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What is it that leads humans to seek satisfaction in religion or in mysticism? The materialists may tell us that biological or personal frustration drives many spinster women to do so, that decaying intellect drives many ageing men to do so, that the natural need of consolation drives many widows and widowers to do so. Marxists call the idea of God "the opium of the masses." That there is some basis of truth in all these criticisms must be admitted, but that there is an immeasurably broader basis of truth in the time-old declaration that man is really related to God and must fulfil the responsibilities of such a relation must be more emphatically affirmed.

-- Notebooks Category 17: The Religious Urge > Chapter 1 : Origin, Purpose of Religions > # 51