Ingersoll's Lecture on Thomas Paine--Delivered in Central Music Hall,
Chicago, January 29, 1880 (From the Chicago Times, Verbatim Report)



Ladies and Gentlemen:--It so happened that the first speech--the very
first public speech I ever made--took occasion to defend the memory of
Thomas Paine.

I did it because I had read a little something of the history of my
country. I did it because I felt indebted to him for the liberty I then
enjoyed--and whatever religion may be true, ingratitude is the blackest
of crimes. And whether there is any God or not, in every star that
shines, gratitude is a virtue.

The man who will tell the truth about the dead is a good man, and for
one, about this man, I intend to tell just as near the truth as I can.

Most history consists in giving the details of things that never
happened--most biography is usually the lie coming from the mouth of
flattery, or the slander coming from the lips of malice, and whoever
attacks the religion of a country will, in his turn, be attacked.
Whoever attacks a superstition will find that superstition defended by
all the meanness of ingenuity. Whoever attacks a superstition will find
that there is still one weapon left in the arsenal of Jehovah--slander.

I was reading, yesterday, a poem called the "Light of Asia," and I read
in that how a Boodh seeing a tigress perishing of thirst, with her mouth