The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 06 (of 12): Dresden Edition—DiscussionsIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 06 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Discussions
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
Is it not perfectly apparent that you have changed the issue, and that
instead of showing that opinions are creatures of the will, you have
discussed the quality of actions? What have corrupt and cruel judgments
pronounced by corrupt and cruel judges to do with their real opinions?
When a judge forms one opinion and renders another he is called corrupt.
The corruption does not consist in forming his opinion, but in rendering
one that he did not form. Does a dishonest creditor, who incorrectly
adds a number of items making the aggregate too large, necessarily
change his opinion as to the relations of numbers? When an error is
known, it is not a mistake; but a conclusion reached by a mistake, or by
a prejudice, or by both, is a necessary conclusion. He who pretends to
come to a conclusion by a mistake which he knows is not a mistake, knows
that he has not expressed his real opinion.
Can any thing be more illogical than the assertion that because a boy
reaches, through negligence in adding figures, a wrong result, that
he is accountable for his opinion of the result? If he knew he was
negligent, what must his opinion of the result have been?
So with the man who boldly announces that he has discovered the
numerical expression of the relation sustained by the diameter to the
circumference of a circle. If he is honest in the announcement, then the
announcement was caused not by his will but by his ignorance. His will
cannot make the announcement true, and he could not by any possibility
have supposed that his will could affect the correctness of his
announcement. The will of one who thinks that he has invented or
discovered what is called perpetual motion, is not at fault. The man, if
honest, has been misled; if not honest, he endeavors to mislead others.
There is prejudice, and prejudice does raise a clamor, and the intellect
is affected and the judgment is darkened and the opinion is deformed;
but the prejudice is real and the clamor is sincere and the judgment is
upright and the opinion is honest.
The intellect is not always supreme. It is surrounded by clouds.
It sometimes sits in darkness. It is often misled--sometimes, in
superstitious fear, it abdicates. It is not always a white light. The
passions and prejudices are prismatic--they color thoughts. Desires
betray the judgment and cunningly mislead the will.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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