The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

Religious sentiment not innate.

In the first place, how universal soever the religious sentiment may appear to be, it must be admitted that it is not innate. Persons who have passed their childhood without any communication with other human beings, owing to some corporal defect, display no signs of the possession of religious ideas. Dr. Kitto, in his book on the loss of the senses, cites the case of an American woman who was congenitally deaf and dumb, and who later, after she was capable of communicating with the people about her, was found not to possess the slightest notion of a divinity. The Rev. Samuel Smith, after twenty-three years intercourse with deaf mutes, says that, education apart, they possess no notion of a divinity. Lubbock and Baker cite a great number of examples of savages who are in the same case. According to the conclusions set forth above, in the beginning religions did not spring ready-made out of the human heart: they were imposed on man from without, they reached him through his eyes and through his ears; they contained no element of mysticism—in their first steps. Those who derive mysticism from an innate religious sentiment reason a little after the manner of those who in politics should derive royalty from some supposed innate respect for a royal race. Such a respect is the work of time, of custom, of the sympathetic tendencies of a body of men long trained in some one direction; there is contained in it no single primitive element, and yet the power of the sentiment of loyalty to a royal race is considerable. The Revolution showed as much, in the wars of the Vendée. But this power wears out some day or other, the cult for royalty disappears with the disappearance of royalty itself; other habits are formed, creating other sentiments, and the spectator is surprised to see that a people which was royalist under monarchy becomes republican under republicanism. The reign of sensibility over intelligence is not perpetual; sooner or later, the position of the two must be reversed; there is an intellectual habitat to which we must as inevitably adapt ourselves as to our physical habitat. The perpetuity of the religious sentiment depends upon its legitimacy. Born, as it is, of certain beliefs and certain customs, its fate is one with theirs. So long as a belief is not completely compromised and dissolved, the sentiment attaching to it may no doubt possess the power of preserving it, for sentiment always plays the rôle of protector and preserver. The human soul in this respect is analogous to society. Religious or political sentiments resemble iron braces buried in some wall menaced with ruin; they bind together the disjointed stones, and may well sustain the edifice for some time longer than, but for them, it would have stood; but let the wall once be undermined, so that it begins to give way, and they will fall with it. No better method could be employed for securing the complete and absolute extinction of a dogma or an institution than to maintain it till the last possible instant; its fall under such circumstances becomes a veritable annihilation. There are periods in history when to preserve is not to save but definitely to ruin.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

The perpetuity of religion has therefore in nowise been demonstrated. From the fact that religions always have existed it cannot be concluded that they always will exist; by ratiocination like that one might indeed achieve singular consequences. Humanity has always, in all times and places, associated certain events with others which chanced to accompany them; post hoc ergo propter hoc is a universal sophism and the principle of all superstition. It is the basis of the belief that thirteen must not sit down at table, that one must be careful not to spill the salt, etc. Certain beliefs of this kind, such as that Friday is an unlucky day, are so widespread that they suffice sensibly to affect the average of travellers arriving in Paris on that day of the week by train and omnibus; a number of Parisians are averse to beginning a journey on Friday, or to attending to business that can be postponed; and it must be remembered that the intelligence of Parisians, at least of the men, stands high in the scale. What can one conclude from that if not that superstition is tenacious of life in the bosom of humanity and will long be so? Let us reason, then, in regard to superstition as in regard to mythological religion. Must we not admit that the need of superstition is innate in man, that it is part of his nature, that his life would really be incomplete if he ceased to believe that the breaking of a mirror is a sign that someone will die? Let us therefore set about finding some modus vivendi with superstition; let us combat superstitions which are harmful not by exposing their irrationality but by substituting in their stead superstitions which are contrary to them and inoffensive. Let us declare that there are political superstitions and instruct women and children in them; let us inoculate, for example, feeble minds with that ingenious Mohammedan aphorism, that the duration of one’s life is determined in advance and that the coward gains absolutely nothing by fleeing from the field of battle; if he was fated to die, he will die on his own doorstep. Does not that strike one as a useful belief for an army to hold and more inoffensive than a great many religious beliefs? Perhaps it even contains an element of truth.

That religious beliefs have been useful no reason for retaining them.

One might go far along that path and discover a number of necessary or at least useful illusions, a number of “indestructible” beliefs. “It is,” says M. Renan, “more difficult to hinder mankind’s believing than to induce it to believe.” Certainly it is. In other words, it is more difficult to instruct than to deceive. If it were not so, what merit would there be in the communication of knowledge? Knowledge is always more complex than prejudice. A knowledge sufficiently complete to put one on one’s guard against lapses of judgment demands years of patience. Happily, humanity has long centuries before it, long centuries and treasures of perseverance; for there is no creature more persevering than man and no man more obstinate than the savant. But it may be said that religious myths, being better adapted than pure knowledge to popular intelligence, possess after all the advantage of symbolizing a portion of the truth; and that on this score one may permit them to the vulgar. It is as if one should say that the “vulgar” should be permitted to believe that the sun moves round the earth because the common man is incapable of conceiving, with accuracy, the infinite complexity of the motion of the stars. But every theory, every attempted explanation, however crude it may be, is in some degree a symbol of the truth. It is symbolic of the truth to say that nature experiences a horror of a vacuum, that the blood lies motionless in the arteries, that the line of vision runs from the eye to the object, instead of from the object to the eye. All these primitive theories are incomplete formulations of the reality, more or less popular efforts to “render” it; they rest upon visible facts not yet correctly interpreted by a completer scientific knowledge; and does that constitute a reason for respecting all these symbols, and for condemning the popular intelligence to fatten upon them? Primitive and mythical explanations served in the past to build up the truth; they ought not nowadays to be employed to obscure it. When a scaffolding has served its purpose in aiding one to erect an edifice, one tears it down. If certain tales are good to amuse children with, one at least should be careful that they are not taken too seriously. Let us not take outworn dogmas too seriously, let us not regard them with excessive complacency and tenderness; if they are still legitimately objects of admiration to us when we reset them among the circumstances to which they owed their birth, they cease to be so the instant one endeavours to perpetuate them among the circumstances of modern life where they are quite out of place.

Preliminary acquisition of falsehood not necessary to recognition of truth.

Like M. Renan, Mr. Max Müller almost sees an example to be followed in the castes established by the Hindus among the minds, as among the classes of the people, in the regular periods or asrâmas through which they oblige the intelligence successively to pass, in the hierarchy of religions with which they burden the spirit of the faithful. For them traditional error is sacred and venerable; it serves as a preparation for the truth; one must place a bandage on the eyes of the neophyte in order to be able to take it off again afterward. The tendencies of the modern mind are precisely the opposite; it likes to supply the present generation at once, and without superfluous preliminary, with the whole body of truth acquired by the generations which have passed away, without false respect or false courtesy for the errors it replaces; it is not enough that the light should filter into the mind through some secret rift, the doors and windows must be thrown wide open. The modern mind fails to see in what respect a deliberate effort to inculcate absurdity in a portion of the community can serve to secure rectitude of judgment in the remaining portions; or in what respect it is necessary to build a house of truth upon a foundation of falsehood; or to run down the part of the hill that we have already climbed, as a preparation for climbing higher.

Transformation of faith inevitable.