interest, and perhaps surprise,
some to learn that for the famous Christmas Number of the Freethinker
which was successfully prosecuted, the editor received absolutely
nothing for his work except twelve months' imprisonment, while the
then registered proprietor, who suffered nine months of the same fate,
actually shared with him a pecuniary loss of five pounds. We are really
in deadly earnest, like all the greater soldiers of freedom who preceded
us; and we employ our smaller resources of satire, as such giants as
Lucian, Rabelais, Erasmus, Voltaire and Heine used theirs, for ends
that reach far forward into the mighty future, and affect the welfare of
unimagined generations of mankind.

Now the masses do not read learned disquisitions; they have no leisure
to make themselves adequately acquainted with the history of the Bible
documents; nor can they study comparative religion, trace out the
analogies between Christianity and older faiths, and realise how all
the elaborate developments of doctrine and ritual in modern creeds have
sprung from a few simple beliefs and practices of savage superstition.
But they are conversant with one or two cardinal ideas of science, and
they know the principles which underlie our daily life. What is called
common sense (the logic of common experience) is their philosophy, and
whoever seeks to move them must appeal to them through that. Strange as
it may appear, it is that very common sense which the clergy dread far
more than all the disclosures of learning and all the revelations of
science; the reason being, that learning and science are the privilege
of a few, while common sense is the possession of all, and affects the
very foundations of spiritual and political tyranny.

Ridicule is a most potent form of common-sense logic. What is the
_reductio ad absurdum_ but an appeal to admitted truths against
plausible falsehoods? Reducing a thing to an absurdity is simply showing
its inconsistency with what is common to both sides in a dispute; and it
frequently means the exposure of a gross contradiction to the principles
of sanity. Laughter, too, as Hobbes pointed out, has always an element
of pride or contempt; being invariably accompanied by a feeling of
superiority to its object. Whoever laughs at an absurdity is above it.
He looks down on it from a loftier altitude than argument can reach.
The man who laughs is safe. He can never more be in danger, unless he
suffers fatty degeneration