The Great Agnostic (19 page)

Second, Ingersoll made the connection between repressive religion and everyday burdens and injustices as no one had before him. The Enlightenment rationalists, especially Paine and Voltaire, understood and excoriated the role of religion, coupled with state power, in large issues that included slavery, torture, and capital punishment. Ingersoll spoke out on the same issues but moved farther and deeper into the most intimate injustices sanctioned by society. As far as he was concerned, there were no social injustices in which religion did not play a major role—from the prevalent belief, well into the nineteenth century, that God had created the poor for a reason and that only those
who could pay deserved to be educated, to the religiously based laws and customs that sanctioned marital violence, deemed it a moral disgrace for a woman to leave her husband for any reason, and denied women access to education and the means of making a living. Debtors' prisons, cruelty to children and animals, inhumane treatment both of the insane and of criminals: All were justified by biblical precepts that formed the original basis for mistreatment of the powerless by the powerful. Ingersoll did not live to see twentieth-century totalitarianism, but there is little doubt, given his contempt for the idea that “tooth and claw” should be the rule for man in a state of civilization, that he would have had equal contempt for secular ideologies that took on the anti-rational, anti-evidentiary characteristics of orthodox theology.

Finally, Ingersoll's primary civic aim was the restoration of the historical memory of a founding generation that had explicitly rejected theocracy as the basis for a national government. His American patriotism was inseparable from his valorization of the separation of church and state. To him, the glory of the founding generation was that it did
not
establish a Christian nation. There is no establishment figure who says anything of the kind in America today. Even though Ingersoll was denied the opportunity for public office because of his antireligious beliefs, he was nevertheless very much a part of the social and
political establishment. Yet he placed his principles, and his determination that Americans not forget the secular side of their own history, above his considerable political ambitions—something that no aspirant to high office has been willing to do in the United States since … well, since Ingersoll himself. There ought to be some sort of Atheist Hall of Fame—it would not be large—for those who refuse to engage in religious hypocrisy to further their political ambitions.

Ingersoll belongs there. Eliminate a few Victorianisms, and everything he had to say in his time is just as relevant to a nation in which religious censors are still trying to eliminate the very idea of the separation of church and state from school history texts and a world in which radical Islamist theocrats still want blasphemers to die for their “crimes.”

Like atheists of this generation, Ingersoll was constantly charged by his religiously orthodox contemporaries with the crime of attempting to destroy comforting beliefs in divine guidance while replacing them with nothing, leaving forlorn men and women to roam the earth in a state of fear because nothing can make this life worthwhile in the absence of faith in an afterlife. To this Ingersoll replied, as atheists do today, that nothing in a putative eternity could possibly justify suffering in this world and that the reduction of suffering in one, finite lifetime is a high
goal for any human being. Given the existence of evils long attributed to gods, Ingersoll saw no reason for humans to be intimidated by the idea that they were on their own in the task of building a better future. “Man through his intelligence must protect himself,” Ingersoll said equably. “He gets no help from any other world.” What would be left when the men and women banished the ghosts of gods who destroyed or ennobled humans on the basis of divine whim? “The world remains,” Ingersoll replied, “with … homes and firesides, where grow and bloom the virtues of our race. … Let the ghosts go. We will worship them no more. Let them cover their eyeless sockets with their fleshless hands and fade forever from the imaginations of men.”

You “new” atheists should consider it your special duty and privilege to work tenaciously for the restoration of the memory of this old American freethinker. You owe him. So does every American, religious or nonreligious, who enjoys and takes for granted that liberty of conscience is meant for thee as well as for me—the greatest secular idea of all.

Vivisection is the Inquisition—the Hell—of Science. All the cruelty which the human—or rather the inhuman—heart is capable of inflicting, is in this one word. Below this there is no depth. This word lies like a coiled serpent at the bottom of the abyss.

We can excuse, in part, the crimes of passion. We take into consideration the fact that man is liable to be caught by the whirlwind, and that from a brain on fire the soul rushes to a crime. But what excuse can ingenuity form for a man who deliberately—with an unaccelerated pulse—with the calmness of John Calvin at the murder of Servetus—seeks, with curious and cunning knives, in the living, quivering flesh of a dog, for all the throbbing nerves of pain? The wretches who commit these infamous crimes pretend
that they are working for the good of man; that they are actuated by philanthropy; and that their pity for the sufferings of the human race drives out all pity for the animals they slowly torture to death. But those who are incapable of pitying animals are, as a matter of fact, incapable of pitying men. A physician who would cut a living rabbit in pieces—laying bare the nerves, denuding them with knives, pulling them out with forceps—would not hesitate to try experiments with men and women for the gratification of his curiosity.

To settle some theory, he would trifle with the life of any patient in his power. By the same reasoning he will justify the vivisection of animals and patients. He will say that it is better that a few animals should suffer than that one human being should die; and that it is far better that one patient should die, if through the sacrifice of that one, several may be saved.

Brain without heart is far more dangerous than heart without brain.

Have these scientific assassins discovered anything of value? They may have settled some disputes as to the action of some organ, but have they added to the useful knowledge of the race?

It is not necessary for a man to be a specialist in order to have and express his opinion as to the right or wrong of vivisection. It is not necessary to be a scientist or a naturalist
to detest cruelty and love mercy. Above all the discoveries of the thinkers, above all the inventions of the ingenious, above all the victories won on fields of intellectual conflict, rise human sympathy and a sense of justice.

I know that good for the human race can never be accomplished by torture. I also know that all that has been ascertained by vivisection could have been done by the dissection of the dead. I know that all the torture has been useless. All the agony inflicted has simply hardened the hearts of the criminals, without enlightening their minds.

It may be that the human race might be physically improved if all the sickly and deformed babes were killed, and if all the paupers, liars, drunkards, thieves, villains, and vivisectionists were murdered. All this might, in a few ages, result in the production of a generation of physically perfect men and women; but what would such beings be worth,—men and women healthy and heartless, muscular and cruel—that is to say, intelligent wild beasts?

Never can I be the friend of one who vivisects his fellow-creatures. I do not wish to touch his hand.

When the angel of pity is driven from the heart; when the fountain of tears is dry,—the soul becomes a serpent crawling in the dust of the desert.

—Robert Ingersoll to Philip G. Peabody, May 27, 1890

My friends: Again, we, in the mystery of Life, are brought face to face with the mystery of Death. A great man, a great American, the most eminent citizen of this Republic, lies dead before us, and we have met to pay a tribute to his greatness and his worth.

I know he needs no words of mine. His fame is secure. He laid the foundations of it deep in the human heart and brain. He was, above all I have known, the poet of humanity, of sympathy. He was so great that he rose above the greatest that he met without arrogance, and so great that he stooped to the lowest without conscious condescension. He never claimed to be lower or greater than any of the sons of men.

He came into our generation a free, untrammeled
spirit, with sympathy for all. His arm was beneath the form of the sick. He sympathized with the imprisoned and despised, and even on the brow of crime he was great enough to place the kiss of human sympathy.

One of the greatest lines in our literature is his, and the line is great enough to do honor to the greatest genius that has ever lived. He said, speaking of an outcast: “Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you.”

His charity was wide as the sky, and wherever there was human suffering, human misfortune, the sympathy of Whitman bent above it as the firmament bends above the earth.

He was built on a broad and splendid plane—ample, without appearing to have limitations—passing easily for a brother of mountains and seas and constellations; caring nothing for the little maps and charts with which timid pilots hug the shore, but giving himself freely with recklessness of genius to winds and waves and tides; caring for nothing as long as the stars were above him. He walked among men, among writers, among verbal varnishers and veneerers, among literary milliners and tailors, with the unconscious majesty of an antique god.

He was the poet of that divine democracy which gives equal rights to all the sons and daughters of men. He uttered the great American voice; uttered a song worthy of the great Republic. No man ever said more for the rights
of humanity, more in favor of real democracy, of real justice. He neither scorned nor cringed, was neither tyrant nor slave. He asked only to stand the equal of his fellows beneath the great flag of nature, the blue and stars.

He was the poet of Life. It was a joy simply to breathe. He loved the clouds; he enjoyed the breath of morning, the twilight, the wind, the winding streams. He loved to look at the sea when the waves burst into whitecaps of joy. He loved the fields, the hills; he was acquainted with the trees, with birds, with all the beautiful objects of the earth. He not only saw these objects, but understood their meaning, and he used them that he might exhibit his heart to his fellow-men.

He was the poet of Love. He was not ashamed of that divine passion that has built every home in the world; that divine passion that has painted every picture and given us every real work of art; that divine passion that has made the world worth living in and has given some value to human life.

He was the poet of the natural, and taught men not to be ashamed of what is natural. He was not only the poet of democracy, not only the poet of the great Republic, but he was the poet of the human race. He was not confined to the limits of this country, but his sympathy went out over the seas to all the nations of the earth.

He stretched out his hand, and he felt himself the equal
of all kings and all princes, and the brother of all men, no matter how high, no matter how low.

He has uttered more supreme words than any writer of our century, possibly of almost any other. He was, above all things, a man, and above genius, above all the snowcapped peaks of intelligence, above all art, rises the true man. Greater than all is the true man, and he walked among his fellow-men as such.

He was the poet of Death. He accepted all life and all death, and he justified all. He had the courage to meet all, and was great enough and splendid enough to harmonize all and to accept all there is of life as a divine melody …

He was absolutely true to himself. He had frankness and courage, and he was as candid as light. He was willing that all the sons of men should be absolutely acquainted with his heart and brain. He had nothing to conceal. Frank, candid, pure, serene, noble, and yet for years he was maligned and slandered, simply because he had the candor of nature. He will be understood yet, and that for which he was condemned—his frankness, his candor—will add to the glory and greatness of his fame.

He wrote a liturgy for mankind; he wrote a great and splendid psalm of life, and he gave to us the gospel of humanity—the greatest gospel that can be preached.

He was not afraid to live, not afraid to die. For many years he and death were near neighbors. He was always
willing and ready to meet and greet this king called death, and for many months he sat in the deepening twilight waiting for the night, waiting for the light.

He never lost his hope. When the mists filled the valleys, he looked upon the mountain tops, and when the mountains in darkness disappeared, he fixed his gaze upon the stars.

In his brain were blessed memories of the day, and in his heart were mingled the dawn and dusk of life.

He was not afraid; he was cheerful every moment. The laughing nymphs of day did not desert him. They remained that they might clasp the hands and greet with smiles the veiled and silent sisters of the night. And when they did come, Walt Whitman stretched his hand to them. On one side were the nymphs of the day, and on the other the silent sisters of the night, and so, hand in hand, between smiles and tears, he reached his journey's end.

From the frontier of life, from the western wave-kissed shore, he sent us messages of content and hope, and these messages seem now like strains of music blown by the “Mystic Trumpeter” from Death's pale realm.

To-day we give back to Mother Nature, to her clasp and kiss, one of the bravest, sweetest souls that ever lived in human clay.

Charitable as the air and generous as Nature, he was
negligent of all except to do and say what he believed he should do and say.