Voltaire really got the pick of the workmen of Geneva--the goods made were of the best, and while at first Catholics only were employed, yet in five years Ferney was quite as much Protestant as Catholic. Voltaire respected the religious beliefs of his workmen, and there was liberty for all. He paid better wages and treated his workers better than they had ever been treated in Geneva. Voltaire built houses for his people and allowed them to pay him in monthly instalments. And not only did he himself make much money out of his Ferney investment, but he established the town upon such a safe financial basis that its prosperity endures even unto this day. * * * * * It was at Ferney, in his old age, that Voltaire first made open war upon "revealed religion." All religions that professed a miraculous origin were to him baneful in the extreme, the foes of light and progress, the enemies of mankind. He did not perceive, as modern psychology does, that the period of supernaturalism is the childhood of the mind. Myths and fairy-tales are not of themselves base--the injury lies with the men who seek to profit by these things, and build up a tyranny founded on innocence and ignorance--seeking to perpetuate these things, issuing threats against growth, and offers of reward to all who stand still. Voltaire called superstition "The Infamy," and he summoned the thinkers of the world to crush it beneath a heel of scorn. Letters, pamphlets, plays, essays, were sent out in various languages, by his own printing-presses. The wit of the man--his scathing mockery--were weapons no one could wield in reply. The priests and preachers did not answer him--they could not--they only grew purple with wrath and hissed. Says Victor Hugo, "Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled." To which Bernard Shaw has recently rejoined, "Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled; William Morris worked." From the prosperity, peace and security of Ferney, Voltaire pointed a bony finger at every hypocrite in Christendom, and laughed his mocking smile. The man expressed himself, and happiness lies in that and nothing else. Misery comes from lack of full, free self-expression, and from nothing else. The man who fights for freedom fights for the right of self-expression for himself and others--and immortality lies in nothing else. There is no fight worth making--no struggle worth the while--save the struggle for freedom. No name is honored among men--no name lives--save the name of the man who worked for liberty and light--who has fought freedom's fight. Run the list in your mind of the names that are immortal, and you will recall only those of men who have widened the horizon for other men, and that select number who are remembered in infamy because they linked their names with greatness by doubting, denying, betraying and persecuting it--deathless through disgrace.