The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 42
[introduction]
he lecture which I am about to review was delivered in Chicago, Illinois, March 23rd, A.D., 1879. It is Mr. Ingersoll's stereotyped lecture entitled "
Some Mistakes of Moses." The report of this speech in the Chicago
Tribune of March 24th, has
laughter eighty-one times; frequently it is preceded by such words as "continued," "renewed," "groat," "prolonged," "uproarious." Applause also occurs twelve times. Hence the speech must have been a profound one, and heard by a refined and intellectual audience.
Mr. Ingersoll is a most extraordinary man. His wit is sparkling and original; his invective is withering, and the undercurrent of blasphemy hisses through almost every paragraph; his humor protrudes, and if ever put on the background comes to the front again on the slightest provocation; he is reckless in his statements; he is irreverent—not to say impudent—in his treatment of believers; his power in assertion is a rare gift; in the use of hyperbole he surpasses the wildest imagination of the most fervid oriental; his logic is suffering from paralysis, and gives no signs of recovery; to make half-statements of facts and create false issues respecting them, he is the peer of any man, living or dead. He is not a slave to truth, but a free man. When he wishes to take a position, he takes it, and if the facts are adverse, it is all the worse for them. It would be unreasonable to ask such a man to descend to the dull routine of logic. If he were compelled to establish his premises by the induction of facts, and reach his conclusion in a legitimate way, the opportunities for the display of genius would be gone, and he would become as tame and dull and stupid and platitudinarian as clergymen, whom he represents as occupying the caverns of darkness, and, like the owls, "hooting the hoots that have been hooted for the last 1800 years." Unless he should be permitted to perform his feats of clog-dancing on the slack-wire of his own spiritual aberration, and turn intellectual hand-springs to the astonishment of the common people and the unbounded delight of the God-hating, the spell of his power would be broken, and there would even be danger of mistaking him for a common man. In the use of materials he is gifted beyond a parrallel in history. If you have read his episode on the gods you have read the quintessence of all his more recent effusions. He changes the combinations, rearranges the compilations and variations, and thus startles the world and convulses his disciples with a lecture that is unquestionably new in its title.
As for Moses, Mr. Ingersoll evidently neither knows nor cares to know much about him. But the name gave him a new suit for his old lecture, and furnished him with an opportunity to fling his innuendoes and vituperations at believers in Christ, and uproar the liberty-loving with mirthfulness. At just what they laughed, one can't always tell from reading the lecture; but they laughed and cheered, and so the speaker accomplished his purpose.