subordination of the passions to the perceptions of the intellect.
True religion is not a theory--it is a practice. It is not a creed--it
is a life.

A theory that is afraid of investigation is undeserving a place in the
human mind.

I do not pretend to tell what all the truth is. I do not pretend to have
fathomed the abyss, nor to have floated on outstretched wings level with
the dim heights of thought. I simply plead for freedom. I denounce the
cruelties and horrors of slavery. I ask for light and air for the souls
of men. I say, take off those chains--break those manacles--free those
limbs--release that brain! I plead for the right to think--to reason--to
investigate. I ask that the future may be enriched with the honest
thoughts of men. I implore every human being to be a soldier in the army
of progress.

I will not invade the rights of others. You have no right to erect your
toll-gate upon the highways of thought. You have no right to leap from
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 liberty in your own
way but extend to all others the same right.

I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty
to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous--if they aver that doubt is
a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds
of men.

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. 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 ideas of justice by promising infinite rewards for finite
virtues, and threatening infinite punishment for finite offenses.

They filled the future with heavens and with hells, with the shining
peaks of selfish joy and the lurid abysses of flame. For ages they kept
the world in ignor