Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/64

50 but dimly recognized; some external disturbance however occurs, and they blaze up, casting a light as bright as day upon the entire inner world of intelligence and emotions. Heredity is a curse from which we can not escape. It is impossible for us to change the shape of our features or of our bodies, and in the same way it is impossible for us to alter the mental physiognomy of our thought, bequeathed to us with the former by our ancestors. This explains the trait of superstition which is often absolutely beyond the control of the reason or will, and which we notice with such surprise in ourselves, and in others of the most extensive culture; it also explains that exaltation of religious sentiment to which persons of poetic temperament are so liable, because they are particularly susceptible to the influence of heredity. This source of superstitious ideas, heredity, can be only controlled and done away with by the accumulated efforts of many generations. Centuries will be required to produce a human being, who from his birth up, is prepared to comprehend life and the universe from the point of view of reason and natural science, without prejudice or superstition, because a hundred generations before him had been convincing themselves of the correctness of this point of view.

We on the contrary, are predisposed to look upon the phenomena of this life and the world, from an irrational and superstitious standpoint, owing to the fact that not hundreds, but hundreds of thousands of generations before us, have been in the habit of carrying on a false and mistaken habit of thought and theorizing. Among the causes which led to the conception of Religion and its continued existence in the human mind, are some which, although not capable of producing by themselves the ideas of God, the soul and immortality, were yet powerful in impressing and perpetuating them upon the heart