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
I have been giving you my real ideas. I have spoken freely, and yet
the sun rose this morning, just the same as it always has. There is no
particular change visible in the world, and I do not see but that we are
all as happy to-day as though we had spent yesterday in making somebody
else miserable. I denounced on yesterday the superstitions of the
Christian world, and yet, last night I slept the sleep of peace. You
will pardon me for saying again that I feel the greatest possible
interest in the result of this trial, in the principle at stake. This is
my only apology, my only excuse, for taking your time. For years I
have felt that the great battle for human liberty, the battle that has
covered thousands of fields with heroic dead, had finally been won. When
I read the history of this world, of what has been endured, of what has
been suffered, of the heroism and infinite courage of the intellectual
and honest few, battling with the countless serfs and slaves of kings
and priests, of tyranny, of hypocrisy, of ignorance and prejudice, of
faith and fear, there was in my heart the hope that the great battle had
been fought, and that the human race, in its march towards the dawn, had
passed midnight, and that the "great balance weighed up morning." This
hope, this feeling, gave me the greatest possible joy. When I thought
of the many who had been burnt, of how often the sons of liberty had
perished in ashes, of how many o! the noblest and greatest had stood
upon scaffolds, and of the countless hearts, the grandest that ever
throbbed in human breasts, that had been broken by the tyranny of church
and state, of how many of the noble and loving had sighed themselves
away in dungeons, the only consolation was that the last bastile had
fallen, that the dungeons of the Inquisition had been torn down and that
the scaffolds of the world could no longer be wet with heroic blood.
You know that sometimes, after a great battle has been fought, and one
of the armies has been broken, and its fortifications carried, there
are occasional stragglers beyond the great field, stragglers who know
nothing of the fate of their army, know nothing of the victory, and for
that reason, fight on. There are a few such stragglers in the State of
New Jersey. They have never heard of the great victory. They do not know
that in all civilized countries the hosts of superstition have been put
to flight. They do not know that Freethinkers, Infidels, are to-day the
leaders of the intellectual armies of the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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