religion the more he abominates all others. A Christian would scorn the idea of the essence of his faith being common to all others, or any other. If there be any common truth it is a very secret truth.
Is there any secret truth? If so, what is it?
There is a further question.
There is probably no one thing that we learn with more certainty than this, that whatever exists, whatever persists, does so because it fulfils a want, because it's of use. It is immaterial where we look, the rule is absolute. In the material world Darwin and others have shewn it to us over and over again. When anything is useless it atrophies. So have the snake and the whale lost their legs, and man his hairy skin and sense of scent. Males have lost their power of suckling their young; with females this power has increased. Need developes any thing or any quality; when it becomes needless it dies. Where we find anything flourishing and persistent we are sure always that it is so because it is wanted, because it fills a need.
Religion in some form or another has always existed, has increased and developed, has grown and gained strength.
Therefore religion, all religions that have existed have filled some need, all religions that now exist do so because they fulfil some present use. From the way their believers cherish them the need is a great and urgent one. These religions are of vital use to their believers.
What is this great common need and yearning that all men have, and which, to men in sympathy with it, every religion fulfils?
Can it be that all men have a like need and that all religions have a common quality which serves that need?
Can it be possible that all races, the Englishman, the Negro, the Italian, the Russian, the Arab, the Chinaman, and the Pathan, have the same urgent necessity, and that their urgent necessity is answered by so many varying religions? If so, what is this necessity which religion alone can fill, what is this succour that religion alone can give? What is the use of religion?
These are some of the questions I ask, other men have asked the same – not many. The majority of men never ask themselves anything of the sort. They are born into a religion, they live in it more or less, they die in it. They may question its accuracy in one point or another, for each man to some extent makes his own faith; but nearly all men take their faith much as they find it and make the best of it. It does not occur to them to say, "Why should I want a religion at all? Why not go without?" They feel the necessity of it. Even the very few who reject their own faith almost always try for some other, something they hope will meet their necessity. They will prefer one faith to another. But they do not first consider why they want a faith at all. They do not ask, "Of what use is any religion?"
Yet this is in the main the subject of this book, these questions are the ones I ask, the questions to which I seek an answer. I will repeat them.
Why are all peoples, all men religious? Is the necessity a common necessity? If so, what is it?
Why does one form of religion appeal to one people and another to another people, while remaining hateful to all the rest?
Notwithstanding their common hate, have all religions a common secret? And if so, what is that?
This book of mine is in part the story of a boy who was born into a faith and who lost it; it tries to explain why he lost it.
It is the story of a man who searched for a new faith and who did not find it, because he knew not what he sought. He knew not what religion was nor why he wanted it. He knew not his need. He sought in religion for things no religion possesses. He was ill yet he knew not his disease, and so he could find no remedy. And finally it is an attempt to discern what religion really means, what it is, what is the use of it, what men require of it.
There may be among my readers some who will read the early chapters and will then stop. They will feel hurt perhaps, they will think that there is here an attack upon their religion, upon all they hold as the Truth of God. So they will close the book and read no more. I would beg of my readers not to judge me thus. I would ask them if they read at all to read to the end. It may be that then they will understand. Even if it be not so, that the early chapters still seem to be hard, is it not better to hear such things from a friend than from an enemy? Be sure there are very many who say and who feel very much harder things than this boy did. Is it not as well to know them?
These early chapters are of a boy's life; they may be, they should be if truly written, full of the hardness of youth, its revolt from what it conceives to be untrue, its intense desire to know, its stern rejection of all that is not clear and cannot be known. Yet they must be written, for only by knowing the thoughts of the boy can the later thoughts of the man be understood?
And I am sure that those who read me to the end, though they may disagree with what I say, will admit this: that, thinking as I do of religion, I would not unnecessarily throw a stone at any faith, I would not thoughtlessly hurt the belief of any believer, no matter what his religion; because I think I have learnt not only what his faith is to him, but why it is so, because I have found the use of all religion.
CHAPTER II
EARLY BELIEFS
The boy of whom I am about to write was brought up until he was twelve entirely by women. He had masters, it is true, who taught him the usual things that are taught to boys, and he had playfellows, other boys; but the masters were with him but an hour or two each day for lessons, and of the boys he was always the eldest.
Those who have studied how it is that children form their ideas of the world, of what it is, of what has to be done in it, of how to do it, will recognise all that this means; for children obtain their ideas of everything, not from their lessons nor their books nor their teachers, but from their associates. A teacher may teach, but a boy does not believe. He believes not what he is told, but what he sees. He forms to himself rules of conduct modelled on the observed conduct of other people. Their ideas penetrate his, and he absorbs and adapts them to his own wants. In a school with other boys, or where a boy has as playfellows boys older than himself, this works out right. The knowledge and ideas of the great world filter gradually down. Young men gain it from older men, the young men pass it to the elder boys, and the bigger to the smaller, each adapting it as he takes. Thus is wisdom made digestible by the many processes it passes through, and the child can take it and find it agree with him.
But with a child brought up with adults and children younger than himself this is not so. From the latter he can learn nothing; he therefore adapts himself to the former. He listens to them, he watches them, unconsciously it is true, but with that terrible penetrative power children possess. He learns their ideas, and, tough as they may prove to him, he has to absorb them, and he has not the digestive juice, the experience that is required to assimilate them. They are unfit for his tender years, they do not yield the nourishment he requires. He suffers terribly. A man's ideas and knowledge are not fit for a boy.
And if a man's, how much less a woman's? A boy will become a man; what he has learnt of men is knowledge of the right kind, though of the wrong degree. But what he learns from women is almost entirely unsuitable in kind and in degree. The ideas, the knowledge, the codes of conduct, the outlook on life that suit a woman are entirely unfitted for a boy. Consider and you must see how true it is.
This boy, too, was often ill and unable to play, to go out at all sometimes for weeks in the winter. He seemed always ailing. Thus he had to spend much of his time alone, and when he was tired of reading or of wood carving, or colouring plates in a book, he thought. He had often so much time to think that he grew sick of thought. He hated it. He would have given very much to be able to get out and run about and play so as not to think, to be enabled to forget that he had a brain which would keep on passing phantoms before his inner eyes. There was nothing he hated so much, nothing he dreaded so deeply as having nothing to do but think. In later years he took this terror to his heart and made it into an exceedingly great pleasure, but to the child it was not so.
Therefore, when he was twelve and was sent at last to a large school, he was different to most boys at that age; for his view of the world, his knowledge of it, his judgment of it, were all obtained from women. He saw life much as they did, through the same glasses, though with different sight. His ideas of conduct were a woman's ideas, his religion was a woman's religion.
Are