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