15. Chapter XV: That Religious Belief Sometimes Turns The Thoughts Of
The Americans To Immaterial Pleasures
In the United States, on the seventh day of every week, the
trading and working life of the nation seems suspended; all
noises cease; a deep tranquillity, say rather the solemn calm of
meditation, succeeds the turmoil of the week, and the soul
resumes possession and contemplation of itself. Upon this day the
marts of traffic are deserted; every member of the community,
accompanied by his children, goes to church, where he listens to
strange language which would seem unsuited to his ear. He is
told of the countless evils caused by pride and covetousness: he
is reminded of the necessity of checking his desires, of the
finer pleasures which belong to virtue alone, and of the true
happiness which attends it. On his return home, he does not turn
to the ledgers of his calling, but he opens the book of Holy
Scripture; there he meets with sublime or affecting descriptions
of the greatness and goodness of the Creator, of the infinite
magnificence of the handiwork of God, of the lofty destinies of
man, of his duties, and of his immortal privileges. Thus it is
that the American at times steals an hour from himself; and
laying aside for a while the petty passions which agitate his
life, and the ephemeral interests which engross it, he strays at
once into an ideal world, where all is great, eternal, and pure.
I have endeavored to point out in another part of this work
the causes to which the maintenance of the political institutions
of the Americans is attributable; and religion appeared to be one
of the most prominent amongst them. I am now treating of the
Americans in an individual capacity, and I again observe that
religion is not less useful to each citizen than to the whole
State. The Americans show, by their practice, that they feel the
high necessity of imparting morality to democratic communities by
means of religion. What they think of themselves in this respect
is a truth of which every democratic nation ought to be
thoroughly persuaded.
I do not doubt that the social and political constitution of
a people predisposes them to adopt a certain belief and certain
tastes, which afterwards flourish without difficulty amongst
them; whilst the same causes may divert a people from certain
opinions and propensities, without any voluntary effort, and, as
it were, without any distinct consciousness, on their part. The
whole art of the legislator is correctly to discern beforehand
these natural inclinations of communities of men, in order to
know whether they should be assisted, or whether it may not be
necessary to check them. For the duties incumbent on the
legislator differ at different times; the goal towards which the
human race ought ever to be tending is alone stationary; the
means of reaching it are perpetually to be varied.
If I had been born in an aristocratic age, in the midst of a
nation where the hereditary wealth of some, and the irremediable
penury of others, should equally divert men from the idea of
bettering their condition, and hold the soul as it were in a
state of torpor fixed on the contemplation of another world, I
should then wish that it were possible for me to rouse that
people to a sense of their wants; I should seek to discover more
rapid and more easy means for satisfying the fresh desires which
I might have awakened; and, directing the most strenuous efforts
of the human mind to physical pursuits, I should endeavor to
stimulate it to promote the well-being of man. If it happened
that some men were immoderately incited to the pursuit of riches,
and displayed an excessive liking for physical gratifications, I
should not be alarmed; these peculiar symptoms would soon be
absorbed in the general aspect of the people.
The attention of the legislators of democracies is called to
other cares. Give democratic nations education and freedom, and
leave them alone. They will soon learn to draw from this world
all the benefits which it can afford; they will improve each of
the useful arts, and will day by day render life more
comfortable, more convenient, and more easy. Their social
condition naturally urges them in this direction; I do not fear
that they will slacken their course.
But whilst man takes delight in this honest and lawful
pursuit of his wellbeing, it is to be apprehended that he may in
the end lose the use of his sublimest faculties; and that whilst
he is busied in improving all around him, he may at length
degrade himself. Here, and here only, does the peril lie. It
should therefore be the unceasing object of the legislators of
democracies, and of all the virtuous and enlightened men who live
there, to raise the souls of their fellow-citizens, and keep them
lifted up towards heaven. It is necessary that all who feel an
interest in the future destinies of democratic society should
unite, and that all should make joint and continual efforts to
diffuse the love of the infinite, a sense of greatness, and a
love of pleasures not of earth. If amongst the opinions of a
democratic people any of those pernicious theories exist which
tend to inculcate that all perishes with the body, let men by
whom such theories are professed be marked as the natural foes of
such a people.
The materialists are offensive to me in many respects; their
doctrines I hold to be pernicious, and I am disgusted at their
arrogance. If their system could be of any utility to man, it
would seem to be by giving him a modest opinion of himself. But
these reasoners show that it is not so; and when they think they
have said enough to establish that they are brutes, they show
themselves as proud as if they had demonstrated that they are
gods. Materialism is, amongst all nations, a dangerous disease of
the human mind; but it is more especially to be dreaded amongst a
democratic people, because it readily amalgamates with that vice
which is most familiar to the heart under such circumstances.
Democracy encourages a taste for physical gratification: this
taste, if it become excessive, soon disposes men to believe that
all is matter only; and materialism, in turn, hurries them back
with mad impatience to these same delights: such is the fatal
circle within which democratic nations are driven round. It were
well that they should see the danger and hold back.
Most religions are only general, simple, and practical means
of teaching men the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.
That is the greatest benefit which a democratic people derives,
from its belief, and hence belief is more necessary to such a
people than to all others. When therefore any religion has
struck its roots deep into a democracy, beware lest you disturb
them; but rather watch it carefully, as the most precious bequest
of aristocratic ages. Seek not to supersede the old religious
opinions of men by new ones; lest in the passage from one faith
to another, the soul being left for a while stripped of all
belief, the love of physical gratifications should grow upon it
and fill it wholly.
The doctrine of metempsychosis is assuredly not more
rational than that of materialism; nevertheless if it were
absolutely necessary that a democracy should choose one of the
two, I should not hesitate to decide that the community would run
less risk of being brutalized by believing that the soul of man
will pass into the carcass of a hog, than by believing that the
soul of man is nothing at all. The belief in a supersensual and
immortal principle, united for a time to matter, is so
indispensable to man's greatness, that its effects are striking
even when it is not united to the doctrine of future reward and
punishment; and when it holds no more than that after death the
divine principle contained in man is absorbed in the Deity, or
transferred to animate the frame of some other creature. Men
holding so imperfect a belief will still consider the body as the
secondary and inferior portion of their nature, and they will
despise it even whilst they yield to its influence; whereas they
have a natural esteem and secret admiration for the immaterial
part of man, even though they sometimes refuse to submit to its
dominion. That is enough to give a lofty cast to their opinions
and their tastes, and to bid them tend with no interested motive,
and as it were by impulse, to pure feelings and elevated
thoughts.
It is not certain that Socrates and his followers had very
fixed opinions as to what would befall man hereafter; but the
sole point of belief on which they were determined -that the
soul has nothing in common with the body, and survives it -was
enough to give the Platonic philosophy that sublime aspiration by
which it is distinguished. It is clear from the works of Plato,
that many philosophical writers, his predecessors or
contemporaries, professed materialism. These writers have not
reached us, or have reached us in mere fragments. The same thing
has happened in almost all ages; the greater part of the most
famous minds in literature adhere to the doctrines of a
supersensual philosophy. The instinct and the taste of the human
race maintain those doctrines; they save them oftentimes in spite
of men themselves, and raise the names of their defenders above
the tide of time. It must not then be supposed that at any
period or under any political condition, the passion for physical
gratifications, and the opinions which are superinduced by that
passion, can ever content a whole people. The heart of man is of
a larger mould: it can at once comprise a taste for the
possessions of earth and the love of those of heaven: at times it
may seem to cling devotedly to the one, but it will never be long
without thinking of the other.
If it be easy to see that it is more particularly important
in democratic ages that spiritual opinions should prevail, it is
not easy to say by what means those who govern democratic nations
may make them predominate. I am no believer in the prosperity,
any more than in the durability, of official philosophies; and as
to state religions, I have always held, that if they be sometimes
of momentary service to the interests of political power, they
always, sooner or later, become fatal to the Church. Nor do I
think with those who assert, that to raise religion in the eyes
of the people, and to make them do honor to her spiritual
doctrines, it is desirable indirectly to give her ministers a
political influence which the laws deny them. I am so much alive
to the almost inevitable dangers which beset religious belief
whenever the clergy take part in public affairs, and I am so
convinced that Christianity must be maintained at any cost in the
bosom of modern democracies, that I had rather shut up the
priesthood within the sanctuary than allow them to step beyond
it.
What means then remain in the hands of constituted
authorities to bring men back to spiritual opinions, or to hold
them fast to the religion by which those opinions are suggested?
My answer will do me harm in the eyes of politicians. I believe
that the sole effectual means which governments can employ in
order to have the doctrine of the immortality of the soul duly
respected, is ever to act as if they believed in it themselves;
and I think that it is only by scrupulous conformity to religious
morality in great affairs that they can hope to teach the
community at large to know, to love, and to observe it in the
lesser concerns of life.