ation:
in short, for love and money. To these people one morality is as good
as another provided they are used to it and can put up with its
restrictions without unhappiness; and in the maintenance of this
morality they will fight and punish and coerce without scruple. They
may not be the salt of the earth, these Philistines; but they are the
substance of civilization; and they save society from ruin by criminals
and conquerors as well as by Savonarolas and Knipperdollings. And as
they know, very sensibly, that a little religion is good for children
and serves morality, keeping the poor in good humor or in awe by
promising rewards in heaven or threatening torments in hell, they
encourage the religious people up to a certain point: for instance, if
Savonarola only tells the ladies of Florence that they ought to tear
off their jewels and finery and sacrifice them to God, they offer him
a cardinal's hat, and praise him as a saint; but if he induces them to
actually do it, they burn him as a public nuisance.

RELIGION OF THE MINORITY. SALVATIONISM.

The religion of the tolerated religious minority has always been
essentially the same religion: that is why its changes of name and form
have made so little difference. That is why, also, a nation so civilized
as the English can convert negroes to their faith with great ease,
but cannot convert Mahometans or Jews. The negro finds in civilized
Salvationism an unspeakably more comforting version of his crude creed;
but neither Saracen nor Jew sees any advantage in it over his own
version. The Crusader was surprised to find the Saracen quite as
religious and moral as himself, and rather more than less civilized.
The Latin Christian has nothing to offer the Greek Christian that
Greek Christianity has not already provided. They are all, at root,
Salvationists.

Let us trace this religion of Salvation from its beginnings. So
many things that man does not himself contrive or desire are always
happening: death, plagues, tempests, blights, floods, sunrise and
sunset, growths and harvests and decay, and Kant's two wonders of the
starry heavens above us and the moral law within us, that we conclude
that somebody must be doing it all, or that somebody is doing the good
and somebody else doing the evil, or that armies of invisible persons,
benefit-cut and malevolent, are doing it; hence you postulate gods and
devils, angels and demons. You propitiate these powers with presents,
cal