We are not endeavoring to chain the future, but to free the present. We are not forgoing fetters for our children, but we are breaking those our fathers made for us. We are the advocates of inquiry, of investigation and thought. This of itself, is an admission that we are not perfectly satisfied with all our conclusions. Philosophy has not the egotism of faith. While superstition builds walls and creates obstructions, science opens all the highways of thought. We do not pretend to have circumnavigated everything, and to have solved all difficulties, but we do believe that it is better to love men than to fear gods, that it is grander and nobler to think and investigate for yourself than to repeat a creed. We are satisfied that there can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven. We do not expect to accomplish everything in our day; but we want to do what good we can, and to render all the service possible in the holy cause of human progress. We know that doing away with gods and supernatural persons and powers is not an end. It is a means to an end; the real end being the happiness of man.
Felling forests is not the end of agriculture. Driving pirates from the sea is not all there is of commerce.
We are laying the foundations of a grand temple of the future—not the temple of all the gods, but of all the people—wherein, with appropriate rites, will be celebrated the religion of Humanity. We are doing what little we can to hasten the coming of the day when society shall cease producing millionaires and mendicants—gorged indolence and famished industry—truth in rags, and superstition robed and crowned. We are looking for the time when the useful shall be the honorable; and when REASON, throned upon the world's brain, shall be the King of Kings, and God of Gods.
INGERSOLL'S LECTURE ON GHOSTS.
Ladies and Gentlemen: In the first place, allow me to tender my sincere thanks to the clergy of this city. I feel that I am greatly indebted to them for this magnificent audience. It has been said, and I believe it myself, that there is a vast amount of intolerance in the church of today, but when twenty-four clergymen, three of whom, I believe, are bishops, act as my advance agents, without expecting any remuneration, or reward in this world, I must admit that perhaps I was mistaken on the question of intolerance. And I will say, further, that against those men I have not the slightest feeling in the world; every man is the product of his own surroundings; he is the product of every circumstance that has ever touched him; he is the product to a certain degree of the religion and creed of his day, and when men show the slightest intolerance I blame the creed, I blame the religion, I blame the superstition that forced them to do so. I do not blame those men.
Allow me to say, further, that this world is not, in my judgment, yet perfect. I am doing, in a very feeble way, to be sure, but I am still endeavoring, according to my Idea, to make this world just a little better; to give a little more liberty to men, a little more liberty to women. I believe in the government of kindness; I believe in truth, in investigation, in free thought. I do not believe that the hand of want will be eternally extended in the world; I do not believe that the prison will forever scar the ground; I do not believe that the shadow of the gallows will forever curse the earth; I do not believe that it will always be true that the men who do the most work will have the least to wear and the least to eat. I do believe that the time will come when liberty and morality and justice, like the rings of Saturn, will surround the world; that the world will be better, and every true man and every free man will do what he can to hasten the coming of the religion of human advancement.
I understand that for the thousands and thousands of years that have gone by, all questions have been settled by religion. I understand that during all this time the people have gotten their information from the sacerdotal class—from priests. I know that when India was supreme they worshipped Brahma and Vishnu, and that when Rome held in its hand the red sword of war they worshipped Jove, and I know now that our religion has swept to the top. Any man living in India a few hundred or thousand years ago would have said, this is the only true religion. Why? Because here is the only true civilization. A man afterward living in Egypt would have said, this is the only true religion, because we have the best civilization; a Greek in Athens would have said this is the only true religion, and a Roman would have said we have the true religion, and now those religions all having died, although they were all true religions, we say ours is the only religion, because we are the greatest commercial nation in the world.
There will come other nations; there will come other religions. Man has made every religion in this world, in my judgment, and the religion, has been good or bad according as the men who made it were good or bad. If they were savages and barbarians, they made a God like the Jehovah of the Jews; if they were civilized, if they were kind and tender, they filled the heavens with kindness and love. Every man makes his own God. Show me the God a man worships, and I will tell you what kind of a man he is. Every one makes his own God, every one worships his own God; and if you are a civilized man you will have a civilized God, and we have been civilizing ours for hundreds and hundreds of years. He is getting better every day.
I am going to tell you tonight just exactly what I think. The other lecture I delivered here was my conservative lecture; this is my radical one! We even hear it suggested that our religion, our Bible, has given us all we have of prosperity and greatness and grandeur. I deny it! We have become civilized in spite of it, and I will show you tonight that the obstruction that every science has had is what we have been pleased to call our religion—or superstition. I had a conversation with a gentleman once—and these gentlemen are always mistaking something that goes along with a thing for the cause of the thing—and he stated to me that his particular religion was the cause of all advancement. I said to him: "No, Sir; the causes of all advancement, in my judgment, are plug hats and suspenders." And I said to him: "You go to Turkey, where they are semi-barbarians, and you won't find a pair of suspenders or a plug hat in all that country; you go to Russia, and you will find now and then a pair of suspenders at Moscow or St. Petersburg; you go on down till you strike Austria, and black hats begin; then you go on to Paris, Berlin and New York, and you will find everybody wears suspenders and everybody wears black hats. Wherever you find education and music there you will find black hats and suspenders." He said that any man who said to him that plug hats and suspenders had done more for mankind than the Bible and religion he would not talk to.