Religion & Sex: Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development

by Chapman Cohen

that would prevent the operation of hallucination or illusion. But the method remains the same throughout, and it is equally sterile throughout. In all history these mystical states of illumination have discovered no verifiable truth; they have never at any time advanced human knowledge in the smallest degree. And the reason for this is plain: The brain of the mystic, like that of the non-mystic, can only work on the basis of its acquired knowledge or experience. It can create nothing new; it can declare no truth that is not in the nature of an induction from existing knowledge. All that the religious mystic can accomplish after brooding upon inherited religious beliefs is to create new combinations, or effect certain modifications or developments of them, and by continued contemplation endow his subjective creations with an objective existence. That is why the Christian mystic remains a Christian. The Mohammedan mystic remains a Mohammedan. The 'supersensible reality' is always of the kind consonant with their inherited beliefs and their social environment. That is also why mysticism has its fashions like all other forms of religious extravagance. And as he is "applying rationalism to a sphere above reason," the mystic may give full vent to his imaginative powers. That which is above reason may defy reasonable disproof. To some, however, it has the disadvantage of not admitting of reasonable verification. There is nothing here but the primitive delusion operating under changed conditions.

In addition, to the lines of investigation followed in the foregoing pages, a great deal might be said as to how far the religious idea has been perpetuated by an

exploitation of purely social qualities. It must be obvious to even the cursory student that a great deal of what is now being put forward as religious is really no more than a sociology with a religious label. The feeling for truth, beauty, justice, the desire for social intercourse, are all treated as expressions of religious conviction. All sorts of social reforms are urged in the name of religion, and the degree of success achieved dwelt upon as fruits of the religious spirit. But in no legitimate sense of the word can these things be called religious. They may or may not be consonant with the existing religion, but in themselves they are very clearly the outcome of man's social nature, and would exist even though religion disappeared entirely. The appeals made to man's moral sense, to his sense of justice, to his sympathies, are thus fundamentally appeals made to his social nature, and so far as the religious appeal is placed upon this basis it becomes an exploitation of the social consciousness. Unfortunately, the long association of religious forms with social life and institutions, due ultimately to the immense power of supernaturalism in early society, this, combined with early education, makes it a matter of no small difficulty for the average man or woman to separate the two things.

Finally, let us imagine for a moment that the course of human history had been different to what it actually has been. Suppose that by some miracle humanity had started its career in full possession of that knowledge of nature which has been so laboriously accumulated. In that case, would the belief in the supernatural have ever existed? Would the thousand and one 'spiritual beings' of primitive society have ever had being?

And if not called into being then, from what other source could they have been derived? Is there anything in later scientific knowledge that would ever have suggested the supernatural? We know there is not; we know that the whole of modern science is an emphatic protest against its existence. Unfortunately the scientist does not come first, but last; and by the time he appears, the supernatural has made good its foothold; it has permeated human institutions, and has bitten so deeply into habits of thought as to make its eradication the most difficult of all tasks.

Let us carry our imagining yet a step further. Imagine that even after primitive ignorance had created the supernatural, it had come to an abrupt stop when man had emerged from the purely savage stage. Suppose a generation born, not without knowledge of what their progenitors believed, but with a sufficient knowledge of their own to correct their ancestor's errors. Suppose that generation in a position to recognise disease, insanity, delusion, hysteria, hallucination for what they are. Assume them to be under no delusion concerning the nature of man, physically or mentally. Would the religious idea have persisted in the way that it has done? Granted religion would still have continued to exist as an ultimate philosophy of nature that appealed to some minds, as other systems of philosophy number their disciples, would it have been the dominating power it has been? What under such conditions would have become of that evidence for the supernatural, accepted generation after generation, but which is now rejected by all educated minds? Where would have been that long array of seers, prophets, illuminants, whose credentials have been found

in states of mind that are now seen to have been pathological in character? For remember it was not always—very seldom, in fact—the justice, or the reasonableness of the teachings set forth, that won support, but generally the 'signs and wonders' that were pointed to as evidence of the divine commission of the teachers. Assume, then, that these 'signs and wonders' had been wanting, and that for thousands of years people had looked at natural phenomena from the point of view of the educated mind of to-day, what would have been the present position of the religious idea? Would it not have been like a tree divorced from the soil?

Well, we know that the course of history has been far different from what I have assumed to be the case. We know that the savage dies out very slowly, and that even in civilised States to-day he is honoured in the existence of a whole army of representatives. Each generation moves along the road marked out by its predecessors, and broadens or lengthens it to but a small extent. For many, many generations people went on adopting the conclusions of the savage concerning man and the universe, and finding proofs of the soundness of those conclusions in exactly the same kind of experiences. The beliefs thus engendered were wild and absurd—admittedly so, and many of such a nature that educated people are now ashamed of them. But such as they were, they served the purpose of perpetuating the belief in the supernatural, and so served to strengthen the general religious idea. Of that there can be no reasonable doubt. For the influence of beliefs that have been long held does not end with the intellectual perception of their falsity. A belief such

as witchcraft dies out, but by that time it has done its work in familiarising the general mind with the reality of the supernatural, and so prepares the ground for other harvests. These long centuries of superstitious beliefs have left behind in society a psychological residuum that is at all times an obstacle and is sometimes fatal to scientific thinking. We are like men who have obtained freedom after almost a lifetime of slavery. We may be no longer in any real danger of the lash, but fear of the whip has become part of our nature, and we shrink without cause. So with all those now admitted delusions that have been described in the foregoing pages, and which for generations were asserted without question. They bit deeply in to social institutions; the temper of mind they induced became part of our social heritage. They perpetuated the long reign of supernaturalism, and still interpose a serious obstacle to sane and helpful conceptions of man and the universe.