The Ghosts, and Other Lectures 6 – Ingersoll · Verses Across
Freethought · Agnosticism
The Ghosts, and Other Lectures 6Conclusion
18
Freethought · Agnosticism
The Ghosts, and Other Lectures 6
Conclusion
IngersollEnglish
I have given you my honest thought. Surely investigation is better than unthinking faith. Surely reason is a better guide than fear. This world should be controlled by the living, not by the dead. The grave is not a throne, and a corpse is not a king. Man should not try to live on ashes.
The theologians dead, knew no more than the theologians now living. More than this cannot be said. About this world little is known,--about another world, nothing.
Our fathers were intellectual serfs, and their fathers were slaves. The makers of our creeds were ignorant and brutal. Every dogma that we have, has upon it the mark of whip, the rust of chain, and the ashes of fagot.
Our fathers reasoned with instruments of torture. They believed in the logic of fire and sword. They hated reason. They despised thought. They abhorred liberty.
Superstition is the child of slavery. Free thought will give us truth. When all have the right to think and to express their thoughts, every brain will give to all the best it has. The world will then be filled with intellectual wealth.
As long as men and women are afraid of the church, as long as a minister inspires fear, as long as people reverence a thing simply because they do not understand it, as long as it is respectable to lose your self-respect, as long as the church has power, as long as mankind worship a book, just so long will the world be filled with intellectual paupers and vagrants, covered with the soiled and faded rags of superstition.
As long as woman regards the bible as the charter of her rights, she will be the slave of man. The bible was not written by a woman. Within its lids there is nothing but humiliation and shame for her. She is regarded as the property of man. She is made to ask forgiveness for becoming a mother. She is as much below her husband, as her husband is below Christ. She is not allowed to speak. The gospel is too pure to be spoken by her polluted lips. Woman should learn in silence.
In the bible will be found no description of a civilized home. The free mother, surrounded by free and loving children, adored by a free man, her husband, was unknown to the inspired writers of the bible. They did not believe in the democracy of home--in the republicanism of the fireside.
These inspired gentlemen knew nothing of the rights of children. They were the advocates of brute force--the disciples of the lash. They knew nothing of human rights. Their doctrines have brutalized the homes of millions, and filled the eyes of infancy with tears.
Let us free ourselves from the tyranny of a book, from the slavery of dead ignorance, from the aristocracy of the air.
There has never been upon the earth a generation of free men and women. It is not yet time to write a creed. Wait until the chains are broken--until dungeons are not regarded as temples. Wait until solemnity is not mistaken for wisdom--until mental cowardice ceases to be known as reverence. Wait until the living are considered the equals of the dead--until the cradle takes precedence of the coffin. Wait until what we know can be spoken without regard to what others may believe. Wait until teachers take the place of preachers--until followers become investigators. Wait until the world is free before you write a creed.
In this creed there will be but one word--Liberty.
Oh Liberty, float not forever in the far horizon--remain not forever in the dream of the enthusiast, the philanthropist and poet, but come and make thy home among the children of men!
I know not what discoveries, what inventions what thoughts may leap from the brain of the world. I know not what garments of glory may be woven by the years to come. I cannot dream of the victories to be won upon the fields of thought; but I do know, that coming from the infinite sea of the future, there will never touch this "bank and shoal of time" a richer gift, a rarer blessing than liberty for man, for woman, and for child.
