第112章 Religion(3)

The influence of supernatural penalties is therefore in 'an inverse ratio to the demand for it,'10In reality,the efficacy of the sanctions is due to their dependence upon public opinion.Our real motive for acting rightly is our desire for the praise of our fellows and our interest in their good conduct.We conceal this motive even from ourselves,because we wish to have the credit of serving the Deity exclusively,this is confirmed by the familiar instances of a conflict between public opinion and religious sanctions.Duelling,fornication,and perjury are forbidden by the divine law,but the prohibition is ineffectual whenever the real sentiment of mankind is opposed to it,the divine law is set aside as soon as it conflicts with the popular opinion.In exceptional cases,indeed,the credit attached to unreasonable practices leads to fanaticism,asceticism,and even insanity,but superhuman terrors fail at once when they try to curb the action of genuine substantial motives.Hence we must admit that they are useless in the case even of 'secret crimes.'Religion,in short,prescribes mischievous practices,becomes impotent except for the production of misery,and is really,though not avowedly,dependent on the popular sanction.11We can now classify the evils actually produced.Religion injures individuals by prescribing useless and painful practices;fasting,celibacy,voluntary self-torture,and so forth.It suggests vague terrors which often drive the victim to insanity,and it causes remorse for harmless enjoyments.12Religion injures society by creating antipathies against unbelievers,and in a less degree against heretics and nonconformists.It perverts public opinion by making innocent actions blameable;by distorting the whole science of morality and sanctioning the heterogeneous dictates of a certain blind and unaccountable impulse called the 'moral instinct or conscience.'13Morality becomes a 'mere catalogue of reigning sentiments,'because it has cast away the standard of utility.A special aversion to improvement is generated,because whatever changes our conceptions of the 'sequences of phenomena'is supposed to break the divine 'laws of nature.''Unnatural'becomes a 'self-justifying'epithet forbidding any proposed change of conduct,which will counteract the 'designs of God.'Religion necessarily injures intellectual progress.It disjoins belief from its only safe ground,experience,the very basis,the belief in an inscrutable and arbitrary power,sanctions supernatural or 'extra-experimental'beliefs of all kinds.You reject in the case of miracles all the tests applicable to ordinary instruction,and appeal to trial by ordeal instead of listening to witnesses.Instead of taking the trouble to plough and sow,you expect to get a harvest by praying to an inscrutable Being.You marry without means,because you hold that God never sends a child without sending food for it to eat.Meanwhile you suborn 'unwarranted belief'by making belief a matter of reward and penalty.It is made a duty to dwell upon the arguments upon one side without attending to those upon the other,and ,the weaker the evidence the greater the merit in believing.'14The temper is depraved not only by the antipathies generated,but by the 'fitful and intermittent character'of the inducements to conduct.15

The final result of all this is still more serious.It is that religion,besides each separate mischief,'subsidises a standing army for the perpetuation of all the rest.'16The priest gains power as a 'wonder-worker,'who knows how to propitiate the invisible Being,and has a direct interest in 'depraving the intellect,'cherishing superstition,surrounding himself with mysteries,representing the will of the Deity as arbitrary and capricious,and forming an organised 'array of human force and fraud.'17The priesthood sets up an infallible head,imposes upon the weak and dying,stimulates antipathy,forms the mass of 'extra-experimental'beliefs into the likeness of a science,and allies itself with the state,Heresy becomes a crime.The ruler helps the priests to raise a tax for their own comfort,while they repay him by suppressing all seditious opinions.Thus is formed an unholy alliance between the authorities of 'natural religion'and the 'sinister interests of the earth.'The alliance is so complete that it is even more efficient than if it had been openly proclaimed.'Prostration and plunder of the community is indeed the common end of both'(priests and rulers).The only chance of dissension is about the 'partition of the spoil.'18The book is as characteristic of the Utilitarians in style as in spirit.It is terse,vigorous reasoning,with no mere rhetorical flourishes.The consequences of the leading principle are deduced without flinching and without reserve.Had the authors given their names,they would no doubt have excited antipathies injurious to the propaganda of Utilitarianism.They held,for that reason presumably,that they were not bound to point out the ultimate goal of their speculations.

No intelligent reader of their other writings could fail to see what that goal must be;but an 'open secret'is still for many purposes a real secret.