Philalethes.  That’s what you keep on saying.  To free a man from error is to give, not to take away.  Knowledge that a thing is false is a truth.  Error always does harm; sooner or later it will bring mischief to the man who harbors it.  Then give up deceiving people; confess ignorance of what you don’t know, and leave everyone to form his own articles of faith for himself.  Perhaps they won’t turn out so bad, especially as they’ll rub one another’s corners down, and mutually rectify mistakes.  The existence of many views will at any rate lay a foundation of tolerance.  Those who possess knowledge and capacity may betake themselves to the study of philosophy, or even in their own persons carry the history of philosophy a step further.

Demopheles.  That’ll be a pretty business!  A whole nation of raw metaphysicians, wrangling and eventually coming to blows with one another!

Philalethes.  Well, well, a few blows here and there are the sauce of life; or at any rate a very inconsiderable evil compared with such things as priestly dominion, plundering of the laity, persecution of heretics, courts of inquisition, crusades, religious wars, massacres of St. Bartholomew.  These have been the result of popular metaphysics imposed from without; so I stick to the old saying that you can’t get grapes from thistles, nor expect good to come from a pack of lies.

Demopheles.  How often must I repeat that religion is anything but a pack of lies?  It is truth itself, only in a mythical, allegorical vesture.  But when you spoke of your plan of everyone being his own founder of religion, I wanted to say that a particularism like this is totally opposed to human nature, and would consequently destroy all social order.  Man is a metaphysical animal,—­that is to say, he has paramount metaphysical necessities; accordingly, he conceives life above all in its metaphysical signification, and wishes to bring everything into line with that.  Consequently, however strange it may sound in view of the uncertainty of all dogmas, agreement in the fundamentals of metaphysics is the chief thing, because a genuine and lasting bond of union is only possible among those who are of one opinion on these points.  As a result of this, the main point of likeness and of contrast between nations is rather religion than government, or even language; and so the fabric of society, the State, will stand firm only when founded on a system of metaphysics which is acknowledged by all.  This, of course, can only be a popular system,—­that is, a religion:  it becomes part and parcel of the constitution of the State, of all the public manifestations of the national life, and also of all solemn acts of individuals.  This was the case in ancient India, among the Persians, Egyptians, Jews, Greeks and Romans; it is still the case in the Brahman, Buddhist and Mohammedan nations.  In China there are three faiths, it is true, of which the most prevalent—­Buddhism—­is