The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

The Church possesses two means of educating children in its dogmas, and only two; the first is that of patristic or ecclesiastical authority: ‘The fact is thus and such because I say so’; the second is the testimony of miracles. These two, even at the present day, constitute the whole effective contents of the priests’ armoury. The moment they step outside this little circle of ideas they lose their power. And to destroy these two arguments it suffices to show: 1st, that other men have said something different from the teachings of Christianity; 2d, that other gods than Jehovah have also performed miracles; or, in other words, there are no miracles whatever that have been scientifically ascertained. A number of French schools were founded in Kabail, and were prospering, when by degrees they were abandoned. In one of them, which was the last deserted, some exercises of the pupils were discovered: they dealt with a story about Fredegunde. This anecdote illustrates current notions on instruction in classical history: History means facts, and facts often monstrous and immoral; not content with teaching them to young Frenchmen we export them to Kabail; but we do not export our ideas, nor even employ them at home. We should have done better to teach the young Algerians what we know about Mohammed and his religion and about Jesus and the other prophets, the divinity of whose inspiration Mohammed himself admitted. The slightest traces that a really rational education should leave in a half-savage mind would be more useful than a heap of absurd facts perfectly remembered. At bottom it is more important even that a French child should know something of Mohammed or Buddha than of Fredegunde. Although Mohammed and Buddha never lived on French soil, their influence on us is infinitely more great and their relation to us infinitely closer than that of Chilperic or Lothaire.

Place of religion in state education.

The place in which the history of religions really belongs, is in the higher education. It is not enough to have introduced it with success into the Collège de France, and quite recently to have secured its recognition in a small part of the higher studies in the École. If we should replace our faculties of theology by chairs of religious criticism we should do no more than follow the example of Holland.[85] Mr. Max Müller introduced the science of religions into the University of Oxford with success. Similarly in Switzerland at the organization of the University of Geneva, in 1873, there was created in the faculty of letters a chair of the history of religions, although there already existed in the university a faculty of theology. In Germany the history of religions is taught independently, notably at the University of Wurtzburg, under the name of Comparative Symbolism. Just as a complete course of instruction in philosophy should include the principles of the philosophy of law and the philosophy of history, it will some day include also the principles of the philosophy of religion. After all, even from the point of view of philosophy, Buddha and Jesus possess a much greater importance than Anaximander or Thales.[86]

Education of instructors.

It has been said, after M. Laboulaye, that a professor of the history of religion should be at once an archæologist, an epigraphist, a numismatist, a linguist, an anthropologist, and versed in Hindu, Phœnician, Slavonic, Germanic, Celtic, Etruscan, Greek, and Roman antiquities; he should be nothing less than a Pico della Mirandola. At that rate one might show also that neither schools nor colleges can be expected to include a course on natural history or on the political history of some seven or eight nations—nay, even that it is impossible to teach children to read: the art of reading is so difficult in its perfection! Really is it necessary that the historian of religion should be a master of all the historical sciences? He is under no obligation to discover new materials, he has simply to make use of those which philologists and epigraphists have put at his disposal; such materials are now abundant enough and well enough ascertained to require a course specially devoted to them. There is no need for the instructor to master such and such a particular division of the history of religion; he is simply required to furnish students in our universities, in the course of one or two years, with a general view of the development of religious ideas in history. The professor will no doubt encounter certain difficulties in dealing with religious questions because of the amount of feeling that such problems always involve, but the same difficulty is met with in every course which deals with contemporary questions, and almost every course does deal with them. A professor of history has to deal with contemporary facts, to describe the successive changes in the form of government in France, etc. A professor of philosophy has to deal with questions of theodicy and morals; and even in pure psychology, materialistic and deterministic theories have to be passed upon; even a mere professor of rhetoric is obliged, in treating of literature and of Voltaire and of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to touch on questions which are burning. Similarly, a professor in the law school must find a thousand occasions for praising, or blaming, or criticising the laws of the State. And must one, because of dangers of this sort which are met with at every step, cease teaching history, philosophy, and law? No, and we do not believe that one should be debarred from teaching religious history. The whole question is one of fact rather than of principle; it should be the master’s business to avoid digressions beyond the limits of pure science, and to be on his guard against seeming to mean something more than he says, and masking a criticism of the existing order of things under a course on abstract theory.[87]

Legitimate object of religious instruction.

The aim of this impartial course of instruction should be to supply each religion with its proper historical setting, to show how it was born, developed, opposed to others; it should be described, not refuted. The bare introduction of historical continuity into the course of religious thought is itself a considerable step in advance; whatever is continuous ceases to be marvellous. Nobody is astonished at a brook which gradually becomes bigger; our ancestors adored great rivers of whose sources they were ignorant.

III. Education at Home.

It has often been asked, as a question of practical conduct, whether the head of a household ought not to have a religion, at least if not for himself, for his wife and children, and if his wife is religious ought he to abandon the education of his children to her?