Chapter III

The Influence of Religion Upon Ethics

The Forerunner: Vol. V, No. 3 (p. 76-82)

March 1914

In all the unplumbed depths of human psychology, all its cloudy heights and wide waste places, there is no region more exciting than that in which we may study the effects of religion.

We have to consider a race of beings, the slow accomplishment of ages of evolution, coming into possession of a new power-Consciousness.

This human consciousness is psychic and social. In our individual recognition of it we find ourselves possessed of memory, judgment, and a high degree of volition. We roughly define this consciousness as "the soul."

It is as if, in the limited psychology of our pre-human ancestors, the steering-gear for the most part ran itself automatically, the conduct of those creatures being mostly governed by mere reflexes, or by those inherited habits we call instincts.

But man discovers himself possessed of a big complicated engine-room; power pouring in through a thousand impressions; storage batteries to hold the power; a conning tower, as it were, from which to direct his course; and considerable ability to jump about among the valves and levers, turning the power on here and off there with marvellous effects upon the steering.

The business before him was to learn how to live; how to adjust his individual activities to those of the increasing multitudes of his fellows, and this soul of his, with its growing range of "fellow-feeling," which is social consciousness, was the field of communication. The main need of a growing humanity was communication, the physical communication in which our bodies and our products of industry may be transferred from place to place, as wanted; and psychic communication, of which speech is our first distinctive medium.

When we learned to preserve and transmit thoughts through literature we extended our power of communication across time as well as space; and in all the later improvements, such as the multiplication of forms by printing, or the increase in speed through telegraphy, we simply developed this governing necessity of men for communication.

Our way upward was to learn to understand one another, to help one another by specialized industry, by the ex-change of services and products, to develop as rapidly as might be, a world of peaceful, friendly, mutually serviceable beings, enjoying the wide powers and pleasures of true human growth.

This line of development we call, in a vague way, civilization, because it was visibly accelerated by the improved communication of cities.

Here is the human game, which we are here to learn to play: how to get on together to our best mutual advantage and constant growth; how to develop our new faculties and fulfill the gradually discovered laws of social development.

This is what we had to do.

What have we done?

We soon discovered, and became vastly proud of, this extension of psychic power we call the soul. We could easily see anyone not a fool could see-that it constituted our real superiority to the other creatures.

This range of consciousness was carried backward by memory and further extended by tradition; carried forward by imagination, that wondrous power we use so little; and spread out around the world as we gradually learned of more and more people and came into human relation with them. To-day it begins to waver feebly out among the stars, as we visualize other existence there.

Mightily puffed up were we by this Inner Empire we called the Soul.

It is a lovely comforting thing to solace one's mind for the moment by a fair picture of the normal course of human development, as it might have been.

We may think of the clean matings of the beasts growing smoothly, naturally, into our nobler unions, lasting unions of two, of a two, of a thousandfold depth and breadth and tender richness.

We may think of our few primitive industries growing smoothly, naturally, into the thousandfold delicate ramifications of our present forms of mutual service, each followed in widening delight by those whose special faculties are meant for it.

We may think of our groping loneliness, growing smoothly, naturally, into the thousandfold companionship of social life, with power and joy multiplying at every step.

We may think of societies as rich, as busy, as mutually loving as those of the ant; but with all the added strength and splendor of a universe-ranging intellect, a humanity-holding heart.

We may think of that picture with pleasure, and lay it away with a sigh. That is not what happened.

Consciousness came before knowledge.

Man felt his soul, but did not recognize it.

He became aware of the other people around him, perforce; his relations with them and theirs with him widened and thickened.

Conduct, human behavior, grew steadily in importance.

At first the natural environment was the main factor; how man behaved was not of so much consequence as how the weather behaved, or the wild beasts. But very soon how man behaved was recognized as the one most important fact to human life,--which it is. That is why ethics is the most important study--and should be the commonest.

In the real picture of the progress of humanity on earth we need again our great chart on the wall, our horizontal lines that mark the ages; our long branching upward reaching currents of human growth.

Then, upon those lines of growth, we may mark in different colors, the different forces which have modified them.

In concrete instance, note the change of conduct in regard to mating.

The original sex impulse we will show in clear red, rising from pre-human times and holding its own through the ages. Then we will mark the natural growth of love as blue, slowly appearing, increasing, yet much weakened and discolored by other influences.

The appearance of law, as a modifying influence, we will make brown, checking, discriminating, guiding; here quite extinguishing both the red line and the blue; here blending with them; and here again we see the red running at large, in spite of all the efforts of the brown.

Economic forces appear also,--green, we will say,--checking the red line here, swelling it there, driving it under the brown and out from under it as well, always modifying.

But strongest of all comes religion, very early in the ascent, beginning as mere taboo and custom, it is true, but rapidly assuming high importance. So great is that importance, so heavily has the influence of religion modified the initial impulse of sex, that in some cases it has produced absolute celibacy. In many religions indeed there seems to be an antagonism between sex and holiness; and we find Buddhist and Brahmin vying with Christian in an attitude of rigid denial to this instinct.

Since the sex instinct is one of the strongest in nature, the power of religion to inhibit it is as good a single proof as could be given of the immense weight of that power.

In any line of conduct it is easy to note the modifications of these and of other forces, but in the whole field from the most ancient times, religion is the strongest of our telic forces; stronger than custom, law, economics, than all our emotions and impulses.

Our purpose here is to show something of the pressure of this mighty force upon the knowledge and practice of ethics.

What is a religion?

It is a group of doctrines, of mental attitudes and emotions, of required conduct. It applies to what you believe, to how you feel, to what you do.

In each of these fields it has had an overmastering influence on human life.

Let us consider the matter of belief first.

Every religion rests on certain postulates. In accepting a given religion you must first of all believe something. The merit of the "Believer," the guilt of the "Unbeliever," are predominant in religions. Such a valiant and efficacious faith as the Moslem is spread at the point of the sword. "Confess the faith!" cries the victor. "Believe or die!"

In the predominant forms of the Christian religion as popularly accepted, the same attitude holds. "Whoso believeth in me and confesseth it with his mouth, he shall be saved." An alleged damnation is the alternative instead of a palpable sword, but the requirement is the same "Believe or die!"

This is the major chord in all our history of religions. The first thing to do with a religion is to believe it. Later one is required to feel it, and lastly to practice it, but believing is the absolute necessity.

In the ruthless violence of ancient times this demand was enforced with sweeping sincerity. Everyone believed because those who did not had died. For thousands upon thousands of years, in all faiths, this was the attitude of religion -"Death to the unbeliever."

We have seen that our attaching guilt or virtue to a given act may be quite arbitrary, and yet have the most profound effect upon the soul. It is a perfectly easy matter, by careful education, to attach more shame to eating with a knife than to telling a lie; more virtue to clean linen than to chastity.

If a given act is universally condemned and punished, or universally praised and rewarded, our sense or "right" and "wrong" adjusts itself to the conditions very promptly.

The virtue of belief, the guilt of unbelief, have been so long and so violently inculcated upon the human mind that even a free-thinking scientific student finds it hard to give up a previously accepted theory, and feels a certain sense of wrong in doing so.

Yet what is this thing-Belief? It is something that you do; it is a verb-"to believe." That which you believe becomes a noun-your belief. But all rests on the act of believing.

What is this act? What do you do when you believe anything? You open the mind and take in something, as a bird opens its beak and swallows a cropful.

I tell you that I have seen a man with a beard. You believe it. You know that men have beards.

I tell you that I have seen a woman with a beard. You believe that. You may have seen one yourself, or read of them.

I tell you that I have seen a baby with a beard--a new-born baby--with a beard a yard long. You do not believe that. Why should you? It is contrary to every fact that you know. Your brain rejects it, as not in agreement with its previous knowledge.

But suppose you had no previous knowledge. Suppose you had never seen a baby. Suppose that you were three years old, and your mother told you that--you would believe her.

A young brain, scantily stocked with information, and inevitably depending on its elders for instruction, can believe almost anything.

In the days when religions began to grow we were a baby race. We had no facts save those of immediate personal experience of the narrowest sort. All the instruction then attainable came from our elders-what they said we believed.

You never find a primitive religion basing its myths on the field of practical knowledge open to its hearers. The first stronghold of religion is always to be found in remote antiquity. Unfortunately for those ignorant ancients, these ideas of antiquity were also limited. Our later knowledge has shown these alleged "beginnings" to be of most frankly recent date.

Be the statements what they might, it was essential that they be believed.

I had once the experience of teaching, or of trying to teach, a peculiarly objectionable small boy, who replied to the information given: "I don't believe you, Miss Perkins!" No instruction is possible under such circumstances.

But our open-minded savage ancestors had learned "to believe" before the priest appeared. They had believed their mothers, whose teaching was all for help and protection. To believe meant safety-it was part of obedience.

Also as the early group developed its small social consciousness, as its little stock of mental impressions flowed from mind to mind, any mind refusing to accept was felt as an obstacle, resented and removed.

So when old tales became traditions and loomed grandly into myths, they were believed. When the medicine man grew into the priest, and, exercising his mind. along one line, made new percepts, had "ideas," felt the rich experience of mental vision, he supposed that this thought now his, which was not his before, was told him by someone as he had gained his others.

So came the natural theory of revelation, the "And God said unto me," "the inner voice," which still speaks in the human mind.

Then it was an oracle; it was the literal voice of a very literal god; and above any other message it must be believed.

In our psychology natural law holds sway as in all fields of life. A mental process or habit tends to grow, indefinitely, as does the physical. If a feeling is attached to an act, for good reason originally, perhaps; if, in the lapse of time the act no longer justifies the feeling-we do not therefore lose it on the instant.

Because belief was imperative in parental education; because it became a conscious virtue in all religions, most cruelly enforced; we to-day still exhibit an enormous capacity for believing, and a clinging conviction that we ought to believe.

But what virtue is there in this purely mental attitude? What has it to do with conduct, with ethics?

When belief is exalted as a virtue, as the virtue, sufficient in itself to save life, or, further, to save the soul, we throw all conduct out of perspective. We lose our sense of ethical values. We can no longer correctly judge of relative right woman attaches the feeling to her hair and wrong. We have made an arrangement by which one act becomes as it our feet and legs and must bathe in were a password, a ticket of admission, an agreed performance, possible to any one, by which to attain a desired end.

Anything more subversive to real ethical advance could hardly be imagined.

The real field before us was that of the unfolding complexity of social life; the real work to learn what was right and what was wrong in all the multiplying activities of our growth and change.

Then comes religion, saying: "Believe this and you are all right." It was easy-too easy. We have Believed, with might and main, first this, then that, and then something else; each new Belief starting with some mind the intensity of whose percepts was taken as a revelation; each following the same path--the effort to make other people see the same vision--and be saved.

But while thus busily occupied in Believing, some, the rare and courageous, in Denying, and most in laboriously converting, or destroying, the unbelievers, our conduct and our real study of right and wrong, was ignored and neglected.

This general effect of the habit of believing has no concern with the truth or falsehood of the thing believed. When we study the special doctrines of the various religions of the world we find new influences upon ethics, as in the effect of the doctrine of Karma, or of the vicarious atonement, or of plenary absolution.

Of this immense field of influence we will only remark that the ethics of a given people is visibly affected by the doctrines enforced upon their minds; and by no means always for the better.

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The second department of religion, its emotions, and sentiments, has a further influence upon our growth in ethics.

Feelings and ideas do not belong together by changeless law. We have before us a world of facts. As we become conscious of these facts we develop the inner world of ideas. To those ideas we arbitrarily attach a world of feelings.

Take the virtue of modesty, for instance, sex-modesty. Women of some races attach this feeling to their faces, and must go veiled. The Breton peasant and must wear a cap. We attach it to clothing; but we detach it from breast and back, and go half-naked in evening dress. It is all arbitrary.

People "feel" as they do merely from education and association. It is quite possible to change one's "feelings" beyond recognition in a few active years; to be proud of what we were formerly ashamed of and ashamed of what we were formerly proud of.

Neither is there inherent virtue in a feeling any more than in a belief.

Right and wrong applies to conduct, and to feelings only as they lead to conduct.

The religious emotion, par excellence, is worship. Worship, as a feeling, is an attitude of mind in which the self is minimized and the object of worship magnified. As practically expressed, it consists, in primitive form, in physical prostrations and genuflections; in offerings, gifts, oblations, sacrifices; and in the utterance of the most extreme laudation of the object.

Tracing this to its dim beginnings in the patriarchal government, and in the rule of the ancient priest and medicine man, it is easy to see how the natural pride of power developed and demanded of the child, of the people, due honor and respect. As government grew into far-reaching despotism, all this increased. Those ancient kings had an inordinate appetite for praise and salutation, and elaborate cults were developed in all the minutia of the courts.

The same cult of reverence extended from the priest to the idol, and when we began to form concepts of the gods, as Spirits, not as Images, we transferred our system of worship to that plane of thought.

In our religion, in spite of all the wholesome influence of Jesus, we have the same old primitive worship, with its naïve assumption of pleasing God by a proper form of address. We still vaguely imagine, as shown in many a hymn, that the major exercise of saved souls, for eternity, is "praising God."

Our poor stunted imaginations, so crushed and overlain by Believing that they have no use of their wings, never trust themselves to consider what kind of a God it is which can sit on a throne and be praised for eternity—and enjoy it.

The more we abase ourselves in worship, the more preposterous it becomes that the Exalted Object of worship should derive any satisfaction from our performance.

"But," some protest in pain--in genuine pain, for supreme virtue has been attached to worship for so long that it hurts to feel them dissociated, "consider the effect on the worshipper!"

Well-what is the effect on the worshipper? Do those who worship most, do the best?

There is no relation between this attitude and the development of right conduct.

Worship, as part of religion, decreases as the standard of ethics rises.

Primitive peoples, ancient discouraged peoples, submissive fatalistic peoples, ignorant undeveloped peoples, may throw themselves under the wheels of Juggernaut, or kneel for hours in adoration, march in processions with incense and high-held idols, sing, or hire others to sing, as acts of worship.

But with the long steady lifting of standards of conduct we begin to appreciate more and more the fiery scorn of Jesus for such an attitude: "Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say!"

Conduct is the real test.

Connected with this feeling of worship are those other central religious emotions, the feeling of sanctity, of mystery, of authority. Here we come close to the very core of religious psychology.

Remember that all our mental habits arise from pressure of conditions, are developed by education and association, and are so transmitted down the ages in social heredity.

Religious authority is the utmost height of a feeling originating in parental authority, and developed by priest, chief and king. The human mind, so long trained in submission to authority, was lost without it, and out of its own need for this moral support erected a Last Authority, greatest of all, upon which it might absolutely rest. This is so old a habit as to have long since become an instinct, and even when the sturdy young brain insists on rejecting authority, on thinking and deciding for itself, the old brain, or the sick one, sinks gladly back to the earlier attitude of submission.

It is no wonder that Religion has feared Science. The study of natural science shows us a moving universe, in which we live, and of which we may learn as much as we can. The more we learn the better we can live. But in Science is no Authority, no Revelation. We have to study, to experiment, to push on, accumulating knowledge, failing, trying again, slowly rising-a wide road, open to all, leading always upward.

Our conduct in regard to the material world is based on definite knowledge. "But," objects the religious person, “our conduct in regard to the spiritual world must be based on authority; we have no knowledge to offer."

If religion confined its spiritual directions to the spiritual world-of which we have no knowledge-we would not criticize it. Where it interferes with ethics is in dictating plain natural conduct in this world-of which we do have knowledge.

Human conduct is a matter of ascertainable fact; a thing we may study and learn; and the substitution of authority for investigation, with the seal of finality upon it too, the absolute unchangeable law, has had a most paralyzing effect upon our healthy progress in ethical science.

The human brain, which has made such wonderful progress in other departments, where it was free to work its own way, has made very little in the line of ethics. Religious authority, as a substitute for study and experiment, makes a very poor showing in results.

What improvement we have made in conduct is far more perceptible in the fields governed by social relations and not touched by religion—as in "manners," or the standards of "honor," than in the field where the heaviest penalties, the highest rewards, and the most infallible directions are offered by religion.

With Authority, buttressing it with measureless reinforcements, stands Mystery; and, protecting Mystery, we find Sanctity.

What are these things? How did they arise? What is their effect on ethics?

The world in which we find ourselves consists of the small area of things we know, and the large dark area of the things we do not know. In the sense of mere not-knowing, everything is a mystery to a child--or a rabbit.

The rabbit does not call it a mystery, because he does not care. He knows grass and is not interested in trees--unless prostrate and hollow. The child is interested. He wants to know. Baby-man wanted to know. He was profoundly interested in the world about him. He investigated, experimented, found out things. If he could not find out the nature of the forces and facts about him he was puzzled.

When that social functionary, the medicine-man, rose to prominence, he held his power by knowing something the others did not. If they found out his secrets then he would have no power, so he sought to protect his patents. Over his charms and tricks he hung the two veils mystery and sanctity--mystery and sanctity. Mysterious, because unknown, Sacred--therefore you mustn't try to find out.

Of all varied and detachable feelings sanctity is the most so. It is deliberately applied like a plaster in the overt act of "consecration.' "consecration." We erect a stone building, and and with stately ceremonies "consecrate it"-and it is sacred. We fence off a piece of ground, make performance thereon-and it is "consecrated ground." We have "sacred music," "sacred relics," "sacred writings"; we speak of "the sanctity of the home""the sanctity of human life"; anything may be sacred that we choose to sanctify.

What is this thing-sanctity?

It is merely a feeling—a state of mind, which we set up and take down at pleasure. It is as arbitrary and changeable as any game or dance that ever was invented.

Each new religion utterly denies the "sanctity" of the images, symbols, books, buildings and all performances of the previous religions, and then solemnly sets up new "sanctities" of its own-all set aside by the next one.

Yet as humanity advances we see a steady increase of intelligence, and a steady decrease of this "sacred" state of mind. Finding that the element of sanctity in a given object or act is so patently a product of our own, and so glaringly uncertain and removable, we begin to question what this fluctuating feeling is and what it is good for. In especial, in our study, we wish to know what effect it has upon ethics.

Is human conduct illuminated, strengthened, made surer, easier, higher, by sanctity?

"Do you hold nothing sacred?" demands the person who has that feeling about many things.

Why should we? What good does it do-to the thing held, or to the person holding it? Does the arbitrarily attached sanctity of anything help us to distinguish good from evil, or strengthen us to do right and not to do wrong?

Come back to the facts.

Here is a growing race, whose past history shows that it still has much to learn.

We need to know how to live; and in all the processes of living the most important are those which concern our social relation. How to live together, how to conduct ourselves towards one another, how to adjust our desires and impulses, how to restrain and promote our actions, so as to carry out the main pur pose of our being.

"Ah!"--A cry of triumph from the religious. "And what is the main purpose of our being? What can your miserable ethics tell us of that? Only religion knows!"

Yes?--Which religion, please?

"Mine"! triumphantly answers each and all.

(To be continued)