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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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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
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
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
A name given to the resource
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"
Creator
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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.
Publisher
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R. Forder
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1896
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N327
Subject
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Free thought
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 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>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Civilization
Free Thought
NSS
Religion