looking at religion in this way is to be gathered from the fact that it
is not only the blind, credulous masses, but also the clergy of every
religion, who, as such, have studied its sources, arguments, dogmas and
differences, who cling faithfully and zealously as a body to the
religion of their fatherland; consequently it is the rarest thing in the
world for a priest to change from one religion or creed to another. For
instance, we see that the Catholic clergy are absolutely convinced of
the truth of all the principles of their Church, and that the
Protestants are also of theirs, and that both defend the principles of
their confession with like zeal. And yet the conviction is the outcome
merely of the country in which each is born: the truth of the Catholic
dogma is perfectly clear to the clergy of South Germany, the Protestant
to the clergy of North Germany. If, therefore, these convictions rest on
objective reasons, these reasons must be climatic and thrive like
plants, some only here, some only there. The masses everywhere, however,
accept on trust and faith the convictions of those who are _locally
convinced_.

_Demop._ That doesn't matter, for essentially it makes no difference.
For instance, Protestantism in reality is more suited to the north,
Catholicism to the south.

_Phil._ So it appears. Still, I take a higher point of view, and have
before me a more important object, namely, the progress of the knowledge
of truth among the human race. It is a frightful condition of things
that, wherever a man is born, certain propositions are inculcated in his
earliest youth, and he is assured that under penalty of forfeiting
eternal salvation he may never entertain any doubt about them; in so
far, that is, as they are propositions which influence the foundation of
all our other knowledge and accordingly decide for ever our point of
view, and if they are false, upset it for ever. Further, as the
influences drawn from these propositions make inroads everywhere into
the entire system of our knowledge, the whole of human knowledge is
through and through affected by them. This is proved by every
literature, and most conspicuously by that of the Middle Age, but also,
in too great an extent, by that of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. We see how paralysed even the minds of the first rank of all
those epochs were by such false fundamental conceptions; and how
especially all insight into the true substance and working of Na