THE OBSERVATION that intelligence in certain spheres
of life can exist side by side with the most unintelligent superstition,
political freedom with religious servitude, scientific, industrial progress
with religious stagnation and even bigotry, has led some to the superficial
view and contention that religion is without bearing on life, and especially on
public, political life, and that consequently our only goal in this connection
should be absolute freedom to believe what we wish. To this I reply that a
state of affairs in which political freedom is combined with religious
prejudice and bigotry is not satisfactory. I for my part don’t care a farthing
for a political freedom that leaves me enslaved to my religious prejudices and
imaginings. True freedom is present only where man is also free from religion;
true culture is present only where man has become master over his religious
prejudices and imaginations. But the state can have no other aim than to form
complete, authentic men, though of course this is not meant here in any Utopian
sense; consequently a state whose citizens, while enjoying free political
institutions, are not free in a religious sense, cannot be a truly human and
free state. The state does not make men, men make the state. As men are, so is
their state. Once a state exists, to be sure, the individuals who by birth or
immigration become its citizens, are molded by it; but what is a state in
relation to the individuals who come to it if not the sum and combination of
the people who already constitute it, who through the means at their disposal,
through the institutions they have created, mold newcomers to their spirit and
will? Thus, where men are politically free but unfree in religion, the state is
not perfect or not yet complete.
As to the second point, freedom of faith and
conscience, the first condition of a free state is indeed that “every man may
be saved in his own way,” that every man may believe what he likes. But this is
a secondary and empty freedom; for it means nothing more than each man’s freedom
or right to be a fool in his own way. True, the state, in the present sense of
the word, can do no more than refrain from all intervention in the field of
faith—than grant unrestricted freedom in this respect. But man’s task in the
state is not only to believe what he wishes, but to believe what is reasonable,
not only to believe, but to know what he can and must know if he is to be a
free and cultivated man. Here no barrier to human knowledge can excuse us. In
the realm of nature, to be sure, there are still many things we do not
understand; but the secrets of religion spring from man himself, and he is
capable of knowing them down to their remotest depths. And because he can know
them, he ought to know them. Finally, it is an utterly superficial notion,
refuted every day by history and even by daily life, to suppose that religion
is without influence on public life. This view has originated only in our own
day, when religious faith has ceased to be anything more than a chimera.
Obviously, where religious faith has ceased to be a truth in man, it can have
no practical consequences, it no longer inspires deeds of world-shaking
importance. But where this is the case, where faith has become a mere lie, man
is involved in the ugliest contradiction with himself and the consequences of
faith are at least morally disastrous. Modem theism is just such a lie.
The elimination of this lie is the condition for a new, energetic mankind.
The above-mentioned observation that piety in the
common sense of the word is often combined with diametrically opposed traits,
has led many to suppose that man has a special organ of religion, a specific
religious feeling. We should be more justified in assuming the existence of a
specific organ of superstition. Religion, that is, the belief in gods, in
spirits, in so-called higher invisible beings who rule over man, has been said
to be as innate in man as his other senses. Translated into the language of
honesty and reason, this would only mean that, as Spinoza has already maintained,
superstition is innate in man. But the source and strength of superstition are
the power of ignorance and stupidity, which is the greatest power on earth, the
power of fear and the feeling of dependency, and finally the power of the
imagination.
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