an as
Shakespeare--he who harvested all the fields of dramatic thought, and
after whom all others have been only gleaners of straw, he who found
the human intellect dwelling in a hut, touched it with the wand of his
genius and it became a palace--producing him and hundreds of others I
might mention--with the angels of progress leaning over the far horizon
beckoning this race of work and thought--I had rather belong to a race
commencing at the skull-less vertebrae producing the gentleman in the
dug-out and so on up, than to have descended from a perfect pair upon
which the Lord has lost money from that day to this. I had rather
belong to a race that is going up than to one that is going down. I
would rather belong to one that commenced at the skull-less vertebrae
and started for perfection, than to belong to one, that started from
perfection and started for the skull-less vertebrae.

These are the excuses I have for my race, and taking everything into
consideration, I think we have done extremely well.

Let us have more liberty and free thought. Free thought will give us
truth. It is too early in the history of the world to write a creed.
Our fathers were intellectual slaves; our fathers were intellectual
serfs. There never has been a free generation on the globe. Every
creed you have got bears the mark of whip, and chain, and fagot. There
has been no creed written by a free brain. Wait until we have had two
or three generations of liberty and it will then be time enough to
seize the swift horse of progress by the bridle and say--thus far and
no farther; and in the meantime let us be kind to each other; let us
be decent towards each other. We are all travelers on the great plain
we call life and there is nobody quite sure, what road to take--not
just dead sure, you known. There are lots of guide-boards on the plain
and you find thousands of people swearing today that their guide-board
is the only board that shows the right direction. I go and talk to
them and they say: "You go that way, or you will be damned." I go to
another and they say: "You go this way, or you will be damned." I
find them all fighting and quarreling and beating each other, and then
I say: "Let us cut down all these guide-boards." "What," they say,
"leave us without any guide-boards?" I say: "Yes. Let every man take
the road he thinks is right; and let everybody else wish him a happy
journey; let us part friends."

I say to you t