crouches, watching for a chance to spring. The Church which burned
John Huss, which burned Giordano Bruno for teaching that the earth
moves round the sun--that same church, in the name of the same
three-headed god, sent out Francesco Ferrer to the firing-squad; if it
does not do the same thing to the author of this book, it will be
solely because of the police. Not being allowed to burn me here, the
clergy will vent their holy indignation by sentencing me to eternal
burning in a future world which they have created, and which they run
to suit themselves.

It is a fact, the significance of which cannot be exaggerated, that
the measure of the civilization which any nation has attained is the
extent to which it has curtailed the power of institutionalized
religion. Those peoples which are wholly under the sway of the
priesthood, such as Thibetans and Koreans, Siamese and Caribbeans, are
peoples among whom the intellectual life does not exist. Farther in
advance are Hindoos and Turks, who are religious, but not exclusively.
Still farther on the way are Spaniards and Irish; here, for example,
is a flashlight of the Irish peasantry, given by one of their number,
Patrick MacGill:

The merchant was a great friend of the parish priest, who
always told the people if they did not pay their debts they
would burn for ever and ever in hell. "The fires of eternity
will make you sorry for the debts that you did not pay,"
said the priest. "What is eternity?" he would ask in a
solemn voice from the altar steps. "If a man tried to count
the sands on the sea-shore and took a million years to count
every single grain, how long would it take him to count them
all? A long time, you'll say. But that time is nothing to