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« Czytelnia i książki Religion Autor tekstu: Thomas Hobbes
Leviathan, Chapter XII
Seeing there are no signs nor fruit of religion but in man only,
there is no cause to doubt but that the seed of religion is also
only in man; and consisteth in some peculiar quality, or at least in
some eminent degree thereof, not to be found in other living
creatures.
And first, it is peculiar to the nature of man to be inquisitive
into the causes of the events they see, some more, some less, but
all men so much as to be curious in the search of the causes of
their own good and evil fortune.
Secondly, upon the sight of anything that hath a beginning, to think
also it had a cause which determined the same to begin then when it
did, rather than sooner or later.
Thirdly, whereas there is no other felicity of beasts but the
enjoying of their quotidian food, ease, and lusts; as having little or
no foresight of the time to come for want of observation and memory of
the order, consequence, and dependence of the things they see; man
observeth how one event hath been produced by another, and remembereth
in them antecedence and consequence; and when he cannot assure himself
of the true causes of things (for the causes of good and evil
fortune for the most part are invisible), he supposes causes of
them, either such as his own fancy suggesteth, or trusteth to the
authority of other men such as he thinks to be his friends and wiser
than himself.
The two first make anxiety. For being assured that there be causes
of all things that have arrived hitherto, or shall arrive hereafter,
it is impossible for a man, who continually endeavoureth to secure
himself against the evil he fears, and procure the good he desireth,
not to be in a perpetual solicitude of the time to come; so that every
man, especially those that are over-provident, are in an estate like
to that of Prometheus. For as Prometheus (which, interpreted, is the
prudent man) was bound to the hill Caucasus, a place of large
prospect, where an eagle, feeding on his liver, devoured in the day as
much as was repaired in the night: so that man, which looks too far
before him in the care of future time, hath his heart all the day long
gnawed on by fear of death, poverty, or other calamity; and has no
repose, nor pause of his anxiety, but in sleep.
This perpetual fear, always accompanying mankind in the ignorance of
causes, as it were in the dark, must needs have for object
something. And therefore when there is nothing to be seen, there is
nothing to accuse either of their good or evil fortune but some
power or agent invisible: in which sense perhaps it was that some of
the old poets said that the gods were at first created by human
fear: which, spoken of the gods (that is to say, of the many gods of
the Gentiles), is very true. But the acknowledging of one God eternal,
infinite, and omnipotent may more easily be derived from the desire
men have to know the causes of natural bodies, and their several
virtues and operations, than from the fear of what was to befall
them in time to come. For he that, from any effect he seeth come to
pass, should reason to the next and immediate cause thereof, and
from thence to the cause of that cause, and plunge himself
profoundly in the pursuit of causes, shall at last come to this,
that there must be (as even the heathen philosophers confessed) one
First Mover; that is, a first and an eternal cause of all things;
which is that which men mean by the name of God: and all this
without thought of their fortune, the solicitude whereof both inclines
to fear and hinders them from the search of the causes of other
things; and thereby gives occasion of feigning of as many gods as
there be men that feign them.
And for the matter, or substance, of the invisible agents, so
fancied, they could not by natural cogitation fall upon any other
concept but that it was the same with that of the soul of man; and
that the soul of man was of the same substance with that which
appeareth in a dream to one that sleepeth; or in a looking-glass to
one that is awake; which, men not knowing that such apparitions are
nothing else but creatures of the fancy, think to be real and external
substances, and therefore call them ghosts; as the Latins called
them imagines and umbrae and thought them spirits (that is, thin
aerial bodies), and those invisible agents, which they feared, to be
like them, save that they appear and vanish when they please. But
the opinion that such spirits were incorporeal, or immaterial, could
never enter into the mind of any man by nature; because, though men
may put together words of contradictory signification, as spirit and
incorporeal, yet they can never have the imagination of anything
answering to them: and therefore, men that by their own meditation
arrive to the acknowledgement of one infinite, omnipotent, and eternal
God choose rather to confess He is incomprehensible and above their
understanding than to define His nature by spirit incorporeal, and
then confess their definition to be unintelligible: or if they give
him such a title, it is not dogmatically, with intention to make the
Divine Nature understood, but piously, to honour Him with attributes
of significations as remote as they can from the grossness of bodies
visible.
Then, for the way by which they think these invisible agents wrought
their effects; that is to say, what immediate causes they used in
bringing things to pass, men that know not what it is that we call
causing (that is, almost all men) have no other rule to guess by but
by observing and remembering what they have seen to precede the like
effect at some other time, or times before, without seeing between the
antecedent and subsequent event any dependence or connexion at all:
and therefore from the like things past, they expect the like things
to come; and hope for good or evil luck, superstitiously, from
things that have no part at all in the causing of it: as the Athenians
did for their war at Lepanto demand another Phormio; the Pompeian
faction for their war in Africa, another Scipio; and others have
done in diverse other occasions since. In like manner they attribute
their fortune to a stander by, to a lucky or unlucky place, to words
spoken, especially if the name of God be amongst them, as charming,
and conjuring (the liturgy of witches); insomuch as to believe they
have power to turn a stone into bread, bread into a man, or anything
into anything.
Thirdly, for the worship which naturally men exhibit to powers
invisible, it can be no other but such expressions of their
reverence as they would use towards men; gifts, petitions, thanks,
submission of body, considerate addresses, sober behaviour,
premeditated words, swearing (that is, assuring one another of their
promises), by invoking them. Beyond that, reason suggesteth nothing,
but leaves them either to rest there, or for further ceremonies to
rely on those they believe to be wiser than themselves.
Lastly, concerning how these invisible powers declare to men the
things which shall hereafter come to pass, especially concerning their
good or evil fortune in general, or good or ill success in any
particular undertaking, men are naturally at a stand; save that
using to conjecture of the time to come by the time past, they are
very apt, not only to take casual things, after one or two encounters,
for prognostics of the like encounter ever after, but also to
believe the like prognostics from other men of whom they have once
conceived a good opinion.
And in these four things, opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second
causes, devotion towards what men fear, and taking of things casual
for prognostics, consisteth the natural seed of religion; which, by
reason of the different fancies, judgements, and passions of several
men, hath grown up into ceremonies so different that those which are
used by one man are for the most part ridiculous to another.
For these seeds have received culture from two sorts of men. One
sort have been they that have nourished and ordered them, according to
their own invention. The other have done it by God's commandment and
direction. But both sorts have done it with a purpose to make those
men that relied on them the more apt to obedience, laws, peace,
charity, and civil society. So that the religion of the former sort is a part of human politics; and teacheth part of the duty which
earthly kings require of their subjects. And the religion of the
latter sort is divine politics; and containeth precepts to those
that have yielded themselves subjects in the kingdom of God. Of the
former sort were all the founders of Commonwealths, and the
lawgivers of the Gentiles: of the latter sort were Abraham, Moses, and
our blessed Saviour, by whom have been derived unto us the laws of the
kingdom of God.
And for that part of religion which consisteth in opinions
concerning the nature of powers invisible, there is almost nothing
that has a name that has not been esteemed amongst the Gentiles, in
one place or another, a god or devil; or by their poets feigned to
be animated, inhabited, or possessed by some spirit or other.
The unformed matter of the world was a god by the name of Chaos.
The heaven, the ocean, the planets, the fire, the earth, the
winds, were so many gods.
Men, women, a bird, a crocodile, a calf, a dog, a snake, an onion, a leek, were deified. Besides that, they filled almost all places with
spirits called demons: the plains, with Pan and Panises, or Satyrs;
the woods, with Fauns and Nymphs; the sea, with Tritons and other
Nymphs; every river and fountain, with a ghost of his name and with
Nymphs; every house, with its Lares, or familiars; every man, with his
Genius; Hell, with ghosts and spiritual officers, as Charon, Cerberus,
and the Furies; and in the night time, all places with larvae,
lemures, ghosts of men deceased, and a whole kingdom of fairies and
bugbears. They have also ascribed divinity, and built temples, to mere
accidents and qualities; such as are time, night, day, peace, concord,
love, contention, virtue, honour, health, rust, fever, and the like;
which when they prayed for, or against, they prayed to as if there
were ghosts of those names hanging over their heads, and letting
fall or withholding that good, or evil, for or against which they
prayed. They invoked also their own wit, by the name of Muses; their
own ignorance, by the name of Fortune; their own lust, by the name
of Cupid; their own rage, by the name Furies; their own privy
members by the name of Priapus; and attributed their pollutions to
incubi and succubae: insomuch as there was nothing which a poet
could introduce as a person in his poem which they did not make either a god or a devil.
The same authors of the religion of the Gentiles, observing the
second ground for religion, which is men's ignorance of causes, and
thereby their aptness to attribute their fortune to causes on which
there was no dependence at all apparent, took occasion to obtrude on
their ignorance, instead of second causes, a kind of second and
ministerial gods; ascribing the cause of fecundity to Venus, the cause
of arts to Apollo, of subtlety and craft to Mercury, of tempests and
storms to Aeolus, and of other effects to other gods; insomuch as
there was amongst the heathen almost as great variety of gods as of
business.
And to the worship which naturally men conceived fit to be used
towards their gods, namely, oblations, prayers, thanks, and the rest
formerly named, the same legislators of the Gentiles have added
their images, both in picture and sculpture, that the more ignorant
sort (that is to say, the most part or generality of the people),
thinking the gods for whose representation they were made were
really included and as it were housed within them, might so much the
more stand in fear of them: and endowed them with lands, and houses,
and officers, and revenues, set apart from all other human uses;
that is, consecrated, made holy to those their idols; as caverns,
groves, woods, mountains, and whole islands; and have attributed to
them, not only the shapes, some of men, some of beasts, some of
monsters, but also the faculties and passions of men and beasts; as
sense, speech, sex, lust, generation, and this not only by mixing
one with another to propagate the kind of gods, but also by mixing
with men and women to beget mongrel gods, and but inmates of heaven,
as Bacchus, Hercules, and others; besides, anger, revenge, and other
passions of living creatures, and the actions proceeding from them, as
fraud, theft, adultery, sodomy, and any vice that may be taken for
an effect of power or a cause of pleasure; and all such vices as
amongst men are taken to be against law rather than against honour.
Lastly, to the prognostics of time to come, which are naturally
but conjectures upon the experience of time past, and
supernaturally, divine revelation, the same authors of the religion of
the Gentiles, partly upon pretended experience, partly upon
pretended revelation, have added innumerable other superstitious
ways of divination, and made men believe they should find their
fortunes, sometimes in the ambiguous or senseless answers of the
priests at Delphi, Delos, Ammon, and other famous oracles; which
answers were made ambiguous by design, to own the event both ways;
or absurd, by the intoxicating vapour of the place, which is very
frequent in sulphurous caverns: sometimes in the leaves of the Sibyls,
of whose prophecies, like those perhaps of Nostradamus (for the
fragments now extant seem to be the invention of later times), there
were some books in reputation in the time of the Roman republic:
sometimes in the insignificant speeches of madmen, supposed to be
possessed with a divine spirit, which possession they called
enthusiasm; and these kinds of foretelling events were accounted
theomancy, or prophecy: sometimes in the aspect of the stars at
their nativity, which was called horoscopy, and esteemed a part of
judiciary astrology: sometimes in their own hopes and fears, called
and fears, called thumomancy, or presage: sometimes in the
prediction of witches that pretended conference with the dead, which
is called necromancy, conjuring, and witchcraft, and is but juggling
and confederate knavery: sometimes in the casual flight or feeding
of birds, called augury: sometimes in the entrails of a sacrificed
beast, which was haruspicy: sometimes in dreams: sometimes in croaking
of ravens, or chattering of birds: sometimes in the lineaments of
the face, which was called metoposcopy; or by palmistry in the lines
of the hand, in casual words called omina: sometimes in monsters or
unusual accidents; as eclipses, comets, rare meteors, earthquakes,
inundations, uncouth births, and the like, which they called portenta,
and ostenta, because they thought them to portend or foreshow some
great calamity to come: sometimes in mere lottery, as cross and
pile; counting holes in a sieve; dipping of verses in Homer and
Virgil; and innumerable other such vain conceits. So easy are men to
be drawn to believe anything from such men as have gotten credit
with them; and can with gentleness, and dexterity, take hold of
their fear and ignorance.
And therefore the first founders and legislators of Commonwealths
amongst the Gentiles, whose ends were only to keep the people in
obedience and peace, have in all places taken care: first, to
imprint their minds a belief that those precepts which they gave
concerning religion might not be thought to proceed from their own
device, but from the dictates of some god or other spirit; or else
that they themselves were of a higher nature than mere mortals, that
their laws might the more easily be received; so Numa Pompilius
pretended to receive the ceremonies he instituted amongst the Romans
from the nymph Egeria and the first king and founder of the kingdom of
Peru pretended himself and his wife to be the children of the sun; and
Mahomet, to set up his new religion, pretended to have conferences
with the Holy Ghost in form of a dove. Secondly, they have had a care to make it believed that the same things were displeasing to
the gods which were forbidden by the laws. Thirdly, to prescribe
ceremonies, supplications, sacrifices, and festivals by which they
were to believe the anger of the gods might be appeased; and that
ill success in war, great contagions of sickness, earthquakes, and
each man's private misery came from the anger of the gods; and their
anger from the neglect of their worship, or the forgetting or
mistaking some point of the ceremonies required. And though amongst
the ancient Romans men were not forbidden to deny that which in the
poets is written of the pains and pleasures after this life, which
divers of great authority and gravity in that state have in their
harangues openly derided, yet that belief was always more cherished,
than the contrary.
And by these, and such other institutions, they obtained in order to
their end, which was the peace of the Commonwealth, that the common
people in their misfortunes, laying the fault on neglect, or error
in their ceremonies, or on their own disobedience to the laws, were
the less apt to mutiny against their governors. And being
entertained with the pomp and pastime of festivals and public games
made in honour of the gods, needed nothing else but bread to keep them
from discontent, murmuring, and commotion against the state. And
therefore the Romans, that had conquered the greatest part of the then
known world, made no scruple of tolerating any religion whatsoever
in the city of Rome itself, unless it had something in it that could
not consist with their civil government; nor do we read that any
religion was there forbidden but that of the Jews, who (being the
peculiar kingdom of God) thought it unlawful to acknowledge subjection
to any mortal king or state whatsoever. And thus you see how the
religion of the Gentiles was a part of their policy.
But where God himself by supernatural revelation planted religion,
there he also made to himself a peculiar kingdom, and gave laws, not
only of behaviour towards himself, but also towards one another; and
thereby in the kingdom of God, the policy and laws civil are a part of
religion; and therefore the distinction of temporal and spiritual
domination hath there no place. It is true that God is king of all the
earth; yet may He be king of a peculiar and chosen nation. For there
is no more incongruity therein than that he that hath the general
command of the whole army should have withal a peculiar regiment or
company of his own. God is king of all the earth by His power, but
of His chosen people, He is king by covenant. But to speak more
largely of the kingdom of God, both by nature and covenant, I have
in the following discourse assigned another place.
From the propagation of religion, it is not hard to understand the
causes of the resolution of the same into its first seeds or
principles; which are only an opinion of a deity, and powers invisible
and supernatural; that can never be so abolished out of human
nature, but that new religions may again be made to spring out of them
by the culture of such men as for such purpose are in reputation.
For seeing all formed religion is founded at first upon the faith
which a multitude hath in some one person, whom they believe not
only to be a wise man and to labour to procure their happiness, but
also to be a holy man to whom God Himself vouchsafeth to declare His
will supernaturally, it followeth necessarily when they that have
the government of religion shall come to have either the wisdom of
those men, their sincerity, or their love suspected, or that they
shall be unable to show any probable token of divine revelation,
that the religion which they desire to uphold must be suspected
likewise and (without the fear of the civil sword) contradicted and
rejected.
That which taketh away the reputation of wisdom in him that
formeth a religion, or addeth to it when it is already formed, is
the enjoining of a belief of contradictories: for both parts of a contradiction cannot possibly be true, and therefore to enjoin the
belief of them is an argument of ignorance, which detects the author
in that, and discredits him in all things else he shall propound as
from revelation supernatural: which revelation a man may indeed have
of many things above, but of nothing against natural reason.
That which taketh away the reputation of sincerity is the doing or
saying of such things as appear to be signs that what they require
other men to believe is not believed by themselves; all which doings
or sayings are therefore called scandalous because they be
stumbling-blocks that make men to fall in the way of religion: as
injustice, cruelty, profaneness, avarice, and luxury. For who can
believe that he that doth ordinarily such actions, as proceed from any
of these roots, believeth there is any such invisible power to be
feared as he affrighteth other men withal for lesser faults?
That which taketh away the reputation of love is the being
detected of private ends: as when the belief they require of others
conduceth, or seemeth to conduce, to the acquiring of dominion,
riches, dignity, or secure pleasure to themselves only or specially.
For that which men reap benefit by to themselves they are thought to
do for their own sakes, and not for love of others.
Lastly, the testimony that men can render of divine calling can be
no other than the operation of miracles, or true prophecy (which
also is a miracle), or extraordinary felicity. And therefore, to those
points of religion which have been received from them that did such
miracles, those that are added by such as approve not their calling by
some miracle obtain no greater belief than what the custom and laws of
the places in which they be educated have wrought into them. For as in
natural things men of judgement require natural signs and arguments,
so in supernatural things they require signs supernatural (which are
miracles) before they consent inwardly and from their hearts.
All which causes of the weakening of men's faith do manifestly
appear in the examples following. First, we have the example of the
children of Israel, who, when Moses that had approved his calling to
them by miracles, and by the happy conduct of them out of Egypt, was
absent but forty days, revolted from the worship of the true God
recommended to them by him, and, setting up (Exodus, 32. 1, 2) a golden calf for their
god, relapsed into the idolatry of the Egyptians from whom they had
been so lately delivered. And again, after Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and
that generation which had seen the great works of God in Israel were
dead, another generation arose and served Baal.(Judges, 2. 11) So that Miracles
failing, faith also failed. Again, when the sons of Samuel, being constituted by their father
judges in Beer-sheba, received bribes and judged unjustly, the
people of Israel refused any more to have God to be their king in
other manner than He was king of other people, and therefore cried out
to Samuel to choose them a king after the manner of the nations.* (I Samuel, 8. 3)
So
that justice failing, faith also failed, insomuch as they deposed
their God from reigning over them.
And whereas in the planting of Christian religion the oracles ceased
in all parts of the Roman Empire, and the number of Christians
increased wonderfully every day and in every place by the preaching of
the Apostles and Evangelists, a great part of that success may
reasonably be attributed to the contempt into which the priests of the
Gentiles of that time had brought themselves by their uncleanness,
avarice, and juggling between princes. Also the religion of the Church
of Rome was partly for the same cause abolished in England and many
other parts of Christendom, insomuch as the failing of virtue in the
pastors maketh faith fail in the people, and partly from bringing of
the philosophy and doctrine of Aristotle into religion by the
Schoolmen; from whence there arose so many contradictions and
absurdities as brought the clergy into a reputation both of
ignorance and of fraudulent intention, and inclined people to revolt
from them, either against the will of their own princes as in France
and Holland, or with their will as in England.
Lastly, amongst the points by the Church of Rome declared
necessary for salvation, there be so many manifestly to the
advantage of the Pope so many of his spiritual subjects residing in
the territories of other Christian princes that, were it not for the
mutual emulation of those princes, they might without war or trouble
exclude all foreign authority, as easily as it has been excluded in
England. For who is there that does not see to whose benefit it
conduceth to have it believed that a king hath not his authority
from Christ unless a bishop crown him? That a king, if he be a priest,
cannot marry? That whether a prince be born in lawful marriage, or
not, must be judged by authority from Rome? That subjects may be freed
from their allegiance if by the court of Rome the king be judged a heretic? That a king, as Childeric of France, may be deposed by a Pope, as Pope Zachary, for no cause, and his kingdom given to one of
his subjects? That the clergy, and regulars, in what country soever,
shall be exempt from the jurisdiction of their king in cases criminal?
Or who does not see to whose profit redound the fees of private
Masses, and vales of purgatory, with other signs of private interest
enough to mortify the most lively faith, if, as I said, the civil
magistrate and custom did not more sustain it than any opinion they
have of the sanctity, wisdom, or probity of their teachers? So that I may attribute all the changes of religion in the world to one and
the same cause, and that is unpleasing priests; and those not only
amongst catholics, but even in that Church that hath presumed most
of reformation.
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