which I proclaim my heterodoxies. I rail at the theistic credulity of
Voltaire, the amoristic superstition of Shelley, the revival of tribal
soothsaying and idolatrous rites which Huxley called Science and
mistook for an advance on the Pentateuch, no less than at the welter
of ecclesiastical and professional humbug which saves the face of the
stupid system of violence and robbery which we call Law and Industry.
Even atheists reproach me with infidelity and anarchists with nihilism
because I cannot endure their moral tirades. And yet, instead of
exclaiming "Send this inconceivable Satanist to the stake," the
respectable newspapers pith me by announcing "another book by this
brilliant and thoughtful writer." And the ordinary citizen, knowing that
an author who is well spoken of by a respectable newspaper must be all
right, reads me, as he reads Micah, with undisturbed edification from
his own point of view. It is narrated that in the eighteen-seventies an
old lady, a very devout Methodist, moved from Colchester to a house in
the neighborhood of the City Road, in London, where, mistaking the Hall
of Science for a chapel, she sat at the feet of Charles Bradlaugh
for many years, entranced by his eloquence, without questioning
his orthodoxy or moulting a feather of her faith. I fear I small be
defrauded of my just martyrdom in the same way.

However, I am digressing, as a man with a grievance always does. And
after all, the main thing in determining the artistic quality of a book
is not the opinions it propagates, but the fact that the writer has
opinions. The old lady from Colchester was right to sun her simple soul
in the energetic radiance of Bradlaugh's genuine beliefs and disbeliefs
rather than in the chill of such mere painting of light and heat as
elocution and convention can achieve. My contempt for belles lettres,
and for amateurs who become the heroes of the fanciers of literary
virtuosity, is not founded on any illusion of mind as to the permanence