My Path to Atheism

by Annie Besant

Of all the various sentiments which are thus at present "intuitional," none is so powerful, none so overmastering as this instinct to worship, this sentiment of religion. It is as natural for man to worship as to eat. He will do it, be it reasonable or unreasonable. Just as the baby crams everything into his mouth, so does man persist in worshipping something. It may be said that the baby's instinct does not prove that he is right in trying to devour a matchbox; true, but it proves the existence of something eatable; so fetish-worship, polytheism, theism, do not prove that man has worshipped rightly, but do they not prove the existence of something worshipable! The argument does not, of course, pretend to amount to a demonstration; it is nothing more than the suggestion of an analogy. Are we to find that the supply is correlated to the demand throughout nature, and yet believe that this hitherto invariable system is suddenly altered when we reach the spiritual part of man? I do not deny that this instinct is hereditary, and that it is fostered by habit. The idea of reverence for God is transmitted from parent to child; it is educated into an abnormal development, and thus almost indefinitely strengthened; but yet it does appear to me that the bent to worship is an integral part of man's nature. This instinct has also sometimes been considered to have its root in the feeling that one's individual self is but a "part of a stupendous whole;" that the so-called religious feeling which is evoked by a grand view or a bright starlight night is only the realisation of personal insignificance, and the reverence which rises in the soul in the presence of the mighty universe of which we form a part. Whatever the root and the significance of this instinct, there can be no doubt of its strength; there is nothing rouses men's passions as does theology; for religion men rush on death more readily and joyfully than* for any other cause; religious fanaticism is the most fatal, the most terrible power in the world. In studying history I also see the upward tendency of the race, and note that current which Mr. Matthew Arnold has called "that stream of tendency, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness." Of course, if there be a conscious God, this tendency is a proof of his moral character, since it would be the outcome of his laws; but here again an argument which would be valuable were the existence of God already proved, falls blunted from the iron wall of the unknown. The same tendency upwards would naturally exist in any "realm of law," although the law were an unconscious force. For righteousness is nothing more than obedience to law, and where there is obedience to law, Nature's mighty forces lend their strength to man, and progress is secured. Only by obedience to law can advance be made, and this rule applies, of course, to morality as well as to physics. Physical righteousness is obedience to physical laws; moral righteousness is obedience to moral laws: just as physical laws are discovered by the observation of natural phenomena, so must moral laws be discovered by the observation of social phenomena. That which increases the general happiness is right; that which tends to destroy the general happiness is wrong. Utility is the test of morality. But a law must not be drawn from a single fact or phenomenon; facts must be carefully collated, and the general laws of morality drawn from a generalisation of facts. But this subject is too large to enter upon here, and it is only hinted at in order to note that, although there is a moral tendency apparent in the course of events, it is rather a rash assumption to take it for granted that the power in question is a conscious one: it may be, and that, I think, is all we can justly and reasonably say.

Again, as regards Love. I have protested above against the easiness which talks glibly of the Supreme Love while shutting its eyes to the supreme agony of the world. But here, in putting forward what may be said on the other side of the question, I must remark that there is a possible explanation for sorrow and sin which is consistent with love given immortality of man and beast, and the future gain may then outweigh the present loss. But we are bound to remember that we can only have a hope of immortality; we have no demonstration of it, and this is, therefore, only an assumption by which we escape from a difficulty. We ought to be ready to acknowledge, also, that there is love in nature, although there is cruelty too; there is the sunshine as well as the storm, and we must not fix our eyes on the darkness alone and deny the light. In mother-love, in the love of friends, loyal through all doubt, true in spite of danger and difficulty, strongest when most sorely tried, we see gleams of so divine, so unearthly a beauty, that our hearts whisper to us of an universal heart pulsating throughout nature, which, at these rare moments, we cannot believe to be a dream. But there seems, also, to be a vague idea that love and other virtues could not exist unless derived from the Love, &c. It is true that we do conceive certain ideals of virtue which we personify, and to which we apply various terms implying affection; we speak of a love of Truth, devotion to Freedom, and so on. These ideals have, however, a purely subjective existence; they are not objective realities; there is nothing answering to these conceptions in the outside world, nor do we pretend to believe in their individuality. But when we gather up all our ideals, our noblest longings, and bind them into one vast ideal figure, which we call by the name of God, then we at once attribute to it an objective existence, and complain of coldness and hardness if its reality is questioned, and we demand to know if we can love an abstraction? The noblest souls do love abstractions, and live in their beauty and die for their sake.

There appears, also, to be a possibility of a mind in Nature, although we have seen that intelligence is, strictly speaking, impossible. There cannot be perception, memory, comparison, or judgment; but may there not be a perfect mind, unchanging, calm, and still? Our faculties fail us when we try to estimate the Deity, and we are betrayed into contradictions and absurdities; but does it therefore follow that He is not? It seems to me that to deny his existence is to overstep the boundaries of our thought-power almost as much as to try and define it. We pretend to know the Unknown if we declare Him to be the Unknowable. Unknowable to us at present, yes! Unknowable for ever, in other possible stages' of existence?—We have reached a region into which we cannot penetrate; here all human faculties fail us; we bow our heads on "the threshold of the unknown."

And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see;
But if we could see and hear, this Vision—were it not He?

Thus sings Alfred Tennyson, the poet of metaphysics: "if we could see and hear"; alas! it is always an "if."

We come back to the opening of this essay: what is the practical result of our ideas about the Divinity, and how do these ideas affect the daily working life? What conclusions are we to draw from the undeniable fact that, even if there be a "personal God," his nature and existence are beyond our faculties, that "clouds and darkness are round about him," that he is veiled in eternal silence and reveals himself not to men? Surely the obvious inference is that, if he does-really exist, he desires to conceal himself from the inhabitants of our world. I repeat, that if the Deity exist, he does-not wish us to know of his existence. There may be, in the very nature of things, an impossibility of his revealing himself to men; we may have no faculties with which to apprehend him; can we reveal the stars and the rippling expanse of ocean to the sightless limpet on the rock? Whether this be so or not, certain is it that the Deity does not reveal himself; either he cannot or he will not. And the reason—I am granting for the moment, for argument's sake, his personal existence—is not far to seek; it is blazed upon the face of history. For what has been the result of theology upon the whole? It has turned men's eyes from earth, to fix them on heaven; it has bid them be careless of the temporal, while luring them to grasp at the eternal; it has induced multitudes to lavish fervent sentiment upon a conception framed by Priests of an incomprehensible God, while diverting their strength from the plain duties which Humanity has before it; it has taught them to live for the world to come, when they should live for the world around them; it has made earth's wrongs endurable with the hope of the glory to be revealed. Wisely indeed would the Deity hide himself, when even a phantom of him has wrought such fatal mischief; and never will real and steady progress be secured until men acquiesce in this beneficent law of their nature, which draws a stern circle of the "limits of Religious Thought" and bids them concentrate their attention on the work they have to do in this world, instead of being "for ever peering into and brooding over the world beyond the grave." "What is to be our conception of morality, is it to base itself on obedience to God, or is it to be sought for itself and its effects?" When we admit that God is beyond our knowing, morality becomes at once necessarily grounded on utility, or the natural adaptation of certain feelings and actions to promote the general welfare of society. As no revelation is given to us as one "infallible standard of right and wrong," we must form our morality for ourselves from thought and from experience. For example, our moral nature, as educated under the highest civilisation, tells us that lying is wrong;* with this hypothesis in our minds we study facts, and discover that lying causes mistrust, anarchy, and ruin; thence we lay down as a moral law, "Lie not at all." The science of morality must be content to grow like other sciences; first an hypothesis, round which to group our facts, then from the collected and collated facts reasoning up to a solid law. Scientific morality has this great advantage over revealed, that it stands on firm, unassailable ground; new facts will alter its details, but can never touch its method; like all other sciences, it is at once positive and progressive.

* All men do not think lying wrong, e g.. Thugs and old
Spartans. Therefore it is not our moral nature that
intuitively tells us thus, but our moral nature as
instructed by the moral ideas prevailing in the society in
which we happen to be living.—Note by the Editor.

"Is our mental attitude to be kneeling or standing?" When we admit that the Deity is veiled from us, how can we pray? When we see that that law is inexorable, of what use to protest against its absolute sway? When we feel that all, including ourselves, are but modes of Being which is one and universal, and in which we "live and move," how shall we pray to that which is close to us as our own souls, part of our very selves, inseparable from our thoughts, sharing our consciousness? As well talk aloud to ourselves as pray to the universal Essence. Children cry for what they want; men and women work for it. There are two points of view from which we may regard prayer: from the one it is a piece of childishness only, from the other it is sheer impertinence. Regarding Nature's mighty order, her grand, silent, unvarying march,—the importunity which frets against her changeless progress is a mark of the most extreme childishness of mind; it shows that complete irreverence of spirit which cannot conceive the idea of a greatness before which the individual existence is as nothing, and that infantile conceit which imagines that its own plans and playthings rival in importance the struggles of nations and the interests of distant worlds. Regarding Nature's laws as wiser than our own whims, the idea which finds its outlet in prayer is a gross impertinence; who are we that we should take it on ourselves to remind Nature of her work, God of his duty? Is there any impertinence so extreme as the prayer which "pleads" with the Deity? There is only one kind of "prayer" which is reasonable, and that is the deep, silent, adoration of the greatness and beauty and order around us, as revealed in the realms of non-rational life and in Humanity; as we bow our heads before the laws of the universe and mould our lives into obedience to their voice, we find a strong, calm peace steal over our hearts, a perfect trust in the ultimate triumph of the right, a quiet determination to "make our lives sublime." Before our own high ideals, before those lives which show us "how high the tides of divine life have risen in the human world," we stand with hushed voice and veiled face; from them we draw strength to emulate, and even dare struggle to excel. The contemplation of the ideal is true prayer; it inspires, it strengthens, it ennobles. The other part of prayer is work: from contemplation to labour, from the forest to the street. Study Nature's laws, conform to them, work in harmony with them, and work becomes a prayer and a thanksgiving, an adoration of the universal wisdom, and a true obedience to the universal law.

"Is the mainspring of our actions to be the idea of duty to God, or the of loyalty to law and to man's well-being?" We cannot serve God in any real sense; we are awed before the Unknown, but we cannot serve it. For the Mighty, for the Incomprehensible, what can we do? But we can serve man, ay, and he needs our service; service of brain and hand, service untiring and unceasing, service through life and unto-death. The race to which we belong (our own families and kinsfolk, and then the community at large) has the first claim on our allegiance, a claim from which nothing can release us until death drops a veil over our work.

Surely I may claim that my subject is not an unpractical one, and that our ideas of the Nature and Existence of God influence our lives in a very real way. If I have substituted a different basis of morality for that on which it now stands, if I have suggested a different theory of prayer, and offered a different motive for duty, surely these changes affect the whole of human life And if one by one these theories ate denied by the orthodox, and they reject them because they sever human life from that which is called revealed religion, is not my position justified, that the ideas we hold of God are the ruling forces of our lives? that it is of primary importance to the welfare of mankind that a false theory on this point should be destroyed and a more reasonable faith accepted?