Montgomery Quiggle once said: “The world’s population is divided into
three classes—those who have forged ahead of accepted theories, those
who have only reached the level of accepted theories, and those who are
slowly trudging along behind the march of progress without any theories
at all. And the strange thing of it all is, the middle class rule,
instead of those in advance.”
In fact, those in advance are punished for their advanced ideas, are
ostracised, maligned, mobbed and often imprisoned at the dictates of the
middle class, while the rear class of mere thoughtless plodders cheer the
proceedings when an advanced thinker is thus caught and punished.
It has always been thus. Galileo was an early victim, so was Bruno,
Savanarola, and a thousand other bright mental lights who threw beams of
illumination far in advance of the thick-headed middle class. The thinker
has always been a martyr to truth and justice. The man who would remove
the mental fetters that chain the human mind, has always been treated as
a heretic and traitor to good government and morality.
And the mobs that are chained to the old fogyism are always ready to
crucify the thinker who would dare devise means of setting them at
liberty.
The middle class are always insisting that they have arrived at the top
of advanced ideas, and that it is an unpardonable sin to advance one
single step farther. Whatever form of government is accepted by them is
the right form, and the “crank” who would suggest anything different, is
a bad man.
And the unthinking plodders take up the cry and shout “Bad man!” at
everybody who accepts the new theory. In fact, the plodding mob is
used as a tail to the middle class kite, and as of material assistance
in helping to hold the kite in proper position to catch the breeze.
And it is because the advanced class refuse to serve as a tail to the
conservative kite that they are persecuted. They may in time persuade the
mob of plodders to cease playing tail-piece to the middle class kite, and
let the kite come down with a bang and break up its stock of old exploded
theories and decayed ideas, and so leave them floundering in the mud of
mental stagnation.
Read up the history of the old martyrs, men who died on the scaffold and
at the stake for truth’s sake, and you will find in every instance that
they were men of advanced ideas—men who had broken away from conservative
fogyism and had made some attempt to break the fetters that bind the
minds of men and set them free.
In the eyes of the middle class there can be no greater crime than to
make an attempt to break the fetters of the mental slaves and stir the
minds of the plodding, unthinking mob and set them to thinking real
thoughts and evolving new theories.
Go back a few years previous to the abolition of human slavery and notice
how the advanced thinkers were treated. History tells how Thompson
narrowly escaped the mob at Concord, for teaching that human slavery is a
crime against God and man. Whittier was pelted with mud and stones, and
Garrison was often mobbed in Boston.
At one time a subscription to a fund was asked of the Norfolk people to
pay for the heads of Thompson, Garrison and Zappan, and many Southern
cities threatened to boycott all cities in the North that allowed men
to teach the abolition of slavery. And the plodding mob who were little
better than slaves themselves were ready to cast the first stone or
brickbat at the advanced thinkers who could see human slavery from the
human side.
I know a woman in Colorado who had once been a Mormon. She had been born
and reared in Mormondom. But she began to doubt the whole institution
when asked to become the fourth wife of a wealthy Mormon elder. Her
ideas had advanced beyond the pagan idea of such gross immorality. It was
lucky for this woman that just outside of Utah there were thousands of
people advanced beyond pagan morals. She fled from home one night in a
covered wagon, and outside the city she met her lover, the young Gentile
who had taught her the sham and pretentions of her father’s religion.
In Colorado they found safety and happiness. She was an old woman when
I met her, but she said she still trembled when she looked back to her
early experience. Had all the world believed in Mormonism she could not
have escaped the lust of the Mormon elder and a life of misery.