* This is the first lecture ever delivered by Mr. Ingersoll.
The stars indicate the words missing in the manuscript. It
was delivered in Pekin, 111., in 1860, and again in
Bloomington, 111., in 1804.
IT is admitted by all that happiness is the only good, happiness in its
highest and grandest sense and the most * * springs * * of * * refined *
* generous * *
Conscience * * tends * * indirectly * * truly we * * physically * * to
develop the wonderful powers of the mind is progress.
It is impossible for men to become educated and refined without leisure
and there can be no leisure without wealth and all wealth is produced by
labor, nothing else. Nothing can * * the hands * * and * * fabrics *
* service of civil * * and crumbles * * of all, and yet even in free
America labor is not honored as it deserves.
We should remember that the prosperity of the world depends upon the men
who walk in the fresh furrows and through the rustling corn, upon those
whose faces are radiant with the glare of furnaces, upon the delvers in
dark mines, the workers in shops, upon those who give to the wintry air
the ringing music of the axe, and upon those who wrestle with the wild
waves of the raging sea.
And it is from the surplus produced by labor that schools are built,
that colleges and universities are founded and endowed. From this
surplus the painter is paid for the immortal productions of the pencil.
This pays the sculptor for chiseling the shapeless rock into forms of
beauty almost divine, and the poet for singing the hopes, the loves and
aspirations of the world.
This surplus has erected all the palaces and temples, all the galleries
of art, has given to us all the books in which we converse, as it were,
with the dead kings of the human race, and has supplied us with all
there is of elegance, of beauty and of refined happiness in the world.
I am aware that the subject chosen by me is almost infinite and that in
its broadest sense it is absolutely beyond the present comprehension of
man.
I am also aware that there are many opinions as to what progress really
is, that what one calls progress, another denominates barbarism; that
many have a wonderful veneration for all that is ancient, merely because
it is ancient, and they see no beauty in anything from which they do not
have to blow the dust of ages with the breath of praise.
They say, no masters like the old, no governments like the ancient, no
orators, no poets, no statesmen like those who have been dust for two
thousand years. Others despise antiquity and admire only the modern,
merely because it is modern. They find so much to condemn in the past,
that they condemn all. I hope, however, that I have gratitude enough
to acknowledge the obligations I am under to the great and heroic minds
of antiquity, and that I have manliness and independence enough not
to believe what they said merely because they said it, and that I have
moral courage enough to advocate ideas, however modern they may be, if I
believe that they are right. Truth is neither young nor old, is neither
ancient nor modern, but is the same for all times and places and should
be sought for with ceaseless activity, eagerly acknowledged, loved more
than life, and abandoned--never. In accordance with the idea that labor
is the basis of all prosperity and happiness, is another idea or truth,
and that is, that labor in order to make the laborer and the world at
large happy, must be free. That the laborer must be a free man, the
thinker must be free. I do not intend in what I may say upon this
subject to carry you back to the remotest antiquity,--back to Asia, the
cradle of the world, where we could stand in the ashes and ruins of a
civilization so old that history has not recorded even its decay. It
will answer my present purpose to commence with the Middle Ages. In
those times there was no freedom of either mind or body in Europe. Labor
was despised, and a laborer was considered as scarcely above the beasts.
Ignorance like a mantle covered the world, and superstition ran riot
with the human imagination. The air was filled with angels, demons
and monsters. Everything assumed the air of the miraculous. Credulity
occupied the throne of reason and faith put out the eyes of the soul. A
man to be distinguished had either to be a soldier or a monk. He could
take his choice between killing and lying. You must remember that in
those days nations carried on war as an end, not as a means. War and
theology were the business of mankind. No man could win more than a bare
existence by industry, much less fame and glory. Comparatively speaking,
there was no commerce. Nations instead of buying and selling from and
to each other, took what they wanted by brute force. And every Christian
country maintained that it was no robbery to take the property of
Mohammedans, and no murder to kill the owners with or without just cause
of quarrel. Lord Bacon was the first man of note who maintained that a
Christian country was bound to keep its plighted faith with an Infidel
one. In those days reading and writing were considered very dangerous
arts, and any layman who had acquired the art of reading was suspected
of being a heretic or a wizard.
It is almost impossible for us to conceive of the ignorance, the
cruelty, the superstition and the mental blindness of that period. In
reading the history of those dark and bloody years, I am amazed at the
wickedness, the folly and presumption of mankind. And yet, the solution
of the whole matter is, they despised liberty; they hated freedom of
mind and of body. They forged chains of superstition for the one and of
iron for the other. They were ruled by that terrible trinity, the cowl,
the sword and chain.
You cannot form a correct opinion of those ages without reading the
standard authors, so to speak, of that time, the laws then in force,
and by ascertaining the habits and customs of the people, their mode
of administering the laws, and the ideas that were commonly received
as correct. No one believed that honest error could be innocent; no one
dreamed of such a thing as religious freedom. In the fifteenth century
the following law was in force in England: "That whatsoever they were
that should read the Scriptures in the mother tongue, they should
forfeit land, cattle, body, life, and goods from their heirs forever,
and so be condemned for heretics to God, enemies to the crown, and most
arrant traitors to the land." The next year after this law was in force,
in one day thirty-nine were hanged for its violation and their bodies
afterward burned.
Laws equally unjust, bloody and cruel were in force in all parts of
Europe. In the sixteenth century a man was burned in France because
he refused to kneel to a procession of dirty monks. I could enumerate
thousands of instances of the most horrid cruelty perpetrated upon men,
women and even little children, for no other reason in the world than
for a difference of opinion upon a subject that neither party knew
anything about. But you are all, no doubt, perfectly familiar with the
history of religious persecution.
There is one thing, however, that is strange indeed, and that is that
the reformers of those days, the men who rose against the horrid tyranny
of the times, the moment they attained power, persecuted with a zeal and
bitterness never excelled. Luther, one of the grand men of the world,
cast in the heroic mould, although he gave utterance to the following
sublime sentiment: "Every one has the right to read for himself that he
may prepare himself to live and to die," still had no idea of what we
call religious freedom. He considered universal toleration an error,
so did Melancthon, and Erasmus, and yet, strange as it may appear, they
were exercising the very right they denied to others, and maintaining
their right with a courage and energy absolutely sublime.
John Knox was only in favor of religious freedom when he was in the
minority, and Baxter entertained the same sentiment. Castalio, a
professor at Geneva, in Switzerland, was the first clergyman in Europe
who declared the innocence of honest error, and who proclaimed himself
in favor of universal toleration. The name of this man should never be
forgotten. He had the goodness, the courage, although surrounded with
prisons and inquisitions, and in the midst of millions of fierce bigots,
to declare the innocence of honest error, and that every man had a right
to worship the good God in his own way.
For the utterance of this sublime sentiment his professorship was taken
from him, he was driven from Geneva by John Calvin and his adherents,
although he had belonged to their sect.
He was denounced as a child of the Devil, a dog of Satan, as a murderer
of souls, as a corrupter of the faith, and as one who by his doctrines
crucified the Savior afresh. Not content with merely driving him from
his home, they pursued him absolutely to the grave, with a malignity
that increased rather than diminished. You must not think that Calvin
was alone in this; on the contrary he was fully sustained by public
opinion, and would have been sustained even though he had procured the
burning of the noble Castalio at the stake. I cite this instance not
merely for the purpose of casting odium upon Calvin, but to show you
what public opinion was at that time, when such things were ordinary
transactions. Bodi-nus, a lawyer in France, about the same time
advocated something like religious liberty, but public opinion was
overwhelmingly against him and the people were at all times ready with
torch and brand, chain, and fagot to get the abominable heresy out of
the human mind, that a man had a right to think for himself. And yet
Luther, Calvin, Knox and Baxter, in spite, as it were, of themselves,
conferred a great and lasting benefit upon mankind; for what they did
was at least in favor of individual judgment, and one successful stand
against the church produced others, all of which tended to establish
universal toleration. In those times you will remember that failing to
convert a man or woman by the ordinary means, they resorted to every
engine of torture that the ingenuity of bigotry could devise; they
crushed their feet in what they called iron boots; they roasted them
upon slow fires; they plucked out their nails, and then into the
bleeding quick thrust needles; and all this to convince them of the
truth. I suppose that we should love our neighbor as ourselves.
Montaigne was the first man who raised his voice against torture in
France; a man blessed with so much common sense, that he was the most
uncommon man of the age in which he lived. But what was one voice
against the terrible cry of ignorant millions?--a drowning man in the
wild roar of the infinite sea. It is impossible to read the history of
the long and seemingly hopeless war waged for religious freedom,
without being filled with horror and disgust. Millions of men, women and
children, at least one hundred millions of human beings with hopes and
loves and aspirations like ourselves, have been sacrificed upon the
altar of bigotry. They have perished at the stake, in prisons, by famine
and by sword; they have died wandering, homeless, in deserts, groping
in caves, until their blood cried from the earth for vengeance. But the
principle, gathering strength from their weakness, nourished by blood
and flame, rendered holier still by their sufferings--grander by their
heroism, and immortal by their death, triumphed at last, and is now
acknowledged by the whole civilized world. Enormous as the cost has been
the principle is worth a thousand times as much. There must be freedom
in religion, for without freedom there can be no real religion. And as
for myself I glory in the fact that upon American soil that principle
was first firmly established, and that the Constitution of the United
States was the first of any great nation in which religious toleration
was made one of the fundamental laws of the land. And it is not only
the law of our country but the law is sustained by an enlightened public
opinion. Without liberty there is no religion--no worship. What light
is to the eyes--what air is to the lungs--what love is to the heart,
liberty is to the soul of man. Without liberty, the brain is a dungeon,
where the chained thoughts die with their pinions pressed against the
hingeless doors.