The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

Indissoluble material compounds.

Note, first, that even in the external world we are not without examples of indissoluble compounds; certain simple atoms are compounds of this sort. The atom of hydrogen is a vortex of little worlds. Well, is there nothing indissoluble in the universe except so-called atoms, so-called physical “individuals,” and is it unpermissible to conceive, on the subjective side, individuals more worthy of the name, whose duration is guaranteed by the very fact of their complexity?

Restatement of the problem.

According to the reigning doctrines in physiology and experimental psychology, individual consciousness is, as we have said, a compound of the consciousnesses of all the cells that are united in the physical organism.[170] The individual, consisting thus of a society, the problem of death amounts to the question, whether there can exist an association, at once solid enough to endure forever, and flexible enough to adapt itself to the ever-shifting conditions of universal evolution.

The ideal type of association.

This problem, be it observed in the first place, is precisely that which human societies are endeavouring to solve. At the lowest stage of social evolution solidity and flexibility are rarely united. Egypt, for example, was solid but not very progressive. A stage higher in the scale of evolution, in proportion as science advances and personal liberty comes to be recognized, civilization becomes both more solid and indefinitely flexible, and at some period in the future, when scientific civilization shall have once mastered the globe, it will possess a power that the most compact, and, in appearance, the solidest masses cannot equal; it will be firmer than the very pyramids, and will at the same time prove increasingly flexible, progressive, capable of adaptation to every variation in the environment. The synthesis of complexity and stability will then have been achieved. The very character of thought is increasing adaptivity, and the more intellectual a being is, the greater its power of displaying the qualities which are most advantageous under any given set of circumstances. The eye, which is more intellectual than the sense of touch, furnishes a power of adaptation to a wider and more diversified environment. Thought, which is more intellectual than sight, enables one to adapt one’s self to the universe itself, to the immensity of the stars, as well as to the infinite pettiness of the atoms in a drop of water. If memory is a masterpiece of intellectual record-taking, reasoning is a masterpiece of flexibility, of mobility, and of progress. So that, whether individuals or nations are in question, the most intellectual are those which possess at once the greatest amount of stability and of adaptability. The problem of society is to unite these two things, the problem of immortality is at bottom the same; the individual consciousness being, as we have seen, itself a society. From this point of view, it seems probable that the more perfect one’s personal consciousness is, the more absolutely it possesses both durability and a power of indefinite metamorphosis. So that, even admitting what the Pythagoreans insist upon, that consciousness is a number, a harmony, a musical chord, we may still ask whether certain harmonies may not become sufficiently perfect to endure forever without, on that account, ceasing to enter as elements into richer and more complex harmonies. A lyre might vibrate ad infinitum without its several strings losing their respective tonalities amid the multitude of their variations. There ought to exist an evolution in the organization of consciousness as in the organization of molecules and living cells, and the most vital and durable and flexible combinations should possess the advantage in the struggle for existence.

The last stage in the struggle for existence.

Consciousness is a collection of associations of ideas, and, consequently, of habits, grouped about a centre; and we know that habits possess an indefinite duration; contemporary philosophy regards the properties of elementary material substances as habits, as instances of indissoluble association. A vegetable or animal species is a habit, a type of grouping and organic form which subsists century after century. It is not proved that mental habits may not in the course of evolution achieve a fixity and a durability of which we possess to-day no example. It is not proved that instability is the definitive and eternal characteristic of the highest functions of consciousness. A philosophic hopefulness in regard to immortality is founded on the belief that, in the last stages of evolution, the struggle for existence will become a struggle for immortality. Nature will then come to realize, not by virtue of simplicity, but of judicious complexity, a sort of progressive immortality, the final product of natural selection; and, if so, religious symbols will have been simply an anticipation of this final period. We shall have wings to support us in our flight through life, Rückert says, wings to support us in our flight past death; but the bird does not learn to fly immediately nor at once; the hereditary habit of flight must have been acquired and developed by the species because of the advantage it brings with it in the struggle for existence. Survival, therefore, must not be conceived as completed at a bound, but as slowly perfected by a gradual and continuous lengthening of the average span of life. It must be shown, however, that such a survival would constitute a superiority, not only for the individual, but for the species.

Psychology and the communion of souls.