Demop.  Well, stick to your conclusion, and be always mindful that religion has two sides.  If it can’t stand when looked at merely from the theoretical—­in other words, from its intellectual side, it appears, on the other hand, from the moral side as the only means of directing, training, and pacifying those races of animals gifted with reason, whose kinship with the ape does not exclude a kinship with the tiger.  At the same time religion is, in general, a sufficient satisfaction for their dull metaphysical needs.  You appear to me to have no proper idea of the difference, wide as the heavens apart, of the profound breach between your learned man, who is enlightened and accustomed to think, and the heavy, awkward, stupid, and inert consciousness of mankind’s beasts of burden, whose thoughts have taken once and for all the direction of fear about their maintenance, and cannot be put in motion in any other; and whose muscular power is so exclusively exercised that the nervous power which produces intelligence is thereby greatly reduced.  People of this kind must absolutely have something that they can take hold of on the slippery and thorny path of their life, some sort of beautiful fable by means of which things can be presented to them which their crude intelligence could most certainly only understand in picture and parable.  It is impossible to approach them with subtle explanations and fine distinctions.  If you think of religion in this way, and bear in mind that its aims are extremely practical and only subordinately theoretical, it will seem to you worthy of the highest respect.

Phil.  A respect which would finally rest on the principle that the end sanctifies the means.  However, I am not in favour of a compromise on a basis of that sort.  Religion may be an excellent means of curbing and controlling the perverse, dull, and malicious creatures of the biped race; in the eyes of the friend of truth every fraus, be it ever so pia, must be rejected.  It would be an odd way to promote virtue through the medium of lies and deception.  The flag to which I have sworn is truth.  I shall remain faithful to it everywhere, and regardless of success, I shall fight for light and truth.  If I see religion hostile, I shall—­

Demop.  But you will not!  Religion is not a deception; it is true, and the most important of all truths.  But because, as has already been said, its doctrines are of such a lofty nature that the great masses cannot grasp them immediately; because, I say, its light would blind the ordinary eye, does it appear concealed in the veil of allegory and teach that which is not exactly true in itself, but which is true according to the meaning contained in it:  and understood in this way religion is the truth.

Phil.  That would be very probable, if it were allowed to be true only in an allegorical sense.  But it claims to be exactly true, and true in the proper sense of the word:  herein lies the deception, and it is here that the friend of truth must oppose it.