Part 24 (1/2)
Ingersoll's Lecture on Voltaire
Ladies and Gentlemen: The infidels of one age have often been the aureoled saints of the next.
The destroyers of the old are the creators of the new. As time sweeps on the old pa.s.ses away and the new in its turn becomes of old.
There is in the intellectual world, as in the physical, decay and growth, and ever by the grave of buried age stand youth and joy.
The history of intellectual progress is written in the lives of infidels.
Political rights have been preserved by traitors; the liberty of mind by heretics.
To attack the king was treason; to dispute the priest was blasphemy.
For many years the sword and cross were allies. Together they attacked the rights of man. They defended each other.
The throne and altar were twins--two vultures from the same egg.
James I said: ”No bishop; no king.” He might have added: No cross, no crown. The king owned the bodies of men; the priest, the souls. One lived on taxes collected by force, the other on alms collected by fear--both robbers, both beggars.
These robbers and these beggars controlled two worlds. The king made laws, the priest made creeds. Both obtained their authority from G.o.d, both were the agents of the infinite. With bowed backs the people carried the burdens of one, and with wonder's open mouth received the dogmas of the other. If the people aspired to be free, they were crushed by the king, and every priest was a Herod, who slaughtered the children of the brain.
The king ruled by force, the priest by fear, and both by both. The king said to the people: ”G.o.d made you peasants, and He made me king; He made you to labor, and me to enjoy; He made rags and hovels for you, robes and palaces for me. He made you to obey and me to command. Such is the justice of G.o.d,” And the priest said: ”G.o.d made you ignorant and vile; He made me holy and wise; you are the sheep, I am the shepherd; your fleeces belong to me. If you do not obey me here, G.o.d will punish you now and torment you forever in another world. Such is the mercy of G.o.d.”
”You must not reason. Reason is a rebel. You must not contradict--contradiction is born of egotism; you must believe. He that has ears to hear let him hear. Heaven is a question of ears.”
Fortunately for us, there have been traitors and there have been heretics, blasphemers, thinkers, investigators, lovers of liberty, men of genius, who have given their lives to better the condition of their fellow-men.
It may be well enough here to ask the question: ”What is greatness?”
A great man adds to the sum of knowledge, extends the horizon of thought, releases souls from the Bastille of fear, crosses unknown and mysterious seas, gives new islands and new continents to the domain of thought, new constellations to the firmament of mind. A great man does not seek applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to happiness, and what he ascertains he gives to others. A great man throws pearls before swine, and the swine are sometimes changed to men.
If the great had always kept their pearls, vast mult.i.tudes would be barbarians now.
A great man is a torch in the darkness, a beacon in superst.i.tion's night, an inspiration and a prophecy. Greatness is not the gift of majorities; it cannot be thrust upon any man; men cannot give it to another; they can give place and power, but not greatness. The place does not make the man, nor the sceptre the king. Greatness is from within.
The great men are the heroes who have freed the bodies of men; they are the philosophers and thinkers who have given liberty to the soul; they are the poets who have transfigured the common and filled the lives of many millions with love and song. They are the artists who have covered the bare walls of weary life with the triumphs of genius. They are the heroes who have slain the monsters of ignorance and fear, who have outgazed the Gorgon and driven the cruel G.o.ds from their thrones.
They are the inventors, the discoverers, the great mechanics, the kings of the useful who have civilized this world.
At the head of this heroic army, foremost of all, stands Voltaire, whose memory we are honoring tonight. Voltaire! a name that excites the admiration of men, the malignity of priests. p.r.o.nounce that name in the presence of a clergyman, and you will find that you have made a declaration of war. p.r.o.nounce that name, and from the face of the priest the mask of meekness will fall, and from the mouth of forgiveness will pour a Niagara of vituperation and calumny. And yet Voltaire was the greatest man of his century, and did more for the human race than ally other of the sons of men.
On Sunday, the 21st of November, 1694, a babe was born; a babe exceedingly frail, whose breath hesitated about remaining. This babe became the greatest man of the eighteenth century.
When Voltaire came to this ”great stage of fools,” his country had been christianized--not civilized--for about fourteen hundred years. For a thousand years the religion of peace and good will had been supreme.
The laws had been given by christian kings, sanctioned by ”wise and holy men.”
Under the benign reign of universal love, every court had its chamber of torture, and every priest relied on the thumbscrew and rack. Such had been the success of the blessed gospel that every science was an outcast. To speak your honest thoughts, to teach your fellow men, to investigate for yourself, to seek the truth, these were crimes, and the ”Holy Mother Church” pursued the criminals with sword and flame.
The believers in a G.o.d of love--an infinite father--punished hundreds of offenses with torture and death. Suspected persons were tortured to make them confess. Convicted persons were tortured to make them give the names of their accomplices. Under the leaders.h.i.+p of the church cruelty had become the only reforming power. In this blessed year 1694 all authors were at the mercy of king and priest. The most of them were cast into prisons, impoverished by fines and costs, exiled or executed. The little time that hangmen could s.n.a.t.c.h from professional duties was occupied in burning books. The courts of justice were traps in which the innocent were caught. The judges were almost as malicious and cruel as though they had been bishops or saints. There was no trial by jury, and the rules of evidence allowed the conviction of the supposed criminal by the proof of suspicion or hearsay. The witnesses, being liable to torture, generally told what the judges wished to hear.
When Voltaire was born the church ruled and owned France. It was a period of almost universal corruption. The priests were mostly libertines, the judges cruel and venal. The royal palace was a house of prost.i.tution. The n.o.bles were heartless, proud, arrogant and cruel to the last degree. The common people were treated as beasts. It took the church a thousand years to bring about this happy condition of things.
The seeds of the revolution unconsciously were being scattered by every n.o.ble and by every priest. They were germinating slowly in the hearts of the wretched; they were being watered by the tears of agony; blows began to bear interest. There was a faint longing for blood. Workmen, blackened by the sun, bowed by labor, deformed by want; looked at the white throats of scornful ladies and thought about cutting them. In those days the witnesses were cross-examined with instruments of torture; the church was the a.r.s.enal of superst.i.tion; miracles, relics, angels, and devils were as common as lies.
Voltaire was of the people. In the language of that day, he had no ancestors. His real name was Francois Marie Arouet. His mother was Marguerite d'Aumard. This mother died when he was seven years of age.
He had an elder brother, Armand, who was a devotee, very religious and exceedingly disagreeable. This brother used to present offerings to the church, hoping to make amends for the unbelief of his brother. So far as we know none of his ancestors were literary people. The Arouets had never written a line. The Abbe le Chaulieu was his G.o.dfather, and, although an abbe, was a deist who cared nothing about his religion except in connection with his salary. Voltaire's father wanted to make a lawyer of him, but he had no taste for law. At the age of 10 he entered the college of Louis le Grand. This was a Jesuit school, and here he remained for seven years, leaving at 17, and never attending any other school. According to Voltaire he learned nothing at this school but a little Greek, a good deal of Latin, and a vast amount of nonsense.