The Intimate Causes of Old Age. 191 



tithes collected. Reason and conscience were borne down 

 by the voice of sacerdotal authority, nether worlds for 

 torture were invented, and blind faith exacted under ban 

 and penalty. Fane, shrine, temple, mosque, and cathe- 

 dral were reared, and vast guilds of insolent priesthood 

 organized. " Religion reared her proud head in the skies ; 

 human life groveled foully in the dust." 



That was the price; the penalty, which humanity paid 

 for longing after more life, for believing that somehow 

 there would be immortal life somewheres. We should fix 

 our attention, not on the errata of creed and religion, but 

 on the nature of this great Hope of the human heart, the 

 Hope that inspired it all. 



For, if human beings had all along been persuaded with 

 certainty that this earthly life of three scor;e~-fwid ten 

 years were all to which they could attain, there would 

 have been no religion, no priest. It was the longing for 

 more life which made religion possible in human history. 



Sacerdos proved the greatest of hypnotists. Humanity 

 passed into the sleep of the creeds, the long-night incubus 

 of faith in the supernatural, with its phantasmagoria of 

 gods and devils, nether-worlds and upper- worlds, limboes, 

 pur^toriies, torture-hells, and gaudy-golden heavens ! 



A long, wild, troubled night of the human brain. 



Ten thousand years of supernatural religion. 



It is from this nightmare of indoctrination, this trance 

 of dogmatism, this long-woven spell of sacerdotal authority, 



