III.

Friends:

Before we proceed to deal with the meaning of the moral, drawn from our previous remarks, I should like to call your attention to the essential characteristics, to the great and general outlines of religion. I shall not speak of any special denomination : neither of the Christian, Jewish, Mohammedan or pagan beliefs, but of idolatry in general.

We have found that religion and social-democracy have this in common, that they both strive for salvation. Yet, social-democracy is in this respect more advanced that it does not look for salvation in the realm of spirit, but in the world of material realities, taking human spirit only as its guide. The need for salvation, the misery of the primitive man is the psychological germ out of which religion evolved. This perplexity and helplessness in the midst of a world of adversities causes man to look for omnipotence and perfection in some other quarters, and suggested to him the worship of animals, stars, trees, lightning, winds, certain heroic personalities, etc. But eventually in the long run experience inevitably taught him that those things are themselves powerless. Man took a step further and looked for the supreme being no more in near-by and tangible things, but in a spirit reigning in the clouds. Removed from experience as the new godhead was, it became more difficult to get some reliable information about it. Yet modern science, which succeeded in fathoming many a mystery, penetrated also to the bottom of the secret of religion.

The “wealthy and cultured” whose care for science extends but so far as it helps them to accumulate treasure and to preserve their privileges, are in fact the mean materialists to whom nothing is of more serious concern than the selfish cultivation of the body. It is these people who are fain to declare that we must not discuss religion, as nothing could be known about it. Against all such assertions I may assure you, friends, that religion, despite its obscurity and lofty mysteriousness, did not escape the piercing eye of science, which penetrated into its most remote and darkest corners. Just as we know as a certainty that two and two equals four, or that there are no two mountains without a valley, on earth or in heaven or anywhere else, so do we know what and who religion and God are, where they begin and end, where they come from and how they dissolve.

The ruling classes and their conscious or unconscious flunkeys have an interest to contend against the austerity of religion, as it interferes with their worldly enjoyments. For those who really believe and trust in an eternal treasure which is eaten neither by rust nor by moths, lose their appetite for the evanescent joys of the world. Indeed, religious as well as political liberalism is closely connected with property and with the mode of business prevailing to-day. The aristocratic families of the past were the friends and followers of the monks, for both had their kitchen and cellar supplied by socage and tithes. The great houses of the present, which “earn” their sumptuous living by profit-making off the labor of others, and this on so liberal, i.e., plentiful, a scale, are more than alienated from the orthodox preacher of Christian discipline and sobriety; their attitude towards him is full of antipathy. Yet it would be a mistake to assume that liberalism is serious in its unbelief. They can’t be serious. Their privileged social position condemns the “wealthy and cultured” to that nauseous lukewarmness, to that indifferentism which is neither cold nor warm. Their religious freemasonry, their protests against superstition – by the way, all belief is superstition – cannot be serious, for the religious discipline is one of the mainstays of class-rule. Though they have lost all belief in God they never tire of reminding us of his commandments: “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s ... Be subject to principalities and powers, obey magistrates ... Pray and work ... Bear the cross in all humility and patience ...” While they are fiercely striving to climb up the ladder of might and wealth they actually delude us, and perhaps also themselves, into believing that they trust in God, who is supposed to humble the proud and to exalt the humble. The liberal bunglers are easily to be recognized as religious hypocrites. The great captains of industry, with their liveried and titled flunkeys as professors, justices, lawyers, etc., are passionately devoted to freedom of trade and competition as well as to freedom of religion. Every man shall be free to believe as his conscience dictates. But woe to those who try to live up to such maxims and free themselves of all religion! You may belong to a nonconformist congregation or to an undenominational school. But to have no religion at all, or to belong to a secular school – why, that’s positively disgraceful! That’s past all bearing ! Such things must be put a stop to! If the people do no more believe in anything, who will sanctify our property and supply the dear fatherland with food for guns or cannon?

The small craftsman who feels and sees that the industrial revolution is undoing him, does not know and does not want to know of the inventions and discoveries of science. This is quite the case with our “wealthy and cultured” in matters of religion. They are used to say: If there is no positive proof for the truths of religion, there is still less any proof against religion. Because their interests are endangered by such knowledge, they refuse to admit that more than half a century ago Feuerbach particularly had brought the conclusive and irrefutable proof that all religion is simply a substitute for human ignorance.

The human race has this peculiar distinction, that at different times and places it values different things and qualities as the highest beyond all measure; – that, unlike the apes which but imitate what was shown them, humanity revolutionizes its highest standards, in short, it makes history. Of course, not that history as taught in our schools, which is simply a miserable index of the births and deaths of princes; an enumeration of wars, battles and treaties, while its real import consists in the great and solemn evidence that mankind, its generations and peoples, constitutes a living and continually developing organism, each part of which serves the whole. The aim or postulate of this development is to subdue all existing matter and forces to human needs, to cultivate nature, and to bring system into the world with the help of our mind. This process is going on slowly, by fits and starts. Those who by the study of nature and by the insight into its boundless possibilities attained to a wise humility, recognize without hesitation that the historic progress, though its aim is to make human consciousness the lord of the world, is still far from being a matter of consciousness. It is much more the instinct, the nature of matter, which impels its continual development, through the various geological periods to the formation of life, which began with the most primitive life-cells and developed to higher forms with plants and animals by variation and natural selection, until its highest product, man gifted with reason, was brought forth. The end and aim of the evolutionary process is to comprehend the manifold phenomena of nature and history in order to enable man to consider and to use the human race, its ethnological and political organizations and all existing mental and material energies as an organic whole. In the course of his development man passionately idolized anything that happened to range high in his estimation, be it an animal, a plant, a star, a human being or a law. God – the essence of religion – appears thus as a changeable and temporary, and not as a permanent and eternal, character. The divine has changed so often that its evanescence became manifest to the scientific mind. Science has therefore formulated the proposition : That which religion values beyond measure is in historic reality but temporarily and locally valuable. Religious people are wont to assert that all races, savage or civilized, have some sort of religion and believe in God. From which they infer that religion is inherent in man and needs, therefore, no further demonstration. That assertion is, however, only in so far true as people without experience are credulous, and all the more so, the less experience and culture they possess. Nowadays it is but peasants and women that are the true believers. Those who have eyes to see perceive that there is not one, but many religions, and not one God, but many Gods. As man attains to the understanding of the world only by degrees, he idolizes many things, to-day the sun, to-morrow the moon, one time the dog, as the Persians, at another time the cat, as the Egyptians, until he finally gains the social-democratic truth that nothing and every thing is divine, nothing and everything does invaluable services. What the heathen valued in their gods, in Bacchus – wine, in Venus – love, etc.; what the Israelites valued in Jahve – the punishing, reproving and law-making; what the Christians worship in their God – the incarnation, suffering and dying for others, boundless love and mercy, contempt for worldly matters, abstemiousness, celibacy, etc. – all this, my friends, is to be valued temporarily and locally, but never to be idolized. Not the objects of religion are reprehensible, but the essence of religion, which is boundless and inordinate in its veneration.

The essence of religion consists in this, that certain phenomena of nature and history, which, according to time and circumstances, acquired an unusual importance, have been personified and put on so high a pinnacle that they appear to be independent of time and space.

The religious truth is but a natural truth standing on its head. Not God created man, but always and everywhere man created God in his own image. If some out-of-the-way people, possessed of wisdom, happen to get the sacred books of our churches, they will learn nothing about God and heaven, but a good deal about the civilization of men who wrote and esteemed those things. How near our time is to giving up all religion, is evident from the vague and confused ideas now circulating about God and his attributes. While man comes to the knowledge of the existence of all other things because he had known before how and what they are, he wants to be convinced of the existence of God before knowing anything in particular about his nature, whether he is of human or inhuman form, small or large, black- or blue-eyed, male or female. The theologians, being themselves in the dark, label such questions materialistic and improper. But the more advanced thinkers know already that the very few things their colleagues assume to know about God when they qualify him as just, good, wise, almighty, etc. -that all those qualities are not religious, but profane and earthly qualities, which we may find here on earth without taking the trouble of going up to heaven. Such qualifications are called by the scholars “anthropomorphistic,” that is, where man over-estimates justice, he describes a just God, and where he has a liking for human flesh, he treats his God therewith. The advanced theologians are well aware of that and decline to give any description of their objects of worship. But is it not senseless to assert the existence of something and at the same time to confess complete ignorance of how, where and what its nature is? The more the idea of God recedes into the past the more palpable it is; in olden times man knew everything about his God; the more modern the form of religion has become, the more confused and hazy are our religious ideas. The truth is that the historic development of religion tends to its gradual dissolution.

A little while ago I characterized religion as the substitute of human ignorance, that is, it fills up the gaps of knowledge. Where the gaps are wide, there the scope of religion is wide. The whole life of barbarian tribes, their work and their rest, their social customs and laws are under the strict control of God. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob cares about the most insignificant details; he supervises the cleanliness of his people; he prescribes how to hitch their animals to the carriage, in short, there is nothing left to a true Israelite which is not regulated by divine command. The same may be said of all Asiatic religions. On the other hand, the civilized nations of to-day leave to God those things only whose laws have not yet been discovered, as the making of the weather, the healing of malignant diseases, etc. To an enlightened liberal the blessed name of the Lord is in reality no more than the A, the beginning of the alphabet of his conception of the world. Once he passes beyond the beginning, he allows the world to take its natural course. To this un-Christian Christian everything in the world is natural except the beginning, which is unnatural and divine. It is this consideration which stands in the way of his giving up the belief in the existence of God, which has also the advantage of keeping the lower orders, the “illiterate,” in check. The only link which connects this sham-religion of the Progressive-Liberal with the Catechism is the so-called “moral world.” But inasmuch as he begins dimly to perceive that morality, too, has a worldly basis, his association of ideas becomes dim and shadowy. As soon as we are conscious of the fact that the ethical had not its roots in the divine will, but, on the contrary, that which, for social reasons, had become ethical receives subsequently divine sanction; – as soon as we recognize that ethics was antecedent to the “ Eternal,” the Church loses the ground from under its feet. If we compare the wide scope of religious life of the pagan past, when the trees and bushes, the hills and waters teemed with gods and goddesses; – if we compare the intense faith of early Christianity with its manifold saints and miracles; – if we compare all that with the position of to-day, when religion is pushed into the background by so many other considerations, then, I think, no impartial observer will be able to disagree with our proposition, that the progress or development of religion consists in its gradual dissolution. No doubt, this is the usual course of things in the world. With the first day of his life the new-born begins his pilgrimage towards the grave. And stronger words than those I could not conscientiously utter against religion. It is not an eternal or heavenly affair, but an earthly and temporal one.

The last and strongest religious argument, brought forward by rather unprejudiced minds, is the undeniable fitness of things in nature or in the universe. Who could deny the wonderful order of the universe, its harmony, organization and system? Apart from the numberless illustrations usually brought in favor of that argument, apart from the green, blue and speckled cuckoo’s eggs, which, according to color and volume, always fit in with the bird’s eggs to which they are added, we find in every step the proofs of a universal intelligence which uses everything that is living and existing as a part, as a suitable organic part of the whole. To recognize the evolution or the gradual organization, not only of nature but also of human society, is the special task of social-democrats. Their superior understanding consists just in this, that they regard all phenomena of nature and human history as being parts of the whole that are involved in the process of evolution, and even such things as religion, morality and property, which are usually looked upon as constant and eternal ; there is no sacred exception to this rule. And how could they fail to recognize that there is in this whole something of a higher life to which the individual parts are subordinated? But when recognizing this, there is no necessity of going back to religion and mysticism. Experience has so much sharpened our wits that we spotted the rocks on which human reason, in its efforts to get at the truth, has hitherto often suffered shipwreck. The learned marked them with the ponderous name : anthropomorphism. It is the manner of the unsophisticated, which is so difficult to get rid of, to measure and to interpret the external world by the gauge of their own individual life. Because man pursues his aims deliberately and consciously he substitutes a being in his own image, gifted with deliberative power and consciousness, as the architect of the system of nature. And even among intelligent people whose sense of criticism is so far developed as to shake all belief in a personal God, we find that they cannot do away with all philosophic mysticism; they take refuge either in a philosophy of the unconscious, which attributes will and conception to unconscious things, or to spiritualism and theosophy.

It cannot however be denied that there is in dead matter a living impulse towards a higher form of organization, and that, consequently, the material world is not dead, but living. Yet, it is necessary to keep in mind that we can only speak of its will and purpose in a relative and comparative sense. For the manifestation of the universal intelligence is but gradual. The higher the organization of matter the clearer the manifestation of the intelligence. We see it in the animal instinct in a limited degree of clearness and it attains to a pure expression in the cerebral function of man, i.e., in our consciousness. To attribute purpose, will and conception to low-organized matter is therefore as wrong as to call twilight day because of the limited degree of light the former possesses. And if I ventured a little while ago to make use of those terms it was but with the intention to discredit them and to show their relative meaning. To be sure, there is reason in the natural things. But for this it was possible for the homo sapiens to appear without divine assistance on the stage of history. Those who recognize reason, the source of all system and of all fitness of things, as a product of nature, cannot fail to admit the suitability inherent in nature. Yet, the spirit of man is the only spirit. This name cannot be given to the reason which we find in the orderly revolutions of the solar systems, or in the cuckoo’s eggs, or in the construction of the bee’s cell, or in the working of the ants, or in the head of apes, but solely to its highest manifestation, to the consciousness, to the cerebral function of man.

Our spirit is the highest spiritual being. But, my pious friends, that is, my attentive friends, we must not put it on the high pinnacle of a religious godhead. High and low means in our materialistic philosophy as much as more or less organized. The less autonomous the parts of a thing are, the more they function as organs, the more interdependent and closely connected they are, the more numerous and varied their natural communications and services, the higher is the thing in the hierarchy of nature. Our consciousness is the universal center, the universal means of communication. But it does not exist by itself, isolated in aristocratic aloofness like our Lord God, but it is in its good democratic way only a point of contact, a connection with all other things. Even before natural science mastered the art of differentiation and unification, the logic or the science of mind had discovered that there is but one species, namely, worldly things, while everything else is but a variety. The conscious and unconscious, the plants and animals, the good and bad, all diversity, all antagonisms of the world must be considered as diverse forms of one and the same being, which gradually merge into each other, carrying on a perpetual struggle for existence, and renewing and perfecting themselves through natural selection. Out of chaos arose cosmos, which gradually evolved reason-gifted man, whose pleasant duty it is to further the progress of our world, to remove its imperfections. His task can be best effected by studying and organizing its forces. Indeed, man has always been working at his task, but until now in an unconscious manner: when his intellectual and civilizing efforts had sufficiently accumulated to form a great generalization and a new social stage he rested for a time; those were epoch-making instances which found their visible expression in a new religious conception: the animal-worship of oriental nations, the Law of Israel, the Humanity of Christ, etc. But where man becomes conscious of his task, where he recognizes in himself the absolute organizer, there the place of the religious conception is taken by the anti-religious social-democracy.