the most important of all truths. Because its doctrines are, as I have
said, of such a lofty kind that the multitude can't grasp them without
an intermediary, because, I say, its light would blind the ordinary eye,
it comes forward wrapt in the veil of allegory and teaches, not indeed
what is exactly true in itself, but what is true in respect of the lofty
meaning contained in it; and, understood in this way, religion is the
truth.
_Philalethes_. It would be all right if religion were only at liberty to
be true in a merely allegorical sense. But its contention is that it is
downright true in the proper sense of the word. Herein lies the
deception, and it is here that the friend of truth must take up a
hostile position.
_Demopheles_. The deception is a _sine qua non_. If religion were to
admit that it was only the allegorical meaning in its doctrine which was
true, it would rob itself of all efficacy. Such rigorous treatment as
this would destroy its invaluable influence on the hearts and morals of
mankind. Instead of insisting on that with pedantic obstinacy, look at
its great achievements in the practical sphere, its furtherance of good
and kindly feelings, its guidance in conduct, the support and
consolation it gives to suffering humanity in life and death. How much
you ought to guard against letting theoretical cavils discredit in the
eyes of the multitude, and finally wrest from it, something which is an
inexhaustible source of consolation and tranquillity, something which,
in its hard lot, it needs so much, even more than we do. On that score
alone, religion should be free from attack.
_Philalethes_. With that kind of argument you could have driven Luther
from the field, when he attacked the sale of indulgences. How many a one
got consolation from the letters of indulgence, a consolation which
nothing else could give, a complete tranquillity; so that he joyfully
departed with the fullest confidence in the packet of them which he held
in his hand at the hour of death, convinced that they were so many cards
of admission to all the nine heavens. What is the use of grounds of
consolation and tranquillity which are constantly overshadowed by the
Damocles-sword of illusion? The truth, my dear sir, is the only safe
thing; the truth alone remains steadfast and trusty; it is the only
solid consolation; it is the indestructible diamond.
_Demopheles_. Yes, if you had truth in your pocket, ready to favor us
with it on demand. All you've got are metaphysical systems, in which
nothing is certain but the headaches they cost. Before you take anything
away, you must have something better to put in its place.
_Philalethes_. That's what you keep on saying. To free a man from error
is to give, not to take away. Knowledge that a thing is false is a
truth. Error always does harm; sooner or later it will bring mischief to
the man who harbors it. Then give up deceiving people; confess ignorance
of what you don't know, and leave everyone to form his own articles of
faith for himself. Perhaps they won't turn out so bad, especially as
they'll rub one another's corners down, and mutually rectify mistakes.
The existence of many views will at any rate lay a foundation of
tolerance. Those who possess knowledge and capacity may betake
themselves to the study of philosophy, or even in their own persons
carry the history of philosophy a step further.
_Demopheles_. That'll be a pretty business! A whole nation of raw
metaphysicians, wrangling and eventually coming to blows with one
another!
_Philalethes_. Well, well, a few blows here and there are the sauce of
life; or at any rate a very inconsiderable evil compared with such
things as priestly dominion, plundering of the laity, persecution of
heretics, courts of inquisition, crusades, religious wars, massacres of
St. Bartholomew. These have been the result of popular metaphysics
imposed from without; so I stick to the old saying that you can't get
grapes from thistles, nor expect good to come from a pack of lies.
_Demopheles_. How often must I repeat that religion is anything but a
pack of lies? It is truth itself, only in a mythical, allegorical
vesture. But when you spoke of your plan of everyone being his own
founder of religion, I wanted to say that a particularism like this is
totally opposed to human nature, and would consequently destroy all
social order. Man is a metaphysical animal,--that is to say, he has
paramount metaphysical necessities; accordingly, he conceives life above
all in its metaphysical signification, and wishes to bring everything
into line with that. Consequently, however strange it may sound in view
of the uncertainty of all dogmas, agreement in the fundamentals of
metaphysics is the chief thing, because a genuine and lasting bond of
union is only possible among those who are of one opinion on these
points. As a result of this, the main point of likeness and of contrast
between nations is rather religion than government, or even language;
and so the fabric of society, the State, will stand firm only when
founded on a system of metaphysics which is acknowledged by all. This,
of course, can only be a popular system,--that is, a religion: it
becomes part and parcel of the constitution of the State, of all the
public manifestations of the national life, and also of all solemn acts
of individuals. This was the case in ancient India, among the Persians,
Egyptians, Jews, Greeks and Romans; it is still the case in the Brahman,
Buddhist and Mohammedan nations. In China there are three faiths, it is
true, of which the most prevalent--Buddhism--is precisely the one which
is not protected by the State; still, there is a saying in China,
universally acknowledged, and of daily application, that "the three
faiths are only one,"--that is to say, they agree in essentials. The
Emperor confesses all three together at the same time. And Europe is the
union of Christian States: Christianity is the basis of every one of the
members, and the common bond of all. Hence Turkey, though geographically
in Europe, is not properly to be reckoned as belonging to it. In the
same way, the European princes hold their place "by the grace of God:"
and the Pope is the vicegerent of God. Accordingly, as his throne was
the highest, he used to wish all thrones to be regarded as held in fee
from him. In the same way, too, Archbishops and Bishops, as such,
possessed temporal power; and in England they still have seats and votes
in the Upper House. Protestant princes, as such, are heads of their
churches: in England, a few years ago, this was a girl eighteen years
old. By the revolt from the Pope, the Reformation shattered the European
fabric, and in a special degree dissolved the true unity of Germany by
destroying its common religious faith. This union, which had practically
come to an end, had, accordingly, to be restored later on by artificial
and purely political means. You see, then, how closely connected a
common faith is with the social order and the constitution of every
State. Faith is everywhere the support of the laws and the constitution,
the foundation, therefore, of the social fabric, which could hardly hold
together at all if religion did not lend weight to the authority of
government and the dignity of the ruler.
_Philalethes_. Oh, yes, princes use God as a kind of bogey to frighten
grown-up children to bed with, if nothing else avails: that's why they
attach so much importance to the Deity. Very well. Let me, in passing,
recommend our rulers to give their serious attention, regularly twice
every year, to the fifteenth chapter of the First Book of Samuel, that
they may be constantly reminded of what it means to prop the throne on
the altar. Besides, since the stake, that _ultima ration theologorum_,
has gone out of fashion, this method of government has lost its
efficacy. For, as you know, religions are like glow-worms; they shine
only when it is dark. A certain amount of general ignorance is the
condition of all religions, the element in which alone they can exist.
And as soon as astronomy, natural science, geology, history, the
knowledge of countries and peoples have spread their light broadcast,
and philosophy finally is permitted to say a word, every faith founded
on miracles and revelation must disappear; and philosophy takes its
place. In Europe the day of knowledge and science dawned towards the end
of the fifteenth century with the appearance of the Renaissance
Platonists: its sun rose higher in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries so rich in results, and scattered the mists of the Middle Age.
Church and Faith were compelled to disappear in the same proportion; and
so in the eighteenth century English and French philosophers were able
to take up an attitude of direct hostility; until, finally, under
Frederick the Great, Kant appeared, and took away from religious belief
the support it had previously enjoyed from philosophy: he emancipated
the handmaid of theology, and in attacking the question with German
thoroughness and patience, gave it an earnest instead of a frivolous
tone. The consequence of this is that we see Christianity undermined in
the nineteenth century, a serious faith in it almost completely gone; we
see it fighting even for bare existence, whilst anxious princes try to
set it up a little by artificial means, as a doctor uses a drug on a
dying patient. In this connection there is a passage in Condorcet's
"_Des Progrès de l'esprit humain_" which looks as if written as a
warning to our age: "the religious zeal shown by philosophers and great
men was only a political devotion; and every religion which allows
itself to be defended as a belief that may usefully be left to the
people, can only hope for an agony more or less prolonged." In the whole
course of the events which I have indicated, you may always observe that
faith and knowledge are related as the two scales of a balance; when the
one goes up, the other goes down. So sensitive is the balance that it
indicates momentary influences. When, for instance, at the beginning of
this century, those inroads of French robbers under the leadership of
Bonaparte, and the enormous efforts necessary for driving them out and
punishing them, had brought about a temporary neglect of science and
consequently a certain decline in the general increase of knowledge, the
Church immediately began to raise her head again and Faith began to show
fresh signs of life; which, to be sure, in keeping with the times, was
partly poetical in its nature. On the other hand, in the more than
thirty years of peace which followed, leisure and prosperity furthered
the building up of science and the spread of knowledge in an
extraordinary degree: the consequence of which is what I have indicated,
the dissolution and threatened fall of religion. Perhaps the time is
approaching which has so often been prophesied, when religion will take
her departure from European humanity, like a nurse which the child has
outgrown: the child will now be given over to the instructions of a
tutor. For there is no doubt that religious doctrines which are founded
merely on authority, miracles and revelations, are only suited to the
childhood of humanity. Everyone will admit that a race, the past
duration of which on the earth all accounts, physical and historical,
agree in placing at not more than some hundred times the life of a man
of sixty, is as yet only in its first childhood.
_Demopheles_. Instead of taking an undisguised pleasure in prophesying
the downfall of Christianity, how I wish you would consider what a
measureless debt of gratitude European humanity owes to it, how greatly
it has benefited by the religion which, after a long interval, followed
it from its old home in the East. Europe received from Christianity
ideas which were quite new to it, the Knowledge, I mean, of the
fundamental truth that life cannot be an end-in-itself, that the true
end of our existence lies beyond it. The Greeks and Romans had placed
this end altogether in our present life, so that in this sense they may
certainly be called blind heathens. And, in keeping with this view of
life, all their virtues can be reduced to what is serviceable to the
community, to what is useful in fact. Aristotle says quite naively,
_Those virtues must necessarily be the greatest which are the most
useful to others_. So the ancients thought patriotism the highest
virtue, although it is really a very doubtful one, since narrowness,
prejudice, vanity and an enlightened self-interest are main elements in
it. Just before the passage I quoted, Aristotle enumerates all the
virtues, in order to discuss them singly. They are _Justice, Courage,
Temperance, Magnificence, Magnanimity, Liberality, Gentleness, Good
Sense_ and _Wisdom_. How different from the Christian virtues! Plato
himself, incomparably the most transcendental philosopher of
pre-Christian antiquity, knows no higher virtue than _Justice_; and he
alone recommends it unconditionally and for its own sake, whereas the
rest make a happy life, _vita beata_, the aim of all virtue, and moral
conduct the way to attain it. Christianity freed European humanity from
this shallow, crude identification of itself with the hollow, uncertain
existence of every day,
coelumque tueri
Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.
Christianity, accordingly, does not preach mere Justice, but _the Love
of Mankind, Compassion, Good Works, Forgiveness, Love of your Enemies,
Patience, Humility, Resignation, Faith_ and _Hope_. It even went a step
further, and taught that the world is of evil, and that we need
deliverance. It preached despisal of the world, self-denial, chastity,
giving up of one's will, that is, turning away from life and its
illusory pleasures. It taught the healing power of pain: an instrument
of torture is the symbol of Christianity. I am quite ready to admit that
this earnest, this only correct view of life was thousands of years
previously spread all over Asia in other forms, as it is still,
independently of Christianity; but for European humanity it was a new
and great revelation. For it is well known that the population of Europe
consists of Asiatic races driven out as wanderers from their own homes,
and gradually settling down in Europe; on their wanderings these races
lost the original religion of their homes, and with it the right view of
life: so, under a new sky, they formed religions for themselves, which
were rather crude; the worship of Odin, for instance, the Druidic or the
Greek religion, the metaphysical content of which was little and
shallow. In the meantime the Greeks developed a special, one might
almost say, an instinctive sense of beauty, belonging to them alone of
all the nations who have ever existed on the earth, peculiar, fine and
exact: so that their mythology took, in the mouth of their poets, and in
the hands of their artists, an exceedingly beautiful and pleasing shape.
On the other hand, the true and deep significance of life was lost to
the Greeks and Romans. They lived on like grown-up children, till
Christianity came and recalled them to the serious side of existence.
_Philalethes_. And to see the effects one need only compare antiquity
with the Middle Age; the time of Pericles, say, with the fourteenth
century. You could scarcely believe you were dealing with the same kind
of beings. There, the finest development of humanity, excellent
institutions, wise laws, shrewdly apportioned offices, rationally
ordered freedom, all the arts, including poetry and philosophy, at their
best; the production of works which, after thousands of years, are
unparalleled, the creations, as it were, of a higher order of beings,
which we can never imitate; life embellished by the noblest fellowship,
as portrayed in Xenophen's _Banquet_. Look on the other picture, if you
can; a time at which the Church had enslaved the minds, and violence the
bodies of men, that knights and priests might lay the whole weight of
life upon the common beast of burden, the third estate. There, you have
might as right, Feudalism and Fanaticism in close alliance, and in their
train abominable ignorance and darkness of mind, a corresponding
intolerance, discord of creeds, religious wars, crusades, inquisitions
and persecutions; as the form of fellowship, chivalry, compounded of
savagery and folly, with its pedantic system of ridiculous false
pretences carried to an extreme, its degrading superstition and apish
veneration for women. Gallantry is the residue of this veneration,
deservedly requited as it is by feminine arrogance; it affords continual
food for laughter to all Asiatics, and the Greeks would have joined in
it. In the golden Middle Age the practice developed into a regular and
methodical service of women; it imposed deeds of heroism, _cours
d'amour_, bombastic Troubadour songs, etc.; although it is to be
observed that these last buffooneries, which had an intellectual side,
were chiefly at home in France; whereas amongst the material sluggish
Germans, the knights distinguished themselves rather by drinking and
stealing; they were good at boozing and filling their castles with
plunder; though in the courts, to be sure, there was no lack of insipid
love songs. What caused this utter transformation? Migration and
Christianity.
_Demopheles_. I am glad you reminded me of it. Migration was the source
of the evil; Christianity the dam on which it broke. It was chiefly by
Christianity that the raw, wild hordes which came flooding in were
controlled and tamed. The savage man must first of all learn to kneel,
to venerate, to obey; after that he can be civilized. This was done in
Ireland by St. Patrick, in Germany by Winifred the Saxon, who was a
genuine Boniface. It was migration of peoples, the last advance of
Asiatic races towards Europe, followed only by the fruitless attempts of
those under Attila, Zenghis Khan, and Timur, and as a comic afterpiece,
by the gipsies,--it was this movement which swept away the humanity of
the ancients. Christianity was precisely the principle which set itself
to work against this savagery; just as later, through the whole of the
Middle Age, the Church and its hierarchy were most necessary to set
limits to the savage barbarism of those masters of violence, the princes
and knights: it was what broke up the icefloes in that mighty deluge.
Still, the chief aim of Christianity is not so much to make this life
pleasant as to render us worthy of a better. It looks away over this
span of time, over this fleeting dream, and seeks to lead us to eternal
welfare. Its tendency is ethical in the highest sense of the word, a
sense unknown in Europe till its advent; as I have shown you, by putting
the morality and religion of the ancients side by side with those of
Christendom.
_Philalethes_. You are quite right as regards theory: but look at the
practice! In comparison with the ages of Christianity the ancient world
was unquestionably less cruel than the Middle Age, with its deaths by
exquisite torture, its innumerable burnings at the stake. The ancients,
further, were very enduring, laid great stress on justice, frequently
sacrificed themselves for their country, showed such traces of every
kind of magnanimity, and such genuine manliness, that to this day an
acquaintance with their thoughts and actions is called the study of
Humanity. The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries,
crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives in America, and the
introduction of African slaves in their place; and among the ancients
there is nothing analogous to this, nothing that can be compared with
it; for the slaves of the ancients, the _familia_, the _vernae_, were a
contented race, and faithfully devoted to their masters' service, and as
different from the miserable negroes of the sugar plantations, which are
a disgrace to humanity, as their two colors are distinct. Those special
moral delinquencies for which we reproach the ancients, and which are
perhaps less uncommon now-a-days than appears on the surface to be the
case, are trifles compared with the Christian enormities I have
mentioned. Can you then, all considered, maintain that mankind has been
really made morally better by Christianity?
_Demopheles_. If the results haven't everywhere been in keeping with the
purity and truth of the doctrine, it may be because the doctrine has
been too noble, too elevated for mankind, that its aim has been placed
too high. It was so much easier to come up to the heathen system, or to
the Mohammedan. It is precisely what is noble and dignified that is most
liable everywhere to misuse and fraud: _abusus optimi pessimus_. Those
high doctrines have accordingly now and then served as a pretext for the
most abominable proceedings, and for acts of unmitigated wickedness. The
downfall of the institutions of the old world, as well as of its arts
and sciences, is, as I have said, to be attributed to the inroad of
foreign barbarians. The inevitable result of this inroad was that
ignorance and savagery got the upper hand; consequently violence and
knavery established their dominion, and knights and priests became a
burden to mankind. It is partly, however, to be explained by the fact
that the new religion made eternal and not temporal welfare the object
of desire, taught that simplicity of heart was to be preferred to
knowledge, and looked askance at all worldly pleasure. Now the arts and
sciences subserve worldly pleasure; but in so far as they could be made
serviceable to religion they were promoted, and attained a certain
degree of perfection.
_Philalethes_. In a very narrow sphere. The sciences were suspicious
companions, and as such, were placed under restrictions: on the other
hand, darling ignorance, that element so necessary to a system of faith,
was carefully nourished.
_Demopheles_. And yet mankind's possessions in the way of knowledge up
to that period, which were preserved in the writings of the ancients,
were saved from destruction by the clergy, especially by those in the
monasteries. How would it have fared if Christianity hadn't come in just
before the migration of peoples.
_Philalethes_. It would really be a most useful inquiry to try and make,
with the coldest impartiality, an unprejudiced, careful and accurate
comparison of the advantages and disadvantages which may be put down to
religion. For that, of course, a much larger knowledge of historical and
psychological data than either of us command would be necessary.
Academies might make it a subject for a prize essay.
_Demopheles_. They'll take good care not to do so.
_Philalethes_. I'm surprised to hear you say that: it's a bad look out
for religion. However, there are academies which, in proposing a subject
for competition, make it a secret condition that the prize is to go to
the man who best interprets their own view. If we could only begin by
getting a statistician to tell us how many crimes are prevented every
year by religious, and how many by other motives, there would be very
few of the former. If a man feels tempted to commit a crime, you may
rely upon it that the first consideration which enters his head is the
penalty appointed for it, and the chances that it will fall upon him:
then comes, as a second consideration, the risk to his reputation. If I
am not mistaken, he will ruminate by the hour on these two impediments,
before he ever takes a thought of religious considerations. If he gets
safely over those two first bulwarks against crime, I think religion
alone will very rarely hold him back from it.