Boulanger says,[1] no inefficient government can possibly maintain its place, unless the masses can be induced to adopt some form of idolatry; for the worship of The Inconceivable Unity confers such elastic strength, that a people accustomed to it would at once shake off any government which no longer represented its own highest Ideals. And every inefficient government instinctively has recourse, if it can, to the device of using as tools for the brutalizing of the masses, those very priests whose original function was to vitalize the masses. "Priests were appointed to lead man in the right road; but in all ages they have feared lest he should find it and walk in it. … Men have believed that they could, without degradation, behave as the slaves of Him Who set us free; and" (as the true God retires before such unworthy homage) "they have only succeeded in becoming slaves to His hypocritical Ministers." Thus does Boulanger sum up the History of Religion; and thus may be summed up all that Logic can have to say about any teaching of so-called Religion which aims at preparing pupils for Examinations, or which adopts methods found useful in preparing for examination in "secular" subjects.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE ART OF EDUCATION.
"The heathen say, Where is your God?"
Methods of teaching which, from the point of view of medical psychology, are sound (i.e., those which vitalize and sanitate the brain), are distinguished from vicious
- ↑ Origine du Despotisme Oriental.
