o appeals to the
will, fears, and hopes of mortals living in constant need; religion
provides them with gods, demons, to whom they call, appease, and
conciliate. Finally, it appeals to their moral consciousness, which is
undeniably present, and lends to it that authenticity and support from
without--a support without which it would not easily maintain itself in
the struggle against so many temptations. It is exactly from this side
that religion provides an inexhaustible source of consolation and
comfort in the countless and great sorrows of life, a comfort which does
not leave men in death, but rather then unfolds its full efficacy. So
that religion is like some one taking hold of the hand of a blind person
and leading him, since he cannot see for himself; all that the blind
person wants is to attain his end, not to see everything as he walks
along.

_Phil._ This side is certainly the brilliant side of religion. If it is
a _fraus_ it is indeed a _pia fraus_; that cannot be denied. Then
priests become something between deceivers and moralists. For they dare
not teach the real truth, as you yourself have quite correctly
explained, even if it were known to them; which it is not. There can, at
any rate, be a true philosophy, but there can be no true religion: I
mean true in the real and proper understanding of the word, not merely
in that flowery and allegorical sense which you have described, a sense
in which every religion would be true only in different degrees. It is
certainly quite in harmony with the inextricable admixture of good and
evil, honesty and dishonesty, goodness and wickedness, magnanimity and
baseness, which the world presents everywhere, that the most important,
the most lofty, and the most sacred truths can make their appearance
only in combination with a lie, nay, can borrow strength from a lie as
something that affects mankind more powerfully; and as revelation must
be introduced by a lie. One might regard this fact as the _monogram_ of
the moral world. Meanwhile let us not give up the hope that mankind will
some day attain that point of maturity and education at which it is able
to produce a true philosophy on the one hand, and accept it on the
other. _Simplex sigillum veri_: the naked truth must be so simple and
comprehensible that one can impart it to all in its true form without
any admixture of myth and fable (a pack of lies)--in other words,
without masking it as _religion_.

_Demop._ You have