KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF. 311 



Mohammedan, Mosaic, Buddhistic, and Brahmanic 

 religions, and is just as incapable of reconciliation 

 with a rational knowledge of nature. Each of these 

 religions is for the sincere believer an indisputable 

 truth, and each regards the other as heresy and 

 damnable error. The more confidently a particular 

 sect considers itself " the only ark of salvation," and 

 the more ardently this conviction is cherished, the 

 more zealously does it contend against all other sects 

 and give rise to the fearful religious wars that form 

 the saddest pages in the book of history. And all the 

 time the unprejudiced " critique of pure reason " 

 teaches us that all these different forms of faith are 

 equally false and irrational, mere creatures of poetic 

 fancy and uncritical tradition. Rational science must 

 reject them all alike as the outcome of superstition. 



The incalculable injury which irrational superstition 

 has done to credulous humanity is conspicuously 

 revealed in the ceaseless conflict of confessions of 

 faith. Of all the wars which nations have waged 

 against each other with fire and sword the religious 

 wars have been the bloodiest; of all the forms of 

 discord that have shattered the happiness of families 

 and of individuals those that arise from religious 

 differences are still the most painful. Think of the 

 millions who have lost their lives in Christian perse- 

 cutions, in the religious conflicts of Islam and of the 

 Reformation, by the Inquisition, and under the charge 

 of witchcraft. Or think of the still greater number 

 of luckless men who, through religious differences, 

 have been plunged into family troubles, have lost the 

 esteem of their fellow citizens and their position in 

 the community, or have even been compelled to fly 

 from their country. The official confession of faith 



