A quotation from Buckle (1940)

From the July 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

” . . . the two principles underlying religion are ignorance and danger, ignorance keeping man unacquainted with natural causes, and danger making them recur to supernatural ones. Or, to express the same proposition in other words, the feeling of veneration, which under one of its aspects takes the form of superstition, is a product of wonder and fear, and it is obvious that wonder is connected with ignorance, and that fear is connected with danger. Hence it is, that whatever in any country increases the total amount of amazement, or whatever in any country increases the total amount of peril, has a direct tendency to increase the total amount of superstition, and therefore to strengthen the hands of the priesthood.” (“History of Civilisation in England,” Vol. 3, p. 32. World’s Classics Edition.)