THE NATURE OF RELIGION.
It is no mere paradox to say that religion is most interesting to those
who have ceased to believe in it. The reason for this is not far to
seek. Religious beliefs play so large a part in the early history of
society, and are so influential in social history generally, that it is
impossible to leave religion alone without forfeiting an adequate
comprehension of a large part of social evolution. Human development
forms a continuous record; our institutions, whatever be their nature,
have their roots in the far past, and often, even when modified in form,
retain their essential characteristics. No student of social history can
travel far or dig deeply without finding himself in contact with
religion in some form. And the mass of mankind are not yet so far
removed from "primitive" humanity as to give to the study of religion an
exclusively archaeological interest.
Where so much is discord it is well, if it be possible, to start with a
basis of agreement. And on one point, at least, there is substantial
unity among critics. There is a general agreement among students of folk
lore, comparative mythology, and anthropology, that religious ideas rest
ultimately upon an interpretation of nature that is now generally
discarded. Differing as they do on details, there is consent upon this
point. It is the world of the savage that originates the religion of the
savage, and upon that rests the religions of civilized man as surely as
his physical structure goes back to the animal world for its beginning.
And in giving birth to a religious explanation of his world the savage
was only pursuing the normal path of human development. Mankind
progresses through trial and error; doubtful and erroneous theories are
framed before more reliable ones are established, and while truth may
crown our endeavours it seldom meets us at the outset. Religious beliefs
thus form man's earliest interpretation of nature. On this there is, as
I have said, general agreement, and it is as well not to permit
ourselves to lose sight of that in the discussion of the various
theories that are put forward as to the exact nature of the stages of
religious development.
In many directions the less accurate theories of things are replaced
gradually and smoothly by more reliable explanations. But in religion
this is not so. For many reasons, with which we are not now immediately
concerned, religious beliefs are not outgrown without considerable
"growing pains." And a long time after the point of view from which
religious beliefs sprang has been given up, the conclusions that were
based on that point of view are held to most tenaciously. And yet if one
accepts the scientific story of the origins of religious ideas there
seems no justification whatever for this. Religion cannot transcend its
origin. Multiply nothing to infinity and the result is still nothing.
Illusion can beget nothing but illusion, even though in its pursuit we
may stumble on reality. And no amount of ingenuity can extract truth
from falsehood.
One's surprise at the perpetuation of this particular delusion is
diminished by the reflection that the period during which we have
possessed anything like an exact knowledge of the character and
operations of natural forces is, after all, but an infinitesimal
portion of the time the race has been in existence. Three or four
centuries at most cover the period during which such knowledge has been
at our command, and small as this is in relation to the thousands of
generations wherein superstition has reigned unchallenged, a knowledge
of the laws of mental life belongs only to the latter portion. And even
then the knowledge available has been till recently the possession of a
class, while to-day, large masses of the population are under the
domination of the crudest of superstitions. The belief that thirteen is
an unlucky number, that a horse-shoe brings luck, the extent to which
palmistry and astrology flourishes, the cases of witchcraft that crop up
every now and again, all bear testimony to the vast mass of superstition
that is still with us. The primitive mind is still alive and active,
disguised though it may be by a veneer of civilization and a terribly
superficial education. And when one reflects upon all the facts there is
cause for astonishment that in the face of so great a dead weight of
custom and tradition against a rational interpretation of the universe
so much has been done and in so short a time.
In discussing religion very much turns upon the meaning of the word, and
unfortunately "religion" is to-day used in so many differing and
conflicting senses that without the most careful definition no one is
quite sure what is meant by it. The curious disinclination of so many to
avow themselves as being without a religion must also be noted. To be
without a religion, or rather to be known as one who is without a
religion, would seem to mark one off as apart from the rest of one's
kind, and to infringe all the tribal taboos at one sweep. And very few
seem to have the courage to stand alone. Mr. Augustine Birrell once
said, in introducing to the House of Commons an Education Bill, that
children would rather be wicked than singular. That is quite true, and
it is almost as true of adults as it is of children. There is no great
objection to having a religion different from that of other people,
because the religions of the world are already of so varied a character
that there is always companionship in difference. But to be without a
religion altogether is a degree of isolation that few can stand. The
consequence is that although vast numbers have given up everything that
is really religious they still cling to the name. They have left the
service, but they show a curious attachment to the uniform. Thus it
happens that we have a religion of Socialism, a religion of Ethics,
etc., and I should not be surprised to find one day a religion of
Atheism--if that has not already appeared.
But all this is a mistake, and a very serious mistake. The Freethinker,
or Socialist, who calls his theory of life a religion is not causing the
religionist to think more highly of him, he is making his opponent think
more highly of his own opinions. Imitation becomes in such a case not
alone flattery, but confirmation. The Goddite does not think more highly
of Freethought because it is labelled religion, he merely becomes the
more convinced of the supreme value of his own faith, and still hopes
for the Freethinker's return to the fold. If Freethinkers are to command
the respect of the religious world they must show not only that they can
get along without religion, but that they can dispense with the name
also. If strength does not command respect weakness will certainly fail
to secure it. And those of us who are genuinely anxious that the world
should be done with false ideas and mischievous frames of mind ought to
at least take care that our own speech and thought are as free from
ambiguity as is possible.
There is another and deeper aspect of the matter. As I have already
said, language not alone expresses thought, it also governs and directs
it. Locke expressed this truth when he said, "It is impossible that men
should ever truly seek, or certainly discover, the disagreement of ideas
themselves whilst their thoughts flutter about, or stick only on sounds
of doubtful and uncertain significance." Quite a number of theological
and metaphysical conundrums would lose their significance if it were
only realized that the words used are not alone of doubtful and
uncertain significance, but often of no possible significance whatever.
They are like counterfeit coins, which retain their value only so long
as they are not tested by a proper standard. And the evil of these
counterfeits is that they deceive both those who tender and those who
accept them. For even though slovenliness of speech is not always the
product of slovenly thought, in the long run it tends to induce it, and
those who realize this need to be specially on their guard against using
language which can only further confuse an already sufficiently confused
public opinion, and strengthen superstitions that are already
sufficiently strong without our clandestine or unintended assistance.[15]
[15] Of the evil of an incautious use of current words we have an
example in the case of Darwin. Neither his expressions of regret at
having "truckled to public opinion" at having used the term "creator,"
nor his explicit declaration that the word was to him only a synonym of
ignorance, prevented religious apologists from citing him as a believer
in deity on the strength of his having used the word.
Unfortunately, it remains a favourite policy with many writers to use
and define the word religion, not in accordance with a comprehensive
survey of facts, but in a way that will harmonize with existing
pre-possessions. To this class belongs Matthew Arnold's famous
definition of religion as "Morality touched with emotion," Professor
Seeley's statement that we are entitled to call religion "any habitual
and permanent admiration," or the common description of religion as
consisting in devotion to an ideal. All such definitions may be set on
one side as historically worthless, and as not harmonizing with the
facts. Arnold's definition is in the highest degree superficial, since
there exists no morality that is not touched with emotion, and on the
other hand there exist phases of religion that have not any connection
with morality, however slight. Professor Leuba properly rules
definitions of this class out of order in the comment that, as it is
"the function of words to delimitate, one defeats the purpose of
language by stretching the meaning of a word until it has lost all
precision and unity of meaning."[16] A definition that includes
everything may as well, for all the use it is, not cover anything.
[16] _The Psychological Origin and Nature of Religion_, p. 92.
Equally faulty are those definitions that are based upon an assumed
conscious effort to explain the mysteries of existence. No stranger
lapse ever overtook a great thinker than occurred to Herbert Spencer
when he described religion as consisting in a worship of the unknowable,
and as due to the desire to explain a mystery ever pressing for
interpretation. Granting the existence of an Unknowable, the sense of
its presence belongs to the later stages of mental evolution, not to the
earlier ones. Metaphysical and mystical theories of religion are
indications of its disintegration, not of its beginnings. Primitive man
began to believe in ghosts and gods for the same reasons that he
believed in other things; he worshipped his gods for very concrete
considerations. Even the distinction between "spiritual" and material
existence is quite foreign to his mind. Such distinctions arise
gradually with the progress of knowledge and its disintegrating
influence on inherited beliefs. If primitive man may be credited with a
philosophy, and if one may use the word in a purely convenient sense,
then one may say that he is neither a dualist, nor a pluralist, but a
monist. The soul or double he believes in is similar to the body he
sees; the unseen forces he credits with various activities are of the
same kind as those with which he is acquainted. To read our conceptions
into the mind of primitive man because we use our words to explain his
thoughts is a procedure that is bound to end in confusion. Man's
earliest conception of things is vague and indefinite. Later, he
distinguishes differences, qualitative and quantitative, his conception
of things becomes more definite, and distinctions are set up that lay
the foundations of science and philosophy, and which mark their
separation from religion.
So far as one can see there are only two causes why people should
continue to use the word religion after giving up all for which it
properly stands. One is sheer conservatism. When, for instance, Thomas
Paine said, "To do good is my religion," he had at least the
justification of believing in a deity, but apart from this the only
cause for his calling the desire to do good a religion is that there had
grown up the fashion of calling one's rule of life a religion. The other
cause is the ill-repute that has been attached to those who avow
themselves as being without religion. Orthodoxy saw to it that they were
treated as pariahs without social status, and, in many cases, legal
rights. Once upon a time it was useless unless one believed in the
_right_ religion. Nowadays, any religion will do, or anything that one
cares to call a religion. But not to have any religion at all still puts
one outside the pale of respectability, and there seem to be few who
can stand that. And supernatural religion--the only genuine
article--being impossible with many, these may still, if they care to,
save their face by professing to use the name, even if they have not the
thing. Orthodoxy is very accommodating nowadays.
Leaving for a time the question of how religion actually does arise, we
may turn to those writers who define religion in terms of ethics. It may
be admitted that so far as the later stages of religion are concerned
considerable emphasis is laid upon ethics. But we can only make religion
a part of ethics by expanding the term morality so as to include
everything, or by contracting it so as to exclude all the lower forms of
religious belief. And any definition of religion that does not embrace
all its forms is obviously inaccurate. It is not at all a question of
defining the higher in terms of the lower, or the lower in terms of the
higher, it is simply the need of so defining religion that our
definition will cover all religions, high and low, and thus deal with
their essential characteristics.
The only sense in which ethics may be said to be included in religion
lies in the fact that in primitive times religion includes everything.
The fear of unseen intelligences is one of the most powerful factors of
which early humanity is conscious, and the necessity for conciliating
them is always present. The religious ceremonies connected with eating
and drinking, with lying down and rising up, with sowing and reaping,
with disease, hunting, and almost every circumstance of primitive life
prove this. Differentiation and discrimination arise very slowly, but
one after another the various departments of life do shake off the
controlling influence of religion. Ethics may, therefore, be said to
originate in the shadow of religion--as do most other things--but in no
sense can morality be said to owe its origin to religion. Its origin is
deeper and more fundamental than religion. As a matter of practice
morality is independent of religious belief and moral theory, and as a
matter of theory the formulation of definite moral rules is
substantially independent of religion and is an assertion of its
independence. Indeed, the conflict between a growing moral sense and
religion is almost as large a fact in the social sphere as the conflict
between religion and science is in the intellectual one.
In all its earlier stages religion is at best non-moral. It becomes
otherwise later only because of the reaction of a socialized morality on
religious beliefs. Early religion is never concerned with the morality
of its teaching, nor are the worshippers concerned with the morality of
their gods. The sole question is what the gods desire and how best to
satisfy them. We cannot even conceive man ascribing ethical qualities to
his gods until he has first of all conceived them in regard to his
fellow men. The savage has no _moral_ reverence for his gods; they are
magnified men, but not perfect ones. He worships not because he admires,
but because he fears. Fear is, indeed, one of the root causes of
religious belief. Professor Leuba quite admits the origin of religion is
fear, but he reserves the possibility of man being occasionally placed
under such favourable conditions that fear may be absent. We admit the
possibility, but at present it remains a possibility only. At present
all the evidence goes to prove the words of Ribot that, "The religious
sentiment is composed first of all of the emotion of fear in its
different degrees, from profound terror to vague uneasiness, due to
faith in an unknown mysterious and impalpable power." And if that be
admitted, we can scarcely find here the origin of morality.
What is here overlooked is the important fact that while religion, as
such, commences in a reasoned process, morality is firmly established
before mankind is even aware of its existence. A formulated religion is
essentially of the nature of a theory set forth to explain or to deal
with certain experiences. Morality, on the other hand, takes its rise in
those feelings and instincts that are developed in animal and human
societies under the pressure of natural selection. The affection of the
animal for its young, of the human mother for its child, the attraction
of male and female, the sympathetic feelings that bind members of the
same species together, these do not depend upon theory, or even upon an
intellectual perception of their value. Theory tries to account for
their existence, and reason justifies their being, but they are
fundamentally the product of associated life. And it is precisely
because morality is the inevitable condition of associated life that it
has upon religion the effect of modifying it until it is at least not
too great an outrage upon the conditions of social well-being. All along
we can, if we will, see how the developing moral sense forces a change
in religious teaching. At one time there is nothing revolting in the
Christian doctrine of election which dooms one to heaven and another to
hell without the slightest regard to personal merit. At another the
doctrine of eternal damnation is rejected as a matter of course. Heresy
hunting and heretic burning, practised as a matter of course by one
generation become highly repulsive to another. In every direction we see
religious beliefs undergoing a modification under the influence of moral
and social growth. It is always man who moralizes his gods; never by any
chance is it the gods who moralize man.
If we are to arrive at a proper understanding of religion we can,
therefore, no more assume morals to be an integral part of religion
than we can assume medicine or any of the special arts, all of which may
be associated with religion. It will not even do to define religion with
Mr. W. H. Mallock[17] as a belief that the world "has been made and is
sustained by an intelligence external to and essentially independent of
it." That may pass as a definition of Theism, but Theism is only one of
the phases of religion, and the idea of a creator independent of the
universe is one that is quite alien to the earlier stages of religion.
And to deny the name of religion to primitive beliefs is to put oneself
on the level of the type of Christian who declines to call any
superstition but his own religion. It is for this reason impossible to
agree with Professor Leuba when he says that "the idea of a creator must
take precedence of ghosts and nature beings in the making of a
religion." If by precedence the order of importance, from the standpoint
of later and comparatively modern forms of religion, is intended, the
statement may pass. But if the precedence claimed is a time order, the
reply is that, instead of the idea of a creator taking precedence of
ghosts and nature beings, it is from these that the idea of a creator is
evolved. It is quite true Professor Leuba holds that "belief in the
existence of unseen anthropopathic beings is not religion. It is only
when man enters into relation with them that religion comes into
existence," but so soon as man believes in the existence of them he
believes himself to be in relation with them, and a large part of his
efforts is expended in making these relations of an amicable and
profitable character.
[17] _Religion as a Credible Doctrine_, p. 11.
A further definition of religion, first given, I think, by the late
Professor Fiske, but since widely used, as a craving for "fulness of
life," must be dismissed as equally faulty. For if by fulness of life
is meant the desire to make it morally and intellectually richer, the
answer is that this desire is plainly the product of a progressive
social life, of which much that now passes for religion is the
adulterated expression. Apologetically, it is an attempt so to state
religion that it may evade criticism of its essential character. From
one point of view this may be gratifying enough, but it is no help to an
understanding of the nature of religion. And how little religion does
help to a fuller life will be seen by anyone who knows the part played
by organized religion in mental development and how blindly obstructive
it is to new ideas in all departments of life. All these attempts to
define religion in terms of ethics, of metaphysics, or as the craving
after an ideal are wholly misleading. It is reading history backwards,
and attributing to primitive human nature feelings and conceptions which
it does not and cannot possess.
In another work[18] I have traced the origin of the belief in God to the
mental state of primitive mankind, and there is no need to go over the
same ground here at any length. Commencing with the indisputable fact
that religion is something that is acquired, an examination of the state
of mind in which primitive mankind faced, and still faces, the world,
led to the conclusion that the idea of god begins in the personification
of natural forces by the savage. The growth of the idea of God was there
traced back to the ghost, not to the exclusion of other methods of god
making, but certainly as one of its prominent causes. I must refer
readers to that work who desire a more extended treatment of the
god-idea.
[18] _Theism or Atheism_, Chapter 2.
What remains to be traced here, in order to understand the other factor
that is common to religions, is the belief in a continued state of
existence after death, or at least of a soul.
It has been shown to the point of demonstration by writers such as
Spencer, Tylor, and Frazer, that the idea of a double is suggested to
man by his experience of dreams, swoons, and allied normal and abnormal
experiences. Even in the absence of evidence coming to us from the
beliefs of existing tribes of savages, the fact that the ghost is always
depicted as identical in appearance with the living person would be
enough to suggest its dream origin. But there are other considerations
that carry the proof further. The savage sees in his dreams the figures
of dead men and assumes that there is a double that can get out of the
body during sleep. But he also dreams of dead men, and this is also
proof that the dead man still exists. Death does not, then, involve the
death of the ghost, but only its removal to some other sphere of
existence. Further, the likeness of sleep itself to death is so obvious
and so striking that it has formed one of the most insistent features of
human thought and speech. With primitive man it is far more than a
figure of speech. The Melanesians put this point of view when they say,
"the soul goes out of the body in some dreams, and if for some reason it
does not come back the man is found dead in the morning." Death and
dreaming have, therefore, this in common, they are both due to the
withdrawal of the double. Hence we find a whole series of ceremonies
designed to avert death or to facilitate the return of the double. The
lingering of this practice is well illustrated by Sir Frederick Treves
in his book, _The Other Side of the Lantern_. He there tells how he saw
a Chinese mother, with the tears streaming down her face, waving at the
door of the house the clothing of a recently deceased child in order to
bring back the departed spirit.
Death is thus the separation of the double from the body; but if it may
return, its return is not always a matter of rejoicing, for we find
customs that are plainly intended to prevent the ghost recognizing the
living or to find its way back to its old haunts. Thus Frazer has shown
that the wearing of black is really a form of disguise. It is a method
taken to disguise the living from the attentions of the dead. It is in
order to avoid recognition by spirits who wish to injure them that the
Tongans change their war costume at every battle. The Chinese call their
best beloved children by worthless names in order to delude evil
spirits. In Egypt, too, the children who were most thought of were the
worst clad. In some places the corpse is never carried out through the
door, but by a hole in the side of the hut, which is afterwards closed
so that the ghost may not find its way back.
The ghost being conceived as at all points identical with living beings,
it demands attention after death. It needs food, weapons, servants,
wives. In this way there originates a whole group of burial customs,
performed partly from fear of what the ghost may do if its wants are
neglected. The custom of burying food and weapons with the dead thus
receives a simple explanation. These things are buried with the dead man
in order that their spirit may accompany his to the next world and serve
the same uses there that they did here. The modern custom of scattering
flowers over a grave is unquestionably a survival of this primitive
belief. The killing of a wife on the husband's grave has the same
origin. Her spirit goes to attend the husband in the ghost-land. In the
case of a chief we have the killing of servants for the same reason.
When Leonidas says, "Bury me on my shield, I will enter even Hades as a
Lacedaemonian," he was exhibiting the persistence of this belief in
classical times. The Chinese offer a further example by making little
paper houses, filling them with paper models of the things used by the
dead person, and burning them on the grave. All over the world we have
the same class of customs developing from the same beliefs, and the same
beliefs projected by the human mind when brought face to face with the
same class of phenomena.
As the ghost is pictured as like the physical man, so the next world is
more or less a replica of this. The chief distinction is that there is a
greater abundance of desirable things. Hunting tribes have elysiums
where there is an abundance of game. The old Norse heaven was a place
where there was unlimited fighting. The gold and diamonds and rubies of
the Christian heaven represent a stage of civilization where these
things had acquired a special value. Social distinctions, too, are often
maintained. The Caribs believe that every time they secure an enemy's
head they have gained a servant in the next world. And all know the
story of the French aristocrat who, when threatened with hell, replied,
"God will think twice before damning a person of my quality."
Several other consequences of this service paid to the dead may be
noted. The ghost being drawn to the place where the body is buried, the
desire to preserve the corpse probably led to the practice of embalming.
The grave becomes a place of sanctity, of pilgrimage, and of religious
observance, and it has been maintained by many writers, notably by Mr.
W. Simpson in his _Worship of Death_, that the service round the grave
gives us the beginning of all temple worship.
But from this brief view of the beginnings of religion we are able to
see how completely fallacious are all those efforts to derive religion
from an attempt to achieve an ideal, from a desire to solve certain
philosophical problems, or from any of the other sources that are
paraded by modern apologists. The origin and nature of religion is
comparatively simple to understand, once we have cleared our minds of
all these fallacies and carefully examine the facts. Religion is no more
than the explanation which the primitive mind gives of the experiences
which it has of the world. And, therefore, the only definition that
covers all the facts, and which stresses the essence of all religions,
high and low, savage and civilized, is that given by Tylor, namely, the
belief in supernatural beings. It is the one definition that expresses
the feature common to all religions, and with that definition before us
we are able to use language with a precision that is impossible so long
as we attempt to read into religion something that is absent from all
its earlier forms, and which is only introduced when advanced thought
makes the belief in the supernatural more and more difficult to retain
its hold over the human mind.