 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. This recording by Karl Manchester, 2007. God and the State by Mikhail Bakunin Chapter 3 Nevertheless, we must not rely too much on this. Though we may be well nice certain that a savant would not dare to treat a man today as he treats a rabbit, it remains always to be feared that the savants as a body, if not interfered with, may submit living men to scientific experiments and doubtedly less cruel, but nonetheless disagreeable to their victims. If they cannot perform experiments upon the bodies of individuals, they will ask nothing better than to perform them on the social body, and that is what must be absolutely prevented. In their existing organization, monopolizing science and remaining thus outside of social life, the savants form a separate caste, in many respects analogous to the priesthood. Scientific abstraction is their God. Living and real individuals are their victims, and they are the consecrated and licensed sacrifices. Science cannot go outside of the sphere of abstractions. In this respect, it is infinitely inferior to art, which in its turn is peculiarly concerned also with general types and general situations, but which incarnates them by an artifice of its own, in forms which, if they are not living in the sense of real life, nonetheless excite in our imagination the memory and sentiments of life. Art, in a certain sense, individualizes the types and situations which it conceives by means of the individualities without flesh and bone and consequently permanent and immortal, which it has the power to create. It recalls to our minds the living real individualities which appear and disappear under our eyes. Art, then, is, as it were, the return of abstraction to life. Science, on the contrary, is the perpetual immolation of life, fugitive, temporary, but real, on the altar of eternal abstractions. Science is as incapable of grasping the individuality of a man as that of a rabbit, being equally indifferent to both. Not that it is ignorant of the principle of individuality, it conceives it perfectly as a principle, but not as a fact. It knows very well that all the animal species, including the human species, have no real existence outside of an indefinite number of individuals, born and dying to make room for new individuals, equally fugitive. It knows that in rising from the animal species to the superior species, the principle of individuality becomes more pronounced. The individuals appear freer and more complete. It knows that man, the last and most perfect animal of earth, presents the most complete and most remarkable individuality because of his power to conceive, create, personify, as it were, in his social and private existence, the universal law. It knows, finally, when it is not viciated by theological or metaphysical, political or judicial doctrinaireism, or even by a narrow scientific pride, when it is not deaf to the instincts and spontaneous aspirations of life, it knows, and this is its last word, that respect for man is the supreme law of humanity and that the great, the real object of history, its only legitimate object, is the humanisation and emancipation, the real liberty, the prosperity and happiness of each individual living in society. For, if we would not fall back into the liberty-sidal fiction of the public welfare represented by the state, a fiction always founded on the systematic sacrifice of the people, we must clearly recognise that collective liberty and prosperity exist only so far as they represent the sum of individual liberties and prosperity. Science knows all these things, but it does not and cannot go beyond them. Abstraction being its very nature, it can well enough conceive the principle of real and living individuality, but it can have no dealings with real and living individuals. It concerns itself with individuals in general, but not with Peter or James, not with such and such a one, who so far as it is concerned do not, cannot have any existence. Its individuals, I repeat, are only abstractions. Now, history is made not by abstract individuals, but by acting, living, and passing individuals. Abstractions advance only when born forward by real men. For these beings made not in idea only, but in reality of flesh and blood, science has no heart. It considers them at most as material for intellectual and social development. What does it care for the particular conditions and chance fate of Peter or James? It would make itself ridiculous, it would abdicate, it would annihilate itself, if it wished to concern itself with them otherwise than as examples in support of its eternal theories, and it would be ridiculous to wish it to do so, for its mission lies not there. It cannot grasp the concrete, it can move only in abstractions. Its mission is to busy itself with the situation and the general conditions of the existence and development, either of the human species in general, or of such a race, such a people, such a class, or category of individuals. The general causes of their prosperity, their decline, and the best general methods of securing their progress in all ways. Provided it accomplishes this task broadly and rationally, it will do its whole duty, and it would be really unjust to expect more of it. But it would be equally ridiculous, it would be disastrous, to entrust it with a mission which it is incapable of fulfilling. Since its own nature forces it to ignore the existence of Peter and James, it must never be permitted, nor must anybody be permitted in its name to govern Peter and James, for it were capable of treating them almost as it treats rabbits, or rather it would continue to ignore them, but its licensed representatives, men not at all abstract, but on the contrary in very active life and having very substantial interests, yielding to the pernicious influence which privilege inevitably exercises upon men, would finally fleece other men in the name of science, just as they have been fleeced hitherto by priests, politicians of all shades, and lawyers in the name of God, and of the state of judicial right. What I preach then is, to a certain extent, the revolt of life against science, or rather against the government of science, not to destroy science that would be high treason to humanity, but to remand it to its place so that it can never leave it again. Until now all human history has been only a perpetual and bloody immolation of millions of poor human beings in honour of some pitiless abstraction. God, country, power of state, national honour, historical rights, judicial rights, political liberty, public welfare. Such has been, up to today, the natural, spontaneous, and inevitable movement of human societies. We cannot undo it. We must submit to it so far as the past is concerned, as we submit to all natural fatalities. We must believe that that was the only possible way to educate the human race, for we must not deceive ourselves. Even attributing the larger part to the Machiavellian wiles of the governing classes, we have to recognise that no minority would have been powerful enough to impose all these horrible sacrifices upon the masses if there had not been in the masses themselves a dizzy, spontaneous movement which pushed them on to continual self-sacrifice. Now to one, now to another of these devouring abstractions the vampires of history ever nourished upon human blood. We readily understand that this is very gratifying to the theologians, politicians, and jurists. Priests of these abstractions, they live only by the continual immolation of the people. Nor is it more surprising that Metaphysics 2 should give its consent. Its only mission is to justify and rationalise as far as possible the iniquitous and absurd. But that positive science itself should have shown the same tendencies is a fact which we must deplore while we establish it. That it has done so is due to two reasons. In the first place, because constituted outside of life, it is represented by a privileged body. And in the second place, because thus far it has posited itself as an absolute and final object of all human development. By a judicious criticism, which it can and finally will be forced to pass upon itself, it would understand on the contrary that it is only a means for the realisation of a much higher object, that of the complete humanisation of the real situation of all the real individuals who are born, who live, and who die on earth. The immense advantage of positive science over theology, metaphysics, politics, and judicial right consists in this. That in the place of the false and fatal abstractions set up by these doctrines, it posits true abstractions which express the general nature and logic of things, their general relations and the general laws of their development, this separates it profoundly from all preceding doctrines and will assure it forever a great position in society. It will constitute in a certain sense society's collective consciousness. But there is one aspect in which it resembles all these doctrines. It's only possible object being abstractions. It is forced by its very nature to ignore real men, outside of whom the truest abstractions have no existence. To remedy this radical defect, positive science will have to proceed by a different method from that followed by the doctrines of the past. The latter have taken advantage of the ignorance of the masses to sacrifice them with delight to their abstractions, which, by the way, are always very lucrative to those who represent them in flesh and bone. Positive science, recognizing its absolute inability to conceive real individuals and interests itself in their lot, must definitely and absolutely renounce all claim to the government of societies. For if it should meddle therein, it would only sacrifice continually the living men whom it ignores to the abstractions, which constitute the sole object of its legitimate preoccupations. The true science of history, for instance, does not yet exist. Scarcely do we begin today to catch a glimpse of its extremely complicated conditions. But suppose it were definitely developed. What could it give us? It would exhibit a faithful and rational picture of the natural development of the general conditions, material and ideal, economical, political and social, religious, philosophical, aesthetic and scientific, of the societies which have a history. But this universal picture of human civilizations, however detailed it might be, would never show anything beyond general and consequently abstract estimates. The milliards of individuals who have furnished the living and suffering materials of this history at once triumphant and dismal, triumphant by its general results, dismal by the immense hecatomb of human victims crushed under its ear, those milliards of obscure individuals without whom none of the great abstract results of history would have been obtained and who, bear in mind, have never benefited by any of these results, will find no place, not even the slightest, in our annals. They have lived and been sacrificed, crushed for the good of abstract humanity. That is all. Shall we blame the science of history? That would be unjust and ridiculous. Individuals cannot be grasped by thought, by reflection or even by human speech, which is capable of expressing abstractions only. They cannot be grasped in the present day any more than in the past. Therefore, social science itself, the science of the future, will necessarily continue to ignore them. All that we have a right to demand of it is that it shall point us with faithful and sure hand to the general causes of individual suffering. Among these causes it will not forget the emulation and subordination, still too frequent, alas, of living individuals to abstract generalities, at the same time showing us the general conditions necessary to the real emancipation of the individuals living in society. That is its mission. Those are its limits, which the action of social science can only be impotent and fatal, beyond those limits being the doctrinaire and governmental pretensions of its licensed representatives, its priests. It is time to have done with all popes and priests. We want them no longer, even if they call themselves social democrats. Once more, the sole mission of science is to light the road. Only life delivered from all its governmental and doctrinaire barriers and given full liberty of action can create. How to solve this antinomy? On the one hand, science is indispensable to the rational organization of society. On the other, being incapable of interesting itself in that which is real and living, it must not interfere with the real or practical organization of society. This contradiction can be solved only in one way, by the liquidation of science as a moral being existing outside of all and represented by a body of brevity savants. It must spread among the masses. Science being called upon to henceforth represent society's collective consciousness must really become the property of everybody. Thereby, without losing anything of its universal character of which it can never divest itself without ceasing to be science and while continuing to concern itself exclusively with general causes, the conditions and fixed relations of individuals and things, it will become one in fact with the immediate and real life of all individuals. That will be a movement analogous to that which said to the Protestants at the beginning of the Reformation that there was no further need for priests for man, who had henceforth be his own priest, every man thanks to the invisible intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ alone, having at last succeeded in swallowing his good God. But here the question is not of Jesus Christ nor good God, nor of political liberty, nor of judicial right, things all theologically or metaphysically revealed and all alike indigestible. The world of scientific abstractions is not revealed, it is inherent in the real world, of which it is only the general or abstract expression and representation. As long as it forms a separate region, specially represented by the savants as a body, this ideal world threatens to take the place of a good God to the real world, reserving for its licensed representatives the office of priests. That is the reason why it is necessary to dissolve the special social organization of the savants by general instruction, equal for all in all things in order that their masses ceasing to be flocks lead and shorn by privileged priests may take into their own hands the direction of their destinies. Science, in becoming the patrimony of everybody will wed itself in a certain sense to the immediate and real life of each. It will gain in utility and grace what it loses in pride, ambition and doctrinaire pedantry. This, however, will not prevent men of genius, better organized for scientific speculation than the majority of their fellows from devoting themselves exclusively to the motivation of the sciences and rendering great services to humanity. Only they will be ambitious for no other social influence than the natural influence exercised upon its surroundings by every superior intelligence, and for no other reward than the high delight which a noble mind always finds in the satisfaction of a noble passion. End footnote But until the masses shall have reached this degree of instruction, will it be necessary to leave them to the government of scientific men? Certainly not. It would be better for them to dispense with science than allow themselves to be governed by savants. The first consequence of the government of these men would be to render science inaccessible to the people, and such a government would necessarily be aristocratic because the existing scientific institutions are essentially aristocratic and aristocracy of learning. From the practical point of view the most implacable and from the social point of view the most haughty and insulting such would be the power established in the name of science. This regime would be capable of paralyzing the life and movement of society. The savants, always presumptuous ever self-sufficient and ever impotent would desire to meddle with everything and the sources of life would dry up under the breath of their abstractions. Once more, life that science creates life. The spontaneous action of the people themselves alone can create liberty. Undoubtedly, it would be a very fortunate thing if science could, from this day forth, illuminate the spontaneous march of the people towards their emancipation. But better an absence of light than a false and feeble light kindled only to mislead those who follow it, after all the people will not lack light. Not in vain have they traversed a long historic career and paid for their errors by centuries of misery. The practical summary of their painful experiences constitutes a sort of traditional science which in certain respects is worth as much as theoretical science. Last of all a portion of the youth, those of the bourgeois students who feel hatred enough for the falsehood, hypocrisy, injustice and cowardice of bourgeoisie to find courage to turn their backs upon it and passion enough to unreservedly embrace the just and human cause of the proletariat. Those will be, as I have already said for eternal instructors of the people. Thanks to them there will be no occasion for the government of the savants. If the people should beware of the government of the savants, all the more should they provide against that of the inspired idealists. As the poets of heaven the more dangerous they become. The scientific abstraction I have said is a rational abstraction true in its essence, necessary to life of which it is the theoretical representation or if one prefers the conscience, it may it must be absorbed and digested by life. The idealistic abstraction God is a corrosive poison which destroys and decomposes life, falsifies and kills it. The pride of the idealists not being personal but divine is invincible and inexorable. It may it must die but it will never yield and while it has a breath left it will try to subject men to its God just as the lieutenants of Prussia these practical idealists of Germany would like to see the people crushed under the spurred boot of their emperor. The faith is the same the end but little different and the result as that of faith is slavery. It is at the same time the triumph of the ugliest and most brutal materialism. There is no need to demonstrate this in the case of Germany one would have to be blind to avoid seeing it at the present hour but I think it is still necessary to demonstrate it in the case of divine idealism. Man like all the rest of nature is an entirely material being. The mind, the facility of thinking of receiving and reflecting upon different external and internal sensations of remembering them when they have passed and reproducing them by the imagination of comparing and distinguishing them of abstracting determinations common to them and thus creating general concepts and finally of forming ideas by grouping and combining concepts according to different methods. Intelligence in a word, soul creator of our whole ideal world is a property of the animal body and especially of the quite material organism of the brain. We know this certainly by the experience of all which no fact has ever contradicted and which any man can verify at any moment of his life. In all animals without accepting the wholly inferior species we find a certain degree of intelligence and we see that in the series of species animal intelligence develops in proportion as the organization of species approaches that of man but that in man alone it attains to that power of abstraction which properly constitutes thought. Universal experience which is the soul origin the source of all our knowledge shows us therefore that all intelligence is always attached to some animal body and that the intensity the power of this animal function depends on the relative perfection of the organism. Footnote Universal experience on which all science rests must be clearly distinguished from universal faith on which the idealists wish to support their beliefs. The first is a real authentication of facts the second is only a supposition of facts which nobody has seen and which consequently are at variance with the experience of everybody. End footnote The latter of these results of universal experience is not applicable only to the different animal species we establish it likewise in men whose intellectual and moral power depends so clearly upon the greater or less perfection of their organism as a race as a nation as a class and as individuals that it is not necessary to insist upon this point. Footnote The idealists all those who believe in the immateriality and immortality of the human soul must be excessively embarrassed by the difference in intelligence existing between races, peoples and individuals unless we suppose that the various divine particles have been irregularly distributed how is this difference to be explained? Unfortunately there is a considerable number of men wholly stupid foolish even to idiocy Could they have received in the distribution of the particle at once divine and stupid? To escape this embarrassment the idealists must necessarily suppose that all human souls are equal but that the prisons in which they find themselves necessarily confined, human bodies are unequal some more capable than others of serving as an organ for the pure intellectuality of the soul. According to this such a one might have very fine organs at his disposition such another very gross organs but these are distinctions which idealism has not the power to use without falling into inconsistency and the grossest materialism for in the presence of absolute immateriality of soul all bodily differences disappear all that is corporeal material necessarily appearing indifferent equally and absolutely gross the abyss which separates soul from body absolute materiality from absolute materiality is infinite consequently all differences by the way inexplicable and logically impossible which may exist on the other side of the abyss in matter should be to the soul null and void and neither can nor should exercise any influence over it in a word the absolutely immaterial cannot be constrained imprisoned and much less expressed in any degree whatsoever by the absolutely material of all the gross and materialistic using the word in a sense attached to it by the idealists imaginations which were engendered by the primitive ignorance and stupidity of men that of an immaterial soul imprisoned in a material body is certainly the grossest the most stupid and nothing better proves the omnipotence exercised by ancient prejudices even over the best minds that the deplorable sight of men endowed with lofty intelligence still taking of it in our days end footnote on the other hand it is certain that no man has ever seen or can see pure mind detached from all material form existing separately from any animal body whatsoever but if no person has seen it how is it that men have come to believe in its existence the fact of this belief is certain and if not universal as all the idealists pretend at least very general and as such it is entirely worthy of our closest attention for a general belief however foolish it may be exercises too potent a sway over the destiny of men to warrant us in ignoring it or putting it aside the explanation of this belief more over is rational enough the example afforded us by children and young people even by many men long past the age of majority shows us that man may use his mental faculties for a long time before accounting to himself for the way in which he uses them before becoming clearly conscious of it during this working of the mind unconscious of itself during this action of innocent or believing intelligence man obsessed by the external world pushed on by that internal goat called life and its manifold necessities creates a quantity of imaginations, concepts and ideas necessarily very imperfect at first and conforming but slightly to the reality of the things and facts which they endeavour to express not having yet the consciousness of his own intelligent action not knowing yet that he himself has produced and continues to produce these imaginations, these concepts these ideas ignoring their wholly subjective that is human origin he must naturally consider them as objective beings as real beings, wholly independent of him, existing by themselves and in themselves it was thus that primitive peoples emerging slowly from their animal innocence created their gods having created them not suspecting that they themselves were the real creators they worshiped them considering them as real beings infinitely superior to themselves attributed omnipotence to them and recognised themselves as their creatures their slaves as fast as human ideas develop the gods who as I have already stated were never anything more than a fantastic ideal poetical reverberation of an inverted image become idealised also at first gross fetishes they gradually become pure spirits existing outside of the visible world and at last in the course of a long historic evolution are confounded in a single divine being pure, eternal, absolute spirit creator and master of the worlds in every development just or false, real or imaginary collective or individual it is always the first step the first act that is the most difficult that step once taken the rest follows naturally as a necessary consequence the difficult step in the historical development of this terrible religious insanity which continues to obsess and crush us was to posit a divine world as such outside the world this first act of madness so natural from the physiological points of view and consequently necessary in the history of humanity was not accomplished in a single stroke I know not how many centuries were needed to develop this belief and make it a governing influence upon the mental customs of men but at first it became omnipotent as each insane notion necessarily becomes when it takes possession of man's brain take a madman whatever the object of his madness you will find that obscure and fixed idea which obsesses him seems to him the most natural thing in the world and that on the contrary the real things which contradict this idea seem to him ridiculous and odious follies well religion is a collective insanity it is powerful because it is traditional folly and because its origin is lost in the most remote antiquity as collective insanity it has penetrated to the very depths of the public and private existence of the peoples it is incarnate in society it has become so to speak the collective soul and thought every man is enveloped in it from his birth he sucks it in with his mother's milk absorbs it with all that he touches all that he sees he is so exclusively fed upon it so poisoned and penetrated by it in all his being that later however powerful his natural mind he has to make unheard of efforts to deliver himself from it and then never completely succeeds we have one proof of this in our modern idealists and another in our doctrine our materialists the german communists they have found no way to shake off the religion of the state the supernatural world the divine world once well established in the imagination of the peoples the development of the various religious systems has followed its natural and logical course conforming moreover in all things to the contemporary development of economical and political relations of which it has been in all ages in the world of religious fancy the faithful reproduction and divine consecration thus has the collective and historical insanity which calls itself religion being developed since fetishism passing through all the stages from polytheism to christian monotheism the second step in the development of religious beliefs undoubtedly the most difficult next to the establishment of a separate divine world was precisely this transition from polytheism to monotheism from the religious materialism of the pagans to the spiritualistic faith of the christians she pagan gods and this was their principal characteristic were first of all exclusively national gods very numerous they necessarily retained a more or less material character or rather they were so numerous because they were material diversity being one of the principal attributes of the real world the pagan gods were not yet strictly the negation of real things they were only a fantastic exaggeration of them we have seen how much this transition cost the jewish people constituting so to speak its entire history in vain did moses and the prophets preach the one god the people always relapsed into their primitive idolatry into the ancient and comparatively much more natural and convenient faith in many good gods more material, more human and more palpable johova himself, their soul god of moses and the prophets was still an extremely national god who, to reward and punish his faithful followers, his chosen people used material arguments often stupid always gross and cruel it does not even appear that faith in his existence implied a negation of the existence of earlier gods the jewish god did not deny the existence of all these rivals he simply did not want his people to worship them side by side with him because before all johova was a very jealous god his first commandment was this I am the lord god and thou shalt have no other gods before me johova then was only a first draft very material and very rough of the supreme deity of modern idealism moreover he was only a national god like the russian god worshiped by the german generals subjects of the tsar and patriots of the empire of all the russias like the german god whom the pietists and the german generals subjects of william the first at berlin will no doubt soon proclaim the supreme being cannot be a national god he must be the god of entire humanity nor can the supreme being be a material being he must be the negation of all matter, pure spirit two things have proved necessary to the realization of the worship of the supreme being one a realization such as it is of humanity by the negation of nationalities and national forms of worship two a development already far advanced of metaphysical ideas in order to spiritualize the gross johova of the jews the first condition was fulfilled by the romans though in a very negative way no doubt by the conquest of most of the countries known to the ancients and by the destruction of their national institutions the gods of all the concord nations gathered in the pantheon mutually canceled each other this was the first draft of humanity very gross and quite negative as for the second condition the spiritualization of johova that was realized by the greeks long before the conquest of their country by the romans they were the creators of metaphysics greece in the cradle of her history had already found from the orient a divine world which had been definitely established in the traditional faith of her peoples this world had been left and handed over to her by the orient in her instinctive period prior to her political history she had developed and prodigiously humanized this divine world through her poets and when she actually began her history she already had a religion ready made the most sympathetic and noble of all the religions which have existed so far at least as a religion that is a lie can be noble and sympathetic her great thinkers and no nation has had greater than greece found the divine world established not only outside of themselves in the people but also in themselves as a habit of feeling and thought and naturally they took it as a point of departure that they made no theology that is that they did not wait in vain to reconcile dawning reason with the absurdities of such a god as did the scholastics of the middle ages was already much in their favor they left the gods out of their speculations and attached themselves directly to the divine idea one invisible omnipotent, eternal and absolutely spiritualistic but impersonal as concerns spiritualism then the greek metaphysicians much more than the jews were the creators of the christian god the jews only added to it the brutal personality of their jehovah that a sublime genius like the divine Plato could have been absolutely convinced of the reality of the divine idea how contagious, how omnipotent is the tradition of the religious mania even on the greatest minds besides we should not be surprised at it since even in our day the greatest philosophical genius which has ever existed since Aristotle and Plato Hegel in spite even of Kant's criticism imperfect and too metaphysical though it be which had demolished the objectivity or reality of the divine ideas to replace these divine ideas upon their transcendental or celestial throne it is true that Hegel went about his work of restoration in so impolite a manner that he killed the good god forever he took away from these ideas their divine halo by showing to whoever will read him that they were never anything more than a creation of the human mind running through history in search of itself to put an end to all religious insanities in mirage he left nothing lacking but the utterance of those grand words which were said after him almost at the same time by two great minds who had never heard of each other Ludwig Feierbach the disciple and demolisher of Hegel in Germany and Auguste Comte the founder of positive philosophy in France these words were as follows quote metaphysics are reduced to psychology end quote all the metaphysical systems have been nothing else than human psychology developing itself in history today it is no longer difficult to understand how the divine ideas were born how they were created in succession by the abstractive faculty of man man made the gods but in the time of Plato this knowledge was impossible the collective mind and consequently the individual mind as well even that of the greatest genius was not right for that scarcely had it said with Socrates know thyself this self-knowledge existed only in a state of intuition in fact it amounted to nothing hence it was impossible for the human mind to suspect that it was itself the sole creator of the divine world it found the divine world before it it found it as history as tradition as a sentiment as a habit of thought and it necessarily made it the object of its loftiest speculations thus was born metaphysics and thus were developed and perfected the divine ideas the basis of spiritualism it is true that after Plato there was a sort of inverse movement in the development of the mind Aristotle the true father of science and positive philosophy did not deny the divine world but concerned himself with it as possible he was the first to study like the analyst and experimenter that he was logic, the laws of human thought and at the same time the physical world not in its ideal illusory essence but in its real aspect after him the Greeks of Alexandria established the first school of the positive scientists they were atheists but their atheism left no mark on their contemporaries science tended more and more to separate itself from life after Plato divine ideas were rejected in metaphysics themselves this was done by the Epicureans and skeptics two sects who contributed much to the degradation of human aristocracy but they had no effect upon the masses another school infinitely more influential was formed at Alexandria this was the school of neoplatonists these confounding in an impure mixture the monstrous imaginations of the Orient with the ideas of Plato with the true originators and later the elaborators of the Christian dogmas thus the personal and gross egoism of Jehovah the not less brutal and gross Roman conquest and the metaphysical ideal speculation of the Greeks materialized by contact with the Orient with the three historical elements of the spiritualistic religion of the Christians before the altar of a unique and supreme god was raised on the ruins of the numerous altars of the pagan gods the autonomy of the various nations composing the pagan or ancient world had to be destroyed first this was very brutally done by the Romans who by conquering the greatest part of the globe known to the ancients laid the first foundations quite gross and negative ones of humanity a god thus raised above the national differences material and social of all countries and in a certain sense the direct negation of them must necessarily be an immaterial and abstract being but faith in the existence of such a being so difficult a matter could not spring into existence suddenly consequently as I have demonstrated in the appendix it went through a long course of exploration and development at the hands of Greek metaphysics which was the first to establish in a philosophical manner the notion of the divine idea a model eternally creative and always reproduced by the visible world but the divinity conceived and created by Greek philosophy was an impersonal divinity no logical and serious metaphysics being able to rise or rather to descend to the idea of a personal god or to imagine a god who was one and very personal at once he was found in the very brutal selfish and cruel person of Jehovah the national god of the Jews but the Jews in spite of that exclusive national spirit which distinguishes them even today had become in fact long before the birth of Christ the most international people of the world some of them carried away as captives but many more even urged on by that mercantile passion which constitutes one of the principal traits of their character they had spread through all countries carrying everywhere the worship of their Jehovah to whom they remained all the more faithful the more he abandoned them in Alexandria this terrible god of the Jews made the personal acquaintance of the metaphysical divinity of Plato already much corrupted by Oriental contact and corrupted her and still more by his own in spite of his national jealous and ferocious exclusivism he could no longer resist the grace of this ideal and impersonal divinity of the Greeks he married her and from this marriage was born the spiritualistic but not spirited god of the Christians the near-plateness of Alexandria and known to have been the principal creators of the Christian theology nevertheless theology alone and religion any more than historical elements suffice to create history by historical elements I mean the general conditions of any real development whatsoever for example in this case the conquest of the world by the Romans and the meeting of the god of the Jews with the ideal of divinity of the Greeks to impregnate the historical elements to cause them to run through a series of new historical transformation a living spontaneous fact was needed without which they might have remained many centuries longer in the state of unproductive elements this fact was not lacking in Christianity it was the propagandism, martyrdom and death of Jesus Christ we know almost nothing of this great and saintly personage all that the gospels tell us being contradictory and so fabulous that we can scarcely seize upon a few real and vital traits but it is certain that he was the preacher of the poor, the friend and consolar of the wretched, of the ignorant, of the slaves and of the women and that by these last he was much loved he promised eternal life to all who are oppressed to all who suffer here below and the number is immense he was hanged as a matter of course by the representatives of the official morality and public order of that period his disciples and the disciples of his disciples succeeded in spreading thanks to the destruction of the national barriers by the Roman conquest and propagated the gospel in all the countries known to the ancients everywhere they were received with open arms by the slaves and the women, the two most oppressed most suffering and naturally also the most ignorant classes of the ancient world for even such few proselytes as they made in the privileged and learned world they were indebted in great part to the influence of women their most extensive propagandism was directed almost exclusively among the people unfortunate and degraded by slavery this was the first awakening the first intellectual revolt of the proletariat the great honour of christianity its incontestable merit and the whole secret of its unprecedented and yet thoroughly legitimate triumph lay in the fact that it appealed to that suffering and immense public to which the ancient world a strict and cruel intellectual and political aristocracy denied even the simplest rights of humanity otherwise it never could have spread the doctrine taught by the apostles of christ wholly consoling as it may have seemed to the unfortunate was too revolting, too absurd from the standpoint of human reason ever to have been accepted by enlightened men according with what joy Paul speaks of the Scandal de la Foire the scandal of faith and of the triumph of that divine folly divine madness rejected by the powerful and wise of the century but all the more passionately accepted by the simple, the ignorant and the weak-minded indeed there must have been a very deep-seated dissatisfaction with life a very intense thirst of heart to secure the acceptance of the Christian absurdity the most audacious and monstrous of all religious absurdities this was not only the negation of all the political, social and religious institutions of antiquity it was the absolute overturn of common sense of all human reason the living being, the real world were considered thereafter as nothing whereas the product of man's abstractive faculty was the vast and supreme abstraction in which this faculty far beyond existing things even beyond the most general determinations of the living being the ideas of space and time having nothing left to advance beyond rests in contemplation of his emptiness and absolute immobility that abstraction that cappert mortuum absolutely void of all contents the true nothing, God is proclaimed the only real eternal all-powerful being the real all is declared nothing and the absolute nothing, the all the shadow becomes the substance and the substance vanishes like a shadow footnote I am well aware that in the theological and metaphysical systems of the Orient and especially in those of India including Buddhism we find the principle of the annihilation of the real world in favour of the ideal abstraction but it has not the added character of voluntary and deliberate negation which distinguishes Christianity when those systems were conceived the world of human thought of will and of liberty had not reached that stage of development which was afterwards seen in the Greek and Roman civilization end footnote all this was audacity and absurdity unspeakable the true scandal de la foire the triumph of credulous stupidity over the mind for the masses and for a few the triumphant irony of a mind wearied corrupted, disillusioned and disgusted in honest and serious search for truth it was that necessity of shaking off thought and becoming brutally stupid so frequently felt by surfeited minds all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org this reading by Carl Manchester 2007 God and the State by Mikhail Bakunin Chapter 4 Credo Quad Absurdum I believe in the absurd I believe in it precisely and mainly because it is absurd in the same way many distinguished and enlightened minds in our day believe in animal magnetism, spiritualism tipping tables and why go so far believe still in Christianity in idealism in God the belief of the ancient proletariat like that of the modern was more robust and simple less ogoo the Christian propagandism appealed to its heart not to its mind the theological aspirations its necessities, its sufferings its slavery not to its reason which still slept and therefore could know nothing about logical contradictions and the evidence of the absurd it was interested solely in knowing when the hour of promise deliverance would strike when the kingdom of God would come as for theological dogmas it did not trouble itself about them because it understood nothing about them the proletariat converted to Christianity constituted its growing material but not its intellectual strength as for the Christian dogmas it is known that they were elaborated in a series of theological and literary works and in the councils principally by the converted neoplatonists of the Orient the Greek mind had fallen so low that in the fourth century of the Christian era the period of the first council the idea of a personal God pure eternal absolute mind creator and supreme master existing outside the world was unanimously accepted by the church fathers as a logical consequence of this absolute absurdity it then became natural and necessary to believe in the immateriality and immortality of the human soul lodged and imprisoned in a body only partially mortal there being in this body itself a portion which while material is immortal is immortal like the soul and must be resurrected with it we see how difficult it was even for the church fathers to conceive pure minds outside of any material form it should be added that in general it is the character of every metaphysical and theological argument to seek to explain one absurdity by another it was very fortunate for Christianity that it met a world of slaves it had another piece of good luck in the invasion of the barbarians the latter were worthy people full of natural force and above all urged on by a great necessity of life and a great capacity for it brigands who had stood every test capable of devastating and gobbling up anything like their successors the Germans of today but they were much less systematic and pedantic than these last much less moralistic less learned more independent and proud capable of science and not incapable of liberty as are the bourgeois of modern Germany but in spite of all their great qualities they were nothing but barbarians that is as indifferent to all questions of theology and metaphysics as the ancient slaves a great number of whom moreover belonged to their race so that their practical repugnance once overcome was able to convert them theoretically to Christianity for ten centuries Christianity armed with the omnipotence of church and state and opposed by no competition was able to deprave, debase and falsify the mind of Europe it had no competitors because outside of the church there were neither thinkers nor educated persons it alone thought it alone spoke and wrote that when the epithesis arose in its bosom they affected only the theological or practical developments of the fundamental dogma never the dogma itself the belief in God pure spirit and creator of the world and the belief in the immateriality of the soul remained untouched this double belief became the ideal basis of the whole occidental and oriental civilization of Europe it penetrated and became incarnate in all the institutions all the details of the public and private life of all classes and the masses as well after that is it surprising that this belief has lived until the present day continuing to exercise its disastrous influence even upon select minds such as those of Mazzini Michelet, Quinnet and so many others we have seen that the first attack upon it came from the renaissance of the free mind in the 15th century which produced heroes and martyrs like Vanini, Giordano Bruno and Galileo although drowned in the noise tumult and passions of the Reformation it noiselessly continued its invisible work bequeathing to the noblest minds of each generation its task of human emancipation by the destruction of the absurd until at last in the latter half of the 18th century it again reappeared in broad day boldly waving the flag of atheism and materialism the human mind then one might have supposed was at last about to deliver itself from all the divine obsessions not at all the divine falsehood upon which humanity had been feeding for 18th centuries speaking of Christianity only was once again to show itself more powerful than human truth no longer able to make use of the black tribe of the ravens consecrated by the church of the Catholic or Protestant priests or confidence in whom had been lost it made use of lay priests short-robed liars and sophists among whom the principal roles devolved upon two fatal men one at the falsest mind the other the most doctrinal despotic will of the last century JJ Russo and Robespierre the first is the perfect type of narrowness and suspicious meanness of exaltation without other object than his own person of cold enthusiasm and hypocrisy at once sentimental and implacable of the falsehood of modern idealism he may be considered as the real creator of modern reaction to all appearance the most democratic writer of the 18th century he bred within himself the pitiless despotism of the statesman he was the prophet of the doctrinaire state as Robespierre, his worthy and faithful disciple, tried to become its high priest having heard the saying of Voltaire that if God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him JJ Russo invented the supreme being the abstract and sterile god of the daists and it was in the name of the supreme being and of the hypocritical virtue commanded by this supreme being that Robespierre guillotined first the hubatists and then the very genius of the revolution Danton in whose person he assassinated the republic thus preparing the way for the henceforth necessary triumph of the dictatorship of Bonaparte I after this great triumph the idealistic reaction sought and found servants less fanatical less terrible, nearer to the diminished stature of the actual bourgeoisie in France Chateaubriand Lamartine and shall I say it, why not all must be said if it is truth Victor Hugo himself the democrat, the republican the quasi socialist of today and after them the whole melancholy and sentimental company of poor and pallid minds who, under the leadership of these masters established the modern romantic school in Germany the Schlegels the Nevales the Werners the Schellings and so many others besides whose names do not even deserve to be recalled the literature created by this school was the very reign of ghosts and phantoms it could not stand the sunlight the twilight alone permitted it to live no more could it stand the brutal contact of the masses it was the literature of the tender delicate distinguished souls of the heavens and living on earth as if in spite of themselves it had a horror and contempt for the politics and questions of the day but when perchance it referred to them it showed itself frankly reactionary took the side of the church against the insolence of the free thinkers of the kings against the peoples and of all the aristocrats against the vile rabble of the streets for the rest as I have just said the dominant feature of the school of romanticism was a quasi-complete indifference to politics amid the clouds in which it lived could be distinguished to real points the rapid development of bourgeois materialism and the ungovernable outburst of individual vanities to understand this romantic literature the reason for its existence must be sought in the transformation which had been effected in the bosom of the bourgeois class since the revolution of 1793 from the Renaissance and the Reformation down to the revolution the bourgeoisie, if not in Germany at least in Italy, in France in Switzerland, in England, in Holland was the hero and representative of the revolution-regenius of history from its bosoms sprang most of the free thinkers of the 15th century the religious reformers of the two following centuries and the apostles of human emancipation and those of Germany of the past century it alone, naturally supported by the powerful arm of the people who had faith in it made the revolution of 1789 and 93 it proclaimed the downfall of royalty and of the church the fraternity of the peoples the rights of man and of the citizen those are its titles to glory they are immortal soon it split a considerable proportion of the purchasers of national property having become rich and supporting themselves no longer on the proletariat of the cities but on the major portion of the peasants of France these also having become landed proprietors had no aspiration left but for peace the re-establishment of public order and the foundation of a strong and regular government it therefore welcomed with joy the dictatorship of the first bonaparte and although always Voltarian did not view with displeasure the concordat with the pope and the re-establishment of the official church in France religion is so necessary to the people which means that satiated themselves this portion of the bourgeoisie then began to see that it was needful to the maintenance of their situation the preservation of their newly acquired estates to appease the unsatisfied hunger of the people by promises of heavenly manner then it was that Chateaubriand began to preach footnote it seems to me useful to recall at this point an anecdote one by the way well known and thoroughly authentic which sheds a very clear light on the personal value of this warmed over of the catholic beliefs and on the religious sincerity of that period Chateaubriand submitted to a publisher a work attacking faith the publisher called his attention to the fact that atheism had gone out of fashion that the reading public cared no more for it and that the demand on the contrary was for religious works Chateaubriand withdrew but a few months later came back with his genius of christianity end footnote Napoleon fell and the restoration brought back into France the legitimate monarchy and with it the power of the church and of the nobles who regained if not the whole at least a considerable portion of their former influence this reaction through the bourgeoisie back into the revolution and with the revolutionary spirit that of skepticism also was reawakened in it it set Chateaubriand aside and began to read Voltaire again but it did not go so far as did a row its debilitated nerves could not stand nourishment so strong Voltaire on the contrary at once a free thinker and a daest suited it very well Bayre-Angers and P.L.Courier expressed this new tendency perfectly the god of the good people and the ideal of the bourgeois king at once liberal and democratic sketched against the majestic and thenceforth inoffensive background of the empire's gigantic victories such was at that period the daily intellectual food of the bourgeoisie of France La Martin to be sure excited by a vain and ridiculously envious desire to rise to the poetic height of the great Byron had begun his coldly delirious hymns in honor of the god of the nobles and of the legitimate monarchy but his songs resounded only in aristocratic salons the bourgeoisie did not hear them Bayre-Angers was its poet and Courier was its political writer the revolution of July resulted in lifting its tastes we know that every bourgeois in France carries within him the imperishable type of the bourgeois gentleman which never fails to appear immediately the parvenu acquires a little wealth and power in 1830 the wealthy bourgeoisie had definitely replaced the old nobility in the seats of power it naturally tended to establish a new aristocracy an aristocracy of capital first of all but also an aristocracy of intellect of good manners and delicate sentiments it began to feel religious this was not on its part simply an aping of aristocratic customs it was also a necessity of its position the proletariat had rendered it a final service in once more aiding it to overthrow the nobility the bourgeoisie now had no further need of its cooperation for it felt itself firmly seated in the shadow of the throne of July and the alliance with the people thenceforth useless began to become inconvenient it was necessary to demand it to its place which naturally could not be done without provoking great indignation among the masses it became necessary to restrain this indignation in the name of what in the name of the bourgeois interest bluntly confessed that would have been much too cynical the more unjust and inhuman an interest is the greater need it has of sanction now where find it if not in religion that good protectress of all the well fed and the useful consola of the hungry and more than ever the triumphant bourgeoisie saw that religion was indispensable to the people after having won all its titles to glory in religious, philosophical and political opposition in protest and in revolution it at last became the dominant class and thereby even the defender and preserver of the state thenceforth the regular institution of the exclusive power of that class the state is force and for it first of all is the right of force the triumphant argument of the needle gun of the Shaspott but man is so singularly constituted that this argument wholly eloquent as it may appear is not sufficient in the long run some moral sanction or other is absolutely necessary to enforce his respect further this sanction must be at once so simple and so plain that it may convince the masses who after having been reduced by the power of the state must also be induced to morally recognize its right there are only two ways of convincing the masses of the goodness of any social institution whatever the first, the only real one is also the most difficult to adopt because it implies the abolition of the state or in other words the abolition of the organized political exploitation of the majority by any minority whatsoever would be the direct and complete satisfaction of the needs and aspirations of the people which would be equivalent to the complete liquidation of the political and economical existence of the bourgeois class or again to the abolition of the state beneficial means for the masses but detrimental to bourgeois interests hence it is useless to talk about them the only way on the contrary harmful only to the people precious in its salvation of bourgeois privileges is no other than religion that is the eternal mirage which leads away the masses in a search for divine treasures while much more reserved the governing class contents itself and its members very unequally moreover and always giving most to him who possesses most the miserable goods of earth and the plunder taken from the people including their political and social liberty there is not, there cannot be a state without religion take the freest states in the world the united states of america or the swiss confederation for instance and see what an important part is played in all official discourses by divine providence that supreme sanction of all states but whenever a chief of state speaks of god be he william the first the nauto-germanic emperor or grand the president of the great republic be sure that he is getting ready to share once more his people flock the french liberal and vultarian bourgeoisie driven by temperament to a positivism to say a materialism singularly narrow and brutal having become the governing class of the state by its triumph of 1830 had to give itself an official religion it was not an easy thing the bourgeoisie could not abruptly go back under the yoke of roman Catholicism between it and the church of Rome was an abyss of blood and hatred and however practical and wise one becomes it is never possible to repress a passion developed by history moreover the french bourgeoisie would have covered itself with ridicule if it had gone back to the church to take part in the pious ceremonies of its worship an essential condition of a meritorious and sincere conversion several attempted it it is true but their heroism was rewarded by no other result than a fruitless scandal finally a return to Catholicism was impossible on account of the insolvable contradiction which separates the invariable politics of Rome from the development of the economical and political interests of the middle class in this respect Protestantism is much more advantageous it is the bourgeois religion par excellence it accords just as much liberty as is necessary to the bourgeoisie and finds a way of reconciling celestial aspirations with the respect which terrestrial conditions demand consequently it is especially in Protestant countries that commerce and industry have been developed but it was impossible for the French bourgeoisie to become Protestant to pass from one religion to another unless it be done deliberately as sometimes is the case of the Jews of Russia and Poland who get baptised three or four times in order to receive each time the remuneration allowed them to seriously change one's religion a little faith is necessary now in the exclusive positive heart of the French bourgeoisie there is no room for faith he professes the most profound indifference for all questions which touch neither his pocket first nor his social vanity afterwards he is as indifferent to Protestantism as to Catholicism on the other hand the French bourgeoisie could not go over to Protestantism without putting himself in conflict with the Catholic routine of the French people which would have been great imprudence on the part of a class pretending to govern the nation they were still one way left to return to the humanitarian and revolutionary religion of the 18th century but that would have led too far so the bourgeoisie was obliged in order to sanction its new state to create a new religion which might be boldly proclaimed without too much ridicule and scandal by the whole bourgeois class thus was born doctrinaire deism others have told much better than I could tell it the story of the birth and development of this school which had so decisive and we may well add so fatal an influence on the political intellectual and moral education of the bourgeois youth of France it dates from Benjamin Consta and Madame de Stael its real founder was Roye Collard its apostles Guizot, Cousin, Vilma and many others its boldly avowed object was the reconciliation of revolution with reaction or to use the language of the school of the principle of liberty with that of authority and naturally to the advantage of the latter this reconciliation signified in politics the taking away of popular liberty for the benefit of bourgeois rule represented by the monarchical and constitutional state in philosophy the deliberate submission of free reason to the eternal principles of faith we have only to deal here with the latter we know that this philosophy was specially elaborated by Michel Cousin of French eclecticism a superficial and pedantic talker incapable of any original conception of any idea peculiar to himself but very strong on commonplace which he confounded with common sense this illustrious philosopher learnedly prepared for the use of the studious youth of France a metaphysical dish of his own making the use of which made compulsory in all schools of the state under the university condemned several generations one after the other to a cerebral indigestion imagine a philosophical vinegar source of the most opposed systems a mixture of fathers of the church scholastic philosophers Descartes and Pascal Kant and Scotch psychologists all this a superstructure on the divine and innate ideas of Plato and covered up with a layer of Hegelian eminence accompanied of course by an ignorance as contemptuous as it is complete of natural science and proving just as two times two make five the existence of a personal god End of God and the State by Mikhail Bakunin read by Carl Manchester 2007