g of
religion, that you should grasp it more from the practical and less from
the theoretical side. Personified metaphysics may be religion's enemy,
yet personified morality will be its friend. Perhaps the metaphysics in
all religions is false; but the morality in all is true. This is to be
surmised from the fact that in their metaphysics they contradict each
other, while in their morality they agree.

_Phil_. Which furnishes us with a proof of the rule of logic, that a
true conclusion may follow from false premises.

_Demop_. Well, stick to your conclusion, and be always mindful that
religion has two sides. If it can't stand when looked at merely from the
theoretical--in other words, from its intellectual side, it appears, on
the other hand, from the moral side as the only means of directing,
training, and pacifying those races of animals gifted with reason, whose
kinship with the ape does not exclude a kinship with the tiger. At the
same time religion is, in general, a sufficient satisfaction for their
dull metaphysical needs. You appear to me to have no proper idea of the
difference, wide as the heavens apart, of the profound breach between
your learned man, who is enlightened and accustomed to think, and the
heavy, awkward, stupid, and inert consciousness of mankind's beasts of
burden, whose thoughts have taken once and for all the direction of fear
about their maintenance, and cannot be put in motion in any other; and
whose muscular power is so exclusively exercised that the nervous power
which produces intelligence is thereby greatly reduced. People of this
kind must absolutely have something that they can take hold of on the
slippery and thorny path of their life, some sort of beautiful fable by
means of which things can be presented to them which their crude
intelligence could most certainly only understand in picture and
parable. It is impossible to approach them with subtle explanations and
fine distinctions. If you think of religion in this way, and bear in
mind that its aims are extremely practical and only subordinately
theoretical, it will seem to you worthy of the highest respect.

_Phil_. A respect which would finally rest on the principle that the end
sanctifies the means. However, I am not in favour of a compromise on a
basis of that sort. Religion may be an excellent means of curbing and
controlling the perverse, dull, and malicious creatures of the biped
race; in the eyes of the friend of truth eve