The question whether morality is based on religion, or religion on
morality, is one which calls for discussion, inasmuch as it is apt to
proceed on a mistaken view of facts in the history of religion. It is
maintained that as a matter of history morality came first and religion
afterwards; and that as a matter of philosophy religion presupposes
morality. Reality, that is to say, is in the making; the spirit of man
is self-realising; being is in process of becoming rationalised and
moralised; religion in process of disappearing.
Early religion, it is said, is unethical: it has to do with spirits,
which, as such, are not concerned with morality; with gods which are
not ethical or ideal, and are not objects of worship in our sense of
the term.
Now, the spirits which, in the period of animism, are believed to
animate things, are not, it is true, concerned with morality; but then,
neither are they gods. To be a god a spirit must have a community of
worshippers; and it is as the protector of that community that he is
worshipped. He protects the community against any individual member
who violates the custom of the community. The custom of the community
constitutes the morality of the society. Offences against that custom
are offences against the god of the community. A god starts as an
ethical power, and as an object of worship.
Still, it may be argued, before gods were, before religion was evolved,
morality was; and this may be shown by the origin and nature of
justice, which throughout is entirely independent of religion and
religious {xxii} considerations. On this theory, the origin of justice
is to be found in the resentment of the individual. But, first, the
individual, apart from society, is an abstraction and an impossibility:
the individual never exists apart from but always as a member of some
society. Next, justice is not the resentment of any individual, but
the sentiment of the community, expressing itself in the action not of
any individual but of the community as such. The responsibility both
for the wrong done and for righting it rests with the community. The
earliest offences against which public action is taken are said to be
witchcraft and breaches of the marriage laws. The latter are not
injuries resented by any individual: they are offences against the gods
and are punished to avert the misfortunes which otherwise would visit
the tribe. Witchcraft is especially offensive to the god of the
community.
In almost, if not quite, the lowest stages of human development,
disease and famine are regarded as punishments which fall on the
community as a whole, because the community, in the person of one of
its members, has offended some supernatural power. In quite the lowest
stage the guilt of the offending member is also regarded as capable of
infecting the whole community; and he is, accordingly, avoided by the
whole community and tabooed. Taboo is due to the collective action,
and expresses the collective feeling of the community as a whole. It
is from such collective action and feeling that justice has been
evolved and not from individual resentment, which is still and always
was something different from justice. The offences punished by the
community have always been considered, so far as they are offences
against morality, to be offences against the gods of the community.
The fact that in course of time such offences come to be punished
always as militating against the good of society testifies merely to
the general assumption that the good of man is the will of God: men do
not believe that murder, adultery, etc., are merely offences {xxiii}
against man's laws. It is only by ignoring this patent fact that it
becomes possible to maintain that religion is built upon morality, and
that we are discovering religion to be a superfluous superstructure.
It may be argued that the assumption that murder, adultery, etc., are
offences against God's will is a mere assumption, and that in making
the assumption we are fleeing "to the bosom of faith." The reply is
that we are content not merely to flee but to rest there . . . 211-238