New Christianity

1825

 

By

Henri de Saint-Simon

[ Claude-Henri de Rouvroy ]

[ Comte de Saint-Simon ]

[ 1760 – 1825 ]

 

He who loves his neighbour has fulfilled the law.

Everything is summed up in these words:

Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

St. Paul, Epistle to the Romans

 

 

Preface

 

The fragment now before the reader was intended to form part of the second volume of ‘Literary, Philosophic, and Industrial Opinions,’ but the question dealt with here is so important in itself, and so bound up with present political conditions that it has been decided to publish it separately and at once.

The main object of the following dialogue is this:  to recall peoples and kings to the true spirit of Christianity, at a time when they have departed completely from that spirit; a time when laws on sacrilege are passed, when Catholics and Protestants seek some way of ending a long and painful struggle between them.  My aim is also to try and define the part played by religious sentiment in society, at a time when all men are conscious of it, or at any rate feel the need to respect it in others; at a time when the most eminent writers are concerned with finding its origin, manifestations, and development, while, on the other hand, the theologians try to smother it under the weight of superstition.

The ministers of the different Christian sects who regard each other as heretics, and certainly are so, in different degrees, by the true, moral standard of Christianity, will not fail to react to such an accusation, and against the work in which it is put forward.  But it is not principally for them that this work is written.  It is written for all those who, whether they are labelled as Catholics, Protestants, Lutheran Protestants, Reformed Protestants, Anglicans or Jews, regard religion as having morality as its essential aim; for all those who, granting the widest liberty of worship and dogma, are far from regarding morality with indifference, and feel a continual need to purify and perfect it, and to extend its dominion over all classes of society, while preserving its religious character.  Finally, it is written for those who realize that there is something truly sublime, divine, in primitive Christianity – the predominance of morality over the law, that is to say, over forms of worship and dogma; who realize that the purpose of forms of worship and dogma is to fix the attention of the faithful on the divine morality.  From this point of view, criticisms of Catholicism, Protestantism, and other Christian sects, are indispensable, since it is evident that none of these sects has fulfilled the views of the founder of Christianity.

This desire to purify morality, to simplify the form of worship and dogma, impels many people to form a particular sect of Protestantism; for instance, the so-called Reformed religion, as the inevitable transition to a new religious order, or even as the final form.  They base this opinion on the elements of this particular form of religion which bring it closer to the spirit of Christianity than any other, and they will certainly rouse themselves to resist any shafts which they believe to be levelled at Protestantism.

There is only one answer to this argument:  the human race is not confined to imitation.  It often happens that while we wholly appreciate the benefits derived in an earlier period from adopting a particular belief, or institution, our approval of what has already been accomplished should be accompanied by the construction of a belief and an institution even better.  Any error on this point is harmful, but temporary.

As for those who regard ideas of the Deity and revelation as concepts which may have been of some value in times of ignorance and barbarism, but the use of them in the nineteenth century as contrary to philosophy; who think they can refute the author of this book by a Voltairian sneer, they will probably try to find in their sham systems of philosophy a definition of morality more universal, more simple and more popular than the Christian principle.  If they only succeed in substituting for it pure reason and natural law revealed in men’s hearts, no doubt they would give up a mere argument about words; in any case, they would soon see how much vagueness and uncertainty there is in their language.  If they persist in doubting the superhuman excellence of the Christian principle, at least they would have to respect it as the principle of the greatest universality which men have ever put into practice, as the most exalted conception which has been produced in eighteen centuries.

 

 

Dialogue Between a Conservative and a Reformer

 

First Dialogue

 

Conservative.  Do you believe in God?

Reformer.  Yes, I believe in God.

C.  Do you believe that the Christian religion has a divine origin?

R.  Yes, I do.

C.  If the Christian religion is divine in origin it does not admit of improvement; yet by your writings you urge the artists, industrialists and scientists to improve this religion.  You thus contradict yourself since your opinion is in opposition to your belief.

R.  The opposition which you point out between my belief and my opinion is only in appearance; we must distinguish what God Himself has said from what the Church has said in His name.  The words of God are certainly not open to improvement, but the words of the Church in His name consist of a body of knowledge which is capable of improvement like any other branch of knowledge.  Theology needs to be brought up to date at different periods, just like physics, chemistry, physiology.

C.  What part of Christianity do you consider divine, and what part as human?

R.  God has said ‘Men should treat each other as brothers.’  This sublime principle comprises all that is divine in the Christian religion.

C.  What?  You reduce all that is divine in Christianity to a single principle?

R.  Naturally God has related everything to a single principle, and deduced everything from a single principle – otherwise His will towards men would not have had coherence.  It would be blasphemy to assert that the Almighty has founded His religion on a number of principles.  Now, according to this principle given to men by God as a guide for their conduct, they should organize their community in the way which will be most advantageous to the greatest number; they should make it their aim in all their undertakings and actions, to promote as quickly and completely as possible the moral and physical welfare of the most numerous class.  I maintain that in that, and that alone, consists the divine part of the Christian religion.

C.  I admit that God has given to men a single principle.  I admit that He has ordered men to organize their community in such a way as to secure for the poorest class the quickest and most complete improvement of their moral and physical condition; but I would point out that God has left guides for the human race.  Before returning to Heaven, Jesus Christ made His apostles and their successors responsible for guiding the conduct of mankind, by teaching them the way in which they should carry out the fundamental principle of the divine morality, by showing them how to deduce from the principle the correct conclusions.

Do you recognize the Church as a divine institution?

R.  I believe that God Himself founded the Christian Church; I am filled with the most profound respect and admiration for the behaviour of the Fathers of this Church.  The leaders of the early Church boldly preached union to all peoples, they urged them to live at peace with each other; they declared positively and energetically to those in power that their first duty was to employ all their resources in the most rapid improvement of the moral and physical condition of the poor.  These leaders of the primitive Church compiled the best book that has ever been published, the primitive catechism, in which they divided men’s actions into two sorts, good and bad, – that is to say, actions in conformity with the fundamental principle of divine morality and actions contrary to this principle.

C.  Develop your ideas, and tell me if you consider the Christian Church to be infallible?

R.  If the Church has as its leaders men who are the most capable of directing the energies of society towards the divine aim, I think that the Church may conveniently be regarded as infallible, and the community is wise in relying on its leadership.  I consider the Fathers of the Church as infallible for the age in which they lived; while the clergy of today seem to me, of all corporate bodies, the one which makes the greatest mistakes – mistakes which are the most harmful to the community; and their conduct the most directly opposed to the fundamental principle of the divine morality.

C.  According to you, therefore, the Christian religion is in a parlous condition?

R.  Quite the contrary.  Never have there been so many good Christians, but today they are to be found almost entirely among the laity.  The Christian religion, since the fifteenth century, has lost its unity of action.  Since that time there has no longer been a Christian clergy.  All the clergy who today try to graft their own opinions, ethic, forms of worship and dogma on to the principle of morality which mankind has received from God are heretics, because their opinions, ethics, dogmas and forms of worship are to a greater or less degree in opposition to the divine morality.  The most powerful Church of all is also the one which is most heretical.

C.  What will happen to the Christian religion if, as you think, those men who are responsible for it have become heretics?

R.  Christianity will become the universal and only religion.  Asia and Africa will be converted;  the clergy of Europe will become good Christians, and will abandon the different heresies which they uphold today.  The true doctrine of Christianity, that is to say the most universal doctrine which can be deduced from the fundamental principle of the divine morality, will be realized, and at once the differences of religious opinion will disappear.

The early Christian doctrine only gave the community a partial and incomplete organization.  The rights of Caesar remained independent of the rights attributed to the Church.  ‘Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s’ – such is the famous saying which divided these two powers.  The temporal power has continued to base its strength on the law of the strongest, while the Church has maintained that the community should only acknowledge as legitimate those institutions which aim at the improvement of the condition of the poorest classes.

The new Christian organization will base temporal institutions as well as spiritual on the principle that all men should treat others as brothers.  It will direct all institutions of whatever kind towards the improvement of the well-being of the poorest class.

C.  On what evidence do you base this opinion?  What makes you believe that one moral principle will eventually govern all human communities?

R.  The most universal morality, the divine morality, must become the only morality; this follows from its nature and origin.  The chosen people of God, which received revelation before the appearance of Jesus, the people which has spread most widely over the whole world, has always felt that the Christian religion, founded by the Fathers of the Church, was incomplete.  This people has always maintained that a great age will arrive, to which they have given the name of Messianic, an age when the religious doctrine will be set forth in the most universal terms of which it is capable, when it will govern the actions both of the temporal and of the spiritual power, and every human race will have the same religion and the same organization.

In short, I have a clear idea of the new Christian doctrine, and I shall proceed to expound it; then I shall review all the spiritual and temporal institutions existing in England, France, Northern and Southern Germany, in Italy, Spain and Russia, in North and South America.  I shall compare the doctrines of these different institutions with that which is derived direct from the fundamental principle of the divine morality, and I shall easily convince every man of good faith and good intentions that, if all institutions were directed to the aim of promoting the moral and physical well-being of the poorest class, they would bring about the prosperity of all classes and all nations with the greatest possible speed.

I am a reformer because I draw the direct consequences from the fundamental principle of the divine morality – a step which has not been taken until now.  Those of you who have the same zeal as I for the public welfare, but are governed by the conservative spirit, limit your task to that of preventing men from losing sight altogether of the principle which I wish to extend.  Let us rather combine our efforts.  I shall expound my ideas; oppose them when it strikes you that I am departing from the guidance given to man by the Almighty.

I undertake this task with complete confidence.  The best theologian is he who makes the widest application of the fundamental principle of the divine morality; the best theologian is the real Pope, God’s deputy on earth.  If the deductions which I shall make are correct, if the doctrine I shall expound is sound, I shall have spoken in the name of God.

I therefore embark on my task.  I begin by examining the different religions which exist at present, and comparing their doctrines with that which is derived directly from the fundamental principle of the divine morality.

 

 

On Religions

 

New Christianity will be composed of groups similar to those which today comprise the various heretic bodies in Europe and America.

New Christianity, like the heretical bodies, will have its morality, form of worship and dogma; it will have its clergy, and its hierarchy.  But, despite this similarity, New Christianity will be purged of all the heresies which exist today.  Moral doctrine will be considered by the new Christians as the most important thing; the form of worship and dogma will be regarded only as secondary features for the purpose of fixing the attention of the faithful of all classes on morality.

In New Christianity all morality will be derived directly from the principle that ‘Men should treat each other as brothers.’  This principle, which belongs to primitive Christianity, will undergo a transfiguration by which it will be proclaimed as the aim of all religious activity.  This principle, regenerated, will be proclaimed as follows:  religion should guide the community towards the great aim of improving as quickly as possible the condition of the poorest class.

The founders of New Christianity and leaders of the new Church, should be those men who are most capable of contributing by their efforts to the improvement of the well-being of the poorest class.  The functions of the clergy will be confined to teaching the New Christian doctrine.  The leaders of the Church should apply themselves unremittingly to the perfecting of this doctrine.

Such, in brief, is the way in which true Christianity should develop in present conditions.  We shall now compare this conception of religious institutions with the existing religions in Europe and America.  This comparison will easily demonstrate that all so-called Christian religions of the present time are nothing but heresies – that is to say, that they do not aim directly at the quickest possible improvement of the well-being of the poorest class, which is the sole aim of Christianity.

 

 

Catholicism

 

The Catholic, Roman, and Apostolic community is the largest of the European and American religious communities, and still possesses several great advantages over the other sects to which the inhabitants of these two continents may belong.

It followed without a break from the Christian community, and therefore has a certain veneer of orthodoxy.  The Catholic clergy have inherited a great part of the wealth amassed by the Christian clergy in the countless victories they achieved in during five centuries, in fighting for an aristocracy of talent against an aristocracy of birth, and in asserting the religious supremacy of men of peace over men of war.

The heads of the Catholic Church have retained the sovereignty of the city which has dominated the world for twenty centuries, first by force of arms, then by the omnipotence of the divine morality.  At the Vatican, the Jesuits plot to-day to dominate the human race by a hateful system of mysticism and trickery.

The Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman community is unquestionably still very powerful, though it has declined considerably since the pontificate of Leo X who founded it.  But the power which it possesses is only a material force, and it only succeeds in maintaining itself by trickery.  It completely lacks spiritual, moral, Christian, force based on frankness and loyalty.  In a word, the Catholic, Apostolic, Roman religion is no more than a Christian heresy, a part of degenerate Christianity.

I say that Catholics are heretics, and I will prove it.  I will prove that the rebirth of Christianity will wipe out the Inquisition, and rid the community of the Jesuits and their Machiavellian doctrines.  True Christianity commands all men to act towards each other as brothers.  Jesus Christ promised eternal life to those who contributed the most to the improvement of the condition of the poorest class in the moral and physical sense.

Therefore the heads of the Christian Church should be chosen from the men who are the most capable of directing the undertakings aimed at increasing the welfare of the most numerous class; and the clergy should be concerned primarily with teaching to the faithful the conduct they should follow in order to promote the well-being of the majority of the population.

Let us now examine how the Sacred College has been composed since Leo X, founder of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church.  Let us examine the knowledge which the College demands from those who are admitted to the priesthood.

Let us see what moral and physical improvement the poor have experienced in the Papal States which should be a model to other governments.  Finally, let us see what is the teaching given by the Catholic clergy to the faithful in its communion.

I challenge the Pope, who claims to be Christian, who claims to be infallible, and assumes the title of Vicar of Jesus Christ, to answer clearly and without resort to mystical terms, the four accusations of heresy which I shall now bring against the Catholic Church.

I accuse the Pope and his Church of heresy, first, on the following count.  The teaching given by the Catholic clergy to the laity of its communion is faulty, because it does not guide their conduct on Christian lines.  Christianity teaches the faithful that the aim in this world is to improve as quickly as possible the moral and physical condition of the poor.  Jesus Christ promised eternal life to those who laboured with the greatest zeal for the improvement of the well-being of the most numerous class.  The Catholic clergy, like all the other clergy, should, therefore, have as their mission the task of rousing the zeal of all members of the community to labour for the common good.

The clergy everywhere should use all their intelligence and their gifts to show to the laity in their sermons and more intimate discussions that the improvement of the lot of the lowest class brings with it inevitably the increase of the real welfare of the higher classes; since God regards all men, even the rich, as His children.

Therefore the clergy should, in their teaching of children, in their sermons to the faithful, in their prayers, in every aspect of their worship and dogma, fix the attention of their congregation on this important fact, that the immense majority of the population could enjoy a moral and physical existence much more satisfying than that which they enjoy at present, and that the rich, by increasing the well-being of the poor, would improve their own lot.

Such is the conduct which true Christianity ordains for the clergy.  It will now be easy to show the faults in the teaching given by the Catholic clergy to those who accept their beliefs.

If we survey the mass of works written on Catholic dogma with the approval of the Pope and the Sacred College, if we examine all the prayers sanctioned by the heads of the Church, to be said by the faithful, laity as well as priests, nowhere in them shall we find the aim of the Christian religion clearly stated.  Ideas of morality are rare in these writings, and do not constitute a coherent body of doctrine:  they are scattered through this huge mass of volumes which are mainly composed of tedious repetitions of certain mystical conceptions – conceptions which give no guidance and, on the contrary, obscure the principles of the sublime morality of Christ.

It would be unjust to bring an accusation of inconsistency against the huge collection of prayers approved by the Pope.  It must be acknowledged that the choice of these prayers has been based on a systematic plan; it must be acknowledged that the Sacred College guides the faithful to one end, but it is clear that this end is not the Christian end but a heretical one.  Their aim is to persuade the laity that they are not able to govern their own actions by their own intelligence, and that they should put themselves under the direction of the clergy, without any obligation on the clergy to show a greater capacity than theirs.

Every aspect of worship and all the principles of Catholic dogma obviously have as their aim to reduce the laity to absolute dependence on the clergy.  The first accusation of heresy which I bring against the Pope and his Church, on account of the bad teaching which they give to Catholics, is therefore proved.

I accuse the Pope and the Cardinals of heresy on this second count:  of lacking the knowledge which fits them to guide the faithful towards their salvation.

I accuse them of educating candidates for the priesthood wrongly, and failing to ensure for them the instruction which they need to make them worthy pastors, fitted to guide the flocks committed to their charge.

Theology is the only branch of knowledge taught in the seminaries, the only science which the Pope and the Cardinals feel called upon to pursue.  Theology is the knowledge required by the leader of the Church for those who as vicars, bishops, archbishops, etc., are destined to guide the conduct of the faithful.  What is theology?  It is the science of disputation on questions relating to dogma and form of worship.

This science is unquestionably the most important for all heretical clergy, granted that it provides for them the means of confining the attention of the faithful to trifling details, and making Christians forget the great aim in this world which they should strive towards in order to obtain eternal life – that is to say the improvement in the quickest possible way of the moral and physical condition of the poor.

But theology should not have much importance for a clergy who are truly Christian.  They should consider the form of worship and dogma only as accessories to religion, emphasizing morality as the only true religious doctrine, and should only use dogma and forms of worship as means, useful at times, to concentrate the attention of all Christians upon morality.

The Roman Catholic clergy were orthodox until the accession of Leo X, because up to that period they were superior to the laity in all the branches of knowledge, the progress of which had contributed to the increased well-being of the poorest class.  Since then they have become heretical, because they have pursued nothing but theology, and because they have allowed themselves to be outstripped by the laity in the arts, exact sciences, and in the industrial sphere.  The accusation of heresy which I bring against the Pope and the Cardinals, on the ground of the bad use they make of their intelligence and the bad education they give to candidates for the priesthood, is therefore proved.

I accuse the Pope of acting heretically on a third count:  of governing in a way more opposed to the moral and physical interests of the poorer classes of his temporal subjects than any lay prince.  Look throughout Europe and one is bound to admit that the administration of the Papal States is the most vicious and anti-Christian.  Large areas within the domain of St. Peter, which once produced large crops, have turned into fever-ridden marshes through the neglect of the Papal government.  A large part of the country, if it has not been swamped by water, is uncultivated, owing not to the barrenness of the soil but to the lack of incentive to the farming profession in the Papal States.

This occupation offers so little standing or profit that it is not sought after; men with ability or capital shun it.  The Pope has retained the monopoly not only of all the important agricultural products, but even all essential foodstuffs, and he grants these monopolies to the Cardinals who win his favour.

Finally, there are no manufacturers in the Papal States, although labour costs would make the development of manufacture profitable.  This is solely due to the faults of the administration.

Every branch of industry is paralysed.  The poor lack work, and would die of starvation if the religious foundations, that is to say, the government, did not feed them.  The poor, fed only by charity, are badly fed; thus their physical conditions are deplorable.

Their moral condition is even more unfortunate since they live in idleness, which breeds every kind of vice, and the brigandage with which the unhappy country is infested.

The third accusation of heresy which I bring against the Pope, on the ground of the faulty and anti-Christian way in which he governs his temporal subjects, is therefore proved.

I accuse the Pope and all the Cardinals – I accuse every Pope and Cardinal since the fifteenth-century, of heresy on this fourth count:  of having allowed the formation of two institutions directly contrary to the Christian spirit – the Inquisition and the Jesuits.  I accuse them of having ever since, almost without interruption, protected these institutions.

The spirit of Christianity is gentleness, kindness, charity, and above all, honesty; its weapons are persuasion and example.

The spirit of the Inquisition is tyranny and greed, its weapons are violence and cruelty.  The spirit of the Jesuit organization is selfishness, and they rely on trickery to gain their end, which is to dominate completely the clergy as well as the laity.

The idea of the Inquisition is radically faulty and anti-Christian.  Even if the Inquisition had killed in their auto-da-fé only those who were guilty of opposing the moral and physical improvement of the poor, even in this case (which would have condemned to death the whole of the Sacred College), they would have been heretics, since Jesus allowed no exceptions in prohibiting the use of violence by His Church.  But the heresy of the Inquisition would have been venial in this case compared with the heresy they have shown in their atrocious activities.

The sentences of the Inquisition have been based only on artificial crimes against the form of worship or dogma, which should never have been regarded as anything but minor offences, and not as crimes deserving capital punishment.

These condemnations have always been intended to make the Catholic clergy all‑powerful, by sacrificing the poor to the rich and powerful laity, on the understanding that the latter allowed themselves to be dominated in all things by the clergy.

As for the Company of Jesus, the famous Pascal has analysed its character, conduct, and aims so well that I will do no more than refer the faithful to the ‘Lettres Provinciales’. I will merely add that the new Company of Jesus is infinitely more contemptible than the old, because it tries to re-establish that preponderance of dogma and worship over morality, which has been destroyed by the Revolution; while the first Jesuits strove only to maintain the abuses which had already crept into the Church in that respect.

The earlier Jesuits defended an existing order; the new Jesuits rebel against the new and better order of things which is taking shape.  Their present-day missionaries are anti-Christs, since they preach a code of morality entirely opposed to that of the Gospel.  The Apostles were defenders of the poor; these missionaries are defenders of the rich and powerful against the poor, whose only defenders now are to be found among lay moralists.

 

 

The Protestant Religion

 

European civilization rose to great heights in the fifteenth century.  Great discoveries and rapid progress were achieved in many fields of practical utility, and they were almost entirely due to the work of laymen.

The discovery of America was due to the persevering genius of Christopher Columbus; Portuguese laymen opened a new route to India by rounding the Cape of Good Hope; printing was discovered and developed by laymen; Dante, Ariosto, and Tasso were laymen; Raphael, Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci were also laymen.  The three great laws from which Newton later deduced the phenomena of the Universe were first formulated by Kepler, a layman.

The Medicis, who increased and stimulated the commerce of Europe, developed agriculture and manufacture, were laymen; and they acquired such social prestige that their family had risen to the rank of a royal house, and they played a part, which one might describe as preponderant, in the temporal power.

Laymen had therefore achieved a clear superiority over priests, while the so-called profane branches of knowledge had gone beyond the limits within which the deductions drawn by the Church from the principles of divine worship founded by Jesus were still confined.  The Pope and the Cardinals no longer possessed the capacity to guide the Christian clergy, and the clergy were no longer capable of guiding the faithful.

From another point of view, the Court of Rome lost at this period much of the support which it had found until then in the class of plebeians against the patricians, and in the third estate against the nobility and the feudal powers.  The divine Founder of Christianity enjoined upon His apostles a continual endeavour to raise up the lowest classes of society, and to lessen the importance of those invested with the power of command and law-making.  Until the fifteenth century the Church followed more or less the Christian precept.  Nearly all the Cardinals and Popes came from the plebeian class, and often they appeared from families used to the most menial occupations.  By this policy the clergy strove with perseverance to lessen the importance and prestige of hereditary aristocracy, and to subject it to an intellectual aristocracy.

At the end of the fourteenth century the Sacred College entirely changed its purpose.  It gave up the guidance of the Christian Church for a wholly worldly policy; the spiritual power ceased to struggle against the temporal power, it no longer identified itself with the poorer social classes, or worked for their improvement; it no longer strove to impose an intellectual aristocracy on the hereditary aristocracy.  It adopted a plan of which the aim was to preserve the power and wealth acquired by the efforts of the church militant, and to enjoy this power and wealth without effort and without fulfilling any useful function.

In pursuit of this aim the Sacred College put itself under the protection of the temporal power, against which it had formerly fought, and made an impious pact:  ‘We will use all our influence with the laity to establish in your favour absolute power; we will declare that you are kings by the grace of God; we will teach the dogma of passive obedience; we will establish the Inquisition, by which you will have at your disposal a tribunal which is subject to no rules; we will create a new religious order which we shall name the Society of Jesus: this Society will establish a dogma directly opposed to that of Christianity, and it will undertake to subordinate in the sight of God the interests of the poor to the interests of the rich and powerful.  In exchange for these services, and our subordination to the temporal power which is unholy in origin because its rights are founded on the law of the strongest, and as compensation for our treason to the poor, whom our Divine Founder enjoined us to defend and champion, we require you to preserve the property gained by the apostolic work of the church militant, and we require you to maintain us in the enjoyment of our privileges and revenues granted by your predecessors.’

This unholy pact, conceived by the Sacred College at the end of the fifteenth century, had already been carried out in its main lines by the beginning of the sixteenth century.

It was at this time that Leo X came to the papal throne – a remarkable event in the annals of religion, and an event hitherto not sufficiently emphasized by Christian thinkers.

The earliest heads of the Church were chosen by the faithful, and the sole motive for their election was their zeal for the good of the poor, and their ability to find out means of improving the moral and physical condition of the masses.  When the heads of the Church obtained the sovereignty of Rome and made it the capital of the Christian world, when they had centralized the priestly power in the hands of the Pope, the controlling factor in papal elections was the ability of the candidate chosen by the Sacred College to crush hereditary aristocracy under the weight of intellectual aristocracy.  The motives for the election of Leo X were quite different and contrary to those which guided former electors, whose intentions were more or less Christian.  On this occasion the Cardinals acted on the plan which they had adopted, as I have already pointed out.  They kept before them only one aim – to preserve for the Church its wealth and to increase their worldly ease.  Leo X was by nature of the stuff of which kings are made, and consequently he was not suitable to be a Pope.  In fact, his whole conduct shewed that he attached more importance to the rights derived from his birth than those derived from the papacy.  He organized the ceremonial round his person exactly like that of a lay court.  His sister kept up a palace and the state of a princess at Rome, not in virtue of her kinship with the Pope, but of her position as daughter of the most important lay prince of Italy.

Leo X was the patron of poets, painters, architects, sculptors, and scholars.  He protected all the learned Greeks who took refuge in Italy at this time, but he acted in this as a temporal prince, and only to procure pleasure for himself and add a worldly brilliance to his reign.  A real Pope would have taken advantage of the advance of European civilization in every important sphere at this period to harmonize the work of the scholars, artists, and great industrial leaders with the interests of the clergy and the poor, against the hereditary claims of the temporal power, unholy in its origin, as I have explained above, because its original rights were founded on the right of conquest, that is to say, on the law of the strongest.

The early papal indulgences were granted in return for work which was socially beneficial, such as the construction of bridges, roads, etc.  The later indulgences were granted to the faithful at a time when the papal authority, having amassed great wealth and temporal power, had begun to suffer from moral decline.  The Popes diverted the sums accruing from the sale of indulgences from their original purpose, and used them to satisfy their whims or promote priestly ambition, though they were still careful to give their activities an appearance of public service.  Leo X altered all this; he took off the mask, and declared publicly that the profits of plenary indulgences, which he ordered the Dominicans to sell on behalf of the Holy See, should be used to pay for the dresses of his sister.  Leo X proceeded to exploit the papacy as if it was essentially a temporal power; he wished to tax the faithful in exactly the same way as he would have done if he had possessed the rights of a lay prince over them.

In his diplomatic relations with Charles V, Leo X behaved much more as a prince of the House of Medici than as a Pope.  The result was that the papacy was no longer a source of apprehension for the Emperor, and Charles V, conscious that he was no longer limited by the ecclesiastical authority, which was alone capable of putting bounds to the ambition of the lay princes, conceived the plan of establishing for himself a universal monarchy – the plan revived by Louis XIV and Bonaparte.  From Charlemagne till the sixteenth century, none of the lay European princes had attempted to carry out such a project.

Such was the condition of the single religion which existed then in Europe, when Luther began his revolt against the Court of Rome.  The work of this reformer falls naturally into two parts – first, criticism of the papal religion; the second aiming at the establishment of a religion separate from that governed by the Court of Rome.  The first part of Luther’s work was feasible and was carried out completely.  By his criticism of the Court of Rome, Luther rendered an important service to civilization; without him, the papacy would have completely subjected the human spirit to superstitious ideas, by suppressing moral principles altogether.  To Luther we owe the destruction of a spiritual power which was no longer in harmony with social conditions.  But Luther could not fight against ultra-montane doctrines without trying to reorganize the Christian religion on his own lines.

In this second part of his reforms, in the constructive part of his work, Luther has left to his successors much to do; the Protestant religion, as conceived by Luther, is still only a heresy.  Certainly Luther was right in saying that the Court of Rome had abandoned the aims given by Jesus to His apostles in proclaiming that the forms of worship and dogma established by the Popes were not suitable for directing the faithful towards Christian morality, while in their true form they could not be mistaken for anything but accessories to religion; but, in proclaiming these undoubted truths, Luther was wrong in concluding that morality should be taught to the faithful of his own time in the same way that the fathers of the Church taught it to their contemporaries.  He was not entitled to conclude that the form of worship should be stripped of all the beauty with which the arts could enrich it.  The dogmatic part of Luther’s reform failed.  The reform was incomplete, and itself needs to be reformed.  I accuse the Lutherans of heresy on this first count:  of adopting a morality much inferior to the morality appropriate to Christians in the present stage of their civilization.

As public opinion in Europe is favourable to Protestantism, and unfavourable to Catholicism, I must demonstrate the charge of heresy against Protestantism very strictly, and I am therefore obliged to treat this question at length.

Jesus gave His apostles and their successors the task of organizing the human race in the way most favourable to the improvement of the lot of the poor, at the same time enjoining His Church to use none but the methods of kindness, persuasion, and demonstration to reach this end.

Much time and much work would be required to fulfil this task; it is not surprising, therefore, that it has not yet been accomplished.

What part of this task fell to Luther?  How did Luther acquit himself in it?  These two points I wish to clarify.  For this purpose, I shall examine successively four main questions.

(1) What was the organization of society when Jesus gave His apostles the mission of reorganizing the human race?

(2) What was the organization of society at the time when Luther made his reform?

(3) What was the complete reform needed by the Papal religion to resume the direction given it by Jesus and His apostles, when Luther rebelled against the Court of Rome?

(4) In what did Luther’s reform consist?

The analysis of these four main questions will lead inevitably to the conclusion that the Lutherans are heretics.

(1) At the time when Jesus gave His apostles the sublime mission of organizing the human race in the interests of the poorest class, civilization was still in its infancy.  Society was divided into two main classes:  masters and slaves.  The former class was divided into two castes:  the patricians who made laws and filled all important public posts, and the plebeians who were subject to the law, which they had not made, and usually performed the menial tasks.  Even the greatest thinkers did not conceive of an organization of society on any other basis.  A system of moral principles did not yet exist, as no one had yet discovered a way of relating all the principles of morality to a single principle.

There was as yet no religious system, since all the official religions recognized a large number of gods, inspiring men with diverse and even totally contrary sentiments.  The human spirit had not yet risen to the consciousness of philanthropic feelings.  The notion of patriotism was the widest principle entertained by the most generous minds, but this feeling of patriotism was extremely narrow, because of the limited territories and comparatively small populations of the nations of antiquity.

One nation, the Romans, ruled over all the others, and ruled arbitrarily.

The size of the earth was unknown, so that no general plan of improving the territorial property of the human race could be conceived.

In short, Christianity, its moral principles, form of worship and dogma, its followers and priests, found at the beginning that they were completely outside the existing social organization, its morals and customs.

(2) At the time when Luther made his reform, civilization had made great advances.  Since the establishment of Christianity, society had completely altered; the organization of society was now based on new foundations.  Slavery was almost entirely abolished; the patricians no longer monopolized legislation, or public office; the temporal power, profane in origin, no longer dominated the spiritual power, and the spiritual power was no longer in the hands of the patricians.  The Court of Rome had become the leading court of Europe; since the establishment of the papacy, all the Popes and nearly all the Cardinals had come from the plebeian class.  An intellectual aristocracy had precedence over an aristocracy of riches, as well as over a hereditary aristocracy.

Society now had a religious system and a system of morality combined, since love of God and love of one’s neighbour gave unity to the most generous sentiments of the faithful.

Christianity had become the basis of social organization; it had replaced the law of the strongest; the right of conquest was no longer considered as the most legitimate of all rights.

America had been discovered; and the human race, having achieved knowledge of the extent of its domains, was in a position to make a general plan of undertakings designed to exploit the planet to the best advantage.

Peaceful activities had developed and acquired precision; the arts had begun to revive; the experimental sciences and industry were beginning to expand.

The sentiment of philanthropy, the true basis of Christianity, had replaced patriotism in the most generous minds.  If all men did not act towards each other as brothers, at least they professed that they should regard each other as children of the same Father.

(3) If Luther had been able to complete his reform, he would have conceived and proclaimed the following doctrine, saying to the Pope and Cardinals:  ‘Your predecessors have adequately perfected the theory of Christianity, and spread it abroad.  The Europeans have now absorbed it; now you should concern yourselves with the general application of this doctrine.  True Christianity should make men happy, not only in heaven but upon earth.  No longer should you keep the eyes of the faithful fixed on abstract ideas; it is by a proper use of material aims and by combining them so as to procure the highest degree of felicity attainable by the human race on earth, that you will achieve the realization of Christianity as the comprehensive, universal and sole religion.

‘You should no longer confine yourselves to preaching to the faithful of every class that the poor are the cherished children of God; you must use boldly and energetically all the powers and methods acquired by the church militant to improve rapidly the moral and physical existence of the most numerous class.  The preliminary and preparatory work of Christianity is over; the task that you have to fulfil is a much more satisfying one than the work accomplished by your predecessors.  This task consists in establishing the universal and final Christianity; it consists in organizing every human race according to the fundamental principle of the divine morality.  To fulfil this task, you must make this principle the basis and aim of every social institution.  The apostles were obliged to recognize the power of Caesar; they were obliged to say “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s” because they were not sufficiently strong to fight against him, and had therefore to avoid antagonizing him.  But today the comparative position of the spiritual and temporal powers has changed, thanks to the work of the church militant, and you should therefore declare to the successors of Caesar that Christianity no longer recognizes their right to dominion over men, a right founded on conquest, on the law of the strongest.

‘You should declare to all kings that the only way of making monarchy legitimate is to regard it as an institution the object of which is to prevent the rich and powerful oppressing the poor; you should say to them that their sole duty is to improve the moral and physical condition of the most numerous class, and that every expense ordered by them in the administration of the national wealth, which is not strictly necessary, is a crime and makes them the enemies of God.

‘You possess all the force necessary to compel the temporal power to agree to this application of Christianity; your supremacy is recognized by all the powers, and you control the clergy spread all over Europe.  The clergy will always have a predominant influence on the temporal institutions of every people, if they will work definitely for the improvement of the condition of the poor, who are everywhere the most numerous class.

‘I pass to another question, and I have this second complaint against you, Holy Father.

Whenever two Christian nations are at war with each other, they are both in the wrong, since the divine Founder of Christianity told all men to treat each other as brothers, and forbade them to use any other means of settling their differences than those of persuasion and argument.  You should use all your papal power, all the influence of the clergy in every nation, to prevent wars; yet, far from acting in this way, you allow the clergy of the nations at war to invoke on their side the God of Battles, who cannot be anything but a pagan deity; you allow both sides to sing the Te Deum on the morrow of a battle.  Your conduct in this respect, and the conduct of the clergy, is sacrilegious.

‘Union gives strength.  A society whose members are warring against each other is ripe for dissolution.  With all haste, recall the clergy to unity of action.

‘There is another form of unity even more important to establish – I mean the unity of aim for all the efforts of Christians, of every race.  There is a clear, universal, positive, material aim which you should put before mankind, so as to make Christianity prevail over Mohammedanism or the Buddhism of China and of India; over every religion, and every temporal institution.

‘The main aim which you should urge men to work for is the improvement of the moral and physical condition of the most numerous class; and you should create a form of social organization suitable for the encouragement of this work, and to ensure that it has priority over all other undertakings, however important they may seem.

‘The most favourable conditions for improving as rapidly as possible the condition of the poorest class, would be those in which large-scale enterprises were needed, of a kind which would require the greatest development of human intelligence.

‘You have the power to create these conditions.  Now that the size of the planet is known, you should make the scientists, artists, and industrialists draw up a general plan of enterprises designed to make the domain of the human race as productive and agreeable as possible in every way.

‘The huge number of enterprises which you will at once initiate will contribute more effectively to the improvement of the lot of the poor than any amount of charity; and in this way the rich, far from impoverishing themselves by grants of money, will enrich themselves as well as the poor.

‘The Church has until now offered the faithful only a metaphysical aim for their activities – the heavenly paradise, with the result that priests have acquired completely arbitrary powers, which they have abused in the most extravagant and absurd fashion.  Some have persuaded their followers that they must flagellate the flesh with a scourge in order to attain paradise; others have required them to martyr themselves with hair-shirts, others have recommended fasting.  Some say they must eat fish, and abstain from meat; others, that they must say enormous numbers of prayers every day, mostly trivial, and written in a language of which most of the faithful are ignorant.  Others say they must spend much of the day kneeling in church.  None of these things contribute in any way to the improvement of the lot of the poor.  This action of the Church was possible and inevitable in the early days of religion; but today, when our ideas on this subject have become clearer and more precise, the maintenance of such mumbo-jumbo would bring dishonour on the Court of Rome.  Doubtless all Christians desire eternal life, but the only way of obtaining it consists in working during this life for the welfare of the human race.  Holy Father, the human race is undergoing at this moment a great intellectual crisis.  Three new activities have appeared; the arts have revived, science is about to predominate over all other branches of knowledge, and great industrial organizations will promote the improvement of the lot of the poor more directly than any of the steps taken hitherto by the temporal or the spiritual powers.

‘These three activities are of a peaceful nature; therefore it is to your interest, and to that of the Church, to join forces with them.  By this union, you can soon and without difficulty organize the human race in the way most favourable to the moral and physical improvement of the most numerous class.  By these means the power of Caesar, which is unholy in its origin, and its claims, will be completely destroyed.

‘If, on the contrary, you condemn as unholy, or of no account in the eyes of God, the arts, sciences, and great industrial organizations; if you try to maintain your domination of mankind by the methods which your predecessors employed to acquire it in the Middle Ages; if you continue to put forward mystical ideas as the most important for the happiness of mankind, the artists, scientists and industrialists will ally with Caesar against you.  They will open the eyes of the common people to the absurdity of your doctrines, to the monstrous abuse of your power, and you will then have no resource to maintain your place in society except to become the instruments of the temporal power.  Caesar will force you to oppose the progress of civilization by keeping the people occupied with mystical and superstitious ideas, and depriving them as far as possible of education in the arts, experimental sciences, and industrial organization.  Your main business will be to induce respect for the temporal power, which hitherto you have fought against; to preach passive obedience to kings, to lay down the rule that they are responsible to none but God, and that, in any case, their subjects cannot disobey without committing a crime.  Such will be the method by which you will preserve your honours and wealth.

‘I have still to speak to you, Holy Father, on a very important point.  The unity of the papacy, which is nothing but a unity of command, has sufficed hitherto to coordinate the different ranks of the clergy, because the clergy (and a portion of the laity) were still ignorant.  Nowadays, this unity does not provide an adequate bond; you must lay down clearly the unity of the material aims of the efforts of the Church.  The papacy must publicly explain its actions, and clearly demonstrate how its actions contribute to the improvement of the moral and physical existence of the most numerous class.  The Popes must cease to act according to motives they keep secret.’

(4) Luther was an extremely energetic and able critic, but it is only in this respect that he showed marked ability.  He demonstrated vigorously and thoroughly that the Court of Rome had abandoned the true paths of Christianity; he proved that, on the one hand, Rome was trying to make itself into an arbitrary power, and that, on the other, it sought to ally itself with the powerful against the poor; and that, therefore, the faithful must compel it to reform.

But that part of his work which was connected with the reorganization of Christianity was much worse than it should have been.  Instead of taking the steps required to increase the social significance of the Christian religion, he took a retrograde step which carried it back to its starting point.  He removed Christianity from its social context.  He thus recognized the power of Caesar as the power from which all other powers derive; he preserved for his church merely the right of humble petition to the temporal power.  By these steps he handed over the peaceful activities of mankind to the men of violence, the military caste, in perpetual dependence.  He thus confined Christian morality to the narrow limits which were forced upon the early Christians by the existing state of civilization.

The charge of heresy which I have brought against the Protestants, on the ground of the morality they have adopted, which is far below the present level of our civilization, is therefore proved.

I accuse the Protestants of heresy on the second count:  of adopting a faulty form of worship.

The more society progresses morally and physically, the more subdivision of intellectual and manual labour takes place; in the course of their daily work, men’s minds are occupied with things of more and more specialized interest, as the arts, science, and industry progress.  The result is that, the more society progresses, the more necessary it is that the form of worship should be improved; for the purpose of the form of worship is to remind men, when they assemble periodically on the day of rest, of the interests common to all members of society, of the common interests of the human race.

Luther the reformer, and, since his death, the clergy of the reformed churches, should therefore have sought to make the form of worship as suitable as possible for reminding the faithful of their common interests.

They should have sought for the means and the conditions which would develop among the faithful the fundamental principle of the Christian religion, that all men should treat each other as brothers, the means which would accustom their minds to this principle, and train them to apply it in all social relationships.  Their aim should be to ensure that men should not lose sight of this principle, however specialized their daily occupations might be.

There are two main ways of calling men’s attention to ideas of this sort and giving them a strong impulse; fear must be roused in them by the contemplation of the terrible evils in store for them if they depart from the rules laid down for them, and they must be attracted by the delights which will follow their efforts along the paths put before them.  In both cases, the most effective results will be produced by combining all the resources offered by the arts.

The preacher, who naturally uses eloquence, the first of the arts, should make his audience tremble by depicting the miserable state of the man who, in this life, deserves the condemnation of the people; he should show God striking down with His arm the men whose feelings are not dominated by love of his fellow men.  Alternatively, he should stimulate in his audience powerful and generous feelings by persuading them that the happiness which comes from the esteem of one’s fellow men is greater than any other form of happiness.  The poets should help the work of the preachers; they should provide short poems to be recited in unison, so that all the faithful may become teachers of one another.  The musicians should enrich the religious poems by their harmonies, and give them a musical character penetrating to the depths of the soul.  Painters and sculptors working in the temple should remind Christians of acts which are outstandingly Christian.  Architects should build temples so that the preachers, poets, and musicians, the painters and sculptors can sway the faithful, at will, by feelings of terror or feelings of joy and hope.

These are obviously the lines along which a form of worship should be developed, and the means of making it most socially useful.  What did Luther do in this respect?  He reduced the ritual of the Church simply to preaching; he made all the Christian sentiments as prosaic as possible; he banned from his churches all decoration of painting and sculpture, and suppressed music.  He preferred religious buildings to be as dull as possible, and consequently as unsuitable as possible for rousing the faithful to a strong feeling for the common welfare.

The Protestants will obviously make the objection that, while Catholics have plenty of singing and their shrines are decorated with the finest works of painting and sculpture, the sermons of the reformed clergy have a much more beneficial effect on their congregations than all the sermons of the Catholic priests (whose principal object is always to make the Roman Catholics give as much money as possible for the maintenance of the church and the clergy), and that therefore it is impossible to deny that the Protestant form of worship is superior to the Catholic.

To this I reply:  the object of my work is not to find out which of the two forms of religion is the less heretical.  I have undertaken to show that they are both heretical, in different degrees; that is to say, that neither of them is the Christian religion. I have tried to show that Christianity has been abandoned since the fifteenth century; I have tried to restore and revitalize it.  My aim is to purify this religion (eminently philanthropic in character) of all superstitions or useless beliefs and practices.

New Christianity is called upon to achieve the triumph of the principles of universal morality in the struggle which is going on with the forces aiming at the individual instead of public interests.  This rejuvenated religion is called upon to organize all peoples in a state of perpetual peace, by allying them all against the nation which tries to gain its own advantage at the expense of the good of the whole human race, mobilizing them against any government so anti-Christian as to sacrifice national interests to the private interest of the rulers.  It is called upon to link together the scientists, artists, and industrialists, and to make them the managing directors of the human race, as well as of the particular interests of each individual people.  It is called upon to put the arts, experimental sciences and industry in the front rank of sacred studies, whereas the Catholics have put them among the profane branches of study.

Finally, New Christianity is called upon to pronounce anathema upon theology, and to condemn as unholy any doctrine trying to teach men that there is any other way of obtaining eternal life, except that of working with all their might for the improvement of the conditions of life of their fellow men.

I have clearly shewn what the form of worship should be, if it is to fulfil the purpose of reminding Christians, on the day of rest, of Christian morality.  I have shewn conclusively that the Protestant form of worship was deprived of the most effective aids for sowing in the souls of the faithful a desire for the public good.  Thus, I have proved the second charge of heresy against Protestantism.

I bring a third charge of heresy against the Protestants:  I accuse them of adopting a false creed.

In the early days of religion, at a time when the people were still sunk in ignorance, they had little interest in the observation of natural phenomena.  Man’s ambition had not risen to the point where he felt a desire to master the planet and mould it to his own advantage; he had few needs of which he was clearly aware, but he was swayed by violent passions, arising from his vague desires and impulses, and mainly from a presentiment of the power he was destined to wield over nature.  Commerce, which has since civilized the world, only existed in rudimentary form; each small tribe was in a state of permanent hostility to the rest of the human race, and the inhabitants of a town had no moral link with any but the members of their own town.  Thus philanthropy could not yet exist except as an abstract idea.

At this period, also, all nations were divided into two classes, master and slaves.  Religion could only have a strong effect on the masters, since they alone had the capacity of free will.  Morality was bound to be the least developed aspect of religion, since there was no reciprocity of rights and duties between the two great sections of society.  Ritual and dogma were bound to appear much more important than morality.  Religious observances, and reasoning about the purpose of ritual and the beliefs on which it was based, were the aspects of religion which would mostly occupy the priests and the mass of believers.

In short, the material side of religion played a greater part the nearer religion was to its origins; while the spiritual aspect has acquired the greater importance as man’s intelligence has developed.

Nowadays the form of worship should be regarded only as a means of reminding men, on the day of rest, of philanthropic feelings and ideas, and dogma should be conceived only as a collection of commentaries aimed at the general application of these ideas and feelings to political developments, or encouraging the faithful to apply moral principles in their daily relationships.

I shall now examine Luther’s thoughts on dogma, his own words, and his advice to the Protestants in this respect.

Luther considered that Christianity was perfect in its origin, but deteriorated steadily since the time of its institution.  As a reformer he concentrated entirely on the errors of the Church in the Middle Ages, and overlooked the immense progress contributed by the priests to civilization, and the important social position they had won for men of peaceful pursuits by diminishing the force and prestige of the temporal power – that unholy power which tends by its nature to subject men to the rule of physical force, and to govern nations for its own profit.  Luther ordered Protestants to study Christianity in the books written at the time of its foundation, and particularly the Bible.  He declared that he would recognize no dogmas which were not expounded in the Holy Scriptures.

This declaration by Luther was as absurd as if the mathematicians, physicists, chemists, and all other learned men declared that their particular sciences should be studied in the earliest works dealing with the subject.

What I have just said is in no way contrary to a belief in the divinity of the Founder of Christianity.  Jesus could only speak to men in the language which they could understand at the time when He spoke to them.  He left to the apostles the seed of Christianity, and made His Church responsible for the development of this precious seed; He gave the Church the duty of abolishing all political rights derived from the law of the strongest, and every institution which was an obstacle to the improvement of the moral and physical condition of the poor.

By observing effects and analysing them carefully one can gather sufficient data to judge causes precisely.  I shall adopt this course, and by examining in turn the main difficulties which have arisen from Luther’s error in directing Christians too exclusively to the Bible, the conclusion will certainly follow that my third charge of heresy against the Protestant religion is proved.

Four main difficulties have resulted from the excessive preoccupation of the Protestants with the study of the Bible.

(1) The study of the Bible has made them lose sight of positive ideas and present interests; it has given them a taste for aimless research and a powerful tendency to metaphysics.  In the north of Germany, the home of Protestantism, vagueness of ideas and feelings predominate in the writings of their most famous philosophers, and of their most popular novelists.

(2) The study of the Bible befouls the imagination by its reminders of several shameful vices which have disappeared with civilization, such as bestiality and incest of all kinds.

(3) The study of the Bible draws attention to political motives contrary to the public welfare; it encourages the governed to establish an equality which is absolutely impossible.  It prevents the Protestants from working for a political system in which common interests will be managed by the ablest men in science, art, and industry – the best form of social system to which the human can attain, since it will contribute most directly and effectively to improvement of the moral and physical condition of the poor.

(4) The study of the Bible encourages the belief that it is the most important kind of study – hence the formation of Bible societies, which send out to the public thousands of copies of the Bible every year.  Instead of using their energies in producing and preaching a doctrine appropriate to the present stage of civilization, these so-called Christian societies give a false direction to philanthropic feelings, and one contrary to the public welfare.  Believing that they are forwarding the progress of the human mind, they would, on the contrary, drag it backwards, if that were possible.

On these four grounds, I conclude that my third accusation of heresy against Protestants, in regard to dogma, is firmly established.

I have had to criticize Protestantism severely in order to bring home to Protestants the incompleteness of Luther’s work, and its inferiority to New Christianity; but, as I have said before beginning my analysis of Luther’s work, I am nevertheless profoundly conscious of the great services to society he has made in the critical part of his reform, despite his numerous errors.  Moreover, my criticism is directed against Protestantism in so far as it is regarded by Protestants as the final reform of Christianity; it is far from attacking the stubborn genius of Luther.  If we consider the time at which he lived, the circumstances he had to struggle against, we must admit that he did everything possible at the time to initiate reform and establish it.  In emphasizing morality rather than ritual and dogma (despite the fact that Protestant morality is not on a par with the enlightenment of modern civilization), Luther paved the way for a further reform of the Christian religion.  New Christianity must not, however, be regarded as an improved Protestantism.  The new form in which I present the original principles of Christianity is completely different from the various improvements which Christianity has undergone hitherto.

Here I conclude. I think that I have expounded my ideas on the new Christian doctrine sufficiently for you, Sir, the Conservative, to have already formed some opinion about it.  Tell me if you think that I have grasped the true spirit of Christianity, and if my efforts to rejuvenate this sublime religion are of such a kind as to leave its primitive purity untouched.

Conservative.  I have followed your exposition with close attention.  While you were speaking my own ideas became clearer, my doubts disappeared, and I felt my love and admiration for the Christian religion increasing.  My devotion to the religious system which has civilized Europe has not blinded me to the possibility of improving it, and, on this point, you have entirely convinced me.

It is clear that the moral principle that ‘all men should treat each other as brothers,’ given by God to His Church, includes the whole range of ideas which you express in the concept that ‘The whole community should strive to improve the moral and physical existence of the poorest class, and should organize itself on lines most fitted to bring about this great end.’  It is equally certain that in the beginning of Christianity this principle had to be expressed in terms of the first formula, and that today the second formula should be used.

At the time of the foundation of Christianity, as you have said, society was divided into two completely dissimilar classes, masters and slaves, forming, so to speak, two distinct human races, although living in close contact.  It was then completely impossible to establish any reciprocity in the moral relations between the two races; so the divine Founder of the Christian religion limited His moral principle to an obligation on every individual of every human race, not being in a position to establish it as the bond of association uniting masters and slaves.

We live now at a time when slavery is completely abolished; men are now of the same mind politically, and classes are only distinguished by slight differences.  Your conclusion from this situation is that the fundamental principle of Christianity ought to be formulated in such a way as to make it an obligation for the people as a whole, while remaining obligatory for individuals in their relations with each other.  I consider this conclusion legitimate and of the greatest importance.  Henceforward I am a New Christian, and will join you in advocating New Christianity.

However, I have certain observations to make on the general direction which your efforts should take.  The new formula in which you express the Christian principle covers the whole of your conception of social organization – a system founded both on philosophic arguments based on science, art, and industry, as well as on the most universally established religious principle of the civilized world, Christianity.  Well, then, why have you not first expounded this system, the object of all your thinking, from the religious point of view, which is the most exalted and the most popular?  Why did you approach the industrialists, scientists, and artists instead of going straight to the people by the way of religion?  Why do you lose precious time at this moment in criticizing Catholics and Protestants, instead of establishing your religious doctrine forthwith?  Do you wish it to be said of you, as you yourself said of Luther – his criticism was good, but his doctrine poor?

The intellectual powers of man are weak; it is only by concentrating and directing them on a single aim that great and important results can be obtained. Why do you begin by using your energies in criticism, instead of beginning with a doctrine?  Why do you not tackle boldly and straightforwardly the question of New Christianity?  You have discovered the way to cure religious indifference in the most numerous class; as the poor could not be indifferent to a religion the express aim of which is to improve as rapidly as possible their physical and moral existence.  Since you have succeeded in reproducing this fundamental principle of Christianity in an entirely new form, surely your first aim should be to spread the knowledge of this revitalized principle in the class which has the greatest interest in adopting it?  As this class is in itself infinitely larger in number than all others combined, success is certain.

You should have begun by acquiring a large number of followers as support for your attack on the Catholics and Protestants.  Finally, as soon as you had a clear conviction of the power, richness, and irresistible attraction of your theory, you should at once have developed it into a religious doctrine, without preliminary precautions, without any anxiety on the score of political obstacles, or danger of refutation.  You have said that ‘society should be organized in accordance with Christian morality; every class should contribute as far as it can to the improvement of the moral and physical condition of the individuals who compose the largest class; every social institution should contribute as directly and energetically as possible to this great religious aim.  In the present state of enlightenment and civilization, no political right should any longer be based on the law of the strongest, or the right of conquest.  Monarchy is no longer legitimate unless kings use their power to make the rich contribute to the improvement of the moral and physical condition of the poor.’

What obstacles can such a doctrine encounter?  Are not those who have an interest in supporting it infinitely more numerous than those whose interest it is to oppose it?  The supporters of this doctrine base themselves on the principle of divine morality, while its opponents have no weapons but the habits derived from an age of ignorance and barbarism, backed by the principle of Jesuit egoism.

In short, I believe that you should immediately propagate your new doctrine, and form missions to send to all interested nations, and convert them to it.

Reformer.  The New Christians should have the same character and follow the same course as the Christians of the early church; they should use nothing but their intelligence to spread their doctrine.  It is by persuasion and demonstration only that they should work for the conversion of Catholics and Protestants; by persuasion and demonstration they will succeed in leading these misguided Christians to a renunciation of the heresies with which the Roman Catholic and Lutheran religions are polluted in favour of New Christianity.

New Christianity, like primitive Christianity, will be supported, helped, and protected by the force of morality and the omnipotence of public opinion.  If unhappily its introduction should lead to acts of violence, and unjust condemnations, it would be the New Christians who would suffer these acts of violence and unjust condemnations; but in no circumstances whatever, would they use physical force against their opponents, or act as judges or executioners.

Having found the means of rejuvenating Christianity by a transfiguration of its fundamental principle, I have taken care first of all, as I was bound to do, to take every possible precaution to ensure that the introduction of the new doctrine should not excite the poor to acts of violence against the rich and the governments.

I had to approach the rich and the powerful first of all to gain their favour for the new doctrine, by showing them that it was not contrary to their interests because it would be obviously impossible to improve the moral and physical existence of the poor by any other means than those which would also increase the wealth of the rich.  I had to show the artists, scientists, and industrial leaders that their interests were essentially the same as those of the mass of the people, that they belong to the class of workers (of which they were also the natural leaders), and that the gratitude of the mass of the people for the services which they could render would be the only worthy reward for their glorious work.  I had to emphasize the point strongly, because it is of the greatest importance in that it is the only way of giving the nations leaders who really deserve confidence, leaders who are capable of moulding their opinions and educating them to a sound judgment of the political measures favourable or opposed to the interests of the majority.  Finally, I had to show the Catholics and Protestants the exact period when they had taken the wrong turning, in order to make it easier for them to resume the right direction.  I must emphasize this point, because the conversion of the Catholic and Protestant clergy would provide powerful support for New Christianity.

After this explanation I resume my theme; I shall not pause to examine all the religious sects which have sprung from Protestantism.  The most important of them, Anglicanism, is so bound up with the national institutions of England that it can only be properly considered in relation to their institutions as a whole, and this analysis should come when I review, as I have promised, all the spiritual and temporal institutions of Europe and America.  The Greek schism has remained up to now outside the European system, and I shall not deal with it.  Moreover, the fundamental points in the criticism of these different heresies are contained in the criticism of Protestantism.

My aim, however, is not only to demonstrate the heresy of Catholicism and Protestantism.  In order to rejuvenate Christianity it is not enough to enable it to triumph over former religious philosophies.  I must also establish its scientific superiority to all the philosophic doctrines which have discarded religion.  I must defer this line of thought for a later discussion; meanwhile I will show briefly the general lines of my work.

The human race has never ceased to progress, but it has not always proceeded in the same way nor used the same methods to increase the sum of knowledge and perfect civilization.  Experience shows the opposite:  from the fifteenth century to the present day, the human race has used a method quite different from that which it followed from the establishment of Christianity to the fifteenth century.

From the establishment of Christianity to the fifteenth century, the human race was mainly concerned with the coordination of its general ideas, with the realization of a single, universal principle, with the foundation of a universal institution designed to raise an aristocracy of intellect above an aristocracy of birth, and thereby to subordinate particular interests to the general interest.  Throughout this period, the study and observation of private interests, particular facts and secondary principles were neglected, and despised by the majority of educated men.  The prevailing opinion held that secondary principles should be deduced from general ideas and a universal principle – a purely speculative view, since the human intellect has not the means to establish generalizations sufficiently precise to enable all the particular deductions to be drawn from them.  The observations I have made in this dialogue, in the analysis of Catholicism and Protestantism, link up with this important point.

Since the dissolution of the spiritual authority of Europe caused by the rebellion of Luther – since the fifteenth century the human spirit has abandoned universal ideas and devoted itself to particular aspects, and engaged in the analysis of facts and the individual interests of the different classes of society:  it has endeavoured to define the secondary principles on which to base the different branches of knowledge.  During the second period, the view has prevailed that discussion of universal principles and universal interests of the human race were only vague and metaphysical, contributing nothing useful to the progress of enlightenment and the improvement of civilization.

Thus the human spirit has followed a course since the fifteenth century quite different from that which it had followed up to that time; and certainly the important and substantial progress which followed in every branch of knowledge shewed indisputably how much our medieval ancestors had erred in underestimating the study of particular facts, secondary principles, and private interests.

Yet it is equally true that great harm was done to the community by the neglect in which, since the fifteenth century, the study of universal principles and universal interests had been left.  This neglect gave rise to the egoism which became dominant in all classes and individuals.  This sentiment, dominating all classes and individuals, made it easier for Caesarism to recover much of the political force which it had lost before the fifteenth century.  It is to this egoism that we must attribute the political malady of our own age, a malady which afflicts all the workers who serve the community; which allows kings to waste a great proportion of the wages of the poor on their personal expenses, and those of their courtiers and soldiers; which allows monarchy and hereditary aristocracy to usurp much of the esteem which should go to the scientists, artists, and industrialists, in virtue of their direct positive services to the community.

It is therefore desirable that the studies directed to the improvement of our knowledge of universal principles and universal interests should be resumed and encouraged by the community, on a level with studies directed to particular facts, secondary principles, and individual interests.

Such, in outline, are the ideas which will be developed in our second discussion, which will have as its object an explanation of Christianity from the theoretical and scientific point of view, and the demonstration of the superiority of the Christian system to all particular philosophies, whether religious or scientific.  Finally, in a third dialogue, I shall deal directly with New Christianity, Christianity in its final form.  I shall expound its ethical doctrine, form of worship and dogma; I shall propound a creed for New Christians.

I shall show that this doctrine is the only social doctrine appropriate for Europe in its present state of enlightenment and civilization.  I shall demonstrate that by adopting this doctrine the huge difficulties arising, since the fifteenth century, from the encroachment of material power on the spiritual sphere can be most easily and peacefully resolved, and these encroachments stopped, by reorganizing the spiritual authority on a new basis, giving it the necessary strength to restrain the unlimited claims of the temporal power.

I shall further show that the adoption of New Christianity, by coordinating the study of general ideas with that of the specialized sciences, will promote the progress of civilization infinitely more than any other measure.

I conclude this first dialogue by declaring frankly what I think of the Christian revelation.  We are certainly superior to our ancestors in the particular, applied sciences.  It is only since the fifteenth century, and chiefly since the beginning of the last century, that we have made considerable progress in mathematics, physics, chemistry and physiology.  But there is a science much more important for the community than physical and mathematical science – the science on which society is founded, namely ethics, the development of which has been completely different from that of the physical and mathematical sciences.  It is more than eighteen centuries since its fundamental principle has been produced, and since then none of the researches of the men of the greatest genius has been able to discover a principle superior in universality or precision to that formulated by the Founder of Christianity. I will go further and say that when society has lost sight of this principle, and ceased to use it as a guide to its conduct, it has promptly relapsed under the despotism of Caesar, and the rule of brute force, which this principle of Christianity had subordinated to the rule of reason.

I therefore put the question whether the intelligence which produced, eighteen centuries ago, the governing principle of the human race, and produced it fifteen centuries before any important progress was made in the physical and mathematical sciences, must not obviously be superhuman in character, and whether there can be any greater proof of the divine revelation of Christianity.

Yes, I believe that Christianity is divinely instituted, and I am persuaded that God extends a special protection to those who strive to subordinate all human institutions to the fundamental principle of this sublime doctrine.  I am convinced that I am fulfilling a divine mission in recalling nations and kings to the true spirit of Christianity.  Fully confident of the divine protection specially given me in my tasks, I feel emboldened to criticize the kings of Europe who are allied under the sacred name of the Holy Alliance.  I address them directly, daring to say to them:

‘Princes,

‘What is the nature and character, in the eyes of God and of Christians, of the power which you wield?

‘What is the basis of the social system which you endeavour to establish? What measures have you taken to improve the moral and physical condition of the poor?

‘You call yourselves Christians, and yet you base your power on material force; you are still the successors of Caesar, and you forget that true Christians have as the final goal of their efforts the abolition of the power of the sword, the power of Caesar, which by its nature is essentially transitory.

‘Yet this is the power on which you have undertaken to found the social order!  According to you, to this power alone belongs the initiation in all improvements demanded by the progress of enlightenment.  To support this monstrous system you keep two million men under arms, you compel all tribunals to adopt this principle, you oblige priests, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, to preach the heresy that the power of Caesar is the governing principle of Christian society.

‘In recalling the peoples to the Christian religion by the symbol of your union, in giving them peace which is their first need, you have nevertheless failed to win their gratitude:  your personal interests are too prominent in the schemes which you claim to be in the common interest.  The supreme authority in Europe which rests in your hands is far from being a Christian authority, as it should have been.  As soon as you act, you display the character and signs of material power, of anti-Christian force.

‘All the important measures which you have taken since your union in the Holy Alliance have had the effect of worsening the condition of the poor, not only for the present but for future generations.  You have raised taxes, you raise them every year, in order to meet the mounting costs of your armies and the luxury of your courts.  The class which you favour specially is that of the nobility – a class which, like yourselves, derives its rights from the sword.

‘However, your blameworthy conduct can be excused in certain respects.  If there is one thing which has led you into error, it is the praise which has been given to your united efforts to overthrow the power of the modern Caesar.  In fighting against him you have acted in a truly Christian manner; but it is only because the authority of Caesar which was acquired by Napoleon through conquest had in his hands much greater power than in yours, where it came only through inheritance.  Your conduct can also be excused, in that the churches which should have restrained you at the edge of the precipice, have joined you in throwing themselves over.

‘Princes,

            ‘Hearken to the voice of God which speaks through me.  Return to the path of Christianity; no longer regard mercenary armies, the nobility, the heretical priests and perverse judges, as your principal support, but, united in the name of Christianity, understand how to carry out the duties which Christianity imposes on those who possess power.  Remember that Christianity commands you to use all your powers to increase as rapidly as possible the social welfare of the poor!’