The real nature of religion being as stated, it having originated in an utterly erroneous view of things, it would seem that nothing more can be needed to justify its rejection. But the conclusion would not be correct, at least so far as the mass of believers or quasi-believers are concerned. Here the conviction still obtains that religion, no matter what its origin, still wields an enormous influence for good. The curious thing is that when one enquires "what religion is it that has exerted this beneficent influence?" the replies effectually cancel one another. Each means by religion his own religion, and each accuses the religion of the other man of all the faults with which the Freethinker accuses the whole. The avowed object of our widespread missionary activity is to save the "heathen" from the evil effects of their religion; and there is not the least doubt that if the heathen had the brute force at their command, and the impudence that we have, they would cordially reciprocate. And the efforts of the various Christian sects to convert each other is too well known to need mention. So that the only logical inference from all this is that, while all religions are, when taken singly, injurious, taken in the bulk they are sources of profound benefit. It is not alone the common or garden order of religionist who takes up this curious position, nor is it even the better educated believer; it is not uncommon to find those who have rejected all the formal religions of the world yet seeking to discover some good that religion has done or is doing. As an illustration of this we may cite an example from Sir James Frazer, than whom no one has done more to bring home to students a knowledge of the real nature of religious beliefs. It is the more surprising to find him putting in a plea for the good done by religion, not in the present, but in the past. And such an instance, if it does nothing else, may at least serve to mitigate our ferocity towards the common type of religionist. In an address delivered in 1909, entitled "Psyche's Task: A discourse concerning the influence of superstition on the growth of Institutions," he puts in a plea for the consideration of superstition (religion) at various stages of culture. Of its effects generally, he says:-- That it has done much harm in the world cannot be denied. It has sacrificed countless lives, wasted untold treasures, embroiled nations, severed friends, parted husbands and wives, parents and children, putting swords and worse than swords between them; it has filled gaols and madhouses with its deluded victims; it has broken many hearts, embittered the whole of many a life, and not content with persecuting the living it has pursued the dead into the grave and beyond it, gloating over the horrors which its foul imagination has conjured up to appal and torture the survivors. It has done all this and more.