t, had said: "That crooked stick is the best plow that can be
invented: the pattern of that plow was given to a pious farmer in a
holy dream, and that twisted straw is the _ne plus ultra_ of all twisted
things, and any man who says he can make an improvement upon that plow,
is an atheist;" what, in your judgment, would have been the effect upon
the science of agriculture?

But the people said, and the king and priest said: "We want better
weapons with which to kill our fellow christians; we want better plows,
better music, better paintings, and whoever will give us better weapons,
and better music, better houses to live in, better clothes, we will robe
him in wealth, and crown him with honor." Every incentive was held out
to every human being to improve these things. That is the reason the
club has been changed to a cannon, the dug-out to a steamship, the daub
to a painting; that is the reason that the piece of rough and broken
stone finally became a glorified statue.

You must not, however, forget that the gentleman in the dug-out, the
gentleman who was enraptured with the music of the tom-tom, and
cultivated his land with a crooked stick, had a religion of his own.
That gentlemen in the dugout was orthodox. He was never troubled with
doubts. He lived and died settled in his mind. He believed in hell; and
he thought he would be far happier in heaven, if he could just lean over
and see certain people who expressed doubts as to the truth of his
creed, gently but everlastingly broiled and burned.

It is a very sad and unhappy fact that this man has had a great many
intellectual descendants. It is also an unhappy fact in nature, that the
ignorant multiply much faster than the intellectual. This fellow in the
dug-out believed in a personal devil. His devil had a cloven hoof, a
long tail, armed with a fiery dart; and his devil breathed brimstone.
This devil was at least the equal of God; not quite so stout but
a little shrewder. And do you know there has not been a patentable
improvement made upon that devil for six thousand years.

This gentleman in the dug-out believed that God was a tyrant; that he
would eternally damn the man who lived in accordance with his highest
and grandest ideal. He believed that the earth was flat. He believed in
a literal, burning, seething hell of fire and sulphur. He had also his
idea of politics; and his doctrine was, might makes right. And it will
take thousands of years before the world w