Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/49

Rh In liberty-loving England the laws and public opinion allow us to belong to any sect or religion we choose, we can be Buddhists, or worship the sun with the Parsees, but we are not allowed to announce ourselves as atheists. Bradlaugh had the audacity to proclaim his atheism. He was in consequence spurned by society, turned out of Parliament and involved in an incredibly expensive law-suit. So powerful is the influence of Religion upon every mind, so difficult is it to break loose from the habit of belonging to some church directly or indirectly, that even the atheists who are trying to substitute for the ancient faith, a new ideal more in accordance with our view of the universe, are so wanting in courage that they retain for their new conceptions founded upon reason, the title of Religion, which is so connected with the follies of the human race. There are some associations of freethinkers in Berlin and in other places in northern Germany, who have found no better name for their communities, than "the Free Religion Societies" and David Friedrich Strauss calls an ideal belief, whose essence is the non-existence of any religion not perceptible by the senses, the "Religion of the Future." Does not that recall to mind the anecdote of the freethinker who exclaimed: "By the Almighty, I am an atheist."

This is the place to anticipate misconstructions of my meaning. When I call Religion a conventional lie of civilized society, I do not mean by the word Religion, a belief in super-natural, abstract powers. This belief is sincere with most people. It still exists unconsciously even in men of the highest culture, and there are but few children of the Nineteenth Century, who have become so