Freud wrote in 1928 that if not for religion there would be mayhem: “If one imagined its prohibitions removed, then one could choose any woman who took one’s fancy as one’s sexual object, one could kill without hesitation one’s rival or whoever interfered with one in any other way, and one could seize what one wanted of another man’s goods without asking his leave.” Freud was not religious, but he knew the importance of the ethical teachings. “If you want to expel religion from our European civilization, you can only do it by means of another system of doctrines.”
