Heretics and Heresies

The Lecture

Published in 1874, this lecture celebrates intellectual courage and condemns the machinery of religious persecution. Ingersoll argues that heresy — the willingness to differ from received opinion — is not a sin but a virtue, and that the heretics of every age have been its true benefactors.

What Is a Heretic?

A heretic, in the original sense, is simply one who chooses — from the Greek hairetikos, one who chooses. The heretic is one who, confronted with a choice between received doctrine and honest reason, chooses honest reason.

In every age, those who have made this choice have paid for it dearly. They have been burned, drowned, imprisoned, excommunicated, ostracized, and defamed. Their books have been destroyed, their reputations ruined, their memories traduced.

And they have been right.

The History of Heresy

Every doctrine that was ever burned is now taught in schools. Every opinion that was once a heresy is now orthodoxy. The history of theology is the history of condemned positions becoming accepted ones.

Galileo was a heretic. Newton's gravity implied a universe that ran by law and not by perpetual divine intervention — heresy. Darwin's evolution contradicted Genesis — heresy. The idea that the earth was not the center of the universe — heresy. The idea that the blood circulated — heresy.

And yet: the earth does move. Gravity does operate. Life did evolve. The blood does circulate. These things are true whether the Church approves of them or not.

Every martyr for an idea that later became accepted — every Bruno, every Servetus, every Huss — represents a crime committed by certainty against truth.

The Right to Think

I believe in the right of every human being to think for themselves. Not the right to think correctly — no one can guarantee that — but the right to think freely, to follow the evidence as they see it, to reach their own conclusions by their own road.

I believe this right is inalienable. It cannot be taken away; it can only be suppressed. And suppressing it is always wrong, always counterproductive, always an act of intellectual cowardice dressed up as piety.

"The greatest of all reformers was the man who said: Prove all things, hold fast to that which is good."

The man who says "I will not allow you to examine this" has already confessed that he does not believe his position can survive examination. The persecution of heretics is not the defense of truth — it is the confession of weakness.

On Intellectual Courage

The greatest virtue, in my view, is intellectual courage: the willingness to follow the evidence wherever it leads, regardless of where you hoped it would take you.

This is rare. The natural tendency of the human mind is to seek confirmation of what it already believes, to resist information that challenges its assumptions, to mistake familiarity for truth and novelty for error.

The great minds of history — the ones who actually advanced human knowledge — were the ones who overcame this tendency. Who said: "I thought this was true, but the evidence says otherwise, and therefore I must change my mind."

This is not weakness. This is the highest form of intellectual strength.

The Future of Thought

I believe that the future belongs to the free thinker. Not because freethinkers are always right — they are not — but because the free mind is the only instrument by which truth can be discovered.

A mind that has been told what to think cannot think. A mind that is afraid to question cannot inquire. A mind imprisoned by authority cannot explore.

The free mind — skeptical, humble, honest, open — is the only mind that can make progress. It will make mistakes. But it will correct them, because it is not committed in advance to any particular conclusion.

This is the heretic's gift to humanity: not just particular truths, but the method by which truth is found.

"Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith."

The complete "Heretics and Heresies" is available at Project Gutenberg.