Zane Grey - "The Man of the Forest"

Henri Barbusse - "Under Fire"

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Joel Chandler Harris - "Uncle Remus"

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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 Latest

C >> Col. Robert Green Ingersoll >> Lectures of Col. R.G. Ingersoll Latest



Produced by Jake Jaqua




Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll--Latest




Contents

Thomas Paine
Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
Orthodoxy
Blasphemy
Some Reasons Why
Intellectual Development
Human Rights
Talmagian Theology (Second Lecture)
Talmagian Theology (Third Lecture)
Religious Intolerance
Hereafter
Review of His Reviewers
How the Gods Grow
The Religion of our Day
Heretics And Heresies
The Bible
Voltaire
Myth and Miracle
Ingersoll's Letter, on The Chinese God
Ingersoll's Letter, Is Suicide a Sin?
Ingersoll's Letter, The Right To One's Life




Ingersoll's Lecture on Thomas Paine--Delivered in Central Music Hall,
Chicago, January 29, 1880 (From the Chicago Times, Verbatim Report)



Ladies and Gentlemen:--It so happened that the first speech--the very
first public speech I ever made--took occasion to defend the memory of
Thomas Paine.

I did it because I had read a little something of the history of my
country. I did it because I felt indebted to him for the liberty I then
enjoyed--and whatever religion may be true, ingratitude is the blackest
of crimes. And whether there is any God or not, in every star that
shines, gratitude is a virtue.

The man who will tell the truth about the dead is a good man, and for
one, about this man, I intend to tell just as near the truth as I can.

Most history consists in giving the details of things that never
happened--most biography is usually the lie coming from the mouth of
flattery, or the slander coming from the lips of malice, and whoever
attacks the religion of a country will, in his turn, be attacked.
Whoever attacks a superstition will find that superstition defended by
all the meanness of ingenuity. Whoever attacks a superstition will find
that there is still one weapon left in the arsenal of Jehovah--slander.

I was reading, yesterday, a poem called the "Light of Asia," and I read
in that how a Boodh seeing a tigress perishing of thirst, with her mouth
upon the dry stone of a stream, with her two cubs sucking at her dry and
empty dugs, this Boodh took pity upon this wild and famishing beast,
and, throwing from himself the Yellowrobe of his order, and stepping
naked before this tigress, said: "Here is meat for you and your cubs."
In one moment the crooked daggers of her claws ran riot in his flesh,
and in another he was devoured. Such, during nearly all the history of
this world, has been the history of every man who has stood in front of
superstition.

Thomas Paine, as has been so eloquently said by the gentleman who
introduced me, was a friend of man, and whoever is a friend of man is
also a friend of God--if there is one. But God has had many friends who
were the enemies of their fellow-men. There is but one test by which to
measure any man who has lived. Did he leave this world better than he
found it? Did he leave in this world more liberty? Did he leave in
this world more goodness, more humanity, than when he was born? That is
the test. And whatever may have been the faults of Thomas Paine, no
American who appreciates liberty, no American who believes in true
democracy and pure republicanism, should ever breathe one word against
his name. Every American, with the divine mantle of charity, should
cover all his faults, and with a never-tiring tongue should recount his
virtues.

He was a common man. He did not belong to the aristocracy. Upon the
head of his father God had never poured the divine petroleum of
authority. He had not the misfortune to belong to the upper classes.
He had the fortune to be born among the poor and to feel against his
great heart the throb of the toiling and suffering masses. Neither was
it his misfortune to have been educated at Oxford. What little sense he
had was not squeezed out at Westminster. He got his education from
books. He got his education from contact with fellow-men, and he
thought, and a man is worth just what nature impresses upon him. A man
standing by the sea, or in a forest, or looking at a flower, or hearing
a poem, or looking in the eyes of the woman he loves, receives all that
he is capable of receiving--and if he is a great man the impression is
great, and he uses it for the purpose of benefiting his fellow-man.

Thomas Paine was not rich, he was poor, and his father before him was
poor, and he was raised a sailmaker, a very lowly profession, and yet
that man became one of the mainstays of liberty in this world. At one
time he was an excise man, like Burns. Burns was once--speak it softly
--a gauger--and yet he wrote poems that will wet the cheek of humanity
with tears as long as the world travels in its orb around the sun.

Poverty was his brother, necessity his master. He had more brains than
books; more courage than politeness; more strength than polish. He
had no veneration for old mistakes, no admiration for ancient lies. He
loved the truth for truth's sake and for man's sake. He saw oppression
on every hand, injustice everywhere, hypocrisy at the altar, venality on
the bench, tyranny on the throne, and with a splendid courage he
espoused the cause of the weak against the strong, of the enslaved many
against the titled few.

In England he was nothing. He belonged to the lower classes--that is,
the useful people. England depended for her prosperity upon her
mechanics and her thinkers, her sailors and her workers, and they are
the only men in Europe who are not gentlemen. The only obstacles in the
way of progress in Europe were the nobility and the priests, and they
are the only gentlemen.

This, and his native genius, constituted his entire capital, and he
needed no more. He found the colonies clamoring for justice; whining
about their grievances; upon their knees at the foot of the throne,
imploring that mixture of idiocy and insanity, George III., by the grace
of God, for a restoration of their ancient privileges. They were not
endeavoring to become free men, but were trying to soften the heart of
their master. They were perfectly willing to make brick if Pharaoh
would furnish the straw. The colonists wished for, hoped for, and
prayed for reconciliation. They did not dream of independence.

Paine gave to the world his "Common Sense." It was the first argument
for separation; the first assault upon the British form of government;
the first blow for a republic, and it aroused our fathers like a
trumpet's blast. He was the first to perceive the destiny of the new
world. No other pamphlet ever accomplished such wonderful results. It
was filled with arguments, reasons, persuasions, and unanswerable logic.
It opened a new world. It filled the present with hope and the future
with honor. Everywhere the people responded, and in a few months the
Continental Congress declared the colonies free and independent states.
A new nation was born.

It is simple justice to say that Paine did more to cause the Declaration
of Independence than any other man. Neither should it be forgotten that
his attacks upon Great Britain were also attacks upon monarchy, and
while he convinced the people that the colonies ought to separate from
the mother country, he also proved to them that a free government is the
best that can be instituted among men.

In my judgment Thomas Paine was the best political writer that ever
lived. "What he wrote was pure nature, and his soul and his pen ever
went together." Ceremony, pageantry, and all the paraphernalia of power
had no effect upon him. He examined into the why and wherefore of
things. He was perfectly radical in his mode of thought. Nothing short
of the bed-rock satisfied him. His enthusiasm for what he believed to be
right knew no bounds. During all the dark scenes of the revolution never
for a moment did he despair. Year after year his brave words were
ringing through the land, and by the bivouac fires the weary soldiers
read the inspiring words of "Common Sense," filled with ideas sharper
than their swords, and consecrated themselves anew to the cause of
freedom.

Paine was not content with having aroused the spirit of independence,
but he gave every energy of his soul to keep that spirit alive. He was
with the army. He shared its defeats, its dangers, and its glory. When
the situation became desperate, when gloom settled upon all, he gave
them the "Crisis." It was a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by
night, leading the way to freedom, honor, and glory. He shouted to them
"These are the times that try men's souls." The summer soldier and the
sunshine patriot, will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his
country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man
and woman.

To those who wished to put the war off to some future day, with a lofty
and touching spirit of self-sacrifice, he said: "Every generous parent
should say: 'If there must be war, let it be in my day, that my child
may have peace'." To the cry that Americans were rebels, he replied:
"He that rebels against reason is a real rebel; but he that in defense
of reason rebels against tyranny, has a better title to 'Defender of the
Faith' than George III."

Some said it was to the interest of the colonies to be free. Paine
answered this by saying: "To know whether it be the interest of the
continent to be independent, we need ask only this simple, easy
question: 'Is it the interest of man to be a boy all his life?"' He
found many who would listen to nothing, and to them he said: "That to
argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to
the dead." This sentiment ought to adorn the walls of every orthodox
church.

There is a world of political wisdom in this: "England lost her liberty
in a long chain of right reasoning from wrong principles;" and there is
real discrimination in saying: "The Greeks and Romans were strongly
possessed of the spirit of liberty, but not the principles, for at the
time they were determined not to be slaves themselves, they employed
their power to enslave the rest of mankind."

In his letter to the British people, in which he tried to convince them
that war was not to their interest, occurs the following passage brimful
of common sense: "War never can be the interest of a trading nation any
more than quarreling can be profitable to a man in business. But to
make war with those who trade with us is like setting a bull-dog upon a
customer at the shop door."

The Writings of Paine fairly glitter with simple, compact, logical
statements that carry conviction to the dullest and most prejudicial.
He had the happiest possible way of putting the case, in asking
questions in such a way that they answer themselves, and in stating his
premises so clearly that the deduction could not be avoided.

Day and night he labored for America. Month after month, year after
year, he gave himself to the great cause, until there was "a government
of the people and for the people," and until the banner of the stars
floated over a continent redeemed and consecrated to the happiness of
mankind.

At the close of the Revolution no one stood higher in America than
Thomas Paine. The best, the wisest, the most patriotic were his friends
and admirers; and had he been thinking only of his own good he might
have rested from his toils and spent the remainder of his life in
comfort and in ease. He could have been what the world is pleased to
call "respectable." He would have died surrounded by clergymen,
warriors, and statesmen, and at his death there would have been an
imposing funeral, miles of carriages, civic societies, salvos of
artillery, a Nation in mourning, and, above all, a splendid monument
covered with lies. He choose rather to benefit mankind. At that time
the seeds sown by the great infidels were beginning to bear fruit in
France. The eighteenth century was crowning its gray hairs with the
wreath of progress.

On every hand science was bearing testimony against the church. Voltaire
had filled Europe with light. D'Holbach was giving to the elite of
Paris the principles contained in his "System of Nature." The
encyclopaedists had attacked superstition with information for the
masses. The foundation of things began to be examined. A few had the
courage to keep their shoes on and let the bush burn. Miracles began to
get scarce. Everywhere the people began to inquire. America had set an
example to the world. The word liberty was in the mouths of men, and
they began to wipe the dust from their superstitious knees. The dawn of
a new day had appeared. Thomas Paine went to France. Into the new
movement he threw all his energies. His fame had gone before him, and
he was welcomed as a friend of the human race and as a champion of free
government.

He had never relinquished his intention of pointing out to his
countrymen the defects, absurdities, and abuse of the English
government. For this purpose; he composed and published his greatest
political work. "The Rights of Man." This work should be read by every
man and woman. It is concise, accurate, rational, convincing, and
unanswerable. It shows great thought, an intimate knowledge of the
various forms of government, deep insight into the very springs of human
action, and a courage that compels respect and admiration. The most
difficult political problems are solved in a few sentences. The
venerable arguments in favor of wrong are refuted with a question--
answered with a word. For forcible illustration, apt comparison,
accuracy and clearness of statement, and absolute thoroughness, it has
never been excelled.

The fears of the administration were aroused, and Paine was prosecuted
for libel, and found guilty; and yet there is not a sentiment in the
entire work that will not challenge the admiration of every civilized
man. It is a magazine of political wisdom, an arsenal of ideas, and an
honor not only to Thomas Paine, but to nature itself. It could have
been written only by the man who had the generosity, the exalted
patriotism, the goodness to say: "The world is my country, and to do
good my religion."

There is in all the utterances of the world no grander, no sublimer
sentiment. There is no creed that can be compared with it for a moment.
It should be wrought in gold, adorned with jewels, and impressed upon
every human heart: "The world is my country, and to do good my
religion."

In 1792, Paine was elected by the department of Calais as their
representative in the National Assembly. So great was his popularity in
France, that he was selected about the same time by the people of no
less than four departments.

Upon taking his place in the assembly, he was appointed as one of a
committee to draft a constitution for France. Had the French people
taken the advice of Thomas Paine, there would have been no "reign of
terror." The streets of Paris would not have been filled with blood in
that reign of terror. There were killed in the City of Paris not less,
I think, than seventeen thousand people--and on one night, in the
massacre of St. Bartholomew, there were killed, by assassination, over
sixty thousand souls--men, women, and children. The revolution would
have been the grandest success of the world. The truth is that Paine
was too conservative to suit the leaders of the French revolution. They,
to a great extent, were carried away by hatred and a desire to destroy.
They had suffered so long, they had borne so much, that it was
impossible for them to be moderate in the hour of victory.

Besides all this, the French people had been so robbed by the
government, so degraded by the church, that they were not fit material
with which to construct a republic. Many of the leaders longed to
establish a beneficent and just government, but the people asked for
revenge. Paine was filled with a real love for mankind. His
philanthropy was boundless. He wished to destroy monarchy--not the
monarch. He voted for the destruction of tyranny, and against the death
of the tyrant. He wished to establish a government on a new basis--one
that would forget the past; one that would give privileges to none, and
protection to all.

In the assembly, where all were demanding the execution of the king,--
where to differ with the majority was to be suspected, and where to be
suspected was almost certain death--Thomas Paine had the courage, the
goodness, and the justice to vote against death. To vote against the
execution of the king was a vote against his own life. This was the
sublimity of devotion to principle. For this he was arrested,
imprisoned, and doomed to death. There is not a theologian who has ever
maligned Thomas Paine that has the courage to do this thing. When Louis
Capet was on trial for his life before the French convention, Thomas
Paine had the courage to speak and vote against the sentence of death.
In his speech I find the following splendid sentiments:


"My contempt and hatred for monarchical governments are sufficiently
well known, and my compassion for the unfortunate, friends or enemies,
is equally profound.

I have voted to put Louis Capet upon trial, because it was necessary to
prove to the world the perfidy, the corruption, and the horror of the
monarchical system.

To follow the trade of a king destroys all morality, just as the trade
of a jailer deadens all sensibility.

Make a man a king today and tomorrow he will be a brigand.

Had Louis Capet been a farmer, he might have been held in esteem by his
neighbors, and his wickedness results from his position rather than from
his nature.

Let the French nation purge its territory of kings without soiling
itself with their impure blood.

Let the United States be the asylum of Louis Capet, where, in spite of
the overshadowing miseries and crimes of a royal life, he will learn by
the continual contemplation of the general prosperity that the true
system of government is not that of kings, but of the people.

I am an enemy of kings, but I can not forget that they belong to the
human race.

It is always delightful to pursue that course where policy and humanity
are united.

As France has been the first of all the nations of Europe to destroy
royalty, let it be the first to abolish the penalty of death.

As a true republican, I consider kings as more the objects of contempt
than of vengeance."


Search the records of the world and you will find but few sublimer acts
than that of Thomas Paine voting against the king's death. He, the
hater of despotism, the abhorer of monarchy, the champion of the rights
of man, the republican, accepting death to save the life of a deposed
tyrant--of a throneless king! This was the last grand act of his
political life--the sublime conclusion of his political career.

All his life he had been the disinterested friend of man. He had
labored not for money, not for fame, but for the general good. He had
aspired to no office. He had no recognition of his services, but had
ever been content to labor as a common soldier in the army of progress,
confining his efforts to no country, looking upon the world as his field
of action. Filled with a genuine love for the right, he found himself
imprisoned by the very people he had striven to save.

Had his enemies succeeded in bringing him to the block, he would have
escaped the calumnies and the hatred of the Christian world. And let me
tell you how neat they came getting him to the block. He was in prison,
there was a door to his cell--it had two doors, a door that opened in
and an iron door that opened out. It was a dark passage, and whenever
they concluded to cut a man's head off the next day, an agent went along
and made a chalk mark upon the door where the poor prisoner was bound.
Mr. Barlow, the American minister, happened to be with him and the outer
door was shut, that is, open against the wall, and the inner door was
shut, and when the man came along whose business it was to mark the door
for death, he marked this door where Thomas Paine was, but he marked the
door that was against the wall, so when it was shut the mark was inside,
and the messenger of death passed by on the next day. If that had
happened in favor of some Methodist preacher, they would have clearly
seen, not simply the hand of God, but both hands. In this country, at
least, he would have ranked with the proudest names. On the anniversary
of the Declaration, his name would have been upon the lips of all
orators, and his memory in the hearts of all the people.

Thomas Paine had not finished his career. He had spent his life thus
far in destroying the power of kings, and now turned his attention to
the priests. He knew that every abuse had been embalmed in scripture--
that every outrage was in partnership with some holy text. He knew that
the throne skulked behind the altar, and both behind a pretended
revelation of God. By this time he had found that it was of little use
to free the body and leave the mind in chains. He had explored the
foundations of despotism, and had found them infinitely rotten. He had
dug under the throne, and it occurred to him that he would take a look
behind the altar. The result of this investigation was given to the
world in the "Age of Reason." From the moment of its publication he
became infamous. He was calumniated beyond measure. To slander him
was to secure the thanks of the church. All his services were instantly
forgotten, disparaged, or denied. He was shunned as though he had been
a pestilence. Most of his old friends forsook him. He was regarded as a
moral plague, and at the bare mention of his name the bloody hands of
the church were raised in horror. He was denounced as the most
despicable of men.

Not content with following him to his grave, they pursued him after
death with redoubled fury, and recounted with infinite gusto and
satisfaction the supposed horrors of his death-bed: gloried in the fact
that he was forlorn and friendless, and gloated like fiends over what
they supposed to be the agonizing remorse of his lonely death.

It is wonderful that all his services are thus forgotten. It is amazing
that one kind word did not fall from some pulpit; that some one did not
accord to him, at least--honesty. Strange that in the general
denunciation some one did not remember his labor for liberty, his
devotion to principle, his zeal for the rights of his fellow-men. He
had, by brave and splendid effort, associated his name with the cause of
progress. He had made it impossible to write the history of political
freedom with his name left out. He was one of the creators of light,
one of the heralds of the dawn. He hated tyranny in the name of kings,
and in the name of God, with every drop of his noble blood. He believed
in liberty and justice, and in the sacred doctrine of human equality.
Under these divine banners he fought the battle of his life. In both
worlds he offered his blood for the good of man. In the wilderness of
America, in the French assembly, in the sombre cell waiting for death,
he was the same unflinching, unwavering friend of his race; the same
undaunted champion of universal freedom. And for this he has been
hated; for this the church has violated even his grave.

This is enough to make one believe that nothing is more natural than for
men to devour their benefactors. The people in all ages have crucified
and glorified. Whoever lifts his voice against abuses, whoever arraigns
the past at the bar of the present, whoever asks the king to show his
commission, or question the authority of the priest, will be denounced
as the enemy of man and God. In all ages reason has been regarded as
the enemy of religion. Nothing has been considered so pleasing to the
Deity as a total denial of the authority of your own mind. Self-reliance
has been thought deadly sin; and the idea of living and dying without
the aid and consolation of superstition has always horrified the church.
By some unaccountable infatuation, belief has been and still is
considered of immense importance. All religions have been based upon
the idea that God will forever reward the true believer, and eternally
damn the man who doubts or denies. Belief is regarded as the one
essential thing. To practice justice, to love mercy, is not enough;
you must believe in some incomprehensible creed. You must say: "Once
one is three, and three times one is one." The man who practiced every
virtue, but failed to believe, was execrated. Nothing so outrages the
feelings of the church as a moral unbeliever, nothing so horrible as a
charitable atheist.

When Paine was born the world was religious, the pulpit was the real
throne, and the churches were making every effort to crush out of the
brain the idea that it had the right to think. He again made up his
mind to sacrifice himself. He commenced with the assertion "That any
system of religion that had anything in it that shocks the mind of a
child can not be a true system." What a beautiful, what a tender
sentiment! No wonder the church began to hate him. He believed in one
God, and no more. After his life he hoped for happiness. He believed
that true religion consisted in doing justice, loving mercy; in
endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy, and in offering to God
the fruit of the heart. He denied the inspiration of the scriptures.
This was his crime.