A companion to Mr. Wells's "Outline of history"

by Hilaire Belloc

That, I say, is the very first action of the human mind, as we know it, where the conception of the Divine comes into its action: worship.

There is no race of men whatsoever, even where it has lost the conception of the Universal God, or has let that conception become obscure and indifferent, which does not still preserve the derivatives from the original idea of God. Treat the simplest savage with gross injustice, and you will soon see what he has to say to you: it will be of exactly the same sort as what the most corrupt of Londoners or Parisians would have to say to you. Propose that there is no ultimate vengeance for injustice, and you will discover despair in those who admit such a doctrine. You will find those who deny God—and those who find the Universe unjust are deniers of God—to be in despair, and you will find this despair showing just as clearly in the most corrupt Parisian or Londoner as you would in the most candid savage. Yet with this difference, that the savage is much less likely to accept such a proposition than the worn-out dregs of a luxurious civilization are likely to accept it.

Now on this chapter of Veneration—which must of necessity come first in order, and which we know does in practice, to our own human minds, come first in order—Mr. Wells has nothing to say.

He, or rather those from whom he got his mythology, have plenty to say of a base fear at the origin of religion, but nothing of Veneration.

Men feel Veneration in varying degrees, just as they feel colour or music in varying degrees; but it is not for those who feel it least to teach those who feel it normally and fully. It is not for the man almost colour-blind to instruct the average man on colour; it is not for a man almost tone-deaf to instruct you and me on the insufficiency of music. Mr. Wells does not apparently feel Veneration—even for great things near at hand, let alone for his Maker—at all.

Next to Veneration as a religious function proceeding from the Idea of God comes Sacrifice. If you will look at your own mind and see how the idea of Sacrifice arises in it you will discover that there is in that suggestion essentially the motive of offering a gift; after that (not before it) there may also be a motive of propitiation. There may also come a motive, perhaps, sooner or later, of direct ritual connection between cause and effect: the feeling that a Sacrifice made by you will have a spiritual result. At any rate, the main motive is certainly offering. It is so with Sacrifice made for the sake of human beings whom we love or venerate. Still more is it so with Sacrifice to and for the Supreme Power: “I owe you all things: so take back this, yours though it is, in gratitude.”

Now, this is a noble and generous emotion; why in Mr. Wells’s account do we only hear of its perversions and especially of its beastliest perversions? The very primitive races among us enjoy that very feeling of owing gratitude; we enjoy it in the full light of revelation. Many men continue to sacrifice all day long. The better they are, the more they do it. It is an essential factor in religion, subsidiary to and derivative from the Idea of God.

Now let us proceed to the survival of man after death. It is not true that all primitive men everywhere have been (or are) equally conscious of survival after death and of the immortality of the human spirit. It is still less true to-day that all men in our refined and fatigued civilization are conscious of it. But it is true that some consciousness of it is almost universal in unspoilt men, and that, wherever it exists, it is accompanied by certain natural and almost necessary acts. We find these acts, on examining our own emotions, to be often rather symbolic than positively religious; but they are intricately bound up—whether symbolic (such as putting flowers on a grave or objects into it) or actively religious (such as prayers for and to the dead)—with the conception of survival.

If you find that a particular set of men bury their dead with care, deposit with them loved or valuable objects, or objects with which their lives were associated, or even sink to the superstition of sacrificing companions to accompany them into the other world, you may be certain that these people believed in the survival of man.

Here again I repeat that warning which I have brought in over and over again in these notes. We must distinguish between what is evidence for truth and what is evidence only of human mood. We Christians may argue from philosophy upon the survival of the soul, or we may argue from authority upon it; and we shall triumph in that argument, for we have all the trumps in our hands. We may, and I hope, do, accept Immortality simply on faith, as a truth which the Church teaches; and we affirm it equally strongly whether we feel it little or much; for the Faith is the best ground for certitude. But we are not here concerned with either of these processes, Faith or mood. We are not here concerned with whether man be right or wrong in generally accepting survival after death; we are concerned only with the value of Mr. Wells as a would be historian when he tells us that man has not accepted the idea.