ance and awe, in want and misery, in fear and chains.

I plead for light, for air, for opportunity. I plead for individual
independence. I plead for the rights of labor and of thought. I plead
for a chainless future. Let the ghosts go--justice remains. Let them
disappear--men and women and children are left. Let the monsters fade
away--the world is here with its hills and seas and plains, with its
seasons of smiles and frowns, its spring of leaf and bud, its summer of
shade and flower and murmuring stream; its autumn with the laden boughs,
when the withered banners of the corn are still, and gathered fields are
growing strangely wan; while death, poetic death, with hands that color
what they touch, weaves in the Autumn wood her tapestries of gold and
brown.

The world remains with its winters and homes and firesides, where grow
and bloom the virtues of our race. All these are left; and music, with
its sad and thrilling voice, and all there is of art and song and hope
and love and aspiration high. All these remain. Let the ghosts go--we
will worship them no more.

Man is greater than these phantoms. Humanity is grander than all the
creeds, than all the books. Humanity is the great sea, and these creeds,
and books, and religions, are but the waves of a day. Humanity is the
sky, and these religions and dogmas and theories are but the mists and
clouds changing continually, destined finally to melt away.

That which is founded upon slavery, and fear, and ignorance, cannot
endure. In the religion of the future there will be men and women and
children, all the aspirations of the soul, and all the tender humanities
of the heart.

Let the ghosts go. We will worship them no more. Let them cover their
eyeless sockets with their fleshless hands and fade forever from the
imaginations of men.

THE LIBERTY OF MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD

Liberty sustains the same Relation to Mind that Space does to Matter.

THERE is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the child of intelligence.
The history of man is simply the history of slavery, of injustice and
brutality, together with the means by which he has, through the dead and
desolate years, slowly and painfully advanced. He has been the sport
and prey of priest and king, the food of superstition and cruel might.
Crowned force has governed ignorance through fear. Hypocrisy and
tyranny--two vultures--have fed upon the liberties of man. From all
these there has been, and is, bu