d of
all thought, so that the metaphysics of the few, the emancipated, as you
call them, must be devoted only to confirming, strengthening, and
explaining the metaphysics of the masses? that the highest powers of
human intelligence shall remain unused and undeveloped, even be nipped
in the bud, in order that their activity may not thwart the popular
metaphysics? And isn't this just the very claim which religion sets up?
Isn't it a little too much to have tolerance and delicate forbearance
preached by what is intolerance and cruelty itself? Think of the
heretical tribunals, inquisitions, religious wars, crusades, Socrates'
cup of poison, Bruno's and Vanini's death in the flames! Is all this
to-day quite a thing of the past? How can genuine philosophical effort,
sincere search after truth, the noblest calling of the noblest men, be
let and hindered more completely than by a conventional system of
metaphysics enjoying a State monopoly, the principles of which are
impressed into every head in earliest youth, so earnestly, so deeply,
and so firmly, that, unless the mind is miraculously elastic, they
remain indelible. In this way the groundwork of all healthy reason is
once for all deranged; that is to say, the capacity for original thought
and unbiased judgment, which is weak enough in itself, is, in regard to
those subjects to which it might be applied, for ever paralyzed and
ruined.

_Demopheles._ Which means, I suppose, that people have arrived at a
conviction which they won't give up in order to embrace yours instead.

_Philalethes_. Ah! if it were only a conviction based on insight. Then
one could bring arguments to bear, and the battle would be fought with
equal weapons. But religions admittedly appeal, not to conviction as the
result of argument, but to belief as demanded by revelation. And as the
capacity for believing is strongest in childhood, special care is taken
to make sure of this tender age. This has much more to do with the
doctrines of belief taking root than threats and reports of miracles.
If, in early childhood, certain fundamental views and doctrines are
paraded with unusual solemnity, and an air of the greatest earnestness
never before visible in anything else; if, at the same time, the
possibility of a doubt about them be completely passed over, or touched
upon only to indicate that doubt is the first step to eternal perdition,
the resulting impression will be so deep that, as a rule, that is, in
al