[Footnote 1: Since I wrote the above, there have been founded in England, France, also in Norway, reformed schools, working more or less in the direction I have outlined.] CHAPTER VII RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION At the present moment the most demoralising factor in education is Christian religious instruction. What I mean by this is principally catechism, Scripture history, theology, and church history. Even earnest Christians have said, regarding the ordinary instruction in these subjects, that nothing shows better how deeply religion is rooted in man's nature than the fact that "religious education" is not able to destroy religion. But beside this, I believe that even a more living, a more actual instruction in Christianity injures the child. Children should bring themselves by themselves to live in the patriarchal world of the Old Testament; indeed, in the world of the New Testament as well. This can be done best in the form of children's Bibles. These works will be treasured by children; they will find in them infinite material for nourishing the imagination and the emotions. But this can only be done by allowing children to read the Bible undisturbed, without the need of pedagogical or dogmatic explanation. At home this book, like other children's books, should be only talked about and explained when the child requests it. It should never be treated as a school book or appear on the school desk. If the child gets impressions in this way from the Bible, freed from all other authority, apart from the subjective one of the impressions themselves, the myths of the Bible will no more contradict the rest of his instruction, than the Scandinavian story of creation or the Greek legends of the gods. But the most dangerous of all educational mistakes in influencing humanity, is due to the fact, that children are now taught the Old Testament account of the world as absolute truth, although it wholly contradicts their physical and historical instruction. Besides children learn to regard the morality of the New Testament as absolutely binding, while its commands are everywhere seen to be transgressed by the child, the moment he takes his first step into life. Our whole industrial and capitalistic society rests on a contradiction of the Christian command to love one's neighbour as one's self. The capitalistic axiom is that every man is nearest neighbour to himself.