Nor must we forget that many educated, cultured, and well-meaning Europeans and Americans to-day believe that unbaptised babies, and free-thinkers, and unrepentant Christians will lie shrieking forever in a lake of fire and brimstone.
We must not forget that it is now, in the Twentieth Century, that I, an Englishman, am writing this book to plead that men and women, our brothers and sisters, should not be hated, degraded, whipped, imprisoned, hanged, and everlastingly damned for being more ignorant and less fortunate than others, their fellows.
Taken straight from the cradle and brought up by brutes, a child would be scarcely human. Taken straight from the cradle and brought up amongst savages, the child must be a savage.
Taken straight from the cradle and brought up amongst thieves, the child must be a thief.
Every child is born destitute of knowledge, and every child is born with propensities that may make for evil or for good.
And the men and women amongst whom the child is born and reared are the sole source from which he can get knowledge.
And the men and women amongst whom the child is born and reared are the sole means by which his propensities may be restrained from evil and developed for good.
The child's character, then, his development for good or evil, depends upon his treatment by his fellow-creatures.
His propensities depend upon his ancestors.
That is to say, a child must inevitably grow up and become that which his ancestors and his fellow-creatures make him.