eles_. Yes, if you had truth in your pocket, ready to favor us
with it on demand. All you've got are metaphysical systems, in which
nothing is certain but the headaches they cost. Before you take anything
away, you must have something better to put in its place.

_Philalethes_. That's what you keep on saying. To free a man from error
is to give, not to take away. Knowledge that a thing is false is a
truth. Error always does harm; sooner or later it will bring mischief to
the man who harbors it. Then give up deceiving people; confess ignorance
of what you don't know, and leave everyone to form his own articles of
faith for himself. Perhaps they won't turn out so bad, especially as
they'll rub one another's corners down, and mutually rectify mistakes.
The existence of many views will at any rate lay a foundation of
tolerance. Those who possess knowledge and capacity may betake
themselves to the study of philosophy, or even in their own persons
carry the history of philosophy a step further.

_Demopheles_. That'll be a pretty business! A whole nation of raw
metaphysicians, wrangling and eventually coming to blows with one
another!

_Philalethes_. Well, well, a few blows here and there are the sauce of
life; or at any rate a very inconsiderable evil compared with such
things as priestly dominion, plundering of the laity, persecution of
heretics, courts of inquisition, crusades, religious wars, massacres of
St. Bartholomew. These have been the result of popular metaphysics
imposed from without; so I stick to the old saying that you can't get
grapes from thistles, nor expect good to come from a pack of lies.

_Demopheles_. How often must I repeat that religion is anything but a
pack of lies? It is truth itself, only in a mythical, allegorical
vesture. But when you spoke of your plan of everyone being his own
founder of religion, I wanted to say that a particularism like this is
totally opposed to human nature, and would consequently destroy all
social order. Man is a metaphysical animal,--that is to say, he has
paramount metaphysical necessities; accordingly, he conceives life above
all in its metaphysical signification, and wishes to bring everything
into line with that. Consequently, however strange it may sound in view
of the uncertainty of all dogmas, agreement in the fundamentals of
metaphysics is the chief thing, because a genuine and lasting bond of
union is only possible among those who are of one opinion on these