Rationalism does not attack the religions of the world, it tries
to explain them. But religions do not wish to be explained, and
consequently they denounce the investigator as an enemy of morals as
well as of religion. Reason, the theologians contend, is incapable of
understanding the divine mysteries, and forgets, of course, that faith
alone can discover the hidden things of God. But they do not stop to
think that they are reasoning even when they are giving reasons why we
should not reason.
Beginning with the belief in God, which is the basic belief in nearly
all religions, Rationalism endeavors to show the unreasonableness of all
the dogmas which deal with the supernatural. It is impossible to
talk about an infinite person without making one's self utterly
unintelligible, not to say, absurd. There is not a single statement
made about a god, which can be harmonized with sense. It is because the
beliefs about the supernatural cannot be reconciled with reason,--it is
because of the apparent absurdity of the dogmas of religion, that the
clergy have had to resort to fire and blood,--the scourge, the dungeon,
the rack, the gallows, and hell-fire to force people to believe in them.
There is no reliable record of God ever being seen by man. His voice
has never been heard. His form and expression or whereabouts remain
a mystery to this day. We have nothing but guesses as to the kind
of worship he prefers, or why he should be praised. And yet, entire
countries have been plundered, pillaged, and laid waste for no other
reason than that they held different views from ours on the form or
nature of a God whom no man has ever seen, heard or comprehended. Such
is the extraordinary folly of man!
All religions are absolutely human in origin. There is not, and there
has never been, and in the nature of things there never can be a divine
or superhuman religion--that is to say, a religion invented by a god.
Let us imagine for the sake of argument, however, that a god wished to
reveal himself to us. What would be the probable course he would pursue?
Would he reveal himself to us as he is, or only as much of himself as we
needed to know or could comprehend? To reveal himself to us as he is in
all the fulness of his nature would be a moral impossibility, for the
reason that only a god could fully comprehend a god.
But if he revealed to men only as much of himself as they could grasp,
then their knowledge of him must necessarily be imperfect. We are
revealing ourselves to the animals, for instance, every day of our life,
but still the animals, owing to their limitations, can never know us
as we are, but only as they think we are. Likewise our knowledge of
supernatural beings must be as incomplete as is the knowledge of animals
concerning man. We see objects as the structure of our eyes permits us
to see them, or as our minds grasp them. The reflection of the sky in
a drop of dew is limited to the capacity of the dew. Owing to this
adaptation of objects to the powers of the observer before they can be
observed at all, it may be said that objects are seen not as they really
are but as they appear to the observer. Since, then, a divine revelation
cannot overcome the limitations of the finite mind, God could be no more
to us than what _we_ think he is, or in other words, what we make him to
be.
Another proof that man is the maker of his own gods is that his gods
are neither better nor worse than he is himself. The barbarian can never
conceive of a civilized diety; on the contrary, the Great Spirit he
worships is a projection of his own passions and aspirations--his own
vices and virtues. As he advances in refinement and humanity, his God
advances too. If he sinks into deeper ignorance and brutality, he drags
his God down with him. The God of the Quaker is peaceful; that of the
Hebrew was a "man of war." The God of the Negro, who has never seen
white folks, is necessarily black. The God of children is a child-god;
and in a society where man, not woman, is the ruler, God is a "he."
Not only is man the maker of his gods, but he also keeps them in
repair--constantly remodeling or retouching them in order to preserve
some sort of correspondence between himself and his gods.
And why is the god of the Negro black? Because he not only is ignorant
of any other color, but because black is for him the color of preference
or aristocracy. When he becomes acquainted with white people he
associates their color with everything that he fears and despises. He
therefore, as a later evolution, makes his devils white. The idea I
wish to present is that just as man determines the color of his gods and
devils he determines also their characters. He can only invest them with
such virtues and vices as he is acquainted with. He can not attribute
to them powers which he does not covet for himself. In short he is the
maker of the gods he worships and the devils he fears.
The pathetic part of all this, however, is that though man makes his own
gods, he imagines that the gods have made him. He manufactures an image
or an idol, invests it with certain attributes and powers, and then,
like a slave, falls down to bite the dust before his own handiwork.
Reflect upon this for a moment: The Pope, for instance, owes every one
of his prerogatives to the very people who bend before him; they make
him infallible, they seat him on a throne, and place the Keys of Heaven
and Hell in his hands; yet before this creature of their own vanity or
fear they behave like a race of bondsmen. Who created the Sultan or the
Czar? Their own subjects! And yet see how these Turks and Russians creep
and crawl before the work of their own hands. Is it not absurd for a
potter to worship his own pot? In view, therefore, of the undeniable
fact that man makes the gods he worships, how pitiable to observe the
servility and stupidity with which he plays the sycophant before the
images of his own hand or head!
Notwithstanding this self-evident truth that all religions are human in
origin, every one of them has claimed to be from above. Like puffed-up
or ungrateful children, the religions of the world have denied their
real, though humble parentage, and have laid claim to a celestial
birth. But the fact that each of the great religions, while claiming
a supernatural origin for itself, vehemently denies it to all others,
renders all such claims exceedingly suspicious. It would be easier for
me, for instance, to believe that God has also spoken to you, if he
has really spoken to me. But if he has not spoken to me, I am apt to
consider the claim that he has spoken to you, as an impertinence. The
reason one "inspired" teacher calls another "an imposter" is that he
is not sure of his own inspiration. He judges others' pretensions to a
divine origin by his own. * The refusal of the different religions
to believe in one another is a strong proof that they are all equally
unworthy of belief, as far as their supernatural claims are concerned.
* Oato used to say that he was surprised one soothsayer
could keep his countenance when he saw another manipulating,
knowing as he did the imposture he was practicing.
Jesus is reported by John the evangelist to have denounced
all who preceded his as "thieves and robbers."--Gospel
according to John.
There is a Hindoo legend that Krishna, the son of God, once
showed himself to a group of young ladies who were so
charmed with his handsome face and figure that not only did
each of the young ladies wish to dance with him, but each
insisted that no one else should enjoy the same privilege,
whereupon Krishna found himself in an embarrassing position.
He was willing enough to dance with the girls, but did not
wish to inflame their jealously, so calling upon his
resources, he immediately multiplied himself into as many
Krishnas as there were maidens, and danced with each and
every one of them, taking pains however to leave the
impression with each young woman that she alone had danced
with the god. So each religious prophet imagines that the
Lord has not danced with anybody but himself.
The reluctance of the prophets to believe in one another shows how
difficult it is for us to ascertain to which of them the revelation has
been made. The only way a special revelation could be given would be
through an individual--a Moses, a Mohammed, a Jesus, etc. But if we
ourselves are not inspired, how are we to tell which teacher is telling
the truth? If we are to use our own reason to decide this momentous
question, why, then, do we need a revelation? Tell me, I pray you, was
it fair in God to have expressed himself privately to some individual,
and then to have left it to us to decide whether said individual was or
was not inspired?
And a revelation, the truth or untruth of which has to be ascertained by
the exercise of human reason can claim no superiority to human reason.
It follows then unmistakably that a revelation is impossible since it
is we who have to decide whether or not it is a revelation. Even as we
create the gods, we create also the bibles of the world.
Besides the ostensible purpose of a revelation is to make things
clear, or to change our ignorance into knowledge. Have the different
revelations of the world done this? Have they not, on the contrary,
added to the perplexities of the mind? A god who reveals himself to an
individual privately and then leaves it to us to decide whether said
individual has or has not received a revelation instead of relieving,
increases our embarrassment.
If it be argued that we should have faith, I answer in which one of the
prophets? Shall we have faith in the one our parents believed, in the
one of the country we were born in, in the one who agrees with us, or in
the one who can force us to accept him?
Moreover, if faith can make one prophet inspired, why not another? If
faith can make Jesus divine, why not Mohammed?
It is our purpose to show that neither gods nor revealed religions can
be a proper subject of study, and what cannot be a subject of study
cannot be an object of faith. We do not deny the gods, for we know
nothing about them to be able to make any reasonable statement
concerning them; we simply dismiss them from our thought.
But while the supernatural has no interest for the Rationalist, he is
very much interested in the interpretations which men have given of
it, and the manner in which they have built up a system of morals and a
philosophy of life upon it. The great teachers and founders of religions
are proper subjects both for criticism and commendation. Being men they
cannot claim immunity from a free and fearless examination of their
teachings. The more honest a teacher is, the more willing he is to be
investigated, and nothing prejudices us more against a teacher than
his refusal to be questioned. "He who will have no judge but himself,
condemns himself," says the proverb.
But to regard these teachers as men, only, is to divest them also of
all the magical powers which a fond credulity has ascribed to them.
A teacher who seeks converts to his religion by curing a horse, as
Zoroaster is supposed to have done, or by changing a stick into a
serpent, as Moses claims he did, or water into wine, as Jesus is
believed to have done, instead of saving the world, degrades it. We
insult our teachers when we ascribe to them miraculous powers such as
walking on the water, multiplying, loaves and raising the dead. All the
wonders of the world cannot make what is bad, good, or what is false,
true. A teacher who has a falsehood which he wishes to pass for the
truth may resort to a miracle; but why should an honest soul undertake
to win converts by unintelligible performances? If physical and
mathematical truth can, unaided, command universal assent, why should
there be "signs and wonders" to maintain moral or intellectual truths?
Moreover, if a teacher has power to stop the sun, has he not the power
to make people see the truth without a miracle? If he can raise the
dead, can he not lift the human mind out of error without the aid of
extraordinary phenomena? Resorting to miracles to convert people,
proves, not the power, but the despair of the teacher. He who can
command followers relying solely upon the truth of his teaching is, and
remains forever, a greater moral and intellectual force than he who is
driven to surprise and bewilder his hearers before he can convert
them. *
* To aim to convert a man by miracle is a profanation.
--Emerson
And now before we can make an estimate of the world's leading religions,
we must try to arrive at some sort of an agreement as to what we would
consider the greatest virtue, and what the greatest vice in religion.
There will be no objection, on the part of my readers, to the statement
that the most heinous of all vices in any religion is _cruelty_. There
is not a crime or an error which is not made worse by cruelty--or
softened by the absence of it. Cruelty is the most inexcusable, the most
inhuman, the most unreasonable, the most degrading, and the most
deadly of the vices that human nature is heir to. Cruelty is consummate
wickedness. It is the passion of the bad because it is bad. It is
doing evil from pleasure, Think, then, what a serious thing it is for
a religion purporting to be "divine" to recommend the halter, the
fire-brand and the sword, for instance, against all who do not subscribe
to its dogmas. With such a religion in force, it will not be necessary
to invent a devil, for man, himself, under its influence, must develop
into a fiend of hate and cruelty, withering all he comes in contact
with, as the frost blackens all it bites.
It is admitted that there is an element of cruelty in almost all the
religions of the world;--though of Buddhism it has been claimed that
during its nearly twenty-five centuries of existence, it has not killed,
much less tortured a single human being in the name of religion. That is
certainly an enviable record. It should compel the hot flush of shame to
the cheek of those persecuting Faiths which have shed enough human
blood "to incamardine the multitudinous seas." As Buddhism is one of
the numerically stronger religions of the world, and as it has helped to
shape the beliefs and practices recommended by the more recent creeds, a
brief examination of its fundamental doctrine would assist us in making
an estimate of its moral worth and may be useful to this discussion.
What is the teaching which makes of Buddhism a distinctive religion?
_Life is an evil_, taught the Hindu reformer. To desire life is the acme
of immorality according to this doctrine for it is to desire that which
is evil. Desire is the soil in which spring up all the noxious weeds
which choke to death the flower of happiness. To cease to desire is to
conquer freedom from suffering. Salvation according to Buddhism consists
in winding up and sealing forever the book of life, leaving not the
remotest possibility for any fresh life to spring up again. This
pessimism, which while it has attractions for the speculative and supine
Oriental, is justly abhorred by the creative and ever-youthful European.
The important question is not, "Is life worth living?" but "How can life
be made worth living, since live we must?" While therefore Buddha taught
a scrupulous morality, while his own character stands out as one of the
noblest, and while his teachings have made countless millions gentle and
peaceful, nevertheless, there is in this mildest of religions, much
that is positively harmful. The Buddhist conception of life with its
blighting pessimism which recommends non-resistance to evil, has emptied
a continent of its vigor and converted it into a desert. The teaching
of orthodox Buddhism may be likened to the advice which a sea captain,
driven by despair, might give to his men on deck--to sink the ship
in order to escape the storm. Then again the Buddhist doctrine of
reincarnation as an endless chain of nightmares, dragging man through
unending births to "the vast void night," has caused untold agony of
mind and body. This gloomy view has made life, for millions of people, a
misfortune, love a crime, and the earth, a hell!
The believers in transmigration or reincarnation forget that the
scientific view of man leaves no room for anything to migrate. What
science understands by soul is the word which expresses the functions,
including brain activity and the circulation of the blood. When these
cease there is no soul to go anywhere. Neither could reincarnation
produce the moral discipline claimed by its advocates. It is no
punishment to return to the world in a lower form of life, since there
is no memory, clear and ringing, of a former and higher existence.
Moreover, the lower forms of life are more callous and not at all
conscious of deflection from a better standard. If a cruel man becomes
a tiger, it would be giving him a better chance to be more cruel. Unless
the animal can remember his humanity, he can not be disciplined by a
descent into a lower stage of being..
But the Buddhist hell, fearful though it is, is, fortunately, not
everlasting. Over its gaping mouth is spread the rainbow arch of
Nirvana, that is to say, deliverance for all from every form of
suffering, in sleep--_eternal sleep_, which will, some day, according to
this religion, fold an aching world on its cool and calm bosom.
The vice of Buddhism then is its exaggeration of the troubles of
life--its deprecation of the opportunities for the pursuit of truth and
goodness which life offers. By dwelling too long and too often upon
the thorns, Buddhism becomes blind to the rose which is as real as the
thorns. And again this Oriental teacher set up an unattainable ideal
when he demanded the eradication of all desire from the human soul. Man
can only change his desires; he cannot cease to desire. Not to desire is
also a desire--a desire to be free from desire.
The virtue which we admire most in Buddha's doctrine is gentleness.
Buddha is said to have been of all great leaders the most compassionate.
He trembled to cause pain to the least of sentient things. The birds,
the fishes, the crawling worms, as well as man, he looked upon as his
brothers. Buddhism might be called the Religion of Pity. There is little
doubt but that wherever Buddhism triumphed there war and persecution,
two of the most abominable institutions of all time, practically
disappeared.
It is with feelings of undivided admiration that I now come to speak of
Confucius--the only Rationalist among the immortals of ancient times. If
the other founders of Faiths owe their reign over the minds of men, in
part at least, to the wonderful miracles attributed to them, Confucius,
on the contrary, owes his increasing reputation to the complete absence
of the supernatural from his life and doctrines. He has conquered the
ages by his common sense. And his sanity assures for him a future which
we can not safely predict for the others.
Omitting a historical sketch of the great Chinese teacher, and confining
ourselves briefly to an exposition of his philosophy or religion, we
notice at once that Confucianism devotes itself exclusively to this
world--to the now and here. This is very remarkable when we remember
how all the other teachers made the world to come, that is to say, some
invisible and undiscovered world the principal theme of their preaching.
To lose this world that we may win the next was the burden of the
teaching of both Buddha and Jesus. But the great Chinaman completely
ignored the so-called next world, and directed all his efforts toward
the enlightenment of man concerning the world that now is. It will
readily be seen what a radical difference there is between Confucius and
his colleagues. When they spoke of gods, Confucius spoke of man;
when they asked for faith, Confucius recommended knowledge; when they
delivered mysteries, Confucius presented facts. With perfect propriety
we may call Confucius the first apostle of secularism. Now secularism is
the very opposite of supernaturalism, and as the world is becoming more
and more secular, that is to say, practical and humanitarian, Confucius
is the only one among the great sages who is as much modern as he is
ancient.
In the teaching of Confucius we do not find the least suggestion of
even so much as a Buddhist hell. The religion taught by Confucius is the
least theological of any Oriental cult. Confucius was a teacher, not a
priest. He worked no miracles, delivered no inspired oracles, dealt in
no mysteries, claimed no supernatural powers, did not think that the
less sense there was in a religion the more divine it would be, and made
no attempt to allure with future promises, or to frighten with hell-fire
his hearers. In the long annals of a past musty with age and choking
with superstitions innumerable, the page on which is inscribed the name
of this sanest of all Asiatics is the fairest and freest from cant and
rant.
The name of Zoroaster takes us back to a very remote period in the
history of our humanity. It has been conjectured that when he began
his career as a religious teacher he found his people, the Persians,
worshiping the principle of Evil, or Ahriman, the Persian name for
Devil. While Zoroaster was unable to wean his people from Ahriman, he
did succeed in supplementing the fear of the devil with the love of God
or Ormuzd, the principle of goodness. The dualism is the distinguishing
characteristic of the religion founded by Zoroaster, and is also its
contribution to nearly all the other religions; for we find in Judaism,
Christianity and Mohammedanism the same fundamental belief in the
existence of a God invariably accompanied by his rival--the Devil. What
the one creates, the other destroys; what the one mends, the other mars;
God makes the light, the Devil the darkness; God kindles the flame,
the Devil tries to turn it into smoke; God is omnipotent in wisdom, the
Devil is equally resourceful in mischief. Zoroastrianism or Mazdaism,
then, is the parent of dualism, namely, of the eternal struggle between
these two archpowers for the possession of man.
Without denying to Zoroaster the name of reformer, and also of
empire-builder,--for doubtless his services contributed to the political
expansion of Persia, making her on land and sea, one of the great
powers of ancient times, and duly acknowledging the beginnings of a high
morality in the collected scriptures called the _Avestas_, attributed
to his pen,--we are compelled by the evidence to charge the religion
of Zoroaster, that is to say, the religion of dualism, of a God plus a
Devil, with having invented, so to speak, the awful doctrine of hell,
and therefore of religious persecution. It was a natural consequence of
the belief in a God opposed by a Devil to make war upon all who were not
on the side of God. And as the prophet is himself invariably the vicar
or the apostle of God, it followed that all those who refused obedience
to his will were in opposition to the Deity and should be suppressed,
even as God is trying to suppress the Devil, his antagonist.
When we approach the Jewish-Christian faith, we find the dark stream
of religious persecution, which had its source in Zoroastrianism,
grown into a raging sea. The three religions, Judaism, Christianity and
Mohammedanism, bear to one another the relation of parent and children.
Christianity is the elder, and Mohammedanism the younger daughter
of Judaism. The predominant trait, which is common to them all, is
exclusiveness. It is impossible to be humanitarian or universal and
exclusive at the same time, which is another way of saying that, where
the spirit of exclusiveness holds sway, there religious toleration will
be considered a crime, both against God and the State. Of course in all
three of these faiths are to be found passages which seem to possess
an accent of universality. But it is a universality conditioned on the
conversion of the whole world to the faith in question. "My house shall
be a house of prayer for all nations," writes the Jewish prophet, but
observe it says,--"My house,"--which means that the whole world will
come to worship in a Jewish temple. It does not mean that Pagan and
Christian, without embracing the Jewish faith, may each worship his
own "Christ" in a Jewish synagogue. It is in this same spirit that the
Mohammedan throws open his mosque, and the Christian his cathedral to
the whole world. Brotherhood in these religions is limited to those of
the true faith. The misbeliever is an alien to whom it is a sin even to
say "God speed." Intermarriage is forbidden with a view to emphasize the
fact that only through conversion can a stranger become a friend or a
brother. Such exclusiveness was bound to breed hatred and persecution.
And as men make their gods, an exclusive people will have an exclusive
god. The Bible conception of God is one of the most repellant in
religious literature. We may say it is the least successful attempt at
god-making on record. The three religions we have named have all one and
the same God, with only unimportant variations. The authors of the
Bible seem to have labored under the impression that to make their God
acceptable they had only to make him intensely partisan. One who loves
his own only. But they have made him, necessarily, as terrible as he
is exclusive. He is not only called a jealous God, but also a consuming
fire, a man of war. It is expressly stated that "He is angry every
day." The English translators have interpolated the words--"with the
wicked,"--but the original as rendered into Latin, German, French and
other languages, shows plainly that the editors of King James' Version
took undue liberties with the text. The Revised Version has dropped the
words _with the wicked_, and the text now conveys the same meaning in
the English Bible as in the German, which reads: "Und ein Gott, der
taglich dirauet," and in the French, "La colere the Dieu est toujours
prete a eclater."
"Irascitur per singulos dies," are the words in the Vulgate.
To please his makers the God of the Jew, the Christian and the
Mohammedan orders the extermination of all who object to be converted:
"And thou shalt consume all the people which the Lord thy God shall
deliver thee: thine eye shall have no pity upon them." Each of the three
religions, unfortunately, has been too willing to obey to the letter
this unfraternal injunction introduced into the mouth of the Deity by
the priesthood. As the authors of the above text claimed to be inspired
the priests of these three religions have shed more blood than all the
tyrants put together. This is a fearful but absolutely just indictment
against the Jewish-Chris-tian-Mohammedan religion.
But confining for a moment our remarks to Christianity alone, it must be
admitted that in spite of its doctrine of hell, it has certain redeeming
features about it which are of undoubted pagan origin and which we do
not find in Judaism. The advantage of Christianity over Judaism consists
in the former's generous efforts to save the whole world, irrespective
of race or color, from the doom of hell. This is the contribution of the
Gentile to Christianity. The words of Jesus, "Go ye into all the world
and preach the Gospel to every creature," were in all probability put
in his mouth by a Gentile. What Jesus really said, if, indeed, we can
be sure of anything that he said, was, "Go not into the cities of the
Gentiles," assuring them at the same time that the world would come
to an end before they had even finished preaching to the lost sheep of
Israel. Jesus as a Jew shared the belief of his people that "none are
beloved before God but Israel." It was the Greek and Latin genius that
made of Christianity more than merely another. Jewish sect, by breathing
into it as much of its universalism as a dogmatic religion would admit
Of course, the best service which paganism rendered Christianity was
to introduce into it a new God--the _man_ God as against the all-God
Jehovah--who, by personal sacrifices, conquered for the whole world
an opportunity to be saved. Christ, as a secondary God--or a junior
God--was the revolt of the Gentile world against the Jewish Deity.
Whatever good Christianity has done is due to this rebellion which
culminated in compelling the dread Jehovah to admit the man-God into
full and equal partnership with him. The Jews call this blasphemy; but
Christianity, inspired by the Hellenic and Latin genius, weakened the
divinity by dividing it into three--later into four, by the addition of
a woman to the number. In this alone, namely, in making a new God, and
thus taking from the old solitary deity many of his ancient and Semitic
prerogatives, Christianity has proved its greater sympathy with paganism
than with Judaism.
Another leading trait of these three religions is their fear and hatred
of freedom of thought To perpetuate their own power the priests of this
family of religions found it necessary to suppress, at first by threats
of divine punishments, and when these failed, by force of arms, all
inquiry. Faith, which meant unquestioning acquiescence, was of God;
Science, which meant investigation, was of the Devil. The agents of this
group of religions which between them have held Europe, America and a
great part of Asia and Africa captive for many centuries, prompted their
God to solemnly declare in infallible documents, that a father should
not hesitate to kill his own son, or a son his own father; that a mother
should destroy her child, and the child its mother,--to prevent them
from professing or following another religion. It is impossible to bring
a more horrible accusation against a set of men. The worst thing that
we can say against the profession of the law or of medicine, pales into
insignificance when compared with this specimen of the inhumanity of the
priesthood. The day of judgment is here, and the founders of these three
religions are summoned to answer at the bar of humanity, awakened from
sleep, for the wholesale massacres which have dipped the world in blood,
for the Spanish and Scottish inquisitions, and for the sectarianism and
hatred which converted men of the same race and country into implacable
enemies and persecutors of one another.
The religious commentators defend the respective scriptures of these
religions by saying that their teachings were limited to the mental
level of the times and the peoples. But if God had to descend to
the plane of man and become brutal and bigoted like him, how was man
benefited by his intercourse with the divine? Furthermore, if the mental
and moral limitations of a people determine the character of revelation,
what advantage is there in having a revelation? Moreover, because a
child cannot comprehend algebra, is it right to teach him that one and
one make three? Is the inability of the primitive man to appreciate the
higher virtues of generosity, justice and fellowship with aliens, an
excuse to command him to exterminate his neighbors, * to bear false
witness, ** to practice immorality, to plunder, to be cruel and
credulous? *** If a revelation cannot civilize a barbarian, what is its
value?
* Deut. 7: 16, etc.
** Jer. 4: 10; I. Kings 22: 23; Ezek. 14: 9, etc.
***Exod. 12: 85, 36; I. Sam. 16: 1, 2,; Exod. 1; 18-20, etc.
But while denouncing intolerance we must not become intolerant
ourselves. With all their faults these three religions have been, in
their day, of considerable service to the world. We may justly say of
them that having done all the bad and all the good of which they
were capable it is time for them to step aside and leave the field to
science. Am I asked what good these religions have done? I answer: They
have taught man science by forbidding it. It may sound strange, but
religion aroused human curiosity, which again discovered science. The
time came when man was not satisfied with information only about the
next world, about spirits and demons, about mysteries and divine
attributes; he asked also information about this world, about man, the
past history of the earth and so forth. Just as by seeking the
philosopher's stone men discovered chemistry, and by the way of
astrology they came to the science of astronomy, and by the way of
sorcery and magic to the knowledge of medicine,--so did theology develop
into philosophy.
Religion also must be credited with having been the first to give man a
system of thought. Now a system, however crude, is a work of art. It
is a creation. It is a putting together of ideas and beliefs for the
purpose of arriving at a conclusion. Thus religion taught man to think
connectedly, to see the relation of things, and to think for a purpose,
that is to say, to reason. The savage has ideas too, but he can not put
them together, he can not classify or systematize them. There has been
iron in the bowels of the earth, and lying on the surface in many places
for long ages, but only when man could give shape and form to it did he
enter the path of civilization. In the same sense, not until man could
forge, fuse and combine his ideas into a system of some kind, did he
begin his intellectual evolution. Religion started civilization by
enabling man to put his ideas together. Even as the worm was the
prophecy of the coming man, the creed was the beginning of science.
Let us see if we cannot make this idea a little clearer: All religions
represent the effort of the human mind to understand itself and its
environment. At the core of every religion, however crude, there is a
philosophy,--that is to say, every belief, be it ever so foolish, has a
meaning, and at one time was a help to man.
The savage carries a fetish on his person to secure himself against
evil. The civilized man crosses himself in the presence of danger. Both
practices embody a truth, and it is the province of criticism to define
that truth.
When the turbaned Oriental, standing in his mosque, pronounces the name
of _Allah_ with such awe and joy, what is it he means? In his groping
way he is aiming to be scientific; he is trying his hand at philosophy;
he wishes to put his finger upon the nerve of the universe; he is trying
to bring the multifarious forces of nature about him into a focus; he
is trying to evolve harmony out of chaos,--music out of the discord and
babel of life; and he thinks he has succeeded, when he has pronounced
the word _Allah!_ Of course, his philosophy is that of a beginner, but
it is a philosophy, nevertheless. He is an embryo scientist, taking his
first lesson in logical reasoning. That is the truth at the heart of all
religions which we must recognize. They represent the desire of man to
make things clear to his intelligence, and to wrest life's secret
from the universe. Man seeks knowledge because in the consciousness
of knowledge there is happiness and power. The strain of ignorance is
intolerable to him. Darkness embarrasses his mind and he seeks the light
by instinct.
The primitive man, for instance, alarmed by the things he did not
understand, proposed explanation after explanation, in his effort to
throw off the darkness from his mind. When the sky frowned upon him and
the winds wailed in his ears, he did not know what to make of them, and
felt insecure until he could satisfy himself that he understood how
and why the dark clouds swept over the face of the skies and the winds
moaned about his dwelling. He felt relieved when he believed that he had
grasped the situation. His explanation that the sun and the wind were
free agents, like himself, acting from choice, as he thought he did, was
a very crude one, but it was an explanation, all the same, and for the
time being proved helpful to him. From the very beginning, man has shown
a hunger for knowledge, which has put his mind in action. Religion,
then, is man's first attempt at scientific and philosophical thinking.
Religion is, in a sense, the primer of science and philosophy. The
mistake we make is to declare this primer infallible. We take the first
composition of the child, so to speak--his first prattle in the presence
of the universe--and pronounce it inspired. When Moses, or whoever wrote
the first chapters of the book of Genesis, described how man and woman
were fashioned, he was trying to be scientific, in his modest way. But
the best explanation that his mentality could produce was that God took
some clay from the ground and kneaded it into the form of man, and from
one of the ribs of this man he formed woman. It is not his science we
commend; it is his desire to explain man's origin that honors him, for
out of that desire, philosophy, science,--progress--are born.
But there is another truth hidden in the bosom of all religions which it
is the mission of philosophy to disclose. The first truth I called
your attention to was that the primitive beliefs of man represented his
effort to understand the world and himself; the second truth is that
all the religious rites and ceremonies, the most superstitious of them,
embody likewise a truth;--they represent the effort of man to get the
control of the universe into his own hands. If today we possess any
power over the resources and forces of nature, if we can utilize them,
command them to do our errands, to wait upon us, to serve us,--this
power is the fruition of that primitive desire of our barbarian
ancestors to get the gods under control by presents and compliments.
The scientist masters the laws of nature,--the movements of the
atmosphere, the currents of the ocean, the lightning's secret, for the
purpose of putting a bit into their mouths to control them for human
service; but the priest when he offered his bloody sacrifices, when he
performed his incantations, and repeated magical formulas, had the same
aim in view,--the control of the universe. As soon as primitive man
concluded that the sun, for example, or the river, was a god, he set to
work to learn the habits, tastes, pleasure of his gods, that he might
prevent them from hurting him and encourage them to gratify his needs.
In other words, he wished to replace them in the government of the
world. He did not feel safe until he could get the reins in his own
hands. When I was in one of the churches of Florence, and stood looking
at a figure of the pope with the keys of heaven and hell in his hand, it
dawned upon me that man, from time immemorial, has coveted the
ownership of the universe, and even in his feebleness gave himself the
satisfaction of holding the keys in his own hands.
But it would be unreasonable to continue to preserve and propagate these
religions at great cost to the people, and also at the detriment of more
important interests--on the ground that at one time, when man was but a
child, they were of service to him. Our ancestors before the age of
iron used tools made of stone. Shall these still be given the preference
despite the better and more useful implements of modern times--because,
forsooth, they started our race in its career of progress? Shall the
candle light be permitted to prejudice us against electricity; the
stagecoach against the locomotive; the cave of the savage against
the sanitary dwellings of modern cities; or the primitive forms of
communication against the wonderful wireless? Why, then, should Moses
or Mohammed or Jesus stand in the way of the science of the twentieth
century? If we may discard our mother's hut or the rag she clothed
herself with at one time, why not also her religion? True enough both
hut and rag served a purpose and marked a stage in the evolution of man,
but the purpose they served was to fit us for something better, that is
to say, to make us discontented with and rebellious against the hut and
the rag forever.
The day of faiths is over. They belong to the furniture of the past. The
glorious reign of Science has begun. Thought like a fruit on the tree of
evolution has at last ripened. The glow of the sun, and the tints of the
sky are upon her. The countries which were the first to replace faith
by knowledge have invariably been the first also in civilization. While
Palestine remained a desert, Greece became the garden of the world.
Whatever of beauty there is in our lives today, we owe it to the
immortal Greeks. Truth and goodness flourish in all their glory only
among a free and intelligent people. Where there is an infallible faith
there can be no liberty of thought, and without liberty of thought there
is no mind, and without mind man is not different from the brute.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Story of My Mind, by M. M. Mangasarian