Question. Do you believe in the resurrection of the body?
Answer. My answer to that is about the same as to the other question. I do not believe in the resurrection of the body. It seems to me an exceedingly absurd belief—and yet I do not know. I am told, and I suppose I believe, that the atoms that are in me have been in many other people, and in many other forms of life, and I suppose at death the atoms forming my body go back to the earth and are used in countless forms. These facts, or what I suppose to be facts, render a belief in the resurrection of the body impossible to me.
We get atoms to support our body from what we eat. Now, if a cannibal should eat a missionary, and certain atoms belonging to the missionary should be used by the cannibal in his body, and the cannibal should then die while the atoms of the missionary formed part of his flesh, to whom would these atoms belong in the morning of the resurrection?
Then again, science teaches us that there is a kind of balance between animal and vegetable life, and that probably all men and all animals have been trees, and all trees have been animals; so that the probability is that the atoms that are now in us have been, as I said in the first place, in millions of other people. Now, if this be so, there cannot be atoms enough in the morning of the resurrection, because, if the atoms are given to the first men, that belonged to the first men when they died, there will certainly be no atoms for the last men.
Consequently, I am compelled to say that I do not believe in the resurrection of the body.*
[* From notes found among Colonel Ingersoll's papers.]
TOLSTOY AND LITERATURE.
Question. What is your opinion of Count Leo Tolstoy?
Answer. I have read Tolstoy. He is a curious mixture of simplicity and philosophy. He seems to have been carried away by his conception of religion. He is a non-resistant to such a degree that he asserts that he would not, if attacked, use violence to preserve his own life or the life of a child. Upon this question he is undoubtedly insane.
So he is trying to live the life of a peasant and doing without the comforts of life! This is not progress. Civilization should not endeavor to bring about equality by making the rich poor or the comfortable miserable. This will not add to the pleasures of the rich, neither will it feed the hungry, not clothe the naked.