It is much easier to reply to materialists who are uncompromising, convinced, sincere (that is to say, sincere within the limits of their consciousness) than to people having a religion—much easier!

But naturally, from the intellectual point of view, all human convictions have an explanation and a place. There is nothing men have thought which is not the deformation of a truth. The difficulty is not there, but rather in the fact that for religious people there are things which it is their duty to believe and it is a sin to let the mind discuss them—and so they shut themselves up, naturally, and they can never make any progress. Whereas the materialists, on the contrary, are supposed to know everything, explain everything: they explain everything rationally. And thus by the very fact that they explain everything, they can be led to wherever one wants to go. …

If they have been clinging to a religion, it is because that religion has helped them in one way or another, it has helped in them precisely something which wanted to have a certitude, not to have to search but to be able to rest on something solid without being responsible for the solidity—somebody else is responsible and it goes on like that. It is a lack of compassion to want to pull them out of that—it is better to leave them where they are. …   more »