Conventional Lies of our Civilization - Max Simon Nordau

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satisfaction and a thousand airs and graces; we counterfeit out-ward reverence for certain persons and things, which appear to our innermost hearts, as absurd in the highest degree, and we cling like cowards, to certain conventionalities, whose utter incongruity we feel with every fibre of our being.

      This perpetual conflict between the existing conditions of the world and our secret convictions, has a most tragic reaction upon the inner life of the individual. We seem to ourselves like clowns, who set others to laughing by the jokes, which to them are so flat and stale. Ignorance is easily combined with a kind of animal sense of comfort, and we can live happy and contented, if we accept all our surroundings as necessary and right. The Inquisition, in rooting out doubt with the sword and the stake, intended to benefit humanity in its own way, by saving to man his pleasure in existence. But as soon as we recognize the fact that the hitherto cherished institutions have lost their vitality and are all out of date, that they are empty, foolish phantoms, partly scarecrows, partly theatre properties, we experience the horror and longing for escape, the discouragement and disgust, which would fill the mind and heart of a living man locked in a vault with the dead, or of a sane man imprisoned with lunatics, obliged to humor their vagaries, to escape physical violence.

      This perpetual conflict between our ideas, and all forms of our civilization, this necessity for carrying on our existence in the midst of institutions which we consider to be lies—these are the causes of our pessimism and ​skepticism. This is the frightful rent that goes through the entire civilized world. In this insupportable contradiction we lose all enjoyment of life and all inclination for effort. It is the cause of that feverish sense of discomfort that disturbs the people of culture in all countries today. In it we find the solution of the problem of the dismal tone of modern thought.

      It will be the task of the following chapters to set forth in detail the different phases of this discordant strife between the principal conventional lies of our civilization, and the truths they deny, based on natural science, which we have adopted as our conceptions of the universe.

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       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      Religion is the most powerful and widely extended of all the institutions bequeathed to us by the past. The entire human race comes under its ban. It binds with the same fetters the highest and the lowest races alike, and its connecting links render the negro of Australia the brother in sentiment and neighbor in civilization of the English lord. Religion penetrates all forms of political and social life, and faith in its abstract dogmas, is the avowed or unexpressed foundation for the rightfulness, or even the possibility of a whole series of actions which form the degrees of critical development, or the turning points, in any individual existence. There are still great many civilized countries, where everyone is obliged to belong to some religion. No one is asked about his faith, his convictions, but every one is obliged to conform to some established form of worship. The world has progressed somewhat since the days of the Anti-reformation under Bloody Mary, of Spain during the Sixteenth Century, and of the Puritan rule in New England, when every citizen was obliged, under the most fearful penalties, to take part in the established worship; but the progress has been slight, taken as a whole. The State no longer drives every individual to mass and confession, it has abolished the penalty of being burnt at the stake for negligence in church attendance; but it requires, at least in ​some European and American countries, every one to be enrolled on the list of members of some religious community, and by means of its organization exacts contributions from all sides.

      Religion receives into her arms at its birth the infant of civilized life, she becomes its unyielding, implacable companion throughout its entire existence, and will not relinquish her claims even upon its death-bed. A citizen is born—the parents are obliged to present him for baptism, as a refusal, in some countries, would render them liable to a fine and prosecution by the State. He wishes to get married—this he can only do in the church, with the co-operation of the minister. Many countries recognize a civil marriage as legal, it is true, but, in the first place it is only introduced into a comparatively small number, in the second, where it is already introduced powerful influences are at work undermining it, and, in the third place, social customs have not kept pace with the law, consequently in those countries where the civil marriage is a recognized, permanent institution it is not considered as a complete marriage. He dies—a minister follows his corpse to the grave, and he is laid to rest in consecrated ground, surrounded by the tokens and symbols of Religion. In many cases he can only advance his most authorized interests by taking an oath, based upon religious ideas. He is willing to serve his country, by shedding his life's blood at her command—he can not do so unless he takes the oath of allegiance before God; he applies to the legal authorities to maintain his rights—he is straightway called upon for an oath. He can not give his testimony before his fellow-citizens without an oath; neither can he without first having taken the oath of office, uphold the rights of the people, nor enter into possession of any public office. A passionate resistance met ​and overwhelmed the recent attempt in England and France to substitute a formal assurance of honor and conscience for the customary religious oath. Through out the whole length and breadth of the civilized world there is not a single nook or corner to be found, in which the autocratic yoke of Religion has been shaken off.

      We learn from history that the family, property, State and Religion are the forms in which civilization has developed. Well, none of these four forms includes such a large number of individuals as the last. There are many persons standing outside the pale of family life—such as foundlings, and the street arabs of large cities, although in later years they may found a family by marriage or concubinage. Habitual criminals and the very poor, do not recognize the principles of property. In the midst of our highly regulated civilization, with its multiplicity of laws, its governmental machinery and its army of public officials, there are isolated groups—the gypsies for example, in almost every country in Europe—who do not join the organization of the State; their births, marriages and deaths are never recorded, they never pay taxes, nor serve out terms of military service; they are without a fixed place of residence, or political nationality, and, even if they desired it, would experience no little difficulty in entering upon a normal civil life, because they could produce none of the be-sealed and besignatured documents, without which the son of modern civilization, numbered and ticketed, can not receive an official recognition of his life, nor of his death. But the case is different with Religion; the number of those without the fold, is exceedingly small. A society of freethinkers was founded in Germany which offered to those who had thrown off the inherited fetters of Religion, the opportunity of ​declaring their emancipation. It numbers hardly a thousand members after several years, and even of these, many are officially claimed on the records of religious communities. A law was passed in Austria to legalize the act of withdrawing from the church, but less than five hundred persons have availed themselves of its privileges and of this number, the majority were not persons constrained by their sense of honor to bring their outward lives into harmony with their inward convictions, but were either persons of different religions who wished to be united in matrimony and met on neutral ground by mutually renouncing the religion in which they had been brought up, or else Jews, who fancied they could escape from the popular prejudice against their race, by proclaiming officially the fact that they had renounced the faith of their fathers. This latter motive came into play so frequently that the terms Jew and "creedless" became almost synonymous in Austria, so that the secretary of the Vienna University used to remark good-naturedly. "Why don't you say right out that you are a Jew?" when some candidate for admission to the University, replied. "Creedless," when asked to what religion he belonged―one of the usual questions put to candidates. France is the country where liberty of thought has obtained from the laws, but not from society, the most extensive concessions from the yoke of Religion. But even in France, a large majority of the freethinkers remain

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