Freud - Complete Works (718 page)

The Future Of An Illusion

4429

   For this situation is nothing
new. It has an infantile prototype, of which it is in fact only the
continuation. For once before one has found oneself in a similar
state of helplessness: as a small child, in relation to one’s
parents. One had reason to fear them, and especially one’s
father; and yet one was sure of his protection against the dangers
one knew. Thus it was natural to assimilate the two situations.
Here, too, wishing played its part, as it does in dream-life. The
sleeper may be seized with a presentiment of death, which threatens
to place him in the grave. But the dream-work knows how to select a
condition that will turn even that dreaded event into a
wish-fulfilment: the dreamer sees himself in an ancient Etruscan
grave which he has climbed down into, happy to find his
archaeological interests satisfied. In the same way, a man makes
the forces of nature not simply into persons with whom he can
associate as he would with his equals - that would not do justice
to the overpowering impression which those forces make on him - but
he gives them the character of a father. He turns them into gods,
following in this, as I have tried to show, not only an infantile
prototype but a phylogenetic one.

   In the course of time the first
observations were made of regularity and conformity to law in
natural phenomena, and with this the forces of nature lost their
human traits. But man’s helplessness remains and along with
it his longing for his father, and the gods. The gods retain their
threefold task: they must exorcize the terrors of nature, they must
reconcile men to the cruelty of Fate, particularly as it is shown
in death, and they must compensate them for the sufferings and
privations which a civilized life in common has imposed on
them.

The Future Of An Illusion

4430

   But within these functions there
is a gradual displacement of accent. It was observed that the
phenomena of nature developed automatically according to internal
necessities. Without doubt the gods were the lords of nature; they
had arranged it to be as it was and now they could leave it to
itself. Only occasionally, in what are known as miracles, did they
intervene in its course, as though to make it plain that they had
relinquished nothing of their original sphere of power. As regards
the apportioning of destinies, an unpleasant suspicion persisted
that the perplexity and helplessness of the human race could not be
remedied. It was here that the gods were most apt to fail. If they
themselves created Fate, then their counsels must be deemed
inscrutable. The notion dawned on the most gifted people of
antiquity that Moira stood above the gods and that the gods
themselves had their own destinies. And the more autonomous nature
became and the more the gods withdrew from it, the more earnestly
were all expectations directed to the third function of the gods -
the more did morality become their true domain. It now became the
task of the gods to even out the defects and evils of civilization,
to attend to the sufferings which men inflict on one another in
their life together and to watch over the fulfilment of the
precepts of civilization, which men obey so imperfectly. Those
precepts themselves were credited with a divine origin; they were
elevated beyond human society and were extended to nature and the
universe.

The Future Of An Illusion

4431

   And thus a store of ideas is
created, born from man’s need to make his helplessness
tolerable and built up from the material of memories of the
helplessness of his own childhood and the childhood of the human
race. It can clearly be seen that the possession of these ideas
protects him in two directions - against the dangers of nature and
Fate, and against the injuries that threaten him from human society
itself. Here is the gist of the matter. Life in this world serves a
higher purpose; no doubt it is not easy to guess what that purpose
is, but it certainly signifies a perfecting of man’s nature.
It is probably the spiritual part of man, the soul, which in the
course of time has so slowly and unwillingly detached itself from
the body, that is the object of this elevation and exaltation.
Everything that happens in this world is an expression of the
intentions of an intelligence superior to us, which in the end,
though its ways and byways are difficult to follow, orders
everything for the best - that is, to make it enjoyable for us.
Over each one of us there watches a benevolent Providence which is
only seemingly stern and which will not suffer us to become a
plaything of the overmighty and pitiless forces of nature. Death
itself is not extinction, is not a return to inorganic
lifelessness, but the beginning of a new kind of existence which
lies on the path of development to something higher. And, looking
in the other direction, this view announces that the same moral
laws which our civilizations have set up govern the whole universe
as well, except that they are maintained by a supreme court of
justice with incomparably more power and consistency. In the end
all good is rewarded and all evil punished, if not actually in this
form of life then in the later existences that begin after death.
In this way all the terrors, the sufferings and the hardships of
life are destined to be obliterated. Life after death, which
continues life on earth just as the invisible part of the spectrum
joins on to the visible part, brings us all the perfection that we
may perhaps have missed here. And the superior wisdom which directs
this course of things, the infinite goodness that expresses itself
in it, the justice that achieves its aim in it - these are the
attributes of the divine beings who also created us and the world
as a whole, or rather, of the one divine being into which, in our
civilization, all the gods of antiquity have been condensed. The
people which first succeeded in thus concentrating the divine
attributes was not a little proud of the advance. It had laid open
to view the father who had all along been hidden behind every
divine figure as its nucleus. Fundamentally this was a return to
the historical beginnings of the idea of God. Now that God was a
single person, man’s relations to him could recover the
intimacy and intensity of the child’s relation to his father.
But if one had done so much for one’s father, one wanted to
have a reward, or at least to be his only beloved child, his Chosen
People. Very much later, pious America laid claim to being
‘God’s own Country’; and, as regards one of the
shapes in which men worship the deity, the claim is undoubtedly
valid.

The Future Of An Illusion

4432

   The religious ideas that have
been summarized above have of course passed through a long process
of development and have been adhered to in various phases by
various civilizations. I have singled out one such phase, which
roughly corresponds to the final form taken by our present-day
white Christian civilization. It is easy to see that not all the
parts of this picture tally equally well with one another, that not
all the questions that press for an answer receive one, and that it
is difficult to dismiss the contradiction of daily experience.
Nevertheless, such as they are, those ideas - ideas which are
religious in the widest sense - are prized as the most precious
possession of civilization, as the most precious thing it has to
offer its participants. It is far more highly prized than all the
devices for winning treasures from the earth or providing men with
sustenance or preventing their illnesses, and so forth. People feel
that life would not be tolerable if they did not attach to these
ideas the value that is claimed for them. And now the question
arises: what are these ideas in the light of psychology? Whence do
they derive the esteem in which they are held? And, to take a
further timid step, what is their real worth?

The Future Of An Illusion

4433

IV

An enquiry which proceeds like a monologue,
without interruption, is not altogether free from danger. One is
too easily tempted into pushing aside thoughts which threaten to
break into it, and in exchange one is left with a feeling of
uncertainty which in the end one tries to keep down by
over-decisiveness. I shall therefore imagine that I have an
opponent who follows my arguments with mistrust, and here and there
I shall allow him to interject some remarks.

   I hear him say: ‘You have
repeatedly used the expressions "civilization creates these
religious ideas", "civilization places them at the
disposal of its participants". There is something about this
that sounds strange to me. I cannot myself say why, but it does not
sound so natural as it does to say that civilization has made rules
about distributing the products of labour or about rights
concerning women and children.’

   I think, all the same, that I am
justified in expressing myself in this way. I have tried to show
that religious ideas have arisen from the same need as have all the
other achievements of civilization: from the necessity of defending
oneself against the crushingly superior force of nature. To this a
second motive was added - the urge to rectify the shortcomings of
civilization which made themselves painfully felt. Moreover, it is
especially apposite to say that civilization gives the individual
these ideas, for he finds them there already; they are presented to
him ready-made, and he would not be able to discover them for
himself. What he is entering into is the heritage of many
generations, and he takes it over as he does the multiplication
table, geometry, and similar things. There is indeed a difference
in this, but that difference lies elsewhere and I cannot examine it
yet. The feeling of strangeness that you mention may be partly due
to the fact that this body of religious ideas is usually put
forward as a divine revelation. But this presentation of it is
itself a part of the religious system, and it entirely ignores the
known historical development of these ideas and their differences
in different epochs and civilizations.

The Future Of An Illusion

4434

   ‘Here is another point,
which seems to me to be more important. You argue that the
humanization of nature is derived from the need to put an end to
man’s perplexity and helplessness in the face of its dreaded
forces, to get into a relation with them and finally to influence
them. But a motive of this kind seems superfluous. Primitive man
has no choice, he has no other way of thinking. It is natural to
him, something innate, as it were, to project his existence
outwards into the world and to regard every event which he observes
as the manifestation of beings who at bottom are like himself. It
is his only method of comprehension. And it is by no means
self-evident, on the contrary it is a remarkable coincidence, if by
thus indulging his natural disposition he succeeds in satisfying
one of his greatest needs.’

   I do not find that so striking.
Do you suppose that human thought has no practical motives, that it
is simply the expression of a disinterested curiosity? That is
surely very improbable. I believe rather that when man personifies
the forces of nature he is again following an infantile model. He
has learnt from the persons in his earliest environment that the
way to influence them is to establish a relation with them; and so,
later on, with the same end in view, he treats everything else that
he comes across in the same way as he treated those persons. Thus I
do not contradict your descriptive observation; it is in fact
natural to man to personify everything that he wants to understand
in order later to control it (psychical mastering as a preparation
for physical mastering); but I provide in addition a motive and a
genesis for this peculiarity of human thinking.

   ‘And now here is yet a
third point. You have dealt with the origin of religion once
before, in your book
Totem and Taboo
. But there it appeared
in a different light. Everything was the son-father relationship.
God was the exalted father, and the longing for the father was the
root of the need for religion. Since then, it seems, you have
discovered the factor of human weakness and helplessness, to which
indeed the chief role in the formation of religion is generally
assigned, and now you transpose everything that was once the father
complex into terms of helplessness. May I ask you to explain this
transformation?’

The Future Of An Illusion

4435

   With pleasure. I was only waiting
for this invitation. But is it really a transformation? In
Totem
and Taboo
it was not my purpose to explain the origin of
religions but only of totemism. Can you, from any of the views
known to you, explain the fact that the first shape in which the
protecting deity revealed itself to men should have been that of an
animal, that there was a prohibition against killing and eating
this animal and that nevertheless the solemn custom was to kill and
eat it communally once a year? This is precisely what happens in
totemism. And it is hardly to the purpose to argue about whether
totemism ought to be called a religion. It has intimate connections
with the later god-religions. The totem animals become the sacred
animals of the gods; and the earliest, but most fundamental moral
restrictions - the prohibitions against murder and incest -
originate in totemism. Whether or not you accept the conclusions of
Totem and Taboo
, I hope you will admit that a number of very
remarkable, disconnected facts are brought together in it into a
consistent whole.