And, in the second place, let me say that I have great respect for the Unitarian Church. I have great respect for the memory of Theodore Parker. I have great respect for every man who has assisted in reaving the heavens of an infinite monster. I have great respect for every man who has helped to put out the fires of hell. In other words, I have great respect for every man who has tried to civilize my race.

The Unitarian Church has done more than any other church—and may be more than all other churches—to substitute character for creed, and to say that a man should be judged by his spirit; by the climate of his heart; by the autumn of his generosity; by the spring of his hope; that he should be judged by what he does; by the influence that he exerts, rather than by the mythology he may believe. And whether there be one God or a million, I am perfectly satisfied that every duty that devolves upon me is within my reach; it is something that I can do myself, without the help of anybody else, either in this world or any other.

Now, in order to make myself plain on this subject—I think I was to speak about the Ideal—I want to thank the Unitarian Church for what it has done; and I want to thank the Universalist Church, too. They at least believe in a God who is a gentleman; and that is much more than was ever done by an orthodox church. They believe, at least, in a heavenly father who will leave the latch string out until the last child gets home; and as that lets me in—especially in reference to the "last"—I have great respect for that church.

But now I am coming to the Ideal; and in what I may say you may not all agree. I hope you won't, because that would be to me evidence that I am wrong. You cannot expect everybody to agree in the right, and I cannot expect to be always in the right myself. I have to judge with the standard called my reason, and I do not know whether it is right or not; I will admit that. But as opposed to any other man's, I will bet on mine. That is to say, for home use. In the first place, I think it is said in some book—and if I am wrong there are plenty here to correct me—that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." I think a knowledge of the limitations of the human mind is the beginning of wisdom, and, I may almost say, the end of it—really to understand yourself.

Now, let me lay down this proposition. The imagination of man has the horizon of experience; and beyond experience or nature man cannot go, even in imagination. Man is not a creator. He combines; he adds together; he divides; he subtracts; he does not create, even in the world of imagination. Let me make myself a little plainer: Not one here—not one in the wide, wide world can think of a color that he never saw. No human being can imagine a sound that he has not heard, and no one can think of a taste that he has not experienced. He can add to—that is add together—combine; but he cannot, by any possibility, create.

Man originally, we will say—go back to the age of barbarism, and you will not have to go far; our own childhood, probably, is as far as is necessary—but go back to what is called the age of savagery; every man was an idealist, as every man is to-day an idealist. Every man in savage or civilized time, commencing with the first that ever crawled out of a cave and pushed the hair back from his forehead to look at the sun—commence with him and end with Judge Wright—the last expression on the God question—and from that cave to the soul that lives in this temple, everyone has been an idealist and has endeavored to account in some way for what he saw and for what he felt; in other words, for the phenomena of nature. The easiest way to account for it by the rudest savage, is the way it has been accounted for to-night. What makes the river run? There's a god in it. What makes the tree grow? There's a god in it. What makes the star shine? There's a god in it. What makes the sun rise? Why, he is a god himself. And what makes the nightingale sing until the air is faint with melody? There's a god in it.

They commenced making gods to account for everything that happens; gods of dreams and gods of love and friendship, and heroism and courage. Splendid! They kept making more and more. The more they found out in nature, up to a certain point, the more gods they needed; and they kept on making gods until almost every wave of the sea bore a god. Gods on every mountain, and in every vale and field, and by every stream! Gods in flowers, gods in grass; gods everywhere! All accounting for this world and for what happened in this world.

Then, when they had got about to the top, when their ingenuity had been exhausted, they had not produced anything, and they did not produce anything beyond their own experience. We are told that they were idolaters. That is a mistake, except in the sense that we are all idolaters. They said, "Here is a god; let us express our idea of him. He is stronger than a man; let us give him the body of a lion. He is swifter than a man; let us give him the wings of an eagle. He is wiser than a man"—and when a man was very savage he said, "let us give him the head of a serpent;" a serpent is wonderfully wise; he travels without feet; he climbs without claws; he lives without food, and he is of the simplest conceivable form.

And that was simply to represent their idea of power, of swiftness, of wisdom. And yet this impossible monster was simply made of what man had seen in nature, and he put the various attributes or parts together by his imagination. He created nothing. He simply took these parts of certain beasts, when beasts were supposed to be superior to man in some particulars, and in that way expressed his thought.

You go into the territory of Arizona to-day, and you will find there pictures of God. He was clothed in stone, through which no arrow could pierce, and so they called God the Stone-Shirted whom no Indian could kill. That was for the simple and only reason that it was impossible to get an arrow through his armor. They got the idea from the armadillo.