and the Holy Ghost descends in the form of a dove.  But if the Committee of the Privy Council, or the Lord Chamberlain, or anyone else, were to attempt to keep Parsifal from us to spare the feelings of these people, it would not be long before even the most thoughtless champions of the censorship would see that the principle of doing nothing that could shock anybody had reduced itself to absurdity.  No quarter whatever should be given to the bigotry of people so unfit for social life as to insist not only that their own prejudices and superstitions should have the fullest toleration but that everybody else should be compelled to think and act as they do.  Every service in St. Paul’s Cathedral is an outrage to the opinions of the congregation of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Westminster.  Every Liberal meeting is a defiance and a challenge to the most cherished opinions of the Unionists.  A law to compel the Roman Catholics to attend service at St. Paul’s, or the Liberals to attend the meetings of the Primrose League would be resented as an insufferable tyranny.  But a law to shut up both St. Paul’s and the Westminster Cathedral; and to put down political meetings and associations because of the offence given by them to many worthy and excellent people, would be a far worse tyranny, because it would kill the religious and political life of the country outright, whereas to compel people to attend the services and meetings of their opponents would greatly enlarge their minds, and would actually be a good thing if it were enforced all round.  I should not object to a law to compel everybody to read two newspapers, each violently opposed to the other in politics; but to forbid us to read newspapers at all would be to maim us mentally and cashier our country in the ranks of civilization.  I deny that anybody has the right to demand more from me, over and above lawful conduct in a general sense, than liberty to stay away from the theatre in which my plays are represented.  If he is unfortunate enough to have a religion so petty that it can be insulted (any man is as welcome to insult my religion, if he can, as he is to insult the universe) I claim the right to insult it to my heart’s content, if I choose, provided I do not compel him to come and hear me.  If I think this country ought to make war on any other country, then, so long as war remains lawful, I claim full liberty to write and perform a play inciting the country to that war without interference from the ambassadors of the menaced country.  I may “give pain to many worthy people, and pleasure to none,” as the Censor’s pet phrase puts it:  I may even make Europe a cockpit and Asia a shambles:  no matter:  if preachers and politicians, statesmen and soldiers, may do these things—­if it is right that such things should be done, then I claim my share in the right to do them.  If the proposed Committee is meant to prevent me from doing these things whilst men of other professions are permitted to do them, then I protest with all