The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume XII Part 26

If we had free thought, then we could collect the wealth of the intellectual world. In the physical world, springs make the creeks and brooks, and they the rivers, and the rivers empty into the great sea. So each brain should add to the sum of human knowledge. If we deny freedom of thought, the springs cease to gurgle, the rivers to run, and the great ocean of knowledge becomes a desert of barren, ignorant sand.

THIS IS AN AGE OF MONEY-GETTING, of materialism, of cold, unfeeling science. The question arises, Is the world growing less generous, less heroic, less chivalric?

Let us answer this. The experience of the individual is much like the experience of a generation, or of a race. An old man imagines that everything was better when he was young; that the weather could then be depended on; that sudden changes are recent inventions. So he will tell you that people used to be honest; that the grocers gave full weight and the merchants full measure, and that the bank cashier did not spend the evening of his days in Canada.

He will also tell you that the women were handsome and virtuous. There were no scandals then, no divorces, and that in religion all were orthodox--no Infidels. Before he gets through, he will probably tell you that the art of cooking has been lost--that n.o.body can make biscuit now, and that he never expects to eat another slice of good bread.

He mistakes the twilight of his own life for the coming of the night of universal decay and death. He imagines that that has happened to the world, which has only happened to him. It does not occur to him that millions at the moment he is talking are undergoing the experience of his youth, and that when they become old they will praise the very days that he denounces.

The Garden of Eden has always been behind us. The Golden Age, after all, is the memory of youth--it is the result of remembered pleasure in the midst of present pain.

To old age youth is divine, and the morning of life cloudless.

So now thousands and millions of people suppose that the age of true chivalry has gone by and that honesty has about concluded to leave the world. As a matter of fact, the age known as the age of chivalry was the age of tyranny, of arrogance and cowardice. Men clad in complete armor cut down the peasants that were covered with leather, and these soldiers of the chivalric age armored themselves to that degree that if they fell in battle they could not rise, held to the earth by the weight of iron that their bravery had got itself entrenched within. Compare the difference in courage between going to war in coats of mail against sword and spear, and charging a battery of Krupp guns!

The ideas of justice have grown larger and n.o.bler. Charity now does, without a thought, what the average man a few centuries ago was incapable of imagining. In the old times slavery was upheld, and imprisonment for debt. Hundreds of crimes--or rather misdemeanors--were punishable by death. Prisons were loathsome beyond description.

Thousands and thousands died in chains. The insane were treated like wild beasts; no respect was paid to s.e.x or age. Women were burned and beheaded and torn asunder as though they had been hyenas, and children were butchered with the greatest possible cheerfulness.

So it seems to me that the world is more chivalric, more generous, nearer just and fair, more charitable, than ever before.

THE COLORED MAN is doing well. He is hungry for knowledge. Their children are going to school. Colored boys are taking prizes in the colleges. A colored man was the orator of Harvard. They are industrious, and in the South many are becoming rich. As the people, black and white, become educated they become better friends. The old prejudice is the child of ignorance. The colored man will succeed if the South succeeds.

The South is richer to-day than ever before, more prosperous, and both races are really improving. The greatest danger in the South, and for that matter all over the country, is the mob. It is the duty of every good citizen to denounce the mob. Down with the mob.

FREEDOM OF RELIGION is the destruction of religion. In Rome, after people were allowed to worship their own G.o.ds, all G.o.ds fell into disrepute. It will be so in America. Here is freedom of religion, and all devotees find that the G.o.ds of other devotees are just as good as theirs. They find that the prayers of others are answered precisely as their prayers are answered.

The Protestant G.o.d is no better than the Catholic, and the Catholic is no better than the Mormon, and the Mormon is no better than Nature for answering prayers. In other words, all prayers die in the air which they uselessly agitate. There is undoubtedly a tendency among the Protestant denominations to unite. This tendency is born of weakness, not of strength. In a few years, if all should unite, they would hardly have power enough to obstruct, for any considerable time, the march of the intellectual host destined to conquer the world. But let us all be good natured; let us give to others all the rights that we claim for ourselves. The future, I believe, has both hands full of blessings for the human race.

THE DEISTS AND NATURE.--We who deny the supernatural origin of the Bible, must admit not only that it exists, but that it was naturally produced. If it is not supernatural, it is natural. It will hardly do for the worshipers of Nature to hold the Bible in contempt, simply because it is not a supernatural book.

The Deists of the last century made a mistake. They proceeded to show that the Bible is immoral, untrue, cruel and absurd, and therefore came to the conclusion that it could not have been written by a being of infinite wisdom and goodness,--the being whom they believed to be the author of Nature. Could not infinite wisdom and goodness just as easily command crime as to permit it? Is it really any worse to order the strong to slay the weak, than to stand by and refuse to protect the weak?

After all, is Nature, taken together, any better than the Bible? If G.o.d did not command the Jews to murder the Canaanites, Nature, to say the least, did not prevent it. If G.o.d did not uphold the practice of polygamy, Nature did. The moment we deny the supernatural origin of the Bible, we declare that Nature wrote its every word, commanded all its cruelties, told all its falsehoods. The Bible is, like Nature, a mixture of what we call "good" and "bad,"--of what appears, and of what in reality is.

The Bible must have been a perfectly natural production not only, but a necessary one. There was, and is, no power in the universe that could have changed one word. All the mistakes in translation were necessarily made, and not one, by any possibility, could have been avoided. That book, like all other facts in Nature, could not have been otherwise than it is. The fact being that Nature has produced all superst.i.tions, all persecution, all slavery, and every crime, ought to be sufficient to deter the average man from imagining that this power, whatever it may be, is worthy of worship.

There is good in Nature. It is the nature in us that perceives the evil, that pursues the right. In man, Nature not only contemplates herself, but approves or condemns her actions. Of course, "good" and "bad" are relative terms, and things are "good" or "bad" as they affect man well or ill.

Infidels, skeptics,--that is to say, Freethinkers, have opposed the Bible on account of the bad things in it, and Christians have upheld it, not on account of the bad, but on account of the good. Throw away the doctrine of inspiration, and the Bible will be more powerful for good and far less for evil. Only a few years ago, Christians looked upon the Bible as the bulwark of human slavery. It was the word of G.o.d, and for that reason was superior to the reason of uninspired man. Had it been considered simply as the work of man, it would not have been quoted to establish that which the man of this age condemns. Throw away the idea of inspiration, and all pa.s.sages in conflict with liberty, with science, with the experience of the intelligent part of the human race, instantly become harmless. They are no longer guides for man. They are simply the opinions of dead barbarians. The good pa.s.sages not only remain, but their influence is increased, because they are relieved of a burden.

No one cares whether the truth is inspired or not. The truth is independent of man, not only, but of G.o.d. And by truth I do not mean the absolute, I mean this: Truth is the relation between things and thoughts, and between thoughts and thoughts. The perception of this relation bears the same relation to the logical faculty in man, that music does to some portion of the brain--that is to say, it is a mental melody. This sublime strain has been heard by a few, and I am enthusiastic enough to believe that it will be the music of the future.

For the good and for the true in the Old and New Testaments I have the same regard that I have for the good and true, no matter where they may be found. We who know how false the history of to-day is; we who know the almost numberless mistakes that men make who are endeavoring to tell the truth; we who know how hard it is, with all the facilities we now have--with the daily press, the telegraph, the fact that nearly all can read and write--to get a truthful report of the simplest occurrence, must see that nothing short of inspiration (admitting for the moment the possibility of such a thing,) could have prevented the Scriptures from being filled with error.

AT LAST, THE SCHOOLHOUSE is larger than the church. The common people have, through education, become uncommon. They now know how little is really known by kings, presidents, legislators, and professors. At last, they are capable of not only understanding a few questions, but they have acquired the art of discussing those that no one understands. With the facility of the cultured, they can now hide behind phrases and make barricades of statistics. They understand the sophistries of the upper cla.s.ses; and while the cultured have been turning their attention to the cla.s.sics, to the dead languages, and the dead ideas that they contain,--while they have been giving their attention to ceramics, artistic decorations, and compulsory prayers, the common people have been compelled to learn the practical things. They are acquainted with facts, because they have done the work of the world.

CRUELTY.--Sometimes it has seemed to me that cruelty is the climate of crime, and that generosity is the Spring, Summer and Autumn of virtue.

Every form of wickedness, of meanness, springs from selfishness, that is to say, from cruelty. Every good man hates and despises the wretch who abuses wife and child--who rules by curses and blows and makes his home a kind of h.e.l.l. So, no generous man wishes to a.s.sociate with one who overworks his horse and feeds the lean and fainting beast with blows.

The barbarian delights in inflicting pain. He loves to see his victim bleed,--but the civilized man staunches blood, binds up wounds and decreases pain. He pities the suffering animal as well as the suffering man.

He would no more inflict wanton wounds upon a dog than on a man. The heart of the civilized man speaks for the dumb and helpless.

A good man would no more think of flaying a living animal than of murdering his mother. The man who cuts a hoof from the leg of a horse is capable of committing any crime that does not require courage. Such an experiment can be of no use. Under no circ.u.mstances are hoofs taken from horses for the good of the horses any more than their heads would be cut off.

Think of the pain inflicted by separating the hoof of a living horse from the flesh! If the poor beast could speak what would he say? The same knowledge could be obtained by cutting away the hoof of a dead horse. Knowledge of every bone, ligament, artery and vein, of every cartilage and joint can be obtained by the dissection of the dead.

"But," says the biologist, "we must dissect the living."

Well, millions of living animals have been cut in pieces; millions of experiments have been tried; all the nerves have been touched; every possible agony has been inflicted that ingenuity could invent and cruelty accomplish. Many volumes have been published filled with accounts of these experiments, giving all the details and the results.

People who are curious about such things can read these reports. There is no need of repeating these savage experiments. It is now known how long a dog can live with all the pores of his skin closed, how long he can survive the loss of his skin, or one lobe of his brain, or both of his kidneys, or part of his intestines, or without his liver, and there is no necessity of mutilating and mangling thousands of other dogs to substantiate what is already known.

Of what possible use is it to know just how long an animal can live without water--at what time he becomes insane from thirst, or blind or deaf?

THE WORLD'S FAIR will do great good. A great many thousand people of the Old World will for the first time understand the new; will for the first time appreciate what a free people can do. For the first time they will know the value of free inst.i.tutions, of individual independence, of a country where people express their thoughts, are not afraid of each other, not afraid to try--a people so accustomed to success that disaster is not taken into calculation. Of course, we have great advantages. We have a new half of the world. We have soil better than is found in other countries, and the soil is new and generous and anxious to be cultivated. So we have everything in hill and mountain that man can need--silver, and gold, and iron beyond computation--and, in addition to all that, our people are the most inventive. We sustain about the same relation to invention that Italy in her palmy days did to art, or that Spain did to superst.i.tion.

And right here it may be well enough to say that I think it was exceedingly unfortunate that this country was discovered under the auspices of Spain. Ferdinand and Isabella were a couple of wretches. The same year that Columbus discovered America, these sovereigns expelled the Jews from Spain, and the expulsion was accompanied by every outrage, by every atrocity to which man--that is to say, savage man--that is to say, the superst.i.tious savage--is capable of inflicting.

The Spaniards came to America and destroyed two civilizations far better than their own. They were natural robbers, buccaneers, and thought nothing of murdering thousands for gold. I am perfectly willing to celebrate the fact of discovery, but for the sovereigns of Spain I am not willing to celebrate, except, perhaps their deaths. There is at least some joy to be extracted from that.

In spite of the untoward circ.u.mstances under which the continent was discovered and settled, there is one thing that counteracted to a certain degree the influence of the Old World in the New. Possibly we owe our liberty to the Indians. If there had been no hostile savages on this continent, the kings and princes of the Old World would have taken possession and would have divided it out among their favorites. They tried to do that, but their favorites could not take possession. They had to fight for the soil and in the conflict of centuries they found that a good fighter was a good citizen, and the ideas of caste were slowly lost.

Then another thing was of benefit to us. The settlers felt that they had earned the soil; that they had fought for it, gained it by their sufferings, their courage, their selfdenial, and their labor; and the idea crept into their heads that the kings in Europe, who had done nothing, had no right to dictate to them.

Thus at first the spirit of caste was destroyed by respectability resting on usefulness. The spirit of subserviency to the Old World also died, and the people who had rescued the land made up their minds not only to own it, but to control it. They were also firmly convinced that the profits belonged to them. In this way manhood was recognized in the New World. In this way grew up the feeling of nationality here.

What I wish to see celebrated in this great exposition are the triumphs that have been achieved in this New World. These I wish to see above all. At the same time I want the best that labor and thought have produced in all countries. It seems to me that in the presence of the wonderful machines, of those marvelous mechanical contrivances by which we take advantage of the forces of nature, by which we make servants of the elemental powers--in the presence, I say, of these, it seems to me respect for labor must be born. We shall begin to appreciate the men of use instead of those who have posed as decorations. All the beautiful things, all the useful things, come from labor, and it is labor that has made the world a fit habitation for the human race.

Take from the World's Fair what labor has produced--the work of the great artists--and nothing will be left. What have the great conquerors to show in this great exhibition? What shall we get from the Caesars and the Napoleons? What shall we get from popes and cardinals? What shall we get from the n.o.bility? From princes and lords and dukes? What excuse have they for having existence and for having lived on the bread earned by honest men? They stand in the show-windows of history, lay figures, on which fine goods are shown, but inside the raiment there is nothing, and never was. This exposition will be the apotheosis of labor. No man can attend it without losing, if he has any sense at all, the spirit of caste; or, if he still maintains it, he will put the useful in the highest cla.s.s, and the useless, whether carrying sceptres or dishes for alms, in the lowest.--October, 1892.

THE SAVAGE made of the river, the tree, the mountain, a fetich. He put within, or behind these things, a spirit--according to Mr. Spencer, the spirit of a dead ancestor. This is considered by the modern Christian, and in fact by the modern philosopher, as the lowest possible phase of the religious idea. To put behind the river or the tree, or within them, a spirit, a something, is considered the religion of savagery; but to put behind the universe, or within it, the same kind of fetich, is considered the height of philosophy.

For my part, I see no possible distinction in these systems, except that the view of the savage is altogether the more poetic. The _fetich_ of the savage is the _noumenon_ of the Greek, the _G.o.d_ of the theologian, the _First Cause_ of the metaphysician, the _Unknowable_ of Spencer.