In this arid wilderness of steel and stone I raise up my voice that you may hear.
To the East and to the West I beckon. To the North and to the South I show a sign —
Proclaiming “Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong.”
Open your eyes that you may hear, O! men of mildewed minds and listen to me, ye
laborious millions!
For I stand forth to challenge the wisdom of the world; to interrogate the “laws” of man
and of “God.”
I request reasons for your Golden Rule and ask the why and wherefore of your Ten
Commands.
Before none of your printed idols do I bend in acquiescence and he who saith “thou shalt”
to me is my mortal foe.
I demand proof over all things, and accept (with reservations) even that which is true.
I dip my forefinger in the watery blood of your impotent mad-redeemer (your Divine
Democrat — your Hebrew Madman) and write over his thorn-torn brow, “The true prince
of Evil — the king of the Slaves!”
No hoary falsehood shall be a truth to me — no cult or dogma shall encramp my pen.
I break away from all conventions. Alone, untrammeled. I raise up in stern invasion the
standard of Strong.
I gaze into the glassy eye of your fearsome Jehovah, and pluck him by the beard — I
uplift a broad-axe and split open his worm-eaten skull.
I blast out the ghastly contents of philosophic whited sepulchres and laugh with sardonic
wrath.
Then reaching up the festering and varnished facades of your haughtiest moral dogmas, I
write thereon in letters of blazing scorn: — “Lo and behold, all this is fraud!”
I deny all things! I question all things!
And yet! And yet! —
— Gather around me O! ye death-defiant, and the earth itself shall be thine, to have and
to hold.