From A Little History of Religion by Richard Holloway:
If daring to know how nature worked was one of the impulses of the Enlightenment, another was disgust with centuries of religious violence. Superstition was bad enough. War was worse. The thinkers of the Enlightenment noticed how religions always disagreed with each other. Each believed it possessed the truth revealed by God and the others were wrong. And when it got control of a country it tried to make everyone march to its drumbeat. That was bad enough. It was worse if there were just two religions in a country competing against each other. They would be at each other’s throats all the time, as they had been in Europe since the Reformation. But if there were thirty religions they all seemed to live in peace!
I have an interesting track record with literary publications … they keep disappearing, often just after I renew my subscription. Unfortunately, in this case it is one of my very favorites. Tin House has accompanied me through many years of excellent reading.
Of that “season in hell” I very well remember the twenty days that I was interned in the military mental hospital. The reason? One morning in the barracks at a very early hour, in less than ten minutes I very methodically drank a bottle of cognac, smoked hashish and kef, and took five amphetamines. Two hours later during the military drills, under the influence of that ferocious mixture, I shot my gun at the clouds. They asked what had gotten into me and I explained that I was crazy.
Well I’m walking well but my eyesight sucks. Thank goodness for electronic manipulation of the text (bigger and more distinct) otherwise I’d be back to the curved page of an actual book and the further distorted view through even the best magnifying device held in my shaking hand.