Essays and Aphorisms

by Arthur Schopenhauer

Those who think the sciences can go on advancing and spreading wider and wider without threatening the continued existence and prosperity of religion are very much in error. Physics and metaphysics are the natural enemies of religion. To speak of peace and accord between them is very ludicrous: it is a bellum ad internecionem.14 Religions are the children of ignorance, and they do not long survive their mother. Omar understood that when he burned the library at Alexandria: his reason for doing so – that the knowledge contained in the books was either also contained in the Koran or was superfluous – is regarded as absurd, but is in fact very shrewd if taken cum grano salis: it signifies that if the sciences go beyond the Koran they are enemies of religion and consequently not to be tolerated. Christianity would be in much better shape today if Christian rulers had been as wise as Omar. By now, however, it is a little late to burn all the books.

Religion & science