The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

If we pass from these general principles to their particular applications we find three essential kinds of voluntary association that seem destined to survive religions: associations for intellectual purposes, for moral purposes, for emotional purposes.

I. Associations for intellectual purposes.

Associations for the advancement of research.

It will always be possible for men of science to associate for the purpose of verifying and collecting evidence in regard to doctrines and beliefs which they themselves recognize as provisional only. There are divisions and subdivisions in the world of thought, which resemble the geographical division of the earth; these divisions practically result from the division of labour; each person has a distinct task to fulfil, a distinct object to which he must apply his intelligence. The whole body of labourers united in one and the same effort of thought, and turned toward the same point in the intellectual horizon, tend naturally to gravitate toward each other; every form of co-operation tends to become an association. We all of us belong to some intellectual province, we have all of us a mental native land, in which we find our fellow-citizens, our brothers toward whom we are impelled by a natural sympathy. This sympathy is explicable as a vague consciousness of the solidarity existing between the whole body of intelligent human beings who inevitably take an interest in each other, who love to share truth or error, as they love to share pleasure or pain: it is good to see men draw together and agree, providing they do not thereby lose flexibility; providing their solidarity becomes a condition of progress and not of immobility. Men will always delight in contributing their store of ideas to the common stock, as the disciples of Socrates brought their dinners and shared them in the little house in Athens; knowledge, supposition, or prejudice, in common, draws people together like a common love. Our hearts should go out first to those who are nearest to us, to those who are our neighbours in the field of intelligence. Labour not only fashions the object it is expended on, it fashions the labourer; similarity of occupation pursued with the same ardour ends by producing similarity of heart. Companionship in labour, of whatsoever kind it may be, constitutes one of the strongest ties among men. In our days associations are formed among men of science or investigators, as among journeymen following the same trade. There are societies for the pursuit of scientific, medical, biological studies, etc.; and societies for the pursuit of literary and philological studies, of philosophical, psychological, and moral studies; of economic and social studies, and finally of religious studies. These societies are genuine églises, churches, but churches for community of labour and not for associate repose in a conventional faith; and they will increase in number with the subdivision and specialization of each of these several branches of study. Such associations are typical of future associations generally, religious associations included. Community of inquiry, which no less than community of faith gives rise to a feeling of fraternity, is often superior to community of faith and more fertile than it. The highest religious associations will, no doubt, some day be associations for the pursuit of religious and metaphysical studies. Thus the best elements of individualism and socialism will be reconciled. The infinite extensibility of science, the opportunity that it offers inquirers of appropriating the results of each other’s labours, make association for the acquisition of knowledge the type of a perfect association, of an association that exists for the benefit both of the individuals and of the society.

Scientific fanaticism.

There is one thing, however to be avoided. Opinions, and in especial opinions on morals, social matters, or metaphysical subjects, acquire, like the sticks in the fable, a prodigious power, when a number of people holding them in common once associate, which is out of all relation to the intrinsic value of the opinions themselves. Novalis said: “My faith gained an infinite value in my eyes the moment I saw it shared by someone else.” The psychology of that remark is just; it calls attention to a dangerous illusion against which precaution should be taken; for in a certain state of the emotions it is easier for two people, and even for a thousand, to make mistakes than for any one of them separately. Science has its enthusiasts, and also its fanatics, and might have at need its advocates of intolerance and violence. Happily it carries the remedy for all this with it; increase science, and it becomes the very principle of tolerance, for the greatest science is best aware of its own limits.

Association for purposes of propagandism.

While distinguished minds will thus associate and carry on their labours and speculations in common, men who are occupied rather with manual labour will associate for the communication of their more or less vague, more or less irreflective beliefs, which, however, will be increasingly free from all element of the supernatural as instruction spreads among the people. These beliefs, which among certain peoples will be metaphysical, among certain others, such as the Latin nations, will be social and moral. Such associations will be of every possible kind, according to the opinions which preside over their formation; they will, however, possess this trait in common, that they will more and more rigorously exclude anything in the nature of dogma and of revelation. They will aim also at becoming like the associations of thinkers and men of science of which we have just spoken. It will be the duty of people of education, in such societies, to hand on the results of the scientific and metaphysical inquiries conducted by associations higher in the intellectual scale. Every temple will thus be built in stages, nave on nave, as in certain ancient churches, and the highest of these temples from which the inspired word will descend will be open to the sky and inhabited not by believers but by unbelievers in every limitation of research—by minds restlessly active, in quest of a more extended and demonstrable knowledge: ad lucem per lucem.

Association for the dissemination of useful knowledge.

One of the principal effects of association for intellectual purposes, thus conducted, would be the diffusion of scientific ideas among the people. If religions may be considered as so many expressions of the earliest scientific theories, the surest means of combating the errors and of preserving the good sides of religion would be the dissemination of the established principles of modern science. To disseminate is in a sense “to convert,” but to convert the believer to a faith in indubitable virtues; the task is one which is most tempting to a philosopher; one is sure that truth can do no harm, when it is handed on in all its purity. A really capital bit of statement, a really capital book, is often better than a good action; it carries farther, and if an imprudent act of heroism sometimes has a melancholy ending, words that speak to the heart never have. There are already in existence books for children, and for the people, that are masterpieces; they supply the public, for which they are intended, with ideas on morality and on certain sciences and supply those ideas undisfigured; and such books constitute more or less scientific catechisms, which are altogether superior to religious catechisms. At some future day such books will be written in regard to the great cosmological and metaphysical theories, epitomizing in simple language, made simpler by telling illustrations, the body of acquired facts or of probable hypotheses on the prime subjects of human interest. The dissemination of knowledge, standing thus on the middle plane between original inquiry and research and popular ignorance, will take the place held by religions, which are themselves founded on a collection of exoteric notions—a gross and symbolic epitome of what once was profound, and to-day is naïve, in the realm of knowledge. Modern science, if it is to progress, must be popularized; like a great river, if it is to grow larger, its bed must be deepened and widened.