Secularism
Essay.

by Robert G. Ingersoll
(1887)

From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Edition, 1900–1902), Volume 11.
Source: https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/secularism/
Public domain. CC0 / Public Domain Mark 1.0.

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SEVERAL people have asked me the meaning of this term.

Secularism is the religion of humanity; it embraces the affairs of this
world; it is interested in everything that touches the welfare of a
sentient being; it advocates attention to the particular planet in which
we happen to live; it means that each individual counts for something;
it is a declaration of intellectual independence; it means that the pew
is superior to the pulpit, that those who bear the burdens shall have
the profits and that they who fill the purse shall hold the strings.
It is a protest against theological oppression, against ecclesiastical
tyranny, against being the serf, subject or slave of any phantom, or of
the priest of any phantom. It is a protest against wasting this life for
the sake of one that we know not of. It proposes to let the gods take
care of themselves. It is another name for common sense; that is to say,
the adaptation of means to such ends as are desired and understood.

Secularism believes in building a home here, in this world. It trusts
to individual effort, to energy, to intelligence, to observation and
experience rather than to the unknown and the supernatural. It desires
to be happy on this side of the grave.

Secularism means food and fireside, roof and raiment, reasonable work
and reasonable leisure, the cultivation of the tastes, the acquisition
of knowledge, the enjoyment of the arts, and it promises for the human
race comfort, independence, intelligence, and above all, liberty. It
means the abolition of sectarian feuds, of theological hatreds. It means
the cultivation of friendship and intellectual hospitality. It means
the living for ourselves and each other; for the present instead of
the past, for this world rather than for another. It means the right to
express your thought in spite of popes, priests, and gods. It means that
impudent idleness shall no longer live upon the labor of honest men.
It means the destruction of the business of those who trade in fear. It
proposes to give serenity and content to the human soul. It will put out
the fires of eternal pain. It is striving to do away with violence and
vice, with ignorance, poverty and disease. It lives for the ever present
to-day, and the ever coming to-morrow. It does not believe in praying
and receiving, but in earning and deserving. It regards work as worship,
labor as prayer, and wisdom as the savior of mankind. It says to every
human being, Take care of yourself so that you may be able to help
others; adorn your life with the gems called good deeds; illumine your
path with the sunlight called friendship and love.

Secularism is a religion, a religion that is understood. It has no
mysteries, no mummeries, no priests, no ceremonies, no falsehoods, no
miracles, and no persecutions. It considers the lilies of the field, and
takes thought for the morrow. It says to the whole world, Work that you
may eat, drink, and be clothed; work that you may enjoy; work that you
may not want; work that you may give and never need.—The Independent
Pulpit, Waco, Texas, 1887.

Criticism of "robert Elsmere," "john Ward, Preacher," and "an African Farm."

IF one wishes to know what orthodox religion really is—I mean that
religion unsoftened by Infidelity, by doubt—let him read "John Ward,
Preacher." This book shows exactly what the love of God will do in the
heart of man. This shows what the effect of the creed of Christendom is,
when absolutely believed. In this case it is the woman who is free
and the man who is enslaved. In "Robert Els-mere" the man is breaking
chains, while the woman prefers the old prison with its ivy-covered
walls.

Why should a man allow human love to stand between his soul and the
will of God—between his soul and eternal joy? Why should not the true
believer tear every blossom of pity, of charity, from his heart, rather
than put in peril his immortal soul?

An orthodox minister has a wife with a heart. Having a heart she cannot
believe in the orthodox creed. She thinks God better than he is. She
flatters the Infinite. This endangers the salvation of her soul. If she
is upheld in this the souls of others may be lost. Her husband feels not
only accountable for her soul, but for the souls of others that may
be injured by what she says, and by what she does. He is compelled to
choose between his wife and his duty, between the woman and God. He is
not great enough to go with his heart. He is selfish enough to side with
the administration, with power. He lives a miserable life and dies a
miserable death.

The trouble with Christianity is that it has no element of
compromise—it allows no room for charity so far as belief is concerned.
Honesty of opinion is not even a mitigating circumstance. You are not
asked to understand—you are commanded to believe. There is no common
ground. The church carries no flag of truce. It does not say, Believe
you must, but, You must believe. No exception can be made in favor of
wife or mother, husband or child. All human relations, all human love
must, if necessary, be sacrificed with perfect cheerfulness. "Let the
dead bury their dead—follow thou me. Desert wife and child. Human love
is nothing—nothing but a snare. You must love God better than wife,
better than child." John Ward endeavored to live in accordance with this
heartless creed.

Nothing can be more repulsive than an orthodox life—than one who lives
in exact accordance with the creed. It is hard to conceive of a more
terrible character than John Calvin. It is somewhat difficult to
understand the Puritans, who made themselves unhappy by way of
recreation, and who seemed to enjoy themselves when admitting their
utter worthlessness and in telling God how richly they deserved to be
eternally damned. They loved to pluck from the tree of life every bud,
every blossom, every leaf. The bare branches, naked to the wrath of God,
excited their admiration. They wondered how birds could sing, and the
existence of the rainbow led them to suspect the seriousness of the
Deity. How can there be any joy if man believes that he acts and lives
under an infinite responsibility, when the only business of this life
is to avoid the horrors of the next? Why should the lips of men feel
the ripple of laughter if there is a bare possibility that the creed of
Christendom is true?

I take it for granted that all people believe as they must—that all
thoughts and dreams have been naturally produced—that what we call the
unnatural is simply the uncommon. All religions, poems, statues, vices
and virtues, have been wrought by nature with the instrumentalities
called men. No one can read "John Ward, Preacher," without hating with
all his heart the creed of John Ward; and no one can read the creed of
John Ward, preacher, without pitying with all his heart John Ward; and
no one can read this book without feeling how much better the wife was
than the husband—how much better the natural sympathies are than the
religions of our day, and how much superior common sense is to what is
called theology.

When we lay down the book we feel like saying: No matter whether God
exists or not; if he does, he can take care of himself; if he does, he
does not take care of us; and whether he lives or not we must take care
of ourselves. Human love is better than any religion. It is better to
love your wife than to love God. It is better to make a happy home here
than to sunder hearts with creeds. This book meets the issues far more
frankly, with far greater candor. This book carries out to its logical
sequence the Christian creed. It shows how uncomfortable a true believer
must be, and how uncomfortable he necessarily makes those with whom he
comes in contact. It shows how narrow, how hard, how unsympathetic,
how selfish, how unreasonable, how unpoetic, the creed of the orthodox
church is.

In "Robert Elsmere" there is plenty of evidence of reading and
cultivation, of thought and talent. So in "John Ward, Preacher," there
is strength, purpose, logic, power of statement, directness and courage.
But "The Story of an African Farm" has but little in common with the
other two.

It is a work apart—belonging to no school, and not to be judged by the
ordinary rules and canons of criticism. There are some puerilities and
much philosophy, trivialities and some of the profoundest reflections.
In addition to this, there is a vast and wonderful sympathy.

The following upon love is beautiful and profound: "There is a love that
begins in the head and goes down to the heart, and grows slowly, but it
lasts till death and asks less than it gives. There is another love that
blots out wisdom, that is sweet with the sweetness of life and bitter
with the bitterness of death, lasting for an hour; but it is worth
having lived a whole life for that hour. It is a blood-red flower, with
the color of sin, but there is always the scent of a god about it."

There is no character in "Robert Elsmere" or in "John Ward, Preacher,"
comparable for a moment to Lyndall in the "African Farm." In her there
is a splendid courage. She does not blame others for her own faults;
she accepts. There is that splendid candor that you find in Juliet in
"Measure for Measure." She is asked:

"Love you the man that wronged you?"

And she replies:

"Yes; as I love the woman that wronged him."

The death of this wonderful girl is extremely pathetic.

None but an artist could have written it:

"Then slowly, without a sound, the beautiful eyes closed. The dead
face that the glass reflected was a thing of marvellous beauty and
tranquillity. The gray dawn crept in over it and saw it lying there."

So the story of the hunter is wonderfully told. This hunter climbs above
his fellows—day by day getting away from human sympathy, away from
ignorance. He lost at last his fellow-men, and truth was just as far
away as ever. Here he found the bones of another hunter, and as he
looked upon the poor remains the wild faces said:

"So he lay down here, for he was very tired. He went to sleep forever.
He put himself to sleep. Sleep is very tranquil. You are not lonely when
you are asleep, neither do your hands ache nor your heart."

So the death of Waldo is most wonderfully told. The book is filled with
thought, and with thoughts of the writer—nothing is borrowed. It is
original, true and exceedingly sad. It has the pathos of real life.
There is in it the hunger of the heart, the vast difference between the
actual and the ideal:

"I like to feel that strange life beating up against me. I like to
realize forms of life utterly unlike my own. When my own life feels
small and I am oppressed with it, I like to crush together and see it in
a picture, in an instant, a multitude of disconnected, unlike phases of
human life—a mediaeval monk with his string of beads pacing the quiet
orchard, and looking up from the grass at his feet to the heavy fruit
trees; little Malay boys playing naked on a shining sea-beach; a Hindoo
philosopher alone under his banyan tree, thinking, thinking, thinking,
so that in the thought of God he may lose himself; a troop of
Bacchanalians dressed in white, with crowns of vine-leaves, dancing
along the Roman streets; a martyr on the night of his death looking
through the narrow window to the sky and feeling that already he has the
wings that shall bear him up; an epicurean discoursing at a Roman
bath to a knot of his disciples on the nature of happiness; a Kafir
witch-doctor seeking for herbs by moonlight, while from the huts on
the hillside come the sound of dogs barking and the voices of women
and children; a mother giving bread and milk to her children in little
wooden basins and singing the evening song. I like to see it all; I
feel it run through me—that life belongs to me; it makes my little life
larger, it breaks down the narrow walls that shut me in."

The author, Olive Schreiner, has a tropic zone in her heart. She
sometimes prattles like a child, then suddenly, and without warning, she
speaks like a philosopher—like one who had guessed the riddle of the
Sphinx. She, too, is overwhelmed with the injustice of the world—with
the negligence of nature—and she finds that it is impossible to find
repose for heart or brain in any Christian creed.

These books show what the people are thinking—the tendency of modern
thought. Singularly enough the three are written by women. Mrs. Ward,
the author of "Robert Elsmere," to say the least is not satisfied with
the Episcopal Church. She feels sure that its creed is not true. At the
same time, she wants it denied in a respectful tone of voice, and she
really pities people who are compelled to give up the consolation of
eternal punishment, although she has thrown it away herself and the
tendency of her book is to make other people do so. It is what the
orthodox call "a dangerous book." It is a flank movement calculated
to suggest a doubt to the unsuspecting reader, to some sheep who has
strayed beyond the shepherd's voice.

It is hard for any one to read "John Ward, Preacher," without hating
Puritanism with all his heart and without feeling certain that nothing
is more heartless than the "scheme of salvation;" and whoever finishes
"The Story of an African Farm" will feel that he has been brought in
contact with a very great, passionate and tender soul. Is it possible
that women, who have been the Caryatides of the church, who have borne
its insults and its burdens, are to be its destroyers?

Man is a being capable of pleasure and pain. The fact that he can enjoy
himself—that he can obtain good—gives him courage—courage to defend
what he has, courage to try to get more. The fact that he can suffer
pain sows in his mind the seeds of fear. Man is also filled with
curiosity. He examines. He is astonished by the uncommon. He is forced
to take an interest in things because things affect him. He is liable at
every moment to be injured. Countless things attack him. He must defend
himself. As a consequence his mind is at work; his experience in some
degree tells him what may happen; he prepares; he defends himself from
heat and cold. All the springs of action lie in the fact that he can
suffer and enjoy. The savage has great confidence in his senses. He
has absolute confidence in his eyes and ears. It requires many years of
education and experience before he becomes satisfied that things are
not always what they appear. It would be hard to convince the average
barbarian that the sun does not actually rise and set—hard to convince
him that the earth turns. He would rely upon appearances and would
record you as insane.

As man becomes civilized, educated, he finally has more confidence in
his reason than in his eyes. He no longer believes that a being called
Echo exists. He has found out the theory of sound, and he then knows
that the wave of air has been returned to his ear, and the idea of a
being who repeats his words fades from his mind; he begins then to
rely, not upon appearances, but upon demonstration, upon the result of
investigation. At last he finds that he has been deceived in a thousand
ways, and he also finds that he can invent certain instruments that are
far more accurate than his senses—instruments that add power to his
sight, to his hearing and to the sensitiveness of his touch. Day by day
he gains confidence in himself.

There is in the life of the individual, as in the life of the race,
a period of credulity, when not only appearances are accepted without
question, but the declarations of others. The child in the cradle or
in the lap of its mother, has implicit confidence in fairy
stories—believes in giants and dwarfs, in beings who can answer wishes,
who create castles and temples and gardens with a thought. So the race,
in its infancy, believed in such beings and in such creations. As the
child grows, facts take the place of the old beliefs, and the same is
true of the race.

As a rule, the attention of man is drawn first, not to his own mistakes,
not to his own faults, but to the mistakes and faults of his neighbors.
The same is true of a nation—it notices first the eccentricities and
peculiarities of other nations. This is especially true of religious
systems. Christians take it for granted that their religion is true,
that there can be about that no doubt, no mistake. They begin to examine
the religions of other nations. They take it for granted that all
these other religions are false. They are in a frame of mind to notice
contradictions, to discover mistakes and to apprehend absurdities. In
examining other religions they use their common sense. They carry in the
hand the lamp of probability. The miracles of other Christs, or of the
founders of other religions, appear unreasonable—they find that
they are not supported by evidence. Most of the stories excite their
laughter. Many of the laws seem cruel, many of the ceremonies absurd.
These Christians satisfy themselves that they are right in their first
conjecture—that is, that other religions are all made by men. Afterward
the same arguments they have used against other religions were found to
be equally forcible against their own. They find that the miracles of
Buddha rest upon the same kind of evidence as the miracles in the Old
Testament, as the miracles in the New—that the evidence in the one case
is just as weak and unreliable as in the other. They also find that it
is just as easy to account for the existence of Christianity as for the
existence of any other religion, and they find that the human mind in
all countries has traveled substantially the same road and has arrived
at substantially the same conclusions.

It may be truthfully said that Christianity by the examination of other
religions laid the foundation for its own destruction. The moment
it examined another religion it became a doubter, a sceptic, an
investigator. It began to call for proof. This course being pursued in
the examination of Christianity itself, reached the result that had been
reached as to other religions. In other words, it was impossible for
Christians successfully to attack other religions without showing that
their own religion could be destroyed. The fact that only a few years
ago we were all provincial should be taken into consideration. A few
years ago nations were unacquainted with each other—no nation had
any conception of the real habits, customs, religions and ideas of any
other. Each nation imagined itself to be the favored of heaven—the only
one to whom God had condescended to make known his will—the only one in
direct communication with angels and deities. Since the circumnavigation
of the globe, since the invention of the steam engine, the discovery of
electricity, the nations of the world have become acquainted with each
other, and we now know that the old ideas were born of egotism, and that
egotism is the child of ignorance and savagery.

Think of the egotism of the ancient Jews, who imagined that they were
"the chosen people"—the only ones in whom God took the slightest
interest! Imagine the egotism of the Catholic Church, claiming that it
is the only church—that it is continually under the guidance of the
Holy Ghost, and that the pope is infallible and occupies the place of
God. Think of the egotism of the Presbyterian, who imagines that he
is one of "the elect," and that billions of ages before the world was
created, God, in the eternal counsel of his own good pleasure, picked
out this particular Presbyterian, and at the same time determined to
send billions and billions to the pit of eternal pain. Think of
the egotism of the man who believes in special providence. The old
philosophy, the old religion, was made in about equal parts of ignorance
and egotism. This earth was the universe. The sun rose and set simply
for the benefit of "God's chosen people." The moon and stars were made
to beautify the night, and all the countless hosts of heaven were for no
other purpose than to decorate what might be called the ceiling of the
earth. It was also believed that this firmament was solid—that up there
the gods lived, and that they could be influenced by the prayers and
desires of men.

We have now found that the earth is only a grain of sand, a speck, an
atom in an infinite universe. We now know that the sun is a million
times larger than the earth, and that other planets are millions of
times larger than the sun; and when we think of these things, the old
stories of the Garden of Eden and Sinai and Calvary seem infinitely out
of proportion.

At last we have reached a point where we have the candor and the
intelligence to examine the claims of our own religion precisely as we
examine those of other countries. We have produced men and women
great enough to free themselves from the prejudices born of
provincialism—from the prejudices, we might almost say, of patriotism.
A few people are great enough not to be controlled by the ideas of the
dead—great enough to know that they are not bound by the mistakes of
their ancestors—and that a man may actually love his mother without
accepting her belief. We have even gone further than this, and we are
now satisfied that the only way to really honor parents is to tell our
best and highest thoughts. These thoughts ought to be in the mind when
reading the books referred to. There are certain tendencies, certain
trends of thought, and these tendencies—these trends—bear fruit; that
is to say, they produce the books about which I have spoken as well as
many others.
