The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume IV Part 10

So we in the United States believe that the authority to govern, the authority to make and execute laws, comes from the consent of the governed and not from any supernatural source. We do not believe that the king occupied his throne because of the will of the supernatural.

Neither do we believe that others are subjects or serfs or slaves by reason of any supernatural will.

So, our ideas of morality have changed, and millions now believe that whatever produces happiness and well-being is in the highest sense moral. Unreasoning obedience is not the foundation or the essence of morality. That is the result of mental slavery. To act in accordance with obligation perceived is to be free and n.o.ble. To simply obey is to practice what might be called a slave virtue; but real morality is the flower and fruit of liberty and wisdom.

There are very many who have reached the conclusion that the supernatural has nothing to do with real religion. Religion does not consist in believing without evidence or against evidence. It does not consist in worshiping the unknown or in trying to do something for the Infinite. Ceremonies, prayers and inspired books, miracles, special providence, and divine interference all belong to the supernatural and form no part of real religion.

Every science rests on the natural, on demonstrated facts. So, morality and religion must find their foundations in the necessary nature of things.

II. HOW CAN WE REFORM THE WORLD?

IGNORANCE being darkness, what we need is intellectual light. The most important things to teach, as the basis of all progress, are that the universe is natural; that man must be the providence of man; that, by the development of the brain, we can avoid some of the dangers, some of the evils, overcome some of the obstructions, and take advantage of some of the facts and forces of nature; that, by invention and industry, we can supply, to a reasonable degree, the wants of the body, and by thought, study and effort, we can in part satisfy the hunger of the mind.

Man should cease to expect any aid from any supernatural source. By this time he should be satisfied that worship has not created wealth, and that prosperity is not the child of prayer. He should know that the supernatural has not succored the oppressed, clothed the naked, fed the hungry, shielded the innocent, stayed the pestilence, or freed the slave.

Being satisfied that the supernatural does not exist, man should turn his entire attention to the affairs of this world, to the facts in nature.

And, first of all, he should avoid waste--waste of energy, waste of wealth. Every good man, every good woman, should try to do away with war, to stop the appeal to savage force. Man in a savage state relies upon his strength, and decides for himself what is right and what is wrong. Civilized men do not settle their differences by a resort to arms. They submit the quarrel to arbitrators and courts. This is the great difference between the savage and the civilized. Nations, however, sustain the relations of savages to each other. There is no way of settling their disputes. Each nation decides for itself, and each nation endeavors to carry its decision into effect. This produces war.

Thousands of men at this moment are trying to invent more deadly weapons to destroy their fellow-men. For eighteen hundred years peace has been preached, and yet the civilized nations are the most warlike of the world. There are in Europe to-day between eleven and twelve millions of soldiers, ready to take the field, and the frontiers of every civilized nation are protected by breastwork and fort. The sea is covered with steel clad ships, filled with missiles of death.

The civilized world has impoverished itself, and the debt of Christendom, mostly for war, is now nearly thirty thousand million dollars. The interest on this vast sum has to be paid; it has to be paid by labor, much of it by the poor, by those who are compelled to deny themselves almost the necessities of life. This debt is growing year by year. There must come a change, or Christendom will become bankrupt.

The interest on this debt amounts at least to nine hundred million dollars a year; and the cost of supporting armies and navies, of repairing ships, of manufacturing new engines of death, probably amounts, including the interest on the debt, to at least six million dollars a day. Allowing ten hours for a day, that is for a working day, the waste of war is at least six hundred thousand dollars an hour, that is to say, ten thousand dollars a minute.

Think of all this being paid for the purpose of killing and preparing to kill our fellow-men. Think of the good that could be done with this vast sum of money; the schools that could be built, the wants that could be supplied. Think of the homes it would build, the children it would clothe.

If we wish to do away with war, we must provide for the settlement of national differences by an international court. This court should be in perpetual session; its members should be selected by the various governments to be affected by its decisions, and, at the command and disposal of this court, the rest of Christendom being disarmed, there should be a military force sufficient to carry its judgments into effect. There should be no other excuse, no other business for an army or a navy in the civilized world.

No man has imagination enough to paint the agonies, the horrors and cruelties of war. Think of sending shot and sh.e.l.l crashing through the bodies of men! Think of the widows and orphans! Think of the maimed, the mutilated, the mangled!

III. ANOTHER WASTE.

LET us be perfectly candid with each other. We are seeking the truth, trying to find what ought to be done to increase the well-being of man.

I must give you my honest thought. You have the right to demand it, and I must maintain the integrity of my soul.

There is another direction in which the wealth and energies of man are wasted. From the beginning of history until now man has been seeking the aid of the supernatural. For many centuries the wealth of the world was used to propitiate the unseen powers. In our own country, the property dedicated to this purpose is worth at least one thousand million dollars. The interest on this sum is fifty million dollars a year, and the cost of employing persons, whose business it is to seek the aid of the supernatural and to maintain the property, is certainly as much more. So that the cost in our country is about two million dollars a week, and, counting ten hours as a working day, this amounts to about five hundred dollars a minute.

For this vast amount of money the returns are remarkably small. The good accomplished does not appear to be great. There is no great diminution in crime. The decrease of immorality and poverty is hardly perceptible.

In spite, however, of the apparent failure here, a vast sum of money is expended every year to carry our ideas of the supernatural to other races. Our churches, for the most part, are closed during the week, being used only a part of one day in seven. No one wishes to destroy churches or church organizations. The only desire is that they shall accomplish substantial good for the world. In many of our small towns--towns of three or four thousand people--will be found four or five churches, sometimes more. These churches are founded upon immaterial differences; a difference as to the mode of baptism; a difference as to who shall be ent.i.tled to partake of the Lord's supper; a difference of ceremony; of government; a difference about fore-ordination; a difference about fate and free will. And it must be admitted that all the arguments on all sides of these differences have been presented countless millions of times. Upon these subjects nothing new is produced or antic.i.p.ated, and yet the discussion is maintained by the repet.i.tion of the old arguments.

Now, it seems to me that it would be far better for the people of a town, having a population of four or five thousand, to have one church, and the edifice should be of use, not only on Sunday, but on every day of the week. In this building should be the library of the town.

It should be the clubhouse of the people, where they could find the princ.i.p.al newspapers and periodicals of the world. Its auditorium should be like a theatre. Plays should be presented by home talent; an orchestra formed, music cultivated. The people should meet there at any time they desire. The women could carry their knitting and sewing; and connected with it should be rooms for the playing of games, billiards, cards, and chess. Everything should be made as agreeable as possible.

The citizens should take pride in this building. They should adorn its niches with statues and its walls with pictures. It should be the intellectual centre. They could employ a gentleman of ability, possibly of genius, to address them on Sundays, on subjects that would be of real interest, of real importance. They could say to this minister:

"We are engaged in business during the week; while we are working at our trades and professions, we want you to study, and on Sunday tell us what you have found out."

Let such a minister take for a series of sermons the history, the philosophy, the art and the genius of the Greeks. Let him tell of the wondrous metaphysics, myths and religions of India and Egypt. Let him make his congregation conversant with the philosophies of the world, with the great thinkers, the great poets, the great artists, the great actors, the great orators, the great inventors, the captains of industry, the soldiers of progress. Let them have a Sunday school in which the children shall be made acquainted with the facts of nature; with botany, entomology, something of geology and astronomy.

Let them be made familiar with the greatest of poems, the finest paragraphs of literature, with stories of the heroic, the self-denying and generous.

Now, it seems to me that such a congregation in a few years would become the most intelligent people in the United States.

The truth is that people are tired of the old theories. They have lost confidence in the miraculous, in the supernatural, and they have ceased to take interest in "facts" that they do not quite believe.

"There is no darkness but ignorance."

There is no light but intelligence,

As often as we can exchange a mistake for a fact, a falsehood for a truth, we advance. We add to the intellectual wealth of the world, and in this way, and in this way alone, can be laid the foundation for the future prosperity and civilization of the race.

I blame no one; I call in question the motives of no person; I admit that the world has acted as it must.

But hope for the future depends upon the intelligence of the present.

Man must husband his resources. He must not waste his energies in endeavoring to accomplish the impossible.

He must take advantage of the forces of nature. He must depend on education, on what he can ascertain by the use of his senses, by observation, by experiment and reason. He must break the chains of prejudice and custom. He must be free to express his thoughts on all questions. He must find the conditions of happiness and become wise enough to live in accordance with them.

IV. HOW CAN WE LESSEN CRIME?

IN spite of all that has been done for the reformation of the world, in spite of all the inventions, in spite of all the forces of nature that are now the tireless slaves of man, in spite of all improvements in agriculture, in mechanics, in every department of human labor, the world is still cursed with poverty and with crime.

The prisons are full, the courts are crowded, the officers of the law are busy, and there seems to be no material decrease in crime.

For many thousands of years man has endeavored to reform his fellow-men by imprisonment, torture, mutilation and death, and yet the history of the world shows that there has been and is no reforming power in punishment. It is impossible to make the penalty great enough, horrible enough to lessen crime.

Only a few years ago, in civilized countries, larceny and many offences even below larceny, were punished by death; and yet the number of thieves and criminals of all grades increased. Traitors were hanged and quartered or drawn into fragments by horses; and yet treason flourished.

Most of these frightful laws have been repealed, and the repeal certainly did not increase crime. In our own country we rely upon the gallows, the penitentiary and the jail. When a murder is committed, the man is hanged, shocked to death by electricity, or lynched, and in a few minutes a new murderer is ready to suffer a like fate. Men steal; they are sent to the penitentiary for a certain number of years, treated like wild beasts, frequently tortured. At the end of the term they are discharged, having only enough money to return to the place from which they were sent. They are thrown upon the world without means--without friends--they are convicts. They are shunned, suspected and despised.

If they obtain a place, they are discharged as soon as it is found that they were in prison. They do the best they can to retain the respect of their fellow-men by denying their imprisonment and their ident.i.ty. In a little while, unable to gain a living by honest means, they resort to crime, they again appear in court, and again are taken within the dungeon walls. No reformation, no chance to reform, nothing to give them bread while making new friends.

All this is infamous. Men should not be sent to the pent.i.tentiary as a punishment, because we must remember that men do as they must. Nature does not frequently produce the perfect. In the human race there is a large percentage of failures. Under certain conditions, with certain appet.i.tes and pa.s.sions and with a certain quality, quant.i.ty and shape of brain, men will become thieves, forgers and counterfeiters. The question is whether reformation is possible, whether a change can be produced in the person by producing a change in the conditions. The criminal is dangerous and society has the right to protect itself. The criminal should be confined, and, if possible, should be reformed. A pent.i.tentiary should be a school; the convicts should be educated. So, prisoners should work, and they should be paid a reasonable sum for their labor. The best men should have charge of prisons. They should be philanthropists and philosophers; they should know something of human nature. The prisoner, having been taught, we will say, for five years--taught the underlying principles of conduct, of the naturalness and harmony of virtue, of the discord of crime; having been convinced that society has no hatred, that n.o.body wishes to punish, to degrade, or to rob him; and being at the time of his discharge paid a reasonable price for his labor; being allowed by law to change his name, so that his ident.i.ty will not be preserved, he could go out of the prison a friend of the government. He would have the feeling that he had been made a better man; that he had been treated with justice, with mercy, and the money he carried with him would be a breastwork behind which he could defy temptation, a breastwork that would support and take care of him until he could find some means by which to support himself. And this man, instead of making crime a business, would become a good, honorable and useful-citizen.

As it is now, there is but little reform. The same faces appear again and again at the bar; the same men hear again and again the verdict of guilty and the sentence of the court, and the same men return again and again to the prison cell. Murderers, those belonging to the dangerous cla.s.ses, those who are so formed by nature that they rush to the crimes of desperation, should be imprisoned for life; or they should be put upon some island, some place where they can be guarded, where it may be that by proper effort they could support themselves; the men on one island, the women on another. And to these islands should be sent professional criminals, those who have deliberately adopted a life of crime for the purpose of supporting themselves, the women upon one island, the men upon another. Such people should not populate the earth.

Neither the diseases nor the deformities of the mind or body should be perpetuated. Life at the fountain should not be polluted.

V. HOMES FOR ALL.

THE home is the unit of the nation. The more homes the broader the foundation of the nation and the more secure.

Everything that is possible should be done to keep this from being a nation of tenants. The men who cultivate the earth should own it.

Something has already been done in our country in that direction, and probably in every State there is a homestead exemption. This exemption has thus far done no harm to the creditor cla.s.s. When we imprisoned people for debt, debts were as insecure, to say the least, as now. By the homestead laws, a home of a certain value or of a certain extent, is exempt from forced levy or sale; and these laws have done great good.

Undoubtedly they have trebled the homes of the nation.

I wish to go a step further. I want, if possible, to get the people out of the tenements, out of the gutters of degradation, to homes where there can be privacy, where these people can feel that they are in partnership with nature; that they have an interest in good government.

With the means we now have of transportation, there is no necessity for poor people being huddled in festering ma.s.ses in the vile, filthy and loathsome parts of cities, where poverty breeds rags, and the rags breed diseases. I would exempt a homestead of a reasonable value, say of the value of two or three thousand dollars, not only from sale under execution, but from sale for taxes of every description. These homes should be absolutely exempt; they should belong to the family, so that every mother should feel that the roof above her head was hers; that her house was her castle, and that in its possession she could not be disturbed, even by the nation. Under certain conditions I would allow the sale of this homestead, and exempt the proceeds of the sale for a certain time, during which they might be invested in another home; and all this could be done to make a nation of householders, a nation of land-owners, a nation of home-builders.