The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

The most discouraging aspect of the theory of evolution is that of dissolution, which seems to be inevitably incident to it. From Heracleitus to Mr. Spencer, philosophers have regarded these two ideas as inseparable. But does evolution necessarily result in dissolution? Our experience, both of the life of individuals and of worlds, seems, so far as the past is concerned, to make for a reply in the affirmative. Our whole acquaintance has been with worlds which have gone or are going to shipwreck. When the corpse of a sailor is thrown into the sea, his friends take notice of the exact point of latitude and longitude at which his body disappeared in the ocean. Two figures on a bit of paper are all that exists of what was a human life. An analogous destiny may be supposed to be in reserve for the terrestrial globe and for humanity as a whole. They may some day sink out of sight in space and dissolve beneath the moving waves of ether; and at that period, if some neighbouring and friendly star observe us, it may take the latitude and longitude in infinite space of the point in the celestial abyss where we disappeared—the angle made by the last rays that left the earth; and the measure of this angle, made by two extinct rays, may be the sole trace to remain of the whole sum of human effort in the world of thought.

Has been observed in the past only.

Nevertheless, the duty of science being equally in its denials and in its affirmations to keep within the limits of certainty, it is important not to model our conception of the future too absolutely upon our knowledge of the past.

The future may differ from the past.

Up to the present time there has been no individual, nor group of individuals, nor world which has attained complete self-consciousness, complete consciousness of its life and of the laws of its life. We are unable, therefore, either to affirm or to demonstrate that dissolution is essentially and eternally incident to evolution by the very law of being: the law of laws is to us simply x. If thought is ever to understand the law of laws, it will be by realizing the law in its own person. And such a height of development is conceivable; if it is impossible to prove its existence, it is still more impossible to prove its non-existence. It may be that if complete self-consciousness, if complete consciousness is ever achieved, it will produce a corresponding power great enough to arrest the process of dissolution. Beings who are capable, in their infinite complication of movements in the world, of distinguishing those which make for evolution as against those which make for dissolution, might be capable of defeating the latter and of securing the unimpeded operation of the former. If a bird is to cross the sea it needs a certain breadth of wing; its destiny depends on some inches, more or less, of feathers. Seabirds that desert the shore before their wings have attained the proper strength are one after another engulfed in the waves, but when their wings are full grown they can cross the ocean. A world also needs, so to speak, a certain breadth of wing to secure its flight in infinite space—its fate depends on some small increments, more or less, in the development of consciousness; beings may one day be produced capable of traversing eternity without danger of being engulfed, and evolution may be established once for all in security against a recoil; for the first time in the onward movement of the universe a definitive result may be achieved. According to the profound symbolism of the Greek religion, time is the father of worlds. The power of evolution which the moderns regard as ruling over all things is the ancient Saturn who devours his offspring. Which of his children shall deceive him and vanquish him—what Jupiter shall some day prove strong enough to chain up the divine and terrible power that engendered him? The problem for him when he shall arise—for this god of light and intelligence—will be to check the eternal and blind impulse of destruction without at the same time arresting the impulse of productivity. Nothing, after all, can justify one in affirming scientifically that such a problem is forever insoluble.

The inexhaustible resources of nature.

The great resource of nature is number, the possible combinations of which are infinite and constitute the secret of the eternal mechanism of the universe. Fortuitous combination and selection, which have produced so many marvels in the past, may give rise to still greater marvels in the future. It is on that fact that Heracleitus, Empedocles, Democritus, and later the men like Laplace, Lamarck, and Darwin based their conception of the part played by chance in the universe, and of the point of union between luck and destiny. There is in the history of the world—as in the history of a people, a belief, or a science—a certain number of partings of the way, where the least impulse toward one side or toward the other suffices to destroy or to preserve the accumulated effort of centuries. We must happily have passed an infinity of such cross-roads to have attained our present point of development. And at each new point of the kind we encounter once more the same danger and run the same risk of losing everything that we have gained. The number of times that a fortunate soldier has evaded death will not make the next shot fired at him deviate a millimetre from its appointed path, but if our successes in the past are no guarantee of success in the future, our failures in the past do not constitute a definitive proof of failure in the future.

Even chances that the future may not resemble the past.

The gravest objection that can be urged against hopefulness, an objection which has hitherto not been sufficiently considered, and which M. Renan has omitted to deal with in his something too optimistic “Dialogues”—is that of the eternity a parte post, is the semi-abortion, the partial miscarriage of a universe which, throughout an infinite past, has proved itself incapable of a better world than this.[161] Still, if that fact constitutes a reason for looking with less confidence toward the future, it cannot be regarded as a ground for despair. An infinite past has proved to be more or less sterile, but an infinite future may prove to be otherwise. Even taking for granted the total miscarriage hitherto of the labours of humanity and of the infinity of extra-terrestrial beings who no doubt coöperate with us, there remains, so far as the future is concerned, mathematically one chance out of every two of success; and that is enough to debar pessimism forever of an ultimate triumph. If the mere chances of the dice, by which, according to Plato, the universe is governed, have as yet produced nothing but crumbling worlds and caducous civilization, a calculation of probabilities demonstrates that even after an infinite number of throws the result of the present cast or of the next cast cannot be foreseen. The future is not entirely determined by the past which is known to us. Future and past are reciprocally related and the one cannot be absolutely known without the other, and the one cannot be absolutely divined from a knowledge of the other. Conceive a flower in bloom at some point in infinite space—a sacred flower, the flower of thought: hands have been groping for it in every direction throughout an infinite past; some have touched it by chance and then lost it again before they could seize it. Is the divine flower never to be plucked? Why not? A negative answer would be simply the outcome of discouragement, not the expression of probability. Or conceive, once more, a ray of light following a straight line through space, not reflected by any solid atom or molecule of air, and an infinity of eyes in an eternal obscurity seeking for this ray, with no means of discovering how near to them or how far from them it may, at any moment, be. The ray pursues its way unimpeded, and innumerable open, ardent eyes long for it and sometimes seem to feel the presence of the luminous wave moving forward on its victorious course. Must their search eternally be vain? If there is no definitive reason for affirming it, there is still less any categorical reason for denying it. It is a matter of chance, the man of science might say; it is a matter, also, of perseverance and intelligence, would be added by the philosopher.