ns, and the like, all
of which aimed at anything but the moral improvement of the individual.
The whole of their so-called religion consisted, and particularly in the
towns, in some of the _deorum majorum gentium_ having temples here and
there, in which the aforesaid worship was conducted as an affair of
state, when in reality it was an affair of police. No one, except the
functionaries engaged, was obliged in any way to be present, or even to
believe in it. In the whole of antiquity there is no trace of any
obligation to believe in any kind of dogma. It was merely any one who
openly denied the existence of the gods or calumniated them that was
punished; because by so doing he insulted the state which served these
gods; beyond this every one was allowed to think what he chose of them.
If any one wished to win the favour of these gods privately by prayer or
sacrifice he was free to do so at his own cost and risk; if he did not
do it, no one had anything to say against it, and least of all the
State. Every Roman had his own Lares and Penates at home, which were,
however, at bottom nothing more than the revered portraits of his
ancestors. The ancients had no kind of decisive, clear, and least of all
dogmatically fixed ideas about the immortality of the soul and a life
hereafter, but every one in his own way had lax, vacillating, and
problematical ideas; and their ideas about the gods were just as
various, individual, and vague. So that the ancients had really no
_religion_ in our sense of the word. Was it for this reason that anarchy
and lawlessness reigned among them? Is not law and civil order rather so
much their work, that it still constitutes the foundation of ours? Was
not property perfectly secure, although it consisted of slaves for the
greater part? And did not this condition of things last longer than a
thousand years?

So I cannot perceive, and must protest against the practical aims and
necessity of religion in the sense which you have indicated, and in such
general favour to-day, namely, as an indispensable foundation of all
legislative regulations. For from such a standpoint the pure and sacred
striving after light and truth, to say the least, would seem quixotic
and criminal if it should venture in its feeling of justice to denounce
the authoritative belief as a usurper who has taken possession of the
throne of truth and maintained it by continuing the deception.

_Demop._ But religion is not opposed to tru