It is with great wealth of discussion that Guyau recounts the genesis of religions in primitive societies to indicate the sociological basis of religion. More important are his chapters on the dissolution of religions in existing societies, in which he shows the unsatisfactoriness of the dogmas of orthodox Protestantism equally with those of the Catholic Church. As mischievous as the notion of an infallible Church is that of an infallible book, literally—that is to say, foolishly-interpreted. He recognises that for a literal explanation of the Bible must be substituted, and is, indeed, being substituted, a literary explanation. Like Renan, he criticises the vulgar conception of prayer and of religious morality which promotes goodness by promise of paradise or fear of hell. He urges in this connection the futility of the effort made by Michelet, Quinet and, more especially, by Renouvier and Pillon to “Protestantise” France. While admitting a certain intellectual, moral and political superiority to it, Guyau claims that for the promotion of morality there is little use in substituting Protestantism for Catholicism. He forecasts the limitation of the power of priests and other religious teachers over the minds of young children. Protestant clergymen in England and America he considers to be no more tolerant in regard to the educational problem than the priests. Guyau urges the importance of an elementary education being free from religious propaganda. He was writing in 1886, some years after the secular education law had been carried. There is, however, more to be done, and he points out “how strange it is that a society should not do its best to form those whose function it is to form it.”[[34]] In higher education some attention should be given to the comparative study of religions. “Even from the point of view of philosophy, Buddha and Jesus are more important than Anaximander or Thales.”[[35]] It is a pity, he thinks, that there is not a little more done to acquaint the young with the ideas for which the great world-teachers, Confucius, Zoroaster, Buddha, Socrates, Mohammed, stood, instead of cramming a few additional obscure names from early national history. It would give children at least a notion that history had a wider range than their own country, a realisation of the fact that humanity was already old when Christ appeared, and that there are great religions other than Christianity, religions whose followers are not poor ignorant savages or heathen, but intelligent beings, from whom even Christians may learn much. It is thoroughly mischievous, he aptly adds, to bring up children in such a narrow mental atmosphere that the rest of their life is one long disillusionment.
[34] L’Irréligion de l’Avenir, p. 232; Eng. trans., p. 278.
[35] Ibid., p. 236; Eng. trans., p. 283.
With particular reference to his own country, Guyau criticises the religious education of women, the question of “mixed marriages,” the celibacy of the Roman Catholic clergy, and the influence of religious beliefs upon the limitation or increase of the family.
After having summed up the tendency of dogmatic religion to decay, he asks if any unification of the great religions is to-day possible, or whether any new religion may be expected? The answer he gives to both these questions is negative, and he produces a wealth of very valid reasons in support of his finding. He is, of course, here using the term religion as he has himself defined it. The claim to universality by all world-religions, the insistence by each that it alone is the really best or true religion, precludes any question of unity. As well might we imagine unity between Protestantism and the Roman Catholic Church.
In the “non-religious” state, dogma will be replaced by individual constructions. Religion will be a free, personal affair, in which the great philosophical hypotheses (e.g., Theism and Pantheism) will be to a large extent utilised. They will, however, be regarded as such by all, as rational hypotheses, which some individuals will accept, others will reject. Certain doctrines will appeal to some, not to others. The evidence for a certain type of theism will seem adequate to some, not to others. There will be no endeavour to impose corporately or singly the acceptance of any creed upon others.
With Guyau’s conception of the future of religion or non-religion, whichever we care to call it, we may well close this survey of the religious ideas in modern France. In the Roman Church on the one hand, and, on the other, in the thought of Renan, Renouvier and Guyau, together with the multitude of thinking men and women they represent, may be seen the two tendencies—one conservative, strengthening its internal organisation and authority, in defiance of all the influences of modern thought, the other a free and personal effort, issuing in a genuine humanising of religion and freeing it from ecclesiasticism and dogma.
A word may be said here, however, with reference to the “Modernists.” The Modernist movement is a French product, the result of the interaction of modern philosophical and scientific ideas upon the teaching of the Roman Church. It has produced a philosophical religion which owes much to Ollé-Laprune and Blondel, and is in reality modern science with a veneer of religious idealism or platonism. It is a theological compromise, and has no affinities with the efforts of Lamennais. As a compromise it was really opposed to the traditions of the French, to whose love of sharp and clear thinking such general and rather vague syntheses are unacceptable. It must be admitted, however, that there is a concreteness, a nearness to reality and life, which separates it profoundly from the highly abstract theology of Germany, as seen in Ritschl and Harnack.
The Abbé Marat of the Theological School at the Sorbonne and Father Gratry of the Ecole Normale were the initiators of this movement, as far back as the Second Empire. “Modernism” was never a school of thought, philosophical or religious, and it showed itself in a freedom and life, a spirit rather than in any formula;. As Sorel’s syndicalism is an application of the Bergsonian and kindred doctrines to the left wings, and issues in a social theory of “action,” so Modernism is an attempt to apply them to the right and issues in a religion founded on action rather than theology. The writings of the Modernists are extensive, but we mention the names of the chief thinkers. There is the noted exegetist Loisy, who was dismissed in 1894 from the Catholic Institute of Paris and now holds the chair of the History of Religions at the College de France. His friend, the Abbé Bourier, maintained the doctrine, “ Where Christ is there is the Church,” with a view to insisting upon the importance of being a Christian rather than a Catholic or a Protestant.
The importance of the Catholic thinker, Blondel, both for religion and for philosophy, has already been indicated at an earlier stage in this book. His work inspires most.Modernist thought. Blondel preaches, with great wealth of philosophical and psychological argument, the great Catholic doctrine of the collaboration of God with man and of man with God. Man at one with himself realises his highest aspirations. Divine transcendence and divine immanence in man are reconciled. God and man, in this teaching, are brought together, and the stern realism of every-day life and the idealism of religion unite in a sacramental union. The supreme principle in this union Laberthonnière shows to be Love. He is at pains to make clear, however, that belief in Love as the ultimate reality is no mere sentimentality, no mere assertion of the will-to-believe. For him the intellect must play its part in the religious life and in the expression of faith. No profounder intellectual judgment exists than just the one which asserts “God is Love,” when this statement is properly apprehended and its momentous significance clearly realised. We cannot but lament, with Laberthonnière, the abuse of this proposition and its subsequent loss of both appeal and meaning through a shallow familiarity. The reiteration of great conceptions, which is the method by which the great dogmas have been handed down from generations, tends to blurr their real significance. They become stereotyped and empty of life. It is for this reason that Le Roy in Dogme et Critique (1907) insisted upon the advisability of regarding all dogmas as expressions of practical value in and for action, rather than as intellectual propositions of a purely “religious” or ecclesiastical type, belonging solely to the creeds.