Juliet James - "Palaces and Courts of the Exposition"

John Bunyan - "The Holy War"

Clement Juglar - "A Brief History of Panics"

William W. Walter - "The Pastor's Son"

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 Latest

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




You are sometimes in the presence of a great disaster; there is a fire;
at the fourth story window you see the white face of a woman with a
child in her arms, and humanity calls out for somebody to go to the
rescue through that smoke and flame, maybe death. They don't call for a
Baptist, nor a Presbyterian, nor a Methodist, but humanity calls for a
man. And all at once, out steps somebody that nobody ever did think was
much, not a very good man, and yet he springs up the ladder and is lost
in the smoke, and a moment afterward he emerges, and the cruel serpents
of fire climb and hiss around his brave form, but he goes on and you see
that woman and child in his arms, and you see them come down and they
are handed to the bystanders, and he has fainted, maybe, and the crowd
stand hushed, as they always do, in the presence of a grand action, and
a moment after the air is rent with a cheer. Tell me that that man is
going to hell, who is willing to lose his life merely to keep a woman
and child from the torment of a moment's flame--tell me that he is going
to hell; I tell you that it is a falsehood, and if anybody says so he
is mistaken.

I have seen upon the battlefield a boy sixteen years of age struck by
the fragment of a shell and life oozing slowly from the ragged lips of
his death-wound, and I have heard him and seen him die with a curse upon
his lips, and he had the face of his mother in his heart. Do you tell
me that that boy left that field where he died that the flag of his
country might wave forever in the air--do you tell me that he went from
that field, where he lost his life in defense of the liberties of men,
to an eternal hell? I tell you it is infamous!--and such a doctrine as
that would tarnish the reputation of a hyena and smirch the fair fame of
an anaconda.

Let us see whether we are to believe it or not. We had a war a little
while ago and there was a draft made, and there was many a good
Christian hired another fellow to take his place, hired one that was
wicked, hired a sinner to go to hell in his place for five hundred
dollars! While if he was killed he would go to heaven. Think of that.
Think of a man willing to do that for five hundred dollars! I tell you
when you come right down to it they have got too much heart to believe
it; they say they do, but they do not appreciate it. They do not
believe it. They would go crazy if they did. They would go insane. If
a woman believed it, looking upon her little dimpled darling in the
cradle, and said, "Nineteen chances in twenty I am raising fuel for
hell," she would go crazy. They don't believe it, and can't believe it.
The old doctrine was that the angels in heaven would become happier as
they looked upon those in hell. That is not the doctrine now; we have
civilized it. That is not the doctrine. What is the doctrine now? The
doctrine is that those in heaven can look upon the agonies of those in
hell, whether it is a fire or whatever it is, without having the
happiness of those in heaven decreased--that is the doctrine.

That is preached today in every orthodox pulpit in Harrisburg. Let me
put one case and I will be through with this branch of the subject. A
husband and wife love each other. The husband is a good fellow and the
wife a splendid woman. They live and love each other and all at once he
is taken sick, and they watch day after day and night after night around
his bedside until their property is wasted and finally she has to go to
work, and she works through eyes blinded with tears, and the sentinel of
love watches at the bedside of her prince, and at the least breath or
the least motion she is awake; and she attends him night after night
and day after day for years, and finally he dies, and she has him in her
arms and covers his wasted face with the tears of agony and love. He is
a believer and she is not. He dies, and she buries him and puts flowers
above his grave, and she goes there in the twilight of evening and she
takes her children, and tells her little boys and girls through her
tears how brave and how true and how tender their father was, and
finally she dies and she goes to hell, because she was not a believer;
and he goes to the battlements of heaven and looks over and sees the
woman who loved him with all the wealth of her love, and whose tears
made his dead face holy and sacred, and he looks upon her in the agonies
of hell without having his happiness diminished in the least.

With all due respect to everybody, I say, damn any such doctrine as
that. It is infamous! It never ought to be preached; it never ought
to be believed. We ought to be true to our hearts, and the best
revelation of the infinite is the human heart.

Now, I come back to where I started from. They used to think that a
certain day was too good for a child to be happy in, so they filled the
imagination of this child with these horrors of hell. I said, and I say
again, no day can be so sacred but that the laugh of a child will make
the holiest day more sacred still. Strike with hand of fire, oh, weird
musician, thy harp, strung with Apollo's golden hair; fill the vast
cathedral aisles with symphonies sweet and dim, deft toucher of the
organ keys; blow bugler, blow, until thy silver notes do touch the
skies, with moonlit waves, and charm the lovers wandering on the vine-
clad hills; but know, your sweetest strains are discords all, compared
with childhood's happy laugh, the laugh that fills the eyes with light
and every heart with joy; oh, rippling river of life, thou art the
blessed boundary-line between the beasts and man, and every wayward wave
of thine doth drown some fiend of care; oh, laughter, divine daughter
of joy, make dimples enough in the cheeks of the world to catch and hold
and glorify all the tears of grief.

I am opposed to any religion that makes them melancholy, that makes
children sad, and that fills the human heart with shadow.

Give a child a chance. When I was a boy we always went to bed when we
were not sleepy, and we always got up when we were sleepy. Let a child
commence at which end of the day they please, that is their business;
they know more about it than all the doctors in the world. The voice of
nature when a man is free, is the voice of right, but when his passions
have been damned up by custom, the moment that is withdrawn, he rushes
to some excess. Let him be free from the first. Let your children grow
in the free air and they will fill your house with perfume. Do not
create a child to be a post set in an orthodox row; raise investigators
and thinkers, not disciples and followers; cultivate reason, not faith;
cultivate investigation, not superstition; and if you have any doubt
yourself about a thing being so, tell them about it; don't tell them
the world was made in six days--if you think six days means six good
whiles, tell them six good whiles. If you have any doubts about anybody
being in a furnace and not being burnt, or even getting uncomfortably
warm, tell them so--be honest about it. If you look upon the jaw-bone
of a donkey as not a good weapon, say so. Give a child a chance. If
you think a man never went to sea in a fish, tell them so, it won't make
them any worse. Be honest--that is all; don't cram their heads with
things that will take them years and years to unlearn; tell them facts
--it is just as easy. It is as easy to find out botany, and astronomy,
and geology, and history--it is as easy to find out all these things as
to cram their minds with things you know nothing about,* and where a
child knows what the name of a flower is when it sees it, the name of a
bird and all those things, the world becomes interesting everywhere, and
they do not pass by the flowers--they are not deaf to all the songs of
birds, simply because they are walking along thinking about hell.

[* "We know of no difference between matter and spirit, because we know
nothing with certainty about either. Why trouble ourselves about
matters of which, however important they may be we do know nothing and
can know nothing?"--Huxley]

I tell you, this is a pretty good world if we only love somebody in it,
if we only make somebody happy, if we are only honor-bright in it, if we
have no fear. That is my doctrine. I like to hear children at the
table telling what big things they have seen during the day; I like to
hear their merry voices mingling with the clatter of knives and forks.
I had rather hear that than any opera that was ever put on the stage. I
hate this idea of authority. I hate dignity. I never saw a dignified
man that was not after all an old idiot. Dignity is a mask; a
dignified man is afraid that you will know he does not know everything.
A man of sense and argument is always willing to admit what he don't
know--why?--because there is so much that he does know; and that is the
first step towards learning anything--willingness to admit what you
don't know and when you don't understand a thing, ask--no matter how
small and silly it may look to other people--ask, and after that you
know. A man never is in a state of mind that he can learn until he gets
that dignified nonsense out of him, and so, I say let us treat our
children with perfect kindness and tenderness.

Now, then, I believe in absolute intellectual liberty; that a man has a
right to think, and think wrong, provided he does the best he can to
think right--that is all. I have no right to say that Mr. Smith shall
not think; Mr. Smith has no right to say I shall not think; I have no
right to go and pull a clergyman out of his pulpit and say: "You shall
not preach that doctrine," but I have just as much right as he has to
say my say. I have no right to lie about a clergyman, and with great
modesty I claim--and with some timidity--that he has no right to slander
me--that is all.

I claim that every man and wife are equal, except that she has a right
to be protected; that there is nothing like the democracy of the home
and the republicism of the fire-side, and that a man should study to
make his wife's life one perpetual poem of joy; that there should be
nothing but kindness and goodness; and then I say that children should
be governed by love, by kindness, by tenderness, and by the sympathy of
love, kindness and tenderness. That is the religion I have got, and it
is good enough for me whether it suits anybody else in the world or not.
I think it is altogether more important to believe in my wife than it is
to believe in the master; I think it is altogether more important to
love my children than the twelve apostles--that is my doctrine. I may
be wrong, but that is it. I think more of the living than I do of the
dead. This world is for the living. The grave is not a throne, and a
corpse is not a king. The living have a right to control this world. I
think a good deal more of today than I do of yesterday, and I think more
of tomorrow than I do of this day; because it is nearly gone--that is
the way I feel, and this my creed. The time to be happy is now; the
way to be happy is to make somebody else happy; and the place to be
happy is here. I never will consent to drink skim milk here with the
promise of cream somewhere else.

Now, my friends, I have some excuses to offer for the race to which I
belong. In the first place, this world is not very well adapted to
raising good people; there is but one-quarter of it land to start with;
it is three times as well adapted to fish-culture as it is to man, and
of that one-quarter there is but a small belt where they raise men of
genius. There is one strip from which all the men and women of genius
come. When you go too far north yon find no brain; when you go too far
south you find no genius, and there never has been a high degree of
civilization except where there is winter. I say that winter is the
father and mother of the fireside, the family of nations; and around
that fireside blossom the fruits of our race. In a country where they
don't need any bed-clothes except the clouds, revolution is the normal
condition not much civilization there. When in the winter I go by a
house where the curtain is a little bit drawn, and I look in there and
see children poking the fire and wishing they had as many dollars or
knives or something else as there are sparks; when I see the old man
smoking and the smoke curling above his head like incense from the altar
of domestic peace, the other children reading or doing something, and
the old lady with her needle and shears--I never pass such a scene that
I do not feel a little ache of joy in my heart.

Awhile ago they were talking about annexing San Domingo. They said it
was the finest soil in the world, and so on. Says I, "It don't raise
the right kind of folks; you take five thousand of the best people in
the world and let them settle there and you will see the second
generation barefooted, with the hair sticking out of the top of their
sombreros; you will see them riding barebacked, with a rooster under
each arm, going to a cockfight on Sunday." That is one excuse I have.

Another is, I think we came from the lower animals, I am not dead sure
of it. On that question I stand about eight to seven. If there is
nothing of the snake, or hyena, or jackal in man, why would he cut his
brother's throat for a difference of belief? Why would he build dungeons
and burn the flesh of his brother man with red hot irons? I think we
came from the lower animals. When I first heard that doctrine I did not
like it. I felt sorry for our English friends, who would have to trace
their pedigree back to the Duke of Orangutan, or the Earl of Chimpanzee.
But I have read so much about rudimentary bones and rudimentary muscles
that I began to doubt about it. Says I: "What do you mean by
rudimentary muscles?" They say: "A muscle that has gone into
bankruptcy--" "Was it a large muscle?" "Yes." "What did our
forefathers use it for?" They say: "To flap their ears with." After I
found that out I was astonished to find that they had become
rudimentary; I know so many people for whom it would be handy today, so
many people where that would have been on an exact level with their
intellectual development. So after while I began to like it, and says I
to myself: "You have got to come to it." I thought after all I had
rather belong to a race of people that came from skull-less vertebrae in
the dim Laurentian period, that wiggled without knowing they were
wiggling, that began to develop and came up by a gradual development
until they struck this gentleman in the dug-out; coming up slowly--up-
up-up--until, for instance, they produced such a man as Shakespeare--he
who harvested all the fields of dramatic thought, and after whom all
others have been only gleaners of straw, he who found the human
intellect dwelling in a hut, touched it with the wand of his genius and
it became a palace--producing him and hundreds of others I might
mention--with the angels of progress leaning over the far horizon
beckoning this race of work and thought--I had rather belong to a race
commencing at the skull-less vertebrae producing the gentleman in the
dug-out and so on up, than to have descended from a perfect pair upon
which the Lord has lost money from that day to this. I had rather
belong to a race that is going up than to one that is going down. I
would rather belong to one that commenced at the skull-less vertebrae
and started for perfection, than to belong to one, that started from
perfection and started for the skull-less vertebrae.

These are the excuses I have for my race, and taking everything into
consideration, I think we have done extremely well.

Let us have more liberty and free thought. Free thought will give us
truth. It is too early in the history of the world to write a creed.
Our fathers were intellectual slaves; our fathers were intellectual
serfs. There never has been a free generation on the globe. Every
creed you have got bears the mark of whip, and chain, and fagot. There
has been no creed written by a free brain. Wait until we have had two
or three generations of liberty and it will then be time enough to seize
the swift horse of progress by the bridle and say--thus far and no
farther; and in the meantime let us be kind to each other; let us be
decent towards each other. We are all travelers on the great plain we
call life and there is nobody quite sure, what road to take--not just
dead sure, you known. There are lots of guide-boards on the plain and
you find thousands of people swearing today that their guide-board is
the only board that shows the right direction. I go and talk to them
and they say: "You go that way, or you will be damned." I go to another
and they say: "You go this way, or you will be damned." I find them
all fighting and quarreling and beating each other, and then I say:
"Let us cut down all these guide-boards." "What," they say, "leave us
without any guide-boards?" I say: "Yes. Let every man take the road
he thinks is right; and let everybody else wish him a happy journey;
let us part friends."

I say to you tonight, my friends, that I have no malice upon this
subject--not a particle; I simply wish to express my thoughts. The
world has grown better just in proportion as it is happier; the world
has grown better just in proportion as it has lost superstition; the
world has grown better just in the proportion that the sacerdotal class
has lost influence--just exactly; the world has grown better just in
proportion that secular ideas have taken possession of the world. The
world has grown better just in proportion that it has ceased talking
about the visions of the clouds, and talked about the realities of the
earth. The world has grown better just in the proportion that it has
grown free, and I want to do what little I can in my feeble way to add
another flame to the torch of progress. I do not know, of course, what
will come, but if I have said anything tonight that will make a husband
love his wife better, I am satisfied; if I have said anything, that
will make a wife love her husband better, I am satisfied; if I have
said anything that will add one more ray of joy to life, I am satisfied;
if I have said anything that will save the tender flesh of a child from
a blow, I am satisfied; if I have said anything that will make us more
willing to extend to others the right we claim for ourselves, I am
satisfied.

I do not know what inventions are in the brain of the future; I do not
know what garments of glory may be woven for the world in the loom of
the years to be; we are just on the edge of the great ocean of
discovery. I do not know what is to be discovered; I do not know what
science will do for us. I do know that science did just take a handful
of sand and make the telescope, and with it read all the starry leaves
of heaven; I know that science took the thunderbolts from the hands of
Jupiter, and now the electric spark, freighted with thought and love,
flashes under waves of the sea. I know that science stole a tear from
the cheek of unpaid labor, converted it into steam, and created a giant
that turns with tireless arms the countless wheels of toil; I know that
science broke the chains from human limbs and gave us instead the forces
of nature for our slaves; I know that we have made the attraction of
gravitation work for us; we have made the lightnings our messengers; we
have taken advantage of fire and flames and wind and sea; these slaves
have no backs to be whipped; they have no hearts to be lacerated; they
have no children to be stolen, no cradles to be violated. I know that
science has given us better houses; I know it has given us better
pictures and better books; I know it has given us better wives and
better husbands, and more beautiful children. I know it has enriched a
thousand-fold our lives; and for that reason I am in favor of
intellectual liberty.

I know not, I say, what discoveries may lead the world to glory; but I
do know that from the infinite sea of the future never a greater or
grander blessing will strike this bank and shoal of time than liberty
for man, woman and child.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have delivered this lecture a great many times;
clergymen have attended, and editors of religious newspapers, and they
have gone away and written in their papers and declared in their pulpits
that in this lecture I advocated universal adultery; they have gone
away and said it was obscene and disgusting. Between me and my clerical
maligners, between me and my religious slanderers, I leave you, ladies
and gentlemen, to judge.




[[File 2--Lectures of Col. R.G. Ingersoll--Latest:]]




Ingersoll's Lecture on Human Rights



Ladies and Gentlemen: I suppose that man, from the most grotesque
savage up to Heckle, has had a philosophy by which he endeavored to
account for all the phenomena of nature he may have observed. From that
mankind may have got their ideas of right and wrong. Now, where there
are no rights there can be no duties. Let us always remember that only
as a man becomes free can he by any possibility become good or great.
As I said, every savage has had his philosophy, and by it accounted for
everything he observed. He had an idea of rain and rainbow, and he had
an idea of a controlling power. One said there is a being who presides
over our world, and who will destroy us unless we do right. Others had
many of these beings, but they were invariably like themselves. The
most fruitful imagination cannot make more than a man, though it may
make infinite powers and attributes out of the powers and attributes of
man. You can't build a God unless you start with a human being. The
savage said, when there was a storm, "Somebody is angry." When
lightning leaped from the lurid cloud, he thought, "What have I been
doing?" and when he couldn't think of any wrong he had been doing, he
tried to think of some wrong his neighbor had been doing.

I may as well state here that I believe man has come up from the lowest
orders of creation, and may have not come up very far; still, I believe
we are doing very well, considering.

But, speaking of man's early philosophy, his morality was founded first
on self-defense. When gathered together in tribes, he held that this
infinite being would hold the tribe responsible for the actions of any
individual who had angered him. They imagined this being got angry.
Just imagine the serenity of an infinite being being disturbed, and a
God breaking into a passion because some poor wretch had neglected to
bring two turtle doves to a priest!

Then they sought out this poor offending individual, to punish him and
appease the wroth of this being. And here commenced religious
persecution.

Now, I do not say there is no God, but what I do say is that I do not
know. The only difference between me and the theologian is that I am
honest. There may or there may not be an infinite being, but I do not
know it, and until I do I cannot conceive of any obedience I owe to any
unknown being.

As soon as men began to imagine they would be held responsible for the
act of any other person, came the necessity for some one to teach them
how to keep from offending the being. Some called him medicine man,
some called him priest; now, we call him theologian. These men set out
to teach men how to keep from offending this being, and they laid down
certain laws to regulate the conduct of men. First of all it was
necessary to believe in this power. To disbelieve in him was the worst
offense of all. To have some human being, dressed in the skin of a wild
beast, deny the existence of this infinite being, was more than the
infinite being could stand. The first thing, therefore, was to believe
in this power, the next to support this gentleman standing between you
and the supreme wrath. These gentlemen were the lobbyists with the
power, and sometimes succeeded in getting the veto used in favor of
their clients.

For ages, as mankind slowly came through the savage state, the world was
filled with infinite fear. They accounted for everything bad that
happened as the wrath of this supreme being. But they went from savagery
to barbarism--a step in improvement--and then began to build temples to,
and make images of, this being. Then man began to believe he could
influence this being by prayer, by getting on his knees to the image he
had made.

Nothing, I suppose astonishes a missionary more than to see a savage in
Central Africa on his knees before a stone praying for luck in hunting
or in fighting. And yet it strikes me--we have our army chaplains
before a battle praying for the success of our side. They don't pray
for assistance if our cause is just, but they pray, "Lord help us!" I
can't see the difference between the two.

But there is this said in favor of prayer that, whether successful or
not, it is a sort of intellectual exercise. Like a man trying to lift
himself, he may not succeed, but he gets a good deal of exercise.