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Title: Essay on Religion Author: Joseph DĂ©jacque Date: 1861 Language: en Topics: religion, anti-religion, philosophy Source: Retrieved on 04/06/2019 from https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/working-translations/joseph-dejacque-essay-on-religion-1861/ Notes: Translated from French by Shawn P. Wilbur
What is Religion? What must it be?
What is Religion today? It is the immutable synthesis of all errors,
ancient and modern, the affirmation of absolutist arbitrariness, the
negation of attractional anarchism, it is the principle and consecration
of every inertism in humanity and universality, the petrification of the
past, its permanent immobilization.
What must it be? The evolving synthesis of all the contemporary truths;
perpetual observation and unification; the progressive organization of
all the recognized sciences, gravitating from the present to the future,
from the known to the unknown, from the finite to the infinite; the
negation of arbitrary absolutism and the affirmation of attractional
anarchism; the principle and consecration of every movement in humanity
and universality, the pulverization of the past and its rising
regeneration in the future, it’s permanent revolution.
Dualism’s Work of conservation.
To date, in Religion as in Politics (and, by politics I mean here, not
“the art of governing states,” but the art of organizing society; as, by
religion I mean here, not “the worship one renders to divinity,” but the
humanitary link or idea). Thus far there has been no revolution in them;
there have only been evolutions, which have indeed been able to bring
about some modifications in the system, but have changed nothing about
the principle. The principle de of religious economy, like that of
political economy, is still God; it is still authority. So long as we
have not destroyed God, in heaven, and authority, his satellite, on
earth, we will have revolutionized neither religion, nor politics; at
most, we will have revolutionized deism and governmentalism: the
religious dualism, — spirit and matter, — and the political dualism, —
governors and governed. To revolutionize the dualism, is that not to
preserve it?
The Religious Code is the Supreme Penal Code.
“Dis-moi qui tu hantes, et je te dirai qui tu es;” thus speaks the
proverbial wisdom. [1]—Tell me what religion you profess, and I will
also tell you, man of the people, who you are. Is not religion, for the
savage peoples, as for the barbaric or civilized nations, the law of
laws, the morality of moralities? Has not man, seized by a fanatical,
superstitious belief in God, placed divine law well above the human law,
and the morality of the Church above the morality of the State? It may
be that he endures the one if it is imposed on him, but he only has
fervent devotion to the other. In order to govern the world, would there
be need of penal laws, civil moralities and legions of secular
archangels, if the people had a blind faith in the religious dogma? The
clerical army would be sufficient by itself to keep them in submission,
and the voice of the priests more terrifying in their ears than the
sound of the lictors’ armor.
Religion prepares its own suicide by using a double-edged sword.
If Religion, in opposition to its very principle, which is the exclusive
domination of brutal force by intellectual force, a principle that
forbade it, in its own interest, from recognizing in the sword a
governmental power capable of turning against it, as we have seen at the
birth of every religious reform, through the massacre of the first
Christians, for example, and of the first Huguenots—if Religion, I say,
has had recourse to warriors, if it has called for aid and support from
the sword, it was with the aim of reducing to obedience the men or
nations that, in ancient time, still did not have faith, of that, in
modern times, no longer had it. The faithful, its willing slaves, had no
need of that brutal constraint in order to bow and serve. It is, on the
contrary, that senseless use of violence that has contributed to opening
their eyes and unblocking their ears. Soon the zealous servants would
become aggressive rebels. Religion, by wishing to embrace too much,
would only grasp itself: it struck a mortal blow to a principle.
Religion is the barometer of public reason.
If Religion has been able to act in this way, if it has been in all eras
of history the more extreme personification of the exploitation of man
by man, it is because, as a synthesis of false sciences, an
extraordinary expression of authoritarian prejudices, of divine
superstitions that had currency among humanity, it was inevitable, it
was logical that by summing them up it affirmed them in all their
hideousness. Religion is only the barometer of public reason, and it
does nothing but indicate through its formulas the general degree of
elevation or abasement of human knowledge. The religious idea is no more
capable than the political of resisting the magnetic action of minds, of
escaping the movements of the intellectual temperature. As a new
constitution marks for a nation the level of its political progress, the
appearance of a new religion records the level of philosophical
progress.
The reigning Religions are the testament of generations who are no more.
Only at their advent in the world, religions, like constitutions, never
affirm anything but the knowledge acquired on the day before, and always
present themselves as an obstacle to the affirmation of the latent
knowledge that the social atmosphere of tomorrow will embrace: and in
this, we must confess, they are still only the reflection of the nations
and men, who always cling, with a kind of stupid fury, to their dead
ideas, and yield to the attraction of living ideas only after having
been long assailed by them. It seems that all, men and nations,
constitutions and religions, are as ashamed to confess themselves
vanquished, and abandon themselves only with grudgingly to the charms or
the fascinating seduction of irresistible and universal progress.
(To be continued)
____________________________________________________________________________
There are some obvious transcription errors in the only version of this
text online, but the sense of the paragraphs seems clear. And as this
first installment of the essay appeared in the last issue of Le
Libertaire, it was not ultimately continued.
—Working Translation by Shawn. P. Wilbur.
[1] The sense is the proverb is that “you are known by the company you
keep.”