The benefactors of humanity are those who have thought great thoughts
about her; but her masters and her idols are those who have flattered
and despised her, those who have muzzled and massacred her, inflamed her
with fanaticism or used her for selfish purposes. Her benefactors are
the poets, the artists, the inventors, the apostles and all pure hearts.
Her masters are the Caesars, the Constantines, the Gregory VII.'s, the
Innocent III.'s, the Borgias, the Napoleons.
* * * * *
Every civilization is, as it were, a dream of a thousand years, in which
heaven and earth, nature and history, appear to men illumined by
fantastic light and representing a drama which is nothing but a
projection of the soul itself, influenced by some intoxication--I was
going to say hallucination--or other. Those who are widest awake still
see the real world across the dominant illusion of their race or time.
And the reason is that the deceiving light starts from our own mind: the
light is our religion. Everything changes with it. It is religion which
gives to our kaleidoscope, if not the material of the figures, at least
their color, their light and shade, and general aspect. Every religion
makes men see the world and humanity under a special light; it is a mode
of apperception, which can only be scientifically handled when we have
cast it aside, and can only be judged when we have replaced it by a
better.
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