Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest Part 29

Sixth, in this discussion a curious thing has happened. For several centuries the clergy have declared that while infidelity is a very good thing to live by, it is a bad support, a wretched consolation, in the hour of death. They have, in spite of the truth, declared that all the great unbelievers died trembling with fear, asking G.o.d for mercy, surrounded by fiends, in the torments of despair. Think of the thousands and thousands of clergymen who have described the last agonies of Voltaire, who died as peacefully as a happy child smilingly pa.s.ses from play to slumber; the final anguish of Hume, who fell into his last sleep as serenely as a river, running between green and shaded banks, reaches the sea; the despair of Thomas Paine, one of the bravest, one of the n.o.blest men, who met the night of death untroubled as a star that meets the morning.

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. G.o.d 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 pa.s.sing 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 G.o.ds or heavens or h.e.l.ls, 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 G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstances.

What is the best thing to do under the circ.u.mstances? That which will increase the sum of human happiness--or lessen it the least.

Happiness, in its highest, n.o.blest 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 pa.s.sion, 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 h.e.l.ls 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 n.o.ble 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d and another world, then the infinitely good G.o.d will be just as good to us in that world as he is in this. If this infinitely good G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 circ.u.mstances we would take our lives--and produced such circ.u.mstances 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 G.o.d, 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 fort.i.tude 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 G.o.ds and their impossible h.e.l.ls, I have no care, no fear.

The existence of G.o.d 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 sh.o.r.es 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 "G.o.d" has appointed a time for each to die.

Of this there is, and there can be, no evidence. There is no evidence that any G.o.d 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 G.o.d, through all ages, has allowed his friends, his worshipers, to be imprisoned, tortured and murdered by His enemies. Such is the protection of G.o.d. 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.