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

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During the period this law was in force, thirty-nine were hanged and
their bodies burned. In the 16th century men were burned because they
failed to kneel to a procession of monks. Even the Reformers, so
called, had no idea of liberty only when in the minority; the moment
they were clothed with power, they began to exterminate with fire and
sword. Castillo--and I want you to recollect it--was the first minister
in the world that declared in favor of universal toleration. Castillo
was pursued by John Calvin like a wild beast. Calvin said that such a
monstrous doctrine he crucified Christ afresh, and they pursued that man
until he died; recollect it! They can't do that now-a-days! You don't
know how splendid I feel about the liberty I have. The horizon is
filled with glory and the air is filled with wings. If there are any in
this world who think they had better not tell what they really think
because it will take bread from their little children, because it will
take clothing from their families--don't do it! don't make martyrs of
yourselves! I don't believe in martyrdom! Go right along with them; go
to church and say amen as near the right place as you can. I will do
your talking for you. They can't take the bread away from me. I will
talk. Bodemus, a lawyer of France, wrote a few words in favor of
freedom of conscience. Montaigne was the first to raise his voice
against torture in France; but what was the voice of one man against the
terrible cry of ignorant, infatuated, malevolent millions! I intend to
do what little I can, and I am going to do it kindly. I am going to
appeal to reason and to charity, to justice, to science, and to the
future. For my part, I glory in the fact that in the New World, in the
United States, liberty of conscience was first granted to man, and that
the Constitution of the United States was the first great decree entered
in the high court of human equity forever divorcing Church and State.
It is the grandest step ever taken by the human race and the Declaration
of Independence was the first document that retired ghosts from
politics. It is the first document that said authority does not come
from the phantoms of the air; authority is not from that direction; it
comes from the people themselves. The Declaration of Independence
enthroned man and dethroned the phantoms. You will ask what has caused
this change in three hundred years. I answer, the inventions and
discoveries of the few; the brave thoughts and heroic utterances of the
few; the acquisition of a few facts; getting acquainted with our
mother, Nature. Besides this, you must remember that every wrong in
some way, tends to abolish itself. It is hard to make a lie last
always. A lie will not fit the truth; it will only fit another lie told
on purpose to fit it. Nothing but truth lives.

The nobles and the kings quarreled; the priests began to dispute, and
the millions began to get their rights. In 1441 printing was
discovered. At that time the past was a vast cemetery, without an
epitaph. The ideas of men had mostly perished in the brains that had
produced them. Printing gives an opening for thought; it preserves
ideas; it made it possible for a man to bequeath to the world the
wealth of his thoughts. About the same time, or a little before, the
Moors had gone into Europe, and it can be truthfully said that science
was thrust into the brain of Europe upon the point of a Moorish lance.
They gave us paper, and what is printing without paper?

A bird without wings. I tell you paper has been a splendid thing.

The discovery of America, whose shores were trod by the restless feet of
adventure and the people of every nation--out of this strange mingling
of facts and fancies came the great Republic. Every fact has pushed a
superstition from the brain and a ghost from the cloud. Every
mechanical art is an educator; every loom, every reaper, every mower,
every steamboat, every locomotive, every engine, every press, every
telegraph is a missionary of science and an apostle of progress; every
mill, every furnace with its wheels and levers, in which something is
made for the convenience, for the use and the comfort and the well-being
of man, is my kind of church, and every schoolhouse is a temple.
Education is the most radical thing in this world. To teach the
alphabet is to inaugurate a revolution; to build a schoolhouse is to
construct a fort; every library is an arsenal filled with the weapons
and ammunition of progress; every fact is a monitor with sides of iron
and a turret of steel. I thank the inventors and discoverers. I thank
Columbus and Magellan. I thank Locke and Hume, Bacon and Shakespeare.
I thank Fulton and Watt, Franklin and Morse, who made lightning the
messenger of man. I thank Luther for protesting against the abuses of
the Church, but denounce him because he was an enemy of liberty. I thank
Calvin for writing a book in favor of religious freedom, but I abhor him
because he burned Servetus. I thank the Puritans for saying that
resistance to tyrants is obedience to God, and yet I am compelled to
admit that they were tyrants themselves. I thank Thomas Paine because
he was a believer in liberty. I thank Voltaire, that great man who for
half a century was the intellectual monarch of Europe, and who, from his
throne at the foot of the Alps, pointed the finger of scorn at every
hypocrite in Christendom. I thank the inventors, I thank the
discoverers, the thinkers and the scientists, and I thank the honest
millions who have toiled. I thank the brave men with brave thoughts.
They are the Atlases upon whose broad and mighty shoulders rests the
grand fabric of civilization; they are the men who have broken, and are
still breaking, the chains of superstition.

We are beginning to learn that to swap off a superstition for a fact, to
ascertain the real, is to progress. All that gives us better bodies and
minds and clothes and food and pictures, grander music, better heads,
better hearts, and that makes us better husbands and wives and better
citizens, all these things combined produce what we call the progress of
the human race. Man advances only as he overcomes the obstacles of
nature. It is done by labor and thought. Labor is the foundation.
Without great labor it is impossible to progress. Without labor on the
part of those who conduct all great industries of life, of those who
battle with the obstacles of the sea, on the part of the inventors, the
discoverers, and the brave, heroic thinkers, no surplus is produced;
and from the surplus produced by labor, spring the schools and
universities, the painters, the sculptors, the poets, the hopes, the
loves and the aspirations of the world.

The surplus has given us the books. It has given us all there is of
beauty and eloquence. I am aware there is a vast difference of opinion
as to what progress is, and that many denounce my ideas. I know there
are many worshipers of the past. They see no beauty in anything from
which they do not blow the dust of ages with the breath of praise. They
see nothing like the ancients; no orators, poets or statesmen like
those who have been dust for thousands of years.

In a sermon on a certain evening, some time ago, the Rev. Dr. Magee of
Albany, N. Y., stated that Colonel Ingersoll, referring to Jesus Christ,
called him a "dirty little Jew." I denounce that as a dirty little lie.

I have as much reverence for any man who ever did what he believed was
right, and died in order to benefit mankind, as any man in this world.
Do they treat an opponent with fairness? Are they investigating? Do
they pull forward or do they hold back? Is science indebted to the
Church for a single fact? Let us know what it is. What church has been
the asylum for a persecuted truth? What reform has been inaugurated by
the Church? Did the Church abolish slavery? No. Who commenced it?
Such men as Garrison and Pillsbury and Wendel Phillips. They were the
titans that attacked the monster, and not a solitary one of them ever
belonged to a church. Has the Church raised its voice against war? No.
Are men restrained by superstition? Are men restrained by what you call
religion? I used to think they were not; now I admit they are. No man
has ever been restrained from the commission of a real crime, but from
an artificial one he has. There was a man who committed murder. They
got the evidence, but he confessed that he did it. "What did you do it
for?" "Money." "Did you get any money?" "Yes." "How much?"
"Fifteen cents." "What kind of a man was he?" "A laboring man I
killed." "What did you do with the money?" "I bought liquor with it."
"Did he have anything else?" "I think he had some meat and bread."
"What did you do with that?" "I ate the bread and threw away the meat;
it was Friday." So you see it will restrain in some things.

Just to the extent that man has freed himself from the dominion of
ghosts he has advanced; to that extent he has freed himself from the
tyrant's poison. Man has found that he must give liberty to others in
order to have it himself. He has found that a master is a slave; that
a tyrant is also a slave. He has found that governments should be
administered by men for men; that the rights of all are to be
protected; that woman is at least the equal for man; that men existed
before books; that all creeds were made by men; that the few have a
right to contradict what the pulpit asserts; that man is responsible to
himself and to others. True religion must be free; without liberty the
brain is a dungeon and the mind the convict. The slave may bow and
cringe and crawl, but he cannot worship, he cannot adore. True religion
is the perfume of the free and grateful air. True religion is the
subordination of the passions to the intellect. It is not a creed; it
is a life. The theory that is afraid of investigation is not deserving
of a place in the human mind.

I do not pretend to tell what all the truth is. I do not pretend to
have fathomed the abyss, nor to have floated on outstretched wings level
with the heights of thought. I simply plead for freedom. I denounce the
cruelties and horrors of slavery. I ask for light and air for the souls
of men. I say, take off those chains--break those manacles--free those
limbs--release that brain. I plead for the right to think--to reason--
to investigate. I ask that the future may be enriched with the honest
thoughts of men. I implore every human being to be a soldier in the
army of progress. I will not invade the rights of others. You have no
right to erect your toll-gates upon the highways of thought. You have
no right to leap from the hedges of superstition and strike down the
pioneers of the human race. You have no right to sacrifice the
liberties of man upon the altars of ghosts. Believe what you may;
preach what you desire; have all the forms and ceremonies you please;
exercise your liberties in your own way, and extend to all others the
same right.

I attack the monsters, the phantoms of imagination that have ruled the
world. I attack slavery. I ask for room--room for the human mind.

Why should we sacrifice a real world that we have for one we know not
of? Why should we enslave ourselves? Why should we forge fetters for
our own hands? Why should we be the slaves of phantoms--phantoms that
we create ourselves? The darkness of barbarism was the womb of these
shadows. In the light of science they cannot cloud the sky forever.
They have reddened the hands of man with innocent blood. They made the
cradle a curse, and the grave a place of torment.

They blinded the eyes and stopped the ears of the human race. They
subverted all the ideas of justice by promising infinite rewards for
finite virtues, and threatening infinite punishment for finite offenses.

I plead for light, for air, for opportunity. I plead for individual
independence. I plead for the rights of labor and of thought. I plead
for a chainless future. Let the ghosts go--justice remains. Let them
disappear--men, women and children are left. Let the monster fade away
--the world remains, with its hills and seas and plains, with its seasons
of smiles and frowns, its Springs of leaf and bud, its Summer of shade
and flower, its Autumn with the laden boughs, when

The withered banners of the corn are still,
And gathered fields are growing strangely wan,
While Death, poetic Death, with hands that color
Whate'er they touch, weaves in the Autumn wood
Her tapestries of gold and brown.

The world remains, with its Winters and homes and firesides, where grow
and bloom the virtues of our race. All these are left; and music, with
its sad and thrilling voice, and all there is of art and song and hope,
and love and aspiration high. All these remain. Let the ghosts go--we
will worship them no more.

Man is greater than these phantoms. Humanity is grander than all the
creeds, than all the books. Humanity is the great sea, and these
creeds and books and religions are but the waves of a day. Humanity is
the sky, and these religions and dogmas and theories are but the mists
and clouds, changing continually, destined finally to melt away.

Let the ghosts go. We will worship them no more. Let them cover their
eyeless sockets with their fleshless hands, and fade forever from the
imaginations of men.

INGERSOLL'S LECTURE ON HELL

Ladies and Gentlemen: The idea of a hell was born of revenge and
brutality on the one side, and cowardice on the other. In my judgment
the American people are too brave, too charitable, too generous, too
magnanimous to believe in the infamous dogma of an eternal hell. I have
no respect for any human being who believes in it. I have no respect for
the man who will pollute the imagination of childhood with that infamous
lie. I have no respect for the man who will add to the sorrows of this
world with the frightful dogma. I have no respect for any man who
endeavors to put that infinite cloud, that infinite shadow, over the
heart of humanity. I want to be frank with you. I dislike this doctrine,
I hate it, I despise it; I defy this doctrine. For a good many years the
learned intellects of christendom have been examining into the religions
of other countries in the world, the religions of the thousands that
have passed away. They examined into the religions of Egypt, the
religion of Greece, the religion of Rome and of the Scandinavian
countries. In the presence of the ruins of those religions the learned
men of christendom insisted that those religions were baseless, that
they are fraudulent. But they have all passed away. While this was being
done the christianity of our day applauded, and when the learned men got
through with the religions of other countries they turned their
attention to our religion. By the same mode of reasoning, by the same
methods, by the same arguments that they used with the old religions,
they were overturning the religion of our day. Why? Every religion in
this world is the work of man. Every one! Every book has been written by
man. Men existed before the books. If books had existed before man, I
might admit there was such a thing as a sacred volume.

In my judgment man has made every religion and made every book. There is
another thing to which I wish to call your attention. Man never had an
idea; man will never have an idea, except those supplied to him by his
surroundings. Every idea in the world that man has, came to him by
nature. Man cannot conceive of anything the hint of which you have not
received from your surroundings. You can imagine an animal with the hoof
of a bison, with the pouch of the kangaroo, with the wings of an eagle,
with the beak of a bird, and with the tail of the lion; and yet every
point of this monster you borrowed from nature. Every thing you can
think of--every thing you can dream of, is borrowed from your
surroundings--everything. And there is nothing on this earth coming from
any other sphere whatever. Man has produced every religion in the world.
And why? Because each generation bodes forth the knowledge and the
belief of the people at the time it was made, and in no book is there
any knowledge found, except that of the people who wrote it. In no book
is there found any knowledge, except that of the time in which it was
written. Barbarians have produced, and always will produce barbarian
religions. Barbarians have produced, and always will produce ideas in
harmony with their surroundings, and all the religions of the past were
produced by barbarians--every one of them. We are making religions
today. We are making religions to-night. That is to say, we are changing
them, and the religion of to-day is not the religion of one year ago.
What changed it? Science has done it; education and the growing heart of
man has done it. We are making these religions every day, and just to
the extent that we become civilized ourselves will we improve the
religion of our fathers. If the religion of one hundred years ago,
compared with the religion of to-day is so low, what will it be in one
thousand years?

If we continue making the inroads upon orthodoxy which we have been
making during the last twenty-five years, what will it be fifty years
from to-night? It will have to be remonetized by that time, or else it
will not be legal tender. In my judgment, every religion that stands by
appealing to miracles is dishonor. [sic] Every religion in the world
has denounced every other religion as a fraud. That proves to me that
they all tell the truth--about others. Why? Suppose Mr. Smith should
tell Mr. Brown that he--Smith--saw a corpse get out of the grave, and
that when he first saw it, it was covered with the worm's of death, and
that in his presence it was reclothed in healthy, beautiful flesh. And
then suppose Mr. Brown should tell Mr. Smith, "I saw the same thing
myself. I was in a graveyard once, and I saw a dead man rise." Suppose
then that Smith should say to Brown, "You're a liar," and Brown should
reply to Smith, "And you're a liar," what would you think? It would
simply be because Smith, never having seen it himself, didn't believe
Brown; and Brown, never having seen it, didn't believe Smith had. Now,
if Smith had really seen it, and Brown told him he had seen it too, then
Smith would regard it as a corroboration of his story, and he would
regard Brown as one of his principal witnesses. But, on the contrary, he
says, "You never saw it." So, when man says, "I was upon Mount Sinai,
and there I met God, and he told me, 'Stand aside and let me drown these
people';" and another man says to him, "I was upon a mountain, and there
I met the Supreme Brahma," and Moses says, "That's not true," and
contends that the other man never did see Brahma, and he contends that
Moses never did see God, that is in my judgment proof that they both
speak truly.

Every religion, then, has charged every other religion with having been
an unmitigated fraud; and yet, if any man had ever seen the miracle
himself, his mind would be prepared to believe that another man had seen
the same thing. Whenever a man appeals to a miracle he tells what is not
true. Truth relies upon reason, and the undeviating course of all the
laws of nature.

Now, we have a religion--that is, some people have. I do not pretend to
have religion myself. I believe in living for this world--that's my
doctrine--in living here, now, to-day, to-night--that's my doctrine, to
make everybody happy that you can. Now, let the future take care of
itself and if I ever touch the shores of another world I will be just as
ready and anxious to get into some remunerative employment as anybody
else. Now, we have got in this country a religion which men have
preached for about eighteen hundred years, and just in proportion as
their belief in that religion has grown great, men have grown mean and
wicked; just in proportion as they have ceased to believe it, men have
become just and charitable. And if they believe it to-night as they
once believed it, I wouldn't be allowed to speak in the city of New
York. It is from the coldness and infidelity of the churches that I get
my right to preach; and I say it to their credit. Now we have a
religion. What is it? They say in the first place that all this vast
universe was created by a deity. I don't know whether it was or not.
They say, too, that had it not been for the first sin of Adam there
would never have been any devil in this world, and if there had been no
devil there would have been no sin, and if there had been no sin there
never would have been any death. For my part I am glad there was
Somebody had to die to give me room, and when my turn comes I'll be
willing to let somebody else take my place. But whether there is another
life or not, if there is any being who gave me this, I shall thank him
from the bottom of my heart, because, upon the whole, my life has been a
joy. Now they say, because of this first sin all men were consigned to
eternal hell. And this because Adam was our representative. Well, I
always had an idea that my representative ought to live somewhere about
the same time I do. I always had an idea that I should have some voice
in choosing my representative. And if I had a voice I never should have
voted for the old gentleman called Adam. Now in order to regain man from
the frightful hell of eternity, Christ himself came to this world and
took upon himself flesh, and in order that we might know the road to
eternal salvation he gave us a book, and that book is called the Bible,
and whenever that Bible has been read men have immediately commenced
cutting each others' throats. Wherever that Bible has been circulated,
they have invented inquisitions and instruments of torture, and they
commenced hating each other with all their hearts. But I am told now, we
are all told that this Bible is the foundation of civilization, but I
say that this Bible is the foundation of Hell, and we never shall get
rid of the dogma of hell until we get rid of the idea that it is an
inspired book. Now, what does the Bible teach? I am not going to talk
about what this minister or that minister says it teaches; the question
is "ought a man to be sent to eternal hell for not believing this Bible
to be the work of a Merciful Father?" and the only way to find out is to
read it; and a very few people do read it now. I will read a few
passages. This is the book to be read in the schools, in order to make
our children charitable and good; this is the book that we must read in
order that our children may have ideas of mercy, charity and justice.
Does the Bible teach mercy? Now be honest, I read: "I will make mine
arrows drunk with blood; and the sword shall devour flesh." (Deut. xxxii,
42.) Pretty good start for a merciful God! "That thy foot may be dipped
in the blood of thine enemies and the tongue of thy dogs in the same."
(Ps. ixviii, 23.) Again: "And the Lord thy God will put out those
nations before thee by little and little; thou mayest not consume them
at once, lest the beasts of the field increase upon thee." (Deut. vii,
22.)

"But the Lord thy God shall deliver them unto thee, and shall destroy
them with a mighty destruction, until they be destroyed.

"And he shall deliver their kings into thine hand, and thou shalt
destroy their name from under heaven; there shall no man be able to
stand before thee, until thou have destroyed them." (Deut. vii, 23, 24.)

"So Joshua came, and all the people of war with him, against them by
waters of Merom suddenly; and they fell upon them.

"And the lord delivered them into the hand of Israel, who smote them,
and chased them unto great Zidon, and unto Misrephothimaim, and unto the
valley of Mizpeh eastward; and they smote them, until they left them
none remaining.

"And Joshua did unto them as the Lord bade him; he houghed their horses,
and burnt their chariots with fire.

"And Joshua at that time turned back, and took Hazor, and smote the king
thereof with the sword; for Hazor beforetime was the head of all those
kingdoms.

"And they smote all the souls that were therein with the edge of the
sword, utterly destroying them: there was not any left to breathe; and
he burnt Hazor with fire.

"And all the cities of those kings, and all the kings of them, did
Joshua take, and smote them with the edge of the sword, and he utterly
destroyed them, as Moses the servant of the Lord commanded.

"But as for the cities that stood still in their strength, Israel burnt
none of them, save Hazor only; that did Joshua burn.

"And all the spoil of these cities and the cattle, the children of Israel
took for a prey unto themselves, but every man they smote with the edge
of the sword [Brave!] until they had destroyed them, neither left they
any to breathe. [As the moral god had commanded them.]

"As the Lord commanded Moses, his servant, so did Moses command Joshua,
and so did Joshua; he left nothing undone of all that the Lord commanded
Moses.

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