I attack the monsters, the phantoms of imagination that have ruled the world. I attack slavery. I ask for room—room for the human mind.
Why should we sacrifice a real world that we have for one we know not of? Why should we enslave ourselves? Why should we forge fetters for our own hands? Why should we be the slaves of phantoms—phantoms that we create ourselves? The darkness of barbarism was the womb of these shadows. In the light of science they cannot cloud the sky forever. They have reddened the hands of man with innocent blood. They made the cradle a curse, and the grave a place of torment.
They blinded the eyes and stopped the ears of the human race. They subverted all the ideas of justice by promising infinite rewards for finite virtues, and threatening infinite punishment for finite offenses.
I plead for light, for air, for opportunity. I plead for individual independence. I plead for the rights of labor and of thought. I plead for a chainless future. Let the ghosts go—justice remains. Let them disappear—men, women and children are left. Let the monster fade away—the world remains, with its hills and seas and plains, with its seasons of smiles and frowns, its Springs of leaf and bud, its Summer of shade and flower, its Autumn with the laden boughs, when
The withered banners of the corn are still,
And gathered fields are growing strangely wan,
While Death, poetic Death, with hands that color
Whate'er they touch, weaves in the Autumn wood
Her tapestries of gold and brown.
The world remains, with its Winters and homes and firesides, where grow and bloom the virtues of our race. All these are left; and music, with its sad and thrilling voice, and all there is of art and song and hope, and love and aspiration high. All these remain. Let the ghosts go—we will worship them no more.
Man is greater than these phantoms. Humanity is grander than all the creeds, than all the books. Humanity is the great sea, and these creeds and books and religions are but the waves of a day. Humanity is the sky, and these religions and dogmas and theories are but the mists and clouds, changing continually, destined finally to melt away.
Let the ghosts go. We will worship them no more. Let them cover their eyeless sockets with their fleshless hands, and fade forever from the imaginations of men.