The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume VIII Part 55

_Question_. I should be glad if you would tell me what you think the differences are between English and American oratory?

_Answer_. There is no difference between the real English and the real American orator. Oratory is the same the world over. The man who thinks on his feet, who has the pose of pa.s.sion, the face that thought illumines, a voice in harmony with the ideals expressed, who has logic like a column and poetry like a vine, who transfigures the common, dresses the ideals of the people in purple and fine linen, who has the art of finding the best and n.o.blest in his hearers, and who in a thousand ways creates the climate in which the best grows and flourishes and bursts into blossom--that man is an orator, no matter of what time, of what country.

_Question_. If you were to compare individual English and American orators--recent or living orators in particular--what would you say?

_Answer_. I have never heard any of the great English speakers, and consequently can pa.s.s no judgment as to their merits, except such as depends on reading. I think, however, the finest paragraph ever uttered in Great Britain was by Curran in his defence of Rowan.

I have never read one of Mr. Gladstone's speeches, only fragments.

I think he lacks logic. Bright was a great speaker, but he lacked imagination and the creative faculty. Disraeli spoke for the clubs, and his speeches were artificial. We have had several fine speakers in America. I think that Thomas Corwin stands at the top of the natural orators. Sergeant S. Prentiss, the lawyer, was a very great talker; Henry Ward Beecher was the greatest orator that the pulpit has produced. Theodore Parker was a great orator. In this country, however, probably Daniel Webster occupies the highest place in general esteem.

_Question_. Which would you say are the better orators, speaking generally, the American people or the English people?

_Answer_. I think Americans are, on the average, better talkers than the English. I think England has produced the greatest literature of the world; but I do not think England has produced the greatest orators of the world. I know of no English orator equal to Webster or Corwin or Beecher.

_Question_. Would you mind telling me how it was you came to be a public speaker, a lecturer, an orator?

_Answer_. We call this America of ours free, and yet I found it was very far from free. Our writers and our speakers declared that here in America church and state were divorced. I found this to be untrue. I found that the church was supported by the state in many ways, that people who failed to believe certain portions of the creeds were not allowed to testify in courts or to hold office.

It occurred to me that some one ought to do something toward making this country intellectually free, and after a while I thought that I might as well endeavor to do this as wait for another. This is the way in which I came to make speeches; it was an action in favor of liberty. I have said things because I wanted to say them, and because I thought they ought to be said.

_Question_. Perhaps you will tell me your methods as a speaker, for I'm sure it would be interesting to know them?

_Answer_. Sometimes, and frequently, I deliver a lecture several times before it is written. I have it taken by a shorthand writer, and afterward written out. At other times I have dictated a lecture, and delivered it from ma.n.u.script. The course pursued depends on how I happen to feel at the time. Sometimes I read a lecture, and sometimes I deliver lectures without any notes--this, again, depending much on how I happen to feel. So far as methods are concerned, everything should depend on feeling. Att.i.tude, gestures, voice, emphasis, should all be in accord with and spring from feeling, from the inside.

_Question_. Is there any possibility of your coming to England, and, I need hardly add, of your coming to speak?

_Answer_. I have thought of going over to England, and I may do so. There is an England in England for which I have the highest possible admiration, the England of culture, of art, of principle.

--_The Sketch_, London, Eng., March 21, 1894.

CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. THE POPE, THE A. P. A., AGNOSTICISM AND THE CHURCH.

_Question_. Which do you regard as the better, Catholicism or Protestantism?

_Answer_. Protestantism is better than Catholicism because there is less of it. Protestantism does not teach that a monk is better than a husband and father, that a nun is holier than a mother.

Protestants do not believe in the confessional. Neither do they pretend that priests can forgive sins. Protestantism has fewer ceremonies and less opera bouffe, clothes, caps, tiaras, mitres, crooks and holy toys. Catholics have an infallible man--an old Italian. Protestants have an infallible book, written by Hebrews before they were civilized. The infallible man is generally wrong, and the infallible book is filled with mistakes and contradictions.

Catholics and Protestants are both enemies of intellectual freedom --of real education, but both are opposed to education enough to make free men and women.

Between the Catholics and Protestants there has been about as much difference as there is between crocodiles and alligators. Both have done the worst they could, both are as bad as they can be, and the world is getting tired of both. The world is not going to choose either--both are to be rejected.

_Question_. Are you willing to give your opinion of the Pope?

_Answer_. It may be that the Pope thinks he is infallible, but I doubt it. He may think that he is the agent of G.o.d, but I guess not. He may know more than other people, but if he does he has kept it to himself. He does not seem satisfied with standing in the place and stead of G.o.d in spiritual matters, but desires temporal power. He wishes to be Pope and King. He imagines that he has the right to control the belief of all the world; that he is the shepherd of all "sheep" and that the fleeces belong to him. He thinks that in his keeping is the conscience of mankind. So he imagines that his blessing is a great benefit to the faithful and that his prayers can change the course of natural events. He is a strange mixture of the serious and comical. He claims to represent G.o.d, and admits that he is almost a prisoner. There is something pathetic in the condition of this pontiff. When I think of him, I think of Lear on the heath, old, broken, touched with insanity, and yet, in his own opinion, "every inch a king."

The Pope is a fragment, a remnant, a shred, a patch of ancient power and glory. He is a survival of the unfittest, a souvenir of theocracy, a relic of the supernatural. Of course he will have a few successors, and they will become more and more comical, more and more helpless and impotent as the world grows wise and free.

I am not blaming the Pope. He was poisoned at the breast of his mother. Superst.i.tion was mingled with her milk. He was poisoned at school--taught to distrust his reason and to live by faith.

And so it may be that his mind was so twisted and tortured out of shape that he now really believes that he is the infallible agent of an infinite G.o.d.

_Question_. Are you in favor of the A. P. A.?

_Answer_. In this country I see no need of secret political societies. I think it better to fight in the open field. I am a believer in religious liberty, in allowing all sects to preach their doctrines and to make as many converts as they can. As long as we have free speech and a free press I think there is no danger of the country being ruled by any church. The Catholics are much better than their creed, and the same can be said of nearly all members of orthodox churches. A majority of American Catholics think a great deal more of this country than they do of their church. When they are in good health they are on our side. It is only when they are very sick that they turn their eyes toward Rome.

If they were in the majority, of course, they would destroy all other churches and imprison, torture and kill all Infidels. But they will never be in the majority. They increase now only because Catholics come in from other countries. In a few years that supply will cease, and then the Catholic Church will grow weaker every day. The free secular school is the enemy of priestcraft and superst.i.tion, and the people of this country will never consent to the destruction of that inst.i.tution. I want no man persecuted on account of his religion.

_Question_. If there is no beat.i.tude, or heaven, how do you account for the continual struggle in every natural heart for its own betterment?

_Answer_. Man has many wants, and all his efforts are the children of wants. If he wanted nothing he would do nothing. We civilize the savage by increasing his wants, by cultivating his fancy, his appet.i.tes, his desires. He is then willing to work to satisfy these new wants. Man always tries to do things in the easiest way.

His constant effort is to accomplish more with less work. He invents a machine; then he improves it, his idea being to make it perfect. He wishes to produce the best. So in every department of effort and knowledge he seeks the highest success, and he seeks it because it is for his own good here in this world. So he finds that there is a relation between happiness and conduct, and he tries to find out what he must do to produce the greatest enjoyment.

This is the basis of morality, of law and ethics. We are so const.i.tuted that we love proportion, color, harmony. This is the artistic man. Morality is the harmony and proportion of conduct-- the music of life. Man continually seeks to better his condition --not because he is immortal--but because he is capable of grief and pain, because he seeks for happiness. Man wishes to respect himself and to gain the respect of others. The brain wants light, the heart wants love. Growth is natural. The struggle to overcome temptation, to be good and n.o.ble, brave and sincere, to reach, if possible, the perfect, is no evidence of the immortality of the soul or of the existence of other worlds. Men live to excel, to become distinguished, to enjoy, and so they strive, each in his own way, to gain the ends desired.

_Question_. Do you believe that the race is growing moral or immoral?

_Answer_. The world is growing better. There is more real liberty, more thought, more intelligence than ever before. The world was never so charitable or generous as now. We do not put honest debtors in prison, we no longer believe in torture. Punishments are less severe. We place a higher value on human life. We are far kinder to animals. To this, however, there is one terrible exception. The vivisectors, those who cut, torture, and mutilate in the name of science, disgrace our age. They excite the horror and indignation of all good people. Leave out the actions of those wretches, and animals are better treated than ever before. So there is less beating of wives and whipping of children. The whip in no longer found in the civilized home. Intelligent parents now govern by kindness, love and reason. The standard of honor is higher than ever. Contracts are more sacred, and men do nearer as they agree. Man has more confidence in his fellow-man, and in the goodness of human nature. Yes, the world is getting better, n.o.bler and grander every day. We are moving along the highway of progress on our way to the Eden of the future.

_Question_. Are the doctrines of Agnosticism gaining ground, and what, in your opinion, will be the future of the church?

_Answer_. The Agnostic is intellectually honest. He knows the limitations of his mind. He is convinced that the questions of origin and destiny cannot be answered by man. He knows that he cannot answer these questions, and he is candid enough to say so.

The Agnostic has good mental manners. He does not call belief or hope or wish, a demonstration. He knows the difference between hope and belief--between belief and knowledge--and he keeps these distinctions in his mind. He does not say that a certain theory is true because he wishes it to be true. He tries to go according to evidence, in harmony with facts, without regard to his own desires or the wish of the public. He has the courage of his convictions and the modesty of his ignorance. The theologian is his opposite. He is certain and sure of the existence of things and beings and worlds of which there is, and can be, no evidence.

He relies on a.s.sertion, and in all debate attacks the motive of his opponent instead of answering his arguments. All savages know the origin and destiny of man. About other things they know but little. The theologian is much the same. The Agnostic has given up the hope of ascertaining the nature of the "First Cause"--the hope of ascertaining whether or not there was a "First Cause." He admits that he does not know whether or not there is an infinite Being. He admits that these questions cannot be answered, and so he refuses to answer. He refuses also to pretend. He knows that the theologian does not know, and he has the courage to say so.

He knows that the religious creeds rest on a.s.sumption, supposition, a.s.sertion--on myth and legend, on ignorance and superst.i.tion, and that there is no evidence of their truth. The Agnostic bends his energies in the opposite direction. He occupies himself with this world, with things that can be ascertained and understood. He turns his attention to the sciences, to the solution of questions that touch the well-being of man. He wishes to prevent and cure diseases; to lengthen life; to provide homes and raiment and food for man; to supply the wants of the body.

He also cultivates the arts. He believes in painting and sculpture, in music and the drama--the needs of the soul. The Agnostic believes in developing the brain, in cultivating the affections, the tastes, the conscience, the judgment, to the end that man may be happy in this world. He seeks to find the relation of things, the condition of happiness. He wishes to enslave the forces of nature to the end that they may perform the work of the world. Back of all progress are the real thinkers; the finders of facts, those who turn their attention to the world in which we live. The theologian has never been a help, always a hindrance. He has always kept his back to the sunrise. With him all wisdom was in the past. He appealed to the dead. He was and is the enemy of reason, of investigation, of thought and progress. The church has never given "sanctuary" to a persecuted truth.

There can be no doubt that the ideas of the Agnostic are gaining ground. The scientific spirit has taken possession of the intellectual world. Theological methods are unpopular to-day, even in theological schools. The attention of men everywhere is being directed to the affairs of this world, this life. The G.o.ds are growing indistinct, and, like the shapes of clouds, they are changing as they fade.

The idea of special providence has been substantially abandoned.

People are losing, and intelligent people have lost, confidence in prayer. To-day no intelligent person believes in miracles--a violation of the facts in nature. They may believe that there used to be miracles a good while ago, but not now. The "supernatural"

is losing its power, its influence, and the church is growing weaker every day.

The church is supported by the people, and in order to gain the support of the people it must reflect their ideas, their hopes and fears. As the people advance, the creeds will be changed, either by changing the words or giving new meanings to the old words.

The church, in order to live, must agree substantially with those who support it, and consequently it will change to any extent that may be necessary. If the church remains true to the old standards then it will lose the support of progressive people, and if the people generally advance the church will die. But my opinion is that it will slowly change, that the minister will preach what the members want to hear, and that the creed will be controlled by the contribution box. One of these days the preachers may become teachers, and when that happens the church will be of use.

_Question_. What do you regard as the greatest of all themes in poetry and song?

_Answer_. Love and Death. The same is true of the greatest music.

In "Tristan and Isolde" is the greatest music of love and death.

In Shakespeare the greatest themes are love and death. In all real poetry, in all real music, the dominant, the triumphant tone, is love, and the minor, the sad refrain, the shadow, the background, the mystery, is death.

_Question_. What would be your advice to an intelligent young man just starting out in life?

_Answer_. I would say to him: "Be true to your ideal. Cultivate your heart and brain. Follow the light of your reason. Get all the happiness out of life that you possibly can. Do not care for power, but strive to be useful. First of all, support yourself so that you may not be a burden to others. If you are successful, if you gain a surplus, use it for the good of others. Own yourself and live and die a free man. Make your home a heaven, love your wife and govern your children by kindness. Be good natured, cheerful, forgiving and generous. Find out the conditions of happiness, and then be wise enough to live in accordance with them.

Cultivate intellectual hospitality, express your honest thoughts, love your friends, and be just to your enemies."

--_New York Herald_, September 16, 1894.

WOMAN AND HER DOMAIN.