the hedges of
superstition and strike down the pioneers of the human race. You have
no right to sacrifice the liberties of man upon the altars of ghosts.
Believe what you may; preach what you desire; have all the forms and
ceremonies you please; exercise your liberties in your own way, and
extend to all others the same right.

I attack the monsters, the phantoms of imagination that have ruled the
world. I attack slavery. I ask for room--room for the human mind.

Why should we sacrifice a real world that we have for one we know not
of? Why should we enslave ourselves? Why should we forge fetters for
our own hands? Why should we be the slaves of phantoms--phantoms that
we create ourselves? The darkness of barbarism was the womb of these
shadows. In the light of science they cannot cloud the sky forever.
They have reddened the hands of man with innocent blood. They made the
cradle a curse, and the grave a place of torment.

They blinded the eyes and stopped the ears of the human race. They
subverted all the ideas of justice by promising infinite rewards for
finite virtues, and threatening infinite punishment for finite offenses.

I plead for light, for air, for opportunity. I plead for individual
independence. I plead for the rights of labor and of thought. I plead
for a chainless future. Let the ghosts go--justice remains. Let them
disappear--men, women and children are left. Let the monster fade
away--the world remains, with its hills and seas and plains, with its
seasons of smiles and frowns, its Springs of leaf and bud, its Summer
of shade and flower, its Autumn with the laden boughs, when

The withered banners of the corn are still,
And gathered fields are growing strangely wan,
While Death, poetic Death, with hands that color
Whate'er they touch, weaves in the Autumn wood
Her tapestries of gold and brown.

The world remains, with its Winters and homes and firesides, where grow
and bloom the virtues of our race. All these are left; and music, with
its sad and thrilling voice, and all there is of art and song and hope,
and love and aspiration high. All these remain. Let the ghosts go--we
will worship them no more.

Man is greater than these phantoms. Humanity is grander than all the
creeds, than all the books. Humanity is the great sea, and these
creeds and books and religions are but the waves of a day. Humanity is
the sky, and these religio