The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

Money the modern patent of nobility.

It may be objected, it is true, that the superior races of mankind may remain isolated in the midst of the multiplication of the other branches of humanity in a sort of jealous aristocracy, served and respected by those whom they dominate by their intelligence. This is one of the dreams of M. Renan, who sees in the Chinese the future slave of the Europeans—gentle, docile slaves, with just enough intelligence to be marvellous industrial machines. Unhappily we have learned, to our expense, that the Chinese are also excellent instruments of war. In the industrial society in which we live, money constitutes, in the long run, the basis of aristocracy. To-day money is the true force and title of nobility. To lay up treasures demands a very average intelligence, of which a great number of inferior people are no doubt capable: once rich and they will be our equals; richer, they will be our superiors and our masters. If they have money enough they can purchase every privilege, even that of mixing their blood with ours, even that of marrying our daughters and of confounding our race and theirs. The only means by which intelligence can preserve its power is by means of numbers. Genius itself must leave a posterity behind it, and in spite of prejudice to the contrary, if we are to be eternal it must be by means of our children rather than by our works.

Religion of the family.

Positivists propose to substitute a religion of humanity for existing and rapidly disappearing religions; there is a still more accessible religion, and more practical, and more useful, which was one of the first religions of humanity: the religion of the family, the worship of the little group of beings bound together by ties of blood and memory and name and honour, which form an epitome of a nation; to permit one’s family to die out or to diminish in number is to labour, to the extent that in one lies, to diminish the power of one’s native country and of humanity itself. Patriotism has been made a subject of ridicule, but patriotism is a beautiful thing, and befitting in the head of a household. Paternity in its completest sense, that is to say, the responsibility for the education of a new generation from birth to the age of manhood, is, after all, the surest element of patriotism, and is within the reach of everyone.

Gradual impoverishment of France.

In France especially, as we have seen, the population question is an important one, and should be insisted on. It has been said with reason that France to-day is not threatened by a multitude of dangers, but by one only, which actually constitutes a national peril: that of extinction from lack of children.[97] A nation may increase its capital in two ways; 1. By productive expenditure and productive labour; 2. By the utmost possible diminution of both, of labour and of expenditure. France has been employing the second means since the beginning of the present century; she has been economizing in children and diminishing the rapidity of the circulation of national life. She has, by this process, amassed a great treasure, but the results of her economy have been in part consecrated to the payment of an indemnity of five billions, and in part to loans, as in Mexico, Turkey, and Egypt, and to speculation of every kind, and the result of these blind economies has been a gradual impoverishment.

Classes in France that maintain the population.

Over and above those who are unreflective, or who simply trust to luck, there exists no considerable class of people in France, except Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, who can be counted on to maintain the race. There exists no doubt a certain number of bons vivants who are determined to take their pleasure at all hazards, and who find in the restriction of the family a limitation of their pleasure; but they are rare. The disciples of Malthus are nowadays much more numerous than those of Rabelais. People who have children, not out of pleasure nor by chance, but out of patriotism and philosophy, are so rare that they need not at present be taken into account. The more the property in France is subdivided, the greater the number of small proprietors, the fewer children there are. Since 1866 the agricultural inquiry has demonstrated the invasion of Malthusianism and the progress of voluntary infertility in almost every department side by side with the subdivision of the soil. From that time on the movement has gone forward unchecked. “In certain communes the words brother and sister have almost fallen out of use. Primogeniture, which was abolished in 1789, has been replaced by unigeniture.”[98] Labourers only are anti-malthusians, and that out of carelessness for the future. A Malthusian was one day remonstrating with a poor labourer, who was the father of twelve children and ambitious to become the father of a thirteenth. “What will you have?” said the latter, “it is the only pleasure in the world that I get for nothing; I would not diminish it on any account.”

Power of religion to stimulate population.