Dewitt H. Parker - "The Principles Of Aesthetics"

Meriwether Lewis et al - "The Journals of Lewis and Clark"

Charlotte Selina Bompas - "Owindia"

Edgar Saltus - "Imperial Purple"

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




At the same time these ministers admitted that the average murderer
could meet death on the scaffold with perfect serenity, and could
smilingly ask the people who had gathered to see him killed meet him in
heaven.

But the honest man who had expressed his honest thoughts against the
creed of the church in power could not die in peace. God would see to
it that his last moments should be filled with the insanity of fear--
that with his last breath he should utter the shriek of remorse, the cry
for pardon.

This has all changed, and now the clergy, in their sermons answering me,
declare that the atheists, the free-thinkers, have no fear of death--
that to avoid some little annoyance, a passing inconvenience, they
gladly and cheerfully put out the light of life. It is now said that
infidels believe that death is the end--that it is a dreamless sleep--
that it is without pain--that therefore they have no fear, care nothing
for gods or heavens or hells, nothing for the threats of the pulpit,
nothing for the day of judgment, and that when life becomes a burden
they carelessly throw it down.

The infidels are so afraid of death that they commit suicide. This
certainly is a great change, and I congratulate myself on having forced
the clergy to contradict themselves.

Seventh, the clergy take the position that the atheist, the unbeliever,
has no standard of morality--that he can have no real conception of
right and wrong. They are of the opinion that it is impossible for one
to be moral or good unless he believes in some being far above himself.

In this connection we might ask how God can be moral or good unless he
believes in some being superior to himself.

What is morality? It is the best thing to do under the circumstances.
What is the best thing to do under the circumstances? That which will
increase the sum of human happiness--or lessen it the least. Happiness,
in its highest, noblest form, is the only good; that which increases or
preserves or creates happiness is moral--that which decreases it, or
puts it in peril, is immoral.

It is not hard for an atheist--for an unbeliever--to keep his hands out
of the fire. He knows that burning his hands will not increase his
well-being, and he is moral enough to keep them out of the flames.

So it may be said that each man acts according to his intelligence--so
far as what he considers his own good is concerned. Sometimes he is
swayed by passion, by prejudice, by ignorance, but when he is really
intelligent, master of himself, he does what he believes is best for
him. If he is intelligent enough he knows that what is really good for
him is good for others--for all the world.

It is impossible for me to see why any belief in the supernatural is
necessary to have a keen perception of right and wrong. Every man who
has the capacity to suffer and enjoy, and has imagination enough to give
the same capacity to others, has within himself the natural basis of all
morality. The idea of morality was born here, in this world, of the
experience, the intelligence of mankind. Morality is not of
supernatural origin. It did not fall from the clouds, and it needs no
belief in the supernatural, no supernatural promises or threats, no
supernatural heavens or hells to give it force and life. Subjects who
are governed by the threats and promises of a king are merely slaves.
They are not governed by the ideal, by noble views of right and wrong.
They are obedient cowards, controlled by fear, or beggars governed by
rewards, by alms.

Right and wrong exist in the nature of things. Murder was just as
criminal before as after the promulgation of the ten commandments.

Eighth, many of the clergy, some editors and some writers of letters who
have answered me have said that suicide is the worst of crimes, that a
man had better murder somebody else than himself. One clergyman gives
as a reason for this statement that the suicide dies in an act of sin,
and therefore he had better kill another person. Probably he would
commit a less crime if he would murder his wife or mother.

I do not see that it is any worse to die than to live in sin. To say
that it is not as wicked to murder another as yourself seems absurd.
The man about to kill himself wishes to die. Why is it better for him
to kill another man, who wishes to live?

To my mind it seems clear that you had better injure yourself than
another. Better be a spendthrift than thief. Better throw away your
own money than steal the money of another. Better kill yourself if you
wish to die than murder one whose life is full of joy.

The clergy tell us that God is everywhere, and that it is one of the
greatest possible crimes to rush into His presence. It is wonderful how
much they know about God and how little about their fellow-men.
Wonderful the amount of their information about other worlds and how
limited their knowledge is of this.

There may or may not be an infinite being. I neither affirm nor deny.
I am honest enough to say that I do not know. I am candid enough to
admit that the question is beyond the limitations of my mind. Yet I
think I know as much on that subject as any human being knows or ever
knew, and that is--nothing.

I do not say that there is not another world, another life; neither do I
say that there is. I say that I do not know. It seems to me that every
sane and honest man must say the same. But if there is an infinitely
good God and another world, then the infinitely good God will be just as
good to us in that world as he is in this. If this infinitely good God
loves His children in this world, He will love them in another. If He
loves a man when he is alive, He will not hate him the instant he is
dead. If we are the children of an infinitely wise and powerful God, He
knew exactly what we would do--the temptations that we could and could
not withstand--knew exactly the effect that everything would have upon
us, knew under what circumstances we would take our lives--and produced
such circumstances himself. It is perfectly apparent that there are
many people incapable by nature of bearing the burdens of life,
incapable or preserving their mental poise in stress and strain of
disaster, disease and loss, and who by failure, by misfortune and want,
are driven to despair and insanity, in whose darkened minds there comes
like a flash of lightning in the night, the thought of death, a thought
so strong, so vivid, that all fear is lost, all ties broken, all duties,
all obligations, all hopes forgotten, and naught remains except a fierce
and wild desire to die. Thousands and thousands become moody,
melancholy, brood upon loss of money, of position, of friends, until
reason abdicates, and frenzy takes possession of the soul. If there be
an infinitely wise and powerful God, all this was known to Him from the
beginning, and He so created things, established relations, put in
operation causes and effects that all that has happened was the
necessary result of his own acts.

Ninth, nearly all who have tried to answer what I said have been
exceeding careful to misquote me, and then answer something that I never
uttered. They have declared that I have advised people who were in
trouble, somewhat annoyed, to kill themselves; that I have told men who
have lost their money, who had failed in business, who were not good in
health, to kill themselves at once, without taking into consideration
any duty that they owed to wives, children, friends, or society.

No man has a right to leave his wife to fight the battle alone if he is
able to help. No man has a right to desert his children if he can
possibly be of use. As long as he can add to the comfort of those he
loves, as long as he can stand between wife and misery, between child
and want, as long as he can be of use, it is his duty to remain.

I believe in the cheerful view, in looking at the sunny side of things,
in bearing with fortitude the evils of life, in struggling against
adversity, in finding the fuel of laughter even in disaster, in having
confidence in tomorrow, in finding the pearl of joy among the flints and
shards, and in changing by the alchemy of patience even evil things to
good. I believe in the gospel of cheerfulness, of courage and good-
nature.

Of the future I have no fear. My fate is the fate of the world, of all
that live. My anxieties are about this life, this world. About the
phantoms called gods and their impossible hells, I have no care, no
fear.

The existence of God I neither affirm nor deny. I wait. The
immortality of the soul I neither affirm nor deny. I hope, hope for all
of the children of men. I have never denied the existence of another
world, nor the immortality of the soul. For many years I have said that
the idea of immortality, that like a sea has ebbed and flowed in the
human heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear beating against
the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of
any creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human affection, and it
will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and
darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death.

What I deny is the immortality of pain, the eternity of torture.

After all, the instinct of self-preservation is strong. People do not
kill themselves on the advice of friends or enemies. All wish to be
happy, to enjoy life; all wish for food and roof and raiment, for
friends, and as long as life gives joy the idea of self-destruction
never enters the human mind.

The oppressors, the tyrants, those who trample on the rights of others,
the robbers of the poor, those who put wages below the living point, the
ministers who make people insane by preaching the dogma of eternal pain;
these are the men who drive the weak, the suffering and the helpless
down to death.

It will not do to say that "God" has appointed a time for each to die.
Of this there is, and there can be, no evidence. There is no evidence
that any god takes any interest in the affairs of men--that any sides
with the right or helps the weak, protects the innocent or rescues the
oppressed. Even the clergy admit that their God, through all ages, has
allowed his friends, his worshipers, to be imprisoned, tortured and
murdered by His enemies. Such is the protection of God. Billions of
prayers have been uttered; has one been answered? Who sends plague,
pestilence and famine? Who bids the earthquake devour and the volcano
to overwhelm?

Tenth, again I say that it is wonderful to me that so many men, so many
women endure and carry their burdens to the natural end; that so many,
in spite of "age, ache and penury," guard with trembling hands the spark
of life; that prisoners for life toil and suffer to the last; that the
helpless wretches in poor-houses and asylums cling to life; that the
exiles in Siberia, loaded with chains, scarred with the knout, live on;
that the incurables, whose every breath is a pang, and for whom the
future has only pain, should fear the merciful touch and clasp of death.

It is but a few steps at most from the cradle to the grave; a short
journey. The suicide hastens, shortens the path, loses the afternoon,
the twilight, the dusk of life's day; loses what he does not want, what
he cannot bear. In the tempest of despair, in the blind fury of madness
or in the calm of thought and choice the beleaguered soul finds the
serenity of death.

Let us leave the dead where nature leaves them. We know nothing of any
realm that lies beyond the horizon of the known, beyond the end of life.
Let us be honest with ourselves and others. Let us pity the suffering,
the despairing, the men and women hunted and pursued by grief and shame,
by misery and want, by chance and fate until their only friend is death.