The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

Futility of effort to bring about a return of religion.

II. If the question is really one of a return to some traditional religion or a gradual extinction of the race, free-thinkers may well hesitate between a number of lines of conduct. They may, in the first place, take refuge in resignation: “After me the Deluge.” Many of the middle classes and a great number even of economists, who regard the future of their race and of their country as much too distant to be taken into account and consider present comfort as the sole rational aim of man, accept this position. A more radical alternative is to join the Church: both the Catholic and the Protestant churches, in spite of the eccentricity of their legends, are useful as an aid in making a nation numerous and strong and prolific; and the French of all nations needs religion, so that, instead of endeavouring to destroy the Christian faith, it is our duty to endeavour to propagate it. There is an element of hypocrisy and even of cowardice in this effort to revive a bygone error in the name of present utility. And it involves the affirmation that error is at the bottom more useful than truth, and that truth is fundamentally irreconcilable with the continued existence of the human race—an affirmation which is somewhat precipitate. Above all, the effort to arrest scepticism is simply futile—futile for humanity, for a people, for a family. When it is time to regret that certain things have been learned it is too late to set about ignoring them. The French people, in especial, possess a fund of incredulity which is based upon the practical and logical character of their temperament: they rose in 1789 against the clergy, in the name of liberty; nowadays they will struggle with the same stubbornness in the name of comfort against the prescriptions of religion, against the very instincts of human nature, and will make themselves sterile in order to become rich without immoderate labour. The re-establishment of religion is simply out of the question; sincerely religious men themselves, if they happen also to be intelligent, recognize it. This rational sterility, produced by a triumph of the intellect over natural instinct and religious dogma, is a charming theme for declamation; but declamation is also sterile, and does not date from yesterday; it was tried before the Revolution and succeeded neither in augmenting religious sensibility nor in diminishing French infertility. In a pamphlet on the Erreurs de Voltaire, the Abbé Nonotte wrote in 1766: “Present notions and practices on the subject of population are as melancholy for morality as for statesmanship. People are content nowadays with a single heir. Pleasure and libertinism carry the day. The fortunes of a great number of the first families in Paris rest on the shoulders of a single child. It was better in former times; for families were not afraid of a number of children, and were not so extravagant but that they could provide them with a means of subsistence.”

Inability of priest to cope with question of population.

Neither the priest nor the confessor can be counted on. Has the priest ever power enough, even in countries like Brittany where devotion is at its height, to suppress the grossest vice; drunkenness, for example, and that, too, among women? How can a priest be expected to maintain an influence over men who confess hardly more than once a year—at Easter? How can the priest, under such circumstances, be expected to be really a governor of the conscience, and in especial a physician of the soul? He receives a general confession from each of his parishioners, he is in a hurry, he is obliged to restrict his attention to the most enormous of the sins confessed to him, and the whole ends in absolution, followed by communion. Some days afterward the men get drunk again, and do just as they did before, till the year comes round. Prejudices and habits are stronger than anything else.

Pliancy of religion.

They who, with the Abbé Nonotte, regard religion as the cure of all evils, forget that religion itself is very compliant, that it can be made to stand for a multitude of things. If the mass of the French people should allow themselves to be persuaded by the Abbé Nonotte and his disciples to return to the traditional faith, the traditional faith itself would soon cease to be so austere. Confessors would become more discreet. Are they not to-day obliged to tolerate polkas and waltzes, and young people whirling about the room in each other’s arms, which was formerly so severely prohibited? The letter of religion remains in vain the same, the spirit of the worshippers changes. At the present day Jesuits willingly close their eyes to the sterility of the family; they have even been accused of whispering to advice for the preservation of certain inheritances. Do you imagine that confessors in the Faubourg Saint-Germain ask especially embarrassing questions? Heaven can be compromised with.

Even of Protestantism.

This sort of tolerance, like all tolerance, will grow with time. Even in Protestant families in which a more extreme rigidity reigns, the spirit of the times is dominant. Orthodoxy is everywhere becoming less ferocious, sterility is everywhere on the increase. Even clergymen do not have as large families as formerly. Statistics on this head would be very instructive; one might find in the very bosom of Protestantism sterility increasing directly with liberalism of belief. If Darwin and Spencer have partisans in the English clergy, and among the American Protestants, why should not Malthus also? In especial, since Malthus was a grave and religious man.

Decrease of population encouraged by the Catholic Church.

The Catholic religion has itself been guilty by its advocacy of religious celibacy. In France one hundred and thirty thousand persons of both sexes are devoted to celibacy.[100] It is to be regretted that Catholicism, which during a number of centuries (in the time when St. Sidonius Apollinaris, the son-in-law of the Emperor Avitus, was Bishop of Clermont-Ferrand) did not impose celibacy upon ecclesiastics, should have felt obliged later to exact it, and should have come to consider absolute continence superior to marriage, contrary to all physiological and psychological laws. “Continence as a profession,” says M. Montesquieu, “has destroyed more men than pestilence and war together. Every religious house constitutes a family which never gives birth to a child, and which continues in existence only by adopting children from without. Such houses are open like so many abysses, to swallow up the future of the race.” Religious celibacy results in another evil consequence: although priests do not to-day constitute the élite of society, they are still among the most intelligent, the best educated, the least ill-disposed members of society. And they gaily consent to be annihilated, to disappear, and to leave, like the heretics they used to burn, no trace behind. They form as constant a drain on the body-politic as the victims of the Inquisition formed during so many years in Spain. If we should count the sons only of clergymen who have become distinguished or even great men, from Linnæus to Wurtz and Emerson, we might see how much we lose by the celibacy of our priesthood.