Page:Nikolai Bukharin - Programme of the World Revolution (1920).djvu/77

 also for spiritual liberation of the toiling masses. Economic liberation itself will be the easier attained the sooner the workman and the farm labourer get their brains cleared of all the rubbish with which the landowners and the manufacturing bourgeoisie have stuffed them. We have already noticed before how cleverly the dominating classes have hitherto bound the workers with their newspapers, journals, pamphlets, priests, and even the school, which they cleverly converted from an organ of enlightenment into an institution for dulling the minds of the people.

One of the agencies in achieving this object was the belief in God and the Devil, spirits good and evil (angels and saints), in short, in religion. A great number of people have grown accustomed to believe in all this, whilst if we analyse these ideas and try to understand the origin of religion and why it is so strongly supported by the bourgeoisie, it will become clear that the real significance of religion is that it is a poison which is still being instilled into the people. It will also become clear why the party of the Communists is a strong antagonist of religion.

Modern science has proved that the original form of religion was the worship of the souls of dead ancestors. This worship began at a time when the so-called elders—that is to say, the richer, more experienced and wise old men of the tribe who already had some power over the rest, had attained great importance. In the early stages of human history, when men were still living in herds, like semi-apes, people were indeed equal. It was only later on that elders or heads of tribes began to have command over the whole tribe: they were the first to be worshipped. The worship of the spirits of the dead rich—this is the basis of religion: and these "sacred" idols were later on changed into a terrible God who punishes and forgives, judges and governs. Let us analyse why people have come to accept such an explanation of everything that takes place around them. The reason is that people judge of things that are little known to them by comparing them with things with which they are familiar: they weigh and measure things on a scale that is concrete and comprehensible. A well-known scholar quotes the following instance. A little girl, brought up on a private estate here there was a poultry farm, constantly had to do with eggs: eggs were ever present before her eyes. Once, when she saw the sky strewn with stars, she told a story