Introductory material (continued 8)

The real oppressor, enslaver and corrupter of the people is the bible. That book is the chain that binds, the dungeon that holds the clergy. That book spreads the pall of superstition over the colleges and schools. That book puts out the eyes of science, and makes honest investigation a crime. That book unmans the politician and degrades the people. That book fills the world with bigotry, hypocrisy and fear.

Volumes might be written upon the infinite absurdity of this most incredible, wicked and foolish of all the fables contained in that repository of the impossible, called the bible. To me it is a matter of amazement, that it ever was for a moment believed by any intelligent human being.

Is it not infinitely more reasonable to say that this book is the work of man, that it is filled with mingled truth and error, with mistakes and facts, and reflects, too faithfully perhaps, the "very form and pressure of its time?" If there are mistakes in the bible, certainly they were made by man. If there is anything contrary to nature, it was written by man. If there is anything immoral, cruel, heartless or infamous, it certainly was never written by a being worthy of the adoration of mankind.

It strikes me that God might write a book that would not necessarily excite the laughter of his children. In fact, I think it would be safe to say that a real god could produce a work that would excite the admiration of mankind.

The man who now regards the old testament as, in any sense, a sacred or inspired book is, in my judgment, an intellectual and moral deformity. There is in it so much that is cruel, ignorant and ferocious that it is to me a matter of amazement that it was ever thought to be the work of a most merciful deity.

Admitting that the bible is the book of God, is that His only good job? Will not a man be damned as quick for denying the equator as denying the bible? Will he not be damned as quick for denying geology as for denying the scheme of salvation? When the bible was first written it was not believed. Had they known as much about science as we know now, that bible would not have been written.

Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly revealed His will to man. To each reader the bible conveys a different meaning. About the meaning of this book, called a revelation, there have been ages of war and centuries of sword and flame. If written by an infinite God, He must have known that these results must follow; and thus knowing, He must be responsible for all.

Paine thought the barbarities of the old testament inconsistent with what he deemed the real character of God. He believed that murder, massacre and indiscriminate slaughter had never been commanded by the Deity. He regarded much of the bible as childish, unimportant and foolish. The scientific world entertains the same spirit in which he had attacked the pretensions of kings. He used the same weapons. All the pomp in the world could not make him cower. His reason knew no "Holy of Holies," except the abode of Truth.

Nothing can be clearer than that Moses received from the Egyptians the principal parts of his narrative, making such changes and additions as were necessary to satisfy the peculiar superstitions of his own people.

According to the theologians, God, the Father of us all, wrote a letter to His children. The children have always differed somewhat as to the meaning of this letter. In consequence of these honest difficulties, these brothers began to cut out each other's hearts. In every land, where this letter from God has been read, the children to whom and for whom it was written have been filled with hatred and malice. They have imprisoned and murdered each other, and the wives and children of each other. In the name of God every possible crime has been committed, every conceivable outrage has been perpetrated. Brave men, tender and loving women, beautiful girls and prattling babes have been exterminated in the name of Jesus Christ.

The church has burned honesty and rewarded hypocrisy. And all this, because it was commanded by a book—a book that men had been taught implicitly to believe, long before they knew one word that was in it. They had been taught that to doubt the truth of this book—to examine it, even—was a crime of such enormity that it could not be forgiven, either in this world or in the next.

All that is necessary, as it seems to me, to convince any reasonable person that the bible is simply and purely of human invention—of barbarian invention—is to read it. Read it as you would any other book; think of it as you would any other; get the bandage of reverence from your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of you brain the cowled form of superstition—then read the holy bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness and purity, to be the author of such ignorance and such atrocity.

Whether the bible is false or true, is of no consequence in comparison with the mental freedom of the race. Salvation through slavery is worthless. Salvation from slavery is inestimable. As long as man believes the bible to be infallible, that book is his master. The civilization of this century is not the child of faith, but of unbelief—the result of free thought.

What man who ever thinks, can believe that blood can appease God? And yet our entire system of religion is based on that belief. The Jews pacified Jehovah with the blood of animals, and according to the christian system, the blood of Jesus softened the heart of God a little, and rendered possible the salvation of a fortunate few.

It is hard to conceive how any sane man can read the bible and still believe in the doctrine of inspiration.

The bible was originally written in the Hebrew language, and the Hebrew language at that time had no vowels in writing. It was written entirely with consonants, and without being divided into chapters and verses, and there was no system of punctuation whatever. After you go home to-night write an English sentence or two with only consonants close together, and you will find that it will take twice as much inspiration to read it as it did to write it.

The real bible is not the result of inspired men, nor prophets, nor evangelists, nor christs. The real bible has not been written, but is being written. Every man who finds a fact adds a word to this great book.

The bad passages in the bible are not inspired. No god ever ordered a soldier to sheathe his sword in the breast of a mother. No god ever ordered a warrior to butcher a smiling, prattling babe. No god ever upheld tyranny. No god ever said, be subject to the powers that be. No god endeavored to make man a slave and woman a beast of burden. There are thousands of good passages in the bible. Many of them are true. There are in it wise laws, good customs, some lofty and splendid things. And I do not care whether they are inspired or not, so they are true. But what I do insist upon is that the bad is not inspired.

There is no hope for you. It is just as bad to deny hell as it is to deny heaven. Prof. Swing says the bible is a poem. Dr. Ryder says it is a picture. The Garden of Eden is pictorial; a pictorial snake and a pictorial woman, I suppose, and a pictorial man, and may be it was a pictorial sin. And only a pictorial atonement!

Man must learn to rely on himself. Reading bibles will not protect him from the blasts of winter, but houses, fire and clothing will. To prevent famine one plow is worth a million sermons, and even patent medicines will cure more diseases than all the prayers uttered since the beginning of the world.

Ingersoll's Lecture on Voltaire

Ladies and Gentlemen: The infidels of one age have often been the aureoled saints of the next.

The destroyers of the old are the creators of the new. As time sweeps on the old passes away and the new in its turn becomes of old.

There is in the intellectual world, as in the physical, decay and growth, and ever by the grave of buried age stand youth and joy.

The history of intellectual progress is written in the lives of infidels.

Political rights have been preserved by traitors; the liberty of mind by heretics.

To attack the king was treason; to dispute the priest was blasphemy.

For many years the sword and cross were allies. Together they attacked the rights of man. They defended each other.

The throne and altar were twins—two vultures from the same egg.

James I said: "No bishop; no king." He might have added: No cross, no crown. The king owned the bodies of men; the priest, the souls. One lived on taxes collected by force, the other on alms collected by fear—both robbers, both beggars.

These robbers and these beggars controlled two worlds. The king made laws, the priest made creeds. Both obtained their authority from God, both were the agents of the infinite. With bowed backs the people carried the burdens of one, and with wonder's open mouth received the dogmas of the other. If the people aspired to be free, they were crushed by the king, and every priest was a Herod, who slaughtered the children of the brain.

The king ruled by force, the priest by fear, and both by both. The king said to the people: "God made you peasants, and He made me king; He made you to labor, and me to enjoy; He made rags and hovels for you, robes and palaces for me. He made you to obey and me to command. Such is the justice of God," And the priest said: "God made you ignorant and vile; He made me holy and wise; you are the sheep, I am the shepherd; your fleeces belong to me. If you do not obey me here, God will punish you now and torment you forever in another world. Such is the mercy of God."

"You must not reason. Reason is a rebel. You must not contradict—contradiction is born of egotism; you must believe. He that has ears to hear let him hear. Heaven is a question of ears."

Fortunately for us, there have been traitors and there have been heretics, blasphemers, thinkers, investigators, lovers of liberty, men of genius, who have given their lives to better the condition of their fellow-men.

It may be well enough here to ask the question: "What is greatness?" A great man adds to the sum of knowledge, extends the horizon of thought, releases souls from the Bastille of fear, crosses unknown and mysterious seas, gives new islands and new continents to the domain of thought, new constellations to the firmament of mind. A great man does not seek applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to happiness, and what he ascertains he gives to others. A great man throws pearls before swine, and the swine are sometimes changed to men. If the great had always kept their pearls, vast multitudes would be barbarians now.

A great man is a torch in the darkness, a beacon in superstition's night, an inspiration and a prophecy. Greatness is not the gift of majorities; it cannot be thrust upon any man; men cannot give it to another; they can give place and power, but not greatness. The place does not make the man, nor the sceptre the king. Greatness is from within.

The great men are the heroes who have freed the bodies of men; they are the philosophers and thinkers who have given liberty to the soul; they are the poets who have transfigured the common and filled the lives of many millions with love and song. They are the artists who have covered the bare walls of weary life with the triumphs of genius. They are the heroes who have slain the monsters of ignorance and fear, who have outgazed the Gorgon and driven the cruel gods from their thrones.

They are the inventors, the discoverers, the great mechanics, the kings of the useful who have civilized this world.

At the head of this heroic army, foremost of all, stands Voltaire, whose memory we are honoring tonight. Voltaire! a name that excites the admiration of men, the malignity of priests. Pronounce that name in the presence of a clergyman, and you will find that you have made a declaration of war. Pronounce that name, and from the face of the priest the mask of meekness will fall, and from the mouth of forgiveness will pour a Niagara of vituperation and calumny. And yet Voltaire was the greatest man of his century, and did more for the human race than ally other of the sons of men.

On Sunday, the 21st of November, 1694, a babe was born; a babe exceedingly frail, whose breath hesitated about remaining. This babe became the greatest man of the eighteenth century.

When Voltaire came to this "great stage of fools," his country had been christianized—not civilized—for about fourteen hundred years. For a thousand years the religion of peace and good will had been supreme. The laws had been given by christian kings, sanctioned by "wise and holy men."

Under the benign reign of universal love, every court had its chamber of torture, and every priest relied on the thumbscrew and rack. Such had been the success of the blessed gospel that every science was an outcast. To speak your honest thoughts, to teach your fellow men, to investigate for yourself, to seek the truth, these were crimes, and the "Holy Mother Church" pursued the criminals with sword and flame.

The believers in a God of love—an infinite father—punished hundreds of offenses with torture and death. Suspected persons were tortured to make them confess. Convicted persons were tortured to make them give the names of their accomplices. Under the leadership of the church cruelty had become the only reforming power. In this blessed year 1694 all authors were at the mercy of king and priest. The most of them were cast into prisons, impoverished by fines and costs, exiled or executed. The little time that hangmen could snatch from professional duties was occupied in burning books. The courts of justice were traps in which the innocent were caught. The judges were almost as malicious and cruel as though they had been bishops or saints. There was no trial by jury, and the rules of evidence allowed the conviction of the supposed criminal by the proof of suspicion or hearsay. The witnesses, being liable to torture, generally told what the judges wished to hear.

When Voltaire was born the church ruled and owned France. It was a period of almost universal corruption. The priests were mostly libertines, the judges cruel and venal. The royal palace was a house of prostitution. The nobles were heartless, proud, arrogant and cruel to the last degree. The common people were treated as beasts. It took the church a thousand years to bring about this happy condition of things.

The seeds of the revolution unconsciously were being scattered by every noble and by every priest. They were germinating slowly in the hearts of the wretched; they were being watered by the tears of agony; blows began to bear interest. There was a faint longing for blood. Workmen, blackened by the sun, bowed by labor, deformed by want; looked at the white throats of scornful ladies and thought about cutting them. In those days the witnesses were cross-examined with instruments of torture; the church was the arsenal of superstition; miracles, relics, angels, and devils were as common as lies.

Voltaire was of the people. In the language of that day, he had no ancestors. His real name was Francois Marie Arouet. His mother was Marguerite d'Aumard. This mother died when he was seven years of age. He had an elder brother, Armand, who was a devotee, very religious and exceedingly disagreeable. This brother used to present offerings to the church, hoping to make amends for the unbelief of his brother. So far as we know none of his ancestors were literary people. The Arouets had never written a line. The Abbe le Chaulieu was his godfather, and, although an abbe, was a deist who cared nothing about his religion except in connection with his salary. Voltaire's father wanted to make a lawyer of him, but he had no taste for law. At the age of 10 he entered the college of Louis le Grand. This was a Jesuit school, and here he remained for seven years, leaving at 17, and never attending any other school. According to Voltaire he learned nothing at this school but a little Greek, a good deal of Latin, and a vast amount of nonsense.

In this college of Louis le Grand they did not teach geography, history, mathematics, or any science. This was a Catholic institution, controlled by the Jesuits. In that day the religion was defended, was protected, or supported by the state. Behind the entire creed were the bayonet, the ax, the wheel, the fagot, and the torture chamber. While Voltaire was attending the college of Louis le Grand the soldiers of the king were hunting Protestants in the mountains of Cevennes for magistrates to hang on gibbets, to put to torture, to break on the wheel or to burn at the stake.

There is but one use for law, but one excuse for government—the preservation of liberty—to give to each man his own, to secure to the farmer what he produces from the soil, the mechanic what he invents and makes, to the artist what he creates, to the thinker the right to express his thoughts. Liberty is the breath of progress. In France the people were the sport of a king's caprice. Everywhere was the shadow of the Bastille. It fell upon the sunniest field, upon the happiest home. With the king walked the headsman; back of the throne was the chamber of torture. The church appealed to the rack, and faith relied on the fagot. Science was an outcast, and philosophy, so-called, was the pander of superstition. Nobles and priests were sacred. Peasants were vermin. Idleness sat at the banquet and industry gathered the crumbs and crusts.

At 17 Voltaire determined to devote his life to literature. The father said, speaking of his two sons, Armand and Francois: "I have a pair of fools for sons, one in verse and the other in prose." In 1713 Voltaire, in a small way, became a diplomat. He went to The Hague attached to the French minister, and there he fell in love. The girl's mother objected. Voltaire sent his clothes to the young lady that she might visit him. Everything was discovered and he was dismissed. To this girl he wrote a letter, and in it you will find the keynote of Voltaire: "Do not expose yourself to the fury of your mother. You know what she is capable of. You have experienced it too well. Dissemble; it is your only chance. Tell her that you have forgotten me, that you hate me; then after telling her, love me all the more." On account of this episode Voltaire was formally disinherited by his father. The father procured an order of arrest and gave his son the choice of going to prison or beyond the seas. He finally consented to become a lawyer, and says: "I have already been a week at work in the office of a solicitor learning the trade of a pettifogger." About this time he competed for a prize, writing a poem on the king's generosity in building the new choir in the cathedral Notre Dame. He did not win it. After being with the solicitor a little while, he hated the law, he began to write poetry and the outlines of tragedy. Great questions were then agitating the public mind, questions that throw a flood of light upon that epoch.

Louis XIV having died, the regent took possession; and then the prisons were opened. The regent called for a list of all persons then in the prisons sent there at the will of the king. He found that, as to many prisoners, nobody knew any cause why they had been in prison. They had been forgotten. Many of the prisoners did not know themselves, and could not guess why they had been arrested. One Italian had been in the Bastille thirty-three years without ever knowing why. On his arrival to Paris thirty-three years before he was arrested and sent to prison. He had grown old. He had survived his family and friends. When the rest were liberated he asked to remain where he was, and lived there the rest of his life.

The old prisoners were pardoned; but in a little while their places were taken by new ones. At this time Voltaire was not interested in the great world—knew very little of religion or of government. He was busy writing poetry, busy thinking of comedies and tragedies. He was full of life. All his fancies were winged, like moths. He was charged with having written some cutting epigrams. He was exiled to Tulle, three hundred miles away. From this place he wrote in the true vein: "I am at a chateau, a place that would be the most agreeable in the world if I had not been exiled to it, and where there is nothing wanting for my perfect happiness except the liberty of leaving. It would be delicious to remain if I only were allowed to go." At last the exile was allowed to return. Again he was arrested; this time sent to the Bastille, where he remained for nearly a year. While in prison he changed his name from Francois Marie Arouet to Voltaire, and by that name he has since been known. Voltaire began to think, to doubt, to inquire. He studied the history of the church of the creed. He found that the religion of his time rested on the usurpation of the scriptures—the infallibility of the church—the dreams of insane hermits—the absurdities of the fathers—the mistakes and falsehoods of saints—the hysteria of nuns—the cunning of priests and the stupidity of the people. He found that the Emperor Constantine, who lifted christianity into power, murdered his wife Fansta and his eldest son Crispus the same year that he convened the council of Nice to decide whether Christ was a man or the son of God. The council decided, in the year 325, that Christ was consubstantial with the Father. He found that the church was indebted to a husband who assassinated his wife—a father who murdered his son—for settling the vexed question of the divinity of the Savior. He found that Theodosius called a council at Constantinople in 381 by which it was decided that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father—that Theodosius, the younger, assembled a council at Ephesus in 431 that declared the Virgin Mary to be the mother of God—that the Emperor Martian called another council at Chalcedon in 451 that decided that Christ had two wills—that Pognatius called another in 680 that declared that Christ had two natures to go with his two wills—and that in 1274, at the council of Lyons, the important fact was found that the Holy Ghost "proceeded" not only from the Father, but also from the Son at the same time.

So Voltaire has been called a mocker! What did he mock? He mocked kings that were unjust; kings who cared nothing for the sufferings of their subjects. He mocked the titled fools of his day. He mocked the corruption of courts; the meanness, the tyranny, and the brutality of judges. He mocked the absurd and cruel laws, the barbarous customs. He mocked popes and cardinals, bishops and priests, and all the hypocrites on the earth. He mocked historians who filled their books with lies, and philosophers who defended superstition. He mocked the haters of liberty, the persecutors of their fellow-men. He mocked the arrogance, the cruelty, the impudence and the unspeakable baseness of his time.

He has been blamed because he used the weapon of ridicule. Hypocrisy has always hated laughter, and always will. Absurdity detests humor and stupidity despises wit. Voltaire was the master of ridicule. He ridiculed the absurd, the impossible. He ridiculed the mythologies and the miracles, the stupid lives and lies of the saints. He found pretense and mendacity crowned by credulity. He found the ignorant many controlled by the cunning and cruel few. He found the historian, saturated with superstition, filling his volumes with the details of the impossible, and he found the scientists satisfied with "they say." Voltaire had the instinct of the probable. He knew the law of average; the sea level; he had the idea of proportion; and so he ridiculed the mental monstrosities and deformities—the non sequiturs—of his day. Aristotle said women had more teeth than men. This was repeated again and again by the Catholic scientists of the eighteenth century. Voltaire counted the teeth. The rest were satisfied with "they say."

We may, however, get an idea of the condition of France from the fact that Voltaire regarded England as the land of liberty. While he was in England he saw the body of Sir Isaac Newton deposited in Westminster Abbey. He read the works of this great man and afterward gave to France the philosophy of the great Englishman. Voltaire was the apostle of common sense. He knew that there could have been no primitive or first language from which all other languages had been formed. He knew that every language had been influenced by the surroundings of the people. He knew that the language of snow and ice was not the language of palm and flower. He knew also that there had been no miracle in language. He knew it was impossible that the story of the Tower of Babel should be true. That everything in the whole world had been natural. He was the enemy of alchemy, not only in language, but in science. One passage from him is enough to show his philosophy in this regard. He says: "To transmute iron into gold two things are necessary. First, the annihilation of the iron; second, the creation of gold." Voltaire was a man of humor, of good nature, of cheerfulness. He despised with all his heart the philosophy of Calvin, the creed of the somber, of the severe, of the unnatural. He pitied those who needed the aid of religion to be honest, to be cheerful. He had the courage to enjoy the present and the philosophy to bear what the future might bring. And yet for more than a hundred and fifty years the Christian world has fought this man and has maligned his memory. In every christian pulpit his name has been pronounced with scorn, and every pulpit has been an arsenal of slander. He is one man of whom no orthodox minister has ever told the truth. He has been denounced equally by Catholics and Protestants.

Priests and ministers, bishops and exhorters, presiding elders and popes have filled the world with slanders, with calm calumnies about Voltaire. I am amazed that ministers will not or cannot tell the truth about an enemy of the church. As a matter of fact, for more than 1,000 years almost every pulpit has been a mint in which slanders were coined.

For many years this restless man filled Europe with the product of his brain. Essays, epigrams, epics, comedies, tragedies, histories, poems, novels, representing every phase and every faculty of the human mind. At the same time engrossed in business, full of speculation, making money like a millionaire, busy with the gossip of courts, and even with the scandals of priests. At the same time alive to all the discoveries of science and the theories of philosophers, and in this babel never forgetting for a moment to assail the monster of superstition. Sleeping and waking he hated the church. With the eyes of Argus he watched, and with the arms of Briarieius he struck. For sixty years he waged continuous and unrelenting war, sometimes in the open field, sometimes striking from the hedges of opportunity, taking care during all this time to remain independent of all men. He was in the highest sense successful. He lived like a prince, became one of the powers of Europe, and in him, for the first time, literature was crowned. Voltaire, in spite of his surroundings, in spite of almost universal tyranny and oppression, was a believer in God and in what he was pleased to call the religion of nature. He attacked the creed of his time because it was dishonorable to his God. He thought of the Deity as a father, as the fountain of justice, intelligence and mercy, and the creed of the Catholic church made him a monster of cruelty and stupidity. He attacked the bible with all the weapons at his command. He assailed its geology, its astronomy, its idea of justice, its laws and customs, its absurd and useless miracles, its foolish wonders, its ignorance on all subjects, its insane prophecies, its cruel threats, and its extravagant promises. At the same time he praised the God of nature, the God who gives us rain and light, and food and flowers, and health and happiness—he who fills the world with youth and beauty.

In 1755 came the earthquake at Lisbon. This frightful disaster became an immense interrogation. The optimist was compelled to ask, "What was my God doing? Why did the Universal Father crush to shapelessness thousands of his poor children, even at the moment when they were upon their knees returning thanks to Him?" What could be done with this horror? If earthquake there must be, why did it not occur in some uninhabited desert on some wide waste of sea? This frightful fact changed the theology of Voltaire. He became convinced that this is not the best possible of all worlds. He became convinced that evil is evil here, now and forever.

Who can establish the existence of an infinite being? It is beyond the conception—the reason—the imagination of man—probably or possibly—where the zenith and nadir meet this God can be found.

Voltaire, attacked on every side, fought with every weapon that wit, logic, reason, scorn, contempt, laughter, pathos and indignation could sharpen, form, devise or use. He often apologized, and the apology was an insult. He often recanted, and the recantation was a thousand times worse than the thing recanted. He took it back by giving more. In the name of eulogy he flayed his victim. In his praise there was poison. He often advanced by retreating, and asserted by retraction. He did not intend to give priests the satisfaction of seeing him burn or suffer. Upon this very point of recanting, he wrote: "They say I must retract. Very willingly. I will declare the Pascal is always right. That if St. Luke and St. Mark contradict one another it is only another proof of the truth of religion to those who know how to understand such things; and that another lovely proof of religion is that it is unintelligible. I will even avow that all priests are gentle and disinterested; that Jesuits are honest people; that monks are neither proud nor given to intrigue, and that their odor is agreeable; that the Holy Inquisition is the triumph of humanity and tolerance. In a word, I will say all that may be desired of me, provided they leave me in repose, and will not prosecute a man who has done harm to none."

He gave the best years of his wondrous life to succor the oppressed, to shield the defenseless, to reverse infamous decrees, to rescue the innocent, to reform the laws of France, to do away with torture, to soften the hearts of priests, to enlighten judges, to instruct kings, to civilize the people, and to banish from the heart of man the love and lust of war. Voltaire was not a saint. He was educated by the Jesuits. He was never troubled about the salvation of his soul. All the theological disputes excited his laughter, the creeds his pity, and the conduct of bigots his contempt. He was much better than a saint. Most of the Christians in his day kept their religion not for everyday use but for disaster, as ships carry lifeboats to be used only in the stress of storm.

Voltaire believed in the religion of humanity—of good and generous deeds. For many centuries the church had painted virtue so ugly, sour and cold that vice was regarded as beautiful. Voltaire taught the beauty of the useful, the hatefulness and hideousness of superstition. He was not the greatest of poets, or of dramatists, but he was the greatest man of his time, the greatest friend of freedom, and the deadliest foe of superstition. He wrote the best French plays—but they were not wonderful. He wrote verses polished and perfect in their way. He filled the air with painted moths—but not with Shakespearean eagles.

You may think that I have said too much; that I have placed this man too high. Let me tell you what Goethe, the great German, said of this man: "If you wish depth, genius, imagination, taste, reason, sensibility, philosophy, elevation, originality, nature, intellect, fancy, rectitude, facility, flexibility, precision, art, abundance, variety, fertility, warmth, magic, charm, grace, force, an eagle sweep of vision, vast understanding, instruction rich, tone excellent, urbanity, suavity, delicacy, correctness, purity, cleanness, eloquence, harmony, brilliancy, rapidity, gayety, pathos, sublimity, and universality perfection, indeed, behold Voltaire."

Even Carlyle, the old Scotch terrier, with the growl of a grizzly bear, who attacked shams, as I have sometime thought, because he hated rivals, was forced to admit that Voltaire gave the death stab to modern superstition. It was the hand of Voltaire that sowed the seeds of liberty in the heart and brain of Franklin, of Jefferson, and of Thomas Paine.

Toulouse was a favored town. It was rich in relics. The people were as ignorant as wooden images, but they had in their possession the dried bodies of seven apostles—the bones of many of the infants slain by Herod—part of a dress of the Virgin Mary, and lots of skulls and skeletons of the infallible idiots known as saints.

In this city the people celebrated every year with great joy two holy events: The expulsion of the Huguenots and the blessed massacre of St. Bartholomew. The citizens of Toulouse had been educated and civilized by the church. A few Protestants, mild because in the minority, lived among these jackals and tigers. One of these Protestants was Jean Calas—a small dealer in dry goods. For forty years he had been in this business, and his character was without a stain. He was honest, kind and agreeable. He had a wife and six children, four sons and two daughters. One of the sons became a Catholic. The eldest son, Marc Antoine, disliked his father's business and studied law. He could not be allowed to practice unless he became a Catholic. He tried to get his license by concealing that he was a Protestant. He was discovered—grew morose. Finally he became discouraged and committed suicide by hanging himself one evening in his father's store. The bigots of Toulouse started the story that his parents had killed him to prevent his becoming a Catholic. On this frightful charge the father, mother, one son, a servant, and one guest at their house were arrested. The dead son was considered a martyr, the church taking possession of the body. This happened in 1761. There was what was called a trial. There was no evidence, not the slightest, except hearsay. All the facts were in favor of the accused. The united strength of the defendants could not have done the deed.

Jean Calas was doomed to torture and to death upon the wheel. This was on the 9th of March, 1762, and the sentence was to be carried out the next day. On the morning of the 10th the father was taken to the torture room. The executioner and his assistants were sworn on the cross to administer the torture according to the judgment of the court. They bound him by the wrists to an iron ring in the stone wall four feet from the ground and his feet to another ring in the floor. Then they shortened the ropes and chains until every joint in his arms and legs were dislocated. Then he was questioned. He declared that he was innocent. Then the ropes were again shortened until life fluttered in the torn body; but he remained firm. This was called the question ordinaire. Again the magistrate exhorted the victim to confess, and again he refused, saying that there was nothing to confess. Then came the question extraordinaire. Into the mouth of the victim was placed a horn holding three pints of water. In this way thirty pints of water were forced into the body of the sufferer. The pain was beyond description, and yet Jean Calas remained firm. He was then carried to a scaffold in a tumbril. He was bound to a wooden cross that lay on the scaffold. The executioner then took a bar of iron, broke each leg and arm in two places, striking eleven blows in all. He was then left to die if he could. He lived for two hours, declaring his innocence to the last. He was slow to die and so the executioner strangled him. Then his poor lacerated, bleeding and broken body was chained to a stake and burned. All this was a spectacle—a festival for the savages of Toulouse. What would they have done if their hearts had not been softened by the glad tidings of great joy, peace on earth and good will to men?

But this was not all. The property of the family was confiscated; the son was released on condition that he become a Catholic; the servant if she would enter a convent. The two daughters were consigned to a convent and the heart-broken widow was allowed to wander where she would.

Voltaire heard of this case. In a moment his soul was on fire. He took one of the sons under his roof. He wrote a history of the case. He corresponded with kings and queens, with chancellors and lawyers. If money was needed he advanced it. For years he filled Europe with the echoes of the groans of Jean Calas. He succeeded. The horrible judgment was annulled—the poor victim declared innocent and thousands of dollars raised to support the mother and family. This was the work of Voltaire.

Sirven, a Protestant, lived in Languedoc with his wife and three daughters. The housekeeper of the bishop wanted to make one of the daughters a Catholic. The law allowed the bishop to take the child of Protestants from its parents for the sake of its soul. The little girl was so taken and placed in a convent. She ran away and came back to her parents. Her poor little body was covered with the marks of the convent whip. "Suffer little children to come unto me." The child was out of her mind; suddenly she disappeared; and three days after her little body was found in a well, three miles from home. The cry was raised that her folks had murdered her to keep her from becoming a Catholic. This happened only a little way from the christian city of Toulouse while Jean Calas was in prison. The Sirvens knew that a trial would end in conviction. They fled. In their absence they were convicted, their property confiscated. The parents sentenced to die by the hangman, the daughters to be under the gallows during the execution of their mother and then to be exiled. The family fled in the midst of winter; the married daughter gave birth to a child in the snows of the Alps; the mother died, and at last the father, reaching Switzerland, found himself without the means of support. They went to Voltaire. He espoused their cause. He took care of them, gave them the means to live, and labored to annul the sentence that had been pronounced against them for nine long and weary years. He appealed to kings for money, to Catherine II of Russia, and to hundreds of others. He was successful. He said of this case:—The Sirvens were tried and condemned in two hours in January, 1762, and now in January, 1772, after ten years of effort, they have been restored to their rights."

This was the work of Voltaire. Why should the worshipers of God hate the lovers of men?

Espenasse was a Protestant, of good estate. In 1740 he received into his house a Protestant clergyman, to whom he gave supper and lodging. In a country where priests repeated the parable of the "Good Samaritan" this was a crime. For this crime Espenasse was tried, convicted and sentenced to the galleys for life. When he had been imprisoned for twenty-three years his case came to the knowledge of Voltaire, and he was, through the efforts of Voltaire, released and restored to his family.

This was the work of Voltaire. There is not time to tell of the case of Gen. Lally, of the English Gen. Byng, of the niece of Corneille, of the Jesuit Adam, of the writers, dramatists, actors, widows and orphans for whose benefit he gave his influence, his money and his time.

But I will tell another case: In 1765 at the town of Abbeville an old wooden cross on a bridge had been mutilated—whittled with a knife—a terrible crime. Sticks, when crossing each other, were far more sacred than flesh and blood. Two young men were suspected—the Chevalier de la Barre and d'Ettalonde. D'Ettallonde fled to Prussia and enlisted as a common soldier. La Barre remained and stood his trial. He was convicted without the slightest evidence, and he and d'Ettallonde were both sentenced: First, to endure the torture, ordinary and extraordinary; second, to have their tongues torn out by the roots with pincers of iron; third, to have their right hands cut off at the door of the church; and fourth, to be bound to stakes by chains of iron and burned to death by a slow fire. "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." Remembering this, the judges mitigated the sentence by providing that their heads should be cut off before their bodies were given to the flames. The case was appealed to Paris; heard by a court composed of twenty-five judges learned in law, and the judgment was confirmed. The sentence was carried out on the 1st day of July, 1766.

Voltaire had fought with every weapon that genius could devise or use. He was the greatest of all caricaturists, and he used this wonderful gift without mercy. For pure crystallized wit he had no equal. The art of flattery was carried by him to the height of an exact science. He knew and practiced every subterfuge. He fought the army of hypocrisy and pretense, the army of faith and falsehood. Voltaire was annoyed by the meaner and baser spirits of his time, by the cringers and crawlers, by the fawners and pretenders, by those who wished to gain the favors of priests, the patronage of nobles. Sometimes he allowed himself to be annoyed by these scorpions; sometimes he attacked them. And, but for these attacks, long ago they would have been forgotten. In the amber of his genius Voltaire preserved these insects, these tarantulas, these scorpions.

It is fashionable to say that he was not profound. This is because he was not stupid. In the presence of absurdity he laughed, and was called irreverent. He thought God would not damn even a priest forever. This was regarded as blasphemy. He endeavored to prevent Christians from murdering each other, and did what he could to civilize the disciples of Christ. Had he founded a sect, obtained control of some country, and burned a few heretics at slow fires, he would have won the admiration, respect and love of the christian world. Had he only pretended to believe all the fables of antiquity, and had he mumbled Latin prayers, counted beads, crossed himself, devoured now and then the flesh of God, and carried fagots to the feet of Philosophy in the name of Christ, he might have been in heaven this moment, enjoying a sight of the damned.

If he had only adopted the creed of his time—if he had asserted that a God of infinite power and mercy had created millions and billions of human beings to suffer eternal pain, and all for the sake of his glorious justice—that he had given his power of attorney to a cunning and cruel Italian pope, authorizing him to save the soul of his mistress and send honest wives to hell—if he had given to the nostrils of this God the odor of burning flesh—the incense of the fagot—if he had filled his ears with the shrieks of the tortured—the music of the rack, he would now be known as St. Voltaire.

Instead of doing these things he willfully closed his eyes to the light of the gospel, examined the bible for himself, advocated intellectual liberty, struck from the brain the fetters of an arrogant faith, assisted the weak, cried out against the torture of man, appealed to reason, endeavored to establish universal toleration, succored the indigent, and defended the oppressed. He demonstrated that the origin of all religions is the same, the same mysteries—the same miracles—the same impostures—the same temples and ceremonies—the same kind of founders, apostles and dupes—the same promises and threats—the same pretense of goodness and forgiveness and the practice of the same persecution and murder. He proved that religion made enemies—philosophy, friends—and that above the rites of gods were the rights of man. These were his crimes. Such a man God would not suffer to die in peace. If allowed to meet death with a smile, others might follow his example, until none would be left to light the holy fires of the auto da fe. It would not do for so great, so successful an enemy of the church to die without leaving some shriek of fear, some shudder of remorse, some ghastly prayer of chattered horror, uttered by lips covered with blood and foam. For many centuries the theologians have taught that an unbeliever—an infidel—one who spoke or wrote against their creed, could not meet death with composure; that in his last moments God would fill his conscience with the serpents of remorse. For a thousand years the clergy have manufactured the facts to fit this theory—this infamous conception of the duty of man and the justice of God. The theologians have insisted that crimes against men were, and are, as nothing compared with crimes against God. That, while kings and priests did nothing worse than to make their fellows wretched, that so long as they only butchered and burnt the innocent and helpless, God would maintain the strictest neutrality; but when some honest man, some great and tender soul, expressed a doubt as to the truth of the scriptures, or prayed to the wrong god, or to the right one by the wrong name, then the real God leaped like a wounded tiger upon his victim, and from his quivering flesh tore the wretched soul.

There is no recorded instance where the uplifted hand of murder has been paralyzed—no truthful account in all the literature of the world of the innocent child being shielded by God. Thousands of crimes are being committed ever day—men are at this moment lying in wait for their human prey—wives are whipped and crushed, driven to insanity and death—little children begging for mercy, lifting imploring, tear-filled eyes to the brutal faces of fathers and mothers—sweet girls are deceived, lured and outraged, but God has no time to prevent these things—no time to defend the good and protect the pure. He is too busy numbering hairs and watching sparrows. He listens for blasphemy; looks for persons who laugh at priests; examines baptismal registers; watches professors in college who begin to doubt the geology of Moses and the astronomy of Joshua. He does not particularly object to stealing, if you don't swear. A great many persons have fallen dead in the act of taking God's name in vain, but millions of men, women and children have been stolen from their homes and used as beasts of burden, but no one engaged in this infamy has ever been touched by the wrathful hand of God. All kinds of criminals, except infidels, meet death with reasonable serenity. As a rule there is nothing in the death of a pirate to cast any discredit on his profession. The murderer upon the scaffold, with a priest on either side, smilingly exhorts the multitude to meet him in heaven. The man who has succeeded in making his home a hell meets death without a quiver, provided he has never expressed any doubt as to the divinity of Christ or the eternal "procession" of the Holy Ghost.

Now and then a man of genius, of sense, of intellectual honesty, has appeared. Such men have denounced the superstition of their day. They have pitied the multitude. To see priests devour the substance of the people—priests who made begging one of the learned professions—filled them with loathing and contempt. These men were honest enough to tell their thoughts, brave enough to speak the truth. Then they were denounced, tried, tortured, killed by rack or flame. But some escaped the fury of the fiends who loved their enemies and died naturally in their beds. It would not do for the church to admit that they died peacefully. That would show that religion was essential at the last moment. Superstition gets its power from the terror of death. It would not do to have the common people understand that a man could deny the bible, refuse to kiss the cross; contend that humanity was greater than Christ, and then die as sweetly as Torquemada did after pouring molten lead into the ears of an honest man, or as calmly as Calvin after he had burned Servetus, or as peacefully as King David after advising with his last breath one son to assassinate another.

The church has taken great pains to show that the last moments of all infidels (that Christians did not succeed in burning) were infinitely wretched and despairing. It was alleged that words could not paint the horrors that were endured by a dying infidel. Every good Christian was expected to, and generally did, believe these accounts. They have been told and retold in every pulpit of the world. Protestant ministers have repeated the lies invented by Catholic priests, and Catholics, by a kind of theological comity, have sworn to the lies told by the Protestants. Upon this point they have always stood together, and will as long as the same falsehood can be used by both. Upon the death-bed subject the clergy grew eloquent. When describing the shudderings and shrieks of the dying unbeliever their eyes glitter with delight. It is a festival. They are no longer men. They become hyenas. They dig open graves. They devour the dead. It is a banquet. Unsatisfied still, they paint the terrors of hell. They gaze at the souls of the infidels writhing in the coils of the worm that never dies. They see them in flames—in oceans of fire—in gulfs of pain—in abysses of despair. They shout with joy. They applaud.

It is an auto da fe, presided over by God. But let us come back to Voltaire—to the dying philosopher. He was an old man of 84. He had been surrounded with the comforts, the luxuries of life. He was a man of great wealth, the richest writer that the world had known. Among the literary men of the earth he stood first. He was an intellectual monarch—one who had built his own throne and had woven the purple of his own power. He was a man of genius. The Catholic God had allowed him the appearance of success. His last years were filled with the intoxication of flattery—of almost worship. He stood at the summit of his age. The priests became anxious. They began to fear that God would forget, in a multiplicity of business, to make a terrible example of Voltaire. Toward the last of May, 1778, it was whispered in Paris that Voltaire was dying. Upon the fences of expectation gathered the unclean birds of superstition, impatiently waiting for their prey. Two days before his death, his nephew went to seek the cure of Saint Surplice and the Abbe Gautier, and brought them to his uncle's sick chamber, who, being informed that they were there, said: "Ah, well, give them my compliments and my thanks." The abbe spoke some words to him, exhorting him to patience. The cure of Saint Surplice then came forward, having announced himself, and asked of Voltaire, elevating his voice, if he acknowledged the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. The sick man pushed one of his hands against the cure's coif, shoving him back, and cried, turning abruptly to the other side: "Let me die in peace." The cure seemingly considered his person soiled and his coif dishonored by the touch of a philosopher. He made the nurse give him a little brushing and went out with the Abbe Gautier. He expired, says Wagnierre, on the 30th of May, 1778, at about a quarter past 11 at night, with the most perfect tranquility. A few moments before his last breath he took the hand of Morand, his valet de chambee, who was watching by him, pressed it, and said: "Adieu, my dear Morand, I am gone." These were his last words. Like a peaceful river, with green and shaded banks, he flowed without a murmur into the waveless sea, where life is rest.

From this death, so simple and serene, so kind, so philosophic and tender; so natural and peaceful; from these words so utterly destitute of cant or dramatic touch, all the frightful pictures, all the despairing utterances have been drawn and made. From these materials, and from these alone, or rather, in spite of these facts, have been constructed by priests and clergymen and their dupes all the shameless lies about the death of this great and wonderful man. A man, compared with whom all of his calumniators, dead and living, were, and are, but dust and vermin. Let us be honest. Did all the priests of Rome increase the mental wealth of man as much as Bruno? Did all the priests of France do as great a work for the civilization of the world as Voltaire or Diderot? Did all the ministers of Scotland add as much to the such of human knowledge as David Hume? Have all the clergymen, monks, friars, ministers, priests, bishops, cardinals and popes, from the day of Pentecost to the last election, done as much for human liberty as Thomas Paine? What would the world be if infidels had never been? The infidels have been the brave and thoughtful men; the flower of all the world; the pioneers and heralds of the blessed day of liberty and love; the generous spirits of the unworthy past; the seers and prophets of our race; the great chivalric souls, proud victors on the battlefields of thought, the creditors of all the years to be.

In those days the philosophers—that is to say, the thinkers—were not buried in holy ground. It was feared that their principles might contaminate the ashes of the just. And they also feared that on the morning of the resurrection they might, in a moment of confusion, slip into heaven. Some were burned and their ashes scattered; and the bodies of some were thrown naked to beasts, and others buried in unholy earth. Voltaire knew the history of Adrienne Le Couvreur, a beautiful actress, denied burial. After all, we do feel an interest in what is to become of our bodies. There is a modesty that belongs to death. Upon this subject Voltaire was infinitely sensitive. It was that he might be buried that he went through the farce of confession, of absolution, and of the last sacrament. The priests knew that he was not in earnest, and Voltaire knew that they would not allow him to be buried in any of the cemeteries of Paris. His death was kept a secret. The Abbe Mignot made arrangements for the burial at Romilli-on-the-Seine, more than 100 miles from Paris. Sunday evening, on the last day of May, 1778, the body of Voltaire, clad in a dressing gown, clothed to resemble an invalid, posed to simulate life, was placed in a carriage; at its side a servant, whose business it was to keep it in position. To this carriage were attached six horses, so that people might think a great lord was going to his estates. Another carriage followed in which were a grand-nephew and two cousins of Voltaire. All night they traveled, and on the following day arrived at the courtyard of the abbey. The necessary papers were shown, the mass was performed in the presence of the body, and Voltaire found burial. A few moments afterward the prior who "for charity had given a little earth" received from his bishop a menacing letter forbidding the burial of Voltaire. It was too late. He could not then be removed, and he was allowed to remain in peace until 1791.

Voltaire was dead. The foundations of State and throne had been sapped. The people were becoming acquainted with the real kings and with the actual priests. Unknown men born in misery and want, men whose fathers and mothers had been pavement for the rich, were rising towards the light and their shadowy faces were emerging from darkness. Labor and thought became friends. That is, the gutter and the attic fraternized. The monsters of the night and the angels of dawn—the first thinking of revenge and the others dreaming of equality, liberty and fraternity. For 400 years the Bastille had been the outward symbol of oppression. Within its walls the noblest had perished. It was a perpetual threat. It was the last and often the first argument of king and priest. Its dungeons, damp and rayless, its massive towers, its secret cells, its instruments of torture, denied the existence of God. In 1789, on the 14th of July, the people, the multitude, frenzied by suffering, stormed and captured the Bastille. The battlecry was, "Vive le Voltaire!"

In 1791 permission was given to place in the Pantheon the ashes of Voltaire. He had been buried 110 miles from Paris. Buried by stealth he was to be removed by a nation. A funeral procession of a hundred miles; every village with its flags and arches in his honor; all the people anxious to honor the philosopher of France—the savior of Calas—the destroyer of superstition! On reaching Paris the great procession moved along the Rue St. Antoine. Here it paused, and for one night upon the ruins of the Bastille rested the body of Voltaire—rested in triumph, in glory—rested on fallen wall and broken arch, on crumbling stone still damp with tears, on rusting chain, and bar and useless bolt—above the dungeons dark and deep, where light had faded from the lives of men and hope had died in breaking hearts. The conqueror resting upon the conquered. Throned upon the Bastille, the fallen fortress of night, the body of Voltaire, from whose brain had issued the dawn.

For a moment his ashes must have felt the Promethean fire, and the old smile must have illumined once more the face of the dead.

While the vast multitude were trembling with love and awe, a priest was heard to cry, "God shall be avenged!"

The grave of Voltaire was violated. The cry of the priest, "God shall be avenged!" had borne its fruit. Priests, skulking in the shadows, with faces sinister as night-ghouls—in the name of the gospel, desecrated the gave. They carried away the body of Voltaire. The tomb was empty. God was avenged! The tomb was empty, but the world is filled with Voltaire's fame. Man has conquered!

What cardinal, what bishop, what priest raised his voice for the rights of men? What ecclesiastic, what nobleman, took the side of the oppressed—of the peasant? Who denounced the frightful criminal code the torture of suspected persons? What priest pleaded for the liberty of the citizen? What bishop pitied the victim of the rack? Is there the grave of a priest in France on which a lover of liberty would now drop a flower or a tear? Is there a tomb holding the ashes of a saint from which emerges one ray of light? If there be another life, a day of judgment, no God can afford to torture in another world a man who abolished torture in his. If God be the keeper of an eternal penitentiary, He should not imprison there those who broke the chain of slavery here. He cannot afford to make eternal convicts of Franklin, of Jefferson, of Paine, of Voltaire.

Voltaire was perfectly equipped for his work. A perfect master of the French language, knowing all its moods, tenses, and declinations, in fact and in feeling, playing upon it as skillfully, as Paganini on his violin, finding expression for every thought and fancy, writing on the most serious subjects with the gayety of a harlequin, plucking jests from the mouth of death, graceful as the waving of willows, dealing in double meanings—that covered the asp with flowers and flattery, master of satire and compliment, mingling them often in the same line, always interested himself, therefore interesting others, handling thoughts, questions, subjects, as a juggler does balls, keeping them in the air with perfect ease, dressing old words in new meanings, charming, grotesque, pathetic, mingling mirth with tears, wit with wisdom, and sometimes wickedness, logic, and laughter. With a woman's instinct knowing the sensitive nerves—just where to touch—hating arrogance of place, the stupidity of the solemn, snatching masks from priest and king, knowing the springs of action and ambition's ends, perfectly familiar with the great world, the intimate of kings and their favorites, sympathizing with the oppressed and imprisoned, with the unfortunate and poor, hating tyranny, despising superstition, and loving liberty with all his heart. Such was Voltaire, writing "Edipus" at seventeen, "Irene" at eighty-three, and crowding between these two tragedies, the accomplishment of a thousand lives.

Ingersoll's Lecture on Myth and Miracles

Ladies and Gentlemen: What, after all, is the object of life? What is the highest possible aim? The highest aim is to accomplish the only good. Happiness is the only good of which man by any possibility can conceive. The object of life is to increase human joy, and that means intellectual and physical development. The question, then, is: Shall we rely upon superstition or upon growth? Is intellectual development the highway of progress or must we depend on the pit of credulity? Must we rely on belief or credulity, or upon manly virtues, courageous investigation, thought, and intellectual development? For thousands of years men have been talking about religious freedom. I am now contending for the freedom of religion, not religious freedom—for the freedom which is the only real religion. Only a few years ago our poor ancestors tried to account for what they saw. Noticing the running river, the shining star, or the painted flower, they put a spirit in the river, a spirit in the star, and another in the flower. Something makes this river run, something makes this star shine, something paints the blossom of that flower. They were all spirits. That was the first religion of mankind—fetichism—and in everything that lived, everything that produced an effect upon them, they said: "This is a spirit that lives within." That is called the lowest phase of religious thought, and yet it is quite the highest phase of religious thought. One by one these little spirits died. One by one nonentities took their places, and last of all we have one infinite fetich that takes the place of all others. Now, what makes the river run? We say the attraction of gravitation, and we know no more about that than we do about this fetich. What makes the tree grow? The principle of life—vital forces. These are simply phrases, simply names of ignorance. Nobody knows what makes the river run, what makes the trees grow, why the flowers burst and bloom—nobody knows why the stars shine, and probably nobody ever will know.

There are two horizons that have never been passed by man—origin and destiny. All human knowledge is confined to the diameter of that circle. All religions rest on supposed facts beyond the circumference of the absolutely known. What next? The next thing that came in the world—the next man—was the mythmaker. He gave to these little spirits human passions; he clothed ghosts in flesh; he warmed that flesh with blood, and in that blood he put desire—motive. And the myths were born, and were only produced through the fact of the impressions that nature makes upon the brain of man. They were every one a natural production, and let me say here, tonight, that what men call monstrosities are only natural productions. Every religion has grown just as naturally as the grass; every one, as I said before, and it cannot be said too often, has been naturally produced. All the Christs, all the gods and goddesses, all the furies and fairies, all the mingling of the beastly and human, were all produced by the impressions of nature upon the brain of man—by the rise of the sun, the silver dawn, the golden sunset, the birth and death of day, the change of seasons, the lightning, the storm, the beautiful bow—all these produced within the brain of man all myths, and they are all natural productions.

There have been certain myths universal among men. Gardens of Eden have been absolutely universal—the golden age, which is absolutely the same thing. And what was the golden age born of? Any old man in Boston will tell you that fifty years ago all people were honest. Fifty years ago all people were sociable—there was no stuck-up aristocracy then. Neighbors were neighbors. Merchants gave full weight. Everything was full length; everything was a yard wide and all wool. Now everybody swindles everybody else, and calls it business. Go back fifty years and you will find an old man who will tell you that there was a time when all were honest. Go back another fifty years and you will find another sage who will tell you the same story. Every man looks back to his youth, to the golden age, and what is true of the individual is true of the whole human race. It has its infancy, its manhood, and, finally, will have an old age. The garden of Eden is not back of us. There are more honest men, good women, and obedient children in the world today than ever before.

The myth of the Elysian fields—universally born of sunsets. When the golden clouds in the west turned to amethyst, sapphire, and purple, the poor savage thought it a vision of another land—a land without care or grief—a world of perpetual joy. This myth was born of the setting of the sun. A universal myth, all nations have believed in floods. Savages found everywhere evidences of the sea having been above the earth, and saw in the shells souvenirs of the ocean's visit. It had left its cards on the tops of mountains. The savage knew nothing of the slow rise and sinking of the crust of the earth. He did not dream of it. We now know that where the mountains lift their granite foreheads to the sun, the billows once held sway, and that where the waves dash into white caps of joy, the mountains will stand once more. Everywhere the land is, the ocean will be; and where the ocean is the land will be. The Hindoos believed in the flood myth. Their hero, who lived almost entirely on water, went to the Ganges to perform his ablutions, and, taking up a little water in his hand, he saw a small fish that prayed him to save it from the monster of the river, and it would save him in turn from his enemies. He did so, and put it into different receptacles until it grew so large that he let it loose in the sea; then it was large enough to take care of itself. The fish told him that there was going to be an immense flood, and told him to gather all kinds of seed and take two of each kind of animals of use to man, and he would come along with an ark and take them all in. He told him to pick out seven saints. And the fish towed the ark along tied to its horns, and took them in and carried them to the top of a mountain, where he hitched the ark to a tree. When the waters receded, they came out and followed them down until they reached the plain. There were the same number—eight—in this ark as there were with Noah.

I find that the myth of the virgin mother is universal. The virgin mother is the earth. I find also in countries the idea of a trinity. In Egypt I find Isis, Osiris, and Horus. This idea prevailed in Central America among the Aztecs. We find the myth of the judgment almost universal. I imagine men have seen so much injustice here that they naturally expect that there must be some day of final judgment somewhere. Nearly every theist is driven to the necessity of having another world in which his god may correct the mistakes he has made in this. We find on the walls of Egyptian temples pictures of the judgment; the righteous all go on the right hand, and those unworthy on the left. The myth of the sun god was universal. Agni was the sun god of the Hindoos. He was called the most generous of all gods, yet he ate his own father and mother. Baldur was another sun god; he was a sun myth. Hercules was a sun god, and so was Samson. Jonah, too, was a sun god, and was swallowed by a fish. So was Hercules, and a wonderful thing is that they were swallowed in about the same place, near Joppa. Where did the big fish go? When the sun went down under the earth, it was thought to be followed by the fish, which was said to swallow it, and carry it safely through the under world. The sun thus came to be represented as the body of a woman with the tail of a fish, and so the mermaid was born. Another strange thing is that all the sun gods were born near Christmas. The myth of Red Riding Hood, was known among the Aztecs. The myth of eucharist came from the story of Ceres and Bacchus. When the cakes made by the product of the field were eaten, it was the body of Ceres, and when the wine was drank it was the blood of Bacchus. From this idea the eucharist was born. There is nothing original in christianity. Holy water! Another myth. The Hindoos imagined that the water had its source in the throne of God. The Egyptians thought the Nile sacred. Greece was settled by Egyptian colonies, and they carried with them the water of the Nile, and when any one died the water was sprinkled on him. Finally Rome conquered Greece physically, but Greece conquered Rome intellectually. This is the myth of holy water, and with it grew up the idea of baptism, and I presume that that is as old as water and dirt. The cross is another universal symbol. There was once an ancient people in Italy before the Romans, before the Etruscans. They faded from the world, and history does not even know the name of that nation. We find where they buried the ashes of their dead, and we find chiseled, hundreds of years before Christ, the cross, a symbol of a hope of another life. We find the cross in Egypt, in the cylinders from Babylon, and, more than that, we find them in Central America. On the temples of the Aztecs we find the cross, and on it a bleeding, dying god. Our cross was built in the middle ages.

When Adam was very sick he sent Seth, his son, to the garden of Eden. He told him he would have no trouble in finding it; all he had to do was to follow the tracks made by his mother and father when they left it. He wanted a little balsam from the tree of life that he might not die. Seth found there a cherub, with flaming sword, who would not let him pass the door. He moved his wings so that he could see in, and he saw the tree of life, with its roots running down to hell, and among them Cain, the murderer. The angel gave Seth three seeds, and told him to put them in his father's mouth when he was buried and to watch the effect. The result was that these trees grew up—one pine, one cedar, and on cypress. Solomon cut down one of these trees to put in the temple, but it grew through the roof and he threw it into the pool of Bethesda. When the soldiers went for a beam on which to crucify Christ they took this tree and made a cross of it. Helen, the mother of Constantine, went to Jerusalem to find this cross. She found the two crosses, also, that the thieves were crucified on. They could not tell which was which, so they called a sick woman who touched them, and when she touched the right one she was immediately made whole.

Such is myth and fable. The history of one religion is substantially the history of all religions. In embryo man lives all lives. The man of genius knows within himself the history of the human race; he knows the history of all religions. The man of imagination, genius, having seen a leaf and a drop of water, can construct the forests, the rivers, and the seas. In his presence all the cataracts fall and foam, the mists rise, and the clouds form and float. To really know one fact is known its kindred and its neighbors. Shakespeare, looking at a coat of mail, instantly imagined the society, the conditions that produced it, and what it, in its turn, produced. He saw the castle, the moat, the drawbridge, the lady in the tower, and the knightly lover spurring over the plain. He saw the bold baron and the rude retainer, the trampled serfs, and all the glory and the grief of feudal life. The man of imagination has lived the life of all people, of all races. He has been a citizen of Athens in the days of Pericles; listened to the eager eloquence of the great orator, and has sat upon the cliff, and with the tragic poet heard "the multitudinous laughter of the sea." He has seen Socrates thrust the spear of question through the shield and heart of falsehood—was present when the great man drank hemlock and met the night of death tranquil as a star meets morning. He has followed the peripatetic philosophers, and has been puzzled by the sophists. He has watched Phidias, as he chiseled shapeless stone to forms of love and awe. He has lived by the slow Nile, amid the vast and monstrous. He knows the very thought that wrought the form and features of the Sphinx. He has heard great Memnon's morning song, has laid him down with the embalmed dead, and felt within their dust the expectation of another life, mingled with cold and suffocating doubts—the children born of long delay. He has walked the ways of mighty Rome, has seen the great Caesar with his legions in the field, has stood with vast and motley throngs and watched the triumphs given to victorious men, followed by uncrowned kings, the captured hosts and all the spoils of ruthless war. He has heard the shout that shook the Coliseum's roofless walls when from the reeling gladiator's hand the short sword fell, while from his bosom gushed the stream of wasted life. He has lived the life of savage men—has trod the forest's silent depths, and in the desperate name of life or death has matched his thought against the instinct of the beast. He has sat beneath the bo tree's contemplative shade, rapt in Buddha's mighty thought, and he has dreamed all dreams that light, the alchemist, hath wrought from dust and dew and stored within the slumbrous poppy's subtle blood. He has knelt with awe and dread at every prayer; has felt the consolation and the shuddering fear; has seen all the devils; has mocked and worshiped all the gods; enjoyed all heavens, and felt the pangs of every hell. He has lived all lives, and through his blood and brain have crept the shadow and the chill of every death, and his soul, Mazeppa-like, has been lashed naked to the wild horse of every fear and love and hate. The imagination hath a stage within the brain, whereon he sets all scenes that lie between the morn of laughter and the night of tears, and where his players body forth the false and true, the joys and griefs, the careless shadows, and the tragic deeps of human life.

Through with the myth-makers, we now come to the wonder-worker. There is this difference between the miracle and the myth—a myth is an idealism of a fact, and a miracle is a counterfeit of a fact. There is some difference between a myth and a miracle. There is the difference that there is between fiction and falsehood and poetry and perjury. Miracles are probably only in the far past or the very remote future. The present is the property of the natural. You say to a man: "The dead were raised 4,000 years ago." He says, "Well, that's reasonable." You say to him, "In 4,000,000 years we shall all be raised." He says, "That is what I believe." Say to him, "A man was raised from the dead this morning," and he will say, "What are you giving us?" Miracles never convince at the time they were said to have been performed.

John the Baptist was the forerunner of Christ. He was cast into prison. When Christ heard of it He "departed from that country." Afterward he returned and heard that John had been beheaded, and he again departed from that country. There is no possible relation between the miraculous and the moral. The miracles of the middle ages are the children of superstition. In the middle ages men told everything but the truth, and believed everything but the facts. The middle ages—a trinity of ignorance, mendacity and insanity. There is one thing about humanity. You see the faults of others, but not your own. A Catholic in India sees a Hindoo bowing before an idol and thinks it absurd. Why does he not get him a plaster of paris virgin and some beads and holy water? Why does the protestant shut his eyes when he prays? The idea is a souvenir of sun worship. It is the most natural worship in the world. Religious dogmas have become absurd. The doctrine of eternal torment today has become absurd, low, groveling, ignorant, barbaric, savage, devilish and no gentleman would preach it.

Science, thou art the great magician! Thou alone performest the true miracles. Thou alone workest the real wonders. Fire is thy servant, lightning thy messenger. The waves obey thee, and thou knowest the circuits of the wind. Thou art the great philanthropist. Thou hast freed the slave and civilized the master. Thou hast taught man to chain, not his fellow-man, but the forces of nature—forces that have no backs to be scarred, no limbs for chains to chill and eat—forces that never know fatigue, that shed no tears—forces that have no hearts to break. Thou gavest man the plow, the reaper and the loom—thou hast fed and clothed the world. Thou art the great physician. Thy touch hath given sight. Thou hast made the lame to leap, the dumb to speak, and in the pallid cheek thy hand hath set the rose of health. "Thou hast given thy beloved sleep"—a sleep that wraps in happy dreams the throbbing nerves of pain. Thou art the perpetual providence of man—preserver of life and love. Thou art the teacher of every virtue, and the enemy of every vice. Thou has discovered the true basis of morals—the origin and office of conscience—and hast revealed the nature and measure of obligation. Thou hast taught that love is justice in its highest form, and that even self-love, guided by wisdom, embraces with loving arms the human race. Thou hast slain the monsters of the past. Thou hast discovered the one inspired book. Thou hast read the records of the rocks, written by wind and wave, by frost and flame—records that even priestcraft cannot change—and in thy wondrous scales thou hast weighed the atoms and the stars. Thou art the founder of the only true religion. Thou art the very Christ, the only savior of mankind!

Theology has always been in the way of the advance of the human race. There is this difference between science and theology—science is modest and merciful, while theology is arrogant and cruel. The hope of science is the perfection of the human race. The hope of theology is the salvation of a few and the damnation of almost everybody. As I told you in the first place, I believe in the religion of freedom. O liberty! thou art the god of my idolatry. Thou art the only deity that hates the bended knee. In thy vast and unwalled temple, beneath the roofless dome, star-gemmed and luminous with suns, thy worshipers stand erect. They do not bow or cringe or crawl or bend their foreheads to the earth. Thy dust hast never borne the impress of lips, upon thy sacred altars mothers do not sacrifice their babes, nor men their rights. Thou askest naught from man except the things that good men hate, the whip, the chain, the dungeon key. Thou hast no kings, no popes, no priests to stand between their fellow-men and thee. Thou hast no monks, no nuns, who, in the name of duty, murder joy. Thou carest not for forms nor mumbled prayers. At thy sacred shrine hypocrisy does not bow, fear does not crouch, virtue does not tremble, superstition's feeble tapers do not burn, but reason holds aloft her inextinguishable torch, while on the ever-broadening brow of science falls the ever coming morning of the ever better day.

Ingersoll on The Chinese God

Messrs. Wright, Dickey, O'Conner and Murch, of the select committee on the causes of the present depression of labor, presented the majority special report upon Chinese immigration.

These gentlemen are in great fear for the future of our most holy and perfectly authenticated religion, and have, like faithful watchmen from the walls and towers of Zion, hastened to give the alarm. They have informed Congress that "Joss has his temple of worship in the Chinese quarters, in San Francisco. Within the walls of a dilapidated structure is exposed to the view of the faithful the god of the Chinaman, and here are his altars of worship. Here he tears up his pieces of paper; here he offers up his prayers; here he receives his religious consolations, and here is his road to the celestial land." That "Joss is located in a long, narrow room, in a building in a back alley, upon a kind of altar;" that "he is a wooden image, looking as much like an alligator as like a human being;" that the Chinese "think there is such a place as heaven;" that "all classes of Chinamen worship idols;" that "the temple is open every day at all hours;" that "the Chinese have no Sunday;" that this heathen god has "huge jaws, a big red tongue, large white teeth, a half-dozen arms, and big, fiery eyeballs. About him are placed offerings of meat, and other eatables—a sacrificial offering."

No wonder that these members of the committee were shocked at such a god, knowing as they did that the only true God was correctly described by the inspired lunatic of Patmos in the following words:

"And there sat in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks one like unto the son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto fine brass as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars; and out of his mouth went a sharp, two-edged sword; and his countenance was as the sun shining in his strength."

Certainly, a large mouth, filled with white teeth, is preferable to one used as the scabbard of a sharp, two-edged sword. Why should these gentlemen object to a god with big fiery eyeballs, when their own Deity has eyes like a flame of fire?

Is it not a little late in the day to object to people because they sacrifice meat and other eatables to their god? We all know that for thousands of years the "real" God was exceedingly fond of roasted meat; that He loved the savor of burning flesh, and delighted in the perfume of fresh, warm blood.

The following account of the manner in which the "living God" desired that His people should sacrifice tends to show the degradation and religious blindness of the Chinese—:

"Aaron therefore went unto the altar and slew the calf of the sin-offering which was for himself. And the sons of Aaron brought the blood unto him. And he dipped his fingers in the blood and put it upon the horns of the altar, and poured out the blood at the bottom of the altar; but the fat and the kidneys and the caul above the liver of the sin-offering he burnt upon the altar, as the Lord commanded Moses, and the flesh and the hide he burnt with fire without the camp. And he slew the burnt offering. And Aaron's sons presented unto him the blood which he sprinkled round about the altar.... And he brought the meat offering and took a handful thereof and burnt upon the altar..... He slew also the bullock and the ram for a sacrifice of peace offering, which was for the people. And Aaron's sons presented unto him the blood which he sprinkled upon the altar, round about, and the fat of the bullock and of the ram, the rump and that which covereth the inwards, and the kidneys, and the caul above the liver, and they put the fat upon the breasts and he burnt the fat upon the altar. And the breasts and the right shoulder Aaron waved for a wave-offering before the Lord, as Moses had commanded."

If the Chinese only did something like this, we would know that they worshiped the "living" God. The idea that the supreme head of the "American system of religion" can be placated with a little meat and "ordinary eatables," is simply preposterous. He has always asked for blood, and has always asserted that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.

The world is also informed by these gentlemen that "the idolatry of the Chinese produces a demoralizing effect upon our American youth by bringing sacred things into disrespect, and making religion a theme of disgust and contempt."

In San Francisco there are some three hundred thousand people. Is it possible that a few Chinese can bring "our holy religion" into disgust and contempt? In that city there are fifty times as many churches as joss-houses. Scores of sermons are uttered every week; religious books and papers are plentiful as leaves in autumn, and somewhat dryer; thousands of bibles are with in the reach of all. And there, too, is the example of a Christian city.

Why should we send missionaries to China if we cannot convert the heathen when they come here? When missionaries go to a foreign land, the poor, benighted people have to take their word for the blessings showered upon a Christian people; but when the heathen come here, they can see for themselves. What was simply a story becomes a demonstrated fact. They come in contact with people who love their enemies. They see that in a Christian land men tell the truth; that they will not take advantage of strangers; that they are just and patient; kind and tender; and have no prejudice on account of color, race, or religion; that they look upon mankind as brethren; that they speak of God as a universal Father, and are willing to work, and even to suffer, for the good, not only of their own countrymen, but of the heathen as well. All this the Chinese see and know, and why they still cling to the religion of their country is to me a matter of amazement.

We all know that the disciples of Jesus do unto others as they would that others should do unto them, and that those of Confucius do not unto others anything that they would not that others should do unto them. Surely, such peoples ought to live together in perfect peace. Rising with the subject, growing heated with a kind of holy indignation, these Christian representatives of a Christian people most solemnly declare that anyone who is really endowed with a correct knowledge of our religious system which acknowledges the existence of a living God and an accountability to Him, and a future state of reward and punishment, who feels that he has an apology for this abominable pagan worship, is not a fit person to be ranked as a good citizen of the American union. It is absurd to make any apology for its toleration. It must be abolished, and the sooner the decree goes forth by the power of this government, the better it will be for the interests of this land.

I take this the earliest opportunity to inform these gentlemen composing a majority of the committee that we have in the United States no "religious system;" that this is a secular government. That it has no religious creed; that it does not believe nor disbelieve in a future state of reward and punishment; that it neither affirms nor denies the existence of a "living God;" and that the only god, so far as this government is concerned; is the legally expressed will of a majority of the people. Under our flag the Chinese have the same right to worship a wooden god that you have to worship any other. The constitution protects equally the church of Jehovah and the house of Joss. Whatever their relative positions may be in heaven, they stand upon a perfect equality in the United States. This government is an infidel government. We have a constitution with man put in and God left out; and it is the glory of this country that we have such a constitution.

It may be surprising to you that I have an apology for pagan worship, yet I have. And it is the same one that I have for the writers of this report. I account for both by the word superstition. Why should we object to their worshiping God as they please? If the worship is improper, the protestation should come not from a committee of congress, but from God himself. If He is satisfied, that is sufficient.

Our religion can only be brought into contempt by the actions of those who profess to be governed by its teachings. This report will do more in that direction than millions of Chinese could do by burning pieces of paper before a wooden image. If you wish to impress the Chinese with the value of your religion, of what you are pleased to call "the American system," show them that Christians are better than heathens. Prove to them that what you are pleased to call the "living God" teaches higher and holier things, a grander and purer code of morals, than can be found upon pagan pages. Excel these wretches in industry, in honesty, in reverence for parents, in cleanliness, in frugality, and above all by advocating the absolute liberty of human thought.

Do not trample upon these people because they have different conception of things about which even this committee knows nothing.

Give them the same privilege you enjoy of making a god after their own fashion, and let them describe him as they will. Would you be willing to have them remain, if one of their race, thousands of years ago, had pretended to have seen God, and had written of Him as follows: "There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth; coals were kindled by it.... and he rode upon a cherub and did fly?" Why should you object to these people on account of their religion? Your objection has in it the spirit of hate and intolerance. Of that spirit the inquisition was born. That spirit lighted the fagot, made the thumbscrew, put chains upon the limbs, and lashes upon the backs of men. The same spirit bought and sold, captured and kidnapped human beings; sold babes, and justified all the horrors of slavery. Congress has nothing to do with the religion of the people. Its members are not responsible to God for the opinions of their constituents, and it may tend to the happiness of the constituents for me to state that they are in no way responsible for the religion of the members. Religion is an individual not a national matter, and where the nation interferes with the right of conscience, the liberties of the people are devoured by the monster, superstition.

If you wish to drive out the Chinese, do not make a pretext of religion. Do not pretend that you are trying to do God a favor. Injustice in His name is doubly detestable. The assassin cannot sanctify his dagger by falling on his knees, and it does not help a falsehood if it be uttered as a prayer. Religion, used to intensify the hatred of men toward men, under the pretense of pleasing God, has cursed this world.