"But, friends, a sudden reaction comes over me. I determine to profess and practise the new religion. I have learned at the free religious club that I possess the first requisite for this, having never studied any theology at all. The ex-divines whom I have met there have so bewailed the artificial ignorance which they acquired in their divinity-school training, that I presume my natural knowledge to be its proper and desired antithesis. I have read the Bhavadgheeta and Mr. Emerson's poems, the psalms and gospel of the new faith. To be no Christian is the next important desideratum; and I believe that I shall find this, as most people do, easier than not. My first rule will be, 'Brahmins, beware of intercourse with Pariahs!' The three hundred incarnations of Vishnu, far more imposing in number than the single excarnation of which the old theology has made so much, shall be preached by me both as precept and example. The Confucian moralities, as illustrated by Californian experience, shall replace the Decalogue. Mr. Emerson's crowning sentence, that he who commits a crime hurts himself, will, of course, suffice to convert a whole society of criminals and reprobates. I will introduce the Joss into prisons, and give the myth of the Celestial Empire a literal interpretation. Our railroad and steamboat system will greatly facilitate the offering of children to the river, with the further advantage of offering the parents too. The strangling of female infants will relieve the present excess of female population in New England, and postpone the pressure of woman suffrage. The burning of widows alone will save the country no small outlay in pensions. Lastly, since the Turkish ethics are coming so much into favor, I should advise a more than Mormon application of them in our midst. Coöperative housekeeping could then be begun on the most immediate and harmonious footing. And so we will reconvert and transreform, and true progress shall consist in regress. "But, as Archimedes asked to get out of the world in order to move it, we shall be forced to go outside of Christendom in order to accomplish this revolution. And if I may believe my friends of the Free Religious Association, the surest way to do this will be to keep closely in their midst. For, elsewhere, between steamboats and missionaries, we cannot be sure of meeting people who shall be sure of not being Christians.