Slowly, agonizingly, humans learned how the universe worked, abandoning most of the fanciful beliefs they carried through their long, dark loneliness. This included belief in—

- the divine right of egotistical kings, - the mental incapacity of women, - the idea that a wise state knows all, - the idea that the individual is always right, - the sick-sweet addiction that transforms a doctrine from a mere model of the world into something sacred, worth killing for.