Note 24 — Chapter VIII · CONCLUSION

“One can say without exaggeration that the most religious times and the most religious peoples, or those in which or among whom the power of the Church has been the strongest, have, generally speaking, been the most immoral. One has evidence enough in the horrors of the Middle Ages, and, if to-day it be otherwise, it is not to religion we owe the change, but to the spread of education and the progress of intelligence.... It is one of the fatalest and most widespread of errors that morality without religion is impossible. It has long been scientifically acknowledged that morality, as such, is far older than religion.... Morality comes only as the consequence and result of the inevitable necessities of social intercourse.”24—Ludwig Büchner.