not a sufficient idea of the wretched capacities of
the masses.

_Phil._ I express it only as a hope; but to give it up is impossible. In
that case, if truth were in a simpler and more comprehensible form, it
would surely soon drive religion from the position of vicegerent which
it has so long held. Then religion will have fulfilled her mission and
finished her course; she might then dismiss the race which she has
guided to maturity and herself retire in peace. This will be the
_euthanasia_ of religion. However, as long as she lives she has two
faces, one of truth and one of deceit. According as one looks
attentively at one or the other one will like or dislike her. Hence
religion must be regarded as a necessary evil, its necessity resting on
the pitiful weak-mindedness of the great majority of mankind, incapable
of grasping the truth, and consequently when in extremity requires a
substitute for truth.

_Demop._ Really, one would think that you philosophers had truth lying
in readiness, and all that one had to do was to lay hold of it.

_Phil._ If we have not got it, it is principally to be ascribed to the
pressure under which philosophy, at all periods and in all countries,
has been held by religion. We have tried to make not only the expression
and communication of truth impossible, but even the contemplation and
discovery of it, by giving the minds of children in earliest childhood
into the hands of priests to be worked upon; to have the groove in which
their fundamental thoughts are henceforth to run so firmly imprinted, as
in principal matters, to become fixed and determined for a lifetime. I
am sometimes shocked to see when I take into my hand the writings of
even the most intelligent minds of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, and especially if I have just left my oriental studies, how
paralysed and hemmed in on all sides they are by Jewish notions.
Prepared in this way, one cannot form any idea of the true philosophy!

_Demop._ And if, moreover, this true philosophy were discovered,
religion would not cease to exist, as you imagine. There cannot be one
system of metaphysics for everybody; the natural differences of
intellectual power in addition to those of education make this
impossible. The great majority of mankind must necessarily be engaged in
that arduous bodily labour which is requisite in order to furnish the
endless needs of the whole race. Not only does this leave the majority
no time for edu