"The first step to be taken for this purpose was to rouse the American mind to a sense of its rights and dignity, to emancipate it from superstition, from its subjection to the clergy, and its fear of unseen powers, to withdraw it from the contemplation of the stars or an imaginary heaven after death, and fix it on the great and glorious work of promoting _man's earthly well-being_. "The second step was, by political action, to get adopted, at the earliest practical moment, a system of State schools, in which all the children from two years old and upward should be fed, clothed, in a word, maintained, instructed, and educated at the public expense. "In furtherance of the first object, Fanny prepared a course of Lectures on _Knowledge_, which she delivered in the principal cities of the Union. She thought that she possessed advantages in the fact that she was a woman; for there would, for that reason, be a greater curiosity to hear her, and she would be permitted to speak with greater boldness and directness against the clergy and superstition than would be one of the other sex. "The great measure, however, on which Fanny and her friends relied for ultimate success, was the system of public schools. These schools were intended to deprive, as well as to relieve, parents of all care and responsibility of their children after a year or two years of age. It was assumed that parents were, in general, incompetent to train up their children, provide proper establishments, teachers and governors for them, till they should reach the age of majority. "The _aim_ was, on the one hand, to relieve marriage of its burdens, and to remove the principal reasons for making it _indissoluble_; and, on the other hand, to provide for bringing up all children, in a rational manner, to be reasonable men and women, that is, _free from superstition, free from all belief in God and immortality_, free from all regard for the invisible, and make them look _upon this life_ as _their only life_, this earth as their only home, and _the promotion of their earthly interests and enjoyments as their only end_. The three great enemies to earthly happiness were held to be religion, marriage, or family and private property. Once get rid of these three institutions, and we may hope soon to realize our earthly paradise. For religion is to be substituted science, that is, science of the world, of the five senses only; for private property, a community of goods; and for private families, a community of wives.