River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1880-05-06
TNGERS0LL.
The Charge of Plagiarism

A small but appreciative audience
gathered at the Centenary Church on
West Monroe street last evening TO
listen to lecture by Mr.. Frank Jervis,
a we'll. known local journalist, entitled
"Col. Ingersoll, the champion Plagiarist
of the Nineteenth Century" Among the
audience were quite number of we'll
known clergymen, who listened with at
tention to the account of how and
where Ingersoll got a portion at least of
his ammunition. The lecturer was in.
troduced by the Rev. DIR. Thomas, pas
tor of the church. The following syn
opsis of his remarks is given;
He began stating that he should not
ask the indulgence of his hearers in re-
gard to the matter embraced in his
lecture, as he thought it was the bust
ness of every man to do what he could,
when the very foundations of civic and
religious liberty were endangered. Inf-
deity cropped out at stated periods ex-
actIy like mushrooms. Ingersoll, the
great inconaclast of the age, had been
collecting the accumulated fungus OF
infidelty for years, and was now afflict-
ing the world with his stolen eloquence
The speaker quoted from the Ram
bier" Johnson's definition of the word
plagiarism, and proceeded to score Col.
Ingersoll numerically. If Ingersoll's
mouthings we're to perish, every word
he had spoken and every idea advanced
by him could be easily replaced by
careful search among the works of the
infidel writers of the past 200 years.
The speaker then proceeded to read
extracts from Ingersol's various lee
lures, and, to substantiate his charge
that he was guilty of plagiarism, read
quotations from Holyoke's discussions
with Grant in London during 1858. He
claimed that Ingersoll's saying that she
would go to Hell with his reason, rather
than to Heaven without it," was stolen
bodily from the writings of Baron Hol-
bach, famous French free-thinker of
the last century. "The System of Ma
ture" appeared to be a favorite hunting
ground for the successor OF Thomas
Paine. and from that book he / I'D crib
bed two thirds of his lecture on Ghosts"
In preparing his lecture on the Gods,
which he had stated was the best one
in the course, he had searched the
slums of infdel writings for material.
His famous aphorism, IAN honest God
the noblest work of man." was cribbed
from a work published in London by
Charles Blount in 1868, and some Of
his most pungent and foul illusions to
Christianity and the clergy were taken
from work so foul that It's publication
and circulation mad been suppressed in
its own country namely, "The Life
of the Gods" by Eugene Baptiste Parn-
ry, a FrenchmaR.
"The Mistakes of Moses" was almost
literal copy of the doubts of Inf
dels," published in London in 1888 by
James Watson, and the speaker quoted
passage after passage from the two
| works to prove the assertion. IDgersoll
displayed in all his writings considera-
BILE ingenuity in the way in which he
pulled, twisted, and entangled the Ian
guage of the writer's from whom he
culled, but not a particle of originali-
ty. In all his writings the speak
er traced the thoughts of some writ
er Of the past, and said ne, "He
never makes an epigram or advances
an idea but that stillhunt among the
works of these old writers on kindred
subjects will discover its progenitor.
Dean Swife's aphorism "that the less q
bottle has in it, the more of a row it
makes in pouring it out" would aptly
apply to IngersolI, and yet lie had the
adamantine cheek to asert that any
man who did not do his own thinking
was slave.
He concluded by saying that the
church was in no danger of disruption
from Ingersoll's efforts to overthrow it,
and that such religion as he advo-
Gated could never obtain a foothold
among people who believed in the pur-
ity of home and future existence be-
yond the grave.