Democritus, Euhemerus, Anaxagoras, Epicurus, Aristotle, Libanius, Pliny, Lucretius, and the latter Pythagoreans, almost entirely ignored the doctrines of Polytheism, which, indeed, never assumed an aggressive form, the attempted suppression of the Christian dogmatists being an only apparent exception, dictated by motives of political apprehensions, rather than by religious zeal; for at the very time when the followers of the life-hating Galilean were persecuted as “enemies of mankind,” a large number of other oriental religions enjoyed privileges bordering on license. The Grecian colonists of Asia Minor never interfered with the religious customs of their new neighbors. They studied and discussed them as they would study the curiosities of other social phenomena; and a purely naturalistic system of education would undoubtedly lead to analogous results. Intelligent children often evince a remarkable tact in avoiding certain topics of conversation, such as allusions to personal or national defects, scandals, the arcana of sexual relations, private affairs, etc., and the experience of after years may confirm such habits of discretion; but no conceivable motive but deference to an arbitrary precept could dictate a similar reticence in the discussion of purely metaphysical topics, or of dogmas which by their very pretense to a mission of extreme importance should justify an extreme frankness in debating the basis of their claims. B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY. Religious liberty guarantees every other kind of freedom, as every form of slavery walks in the train of priestly despotism. In America religious emancipation led the way to the Declaration of Independence, and still continues to make this continent the chosen home of thousands of Liberals whom the material prosperity of the New World would have failed to attract. It is possible that a policy of intolerance would have averted or postponed the fate of the Moorish empire, which was ultimately overthrown by the fanatics of a creed which the followers of a more rational faith had permitted to survive in their midst; yet it is not less certain that for nearly five hundred years religious tolerance made the realm of the Spanish caliphs the one bright Goshen in a world of intellectual darkness. In northern Europe the history of civilization begins only with the triumph of Rationalism. Protestantism, in that wider sense which made the revolt of the Germanic nations an insurrection against the powers of superstition, has laid the foundation of national prosperity in Great Britain, in the Netherlands, and in the rising empire of northern Germany. The real founder of that empire was at once the greatest statesman and the boldest Freethinker of the last fourteen centuries. His capital became a city of refuge for the philosophers of Christian Europe. The eastern provinces of his kingdom were colonized by refugees from the tyranny of clerical autocrats. His absolute tolerance protected even the Jesuits,