Studies in religious history

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author's preface - - - - - I •

EXPERIMENTAL METHOD APPLIED TO RELIGION - 23 I -PAGANISM - - - - - " 33

Author's Preface

witness to vows made to that goddess have been excavated — they are now for the most part preserved in the National Library of Paris ; each and all state that Rabbat Tanit ' heard the prayers ' addressed to her. These three thousand witnesses to a prayer having secured its object certainly deceived themselves. For, indeed, Rabbat Tanit, being a false deity, never could grant anyone's prayer. The efficacy of quinine is proved because, in numberless cases, quinine or its substitutes have modified the course of a fever. Did ever prayer secure such proofs ? Certainly not. Yet the fact is easy to test, for millions of prayers are daily offered to. Heaven.

How will the future reconcile these truths, already established, with the need man feels of bowing before an Ideal Superior ? It is difficult to say ; yet in such matters what we have to do is evident, though the theory is obscure. From liberty alone proceeds the practice of religion. Religion must eventually become entirely free ; that is, it must be placed beyond the interference of the State, and be as individual a thing as literature, art, or taste. If, perchance, under the pretext of religion, offences should be committed against common rights, laws exist to punish them. If there were no more laws to govern religious matters than there now are to restrict the dress, studies, or private amusements of citizens, that would be perfection. A State neutral as regards religion is the only one that will never be brought to play the part of persecutor.

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Though such a state of things be very remote from us, that is no reason why we should not aspire to it ; for, in human pursuits, it is equally wrong to have no ideal, and to believe one's ideal susceptible of immediate attainment. As a matter of fact, the ideal of liberty of which we nOw speak is more than half realized in France, since with us no religion is imposed upon citizens ; a Frenchman may enjoy all civic and political rights without belonging to this or that sect, without even professing any religious belief.

No doubt a further step remains to be made. It would consist in putting an end to the Concordat and striking out from the general budget all grants in aid of particular forms of worship. This reform, than which nothing could be more logical, will certainly work itself out ; for, despite many contrary signs, I feel convinced that the future of Europe belongs to liberty. The State, being, according to modern conceptions, a simple guarantee of order for the exercise of individual activity, is no more justified in keeping up Concordats with religions, than with romanticism, or realism, or classicism, or any other opinion that may lawfully be held or not held. But the abandonment of Concordats would imply that we already had a good law of association, regulating the foundation and the legal existence of unions of persons for moral purposes. And such a law is not only wanting, but the Democratic party does not seem at all disposed to vote for it. It is in

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England or in the most liberal States of Northern America that we should seek for the type of such a law. Neither the anti-Clerical Democrats nor the Catholic party will hear of such a solution. The programme of the anti-Clerical party is the suppression of the privileges of the clergy, without, in exchange, granting them the liberty of organizing themselves in their own way. The Catholic party claims all the privileges of the Napoleonic Concordat, without accepting any of its duties. It wants to be free, as in America, and official, as it always used to be in France. One cannot, at the same time, enjoy the benefit of an exceptional statute and of the common law. If liberty of association were established in France to-morrow, it should be stipulated that the provisions of such law would not apply to any corporation which had formed special Concordats with the State, or to any college which conferred upon its members even the appearance of State functionaries. Upon their renouncing the benefits of their Concordats religious creeds should enjoy the common law. With time they would be brought to understand that liberty for all is also the best and the safest of charters.

Everything considered, our actual state of religious legislation, however incoherent, grants sufficient liberty to all. Those who do not belong to the so-called creed of the majority have nothing to complain of. As for Catholicism, it is wrong, I think, to proclaim itself persecuted. The truth is, it is privileged ; and privileges must entail corresponding duties. Qui sentit commodum debet sentire et incommodum. The concordat ory organization admits only dioceses and parishes ; in such a state of things, religious congregations cannot exist save by the authorization of the State. This is illiberal ; this is quite contrary to liberty, as we understand it, and as we wish it. We desire a legislation allowing everybody to dress, to lodge, and to live as he thinks fit. But the first step in that direction would be to abandon the Concordat, since the Concordat is itself the negation of the theory of the State, understood as a protector of liberties and a stranger to all religious or literary opinions. The ties which bind Catholicism are, in reality, the ties of its privileges — ties which eighty years ago it was so delighted to form, and which to-day it is not at all anxious to sever.

The present state of our religious legislation is therefore very tolerable, and the times we live in not being suited for great reforms, we must not urge fundamental changes, which might carry with them serious inconvenience. For the present, a modification of details will be sufficient. In our actual legal system, liberal principles appear to me to be seriously infringed only as regards educational obligations. The State has a right to teach in every branch, on condition that no one should be compelled to follow its teaching. Some of the provisions actually in force respecting

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examinations to be undergone by children who do not attend public schools may become highly vexatious. The obligation imposed upon the father to give elementary instruction to his children does not necessitate preventive measures. It is also the father's duty to give his children proper and sufficient nourishment, yet no surveillance over him ascertains how he fulfils that duty.

A comparison will explain my meaning. Every commune possesses its public fountain, where water can be had gratis. No one, however, is bound to avail himself of the advantage thus offered. Any of the inhabitants would even be perfectly free to say : ' The water from the public fountain is very injurious ; come and take water from my well ;' and his fellow-citizens would have a right to accept his invitation. But if the owner of the well were afterwards to say : ' You see now, everybody prefers the water of my well ; do away with the public fountain, and give me the money that is spent in keeping it up,' he should be plainly told : ' No ; public institutions must not impede individual efforts, but they must not be dependent upon private will or action.'

The best guarantee of liberty is the general progress of enlightenment. If we consider the whole of Europe, such progress is indubitably real. We may yet see strong religious reactions ; we shall never see a return to fanaticism. Fanaticism is only possible to the faith of the masses. Such faith is much weakened, and it is improbable i 4 NEW STUDIES OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY.

that, even in the face of great social disasters, it will ever be rekindled to any appreciable extent. Let us suppose the most fearful misfortunes ; it would even then be hard to persuade the people that such misfortunes were caused by persons who did not go to mass, and that they should therefore be attacked. Supernatural beliefs will slowly die out, undermined by primary instruction and by the predominance of scientific over literary education. These influences are not the result of any political regime, of true or false theories spread abroad by publicists ; they are the consequence of the progress of modern societies towards a state wherein the individual, in order to live, requires a certain positive instruction. Of yore the peasant, unable to read, write, or calculate, still lived, protected by patronage and by a kind of patriarchal spirit, generally diffused. Nowadays the struggle for life dooms to starvation any individual placed in such conditions. Similarly, the man who has gone through his Greek and Latin studies, but has neglected geography, the elements of science, modern languages, will find himself not so well prepared for the struggle of life as one whose education has been more modern, not so refined, perhaps, yet more practical. Classical education will ensure superiority only to those who wish to write ; that is, to a very limited number.

But the ordinary and common education, which will become that of the masses, will be less con-

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servative of spiritual belief than the old complacent classicism, which cared little whether a sentence was true or not, so long as it was well turned. Men who have not been to the university at all throw off supernatural notions more readily than those who have had an incomplete literary education ; for the latter have been brought up to admire exclusively the seventeenth century, and, in most cases, their masters have not had sufficient strength of mind to point out the essential distinction between the excellent type of prose style created by the seventeenth century and the intellectual childishness too often displayed in the literary productions of that period. A man is valued now in proportion to what he knows ; and the best writers of the seventeenth century knew very little, and can teach us scarcely- anything. Historical sciences were then hardly born ; the great natural sciences existed only in the brain of some rare genius. A schoolboy of to-day, with his textbook, knows a great deal more than Bossuet respecting a crowd of topics of the first importance. Our new system of education will make generations not so cultured, perhaps, but more enlightened than those who owe their habit of mind to a classical education. It is the fault of classical education which has failed to lead its students to put on the toga virilis in earnest, and assert their intellectual majority by dethroning literature and substituting for it the positive culture of the human mind. In such conditions, superstition will still no doubt dispose of very great forces ; but it will then be little more than a social inconvenience. Fanaticism, which three centuries ago was able to overwhelm a great country like Spain, is now but a vanquished Typhon, powerless to do harm.

We must be prepared to consider calmly the events which, a few years hence, will brutally assail our closing century. The aim of human life will ever be holy. If it is true that henceforth intellectual culture, even in its humblest degree, will exclude supernatural belief, it is equally true that the highest culture will never uproot religion understood in its loftiest meaning. Man is not dependent upon some capricious master, who makes him live, die, prosper, or suffer indifferently. But he is dependent on the whole universe, which has an aim, and which makes everything converge towards that aim. Man is a subordinate being ; whatever he may do, he worships, he serves. To contribute readily and joyfully to the supreme good, is virtue. To serve ungracefully, to imitate indifferent soldiers who, though they go into action like the rest, are constantly grumbling against their chiefs, is evil. It might be proved that the worst of men co-operates with providential views by his unconscious action more than he thwarts them by his revolt and his misdeeds.

Indeed, the sermon of St. Francis of Assisi to the birds is the resume of all good theology : ' Swallows, my little sisters, you are under very

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great obligations to God your Maker, and at all times you should praise Him, because He has given you freedom to fly everywhere, and because He has provided you with a double and treble garment, and chiefly because of the element of air to which He has destined you. You neither sow nor reap ; yet God feeds you, and He has made the streams and the fountains to slake your thirst ; He gave you the mountains and the valleys as a shelter, and the high trees in which to build your nests ; and although you know neither how to spin nor how to sow, God has furnished you with garments for yourselves and for your young ones ; whereby we see how much your Maker loves you. Therefore beware, my little sisters, of the sin of ingratitude, and devote yourselves for ever to praising God. . .' Here is the truth. The world is a vast choir, wherein each of us has a part to sustain. Religion consists for everyone of us in singing while we do our work, in praising God from morning to night by cheerfulness, good humour, and patience.

As St. Francis of Assisi very truly remarked, the bird is in that respect favourably situated, for singing is natural to it, and it is free from the cares of a complicated existence. Yet we may all in various degrees imitate it for some part of our time. First of all, women, to raise themselves to pure worship, have but to consult their inner selves, to listen to the inward voice of their sex, that sex being in itself a kind of merciful profession, an everlasting act of piety. Woman is religious by simply observing the proprieties of her state. The robe and girdle of women are the insignia of an order ; they are garments of holiness. Man has also his ejaculatory, manly prayer, which, being raised from the hottest of the fray of life, pierces heaven with short, abrupt, and uncouth accents. We pray as soon as we cease to be selfish ; and man is not always selfish. If he sometimes grumbles at Providence, it is because he does not think it sufficiently just. His very reproach is often an act of faith ; his railings at any rate are more agreeable to the Eternal than the hypocritical homage of a bigot. Youth is fiery; it darts diamond-pointed arrows, like that of the seraph who pierced St. Theresa's heart. Even at the age when we mark in white the days on which we do not suffer, there is the dream (sad way of worshipping for want of any other) ; there are old remnants of ardour, extinguished fires still warm, some secret belief that even the depth of night, as recent explorers have ascertained regarding the depths of the ocean, is perhaps not without warmth and life.

Everything considered, there are few situations in the vast field of existence, on the surface of this big iron ball which is called the planet Earth, wherein the balance of debit and credit does not leave a little surplus of happiness. And this at a period of the world's history when God, if He were autocratic, would be regarded, when judged

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by His government, as a Sovereign of limited intelligence and little justice. How much easier will hearty adherence, homage, and praise become when reason more widely rules the world, when, evil being more thoroughly vanquished, good becomes stronger ; when the number of beings for whom life is a baneful gift grows insignificant !

Everybody will then, from the bottom of his heart, follow the solitary voice of the priest when he sings at mass : Vere dignum et justum est, cequum et salutare nos tibi semper et ubique gratias agere. Life for everyone, as for the birds of St. Francis of Assisi, will overflow with love and gratitude. Melancholy and saddening dogmas will not find any more believers. The joy of life, now so often obliterated by suffering, will break out everywhere. Nihilism, caused by the frightful mass of misery which centuries upon centuries of violence and harshness have engendered in the midst of our old continent, will disappear, or rather, will have no reason to exist. When the world becomes better, when gaiety reigns in Russia, as, in good times, it reigns in Burgundy or in Normandy, heroic protests will be needless : men will no longer be atheists out of pity, destroyers out of a spirit of justice, criminals out of the love of good; the most fanatic adherents of nihilism will become the best soldiers of the ideal. May we see, before we die, some signs of the dawn of these happy days !

My joy, in the decline of my life, is to think that I have contributed something to this desirable

2 — 2 end. As I never wrote with the intention of causing this or that solution to prevail by the skill of an advocate, but rather always endeavoured loyally to provoke the free judgment of my reader by placing before him the elements of the question, I am confident that, even when mistaken, I have been useful. I have served my adversaries as well as my adherents, and if some day catholic studies rise again, it will, I hope, be acknowledged that I have contributed to that result. If, on the contrary, supernatural beliefs, consummating their divorce from rational methods, abandon more and more the field of the human mind, it may not have been useless that a serious and wellmeaning inquiry has been made into an order of ideas which is perhaps doomed to lose its importance, but which was everything in the past. Indeed, religious history possesses this advantage, that it would still be necessary, even in case religion itself were to disappear. Though we disbelieve the mythology of the Homeric poems, we nevertheless are delighted to read them. The lessons of morality given by religious systems need but a simple transposition to become very sound philosophy ; or rather, is it not we who, from our own old stock of kindness and instinctive devotion, have lent to Christianity that excellent moral philosophy for which we give it credit ? Christianity has made us, no doubt ; but we also have made Christianity. And so in endeavouring to gather, outside the particular dogmas of churches,.

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the elements of rational piety, we are only reassuming our property wherever we find it.

Dogmas pass away, but piety is eternal. St. Nil adapted the maxims of Epictetus to the requirements of Christian life. I sometimes form a similar though infinitely more modest project. Some persons having expressed to me their satisfaction with certain passages in my writings, and having found them capable of edifying and consoling, I should like to extract such passages from the volumes in which they are contained, and to publish them in a little book, under the name of Pious Readings. I would divide them into fifty-two parts, for the fifty-two Sundays in the year. For each Sunday there would be an extract from the Gospel and from the Fathers of the Spiritual Life, a prayer and a spiritual bouquet, after the manner of St. Francis de Sales ; later on, illustrations might be added. But for certain omissions, a pious woman would not notice any difference between such a book and the Prayer-book which she carries with her to church. Perhaps she might end by, in some respects, preferring it.

This would be a glorious victory. I will not deny that, of all books, the one of which I am most envious is the Mass-book. It certainly contains many sublime things. It must, however, be granted that its success has been singular and out of all proportion to its intrinsic value. To deserve to be thus lovingly read in the hours of meditation and solitude, to enjoy the incomparable privilege of receiving the unguarded looks of woman, at the time when she thinks herself alone in the presence of her Maker, the Prayer-book should be a web of the purest and costliest texture. But nothing of the kind. This little book, which so many exquisite beings clasp with a fervent hand, and at times press to their lips, contains weaknesses,, errors, things that maintain in woman the unfortunate habit of too often countenancing and accepting absurdities. Those lines, upon which so many charming eyes are fixed with a kind of loving intensity, are often almost meaningless. A great step would be made on the day when we. could place in woman's hand a devotional book less imperfect. Far from me be the thought of undertaking so delicate a work, in which one could succeed only by a combination of talent,, tenderness, and simplicity. I would only gather,, in a small- sized book, a few sincere thoughts, for the benefit of those for whom the old missal no longer suffices. My last ambition will be gratified, if I may hope to enter a church after my death, in the shape of a small i8mo. book, bound in black morocco, held between the long and slender fingers of an elegantly gloved hand.

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An Oriental once said to me : c You Europeans will never fully understand religions, because you have never beheld the birth of any. As for us, we daily see some fresh one rising in our midst.' Indeed, all the leading religions of the world began in Asia. And this creative activity cannot be said to be exhausted. Even in our days, active sects have appeared in Asia. Bdbism, which is far from having achieved its destinies, is quite a recent phenomenon. We cannot absolutely deny that some great religious cyclones, kinds of Islamism, substituting a fresh Koran for that of Mahomet, may yet develop themselves in Asia. A man sufficiently conversant with Arabic to write in a fine style a book purporting to define Adam's relfgion, might expect to see it adopted by the tribes bordering on Syria. These tribes, whose ways and customs are still what they were twelve hundred years ago, might easily be persuaded that Mahomet was a great man for having re-discovered the religion of Abraham, but that the religion of Adam is superior, since it applies to the whole of Adam's posterity — that is, to mankind without exception. Fireworks let off on the mountain of Safet, and backed up by a few millions of francs, might easily be passed off as the apparition of the Messiah ; confirmatory evidence might be procured by a sufficiently generous treatment of the Jews of Tiberias and Safet. By a rapid coup de main, Mecca might be taken, and the Caaba dismantled and turned into a receptacle for refuse.

In a word, with about fifty millions of francs, the equivalent of what, twelve hundred and fifty years ago, was achieved by Mahomet could be performed in our days ; Islam would thus be ruined, and a new religion founded, lasting as long as anything can last, which in the course of a hundred years would prove its divinity by miracles, martyrs, etc. it

The experiment might, after all, be worth trying. Yes, a millionnaire willing to devote his fortune to the attempt might, without leaving Paris, have the pleasure of again arousing the religious enthusiasm of Asia. He could, while dining at Brebant's with his friends, have telegrams forwarded to him respecting the exploits of his disciples, the heroic virtues displayed by them, the manner in which, in the course of the day, they had been tearing their own flesh with iron hooks. I would advise him to make his religion very difficult, that it might be all the more attractive ; very absurd, that it might the more readily be proclaimed of

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?5 divine origin. In the meantime, the impartial observer would have rich opportunities of laughing or weeping at the incurable foolishness of mankind and its inexhaustible goodness.

The new religion would not require great doctrinal originality. A Persian friend of mine, who long resided in France, told me that, upon his return to Persia, he was, in spite of himself, on the point of becoming the founder of a new religion. A sort of legend preceded him, to which he vainly endeavoured to put a stop ; the rumour of the miracles he was alleged to have performed distracted him to such an extent that he sometimes wondered whether it were not true. His motto was, ' Liberty, equality, fraternity ;' people to whom he communicated these three sacramental words fell on their knees struck with amazement. They use£ to say they were much more sublime than the Koran, and that the Divine Spirit alone was capable of revealing such lofty things.

The cause of this peculiar superiority of Asia, in the matter of religious creations, is to be found in certain faculties with which Asia is richly gifted, and in which we ourselves are almost wholly wanting. Asia possesses enthusiasm, faith, an easily inflamed imagination, a boundless hope, audacious deceit, and, in extreme cases, when the holy cause is driven to bay, that imperturbable assurance which maintains an idea in spite of reality. Our races are infinitely more solid, serious, straightforward than those of Asia ; but, for these very reasons, they draw back horrified at what appears to them an imposture ; they are not light enough to be so lifted up ; they are deficient in that sort of double dealing which enables one to be, at the same time, fanatical and shrewd, cunning and credulous, impostor and dupe. We are too honest to persist in such wild undertakings : were we to try, we should fancy that people laughed at us. This reminds me of that good Vulfilaic of Treves, of whom Gregory of Tours* speaks ; it seems that he tried, on the banks of the Mosel, to imitate the Stylites of Syria, and live upon a column. The sensible bishops made him understand that such a feat could not be performed by a barbarian like him ; that, being but a peasant, he must not attempt to imitate the superior beings who succeeded at Antioch and Chalcis.

To the already enumerated causes ^which, in the East, act as stimulants to new religions, we must also add the enthusiastic craving for martyrdom. Religions are founded by martyrs. Indeed, Eastern races seem to find in tortures endured for their faith a sort of fierce delight. It is no rare occurrence in Asia to see people become believers in order to enjoy the supreme pleasure of suffering death for their creed. While the long rows of Babist martyrs slowly moved through the streets of Teheran like a living conflagration, *

Hist. eccl. franc, v. 15.

f The miserable creatures carried lighted tapers stuck in every part of their body.

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persons, till then strangers to the sect, would rush from their houses and join the dreadful procession of the unfortunate sufferers, so as to be tortured with them.

This religious incapacity of Europe is the cause of the long torpor in which, for centuries, pagan mythologies vegetated. Next to nothing is known concerning the religions of the Iberic race ; yet to say that they were, morally, little productive, is probably not going too far. Indo-European mythology, introduced in the West by the Greeks, the Italians, the Celts, the Germans, brought about in Greece a marvellous development of the plastic arts ; but it was almost sterile in moral effect.. Gods formed from Nature by primitive intuitions, highly poetic, yet devoid of moral sense, could not exercise any beneficial influence upon morals.

Hence arose the grotesque phenomenon of populations kept in religious inferiority, when these same populations had already attained the highest degree of perfection in art, literature, science, politics, and theories of social organization.. Umbrian and Latin forms of worship never rose above a coarse formalism, which left no room for any tender feeling between the god and the man. Orphism and Mysteries were in Greece fruitless attempts to foster devotion and piety.

Celtic Druidism more resembles the great religious reforms that in the East bore the names of Moses, of Zoroaster, of Buddha ; still Druidism is not sufficient to give the religion of the Celts an}r superiority over that of other Western nations. When, towards the middle of the second century, Christianity made its sudden appearance at Lyons, at Vienne, in the heart of Gaul, among the Segusiani and the Allobroges, it was enthusiastically welcomed. All lofty and susceptible souls accepted it. Christianity appearing suddenly in the midst of this religious degradation, produced the same effect as civilization does when contrasted with barbarism. Our races, with natural piety, were soon charmed ; they adopted Christianity with all their spiritual strength ; that religion became, in some way, national to our ancestors ; so much so that, later on, they imagined it was the very offspring of their hearts, their treasure, their own personal creation.

In so thinking, our ancestors did not absolutely deceive themselves. Certainly, Christianity is, in its origin, a pure Oriental production, an offshoot from Judaism ; that is, a purely Semitic religion. But in adopting it the West made it its own. St. Bernard, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Elizabeth of Thuringia, Joan of Arc, are much more closely related to our old ancestors of the Gallic or German forests than to David, Esther, or the authors of the Talmud. Our Breton or Irish saints, a St. Iltudus, a St. Cadoc, a St. Columba, bear a closer resemblance to the Druids than to St. Peter or St. Paul. In adopting Christianity European races imparted to it both their defects and their virtues. Their virtues were unusual