Among the members of the so-called "National Vigilance Association" were various parsons and priests who naturally abominated such an infidel as Zola, and some of whom subsequently traduced him freely. These might accept the outspokenness of a Stead, but, generally speaking, they represented the doctrine of reticence and secrecy as opposed to that of publicity. Theirs was the policy, pursued through the ages, of wrapping everything up, cloaking everything over, and they were lost in anger, horror, and amazement when they found a different course being pursued. They ignored Zola's position altogether, though for years he had been calling to them and those who resembled them: "You claim to reform the world, you preach and you prate; but although your endeavours may be honest you do little or no good. Evil exists on all sides, society is rotten at the core; but you merely cover up abominations, you even feign at times to ignore their existence, though they lie little below the surface and poison all around them. The system of reticence and concealment which you pursue is a profound mistake. It is one of the many consequences of that system that thousands of girls are cast every year into the arms of seducers, that thousands of young men kneel at the feet of harlots. Abortion is practised among the married as among the unmarried. Drunkenness is in your midst. Your prisons are full. Your gibbets and guillotines are always in use. Cheating and swindling are commonplaces of your every-day life. Well, I am resolved to tear the veil asunder, to set forth everything, to conceal nothing. I shall shock the world undoubtedly, but it is only by bringing things to light, by disgusting people with themselves and their surroundings, that there will be a possibility of remedying the many evils which prey on the community at large. Eighteen hundred years have elapsed since the carpenter of Nazareth walked the earth. You and your forerunners have had those eighteen hundred years at your disposal. What have you done in them? How much, or rather how little real good have you effected with all your organisations, your great authority, your exceeding wealth, your devotion, your piety, your talent, which at times has blossomed into genius? You have extirpated nothing whatever; your system has tended chiefly to the dissemination of hypocrisy and cant; you have failed egregiously; and to explain your failure you preach the ridiculous doctrine of the Fall, invented expressly to account for the impotency of priestcraft. I have nothing to say--as yet--on the subject of your belief in a future state, of your system of rewards or penalties after life, for good or evil conduct in the world, though it is one, half threat and half bribe, for which there should be no occasion. But I take human society as it is, and by exposing the errors of its ways I hope to set afoot, to encourage among practical reformers, a movement