INGERSOLL COMMENTS

                                    INGERSOLL  COMMENTS

                                            NORMAN  V.  KELLY

 

Robert Green Ingersoll, according to me in an earlier article, was the most famous Peorian we had until the modern celebrities like Richard Pryor and a dozen or so others came along.  He was a lawyer and practiced law here starting in 1857 until 1877.  He was a genius and considered the best orator in America’s History.  Now in order for you to understand this it would take you about one year of research to read everything this man said that was in the printed form.  They called him ‘The Great Agnostic,’ but that name had very little to do with his greatness and who he was.  I will just give you a bit of an interview he gave a reporter for the Washington Post on May 3, 1878. Our library has a ton of material on this extraordinary man.  He had a big fan club here and around the world and there is a statue of him in the lower entrance of Glen Oak Park, dedicated 1911.

 

What becomes of man after death?  “If I told, or pretended to know, what becomes of man after death, I would be as dogmatic as theologians

upon this question. The difference between me and them…is I am

honest. I admit that I do NOT know. No one can control his own opinion

or his own belief. My belief was forced upon me by my surroundings.

I am the product of all the circumstances that have in any way touched me. I believe in this world. I have no confidence in any religion promising joys in another world at the expense of happiness in this. At the same time, I wish to give to others the rights I claim for myself. “

 

How could persons be punished for their sins who escaped retribution in this world if there is no prospect of a future life after death?

 

“I admit they all do not seem to be punished as they deserve.  I will also admit that they do not seem to be rewarded as they deserve: and there is in this world, apparently, as great a failure in the matter of reward as in

the matter of punishment. If there is another life a man will be happier there by having acted according to his highest ideal in this world.  But I do not discern in nature any effort to do justice.