237. What two reasons are stated for the fact that society does not inform its members of the real purpose of the moral rules? 238. Why is moral sentiment valued more highly than correct acts? 239. How is the relation between morality and religion established? 240. What is the influence of monotheism on the growth of morality? CONCLUSION What a strange being is man according to popular understanding! He possesses senses intended to inform him of the world, but incapable of doing this since they deceive him. In addition he has judgment and reason which help him to discover the deceptions of his senses and to gain a true knowledge of the world by the aid of principles whose origin is foreign to this world. His thoughts consist of ideas which succeed each other in accordance with definite laws. Nevertheless, he sits within himself, the _homunculus_ in the _homo_, and with perfect contempt for those laws directs the ideas, weakens this, strengthens that, keeps one and expels the other, unites them and separates them with despotic arbitrariness. His chief desire is furtherance of his well-being. Nevertheless, he strives to aid others, to be fair and just, to mortify the flesh. He unceasingly strives to make himself the lord of the world. Still he has a constant craving for being the subject of an omnipotent power; and to satisfy this craving God has given him the belief in Divinity. But God, from whom everything springs, has given him also a punishable inclination toward heresies and confused him by the contradictions of a hundred different revelations, each one claiming its own genuineness. Man’s whole being appears mixed up. No second step is possible without reversing the first. No definite purpose can be made out in all this.