be very careful to give opponents no reasonable pretext for making a disturbance against them.[99] He counselled not only orderliness but tact; and he sharply rebuked any of his followers who would not listen patiently to even a stupid opponent's speech. Mrs Ward's account of Secularist organisations is an unfortunate proof that the spirit of religiosity does not change with mere modifications of dogma. Even if it were really found that plain, unlettered men, facing a religion they feel to be absurd, spoke out their feeling without due courtesy or refinement, an instructed observer would see in their reaction the measure and correlative of the crudity of the doctrines assailed. But people of Mrs Ward's way of thinking look tenderly on the worst buffooneries of popular faith, and on the most brutal propaganda of hell and blood-redemption, while recoiling sentimentally from the perfectly sincere derision of these things by men on whom they are blatantly thrust. The right spirit, surely, is that which would enlighten the deluded as individuals, neither patronising them nor abusing them. That was the attitude of Bradlaugh as a publicist and as a man. He never talked, in public or in private, with malice, and seldom even with disgust, of fanatics as such. He explained them, and respected their honesty. Of certain employees of the Christian Evidence Society he would on occasion speak publicly in the strongest terms, as "vile things who, in fields and open spaces, where we are not to answer for ourselves, stab our reputation and our children's." But towards honest bigots, however imbecile, he was incapable of feeling the virulent animosity which Mrs Ward seems to feel for the Secularists of her imagination. To speak of him, as some journalists have done, as accounting for all religion by "priestcraft" in the early eighteenth century manner, is to exhibit the ignorance the statement imputes. He carefully studied the anthropological origins of religion, lectured specially on anthropology, and always related his teaching to the anthropological view. Towards priests, as such, he felt no malevolence. In fine, from first to last, the essential manliness and geniality of his nature gave his followers a lead to humanity and chivalry in their warfare with bigotry. If any of them, seeing the kind of reward he received for his self-restraint, have taken satisfaction in barbing their arrows, and in humiliating as well as defeating the enemy, they cannot cite his example. [Footnote 99: Thus, when in July or August 1882 an open-air Freethought meeting was attacked by riotous Salvationists, Bradlaugh strongly urged avoidance of provocation, and that, "above all, Freethinkers must avoid being drawn into physical conflict with Salvationists" (_National Reformer_, August 13, 1882).]