Progress
Ingersoll's earliest surviving lecture (1860).

by Robert G. Ingersoll
(1860)

From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Edition, 1900–1902), Volume 4.
Source: https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/progress/
Public domain. CC0 / Public Domain Mark 1.0.

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• This is the first lecture ever delivered by Mr. Ingersoll.
    The stars indicate the words missing in the manuscript. It
    was delivered in Pekin, 111., in 1860, and again in
    Bloomington, 111., in 1804.

IT is admitted by all that happiness is the only good, happiness in its
highest and grandest sense and the most   springs   of   refined *
 generous  *

Conscience   tends   indirectly   truly we   physically   to
develop the wonderful powers of the mind is progress.

It is impossible for men to become educated and refined without leisure
and there can be no leisure without wealth and all wealth is produced by
labor, nothing else. Nothing can   the hands   and   fabrics *
 service of civil   and crumbles  * of all, and yet even in free
America labor is not honored as it deserves.

We should remember that the prosperity of the world depends upon the men
who walk in the fresh furrows and through the rustling corn, upon those
whose faces are radiant with the glare of furnaces, upon the delvers in
dark mines, the workers in shops, upon those who give to the wintry air
the ringing music of the axe, and upon those who wrestle with the wild
waves of the raging sea.

And it is from the surplus produced by labor that schools are built,
that colleges and universities are founded and endowed. From this
surplus the painter is paid for the immortal productions of the pencil.
This pays the sculptor for chiseling the shapeless rock into forms of
beauty almost divine, and the poet for singing the hopes, the loves and
aspirations of the world.

This surplus has erected all the palaces and temples, all the galleries
of art, has given to us all the books in which we converse, as it were,
with the dead kings of the human race, and has supplied us with all
there is of elegance, of beauty and of refined happiness in the world.

I am aware that the subject chosen by me is almost infinite and that in
its broadest sense it is absolutely beyond the present comprehension of
man.

I am also aware that there are many opinions as to what progress really
is, that what one calls progress, another denominates barbarism; that
many have a wonderful veneration for all that is ancient, merely because
it is ancient, and they see no beauty in anything from which they do not
have to blow the dust of ages with the breath of praise.

They say, no masters like the old, no governments like the ancient, no
orators, no poets, no statesmen like those who have been dust for two
thousand years. Others despise antiquity and admire only the modern,
merely because it is modern. They find so much to condemn in the past,
that they condemn all. I hope, however, that I have gratitude enough
to acknowledge the obligations I am under to the great and heroic minds
of antiquity, and that I have manliness and independence enough not
to believe what they said merely because they said it, and that I have
moral courage enough to advocate ideas, however modern they may be, if I
believe that they are right. Truth is neither young nor old, is neither
ancient nor modern, but is the same for all times and places and should
be sought for with ceaseless activity, eagerly acknowledged, loved more
than life, and abandoned—never. In accordance with the idea that labor
is the basis of all prosperity and happiness, is another idea or truth,
and that is, that labor in order to make the laborer and the world at
large happy, must be free. That the laborer must be a free man, the
thinker must be free. I do not intend in what I may say upon this
subject to carry you back to the remotest antiquity,—back to Asia, the
cradle of the world, where we could stand in the ashes and ruins of a
civilization so old that history has not recorded even its decay. It
will answer my present purpose to commence with the Middle Ages. In
those times there was no freedom of either mind or body in Europe. Labor
was despised, and a laborer was considered as scarcely above the beasts.
Ignorance like a mantle covered the world, and superstition ran riot
with the human imagination. The air was filled with angels, demons
and monsters. Everything assumed the air of the miraculous. Credulity
occupied the throne of reason and faith put out the eyes of the soul. A
man to be distinguished had either to be a soldier or a monk. He could
take his choice between killing and lying. You must remember that in
those days nations carried on war as an end, not as a means. War and
theology were the business of mankind. No man could win more than a bare
existence by industry, much less fame and glory. Comparatively speaking,
there was no commerce. Nations instead of buying and selling from and
to each other, took what they wanted by brute force. And every Christian
country maintained that it was no robbery to take the property of
Mohammedans, and no murder to kill the owners with or without just cause
of quarrel. Lord Bacon was the first man of note who maintained that a
Christian country was bound to keep its plighted faith with an Infidel
one. In those days reading and writing were considered very dangerous
arts, and any layman who had acquired the art of reading was suspected
of being a heretic or a wizard.

It is almost impossible for us to conceive of the ignorance, the
cruelty, the superstition and the mental blindness of that period. In
reading the history of those dark and bloody years, I am amazed at the
wickedness, the folly and presumption of mankind. And yet, the solution
of the whole matter is, they despised liberty; they hated freedom of
mind and of body. They forged chains of superstition for the one and of
iron for the other. They were ruled by that terrible trinity, the cowl,
the sword and chain.

You cannot form a correct opinion of those ages without reading the
standard authors, so to speak, of that time, the laws then in force,
and by ascertaining the habits and customs of the people, their mode
of administering the laws, and the ideas that were commonly received
as correct. No one believed that honest error could be innocent; no one
dreamed of such a thing as religious freedom. In the fifteenth century
the following law was in force in England: "That whatsoever they were
that should read the Scriptures in the mother tongue, they should
forfeit land, cattle, body, life, and goods from their heirs forever,
and so be condemned for heretics to God, enemies to the crown, and most
arrant traitors to the land." The next year after this law was in force,
in one day thirty-nine were hanged for its violation and their bodies
afterward burned.

Laws equally unjust, bloody and cruel were in force in all parts of
Europe. In the sixteenth century a man was burned in France because
he refused to kneel to a procession of dirty monks. I could enumerate
thousands of instances of the most horrid cruelty perpetrated upon men,
women and even little children, for no other reason in the world than
for a difference of opinion upon a subject that neither party knew
anything about. But you are all, no doubt, perfectly familiar with the
history of religious persecution.

There is one thing, however, that is strange indeed, and that is that
the reformers of those days, the men who rose against the horrid tyranny
of the times, the moment they attained power, persecuted with a zeal and
bitterness never excelled. Luther, one of the grand men of the world,
cast in the heroic mould, although he gave utterance to the following
sublime sentiment: "Every one has the right to read for himself that he
may prepare himself to live and to die," still had no idea of what we
call religious freedom. He considered universal toleration an error,
so did Melancthon, and Erasmus, and yet, strange as it may appear, they
were exercising the very right they denied to others, and maintaining
their right with a courage and energy absolutely sublime.

John Knox was only in favor of religious freedom when he was in the
minority, and Baxter entertained the same sentiment. Castalio, a
professor at Geneva, in Switzerland, was the first clergyman in Europe
who declared the innocence of honest error, and who proclaimed himself
in favor of universal toleration. The name of this man should never be
forgotten. He had the goodness, the courage, although surrounded with
prisons and inquisitions, and in the midst of millions of fierce bigots,
to declare the innocence of honest error, and that every man had a right
to worship the good God in his own way.

For the utterance of this sublime sentiment his professorship was taken
from him, he was driven from Geneva by John Calvin and his adherents,
although he had belonged to their sect.

He was denounced as a child of the Devil, a dog of Satan, as a murderer
of souls, as a corrupter of the faith, and as one who by his doctrines
crucified the Savior afresh. Not content with merely driving him from
his home, they pursued him absolutely to the grave, with a malignity
that increased rather than diminished. You must not think that Calvin
was alone in this; on the contrary he was fully sustained by public
opinion, and would have been sustained even though he had procured the
burning of the noble Castalio at the stake. I cite this instance not
merely for the purpose of casting odium upon Calvin, but to show you
what public opinion was at that time, when such things were ordinary
transactions. Bodi-nus, a lawyer in France, about the same time
advocated something like religious liberty, but public opinion was
overwhelmingly against him and the people were at all times ready with
torch and brand, chain, and fagot to get the abominable heresy out of
the human mind, that a man had a right to think for himself. And yet
Luther, Calvin, Knox and Baxter, in spite, as it were, of themselves,
conferred a great and lasting benefit upon mankind; for what they did
was at least in favor of individual judgment, and one successful stand
against the church produced others, all of which tended to establish
universal toleration. In those times you will remember that failing to
convert a man or woman by the ordinary means, they resorted to every
engine of torture that the ingenuity of bigotry could devise; they
crushed their feet in what they called iron boots; they roasted them
upon slow fires; they plucked out their nails, and then into the
bleeding quick thrust needles; and all this to convince them of the
truth. I suppose that we should love our neighbor as ourselves.

Montaigne was the first man who raised his voice against torture in
France; a man blessed with so much common sense, that he was the most
uncommon man of the age in which he lived. But what was one voice
against the terrible cry of ignorant millions?—a drowning man in the
wild roar of the infinite sea. It is impossible to read the history of
the long and seemingly hopeless war waged for religious freedom,
without being filled with horror and disgust. Millions of men, women and
children, at least one hundred millions of human beings with hopes and
loves and aspirations like ourselves, have been sacrificed upon the
altar of bigotry. They have perished at the stake, in prisons, by famine
and by sword; they have died wandering, homeless, in deserts, groping
in caves, until their blood cried from the earth for vengeance. But the
principle, gathering strength from their weakness, nourished by blood
and flame, rendered holier still by their sufferings—grander by their
heroism, and immortal by their death, triumphed at last, and is now
acknowledged by the whole civilized world. Enormous as the cost has been
the principle is worth a thousand times as much. There must be freedom
in religion, for without freedom there can be no real religion. And as
for myself I glory in the fact that upon American soil that principle
was first firmly established, and that the Constitution of the United
States was the first of any great nation in which religious toleration
was made one of the fundamental laws of the land. And it is not only
the law of our country but the law is sustained by an enlightened public
opinion. Without liberty there is no religion—no worship. What light
is to the eyes—what air is to the lungs—what love is to the heart,
liberty is to the soul of man. Without liberty, the brain is a dungeon,
where the chained thoughts die with their pinions pressed against the
hingeless doors.

Witchcraft

THE next fact to which I call your attention is, that during the Middle
Ages the people, the whole people, the learned and the ignorant, the
masters and the slaves, the clergy, the lawyers, doctors and statesmen,
all believed in witchcraft—in the evil eye, and that the devil entered
into people, into animals and even into insects to accomplish his dark
designs. And all the people believed it their solemn duty to thwart the
devil by all means in their power, and they accordingly set themselves
at work hanging and burning everybody suspected of being in league with
the Enemy of mankind. If you grant their premises, you justify their
actions. If these persons had actually entered into partnership with the
devil for the purpose of injuring their neighbors, the people would have
been justified in exterminating them all. And the crime of witchcraft
was proven over and over again in court after court in every town of
Europe. Thousands of people who were charged with being in league with
the devil confessed the crime, gave all the particulars of the bargain,
told just what the devil said and what they replied, and exactly how the
bargain was consummated, admitted in the presence of death, on the very
edge of the grave, when they knew that the confession would confiscate
all their property and leave their children homeless wanderers, and
render their own names infamous after death.

We can account for a man suffering death for what he believes to be
right. He knows that he has the sympathy of all the truly good, and he
hopes that his name will be gratefully remembered in the far future, and
above all, he hopes to win the approval of a just God. But the man who
confessed himself guilty of being a wizard, knew that his memory would
be execrated and expected that his soul would be eternally lost. What
motive could then have induced so many to confess? Strange as it is, I
believe that they actually believed themselves guilty. They considered
their case hopeless; they confessed and died without a prayer. These
things are enough to make one think that sometimes the world becomes
insane and that the earth is a vast asylum without a keeper. I repeat
that I am convinced that the people that confessed themselves guilty
believed that they were so. In the first place, they believed in
witchcraft and that people often were possessed of Satan, and when they
were accused the fright and consternation produced by the accusation, in
connection with their belief, often produced insanity or something
akin to it, and the poor creatures charged with a crime that it was
impossible to disprove, deserted and abhorred by their friends, left
alone with their superstitions and fears, driven to despair, looked upon
death as a blessed relief from a torture that you and I cannot at this
day understand. People were charged with the most impossible crimes.
In the time of James the First, a man was burned in Scotland for having
produced a storm at sea for the purpose of drowning one of the royal
family. A woman was tried before Sir Matthew Hale, one of the most
learned and celebrated lawyers of England, for having caused children to
vomit-crooked pins. She was also charged with nursing demons. Of course
she was found guilty, and the learned Judge charged the jury that there
was no doubt as to the existence of witches, that all history, sacred
and profane, and that the experience of every country proved it beyond
any manner of doubt. And the woman was either hanged or burned for a
crime for which it was impossible for her to be guilty. In those times
they also believed in Lycanthropy—that is, that persons of whom the
devil had taken possession could assume the appearance of wolves.

One instance is related where a man was attacked by what appeared to
be a wolf. He defended himself and succeeded in cutting off one of the
wolf's paws, whereupon the wolf ran and the man picked up the paw and
putting it in his pocket went home. When he took the paw out of his
pocket it had changed to a human hand, and his wife sat in the house
with one of her hands gone and the stump of her arm bleeding. He
denounced his wife as a witch, she confessed the crime and was burned
at the stake. People were burned for causing frosts in the summer, for
destroying crops with hail, for causing cows to become dry, and even for
souring beer. The life of no one was secure, malicious enemies had only
to charge one with witchcraft, prove a few odd sayings and queer actions
to secure the death of their victim. And this belief in witchcraft was
so intense that to express a doubt upon the subject was to be suspected
and probably executed. Believing that animals were also taken possession
of by evil spirits and also believing that if they killed an animal
containing one of the evil spirits that they caused the death of the
spirit, they absolutely tried animals, convicted and executed them. At
Basle, in 1474, a rooster was tried, charged with having laid an egg,
and as rooster eggs were used only in making witch ointment it was a
serious charge, and everyone of course admitted that the devil must have
been the cause, as roosters could not very well lay eggs without some
help. And the egg having been produced in court, the rooster was duly
convicted and he together with his miraculous egg were publicly and with
all due solemnity burned in the public square. So a hog and six pigs
were tried for having killed, and partially eaten a child, the hog was
convicted and executed, but the pigs were acquitted on the ground of
their extreme youth. Asiate as 1740 a cow was absolutely tried on a
charge of being possessed of the devil. Our forefathers used to rid
themselves of rats, leeches, locusts and vermin by pronouncing what they
called a public exorcism.

On some occasions animals were received as witnesses in judicial
proceedings.

The law was in some of the countries of Europe, that if a man's house
was broken into between sunset and sunrise and the owner killed the
intruder, it should be considered justifiable homicide.

But it was also considered that it was just possible that a man living
alone might entice another to his house in the night-time, kill him and
then pretend that his victim was a robber. In order to prevent this,
it was enacted that when a person was killed by a man living alone and
under such circumstances, the solitary householder should not be held
innocent unless he produced in court some animal, a dog or a cat, that
had been an inmate of the house and had witnessed the death of the
person killed. The prisoner was then compelled in the presence of such
animal to make a solemn declaration of his innocence, and if the animal
failed to contradict him, he was declared guiltless,—the law taking it
for granted that the Deity would cause a miraculous manifestation by a
dumb animal, rather than allow a murderer to escape. It was the law
in England that any one convicted of a crime, could appeal to what was
called corsned or morsel of execration. This was a piece of cheese or
bread of about an ounce in weight, which was first consecrated with a
form of exorcism desiring that the Almighty, if the man were guilty,
would cause convulsions and paleness, and that it might stick in his
throat, but that it might if the man were innocent, turn to health and
nourishment. Godwin, the Earl of Kent, during the reign of Edward
the Confessor, appealed to the corsned, which sticking in his throat,
produced death. There were also trials by water and by fire. Persons
were made to handle red hot iron, and if it burned them their guilt was
established; so their hands and feet were tied, and they were thrown
into the water, and if they sank they were pronounced guilty and allowed
to drown. I give these instances to show you what has happened, and what
always will happen, in countries where ignorance prevails, and people
abandon the great standard of reason. And also to show to you that
scarcely any man, however great, can free himself of the superstitions
of his time. Kepler, one of the greatest men of the world, and an
astronomer second to none, although he plucked from the stars the
secrets of the universe, was an astrologer and thought he could predict
the career of any man by finding what star was in the ascendant at his
birth. This infinitely foolish stuff was religiously believed by
him, merely because he had been raised in an atmosphere of boundless
credulity. Tycho Brahe, another astronomer who has been, and is called
the prince of astronomers—not only believed in astrology, but actually
kept an idiot in his service, whose disconnected and meaningless words
he carefully wrote down and then put them together in such a manner as
to make prophecies, and then he patiently and confidently awaited their
fulfillment.

Luther believed that he had actually seen the devil not only, but that
he had had discussions with him upon points of theology. On one occasion
getting excited, he threw an inkstand at his majesty's head, and the ink
stain is still to be seen on the wall where the stand was broken.
The devil I believe, was untouched, he probably having an inkling of
Luther's intention, made a successful dodge.

In the time of Charles the Fifth, Emperor of Germany, Stoefflerer, a
noted mathematician and astronomer, a man of great learning, made an
astronomical calculation according to the great science of astrology
and ascertained that the world was to be visited by another deluge. This
prediction was absolutely believed by the leading men of the empire not
only, but of all Europe. The commissioner general of the army of Charles
the Fifth recommended that a survey be made of the country by competent
men in order to find out the highest land. But as it was uncertain how
high the water would rise this idea was abandoned.

Thousands of people left their homes in low lands, by the rivers and
near the sea and sought the more elevated ground. Immense suffering was
produced. People in some instances abandoned the aged, the sick and the
infirm to the tender mercies of the expected flood, so anxious were they
to reach some place of security.

At Toulouse, in France, the people actually built an ark and stocked it
with provisions, and it was not till long after the day upon which the
flood was to have come, had passed, that the people recovered from their
fright and returned to their homes. About the same time it was currently
reported and believed that a child had been born in Silesia with
a golden tooth. The people were again filled with wonder and
consternation. They were satisfied that some great evil was coming upon
mankind. At last it was solved by some chapter in Daniel wherein is
predicted somebody with a golden head. Such stories would never have
gained credence only for the reason that the supernatural was expected.
Anything in the ordinary course of nature was not worth telling. The
human mind was in chains; it had been deformed by slavery. Reason was a
trembling coward, and every production of the mind was deformed, every
idea was a monster. Almost every law was unjust. Their religion was
nothing more or less than monsters worshiping an imaginary monster.
Science could not, properly speaking, exist. Their histories were the
grossest and most palpable falsehoods, and they filled all Europe with
the most shocking absurdities. The histories were all written by the
monks and bishops, all of whom were intensely superstitious, and equally
dishonest. Everything they did was a pious fraud. They wrote as if
they had been eye-witnesses of every occurrence that they related. They
entertained, and consequently expressed, no doubt as to any particular,
and in case of any difficulty they always had a few miracles ready just
suited for the occasion, and the people never for an instant doubted the
absolute truth of every statement that they made. They wrote the history
of every country of any importance. They related all the past and
present, and predicted nearly all the future, with an ignorant impudence
actually sublime. They traced the order of St. Michael in France back
to the Archangel himself, and alleged that he was the founder of a
chivalric order in heaven itself. They also said that the Tartars
originally came from hell, and that they were called Tartars because
Tartarus was one of the names of perdition. They declared that Scotland
was so called after Scota, a daughter of Pharaoh, who landed in Ireland
and afterward invaded Scotland and took it by force of arms. This
statement was made in a letter addressed to the Pope in the 14th century
and was alluded to as a well-known fact. The letter was written by some
of the highest dignitaries of the church and by direction of the king
himself. Matthew, of Paris, an eminent historian of the 13th century,
gave the world the following piece of valuable information: "It is
well known that Mohammed originally was a Cardinal and became a heretic
because he failed in his design of being elected Pope."

The same gentleman informs us that Mohammed having drank to excess fell
drunk by the roadside, and in that condition was killed by pigs. And
this is the reason, says he, that his followers abhor pork even unto
this day. Another historian of about the same period, tells us that one
of the popes cut off his hand because it had been kissed by an improper
person, and that the hand was still in the Lateran at Rome, where it had
been miraculously preserved from corruption for over five hundred years.
After that occurrence, says he, the Pope's toe was substituted, which
accounts for this practice. He also has the goodness to inform his
readers that Nero was in the habit of vomiting frogs. Some of the
croakers of the present day against progress would, I think, be the
better of such a vomit. The history of Charlemagne was written by Turpin
the Archbishop of Rheims, and received the formal approbation of the
Pope. In this it is asserted that the walls of a city fell down in
answer to prayer; that Charlemagne was opposed by a giant called
Fenacute who was a descendant of the ancient Goliath; that forty men
were sent to attack this giant, and that he took them under his arms
and quietly carried them away. At last Orlando engaged him singly; not
meeting with the success that he anticipated, he changed his tactics and
commenced a theological discussion; warming with his subject he pressed
forward and suddenly stabbed his opponent, inflicting a mortal wound.
After the death of the giant, Charlemagne easily conquered the whole
country and divided it among his sons.

The history of the Britons, written by the Archdeacons of Monmouth and
Oxford, was immensely popular. According to their account, Brutus, a
Roman, conquered England, built London, called the country Britain after
himself. During his time it rained blood for three days. At another
time a monster came from the sea, and after having devoured a great many
common people, finally swallowed the king himself. They say that King
Arthur was not born like ordinary mortals, but was formed by a magical
contrivance made by a wizard. That he was particularly lucky in killing
giants, that he killed one in France who used to eat several people
every day, and that this giant was clothed with garments made entirely
of the beards of kings that he had killed and eaten. To cap the climax,
one of the authors of this book was promoted for having written an
authentic history of his country. Another writer of the 15th century
says that after Ignatius was dead they found impressed upon his heart
the Greek word Theos. In all historical compositions there was an
incredible want of common honesty. The great historian Eusebius
ingenuously remarks that in his history he omitted whatever tended to
discredit the church and magnified whatever conduced to her glory.
The same glorious principle was adhered to by most, if not all, of
the writers of those days. They wrote and the people believed that the
tracks of Pharaoh's chariot wheels, were still impressed upon the sands
of the Red Sea and could not be obliterated either by the winds or
waves.

The next subject to which I call your attention is the wonderful
progress in the mechanical arts. Animals use the weapons nature has
furnished, and those only—the beak, the claw, the tusk, the teeth.
The barbarian uses a club, a stone. As man advances he makes tools with
which to fashion his weapons; he discovers the best material to be used
in their construction. The next thing was to find some power to assist
him—that is to say, the weight of falling water, or the force of the
wind. He then creates a force, so to speak, by changing water to steam,
and with that he impels machines that can do almost everything but
think. You will observe that the ingenuity of man is first exercised in
the construction of weapons. There were splendid Damascus blades when
plowing was done with a crooked stick. There were complete suits of
armor on backs that had never felt a shirt. The world was full of
inventions to destroy life before there were any to prolong it or make
it endurable. Murder was always a science—medicine is not one yet.
Scalping was known and practiced long before Barret discovered the Hair
Regenerator. The destroyers have always been honored. The useful have
always been despised. In ancient times agriculture was known only to
slaves. The low, the ignorant, the contemptible, cultivated the soil. To
work was to be nobody. Mechanics were only one degree above the farmer.
In short, labor was disgraceful. Idleness was the badge of gentle blood.
The fields being poorly cultivated produced but little at the best. Only
a few kinds of crops were raised. The result was frequent famine and
constant suffering. One country could not be supplied from another as
now; the roads were always horrible, and besides all this, every country
was at war with nearly every other. This state of things lasted until a
few years ago.

Let me show you the condition of England at the beginning of the
eighteenth century. At that time London was the most populous capital
in Europe, yet it was dirty, ill built, without any sanitary provisions
whatever. The deaths were one in 23 each year. Now in a much more
crowded population they are not one in forty. Much of the country was
then heath and swamp. Almost within sight of London there was a tract,
twenty-five miles round, almost in a state of nature; there were
but three houses upon it. In the rainy season the roads were almost
impassable. Through gullies filled with mud, carriages were dragged by
oxen. Between places of great importance the roads were little
known, and a principal mode of transport was by pack horses, of which
passengers took advantage by stowing themselves away between the packs.
The usual charge for freight was 30 cents per ton a mile. After a while,
what they were pleased to call flying coaches were established. They
could move from thirty to fifty miles a day. Many persons thought the
risk so great that it was tempting Providence to get into one of them.
The mail bag was carried on horseback at five miles an hour. A penny
post had been established in the city, but many long-headed men, who
knew what they were saying, denounced it as a popish contrivance. Only a
few years before, Parliament had resolved that all pictures in the royal
collection which contained representations of Jesus or the Virgin Mary
should be burned. Greek statues were handed over to Puritan stone masons
to be made decent. Lewis Meggleton had given himself out as the last and
the greatest of the prophets, having power to save or damn. He had also
discovered that God was only six feet high and the sun four miles off.
There were people in England as savage as our Indians. The women, half
naked, would chant some wild measure, while the men would brandish their
dirks and dance. There were thirty-four counties without a printer.
Social discipline was wretched. The master flogged his apprentice, the
pedagogue his scholar, the husband his wife; and I am ashamed to say
that whipping has not been abolished in our schools. It is a relic of
barbarism and should not be tolerated one moment. It is brutal, low and
contemptible. The teacher that administers such punishment is no more
to blame than the parents that allow it. Every gentleman and lady
should use his or her influence to do away with this vile and infamous
practice. In those days public punishments were all brutal. Men and
women were put in the pillory and then pelted with brick-bats, rotten
eggs and dead cats, by the rabble. The whipping-post was then an
institution in England as it is now in the enlightened State of
Delaware. Criminals were drawn and quartered; others were disemboweled
and hung and their bodies suspended in chains to rot in the air. The
houses of the people in the country were huts, thatched with straw.
Anybody who could get fresh meat once a week was considered rich.
Children six years old had to labor. In London the houses were of wood
or plaster, the streets filthy beyond expression, even muddier than
Bloomington is now. After nightfall a passenger went about at his peril,
for chamber windows were opened and slop pails unceremoniously emptied.
There were no lamps in the streets, but plenty of highwaymen and
robbers.

The morals of the people corresponded, as they generally do, to their
physical condition. It is said that the clergy did what they could to
make the people pious, but they could not accomplish much. You cannot
convert a man when he is hungry. He will not accept better doctrines
until he gets better clothes, and he won't have more faith till he gets
more food. Besides this, the clergy were a little below par, so much so
that Queen Elizabeth issued an order that no clergyman should presume
to marry a servant girl without the consent of her master or mistress.
During the same time the condition of France and indeed of all Europe
was even worse than England. What has changed the condition of Great
Britain? More than any and everything else, the inventions of her
mechanics. The old moral method was and always will be a failure. If
you wish to better the condition of a people morally, better them
physically. About the close of the 18th Century, Watt, Arkwright,
Hargreave, Crompton, Cartwright, invented the steam engine, the spring
frame, the jenny, the mule, the power loom, the carding machine and a
hundred other minor inventions, and put it in the power of England to
monopolize the markets of the world. Her machinery soon became equal
to 30,000,000 of men. In a few years the population was doubled and
the wealth quadrupled; and England became the first nation of the world
through her inventors, her merchants, her mechanics, and in spite of
her statesmen, her priests and her nobles. England began to spin for
the world, cotton began to be universally worn, clean shirts began to
be seen. The most cunning spinners of India could make a thread over
100 miles long from one pound of cotton. The machines of England have
produced one over 1000 miles in length from the same quantity. In a
short time Stephenson invented the locomotive. Railroads began to be
built. Fulton gave to the world the steamboat, and commerce became
independent of the winds. There are already railroads enough in
the United States to make a double track around the world. Man has
lengthened his arms. He reaches to every country and takes what he
wants; the world is before him; he helps himself. There can be no more
famine. If there is no food in this country, the boat and the car will
bring it from another.

We can have the luxuries of every climate. A majority of the people now
live better than the king used to do. Poor Solomon with his thousand
wives, and no carpets, his great temple, and no gas light! A thousand
women, and not a pin in the house; no stoves, no cooking range, no
baking powder, no potatoes—think of it! Breakfast without potatoes!
Plenty of wisdom and old saws—but no green corn; never heard of
succotash in his whole life. No clean clothes, no music, if you except a
jew's-harp, no ice water, no skates, no carriages, because there was not
a decent road in all his dominions. Plenty of theology but no tobacco,
no books, no pictures, not a picture in all Palestine, not a piece of
statuary, not a plough that would scour. No tea, no coffee; he never
heard of any place of amusement, never was at a theatre, or a circus.
"Seven up" was then unknown to the world. He couldn't even play
billiards, with all his knowledge, never had an idea of woman's rights,
or universal suffrage; never went to school a day in his life, and cared
no more about the will of the people than Andy Johnson.

The inventors have helped more than any other class to make the world
what it is; the workers and the thinkers, the poor and the grand; labor
and learning, industry and intelligence; Watt and Descartes, Fulton
and Montaigne, Stephenson and Kepler, Crompton and Comte, Franklin and
Voltaire, Morse and Buckle, Draper and Spencer, and hundreds more that I
could mention. The inventors, the workers, the thinkers, the mechanics,
the surgeons, the philosophers—these are the Atlases upon whose
shoulders rests the great fabric of modern civilization.

Language

IN order to show you that the most abject superstition pervaded every
department of human knowledge, or of ignorance rather, allow me to give
you a few of their ideas upon language. It was universally believed that
all languages could be traced back to the Hebrew; that the Hebrew was
the original language, and every fact inconsistent with that idea was
discarded. In consequence of this belief all efforts to investigate the
science of language were utterly fruitless. After a time, the Hebrew
idea falling into disrepute, other languages claimed the honor of being
the original ones.

Andre Kempe published a work in 1569, on the language of Paradise,
in which he maintained that God spoke to Adam in Swedish; that Adam
answered in Danish and that the serpent (which appears quite probable)
spoke to Eve in French. Erro, in a book published at Madrid, took the
ground that Basque was the language spoken in the Garden of Eden. But in
1580, Goropius published his celebrated work at Antwerp, in which he put
the whole matter at rest by proving that the language spoken in Paradise
was nothing more or less than plain Holland Dutch. The real founder of
the present science of language was a German, Leibnitz—a contemporary
of Sir Isaac Newton. He discarded the idea that all language could be
traced to an original one. That language was, so to speak, a natural
growth. Actual experience teaches us that this must be true. The ancient
sages of Egypt had a vocabulary, according to Bunsen, of only about six
hundred and eighty-five words, exclusive of proper names. The English
language has at least one hundred thousand.

Geography

IN the 6th century a monk by the name of Cosmas wrote a kind of orthodox
geography and astronomy combined. He pretended that it was all in
accordance with the Bible. According to him, the world was composed,
first, of a flat piece of land and circular; this piece of land was
entirely surrounded by water which was the ocean, and beyond the strip
of water was another circle of land; this outside circle was the land
inhabited by the old world before the flood; Noah crossed the strip of
water and landed on the central piece where we now are; on the outside
land was a high mountain around which the sun and moon revolved; when
the sun was behind the mountain it was night, and when on the side next
us it was day. He also taught that on the outer edge of the outside
circle of land the firmament or sky was fastened, that it was made of
some solid material and turned over the world like an immense kettle.
And it was declared at that time that anyone who believed either more or
less on that subject than that book contained was a heretic and deserved
to be exterminated from the face of the earth. This was authority until
the discovery of America by Columbus. Cosmas said the earth was flat; if
it was round how could men on the other side at the day of judgment see
the coming of the Lord? At the risk of being tiresome, I have said
what I have, to show you the productions of the mind when enslaved—the
consequences of abandoning judgment and reason—the effects of wide
spread ignorance and universal bigotry.

I want to convince you that every wrong is a viper that will sooner or
later strike with poisoned fangs the bosom that nourishes it. You will
ask what has produced this wonderful change in only three hundred
years. You will remember that in those days it was said that all
ghosts vanished at the dawn of day; that the sprites, the spooks,
the hobgoblins and all the monsters of the imagination fled from the
approaching sun. In 1441, printing was invented. In the next century it
became a power, and it has been flooding the world with light from that
time to this. The Press has been the true Prometheus.

It has been, so to speak, the trumpet blown by the Gabriel of Progress,
until, from the graves of ignorance and superstition, the people have
leaped to grand and glorious life, spurning with swift feet the dust of
an infamous past.

When people read, they reason, when they reason they progress. You must
not think that the enemies of progress allowed books to be published
or read when they had the power to prevent it. The whole power of the
church, of the government, was arrayed upon the side of ignorance.
People found in the possession of books were often executed. Printing,
reading and writing were crimes. Anathemas were hurled from the Vatican
against all who dared to publish a word in favor of liberty or the
sacred rights of man. The Inquisition was founded on purpose to crush
out every noble aspiration of the heart. It was a war of darkness
against light, of slavery against liberty, of superstition against
reason. I shall not attempt to recount the horrors and tortures of the
Inquisition. Suffice it to say that they were equal to the most terrible
and vivid pictures even of Hell, and the Inquisitors were even more
horrid fiends than even a real Perdition could boast. But in spite of
priests, in spite of kings, in spite of mitres, in spite of crowns, in
spite of Cardinals and Popes, books were published and books were read.
Beam after beam of light penetrated the darkness. Star after star arose
in the firmament of ignorance. The morning of Freedom began to dawn.
Driven to madness by the prospect of ultimate defeat, the enemies of
light persecuted with redoubled fury.

People were burned for saying that the earth was round, for saying that
the sun was the center of a system. A woman was executed because she
endeavored to allay the pains of a fever by singing. The very name of
Philosopher became a title of proscription, and the slightest offences
were punished by death. About the beginning of the sixteenth century
Luther and Jerome, of Prague, inaugurated the great Reformation in
Germany, Ziska was at work in Hungary, Zwinglius in Switzerland. The
grand work went forward in Denmark, in Sweden and in England. All this
was accomplished as early as 1534. They unmasked the corruption and
withstood the tyranny of the church.

With a zeal amounting to enthusiasm, with a courage that was heroic,
with an energy that never flagged, a determination that brooked no
opposition, with a firmness that defied torture and death, this sublime
band of reformers sprang to the attack. Stronghold after stronghold
was carried, and in a few short but terrible years, the banner of the
Reformation waved in triumph over the bloody ensign of Saint Peter. The
soul roused from the slumbers of a thousand years began to think. When
slaves begin to reason, slavery begins to die. The invention of powder
had released millions from the army, and left them to prosecute the arts
of peace. Industry began to be remunerative and respectable.

Science began to unfold the wings that will finally fill the heavens.
Descartes announced to the world the sublime truth that the Universe is
governed by law.

Commerce began to unfold her wings. People of different countries began
to get acquainted. Christians found that Mohammedan gold was not the
less valuable on account of the doctrines of its owners. Telescopes
began to be pointed toward the stars. The Universe was getting immense.
The Earth was growing small. It was discovered that a man could be
healthy without being a Catholic. Innumerable agencies were at work
dispelling darkness and creating light. The supernatural began to be
abandoned, and mankind endeavored to account for all physical phenomena
by physical laws. The light of reason was irradiating the world, and
from that light, as from the approach of the sun, the ghosts and spectres
of superstition wrapped their sheets around their attenuated bodies and
vanished into thin air. Other inventions rapidly followed. The wonderful
power of steam was made known to the world by Watts and by Fulton.
Neptune was frightened from the sea. The locomotive was given to mankind
by Stephenson; the telegraph by Franklin and Morse. The rush of
the ship, the scream of the locomotive, and the electric flash have
frightened the monsters of ignorance from the world, and have left
nothing above us but the heaven's eternal blue, filled with glittering
planets wheeling through immensity in accordance with Law. True
religion is a subordination of the passions and interests to the
perceptions of the intellect. But when religion was considered the
end of life instead of a means of happiness, it overshadowed all other
interests and became the destroyer of mankind. It became a hydra-headed
monster—a serpent reaching in terrible coils from the heavens and
thrusting its thousand fangs into the bleeding, quivering hearts of men.

Slavery

I HAVE endeavored thus far to show you some of the results produced by
enslaving the human mind. I now call your attention to another terrible
phase of this subject; the enslavement of the body. Slavery is a very
ancient institution, yes, about as ancient as robbery, theft and murder,
and is based upon them all.

Springing from the same fountain, that a man is not the owner of his
soul, is the doctrine that he is not the owner of his body. The two are
always found together, supported by precisely the same arguments, and
attended by the same infamous acts of cruelty. From the earliest
time, slavery has existed in all countries, and among all people until
recently. Pufendorf said that slavery was originally established by
contract. Voltaire replied, "Show me the original contract, and if it is
signed by the party that was to be a slave I will believe you." You
will bear in mind that the slavery of which I am now speaking is white
slavery.

Greeks enslaved one another as well as those captured in war. Coriolanus
scrupled not to make slaves of his own countrymen captured in civil war.

Julius Caesar sold to the highest bidder at onetime fifty-three thousand
prisoners of war all of whom were white. Hannibal exposed to sale thirty
thousand captives at one time, all of whom were Roman citizens. In Rome,
men were sold into bondage in order to pay their debts. In Germany, men
often hazarded their freedom on the throwing of dice. The Barbary States
held white Christians in slavery in this, the 19th century. There were
white slaves in England as late as 1574. There were white slaves in
Scotland until the end of the 18th century.

These Scotch slaves were colliers and salters. They were treated as real
estate and passed with a deed to the mines in which they worked.

It was also the law that no collier could work in any mine except the
one to which he belonged. It was also the law that their children could
follow no other occupation than that of their fathers. This slavery
absolutely existed in Scotland until the beginning of the glorious 19th
century.

Some of the Roman nobles were the owners of as many as twenty thousand
slaves.

The common people of France were in slavery for fourteen hundred years.
They were transferred with land, and women were often seen assisting
cattle to pull the plough, and yet people have the impudence to say that
black slavery is right, because the blacks have always been slaves in
their own country. I answer, so have the whites until very recently. In
the good old days when might was right and when kings and popes stood
by the people, and protected the people, and talked about "holy oil and
divine right," the world was filled with slaves. The traveler standing
amid the ruins of ancient cities and empires, seeing on every side the
fallen pillar and the prostrate wall, asks why did these cities fall,
why did these empires crumble? And the Ghost of the Past, the wisdom of
ages, answers: These temples, these palaces, these cities, the ruins of
which you stand upon were built by tyranny and injustice. The hands that
built them were unpaid. The backs that bore the burdens also bore the
marks of the lash. They were built by slaves to satisfy the vanity and
ambition of thieves and robbers. For these reasons they are dust.

Their civilization was a lie. Their laws merely regulated robbery and
established theft. They bought and sold the bodies and souls of men, and
the mournful winds of desolation, sighing amid their crumbling ruins,
is a voice of prophetic warning to those who would repeat the infamous
experiment. From the ruins of Babylon, of Carthage, of Athens, of
Palmyra, of Thebes, of Rome, and across the great desert, over that sad
and solemn sea of sand, from the land of the pyramids, over the fallen
Sphinx and from the lips of Memnon the same voice, the same warning and
uttering the great truth, that no nation founded upon slavery, either of
body or mind, can stand.

And yet, to-day, there are thousands upon thousands endeavoring to build
the temples and cities and to administer our Government upon the old
plan. They are makers of brick without straw. They are bowing themselves
beneath hods of untempered mortar. They are the babbling builders of
another Babel, a Babel of mud upon a foundation of sand.

Nothwithstanding the experience of antiquity as to the terrible effects
of slavery, bondage was the rule, and liberty the exception, during the
Middle Ages not only, but for ages afterward.

The same causes that led to the liberation of mind also liberated the
body. Free the mind, allow men to write and publish and read, and one by
one the shackles will drop, broken, in the dust. This truth was always
known, and for that reason slaves have never been allowed to read. It
has always been a crime to teach a slave. The intelligent prefer death
to slavery. Education is the most radical abolitionist in the world. To
teach the alphabet is to inaugurate revolution. To build a schoolhouse
is to construct a fort. Every library is an arsenal, and every truth is
a monitor, iron-clad and steel-plated.

Do not think that white slavery was abolished without a struggle. The
men who opposed white slavery were ridiculed, were persecuted, driven
from their homes, mobbed, hanged, tortured and burned. They were
denounced as having only one idea, by men who had none. They were called
fanatics by men who were so insane as to suppose that the laws of a
petty prince were greater than those of the Universe. Crime made faces
at virtue, and honesty was an outcast beggar. In short, I cannot better
describe to you the manner in which the friends of slavery acted at that
time, than by saying that they acted precisely as they used to do in
the United States. White slavery, established by kidnapping and piracy,
sustained by torture and infinite cruelty, was defended to the very
last.

Let me now call your attention to one of the most immediate causes of
the abolition of white slavery in Europe. There were during the Middle
Ages three great classes of people: the common people, the clergy and
the nobility. All these people could, however, be divided into two
classes, namely, the robbed and the robbers. The feudal lords were
jealous of the king, the king afraid of the lords, the clergy always
siding with the stronger party. The common people had only to do the
work, the fighting, and to pay the taxes, as by the law the property of
the nobles was exempt from taxation. The consequence was, in every war
between the nobles and the king, each party endeavored by conciliation
to get the peasants upon their side. When the clergy were on the side
of the king they created dissension between the people and the nobles by
telling them that the nobles were tyrants. When they were on the side of
the nobles they told the people that the king was a tyrant. At last the
people believed both, and the old adage was verified, that when thieves
fall out honest men get their dues.

By virtue of the civil and religious wars of Europe, slavery was
abolished, and the French Revolution, one of the grandest pages in all
history, was, so to speak, the exterminator of white slavery. In that
terrible period the people who had borne the yoke for fourteen hundred
years, rising from the dust, casting their shackles from them, fiercely
avenged their wrongs. A mob of twenty millions driven to desperation,
in the sublimity of despair, in the sacred name of Liberty cried for
vengeance. They reddened the earth with the blood of their masters.
They trampled beneath their feet the great army of human vermin that had
lived upon their labor. They filled the air with the ruins of temples
and thrones, and with bloody hands tore in pieces the altar upon which
their rights had been offered by an impious church. They scorned the
superstitions of the past not only, but they scorned the past; for
the past to them was only wrong, imposition and outrage. The French
Revolution was the inauguration of a new era. The lava of freedom long
buried beneath a mountain of wrong and injustice at last burst forth,
overwhelming the Pompeii and Herculaneum of priestcraft and tyranny. As
soon as white slavery began to decay in Europe, and while the condition
of the white slaves was improving about the middle of the 16th century
in 1541, Alonzo Gonzales, of Portugal, pointed out to his countrymen a
new field of operations, a new market for human flesh, and in a short
time the African slave-trade with all its unspeakable horrors was
inaugurated.

This trade has been the great crime of modern times. It is almost
impossible to conceive that nations who professed to be Christian,
or even in any degree civilized, should have engaged in this infamous
traffic. Yet nearly all of the nations of Europe engaged in the
slave-trade, legalized it, protected it, fostered the practice, and vied
with each other in acts, the bare recital of which is enough to make the
heart stand still.

It has been calculated that for years, at least 400,000 Africans were
either killed or enslaved annually. They crammed their ships so full
of these unfortunate wretches, that, as a general thing, about ten per
cent, died of suffocation on the voyage. They were treated like wild
beasts. In times of danger they were thrown into the sea. Remember that
this horrible traffic commenced in the middle of the 16th century, was
carried on by nations pretending to Christian civilization, and when
do you think it was abolished by some of the principal countries? In
England, Wilberforce and Clarkson dedicated their lives to the abolition
of the slave-trade. They were hated and despised. They persevered for
twenty years, and it was not until the 25th of March, 1808, that
England pronounced the infamous traffic in human flesh illegal, and the
rejoicing in England was redoubled on receiving the news that the United
States had done the same thing. After a time, those engaged in the
slave-trade were declared pirates.

On the 28th day of August, 1833, England abolished slavery throughout
the British Colonies, thus giving liberty to nearly one million slaves.

The United States was then the greatest slave-holding power in the
civilized world.

We are all acquainted with the history of slavery in this country. We
know that it corrupted our people, that it has drenched our land in
fraternal blood, that it has clad our country in mourning for the loss
of 300,000 of her bravest sons; that it carried us back to the darkest
ages of the world, that it led us to the very brink of destruction,
forced us to the shattered gates of eternal ruin, death and
annihilation. But Liberty rising above party prejudice, Freedom lifting
itself above all other considerations,
    "As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,
    Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,—
    Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
    Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

And on the 1st day of January, 1863, the grandest New Year that ever
dawned upon this continent, in accordance with the will of the heroic
North, by the sublime act of one whose name will be sacred through all
the coming years, the justice so long delayed was accomplished, and four
millions of slaves became chainless.

Liberty Triumphed

LIBERTY, that most sacred word, without which all other words are vain,
without which, life is worse than death, and men are beasts! I never see
the word Liberty without seeing a halo of glory around it. It is a word
worthy of the lips of a God. Can you realize the fact that only a
few years ago, the most shocking system of slavery—the most
barbarous—existed in our country, and that you and I were bound by
the laws of the United States to stand between a human being and his
liberty? That we were absolutely compelled by law to hand back that
human being to the lash and chain? That by our laws children were
sold from the arms of mothers, wives sold from their husbands? That we
executed our laws with the assistance of bloodhounds, owned and trained
by human bloodhounds fiercer still, and that all this was not only
upheld by politicians, but by the pretended ministers of Christ?
That the pulpit was in partnership with the auction block—that the
bloodhound's bark was only an echo from many of the churches? And that
this was all done under the sacred name of Liberty, by a republican
government that was founded upon the sublime declaration that all men
are equal? This all seems to me like a horrible dream, a nightmare
of terror, a hellish impossibility. And yet, with cheeks glowing and
burning with shame, before the bar of history, we are forced to plead
guilty to this terrible charge. We made a whip-ping-post of the cross
of Christ. It is true that in a great degree we have atoned for this
national crime. Our bravest and our best have been sacrificed. We have
borne the bloody burden of war. The good and the true have been with us,
and the women of the North have won glory imperishable. They robbed war
of half its terrors. Not content with binding the wreath of victory upon
the leader's brow, they bandaged the soldiers' wounds, they nerved the
living, comforted the dying, and smiled upon the great victory through
their tears.

They have consoled the hero's widow and are educating his orphans. They
have erected a monument to enlightened charity to which time can add
only grandeur. There is much, however, to be accomplished still. Slavery
has been abolished, but Progress requires more. We are called upon to
make this a free government in the broadest sense, to give liberty to
all. Standing in the presence of all history, knowing the experience
of mankind, knowing that the earth is covered with countless wrecks of
cruel failures; appealed to by the great army of martyrs and heroes who
have gone before; by the sacred dust filling innumerable graves; by the
memory of our own noble dead; by all the suffering of the past; by all
the hopes for the future; by all the glorious dead and the countless
millions yet to be, I pray, I beseech, I implore the American people
to lay the foundation of the Government upon the principles of eternal
justice. I pray, I beseech, I implore them to take for the corner-stone,
Universal Human Liberty—the stone which has been heretofore rejected
by all the builders of nations. The Government will then stand, and the
swelling dome of the temple will touch the stars.

Conclusion

I HAVE thus endeavored to show you some of the effects of slavery, and
to prove to you that a step in order to be in the direction of progress
must be in the direction of freedom; that slavery either of body or mind
is barbarism and is practiced and defended only by infamous tyrants or
their dupes. I have endeavored to point out some of the causes of
the abolition of slavery, both of body and mind. There is one truth,
however, that you must not forget, and that is, that every evil tends
to correct and abolish itself. I believe, however, that the diffusion
of knowledge, more than everything else combined, has ameliorated the
condition of mankind. When there was no freedom of speech and no press,
then every idea perished in the brain that gave it birth. One man could
not profit by the thought of another. The experience of the past was
in a great degree unknown. And this state of things produced the same
effect in the mental world, that confining all the water to the springs
would in the physical. Confine the water to the springs, the rivulets
would cease to murmur, the rivers to flow, and the ocean itself would
become a desert of sand. But with the invention of printing, ideas began
to circulate, born of the busy brain of the million—little rivulets of
facts running into rivers of information, and they all flowing into the
great ocean of human knowledge.

This exchange of ideas, this comparison of thought, has given to each
generation the advantage of all the past. This, more than all else, has
enabled man to improve his condition. It is by this that from the log
or piece of bark on which a naked savage floated, we have by successive
improvements created a man-of-war carrying a hundred guns and miles
of canvas. By these means we have changed a handful of sand into a
telescope. In the hands of science a drop of water has become a giant,
turning with swift and tireless arm the countless wheels. The sun has
become an artist painting with shining beams the very thoughts within
our eyes. The elements have been taught to do our bidding, and the
electric spark, freighted with human thought and love, defies distance,
and devours time as it sweeps under all the waves of the sea.

These are some of the results of free thought and free labor. I have
barely alluded to a few—where is improvement to stop? Science is only
in its infancy. It has accomplished all this and is in its cradle still.

We are standing on the shore of an infinite ocean whose countless waves,
freighted with blessings, are welcoming our adventurous feet. Progress
has been written on every soul. The human race is advancing.

Forward, oh sublime army of progress, forward until law is justice,
forward until ignorance is unknown, forward while there is a spiritual
or temporal throne, forward until superstition is a forgotten dream,
forward until the world is free, forward until human reason, clothed in
the purple of authority, is king of kings.
