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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE
GHOSTS
BY
COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL.
Let them cover their Eyeless Sockets with their Flesh
less Hands and fade for ever from the imagination
of Men.
Price Threepence.
R. FORDER, 28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.O.
1893.
�LONDON :
PRINTED BY
G. W. FOOTE,
AT 11 CLERK F KWELL GREEN, E.C.
�THE GHOSTS.
Let them cover their Eyeless Sockets with their Fleshless Hands
and fade for ever from the imagination of Men.
There are three theories by which men. account for all phe
nomena, for everything that happens : First, the Supernatural; second, the Supernatural and Natural; third, the
Natural. Between these theories there has been, from the
dawn of civilisation, a continual conflict. In this great war
nearly all the soldiers have been in the ranks of the super
natural. The believers in the supernatural insist that matter
is controlled and directed entirely by powers from without;
while naturalists maintain that Nature acts from within;
that Nature is not acted upon; that the universe is all there
is; that Nature with infinite arms embraces everything that
exists, and that all supposed powers beyond the limits of the
material are simply ghosts. You say, “ Oh, this is material
ism!” What is matter? I take in my hand some earth
—in this dust put seeds. Let the arrows of light from the
quiver of the sun smite upon it; let the rain fall upon it;
the seeds will grow and a plant will bud and blossom. Do
you understand this ? Can you explain it better than you
can the production of thought ? Have you the slightest con
ception of what it really is ? And yet you speak of matter as
though acquainted with its origin, as though you had torn
from the clenched hands of the rocks the secrets of material
existence. Do you know what force is ? Can you account
for molecular action ? Are you really familiar with chem
istry, and can you account for the loves and hatreds of the
atoms ? Is there not something in matter that for ever
eludes? After all, can you get beyond, above, or below
appearances ? Before you cry “ materialism !” had you not
better ascertain what matter really is? Can you think even
of anything without a material basis ? Is it possible to
imagine the annihilation of a single atom ? Is it possible for
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you to conceive of the creation of an atom ? Can you have a
thought that was not suggested to you by what you call
matter ?
Our fathers denounced materialism, and accounted for all
phenomena by the caprice of gods and devils.
For thousands of years it was believed that ghosts, good
and bad, benevolent and malignant, weak and powerful, in
some mysterious way, produced all phenomena; that disease
and health, happiness and misery, fortune and misfortune,
peace and war, life and death, success and failure, were but
arrows from the quivers of these ghosts; that shadowy
phantoms rewarded and punished mankind; that they were
pleased and displeased by the actions of men; that they sent
and withheld the snow, the light, and the rain; that they
blessed the earth with harvests or cursed it with famine;
that they fed or starved the children of men; that they
crowned and uncrowned kings; that they took sides in war ;
that they controlled the winds; that they gave prosperous
voyages, allowing the brave mariner to meet his wife and
child inside the harbor bar, or sent the storms, strewing the
sad shore with wrecks of ships and the bodies of men.
Formerly, these ghosts were believed to be almost innu
merable. Earth, air, and water were filled with these phan
tom hosts. In modern times they have greatly decreased
in number, because the second theory—a mingling of the
supernatural and natural—has generally been adopted. The
remaining ghosts, however, are supposed to perform the same
offices as the hosts of yore.
It has always been believed that these ghosts could in some
way be appeased; that they could be flattered by sacrifices,
by prayer, by fasting, by the building of temples and
cathedrals, by the blood of men and beasts, by forms and
ceremonies, by chants, by kneelings and prostrations, by
flagellations and maimings, by renouncing the joys of home,
by living alone in a wide desert, by the practice of celibacy,
by inventing instruments of torture, by destroying men,
women, and children, by covering the earth with dungeons,
by burning unbelievers, by putting chains upon the thoughts
and manacles upon the limbs of men, by believing things
without evidence and against evidence, by disbelieving and
denying demonstration, by despising facts, by hating reason,
by denouncing liberty, by maligning heretics, by slandering
the dead, by subscribing to senseless and cruel creeds, by
discouraging investigation, by worshipping a book, by the
cultivation of credulity, by observing certain times and days,
by counting beads, by gazing at crosses, by hiring others to
repeat verses and prayers, by burning candles, and ringing
�( 5 )
bells, by enslaving each, other, and putting out the eyes of
the soul. All this has been done to appease and flatter this
monster of the air.
In the history of our poor world, no horror has been,
omitted, no infamy has been left undone by the believers in
ghosts,—by the worshippers of these fleshless phantoms.
And yet these shadows were born of cowardice and malignity.
They were painted by the pencil of fear upon the canvas of
ignorance by that artist called superstition.
From these ghosts our fathers received information. They
were the schoolmasters of our ancestors. They were the
scientists and philosophers, the geologists, legislators, astro
nomers, physicians, metaphysicians, and historians of the
past. For ages these ghosts were supposed to be the only
source of real knowledge. They inspired men to write
books, and the books were considered sacred. If facts were
found to be inconsistent with these books, so much the worse
for the facts, and especially for their discoverers. It was then,
and still is, believed that these books are the basis of the
idea of immortality; that to give up these volumes, or rather
the idea that they are inspired, is to renounce the idea of
immortality. This I deny.
The idea of immortality that like a sea has ebbed and
flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves of
hope and fear, beating against the shores and rocks of time
and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of
any religion. It was born of human affection, and it will
continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of
doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death.
It is the rainbow of hope shining-upon the tears of grief.
From the books written by the ghosts we have at last
ascertained that they knew nothing about the world in which
we live. . Did they know anything about the next? Upon
every point where contradiction is possible, they have been
contradicted.
By these ghosts, by these citizens of the air, the affairs of
government were administered; all authority to govern
came from. them. The emperors, kings, and potentates all
had commissions from these phantoms. Man was not con
sidered as the source of any powei’ whatever. To rebel
against the king was to rebel against the ghosts, and nothing
less than the blood of the offender could appease the invisible
phantom or the visible tyrant. Kneeling was the proper
position to be assumed by the multitude. The prostrate
were the good. Those who stood erect were infidels and
traitors. In the name and by the authority of the ghosts,
man was enslaved, crushed, and plundered. The many
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toiled wearily in the storm and sun that the few favorites of
the ghosts might live in idleness. The many lived in huts,
and caves, and dens, that the few might dwell in palaces.
The many covered themselves with rags, that the few might
robe themselves in purple and in gold. . The many crept, and
cringed, and crawled, that the few might tread upon their
flesh with iron feet.
From the ghosts men received, not only authority, but
information of every kind. They told us the form of this
earth. They informed us that eclipses were caused by the
sins of man; that the universe was made in six days;
that astronomy and geology were devices of wicked men,
instigated by wicked ghosts ; that gazing at the sky with a
telescope was a dangerous thing ; that digging into the earth
was sinful curiosity ; that trying to be wise above what
they had written was born of a rebellious and irreverent
spirit.
They told us there was no virtue like belief, and no crime
like doubt ; that investigation was pure impudence, and the
punishment therefore, eternal torment. They not only told
us all about this world, but about two others ; and if their
statements about the other world are as true as about this,
no one can estimate the value of their information.
For countless ages the world was governed by ghosts, and
they spared no pains to change the eagle of the human intel
lect into a bat of darkness. To accomplish this infamous
purpose ; to drive the love of truth from the human heart ;
to prevent the advancement of mankind ; to shut out from
the world every ray of intellectual light; to pollute every
mind with superstition, the power of kings, the cunning
and cruelty of priests, and the wealth of nations were
exhausted.
During these years of persecution, ignorance, superstition,
and slavery, nearly all the people, the kings, lawyers, doctors,
the learned and the unlearned, believed in that frightful
production of ignorance, fear and faith, called witchcraft.
They believed that man was the sport and prey of devils.
They really thought that the very air was thick with
these enemies of man. With few exceptions, this hideous
and infamous belief was universal. Under these conditions,
progress was almost impossible.
Fear paralyses the brain. Progress is born of courage.
Fear believes—courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth
and prays—courage stands erect and thinks. Fear retreats
--courage advances. Fear is barbarism—courage is civilisa
tion. Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils, and in ghosts.
Fear is religion—courage is science.
�( 7 )
The facts, upon which this terrible belief rested, were
proved over and over again in every court of Europe.
Thousands confessed themselves guilty—admitted that they
had sold themselves to the Devil. They gave the particulars
of the sale; told what they said and what the Devil replied.
They confessed this, when they knew that confession was
death; knew that their property would be confiscated, and
their children left to beg their bread. This is one of the
miracles of history—one of the strangest contradictions of
the human mind. Without doubt, they really believed
themselves guilty. In the first place, they believed in
witchcraft as a fact, and when charged with it they probably
became insane. In their insanity they confessed their guilt.
They found themselves abhorred and deserted—charged
with a crime that they could not disprove. Like a man in
quicksand, every effort only sunk them deeper. Caught in
this frightful web, at the mercy of the spiders of superstition,
hope fled, and nothing remained but the insanity of confession.
The whole world appeared to be insane.
In the time of James the First, a man was executed for
causing a storm at sea with the intention of drowning one of
the royal family. How could he disprove it ? How could
he show that he did not cause the storm ? All storms were
at that time generally supposed to be caused by the Devil—<
the prince of the power of the air—and by those whom he
assisted.
I implore you to remember that the believers in such
impossible things were the authors of our creeds and con
fessions of faith.
A woman was tried and convicted before Sir Matthew
Hale, one of the great judges and lawyers of England, for
having caused children to vomit crooked pins. She was
also charged with having nursed devils. The learned judge
charged the intelligent jury that there was no doubt as to
the existence of witches; that it was established by all
history, and expressly taught by the Bible.
The woman was hanged and her body burned.
Sir Thomas More declared that to give up witchcraft was
to throw away the sacred scriptures. In my judgment he
was right.
John.Wesley was a firm believer in ghosts and witches,
and insisted upon it, years after all laws upon the subject
had been repealed in England. I beg of you to remember
that John Wesley was the founder of the Methodist Church.
In New England, a woman was charged with being a
witch, and with having changed herself into a fox. While
in that condition she was attacked and bitten by some dogs.
�( 8)
A committee of three men, by order of the court, examined
this woman. They removed her clothing and searched for
“ witch spots.” That is to say, spots into which needles
could be thrust without giving her pain. They reported to
the court that such spots were found. She denied, however,
that she ever had changed herself into a fox. Upon the
report of the committee she was found guilty and actually
executed. This was done by our Puritan fathers, by the
gentlemen who braved the dangers of the deep for the sake
of worshipping God and persecuting their fellow men.
In those days people believed in what was known as
lycanthropy—that is, that persons, with the assistance of the
Devil, could assume the form of wolves. An instance is
given where a man was attacked by a wolf. He defended
himself, and succeeded in cutting off one of the animal’s
paws. . The wolf ran away. The man picked up the paw,
put it in his pocket and carried it home. There he found his
wife with one of her hands gone. He took the paw from
his pocket.. It had changed to a human hand. He charged
his wife with being a witch. She was tried. She confessed
her guilt, and was burned.
People were burned for causing frosts in summer—for
destroying crops with hail—for causing storms—for making
cows go dry, and even for souring beer. There was no im
possibility for which someone was not tried and convicted.
The life of no one was secure. To be charged, was to be
convicted. Every man was at the mercy of every other.
This infamous belief was so firmly seated in the minds of
the people, that to express a doubu as to its truth was to be
suspected. Whoever denied the existence of witches 'and
devils was denounced as an infidel.
They believed that animals were often taken possession of
by devils, and that the killing of the animal would destroy
the devil. They absolutely tried, convicted, and executed
dumb beasts.
At Basle, in 1470, a rooster was tried upon the charge of
having laid an egg. .Rooster eggs were used only in making
witch ointment—this everybody knew. The rooster was
convicted, and with all due solemnity was burned in the
public square. So a hog and six pigs were tried for having
killed and. partially eaten a child. The hog was convicted,
but the pigs, on account probably of their extreme youth,
were acquitted. As late as 1740, a cow was tried and con
victed of being possessed by a devil.
They used to exorcise rats, locusts, snakes, and vermin.
They used to go through the alleys, streets, and fields, and
warn them to leave within a certain number of days. In
�( 9 )
case they disobeyed, they were threatened with pains and
penalties.
But let us be careful how we laugh at these things. Let us
not pride ourselves too much on the progress of our age. We
must not forget that some of our people are yet in the same
intelligent business. Only a little while ago, the Governor
of Minnesota appointed a day of fasting and prayer, to see if
some power could not be induced to kill the grasshoppers, or
send them into some other state.
About the close of the fifteenth century, so great was the
excitement with regard to the existence of witchcraft, that
Pope Innocent VII. issued a bull directing the inquisitors to
be vigilant in searching out and punishing ail guilty of this
crime. Forms for the trial were regularly laid down in a
book or pamphlet called the Malleus Maleficorum (Hammer
of Witches), which was issued by the Roman See. Popes
Alexander, Leo, and Adrian, issued like bulls. For two
hundred and fifty years the Church was busy in punishing
the impossible crime of witchcraft; in burning, hanging, and
torturing men, women, and children. Protestants were as
active as Catholics, and in Geneva five hundred witches were
burned at the stake in a period of three months. About one
thousand were executed in one year in the diocese of Como.
At least one hundred thousand victims suffered in Germany
alone: the last execution (in Wurtzburg) taking place as
late as 1749. Witches were burned in Switzerland as late
as 1780.
In England the same frightful scenes were enacted.
Statutes were passed from Henry VI. to James I., defining
the crime and its punishment. The last Act passed by the
feritish Parliament was when Lord Bacon was a member of
the House of Commons; and this Act was not repealed
until 1736.
Sir William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws
of England, says : “ To deny the possibility, nay, actual
existence of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once flatly to con
tradict the Word of God in various passages both of the Old
and New Testament; and the thing itself is a truth to which
every nation in the world hath in its turn borne testimony,
either by examples seemingly well attested, or by prohibitory
laws, which at least suppose the possibility of a commerce
with evil spirits.”
In Brown’s Dictionary of the Bible, published at Edin
burgh, Scotland, in 1807, it is said that: “ A witch is a
woman that has dealings with Satan. That such persons are
among men is abundantly plain from scripture, and that they
ought to be put to death.”
�( 10 )
This work was re-published in Albany, New York, in 1816.
No wonder the clergy of that city are ignorant and bigoted
even unto this day.
In 1716, Mrs. Hicks and her daughter, nine years of age,
were hanged for selling their souls to the Devil, and raisin«a storm by pulling off their stockings and making a lather of
soap.
In England it has been estimated that at least thirty thou
sand were hanged and burned. The last victim executed in
Scotland perished in 1722. “ She was an innocent old woman,
who had so little idea of her situation as to rejoice at the
sight of the fire which was destined to consume her. She
had a daughter, lame both of hands and of feet—a circum
stance attributed to the witch having been used to transform
her daughter into a pony and getting her shod by the Devil.”
In 1692, nineteen persons were executed and one pressed
to death in Salem, Massachusetts, for the crime of witch
craft.
It was thought, in those days, that men and women made
compacts with the Devil, orally and in writing. That they
abjured God and Jesus Christ, and dedicated themselves
wholly to the Devil. The contracts were confirmed at a
general meeting of witches and ghosts, over which the Devil
himself presided; and the persons generally signed the
articles of agreement with their own blood. These contracts
were, in some instances for a few years; in others, for life.
General assemblies of the witches were held at least once a
year,.at which they appeared entirely naked, besmeared with
an ointment made from the bodies of unbaptised infants.
“ To these meetings they rode from great distances on broom
sticks, pokers, goats, hogs, and dogs. Here they did homage
to the prince of hell, and offered him sacrifices of young
children, and practised all sorts of license until the break of
day.”
“ As late as 1815, Belgium was disgraced by a witch trial;
and guilt was established by the water ordeal.” “ In 1836,
the populace of Hela, near Dantzic, twice plunged into the
sea a woman reputed to be a sorceress ; and as the miserable
creature persisted in rising to the surface, she was pronounced
guilty, and beaten to death.”
“ It was believed that the bodies of devils are not like
those of men and animals, cast in an unchangeable mould.
It was thought they were like clouds, refined and subtle
matter, capable of assuming any form and penetrating into
any orifice. The horrible tortures they endured in their place
of punishment rendered them extremely sensitive to suffer
ing, and they continually sought a temperate and somewhat
�(11)
moist warmth in. order to allay their pangs. It was for this
reason they so frequently entered into men and women.”
The Devil could transport men, at his will, through the
gjy. He could beget children; and Martin Luther himself
had come in contact with one of these children.. He. recom
mended the mother to throw the child into the river,inorder
to free their house from the presence of a devil.
It was believed that the Devil could transform people into
any shape he pleased.
Whoever denied these things was denounced as an infidel.
All the believers in witchcraft confidently appealed to the
Bible. Their mouths were filled with passages demonstrating
the existence of witches and their power over human .beings.
By the Bible they proved that innumerable evil spirits were
ranging over the world endeavoring to ruin mankind; that
these spirits possessed a power and wisdom far transcending
the limits of human faculties ; that they delighted in. every
misfortune that could befall the world; that their malice was
superhuman. That they caused tempests was proved by the
action of the Devil toward Job; by the passage in the book of
Revelation describing the four angels who held the four winds,
and to whom it was given to afflict the earth. They believed
this, because they knew that Christ had been carried by the
Devil in the same manner and placed on a pinnacle of the
temple. “ The prophet Habakkuk had been transported.by
a spirit from Judea to Babylon; and Philip, the evangelist,
had been the object of a similar miracle; and in the same
way St. Paul had been carried in the body to the third
heaven.”
“ In those pious days, they believed that. Incubi and
Succubi were for ever wandering among mankind, alluring,
by more than human charms, the unwary to their destruction,
and laying plots, which were too often successful, against the
virtue of the saints. Sometimes the witches kindled in the
monastic priest a more terrestrial fire. People, told, with
bated breath, how, under the spell of a vindictive woman,
four successive abbots in a German monastery had been
wasted away by an unholy flame.”
An instance is given in which the Devil not only assumed
the appearance of a holy man, in order to pay his addresses
to a lady, but when discovered, crept under the bed, suffered
himself to be dragged out, and was impudent enough to
declare that he was the veritable bishop. So perfectly had
he assumed the form and features of the prelate that those
Who knew the bishop best were deceived.
One can hardly imagine the frightful state of the human
mind during these long centuries of darkness and supersti-
�()
tion. To them, these things were awful and frightful realities.
Hovering about them in the open air, in their houses, in the
bosoms of friends, in their very bodies, in all the darkness of
i* everywhero, around, above and below, were innumer
able hosts of unclean and malignant devils.
From the malice of those leering and vindictive vampires
ot the air, the Church pretended to defend mankind. Pursued
by those phantoms, the frightened multitudes fell upon their
theft aD<* imPl°red
of robed hypocrisy and sceptered
Take from the orthodox Church of to-day the threat and
tear ot hell, and it becomes an extinct volcano.
Take from the Church the miraculous, the supernatural,
the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the
unknowable and the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum
remains.
Notwithstanding all the infamous things justly laid to the
charge of the Church, we are told that the civilisation of
to-day is the child of what we are pleased to call the super
stition of the past.
1
Religion has not civilised man—man has civilised religion.
God improves as man advances.
Ca^ your attention to what we have received from
the followers of the ghosts. Let me give you an outline of
" a sciences as taught by these philosophers of the clouds.
j diseases were produced, either as a punishment by the
good ghosts, or out of pure malignity by the bad ones,
lhere were, properly speaking, no diseases. The sick were
possessed by ghosts. The science of medicine consisted in
knowing how to persuade these ghosts to vacate the premises,
kor thousands of years the diseased were treated with
incantations, with hideous noises, with drums and gongs.
.Everything was. done to make the visit of the ghost as un
pleasant as possible, and they generally succi-eded in making
things so disagreeable that if the ghost did not leave, the
patient did. These ghosts were supposed to be of different
rank, power and dignity. Now and then a man pretended
to have won the favor of some powerful ghost, and that gave
him power oyer the little ones. Such a man became an
eminent physician.
It was found that certain kinds of smoke, such as that
produced by burning the liver of a fish, the dried skin of a
serpent, the eyes of a toad, or the tongue of an adder, were
i 3gly offeQsive ,t0 the nostrils of an ordinary ghost.
With this smoke the sick room would be filled until the ghost
vanished or the patient died.
”
�It was also believed that certain words—the names of the
most powerful ghosts—when properly pronounced, were
very effective weapons. It was for a long time thought that
Isatin words were the best—Latin being a dead language,
and known by the clergy. Others thought that two sticks
laid across each other and held before the wicked ghost
Would cause it instantly to flee in dread away.
For thousands of years the practice of medicine consisted
in driving these evil spirits out of the bodies of men.
In some instances bargains and compromises were made
with the ghosts. One case is given where a multitude of
devils traded a man for a herd of swine. In this transaction
the devils were the losers, as the swine immediately drowned
themselves in the sea. This idea of disease appears to have
been almost universal, and is by no means yet extinct.
The contortions of the epileptic, the strange twitchings of
those afflicted with chorea, the shakings of palsy, dreams,
trances, and the numberless frightful phenomena produced
by diseases of the nerves, were all seized upon as so many
proofs that the bodies of men were filled with unclean and
malignant ghosts.
Whoever endeavored to account for these things by natural
causes, whoever attempted to cure diseases by natural means,
was denounced by the Church as an infidel. To explain
anything was a crime. It was to the interest of the priest
that all phenomena should be accounted for by the will and
bower of gods and devils. The moment it is admitted that
all phenomena are within the domain of the natural, the
necessity for a priest has disappeared. Religion breathes
the air of the supernatural. Take from the mind of man the
idea of the supernatural, and religion ceases to exist. For
this reason, the Church has always despised the man who
explained the wonderful. Upon this principle, nothing was
left undone to stay the science of medicine. As long as
plagues and pestilences could be stopped by prayer, the priest
was useful. The moment the physician found a cure, the
¡priest became an extravagance. The moment it began to be
apparent that prayer could do nothing for the body, the
priest shifted his ground and began praying for the soul.
Long after the devil idea was substantially abandoned in
the practice of medicine, and when it was admitted that God
had nothing to do With ordinary coughs and colds, it was
»till believed that all the frightful diseases were sent by him
as punishments for the wickedness of the people. It was
thought to be a kind of blasphemy to even try, by any
Natural means, to stay the ravages of pestilence. Formerly,
during the prevalence of plague and epidemics, the arro
�( 14 )
gance of the priest was boundless. He told the people that
they had slighted the clergy, that they had refused to pay
tithes, that they had doubted some of the doctrines of the
Church, and that God was now taking his revenge. The
people for the most part believed this infamous tissue of
priestcraft. They hastened to fall upon their knees; they
poured out their wealth upon the altars of hypocrisy; they
abased and debased themselves; from their minds they
banished all doubts, and made haste to crawl in the very
dust of humility.
The Church never wanted disease to be under the control
of man. Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College, preached
a sermon against vaccination. His idea was, that if God had
decreed from all eternity that a certain man should die with
the small-pox, it was a frightful sin to avoid and annul that
decree by the trick of vaccination. Small-pox being regarded
as one of the heaviest guns in the arsenal of heaven, to
spike it was the height of presumption. Plagues and
pestilences were instrumentalities in the hands of God with
which to gain the love and worship of mankind. To find
a cure for a disease was to take a weapon from the Church.
No one tries to cure the ague with prayer. Quinine has
been found altogether more reliable. Just as soon as a
specific is found for a disease, that disease will be left out
of the list of prayer. The number of diseases with which
God from time to time afflicts mankind is continually decreas
ing. In a few years all of them will be under the control of
man, the gods will be left unarmed, and the threats of their
priests will excite only a smile.
The science of medicine has had but one enemy—religion.
Man was afraid to save his body for fear he might lose his
soul.
Is it any wonder that the people in those days believed in
and taught the infamous doctrine of eternal punishment—a
doctrine that makes God a heartless monster and man a slimy
hypocrite and slave ?
The ghosts were historians, and their histories were the
grossest absurdities. “ Tales told by idiots, full of sound and
fury, signifying nothing.” In those days the histories were
written by the monks, who, as a rule, were almost as super
stitious as they were dishonest. They wrote as though they
had been witnesses of every occurrence they related. They
wrote the history of every country of importance. They told
all the past and predicted all the future with an impudence
that amounted to sublimity. “ They traced the order of St.
Michael, in Prance, to the archangel himself, and alleged that
�( 15 )
he was the founder of a chivalric order in heaven itself. They
said that Tartars originally came from hell, and that they
were called Tartars because Tartarus was one of the names of
perdition. They declared that Scotland was so named after
Scota, a daughter of Pharaoh, who landed in Ireland, invaded
Scotland, and took it by force of arms. This statement was
made in a letter addressed to the Pope in the fourteenth
century, and was alluded to as a well-known fact. The letter
was written by some of the highest dignitaries, and by direc
tion of the King himself.”
These gentlemen accounted for the red on the breasts of
robins from the fact that these birds carried water to unbap
tised infants in hell.
Matthew, of Paris, an eminent historian of the fourteenth
century, gave the world the following piece of information :
“ It is well known that Mohammed was once a cardinal, and
became a heretic because he failed in his effort to be elected
Popeand that, having drank to excess, he fell by the road
side, and in this condition was killed by swine. “ And for
that reason his followers abhor pork even unto this day.”
Another eminent historian informs us that Nero was in the
habit of vomiting frogs. When I read this I said to myself:
Some of the croakers of the present day against Progress
would be the better for such a vomit.
The history of Charlemagne was written by Turpin, of
Rheims. He was a bishop. He assures us that the walls of
a city fell down in answer to prayer. That there were giants
in those days who could take fifty ordinary men under their
arms and walk away with them. “ With the greatest of these,
a direct descendant of Goliath, one Orlando had a theological
discussion, and that in the heat of the debate, when the giant
was overwhelmed with the argument, Orlando rushed forward
and inflicted a fatal stab.”
The history of Britain, written by the archdeacons of
Monmouth and Oxford, was wonderfully popular. According
to them, Brutus conquered England and built the city of
London. During his time it rained pure blood for three days.
At another time a monster came from the sea, and, after
having devoured great multitudes of people, swallowed the
king and disappeared. They tell us that King Arthur was
not born like other mortals, but was the result of a magical
contrivance; that he had great luck in killing giants; that
he killed one in France that had the cheerful habit of eating
some thirty men a.day. That this giant had clothes woven
of the beards of kings he had devoured. To cap the climax,
one of the authors of this book was promoted for having
w ri tten the only reli able history of his country.
�( 16 )
In all the histories of those days there is hardly a single
truth. Facts were considered unworthy of preservation.
Anything that really happened was not of sufficient interest
or importance to be recorded. The great religious historian,
Eusebius, ingeniously remarks that in his history he carefully
omitted whatever tended to discredit the Church, and that
he piously magnified all that conduced to her glory.
The same glorious principle was scrupulously adhered to by
all the historians of that time.
They wrote, and the people believed, that the tracts of
Pharaoh’s chariots were still visible on the sands of the Red
Sea, and that they had been miraculously preserved from the
winds and waves as perpetual witnesses of the great miracle
there performed.
It is safe to say that every truth in the histories of those
times is the result of accident or mistake.
They accounted for everything as the work of good and
evil spirits. With cause and effect they had nothing to do.
Facts were in no way related to each other. God governed
by infinite caprice, filled the world with miracles and discon
nected events. From the quiver of his hatred came the
arrows of famine, pestilence and death..
The moment that the idea is abandoned that all is
natural; that all phenomena are the necessary links in
the endless chain of being, the conception of history
becomes impossible. With the ghosts the present is not
the child of the past, nor the mother of the future. In the
domain of religion all is chance, accident and caprice.
Do not forget, I pray you, that our creeds were written by
the co-temporaries of these historians.
The same idea was applied to law. It was believed by our
intelligent ancestors that all law derived its sacredness and
its binding force from the fact that it had been communi
cated to man by the ghosts. Of course it was not pretended
that the ghosts told everybody the law ; but they told it to
a few, and the few told it to the people, and the people, as a
rule, paid them exceedingly well for their trouble. It was
thousands of ages before the people commenced making
laws for themselves, and strange as it may appear, most of
these laws were vastly superioi’ to the ghost article. Through
the web and woof of human legislation began to run and
shine and glitter the golden thread of justice.
During these years of darkness it was believed that rather
than see an act of injustice done ; rather than see the
innocent suffer ; rather than see the guilty triumph, some
ghost would interfere. This belief, as a rule, gave great
�( 17 )
Satisfaction to the victoi’ious party, and as the other man was
dead, no complaint was heard from him.
This doctrine was the sanctification of brute force and
chance. They had trials by battle, by fire, by water, and by
lot. Persons were made to grasp hot iron, and if it burnt
them their guilt was established. Others, with tied hands
and feet, were cast into the sea, and if they sank, the verdict
of guilty was unanimous—if they did not sink, they were in
league with devils.
So in England, persons charged with erime could appeal
to the corsned. The corsned was a piece of the sacramental
bread. If the defendant could swallow this piece he went
acquit. Godwin, Earl of Kent, in the time of Edward the
Confessor, appealed to the corsned. He failed to swallow
it and was choked to death.
The ghosts and their followers always took delight in
torture, in cruel and unusual punishments. For the infrac
tion of most of their laws, death was the penalty—death
produced by stoning and by fire. Sometimes, when man
committed only murder, he was allowed to flee to some
city of refuge. Murder was a crime against man. But for
saying certain words, or denying certain doctrines,_ or for
picking up sticks on certain days, or for worshipping the
wrong ghost, or for failing to pray to the right one, or for
laughing at a priest, or for saying that wine was not blood,
or that bread was not flesh, or for failing to regard ram’s
horns as artillery, or for insisting that a dry bone was
scarcely sufficient to take the place of water works, or that
a raven, as a ru e, made a poor landlord ¡—Death, produced
by all the ways that the ingenuity of hatred could devise,
was the penalty.
Law is a growth—it is a science. Right and wrong exist
in the nature of things. Things are not right because they
are commanded, nor wrong because they are prohibitedThere are real crimes enough without creating artificial
ones. All progress in legislation has for centuries consisted
in repealing the laws of the ghosts.
The idea of right and wrong is born of man’s capacity to
enjoy and suffer. If man could not suffer, if he could not
inflict injury upon his fellow, if he could neither feel nor
inflict pain, the idea of right and wrong never would have
entered his brain. But for this, the word “ conscience ” never
would have passed the lips of man.
There is one good—happiness. There is but one sin—
selfishness. All law should be for the preservation of the
one and the destruction of the other.
�( 18 )
Under the regime of the.ghosts, laws were not supposed toexist m the nature of things. They were supposed to be
simply the irresponsible command of a ghost. These commands were not supposed to rest upon reason, they were the
product of arbitrary will.
The penalties for the violation of these laws were as cruel
a0 the laws were senseless and absurd. Working on the
Sabbath and murder were both punished with death. The
tendency of . such laws is to blot from the human heart the
sense of justice.
To show you how perfectly every department of know
ledge, or ignorance rather, was saturated with superstition, I
will for a moment refer to the science of language.
It. was thought by our fathers, that Hebrew was the
°^jnal lan"ua#e 5 that it was taught to Adam in the Garden
of Eden by the Almighty, and that consequently all languages
came from, and can be traced to, the Hebrew. Every fact
inconsistent with that idea was discarded. According to the
ghosts, the trouble of the Tower of Babel accounted for the
fact, that all people did. not. speak Hebrew. The Babel
business settled all questions in the science of language.
After a time, so many facts were found to be inconsistent
with the Hebrew idea that it began to fall into disrepute,
and other languages began to compete for the honor of beiii0the original.
°
Andre Kemp, in 1569, published a work on the language of
Paradise,111 which he maintained that God spoke to A d am in
Swedish; that Adam answered in Danish; and that the
serpent—which appears to me quite probable-spoke to Eve
in French. Erro, m a work published at Madrid, took the
Basque was the.language spoken in the Garden
of Eden.; but in 1580 Goropius published his celebrated work
at Antwerp, m which he put the whole matter at rest by
showing, beyond all doubt, that the language spoken in
Paradise was neither more nor less than plain Holland Dutch.
The real founder of the science of language was Leibnitz,
a cotemporary of Sir Isaac Newton. He discarded the idea
that all languages could be traced to one language. He
maintained that language was a natural growth. Experience
teaches us that this must be so. Words are continually dying
out and continually being born. Words are naturally and
necessarily produced. Words are the garments of thought,
the robes of ideas. Some are as rude as the skins of wild
beasts, and others glisten and glitter like silk and gold They
have been born of hatred and revenge; of love and self
sacrifice ; of hope and fear, of agony and joy. These words
are born of the terror and beauty of nature. The stars have
�(ly)
fashioned them. In them mingle the darkness and the dawn.
From everything they have taken something. Words are the
crystalisations of human history, of all that man has enjoyed
and suffered—his victories and defeats—all that he has lost
and won. Words are the shadows of all that has been—the
mirrors of all that is.
The ghosts also enlightened our fathers in astronomy and
geology. According to them the earth was made out of
nothing, and a little more nothing having been taken than
was used in the construction of this world, the stars were
made out of what was left over. Cosmos, in the sixth century,
taught that the stars were impelled by angels, who either
carried them on their shoulders, rolled them in front of them,
or drew them after. He also taught that each angel that
pushed a star took great pains to observe what the other
angels were doing, so that the relative distances between the
stars might always remain the same. He also gave his idea
as to the form of the world.
He stated that the world was a vast parallelogram; that on
the outside was a strip of land, like the frame of a common
slate; that then there was a strip of water, and in the middle
a great piece of land; that Adam and Eve lived on the outer
strip; that their descendants, with the exception of the Noah
family, were drowned by a flood on this outer strip; that the
ark finally rested on the middle piece of land where we now
are. He accounted for night and day by saying that on the
outside strip of land there was a high mountain, around which
the sun and moon revolved, and that when the sun was on the
other side of the mountain it was night; and when on this
side it was day.
He also declared that the earth was flat. This he proved
by many passages from the Bible. Among other reasons for
believing the earth to be flat he brought forward the follow
ing : We are told in the New Testament that Christ shall
come again in glory and power, and all the world shall see
him. Now, if the world is round, how are the people on the
other side going to see Christ when he comes ? That settled
the question, and the Church, not only endorsed the book,
but declared that whoever believed less or more than stated
¡by Cosmos, was a heretic.
In those blessed days, Ignorance was a king and Science an
outcast.
They knew the moment this earth ceased to be the centre
of the universe, and became a mere speck in the starry heaven
of existence, that their religion would become a childish fable
of the past.
�( 20 )
In the name and by the authority of the ghosts, men
enslaved their fellow men; they trampled upon the rights of
women and children. In the name and by the authority of
the ghosts, they bought and sold and destroyed each other;
they filled heaven with tyrants and earth with slaves, the
present with despair and the future with horror. In the name
and by the authority of the ghosts, they imprisoned the
human mind, polluted the conscience, hardened the heart,
subverted justice, crowned robbery, sainted hypocrisy, and
extinguished for a thousand years the torch of reason.
I have endeavored, in some faint degree, to show you what
has happened, and what will always happen when men are
governed by superstition and fear; when they desert the
sublime standard of reason; when they take the words of
others and do not investigate for themselves.
Even the great men of those days were nearly as weak in
this matter as the most ignorant. Kepler, one of the greatest
men of the world, an astronomer second to none, although
he plucked from the stars the secrets of the universe, was an
astrologer, and really believed that he could predict the
career of a man by finding what star was in the ascendant
at his birth. This great man breathed, so to speak, the
atmosphere of his time. He believed in the music of the
spheres, and assigned alto, bass, tenor, and treble to certain
stars.
Tycho Brahe, another astronomer, kept an idiot, whose
disconnected and meaningless words he carefully set down,
and then put them together in such mannei’ as to make
prophecies, and then waited patiently to see them fulfilled.
Luther believed that he had actually seen the Devil, and had
discussed points of theology with him. The human mind
was in chains. Every idea almost was a monster. Thought
was deformed. Eacts were looked upon as worthless. Only
the wonderful was worth preserving. Things that actually
happened were not considered worth recording—real occur
rences were too common. Everybody expected the miraculous.
The ghosts were supposed to be busy; devils were thought
to be the most industrious things in the universe, and with
these imps every occurrence of an unusual character was in
someway connected. There was no order, no serenity, no
certainty in anything. Everything depended upon ghosts
and phantoms. . Man was, for the most part, at the mercy of
malevolent spirits. He protected himself as best he could
with holy water, and tapers, and wafers, and cathedrals. He
made noises and rung bells to frighten the ghosts, and he
made music to charm them. He used smoke to choke them,
and incense to please them. He wore beads and crosses.
�( 21 )
He said prayers, and hired others to say them. He fasted
when he was hungry, and feasted when he was not. He
believed everything that seemed unreasonable, just to
appease the ghosts. He humbled himself. He crawled in
the dust. He shut the doors and windows, and excluded
every ray of light from the temple of the soul. He debauched
and polluted his own mind, and toiled night and day to
repair the walls of his own prison. From the garden of his
heart he plucked and trampled upon the holy flowers of pity.
The priests revelled in horrible descriptions of hell. Con
cerning the wrath of God, they grew eloquent. They
denounced man as totally depraved. They made reason
blasphemy, and pity a crime. Nothing so delighted them as
painting the torments and sufferings of the lost. Over the
worm that never dies they grew poetic; and the second
death filled them with a kind of holy delight. According
to them, the smoke and cries ascending from hell were the
perfume and music of heaven.
At the risk of being tiresome, I have said what I have to
show you the productions of the human mind, when enslaved;
the effects of widespread ignorance—the results of fear. I
want to convince you that every form of slavery is a viper,
that, sooner or later, will strike its poison fangs into the
bosoms of men.
The first great step towards progress is, for man to cease
to be the slave of man ; the second, to cease to be the slave
of the monsters of his own creation—of the ghosts and
phantoms of the air.
For ages the human race was imprisoned. Through the
bars and grates came a few struggling rays of light. Against
these grates and bars Science pressed its pale and thoughtful
face, wooed by the holy dawn of human advancement.
Men found that the real was the useful; that what a man
knows is better than what a ghost says; that an event is
more valuable than a prophesy. They found that diseases
were not produced by spirits, and could not be cured by
frightening them away. They found that death was as
natural as life. They began to study the anatomy and
chemistry of the human body, and found that all was natural
and within the domain of law.
The conjnror and sorcerer were discarded, and the phy
sician and surgeon employed. They found that the earth
was not flat; that the stars were not mere specks. They
found that being born undei’ a particular planet had nothing
to do with the fortunes of men.
The astrologer was discharged and the astronomer took
his place.
�( ¿2 )
# They found that the earth had swept through the constella
tions for millions of ages. They found that good and evil
were produced by natural causes, and not by ghosts; that
man could not be good enough or bad enough to stop or cause
a rain; that diseases were produced as naturally as grass,
and were not sent as punishments upon man for failing
to believe a certain creed. They found that man, through
intelligence, could take advantage of the forces of nature—
that he could make the waves, the winds, the flames, and the
lightnings of heaven do his bidding and minister to his
wants. They found that the ghosts knew nothing of benefit
to man; that they were utterly ignorant of geology—of
astronomy—of geography;—that they knew nothing of
history;—that they were poor doctors and worse surgeons ;
—that they knew nothing of law and less of justice;—that
they were without brains, and utterly destitute of hearts;—
that they knew nothing of the rights of men;—that they
were despisers of women, the haters of progress, the enemies
of science, and the destroyers of liberty.
The condition of the world during the Dark Ages shows
exactly the result of enslaving the bodies and souls of men.
In those days there was no freedom. Labor was despised,
and a laborer was considered but little above a beast.
Ignorance, like a vast cowl, covered the brain of the world,
and superstition ran riot with the imagination of man. The
air was filled with angels, with demons and monsters.
Credulity sat upon the throne of the soul, and Reason was
an exiled king. A man to be distinguished must be a
soldier or a monk. War and theology, that is to say, murder
and hypocrisy, were the principal employments of man.
Industry was a slave, theft was commerce; murder was war,
hypocrisy was religion.
Every Christian country maintained that it was no robbery
to take the property of Mohammedans by force, and no
murder to kill the owners. Lord Bacon was the first man
of note who maintained that a Christian country was bound
to keep its plighted faith with an infidel nation. Reading
and writing were considered dangerous arts. Every layman
who could read and write was suspected of being a heretic.
All thought was discouraged. They forged chains of super
stition for the mind, and manacles of iron for the bodies of
men. The earth was ruled by the cowl and sword, by the
mitre and sceptre, by the altar and throne, by Fear and Foroe,
by Ignorance and Faith, by ghouls and ghosts.
In the fifteenth century the following law was in force in
England:
�( 23 )
“ That whosoever reads the scriptures in the mother
tongue, shall forfeit land, cattle, life, and goods from their
heirs for ever, and so be condemned for heretics to God,
enemies to the Crown, and most arrant traitors to the land.”
During the first year this law was in force, thirty-nine
were hanged for its violation and their bodies burned.
In the sixteenth century men were burned because they
failed to kneel to a procession of monks.
The slightest word uttered against the superstition of the
time was punished with death.
Even the reformers, so-called, of those days, had no idea
of intellectual liberty—no idea even of toleration. Luther,
Knox, Calvin, believed in religious liberty only when they
were in the minority. The moment they were clothed with
power they began to exterminate with fire and sword.
Castellio was the first minister who advocated the liberty
of the soul. He was regarded by the reformers as a
criminal, and treated as though he had committed the crime
of crimes.
Bodinus, a lawyer of France, about the same time, wrote a
few words in favoi’ of the freedom of conscience, but
public opinion was overwhelmingly against him. The
people were ready, anxious, and willing, with whip, and
chain, and fire, to drive from the mind of man the heresy
that he had a right to think.
Montaigne, a man blest with so much common sense that
he was the most uncommon man of his time, was the first to
raise a voice against torture in France. But what was the
voice of one man against the terrible cry of ignorant,
infatuated, superstitious and malevolent millions? It was
the cry of a drowning man in the wild roar of the cruel sea.
In spite of the efforts of the brave few the infamous war
against the freedom of the soul was waged until at least one
pundred millions of human beings—fathers, mothers,
brothers, sisters—with hopes, loves, and aspirations like
ourselves, were sacrificed upon the cruel altar of an ignorant
faith. They perished in every way by which death can be
broduced. Every nerve of pain was sought out and touched
by the believers in ghosts.
For my part I glory in the fact, that here in the new
world—in the United States—liberty of conscience was first
guaranteed to man, and that the Constitution of the United
•States was the first great decree entered in the high court of
human equity for ever divorcing Church and State—the
first injunction granted against the interference of the
ghosts. This was one of the grandest steps ever taken by
ijhe human race in the direction of Progress.
�( 24 )
You will ask what has caused this wonderful change in
three hundred years. And I answer—the inventions and
discoveries of the few ; the brave thoughts, the heroic utter
ances of the few—the acquisition of a few facts.
Besides, you must remember that every wrong in some way
tends to abolish itself. It is hard to make a lie stand always.
A lie will not fit a fact. It will only fit another lie made for
the purpose. The life of a lie is simply a question of time.
Nothing but truth is immortal. The nobles and kings quar
relled: the priests began to dispute ; the ideas of government
began to change.
In 1441 printing was discovered. At that time the past
was a vast cemetery with hardly an epitaph. The ideas of
men had mostly perished in the brain that produced them.
The lips of the human race had been sealed. Printing gave
pinions to thought. It preserved ideas. It made it possible
for man to bequeath to the future the riches of his brain, the
wealth of his soul. At first, it was used to flood the world
with the mistakes of the ancients, but since that time it has
been flooding the world with light.
When people read they begin to reason, and when they
reason they progress. This was another grand step in the
direction of Progress.
The discovery of powder, that put the peasant almost upon
a par with the prince; that put an end to the so-called age of
chivalry; that released a vast number of men from the
armies; that gave pluck and nerve a chance with brute
strength.
The discovery of America, whose shores were trod by the
restless feet of adventure; that brought people holding every
shade of superstition together ; that gave the world an oppor
tunity to compare notes, and to laugh at the follies of each
other. Out of this strange mingling of all creeds, and super
stitions, and facts, and theories, and countless opinions, came
the Great Republic.
Every fact has pushed a superstition from the brain and a
ghost from the clouds. Every mechanic art is an educator.
Every loom, every reaper and mower, every steamboat, every
locomotive, every engine, every press, every telegraph, is a
missionary of Science and an apostle of Progress. Every
mill, every furnace, every building with its wheels and levers,
in which something is made for the convenience, for the use,
and for the comfort and elevation of man, is a church, and
every school house is a temple.
Education is the most radical thing in the world.
To teach the alphabet is to inaugurate a revolution.
To build a school house is to construct a fort.
�(25)
Every library is an arsenal filled with the weapons and
ammunition of Progress, and every fact is a monitor with
fades of iron and a turret of steel.
T
I thank the inventors,., the discoverers, the thinkers. 1
thank Columbus and Magellan. I thank Galileo, and Coper
nicus, and Kepler, and Des Cartes, and Newton, and La
Place. I thank Locke, and Hume, and Bacon, and pbake'
speare, and Kant, and Fichte, and Liebmtz, and Goethe. 1
thank Fulton, and Watts, and Volta, and Galvani, and
Franklin, and Morse, who made lightning the messenger of
man. I thank Humboldt, the Shakespeare of science. 1
thank Crompton and Arkwright, from whose brains leaped
the looms and spindles that clothe the world. I thank Luther
for protesting against the abuses of the Church, and I
denounce him because he was the enemy of liberty. 1 thank
Calvin for writing a book in favor of religious freedom, and 1
abhor him because he burned Servetus. I thank Knox for
resisting episcopal persecution, and I hate him because he
persecuted in his turn. I thank the Puritans for saying,
“ Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God, and yet 1 am
compelled to say that they were tyrants themselves. 1 thank
Thomas Paine because he was a believer m liberty, and because
he did as much to make my country free as any other human
being. I thank Voltaire, that great man who, for halt a
century, was the intellectual emperor of Europe, and who,
from his throne at the foot of the Alps, pointed the finger of
scorn at every hypocrite in Christendom. I thank Darwin,
Haeckel and Biichner, Spencer, Tyndall and Huxley, Draper,
Lecky and Buckle.
,, ....
I thank the inventors, the discoverers, the thinkers, the
scientists, the explorers. I thank the honest millions who
have toiled.
,
,,
_ ..
I thank the brave men with brave thoughts. They are the
Atlases upon whose broad and mighty shoulders rests the
grand fabric of civilisation. They are the men who have
broken, and are still breaking, the chains of Superstition.
They are the Titans who carried Olympus by assault, ana
who will soon stand victors upon Sinai’s crags.
We are beginning to learn that to exchange a mistake or
the truth—a superstition for a fact—to ascertain the real is
t0Happiness is the only possible good, and all that tends to
the happiness of man is right, and is of value. All that
tends to develop the bodies and minds of men; all that gives
us better houses, better clothes, better food, better pictures,
grander music, better heads, better hearts; all that renders
us more intellectual and more loving, nearer just; that
�( 26 )
makes us better husbands and wives, better children, better
citizens—all these things combined produce what I call
Progress.
•
•
•
•
•
•
Man advances only as he overcomes the obstructions of
Nature, and this can be done only by labor and by thought.
Labor is the foundation of all. Without labor, and without
great labor, progress is impossible. The progress of the
world depends upon the men who talk in the fresh furrows
and through the rustling corn; upon those who sow and
reap; upon those whose faces are radiant with the glare of
furnace fires; upon the delvers in the mines, and the workers
in shops; upon those who give to the winter air the ringing
music of the axe; upon those who battle with the boisterous
billows of the sea; upon the inventors and discoverers; upon
the brave thinkers.
. From the surplus produced by labor, schools and univer
sities are built and fostered. From this surplus the painter
is paid for the productions of the pencil; the sculptor for
chiselling shapeless rock into forms divinely beautiful, and
the poet for singing the hopes, the loves, the memories, and
the aspirations of the world. This surplus has given us the
books in which we converse with the dead and living kings
of the human race. It has given us all there is of beauty, of
elegance, and of refined happiness.
I am aware that there is a vast difference of opinion as to
what progress really is; that many denounce the ideas of
to-day as destructive of all happiness—of all good. I know
that there are many worshippers of the past. They venerate
the ancient because it is ancient. They Bee no beauty in
anything from which they do not blow the dust of ages with
the breath of praise. They say, no masters like the old; no
religion, no governments like the ancient; no orators, no
poets, no statesmen like those who have been dust for two
thousand years. Others love the modern simply because it
is modern.
We should have gratitude enough to acknowledge the
obligations we are under to the great and heroic of antiquity,
and independence enough not to believe what they said
simply because they said it.
With the idea that labor is the basis of progress goes the
truth that labor must be free. The laborer must be a free man.
The free man, working for wife and child, gets his head
and hands in partnership.
To do the greatest amount of work in the shortest space of
time, is the problem of free labor.
Slavery does the least work in the longest space of time.
�( 27 )
Free labor will give us wealth. Free thought will give us
truth.
Slowly, but surely, man is freeing his imagination of these
sexless phantoms, of the cruel ghosts. Slowly, but surely,
he is rising above the superstitions of the past. He is
learning to rely upon himself. He is beginning to find that
labor is the only prayer that ought to be answered, and that
hoping, toiling, aspiring, suffering men and women are of
more importance than all the ghosts that ever wandered
through the fenceless fields of space.
The believers in ghosts claim still, that they are the only
wise and virtuous people upon the earth; claim still, that
there is a difference between them and unbelievers so vast,
that they will be infinitely rewarded, and the others infinitely
punished.
I ask you to-night, do the theories and doctrines of the
theologians satisfy the heart or brain of the nineteenth
century p
Have the churches the confidence of mankind ?
Does the merchant give credit to a man because he belongs
to a church ?
Does the banker loan money to a man because he is a
Methodist or Baptist P
Will a certificate of good standing in any church be taken
as collateral security for one dollar ?
Will you take the word of a church member, or his note, or
his oath, simply because he is a church member.
Are the clergy, as a class, better, kinder and more generous
to their families—to their fellow-mem—than doctors, lawyers,
merchants and farmers P
Does a belief in ghosts and unreasonable things necessarily
•make people honest ?
When a man loses confidence in Moses, must the people
lose confidence in him ?
Does not the credit system in morals breed extravagance
in sin ?
Why send missionaries to other lands while every peni
tentiary in ours iB filled with criminals ?
Is it philosophical to say that they who do right carry a
-cross ?
Is it a source of joy to think that perdition is the destinaon of nearly all of the children of men ?
Is it worth while to quarrel about original sin—when there
is so much copy ?
Does it pay to dispute about baptism, and the Trinity, and
predestination, and apostolic succession, and the infallibility
�( 28 )
of churches, of popes, and of books ? Does all this do anv
good ?
J
Are the theologians welcomers of new truths ? Are they
noted for their candor? Do they treat an opponent with
common fairness? Are they investigators? Do they pull
forward or do they hold back ?
Is science indebted to the Church for a solitary fact ?
What Church is an asylum for a persecuted truth ?
What great reform has been inaugurated by the Church ?
Did the Church abolish slavery ?
Has the Church raised its voice against war ?
. I used to think that there was in religion no real restrain
ing force. Upon this point my mind has changed. Religion
will prevent man from committing artificial crimes and
offences.
A man committed murder. The evidence was so conclusivethat he confessed his guilt.
He was asked why he killed his fellow man.
He replied: “Formoney.”
“Did you get any?”
“Yes.”
“ How much ?”
“ Fifteen cents.”
<< What did you do with this money ?”
li
Spent it.”
“ What for ?”
“ Liquor.”
“ What else did you find upon the dead man ?”
“ He had his dinner in a bucket—some meat and bread.”
“ What did you do with that ?”
“ I ate the bread.”
“ What did you do with the meat ?”
“ I threw it away.”
“ Why ?”
“ It was Friday.”
Just to the extent that man has freed himself from thehe has advanced. Just to the extent
that he has freed himself from the tyrants of his own creation
he has progressed. Just to the extent that he has investi. £or himself he has lost confidence in superstition.
With knowledge obedience becomes intelligent acquiescence.
It is no longer degrading. Acquiescence in the understood
in the known is the act of a sovereign, not of a slave. It
ennobles, it does not degrade.
Man has found that he must give liberty to others in order"
to have it himself. He has found that a master is also a
slave; that a tyrant is himself a serf. He has found that-
�( 29 )
■governments should be founded and administered by man
■and for man; that the rights of all are equal; that the
powers that be are not ordained by God ; that woman is at
least the equal of man; that men existed before books; that
relig'on is one of the phases of thought through which the
world is passing; that all creeds were made by man; that
everything is natural; that a miracle is an impos-ibility;
that we know nothing of origin and destiny; that concerning
the unknown we are equally ignorant; that the pew has a
right to contradict what the pulpit asserts; that man is
responsible only to himself and those he injures, and that all
have a right to think.
True religion must be free. Without perfect liberty of
the mind there can be no true religion, Without liberty the
brain is a dungeon—the mind a convict. The slave may
bow and cringe and crawl, but he cannot adore—he cannot
love.
True religion is the perfume of a free and grateful heart.
True religion is a subordination of the passions to the per
ceptions of the intellect. True religion is not a theory—it
is a practice. It is rot a creed—it is a life.
A theory that is afraid of investigation is undeserving a
place in the human mind.
I do not pretend to tell what all the truth is. I do not
pretend- to have fathomed the abyss, nor to have floated on
outstretched wings level with the dim heights of thought.
I simply plead for freedom. I denounce the cruelties and
horrors of slavery. I ask for light and air for the souls of
men. I say, take off those chains—break those manacles—
free those limbs—release that brain ! I plead for the right to
think—-to reason—to investigate. I ask that the future may
be enriched with the honest thoughts of men. I implore every
human being to be a soldier in the army of progress.
I will not invade the rights of others. You have no right
to erect your toll-gate upon the highways of thought. You
have no right to leap from the hedges of superstition and
strike down the pioneers of the human race. You have no
right to sacrifice the liberties of man upon the altars of
ghosts Believe what you may; preach what you desire;
have all the forms and ceremonies you please; exercise your
liberty in your own way; but extend to all others the same
right.
I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they
accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous,
if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one
$nd all, because they enslave the minds of men.
�( 30 )
I attack the monsters, the phantoms of imagination thathave ruled the world. I attack slavery. I ask for room
room for the human mind.
Why should we sacrifice a real world that we have for one
we know not of? Why should we enslave ourselves? Why
should we forge fetters for our own hands ? Why should we
be the slaves of phantoms ? The darkness of barbarism was
the womb of the shadows. In the light of science they'
cannot cloud the sky for ever. They have reddened thehands of man with innocent blood. They made the cradle a
curse, and the grave a place of torment.
They blinded the eyes and stopped the ears of the human
race. They subverted all ideas of justice by promising infinite
rewards for. finite virtues, and threatening infinite punish—i
ment for finite offences.
They filled the future with heavens and with hells, with
the shining peaks of selfish joy and the lurid abysses of flame.
For ages they kept the world in ignorance and awe, in want
and misery, in fear and chains.
I plead for light, for air, for opportunity. I plead for
individual independence. I plead for the rights of labor and
of thought. I plead for a chainless future. Let the ghostsgo—justice remains. Let them disappear—men and women
and children are left. Let the monsters fade away—the
world is here with its hills and seas and plains, with its
seasons of smiles and frowns, its spring of leaf and bud, its
summer of shade and flower and murmuring stream ; its
autumn with laden boughs, when the withered banners of
the corn are still, and gathered fields are growing strangely
wan; while death, poetic death, with hands that color what
they touch, weaves in the autumn wood her tapestries of
gold and brown.
The world remains with its winters and homes and firesides,
where grow and bloom the virtues of our race. All these
are left; and music, with its sad and thrilling voice, and all
there is of art and song and hopo and love and aspiration
high. All these remain. Let the ghosts go—we will worship
them no more.
Manis greater than these phantoms. Humanity is grander
than all the creeds, than all the books. Humanity is the
great sea, and these creeds, and books, and religions, are but
the waves of a day. Humanity is the sky, and these religions
and dogmas and theories are but the mists and clouds
changing continually, destined finally to melt away.
That which is founded upon slavery, and fear, and igno
rance, cannot endure. In the religion of the future there
�( 31 )
will be men and women and children, all the aspirations of
the soul, and all the tender1 humanities of the heart.
Let the ghosts go. We will worship them no more. Let
them cover their eyeless sockets with their fleshless hands,
and fade for ever from the imaginations of men.
�WORKS BY COL. R. G. INGERSOLL.
MISTAKES OF MOSES
...
...
...
Superior edition, in cloth ...
..
...
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 Manning
CRIMES AGAINST CRIMINALS
...
...
AN ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN...
...
ORATION ON VOLTAIRE ...
...
...
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
...
...
...
PAINE THE PIONEER
...
...
...
HUMANITY’S DEBT TO THOMAS PAINE
...
ERNEs 1' RENAN AND JESUS CHRIST
..
THE THREE PHILANTHROPISTS
...
...
TRUE RELIGION
...
...
...
...
FAITH AND FACT. Reply to Rev. Dr. Field
...
GOD AND MAN.Second Reply to Dr. Field
...
SKULLS ...
...
...
...
...
THE HOUSEHOLD OF FAITH
...
...
LOVE THE REDEEMER. Reply to Count Tolstoi
THE LIMITS OF TOLERATION
A Discussion with Hon. F. D. Coudert ...
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
...
...
...
CREEDS AND SPIRITUALITY
...
...
CHRIST AND MIRACLES
...
...
...
THE GREAT MISTAKE
...
...
...
LIVE TOPICS
...
.
...
REAL BLASPHEMY
...
...
...
REPAIRING THE IDOLS
...
...
...
MYTH AND MIRACtE
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�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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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>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The ghosts
Creator
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 31 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: "Works by Col. R.G. Ingersoll" listed on back cover. No. 26f in Stein checklist. Printed by G.W. Foote. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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R. Forder
Date
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1893
Identifier
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N350
Subject
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Spiritualism
Rights
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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 ghosts), 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>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Ghosts
NSS
Supernatural