liberty his lyrics send through men’s hearts, when they respond to the strains of his lyre?  Music does not die, though one instrument be broken; thought does not die, though one brain be shivered; love does not die, though one heart’s strings be rent; and no great thinker dies so long as his thought re-echoes through the ages, its melody the fuller-toned the more human brains send its music on.  Not only to the hero and the sage is this immortality given; it belongs to each according to the measure of his deeds; world-wide life for world-wide service; straitened life for straitened work; each reaps as he sows, and the harvest is gathered by each in his rightful order."[19]

This longing to leave behind a name that will live among men by right of service done them, this yearning for human love and approval that springs naturally from the practical and intense realisation of human brotherhood—­these will be found as strong motives in the breasts of the most earnest men and women who have in our generation identified themselves with the Freethought cause.  They shine through the written and spoken words of Charles Bradlaugh all through his life, and every friend of his knows how often he has expressed the longing that “when the grass grows green over my grave, men may love me a little for the work I tried to do.”

Needless to say that, in the many controversies in which I took part, it was often urged against me that such motives were insufficient, that they appealed only to natures already ethically developed, and left the average man, and, above all, the man below the average, with no sufficiently constraining motive for right conduct.  I resolutely held to my faith in human nature, and the inherent response of the human heart when appealed to from the highest grounds; strange—­I often think now—­this instinctive certainty I had of man’s innate grandeur, that governed all my thought, inconsistent as that certainty was with my belief in his purely animal ancestry.  Pressed too hard, I would take refuge in a passionate disdain for all who did not hear the thrilling voice of Virtue and love her for her own sweet sake.  “I have myself heard the question asked:  ’Why should I seek for truth, and why should I lead a good life, if there be no immortality in which to reap a reward?’ To this question the Freethinker has one clear and short answer:  ’There is no reason why you should seek Truth, if to you the search has no attracting power.  There is no reason why you should lead a noble life, if you find your happiness in leading a poor and a base one.’  Friends, no one can enjoy a happiness which is too high for his capabilities; a book may be of intensest interest, but a dog will very much prefer being given a bone.  To him whose highest interest is centred in his own miserable self, to him who cares only to gain his own ends, to him who seeks only his own individual comfort, to that man Freethought can have no attraction.  Such a man may indeed be made religious by a bribe of heaven;