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

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Well, I read in another book what appeared to be an account of the same
transaction. It was written about four thousand years before the other.
All commentators agree that the one that was written last was the
original, and the one that was written first was copied from the one
that was written last. But I would advise you all not to allow your
creed to be disturbed by a little matter of four or five thousand years.
It is a great deal better to be mistaken in dates than to go to the
devil. In this other account the Supreme Brahma made up his mind to
make the world and a man and woman. He made the world and he made the
man and then the woman, and put them on the Island of Ceylon. According
to the account it was the most beautiful island of which man can
conceive. Such birds, such songs, such flowers, and such verdure! And
the branches of the trees were so arranged that when the wind swept
through them every tree was a thousand aeolian harps. Brahma, when he
put them there, said: "Let them have a period of courtship, for it is
my desire and will that true love should forever precede marriage."
When I read that, it was so much more beautiful and lofty than the
other, that I said to myself: "If either one of these stories ever turns
out to be true, I hope it will be this one."

Then they had their courtship, with the nightingale singing and the
stars shining and the flowers blooming, and they fell in love. Imagine
that courtship! No prospective fathers or mothers-in-law; no prying and
gossiping neighbors; nobody to say, "Young man, how do you expect to
support her?" Nothing of that kind, nothing but the nightingale singing
its song of joy and pain, as though the thorn already touched its heart.
They were married by the Supreme Brahma, and he said to them, "Remain
here; you must never leave this island." Well, after a little while the
man--and his name was Adami, and the woman's name was Heva--said to
Heva: "I believe I'll look about a little." He wanted to go West. He
went to the western extremity of the island where there was a little
narrow neck of land connecting it with the mainland, and the devil, who
is always playing pranks with us, produced a mirage, and when he looked
over to the mainland, such hills and vales, such dells and dales, such
mountains crowned with snow, such cataracts clad in bows of glory did he
see there, that he went back and told Heva: "The country over there is
a thousand times better than this, let us migrate." She, like every
other woman that ever lived, said: "Let well enough alone we have all
we want; let us stay here." But he said: "No, let us go;" so she
followed him, and when they came to this narrow neck of land, he took
her on his back like a gentleman, and carried her over. But the moment
they got over, they heard a crash, and, looking back, discovered that
this narrow neck of land had fallen into the sea. The mirage had
disappeared, and there was naught but rocks and sand, and the Supreme
Brahma cursed them both to the lowest Hell.

Then it was that the man spoke--and I have liked him ever since for it--
"Curse me, but curse not her; it was not her fault, it was mine."
That's the kind of a man to start a world with. The Supreme Brahma
said: "I will save her but not thee." And she spoke out of her
fullness of love, out of a heart in which there was love enough to make
all her daughters rich in holy affection, and said: "If thou wilt not
spare him, spare neither me. I do not wish to live without him, I love
him." Then the Supreme Brahma said--and I have liked him ever since I
read it--"I will spare you both, and watch over you and your children
forever." Honor bright, is that not the better and grander story?

And in that same book I find this "Man is strength, woman is beauty; man
is courage, woman is love. When the one man loves the one woman, and
the one woman loves the one man, the very angels leave Heaven, and come
and sit in that house, and sing for joy." In the same book this:
"Blessed is that man, and beloved of all the gods, who is afraid of no
man, and of whom no man is afraid." Magnificent character! A
missionary certainly ought to talk to that man. And I find this: "Never
will I accept private, individual salvation, but rather will I stay and
work, strive and suffer, until every soul from every star has been
brought home to God." Compare that with the Christian that expects to
go to Heaven while the world is rolling over Niagara to an eternal and
unending Hell. So I say that religion lays all the crime and troubles
of this world at the beautiful feet of woman. And then the church has
the impudence to say that it has exalted women. I believe that marriage
is a perfect partnership; that woman has every right that man has--and
one more--the right to be protected. Above all men in the world I hate a
stingy man--a man that will make his wife beg for money. "What did you
do with the dollar I gave you last week? And what are you going to do
with this?" It is vile. No gentleman will ever be satisfied with the
love of a beggar and a slave--no gentleman will ever be satisfied except
with the love of an equal. What kind of children does a man expect to
have with a beggar for their mother? A man can not be so poor but that
he can be generous, and if you only have one dollar in the word and you
have got to spend it, spend it like a lord--spend it as though it were a
dry leaf, and you the owner of unbounded forests--spend it as though you
had a wilderness of your own. That's the way to spend it.

I had rather be a beggar and spend my last dollar like a king, than be a
king and spend my money like a beggar. If it has got to go, let it go.
And this is my advice to the poor. For you can never be so poor that
whatever you do you can't do in a grand and manly way. I hate a cross
man. What right has a man to assassinate the joy of life? When you go
home you ought to go like a ray of light--so that it will, even in the
night, burst out of the doors and windows and illuminate the darkness.
Some men think their mighty brains have been in a turmoil; they have
been thinking about who will be Alderman from the Fifth Ward; they have
been thinking about politics, great and mighty questions have been
engaging their minds, they have bought calico at five cents or six, and
want to sell it for seven. Think of the intellectual strain that must
have been upon that man, and when he gets home everybody else in the
house must look out for his comfort. A woman who has only taken care of
five or six children, and one or two of them sick, has been nursing them
and singing to them, and trying to make one yard of cloth do the work of
two, she, of course, is fresh and fine and ready to wait upon this
gentleman--the head of the family--the boss. I was reading the other
day of an apparatus invented for the ejecting of gentlemen who subsist
upon free lunches. It is so arranged that when the fellow gets both
hands into the victuals, a large hand descends upon him, jams his hat
over his eyes--he is seized, turned toward the door, and just in the
nick of time an immense boot comes from the other side, kicks him in
italics, sends him out over the sidewalk and lands him rolling in the
gutter. I never hear of such a man--a boss--that I don't feel as though
that machine ought to be brought into requisition for his benefit.

Love is the only thing that will pay ten per cent of interest on the
outlay. Love is the only thing in which the height of extravagance is
the last degree of economy. It is the only thing, I tell you. Joy is
wealth. Love is the legal tender of the soul--and you need not be rich
to be happy. We have all been raised on success in this country.
Always been talked with about being successful, and have never thought
ourselves very rich unless we were the possessors of some magnificent
mansion, and unless our names have been between the putrid lips of rumor
we could not be happy. Every little boy is striving to be this and be
that. I tell you the happy man is the successful man. The man that has
won the love of one good woman is a successful man. The man that has
been the emperor of one good heart, and that heart embraced all his, has
been a success. If another has been the emperor of the round world and
has never loved and been loved, his life is a failure. It won't do.
Let us teach our children the other way, that the happy man is the
successful man, and he who is a happy man is the one who always tries to
make some one else happy.

The man who marries a woman to make her happy; that marries her as much
for her own sake as for his own; not the man that thinks his wife is
his property, who thinks that the title to her belongs to him--that the
woman is the property of the man; wretches who get mad at their wives
and then shoot them down in the street because they think the woman is
their property. I tell you it is not necessary to be rich and great and
powerful to be happy.

A little while ago I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon--a
magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a dead deity--and
gazed upon the sarcophagus of black Egyptian marble, where rest at last
the ashes of the restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought
about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. I saw him
walk upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide--I saw him at
Toulon--I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris--I saw
him at the head of the army of Italy--I saw him crossing the bridge of
Lodi with the tri-color in his hand--I saw him in Egypt in the shadows
of the pyramids--I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of
France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo--at Ulm and
Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the
cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like Winter's withered
leaves. I saw him at Leipzig in defeat and disaster--driven by a
million bayonets back upon Paris--clutched like a wild beast--banished
to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his
genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where chance
and fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw
him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon
the sad and solemn sea. I thought of the orphans and widows he had
made--of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only
woman who ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of
ambition. And I said I would rather have been a French peasant and worn
wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing
over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the Autumn
sun; I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by
my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky, with my children upon
my knees and their arms about me; I would rather have been that man and
gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust than to have
been that imperial impersonation of force and murder, known as Napoleon
the Great. It is not necessary to be rich in order to be happy. It is
only necessary to be in love. Thousands of men go to college and get a
certificate that they have an education, and that certificate is in
Latin and they stop studying, and in two years, to save their life, they
couldn't read the certificate they got.

It is mostly so in marrying. They stop courting when they get married.
They think, we have won her and that is enough. Ah! the difference
before and after! How well they look! How bright their eyes! How
light their steps, and how full they were of generosity and laughter! I
tell you a man should consider himself in good luck if a woman loves him
when he is doing his level best! Good luck! Good luck! And another
thing that is the cause of much trouble is that people don't count
fairly. They do what they call putting their best foot forward. That
means lying a little. I say put your worst foot forward. If you have
got any faults admit them. If you drink say so and quit it. If you
chew and smoke and swear, say so. If some of your kindred are not very
good people, say so. If you have had two or three that died on the
gallows, or that ought to have died there, say so. Tell all your faults
and if after she knows your faults she says she will have you, you have
got the dead wood on that woman forever. I claim that there should be
perfect equality in the home, and I can not think of anything nearer
Heaven than a home where there is true republicanism and true democracy
at the fireside. All are equal.

And then, do you know, I like to think that love is eternal; that if
you really love the woman, for her sake, you will love her no matter
what she may do; that if she really loves you, for your sake, the same;
that love does not look at alterations, through the wrinkles of time,
through the mask of years--if you really love her you will always see
the face you loved and won. And I like to think of it. If a man loves a
woman she does not ever grow old to him. And the woman who really loves
a man does not see that he is growing older. He is not decrepit to her.
He is not tremulous. He is not old. He is not bowed. She always sees
the same gallant fellow that won her hand and heart. I like to think of
it in that way, and as Shakespeare says: "Let Time reach with his
sickle as far as ever he can; although he can reach ruddy cheeks and
ripe lips, and flashing eyes, he can not quite reach love." I like to
think of it. We will go down the hill of life together, and enter the
shadow one with the other, and as we go down we may hear the ripple of
the laughter of our grandchildren, and the birds, and spring, and youth,
and love will sing once more upon the leafless branches of the tree of
age. I love to think of it in that way--absolute equals, happy, happy,
and free, all our own.

But some people say: "Would you allow a woman to vote?" Yes, if she
wants to; that is her business, not mine. If a woman wants to vote, I
am too much of a gentleman to say she shall not. But, they say, woman
has not sense enough to vote. It don't take much. But it seems to me
there are some questions, as for instance, the question of peace or war,
that a woman should be allowed to vote upon. A woman that has sons to
be offered on the altar of that Moloch, it seems to me that such a woman
should have as much right to vote upon the question of peace and war as
some thrice-besotted sot that reels to the ballot box and deposits his
vote for war. But if women have been slaves, what shall we say of the
little children, born in the sub-cellars, children of poverty, children
of crime, children of wealth, children that are afraid when they hear
their names pronounced by the lips of their mother, children that cower
in fear when they hear the footsteps of their brutal father, the flotsam
and jetsam upon the rude sea of life, my heart goes out to them one and
all.

Children have all the rights that we have and one more, and that is to
be protected. Treat your children in that way. Suppose your child
tells a lie. Don't pretend that the whole world is going into
bankruptcy. Don't pretend that that is the first lie ever told. Tell
them, like an honest man, that you have told hundreds of lies yourself,
and tell the dear little darling that it is not the best way; that it
soils the soul. Think of the man that deals in stocks whipping his
children for putting false rumors afloat! Think of an orthodox minister
whipping his own flesh and blood, for not telling all it thinks! Think
of that! Think of a lawyer for beating his child for avoiding the
truth! when the old man makes about half his living that way. A lie is
born of weakness on one side and tyranny on the other. That is what it
is. Think of a great big man coming at a little bit of a child with a
club in his hand! What is the little darling to do? Lie, of course. I
think that mother Nature put that ingenuity into the mind of the child,
when attacked by a parent, to throw up a little breastwork in the shape
of a lie to defend itself. When a great general wins a battle by what
they call strategy, we build monuments to him. What is strategy? Lies.
Suppose a man as much larger than we are as we are larger than a child
five years of age, should come at us with a liberty pole in his hand,
and in tones of thunder want to know "who broke that plate," there isn't
one of us, not excepting myself, that wouldn't swear that we never had
seen that plate in our lives, or that it was cracked when we got it.

Another good way to make children tell the truth is to tell it yourself.
Keep your word with your child the same as you would with your banker.
If you tell a child you will do anything, either do it or give the child
the reason why. Truth is born of confidence. It comes from the lips of
love and liberty. I was over in Michigan the other day. There was a boy
over there at Grand Rapids about five or six years old, a nice, smart
boy, as you will see from the remark he made--what you might call a
nineteenth century boy. His father and mother had promised to take him
out riding. They had promised to take him out riding for about three
weeks, and they would slip off and go without him. Well, after while
that got kind of played out with the little boy, and the day before I
was there they played the trick on him again. They went out and got the
carriage, and went away, and as they rode away from the front of the
house, he happened to be standing there with his nurse, and he saw them.
The whole thing flashed on him in a moment. He took in the situation,
and turned to his nurse and said, pointing to his father and mother,
"There go the two d--t liars in the State of Michigan!" When you go
home fill the house with joy, so that the light of it will stream out
the windows and doors, and illuminate even the darkness. It is just as
easy that way as any in the world.

I want to tell you tonight that you can not get the robe of hypocrisy on
you so thick that the sharp eye of childhood will not see through every
veil, and if you pretend to your children that you are the best man that
ever lived--the bravest man that ever lived--they will find you out
every time. They will not have the same opinion of father when they
grow up that they used to have. They will have to be in mighty bad luck
if they ever do meaner things than you have done. When your child
confesses to you that it has committed a fault, take that child in your
arms, and let it feel your heart beat against its heart, and raise your
children in the sunlight of love, and they will be sunbeams to you along
the pathway of life. Abolish the club and the whip from the house,
because, if the civilized use a whip, the ignorant and the brutal will
use a club, and they will use it because you use the whip.

Every little while some door is thrown open in some orphan asylum, and
there we see the bleeding back of a child whipped beneath the roof that
was raised by love. It is infamous, and a man that can't raise a child
without the whip ought not to have a child. If there is one of you here
that ever expect to whip your child again, let me ask you something.
Have your photograph taken at the time and let it show your face red
with vulgar anger, and the face of the little one with eyes swimming in
tears, and the little chin dimpled with fear, looking like a piece of
water struck by a sudden cold wind. If that little child should die, I
can not think of a sweeter way to spend an Autumn afternoon than to take
that photograph and go to the cemetery, when the maples are clad in
tender gold, and when little scarlet runners are coming from the sad
heart of the earth, and sit down upon that mound, and look upon that
photograph, and think of the flesh, now dust, that you beat. Just think
of it. I could not bear to die in the arms of a child that I had
whipped. I could not bear to feel upon my lips, when they were withered
beneath the touch of death, the kiss of one that I had struck. Some
Christians act as though they really thought that when Christ said,
"Suffer little children to come unto me," He had a rawhide under His
coat. They act as though they really thought that He made that remark
simply to get the children within striking distance.

I have known Christians to turn their children from their doors,
especially a daughter, and then get down on their knees and pray to God
to watch over them and help them. I will never ask God to help my
children unless I am doing my level best in that same wretched line. I
will tell you what I say to my girls: "Go where you will; do what crime
you may; fall to what depth of degradation you may; in all the storms
and winds and earthquakes of life, no matter what you do, you never can
commit any crime that will shut my door, my arms or my heart to you. As
long as I live you have one sincere friend." Call me an atheist; call
me an infidel because I hate the God of the Jew--which I do. I intend
so to live that when I die my children can come to my grave and
truthfully say: "He who sleeps here never gave us one moment of pain."

When I was a boy there was one day in each week too good for a child to
be happy in. In these good old times Sunday commenced when the sun went
down on Saturday night and closed when the sun went down on Sunday
night. We commenced Saturday to get a good ready. And when the sun
went down Saturday night there was a gloom deeper than midnight that
fell upon the house. You could not crack hickory nuts then. And if you
were caught chewing gum, it was only another evidence of the total
depravity of the human heart. Well, after a while we got to bed sadly
and sorrowfully after having heard Heaven thanked that we were not all
in Hell. And I sometimes used to wonder how the mercy of God lasted as
long as it did, because I recollected that on several occasions I had
not been at school, when I was supposed to be there. Why I was not
burned to a crisp was a mystery to me. The next morning we got ready
for church--all solemn, and when we got there the minister was up in the
pulpit, about twenty feet high, and he commenced at Genesis about "The
fall of man," and he went on to about twenty thirdly; then he struck
the second application, and when he struck the application I knew he was
about half way through. And then he went on to show the scheme how the
Lord was satisfied by punishing the wrong man. Nobody but a God would
have thought of that ingenious way. Well, when he got through that,
then came the catechism--the chief end of man. Then my turn came, and
we sat along on a little bench where our feet came within about fifteen
inches of the floor, and the dear old minister used to ask us:

"Boys, do you know that you ought to be in Hell?"

And we answered up as cheerfully as could be expected under the
circumstances.

"Yes, sir."

"Well, boys, do you know that you would go to Hell if you died in your
sins?"

And we said: "Yes, sir."

And then came the great test:

"Boys"--I can't get the tone, you know. And do you know that is how the
preachers get the bronchitis. You never heard of an auctioneer getting
the bronchitis, nor the second mate on a steamboat--never. What gives
it to the minister is talking solemnly when they don't feel that way,
and it has the same influence upon the organs of speech that it would
have upon the cords of the calves of your legs to walk on your tip-toes,
and so I call bronchitis "parsonitis." And if the ministers would all
tell exactly what they think they would all get well, but keeping back a
part of the truth is what gives them bronchitis.

Well the old man--the dear old minister--used to try and show us how
long we would be in Hell if we would only locate there. But to finish
the other. The grand test question was:

"Boys, if it was God's will that you should go to Hell, would you be
willing to go?"

And every little liar said:

"Yes, sir."

Then, in order to tell how long we would stay there, he used to say:

"Suppose once in a billion ages a bird should come from a far distant
clime and carry off in its bill one little grain of sand, the time would
finally come when the last grain of sand would be carried away. Do you
understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Boys, by that time it would not be sun-up in Hell."

Where did that doctrine of Hell come from? I will tell you; from that
fellow in the dug-out. Where did he get it? It was a souvenir from the
wild beasts. Yes, I tell you he got it from the wild beasts, from the
glittering eye of the serpent, from the coiling, twisting snakes with
their fangs mouths; and it came from the bark, growl and howl of wild
beasts; it was born of a laugh of the hyena and got it from the
depraved chatter of malicious apes. And I despise it with every drop of
my blood and defy it. If there is any God in this universe who will
damn his children for an expression of an honest thought I wish to go to
Hell. I would rather go there than go to heaven and keep the company of
a God that would thus damn his children. Oh it is an infamous doctrine
to teach that to little children, to put a shadow in the heart of a
child to fill the insane asylums with that miserable, infamous lie. I
see now and then a little girl--a dear little darling, with a face like
the light, and eyes of joy, a human blossom, and I think, "is it
possible that little girl will ever grow up to be a Presbyterian?" Is
it possible, my goodness, that that flower will finally believe in the
five points of Calvinism or in the eternal damnation of man? Is it
possible that that little fairy will finally believe that she could be
happy in Heaven with her baby in Hell? Think of it! Think of it! And
that is the Christian religion!

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