he may be led to seek for truth, because he hopes to gain his reward hereafter by the search; but Truth disdains the service of the self-seeker; she cannot be grasped by a hand that itches for reward.  If Truth is not loved for her own pure sake, if to lead a noble life, if to make men happier, if to spread brightness around us, if to leave the world better than we found it—­if these aims have no attraction for us, if these thoughts do not inspire us, then we are not worthy to be Secularists, we have no right to the proud title of Freethinkers.  If you want to be paid for your good lives by living for ever in a lazy and useless fashion in an idle heaven; if you want to be bribed into nobility of life; if, like silly children, you learn your lesson not to gain knowledge but to win sugar-plums, then you had better go back to your creeds and your churches; they are all you are fit for; you are not worthy to be free.  But we—­who, having caught a glimpse of the beauty of Truth, deem the possession of her worth more than all the world beside; who have made up our minds to do our work ungrudgingly, asking for no reward beyond the results which spring up from our labour—­we will spread the Gospel of Freethought among men, until the sad minor melodies of Christianity have sobbed out their last mournful notes on the dying evening breeze, and on the fresh morning winds shall ring out the chorus of hope and joyfulness, from the glad lips of men whom the Truth has at last set free."[20]

The intellectual comprehension of the sources of evil and the method of its extinction was the second great plank in my ethical platform.  The study of Darwin and Herbert Spencer, of Huxley, Buechner and Haeckel, had not only convinced me of the truth of evolution, but, with help from W.H.  Clifford, Lubbock, Buckle, Lecky, and many another, had led me to see in the evolution of the social instinct the explanation of the growth of conscience and of the strengthening of man’s mental and moral nature.  If man by study of the conditions surrounding him and by the application of intelligence to the subdual of external nature, had already accomplished so much, why should not further persistence along the same road lead to his complete emancipation?  All the evil, anti-social side of his nature was an inheritance from his brute ancestry, and could be gradually eradicated; he could not only “let the ape and tiger die,” but he could kill them out.”  It may be frankly acknowledged that man inherits from his brute progenitors various bestial tendencies which are in course of elimination.  The wild-beast desire to fight is one of these, and this has been encouraged, not checked, by religion....  Another bestial tendency is the lust of the male for the female apart from love, duty, and loyalty; this again has been encouraged by religion, as witness the polygamy and concubinage of the Hebrews—­as in Abraham, David, and Solomon, not to mention the precepts of the Mosaic laws—­the bands of