ving robe of passionate flesh--how are you going to make them think
and feel alike? If there is an infinite god, one who made us, and wishes
us to think alike, why did he give a spoonful of brains to one, and a
magnificent intellectual development to another? Why is it that we
have all degrees of intelligence, from orthodoxy to genius, if it was
intended that all should think and feel alike?

I used to read in books how our fathers persecuted mankind. But I never
appreciated it. I read it, but it did not burn itself into my soul, I
did not really appreciate the infamies that have been committed in the
name of religion, until I saw the iron arguments that christians used.
I saw the Thumbscrew--two little pieces of iron, armed on the inner
surfaces with protuberances, to prevent their slipping; through each end
a screw uniting the two pieces. And when some man denied the efficacy of
baptism, or maybe said, "I do not believe that a fish ever swallowed a
man to keep him from drowning," then they put his thumb between these
pieces of iron and in the name of love and universal forgiveness, began
to screw these pieces together. When this was done most men said, "I
will recant." Probably I should have done the same. Probably I would
have said: "Stop, I will admit anything that you wish; I will admit that
there is one god or a million, one hell or a billion; suit yourselves;
but stop."

But there was now and then a man who would not swerve the breadth of a
hair. There was now and then some sublime heart, willing to die for
an intellectual conviction. Had it not been for such men, we would be
savages to-night. Had it not been for a few brave, heroic souls in every
age, we would have been cannibals, with pictures of wild beasts tattooed
upon our flesh, dangling around some dried snake fetich.

Let us thank every good and noble man who stood so grandly, so proudly,
in spite of opposition, of hatred and death, for what he believed to be
the truth.

Heroism did not excite the respect of our fathers. The man who would not
recant was not forgiven. They screwed the thumbscrews down to the last
pang, and then threw their victim into some dungeon, where, in the
throbbing silence and darkness, he might suffer the agonies of the
fabled damned. This was done in the name of love--in the name of
mercy--in the name of the compassionate Christ.

I saw, too, what they called the Collar of Torture. Imagine a circle
of iron, and on the inside