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

by Robert Green Ingersoll

The man who accepts opinions because they have been entertained by distinguished people, is a mental snob. When we blindly follow authority we are serfs. When our reason is convinced we are freemen. It is rare to find a fully rounded and complete man. A man may be a great doctor and a poor mechanic, a successful politician and a poor metaphysician, a poor painter and a good poet.

The rarest thing in the world is a logician—that is to say, a man who knows the value of a fact. It is hard to find mental proportion. Theories may be established by names, but facts cannot be demonstrated in that way. Very small people are sometimes right, and very great people are sometimes wrong. Ministers are sometimes right.

In all the philosophies of the world there are undoubtedly contradictions and absurdities. The mind of man is imperfect and perfect results are impossible. A mirror, in order to reflect a perfect picture, a perfect copy, must itself be perfect. The mind is a little piece of intellectual glass the surface of which is not true, not perfect. In consequence of this, every image is more or less distorted. The less we know, the more we imagine that we can know; but the more we know, the smaller seems the sum of knowledge. The less we know, the more we expect, the more we hope for, and the more seems within the range of probability. The less we have, the more we want. There never was a banquet magnificent enough to gratify the imagination of a beggar. The moment people begin to reason about what they call the supernatural, they seem to lose their minds. People seem to have lost their reason in religious matters, very much as the dodo is said to have lost its wings; they have been restricted to a little inspired island, and by disuse their reason has been lost.

In the Jewish Scriptures you will find simply the literature of the Jews. You will find there the tears and anguish of captivity, patriotic fervor, national aspiration, proverbs for the conduct of daily life, laws, regulations, customs, legends, philosophy and folly. These books, of course, were not written by one man, but by many authors. They do not agree, having been written in different centuries, under different circumstances. I see that Mr. Beecher has at last concluded that the Old Testament does not teach the doctrine of immortality. He admits that from Mount Sinai came no hope for the dead. It is very curious that we find in the Old Testament no funeral service. No one stands by the dead and predicts another life. In the Old Testament there is no promise of another world. I have sometimes thought that while the Jews were slaves in Egypt, the doctrine of immortality became hateful. They built so many tombs; they carried so many burdens to commemorate the dead; the saw a nation waste its wealth to adorn its graves, and leave the living naked to embalm the dead, that they concluded the doctrine was a curse and never should be taught.

Question. If the Jews did not believe in immortality, how do you account for the allusions made to witches and wizards and things of that nature?

Answer. When Saul visited the Witch of Endor, and she, by some magic spell, called up Samuel, the prophet said: "Why hast thou disquieted me, to call me up?" He did not say: Why have you called me from another world? The idea expressed is: I was asleep, why did you disturb that repose which should be eternal? The ancient Jews believed in witches and wizards and familiar spirits; but they did not seem to think that these spirits had once been men and women. They spoke to them as belonging to another world, a world to which man would never find his way. At that time it was supposed that Jehovah and his angels lived in the sky, but that region was not spoken of as the destined home of man. Jacob saw angels going up and down the ladder, but not the spirits of those he had known. There are two cases where it seems that men were good enough to be adopted into the family of heaven. Enoch was translated, and Elijah was taken up in a chariot of fire. As it is exceedingly cold at the height of a few miles, it is easy to see why the chariot was of fire, and the same fact explains another circumstance—the dropping of the mantle. The Jews probably believed in the existence of other beings—that is to say, in angels and gods and evil spirits —and that they lived in other worlds—but there is no passage showing that they believed in what we call the immortality of the soul.

Question. Do you believe, or disbelieve, in the immortality of the soul?

Answer. I neither assert nor deny; I simply admit that I do not know. Upon that subject I am absolutely without evidence. This is the only world that I was ever in. There may be spirits, but I have never met them, and do not know that I would recognize a spirit. I can form no conception of what is called spiritual life. It may be that I am deficient in imagination, and that ministers have no difficulty in conceiving of angels and disembodied souls. I have not the slightest idea how a soul looks, what shape it is, how it goes from one place to another, whether it walks or flies. I cannot conceive of the immaterial having form; neither can I conceive of anything existing without form, and yet the fact that I cannot conceive of a thing does not prove that the thing does not exist, but it does prove that I know nothing about it, and that being so, I ought to admit my ignorance. I am satisfied of a good many things that I do not know. I am satisfied that there is no place of eternal torment. I am satisfied that that doctrine has done more harm than all the religious ideas, other than that, have done good. I do not want to take any hope from any human heart. I have no objection to people believing in any good thing—no objection to their expecting a crown of infinite joy for every human being. Many people imagine that immortality must be an infinite good; but, after all, there is something terrible in the idea of endless life. Think of a river that never reaches the sea; of a bird that never folds its wings; of a journey that never ends. Most people find great pleasure in thinking about and in believing in another world. There the prisoner expects to be free; the slave to find liberty; the poor man expects wealth; the rich man happiness; the peasant dreams of power, and the king of contentment. They expect to find there what they lack here. I do not wish to destroy these dreams. I am endeavoring to put out the everlasting fires. A good, cool grave is infinitely better than the fiery furnace of Jehovah's wrath. Eternal sleep is better than eternal pain. For my part I would rather be annihilated than to be an angel, with all the privileges of heaven, and yet have within my breast a heart that could be happy while those who had loved me in this world were in perdition.

I most sincerely hope that the future life will fulfill all splendid dreams; but in the religion of the present day there is no joy. Nothing is so devoid of comfort, when bending above our dead, as the assertions of theology unsupported by a single fact. The promises are so far away, and the dead are so near. From words spoken eighteen centuries ago, the echoes are so weak, and the sounds of the clods on the coffin are so loud. Above the grave what can the honest minister say? If the dead were not a Christian, what then? What comfort can the orthodox clergyman give to the widow of an honest unbeliever? If Christianity is true, the other world will be worse than this. There the many will be miserable, only the few happy; there the miserable cannot better their condition; the future has no star of hope, and in the east of eternity there can never be a dawn.

Question. If you take away the idea of eternal punishment, how do you propose to restrain men; in what way will you influence conduct for good?