by Georg Simmel and translated by William Wilson Elwang

“ In attempting to find the beginnings of religion in human relations which are in themselves non-religious, we merely follow a well-known method. It has long been admitted that science is merely a heightening, a refinement, a completion, of those means of knowledge which, in lower and dimmer degree, assist us in forming our judgments and experiences in daily, practical life. ”

“ That absence of competition which conditions unity as the life-form of the group, but which always reigns only relatively and partially in it, has found absolute and intensest realization in the religious realm. It might actually be said of religion, as of faith, that it represents in substance—yes, to a certain extent consists of the substantialization of—that which, as form and function, regulates the group-life. ”

“ When a given idea of God is, in essence, the origin and at the same time the unity of all the varieties of being and willing, of all the antitheses and differences especially of our subjective life-interests, we can without more ado put the social totality into its place; for it is from this totality that all those impulses flow which come to us as the results of shifting adaptations, all that multiplicity of relations in which we find ourselves, that development of the organs with which we apprehend the different and almost irreconcilable aspects of the universe. ”

“ But this is precisely the result of an easy-going, uncritical faith in the power, value, superiority, and goodness of those in authority—a faith which is by no means an uncertain, theoretical assumption, but a unique thing, compounded of knowledge, instinct, and feeling, which is concisely and simply described as faith in them. That, in the face of reasonable proof to the contrary, we still can retain our faith in an individual is one of the strongest of the ties that bind society. ”

“ Such is the foolish and confused notion that the dignity of humanity is profaned by tracing man’s origin to the lower animals, as if that dignity did not depend upon what man really is, no matter what his origin. ”

“ Just as an attack upon a palladium or other symbol of group-unity will evoke the most violent reaction, even though it may have no direct connection with it at all, so religion is the purest form of unity in society, raised high above all concrete individualities. ”

“ That any particular form of life—social, literary, religious, personal—should survive its connection with a single content, and also lend itself unchanged to a new one; that the single content should maintain its essential nature through a mass of successive and mutually destructive forms, is precisely what the continuity of history will not permit. ”

“ It is not a question about the trivial proposition that mankind is reflected in its gods—a general truth which needs no proof. The question is, rather, to find those particular human characteristics whose development and extension beyond the human create the gods. And it must also be borne in mind that the gods do not exist as the idealization of individual characteristics, of the power, or moral or immoral characteristics, or the inclinations and needs of individuals; but that it is the inter-individual forms of life which often give their content to religious ideas. ”

“ The deification of ancestors, especially of the ablest and most successful, is, as it were, the most appropriate expression of the dependence of the individual upon the previous life of the group, even though consciousness may reveal other motives for it. Thus the humility with which the pious person acknowledges that all that he is and has comes from God, and recognizes in him the source of his existence and ability, is properly traced to the relation of the individual to the whole. For man is not absolutely nothing in contrast to God, but only a dust-mote ”

“ Thus it may help us to an insight into the origin and nature of religion, if we can discover in all kinds of non-religious conditions and interests certain religious momenta, the beginnings of what later came to be religion, definitely and independently. I do not believe that the religious feelings and impulses manifest themselves in religion only; rather, that they are to be found in many connections, a co-operating element in various situations, whose extreme development and differentiation is religion as an independent content of life. ”

“ It has long been known that custom is the chief form of social control in the lower culture conditions. Those life-conditions which, on the one hand, are subsequently codified as laws and enforced by the police power of the state, and, on the other hand, are remitted to the free consent of the cultivated and trained individual socius, are, in narrower and primitive circles, guaranteed by that peculiar, immediate control of the individual by his environment which we call custom. ”

“ Another side of the social life which develops into a corresponding one within the religious life is found in the concept of unity. That we do not simply accept the disconnected manifoldness of our impressions of things, but look for the connections and relations which bind them into a unity; yes, that we everywhere presuppose the presence of higher unities and centers for the seemingly separate phenomena, in order that we may orient ourselves aright amid the confusion with which they come to us, is assuredly one of the important characteristics of social realities and necessities. ”

“ Even if we have succeeded in the attempt to understand religion as a product of the subjective conditions of human life, we have not at all impinged upon the problem whether the objective reality which lies outside of human thought contains the counterpart and confirmation of the psychical reality which we have here discussed. Thus the psychology of cognition seeks to explain how the mind conceives the world to be spatial, and of three dimensions, but is content to have other disciplines undertake to prove whether beyond our mental world there is a world of things in themselves of like forms. ”

“ The compelling and punitive gods, the loving God, the God of Spinoza who cannot return our love, the God who both bestows and deprives us of the inclination and ability to act—these are precisely the tokens by which the ethical relation between the group and its members unfolds its energies and oppositions. ”

“ Persons entertaining such notions will always resist the attempt to understand religion by deriving it from elements not in themselves religious. But precisely such persons, who hope to preserve the dignity of religion by denying its historical-psychological origin, must be reproached with weakness of religious consciousness. Their subjective certainty and emotional depth must assuredly be of little moment, if the knowledge of their origin and development endangers or even touches their validity and worth. ”

“ When materialism derives the entire content of historic life from economic conditions, and defines custom and law, art and religion, science and social progress accordingly, a part of a very comprehensive process is exaggerated into the whole. The development of the forms and contents of social life, throughout its wide territory and multiplied phenomena, is such that the selfsame content finds expression in many forms, and the same form in many contents. ”

“ For, just as genuine and deepest love for a human being is not disturbed by subsequent evidence concerning its causes—yes, as its triumphant strength is revealed by its survival of the passing of those causes—so the strength of the subjective religious emotion is revealed only by the assurance which it has in itself, and with which it grounds its depth and intensity entirely beyond all the causes to which investigation may trace it. ”

“ The faith in human relations which exists as a social necessity now becomes an independent, typical function of humanity which spontaneously authenticates itself from within; just as it is no rare phenomenon for a certain object to produce a certain psychical process in us, and afterward for this process, having become independent, to create a corresponding object for itself. ”

“ Custom, law, and the voluntary morality of the individual are different unifying elements of the social structure which can carry the same obligations as their content, and, as a matter of fact, have had them among different peoples at different times. Many of the norms and practices of public life are supported both by the free play of competing forces and by the control of the lower elements by higher ones. ”

“ It is the deepest significance of the God-idea that the manifoldness and contradictoriness of things find in it their relation and unity, it matters not whether it be the absolute unity of the one God, or the partial unities of polytheism. Thus, for example, the social life of the ancient Arabians, with the all-controlling influence of its tribal unity, foreshadowed monotheism; among Semitic peoples, like the Jews, Phoenicians, and Canaanites, the method of their social unification and its transformations was plainly reflected in the character of their gods. ”

“ When primitive associations are so often found organized in tens, it means, clearly, that the group-relationship is similar to that of the fingers of the hand—relative freedom and independent movement of the individual, and, at the same time, unity of purpose and inseparableness of existence from others. The fact that all social life is a relationship at once defines it as a unity ”

“ If the theory is correct which asserts that all religion is derived from ancestor-worship, from the worship and conciliation of the immortal soul of a forbear, especially of a hero and leader, it will confirm this connection; for we are, as a matter of fact, dependent upon what has been before us, and which was most directly concentrated in the authority of the fathers over their descendants. ”

“ It is almost solely in religion that the energies of individuals can find fullest development without coming into competition with each other, because, as Jesus so beautifully expresses it, there is room for all in God’s house. ”

“ The faith which has come to be regarded as the essential, the substance, of religion, is first a relation between individuals; for it is a question of practical faith, which is by no means merely a lower form or attenuation of theoretical belief. ”

“ The relations of persons to each other, which have grown out of the most manifold interests, have been supported by the most opposite forces, and have been cast into the most diverse forms, also attain a condition in the aggregate whose identification with and relation to a Being above and beyond them we call religion—in that they become both abstract and concrete, a dual development which gives religion the strength with which it again, reflexively, influences those relations. ”

“ And the multiplicity of psychological causes to which religion is ascribed corresponds to this indefinite conception as to its nature. It matters not whether fear or love, ancestor-worship or self-deification, the moral instincts or the feeling of dependence, be regarded as the subjective root of religion; a theory is only then entirely erroneous when it assumes to be the sole explanation, and then only correct when it claims to point out merely one of the sources of religion. ”

“ It means not only that I accept the existence of God, even though it be not fully demonstrable, but it implies also a certain subjective relation to him, a going out of the affections to him, an attitude of life; in all of which there is a peculiar mixture of faith as a kind of method of knowledge with practical impulses and feelings. And now, as to the analogy of all this in human socialization. We do not base our mutual relations by any means upon what we conclusively know about each other. ”

“ And this, in turn, assumes a personal form in a priesthood which, despite its historic connection with certain classes, stands, in its fundamental idea, above all classes, and precisely on that account represents the focus and unity of the ideal life-content for all individuals. Thus the celibacy of the Catholic priesthood frees them from every special relation to any element or group of elements, and makes possible a uniform relation to each; just as “society” or the “state” stands above individuals as the abstract unity which represents all their relationships in itself. ”

“ This arrangement of religious and ethical-social ideas is supported by the fact that God is conceived as the personification of those virtues which he himself demands from the people. He is goodness, justice, patience, etc., rather than the possessor of these attributes; he is, as it is sometimes expressed, perfection in substance; he is goodness itself, and love itself, etc. Morality, the imperatives that control human conduct, has, so to speak, become immutable in him. ”

“ The entire history of social life is permeated by this process: the positively antagonistic motives of individuals, with which their social life begins, grow up into separate and independent organisms. Thus, from the regulations for preserving the group-life there arise, on the one hand, the law which codifies them, and, on the other, the judge whose business it is to apply them. ”

“ The emotional value of religion—that is to say, the most subjective reflexive effect of the idea of God—is entirely independent of all assumption about the manner in which the idea originated. We here touch upon the most serious misconception to which the attempt to trace ideal values historically and psychologically is exposed. ”

“ In contrast to this, religion, as an independent phenomenon, is a derivative thing, almost like the state in the Roman and modern sense, as an objective and self-sufficient existence, is secondary in contrast to the original causes, relations, and customs which immediately controlled the social elements, and which only gradually projected upon or abrogated to the state the conservation and execution of their contents. ”

“ The chain of causes may have to terminate somewhere in an objective reality. But this possibility or necessity can concern only him who has in view the complete elucidation of the origin and nature of religion, but it does not affect our attempt to trace only a single one of the rays that are focused in religion. ”