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20 Maresfield Gardens
London N.W. 3
October 31, 1938
Dear Sir
I am glad to have the opportunity of establishing at least a written contact with you, and I am grateful for the permission to do so in the German language. At the same time I wish to thank you for the pamphlet and the report which my son Ernst has passed on to me.
The reason for our correspondence is certainly strange enough. My little book, at present at the printer's, bears the title Moses and Monotheism,1 as I trust you will be seeing for yourself next spring. It contains an investigation based on analytical assumptions of the origin of religion, specifically Jewish monotheism, and is essentially a sequel to and an expansion of another work which I published twenty-five years ago under the title Totem and Taboo. New ideas do not come easily to an old man; there is nothing left for him to do but repeat himself.
It can be called an attack on religion only in so far as any scientific investigation of religious belief presupposes disbelief. Neither in my private life nor in my writings have I ever made a secret of my being an out-and-out unbeliever. Anyone considering the book from this point of view will have to admit that it is only Jewry and not Christianity which has reason to feel offended by its conclusions. For only a few incidental remarks, which say nothing that hasn't been said before, allude to Christianity. At most one can quote the old adage: “Caught together, hanged together!”
Needless to say, I don't like offending my own people, either. But what can I do about it? I have spent my whole life standing up for what I have considered to be the scientific truth, even when it was uncomfortable and unpleasant for my fellow men. I cannot end up with an act of disavowal. Your letter contains the assurance which testifies to your superior intelligence, that everything I write