This is a continuation of my notes on Bentham and Grote’s Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion Upon the Temporal Happiness of Mankind (1822). Part II discusses the discrete harms natural religion causes to the individual and society.
Part II – Catalogue of the various modes in which natural religion is mischievous.
Chapter 1 – Of the mischiefs accruing to the individual.
- Inflicting unprofitable suffering. To prove reverence for the Deity requires imposing pain on yourself with no prospect of temporal reward, or giving happiness to oneself or others.
- Imposing useless privations. Pleasures are renounced and considered abhorrent, e.g. fasting; celibacy; abstinence from repose; abstinence from cleanliness, personal decoration and innocent comforts; abstinence from social enjoyments and mirth; abstinence from remedies to disease; gratuitous surrender of property, time and labour; surrender of dignity and honours. Public opinion will encourage such asceticism.
- Impressing undefined terrors. These will affect us in times of sorrow and disaster, e.g. near death; our imagination is haunted.
- Taxing pleasure, by the infusion of preliminary scruples, and subsequent remorse. Pleasures are reduced by feelings of guilt and doubt about it.
Chapter 2 – Of the mischiefs which natural religion occasions, not only to the believer himself, but also to others through his means.
- Creating factitious antipathy. Religion leads to antipathies related to unbelief in the Deity, non-observance of the Deity’s will, and mal-observance of his will. E.g. ‘to him who entertains a strong conviction, for which he has little or no arguments to offer, an intense antipathy not only clings as the natural concomitant of dissent, but is even necessary as a weapon to intimidate unsatisfied hearers, and to stifle an enquiry which it would be difficult to ward off in any other manner.’ And ‘when we contemplate the universal prevalence of religious hatred, and its daily and hourly interference with the line of human conduct – creating factitious motives for inflicting mutual evil, or withholding assistance – we shall be authorised in placing to its account no inconsiderable portion of the misery which pervades human society.’
- Perverting the popular opinion – corrupting moral sentiment – sanctifying antipathy – producing aversion to improvement. ‘Whatever … tends to make men hate that which does not actually hurt them, contributes to distort or disarm public opinion, in its capacity of a restraint upon injurious acts – for the public sentiment is only the love or hatred of all or most of the individuals in the society. Now religion has been shewn to create a number of factitious antipathies – that is, to make men hate a number of practices which they would not have hated had their views been confined simply to the present life. But if men would not naturally have hated these practices, this is a proof that they are not actually hurtful. Religion, therefore, attaches the hatred of mankind to actions not really injurious to them, and thus seduces it from its only legitimate and valuable function, that of deterring individuals from injurious conduct. By this distortion from its true purpose, the efficacy of popular censure is also weakened on those occasions when it is most beneficially and indispensibly called for, as a guardian of human happiness. It is dissipated over an unnecessary extent of defensible ground, and thus becomes less efficient at every particular point; And it is deprived of that unity of design, and that reference to a distinct and assignable end, which marks all provisions exclusively destined for securing the public happiness. The different actions, to which the public odium is attached, appear entirely unconnected and heterogeneous in their tendencies, and its application is thus involved in darkness and confusion. Besides, hatred from one man towards another, is a feeling decidedly noxious, and no friend of humanity could suffer a single drop of it to exist, were it not required to prevent a greater evil – to obviate a still larger destruction of happiness. Unless sanctified by this warrant, the affection of hatred becomes nothing better than unredeemed malignity. It is by exciting and keeping alive this malignity, that religion enforces her causeless prohibitions’. ‘The science of morality having been thus degraded into a mere catalogue of the reigning sentiments, without any trial or warrant, not only do the prejudices of to-day meet with adoption and licence, but a sanctuary is also provided for those of to-morrow. Morality cannot, in this state, either instruct or amend mankind, nor is it capable of progress or improvement, because the standard, by which alone its advance can be measured, has been cast away … as all means of distinguishing right from wrong disapprobation is obliterated, every one naturally endeavours to licence and sanctify his own private antipathies, by placing them to the account of religion. By an artful transfer of terms, he attempts to slip his personal dislike into the moral code, and to found thereon the character of being zealously concerned for the honour of God and the interests of virtue. If he can succeed in procuring a few allies, his antipathy becomes gradually diffused and legalised, and is worshipped as a dictate of the moral sense. But in order to obtain these partisans, he is compelled to offer some service in return; and for this purpose he naturally stands forth as the champion of their antipathies, in the same manner as they second his. By this compromise, therefore, the whole band are leagued to endorse and accredit each others enmities, and to vilify the actions which they dislike, as infringements of religion and of the law of nature. The less hurtfull the action – the less real necessity can be alleged for the dislike – the more loudly will they be obliged to appeal to religion and the moral instinct, as their only chance of shelter from the charge of absurd peculiarity. Those antipathies, therefore, which are the least defensible on the score of public utility, are the most commonly put forward to be stamped and sanctified by religion, and to pass current under the denomination of laws of nature.’
- Disqualifying the intellectual faculties for purposes useful in this life. Section I: Disjoining belief from experience: ‘all our knowledge with regard to pleasure and pain is derived from experience. To know the way of procuring the former and escaping the latter, some one must have made trial. Knowledge can only be instrumental for these purposes, when it is the statement and summary of the trials which have thus been made. Now knowledge consists in the belief of certain facts: All useful knowledge, therefore, (that is, all which can be instrumental in multiplying the enjoyments and diminishing the sufferings of this life) consists in believing facts conformable to experience – in believing the modes of producing pleasure and avoiding pain to be, in each particular case, such as actual trial indicates. It is on the conformity of belief with experience, therefore, that the attainment of pleasure and the prevention of misery, in every case without exception, is founded.’ ‘And conversely, whatever tends to disjoin belief from experience, must be regarded as crippling, to a greater or less extent, the sole engine by which our preservation even from incessant suffering is ensured, and tending to disqualify our mental faculties for purposes of temporal happiness. Such is the injurious effect (with reference to the present life) of disjoining the two – or of making us believe any thing uncertified by experience.’ Natural religion posits the existence of a hidden being who cannot be discovered by experience: ‘The very basis, therefore, of natural religion is an article of extra-experimental belief, or of belief altogether uncomformable to experience. It has a tendency, thus in the very outset, to introduce that mental depravation which we have demonstrated to be the inevitable result of this species of belief.’ ‘Our belief with regard to the original creative power of God, and the design by which it was exerted, is alike uncertified by experience … If the interests of the present life require that our persuasion should never deviate from experience, they also require that we should not attempt to account for the original commencement of things – because it is obvious that experience must be entirely silent upon that subject.’ On God’s agency in the present life and the ability to change or suspend laws of nature (e.g. through miracles): ‘Whoever … believes these laws to be violable at the will of an incomprehensible Being, completely debars himself from the application of all previous experience to the existing fact. If they are violable at all, why may they not have been violated in the case before us? No imaginable reason can be assigned for this – because in order to constitute a reason – in order to make a complete proof – you must presuppose that uniformity of the course of nature which your reason is intended to vindicate. Whether you assume her laws to be violable or inviolable, you must adhere to the same assumption throughout. If you say that they are inviolable, you cannot maintain them to be infringed in any particular case – if you hold that they are violable, you cannot assume them to be permanent and uniform in any one case. If therefore you believe the agency of an incomprehensible Being in the affairs of this life, your belief is such as would, were it pursued consistently, exclude you from all application of past experience to the future – and therefore incapacitate you from contriving any defence against coming pains, or any modes of procuring pleasures. Again, this belief also precludes you from applying the process of refutation, and thus from detecting any falsehood whatever. For no assertion can ever be refuted except by offering proof of some other assertion, and then appealing to experience for a certificate of the incompatibility of the two.’ ‘Hence the belief of an unseen agent, infringing at pleasure the laws of nature, appears to be pregnant with the most destructive consequences. It discredits and renders inadmissible the lessons of experience: It vitiates irrecoverably the processes both of proof and refutation, thereby making truth incapable of being established, and falsehood incapable of being detected: It withdraws from us the power of distinguishing the true methods, of procuring enjoyment or avoiding pain, from the false ones; and plunges us into the naked, inexperienced and helpless condition of a new-born child – thereby qualifying us indeed for the kingdom of heaven, but leaving us wholly defenceless against the wants and sufferings of earth.’ ‘To him who believes in the intervention of incomprehensible and unlimited Beings, no story can appear incredible. The most astonishing narratives are exempted from cross-examination, and readily digested under the title of miracles or prodigies. Of these miracles, every nation on the face of the earth has on record and believes thousands. And as each nation disbelieves all except its own, each, though it believes a great many, yet disbelieves more. The most enthusiastic believer in miracles, therefore, cannot deny that an enormous excess of false ones have obtained credence amongst the larger portion of mankind. The root of all these fictions, by which the human intellect has thus been cheated and overrun, is the extra-experimental belief of the earthly interference of God; and the immense evil arising from such a deception is another of its pernicious results.’ ‘He who feels confidence that the Deity will decide for him a particular point, or realise any other object of his wishes, will of course take no pains to form his own opinion, or to attain the object by his own efforts. Reliance on foreign aid, if perfect and full, supersedes the necessity of self-exertion altogether – and if the person thus relying puts himself to any trouble whatever, it is only because his confidence is not perfect. A man sits still while his servant is bringing up breakfast, because he feels quite confident that his desires will be attained without any trouble of his own. The belief therefore in super-human interference cannot fail, when firmly and thoroughly entertained, to produce an entire abandonment of the means suggested by experience for human enjoyment. If the Almighty declares against us, our efforts are fruitless – if in our favour, they are unnecessary: In neither case therefore have we any motive to make efforts. Expectation of effects on the ground of the divine attributes must thus, so far as it is really genuine and operative, extinguish all forecast, and cut all the sinews of human exertion.’ Attempts to gain divine favour and assistance: ‘these expectations, supposing them well-founded and firmly entertained, cannot fail to introduce complete inactivity among the human race. Why should a man employ the slow and toilsome methods to which experience chains him down, when the pleasure which he seeks may be purchased by a simple act of prayer? Why should he plough, and sow, and walk his annual round of anxiety, when by the mere expression of a request, an omnipotent ally may be induced to place the mature produce instantly within his grasp? No, it is replied – God will not assist him unless he employs all his own exertions: he will not favour the lazy. In this defence however it is implied, either that the individual is not to rely upon God at all, in which case there is no motive to offer up the prayer – or that he is to feel a reliance, and yet act as if he felt none whatever. It is implied, therefore, that the conduct of the individual is to be exactly the same as if he did not anticipate any super-human interference. By this defence, you do indeed exculpate the belief in supernatural agency from the charge of producing pernicious effects – because you reduce it to a mere non-entity, and make it produce no effects at all. If therefore the request is offered up with any hope of being realised, it infallibly proves pernicious, by relaxing the efforts of the petitioner to provide for himself. Should he believe that God will, when he himself has done his utmost, make up the deficiency and crown his views with success; the effect will be to make him undertake any enterprizes whatever, without regarding the inadequacy of his means. Provided he employs actively all the resources in his power, he becomes entitled to have the balance made up from the divine treasury.’ ‘[A]s all our pleasure and all our exemption from want and pain, is the result of human provision – as these provisions are only so many applications of acquired knowledge, that is, of belief conformable to experience – it follows, that the whole fabric of human happiness depends upon the intimate and inviolable union between belief and experience. Whatever has the effect of disjoining the two, is decidedly of a nature to undermine and explode all the apparatus essential to human enjoyment – and if this result is not actually produced, it is only because the train laid is not sufficiently extensive, and is confined to the out-works instead of reaching the heart of the fortress.’
- Suborning unwarranted belief. ‘[I]n the divine classification of human actions, disbelief is characterised as the most heinous of all trespasses, and belief as very meritorious, though not to a corresponding extent. The severest penalties are supposed and proclaimed to await the former; very considerable rewards to follow the latter.’ ‘When assent or dissent has thus become a question of profit and loss, and not of reason, the believer is interested in bringing into contempt the guide whom he has deserted. He accordingly speaks in the most degrading terms of the fallibility and weakness of human reason, and of her incapacity to grasp any very lofty or comprehensive subject. It thus becomes a positive merit to decide contrary to reason, rather than with her.’ ‘Suppose government were to offer large rewards to all who believed in witches, or in the personality and marvellous feats of Hercules or Jack the Giant-killer – and to threaten proportionate punishments to all disbelievers. No one would question that these offers and threats, if they were at all effective, would contribute to produce a general perversion of intellect – and that they would mislead men’s judgments in numerous other cases besides that one to which they immediately applied. Error, when once implanted, uniformly and inevitably propagates its species. Precisely the same in all cases, is the effect of erecting belief into an act of merit, and rendering unbelief punishable. You either produce no result at all; or you bribe and suborn a man into believing what he would not otherwise have believed, that is, what appears to him inadequately authenticated.’
- Depraving the temper. ‘The fitful and intermittent character of its [religion’s] inducements, incapable of keeping a steady purchase upon the mind, and daily overborne by urgent physical wants – the endless and almost impracticable compliances exacted in its code – the misty attributes of its legislator, who treats every attempt to inquire into his proceedings as the most unpardonable of insults – all these render it quite impossible for a religionist to preserve any thing like a satisfactory accordance between his belief and his practice. Hence a perpetual uneasiness and dissatisfaction with himself – a sense of infirmity of purpose and dereliction of principle – which is thoroughly fatal to all calmness or complacency of mind. Privations or torture might by habit become tolerable and even indifferent: but this feeling of inferiority and degradation is continually renovated, and never ceases to vex the resolving and re-resolving sinner. And a mind thus at variance with itself can never be at peace with any body else, or feel sufficient leisure to sympathize with the emotions of others. It shelters its own vacillation under the plea of the general debasement and original wickedness of the whole human race: and this plea must assuredly weaken, if it does not entirely root out, all sympathy for such degenerate Beings. Dissatisfied with his own conduct, it is hardly possible that a man can be satisfied with that of others. We are told indeed that this consciousness of imperfection in ourselves ought to engender humility, and indulgence towards the defects of our brethren. But rarely indeed does it produce any such effect as this. Its general tendency is to sharpen the edge of envy to make us more acute in hunting out and magnifying the faults of others, inasmuch as nearly the sole comfort remaining to us is, the view of others equally distant from the same goal. When we consider how infinitely the happiness of every family and society depends upon the steadiness and equability of disposition in each member, whereby all the rest are enabled to ascertain and avoid what ever might offend him – and upon the sympathy which each man manifests for the feelings of the remainder the mischief above explained must be estimated very high in amount. There can be no equability of temper, where there is an unceasing conflict of principle and practice – of resolution and failure: and where the mind is darkened over by a sense of self-abasement and guilt. There can be no sympathy either for the enjoyments or the sufferings of others, where the thoughts of an individual are absorbed in averting posthumous torments or in entitling himself to a posthumous happiness – and where this object, important as it is, is involved in such obscurity, as to leave him in a state of perpetual anxiety and apprehension.’
- Creating a particular class of persons incurably opposed to the interests of humanity. The clergy ‘have the strongest interest in the depravation of the human intellect. For the demand for their services as agents for the temporal aid of the Deity, altogether depends upon human ignorance and incapacity, and is exactly proportional to it. Why does a man apply for the divine assistance? Because he does not know how to accomplish his ends without it, or how to procure the requisite apparatus for the purpose. If he knew any physical means of attaining it, he would unquestionably prefer them. Every extension therefore of physical methods in the gratification of our wishes, displaces and throws out of employment by so much the labour of the aërial functionaries. No one prays for the removal of a disease by supernatural aid, when he once knows an appropriate surgical remedy. He therefore who lives by the commission which he charges on the disposal of the former, has a manifest interest in checking the advance and introduction of the latter. Besides, the accumulation of experimental knowledge excludes the supernatural man from another of his most lucrative employments – that of predicting future events … When mankind advance a little in knowledge, and become inquisite, the task of the soothsayer becomes more and more difficult; whereas ignorance and credulity are duped without any great pains. The supernatural agent therefore has a deadly interest against the advance of knowledge, not only as it introduces a better machinery for obtaining acquaintance with the future, and thereby throws him out of employment as a prophet – but also as it enables mankind to detect the hollow, fictitious, and illusory nature of his own predicting establishment.’ ‘As he is interested in impeding the progress of knowledge, so he is not the less interested in propagating and cherishing extra-experimental belief. Ignorance is his negative ally, cutting off mankind from any other means of satisfying their wants except those which he alone can furnish: Extra-experimental belief is the substratum on which all his influence is built. It is this which furnishes to mankind all their evidence of the being, a power and agency of his invisible principal, and also of the posthumous scenes in preparation for us, where these are to be exhibited on a superior and perfect scale. It is this too which supplies mankind with the credentials of his own missions, and makes them impute to him at once, and without cavilling, all that long stretch of aerial dignity and prerogative, the actual proof of which it would have been difficult for him to have gone through. Both the hopes and fears, therefore, which call for his interference, and the selection of him as the person to remove them, rest upon the maintenance of extra-experimental persuasion in the human breast. Were belief closely and inseparably knit with experience, he would never obtain credit for the power of doing any thing else than what man kind really saw him do. His interest accordingly prompts him to disjoin the two – to disjoin them on every occasion in his power, if he would ensure their disjunction for his own particular case.’ ‘If any man, or any separate class, are permitted to legislate for their own benefit, they are in effect despots; while the rest of the community are degraded to the level of slaves, and will be treated as such by the legislative system so constructed. Conformable to this system the precepts delivered by the supernatural delegate as enacted by his invisible master, will be such as to subjugate the minds of the community, in the highest practicable degree, to himself and to his brethren, and to appropriate for the benefit of the class as much wealth and power as circumstances will permit. This is a mere statement of the dictates of self-preference. To effect this purpose, he will find it essentially necessary to describe the Deity as capricious, irritable, and vindictive, to the highest extent – as regarding with gloom and jealousy the enjoyments of the human worm, and taking delight in his privations or sufferings – pliable indeed without measure, and yielding up instantaneously all his previous sentiments, when technically and professionally solicited – but requiring the perpetual application of emollients to sooth his wrathful propensities. The more implicitly mankind believe in these appalling attributes, the more essential is he who can stand in the gap and avert the threatened pestilence – the more necessary is it to ensure his activity by feeing and ennobling him. On whatever occasions he can, in the capacity of interpreter to the divine will, persuade them that they are exposed to supernatural wrath – in all such junctures, he will obtain a fee, as mediator or intercessor, for procuring a reprieve. The more therefore he can multiply the number of offences against God, the greater does his profit become – because on every such act of guilt, the sinner will find it answer to forestall the execution of the sentence by effecting an amicable compromise with the viceregent of the Almighty. For rendering so important a service, the latter may make his own terms. But in order to multiply offences, the most efficacious method is to prohibit those acts which there is the most frequent and powerful temptation to commit. Now the temptation to perform any act is of course proportional to the magnitude of the pleasurable, and the smallness of the painful, consequences by which it is attended. Those deeds, therefore, which are the most delightful, and the most innoxious, will meet with the severest prohibitions in the religious code, and be represented as the most deeply offensive to the divine majesty. Because such deeds will be most frequently repeated for the expiatory formula. Such therefore will be the code constructed by the supernatural delegate in the name of his unearthly sovereign – including the most rigorous denunciations against human pleasure, and interdicting it the more severely in proportion as it is delicious and harmless.’ ‘All the purchase which the interpreter of the divine will has upon the human mind, depends upon the extent of its superhuman apprehensions. It is therefore his decided interest that the dread of these unseen visitations should haunt the bosoms of mankind, like a heavy and perpetual incubus, day and night – that they should live under a constant sense of the suspended arm of God – and thus in a state of such conscious insecurity and helplessness, that all possibility of earthly comfort should be altogether blighted and cast out.’ ‘By this analysis, I think, it appears most demonstratively, that all those whose influence rests on an imputed connexion with the Divine Being, cannot fail to be animated by an interest incurably opposed to all human happiness: that the inevitable aim of such persons must be to extend and render irremediable, those evils which natural religion would originate without them, viz, ignorance, extra-experimental belief, appalling conceptions of the Deity, intense dread of his visitations, and a perversion of the terms of praise and censure in his behalf.’ ‘[B]etween the particular interest of a governing aristocracy and a sacerdotal class, there seems a very peculiar affinity and coincidence – each wielding the precise engine which the other wants. The aristocracy, for instance, possess the disposal of a mass of physical force sufficient to crush any partial resistance, and demand only to be secured against any very general or simultaneous opposition on the part of the community. To make this sure, they are obliged to maintain a strong purchase upon the public mind, and to chain it down to the level of submission – to plant within it feelings which may neutralize all hatred of slavery, and facilitate the business of spoliation. For this purpose the sacerdotal class are most precisely and most happily cut out. By their influence over the moral sentiments, they place implicit submission among the first of all human duties. They infuse the deepest reverence for temporal power, by considering the existing authorities as established and consecrated by the immaterial Autocrat above, and as identified with his divine majesty. The duty of mankind towards the earthly government becomes thus the same as duty to God – that is, an unvarying “prostration both of the understanding and will.” Besides this direct debasement of the moral faculties for the purpose of assuring non-resistance, the supernatural terrors, and the extra-experimental belief, which the priesthood are so industrious in diffusing, all tend to the very same result. They produce that mistrust, alarm, and insecurity, which disposes a man to bless himself in any little fragment of present enjoyment, while it stifles all aspirations for future improvement and even all ideas of its practicability.’ ’The earthly ruler, on the other hand, amply repays the co-operation which he has thus derived. The mental (or psychagogical) machinery of the priesthood is very excellent; but they are unhappily deficient in physical force. Hence the protection of the earthly potentate is of most essential utility to a class so defectively provided in this main point. The coercion which he supplies is all sanctified by the holy name of religion, in defence of which it is resorted to; and he is extolled, while thus engaged, as the disinterested servant of the invisible Being. He is therefore permitted to employ, in behalf of religion, an extent and disposition of force which would have provoked indignation and revolt, on any other account. The utmost extent of physical force, which circumstances will permit, is in this manner put forward, to smother any symptom of impiety, or even of dissent from the sacerdotal dogmas: Irreligion and heresy become crimes of the deepest dye, and the class are thus secured, in their task of working on the public mind, from all competition or contest. Under the protection of such powerful artillery, this corps of sappers and miners carries on a tranquil, but effectual, progress in the trenches.’ ‘One of the most noxious properties therefore, in the profession of men to which natural religion gives birth, is its coincidence and league with the sinister interests of earth – a coincidence so entire, as to secure unity of design on the part of both, without any necessity for special confederation, and therefore more mischievously efficient than it would have proved had the deed of partnership been open and proclaimed. Prostration and plunder of the community is indeed the common end of both. The only point upon which there can be any dissension, is about the partition of the spoil – and quarrels of this nature have occasionally taken place, in cases where the passive state of the people has obviated all apprehension of resistance. In general, however, the necessity of strict amity has been too visible to admit of much discord, and the division of the spoil has been carried on tranquilly, though in different ratios, according to the tone of the public mind.’
Notes in the Margins of the Days 