primarily, in nothing but what will satisfy his physical needs and hankerings, and beyond this, give him a little amusement and pastime.  Founders of religion and philosophers come into the world to rouse him from his stupor and point to the lofty meaning of existence; philosophers for the few, the emancipated, founders of religion for the many, for humanity at large.  For, as your friend Plato has said, the multitude can’t be philosophers, and you shouldn’t forget that.  Religion is the metaphysics of the masses; by all means let them keep it:  let it therefore command external respect, for to discredit it is to take it away.  Just as they have popular poetry, and the popular wisdom of proverbs, so they must have popular metaphysics too:  for mankind absolutely needs an interpretation of life; and this, again, must be suited to popular comprehension.  Consequently, this interpretation is always an allegorical investiture of the truth:  and in practical life and in its effects on the feelings, that is to say, as a rule of action and as a comfort and consolation in suffering and death, it accomplishes perhaps just as much as the truth itself could achieve if we possessed it.  Don’t take offense at its unkempt, grotesque and apparently absurd form; for with your education and learning, you have no idea of the roundabout ways by which people in their crude state have to receive their knowledge of deep truths.  The various religions are only various forms in which the truth, which taken by itself is above their comprehension, is grasped and realized by the masses; and truth becomes inseparable from these forms.  Therefore, my dear sir, don’t take it amiss if I say that to make a mockery of these forms is both shallow and unjust.

Philalethes.  But isn’t it every bit as shallow and unjust to demand that there shall be no other system of metaphysics but this one, cut out as it is to suit the requirements and comprehension of the masses? that its doctrine shall be the limit of human speculation, the standard of all thought, so that the metaphysics of the few, the emancipated, as you call them, must be devoted only to confirming, strengthening, and explaining the metaphysics of the masses? that the highest powers of human intelligence shall remain unused and undeveloped, even be nipped in the bud, in order that their activity may not thwart the popular metaphysics?  And isn’t this just the very claim which religion sets up?  Isn’t it a little too much to have tolerance and delicate forbearance preached by what is intolerance and cruelty itself?  Think of the heretical tribunals, inquisitions, religious wars, crusades, Socrates’ cup of poison, Bruno’s and Vanini’s death in the flames!  Is all this to-day quite a thing of the past?  How can genuine philosophical effort, sincere search after truth, the noblest calling of the noblest men, be let and hindered more completely than by a conventional system of metaphysics enjoying a State monopoly, the