Atheism Among the People Part 1

Atheism Among the People.

by Alphonse de Lamartine.

I.

I have often asked myself, "Why am I a Republican?--Why am I the partizan of equitable Democracy, organized and established as a good and strong Government?--Why have I a real love of the People--a love always serious, and sometimes even tender?--What has the People done for me? I was not born in the ranks of the People. I was born between the high Aristocracy and what was then called _the inferior cla.s.ses_, in the days when there were cla.s.ses, where are now equal citizens in various callings. I never starved in the People's famine; I never groaned, personally, in the People's miseries; I never sweat with its sweat; I was never benumbed with its cold. Why then, I repeat it, do I hunger in its hunger, thirst with its thirst, warm under its sun, freeze under its cold, grieve under its sorrows? Why should I not care for it as little as for that which pa.s.ses at the antipodes?--turn away my eyes, close my ears, think of other things, and wrap myself up in that soft, thick garment of indifference and egotism, in which I can shelter myself, and indulge my separate personal tastes, without asking whether, below me,--in street, garret, or cottage, there is a rich People, or a beggar People; a religious People, or an atheistic People; a People of idlers, or of workers; a People of Helots, or of citizens?"

And whenever I have thus questioned myself, I have thus answered myself:--"I love the people because I believe in G.o.d. For, if I did not believe in G.o.d, what would the people be to me? I should enjoy at ease that lucky throw of the dice, which chance had turned up for me, the day of my birth; and, with a secret, savage joy, I should say, 'So much the worse for the losers!--the world is a lottery. Woe to the conquered!'" I cannot, indeed, say this without shame and cruelty,--for, I repeat it, _I believe in G.o.d_.

II.

"And what is there in common," you will say to me, "between your belief in G.o.d and your love for the People?" I answer: My belief in G.o.d is not that vague, confused, indefinite, shadowy sentiment which compels one to suppose a principle because he sees consequences,--a cause where he contemplates effects, a source where he sees the rush of the inexhaustible river of life, of forms, of substances, absorbed for ever in the ocean, and renewed unceasingly from creation. The belief in G.o.d, which is thus perceived and conceived, is, so to speak, only a mechanical sensation of the interior eye,--an instinct of intelligence, in some sort forced and brutal,--an evidence, not reasonable, not religious, not perfect, not meritorious; but like the material evidence of light, which enters our eyes when we open them to the day; like the evidence of sound which we hear when we listen to any noise; like the evidence of touch when we plunge our limbs in the waves of the sea, and shiver at the contact. This elementary, gross, instinctive, involuntary belief in G.o.d, is not the living, intelligent, active, and legislative faith of humanity. It is almost animal. I am persuaded that if the brutes even,--if the dog, the horse, the ox, the elephant, the bird, could speak, they would confess, that, at the bottom of their nature, their instincts, their sensations, their obtuse intelligence, a.s.sisted by organs less perfect than ours, there is a clouded, secret sentiment of this existence of a superior and primordial Being, from whom all emanates, and to whom all returns,--a shadow of the divinity upon their being, a distant approach to the conception of that idea, which fills the worlds, and for which alone the worlds have been made,--the idea of G.o.d!

This may be a bold, but it is not an impious supposition. For G.o.d, having made all things for himself alone, must have placed, upon all that he made, an impress of himself; more or less clear, more or less luminous, more or less profound, a presentiment or a remembrance of a Creator. But this faith, when it stops here, is not worthy of the name. It is a species of _Pantheism_, that is to say, a confused "visibility," a physical working together into indissoluble union of something impersonal, something blind, something fatal, and something divine, which, in the elements composing the universe, we may call G.o.d. But this "visibility" can give to man no moral decision,--can give to G.o.d no worship. The Pantheism of which I am accused as a philosopher and poet, that Pantheism which I have always scorned as a contradiction and as a blasphemy, resembles entirely the reasoning of the man who should say, "I see an innumerable mult.i.tude of rays, therefore there is no sun."

III.

Faith, or reasonable and effective belief in G.o.d, proceeds, undoubtedly, from this first instinct; but in proportion as intelligence develops itself, and human thought expands, it goes from knowledge to knowledge, from conclusion to conclusion, from light to light, from sentiment to sentiment, infinitely farther and higher, in the idea of G.o.d. It does not see him with the eyes of the body, because the Infinite is not visible by a narrow window of flesh, pierced in the frontal bone of an insect called Man; but it sees Him, with a thousand times more certainty, by the spirit, that immaterial eye of the soul, which nothing blinds; and after having seen him with evidence, it reasons upon the consequences of his existence, upon the divine aims of His creation, upon the terrestrial as well as eternal destinies of His creatures, upon the nature of the homage and adoration that G.o.d expects, upon his moral laws, upon the public and private duties which he imposes on his creatures by their consciences, upon the liberty He leaves them; so that with the sufferings of conflict He may give to them the merits and the prize of virtue. Thus in man does the instinct of G.o.d become Faith. Thus man can speak the greatest word that has ever been spoken upon the earth or in the stars, the word which fills the worlds by itself alone, the word which commenced with them, and which can only end with them;--

"I believe in G.o.d!"

IV.

It is in this sense, my friends, that I say to you, "I believe in G.o.d."

But, once having said this word with the universe of beings and of worlds, and blessed this invisible G.o.d for having rendered himself visible, sensible, evident, palpable, adorable in the mirror of weak human intelligence, made gradually more and more pure, I reason with myself on the best worship to be rendered Him in thought and action.

Let me show how, by this reasoning, I am forcibly drawn to the love of the People.

I say to myself, then, "Who is this G.o.d? Is he a vain _notion_, which has no effect on the thoughts and acts of man, his creature; who inspires nothing in him; who gives him no commands; who imposes nothing upon him; who does not reward, and who does not punish?--No! G.o.d is not a mere _notion_, an idea, an evidence;--G.o.d is a _law_,--the living law, the supreme law, the universal law, the eternal law. Because G.o.d is a law on high, he is a duty on the earth; and when man says, 'I believe in G.o.d,' he says, at the same time, 'I believe in my duty towards G.o.d,--I believe in my duty towards man.' G.o.d is a government!"

And what are these duties? They are of three sorts:--

_Duty towards G.o.d_,--that is to say, the duty of developing, as much as possible, my intelligence and my reason, to arrive at the purest idea and the highest worship of the Supreme Being, by whom and for whom all is, all exists:--_Religion_.

_Private Duties_,--that is to say, the exact and tender discharge of all sentiments to which form has been given, either in written or unwritten laws, which bind me to those, to whom, in the order of nature, I hold most closely,--the nearest to myself in the human group--father, mother, brothers, sisters, wife, children, friends, neighbors:--_the Family_.

_Collective Duties_,--that is to say, devotions, even to the sacrifice of myself, even to death, to the progress, the well-being, the preservation, the amelioration of this great human family, of which my family, and my country, are only parts; and of which I myself am only a miserable and vanishing fraction, a leaf of a summer, which vegetates and withers on a branch of the immense trunk of the human race:--_Society_.

Let us speak to-day only of these last duties,--because, now we are occupied with politics alone.

V.

G.o.d, when one believes in Him as you and I do, imposes then on man a duty towards the society of which he makes a part. You admit it, do you not?

Then follow, and a.n.a.lyze with me this society. Of whom, and how, is it composed?

It is composed, at the same time, of strong and weak, conquerors and conquered, victors and vanquished, oppressors and oppressed, masters and slaves, n.o.bles and serfs, of citizens and bondmen or subjects disinherited and enslaved, considered as living furniture, as tools and laughing-stocks to their fellow-men, as were the Blacks in our colonies before the Republic.

Thanks to the increase of general reason, to the light of philosophy, to the inspiration of Christianity, to the progress of the idea of justice, of charity, and of fraternity, in laws, manners, and religion, society in America, in Europe, and in France, especially since the Revolution, has broken down all these barriers, all these denominations of caste, all these injurious distinctions among men.

Society is composed only of various conditions, professions, functions, and ways of life, among those who form what we call a Nation; of proprietors of the soil, and proprietors of houses; of investments, of handicrafts, of merchants, of manufacturers, of farmers; of day-laborers becoming farmers, manufacturers, merchants, or possessors of houses or capital, in their turn; of the rich, of those in easy circ.u.mstances, of the poor, of workmen with their hands, workmen with their minds; of day-laborers, of those in need, of a small number of men enjoying considerable acquired or inherited wealth, of others of a smaller fortune painfully increased and improved, of others with property only sufficient for their needs; there are some, finally, without any personal possession but their hands, and gleaning for themselves and for their families, in the workshop, or the field, and at the threshold of the homes of others on the earth, the asylum, the wages, the bread, the instruction, the tools, the daily pay, all those means of existence which they have neither inherited, saved, nor acquired. These last are what have been improperly called _the People_. This name is extended now; it embraces really all the People; but still it is used as the name of the indigent and suffering part of the People.

It is more especially of this cla.s.s that I intend to speak, in saying to you, "To love the People, it is necessary to believe in G.o.d."

VI.

The love of the People, the conscience of the citizen, the sentiment which induces the individual to lose himself in the ma.s.s, to submit himself to the community, to sacrifice himself to its needs,--his interest, his individuality, his egotism, his ambition, his pride, his fortune, his blood, his life, his reputation even, sometimes, to the safety of his country, to the happiness of the People, to the good of humanity, of which he is a member in the sight of G.o.d,--in one word, all these virtues, necessary under every form of government,--useful under a monarchy, indispensable under a republic,--never have been derived, and never can be derived, from any thing but that single sentence, p.r.o.nounced with religious faith, at the commencement, in the middle, at the end of all our patriotic acts:--"I believe in G.o.d!"

The People who do not believe strongly, efficaciously in this first principle, in this supreme original, in this last end of all existence, cannot have a faith superior to their individual selfishness.

The People who cannot have a principle superior to their individual selfishness, in their acts as citizens, cannot have national virtue.

The People who cannot have national virtue cannot be free; for they can have neither the courage which enables them to defend their own liberty, nor the conscience which forces them to respect the liberty of others, and to obey the laws, not as an outward force, but as a second conscience.

The People who can neither defend their liberty, nor restrain it, may be, by turns, slaves or tyrants, but they can never be republicans.

Therefore, Atheism in the People is the most invincible obstacle to the establishment and consolidation of that sublime form of government, the idol of all ages, the tendency of all perfect civilization, the dream of every sage, the model of all great souls,--the government of the entire People by the reason and conscience of each citizen,--otherwise called the REPUBLIC.

VII.

Must I demonstrate to you so simple a truth? Can you not comprehend, without explanation of mine, that a nation, where each citizen thinks only of his own private well-being here below, and sacrifices constantly the general good to his personal and narrow interest;--where the powerful man wishes to preserve all the power for himself alone, without making an equitable and proportional division to the weak;--where the weak wishes to conquer at any price, that he may tyrannize in his turn;--where the rich wishes to acquire and concentrate the greatest possible amount of wealth, to enjoy it alone, and even without circulating it in work, in wages, in a.s.sistance, in benevolence, in good deeds to his brothers;--where the poor wishes to dispossess violently and unjustly those who possess more than himself, instead of recognizing that diversity of chances, of conditions, of professions, of fortunes, of which human life is composed,--instead of acquiring prosperity for his family, in his turn and degree, by effort, by order, by labor, by economy, by the a.s.sistance of borrowed capital, by the law of inheritance, by the free transfer of real estate, by free entrance into different callings and trades, by free compet.i.tion in the money market;--where each cla.s.s of citizens declares itself an enemy to every other, and heaps upon each other all manner of evil, instead of doing all the good in its power, and uniting in the holy harmony of social unity;--where each individual draws around him, for himself alone, the common mantle, willing to tear it in pieces for himself, and thus leave the whole world naked,--do you not understand, I say, that such a People, having no G.o.d but its selfishness, no judge but interest, no conscience but cupidity, will fall, in a short time, into complete destruction, and, being incapable of a Republican government, because it casts aside the government of G.o.d himself, will rush headlong into the government of the brute: the government of the strongest, the despotism of the sword, the divinity of the cannon,--that last resort of anarchy, which is at once the remedy and the death of nations without G.o.d!