Leo N. tolstoy religion and morality, 1893. part 2

Until recently, at the beginning of this century, the most advanced people, if they rejected (в значении «отклонять, не принимать» - Е.С.) Catholicism, Protestantism, and Ortodoxy, as the encyclopedists did at the end of the last century, none of them rejected the fact that religion in general was and it is necessary condition for every person;s life.

Not to mention the deist, like Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Diderot and Rousseau, Voltaire erected a monument to God, Robespierre established the festival of higher being.

But in our time, thanks to the frivolous and superficial teaching of Auguste Comte, who sincerely believed, like most Frenchmen, that Christianity is nothing but Catholicism, and therefore saw in Catholicism the full realization of Christianity, it was decided and recognized by the cultural crowd as always willingly and quickly accepted the based ideas – it was decided and recognized that religion is only a well-known, long-lived phase of human development that hinders (в значении «мешать, препятствовать») its progress.

It is recognized that humanity has already gone through two periods: religious and metaphysical, and has now entered the third, higher – scientific, and that all religious phenomena among people are only experiences of the once necessary spiritual organ of humanity, which has long lost its meaning and significance, in the manner of the fifth finger nail of a horse.

It is recognized that the essence of religion consist in recognizing imaginary beings and worshipping them caused by fear of incomprehensible forces of nature, as Democritus thought in ancient times and as the latest philosophers and historians of religions claim.

But, not to mention the fact the recognition of invisible supernatural beings or beings did not always come from fear of the unknown forces of nature, as evidenced (evidence – в значении «свидетельство» - Е.С.) by hundred of the most advanced and highly educated people of the past, Socrates, Descartes, Newtons, and the same people in our time , no longer out of fear of the unknown forces of nature, recognizing higher supernatural beings or beings ,  the assertion (утверждение) that religion originated from the superstitious fear of people before the incomprehensible forces of nature, in reality, does not answer the main question: where did the idea of about invisible supernatural beings?

If people were afraid of thunder and lighting, they would be afraid of thunder and lighting, but why did they come up with some invisible supernatural being, Jupiter, which is somewhere and sometimes throws arrows at people?

If people were struck by the kind of death, they would be afraid of death, but why did they «invent» (изобретать) the souls of the dead, with whom they began to enter into imaginary intercourse?

From thunder people could hide, from terror before death they could flee (бежать) from it, but they invented an eternal and powerful being on whom they consider themselves dependent, and the living souls of the dead not only out of fear, but for some other reason.

And for this reasons, obviously, is the essence of what is called religion.
In addition, every person who has ever experienced a religion feeling, at least in childhood, knows from personal experience that this feeling has always been caused in him not by external terrible material phenomena, but internal too, which has nothing to do with fear of the incomprehensible, by the forces of nature with the consciousness of its nothingness, loneliness and its sinfulness.

That is why man can learn from external observation and personal experience that religion is not a worship of deities caused by superstitious fear of unknown forces of nature, which is inherent (присуще) in people only in a certain period of their development, and something completely independent of fear and human education, and cannot be destroyed by any development of enlightenment (просвещение), since man;s 



That is why man can learn from external observation and personal experience that religion is not a worship of deities caused by superstitious fear of unknown forces of nature, which is inherent in people only in a certain period of their development, and something completely independent of fear and human education. and cannot be destroyed by any development of enlightenment, since man;s consciousness of his finiteness in the midst of the infinite world and his sinfulness, i.e. failure to do all that he could and should have done but did not do, has always been and always will be until as long as man remains man.