F. B. Jevons

“ The form which justice takes in the period which is almost, but not quite, the lowest stage of human evolution is the sense of the collective responsibility of the community for all its actions, that is to say, for the acts of all its members. And that responsibility in its earliest shape is felt to be a responsibility to heaven, to the supernatural powers that send disease and famine upon the community. In those days no man sins to himself alone, just as, in still earlier days, no man could break a taboo without becoming a source of danger to the whole community. ”

“ But if the truth that the individual is an end as well as a means is recognised by moral philosophy, that truth has also played at least an equally important part in political philosophy. It is the very breath of the cry for liberty, equality, and fraternity,—a cry wrung out from the heart of man by the system of oppression which denied that the ordinary citizen had a right to be anything but a means for procuring enjoyment to the members of the ruling class. ”

“ If a moral system by itself, on its own merits, were capable of affording a sure foundation for religion, Buddhism would be built upon a rock. To the spiritual community by which man may be united to his fellow-man and to his God, morality is essential and indispensable. But the moral life derives its value solely from the fact that on it depends, and by means of it is realised, that communion of man with God after which man has from the beginning striven. If then that communion and the very possibility of that communion is denied, the denial must prove fatal alike to religion and to morality. ”

“ God is not far from us at any time. That truth was implicit at all stages in the evolution of religion—consciously recognised, perhaps more, perhaps less, but whether more or less consciously recognised, it was there. That is the conviction implied in the fact that man everywhere seeks God. If he seeks Him in plants, in animals, in stocks or stones, that only shows that man has tried in many wrong directions—not that there is not a right direction. It is the general law of evolution: of a thousand seeds thrown out, perhaps one alone falls into good soil. ”

“ To seek the origin of religion in fetichism is as vain as to seek the origin of morality in the selfish and self-seeking tendencies of man. There is no need to enquire whether fetichism is historically prior to religion, or whether religion is historically prior to fetichism. Man, as long as he has lived in societies, must have had desires which were incompatible with the welfare of the community as well as desires which promoted its welfare. The powers which are supposed to care whether the community fares well are the gods of the community; and their worship is the religion of the community. ”

“ The individual, to do anything, must exist. If he is to desire nothing save to cease to exist, he must exist to do that. But the teaching of Buddhism is that this world and this life is illusion—and further, that the existence of the individual self is precisely the most mischievous illusion, that illusion above all others from which it is incumbent on us to free ourselves. We are here for no other end than to free ourselves from that illusion. ”

“ If Christianity should cease to grow where it now grows, and cease to spread where it as yet is not, there would be the greater fall. And on us would rest some, at least, of the responsibility. Christianity cannot be stationary: if it stands, let it beware; it is in danger of falling. Between religions, as well as other organisations, there is a struggle for existence. In that struggle we have to fight—for a religion to decline to fight is for that religion to die. The missionary is not engaged in a work of supererogation, something with which we at home have no concern. ”

“ Now, if we are, I will not say to do justice to the view that fetichism is the primitive religion of mankind or a stage from which other modes of religious thought have been developed, but if we are simply to understand it, we must clearly distinguish it from the view—somewhat paradoxical to say the least—that fetichism has no religious value, and yet is the source of all religious values. ”

“ Must we not, however, go one step further and admit that one and the same form of words may be prayer and religion when breathed in one spirit, and vain repetition and mere magic when uttered in another? ”

“ Now this theory of the evolution of humanity, and of the place religion takes in that evolution, is in essential harmony with the scientific treatment of the evolution theory, inasmuch as it treats of the individual solely as an instrument to something other than himself, as a means of producing a state of humanity to which he will not belong. But if the assumption that the individual is always a means and never an end in himself be false, then a theory of the evolution of man (as an ethical consciousness) which is based on that wrong assumption will itself be wrong. ”

“ Thus not only the origin of justice, but the whole course of its growth and development, is entirely independent of religion and religious considerations. Throughout, the individual and society are the only parties involved; the gods do not appear—or, if they do appear, they are intrusive and superfluous. If this be the true view of the history and nature of justice, it may—and probably must—be the truth about the whole of morality and not only about justice. ”

“ But in any case what the god of a community is there for is to promote the good of the community. It is because the savage has petitions to put up that he believes there are powers who can grant his petitions. Prayer is the very root of religion. When the savage has taken every measure he knows of to produce the result he desires, he then goes on to pray for the rainfall he desires, crying out in a loud voice "the impoverished state of the country and the half-starved condition of the tribe." ”

“ Human solidarity, humanity regarded as a spiritual whole, may be called, as Hegel calls it, self-conscious spirit; or you may call it, as Comte calls it, the Mind of Humanity—it is but the collective wisdom "of a common humanity with a common aim"; and, that being so, morality is rooted, not in the will and the love of a beneficent and omnipotent Providence, but in the self-realising spirit in man setting up its "common aim" at morality. ”

“ Hence at all times the man who has postponed his own interests to those under the sanction of the god and the community—the man who has respected and upheld the custom of the community—has been regarded as the higher type of man, as the better man from the religious as well as from the moral point of view; while the man who has sacrificed the higher interests to the lower, has been punished—whether by the automatic action of taboo, or the deliberate sentence of outlawry—as one who, by breaking custom, has offended against the god and so brought suffering on the community. ”

“ If it is the proper test for ascertaining what degree of perfection society at any given moment has attained, it is also the proper test for ascertaining what advance, if any, towards perfection has been made by society between any two periods of its growth, any two stages in its evolution. But the moment we admit the possibility of applying a test to the process of evolution and of discovering to what end the process is moving, we are abandoning science and the scientific theory of evolution. ”

“ If, on looking back upon past history, we pronounce that an event had value, we do so because we see that it served, or might have served, some end of which we approve. Its value is relative in our eyes to some end or purpose which was relatively future to it. The objects which we aim at, the ends after which we strive, are in the future. Those things have value which may subserve our ends and help us to attain our purposes. ”

“ Christianity alone makes love of God to be the true basis and the only end of society, both that whereby personality exists and the end in which it seeks its realisation. Therein the Christian theory of society differs from all others. Not merely does it hold that man cannot make himself better without making society better, that development of personality cannot be effected without a corresponding development of society. But it holds that such moral development and improvement of the individual and of society can find no rational basis and has no rational end, save in the love of God. ”

“ Whatever be the earliest history of that hope, whatever was its nature and course in prehistoric times, it has been worked out in history in many directions, under the influence of many errors, into many forms of religion. But in them all we feel that there is the same striving, the same yearning; and we see it with the same pity and distress as we may observe the distorted motions of the man who, though partially paralysed, yet strives to walk, and move to the place where he would be. ”

“ We must, therefore, once more insist upon the simple fact that science of religion abstains necessarily from assuming either that religion is true or is not true. What it does assume is what no one will deny, viz. that religion is a fact. Religious beliefs may be right or they may be wrong: but they exist. Therefore they can be studied, described, classified, placed in order of development, and treated as a branch of sociology and as one department of the evolution of the world. ”

“ The collapse of magic becomes complete when every one sees that the southeast trade wind blows at its appointed time, whether the magic rites are performed or not. In fine, what kills magic regarded as a means for producing effects is the discovery that it is superfluous, when for instance the desired wind or rain is coming, and futile when it is not. And whereas morality and religion only condemn the end aimed at by magic, and only condemn it when it is anti-social, science slowly shows that magic as a means to any end is superfluous and silly. ”

“ One answer to the question before us is that morality is the basal fact—the bottom fact: if we regard the question historically, we shall find that morality came first and religion afterwards; and, even if that were not so, we should find that as a matter of logic and philosophy religion presupposes morality—religion may, for a time, be the lever that moves the world, but it would be powerless if it had not a fulcrum, and that fulcrum is morality. So long and so far as religion operates beneficially on the world, it does so simply because it supports and reënforces morality. ”

“ The time has happily gone by when the mere idea of comparing Christianity with any other religion would have been rejected with horror as treasonous and treacherous. The fact that that time has now gone by is in itself evidence of a stronger faith in Christianity. ”