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How pitiful the suggestion of Marx that religion is an invention of human imagination to enable one class--the sacerdotal--to prey on the people, and another class--the upper--to exploit the people, or the assertion of Polybius that it is an invention of society for its own protection to maintain order among men and prevent them from running amok into anarchy by following their own individual wills entirely. That it has been used for such purposes historically is correct, but the religious instinct is a very real thing and rises from a very real source.

-- Notebooks Category 17: The Religious Urge > Chapter 4 : Problems of Organized Religion > # 12