The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 11 (of 12): Dresden Edition—MiscellanyIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 11 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Miscellany
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
Now, let us turn the tables. A gentleman comes from Turkey to
Morristown. He has got a pamphlet. He says, "The Koran is the inspired
book, Mohammed is the real prophet, your Bible is false and your Savior
simply a myth." Thereupon the Morristown people put him in jail.
Then what would the Turks say? They would say, "Morristown needs more
missionaries," and I would agree with them.
In other words, what we want is intellectual hospitality. Let the
world talk. And see how foolish this trial is. I have no doubt that the
prosecuting attorney-agrees with me to-day, that whether this law is
good or bad, this trial should not have taken place. And let me tell you
why. Here comes a man into your town and circulates a pamphlet. Now,
if they had just kept still, very few would ever have heard of it. That
would have been the end. The diameter of the echo would have been a few
thousand feet. But in order to stop the discussion of that question,
they indicted this man, and that question has been more discussed in
this country since this indictment than all the discussions put together
since New Jersey was first granted to Charles II.'s dearest brother
James, the Duke of York.. And what else? A trial here that is to be
reported and published all over the United States, a trial that will
give Mr. Reynolds a congregation of fifty millions of people. And yet
this was done for the purpose of stopping a discussion of this subject.
I want to show you that the thing is in itself almost idiotic--that it
defeats itself, and that you cannot crush out these things by force. Not
only so, but Mr. Reynolds has the right to be defended, and his counsel
has the right to give his opinions on this subject.
Suppose that we put Mr. Reynolds in jail. The argument has not been sent
to jail. That is still going the rounds, free as the winds. Suppose you
keep him at hard labor a year--all the time he is there, hundreds and
thousands of people will be reading some account, or some fragment, of
this trial. There is the trouble. If you could only imprison a thought,
then intellectual tyranny might succeed. If you could only take an
argument and put a striped suit of clothes on it--if you could only
take a good, splendid, shining fact and lock it up in some dungeon of
ignorance, so that its light would never again enter the mind of man,
then you might succeed in stopping human progress. Otherwise, no.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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