that the historic development of religion tends to its gradual dissolution."[1]
The characteristic attitude of the socialist materialist toward Christianity appears very clearly in the following excerpt from Professor Ferri's "Socialism and Modern Science":
"It is true that Marxian Socialism, since the Congress held at Erfurt (1891), has rightly declared that religious beliefs are private affairs[2] and that, therefore, the Socialist party combats religious intolerance under all its forms. . . . But this breadth of superiority of view is, at bottom, only a consequence of the confidence in final victory.
"It is because Socialism knows and foresees that religious beliefs, whether one regards them, with Sergi, as pathological phenomena of human psychology, or as useless phenomena of moral incrustation, are destined to perish by atrophy with the extension of even elementary scientific culture. This is why Socialism does not feel the necessity of waging a special warfare against these religious beliefs which are destined
- ↑ "Philosophical Essays." Dietzgen. Page 116.
- ↑ The reader will observe that Ferri reads into the Erfurt pronouncement on religion (quoted in full above) a broader spirit of tolerance than its words necessarily imply.
