35. Forgive the Children!

When your child confesses to you that it has com mitted a fault, take the child in your arms, and let it feel your heart beat against its heart, and raise your children in the sunlight of love, and they will be sunbeams to you along the pathway of life. Abolish the club and the whip from the house, because, if the civilized use a whip, the ignorant and the brutal will use a club, and they will use it because you use the whip.

36. A Solemn Satire on Whipping Children

If there is one of you here that ever expect to whip your child again, let me ask you something. Have your photograph taken at the time, and let it show your face red with vulgar anger, and the face of the little one with eyes swimming in tears. If that little child should die I cannot think of a sweeter way to spend an Autumn afternoon than to take that photograph and go to the cemetery, where the maples are clad in tender gold, and when little scarlet runners are coming, like poems of regret, from the sad heart of the earth; and sit down upon that mound, I look upon that photograph, and think of the flesh, made dust, that you beat. Just think of it. I could not bear to die in the arms of a child that I had whipped. I could not bear to feel upon my lips, when they were withering beneath the touch of death, the kiss of one that I had struck.

37. The Whips and G.o.ds are Gone!

Children are better treated than they used to be; the old whips and G.o.ds are out of the schools, and they are governing children by love and sense. The world is getting better; it is getting better in Maine. It has got better in Maine, in Vermont. It is getting better in every State of the North.

INDIVIDUALITY

38. Absolute Independence of the Individual

What we want to-day is what our fathers wrote. They did not attain to their ideal; we approach it nearer, but have not yet reached it. We want, not only the independence of a state, not only the independence of a nation, but something far more glorious--the absolute independence of the individual. That is what we want. I want it so that I, one of the children of Nature, can stand on an equality with the rest; that I can say this is my air, my sunshine, my earth, and I have a right to live, and hope, and aspire, and labor, and enjoy the fruit of that labor, as much as any individual, or any nation on the face of the globe.

39. Saved by Disobedience

I tell you there is something splendid in man that will not always mind.

Why, if we had done as the kings told us five hundred years ago, we would all have been slaves. If we had done as the priests told us, we would all have been idiots. If we had done as the doctors told us, we would all have been dead. We have been saved by disobedience. We have been saved by that splendid thing called independence, and I want to see more of it, day after day, and I want to see children raised so they will have it. That is my doctrine.

40. Intellectual Tyranny

Nothing can be more infamous than intellectual tyranny. To put chains upon the body is as nothing compared with putting shackles on the brain.

No G.o.d is ent.i.tled to the worship or the respect of man who does not give, even to the meanest of his children, every right that he claims for himself.

41. Say What You Think

I do not believe that the tendency is to make men and women brave and glorious when you tell them that there are certain ideas upon certain subjects that they must never express; that they must go through life with a pretense as a shield; that their neighbors will think much more of them if they will only keep still; and that above all is a G.o.d who despises one who honestly expresses what he believes. For my part, I believe men will be nearer honest in business, in politics, grander in art--in everything that is good and grand and beautiful, if they are taught from the cradle to the coffin to tell their honest opinions.

42. I Want to Put Out the Fires of h.e.l.l

Some people tell me that I take away the hope of immortality. I do not.

Leave heaven as it was! I want to put out the fires of h.e.l.l. I want to transfer the war from this earth to heaven. Some tell me Jehovah is G.o.d, and another says Ali is G.o.d, and another that Brahma is G.o.d. I say, let Jehovah, and Ali, and Brahma fight it out. Let them fight it out there, and whoever is victor, to that G.o.d I will bow.

43. The Puritans

When the Puritans first came they were narrow. They did not understand what liberty meant--what religious liberty, what political liberty, was; but they found out in a few years. There was one feeling among them that rises to their eternal honor like a white shaft to the clouds--they were in favor of universal education. Wherever they went they built school houses, introduced books, and ideas of literature. They believed that every man should know how to read and how to write, and should find out all that his capacity allowed him to comprehend. That is the glory of the Puritan fathers.

44. A Star in the Sky of Despair

Every Christian, every philanthropist, every believer in human liberty, should feel under obligation to Thomas Paine for the splendid service rendered by him in the darkest days of the American Revolution. In the midnight of Valley Forge, "The Crisis" was the first star that glittered in the wide horizon of despair. Every good man should remember with grat.i.tude the brave words spoken by Thomas Paine in the French Convention against the death of Louis. He said: "We will kill the king, but not the man. We will destroy monarchy, not monarch."

45. Do not Shock the Heathen!

You send missionaries to Turkey, and tell them that the Koran is a lie.

You shock them. You tell them that Mahomet was not a prophet. You shock them. It is too bad to shock them. You go to India, and you tell them that Vishnu was nothing, that Purana was nothing, that Buddha was n.o.body, and your Brahma, he is nothing. Why do you shock these people?

You should not do that; you ought not to hurt their feelings. I tell you no man on earth has a right to be shocked at the expression of an honest opinion when it is kindly done, and I don't believe there is any G.o.d in the universe who has put a curtain over the fact and made it a crime for the honest hand of investigation to endeavor to draw that curtain.

46. I will Settle with G.o.d Myself

They say to me, "G.o.d will punish you forever, if you do these things."

Very well. I will settle with him. I had rather settle with him than any one of his agents. I do not like them very well. In theology I am a granger--I do not believe in middlemen. What little business I have with Heaven I will attend to myself.

47. I Claim my Right to Guess