The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume I Part 16

In 1441 printing was discovered. At that time the past was a vast cemetery with hardly an epitaph. The ideas of men had mostly perished in the brain that produced them. The lips of the human race had been sealed. Printing gave pinions to thought. It preserved ideas. It made it possible for man to bequeath to the future the riches of his brain, the wealth of his soul. At first, it was used to flood the world with the mistakes of the ancients, but since that time it has been flooding the world with light.

When people read they begin to reason, and when they reason they progress. This was another grand step in the direction of Progress.

The discovery of powder, that put the peasant almost upon a par with the prince;--that put an end to the so-called age of chivalry;--that released a vast number of men from the armies;--that gave pluck and nerve a chance with brute strength.

The discovery of America, whose sh.o.r.es were trod by the restless feet of adventure;--that brought people holding every shade of superst.i.tion together;--that gave the world an opportunity to compare notes, and to laugh at the follies of each other. Out of this strange mingling of all creeds, and superst.i.tions, and facts, and theories, and countless opinions, came the Great Republic.

Every fact has pushed a superst.i.tion from the brain and a ghost from the clouds. Every mechanic art is an educator. Every loom, every reaper and mower, every steamboat, every locomotive, every engine, every press, every telegraph, is a missionary of Science and an apostle of Progress.

Every mill, every furnace, every building with its wheels and levers, in which something is made for the convenience, for the use, and for the comfort and elevation of man, is a church, and every school-house is a temple.

Education is the most radical thing in the world.

To teach the alphabet is to inaugurate a revolution.

To build a schoolhouse is to construct a fort.

Every library is an a.r.s.enal filled with the weapons and ammunition of Progress, and every fact is a monitor with sides of iron and a turret of steel.

I thank the inventors, the discoverers, the thinkers. I thank Columbus and Magellan. I thank Galileo, and Copernicus, and Kepler, and Descartes, and Newton, and Laplace. I thank Locke, and Hume, and Bacon, and Shakespeare, and Kant, and Fichte, and Leibnitz, and Goethe. I thank Fulton, and Watts, and Volta, and Galvani, and Franklin, and Morse, who made lightning the messenger of man. I thank Humboldt, the Shakespeare of science. I thank Crompton and Arkwright, from whose brains leaped the looms and spindles that clothe the world. I thank Luther for protesting against the abuses of the church, and I denounce him because he was the enemy of liberty. I thank Calvin for writing a book in favor of religious freedom, and I abhor him because he burned Servetus. I thank Knox for resisting Episcopal persecution, and I hate him because he persecuted in his turn. I thank the Puritans for saying "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to G.o.d," and yet I am compelled to say that they were tyrants themselves. I thank Thomas Paine because he was a believer in liberty, and because he did as much to make my country free as any other human being. I thank Voltaire, that great man who, for half a century, was the intellectual emperor of Europe, and who, from his throne at the foot of the Alps, pointed the finger of scorn at every hypocrite in Christendom. I thank Darwin, Haeckel and Buchner, Spencer, Tyndall and Huxley, Draper, Lecky and Buckle.

I thank the inventors, the discoverers, the thinkers, the scientists, the explorers, I thank the honest millions who have toiled.

I thank the brave men with brave thoughts. They are the Atlases upon whose broad and mighty shoulders rests the grand fabric of civilization.

They are the men who have broken, and are still breaking, the chains of Superst.i.tion. They are the t.i.tans who carried Olympus by a.s.sault, and who will soon stand victors upon Sinai's crags.

We are beginning to learn that to exchange a mistake for the truth--a superst.i.tion for a fact--to ascertain the real--is to progress.

Happiness is the only possible good, and all that tends to the happiness of man is right, and is of value. All that tends to develop the bodies and minds of men; all that gives us better houses, better clothes, better food, better pictures, grander music, better heads, better hearts; all that renders us more intellectual and more loving, nearer just; that makes us better husbands and wives, better children, better citizens--all these things combined produce what I call Progress.

Man advances only as he overcomes the obstructions of Nature, and this can be done only by labor and by thought. Labor is the foundation of all. Without labor, and without great labor, progress is impossible. The progress of the world depends upon the men who walk in the fresh furrows and through the rustling corn; upon those who sow and reap; upon those whose faces are radiant with the glare of furnace fires; upon the delvers in the mines, and the workers in shops; upon those who give to the winter air the ringing music of the axe; upon those who battle with the boisterous billows of the sea; upon the inventors and discoverers; upon the brave thinkers.

From the surplus produced by labor, schools and universities are built and fostered. From this surplus the painter is paid for the productions of the pencil; the sculptor for chiseling shapeless rock into forms divinely beautiful, and the poet for singing the hopes, the loves, the memories, and the aspirations of the world. This surplus has given us the books in which we converse with the dead and living kings of the human race. It has given us all there is of beauty, of elegance, and of refined happiness.

I am aware that there is a vast difference of opinion as to what progress really is; that many denounce the ideas of to-day as destructive of all happiness--of all good, I know that there are many worshipers of the past. They venerate the ancient because it is ancient.

They see no beauty in anything from which they do not blow the dust of ages with the breath of praise. They say, no masters like the old; no religion, no governments like the ancient; no orators, no poets, no statesmen like those who have been dust for two thousand years. Others love the modern simply because it is modern.

We should have grat.i.tude enough to acknowledge the obligations we are under to the great and heroic of antiquity, and independence enough not to believe what they said simply because they said it.

With the idea that labor is the basis of progress goes the truth that labor must be free. The laborer must be a free man.

The free man, working for wife and child, gets his head and hands in partnership.

To do the greatest amount of work in the shortest s.p.a.ce of time, is the problem of free labor.

Slavery does the least work in the longest s.p.a.ce of time.

Free labor will give us wealth. Free thought will give us truth.

Slowly but surely man is freeing his imagination of these s.e.xless phantoms, of these cruel ghosts. Slowly but surely he is rising above the superst.i.tions of the past. He is learning to rely upon himself.

He is beginning to find that labor is the only prayer that ought to be answered, and that hoping, toiling, aspiring, suffering men and women are of more importance than all the ghosts that ever wandered through the fenceless fields of s.p.a.ce.

The believers in ghosts claim still, that they are the only wise and virtuous people upon the earth; claim still, that there is a difference between them and unbelievers so vast, that they will be infinitely rewarded, and the others infinitely punished.

I ask you to-night, do the theories and doctrines of the theologians satisfy the heart or brain of the nineteenth century?

Have the churches the confidence of mankind?

Does the merchant give credit to a man because he belongs to a church?

Does the banker loan money to a man because he is a Methodist or Baptist?

Will a certificate of good standing in any church be taken as collateral security for one dollar?

Will you take the word of a church member, or his note, or his oath, simply because he is a church member?

Are the clergy, as a cla.s.s, better, kinder and more generous to their families--to their fellow-men--than doctors, lawyers, merchants and farmers?

Does a belief in ghosts and unreasonable things necessarily make people honest?

When a man loses confidence in Moses, must the people lose confidence in him?

Does not the credit system in morals breed extravagance in sin?

Why send missionaries to other lands while every penitentiary in ours is filled with criminals?

Is it philosophical to say that they who do right carry a cross?

Is it a source of joy to think that perdition is the destination of nearly all of the children of men?

Is it worth while to quarrel about original sin--when there is so much copy?

Does it pay to dispute about baptism, and the Trinity, and predestination, and apostolic succession and the infallibility of churches, of popes and of books? Does all this do any good?

Are the theologians welcomers of new truths? Are they noted for their candor? Do they treat an opponent with common fairness? Are they investigators? Do they pull forward, or do they hold back?

Is science indebted to the church for a solitary fact?

What church is an asylum for a persecuted truth?

What great reform has been inaugurated by the church?

Did the church abolish slavery?

Has the church raised its voice against war?

I used to think that there was in religion no real restraining force.

Upon this point my mind has changed. Religion will prevent man from committing artificial crimes and offences.

A man committed murder. The evidence was so conclusive that he confessed his guilt.