Freud - Complete Works (719 page)

   The question of why in the long
run the animal god did not suffice, and was replaced by a human
one, was hardly touched on in
Totem and Taboo
, and other
problems concerning the formation of religion were not mentioned in
the book at all. Do you regard a limitation of that kind as the
same thing as a denial? My work is a good example of the strict
isolation of the particular contribution which psycho-analytic
discussion can make to the solution of the problem of religion. If
I am now trying to add the other, less deeply concealed part, you
should not accuse me of contradicting myself, just as before you
accused me of being one-sided. It is, of course, my duty to point
out the connecting links between what I said earlier and what I put
forward now, between the deeper and the manifest motives, between
the father-complex and man’s helplessness and need for
protection.

   These connections are not hard to
find. They consist in the relation of the child’s
helplessness to the helplessness of the adult which continues it.
So that, as was to be expected, the motives for the formation of
religion which psycho-analysis revealed now turn out to be the same
as the infantile contribution to the
manifest
motives. Let
us transport ourselves into the mental life of a child. You
remember the choice of object according to the anaclitic type,
which psycho-analysis talks of? The libido there follows the paths
of narcissistic needs and attaches itself to the objects which
ensure the satisfaction of those needs. In this way the mother, who
satisfies the child’s hunger, becomes its first love-object
and certainly also its first protection against all the undefined
dangers which threaten it in the external world - its first
protection against anxiety, we may say.

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   In this function the mother is
soon replaced by the stronger father, who retains that position for
the rest of childhood. But the child’s attitude to its father
is coloured by a peculiar ambivalence. The father himself
constitutes a danger for the child, perhaps because of its earlier
relation to its mother. Thus it fears him no less than it longs for
him and admires him. The indications of this ambivalence in the
attitude to the father are deeply imprinted in every religion, as
was shown in
Totem and Taboo
. When the growing individual
finds that he is destined to remain a child for ever, that he can
never do without protection against strange superior powers, he
lends those powers the features belonging to the figure of his
father; he creates for himself the gods whom he dreads, whom he
seeks to propitiate, and whom he nevertheless entrusts with his own
protection. Thus his longing for a father is a motive identical
with his need for protection against the consequences of his human
weakness. The defence against childish helplessness is what lends
its characteristic features to the adult’s reaction to the
helplessness which
he
has to acknowledge - a reaction which
is precisely the formation of religion. But it is not my intention
to enquire any further into the development of the idea of God;
what we are concerned with here is the finished body of religious
ideas as it is transmitted by civilization to the individual.

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V

Let us now take up the thread of our enquiry.
What, then, is the psychological significance of religious ideas
and under what heading are we to classify them? The question is not
at all easy to answer immediately. After rejecting a number of
formulations, we will take our stand on the following one.
Religious ideas are teachings and assertions about facts and
conditions of external (or internal) reality which tell one
something one has not discovered for oneself and which lay claim to
one’s belief. Since they give us information about what is
most important and interesting to us in life, they are particularly
highly prized. Anyone who knows nothing of them is very ignorant;
and anyone who has added them to his knowledge may consider himself
much the richer.

   There are, of course, many such
teachings about the most various things in the world. Every school
lesson is full of them. Let us take geography. We are told that the
town of Constance lies on the Bodensee. A student song adds:
‘if you don’t believe it, go and see.’ I happen
to have been there and can confirm the fact that that lovely town
lies on the shore of a wide stretch of water which all those who
live round it call the Bodensee; and I am now completely convinced
of the correctness of this geographical assertion. In this
connection I am reminded of another, very remarkable, experience. I
was already a man of mature years when I stood for the first time
on the hill of the Acropolis in Athens, between the temple ruins,
looking out over the blue sea. A feeling of astonishment mingled
with my joy. It seemed to say: ‘So it really
is
true,
just as we learnt at school!’ How shallow and weak must have
been the belief I then acquired in the real truth of what I heard,
if I could be so astonished now! But I will not lay too much stress
on the significance of this experience; for my astonishment could
have had another explanation, which did not occur to me at the time
and which is of a wholly subjective nature and has to do with the
special character of the place.

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   All teachings like these, then,
demand belief in their contents, but not without producing grounds
for their claim. They are put forward as the epitomized result of a
longer process of thought based on observation and certainly also
on inferences. If anyone wants to go through this process himself
instead of accepting its result, they show him how to set about it.
Moreover, we are always in addition given the source of the
knowledge conveyed by them, where that source is not self-evident,
as it is in the case of geographical assertions. For instance, the
earth is shaped like a sphere; the proofs adduced for this are
Foucault’s pendulum experiment, the behaviour of the horizon
and the possibility of circumnavigating the earth. Since it is
impracticable, as everyone concerned realizes, to send every
schoolchild on a voyage round the world, we are satisfied with
letting what is taught at school be taken on trust; but we know
that the path to acquiring a personal conviction remains open.

   Let us try to apply the same test
to the teachings of religion. When we ask on what their claim to be
believed is founded, we are met with three answers, which harmonize
remarkably badly with one another. Firstly, these teachings deserve
to be believed because they were already believed by our primal
ancestors; secondly, we possess proofs which have been handed down
to us from those same primaeval times; and thirdly, it is forbidden
to raise the question of their authentication at all. In former
days anything so presumptuous was visited with the severest
penalties, and even to-day society looks askance at any attempt to
raise the question again.

   This third point is bound to
rouse our strongest suspicions. After all, a prohibition like this
can only be for one reason - that society is very well aware of the
insecurity of the claim it makes on behalf of its religious
doctrines. Otherwise it would certainly be very ready to put the
necessary data at the disposal of anyone who wanted to arrive at
conviction. This being so, it is with a feeling of mistrust which
it is hard to allay that we pass on to an examination of the other
two grounds of proof. We ought to believe because our forefathers
believed. But these ancestors of ours were far more ignorant than
we are. They believed in things we could not possibly accept
to-day; and the possibility occurs to us that the doctrines of
religion may belong to that class too. The proofs they have left us
are set down in writings which themselves bear every mark of
untrustworthiness. They are full of contradictions, revisions and
falsifications, and where they speak of factual confirmations they
are themselves unconfirmed. It does not help much to have it
asserted that their wording, or even their content only, originates
from divine revelation; for this assertion is itself one of the
doctrines whose authenticity is under examination, and no
proposition can be a proof of itself.

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   Thus we arrive at the singular
conclusion that of all the information provided by our cultural
assets it is precisely the elements which might be of the greatest
importance to us and which have the task of solving the riddles of
the universe and of reconciling us to the sufferings of life - it
is precisely those elements that are the least well authenticated
of any. We should not be able to bring ourselves to accept anything
of so little concern to us as the fact that whales bear young
instead of laying eggs, if it were not capable of better proof than
this.

   This state of affairs is in
itself a very remarkable psychological problem. And let no one
suppose that what I have said about the impossibility of proving
the truth of religious doctrines contains anything new. It has been
felt at all times - undoubtedly, too, by the ancestors who
bequeathed us this legacy. Many of them probably nourished the same
doubts as ours, but the pressure imposed on them was too strong for
them to have dared to utter them. And since then countless people
have been tormented by similar doubts, and have striven to suppress
them, because they thought it was their duty to believe; many
brilliant intellects have broken down over this conflict, and many
characters have been impaired by the compromises with which they
have tried to find a way out of it.

   If all the evidence put forward
for the authenticity of religious teachings originates in the past,
it is natural to look round and see whether the present, about
which it is easier to form judgements, may not also be able to
furnish evidence of the sort. If by this means we could succeed in
clearing even a single portion of the religious system from doubt,
the whole of it would gain enormously in credibility. The
proceedings of the spiritualists meet us at this point; they are
convinced of the survival of the individual soul and they seek to
demonstrate to us beyond doubt the truth of this one religious
doctrine. Unfortunately they cannot succeed in refuting the fact
that the appearance and utterances of their spirits are merely the
products of their own mental activity. They have called up the
spirits of the greatest men and of the most eminent thinkers, but
all the pronouncements and information which they have received
from them have been so foolish and so wretchedly meaningless that
one can find nothing credible in them but the capacity of the
spirits to adapt themselves to the circle of people who have
conjured them up.

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   I must now mention two attempts
that have been made - both of which convey the impression of being
desperate efforts - to evade the problem. One, of a violent nature,
is ancient; the other is subtle and modern. The first is the
‘
Credo quia absurdum
’ of the early Father of the
Church. It maintains that religious doctrines are outside the
jurisdiction of reason - are above reason. Their truth must be felt
inwardly, and they need not be comprehended. But this
Credo
is only of interest as a self-confession. As an authoritative
statement it has no binding force. Am I to be obliged to believe
every
absurdity? And if not, why this one in particular?
There is no appeal to a court above that of reason. If the truth of
religious doctrines is dependent on an inner experience which bears
witness to that truth, what is one to do about the many people who
do not have this rare experience? One may require every man to use
the gift of reason which he possesses, but one cannot erect, on the
basis of a motive that exists only for a very few, an obligation
that shall apply to everyone. If one man has gained an unshakable
conviction of the true reality of religious doctrines from a state
of ecstasy which has deeply moved him, of what significance is that
to others?

   The second attempt is the one
made by the philosophy of ‘As if’. This asserts that
our thought-activity includes a great number of hypotheses whose
groundlessness and even absurdity we fully realize. They are called
‘fictions’, but for a variety of practical reasons we
have to behave ‘as if’ we believed in these fictions.
This is the case with religious doctrines because of their
incomparable importance for the maintenance of human society.¹
This line of argument is not far removed from the ‘
Credo
quia absurdum
’. But I think the demand made by the
‘As if’ argument is one that only a philosopher could
put forward. A man whose thinking is not influenced by the
artifices of philosophy will never be able to accept it; in such a
man’s view, the admission that something is absurd or
contrary to reason leaves no more to be said. It cannot be expected
of him that precisely in treating his most important interests he
shall forgo the guarantees he requires for all his ordinary
activities. I am reminded of one of my children who was
distinguished at an early age by a peculiarly marked
matter-of-factness. When the children were being told a fairy story
and were listening to it with rapt attention, he would come up and
ask: ‘Is that a true story?’ When he was told it was
not, he would turn away with a look of disdain. We may expect that
people will soon behave in the same way towards the fairy tales of
religion, in spite of the advocacy of ‘As if’.