The future of an illusion

‘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.

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: