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Everything that the human race has done and thought is
concerned with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of
pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand
spiritual movements and their development. Feeling and longing are the
motivating force behind all human endeavors and human creations, in however
exalted a guise the latter may present themselves to us. Now what are the
feelings and needs that have led men to religious thought and belief in the
widest sense of the words? A little consideration will suffice to show us that
the most varying emotions preside over the birth of religious thought and
experience. With primitive man it is above all fear that evokes religious
notions - fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness, death. Since at this stage of
existence understanding of causal connections is usually poorly developed, the
human mind creates illusory beings more or less analogous to itself on whose
wills and actions these fearful happenings depend. Thus, one tries to secure the
favor of these beings by carrying out actions and offering sacrifices which,
according to the tradition handed down from generation to generation, propitiate
them or make them well disposed towards a mortal. In this sense, I am speaking
of a religion of fear. This, though not created, is in an important degree
stabilized by the formation of a special priestly caste which sets itself up as
a mediator between the people and the beings they fear, and erects a hegemony on
this basis. In many cases, a leader or ruler or a privileged class whose
position rests on other factors combines priestly functions with its secular
authority in order to make the latter more secure; or the political rulers and
the priestly caste make common cause in their own interests.
The social impulses are another source of the
crystallization of religion. Fathers and mothers and the leaders of larger human
communities are mortal and fallible. The desire for guidance, love, and support
prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God. This is the God of
Providence, Who protects, disposes, rewards, and punishes; the God who,
according to the limits of the believer’s outlook, loves and cherishes the life
of the tribe or of the human race, or even of life itself; the comforter in
sorrow and unsatisfied longing; he who preserves the souls of the dead. This is
the social or moral conception of God.
The Jewish scriptures admirably illustrate the development
from the religion of fear to moral religion -- a development continued in the
New Testament. The religions of all civilized peoples, especially the peoples of
the Orient, are primarily moral religions. The development from a religion of
fear to moral religion is a great step in peoples’ lives. And yet, that
primitive religions are based entirely on fear and the religions of civilized
peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on our guard.
The truth is that all religions are a varying blend of both types, with this
differentiation: on the higher levels of social life, the religion of morality
predominates.
Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character
of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional
endowments and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable
extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience
which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I
shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this
feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no
anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.
The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims
at the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and
in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison
and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. The
beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear at an early stage of
development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets.
Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of
Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this.
The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished
by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in
man’s image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on
it. Hence, it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who
were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases
regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked
at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi and Spinoza are closely
akin to one another.
How can the cosmic religious feeling be communicated from
one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no
theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to
awaken this feeling and to keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.
We thus arrive at a conception of the relation of science
to religion very different from the usual one. When one views the matter
historically, one is inclined to look upon science and religion as
irreconcilable antagonists, and for a very obvious reason. The man who is
thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot
for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of
events -- provided, of course, that he takes the hypothesis of causality really
seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social
or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for
the simple reason that a man’s actions are determined by necessity, external and
internal so that in God’s eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an
inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes. Science has
therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A
man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and
social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a
poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward
after death.
It is therefore easy to see why churches have always fought
science and persecuted its devotees. On the other hand, I maintain that the
cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific
research. Only those who realize the immense efforts and, above all, the
devotion without which pioneer work in theoretical science cannot be achieved
are able to grasp the strength of the emotion out of which alone such work,
remote as it is from the immediate realities of life, can issue. What a deep
conviction of the rationality of the universe and what a yearning to understand.
Were it but a feeble reflection of the mind revealed in this world, Kepler and
Newton must have had to enable themselves to spend years of solitary labor in
disentangling the principles of celestial mechanics! Those whose acquaintance
with scientific research is derived chiefly from its practical results easily
develop a completely false notion of the mentality of the men who, surrounded by
a skeptical world, have shown the way to kindred spirits scattered wide through
the world and through the centuries. Only one who has devoted his life to
similar ends can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and
given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless
failures. It is the cosmic religious feeling that gives a man such strength. A
contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the
serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.
Courtesy:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
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