Excerpt from Challenging a God In View of the extraordinary fact that this ruler's subjects excel their god in sense Of beauty, nobility, and justice, i do not hesitate to challenge him. I realize that it requires a great deal Of courage to do so. This god, namely, has a powerful helpmate, whose name is Public Opinion. This second god, Public Opinion, is the worst enemy Of progress, sci ence, and truth. It Often tempts a man to be untrue to his convictions. It sometimes keeps him silent when he should speak. Caring more for truth and the soul-progress Of humanity than for public opinion, I shall now proceed to send my challenge. I accuse this god Of having felt infinitely bored; of having passed the dreariness Of the eternal hours in creating balls Of mud and peo pling them with beings; Of having been, and still being, the whimsical, playful owner of human toys; Of having, knowingly, made these toys imperfect, through which imperfection they Often suffer unnameable agonies. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.