Individuality (1873)
Robert Green Ingersoll
"HIS SOUL WAS LIKE A STAR AND DWELT APART"
On every hand are the enemies of individuality and mental freedom. Custom
meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb. Our first questions are
answered by ignorance, and our last by superstition.
We are pushed and dragged by countless hands along the beaten track, and our
entire training can be summed up in the word -- suppression. Our desire to have
a thing, or to do a thing, is considered as conclusive evidence that we ought
not to have it, and ought not to do it. At every turn we run against cherubim
and a flaming sword guarding some entrance to the
We have all read accounts of Christian gentlemen remarking, when about to be
hanged, how much better it would have been for them if they had only followed a
mother's advice. But after all, how fortunate it is for the
world that the maternal advice has not always been followed. How
fortunate it is for us all that it is somewhat unnatural for a human being to
obey. Universal obedience is universal stagnation; disobedience is one of the
conditions of progress. Select any age of the world and tell me what would have
been the effect of implicit obedience. Suppose the church had had absolute
control of the human mind at any time, would not the words liberty and progress
have been blotted from human speech? In defiance of advice, the world has
advanced.
Suppose the astronomers had controlled the science of astronomy; suppose the
doctors had controlled the science of medicine; suppose kings had been left to
fix the forms of government; suppose our fathers had taken the advice of Paul,
who said, "be subject to the powers that be, because they are ordained of
God;" suppose the church could control the world to-day, we would go back
to chaos and old night. Philosophy would be branded as infamous; Science would
again press its pale and thoughtful face against the prison bars,
and round the limbs of liberty would climb the bigot's flame.
It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had individuality
enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions, -- some one who had
the grandeur to say his say. I believe it was Magellan who said, "The
church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I
have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church." On the prow of
his ship were disobedience, defiance, scorn, and success.
The trouble with most people is, they bow to what
is called authority; they have a certain reverence for the old because it is
old. They think a man is better for being dead, especially if he has been dead
a long time. They think the fathers of their nation were the greatest and best
of all mankind. All these things they implicitly believe because it is popular
and patriotic, and because they were told so when they were very small, and
remember distinctly of hearing mother read it out of a book. It is hard to
over-estimate the influence of early training in the direction of superstition.
You first teach children that a certain book is true -- that it was written by
God himself -- that to question its truth is a sin, that to deny it is a crime,
and that should they die without believing that book they will be forever
damned without benefit of clergy. The consequence is,
that long before they read that book, they believe it to be true. When they do
read it their minds are wholly unfitted to investigate its claims. They accept
it as a matter of course.
In this way the reason is overcome, the sweet instincts of
humanity are blotted from the heart, and while reading its infamous pages even
justice throws aside her scales, shrieking for revenge, and charity, with
bloody hands, applauds a deed of murder. In this way we are taught that
the revenge of man is the justice of God; that mercy is not the same
everywhere. In this way the ideas of our race have been subverted. In this way
we have made tyrants, bigots, and inquisitors. In this way the brain of man has
become a kind of palimpsest upon which, and over the writings of nature,
superstition has scrawled her countless lies. One great trouble is that most
teachers are dishonest. They teach as certainties those things concerning which
they entertain doubts. They do not say, "we think
this is so." but "we know this is so." They do not appeal to the
reason of the pupil, but they command his faith. They keep all doubts to
themselves; they do not explain, they assert. All this is infamous. In this way
you may make Christians, but you cannot make men; you cannot make women. You
can make followers, but no leaders; disciples, but no Christs. You may promise
power, honor, and happiness to all those who will blindly follow, but you
cannot keep your promise.
A monarch said to a hermit, "Come with me and I will give you
power."
"I have all the power that I know how to use," replied the hermit.
"Come," said the king, "I will give you wealth."
"I have no wants that money can supply." said the hermit.
"I will give you honor," said the monarch.
"Ah, honor cannot be given, it must he earned," was the hermit's
answer. "Come," said the king, making a last appeal, "and I will
give you happiness." "No," said the man of solitude, "there
is no happiness without liberty, and he who follows cannot be free."
"You shall have liberty too," said the king. "Then I will
stay where I am," said the old man.
And all the king's courtiers thought the hermit a fool.
Now and then somebody examines, and in spite of all keeps his manhood, and
has the courage to follow where his reason leads. Then the pious get together
and repeat wise saws, and exchange knowing nods and most prophetic winks. The
stupidly wise sit owl-like on the dead limbs of the tree of knowledge, and
solemnly hoot. Wealth sneers, and fashion laughs, and respectability passes by
on the other side, and scorn points with all her skinny fingers, and all the
snakes of superstition writhe and hiss, and slander lends her tongue, and
infamy her brand, and perjury her oath, and the law its power, and bigotry
tortures, and the church kills.
The church hates a thinker precisely for the same reason a robber dislikes a
sheriff, or a thief despises the prosecuting witness. Tyranny likes courtiers,
flatterers, followers, fawners, and superstition wants believers, disciples,
zealots, hypocrites, and subscribers. The church demands worship -- the very
thing that man should give to no being, human or divine. To worship another is
to degrade yourself. Worship is awe and dread and
vague fear and blind hope. It is the spirit of worship that elevates the one
and degrades the many; that builds palaces for robbers, erects monuments to
crime, and forges manacles even for its own hands. The spirit of worship is the
spirit of tyranny. The worshiper always regrets that he is not the worshiped.
We should all remember that the intellect has no knees, and that whatever the
attitude of the body may be, the brave soul is always found erect. Whoever
worships, abdicates. Whoever believes at the command of power, tramples his own
individuality beneath his feet, and voluntarily robs himself
of all that renders man superior to the brute.
The despotism of faith is justified upon the ground that Christian countries
are the grandest and most prosperous of the world. At one time the same thing
could have been truly said in
Wherever brave blood has been shed, the sword of the church has been wet. On
every chain has been the sign of the cross. The altar and throne have leaned
against and supported each other.
All that is good in our civilization is the result of commerce, climate,
soil, geographical position, industry, invention, discovery, art, and science.
The church has been the enemy of progress, for the reason that it has
endeavored to prevent man thinking for himself. To prevent thought is to
prevent all advancement except in the direction of faith.
Who can imagine the infinite impudence of a church assuming to think for the
human race? Who can imagine the infinite impudence of a church that pretends to
be the mouthpiece of God, and in his name threatens to
inflict eternal punishment upon those who honestly reject its claims and scorn
its pretensions? By what right does a man, or an organization of men, or a god,
claim to hold a brain in bondage? When a fact can be demonstrated, force is
unnecessary; when it cannot be demonstrated, an appeal to force is infamous. In
the presence of the unknown all have an equal right to think.
Over the vast plain, called life, we are all travelers, and not one traveler
is perfectly certain that he is going in the right direction. True it is that
no other plain is so well supplied with guide-boards. At every turn and
crossing you will find them, and upon each one. is written
the exact direction and distance. One great trouble is, however, that these
boards are all different, and the result is that most travelers are confused in
proportion to the number they read. Thousands of people are around each of
these signs, and each one is doing his best to convince the traveler that his
particular board is the only one upon which the least reliance can be placed,
and that if his road is taken the reward for so doing will be infinite and
eternal, while all the other roads are said to lead to hell, and all the makers
of the other guide-boards are declared to be heretics, hypocrites and liars.
"Well," says a traveler, "you may be right in what you say, but
allow me at least to read some of the other directions and examine a little into
their claims. I wish to rely a little upon my own judgment in a matter of so
great importance." "No, sir," shouts the zealot, "that is
the very thing you are not allowed to do. You must go my way without
investigation, or you are as good as damned already." "Well,"
says the traveler, "if that is so, I believe I had better go your
way." And so most of them go along, taking the word of those who know as
little as themselves. Now and then comes one who, in spite of all threats, calmly
examines the claims of all, and as calmly rejects them all. These travelers
take roads of their own, and are denounced by all the others as infidels and
atheists.
Around all of these guide-boards, as far as the eye can reach, the ground is
covered with mountains of human bones, crumbling and bleaching in the rain and
sun. They are the bones of martyrs, murdered men and women -- fathers, mothers
and babes.
In my judgment, every human being should take a road of his own. Every mind
should be true to itself -- should think, investigate and conclude for itself.
This is a duty alike incumbent upon pauper and prince. Every soul should repel
dictation and tyranny no matter from what source they come -- from earth or
heaven from men or gods. Besides, every traveler upon this vast plain should
give to every other traveler his best idea as to the road that should be taken.
Each is entitled to the honest opinion of all. And there is but one way to get
an honest opinion upon any subject whatever. The person giving the opinion must
be free from fear. The merchant must not fear to lose his custom, the doctor his practice, nor the preacher his pulpit. There can he no
advance without liberty. Suppression of honest inquiry is retrogression, and
must end in intellectual night. The tendency of orthodox religion to-day is
toward mental slavery and barbarism. Not one of the orthodox ministers dare
preach what he thinks if he knows a majority of his congregation think
otherwise. He knows that every member of his church stands guard over his brain
with a creed, like a club, in his hand. He knows that he is not expected to
search after the truth, but that he is employed to defend the creed. Every
pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit, defending the justice of
his own imprisonment.
Is it desirable that all should be exactly alike in their religious
convictions? Is any such thing possible? Do we not know that there are no two
persons alike in the whole world? No two trees, no two leaves, no two anything
that are alike? Infinite diversity is the law. Religion tries to force all
minds into one mould. Knowing that all cannot believe, the church endeavors to
make all say they believe. She longs for the unity of hypocrisy, and detests
the splendid diversity of individuality and freedom.
Nearly all people stand in great horror of annihilation, and yet to give up
your individuality is to annihilate yourself. Mental slavery is mental death,
and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of
his dead soul. In this sense, every church is a cemetery and every creed an
epitaph.
We should all remember that to be like other people is to be unlike
ourselves, and that nothing can be more detestable in character than servile
imitation. The great trouble with imitation is, that
we are apt to ape those who are in reality far below us. After all, the poorest
bargain that a human being can make, is to give his
individuality for what is called respectability.
There is no saying more degrading than this: It is better to be the tail of a
lion than the head of a dog. It is a responsibility to think and act for yourself. Most people hate responsibility; therefore they
join something and become the tail of some lion. They say, My
party can act for me -- my church can do my thinking. It is enough for me to
pay taxes and obey the lion to which I belong, without troubling myself about
the right, the wrong, or the why or the wherefore of anything whatever. These
people are respectable. They hate reformers, and dislike exceedingly to have
their minds disturbed. They regard convictions as very disagreeable things to
have. They love forms and enjoy beyond everything else, telling what a splendid
tail their lion has and what a troublesome dog their neighbor is. Besides this
natural inclination to avoid personal responsibility, is and always has been, the fact that every religionist has warned men against
the presumption and wickedness of thinking for themselves. Reason has been
denounced by all Christendom as the only unsafe guide. The church has left
nothing undone to prevent man following the logic of his brain. The plainest
facts have been covered with the mantle of mystery. The grossest absurdities
have been declared to be self- evident facts. The order of nature has been as
it were, reversed, that the hypocritical few might
govern the honest many. The man who stood by the conclusion of his reason was
denounced as a scorner and hater of God and his holy church. From the
organization of the first church until this moment, to think your own thoughts
has been inconsistent with membership. Every member has borne the marks of
collar and chain, and whip. No man ever seriously attempted to reform a church
without being cast out and hunted down by the hounds of hypocrisy. The highest
crime against a creed is to change it. Reformation is treason.
Thousands of young men are being educated at this moment by the various
churches. What for? In order that they may be prepared to investigate the
phenomena by which we are surrounded? No! The object, and the only object, is
that they may be prepared to defend a creed; that they may learn the arguments
of their respective churches, and repeat them in the dull ears of a thoughtless
congregation. If one, after being thus trained at the expense of the
Methodists, turns Presbyterian or Baptist, he is denounced as an ungrateful
wretch. Honest investigation is utterly impossible within the pale of any
church, for the reason, that if you think the church is right you will not
investigate, and if you think it wrong, the church will investigate you. The
consequence of this is, that most of the theological
literature is the result of suppression, of fear, tyranny and hypocrisy.
Every orthodox writer necessarily said to himself; If
I write that, my wife and children may want for bread. I will be covered with
shame and branded with infamy; but if I write this, I will gain position,
power, and honor. My church rewards defenders, and burns reformers.
Under these conditions all your Scotts, Henrys, and McKnights have written;
and weighed in these scales, what are their commentaries worth? They are not
the ideas and decisions of honest judges, but the sophisms of the paid
attorneys of superstition. Who can tell what the world has lost by this
infamous system of suppression? How many grand thinkers have died with the
mailed hand of superstition upon their lips? How many splendid ideas have
perished in the cradle of the brain, strangled in the poison-coils of that
python, the Church!
For thousands of years a thinker was hunted down like an escaped convict. To
him who had braved the church, every door was shut, every knife was open. To
shelter him from the wild storm, to give him a crust when dying, to put a cup
of water to his cracked and bleeding lips; these were all crimes, not one of
which the church ever did forgive; and with the justice taught of her God, his
helpless children were exterminated as scorpions and vipers.
Who at the present day can imagine the courage, the devotion to principle,
the intellectual and moral grandeur it once required to be an infidel, to brave
the church, her racks, her fagots, her dungeons, her tongues of fire, -- to
defy and scorn her heaven and her hell -- her devil and her God? They were the
noblest sons of earth. They were the real saviors of our race, the destroyers
of superstition and the creators of Science. They were the real Titans who
bared their grand foreheads to all the thunderbolts of all the gods.
The church has been, and still is, the great robber. She has rifled not only
the pockets but the brains of the world. She is the stone at the sepulchre of
liberty; the upas tree, in whose shade the intellect of man has withered; the
Gorgon beneath whose gaze the human heart has turned to stone. Under her
influence even the Protestant mother expects to be happy in heaven, while her
brave boy, who fell fighting for the rights of man, shall writhe in hell.
It is said that some of the Indian tribes place the heads of their children
between pieces of bark until the form of the skull is permanently changed. To us
this seems a most shocking custom: and yet, after all, is it as bad as to put
the souls of our children in the strait-jacket of a creed? to so utterly deform
their minds that they regard the God of the Bible as a being of infinite mercy,
and really consider it a virtue to believe a thing just because it seems
unreasonable? Every child in the Christian world has uttered its wondering
protest against this outrage. All the machinery of the church is constantly
employed in corrupting the reason of children. In every possible way they are
robbed of their own thoughts and forced to accept the statements of others.
Every Sunday school has for its object the crushing out of every germ of
individuality. The poor children are taught that nothing can be more acceptable
to God than unreasoning obedience and eyeless faith, and that to believe God
did an impossible act, is far better than to do a good one yourself. They are
told that all religions have been simply the John-the-Baptists of ours; that
all the gods of antiquity have withered and shrunken into the Jehovah of the
Jews; that all the longings and aspirations of the race are realized in the
motto of the Evangelical Alliance. "Liberty in non- essentials;" that
all there is, or ever was, of religion can be found in the apostles' creed;
that there is nothing left to be discovered; that all the thinkers are dead,
and all the living should simply be believers; that we have only to repeat the
epitaph found on the grave of wisdom; that grave-yards are the best possible universities
and that the children must be forever beaten with the bones of the fathers.
It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a god would choose for his
companions, during all eternity, the dear souls whose highest and only ambition
is to obey. He certainly would now and then be tempted to make the same remark
made by an English gentleman to his poor guest. The gentleman had invited a man
in humble circumstances to dine with him. The man was so overcome with the
honor that to everything the gentleman said he replied Yes.
Tired at last with the monotony of acquiescence, the gentleman cried out,
"For God's sake, my good man, say 'no,' just once, so there will be two of
us."
Is it possible that an infinite God created this world simply to be the
dwelling-place of slaves and serfs? simply for the
purpose of raising orthodox Christians? That he did a few miracles to astonish
them; that all the evils of life are simply his punishments, and that he is
finally going to turn heaven into a kind of religious museum filled with
Baptist barnacles, petrified Presbyterians and Methodist mummies? I want no
heaven for which I must give my reason; no happiness in exchange for my
liberty, and no immortality that demands the surrender of my individuality.
Better rot in the windowless tomb, to which there is no door but the red mouth
of the pallid worm, than wear the jeweled collar even of a god.
Religion does not, and cannot, contemplate man as free. She accepts only the
homage of the prostrate, and scorns the offerings of those who stand erect. She
cannot tolerate the liberty of thought. The wide and sunny fields belong not to
her domain. The star-lit heights of genius and individuality are above and
beyond her appreciation and power. Her subjects cringe at her feet, covered
with the dust of obedience. They are not athletes standing posed by rich life
and brave endeavor like antique statues, but shriveled deformities, studying
with furtive glance the cruel face of power.
No religionist seems capable of comprehending this plain truth. There is
this difference between thought and action: for our actions we are responsible
to ourselves and to those injuriously affected; for thoughts, there can, in the
nature of things, be no responsibility to gods or men, here or hereafter. And yet
the Protestant has vied with the Catholic in denouncing freedom of thought; and
while I was taught to hate Catholicism with every drop of my blood, it is only
justice to say, that in all essential particulars it is precisely the same as
every other religion. Luther denounced mental liberty with all the coarse and
brutal vigor of his nature; Calvin despised, from the very bottom of his
petrified heart, anything that even looked like religious toleration, and
solemnly declared that to advocate it was to crucify Christ afresh. All the
founders of all the orthodox churches have advocated the same infamous tenet.
The truth is, that what is called religion is
necessarily inconsistent with free thought.
A believer is a bird in a cage, a Freethinker is an
eagle parting the clouds with tireless wing. At present, owing to the inroads
that have been made by liberals and infidels, most of the churches pretend to
be in favor of religious liberty. Of these churches we will ask this question:
How can a man, who conscientiously believes in religious liberty, worship a God
who does not? They say to us: We will not imprison you on account of your
belief, but our God will. We will not burn you because you throw away the
sacred Scriptures, but their author will. We think it an infamous crime to
persecute our brethren for opinion's sake, -- but the God, whom we ignorantly
worship, will on that account, damn his own children forever.
Why is it that these Christians not only detest the infidels, but cordially
despise each other? Why do they refuse to worship in the temples of each other?
Why do they care so little for the damnation of men, and so much for the
baptism of children? Why will they adorn their churches with the money of
thieves and flatter vice for the sake of subscriptions? Why will they attempt
to bribe Science to certify to the writings of God? Why do they torture the
words of the great into an acknowledgment of the truth of Christianity? Why do
they stand with hat in hand before presidents, kings, emperors, and scientists,
begging, like Lazarus, for a few crumbs of religious comfort? Why are they so
delighted to find an allusion to
Is it because the foundation of their temple is crumbling, because the walls
are cracked, the pillars leaning, the great dome swaying to its fall and
because Science has written over the high altar its MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN
-- the old words, destined to be the epitaph of all religions?
Every assertion of individual independence has been a step toward
infidelity. Luther started toward Humboldt, -- Wesley, toward John Stuart Mill.
To really reform the church is to destroy it. Every new religion has a little
less superstition than the old, so that the religion of Science is but a
question of time.
I will not say the church has been an unmitigated evil in all respects. Its
history is infamous and glorious. It has delighted in the production of
extremes. It has furnished murderers for its own martyrs. It has sometimes fed
the body, but has always starved the soul. It has been a charitable highwayman
-- a profligate beggar -- a generous pirate. It has produced some angels and a
multitude of devils. It has built more prisons than asylums. It made a hundred
orphans while it cared for one. In one hand it has carried the alms-dish and in
the other a sword. lt has founded schools and endowed
universities for the purpose of destroying true learning. It filled the world
with hypocrites and zealots, and upon the cross of its own Christ it crucified
the individuality of man. It has sought to destroy the independence of the soul
and put the world upon its knees. This is its crime. The commission of this
crime was necessary to its existence. In order to compel obedience it declared
that it had the truth, and all the truth; that God had made it the keeper of
his secrets; his agent and his vicegerent. It declared that all other religions
were false and infamous. It rendered all compromise impossible and all thought
superfluous. Thought was its enemy, obedience was its friend. Investigation was
fraught with danger; therefor investigation was suppressed. The holy of holies
was behind the curtain. All this was upon the principle that forgers hate to
have the signature examined by an expert, and that imposture detests curiosity.
He that hath ears to hear, let him hear has always been the favorite text of
the church.
In short, Christianity has always opposed every forward movement of the
human race. Across the highway of progress it has always been building
breastworks of Bibles, tracts, commentaries, prayer-books, creeds, dogmas and
platforms, and at every advance the Christians have gathered together behind
these heaps of rubbish and shot the poisoned arrows of malice at the soldiers
of freedom.
And even the liberal Christian of to-day has his holy of holies, and in the
niche of the temple of his heart has his idol. He still clings to a part of the
old superstition, and all the pleasant memories of the old belief linger in the
horizon of his thoughts like a sunset. We associate the memory of those we love
with the religion of our childhood. It seems almost a sacrilege to rudely
destroy the idols that our fathers worshiped, and turn their sacred and
beautiful truths into the fables of barbarism. Some throw away the Old
Testament and cling to the New, while others give up everything except the idea
that there is a personal God, and that in some wonderful way we are the objects
of his care.
Even this, in my opinion, as Science, the great iconoclast, marches onward,
will have to be abandoned with the rest. The great ghost will surely share the
fate of the little ones. They fled at the first appearance of the dawn, and the
other will vanish with the perfect day. Until then the independence of man is
little more than a dream. Overshadowed by an immense personality, in the
presence of the irresponsible and the infinite, the individuality of man is
lost, and he falls prostrate in the very dust of fear. Beneath the frown of the
absolute, man stands a wretched, trembling slave, --
beneath his smile he is at best only a fortunate serf. Governed by a being
whose arbitrary will is law, chained to the chariot of power, his destiny rests
in the pleasure of the unknown. Under these
circumstances, what wretched object can he have in lengthening out his aimless
life?
And yet, in most minds, there is a vague fear of the gods -- a shrinking
from the malice of the skies. Our fathers were slaves, and nearly all their
children are mental serfs. The enfranchisement of the soul is a slow and
painful process. Superstition, the mother of those hideous twins, Fear and
Faith, from her throne of skulls, still rules the world, and will until the
mind of woman ceases to be the property of priests.
When women reason, and babes sit in the lap of
philosophy, the victory of reason over the shadowy host of darkness will be
complete.
In the minds of many, long after the intellect has thrown aside as utterly
fabulous the legends of the church, there still remains a lingering suspicion,
born of the mental habits contracted in childhood, that after all there may be
a grain of truth in these mountains of theological mist, and that possibly the
superstitious side is the side of safety.
A gentleman, walking among the ruins of
We have all been taught by the church that nothing is so well calculated to
excite the ire of the Deity as to express a doubt as to his existence, and that
to deny it is an unpardonable sin. Numerous well-attested instances are
referred to of atheists being struck dead for denying the existence of God.
According to these religious people, God is infinitely above us in every
respect, infinitely merciful, and yet he cannot bear to hear a poor finite man
honestly question his existence. Knowing, as he does, that his children are
groping in darkness and struggling with doubt and fear; knowing that he could
enlighten them if he would he still holds the expression of a sincere doubt as
to his existence, the most infamous of crimes. According to orthodox logic, God
having furnished us with imperfect minds, has a right
to demand a perfect result.
Suppose Mr. Smith should overhear a couple of small bugs holding a
discussion as to the existence of Mr. Smith, and suppose one should have the
temerity to declare, upon the honor of a bug, that he had examined the whole
question to the best of his ability, including the argument based upon design,
and had come to the conclusion that no man by the name of Smith had ever lived.
Think then of Mr. Smith flying into an ecstasy of rage, crushing the atheist
bug beneath his iron heel, while he exclaimed "I will teach you,
blasphemous wretch, that Smith is a diabolical fact!" What then can we
think of a God who would open the artillery of heaven upon one of his own
children for simply expressing his honest thought? And what man who really thinks
can help repeating the words of Ennius: "If there are gods they certainly
pay no attention to the affairs of man."
Think of the millions of men and women who have been destroyed simply for
loving and worshiping this God. Is it possible that this God, having infinite
power, saw his loving and heroic children languishing in the darkness of
dungeons; heard the clank of their chains when they lifted their hands to him
in the agony of prayer; saw them stretched upon the bigot's rack, where death
alone had pity; saw the serpents of flame crawl hissing round their shrinking
forms -- saw all this for sixteen hundred years and sat as silent as a stone?
From such a God, why should man expect assistance? Why should he waste his
days in fruitless prayer? Why should he fall upon his knees and implore a
phantom -- a phantom that is deaf, and dumb, and blind?
Although we live in what is called a free government, -- and politically we
are free, -- there is but little religious liberty in
The Declaration of Independence announces the sublime truth,
that all power comes from the people. This was a denial, and the first
denial of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the right upon one
man to govern others. It was the first grand assertion of the dignity of the
human race. It declared the governed to be the source of power, and in fact
denied the authority of any and all gods. Through the ages of slavery --
through the weary centuries of the lash and chain, God was the acknowledged
ruler of the world. To enthrone man, was to dethrone God.
To Paine, Jefferson, and Franklin, are we indebted,
more than to all others, for a human government, and for a Constitution in
which no God is recognized superior to the legally expressed will of the
people.
They knew that to put God in the Constitution was to put man out. They knew
that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as
a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history
of the church too well to place in her keeping, or in the keeping of her God,
the sacred rights of man. They intended that all should have the right to
worship, or not to worship; that our laws should make no distinction on account
of creed. They intended to found and frame a government for man, and for man
alone. They wished to preserve the individuality and liberty of all; to prevent
the few from governing the many, and the many from persecuting and destroying
the few.
Notwithstanding all this, the spirit of persecution still lingers in our
laws. In many of the States, only those who believe in the existence of some
kind of God, are under the protection of the law.
The supreme court of
Last year, in a convention of Protestant bigots, held in the city of
Give the church a place in the Constitution, let her touch once more the
sword of power, and the priceless fruit of all the ages will turn to ashes on
the lips of men.
In religious ideas and conceptions there has been for ages a slow and steady
development. At the bottom of the ladder (speaking of modern times) is
Catholicism, and at the top is Science. The intermediate rounds of this ladder
are occupied by the various sects, whose name is legion.
But whatever may be the truth upon any subject has nothing to do with our
right to investigate that subject, and express any opinion we may form. All
that I ask is the same right I freely accord to all others.
A few years ago a Methodist clergyman took it upon himself to give me a
piece of friendly advice. "Although you may disbelieve the Bible,"
said he, "you ought not to say so. That, you should keep to yourself."
"Do you believe the Bible," said I.
He replied, "Most assuredly."
To which I retorted, "Your answer conveys no information to me. You may
be following your own advice. You told me to suppress my opinions. Of course a
man who will advise others to dissimulate will not always be particular about
telling the truth himself."
There can be nothing more utterly subversive of all that is really valuable
than the suppression of honest thought -- No man, worthy of the form he bears,
will at the command of church or state solemnly repeat a creed his reason
scorns.
It is the duty of each and every one to maintain his individuality.
"This above all, to thine own-self be true, and it must follow as the
night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." It is a
magnificent thing to be the sole proprietor of yourself.
It is a terrible thing to wake up at night and say, "There is nobody in
this bed." It is humiliating to know that your ideas are all borrowed;
that you are indebted to your memory for your principles; that your religion is
simply one of your habits, and that you would have convictions if they were
only contagious. It is mortifying to feel that you belong to a mental mob and
cry "crucify him," because the others do; that you reap what the
great and brave have sown and that you can benefit the world only by leaving
it.
Surely every human being ought to attain to the dignity of the unit. Surely
it is worth something to be one, and to feel that the census of the universe
would be incomplete without counting you. Surely there is grandeur in knowing
that in the realm of thought, at least, you are without a chain; that you have
the right to explore all heights and all depths; that there are no walls nor
fences, nor prohibited places, nor sacred corners in all the vast expanse of
thought; that your intellect owes no allegiance to any being, human or divine;
that you hold all in fee and upon no condition and by no tenure whatever; that
in the world of mind you are relieved from all personal dictation, and from the
ignorant tyranny of majorities. Surely it is worth something to feel that there
are no priests, no popes, no parties, no governments, no kings, no gods, to whom your intellect can be compelled to pay a
reluctant homage. Surely it is a joy to know that all the cruel ingenuity of
bigotry can devise no prison, no dungeon, no cell in which for one instant to
confine a thought; that ideas cannot be dislocated by racks, nor crushed in
iron boots, nor burned with fire. Surely it is sublime to think that the brain
is a castle, and that within its curious bastions and winding halls the soul,
in spite of all worlds and all beings, is the supreme sovereign of itself.
Bank of Wisdom
The Bank of Wisdom is run by Emmett Fields out of his home in Kentucky. He
painstakingly scanned in these works and put them on disks for others to have
available. Mr. Fields makes these disks available for only the cost of the
media.
Files made available from the Bank of Wisdom may be freely reproduced and
given away, but may not be sold.
The Bank of Wisdom is a collection of the most thoughtful, scholarly and
factual books. These computer books are reprints of suppressed books and will
cover American and world history; the Biographies and writings of famous
persons, and especially of our nations Founding Fathers. They will include
philosophy and religion. all these subjects, and more, will be made available
to the public in electronic form, easily copied and distributed, so that
America can again become what its Founders intended --
The Free Market-Place of Ideas.
The Bank of Wisdom is always looking for more of these old, hidden, suppressed
and forgotten books that contain needed facts and information for today. If you
have such books please contact us, we need to give them back to
Bank of Wisdom,