I stand forth to challenge the wisdom of the world; to interrogate the ‘laws’ of man and of ‘God.’ I request reasons for your Golden Rule and ask the why and wherefore of your Ten Commands. Before none of your printed idols do I bend in acquiescence and he who saith ‘thou shalt’ to me is my mortal foe.
I demand proof over all things, and accept (with reservations) even that which is true. I dip my forefinger in the watery blood of your impotent mad-redeemer (your Divine Democrat—your Hebrew Madman) and write over his thorn-torn brow, ‘The true prince of Evil—the king of the Slaves!’
No hoary falsehood shall be a truth to me—no cult or dogma shall encramp my pen. I break away from all conventions. Alone, untrammeled. I raise up in stern invasion the standard of Strong.
I gaze into the glassy eye of your fearsome Jehovah, and pluck him by the beard—I uplift a broad-axe and split open his worm-eaten skull. I blast out the ghastly contents of philosophic whited sepulchres and laugh with sardonic wrath. Then reaching up the festering and varnished facades of your haughtiest moral dogmas, I write thereon in letters of blazing scorn: —‘Lo and behold, all this is fraud!’
I deny all things! I question all things! And yet! And yet!—Gather around me O! ye death-defiant, and the earth itself shall be thine, to have and to hold.
What is your ‘civilisation and progress’ if its only outcome is hysteria and downgoing? What is ‘government and law’ if their ripened harvests are men without sap? What are ‘religions and literatures’ if their grandest productions are hordes of faithful slaves? What is ‘evolution and culture’ if their noxious blossoms are sterilized women? What is ‘education and enlightenment’ if their dead-sea-fruit is a caitiff race, with rottenness in its bones?
