on Friday, but not from whipping his wife. The Episcopal Church
can prevent dancing, it may be, in Lent, but not slander. The
Presbyterian can keep a man from working on Sunday, but not from
practicing deceit on Monday. And so I might go through the churches.
They lay the greater stress upon the artificial offences. Those
countries that are the most religious are the most immoral. When
the world was under the control of the Catholic Church, it reached
the very pit of immorality, and nations have advanced in morals
just in proportion that they have lost Christianity.

_Question_. It is frequently asserted that there is nothing new
in your objections against Christianity. What is your reply to
such assertions?

_Answer_. Of course, the editors of religious papers will say
this; Christians will say this. In my opinion, an argument is new
until it has been answered. An argument is absolutely fresh, and
has upon its leaves the dew of morning, until it has been refuted.
All men have experienced, it may be, in some degree, what we call
love. Millions of men have written about it. The subject is of
course old. It is only the presentation that can be new. Thousands
of men have attacked superstition. The subject is old, but the
manner in which the facts are handled, the arguments grouped--these
may be forever new. Millions of men have preached Christianity.
Certainly there is nothing new in the original ideas. Nothing can
be new except the presentation, the grouping. The ideas may be
old, but they may be clothed in new garments of passion; they may
be given additional human interest. A man takes a fact, or an old
subject, as a sculptor takes a rock; the rock is not new. Of this
rock he makes a statue; the statue is new. And yet some orthodox
man might say there is nothing new about that statue: "I know the
man that dug the rock; I know the owner of the quarry." Substance
is eternal; forms are new. So in the human mind certain ideas, or
in the human heart certain passions, are forever old; but genius
forever gives them new forms, new meanings; and this is the perpetual
originality of genius.

_Question_. Do you consider that churches are injurious to the
community?

_Answer_. In the exact proportion that churches teach falsehood;
in the exact proportion that they destroy liberty of thought, the
free action of the human mind; in the exact proportion that they
teach the doctrine of eternal pain, and