his animal nature, to persuade himself that he is not limited by its
weaknesses nor concerned in its fate. And this impulse may be
harmless, when it is genuine. But what are we to say when we see the
formulas of heroic self-deception made use of by unheroic
self-indulgence? What are we to say when we see asceticism preached to
the poor by fat and comfortable retainers of the rich? What are we to
say when we see idealism become hypocrisy, and the moral and spiritual
heritage of mankind twisted to the knavish purposes of class-cruelty
and greed? What I say is--Bootstrap-lifting!

It is the fate of many abstract words to be used in two senses, one
good and the other bad. Morality means the will to righteousness, or
it means Anthony Comstock; democracy means the rule of the people, or
it means Tammany Hall. And so it is with the word "Religion". In its
true sense Religion is the most fundamental of the soul's impulses,
the impassioned love of life, the feeling of its preciousness, the
desire to foster and further it. In that sense every thinking man must
be religious; in that sense Religion is a perpetually self-renewing
force, the very nature of our being. In that sense I have no thought
of assailing it, I would make clear that I hold it beyond assailment.

But we are denied the pleasure of using the word in that honest sense,
because of another which has been given to it. To the ordinary man
"Religion" means, not the soul's longing for growth, the "hunger and
thirst after righteousness", but certain forms in which this hunger
has manifested itself in history, and prevails today throughout the
world; that is to say, institutions having fixed dogmas and
"revelations", creeds and rituals, with an administering caste
claiming supernatural sanction. By such institutions the moral
strivings of the race, the affections of childhood and the aspirations