"Did you get any?"
"Yes."
"How much?"
"Fifteen cents."
"What did you do with this money?"
"Spent it."
"What for?"
"Liquor."
"What else did you find upon the dead man?" "He had his dinner in a
bucket--some meat and bread."
"What did you do with that?"
"I ate the bread."
"What did you do with the meat?"
"I threw it away."
"Why?"
"It was Friday."
Just to the extent that man has freed himself from the dominion of
ghosts he has advanced. Just to the extent that he has freed himself
from the tyrants of his own creation he has progressed. Just to the
extent that he has investigated for himself he has lost confidence in
superstition.
With knowledge obedience becomes intelligent acquiescence--it is no
longer degrading. Acquiescence in the understood--in the known--is the
act of a sovereign, not of a slave. It ennobles, it does not degrade.
Man has found that he must give liberty to others in order to have it
himself. He has found that a master is also a slave;--that a tyrant
is himself a serf. He has found that governments should be founded and
administered by man and for man; that the rights of all are equal; that
the powers that be are not ordained by God; that woman is at least the
equal of man; that men existed before books; that religion is one of the
phases of thought through which the world is passing; that all creeds
were made by man; that everything is natural; that a miracle is
an impossibility; that we know nothing of origin and destiny; that
concerning the unknown we are all equally ignorant; that the pew has
the right to contradict what the pulpit asserts; that man is responsible
only to himself and those he injures, and that all have a right to
think.
True religion must be free. Without perfect liberty of the mind there
can be no true religion. Without liberty the brain is a dungeon--the
mind a convict. The slave may bow and cringe and crawl, but he cannot
adore--he cannot love.
True religion is the perfume of a free and grateful heart. True religion
is a subordination of the passions to the perceptions of the intellect.
True religion is not a theory--it is a practice. It is not a creed--it
is a life.
A theory that is afraid of investigation is undeserving a place in the
human mind.
I do not pretend to tell what all the truth is. I do not pretend to have
fathomed the abyss, nor to have floated on outstretched wings level with
the dim heights of thought. I simply plead for freedom. I denounce the
cruelties and horrors of slavery. I ask for light and air for the souls
of men. I say, take off those chains--break those manacles--free those
limbs--release that brain! I plead for the right to think--to reason--to
investigate. I ask that the future may be enriched with the honest
thoughts of men. I implore every human being to be a soldier in the army
of progress.
I will not invade the rights of others. You have no right to erect your
toll-gate upon the highways of thought. You have no right to leap from
the hedges of superstition and strike down the pioneers of the human
race. You have no right to sacrifice the liberties of man upon the
altars of ghosts. Believe what you may; preach what you desire; have all
the forms and ceremonies you please; exercise your liberty in your own
way but extend to all others the same right.
I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty
to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous--if they aver that doubt is
a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds
of men.
I attack the monsters, the phantoms of imagination that have ruled the
world. I attack slavery. I ask for room--room for the human mind.
Why should we sacrifice a real world that we have, for one we know not
of? Why should we enslave ourselves? Why should we forge fetters for
our own hands? Why should we be the slaves of phantoms. The darkness of
barbarism was the womb of these shadows. In the light of science they
cannot cloud the sky forever. They have reddened the hands of man with
innocent blood. They made the cradle a curse, and the grave a place of
torment.
They blinded the eyes and stopped the ears of the human race. They
subverted all ideas of justice by promising infinite rewards for finite
virtues, and threatening infinite punishment for finite offences.
They filled the future with heavens and with hells, with the shining
peaks of selfish joy and the lurid abysses of flame. For ages they kept
the world in ignorance and awe, in want and misery, in fear and chains.
I plead for light, for air, for opportunity. I plead for individual
independence. I plead for the rights of labor and of thought. I plead
for a chainless future. Let the ghosts go--justice remains. Let them
disappear--men and women and children are left. Let the monsters fade
away--the world is here with its hills and seas and plains, with its
seasons of smiles and frowns, its spring of leaf and bud, its summer of
shade and flower and murmuring stream; its autumn with the laden boughs,
when the withered banners of the corn are still, and gathered fields are
growing strangely wan; while death, poetic death, with hands that color
what they touch, weaves in the Autumn wood her tapestries of gold and
brown.
The world remains with its winters and homes and firesides, where grow
and bloom the virtues of our race. All these are left; and music, with
its sad and thrilling voice, and all there is of art and song and hope
and love and aspiration high. All these remain. Let the ghosts go--we
will worship them no more.
Man is greater than these phantoms. Humanity is grander than all the
creeds, than all the books. Humanity is the great sea, and these creeds,
and books, and religions, are but the waves of a day. Humanity is the
sky, and these religions and dogmas and theories are but the mists and
clouds changing continually, destined finally to melt away.
That which is founded upon slavery, and fear, and ignorance, cannot
endure. In the religion of the future there will be men and women and
children, all the aspirations of the soul, and all the tender humanities
of the heart.
Let the ghosts go. We will worship them no more. Let them cover their
eyeless sockets with their fleshless hands and fade forever from the
imaginations of men.