My maxim is _Vigeat veritas et pereat mundus_, like the lawyers' _Fiat
justitia et pereat mundus_. Every profession ought to have an analogous
advice.

_Demopheles_. Then I suppose doctors should say _Fiant pilulae et pereat
mundus_,--there wouldn't be much difficulty about that!

_Philalethes_. Heaven forbid! You must take everything _cum grano
salis_.

_Demopheles_. Exactly; that's why I want you to take religion _cum grano
salis_. I want you to see that one must meet the requirements of the
people according to the measure of their comprehension. Where you have
masses of people of crude susceptibilities and clumsy intelligence,
sordid in their pursuits and sunk in drudgery, religion provides the
only means of proclaiming and making them feel the hight import of life.
For the average man takes an interest, 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