oreover, the ecclesiastic's answers
to the riddles of life are easier, by far, to grasp than the answers of
science. These two factors, of innate mental inertia and force of
repetition, are well manifested by the present tactics of advertising.
The manufacturer of any product well knows that constant repetition and
the dangling of his product before the eyes of the public will lead to a
widespread acceptance of the advertising slogans propounded for his
article.

The force of so-called authority has aggravated this mental inertia. It
takes a tremendous amount of will power and mental courage for any
individual to assert an opinion that runs counter to the accepted mode
of thinking. It is much easier and much more pleasant to give oneself
passively to that delusion of grandeur, that delusion that pleasantly
drugs the mind with the assumption that there is a supreme being who is
personally interested in our well-being; a providence who, like a school
master, at his pleasure dispenses rewards and punishments; as
immortality, Heaven and Hell. So firmly has this become entrenched in
the minds of men that the irrationalities which manifest themselves
against such a conception make no impression. Schopenhauer well states,
"Nothing is more provoking, when we are arguing against a man with
reasons and explanations, and taking all pains to convince him, than to
discover at last that he _will_ not understand, that we have to do with
his _will_."

The Martian, knowing the widespread extent of religious beliefs and
their supposed influence in our daily lives, is prepared to find in our
annals a vast literature that would attest to the overwhelming benefits
that mankind had derived from his religious beliefs.

He is amazed to find that the little good which religion had
accomplished, had occurred at the time when our race was in its infancy.
Just as fear is instilled into the mind of the child to protect it from
the dangers of its environment before the child has reached the age when
it can use its reason for protection, just so had religion, by its
implantation of fear, served its purpose in the days of our racial
childhood. The child, however, as soon as it learns to reason, replaces
those fears by a logical comprehension of the laws governing his
environment. But in religious matters this fear has clung to man
tenaciously; and while at first serving a protective function, at the
present stage of civilization constitutes an embr