Nationalism and Culture (10 page)

It is a fact that the great pioneers of the modern constitutional state have emphasized the necessity of religion for the prosperity of the governmental power just as energetically as did formerly the advocates of princely absolutism. Thus, Rousseau^who in his work, The Social Contract, inflicted such incurable wounds on absolute monarchy, declared quite frankly:

"In order that an evolving people should learn to value the sacred fundamentals of statecraft, and obey the elementary principles of state law, it is necessary that the effect should become cause. The social spirit which would be the result of the constitution would have to play the leading part in the creation of the constitution, and men, even before the establishment of the laws, would have to be that which they would become through these laws. But since the lawgiver can neither compel nor convince, he must needs take refuge in a higher authority which, without external pressure, is able to persuade men and enthuse them without having to convince them. This is the reason why the founding fathers of the nation have at all times felt compelled to take refuge in heaven and to honor the gods for reasons of politics. Thus would men, who are subject to both the laws of the state and those of nature, voluntarily be obedient to the power which has formed both man and the state, and understandingly carry the burden which the fortune of the state imposes on them. It is this higher understanding, transcending the mental vision of ordinary men, whose dictum the legislator puts into the mouth of the godhead, thus carrying along by respect for a higher power those who are not submissive to human wisdom." ^

Robespierre followed the advice of the master to the letter and sent the Hebertists and the so-called "Enrages" to the scaffold because their anti-religious propaganda, which was really anti-church, lowered the regard for the state and undermined its moral foundation. The poor Hebertists! They were just as firm believers as the "Incorruptible" and his Jacobin church congregation, but their veneration-urge moved along different lines, and they would acknowledge no higher power than the state, which to them was the holiest of holies. They were good patriots, and when they spoke of the "Nation," they were enflamed by the same religious ardor as the pious Catholic when he speaks of his God. But they were not the legislators of the country, and consequently they lacked that famous "higher understanding" which, according to Rousseau, transcends the mental grasp of ordinary men and whose decision the legislator is careful to have confirmed from the mouth of the godhead.

Robespierre, of course, possessed this "higher understanding." He felt himself to be the lawgiver of "the Republic, one and indivisible" j consequently he called atheism "an aristocratic affair," and its adherents, hirelings of William Pitt. Just so today, in order to excite the horror of

^ Jean Jacques Rousseau, Le contrat social. Book II, ch. 7.

the faithful, do the partisans of Bolshevism denounce as "counterrevolutionary" every idea which does not suit them. In times of excitement such a designation is deadly dangerous and tantamount to "Strike him dead J he has blasphemed against God!" This the Hebertists, too, had to learn, as so many before and after them. They were believers, but not orthodox believers j consequently the guillotine had to convince them as formerly the stake did the heretics.

In his great speech before the convention in defense of the belief in a higher being Robespierre hardly developed an original thought. He referred to Rousseau's Social Contracty on which he commented in his usual long-winded manner. He felt the necessity of a state religion for Republican France, and the cult of the Supreme Being was to serve him by putting the wisdom of his policy in the mouth of the new godhead, and endowing it with the halo of the divine will.

The Convention resolved to publish that speech all over France, to translate it into all languages, thus giving the abominable doctrine of atheism a deadly blow, and to announce to the world the true confession of faith of the French people. The Jacobin Club in Paris made haste to announce its veneration of the Supreme Being in a special memorial declaration. Its content, like that of Robespierre's speech, was rooted completely in Rousseau's ideas. It referred with special gusto to a passage in the Fourth Book of the Social Contract which said:

There exists consequently a purely civic confession of faith and the settling of its Articles is exclusively a matter for the head of the state. It is here a question not so much of religious doctrine as of universal views without whose guidance one can be neither a good citizen nor a faithful subject. Without being able to compel anyone to believe in them, the state can banish anyone who does not believe, not as a godless one, but as one who has violated the Social Contract and is incapable of loving the law and justice with his whole heart, incapable in case of necessity of sacrificing his life to his duty. If anyone, after the public aeceptance of these civic articles of faith, announces himself as an infidel, he deserves the death penalty, for he has committed the greatest of all crimes. He has knowingly perjured himself in the face of the law.

The young French Republic was a hardly established power, still without tradition, which had, besides, arisen from the overthrow of an old system of rulership whose deeply rooted institutions were still alive in large sections of the people. It was, therefore, incumbent on her more than on any other state to establish her young power in the religious consciousness of the people. It is true that the wielders of the young power had endowed the state with divine qualities and had raised the cult of the "Nation" to a new religion which had filled France with wild enthusiasm.

But that had happened in the intoxication of the great Revolution, whose fierce tempests were to have shattered the old world. This ecstasy could not last forever, and the time was to be anticipated when increasing sobriety would make a place for critical consideration. For this new religion lacked something—tradition, one of the most important elements in the structure of religious consciousness. It was, therefore, only an act for reasons of state, when Robespierre drove the "Goddess of Reason" from the temple and replaced her by the cult of the "Supreme Being," thus procuring for "the Republic, one and indivisible," the necessary saintly halo.

Recent history, too, shows typical examples of this sort. We need only think of Mussolini's compact with the Catholic Church. Robespierre had never denied the existence of God, neither had Rousseau. Mussolini, however, was a pronounced atheist and a grim opponent of all religious belief J and fascism, true to the anti-clerical traditions of the Italian bourgeoisie, appeared at first as a decided opponent of the church. But as a clever state-theologian, Mussolini soon recognized that his power could only have permanence if he succeeded in rooting it in the feeling of dependence of his subjects, and in giving it an outward religious character. With this motive he shaped the extreme nationalism into a new religion, which in its egotistical exclusiveness, and in its violent separation from all other human groups, recognized no higher ideal than the fascist state and its prophet, II Duce.

Like Robespierre, Mussolini felt that his doctrine lacked tradition, and that his young power was not impressive. This made him cautious. The national tradition in Italy was not favorable to the church. It had not yet been forgotten that the Papacy had once been one of the most dangerous opponents of national unification, which had only been successful after an open conflict with the Vatican. But the men of the Risorgimento, the creators of Italy's national unity, were no anti-religious zealots. Their politics were anti-clerical because the attitude of the Vatican had forced them to it. They were no atheists. Even that grim hater of the clergy, Garibaldij who in the introduction to his memoirs has written the words: ^The priest is the personification of the liej but the liar is a robber, and the robber a murderer, and I could prove other damnable attributes of the priesthood"—even Garibaldi was not only, as shown by his nationalist endeavors, a deeply religious man, but his whole concept of life was rooted in a belief in God. And so the seventh of his Twelve Articles which in 1867 were submitted to the Congress of the "League for Peace and Freedom" in Geneva, runs as follows: "The Congress adopts the religion of "God, and each of its members obligates itself to aid in spreading it over all the earth."

And Mazzini, the leader of Young Italy, and next to Garibaldi the

foremost figure in the struggle for national unity, was in the depths of his soul permeated with the deepest religious belief. His whole philosophy was a curious mixture of religious ethics and national-political aspirations which, in spite of their democratic exterior, were of a thoroughly autocratic nature. His slogan, "God and the People," was strikingly characteristic of his aim, for the nation was to him a religious concept which he strove to confine within the frame of a political church.

Mussolini, however, and with him the numerous leaders of Italian fascism, did not find themselves in this enviable position. They had been grim antagonists, not only of the church, but of religion as such. Such a record constitutes a heavy load—especially in a country whose capital has been for hundreds of years the center of a mighty church, with thousands of agencies at its disposal which, on orders from above, were always ready to keep actively alive in the people the memory of the notorious past of the head of the fascist state. It was therefore advisable to come to an understanding with this power. That was not easy, because between the Vatican and the Italian state stood the twentieth of September, J 870, when the troops of Victor Emmanuel marcheJlnto Rome and put an end to the temporal power of the Papal States. But Mussolini was readyTor any sacrifice. To purchase peace with the Vatican, he recreated, though in diminutive form, the Papal States. He recompensed the Pope financially for the injustice which had once been dorfe to one of his predecessors, he recognized Catholicism as the state religion, and delivered to the priesthood a considerable part of the public educational institutions.

It was surely no religious or moral reason which moved Mussolini to this step, but sober considerations of political power. He needed moral support for his imperialistic plans and could but be especially concerned to remove the suspicion with which the other countries regarded him. Consequently, he sought contact with the power which had up to now weathered all the storms of time and whose mighty world-encircling organization could under certain circumstances prove very dangerous to him. Whether he had the best of the bargain is a question which does not concern us here. But the fact that it had to be exactly the "almighty Ducey" who opened again the gates of the Vatican and put an end to the "imprisonment of the Popes," is one of the grotesques of history and will keep the name of Mussolini alive longer than anything else which is associated with it. Even fascism had finally to recognize that on castor oil, assassination and pogroms-^ however necessary such things may seem for the fascist state in its inner politics—no permanent power can be founded. Consequently, Mussolini forgot for the time being the "fascist miracle," from which the Italian people was said to have been reborn, in order that "Rome might for the third time become the heart of the world." He sought contact with the power which has its secret strength

in the millennial tradition, and which, as a result, was so hard to undermine.

In Germany, where the leaders of victorious fascism had neither the adaptability nor the clever insight of Mussolini and, in stupid ignorance of the real facts, believed that the whole life of a people could be changed at the whim of their anemic theories, they had to pay dearly for their mistake. However, Hitler and his intellectual advisers did recognize that the so-called "totalitarian state" must have root in the traditions of the masses in order to attain permanence j but what they called tradition was partly the product of their sickly imagination, and partly concepts which had been dead in the minds of the people for many centuries. Even gods grow old and must die and be replaced by others more suitable to the religious needs of the times. The one-eyed Wotan and the lovely Freia with the golden apples of life are but shadow patterns of long-past ages which no "myth of the twentieth century" can awaken to new life. Consequently, the illusion of a new "German Christianity on a Germanic basis" was infinitely absurd and shamefully stupid.

It was by no means the violent and reactionary character of Hitler's policy that caused hundreds of Catholic and Protestant clergy to oppose the Gle'ichschaltung of the church. It was the certain recognition that this brainless enterprise was irrevocably doomed to suffer a setback, and they were clever enough not to assume responsibility for an adjustment which must prove disastrous to the church. It did not profit the rulers of the Third Reich to drag the obstreperous priests into concentration camps and in the bloody June days shoot down in gangster fashion some of the most prominent representatives of German Catholicism. They could not allay the storm and finally had to yield. Hitler, who had been able to beat down the whole German labor movement, numbering millions, without any opposition worth mentioning, had here bitten upon a nut he could not crack. It was the first defeat which his internal policy suffered, and its consequences cannot yet be estimated j for dictatorships are harder hit by such setbacks than any other form of government.

The leaders of the Russ ian Revolutio n found themselves confronted with a church so completely identified, in fact unified, with czarism that compromise with it was impossible j they were compelled to replace it with something else. This they did by making the collectivist state the one omniscient and omnipotent god—and Lenin his prophet. He died at a quite convenient time and was promptly canonized. His picture is replacing the ikon, and millions make pilgrimages to his mausoleum instead of to the shrine of some saint.

Although purely iconoclastic, such work is valuable, for it clears the ground of superstitious rubbish, making it ready for the fine structure