The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

Objective idealism.

Of objective idealism the same cannot be said. In objective idealism, too, all material existence is regarded as a mode of mental existence; being is identified either with the ideal law which presides over the development of the universe, or with the genuine foundation of our consciousness, our sensations, our desires. The world, as Emerson has said, is a precipitate of the soul.

Criticised.

This hypothesis is certainly one of those that may best serve as a substitute for theism, if theism should ever disappear. But idealism, thus understood, is open to the following objection: Is it of any special use to objectify the soul, if the existence of evil, which Plato identified with matter, is thereby left unchanged? It is in vain to translate evolution into psychic terms; no difficulty can be avoided by so doing. The mysterious imperfections of the exterior world are transported bodily into the mind; evil is spiritualized simply. Identifying things with the intellectual law which presides over their evolution in nowise excuses us from explaining why that law is in so many respects bad, and why the intelligence that directs the universe is so often self-contradictory and feeble.

Objective idealism relatively capable of satisfying the moral instincts.

In spite of this objection, which will, perhaps, never receive a sufficient reply, it is certain that, so far as our moral and social instincts are concerned, idealism offers us greater ground for hope than either of the remaining systems of thought. In spite of evil and pain, the desire of progress and of salvation, which is the basis of all religious speculation, may rely upon thought as its last resource. But thought, if the doctrine of objective idealism is to be made acceptable, must be understood as including not only intelligence, but also sentiment, desire, and volition, and, in effect, the purely intellectual idealism of a former time is at the present day being succeeded by an idealism that regards the will as the fundamental element in the universe.[144] Universal sensibility is an incident of universal power of will, whereas intelligence, properly so called, at least in so far as the function of intelligence is regarded as representation, is more superficial than sensibility or volition.[145] These three inseparable forms of psychic life[146] constitute the great forces to which moral and religious sentiment must always turn for support.

Hypothesis of moral progress immanent in the world.

Idealism, thus understood, constitutes one of the most tempting of the solutions of the problem of evil. Optimism being, as we have seen, indefensible, and pessimism being a caricature, the most plausible religious and metaphysical hypothesis at the present day is the conception of a “possible progress owing to the radical spontaneity of all existing things.”[147] The will, according to this hypothesis, with its tendency to indefinite self-expansion, is par excellence the primitive power, the central element in man and in the universe. Freedom of the will in man means the consciousness of this progressive power, which is immanent in all things, and this consciousness may be made the foundation of a moral being. This conception of freedom, which is reconcilable with determinism, becomes an additional motive among the other motives that govern man’s life, and tends to be realized by the very fact that it is conceived and desired. Through the intermediation of this conception, reality possesses a progressive freedom, that is to say, a power of constant union with the whole, and of moral enfranchisement. “In the beginning there obtains a universal antagonism among the forces of the universe, a brutal fatality, an infinite reign of shock and counter-shock, between blind and blindly driven beings; then there arises a progressive organization that makes the evolution of consciousness, and therefore of volition, possible; there arises a gradual union and fraternity among the particulars that constitute the universe. Ill-will, whether it originate in mechanical necessity or in intellectual ignorance, is transitory; good-will is permanent, radical, normal, and fundamental. To cultivate good-will in one’s self is to enfranchise one’s self from the individual and the transitory in favour of the universal and the permanent; it is to become truly free, and by that very fact to become truly loving.”[148]

Reconciliation between freedom and determinism.

Between progressive freedom thus conceived, and the determinism in the midst of which it progresses, there is no opposition; freedom and determinism constitute two aspects of one and the same process of evolution. Determinism essentially consists in a series of actions and reactions existing between other beings and ourselves; but these very actions and reactions constitute the manifestation of the development of our, and their, inner activities. And the source of activity in the universe is none other than an overflowing power, which is hostile to limitation, to impediment of every kind; is, in a word, none other than a self-realizing volition. Freedom, thus understood, may, therefore, be considered in the last resort as the origin of determinism and as one with it.[149] Necessity is, so to speak, the outer surface of freedom—the point of contact between two or more free agents. Freedom is inconceivable apart from a resulting determinism, for to be free is to possess power, is to act and to react, is to determine and to be determined. Determinism, on the other hand, that is to say, reciprocal action, is inconceivable apart from freedom, from internal action, from a spontaneous outbreak of power that tends to be free. So that one may say, without contradiction, that determinism envelops the world, and that free-will constitutes it.