J. Cuthbert Hadden - "Haydn"

E. Nesbit - "In Homespun"

Stephen Leacock - "The Hohenzollerns in America"

Hamilton Wright Mabie - "Heroes Every Child Should Know"

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




No one, in the world's whole history, ever attempted to substantiate a
truth by a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of miracle. Nothing but
falsehood ever attested itself by signs and wonders. No miracle ever was
performed, and no sane man ever thought he had performed one, and until
one is performed, there can be no evidence of the existence of any power
superior to, and independent of nature.

The church wishes us to believe. Let the church, or one of its
intellectual saints, perform a miracle, and we will believe. We are
told that nature has a superior. Let this superior, for one single
instant, control nature, and we will admit the truth of your assertion.

We have heard talk enough. We have listened to all the drowsy,
idealess, vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We have read your bible
and the works of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your
solemn groans and your reverential amens. All these amount to less than
nothing. We beg at the doors of your churches for just one little fact.
We pass our hats along your pews and under your pulpits and implore you
for just one fact. We know all about your moldy wonders and your stale
miracles. We want this year's fact. We ask only one. Give us one
fact of charity. Your miracles are too ancient. The witnesses have
been dead for nearly two thousand years. Their reputations for "truth
and veracity" in the neighborhood where they resided is wholly unknown
to us. Give us a new miracle, and substantiate it by witnesses who
still have the cheerful habit of living in this world. Do not send us
to Jericho to hear the winding horns, nor put us in the fire with
Shadrach, Moshech, and Abednego. Do not compel us to navigate the sea
with Captain Jonah, nor dine with Mr. Ezekiel. There is no sort of use
in sending us fox-hunting with Samson. We have positively lost interest
in that little speech so eloquently delivered by Balaam's inspired
donkey. It is worse than useless to show us fishes with money in their
mouths, and call our attention to vast multitudes stuffing themselves
with five crackers and two sardines. We demand a new miracle and we
demand it now. Let the church furnish at least one, or forever after
hold her peace.

In the olden time, the church, by violating the order of nature, proved
the existence of her God. At that time miracles were performed with the
most astonishing ease. They became so common that the church ordered
her priests to desist. And now this same church--the people having
found so little sense--admits, not only, that she cannot perform a
miracle, but insists--that absence of miracle--the steady, unbroken
march of cause and effect, proves the existence of a power superior to
nature. The fact is, however, that the indissoluble chain of cause and
effect proves exactly the contrary.

Sir William Hamilton, one of the pillars of modern theology, in
discussing this very subject, uses the following language: "The
phenomena of matter taken by themselves, so far from warranting any
inference to the existence of a god, would on the contrary ground even
an argument to his negation. The phenomena of a material world are
subjected to immutable laws; are produced and reproduced in the same
invariable succession, and manifest only the blind force of mechanical
necessity."

Nature is but an endless series of efficient causes. She cannot create,
but she eternally transforms. There was no beginning; and there can be
no end.

The best minds, even in the religious world, admit that in material
nature there is no evidence of what they are pleased to call a god. They
find their evidence in the phenomena of intelligence, and very
innocently assert that intelligence is above, and in fact, opposed to
nature. They insist that man, at least, is a special creation; that he
had somewhere in his brain a divine spark, a little portion of the
"Great First Cause." They say that matter cannot produce thought; but
that thought can produce matter. They tell us that man has
intelligence, and therefore there must be an intelligence greater than
his. Why not say, God has intelligence, therefore there must be an
intelligence greater than his? So far as we know, there is no
intelligence apart from matter. We cannot conceive of thought, except
as produced within a brain.

The science, by means of which they demonstrate the existence of an
impossible intelligence, and an incomprehensible power, is called
metaphysics or theology. The theologians admit that the phenomena of
matter tend, at least, to disprove the existence of any power superior
to nature, because in such phenomena we see nothing but an endless chain
of efficient causes--nothing but the force of a mechanical necessity.
They therefore appeal to what they denominate the phenomena of mind to
establish this superior power.

The trouble is, that in the phenomena of mind we find the same endless
chain of efficient causes; the same mechanical necessity. Every thought
must have had an efficient cause. Every motive, every desire, every
fear, hope and dream must have been necessarily produced. There is no
room in the mind of a man for providence or change. The facts and
forces governing thought are as absolute as those governing the motions
of the planets. A poem is produced by the forces of nature, and is as
necessarily and naturally produced as mountains and seas. You will seek
in vain for a thought in man's brain without its efficient cause. Every
mental operation is the necessary result of certain facts and
conditions. Mental phenomena are considered more complicated than those
of matter, and consequently more mysterious. Being more mysterious,
they are considered better evidence of the existence of a god. No one
infers a god from the simple, from the known, from what is understood,
but from the complex, from the unknown and incomprehensible. Our
ignorance is God; what we know is science.

When we abandon the doctrine that some infinite being created matter and
force, and enacted a code of laws for their government, the idea of
interference will be lost. The real priest will then be, not the mouth-
piece of some pretended deity, but the interpreter of nature. From that
moment the church ceases to exist. The tapers will die out upon the
dusty altar; the moths will eat the fading velvet of pulpit and pew;
the Bible will take its place with the Shastras, Puranas, Vedas, Eddas,
Sagas and Korans, and the fetters of a degrading faith will fall from
the minds of men.

"But," says the religionist "you cannot explain everything; you cannot
understand everything; and that which you cannot explain, that which
you do not comprehend, is my god."

We are explaining more every day. We are understanding more every day;
consequently your God is growing smaller every day.

Nothing daunted, the religionist then insists that nothing can exist
without a cause, except cause, and that this uncaused cause is God.

To this we again replied: Every cause must produce an effect, because
until it does produce an effect, it is not a cause. Every effect must
in its turn become a cause. Therefore, in the nature of things, there
cannot be a last cause, for the reason that a so-called last cause would
necessarily produce an effect, and that effect must of necessity become
a cause. The converse of these propositions must be true. Every effect
must have had a cause, and every cause must have been an effect.
Therefore, there could have been no first cause. A first cause is just
as impossible as a last effect.

Beyond the universe there is nothing, and within the universe the
supernatural does not and cannot exist.

The moment these great truths are understood and admitted, a belief in
general or special providence becomes impossible. From that instant men
will cease their vain efforts to please an imaginary being, and will
give their time and attention to the affairs of this world. They will
abandon the idea of attaining any object by prayer and supplication.
The element of uncertainty will, in a great measure, be removed from the
domain of the future, and man, gathering courage from a succession of
victories over the obstructions of nature, will attain a serene grandeur
unknown to the disciples of any superstition. The plans of mankind will
no longer be interfered with by the finger of a supposed omnipotence,
and no one will believe that nations or individuals are protected or
destroyed by any deity whatever. Science, freed from the chains of
pious custom and evangelical prejudice, will, within her sphere, be
supreme. The mind will investigate without reverence and publish its
conclusions without fear. Agassiz will no longer hesitate to declare
the Mosaic cosmogony utterly inconsistent with the demonstrated truths
of geology, and will cease pretending any reverence for the Jewish
scriptures. The moment science succeeds in rendering the church
powerless for evil, the real thinkers will be outspoken. The little
flags of truce carried by timid philosophers will disappear, and the
cowardly parley will give place to victory lasting and universal.

If we admit that some infinite being has controlled the destinies of
persons and people, history becomes a most cruel and bloody farce. Age
after age, the strong have trampled upon the weak; the crafty and
heartless have ensnared and enslaved the simple and innocent, and
nowhere, in all the annals of mankind, has any god succored the
oppressed.

Man should cease to expect aid from on high. By this time he should
know that heaven has no ear to hear, and no hand to help. The present is
the necessary child of all the past. There has been no chance, and
there can be no interference.

If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed,
man must free them. If new truths are discovered, man must discover
them. If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is
done; if labor is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind,
if the defenseless are protected, and if the right finally triumphs, all
must be the work of man. The grand victories of the future must be won
by man, and by man alone.

Nature, so far as we can discern, without passion and without intention,
forms, transforms, and retransforms forever. She neither weeps nor
rejoices. She produces man without purpose, and obliterates him without
regret. She knows no distinction between the beneficial and the
hurtful. Poison and nutrition, pain and joy, life and death, smiles and
tears are alike to her. She is neither merciful nor cruel. She cannot
be flattered by worship nor melted by tears. She does not know even the
attitude of prayer. She appreciates no difference between poison in the
fangs of snakes and mercy in the hearts of men. Only through man does
nature take cognizance of the good, the true, and the beautiful; and,
so far as we know, man is the highest intelligence.

And yet man continues to believe that there is some power independent of
and superior to nature, and still endeavors, by form, ceremony,
supplication, hypocrisy, to obtain its aid. His best energies have been
wasted in the service of this phantom. The horrors of witchcraft were
all born of an ignorant belief in the existence of a totally depraved
being superior to nature, acting in perfect independence of her laws;
and all religious superstition has had for its basis a belief in at
least two beings, one good and the other bad, both of whom could
arbitrarily change the order of the universe. The history of religion
is simply the story of man's efforts in all ages to avoid one of these
powers and to pacify the other. Both powers have inspired little else
than abject fear. The cold, calculating sneer of the devil, and the
frown of God, were equally terrible. In any event, man's fate was to be
arbitrarily fixed forever by an unknown power superior to all law, and
to all fact. Until this belief is thrown aside, man must consider
himself the slave of phantom masters--neither of whom promise liberty in
this world nor in the next.

Man must learn to rely upon himself. Reading bibles will not protect
him from the blasts of winter, but houses, fires, and clothing will. To
prevent famine, one plow is worth a million sermons, and even patent
medicines will cure more diseases than all the prayers uttered since the
beginning of the world.

Although many eminent men have endeavored to harmonize necessity and
free will, the existence of evil, and the infinite power and goodness of
God, they have succeeded only in producing learned and ingenious
failures. Immense efforts have been made to reconcile ideas utterly
inconsistent with the facts by which we are surrounded, and all persons
who have failed to perceive the pretended reconciliation, have been
denounced as infidels, atheists and scoffers. The whole power of the
church has been brought to bear against philosophers and scientists in
order to compel a denial of the authority of demonstration,--and to
induce some Judas to betray Reason, one of the saviors of mankind.

During that frightful period known as the "Dark Ages," Faith reigned,
with scarcely rebellious subject. Her temples were "carpeted with
knees," and the wealth of nations adorned her countless shrines. The
great painters prostituted their genius to immortalize her vagaries,
while the poets enshrined them in song. At her bidding, man covered the
earth with blood. The scales of justice were turned with gold, and for
her use were invented all the cunning instruments of pain. She built
cathedrals for God, and dungeons for men. She peopled the clouds with
angels and the earth with slaves. For centuries the world was retracing
its steps--going steadily back toward, barbaric night! A few infidels--
a few heretics cried, "Halt!" to the great rabble of ignorant devotion,
and made it possible for the genius of the nineteenth century to
revolutionize the cruel creeds and superstitions of mankind.

The thoughts of man, in order to be of any real worth, must be free.
Under the influence of fear the brain is paralyzed, and instead of
bravely solving a problem for itself, tremblingly adopts the solution of
another. As long as a majority of men will cringe to the very earth
before some petty prince or king, what must be the infinite abjectness
of their little souls in the presence of their supposed creator and God?
Under such circumstances, what can their thoughts be worth?

The originality of repetition, and the mental vigor of acquiescence, are
all that we have any right to expect from the Christian world. As long
as every question is answered by the word "God," scientific inquiry is
simply impossible. As fast as phenomena are satisfactorily explained
the domain of the power, supposed to be superior to nature must
decrease, while the horizon of the known must as constantly continue to
enlarge.

It is no longer satisfactory to account for the fall and rise of nations
by saying, "It is the will of God." Such an explanation puts ignorance
and education upon exact equality, and does away with the idea of really
accounting for anything whatever.

Will the religionist pretend that the real end of science is to
ascertain how and why God acts? Science, from such a standpoint, would
consist in investigating the law of arbitrary action, and in a grand
endeavor to ascertain the rule necessarily obeyed by infinite caprice.

From a philosophical point of view, science is knowledge of the laws of
life; of the condition of happiness; of the facts by which we are
surrounded, and the relations we sustain to men and things--by means of
which man, so to speak, subjugates nature and bends the elemental powers
to his will, making blind force the servant of his brain.

A belief in special providence does away with the spirit of
investigation, and is inconsistent with personal efforts. Why should
man endeavor to thwart the designs of God? "Which of you, with taking
thought, can add to his stature one cubit?" Under the influence of this
belief, man, basking in the sunshine of a delusion, considers the lilies
of the field and refuses to take any thought for the morrow. Believing
himself in the power of an infinite being, who can, at any moment, dash
him to the lowest hell or raise him to the highest heaven, he
necessarily abandons the idea of accomplishing anything by his own
efforts. So long as this belief was general, the world was filled with
ignorance, superstition and misery. The energies of man were wasted in
a vain effort to obtain the aid of this power, supposed to be superior
to nature. For countless ages, even men were sacrificed upon the altar
of this impossible god. To please him, mothers have shed the blood of
their own babies; martyrs have chanted triumphant songs in the midst of
flames; priests have gorged themselves with blood; nuns have forsworn
the ecstasies of love; old men have tremblingly implored; women have
sobbed and entreated; every pain has been endured, and every horror has
been perpetrated.

Through the dim long years that have fled, humanity has suffered more
than can be conceived. Most of the misery has been endured by the weak,
the loving and the innocent. Women have been treated like poisonous
beasts, and little children trampled upon as though they had been
vermin. Numberless altars have been reddened, even with the blood of
babies; beautiful girls have been given to slimy serpents; whole races
of men doomed to centuries of slavery, everywhere there has been outrage
beyond the power of genius to express. During all these years the
suffering have supplicated; the withered lips of famine have prayed;
the pale victims have implored, and heaven has been deaf and blind.

Of what use have the gods been to man?

It is no answer to say that some god created the world, established
certain laws, and then turned his attention to other matters, leaving
his children, weak, ignorant and unaided, to fight the battle of life
alone. It is no solution to declare that in some other world this god
will render a few or even all of his subjects happy. What right have we
to expect that a perfectly wise, good and powerful being will ever do
better than he has done, and is doing? The world is filled with
imperfections. If it was made by an infinite being, what reason have we
for saying that he will render it nearer perfect than it now is? If the
infinite Father allows a majority of his children to live in ignorance
and wretchedness now, what evidence is there that he will ever improve
their condition? Will god have more power? Will he become more
merciful? Will his love for his poor creatures increase? Can the
conduct of infinite wisdom, power and love ever change? Is the infinite
capable of any improvement whatever.

We are informed by the clergy that this world is a kind of school; that
the evils by which we are surrounded are for the purpose of developing
our souls, and that only by suffering can men become pure, strong,
virtuous and grand.

Supposing this to be true, what is to become of those who die in
infancy? The little children, according to this philosophy, can never
be developed. They were so unfortunate as to escape the ennobling
influences of pain and misery, and as a consequence, are doomed to an
eternity of mental inferiority. If the clergy are right on this
question, none are so unfortunate as the happy, and we should envy only
the suffering and distressed. If evil is necessary to the development
of man, in this life, how is it possible for the soul to improve in the
perfect joy of paradise?

Since Paley found his watch, the argument of "design" has been relied
upon as unanswerable. The Church teaches that this world, and all that
it contains, were created substantially as we now see them, that the
grasses, the flowers, the trees, and all animals, including man, were
special creations, and that they sustain no necessary relation to each
other. The most orthodox will admit that some earth has been washed
into the sea, that the sea has encroached a little upon the land, and
that some mountains may be a trifle lower than in the morning of
creation. The theory of gradual development was unknown to our fathers;
the idea of evolution did not occur to them. Our fathers looked upon
the then arrangement of things as the primal arrangement. The earth
appeared to them fresh from the hands of a deity. They knew nothing of
the slow evolutions of countless years, but supposed that the almost
infinite variety of vegetable and animal forms had existed from the
first.

Suppose that upon some island we should find a man a million years of
age, and suppose that we should find him in the possession of a most
beautiful carriage, constructed upon the most perfect model. And suppose
further, that he should tell us that it was the result of several
hundred thousand years of labor and of thought; that for fifty thousand
years he used as flat a log as he could find, before it occurred to him
that by splitting the log he could have the same surface with only half
the weight; that it took him many thousand years to invent wheels for
this log; that the wheels he first used were solid, and that fifty
thousand years of thought suggested the use of spokes and tire; that
for many centuries he used the wheels without linch-pins: that it took
a hundred thousand years more to think of using four wheels, instead of
two; that for ages he walked behind the carriage, when going down hill,
in order to hold it back, and that only by a lucky chance he invented
the tongue; would we conclude that this man, from the very first, had
been an infinitely ingenious and perfect mechanic? Suppose we found him
living in an elegant mansion, and he should inform us that he lived in
that house for five hundred thousand years before he thought of putting
on a roof, and that he had but recently invented windows and doors;
would we say that from the beginning he had been an infinite
accomplished and scientific architect.

Does not an improvement in the things created, show the corresponding
improvement in the creator?

Would an infinitely wise, good and powerful God, intending to produce
man, commence with the lowest possible forms of life; with the simplest
organism that can be imagined, and during immeasurable periods of time,
slowly and almost imperceptibly improve upon the rude beginning, until
man was evolved? Would countless ages thus be wasted in the production
of awkward forms, afterward abandoned? Can the intelligence of man
discover the least wisdom in covering the earth with crawling, creeping
horrors, that live only upon the agonies and pangs of others? Can we
see the propriety of so constructing the earth, that only an
insignificant portion of its surface is capable of producing an
intelligent man? Who can appreciate the mercy of so making the world
that all animals devour animals? so that every mouth is a slaughter-
house, and every stomach a tomb? Is it possible to discover infinite
intelligence and love in universal and eternal carnage?

What would we think of a father, who should give a farm to his children,
and before giving them possession should plant upon it thousands of
deadly shrubs and vines; should stock it with ferocious beasts; and
poisonous reptiles; should take pains to put a few swamps in the
neighborhood to breed malaria; should so arrange matters, that the
ground would occasionally open and swallow a few of his darlings, and
besides all this, should establish a few volcanoes in the immediate
vicinity, that might at any moment overwhelm his children with rivers of
fire? Suppose that this father neglected to tell his children which of
the plants were deadly; that the reptiles were poisonous; failed to
say anything about the earthquakes, and kept the volcano business a
profound secret; would we pronounce him angel or fiend?

And yet this is exactly what the orthodox God has done.

According to the theologians, God prepared this globe expressly for the
habitation of his loved children, and yet he filled the forests with
ferocious beasts; placed serpents in every path; stuffed the world with
earthquakes, and adorned its surface with mountains of flame.

Notwithstanding all this, we are told that the world is perfect; that it
was created by a perfect being, and is therefore necessarily perfect.
The next moment, these same persons will tell us that the world was
cursed; covered with brambles, thistles and thorns, and that man was
doomed to disease and death, simply because our poor, dear mother ate an
apple contrary to the command of an arbitrary God.

A very pious friend of mine, having heard that I had said the world was
full of imperfections, asked me if the report was true. Upon being
informed that it was, he expressed great surprise that any one could be
guilty of such presumption. He said that, in his judgment, it was
impossible to point out an imperfection. "Be kind enough," said he, "to
name even one improvement that you could make, if you had the power."
"Well," said I, "I would make good health catching, instead of disease."