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Ingersoll on VOLTAIRE from the Works of Robert G Ingersoll Volume 3 Lecture 4 - Robert G Ingersoll · Sacred Texts Archive

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  Speaker 1: Part one of Ingersoll on Voltaire from the works of
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  Speaker 1: Robert g Ingersoll, Volume three, Lecture four. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: This recording is by Michel Frye Baton Rouge, Louisiana in
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  Speaker 1: March two thousand, twenty. Ingersoll on Voltaire, Part one introduction.
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  Speaker 1: The infidels of one age have often been the arii
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  Speaker 1: old saints of the next. The destroyers of the old
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  Speaker 1: are the creators of the new. As time sweeps on,
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  Speaker 1: the old passes away, and the new, in its turn,
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  Speaker 1: becomes old. There is in the intellectual world, as in
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  Speaker 1: the physical, decay and growth, and ever by the grave
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  Speaker 1: of the buried age stand youth and joy. The history
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  Speaker 1: of intellectual progress is written in the lives of infidels.
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  Speaker 1: Political rights have been preserved by traitors, the liberty of
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  Speaker 1: mind by heretics. To attack the king was treason. To
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  Speaker 1: dispute the priest was blasphemy. For many centuries, the sword
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  Speaker 1: and cross were allies. Together they attacked the rights of man,
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  Speaker 1: They defended each other. The throne and altar were twins,
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  Speaker 1: two vultures from the same egg. James. The first said,
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  Speaker 1: no bishop, no king. He might have added, no cross,
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  Speaker 1: no crown. The king owned the bodies of men, the priests,
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  Speaker 1: the souls. One lived on taxes collected by force, the
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  Speaker 1: other on alms collected by fear. Both robbers, both beggars.
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  Speaker 1: These robbers and these beggars controlled two worlds. The king
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  Speaker 1: made laws, the priest made creeds. Both obtained their authority
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  Speaker 1: from God. Both were the age of the infinite. With
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  Speaker 1: bowed backs, the people carried the burdens of the one,
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  Speaker 1: and with wonder's open mouth, received the dogmas of the other.
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  Speaker 1: If the people aspired to be free, they were crushed
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  Speaker 1: by the king. And every priest was a herod who
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  Speaker 1: slaughtered the children of the brain. The king ruled by force,
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  Speaker 1: the priest by fear, and both by both. The king
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  Speaker 1: said to the people, God made you peasants, and he
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  Speaker 1: made me king. He made you to labor and me
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  Speaker 1: to enjoy. He made rags and hobbls for you, robes
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  Speaker 1: and palaces for me. He made you to obey and
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  Speaker 1: me to command. Such is the justice of God. And
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  Speaker 1: the priest said, God made you ignorant and vile. He
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  Speaker 1: made me holy and wise. You are the sheep. I
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  Speaker 1: am the shepherd. Your fleeces belong to me. If you
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  Speaker 1: do not obey me here, God will punish you now
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  Speaker 1: and torment you forever in another world. Such is the
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  Speaker 1: mercy of God. You must not reason. Reason is a rebel.
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  Speaker 1: You must not contradict. Contradiction is born of egotism. You
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  Speaker 1: must believe He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
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  Speaker 1: Heaven was a question of ears. Fortunately for us, there
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  Speaker 1: have been traitors, and there have been heretics, blesphemers, thinkers, investigators,
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  Speaker 1: lovers of liberty, men of genius, who have given their
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  Speaker 1: lives to better the condition of their fellow men. It
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  Speaker 1: may be well enough here to ask the question what
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  Speaker 1: is greatness? A great man adds to the sum of knowledge,
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  Speaker 1: extends the horizon of thought, releases souls from the bestial
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  Speaker 1: of fear, crosses unknown and mysterious seas, gives new islands
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  Speaker 1: and new continents to the domain of thought, new constellations
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  Speaker 1: to the firmament of mind. A great man does not
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  Speaker 1: seek applause or place. He seeks for truth. He seeks
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  Speaker 1: the road to happiness, and what he ascertains he gives
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  Speaker 1: to others. A great man throws pearls before swine, and
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  Speaker 1: the swine are sometimes changed to men. If the great
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  Speaker 1: had always kept their pearls, vast multitudes would be barbarians.
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  Speaker 1: Now a great man is a torch in the darkness,
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  Speaker 1: a beacon in superstition's night, an inspiration, and a prophecy.
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  Speaker 1: Greatness is not the gift of majorities. It cannot be
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  Speaker 1: thrust upon any man. Man cannot give it to another.
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  Speaker 1: They can give place and power, but not greatness. The
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  Speaker 1: place does not make the man, nor the scepter the king.
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  Speaker 1: Greatness is from within. The great men are the heroes
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  Speaker 1: who have freed the bodies of men. They are the
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  Speaker 1: philosophers and thinkers who have given liberty to the soul.
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  Speaker 1: They are the poets who have transfigured the common and
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  Speaker 1: filled the lives of many millions with love and song.
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  Speaker 1: They are the artists who have covered the bare walls
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  Speaker 1: of weary life with the triumphs of genius. They are
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  Speaker 1: the heroes who have slain the monsters of ignorance and fear,
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  Speaker 1: who have outgazed the gorgon and deriven the cruel gods
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  Speaker 1: from their thrones. They are the inventors, the discoverers, the
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  Speaker 1: great mechanics, the kings of the useful, who have civilized
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  Speaker 1: this world. At the head of this heroic army, for
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  Speaker 1: most of all, stands Voltaire, whose memory we are honoring
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  Speaker 1: to night. Voltaire, a name that excites the admiration of men,
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  Speaker 1: the malignity of priests. Pronounce that name in the presence
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  Speaker 1: of a clergyman, and you will find that you have
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  Speaker 1: made a declaration of war. Pronounce that name, and from
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  Speaker 1: the face of the priest, the mask of meekness will fall,
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  Speaker 1: and from the mouth of forgiveness will pour a niagara
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  Speaker 1: of vituperation and calumny. And yet Voltaire was the greatest
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  Speaker 1: man of his century, and did more to free the
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  Speaker 1: human race than any other of the sons of men.
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  Speaker 1: On Sunday, the twenty first of November sixteen ninety four,
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  Speaker 1: a babe was born, a babe so exceedingly frailed that
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  Speaker 1: the breath hesitated about remaining, and the parents had him
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  Speaker 1: baptized as soon as possible. They were anxious to save
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  Speaker 1: the soul of this babe, and they knew that if
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  Speaker 1: death came before baptism, the child would be doomed to
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  Speaker 1: an eternity of pain. They knew that God despised an
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  Speaker 1: unsprinkled child. The priest who, with a few drops of
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  Speaker 1: water gave the name of Frossois Marie Arouet to this
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  Speaker 1: babe and saved his soul, little thought that before him,
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  Speaker 1: wrapped in many folds, weakly wailing, scarcely breathing, was the
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  Speaker 1: one destined to tear from the white throat of liberty,
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  Speaker 1: the cruel, murderous clause of the triumphant beast. When Voltaire
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  Speaker 1: came to this great stage of fools, his country had
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  Speaker 1: been christianized, not civilized, for about fourteen hundred years. For
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  Speaker 1: a thousand years, the religion of peace and good will
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  Speaker 1: had been supreme. The laws had been given by Christian
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  Speaker 1: kings and sanctioned by wise and holy men. Under the
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  Speaker 1: benign reign of universal love. Every court had its chamber
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  Speaker 1: of torture, and every priest relied on the thumbscrew and
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  Speaker 1: the rack. Such had been the success of the blessed Gospel,
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  Speaker 1: that every science was an outcast. To speak your honest thoughts,
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  Speaker 1: to teach your fellow men, to investigate for yourself, to
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  Speaker 1: seek the truth. These were all crimes, and the Holy
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  Speaker 1: Mother Church pursued the criminals with sword and flame. The
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  Speaker 1: believers in a God of love and infinite Father punished
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  Speaker 1: hundreds of offenses with torture and death. Suspected persons were
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  Speaker 1: tortured to make them confess. Convicted persons were tortured to
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  Speaker 1: make them give the names of their accomplices. Under the
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  Speaker 1: leadership of the Church, cruelty had become the only reforming power.
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  Speaker 1: In this blessed year sixteen ninety four, all authors were
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  Speaker 1: at the mercy of king and priests. The most of
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  Speaker 1: them were cast into prisons, impoverished by fines and costs, exiled,
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  Speaker 1: or executed. The little time that Hayman could snatch from
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  Speaker 1: professional duties was occupied in burning books. The courts of
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  Speaker 1: justice were traps in which the innocent were caught. The
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  Speaker 1: judges were almost as malicious and cruel as though they
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  Speaker 1: had been bishops or saints. There was no trial by jury,
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  Speaker 1: and the rules of evidence allowed the conviction of the
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  Speaker 1: supposed criminal by the proof of suspicion or a hearsay.
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  Speaker 1: The witness, being liable to be tortured, generally told what
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  Speaker 1: the judges wished to hear the supernatural and the miraculous
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  Speaker 1: controlled the world. Everything was explained, but nothing was understood.
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  Speaker 1: The Church was at the head. The sick bought from
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  Speaker 1: monks little amulets of consecrated paper. They did not send
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  Speaker 1: for a doctor, but for a priest, and the priest's
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  Speaker 1: sold the disease and the dying, and these magical amulets,
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  Speaker 1: these little pieces of paper, with the help of some saint,
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  Speaker 1: would cure diseases of every kind. If you would put
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  Speaker 1: one in a cradle, it would keep the child from
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  Speaker 1: being bewitched. If you would put one in the barn,
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  Speaker 1: the rats would not eat your corn. If you would
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  Speaker 1: keep one in the house, evil spirits would not enter
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  Speaker 1: your doors. And if you buried them in the fields,
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  Speaker 1: you would have good weather. The frost would be delayed,
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  Speaker 1: rain would come when needed, and abundant crops would bless
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  Speaker 1: your labor. The church insisted that all diseases could be
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  Speaker 1: cured in the name of God, and that these cures
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  Speaker 1: could be affected by prayers, exorcism, by touching bones of saints,
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  Speaker 1: pieces of the true Cross, by being sprinkled with holy
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  Speaker 1: water or with sanctified salt, or touched with magical oil.
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  Speaker 1: In that day, the dead saints were the best physicians.
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  Speaker 1: Saint Valentine cured the epilepsy. Saint Jervasius was exceedingly good
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  Speaker 1: for rheumatism, Saint Michael for cancer, Saint Judas for coughs
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  Speaker 1: and colds. Saint Ovidius restored the hearing. Saint Sebastian was
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  Speaker 1: good for bites of snakes and the stings of poisonous insects,
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  Speaker 1: Saint Apollonia for toothache, Saint Clara for any trouble with
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  Speaker 1: the eyes, and Saint Hubert for hydrophobia. It was known
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  Speaker 1: that doctors reduced the revenues of the church. That was enough.
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  Speaker 1: Science was the enemy of religion. The Church thought that
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  Speaker 1: the air was filled with devils, that every sinner was
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  Speaker 1: a kind of tenement house inhabited by evil spirits, that
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  Speaker 1: angels were on one side of men and evil spirits
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  Speaker 1: on the other, and that God would, when the subscription
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  Speaker 1: and donations justify the effort, drive the evil spirits from
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  Speaker 1: the field. Satan had power over the air. Consequently, he
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  Speaker 1: controlled the frost, the mildew, the lightning, and the flood.
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  Speaker 1: And the principal business of the church was with bells
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  Speaker 1: and holy water and incense and crosses to defeat the
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  Speaker 1: machinations of that prince. Of the power of the air.
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  Speaker 1: Great reliance was placed upon the bells. They were sprinkled
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  Speaker 1: with holy water, and their clangor cleared the air of
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  Speaker 1: imps and fiends. And bells also protected the people from
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  Speaker 1: storms and lightning. In that day, the Church used to
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  Speaker 1: anathematize insects. Suits were commenced against rats, and judgment rendered.
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  Speaker 1: Every monastery had its master magician, who sold incense and
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  Speaker 1: salt and tapers, and consecrated palms and relics. Every science
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  Speaker 1: was regarded as an enemy. Every fact held the creed
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  Speaker 1: of the Church in scorn. Investigators were regarded as dangerous,
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  Speaker 1: thinkers were traitors, and the church Church exerted its vast
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  Speaker 1: power to prevent the intellectual progress of man. There was
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  Speaker 1: no real liberty, no real education, no real philosophy, no
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  Speaker 1: real science, nothing but credulity and superstition. The world was
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  Speaker 1: under the control of Satan and the Church. The Church
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  Speaker 1: firmly believed in the existence of witches and devils and fiends.
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  Speaker 1: In this way, the Church had every enemy within her power.
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  Speaker 1: It simply had to charge him with being a wizard
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  Speaker 1: of holding communications with devils, and the ignorant mob were
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  Speaker 1: ready to tear him to pieces. So prevalent was this belief,
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  Speaker 1: this belief in the supernatural, that the poor people were
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  Speaker 1: finally driven to make the best possible terms they could
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  Speaker 1: with the spirit of evil. This frightful doctrine filled every
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  Speaker 1: friend with suspicion of his friend, and made the husband
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  Speaker 1: denounce the wife, children, their parents, parents, their children. It
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  Speaker 1: destroyed the amenities of humanity. It did away with justice
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  Speaker 1: in courts, It broke the bonds of friendship. It filled
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  Speaker 1: with poison the golden cup of life. It turned earth
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  Speaker 1: into a very perdition, peopled with abominable, malicious, and hideous fiends.
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  Speaker 1: Such was the result of a belief in the supernatural.
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  Speaker 1: Such was the result of giving up the evidence of
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  Speaker 1: their own senses and relying upon dreams, visions, and fears.
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  Speaker 1: Such was the result of the attack upon the human reason.
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  Speaker 1: Such the result of depending on the imagination on the supernatural.
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  Speaker 1: Such the result of living in this world for another,
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  Speaker 1: of depending upon priests instead of upon ourselves. The Protestants
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  Speaker 1: vied with Catholics. Luther stood side by side with the priests.
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  Speaker 1: He had deserted in promoting this belief in devils and fiends.
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  Speaker 1: To the Catholic, every Protestant was possessed by a devil.
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  Speaker 1: To the Protestant, every Catholic was the home of a fiend.
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  Speaker 1: All order, all regular succession of causes and effects were
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  Speaker 1: known no more. The naturals ceased to exist. The learned
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  Speaker 1: and the ignorant were on a level. The priest was
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  Speaker 1: caught in the net he had spread for the peasant,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: and Christendom became a vast mad house with the insane
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  Speaker 1: for keepers. When Voltaire was born, the Church ruled and
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  Speaker 1: owned France. It was a period of almost universal corruption.
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  Speaker 1: The priests were mostly libertines, the judges cruel and venal.
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  Speaker 1: The royal palace was a house of prostitution. The nobles
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: were heartless, proud, arrogant, and cruel to the last degree.
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  Speaker 1: The common people were treated as beasts. It took the
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  Speaker 1: Church a thousand years to bring about this happy condition
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  Speaker 1: of things. The seeds of revolution unconsciously were being scattered
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  Speaker 1: by every noble and by every priest. They were germinating
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: slowly in the hearts of the wretched. They were being
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: watered by the tears of of agony, blows began to
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  Speaker 1: bear interest. There was a faint longing for blood. Workmen
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  Speaker 1: blackened by the sun, bowed by labor, deformed by want,
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  Speaker 1: looked at the white throats of scornful ladies and thought
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  Speaker 1: about cutting them. In those days, witnesses were cross examined
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  Speaker 1: with instruments of torture. The church was the arsenal of superstition. Miracles, relics, angels,
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  Speaker 1: and devils were as common as lies. In order to
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  Speaker 1: appreciate a great man, we must know his surroundings. We
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  Speaker 1: must understand the scope of the drama in which he
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: played the part he acted, and we must also know
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: his audience. In England, George the first was disporting with
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  Speaker 1: the maypole and elephant, and then George the second jealous
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  Speaker 1: and choleric, hating the English and their language, making, however,
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  Speaker 1: an excellent image or idle before whom the English were
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  Speaker 1: glad to bow. Snobbery triumphant. The criminal code getting bloodier
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  Speaker 1: every day, two hundred and twenty three offenses punishable with death,
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  Speaker 1: the prisons filled, and the scaffolds crowded. Efforts on every
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  Speaker 1: hand to repress the ambition of men to be men,
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  Speaker 1: the Church relying on superstition and ceremony to make men good,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: and the state dependent on the whip, the rope and
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  Speaker 1: the axe to make men patriotic. In Spain, the Inquisition
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  Speaker 1: in full control all the instruments of torture used to
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  Speaker 1: prevent the development of the mind. Spain that had driven
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  Speaker 1: out the Jews, that is to say, her talent, that
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: had driven out the Moors, that is to say, her taste,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: and her industry was still endeavoring by all religious means
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  Speaker 1: to reduce the land to the imbecility of the true faith.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: In Portugal they were burning women and children for having
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  Speaker 1: eaten meat on a holy day and is to please
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  Speaker 1: the most merciful God. In Italy, the nation prostrate, covered
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  Speaker 1: with swarms of cardinals and bishops, and priests and monks
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: and nuns, and every representative of holy sloth the Inquisition.
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  Speaker 1: There also, while hands that were clasped in prayer are
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  Speaker 1: stretched for alms, grasped with eagerness and joy, the lever
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  Speaker 1: of the rack or gathered faggots for the holy flame.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: In Germany they were burning men and women charged with
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  Speaker 1: having made a compact with the enemy of man, and
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  Speaker 1: in our own fair land, persecuting Quakers, stealing men and
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  Speaker 1: women from another shore, stealing children from their mother's breasts,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: and paying labor with the cruel lash. Superstition ruled the world.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: There is but one use for law, but one excuse
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: for government, the preservation of liberty, to give to each
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  Speaker 1: man his own to secure to the farmer what he
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: produces from the soil, the mechanic, what he invents and makes,
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  Speaker 1: to the artist, what he creates, to the thinker the
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  Speaker 1: right to express his thoughts. Liberty is the breath of progress.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: In France, the people were the sport of the king's caprice.
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  Speaker 1: Everywhere was the shadow of the bastille. It fell upon
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: the sunniest field, upon the happiest home. With the king
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: walked the headsman. Back of the throne was the chamber
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: of torture. The church appealed to the rack, and faith
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: relied on the fagot. Science was an outcast, and philosophy,
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  Speaker 1: so called, was the pander of superstition. Nobles and priests
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: were sacred, peasants were vermin Idleness sat at the banquet,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: and industry gathered the crumbs and the cross. End of
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: Part one introduction.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Part two of Ingersoll on Voltaire from the works of
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Robert g. Ingersoll, Volume three, Lecture four. This is a
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings or in the public domain.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: For more information to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: ankersoll En Voltaire, Part two, The Days of Youth. Voltaire
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: was of the people in the language of that day.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: He had no ancestors. His real name was Franzois Marie Arrouette.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: His mother was Marguerite de Amored. This mother died when
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: he was seven years of age. He had an elder brother, Armand,
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: who was a devotee, very religious and exceedingly disagreeable. This
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: brother used to present offerings to the church, hoping to
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: make amends for the unbelief of his brother. So far
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: as we know, none of his ancestors were literary people.
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  Speaker 2: The Arouettes had never written a line. The Abbe di
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: Choleu was his godfather, and all An Abbey was a
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  Speaker 2: deist who cared nothing about religion except in connection with
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: his salary. Voltaire's father wanted to make a lawyer of him,
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  Speaker 2: but he had no taste for law. At the age
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: of ten, he entered the College of Louis la Grand.
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  Speaker 2: This was a Jesuit school, and here he remained for
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: seven years, leaving at seventeen and never attending any other school.
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  Speaker 2: According to Voltaire, he learned nothing at the school but
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: a little Greek, a good deal of Latin, and a
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: vast amount of nonsense. In this College of Luis la Grand,
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: they did not teach geography, history, mathematics, or any science.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: This was a Catholic institution controlled by the Jesuits. In
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: that day, the religion was defended, was protected or supported
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: by the state. Behind the entire creed where the bayonet,
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: the axe, the wheel, the faggot, and the torture chamber.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: While Voltaire was attending the College of Louis la Grand,
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: the soldiers of the king were hunting Protestants the mountains
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: of Savanes, for magistrates to hang on gibbets, to put
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: to torture, to break on the wheel, or burneth a stake.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: At seventeen, Voltaire determined to devote his life to literature.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: The father said, speaking of his two sons, Armand and Francois,
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: I have a pair of fools for sons, one in
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: verse and the other in prose. In seventeen thirteen, Voltaire,
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: in a small way became a diplomat. He went to
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: the hague attached to the French minister, and there he
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: fell in love. The girl's mother objected. Voltaire sent his
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: clothes to the young lady that she might visit him.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: Everything was discovered and he was dismissed. To this girl,
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: he wrote a letter, and in it you will find
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: the key note of Voltaire. Do not expose yourself to
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: the fury of your You know what she is capable of.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: You have experienced it too well. Dissemble is your only chance.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: Tell her that you have forgotten me, that you hate me. Then,
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: after telling her, love me all the more. On account
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: of this episode, Voltaire was formally disinherited by his father.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: The father procured an order of arrest and gave his
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: son the choice of going to prison or beyond the seas.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: He finally consented to becoming a lawyer, and says, I
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: have already been a week at work in the office
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: of a solicitor, learning the trade of a pettifogger. About
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: this time he competed for a prize writing a poem
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: on the King's generosity in building the new choir in
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: the Cathedral Notre Dame. He did not win it. After
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: being with the solicitor a little while, he hated the law,
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: began to write poetry and the outlines of tragedy. Great
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: questions were then agitating the public mind, questions that throw
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: a flood of light upon that epoch. In fifteen fifty two,
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: doctor Bais took it into his head to sustain a
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: number of propositions touching predestination to the prejudice of the
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: doctrine of free will. The Cordelian monks selected seventy six
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: of the propositions and denounced them to the Pope as heretical,
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: and from the Pope obtained what was called a bull.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: This bull contained a doubtful passage, the meaning of which
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: was dependent upon the position of a comma. The friends
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: of doctor Bias wrote to Rome to find where the
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: comma ought to be placed. Rome, busy with other matters,
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: sent as an answer a copy of the bull, in
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: which the doubtful sentence was left without any comma. So
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: the dispute continued. Then there was the great controversy between
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: the Jansenists and Molinists. Molini was a Spanish Jesuit who
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: sustained the doctrine of free will with the subtlety of
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: a man's will is free, but God sees exactly how
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: he will use it. The Presbyterians of our country are
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: still wrestling with this important absurdity. Jansenius was a French
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: Jesuit who carried the doctrine of predestination to the extreme,
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: asserting that God commands things that are impossible and that
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Christ did not die for all. In sixteen forty one,
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: the Jesuits obtained a bull condemning five propositions of Jansenius.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: The Jansonists thereupon denied that the five propositions or any
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: of them, were found in the works of Jansenius. This
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: question of Jansonism and Molinism occupied France for about two
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: hundred years. In Voltaire's time, the question had finally dwindled
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: down to whether the five propositions condemned to buy the
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: papal bull were in fact in the works of Jansenius.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: The Jansonists proved that the five propositions were not in
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: his book because a niece of Pascal had a diseased
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: eye cured by the application of a thorn from the
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: crown of Christ. The bull unigenitus was launched in seventeen thirteen,
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: and then all the prisons were filled with Jansonists. This
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: great question of predestination and free will, a free moral
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: agency and accountability, and being saved by the grace of God,
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: and damned for the glory of God have occupied the
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: mind of what we call the civilized world for many centuries.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: All these questions were argued pro and con through Switzerland,
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: all of them in Holland, for centuries in Scotland and
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: England and New England, and millions of people are still
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: busy harmonizing foreordination and free will, necessity and morality, predestination
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: and accountability. Louis the fourteenth having died, the Regent took possession,
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: and then the prisons were opened. The regent called for
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: a list of all persons then in prisons, sent there
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: at the will of the king. He found that, as
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: to many prisoners, nobody knew any cause why they had
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: been in prison. They had been forgotten. Many of the
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: prisoners did not know themselves and could not guess why
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: they had been arrested. One Italian had been in the
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Bastille thirty three years without ever knowing why. On his
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: arrival in Paris, thirty three years before he was arrested
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: and sent to prison. He had grown old, he had
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: survived his family and friends. When the rest were liberated,
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: he asked to remain where he was, and lived there
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: the rest of his life. The old prisoners were pardoned,
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: but in a little while their places were taken by
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: new ones. At this time, Voltaire was not interested in
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: the great world. Knew very little of religion or of government.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: He was busy writing poetry, busy thinking of comedies and tragedies.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: He was full of life. All his fancies were winged
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: like moths. He was charged with having written some cutting epigrams.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: He was exiled to Tula, three hundred miles away from
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: this place. He wrote in his true vein, I am
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: at a chateau, a place that would be the most
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: agreeable in the world if I had not been exiled
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: to it, and where there is nothing wanting for my
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: perfect happiness except the liberty of leaving. It would be
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: delicious to remain, if only I were allowed to go.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: At last, the exile was allowed to return again. He
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: was arrested, this time sent to the Bastille, where he
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: remained for nearly a year. While in prison, he changed
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: his name from Francois Marie our Way to Voltaire, and
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: by that name he has since been known. Voltaire, as
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: full of life as summer is full of blossoms, giving
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: his ideas upon all subjects. At the expense of Prince
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: and King, was exiled to England from sunny France. He
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: took his way to the mists and fogs of Albion.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: He became acquainted with the highest and the best in Britain.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: He met Pope, a most wonderful verbal mechanic, a maker
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: of artificial flowers, very much like natural ones, except they
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: lack perfume and the seeds of suggestion. He made the
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: acquaintance of Young, who wrote The Night Thoughts. Young, a
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: fine old hypocrite with a virtuous imagination, a gentleman who
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: electioneered with the King's mistress that he might be made
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: a bishop. He became acquainted with Chesterfield all manners no
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: man with Thompson, author of the Seasons, who loved to
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: see the sun rise in bed and visit the country
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: in town with Swift, whose poisoned arrows were then festering
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: in the flesh of mister bull. Swift as wicked as
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: he was witty and as heartless as he was humorous,
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: with swift, a dean and a devil, with Congreve, whom
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: Addison thought superior to Shakespeare, and who never wrote but
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: one great line The Cathedral Looking Tranquility. End of Part two,
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: The Days of Youth.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: Part three of Ingersol on Voltaire, from the works of
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: Robert g. Ingersoll, Volume three, Lecture four. This is a
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: LibriVox recording or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: Recording by Catherine Phipps Ingersol On Voltaire, Part three, The
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: Mourn of Manhood. Voltaire began to think, to doubt, to inquire.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: He studied the history of the Church of the Creed.
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: He found that the religion of his time rested on
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: the inspiration of the scriptures, the infallibility of the church,
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: the dreams of insane hermits, the absurdities of the fathers,
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: the mistakes and falsehoods of saints, the hysteria of nuns,
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: the cunning of priests, and the stupidity of the people.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: He found that the Emperor Constantine, who lifted Christianity into power,
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: murdered his wife Fausta, and his eldest son Crispus. The
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: same year that he convened the Council of Nice to
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: decide whether Christ was a man or the son of God.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: The council decided in the year three twenty five that
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: Christ was consubstantial with the Father. He found that the
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: church was indebted to a husband who assassinated his wife,
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: a father who murdered his son. For settling the vexed
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: question of the divinity of the Savior. He found that
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: Theodosius called a council at Constantinople in three eighty one,
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: by which it was to say, decided that the Holy
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: Ghost proceeded from the Father. That Theodosius the Younger assembled
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: a council at Epheus in four thirty one that declared
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: the Virgin Mary to be the Mother of God. That
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: the Emperor Marcian called another council at Chalcedon in four
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: fifty one that decided that Christ had two wills. That
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: Pognatius called another in six eighty that declared that Christ
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: had two natures to go with his two wills, And
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: that in twelve seventy four at the Council of Lyons,
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: the important fact was found that the holy Ghost proceeded
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: not only from the Father, but also from the Son
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: at the same time. So it took about thirteen hundred
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: years to find out a few things that had been
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: revealed by an infinite God to his infallible church. Voltaire
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: found that this insane creed had filled the world with
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: cruelty and fear. He found that vestments were more sacred
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: than virtues, that images and crosses, pieces of old bones,
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: and bits of wood were more precious than the rights
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: and lives of men, and that the keepers of these
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: relics were the enemies of the human race. With all
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: the energy of his nature, with every faculty of his mind,
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: he attacked this triumphant beast. Voltaire was the apostle of
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: common sense. He knew that there could have been no
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: primitive or first language from which all other languages had
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: been formed. He knew that every language had been influenced
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: by the surroundings of the people. He knew that the
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: language of snow and ice was not the language of
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: palm and flower. He knew also that there had been
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: no miracle in language. He knew that it was impossible
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: that the story of the Tower of Babel should be true.
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: He knew that everything in the whole world had been natural.
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: He was the enemy of alchemy, not only in language,
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: but in science. One passage from him is enough to
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: show his philosophy. In this regard, he says, to transmute
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: iron into gold, two things are necessary, first, the annihilation
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: of the iron, second the creation of gold. Voltaire gave
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: us the philosophy of history. Voltaire was a man of humor,
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: of good nature, of cheerfulness. He despised with all his
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: heart the philosophy of Calvin, the creed of the somber,
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: of the severe, of the unnatural. He pitied those who
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: needed the aid of religion to be honest, to be cheerful.
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: He had the courage to enjoy the present and the
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: philosophy to bear what the future might bring. And yet,
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: for more than one hundred and fifty years, the Christian
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: world has fought this man and has maligned his memory.
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: In every Christian pulpit, his name has been pronounced with scorn,
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: and every pulpit has been an arsenal of slander. He
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: is one man of whom no Orthodox minister has ever
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: told the truth. He has been denounced equally by Catholics
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: and Protestants, priests and ministers, bishops and exhorters, presiding elders
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: and popes have filled the world with slanders with calumnies
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: about Voltaire. I am amazed that ministers will not or
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: cannot tell the truth about an enemy of the church.
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, for more than one thousand years,
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: almost every pulpit has been a mint in which slanders
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: have been coined. Voltaire made up his mind to destroy
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: the superstition of his time. He fought with every weapon
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: that genius could devise or use. He was the greatest
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: of all carricaturists, and he used this wonderful gift without mercy.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: For pure crystallized wit he had no equal. The art
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: of flattery was carried by him to the height of
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: an exact science. He knew and practiced every subterfuge. He
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: fought the army of hypocrisy and pretense, the army of
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: faith and falsehood. Voltaire was annoyed by the meaner and
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: baser spirits of his time, by the cringers and crawlers,
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: by the fauners and pretenders, by those who wished to
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: gain the favor of priests, the patronage of nobles. Sometimes
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: he allowed himself to be annoyed by these wretches. Sometimes
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: he attacked them. And but for these attacks long ago,
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: they would have been forgotten. In the amber of his genius,
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: votaire preserved these insects, these tarantulas, these scorpions. It is
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: fashionable to say that he was not profound. This is
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: because he was not stupid. In the presence of absurdity,
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: he laughed and was called irreverent. He thought God would
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: not damn even a priest. Forever this was regarded as blasphemy.
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: He endeavored to prevent Christians from murdering each other, and
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: did what he could to civilize the disciples of Christ.
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: Had he founded a sect, obtained control of some country,
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: and burned a few heretics at slow fires, he would
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: have won the admiration, respect, and love of the Christian world.
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: Had he only pretended to believe all the fable of antiquity,
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: had he mumbled Latin prayers, counted beads, crossed himself, devoured
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: now and then the flesh of God, and carried fagots
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: to the feet of philosophy in the name of Christ,
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: he might have been in heaven this moment enjoying a
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: sight of the damned. If he had only adopted the
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: creed of his time, if he had asserted that a
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: God of infinite power and mercy had created millions and
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: billions of human beings to suffer eternal pain and all
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: for the sake of his glorious justice. That he had
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: given his power of attorney to a cunning and cruel
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: Italian pope, authorizing him to save the soul of his
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: mistress and send honest wives to hell. If he had
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: given to the nostrils of this god the odor of
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: burning flesh, the incense of the fagot, If he had
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: filled his ears with the shrieks of the tortured, the
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: music of the rack, he would now be known as
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: Saint Voltaire. For many years, this restless man filled Europe
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: with the product of his brain, essays, epigrams, epics, comedies, tragedies, histories, poems, novels,
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: representing every phase and every faculty of the human mind.
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: At the same time engrossed in business, full of speculation,
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: making money like a millionaire, busy with the gossip of courts,
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: and even with the scandals of priests. At the same
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: time alive to all the discoveries of science, other theories
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: of philosophers, and in this babble, never forgetting for one
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: moment to assail the monster of superstition. Sleeping and waking,
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: he hated the Church. With the eyes of Argus he watched,
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: and with the arms of Bryarius he struck. For sixty years,
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: he waged continuous and unrelenting war, sometimes in the open field,
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: sometimes striking from the hedges of opportunity, taking care during
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: all this time to remain independent of all men. He
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: was in the highest sense success. He lived like a prince,
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: became one of the powers of Europe, and in him,
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: for the first time, literature was crowned. It has been
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: claimed by the Christian critics that Voltaire was irreverent, that
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: he examined sacred things without solemnity, that he refused to
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: remove his shoes in the presence of the burning bush,
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: that he smiled at the geology of Moses, the astronomical
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: ideas of Joshua, and that the biography of Jonah filled
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: him with laughter. They say that these stories, these sacred impossibilities,
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: these inspired falsehoods, should be read and studied with a
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: believing mind, in humbleness of spirit, that they should be examined, prayerfully,
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: asking God at the same time to give us strength
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: to triumph over the conclusions of our reason. These critics
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: imagined that a falsehood can be old enough to be venerable,
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: and that to stand covered in its presence is the
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: act of an irreverent Scoffer. Voltaire approached the mythology of
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: the Jews precisely as he did the method pology of
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: the Greeks and Romans, or the mythology of the Chinese
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: or the Iroquois Indians. There is nothing in this world
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: too sacred to be investigated, to be understood. The philosopher
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: does not hide secrecy is not the friend of truth.
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: No man should be reverent at the expense of his reason.
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: Nothing should be worshiped until the reason has been convinced
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: that it is worthy of worship. Against all miracles, against
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: all holy superstition, against sacred mistakes, he shot the arrows
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: of ridicule. These arrows, winged by fancy, sharpened by wit,
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: poisoned by truth, always reached the center. It is claimed
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: by many that anything the best and holiest can be ridiculed.
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, He who attempts to ridicule,
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: the truth ridicules himself. He becomes the food of his
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: own laughter. The mind of man is many sided. Truth
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: must be, and is willing to be tested in every way,
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: tested by all the senses. But in what way can
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: the absurdity of the real presence be answered except by banter,
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: by raillery, by ridicule, by persiflage. How are you going
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: to convince a man who believes that when he swallows
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: the sacred wafer, he has eaten the entire Trinity, and
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: that a priest drinking a drop of wine has devoured
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: the infinite? How are you to reason with a man
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: who believes that if any of the sacred wafers are
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: left over, they should be put in a secure place
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: so that mice should not eat God. What effect will
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: logic have upon a religious gentleman who firmly believes that
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: a God of infinite compassion sent two bears to tear
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: thirty or forty children in pieces for laughing at a
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: bald headed prophet? How are such people to be answered?
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: How can they be brought to a sense of their absurdity?
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: They must feel in their flesh the arrows of ridicule,
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: So Voltaire has been called a mocker. What did hem?
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: He mocked kings that were unjust, kings who cared nothing
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: for the sufferings of their subjects. He mocked the title
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: fools of his day. He mocked the corruption of courts,
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: the meanness, the tyranny, and the brutality of judges. He
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: mocked the absurd and cruel laws, the barbarous customs. He
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: mocked popes and cardinals, and bishops and priests, and all
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: the hypocrites on the earth. He mocked historians who filled
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: their books with lies, and philosophers who defended superstition. He
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: mocked the haters of liberty, the persecutors of their fellow men.
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: He mocked the arrogance, the cruelty, the impudence, and the
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: unspeakable baseness of his time. He has been blamed because
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: he used the weapon of ridicule. Hypocrisy has always hated laughter,
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: and always will. Absurdity detests humor, and stupidity despises wit.
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: Voltaire was the master of ridicule. He ridiculed the absurd,
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: the impossible. He ridiculed the mythologies and the miracles, the
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: stupid lives and lies of the saints. He found pretense
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: and mendacity crowned by credulity. He found the ignorant many
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: controlled by the cunning and cruel view. He found the
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: historian saturated with superstition, filling his volumes with the details
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: of the impossible, and he found the scientists satisfied with.
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: They say. Voltaire had the instinct of the probable. He
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: knew the law of average the sea level. He had
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: the idea of proportion, and so he ridiculed the mental
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: monstrosities and deformities. The nonsecuiteurs of his day. Aristotles said
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: women had more teeth than men. This was repeated again
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: and again by the Catholic scientists of the eighteenth century.
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: Voltaire counted the teeth the rest were satisfied with. They
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: say Voltaire, for many years, in spite of his surroundings,
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: in spite of almost universal tyranny and oppression, was a
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: believe in God and what he was pleased to call
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: the religion of nature. He attacked the creed of his
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: time because it was dishonorable to his God. He thought
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: of the deity as a father, as the fountain of justice, intelligence,
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: and mercy, and the creed of the Catholic Church made
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: him a monster of cruelty and stupidity. He attacked the
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: Bible with all the weapons at his command. He assailed
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: its geology, its astronomy, its ideas of justice, its laws
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: and customs, its absurd and useless miracles, its foolish wonders,
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: its ignorance on all subjects, its insane prophecies, its cruel threats,
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: and its extravagant promises. At the same time, he praised
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: the God of nature, the God who gives us rain
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: and light, and food and flowers and health and happiness,
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: who fills the world with youth and beauty. Attacked on
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: every side, he fought with every weapon that wit, logic, reason, scorn, contempt, laughter, pathos,
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: and indignation could sharpen, form, devise, or use. He often apologized,
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: and the apology was an insult. He often recanted, and
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: the recantation was a thousand times worse than the thing recanted.
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: He took it back by giving more in the name
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: of eulogy. He flayed his victim. In his praise, there
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: was poison. He often advanced by retreating, and asserted by retraction.
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: He did not intend to give priests the satisfaction of
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: seeing him burn or suffer. Upon this very point of recanting,
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: he wrote, they say I must retract very willingly. I
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: will declare that Pascal is always right, that if Saint
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: Luke and Saint Mark contradict one another, it is only
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: another proof of the truth of religion to those who
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: know how to understand such things, and that another lovely
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: proof of religion is that it is unintelligible. I will
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: even avow that all priests are gentle and disinterested, that
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: Jesuits are honest people, that monks are neither proud nor
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: give to intrigue, and that their odor is agreeable. That
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: the Holy Inquisition is the triumph of humanity and tolerance.
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: In a word, I will say all that may be
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: desired of me, provided they leave me in repose, and
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: will not persecute a man who has done harm to none.
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: He gave the best years of his wondrous life to
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: succor the oppressed, to shield the defenseless, to reverse infamous decrees,
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: to rescue the innocent, to reform the laws of France,
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: to do away with torture, to soften the hearts of priests,
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: to enlighten judges, to instruct kings, to civilize the people,
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: and to banish from the heart of man the love
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: and lust of war. You may think that I have
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: said too much, that I have placed this man too high.
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: Let me tell you what Gerttha, the great German, said
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: of this man. If you wish depth, genius, imagination, taste, reason, sensible, philosophy, elevation, originality, nature, intellect, fancy, rectitude, facility, flexibility, precision, art, abundance, variety, fertility, warmth, magic, charm, grace, force,
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: an eagle sweep of vision, vast understanding, instruction, rich tone, excellent, urbanity, suavity, delicacy, correctness, purity, clearness, eloquence, harmony, brilliancy, rapidity, gaiety, pathos, sublimity,
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: and universality perfection. Indeed, behold Voltaire. Even Carlyle, that old
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: Scotch terrier with the growl of a grisly bear, who
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: attacked shams, as I have sometimes thought, because he hated rivals,
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: was forced to admit that Voltaire gave the death stab
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: to modern superstition. It is the duty of every man
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: to destroy the superstitions of his time. And yet there
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: are thousands of men and women, fathers and mothers, who
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: repudiate with their whole hearts the creeds of superstition, and
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: still allow their children to be taught these lies. They
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: allow their imaginations to be poisoned with the dogma of
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: eternal pain. They allow arrogant and ignorant parsons, meek and
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: foolish teachers to serve the seeds of barbarism in the
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: minds of their children, seeds that will fill their lives
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: with fear and pain. Nothing can be more important to
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: a human being than to be free and to live
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: without fear. It is far better to be a mortal
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: free man than an immortal slave. Fathers and mothers should
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: do their utmost to make their children free. They should
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: teach them to doubt, to investigate, to inquire, and every
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: father and mother should know that by the cradle of
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: every child, as by the cradle of the infant, Hercules
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: cralls the serpent of superstition. End of Part three, The
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: Mourn of Manhood, Part four of Ingersoll on Voltaire from
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: the works of Robert g Ingersoll, Volume three, Lecture four.
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Catherine Phipps ingersol On Voltaire,
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: Part four the Scheme of Nature. At that time, it
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: was pretended by the believers in God, that the plan
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: or the scheme of nature was not cruel, that the
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: lower was sacrificed for the benefit of the higher. That
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: while life lived upon life, while animals lived upon each other,
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: and while man was the king or sovereign of all,
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: still the higher lived upon the lower. Consequently, a lower
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: life was sacrificed that a higher life might exist. This
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: reasoning satisfied many, Yet there were thousands that could not
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: see why the lower should be sacrificed, or why all
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: jaw should be born of pain. But since the construction
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: of the microscope, since man has been allowed to look
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: toward the infinitely small as well as toward the infinitely great,
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: he finds that our fathers were mistaken when they laid
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: down the proposition that only the lower life were sacrificed
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: for the sake of the higher. Now we find that
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: the lives of all visibler animals are liable to be,
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: and in countless cases are destroyed by a far lower life.
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: That man himself is destroyed by the microbes. The Basili
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: the infinitesimal. We find that for the sake of preserving
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: the yellow fever germs, millions and millions have died, and
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: that whole nations have been decimated for the sake of
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: the little beast that gives us the cholera. We have
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: also found that there are animals call them what you please,
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: that live on the substance of the human heart, Others
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: that prefer the lungs. Others, again so delicate in their
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: palate that they insist on devouring the optic nerve. And
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: when they have destroyed the sight of one eye, have
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: sense enough to bore through the cartilage of the nose
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: to attack the other. Thus we find the other side
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: of this proposition. At first sight, the lower seem to
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: be sacrificed for the sake of the higher, but on
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: closer inspection, the highest are sacrificed for the sake of
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: the lowest. Voltaire was for a long time a believer
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: in the optimism of pope, all partial evil, universal good.
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: This is a very fine philosophy for the fortunate. It
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: suits the rich. It is flattering to kings and priests,
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: It sounds well. It is a fine stone to throw
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: it a beggar. It enables you to bear with great
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: fortitude the misfortunes of others. It is not the philosophy
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: for those who suffer for industry, clothed in rags, for patriotism,
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: in prison, for honesty, in want, or for virtuous outcasts.
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: It is a philosophy of a class of a few,
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: and of the few who are foughtue. And when misfortune
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: overtakes them, this philosophy fades and withers. In seventeen fifty
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: five came the earthquake at Lisbon. This frightful disaster became
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: an immense interrogation. The optimist was compelled to ask, what
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: was my God doing? Why did the universal Father crush
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: to shapelessness thousands of his poor children, even at the
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: moment when they were upon their knees returning thanks to him?
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: What could be done with this horror? If earthquake there
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: must be, why did it not occur in some uninhabited desert,
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: on some wide waste of sea. This frightful fact changed
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: the theology of Voltaire. He became convinced that this is
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: not the best possible of all worlds. He became convinced
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: that evil is evil. Here now and forever. The theist
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: was silent. The earthquake denied the existence of God. End
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: of Part four The Scheme of Nature.
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: Part five of Ingersoll on Voltaire, from the works of
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: Robert g Ingersoll, Volume three, Lecture four. This is a
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: This recording by William Jones, Benita Springs, Florida. Ingersoll On Voltaire,
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: Part five is Humanity, the Expenace Case and the Servan Family.
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: Part five His Humanity. Toulouse was a favored town. It
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: was rich in relics. The people were as ignorant as
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: wooden images, but they had in their position the dried
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: bodies of seven apostles, the bones of many of the
• 52:59
  Speaker 4: infants slain by Herod part of Address of the Virgin Mary,
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: and lots of skulls and skeletons of the infallible idiots
• 53:07
  Speaker 4: known as saints. In this city, the people celebrated every
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: year with great joy, too holy events, the expulsion of
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: the Huguenots and the blessed massacre of Saint Bartholomew. The
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: citizens of Toulouse had been educated and civilized by the Church.
• 53:27
  Speaker 4: A few Protestants, mild because in the minority, lived among
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: these jackals and tigers. One of these Protestants was Jean
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: calass a small dealer in dry goods for forty years.
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: He had been in this business and his character was
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: without a stain. He was honest, kind and agreeable. He
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: had a wife and six children, four sons and two daughters.
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: One of the sons became a Catholic. The eldest son,
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: Marc Antoine, disliked his father's business and studied law. He
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: could not be allowed to practice unless he became a Catholic.
• 54:07
  Speaker 4: He tried to get his license by concealing that he
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: was a Protestant. He was discovered and grew morose. Finally,
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: he became discouraged and committed suicide by hanging himself one
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: evening in his father's store. The bigots of Toulouse started
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: the story that his parents had killed him to prevent
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: his becoming a Catholic. On this frightful charge, the father, mother,
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: one son, a servant, and one guest at their house
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: were arrested. The dead son was considered a martyr. The
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: church taking possession of the body. This happened in seventeen
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: sixty one. There was what was called a trial. There
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: was no evidence, not the slightest except hearsay. All the
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: facts were in favor of the accused. The united strength
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: of the de fendants could not have done the deed.
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: Jean Calas was doomed to torture and to death upon
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: the wheel.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: This was on the.
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: Ninth of March seventeen sixty two, and the sentence was
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: to be carried out the next day. On the morning
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: of the tenth, the father was taken to the torture room.
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: The executioner and his assistants were sworn on the cross
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: to administer the torture according to the judgment of the court.
• 55:28
  Speaker 4: They bound him by the wrists to an iron ring
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: in a stone wall four feet from the ground, and
• 55:34
  Speaker 4: his feet to another ring in the floor. Then they
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: shortened the ropes and chains until every joint in his
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: arms and legs was dislocated. Then he was questioned. He
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: declared that he was innocent. Then the ropes were again
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: shortened until the life fluttered in the torn body, but
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: he remained firm. This was called the question or dedaire.
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: Again the magistrates exhorted the victim to confess, and again
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: he refused, saying that there was nothing to confess. Then
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: came the questioned extraordinari. Into the mouth of the victim
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: was placed a horn holding three pints of water. In
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: this way, thirty pints of water were forced into the
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: body of the sufferer. The pain was beyond description, and
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: yet Jean Calas remained firm. Then he was carried to
• 56:29
  Speaker 4: the scaffold in a tumbrum. He was bound to a
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: wooden cross that lay on the scaffold. The executioner then
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: took a bar of iron, broke each leg and each
• 56:40
  Speaker 4: arm in two places, striking eleven blows in all. He
• 56:45
  Speaker 4: was then left to die if he could. He lived
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: for two hours, declaring his innocence to the last. He
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: was slow to die, and so the executioner strangled him.
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: Then his poor, lacerated, blue and broken body was chained
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: to a stake and burned. All this was a spectacle,
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: a festival for the savages of Toulouse. What would they
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: have done if their hearts had not been softened by
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: the glad tidings of great joy, peace on earth and
• 57:18
  Speaker 4: good will to man? But this was not all. The
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: property of the family was confiscated. The son was released
• 57:26
  Speaker 4: on condition that he become a Catholic, the servant if
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: she would enter a convent. The two daughters were consigned
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: to a convent, and the heart broken widow was allowed
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: to wonder where she would. Voltaire heard of this case
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: in a moment. His soul was on fire. He took
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: one of the sons under his roof. He wrote a
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: history of the case. He corresponded with kings and queens,
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: with chancellors and lawyers. If money was needed, he advanced
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: it for years. He filled Europe with the echoes of
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: the groans of Jean Carrains. He succeeded. The horrible judgment
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: was annulled, the poor victim was declared innocent, and thousands
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: of dollars raised to support the mother and family. This
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: was the work of Voltaire. The Sirvan family Syvan, a Protestant,
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: lived in Languedoc with his wife and three daughters. The
• 58:28
  Speaker 4: housekeeper of the bishop wanted to make one of the
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: daughters a Catholic. The law allowed the bishop to take
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: the child of Protestants from their parents for the sake
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: of its soul. This little girl was so taken and
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: placed in a convent. She ran away and came back
• 58:45
  Speaker 4: to her parents. Her poor little body was covered with
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: the marks of the convent whip suffer little children come
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: unto me. The child was out of her mind. Suddenly
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: she disappeared, and a few day days after her little
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: body was found in a well three miles from home.
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: The cry was raised that her folks had murdered her
• 59:09
  Speaker 4: to keep her from becoming a Catholic. This happened only
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: a little way from the Christian city of Toulouse. While
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: Jean Calas was in prison. The servants knew that a
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: trial would end in conviction. They fled in their absence.
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: They were convicted, their property confiscated, the parents sentenced to
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: die by the hangman, the daughters to be under the
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: gallows during the execution of their mother, and then to
• 59:35
  Speaker 4: be exiled. The family fled in the midst of winter.
• 59:40
  Speaker 4: The married daughter gave birth to a child in the
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: snows of the Alps. The mother died, and at last
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: reaching Switzerland, the father found himself without means of support.
• 59:52
  Speaker 4: They went to Voltaire. He espoused their cause. He took
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: care of them, gave them the means to live and
• 59:59
  Speaker 4: labored to all the sentence that had been pronounced against them.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 4: For nine long and weary years. He appealed to kings
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: for money, to Catherine the second of Russia, and to
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: hundreds of others. He was successful. He said of this case,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: the servants were tried and condemned in two hours in
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: January seventeen sixty two, and now in January of seventeen
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: seventy two, after ten years of effort, they have been
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 4: restored to their rights. This was the work of Voltaire.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 4: Why should the worshipers of God hate the lovers of men?
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 4: The Espinos case. Espinos was a Protestant of good estate.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: In seventeen forty he received into his house a Protestant clergyman,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: to whom he gave supper and lodging. In a country
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 4: where priests repeated the parable of the Good Samaritan, this
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: was a crime crime. Espinas was tried, convicted, and sentenced
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: to the galleys for life. When he had been imprisoned
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: for twenty three years, his case came to the knowledge
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: of Voltaire, and he was, through the efforts of Voltaire,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: released and restored to his family. This was the work
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: of Voltaire. There is not time to tell of the
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: case of General Lalay, of the English general, being of
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: the niece of Corneil, of the Jesuit Adam, of the
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: writer's dramatists, actors, widows and orphans, for whose benefit he
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: gave his influence, his money, and his time. But I
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: will tell another case. In seventeen sixty five, in the
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: town of Abbeville, an old wooden cross on a bridge
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: had been mutilated, quilled with a knife, a terrible crime. Sticks,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 4: when crossing each other, were far more sacred than flesh
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: and blood. Two young men were suspected, the Chevalier de
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: le Barres and de Etelon. Detoulon fled to Prussia and
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: enlisted as a common soldier. Lebarre remained and stood his trial.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: He was convicted without the slightest evidence, and he and
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: Etolon were both sins. First to endure the torture ordinary
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: and extraordinary. Second to have their tongues torn out by
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: the roots with pincers of iron. Third to have their
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: right hands cut off at the door of the church.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 4: Forth to be bound to stakes by chains of iron,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: and burned to death by a slow fire. Quote forgive
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 4: us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: us quote. Remembering this, the judges mitigated the sentence by
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: providing that their heads should be cut off before their
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: bodies were given to the flames. The case was appealed
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 4: to Paris, heard by a court composed of twenty five
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 4: judges learned in the law, and the judgment was confirmed.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 4: The sentence was carried out on the first day of
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 4: July seventeen sixty six. When Voltaire heard of this judicial infamy,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: he made up his mind to abandon France. He wished
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 4: to leave forever a country where such cruelties were possible.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: He wrote a pamphlet giving the history of the case.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: He ascertained the whereabouts of Delental, wrote in his behalf
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 4: to the King of Prussia, got him released from the army,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: took him to his own house, kept him for a
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: year and a half, saw that he was instructed in drawing, mathematics, engineering,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: and had at last the happiness of seeing him a
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 4: captain of engineers in the army of Frederic the Great.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 4: Such a man was Voltaire. He was the champion of
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 4: the oppressed and the helpless. He was the caesar to
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: whom the victims of church and state appealed. He stood
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: for the intellect and heart of his time. And yet
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: for a hundred and fifty years those who love their
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: enemies have exhausted their vocabulary of hate, the ingenuity of malice,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: and mendacity in their efforts to save their stupid creeds
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: from the genius of Voltaire. From a great height, he
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 4: surveyed the world. His horizon was large. He had some vices,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 4: These he shared in common with priests. His virtues were
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: his own. He was in favor of universal education, of
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: the development of the brain. The Church despised him. He
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: wished to put the knowledge of the whole world within
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 4: the reach of all. Every priest was his enemy. He
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 4: wished to drive from the gates of Eden the cherubim
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 4: of superstition, so that the children of Adam might return
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 4: and eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: The Church opposed this, because it had the fruit of
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 4: the tree of ignorance for sale. He was one of
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 4: the foremost friends of the Encyclopedia of did it all,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 4: and did all in his power to give information to all,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: so far as principles were concerned. He was the greatest
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 4: lawyer of his time. I do not mean that he
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: knew the terms and decisions, but that he clearly perceived
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 4: not only what the law should be, but its application
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: and administration. He understood the philosophy of evidence, the difference
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 4: between suspicion and proof, between belief and knowledge. That he
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 4: did more to reform the laws of the kingdom and
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 4: the abuses at the courts than all the lawyers and
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 4: statesmen of his time. At school, he read and studied
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: the works of Cicero, the lord of language, probably the
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 4: greatest orator that has uttered speech, and the words of
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 4: the Roman remained in his brain. He became, in spite
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: of the spirit of Caste, a believer in the equality
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 4: of men. He said, quote, men are born equal. Let
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 4: us respect virtue and merit. Let us have it in
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 4: the heart that men are equal. Close quote. He was
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 4: an abolitionist, the enmy of slavery in all its forms.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 4: He did not think that the color of one man
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 4: gave him the right to steal from another man on
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 4: account of that man's color. He was the friend of
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 4: serf and peasant, and did what he could to protect animals,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 4: wives and children from the fury of those who love
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 4: their neighbors. As themselves. It was Voltaire who sowed the
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 4: seeds of liberty in the heart and brain of Franklin
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 4: Jefferson and Thomas Paine. Kouffendorff had taken the ground that
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 4: slavery was in part founded on contract. Voterire said, quote,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 4: show me the contract, and if it is signed by
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 4: the party to be the slave, I may believe close quote.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 4: He thought it absurd that God should drown the fathers
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 4: and then come and die for their children. This is
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 4: as good as the remark of de Deeraux. Quote. If
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 4: Christ had the power to defend himself from the Jews
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: and refuse to use it, he was guilty of suicide.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 4: Close quote. He had sense enough to know that the
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 4: flame of the fagot does not enlighten the mind. He
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 4: hated the cruel and pity the victims of church and state.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 4: He was the friend of the unfortunate, the helper of
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 4: the striving. He laughed at the pomp of kings, the
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 4: pretensions of priests. He was a believer in the natural
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 4: and abhorred with all his heart the miraculous and absurd.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 4: Voltaire was not a saint. He was educated by the Jesuits.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 4: He was never trebled about the salvation of his soul.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 4: All the theological disputes excited his laughter, the creeds his pity,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: and the conduct of bigots his contempt. He was much
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 4: better than a saint. Most of the Christians in his
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 4: day kept their religion not for everyday use, but for disaster,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 4: as ships carry the lifeboats to be used only in
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 4: the stress of storm. Voltaire believed in the religion of humanity,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 4: of good and generous deeds. For many centuries, the Church
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 4: had painted virtue so ugly, sour and cold that the
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 4: vice was regarded as beautiful. Voltaire taught the beauty of
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 4: the useful the hatefulness and hideousness of superstition. He was
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 4: not the greatest of poets or of dramatists, but he
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 4: was the greatest man of his time, the greatest friend
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 4: of freedom, and the deadliest foe of superstition. He did
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 4: more to break the chains of superstition, to drive the
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 4: phantoms of fear from the heart and brain, to destroy
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 4: the authority of the Church, and to give liberty to
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 4: the world than any other of the sons of men.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 4: In the highest, the holiest sense, he was the most
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 4: profoundly religious man of his time. End of Part five
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 4: is Humanity, the Espinos Case and the Servan Family. Part
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 4: six of Ingersoll on Voltaire from the works of Robert g. Ingersoll,
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 4: Volume three, Lecture four. This is a LibriVox recording. All
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 4: LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 4: or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. This recording
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 4: by William Jones Benita Springs, Florida. Ingersoll On Voltaire, Part six,
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 4: The Return. After an exile of twenty seven years, occupying
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 4: during all that time a first place in the civilized world,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 4: Voltaire returned to Paris. His journey was a triumphal march.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 4: He was received as a conqueror the academy. The immortals
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: came to meet him, a compliment that had never been
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 4: paid to royalty. His tragedy of Irene was performed at
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 4: the theater. He was crowned with laurel, covered with flowers.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 4: He was intoxicated with perfume and with incense of worship.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 4: He was a supreme French poet, standing above them all
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 4: among the literary men of the world. He stood first
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 4: a monarch by the divine right of genius. There were
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 4: three mighty forces in France, the throne, the altar, and Voltaire.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 4: The king was the enemy of Volpaire. The court would
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 4: have nothing to do with him. The Church malign and
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 4: Moros was waiting for her revenge. And yet such was
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 4: the reputation of this man, such to hold he had
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 4: upon the people, that he became in spite of throne,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 4: in spite of Church, the idol of France. He was
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 4: an old man of eighty four. He had been surrounded
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 4: with the comforts, the luxuries of life. He was a
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 4: man of great wealth, the richest writer that the world
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 4: had known. Among the literary men of the earth, he
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 4: stood first. He was an intellectual king, one who had
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 4: built his own throne and had woven the purple of
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 4: his own power. He was a man of genius. The
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: Catholic God had allowed him the appearance of success. His
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 4: last years were filled with the intoxication of flattery, of
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 4: almost worship. He stood at the summit of his age.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 4: The priest became anxious. They began to fear that God
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 4: would forget in a mulciplicity of business, to make a
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 4: terrible example of Voltaire. Towards the last of May seventeen
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 4: seventy eight, it was whispered in Paris that Voltaire was
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 4: dying upon the fenses of expectation, gathered the unclean birds
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 4: of superstition, impatiently waiting for their prey. Two days before
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: his death, his nephew went to seek the Curee of
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 4: Sons Olpice and the Abbe Gautier, and brought them into
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 4: his uncle's six chamber. Ah Well, said Voltaire, give them
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 4: my compliments and my thanks. The Abbe spoke some words
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 4: to him, exhorting him to patience. The Curate of Saint
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 4: Sulpiece then came forward, having announced himself, and asked of Voltaire,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 4: elevating his voice, if he acknowledged the divinity of our
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 4: Lord Jesus Christ. The sick man pushed one of his
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 4: hands against the curate's quoff, shoving him back, and cried,
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 4: turning abruptly to the other side, Let me die in peace.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 4: The Curee seemingly considered his person's soiled and his quoff
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 4: dishonored by the touch of a philosopher, He made the
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 4: nurse give him a little brushing, and went out with
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 4: the Abbe Gautier. He expired, said Vagniere. On the thirtieth
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 4: of May seventeen seventy eight, at about a quarter past
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 4: eleven at night, with the most perfect tranquility. A few
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 4: minutes before his last breath, he took the hand of
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 4: Morn his valet de Chambre, who was watching by him,
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 4: pressed it and said, Adieu, my dear Moron, I am gone.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 4: These were his last words. Like a peaceful river with
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 4: green and shaded banks, he flowed without a murmur, into
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 4: the waveless sea, where life is rest. From this death,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 4: so simple and serene, so kind, so philosophic and tender,
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 4: so natural and peaceful, From these words, so utterly destitute
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 4: of cant or dramatic touch, All the frightful pictures, all
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 4: the despairing utterances, have been drawn and made from these materials,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 4: and from these alone, or rather in spite of these facts,
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 4: have been constructed by the priest and clergymen and their dupes,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 4: all the shameless life about the death of this great
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 4: and wonderful man, a man compared with whom all of
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 4: his calumniators, dead and living, were and are but dust
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: and vermin. Let us be honest. Did all the priests
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 4: of Rome increase the mental wealth of men as much
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 4: as Bruno did. All the priests of France do as
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 4: great a work for the civilization of the world as
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 4: Voltaire or de Deerrout did. All the ministers of Scotland
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: add as much to the sum of human knowledge as
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 4: David Hume have. All the clergymen, monks, friars, ministers, priests, bishops,
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 4: cardinals and popes, from the day of Pentecost to the
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 4: last Election, done as much for a human liberty as
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 4: Thomas Paine. What would the world be if infidels had
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 4: never been? The infidels have been the brave and thoughtful men,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 4: the flower of the world, the pioneers and heralds of
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 4: the blessed day of liberty and love, the generous spirits
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 4: of the unworthy past, the seers and prophets of our race,
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 4: the great chivalric souls, proud victors on the battlefields of thought,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 4: the creditors of all the years to be. Why should
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 4: it be taken for granted that the men who devoted
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 4: their lives to the liberation of their fellow men should
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 4: have been hissed at in the hour of death by
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 4: the snakes of conscience, while men who defended slavery practiced
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 4: polygamy justified, the stealing of babes from the breasts of mothers,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: and lashed the naked back of unpaid labor, are supposed
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 4: to have passed smilingly from Earth to the embraces of
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: the angels. Why should we think that the brave thinkers,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 4: the investigators, the honest men, must have left the crumbling
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 4: shore of time in dread and fear. While the instigators
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 4: of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, the inventors and the
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 4: users of thumbscrews of iron, boots and racks, the burners
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 4: and tears of human flesh, the steelers, the whippers, and
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 4: the enslavers of men, the buyers and beaters of maidens, mothers,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 4: and babes, the founders of the inquisition, the makers of chains,
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 4: the builders of dungeons, the calumniators of the living, the
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 4: slanderers of the dead, and even the murderers of Jesus Christ,
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 4: all died in the odor of sanctity, with white forgiven
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 4: hands folded upon the breasts of peace. While the destroyers
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 4: of prejudice, the apostles of humanity, the soldiers of liberty,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 4: the breakers of fetters, the creators of light, died surrounded
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 4: by the fierce fiends of God. In those days, the philosophers,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 4: that is to say, the thinkers, were not buried in whole.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 4: It was feared that their principles might contaminate the ashes
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 4: of the just, and they also feared that, on the
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 4: morning of the resurrection, they might, and a moment of confusion,
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 4: slip into heaven. Some were burned and their ashes scattered,
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 4: and the bodies of some were thrown naked to beasts,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 4: and others buried in unholy earth. Voltaire knew the history
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 4: of Adrian Le Couvrere, a beautiful actress denied burial. After all,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 4: we do feel an interest in what is to become
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 4: of our bodies. There is a modesty that belongs to death.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 4: Upon this subject, Voltaire was infinitely sensitive. It was that
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 4: he might be buried, that he went through the farce
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 4: of confession, of absolution and of the last sacrament. The
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 4: priest knew that he was not in earnest, and Voltaire
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 4: knew that they would not allow him to be buried
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 4: in any of the cemeteries of pain. His death was
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 4: kept a secret. The Abbe Mignon made arrangements for the
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 4: burial at Romeilli on the Sande, more than one hundred
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 4: miles from Paris. On Sunday evening on the last day
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 4: of May seventeen seventy eight, the body of Voltaire, clad
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 4: in a dressing gown, clothed to resemble an invalid polls
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 4: to simulate life, was placed in a carriage. At its
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 4: side a servant whose business it was to keep it
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 4: in position. To this carriage were attached six horses, so
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 4: that people might think a great lord was going to
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 4: his estates. Another carriage followed, in which were a grand
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 4: nephew and two cousins of Voltaire. All night they traveled,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 4: and on the following day arrived at the courtyard of
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 4: the abbey. The necessary papers were shown, the mass was
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 4: performed in the presence of the body, and Voltaire found burial.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 4: Few minutes afterward, the prior, who for charity had given
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 4: a little earth, received from his bishop a menacing letter
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 4: forbidding the burial of Voltaire. It was too late. Voltaire
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 4: was dead. The foundations of state and throne had been sapped.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 4: The people were becoming acquainted with the real kings and
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 4: with the actual priests. Unknown men were born in misery
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 4: and want men whose fathers and mothers had been pavement
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 4: for the rich, were rising toward the light, and their
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 4: shadowy faces were emerging from darkness. Labor and thought became friends.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 4: That is, the gutter and the attic fraternized, the monsters
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 4: of the night and the angels of the dawn, the
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 4: first thinking of revenge, and the others dreaming of equality, liberty,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 4: and fraternity. End of Part six, Their Return. Part seven
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 4: of Ingersoll on Voltaire from the works of Robert g. Ingersoll,
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 4: Volume three, Lecture four. This is a LibriVox recording. All
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 4: LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 4: or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. This recording
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 4: by William Jones, Benita Springs, Florida. Ingersoll on Voltaire, Part seven,
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 4: The death bed argument. All kinds of criminals, except infidels,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 4: meet death with reasonable serenity. As a rule, there is
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 4: nothing in the death of a pirate to cast any
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 4: discredit on his profession. Their murder upon the scaffold, with
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 4: a priest on either side, smilingly exhorts the multitude to
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 4: meet him in heaven. The man who has succeeded in
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 4: making his home may hell meets death without a quiver,
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 4: provided he has never expressed any doubt as to the
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 4: divinity of Christ or the eternal procession of the Holy Ghost.
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 4: The king who has wasted cruel and useless war, who
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 4: has filled countries with widows and fatherless children, with the
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 4: maim and diseased, and who has succeeded in offering to
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 4: the mullet of ambition, the best and bravest of his
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 4: subject dies like a saint. All the believing kings are
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 4: in heaven, all the doubting philosophers in perdition, all the
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 4: persecutors sleep in peace, and the ashes of those who
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 4: burned their brothers sleep in consecrated ground. Libraries could hardly
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 4: contain the names of the Christian wretches who have filled
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 4: the world with violence and death in defense of book
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 4: and creed. And yet they all died the death of
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 4: the righteous, and no priest, no minister, described the agony
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 4: and fear, the remorse and horror with which their guilty
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 4: souls were filled in the last moments of their lives.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 4: These men had never doubted, they had never thought, They
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 4: accepted the creed as they did the fashion of their clothes.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 4: They were not infidels, they could not be. They had
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 4: been baptized, they had not denied the divinity of Christ,
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 4: they had partaken of the Last Supper. They respected priests.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 4: They admitted that Christ had two natures and the same
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 4: number of wills. They admitted that the Holy Ghost had proceeded,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 4: and that according to the multiplication table of Heaven, once
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 4: one is three and three times one is one. And
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 4: these things put pels beneath their heads and covered them
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 4: with the drapery of peace. They admitted that while kings
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 4: and priests did nothing worse than make their fellows of wretched,
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 4: that so long as they only butchered and burnt, the
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 4: innocent and helpless God would maintain the strictest neutrality. But
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 4: when some honest man, some great and tender soul, expressed
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 4: a doubt as to the truth of the scriptures, or
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 4: prayed to the wrong God or to the right one
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 4: by the wrong name, then the real God leaped like
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 4: a wounded tiger upon his victim, and from his quivering
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 4: flesh tore his wretched soul. There is no recorded instance
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 4: where the uplifted hand of murder has been paralyzed, no
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 4: truthful account in all the literature of the world of
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 4: the innocent child being shielded by God. Thousands of crimes
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 4: are being committed every day. Men are at this moment
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 4: lying in wait for their human prey. Wives are whipt
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 4: and crushed, driven to insanity and death. Little children begging
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 4: for mercy, lifting imploring, tear filled eyes to the brutal
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 4: faces of fathers and mothers. Sweat eat girls are deceived,
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 4: lured in outrage. But God has no time to prevent
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 4: these things, no time to defend the good and protect
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 4: the pure. He is too busy numbering hairs and watching sparrows.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 4: He listens for a blasphemy, looks for persons who laugh
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 4: at priests, examines baptismal registers, watch his professors in college.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 4: We begin to doubt the geology of Moses and the
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 4: astronomy of Joshua. He does not particularly object to stealing,
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 4: if you won't swear a great Many persons have fallen
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 4: dead in the act of taking God's name in vain,
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 4: But millions of men, women, and children have been stolen
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 4: from their homes and used as beasts of burden. But
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 4: no one engaged in this infamy has ever been touched
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 4: by the wrathful hand of God. Now and then a
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 4: man of genius, of sense, of intellectual honesty has appeared.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 4: Such men have denounced the superstitions of their day. They
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 4: have pitied the multitude to see priests devour the substance
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 4: of the people. Priest who made begging one of their
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 4: earned professions filled them with loathing and contempt. These men
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 4: were honest enough to tell their thoughts, brave enough to
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 4: speak the truth. Then they were denounced, tried, tortured, killed
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 4: by rack or flame. But some escaped the fury of
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 4: the fiends, who loved their enemies, and died naturally in
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 4: their beds. It would not do for their church to
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 4: admit that they died peacefully. That would show that religion
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 4: was not essential at the last moment. Superstition gives this
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 4: power from the terror of death. It would not do
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 4: to have the common people understand that a man could
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 4: deny the Bible, refuse to kiss the cross, contend that
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 4: humanity was greater than Christ, and then die as sweetly
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 4: as Turchamoda did after pouring molten lead into the ears
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 4: of an honest man, or as calmly as Calvin after
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 4: he had burned Servetus, or peacefully as King David, after
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 4: advising with his last breath one son to assassinate another's.
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 4: The Church has taken great pains to show that the
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 4: last moments of all infidels that Christians did not succeed
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 4: in burning were infinitely wretched and despairing. It was alleged
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 4: that words could not paint the horrors that were endured
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 4: by a dying infidel. Every good Christian was expected to,
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 4: and generally did, believe these accounts. They have been told
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 4: and retold in every pulpit of the world. Protestant ministers
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 4: have repeated the lies invented by Catholic priests, and Catholics,
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 4: by a kind of theological comedy, have sworn to the
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 4: lies told by the Protestants. Upon this point they have
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 4: always stood together and will as long as the same
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 4: falsehood can be used by both. Instead of doing these things,
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 4: Voltaire wilfully closed his eyes to the light of the Gospel,
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 4: examined the Bible for himself, advocated intellectual liberty, struck from
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 4: the brain the fetters of an arrogant faith, assisted the weak,
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 4: cried out against the torture of man, appealed to reason,
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 4: endeavored to establish universal toleration, succored the indigen and defended
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 4: the oppressed. He demonstrated that the origin of all religions
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 4: is the same, the same mysteries, the same miracles, the
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 4: same imposture, the same temples and ceremonies, the same kind
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 4: of founders, apostles and dupes, the same promises and threats,
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 4: the same pretense of goodness and forgiveness, and the practice
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 4: of the same persecution and murder. He proved that religion
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 4: made enemies, philosophy friends, and that above the rights of
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 4: gods were the rights of man. These were his crimes.
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 4: Such a man God would not suffer to die in peace.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 4: If allowed to meet death with his smile, others might
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 4: follow his example, until none would be left to light
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 4: the holy fires of the Auto da Fey. It would
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 4: not do, for so great, so successful an enemy of
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 4: the Church to die without leaving some shriek of fear,
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 4: some shadder of remorse, some ghastly prayer of chattered horror,
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 4: uttered by lips covered with blood and foam. For many centuries,
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 4: the theologians have taught that an unbeliever, an infidel, one
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 4: who spoke or wrote against their creed, could not meet
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 4: death with composure, that in his last moments God will
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 4: fill his conscience with the serpents of remorse. For a
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 4: thousand years, the clergy have manufactured the facts to fit
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 4: this theory, this infamous conception of the duty of man
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 4: and the justice of God. The theologians have insisted that
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 4: crimes against man were and are as nothing compared with
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 4: crimes against God. Upon the deathbed subject, the clergy grow
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 4: eloquent when describing the shudderings and shrieks of the dying unbeliever.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 4: Their eyes glitter with delight. It is a festival. They
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 4: are no longer men. They become hyenas they dig open graves,
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 4: they devour the dead. It is a banquet. Unsatisfied still,
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 4: they paint the terrors of hell. They gaze at the
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 4: souls of the infidels, writhing in the coils of the
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 4: worm that never dies. They see them in flame, in
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 4: oceans of fire, in gulfs of pain and abysses of despair.
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 4: They shout with joy, they applaud. It is an auto
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 4: da fe presided over by God. End of Part seven
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 4: The deathbed Argument.
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 5: Part eight of Ingersoll On Voltaire from the works of
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 5: Robert G. Ingersoll Volume three, Lecture four. This is a
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 5: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 5: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 5: Ingersoll on Voltaire, Part eight, the Second Return. For four
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 5: hundred years, the Bass Deal had been the outward symbol
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 5: of oppression. Within its walls, the noblest perished. It was
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 5: a perpetual threat. It was the last, and often the
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 5: first argument of king and priest. Its dungeons damp and rayless,
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 5: its massive towers, its secret cells, its instruments of torture
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 5: denied the existence of God. In seventeen eighty nine, on
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 5: the fourteenth of July, the people, the multitude, frenzied by suffering,
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 5: stormed and captured the Bastille. The battle cry was vis Voltaire.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 5: In seventeen ninety one, permission was given to place in
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 5: the Pantheon the ashes of Voltaire. He had been buried
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 5: one hundred ten miles from Paris, buried by stealth. He
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 5: was to be removed by a nation, a funeral procession
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 5: of one hundred miles, every village with its flags and arches,
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 5: all the people anxious to honor the philosopher of France,
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 5: the savior of Calas, the destroyer of superstition. On reaching Paris,
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 5: the great procession moved along the Rue Saint Antoine. Here
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 5: it paused, and for one night, upon the ruins of
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 5: the Bastille rested the body of Voltaire, rested in triumph,
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 5: in glory, rested on fallen wall and broken arch, on
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 5: crumbling stones, still damp with tears, on rusting chain and
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 5: bar and useless bolt. Above the dungeons, dark and deep,
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 5: where light had faded from the lives of men, and
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 5: hope had died in breaking hearts, The conqueror resting upon
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 5: the conquered, throned upon the bastille, the fallen fortress of night,
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 5: the body of Voltaire, from whose brain had issued the dawn.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 5: For a moment, his ashes must have felt the Promethean fire,
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 5: and the old smile must have illuminated once more the
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 5: face of death. The vast multitudes bowed in reverence, hushed
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 5: with love, and awe heard these words uttered by a priest,
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 5: God shall be avenged. The cry of the priest was
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 5: a prophecy. Priests skulking in the shadows with faces sinister
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 5: as night, ghouls in the name of the Gospel, desecrated
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 5: the grave. They carried away the ashes of Voltaire. The
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 5: tomb is empty. God is avenged, the world is filled
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 5: with His fame. Man has conquered. Was there in the
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 5: eighteenth century a man wearing the vestiments of the church,
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 5: the equal of Voltaire? What cardinal, what bishop? What priest
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 5: in France raised his voice for the rites of men?
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 5: What ecclesiastic What noblemen took this s of the oppressed,
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 5: of the peasant, who denounced the frightful criminal code, the
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 5: torture of suspected persons? What priest pleaded for the liberty
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 5: of the citizen? What bishop pitied the victims.
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 3: Of the rack?
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 5: Is there a grave of a priest in France on
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 5: which a lover of liberty would now drop a flower
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 5: or a tear? Is there a tomb holding the ashes
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 5: of a saint from which emerges one ray of light?
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 5: If there be another life, a day of judgment, no
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 5: God can afford to torture in another world the man
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 5: who abolished torture in this. If God be the keeper
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 5: of an eternal penitentiary, he should not imprison there the
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 5: men who broke the chains of slavery here he cannot
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 5: afford to make an eternal convict of Voltaire. Voltaire was
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 5: a perfect master of the French language, knowing all its moods, tenses,
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 5: and declinations, in fact and in feeling, playing upon it
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 5: as skillfully as Paganini on his violin, finding expression for
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 5: every thought and fancy. Writing on the most serious subjects
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 5: with the gayety of a harlequin, plucking jests from the
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 5: crumbling mouth of death, graceful as the waving willows, dealing
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 5: in double meanings that covered the asp with flowers and flattery.
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 5: Master of satire and compliment, mingling them often in the
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 5: same line, always interested himself and therefore interesting others, Handling thoughts, questions,
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 5: subjects as a juggler does balls, keeping them in the
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 5: air with perfect ease, dressing old words in new meanings, charming, grotesque, pathetic,
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 5: mingling mirth with tears, wit and wisdom and sometimes wickedness,
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 5: logic and laughter with a woman's instinct, knowing the sensitive
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 5: nerves just where to touch, Hating arrogance of place, hating
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 5: the stupidity of the solemn, snatching masks from priest and king,
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 5: knowing the springs of action, and ambitions ends perfectly familiar
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 5: with the great world, the intimate of kings and their favorites,
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 5: sympathizing with the oppressed and imprisoned, with the unfortunate and poor,
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 5: hating tyranny, despising superstition, and loving liberty with all his heart.
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 5: Such was Voltaire writing Oedipus at seventeen, Irenne at eighty three,
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 5: and crowded between these two tragedies the accomplishment of a
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 5: thousand lives. From his throne at the foot of the Alps,
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 5: he pointed the finger of scorn at every hypocrite in
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 5: Europe for half a century. Past rack and stake, past
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 5: dungeon and cathedral, past altar and throne, he carried with
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 5: brave hands the sacred torch of reason, whose light at
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 5: last will flood the world. End of Part eight The
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 5: second Return recording by Brian Levine Burbank, California. End of
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 5: Ingersoll on Voltaire from the works of Robert g Ingersoll,
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 5: Volume three Lectures