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118 shows to be directly opposed to the facts; that religion has been the greatest impediment in the road to progress. This will be shown in the subsequent chapters. The oft-repeated assertion that, during the Middle Ages, ecclesiastic influence was the saving grace is well refuted by Dr. William J. Robinson:

"We are told by the Church apologists that during the Middle Ages the priests and monks kept up the torch of learning, that, being the only literate people, they brought back the study of the classics. Historically speaking, this is about the most impudent statement that one could imagine. It was the Church that retarded human progress at least one thousand years, it is the Church that put a thick, impenetrable pall over the sun of learning and science, so that humanity was enveloped in utter darkness, and if the priests and monks later learned to read and write (from the Arabs, Jews, and Greeks exiled from Constantinople after 1453), it is because they wanted to keep the power in their hands; the people they did not permit to learn either to read or write. Even the reading of the Bible, bear in mind,, was considered a crime. We are told that the priests and monks built hospitals and gave alms to the poor. Having gotten enormous tracts of the best land into, their hands, so that the people, were starving, they were willing to throw a bone occasionally to the latter. It cost them nothing and it gave them a reputation for charity. They built enormous monasteries with well filled cellars, and lived on the fat of the land, while the people lived in wretched hovels, working their lives away for a crust of bread. The beasts, the domestic animals lived a more comfortable life than did the men, women, and children of the people. And the Church never, never raised a finger to ameliorate their condition. It kept them in superstitious darkness and helped the temporal lords—