A prophetic plea from 1936 for a ‘cosmic religion’ [kosmické náboženství] by Norbert Fabián Čapek

Norbert Fabián Čapek (1870-1942) — A moment of reflection in the woods outside Prague

I believe in cosmic religion [kosmické náboženství]. No merely national religion suffices for me, still less a racial one. Cosmic religion embraces everything that is beautifully human, but it is far wider and higher. It reaches beyond time and space, and contains the whole universe and all eternity.
Norbert Fabián Čapek (1870-1942)

—o0o— 

 

Whither Leads the Religion of the Modern Man (1936) by Norbert F. Čapek
Cesty a Cíle, 1936, Vol. 14. Issue 10, pp. 149-156

When today’s theme was put before me, my first thoughts were these: ‘Who, after all, is the modern man?’ ‘And what is the religion of the modern man?’ Perhaps there are quite a few who consider themselves modern and yet recognise no religion at all. The agnostic too is accounted a modern man. He might say, for instance, that religion leads nowhere, or that it holds one back. The atheist would perhaps say that it leads to superstition, or that it is an opiate. We, however, can say that it leads to higher moral levels. It leads to the hallowing, beautifying and spiritualising of the whole of life.

 

The question remains: which religion? In the forty-six years of my work as a preacher I have become convinced of one thing. More people are turned away from religion, towards doubt and unbelief, by religion itself than by everything that is done directly against it. And so the most important question today is not even where religion leads. It is rather: what must religion be like, if it is to lead anywhere?

 

Four thousand years ago Moses taught: do not lie, do not steal, do not kill. Twenty-five centuries ago Buddha taught: do not lie, do not slander, do not steal, do not kill. Twenty centuries ago Jesus taught love of one’s neighbour, and even of one’s enemy. And where are we today? Are we to imagine yet more slander, lying and stealing? Are we to imagine killing prepared on a grand scale? And so the question arises: are people alone to blame for this? Or were these teachings simply not pressed upon them strongly enough in the name of religion?

 

Who could deny that people have been murdered in the name of religion, indeed even by the Christian religion? Witness the history of the heretics. Who could deny that there have been thefts in the form of confiscations of property? Who could deny that there has been slander, when the noblest of people had the vilest things imputed to them simply because they were heretics!

 

Broadly speaking, we may say that in the cultural history of mankind religion shows three currents. They interpenetrate one another, of course, to a greater or lesser degree. The oldest, and still the most widespread, is folk religion. It is founded, broadly speaking, upon fear. In early humanity it is above all fear that calls forth religious ideas. And from this early standpoint religion has, in many respects, not advanced even here in the middle of Europe. Indeed, one of our Czech professors of dogmatics wrote not long ago that in religion, as his church understands it, a feeling of horror and dread predominates everywhere from the very start. We are not to conceive of God, he says, without fear and anxious trembling.

 

Modern psychology, however, teaches us that fear is as destructive to the human soul as poison is to the body. From my own counselling practice I know many cases in which defects of character, and even severe neurasthenia and phobias (morbid dread), had their origin in the fear instilled in the hours of religious instruction.

 

A kind of excess of folk religion is clericalism. It is the rule of politicising priests. On the one hand they divert religion itself into ritualism; on the other, into the domination of the masses by fear.

 

Today we find ourselves in transition from folk religion to a human, humane religion. That religion could be inhuman sounds paradoxical, of course. But that it has been, and still often is, of that there is no doubt. Every religion does indeed contain humanitarian elements. But they are not sufficiently emphasised, and they often stand in contradiction to the practice of life.

 

Christianity arose at a time when all work was done by human hands. There was no unemployment, and no great anxiety about food, clothing and shelter. Today everything has been revalued. The machine has become the master of man, and is counted of greater worth than many human beings. Unlimited exploitation within the bounds of the law, to the profit of some and to the ruin of others, has become the rule. To kill a man counts as a crime only when it is done privately, without organisation and on a small scale. And so problems rise before the eyes of today’s religious man of which the old world knew nothing.

 

Consequently, in contrast to folk religion, the humanitarian – that is, the human – religion is slowly becoming the catchword of the day. For a time it will probably govern the minds of all the more earnest spirits. They will see religion more in life and in deeds, and lay little or no stress on what is said, or on how it is said.

 

In this connection I consider a remark of Thomas Mann’s to be highly significant: ‘I believe that behind all the moral and political confusion that oppresses today’s world, a quiet work is being done on a new world, on a new religion. All the higher, finer and deeper spirits of the West are labouring at it. All the essential impulses of the human subconscious, all the depths of conscious spirituality, are tending towards a new faith in the idea of man. They contain a new religious love for the idea of man, for the profound problem of man. When this new love prevails, then the world will once again be more beautiful than it appears today.’

 

It is only natural that some will wish to strike the word God out of this religion, and will lean more or less towards a materialist orientation. Others, however, will seek to fill this human religion with the spirit of cosmic religion [kosmické náboženství]. These will become the forerunners and pioneers of the highest religion and of the most perfect social orders.

 

Of cosmic religion Einstein wrote [in The World As I See It] that ‘it is difficult to explain it to one who has not known it’, although ‘stirrings of cosmic religion appear even at an early stage of development’. And further he says: ‘It is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find people who were full of the highest piety. They often appeared to their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes even as saints.’ He goes on to show that cosmic religiosity cannot be at odds with science, and that within it dread has no place.

 

I believe in cosmic religion. No merely national religion suffices me, still less a racial one. Cosmic religion embraces everything that is beautifully human, but it is far wider and higher. It reaches beyond time and space, and contains the whole universe and all eternity.

 

I am well aware that religion can be defined otherwise, and just as truly. I agree entirely, for example, with Masaryk’s latest definition [from Talks with T. G. Masaryk], when he said: ‘Religion is for me Jesus.’ And further he says: ‘I look at Jesus’s life. He works from morning till night for the people he knows and who seek him out. To one he gives bread, another he heals, to a third he says something: he works. All the while he is conscious of being one with his God, his Father.’ – ‘To Jesus, God is a Father; that is, a moral, intimate relationship; but God is the proper object of religion.’ And further he says: ‘Jesus was a man, a prophet; therefore I can love him.’ – ‘I doubt whether it is possible to love God; in any case it would have to be a special love, a love for a being we cannot grasp.’ And elsewhere he notes: ‘Religion is for me not merely blind faith in authority, but the conviction of the existence of God and of the immortality of the subject, and from that hope and courage in all the changes of life. Religion is the feeling of the world and of life.’

 

Religion, in the best sense of the word, is a matter of the soul and the heart. It is the conscious communion of man with the Highest. It is the feeling of eternity, in the unique sense of that word. It is something supremely alive, and something that daily life cannot do without. It does not consist in believing that somewhere something is, or was, or will be. It is the daily endeavour to create a more beautiful life. It is the rising above the animal realm towards a higher humanity and towards the very borders of the divine.

 

Professor Žilka earned great merit with his modern translation of the New Testament. In this version it has once again become my most beloved book. And it is precisely in this New Testament that Professor Žilka points out that in the original Greek text, in the Acts of the Apostles, the word ‘way’ stands where we use the word ‘religion’. And that is how I understand religion. It should be a way not only to God, but also to the discovery and the gladdening of man. It should be a way towards a fuller life. It should be a way from weakness to strength, from sorrow to joy, from sickness to health, from slavery to freedom, from selfishness to love and brotherhood.

 

It has also been said that religion is to walk in the ways of God. The catch, of course, is that some see the ways of God only where a priest has walked and sprinkled the path with holy water. But someone else will rightly say that the ways of God are wherever God’s people walk, God’s labourers, to comfort and uplift their fellow man.

 

Along the path trodden by ‘pious’ folk there are many monuments, and many suppose that the monuments are the main thing and the path a mere side matter. Their chief concern is to stop at those monuments and to delight in what someone else achieved, in whose honour the monument was raised.

 

It is no use knowing who went this way, and no use venerating someone merely because he went this way. What is needed is that each person should go that way himself. The modern man needs to walk that path, and to know that he is going further and higher, that he is getting somewhere, that he is achieving something, and that behind him remains the footprint of a man of God. And yet it is precisely among those who count themselves modern that we meet long ranks of the weary, of those sick of life and soured, of those prone to suicide, poisoned through and through by black pessimism.

 

How greatly a religion is needed here that would lead the modern man to optimism, to joy in life, to creative work, to bolder ventures, to the seeking of that truth which is true, and to the preparing of more just social orders.

 

Instead of that, let us look only briefly at what is being done for the mental health of our fellow citizens. We could begin with the school. In one edition of a reader for the first year of secondary school there are 280 pages and 140 pieces. One might expect to find much there that serves the mental health of our growing youth. In fact there is sorrow upon sorrow: ‘Ballad of Death’, ‘The Prisoner on Bezděz’, ‘Sad Parting’, ‘Havlíček’s Funeral’, ‘God’s Judgement’, ‘Hus at the Stake’, ‘The Death of Leonidas’, and so on. So many things that can only draw tears to a sensitive child’s cheeks, for a good third of the pieces have mournful subjects. The poems are of a similar kind: a tearful tale of how the bailiff sells the cow, the last possession of a poor widow.

 

Pessimism fills every page, and you look in vain for a way out towards a joyful optimism. Everywhere there is only heaviness of heart, for the Czech is depicted here as a degenerate decadent. Pitifully few are the pieces that directly encourage courage. Everything tends towards the rearing of small, dreamy, sentimental people. For the hard struggle of an age of technical progress and spiritual revolution, they are fed on grandmothers’ fairy tales from the days of forced labour (robota). In those days a luxuriant fancy of enchanted princesses, forest sprites and bleeding pictures of saints comforted the people when they came home from their labour in the evening.

 

Or take contemporary poetry as food for adults. What, if not poetry, ought to uplift and encourage, and to teach new ventures and the indomitable overcoming of every obstacle? Instead of that we find everywhere only depression, lamentation, languor, and sorrow over decay and ruin. Thus sings one of them: ‘Stamp, stamp, the death-stiff flowers jutting from the clay like the joints of skeletons.’ Or another, one of the young and well-known poets, writes: ‘Farewell. The dream vanishes like a white hound; I shall see you no more, my little boats; here is death.’

 

In other verses you are not even surprised by the singing of monasteries, churchyards and tombstones, and of a certain cowardice in the face of life. Or I hear a scientist, and I praise him for stooping to the people and bringing them popularised science in a lecture. He tells how man has slowly got the better of tuberculosis, how the hardening of the arteries may be prevented, how even a pierced heart has been healed. And I rejoice: here, I think, is something that encourages us to live. But I have scarcely thought it through before I hear him end with these words: ‘And what good is it if we discover an effective remedy for one disease, when in the meantime two new diseases appear that we cannot cope with? And even if we found, for the most dreadful disease of all, for cancer, the cure so eagerly sought, perhaps some still worse affliction would swoop down upon mankind.’

 

The life of many is sad and heavy precisely because it is oriented towards death. And the ruthlessness and wickedness of others are so great precisely because they believe in a death that will wipe everything out. The thought that death might make an end of everything weakens, indeed destroys, the sense of responsibility in many.

 

It is often the noblest souls, those who have loved most, who suffer most from the thought of total annihilation by death. And those who suffer least from the thought of destruction are precisely those who believe that it lies in their power to end a life for ever. The murderer bursts into a home, lets himself be entertained, insinuates himself with friendly words, then calmly kills one person after another. Beside his victim he washes his hands, eats and drinks, and goes straight from the scene of the murder to his pleasures. The only thought that can trouble him is whether it will come out, whether he will be caught. Never, however, the worth of the human being with whom he must meet and reckon.

 

The intelligence of the universe cannot be on the side of the worst. And wickedness is not so small a thing that death could simply extinguish it, without any consequences.

 

The universe is not a dead heap of bodies and forms; it is a living organism. The noble man feels no greater pain over anything than over evil that can no longer be undone, over a lie that never comes to light, over undeserved misfortune that finds no counterweight in any redress. And if, in that cosmic order which displays so much harmony and design, there were no redress and atonement for all evils and wickedness, the universe would remain poisoned. It would be a living indictment of its Creator. Then evil would have to be called good, and good evil, and the whole of life would be a farce, and one would not care to live.

 

I touch on this problem of eternity and immortality only because our attitude to it means a greater or a lesser responsibility. And one of the great advantages of the religion of the modern man is that it leads him to a greater responsibility before the face of eternity. And that responsibility is what the present generation needs most of all.

 

But if we look at life from the angle of eternity, and if we have understood God as the friend of all people and ourselves as God’s labourers, then our whole view of the world and of people is changed. All people draw nearer to us, and all nature becomes friendlier to us. The flame of love warms and stirs our soul. The angel of peace and of inner harmony accompanies us through life. Joy and enthusiasm, great faith and great hope, light up our horizon. And wherever we go, there remain behind us the footprints and the light of the people of God, who worked with God for a happier humanity and for more perfect orders of the world.

 

Had religion in the spirit of Jesus been proclaimed purely, and developed in his spirit, and remained a way of spiritual progress towards the highest goals of humanity, then over those two thousand years something quite different would have come to pass from what we witness today. There would be no poverty. Everyone would have enough of everything, for our earth, rightly used, would suffice for a hundred times more people. As it is, people devote ninety per cent of their strength, their skill and their knowledge to overcoming, cheating and deceiving one another, to defending themselves against one another, or to preparing to harm one another. Were all these energies turned instead to the invention of useful machines and things, to the building of beautiful homes and efficient schools, to the provision of well-being, to the spread of enlightenment and the ennobling of life, there would not be a single beggar, and criminals and those who delight in evildoing would dwindle away.

 

The whole earth would be one great brotherhood, in which each lived for the other and all were devoted to all. No one would force his opinion on another. No one would curtail another’s freedom. Freedom and brotherhood would be the watchword of all humanity.

 

To sum up: the higher religion contains within itself every impulse and possibility to lead man, in the bodily realm, towards better health, towards freshness and beauty. For our body is the temple of God, and to neglect it is godlessness. It leads on towards inner equilibrium, towards peace with oneself, with one’s fellows and with God. It gives spiritual strength for the mastering of the world, love for a self-sacrificing brotherhood, discipline and forbearance, and accord with all people of good will. It creates a healthier environment, whether in the life of families, of communities and towns, of society, or of the state.

 

The man devoted to the higher religion desires just social orders – namely, that kingdom of God on earth. And in the spirit of Jesus he has no rest so long as a single soul remains lost, so long as a single creature suffers unjustly, so long as the will of God is not done on earth as it is in heaven.