with things that will take them years and years
to unlearn; tell them facts--it is just as easy. It is as easy to find
out botany, and astronomy, and geology, and history--it is as easy to
find out all these things as to cram their minds with things you know
nothing about,* and where a child knows what the name of a flower is
when it sees it, the name of a bird and all those things, the world
becomes interesting everywhere, and they do not pass by the
flowers--they are not deaf to all the songs of birds, simply because
they are walking along thinking about hell.

[* "We know of no difference between matter and spirit, because we know
nothing with certainty about either. Why trouble ourselves about
matters of which, however important they may be we do know nothing and
can know nothing?"--Huxley]

I tell you, this is a pretty good world if we only love somebody in it,
if we only make somebody happy, if we are only honor-bright in it, if
we have no fear. That is my doctrine. I like to hear children at the
table telling what big things they have seen during the day; I like to
hear their merry voices mingling with the clatter of knives and forks.
I had rather hear that than any opera that was ever put on the stage.
I hate this idea of authority. I hate dignity. I never saw a
dignified man that was not after all an old idiot. Dignity is a mask;
a dignified man is afraid that you will know he does not know
everything. A man of sense and argument is always willing to admit what
he don't know--why?--because there is so much that he does know; and
that is the first step towards learning anything--willingness to admit
what you don't know and when you don't understand a thing, ask--no
matter how small and silly it may look to other people--ask, and after
that you know. A man never is in a state of mind that he can learn
until he gets that dignified nonsense out of him, and so, I say let us
treat our children with perfect kindness and tenderness.

Now, then, I believe in absolute intellectual liberty; that a man has a
right to think, and think wrong, provided he does the best he can to
think right--that is all. I have no right to say that Mr. Smith shall
not think; Mr. Smith has no right to say I shall not think; I have no
right to go and pull a clergyman out of his pulpit and say: "You shall
not preach that doctrine," but I have just as much right as he has to
say my say. I have no right to lie about a clergyman, and