nted Superior Class has driven men wheresoever it
willed. The evolution of formal religions is not a complex process, and
the fact that they embody these two unmixable things, dogma and
morality, is a very plain and simple truth, easily seen, undisputed by
all reasonable men. And be it said that the morality of most religions
is good. Love, truth, charity, justice and gentleness are taught in them
all. But, like a rule in Greek grammar, there are many exceptions. And
so in the morality of religions there are exceptional instances that
constantly arise where love, truth, charity, gentleness and justice are
waived on suggestion of the Superior Class, that good may follow. Were
it not for these exceptions there would be no wars between
Christian nations.

The question of how to express your life will probably never down, for
the reason that men vary in temperament and inclination. Some men have
no capacity for certain sins of the flesh; others there be, who, having
lost their inclination for sensuality through too much indulgence, turn
ascetics. Yet all sermons have but one theme: how shall life be
expressed? Between asceticism and indulgence men and races swing.

Asceticism in our day finds an interesting manifestation in the
Trappists, who live on a mountain top, nearly inaccessible, and deprive
themselves of almost every vestige of bodily comfort, going without food
for days, wearing uncomfortable garments, suffering severe cold; and
should one of this community look upon the face of a woman he would
think he was in instant danger of damnation. So here we find the extreme
instance of men repressing the faculties of the body in order that the
spirit may find ample time and opportunity for exercise.

Somewhere between this extreme repression of the monk and the license of
the sensualist lies the truth. But just where is the great question; and
the desire of one person, who thinks he has discovered the norm, to
compel all other men to stop there, has led to war and strife untold.
All law centers around this point--what shall men be allowed to do? And
so we find statutes to punish "strolling play actors," "players on
fiddles," "disturbers of the public conscience," "persons who dance
wantonly," "blasphemers," and in England there were, in the year 1800,
thirty-seven offenses that were legally punishable by death. What
expression is right and what is not, is simply a matter of opinion. One
religious denomination that now e