was the same difference between those skulls, the lowest and highest
skulls, that there was between the dugout and the man-of-war and the
steamship, between the club and the Krupp gun, between the yellow daub
and the landscape, between the tom-tom and an opera by Verdi.

The first and lowest skull in this row was the den in which crawled the
base and meaner instincts of mankind, and the last was a temple in which
dwelt joy, liberty, and love.

It is all a question of brain, of intellectual development.

If we are nearer free than were our fathers, it is because we have
better heads upon the average, and more brains in them.

Now, I ask you to be honest with me. It makes no difference to you what
I believe, nor what I wish to prove. I simply ask you to be honest.
Divest your minds, for a moment at least, of all religious prejudice.
Act, for a few moments, as though you were men and women.

Suppose the king, if there was one, and the priest, if there was one,
at the time this gentleman floated in the dug-out, and charmed his ears
with the music of the tom-tom, had said: "That dug-out is the best boat
that ever can be built by man; the pattern of that came from on high,
from the great god of storm and flood, and any man who says that he can
improve it by putting a mast in it, with a sail upon it, is an infidel,
and shall be burned at the stake;" what, in your judgment--honor
bright--would have been the effect upon the circumnavigation of the
globe?

Suppose the king, if there was one, and the priest, if there was
one--and I presume there was a priest, because it was a very ignorant
age--suppose this king and priest had said: "That tom-tom is the most
beautiful instrument of music of which any man can conceive; that is the
kind of music they have in heaven; an angel sitting upon the edge of
a fleecy cloud, golden in the setting sun, playing upon that tom-tom,
became so enraptured, so entranced with her own music, that in a kind of
ecstasy she dropped it--that is how we obtained it; and any man who
says that it can be improved by putting a back and front to it, and
four strings, and a bridge, and getting a bow of hair with rosin, is a
blaspheming wretch, and shall die the death,"--I ask you, what effect
would that have had upon music? If that course had been pursued, would
the human ears, in your judgment, ever have been enriched with the
divine symphonies of Beethoven? Suppose the king, if there was one, and
the pries