The World in 2000 Years Page 6

  Whether that God, according to the locality, took the name of the Supreme Being, the Great Spirit, Jehovah, Allah, Jupiter, Zeus, Buddha, Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva, God; whether he was represented in three persons or one alone; whether he was unified or divided; whether he was honored under the appearances of the sun, the moon, water, fire, the earth, or even plants and animals, he was nonetheless God—which is to say, the unknown master that everything obeyed. Only the name and the form changed.

  “All people feels the need to shelter beneath an invisible power, which they divines, which they sense, which they cannot explain, which reveals itself to them at every instant but never shows itself. Is not pretending to define that which escapes reason the height of human presumption? If God were to show himself in his real form, we would no longer be living in that dread of the unknown, which magnifies him in our eyes.

  “‘I do not know what put me in the world or what I am. I am in a terrible ignorance of everything. I only know what my body is, what my senses are, that my soul is the part of me that thinks what I say, which reflects upon everything and upon itself and does not know itself any more than the rest. I see the frightful spaces of the universe that enclose me, and I find myself attached to a corner of that vast expanse, without knowing why I am in this place rather than another, nor why the short time that is given to me to live, has been assigned to me at this point rather than another in the eternity that preceded me and that which will follow me. I see nothing but infinities everywhere, which enclose me like an atom, and like a shadow that lasts but an instant and never returns. All that I know is that I must soon die, but that I do not know what death is, any more than I can escape it.’11

  “That perpetual uncertainty which is our destiny, that prospect of death which threatens us incessantly, which sometimes strikes us at the moment when we least expect it, the very impossibility of avoiding it, forces us to admit a supreme principle from which all humankind derives.

  “The limits within which our intelligence finds itself restrained, since infinity borders it on every side without it being able to fathom its extent, render our imperfection evident.

  “The world, in spite of the clever sophisms of a few philosophers, cannot have made itself. ‘Nothing comes from nothing,’ says Lucretius. It follows logically that all the marvels that we see around us, distributed with such perfect regularity, which we admire without comprehending either the origin or he utility, are the work of that supreme principle. If humans had made themselves, they would understand the mystery of how they came into the world; they would understand their soul, their intelligence, their thought, their beginning and their end; in a word, they would comprehend themselves—and they do not. They cannot comprehend themselves, because they cannot both be cause and effect. In order for them to be the cause, they would have had to exist before being the effect, and if they had existed before that, they would have had no need to create themselves, since they would have had the quality of which they were claiming to be the author: existence.

  “If humans had created the world, they would be able to explain its mechanism, its origin and its duration. They would know what is happening on thousands of planets, a new one of which, without them being aware of it, appears every day in the field of the telescope. They would know whether those planets are inhabited, like ours. But they know nothing; they merely reason from hypotheses that contradict one another. They are less than nothing in that unknown immensity.

  “They cannot be the work of chance, any more than the world, because chance still supposes a Creator.

  “It is therefore necessary that there is above us an uncreated being, which knows everything that we do not know, and which is all that we are not, which fills by itself that Infinity whose extent is hidden from the range of our reflection.

  “Eternity! Infinity! Insoluble problems with which the audacious conceptions of thought collide. Ought not the very fact of our impotence and our negligibility to be sufficient to reveal the Creator?

  “If humans have an intelligence too narrow to seek the proofs of the existence of God in the high regions of metaphysics, let them be content with the physical proofs they encounter every day in nature; let them be content with the sentiment innate within the soul, which furnishes the intuition via the organ of conscience. To invoke all those proofs one by one would be to fall into repetition; we have only to cast our eyes around to be convinced of it; and in any case, they carry little weight by comparison with metaphysical proofs.

  “But I do not have to demonstrate here that which imposes itself, and always has imposed itself, on human reason; I am studying the mores, the laws and the beliefs of a society more advanced that ours; it is to that task that I ought to confine myself. I have only allowed myself to be drawn into this preliminary study in order to facilitate a transition between the ideas of our epoch and those of society in 2000 years.

  “I’m looking for a temple, but I can’t see any. Ah! Yes, I can see one—only one; an immense temple on the fronton of which I read, in letters of gold: TO THE SUPREME BEING. Inside, nothing that denotes the practice of religious ceremonies. The walls are denuded of hangings. The architecture is severe and imposing: no altars, no statues, no ornaments, nothing that attracts the eye and captures the attention, to the detriment of the deity. The divinity alone is invisible and present, impalpable and real. One divines its presence, senses the perfume of sanctity that reigns in this place. It is truly great only when one reveals one’s soul to it without the aid of any external apparatus.

  “There are no priests living in idleness under the illusory pretext of the maintenance of worship. Humans do not have the right to withdraw from the circle of society, to decline the obligations of life. They are on this earth to fulfill their duties, to attain an objective. If they deny those duties and deny that objective, concentrating on their egoism, they become neutered beings; that is contrary to nature.

  “This temple is open day and night. There is no fear of anyone stealing sacred objects; there are none. As for offices, there are none of those either. Everyone comes to pray to God when conscience instructs them to. Progress has got rid of our prejudices of exterior worship; all the people here bear their own worship in their hearts, adore their own particular Supreme Being as they conceive it, and render no other homage thereto but an honest life employed in labor. God demands no more.

  “The religion of our day, especially the Catholic religion, is a medium of speculation like any other. Everything costs money: burials, births, marriages, dispensations . Merchants have established in the Churches; some hire out chairs, others sell candles, exercising their petty trades under the aegis of piety. Can one claim to be following the maxims of the Master in that fashion? Did Christ not cast the merchants out of the Temple? What can a candle do for a dead person? Can the offering of a relative or friend diminish their demerit, advance them on the road of Eternity? If the offerings of the living can redeem the sins of the dead, one could be a scoundrel in life, trusting in the generosity of those one leaves behind. Is it not the same with prayers? God would no longer be just if the supplications of the living could abridge the punishment of the dead. To counterbalance his wrath with the price of a certain number of candles, masses or indulgences would be too easy—and people survived only by poor or indifferent relatives, or none a all, would be subject to the full extent of their punishment, for lack of candles, masses and indulgences. On that basis, the rich would have the advantage over the poor of gaining heaven more rapidly, only having merited it by virtue of their money.

  “The justice of God is the same for everyone. Is it not offensive to suppose, on the contrary, that it might be corruptible by presents, sensitive to prayers? All those puerilities diminish the Catholic religion and make it ridiculous; they bury it under a heap of contradictions.

  “The Protestant religion, grafted on to the Catholic religion, has taken from it that which is good and left behind that which is defective. It has reestablished marriage for pr
iests, arbitrarily abolished by Pope Gregory VII; it has made its temples, from which it has banished superfluous ornaments, places of meditation. There is no distinction of fortune there; the rich and the poor may sit down side by side; one does not pay for the time that one spends elevating one’s soul to God. It is, in that sense, more advanced than the Catholic religion, but it is no less destined to perish as well, because both are born of human fantasy.

  “The Creator has not imposed conventional rites on humans; he created them with the intuition of a Supreme Being but demanded no other worship than that they follow scrupulously the instinct of their conscience. If he had wanted to be adored under the form of some particular religion he would have shown himself visibly and dictated his will. Now, as he has surrounded himself with mystery, it is because he considers himself greater in remaining unknown.

  “The primary duty of humans, on this earth, is to carry out the mission that God has confided to them. That mission consists of living by their labor, in order to earn a better existence solely by merit of duty accomplished; it is not difficult to be a good person at that price. A good person has only to follow the unique route mapped out by conscience, the interpreter of divine will. That mission also consists of transmitting the seed of generation of which the individual human is the depository; that is the worship most agreeable to God.

  “Priests, in ridding themselves of that obligation, in devoting themselves to celibacy, are entering into open conflict with their Creator. Created themselves, by virtue of a divine principle, they refuse to obey the most sacred maxim of the gospel of which they are nevertheless the commentators. What purpose is there in their being in the world if their lives must be spent in futile practices, if they do not leave other beings after them to perpetuate the mystery of Creation? If their parents had thought like them, where would they be? Non-existent. It is, therefore, a false idea that they have of God in believing that the gift of their chastity is, in his eyes, a meritorious sacrifice. God did not create two sexes in order for people to reserve the homage of their distinctive attributes to him. If that were the case, the world would cease to be, for lack of generators.

  “Priestly celibacy is thus condemned by the most elementary principles of reason. Their ministry is no less than the capacity that everyone has, to the same degree, to give thanks to God, without the assistance of a foreign intermediary. A human being is no less human for being a priest; as a human being, the consecration of human beings is impotent to dress him in the reflection of the divinity.

  “It has been recognized, moreover, that continence irritates the inherent appetites of the human animal and sometimes excites priests to actions all the more monstrous because they are the result of long-suppressed desire. The sad examples of popes that history transmits to us and the annals of tribunals have made the abolition of that institution an urgent necessity.

  “In the epoch I am describing to you, priests no longer exist—or, rather, everyone is his or her own priest. Religious ceremonies no longer waste precious time owed to more fruitful occupations; they no longer exist. God is content with the simple homage of human thought, at times when work leaves people the leisure to elevate themselves toward him.

  “What does he make of the splendor and glitter of ornaments, the tedium of offices, the pomp of ceremonies? Is he not above the paltriness of vanity? To render him sensible to such puerilities is to diminish him; it is to make him in our image.”

  “And what idea do the people have of God?” asked Hobson.

  “God,” the savant continued, “is nowhere and everywhere; God is invisible and present; God is formless, devoid of appearance or volume, and he fills the world; God is infinitely good, infinitely powerful, infinitely everything; he is eternal, immaterial, universal; he is pure spirit.

  “He has made use of matter to form humans, but, wishing to engrave within him an impression of the superior principle from which they derive, he has animated them with a parcel of his essence. There is nothing in the soul that indicates a mixture of different substances, nothing that seems molded of terrestrial clay, nothing that presents itself to us in the appearance of water, fire or earth. Those bodies, in fact, do not possess memory, intelligence or reflection; they do not have the faculties of remembering the past, embracing the present or anticipating the future: divine attributes, the origin of which can only go back to God.

  “The soul is therefore perfectly distinct from that which falls upon the senses. In consequence, everything that lives, suffers and reflects is of divine essence, and necessarily eternal. Where is the soul? What is it? Where is yours? Where is mine? Who can say? Our intelligence does not extend that far. The soul cannot be seen. It is an eye that sees everything around it, but cannot see itself. Thus, it is unaware of its own form. But that is unimportant. It is aware of its wisdom, its memory, its movement: that alone is divine, that alone is eternal. It is futile to seek any further an appearance in which it hides and in which it resides. It exists; it is existence itself; that is all that we can know about it.

  “The soul, within the carnal envelope, has lost its initial subtlety; there remains to it an intuition of the divine principle from which it emanates; it males vain efforts to raise itself up to that principle, to comprehend it, to see it; but the material prison in which it is enclosed thwarts its thrusts. Attached to the body, it cannot raise itself above matter; it obeys it and commands it at the same time; it can only become itself again, entirely purified of material contact, by means of the series of its incarnations. Eternal, like its original principle, it is a spark running through the centuries in order to regain its point of departure: eternity. During that exile, however, it loses an exact notion of its nature.

  “Does every person not hear, in the depths of conscience, a voice that cries: ‘Limited spirit, imperfect being, I forbid you too cross the limit that I have imposed on your intelligence; I forbid you to penetrate the sanctuary reserved for me. Your soul will only enjoy my contemplation once delivered from its corporeal bonds. I give you the sentiment of Infinity and the sentiment of the Eternal, but I forbid you to plumb their depths. That is my essence; that is my prerogative.’

  “Indeed, as far as our thought can reach, it encounters nothing but Infinity, always Infinity, more Infinity, the eternal immensity—and, in those fearful spaces, the infinite smallness of our being. The further it looks back into itself, the less it comprehends.

  “How can we get out of that vicious circle? The idea of infinity implies the idea of God; the idea of God implies that of infinity, and reciprocally. It is necessary that God be infinite, to impose himself on his Creation; it is necessary that Infinity be divine, in order for it not to fall upon the senses. What is Infinity? What is God? Infinity is God, the one being the attribute of the other, similarly implying the idea of Eternity. If God were not eternal, it would be necessary for him to be created, for him to have had a beginning, for him to have an end; he would thus be reduced to our level; he would be derived himself from a superior principle, he would no longer be God. Why did he have no beginning? Why will he have no end? We are no more in a position to explain that than we are to explain Infinity, and Infinity imposes itself logically upon our thought. To limit Infinity would be to conceive of another Infinity, itself limited by another Infinity, and so on.

  “Universality is another of the deity’s attributes. If God were not nowhere and everywhere at the same time, would our conscience sense his presence? If he were occupied in judging the actions of one of us in particular, could he be, at the same time, the impartial judge of the least of our actions? His infinite justice would no longer be infallible, and, in order that it should be, as it must, it is necessary that he embraces everything at once; he is, therefore, infinite, eternal and universal.

  “Insofar as infinite goodness is concerned, eternal punishment is repugnant to him. When made humans imperfect, it was not to punish them eternally for the weaknesses of their imperfection; by way of compensation, he endowed them wi
th a certain measure of personal responsibility: the free will that permits them to choose between god and evil.

  “Insofar as infinite justice is concerned, ought he to reserve the same destiny for the good and the evil? The simplest common sense answers in the negative. But the punishment he reserves for the wicked, by virtue of his infinite generosity, and the imperfection of the guilty party, cannot be eternal. Its duration is proportional to their sins. It is purely moral, not physical.

  “Hell is merely a fiction invented by weak minds. The priests of all epochs and all religions have profited by it to take possession of the minds of peoples and hold them in a sort of superstitious stewardship. They have imagined gripping scenes that strike the imagination, and have appropriated to it the tendencies of their epoch.

  “This is the description that Virgil gives us of Hell: ‘Suddenly, Aeneas looks behind him, and sees to his left, under a rock, a vast fortress flanked by a triple wall. The Phlegeton, a rapid torrent, surrounds it with its flaming weaves, carrying rocky debris noisily. The enclosure is sealed by an immense door, sustained by massive diamond columns; no human force, nor even any divine force, can tear them from their foundations. An iron tower rises up into the clouds. Tisiphone is sitting on the threshold, dressed in a blood-stained robe whose folds she is lifting to her waist. She watches there, day and night, without ever closing her eyelids. Groaning voices escape from that place, the cruel whistling of whips and the frightful clanking of iron chains being dragged.’12

  “That Hell is concordant with the idea the ancients had of the divinity. For them, the gods were heroes deified after death, legendary individuals who retained our appetites and vices. The represented them as continually at war with one another. Their own power was subject to laws to which they were bound to submit.