Now in the old times of which I have spoken, they said, "We can make all men think alike." All the mechanical ingenuity of this earth cannot make two clocks run alike, and how are you going to make millions of people of different quantities and qualities and amount of brain, clad in this living robe of passionate flesh--how are you going to make millions of them think alike? If the infinite God, if there is one, who made us, wished us to think alike, why did he give a spoonful of brains to one man, and a bushel to another? Why is it that we have all degrees of humanity, from the idiot to the genius, if it was intended that all should think alike? I say our fathers concluded they would do this by force, and I used to read in books how they persecuted mankind, and do you know I never appreciated it; I did not. I read it, but it did not burn itself, as it were, into my very soul what infamies had been committed in the name of religion, and I never fully appreciated it until a little while ago I saw the iron arguments our fathers used to use. I tell you the reason we are through that, is because we have better brains than our fathers had. Since that day we have become intellectually developed, and there is more real brain and real good sense in the world today than in any other period of its history, and that is the reason we have more liberty, that is the reason we have more kindness. But I say I saw these iron arguments our fathers used to use. I saw here the thumb-screw--two little innocent looking pieces of iron, armed on the inner surface with protuberances to prevent their slipping--and when some man denied the efficacy of baptism, or maybe said, "I do not believe that the whale ever swallowed a man to keep him from drowning," then they put these pieces of iron upon his thumb, and there was a screw at each end, and then, in the name of love and forgiveness, they began screwing these pieces of iron together. A great many men, when they commenced, would say, "I recant." I expect I would have been one of them. I would have said, "Now you just stop that; I will admit anything on earth that you want. I will admit there is one god or a million, one hell or a billion; suit yourselves, but stop that." But I want to say, the thumbscrew having got out of the way, I am going to have my say.