I. We shall meet, in the course of this work, many different definitions that have at one time or another been given to religion. Some were assigned from the point of view of physics, others from that of metaphysics, others from that of morals, almost none from that of sociology. And yet, upon closer scrutiny, the notion of a social bond between man and the powers superior to him, but resembling him, is precisely the point in which all religious conceptions are at one. Man becomes truly religious, in our judgment, only when above the human society in which he lives he superimposes in his scheme of the world another society, more powerful and more cultured, a universal and, so to speak, a cosmic society. The sphere of sociality, which is one of the characteristics of humanity, must be enlarged till it reaches to the stars. Sociality is the firm foundation of the religious sentiment, and a religious being might be defined as a being disposed to be sociable, not only with all living creatures with whom experience makes him acquainted, but also with the creatures of thought with whom he peoples the world.
That religion consists essentially in the establishment of a bond—at first mythical, and subsequently mystic, in the first instance between man and the forces of the universe, then between man and the universe itself, and ultimately between man and the elements of the universe—is distinctly the outcome of every study of religion; but what we wish especially here to consider is the precise way in which this bond has been conceived. Well (it may appear more clearly at the close of this inquiry), the religious bond has been conceived ex analogia societatis humanæ: the relations, amicable and inimical, of men to each other were employed first for the explanation of physical phenomena and natural forces, then for the metaphysical explanation of the world, of its creation, conservation, and government; in short, sociological laws were universalized, and the state of war or peace which existed among men, families, tribes, and nations was conceived as existing also among the volitions which were fancied to exist beneath or beyond the forces of nature. A mythic or mystic sociology, conceived as containing the secret of all things, lies at the basis of all religions. Religion is not simply the expression of an anthropomorphism—animals and fantastic beings of various sorts have played no inconsiderable rôle in different cults; it is an imaginative extension, a universalization of all the good or evil relations which exist among conscious beings, of war and peace, friendship and enmity, obedience and rebellion, protection and authority, submission, fear, respect, devotion, love: religion is a universal sociomorphism. Social relations with animals, with the dead, intellectual and social relations with good and evil genii, with the forces of nature, are nothing more nor less than various forms of this universal sociology in which religion has sought to find the reason of things—of physical phenomena such as thunder, storm, sickness, death, as well as of metaphysical relations—the origin and destiny of things, and of moral relations—virtue, vice, law, and sanction.
If, therefore, we were forced to condense the theory of this book into a single definition, we should say that religion is the outcome of an effort to explain all things—physical, metaphysical, and moral—by analogies drawn from human society, imaginatively and symbolically considered. In short it is a universal sociological hypothesis, mythical in form.
To justify this conception we shall review the various definitions that have been put forth of the religious sentiment; we shall see that each of them needs completion by the rest, and that, too, from the sociological point of view.
The definition which has perhaps been most widely adopted of late years, with divers modifications by Strauss, by Pfleiderer, by Lotze, and by M. Réville, is that of Schleiermacher. According to him, the essence of religion consists in the feeling that we all have of our own absolute dependence. The powers in respect to which this dependence is felt we call divinities. On the other hand, according to Feuerbach, the origin, nay the essence even of religion is desire: if man possessed no needs, no desires, he would possess no gods. If grief and evil did not exist, says Hartmann later on, there would be no religion; the gods, even the gods of history, are no more than the powers to whom man looks for what he does not possess, and wants, to whom he looks for relief, for salvation, for happiness. The respective definitions of Schleiermacher and Feuerbach, taken separately, are incomplete; it is at least necessary, as Strauss suggests, to superpose them. The religious sentiment is primarily, no doubt, a feeling of dependence; but this feeling of dependence, really to give birth to religion, must provoke in one a reaction—a desire of deliverance. To feel one’s own weakness; to be conscious of limitations of all sorts which bound one’s life, and then to desire to augment one’s power over one’s self and over the material universe; to enlarge one’s sphere of action; to attain once more to a comparative independence in face of the necessities of every kind which hem one in—such is the course of the human mind in the presence of the universe.
But here an objection occurs: precisely the same course seems to be followed by the mind in the establishment of science. In a scientific period man feels himself as profoundly dependent as in a religious period, and this feeling of dependence is accompanied by a no less vivid reaction in the one case than in the other. The man of science and the believer alike aim at enfranchisement, but by different means. Must one be content, then, with an external and negative definition, and say with M. Darmesteter: “Religion embraces all knowledge and all power not scientific”?[1] A knowledge not scientific possesses all the attributes of a contradiction in terms, and, as for a power not scientific, it is indispensable to distinguish it in some positive way from the power which is afforded us by science. Well, to keep close to the facts, the power of religion is that which we frankly do not possess, while the power of science is that which we do possess and know that we possess. One might indeed fall back on the distinction between belief and certainty; but the man of science also has his beliefs, his preferences for such and such a cosmological hypothesis, which, however, is not a religious belief, properly so called. Religious and moral “faith,” as opposed to scientific “hypothesis,” is an ultimate and very complete manifestation of the religious sentiment, which we shall examine later, though it carries with it no suggestion of its primitive origin.
From the sociological point of view the distinction is plain. The religious sentiment begins at the point where mechanical determinism seems to offer an opportunity in the world for a sort of moral and social reciprocity—a possible exchange of sentiments and even of desires, between man and the powers of the universe, whatever they may be. That point once reached, man no longer conceives it possible to measure the consequences of an act—of using an axe, for example, on a sacred tree—in the exact terms of mere mechanical reaction; for over and above the simple brute fact of what he has done, the sentiment or intention that it indicates must be taken into account and the probable effect of that for good or evil upon the gods. Religious sentiment is a feeling of dependence, on the part of primitive man, in respect to the intelligences, the volitions, with which he has peopled the universe and which he believes capable of being affected agreeably or disagreeably by his conduct. Religious sentiment is not a feeling of mere physical dependence upon the universal frame of things; it is more than all a physical dependence, a moral, and in especial, a social dependence. This relation of dependence consists really of two reciprocal terms: if man is bound by it in some sort to the powers of nature, they in turn are bound by it to man; man has more or less of a hold on them, he can offend them morally, just as he might offend a fellow-man. If man is in the hand of the gods, he can in a measure force the hand to open or shut. The divinities are in a sense dependent also on man; they experience, as the result of his conduct, a measure of pleasure or of pain. It is only later that this idea of reciprocal dependence becomes metaphysical; it reaches its ultimate development in the concept of the “absolute,” and in the sentiment of adoration or simple “respect.”
Besides the consciousness of dependence and the correlative need of a liberation of some sort from it, we find in the religious sentiment the expression of another social need not less important; the need of affection, of tenderness, of love. Our sensibility, developed by hereditary instincts of sociality and by the force even of our imagination stretching out beyond the limits of this world, instinctively seeks for a person, a commanding figure to lean on, to confide in. When we are happy we need to bless some one; when we are wretched, we need some one to complain to, to groan to, even to curse. It is hard to resign ourselves to the belief that no one hears us, that no one a long way off sympathizes with us, that this swarming universe spins in the void. God is the friend with us at the first hour and at the last, with us always and in all places, even where no other friend can follow, even in death. To whom can we speak of those we have loved and lost? Of the people about us, some hardly remember them, others did not even know them; but in this divine and omnipresent Being we find the society, which is constantly broken by death, once more reunited: In eo vivimus, in Him we cannot die. From this point of view, God, the object of the religious sentiment, no longer seems a guardian and master simply. He is better than a friend; He is a father; in the beginning a severe father and all-powerful, as very young children imagine their fathers to be. Children readily believe that their father can do anything, even work miracles: a word from him and the world moves; fiat lux, and the day is born; the distinction between evil and good lies in his will; disobedience to him naturally involves punishment. They judge his power by their weakness; and so the primitive race of man felt toward God. But later a superior conception arose; as man developed he developed his God, endowed him with a more generous list of moral attributes; and this God is ours. We feel the need of a smile from Him after a sacrifice, the thought of Him sustains us. Woman especially, who is more immature in this respect than man, experiences a greater need of a “Father in heaven.” When one wishes to deprive us of a god, to deliver us from celestial tutelage, we suddenly find ourselves orphans. One might recognize a profound truth in the great symbol of Christ, the God, dying for the enfranchisement of human thought. This modern version of the “passion” is enacted, it is true, only in the heart, but it is none the less agonizing; it stirs one’s indignation none the less, it dwells in one like the image of a father who is dead. One cares less for the promised freedom than for the protection and affection that are gone. Carlyle—whimsical, unhappy genius—could eat no bread that his wife’s own hands, nay his wife’s own heart, had not prepared; and we are all like that; we all have need of daily bread kneaded with love and tenderness; and they that have no loving hand from which to look for it, ask it of their god, of their ideal, of their dream; they create for themselves a family in the realm of imagination, they fill out the bosom of infinity by the addition of a heart.
The social need for protection and love was evidently not so dominant in primitive times. The tutelary functions attributed to divinities were at first confined to the more or less vulgar accidents of this life. Later they were more especially directed toward one’s moral emancipation and extended even beyond the tomb. Need of protection and affection leads ultimately to considerations on the destiny of man and the world; and thus it is that religion, nearly physical in origin, issues in systems of metaphysics.