The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume XII Part 2

No one will blame Mr. Brown or Mr. Jones for not writing like Shakespeare. Should they be blamed for not acting like Christ? We say that a great painter has genius. Is it not possible that a certain genius is required to be what is called "good"? All men cannot be great. All men cannot be successful. Can all men be kind? Can all men be honest?

It may be that a crime appears terrible in proportion as we realize its consequences. If this is true, morality may depend largely upon the imagination. Man cannot have imagination at will; that, certainly, is a natural product. And yet, a man's action may depend largely upon the want of imagination. One man may feel that he really wishes to kill another. He may make preparations to commit the deed; and yet, his imagination may present such pictures of horror and despair; he may so vividly see the widow clasping the mangled corpse; he may so plainly hear the cries and sobs of orphans, while the clods fall upon the coffin, that his hand is stayed. Another, lacking imagination, thirsting only for revenge, seeing nothing beyond the accomplishment of the deed, buries, with blind-and thoughtless hate, the dagger in his victim's heart.

Morality, for the most part, is the verdict of the majority.

This verdict depends upon the intelligence of the people; and the intelligence depends upon the amount, form, and quality of the average brain.

If the mind depends upon certain organs for the expression of its thought, does it have thought independently of those organs? Is there any mind without brain? Does the mind think apart from the brain, and then express its thought through the instrumentality of the brain?

Theologians tell us that insanity is not a disease of the soul, but of the brain; that the soul is perfectly untouched; but that the instrument with which, and through which, it manifests itself, is impaired. The fact, however, seems to be, that the mind, the something that is the man, is unconscious of the fact that anything is out of order in the brain. Insane people insist that they are sane.

If we should find a locomotive off the track, and the engineer using the proper appliances to put it back, we would say that the machine is out of order, but the engineer is not. But, if we found the locomotive upside down, with wheels in air, and the engineer insisting that it was on the track, and never running better, we would then conclude that something was wrong, not only with the locomotive, but with the engineer.

We are told in medical books of a girl, who, at about the age of nine years, was attacked with some cerebral disease. When she recovered, she had forgotten all she ever knew, and had to relearn the alphabet, and the names of her parents and kindred. In this abnormal state, she was not a good girl; in the normal state, she was. After having lived in the second state for several years, she went back to the first; and all she had learned in the second state was forgotten, and all she had learned in the first was remembered.

I believe she changed once more, and died in the abnormal state. In which of these states was she responsible? Were her thoughts and actions as free in one as in the other? It may be contended that, in her diseased state, the mind or soul could not correctly express itself. If this is so, it follows that, as no one is perfectly healthy, and as no one has a perfect brain, it is impossible that the soul should ever correctly express itself. Is the soul responsible for the defects of the brain? Is it not altogether more rational to say, that what we call mind depends upon the brain, and that the child--mind, inherits the defects of its parent--brain?

Are certain physical conditions necessary to the production of what we call virtuous actions? Is it possible for anything to be produced without what we call cause, and, if the cause was sufficient, was it not necessarily produced? Do not most people mistake for freedom the right to examine their own chains? If morality depends upon conditions, should it not be the task of the great and good to discover such conditions?

May it not be possible so to understand the brain that we can stop producing criminals?

It may be insisted that there is something produced by the brain besides thought--a something that takes cognizance of thoughts--a something that weighs, compares, reflects and p.r.o.nounces judgment. This something cannot find the origin of itself. Does it exist independently of the brain? Is it merely a looker-on? If it is a product of the brain, then its power, perception, and judgment depend upon the quant.i.ty, form, and quality of the brain.

Man, including all his attributes, must have been necessarily produced, and the product was the child of conditions.

Most reformers have infinite confidence in creeds, resolutions, and laws. They think of the common people as raw material, out of which they propose to construct inst.i.tutions and governments, like mechanical contrivances, where each person will stand for a cog, rope, wheel, pulley, bolt, or fuel, and the reformers will be the managers and directors. They forget that these cogs and wheels have opinions of their own; that they fall out with other cogs, and refuse to turn with other wheels; that the pulleys and ropes have ideas peculiar to themselves, and delight in mutiny and revolution. These reformers have theories that can only be realized when other people have none.

Some time, it will be found that people can be changed only by changing their surroundings. It is alleged that, at least ninety-five per cent.

of the criminals transported from England to Australia and other penal colonies, became good and useful citizens in a new world. Free from former a.s.sociates and a.s.sociations, from the necessities of a hard, cruel, and compet.i.tive civilization, they became, for the most part, honest people. This immense fact throws more light upon social questions than all the theories of the world. All people are not able to support themselves. They lack intelligence, industry, cunning--in short, capacity. They are continually falling by the way. In the midst of plenty, they are hungry. Larceny is born of want and opportunity. In pa.s.sion's storm, the will is wrecked upon the reefs and rocks of crime.

The complex, tangled web of thought and dream, of perception and memory, of imagination and judgment, of wish and will and want--the woven wonder of a life--has never yet been raveled back to simple threads.

Shall we not become charitable and just, when we know that every act is but condition's fruit; that Nature, with her countless hands, scatters the seeds of tears and crimes--of every virtue and of every joy; that all the base and vile are victims of the Blind, and that the good and great have, in the lottery of life, by chance or fate, drawn heart and brain?

Washington, December 21, 1881.

PREFACE TO "MEN, WOMEN AND G.o.dS."

NOTHING gives me more pleasure, nothing gives greater promise for the future, than the fact that woman is achieving intellectual and physical liberty.

It is refreshing to know that here, in our country, there are thousands of women who think, and express their thoughts--who are thoroughly free and thoroughly conscientious--who have neither been narrowed nor corrupted by a heartless creed--who do not worship a being in heaven whom they would shudderingly loathe on earth--women who do not stand before the altar of a cruel faith, with downcast eyes of timid acquiescence, and pay to impudent authority the tribute of a thoughtless yes. They are no longer satisfied with being told. They examine for themselves. They have ceased to be the prisoners of society--the satisfied serfs of husbands, or the echoes of priests. They demand the rights that naturally belong to intelligent human beings. If wives, they wish to be the equals of husbands. If mothers, they wish to rear their children in the atmosphere of love, liberty and philosophy. They believe that woman can discharge all her duties without the aid of superst.i.tion, and preserve all that is true, pure, and tender, without sacrificing in the temple of absurdity the convictions of the soul.

Woman is not the intellectual inferior of man. She has lacked, not mind, but opportunity. In the long night of barbarism, physical strength and the cruelty to use it, were the badges of superiority. Muscle was more than mind. In the ignorant age of Faith, the loving nature of woman was abused. Her conscience was rendered morbid and diseased. It might almost be said that she was betrayed by her own virtues. At best she secured, not opportunity, but flattery--the preface to degradation. She was deprived of liberty, and without that, nothing is worth the having. She was taught to obey without question, and to believe without thought.

There were universities for men before the alphabet had been taught to women. At the intellectual feast, there were no places for wives and mothers. Even now they sit at the second table and eat the crusts and crumbs. The schools for women, at the present time, are just far enough behind those for men, to fall heirs to the discarded; on the same principle that when a doctrine becomes too absurd for the pulpit, it is given to the Sunday-school.

The ages of muscle and miracle--of fists and faith--are pa.s.sing away.

Minerva occupies at last a higher niche than Hercules. Now a word is stronger than a blow. At last we see women who depend upon themselves--who stand, self poised, the shocks of this sad world, without leaning for support against a church--who do not go to the literature of barbarism for consolation, or use the falsehoods and mistakes of the past for the foundation of their hope--women brave enough and tender enough to meet and bear the facts and fortunes of this world.

The men who declare that woman is the intellectual inferior of man, do not, and cannot, by offering themselves in evidence, substantiate their declaration.

Yet, I must admit that there are thousands of wives who still have faith in the saving power of superst.i.tion--who still insist on attending church while husbands prefer the sh.o.r.es, the woods, or the fields. In this way, families are divided. Parents grow apart, and unconsciously the pearl of greatest price is thrown away. The wife ceases to be the intellectual companion of the husband. She reads _The Christian Register_, sermons in the Monday papers, and a little gossip about folks and fashions, while he studies the works of Darwin, Haeckel, and Humboldt. Their sympathies become estranged. They are no longer mental friends. The husband smiles at the follies of the wife, and she weeps for the supposed sins of the husband. Such wives should read this book.

They should not be satisfied to remain forever in the cradle of thought, amused with the toys of superst.i.tion.

The parasite of woman is the priest.

It must also be admitted that there are thousands of men who believe that superst.i.tion is good for women and children--who regard falsehood as the fortress of virtue, and feel indebted to ignorance for the purity of daughters and the fidelity of wives. These men think of priests as detectives in disguise, and regard G.o.d as a policeman who prevents elopements. Their opinions about religion are as correct as their estimate of woman.

The church furnishes but little food for the mind. People of intelligence are growing tired of the plat.i.tudes of the pulpit--the iterations of the itinerants. The average sermon is "as tedious as a twice told tale vexing the ears of a drowsy man."

One Sunday a gentleman, who is a great inventor, called at my house.

Only a few words had pa.s.sed between us, when he arose, saying that he must go as it was time for church. Wondering that a man of his mental wealth could enjoy the intellectual poverty of the pulpit, I asked for an explanation, and he gave me the following: "You know that I am an inventor. Well, the moment my mind becomes absorbed in some difficult problem, I am afraid that something may happen to distract my attention.

Now, I know that I can sit in church for an hour without the slightest danger of having the current of my thought disturbed."

Most women cling to the Bible because they have been taught that to give up that book is to give up all hope of another life--of ever meeting again the loved and lost. They have also been taught that the Bible is their friend, their defender, and the real civilizer of man.

Now, if they will only read this book--these three lectures, without fear, and then read the Bible, they will see that the truth or falsity of the dogma of inspiration has nothing to do with the question of immortality. Certainly the Old Testament does not teach us that there is another life, and upon that question even the New is obscure and vague.

The hunger of the heart finds only a few small and scattered crumbs.

There is nothing definite, solid, and satisfying. United with the idea of immortality we find the absurdity of the resurrection. A prophecy that depends for its fulfillment upon an impossibility, cannot satisfy the brain or heart.

There are but few who do not long for a dawn beyond the night. And this longing is born of and nourished by the heart. Love wrapped in shadow--bending with tear-filled eyes above its dead, convulsively clasps the outstretched hand of hope.

I had the pleasure of introducing Miss Gardener to her first audience, and in that introduction said a few words that I will repeat.

"We do not know, we cannot say, whether death is a wall or a door; the beginning or end of a day; the spreading of pinions to soar, or the folding forever of wings; the rise or the set of a sun, or an endless life that brings the rapture of love to every one.

"Under the seven-hued arch of hope let the dead sleep."

They will also discover, as they read the "Sacred Volume," that it is not the friend of woman. They will find that the writers of that book, for the most part, speak of woman as a poor beast of burden, a serf, a drudge, a kind of necessary evil--as mere property. Surely, a book that upholds polygamy is not the friend of wife and mother.

Even Christ did not place woman on an equality with man. He said not one word about the sacredness of home, the duties of the husband to the wife--nothing calculated to lighten the hearts of those who bear the saddest burdens of this life.

They will also find that the Bible has not civilized mankind. A book that establishes and defends slavery and wanton war is not calculated to soften the hearts of those who believe implicitly that it is the work of G.o.d. A book that not only permits, but commands, religious persecution, has not, in my judgment, developed the affectional nature of man.

Its influence has been bad and bad only. It has filled the world with bitterness, revenge and crime, and r.e.t.a.r.ded in countless ways the progress of our race.

The writer of this volume has read the Bible with open eyes. The mist of sentimentality has not clouded her vision. She has had the courage to tell the result of her investigations. She has been quick to discover contradictions. She appreciates the humorous side of the stupidly solemn. Her heart protests against the cruel, and her brain rejects the childish, the unnatural and absurd. There is no misunderstanding between her head and heart. She says what she thinks, and feels what she says.

No human being can answer her arguments. There is no answer. All the priests in the world cannot explain away her objections. There is no explanation. They should remain dumb, unless they can show that the impossible is the probable--that slavery is better than freedom--that polygamy is the friend of woman--that the innocent can justly suffer for the guilty, and that to persecute for opinion's sake is an act of love and worship.

Wives who cease to learn--who simply forget and believe--will fill the evening of their lives with barren sighs and bitter tears.

The mind should outlast youth. If when beauty fades, Thought, the deft and unseen sculptor, hath not left his subtle lines upon the face, then all is lost. No charm is left. The light is out. There is no flame within to glorify the wrinkled clay.

Hoffman House, New York, July, 22, 1885.

PREFACE TO "FOR HER DAILY BREAD."