Saturday, July 26, 2008

On Reason: Magic, Religion, Decency & Kindness...

"He had, in fact, got everything from the church and Sunday School, except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason." -Sinclair Lewis ("Elmer Gantry", Novel: Chapter II-1, p. 34, 1927)."You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion.... Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough."

-Aldous Huxley(1894–1963,“Amor Fati,” Texts and Pretexts, 1932. Image: Burt Lancaster from the Oscar winning film"Elmer Gantry", directed by Richard Brooks, 1960).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow! That's one of the most straight-forward and pseudo-enlightening quotes I've ever read concerning living creatures and the notion of religion being a strong "necessary" component in their lives. Glad I stumbled on by!