The experience of the last sixteen centuries has made priestcraft almost a synonym of intolerance; and yet it would be a mistake to suppose that the interests of Freethought are incompatible with the survival of any system of supernatural religion. The myths of polytheism were for ages accepted as the basis of a creed enjoying all the prerogatives and emoluments of an established religion, but the priests of that religion had no need of protecting their prestige by the butchery of heretics. With all their absurdities, the rites of their creed were essentially a worship of Nature, naturally attractive to all lovers of earth and life, and by their harmlessness conciliating the favor of philosophers who might have studied the baneful tendencies of a different creed—a creed which could propagate its dogmas only by an unremitting war against the natural instincts of the human race, and by constant intrigues against the protests of human reason. “The Nature-worshiping Greeks repeated the harmless myths and practiced the merry rites of their creed for centuries without troubling themselves about the myths and rites of their neighbors. Their superstition differed from that of the church as the inspired love of Nature differs from the ecstatic fury of her enemies, as the day-dream of a happy child differs from the fever-dream of a gloomy fanatic. ‘Procul Profani!’ was the cry of the Eleusinian priests. They had more followers than they wanted. Their joy-loving creed could dispense with autos-da-fé. The Hebrews, in stress of famine, conquered a little strip of territory between Arabia and the Syrian desert, and then tried their best to live in peace with heaven and earth, and their sects contented themselves with metaphorical rib-roastings. The Saracens spread their conquests from Spain to the Ganges, but their wars had a physical, rather than metaphysical, purpose. They needed land, and made a better use of it than the former occupants. They contented themselves with assessing dissenters, and did not deem it necessary to assassinate them. But the Galilean pessimists could not afford to tolerate an unconverted neighbor. To the enemies of Nature the happiness of an earth-loving, garden-planting, and science-promoting nation was an intolerable offense: reason had to be sacrificed to faith, health and happiness to the cross, and earth to heaven” (The Secret of the East, p. 62).