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

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The speaker here took from his pocket a pair of spectacles, and adjusted
them, saying: I am sorry to admit it; I have got to come to it. I
hate to put on a pair of spectacles, but the other day, as I was putting
them on, a thought struck me. I see progress in this. To progress is
to overcome the obstacles of nature, and in order to overcome this
obstacle of the loss of sight man invented spectacles. Spectacles led
men to the telescope, with which he read all the starry heavens; and
had it not been for the failure of sight we wouldn't have seen a
millionth part that we have. In the first place, we owe nothing but
truth to the dead. I am going to tell the truth about them. There are
three theories by which men account for all phenomena--for everything
that happens: First, the supernatural. In the olden time, everything
that happened some deity produced, some spirit, some devil, some
hobgoblin, some dryad, some fairy, some spook, something except nature.
First, then, the supernatural; and a barbarian, looking at the wide,
mysterious sea, wandering through the depths of the forest, encountering
the wild beasts, troubled by strange dreams, accounted for everything by
the action of spirits, good and bad. Second, the supernatural and
natural. There is where the religious world is today--a mingling of the
supernatural and natural, the idea being that God created the world and
imposed upon men certain laws, and then let them run, and if they ever
got into any trouble then he would do a miracle, and accomplish any good
that he desired to do. Third--and that is the grand theory--the
natural. Between these theories there has been from the dawn of
civilization a conflict. In this great war nearly all the soldiers have
been in the ranks of the supernatural. The believers in the
supernatural insist that matter is controlled and directed entirely by
powers from without. The naturalists maintain that nature acts from
within; that nature is not acted upon; that the universe is all there
is; that nature, with infinite arms, embraces everything that exists,
and that the supposed powers beyond the limits of the materially real
are simply ghosts.

You say, ah! this is materialism! this is the doctrine of matter! What
is matter? I take a handful of earth in my hands, and into that dust I
put seeds, and arrows from the eternal quiver of the sun smite it, and
the seeds grow and bud and blossom, and fill the air with perfume in my
sight. Do you understand that? Do you understand how this dust and
these seeds and that light and this moisture produced that bud and that
flower and that perfume? Do you understand that any better than you do
the production of thought? Do you understand that any better than you
do a dream? Do you understand that any better than you do the thoughts
of love that you see in the eyes of the one you adore? Can you explain
it? Can you tell what matter is? Have you the slightest conception? Yet
you talk about matter as though you were acquainted with its origin; as
though you had compelled, with clenched hands, the very rocks to give up
the secret of existence? Do you know what force is? Can you account
for molecular action? Are you familiar with chemistry? Can you account
for the loves and the hatreds of the atoms? Is there not something in
matter that forever excludes you? Can you tell what matter really is?
Before you cry materialism, you had better find what matter is. Can you
tell of anything without a material basis? Is it possible to imagine
the annihilation of a single atom? Is it possible for you to conceive
of the creation of a single atom? Can you have a thought that is not
suggested to you by what you call matter? Did any man or woman or child
ever have a solitary thought, dream or conception, that was not
suggested to them by something they had seen in nature? Can you conceive
of anything the different parts of which have been suggested to you by
nature? You can conceive of an animal with the hoofs of a bison, with
the pouch of a kangaroo, with the head of a buffalo, with the tail of a
lion, with the scales of a fish, with the wings of a bird, and yet every
part of this impossible monster has been suggested to you by nature.
You say time, therefore you can think eternity. You say pain, therefore
you can think hell. You say strength, therefore you can think
omnipotence. You say wisdom, therefore you can think infinite wisdom.
Everything you see, everything you can dream of or think of, has been
suggested to you by your surroundings, by nature. Man cannot rise above
nature; below nature man cannot fall. Imagine, if you please, the
creation of a single atom. Can any one here imagine the creation out of
nothing of one atom? Can any one here imagine the destruction of one
atom? Can you imagine an atom being changed to nothing? Can you
imagine nothing being changed to an atom? There is not a solitary
person here with an imagination strong enough to think either of the
creation of an atom or of the annihilation of an atom.

Matter and the universe are the same yesterday, today and forever. There
is just as much matter in the universe today as there ever was, and as
there ever will be; there is just as much force and just as much energy
as there ever was or ever will be; but it is continually taking
different shapes and forms; one day it is a man, another day it is
animal, another day it is earth, another day it is metal, another day it
is gas, it gains nothing and it loses nothing. Our fathers denounced
materialism and accounted for all phenomena how? By the caprice of gods
and devils. For thousands of years it was believed that ghosts, good
ghosts, bad ghosts, benevolent and malevolent, in some mysterious way
produced all phenomena; that disease and health, happiness and misery,
fortune and misfortune, peace and war, life and death, success and
failure, were but arrows shot by those ghosts or shadowy phantoms, to
reward or punish mankind; that they were displeased or pleased by our
actions, that they blessed the earth with harvest or cursed it with
famine; that they fed or starved the children of men; that they
crowned or uncrowned kings; that they controlled war; that they gave
prosperous voyages, allowing the brave mariner to meet his wife and
children inside the harbor bar, or strewed the sad shore with wrecks of
ships and the bodies of men. Formerly these ghosts were believed to be
almost innumerable. Earth, air and water were filled with these
phantoms, but in modern times they have greatly decreased in number,
because the second proposition that I stated, the supernatural and the
natural, has generally been adopted, but the remaining ghosts are
supposed to perform the same functions as of yore.

Let me say right here that the object of every religion ever made by man
has been to get on the good side of supposed powers; has been to
petition the gods to stop the earthquakes, to stop famine, to stop
pestilence. It has always been something that man should do to prevent
being punished by the powers of the air or to get from them some favors.
It has always been believed that these ghosts could in some way be
appeased; that they could be bettered by sacrifices, by prayer, by
fasting, by the building of temples and cathedrals, by shedding the
blood of men and beasts, by forms, by ceremonies, by kneelings, by
prostrations and flagellations, by living alone in the wild desert, by
the practice of celibacy, by inventing instruments of torture, by
destroying men, women and children, by covering the earth with dungeons,
by burning unbelievers and by putting chains upon the thoughts and
manacles upon the lips of men, by believing things without evidence, by
believing things against evidence, by disbelieving and denying
demonstrations, by despising facts, by hating reason, by discouraging
investigation, by making an idiot of yourself--all these have been done
to appease the winged monsters of the air.

In the history of our poor world no horror has been omitted, no infamy
has been left undone by believers in ghosts, and all the shadows were
born of cowardice and malignity; they were painted by the pencil of
fear upon the canvas of ignorance by that artist called Superstition.
From these ghosts our fathers received their information. These ghosts
were the schoolmasters of our ancestors. They were the scientists, the
philosophers, the geologists, the legislators, the astronomers, the
physicians, the metaphysicians and historians of the past.

Let me give you my definition of metaphysics, that is to say, the
science of the unknown, the science of guessing. Metaphysics is where
two fools get together, and each one admits that neither can prove, and
both say, "Hence we infer." That is the science of metaphysics. For
this these ghosts were supposed to have the only experience and real
knowledge; they inspired men to write books, and the books were sacred.
If facts were found to be inconsistent with these books, so much the
worse for the facts, and especially for the discoverers of these facts.
It was then and still is believed that these sacred books are the basis
of the idea of immortality, to give up the idea that these books were
inspired is and to renounce the idea of immortal life. I deny it! Men
existed before books; and all the books that were ever written were
written, in my judgment, by men, and the idea of immortality was not
born of a book, but was born of the man who wrote the book. The idea of
immortality, like the great sea, has ebbed and flowed in the human
heart, beating its countless waves of hope and joy against the shores of
time, and was not born of any book, nor of any religion, nor of any
creed; it was born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and
flow beneath the clouds and mists of doubt and darkness as long as love
kisses the lips of death. It is the rainbow of hope shining upon the
tears of grief. We love, therefore we wish to live, and the foundation
of the idea of immortality is human affection and human love, and I have
a thousand times more confidence in the affections of the human heart,
in the deep and splendid feelings of the human soul than I have in any
book that ever was or ever can be written by mortal man.

From the books written by those ghosts we have at least ascertained that
they knew nothing whatever of the world in which we live. Did they know
anything about any other? Upon every point where contradiction is
possible, the ghosts have been contradicted. By these ghosts, by these
citizens of the air, by this aristocracy of the clouds the affairs of
government were administered all authority to govern came from them.
The emperors, kings and potentates, every one of them, had the divine
petroleum poured upon his head, the kerosene of authority.

The emperors, king and potentates had communications from the phantoms.
Man was not considered as the source of power; to rebel against the
king was to rebel against the ghosts, and nothing less than the blood of
the offenders could appease the invisible phantoms and by the authority
of the ghosts man was crushed and slayed and plundered. Many toiled
wearily in the sun and storm that a few favorites of the ghosts might
live in idleness, and many lived in huts and caves and dens that the few
might dwell in palaces, and many clothed themselves with rags that a few
might robe themselves in purple and gold, and many crept and cringed and
crawled that a few might tread upon their necks with feet of iron. From
the ghosts men received not only authority but information. They told us
the form of the earth; they informed us that eclipses were caused by
the sins of man, especially the failure to pay tithes that the universe
was made in six days; that gazing at the sky with a telescope was
dangerous; that trying to be wise beyond what they had written was born
of a rebellious and irreverent spirit; they told us there was no virtue
like belief; no crime like doubt, that investigation was simply
impudence, and the punishment therefore violent torment; they not only
told us all about this world but about two others, and if their
statements about the other two are as true as they were about this, no
one can estimate the value of their information.

For countless ages the world was governed by ghosts, and they spared no
pains to change the eagle of the human intellect into a bat of darkness.
To accomplish this infamous purpose, to drive the love of truth from the
human heart; to prevent the advancement of mankind to shut out from the
world every ray of intellectual light to pollute every mind with
superstition, the power of kings, the cunning and cruelty of priests,
and the wealth of nations were used.

In order to show you the information we got from the ghosts, and the
condition of the world when the ghosts were the kings, let me call your
attention to this: During these years of persecution, ignorance,
superstition and slavery, nearly all the people, the kings, lawyers and
doctors, learned and unlearned, believed in that frightful production of
ignorance, of fear and faith, called witchcraft. Witchcraft today is
religion carried out. They believed that man was the sport and prey of
devils; that the very air was thick with these enemies of man, and,
with few exceptions, this hideous belief was universal. Under these
conditions progress was almost impossible. Fear paralyzed the brain.

Progress is born of courage. Fear believes, courage doubts. Fear falls
upon the earth and prays; courage stands erect and thinks. Fear
retreats; courage advances. Fear is barbarism, courage is
civilization. Fear believes in witchcraft; courage in science and in
eternal law. The facts upon which this terrible belief rested were
proved over and over again in nearly every court in Europe. Thousands
confessed themselves guilty, admitted they had sold themselves to the
devil. They gave the particulars of the sale; told what they said and
what the devil replied. They confessed themselves guilty when they knew
that confession was death; knew that their property would be
confiscated and their children left to beg their bread. This is one of
the miracles of history, one of the strangest contradictions of the
human mind. Without doubt they really believed themselves guilty.

In the first place, they believed in witchcraft as a fact, and when
charged with it, they became insane. They had read the account of the
witch of Endor calling up the dead body of Samuel. He is an old man; he
has his mantle on. They had read the account of Saul stooping to the
earth and conversing with the spirit that had been called from the
region of space by a witch. They had read a command from the Almighty,
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," and they believed the world was
full of witches, or else the Almighty Would not have made a law against
them. They believed in witchcraft, and when they were charged with it,
they probably became insane, and in their insanity they confessed their
guilt. They found themselves abhorred and deserted, charged with a crime
they could not disprove. Like a man in quicksand, every effort only
sunk them deeper. Caught in this frightful web, at the mercy of the
devotees of superstition, hope fled and nothing remained but the
insanity of confession.

The whole world appeared insane. In the time of James I, a man was
burned for causing a storm at sea, with the intention of drowning one of
the royal family, but I do not think it would have been much of a crime
if he had been really guilty. How could he disprove it? How could he
show that he did not cause a storm at sea? All storms were at that time
supposed to be inspired by the devil; the people believed that all
storms were caused by him, or by persons whom he assisted. I implore
you to remember that the men who believed these things wrote our creeds
and our confessions of faith, and it is by their dust that I am asked to
kneel and pay implicit homage, instead of investigating; and I implore
you to recollect that they wrote our creeds.

A woman was tried and convicted before Sir Matthew Hale, one of the
greatest judges and lawyers of England, for having caused children to
vomit crooked pins. Think of that! The learned judge charged the
intelligent jury that there was no doubt as to the existence of witches,
that it was established by all history and expressly taught by the
Bible. The woman was hung and her body was burned. Sir Thomas Moore
declared that to give up witchcraft was to throw away the sacred
scriptures. John Wesley, too, was a firm believer in ghosts, and
insisted upon their existence after all laws upon the subject had been
repealed in England, and I beg of you to remember that John Wesley was
the founder of the Methodist Church. In New England a woman was charged
with being a witch and with having changed herself into a fox; while in
that condition she was attacked and bitten by some dogs, and a committee
of three men was ordered by the Court to examine this woman. They
removed her clothing, and searched for what they were pleased to call
witch-spots--that is to say, spots into which a needle could be thrust
without giving pain; they reported to the Court that such spots were
found. She denied that she had ever changed herself into a fox. On the
report of the committee she was found guilty, and she was actually
executed by our Puritan fathers, the gentlemen who braved the danger of
the deep for the sake of worshiping God and persecuting their fellow
men. I belong to their blood, and the best thing I can say about them,
and that which rises like a white shaft to their eternal honor, is that
they were in favor of education.

A man was attacked by a wolf; he defended himself and succeeded in
cutting off one of the animal's paws, and the wolf ran away; he put it
in his pocket and carried it home; there he found his wife with one of
her hands gone, and he took that paw from his pocket and put it upon her
arm, and it assumed the appearance of a human hand, and he charged his
wife with being a witch. She was tried, she confessed her guilt, and
she was hung and her body was burned! My! is it possible? Did not
somebody say something against such an infamous proceeding? Yes, they
did! There was a Young Men's Association who invited a man to come and
give his ideas upon the subject.

He denounced it. He said it was outrageous, that it was nonsensical,
that it was infamous and the moment he went away the young men met and
passed a resolution that he had deceived them; and the clergy at that
time protested and said, of course, let the man think, if you call that
kind of stuff thinking.

But there was one man belonging to this Association who had the courage
to stand by the truth.

Whether he believed in what the speaker said or not, he had that
manliness; and I take this opportunity to thank from the bottom of my
heart a man. I have no idea he agrees with me except in this: Whatever
you do, do it like a man and be honest about it.

People were burned for causing frost in summer; for destroying crops
with hail; for causing storms--for making cows go dry; for souring
beer; for putting the devil in emptyings so that they would not rise.
The life of no one was secure. To be charged was to be convicted.
Every man was at the mercy of every other. This infamous belief was so
firmly seated in the minds of the people, that, to express a doubt as to
its existence was to be suspected yourself. They believed that animals
were often taken possession of by devils, and they believed that the
killing of the animal would destroy the devil. They absolutely tried,
convicted and executed dumb beasts.

At Vail, in 1470, a rooster was tried upon the charge of having laid an
egg, and the clergy said they had no doubt of it. Rooster eggs were
used only in making witch-ointment. This everybody knew. The rooster
was convicted, and with all due solemnity, he was burned in the public
square.

So a hog and six pig died for having killed and partially eaten a child.
The hog was convicted, but the pigs, on account of their extreme youth,
were acquitted.

As late as 1740, a cow, charged with being possessed of a devil, was
tried and was convicted. They used to exorcise rats, snakes and vermin;
they used to go through the alleys and streets and fields and warn them
to leave within a certain number of days, and if they did not leave,
they threatened them with certain pains and penalties which they
proceeded to recount.

But let us be careful how we laugh about those things; let us not pride
ourselves too much on the progress of our age. We must not forget that
some of our people are yet in the same intelligent business. Only a
little while ago the Governor of Minnesota appointed a day of fasting
and prayer to see if the Lord could not be induced to kill the
grasshoppers--or send them into some other State.

About the close of the fifteenth century was the excitement in regard to
witchcraft, and Pope Innocent the Eighth issued a bull directing the
inquisitors to be vigilant in searching out and punishing all guilty of
this crime. Forms for the crime were regularly issued. For two hundred
and fifty years the church was busy in punishing the impossible crime of
witchcraft by burning, hanging and torturing men, women and little
children.

Protestants were as active as Catholics; and in Geneva five hundred
witches were burned at the stake in three months, and one thousand were
executed in one year in the diocese of Couro; at least one hundred
thousand victims suffered in Germany, the last execution being in
Galesburgh, and taking place in 1794, and the last in Switzerland, 1780.
In England statutes were passed from Henry VI to James I, defining the
crime and punishment, and the last act passed in the British Parliament
was when Lord Bacon was a member of the house.

In 1716 Mrs. Hicks and daughter, nine years of age, were hung for
selling their souls to the devil; and raising a storm at sea by pulling
off their stockings and making a lather of soap. In England it has been
estimated that at least 30,000 were hung or burned. The last victim
executed in Scotland was 1722. She was an innocent old woman who had so
little idea of her condition, that she rejoiced at the sight of the fire
destined to consume her to ashes. She had a daughter, lame in her
hands, a circumstance accounted for from the fact that the witch had
been used to transfer her daughter into a pony and get her shod by the
devil! Intelligent ancestors!

In 1692 nineteen persons were executed in Salem, Massachusetts, for the
crime of witchcraft. It was thought in those days that men and women
made contracts with the devil, and those contracts were confirmed at a
meeting of witches and ghosts, over which the devil presided; these
contracts in some cases were for a few years, others for life. General
assemblages of witches were held once a year. To these they rode from
great distances on brooms and dogs, and there they did homage to the
prince of hell and offered him sacrifices.

In 1836 the populace of Holland plunged into the sea a woman reputed to
be a sorceress, and as the miserable woman persisted in rising to the
surface, she was pronounced guilty, and was beaten to death. It was
believed that the devil could transform people into any shape he
pleased, and whoever denounced this idea was denounced as an Infidel;
that the believers in witchcraft appealed to the devil; that with the
devil were associated innumerable spirits, who ranged over the world
endeavoring to torment mankind; that these spirits possessed a power
and wisdom transcending the limits of human faculties. They believed
the devil could carry persons hundreds of miles in a few seconds; they
believed this because they knew that Christ had been carried by the
devil, in the same manner, into a high mountain, and placed upon a
pinnacle. According to their account, the prince of the air had
absolutely taken the God of this infinite Universe, the Creator of all
its shining, wheeling stars--he had been absolutely taken by the devil
to a pinnacle of the temple, and there had been tempted by the devil to
cast himself to the earth.

Take from the church itself the threat and fear of hell and it becomes
an extinct volcano. With the doctrine of hell taken from the Church,
that is the end of the fall of man, that is the end of the scheme of
atonement. Take from them the idea of an eternal place of torment, and
the Church is thrown back simply upon facts.

And Dean Stanley, the leading ecclesiastic of Great Britain, only the
other day in Winchester Abbey, said science will be the only theology of
the future. Morality is the only religion of the years to come. Not
withstanding all the infamous things laid to the charge of the Church,
we are told that the civilization of today is the child of what we are
pleased to call superstition. Let me call your attention to what they
received from their fears of these ghosts. Let me give you an outline
of the sciences as taught by those philosophers. There is one thing
that a man is interested in, if he is in anything, and that is in the
science of medicine. A doctor is, so to speak, in partnership with
Nature. He is a preserver if he is worthy of the name. And now I want
to show what they have gotten from these ghosts upon the science of
medicine.

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