Lectures of Col. R.G. Ingersoll, Volume 2 — 09 - Intellectual Development, Part 1

Ingersoll's Lecture on Intellectual Development Ladies and Gentlemen: In the first place I want to admit that there are a great many good people, quite pious people, who don't agree with me and all that proves in the world is, that I don't agree with them.

I am not endeavoring to force my ideas or notions upon other people, but I am saying what little I can to induce everybody in the world to grant to every other person every right he claims for himself.

I

claim, standing under the flag of nature, under the blue and the stars, that I am the peer of any other man, and have the right to think and express my thoughts.

I claim that in the presence of the unknown, and upon a subject that nobody knows anything about, and never did, I have as good a right to guess as anybody else.

The gentlemen who hold views against mine, if they had any evidence, would have no fears--not the slightest.

If a man has a diamond that has been examined by the lapidaries of the world, and some ignorant stonecutter tells him that it is nothing but an ordinary rock, he laughs at him; but if it has not been examined by lapidaries, and he is a little suspicious himself that it is not genuine, it makes him mad.

Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man.

Any man who is afraid to have his doctrine investigated is not only a coward but a hypocrite.

Now, all I ask is simply an opportunity to say my say.

I will give that right to everybody else in the world.

I

understand that owing to my success in the lecture field several clergymen have taken it into their heads to lecture--some of them, I believe, this evening.

I say all that I claim is the right I give to others, and any man who will not give that right is a dishonest man, no matter what church he may belong to or not belong to--if he does not freely accord to all others the right to think, he is not an honest man.

I said some time ago that if there was any being who would eternally damn one of his children for the expression of an honest opinion that he was not a God, but that he was a demon; and from that they have said first, that I did not believe in any God, and, secondly, that I called Him a demon.

If I did not believe in Him how could I call Him anything?

These things hardly hang together.

But that makes no difference; I expect to be maligned; I expect to be slandered; I expect to have my reputation blackened by gentlemen who are not fit to blacken my shoes.

But letting that pass--I simply believe in liberty; that is my religion; that is the altar where I worship; that is my shrine--that every human being shall have every right that I have--that is my religion.

I am going to live up to it and going to say what little I can to make the American people brave enough and generous enough and kind enough to give everybody else the rights they have themselves.

Can there ever be any progress in this world to amount to anything until we have liberty?

The thoughts of a man who is not free are not worth much.

A man who thinks with the club of a creed above his head--a man who thinks casting his eye askance at the flames of hell, is not apt to have very good thoughts.

And for my part, I would not care to have any status or social position even in heaven if I had to admit that I never would have been there only I got scared.

When we are frightened we do not think very well.

If you want to get at the honest thoughts of a man he must be free.

If he is not free you will not get his honest thought.

You won't trade with a merchant, if he is free; you won't employ him if he is a lawyer, if he is free; you won't call him if he is a doctor, if he is free; and what are you going to get out of him but hypocrisy.

Force will not make thinkers, but hypocrites.

A

minister told me awhile ago, "Ingersoll," he says, "if you do not believe the bible you ought not to say so."

Says I, "Do you believe the bible?"

He says, "I do."

I says, "I don't know whether you do or not; maybe you are following the advice you gave me; how shall I know whether you believe it or not?"

Now, I shall die without knowing whether that man believed the bible or not.

There is no way that I can possibly find out, because he said that even if he did not believe it he would not say so.

Now, I read, for instance, a book.

Now, let us be honest.

Suppose that a clergyman and I were on an island--nobody but us two--and I were to read a book, and I honestly believed it untrue, and he asked me about it--what ought I to say?

Ought I to say I believed it, and be lying, or ought I to say I did not?

--that is the question; and the church can take its choice between honest men, who differ, and hypocrites, who differ, but say they do not--you can have your choice, all of you.

* [* "These black-coats are the only persons of my acquaintance who resemble the chameleon, in being able to keep one eye directed upwards to heaven, and the other downwards to the good things of this world."

--Alex.

von Humboldt] If you give to us liberty, you will have in this country a splendid diversity of individuality; but if on the contrary you say men shall think so and so, you will have the sameness of stupid nonsense.

In my judgment, it is the duty of every man to think and express his thoughts; but at the same time do not make martyrs of yourselves.

Those people that are not willing you should be honest, are not worth dying for; they are not worth being a martyr for; and if you are afraid you cannot support your wife and children in this town and express your honest thought, why keep it to yourself, but if there is such a man here he is a living certificate of the meanness of the community in which he lives.

Go right along, if you are afraid it will take food from the mouths of your dear babes--if you are afraid you cannot clothe your wife and children, go along with them to church, say amen in as near the right place as you can, if you happen to be awake, and I will do your talking for you.

I will say my say, and the time will come when every man in the country will be astonished that there ever was a time that everybody had not the right to speak his honest thoughts.

If there is a man here or in this town, preacher or otherwise, who is not willing that I should think and speak, he is just so much nearer a barbarian than I am.

Civilization is liberty, slavery is barbarism; civilization is intelligence, slavery is ignorance; and if we are any nearer free than were our fathers, it is because we have got better heads and more brains in them--that is the reason.

Every man who has invented anything for the use and convenience of man has helped raise his fellow-man, and all we have found out of the laws and forces of nature so that we are finally enabled to bring these forces of nature into subjection, to give us better houses, better food, better clothes--these are the real civilizers of our race; and the men who stand up as prophets and predict hell to their fellow-man, they are not the civilizers of our race; the men who cut each other's throats because they fell out about baptism--they are not the civilizers of my race; the men who built the inquisitions and put into dungeons all the grand and honest men they could find--they are not the civilizers of my race.

The men who have corrupted the imaginations and hearts of men by their infamous dogma of hell--they are not the civilizers of my race.

The men who have been predicting good for mankind, the men who have found some way to get us better homes and better houses and better education, the men who have allowed us to make slaves of the blind forces of nature--they have made this world fit to live in.

I want to prove to you if I can that this is all a question of intellectual development, a question of sense, and the more a man knows the more liberal he is; the less a man knows the more bigoted he is.

The less a man knows the more certain he is that he knows it, and the more a man knows the better satisfied he is that he is entirely ignorant.

Great knowledge is philosophic, and little, narrow, contemptible knowledge is bigoted and hateful.

I want to prove it to you.

I saw a little while ago models of nearly everything man has made for his use--nearly everything.

I saw models of all the watercraft;

from the rude dug-out, in which paddled the naked savage, with his forehead about half as high as his teeth were long--all the water craft from that dug-out up to a man of war that carries a hundred guns and miles of canvas; from that rude dug-out to a steamship that turns its brave prow from the port of New York, with three thousand miles of foaming billows before it, not missing a throb or beat of its mighty iron heart from one shore to the other.

I saw their ideas of weapons, from the rude club, such as was seized by that same barbarian as he emerged from his den in the morning, hunting a snake for his dinner;

from that club to the boomerang, to the dagger, to the sword, to the blunderbuss, to the old flintlock, to the cap-lock, to the needle-gun, to the cannon invented by Krupp, capable of hurling a ball weighing two thousand pounds through eighteen inches of solid steel.

I saw their ideas of defensive armor, from the turtle shell which one of these gentlemen lashed upon his breast preparatory to going to war, or the skin of a porcupine, dried with the quills on, that he pulled on his orthodox head before he sallied forth.

By "orthodox" I mean man who has quit growing; not simply in religion, but it everything; whenever a man is done, he is orthodox whenever he thinks he has found out all, he is orthodox whenever he becomes a drag on the swift car of progress, he is orthodox.

I saw their defensive armor, from the turtle-shell and the porcupine skin to the shirts of mail of the middle ages, that defied the edge of the sword and the point of the spear.

I saw their ideas of agricultural implements, from the crooked stick that was attached to the horn of an ox by some twisted straw, to the agricultural implements of today, that make it possible for a man to cultivate the soil without being an ignoramus.

When they had none of these agricultural implements--when they depended upon one crop--they were superstitious, for if the frosts struck one crop they thought the gods were angry with them.

Now, with the implements, machinery and knowledge of mechanics of today, people have found out that no man can be good enough nor bad enough to cause a frost.

After having found out these things are contrary to the laws of nature, they began to raise more than one kind of crop.

If the frost strikes one they have the other; if it happens to strike all in that locality there is a surplus somewhere else, and that surplus is distributed by railways and steamers and by the thousand ways that we have to distribute these things; and as a consequence the agriculturist begins to think and reason, and now for the first time in the history of the world the agriculturist begins to stand upon a level with the mechanic and with the man who has confidence in the laws and facts of nature.

I saw there their musical instruments, from the tomtom (that is a hoop with two strings of rawhide drawn across it) to the instruments we have that make the common air blossom with melody.

I saw their ideas on ornaments, from a string of the claws of a wild beast that once ornamented the dusky bosom of some savage belle, to the rubies and sapphires and diamonds with which civilization today is familiar.

I

saw the books, written upon the shoulder-blades of sheep, upon the bark of trees, down to the illustrated volumes that are now in the libraries of the world.

I saw their ideas of paintings, from the rude daubs of yellow mud, to the grand pictures we see in the art galleries of today.

I saw their ideas of sculpture, from a monster god with several legs, a good many noses, a great many eyes, and one little, contemptible, brainless head, to the sculpture that we have, where the marble is clothed with such personality that it seems almost impudence to touch it without an introduction.

I saw all these things, and how men had gradually improved through the generations that are dead.

And I saw at the same time a row of men's skulls--skulls from the Bushmen of Australia, skulls from the center of Africa, skulls from the farthest islands of the Pacific, skulls from this country--from the aborigines of America, skulls of the Aztecs, up to the best skulls, or many of the best of the last generation; and I noticed there was the same difference between the skulls as between the products of the skulls, the same between that skull and that, as between the dugout and the man-of-war, as between the dugout and the steamship, as between the tomtom and an opera of Verdi, as between those ancient agricultural implements and ours, as between that yellow daub and that landscape, as between that stone god and a statue of today; and I said to myself, "This is a question of intellectual development; this is a question of brain."

The man has advanced just in proportion as he has mingled his thoughts with his labor, and just in proportion that his brain has gotten into partnership with his hand.

Man has advanced just as he has developed intellectually, and no other way.

That skull was a low den in which crawled and groped the meaner and baser instincts of mankind, and this was a temple in which dwelt love, liberty and joy.

Why is it that we have advanced in the arts?

It is because every incentive has been held out to the world; because we want better clubs or better cannons with which to kill our fellow Christians; we want better music, we want better houses, and any man who will invent them, and any man who will give them to us we will clothe him in gold and glory; we will crown him with honor.

That gentleman in his dugout not only had his ideas of mechanics, but he was a politician.

His idea of politics was, "Might makes right;" and it will take thousands of years before the world will be willing to say that, "Right makes might."

That was his idea of politics, and he had another idea--that all power came from the clouds, and that every armed thief that lived upon the honest labor of mankind had had poured out upon his head the divine oil of authority.

He didn't believe the power to govern came from the people;

he did not believe that the great mass of people had any right whatever, or that the great mass of people could be allowed the liberty of thought--and we have thousands of such today.

They say thought is dangerous--don't investigate;* don't inquire; just believe; shut your eyes, and then you are safe.

You trust not hear this man or that man or some other man, or our dear doctrines will be overturned, and we have nobody on our side except a large majority; we have nobody on our side except the wealth and respectability of the world; we have nobody on our side except the infinite God, and we are afraid that one man, in one or two hours, will beat the whole party.

[* There is no method of reasoning more common, or more blamable, than in philosophical disputes, to endeavor the refutation of any hypothesis, by a pretense of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality."

--David Hume] This man in the dugout also had his ideas of religion--that fellow was orthodox, and any man who differed with him he called an infidel, an atheist, an outcast, and warned everybody against him.

He had his religion--he believed in hell; he was glad of it; he enjoyed it; it was a great source of comfort to him to think when he didn't like people that he would have the pleasure of looking over and seeing them squirm upon the gridiron.

When any man said he didn't believe there was a hell this gentleman got up in his pulpit and called him a hyena.

That fellow believed in a devil too; that lowest skull was a devil factory--he believed in him.

He believed he had a long tail adorned with a fiery dart; he believed he had wings like a bat, and had a pleasant habit of breathing sulphur; and he believed he had a cloven foot--such as most of your clergymen think I am blessed with myself.

They are shepherds of the sheep.

The people are the sheep--that is all they are, they have to be watched and guarded by these shepherds and protected from the wolf who wants to reason with them.

That is the doctrine.

Now, all I claim is the same right to improve on that gentleman's politics, as on the dug-out, and the same right to improve upon his religion as upon his plough, or the musical instrument known as the tomtom--that is all.

Now, suppose the king and priest, if there was one, and there probably was one, as the farther you go back the more ignorant you find mankind and the thicker you find these gentlemen--suppose the king and priest had said: "That boat is the best boat that ever can be built; we got the model of that from Neptune, the god of the seas, and I guess the god of the water knows how to build a boat, and any man that says he can improve it by putting a stick in the middle with a rag on the end of it, and has any talk about the wind blowing this way, and that, he is a heretic--he is a blasphemer."

Honor bright, what, in your judgment, would have been the effect upon the circumnavigation of the globe?

I think we would have been on the other side yet.

Suppose the king and priests had said: "That plow is the best that ever can be invented; the model of that was given to a pious farmer in a holy dream, and that twisted straw is the ne plus ultra of all twisted things, and any man who says he can out-twist it, we will twist him."

Suppose the king and priests had said: "That tomtom is the finest instrument of music in the world--that is the kind of music found in heaven.

An angel sat upon the edge of a glorified cloud playing upon that tomtom and became so entranced with the music that in a kind of ecstasy she dropped it and that is how we got it, and any man who talks about putting any improvement on that, he is not fit to live."

Let me ask you--do you believe if that had been done that the human ears ever would have been enriched with the divine symphonies of Beethoven?

All I claim is the same right to improve upon this barbarian's ideas of politics and religion as upon everything else, and whether it is an improvement or not, I have a right to suggest it--that is my doctrine.

They say to me, "God will punish you forever, if you do these things."

Very well.

I will settle with Him.

I had rather settle with Him than any one of His agents.

I do not like them very well.

In theology I am a granger--I do not believe in middle-men, what little business I have with heaven I will attend to thyself.

Our fathers thought, just as many now think, that you could force men to think your way and if they failed to do it by reason, they tried it another way.

I used to read about it when I was a boy--it did not seem to me that these things were true; it did not seem to me that there ever was such heartless bigotry in the heart of man, but there was and is tonight.

I used to read about it--I did not appreciate it.

I never appreciated it until I saw the arguments of those gentlemen.

They used to use just such arguments as that man in the dug-out would have used to the next man ahead of him.

This low, miserable skull--this next man was a little higher, and this fellow behind called him a heretic, and the next was still a little higher, and he was called an infidel.

And, so it went on through the whole row--always calling the man who was ahead an infidel and a heretic.

No man was ever called so who was behind the army of progress.

It has always been the man ahead that has been called the heretic.

Heresy is the last and best thought always.

Heresy extends the hospitality of the brain to a new idea; that is what the rotting says to the growing; that is what the dweller in the swamp says to the man on the sun-lit hill; that is what the man in the darkness cries out to the grand man upon whose forehead is shining the dawn of a grander day; that is what the coffin says to the cradle.

Orthodoxy is a kind of shroud, and heresy is a banner--orthodoxy is a frog and heresy a star shining forever above the cradle of truth.

I do not mean simply in religion, I mean in everything, and the idea I wish to impress upon you is that you should keep your minds open to all the influences of nature; you should keep your minds open to reason.

Hear what a man has to say, and do not let the turtle-shell of bigotry grow above your brain.

Give everybody a chance and an opportunity; that is all.

I saw the arguments that those gentlemen have used on each other through all the ages.

I saw a little bit of thumbscrew not more than so long (illustrating), and attached to each end was a screw, and the inner surface vas trimmed with little protuberances to prevent their slipping; and when some man doubted--when a man had an idea--then those that did not have an idea put the thumbscrew upon him who did.

He had doubted something.

For instance, they told him, "Christ says you must love your enemies;" he says, "I do not know about that;" then they said, "We will show you!"

"Do unto others as you would be done by," they said is the doctrine.

He doubted.

"We will show you that it is!"

So they put this screw on; and in the name of universal love and universal forgiveness--"pray for those who despitefully use you"--they began screwing these pieces of iron into him--always done in the name of religion--always.

It never was done in the name of reason, never was done in the name of science--never.

No man was ever persecuted in defense of a truth--never.

No man was ever persecuted except in defense of a lie--never.

This man had fallen out with them about something; he did not understand it as they did.

For instance he said, "I do not believe there ever was a man whose strength was in his hair."

They said: "You don't?

We'll show you!"

"I do not believe," he says, "that a fish ever swallowed a man to save his life."

"You don't?

Well, we'll show you!"

And so they put this on, and generally the man would recant and say, "Well, I'll take it back."

Well I think I should.

Such men are not worth dying for.

The idea of dying for a man that would tear the flesh of another on account of an honest difference of opinion--such a man is not worth dying for; he is not worth living for, and if I was in a position that I could not send a bullet through his brain, I would recant.

I would say: "You write it down and I will sign it--I will admit that there is one God, or a million--suit yourself; one hell or a billion; you just write it--only stop this screw.

You are not worth suffering for, you are not worth dying for and I am never going to take the part of any Lord that won't take my part--you just write it down and I'll sign it."

But there was now and then a man who would not do that.

He said, "No, I believe I am right, and I will die for it," and I suppose we owe what little progress we have made to a few men in all ages of the world who really stood by their convictions.

The men who stood by the truth and the men who stood by a fact, they are the men that have helped raise this world, and in every age there has been some sublime and tender soul who was true to his convictions, and who really lived to make men better.

In every age some men carried the torch of progress and handed it to some other, and it has been carried through all the dark ages of barbarism, and had it not been for such men we would have been naked and uncivilized tonight, with pictures of wild beasts tattooed on our skins, dancing around some dried snake fetish.

When a man would not recant, these men, in the name of the love of the Lord, screwed them down to the last thread of agony and threw them into some dungeon, where, in the throbbing silence of darkness, they suffered the pangs of the fabled damned; and this was done in the name of civilization, love and order, and in the name of the most merciful Christ.

There are no thumbscrews now; they are rusting away; but every man in this town who is not willing that another shall do his own thinking and will try to prevent it, has in him the same hellish spirit that made and used that very instrument of torture, and the only reason he does not use it today is because he cannot.

The reason that I speak here tonight is because they cannot help it.

I saw at the same time a beautiful little instrument for the propagation of kindness, called "The Scavenger's Daughter."

(The lecturer here described and illustrated construction of the instrument.

) The victim would be thrown upon that instrument and the strain upon the muscles was such that insanity would sometimes come to his relief.

See what we owe to the civilizing influence of the gentlemen who have made a certain idea in metaphysics necessary to salvation--see what we owe to them.

I saw a collar of torture which they put about the neck of their victim, and inside of that there were a hundred points; so that the victim could not stir without the skin being punctured with these points, and after a little while the throat would swell and suffocation would end the agony, and they would have that done in the presence of his wife and weeping children.

That was all done so that finally everybody would love everybody else as his brother.

I saw a rack.

Imagine a wagon with a windlass on each end, and each windlass armed with leather bands, and a ratchet that prevented slipping.

The victim was placed upon this.

Maybe he had denied something that some idiot said was true; may be he had a discussion--a division of opinion with a man, like John Calvin.

John Calvin said Christ was the Eternal Son of God and Michael Servetus said that Christ was the son of the Eternal God.

That was the only difference of opinion.

Think of it!

What an important thing it was!

How it would have affected the price of food!

"Christ is the Eternal Son of God," said one; "No," said the other, "Christ is the Son of Eternal God"--that was all, and for that difference of opinion Michael Servetus was burned at a slow fire of green wood, and the wind happening to blow the flames from him instead of towards him; he was in the most terrible agony, writhing for minutes and minutes, and hours and hours, and finally he begged and implored those wretches to move him so that the wind would blow the flames against him and destroy him without such hellish agony, but they were so filled with the doctrine of "love your enemies" that they would not do it.

I never will, for my part, depend upon any religion that has ever shed a drop of human blood.

* [* Speaking of the Inquisition, Prof. Draper says: "With such savage alacrity did it carry out its object of protecting the interests of religion, that between 1480 and 1808 it had punished 340,000 persons, and of these nearly 32,000 had been burnt!"

--Conflict between Religion and Science] Upon this rack I have described, this victim was placed, and those chains were attached to his ankles and then to his waist, and clergymen--good men!

pious men!

men that were shocked at the immorality of their day!

They talked about playing cards and the horrible crime of dancing!

Oh, how such things shocked them; men going to theaters and seeing a play written by the grandest genius the world ever has produced.

How it shocked their sublime and tender souls!

But then commenced turning this machine, and they kept on turning until the ankles, knees, hips, elbows, shoulders and wrists were all dislocated and the victim was red with the sweat of agony, and they had standing by a physician to feel the pulse, so that the last faint flutter of life would not leave his veins.

Did they wish to save his life?

Yes.

In mercy?

No!

Simply that they might have the pleasure of racking him once again.

That is the spirit, and it is a spirit born of the doctrine that there is upon the throne of the universe a being who will eternally damn his children, and they said: "If God is going to have the supreme happiness of burning them forever, certainly he ought not to begrudge to us the joy of burning them for an hour or two."

That was their doctrine, and when I read these things it seems to me that I have suffered them myself.

When I look upon those instruments I look upon them as though I had suffered all these tortures myself.

It seems to me as though I had stood upon the shore an exile and looking with tear-filled eyes toward home and native land.

It seems as though my nails had been plucked out and into bleeding flesh needles had been thrust; as though my eyelids had been torn away and I had been set out in the ardent rays of the sun; as though I had been set out upon the sands of the sea and drowned by the inexorable tide; as though I had been in the dungeon waiting for the coming footsteps of relief; as though I had been upon the scaffold arid seen the glittering axe falling upon me; and seen bending above me the white faces of hypocrite priests; as though I had been taken from my wife and children to the public square, where faggots had been piled around me and the flames had climbed around my limbs and scorched my eyes to blindness; as though my ashes had been scattered by all the hands of hatred; and I feel like saying, that while I live I will do what little I can to preserve and augment the rights of men, women arid children; while I live I will do a little something so that they who come after me shall have the right to think and express that thought.

The trouble is those who oppose us pretend they are better than we are.

They are more mortal, they are kinder, they are more generous.

I deny it.

They are not.

And if they are the ones that are to be saved in another world, and if those who simply think they are honest, and express that honest thought, are to be damned, there will be but little originality, to say the least of it, in heaven.

They say they are better than we are--and to show you how much better they are I have got at home copies of some letters that passed between gentlemen high in the church several hundred years ago, and the question was this: "Ought we to cut out the tongues of blasphemers before we burn them?"

And they finally decided that they ought to do so, and I will tell you the reason they gave: They said if they were not cut out that while they were being burned, they might, by their heresies, scandalize the gentleman who would bring the wood; they were too good to hear these things and they might be injured; and the same idea appears to prevail in this world now that they are too good and they must not be shocked.

They say to us: "You must not shock us, and when you say there is no hell we are shocked.

You must not say that."

When I go to church and they tell me there is a hell I must not get shocked; and if they tell me that there is not only a hell, but that I am going to it, I must not be shocked.

Even if they take the next step and act as though they would be glad to see me there, still I must not be shocked.

I will agree to keep from being shocked as long as anybody in the world--they can say what they please; I will not get shocked, but let me say it.

You send missionaries to Turkey and tell them that the Koran is a lie.

You shock them.

You tell them that Mahomet was not a prophet.

You shock them.

It is too bad to shock them.

You go to India and you tell them that Vishnu was nothing, Puranas was nothing, that Buddha was nobody, and your Brahma, he is nothing.

Why do you shock these people?

You should not do that; you ought not to hurt their feelings.

I tell you no man on earth has a right to be shocked at the expression of an honest opinion when it is kindly done, and I don't believe there is any God in the universe who has put a curtain over the fact and made it a crime for the honest hand of investigation to endeavor to draw that curtain.

This world has not been fit to live in fifty years.

There is no liberty in it--very little.

Why, it is only a few years ago that all the Christian nations were engaged in the slave trade.

It was not until 1808, that England abolished the slave trade, and up to that time her priests in her churches, and her judges on her benches, owned stock in slave ships, and luxuriated on the profits of piracy and murder; and when a man stood up and denounced it, they mobbed him as though he had been a common burglar or a horse thief.

Think of it!

It was not until the 28th day of August, 1833, that England abolished slavery in her colonies; and it was not until the first day of January, 1863, that Abraham Lincoln, by direction of the entire North, wiped that infamy out of this country; and I never speak of Abraham Lincoln but I want to say that he was, in my judgment, in many respects the grandest man ever president of the United States.

I say that upon his tomb there ought to be this line--and I know of no other man deserving it so well as he: "Here lies one who, having been clothed with almost absolute power, never abused it except on the side of mercy."

Just think of it!

Our churches and best people, as they call themselves, defending the institution of slavery.

When I was a little boy I used to see steamers go down the Mississippi river with hundreds of men and women chained hand to hand, and even children, and men standing about them with whips in their hands and pistols in their pockets in the name of liberty, in the name of civilization and in the name of religion!

I used to hear them preach to these slaves in the South and the only text they ever took was "Servants, be obedient unto your masters."

That was the salutation of the most merciful God to a man whose back was bleeding, that was the salutation of the most merciful God to the slave mother bending over an empty cradle, to the woman from whose breast a child had been stolen--"Servants, be obedient unto you masters."

That was what they said to a man running for his life and for his liberty through tangled swamps and listening to the baying of bloodhounds, and when he listened for them the voice came from heaven: "Servants, be obedient unto your masters."

That is civilization.

Think what slaves we have been!

Think how we have crouched and cringed before wealth even!

How they used to cringe in old times before a man who was rich--there are so many of them gone into bankruptcy lately that we are losing a little of our fear.

We used to worship the golden calf, and the worst you can say of us now, is, we worship the gold of the calf, and even the calves are beginning to see this distinction.

We used to go down on our knees to every man that held office; now he must fill it if he wishes any respect.

We care nothing for the rich, except what will they do with their money?

Do they benefit mankind?

That is the question.

You say this man holds an office.

How does he fill it?

--that is the question.

And there is rapidly growing up in the world an aristocracy of heart and brain--the only aristocracy that has a right to exist.

We are getting free.

We are thinking in every direction.

We are investigating with the microscope and the telescope.

We are digging into the earth and finding souvenirs of all the ages.

We are finding out something about the laws of health and disease.

We are adding years to the span of human life and we are making the world fit to live in.

That is what we are doing, and every man that has an honest thought and expresses it, helps, and every man that tries to keep honest thought from being expressed is an obstruction and a hindrance.

Now if men have been slaves what shall we say of women?

They have been the slaves of slaves.

The meaner a man is, the better he thinks he is than a woman.

As a rule, you take an ignorant, brutal man--don't talk to him about a woman governing him, he don't believe it--not he; and nearly every religion of this world has been gallant enough to account for all the trouble and misfortune we have had by the crime of woman.

Even if it is true, I do not care; I had rather live in a world full of trouble with the woman I love than in heaven with nobody but men.

Nearly every religion accounts for all the trouble we have ever had by the crime of woman.

I recollect one book where I read an account of what is called the creation--I am not giving the exact words, I will give the substance of it.

The supreme being thought best to make a world and one man--never thought about making a woman at that time;

making a woman was a second thought, and I am free to admit that second thoughts as a rule are best.

He made this world and one man, and put this man in a park, or garden, or public square, or whatever you might call it, to dress and keep it.

The man had nothing to do.

He moped around there as though he was waiting for a train.

And the supreme being noticed that he got lonesome--I am glad He did!

It occurred to Him that he would make a companion, and having made the world and one man out of nothing, and having used up all the nothing, He had to take a part of the man to start the woman with--I am not giving the exact language, neither do I say this story is true.

I do not know.

I would not want to deceive anybody.

So sleep fell upon this man, and they took from his side a rib--the French would call it a cutlet.

And out of that they made a woman, and taking into consideration the amount and quality of the raw material used, I look upon it as the most successful job ever accomplished in this world.

I am giving just a rough outline of this story.

After He got the woman done she was brought to the man--not to see how she liked him, but to see how he liked her.

He liked her and they went to keeping house.

Before she was made there was really nothing to do;

there was no news, no politics, no religion, not even civil service reform.

And as the devil had not yet put in an appearance, there was no chance to conciliate him.

They started in the housekeeping business, and they were told they could do anything they liked except eat an apple.

Of course they ate it.

I would have done it myself I know.

I

am satisfied I would have had an apple off that tree, if I had been there, in fifteen minutes.

They were caught at it, and they were turned out, and there was an extra police force put on to keep them from coming in again.

And then measles, and whooping-cough, mumps, etc. , started in the race of man, roses began to have thorns and snakes began to have teeth, and people began to fight about religion and politics, and they have been fighting and scratching each other's eyes out from that day to this.

I read in another book an account of the same transaction.

They tell us the Supreme Brahma made up his mind to make a man, a woman, and a world; and that he put this man and woman in the island of Ceylon.

According to the description, it was the most beautiful isle that ever existed; it beggared the description of a Chicago land agent completely.

It was delightful; the branches of the trees were so arranged that when the wind swept through them they seemed like a thousand aeolian harps, and the man was named Adami, and the Woman's name was Heva.

This book was written about three or four thousand years before the other one, and all the commentators in this country agree that the story that was written first was copied from the one that was written last.

I hope you will not let a matter of three or four thousand years interfere with your ideas on the subject.

The Supreme Brahma said: "Let them have a period of courtship, because it is my desire that true love always should precede marriage"--and that was so much better than lugging her up to him and saying, "Do you like her?"

that upon my word I said when I read it, "If either one of these stories turn out to be true, I hope it will be this one."

They had a courtship in the starlight and moonlight, and perfume-laden air, with the nightingale singing his song of joy, and they got in love.

There was nobody to bother them, no prospective fathers or mothers-in-law, no gossiping neighbors, nobody to say "Young man, how do you propose to support her"--they got in love and they were married, and they started keeping house, and the Supreme Brahma said to them: "You must not leave this island."

After awhile the man got uneasy--wanted to go west.

He went to the western extremity of the island, and there the devil got up, and when he looked over on the mainland he saw such hills and valleys and torrents, and such mountains crowned with snow; such cataracts, robed in glory, that he went right back to Heva.

Says he: "Come over here; it is a thousand times better;" says he: "let us emigrate."

She said, like another woman: "No, let well enough alone; we have no rent to pay, and no taxes; we are doing very well now, let us stay where we are."

But he insisted, and so she went with him, and when he got to this western extremity, where there was a little neck of land leading to this better land, he took her on his back and walked over, and the moment he got over he heard a crash, and he looked back and this narrow neck of land had sunk into the sea, leaving here and there a rock (and those rocks are called even unto this day the footsteps of Adami), and when he looked back this beautiful mirage had disappeared.

Instead of verdure and flowers there was naught but rocks and sand, and then he heard the voice of the Supreme Brahma crying out cursing them both to the lowest hell, and then it was that Adami said: "Curse me, if you choose, but not her; it was not her fault, it was mine; curse me."

That is the kind of a man to start a world with.

And the Supreme Brahma said "I will spare her, but I will not spare you."

Then she spoke, out of a breast so full of affection that she has left a legacy of love to all her daughters: "If thou wilt not spare him, spare neither me, because I love him."

Then the Supreme Brahma said--and I have liked him ever since--"I will spare both, and watch over you and your children forever."