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national secular society
THE
COMING CIVILISATION
AN ADDRESS
Delivered in the Columbia Theatre, Chicago,
ON
Sunday, Appil 12, 1896
TO
The Members and Friends
OF
“THE CHURCH MILITANT”
BY
COLONEL
R. G.
INGERSOLL
London :
R. FORDER, 28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.C-
Threepence
��THE
COMING CIVILISATION
AN ADDRESS
Delivered in
the
Columbia Theatre, Chicago,
on
Sunday, April 12, 1896
TO
The Members and Friends
OF
“THE CHURCH MILITANT”
BY
COLONEL
R. G.
INGERSOLL
London :
R. FORDER, 28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
1896
��INTRODUCTION.
The address by Colonel Ingersoll, which is here reprinted for
English readers, was delivered in peculiar circumstances.
Dr. Rusk, of Chicago, formerly pastor of Fullarton-avenue
Presbyterian Church, seceded from that body, and formed an
independent organisation of his own called the Church Militant
With the avowed object of giving Christianity a secular character,
and making it influence the affairs of life. Dr. Rusk’s services
were held in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union
Temple. But when it became known that he had invited the
famous Colonel Ingersoll to address the congregation the
Women’s Union refused to let their Temple be used for the pur
pose. Dr. Rusk, however, was determined to carry out his
program, so he engaged the Columbia Theatre, and Colonel
Ingersoll’s address was delivered there on Sunday, April 12.
The building was crowded. “ Three thousand persons were
present” (according to the New York Herald), “and three
times that number endeavored to gain admission.” On the
stage were four hundred or more representative citizens, includ
ing nearly every member of the Appellate and Superior courts,
several county officials, delegations from every law college and
institution of learning in the city, and a number of retired
divines. Speaking of the character of the audience, the Chicago
Times-Herald said : “ It was cosmopolitan in composition, and
always keenly intelligent. Loungers sat beside business men ;
working men touched elbows with doctors and college pro
fessors. Faces everyone knows in Chicago were conspicuous.’
The New York Herald corroborates this. “The audience, or
congregation,” it said, “ was composed of the best element in
�4
INTRODUCTION,
Chicago, men predominating, and these representative of the
business, professional, and literary life of Chicago.”
The same journal described the service as follows : “ The
observable differences between this occasion and the service to1
be seen every Sunday morning in every church in Chicago were
few. The gathering was larger than one sees in a church ; it
assembled in a theatre, and an orchestra instead of an organ
supplied the music. That was all. There was a musical pre
lude, both vocal and instrumental, the usual invocation, and the
Lord’s Prayer. The hymn was ‘America.’ Then the service
proceeded through the usual program of scripture reading,
prayer, offerings, and announcements, to the sermon. But the
sermon was called an address.”
When Colonel Ingersoll made his appearance arm-in-arm
with Mr. Rusk, there was loud applause, mingled with murmurs
from some who seemed to regard such a demonstration as
foreign to a religious service. Dr. Rusk, in his prayer, asked
for a special blessing on their guest of the day, and on his wife
and children. In his introductory remarks, he characterised
Colonel Ingersoll as “the man who is endeavoring to do this
world good, and to make it better.”
Animosities were for once laid aside, and “ Ingersoll, said
the Times-Herald, “was as magnanimous as his audience.
Not once did he utter a word to wound the susceptibilities of
his hearers. Orator and auditors met on the common ground
of considering what can be done and should be done to uplift
humanity. There was no scoffing at religion, no jeering at
simple faith, and when the logic of the speaker’s thought roused
an echo in the hearts of his hearers, they gave him generous
meed of applause. The bursts of approval were anything but
infrequent. The audience of Christians heard from the infidel
thoughts both old and new, but all clothed in beautiful language,
to most of which they could say Amen.”
“ I have followed custom and taken a text,” said Ingersoll on
rising—“It was penned by the greatest of human beings
[Shakespeare]—a line overflowing with philosophy : ‘ There is
�INTRODUCTION.
5
no darkness but ignorance.’ Now don't hold Dr. Rusk respon
sible for my heresies, or my philosophies. I must give you my
honest thought.”
For two hours the great audience listened to “ the eloquent
denier of all that is called supernatural,” and at the close
Ingersoll said : “ I take this occasion to sincerely thank Rev.
Dr. Rusk for generously inviting me to address his congrega
tion. And so I say to him and the Militant Church, success
and long life1”
A great “ infidel ” addressing a Church Militant—or, Ingersoll
in a pulpit, as the papers headed their reports—was calculated
to excite orthodox feeling. Accordingly a number of replies
were forthcoming, including one by Dr. J. P. D. John, ex
President of De Pauw University, who took for his subject,
4<Did Man Make God, or Did God Make Man ?”
It must not be supposed, however, that Colonel Ingersoll’s
audience at the Columbia Theatre was anything exceptional in
point of numbers. He does not depend on Christian invitations
for great meetings. On the evening of the same day he had
an overflowing audience of his own at McVicker’s Theatre,
where he lectured on “ Why I am an Agnostic.”
�h
�THE COMING CIVILISATION.
Every human being is a necessary product of conditions,
and everyone is born with defects for which he cannot be
held responsible. Nature seems to care nothing for the
individual, nothing for the species. Life pursuing life, and
in its turn pursued by death, presses to the snow line of the
possible; and every form of life, of instinct, thought, and
action is fixed and determined by conditions, by countless
antecedent and co-existing facts. The present is the child,
and the necessary child, of all the past, and the mother of
all the future. Every human being longs to be happy, to
satisfy the wants of the body with food, with roof and
raiment, and to feed the hunger of the mind, according to
his capacity, with love, wisdom, philosophy, art, and song.
The wants of the savage are few; but with civilisation the
wants of the body increase, the intellectual horizon widens,
and the brain demands more and more. The savage feels,
but scarcely thinks. The passion of the savage is unin
fluenced by his thought, while the thought of the philosopher
is uninfluenced by passion. Children have wants and
passions before they are capable of reasoning. So, in the
infancy of the race, wants and passions dominate.
The savage was controlled by appearances, by impres
sions ; he was mentally weak, mentally indolent, and his
mind pursued the path of least resistance. Things were to
him as they appeared to be. He was a natural believer in
the supernatural, and, finding himself beset by dangers and
�8
THE COMING CIVILISATION.
evils, he sought in many ways the aid of unseen powers.
His children followed his example, and for many ages, in
many lands, millions and millions of human beings, many
of them the kindest and the best, asked for supernatural
help. Countless altars and temples have been built, and the
supernatural has been worshipped with sacrifice and song,
with self-denial, ceremony, thankfulness, and prayer. During
all these ages the brain of man was being slowly and pain
fully developed. Gradually mind came to the assistance of
muscle, and thought became the friend of labor. Man has
advanced just in the proportion that he has mingled thought
with his work, just in the proportion that he has succeeded
in getting his head and hands into partnership. All this
was the result of experience.
Nature, generous and heartless, extravagant and miserly
as she is, is our mother and our only teacher, and she is
also the deceiver of men. Above her we cannot rise, below
her we cannot fall. In her we find the seed and soil of all
that is good, of all that is evil. Nature originates, nourishes,
preserves, and destroys. Good deeds bear fruit, and in the
fruit are seeds that in their turn bear fruit and seeds. Great
thoughts are never lost, and words of kindness do not
perish from the earth. Every brain is a field where nature
sows the seeds of thought, and the crop depends upon the
soil. Every flower that gives its fragrance to the wandering
air leaves its influence on the soul of man. The wheel and
swoop of the winged creatures of the air suggest the flowing
lines of subtle art. The roar and murmur of the restless
sea, the cataract’s solemn chant, the thunder’s voice, the
happy babble of the brook, the whispering leaves, the thril
ling notes of mating birds, the sighing winds, taught man to
pour his heart in song, and gave a voice to grief and hope,
to love and death. In all that is, in mountain range and
billowed plain, in winding stream and desert sand, in cloud
and star, in snow and rain, in calm and storm, in night and
day, in woods and vales, in all the colors of divided light,
�THE COMING CIVILISATION.
9
in all there is of growth and life, decay and death, in all
that flies and floats and swims, in all that moves, in all the
forms and qualities of things, man found the seeds and
symbols of his thoughts, and all that man has wrought
becomes a part of nature’s self, forming the lives of those to
be. The marbles of the Greeks, like strains of music,
suggest the perfect and teach the melody of life. The great
poems, paintings, inventions, theories, and philosophies
enlarge and mould the mind of man. All that is is natural.
All is naturally produced. Beyond the horizon of the natural
man cannot go.
Yet, for many ages, man in all directions has relied upon,
and sincerely believed in, the existence of the supernatural.
He did not believe in the uniformity of nature. He had
no conception of cause and effect, of the indestructibility
of force. In medicine he believed in charms, magic,
amulets, and incantations. It never occurred to the savage
that diseases were natural. In chemistry he sought for the
elixir of life, for the philosopher’s stone, and for some way
of changing the baser metals into gold. In mechanics he
searched for perpetual motion, believing that he, by some
curious combination of levers, could produce, could create
a force. In government he found the source of authority
in the will of the supernatural. For many centuries his only
conception of morality was the idea of obedience j not to
facts as they exist in nature, but to the supposed command
of some being superior to nature. During all these years
religion consisted in the praise and worship of the invisible
and infinite, of some vast and incomprehensible power;
that is to say, of the supernatural.
By experience, by experiment, possibly by accident, man
found that some diseases could be cured by natural means ;
that he could be relieved in many instances of pain by
certain kinds of leaves or bark. This was the beginning.
Gradually his confidence increased in the direction of the
natural, and began to decrease in charms and amulets.
�IO
THE COMING CIVILISATION.
The war was waged for many centuries, but the natural
gained the victory. Now we know that all diseases are
naturally produced, and that all remedies, all curatives, act
in accordance with the facts in nature. Now we know that
charms, magic, amulets, and incantations are just as useless
in the practice of medicine as they would be in solving a
problem in mathematics. We now know that there are no
supernatural remedies. In chemistry the war was long and
bitter ; but we now no longer seek for the elixir of life, and
no one is trying to find the philosopher’s stone. We are
satisfied that there is nothing supernatural in all the realm
of chemistry. We know that substances are always true to
their natures; we know that just so many atoms of one
substance will unite with just so many of another. The
miraculous has departed from chemistry; in that science
there is no magic, no caprice, and no possible use for the
supernatural. We are satisfied that there can be no changej
that we can absolutely rely on the uniformity of nature;
that the attraction of gravity will always remain the same,
and we feel that we know this as certainly as we know that
the relation between the diameter and circumference of a
circle can never change. We now know that in mechanics
the natural is supreme. We know that man can by no
possibility create a force ; that by no possibility can he
destroy a force. No mechanic dreams of depending upon,
or asking for, any supernatural aid. He knows that he
works in accordance with certain facts that no power can
change.
So we in the United States believe that the authority to
govern, the authority to make and execute laws, comes from
the consent of the governed, and not from any supernatural
source. We do not believe that the king occupied his
throne because of the will of the supernatural. Neither do
we believe that others are subjects or serfs or slaves by
reason of any supernatural will. So our ideas of morality
have changed, and millions now believe that whatever pro
�THE COMING CIVILISATION.
II
duces happiness and well-being is in the highest sense
moral. Unreasoning obedience is not the foundation or the
essence of morality. That is the result of mental slavery.
To act in accordance with obligation perceived is to be free
and noble. To simply obey is to practise what might be
called a slave virtue ; but real morality is the flower and
fruit of liberty and wisdom. There are very many who have
reached the conclusion that the supernatural has nothing to
do with real religion. Religion does not consist in believing
without evidence or against evidence. It does not consist
in worshipping the unknown, or in trying to do something
for the infinite. Ceremonies, prayers, and inspired booksj
miracles, special providence, and divine interference, all
belong to the supernatural, and form no part of real religion.
Every science rests on the natural, on demonstrated facts.
So morality and religion must find their foundations in the
necessary nature of things.
Ignorance being darkness, what we need is intellectual
light. The most important things to teach as the basis of
all progress is that the universe is natural; that man must
be the providence of man ; that by the development of the
brain we can avoid some of the dangers, some of the evilsj
overcome some of the obstructions, and take advantage of
some of the facts and forces of nature; that by invention
and industry we can supply, to a reasonable degree, the
wants of the body; and by thought, study, and effort we
can in part satisfy the hunger of the mind. Man should
cease to expect any aid from any supernatural source. By
this time he should be satisfied that worship has not
created wealth, and that prosperity is not the child of
prayer. He should know that the supernatural has not
succored the oppressed, clothed the naked, fed the hungry,
shielded the innocent, stayed the pestilence, or freed the
slave. Being satisfied that the supernatural does not exist,
man should turn his entire attention to the affairs of this
world, to the facts in nature.
�12
THE COMING CIVILISATION.
And, first of all, he should avoid waste—waste of energy,
waste of wealth. Every good man, every good woman,
should try to do away with war, and stop the appeal to
savage force. Man in a savage state relies upon his strength,
and decides for himself what is right and what is wrong.
Civilised men do not settle their differences by a resort to
arms. They submit the quarrel to arbitrators and courts.
This is the great difference between the savage and the
civilised. Nations, however, sustain the relations of savages
to each other. There is no way of settling their disputes.
Each nation decides for itself, and each nation endeavors
to carry its decision into effect. This produces war.
Thousands of men at this moment are trying to invent more
deadly weapons to destroy their fellow men. For 1,800
years peace has been preached, and yet the civilised nations
are the most warlike of the world. There are in Europe to
day between 11,000,000 and 12,000,000 soldiers ready to
take the field, and the frontiers of every civilised nation are
protected by breastwork and fort. The sea is covered with
steel-clad ships filled with missiles of death. The civilised
world has impoverished itself, and the debt of Christendom,
mostly for war, is now nearly $30,000,000,000. The interest
on this vast sum has to be paid. It has to be paid by labor
—much of it by the poor—by those who are compelled to
deny themselves almost the necessities of life. This debt is
growing year by year. There must come a change, or
Christendom will become bankrupt.
The interest on this debt amounts at least to $900,000,000
a year, and the cost of supporting armies and navies, of
repairing ships, of manufacturing new engines of death, pro
bably amounts, including the interest on the debt, to at
least $6,000,000 a day. Allowing ten hours for a day—that
is, for a working day—the waste of war is at least $600,000
an hour—that is to say, $10,000 a minute. Think of all
this being paid for the purpose of killing and preparing to
kill our fellow men. Think of the good that could be done
�THE COMING CIVILISATION.
13
with this vast sum of money—the schools that could be
built, the wants that could be supplied. Think of the
homes it would build, the children it would clothe. If we
wish to do away with war, we must provide for the settle
ment of national differences by an international court. This
court should be in perpetual session, its members should be
selected by the various governments to be affected by its
decisions ; and, at the command and disposal of this court,
the rest of Christendom being disarmed, there should be a
military force sufficient to carry its judgments into effect.
There should be no other excuse, no other business for an
army or a navy in the civilised world. No man has
imagination enough to paint the agonies, the horrors, and
cruelties of war. Think of sending shot and shell crashing
through the bodies of men ! Think of the widows and
orphans ! Think of the maimed, the mutilated, the mangled!
Let us be perfectly candid with each other. We are
seeking the truth, trying to find what ought to be done to
increase the well-being of man. I must give you my honest
thought. You have the right to demand it, and I must
maintain the integrity of my soul. There is another direc
tion in which the wealth and energies of man are wasted.
From the beginning of history until now man has been
seeking the aid of the supernatural. For many centuries
the wealth of the world was used to propitiate the unseen
powers. In our own country the property dedicated to this
purpose is worth at least $1,000,000,000. The interest on
this sum is $50,000,000 a year, and the cost of employing
persons whose business it is to seek the aid of the super
natural, and to maintain the property, is certainly as much
more. So that the cost in our country is about $2,000,000
a week, and, counting ten hours as a working day, this
amounts to about $500 a minute. For this vast amount of
money the returns are remarkably small. The good accom
plished does not appear to be great. There is no great
diminution in crime. The decrease of immorality and
�14
THE COMING CIVILISATION.
poverty is hardly perceptible. In spite, however, of the
apparent failure here, a vast sum of money is expended
every year to carry our ideas of the supernatural to other
races. Our churches, for the most part, are closed during
the week, being used only a part of one day in seven. No
one wishes to destroy churches or church organisations.
The only desire is that they shall accomplish substantial
good for the world.
In many of our small towns—towns of 3,000 or 4,000
people—will be found four or five churches, sometimes
more. These churches are founded upon immaterial differ
ences, a difference as to the mode of baptism, a difference
as to who shall be entitled to partake of the Lord’s supper,
a difference of ceremony, of government, a difference about
fore-ordination, a difference about fate and freewill. And it
must be admitted that all the arguments on all sides of these
differences have been presented countless millions of times.
Upon these subjects nothing new is produced or anticipated,
and yet the discussion is maintained hy the repetition of the
old arguments. Now it seems to me that it would be far
better for the people of a town, having a population of 4,000
or 5,000, to have one church, and the edifice should be of
use not only on Sunday, but on every day of the week. In
this building should be the library of the town. It should
be the clubhouse of the people, where they could find the
principal newspapers and periodicals of the world. Its
auditorium should be like a theatre. Plays should be pre
sented by home talent, an orchestra formed, music culti
vated. The people should meet there at any time they
desire. The women could carry their knitting and sewing,
and connected with it should be rooms for the playing of
games, billiards, cards, and chess. Everything should be
made as agreeable as possible. The citizens should take
pride in this building. They should adorn its niches with
statues and its walls with pictures. It should be the intel
lectual centre.
�THE COMING CIVILISATION.
15
They could employ a gentleman of ability, possibly of
genius, to address them on Sundays on subjects that would
be of real interest, of real importance. They could say to
this minister: “We are engaged in business during the
week. While we are working at our trades and professions
we want you to study, and on Sunday tell us what you have
found out.” Let such a minister take for a series of sermons
the history, the philosophy of the art and the genius of
the Greeks. Let him tell of the wondrous metaphysics,
myths, and religions of India and Egypt. Let him make his
congregation conversant with the philosophies of the world,
with the great thinkers, the great poets, the great artists,
the great actors, the great orators, the great inventors, the
captains of industry, the soldiers of progress. Let them have
a Sunday school in which the children shall be made
acquainted with the facts of nature, with botany, ento
mology, something of geology and astronomy. Let them be
made familiar with the greatest of poems, the finest para
graphs of literature, with stories of the heroic, the self-deny
ing, and generous. Now, it seems to me that such a con
gregation in a few years would become the most intelligent
people in the United States.
The truth is that people are tired of the old theories.
They have lost confidence in the miraculous, in the super
natural, and they have ceased to take interest in “ facts ”
that they do not quite believe. “ There is no darkness but
ignorance.” There is no light but intelligence. As often
as we can exchange a mistake for a fact, a falsehood for a
truth, we advance, We add to the intellectual wealth of
the world, and in this way, and in this way alone, can be
laid the foundation for the future prosperity and civilisation
of the race. I blame no one. I call in question the motives
of no person ; I admit that the world has acted as it must.
But hope for the future depends upon the intelligence of the
present. Man must husband his resources. He must not
waste his energies in endeavoring to accomplish the impos
�i6
THE COMING CIVILISATION.
sible. He must take advantage of the forces of nature. He
must depend on education, on what-he can ascertain by
the use of his senses, by observation, by experiment and
reason. He must break the chains of prejudice and custom.
He must be free to express his thoughts on all questions.
He must find the conditions of happiness, and become wise
enough to live in accordance with them.
In spite of all that has been done for the reformation of
the world, in spite of all the inventions, in spite of all the
forces of nature that are now the tireless slaves of man, in
spite of all improvements in agriculture, in mechanics, in
every department of human labor, the world is still cursed
with poverty and with crime. The prisons are full, the
courts are crowded, the officers of the law are busy, and
there seems to be no material decrease in crime. For many
thousands of years man has endeavored to reform his
fellow men by imprisonment, torture, mutilation, and death,
and yet the history of the world shows that there has been,
and is, no reforming power in punishment. It is impossible
to make the penalty great enough, horrible enough, to lessen
crime. Only a few years ago, in civilised countries, larceny
and many offences even below larceny were punished by death,
and yet the number of thieves and criminals of all grades
increased. Traitors were hanged and quartered, or drawn
into fragments by horses, and yet treason flourished. Most
of these frightful laws have been repealed, and the repeal
certainly did not increase crime. In our own country we
rely upon the gallows, the penitentiary, and the gaol. When
a murder is committed the man is hanged, shocked to death
by electricity, or lynched, and in a few minutes a new
murderer is ready to suffer a like fate. Men steal. They
are sent to the penitentiary for a certain number of years,
treated like wild beasts, frequently tortured. At the end of
the term they are discharged, having only enough money to
return to the place from which they were sent. They are
thrown upon the world without means, without friends—
�THE COMING CIVILISATION.
17
they are convicts. They are shunned, suspected, and des
pised. If they obtain a place, they are discharged as soon
as it is found that they were in prison. They do the best
they can to retain the respect of their fellow men by deny
ing their imprisonment and their identity. In a little while,
unable to gain a living by honest means, they resort to crime,
they again appear in court, and again are taken within the
dungeon walls. No reformation, no chance to reform,
nothing to give them bread while making new friends.
All this is infamous. Men should not be sent to the
penitentiary as a punishment, because we must remember
that men do as they must. Nature does not frequently
produce the perfect. In the human race there is a large
percentage of failures. Under certain conditions, with
certain appetites and passions, and with certain quality,
quantity, and shape of brain, men will become thieves,
forgers, and counterfeiters. The question is whether re
formation is possible, whether a change can be produced in
the person by producing a change in the conditions. The
criminal is dangerous, and society has the right to protect
itself. The criminal should be confined, and, if possible,
should be reformed. A penitentiary should be a school;
the convicts should be educated. So prisoners should work,
and they should be paid a reasonable sum for their labor.
The best men should have charge of prisons. They should
be philanthropists and philosophers; they should know
something of human nature. The prisoner, having been
taught, we will say, for five years—taught the underlying
principles of conduct, of the naturalness and harmony of
virtue, of the discord of crime ; having been convinced that
society has no hatred, that nobody wishes to punish, to
degrade, or to rob him, and being at the time of his dis
charge paid a reasonable price for his labor; being allowed
by law to change his name so that his identity will not be
preserved, he could go out of the prison a friend of the
government. He would have the feeling that he had been
�THE COMING CIVILISATION.
made a better man ; that he had been treated with justice,
with mercy; and the money he carried with him would be
a. breastwork behind which he could defy temptation—a
breastwork that would support and take care of him until
he could find some means by which to support himself.
And this man, instead of making crime a business, would
become a good, honorable, and useful citizen.
, As it is now, there is but little reform. The same faces
appear again and again at the bar; the same men hear
again and again the verdict of guilty and the sentence of
the court, and the same men return again and again to the
prison cell. Murderers, those belonging to the dangerous
classes, those who are so formed by nature that they rush
to the crimes of desperation, should be imprisoned for life,
or they should be put upon some island, some place where
they can be guarded, where it may be that, by proper effort,
they could support themselves ; the men on one island, the
women on another. And to these islands should be sent
professional criminals—those who have deliberately adopted
a life of crime for the purpose of supporting themselves—
the women upon one island, the men upon another. Such
people should not populate the earth.
Neither the diseases nor the deformities of the mind or
body should be perpetuated ; life at the fountain should
not be polluted..
The home is the unit of the nation. The more homes,
the broader the foundation of the nation and the more
secure. Everything that is possible should be done to keep
this from being a nation of tenants. The men who culti
vate the earth should own it. Something has already been
done in our country in that direction, and probably in
every State there is a homestead exemption. This exemp
tion has thus far done no harm to the creditor class. When
we imprisoned people for debt, debts were as insecure, to
say the least, as now. By the homestead laws a home of
a certain value or of a certain extent is exempt from forced
�THE COMING CIVILISATION.
19
levy or sale, and these laws have done great good. Un
doubtedly they have trebled the homes of the nation. I
wish to go a step farther; I want, if possible, to get the
people out of the tenements, out of the gutters of degrada
tion, to homes where there can be privacy, where these
people can feel that they are in partnership with nature;
that they have an interest in good government. With the
means we now have of transportation there is no necessity
for poor people being huddled in festering masses in the
vile, filthy, and loathsome parts of cities, where poverty
breeds rags and the rags breed diseases. I would exempt
a homestead of a reasonable value, say of the value of
$2,000 or $3,000, not only from sale under execution, but
from sale for taxes of every description. These homes
-should be absolutely exempt. They should belong to the
family, so that every mother should feel that the roof above
her head was hers, that her house was her oastle, and that
in its possession she could not be disturbed, even by the
nation. Under certain conditions I would allow the sale
for a certain time, during which they might be invested in
another home ; and all this could be done to make a nation
of householders, a nation of landowners, a nation of home
builders.
I would invoke the same power to preserve these homes,
and to acquire these homes, that I would invoke for acquir
ing lands for building railways. Every State should fix the
amount of land that could be owned by an individual, not
liable to be taken from him for the purpose of giving a
home to another ; and, when any man owned more acres
than the law allowed, and another should ask to purchase
them, and he should refuse, I would have the law so that
the person wishing to purchase could file his petition in
court. The court would appoint commissioners, or a jury
would be called to determine the value of the land the
petitioner wished for a home ; and, upon the amount being
paid, found by such commission or jury, the land should
�20
THE COMING CIVILISATION.
vest absolutely in the petitioner. This right of eminent
domain should be used not only for the benefit of the
person wishing a home, but for the benefit of all the people.
Nothing is more important to America than that the
babes of America should be born around the firesides of
homes.
There is another question in which I take great interest,
and it ought, in my judgment, to be answered by the
intelligence and kindness of our century. We all know
that for many, many ages men have been slaves, and we all
know that during all these years women have, to some
extent, been the slaves of slaves. It is of the utmost im
portance to the human race that women, that mothers,
should be free. Without doubt the contract of marriage is
the most important and the most sacred that human beings
can make. Marriage is the most important of all institu
tions. Of course the ceremony of marriage is not the real
marriage. It is only evidence of the mutual flames that
burn within. There can be no real marriage without mutual
love. So I believe in the ceremony of marriage; that it
should be public; that records should be kept. Besides,
the ceremony says to all the world that those who marry
are in love with each other. Then arises the question of
divorce. Millions of people imagine that the married are
joined together by some supernatural power, and that they
should remain together, or at least married, during life. If
all who have been married were joined together by the
supernatural, we must admit that the supernatural is not
infinitely wise.
After all, marriage is a contract, and the parties to the
contract are bound to keep its provisions, and neither
should be released from such a contract unless in some
way the interests of society are involved. I would have the
law so that any husband could obtain a divorce when the
wife had persistently and flagrantly violated the contract,
such divorce to be granted on equitable terms. I would
�THE COMING CIVILISATION.
21
■give the wife a divorce if she requested it, if she wanted it.
And I would do this, not only for her sake, but for the sake
of the community, of the nation. All children should be
children of love. All that are born should be sincerely
welcomed. The children of mothers who dislike or hate or
loathe the fathers will fill the world with insanity and crime.
No woman should by law or by public opinion be forced to
live with a man whom she abhors. There is no danger of
demoralising the world through divorce. Neither is there
any danger of destroying in the human heart that divine
thing called love. As long as the human race exists,
men and women will love each other, and just so long
there will be true and perfect marriage. Slavery is not
the soil or rain of virtue.
I make a difference between granting divorce to a man
and to a woman, and for this reason : A woman dowers her
husband with her youth and beauty. He should not be
allowed to desert her because she has grown wrinkled and old.
Her capital is gone, her prospects in life lessened ; while, on
the contrary, he may be far better able to succeed than when
he married her. As a rule, the man can take care of him
self; and, as a rule, the woman needs help. So I would not
allow him to cast her off unless she had flagrantly violated
the contract. But for the sake of the community, and
especially for the sake of the babes, I would give her a
divorce for the asking. There will never be a generation of
great men until there has been a generation of free women—
of free mothers. The tenderest word in our language is
maternity. In that word is the divine mingling of ecstasy
and agony, of love and self sacrifice. This word is holy.
There has been for many years ceaseless discussion upon
what is called the labor question—the conflict between the
working man and the capitalist. Many ways have been
devised, some experiments have been tried, for the purpose of
solving this question. Profit-sharing would not work,
because it is impossible to share profits with those who are
�22
THE COMING CIVILISATION.
incapable of sharing losses. Communities have been
formed, the object being to pay the expenses and share the
profits among all the persons belonging to the society. Forthe
most part these have failed. Others have advocated arbitra
tion, and, while it may be that the employers could be bound
by the decision of the arbitrators, there has been no way dis
covered by which the employees could be held by such
decision. In other words, the question has not been solved.
For my own part, I see no final and satisfactory solution
except through the civilisation of employers and employed.
The question is so complicated, the ramifications are so
countless, that a solution by law or by force seems at least
improbable. Employers are supposed to pay according to
their profits. They may or may not. Profits may be
destroyed by competition. The employer is at the mercy
of other employers, and as much so as his employees are at
his mercy. The employers cannot govern prices, they can
not fix demand, they cannot control supply, and, at present,,
in the world of trade, the laws of supply and demand
except when interfered with by conspiracy, are in absolute
control.
Will the time arrive, and can it arrive, except by deve
loping the brain, except by the aid of intellectual light, when
the purchaser will wish to give what a thing is worth, when
the employer will be satisfied with a reasonable profit, when
the employer will be anxious to give the real value for raw
material, when he will be really anxious to pay the laborer
the full value of his labor ? Will the employer ever become
civilised enough to know that the law of supply and demand
should not absolutely apply in the labor market of the world?'
Will he ever become civilised enough not to take advantage
of the necessities of the poor, of the hunger and rags and
want of poverty ? Will he ever become civilised enough to
say : “ I will pay the man who labors for me enough to give
him a reasonable support, enough for him to assist in taking
care of wife and children, enough for him to do this and lay
�THE COMING CIVILISATION.
23
aside something to feed and clothe him when old age comes,
to lay aside something, enough to give him house and
hearth during the December of his life, so that he can warm
his worn and shrivelled hands at the fire of home ” ? Of
course, capital can do nothing without the assistance of
labor. All there is of value in the world is the product of
labor. The laboring man pays all the expenses. No matter
whether taxes are laid on luxuries or on the necessaries of
life, labor pays every cent.
So we must remember that, day by day, labour is becom
ing intelligent. So I believe the employer is gradually
becoming civilised, gradually becoming kinder, and many
men who have made large fortunes from the labor of their
fellows have given of their millions to what they regarded
as objects of charity, or for the interests of education. This
is a kind of penance, because the men that have made their
money from the brain and muscle of their fellow men have
ever felt that it was not quite their own.
Many of these employers have sought to balance their
accounts by leaving something for universities or the estab
lishment of libraries, drinking fountains, or to build monu
ments to departed greatness. It would have been, I
think, far better had they used this money to better the con
dition of the men who really earned it. So I think that, when
we become civilised, great corporations will make provision
for men who have given their lives to their service. I think
the great railroads should pay pensions to their worn-out
employees. They should take care of them in old age.
They should not maim and wear out their servants} and then
discharge them and allowthem to be supported in poorhouses.
These great companies should take care of the men they
maim ; they should look out for the ones whose lives they
have used, and whose labor has been the foundation of
their prosperity. Upon this question public sentiment
should be aroused to such a degree that these corporations
would be ashamed to use a human life, and then throw
�24
THE COMING CIVILISATION.
away the broken old man as they would cast aside a rotten
tie. It may be that the mechanics, the working men, will
finally become intelligent enough to really unite to act in
absolute concert.
Could this be accomplished, then
a reasonable rate of compensation could be fixed and
enforced. Now such efforts are local, and the result
up to this time has been failure. But, if all could unite,
they could obtain what is reasonable, what is just, and
they would have the sympathy of a very large majority of
their fellow men, provided they were reasonable.
But before they can act in this way they must become
really intelligent, intelligent enough to know what is reason
able, and honest enough to ask for no more. So much has
already been accomplished for the working man that I have
hope, and great hope, for the future. The hours of labor
have been shortened, and materially shortened, in many
countries. There was a time when men worked fifteen and
sixteen hours a day. Now generally a day’s work is not
longer than ten hours, and the tendency is to still further
decrease the hours. By comparing long periods of time we
more clearly perceive the advance that has been made.
In i860 the average amount earned by the labouring men,
workmen, mechanics per year was about $285. It is now
about $500, and $1 to-day will purchase more of the
necessaries of life, more food, clothing, and fuel, than it
would in i860. These facts are full of hope for the future.
All our sympathies should be with the men who work, who
toil, for the women who labor for themselves and children,
because we know that labour is the foundation of all, and
that those who labor are the caryatids that support the
structure and glittering dome of civilisation and progress.
Every child should be taught to be self-supporting, and
every one should be taught to avoid being a burden on
others as it would shun death. Every child should be
taught that the useful are the honorable, and that they
who live on the labor of others are the enemies of society.
�THE COMING CIVILISATION.
25
Every child should be taught that useful work is worship,
and that intelligent labor is the highest form of prayer.
Children should be taught to think, to investigate, to rely
upon the light of reason, of observation, and experience ;
should be taught to use all their senses, and they should be
taught only that which in some sense is really useful.
They should be taught the use of tools, to use their hands
to embody their thoughts in the construction of things.
Their lives should not be wasted in the acquisition of the
useless or of the almost useless. Years should not be
devoted to the acquisition of dead languages, or to the study
of history, which, for the most part, is a detailed account of
things that never occurred. It is useless to fill the mind
with dates of great battles, with the births and deaths of
kings. They should be taught the philosophy of history,
the growth of nations, of philosophies, theories, and, above
all, of the sciences.
So they should be taught the importance, not only of
financial, but of mental honesty ; to be absolutely sincere ;
to utter their real thoughts, and to give their actual opinions
and if parents want honest children, they should be honest
themselves. It may be that hypocrites transmit that failing
to their offspring. Men and women who pretend to agree
with the majority, who think one way and talk another, can
hardly expect their children to be absolutely sincere.
Nothing should be taught in any school that the teacher
does not know. Beliefs, superstitions, theories, should not
be treated like demonstrated facts. The child should be
taught to investigate, not to believe. Too much doubt is
better than too much credulity. So children should be
taught that it is their duty to think for themselves, to under
stand, and, if possible, to know. Real education is the
hope of the future. The development of the brain, the civi
lisation of the heart, will drive want and crime from the
world. The school-house is the. real cathedral, and science
the only possible savior of the human race. Education, real
�2Ô
THE COMING CIVILISATION.
education, is the friend of honesty, of morality, of temper
ance.
We cannot rely upon legislative enactments to make
people wise and good; neither can we expect to make
human beings manly and womanly by keeping them out of
temptation. Temptations are as thick as the leaves of the
forest, and no one can be out of the reach of temptation
unless he is dead. The great thing is to make people
intelligent enough and strong enough not to keep away
from temptation, but to resist it.
All the forces of
civilisation are in favor of morality and temperance. Little
can be accomplished by lawr, because law, for the most
part, about such things is a destruction of personal liberty.
Liberty cannot be sacrificed for the sake of temperance, for
the sake of morality, or for the sake of anything. It is of
more value than everything else. Yet some people would
destroy the sun to prevent the growth of weeds. Liberty
sustains the same relation to all the virtues that the sun
does to life. The world had better go back to barbarism,
to the dens, the caves, and lairs of savagery—-better lose all
art, all inventions, than to lose liberty. Liberty is the
breath of progress ; it is the seed and soil, the heat and rain
of love and joy. So all should be taught that the highest
ambition is to be happy and to add to the well-being of
others; that place and power are not necessary to success ;
that the desire to acquire great wealth is a kind of insanity.
They should be taught that it is a waste of energy, a waste
of thought, a waste of life, to acquire what you do not need,
and what you do not really use, for the benefit of yourself
and others.
Neither mendicants nor millionaires are the happiest of
mankind. The man at the bottom of the ladder hopes to
rise; the man at the top fears to fall. The one asks, the
other refuses, and by frequent refusal the heart becomes
hard enough and the hand greedy enough to clutch and
hold. Few men have intelligence enough, real greatness
�THE COMING CIVILISATION.
27
enough, to own a great fortune. As a rule, the fortune
owns them. Their fortune is their master, for whom they
work and toil like slaves. The man who has a good busi
ness and who can make a reasonable living and lay aside
something for the future, who can educate his children and
can leave enough to keep the wolf of want from the door of
those he loves, ought to be the happiest of men. Now
society bows and kneels at the feet of wealth. Wealth gives
power, wealth commands flattery and adulation, and so
millions of men give all their energies, as well as their very
souls, for the acquisition of gold ; and this will continue as
long as society is ignorant enough and hypocritical enough
to hold in high esteem the man of wealth without the
slightest regard to the character of the man.
In judging of the rich two things should be considered .
How did they get it, and what are they doing with it? Was
it honestly acquired ? Is it being used for the benefit of
mankind ? When people become really intelligent, when the
brain is really developed, no human being will give his life
to the acquisition of what he does not need, or what he can
not intelligently use. The time will come when the truly
intelligent man cannot be happy, cannot be satisfied, when
millions of his fellow men are hungry and naked; the time
will come when in every heart will be the perfume of pity’s
sacred flower; the time will come when the world will be
anxious to ascertain the truth, to find out the conditions of
happiness, and to live in accordance with such conditions ;
and the time will come when in the brain of every human
being will be the climate of intellectual hospitality. Man
will be civilised when the passions are dominated by the
intellectual, when reason occupies the throne, and when the
hot blood of passion no longer rises in successful revolt.
To civilise the world, to hasten the coming of the golden
dawn of the perfect day, we must educate the children ; we
must commence at the cradle, at the lap of the loving
mother.
�28
THE COMING CIVILISATION.
The reforms that I have mentioned cannot be accom
plished in a day, possibly not for many centuries, and
in the meantime there is much crime, much poverty,
much want, and, consequently, something must be done
now.
Let each human being within the limits of the possible
be self-supporting; let every one take intelligent thought
for the morrow, and if a human being supports himself and
acquires a surplus let him use a part of that surplus for the
unfortunate, and let each one to the extent of his ability
help his fellow men. Let him do what he can in the circle
of his own acquaintance to rescue the fallen, to help those
who are trying to help themselves, to give work to the idle.
Let him distribute kind words, words of wisdom, of cheer
fulness, and hope. In other words, let every human being
do all the good he can, and let him bind up the wounds of
his fellow creatures, and at the same time put forth every
effort to hasten the coming of a better day.
This, in my judgment, is real religion. To do all the
good you can is to be a saint in the highest and in the
noblest sense. To do all the good you can—this is to be
really and truly spiritual. To relieve suffering, to put the
star of hope in the midnight of despair—this is true holi*
ness. This is the religion of science. The old creeds are
too narrow; they are not for the world in which we live.
The old dogmas lack breadth and tenderness ; they are too
cruel, too merciless, too savage. We are growing grander
and nobler. The firmament inlaid with suns is the dome
of the real cathedral. The interpreters of nature are the
true and only priests. In the great creed are all the truths
that lips have uttered, and in the real Litany will be found
all the ecstasies and aspirations of the soul, all dreams of
joy, all hopes for nobler, fuller life. The real church, the
real edifice, is adorned and glorified with all that art has
done. In the real choir is all the thrilling music of
the world, and in the starlit aisles have been, and are, the
�THE COMING CIVILISATION.
29
grandest souls of every land and clime. “ There is no dark
ness but ignorance.” Let us flood the world with intel
lectual light.
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The coming civilisation : an address delivered in the Columbia Theatre, Chicago, on Sunday, April 12,1896, to the members and friends of "The Church Militant"
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1896]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 29, [3] p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: "The Church Militant" was an organisation formed by the former Presbyterian pastor Dr Rusk, "with the avowed object of giving Christianity a secular character, and making it influence the affairs of life."--Introd. No. 36e in Stein checklist. Publisher's list and advertisements on unnumbered pages at the end. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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R. Forder
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1896
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N327
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Free thought
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The coming civilisation : an address delivered in the Columbia Theatre, Chicago, on Sunday, April 12,1896, to the members and friends of "The Church Militant"), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Civilization
Free Thought
NSS
Religion
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CREEDS
AND
SPIRITUALITY
ROBERT C. INGERSOLL.
---------------- 4----------------
Price One Penny.
/
LONDON :
PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28’ Stonecutter Street, E.O.
1891.
*.
»>
�CREEDS.
(From the “ New York Morning Advertiser.”)
[Whateveb may be said of his belief in revealed religion,
Robert G. Ingersoll is respected by all intellectual antagonists
for thorough sincerity, absolute fairness in debate, and un
questionable ability in ti.e presentation of his argument.
His views, therefore, on the recent attitude of the general
assembly at Detroit in the case of Dr. Briggs, the alleged
heretical utterances of the Rev. Heber Newton, and the
desertion of one creed for another by the Rev. Dr. Bridgman,
are of peculiar interest just at this time. Colonel Ingersoll
has just returned from a trip through the west, and in speaking
of these incidents, he said :—]
There is a natural desire on the part of every intelli
gent human being to harmonise his information—to
make his theories agree—in other words, to make what
he knows, or thinks he knows, in one department
agree with, and harmonise with, what he knows, or
thinks he knows, in every other department of human
knowledge.
The human race has not advanced in line, neither
has it advanced in all departments with the same
rapidity. It is with the race as it is with an individual.
A man may turn his entire attention to some one
subject—as, for instance, to geology—and neglect other
sciences. He may be a good geologist, but an exceed
ingly poor astronomer ; or he may know nothing of
politics or of political economy. So he may be a
successful statesman and know nothing of theology.
But if a man, successful in one direction, takes up
some other question, he is bound to use the knowledge
he has on one subject as a kind of standard to measure
what he is told on some other subject. If he is a
chemist, it will be natural for him, when studying
some other question, to use what he knows in chemistry ;
that is to say, he will expect to find cause, and every
where succession and resemblance. He will say : It
�( 3 )
must be in all other sciences as in chemistry—there
must be no chance. The elements have no caprice.
Iron is always the same. Gold does not change.
Prussic acid is always poison—it has no freaks. So he
will reason as to all facts in nature. He will be a
believer in the atomic integrity of all matter, in the
persistence of gravitation. Being so trained, and so
convinced, his tendency will be to weigh what is
called new information in the same scales that he has
been using.
Now for the application of this. Progress in reli
gion is the slowest, because man is kept back by
sentimentality, by the efforts of parents, by old asso
ciations. A thousand unseen tendrils are twining
about him that he must necessarily break if he
advances. In other departments of knowledge induce
ments are held out and rewards are promised to the
one who does succeed—to the one who really does
advance—to the man who discovers new facts. But in
religion, instead of rewards being promised, threats are
made. The man is told that he must not advance ;
that if he takes a step forward it is at the peril of his
soul; that if he thinks and investigates, he is in danger
of exciting the wrath of God. Consequently religion
has been of the slowest growth. Now, in most depart
ments of knowledge man has advanced ; and coming
back to the original statement—a desire to harmonise
all that we know—there is a growing desire on the
part of intelligent men to have a religion fit to keep
company with the other sciences.
THE MAKING OF CREEDS.
Our creeds were made in times of ignorance. They
suited very well a flat world, and a God who lived in
the sky just above us, and who used the lightning to
destroy his enemies. This God was regarded much as
a savage regarded the head of his tribe—as one having
the right to reward and punish. And this God, being
much greater than a chief of the tribe, could give
greater rewards and inflict greater punishments. They
knew that the ordinary chief, or the ordinary king,
punished the slightest offences with death. They also
knew that these chiefs and kings tortured their victims
�( 4 )
as long as the victims could bear the torture. So when
they described their God, they gave to this God power
to keep the tortured victim alive for ever, because they
knew that the earthly chief, or the earthly king, would
prolong the life of the tortured for the sake of increas
ing the agonies of the victim. In those savage days
they regarded punishment as the only means of pro
tecting society. In consequence of this they built
heaven and hell on an earthly plan, and they put God
—that is to say, the chief, that is to say, the king—on
a throne-like an earthly king.
Of course, these views were all ignorant and
barbaric ; but in that blessed day their geology and
astronomy were on a par with their theology. There
was a harmony in all departments of knowledge, or
rather of ignorance. Since that time there has been a
great advance made in the idea of government—the
old idea being that the right to do came from God to
the king, and from the king to the people. Now
intelligent people believe that the source of authority
has been changed, and that all just powers of govern
ment are derived from the consent of the governed.
So there has been a great advance in the philosophy
of punishment—in the treatment of criminals. So,
too, in all the sciences. The earth is no longer flat;
heaven is not immediately above us ; the universe has
been infinitely enlarged, and we have at last found
that our earth is but a grain of sand, a speck on the
great shores of the infinite. Consequently there is
a discrepancy, a discord, a contradiction between our
theology and the other sciences. Men of intelligence
feel this. Dr. Briggs concluded that a perfectly good
and intelligent God could not have created billions of
sentient beings knowing that they were to be eternally
miserable. No man could do such a thing, had he the
power, without being infinitely malicious. Dr. Briggs
began to have a little hope for the huinan race—began
to think that maybe God is better than the creed
describes him.
And right here it may be well enough to remark
that no man has ever been declared a heretic for think
ing God bad. Heresy has consisted in thinking God
�( 5 )
better than the church said he was. The man who
said God will damn nearly everybody was orthodox.
The man who said God will save everybody was
denounced as a blaspheming wretch, as one who
assailed and maligned the character of God. I can
remember when the Universalists were denounced as
vehemently and maliciously as the Atheists are to-day.
THE CASE OF DR. BRIGGS.
Now, continued Colonel Ingersoll, Dr. Briggs is
undoubtedly an intelligent man. He knows that
nobody on the earth knows who wrote the five books
of Moses. He knows that they were not written until
hundred of years after Moses was dead. He knows
that tw’O or more persons were the authors of Isaiah.
He knows that David did not write to exceed three or
four of the Psalms. He knows that the book of Job is
not a Jewish book. He knows that the songs of
Solomon were not written by Solomon. He knows
that the book of Ecclesiastes was written by a Free
thinker. He also knows that there is not in existence
to-day—so far as anybody knows—any of the manu
scripts of the Old or New Testament.
So about the New Testament, Dr. Briggs knows
that nobody lives who has ever seen an original manu
script, or who ever saw anybody that did see one, or
that claims to have seen one. He knows that nobody
knows who wrote Matthew, or Mark, or Luke, or John.
He knows that John did not write John, and that
gospel was not written until long after John was dead.
He knows that no one knows who wrote the Hebrews.
He also knows that the book of Revelation is an insane
production, Dr. Briggs also knows the way in which
these books came to be canonical, and he knows that
the way was no more binding than a resolution passed
by a political convention.
He also knows that many books were left out that
had for centuries equal authority with those that were
put in. He also knows that many passages—and the
very passages upon which many churches are founded
—are interpolations. He knows that the last chapter
of Mark, beginning with the sixteenth verse to the
end, is an interpolation ; and he also knows that neither
�( 6 )
Matthew, nor Mark, nor Luke, ever said one word
about the necessity of believing on the Lord Jesus
Christ, or of believing anything—not one word about
believing in the Bible or joining the church, or doing
any particular thing in the way of ceremony to ensure
salvation. He knows that, according to Matthew, God
agreed to forgive us when we would forgive others,!
Consequently he knows that there is not one particle
of what is called modern theology in Matthew, Mark,
or Luke. He knows that the trouble commenced in
John, and that John was not written until probably one
hundred and fifty years—possibly two hundred years—
after Christ was dead. So he also knows that the sin
against the Holy Ghost is an interpolation; that “ I
came not to bring peace but a sword,” if not an inter
polation, is an absolute contradiction.
Knowing those things, and knowing, in addition
to what I have stated, that there are 30,000 or 40,000
mistakes in the Old Testament, that there are a great
many contradictions and absurdities, that many of the
laws are cruel and infamous, and could have been
made only by a barbarous people, Dr. Briggs has con-«
eluded that, after all, the torch that sheds the serenest
and divinest light is the human reason, and that we
must investigate the Bible as we do other books. At
least, I suppose he has reached such conclusion. He
may imagine that the pure gold of inspiration still runs
through the quartz and porphyry of ignorance and
mistake, and that all we have to do is to extract the
shining metal by some process that may be called
theological smelting; and if so I have no fault to find.
Dr. Briggs has taken a step in advance—that is to say,
the tree is growing, and when the tree goes the bark
splits ; when the new leaves come the old leaves are
rotting on the ground.
AS TO PRESBYTERIANISM.
The Presbyterian Creed is a very bad creed. It
has been the stumbling block, not only of the head,
but of the heart for many generations. I do not know
that it is, in fact, worse than any other orthodox creed ;
but the bad features are stated with an explicitness
and emphasised with a candor that render the creed
�( 7 )
absolutely appalling. It is amazing to me that any
man ever wrote it, or that any set of men ever produced
it. It is more amazing to me that any human being
thought it wicked not to believe it. It is more amazing
still than all the others combined that any human
being ever wanted it to be true.
#
This creed is a relic of the middle ages. It has m
the malice, the malicious logic, the total depravity, the
utter heartlessness of John Calvin, and it gives me a
great pleasure to say that no Presbyterian was ever as
bad as his creed. And here let me say, as I have said
many times, that I do not hate Presbyterians—because
among them I count some of my best friends but i
hate Presbyterianism. And I cannot illustrate this
any better than by saying, I do not hate a man because
he has the rheumatism, but I hate the rheumatism
because it has a man.
The Presbyterian Church is growing, and is growing
because, as I said at first, there is a universal tendency
in the mind of a man to harmonise all that he knows
or thinks he knows. This growth may be delayed.
The buds of heresy may be kept back by the north
wind of Princeton and by the early frost called Patton.
In spite of these souvenirs of the dark ages the church
must continue to grow. The theologians who regard
theology as something higher than a trade tend toward
Liberalism. Those who regard preaching as a business,
and the inculcation of sentiment as a trade, will stand
by the lowest possible views. They will cling to the
letter and throw away the spirit. They prefer the
dead limb to a new bud or to a new leaf. They, want
no more sap. They delight in the dead tree, in its
unbending nature, and they mistake, the stiffness of
death for the vigor and resistance of life.
.
Now,“ as with Dr. Briggs, so with Dr. Bridgman,
although it seems to me that he has simply jumped
from the frying-pan into the fire ; and why he should,
prefer the Episcopal creed to the Baptist is more than I
can imagine. The Episcopal creed is, in. fact, just as
bad as the Presbyterian. It calmly and .with unruffled
brow utters the sentence of eternal punishment on the
majority of the human race, and the Episcopalian
�(8)
expects to be happy in heaven, with his son or his
daughter or his mother or his wife in hell.
Dr. Bridgman will find himself exactly in the
position of the Rev. Mr. Newton, provided he expresses
his thought. But I account for the Bridgmans and the
Newtons by the fact there is still sympathy in the
human heart, and that there is still intelligence in the
human brain. For my part I am glad to see this
growth in the orthodox churches, and the quicker
they revise their creeds the better. I oppose nothing
that is good in any creed—I attack only that which
is only ignorant, cruel and absurd, and I make the
attack in the interest of human liberty and for the
sake of human happiness.
ORTHODOXY THE MASTER.
What do you think of the action of the Presbyterian
General Assembly at Detroit, and what effect do you
think it will have on the religious growth ?” was
asked.
That. General Assembly was controlled by the ortho
dox within the Church, replied Colonel Inge rsoll,
by the strict constructionists and by the Calvii ists;
by the gentlemen who not only believe the creed, not
only believe that a vast majority of people are going to
hell, but are really glad of it; by gentlemen who, when
they feel a little blue, read about total depravity to
cheer up, and when they think of the mercy of God
as exhibited in their salvation, and the justice of God
as illustrated by the damnation of others, their hearts
burst into a kind of effloresence of joy.
These gentlemen are opposed to all kinds of amuse
ments except reading the Bible, the Confession of
Faith and the Creed and listening to Presbyterian
sermons and prayers. All these things they regard as
the food of cheerfulness. They warn the elect against
theatres and operas, dancing and games of chance.
Well, if their doctrine is true, there ought to be no
theatres, except exhibitions of hell; there ought to be
no operas, except where the music is a succession of
wails for the misfortunes of man. If their doctrine is
true, I do not see how any human being could ever
�( 9 )
smile again—I do not see how a mother conld welcome
her babe ; everything in nature would become hateful
—flowers and sunshine would simply tell us of our
fate.
My doctrine is exactly the opposite of this. Let us
enjoy ourselves every moment that we can. The love
of the dramatic is universal. The stage has not simply
amused, but it has elevated mankind. The greatest
genius of our world poured the treasures of his soul
into the drama. I do not believe that any girl can be
corrupted, or that any man can be injured, by becoming
acquainted with Isabella, or Miranda, or Juliet, or
Imogene, or any of the great heroines of Shake
speare.
So I regard the opera as one of the great civilisers.
No one can listen to the symphonies of Beethoven or
the music of Schubert, without receiving a benefit.
And no one can hear the operas of Wagner without
feeling that he has been ennobled and refined.
Why is it the Presbyterians are so opposed to music
in this world, and yet expect to have so much in
heaven ? Is not music just as demoralising in the sky
as on the earth, and does anybody believe that Abra
ham, or Isaac, or Jacob, ever played any music com
parable to Wagner ?
Why should we postpone our joy to another world ?
Thousands of people take great pleasure in dancing,
and I let them dance. Dancing is better than weeping
and wailing over a theology born of ignorance and
superstition.
And so with games of chance. There is a certain
pleasure in playing games, and the pleasure is of the
most innocent character. Let all these games be played
at home and children will not prefer the saloon to the
society of their parents. I believe in cards and billiards,
and would believe in progressive euchre were it more
of a game—the great objection to it is its lack of com
plexity. My idea is to get what little happiness you
can out of this life, and to enjoy all sunshine that
breaks through the clouds of misfortune. Life is poor
enough at best. No one should fail to pick up every
jewel of joy that can be found in his path. Every one
�( W )
should be as happy as he can, provided he is not happy
at the expense of another.
So let us get all we can of good between the cradle
and the grave—all that we can of the truly dramatic,
all that we can of enjoyment; and if, when death
comes, that is the end, we have at least made the best
of this life, and if there be another life, let us make the
best of that.
I am doing what little I can to hasten the coming
of the day when the human race will enjoy liberty—
not simply of body, but liberty of mind. And by
liberty of mind I mean freedom from superstition, and,
added to that, the intelligence to find out the conditions
of happiness ; and, added to that, the wisdom to live
in accordance with those conditions.
�(11)
SPIRITUALITY.
If there is an abused word in our language, it is
“ spirituality.”
It has been repeated over and over for several
years by pious pretenders and snivellers as though it
belonged exclusively to them.
In the early days of Christianity the “spiritual”
renounced the world, with all its duties and obliga
tions. They deserted their wives and children. They
became hermits and dwelt in caves. They spent
their useless years praying for their shrivelled and
worthless souls.
They were too “ spiritual ” to love women, to build
homes and to labor for children.
They were too “ spiritual ” to earn their bread, so
they became beggars, and stood by the highway of
life and held out their hands and asked alms of
industry and courage.
They were too “ spiritual ” to be merciful. They
preached the dogmas of eternal pain and gloried in
“ the wrath to come.”
They were too “ spiritual ” to be civilised, so they
persecuted their fellow-men for expressing their
honest thoughts.
They were so “spiritual” that they invented in
struments of torture, founded the Inquisition, ap
pealed to the whip, the rack, the sword and the fagot.
They tore the flesh of their fellow-man with hooks
of iron, buried their neighbors alive, cut off their
eyelids, dashed out the brains of babes and cut off
the breasts of mothers.
�( 12 )
These “ spiritual ” wretches spent day and night
on their knees praying for their own salvation and
asking God to curse the best and noblest in the
world.
John Calvin was intensely “spiritual” when he
warmed his fleshless hands at the flames that consumed
Servetus.
John Knox was constrained by his “spirituality”
to utter low and loathsome calumnies against all
women. All the witch-burners and quaker-maimers
and mutilators were so “ spiritual ” that they constantly
looked heavenward and longed for the skies.
These lovers of God—these haters of men—looked
upon the Greek marbles us unclean, and denounced
the glories of art as the snares and pitfalls of perdition.
These “ spiritual ” mendicants hated laughter and
smiles and dimples, and exhausted their diseased and
polluted imagination in the effort to make love loath
some.
_ From almost every pulpit was heard the denuncia
tion of all that adds to the wealth, the joy, and glory
of life. It became the fashion for the “ spiritual ” to
malign every hope and passion that tends to humanise
and refine the heart. Man was denounced as totally
depraved. Woman was declared to be a perpetual
temptation—her beauty a snare, and her touch pollu
tion.
Even in our own time and country some of the
ministers, no matter how radical they claim to be,
retain the aroma, the odor, or the smell of the
“ spiritual.”
They denounce some of the best and greatest—some
of the benefactors of the race—for having lived on a
low plane of usefulness, and for having had the pitiful
ambition to make their fellows happy in this world.
Thomas Paine was a grovelling wretch because he
devoted his life to the preservation of the rights of
man, and Voltaire lacked the “spiritual” because he
abolished torture in France, and attacked with the
enthusiasm of a divine madness the monster that was
endeavoring to drive the hope of liberty from the heart
of man.
�( 13 )
Humboldt was not “ spiritual ” enough to repeat
with closed eyes the absurdities of superstition, but
was so lost to all the “ skyey influences ” that he was
satisfied to add to the intellectual wealth of the world.
■Darwin lacked “ spirituality,” and in its place had
nothing but sincerity, patience, intelligence, the spirit
of investigation, and the courage to give his honest
conclusions to the world. He contented himself with
giving to his fellow men the greatest and the sublimest
truths that man has spoken since lips have uttered
speech.
But we are now told that these soldiers of science,
these heroes of liberty, these sculptors and painters,,
these singers of songs, these composers of music,
lacked “ spirituality ”’and after all were only common
clay.
This word “ spirituality ” is the fortress, the breast
work, the riflepit of the Pharisee. It sustains the same
relation to sincerity that Dutch metal does to pure gold.
There seems to be something about a pulpit that
poisons the occupant—that changes his nature—that
causes him to denounce what he really loves and to
laud with the fervor of insanity a joy that he never
felt—a rapture that never thrilled his soul. Hypnotised
by his surroundings, he unconsciously brings to market
that which he supposes the purchasers desire.
In every church, whether orthodox or radical, there
are two parties—one conservative, looking backward ;
one radical, looking forward—and generally a minister
“ spiritual ” enough to look both ways.
A. minister who seems to be a philosopher on the
street, or in the home of a sensible man, cannot with
stand the atmosphere of the pulpit. The moment he
stands behind a Bible cushion, like Bottom, he is
“ translated ” and the Titania of superstition “ kisses
his large, fair ears.”
Nothing is more amusing than to hear a clergyman
denounce worldliness—ask his hearers what it will
profit them to build railways and palaces and lose their
own souls—inquire of the common folks before him
why they waste their precious years in following
trades and professions, in gathering treasures that
�( 14 )
moths corrupt and rust devours, giving their days to
the vulgar business of making money—and then see
him take up a collection, knowing perfectly well that
only the worldly, the very people he has denounced,
can by any possibility give a dollar.
“ Spirituality,” for the most part, is a mask worn by
idleness, arrogance, and greed.
Some people imagine they are “ spiritual ” when
they are sickly.
It may be well enough to ask—What is it to be
really spiritual ?
The spiritual man lives up to his ideal. He
endeavors to make others happy. He does not despise
the passions that have filled the world with art and
glory. He loves his wife and* children—home and
fireside. He cultivates the amenities and refinements
of life. He is a friend and champion of the oppressed.
His sympathies are with the poor and the suffering.
He attacks what he believes to be wrong, though
defended by the many, and he is willing to stand for
the right against the world.
He enjoys the beautiful.
In the presence of the highest creations of Art his
eyes are suffused with tears. When he listens to the
great melodies, the divine harmonies, he feels the
sorrows and the raptures of death and love. He is
intensely human. He carries in his heart the burdens
of the world. He searches for the deeper meanings.
He appreciates the harmonies of conduct, the melody
of a perfect life.
He loves his wife and children better than any
God.
He cares more for the world he lives in than for any
other. He tries to discharge the duties of this life, to
help those that he can reach. He believes in being
useful—in making money to feed and clothe and
educate the ones he loves—to assist the deserving and
to support himself. He does not want to be a burden
on others. He is just, generous, and sincere.
Spirituality is all of this world. It is a child of this
earth, born and cradled here. It comes from no
heaven, but it makes a heaven where it is. There is
�( 15 )
no possible connection between superstition and the
spiritual, or between theology and the spiritual.
The spiritually-minded man is a poet. If he does
not write poetry, he lives it. He is an artist. If he
does not paint pictures or chisel statues, he feels them
and their beauty softens his heart. He fills the temple
of his soul with all that is beautiful and he worships at
the shrine of the ideal.
In all the relations of life he is faithful and true.
He asks for nothing that he does not earn. He does
not wish to be happy in heaven if he must receive
happiness as alms. He does not rely on the goodness
of another. He is not ambitious to become a winged
pauper.
.
Spirituality is the perfect health of the soul. It is
noble, manly, generous, brave, free-spoken, natural,
•SupGrl)»
Nothing is more sickening than the “spiritual”
whine—the pretence that crawls at first and talks about
humility, and then suddenly becomes arrogant and
says : “ I am ‘ spiritual ’—I hold in contempt the
vulgar jovs of this life. You work and toil and build
homes and sing songs and weave your delicate robes.
You love women and children and adorn yourselves.
You subdue the earth and dig for gold. You have
your theatres, your operas, and all the luxuries of life ;
but I, beggar that I am, Pharisee that I am, am your
superior because I am ‘ spiritual.’ ”
Above all things, let us be sincere.
Printed by G. W. Foote, at 28 Stonecutter Street, London, E.C.
�WORKS BY COLONEL R. G. INGERSOLL
s. d.
r
MISTAKES OF MOSES
Superior edition, in cloth ...
Only Complete Edition published in England.
DEFENCE OF FREETHOUGHT
Five Hours’ Speech, at the Trial of C. B.
Reynolds for Blasphemy.
REPLY TO GLADSTONE. With a Biography by
J. M. Wheeler
ROME OR REASON ? Reply to Cardinal Man ning
CRIMES AGAINST CRIMINALS
...
AN ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN ...
FAITH AND FACT. Reply to Rev. Dr. Field
GOD AND MAN. Second Reply to Dr. Field
...
THE HOUSEHOLD OF FAITH
...
LOVE THE REDEEMER. Reply to Count To lstoi
THE LIMITS OF TOLERATION
•••
A Discussion with Hon. F. D. Coudert and
Gov. S. L. Woodford
...
THE DYING CREED
DO I BLASPHEME ?
THE CLERGY AND COMMON SENSE
...
SOCIAL SALVATION
...
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE ...
...
GOD AND THE STATE
WHY AM I AN AGNOSTIC ?
...
...
WHY AM I AN AGNOSTIC ? Part II.
...
ART AND MORALITY
...
CHRIST AND MIRACLES
...
...
THE GREAT MISTAKE
...
LIVE TOPICS
MYTH AND MIRACLE
...
REAL BLASPHEMY
...
REPAIRING THE IDOLS
R. Forder, 28 Stonecutter-street, London, E.C.
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Creeds and spirituality
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1896]
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An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 15 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Reprinted from the New York Morning Advertiser. "Works by Colonel R.G. Ingersoll" listed on back cover. No. 12a in Stein checklist. Printed by G.W. Foote. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Progressive Publishing Company
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1891
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N328
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Spiritualism
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Creeds and spirituality), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Creeds
NSS
Religion
Spirituality
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
CRI
S
AGAINST
CRIMINALS
AN ADDRESS
Delivered before the State Bar Association of New York,
January 21, 1890.
BY
COLONEL R. G. INGERSOLL
Price Threepence.
Xonbon :
PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY,.
28 Stonecutter Street, E.U.
1890.
�LONDON
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY G. W. KOOTK,
28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
�CRIMES AGAINST CRIMINALSIn this brief address, the object is to suggest, there
being no time to present arguments at length. The
subject has been chosen for the reason that it is one
that should interest the legal profession, because that
profession to a certain extent controls and shapes the
legislation of our country, and fixes definitely the scope
and meaning of all laws.
Lawyers ought to be foremost in legislative and
judicial reform, and of all men they should understand
the philosophy of mind, the causes of human action,,
and the real science of government.
It has been said that the three pests of a com
munity are—A. priest without charity, a doctor w ithout
knowledge, and a lawyer without a sense of justice.
I.
All nations seem to have had supreme confidence in
the deterrent power of threatened and inflicted pain.
They have regarded punishment as the shortest road to
reformation. Imprisonment, torture, death, consti
tuted a trinity under whose protection society might
feel secure.
In addition to these, nations have relied on confisca
tion and degradation, on maimings,whippings, brandings
�4
Grimes against Criminals.
and" exposures to pubic ridicule and contempt. Con
nected with the court of justice was the chamber of
torture. The ingenuity of man was exhausted in the
construction of instruments that would surely reach the
most sensitive nerve. All this was done in the interest
of civilisation for the protection of virtue, and the
well-being of States. Curiously enough, the fact is
that, no matter how severe the punishments were, the
crimes increased.
It was found that the penalty of death made little
difference. Thieves and highwaymen, heretics and
blasphemers, went on their way. It was then thought
necessaiy to add to this penalty of death, and conse
quently, the convicted were tortured in every conceivable
way before execution. They were broken on the wheel—
their joints dislocated on the rack. They were suspended
by their legs and arms, while immense weights were
placed upon their breasts. Their flesh was burned and
torn with hot irons. They were roasted at slow fires.
They were buried alive—given to wild beasts—molten
lead was poured in their ears—their eye-lids were cut off
and the wretches placed with their faces toward the
sun—others were securely bound, so that they could
move neither hand nor foot, and over their stomachs
were placed inverted bowls ; under these bowls rats
were confined; on top of the bowls were heaped coals
of fire, so that the rats in their efforts to escape would
gnaw into the bowels of the victims. They were staked
out on the sands of the s^a, to be drowned by the
slowly rising tide—and every means, by which human
nature can be overcome slowly, painfully and terribly,
were conceived and carried into execution. And yet
the number of so-called criminals increased.
For petty offences men were degraded—given to the
�Crimes against Criminals.
5
mercy of the rabble. Their ears were cut off, their
nostrils slit, their foreheads branded. They were tied
to the tails of carts and flogged from one town to
another. And yet, in spite of all, the poor wretches
obstinately refused to become good and useful citizens.
Degradation has been thoroughly tried, with its
mannings and brandings, and the result was that these
who inflicted the punishments became as degraded as
their victims.
Only a few years ago there were more than two
hundred offences in Great Britain punishable by death.
The gallows-tree bore fruit through all the year, and
the hangman was the busiest official in the kingdom—
but the criminals increased.
Crimes were committed to punish crimes, and crimes
were committed to prevent crimes. The world has been
filled with prisons and dungeons, with chains and whips,
with crosses and gibbets, with thumb-screws and racks,
with hangmen and headsmen—and yet these frightful
means and instrumentalities and crimes have accom
plished little for the preservation of property or life.
It is safe to say that governments have committed far
more crimes than they have prevented.
Why is it that men will suffer and risk so much for
the sake of stealing ? Why will they accept degrada
tion and punishment and infamy as their portion ?
Some will answer this question by an appeal to the
dogma of original sin ; others by saying that millions
of men and women are under the control of fiends,
that they are actually possessed by devils ; and others
will declare that all these people act from choice—that
they are possessed of free wills, of intelligence—that
they know and appreciate consequences, and that, in
spite of all, they deliberately prefer a life of crime.
�6
Crimes against Criminals.
II.
Have we not advanced far enough intellectually to
deny the existence of chance ? Are we not satisfied
now that back of every act and thought and dream
and fancy is an efficient cause ? Is anything, or can
anything, be produced that is not necessarily produced ?
Can the fatherless and motherless exist ? Is there not
a connection between all events, and is not every act
related to all other acts ? Is it not possible, is it not
probable, is it not true, that the actions of all men are
determined by countless causes over which they have
no positive control ?
Certain it is that men do not prefer unhappiness to
joy. It can hardly ‘be said that man intends per
manently to injure himself, and that he does what he
does in order that he may live a life of misery. On
the other hand, we must take it for granted that man
endeavors to better his own condition, and seeks,
although by mistaken ways, his. own well-being. The
poorest man would like to be rich—the sick desire
health—and no sane man wishes to win the contempt
and hatred of his fellow-men. Every human being
prefers liberty to imprisonment.
Are the brains of criminals exactly like the brains
of honest men ? Have criminals the same ambitions,
the same standards of happiness or of well-being ? If
a difference exists in brain, will that in part account for
the difference in character? Is there anything in
heredity 1 Are vices as carefully transmitted by
Nature as virtues ? Does each man in some degree
bear burdens imposed by ancestors'? We know that
diseases of flesh and blood are transmitted—that the
child is the heir of physical deformity. Are diseases
�Crimes against Criminals.
7
of the brain—are deformities of the soul, of the mind,
also transmitted ?
We not only admit, but we assert, that in the physical
world there are causes and effects. We insist that
there is and can be no effect without an efficient cause.
When anything happens in that world, we are satisfied
that it was naturally and necessarily produced. The
causes may be obscure, but we as implicitly believe in
their existence as when we know positively what they
are. In the physical world we have taken the ground
that there is nothing miraculous—that everything is
natural—and if we cannot explain it, we account for
our inability to explain, by our own ignorance. Is it not
possible, is it not probable, that what is true in the
physical world is equally true in the realm of mind—in
that strange world of passion and desire ? Is it possible
that thoughts, or desires, or passions are the children
of chance, born of nothing ? Can we conceive of
Nothing as a force, or as a cause ? If, then, there is
behind every thought and desire and passion an efficient
cause, we can, in part at least, account for the actions
of men.
A certain man under certain conditions acts in a
certain way. There are certain temptations that he,
with his brain, with his experience, with his intelligence,
with his surroundings, cannot withstand. He is irre
sistibly led to do, or impelled to do, certain things; and
there are other things that he cannot do. If we change
the conditions of this man, his actions will be changed.
Develop his mind, give him new subjects of thought,
and you change the man; and the man being changed,
it follows as a necessity that his conduct will be
different.
In civilised countries the struggle for existence is
�8
Crimes against Criminals.
severe—the competition far sharper than in savage
lands. The consequence is that there are many
failures. These failures lack, it may be, opportunity,
or brain, or moral force, or industry, or something
without which, under the circumstances, success is
impossible. Certain lines of conduct are called legal,
and certain others criminal, and the men who fail in
one line may be driven to the other. How do we know
that it is possible for all people to be honest ? Are we
certain that all people can tell the truth 1 Is it possible
for all men to be generous, or candid, or courageous ?
I am perfectly satisfied that there are millions of
people incapable of committing certain crimes, and it
may be true that there are millions of others incapable
of practising certain virtues. We do not blame a man
because he is not a sculptor, a poet, a painter, or a
statesman. We say he has not the genius. Are we
certain that it does not require genius to be good ?
Where is the man with intelligence enough to take into
consideration the circumstances of each individual
case ? Who has the mental balance with which to
weigh the forces of heredity, of want, of temptation—
and who can analyse with certainty the mysterious
motions of the brain ?
Where and what are the
sources of vice and virtue ? In what obscure and
shadowy recesses of the brain are passions born ? And
what is it that for the moment destroys the sense of
right and wrong ? Who knows to what extent reason
becomes the prisoner of passion—of some strange and
wild desire, the seeds of which were sown, it may be,
thousands of years ago in the breast of some savage ?
To what extent do antecedents and surroundings affect
the moral sense ?
Is it not possible that the tyranny of governments,
�Crimes against Criminals.
9
the injustice of nations, the fierceness of what is called
the law, produce in the individual a tendency in the
same direction 1 Is it not true that the citizen is apt
to imitate his nation ? Society degrades its enemies—
the individual seeks to degrade his. Society plunders
its enemies, and now and then a citizen has the desire
to plunder his. Society kills its enemies, and possibly
sows in the heart of some citizen the seeds of murder.
III.
Is it not true that the criminal is a natural product,
and that society unconsciously produces these children
of vice ? Can we not safely take another step, and say
that the criminal is a victim, as the diseased and insane
and deformed are victims ? We do not think of punish
ing a man because he is afflicted with disease—our
desire is to find a cure. We send him, not to the peni
tentiary, but to the hospital, to an asylum. We do this
because we recognise the fact that disease is naturally
produced—that it is inherited from parents, or the
result of unconscious negligence, or it may be of reck
lessness—but instead of punishing, we pity. If Lhere are
diseases of the mind, of the brain, as there are diseases
of the body ; and if these diseases of the mind, these
deformities of the brain, produce, and necessarily pro
duce, what we call vice, why should we punish the
criminal, and pity those who are physically diseased 1
Socrates, in some respects at least one of the wisest
of men, said: “ It is strange that you should not be
angry when you meet a man with an ill-conditioned
body, and yet be vexed when you encounter one with
an ill-conditioned soul.”
We know that there are deformed bodies, and we
are equally certain that there are deformed minds.
�10
Orimes against Oriminals.
Of course, society has the right. to protect itself, no
mattei' whether the persons who attack its well-being
are responsible or not, no matter whether they are sick
in mind, or deformed in brain. The right of selfdefence exists, not only in the individual, but in society.
The great question is, How shall this right of selfdefence be exercised ? What spirit shall be in the
nation, or in society—the spirit of revenge, a desire to
degrade and punish and destroy, or, a spirit born of the
recognition of the fact that criminals are victims ?
The world has thoroughly tried confiscation, degra
dation, imprisonment, torture and death, and thus far
the world has failed. In this connection I call your
attention to the following statistics gathered in our
own country :
In 1850 we had 23,000,000 of people, and between
six and seven thousand prisoners.
In 1860—31,000,000 of people, and 19,000 prisoners.
In 1870—38,000,000 of people, and 32,000 prisoners.
In 1880—50,000,000 of people, and 58,000 prisoners.
It may be curious to note the relation between in
sanity, pauperism and crime :
In 1850 there were 15,000 insane; in 1860, 24,000;
in 1870, 37,000; in 1880, 91,000.
In the light of these statistics we are not succeeding
in doing away with crime.
There were in 1880,
58,000 prisoners, and in the same year 57,000 home
less children, and 66,000 paupers in almshouses.
Is it possible that we must go to the same causes for
these effects?
IV.
There is no reformation in degradation. To mutilate
a criminal is to say to all the world that he is a criminal,
�Crimes against Criminals.
11
and to render his reformation substantially impossible.
Whoever is degraded by society becomes its enemy.
The seeds of malice are sown in his heart, and to the
day of his death he will hate the hand that sowed the
seeds.
There is also another side to this question. A punish
ment that degrades the punished will degrade the man
who inflicts the punishment, and will degrade the
government that procures the infliction. The whipping
post pollutes, not only the whipped, but the whippet,
and not only the whipper, but the community at large.
Wherever its shadow falls it degrades.
If, then, there is no reforming power in degradation
—no deterrent power—for the reason that the degrada
tion of the criminal degrades the community, and in this
way produces more criminals, then the next question is,
Whether there is any reforming power in torture ? The
trouble with this is, that it hardens and degrades to the
last degree the ministers of the law. Those who are
not affected by the agonies of the bad will in a little
time care nothing for the sufferings of the good. There
seems to be a little of the wild beast in men—a some
thing that is fascinated by suffering, and that delights
in inflicting pain. When a government tortures, it is
in the same state of mind that the criminal was when
he committed his crime. It requires as much malice in
those who execute the law to torture a criminal, as it
did in the criminal to torture and kill his victim. The
one was a crime by a person, the other by a nation.
There is something in injustice, in cruelty, that tends
to defeat itself. There were never as many traitors in
in England as when the traitor was drawn and quar
tered—when he was tortured in every possible way—
when his limbs, tom and bleeding, were given to the
�12
Crimes against Criminals.
fury of mobs or exhibited pierced by pikes or hung in
chains. These frightful punishments produced intense
hatred of the government, and traitors continued to
increase until they became powerful enough to decide
what treason was and who the traitors were, and to
inflict the same torments on others.
Think for a moment of what man has suffered in the
cause of crime. Think of the millions that have been
imprisoned, impoverished, and degraded because they
were thieves and forgers, swindlers, and cheats. Think
for a moment of what they have endured—of the
difficulties under which they have pursued their calling,
and it will be exceedingly hard to believe that they
were sane and natural people, possessed of good brains,
of minds well poised, and that they did what they did
from a choice unaffected by heredity and the countless
circumstances that tend to determine the conduct of
human beings.
The other day I was asked these questions :—“ Has
there been as much heroism displayed for the right as
for the wrong ? Has virtue had as many martyrs as
vice ?”
For hundreds of years the world has endeavored to
destroy the good by force. The expression of honest
thought was regarded as the greatest of crimes. Dun
geons were filled by the noblest and the best, and the
blood of the bravest was shed by the sword or con
sumed by flame. It was impossible to destroy the
longing in the heart of man for liberty and truth. Is
it not possible that brute force and cruelty and revenge,
imprisonment, torture, and death are as impotent to do
away with vice as to destroy virtue ?
In our country there has been for many years a
growing feeling that convicts should neither be
�Grimes against Criminals.
13
degraded nor tortured. It was provided in the Con
stitution of the United States that “ cruel and unusual
punishments should not be inflicted.”
Benjamin
Franklin took great interest in the treatment of
prisoners, being a thorough believer in the reforming
influence of justice, having no confidence whatever in
punishment for punishment’s sake.
To me it has always been a mystery how the average
man, knowing something of the weakness of human
nature, something of the temptations to which he him
self has been exposed—remembering the evil of his
life, the things he would have done had there been
opportunity, had he absolutely known that discovery
would be impossible—should have feelings of hatred
toward the imprisoned.
Is it possible that the average man assaults the
criminal in a spirit of self-defence ? Does he wish to
convince his neighbors that the evil thought and impulse
were never in his mind ? Are his words a shield that
he uses to protect himself from suspicion ? For my
part, 1 sympathise sincerely with all failures, with the
victims of society, with those who have fallen, with the
imprisoned, with the hopeless, with those who have
been stained by verdicts of guilty, and with those who,
in the moment of passion, have destroyed, as with a
blow, the future of their lives.
How perilous, after all, is the state of man. It is
the work of a life to build a great and splendid cha
racter. It is the work of a moment to destroy it
utterly, from turret to foundation stone. How cruel
hypocrisy is !
V.
Is there any remedy î Can anything be done for
the reformation of the criminal ?
�14
Crimes against Criminals.
He should be treated with kindness. Every right
should be given him, consistent with the safety of
society. He should neither be degraded nor robbed.
The State should set the highest and noblest example.
The powerful should never be cruel, and in the breast
of the supreme there should be no desire for revenge.
A man in a moment of want steals the property of
another, and he is sent to the penitentiary—first, as it
is claimed, for the purpose of deterring others ; and,
secondly, of reforming him. The circumstances of each
individual case are rarely inquired into. Investigation
stops when the simple fact of the larceny has been
ascertained.' No distinctions are made, except as
between first and subsequent offences. Nothing is
allowed for surroundings.
All will admit that the industrious must be protected.
In this world it is necessary to work. Labor is the
foundation of all prosperity. Larceny is the enemy of
industry. Society has the right to protect itself. The
question is, Has it the right to punish ?—has it the
right to degrade ?—or should it endeavor to reform the
convict ?
A man is taken to the penitentiary. He is clad in the
garments of a convict. He is degraded—he loses his name
—he is designated by a number. He is no longer treated
as a human being—he becomes the slave of the State.
Nothing is done for his improvement—nothing for his
reformation. He is driven like a beast of burden ;
robbed of his laboi’; leased, it may be, by the State to
a contractor, who gets out of his hands, out of his
muscles, out of his poor brain, all the toil that he can.
He is not allowed to speak with a fellow-prisoner. A.t
night he is alone in his cell. The relations that should
exist between men are destroyed. He is a convict.
�Crimes against Criminals.
15
He is no longer worthy to associate even with’ his
keepers. The jailor is immensely his superior, and the
man who turns the key upon him at night regards him
self, in comparison, as a model of honesty, of virtue
and manhood. The convict is pavement, on which
those who watch him walk. He remains for the time
of his sentence, and when that expires he goes forth a
branded man. He is given money enough to pay his
fare back to the place from whence he came.
What is the condition of this man? Can he get
employment ? Not if he honestly states who he is and
where he has been. The first thing he does is to deny
his personality, to assume a name. He endeavors by
telling falsehoods to lay the foundation for future good
conduct. The average man does not wish to employ
an ex-convict, because the average man has no con
fidence in the reforming power of the penitentiary. He
believes that the convict who comes out is worse than
the convict who went in. He knows that in the peni
tentiary the heart of this man has been hardened—
that he has been subjected to the torture of perpetual
humiliation—that he has been treated like a ferocious
beast; and so he believes that this ex-convict has in his
heart hatred for society, that he feels he has been
degraded and robbed. Under these circumstances,
what avenue is open to the ex-convict
If he changes
his name, there will be some detective, some officer of
the law, some meddlesome wretch, who will betray his
secret. He is then discharged. He seeks employment
again, and he must seek it by again telling what is not
true. He is again detected, and again discharged.
And finally he becomes convinced that he cannot live
as an honest man. He naturally drifts back into the
society of those who have had a like experience; and
�16
Crimes against Criminals.
the result is that in a little while he again stands in
the dock, charged with the commission of another crime.
Again he is sent to the penitentiary—and this is the
end. He feels that his day is done, that the future has
only degradation for him.
The men in the penitentaries do not work for them
selves. Their labor belongs to others. They have no
interest in their toil—no reason for doing the best they
can—and the result is that the product of their labor is
poor. This product comes in competition with the
work of mechanics, honest men, who have families to
support, and the cry is that convict labor takes the
bread from the mouths of virtuous people.
VI.
Why should the State take without compensation
the labor of these men; and why should they, after
having been imprisoned for years, be turned out with
out the means of support ? Would it not be far better,
far more economical, to pay these men for their labor,
to lay aside their earnings from day to day, from month
to month, and from year to year—to put this money
at interest, so that when the convict is released after
five years of imprisonment he will have several hundred
dollars of his own—not merely money enough to pay
his way back to the place from which he was sent, but
enough to make it possible for him to commence a busi
on his own occount, enough to keep the wolf of crime
from the door of his heart ?
Suppose the convict comes out with five hundred
dollars. This would be to most of that class a fortune.
It would form a breast-work, a fortress, behind
which the man could fight temptation. This would
give him food and raiment, enable him to go to some
�\
Crimes against Criminals.
17
other State or country where he could redeem himself.
If this were done, thousands of convicts would feel under
immense obligation to the government. They would
thihk of the penitentiary as the place in which they
were saved—in which they were redeemed—and they
would feel that the verdict of guilty rescued them
from the abyss of crime. Under these circumstances,
the law would appear benificent, and the heart of the
poor convict, instead of being filled with malice, would
overflow with gratitude. He would see the propriety
of the course pursued by the government. He would
recognise and feel and experience the benefits of this
course, and the result would be good, not only to him,
but to the nation as well.
If the convict worked for himself, he would do the
best he could, and the wares produced in the peni
tentiary would not cheapen the labor of other men.
VII.
There are, however, men who pursue crime as a
vocation—as a profession—men who have been convicted
again and again, and who still persist in using the
liberty of intervals to prey upon the rights of others.
What shall be done with these men and women ?
Put one thousand hardened thieves on an island—
compel them to produce what they eat and use—and I
am almost certain that a large majority would be
opposed to theft. Those who worked would not permit
those w’ho did not to steal the result of their labor. In
other words, self-preservation would be the dominant
idea, and these men would instantly look upon the idlers
as the enemies of their society.
Such a community would be self-supporting. Let
women of the same class be put by themselves. Keep
�Crimes against Criminals.
the sexes absolutely apart. Those who are beyond the
power of reformation should not have the liberty to
reproduce themselves. Those who cannot be reached
by kindness—by justice—those who under no circum
stances are willing to do their share, should be separated.
They should dwell apart, and dying, should leave no
heirs.
What shall be done with the slayers of their fellow
men—with murderers ? Shall the nation take life?
It has been contended that the death penalty deters
others that it has far more terror than imprisonment
for life. What is the effect of the example set by a
nation ? Is not the tendency to harden and degrade
not only those who inflict and those who witness, but
the entire community as well ?
A few years ago a man was hanged in Alexandria
(Virginia). One who witnessed the execution, on that
very day, murdered a pedlar in the Smithsonian grounds
at Washington. He was tried and executed, and one
who witnessed his hanging went home, and on the same
day murdered his wife.
The tendency of the extreme penalty is to prevent
conviction. In the presence of death it is easy for a
jury to find a doubt. Technicalities become important,
and absurdities, touched with mercy, have the appear
ance for a moment of being natural and logical. Honest
and conscientious men dread a final and irrevocable
step. If the penalty were imprisonment for life, the
jury would feel that if any mistake were made it could
be rectified; but where the penalty is death a mistake
is fatal. A conscientious man takes into consideration
the defects of human nature—the uncertainty of tes
timony, and the countless shadows that dim and darken
�>
Crimes against Criminals.
19.
the understanding, and refuses to find a verdict that, if
wrong, cannot be righted.
The death penalty, inflicted by the government, is a
perpetual excuse for mobs.
The greatest danger in a Republic is a mob, and as
long as States inflict the penalty of death mobs will
follow the example. If the State does not consider
life sacred, the mob, with ready rope, will strangle the
suspected. The mob will say : “ The only difference
is in the trial; the State does the same—we know the
man is guilty—why should time be wasted in techni
calities ?” In other words, why may not the mob do
quickly that which the State does slowly?
Every execution tends to harden the public heart—
tends to lessen the sacredness of human life. In many
States of this Union the mob is supreme. For certain
offences the mob is expected to lynch the supposed
criminal. It is the duty of every citizen—and as it
seems to me, especially of every lawyer—to do what he
can to destroy the mob spirit. One would think that
men would be afraid to commit any crime in a com
munity where the mob is in the ascendency, and yet,
such are the contradictions and subtleties of human
nature, that it is exactly the opposite. And there is
another thing in this connection—the men who con
stitute the mob are, as a rule, among the worst, the
lowest and the most depraved.
A few years ago, in Illinois, a man escaped from jail,
and, in escaping, shot the sheriff. He was pursued,
overtaken—lynched. The man who put the rope
around his neck was then out on bail, having been
indicted for an assault to murder. And after the poor
wretch was dead, another man climbed the tree from
which he dangled and, in derision, put a cigar in the
�20
Crimes against Criminals.
mouth of the dead; and this man was on bail, havinw
been indicted for larceny.
°
Those who are the fiercest to destroy and hang their
fellow-men for having committed crimes, are, for the
most part, at heart, criminals themselves.
As long as nations meet on the fields of war—as long
as they sustain the relations of savages to each other—
as long as they put the laurel and the oak on the brows
of those who kill—just so long will citizens resort to
violence, and the quarrels of individuals be settled by
dagger and revolver.
J
VIII.
If we are to change the conduct of men, we must
change their conditions. Extreme poverty and crime
go hand in hand. Destitution multiplies temptations
and destroys the finer feelings. The bodies and souls
of men are apt to be clad in like garments. If the
body is covered with rags, the soul is generally in the
same condition. Self-respect is gone—the man looks
down—he has neither hope nor courage. He becomes
sinister—he envies the prosperous, hates the fortunate,,
and despises himself.
As long as children are raised in the tenement and
gutter, the prisons will be full. The gulf between the
rich and the poor will grow wider and wider. One will
depend on cunning, the other on force. It is a great
question whether those who live in luxury can afford to
allow others to exist in want. The value of property
depends, not on the prosperity of the few, but on the
prosperity of a very large majority. Life and property
must be secuie, or that subtle thing called 44 value 31
takes its leave. The poverty of the many is a per
petual menace. If we expect a prosperous and peaceful
�Crimes against Criminals.
21
country, the citizens must have homes. The more
homes, the more patriots, the more virtue, and the more
security for all that gives worth to life.
We need not repeat the failures of the old world.
To divide lands among successful generals, or among
favorites of the crown, to give vast estates for services
rendered in war, is no worse than to allow men of great
wealth to purchase and hold large tracts of land. The
result is precisely the same—that is to say, a nation
composed of a few landlords and of many tenants—the
tenants resorting from time to time to mob violence,
and the landlords depending upon a standing army.
The property of no man, however, should be taken for
either private or public use without just compensation
and in accordance with law. There is in the State
what is known as the right of eminent domain. The
State reserves to itself the power to take the land of
any private citizen foi’ a public use, paying to that
private citizen a just compensation to be legally ascer
tained. When a corporation wishes to build a railway,
it exercises this right of eminent domain, and where
the owner of land refuses to sell a right of way or land
for the establishment of stations or shops, and the cor
poration proceeds to condemn the land to ascertain its
value, and when the amount thus ascertained is paid,
the property vests in the corporation. This power is
exercised because in the estimation of the people the
construction of a railway is a public good.
I believe that this power should be exercised in
another direction. It would be well, as it seems to me,
for the Legislature to fix the amount of land that a
private citizen may own, that will not be subject to be
taken for the use of which I am about to speak. The
amount to be thus held will depend upon many local
�Crimes against Criminals.
circumstances, to be decided by each State for itself.
Let me suppose that the amount of land that may be
held for a farmer for cultivation has been fixed at 160
ames and suppose that A has several thousand acres.
B wishes to buy 160 acres or less of this land, for the
purpose of making himself a home. A refuses to sell.
JSTow, I believe that the law should be so that B can
invoke this right of eminent domain, and file his peti
tion, have the case brought before a jury, or before
■commissioners, who shall hear the evidence and deter
mine the value, and on payment of the amount the
land shall belong to B.
I would extend the same law to lots and houses in
cities and villages—the object being to fill our country
with the owners of homes, so that every child shall
have a fireside, every father and mother a roof, pro
vided they have the intelligence, the energy and the
industry to acquire the necessary means.
Tenements and flats and rented land are, in my
judgment, the enemies of civilisation. They make the
rich richer, and the poor poorer. They put a few in
palaces, but they put many in prisons.
I would go a step further than this. I would exempt
homes of a certain value not only from levy and sale,
but from every kind of taxation, State and National—
so that these poor people would feel that they were
in partnership with Nature—that some of the land was
absolutely theirs, and that no one could drive them
from their home—so that mothers could feel secure.
If the home increased in value, and exceeded the limit,
then taxes could be paid on the excess; and if the home
was sold, I would have the money realised exempt for
a certain time in order that the family should have the
privilege of buying another home.
�Crimes against Criminals.
23
The home, after all, is the unit of civilisation, of
good government; and to secure homes for a great
majority of our citizens, would be to lay the founda
tion of our government deeper and broader and stronger
than that of any nation that has existed among men.
IX.
No one places a higher value upon the free school
than I do; and no one takes greater pride in the pros
perity of our colleges and universities. But at the same
time, much that is called education simply unfits men
successfully to fight the battle of life. Thousands to-day
are studying things that will be of little importance
to them or to others. Much valuable time is wasted
in studying languages that long ago were dead, and
histories in which there is no truth.
There was an idea in the olden time—and it is not
yet dead—that whoever was educated ought not to
work; that he should use his head and not his hands.
Graduates were ashamed to be found engaged in manual
labor, in ploughing fields, in sowing or gathering grain.
To this manly kind of independence they preferred the
garret and the precarious existence of an unappreciated
poet, borrowing their money from their friends, and
their ideas from the dead. The educated regarded the
useful as degrading—they were willing tc stain their
souls to keep their hands white.
The object of all education should be to increase the
usefulness of man—usefulness to himself and others.
Every human being should be taught that his first duty
is to take care of himself, and that to be self-respecting
he must be self-supporting. To live on the labor of
others, either by force which enslaves, or by cunning
�24
Grimes against Criminals.
which robs, or by borrowing or begging, is wholly dis
honorable. Every man should be taught some useful
art. His hands should be educated as well as his head.
He should be taught to deal with things as they are—
with life as it is. This would give a feeling of inde
pendence, which is the firmest foundation of honor, of
character. Every man knowing that he is useful,
admires himself.
Tn all the schools children should be taught to work
in wood and iron, to understand the construction and
use of machinery, to become acquainted with the great
forces that man is using to do his work. The present
system of education teaches names, not things. It is
as though we should spend years in learning the names
of cards, without playing a game.
In this way boys would learn their aptitudes—would
ascertain what they were fitted for—what they could
do. It would not be a guess, or an experiment, but a
demonstration.
Education should increase a boy’s
chances for getting a living. The real good of it is to
get food and roof and raiment, opportunity to develop
the mind and the body and live a full and ample life.
The more real education, the less crime—and the
more homes, the fewer prisons.
X.
The fear of punishment may deter some, the fear of
exposure others ; but there is no real reforming power
in fear or punishment. Men cannot be tortured into
greatness, into goodness. All this, as I said before,
has been thoroughly tried. The idea that punishment
was the only relief, found its - limit, its infinite, in the
old doctrine of eternal pain; but the believers in that
�Crimes against Criminals.
25
dogma stated distinctly that the victims never would
be, and never could be, reformed.
As men become civilised, they become capable of
greater pain and of greater joy. To the extent that
the average man is capable of enjoying or suffering to
that extent he has sympathy with others. The average
man, the more enlightened he becomes, the more apt
he is to put himself in the place of another. He
thinks of his prisoner, of his employee, of his tenant—
and he even thinks beyond these : he thinks of the
community at large. As man becomes civilised he
takes more and more into consideration circumstances
and conditions. He gradually loses faith in the old
ideas and theories that every man can do as he wills,
and in the place of the word “ wills,” he puts the word
“ must.” The time comes to the intelligent man when
in the place of punishments he thinks of consequences,
results—that is to say, not something inflicted by some
other power, but something necessarily growing' out of
whatisdone. The clearer men perceive the consequences
of actions, the better they will be. Behind conse
quences we place no personal will, and consequently do
not regard them as inflictions or punishments. Conse
quences, no matter how severe they may be, create in
the mind no feeling of resentment, no desire for
revenge. We do not feel bitterly toward the fire
because it burns, or the frost that freezes, or the flood
that overwhelms, or the sea that drowns—because we
attribute to these things no motives, good or bad. So,
when through the development of the intellect man
perceives not only the nature but the absolute certainty
of consequences, he refrains from certain actions, and
this may be called reformation through the intellect—
and surely there is no better reformation than this.
�Crimes against Criminals.
Some may be, and probably millions have been reformed
through kindness, through gratitude—made better in
the sunlight of charity. In the atmosphere of kind
ness the seeds of virtue burst into bud and flower.
Cruelty, tyranny, brute force, do not and can not
by any possibility better the heart of man. He who is
forced upon his knees has the attitude, but never the
feeling, of prayer.
I am satisfied that the discipline of the average
piison haidens and degrades. It is for the most part
a perpetual exhibition of arbitrary power. There is
really no appeal. The cries of the convict are not
heard beyond the walls. The protests die in cells, and
the poor prisoner feels that the last tie between him
and his fellow-men has been broken. He is kept in
ignorance of the outer world. The prison is a cemetery,
and his cell is a grave.
In many of the penitentaries there are instruments
of torture, and now and then a convict is murdered.
Inspections and investigations go for naught, because
the testimony of a convict goes for naught. He is
generally prevented by fear from telling his wrongs;
but if he speaks, he is not believed—he is regarded as
less than a human being, and so the imprisoned remain
without remedy. When the visitors are gone, the
conxict who has spoken is prevented from speaking1
again.
Every manly feeling, every effort towards real
reformation, is trampled under foot, so that when the
convict’s time is out there is little left on which to
build. He has been humiliated to the last degree, and
his spirit has so long been bent by authority and fear
that even the desire to stand erect has almost faded
from the mind. The keepers feel that they are
�Crimes against Criminals.
27
safe, because no matter what they do, the convict
when released will not tell the story of his wrongs,
for if he conceals his shame, he must also hide their
guilt.
Every penitentiary should be a real reformatory.
That should be the principal object for the establish
ment of the prison. The men in charge should be of
the kindest and noblest. They should be filled with
divine enthusiasm for humanity, and every means
should be taken to convince the prisoner that his good
is sought—that nothing is done for revenge—nothing
for a display of power, and nothing for the gratification
of malice. He should feel that the warden is his
unselfish friend. When a convict is charged with a
violation of the rules—with insubordination, or with
any offence, there should be an investigation in due and
proper form, giving the convict an opportunity to be
heard. He should not be for one moment the victim
of an irresponsible power. He would then feel that he
had some rights, and that some little of the human
remained in him still. They should be taught things
of value—-instructed by competent men. Pains should
be taken, not to punish, not to degrade, but to benefit
and ennoble.
We know, if we know anything, that men in the
penitentaries are not altogether bad, and that many out
are not altogether good ; and we feel that in the brain
and heart of all there are seeds of good and bad. We
know, too, that the best are liable to fall, and it maybe
that the worst, under certain conditions, may be
capable of grand and heroic deeds. Of one thing we
may be as assured—and that is, that criminals will
never be reformed by being robbed, humiliated, and
degraded.
�28
Grimes against Criminals.
Ignorance, filth and poverty are the missionaries of
crime. As long as dishonorable success outranks
honest effort—as long as society bows and cringes
before the great thieves, there will be little ones enough
to fill the jails.
XI.
All the penalties, all the punishments, are inflicted
under a belief that man can do right under all circum
stances—that his conduct is absolutely under his con
trol, and that his will is a pilot that can, in spite of
winds and tides, reach any port desired. All this is, in
my judgment, a mistake. It is a denial of the integrity
of nature. It is based upon the supernatural and
miraculous, and as long as this mistake remains the
cornerstone of criminal jurisprudence, reformation will
be impossible.
We must take into consideration the nature of man
—the facts of mind—the power of temptation—the
limitations of the intellect—the force of habit—the
result of heredity—the power of passion—the domina
tion of want—the diseases of the brain—the tyranny
of appetite—the cruelty of conditions—the results of
association—the effects of poverty and wealth, of help
lessness and power.
Until these subtle things are understood—until we
know that man in spite all, can certainly pursue the
highway of the right, society should not impoverish and
degrade, should not chain and kill, those who, after all,
may be the helpless victims of unknown causes that are
deaf and blind.
We know something of ourselves—of the average
man—of his thoughts, passions, fears, and aspirations—
something of his sorrows and his joys, his weak-
�Crimes against Criminals.
29
ness, his liability to fall — something of what he
resists—the struggles, the victories, and the failures of
his life. We know something of the tides and cur
rents of the mysterious sea—something of the circuits
of the wayward winds—-but we do not know where the
wild storms are born that wreck and rend. Neither do
we know in what strange realm the mists and clouds
are formed that dim and darken all the heaven of the
mind, nor from whence comes the tempest of the brain
in which the will to do, sudden as the lightning’s flash,
seizes and holds the man until the dreadful deed is done
that leaves a curse upon the soul.
We do not know. Our ignorance should make us
hesitate. Our weakness should make us merciful.
I cannot more fittingly close this address than by
quoting the prayer of the Buddhist:—“ I pray thee to
have pity on the vicious—thou hast already had pity on
the virtuous by making them so.’'’
���WORKS BY COLONEL R. G. INGERSOLL
■------------------ o------------------ -
s. d.
MISTAKES OF MOSES
...
...
...10
Superior edition, in cloth ...
...
... j g
Only Complete Edition published in England.
DEFENCE OF FREETHOUGHT
...
...0
Five Hours’ Speech at theTrial of C. B.
Reynolds for Blasphemy.
0
REPLY TO GLADSTONE
...
...
With a Biography by J. M. Wheeler.
FAITH AND FACT.
GOD AND MAN.
0
4
Reply to Cardinal Manning
ROME OR REASON ?
...
0
4
0
2
Reply to Rev. Dr. Field
...
Second Reply to Dr. Field
THE DYING CREED
...
0 2
...
...
...
0 2
THE HOUSEHOLD OF FAITH
...
....
o 2
THE LIMITS OF TOLERATION
...
...
A Discussion with Hon. F. D. Ooudert an 1
Gov. S. L. Woodford.
0 2
ART AND MORALITY
...
DO I BLASPHEME?
...
...
THE CLERGY AND COMMON SENSE
THE GREAT MISTAKE
LIVE TOPICS
...
2
0
..02
0
\ ...
...
...
...
2
0 1
0 x
...
...
... 0 1
... 0 x
MYTH AND MIRACLE
REAL BLASPHEMY
...
...
SOCIAL SALVATION
...
...
...
0 2
...
...
...
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0 2
0 2
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MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE ...
GOD AND THE STATE
...
WHY AM I AN AGNOSTIC?
...
...
0
2
WHY AM I AN AGNOSTIC?
Part II.
...
0
2
Progressive Publishing Co., 28 Stonecutter Street. E.O.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Crimes against criminals : an address, delivered before the State Bar Association of New York, January 21, 1890
Creator
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1896]
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 29 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: "Works by Colonel R.G. Ingersoll" listed on back cover. No. 13b in Stein checklist. Printed by G.W. Foote. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Progressive Publishing Company
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1890
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N329
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Crime
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Crimes against criminals : an address, delivered before the State Bar Association of New York, January 21, 1890), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Crime and Punishment
Criminal Law
Criminals-United States
NSS
Prison Reform