The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

III. Monism and the fate of worlds—Current of contemporary systems toward monism—Scientific interpretation of monism—The world conceived monistically as a becoming and as a life—Scientific formulæ for life—Progress consists in the gradual confusion of these two formulæ—That the rise of morality and religion can be accounted for without the presupposition of any final cause—Metaphysical and moral expectations in regard to the destiny of the world and of humanity it may be founded on scientific monism—Facts which appear to be inconsistent with these expectations—Pessimistic conception of dissolution that is complementary to the conception of evolution—Is the immanence of dissolution demonstrable?—Natural devices for the perpetuation of the “fittest”—Rôle of intelligence, of numbers, etc.—Calculation of probabilities—Is eternity a parte post a ground of discouragement or of hope—Probable existence of thinking beings in other worlds: the planets, possibility of the existence of beings superior to man—Survival of the conception of gods—Hypothesis of intercosmic consciousness and of a universal society.

IV. Destiny of the human race—The hypothesis of immortality from the point of view of monism—Two possible conceptions of immortality—Eternal or untemporal existence and continuation of life in some superior forms—I. Hypothesis of eternal life—its function in antique religions, in Platonism, and in the systems of Spinoza, Kant, and Schopenhauer—Eternal life and the subsistence of the individual—Distinction made by Schopenhauer and various other philosophers between individuality and personality—Eternal life problematical and transcendent—Aristocratic tendency of the theory of eternal life—Hypothesis of conditional immortality—Criticism of the hypothesis of conditional immortality; incompatibility of this notion with that of divine goodness—II. Hypothesis of a continuation of the present life and its evolution into some superior form—What sort of immortality the theory of evolution permits us to hope for—Immortality of one’s labours and conduct—True conception of such immortality—Its relation to the laws of heredity, atavism, natural selection—Immortality of the individual—Objections drawn from science—Protestations of affection against the annihilation of the person—Resulting antinomy—III. Modern opposition between the conception of function and the conception of simple substance, in which ancient philosophy endeavours to find a proof of immortality—Peripatetic theory of Wundt and modern philosophers on the nature of the soul—Immortality as a continuation of function, proved not by the simplicity, but by the complexity of consciousness—Relation between complexity and instability—Three stages of social evolution—Analogy of conscience with a society, collective character of individual consciousness—Conception of progressive immortality—Last product of evolution and natural selection: (1) No necessary relation between the compositeness and complexity of consciousness and its dissolubility: indissoluble compounds in the physical universe—(2) Relation between consciousnesses, their possible fusion in a superior consciousness—Contemporary psychology and the religious notion of the interpenetration of souls—Possible evolution of memory and identification of it with reality—Palingenesis by force of love—Problematic character of those conceptions and of every conception relative to existence, of consciousness, and the relation between existence and consciousness—IV. Conception of death appropriate to those who, in the present state of evolution, do not believe in the immortality of the individual—Antique and modern stoicism—Acceptance of death: element of melancholy and of greatness in it—Expansion of self by means of philosophical thought, and scientific disinterestedness, to the point of to some extent approving one’s own annihilation.

The problem of the immanence of being.

Naturalism consists in believing that nature, together with the beings which compose it, make up the sum total of existence. But even from this point of view there still remains the problem, what existence essentially is, and what special mode of existence is most typical. Is nature material, or mental, or both? The problem of the essence of being is one that cannot be escaped.

The double-aspect theory.

The theory that seems to-day to be dominant is the “double-aspect” theory—the theory of two inseparable correlatives subjective and objective, of consciousness and of motion. We have, as M. Taine[143] would say, two texts of the eternal book instead of one. The question is, which of the two texts is original and sacred? Sometimes that which is furnished by introspection alone, sometimes that which objective science endeavours to decipher, are respectively held to be primitive. Thence arise two opposed tendencies, not alone in psychological but in metaphysical speculation; the one toward idealism, the other toward materialism; the one toward what lies within, the other toward what lies without. But these two aspects may and should be conceived as possessing a certain unity; there is an inevitable tendency in the human mind to follow out two converging lines to their point of intersection. There are, therefore, three forms of naturalism: idealism, materialism, monism. These three constitute the three genuine systems of thought from which theism, atheism, and pantheism are respectively derived.

I. Idealism.

Idealism defined.

If the words thought and idea be interpreted as Descartes and Spinoza understand them, as designating the entire life of the mind, the sum total of the possible content of consciousness, idealism may be defined as the system which resolves all reality into thought, into psychical existence, insomuch that to be is to think or to be thought; to feel or to be felt; to will or to be willed; to be the object or subject of a conscious effort.