, and when this was done, most men would say: "I will recant."
I think, I would. There is not much of the martyr about me. I would
have told them: "Now you write it down, and I will sign it. You may
have one God or a million, one Hell or a million. You stop that--I am
tired."

Do you know, sometimes I have thought that all the hypocrites in the
world are not worth one drop of honest blood. I am sorry that any good
man ever died for religion. I would rather let them advance a little
easier. It is too bad to see a good man sacrificed for a lot of wild
beasts and cattle. But there is now and then a man who would not
swerve the breadth of a hair. There was now and then a sublime heart
willing to die for an intellectual conviction, and had it not been for
these men we would have been wild beasts and savages today. There were
some men who would not take it back, and had it not been for a few such
brave, heroic souls in every age we would have been cannibals, with
pictures of wild beasts tattooed upon our breasts, dancing around some
dried-snake fetish. And so they turned it down to the last thread of
agony, and threw the victim into some dungeon, where, in the throbbing
silence and darkness, he might suffer the agonies of the fabled damned.
This was done in the name of love, in the name of mercy, in the name of
the compassionate Christ. And the men that did it are the men that
made our Bible for us.

I saw, too, at the same time, the Collar of torture. Imagine a circle
of iron, and on the inside a hundred points almost as sharp as needles.
This argument was fastened about the throat of the sufferer. Then he
could not walk nor sit down, nor stir without the neck being punctured
by these points. In a little while the throat would begin to swell,
and suffocation would end the agonies of that man. This man, it may
be, had committed the crime of saying, with tears upon his cheeks, "I
do not believe that God, the father of us all, will damn to eternal
perdition any of the children of men." And that was done to convince
the world that God so loved the world that He died for us. That was in
order that people might hear the glad tidings of great joy to all
people.

I saw another instrument, called the scavenger's daughter. Imagine a
pair of shears with handles, not only where they now are, but at the
points as well and just above the pivot that unites the blades a circle
of iron. In the upper handles the hands wou