The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

[39] Etymologically, miracle signifies simply surprising. The Hindus do not even possess a special word for a supernatural event; miracle and spectacle in their language are one. The supernatural, that is to say, is for them simply an object of contemplation and admiration, an event which stands out prominently from the general monotony which attracts the eye.

[40] Actes de la Société helvét. des sc. nat., August, 1877.

[41] Through Siberia, by Henry Lansdell, with illustrations and maps; London, 1882.

[42] “Henotheism,” says Von Hartmann, “rests upon a contradiction. Man goes forth in search of divinity, and finds gods. He addresses each of these divinities in succession in the hope that he may be the divinity sought for, and confers upon him a multitude of predicates which call in question the divinity of the other gods. Obliged, however, as he is to look to different gods for the fulfilment of his respective demands he is unable to remain faithful to any one of them; he changes his object of adoration repeatedly and each time acts toward the god he is addressing as if he were god par excellence, without indeed himself observing at the time that he is denying the supreme divinity of any god by attributing it in turn to each of them. What renders the origin of religion possible is that this contradiction is not at first remarked; a persistent failure to recognize such a contradiction would not be possible in the midst of the progress of civilization, except in the case of an extreme intensity of religious sentiment, which shields all religious subjects from rational criticism. Such intensity of religious sentiment neither exists in all places nor at all times, and a spirit of intellectual criticism, operating intermittently, suffices in the long run to render the point of view of henotheism untenable. Two ways of avoiding the contradiction in question offer themselves. One may maintain the unity of God at the expense of the plurality, or, on the contrary, plurality of God at the expense of the unity. The first way leads to abstract monism, the second to polytheism; and out of polytheism, by a process of degeneration, arise polydemonism or animism and then fetichism.”

[43] It has been remarked that peoples who for centuries have renounced anthropophagy have long persisted in human sacrifices: that thousands of women in certain sanctuaries have offered the painful sacrifices of their chastity to gods of a furious sensuality. The gods of paganism are dissolute, arbitrary, vindictive, pitiless, and still their adorers rise little by little to a conception of moral purity, of clemency, and of justice. Javeh is vindictive and ferocious, and yet it is in the midst of his people that the religion par excellence of benignity and forgiveness took its rise. Also the real morality of men was never proportionate to the frequently fanatic intensity of their religious sentiments. See M. Réville (Prolégomènes, p. 281).

[44] See the author’s Esquisse d’une morale (I., iii.); Besoin psychologique d’une sanction.

[45] The question whether the Hebrews believed in the immortality of the soul has long been discussed, and M. Renan has been reproached with his negative attitude in the matter; but M. Renan never denied the existence, among the Hebrews, of a belief in a sojourn for the shadows or manes of the dead; the whole question was whether the Hebrews believed in a system of reward and punishment after death, and M. Renan was right in maintaining that any such notion is foreign to primitive Judaism. It is equally foreign to primitive Hellenism. Though the living endeavoured to conciliate the dead, they did not envy their fate which, even in the case of the just, was worse than the fate of the living. “Seek not to console me for death, noble Ulysses,” Achilles says, when he arrives in Tartarus. “I would rather be a hired labourer and till a poor man’s field than reign over all the regions of the dead.” (See Morale d’Épicure, 3d ed.; Des idées antiques sur la mort.)

[46] The most orthodox theologians, of course, mean by fire a veritable flame.

[47] “Sorcery, in the beginning purely individual and fantastic,” says M. Réville, “gradually develops into sacerdotalism and by that change, having become a permanent public institution, sacerdotal sorcery becomes systematic, develops a ritual which becomes traditional, imposes upon those who aspire to the honour of conducting the conditions of initiation, proof of efficiency, a novitiate, receives privileges, defends them if they are attacked, endeavours to augment them. This is the history of all sacerdotal institutions, which are certainly descended from a capricious, fantastic, disorderly, practice of sorcery in previous ages.”

[48] It is an honour for which one pays dear to be permitted to consecrate to them one’s soul, one’s body, or the soul and body of one’s wife. One pays five rupees for the privilege of contemplating them, twenty for the privilege of touching them, thirteen for the privilege of being whipped by them, seventeen for the privilege of eating betel that they have chewed, nineteen for the privilege of drinking the water in which they have bathed, thirty-five for the privilege of washing their great toes, forty-two for the privilege of rubbing them with perfumed oil, and from one hundred to two hundred for tasting in their company the essence of delight.