The following article by Albert Einstein appeared in the New York Times Magazine on November 9, 1930 pp 1-4. It has been reprinted in Ideas and Opinions, Crown Publishers, Inc. 1954, pp 36 - 40. It also appears in Einstein's book The World as I See It, Philosophical Library, New York, 1949, pp. 24 - 28.
Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with
the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One
has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand
spiritual movements and their development. Feeling and longing are the
motive force behind all human endeavor and human creation, in however
exalted a guise the latter may present themselves to us. Now what are
the feelings and needs that have led men to religious thought and
belief in the widest sense of the words? A little consideration will
suffice to show us that the most varying emotions preside over the birth
of religious thought and experience. With primitive man it is above all
fear that evokes religious notions - fear of hunger, wild beasts,
sickness, death. Since at this stage of existence understanding of
causal connections is usually poorly developed, the human mind creates
illusory beings more or less analogous to itself on whose wills and
actions these fearful happenings depend. Thus one tries to secure the
favor of these beings by carrying out actions and offering sacrifices
which, according to the tradition handed down from generation to
generation, propitiate them or make them well disposed toward a mortal.
In this sense I am speaking of a religion of fear. This, though not
created, is in an important degree stabilized by the formation of a
special priestly caste which sets itself up as a mediator between the
people and the beings they fear, and erects a hegemony on this basis. In
many cases a leader or ruler or a privileged class whose position
rests on other factors combines priestly functions with its secular
authority in order to make the latter more secure; or the political
rulers and the priestly caste make common cause in their own interests.
The social impulses are another source of the crystallization
of religion. Fathers and mothers and the leaders of larger human
communities are mortal and fallible. The desire for guidance, love, and
support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God.
This is the God of Providence, who protects, disposes, rewards, and
punishes; the God who, according to the limits of the believer's
outlook, loves and cherishes the life of the tribe or of the human
race, or even or life itself; the comforter in sorrow and unsatisfied
longing; he who preserves the souls of the dead. This is the social or
moral conception of God.
The Jewish scriptures admirably
illustrate the development from the religion of fear to moral religion,
a development continued in the New Testament. The religions of all
civilized peoples, especially the peoples of the Orient, are primarily
moral religions. The development from a religion of fear to moral
religion is a great step in peoples' lives. And yet, that primitive
religions are based entirely on fear and the religions of civilized
peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on
our guard. The truth is that all religions are a varying blend of both
types, with this differentiation: that on the higher levels of social
life the religion of morality predominates.
Common to all these
types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In
general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally
high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this
level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs
to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall
call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate
this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there
is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.
The
individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the
sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature
and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a
sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single
significant whole. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already
appear at an early stage of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of
David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned
especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much
stronger element of this.
The religious geniuses of all ages
have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows
no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no
church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely
among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with
this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded
by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked
at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza
are closely akin to one another.
How can cosmic religious
feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise
to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the
most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and
keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.
We thus arrive
at a conception of the relation of science to religion very different
from the usual one. When one views the matter historically, one is
inclined to look upon science and religion as irreconcilable
antagonists, and for a very obvious reason. The man who is thoroughly
convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for
a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of
events - provided, of course, that he takes the hypothesis of
causality really seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and
equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and
punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's
actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in
God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object
is responsible for the motions it undergoes. Science has therefore been
charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's
ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education,
and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would
indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of
punishment and hopes of reward after death.