The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents / Dresden Edition—Twelve Volumes

by Robert Green Ingersoll

The imagination is the mother of pity, the mother of generosity, the mother of every possible virtue. It is by the imagination that you are enabled to put yourself in the place of another. Every dollar that has been paid into your treasury came from an imagination vivid enough to imagine himself or herself lying upon the lonely bed of pain, or as having fallen by the wayside of life, dying alone. It is this imagination that makes the difference in men.

Do you believe that a man would plunge the dagger into the heart of another if he had imagination enough to see him dead—imagination enough to see his widow throw her arms about the corpse and cover his face with sacred tears—imagination enough to see them digging his grave, and to see the funeral and to hear the clods fall upon the coffin and the sobs of those who stood about—do you believe he would commit the crime? Would any man be false who had imagination enough to see the woman that he once loved, in the darkness of night, when the black clouds were floating through the sky hurried by the blast as thoughts and memories were hurrying through her poor brain—if he could see the white flutter of her garment as she leaped to the eternal, blessed sleep of death—do you believe that he would be false to her? I tell you that he would be true.

So that, in my judgment, the great mission of the stage is to cultivate the human imagination. That is the reason fiction has done so much good. Compared with the stupid lies-called history, how beautiful are the imagined things with painted wings. Everybody detests a thing that pretends to be true and is not; but when it says, "I am about to create," then it is beautiful in the proportion that it is artistic, in the proportion that it is a success.

Imagination is the mother of enthusiasm. Imagination fans the little spark into a flame great enough to warm the human race; and enthusiasm is to the mind what spring is to the world. .

Now I am going to say a few words because I want to, and because I have the chance.

What is known as "orthodox religion" has always been the enemy of the theatre. It has been the enemy of every possible comfort, of every rational joy—that is to say, of amusement. And there is a reason for this. Because, if that religion be true, there should be no amusement. If you believe that in every moment is the peril of eternal pain—do not amuse yourself. Stop the orchestra, ring down the curtain, and be as miserable as you can. That idea puts an infinite responsibility upon the soul—an infinite responsibility—and how can there be any art, how can there be any joy, after that? You might as well pile all the Alps on one unfortunate ant, and then say, "Why don't you play? Enjoy yourself."

If that doctrine be true, every one should regard time as a kind of dock, a pier running out into the ocean of eternity, on which you sit on your trunk and wait for the ship of death—solemn, lugubrious, melancholy to the last degree.

And that is why I have said joy is Pagan. It comes from a love of nature, from a love of this world, from a love of this life. According to the idea of some good people, life is a kind of green-room, where you are getting ready for a "play" in some other country.

You all remember the story of "Great Expectations," and I presume you have all had them. That is another thing about this profession of acting that I like—you do not know how it is coming out—and there is this delightful uncertainty.

You have all read the book called "Great Expectations," written, in my judgment, by the greatest novelist that ever wrote the English language—the man who created a vast realm of joy. I love the joy-makers—not the solemn, mournful wretches. And when I think of the church asking something of the theatre, I remember that story of "Great Expectations." You remember Miss Haversham—she was to have been married some fifty or sixty years before that time—sitting there in the darkness, in all of her wedding finery, the laces having turned yellow by time, the old wedding cake crumbled, various insects having made it their palatial residence—you remember that she sent for that poor little boy Pip, and when he got there in the midst of all these horrors, she looked at him and said, "Pip, play!" And if their doctrine be true, every actor is in that situation.