all authority to govern came from them.
The emperors, kings and potentates, every one of them, had the divine
petroleum poured upon his head, the kerosene of authority.

The emperors, king and potentates had communications from the phantoms.
Man was not considered as the source of power; to rebel against the
king was to rebel against the ghosts, and nothing less than the blood
of the offenders could appease the invisible phantoms and by the
authority of the ghosts man was crushed and slayed and plundered. Many
toiled wearily in the sun and storm that a few favorites of the ghosts
might live in idleness, and many lived in huts and caves and dens that
the few might dwell in palaces, and many clothed themselves with rags
that a few might robe themselves in purple and gold, and many crept and
cringed and crawled that a few might tread upon their necks with feet
of iron. From the ghosts men received not only authority but
information. They told us the form of the earth; they informed us that
eclipses were caused by the sins of man, especially the failure to pay
tithes that the universe was made in six days; that gazing at the sky
with a telescope was dangerous; that trying to be wise beyond what they
had written was born of a rebellious and irreverent spirit; they told
us there was no virtue like belief; no crime like doubt, that
investigation was simply impudence, and the punishment therefore
violent torment; they not only told us all about this world but about
two others, and if their statements about the other two are as true as
they were about this, no one can estimate the value of their
information.

For countless ages the world was governed by ghosts, and they spared no
pains to change the eagle of the human intellect into a bat of
darkness. To accomplish this infamous purpose, to drive the love of
truth from the human heart; to prevent the advancement of mankind to
shut out from the world every ray of intellectual light to pollute
every mind with superstition, the power of kings, the cunning and
cruelty of priests, and the wealth of nations were used.

In order to show you the information we got from the ghosts, and the
condition of the world when the ghosts were the kings, let me call your
attention to this: During these years of persecution, ignorance,
superstition and slavery, nearly all the people, the kings, lawyers and
doctors, learned and unlearned, believed in that frightful production
of ignorance, of fe