y present in man,
lends to it that corroboration and support without which it would not
easily maintain itself in the struggle against so many temptations. It
is just from this side that religion affords an inexhaustible source of
consolation and comfort in the innumerable trials of life, a comfort
which does not leave men in death, but rather then only unfolds its full
efficacy. So religion may be compared to one who takes a blind man by
the hand and leads him, because he is unable to see for himself, whose
concern it is to reach his destination, not to look at everything by the
way.

_Philalethes_. That is certainly the strong point of religion. If it is
a fraud, it is a pious fraud; that is undeniable. But this makes priests
something between deceivers and teachers of morality; they daren't teach
the real truth, as you have quite rightly explained, even if they knew
it, which is not the case. A true philosophy, then, can always exist,
but not a true religion; true, I mean, in the proper understanding of
the word, not merely in that flowery or allegorical sense which you have
described; a sense in which all religions would be true, only in various
degrees. It is quite in keeping with the inextricable mixture of weal
and woe, honesty and deceit, good and evil, nobility and baseness, which
is the average characteristic of the world everywhere, that the most
important, the most lofty, the most sacred truths can make their
appearance only in combination with a lie, can even borrow strength from
a lie as from something that works more powerfully on mankind; and, as
revelation, must be ushered in by a lie. This might, indeed, be regarded
as the _cachet_ of the moral world. However, we won't give up the hope
that mankind will eventually reach a point of maturity and education at
which it can on the one side produce, and on the other receive, the true
philosophy. _Simplex sigillum veri_: the naked truth must be so simple
and intelligible that it can be imparted to all in its true form,
without any admixture of myth and fable, without disguising it in the
form of _religion_.

_Demopheles_. You've no notion how stupid most people are.

_Philalethes_. I am only expressing a hope which I can't give up. If it
were fulfilled, truth in its simple and intelligible form would of
course drive religion from the place it has so long occupied as its
representative, and by that very means kept open for it. The time would
have come when