In all human societies, at certain periods of their existence, a time has come when religion has first swerved from its original purpose, then, diverging more and more, it has lost sight of that purpose, and has finally petrified into fixed forms, so that its influence on men’s lives has become ever less and less.
At such times the educated minority cease to believe in the established religious teaching, and only pretend to hold it because they think it necessary to do so in order to keep the mass of the people to the established order of life; but the mass of the people, though by inertia they keep to the established forms of religion, no longer guide their lives by its demands, but guide them only by custom and by the State laws.
That is what has repeatedly occurred in various human societies. But what is now happening in our Christian society has never happened before. It never before happened that the rich, ruling and more educated minority, which has the most influence on the masses, not only disbelieved the existing religion, but was convinced that no religion at all is any longer needed, and, instead of influencing those who are doubtful of the truth of the generally professed religion to accept some religious teaching more rational and clear than the prevalent one, influenced them to regard religion in general as a thing that has outlived its day, and is now not merely a useless, but even a harmful, social organ, like the vermiform appendix in the human body.
Religion is regarded by such men, not as something known to us by inward experience, but as an external phenomenon – a disease, as it were, which overtakes certain people, and which we can only investigate by its external symptoms.
Religion, in the opinion of some of these men, arose from attributing a spirit to various aspects of Nature (animism); in the opinion of others, it arose from the supposed possibility of communicating with deceased ancestors; in the opinion of others, again, it arose from fear of the forces of Nature. But, say the learned men of our day, since science has now proved that trees and stones cannot be endowed with a spirit; that dead ancestors do not know what is done by the living; and that the aspects of Nature are explainable by natural causes – it follows that the need for religion has passed, as well as the need for all those restrictions with which (in consequence of religious beliefs) people have hitherto hampered themselves. In the opinion of these learned men there was a period of ignorance: the religious period. That has long been outlived by humanity, though some occasional atavistic indications of it still remain. Then came the metaphysical period, which is now also outlived. But we, enlightened people, are living in a scientific period: a period of positive science which replaces religion and will bring humanity to a height of development it could never have reached while subject to the superstitious teachings of religion.
Early in 1901 the distinguished French savant Berthelot delivered a speech* in which he told his hearers that the day of religion has passed and religion must now be replaced by science. I refer to this speech because it is the first to my hand, and because it was delivered in the metropolis of the educated world by a universally recognized savant. But the same thought is continually and ubiquitously expressed in every form, from philosophic treatises down to newspaper feuilletons.
M. Berthelot says in that speech, that there were formerly two motors moving humanity: Force and Religion; but that these motors have now become superfluous, for in their place we have science. By science M. Berthelot (like all devotees of science) evidently means a science embracing the whole range of things man knows, harmoniously united, co-ordinated, and in command of such methods that the data it obtains are unquestionably true. But as no such science really exists – and what is now called science consists of a collection of haphazard, disconnected scraps of knowledge, many of them quite useless, and such as, instead of supplying undoubted truth, very frequently supply the grossest delusions, exhibited as truth today, but refuted tomorrow – it is evident that the thing M. Berthelot thinks must replace religion is something non-existent. Consequently the assertion made by M. Berthelot and by those who agree with him, to the effect that science will replace religion, is quite arbitrary, and rests on a quite unjustifiable faith in the infallibility of science – a faith similar to the belief in an infallible Church.
Yet men who are said to be, and who consider themselves to be, educated, are quite convinced that a science already exists which should and can replace religion, and which even has already replaced it.
‘Religion is obsolete: belief in anything but science is ignorance. Science will arrange all that is needful, and one must be guided in life by science alone.’ This is what is thought and said both by scientists themselves and also by those men of the crowd who, though far from scientific, believe in the scientists and join them in asserting that religion is an obsolete superstition, and that we must be guided in life by science only: that is, in reality, by nothing at all; for science, by reason of its very aim (which is to study all that exists), can afford no guidance for the life of man.
The learned men of our times have decided that religion is not wanted, and that science will replace it, or has already done so; but the fact remains that, now as formerly, no human society and no rational man has existed or can exist without a religion. I use the term rational man because an irrational man may live, as the beasts do, without a religion. But a rational man cannot live without one; for only religion gives a rational man the guidance he needs, telling him what he should do, and what first and what next. A rational man cannot live without religion, precisely because reason is characteristic of his nature. Every animal is guided in its actions (apart from those to which it is impelled by the need to satisfy its immediate desires) by a consideration of the direct results of its actions. Having considered those results by such means of comprehension as it possesses, an animal makes its actions conform to those consequences, and it always unhesitatingly acts in one and the same way, in accord with those considerations. A bee, for instance, flies for honey and stores it in the hive because in winter it will need food for itself and for the young, and beyond these considerations it knows, and can know, nothing. So also a bird is influenced when it builds its nest, or migrates from the north to the south and back again. Every animal acts in a like way when it does anything not resulting from direct, immediate necessity, but prompted by considerations of anticipated results. With man, however, it is not so. The difference between a man and an animal lies in the fact that the perceptive capacities possessed by an animal are limited to what we call instinct, whereas man’s fundamental perceptive capacity is reason. A bee, collecting honey, can have no doubts as to whether it is good or bad to collect honey; but a man gathering in his corn or fruit cannot but consider whether he is diminishing the prospects of obtaining future harvests, and whether he is not depriving his neighbour of food. Nor can he help wondering what the children whom he now feeds will become like – and much else. The most important questions of conduct in life cannot be solved conclusively by a reasonable man, just because there is such a superabundance of possible consequences which he cannot but be aware of. Every rational man knows, or at least feels, that in the most important questions of life he can guide himself neither by personal impulses, nor by considerations of the immediate consequences of his activity – for the consequences he foresees are too numerous and too various, and are often contradictory one to another, being as likely to prove harmful as beneficial to himself and to other people. There is a legend which tells of an angel who descended to earth and, entering a devout family, slew a child in its cradle; when asked why he did so, he explained that the child would have become the greatest of malefactors, and would have destroyed the happiness of the family. But it is thus not only with the question, Which human lives are useful, useless or harmful? None of the most important questions of life can a reasonable man decide by considerations of their immediate results and consequences. A reasonable man cannot be satisfied with the considerations that guide the actions of an animal. A man may regard himself as an animal among animals – living for the passing day; or he may consider himself as a member of a family, a society or a nation, living for centuries; or he may, and even must necessarily (for reason irresistibly prompts him to this) consider himself as part of the whole infinite universe existing eternally. And therefore reasonable men should do, and always have done, in reference to the infinitely small affairs of life affecting their actions, what in mathematics is called integrate: that is to say, they must set up, besides their relation to the immediate facts of life, a relation to the whole immense Infinite in time and space, conceived as one whole. And such establishment of man’s relation to that whole of which he feels himself to be a part, from which he draws guidance for his actions, is what has been called, and is called, Religion. And therefore religion always has been, and cannot cease to be, a necessary and an indispensable condition of the life of a reasonable man and of all reasonable humanity.
‘But is there any true religion? Religions are endlessly various, and we have no right to call one of them true, just because it most nearly suits our own taste’ – is what people say who look at the external forms of religion as at some disease from which they feel themselves free, but from which other people still suffer. But this is a mistake; religions differ in their external forms, but they are all alike in their fundamental principles. And it is these principles, that are fundamental to all religions, that form the true religion which alone at the present time is suitable for us all, and the adoption of which alone can save men from their ills.
Mankind has lived long, and just as it has produced and improved its practical inventions through successive generations, so also it could not fail to produce and improve those spiritual principles which have formed the bases of its life, as well as the rules of conduct that resulted from those principles. If blind men do not see these, that does not prove that they do not exist.
This religion of our times, common to all men, exists – not as some sect with all its peculiarities and perversions, but as a religion consisting of those principles which are alike in all the widespread religions known to us, and professed by more than nine-tenths of the human race; and that men are not yet completely brutalized is due to the fact that the best men of all nations hold to this religion and profess it, even if unconsciously, and only the hypnotic deception practised on men by the aid of the priests and scientists now hinders men from consciously adopting it.
The principles of this true religion are so natural to men, that as soon as they are put before them they are accepted as something quite familiar and self-evident. For us the true religion is Christianity in those of its principles in which it agrees, not with the external forms, but with the basic principles of Brahmanism, Confucianism, Taoism, Hebraism, Buddhism, and even Mohammedanism. And just in the same way, for those who profess Brahmanism, Confucianism, etc. – true religion is that of which the basic principles agree with those of all other religions. And these principles are very simple, intelligible and clear.
These principles are: that there is a God, the origin of all things; that in man dwells a spark from that Divine Origin, which man, by his way of living, can increase or decrease in himself; that to increase this divine spark man must suppress his passions and increase love in himself; and that the practical means to attain this result is to do to others as you would they should do to you. All these principles are common to Brahmanism, Hebraism, Confucianism and Mohammedanism. (If Buddhism supplies no definition of God, it nevertheless acknowledges That with which man commingles, and into Which he is absorbed when he attains to Nirvana. So, That with which man commingles, or into Which he is absorbed in Nirvana, is the same Origin that is called God in Hebraism, Christianity and Mohammedanism.)
‘But that is not religion,’ is what men of today will say, who are accustomed to consider that the supernatural, i.e., the unmeaning, is the chief sign of religion. ‘That is anything you like: philosophy, ethics, ratiocination – but not religion.’ Religion, according to them, must be absurd and unintelligible (Credo quia absurdum). Yet it was only from these very principles, or rather in consequence of their being preached as religious doctrines, that – by a long process of perversion – all those absurd miracles and supernatural occurrences were elaborated, which are now considered to be the fundamental signs of every religion. To assert that the supernatural and irrational form the essential characteristic of religion is like observing only rotten apples, and then asserting that a flabby bitterness and a harmful effect on the stomach are the prime characteristics of the fruit called Apple.
Religion is the definition of man’s relation to the Source of all things, and of man’s purpose in life which results from that relation; and it supplies rules of conduct resulting from that purpose. And the universal religion, whose first principles are alike in all the faiths, fully meets the demands of this understanding of religion. It defines the relation of man to God, as being that of a part to the whole; from this relation it deduces man’s purpose, which is to increase the divine element in himself; and this purpose involves practical demands on man, in accord with the rule: Do to others as you wish them to do to you.
People often doubt, and I myself at one time doubted, whether such an abstract rule as, Do to others as you wish them to do to you, can be as obligatory a rule and guide for action as the simpler rules: to fast, pray and take communion, etc. But an irrefutable reply to that doubt is supplied, for instance, by the spiritual condition of a Russian peasant who would rather die than spit out the Sacrament on to a manure-heap, but who yet, at the command of men, is ready to kill his brothers.
Why should demands flowing from the rule of doing to others as you wish them to do to you – such, for instance, as: not killing one’s brother man, not reviling, not committing adultery, not revenging one’s self, not taking advantage of the need of one’s brethren to satisfy one’s own caprice, and many others – why should not they be instilled as forcibly, and become as binding and inviolable, as the belief in the sanctity of the Sacraments, or of images, etc., now is to men whose faith is founded more on credulity than on any clear inward consciousness.
The truths of the religion common to all men of our time are so simple, so intelligible, and so near the heart of each man, that it would seem only necessary for parents, rulers and teachers to instil into children and adults – instead of the obsolete and absurd doctrines, in which they themselves often do not believe: about Trinities, virgin-mothers, redemptions, Indras, Trimurti, and about Buddhas and Mohammeds who fly away into the sky – those clear and simple truths, the metaphysical essence of which is that the spirit of God dwells in man; and the practical rule of which is that man should do to others as he wishes them to do to him – for the whole life of humanity to change. If only – in the same way that the belief is now instilled into children and confirmed in adults, that God sent His son to redeem Adam’s sin, and that He established His Church which must be obeyed; as well as rules deduced from these beliefs: telling when and where to pray and make offerings, when to refrain from such and such food, and on what days to abstain from work – if only it were instilled and confirmed that God is a spirit whose manifestation is present in us, the strength of which we can increase by our lives: if only this and all that naturally flows from this, were instilled in the same way that quite useless stories of impossible occurrences, and rules of meaningless ceremonies deduced from those stories, are now instilled – then, instead of purposeless strife and discord, we should very soon (without the aid of diplomatists, international law, peace-congresses, political economists and Socialists in all their various subdivisions) see humanity living a peaceful, united and happy life guided by the one religion.
But nothing of the kind is done: not only is the deception of false religion not destroyed, and the true one not preached, but, on the contrary, men depart farther and farther away from the possibility of accepting the truth.
The chief cause of people not doing what is so natural, necessary and possible is that men today, in consequence of having lived long without religion, are so accustomed to establish and defend their existence by violence, by bayonets, bullets, prisons and gallows, that it seems to them as if such an arrangement of life were not only normal, but were the only one possible. Not only do those who profit by the existing order think so, but those even who suffer from it are so stupefied by the hypnotism exercised upon them, that they also consider violence to be the only means of securing good order in human society. Yet it is just this arrangement and maintenance of the commonweal by violence that does most to hinder people from comprehending the causes of their sufferings, and consequently from being able to establish a true order.
The results of it are such as might be produced by a bad or malicious doctor who should drive a malignant eruption inwards, thereby cheating the sick man, and making the disease worse and its cure impossible.
To people of the ruling classes, who enslave the masses and think and say: ‘Après nous le déluge’,* it seems very convenient by means of the army, the priesthood, the soldiers and the police, as well as by threats of bayonets, bullets, prisons, work-houses and gallows, to compel the enslaved people to remain in stupefaction and enslavement, and not to hinder the rulers from exploiting them. And the ruling men do this, calling it the maintenance of good order, but there is nothing that so hinders the establishment of a good social order as this does. In reality, far from being the establishment of good order, it is the establishment of evil.
If men of our Christian nations, still possessing some remnants of those religious principles which in spite of everything yet live in the people, had not before them the continual example of crime committed by those who have assumed the duty of guarding order and morality among men – the wars, executions, prisons, taxation, sale of intoxicants and of opium – they would never have thought of committing one one-hundredth of the evil deeds – the frauds, violence and murders – which they now commit in full confidence that such deeds are good and natural for men to commit.
The law of human life is such, that the only way to improve it, whether for the individual or for a society of men, is by means of inward, moral growth towards perfection. All attempts of men to better their lives by external action – by violence – serve as the most efficacious propaganda and example of evil, and therefore not only do not improve life, but, on the contrary, increase the evil which, like a snowball, grows larger and larger, and removes men more and more from the only possible way of truly bettering their lives.
In proportion as the practice of violence and crime, committed in the name of the law by the guardians of order and morality, becomes more and more frequent and cruel, and is more and more justified by the hypnotism of falsehood presented as religion, men will be more and more confirmed in the belief that the law of their life is not one of love and service to their fellows, but is one demanding that they should strive with, and devour, one another.
And the more they are confirmed in that thought, which degrades them to the plane of the beasts, the harder will it be to shake off the hypnotic trance in which they are living, and to accept as the basis of their life the true religion of our time, common to all humanity.
A vicious circle has been established: the absence of religion makes possible an animal life based on violence; an animal life based on violence makes emancipation from hypnotism and an adoption of true religion more and more impossible. And, therefore, men do not do what is natural, possible and necessary in our times: do not destroy the deception and simulacrum of religion, and do not assimilate and preach the true religion.
Is any issue from this enchanted circle possible, and if so, what is it?
At first it seems as if the Governments, which have taken on themselves the duty of guiding the life of the people for their benefit, should lead us out of this circle. That is what men who have tried to alter the arrangements of life founded on violence, and to replace them by a reasonable arrangement based on mutual service and love, have always supposed. So thought the Christian reformers, and the founders of various theories of European Communism, and so also thought the celebrated Chinese reformer Mo Tî,* who for the welfare of the people proposed to the Government not to teach school-children military sciences and exercises, and not to give rewards to adults for military achievements, but to teach children and adults the rules of esteem and love, and give rewards and encouragement for feats of love. So also thought, and think, many religious peasant-reformers, of whom I have known and now know several, beginning with Soutayef and ending with an old man who has now five times presented a petition to the Emperor, asking him to decree the abrogation of false religion, and to order that true Christianity be preached.
It seems to men natural that the Government – which justifies its existence on the score of its care for the welfare of the people – must, to secure that welfare, wish to use the only means which can never do people any harm, and can only produce the most fruitful results. Government, however, has not only never taken upon itself this duty, but, on the contrary, has always and everywhere maintained with the greatest jealousy any false, effete religion prevalent at the period, and has in every way persecuted those who have tried to inform the people of the principles of true religion. In reality this cannot be otherwise; for Governments to expose the falsity of the present religions, and to preach the true one, would be as if a man were to cut down the branch on which he is sitting.
But if Government will not do this work, it would seem certain that those learned men – who, having freed themselves from the deception of false religion, say they wish to serve the common people whose labour has provided for their education and support – are bound to do it. But these men, like the Government, do not do it: first, because they consider it inexpedient to risk unpleasantness and to suffer the danger of persecution at the hands of the ruling classes for exposing a fraud which Government protects, and which, in their opinion, will disappear of itself; secondly, because, considering all religion to be an effete error, they have nothing to offer the people in place of the deception they are expected to destroy.
There remain those great masses of unlearned men who are under the hypnotic influence of Church and Government deception, and who therefore believe that the simulacrum of religion which has been instilled into them is the one true religion, and that there is and can be no other. These masses are under a constant and intense hypnotic influence. Generation after generation they are born and live and die in the stupefied condition in which they are kept by the clergy and the Government; and if they free themselves from that influence, they are sure to fall into the school of the scientists who deny religion – when their influence becomes as useless and harmful as the influence of their teachers.
So that for some men the work is unprofitable, while for others it is impossible.
It looks as if no issue were possible.
And indeed for irreligious men there is not, and cannot be, any issue from this position; those who belong to the higher, governing classes, even if they pretend to be concerned for the welfare of the masses, will never seriously attempt (guided by worldly aims, they cannot do it) to destroy the stupefaction and servitude in which these masses live, and which make it possible for the upper classes to rule over them. In the same way, men belonging to the enslaved masses cannot, while guided by worldly motives, wish to make their own hard position harder by entering on a struggle against the upper classes, to expose a false teaching and to preach a true one. Neither of these sets of men has any motive to do this, and if they are intelligent they will never attempt it.
But it is otherwise for religious people: men such as those who – however perverted a society may be – are always to be found guarding with their lives the sacred fire of religion, without which human life could not exist. There are times (and our time is such) when these men are unnoticed, when – as among us in Russia – despised and derided by all, their lives pass unrecorded – in exile, in prisons and in penal battalions – yet they live, and on them depends the rational life of humanity. And it is just these religious men – however few they may be – who alone can and will rend asunder that enchanted circle which keeps men bound. They can do it, because all the disadvantages and dangers which hinder a worldly man from opposing the existing order of society, not only do not impede a religious man, but rather increase his zeal in the struggle against falsehood, and impel him to confess by word and deed what he holds to be divine truth. If he belongs to the ruling classes he will not only not wish to hide the truth out of regard for his own advantageous position, but, on the contrary, having come to hate such advantages, he will exert his whole strength to free himself from them, and to preach the truth, for he will no longer have any other aim in life than to serve God. If he belongs to the enslaved, then in the same way, unbiased by the wish, common among those of his position, to improve the conditions of his physical life, such a man will have no aim but to fulfil the will of God by exposing falsehood and confessing truth; and no sufferings or threats will make him cease to live in accord with that purpose which he has recognized in his life. They will both act thus, as naturally as a worldly man exerts himself and puts up with privations to obtain riches, or to please a ruler from whom he expects to receive advantages. Every religious man acts thus, because a human soul enlightened by religion no longer lives merely by the life of this world, as irreligious people do, but lives an eternal, infinite life, for which suffering and death in this life are as insignificant as are blisters on his hands, or weariness of limbs, to a ploughman when he is ploughing a field.
These are the men who will rend asunder the enchanted circle in which people are now confined. However few such men there may be, however humble their social position, however poor in education or ability, as surely as fire lights the dry steppe, so surely will these people set the whole world aflame, and kindle all the hearts of men, withered by long lack of religion, and now thirsting for a renewal of life.
Religion is not a belief, settled once for all, in certain supernatural occurrences supposed to have taken place once upon a time, nor in the necessity for certain prayers and ceremonies; nor is it, as the scientists suppose, a survival of the superstitions of ancient ignorance, which in our time has no meaning or application to life; but religion is a certain relation of man to eternal life and to God, a relation accordant with reason and contemporary knowledge, and it is the one thing that alone moves humanity forward towards its destined aim.
A wise Hebrew proverb says, ‘The soul of man is the lamp of God.’ Man is a weak and miserable animal until the light of God burns in his soul. But when that light burns (and it burns only in souls enlightened by religion) man becomes the most powerful being in the world. Nor can this be otherwise, for what then acts in him is no longer his strength, but is the strength of God.
So this is what religion is, and in what its essence consists.
[Translated by Aylmer Maude]