The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 04 (of 12): Dresden Edition—LecturesIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 04 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Lectures
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
Let us take another step. The barbaric world was to be rewarded in some
other world for acting sensibly in this. They were promised rewards in
another world, if they would only have self-denial enough to be virtuous
in this. If they would forego the pleasures of larceny and murder; if
they would forego the thrill and bliss of meanness here, they would be
rewarded hereafter for that self-denial. I have exactly the opposite
idea. Do right, not to deny yourself, but because you love yourself and
because you love others. Be generous, because it is better for you. Be
just, because any other course is the suicide of the soul. Whoever does
wrong plagues himself, and when he reaps that harvest, he will find that
he was not practicing self-denial when he did right.
If you want to be happy yourself, if you are truly civilized, you want
others to be happy. Every man ought, to the extent of his ability,
to increase the happiness of mankind, for the reason that that will
increase his own. No one can be really prosperous unless those with whom
he lives share the sunshine and the joy.
The first thing a man wants to know and be sure of is when he has got
enough. Most people imagine that the rich are in heaven, but, as a rule,
it is only a gilded hell. There is not a man in the city of New York
with genius enough, with brains enough, to own five millions of dollars.
Why? The money will own him. He becomes the key to a safe. That money
will get him up at daylight; that money will separate him from his
friends; that money will fill his heart with fear; that money will rob
his days of sunshine and his nights of pleasant dreams. He cannot own
it. He becomes the property of that money. And he goes right on making
more. What for? He does not know. It becomes a kind of insanity. No one
is happier in a palace than in a cabin. I love to see a log house. It is
associated in my mind always with pure, unalloyed happiness. It is the
only house in the world that looks as though it had no mortgage on it.
It looks as if you could spend there long, tranquil autumn days; the
air filled with serenity; no trouble, no thoughts about notes, about
interest--nothing of the kind; just breathing free air, watching the
hollyhocks, listening to the birds and to the music of the spring that
comes like a poem from the earth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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