The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

The most serious opposition to Protestantism in France is not to be looked for from the Catholics, but from the free-thinkers. It is in the name of free-thought that we shall consider the following question: Ought France really to accept as its ideal any religion whatsoever, even though it be superior to the one professedly in possession at the present day? Is not the acceptance of any religion as an ideal precisely contrary to the whole movement of the French mind since the Revolution?

French Revolution still being accomplished.

It has been said that, if the French Revolution was put down before it had produced all of the results which were expected of it, the reason was that it was undertaken, not in the name of a liberal religion, but in antagonism to all religion. The nation rose as a body against Catholicism, but it had nothing to offer in its stead; it was an effort in the void and resulted necessarily in a fall. To address such a reproach to the Revolution, is precisely to fail to recognize its distinguishing peculiarity. Theretofore religion had usually been involved in the political discussions of men; the English Revolution, for example, was in part religious. And when an uprising was, as it happened, wholly religious, its purpose was to pull down one cult and set up another; the aid of a new God had to be called in to expel the old; but for Jesus or some other unknown divinity, Jupiter would still have been enthroned on Olympus. Also the result of these religious revolutions was easy to predict; at the end of a certain number of years some new cult was bound to carry the day, to intrench itself, and to become quite as intolerant as its predecessor; and the revolution was achieved—that is to say, everything was practically in the same state that it was before. A determinate end, close at hand, had been pursued and attained; a little chapter in the history of the universe had been written, and one was ready to close it with a period and to say that was all. What drives the historian to despair in the case of the French Revolution, is precisely the impossibility of writing a peroration, of reaching a final stop, of saying, “That is all.” The great fermentation persists, and passes on from generation to generation. “The French Revolution has come to nothing,” it is said; but the reason is perhaps simply that it has not miscarried. The French Revolution is still in its earliest stages; if we are still unable to say where it is leading us, we may at least affirm with confidence that it is leading us somewhere. It is precisely the incertitude and the remoteness of their aim that constitute the nobility of certain enterprises; if one wants something very big, one must be resigned to want something a little vague. One must be resigned also to a settled discontent with everything that is offered one as a substitute for the fleeing ideal that constitutes one’s aim. Never to be satisfied—behold a comparatively unknown state of mind in many parts of the world! Some thousands of years ago there were a number of revolutions in China, which brought forth results so precise and so incontestable that they have come down in a state of absolute preservation to the present day. Is China the ideal of those who wish a people to achieve once for all a state of satisfaction, of stable equilibrium, of established environment, of unalterable outline and form? Certainly the bent of the French mind is precisely the opposite of that of the Chinese. Horror of routine, of tradition, of the established fact in the face of reason, is an attribute that we possess to a fault. To carry reason into politics, into law, into religion was precisely the aim of the French Revolution. It is no easy thing, it is even futile, to attempt to introduce simultaneously logic and light into everything; one makes mistakes, one reasons ill, one has one’s days of weakness, one succumbs to concordats and empires. In spite, however, of so many temporary divergences from the straight path, it is already easy to recognize the direction toward which the Revolution tends, and to affirm that this direction is not religious. The French Revolution affords an example, for the first time in the world, of a liberal movement disassociated from religion. To wish, with Quinet, that the Revolution should become Protestant is simply not to understand it. Republican in the sphere of politics, the Revolution tends to enfranchise man, in the sphere of thought also, from every species of religious domination, and of uniform and irrational dogmatic belief. The Revolution did not achieve this end at the first attempt; it was guilty even of imitating the intolerance of the Catholics; therein lay its prime fault, its great crime; we suffer from it still. But the remedy does not consist in adopting a new religion, which would simply be a disguised return to the past.

Advantages of Protestantism.

Let us examine, however, the substantial apology for Protestantism, presented by M. de Laveleye. He maintains the superiority of Protestantism principally in regard to three points: 1. It is favourable to education; 2. It is favourable to political and religious liberty; 3. It does not possess a celibate clergy living outside of the family, and even outside of the country. Let us pass these different points in review. In Protestantism the need of instruction, and therefore of a knowledge of how to read, is inevitable, for the reason that, as has been often remarked, the reformed religion is founded on the interpretation of a book, the Bible. The Catholic religion, on the contrary, rests upon the sacraments and certain practices, such as the confession, and the Mass, which presuppose no knowledge of reading. Luther’s first and last word was, “God commands you to educate your children.” In the eyes of the Catholic priest an ability to read is not, so far as religion is concerned, an unqualified advantage, it exposes the possessor to certain dangers, it is a path that may lead to heresy. The organization of popular instruction dates from the Reformation. The consequence is that Protestant countries are far in advance of Catholic countries in the matter of popular instruction.[77] Wherever popular instruction attains its height, labour will be directed with more intelligence, and the economic situation will be better; Protestantism therefore gives rise to a superiority not only in instruction, but in commerce and industry, in order and in cleanliness.[78]

Protestantism favours self-government.

Similarly in civil and political matters, Protestants have always been partisans of self-government, of liberty, of local autonomy, and of decentralization. Side by side with the advance of the Reformation in Switzerland, in Holland, in England and America there went a dissemination of the principles of liberty which later became the articles of faith of the French Revolution. Calvinists, notably, have always been inclined to an ideal of liberty and equality which has rightfully rendered them objects of suspicion to the French monarchy; they realized this ideal only beyond the seas in the American Constitution, which may be regarded, in some sort, as the product of Calvinistic ideas. As early as the year 1633 an American, Roger Williams, proclaimed universal liberty, and liberty of conscience in particular; he proclaimed the complete equality of all modes of religious worship before the law, and on these principles founded the democracy of Rhode Island and the town of Providence. The United States, with the local autonomy and decentralization which characterize its government, still forms the type of the Protestant state. In such a state the widest liberty exists only, to say the truth, within the limit of Christianity: the founders of the American Constitution scarcely foresaw the day when a wider tolerance would be necessary. And it would be to form an extremely false idea of the United States to imagine that the civil power and religion are wholly disassociated. The separation between Church and state is far from being as absolute in America as is often supposed, and M. Goblet d’Alviella very justly corrects the too enthusiastic assertions, on this point, of M. Guizot and M. de Laveleye.[79]

Intellectual and moral superiority of Protestant clergy.

Finally, to the political superiority of Protestantism must be added the intellectual and moral superiority of its clergy. The obligation to read and interpret the Bible has given rise, in the universities of Protestant theology, to a work of exegesis which has resulted in a new science, the Science of Religion. The Protestant clergymen are better educated than our priests, and have moreover families and children, and lead a life like that of any other citizen; they are national, because their church is a national church; they do not receive orders from abroad, and, more than all, they do not possess the terrible power which the Catholic priest owes to the confessional; a power which cost France the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and so many other deplorable measures.[80]