Old Civilizations Birth New Religions

Religion is a conception of the universe that affects emotion and incites action. It is mostly based on a personal, metaphysics, and tries to base itself on revelation from a supernal person or persons. Employing the supernatural, being receptive from it, and consequently convinced that all that is good for us has been revealed, it is the antithesis of science, which employs only the natural, wins its own way, and never has enough. Accordingly it is at its zenith of influence only when science is at its nadir. Yet it employs also the natural as a window for the supernatural to shine through, and makes use of as much science at its disposal as serves its purpose. It can begin, therefore, at least in its higher forms, only in an old civilization prepared for or already entered upon its decline; and it helps on the decline by substituting satisfied belief and emotion for eager inquiry and the employment of reason. It degenerates into superstition, when its leaders become priests, who, continuing to possess a modicum of the previous knowledge of nature, in the midst of an ignorant populace, impose upon them by showing wondrous prescience and performing marvelous deeds.

This is the condition at the beginning of a cycle, except that at the beginning of the primitive cycle priests, or medicine men and meteorologists, were perhaps themselves the discoverers of a few natural laws, the secret of which they kept to themselves. These men appear to have control of natural forces by their communication, as they believe or at all events pretend, with supernatural beings; for ignorance does not distinguish, and extra-ordinary exhibitions of power it takes for supernatural. Imagination now has full swing; and fear is rampant of the unknown. Hence there is unity of belief, at least in a general scheme, throughout the whole race, although every locality may have its own special god or saint. The priests work miracles, as it seems to the people, and receive pay from the beneficiaries; and they also prescribe to those who consult them that they must take a part: must attend regularly, must do homage, must disclose their doings and desires, all avowedly to the god, through the interposition only of the priest. To save from impending ills is the principal object, from ills in this world first, but also from ills imagined in another. The priesthood lives on fees, and on landed property put in its possession; and it lives well.

But as the people become enlightened and find that the services they are paying for are not rendered as unfailingly as they now can get them from others, cures being more frequently effected by physicians, and battles more surely won by machinery, the oracles become dumb and miracles cease, except in remote regions or secluded spots, among peasants dwelling in villages (pagi) or on heaths—pagan or heathen. The priesthood is despoiled of its land, its numbers are reduced, and its support is taken over by the state or by the people, the pay-system being introduced also here, and the priest serving those from whom he gets his salary. 

For this is the period of the supremacy of money, and the owners of wealth, having present enjoyments, are thoughtless of unseen ills, and the seekers after it are hard-headed and critical, demanding results and paying close attention to causes and effects. The priest now becomes a mere preacher, providing the instruction and consolation which the rulers desire for the people or the people desire for one another. His rivals are the philosophers or scientists, who offer other instruction and other hopes, and also the politicians, who create other distraction, and especially the actors and singers, who furnish other entertainment. The clergy must likewise aim at effect and look for new objects of interest. The old central authority being removed and the new one careless, numerous sects are formed by division from the overgrown body of the old religion. Also religions of other countries are imported as exciting novelties, and everywhere strange fanes are erected. Even devotion must now cater to the emotions of women. 

Dissipation occurs of religious as of other forces. But when, in the general disintegration and the approach to misery, all these things must pass off the scene, and the world becomes serious again, and men again take charge of it, then appeal is once more made to powers other than human, and either the old hierarchy or the leading men of the new religion that has won most following, the successful ones among many competitors, gradually assume, or re-assume, the functions of the former priests, and religion again rises as science and civilization fall; for which reason religion is the strongest link between cycles, rising in the decline of one, and sinking in the rise of another.

-excerpted from “The Climax of Civilization” By Correa Moylan Walsh (1917)