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Perhaps they will not turn out so bad, especially as they will rub against each other and mutually rectify errors; at any rate the various opinions will establish tolerance. Those men who possess both knowledge and capacity may take up the study of philosophy, or even themselves advance the history of philosophy. Demop. That would be a fine thing!

If I am not mistaken, he will reflect by the hour on these two obstacles before religious considerations ever come into his mind. If he can get away from these two first safeguards against crime, I am convinced that religion alone will very rarely keep him back from it. Demop.

Moreover, it may be added that revealed religions are related to philosophy, exactly as the sovereigns by the grace of God are to the sovereignty of the people; and hence the two former terms of the parallel are in natural alliance. Demop. Oh, don't adopt that tone!

Perhaps the metaphysics in all religions is false; but the morality in all is true. This is to be surmised from the fact that in their metaphysics they contradict each other, while in their morality they agree. Phil. Which furnishes us with a proof of the rule of logic, that a true conclusion may follow from false premises. Demop.

Drinking and hoarding their castles with plunder were the occupations of their lives; and certainly there was no want of stupid love-songs in the courts. What has changed the scene so? Migration and Christianity. Demop. It is a good thing you reminded me of it. Migration was the source of the evil, and Christianity the dam on which it broke.

Phil. In a very narrow sphere. The sciences were suspicious companions, and as such were placed under restrictions; while fond ignorance, that element so necessary to the doctrines of faith, was carefully nourished. Demop.

And that won't work unless there is a certain innate probitas. You must not ascribe to religion what is the result of innate goodness of character, by which pity for the one who would be affected by the crime prevents a man from committing it. This is the genuine moral motive, and as such it is independent of all religions. Demop.

But since that has ceased to be so all the mysteries are profaned. Demop. However that may be, I wish to remind you, in speaking of religion, that you should grasp it more from the practical and less from the theoretical side. Personified metaphysics may be religion's enemy, yet personified morality will be its friend.

Hence religion must be regarded as a necessary evil, its necessity resting on the pitiful weak-mindedness of the great majority of mankind, incapable of grasping the truth, and consequently when in extremity requires a substitute for truth. Demop. Really, one would think that you philosophers had truth lying in readiness, and all that one had to do was to lay hold of it. Phil.

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. Demop. But this deception is a conditio sine qua non.