One of the most serious features of the general charge of iconoclasm which has been preferred by the critics of Ingersoll is the implication that the adoption of his teachings would destroy the social fabric. All essential ideas in the countless laws which have been formulated for the government of modern society, they say, sprang from the Mosaic code, and to discredit the book of which that code is a part would consequently plunge civilization into anarchy. Probably a majority of Ingersoll's critics will admit, whatever their opinion as to the breadth and depth of his biblical scholarship, that his knowledge of jurisprudence was both wide and profound, and that, therefore, if there ever was a criticism to which he was peculiarly fitted to reply, it is the one in question. Eminent jurists have bowed to popular prejudice, and deformed their works by statements to the effect that the Mosaic laws are the foundations from which spring all ideas right and wrong.
Nothing can be more stupidly false than such assertions.
Thousands of years before Moses was born, the Egyptians had a code of laws. They had laws against blasphemy, murder, adultery, larceny, perjury, laws for collection of debts, the enforcement of contracts, the ascertainment of damages, of debts, the enforcement of contracts, the ascertainment of damages, the redemption of property pawned, and upon nearly every subject of human interest. The Egyptian code was far better than the Mosaic. Laws spring from the instinct of self-preservation. Industry objected to supporting idleness, and laws were made against theft.