The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

Scientific research open to everybody.

One of the great advantages of science is that it can employ half talent and modest capacity—a manifest advantage for it as compared with art. A mediocre poet is a zero in the universe—at least sometimes; but a very ordinary mind may be capable of rendering a genuine service by some almost insignificant improvement in the method of covering the wires in an electric coil or in the gear of a steam-engine; it will have done its work in this world, will have paid its tribute, have won its place in the sun. Art cannot endure mediocrity, science may rely upon it—and find collaborators everywhere. Owing to that fact, science is capable of a degree of democratization that art does not always possess—and that religion alone has equalled. Art is capable of being and remaining aristocratic; science disdains nothing, gathers together all kinds of observations, makes use of all kinds and grades of intellectual power. Like the great Buddhistic and Christian religions, science favours equality, needs the support of the multitude, needs to be named legion. No doubt a small number of commanding men of genius are always necessary to conduct the work, to synthesize the materials in their totality, to make the more fundamental inductions. But if these men of genius were isolated, they would be powerless. Every man must contribute a stone, somewhat at haphazard, and the construction settles firmly on its foundation beneath the added weight of all of them, and becomes really indestructible. Dikes made of irregular stones are the solidest of all. When one walks along such a dike, one feels the sea rumble and break not only near one but under one’s very feet; the water plays vainly against the uncemented, undressed blocks of stone without being able to detach them, bathes them all and destroys none; such, in the history of the human mind, is science, which is formed of a multitude of little facts, gathered in very much at haphazard, which generations of mankind have piled up in disorder, and which ultimately become so solidly united that no effort of the imagination can disjoin them. The human mind, in the midst of its eternal ebb and flow, feels something solid and indestructible in its possession that its waves beat against in vain.

II. Associations for moral purposes and moral propagandism.

Association for uplifting the masses.

There is another element of religion that will survive. Men not only associate for intellectual purposes, they will continue to do so for the purpose of ministering to human suffering, of correcting errors, of disseminating moral ideas. Such associations, like those for intellectual purposes, are based on a consciousness of the solidarity and fraternity of mankind, although, of course, so far as the future is concerned, there will be no question of a fraternity conceived superstitiously, or anti-philosophically, as arising out of a community of origin, from the same terrestrial or celestial father, but only of a rational and moral fraternity, arising out of an identity of nature and interest. The true philosopher should say not only, “Nothing that is human is strange to me;” but also, “Nothing that lives, suffers, and thinks is strange to me.” The heart feels at home wherever it finds another heart, though it even be in a lower order of being, and a fortiori, if it be in an equal or higher order of being. A Hindu poet, says the legend, saw a wounded bird fall struggling at his feet; the heart of the poet, sobbing with pity, struggled with the struggles of the dying bird: it is this fluttering of the heart, this measured and modulated rhythm of pain, which was the origin of verse. Like poetry, religion also originated in the highest and most beautiful manifestation of pity. Human love for human beings does not demand, as a condition precedent, perfect spiritual accord; it is love itself that produces such accord as is necessary. Love one another, and you will understand one another; light springs from the true union of hearts.

Love of mankind in the future.

Universal sympathy is a sentiment which is destined increasingly to develop in future societies. Even to-day, as the result of an inevitable evolution, religion has come to be confounded in the best minds with charity. Hard and sterile among primitive peoples, little more than a collection of formulæ of propitiation, religions have come, through their alliance with morality, to be one of the essential sources of human tenderness. Buddhism and Christianity have headed, first and last, the principal charitable organizations established among mankind. Fatally condemned as they are, at the end of a longer or shorter period, to intellectual sterility, these two religions are endowed with the genius of the heart. Men like Vincent de Paul have little by little come to replace men like St. Augustine or St. Athanasius, not without profit to humanity. This evolutionary process will, no doubt, continue; to-day, for example, few really talented theological works are produced by the priesthood,[121] but a great many practical charities are excellently conceived and executed by them. The day, no doubt, will come when the experience of personal suffering will always result in a desire to relieve the suffering of others. Physical pain usually produces a need of physical movement; æsthetic instinct introduces rhythm into the movement, transforms disorderly gestures into a beautiful regularity, and discordant cries into songs of pain;[122] moral instinct turns this need of movement toward the service of other people, and every misfortune thus becomes a source of pity for the misfortunes of others, and grief is transmuted into charity.

Must find expression in action.

As in the case of artistic sentiment, religious sentiment at its best must be productive, must stimulate one’s activity. Religion, according to St. Paul, means charity, love; but there is no charity that is not charity for someone, and a really rich love cannot be confined within the limits of contemplation and mystic ecstasy, which, scientifically considered, are simply perversions and, as it were, spiritual miscarriages. True love must act.

The ancient opposition between faith and works is thus effaced. There is no powerful faith without works, any more than there is any such thing as a sterile genius or an unproductive talent for art. If Jesus preferred Mary, who was motionless at his feet, to Martha, who was moving about the house, it was, no doubt, because he perceived in the former a treasure of moral energy in reserve for the service of some great devotion; in reserve and therefore only waiting; silent, with a silence of sincere love which speaks more fervently than words.