“We have schools enough of every description,” says the author of L’Education de Soi-Mème, “which give us general knowledge and admirable skill in the technique of every branch of human activity; what we need is a school for the making of men.” The Church would have remained such a school if the Romanists had not made of their authority a political weapon.
Nevertheless, religious morality dwells in the depths of the mind, and thus it is, according to Maurice de Fleury, “that modern savants who have lost their faith, and cannot believe in human free will, become reconciled ultimately to the teaching given us by the Church.”
The rational morality which comes of mental training may be sufficient for the strong, relieving them of a thousand illusions and childish fancies. It remains none the less true, however, that, even amongst those who are past masters in the arts, in science, and politics, there are some who, from an ethical point of view, are spiritual weaklings, needing, in place of the Latin intelligere, some creed, hidden or avowed, adapted to their imaginative and imperfectly-controlled brain.
Whatever may be said, the mass of the people has to be considered as an “inferior majority.” Apart from it, a “superior minority” stands out; no longer bound by all the old beliefs, but all the same given to an “inner” religion, which is the ethical intelligence whence springs rational morality.
Let us consider the apostle. The inferiority of his followers is manifest, but as soon as these disciples reach a higher level, through the education of their spirit, they in their turn will become apostles, and moral equality will exist in a group which, in its turn again, will win over other groups.
We must then concede to the people a religion which may take the place of the moral law, one giving them the hope of living again in
a better life, affording comfort in affliction, and restraining their cravings. Religious beliefs are but the poetic materialisation of moral truths. By maturing the popular mind, by improved education, the time will come—in some far-distant future—when man will need no other dogma than that natural one which is faith in himself, without which he does not (consciously) exist.
On the day when religion shall no longer serve to govern morals, it will be useless. For many it is already a dead letter. That matters nothing in the case of those whose morality, I repeat, is based on reason; but how regrettable when it is a question of persons of inferior intelligence who, without fixed rules, are unable to attain the perception of good and evil!