1 Our son will be raised as a man.
2 At first, man was enslaved by the gods.
3 To be free, a man must be free of his brothers.
4 For in the temple of his spirit, each man is alone.
5 Let each man keep his temple untouched and undefiled.
6 I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet.
7 It was a long story, and the spirit which moved it was the spirit of man's freedom.
8 There was a time when each man had a name of his own to distinguish him from all other men.
9 I understood that centuries of chains and lashes will not kill the spirit of man nor the sense of truth within him.
10 Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth.
11 I have read of a man who lived many thousands of years ago, and of all the names in these books, his is the one I wish to bear.
12 And here, in this uncharted wilderness, I and they, my chosen friends, my fellow-builders, shall write the first chapter in the new history of man.
13 This word must never be placed first within man's soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all the evils on earth, the root of man's torture by men, and of an unspeakable lie.
14 And the day will come when I shall break all the chains of the earth, and raze the cities of the enslaved, and my home will become the capital of a world where each man will be free to exist for his own sake.
15 He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right.
16 When men accepted that worship, the structure of centuries collapsed about them, the structure whose every beam had come from the thought of some one man, each in his day down the ages, from the depth of some one spirit, such spirit as existed but for its own sake.