THE LIMITATIONS OF TOLERATION.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Ingersoll, Robert Green and Widger, David
So when anybody goes into his family and tells these great and shining truths, instead of debauching his children they will kill the snakes that crawl in their cradles. Let us be honest and free.
And now, coming to the second gentleman. He is a Protestant. The Catholic Church says: "Don't think; pay your fare; this is a through ticket, and we will look out for your baggage." The Protestant Church says: "Read that Bible for yourselves; think for yourselves; but if you do not come to a right conclusion you will be eternally damned." Any sensible man will say, "Then I won't read it—I'll believe it without reading it." And that is the only way you can be sure you will believe it; don't read it.
Governor Woodford says that we are responsible for our thoughts. Why? Could you help thinking as you did on this subject? No, Could you help believing the Bible? I suppose not. Could you help believing that story of Jonah? Certainly not—it looks reasonable in Brooklyn.
I stated that thought was the result of the impressions of nature upon the mind through the medium of the senses. He says you cannot have thought without memory. How did you get the first one?
Of course I intended to be understood—and the language is clear—that there could be no thought except through the impressions made upon the brain by nature through the avenues called the senses. Take away the senses, how would you think then? If you thought at all, I think you would agree with Mr. Coudert.
Now, I admit—so we need never have a contradiction about it—I admit that every human being is responsible to the person he injures. If he injures any man, woman, or child, or any dog, or the lowest animal that crawls, he is responsible to that animal, to that being—in other words, he is responsible to any being that he has injured.
But you cannot injure an infinite Being, if there be one. I will tell you why. You cannot help him, and you cannot hurt him. If there be an infinite Being, he is conditionless—he does not want anything—he has it. You cannot help anybody that does not want something—you cannot help him. You cannot hurt anybody unless he is a conditioned being and you change his condition so as to inflict a harm. But if God be conditionless, you cannot hurt him, and you cannot help him. So do not trouble yourselves about the Infinite. All our duties lie within reach—all our duties are right here; and my religion is simply this:
First. Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.
Second. If you tell your thought at all, tell your honest thought. Do not be a parrot—do not be an instrumentality for an organization. Tell your own thought, honor bright, what you think.
My next idea is, that the only possible good in the universe is happiness. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to try and make somebody else so.
My good friend General Woodford—and he is a good man telling the best he knows—says that I will be accountable at the bar up yonder. I am ready to settle that account now, and expect to be, every moment of my life—and when that settlement comes, if it does come, I do not believe that a solitary being can rise and say that I ever injured him or her.
But no matter what they say. Let me tell you a story, how we will settle if we do get there.
You remember the story told about the Mexican who believed that his country was the only one in the world, and said so. The priest told him that there was another country where a man lived who was eleven or twelve feet high, that made the whole world, and if he denied it, when that man got hold of him he would not leave a whole bone in his body. But he denied it. He was one of those men who would not believe further than his vision extended.
So one day in his boat, he was rocking away when the wind suddenly arose and he was blown out of sight of his home. After several days he was blown so far that he saw the shores of another country. Then he said, "My Lord; I am gone! I have been swearing all my life that there was no other country, and here it is!" So he did his best—paddled with what little strength he had left, reached the shore, and got out of his boat. Sure enough, there came down a man to meet him about twelve feet high. The poor little wretch was frightened almost to death, so he said to the tall man as he saw him coming down: "Mister, whoever you are, I denied your existence—I did not believe you lived; I swore there was no such country as this; but I see I was mistaken, and I am gone. You are going to kill me, and the quicker you do it the better and get me out of my misery. Do it now!"
The great man just looked at the little fellow, and said nothing, till he asked, "What are you going to do with me, because over in that other country I denied your existence?" "What am I going to do with you?" said the supposed God. "Now that you have got here, if you behave yourself I am going to treat you well."