us barbarism.
The dogmas of such people about the Father of Mankind and his creatures
are of no more account in my opinion than those of a council of Aztecs.
If a man picks your pocket, do you not consider him thereby disqualified
to pronounce any authoritative opinion on matters of ethics? If a man
hangs my ancient female relatives for sorcery, as they did in this
neighborhood a little while ago, or burns my instructor for not
believing as he does, I care no more for his religious edicts than I
should for those of any other barbarian.

Of course, a barbarian may hold many true opinions; but when the ideas
of the healing art, of the administration of justice, of Christian love,
could not exclude systematic poisoning, judicial duelling, and murder
for opinion's sake, I do not see how we can trust the verdict of
that time relating to any subject which involves the primal instincts
violated in these abominations and absurdities.--What if we are even now
in a state of semi-barbarism?

[Note: This physician believes we "are even now in a state
of semi-barbarism": invasive procedures for the prolongation
of death rather than prolongation of life; "faith" as slimly
based as medieval faith in minute differences between
control and treated groups; statistical manipulation to
prove a prejudice. Medicine has a good deal to answer for!
D.W.]

Perhaps some think we ought not to talk at table about such things.--I
am not so sure of that. Religion and government appear to me the two
subjects which of all others should belong to the common talk of people
who enjoy the blessings of freedom. Think, one moment. The earth is a
great factory-wheel, which, at every revolution on its axis, receives
fifty thousand raw souls and turns off nearly the same number worked
up more or less completely. There must be somewhere a population of
two hundred thousand million, perhaps ten or a hundred times as many,
earth-born intelligences. Life, as we call it, is nothing but the edge
of the boundless ocean of existence where it comes on soundings. In
this view, I do not see anything so fit to talk about, or half so
interesting, as that which relates to the innumerable majority of our
fellow-creatures, the dead-living, who are hundreds of thousands to one
of the live-living, and with whom we all potentially belong, though we
have got tangled for the present in some parcels of fibrine, albumen,
and phosphates, that ke