s one cut out to meet the
needs and comprehension of the people? that its teachings shall be the
boundary of human researches and the standard of all thought, so that
the metaphysics of the few, the emancipated, as you call them, must aim
at confirming, strengthening, and interpreting the metaphysics of the
people? That is, that the highest faculties of the human mind must
remain unused and undeveloped, nay, be nipped in the bud, so that their
activity may not thwart the popular metaphysics? And at bottom are not
the claims that religion makes just the same? Is it right to have
tolerance, nay, gentle forbearance, preached by what is intolerance and
cruelty itself? Let me remind you of the heretical tribunals,
inquisitions, religious wars and crusades, of Socrates' cup of poison,
of Bruno's and Vanini's death in the flames. And is all this to-day
something belonging to the past? What can stand more in the way of
genuine philosophical effort, honest inquiry after truth, the noblest
calling of the noblest of mankind, than this conventional system of
metaphysics invested with a monopoly from the State, whose principles
are inculcated so earnestly, deeply, and firmly into every head in
earliest youth as to make them, unless the mind is of miraculous
elasticity, become ineradicable? The result is that the basis of healthy
reasoning is once and for all deranged--in other words, its feeble
capacity for thinking for itself, and for unbiassed judgment in regard
to everything to which it might be applied, is for ever paralysed and
ruined.

_Demop,_ Which really means that the people have gained a conviction
which they will not give up in order to accept yours in its place.

_Phil._ Ah! if it were only conviction based on insight, one would then
be able to bring forward arguments and fight the battle with equal
weapons. But religions admittedly do not lend themselves to conviction
after argument has been brought to bear, but to belief as brought about
by revelation. The capacity for belief is strongest in childhood;
therefore one is most careful to take possession of this tender age. It
is much more through this than through threats and reports of miracles
that the doctrines of belief take root. If in early childhood certain
fundamental views and doctrines are preached with unusual solemnity and
in a manner of great earnestness, the like of which has never been seen
before, and if, too, the possibility of a doubt about them is eit