 Ingersoll on the Great Infidels from the works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume 3, Lectures. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Michelle Fry, Natan Rouge, Louisiana, in April 2020. Section 1, Introduction. This lecture is printed from notes found among Colonel Ingersoll's papers but was not revised by him for publication. I have sometimes thought that it will not make great and splendid character to rock children in the cradle of hypocrisy. I do not believe that the tendency is to make men and women brave and glorious when you tell them that there are certain ideas upon certain subjects that they must never express, that they must go through life with a pretense as a shield, that their neighbors will think much more of them if they will only keep still, and that above all is a God who despises one who honestly expresses what he believes. For my part, I believe men will be nearer honest in business, in politics, grander in art, in everything that is good and grand and beautiful if they are taught from the cradle to the coffin to tell their honest opinion. Neither do I believe thought to be dangerous. It is incredible that only idiots are absolutely sure of salvation. It is incredible that the more brain you have, the less your chance is. There can be no danger in honest thought, and if the world ever advances beyond what it is today, it must be led by men who express their real opinions. We have passed midnight in the great struggle between fact and faith, between science and superstition. The brand of intellectual inferiority is now upon the orthodox brain. There is nothing grander than to rescue from the leprosy of slender the reputation of a good and generous man. Nothing can be nearer just than to benefit our benefactors. The infidels of one age have been the oriold saints of the next, the destroyers of the old or the creators of the new. The old passes away, and the new becomes old. There is in the intellectual world, as in the material, 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 the mind by heretics. To attack the king was treason, to dispute the priest was blasphemy. The sword and cross were allies, they defended each other. The throne and altar were twins, vultures from the same egg. It was James the first who said, no bishop, no king. He might have said, no cross, no crown. The king owned the bodies, and the priest the souls of men. One lived on taxes, the other on alms. One was a robber, the other a beggar, and each was both. These robbers and beggars controlled two worlds. The king made laws, the priest made creeds. With bode backs the people received the burdens of the one, and with wonders open mouth the dogmas of the other. If any aspired to be free they were crushed by the king, and every priest was a hered 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 rags and hovels for you, robes and palaces for me. Such is the justice of God. And the priest said, God made you ignorant and vile. He made me holy and wise. If you do not obey me, God will punish you here and torment you hereafter. Such is the mercy of God. Infidels are intellectual discoverers. They sail the unknown seas and find new aisles and continents in the infinite realm of thought. An infidel is one who has found a new fact, who has an idea of his own and who in the mental sky has seen another star. He is an intellectual capitalist, and for that reason excites the envy and hatred of the theological pauper. End of introduction. Section 2 of Ingersoll on the Great Infidels from the works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume 3, Lectures. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Brian Levine, Burbank, California. Section 2. The Origin of God and Heaven of the Devil and Hell. In the estimation of good Orthodox Christians, I am a criminal because I am trying to take from loving mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, and lovers the consolations naturally arising from a belief in an eternity of grief and pain. I want to tear, break, and scatter to the winds the God that priests erected in the fields of innocent pleasure. A God made of sticks called creeds, and of old clothes called myths. I shall endeavor to take from the coffin its horror, from the cradle its curse, and put out the fires of revenge kindled by an infinite fiend. Is it necessary that heaven should borrow its light from the glare of hell? Infinite punishment is infinite cruelty, endless injustice, immortal meanness. To worship an eternal jailer hardens, debases, and pollutes even the vilest soul. While there is one sad and breaking heart in the universe, no good being can be perfectly happy. Against the heartlessness of the Christian religion, every grand and tender soul should enter solemn protest. The God of Hell should be held in loathing, contempt, and scorn. A God who threatens eternal pain should be hated, not loved, cursed, not worshipped. A heaven presided over by such a God must be below the lowest hell. I want no part in any heaven in which the saved, the ransomed, and redeemed will drown with shouts of joy the cries and sobs of hell, in which happiness will forget misery, where the tears of the lost only increase the laughter and double bliss. The idea of hell was born of ignorance, brutality, fear, cowardice, and revenge. This idea testifies that our remote ancestors were the lowest beasts. Only from dens, lairs, and caves, only from mouths filled with cruel fangs, only from hearts of fear and hatred, only from the conscience of hunger and lust, only from the lowest and most debased could come this most cruel, heartless and bestial of all dogmas. Our barbarian ancestors knew but little of nature. They were too astonished to investigate. They could not divest themselves of the idea that everything happened with reference to them, that they caused storms and earthquakes, that they brought the tempest and the whirlwind, that on account of something they had done or omitted to do, the lightning of vengeance leaped from the darkened sky. They made up their minds that at least two vast and powerful beings presided over this world, that one was good and the other bad, that both of these beings wished to get control of the souls of men, that they were relentless enemies, eternal foes, that both welcomed recruits and hated deserters, that both demanded praise and worship, that one offered rewards in this world and the other in the next. The devil has paid cash, God buys on credit. Man saw cruelty and mercy in nature because he imagined that phenomena were produced to punish or to reward him. When his poor hut was torn and broken by the wind, he thought it a punishment. When some town or city was swept away by flood or sea, he imagined that the crimes of the inhabitants had been avenged. When the land was filled with plenty, when the seasons were kind, he thought that he had pleased the tyrant of the skies. It must be remembered that both gods and devils were supposed to be presided over by the greatest god and the greatest devil. The god could give infinite rewards and could inflict infinite torments. The devil could assist man here, could give him wealth and place in this world in consideration of owning his soul hereafter. Each human soul was a prize contended for by these deities. Of course, this god and this devil had innumerable spirits at their command to execute their decrees. The god lived in heaven and the devil in hell. Both were monarchs and were infinitely jealous of each other. The priests pretended to be the agents and recruiting sergeants of this god and they were duly authorized to promise and threaten in his name. They had power to forgive and curse. These priests sought to govern the world by force and fear. Believing that men could be frightened into obedience, they magnified the tortures and terrors of perdition. Believing also that man could in part be influenced by the hope of reward, they magnified the joys of heaven. In other words, they promised eternal joy and threatened everlasting pain. Most of these priests, born of the ignorance of the time, believed what they taught. They proved that God was good by sunlight and harvest, by health and happiness, that he was angry by disease and death. Man, according to this doctrine, was led astray by the devil, who delighted only in evil. It was supposed that God demanded worship, that he loved to be flattered, that he delighted in sacrifice, that nothing made him happier than to see ignorant faith upon its knees, that above all things he hated and despised doubters and heretics, and that he regarded all investigation as rebellion. Now and then, believers in these ideas, those who had gained great reputation for learning and sanctity or had enjoyed great power, wrote books, and these books after a time were considered sacred. Most of them were written to frighten mankind and were filled with threatenings and curses for unbelievers and promises for the faithful. The more frightful the curses, the more extravagant the promises, the more sacred the books were considered. All of the gods were cruel, vindictive, unforgiving and relentless, and the devils were substantially the same. It was also believed that certain things must be accepted as true, no matter whether they were reasonable or not, that it was pleasing to God to believe a certain creed, especially if it happened to be the creed of the majority. Each community felt a duty to see that the enemies of God were converted or killed. To allow a heretic to live in peace was to invite the wrath of God. Every public evil, every misfortune was accounted for by something the community had permitted or done. When epidemics appeared brought by ignorance or welcomed by filth, the heretic was brought out and sacrificed to appease the vengeance of God. From the knowledge they had, from their premises, they reasoned well. They said if God will inflict such frightful torments upon us here, simply for allowing a few heretics to live, what will he do with the heretics? Of course, the heretics would be punished forever. They knew how cruel was the barbarian king when he had the traitor in his power. They had seen every horror that man could inflict on man. Of course if God could do more than a king, he could punish forever. The fires he would kindle never could be quenched. The torments he would inflict would be eternal. They thought the amount of punishment would be measured only by the power of God. These ideas were not only prevalent in what are called barbarous times, but they are received by the religious world of today. No death could be conceived more horrible than that produced by flames. To these flames they added eternity and hell was produced. They exhausted the idea of personal torture. By putting intention behind what man called good, God was produced. By putting intention behind what man called bad, the devil was created. Leave this intention out and gods and devils fade away. If not a human being existed, the sun would continue to shine, and tempests now and then would devastate the world. The rain would fall in pleasant showers, and the bow of promise would adorn the clouds. Violets would spread their velvet blossoms to the sun, and the earthquake would devour. Birds would sing and daisies bloom and roses blush, and the volcanoes would fill the heavens with their lurid glare. The procession of the seasons would not be broken, and the stars would shine just as serenely as though the world was filled with loving hearts and happy homes. But in the olden time man thought otherwise. He imagined that he was of great importance. Barbarians are always egotistic. They think that the stars are watching them, that the sun shines on their account, that the rain falls for them, and that gods and devils are really troubling themselves about their poor and ignorant souls. In those days men fought for their god as they did for their king. They killed the enemies of both. For this their king would reward them here and their god hereafter. With them it was loyalty to destroy the disloyal. They did not regard god as a vague spirit, nor as an essence without body or parts, but as a being, a person, an infinite man, a king, the monarch of the universe, who had garments of glory for believers, and robes of flame for the heretic and infidel. Do not imagine that this doctrine of hell belongs to Christianity alone. Nearly all religions have had this dogma for a cornerstone. Upon this burning foundation nearly all have built. Over the abyss of pain rose the glittering dome of pleasure. This world was regarded as one of trial. Here a god of infinite wisdom experimented with man. Between the outstretched paws of the infinite the mouse man was allowed to play. Here man had the opportunity of hearing priests and kneeling in temples. Here he could read and hear read the sacred books. Here he could have the example of the pious and the councils of the holy. Here he could build churches and cathedrals. Here he could burn incense fast, wear haircloth, deny himself all the pleasures of life, confess to priests, count beads, be miserable one day in seven, make creeds, construct instruments of torture, bow before pictures and images, eat little square pieces of bread, sprinkle water on the heads of babes, shut his eyes and say words to the clouds and slander and defame all who have the courage to despise superstition and the goodness to tell their honest thoughts. After death nothing could be done to make him better. When he should come into the presence of God nothing was left except to damn him. Priests might convert him here but God could do nothing there, all of which shows how much more a priest can do for a soul than its creator. How much more potent is the example of your average Christian than that of all the angels? And how much superior earth is to heaven for the moral development of the soul? In heaven the devil is not allowed to enter. There all are pure and perfect yet they cannot influence a soul for good. Only here on earth where the devil is constantly active only where his agents attack every soul is there the slightest hope of moral improvement. Strange that a world cursed by God filled with temptations and thick with fiends should be the only place where hope exists, the only place where man can repent, the only place where reform is possible. Strange that heaven filled with angels and presided over by God is the only place where reformation is utterly impossible. Yet these are the teachings of all the believers in the eternity of punishment. Masters frighten slaves with the threat of hell and slaves got a kind of shadowy revenge by whispering back the threat. The poor have damned the rich and the rich the poor. The imprisoned imagine the hell for their jailers. The weak built this place for the strong, the arrogant for their rivals, the vanquished for their victors, the priest for the thinker, religion for reason, superstition for science. All the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable, grew, blossomed and bore fruit in this one word, hell. For the nourishment of this dogma, cruelty was soil, ignorance was rain and fear was light. Christians have placed upon the throne of the universe a God of eternal hate. I cannot worship a being whose vengeance is boundless, whose cruelty is shoreless and whose malice is increased by the agonies he inflicts. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Whoever attacks a custom or a creed will be confronted with a list of the names of the dead who upheld the custom or believed the creed. He is asked in a very triumphant and sneering way if he knows more than all the great and honored of the past. Every defender of a creed has graven upon his memory the names of all great men whose actions or words can be tortured into evidence for his doctrine. The church is always anxious to have some king or president certified to the moral character of Christ, the authority of the scriptures and the justice of the Jewish God. Of late years, confessions of gentlemen about to be hanged have been considered of great value and the scaffold is regarded as a means of grace. All the churches of our day seek the rich. They are no longer the friends and defenders of the poor. Poverty no longer feels at home in the house of God. In the temple of the Most High, garments out of fashion are considered out of place. People now, before confessing to God what worthless souls they have, enrich their bodies. Now words of penitence mingle with the rustle of silk and light thrown from diamonds adorns the repentant tear. We are told that the rich, the fortunate, the holders of place and office, the fashionable, the respectable, are all within the churches. And yet all these people grow eloquent over the poverty of Christ, boast that he was born in a manger, that the Holy Ghost passed by all the ladies of titled wealth and fashion, and selected the wife of a poor and unknown mechanic for the mother of God. They admit that all the men of Jerusalem who held high positions, all the people of wealth, influence and power, were the enemies of the Saviour and held his pretensions in contempt. They admit that he had influence only with the poor and that he was so utterly unknown, so indigent in acquaintance, that it was necessary to bribe one of his disciples to point him out to the police. They assert that he had done a great number of miracles, had cured the sick and raised the dead, that he had preached to vast multitudes, had made a kind of triumphal entry into Jerusalem, had scourged from the temple the changers of money, had disputed with the doctors, and yet, notwithstanding all these things, he remained in the very depths of obscurity. Surely he and his disciples could have been met with the argument that the great dead were opposed to the new religion. The apostles, it is claimed, preached the doctrines of Christ in Rome and Athens, and the people of those cities could have used the arguments against Christianity that Christians now use in its support. They could have asked the apostles if they were wiser than all the philosophers, poets, orators, and statesmen dead. If they knew more, coming as they did from a weak and barbarous nation, than the greatest men produced by the highest civilization of the known world. With what scorn would the Greeks listen to a barbarian's criticisms upon Socrates and Plato? How a Roman would laugh to hear a vagrant Hebrew attack a mythology that had been believed by Cato and Virgil. Every new religion has to overcome this argument of the cemetery, this logic of the grave. Old ideas take shelter behind a barricade of corpses and tombstones. They have epitaphs for battle cries and malign the living in the name of the dead. The moment, however, that a new religion succeeds, it becomes the old religion and uses the same argument against a new idea that it once so gallantly refuted. The arguments used today against what they are pleased to call infidelity would have shut the mouth of every religious reformer, from Christ to the founder of the last sect. The general objection to the new is that it differs somewhat from the old, and the fact that it does differ is urged as an argument against its truth. Every man is forced to admit that he does not agree with all the great men living or dead. The average Catholic, if not a priest, as a rule will admit that Sir Isaac Newton was in some things his superior, that Demosthenes had the advantage of him in expressing his ideas in public, and that as a sculptor he is far below the unknown man of whose hand and brain was born the Venus de Milo. But he will not, on account of these admissions, change his views upon the important question of transubstantiation. Most Protestants will cheerfully admit that they are inferior in brain and genius to some men who have lived and died in the Catholic Church, that in the matter of preaching funeral sermons they do not pretend to equal basway, that their letters are not so interesting and polished as those of Pascal, that Torkmada excelled them in the genius of organization, and that for planning a massacre they would not for a moment dispute the palm with Catherine de Medici. And yet, after all these admissions, they would insist that the Pope is an unblushing impostor and that the Catholic Church is a vampire fattened by the best blood of a thousand years. The truth is that in favor of almost every sect, the names of some great men can be pronounced. In almost every church there have been men whose only weakness was their religion, and who in other directions achieved distinction. If you call men great because they were emperors, kings, noblemen, statesmen, millionaires, because they commanded vast armies and wielded great influence in their day, then more names can be found to support and prop the Church of Rome than any other Christian sect. Is Protestantism willing to rest its claims upon the great man argument? Give me the ideas, the religions, not that have been advanced and believed by the so-called great of the past, but that will be defended and believed by the great souls of the future. It gives me pleasure to say that Lord Bacon was a great man, but I do not for that reason abandon the Copernican system of astronomy and insist that the earth is stationary. Samuel Johnson was an excellent writer of Latinized English, but I am confident that he never saw a real ghost. Matthew Hale was a reasonably good judge of law, but he was mistaken about witches causing children to vomit crooked pins. John Wesley was quite a man in a kind of religious way, but in this country few people sympathize with his hatred of republican government, or with his contempt for the revolutionary fathers. Sir Isaac Newton in the domain of science was the colossus of his time, but his commentary on the Book of Revelation would hardly excite envy, even in the breast of a Spurgeon or a Talmudge. Upon many questions the opinions of Napoleon were of great value, and yet about his bed when dying he wanted to see burning the Holy Candles of Rome. John Calvin has been called a logician and reasoned well from his premises, but the burning of servitors did not make murder of virtue. Luther weakened somewhat the power of the Catholic Church and to that extent was a reformer, and yet Lord Brogham affirmed that his table talk was so obscene that no respectable English publisher would soil paper with a translation. He was a kind of religious rabble, and yet a man can defend Luther in his attack upon the Church without justifying his obscenity. If every man in the Catholic Church was a good man, that would not convince me that Ignatius Loyola ever met and conversed with the Virgin Mary. The fact is, very few men are right in everything. Great virtues may draw attention from defects, but they cannot sanctify them. A pebble surrounded by diamonds remains a common stone, and a diamond surrounded by pebbles is still a gem. No one should attempt to refute an argument by pronouncing the name of some man unless he is willing to adopt all the ideas and beliefs of that man. It is better to give reasons and facts than names. An argument should not depend for its force upon the name of its author. Facts need no pedigree. Logic has no heraldry, and the living should not be awed by the mistakes of the dead. The greatest men the world has produced have known but little. They had a few facts mingled with mistakes without number. In some departments they towered above their fellows, while in others they fell below the common level of mankind. Daniel Webster had great respect for the scriptures, but very little for the claims of his creditors. Most men are strangely inconsistent. Two propositions were introduced into the Confederate Congress by the same man. One was to hoist the black flag, and the other was to prevent carrying the males on Sunday. George Whitefield defended the slave trade because it brought the Negroes within the sound of the gospel and gave them the advantage of associating with the gentleman who stole them. And yet this same Whitefield believed and taught the dogma of predestination. Volumes might be written upon the follies and imbecilities of great men. A full rounded man, a man of sterling sense and natural logic, is just as rare as a great painter, poet, or sculptor. If you tell your friend that he is not a painter, that he has no genius for poetry, he will probably admit the truth of what you say, without feeling that he has been insulted in the least. But if you tell him that he is not a logician, that he has but little idea of the value of a fact, that he has no real conception of what evidence is, and that he never had an original thought in his life, he will cut your acquaintance. Thousands of men are most wonderful in mechanics, in trade, in certain professions, keen in business, knowing well the men among whom they live, and yet satisfied with religions, infinitely stupid, with politics perfectly senseless, and they will believe that wonderful things were common long ago, such things as no amount of evidence could convince them had happened in their day. A man may be a successful merchant, lawyer, doctor, mechanic, statesman, or theologian, without one particle of originality, and almost without the ability to think logically upon any subject whatever. Other men display in some directions the most marvelous intellectual power, astonishment kind with their grasp and vigor, and at the same time upon religious subjects drool and drivel like David at the gates of Gath. End of section three, the appeal to the cemetery. Section four of Ingersoll on the Great Infidels from the works of Robert G. Ingersoll, volume three, lectures. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rita Boutros. Section four, Sacred Books. We have found at last that other nations have sacred books much older than our own, and that these books and records were and are substantiated by traditions and monuments, by miracles and martyrs, Christ and apostles, as well as by prophecies fulfilled. In all of these nations, differences of opinion as to the authenticity and meaning of these books arose from time to time, precisely as they have done and still do with us, and upon these differences were founded sects that manufactured creeds. These sects denounced each other and preached with the sword and endeavored to convince with the faggot. Our theologians were greatly astonished to find in other Bibles the same stories, precepts, laws, customs and commands that adorn and stain our own. At first they accounted for this by saying that these books were in part copies of the Jewish scriptures, mingled with barbaric myths. To such an extent did they impose upon and insult probability that they declared that all the morality of the world, all laws commanding right and prohibiting wrong, all ideas respecting the unity of a supreme being were borrowed from the Jews who obtained them directly from God. The Christian world asserts with warmth not always born of candor that the Bible is the source, origin and fountain of law, liberty, love, charity and justice, that it is the intellectual and moral son of the world, that it alone gives happiness here and alone points out the way to joy hereafter, that it contains the only revelation from the infinite, that all others are the work of dishonest and mistaken men. They say these things in spite of the fact that the Jewish nation was one of the weakest and most barbaric of the past, in spite of the fact that the civilization of Egypt and India had commenced to wane before that of Palestine existed. To account for all the morality contained in the sacred books of the Hindus, by saying that it was borrowed from the wanderers in the desert of Sinai, from the escaped slaves of the Egyptians, taxes to the utmost the credulity of ignorance, bigotry and zeal. The men who make these assertions are not superior to other men. They have only the facts common to all, and they must admit that these facts do not force the same conclusions upon all. They must admit that men equally honest, equally well informed as themselves deny their premises and conclusions. They must admit that had they been born and educated in some other country, they would have had a different religion, and would have regarded with reverence and awe the books they now hold as false and foolish. Most men are followers and implicitly rely upon the judgment of others. They mistake solemnity for wisdom and regard a grave countenance as the title page and preface to a most learned volume, so they are easily imposed upon by forms, strange garments and solemn ceremonies. And when the teaching of parents, the customs of neighbors, and the general tongue approve and justify a belief or creed, no matter how absurd, it is hard even for the strongest to hold the citadel of his soul. In each country, in defense of each religion, the same arguments would be urged. There is the same evidence in favor of the inspiration of the Qur'an and Bible. Both are substantiated in exactly the same way. It is just as wicked and unreasonable to be a heretic in Constantinople as in New York. To deny the claims of Christ and Mohammed is alike blasphemous. It all depends upon where you are when you make the denial. No religion has ever fallen that carried with it down to dumb death a solitary fact. Mistakes molder with the temples in which they were taught, and countless superstitions sleep with their dead priests. Yet Christians insist that the religions of all nations that have fallen from wealth and power were false, with of course the solitary exception of the Jewish, simply because the nations teaching them dropped from their dying hands the swords of power. This argument drawn from the fate of nations proves no more than would one based upon the history of persons. With nations as with individuals the struggle for life is perpetual, and the law of the survival of the fittest applies equally to both. It may be that the fabric of our civilization will, crumbling, fall to unmeaning chaos and to formless dust, where oblivion broods and even memory forgets. Perhaps the blind Samson of some imprisoned force, released by thoughtless chance, may so wreck and strand the world that man in stress and strain of wanton fear will shudderingly crawl back to savage and barbaric night. The time may come in which this thrilled and throbbing earth, shorn of all life, will in its soundless orbit wheel a barren star on which the light will fall as fruitlessly as falls the gaze of love upon the cold pathetic face of death. End of Section 4 Sacred Books Section 5 of Ingersoll on the Great Infidels from the works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume 3, Lectures This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rita Butros. Section 5 Fear There is a view quite prevalent that in some way you can prove whether the theories defended or advanced by a man, or right or not, but showing what kind of man he was, what kind of life he lived, and what manner of death he died. A man entertains certain opinions, he is persecuted, he refuses to change his mind, he is burned, and in the midst of flames cries out that he dies without change. Hundreds then say that he has sealed his testimony with his blood, and his doctrines must be true. All the martyrs in the history of the world are not sufficient to establish the correctness of an opinion. Martyrdom as a rule establishes the sincerity of the martyr, never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves. Truth cannot be affected by opinions. It cannot be changed, established, or affected by martyrdom. An error cannot be believed sincerely enough to make it a truth. No Christian will admit that any amount of heroism displayed by a Mormon is sufficient to prove that Joseph Smith was divinely inspired. All the courage and culture, all the poetry and art of ancient Greece, do not even tend to establish the truth of any myth. The testimony of the dying concerning some other world, or in regard to the supernatural, cannot be any better to say the least than that of the living. In the early days of Christianity, a serene and intrepid death was regarded as a testimony in favor of the Church. At that time, pagans were being converted to Christianity, were throwing Jupiter away, and taking the Hebrew God instead. In the moment of death, many of these converts, without doubt, retraced their steps and died in the faith of their ancestors. But whenever one died clinging to the cross of the New Religion, this was seized upon as an evidence of the truth of the Gospel. After a time, the Christians taught that an unbeliever, one who spoke or wrote against their doctrines, could not meet death with composure. That the infidel, in his last moment, would necessarily be a prey to the serpent of remorse. For more than a thousand years, they have made the facts to fit this theory. Crimes against men have been considered as nothing when compared with the denial of the truth of the Bible, the divinity of Christ, or the existence of God. According to the theologians, God has always acted in this way. As long as men did nothing, except to render their fellows wretched, as long as they only butchered and burnt the innocent and helpless, God maintained the strictest and most heartless 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 leapt like a wounded tiger upon his victim, and from his quivering flesh tore his 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 being shielded by God. Thousands of crimes are committed every day. Men 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 to 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 and colleges who begin to doubt the geology of Moses and the astronomy of Joshua. He does not particularly object to stealing, if you won'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. The king who has waged cruel and useless war, who has filled countries with widows and fatherless children, with the maimed and diseased, and who has succeeded in offering to the Malak of ambition the best and bravest of his subjects dies like a saint. The emperor Constantine, who lifted Christianity into power, murdered his wife Fausta and his eldest son, Crispus, the same year that he convened the Council of Nice to decide whether Jesus Christ was a man or the Son of God. The council decided that Christ was consubstantial with the Father. This was in the year 325. We are thus indebted to a wife murderer for settling the vexed question of the divinity of the Saviour. Theodosius called a council at Constantinople in 381, and this council decided that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father. Theodosius the Younger assembled another council at Ephesus to ascertain who the Virgin Mary really was, and it was solemnly decided in the year 431 that she was the mother of God. In 451 it was decided by a council held at Calcedon, called together by the Emperor Marcian, that Christ had two natures, the human and divine. In 680 in another general council, held at Constantinople, convened by order of Pognatius, it was also decided that Christ had two wills, and in the year 1274 it was decided at the Council of Lyon that the Holy Ghost proceeded not only from the Father, but from the Son as well. Had it not been for these councils, we might have been without a trinity, even unto this day. When we take into consideration the fact that a belief in the trinity is absolutely essential to salvation, how unfortunate it was for the world that this doctrine was not established until the year 1274. Think of the millions that dropped into hell while these questions were being discussed. This, however, is a digression. Let us go back to Constantine. This Emperor, stained with every crime, is supposed to have died like a Christian. We hear nothing of fiends leering at him in the shadows of death. He does not see the forms of his murdered wife and son covered with the blood he shed. From his white and tripled lips issued no shrieks of terror. He does not cover his glazed eyes with thin and trembling hands to shut out the visions of hell. His chamber is filled with the rustle of wings, waiting to bear his soul to the thrilling realms of joy. Against the Emperor Constantine, the Church has hurled no anathema. She has accepted the story of his vision in the clouds, and his holy memory has been guarded by priest and pope. All the persecutors sleep in peace, and the ashes of those who burned their brothers in the name of Christ rest in consecrated ground. Whole libraries could not contain even the names of the wretches who have filled the world with violence and death in defense of book and creed. And yet they all died the death of the righteous, and no priest or minister describes the agony and fear, the remorse and horror with which their guilty souls were filled in the last moments of their lives. These men had never doubted. They accepted the creed. They were not infidels. They had not denied the divinity of Christ. They had been baptized. They had partaken of the Last Supper. They had respected priests. They admitted that the Holy Ghost had preceded. And these things put pillows beneath their dying heads, and covered them with the drapery of peace. Now and then, in the history of this world, a man of genius, of sense, of intellectual honesty has appeared. These men have denounced the superstitions of their day. They pitied the multitude. To see priests devour the substance of the people filled them with indignation. These men were honest enough to tell their thoughts. Then they were denounced, tried, condemned, executed. Some of them escaped the fury of the people 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 not actually necessary in the last moment. Religion got much of its power from the terror of death. From the works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume 3, Lectures. You had better live well and die wicked. You had better live well and die cursing, than live badly and die praying. It would not do to have the common people understand that a man could deny the Bible, refuse to look at the cross, content that Christ was only a man, and yet die as calmly as Calvin did after he had murdered Servetus, or as King David after advising one son to kill 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 inventions of Catholic priests and Catholics by a kind of theological comedy have sworn to the falsehoods told by Protestants. Upon this point they have always stood together, and will as long as the same calumny can be used by both. Upon the deathbed 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 reputations of 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 autodefé presided over by God and his angels. The men they thus describe were not atheists. They were all believers in God, in special providence, and in the immortality of the soul. They believed in the accountability of men, in the practice of virtue, injustice, and liberty. But they did not believe in that collection of follies and fables called the Bible. In order to show that an infidel must die, overwhelmed with remorse and fear, they have generally selected from all the unbelievers, since the day of Christ, five men—the Emperor Julian, Spinoza, Voltaire, Diderot, David Hume, and Thomas Paine. Hardly a minister in the United States has attempted to answer me without referring to the death of one or more of these men. In vain have these culminators of the dead been called upon to prove their statements. In vain have rewards been offered to any priestly maligner to bring forward the evidence. Let us once for all dispose of these slanders of these pious calamities. End of Section 6, A Death Test. Section 7 of Ingersoll on the Great Infidels This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org recording by Rita Butros. Ingersoll on the Great Infidels from the works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume 3, Lectures. Julian They say that the Emperor Julian was an apostate, that he was once a Christian, that he fell from grace, and that in his last moments, throwing some of his own blood into the air, he cried out to Jesus Christ, Galilean thou hast conquered. It must be remembered that the Christians had persecuted and imprisoned this very Julian, that they had exiled him, that they had threatened him with death. Many of his relatives were murdered by the Christians. He became Emperor and Christians conspired to take his life. The conspirators were discovered and they were pardoned. He did what he could to prevent the Christians from destroying each other. He held pomp and pride and luxury and contempt, and led his army on foot, sharing the privations of the meanest soldier. Upon ascending the throne, he published an edict proclaiming universal religious toleration. He was then a pagan. It is claimed by some that he never did entirely forget his Christian education. In this I am inclined to think there is some truth, because he revoked his edict of toleration, and for a time was nearly as unjust as though he had been a saint. He was Emperor one year and seven months. In a battle with the Persians he was mortally wounded. Brought back to his tent and feeling that he had but a short time to live, he spent his last hours in discoursing with his friends on the immortality of the soul. He reviewed his reign and declared that he was satisfied with his conduct, and had neither penitence nor remorse to express for anything that he had done. His last words were, I submit willingly to the eternal decrees of heaven, convinced that he who is captivated with life, when his last hour has arrived, is more weak and pusillanimous than he who would rush to voluntary death when it is his duty still to live. When we remember that a Christian Emperor murdered Julian's father and most of his kindred, and that he narrowly escaped the same fate, we can hardly blame him for having a little prejudice against a church whose members were fierce, ignorant and bloody, whose priests were hypocrites and whose bishops were assassins. If Julian had said he was a Christian, no matter what he actually was, he would have satisfied the church. The story that the dying Emperor acknowledged that he was conquered by the Galilean was originated by some of the so-called Fathers of the Church, probably by Gregory or Theodore. They are the same wretches who said that Julian sacrificed a woman to the moon, tearing out her entrails with his own hands. We are also informed by these hypocrites that he endeavored to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem, and that fire came out of the earth and consumed the laborers employed in the sacrilegious undertaking. I did not suppose that an intelligent man could be found in the world who believed this childish fable, and yet in the January number for 1880 of the Princeton Review, the Reverend Stuart Robinson, whoever he may be, distinctly certifies to the truth of this story. He says, throughout the entire era of the planting of the Christian Church, the Gospel preached was assailed not only by the malignant fanaticism of the Jew and the violence of Roman statecraft, but also by the intellectual weapons of philosophers, wits, and poets. Now Celsus denounced the new religion as base imposter. Now Tacitus described it as but another phase of the odium generis humani. Now Julian proposed to bring into contempt the prophetic claims of its founder by the practical test of rebuilding the Temple. Here then in the year of grace 1880 is a Presbyterian preacher who really believes that Julian tried to rebuild the Temple, and that God caused fire to issue from the earth and consume the innocent workmen. All these stories rest upon the same foundation, the mendacity of priests. Julian changed the religion of the empire, and diverted the revenues of the Church. Whoever steps between a priest and his salary will find that he has committed every crime. No matter how often the slanders may be refuted, they will be repeated until the last priest has lost his body and found his wings. These falsehoods about Julian were invented some 1500 years ago, and they are repeated today by just as honest and just as respectable people as those who told them at first. Whenever the Church cannot answer the arguments of an opponent, she attacks his character. She resorts to falsehood, and in the domain of Calumny she has stood for 1500 years without arrival. The great empire was crumbling to its fall. The literature of the world was being destroyed by priests. The gods and goddesses were driven from the earth and sky. The paintings were torn and defaced. The statues were broken. The walls were left desolate, and the niches empty. Art, like Rachel, wept for her children and would not be comforted. The streams and forests were deserted by the children of the imagination, and the whole earth was barren, poor, and mean. Christian ignorance, bigotry, and hatred, in blind, unreasoning zeal, had destroyed the treasures of our race. Art was abhorred. Knowledge was despised. Reason was an outcast. The sun was blotted from the intellectual heaven. Every star extinguished, and there fell upon the world that shadow, that midnight, known as the Dark Ages. This night lasted for a thousand years. The first great star, herald of the dawn, was Bruno. End of Section 7, Julian. Section 8 of Ingersoll on the Great Infidels. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rita Butros. Ingersoll on the Great Infidels from the works of Robert G. Ingersoll. Volume 3, Lectures. Section 8, Bruno. The night of the Middle Ages lasted for a thousand years. The first star that enriched the horizon of this universal gloom was Giordano Bruno. He was the herald of the dawn. He was born in 1550, was educated for a priest, became a Dominican friar. At last his reason revolted against the doctrine of transubstantiation. He could not believe that the entire trinity was in a wafer or in a swallow of wine. He could not believe that a man could devour the creator of the universe by eating a piece of bread. This led him to investigate other dogmas of the Catholic Church, and in every direction he found the same contradictions and impossibilities supported. Not by reason, but by faith. Those who loved their enemies threatened his life. He was obliged to flee from his native land, and he became a vagabond in nearly every nation of Europe. He declared that he fought not what priests believed, but what they pretended to believe. He was driven from his native country because of his astronomical opinions. He had lost confidence in the Bible as a scientific work. He was in danger because he had discovered a truth. He fled to England. He gave some lectures at Oxford. He found that institution controlled by priests. He found that they were teaching nothing of importance, only the impossible and the hurtful. He called Oxford the widow of true learning. There were in England at that time two men who knew more than the rest of the world. Shakespeare was then alive. Bruno was driven from England. He was regarded as a dangerous man. He had opinions. He inquired after reasons. He expressed confidence in facts. He fled to France. He was not allowed to remain in that country. He discussed things. That was enough. The church said, move on. He went to Germany. He was not a believer. He was an investigator. The Germans wanted believers. They regarded the whole Christian system as settled. They wanted witnesses. They wanted men who would assert. So he was driven from Germany. He returned at last to his native land. He found himself without friends because he had been true not only to himself but to the human race. But the world was false to him because he refused to crucify the Christ of his own soul between the two thieves of hypocrisy and bigotry. He was arrested for teaching that there are other worlds than this, that many of the stars are suns around which other worlds revolve. That nature did not exhaust all her energies on this grain of sand called the earth. He believed in a plurality of worlds, in the rotation of this, in the heliocentric theory. For these crimes and for these alone, he was imprisoned for six years. He was kept in solitary confinement. He was allowed no books, no friends, no visitors. He was denied pen and paper. In the darkness, in the loneliness, he had time to examine the great questions of origin, of existence, of destiny. He put to the test what is called the goodness of God. He found that he could neither depend upon man nor upon any deity. At last the inquisition demanded him. He was tried, condemned, excommunicated and sentenced to be burned. According to Professor Draper, he believed that this world is animated by an intelligent soul, the cause of forms but not of matter, that it lives in all things, even in such a seam not to live, that everything is ready to become organized, that matter is the mother of forms and then their grave, that matter and the soul of things together constitute God. He was a pantheist, that is to say an atheist. He was a lover of nature, a reaction from the asceticism of the church. He was tired of the gloom of the monastery. He loved the fields, the woods, the streams. He said to his brother priests, come out of your cells, out of your dungeons, come into the air and light. Throw away your beads and your crosses. Gather flowers, mingle with your fellow men. Have wives and children. Scatter the seeds of joy. Throw away the thorns and nettles of your creeds. Enjoy the perpetual miracle of life. On the 16th day of February, in the year of grace 1600, by the triumphant beast, the church of Rome, this philosopher, this great and splendid man was burned. He was offered his liberty if he would recant. There was no God to be offended by his recantation, and yet as an apostle of what he believed to be the truth he refused this offer. To those who passed the sentence upon him, he said, it is with greater fear that you pass this sentence upon me than I receive it. This man, greater than any naturalist of his day, grander than the martyr of any religion, died willingly in defense of what he believed to be the sacred truth. He was great enough to know that real religion will not destroy the joy of life on earth. Great enough to know that investigation is not a crime, that the really useful is not hidden in the mysteries of faith. He knew that the Jewish records were below the level of the Greek and Roman myths, that there is no such thing as special providence, that prayer is useless, that liberty and necessity are the same, and that good and evil are but relative. He was the first real martyr, neither frightened by perdition nor bribed by heaven. He was the first of all the world who died for truth without expectation of reward. He did not anticipate a crown of glory. His imagination had not peopled the heavens with angels waiting for his soul. He had not been promised an eternity of joy if he stood firm, nor had he been threatened with the fires of hell if he wavered and recanted. He expected as his reward an eternal nothing. Death was to him an everlasting end, nothing beyond but a sleep without a dream, a night without a star, without a dawn, nothing but extinction, blank, utter and eternal. No crown, no palm, no well-done good and faithful servant, no shout of welcome, no song of praise, no smile of God, no kiss of Christ, no mansion in the fair skies, not even a grave within the earth, nothing but ashes, wind blown and priests scattered, mixed with earth and trampled beneath the feet of men and beasts. The murder of this man will never be completely and perfectly avenged, until from Rome shall be swept every vestige of priest and pope, until over the shapeless ruin of St. Peter's, the crumbled Vatican and the fallen cross, shall rise a monument to Bruno, the thinker, philosopher, philanthropist, atheist, martyr. End of Section 8 Bruno Section 9 of Ingersoll on the Great Infidels From the works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume 3, Lectures This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Section 9 The Church and the Time of Voltaire When Voltaire was born, the natural was about the only thing in which the church did not believe. The monks sold little amulets of consecrated paper. They would cure diseases. If laid in a cradle, they would prevent a chaff being bewitched, so they could be put into houses and barns to keep devils away, or buried in a field to prevent bad weather, to delay frost, and to ensure good crops. There was a regular formulary, by which they were made, ending with a prayer, after which the amulets were sprinkled with holy water. The church contended that its servants were the only legitimate physicians. The priests cured in the name of the church and in the name of God, by exorcism, relics, water, salt, and oil. Saint Valentine cured epilepsy. Saint Jevasius was good for rheumatism. Saint Michael to Sanitis for cancer. Saint Judas for coughs. Saint Avidius for deafness. Saint Sebastian for poisonous bites. Saint Apollonia for toothache. Saint Clara for room in the eye. Saint Hubert for hydrophobia. Devils were driven out with wax tapers, with incense, with holy water. By pronouncing prayers, the church as late as the middle of the 12th century prohibited good Catholics from having anything to do with physicians. It was believed that the devils produced storms of wind, of rain, and of fire from heaven. That the atmosphere was a battlefield between angels and devils, that Lucifer had power to destroy fields and vineyards and dwellings, and the principal business of the church was to protect the people from the devil. This was the origin of church bells. These bells were sprinkled with holy water, and their clanga cleared the air of imps and fiends. The bells also prevented storms and lightning. The church used to anathematize insects. In the 16th century, regular suits were commenced against rats, and judgment was rendered. Every monastery had its master magician, who sold magic incense, salt, and tapers, consecrated palms, and relics. Every science was regarded as an outcast, an enemy. Every fact held the creed of the church in scorn. Investigators were enemies in disguise. Thinkers were traitors, and the church exerted its vast power for centuries to prevent the intellectual progress of man. There was no liberty, no education, no philosophy, no science, nothing but credulity, ignorance, and superstition. The world was really under the control of Satan and his agents. The church, for the purpose of increasing her power, exhausted every means to convince the people of the existence of witches, devils, and fiends. In this way the church had every enemy within her power. She simply had to charge him with being a wizard, of holding communication with devils, and the ignorant mob were ready to tear him to pieces. To such an extent was his frightful course pursued, and such was the prevalence of the belief in the supernatural, that the worship of the devil was absolutely established. The poor people, brutalized by the church, filled with fear of satanic influence, finding that the church did not protect, as a last resort began to worship the devil. The power of the devil was proven by the Bible, the history of Job, the temptation of Christ in the desert, the carrying of Christ at the top of the temple, and hundreds of other instances were relied upon as establishing his power, and when people laughed about witches, riding upon anointed sticks in the air, invisible, they were reminded of a like voyage when the devil carried Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple. This frightful doctrine filled every friend with suspicion of his friend. It the husband announced the wife, the children the parents, and the parents the children. It destroyed all the sweet relations of humanity. It did away with justice in the courts. It destroyed the charity of religion. It broke the bond of friendship. It filled with poison the golden cup of life. It turned earth into a very hell, peopled with ignorant tyrannical and malicious demons. Such was the result of a few centuries of Christianity. Such was the result of a belief in the supernatural. Such was the result of giving up the evidence of our own senses, and relying upon dreams, visions, and fears. Such was the result of destroying human reason, of depending upon the supernatural, of living here for another world, instead of for this, of depending upon priests, instead of upon ourselves. The Protestants vied with the Catholics. Luther stood side by side with the priests he had deserted in promoting this belief in devils and fiends. To the Catholic, every Protestant was possessed by a devil. To the Protestant, every Catholic was the homestead of a fiend. All order, all regular succession of causes and effects, were known no more. The natural ceased to exist. The learned and the ignorant were on a level. The priest had been caught in the net spread for the peasant, and Christendom was a vast madhouse with the insane priests for keepers. Section 10 of Ingersoll on the Great Infidels from the works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume 3, Lectures This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 10, Voltaire 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 were nearly as cruel as venal. The Royal Palace was simply a house of asignation. The nobles were heartless, proud and 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 germinated in the hearts of the helpless. They were watered by their tears of agony. Blows began to bear interest. There was a faint longing for blood. Workmen, blackened by the sun, bent by labour, looked at the white throats of scornful ladies and thought about cutting them. In those days witnesses were cross-examined with instruments of torture. The church was the arsenal of superstition. Miracles, relics, angels and devils were as common as rags. Voltaire laughed at the evidences, attacked the pretended facts, held the Bible up to ridicule, and filled Europe with indignant protests against the cruelty, bigotry and injustice of the time. He was a believer in God, and in some ingenious way excused this God for allowing the Catholic Church to exist. He had an idea that originally mankind were believers in one God and practiced all the virtues. Of course, this was a mistake. He imagined that the church had corrupted the human race. In this he was right. It may be that, at one time, the church relatively stood for progress, but when it gained power it became an obstruction. The system of Voltaire was contradictory. He described a being of infinite goodness who not only destroyed his children with pestilence and famine, but allowed them to destroy each other. While rejecting the God of the Bible, he accepted another God, who, to say the least, allowed the innocent to be burned for love of him. Voltaire hated tyranny and loved liberty. His arguments to prove the existence of a God were just as grandless are those of the Reverend Fathers of his day to prove the divinity of Christ, or that Mary was the mother of God. The theologians of his time maligned and feared him. He regarded them as a spider does flies. He spread nets for them. They were caught, and he devoured them for the amusement and benefit of the public. He was educated by the Jesuits, and sometimes acted like one. 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 die even a priest forever. This was regarded as blasphemy. He endeavoured to prevent Christians from murdering each other, and did what he could to civilise 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, had he mumbled Latin prayers, counted beads, crossed himself, devoured the flesh of God, and carried faggots to the feet of philosophy in the name of Christ. He might have been in heaven this moment, enjoying a sight of the damned. 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, endeavoured to establish universal toleration, suckered the indigent, and defended the oppressed. 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 Autodafé. 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. He was an old man of eighty-four. He had been surrounded with the comforts of life. He was a man of wealth, of genius. Among the literary men of the world, he stood first. God had allowed him to have the appearance of success. His last years were filled with the intoxication of flattery. 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 curie of Saint-Saul-Pice and the abbey Gautier, and brought them into his uncle's sick chamber. He was informed that they were there. Ah, well, said Voltaire, give them my compliments and my thanks. The abbey spoke some words to him, exhorting him to patience. The curie of Saint-Saul-Pice then came forward, having announced himself, and asked Voltaire, elevating his voice, if he acknowledged the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. The sick man pushed one of his hands against the curie's coiff, shoving him back and cried, turning abruptly to the other side. Let me die in peace. The curie seemingly considered his person soiled, and his coiff dishonoured by the touch of the philosopher. He made the nurse give him a little brushing, and went out with the abbey Gautier. He expired, says Wagner, on the 30th of May 1778, at about a quarter past eleven at night, with the most perfect tranquillity. Ten minutes before his last breath, he took the hand Morand, his valet de Chambre, who was watching by him, pressed it and said, Adieu, my de Morand, I am gone. These were his last words. From this death so simple and serene, 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, have been constructed all the shameless lies about the death of this great and wonderful man, compared with whom all of his columniators, dead and living, were and are but dust and vermin. Voltaire was the intellectual autocrat of his time. From his throne at the foot of the Alps, he pointed the finger of scorn at every hypocrite in Europe. He was the pioneer of his century. He was the assassin of superstition. He left the quiver of ridicule without an arrow. Through the shadows of faith and fable, through the darkness of myth and miracle, through the midnight of Christianity, through the blackness of bigotry, past cathedral and dungeon, past rack and stake, past altar and throne, he carried, with chivalric hands, the sacred torch of reason. End of Section 10, Reading by Florence Section 11, Diderot. Doubt is the first step toward truth. Diderot was born in 1713. His parents were in what may be called the humbler walks of life. Like Voltaire, he was educated by the Jesuits. He had in him something of the vagabond, and was, for several years, almost a beggar in Paris. He was endeavoring to live by his pen. In that day and generation, a man without a patron, endeavoring to live by literature, was necessarily almost a beggar. He nearly starved, frequently going for days without food. Afterward, when he had something for himself, he was as generous as the air. No man ever was more willing to give, and no man less willing to receive, than Diderot. He wrote upon all conceivable subjects that he might have bred. He even wrote sermons, and regretted it all his life. He and D'Alembert were the life and soul of the encyclopedia. With infinite enthusiasm, he helped to gather the knowledge of the world for the use of each and all. He harvested the fields of thought, separated the grain from the straw and chaff, and endeavored to throw away the seeds and fruit of superstition. His motto was, quote, incredulity is a first step towards philosophy. He had the vices of most Christians, was nearly as immoral as the majority of priests. His vices he shared in common, his virtues were his own. All who knew him united in saying that he had the pity of a woman, the generosity of a prince, the self-denial of an anchorite, the courage of Caesar, and the enthusiasm of a poet. He attacked with every power of his mind, the superstition of his day. He said what he thought. The priest hated him. He was in favor of universal education, the church despised it. He wished to put the knowledge of the whole world within the reach of the poorest. He wished to drive from the gate of the garden of Eden the cherubim of superstition, so that the child of Adam might return to eat once more the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Every Catholic was his enemy. His poor little desk was ransacked by the police searching for manuscripts in which something might be found that would justify the imprisonment of such a dangerous man. Whoever in 1750 wished to increase the knowledge of mankind was regarded as the enemy of social order. The intellectual superstructure of France rests upon the encyclopedia. The knowledge given to the people was the impulse, the commencement of the revolution that left the church without an altar and the king without a throne. Diderot fought for himself and bravely gave his thoughts to others. For this reason he was regarded as a criminal. He did not expect his reward in another world. He did not do what he did to please some imaginary God. He labored for mankind. He wished to lighten the burdens of those who should live after him. Hear these noble words. Quote, the more man ascends through the past and the more he launches into the future the greater he will be and all these philosophers and ministers and truth telling men who have fallen victims to the stupidity of nations, the atrocities of priests, the fury of tyrants, what consolation was left for them in death. This, that prejudice would pass and that posterity would pour out the vile of ignominy upon their enemies. O posterity, holy and sacred stay of the unhappy and the oppressed, thou who are just, thou who are incorruptible, thou who findest the good man, who unmaskest the hypocrite, who breakest down the tyrant, may thy sure faith, thy consoling faith never, never abandon me. Close quote. Posterity is for the philosopher what the other world is for the devotee. Diderot took the ground that if orthodox religion be true, Christ was guilty of suicide. Having the power to defend himself, he should have used it. Of course it would not do for the church to allow a man to die in peace who had added to the intellectual wealth of the world. The moment Diderot was dead, Catholic priests began painting and recounting the horrors of his expiring moments. They described him as overcome with remorse, as insane with fear, and these falsehoods have been repeated by the Protestant world and will probably be repeated by thousands of ministers after we are dead. The truth is he had passed his three score years and ten. He had lived for seventy-one years. He had eaten his supper. He had been conversing with his wife. He was reclining in his easy chair. His mind was at perfect rest. He had entered, without knowing it, the twilight of his last day. Above the horizon was the evening star telling of sleep. The room grew still and stillness was lulled by the murmur of the street. There were a few moments of perfect peace. The wife said, he is asleep. She enjoyed his repose and breathed softly that he might not be disturbed. The moments wore on and still he slept. Lovingly, softly, at last she touched him. Yes, he was asleep. He had become a part of the eternal silence. End of section 11, Diderot doubt is the first step toward truth. Section 12 of Ingersoll on the Great Infidels from the works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume 3 Lectures. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording by William Jones Benita Springs, Florida. Section 12, David Hume The worst religion of the world was the Presbyterianism of Scotland, as it existed in the beginning of the 18th century. The Kirk had all the faults of the Church of Rome without a redeeming feature. The Kirk hated music, painting, statuary, and architecture. Anything touched with humanity, with the dimples of joy, was detested and accursed. God was to be feared, not loved. Life was a long battle with the devil. Every desire was of Satan. Happiness was a snare, and human love was wicked, weak in vain. The Presbyterian priest of Scotland was as cruel, bigoted, and heartless as the familiar of the Inquisition. One case will tell it all. In the beginning of this, the 19th century, a boy 17 years of age, Thomas Akinhead, was indicted and tried at Edinburgh for blasphemy. He had denied the inspiration of the Bible. He had on several occasions, when cold, jocularly wished himself in hell that he might get warm. The poor, frightened boy, recanted, begged for mercy. But he was found guilty, hanged, thrown in a hole at the foot of the scaffold, and his weeping mother, vainly begged, that his bruised and bleeding body might be given to her. This one case, multiplied again and again, gives you the conditions of Scotland when on the 26th of April, 1711, David Hume was born. David Hume was one of the few scotchmen of his day who were not owned by the church. He had the manliness to examine historical and religious questions for himself, and the courage to give his conclusions to the world. He was singularly capable of governing himself. He was a philosopher and lived a calm and cheerful life, unstained by an unjust act, free from all excess and devoted in a reasonable degree to benefiting his fellow men. After examining the Bible, he became convinced that it was not true. For failing to suppress his real opinion, for failing to tell a deliberate falsehood, he brought upon himself the hatred of the church. Intellectual honesty is the sin against the Holy Ghost, and whether God will forgive this sin or not, his church has not, and never will. Hume took the ground that a miracle could not be used as evidence until the fact that it had happened was established. But how can a miracle be established? Take any miracle recorded in the Bible, and how could it be established now? You may say, upon the testimony of those who wrote the account. Who were they? No one knows. How could you prove the resurrection of Lazarus or of the widow's son? How could you substantiate today the ascension of Jesus Christ? In what way could you prove that the river Jordan was divided upon being struck by the coat of the prophet? How is it possible now to establish the fact that the fires of a furnace refused to burn three men? Where are the witnesses? Who, upon the whole earth, has the slightest knowledge upon this subject? He insisted that at the bottom of all good was the useful. That human happiness was an end worth working and living for, that origin and destiny were alike unknown, that the best religion was to live temporarily and to deal justly with her fellow men, that the dogma of inspiration was absurd, and that an honest man had nothing to fear. Of course the Kirk hated him. He laughed at the creed. To the lot of whom fell ease of respect, success, and honor. While many disciples of God were the sport and prey of misfortune, he kept steadily advancing. Envious Christians bided their time. They waited as patiently as possible for the horrors of death to fall upon the heart and brain of David Hume. They knew that all the furies would be there and that God would get his revenge. Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations, speaking of Hume in his last sickness, says that in the presence of death, quote, his cheerfulness was so great and his conversation and amusements ran so much in the usual strain that notwithstanding all his bad symptoms, many people could not believe he was dying. A few days before his death, Hume said, I am dying as fast as my enemies, if I have any, could wish, and as easily and tranquilly as my best friends could desire. Colonel Edmundson, shortly afterward, wrote him a letter, of which the following is an extract, quote, my heart is full. I could not see you this morning. I thought it was better for us both. You cannot die. You must live in the memory of your friends and acquaintances and your works will render you immortal. I cannot conceive that it was possible for anyone to dislike you or hate you. He must be more than savage, who could be an enemy to a man with the best head and heart and the most amiable manners. Close quote. Adam Smith happened to go into his room while he was reading the above letter, which he immediately showed him. Smith said to Hume that he was sensible of how much he was weakening and that appearances were in many respects bad. Yet that his cheerfulness was so great and the spirit of life still seemed to be so strong in him that he could not keep from entertaining some hopes. Hume answered, quote, when I lie down in the evening I feel myself weaker than when I arose in the morning and when I rise in the morning weaker than when I lay down in the evening. I am sensible besides that some of my vital parts are affected so that I must soon die. Close quote. Well said Mr. Smith, if it must be so, you have at least the satisfaction of leaving all your friends and the members of your brother's family in particular in great prosperity. He replied that he was so sensible of his situation that when he was reading Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, among all the excuses which were alleged to share on for not entering readily into his vote, he could not find one that fitted him. He had no house to finish, he had no daughter to provide for, he had no enemies upon whom he wished to avenge himself, and I could not well, he said, imagine what excuse I could make to share on in order to obtain a little delay. I have done everything of consequence which I ever meant to do, and I could at no time expect to leave my relations and friends in a better situation than that in which I am now likely to leave them. I have, therefore, every reason to die contented. Close quote. Upon further consideration, said he, I thought I might say to him, good Charon, I have been correcting my works for a new addition, allow me a little time, and I may see how the public receives the alterations. But, Charon would answer, when you have seen the effect of this, you will be for making other alterations. There will be no end to such excuses. So, my honest friend, please step into the vote. But, I might still argue, have a little patience, good Charon. I have been endearing to open the eyes of the public. If I live a few years longer, I may have the satisfaction of seeing the downfall of some of the prevailing systems of superstition. And Charon would then lose all temper and decency and would cry out, you loitering rogue, that will not happen these many hundred years. Do you fancy I will grant you a lease for so long a time? Get into the boat this instant. Close quote. To the contest de bouffilliers, the dying man with the perfect sincerity that springs from an honest and loving life writes, I see death approach gradually without any anxiety or regret. I salute you with great affection and regard for the last time. On the 25th of August 1776, the philosopher, the historian, the infidel, the honest man, and a benefactor of his race in the composure born of a noble life passed quietly and painlessly away. Dr. Black wrote the following account of his death. Quote, Monday 26th August 1776, dear sir, yesterday, about four o'clock in the afternoon, Mr. Hume expired. The near approach of his death became evident on the evening between Thursday and Friday when his disease became exhaustive and soon weakened him so much that he could no longer rise from his bed. He continued to the last perfectly sensible and free from much pain or feeling of distress. He never dropped the smallest expression of impatience, but when he had occasion to speak to the people about him, always did it with affection and tenderness. When he became very weak, it cost him an effort to speak, and he died in such happy composure of mind that nothing could exceed it. Close quote. Dr. Cullen writes Dr. Hunter on the 17th of September 1776, from which the following extracts are made. Quote, You desire an account of Mr. Hume's last days and I give it to you with great pleasure. It was truly an example of des grands-homes qui sont morts et paysants, and to me who have been so often shocked with the horrors of superstition, the reflection on such a death is truly agreeable. For many weeks before his death he was very sensible of his gradual decay, and his answer to inquiries after his health was several times that he was going as fast as his enemies who could wish, and as easily as his friends could desire. He passed most of the time in his drawing room, admitting the visits of his friends, and with his usual spirit conversed with him upon literature and politics and whatever else was started. In conversation he seemed to be perfectly at ease, and to the last abounded with that pleasantry and those curious and entertaining anecdotes which ever distinguished him. His senses and judgment did not fail him to the last hour of his life. He constantly discovered a strong sensibility of the attention and care of his friends, and midst great uneasiness and languor never betrayed any previousness or impatience. Close quote. Here follows the conversation with Sharon, quote, these are a few particulars which may perhaps appear trivial, but to me no particular seem trivial which relate to so great a man. It is perhaps from trifles that we can best distinguish the tranquilness and cheerfulness of the philosopher at a time when the most part of mankind are under disquiet and sometimes even horror. I consider the sacrifice of the cock as a more certain evidence of the trend quality of Socrates than his discourse on immortality. The Christians took it for granted that the serene and placid man died filled with remorse for having given his real opinions and proceeded to describe with every incident and detail of horror the terrors of his last moments. Brainless clergymen, incapable of understanding what Hume had written, knowing only in a general way that he had held their creeds in contempt, answered his arguments by maligning his character. Christians took it for granted that he died in horror and recounted the terrible scenes. When the facts of his death became generally known to intelligent men, the ministers redoubled their efforts to maintain the old columnaries and most of them are in his employment even until this day. Finding it impossible to tell enough falses to hide the truth, a few of the more intelligent among the priests admitted that Hume not only died without showing any particular fear but was guilty of unbecoming levity. The first charge was that he died like a coward, the next that he did not carry enough and went through the shadowy doors of the dread unknown with a smile upon his lips. The dying smile of David Hume scandalized the believers in the God of Love. They felt shocked to see him in dying without fear, who denied the miracles of the Bible, who had spent a life investigating the opinions of men, in endeavoring to prove to the world that the right way is the best way, that happiness is real and substantial good and that virtue is not a terminate with suckin' cheeks and hollow eyes. Christians hated to admit that a philosopher had died serenely without the aid of superstition, one who had taught that man could not make God happy by making himself miserable, and that a useful life, after all, was the best possible religion. They imagined that death would fill such a man with remorse and terror. He had never persecuted his fellow men for the honor of God and must needs die in despair. They were mistaken. He died as he had lived, like a peaceful river with green and shaded banks he passed without a murmur, into that waveless sea where life at last is rest. End of Section 12, David Hume. Section 13 of Ingersoll on the Great Infidels from the works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume 3, Lectures. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Brian Levine, Burbank, California. Section 13, Benedict Spinoza. One of the greatest thinkers was Benedict Spinoza, a Jew born at Amsterdam in 1632. He studied medicine and afterward theology. He endeavored to understand what he studied. In theology, he necessarily failed. Theology is not intended to be understood. It is only to be believed. It is an act not of reason but of faith. Spinoza put to the rabbis so many questions and so persistently asked for reasons that he became the most troublesome of students. When the rabbis found it impossible to answer the questions, they concluded to silence the questioner. He was tried, found guilty, and excommunicated from the synagogue. By the terrible curse of the Jewish religion, he was made an outcast from every Jewish home. His father could not give him shelter. His mother could not give him bread, could not speak to him without becoming an outcast herself. All the cruelty of Jehovah, all the infamy of the Old Testament was in this curse. In the darkness of the synagogue, the rabbis lighted their torches and while pronouncing the curse extinguished them in blood imploring God that in like manner the soul of Benedict Spinoza might be extinguished. Spinoza was but 24 years old when he found himself without kindred, without friends surrounded only by enemies. He uttered no complaint. He earned his bread with willing hands and cheerfully divided his crust with those still poorer than himself. He tried to solve the problem of existence. To him the universe was one. The infinite embraced the all. The all was God. According to his belief the universe did not commence to be. It is. From eternity it was. To eternity it will be. He was right. The universe is all there is or was or will be. It is both subject and object. Contemplator and contemplated. Creator and created. Destroyer and destroyed. Preserver and preserved. And hath within itself all causes, modes, motions, and effects. In this there is hope. This is a foundation and a star. The infinite is the all. Without the all the infinite cannot be. I am something. Without me the infinite cannot exist. Spinoza was a naturalist that is to say a pantheist. He took the ground that the supernatural is and forever will be an infinite impossibility. His propositions are luminous as stars and each of his demonstrations is a Gibraltar behind which logic sits and smiles at all the sophistries of superstition. Spinoza has been hated because he has not been answered. He was a real Republican. He regarded the people as the true and only source of political power. He put the state above the church. The people above the priest. He believed in the absolute liberty of worship, thought, and speech. In every relation of life he was just, true, gentle, patient, modest, and loving. He respected the rights of others and endeavored to enjoy his own and yet he brought upon himself the hatred of the Jewish and Christian world. In his day logic was blasphemy and to think was the unpardonable sin. The priest hated the philosopher. Revelation reviled reason and faith was the sworn foe of every fact. Spinoza was a philosopher, a philanthropist. He lived in a world of his own. He avoided men. His life was an intellectual solitude. He was a mental hermit. Only in his own brain he found the liberty he loved. And yet the rabbis and the priests, the ignorant zealot and the cruel bigot feeling that this quiet, thoughtful, modest man was in some way forging weapons to be used against the church, hated him with all their hearts. He did not retaliate. He found excuses for their acts. Their ignorance, their malice, their misguided and revengeful zeal excited only pity in his breast. He injured no man. He did not live on alms. He was poor and yet with the wealth of his brain he enriched the world. On Sunday, February 21st 1677, Spinoza, one of the greatest and subtlest of metaphysicians, one of the noblest and purest of human beings at the age of 44, passed tranquilly away. And notwithstanding the curse of the synagogue under which he had lived and most lovingly labored, death left upon his lips the smile of perfect peace.