take a child from the leading strings that
upheld it, the child falls down. But you who watch over it, you rejoice
at the fall, for then you can assert that the child must go back to its
leading strings--and be kept in them till death.

HIGH PRIEST. Then you declare that all supports must be suppressed? [_A
pause_] Religion is a prop. It soothes--consoles. He does evil who
disturbs it.

SATNI. Many religions died before ours. The passing of each caused the
sorrows you foresee. Should we then have kept the first, to prevent some
suffering?

HIGH PRIEST. Ours is yet young, though so old; look in the halls of our
temples, behold the countless thank-offerings brought there for prayers
that were granted.

SATNI. Your temples could not hold the offerings, unthinkable in number,
that those whose prayers were not granted might have made, and who none
the less prayed as well as the others.

HIGH PRIEST. Even unanswered their prayers were recompensed. They had
hope, and it is likewise a boon to the poor to promise them welfare in
the world to come.

SATNI. You promise them welfare in the world to come, to make them
forget that all the welfare in this world is yours.

HIGH PRIEST. Can you give happiness to all who are on earth? We are more
generous than you; at least we give them consolation.

SATNI. You make them pay dear for it.

HIGH PRIEST. In truth the granaries of our temples are full to
overflowing. Left to themselves, the people would not think of the lean
years, in the years of abundance. We think for them, and they bring us,
gladly, what they would refuse did they not believe they gave to the
gods. We proclaim the Nile sacred; it is forbidden to sully its waters.
Is that to honor it as a god? Not so, it is to avoid the plague. And all
the animals we deified are those man has need of. You did not learn all
things on your travels--

SATNI. You would have the peasant remain a child, because you fear the
reckoning he would demand of you, if you let him grow up. You know you
could not stay him then by showing him the god-jackal, the god-ram, the
god-bull, and the rest that do not exist.

HIGH PRIEST. Are you certain they do not exist?

SATNI. Yes.

HIGH PRIEST. Know you where you are?

SATNI. In the temple.

HIGH PRIEST. In the temple; where you were brought up. There was a time
when you dared not have crossed the first sacred enclosure. You are in
the third. Look round! There is the holy of holies. At my