Essays and Aphorisms

by Arthur Schopenhauer

And do the pretensions of religion amount at bottom to anything less than this? Is it proper and becoming in that which is intolerance and pitilessness itself to preach tolerance and pity? I call on heretic courts and inquisitions, religious wars and crusades, Socrates’ poison cup and Bruno's and Vanini's blazing pyres to bear witness!4 And even if, as I grant, that kind of thing doesn't go on nowadays, what could stand more in the way of genuine philosophy, of honest inquiry after truth, which is the noblest calling of noblest men, than that conventional metaphysics to which the state has granted a monopoly and whose propositions are hammered into everyone's head in his childhood so earnestly and so deeply and firmly that, unless it is of a miraculous degree of elasticity, it retains their impress for ever, so that his capacity for thinking for himself and for making unprejudiced judgements – a capacity which is in any case far from strong – is once and for all paralysed and ruined?

Pretensions of religion