t. That can surely happen, and when
it happens, the word Irreverence will be regarded as the most
meaningless, and foolish, and self-conceited, and insolent, and impudent
and dictatorial word in the language. And people will say, "Whose
business is it, what gods I worship and what things hold sacred? Who has
the right to dictate to my conscience, and where did he get that right?"

We cannot afford to let that calamity come upon us. We must save the
word from this destruction. There is but one way to do it, and that is,
to stop the spread of the privilege, and strictly confine it to its
present limits: that is, to all the Christian sects, to all the Hindu
sects, and me. We do not need any more, the stock is watered enough,
just as it is.

It would be better if the privilege were limited to me alone. I think so
because I am the only sect that knows how to employ it gently, kindly,
charitably, dispassionately. The other sects lack the quality of
self-restraint. The Catholic Church says the most irreverent things
about matters which are sacred to the Protestants, and the Protestant
Church retorts in kind about the confessional and other matters which
Catholics hold sacred; then both of these irreverencers turn upon Thomas
Paine and charge _him_ with irreverence. This is all unfortunate,
because it makes it difficult for students equipped with only a low grade
of mentality to find out what Irreverence really _is_.

It will surely be much better all around if the privilege of regulating
the irreverent and keeping them in order shall eventually be withdrawn
from all the sects but me. Then there will be no more quarrelling, no
more bandying of disrespectful epithets, no more heart burnings.

There will then be nothing sacred involved in this Bacon-Shakespeare
controversy except what is sacred to me. That will simplify the whole
matter, and trouble will cease. There will be irreverence no longer,
because I will not allow it. The first time those criminals charge me
with irreverence for calling their Stratford myth an
Arthur-Orton-Mary-Baker-Thompson-Eddy-Louis-the-Seventeenth-Veiled-
Prophet-of-Khorassan will be the last. Taught by the methods
found effective in extinguishing earlier offenders by the Inquisition, of
holy memory, I shall know how to quiet them.

CHAPTER XIII

Isn't it odd, when you think of it: that you may list all the celebrated
Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen of modern times, c