(3) Knowledge is the Christ of the World. The saviour-gods of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion are symbols of this one.
(4) Ignorance is the devil of the world. The destroyer-gods of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion are symbols of this one.
(5) Knowledge consists in knowing facts and truths. Every real fact and truth is a word of the only gospel which the world possesses.
(6) A fact is something which matter, force and motion have unconsciously done, not what a god has consciously willed. There are no other facts.
(7) A truth is a fact so interpreted that if it is lived it will contribute towards making the most of life. There are no other truths.
(8) Hence the greatest people in the world are the scientists who discover facts, and the preachers who interpret them and persuade to their living. If you contend that mothers are greater than teachers, I shall agree with you on condition that you will admit that a mother is not really great unless she is a teacher.
(9) The desire and effort to learn facts, interpret and live them constitute morality.
(10) Morality is the greatest thing in the world, because it is all there is of real religion and politics.
(11) But, paradoxical as it may seem, there is one thing which is greater than the greatest thing in the world—freedom.
(12) And the freedom which is greater than morality consists in the liberty to learn, interpret, live and teach facts, without which liberty a man may be a non-moral child, or an immoral hypocrite, but he cannot be the possessor of the pearl of great price—morality, without which human life is not worth the living or even possible.