THE second volume of the "Positive Polity" contains an analysis of the elements of Religion-of the nature and field of Religion-more exhaustive and searching than anything that has ever been said of Religion in ancient or in modern times.
Hence the profound interest of theologians in Comte's scheme. Both Catholic and Protestant divines have studied this abstract theory of Religion intently; and, with all the horror they feel for a Religion without a Theology, they recognise how deeply Auguste Comte has seen to the foundations of all religion, has apprehended what religion really has to do. And this explains the fascination that Comte possesses for some of the most sincere thinkers in many theological creeds. They find a modern man of science claiming for Religion a sphere of work far wider and more continuous than was ever claimed for it by St. Augustine or St. Bernard, Bossuet or Fénelon, by Calvin or Wesley claiming for it an authority over the thoughts and life of men which the most passionate Christian has long ceased even to imagine in his dreams.
And what, on the other hand, says an avowed freethinker like Mr. Mill, one who has himself criticised Comte unsparingly? He entirely justifies Comte in his use of the term Religion, and his analysis of its sphere and nature; and he adds, "not only had he realised the essential conditions of Religion, but all other religions are made better in proportion as, in their practical result, they are brought to coincide with that which he aimed at constructing."
And so, as we so often hear, the familiar objection to Positivism is, that it implies too high a standard of human nature, is too good for practical work. Well! unless we have a high Ideal, a very high Ideal, we are never likely to do much.
I come, then, to show what this analysis of Religion by Comte is, and how it is applied to real life.
Religion is the state of harmony that results when man's entire life, both as an individual and as a member of society, corresponds with the real conditions-first of human nature; and secondly of the world around us.
This is a rather abstract way of putting it; but it can be shown that all systems of religion aim in spirit at this: the ordering human life in a true way, so as to make it accord with man's own nature and the facts of the Universe.
Theologists all say-Do the will of the Almighty, Omniscient Creator and you will have peace.
Just as Confucian Fetishism said: Follow the mean, the just, the even course of correct conduct, and Heaven (the Sky) will give you peace.
Just as Buddhism said: Get rid of all the passions which disturb and distract the Spirit, and you will find ultimate rest in complete freedom from all lower cares.
So Positivism, giving precision to the vague fancies about Creation, Heaven, and Nirvana, says: Make life correspond with the real conditions of human nature and of external nature-and then harmony, happiness, peace result.
Peace, rest, harmony, the healthy working of the human organism, is the end of all modes of Religion. Religion is simply a state of general harmony, within and without-in the inmost spirit, between man and his fellows, between man and the Earth.
How idle, therefore, are debates whether Religion is a needful thing, a good thing, a thing that wise men in the future perhaps will not trouble about. Not to trouble about Religion is to be indifferent whether human life is in harmony with its true nature and real conditions-not to care whether we are at war with our own selves and our fellow beings, and our physical conditions-which is the state of a savage, and the lawless wild man.
But all the efforts of reasonable men, all philosophy, all science, all social energy, all our attempts to improve civilisation, all that we call progress-simply aim at making human life more in harmony with its true nature and its real conditions.
This is the meaning of Auguste Comte's profound aphorism: "Man grows more and more religious." In spite of appearances and of our habit of thinking that religion implies fiction and detachment from earth and life, Man does grow more and more in harmony with his own nature and human nature, and so he does grow more religious. Hence Religion simply means development on the true lines of the real facts-in other words, Progress on the basis of Order.
This capacity for religious unity and union is essentially a human thing, and a social attribute. A steam engine or a ship shows a very remarkable unity of system, and of fitness for its work-but, of course, religion cannot be ascribed to either, beautifully systematic as both are; because they have no development, no continuous adjustment of their powers to their function-and if the engine breaks a wheel or a pipe or the ship starts a leak, there is an end of them, they cannot repair themselves, or remedy the smallest defect.
Nor have animals this possibility of religion. A dog or an elephant has some germs of it for a moment, because both try to adapt their lives to their real conditions, and order their natures round their own proper Providence, as we have seen in many a beautiful instance. But the elephant and the dog have simply germs of moral nature, and none of a social. But a tiger, or a shark, a vulture, and a rattlesnake (even if they had the brain of Dante and Shakespeare) could have no real religion-because their nature is not set towards harmony, towards fellowship, or to a loving acceptance of the real conditions of their life. To live lonely, to live in a ceaseless round of combat and torpor, to kill and be killed, is their only possible kind of life, and the true development of a tiger is to become more and more terrible, and lonely, and destructive-though this very life of passion and storm hastens on his own death.
A short life and a stormy one is the motto of the tiger, and so it is of the human tiger and the human rattlesnake-for the life of selfish self-indulgence necessarily, in a social world, closes in the field against itself. These Napoleons of selfishness soon rouse against them a stronger combination, which ultimately prison them in some St. Helena, as social pariahs.
The glorious peculiarity of Man amongst all living things is this: He unites in himself all these tendencies:—
1. That the development of his own nature coincides with the development of the nature of his fellow men.
2. That co-operation with his fellows is the true development of his own nature.
3. That the joint development of the individual and the race coincides with the true adaptation of man in the world.
4. That the continuity of life possessed by the race multiplies the life of the individual indefinitely.
Hence material, intellectual, and moral Progress all coincide, and tend to the same result when they are in harmony.
Again, individual development and social development alike coincide, and mutually strengthen each other.
Again, the highest activity is equivalent to perfect peace.
Further, the most complete unselfishness is the true way to the highest peace.
In other words, happiness and duty are synonymous, and, relatively, in the long run, prosperity and virtue are synonymous.
All alike mean, Life for Humanity.
Life for Humanity is at once:—
1. The grandest field for the intellect.
2. The most practical sphere for the energies, and
3. The purest satisfaction of the feelings.
It is also the surest mode in which man adjusts himself to the physical pressure of external Nature.
And it is the only way in which he can prolong his life beyond the few years of his own precarious existence.
Herein, then, are realised all the dreams of the older faiths, in which the instinctive genius of mankind groped after the Truth in ways so strange and diverse.
They have all struggled to find some one grand solution of life-so that Man and the Universe might be brought under one Government. And hitherto they have struggled in vain.
But there is a way in which the order of the World around us and the order of Man's life do coincide.
To make these two correspond is the only way in which Man can escape perpetual Death, remorse, and confusion.
Attachment, Reverence, Love are, as Christ has said, the only feelings which in the end can give us Peace.
Though no Creator crush the lawless and rebellious man and condemn him to Hell, he is beating himself to pieces against the Hell of an irresistible destiny.
Death has not the Victory. Man can escape the fate of the beasts that perish, and does become immortal in Humanity at last, not in Heaven, but on Earth.
These astonishing correlations all show us that the state of true harmony has been reached at last. They all arise from the positive study of human nature. That which unites all the powers of the Soul within is the same thing that unites man to man; it is the same thing that regulates the personal life of the man, and the collective life of society.
Religion binds, unites, regulates, lie, rallie, règle, as Comte says. The function of Religion is to bind within, to unite without, and to regulate alike without and within. The idea of Humanity is found to do all three:
1. It supplies the firm voice of enlightened conscience within the soul.
2. It unites the man to his fellows and gives them all a cause and a faith in presence of the World.
3. It regulates the person, the society, and the earth which man's task is to improve.
In place of that Absolute Principle which the ambition of the Intellect has dreamed of for ten thousand years, a truly positive philosophy shows us that the highest idea of Life, the essential conditions of Life, imply a sound Dualism, or Double notion.
Life simply means the continuous adjustment of the organism to its conditions.
Thus our final ideal of Human Nature is its continuous and perfect development in its true sphere-that is the Action and Reaction of
1. Humanity, and
2. The World.
This is the issue of the secular struggle between Religion and Philosophy, Religion and Action.
Religion surrenders its ancient claim to enter into relation with the Absolute Spirit of the Universe. It is content with the practical work-that of adapting Man's life to its actual conditions on the planet.
Thus the conception of Humanity perfecting itself in the world which is its home-gives us that harmony or key to all sides of human nature, which a hundred Religions have yearned after in vain.
And remark that it is done by Humanity alone. Grant that Theology draws out the highest inspirations of the Heart
Does any man pretend that Theology supplies a field for every faculty of the intelligence?
Does any pretend that it offers an object for our practical energies, for our skill, and art, and love of beauty, and industrial instinct?
What says the purest type of spiritual devotee to all this? He says, in the Imitation of Christ, put aside all these vain things, this agitation of the brain, this restlessness of the character-think of things above, that perish not.
And the Buddhist dream of annihilation, or the Confucian dream of the Sky-do these train all the powers; or, again, does the worship of Jupiter, and Juno, Mars and Venus, adequately train the heart, much less regulate the moral nature? Let the Epistle to the Corinthians be the answer!
Try all the Religions in turn-by this test. Do they appeal to the whole nature of Man? Does anything appeal to it but Humanity? Thus we come always back to this if we want peace for the whole Man.
If Religion has to gather up and organise Man's life it must deal equally with all parts of Man's nature, and as there are certainly three sides to this: (1) thought (2) activity, (3) feeling, Religion must have three distinct functions, for Action and Feeling are so entirely different in kind, that nothing which appeals to one can appeal to the other in the same way. Thought may exist without Activity and almost without Feeling. We may have Feeling without Thought, and Activity without Feeling.
Any scheme which is to harmonise human nature must deal with all three, and in a different set of appliances. Thus any Harmony of Man's nature implies all these three things:
1. A scheme or synthesis (i.e., grouping theory) as a basis of belief=A CREED.
2. A set of institutions and principles to discipline and guide action=A CODE OF CONDUCT.
3. A set of habits to cultivate the emotions and educate the heart=A CULT OR WORSHIP.
Nothing can be called really religion which omits any one of these three, or which gives especially to one a larger place, and starves the rest.
In their origin all forms of religion that are worthy of the name have in some sort professed to deal with all these-Belief, Conduct, Worship. Moses, Confucius Mahomet, and the early Medieval Church did not shrink from dealing with all that a man could know, or do, or feel, on all topics, all occasions of life alike. It may have been done in a narrow, absolute and hard way; but these various forms of religion professed to cover LIFE.
We are now so much accustomed to see Religion withdraw from all this, that we suppose Religion means-an opinion about the origin of the world, of the future state after death, and invocations occasionally addressed to the assumed author of the world and disposer of our future. That is to say: Religion has retired from the whole of the vast field of thought and knowledge except one or two metaphysical problems, in which it still asserts its prerogative. Take an ordinary encyclopaedia -as a sort of rude summary of the field of knowledge -what is called Religion by theologians deals with, say, one thousandth part of it at the most; really perhaps it deals with one millionth part.
Religion has already retired from almost the whole field of activity, which it professes to affect by at most one or two general maxims.
And even in the field of Emotion and Feeling, Religion, as popularly understood, considers that its function is fulfilled by periodical hours of worship-dealing with the special feelings of adoration and prayer to a Supreme Being.
Hence, the strangely narrow sense acquired by the terms religion, worship, prayer, creed, and so forth.
The business of Positivism is to give their true breadth and depth to all these. Thus:
I. A belief (capable of forming the basis of life) is a coherent body of ideas on the groups and keys of our knowledge.
That is, it is a ground plan of a complete intellectual development.
It is not enough to say that God made the world and sustains it as a moral providence. That is, no doubt, one answer to a very striking problem. But it is not one-thousandth part of the whole intellectual field. We need general canons of reasoning-simple, but clear, notions of the connection of the sciences, and of the typical results of each science, especially sound principles about the course of human history, and the foundation of human society and morality.
Thus a truly religious belief in the Positivist sense implies not only a belief about the origin of the Universe, but a thorough education.
It is asked whether Positivism therefore implies that an uneducated man cannot be in the full sense of the term religious. Well, obviously not! An illiterate and utterly ignorant man may be a most worthy and noble-hearted man. But he cannot be in the full sense of the term under the highest influence of Religion because he cannot be said to have his whole nature adequately developed. His ignorance will prevent him from understanding the grounds of duty or the nature of the world where his duty lies, and of the collective Humanity which his duty is to serve.
To a Positivist, Education in science and philosophy is, if not precisely Religion, one of the three great sides of Religion and its indispensable foundation.
And the reason is obvious. A man without trained habits of reasoning, solid knowledge of great truths, and the faculty of imagining the great ideals of Religion, is at any moment liable to be led away by crudities, his morality may be sapped by fantastic hypotheses; he will fail to seize in a vivid way the value of the great institutions and even the grandeur of the complex Providence on which his life depends.
An ignorant man may be the most fervent believer in the Theological or Positive Providence, but there is nothing to prevent him from being any day bewildered by the first spiritualist humbug he meets, or from taking up some sciolism like phrenology, "spiritualism," Christian Science, and the like; and under the influence of them he will lose his living confidence in the great institutions of existence, such as marriage, social order, and the discipline of childhood.
In Positivist religion it is not enough to be as little children. We are men and women: and the first duties of life require a solid training in the cardinal truths of human nature and of the World we live in.
II. Turn to the second great side of Religion-conduct, Principles of action. It is not enough to say the substance of religion is to be good, just, and kind, and keep ourselves unspotted from the world. We want to know how-since our work is certainly cast in the world -how we can keep ourselves good, just, and kind.
To say that this is the affair of morality, politics, social organisation, and not of Religion and so forth is simply to say that these: morality, politics, social organisation, etc., are to rule our life-not Religion.
A code of practical duty, a system to discipline our activity must contain principles
(1) As to our duty in our homes, as sons, daughters, husbands and wives.
(2) Our duty in our daily tasks, as workmen, managers, producers, buyers, sellers, as citizens, rulers, etc.
(3) A scheme for making industry as beneficent as it is now often cruel, for making justice the rule of international morality instead of force.
It is for want of this-for fixed principles about our practical duties in fifty spheres of work that all our social diseases and horrors exist, in spite of lofty professions of Christianity; the barbarism of industry, the foul, fierce scramble for wealth, the desperate recklessness of all forms of ambition.
There is but one adequate remedy-a complete scheme of practical discipline, an entire set of habits and recognised duties-not a copybook maxim or two, and a vague hope that we may do our duty in that state of life in which we were called, and so make ourselves meet for the Kingdom of Heaven.
III. Thirdly, I have spoken of Worship-How meagre is this word in its present narrow sense, to express the full meaning of what is needed. What is needed is—
A set of habits and institutions that will train the Heart and Feelings.
Worship nowadays is taken to be the going for an hour or two once a week to a Church or Chapel and there repeating a few well-known formulae.
Well, this is as meagre a training for the Heart as reading one of Bacon's essays once a week would be a paltry training for the Intellect.
Both might be good things. But Worship or cult or education of the Heart implies quite a thousand times more.
(1) The habit of domestic tenderness is worship—the loving converse of son, husband, father, with parent, wife, and child.
(2) The communing with one's own mind, and reflection upon duty and work is worship.
(3) The spiritual use of all noble poetry is worship.
(4) The communion with all noble spirits in public acts is worship.
(5) Every generous act springing from a full heart is worship.
We might as well talk of worshipping once a week, as of eating or drinking once a week, or leading a good life every Sunday.
Cult (worship is now an absurdly narrow term, though a noble old word) implies a continuous training of the spirit to all noble feelings: in our secret hours of inward musing, in our habitual converse with poetry and all forms of art, in our daily life towards our parents, and children, wives, servants, friends and neighhours.
It needs a thousand habits and institutions, of which that of congregational devotion is but one.
This is the meaning of Positivist Prayer.
Thus this scheme of Religion is really a scheme of (1) Knowledge, of (2) Practice, of (3) Feeling in the entire range of human life.
It is plain that no simple set of propositions can contain it-no single term even can express it. It is at once Philosophy and Life. No one can explain it in a Lecture, nor in fifty Lectures. It is simply education, and an education at once intellectual, practical, and devotional-one which it will take us years to master in understanding, and to make a habit in reality,