nk expression on religious, economic and social topics has been
fraught with great peril. Even yet any man who hopes for popularity as
a writer, orator, merchant or politician, would do well to conceal
studiously his inmost beliefs. On such simple themes as the taxation of
real estate, regardless of the business of the owner, and a payment
of a like wage for a like service without consideration of sex, the
statesman who has the temerity to speak out will be quickly relegated
to private life. Successful merchants depending on a local constituency
find it expedient to cater to popular superstitions by heading
subscription-lists for the support of things in which they do not
believe. No avowed independent thinker would be tolerated as chief ruler
of any of the so-called civilized countries.

The fact, however, that the penalty for frank expression is limited now
to social and commercial ostracism is very hopeful--a few years ago it
meant the scaffold.

We have been heirs to a leaden legacy of fear that has well-nigh
banished joy and made of life a long nightmare.

In very truth, the race has been insane.

Hallucinations, fallacies, fears, have gnawed at our hearts, and men
have fought men with deadly frenzy. The people who interfered, trying to
save us, we have killed. Truly did we say, "There is no health in us,"
which repetition did not tend to mend the malady.

We are now getting convalescent. We are hobbling out into the sunshine
on crutches. We have discharged most of our old advisers, heaved the
dulling and deadly bottles out of the windows, and are intent on
studying and understanding our own case. Our motto is twenty-four
centuries old--it is simply this: KNOW THYSELF.

* * * * *

Socrates was a street preacher, with a beautiful indifference as to
whether people liked him or not. To most Athenians he was the town fool.
Athens was a little city (only about one hundred fifty thousand), and
everybody knew Socrates. The popular plays caricatured him; the topical
songs misquoted him; the funny artists on the street-corners who modeled
things in clay, while you waited, made figures of him.

Everybody knew Socrates--I guess so!

Plato, the handsome youth of nineteen, wearing a purple robe, which
marked him as one of the nobility, paused to listen to this uncouth man
who gave everything and wanted nothing.

Ye gods! But it is no wonder they caricatured him--he was a temptation
too