RELIGION AND THE INTELLECTUALS
liS
certainly
is
not surprising. On the contrary, it would be much
more surprising if the rapid decline in religious belief which has
taken place in Western culture during the last three hundred years
were not interrupted by these intellectual memories-memories, after
all, of thousands of years of human history and culture.
Historically speaking, not the history of an idea or the history
of intellectuals is important, but the history of Western mankind in
general. The important historical fact is that an overwhelming ma–
jority has ceased to believe in a Last Judgment at the end of time.
This, of course, does not mean that this majority has become more
scientifically inclined and one might even doubt that the rise of
science during this same period has really caused this development, as
is frequently asserted. The same masses, at any rate hardly bothering
to think of the old mysteries, like the Incarnation or the Trinity, are
quite willing to believe-well just anything. This is plain supersti–
tiousness and the only connection I can see between this frightful
gullibility of modern people and the "scientific attitude" is that the
contents of highbrow and lowbrow superstition change even more
rapidly than the contents of scientific discoveries.
3 and 4. I must confess that the notion that one can or ought
to organize religion as .an institution only because one likes to have a
culture, has always appeared to me as rather funny. The idea of
somebody making up his mind to believe in God, follow His Com–
mandments, praying to Him and going regularly to Church, so that
poets again may have some inspiration and culture be "integrated,"
is simply exhilarating. The
Catholicisme cerebral
which you mention
is one of the surest ways to kill religion-as the Church, by the way,
knew well enough when it put its writings on the index. The same
is true, of course, with respect to the use of religion as a weapon
against totalitarianism or "a safeguard for civilized tradition." More–
over, it seems that all such attempts would be doomed to failure,
particularly in the struggle against totalitarianism; recent history has
demonstrated how weak and helpless organized religion is when
confronted with the new totalitarian forms of government-and this
despite the good will and frequent heroism of great parts of the clergy
of almost all denominations.
The trouble here, as in all discussions of religion, is that one
really cannot escape the question of truth and therefore cannot
