MONOTHEISTIC RELIGION
PREFATORY NOTES
i. Written
before March 1938 (Vienna)
WITH the audacity of one who has little or nothing
to lose I
propose to break a well-founded resolu-
tion for the second time and to follow
up my two
essays on Moses (Imago, Bd. XXIII, Heft i and 3)
with the final
part, till now withheld. When I
finished the last
essay I said I knew full well that
my powers would not suffice for the task. I was,
of course,
referring to the weakening of the crea-
tive faculties which
accompanies old age,
1
but
there was also another obstacle. We live in
very
remarkable times. We find with astonishment
that
progress has concluded an alliance with bar-
barism. In Soviet Russia the
attempt has been
1
I do not share the
opinion of my gifted contemporary Bernard
Shaw that men would achieve anything worth while only if they
could attain the age of 300 years. With the mere lengthening of
the
period of life nothing would be gained unless much in the
conditions of life were radically changed as well.
89
HIS PEOPLE AND MONOTHEISTIC RELIGION
9 1
shall
guard against doing anything that would
serve his interests is more
dangerous than the old
one, with whom we have learned to live in peace.
Psycho -analytic research is in any case the subject
of
suspicious attention from Catholicism. I do
not maintain that this
suspicion is unmerited. If
our research leads us to a result that reduces
religion to the status of a neurosis of mankind and
explains its grandiose powers in the ^ame way as
we should a neurotic obsession in our individual
patients, then we may be sure we shall incur in
this
country the greatest resentment of the powers
that be. It is not that I have
anything new to say,
nothing that I have not clearly expressed a quarter
of a
century ago. All that, however, has been for-
gotten, and it would undoubtedly have some
effect were I to
repeat it now and to illustrate it
by an example typical of the way in which re-
ligions are founded. It would probably lead to our
being forbidden to work in Psycho -Analysis. Such
violent methods of
suppression are by no means
alien to the Catholic Church ; she feels it rather as
an intrusion into her privileges when other people
resort to the same means.
Psycho -Analysis, how-
ever, which has travelled everywhere during the
course of
my long life, has not yet found a more
serviceable home than in the city where it was
born and grew.
I do not
only think so, I know that this external
danger will deter me from publishing the last
92 MOSES AND MONOTHEISM
part of my treatise on Moses. I have tried to
remove this obstacle by telling myself that
my
fear is based on an over-estimation of
my
personal importance, and that the authorities
would
probably be quite indifferent to what I
should have to
say about Moses and the origin
of monotheistic
religions. Yet I do not feel sure
that
my judgement is correct. It seems to me
more likely that malice and an
appetite for
sensation would make
up for the importance I
may lack in the eyes of the world. So I shall not
publish this essay. But that need not hinder me
from writing it. The more so since it was written
once before, two
years ago, and thus only needs
re
-writing and adding on to the two previous
essays. Thus it may lie hid until the time comes
when it may safely venture into the
light of day,
or until someone else who reaches the same
opinions and conclusions can be told: " In
darker
days there lived a man who thought as
you did."
II.
June 1938 (London)
The exceptionally great difficulties which have
weighed on me during the composition of this
essay dealing with Moses inner misgivings as
well as external hindrances are the reason
why
this third and final