m think. What is his intellect
for? Why is his mind one vast interrogation point? Why should not Eve
have grasped with eagerness the fruit of the tree of knowledge?

A taste of the fruit of the tree of knowledge does drive man from the
paradise of ignorance, does send him forth a laborer in the vast fields
of speculation and thought, where there is no rest, and no possibility
of the cessation of labor so long as his energies and his love of truth
remain to impel him to the conquest of the infinite domain that lies
unexplored beyond.

But would any man sell what is gained in liberty, in strength, in
breadth, in conscious superiority, for the delights which every brute
has left him in his stagnant paradise of ignorance and rest? What man
in this nineteenth century can unblushingly say he would not choose the
labor with all its pain, the effort with all its failure, the struggle
with all its exhaustion? Why try to bind the human mind by the silly
theory that a God requires man to crush out or subject the intellect he
has given him? Whatever religion may have gained by such a course, think
what morality and progress have lost by it!

What has not woman lost by that silly fable which made her responsible
for transgression? Honor her for it! Honor her the more if it was she
who first dared the struggle rather than lose her freedom or crush her
reason. _If_ she learned first that the price of ignorance and slavery
was too great to pay for the luxury of idleness--honor her for it. The
acceptance of such contemptible stories, as told by the clergy _in
all ages and in all religions_ as the "word of God," has done more to
enslave and injure women's intellects, and to brutalize men, than has
been done by any other influence; and our boasted superior civilization
is not the result of the Christian religion, but has been won step
by step in despite of it.* For the Church has fought progress with a
vindictive bitterness and power found in no other antagonist--from the
time, long ago, when it crushed Galileo for daring to know more than its
"inspired" leaders could ever learn, down to yesterday, when it raised a
wild howl against Prof. Tyndall for making a simple statement, in itself
absolutely incontrovertible.

* See Lecture 3, "Theological Fictions."

It had to yield to Galileo as the people grew beyond its power to blind
them to his truth. It is yielding every hour to-day to Tyndall from the
same dire necessity; while its