Why I Am Not a Christian

figs, and one really could not blame the tree. I cannot personally feel that, whether in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue, Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to history. I think I should place Buddha and Socrates above Him in those respects.

THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR

As I said before, I do not believe that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; though I have not observed it to be the case. You know, of course, the parody of that argument in Samuel Butler’s book, Erewhon Revisited. You will remember that in Erewhon, a man named Higgs arrives in a remote country, and after spending some time there, he escapes in a balloon. Twenty years later he returns to that country and finds a new religion, in which he is worshipped under the name of the “Sun Child”; it is claimed that he ascended into heaven. He arrives just as the Feast of the Ascension is to be celebrated, and he overhears Professors Hanky and Panky saying to each other that they never saw the man Higgs, and hope they never will—even though they are the high priests of the religion of the Sun Child. He is very indignant, and he approaches them, saying: “I am going to expose all this humbug and tell the people of Erewhon that it was only I, the man Higgs, and