Demopheles.  To some extent the education in our lower, middle and high schools corresponds to the varying grades of initiation into the mysteries.

Philalethes.  In a very approximate way; and then only in so far as subjects of higher knowledge are written about exclusively in Latin.  But since that has ceased to be the case, all the mysteries are profaned.

Demopheles.  However that may be, I wanted to remind you that you should look at religion more from the practical than from the theoretical side. Personified metaphysics may be the enemy of religion, but all the same personified morality will be its friend.  Perhaps the metaphysical element in all religions is false; but the moral element in all is true.  This might perhaps be presumed from the fact that they all disagree in their metaphysics, but are in accord as regards morality.

Philalethes.  Which is an illustration of the rule of logic that false premises may give a true conclusion.

Demopheles.  Let me hold you to your conclusion:  let me remind you that religion has two sides.  If it can’t stand when looked at from its theoretical, that is, its intellectual side; on the other hand, from the moral side, it proves itself the only means of guiding, controlling and mollifying those races of animals endowed with reason, whose kinship with the ape does not exclude a kinship with the tiger.  But at the same time religion is, as a rule, a sufficient satisfaction for their dull metaphysical necessities.  You don’t seem to me to possess a proper idea of the difference, wide as the heavens asunder, the deep gulf between your man of learning and enlightenment, accustomed to the process of thinking, and the heavy, clumsy, dull and sluggish consciousness of humanity’s beasts of burden, whose thoughts have once and for all taken the direction of anxiety about their livelihood, and cannot be put in motion in any other; whose muscular strength is so exclusively brought into play that the nervous power, which makes intelligence, sinks to a very low ebb.  People like that must have something tangible which they can lay hold of on the slippery and thorny pathway of their life, some sort of beautiful fable, by means of which things can be imparted to them which their crude intelligence can entertain only in picture and parable.  Profound explanations and fine distinctions are thrown away upon them.  If you conceive religion in this light, and recollect that its aims are above all practical, and only in a subordinate degree theoretical, it will appear to you as something worthy of the highest respect.

Philalethes.  A respect which will finally rest upon the principle that the end sanctifies the means.  I don’t feel in favor of a compromise on a basis like that.  Religion may be an excellent means of training the perverse, obtuse and ill-disposed members of the biped race:  in the eyes of the friend of truth every fraud, even though it be a pious one, is to be condemned.  A system of deception, a pack of lies, would be a strange means of inculcating virtue.  The flag to which I have taken the oath is truth; I shall remain faithful to it everywhere, and whether I succeed or not, I shall fight for light and truth!  If I see religion on the wrong side—­