The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

Summary.

In effect, all historical treatises unite to show that animism or polydemonism has at one time or other been universal. It immediately succeeded fetichism or concrete naturism, the primitive belief, in which animating soul and animated body were not distinguished.

A belief in separately existing spirits, or spiritism, as Mr. Spencer calls it, which contains the germ of the belief in revisitants from the other world, constitutes the primitive origin of the more refined metaphysical system called spiritualism. This last system, founded also upon the notion of the fundamental duality of man, and of every living being, leads to the notion of a society of spirits.

Let us now consider the inherent necessity under which animism lies of developing into theism.

II. Providence and Miracles.

From ghosts to divinity a single step.

From the notion of a spirit to that of a divinity is but one step. It suffices to conceive the spirit as sufficiently powerful and redoubtable to reduce us in some considerable measure to a state of dependence. Spirits, manes, gods, subsist in the beginning on an indistinct sentiment of terror. The instant that spirits can separate themselves from the body and perform mysterious actions of which we are incapable, they begin to be divine; it is for this reason that death may change a man into a species of god.

Development of notion of special providence.

Spirits are not only powerful, however; they are also clairvoyant, prevoyant—they are acquainted with things that lie beyond our knowledge. More than that, they are benevolent or hostile; they are related to us in various social or antisocial ways. Here we have the elements of the notion of divine providence. The second semi-metaphysical idea, which lies in germ at the bottom of every religion, is, therefore, this of perspicacious spirits, of favouring or unfavouring deities, of providences. “This being is well or ill disposed toward me; he may work me good or harm.” Such is the first naïve formulation of the theory of divine providence. One must not expect to find, in the beginning, the notion of a general, directing intelligence, but simply that of a social tie between particular voluntary, well-disposed or ill-disposed beings. The notion of providence, like all other religious notions, was at first a superstition. A savage, on his way to some undertaking, meets a serpent and succeeds in his enterprise; it was the serpent that brought him luck: behold a providential accident! Gamblers at the present time are quite as superstitious. The fetich theory of providence still subsists, in the belief in medals, scapularies, and so forth.[38] Observation inevitably results in the perception of causal relations among phenomena; the trouble is, simply, that to the primitive mind every coincidence appears to be a cause; post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Any object that is a party to any such coincidence is a lucky object, good to have in one’s power, a portable providence, so to speak. Thus there arises the notion of a destiny, a bias in phenomena toward good or evil, which imposes itself upon the previously existing conception of nature as animated or peopled by spirits. The post hoc, ergo propter hoc—that is to say, the belief in the influence of phenomena immediately preceding or concomitant to the main event, and in the influence of a present action upon some future event—is the germ of superstitions both in regard to providence and to destiny. And out of the idea of destiny, of fortune, of necessity, grows in process of time the scientific notion of determinism and universal reciprocity.