With fear; you have taken our wives
and children from our arms; you have confiscated our property; you have
denied us the right to testify in courts of justice; you have branded
us with infamy; you have torn out our tongues; you have refused us
burial. In the name of your religion you have robbed us of every
right; and after having inflicted upon us every evil that can be
inflicted in this world, you have fallen upon your knees, and with
clasped hands implored your God to finish the holy work in hell.

Can you wonder that we hate your doctrines; that we despise your
creeds; that we feel proud to know that we are beyond your power; that
we are free in spite of you; that we can express our honest thought,
and that the whole world is gradually rising into the blessed light?
Can you wonder that we point with pride to the fact that infidelity has
ever been found battling for the rights of man, for the liberty of
conscience, and for the happiness of all? Can you wonder that we are
proud to know that we have always been disciples of reason and soldiers
of freedom; that we have denounced tyranny and superstition, and have
kept our hands unstained with human blood?

I deny that religion is the end or object of this life. When it is so
considered it becomes destructive of happiness. The real end of life
is, happiness. It becomes a hydra-headed monster, reaching in terrible
coils from the heavens, and thrusting its thousand fangs into the
bleeding, quivering hearts of men. It devours their substance, builds
palaces for God (who dwells not in temples made with hands), and allows
His children to die in huts and hovels. It fills the earth with
mourning, heaven with hatred, the present with fear, and all the future
with fear and despair. Virtue is a subordination of the passion of the
intellect. It is to act in accordance with your highest convictions.
It does not consist in believing, but in doing. This is the sublime
truth that the infidels in all ages have uttered. They have handed the
torch from one to the other through all the years that have fled. Upon
the altar of reason they have kept the sacred fire, and through the
long midnight of faith they fed the divine flame. Infidelity is
liberty; all superstition is slavery. In every creed man is the slave
of God, woman is the slave of man, and the sweet children are the
slaves of all. We do not want creeds; we want some knowledge. We want
happiness. And yet we are to