The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. / Interviews

by Robert Green Ingersoll

Question. Do you think mankind is drifting away from the supernatural?

Answer. My belief is that the supernatural has had its day. The church must either change or abdicate. That is to say, it must keep step with the progress of the world or be trampled under foot. The church as a power has ceased to exist. To-day it is a matter of infinite indifference what the pulpit thinks unless there comes the voice of heresy from the sacred place. Every orthodox minister in the United States is listened to just in proportion that he preaches heresy. The real, simon-pure, orthodox clergyman delivers his homilies to empty benches, and to a few ancient people who know nothing of the tides and currents of modern thought. The orthodox pulpit to-day has no thought, and the pews are substantially in the same condition. There was a time when the curse of the church whitened the face of a race, but now its anathema is the food of laughter.

Question. What, in your judgment, is to be the outcome of the present agitation in religious circles?

Answer. My idea is that people more and more are declining the postponement of happiness to another world. The general tendency is to enjoy the present. All religions have taught men that the pleasures of this world are of no account; that they are nothing but husks and rags and chaff and disappointment; that whoever expects to be happy in this world makes a mistake; that there is nothing on the earth worth striving for; that the principal business of mankind should be to get ready to be happy in another world; that the great occupation is to save your soul, and when you get it saved, when you are satisfied that you are one of the elect, then pack up all your worldly things in a very small trunk, take it to the dock of time that runs out into the ocean of eternity, sit down on it, and wait for the ship of death. And of course each church is the only one that sells a through ticket which can be depended on. In all religions, as far as I know, is an admixture of asceticism, and the greater the quantity, the more beautiful the religion has been considered, The tendency of the world to- day is to enjoy life while you have it; it is to get something out of the present moment; and we have found that there are things worth living for even in this world. We have found that a man can enjoy himself with wife and children; that he can be happy in the acquisition of knowledge; that he can be very happy in assisting others; in helping those he loves; that there is some joy in poetry, in science and in the enlargement and development of the mind; that there is some delight in music and in the drama and in the arts. We are finding, poor as the world is, that it beats a promise the fulfillment of which is not to take place until after death. The world is also finding out another thing, and that is that the gentlemen who preach these various religions, and promise these rewards, and threaten the punishments, know nothing whatever of the subject; that they are as blindly ignorant as the people they pretend to teach, and the people are as blindly ignorant as the animals below them. We have finally concluded that no human being has the slightest conception of origin or of destiny, and that this life, not only in its commencement but in its end, is just as mysterious to-day as it was to the first man whose eyes greeted the rising sun. We are no nearer the solution of the problem than those who lived thousands of years before us, and we are just as near it as those who will live millions of years after we are dead. So many people having arrived at the conclusion that nobody knows and that nobody can know, like sensible folks they have made up their minds to enjoy life. I have often said, and I say again, that I feel as if I were on a ship not knowing the port from which it sailed, not knowing the harbor to which it was going, not having a speaking acquaintance with any of the officers, and I have made up my mind to have as good a time with the other passengers as possible under the circumstances. If this ship goes down in mid- sea I have at least made something, and if it reaches a harbor of perpetual delight I have lost nothing, and I have had a happy voyage. And I think millions and millions are agreeing with me.

Now, understand, I am not finding fault with any of these religions or with any of these ministers. These religions and these ministers are the necessary and natural products of sufficient causes. Mankind has traveled from barbarism to what we now call civilization, by many paths, all of which under the circumstances, were absolutely necessary; and while I think the individual does as he must, I think the same of the church, of the corporation, and of the nation, and not only of the nation, but of the whole human race. Consequently I have no malice and no prejudices. I have likes and dislikes. I do not blame a gourd for not being a cantaloupe, but I like cantaloupes. So I do not blame the old hard-shell Presbyterian for not being a philosopher, but I like philosophers. So to wind it all up with regard to the tendency of modern thought, or as to the outcome of what you call religion, my own belief is that what is known as religion will disappear from the human mind. And by "religion" I mean the supernatural. By "religion" I mean living in this world for another, or living in this world to gratify some supposed being, whom we never saw and about whom we know nothing, and of whose existence we know nothing. In other words, religion consists of the duties we are supposed to owe to the first great cause, and of certain things necessary for us to do here to insure happiness hereafter. These ideas, in my judgment, are destined to perish, and men will become convinced that all their duties are within their reach, and that obligations can exist only between them and other sentient beings. Another idea, I think, will force itself upon the mind, which is this: That he who lives the best for this world lives the best for another if there be one. In other words, humanity will take the place of what is called "religion." Science will displace superstition, and to do justice will be the ambition of man.

My creed is this: Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so.

Question. What is going to take the place of the pulpit?

Answer. I have for a long time wondered why somebody didn't start a church on a sensible basis. My idea is this: There are, of course, in every community, lawyers, doctors, merchants, and people of all trades and professions who have not the time during the week to pay any particular attention to history, poetry, art, or song. Now, it seems to me that it would be a good thing to have a church and for these men to employ a man of ability, of talent, to preach to them Sundays, and let this man say to his congregation: "Now, I am going to preach to you for the first few Sundays—eight or ten or twenty, we will say—on the art, poetry, and intellectual achievements of the Greeks." Let this man study all the week and tell his congregation Sunday what he has ascertained. Let him give to his people the history of such men as Plato, as Socrates, what they did; of Aristotle, of his philosophy; of the great Greeks, their statesmen, their poets, actors, and sculptors, and let him show the debt that modern civilization owes to these people. Let him, too, give their religions, their mythology—a mythology that has sown the seed of beauty in every land. Then let him take up Rome. Let him show what a wonderful and practical people they were; let him give an idea of their statesmen, orators, poets, lawyers—because probably the Romans were the greatest lawyers. And so let him go through with nation after nation, biography after biography, and at the same time let there be a Sunday school connected with this church where the children shall be taught something of importance. For instance, teach them botany, and when a Sunday is fair, clear, and beautiful, let them go into the fields and woods with their teachers, and in a little while they will become acquainted with all kinds of tress and shrubs and flowering plants. They could also be taught entomology, so that every bug would be interesting, for they would see the facts in science— something of use to them. I believe that such a church and such a Sunday school would at the end of a few years be the most intelligent collection of people in the United States. To teach the children all of these things and to teach their parents, too, the outlines of every science, so that every listener would know something of geology, something of astronomy, so that every member could tell the manner in which they find the distance of a star— how much better that would be than the old talk about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and quotations from Haggai and Zephaniah, and all this eternal talk about the fall of man and the Garden of Eden, and the flood, and the atonement, and the wonders of Revelation! Even if the religious scheme be true, it can be told and understood as well in one day as in a hundred years. The church says, "He that hath ears to hear let him hear." I say: "He that hath brains to think, let him think." So, too, the pulpit is being displaced by what we call places of amusement, which are really places where men go because they find there is something which satisfies in a greater or less degree the hunger of the brain. Never before was the theatre as popular as it is now. Never before was so much money lavished upon the stage as now. Very few men having their choice would go to hear a sermon, especially of the orthodox kind, when they had a chance to see a great actor.

The man must be a curious combination who would prefer an orthodox sermon, we will say, to a concert given by Theodore Thomas. And I may say in passing that I have great respect for Theodore Thomas, because it was he who first of all opened to the American people the golden gates of music. He made the American people acquainted with the great masters, and especially with Wagner, and it is a debt that we shall always owe him. In this day the opera—that is to say, music in every form—is tending to displace the pulpit. The pulpits have to go in partnership with music now. Hundreds of people have excused themselves to me for going to church, saying they have splendid music. Long ago the Catholic Church was forced to go into partnership not only with music, but with painting and with architecture. The Protestant Church for a long time thought it could do without these beggarly elements, and the Protestant Church was simply a dry-goods box with a small steeple on top of it, its walls as bleak and bare and unpromising as the creed. But even Protestants have been forced to hire a choir of ungodly people who happen to have beautiful voices, and they, too, have appealed to the organ. Music is taking the place of creed, and there is more real devotional feeling summoned from the temple of the mind by great music than by any sermon ever delivered. Music, of all other things, gives wings to thought and allows the soul to rise above all the pains and troubles of this life, and to feel for a moment as if it were absolutely free, above all clouds, destined to enjoy forever. So, too, science is beckoning with countless hands. Men of genius are everywhere beckoning men to discoveries, promising them fortunes compared with which Aladdin's lamp was weak and poor. All these things take men from the church; take men from the pulpit. In other words, prosperity is the enemy of the pulpit. When men enjoy life, when they are prosperous here, they are in love with the arts, with the sciences, with everything that gives joy, with everything that promises plenty, and they care nothing about the prophecies of evil that fall from the solemn faces of the parsons. They look in other directions. They are not thinking about the end of the world. They hate the lugubrious, and they enjoy the sunshine of to-day. And this, in my judgment, is the highest philosophy: First, do not regret having lost yesterday; second, do not fear that you will lose to-morrow; third, enjoy to- day.

Astrology was displaced by astronomy. Alchemy and the black art gave way to chemistry. Science is destined to take the place of superstition. In my judgment, the religion of the future will be Reason.