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attain the ideal

“. . . the most demoralising factor in education is Christian religious instruction. . . . even a more living, a more actual instruction in Christianity injures the child.

But the most dangerous of all educational mistakes in influencing humanity, is due to the fact, that children are now taught the Old Testament account of the world as absolute truth, although it wholly contradicts their physical and historical instruction. . . .

But the demoralising feature in Christianity as an ideal is, that it is presented as absolute, while man as a social being is obliged to transgress it every day. Besides he is taught in his religious instruction, that as a fallen being he cannot in any case attain the ideal, although the only possibility of his living righteously in temporal things, and happily in the world to come, depends on his capacity for realising it.”

—Ellen Key, The Century of the Child (1900, English version, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 9th printing, 1909)

Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering

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