‘You allow yourself contradictions which are hard to reconcile with one
another. First you declare that a work like yours is quite harmless; no
one will let himself be robbed of his religious faith through such
discussions. But since, as became evident later, it is your aim to
disturb this faith, one may ask: why in fact do you publish it? At
another point, however, you admit that it might be dangerous, indeed
very dangerous, for a man to discover that people no longer believe in
God. Docile though he had been hitherto, now he would throw off all
allegiance to the laws of culture. Your whole argument that the
religious motivation of the cultural commandments signifies a danger for
culture rests, in fact, on the assumption that the believer can be made
into an unbeliever. But that is a complete contradiction.
‘And here is another contradiction: you admit on the one hand that man
will not be guided by intelligence; he is ruled by his passions and by
the claims of his instincts; but on the other hand you propose to
replace the affective basis of his allegiance to culture by a rational
one. Let who can understand this. To me it seems a case of either the
one or the other.
‘Besides, have you learnt nothing from history? Once before such an
attempt to substitute reason for religion was made, officially and in
the grand manner. Surely you remember the French Revolution and
Robespierre, and also how short-lived and how deplorably ineffectual the
experiment? It is being repeated in Russia at present, and we need not
be curious about the result. Do you not think we may assume that man
cannot do without religion?
‘You have said yourself that religion is more than an obsessional
neurosis. But you have not dealt with this other aspect of it. You are
content to work out the analogy with the neurosis. Men must be freed
from a neurosis. What else is lost in the process does not trouble you.’
Probably these apparent contradictions have arisen because I have been
dealing too hastily with complicated matters, but we can make up for
this to some extent. I still maintain that in one respect my work is
quite harmless. No believer will let himself be led astray by these or
by similar arguments. A believer has certain ties of affection binding
him to the substance of religion. There are certainly a vast number of
other people who are not religious in the same sense. They obey the laws
of civilization because they are intimidated by the threats of religion,
and they fear religion so long as they consider it as a part of the
reality that restricts them. These are the people who break free as soon
as they dare to give up their belief in its reality value; but arguments
have no effect on them either. They cease to fear religion when they
find that others do not fear it, and of these I have asserted that they
would learn of the decline of religious influence even if I did not
publish my work.
But I suppose you yourself attach more value to the other contradiction
with which you tax me. Since men are so slightly amenable to reasonable
arguments, so completely are they ruled by their instinctual wishes, why
should one want to take away from them a means of satisfying their
instincts and replace it by reasonable arguments? Certainly men are like
this, but have you asked yourself whether they need be so, whether their
inmost nature necessitates it? Can an anthropologist give the cranial
index of a people whose custom it is to deform their children’s heads by
bandaging them from their earliest years? Think of the distressing
contrast between the radiant intelligence of a healthy child and the
feeble mentality of the average adult. Is it so utterly impossible that
it is just religious up-bringing which is largely to blame for this
relative degeneration? I think it would be a very long time before a
child who was not influenced began to trouble himself about God and the
things beyond this world. Perhaps his thoughts on these matters would
then take the same course as they did with his ancestors; but we do not
wait for this development; we introduce him to the doctrines of religion
at a time when he is neither interested in them nor capable of grasping
their import. Is it not true that the two main points in the modern
educational programme are the retardation of sexual development and the
early application of religious influence? So when the child’s mind
awakens, the doctrines of religion are already unassailable. But do you
suppose that it is particularly conducive to the strengthening of the
mental function that so important a sphere should be closed to it by the
menace of hell pains? We need not be greatly surprised at the feeble
mentality of the man who has once brought himself to accept without
criticism all the absurdities that religious doctrines repeat to him,
and even to overlook the contradictions between them. Now we have no
other means of controlling our instincts than our intelligence. And how
can we expect people who are dominated by thought-prohibitions to attain
the psychological ideal, the primacy of the intelligence? You know too
that women in general are said to suffer from so-called ‘physiological
weak-mindedness’, _i.e._ a poorer intelligence than the man’s. The fact
itself is disputable, its interpretation doubtful; but it has been
argued for the secondary nature of this intellectual degeneration that
women labour under the harshness of the early prohibition, which
prevented them from applying their mind to what would have interested
them most, that is to say, to the problems of sexual life. So long as a
man’s early years are influenced by the religious thought-inhibition and
by the loyal one derived from it, as well as by the sexual one, we
cannot really say what he is actually like.
But I will curb my ardour and admit the possibility that I too am
chasing after an illusion. Perhaps the effect of the religious
thought-prohibition is not as bad as I assume, perhaps it will turn out
that human nature remains the same even if education is not abused by
being subjected to religion. I do not know, and you cannot know either.
It is not only the great problems of this life that seem at present
insoluble; there are many smaller questions also that are hard to
decide. But you must admit that there is here the justification for a
hope for the future, that perhaps we may dig up a treasure which can
enrich culture, and that it is worth while to make the experiment of a
non-religious education. Should it prove unsatisfactory, I am ready to
give up the reform and to return to the earlier, purely descriptive
judgement: man is a creature of weak intelligence who is governed by his
instinctual wishes.
There is another point in which I wholeheartedly agree with you. It is,
to be sure, a senseless proceeding to try and do away with religion by
force and at one blow—more especially as it is a hopeless one. The
believer will not let his faith be taken from him, neither by arguments
nor by prohibitions. And even if it did succeed with some, it would be a
cruel thing to do. A man who has for decades taken a sleeping draught is
naturally unable to sleep if he is deprived of it. That the effect of
the consolations of religion may be compared to that of a narcotic is
prettily illustrated by what is happening in America. There they are now
trying—plainly under the influence of petticoat government—to deprive
men of all stimulants, intoxicants and luxuries,[3] and to satiate them
with piety by way of compensation. This is another experiment about the
result of which we need not be curious.
Footnote 3:
_I.e._ tea, alcohol, and tobacco.
And so I disagree with you when you go on to argue that man cannot in
general do without the consolation of the religious illusion, that
without it he would not endure the troubles of life, the cruelty of
reality. Certainly this is true of the man into whom you have instilled
the sweet—or bitter-sweet—poison from childhood on. But what of the
other, who has been brought up soberly? Perhaps he, not suffering from
neurosis, will need no intoxicant to deaden it. True, man will then find
himself in a difficult situation. He will have to confess his utter
helplessness and his insignificant part in the working of the universe;
he will have to confess that he is no longer the centre of creation, no
longer the object of the tender care of a benevolent providence. He will
be in the same position as the child who has left the home where he was
so warm and comfortable. But, after all, is it not the destiny of
childishness to be overcome? Man cannot remain a child for ever; he must
venture at last into the hostile world. This may be called ‘_education
to reality_’; need I tell you that it is the sole aim of my book to draw
attention to the necessity for this advance?
You fear, probably, that he will not stand the test? Well, anyhow, let
us be hopeful. It is at least something to know that one is thrown on
one’s own resources. One learns then to use them properly. And man is
not entirely without means of assistance; since the time of the deluge
science has taught him much, and it will still further increase his
power. And as for the great necessities of fate, against which there is
no remedy, these he will simply learn to endure with resignation. Of
what use to him is the illusion of a kingdom on the moon, whose revenues
have never yet been seen by anyone? As an honest crofter on this earth
he will know how to cultivate his plot in a way that will support him.
Thus by withdrawing his expectations from the other world and
concentrating all his liberated energies on this earthly life he will
probably attain to a state of things in which life will be tolerable for
all and no one will be oppressed by culture any more. Then with one of
our comrades in unbelief he will be able to say without regret:
Let us leave the heavens
To the angels and the sparrows.