The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

Woman’s attention to details.

We are not obliged to decide the question whether women’s mental powers are or are not inferior to those of men.[91] We are obliged to consider only whether the limits of female intelligence are so tightly drawn that religion, and even superstition, are for it inevitable. Those who maintain that women are in some sort condemned to error argue from certain essential elements in her character; let us examine accordingly the peculiarity of her intelligence and of her sensibility. The female mind, it has been said, is less abstract than that of the male; women are more impressionable on the side of the senses and of the imagination, are more readily appealed to by what is beautiful and striking and coloured: thence arises their need for myths, for symbols, for a cult, for rites that speak to the eye. We reply that this need is not absolute: are not Protestant women content with a cult which does not appeal to the senses? And in any event, an imaginative spirit is not necessarily superstitious. Superstition is a matter of education, not of nature; there is a certain maturity of mind which lends no encouragement to superstition. I have known a number of women who did not possess one superstition among them and were incapable of acquiring one; there was no distinction in this respect to be observed between their intelligence and that of a man; the conception of the world as an orderly succession of phenomena, once really accepted by the human mind, maintains itself by its own power, without aid from without, as the fact in the long run always does.

Female credulity.

A second trait of female intelligence, which has also been made use of, is its credulity—by which religion has so largely profited. Women are more credulous than men, in this sense: they possess a certain confidence in men, whom they recognize as stronger and more widely experienced than themselves; they willingly believe whatever grave men, whom they are accustomed to venerate, men like priests, assert. Their credulity is thus in a great part a mere form of their natural need to lean on some member of the opposite sex. Conceive a religion originated and administered solely by women; it would be looked upon with great distrust by women, in general. The day men cease to believe, female credulity—in especial that of the average woman, who is accustomed to judge with the eyes and intelligence of someone else—will be profoundly affected. I once asked a maid who had remained thirty years in the same house what were her beliefs. “Those of my master,” she replied; her master was an atheist. The same question was put to the wife of a member of the Institute. She replied: “I was a Catholic until I was married. After I was married I began to appreciate the superiority of my husband’s mind, I saw that he did not believe in religion, and I ceased to believe in it entirely myself.”

Female conservatism.

A third trait of the feminine character is its conservativeness, its friendliness to tradition, its indisposition to initiative. Respect for power and authority, Spencer says, predominates in women, influences their ideas and sentiments in regard to all institutions, and tends to strengthen political and ecclesiastical governments. For the same reason women are particularly inclined to put faith in whatever is imposing; doubt, criticism, a disposition to question whatever is established is rare among them, Mr. Spencer thinks. Women certainly do possess a more conservative disposition than men in religion and in politics; it has been so found in England where women vote on municipal questions, and in our judgment the rôle that woman should play in this world is precisely that of conservatism; as a young girl, she must guard her person as a treasure, must be always suspicious of she knows not precisely what; then as a wife she must watch over her child, her house, her husband; must preserve, retain, defend, embrace somebody or something. Is it a thing to be complained of? Is it not to this instinct that we owe our life, and if difference in sex, or sexual functions, involves grave differences in character, must we conclude from this fact that women possess an irremediable civil and religious incapacity? No; conservatism may be of service in the ranks of truth as in the ranks of error; all depends on what is given to conserve. If women are more philosophically and scientifically educated, their conservatism may do good service.

Female timidity.

A final trait of the feminine mind, very like the preceding, is that women are more given to an absorption in detail, are less courageous, are more capable of dealing with particular details than with general ideas and things as a whole, and are more inclined to narrow and literal interpretations than men. If a woman, for example, is intrusted with any administrative office she will execute every rule to the letter with an exaggerated conscientiousness and a naïve anxiety. The conclusion is that women will always lend comfort to literal religions and to superstitious practices. In our opinion this penchant for minutiæ and for scrupulousness which is so frequently observed among women may become, on the contrary, an important factor of incredulity when women are sufficiently instructed to perceive at first hand the innumerable contradictions and ambiguities of the texts they are dealing with. An enlightened scruple is a keener instrument of doubt than of faith.

We confess we do not yet see that the differences, native or acquired, between the male and the female brain suffice to constitute women a sort of inferior caste, devoted by their birth to religion and the service of myth, while men are reserved for science and philosophy.