speed it with truth_. I almost suspect that your plan is the one which
is so much in vogue just now, that you want to impress upon me that

The hour is nigh
When we may feast in quiet.

You recommend us, in fact, to take timely precautions, so that the waves
of the discontented raging masses mayn't disturb us at table. But the
whole point of view is as false as it is now-a-days popular and
commended; and so I make haste to enter a protest against it. It is
_false_, that state, justice, law cannot be upheld without the
assistance of religion and its dogmas; and that justice and public order
need religion as a necessary complement, if legislative enactments are
to be carried out. It is _false_, were it repeated a hundred times. An
effective and striking argument to the contrary is afforded by the
ancients, especially the Greeks. They had nothing at all of what we
understand by religion. They had no sacred documents, no dogma to be
learned and its acceptance furthered by every one, its principles to be
inculcated early on the young. Just as little was moral doctrine
preached by the ministers of religion, nor did the priests trouble
themselves about morality or about what the people did or left undone.
Not at all. The duty of the priests was confined to temple-ceremonial,
prayers, hymns, sacrifices, processions, lustrations and the like, the
object of which was anything but the moral improvement of the
individual. What was called religion consisted, more especially in the
cities, in giving temples here and there to some of the gods of the
greater tribes, in which the worship described was carried on as a state
matter, and was consequently, in fact, an affair of police. No one,
except the functionaries performing, was in any way compelled to attend,
or even to believe in it. In the whole of antiquity there is no trace of