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all-powerful, is merely a myth, and that such a being does not really
exist, and is only an invention of the men to frighten the women
and children." He is nevertheless taught a strict moral code, which
is enforced by his elders. The modern thinkers who knowingly
propagate a fiction as the basis of morality will not hesitate to create
other fictions when needed; this teaching of a "double truth," one for
the elite and another for the simple, is no advance on the present
morality of the godless. More than any doctrines of the philosophical
pragmatists, it prepares people for the acceptance of totalitarian
fictions.
We doubt, however, that the religious pragmatic fiction, moral or
immoral, can accomplish its end today. Under certain conditions,
it
may chasten the violent and help the rulers to keep a small part
of the masses quiet; but it is only one means among many, and how
limited it is may be judged by the peasant revolts in the past and the
brutality of wars fought between believers of opposed nations. And if
religion is regarded mainly as an instrument of order, we must remark
that the most gigantic, demoralizing, catastrophic disorders, which
we call war and economic crisis, are neither caused by unbelief nor
terminated by the religious conscience of the people or of those
who hold power.
Yet the churches have been able at times to restore morality or
to raise the moral level after periods of disorder, just as converts
testify to a moral renewal within themselves. Whether a religious
revival can prevent wars and massacres and the various forms of
collective sadism is another question; the First Crusade is a gruesome
document of Christian violence, and the bitter struggles of the Re–
formation and the Counter-Reform discourage a positive answer.
The qualities of fervor, love, purity of heart, and selfless devotion
to humanity, which might be effective in a good cause, are not
exclusively religious. But apart from this doubt, it should be ob–
served that where the revival of religion has been effective for a
time in the moral life of the community, it has been so under special
circumstances: the revival has been a reform within religion itself,
an enthusiastic movement or new sect which re;-shaped the whole
life of its members, sometimes creating new social as well as new
religious forms; or the religion has been affected by humane at–
titudes arising under favorable, usually very stable economic and
