THE TASK There is a god or goddess for first light and last light, for each star, each motion of stars, and even for stars not visible. A deity for remembering and for forgetting, for fire and for water. Farm animals and wild animals, houses, mountains, storms, and hours have each his own divinity. And at birth there comes to the birthing room an individual and obscure god, just for that one child. At death, the god of decomposition. We must overthrow them all, each must be proved not to exist, the evidence questioned until it gives out. And this must be done sud- denly, not over a period of time, with energy and conviction. The thousand, the ten thousand, the more-than-countable must be overthrown and the new explanation given: whether of the one true God, or of science, or of a trick of language. And see, already, how they begin to multiply again, and we argue over which has the primacy, thus dis- tracted from and forgetting our main task: the overthrow, the ar- guing into dust, the ceaseless and sorrowful effort we give to erasing the gods we have named.