Arthur Schopenhauer - The Horrors and Absurdities of Religion

Demopheles Between ourselves, my dear friend, I dont much like the way you have of displaying your talent for philosophy by making sarcastic remarks about religion or even openly ridiculing it. Every mans faith is sacred to him, therefore it ought to be sacred to you too.

PhilalethesNego consequentiam! [I deny your conclusion!] I cant see why, because other people are simpleminded, I should respect a pack of lies. What I respect is truth, therefore I cant respect what opposes truth. Just as the jurists motto is: fiat justitia et pereat mundus [Let justice be done though the world perish], so my motto is: vigeat veritas et pereat mundus [Let truth prosper though the world perish]. Every profession ought to have an analogous device.

Demopheles Then I suppose the physicians would be: fiant pilulae et pereat mundus [Let pills be distributed though the world perish] which would be the one most likely to be realized.

Philalethes Heaven forfend! You must take everything cum grano salis [With a pinch of salt].

Demopheles Very well: but that applies to you too: youve got to take religion cum grano salis: youve got to see that the needs of ordinary people have to be met in a way they can understand. Religion is the only means of introducing some notion of the high significance of life into the uncultivated heads of the masses, deep sunk as they are in mean pursuits and material drudgery, and of making it palpable to them. Man, taken by and large, has by nature no mind for anything but the satisfaction of his physical needs and desires, and when these are satisfied for a little entertainment and recreation. Philosophers and founders of religions come into the world to shake him out of his stupefaction and to point to the lofty meaning of existence: philosophers for the few, the emancipated, founders of religions for the many, for mankind as a whole. Philosophy isnt for everyone as your friend Plato said and as you shouldnt forget. Religion is the metaphysics of the people, which they absolutely must be allowed to keep: and that means you have to show an outward respect for it, since to discredit it is to take it away from them. Just as there is folk-poetry and, in the proverbs, folk-wisdom, so there has to be folk-metaphysics: for men have an absolute need for an interpretation of life, and it has to be one they are capable of understanding. That is why it is always clothed in allegory; and, as far as its practical effect as a guide to behaviour and its effect on morale as a means of consolation and comfort in suffering and death are concerned, it does as much perhaps as truth itself would do if we possessed it. Dont worry yourself about the baroque and apparently paradoxical forms it assumes: for you, with your learning and culture, have no idea how tortuous and roundabout a route is required to take profound truths to the mass of the people, with their lack of them. The people have no direct access to truth; the various religions are simply schemata by which they grasp it and picture it, but with which it is inseparably linked. Therefore, my dear chap, I hope youll forgive me for saying that to ridicule them is to be both narrow-minded and unjust.

Philalethes But isnt it just as narrow-minded and unjust to demand that there should exist no other metaphysics except this one cut to the requirements of the peoples wants and capacities? that its teachings and doctrine should mark the limit of inquiry and be the guide and model for all thinking, so that the metaphysics of the few and emancipated, as you call them, must amount to nothing but a confirmation, fortification and illumination of your metaphysics of the people? that the highest powers of the human mind should thus lie unused and undeveloped, should indeed be nipped in the bud, in case their activities might happen to run counter to your folk-metaphysics? And do the pretensions of religion amount at bottom to anything less than this? Is it proper and becoming in that which is intolerance and pitilessness itself to preach tolerance and pity? I call on heretic courts and inquisitions, religious wars and crusades, Socrates poison cup and Brunos and Vaninis blazing pyres to bear witness! And even if, as I grant, that kind of thing doesnt go on nowadays, what could stand more in the way of genuine philosophy, of honest inquiry after truth, which is the noblest calling of noblest men, than that conventional metaphysics to which the state has granted a monopoly and whose propositions are hammered into everyones head in his childhood so earnestly and so deeply and firmly that, unless it is of a miraculous degree of elasticity, it retains their impress for ever, so that his capacity for thinking for himself and for making unprejudiced judgements a capacity which is in any case far from strong is once and for all paralysed and ruined?

Demopheles What all this really means is that people have acquired a conviction they arent willing to give up in exchange for yours.

Philalethes If only it were a conviction, and one founded on reason! Then it could be combatted with reasons, and we should be fighting on equal terms. But it is common knowledge that religions dont want conviction, on the basis of reasons, but faith, on the basis of revelation. And the capacity for faith is at its strongest in childhood: which is why religions apply themselves before all else to getting these tender years into their possession. It is in this way, even more than by threats and stories of miracles, that the doctrines of faith strike roots: for if, in earliest childhood, a man has certain principles and doctrines repeatedly recited to him with abnormal solemnity and with an air of supreme earnestness such as he has never before beheld, and at the same time the possibility of doubt is never so much as touched on, or if it is only in order to describe it as the first step towards eternal perdition, then the impression produced will be so profound that in almost every case the man will be almost as incapable of doubting this doctrine as of doubting his own existence, so that hardly one in a thousand will then possess the firmness of mind seriously and honestly to ask himself: is this true? The expression