But it is common knowledge that religions don’t want conviction, on the basis of reasons, but faith, on the basis of revelation. And the capacity for faith is at its strongest in childhood: which is why religions apply themselves before all else to getting these tender years into their possession. It is in this way, even more than by threats and stories of miracles, that the doctrines of faith strike roots: for if, in earliest childhood, a man has certain principles and doctrines repeatedly recited to him with abnormal solemnity and with an air of supreme earnestness such as he has never before beheld, and at the same time the possibility of doubt is never so much as touched on, or if it is only in order to describe it as the first step towards eternal perdition, then the impression produced will be so profound that in almost every case the man will be almost incapable of doubting this doctrine as of doubting his own existence, so that hardly one in a thousand will then possess the firmness of mind seriously and honestly to ask himself: is this true?

This Orientalism reflected the struggle of the German Romantics in the words of Leon Poliakov to free themselves from Judeo-Christian fetters". If we could castrate all scoundrels and stick all stupid geese in a convent and give men of noble character a whole harem and procure men and indeed thorough men for all girls of intellect and understanding then a generation would soon arise which would produce a better age than that of Pericles. He quotes Horace's saying "From the brave and good are the brave descended" (Odes iv 4 29) and Shakespeare's line from Cymbeline "Cowards father cowards and base things sire base" (IV 2) to reinforce his hereditarian argument.

Influenced by Eastern thought he maintained that the "truth was recognized by the sages of India"; consequently his solutions to suffering were similar to those of Vedantic and Buddhist thinkers (i. He has influenced a long list of thinkers including Friedrich NietzscheRichard Wagner Ludwig Wittgenstein Erwin Schrödinger Albert EinsteinSigmund Freud Otto Rank Carl Jung Joseph Campbell Leo Tolstoy Thomas Mann and Jorge Luis Borges.