Lecture Four

Just think with what feelings, what narrow-minded, self-satisfied feelings, the thoroughly modern man looks back on his forebears when referring to their belief in ghosts. There is no need to object to the assertion that our ancestors had this belief! They certainly had it. To-day we will take the statement—our ancestors believed in ghosts, but we are so clever that we no longer believe in them—and pay attention not so much to the idea it expresses as to the feeling it arouses in us—the feeling we have when we see how the present age passes judgment on our stupid ancestors who believed in ghosts and is sure that in this scientific age we have at last left all that behind. The statement that our forebears believed in ghosts is in itself a half-truth, and on that account extraordinarily dangerous; for half-truths are often more harmful than downright falsities, because a downright falsity can be easily detected, whereas half-truths haunt the world themselves like ghosts.