Italy:—Mazzini. Garibaldi.
In France who are and were the friends of freedom—the Catholic priests, or Renan? the bishops, or Gambetta?—Dupanloup, or Victor Hugo?
Michelet—Taine—Auguste Comte.
England:—Let us compare her priests with John Stuart Mill,—Harriet Martineau, that "free rover on the breezy common of the universe."—George Eliot—with Huxley and Tyndall, with Holyoake and Harrison—and above and over all—with Charles Darwin.
CONCLUSION.
LET us be honest. Did all the priests of Rome increase the mental wealth of man as much as Bruno? Did all the priests of France do as great a work for the civilization of the world as Diderot and Voltaire? Did all the ministers of Scotland add as much to the sum of human knowledge as David Hume? Have all the clergymen, monks, friars, ministers, priests, bishops, cardinals and popes, from the day of Pentecost to the last election, done as much for human liberty as Thomas Paine?—as much for science as Charles Darwin?
What would the world be if infidels had never been?
The infidels have been the brave and thoughtful men; the flower of all the world; the pioneers and heralds of the blessed day of liberty and love; the generous spirits of the unworthy past; the seers and prophets of our race; the great chivalric souls, proud victors on the battlefields of thought, the creditors of all the years to be.