Let us consider the unmistakable character of the present situation. We have heard the admission that religion no longer has the same influence on men that it used to have (we are concerned here with European Christian culture). And this, not because its promises have become smaller, but because they appear less credible to people. Let us admit that the reason—perhaps not the only one—for this change is the increase of the scientific spirit in the higher strata of human society. Criticism has nibbled at the authenticity of religious documents, natural science has shown up the errors contained in them, and the comparative method of research has revealed the fatal resemblance between religious ideas revered by us and the mental productions of primitive ages and peoples. The scientific spirit engenders a particular attitude to the problems of this world; before the problems of religion it halts for a while, then wavers, and finally here too steps over the threshold. In this process there is no stopping. The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief, at first only of the obsolete and objectionable expressions of the same, then of its fundamental assumptions, also. The Americans who instituted the monkey trial in Dayton have alone proved consistent. Elsewhere the inevitable transition is accomplished by way of half-measures and insincerities. Culture has little to fear from the educated or from the brain workers. In their case religious motives for civilized behaviour would be unobtrusively replaced by other and secular ones; besides, for the most part they are themselves supporters of culture. But it is another matter with the great mass of the uneducated and suppressed, who have every reason to be enemies of culture. So long as they do not discover that people no longer believe in God, all is well. But they discover it, infallibly, and would do so even if this work of mine were not published. They are ready to accept the results of scientific thought, without having effected in themselves the process of change which scientific thought induces in men. Is there not a danger that these masses, in their hostility to culture, will attack the weak point which they have discovered in their taskmaster? If you must not kill your neighbour, solely because God has forbidden it and will sorely avenge it in this or the other life, and you then discover that there is no God so that one need not fear his punishment, then you will certainly kill without hesitation, and you could only be prevented from this by mundane force. And so follows the necessity for either the most rigorous suppression of these dangerous masses and the most careful exclusion of all opportunities for mental awakening or a fundamental revision of the relation between culture and religion. CHAPTER VIII