influence works through the medium of custom. An atrocious act is at
once felt to be repulsive. What is this but the effect of early
impressions? Think, for instance, how often a man, especially if of
noble birth, will make tremendous sacrifices to perform what he has
promised, motived entirely by the fact that his father has often
earnestly impressed upon him in his childhood that "a man of honor" or
"a gentleman" or a "a cavalier" always keeps his word inviolate.
_Philalethes_. That's no use unless there is a certain inborn
honorableness. You mustn't ascribe to religion what results from innate
goodness of character, by which compassion for the man who would suffer
by his crime keeps a man from committing it. This is the genuine moral
motive, and as such it is independent of all religions.
_Demopheles_. But this is a motive which rarely affects the multitude
unless it assumes a religious aspect. The religious aspect at any rate
strengthens its power for good. Yet without any such natural foundation,
religious motives alone are powerful to prevent crime. We need not be
surprised at this in the case of the multitude, when we see that even
people of education pass now and then under the influence, not indeed of
religious motives, which are founded on something which is at least
allegorically true, but of the most absurd superstition, and allow
themselves to be guided by it all their life long; as, for instance,
undertaking nothing on a Friday, refusing to sit down thirteen at a
table, obeying chance omens, and the like. How much more likely is the
multitude to be guided by such things. You can't form any adequate idea
of the narrow limits of the mind in its raw state; it is a place of
absolute darkness, especially when, as often happens, a bad, unjust and
malicious heart is at the bottom of it. People in this condition--and
they form the great bulk of humanity--must be led and controlled as well
as may be, even if it be by really superstitious motives; until such
time as they become susceptible to truer and better ones. As an instance
of the direct working of religion, may be cited the fact, common enough,
in Italy especially, of a thief restoring stolen goods, through the
influence of his confessor, who says he won't absolve him if he doesn't.
Think again of the case of an oath, where religion shows a most decided
influence; whether it be that a man places himself expressly in the
position of a purely _moral being_, and as such looks upon himself as
solemnly appealed to, as seems to be the case in France, where the
formula is simply _je le jure_, and also among the Quakers, whose solemn
_yea_ or _nay_ is regarded as a substitute for the oath; or whether it
be that a man really believes he is pronouncing something which may
affect his eternal happiness,--a belief which is presumably only the
investiture of the former feeling. At any rate, religious considerations
are a means of awakening and calling out a man's moral nature. How often
it happens that a man agrees to take a false oath, and then, when it
comes to the point, suddenly refuses, and truth and right win the day.
_Philalethes_. Oftener still false oaths are really taken, and truth and
right trampled under foot, though all witnesses of the oath know it
well! Still you are quite right to quote the oath as an undeniable
example of the practical efficacy of religion. But, in spite of all
you've said, I doubt whether the efficacy of religion goes much beyond
this. Just think; if a public proclamation were suddenly made announcing
the repeal of all the criminal laws; I fancy neither you nor I would
have the courage to go home from here under the protection of religious
motives. If, in the same way, all religions were declared untrue, we
could, under the protection of the laws alone, go on living as before,
without any special addition to our apprehensions or our measures of
precaution. I will go beyond this, and say that religions have very
frequently exercised a decidedly demoralizing influence. One may say
generally that duties towards God and duties towards humanity are in
inverse ratio.
It is easy to let adulation of the Deity make amends for lack of proper
behavior towards man. And so we see that in all times and in all
countries the great majority of mankind find it much easier to beg their
way to heaven by prayers than to deserve to go there by their actions.
In every religion it soon comes to be the case that faith, ceremonies,
rites and the like, are proclaimed to be more agreeable to the Divine
will than moral actions; the former, especially if they are bound up
with the emoluments of the clergy, gradually come to be looked upon as a
substitute for the latter. Sacrifices in temples, the saying of masses,
the founding of chapels, the planting of crosses by the roadside, soon
come to be the most meritorious works, so that even great crimes are
expiated by them, as also by penance, subjection to priestly authority,
confessions, pilgrimages, donations to the temples and the clergy, the
building of monasteries and the like. The consequence of all this is
that the priests finally appear as middlemen in the corruption of the
gods. And if matters don't go quite so far as that, where is the
religion whose adherents don't consider prayers, praise and manifold
acts of devotion, a substitute, at least in part, for moral conduct?
Look at England, where by an audacious piece of priestcraft, the
Christian Sunday, introduced by Constantine the Great as a subject for
the Jewish Sabbath, is in a mendacious way identified with it, and takes
its name,--and this in order that the commands of Jehovah for the
Sabbath (that is, the day on which the Almighty had to rest from his six
days' labor, so that it is essentially the last day of the week), might
be applied to the Christian Sunday, the _dies solis_, the first day of
the week which the sun opens in glory, the day of devotion and joy. The
consequence of this fraud is that "Sabbath-breaking," or "the
desecration of the Sabbath," that is, the slightest occupation, whether
of business or pleasure, all games, music, sewing, worldly books, are on
Sundays looked upon as great sins. Surely the ordinary man must believe
that if, as his spiritual guides impress upon him, he is only constant
in "a strict observance of the holy Sabbath," and is "a regular
attendant at Divine Service," that is, if he only invariably idles away
his time on Sundays, and doesn't fail to sit two hours in church to hear
the same litany for the thousandth time and mutter it in tune with the
others, he may reckon on indulgence in regard to those little
peccadilloes which he occasionally allows himself. Those devils in human
form, the slave owners and slave traders in the Free States of North
America (they should be called the Slave States) are, as a rule,
orthodox, pious Anglicans who would consider it a grave sin to work on
Sundays; and having confidence in this, and their regular attendance at
church, they hope for eternal happiness. The demoralizing tendency of
religion is less problematical than its moral influence. How great and
how certain that moral influence must be to make amends for the
enormities which religions, especially the Christian and Mohammedan
religions, have produced and spread over the earth! Think of the
fanaticism, the endless persecutions, the religious wars, that
sanguinary frenzy of which the ancients had no conception! think of the
crusades, a butchery lasting two hundred years and inexcusable, its war
cry "_It is the will of God_," its object to gain possession of the
grave of one who preached love and sufferance! think of the cruel
expulsion and extermination of the Moors and Jews from Spain! think of
the orgies of blood, the inquisitions, the heretical tribunals, the
bloody and terrible conquests of the Mohammedans in three continents, or
those of Christianity in America, whose inhabitants were for the most
part, and in Cuba entirely, exterminated. According to Las Cases,
Christianity murdered twelve millions in forty years, of course all _in
majorem Dei gloriam_, and for the propagation of the Gospel, and because
what wasn't Christian wasn't even looked upon as human! I have, it is
true, touched upon these matters before; but when in our day, we hear of
_Latest News from the Kingdom of God_ [Footnote: A missionary paper, of
which the 40th annual number appeared in 1856], we shall not be weary of
bringing old news to mind. And above all, don't let us forget India, the
cradle of the human race, or at least of that part of it to which we
belong, where first Mohammedans, and then Christians, were most cruelly
infuriated against the adherents of the original faith of mankind. The
destruction or disfigurement of the ancient temples and idols, a
lamentable, mischievous and barbarous act, still bears witness to the
monotheistic fury of the Mohammedans, carried on from Marmud, the
Ghaznevid of cursed memory, down to Aureng Zeb, the fratricide, whom the
Portuguese Christians have zealously imitated by destruction of temples
and the _auto de fé_ of the inquisition at Goa. Don't let us forget the
chosen people of God, who after they had, by Jehovah's express command,
stolen from their old and trusty friends in Egypt the gold and silver
vessels which had been lent to them, made a murderous and plundering
inroad into "the Promised Land," with the murderer Moses at their head,
to tear it from the rightful owners,--again, by the same Jehovah's
express and repeated commands, showing no mercy, exterminating the
inhabitants, women, children and all (Joshua, ch. 9 and 10). And all
this, simply because they weren't circumcised and didn't know Jehovah,
which was reason enough to justify every enormity against them; just as
for the same reason, in earlier times, the infamous knavery of the
patriarch Jacob and his chosen people against Hamor, King of Shalem, and
his people, is reported to his glory because the people were
unbelievers! (Genesis xxxiii. 18.) Truly, it is the worst side of
religions that the believers of one religion have allowed themselves
every sin again those of another, and with the utmost ruffianism and
cruelty persecuted them; the Mohammedans against the Christians and
Hindoos; the Christians against the Hindoos, Mohammedans, American
natives, Negroes, Jews, heretics, and others.
Perhaps I go too far in saying _all_ religions. For the sake of truth, I
must add that the fanatical enormities perpetrated in the name of
religion are only to be put down to the adherents of monotheistic
creeds, that is, the Jewish faith and its two branches, Christianity and
Islamism. We hear of nothing of the kind in the case of Hindoos and
Buddhists. Although it is a matter of common knowledge that about the
fifth century of our era Buddhism was driven out by the Brahmans from
its ancient home in the southernmost part of the Indian peninsula, and
afterwards spread over the whole of the rest of Asia, as far as I know,
we have no definite account of any crimes of violence, or wars, or
cruelties, perpetrated in the course of it.
That may, of course, be attributable to the obscurity which veils the
history of those countries; but the exceedingly mild character of their
religion, together with their unceasing inculcation of forbearance
towards all living things, and the fact that Brahmanism by its caste
system properly admits no proselytes, allows one to hope that their
adherents may be acquitted of shedding blood on a large scale, and of
cruelty in any form. Spence Hardy, in his excellent book on _Eastern
Monachism_, praises the extraordinary tolerance of the Buddhists, and
adds his assurance that the annals of Buddhism will furnish fewer
instances of religious persecution than those of any other religion.
As a matter of fact, it is only to monotheism that intolerance is
essential; an only god is by his nature a jealous god, who can allow no
other god to exist. Polytheistic gods, on the other hand, are naturally
tolerant; they live and let live; their own colleagues are the chief
objects of their sufferance, as being gods of the same religion. This
toleration is afterwards extended to foreign gods, who are, accordingly,
hospitably received, and later on admitted, in some cases, to an
equality of rights; the chief example of which is shown by the fact,
that the Romans willingly admitted and venerated Phrygian, Egyptian and
other gods. Hence it is that monotheistic religions alone furnish the
spectacle of religious wars, religious persecutions, heretical
tribunals, that breaking of idols and destruction of images of the gods,
that razing of Indian temples, and Egyptian colossi, which had looked on
the sun three thousand years, just because a jealous god had said, _Thou
shalt make no graven image_.
But to return to the chief point. You are certainly right in insisting
on the strong metaphysical needs of mankind; but religion appears to me
to be not so much a satisfaction as an abuse of those needs. At any rate
we have seen that in regard to the furtherance of morality, its utility
is, for the most part, problematical, its disadvantages, and especially
the atrocities which have followed in its train, are patent to the light
of day. Of course it is quite a different matter if we consider the
utility of religion as a prop of thrones; for where these are held "by
the grace of God," throne and altar are intimately associated; and every
wise prince who loves his throne and his family will appear at the head
of his people as an exemplar of true religion. Even Machiavelli, in the
eighteenth chapter of his book, most earnestly recommended religion to
princes. Beyond this, one may say that revealed religions stand to
philosophy exactly in the relation of "sovereigns by the grace of God,"
to "the sovereignty of the people"; so that the two former terms of the
parallel are in natural alliance.
_Demopheles_. Oh, don't take that tone! You're going hand in hand with
ochlocracy and anarchy, the arch enemy of all legislative order, all
civilization and all humanity.
_Philalethes_. You are right. It was only a sophism of mine, what the
fencing master calls a feint. I retract it. But see how disputing
sometimes makes an honest man unjust and malicious. Let us stop.
_Demopheles_. I can't help regretting that, after all the trouble I've
taken, I haven't altered your disposition in regard to religion. On the
other hand, I can assure you that everything you have said hasn't shaken
my conviction of its high value and necessity.
_Philalethes_. I fully believe you; for, as we may read in Hudibras--
A man convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still.
My consolation is that, alike in controversies and in taking mineral
waters, the after effects are the true ones.
_Demopheles_. Well, I hope it'll be beneficial in your case.
_Philalethes_. It might be so, if I could digest a certain Spanish
proverb.
_Demopheles_. Which is?
_Philalethes. Behind the cross stands the devil_.
_Demopheles_. Come, don't let us part with sarcasms. Let us rather admit
that religion, like Janus, or better still, like the Brahman god of
death, Yama, has two faces, and like him, one friendly, the other
sullen. Each of us has kept his eye fixed on one alone.
_Philalethes_. You are right, old fellow.
A FEW WORDS ON PANTHEISM.
The controversy between Theism and Pantheism might be presented in an
allegorical or dramatic form by supposing a dialogue between two persons
in the pit of a theatre at Milan during the performance of a piece. One
of them, convinced that he is in Girolamo's renowned marionette-theatre,
admires the art by which the director gets up the dolls and guides their
movements. "Oh, you are quite mistaken," says the other, "we're in the
Teatro della Scala; it is the manager and his troupe who are on the
stage; they are the persons you see before you; the poet too is taking a
part."
The chief objection I have to Pantheism is that it says nothing. To call
the world "God" is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language
with a superfluous synonym for the word "world." It comes to the same
thing whether you say "the world is God," or "God is the world." But if
you start from "God" as something that is given in experience, and has
to be explained, and they say, "God is the world," you are affording
what is to some extent an explanation, in so far as you are reducing
what is unknown to what is partly known (_ignotum per notius_); but it
is only a verbal explanation. If, however, you start from what is really
given, that is to say, from the world, and say, "the world is God," it
is clear that you say nothing, or at least you are explaining what is
unknown by what is more unknown.
Hence, Pantheism presupposes Theism; only in so far as you start from a
god, that is, in so far as you possess him as something with which you
are already familiar, can you end by identifying him with the world; and
your purpose in doing so is to put him out of the way in a decent
fashion. In other words, you do not start clear from the world as
something that requires explanation; you start from God as something
that is given, and not knowing what to do with him, you make the world
take over his role. This is the origin of Pantheism. Taking an
unprejudiced view of the world as it is, no one would dream of regarding
it as a god. It must be a very ill-advised god who knows no better way
of diverting himself than by turning into such a world as ours, such a
mean, shabby world, there to take the form of innumerable millions who
live indeed, but are fretted and tormented, and who manage to exist a
while together, only by preying on one another; to bear misery, need and
death, without measure and without object, in the form, for instance, of
millions of negro slaves, or of the three million weavers in Europe who,
in hunger and care, lead a miserable existence in damp rooms or the
cheerless halls of a factory. What a pastime this for a god, who must,
as such, be used to another mode of existence!
We find accordingly that what is described as the great advance from
Theism to Pantheism, if looked at seriously, and not simply as a masked
negation of the sort indicated above, is a transition from what is
unproved and hardly conceivable to what is absolutely absurd. For
however obscure, however loose or confused may be the idea which we
connect with the word "God," there are two predicates which are
inseparable from it, the highest power and the highest wisdom. It is
absolutely absurd to think that a being endowed with these qualities
should have put himself into the position described above. Theism, on
the other hand, is something which is merely unproved; and if it is
difficult to look upon the infinite world as the work of a personal, and
therefore individual, Being, the like of which we know only from our
experience of the animal world, it is nevertheless not an absolutely
absurd idea. That a Being, at once almighty and all-good, should create
a world of torment is always conceivable; even though we do not know why
he does so; and accordingly we find that when people ascribe the height
of goodness to this Being, they set up the inscrutable nature of his
wisdom as the refuge by which the doctrine escapes the charge of
absurdity. Pantheism, however, assumes that the creative God is himself
the world of infinite torment, and, in this little world alone, dies
every second, and that entirely of his own will; which is absurd. It
would be much more correct to identify the world with the devil, as the
venerable author of the _Deutsche Theologie_ has, in fact, done in a
passage of his immortal work, where he says, "_Wherefore the evil spirit
and nature are one, and where nature is not overcome, neither is the
evil adversary overcome_."
It is manifest that the Pantheists give the Sansara the name of God. The
same name is given by the Mystics to the Nirvana. The latter, however,
state more about the Nirvana than they know, which is not done by the
Buddhists, whose Nirvana is accordingly a relative nothing. It is only
Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans who give its proper and correct
meaning to the word "God."
The expression, often heard now-a-days, "the world is an end-in-itself,"
leaves it uncertain whether Pantheism or a simple Fatalism is to be
taken as the explanation of it. But, whichever it be, the expression
looks upon the world from a physical point of view only, and leaves out
of sight its moral significance, because you cannot assume a moral
significance without presenting the world as means to a higher end. The
notion that the world has a physical but not a moral meaning, is the
most mischievous error sprung from the greatest mental perversity.
ON BOOKS AND READING.
Ignorance is degrading only when found in company with riches. The poor
man is restrained by poverty and need: labor occupies his thoughts, and
takes the place of knowledge. But rich men who are ignorant live for
their lusts only, and are like the beasts of the field; as may be seen
every day: and they can also be reproached for not having used wealth
and leisure for that which gives them their greatest value.
When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental
process. In learning to write, the pupil goes over with his pen what the
teacher has outlined in pencil: so in reading; the greater part of the
work of thought is already done for us. This is why it relieves us to
take up a book after being occupied with our own thoughts. And in
reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another's
thoughts. So it comes about that if anyone spends almost the whole day
in reading, and by way of relaxation devotes the intervals to some
thoughtless pastime, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking; just
as the man who always rides, at last forgets how to walk. This is the
case with many learned persons: they have read themselves stupid. For to
occupy every spare moment in reading, and to do nothing but read, is
even more paralyzing to the mind than constant manual labor, which at
least allows those engaged in it to follow their own thoughts. A spring
never free from the pressure of some foreign body at last loses its
elasticity; and so does the mind if other people's thoughts are
constantly forced upon it. Just as you can ruin the stomach and impair
the whole body by taking too much nourishment, so you can overfill and
choke the mind by feeding it too much. The more you read, the fewer are
the traces left by what you have read: the mind becomes like a tablet
crossed over and over with writing. There is no time for ruminating, and
in no other way can you assimilate what you have read. If you read on
and on without setting your own thoughts to work, what you have read can
not strike root, and is generally lost. It is, in fact, just the same
with mental as with bodily food: hardly the fifth part of what one takes
is assimilated. The rest passes off in evaporation, respiration and the
like.
The result of all this is that thoughts put on paper are nothing more
than footsteps in the sand: you see the way the man has gone, but to
know what he saw on his walk, you want his eyes.
There is no quality of style that can be gained by reading writers who
possess it; whether it be persuasiveness, imagination, the gift of
drawing comparisons, boldness, bitterness, brevity, grace, ease of
expression or wit, unexpected contrasts, a laconic or naive manner, and
the like. But if these qualities are already in us, exist, that is to
say, potentially, we can call them forth and bring them to
consciousness; we can learn the purposes to which they can be put; we
can be strengthened in our inclination to use them, or get courage to do
so; we can judge by examples the effect of applying them, and so acquire
the correct use of them; and of course it is only when we have arrived
at that point that we actually possess these qualities. The only way in
which reading can form style is by teaching us the use to which we can
put our own natural gifts. We must have these gifts before we begin to
learn the use of them. Without them, reading teaches us nothing but
cold, dead mannerisms and makes us shallow imitators.
The strata of the earth preserve in rows the creatures which lived in
former ages; and the array of books on the shelves of a library stores
up in like manner the errors of the past and the way in which they have
been exposed. Like those creatures, they too were full of life in their
time, and made a great deal of noise; but now they are stiff and
fossilized, and an object of curiosity to the literary palaeontologist
alone.