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The Ghosts and Other Lectures
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.
242 pages, Paperback
First published January 11, 2006
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About the author
Robert G. Ingersoll
1,002 books325 followers"On August 11, 1833, was born the greatest and noblest of the Western World; an immense personality, -- unique, lovable, sublime; the peerless orator of all time, and as true a poet as Nature ever held in tender clasp upon her loving breast, and, in words coined for the chosen few, told of the joys and sorrows, hopes, dreams, and fears of universal life; a patriot whose golden words and deathless deeds were worthy of the Great Republic; a philanthropist, real and genuine; a philosopher whose central theme was human love, -- who placed 'the holy hearth of home' higher than the altar of any god; an iconoclast, a builder -- a reformer, perfectly poised, absolutely honest, and as fearless as truth itself -- the most aggressive and formidable foe of superstition -- the most valiant champion of reason -- Robert G. Ingersoll." - Herman E. Kittredge
Robert Green Ingersoll, who became the best known advocate of freethought in the 19th-century, was born in Dresden, N.Y. The son of an impoverished itinerant pastor, he later recalled his formative church experiences: "The minister asked us if we knew that we all deserved to go to hell, and we all answered 'yes.' Then we were asked if we would be willing to go to hell if it was God's will, and every little liar shouted 'Yes!'" He became an attorney by apprenticeship, and a colonel in the Civil War, fighting in the Battle of Shiloh. In 1867, Ingersoll was appointed Illinois' first Attorney General. His political career was cut short by his refusal to halt his controversial lectures, but he achieved national political fame for his thrilling nomination speech for James G. Blaine for president at the national convention of the Republican Party in 1876. Ingersoll was good friends with three U.S. presidents. The distinguished attorney was known and admired by most of the leading progressives and thinkers of his day.
Ingersoll traveled the continent for 30 years, speaking to capacity audiences, once attracting 50,000 people to a lecture in Chicago—40,000 too many for the Exposition Center. His repertoire included 3 to 4-hour lectures on Shakespeare, Voltaire and Burns, but the largest crowds turned out to hear him denounce the bible and religion. He initially settled in Peoria, Illinois, then in Washington, D.C., where he successfully defended falsely accused men in the "Star Route" scandal, the most famous political trial of the 19th century. Religious rumors against Ingersoll abounded. One had it that Ingersoll's son was a drunkard who more than once had to be carried away from the table. Ingersoll wrote: "It is not true that intoxicating beverages are served at my table. It is not true that my son ever was drunk. It is not true that he had to be carried away from the table. Besides, I have no son!"
During the Civil War he was commissioned as Colonel and commander of the 11th Illinois Volunteer Cavalry, and was captured near Corinth, Mississippi. Although soon released, he still made time to treat his Confederate captors to a rousing anti slavery speech.
He hoped for but was never awarded a Cabinet post. The Republicans were afraid of his unorthodox religious views. He was told that he could progress politically if he hid his religious views, but Ingersoll refused on the charge that withholding information from the public would be immoral.
He strongly advocated equal rights for blacks and women. He defended Susan B. Anthony from hecklers when she spoke in Peoria; when every hotel in the city refused to house Frederick Douglass, he welcomed him into his home.
More: https://ffrf.org/news/day/dayitems/it...
http://infidels.org/library/historica...
http://www.robertgreeningersoll.org/8-2/
http://www.positiveatheism.org/tochin...
http://www.philosopedia.org/index.php...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G...
Robert Green Ingersoll, who became the best known advocate of freethought in the 19th-century, was born in Dresden, N.Y. The son of an impoverished itinerant pastor, he later recalled his formative church experiences: "The minister asked us if we knew that we all deserved to go to hell, and we all answered 'yes.' Then we were asked if we would be willing to go to hell if it was God's will, and every little liar shouted 'Yes!'" He became an attorney by apprenticeship, and a colonel in the Civil War, fighting in the Battle of Shiloh. In 1867, Ingersoll was appointed Illinois' first Attorney General. His political career was cut short by his refusal to halt his controversial lectures, but he achieved national political fame for his thrilling nomination speech for James G. Blaine for president at the national convention of the Republican Party in 1876. Ingersoll was good friends with three U.S. presidents. The distinguished attorney was known and admired by most of the leading progressives and thinkers of his day.
Ingersoll traveled the continent for 30 years, speaking to capacity audiences, once attracting 50,000 people to a lecture in Chicago—40,000 too many for the Exposition Center. His repertoire included 3 to 4-hour lectures on Shakespeare, Voltaire and Burns, but the largest crowds turned out to hear him denounce the bible and religion. He initially settled in Peoria, Illinois, then in Washington, D.C., where he successfully defended falsely accused men in the "Star Route" scandal, the most famous political trial of the 19th century. Religious rumors against Ingersoll abounded. One had it that Ingersoll's son was a drunkard who more than once had to be carried away from the table. Ingersoll wrote: "It is not true that intoxicating beverages are served at my table. It is not true that my son ever was drunk. It is not true that he had to be carried away from the table. Besides, I have no son!"
During the Civil War he was commissioned as Colonel and commander of the 11th Illinois Volunteer Cavalry, and was captured near Corinth, Mississippi. Although soon released, he still made time to treat his Confederate captors to a rousing anti slavery speech.
He hoped for but was never awarded a Cabinet post. The Republicans were afraid of his unorthodox religious views. He was told that he could progress politically if he hid his religious views, but Ingersoll refused on the charge that withholding information from the public would be immoral.
He strongly advocated equal rights for blacks and women. He defended Susan B. Anthony from hecklers when she spoke in Peoria; when every hotel in the city refused to house Frederick Douglass, he welcomed him into his home.
More: https://ffrf.org/news/day/dayitems/it...
http://infidels.org/library/historica...
http://www.robertgreeningersoll.org/8-2/
http://www.positiveatheism.org/tochin...
http://www.philosopedia.org/index.php...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G...
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 30, 2024
Religion has not civilized man — man has civilized religion. God improves as man advances.
Though he was a Civil War hero and a kingmaker in the post war Republican Party, Robert Green Ingersoll’s true fame came as a public lecturer against the evils of old time religion. He was one of the most sought after speakers on the 19th century lecture circuit, and gained the title of the Great Agnostic for his fulminating against faith. His lectures are still worth reading today mainly because of his highly quotable fusillades against the most detestable doctrines of the Christian faith and his calls for honest inquiry and free thought.
I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous — if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.
Not all the lectures here presented are of the same quality. The two strongest by far are the title lecture, The Ghosts, and The Liberty of Children. Bearing in mind that he was addressing Gilded Age audiences, it is understandable that his style is sometimes overly florid and occasionally maudlin. He seems to overcompensate for his perceived wickedness as an unashamed infidel by going over the top in praise of values like family, patriotism, and the honest tilling of the soil. I’m not suggesting that he was insincere in these beliefs, just that he blared those particular horns rather too loudly, which to modern ears can sound like the patronizing blather of career politicians.
Below I have included some of Ingersoll’s passages that I found significant.
from The Ghosts
Most of the clergy are, or seem to be, utterly incapable of discussing anything in a fair and catholic spirit. They appeal, not to reason, but to prejudice; not to facts, but to passages of scripture. They can conceive of no goodness, of no spiritual exaltation beyond the horizon of their creed. Whoever differs with them upon what they are pleased to call “fundamental truths” is, in their opinion, a base and infamous man. To re-enact the tragedies of the sixteenth century they lack only the power.
It has always been believed that these ghosts could in some way be appeased; that they could be flattered by sacrifice, by prayer, by the building of temples and cathedrals, by the blood of men and beasts, by burning unbelievers, by putting chains upon the thoughts and manacles upon the limbs of men, by maligning heretics, by subscribing to senseless and cruel creeds, by worshipping a book, by the cultivation of credulity. All this has been done to appease and flatter these monsters of the air.
Sir Thomas Moore declared that to give up witchcraft was to throw away the sacred scriptures. In my judgment he was right.
I glory in the fact that here in the United States liberty of conscience was first guaranteed to man, and that the Constitution of the United States was the first great degree entered in the high court of human equity forever divorcing Church and State — the first injunction granted against the interference of the ghosts.
from The Liberty of Children
If there is a God who will damn his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous tyrant. I make my choice now. I despise that doctrine. It has covered the cheeks of this world with tears. It has polluted the hearts of children, and poisoned the imaginations of men. It has been a constant pain, a perpetual terror to every good man, woman, and child. This doctrine never should be preached again. What right have you, sir, Mr. clergyman, you, minister of the gospel, to stand at the portals of the tomb, at the vestibule of eternity, and fill the future with horror and fear? I do not believe the doctrine: neither do you. If you did you could not sleep one moment. Any man who believes it, and has within his breast a decent, throbbing heart, will go insane. A man who believes that doctrine and does not go insane has the heart of a snake and the conscience of a hyena.
There is some magnificent, splendid thing in the human heart that refuses to be driven. And do you know that is the luckiest thing that ever happened for this world, that people are that way. What would have become of the people five hundred years ago if they had followed strictly the advice of the doctors? They would have all been dead. What would the people have been, if at any age of the world they had followed implicitly the direction of the church? They would have all been idiots. It is a splendid thing that there is always some grand man who will not mind, and who will think for himself.
from 1776 The Declaration of Independence
Our fathers founded the first secular government that was ever founded in this world. Recollect that. The first secular government; the first government that said every church has exactly the same rights and no more; every religion has the same rights and no more. In other words, our fathers were the first men who had the sense, had the genius, to know that no church should be allowed to have a sword.
Though he was a Civil War hero and a kingmaker in the post war Republican Party, Robert Green Ingersoll’s true fame came as a public lecturer against the evils of old time religion. He was one of the most sought after speakers on the 19th century lecture circuit, and gained the title of the Great Agnostic for his fulminating against faith. His lectures are still worth reading today mainly because of his highly quotable fusillades against the most detestable doctrines of the Christian faith and his calls for honest inquiry and free thought.
I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous — if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.
Not all the lectures here presented are of the same quality. The two strongest by far are the title lecture, The Ghosts, and The Liberty of Children. Bearing in mind that he was addressing Gilded Age audiences, it is understandable that his style is sometimes overly florid and occasionally maudlin. He seems to overcompensate for his perceived wickedness as an unashamed infidel by going over the top in praise of values like family, patriotism, and the honest tilling of the soil. I’m not suggesting that he was insincere in these beliefs, just that he blared those particular horns rather too loudly, which to modern ears can sound like the patronizing blather of career politicians.
Below I have included some of Ingersoll’s passages that I found significant.
from The Ghosts
Most of the clergy are, or seem to be, utterly incapable of discussing anything in a fair and catholic spirit. They appeal, not to reason, but to prejudice; not to facts, but to passages of scripture. They can conceive of no goodness, of no spiritual exaltation beyond the horizon of their creed. Whoever differs with them upon what they are pleased to call “fundamental truths” is, in their opinion, a base and infamous man. To re-enact the tragedies of the sixteenth century they lack only the power.
It has always been believed that these ghosts could in some way be appeased; that they could be flattered by sacrifice, by prayer, by the building of temples and cathedrals, by the blood of men and beasts, by burning unbelievers, by putting chains upon the thoughts and manacles upon the limbs of men, by maligning heretics, by subscribing to senseless and cruel creeds, by worshipping a book, by the cultivation of credulity. All this has been done to appease and flatter these monsters of the air.
Sir Thomas Moore declared that to give up witchcraft was to throw away the sacred scriptures. In my judgment he was right.
I glory in the fact that here in the United States liberty of conscience was first guaranteed to man, and that the Constitution of the United States was the first great degree entered in the high court of human equity forever divorcing Church and State — the first injunction granted against the interference of the ghosts.
from The Liberty of Children
If there is a God who will damn his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous tyrant. I make my choice now. I despise that doctrine. It has covered the cheeks of this world with tears. It has polluted the hearts of children, and poisoned the imaginations of men. It has been a constant pain, a perpetual terror to every good man, woman, and child. This doctrine never should be preached again. What right have you, sir, Mr. clergyman, you, minister of the gospel, to stand at the portals of the tomb, at the vestibule of eternity, and fill the future with horror and fear? I do not believe the doctrine: neither do you. If you did you could not sleep one moment. Any man who believes it, and has within his breast a decent, throbbing heart, will go insane. A man who believes that doctrine and does not go insane has the heart of a snake and the conscience of a hyena.
There is some magnificent, splendid thing in the human heart that refuses to be driven. And do you know that is the luckiest thing that ever happened for this world, that people are that way. What would have become of the people five hundred years ago if they had followed strictly the advice of the doctors? They would have all been dead. What would the people have been, if at any age of the world they had followed implicitly the direction of the church? They would have all been idiots. It is a splendid thing that there is always some grand man who will not mind, and who will think for himself.
from 1776 The Declaration of Independence
Our fathers founded the first secular government that was ever founded in this world. Recollect that. The first secular government; the first government that said every church has exactly the same rights and no more; every religion has the same rights and no more. In other words, our fathers were the first men who had the sense, had the genius, to know that no church should be allowed to have a sword.
March 18, 2013
Excellent! Too bad this man is not alive today to offer his lectures.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews