To succeed beyond the average is to realize a weakness in humanity and then bank on it. The priest who pacifies is as natural as the fear he seeks to assuage—as natural as man himself.
So first, man is in bondage to his fear, and this bondage he exchanges for bondage to a priest. First, he fears the unknown; second, he fears the priest who has power with the unknown.
Soon the priest becomes a slave to the answers he has conjured forth. He grows to believe what he at first pretended to know. The punishment of every liar is that he eventually believes his lies. The mind of man becomes tinted and subdued to what he works in, like the dyer's hand.
So we have the formula: Man in bondage to fear. Man in bondage to a priest. The priest in bondage to a creed.
Then the priest and his institution become an integral part and parcel of the State, mixed in all its affairs. The success of the State seems to lie in holding belief intact and stilling all further questions of the people, transferring all doubts to this Volunteer Class which answers for a consideration.
Naturally, the man who does not accept the answers is regarded as an enemy of the State—that is, the enemy of mankind.
To keep this questioner down has been the problem of every religion. And the great problem of progress has been to smuggle the newly-discovered truth past Cerberus, the priest, by preparing a sop that was to him palatable.
From every branch of Science the priest has been routed, save in Sociology alone. Here he has stubbornly made his last stand, and is saving himself alive by slowly accepting the situation and transforming himself into the Promoter of a Social Club.
he attempt to ascertain the truths of physical science outside of theology was, in the early ages, very seldom ventured. When men wanted to know anything about anything, they asked the priest.