A New Party and its Purpose--The Classes that Exist in every Country--Effect of Education on the Common People--Wants Increased by Intelligence--The Dream of 1776--The Monopolist and the Competitor--The War between the Gould and Mackay Cables--Competition between Monopolies--All Advance in Legislation made by Repealing Laws--Wages and Values not to be fixed by Law--Men and Machines--The Specific of the Capitalist: Economy--The poor Man and Woman devoured by their Fellow-men--Socialism one of the Worst Possible forms of Slavery--Liberty not to be exchanged for Comfort--Will the Workers always give their Earnings for the Useless?--Priests, Successful Frauds, and Robed Impostors.
The Origin of Man's Thoughts--The imaginative Man--"Medicinal View" of Poetry--Rhyme and Religion--The theological Poets and their Purpose in Writing--Moral Poets and their "Unwelcome Truths"--The really Passionate are the Virtuous--Difference between the Nude and the Naked--Morality the Melody of Conduct--The inculcation of Moral Lessons not contemplated by Artists or great Novelists--Mistaken Reformers--Art not a Sermon--Language a Multitude of Pictures--Great Pictures and Great Statues painted and chiseled with Words--Mediocrity moral from a Necessity which it calls Virtue--Why Art Civilizes--The Nude--The Venus de Milo--This is Art.
The Way in which Theological Seminaries were Endowed--Religious Guide-boards--Vast Interests interwoven with Creeds--Pretensions of Christianity--Kepler's Discovery of his Three Great Laws--Equivocations and Evasions of the Church--Nature's Testimony against the Bible--The Age of Man on the Earth--"Inspired" Morality of the Bible--Miracles--Christian Dogmas--What the church has been Compelled to Abandon--The Appeal to Epithets, Hatred and Punishment--"Spirituality" the last Resource of the Orthodox--What is it to be Spiritual?--Two Questions for the Defenders of Orthodox Creeds.
Part I. Inharmony of Nature and the Lot of Man with the Goodness and Wisdom of a supposed Deity--Why a Creator is Imagined--Difficulty of the Act of Creation--Belief in Supernatural Beings--Belief and Worship among Savages--Questions of Origin and Destiny--Progress impossible without Change of Belief--Circumstances Determining Belief--How may the True Religion be Ascertained?--Prosperity of Nations nor Virtue of Individuals Dependent on Religions or Gods--Uninspired Books Superior--Part II. The Christian Religion--Credulity--Miracles cannot be Established--Effect of Testimony--Miraculous Qualities of all Religions--Theists and Naturalists--The Miracle of Inspiration--How can the alleged Fact of Inspiration be Established?--God's work and Man's--Rewards for Falsehood offered by the Church.