philosophy. _Simplex sigillum veri_: the naked truth must be so simple
and intelligible that it can be imparted to all in its true form,
without any admixture of myth and fable, without disguising it in the
form of _religion_.

_Demopheles_. You've no notion how stupid most people are.

_Philalethes_. I am only expressing a hope which I can't give up. If it
were fulfilled, truth in its simple and intelligible form would of
course drive religion from the place it has so long occupied as its
representative, and by that very means kept open for it. The time would
have come when religion would have carried out her object and completed
her course: the race she had brought to years of discretion she could
dismiss, and herself depart in peace: that would be the _euthanasia_ of
religion. But as long as she lives, she has two faces, one of truth, one
of fraud. According as you look at one or the other, you will bear her
favor or ill-will. Religion must be regarded as a necessary evil, its
necessity resting on the pitiful imbecility of the great majority of
mankind, incapable of grasping the truth, and therefore requiring, in
its pressing need, something to take its place.

_Demopheles_. Really, one would think that you philosophers had truth in
a cupboard, and that all you had to do was to go and get it!

_Philalethes_. Well, if we haven't got it, it is chiefly owing to the
pressure put upon philosophy by religion at all times and in all places.
People have tried to make the expression and communication of truth,
even the contemplation and discovery of it, impossible, by putting
children, in their earliest years, into the hands of priests to be
manipulated; to have the lines, in which their fundamental thoughts are