The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

Heightened sensibility.

At the same time that the intelligence is becoming more penetrating and reflective with the progress of knowledge, sensibility of every kind is becoming more delicate; even sympathy, according to the pessimist, is coming to be an instrument of torture by annexing the suffering of others in addition to our own. The echo and reverberation in us of the sufferings of other people, growing with the growing sociality, seem to be greater than the echo and reverberation in us of human joys. Social needs themselves, which have been so magnified at the present day, are so far from being satisfied that pessimists are asking whether they ever can be satisfied and whether humanity is not destined to become simply more numerous in the struggle for existence, and more wretched and more conscious of its wretchedness.

Depression of vitality.

And, finally, a last cause of pessimism is the enfeeblement of the will, which accompanies an exaltation of the intelligence and the sensibility. Pessimism is in some sort a metaphysical suggestion engendered by physical and moral powerlessness. Consciousness of lack of power produces a disesteem, not only for one’s self, but for everything; a disesteem which, in certain speculative minds, must inevitably crystallize into a priori formulæ. It has been said that suffering embitters one; and the same is true in an even greater degree of a sense of powerlessness. Recent psychological observations confirm this conclusion.[139] Among the insane, and among hypnotic subjects, periods of satisfaction and optimism, which are periods of benevolence and amenity, coincide with a heightened muscular power, whereas periods of discontent and malevolence coincide with a state of depression of the will which is accompanied by a lowering of the muscular powers, sometimes by one-half. One may say, with M. Féré, that people in good health, at the maximum of their muscular vitality, are incessantly disposed to estimate the world in terms of their own vigour, whereas the degenerate, the physically or mentally enfeebled, are incessantly disposed to estimate the world and its possibilities in terms of their own slackness and incompetency. Add that, being themselves unequal to the struggle with the universe, it seems to them, by a natural illusion, that the universe is unequal to their ideals and demands upon it; they fancy that it is they that tip the scale, whereas the fact is precisely the opposite.

Relation between powerlessness and pessimism.

In all the experiments in hypnotism a sense of powerlessness engenders dissatisfaction; the patient who finds himself unable to obtain possession of a desired object endeavours to explain his inability by seeking in the object itself some quality which renders it repulsive. We are inevitably inclined to objectify the limitations of our own power instead of recognizing them for what they are. Once started in this path, hypnotic patients would certainly, if they were competent, go the length of constructing a metaphysical system to justify their state of mind.[140]

Sense of powerlessness destined to increase.

Pessimism thus probably originates, for the individual, in a sense of lack of power. Sometimes this sense possesses indisputably a certain element of universality; a consciousness of the limits of human power, as of human intelligence, must as inevitably increase by the very progress of our knowledge and capacity. Pessimism is not, therefore, pure madness, nor pure vanity; or, if it is madness, the madness is natural, and is induced sometimes by nature itself. At certain periods nature seems to go insane, to revel in folly, although the power of logic, which is identical in the last resort with the overruling principle of things, always has the last word in the universe, as it ought to have also in the human mind.

Summary.

To sum up: in this century of transition, of religious and moral and social transformation, of reflection and dissolving analysis, causes of suffering are abundant and ultimately assume the guise of motives of despair. Every new step in intelligence and sensibility brings new modes of suffering within our reach. The desire of knowledge, in especial, which is the most dangerous of all human desires, because the object of it is really infinite, becomes every day more insatiable and enslaves not only isolated individuals, but entire nations; it is the desire of knowledge that is the disease of the century, a disease which is growing, and becoming for the philosopher the disease of humanity. The seat of the disease is in the head; it is the brain of mankind that is attacked. We are far from the naïveté of primitive people, who, when they are asked for the seat of thought, point to the stomach or the bosom! We are well aware that we think with our heads, for it is in our heads that we suffer from a preoccupation with the unknown, with the ideal, with an incessant endeavour to overtake the progress of a winged and devouring thought. On the mountains of Tartary one sometimes sees a strange animal pass through the morning mist at a breathless speed; its eyes are those of a frightened antelope, and while it gallops with a foot that trembles as it strikes the soil, two great wings stretch out from the sides of its head and seem on the point of lifting it from the ground each time that they pulsate. It sweeps down the valleys, and its path is marked by traces of blood, and suddenly it falls, and the two great wings rise from the body, and an eagle, which was feeding leisurely upon its brain, takes its way off into the sky.