Even were the facts otherwise, democracy is greater than any
constitution; and its vital principles would remain valid. From a
democratic point of view, the state has no right to impose any religious
observance on a single individual, nor to limit any of his actions
in accordance with the doctrines of any religion; it has no right to
appropriate a single cent of public money for any religious purpose,
nor to cast its moral influence for or against any religion or religious
sect. Its plain duty toward all forms of opinion concerning religion is
to maintain a perfect neutrality, and to treat all citizens on a plane
of absolute equality in this respect. The state is officially
neither Christian nor anti-Christian. It is simply an organization of
individuals for mutual protection and for the more effective forwarding
of their strictly collective aims and interests, which are exclusively
secular. The moment it passes beyond these boundaries, its actions
become _ultra vires_ and tyrannical.
As already shown, nothing can be more completely and essentially a
private matter than religion. Where the beliefs, words or acts of an
individual do not affect the equal rights of any of his fellows, singly
or collectively, the state can under no legitimate pretext interfere
with them. Not only may it not interfere with the free exercise of any
form of religious worship or the performance of any religious acts not
properly prohibited on grounds of public policy independent of their
connection with religion, but it is guilty of a flagrant denial of equal
justice, if it shows the slightest partiality to any form of religious
or anti-religious belief, or practices any discrimination against any
such. It has no right to help or encourage any or all forms of religion,
any more than to hamper or discourage them. The one thing to which they
are all, from Roman Catholicism to Atheism, entitled to receive from the
state on precisely equal terms, is protection in the peaceable exercise
of their rights, involving full liberty to spread their respective
doctrines at their own cost. No honest cult would ask for more, and
no self-respecting school of thought would accept less. Whether any
particular religion or religion as a whole thrives or decays, is none of
the state's business. All it has to do is to give a free field to all,
and let them succeed or fail in proportion to their own merits and their
ability to convince men and women of their truth and of their claim to
support at the hands of individuals.