The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume VIII Part 7

My opinion of immortality is this:

First.--I live, and that of itself is infinitely wonderful.

Second.--There was a time when I was not, and after I was not, I was. Third.--Now that I am, I may be again; and it is no more wonderful that I may be again, if I have been, than that I am, having once been nothing. If the churches advocated immortality, if they advocated eternal justice, if they said that man would be rewarded and punished according to deeds; if they admitted that some time in eternity there would be an opportunity given to lift up souls, and that throughout all the ages the angels of progress and virtue would beckon the fallen upward; and that some time, and no matter how far away they might put off the time, all the children of men would be reasonably happy, I never would say a solitary word against the church, but just as long as they preach that the majority of mankind will suffer eternal pain, just so long I shall oppose them; that is to say, as long as I live.

_Question_. Do you believe in a G.o.d; and, if so, what kind of a G.o.d?

_Answer_. Let me, in the first place, lay a foundation for an answer.

First.--Man gets all food for thought through the medium of the senses. The effect of nature upon the senses, and through the senses upon the brain, must be natural. All food for thought, then, is natural. As a consequence of this, there can be no supernatural idea in the human brain. Whatever idea there is must have been a natural product. If, then, there is no supernatural idea in the human brain, then there cannot be in the human brain an idea of the supernatural. If we can have no idea of the supernatural, and if the G.o.d of whom you spoke is admitted to be supernatural, then, of course, I can have no idea of him, and I certainly can have no very fixed belief on any subject about which I have no idea.

There may be a G.o.d for all I know. There may be thousands of them.

But the idea of an infinite Being outside and independent of nature is inconceivable. I do not know of any word that would explain my doctrine or my views upon the subject. I suppose Pantheism is as near as I could go. I believe in the eternity of matter and in the eternity of intelligence, but I do not believe in any Being outside of nature. I do not believe in any personal Deity. I do not believe in any aristocracy of the air. I know nothing about origin or destiny. Between these two horizons I live, whether I wish to or not, and must be satisfied with what I find between these two horizons. I have never heard any G.o.d described that I believe in. I have never heard any religion explained that I accept. To make something out of nothing cannot be more absurd than that an infinite intelligence made this world, and proceeded to fill it with crime and want and agony, and then, not satisfied with the evil he had wrought, made a h.e.l.l in which to consummate the great mistake.

_Question_. Do you believe that the world, and all that is in it came by chance?

_Answer_. I do not believe anything comes by chance. I regard the present as the necessary child of a necessary past. I believe matter is eternal; that it has eternally existed and eternally will exist. I believe that in all matter, in some way, there is what we call force; that one of the forms of force is intelligence. I believe that whatever is in the universe has existed from eternity and will forever exist.

Secondly.--I exclude from my philosophy all ideas of chance. Matter changes eternally its form, never its essence. You cannot conceive of anything being created. No one can conceive of anything existing without a cause or with a cause. Let me explain; a thing is not a cause until an effect has been produced; so that, after all, cause and effect are twins coming into life at precisely the same instant, born of the womb of an unknown mother. The Universe in the only fact, and everything that ever has happened, is happening, or will happen, are but the different aspects of the one eternal fact.

--_The Dispatch_, Pittsburg, Pa., December 11, 1880.

THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK.

_Question_. What phases will the Southern question a.s.sume in the next four years?

_Answer_. The next Congress should promptly unseat every member of Congress in whose district there was not a fair and honest election. That is the first hard work to be done. Let notice, in this way, be given to the whole country, that fraud cannot succeed.

No man should be allowed to hold a seat by force or fraud. Just as soon as it is understood that fraud is useless it will be abandoned. In that way the honest voters of the whole country can be protected.

An honest vote settles the Southern question, and Congress has the power to compel an honest vote, or to leave the dishonest districts without representation. I want this policy adopted, not only in the South, but in the North. No man touched or stained with fraud should be allowed to hold his seat. Send such men home, and let them stay there until sent back by honest votes. The Southern question is a Northern question, and the Republican party must settle it for all time. We must have honest elections, or the Republic must fall. Illegal voting must be considered and punished as a crime.

Taking one hundred and seventy thousand as the basis of representation, the South, through her astounding increase of colored population, gains three electoral votes, while the North and East lose three.

Garfield was elected by the thirty thousand colored votes cast in New York.

_Question_. Will the negro continue to be the balance of power, and if so, will it inure to his benefit?

_Answer_. The more political power the colored man has the better he will be treated, and if he ever holds the balance of power he will be treated as well as the balance of our citizens. My idea is that the colored man should stand on an equality with the white before the law; that he should honestly be protected in all his rights; that he should be allowed to vote, and that his vote should be counted. It is a simple question of honesty. The colored people are doing well; they are industrious; they are trying to get an education, and, on the whole, I think they are behaving fully as well as the whites. They are the most forgiving people in the world, and about the only real Christians in our country. They have suffered enough, and for one I am on their side. I think more of honest black people than of dishonest whites, to say the least of it.

_Question_. Do you apprehend any trouble from the Southern leaders in this closing session of Congress, in attempts to force pernicious legislation?

_Answer_. I do not. The Southern leaders know that the doctrine of State Sovereignty is dead. They know that they cannot depend upon the Northern Democrat, and they know that the best interests of the South can only be preserved by admitting that the war settled the questions and ideas fought for and against. They know that this country is a Nation, and that no party can possibly succeed that advocates anything contrary to that. My own opinion is that most of the Southern leaders are heartily ashamed of the course pursued by their Northern friends, and will take the first opportunity to say so.

_Question_. In what light do you regard the Chinaman?

_Answer_. I am opposed to compulsory immigration, or cooley or slave immigration. If Chinamen are sent to this country by corporations or companies under contracts that amount to slavery or anything like it or near it, then I am opposed to it. But I am not prepared to say that I would be opposed to voluntary immigration.

I see by the papers that a new treaty has been agreed upon that will probably be ratified and be satisfactory to all parties. We ought to treat China with the utmost fairness. If our treaty is wrong, amend it, but do so according to the recognized usage of nations. After what has been said and done in this country I think there is very little danger of any Chinaman voluntarily coming here. By this time China must have an exceedingly exalted opinion of our religion, and of the justice and hospitality born of our most holy faith.

_Question_. What is your opinion of making ex-Presidents Senators for life?

_Answer_. I am opposed to it. I am against any man holding office for life. And I see no more reason for making ex-Presidents Senators, than for making ex-Senators Presidents. To me the idea is preposterous. Why should ex-Presidents be taken care of? In this country labor is not disgraceful, and after a man has been President he has still the right to be useful. I am personally acquainted with several men who will agree, in consideration of being elected to the presidency, not to ask for another office during their natural lives. The people of this country should never allow a great man to suffer. The hand, not of charity, but of justice and generosity, should be forever open to those who have performed great public service.

But the ex-Presidents of the future may not all be great and good men, and bad ex-Presidents will not make good Senators. If the nation does anything, let it give a reasonable pension to ex- Presidents. No man feels like giving pension, power, or place to General Grant simply because he was once President, but because he was a great soldier, and led the armies of the nation to victory.

Make him a General, and retire him with the highest military t.i.tle.

Let him grandly wear the laurels he so n.o.bly won, and should the sky at any time be darkened with a cloud of foreign war, this country will again hand him the sword. Such a course honors the nation and the man.

_Question_. Are we not entering upon the era of our greatest prosperity?

_Answer_. We are just beginning to be prosperous. The Northern Pacific Railroad is to be completed. Forty millions of dollars have just been raised by that company, and new States will soon be born in the great Northwest. The Texas Pacific will be pushed to San Diego, and in a few years we will ride in a Pullman car from Chicago to the City of Mexico. The gold and silver mines are yielding more and more, and within the last ten years more than forty million acres of land have been changed from wilderness to farms. This country is beginning to grow. We have just fairly entered upon what I believe will be the grandest period of national development and prosperity. With the Republican party in power; with good money; with unlimited credit; with the best land in the world; with ninety thousand miles of railway; with mountains of gold and silver; with hundreds of thousands of square miles of coal fields; with iron enough for the whole world; with the best system of common schools; with telegraph wires reaching every city and town, so that no two citizens are an hour apart; with the telephone, that makes everybody in the city live next door, and with the best folks in the world, how can we help prospering until the continent is covered with happy homes?

_Question_. What do you think of civil service reform?

_Answer_. I am in favor of it. I want such civil service reform that all the offices will be filled with good and competent Republicans. The majority should rule, and the men who are in favor of the views of the majority should hold the offices. I am utterly opposed to the idea that a party should show its liberality at the expense of its principles. Men holding office can afford to take their chances with the rest of us. If they are Democrats, they should not expect to succeed when their party is defeated.

I believe that there are enough good and honest Republicans in this country to fill all the offices, and I am opposed to taking any Democrats until the Republican supply is exhausted.

Men should not join the Republican party to get office. Such men are contemptible to the last degree. Neither should a Republican administration compel a man to leave the party to get a Federal appointment. After a great battle has been fought I do not believe that the victorious general should reward the officers of the conquered army. My doctrine is, rewards for friends.

--_The Commercial_, Cincinnati, Ohio, December 6, 1880.

MR. BEECHER, MOSES AND THE NEGRO.

_Question_. Mr. Beecher is here. Have you seen him?

_Answer_. No, I did not meet Mr. Beecher. Neither did I hear him lecture. The fact is, that long ago I made up my mind that under no circ.u.mstances would I attend any lecture or other entertainment given at Lincoln Hall. First, because the hall has been denied me, and secondly, because I regard it as extremely unsafe. The hall is up several stories from the ground, and in case of the slightest panic, in my judgment, many lives would be lost. Had it not been for this, and for the fact that the persons owning it imagined that because they had control, the brick and mortar had some kind of holy and sacred quality, and that this holiness is of such a wonderful character that it would not be proper for a man in that hall to tell his honest thoughts, I would have heard him.

_Question_. Then I a.s.sume that you and Mr. Beecher have made up?

_Answer_. There is nothing to be made up for so far as I know.

Mr. Beecher has treated me very well, and, I believe, a little too well for his own peace of mind. I have been informed that some members of Plymouth Church felt exceedingly hurt that their pastor should so far forget himself as to extend the right hand of fellowship to one who differs from him upon what they consider very essential points in theology. You see I have denied with all my might, a great many times, the infamous doctrine of eternal punishment. I have also had the temerity to suggest that I did not believe that a being of infinite justice and mercy was the author of all that I find in the Old Testament. As, for instance, I have insisted that G.o.d never commanded anybody to butcher women or to cut the throats of prattling babes. These orthodox gentlemen have rushed to the rescue of Jehovah by insisting that he did all these horrible things. I have also maintained that G.o.d never sanctioned or upheld human slavery; that he never would make one child to own and beat another.

I have also expressed some doubts as to whether this same G.o.d ever established the inst.i.tution of polygamy. I have insisted that the inst.i.tution is simply infamous; that it destroys the idea of home; that it turns to ashes the most sacred words in our language, and leaves the world a kind of den in which crawl the serpents of selfishness and l.u.s.t. I have been informed that after Mr. Beecher had treated me kindly a few members of his congregation objected, and really felt ashamed that he had so forgotten himself. After that, Mr. Beecher saw fit to give his ideas of the position I had taken. In this he was not exceedingly kind, nor was his justice very conspicuous. But I cared nothing about that, not the least.

As I have said before, whenever Mr. Beecher says a good thing I give him credit. Whenever he does an unfair or unjust thing I charge it to the account of his religion. I have insisted, and I still insist, that Mr. Beecher is far better than his creed. I do not believe that he believes in the doctrine of eternal punishment.

Neither do I believe that he believes in the literal truth of the Scriptures. And, after all, if the Bible is not true, it is hardly worth while to insist upon its inspiration. An inspired lie is not better than an uninspired one. If the Bible is true it does not need to be inspired. If it is not true, inspiration does not help it. So that after all it is simply a question of fact. Is it true? I believe Mr. Beecher stated that one of my grievous faults was that I picked out the bad things in the Bible. How an infinitely good and wise G.o.d came to put bad things in his book Mr. Beecher does not explain. I have insisted that the Bible is not inspired, and, in order to prove that, have pointed out such pa.s.sages as I deemed unworthy to have been written even by a civilized man or a savage. I certainly would not endeavor to prove that the Bible is uninspired by picking out its best pa.s.sages. I admit that there are many good things in the Bible. The fact that there are good things in it does not prove its inspiration, because there are thousands of other books containing good things, and yet no one claims they are inspired. Shakespeare's works contain a thousand times more good things than the Bible, but no one claims he was an inspired man. It is also true that there are many bad things in Shakespeare--many pa.s.sages which I wish he had never written. But I can excuse Shakespeare, because he did not rise absolutely above his time. That is to say, he was a man; that is to say, he was imperfect. If anybody claimed now that Shakespeare was actually inspired, that claim would be answered by pointing to certain weak or bad or vulgar pa.s.sages in his works. But every Christian will say that it is a certain kind of blasphemy to impute vulgarity or weakness to G.o.d, as they are all obliged to defend the weak, the bad and the vulgar, so long as they insist upon the inspiration of the Bible. Now, I pursued the same course with the Bible that Mr. Beecher has pursued with me. Why did he want to pick out my bad things? Is it possible that he is a kind of vulture that sees only the carrion of another? After all, has he not pursued the same method with me that he blames me for pursuing in regard to the Bible? Of course he must pursue that method. He could not object to me and then point out pa.s.sages that were not objectionable. If he found fault he had to find faults in order to sustain his ground. That is exactly what I have done with Scriptures--nothing more and nothing less. The reason I have thrown away the Bible is that in many places it is harsh, cruel, unjust, coa.r.s.e, vulgar, atrocious, infamous. At the same time, I admit that it contains many pa.s.sages of an excellent and splendid character --many good things, wise sayings, and many excellent and just laws.

But I would like to ask this: Suppose there were no pa.s.sages in the Bible except those upholding slavery, polygamy and wars of extermination; would anybody then claim that it was the word of G.o.d? I would like to ask if there is a Christian in the world who would not be overjoyed to find that every one of these pa.s.sages was an interpolation? I would also like to ask Mr. Beecher if he would not be greatly gratified to find that after G.o.d had written the Bible the Devil had got hold of it, and interpolated all these pa.s.sages about slavery, polygamy, the slaughter of women and babes and the doctrine of eternal punishment? Suppose, as a matter of fact, the Devil did get hold of it; what part of the Bible would Mr. Beecher pick out as having been written by the Devil? And if he picks out these pa.s.sages could not the Devil answer him by saying, "You, Mr. Beecher, are like a vulture, a kind of buzzard, flying through the tainted air of inspiration, and pouncing down upon the carrion. Why do you not fly like a dove, and why do you not have the innocent ignorance of the dove, so that you could light upon a carca.s.s and imagine that you were surrounded by the perfume of violets?" The fact is that good things in a book do not prove that it is inspired, but the presence of bad things does prove that it is not.

_Question_. What was the real difficulty between you and Moses, Colonel, a man who has been dead for thousands of years?

_Answer_. We never had any difficulty. I have always taken pains to say that Moses had nothing to do with the Pentateuch. Those books, in my judgment, were written several centuries after Moses had become dust in his unknown sepulchre. No doubt Moses was quite a man in his day, if he ever existed at all. Some people say that Moses is exactly the same as "law-giver;" that is to say, as Legislature, that is to say as Congress. Imagine somebody in the future as regarding the Congress of the United States as one person!

And then imagine that somebody endeavoring to prove that Congress was always consistent. But, whether Moses lived or not makes but little difference to me. I presume he filled the place and did the work that he was compelled to do, and although according to the account G.o.d had much to say to him with regard to the making of altars, tongs, snuffers and candlesticks, there is much left for nature still to tell. Thinking of Moses as a man, admitting that he was above his fellows, that he was in his day and generation a leader, and, in a certain narrow sense, a patriot, that he was the founder of the Jewish people; that he found them barbarians and endeavored to control them by thunder and lightning, and found it necessary to pretend that he was in partnership with the power governing the universe; that he took advantage of their ignorance and fear, just as politicians do now, and as theologians always will, still, I see no evidence that the man Moses was any nearer to G.o.d than his descendants, who are still warring against the Philistines in every civilized part of the globe. Moses was a believer in slavery, in polygamy, in wars of extermination, in religious persecution and intolerance and in almost everything that is now regarded with loathing, contempt and scorn. The Jehovah of whom he speaks violated, or commands the violation of at least nine of the Ten Commandments he gave. There is one thing, however, that can be said of Moses that cannot be said of any person who now insists that he was inspired, and that is, he was in advance of his time.

_Question_. What do you think of the Buckner Bill for the colonization of the negroes in Mexico?