Every man, it seems, has his pet delusions, which he hugs to his bosom
and loves because they are his own. If you try to deprive him of those
delusions, it is as though you tore from a woman's arms the child she
has borne. I have written a book called "The Profits of Religion," and
never a week passes that there do not come to me letters from people who
tell me they have read this book with pleasure and profit, they are
grateful to me for teaching them so much about the follies and delusions
of mankind, and it is all right and all true, save for two or three
pages, in which I deal with the special hobby which happens to be their
hobby! What I say about all the other creeds is correct--but I fail to
understand that the Mormon religion is a dignified and inspired
religion, a gift from on high, and if only I would carefully study the
"Book of Mormon," I would realize my error! Or it is all right, except
what I say about the Christian Scientists, or the Theosophists, or
perhaps one particular sect of the Theosophists, who are different from
the others. Today there lies upon my desk a letter from a man who has
read many of my books, and now is grief-stricken because he must part
company from me; he discovers that I permit myself to speak
disrespectfully about the Seventh Day Adventist religion, whereas he is
prepared to show the marvels of biblical prophecy now achieving
themselves in the world. How could any save a divinely revealed religion
have foreseen the present movement to establish the Sabbath by law? Yes,
and presently I shall see the last atom of the prophecy fulfilled--there
will be a death penalty for failure to obey the Sabbath law!
Cultivate the great and precious virtue of open-mindedness. Keep your
thinking free, not merely from outer compulsions, but from the more
deadly compulsions of its own making--from prejudices and superstitions.
The prejudices and superstitions of mankind are like those diseased
mental states which are discovered by the psychoanalyst; what he calls a
"complex" in the subconscious mind, a tangle or knot which is a center
of disturbance, and keeps the whole being in a state of confusion. Each
group of men, each sect or class, have their precious dogmas, their
shibboleths, their sacred words and stock phrases which set their whole
beings aflame with fanaticism. They have also their phobias, their words
of terror, which cannot be spoken in their presence without causing a
brain-storm.
At present the dread word of our time is "Communist."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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