# The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 01/Book 1/Chapter 3

CHAPTER III.
POWER OF THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT.
Now this inborn religious Faculty is the basis and cause of all Religion. Without this internal religious element, either Man could not have any religious notions, nor become religious at all, or else religion would be something foreign to his nature, which he might yet be taught mechanically from without, as bears are taught to dance, and parrots to talk; but which, like this acquired and unnatural accomplishment of the beast and the bird, would divert him from his true nature and perfection rendering him a monster, but less of a man than he would be without the superfetation of this Religion upon him. Without a moral faculty, we could have no duties in respect to men; without a religious faculty, no duties in respect of God. The foundation of each is in Man, not out of him. If man have not a religious element in his nature, miraculous or other “revelations” can no more render him religious than fragments of sermons and leaves of the Bible can make a Lamb religious when mixed and eaten with its daily food. The Law, the Duty, and the Destiny of Man as of all God's creatures, are writ in himself, and by the Almighty's hand. ​The religious element existing within us, and this alone, renders Religion the duty, the privilege, and the welfare of mankind. Thus Religion is not a superinduction upon the race, as some would make it appear; not an afterthought of God interpolated in human affairs, when the work was otherwise complete; but it is an original necessity of our nature; the religious element is deep and essentially laid in the very constitution of Man.
I. Now this religious element is universal. This may be proved in several ways. Whatever exists in the fundamental nature of one man, exists likewise in all men, though in different degrees and variously modified by different circumstances. Human nature is the same in the men of all races, ages, and countries. Man remains always identical, only the differing circumstances of climate, condition, culture, race, nation, and individual, modify the manifestations of what is at bottom the same. Races, ages, nations, and individuals, differ only in the various degrees they possess of particular faculties, and in the development or the neglect of these faculties. When, therefore, it is shown that the religious sentiment exists as a natural principle in any one man, its existence in all other men, that are, were, or shall be, follows unavoidably from the unity of human nature.
Again, the universality of the religious element is confirmed by historical arguments, which also have some force. We discover religious phenomena in all lands, wherever Man has advanced above the primitive condition of mere animal wildness. Of course there must have been a period in his development when the religious faculties had not come to conscious activity: but after that state of spiritual infancy is passed by, religious emotions appear in the rudest and most civilized state; among the cannibals of New Zealand and the refined voluptuaries of old Babylon; in the Esquimaux fisherman and the Parisian philosopher. The subsequent history of men shows no period in which ​these phenomena do not appear; Man worships, feels dependence and accountability, religious fear or hope, and gives signs of these spiritual emotions all the world over. No nation with fire and garments has been found so savage that they have not attained this; none so refined as to outgrow it. The widest observation, therefore, as well as a philosophical deduction from the nature of Man, warrants the conclusion that this sentiment is universal.
But at first glance there are some apparent exceptions to this rule. A few persons from time to time arise and claim the name of Atheist. But even these admit they feel this religious tendency; they acknowledge a sense of dependence, which they refer, not to the sound action of a natural element in their constitution, but to a disease thereof, to the influence of culture, or the instruction of their nurses, and count it an obstinate disease of their mind, or else a prejudice early imbibed and not easily removed. Even if some one could be found who denied that he ever felt any religious emotion whatever, however feebly—this would prove nothing against the universality of its existence, and no more against the general rule of its manifestation, than the rare fact of a child born with a single arm proves against the general rule, that Man by nature has two arms.
Again, travellers tell us some nations with considerable civilization have no God, no priests, no worship, and therefore give no sign of the existence of the religious element in them. Admitting they state a fact, we are not to conclude the religious element is wanting in the savages; only that they, like infants, have not attained the proper stage, when we could discover signs of its action. But ​these travellers are often mistaken. Their observations have, in such cases, been superficial, made with but a slight knowledge of the manners and customs of the nation they treat. And, besides, their prejudice blinded their eyes. They looked for a regular worship, doctrines of religion, priests, temples, images, forms, and ceremonies. But there is one stage of religious consciousness in which none of these signs appear; and yet the religious element is at its work. The travellers, not finding the usual signs of worship, denied the existence of worship itself, and even of any religious consciousness in the nation. But if they had found a people ignorant of cookery and without the implements of that art, it would be quite as wise to conclude from this negative testimony that the nation never ate nor drank. On such evidence, the early Christians were convicted of Atheism by the Pagans, and subsequently the Pagans by the Christians.
​There is still one other case of apparent exception to the rule. Some persons have been found, who in early childhood were separated from human society and grew up towards the years of maturity in an isolated state, having no contact with their fellow-mortals. These give no signs of any religious element in their nature. But other universal faculties of the race, the tendency to laugh, and to speak articulate words, give quite as little sign of their existence. Yet when these unfortunate persons are exposed to the ordinary influence of life, the religious, like other faculties, does its work. Hence we may conclude it existed, though dormant until the proper conditions of its development were supplied.
These three apparent exceptions serve only to confirm the rule that the religious sentiment, like the power of attention, thought, and love, is universal in the race. Yet it is plain that there was a period in which the primitive wild man, without language or self-consciousness, gave no sign of any religious faculty at all, still the original element lay in this baby-man.
However, like other faculties, this is possessed in different degrees by different races, nations, and individuals, and at particular epochs of the world's or the individual's history acquires a predominance it has not at other times. It seems God never creates two races, nations, or men, with precisely the same endowments. There is a difference, more or less striking, between the intellectual, æsthetic, and moral development of two races, or nations, or even between two men of the same race and nation. This difference seems to be the effect, not merely of the ​different circumstances whereto they are exposed, but also of the different endowments with which they set out. If we watch in history the gradual development and evolulution of the human race, we see that one nation takes the lead in the march of mind, pursues science, literature, and the arts; another in war, and the practical business of political thrift, while a third nation, prominent neither for science nor political skill, takes the lead in Religion, and in the comparative strength of its religious consciousness surpasses both.
Three forms of monotheistic Religion have, at various times, come up in the world's history. Two of them at this moment perhaps outnumber the votaries of all other religions, and divide between them the more advanced civilization of mankind. These three are the Mosaic, the Christian, and the Mahometan; all recognizing the unity of God, the religious nature of Man, and the relation between God and Man. All of these, surprising as it is, came from one family of men, the Shemitic, who spoke, in substance, the same language, lived in the same country, and had the same customs and political institutions. Even that wide-spread and more monstrous form of Religion, which our fathers had in the wilds of Europe, betrays its likeness to this Oriental stock; and that form, still earlier, which dotted Greece all over with its temples, filling the isles of the Mediterranean with its solemn and mysterious chant, came apparently from the same source. The beautiful spirit of the Greek, modified, enlarged, and embellished what Oriental piety at first called down from the Empyrean. The nations now at the head of modern civilization have not developed independently their power of creative religious genius, so to say; for each form of worship that has prevailed with them was originally derived from some other race. These nations are more scientific than religious; reflective rather than spontaneous; utilitarian more than reverential; and, so far as history relates, have never yet created a permanent form of Religion which has extended to other families of men. Their faith, like their ​choicer fruits, is an importation from abroad, not an indigenous plant, though now happily naturalized, and rendered productive in their soil. Of all nations hitherto known, these are the most disposed to reflection, literature, science, and the practical arts; while the Shemitish tribes in their early age were above all others religious, and have had an influence in religious history entirely disproportionate to their numbers, their art, their science, or their laws. Out of the heart of this ancient family of nations flowed forth that triple stream of pious life, which even now gives energy to the pulsations of the world. Egypt and Greece have stirred the intellect of mankind; and spoken to our love of the Grand, the Beautiful, the True, to faculties that lie deep in us. But this Oriental people have touched the Soul of men, and awakened reverence for the Good, the Holy, the Altogether Beautiful, which lies in the profoundest deep of all. The religious element appears least conspicuous, it may be, in some nations of Australia—perhaps the most barbarous of men. With savages in general it is in its infancy, like all the nobler attributes of Man, but as they develope their nature, this faculty becomes more and more apparent.
II. Again; this element is indestructible in human nature. It is not in the power of caprice within, nor external circumstances, war or peace, freedom or slavery, ignorance or refinement, wholly to abolish or destroy it. Its growth may be retarded, or quickened; its power misdirected, or suffered to flow in its proper channel. But no violence from within, no violence from without, can ever destroy this element. It were as easy to extirpate hunger and thirst from the sound living body, as this element from the spirit. It may sleep. It never dies. Kept down by external force to-day, it flames up to heaven in streams of light to-morrow. When perverted from its natural course, it writes, in devastation, its chronicles of wrongs,—a horrid page of human history, which proves its awful power, as the strength of the human muscle is proved by the distortions of the maniac. Sensual men, who hate the restraints of Religion, who know nothing of its en​couragements, strive to pluck up by the roots this plant which God has set in the midst of the garden. But there it stands—the tree of Knowledge, the tree of Life. Even such as boast the name of Infidel and Atheist find, unconsciously, repose in its wide shadow, and refreshment in its fruit. It blesses obedient men. He who violates the divine law, and thus would wring this feeling from his heart, feels it, like a heated iron, in the marrow of his bones.
III. Still further; this religious element is the strongest and deepest in human nature. It depends on nothing outside, conventional or artificial. It is identical in all men; not a similar thing, but the same. Superficially, man differs from man, in the less and more; but in the nature of the primitive religious element all agree, as in whatever is deepest. Out of the profoundest abyss in man proceed his worship, his prayer, his hymn of praise. The history of the world shows us what a space Religion fills. She is the mother of philosophy and the arts; has presided over the greatest wars. She holds now all nations with her unseen hand; restrains their passions, more powerful than all the cunning statutes of the lawgiver; awakens their virtue; allays their sorrows with a mild comfort, all her own; brightens their hopes with the purple ray of faith, shed through the sombre curtains of necessity.
Religious emotion often controls society, inspires the lawgiver and the artist—is the deep-moving principle; it has called forth the greatest heroism of past ages; the proudest deeds of daring and endurance have been done in its name. Without Religion, all the sages of a kingdom cannot build a city; but with it, how a rude fanatic sways the mass of men. The greatest works of human art have risen only at Religion's call. The marble is pliant at her magic touch, and seems to breathe a pious life. The chiselled stone is instinct with a living soul, and stands there, silent, yet full of hymns and prayers; an embodied aspiration, a thought with wings that mock at space and time. The Temples of the East, the Cathedrals of the West; Altar and Column and Statue and Image,—these are the tribute Art pays to her. Whence did Michael Angelo, Phidias, Praxiteles, and all the mighty sons of Art, ​who chronicled their awful thoughts in stone, shaping brute matter to a divine form, building up the Pyramid and Parthenon, or forcing the hard elements to swell into the arch, aspire into the dome or the fantastic tower,—whence did they draw their inspiration? All their greatest wonders are wrought in Religion's name. In the very dawn of time, Genius looks through the clouds and lifts up his voice in hymns and songs and stories of the Gods; and the Angel of Music carves out her thanksgiving, her penitence, her prayers for Man, on the unseen air, as a votive gift for her. Her sweetest note, her most majestic chant, she breathes only at Religion's call. Thus it has always been. A thousand men will readily become celibate monks for Religion. Would they for Gold, or Ease, or Fame?
The greatest sacrifices ever made are offered in the name of Religion. For this a man will forego ease, peace, friends, society, wife, and child, all that mortal flesh holds dearest; no danger is too dangerous, no suffering too stern to bear, if Religion say the word. Simeon the Stylite will stay years long on his pillar's top; the devotee of Budha tear off his palpitating flesh to serve his God. The Pagan idolater, bowing down to a false image of stone, renounces his possessions, submits to barbarous and cruel rites, shameful mutilation of his limbs; gives the firstborn of his body for the sin of his soul; casts his own person to destruction, because he dreams Baal, or Saturn, Jehovah, or Moloch, demands the sacrifice. The Christian idolater, doing equal homage to a lying thought, gives up Common Sense, Reason, Conscience, Love of his brother, at the same fancied mandate; is ready to credit most obvious absurdities; accept contradictions; do what conflicts with the moral sense; believe dogmas that make life dark, eternity dreadful, Man a worm, and God a tyrant; dogmas that make him count as cursed half his brother men, because told such is his duty, in the name of Religion. In this name Thomas More, the ablest head of his times, will believe a bit of bread becomes the Almighty God, when a lewd priest but mumbles his juggling Latin and lifts up his hands. In our day, heads as able as Thomas More's believe doctrines quite as absurd, because taught as Religion and God's command. In its behalf, the ​foolishest teaching becomes acceptable; the foulest doctrines, the grossest conduct, crimes that, like the fabled banquet of Thyestes, might make the sun sicken at the sight and turn back affrighted in his course,—these things are counted as beautiful, superior to Reason, acceptable to God. The wicked man may bless his brother in crime; the unrighteous blast the holy with his curse, and devotees shall shout "Amen,” to both the blessing and the ban.
On what other authority have rites so bloody been accepted; or doctrines so false to reason, so libellous of God? For what else has Man achieved such works, and made such sacrifice? In what name but this, will the man of vast and far outstretching mind, the counsellor, the chief, the sage, the native king of men, forego the vastness of his thought, put out his spirit's eyes, and bow him to a drivelling wretch who knows nothing but treacherous mummery and juggling tricks? In Religion this has been done from the first false prophet to the last false priest, and the pride of the Understanding is abashed; the supremacy of Reason degraded; the majesty of Conscience trampled on; the beautifulness of Faith and Love trodden down into the mire of the streets. The hand, the foot, the eye, the ear, the tongue, the most sacred members of the body; judgment, imagination, the overmastering faculties of mind; justice, mercy, and love, the fairest affections of the soul,—all these have been reckoned a poor and paltry sacrifice, and lopped off at the shrine of God as things unholy. This has been done, not only by Pagan polytheists, and savage idolaters, but by Christian devotees, accomplished scholars, the enlightened men of enlightened times.
These melancholy results, which are but aberrations of the religious element, the disease of the baby, not the soundness of mankind, have often been confounded with Religion itself, regarded as the legitimate fruit of the religious faculty. Hence men have said, Such results prove that Religion itself is a popular fury; the foolishness of the people; the madness of mankind. They prove a very different thing. They show the depth, the strength, the awful power of that element which thus can overmaster all the rest of Man—Passion and Conscience, Reason and Love. Tell a man his interest requires a sacrifice, he hesitates; convince him his Religion demands it, and crowds ​rush at once, and joyful, to a martyr's fiery death. It is the best things that are capable of the worst abuse; the very abuse may test the value.
* ↑ See the treatise of Cicero on the foundation of duties in the essay De Legibus, Lib. I. It may surprise some men that a Pagan should come at the truth which lies at the bottom of all moral obligation, while so many Christian moralists have shot wide of the mark. See the discussion of the same subject, and a very different conclusion, in Paley's Moral Philosophy, and Dymond's Essays. See the heathen witnesses collected in Taylor, Elements of the Civil Law; Lond. 1786, p. 100, et seq.
* ↑ Empirical observation alone would not teach the universality of this element, unless it were detected in each man, for a generalization can never go beyond the facts it embraces; but observation, so far as it goes, confirms the abstract conclusion which we reach independent of observation.
* ↑ See Hume's Natural History of Religion, Introduction. Essays; Lond. 1822, Vol. II, p. 379.
* ↑ One of the most remarkable Atheists of the present day is M. Comte, author of the valuable and sometimes profound work Cours de Philosophie positive; Paris, 1830—42, 6 vols. 8vo. He glories in the name, but in many places gives evidence of the religious element existing in him in no small power. See Cudworth's Intellectual System, &c., Ch. IV. § 1—5. Some one says “No man is a consistent Atheist—if such be possible—who admits the existence of any general law.”
* ↑ It seems surprising that so acute a philosopher as Locke (Essays, B. I. ch. 4, § 8) should prove a negative by hearsay, and assert on such evidence as Rhoe, Jo. de Léry, Martinière, Torry, Ovington, &c., that there were “whole nations amongst whom there was to be found no notion of a God, no religion.” See the able remarks of his friend Shaftesbury—who is most unrighteously reckoned a speculative enemy to religion—against this opinion, in his Characteristics, Lond. 1758, Vol. IV. p. 81, et seq.; 8th Letter to a Student, &c. Steller declares the Kamschatkans have no idea of a Supreme Being, yet gives an account of their mythology! See Pritchard, Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, Lond. 1841, et seq., Vol. IV. p. 499. So intelligent a writer as Mr Norton says that “in the popular religion of the Greeks and Romans there was no recognition of God.” Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels, Boston, 1837, et seq., Vol. III. p. 13. This example shows the caution with which we are to read less exact writers, who deny that certain savages have any religion. See examples of this sort collected, for a different purpose, in Monboddo, Origin and Progress of Language, 2nd ed., Edinburgh, 1774, Vol. I. book ii. chap. 3, where see much more evidence to show that races of men exist with tails. Some writers seem to think Christianity is never safe until they have shown, as they fancy, that man cannot, by the natural exercise of his faculties, attain a knowledge of even the simplest and most obvious religious truths. Some foolish books have been based on this idea, which is yet the staple of many sermons. See on this head the valuable remarks of M. Comte ubi supra, Vol. V. p. 32, et seq. It is not long since the whole nation of the Chinese were accused of Atheism, and that by writers so respectable as Le Père de Sainte Marie, and Le Père Longobardi. See, who will, Leibnitz's refutation of the charge, Opp. ed. Dutens, Vol. IV. part i. p. 170, et seq.
* ↑ Winslow, with others, at first declared the American Indians had no religion or knowledge of God, but he afterwards corrected his mistake. See Francis's Life of Eliot, p. 32, et seq. See also Catlin's Letters, &c., on the North American Indians, New York, 1841, Vol. I. p. 156. Even Meiners, Kritische Geschichte der Religionen, Vol. I. p. 11, 12, admits there is no nation without religious observances. See in Pritchard, l. c. Vol. I. p. 188, the statements relative to the Esquimaux, and his correction of the erroneous and ill-natured accounts of others. If any nation is destitute of religious opinions and observances, it must be the Esquimaux, and the Bushmans of South Africa, who seem to be the lowest of the human race. But it is clear, from the statement of travellers and missionaries, that both have religious sentiments and opinions. The Heathen philosophers admitted it as a fact universally acknowledged that there was a God.
* ↑ See a collection of the most remarkable of these cases in Jahn's Appendix Hermeneuticæ, &c., Viennæ, 1815, Vol. II. p. 208, et seq., and the authors there cited. Monboddo, Ancient Metaphysics, &c., Edinburgh, 1779, et seq., Vol. III. book ii. chap. 1, and Appendix, chap. 3. Col. Sleeman's account of “Wolves nurturing Children in their Dens,” Plymouth, England, 1852. Windsor's Papuans, Lond. 1853. Capt. Gibson's communication to the American Geog. Soc., Dec. 1853.
* ↑ This Orientalism of the religious opinions among the Europeans has led to some very absurd conceits; see a notorious instance in Davie's Mythology of the Druids. See also La Religion des Gaulois, &c., par le R. P. Dom [Jacques Martin]; Paris, 1727, 2 vols. 4to.
* ↑ M. Comte takes a very different view of the matter, and has both fact and philosophy against him.
* ↑ On this theme, see the forcible and eloquent remarks of Professor Whewell, in his Sermons on the Foundation of Morals, 2nd edition, p. 28, et seq., a work well worthy, in its spirit and general tone, of his illustrious predecessors, “the Latitude men about Cambridge.” See also Mr Parker's Sermon Of the Relation between the Ecclesiastical Institutions, and the Religious Consciousness of the American People, 1855; and that Of the Function of a Teacher of Religion, 1855; Sermons of Theism, Atheism, and the Popular Theology, 1855, Sermons III., IV., V., VI.