By: DAVID RICE
Re: Blasphemy Trial

Robert Green Ingersoll, "TRIAL OF C.B. REYNOLDS FOR BLASPHEMY."


What is blasphemy? I will give you a definition; I will
give you my thought upon this subject. What is real
blasphemy?

To live on the unpaid labor of other men -- that is
blasphemy.

To enslave your fellow-man, to put chains upon his body --
that is blasphemy.

To enslave the minds of men, to put manacles upon the
brain, padlocks upon the lips -- that is blasphemy.

To deny what you believe to be true, to admit to be true
what you believe to be a lie -- that is blasphemy.

To strike the weak and unprotected, in order that you may
gain the applause of the ignorant and superstitious mob --
that is blasphemy.

To persecute the intelligent few, at the command of the
ignorant many -- that is blasphemy.

To forge chains, to build dungeons, for your honest
fellow-men -- that is blasphemy.

To pollute the souls of children with the dogma of eternal
pain -- that is blasphemy.

To violate your conscience -- that is blasphemy.

The jury that gives an unjust verdict, and the judge who
pronounces an unjust sentence, are blasphemers.

The man who bows to public opinion against his better
judgment and against his honest conviction, is a
blasphemer.

Why should we fear our fellow-men? Why should not each
human being have the right, so far as thought and its
expression are concerned, of all the world? What harm can
come from an honest interchange of 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 of 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 bastille 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.


... Blasphemy is what an old mistake says of a newly discovered truth.
* Shy.David@EdenBBS.com
--- Silver Xpress Mail System 5.4H1
 * Origin: "She blinded me with science!" (1:124/9005)