The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume VII Part 15

The argument was a strong one; the argument was brilliant, and was able; and I say now, with all my predilections for the church of my fathers, and for your church (because it is not a question of our differences, but it is a question whether the tree shall be torn up by the roots, not what branches may bear richer fruit or deserve to be lopped off)--I say, why has every Christian State pa.s.sed these statutes against blasphemy?

Turning into ridicule sacred things--firing off the Lord's Prayer as you would a joke from Joe Miller or a comic poem--that is what I mean by blasphemy. If there is any other or better definition, give it me, and I will use it.

Now understand. All these States of ours care not one fig what our religion is. Behave yourselves properly, obey the laws, do not require the intervention of the police, and the majesty of your conscience will be as exalted as the sun. But the wisest men and the best men--possibly not so eloquent as the orator, but I may say it without offence to him--other names that shine brightly in the galaxy of our best men, have insisted and maintained that the Christian faith was the ligament that kept our modern society together, and our laws have said, and the laws of most of our States say, to this day, "Think what you like, but do not, like Samson, pull the pillars down upon us all."

If I had anything to say, ladies and gentlemen, it is time that I should say it now. My exordium has been very long, but it was no longer than the dignity of the subject, perhaps, demanded.

Free speech we all have. Absolute liberty of speech we never had. Did we have it before the war? Many of us here remember that if you crossed an imaginary line and went among some of the n.o.blest and best men that ever adorned this continent, one word against slavery meant death. And if you say that that was the influence of slavery, I will carry you to Boston, that city which numbers within its walls as many intelligent people to the acre as any city on the globe--was it different there?

Why, the fugitive, beaten, blood-stained slave, when he got there, was seized and turned back; and when a few good and brave men, in defence of free speech, undertook to defend the slave and to try and give him liberty, they were mobbed and pelted and driven through the city. You may say, "That proves there was no liberty of speech." No; it proves this: that wherever, and wheresoever, and whenever, liberty of speech is incompatible with the safety of the State, liberty of speech must fall back and give way, in order that the State may be preserved.

First, above everything, above all things, the safety of the people is the supreme law. And if rhetoricians, anxious to tear down, anxious to pluck the faith from the young ones who are unable to defend it, come forward with nickel-plated plat.i.tudes and commonplaces clothed in second-hand purple and tinsel, and try to tear down the temple, then it is time, I shall not say for good men--for I know so few they make a small battalion--but for good women, to come to the rescue.

GENERAL WOODFORD'S SPEECH.

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen>: At this late hour, I could not attempt--even if I would--the eloquence of my friend Colonel Ingersoll; nor the wit and rapier-like sarcasm of my other valued friend Mr.

Coudert. But there are some things so serious about this subject that we discuss to-night, that I crave your pardon if, without preface, and without rhetoric, I get at once to what from my Protestant standpoint seems the fatal logical error of Mr. Inger-soll's position.

Mr. Ingersoll starts with the statement--and that I may not, for I could not, do him injustice, nor myself injustice, in the quotation, I will give it as he stated it--he starts with this statement: that thought is a necessary natural product, the result of what we call impressions made through the medium of the senses upon the brain.

Do you think that is thought? Now stop--turn right into your own minds--is that thought? Does not will power take hold? Does not reason take hold? Does not memory take hold, and is not thought the action of the brain based upon the impression and a.s.sisted or directed by manifold and varying influences?

Secondly, our friend Mr. Ingersoll says that no human being is accountable to any being, human or divine, for his thought.

He starts with the a.s.sumption that thought is the inevitable impression burnt upon the mind at once, and then jumps to the conclusion that there is no responsibility. Now, is not that a fair logical a.n.a.lysis of what he has said?

My senses leave upon my mind an impression, and then my mind, out of that impression, works good or evil. The gla.s.s of brandy, being presented to my physical sense, inspires thirst--inspires the thought of thirst--inspires the instinct of debauchery. Am I not accountable for the result of the mind given me, whether I yield to the debauch, or rise to the dignity of self-control?

Every thing of sense leaves its impression upon the mind. If there be no responsibility anywhere, then is this world blind chance. If there be no responsibility anywhere, then my friend deserves no credit if he be guiding you in the path of truth, and I deserve no censure if I be carrying you back into the path of superst.i.tion. Why, admit for a moment that a man has no control over his thought, and you destroy absolutely the power of regenerating the world, the power of improving the world.

The world swings one way, or it swings the other. If it be true that in all these ages we have come nearer and nearer to a perfect liberty, that is true simply and alone because the mind of man through reason, through memory, through a thousand inspirations and desires and hopes, has ever tended toward better results and higher achievements.

No accountability? I speak not for my friend, but I recognize that I am accountable to myself; I recognize that whether I rise or fall, that whether my life goes upward or downward, I am responsible to myself. And so, in spite of all sophistry, so in spite of all dream, so in spite of all eloquence, each woman, each man within this audience is responsible--first of all to herself and himself--whether when bad thoughts, when pa.s.sion, when murder, when evil come into the heart or brain he harbors them there or he casts them out.

I am responsible further--I am responsible to my neighbor. I know that I am my neighbor's keeper, I know that as I touch your life, as you touch mine, I am responsible every moment, every hour, every day, for my influence upon you. I am either helping you up, or I am dragging you down; you are either helping me up or you are dragging me down--and you know it. Sophistry cannot get away from this; eloquence cannot seduce us from it. You know that if you look back through the record of your life, there are lives that you have helped and lives that you have hurt. You know that there are lives on the downward plane that went down because in an evil hour you pushed them; you know, perhaps with blessing, lives that have gone up because you have reached out to them a helping hand. That responsibility for your neighbor is a responsibility and an accountability that you and I cannot avoid or evade.

I believe one thing further: that because there is a creation there is a Creator. I believe that because there is force, there is a Projector of force; because there is matter, there is spirit. I reverently believe these things. I am not angry with my neighbor because he does not; it may be that he is right, that I am wrong; but if there be a Power that sent me into this world, so far as that Power has given me wrong direction, or permitted wrong direction, that Power will judge me justly. So far as I disregard the light that I have, whatever it may be--whether it br light of reason, light of conscience, light of history--so far as I do that which my judgment tells me is wrong, I am responsible and I am accountable.

Now the Protestant theory, as I understand it, is simply this: It would vary from the theory as taught by the mother church--it certainly swings far away from the theory as suggested by my friend; I understand the Protestant theory to be this: That every man is responsible to himself, to his neighbor, and to his G.o.d, for his thought. Not for the first impression--but for that impression, for that direction and result which he intelligently gives to the first impression or deduces from it. I understand that the Protestant idea is this: that man may think--we know he will think--for himself; but that he is responsible for it. That a man may speak his thought, so long as he does not hurt his neighbor. He must use his own liberty so that he shall not injure the well-being of any other one--so that when using this liberty, when exercising this freedom, he is accountable at the last to his G.o.d. And so Protestantism sends me into the world with this terrible and solemn responsibility.

It leaves Mr. Ingersoll free to speak his thought at the bar of his conscience, before the bar of his fellow-man, but it holds him in the inevitable grip of absolute responsibility for every light word idly spoken.

G.o.d grant that he may use that power so that he can face that responsibility at the last!

It leaves to every churchman liberty to believe and stand by his church according to his own conviction.

It stands for this; the absolute liberty of each individual man to think, to write, to speak, to act, according to the best light within him; limited as to his fellows, by the condition that he shall not use that liberty so as to injure them; limited in the other direction, by those tremendous laws which are laws in spite of all rhetoric, and in spite of all logic.

If I put my finger into the fire, that fire burns. If I do a wrong, that wrong remains. If I hurt my neighbor, the wrong reacts upon myself. If I would try to escape what you call judgment, what you call penalty, I cannot escape the working of the inevitable-law that follows a cause by effect; I cannot escape that inevitable law--not the creation of some dark monster flashing through the skies--but, as I believe, the beneficent creation which puts into the spiritual life the same control of law that guides the material life, which wisely makes me responsible, that in the solemnity of that responsibility I am bound to lift my brother up and never to drag my brother down.

REPLY OF COLONEL INGERSOLL.

The first gentleman who replied to me took the ground boldly that expression is not free--that no man has the right to express his real thoughts--and I suppose that he acted in accordance with that idea. How are you to know whether he thought a solitary thing that he said, or not? How is it possible for us to ascertain whether he is simply the mouthpiece of some other? Whether he is a free man, or whether he says that which he does not believe, it is impossible for us to ascertain.

He tells you that I am about to take away the religion of your mothers.

I have heard that said a great many times. No doubt Mr. Coudert has the religion of his mother, and judging from the argument he made, his mother knew at least as much about these questions as her son. I believe that every good father and good mother wants to see the son and the daughter climb higher upon the great and splendid mount of thought than they reached.

You never can honor your father by going around swearing to his mistakes. You never can honor your mother by saying that ignorance is blessed because she did not know everything. I want to honor my parents by finding out more than they did.

There is another thing that I was a little astonished at--that Mr.

Coudert, knowing that he would be in eternal felicity with his harp in his hand, seeing me in the world of the d.a.m.ned, could yet grow envious here to-night at my imaginary monument.

And he tells you--this Catholic--that Voltaire was an exceedingly good Christian compared with me. Do you know I am glad that I have compelled a Catholic--one who does not believe he has the right to express his honest thoughts--to pay a compliment to Voltaire simply because he thought it was at my expense?

I have an almost infinite admiration for Voltaire; and when I hear that name p.r.o.nounced, I think of a plume floating over a mailed knight--I think of a man that rode to the beleaguered City of Catholicism and demanded a surrender--I think of a great man who thrust the dagger of a.s.sa.s.sination into your Mother Church, and from that wound she never will recover.

One word more. This gentleman says that children are destructive--that the first thing they do is to destroy their bibs. The gentleman, I should think from his talk, has preserved his!

They talk about blasphemy. What is blasphemy? Let us be honest with each other. Whoever lives upon the unpaid labor of others is a blasphemer.

Whoever slanders, maligns, and betrays is a blasphemer. Whoever denies to others the rights that he claims for himself is a blasphemer.

Who is a worshiper? One who makes a happy home--one who fills the lives of wife and children with sunlight--one who has a heart where the flowers of kindness burst into blossom and fill the air with perfume--the man who sits beside his wife, prematurely old and wasted, and holds her thin hands in his and kisses them as pa.s.sionately and loves her as truly and as rapturously as when she was a bride--he is a worshiper--that is worship.

And the gentleman brought forward as a reason why we should not have free speech, that only a few years ago some of the best men in the world, if you said a word in favor of liberty, would shoot you down.

What an argument was that! They were not good men. They were the whippers of women and the stealers of babes--robbers of the trundlebed--a.s.sa.s.sins of human liberty. They knew no better, but I do not propose to follow the example of a barbarian because he was honestly a barbarian.

So much for debauching his family by telling them that his precepts are false. If he has taught them as he has taught us to-night, he has debauched their minds. I would be honest at the cradle. I would not tell a child anything as a certainty that I did not know. I would be absolutely honest.

But he says that thought is absolutely free--n.o.body can control thought.

Let me tell him: Superst.i.tion is the jailer of the mind. You can so stuff a child with superst.i.tion that its poor little brain is a bastile and its poor little soul a convict. Fear is the jailer of the mind, and superst.i.tion is the a.s.sa.s.sin of liberty.

So when anybody goes into his family and tells these great and shining truths, instead of debauching his children they will kill the snakes that crawl in their cradles. Let us be honest and free.

And now, coming to the second gentleman. He is a Protestant. The Catholic Church says: "Don't think; pay your fare; this is a through ticket, and we will look out for your baggage." The Protestant Church says: "Read that Bible for yourselves; think for yourselves; but if you do not come to a right conclusion you will be eternally d.a.m.ned." Any sensible man will say, "Then I won't read it--I'll believe it without reading it." And that is the only way you can be sure you will believe it; don't read it.

Governor Woodford says that we are responsible for our thoughts. Why?

Could you help thinking as you did on this subject? No, Could you help believing the Bible? I suppose not. Could you help believing that story of Jonah? Certainly not--it looks reasonable in Brooklyn.

I stated that thought was the result of the impressions of nature upon the mind through the medium of the senses. He says you cannot have thought without memory. How did you get the first one?

Of course I intended to be understood--and the language is clear--that there could be no thought except through the impressions made upon the brain by nature through the avenues called the senses. Take away the senses, how would you think then? If you thought at all, I think you would agree with Mr. Coudert.

Now, I admit--so we need never have a contradiction about it--I admit that every human being is responsible to the person he injures. If he injures any man, woman, or child, or any dog, or the lowest animal that crawls, he is responsible to that animal, to that being--in other words, he is responsible to any being that he has injured.

But you cannot injure an infinite Being, if there be one. I will tell you why. You cannot help him, and you cannot hurt him. If there be an infinite Being, he is conditionless--he does not want anything--he has it. You cannot help anybody that does not want something--you cannot help him. You cannot hurt anybody unless he is a conditioned being and you change his condition so as to inflict a harm. But if G.o.d be conditionless, you cannot hurt him, and you cannot help him. So do not trouble yourselves about the Infinite. All our duties lie within reach--all our duties are right here; and my religion is simply this:

_First_. Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.