5 h 17 minAudiobook8 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the ghosts that haunt us are the fears we inherit?
In The Ghosts, and Other Lectures, Robert Green Ingersoll challenges the hold of religious fear on human minds. These speeches turn toward God, the Bible, hell and human freedom. In the title lecture, he argues that old beliefs about invisible powers still haunt the living—and asks what reason, science and kindness might put in their place.
Humboldt and Thomas Paine offer portraits of men Ingersoll admires. Individuality and Heretics and Heresies defend independent thought, while The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child brings his argument into the home. His speeches move quickly, with jokes and strong closing passages. The attacks on religious authority are blunt; the concern for human freedom runs throughout.
What you’ll discover
- Old fears under scrutiny Explore Ingersoll’s argument that inherited terrors shape how people understand storms, sickness and death.
- A conscience of your own Meet a forceful challenge to the claim that any book should command unquestioning belief.
- Science and honest dissent Discover why Ingersoll honors Humboldt’s example and defends the widely scorned Thomas Paine.
- The courage to differ Follow his defense of people who think for themselves rather than accept inherited authority.
- Freedom behind the front door Consider his insistence that liberty must reach women and children within the home.
Who will love it
For readers who love oratory, debates about faith and doubt, and the history of free thought in America. These lectures explore religious authority, individual thought and liberty inside the family.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Old fears still haunt the living
- No book or church should rule conscience
- Science makes a nobler hero than superstition
- Honest dissent deserves defense, even when hated
- Heretics move the world forward
- Liberty belongs to every person in the home
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The Ghosts, and Other Lectures
by Robert Green Ingersoll · 1876
Ingersoll confronts the ghosts of inherited fear with a call to reason, kindness and human freedom.
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In short
The Ghosts, and Other Lectures is a collection of speeches by Robert Green Ingersoll, the American lawyer and orator of the nineteenth century. He spent years on the lecture circuit, and crowds paid to hear him talk about God, the Bible, hell and human freedom.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Old fears still haunt the living
In The Ghosts, Ingersoll argues that humanity has been haunted for ages, and that the haunting is not only by spirits of the dead. He means the gods, demons, devils and terrors that earlier people invented to explain storms, sickness and death. Ignorance made the world seem full of unseen beings, and fear gave them power.
He walks through this history with a speaker's sense of rhythm. Early peoples saw spirits behind every force of nature they could not understand. Priests then arose who claimed to know what those spirits wanted, and they gained wealth and rank by speaking for them. In Ingersoll's telling, belief in the supernatural did not begin as fraud, but it soon became a tool for those who profited from it.
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What is The Ghosts and Other Lectures about?
It is a collection of speeches by Robert Ingersoll on religion, reason and liberty. The title lecture argues that old fears and gods haunt humanity, while others honor Humboldt and Thomas Paine and defend free thought.
Who was Robert Ingersoll?
Ingersoll was an American lawyer and orator of the nineteenth century, known as the Great Agnostic. He toured the country speaking against religious dogma and in support of open inquiry, and he died in 1899.
What does Ingersoll mean by ghosts in the title lecture?
He means the gods, devils and superstitions that people created from fear and ignorance, and which, in his view, still haunt the human mind long after science has explained the world.
The author
Robert Green Ingersoll
1833–1899 · American orator and freethinker
Robert Green Ingersoll (1833–1899) was an American lawyer, public speaker, and politician. He was born in Dresden, New York, lived in Peoria, Illinois, and died in Dobbs Ferry, New York. He wrote and delivered lectures during the nineteenth century. His published works include The Ghosts, and Other Lectures.
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