The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

Emigration tends to augment fertility; emigration must therefore be favoured by law. It is soberly estimated at present that from thirty to forty thousand Frenchmen emigrate each year; the figure is relatively small, but that number of emigrants a year is enough to settle important colonies.[109] It is unscientific to maintain at this late day that the French are incapable of colonizing when they have so powerfully aided in forming the great English colonies in Canada, India, and Egypt and are actually colonizing Algeria and Tunis. What we lack is not the ability to establish colonies, but the habit of emigration. Emigration, in spite of its importance for us, obtains mainly in certain poor districts in France; it is not general enough to have any considerable influence, as yet, in raising the birth-rate; the law should here be looked to, to correct the habits of the people. In England out of every family of four sons it is almost to be expected that one of them will go to India, another to Australia, a third to America; there is nothing surprising in it, it is the custom. A sense of distance is almost unknown on the opposite side of the Channel. In France, if a single child leaves the country, even as the secretary of an embassy, he is as solemnly bid good-bye as if he were going never to return, as if he were dying even. There is a great deal of prejudice and ignorance in paternal anguish of this kind. Such and such a sedentary profession, for example that of a physician, is subject to perils that are perfectly well known to statisticians and which we nevertheless do not hesitate to choose for our children precisely because it permits them to live next door to us, rather than at the other end of the world. Such national prejudices will give way before education, the increasing habit of travelling, and the progressively rapid circulation of society; laws might favour it. The spirit of enterprise and colonization, which seems at first sight so foreign to love of family, is capable of being allied with it; nay, becomes, under certain circumstances, the very condition of it. To rear a numerous family is always in a certain sense to colonize, even though all the children live within the limits of their native country. To rear a large family is to launch one’s children upon unknown ways, and demands the activity of mind and fertility of resource which are of the essence of colonization. The creation of a numerous family is positively a social enterprise, as the creation of a great commercial house or a great farming industry is an economical enterprise; success in both cases demands constant effort and brings a various profit in return. Suppose a couple have reared ten children to labour and honesty; the children form a protecting phalanx about the parents and give them, in return for the rearing, if not gross and direct benefits, at least happiness and honour. We do not wish to disguise the fact, however, that to rear a family involves a certain amount of risk; but every enterprise involves a risk. And indeed the prime need in this whole matter is to develop the spirit of enterprise and audacity which was formerly so powerful in the French nation. A great many people to-day remain celibate for the same reason that they are content to live within a small income without endeavouring to increase their fortune by investing it in commerce or manufacture; they are afraid of the risks of the family, just as they are afraid of commercial risks. They consume instead of producing, because producing is inseparable from a certain preliminary investment of money and activity. Similarly a great many people, once they are married, endeavour, so to speak, to reduce marriage to a minimum; they do not dare to have children; they are afraid of the preliminary outlay, they are afraid of emerging from the shell of their short-sighted egoism.

To French colonies.

It is, of course, emigration to French colonies that the law ought especially to favour, and for that purpose there is one respect in which the military law should be reformed. As a matter of fact, in spite of the law of July 27, 1872, the government is obliged to grant pardon to the numerous Basques and Savoyards who emigrate to escape military service. More than that, the sole important current that exists in France flows toward foreign colonies, and often creates on their shores industries which rival our own, while they rarely open advantageous markets for our commerce. Is it not a matter of urgent necessity to make our colonies as attractive to the French emigrants as the colonies of any foreign nationality? If the young man of twenty who has made up his mind to pass some years of his life in Brazil finds himself de facto exempt from military service, ought he not to be de jure exempt if he wishes to emigrate to Algiers, to Tunis, to Tonquin, to Madagascar? Emigration is itself a sort of military service. Colonists defend and enlarge the frontiers of the countries; a really rational law should recognize them as a portion of the military power of the country. Fifty-four chambers of commerce in our principal cities, “considering that it is of the greatest importance to encourage, by every means possible, intelligent and well-educated young people, intending to emigrate, to establish themselves in our colonies,” demanded justly “that, in times of peace, young men residing in the colonies should be granted a delay of five years in the call to military service, a delay which should become a definitive exemption after a further residence of five consecutive years.” We believe that this period of ten years might be shortened, and that a residence of seven years in the colonies, or even of five in certain distant colonies, like Tonquin, might be infinitely more profitable to the mother country than a three-years’ military service at home.[110] We are much less in need of soldiers to guard our colonies than of colonists; indeed our colonies are too often “colonies without colonists.” More than that, we travel too little, we are not as well acquainted as we should be with our own possessions; whoever had spent five of the most active years of his life in the colonies would be tempted to return there or to send his friends and relatives there. An amendment, looking to this exemption from military service, was discussed in the Chamber of Deputies in May and June, 1884. If it should ever be passed, it might have a considerable influence upon the destinies of the French people.[111]

Dangers of depopulation should be taught.

III. Apart from the laws, the great means of influencing races is public education: it is by that means that the ideas and feelings may be moulded. The French people must be enlightened, therefore, on the disastrous consequences of depopulation; sentiments of patriotism, of honour, of duty, must in every possible way be appealed to. The schoolmaster, the physician, and the mayor may all be of help. There are a whole multitude of such means of instruction that are being neglected.

In the army by conferences.

In the first place there are military conferences. Conferences of a half hour each, with striking facts and examples and a few significant figures, might exercise a considerable influence on the army, which is to-day the nation. Military conferences will some day certainly be one of the great means for the dissemination of knowledge; they have recently been employed with success in Belgium during the strikes, to inculcate notions of political economy in the army and to fortify the military against certain communistic arguments.

In the country by proclamations.