The Ghosts, and Other LecturesIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Ghosts, and Other Lectures
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
And from that same book I want to show you what ideas some of these
miserable heathen had; the heathen we are trying to convert. We send
missionaries over yonder to convert heathen there, and we send soldiers
out on the plains to kill heathen here. If we can convert the heathen,
why not convert those nearest home? Why not convert those we can get at?
Why not convert those who have the immense advantage of the example of
the average pioneer? But to show you the men we are trying to convert:
In this book it says: "Man is strength, woman is beauty; man is courage,
woman is love. When the one man loves the one woman and the one woman
loves the one man, the very angels leave heaven and come and sit in that
house and sing for joy."
They are the men we are converting. Think of it! I tell you, when I read
these things, I say that love is not of any country; nobility does not
belong exclusively to any race, and through all the ages, there have
been a few great and tender souls blossoming in love and pity.
In my judgment, the woman is the equal of the man. She has all the
rights I have and one more, and that is the right to be protected. That
is my doctrine. You are married; try and make the woman you love happy.
Whoever marries simply for himself will make a mistake; but whoever
loves a woman so well that he says "I will make her happy," makes no
mistake. And so with the woman who says, "I will make him happy." There
is only one way to be happy, and that is to make somebody else so, and
you cannot be happy by going cross lots; you have got to go the regular
turnpike road.
If there is any man I detest, it is the man who thinks he is the head
of a family--the man who thinks he is "boss!" The fellow in the dug-out
used that word "boss;" that was one of his favorite expressions.
Imagine a young man and a young woman courting, walking out in the
moonlight, and the nightingale singing a song of pain and love, as
though the thorn touched her heart--imagine them stopping there in the
moonlight and starlight and song, and saying, "Now, here, let us settle
who is 'boss!'" I tell you it is an infamous word and an infamous
feeling--I abhor a man who is "boss," who is going to govern in his
family, and when he speaks orders all the rest to be still as some
mighty idea is about to be launched from his mouth. Do you know I
dislike this man unspeakably?
I hate above all things a cross man. What right has he to murder the
sunshine of a day? What right has he to assassinate the joy of life?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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