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FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER'S DIARY man-appeared to be only an imagination. With its individual cxpression, the universal soul must also go.
While each great discovery of science dealt a staggering blow to the hoary castle of religion, built in the air of faith, and consequently added stone after stone to the solid foundation of the philosophy of Materialism, prejudice persisted by virtue of momentum. In course of time, the progress of the philosophical revolution was retarded by the change in the social position of the rising bourgeois class. Struggling to liberate themselves from feudal bondage, the bourgcoisie had found a powerful weapon in the revolutionary philosophical consequences of science. By repudiating the authority of religion and theology, science destroyed thc ideological foundation and moral justification of the feudal social order. The bourgeoisie preached and practised the “sacred right of revolt” in temporal as well as in spiritual matters, and became the ruling power. In a changed situation, advantageous to themselves, their philosophical outloook changed. As an oppressed class, they had advocated revolution, ideological as well as political. In power, they became conservative. Without authority, there could be no domination of one class over the entire society; an authority on earth could not be firmly established unless backed, directly or indirectly, by some supernatural sanction. So, faith and religion 282
