souls. To question him was to die here and be
damned for eternity.

The problem of civilization has been to get the truth past the preacher
to the people: he has forever barred and blocked the way, and until he
was shorn of his temporal power there was no hope. The prisons were
first made for those who doubted the priest; behind and beneath every
episcopal residence were dungeons; the ferocious and delicate tortures
that reached every physical and mental nerve were his. His anathemas and
curses were always quickly turned upon the strong men of mountain or sea
who dared live natural lives, said what they thought was truth, or did
what they deemed was right. Science is a search for truth, but theology
is a clutch for power.

Nothing is so distasteful to a priest as freedom: a happy, exuberant,
fearless, self-sufficient and radiant man he both feared and abhorred. A
free soul was regarded by the Church as one to be dealt with. The priest
has ever put a premium on pretense and hypocrisy. Nothing recommended a
man more than humility and the acknowledgment that he was a worm of the
dust. The ability to do and dare was in itself considered a proof of
depravity.

The education of the young has been monopolized by priests in order to
perpetuate the fallacies of theology, and all endeavor to put education
on a footing of usefulness and utility has been fought inch by inch.

Andrew D. White, in his book, "The Warfare of Science and Religion," has
calmly and without heat sketched the war that Science has had to make to
reach the light. Slowly, stubbornly, insolently, theology has fought
Truth step by step--but always retreating, taking refuge first behind
one subterfuge, then another. When an alleged fact was found to be a
fallacy, we were told it was not a literal fact, simply a spiritual one.
All of theology's weapons have been taken from her and placed in the
Museum of Horrors--all save one, namely, social ostracism. And this
consists in a refusal to invite Science to indulge in cream-puffs.

We smile, knowing that the man who now successfully defies theology is
the only one she really, yet secretly, admires. If he does not run after
her, she holds true the poetic unities by running after him. Mankind is
emancipated (or partially so).

Darwin's fame rests, for the most part, on two books, "The Origin of
Species" and "The Descent of Man."

Yet before these were published he had issued "A Journal of Research
into Geology