Autobiography by John Stuart Mill (easy books to read txt) 📖

In my education, as in that of everyone, the moral influences, which

are so much more important than all others, are also the most

complicated, and the most difficult to specify with any approach to

completeness. Without attempting the hopeless task of detailing the

circumstances by which, in this respect, my early character may have

been shaped, I shall confine myself to a few leading points, which

form an indispensable part of any true account of my education.

 

I was brought up from the first without any religious belief, in the

ordinary acceptation of the term. My father, educated in the creed of

Scotch Presbyterianism, had by his own studies and reflections been

early led to reject not only the belief in Revelation, but the

foundations of what is commonly called Natural Religion. I have heard

him say, that the turning point of his mind on the subject was reading

Butler's _Analogy_. That work, of which he always continued to speak

with respect, kept him, as he said, for some considerable time, a

believer in the divine authority of Christianity; by proving to him

that whatever are the difficulties in believing that the Old and New

Testaments proceed from, or record the acts of, a perfectly wise and

good being, the same and still greater difficulties stand in the way

of the belief, that a being of such a character can have been the

Maker of the universe. He considered Butler's argument as conclusive

against the only opponents for whom it was intended. Those who admit

an omnipotent as well as perfectly just and benevolent maker and ruler

of such a world as this, can say little against Christianity but what

can, with at least equal force, be retorted against themselves.

Finding, therefore, no halting place in Deism, he remained in a state

of perplexity, until, doubtless after many struggles, he yielded to

the conviction, that concerning the origin of things nothing whatever

can be known. This is the only correct statement of his opinion; for

dogmatic atheism he looked upon as absurd; as most of those, whom the

world has considered Atheists, have always done. These particulars are

important, because they show that my father's rejection of all that is

called religious belief, was not, as many might suppose, primarily a

matter of logic and evidence: the grounds of it were moral, still more

than intellectual. He found it impossible to believe that a world so

full of evil was the work of an Author combining infinite power with

perfect goodness and righteousness. His intellect spurned the

subtleties by which men attempt to blind themselves to this open

contradiction. The Sabaean, or Manichaean theory of a Good and an Evil

Principle, struggling against each other for the government of the

universe, he would not have equally condemned; and I have heard him

express surprise, that no one revived it in our time. He would have

regarded it as a mere hypothesis; but he would have ascribed to it no

depraving influence. As it was, his aversion to religion, in the sense

usually attached to the term, was of the same kind with that of

Lucretius: he regarded it with the feelings due not to a mere mental

delusion, but to a great moral evil. He looked upon it as the greatest

enemy of morality: first, by setting up fictitious excellences--belief

in creeds, devotional feelings, and ceremonies, not connected with the

good of human-kind--and causing these to be accepted as substitutes

for genuine virtues: but above all, by radically vitiating the

standard of morals; making it consist in doing the will of a being,

on whom it lavishes indeed all the phrases of adulation, but whom in

sober truth it depicts as eminently hateful. I have a hundred times

heard him say that all ages and nations have represented their gods as

wicked, in a constantly increasing progression; that mankind have gone

on adding trait after trait till they reached the most perfect

conception of wickedness which the human mind can devise, and have

called this God, and prostrated themselves before it. This _ne plus

ultra_ of wickedness he considered to be embodied in what is commonly

presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity. Think (he used to

say) of a being who would make a Hell--who would create the human race

with the infallible foreknowledge, and therefore with the intention,

that the great majority of them were to be consigned to horrible and

everlasting torment. The time, I believe, is drawing near when this

dreadful conception of an object of worship will be no longer

identified with Christianity; and when all persons, with any sense of

moral good and evil, will look upon it with the same indignation with

which my father regarded it. My father was as well aware as anyone

that Christians do not, in general, undergo the demoralizing

consequences which seem inherent in such a creed, in the manner or

to the extent which might have been expected from it. The same

slovenliness of thought, and subjection of the reason to fears,

wishes, and affections, which enable them to accept a theory involving

a contradiction in terms, prevents them from perceiving the logical

consequences of the theory. Such is the facility with which mankind

believe at one and the same time things inconsistent with one another,

and so few are those who draw from what they receive as truths, any

consequences but those recommended to them by their feelings, that

multitudes have held the undoubting belief in an Omnipotent Author

of Hell, and have nevertheless identified that being with the best

conception they were able to form of perfect goodness. Their worship

was not paid to the demon which such a being as they imagined would

really be, but to their own ideal of excellence. The evil is, that

such a belief keeps the ideal wretchedly low; and opposes the most

obstinate resistance to all thought which has a tendency to raise it

higher. Believers shrink from every train of ideas which would lead

the mind to a clear conception and an elevated standard of excellence,

because they feel (even when they do not distinctly see) that such a

standard would conflict with many of the dispensations of nature, and

with much of what they are accustomed to consider as the Christian

creed. And thus morality continues a matter of blind tradition, with

no consistent principle, nor even any consistent feeling, to guide it.

 

It would have been wholly inconsistent with my father's ideas of duty,

to allow me to acquire impressions contrary to his convictions and

feelings respecting religion: and he impressed upon me from the first,

that the manner in which the world came into existence was a subject

on which nothing was known: that the question, "Who made me?" cannot

be answered, because we have no experience or authentic information

from which to answer it; and that any answer only throws the difficulty

a step further back, since the question immediately presents itself,

"Who made God?" He, at the same time, took care that I should be

acquainted with what had been thought by mankind on these impenetrable

problems. I have mentioned at how early an age he made me a reader of

ecclesiastical history; and he taught me to take the strongest interest

in the Reformation, as the great and decisive contest against priestly

tyranny for liberty of thought.

 

I am thus one of the very few examples, in this country, of one who has

not thrown off religious belief, but never had it: I grew up in a

negative state with regard to it. I looked upon the modern exactly as

I did upon the ancient religion, as something which in no way concerned

It did not seem to me more strange that English people should believe

what I did not, than that the men I read of in Herodotus should have done

History had made the variety of opinions among mankind a fact familiar

to me, and this was but a prolongation of that fact. This point in my

early education had, however, incidentally one bad consequence deserving

notice. In giving me an opinion contrary to that of the world, my father

thought it necessary to give it as one which could not prudently be avowed

to the world. This lesson of keeping my thoughts to myself, at that early

age, was attended with some moral disadvantages; though my limited

intercourse with strangers, especially such as were likely to speak to

me on religion, prevented me from being placed in the alternative of

avowal or hypocrisy. I remember two occasions in my boyhood, on which I

felt myself in this alternative, and in both cases I avowed my disbelief

and defended it. My opponents were boys, considerably older than myself:

one of them I certainly staggered at the time, but the subject was never

renewed between us: the other who was surprised and somewhat shocked, did

his best to convince me for some time, without effect.

 

The great advance in liberty of discussion, which is one of the most

important differences between the present time and that of my childhood,

has greatly altered the moralities of this question; and I think that

few men of my father's intellect and public spirit, holding with such

intensity of moral conviction as he did, unpopular opinions on religion,

or on any other of the great subjects of thought, would now either

practise or inculcate the withholding of them from the world, unless in

the cases, becoming fewer every day, in which frankness on these subjects

would either risk the loss of means of subsistence, or would amount to

exclusion from some sphere of usefulness peculiarly suitable to the

capacities of the individual. On religion in particular the time appears

to me to have come when it is the duty of all who, being qualified in

point of knowledge, have on mature consideration satisfied themselves

that the current opinions are not only false but hurtful, to make their

dissent known; at least, if they are among those whose station or

reputation gives their opinion a chance of being attended to. Such an

avowal would put an end, at once and for ever, to the vulgar prejudice,

that what is called, very improperly, unbelief, is connected with any

bad qualities either of mind or heart. The world would be astonished if

it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments--of those most

distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue--are

complete sceptics in religion; many of them refraining from avowal, less

from personal considerations than from a conscientious, though now in my

opinion a most mistaken, apprehension, lest by speaking out what would

tend to weaken existing beliefs, and by consequence (as they suppose)

existing restraints, they should do harm instead of good.

 

Of unbelievers (so called) as well as of believers, there are many

species, including almost every variety of moral type. But the best

among them, as no one who has had opportunities of really knowing them

will hesitate to affirm, are more genuinely religious, in the best

sense of the word religion, than those who exclusively arrogate to

themselves the title. The liberality of the age, or in other words the

weakening of the obstinate prejudice which makes men unable to see

what is before their eyes because it is contrary to their expectations,

has caused it be very commonly admitted that a Deist may be truly

religious: but if religion stands for any graces of character and not

for mere dogma, the assertion may equally be made of many whose belief

is far short of Deism. Though they may think the proof incomplete that

the universe is a work of design, and though they assuredly disbelieve

that it can have an Author and Governor who is _absolute_ in power as

well as perfect in goodness, they have that which constitutes the

principal worth of all religions whatever, an ideal conception of a

Perfect Being, to which they habitually refer as the guide of their

conscience; and this ideal of Good is usually far nearer to perfection

than the objective Deity of those who think themselves obliged to find

absolute goodness in the author of a world so crowded with suffering

and so deformed by injustice as ours.

 

My father's moral convictions, wholly dissevered from religion, were

very much of the character of those of the Greek philosophers; and

were delivered with the force and decision which characterized all

that came from him. Even at the very early age at which I read with

him the _Memorabilia_ of Xenophon, I imbibed from that work and from

his comments a deep respect for the character of Socrates; who stood

in my mind as a model of ideal excellence: and I well remember how my

father at that time impressed upon me the