The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

Experiments in socialism.

Practical experiments in socialism are being made every day; there is in France the phalansterian association of M. Godin; in America there are the associations by the followers of Cabet, not to speak of others of a more purely religious character, such as those of the Quakers, Shakers, etc.; and finally, there are co-operative societies of various kinds. These avowedly or unavowedly socialistic experiments have never succeeded except when their promoters were willing very rigorously to limit their numbers; certain intellectual and moral defects in the members must inevitably in every case have proved fatal to them. Socialism is possible only in a small society of the elect. Even the theorists who once regarded profit-sharing as the universal panacea recognize to-day that profit-sharing constitutes a remedy in some cases only; that the labouring classes are not, as a whole, either patient, or painstaking enough to fulfil the very simple conditions that profit-sharing demands. They are unfit for corporate life, they are hard repellent individuals, they are elements of disintegration; when a small socialistic society finds them on its list of members, it excludes them; if mankind as a whole formed one great socialistic society, it also would be obliged to exclude them. To universalize socialism is to destroy it.

Future of socialism.

Every scientific discovery passes through three distinct stages: the stage of pure theory, of application on a small scale in the laboratory, of application on a grand scale in the world of business. It frequently happens that the development of an idea is arrested in the sphere of theory, that it does not enter into the sphere of practice at all, or that, completely successful in the laboratory, it miscarries when the attempt is made to apply it to business. If this holds true of scientific ideas, of devices that depend for their success upon the plasticity of inert matter only, which we may bend to our will, a fortiori it must be true of sociological ideas, of experiments, of devices that depend for their success on the plasticity of so variable, so heterogeneous a substance as human nature. Socialism is still, for the most part, at the theoretical stage; and even as a theory socialism is very vague and not very consistent and, when the effort is made to put it into practice, the difference between experiments in the laboratory, among conditions that the experimenter can in a measure determine and control, and in the great world in which everything is determined and controlled for him, must be remembered. The state which yields to the seduction of some charming socialistic theory, and endeavours, as it will endeavour, to realize it, will inevitably be ruined. Social experiments cannot be attempted by the state—not even if they are experiments in religion, or rather in especial not if they are experiments in religion. Some experiments may at most be observed by the state and followed with interest by it; nay, the state may even in certain cases encourage the most interesting of them and subsidize them as it does certain industrial enterprises. We are persuaded that socialism in the future, like religion in the past, will appear in many different forms. There will arise a number of conceptions of an ideal society, each of which is realizable in special circumstances, and by people of some special disposition. Human society which to-day, beyond the limits of convents and monasteries (which consist in artificial groupings of individuals of the same sex), presents a certain uniformity of type, may well at some later date, owing to complete liberty of association, and to the spread of personal initiative, present a great variety of types. Socialism will not result in the founding of a religion, but it may well result in the founding of a number of associations dominated respectively by some metaphysical or moral idea. Socialism will thus contribute to that multiplicity and diversity of beliefs which does not exclude but rather encourages their practical application.

Necessity of allowing for a multiplicity of conflicting ideals.

The future, therefore, will leave the human mind, as time goes on, more and more at liberty; will permit the individual to do increasingly as he likes so long as he does not violate the rights of anybody else. What is the highest social ideal? Does it lie purely and simply in the practice of the necessary virtues or of a half conscious morality, an unreflecting benignity, compounded of ignorance and custom? This social ideal is realized in certain countries in the Orient, where Buddhism is dominant, and the people are so gentle that years pass without a homicide; and yet life in these countries in nowise appeals to us as ideal. To this sort of morality must be added some satisfaction of the principal desire of mankind, of the desire for economic ease and for practical happiness, and even that would not be enough; for that much is realized in corners of Switzerland, of Portugal, in primitive countries like Costa Rica, where poverty is unknown. Artists dream of a life devoted entirely to art, to the beautiful, of a life which is hostile to prosaic and practical virtue, and this ideal was realized in the Renaissance: the Renaissance was distinguished by an extraordinary efflorescence of æsthetic instinct and moral depravity, and we in nowise desire to return to it. And if science, which is the modern ideal, should become absolute, we should see a society of blasés Fausts which would not be more enviable perhaps than other societies. No; a complete social ideal must neither consist in bare morality nor in simple economic well-being, nor in art alone, nor in science alone—it must consist in all of these together; its ideal must be the greatest and most universal conceivable. This ideal is that of progress, and progress cannot take place in one direction only at a time; whoever advances in one direction only will soon retreat. A point of light shines in all directions simultaneously. The excellence of religion cannot be demonstrated by showing that it favours some one species of human activity; morality, for example, or art. It is not enough to make man moral as Christianity and Buddhism did, nor to excite his æsthetic imagination as Paganism did. Not one but all of his faculties must be stimulated, and there is but one religion that can do it; and that religion each must create for himself. Whoever feels attracted by a life similar to that of a priest will do well to become a Christian and even a Quaker, and the artist will do well to become a pagan. What is certain is that no one of the deities which mankind has created and worshipped is all-sufficing; mankind needs all of them and something more, for human thought has outgrown its gods.

Liberty the condition of knowledge.

Under the sounding domes of old cathedrals, the echoes are so numerous that an immense screen has sometimes to be stretched across the nave to break the reverberations and enable the priest’s voice alone to reach the faithful. This screen which is invisible from below, which isolates the sacred word and deadens all other sound, is stretched not only across the cathedral nave but across the heart of every true believer. It must be torn away; every voice and word must be free to attain the ear of man; the sacred word rises from no one throat, but is the symphony of all the voices that sound beneath the dome of heaven.

Decline of the power of religion.