Humankind has never lived and cannot live without religion.
The learned people of our time have decided that religion is not necessary, that it will be or has already been replaced by science, and meanwhile, both now and in the past, not a single human society and not a single rational human being has ever lived and could ever live without religion (I say a rational human being—an irrational human being can live without religion, just like an animal).
And the reason why a rational human being cannot live without religion is because religion gives a rational human being an understanding of his relationship to the infinite world amid which he lives and guidance for his actions that flows from this understanding.
A bee that is gathering food cannot have any doubts about whether it is good or bad to gather it. But a human being who is gathering crops or fruits cannot but think about whether or not he is destroying the future harvest of crops or fruits, and whether or not he is depriving his neighbors of food. He also cannot but think about what is going to happen to the children that he is feeding, and much else besides. The most important questions of what one should do in life cannot be solved definitively by a rational human being due to the abundance of consequences which he cannot predict. Even if he does not know it, every rational human being can sense that when it comes to life’s most important questions, he can be guided neither by personal emotions, nor by considerations about the immediate consequences of his actions, because he can see too many different and oftentimes contradictory outcomes, i.e. ones that may be either beneficial or harmful, both to him and to other people.
That is why a rational human being cannot be satisfied with the considerations that guide the actions of animals. A human being can view himself as an animal among animals that are living today; he can view himself as a member of a family and a member of a society, a nation that has lived for centuries; he can and perhaps absolutely should (because reason is irresistibly drawing him towards this) view himself as a part of the whole of the infinite universe, which exists in eternity. And that is why, apart from his relationship to the immediate phenomena of life, a rational human being had to and always did establish a relationship to the whole of the infinite and eternal universe, understanding it as a single whole. And this establishment of a human being’s relationship to that whole, of which he feels himself a part and from which he derives guidance for his actions, is that which has been and is called religion.
And that is why religion always has been and cannot stop being a necessity and an inescapable condition for the life of a rational human being and a rational humankind.
The stronger the religious feeling in a human being, the clearer and more defined is his vision of that which should be and how he should act.
On the other hand, those who do not have this feeling, or have it to a small degree, are guided by what had been—by the past, by traditions—and it is these people whom the crowd calls religious. A truly religious person, however, neglects the past and, being guided solely by what should be, is oftentimes taken by the crowd for an atheist.
The reason why one often sees people who sacrifice everything, even their lives, for the sake of superstitions—duels, wars, suicides—but rarely those who would give up their lives for the truth, is due to the fact that it is easy to sacrifice your life without conviction under the influence of the crowd’s approval, and very difficult to have such a firm conviction in the truth as to be ready to die for it in disagreement with the crowd.
It is enough to plug your ears in a hall where people are dancing to imagine that you are in a mental asylum. For someone who has destroyed his religious consciousness, all of humankind’s religious acts must produce the same impression. But it is dangerous to place yourself outside the law of the human race and think that you are more right than everyone else.
— Amiel
It is often said that religion has exhausted its power over the people. But this is not so and cannot be so. Those who believe this are observing only one specific class of people that is devoid of religious feeling.
If a person lives a life of misfortune, then the cause is always the same: the absence of faith; and it is the same with society.
