The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

The most essential incident of every dogmatic religion, the cult, is not less foreign to the spirit of modern society than dogma itself is. The foundation of outer forms of worship, as we have seen, is a crystallization of custom and tradition into the form of rites. Well, as has been said, one of the characteristic marks of the innovating spirit, and of intellectual superiority, is the power of breaking up associations of ideas, of liberating one’s self in a measure from established collocations of ideas, of being slow to contract invincible habits of thought, of precisely not possessing a ritualistic mind. If such be one of the great signs of superiority in an individual, it is none the less so in a people. Progress in humanity may be estimated by the degree of perfection that the faculty of psychic disassociation has achieved. The instinct for novelty is then no longer held in check by the instinct for ritualism; curiosity may be pushed to its extreme without any sense of innovating impiety such as primitive peoples regard it with. The importance of ritualism in the material and religious life of a people indicates the predominance among them of obscure and unconscious associations of ideas, their brain is caught and enveloped in a closely woven network of tradition, in a tissue impenetrable to the light of conscience. On the contrary, the progress of reflection and of conscience which is manifested among modern people is accompanied by an enfeeblement of established custom, of unconscious habit, of the discipline and power of the past. There is often a certain danger, on the practical side, in this change, because reflection becomes strong enough to dissolve habits before it is capable of making head against the passions of the moment. The power of disassociation is intellectual, and is not in itself adequate to the moral domination and direction of the individual, and whatever may be the objections, from the point of view of morals, to the progress of reflection, it is certain that it sooner or later strips rites, religious ceremonies, and the whole machinery of worship, of their sacred character. Etiquette in the presence of kings and gods alike is destined to disappear. Whatever is an observance ceases to be a duty, and the rôle of the priest by that fact is seriously changed. The distant ideal toward which we are marching includes among other things the disappearance of the priesthood, which is rite personified; the god of the priesthood, who in certain respects is no more than an apotheosis of custom, has to-day grown old and maintains his power only by the prestige of the accomplished fact. It is in vain for men like German, English, or American clergymen, or Hindu deists, who still possess a religion, to endeavour to throw over revelation and dogma, and reduce their faith to a system of personal and progressive beliefs, to be accompanied by a ritual. The ritual is an excrescence simply, an almost superstitious habit, mechanically practised and destined to disappear.

The liberal movement in religion a movement of disintegration.

The movement which, in certain countries, inclines religion to be shy of dogmas and rites, is in reality a movement of disintegration, not of reconstruction. Human beliefs, when they shall have taken their final form in the future, will bear no mark of dogmatic and ritualistic religion, they will be simply philosophical. Among certain people, it is true, every philosophical system tends to assume the practical and sentimental form of a system of beliefs and aspirations. The ideas of Kant and Schelling, when they passed into America, gave birth to Emerson’s and Parker’s transcendentalism; Spencer’s theory of evolution became, in America, a religion of Cosmism, represented by Messrs. Fiske, Potter, and Savage. But all such alleged religions are simply the moving shadow, in the domain of sentiment and action, of the substance of intellectual speculation. It is not enough to be of the same opinion on some sociological or metaphysical theory and then to congregate to the number of ten or a hundred in some theatre or temple, to found a new religion and a new cult. The majority of these pretended religions, which are simply philosophies and sometimes very bad philosophies, are open to Mark Pattison’s observation on the congregation of Comtists in their chapel in London: “Three persons and no God.”

Secularism.

The defects of these modern cults appear in their most exaggerated form in secularism, which had its hour of success in England. Secularism is a purely atheistic and utilitarian religion, which has borrowed all it could from the ritual of the English Church. This contradiction between the outer form and the inner void resulted in a positive parody.[116]

Comtists.

In France the Comtists have made the same attempt to preserve the rites, without the background, of belief. The Comtist doctrine of fetichism contains a certain amount of truth as characterizing primitive religion, but it is insufficient in its application to actual, existing religions. The religions of the present day have developed, gradually, from a primitive system of physics to a complete system of metaphysics: the fetiches have been transmuted into symbols of the First Cause, or of the Final Cause. Positivism can offer us no symbol of this kind; its “Great Fetich” is genuinely a fetich, and appropriate for primitive peoples only. “Humanity” does not afford complete satisfaction to one’s conception of causality, nor to one’s conception of finality. In regard to the first, humanity is a simple link in the infinite chain of phenomena; in regard to the second, humanity constitutes an end which is practically inexact and theoretically insufficient: practically inexact because almost the whole of one’s activity relates to such and such a restricted group of human beings and not to humanity as a whole; and theoretically insufficient, because humanity looks small in the presence of the great universe. Its life is a point in space, a point in time; it constitutes a contracted ideal, and to say the truth, it is as vain for a race to regard itself as its own end as for an individual. One cannot eternally contemplate one’s own image and cannot, in especial, eternally adore it. Love of humanity is the greatest of virtues and the most ridiculous of fetichisms. The marriage of positive science and blind sentiment cannot produce religion; the attempt to return to fetichism is an attempt to foist the religion of a savage upon the most civilized of mankind. Moreover, what we believe destined to subsist in the future in a multitude of forms, and to replace religions, is not pure and simple sentiment, but sentiment roused by metaphysical symbols, by speculation and thought. Religious metaphysics may consist in involuntary illusion, in error, in dream; but unmetaphysical fetichism consists in voluntary illusion, in cherished error, in day-dream. Auguste Comte seemed to believe that we should always need as the centre of our system of worship, an imaginary personification of humanity, a great Being, a great Fetich; such a fetichism would be a species of new category, in the Kantian sense. Fetichism has never imposed itself upon humanity after that fashion; intellectually considered, it was based on reasons which can be shown to be false; emotionally considered, it was based on feelings which can be shown to be perverted, and can be rectified. If love sometimes stretches out toward personification, toward fetiches, it is only in default of real persons and living individuals; such in our opinion is, in its simplest form, the law which will gradually result in the disappearance of every fetichistic cult. We must find gods of flesh and bone, living and breathing among us—not poetical creations like those of Homer, but visible realities. We must discover the kingdom of heaven in the human soul, a future providence in science, absolute goodness in the foundation of life. We must not project our ideas and subjective images of things into the outer world, and beyond the limits of the outer world, and love them with a sterile love; but must love the beings of this world with an active affection in so far as they are capable of conceiving and realizing the same ideas as we. Just as patriotism, in so far as it is an abstract love, tends to disappear, and to resolve itself into a general sympathy for all our fellow-citizens, just so far the love of God tends to overflow the surface of the earth and to include all living beings. To know living beings is to love them; and thus science, in so far as it is science of the observation of life, is one with the sentiment which constitutes what is best in religion, is one with love.

Ethical Culture Society.

Another religion of humanity, or rather a religion of ethics, has recently been founded in New York by Mr. Felix Adler, the son of an American rabbi; but Mr. Adler, who is more consistent than Comte, has determined to do away with religious ceremonial, not less than with religious dogma. He has abandoned almost everything in the way of ceremony; he has abandoned the catechism, and professes allegiance to no sacred book. As a metaphysician he is a follower of Kant, rather than of Comte, but makes no positive affirmation on the subject of God and immortality; he admits only the existence of an unknowable noumenon, of an ultimate reality which lies behind all appearances, and is responsible for the harmony of the world. So long as divergence in matters of belief continues to become increasingly great, Mr. Adler regards it as necessary to concentrate attention on the moral law itself, apart from any theory of its origin or justification. Men have so long disputed, he thinks, about the basis of the law, that the law itself has not received its due share of notice. His movement is essentially a practical movement and appeals to the conscience, a cry for more justice, an exhortation for the performance of duty.

Its object.