The first gentleman who replied to me took the ground boldly that
expression is not free--that no man has the right to express his real
thoughts--and I suppose that he acted in accordance with that idea. How
are you to know whether he thought a solitary thing that he said, or
not? How is it possible for us to ascertain whether he is simply the
mouthpiece of some other? Whether he is a free man, or whether he says
that which he does not believe, it is impossible for us to ascertain.
He tells you that I am about to take away the religion of your mothers.
I have heard that said a great many times. No doubt Mr. Coudert has
the religion of his mother, and judging from the argument he made, his
mother knew at least as much about these questions as her son. I believe
that every good father and good mother wants to see the son and the
daughter climb higher upon the great and splendid mount of thought than
they reached.
You never can honor your father by going around swearing to his
mistakes. You never can honor your mother by saying that ignorance is
blessed because she did not know everything. I want to honor my parents
by finding out more than they did.
There is another thing that I was a little astonished at--that Mr.
Coudert, knowing that he would be in eternal felicity with his harp in
his hand, seeing me in the world of the damned, could yet grow envious
here to-night at my imaginary monument.
And he tells you--this Catholic--that Voltaire was an exceedingly good
Christian compared with me. Do you know I am glad that I have compelled
a Catholic--one who does not believe he has the right to express his
honest thoughts--to pay a compliment to Voltaire simply because he
thought it was at my expense?
I have an almost infinite admiration for Voltaire; and when I hear that
name pronounced, I think of a plume floating over a mailed knight--I
think of a man that rode to the beleaguered City of Catholicism and
demanded a surrender--I think of a great man who thrust the dagger of
assassination into your Mother Church, and from that wound she never
will recover.
One word more. This gentleman says that children are destructive--that
the first thing they do is to destroy their bibs. The gentleman, I
should think from his talk, has preserved his!
They talk about blasphemy. What is blasphemy? Let us be honest with each
other. Whoever lives upon the unpaid labor of others is a blasphemer.
Whoever slanders, maligns, and betrays is a blasphemer. Whoever denies
to others the rights that he claims for himself is a blasphemer.
Who is a worshiper? One who makes a happy home--one who fills the
lives of wife and children with sunlight--one who has a heart where
the flowers of kindness burst into blossom and fill the air with
perfume--the man who sits beside his wife, prematurely old and wasted,
and holds her thin hands in his and kisses them as passionately and
loves her as truly and as rapturously as when she was a bride--he is a
worshiper--that is worship.
And the gentleman brought forward as a reason why we should not have
free speech, that only a few years ago some of the best men in the
world, if you said a word in favor of liberty, would shoot you down.
What an argument was that! They were not good men. They were
the whippers of women and the stealers of babes--robbers of the
trundlebed--assassins of human liberty. They knew no better, but I do
not propose to follow the example of a barbarian because he was honestly
a barbarian.
So much for debauching his family by telling them that his precepts
are false. If he has taught them as he has taught us to-night, he has
debauched their minds. I would be honest at the cradle. I would not
tell a child anything as a certainty that I did not know. I would be
absolutely honest.
But he says that thought is absolutely free--nobody can control thought.
Let me tell him: Superstition is the jailer of the mind. You can so
stuff a child with superstition that its poor little brain is a bastile
and its poor little soul a convict. Fear is the jailer of the mind, and
superstition is the assassin of liberty.
So when anybody goes into his family and tells these great and shining
truths, instead of debauching his children they will kill the snakes
that crawl in their cradles. Let us be honest and free.
And now, coming to the second gentleman. He is a Protestant. The
Catholic Church says: "Don't think; pay your fare; this is a through
ticket, and we will look out for your baggage." The Protestant Church
says: "Read that Bible for yourselves; think for yourselves; but if you
do not come to a right conclusion you will be eternally damned." Any
sensible man will say, "Then I won't read it--I'll believe it without
reading it." And that is the only way you can be sure you will believe
it; don't read it.
Governor Woodford says that we are responsible for our thoughts. Why?
Could you help thinking as you did on this subject? No, Could you help
believing the Bible? I suppose not. Could you help believing that story
of Jonah? Certainly not--it looks reasonable in Brooklyn.
I stated that thought was the result of the impressions of nature upon
the mind through the medium of the senses. He says you cannot have
thought without memory. How did you get the first one?
Of course I intended to be understood--and the language is clear--that
there could be no thought except through the impressions made upon the
brain by nature through the avenues called the senses. Take away the
senses, how would you think then? If you thought at all, I think you
would agree with Mr. Coudert.
Now, I admit--so we need never have a contradiction about it--I admit
that every human being is responsible to the person he injures. If he
injures any man, woman, or child, or any dog, or the lowest animal that
crawls, he is responsible to that animal, to that being--in other words,
he is responsible to any being that he has injured.
But you cannot injure an infinite Being, if there be one. I will tell
you why. You cannot help him, and you cannot hurt him. If there be an
infinite Being, he is conditionless--he does not want anything--he has
it. You cannot help anybody that does not want something--you cannot
help him. You cannot hurt anybody unless he is a conditioned being
and you change his condition so as to inflict a harm. But if God be
conditionless, you cannot hurt him, and you cannot help him. So do
not trouble yourselves about the Infinite. All our duties lie within
reach--all our duties are right here; and my religion is simply this:
_First_. Give to every other human being every right that you claim for
yourself.
_Second_. If you tell your thought at all, tell your honest thought. Do
not be a parrot--do not be an instrumentality for an organization. Tell
your own thought, honor bright, what you think.
My next idea is, that the only possible good in the universe is
happiness. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here.
The way to be happy is to try and make somebody else so.
My good friend General Woodford--and he is a good man telling the best
he knows--says that I will be accountable at the bar up yonder. I am
ready to settle that account now, and expect to be, every moment of my
life--and when that settlement comes, if it does come, I do not believe
that a solitary being can rise and say that I ever injured him or her.
But no matter what they say. Let me tell you a story, how we will settle
if we do get there.
You remember the story told about the Mexican who believed that his
country was the only one in the world, and said so. The priest told
him that there was another country where a man lived who was eleven or
twelve feet high, that made the whole world, and if he denied it, when
that man got hold of him he would not leave a whole bone in his body.
But he denied it. He was one of those men who would not believe further
than his vision extended.
So one day in his boat, he was rocking away when the wind suddenly arose
and he was blown out of sight of his home. After several days he was
blown so far that he saw the shores of another country. Then he said,
"My Lord; I am gone! I have been swearing all my life that there was no
other country, and here it is!" So he did his best--paddled with what
little strength he had left, reached the shore, and got out of his boat.
Sure enough, there came down a man to meet him about twelve feet high.
The poor little wretch was frightened almost to death, so he said to the
tall man as he saw him coming down: "Mister, whoever you are, I denied
your existence--I did not believe you lived; I swore there was no such
country as this; but I see I was mistaken, and I am gone. You are going
to kill me, and the quicker you do it the better and get me out of my
misery. Do it now!"
The great man just looked at the little fellow, and said nothing, till
he asked, "What are you going to do with me, because over in that other
country I denied your existence?" "What am I going to do with you?" said
the supposed God. "Now that you have got here, if you behave yourself I
am going to treat you well."