y the fruit "of a
well-spent life."

There is no "theory" or "guess-work" about it. It becomes, step by step, a
matter of conscious, intelligent, individual experience. We know it just
as we know that fire will burn or that we are here now, living, breathing,
and acting.

If I thrust my finger into a flame, all the philosophers and
metaphysicians of the world could not "argue" me out of the experience of
the fact of "burn" and "pain"; nor could theologians succeed any better by
quotations from Scripture! Man is so constituted that the _facts_ of
_experience_ are stubborn things; and the more open to reason the
individual the more convincing the facts of experience. Ignorance,
superstition, and fear recede in the presence of these Lights of man's
intelligence, as do dogma and despotism, that seek to enslave the human
soul.

Theologians tell us that it is exceeding dangerous to take all this
responsibility upon ourselves, thus appealing to ignorance, superstition,
and fear.

I would answer: I refuse to take the responsibility of _disregarding_ or
_disobeying_ the Law which the Divine and Universal Intelligence has
placed at the _very foundation_ of man's being; and I am so _un_orthodox
as to imagine and believe that God knew what he was about, even better
than the theologians, or the "Infallible" Italian who misinterprets God,
Nature, and Man.

To-day, as I write, "God's Vicegerent" is instigating and promoting a
"Holy War" in Priest-ridden Spain, over the temporal power of the Vatican,
angered to the point of murder over the "posting of notices of places of
public worship," other than Catholic.

They would rather turn the world into one "City of the Dead," than yield
_one point_ of Freedom, Enlightenment, or Self-government to man.

And men still call this _Religion_, and cast aside the crucifix for the
sword, the gun and the firebrand. The _Inferno_ has never yet been
portrayed or even outlined. Its name is Priestcraft and Intolerance under
the name of "Religion."

And is this a "Study in Psychology"? Yea, verily! Scientific Psychology is
the only thing that goes to the very bottom of it, and defines and
classifies every element, every fact in human experience. Man cannot build
a _home_ on a piece of ground where a slaughter-house disputes every
square yard of ground with the tombstones of a graveyard. Clericalism is
ever the one or the other, and frequently both; denying to man the right
to build a _home_ fo