WHAT IS RELIGION? 313
(the great majority of the nation), while living under the hypnotism of a gross deception, think they possess true religion — become impervious to any forward move- ment, and incapable of any approach towards truth- Proud of tlieir improvements in things that regard the bodily life, as well as of their refined, idle reason- ings (in which they aim not only at justifying them- selves, but also at proving their superiority to any other people of any age of history), they petrify in ignorance and immorality, while feeling fully assured that they stand on an elevation never before reached by hu- manity, and that every step forward along the path of ignorance and immorality raises them to yet greater heights of enlightenment and progress.
X.
Man naturally wishes to bring his bodily (physical) and his rational (spiritual) activity into conformity. He cannot be at peace until, in one way or other, he has reached that conformity. But it is attainable in two different ways. One way is for a man to decide by the use of his reason on the necessity or desirability of a certain action or actions, and then to behave accord- ingly ; the other way is for a man to commit actions under the influence of his feelings, and then to invent intellectual explanations or justifications for what he has done.
The first method of conforming one^s actions with one^s reason is characteristic of men who have some religion, and on the basis of its precepts decide what they ought and what they ought not to do. The second metliod is generally characteristic of men who are not religious, and have no general standard by which to judge the quality of actions, and who there- fore always set up a conformity between their reason and their actions, not by subjecting the latter to their reason, but (after acting under the sway of feeling) by using reason to justify what they have done.
A religious man — knowing what is good and what is
