craving, a ceaseless longing alive in the heart of every
individual human being, lurking in the breast of collective
mankind, that most perplexing problem--"whom or what shall we
worship?" There exists no greater or more painful anxiety for a
man who has freed himself from all religious bias, than how he
shall soonest find a new object or idea to worship. But man seeks
to bow before that only which is recognized by the greater
majority, if not by all his fellow-men, as having a right to be
worshipped; whose rights are so unquestionable that men agree
unanimously to bow down to it. For the chief concern of these
miserable creatures is not to find and worship the idol of their
own choice, but to discover that which all others will believe
in, and consent to bow down to in a mass. It is that instinctive
need of having a worship in common that is the chief suffering of
every man, the chief concern of mankind from the beginning of
times. It is for that universality of religious worship that
people destroyed each other by sword. Creating gods unto
themselves, they forwith began appealing to each other: "Abandon
your deities, come and bow down to ours, or death to ye and your
idols!" And so will they do till the end of this world; they will
do so even then, when all the gods themselves have disappeared,
for then men will prostrate themselves before and worship some
idea. Thou didst know, Thou couldst not be ignorant of, that
mysterious fundamental principle in human nature, and still thou
hast rejected the only absolute banner offered Thee, to which all
the nations would remain true, and before which all would have
bowed--the banner of earthly bread, rejected in the name of
freedom and of "bread in the kingdom of God"! Behold, then, what
Thou hast done furthermore for that "freedom's" sake! I repeat to
Thee, man has no greater anxiety in life than to find some one to