These two works of Kant’s, the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason appear to emanate from two different pens; in the first, whatever is asserted is proved. The second work is dictated by a personal experience; Kant affirms that thus it is and that it cannot be otherwise. But here again I perceive a lack, a want, if not from the believer’s point of view, yet from that of those people who ask what could be the religion of our primitive ancestors; personal experience is not expressed as Kant expresses it, unless it is the result of a long series of meditations and examinations of conscience; in a word, experiences which have been transmitted from generation to generation. This is a religion that has achieved much, it is not that form of it which would be found amongst the generality of men, and still less would it spring to life in the heart of primitive man.
But here are two positivist philosophers who undertake to solve this great problem: they consider reason as ready with a reply to those who seek to know the meaning of God and of religion, two concepts which are inseparable, the one from the other; and even ready to explain how these two concepts have penetrated into the consciousness of all human beings. These philosophers speak no doubt from experience, for having questioned their reason it has replied to them: God and religion form one conception.
The first explanation is—man is conscious of his condition; he is possessed with the desire of happiness, and is unable to realise it; but his imagination represents to him another state in which the desire of happiness will exist and in which there will be no obstacle to its realisation; the first of these states is real, the other visible to the mind’s eye; they are therefore not identical; to will and not to have the power is to be man; to will and to be omnipotent is to be God. Little by little man understands that these two states of conditions having been conceived by the same mind, have the same origin; the notion fixes itself firmly in his mind that the two states seem gradually to approach each other, and are not always distinguishable; the union of desire and power is the Divine essence; the growing consciousness of this union is religion, which dawns and increases in man.
Man does not desire immortality because he believes in it, nor because it is demonstrable; but he believes in it and demonstrates its existence because he desires it. The sentence, “God sees all,” does not mean, so we are told, what it appears to mean; it expresses the feeling God knows all of which man is ignorant, but which he fain would know; and the sentence, “God is beneficence,” is the cry of man who desires happiness. All the predicates applied by man to the Deity in the course of history and humanity have never, in the opinion of philosophers, had any other origin than the representation of our wishes.
But the inner combat, which has been long and unhappy, with no truce, has exhausted man’s powers, and when the despondency checks, and at times almost paralyses his flight after happiness, the instinct of self-preservation leads him towards religion; as this instinct with the incapacity of satisfying it is inseparable in man, motives of religion are renewed continually in each individual and consequently in the multitude.
God and religion, i.e. the outward sign of our union with God, yet emanates from ourselves. This system, of which Feuerbach is the exponent, has many followers amongst the Positivists.
The second explanation comes from a learned member of the extreme Positivist school in Germany; but, as Max Müller says, it would be impossible to represent religion in a worse light ... “and it would be difficult to take a lower view of it.”[66] According to Dr Gruppe, religion exists simply because it satisfies certain selfish instincts of man. He notices two. The first instinct is common to all organic beings; it tends towards the preservation of the individual, and consequently to that of the race; it is elementary, and acts from within outwards. The second instinct belongs only to man taken collectively, and has vitality only in numbers; it belongs to a more advanced stage, and acts from without inwardly. Man instinctively grasps the greatest amount of happiness possible; he therefore seeks that which he considers his greatest good, not after the fashion of the beasts, but in his own way.
“We call religious belief,” says Dr Gruppe, “a belief in an indefinable state or being which we strive to bring into our sphere, and to render permanent by means of sacrificial ceremonies, prayers, penances, and self-denial.”[67]
This indefinable something, the professor considers, would never have appeared in the world without an impulsion, however light; an accidental movement, a casual combination of a disordered brain, and a personality endowed with a certain amount of energy, would have sufficed to make a single individual the author of an idea totally opposed to man’s good possession common sense, and the originator of a movement which must find in the surroundings in which it came to life, all facilities for its indefinite perpetuation. It is of no consequence whether this mental phenomenon has been produced in one individual or in more; figures are of little account in the matter. If this disease called hallucination[68] had remained confined in the circumscribed sphere of one individual or a few, a personal intelligent effort might have overcome it, but being contagious and spreading amongst the people it became impossible to conquer it. The natural laws of reason once violated, the perturbed mind created a succession of sophistical arguments which appeared to satisfy the ineradicable desire for happiness in man; and an incredibly tenacious opposition on the side of error assumed menacing proportions. If the belief that the sun, instead of disappearing each night below the horizon, would continue to shine during the night could in any way contribute to the happiness of mankind, men would slowly but surely have accepted it.
The man who isolates himself from his fellow men and becomes self-absorbed is peculiarly apt to create for himself mental pictures which give him pleasure; if, then, joy is indispensable to man’s existence, the religion which gives it, or the illusion of it, enables him to forget the tangible world, and substitute an imaginary one peopled with phantoms. But the solitary man is a rare phenomenon, and we judge favourably those men who live in the midst of their social surroundings, and whose community of ideas and sentiments has made a homogeneous whole, during many centuries. Each one will find means to develop his personal faculties, and to strengthen his power of resistance in the struggle of all against all, and the good which is illusive in the solitary man becomes a benefit to the members of the society.