every John the Baptist uttering his cry in the
wilderness is heard.

And the fate of John the Baptist, and the fate of the Man whom he
preceded, are typical of the fate of all who are bold enough to carry
the standard of revolt into the camp of the entrenched enemy. The Cross
is a mighty privilege; and only the sublimely great are able to pay the
price at which hemlock is held.

Buddha said that the finest word in any language is "Equanimity." This
is a paradox, and like every paradox implies that the reverse is equally
true. Equanimity in the face of opposition, steadfastness in time of
stress, and wise and useful purpose, are truly godlike.

And there is only one thing worth fighting for, talking for, or writing
for; and all literature and all oratory have this for their central
theme--Freedom. It was only Freedom that could lure Cincinnatus from his
plow or Lincoln from his law-office.

And so Mary Wollstonecraft's book, "The Rights of Woman," was the first
strong, earnest, ringing word on the subject. She summed up the theme
once and for all, just as an essay by Herbert Spencer anticipates and
answers every objection, exhausting the theme. And that the author had a
whimsical touch of humor in her composition is shown in that she
dedicates the book to that Prince of Woman-Haters, "Talleyrand, Late
Bishop of Autun."

"Political Justice," by William Godwin, was published in Seventeen
Hundred Ninety-three. The work, on its first appearance, created a
profound impression among English thinking people, although orthodoxy
has almost succeeded in smothering it in silence since John Stuart Mill
declared that this book created an epoch and deserved to rank with
Milton's "Speech for Unlicensed Printing," Locke's "Essay on Human
Understanding" or Jean Jacques' "Emile." That it was a positive force in
Mill's own life he always admitted.

However, it is only within our own time--only, in fact, since Eighteen
Hundred Seventy-six--that the views of Godwin as expressed in "Political
Justice" have been adopted by the spirit of Christendom. Godwin believed
in the perfectibility of the race, and proved that man's career has
been a constant movement forward. That is, there never was a "Fall of
Man." Man has always fallen upward, and when he has kicked the ball it
has always been toward the goal. Godwin believed that it was well to
scan the faults of our fellows closely, in order to see, forsooth,
whether they are not their virtu