The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume VIII Part 17

_Answer_. I do not believe in the bayonet plan. Mormonism must be done away with by the thousand influences of civilization, by education, by the elevation of the people. Of course, a gentleman would rather have one n.o.ble woman than a hundred females. I hate the system of polygamy. Nothing is more infamous. I admit that the Old Testament upholds it. I admit that the patriarchs were mostly polygamists. I admit that Solomon was mistaken on that subject. But notwithstanding the fact that polygamy is upheld by the Jewish Scriptures, I believe it to be a great wrong. At the same time if you undertake to get the idea out of the Mormons by force you will not succeed. I think a good way to do away with that inst.i.tution would be for all the churches to unite, bear the expense, and send missionaries to Utah; let these ministers call the people together and read to them the lives of David, Solomon, Abraham and other patriarchs. Let all the missionaries be called home from foreign fields and teach these people that they should not imitate the only men with whom G.o.d ever condescended to hold intercourse. Let these frightful examples be held up to these people, and if it is done earnestly, it seems to me that the result would be good.

Polygamy exists. All laws upon the subject should take that fact into consideration, and punishment should be provided for offences thereafter committed. The children of Mormons should be legitimized.

In other words, in attempting to settle this question, we should accomplish all the good possible, with the least possible harm.

I agree mostly with Mr. Beecher, and I utterly disagree with the Rev. Mr. Newman. Mr. Newman wants to kill and slay. He does not rely upon Christianity, but upon brute force. He has lost his confidence in example, and appeals to the bayonet. Mr. Newman had a discussion with one of the Mormon elders, and was put to ignominious flight; no wonder that he appeals to force. Having failed in argument, he calls for artillery; having been worsted in the appeal to Scripture, he asks for the sword. He says, failing to convert, let us kill; and he takes this position in the name of the religion of kindness and forgiveness.

Strange that a minister now should throw away the Bible and yell for a bayonet; that he should desert the Scriptures and call for soldiers; that he should lose confidence in the power of the Spirit and trust in a sword. I recommend that Mormonism be done away with by distributing the Old Testament throughout Utah.

_Question_. What do you think of the investigation of the Department of Justice now going on?

_Answer_. The result, in my judgment, will depend on its thoroughness.

If Mr. Springer succeeds in proving exactly what the Department of Justice did, the methods pursued, if he finds out what their spies and detectives and agents were instructed to do, then I think the result will be as disastrous to the Department as beneficial to the country. The people seem to have forgotten that a little while after the first Star Route trial three of the agents of the Department of Justice were indicted for endeavoring to bribe the jury. They forget that Mr. Bowen, an agent of the Department of Justice, is a fugitive, because he endeavored to bribe the foreman of the jury.

They seem to forget that the Department of Justice, in order to cover its own tracks, had the foreman of the jury indicted because one of its agents endeavored to bribe him. Probably this investigation will nudge the ribs of the public enough to make people remember these things. Personally, I have no feelings on the subject. It was enough for me that we succeeded in thwarting its methods, in spite of the detectives, spies, and informers.

The Department is already beginning to dissolve. Brewster Cameron has left it, and as a reward has been exiled to Arizona. Mr.

Brewster will probably be the next to pack his official valise.

A few men endeavored to win popularity by pursuing a few others, and thus far they have been conspicuous failures. MacVeagh and James are to-day enjoying the oblivion earned by misdirected energy, and Mr. Brewster will soon keep them company. The history of the world does not furnish an instance of more flagrant abuse of power.

There never was a trial as shamelessly conducted by a government.

But, as I said before, I have no feeling now except that of pity.

_Question_. I see that Mr. Beecher is coming round to your views on theology?

_Answer_. I would not have the egotism to say that he was coming round to my views, but evidently Mr. Beecher has been growing.

His head has been instructed by his heart; and if a man will allow even the poor plant of pity to grow in his heart he will hold in infinite execration all orthodox religion. The moment he will allow himself to think that eternal consequences depend upon human life; that the few short years we live in the world determine for an eternity the question of infinite joy or infinite pain; the moment he thinks of that he will see that it is an infinite absurdity.

For instance, a man is born in Arkansas and lives there to be seventeen or eighteen years of age, is it possible that he can be truthfully told at the day of judgment that he had a fair chance?

Just imagine a man being held eternally responsible for his conduct in Delaware! Mr. Beecher is a man of great genius--full of poetry and pathos. Every now and then he is driven back by the orthodox members of his congregation toward the old religion, and for the benefit of those weak disciples he will preach what is called "a doctrinal sermon;" but before he gets through with it, seeing that it is infinitely cruel, he utters a cry of horror, and protests with all the strength of his nature against the cruelty of the creed. I imagine that he has always thought that he was under great obligation to Plymouth Church, but the truth is that the church depends upon him; that church gets its character from Mr.

Beecher. He has done a vast deal to ameliorate the condition of the average orthodox mind. He excites the envy of the mediocre minister, and he excites the hatred of the really orthodox, but he receives the approbation of good and generous men everywhere. For my part, I have no quarrel with any religion that does not threaten eternal punishment to very good people, and that does not promise eternal reward to very bad people. If orthodox Christianity is true, some of the best people I know are going to h.e.l.l, and some of the meanest I have ever known are either in heaven or on the road. Of course, I admit that there are thousands and millions of good Christians--honest and n.o.ble people, but in my judgment, Mr.

Beecher is the greatest man in the world who now occupies a pulpit.

Speaking of a man's living in Delaware, a young man, some time ago, came up to me on the street, in an Eastern city and asked for money.

"What is your business," I asked. "I am a waiter by profession."

"Where do you come from?" "Delaware." "Well, what was the matter --did you drink, or cheat your employer, or were you idle?" "No."

"What was the trouble?" "Well, the truth is, the State is so small they don't need any waiters; they all reach for what they want."

_Question_. Do you not think there are some dangerous tendencies in Liberalism?

_Answer_. I will first state this proposition: The credit system in morals, as in business, breeds extravagance. The cash system in morals, as well as in business, breeds economy. We will suppose a community in which everybody is bound to sell on credit, and in which every creditor can take the benefit of the bankrupt law every Sat.u.r.day night, and the constable pays the costs. In my judgment that community would be extravagant as long as the merchants lasted.

We will take another community in which everybody has to pay cash, and in my judgment that community will be a very economical one.

Now, then, let us apply this to morals. Christianity allows everybody to sin on a credit, and allows a man who has lived, we will say sixty-nine years, what Christians are pleased to call a worldly life, an immoral life. They allow him on his death-bed, between the last dose of medicine and the last breath, to be converted, and that man who has done nothing except evil, becomes an angel. Here is another man who has lived the same length of time, doing all the good he possibly could do, but not meeting with what they are pleased to call "a change of heart;" he goes to a world of pain. Now, my doctrine is that everybody must reap exactly what he sows, other things being equal. If he acts badly he will not be very happy; if he acts well he will not be very sad. I believe in the doctrine of consequences, and that every man must stand the consequences of his own acts. It seems to me that that fact will have a greater restraining influence than the idea that you can, just before you leave this world, shift your burden on to somebody else. I am a believer in the restraining influences of liberty, because responsibility goes hand in hand with freedom.

I do not believe that the gallows is the last step between earth and heaven. I do not believe in the conversion and salvation of murderers while their innocent victims are in h.e.l.l. The church has taught so long that he who acts virtuously carries a cross, and that only sinners enjoy themselves, that it may be that for a little while after men leave the church they may go to extremes until they demonstrate for themselves that the path of vice is the path of thorns, and that only along the wayside of virtue grow the flowers of joy. The church has depicted virtue as a sour, wrinkled termagant; an old woman with nothing but skin and bones, and a temper beyond description; and at the same time vice has been painted in all the voluptuous outlines of a Greek statue. The truth is exactly the other way. A thing is right because it pays; a thing is wrong because it does not; and when I use the word "pays," I mean in the highest and n.o.blest sense.

--_The Daily News_, Denver, Colorado, January 17, 1884.

FREE TRADE AND CHRISTIANITY.

_Question_. Who will be the Republican nominee for President?

_Answer_. The correct answer to this question would make so many men unhappy that I have concluded not to give it.

_Question_. Has not the Democracy injured itself irretrievably by permitting the free trade element to rule it?

_Answer_. I do not think that the Democratic party weakened itself by electing Carlisle, Speaker. I think him an excellent man, an exceedingly candid man, and one who will do what he believes ought to be done. I have a very high opinion of Mr. Carlisle. I do not suppose any party in this country is really for free trade. I find that all writers upon the subject, no matter which side they are on, are on that side with certain exceptions. Adam Smith was in favor of free trade, with a few exceptions, and those exceptions were in matters where he thought it was for England's interest not to have free trade. The same may be said of all writers. So far as I can see, the free traders have all the arguments and the protectionists all the facts. The free trade theories are splendid, but they will not work; the results are disastrous. We find by actual experiment that it is better to protect home industries.

It was once said that protection created nothing but monopoly; the argument was that way, but the facts are not. Take, for instance, steel rails; when we bought them of England we paid one hundred and twenty-five dollars a ton. I believe there was a tariff of twenty-eight or twenty-nine dollars a ton, and yet in spite of all the arguments going to show that protection would simply increase prices in America, would simply enrich the capitalists and impoverish the consumer, steel rails are now produced, I believe, right here in Colorado for forty-two dollars a ton.

After all, it is a question of labor; a question of prices that shall be paid the laboring man; a question of what the laboring man shall eat; whether he shall eat meat or soup made from the bones. Very few people take into consideration the value of raw material and the value of labor. Take, for instance, your ton of steel rails worth forty-two dollars. The iron in the earth is not worth twenty-five cents. The coal in the earth and the lime in the ledge together are not worth twenty-five cents. Now, then, of the forty-two dollars, forty-one and a half is labor. There is not two dollars' worth of raw material in a locomotive worth fifteen thousand dollars. By raw material I mean the material in the earth.

There is not in the works of a watch which will sell for fifteen dollars, raw material of the value of one-half cent. All the rest is labor. A ship, a man-of-war that costs one million dollars-- the raw material in the earth is not worth, in my judgment, one thousand dollars. All the rest is labor. If there is any way to protect American labor, I am in favor of it. If the present tariff does not do it, then I am in favor of changing to one that will.

If the Democratic party takes a stand for free trade or anything like it, they will need protection; they will need protection at the polls; that is to say, they will meet only with defeat and disaster.

_Question_. What should be done with the surplus revenue?

_Answer_. My answer to that is, reduce internal revenue taxation until the present surplus is exhausted, and then endeavor so to arrange your tariff that you will not produce more than you need.

I think the easiest question to grapple with on this earth is a surplus of money.

I do not believe in distributing it among the States. I do not think there could be a better certificate of the prosperity of our country than the fact that we are troubled with a surplus revenue; that we have the machinery for collecting taxes in such perfect order, so ingeniously contrived, that it cannot be stopped; that it goes right on collecting money, whether we want it or not; and the wonderful thing about it is that n.o.body complains. If nothing else can be done with the surplus revenue, probably we had better pay some of our debts. I would suggest, as a last resort, to pay a few honest claims.

_Question_. Are you getting nearer to or farther away from G.o.d, Christianity and the Bible?

_Answer_. In the first place, as Mr. Locke so often remarked, we will define our terms. If by the word "G.o.d" is meant a person, a being, who existed before the creation of the universe, and who controls all that is, except himself, I do not believe in such a being; but if by the word G.o.d is meant all that is, that is to say, the universe, including every atom and every star, then I am a believer. I suppose the word that would nearest describe me is "Pantheist." I cannot believe that a being existed from eternity, and who finally created this universe after having wasted an eternity in idleness; but upon this subject I know just as little as anybody ever did or ever will, and, in my judgment, just as much. My intellectual horizon is somewhat limited, and, to tell you the truth, this is the only world that I was ever in. I am what might be called a representative of a rural district, and, as a matter of fact, I know very little about the district. I believe it was Confucius who said: "How should I know anything about another world when I know so little of this?"

The greatest intellects of the world have endeavored to find words to express their conception of G.o.d, of the first cause, or of the science of being, but they have never succeeded. I find in the old Confession of Faith, in the old Catechism, for instance, this description: That G.o.d is a being without body, parts or pa.s.sions.

I think it would trouble anybody to find a better definition of nothing. That describes a vacuum, that is to say, that describes the absence of everything. I find that theology is a subject that only the most ignorant are certain about, and that the more a man thinks, the less he knows.

From the Bible G.o.d, I do not know that I am going farther and farther away. I have been about as far as a man could get for many years. I do not believe in the G.o.d of the Old Testament.

Now, as to the next branch of your question, Christianity.

The question arises, What is Christianity? I have no objection to the morality taught as a part of Christianity, no objection to its charity, its forgiveness, its kindness; no objection to its hope for this world and another, not the slightest, but all these things do not make Christianity. Mohammed taught certain doctrines that are good, but the good in the teachings of Mohammed is not Mohammedism.

When I speak of Christianity I speak of that which is distinctly Christian. For instance, the idea that the Infinite G.o.d was born in Palestine, learned the carpenter's trade, disputed with the parsons of his time, excited the wrath of the theological bigots, and was finally crucified; that afterward he was raised from the dead, and that if anybody believes this he will be saved and if he fails to believe it, he will be lost; in other words, that which is distinctly Christian in the Christian system, is its supernaturalism, its miracles, its absurdity. Truth does not need to go into partnership with the supernatural. What Christ said is worth the reason it contains. If a man raises the dead and then says twice two are five, that changes no rule in mathematics. If a multiplication table was divinely inspired, that does no good. The question is, is it correct? So I think that in the world of morals, we must prove that a thing is right or wrong by experience, by a.n.a.logy, not by miracles. There is no fact in physical science that can be supernaturally demonstrated. Neither is there any fact in the moral world that could be substantiated by miracles. Now, then, keeping in mind that by Christianity I mean the supernatural in that system, of course I am just as far away from it as I can get.

For the man Christ I have respect. He was an infidel in his day, and the ministers of his day cried out blasphemy, as they have been crying ever since, against every person who has suggested a new thought or shown the worthlessness of an old one.

Now, as to the third part of the question, the Bible. People say that the Bible is inspired. Well, what does inspiration mean?

Did G.o.d write it? No; but the men who did write it were guided by the Holy Spirit. Very well. Did they write exactly what the Holy Spirit wanted them to write? Well, religious people say, yes. At the same time they admit that the gentlemen who were collecting, or taking down in shorthand what was said, had to use their own words. Now, we all know that the same words do not have the same meaning to all people. It is impossible to convey the same thoughts to all minds by the same language, and it is for that reason that the Bible has produced so many sects, not only disagreeing with each other, but disagreeing among themselves.

We find, then, that it is utterly impossible for G.o.d (admitting that there is one) to convey the same thoughts in human language to all people. No two persons understand the same language alike.

A man's understanding depends upon his experience, upon his capacity, upon the particular bent of his mind--in fact, upon the countless influences that have made him what he is. Everything in nature tells everyone who sees it a story, but that story depends upon the capacity of the one to whom it is told. The sea says one thing to the ordinary man, and another thing to Shakespeare. The stars have not the same language for all people. The consequence is that no book can tell the same story to any two persons. The Jewish Scriptures are like other books, written by different men in different ages of the world, hundreds of years apart, filled with contradictions. They embody, I presume, fairly enough, the wisdom and ignorance, the reason and prejudice, of the times in which they were written. They are worth the good that is in them, and the question is whether we will take the good and throw the bad away.

There are good laws and bad laws. There are wise and foolish sayings. There are gentle and cruel pa.s.sages, and you can find a text to suit almost any frame of mind; whether you wish to do an act of charity or murder a neighbor's babe, you will find a pa.s.sage that will exactly fit the case. So that I can say that I am still for the reasonable, for the natural; and am still opposed to the absurd and supernatural.

_Question_. Is there any better or more enn.o.bling belief than Christianity; if so, what is it?

_Answer_. There are many good things, of course, in every religion, or they would not have existed; plenty of good precepts in Christianity, but the thing that I object to more than all others is the doctrine of eternal punishment, the idea of h.e.l.l for many and heaven for the few. Take from Christianity the doctrine of eternal punishment and I have no particular objection to what is generally preached. If you will take that away, and all the supernatural connected with it, I have no objection; but that doctrine of eternal punishment tends to harden the human heart.

It has produced more misery than all the other doctrines in the world. It has shed more blood; it has made more martyrs. It has lighted the fires of persecution and kept the sword of cruelty wet with heroic blood for at least a thousand years. There is no crime that that doctrine has not produced. I think it would be impossible for the imagination to conceive of a worse religion than orthodox Christianity--utterly impossible; a doctrine that divides this world, a doctrine that divides families, a doctrine that teaches the son that he can be happy, with his mother in perdition; the husband that he can be happy in heaven while his wife suffers the agonies of h.e.l.l. This doctrine is infinite injustice, and tends to subvert all ideas of justice in the human heart. I think it would be impossible to conceive of a doctrine better calculated to make wild beasts of men than that; in fact, that doctrine was born of all the wild beast there is in man. It was born of infinite revenge.

Think of preaching that you must believe that a certain being was the son of G.o.d, no matter whether your reason is convinced or not.

Suppose one should meet, we will say on London Bridge, a man clad in rags, and he should stop us and say, "My friend, I wish to talk with you a moment. I am the rightful King of Great Britain," and you should say to him, "Well, my dinner is waiting; I have no time to bother about who the King of England is," and then he should meet another and insist on his stopping while the pulled out some papers to show that he was the rightful King of England, and the other man should say, "I have got business here, my friend; I am selling goods, and I have no time to bother my head about who the King of England is. No doubt you are the King of England, but you don't look like him." And then suppose he stops another man, and makes the same statement to him, and the other man should laugh at him and say, "I don't want to hear anything on this subject; you are crazy; you ought to go to some insane asylum, or put something on your head to keep you cool." And suppose, after all, it should turn out that the man was King of England, and should afterward make his claim good and be crowned in Westminster. What would we think of that King if he should hunt up the gentlemen that he met on London Bridge, and have their heads cut off because they had no faith that he was the rightful heir? And what would we think of a G.o.d now who would d.a.m.n a man eighteen hundred years after the event, because he did not believe that he was G.o.d at the time he was living in Jerusalem; not only d.a.m.n the fellows that he met and who did not believe him, but gentlemen who lived eighteen hundred years afterward, and who certainly could have known nothing of the facts except from hearsay?