The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume I Part 17

He was asked why he killed his fellow-man.

He replied: "For money."

"Did you get any?"

"Yes."

"How much?"

"Fifteen cents."

"What did you do with this money?"

"Spent it."

"What for?"

"Liquor."

"What else did you find upon the dead man?" "He had his dinner in a bucket--some meat and bread."

"What did you do with that?"

"I ate the bread."

"What did you do with the meat?"

"I threw it away."

"Why?"

"It was Friday."

Just to the extent that man has freed himself from the dominion of ghosts he has advanced. Just to the extent that he has freed himself from the tyrants of his own creation he has progressed. Just to the extent that he has investigated for himself he has lost confidence in superst.i.tion.

With knowledge obedience becomes intelligent acquiescence--it is no longer degrading. Acquiescence in the understood--in the known--is the act of a sovereign, not of a slave. It enn.o.bles, it does not degrade.

Man has found that he must give liberty to others in order to have it himself. He has found that a master is also a slave;--that a tyrant is himself a serf. He has found that governments should be founded and administered by man and for man; that the rights of all are equal; that the powers that be are not ordained by G.o.d; that woman is at least the equal of man; that men existed before books; that religion is one of the phases of thought through which the world is pa.s.sing; that all creeds were made by man; that everything is natural; that a miracle is an impossibility; that we know nothing of origin and destiny; that concerning the unknown we are all equally ignorant; that the pew has the right to contradict what the pulpit a.s.serts; that man is responsible only to himself and those he injures, and that all have a right to think.

True religion must be free. Without perfect liberty of the mind there can be no true religion. Without liberty the brain is a dungeon--the mind a convict. The slave may bow and cringe and crawl, but he cannot adore--he cannot love.

True religion is the perfume of a free and grateful heart. True religion is a subordination of the pa.s.sions to the perceptions of the intellect.

True religion is not a theory--it is a practice. It is not a creed--it is a life.

A theory that is afraid of investigation is undeserving a place in the human mind.

I do not pretend to tell what all the truth is. I do not pretend to have fathomed the abyss, nor to have floated on outstretched wings level with the dim heights of thought. I simply plead for freedom. I denounce the cruelties and horrors of slavery. I ask for light and air for the souls of men. I say, take off those chains--break those manacles--free those limbs--release that brain! I plead for the right to think--to reason--to investigate. I ask that the future may be enriched with the honest thoughts of men. I implore every human being to be a soldier in the army of progress.

I will not invade the rights of others. You have no right to erect your toll-gate upon the highways of thought. You have no right to leap from the hedges of superst.i.tion and strike down the pioneers of the human race. You have no right to sacrifice the liberties of man upon the altars of ghosts. Believe what you may; preach what you desire; have all the forms and ceremonies you please; exercise your liberty in your own way but extend to all others the same right.

I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous--if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.

I attack the monsters, the phantoms of imagination that have ruled the world. I attack slavery. I ask for room--room for the human mind.

Why should we sacrifice a real world that we have, for one we know not of? Why should we enslave ourselves? Why should we forge fetters for our own hands? Why should we be the slaves of phantoms. The darkness of barbarism was the womb of these shadows. In the light of science they cannot cloud the sky forever. They have reddened the hands of man with innocent blood. They made the cradle a curse, and the grave a place of torment.

They blinded the eyes and stopped the ears of the human race. They subverted all ideas of justice by promising infinite rewards for finite virtues, and threatening infinite punishment for finite offences.

They filled the future with heavens and with h.e.l.ls, with the s.h.i.+ning peaks of selfish joy and the lurid abysses of flame. For ages they kept the world in ignorance and awe, in want and misery, in fear and chains.

I plead for light, for air, for opportunity. I plead for individual independence. I plead for the rights of labor and of thought. I plead for a chainless future. Let the ghosts go--justice remains. Let them disappear--men and women and children are left. Let the monsters fade away--the world is here with its hills and seas and plains, with its seasons of smiles and frowns, its spring of leaf and bud, its summer of shade and flower and murmuring stream; its autumn with the laden boughs, when the withered banners of the corn are still, and gathered fields are growing strangely wan; while death, poetic death, with hands that color what they touch, weaves in the Autumn wood her tapestries of gold and brown.

The world remains with its winters and homes and firesides, where grow and bloom the virtues of our race. All these are left; and music, with its sad and thrilling voice, and all there is of art and song and hope and love and aspiration high. All these remain. Let the ghosts go--we will wors.h.i.+p them no more.

Man is greater than these phantoms. Humanity is grander than all the creeds, than all the books. Humanity is the great sea, and these creeds, and books, and religions, are but the waves of a day. Humanity is the sky, and these religions and dogmas and theories are but the mists and clouds changing continually, destined finally to melt away.

That which is founded upon slavery, and fear, and ignorance, cannot endure. In the religion of the future there will be men and women and children, all the aspirations of the soul, and all the tender humanities of the heart.

Let the ghosts go. We will wors.h.i.+p them no more. Let them cover their eyeless sockets with their fleshless hands and fade forever from the imaginations of men.

THE LIBERTY OF MAN, WOMAN, AND CHILD.

Liberty sustains the same Relation to Mind that s.p.a.ce does to Matter.

THERE is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the child of intelligence.

The history of man is simply the history of slavery, of injustice and brutality, together with the means by which he has, through the dead and desolate years, slowly and painfully advanced. He has been the sport and prey of priest and king, the food of superst.i.tion and cruel might.

Crowned force has governed ignorance through fear. Hypocrisy and tyranny--two vultures--have fed upon the liberties of man. From all these there has been, and is, but one means of escape--intellectual development. Upon the back of industry has been the whip. Upon the brain have been the fetters of superst.i.tion. Nothing has been left undone by the enemies of freedom. Every art and artifice, every cruelty and outrage has been practiced and perpetrated to destroy the rights of man.

In this great struggle every crime has been rewarded and every virtue has been punished. Reading, writing, thinking and investigating have all been crimes.

Every science has been an outcast.

All the altars and all the thrones united to arrest the forward march of the human race. The king said that mankind must not work for themselves.

The priest said that mankind must not think for themselves. One forged chains for the hands, the other for the soul. Under this infamous _regime_ the eagle of the human intellect was for ages a slimy serpent of hypocrisy.

The human race was imprisoned. Through some of the prison bars came a few struggling rays of light. Against these bars Science pressed its pale and thoughtful face, wooed by the holy dawn of human advancement.

Bar after bar was broken away. A few grand men escaped and devoted their lives to the liberation of their fellows.

Only a few years ago there was a great awakening of the human mind. Men began to inquire by what right a crowned robber made them work for him?

The man who asked this question was called a traitor. Others asked by what right does a robed hypocrite rule my thought? Such men were called infidels. The priest said, and the king said, where is this spirit of investigation to stop? They said then and they say now, that it is dangerous for man to be free. I deny it. Out on the intellectual sea there is room enough for every sail. In the intellectual air there is s.p.a.ce enough for every wing.

The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow-men.

Every man should stand under the blue and stars, under the infinite flag of nature, the peer of every other man.