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아래 글은
네이버 블로그 ‘쓸데없는 생각들’http://blog.naver.com/alphauri을 운영하고 계시는 빈둥빈둥님의 번역입니다.
God and the State
미하일 바쿠닌
I
Who is right, the idealists or the materialists? The question, once stated in this way, hesitation becomes impossible. Undoubtedly the idealists are wrong and the materialists right. Yes, facts are before ideas; yes, the ideal, as Proudhon said, is but a flower, whose root lies in the material conditions of existence. Yes, the whole history of humanity, intellectual and moral, political and social, is but a reflection of its economic history.
유물론(보이는 물질에 바탕해서 사고하는 사람)와 관념론자(머리속에 있는것에 바탕을 두고 사고하는사람)중 누가 옳겠습니까? 이 질문은 우리가 대답하는것을 주저하게 하지 못합니다. 더 말할것도 없이 관념론자들은 틀리고 유물론자는 옳습니다. 예 그렇습니다. 지금 보이는 사실이란 관념(관념이 만들어낸 이상)보다 우세한것입니다.; 그렇습니다 관념이란 단지 프루동이 말한것과 같이 (관념은) 아름다운 꽃지만 그 뿌리는 현존(현재존재)하는 물질(실제)에 의존하고 있는 것입니다. 그렇습니다 역사속의 인간의 지적 도덕적 정치적 사회적인 모든 것들이란 사실은 (실제적인) 경제적 상황의 반영일뿐인 것입니다.
All branches of modem science, of true and disinterested science, concur in proclaiming this grand truth, fundamental and decisive: The social world, properly speaking, the human world - in short, humanity - is nothing other than the last and supreme development - at least on our planet and as far as we know - the highest manifestation of animality.
모든 현대과학의 가지들은 진실이던 그것에 관심없는 과학이던 간에 근원적이고 중대한 거대한 진실을 외치고 있습니다.; 이 사회적인 세계란 아마도 말하자면 인간의 세계라 할수 있을 것입니다 -즉 짧게 말하자면 이것은 인간집단이란 것으로 - 무엇보다 중요한 최상의 발전인 -우리가 우리의 행성에서 알수 있는한 - 가장 발전된 구성으로서의 동물집단일것입니다.
But as every development necessarily implies a negation, that of its base or point of departure, humanity is at the same time and essentially the deliberate and gradual negation of the animal element in man; and it is precisely this negation, as rational as it is natural, and rational only because natural - at once historical and logical, as inevitable as the development and realization of all the natural laws in the world - that constitutes and creates the ideal, the world of intellectual and moral convictions, ideas.
그렇지만 모든 발전에는 필연적으로 암묵적인 부정이 필요합니다 인간집단이 발전하는 동안 시간동안 본질적으로 생각이 깊어지고 점차적으로 동물성을 부정하였고 이 부정이 정확하게 그렇게 되었을때 이성적인 것이 자연스러운것과 같이 자연스럽운 것으로 부터 이성적인 것이 나타난것과 같이 되었을습니다. 역사적으로 논리적으로 피할수 없게 된 세계의 모든 자연 법칙의 발전과 깨닿음은 관념을 만들어 내고 구성하였으며 세계의 지적이고 도덕적인 신념으로서 관념으로서 만들어 졌습니다.
Yes, our first ancestors, our Adams and our Eves, were, if not gorillas, very near relatives of gorillas, omnivorous, intelligent and ferocious beasts, endowed in a higher degree than the animals of another species with two precious faculties - the power to think and the desire to rebel.
우리의 첫번쨰 시조라 할수 있는 아담과 이브가 잡식성의 지적이고 흉폭한 맹수가 다른 종보다 뛰어나게 부여된 생각하는 힘과 반역에 대한 욕구가 아니었다면 고릴라가 아니라던가 고릴라과 흡사하였다고 하지 않을수 있겠습니까?
These faculties, combining their progressive action in history, represent the essential factor, the negative power in the positive development of human animality, and create consequently all that constitutes humanity in man.
즉 인간의 역사의 진보를 이어나간 이러한 재능들이란 본질적인 결과에서 다시 말하자면 긍정적인 인간의 동물성을 발전시키는데 있는 부정적인 힘과 창조 로서 인간집단으로서 인간을 구성하게 만드는것입니다.
The Bible, which is a very interesting and here and there very profound book when considered as one of the oldest surviving manifestations of human wisdom and fancy, expresses this truth very naively in its myth of original sin. Jehovah, who of all the good gods adored by men was certainly the most jealous, the most vain, the most ferocious, the most unjust, the most bloodthirsty, the most despotic, and the most hostile to human dignity and liberty - Jehovah had just created Adam and Eve, to satisfy we know not what caprice; no doubt to while away his time, which must weigh heavy on his hands in his eternal egoistic solitude, or that he might have some new slaves.
성경 이것에 대해서는 매우 흥미롭고 또한 현재하며 매우 깊은 깊이를 가진 책으로 여겨지는 마치 하나의 오래동안 살아온 인간의 지혜와 상상의 형태로서 매우 소박한 오래된 원죄의 신화를 진실로서 이야기합니다.( 성경에 따르자면 ) 여호하 말하자면 숭배받는 모든 좋은 것들의 신은 가장 질투심많고 가장 무력하며 또 가장 흉포하며 또한 가장 부정의하고 가장 피에 굶주렸으며 가장 전제적인 인간의 근면과 자유에 가장 적대적인 이입니다. -( 성경에 따르면 ) 여호하는 아담과 이브를 단지 우리가 알수없는 갑작스런 변덕으로 만들고서 만족하는것입니다 ; 의심할바 없이 그의 시간이 그렇게 흘러간 후에는 영원한 이기적인 고독이 그의 손을 무겁게 햇거나 그는 새로운 노예를 다시 갇게 되었을 것입니다
He generously placed at their disposal the whole earth, with all its fruits and animals, and set but a single limit to this complete enjoyment. He expressly forbade them from touching the fruit of the tree of knowledge. He wished, therefore, that man, destitute of all understanding of himself, should remain an eternal beast, ever on all-fours before the eternal God, his creator and his master. But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge.
그는 아낌없이 지구의 모든 과일과 동물을 처분할 권리를 주어놓고선 하나의 즐거움만을 금지 시킵니다. 그는 지식의 나무의 열매를 만지를 것을 절대적으로 금합니다. 그는 인간이 모든 그자신의 이해로부터 미흡해져 단지 영원한 야수로서 네발달린 동물로서 그의 창조주와 주인을 영원한 신으로 남아있게 하기 위한것이라 할수 있습니다. 그러나 여기 사탄이 영원한 반역으로서 최초의 자유사상과 해방을 세계에 시작하게 하는것입니다. 그는 사람을 그의 짐승과 같은 무지와 편견으로 부터 스스로를 부끄럽게 여기게 만듭니다.
; 그는 스스로를 해방시키고 압제로부터 그의 머리 위에 있는 자유와 인간성의 보증으로서 지식의 열매를 먹지 말라는 명령을 거슬러 그것을 먹게 된것입니다.
We know what followed. The good God, whose foresight, which is one of the divine faculties, should have warned him of what would happen, flew into a terrible and ridiculous rage; he cursed Satan, man, and the world created by himself, striking himself so to speak in his own creation, as children do when they get angry; and, not content with smiting our ancestors themselves, he cursed them in all the generations to come, innocent of the crime committed by their forefathers.
우리는 그후 어떻게 되었는가를 압니다. 이 선한 신은 신성한 하나의 힘으로 이미 알고 있었기에 그에게 그와 같은 일이 있었음을 경고하고 공포스럽고 터무니 없는 화를 냅니다. ; 신는 사탄과 사람을 그가만든 세상을 저주하고 스스로가 만든 아이와 같은 그들에게 화냅니다. 이것은 스스로를 내리치는 것과 같습니다. (신 자신이 세계를 창조했음으로) ; 그리고 우리의 선조들에게 벌을 내리는 것에 만족하지 못하고 그들의 모든 자손에 걸쳐서 그들의 선조의 무죄인 범죄에 대해서 저주하는것입니다.
Our Catholic and Protestant theologians look upon that as very profound and very just, precisely because it is monstrously iniquitous and absurd. Then, remembering that he was not only a God of vengeance and wrath, but also a God of love, after having tormented the existence of a few milliards of poor human beings and condemned them to an eternal hell, he took pity on the rest, and, to save them and reconcile his eternal and divine love with his eternal and divine anger, always greedy for victims and blood, he sent into the world, as an expiatory victim, his only son, that he might be killed by men.
우리의 카톨릭 그리고 신교도의 신학자들은 지극히 난해하고 지극히 당위적위게 이 괴기스럽게 사악하고 불합리한 까닭을 바라보려합니다. 그래서 그가 오직 복수와 격노의 신이 아니라 그는 또한 사랑의 신이기에 이후의 고통받는 수많은 빈곤한 인간 존재들을 영원한 지옥에 떨어지도록 선고받는 그들을 동정해서 그들을 (지옥으로부터) 구하고 그의 영원하고도 신성한 사랑과 영원하고도 또한 신성한 분노로부터 화해하게 하기위해서 언제나의 범죄와 피로부터의 웃음과 범죄로부터의 속죄로서 그의 오직 하나의 아들을 인간에 의해 죽게 했다는 것입니다.
That is called the mystery of the Redemption, the basis of all the Christian religions. Still, if the divine Savior had saved the human world! But no; in the paradise promised by Christ, as we know, such being the formal announcement, the elect will number very few. The rest, the immense majority of the generations present and to come, will burn eternally in hell. In the meantime, to console us, God, ever just, ever good, hands over the earth to the government of the Napoleon Thirds, of the William Firsts, of the Ferdinands of Austria, and of the Alexanders of all the Russias.
이것은 흔히 구속( 다시 돌아감 ; 성서적인 의미의 용어로 인류를 죄악으로 부터 건져내어 하느님의 은총속에 있게 한다는 성서적 의미 ) 의 전설로 불립니다. 모든 기독교의 신앙속에는 이러한 것이 기초에 되어있습니다. 그런데 (그말에 따라보자면) 아직까지도 성스런 구세주가 인간의 세계를 구하지 못했다는 것입니까? 예수는 천국을 약속했습니다. 그러나 아다시피 이것은 선출되어진 소수의 사람에게만 허용된다는 것이 공식적인 발표입니다. 남겨져 있는 거대한 숫자의 대중들의 세대는 현재 그리고 앞으로 올 시간동안 영원히 지옥속에서 태워져야(고통받아야)합니다 . 그러는 동안 언제나 정의롭고 선한 신은 지구상에 나폴레옹3세의 정부가 세워지게 한다던가 윌리암 1세나 오스트리아의 Ferdinands 나 러시아의 알렉산더라등을 통해 우리를 위로합니다.
Such are the absurd tales that are told and the monstrous doctrines that are taught, in the full light of the nineteenth century, in all the public schools of Europe, at the express command of the government. They call this civilizing the people! Is it not plain that all these governments are systematic poisoners, interested stupefies of the masses?
이 불합리한 신화가 말하는 괴물과도 같은 교리란 (근대화가 된) 19세기의 전성기에도 유럽의 공립학교에서 정부의 주도아래 가르켜지고 있습니다. 그들은 이것을 인간의 문명화라고 부릅니다. 이것이야 말로 대중의 무지의 관심이 있는 체제의 암적존재에 의한 이 정부의 계획이 아니라고 할수 있겠습니까?
I have wandered from my subject, because anger gets hold of me whenever I think of the base and criminal means which they employ to keep the nations in perpetual slavery, undoubtedly that they may be the better able to fleece them. Of what consequence are the crimes of all the Tropmanns in the world compared with this crime of treason against humanity committed daily, in broad day, over the whole surface of the civilized world, by those who dare to call themselves the guardians and the fathers of the people? I return to the myth of original sin.
저는 연구들에서 - 저를 그동안 언제나 화내게 했던 화나게 했던 근본적인 범죄였던 영구적인 노예제를 유지하는 국가의 착취- 더 말할필요도 없이 ( 위에서 언급한 종교는 ) 그것을 더 원활히 하기 위한 것입니다. */ 세계에서의 모든 Tropmanns 의 범죄와 이 매일같이 그리고 문명화된 모든 세계에서 말하자면 수호자들과 인간들의 아버지라 불리는 자의 인간성에 대한 배신과 비교해볼때 무엇이 더 중요하겠습니까? /* 저는 다시 원죄의 신화로 돌아가볼까 합니다.
God admitted that Satan was right; he recognized that the devil did not deceive Adam and Eve in promising them knowledge and liberty as a reward for the act of disobedience which he bad induced them to commit; for, immediately they had eaten of the forbidden fruit, God himself said (see Bible): "Behold, man is become as of the Gods, knowing both good and evil; prevent him, therefore, from eating of the fruit of eternal life, lest he become immortal like Ourselves.
신은 사탄이 옳다고 인정 했습니다 ; 신은 악마가 아담과 이브를 속이지 않았음을 인정했습니다. 아담과 이브에게 지식과 해방을 줄 불복종에 대하여 신는 그들이 그렇게 되도록 만드는 것입니다. ; 간단히 말하자면 그들이 먹을 금지될 과일에 대해서 신이 스스로 말하길 “ 보라 인간은 신과 같이 될지며 선과 악을 알게 될 것이다. ; 그를 막아라 ,그가 영원한 삶의 열매를 먹는 다면 그는 우리들과 같게 될것이다. ”
Let us disregard now the fabulous portion of this myth and consider its true meaning, which is very clear. Man has emancipated himself; he has separated himself from animality and constituted himself a man; he has begun his distinctively human history and development by an act of disobedience and science - that is, by rebellion and by thought.
Three elements or, if you like, three fundamental principles constitute the essential conditions of all human development, collective or individual, in history:
(1) human animality;;
(2) thought; and
(3) rebellion.;
우리는 이제 이 말도 안되는 신화의 일부가 품고 있는 진정한 의미에 대한 생각따위는 단순하게 무시해 버립시다. 인간은 그 자신에 의해 해방되어졌습니다(자유롭습니다). 인간은 그 자신을 동물성과 그자신의 인간으로서 만들어진 둘로서 나누었습니다. 인간은 스스로의 독창성으로 인간의 역사와 발전을 불복종과 과학을 통해서 이룩한것입니다 - 이것이란 바로 부정(X)과 사고입니다.
인간의 발전과 집단성 혹은 산업등의 역사적 상황에는 근본적인 3가지의 요소 혹은 원론이라 불리는 것들이 있습니다.
(1) 인간의 동물성 ;
(2) 사고 ; 그리고
(3) 부정 ( 반역 , 회의 )
To the first properly corresponds social and private economy; to the second, science; to the third, liberty.
첫 번째는 완전한 사회적인 개인적인 경제와 일치하고 두 번째는 과학 으로 세 번째는 자유와 완전히 일치합니다.
Idealists of all schools, aristocrats and bourgeois, theologians and metaphysicians, politicians and moralists, religionists, philosophers, or poets, not forgetting the liberal economists - unbounded worshippers of the ideal, as we know - are much offended when told that man, with his magnificent intelligence, his sublime ideas, and his boundless aspirations, is, like all else existing in the world, nothing but matter, only a product of vile matter.
귀족들과 부유한 이들 , 신학자들과 형이상학자들 정치인과 법학자들 종교학자와 철학자 시인 잊지 않고 있는 자유주의 경제학자들 - 우리들이 알고 있는 숭배로부터 벗어난 - 로 구성된 관념주의자들의 학파들은 오직 쓰리기와 같은 것들인 세계밖에 존재를 충족되지 않는 욕망과 그의 터무니없는 상상과 거대한 지식으로서 만들어 내어 사람들에게 말합니다.
We may answer that the matter of which materialists speak, matter spontaneously and eternally mobile, active, productive, matter chemically or organically determined and manifested by the properties or forces, mechanical, physical, animal, and intelligent, which necessarily belong to it - that this matter has nothing in common with the vile matter of the idealists.
우리는 그것에 대해 유물론자에게 질문한 이야기를 듣는다면 언제나 움직이는 활동적이고 생산적인 화학 또는 원론적으로 완벽한 힘과 기계적이고 물리적이며 동물적인 그리고 지성적인 필요한 그것들을 대답해 줄 것입니다. -( 이것에 비교해보자면 관념론자의 하찮은 쓰레기와 같은 대답들은 아무런 가치가 없습니다. ) - (의역)
The latter, a product of their false abstraction, is indeed a stupid, inanimate, immobile thing, incapable of giving birth to the smallest product, a caput mortuum, an ugly fancy in contrast to the beautiful fancy which they call God; as the opposite of this supreme being, matter, their matter, stripped by that constitutes its real nature, necessarily represents supreme nothingness.
후자(관념론자)에 있어서 연금술의 멍청하고 전혀 유용하지 않은 추악한 공상은 그들이 신이라 부르는 아름다운 공상과 대비되어 집니다. ; 그러나 이 위대한 작업의 반대에 있는 것(연금술)이란 물질과 물질이 구성되는 진정한 자연의 모습을 밝혀내는 것으로 그것이 (신학에 비한다면)완전히 의미가 없는 것은 아닐것입니다.
They have taken away intelligence, life, all its determining qualities, active relations or forces, motion itself, without which matter would not even have weight, leaving it nothing but impenetrability and absolute immobility in space; they have attributed all these natural forces, properties, and manifestations to the imaginary being created by their abstract fancy; then, interchanging rles, they have called this product of their imagination, this phantom, this God who is nothing, "supreme Being" and, as a necessary consequence, have declared that the real being, matter, the world, is nothing.
그들은 지성과 삶의 질을 결정하는 관계성이나 힘 스스로의 행위를 제외하고 결코 움직이지 않는 무감각한 공간만을 두었습니다. ; 그들은 모든 자연적인 힘과 상태의 명시에 대해 그들의 추상적인 신화로 만들어 내서 이야기 합니다. ; 이 바뀌어진 법칙 , 그들은 이것은 그들의 상상력속에 있는 아무것도 없는 신이라 불리는 그 유령의 위대한 업적이라 부르며 설명이 필요해지면 실제로 있는 세계란 실로 아무것도 아니라고 선언해 버립니다.
After which they gravely tell us that this matter is incapable of producing anything, not even of setting itself in motion, and consequently must have been created by their God.
그들은 그것들에 대해서 심각하게 우리에게 말합니다. 이러한 (실제의) 사건들이란 (무엇인가의 힘에 의해서 언제나 그렇게 되었음으로) 스스로의 움직임으로부터 비롯되어 질수 있는 것이 아니며 그것은 결국 신에 의하여 그렇게 될 수밖에 없다라고 말입니다.
At the end of this book I exposed the fallacies and truly revolting absurdities to which one is inevitably led by this imagination of a God, let him be considered as a personal being, the creator and organizer of worlds; or even as impersonal, a kind of divine soul spread over the whole universe and constituting thus its eternal principle; or let him be an idea, infinite and divine, always present and active in the world, and always manifested by the totality of material and definite beings.
이 책에 마지막에 저는 잘못된 믿음과 실로 반항적인 - 신이란 상상으로부터 유도되는 - 개인적인 것으로부터 세계를 구성하고 만들어 내는 부조리에 대해서 설명할 것입니다. ; 이것은 사람에게 뿐만 아니라 세계에 흩어져 있는 신성한 영혼들과 영원한 원소들의 구성에 까지 ( 부조리가 닿습니다. ; 그렇지 않으면 영원과 신성에 대한 그의 생각이 언제나 현재의 것이며 또한 활동적인 것으로 세계에 있고 언제나 물질과 그것의 움직임에 대한 정의(定義;의미를 정하다)를 구성할수 있을것입니다.
Here I shall deal with one point only. The gradual development of the material world, as well as of organic animal life and of the historically progressive intelligence of man, individually or socially, is perfectly conceivable. It is a wholly natural movement from the simple to the complex, from the lower to the higher, from the inferior to the superior; a movement in conformity with all our daily experiences, and consequently in conformity also with our natural logic, with the distinctive laws of our mind, which being formed and developed only by the aid of these same experiences; is, so to speak, but the mental, cerebral reproduction or reflected summary thereof.
저는 여기서 한가지의 점만을 제안하려 합니다. 세기에 이르는 물질의 세계의 발전에서 원래의 동물의 삶과(에서) 인간의 지성과 산업과 사회의 역사적 진보는 완전히 믿을만한 것입니다. 이것은 하나의 것들이 결합하고 작은것들이 커지면서 하류의 것이 위대한 것으로 된것입니다. ; 움직임, 우리의 매일의 경험의 운동과 그 결과로서 만들어진 자연법과 특수법 또한 우리의 경험과 같이 만들어지고 발전됩니다. ; 그렇기 때문에 정신이라 일지라도 신경(감각 ,정신)의 재생산이거나 그것을 축약해 놓은 반영들인 것입니다. (경험들 , 경험의 추상)
The system of the idealists is quite the contrary of this. It is the reversal of all human experiences and of that universal and common good sense which is the essential condition of all human understanding, and which, in rising from the simple and unanimously recognized truth that twice two are four to the sublimest and most complex scientific considerations - admitting, moreover, nothing that has not stood the severest tests of experience or observation of things and facts - becomes the only serious basis of human knowledge.
관념주의자들의 체계는 이와 완전히 반대에 있습니다. 이것은 모든 인간의 경험과 좋다고 생각되어지는 생각들인 기본적인 인간의 이해와 2더하기 2가 4라고 하는 것과 같은 과학적인 명료성과 완전히 반대에 서있는 것입니다. - 용인할수 있는 몇가지의 경험과 사실의 관찰에 있어서의 실험의 것들의 - 이러한 것들은 가장 중요한 인간의 지식의 기반에 있습니다. (의역 수정필)/
Very far from pursuing the natural order from the lower to the higher, from the inferior to the superior, and from the relatively simple to the more complex; instead of wisely and rationally accompanying the progressive and real movement from the world called inorganic to the world organic, vegetables, animal, and then distinctively human - from chemical matter or chemical being to living matter or living being, and from living being to thinking being - the idealists, obsessed, blinded, and pushed on by the divine phantom which they have inherited from theology, take precisely the opposite course. They go from the higher to the lower, from the superior to the inferior, from the complex to the simple.
(관념주의자들의 체계는) 낮은 곳에서 높은곳으로의 자연의 법칙과 하위의 것에서 위대한 것으로 관계가 적은것에서 보다 복잡한 것으로의 자연의 법칙을 추구하는 것과는 너무나도 멀리있습니다. ; 현명함과 이성적인 것들을 수반하는 인간을 인간답게 특정 하는 진보와 진실한 운동( 움직임 , 자유와 진보의 가치로서의 , 환경 운동을 비롯한 -- 운동에서의 단어와 비슷한 의미 ) 과 - 화학적( 융합적, 관계적 , 흔히 화학적이라고 할때 몇 개의 물질들이 반응해서 다른 것을 생산하는 것으로 쓰이지요 그런것과 비슷하게 여러인간들이 서로에 관계맺음으로서 다른 것들을 만들어 내는 사회와 비슷할것입니다 이와 같은 의미로 쓰인 화학적으로 ) 물질(matter; 질료 물질 , 물질자체의 움직임과 그것의 성질을 본질적으로 본 유물론자인 바쿠닌)과 화학적 행동으로서 생존의 본질 혹은 생존과 행위와 살아가는 행위로서 생각하는 것들 - 반대에 있는 관념주의자들은 그들이 신학으로부터 혹은 편견에 찬 (인간의 이성과)반대에 있는 (교육혹은 사회적)교육과정으로부터 물려받은 신성한 유령들의 압박받고 눈멀며 환영(환상)에 사로 잡혀 있습니다. 그들은 높은 위치에서 낮은 위치로 가고 위대한 것들에서 추악한 것으로 가며 복잡한 것으로부터 단순한 것으로 갑니다.
They begin with God, either as a person or as divine substance or idea, and the first step that they take is a terrible fall from the sublime heights of the eternal ideal into the mire of the material world; from absolute perfection into absolute imperfection; from thought to being, or rather, from supreme being to nothing. When, how, and why the divine being, eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect, probably weary of himself, decided upon this desperate salto mortale is something which no idealist, no theologian, no metaphysician, no poet, has ever been able to understand himself or explain to the profane.
그들의 신의 시작은 사람이나 혹은 신성한 본질(substance ; matter와 반대로서 관념주의자들의 있어서의 본질) 혹은 관념에서 같이 영원한 이상향의 숭고의 천상으로 부터 현재의 실재의 진창의 세계로의 잔혹한 전락으로부터 시작합니다. ; 극단적인 완벽함에서 극단적인 불 완벽함으로 ; 사고로부터 행동으로, 혹은 무로부터 고결한 행동일지도.
어떻게 그리고 왜 신성한 행위와 영원과 불멸과 극단적 완벽함은 (신)그자신에 있어서 싫증나버리고 지독한 (salto mortale?) 죽음 필연인 무엇가로 이상주의자도 아니고 신학자도 아니고 형이상학자도 아니고 시인도 아니라면 그자신이 스스로 이해하거나 불경한 설명을 할 수 있는 필연적인 것들을 결정한것 일까요. ( 죽음을 왜 만들어 냈는가? 신이 있다면 )
All religions, past and present, and all the systems of transcendental philosophy hinge on this unique and iniquitous mystery.
모든 종교들 과거나 혹은 현재의 종교들의 체계는 독특하고도 부정한 신화들이 있는 초할적이고 철학적인 종이쪼가리( hinge ; 얇은 파라핀 종이 , 조개껍대기 , 찌라시가..... 옳은 해석일까요? ) 의 체계입니다.
[1]
[1] 법의 제정자의 기원이 된 신성한 성직자 예언자가 삶에서 찾아낸 것은 오직 고통과 죽음뿐이었습니다. 그들은 그것에 대해서 설명 할 수 없었기에 마치 고대의 스핑크스처럼 이것은 그들을 삼켜버렸습니다. 위대한 철학자 데카르트와 스피노자는 헤라클레이토스와 플라톤을 이어받고 있습니다. : 라이프니츠 (Leibniz, 오타로 보입니다) , 칸트 , 피이테 , 셀링 , 헤겔은 책더미를 쌓아올리고 재치있고 장엄한 그들이 말하는 매우 아름답고 대단한 것들과 영원한 진실을 찾는 인도의 철학자들을 언급하지는 않지만 -그들은 답을 그럼에도 불구하고 수수께기와 같은 것들을 남깁니다 - 그들이 하는 중요한 작업이란 그들의 선험적인 연구이며 이것은 이전과 같이 이해할수 없는 것들입니다. 가장 화려한 천재들의 거대한 영향들이란 세계가 알고 있고 후세에 13세기동안이나 다시 떠안겨진 시지프스의 작업인 , 오직 무한한 참혹함만을 그려내는 작업입니다.
Is it to be hoped that it will be unveiled to us by the routine speculations of some pedantic disciple of an artificially warmed-over metaphysics at a time when all living and serious spirits have abandoned that ambiguous science born of a compromise - historically explicable no doubt - between the unreason of faith and sound scientific reason?
- 역사적으로 설명할때 부정할수 없는- 까닭없는 믿음과 과학적 근거로 들리는 것들사이에서 절충되어진 모든 삶과 중요한 영혼을 괴리시키는 분명치 않는 과학으로 부터 부자연스럽게 나타난 형이상학의 현학적 배움에 돌고도는 사색속에서 이것이 우리에게 진상을 들어낼것이라고 희망할수 있겠습니까?
It is evident that this terrible mystery is inexplicable - that is, absurd, because only the absurd admits of no explanation. It is evident that whoever finds it essential to his happiness and life must renounce his reason, and return, if he can, to naive, blind, stupid faith, to repeat with Tertullianus and all sincere believers these words, which sum up the very quintessence of theology: Credo quia absurdum. Then all discussion ceases, and nothing remains but the triumphant stupidity of faith. But immediately there arises another question: How comes an intelligent and well-informed man ever to feel the need of believing in this mystery?
이것은 이 참혹한 수수께기가 풀어질수 없다는 것에 대한 증명입니다. - 이 증명이란 오직 불합리한 무근거를 받아들여야 하기에 불합리합니다. ( 죽음 , 고통에 대한 수수께끼를 풀어낸다는 것은 근거 없는 신앙으로 밖에 설명할 수 없다는. 대략의 이야기입니다 ) 이 증명이란 누구라도 그의 행복과 삶에서 그의 이성과 (그것에 따른)대답에서 폐기되어야 합니다. 그가 순진하고 눈멀고 멍청한 믿음을 가질 수 있다면 진정한 신학의 정수를 테르툴리아누스( 신학자 , “불합리하기에 난 믿는다. )와 이때까지의 모든 신앙자과 같이 (다음을) 반복할 수 있을 것입니다. ; / Credo Quiz Absurdum. “불합리하기에 난 믿는다. / 그것은 모든 토론의 파탄과 남는 것이 없지만 승리를 얻는 멍청한 신앙입니다. 그러나 피할 수 없이 거기엔 다른 질문이 생겨납니다. ; 어떻게 지성과 정당한 정보가 이 수수께끼 속 (그러니까 오직) 믿음을 필요로 하는 마음속에서 올수 있을까요?
Nothing is more natural than that the belief in God, the creator, regulator, judge, master, curser, savior, and benefactor of the world, should still prevail among the people, especially in the rural districts, where it is more widespread than among the proletariat of the cities. The people, unfortunately, are still very ignorant, and are kept in ignorance by the systematic efforts of all the governments, who consider this ignorance, not without good reason, as one of the essential conditions of their own power.
아직도 시골의 사람들에게서 신을 세계속의 창조자, 관리자 , 법관 , 주인 , curser? , 구원자 그리고 은인으로 믿는 것이 자연스럽습니다. 즉 시골의 지역에서는 도시보다 좀더 많은 개신교도들이 퍼져 있다는 것입니다. 그들의 힘의 근본적인 상태와 같은 하나의 좋은 까닭의 아닌 무지를 유지하기 위한 고려를 한 모든 정부의 체계적인 노력들에 의해서 불운하게도 무지는 아직도 유지됩니다. ( ....... 수정 필 .... )
Weighted down by their daily labor, deprived of leisure, of intellectual intercourse, of reading, in short of all the means and a good portion of the stimulants that develop thought in men, the people generally accept religious traditions without criticism and in a lump. These traditions surround them from infancy in all the situations of life, and artificially sustained in their minds by a multitude of official poisoners of all sorts, priests and laymen, are transformed therein into a sort of mental and moral babit, too often more powerful even than their natural good sense.
그들의 매일의 노동에 짓눌려 빈약한 정신적인 교제와 읽기와 같은 것들을 할 수 있는 여가
짧게 말하자면 인간의 생각을 발전시키는 상황의 좋은 위치를 의미하는 모든 것들에 빈약함으로 말미암아 광범위하게 종교적 전통을 비판없이 일괄적으로 받아들이는 것입니다.
이 전통이란 것은 공공의 적인 모든 귀족 성직자 불로소득자들을 그들의 자연적인 선관념 보다 강력한 정신과 도덕에 있어서의 숭고한 사람으로 바꾸어 내는 이 생각들을 인위적으로 유지하는 것으로 어린아이때부터 삶의 상황을 에워싸는 것입니다
There is another reason which explains and in some sort justifies the absurd beliefs of the people - namely, the wretched situation to which they find themselves fatally condemned by the economic organization of society in the most civilized countries of Europe.
그것들(맹목적인 믿음)을 설명할수 있는 다른 까닭이 있습니다. 어떤 적당한 정당성은 사람들의 맹목적 믿음을 설명해 주는 것입니다. 그것은 말하자면 비관적인 상황으로 그들이 그들 자신이 가장 문명화된 유럽국가의 사회의 경제적 구성에 의하여 완전히 둘러싸여있음 찾게 되는 것입니다.
Reduced, intellectually and morally as well as materially, to the minimum of human existence, confined in their life like a prisoner in his prison, without horizon, without outlet, without even a future if we believe the economists, the people would have the singularly narrow souls and blunted instincts of the bourgeois if they did not feel a desire to escape; but of escape there are but three methods - two chimerical and a third real.
물질적 상황과 같이 줄여진 지성과 도덕은 그 자신의 감옥에 갇혀 버린 죄수와 같이 인간의 존재도 작게 만듭니다. 우리가 경제학자들을 믿을 때, 전망과 앞으로서 행동방향이 마치 미래가 없는 것처럼 그들이 탈출할 욕망을 느끼지 않으면 사람들은 유별나게 편협한 영혼과 부르주아지의 무딘 직관을 가지고 있는 것입니다. ; 그러나 탈출이라는 것은 단지 3가지로 이루어집니다. 둘을 공상적이고 세 번째는 실제의 것입니다.
The first two are the dram-shop and the church, debauchery of the body or debauchery of the mind; the third is social revolution. Hence I conclude this last will be much more potent than all the theological propagandism of the freethinkers to destroy to their last vestige the religious beliefs and dissolute habits of the people, beliefs and habits much more intimately connected than is generally supposed. In substituting for the at once illusory and brutal enjoyments of bodily and spiritual licentiousness the enjoyments, as refined as they are real, of humanity developed in each and all, the social revolution alone will have the power to close at the same time all the dram-shops and all the churches.
첫 번째의 두 가지는 술집과 교회에서 환락에 몸을 바뀌고 환락에 정신을 맡기는 것입니다.; 세 번째의 것은 사회 혁명입니다. 그렇기 때문에 저는 숙고한 끝에 이 마지막의 것이야 말로 자유사상가들이 사람들의 마지막 종교적 믿음과 방종한 취미들의 잔재를 부셔내는 신학적인 정치선전보다 강력하다고 생각합니다. 믿음과 취미는 일반적인 상상들보다 훨씬 가까이에 있습니다. 허망하고 야만적인 몸과 정신적 방종의 취미들을 대체하고 그들이 진실로서 각각 그리고 모두에 있어 인간성의 발전을 이루기 위해서는 오직 사회적 혁명만이 모든 술집과 모든 교회에서 동일한 시간동안 그러한 것들과 근접한 힘을 가질 수 있을 것입니다.
Till then the people. Taken as a whole, will believe; and, if they have no reason to believe, they will have at least a right.
사람들에 있어서 믿음은 모든 것과 같습니다. ; 그리고 만약 그들이 믿음의 까닭이 없다면 그들은 최악의 옳음를 갇게 될것입니다.
There is a class of people who, if they do not believe, must at least make a semblance of believing. This class comprising all the tormentors, all the oppressors, and all the exploiters of humanity; priests, monarchs, statesmen, soldiers, public and private financiers, officials of all sorts, policemen, gendarmes, jailers and executioners, monopolists, capitalists, tax-leeches, contractors and landlords, lawyers, economists, politicians of all shades, down to the smallest vendor of sweetmeats, all will repeat in unison those words of Voltaire:
"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." For, you understand, "the people must have a religion." That is the safety-valve.
믿지 않은 사람들의 계급이라면 결국에는 믿는 시늉을 해야 합니다. 이 계급은 인간의 모든 고문자들과 압제자와 착취자를 포함합니다.
목사 , 왕 , 사장 , 군인 , 공적이고 사적인 자산가 , 공식적인 귀족들 / 경찰 , 헌병 , 교도관 , 사형집행자 , 독점자본가 , 자본가 , 세무관 , 도급자와 지주, 법률가, 경제학자 , 모든 가리워진 정치가 / 가장 작은 사탕과자의 소상인 , 은 모두 볼테르의 이말을 합창하듯 말합니다.
만약 신이 존재하지 않으면 그것을 창조해야 할 필요성이 있어 “ 너도 알다시피 ” 사람들은 종교를 가져야 하거든 “ 그것은 안전장치야
There exists, finally, a somewhat numerous class of honest but timid souls who, too intelligent to take the Christian dogmas seriously, reject them in detail, but have neither the courage nor the strength nor the necessary resolution to summarily renounce them altogether.
그것들은 결국에는 기독교 교리를 지나친 지성 때문에 진지하게 받아들여지는 정직하지만 소심한 영혼을 가진 어느 몇몇의 계급에서 존재합니다. 세부적인 것은 그들에게 거부되지만
용기도 힘도 의지도 없기에 거부는 간단히 전부 폐기됩니다.
They abandon to your criticism all the special absurdities of religion, they turn up their noses at all the miracles, but they cling desperately to the principal absurdity; the source of all the others, to the miracle that explains and justifies all the other miracles, the existence of God.
그들은 당신의 종교에 대한 모든 특별한 부조리에 대한 당신의 비평에 떨어져 있습니다. 그들은 그들의 코를 기적에 돌리고 있지만 그들은 절망적인 주요 모순에 붙어 있습니다. ; 모든이들에게 기적을 설명하고 그것을 정당화하는 출처란 다른 기적인 신의 존재입니다.
Their God is not the vigorous and powerful being, the brutally positive God of theology. It is a nebulous, diaphanous, illusory being that vanishes into nothing at the first attempt to grasp it; it is a mirage, an ignis fatugs; that neither warms nor illuminates. And yet they hold fast to it, and believe that, were it to disappear, all would disappear with it.
그들의 완전히 야만적인 신학의 신은 활동적이거나 강력한 것이 아닙니다. 그것은 불명확하며 희박한 가능성의 환영과 같은 일을 하고 그것을 붙잡으려 하면 무로 사라집니다. ; 이것은 신기루이며 엉터리 불꽃(도깨비불)입니다(ignis fatugs); 그것은 따스하지도 밝지도 않습니다. 그리고 그것들을 잡으려 하고 믿는다면 모든것들은 그것들과 함께 사라져 버릴것입니다.
They are uncertain, sickly souls, who have lost their reckoning in the present civilisation, belonging to neither the present nor the future, pale phantoms eternally suspended between heaven and earth, and occupying exactly the same position between the politics of the bourgeois and the Socialism of the proletariat.
그들은 현대문명에서 그들의 평가를 잃은 불명확한 병든 영혼이며 현재나 미래의 속할 수 없는 천국과 지구사이에서 영원히 부유하는 그리고 부유한 자의 정치와 가난한자의 사회주의 속에서 동일한 자리를 차지하는 창백한 영혼입니다.
They have neither the power nor the wish nor the determination to follow out their thought, and they waste their time and pains in constantly endeavouring to reconcile the irreconcilable. In public life these are known as bourgeois Socialists.
With them, or against them, discussion is out of the question. They are too puny.
그들은 힘도 희망도 그들의 생각을 이뤄낼 결심도 없으며 그들은 그들의 시간과 고통을 모순된것과 타협하는데 쓸뿐입니다. 공공의 삶에서 이것들은 이것은 브루주아(부유한 자들을 위한 , 부유한 자들의) 사회주의자에 의해서 알게 되어집니다. 그들과 같이 혹은 그들과 적대하던 , 그 논쟁은 문제를 벗어나 있습니다. 그것은 아주 미약한 것입니다.
But there are a few illustrious men of whom no one will dare to speak without respect, and whose vigorous health, strength of mind, and good intention no one will dream of calling in question. I need only cite the names of Mazzini, Michelet, Quinet, John Stuart Mill.
그러나 그 몇몇의 저명한 사람들은 존경과 정력적인 건강과 마음의 힘과 좋은 선의 어느 것이 없이도 문제를 끌어내는 꿈을 감히 말하려 하지 않습니다. 내가 필요로 하는 인용은 오직 마치니 , 미슐레 , 퀴네 , 존 스튜어트 밀뿐입니다.
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Against them, then, we must discuss this question.
관대하고 강한 영혼들의 위대한 심장과 위대한 마음과 위대한 저작 그리고 첫 번째의 영웅적이고 혁명적인 , 위대한 국가의 개혁자들 그들은 모두 철학 그리고 정치에서 이상주의의 전도사이며 쓰디쓴 경멸자이며 유물론의 반대자이며 유물론자와 적대한 자이며 사회주의도 그렇게 보았습니다. 우리는 이 문제을 논쟁해 보아야 합니다.
First, let it be remarked that not one of the illustrious men I have just named nor any other idealistic thinker of any consequence in our day has given any attention to the logical side of this question properly speaking.
먼저 이 질문에 대해서 관념 속에 있는 사상가나 유명한 자들과 같은 하나의 저명한 인간으로서가 오늘날 상기되어지는 이 질문의 적절한 논리적 측면의 귀결에 대해서 다시 살펴보아야 할것입니다.
Not one has tried to settle philosohically the possibility of the divine salto mortale; from the pure and eternal regions of spirit into the mire of the material world. Have they feared to approach this irreconcilable contradiction and despaired of solving it after the failures of the greatest geniuses of history, or have they looked upon it as already sufficiently well settled?
철학적인 신성의 (salto mortale) 목숨을 건 도약의 가능성을 구축하는데 노력하는 자는 한사람만이 아닙니다. (salto mortale 극적 도약 기사회생?) ; 순수하고 영원한 종교의 영혼들에서 진흙투성이의 현실의 세계로의 /
그들이 두려워하고 찬양하는 이 말도 안 돼는 모순과 해결이 안 될 문제는 ( 신과 죽음에 대한 질문 ) 이것은 역사속의 거대한 천재들에 의해서도 실패했거나 이미 충분히 구축 된것이 아닙니까? ( 그것의 연구는 가치가 없습니다. 이것은 충분히 모순적이며 해결되지 않을 문제입니다. 신성함이 어떻게 그들이 말하는 하류의 물질적 가치들에 의해서 해결이 날수 있겠습니까? )
That is their secret. The fact is that they have neglected the theoretical demonstration of the existence of a God, and have developed only its practical motives and consequences. They have treated it as a fact universally accepted, and, as such, no longer susceptible of any doubt whatever, for sole proof thereof limiting themselves to the establishment of the antiquity and this very universality of the belief in God.
저것은 그들의 비밀입니다. 신의 존재에 대한 신학적 증명이 그들로서는 불가능하다는 것과 오직 실제적인 움직임과 결과만이 발전 할 수 있다는 사실은 / /
이 사실은 그들에 있어서 낡아빠진 이 체계와 이 만능의 신에 대한 믿음에 대해서 그들 자신에 한계되어진 단독적인 증명으로서 무엇이던간에 어떤 여지도 없이 광범위하게 동의되어지는 것처럼 여겨집니다.
This imposng unanimity, in the eyes of many illustrious men and writers to quote only the most famous of them who eloquently expressed it, Joseph de Maistre and the great Italian patriot, Giuseppe Mazzini - is of more value than all the demonstrations of science; and if the reasoning of a small number of logical and even very powerful, but isolated, thinkers is against it, so much the worse, they say, for these thinkers and their logic, for universal consent, the general and primitive adoption of an idea, has always been considered the most triumphant testimony to its truth.
많은 저명한 사람과 저자들의 눈이 능변의 Joseph de Maistre (프랑스혁명에 반대함 , 주권신수설 주장) 와 위대한 이탈리아의 애국자 Giuseppe Mazzini의 인용에 대해서 인상적인 만장일치의 합의를 봅니다. - ( 그러나 그 인용) 보다 가치 있는 것은 과학의 설명입니다 ; 소수의 사람들의 논리적인 논증은 강력하지만 또한 고립되어 있습니다 이 논증에 대해서 사상가들은 그것에 대해서 대립합니다. 더욱 더 최악인것은 그들이 이야기 하길 이 사상가들과 그들의 논리는 언제나 동의되어지는 일반적이고 원시적인 관념의 채용으로 언제나 의기양양한 진실에 대한 증언으로서 생각되어 진다는 것입니다.
The I sentiment of the whole world, a conviction that is found ' and maintained always and everywhere, cannot be mistaken; it must have its root in a necessity absolutely inherent in the very nature of man. And since it has been established that all peoples, past and present, have believed and still believe in the existence of God, it is clear that those who have the misfortune to doubt it, whatever the logic that led them to this doubt, are abnormal exceptions, monsters.
저는 세계의 모든 것을 감각하며 그것에 대해서 찾아낸 것은 ' 그것은 언제나 어디서나 실수 없이 유지 된다는 것입니다. ' ; 이것은 매우 자연적인 인간에 있어서 필연적이고 완전한 본성에 있는 뿌리입니다. 그리고 그것은 모든 사람들의 과거와 현재에 확립되어지며 믿어졌고 또한 믿어집니다. 이것은 신의 존재에 대한 믿음입니다. (그러나) 이것은 논리가 이 확실성을 이끌지 못하고 비정상적인 예외인 괴물이 이끌게 된것은 무엇보다도 확실한 불운입니다.
Thus, then, the antiquity; and universality; of a belief should be regarded, contrary to all science and all logic, as sufficient and unimpeachable proof of its truth. Why?
Until the days of Copernicus and Galileo everybody believed that the sun revolved about the earth.
(신은 충분히)오래되고 또한 보편적인 그것 ; 믿음으로서 여겨지는 / 그것의 반대에 있는 모든 과학과 모든 논리와 같은 충분히 자격이 있고 전혀 진실에 대해 의심할여지 없음에도 왜?
Copernicus( 코페르니쿠스 : 지동설 ) Galileo ( 갈릴레오 : 지구는 돈다 ) 이전에 모든 이들은 태양이 지구를 돈다고 믿어 왔습니다.
Was not everybody mistaken? What is more ancient and more universal than slavery? Cannibalism perhaps. From the origin of historic society down to the present day there has been always and everywhere exploitation of the compulsory labour of the masses - slaves, serfs, or wage workers - by some dominant minority; oppression of the people by the Church and by the State.
왜 모든 이들이 실수를 한것입니까? 무엇이 노예제도보다 좀더 오래되고 보편적인 것이 될수 있습니까? 아마도 식인풍습겠죠.(단지 조롱이죠--; 노예제도가 오래되었고 또한 보편적이라 지금까지도 그게 정당하다고? 나는 더 오래된걸 알고 있는데 말이야 그건 식인풍습이야... ) 역사적 사회의 기원(노예제도)에서 지배적인 소수에 의한 대중의 강제노동과 착취 - 노예와 하인 혹은 임금 노동자 - 그것은 현재까지 내려져 오고 있습니다. ; (다시말하자면) 사람들을 교회와 국가에 의한 억압하는 것 .
Must it be concluded that this exploitation and this oppression are necessities absolutely inherent in the very existence of human society? These are examples which show that the argument of the champions of God proves nothing.
필히 착취와 억압을 포함하는 이것이 인간사회에 대단한 존속에 완전히 고유한 필요성을 가진다고 할 수 있습니까? 이 예시야 말로 신존재가 없다는 것에 대한 가장 큰 논증을 보여줄것입니다.
Nothing, in fact, is as universal or as ancient as the iniquitous and absurd; truth and justice, on the contrary, are the least universal, the youngest features in the development of human society. In this fact, too, lies the explanation of a constant historical phenomenon - namely, the persecution of which those who first proclaim the truth have been and continue to be the objects at the hands of the official, privileged, and interested representatives of "universal" and "ancient" beliefs, and often also at the hands of the same masses who, after having tortured them, always end by adopting their ideas and rendering them victorious.
어떤것도 이 사실보다 광범위하고 오래된 부정과 불합리가 아닙니다 ; 진실과 정의 에 반대에서 마지막으로 광범위하게 퍼져있는 인간사회의 발전의 가장 어린 모습에 있는 ( 어떤것@ ) // 이 사실로서 설명과 역사적 현상을 거짓으로 만들어 버렸습니다 - 말하자면 첫 번째의 진실에 대한 선언의 박해가 특권과 " 보편성 " 과 " 전통적인 " 믿음의 대표자에 관심 같게 하고 때때로 그것과 같이 대중들을 움직이며 이후에는 그들을 고문하고 마지막에는 언제나 그들의 이상과 그들의 승리함을 그려내는 상황을 유지하게 만들었습니다.
To us materialists and Revolutionary Socialists, there is nothing astonishing or terrifying in this historical phenomenon. Strong in our conscience, in our love of truth at all hazards, in that passion for logic which of itself alone constitutes a great power and outside of which there is no thought; strong in our passion for justice and in our unshakeable faith in the triumph of humanity over all theoretical and practical bestialities; strong, finally, in the mutual confidence and support given each other by the few who share our convictions - we resign ourselves to all the consequences of this historical phenomenon, in which we see the manifestation of a social law as natural, as necessary, and as invariable as all the other laws which govern the world.
우리를 유물론자와 혁명적인 사회주의자는 눈에 띄지 않게 혹은 잔혹하게 역사적 현상 속에 있습니다. 강력한 우리의 양심인 모든 위협에 처해있는 우리의 진실에 대한 사랑 , 논리에 대한 열정은 , 그것 스스로 구성되어지는 강력한 힘과 밖의 것에 대하여 생각하지 않음에 있습니다.(번역수정필요) ; 정의와 우리의 강력한 열정과 신학과 야만성에 의하여 흔들리지 않을 인간성에 승리에 대한 신념 ; 강력한 그리고 긍극적인 상호 신뢰와 우리와 신념을 나눈 이들의 서로에 대한 도움의 유지 (?) - 우리는 우리들 스스로에 역사적 현상에의 결론
- <역사적 상황은 이것으로 구성> 우리가 스스로 사회의 법과 같은 자연스러운 그리고 필수적이며 불변의 세계의 모든 정부에 있는 모든 다른 법들의 구성을 보고 - 에 따를것입니다.
( 어떻게 이어야 할지 몰라서 대충 써놓습니다. 살짝 바꿔놓으면 오역시 고치기가 힘들수가 있기에 , 역사적 상황을 바라보고 행동하는 사회주의자의 모습입니다. 이것은 형이상학자들의 근원적인 구조를 구성하고 그것에 맞추어 역사를 즉 현실을 재구성 하는 것과는 다르게 사회주의자들의 경우 역사적 상황을 바라보고 그것(경험)에 따라서 어떤 구조를 구성하고 행동한다는 것이 되겠습니다. 물론 이것은 어떤 변화하는 현실에 따라 언제든 변이하는 구조겠지요 그 기반을 현실의 역사적 상황에 두었으니 / 뭐 역주니 딱히 안보셔도 되겠습니다)
This law is a logical, inevitable consequence of the animal origin; of human society; for in face of all the scientific, physiological, psychological, and historical proofs accumulated at the present day, as well as in face of the exploits of the Germans conquering France, which now furnish so striking a demonstration thereof, it is no longer possible to really doubt this origin.
이 법은 논리적이며 동물에서 비롯된 피할 수 없는 결론입니다. ; 인간의 사회에서 모든 과학적인 , 물리적이며 , 정신적이며 역사적인 증명으로 오늘날까지 모아진것과 같이 /독일인의 착취가 프랑스를 정복한 / 이것은 두드러진 설명을 제공합니다. 그것은 더 이상 이 근원에 대해서 의심할 여지가 없다는 것입니다. ( 수정필요 )
But from the moment that this animal origin of man is accepted, all is explained. History then appears to us as the revolutionary negation, now slow, apathetic, sluggish, now passionate and powerful, of the past. It consists precisely in the progressive negation of the primitive animality of man by the development of his humanity.
그러나 계기에 대해서 이것은 인간이 동물로부터 기원됨이 동의되고 모든 것에 대해 설명됩니다. 역사는 우리에게 지금은 느리고 냉담하며 둔하지만 지금의 과거에 대해서는 흥미롭고 강력한 혁명적인 부정과 같은 것을 우리에게 보여줍니다. 이것은 곰곰이 생각해보자면 진보적인 부정이라는 첫 번째의 인간의 동물성의 의한 인간성의 발전입니다.
Man, a wild beast, cousin of the gorilla, has emerged from the profound darkness of animal instinct into the light of the mind, which explains in a wholly natural way all his past mistakes and partially consoles us for his present errors.
고릴라의 사촌쯤되는 야만적인 동물로서 인간이 동물의 본능이라 깊은 어둠속에서 마음이라는 밝은 빛으로 간다는 설명은 모든 그의 과거의 실수와 현재의 실수에 대해 우리에게 조금이라고 위안을 주는 완전히 자연적인 방법입니다.
He has gone out from animal slavery, and passing through divine slavery, a temporary condition between his animality and his humanity, he is now marching on to the conquest and realisation of human liberty.
그(사회주의자 ; 역주와 영문을 뺴고 보심 이어지는데 죄송합니다)는 동물성의 노예로부터 벗어나서 신성의 노예를 지나서 일시적인 그의 동물성과 그의 인간성사이의 상태에서 그는 인간의 자유를 깨닿고 그것을 점령하기 위해 행진하는 이입니다.
Whence it results that the antiquity of a belief, of an idea, far from proving anything in its favour, ought, on the contrary, to lead us to suspect it. For behind us is our animality and before us our humanity; human light, the only thing that can warm and enlighten us, the only thing that can emancipate us, give us dignity, freedom, and happiness, and realise fraternity among us, is never at the beginning, but, relatively to the epoch in which we live, always at the end of history.
믿음과 관념은 호의와 의무에 대한 증명과 멀리에 있습니다. 그것은 오히려 우리를 그것에 대해서 의심케 합니다. ( 살짝 의역입니다. 수정필요) 우리의 숨겨진 곳에는 , 우리의 동물성과 그 앞에 있는 우리의 인간성이 있습니다. ; 오직 따스하고 우리를 밝게 비추며 오직 우리를 해방시키고 존엄과 자유와 행복을 주며 우리가 이웃에 정에 대해 깨닫게 만들어 주는 인간의 빛은 결코 처음부터 그렇게 되지는 않겠지만 우리의 삶에 있어서 거대한 사건이나 언제나 역사의 마지막에 있는 것이 아닙니다.
Let us, then, never look back, let us look ever forward; for forward is our sunlight, forward our salvation. If it is justifiable, and even useful and necessary, to turn back to study our past, it is only in order to establish what we have been and what we must no longer be, what we have believed and thought and what we must no longer believe or think, what we have done and what we must do nevermore.
우리는 이제 결코 뒤를 보아서는 안돼며 우리 계속 앞을 바라보아야 합니다. ; 앞에는 우리의 빛이 있고 앞에는 우리의 구원이 있습니다. 만약 이것은 정당하고 또한 계속 유용하며 또 필요하다면 과거를 연구할수도 있지만 / 이것은 오직 우리가 믿고 생각하고 우리가 믿거나 생각해서는 안돼는 우리가 더 이상 그렇게 해서는 안돼는 것들을 / 에 따라서 그것이 연구될 수도 있고 연구되지 않을 수 있게 만들어 져야 할것입니다. ( 수정필요 )
( 역사의 선택이란 결국 그것이 현재에도 정당한가에 따라서 연구되고 기술되어야 하는 것입니다. 간단히 연대기에서 남성성* ( 즉 폭력과 군대에 대한 ) 에 대한 찬양과 같은 경우는 이것이 지금도 정당하다고 할수 있겠습니까? - 로마에 몰락에 대한 타키투스의 남성성의 쇠함 - 이 지금도 정당하다고 할수 있습니까? 이것이 정당하게 역사의 교육과 기술에 동일하게 적용될수 있습니까? 라는 소리죠 --; )
So much for antiquity. As for the universality; of an error, it proves but one thing - the similarity, if not the perfect identity, of human nature in all ages and under all skies.
너무나 많은 고대의 것과 그와 같은 보편성 ; 오류를 가진 , 이것은 단지 하나의 것들 - 유사한 , 모든 나이와 모든 하늘아래 자연적인 인간성 완전하지 못할 증명이지만 - 을 증명합니다.
And, since it is established that all peoples, at all periods of their life, have believed and still believe in God, we must simply conclude that the divine idea, an outcome of ourselves, is an error historically necessary in the development of humanity, and ask why and how it was produced in history and why an immense majority of the human race still accept it as a truth.
그리고 이것은 모든 인간을 그들의 모든 기간 동안 우리를 쉽게 결론 내는 우리의 밖에 있는 신성한 관념 인 인간성의 발전에 있는 역사적 필요에 대한 오류로서의 신을 믿도록 하고 또 아직도 계속 믿게 합니다. ( 번역수정필요 ,오류 )
Until we shall account to ourselves for the manner in which the idea of a supernatural or divine world was developed and had to be developed in the historical evolution of the human conscience, all our scientific conviction of its absurdity will be in vain; until then we shall never succeed in destroying it in the opinion of the majority, because we shall never be able to attack it in the very depths of the hut man being where it had birth.
아직까지도 우리는 우리의 풍습(예절,관습)속에 있는 이 형이상학적 관념이나 신성한 세계의 발전으로서 그리고 인간 양심의 역사적 진화 - 과학적으로 불합리한 이것은 무의미 해질것입니다 -로서 발전되어왔다고 설명할것입니다. ; 우리는 이것을 부셔버린다면 대중들을 향한 주장에서 성공하지 못할것입니다 우리는 이것이 그가 태어나고 살아온 매우 깊은 오두막을 공격할수는 없기 때문입니다.
Condemned to a fruitless struggle, without issue and without end, we should for ever have to content ourselves with fighting it solely on the surface, in its innumerable manifestations, whose absurdity will be scarcely beaten down by the blows of common sense before it will reappear in a new form no less nonsensical. While the root of all the absurdities that torment the world, belief in God, remains intact, it will never fail to bring forth new offspring.
논쟁과 결론이 없이 보람없는 발버둥에 대한 비난에 대해서 , 우리는 홀로 싸우는 것에 대하여 만족해야만 합니다. 이것은 겉으로는 혼자일지 몰라도 속에는 수없이 많이 표현들이 있으며 누군가의 불합리란 , 부조리가 전혀 없는 재현이 나타나지 않은 한 , 일반적인 상식에서 넘어지지 않습니다.
Thus, at the present time, in certain sections of the highest society, Spiritualism tends to establish itself upon the ruins of Christianity.
그러므로 현대의 시대에 있어 확실히 가장 높은 사회의 곳에서 , 심령술 ( 관념론 )은 기독교의 페허위에서 설립되어 지곤 하는 것입니다.
It is not only in the interest of the masses, it is in that of the health of our own minds, that we should strive to understand the historic genesis, the succession of causes which developed and produced the idea of God in the consciousness of men.
이것은 단지 대중에 대한 관심이 아니라 우리자신의 마음인 인간의 의식에서 신에 대한 관념을 만들어 내고 발전시키는 것을 계승하기 위한 까닭으로서 천재를 이해하려고 노력하는 것입니다.
In vain shall we call and believe ourselves Atheists, until we comprehend these causes, for, until then, we shall always suffer ourselves to be more or less governed by the clamours of this universal conscience whose secret we have not discovered; and, considering the natural weakness of even the strongest individual against the all-powerful influence of the social surroundings that trammel him, we are always in danger of relapsing sooner or later, in one way or another, into the abyss of religious absurdity.
우리가 , 언제나 우리자신에 의해서 괴롭혀지는 것이 더도 덜도 하닌 누군가에 의해 감쳐진 우리가 발견하지 못하는 보편적 양심의 지배라는 것을 알기 전까지는 우리가 스스로를 무신론자라 부르거나 믿는것은 헛된 일일것입니다.
Examples of these shameful conversions are frequent in society today.
이 부끄러운 전환의 예는 오늘날의 사회에서 빈번합니다.
Footnotes
(법의 제정자의 기원이 된 신성한 성직자 예언자가 삶에서 찾아낸 것은 오직 고통과 죽음뿐이었습니다. 그들은 그것에 대해서 설명 할 수 없었기에 마치 고대의 스핑크스처럼 이것은 그들을 삼켜버렸습니다. 위대한 철학자 데카르트와 스피노자는 헤라클레이토스와 플라톤을 이어받고 있습니다. : 라이프니츠 (Leibniz, 오타로 보입니다) , 칸트 , 피이테 , 셀링 , 헤겔은 책더미를 쌓아올리고 재치있고 장엄한 그들이 말하는 매우 아름답고 대단한 것들과 영원한 진실을 찾는 인도의 철학자들을 언급하지는 않지만 -그들은 답을 그럼에도 불구하고 수수께기와 같은 것들을 남깁니다 - 그들이 하는 중요한 작업이란 그들의 선험적인 연구이며 이것은 이전과 같이 이해할수 없는 것들입니다. 가장 화려한 천재들의 거대한 영향들이란 세계가 알고 있고 후세에 13세기동안이나 다시 떠안겨진 시지프스의 작업인 , 오직 무한한 참혹함만을 그려내는 작업입니다.)
[1]
저는 이것을 부정의라고 부릅니다. 왜냐하면 제가 믿고 내가 부록에서 암시적으로 증명한
이 신화는 세계에 만행되어지는 공포를 신성시 하는 것을 계속하고 있습니다. ; 저는 이것을 유일하다고 말합니다. 왜냐하면 모든 다른 신학과 형이상학의 인간의 정신을 추락시키는 부조리들임에도 이것을 결론을 필요로 하기 때문입니다.
(관대하고 강한 영혼들의 위대한 심장과 위대한 마음과 위대한 저작 그리고 첫 번째의 영웅적이고 혁명적인 , 위대한 국가의 개혁자들 그들은 모두 철학 그리고 정치에서 이상주의의 전도사이며 쓰디쓴 경멸자이며 유물론의 반대자이며 유물론자와 적대한 자이며 사회주의도 그렇게 보았습니다. 우리는 이 문제을 논쟁해 보아야 합니다. )
[2]
밀은 아마도 두가지 이유에서 진지한 이상주의를 완전히 의심했던 오직 한사람일지도 모릅니다. ; 먼저 그가 만약 완전히 신자가 아니라면 그는 좋은 철학자인 많은 은닉에도 불구하고 진정한 무신론자인 꽁트(프랑스의 사회학자 , 실증주의 )의 정렬적인 지지자 였을것입니다. ; 두 번째로 밀은 영국인이며 영국에서 스스로를 보편추방제의 제물로 했던것과 같이 스스로를 무신론자라 선언했습니다.
(음... 각주가 딴데였던가.... 알아서 찾아주시길바라며 --; 파트 1 완료 )
Bakunin
God and the State
II
I have stated the chief practical reason of the power still exercised today over the masses by religious beliefs. These mystical tendencies do not signify in man so much an aberration of mind as a deep discontent at Heart. They are the instinctive and passionate protest of the human being against the narrowness, the platitudes, the sorrows, and the shame of a wretched existence. For this malady, I have already said, there is but one remedy - Social Revolution.
저는 종교적인 믿음이 아직도 대중에게 힘을 행사하는 주된 실제의 까닭을 설명했습니다. 이러한 놀라운 경향들은 깊은 마음의 불만과 같은 정신의 탈선이 사람들에 너무나도 많음을 의미하지는 않습니다. 그들은 인간성에 반대에 있는 가난과 지루함과 슬픔과 비참한 존재에 대한 부끄러움에 본능적이고 정열적으로 저항합니다. 이 사회적 병페에 대해 저는 이것에 대한 유일한 치료약은 - 사회혁명 - 이라고 이미 이야기 했습니다.
In the meantime I have endeavored to show the causes responsible for the birth and historical development of religious hallucinations in the human conscience. Here it is my purpose to treat this question of the existence of a God, or of the divine origin of the world and of man, solely from the standpoint of its moral and social utility, and I shall say only a few words, to better explain my thought, regarding the theoretical grounds of this belief.
한편 저는 태생적이고 역사적인 인간의 양심에 대한 종교적 망상의 발전을 보여주려 애썼습니다. 여기 신의 존재에 대한 혹은 인간과 세계의 신성의 기원에 대한 해결을 위한 저의 목적에서 저는 도덕과 사회적인 도구들의 견지에서 단독적으로, 그리고 나의 생각과 이 믿음의 신학적 기반에 대하여 더 나은 설명을 위하여 저는 오직 몇 개의 단어만을 말할 것입니다.
All religions, with their gods, their demigods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the credulous fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties. Consequently, the religious heaven is nothing but a mirage in which man, exalted by ignorance and faith, discovers his own image, but enlarged and reversed - that is, divinized. The history of religion, of the birth, grandeur, and decline of the gods who have succeeded one another in human belief, is nothing, therefore, but the development of the collective intelligence and conscience of mankind.
모든 종교들에서 그들의 신과 그들의 천사( 신보다 떨지는 떨거지 , 반신 ) 그들의 성직자와 그들의 구세주 ( 메시아 ) 와 그들의 성자는 지적 능력의 완전한 발전과 완전한 소유에 도달하지 못한 사람들이 속기 쉬운 공상에 의해서 만들어 졌습니다. 그 결과로서 종교적인 천국이 전혀 없음에도 불구하고 이 신기루는 무지와 신앙을 그가 가진 관념을 찾아내는 것을 - 커다랗지만 뒤짚혀진 그것은 신성입니다 -사람에게 있어서 고귀한 것으로 만들었습니다. 이 역사에서 집단의 지성과 모든 인간의 양심의 발전에 아무것도 아니었음에도 불구하고 종교와 탄생과 웅장함과 독실함의 신은 인간을 믿게 하는데에 성공했습니다.
As fast as they discovered, in the course of their historically progressive advance, either in themselves or in external nature, a power, a quality, or even any great defect whatever, they attributed them to their gods, after having exaggerated and enlarged them beyond measure, after the manner of children, by an act of their religious fancy.
그들이 (신성을) 찾아내는 것 만큼이나 빠른 그들의 역사적인 진보적 발걸음의 길속에서 그들은 자신 혹은 영원한 자연(세계)에 대하여도 또한 힘과 , 질료와 혹은 어떤 다른 강력한 결점이 어느것의 (발견 , 도전이던) 간에 그들은 그들의 신으로 그것들을 구성하고 그후엔 그것을 계측(탐구하기)전에 비정상적으로 확장하고 또한 크게 만들어서 (만든) 그들의 종교적 몽상을 아이들에게 문화적으로 주입하는 것입니다.
Thanks to this modesty and pious generosity of believing and credulous men, heaven has grown rich with the spoils of the earth, and, by a necessary consequence, the richer heaven became, the more wretched became humanity and the earth. God once installed, he was naturally proclaimed the cause, reason, arbiter and absolute disposer of all things: the world thenceforth was nothing, God was all; and man, his real creator, after having unknowingly extracted him from the void, bowed down before him, worshipped him, and avowed himself his creature and his slave.
천국이 부를 불림으로서 지상을 황페하게 하고 그리고 필연적인 결과로서 천국이 부유해지면 부유해질수록 인간성과 지상은 비참한 꼴이 됨에도 이 소박함과 경건한 믿음의 관용에 잘 속은 인간들에 감사합시다. 단지 한번 설치되었던 신은 원인과 이유와 심판자와 모든 것들의 긍극적인 처결자( 종말 )을 본래부터 선언했습니다. : 세계는 거기서부터 아무것도 아니었으며 신만이 모든 것이었던 것입니다 ; 그리고 그의 진정한 창조자인 인간은 무지함으로서 무에서 그를 추출해 내고 그의 앞에서 엎드려서 그를 숭배하고 공공연하게 스스로를 그의 피조물이며 그의 노예라고 인정하였습니다.
Christianity is precisely the religion par excellence, because it exhibits and manifests, to the fullest extent, the very nature and essence of every religious system, which is the impoverishment, enslavement, and annihilation of humanity for the benefit of divinity.
기독교는 진정으로 우수한 종교입니다. 왜냐하면 이것은 완전히 채울만한 넓이의 매우 자연적이며 모든 종교체계의 본질인 , 신성성을 위해서 (인간을) 피폐함과 노예로 만듬과 인간성의 말살을 시키는 것을, 보여주고 또 명확하게 만들어 주기 때문입니다.
God being everything, the real world and man are nothing. God being truth, justice, goodness, beauty, power, and life, man is falsehood, iniquity, evil, ugliness, impotence, and death. God being master, man is the slave. Incapable of finding justice, truth, and eternal life by his own effort, he can attain them only through a divine revelation.
신은 어디든 있습니다. 실제세계와 사람이 없다면 말이죠. 신은 진실과 정의와 선의와 아름다운과 힘과 삶입니다. 사람이 멍청한 생각과 부정과 흉악함과 추함과 무력함과 죽음이라면 말이죠. 신은 주인입니다. 인간이 노예라면요. 정의와 진실과 영원한 삶이 그 자신의 노력에 의해 찾을수 없는 것이라면 그는 오직하나의 신성한 계시(묵시록 , 막장의 세계입니다)를 이룩한 것입니다.
But whoever says revelation says revealers, messiahs, prophets, priests, and legislators inspired by God himself; and these, once recognized as the representatives of divinity on earth, as the holy instructors of humanity, chosen by God himself to direct it in the path of salvation, necessarily exercise absolute power. All men owe them passive and unlimited obedience; for against the divine reason there is no human reason, and against the justice of God no terrestrial justice holds. Slaves of God, men must also be slaves of Church and State, in so far as the State is consecrated by the Church.
그러나 누군가는 묵시록에 대하여 계시를 받은 자와 구원자 성자 성직자 입법자가 신자신의 의지에 의해서 말해진것이라고 말합니다. 그리고 이에 따라서 지구의 신성성의 대표자는 인간성의 신성한 교사로서 신자신에 의해서 직접적으로 선택된 구원과 필연적으로 행사될 절대적인 힘의 대리자라고 말입니다.
모든 인간은 무저항의 영원한 복종을 빚지고 있습니다. ; 신성한 도리에 저항하는 것은 인간의 도리가 아니며 지구상의 정의로는 신의 정의에 저항할 수 없는 것입니다. 신의노예로서 인간은 교회와 - 교회와 얼마떨어지지 않은 국가에도- 노예가 될 수밖에 없습니다.
This truth Christianity, better than all other religions that exist or have existed, understood, not excepting even the old Oriental religions, which included only distinct and privileged nations, while Christianity aspires to embrace entire humanity; and this truth Roman Catholicism, alone among all the Christian sects, has proclaimed and realized with rigorous logic. That is why Christianity is the absolute religion, the final religion; why the Apostolic and Roman Church is the only consistent, legitimate, and divine church.
이 기독교에 대한 사실은 동양의 오래된 종교(유교가 아닐까요 ) 를 제외한다면 어떤 다른 존재하고 있는 다른 종교 혹은 존재했었던 종교보다도 명료하고 특권적인 국가 속에 있는 완전한 인간성의 포용을 열망합니다. ; 그리고 이 로마인의 카톨릭 중에 기독교라는 부분 만이 엄격한 논리를 선언하고 달성했습니다. 그것은 왜 기독교가 긍극적이며 마지막의 종교인가를 알려줍니다. ; 왜 교황과 로마교회가 오직 일관되고 합법적이며 신성한 교회인가요
With all due respect, then, to the metaphysicians and religious idealists, philosophers, politicians, or poets: The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, both in theory and practice.
형이상학자와 종교적 이상주의(*관념주의자) 철학자 정치인 혹은 시인의 모든 당연한 존경과 함께 ; 신에 대한 관념은 인간의 이성과 정의에 대한 포기를 포함하고 있습니다. ; 이것은 결정적인 인간의 자유의 말살이며 필연적인 결과로 인간의 이론과 실행 모두의 노예화입니다.
Unless, then, we desire the enslavement and degradation of mankind, as the Jesuits desire it, as the mmiers, pietists, or Protestant Methodists desire it, we may not, must not make the slightest concession either to the God of theology or to the God of metaphysics. He who, in this mystical alphabet, begins with A will inevitably end with Z; he who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about the matter, but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity.
우리가 열망 하는것이 노예화와 인간성의 추락이 아니라면 그것을 열망하는 예수쟁이와 같이 , mmiers(?)와 경건파 혹은 청교도 감리교도가 열망하는 것과 같이 우리는 형이상학자의 신이나 신학의 신에게 모두의 아주 조금의 양보라도 할수 있을수 없습니다. (인간성의 추락을 열망하는 예수쟁이의 신관념에 우리가 조금이라도 물러설까보냐 ~ 라는 거죠 --; 경건파 청교도 감리교도? 종교의 한파인듯 합니다 Wiki 로 참조 하시길 ) A에서 시작되어 필연적으로 Z로 끝나는 이 신비로운 알파벳은 / 그 누구던간에 그가 그 누구가 신을 숭배하는 것이 물질에 대한 유아적적인 공상 그렇지만 훌륭하게 그의 자유와 인간성을 페기하는 것이란 것을 숨길 수는 없습니다. (... 번역수정필)
If God is, man is a slave; now, man can and must be free; then, God does not exist.
만약 신이 있다면 인간은 노예입니다 ; 지금 , 인간은 자유로울수 있으며 또한 자유로워야 합니다 ; 그렇기에 신을 결코 존재하지 않습니다.
I defy anyone whomsoever to avoid this circle; now, therefore, let all choose.
Is it necessary to point out to what extent and in what manner religions debase and corrupt the people? They destroy their reason, the principal instrument of human emancipation, and reduce them to imbecility, the essential condition of their slavery. They dishonor human labor, and make it a sign and source of servitude. They kill the idea and sentiment of human justice, ever tipping the balance to the side of triumphant knaves, privileged objects of divine indulgence. They kill human pride and dignity, protecting only the cringing and humble. They stifle in the heart of nations every feeling of human fraternity, filling it with divine cruelty instead.
어떤 누군가가 이 순환을 피하려한다면 나는 그를 무시할것입니다. ; 지금 그렇기에 우리는 모든 결정을 내려야 합니다. 매우 광범위하고 또한 종교적으로 매우 타락한 예의(문화)와 그에 따라서 사람들이 타락하는 것이 과연 필요한 것인가요? 그들은 인간해방의 주요한 도구인 이성을 파괴하고 그들을 허약하게 약화시키며 그들의 근본적인 상황을 노예상태로 만들고 있습니다. 그들의 인간노동의 대하여 망신을 주고 그것을 노예상태의 출처와 그 표시로 만들어 버립니다. 그들은 인간의 정의의 감성과 이상을 죽이고 멋대로의 신성에 산물에 특권을 부여하여 영원한 사기꾼의 악한들에게 승리를 안겨줍니다. 그들은 인간의 자존과 존엄을 살해하고 비굴함과 비천함만을 보호합니다. 그들은 인간 집단의 모든 감성을 지닌 국가의 심장을 질식시키고 신성으로 잔혹하게 대체하는 것입니다.
All religions are cruel, all founded on blood; for all rest principally on the idea of sacrifice - that is, on the perpetual immolation of humanity to the insatiable vengeance of divinity. In this bloody mystery man is always the victim, and the priest - a man also, but a man privileged by grace - is the divine executioner. That explains why the priests of all religions, the best, the most humane, the gentlest, almost always have at the bottom of their hearts - and, if not in their hearts, in their imaginations, in their minds (and we know the fearful influence of either on the hearts of men) - something cruel and sanguinary.
모든 종교는 잔혹하고 어디에서나 피의 위에서 세워졌습니다. ; 주로 희생에 관념위에 쓰인 모든 휴식이란 - 그말은 영속하는 인간성의 희생으로서 탐욕스런 신성의 복수를 이룬것입니다. - 이 핏빛의 속의 신비로운 인간은 언제나 범죄자이며 언제나 성직자이며 - 이 사람은 또한 우아한 특권을 가짐니다 - 신성한 사형집행인입니다.
이 설명들은 왜 모든 종교의 성직자들이 가장 최고의 가장 많은 자비를 가지고 가장 예의바른 그가 거의 언제나 가지고 있는 그의 심장의 - 그리고 만약 그들이 심장이 없다면 그들의 정신속 공상에 있는 ( 그리고 우리도 알다싶이 인간들의 마음에 두려운 영향을 미치는 ) - 무언가 잔혹하고 피비릿내나는 무엇인가인지 말해줍니다.
None know all this better than our illustrious contemporary idealists. They are learned men, who know history by heart; and, as they are at the same time living men, great souls penetrated with a sincere and profound love for the welfare of humanity, they have cursed and branded all these misdeeds, all these crimes of religion with an eloquence unparalleled. They reject with indignation all solidarity with the God of positive religions and with his representatives, past, present, and on earth.
아무도 우리의 공상적인 현대의 관념주의자들보다 이에 대해 잘 알수 없습니다. 그들은 심장에 의해 쓰여진 역사에 대해 배운사람입니다. ; 성실하고 깊은 인간성의 복지에 대한 사랑에 스며든 동시대의 위대한 영혼들은 더할나위없는 웅변으로 종교의 범죄인 이 죄악에 대해서 저주하고 낙인찍습니다. 그들은 긍정적인 신과 그의 과거와 현재의 지구상의 대리자에 대해 분노하는 모든 결속에 거부합니다.
The God whom they adore, or whom they think they adore, is distinguished from the real gods of history precisely in this - that he is not at all a positive god, defined in any way whatever, theologically or even metaphysically. He is neither the supreme being of Robespierre and J. J. Rousseau, nor the pantheistic god of Spinoza, nor even the at once immanent, transcendental, and very equivocal god of Hegel. They take good care not to give him any positive definition whatever, feeling very strongly that any definition would subject him to the dissolving power of criticism. They will not say whether be is a personal or impersonal god, whether he created or did not create the world; they will not even speak of his divine providence. All that might compromise him. They content themselves with saying "God" and nothing more. But, then, what is their God? Not even an idea; it is an aspiration.
그들이 숭배하는 신이나 혹은 그들이 생각하길 그들이 숭배하고 있다는 누군가이던가 역사의 진실한 신으로부터 알려진 그것은 이와 같습니다. - 그것은 신학적으로던 형이상학적으로던 어떻게 정의하던간에 결코 좋은 신이 아닙니다. 그는 로베스피에르나 루소와 같이 대단한 일을 한것도 아니며 스피노자의 신처럼 어디에나 있지도 않으며 내재하는 선험적인 그리고 매우 모호한 헤겔의 신도 아닙니다. 그들은 그에게 긍정적인 정의를 주려하지는 않았겠지만 어찌되었던간에 비평에 대해 그것을 받아들여서 합친 정의에 라는것이 매우 강하게 느껴집니다. 그들은 신에대해 그것이 인격적인 신이거나 인격적이지 않은 신이거나 그가 세계를 창조했던 그렇지 않거나를 말하지는 않습니다. ;
It is the generic name of all that seems grand, good, beautiful, noble, human to them. But why, then, do they not say, "Man." Ah! because King William of Prussia and Napoleon III, and all their compeers are likewise men: which bothers them very much. Real humanity presents a mixture of all I that is most sublime and beautiful with all that is vilest and most monstrous in the world. How do they get over this? Why, they call one divine and the other bestial, representing divinity and animality as two poles, between which they place humanity. They either will not or cannot understand that these three terms are really but one, and that to separate them is to destroy them.
이것의 일반적인 이름은 모두 거대하고 선하며 아름답고 고귀한 인간으로 보여집니다. 그러나 왜 그들은 "인간"이라고 말하지 않는걸까요? 아! 왜냐하면 프러시아의 윌리암 왕이라던가 나폴레옹 3세 나 그들의 동무들도 같이 인간이기 떄문이군요 ; 와우 형재들이 이렇게 많다니 . 진정으로 인간적인 오늘은 장엄하고 아름다운 비열함과 기괴스러운 세계와의 합성입니다. 어떻게 이것을 넘을 수 있겠습니까? 왜 신성성과 야만성을 말하고 신성성과 다른 동물성을 마치 두 개의 극과 같이 묘사하며 인간성을 그 둘의 사이에 위치시키는 것일까요. 그들은 세 개의 다른 것들은 실제로는 하나이며 그것들이 분리되면 그것들을 파괴한다는 것을 모르는 것일까요? ( 1부 동물성 , 지성 , 자유 3개로 나눈 곳을 보면 될 듯 합니다 )
They are not strong on logic, and one might say that they despise it. That is what distinguishes them from the pantheistical and deistical metaphysicians, and gives their ideas the character of a practical idealism, drawing its inspiration much less from the severe development of a thought than from the experiences, I might almost say the emotions, historical and collective as well as individual, of life. This gives their propaganda an appearance of wealth and vital power, but an appearance only; for life itself becomes sterile when paralyzed by a logical contradiction.
그들은 논리에 강하지 않으며 어떤이는 그들은 그것들을 경멸한다고 이야기 할것입니다. 그것은 범신론과 자연신적 형이상학자들과 그들의 관념이 가진 더도 덜도 아닌 경험으로부터 온 생각의 소박한 발전에 따른 영감(암시)에 따라 그려진 실제의 이상주의적 특성과 구별됩니다. 저의 말은 아마도 거의 대부분의 감성적이고 역사적이며 집단적 인것과 같이 개인적인 삶에 대해서의 이야기일 것입니다 . 이것은 그들의 선전은 부와 생명의 힘의 (보여지는) 현상 이지만 이것은 단지 (진실이 아니라 보여지는것)현상에 불과하다는 것을 보여줍니다. ;
논리적인 모순에 무력해질때 생명은 스스로를 메마르게 하는 것입니다.
This contradiction lies here: they wish God, and they wish humanity. They persist in connecting two terms which, once separated, can come together again only to destroy each other. They say in a single breath: "God and the liberty of man," "God and the dignity, justice, equality, fraternity, prosperity of men" - regardless of the fatal logic by virtue of which, if God exists, all these things are condemned to non-existence. For, if God is, he is necessarily the eternal, supreme, absolute master, and, if such a master exists, man is a slave; now, if he is a slave, neither justice, nor equality, nor fraternity, nor prosperity are possible for him. In vain, flying in the face of good sense and all the teachings of history, do they represent their God as animated by the tenderest love of human liberty: a master, whoever he may be and however liberal he may desire to show himself, remains none the less always a master. His existence necessarily implies the slavery of all that is beneath him. Therefore, if God existed, only in one way could he serve human liberty - by ceasing to exist.
이 모순된 거짓말이 여기에 있습니다. ; 그들은 신을 갈망하고 또한 인간성또한 갈망합니다. 그들은 두 개의 분리된 것을 둘을 함께 둔다면 서로를 파괴하지 않을수 없는 것을 연결하려 하고 있습니다. 그들은 한번의 호흡(한마디로)에 말합니다 ; " 신 그리고 인간의 자유 " " 신 그리고 인간의 존엄과 정의와 평등과 형제애와 번영 - 부주의한 덕에 의한 운명적인 논리는 신이 존재한다면 이 모든 것들이 존재하지 않는다는 데에 비난되어질 것입니다. 만약 신이 존재한다고 할때 그가 필연적으로 영원하고 위대하며 긍극의 주인이라면 이것이 주인으로서 존재한다면 인간이 노예가 될것입니다. ; 지금 만약 그가 (인간) 노예라면 그에게는 정의도 평등도 형제애도 번영도 그에게 있을 수 없습니다. 모든 역사적 배움과 모든 선의의 비상의 모습은 인간의 자유에 대한 섬세한 사랑을 불어넣은 신에 의해 추락할것입니다. ; 주인이란 누구던간에 그가 있다면 자유라 할지라도 그가 원하는 것을 보려할것이고 남는 것은 주인의 것 외에는 남는것이 없을것입니다. 그의 존재는 필연적으로 그가 숨을 불어 넣은 모든 것들의 노예화를 포함하는 것입니다. 그렇기에 만약 신이 존재한다면 오직 인간의 자유는 - 그 존재를 파기하는 것으로만 - 가능할것입니다.
A jealous lover of human liberty, and deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.
The severe logic that dictates these words is far too evident to require a development of this argument. And it seems to me impossible that the illustrious men, whose names so celebrated and so justly respected I have cited, should not have been struck by it themselves, and should not have perceived the contradiction in which they involve themselves in speaking of God and human liberty at once. To have disregarded it, they must have considered this inconsistency or logical license practically necessary to humanity's well-being.
인간의 자유에 대한 질투자와 그리고 우리가 감탄하고 존경에 마지 않는 인간성의 긍극적인 상태에 대해 나는 볼테르의 말을 반대로 해서 이야기 할것입니다. " 만약 신이 진정으로 존재한다면 이것은 필연적으로 그를 파기시킬것이다. " ( 파트 1 참조 )
위의 단어들로 기술되어진 정확한 논리는 증거를 요구하는 발전된 논쟁들과는 멀리에 있습니다.
Perhaps, too, while speaking of liberty as something very respectable and very dear in their eyes, they give the term a meaning quite different from the conception entertained by us, materialists and Revolutionary Socialists. Indeed, they never speak of it without immediately adding another word, authority - a word and a thing which we detest with all our heart.
아마도 자유와 같은 것들이 그들의 눈에 매우 존경스럽고 매우 경애스럽다면 그들이 가진 개념은 완전히 다른것이 될것이고 우리들 유물론자와 혁명적 사회주의자들을 환대할것입니다. 그러나 그들은 결코 이 한마디 권위라는 말 이외에는 아무것도 말하려하지 않습니다. - 이 말은 우리들이 마음으로 진정 증오하는 것입니다.
What is authority? Is it the inevitable power of the natural laws which manifest themselves in the necessary concatenation and succession of phenomena in the physical and social worlds? Indeed, against these laws revolt is not only forbidden - it is even impossible. We may misunderstand them or not know them at all, but we cannot disobey them; because they constitute the basis and fundamental conditions of our existence; they envelop us, penetrate us, regulate all our movements, thoughts, and acts; even when we believe that we disobey them, we only show their omnipotence.
무엇이 권위입니까? 이것이 자연법에 의한 피할수 없는 힘으로 물리적이고 사회적인 세계에 필연적으로 유도되어지는 현상입니까? 반대로 이 법을 거부되는 것이 오직 금지되는 것은 - 이것은 가능하지 않습니다 . 우리는 그것에 대해 잘못알거나 전혀 알수 없을수도 있지만 우리는 그것에 대해 거부하는것이 용납되지 않습니다 ; 왜냐하면 그것은 기본적이고 근원적인 우리의 존재의 상황을 구성하고 있기 때문입니다. ; 그들은 우리들을 둘러싸고 있고 우리 속에 스며들어 있으며 모든 우리의 행동 사고와 행위를 지배하고 있습니다 ; 마치 우리가 이것을 거부한다면 우리는 그들의 전능한 힘을 보게 될것 같이 믿어집니다.
Yes, we are absolutely the slaves of these laws. But in such slavery there is no humiliation, or, rather, it is not slavery at all. For slavery supposes an external master, a legislator outside of him whom he commands, while these laws are not outside of us; they are inherent in us; they constitute our being, our whole being, physically - intellectually, and morally: we live, we breathe, we act, we think, we wish only through these laws. Without them we are nothing, we are not. Whence, then, could we derive the power and the wish to rebel against them?
그래요 , 우리는 이 법의 노예입니다. 그러나 이 노예는 수치를 느끼기 않으며 오히려 노예가 전혀 아니라고 합니다. 노예는 영원한 주인인 바깥세계의 법의 제정자에게 그가 명령받고 있다고 생각하지만 이것은 우리의 밖에 있는것이 아닙니다. ; 이것은 우리가 타고 난 것에 있습니다 ; 이것은 우리의 행동을 우리의 육체적이고 정신적이며 도덕적인 행동을 구성합니다. ; 우리가 살아가고 숨시고 행동하며 생각하고 우리는 오직 이 법만을 생각합니다. 이것이 없이는 우리는 아무것도 아닙니다. 이러한데도 우리는 이것에 저항하는 욕망과 힘을 어디서 끌어내는 것일까요 ( 유고 What`s authority? 에 동일한 글이 있습니다. 참조` 번역은 개판 )
In his relation to natural laws but one liberty is possible to man - that of recognizing and applying them on an ever-extending scale in conformity with the object of collective and individual emancipation or humanization which he pursues. These laws, once recognized, exercise an authority which is never disputed by the mass of men. One must, for instance, be at bottom either a fool or a theologian or at least a metaphysician, jurist, or bourgeois economist to rebel against the law by which twice two make four. One must have faith to imagine that fire will not burn nor water drown, except, indeed, recourse be had to some subterfuge founded in its turn on some other natural law. But these revolts, or, rather, these attempts at or foolish fancies of an impossible revolt, are decidedly, the exception; for, in general, it may be said that the mass of men, in their daily lives, acknowledge the government of common sense - that is, of the sum of the natural laws generally recognized - in an almost absolute fashion.
이 자연법의 관계에서 하나의 자유라도 인간에 허락된다면 - 이것은 사회적이고 또한 개인적인 평등과 인간성이 이해되고 적용될 때까지 인간은 그것을 쫒을 것입니다. 이 법들에 의해 한번 이해되어지고 실행에 옮겨진 권위들은 대중에 의해서 결코 논의되지 않습니다. 오직 반대로 멍청한 집단들이나 신학자 혹은 형이상학자나 법학자 브루주아지 경제학자들만이 이 두배의 둘이 넷을 만들다는 법에 저항할뿐입니다. 하나가 물에 젖지 않으면 불이 타지 않는다(성경, 불을 만드는 기적을 보이라 했더니 , 예언자가 가뭄에 물을 훔뻑 뿌리자 불이 타기 시작했다라던...) 라는 신념을 가지고 있다고 합니다. 그리고 이것을 구실로 어떤 다른 자연법을 바꾸려 한다고 합시다. 그러나 이 전복 혹은 좀 더 나은 말로 부질없는 시도 혹은 멍청한 공상에 의한 불가능한 전복은 확실하게 동떨어져 있습니다; 일반적으로 이것은 대중에 대해서 매일의 삶인 , 일반적인 상식들의 합인 지식으로서 - 이것은 일반적으로 이해되어지는 자연법들의 합입니다 - 완전히 이러한 경향들속에서 이야기 되어질것입니다.
The great misfortune is that a large number of natural laws, already established as such by science, remain unknown to the masses, thanks to the watchfulness of these tutelary governments that exist, as we know, only for the good of the people. There is another difficulty - namely, that the major portion of the natural laws connected with the development of human society, which are quite as necessary, invariable, fatal, as the laws that govern the physical world, have not been duly established and recognized by science itself.
이 커다란 불운은 많은 수의 자연법들이 과학에 의해서 확립되었지만 아직 알지 못하는 대중들이 있다는데에 감사하는 정부의 수호자들 - 아다시피 이들은 좋은 것들만을 위한 사람입니다 - 이 존재한다는 것입니다. 그리고 다른 어려운 점으로 - 즉 많은 자연법들의 부분이 인간의 사회에 연결되어 있어서 완전히 필요한 것이고 변치 않으며 필연적인 물적인 세계의 법들과 같이 스스로 정당하게 확립 되어지고 이해될수 없다는 것입니다
Once they shall have been recognized by science, and then from science, by means of an extensive system of popular education and instruction, shall have passed into the consciousness of all, the question of liberty will be entirely solved. The most stubborn authorities must admit that then there will be no need either of political organization or direction or legislation, three things which, whether they emanate from the will of the sovereign or from the vote of a parliament elected by universal suffrage, and even should they conform to the system of natural laws - which has never been the case and never will be the case - are always equally fatal and hostile to the liberty of the masses from the very fact that they impose upon them a system of external and therefore despotic laws.
과학에 의해서 이해되어진 것들은 그리고 과학에서 온것들은 확장되어진 공공의 교육과 가르침을 통해서 모두 인식되어질수 있을것이고 자유에 대한 물음도 완벽히 해결될수 있을것입니다. 가장 완고한 권위들은 정치적 조직이나 지도 혹은 법률을 필요로하지 않습니다. 이 세가지의 것들은 주권에의 의지나 대중선거에 의해서 의회가 뽑히는 것 그리고 자연법에 체계에 따르는 것입니다. - 이것은 이미 실행되어진 형태나 실행되어질 형태가 아닙니다. - 이것은 전제적인 법과 영구적인 체계가 부과하는 균등하게 운명지어진 대중에 자유에 적대적인 매우 현재적인 상황인것입니다.
The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual.
인간의 자유란 오직 이것 한가지로만 구성되어집니다. ; 그가 외부의 신성이나 인간 혹은 집단이나 개인이 그에게 부과한 것이 아니라 스스로의 이해에 의하여 자연법을 따르는 것입니다.
Suppose a learned academy, composed of the most illustrious representatives of science; suppose this academy charged with legislation for and the organization of society, and that, inspired only by the purest love of truth, it frames none but laws in absolute harmony with the latest discoveries of science. Well, I maintain, for my part, that such legislation and such organization would be a monstrosity, and that for two reasons: first, that human science is always and necessarily imperfect, and that, comparing what it has discovered with what remains to be discovered, we may say that it is still in its cradle. So that were we to try to force the practical life of men, collective as well as individual, into strict and exclusive conformity with the latest data of science, we should condemn society as well as individuals to suffer martyrdom on a bed of Procrustes, which would soon end by dislocating and stifling them, life ever remaining an infinitely greater thing than science.
대학에서 배운 가장 과학에 가장 저명한 대표자를 한번 가정해봅시다. ; 가장 순수한 진실의 사랑에 고무되어있고 형태는 없지만 최상의 조화를 갇춘 과학적 발견을 가지고 있는 이 대학에 법과 사회의 조직을 맡긴다고 가정해봅시다. 좋습니다. 저는 저의 생각으로서 두가지점에서 이 조직이 괴물과도 같다고 생각합니다. ; 첫 번째는 인간의 과학은 언제나 그리고 필연적으로 완벽하지 않고 발견한것보다 발견하지 않은 것들이 많으며 우리는 이것을 아직 요람안에 있다라고 말할 수밖에 없습니다. 그래서 그것은 인간의 실제적인 삶속에서 강제하려 할때 집단을 개인처럼 딱딱하고 배타적인 과학의 수치들과 같이 따르게 하여 프로쿠르테스의 침대와 같은 형벌을 사회가 개인에 가하는 꼴로 사회를 만들게 될것입니다. 이것은 곧 수단과 목적이 바뀌어진 숨막히는 오직 위대한 과학만이 남는 꼴이 될것입니다.
The second reason is this: a society which should obey legislation emanating from a scientific academy, not because it understood itself the rational character of this legislation (in which case the existence of the academy would become useless), but because this legislation, emanating from the academy, was imposed in the name of a science which it venerated without comprehending - such a society would be a society, not of men, but of brutes. It would be a second edition of those missions in Paraguay which submitted so long to the government of the Jesuits. It would surely and rapidly descend to the lowest stage of idiocy.
이에 대한 두 번째 이유로 ; 사회가 과학적인 학문집단에서 만들어진 법을 따를때 이것은 그 자신이 이 법에 대한 관계를 이성적으로 이해한것이 아니라 ( 이경우에는 대학의 존재는 쓸모없게 될것입니다.) 이 법률이 대학에서 나왔다는 과학이라닌 이름이 주어진 숭배로서 이해없이 따르게 될것이기에 - 이 과학은 사회를 인간이 아니라 동물의 것으로 만들것입니다. 이것은 곧 파라과이의 예수교 정부가 했던 것의 2번째 판 ( 출판할 때 2판 ) 이 될것입니다. 이것은 곧 그리고 필연적으로 최악의 백치의 상태로 추락시킬것입니다.
But there is still a third reason which would render such a government impossible - namely that a scientific academy invested with a sovereignty, so to speak, absolute, even if it were composed of the most illustrious men, would infallibly and soon end in its own moral and intellectual corruption. Even today, with the few privileges allowed them, such is the history of all academies. The greatest scientific genius, from the moment that he becomes an academician, an officially licensed savant, inevitably lapses into sluggishness. He loses his spontaneity, his revolutionary hardihood, and that troublesome and savage energy characteristic of the grandest geniuses, ever called to destroy old tottering worlds and lay the foundations of new. He undoubtedly gains in politeness, in utilitarian and practical wisdom, what he loses in power of thought. In a word, he becomes corrupted.
그러나 아직 3번째 이유인 이러한 조직을 구성하는 것이 불가능하다는 것이 남아 있습니다. -즉 이 과학적인 학술집단에 주권이 부여(양도)되어질때 그렇기에 말하자면 완전히 가장 저명한 한사람에 그것이 주어질때 이는 도덕적이며 지적인 타락을 완전히 그리고 곧 끝낼것입니다. 오늘날 소수의 특권층이 이를 따르고 있는데 이는 학술원들의 역사와 같습니다. 가장 위대한 과학적인 천재가 학술원의 사람이 될때 그는 공식적인 석학의 자격을 갇으며 불가피한 경과로서 나태하게 될것입니다. 그는 그의 자발성을 잃게 될것이고 그의 혁명적인 활력과 오랜 흔들리는 세계를 부시고 새로운 원천을 준비하는 거대한 천재로서의 가차없는 에너지를 가진 특성또한 잃어버리게 될것입니다. 그는 의심할바없이 우아함을 갇게 될것이고 공리적이고 실제적인 지식에 대해서 생각하는 힘을 잃게 될것입니다. 말하자면 그는 타락하게 된다는 것입니다.
It is the characteristic of privilege and of every privileged position to kill the mind and heart of men. The privileged man, whether politically or economically, is a man depraved in mind and heart. That is a social law which admits of no exception, and is as applicable to entire nations as to classes, corporations, and individuals. It is the law of equality, the supreme condition of liberty and humanity. The principal object of this treatise is precisely to demonstrate this truth in all the manifestations of human life.
이것은 특권의 특성이며 또한 모든 특권적인 위치에 있는 사람들의 인간에 마음에 정신을 살해하는 특성입니다. 정치적으로 혹은 경제적으로 특권에 위치에 있는 사람들은 저열한 마음과 정신을 가지고 있습니다. ( 논증에 앞서 실제로도 그렇지 않습니까? ) 이것은 어떤 국가의 계급이나 집단 개인에 있어서의 적용에 예외가 허용되지 않습니다. 이것은 평등의 법인데 자유와 인간성의 최적의 상태입니다. 이 주요한 논증은 인간의 삶을 구성하는 정확하고도 진실한 설명입니다.
A scientific body to which had been confided the government of society would soon end by devoting itself no longer to science at all, but to quite another affair; and that affair, as in the case of all established powers, would be its own eternal perpetuation by rendering the society confided to its care ever more stupid and consequently more in need of its government and direction.
과학적인 몸체로서 신뢰받는 사회의 조직은 곧 과학이상의 것이 되지 않을것이며 완전히 그것이상의 것이 아닐것입니다. ; 그리고 그 형태는 모든 확립된 힘들의 전례와 같이 결과적으로 정부와 지시를 필요로 하는 보다 멍청한 사회를 영원히 그려내는 것이 될것입니다.
But that which is true of scientific academies is also true of all constituent and legislative assemblies, even those chosen by universal suffrage. In the latter case they may renew their composition, it is true, but this does not prevent the formation in a few years' time of a body of politicians, privileged in fact though not in law, who, devoting themselves exclusively to the direction of the public affairs of a country, finally form a sort of political aristocracy or oligarchy. Witness the United States of America and Switzerland.
그러나 진실한 과학적 학술집단은 또한 진실한 의회이고 보통선거에 의해서 선출되어진 합법적인 조직입니다. 후자의 경우 (진실한 학자들) 그들은 그들의 구성을 새롭게 하려할것입니다. 이건 진실입니다, 그렇지만 이것은 수년간의 시간동안 정치가의 몸을 구성하는것을 막지는 못합니다. 특권은 사실은 법이 아닙니다. 누군가가 국가의 공공의 일에 대한 독점적인 지시를 할때 그들자신을 헌신한다면 결국에는 귀족정치나 독재정치가 될것입니다. 미국와 스위스가 그것을 증언합니다. ( 설명에는 역사적 배경이 필요하겠지만 의회나 보통선거로 구성된 정치조직이라 할지라도 그들이 전권을 가지게 된다면 결국에는 독재나 혹은 귀족정치가 될것이라는 것입니다. 오히려 현대의 사회가 이를 증언하지 않을까요? )
Consequently, no external legislation and no authority - one, for that matter, being inseparable from the other, and both tending to the servitude of society and the degradation of the legislators themselves.
그 결과로서 영구적인 법이나 권위가 없는 - 것만이 그로서 다른 것과 없는 사회의 노예상태와 법의 제정자 자신들의 타락을 막을 수 있을것입니다. ( 대충의역 , 수정필 )
Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism censure. I do not content myself with consulting authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.
이것에 따르면 저는 모든 권위를 거부한다는고 할수 있나요? 보통의 생각들과는 저는 멀리에 있습니다. 구두장인들에게 대하여 저는 구두장인들의 권위에 대해서 거부하는 것입니다. ; 집과 운하 혹은 철도에 관련해서 저는 건축가나 공학자에 의견을 물어볼것입니다. 그것에 대해서 혹은 그것의 특별한 지식에 대해서 저는 그에 따르거나 혹은 그 전문가에 따를것입니다. 그러나 저는 구두장인이던 건축가던 석학이던간에 그의 권위가 나를 억누르는 것은 허용할 수가 없습니다. 저는 그들이 가진 지식에 대해 자유롭게 듣고 존경심을 가지고 그것을 취할것이지만 그들의 지식과 성격에 대한 저의 의심할봐 없이 정당한 비판적 견해는 남겨둘것입니다. 저는 어떤 특별한 가지에 있는 권위의 의견이라 할지라도 스스로에게 만족할수 없습니다. ; 저는 많은 의견을 들을 것입니다 ; 저는 그들의 의견을 비교해보고 저에게 정당해 보이는것을 선택할것입니다. ;그러나 저는 특별한 물음속에서 오류없는 권위란 없다는 것을 이해합니다. ;; 그 결과로 무엇이던간에 진실하고 성실함을 가진 무엇인가 혹은 어떤 개인이던간에 저는 존경할것이며 어떤 개인에 대해서 어떤 절대적인 신념도 가지지 않을것입니다. 신념은 저의 이성과 저의 자유와 저의 사명에 치명적일것입니다. ; 이것은 곧 저를 타인의 의지와 흥미로 움직이는 멍청한 노예로 변화시킬것입니다
If I bow before the authority of the specialists and avow my readiness to follow, to a certain extent and as long as may seem to me necessary, their indications and even their directions, it is because their authority is imposed upon me by no one, neither by men nor by God. Otherwise I would repel them with horror, and bid the devil take their counsels, their directions, and their services, certain that they would make me pay, by the loss of my liberty and self-respect, for such scraps of truth, wrapped in a multitude of lies, as they might give me.
제가 만약 전문가들의 권위에 굴목하고 제가 기꺼이 그것에 따르는것이라고 인정한다면 저의 필요성들이란 결코 그들의 지시와 명령보다 확장되어지게 보이지 않게 될것입니다. 이러한 까닭은 신의 의한것도 사람에 의한것도 아닌 그들의 권위가 저를 억누르게 되기 때문입니다. 그렇지 않다면 저는 공포로서 그들을 쫒아내고 그들의 조건과 지시와 봉사를 악마로 선언할것입니다. 그것은 그들은 나에게 자유와 존엄을 댓가로 요구하는 수십겹의 거짓으로 둘러싼 한조각의 진실과 같은 것만을 저에게 주게 될것이기 때문입니다.
I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed upon me by my own reason. I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole. Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give - such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination.
제가 전문가의 권위에 굴복한다면 이것은 제가 가진 이성이 그것에 의해 억압되었기 때문입니다. 저는 모든 세세한 부분과 긍정적인 발전에 대해서 너무나도 큰 인간의 지식의 부분에 대해서 제가 그것을 다가지고 있지 못함을 잘 알고 있습니다. 가장 위대한 지식이 모든 것에 대한 이해와 같지는 않을 것입니다. 이러한 결과로서 과학은 산업과도 같이 분업과 노동조합이(단체, 연구소 ,학파) 필요하게 되는 것입니다. 저는 인간의 삶에서 주고 또한 받습니다. 명령을 내린다면 다음에는 명령을 받습니다. 그러므로 고착되고 영구한 권위란 없으며 자발적인 권위와 예속들의 모든 것은 계속적인 상호적이고 임시적인것입니다.
This same reason forbids me, then, to recognize a fixed, constant, and universal authority, because there is no universal man, no man capable of grasping in that wealth of detail, without which the application of science to life is impossible, all the sciences, all the branches of social life. And if such universality could ever be realized in a single man, and if be wished to take advantage thereof to impose his authority upon us, it would be necessary to drive this man out of society, because his authority would inevitably reduce all the others to slavery and imbecility. I do not think that society ought to maltreat men of genius as it has done hitherto; but neither do I think it should indulge them too far, still less accord them any privileges or exclusive rights whatsoever; and that for three reasons: first, because it would often mistake a charlatan for a man of genius; second, because, through such a system of privileges, it might transform into a charlatan even a real man of genius, demoralize him, and degrade him; and, finally, because it would establish a master over itself.
이러한 까닭에 의해서 저에겐 영구하고도 보편적인 권위라는 것을 이해하고 결정하는 것도 금해짐입니다 왜냐하면 보편적인 사람이란 없고 사람에게 과학을 모든 삶에 가지들에 적용시키는 불가능한 작업 없이는 어떤 사람에게도 세부적인 부(재산,필요품)를 정하게 할 수 없기 때문입니다. 그리고 만약 보편성이라는 것이 한사람에 의해서 이해되어진다면 그리고 만약 그의 권위가 우리를 억압하게 되는 바라게 된다면 이는 그를 사회밖으로 내쫒는 것이 필요할것입니다. 왜냐하면 그의 권위란 다른이들을 노예상태와 무능함의 상태로 필연적으로 추락시킬것이기 때문입니다. 저는 사회가 천재를 괴롭혀야 한다고 생각하지는 않습니다; 그러나 특권이나 베타적인 정의의 어떤것이 던간에 하나라도 그들에게 허락되어야 한다고도 생각지 않습니다. ; 그리고 이것은 3가지의 이유가 있습니다 ; 첫 번째는 이것은 어떤 협잡꾼(말만 잘하는 사기꾼)들이 천재가 되는 오류를 종종범할수 있고 ; 두 번째로 특권을 가진 체계는 진실한 천재라 할지라도 협잡꾼으로 변화시켜 그를 혼란시키고 추락시킬것이기 때문입니다. ; 그리고 마지막으로 이것은 그것 스스로 주인을 설정 할것이기 때문입니다.
To sum up. We recognize, then, the absolute authority of science, because the sole object of science is the mental reproduction, as well-considered and systematic as possible, of the natural laws inherent in the material, intellectual, and moral life of both the physical and the social worlds, these two worlds constituting, in fact, but one and the same natural world. Outside of this only legitimate authority, legitimate because rational and in harmony with human liberty, we declare all other authorities false, arbitrary and fatal.
정리해보자면 과학의 절대적인 권위에 대해서 이것은 정신적인 재생산으로 사회적이고 물리적인 세계에 구성에 대하여 대해 물리적이고 지적이며 도덕적인 가능한 한 체계적이고 올바른 탐구이기 때문이며 자연법은 사회적이고 물리적인 세계의 도덕적이고 지적이며 물리적인 삶의 본디모습으로 부과되어지는 것이지만 사실은 이것도 다른 것과 동일하게 자연적인 세계와 같다는 것을 우리는 이해합니다. 오직 권위의 밖에 있는 것이 정당한 , 정당함은 왜냐하면 이성적이고 인간의 자유에 걸맞기에 , 우리는 모든 권위들에 대해서 잘못되었으며 임의의 것이고 치명적이라 선언해야 합니다.
We recognize the absolute authority of science, but we reject the infallibility and universality of the savant. In our church - if I may be permitted to use for a moment an expression which I so detest: Church and State are my two btes noires - in our church, as in the Protestant church, we have a chief, an invisible Christ, science; and, like the Protestants, more logical even than the Protestants, we will suffer neither pope, nor council, nor conclaves of infallible cardinals, nor bishops, nor even priests. Our Christ differs from the Protestant and Christian Christ in this - that the latter is a personal being, ours impersonal; the Christian Christ, already completed in an eternal past, presents himself as a perfect being, while the completion and perfection of our Christ, science, are ever in the future: which is equivalent to saying that they will never be realized. Therefore, in recognizing absolute science as the only absolute authority, we in no way compromise our liberty.
우리는 과학의 절대적 권위에 대해서 이해합니다. 그러나 우리는 절대적이고 보편적인 석학에 대해 거부합니다. 우리의 교회(과학)에서는 - 만약 제가 *( 교회에 대해서 ) 잠시 언급하는게 허락된다면 저는 저주의 말뿐일것입니다 : 교회와 국가는 저의 두 혐오하는 무리입니다. - 우리의 교회에서 , 개신교의 교회에서와 같이 우리는 숨겨진 크리스트(구세주)로서 과학을 지도자로 가지고 있습니다. 그리고 개신교도 보다 좀더 논리적인 개신교도 와 같은 이(과학교도--;)들은 절대적으로 옳은 카톨릭의 교주나 장로 추기경 이나 목사나 성직자들에게는 괴롭혀지지 않을것입니다. 우리의 구세주분께서는 개신교도나 기독교의 구세주와는 다르게 - 그것은 후자의 것은 사람의 행동으로서 우리들의 비인격적인것과는 다른 ; 이미 완료된 영원불멸의 과거와 현재에의 그의 완전한 행동에의 기독교의 구세주와는 다르게 다른 우리들의 구세주인 과학의 완벽함과 완료됨이라는 것은 언제나 미래에 것으로 합니다 ; 이것은 그들은 결코 이해할수 없을터라는 이야기와 동일합니다. 이로서 우리는 완벽한 과학이라는 것은 완벽한 권위로서 이해되어진다면 우리는 우리의 자유에 대해 이것과 결코 타협할 길이 없다라는 것을 알수 있습니다.
I mean by the words "absolute science," which would reproduce ideally, to its fullest extent and in all its infinite detail, the universe, the system or coordination of all the natural laws manifested by the incessant development of the world. It is evident that such a science, the sublime object of all the efforts of the human mind, will never be fully and absolutely realized. Our Christ, then, will remain eternally unfinished, which must considerably take down the pride of his licensed representatives among us. Against that God the Son in whose name they assume to impose upon us their insolent and pedantic authority, we appeal to God the Father, who is the real world, real life, of which he (the Son) is only a too imperfect expression, whilst we real beings, living, working, struggling, loving, aspiring, enjoying, and suffering, are its immediate representatives.
저는 이 절대적인 과학이란 단어에 대해서 이것은 관념적인 것의 재생으로 완전하고도 영구한 세세하고도 광범위한 모든 것들 채우는 체계거나 끊임없는 세계의 발전에 의해서 정립될 모든 자연법들의 구성입니다. 이것이 증명하는 바는 인간의 정신의 영향을 끼치는 장엄한 목표를 가진 하나의 과학이 결코 완전하고 절대적인 이해가 될 수 없다는 것입니다. 우리의 구세주는 영원히 미완성인 상태로 남아있을 것이고 바로 이러한 점에서 우리들의 공인받은 대표자들의 자부심을 심대하게 끌어 내릴 것이 틀림없습니다. 신의 아들이라는 이름에 저항하는 그들은 그들의 건방지고 현학적인 권위로 우리를 억압하는 것으로 보이지만 우리의 실제의 세계와 실제의 삶인 신의 아버지에 대한 호소에 그(아들, 과학)은 오직 너무나도 불충분한 표현이며 우리의 진실한 행동과 삶 노동과 분투와 사랑과 야망과 즐거움과 고통은 이것의 즉각적인 대변인입니다.
But, while rejecting the absolute, universal, and infallible authority of men of science, we willingly bow before the respectable, although relative, quite temporary, and very restricted authority of the representatives of special sciences, asking nothing better than to consult them by turns, and very grateful for such precious information as they may extend to us, on condition of their willingness to receive from us on occasions when, and concerning matters about which, we are more learned than they. In general, we ask nothing better than to see men endowed with great knowledge, great experience, great minds, and, above all, great hearts, exercise over us a natural and legitimate influence, freely accepted, and never imposed in the name of any official authority whatsoever, celestial or terrestrial. We accept all natural authorities and all influences of fact, but none of right; for every authority or every influence of right, officially imposed as such, becoming directly an oppression and a falsehood, would inevitably impose upon us, as I believe I have sufficiently shown, slavery and absurdity.
오류없는 권위를 가진 과학인의 권위와 모든 절대적이고 보편적이며 오류없음을 거부하지만 우리는 비교적이며 완전히 일시적이고 매우 완고한 특별한 과학의 국한된 대표자들의 권위자라 할지라도 기꺼이 존경스러운 이들에 허리를 굽힙니다. 단지 그들의 조언을 번갈아가며 듣고 기꺼이 우리들의 의견을 들어준다면 우리에게 펼칠 값진 정보에 우리가 그들보다 좀 더 알고 있는 의견이라 할지라도 기꺼이 그것을 값진정보로서 받아들일것입니다.
일반적으로 우리가 거대한 지식과 경험과 정신과 모든 것들을 가진 사람들이 우리들에 행사되어지는 자연적이고 합법적인 영향들은 자유롭게 받아들여졌으며 이 것은 결코 하늘이나 지구상의 어떤 공식적인 권위의 이름으로 부과된것이 아닙니다. 우리는 자연적인 권위들과 모든 사건들을 정당함을 판단치 않고 받아들입니다.; 정당함을 판단하는(정의롭다라고 규정되는) 모든 권위나 모든 영향에 있어 공식적인 영향이란 직접적인 압제나 허위로 불가피하게 우리에 지워지는 것과 같은 충분한 부조리와 노예성을 제가 보여줄수 있을것이라 믿습니다.
In a word, we reject all legislation, all authority, and all privileged, licensed, official, and legal influence, even though arising from universal suffrage, convinced that it can turn only to the advantage of a dominant minority of exploiters against the interests of the immense majority in subjection to them.
단순하게 하자면 우리는 모든 규정화된 권위에 반대하고 모든 특권과 인가와 공식이고 법률적인 영향을 거부함에도 , 보통선거만이 지배적인 착취자들이 소수당파를 이용해 그들의 거대한 대중들이 그들에게 복종하게 하는 것을 바꿀수 있게 할수 있는 유일한 방법이라 확신합니다.
This is the sense in which we are really Anarchists.
이 생각은 우리들 진실한 아나키스트들의 생각입니다.
The modern idealists understand authority in quite a different way. Although free from the traditional superstitions of all the existing positive religions, they nevertheless attach to this idea of authority a divine, an absolute meaning. This authority is not that of a truth miraculously revealed, nor that of a truth rigorously and scientifically demonstrated. They base it to a slight extent upon quasi-philosophical reasoning, and to a large extent also on sentiment, ideally, abstractly poetical. Their religion is, as it were, a last attempt to divinise all that constitutes humanity in men.
현대의 관념론자들은 권위에 대해서 완전히 다른 방식으로 이해하고 있습니다. 모든 존재하는 완전한 종교들안에 잇는 전통적인 미신들로부터 자유롭지만 그들의 권위에 대한 관념이란 신성이라는 절대적인 의미 그 이상이 아닙니다. 이 권위는 기적적인 계시록이나 엄격하고 과학적인 설명의 진실이 아닙니다.
This is just the opposite of the work that we are doing. On behalf of human liberty, dignity and prosperity, we believe it our duty to recover from heaven the goods which it has stolen and return them to earth. They, on the contrary, endeavouring to commit a final religiously heroic larceny, would restore to heaven, that divine robber, finally unmasked, the grandest, finest and noblest of humanity's possessions. It is now the freethinker's turn to pillage heaven by their audacious piety and scientific analysis.
The idealists undoubtedly believe that human ideas and deeds, in order to exercise greater authority among men, must be invested with a divine sanction. How is this sanction manifested? Not by a miracle, as in the positive religions, but by the very grandeur of sanctity of the ideas and deeds: whatever is grand, whatever is beautiful, whatever is noble, whatever is just, is considered divine. In this new religious cult every man inspired by these ideas, by these deeds, becomes a priest, directly consecrated by God himself. And the proof? He needs none beyond the very grandeur of the ideas which he expresses and the deeds which he performs. These are so holy that they can have been inspired only by God.
Such, in so few words, is their whole philosophy: a philosophy of sentiments, not of real thoughts, a sort of metaphysical pietism. This seems harmless, but it is not so at all, and the very precise, very narrow and very barren doctrine hidden under the intangible vagueness of these poetic forms leads to the same disastrous results that all the positive religions lead to - namely, the most complete negation of human liberty and dignity.
To proclaim as divine all that is grand, just, noble, and beautiful in humanity is to tacitly admit that humanity of itself would have been unable to produce it - that is, that, abandoned to itself, its own nature is miserable, iniquitous, base, and ugly. Thus we come back to the essence of all religion - in other words, to the disparagement of humanity for the greater glory of divinity. And from the moment that the natural inferiority of man and his fundamental incapacity to rise by his own effort, unaided by any divine inspiration, to the comprehension of just and true ideas, are admitted, it becomes necessary to admit also all the theological, political, and social consequences of the positive religions. From the moment that God, the perfect and supreme being, is posited face to face with humanity, divine mediators, the elect, the inspired of God spring from the earth to enlighten, direct, and govern in his name the human race.
May we not suppose that all men are equally inspired by God? Then, surely, there is no further use for mediators. But this supposition is impossible, because it is too clearly contradicted by the facts. It would compel us to attribute to divine inspiration all the absurdities and errors which appear, and all the horrors, follies, base deeds, and cowardly actions which are committed, in the world. But perhaps, then, only a few men are divinely inspired, the great men of history, the virtuous geniuses, as the illustrious Italian citizen and prophet, Giuseppe Mazzini, called them. Immediately inspired by God himself and supported upon universal consent expressed by popular suffrage - Dio e Popolo; - such as these should be called to the government of human societies.[3]
But here we are again fallen back under the yoke of Church and State. It is true that in this new organization, indebted for its existence, like all the old political organisations, to the grace of God, but supported this time - at least so far as form is concerned, as a necessary concession to the spirit of modern times, and just as in the preambles of the imperial decrees of Napoleon III. - on the (pretended) will of the people, the Church will no longer call itself Church; it will call itself School. What matters it? On the benches of this School will be seated not children only; there will be found the eternal minor, the pupil confessedly forever incompetent to pass his examinations, rise to the knowledge of his teachers, and dispense with their discipline - the people.[4]
The State will no longer call itself Monarchy; it will call itself Republic: but it will be none the less the State - that is, a tutelage officially and regularly established by a minority of competent men, men of virtuous genius or talent, who will watch and guide the conduct of this great, incorrigible, and terrible child, the people. The professors of the School and the functionaries of the State will call themselves republicans; but they will be none the less tutors, shepherds, and the people will remain what they have been hitherto from all eternity, a flock. Beware of shearers, for where there is a flock there necessarily must be shepherds also to shear and devour it.
The people, in this system, will be the perpetual scholar and pupil. In spite of its sovereignty, wholly fictitious, it will continue to serve as the instrument of thoughts, wills, and consequently interests not its own. Between this situation and what we call liberty, the only real liberty, there is an abyss. It will be the old oppression and old slavery under new forms; and where there is slavery there is misery, brutishness, real social materialism, among the privileged classes as well as among the masses.
In defying human things the idealists always end in the triumph of a brutal materialism. And this for a very simple reason: the divine evaporates and rises to its own country, heaven, while the brutal alone remains actually on earth.
Yes, the necessary consequence of theoretical idealism is practically the most brutal materialism; not, undoubtedly, among those who sincerely preach it - the usual result as far as they are concerned being that they are constrained to see all their efforts struck with sterility - but among those who try to realise their precepts in life, and in all society so far as it allows itself to be dominated by idealistic doctrines.
To demonstrate this general fact, which may appear strange at first, but which explains itself naturally enough upon further reflection, historical proofs are not lacking.
Compare the last two civilisations of the ancient world - the Greek and the Roman. Which is the most materialistic, the most natural, in its point of departure, and the most humanly ideal in its results? Undoubtedly the Greek civilisation. Which on the contrary, is the most abstractly ideal in its point of departure - sacrificing the material liberty of the man to the ideal liberty of the citizen, represented by the abstraction of judicial law, and the natural development of human society to the abstraction of the State - and which became nevertheless the most brutal in its consequences? The Roman civilisation, certainly. It is true that the Greek civilisation, like all the ancient civilisations, including that of Rome, was exclusively national and based on slavery. But, in spite of these two immense defects, the former none the less conceived and realised the idea of humanity; it ennobled and really idealised the life of men; it transformed human herds into free associations of free men; it created through liberty the sciences, the arts, a poetry, an immortal philosophy, and the primary concepts of human respect. With political and social liberty, it created free thought. At the close of the Middle Ages, during the period of the Renaissance, the fact that some Greek emigrants brought a few of those immortal books into Italy sufficed to resuscitate life, liberty, thought, humanity, buried in the dark dungeon of Catholicism. Human emancipation, that is the name of the Greek civilisation. And the name of the Roman civilisation? Conquest, with all its brutal consequences. And its last word? The omnipotence of the Caesars. Which means the degradation and enslavement of nations and of men.
Today even, what is it that kills, what is it that crushes brutally, materially, in all European countries, liberty and humanity? It is the triumph of the Caesarian or Roman principle.
Compare now two modern civilisations - the Italian and the German. The first undoubtedly represents, in its general character, materialism; the second, on the contrary, represents idealism in its most abstract, most pure, and most transcendental form. Let us see what are the practical fruits of the one and the other.
Italy has already rendered immense services to the cause of human emancipation. She was the first to resuscitate and widely apply the principle of liberty in Europe, and to restore to humanity its titles to nobility: industry, commerce, poetry, the arts, the positive sciences, and free thought. Crushed since by three centuries of imperial and papal despotism, and dragged in the mud by her governing bourgeoisie, she reappears today, it is true, in a very degraded condition in comparison with what she once was. And yet how much she differs from Germany! In Italy, in spite of this decline - temporary let us hope - one may live and breathe humanly, surrounded by a people which seems to be born for liberty. Italy, even bourgeois Italy, can point with pride to men like Mazzini and Garibaldi. .In Germany one breathes the atmosphere of an immense political and social slavery, philosophically explained and accepted by a great people with deliberate resignation and free will. Her heroes - I speak always of present Germany, not of the Germany of the future; of aristocratic, bureaucratic, political and bourgeoisie Germany, not of the Germany of the proltaires - her heroes are quite the opposite of Mazzini and Garibaldi: they are William I., that ferocious and ingenuous representative of the Protestant God, Messrs, Bismarck and Moltke, Generals Manteuffel and Werder. In all her international relations Germany, from the beginning of her existence, has been slowly, systematically invading, conquering, ever ready to extend her own voluntary enslavement into the territory of her neighbours; and, since her definitive establishment as a unitary power, she has become a menace, a danger to the liberty of entire Europe. Today Germany is servility brutal and triumphant.
To show how theoretical idealism incessantly and inevitably changes into practical materialism, one needs only to cite the example of all the Christian Churches, and, naturally, first of all, that of the Apostolic and Roman Church. What is there more sublime, in the ideal sense, more disinterested, more separate from all the interests of this earth, than the doctrine of Christ preached by that Church? And what is there more brutally materialistic than the constant practice of that same Church since the eighth century, from which dates her definitive establishment as a power? What has been and still is the principal object of all her contests with the sovereigns of Europe? Her temporal goods, her revenues first, and then her temporal power, her political privileges. We must do her the justice to acknowledge that she was the first to discover, in modern history, this incontestable but scarcely Christian truth that wealth and power, the economic exploitation and the political oppression of the masses, are the two inseparable terms of the reign of divine ideality on earth: wealth consolidating and augmenting power, power ever discovering and creating new sources of wealth, and both assuring, better than the martyrdom and faith of the apostles, better than divine grace, the success of the Christian propagandism. This is a historical truth, and the Protestant Churches do not fail to recognise it either. I speak, of course, of the independent churches of England, America, and Switzerland, not of the subjected churches of Germany. The latter have no initiative of their own; they do what their masters, their temporal sovereigns, who are at the same time their spiritual chieftains, order them to do, It is well known that the Protestant propagandism, especially in England and America, is very intimately connected with the propagandism of the material, commercial interests of those two great nations; and it is known also that the objects of the latter propagandism is not at all the enrichment and material prosperity of the countries into which it penetrates in company with the Word of God, but rather the exploitation of those countries with a view to the enrichment and material prosperity of certain classes, which in their own country are very covetous and very pious at the same time.
In a word, it is not at all difficult to prove, history in hand, that the Church, that all the Churches, Christian and non-Christian, by the side of their spiritualistic propagandism, and probably to accelerate and consolidate the success thereof, have never neglected to organise themselves into great corporations for the economic exploitation of the masses under the protection and with the direct and special blessing of some divinity or other; that all the States, which originally, as we know, with all their political and judicial institutions and their dominant and privileged classes have been only temporal branches of these various Churches have likewise had principally in view this same exploitation for the benefit of lay minorities indirectly sanctioned by the Church; finally and in general, that the action of the good God and of all the divine idealities on earth has ended at last, always and everywhere, in founding the prosperous materialism of the few over the fanatical and constantly famishing idealism of the masses.
We have a new proof of this in what we see today. With the exception of the great hearts and great minds whom I have before referred to as misled, who are today the most obstinate defenders of idealism? In the first places all the sovereign courts. In France, until lately, Napoleon III. and his wife, Madame Eugnie; all their former ministers, courtiers, and ex-marshals, from Rouher and Bazaine to Fleury and Pitri; the men and women of this imperial world, who have so completely idealised and saved France; their journalists and their savants - the Cssagnacs, the Girardins, the Duvernois, the Veuillots, the Leverriers, the Dumas; the black phalanx of Jesuits and Jesuitesses in every garb; the whole upper and middle bourgeoisie of France; the doctrinaire liberals, and the liberals without doctrine - the Guizots, the Thiers, the Jules Favres, the Pelletans, and the Jules Simons, all obstinate defenders of the bourgeoisie exploitation. In Prussia, in Germany, William I., the present royal demonstrator of the good God on earth; all his generals, all his officers, Pomeranian and other; all his army, which, strong in its religious faith, has just conquered France in that ideal way we know so well. In Russia, the Czar and his court; the Mouravieffs and the Bergs, all the butchers and pious proselyters of Poland. Everywhere, in short, religious or philosophical idealism, the one being but the more or less free translation of the other, serves today as the flag of material, bloody, and brutal force, of shameless material exploitation; while, on the contrary, the flag of theoretical materialism, the red flag of economic equality and social justice, is raised by the practical idealism of the oppressed and famishing masses, tending to realise the greatest liberty and the human right of each in the fraternity of all men on the earth.
Who are the real idealists - the idealists not of abstraction, but of life, not of heaven, but of earth - and who are the materialists?
It is evident that the essential condition of theoretical or divine idealism is the sacrifice of logic, of human reason, the renunciation of science. We see, further, that in defending the doctrines of idealism one finds himself enlisted perforce in the ranks of the oppressors and exploiters of the masses. These are two great reasons which, it would seem, should be sufficient to drive every great mind, every great heart, from idealism. How does it happen that our illustrious contemporary idealists, who certainly lack neither mind, nor heart, nor good will, and who have devoted their entire existence to the service of humanity - how does it happen that they persist in remaining among the representatives of a doctrine henceforth condemned and dishonoured?
They must be influenced by a very powerful motive. It cannot be logic or science, since logic and science have pronounced their verdict against the idealistic doctrine. No more can it be personal interests, since these men are infinitely above everything of that sort. It must, then, be a powerful moral motive. Which? There can be but one. These illustrious men think, no doubt, that idealistic theories or beliefs are essentially necessary to the moral dignity and grandeur of man, and that materialistic theories, on the contrary, reduce him to the level of the beasts.
And if the truth were just the opposite!
Every development, I have said, implies the negation of its point of departure. The basis or point of departure, according to the materialistic school, being material, the negation must be necessarily ideal. Starting from the totality of the real world, or from what is abstractly called matter, it logically arrives at the real idealisation - that is, at the humanisation, at the full and complete emancipation of society. Per contra; and for the same reason, the basis and point of departure of the idealistic school being ideal, it arrives necessarily at the materialisation of society, at the organization of a brutal despotism and an iniquitous and ignoble exploitation, under the form of Church and State. The historical development of man according to the materialistic school, is a progressive ascension; in the idealistic system it can be nothing but a continuous fall.
Whatever human question we may desire to consider, we always find this same essential contradiction between the two schools. Thus, as I have already observed, materialism starts from animality to establish humanity; idealism starts from divinity to establish slavery and condemn the masses to an endless animality. Materialism denies free will and ends in the establishment of liberty; idealism, in the name of human dignity, proclaims free will, and on the ruins of every liberty founds authority. Materialism rejects the principle of authority, because it rightly considers it as the corollary of animality, and because, on the contrary, the triumph of humanity, the object and chief significance of history, can be realised only through liberty. In a word, you will always find the idealists in the very act of practical materialism, while you will see the materialists pursuing and realising the most grandly ideal aspirations and thoughts.
History, in the system of the idealists, as I have said, can be nothing but a continuous fall. They begin by a terrible fall, from which they never recover - by the salto mortale; from the sublime regions of pure and absolute idea into matter. And into what kind of matter ! Not into the matter which is eternally active and mobile, full of properties and forces, of life and intelligence, as we see it in the real world; but into abstract matter, impoverished and reduced to absolute misery by the regular looting of these Prussians of thought, the theologians and metaphysicians, who have stripped it of everything to give everything to their emperor, to their God; into the matter which, deprived of all action and movement of its own, represents, in opposition to the divine idea, nothing but absolute stupidity, impenetrability, inertia and immobility.
The fall is so terrible that divinity, the divine person or idea, is flattened out, loses consciousness of itself, and never more recovers it. And in this desperate situation it is still forced to work miracles ! For from the moment that matter becomes inert, every movement that takes place in the world, even the most material, is a miracle, can result only from a providential intervention, from the action of God upon matter. And there this poor Divinity, degraded and half annihilated by its fall, lies some thousands of centuries in this swoon, then awakens slowly, in vain endeavouring to grasp some vague memory of itself, and every move that it makes in this direction upon matter becomes a creation, a new formation, a new miracle. In this way it passes through all degrees of materiality and bestiality - first, gas, simple or compound chemical substance, mineral, it then spreads over the earth as vegetable and animal organization till it concentrates itself in man. Here it would seem as if it must become itself again, for it lights in every human being an angelic spark, a particle of its own divine being, the immortal soul.
How did it manage to lodge a thing absolutely immaterial in a thing absolutely material; how can the body contain, enclose, limit, paralyse pure spirit? This, again, is one of those questions which faith alone, that passionate and stupid affirmation of the absurd, can solve. It is the greatest of miracles. Here, however, we have only to establish the effects, the practical consequences of this miracle.
After thousands of centuries of vain efforts to come back to itself, Divinity, lost and scattered in the matter which it animates and sets in motion, finds a point of support, a sort of focus for self-concentration. This focus is man his immortal soul singularly imprisoned in a mortal body. But each man considered individually is infinitely too limited, too small, to enclose the divine immensity; it can contain only a very small particle, immortal like the whole, but infinitely smaller than the whole. It follows that the divine being, the absolutely immaterial being, mind, is divisible like matter. Another mystery whose solution must be left to faith.
If God entire could find lodgment in each man, then each man would be God. We should have an immense quantity of Gods, each limited by all the others and yet none the less infinite - a contradiction which would imply a mutual destruction of men, an impossibility of the existence of more than one. As for the particles, that is another matter; nothing more rational, indeed, than that one particle should be limited by another and be smaller than the whole. Only, here another contradiction confronts us. To be limited, to be greater and smaller are attributes of matter, not of mind. According to the materialists, it is true, mind is only the working of the wholly material organism of man, and the greatness or smallness of mind depends absolutely on the greater or less material perfection of the human organism. But these same attributes of relative limitation and grandeur cannot be attributed to mind as the idealists conceive it, absolutely immaterial mind, mind existing independent of matter. There can be neither greater nor smaller nor any limit among minds, for there is only one mind - God. To add that the infinitely small and limited particles which constitute human souls are at the same time immortal is to carry the contradiction to a climax. But this is a question of faith. Let us pass on.
Here then we have Divinity torn up and lodged, in infinitely small particles, in an immense number of beings of all sexes, ages, races, and colours. This is an excessively inconvenient and unhappy situation, for the divine particles are so little acquainted with each other at the outset of their human existence that they begin by devouring each other. Moreover, in the midst of this state of barbarism and wholly animal brutality, these divine particles, human souls, retain as it were a vague remembrance of their primitive divinity, and are irresistibly drawn towards their whole; they seek each other, they seek their whole. It is Divinity itself, scattered and lost in the natural world, which looks for itself in men, and it is so demolished by this multitude of human prisons in which it finds itself strewn, that, in looking for itself, it commits folly after folly.
Beginning with fetishism, it searches for and adores itself, now in a stone, now in a piece of wood, now in a rag. It is quite likely that it would never have succeeded in getting out of the rag, if the other; divinity which was not allowed to fall into matter and which is kept in a state of pure spirit in the sublime heights of the absolute ideal, or in the celestial regions, had not had pity on it.
Here is a new mystery - that of Divinity dividing itself into two halves, both equally infinite, of which one - God the Father - stays in the purely immaterial regions, and the other - God the Son - falls into matter. We shall see directly, between these two Divinities separated from each other, continuous relations established, from above to below and from below to above; and these relations, considered as a single eternal and constant act, will constitute the Holy Ghost. Such, in its veritable theological and metaphysical meaning, is the great, the terrible mystery of the Christian Trinity.
But let us lose no time in abandoning these heights to see what is going on upon earth.
God the Father, seeing from the height of his eternal splendour that the poor God the Son, flattened out and astounded by his fall, is so plunged and lost in matter that even having reached human state he has not yet recovered himself, decides to come to his aid. From this immense number of particles at once immortal, divine, and infinitely small, in which God the Son has disseminated himself so thoroughly that he does not know himself, God the Father chooses those most pleasing to him, picks his inspired persons, his prophets, his "men of virtuous genius," the great benefactors and legislators of humanity: Zoroaster, Buddha, Moses, Confucius, Lycurgus, Solon, Socrates, the divine Plato, and above all Jesus Christ, the complete realisation of God the Son, at last collected and concentrated in a single human person; all the apostles, Saint Peter, Saint Paul, Saint John before all, Constantine the Great, Mahomet, then Charlemagne, Gregory VII Dante, and, according to some, Luther also, Voltaire and Rousseau, Robespierre and Danton, and many other great and holy historical personages, all of whose names it is impossible to recapitulate, but among whom I, as a Russian, beg that Saint Nicholas may not be forgotten.
Then we have reached at last the manifestation of God upon earth. But immediately God appears, man is reduced to nothing. It will be said that he is not reduced to nothing, since he is himself a particle of God. Pardon me! I admit that a particle of a definite, limited whole, however small it be, is a quantity, a positive greatness. But a particle of the infinitely great, compared with it, is necessarily infinitely small, Multiply milliards of milliards by milliards of milliards - their product compared to the infinitely great, will be infinitely small, and the infinitely small is equal to zero. God is everything; therefore man and all the real world with him, the universe, are nothing. You will not escape this conclusion.
God appears, man is reduced to nothing; and the greater Divinity becomes, the more miserable becomes humanity. That is the history of all religions; that is the effect of all the divine inspirations and legislations. In history the name of God is the terrible club with which all divinely inspired men, the great "virtuous geniuses," have beaten down the liberty, dignity, reason, and prosperity of man.
We had first the fall of God. Now we have a fall which interests us more - that of man, caused solely by the apparition of God manifested on earth.
See in how profound an error our dear and illustrious idealists find themselves. In talking to us of God they purpose, they desire, to elevate us, emancipate us, ennoble us, and, on the contrary, they crush and degrade us. With the name of God they imagine that they can establish fraternity among men, and, on the contrary, they create pride, contempt; they sow discord, hatred, war; they establish slavery. For with God come the different degrees of divine inspiration; humanity is divided into men highly inspired, less inspired, uninspired. All are equally insignificant before God, it is true; but, compared with each other, some are greater than others; not only in fact - which would be of no consequence, because inequality in fact is lost in the collectivity when it cannot cling to some legal fiction or institution - but by the divine right of inspiration, which immediately establishes a fixed, constant, petrifying inequality. The highly inspired must be listened to and obeyed by the less inspired, and the less inspired by the uninspired. Thus we have the principle of authority well established, and with it the two fundamental institutions of slavery: Church and State.
Of all despotisms that of the doctrinaires; or inspired religionists is the worst. They are so jealous of the glory of their God and of the triumph of their idea that they have no heart left for the liberty or the dignity or even the sufferings of living men, of real men. Divine zeal, preoccupation with the idea, finally dry up the tenderest souls, the most compassionate hearts, the sources of human love. Considering all that is, all that happens in the world from the point of view of eternity or of the abstract idea, they treat passing matters with disdain; but the whole life of real men, of men of flesh and bone, is composed only of passing matters; they themselves are only passing beings, who, once passed, are replaced by others likewise passing, but never to return in person. Alone permanent or relatively eternal in men is humanity, which steadily developing, grows richer in passing from one generation to another. I say relatively; eternal, because, our planet once destroyed - it cannot fail to perish sooner or later, since everything which has begun must necessarily end - our planet once decomposed, to serve undoubtedly as an element of some new formation in the system of the universe, which alone is really eternal, who knows what will become of our whole human development? Nevertheless, the moment of this dissolution being an enormous distance in the future, we may properly consider humanity, relatively to the short duration of human life, as eternal. But this very fact of progressive humanity is real and living only through its manifestations at definite times, in definite places, in really living men, and not through its general idea.
The general idea is always an abstraction and, for that very reason, in some sort a negation of real life. I have stated in the Appendix that human thought and, in consequence of this, science can grasp and name only the general significance of real facts, their relations, their laws - in short, that which is permanent in their continual transformations - but never their material, individual side, palpitating, so to speak, with reality and life, and therefore fugitive and intangible. Science comprehends the thought of the reality, not reality itself; the thought of life, not life. That is its limit, its only really insuperable limit, because it is founded on the very nature of thought, which is the only organ of science.
Upon this nature are based the indisputable rights and grand mission of science, but also its vital impotence and even its mischievous action whenever, through its official licensed representatives, it arrogantly claims the right to govern life. The mission of science is, by observation of the general relations of passing and real facts, to establish the general laws inherent in the development of the phenomena of the physical and social world; it fixes, so to speak, the unchangeable landmarks of humanity's progressive march by indicating the general conditions which it is necessary to rigorously observe and always fatal to ignore or forget. In a word, science is the compass of life; but it is not life itself. Science is unchangeable, impersonal, general, abstract, insensible, like the laws of which it is but the ideal reproduction, reflected or mental - that is cerebral (using this word to remind us that science itself is but a material product of a material organ, the brain). Life is wholly fugitive and temporary, but also wholly palpitating with reality and individuality, sensibility, sufferings, joys, aspirations, needs, and passions. It alone spontaneously creates real things and; beings. Science creates nothing; it establishes and recognises only the creations of life. And every time that scientific men, emerging from their abstract world, mingle with living creation in the real world, all that they propose or create is poor, ridiculously abstract, bloodless and lifeless, still-born, like the homunculus created by Wagner, the pedantic disciple of the immortal Doctor Faust. It follows that the only mission of science is to enlighten life, not to govern it.
The government of science and of men of science, even be they positivists, disciples of Auguste Comte, or, again, disciples of the doctrinaire; school of German Communism, cannot fail to be impotent, ridiculous, inhuman, cruel, oppressive, exploiting, maleficent. We may say of men of science, as such, what I have said of theologians and metaphysicians: they have neither sense nor heart for individual and living beings. We cannot even blame them for this, for it is the natural consequence of their profession. In so far as they are men of science, they have to deal with and can take interest in nothing except generalities; that do the laws [...]
[Three pages of the manuscript are missing]
... they are not exclusively men of science, but are also more or less men of life.
Footnotes
[3]
[4]
"The first measure," he answered "will be the foundation of schools for the people."
"And what will the people be taught in these schools?"
"The duties of man - sacrifice and devotion."
But where will you find a sufficient number of professors to teach these things, which no one has the right or power to teach, unless he preaches by example? Is not the number of men who find supreme enjoyment in sacrifice and devotion exceedingly limited? Those who sacrifice themselves in the service of a great idea obey a lofty passion, and, satisfying this personal passion, outside of which life itself loses all value in their eyes, they generally think of something else than building their action into doctrine, while those who teach doctrine usually forget to translate it into action, for the simple reason that doctrine kills the life, the living spontaneity, of action.
Men like Mazzini, in whom doctrine and action form an admirable unity, are very rare exceptions. In Christianity also there have been great men, holy men, who have really practised, or who, at least, have passionately tried to practice all that they preached, and whose hearts, overflowing with love, were full of contempt for the pleasures and goods of this world. But the immense majority of Catholic and Protestant priests who, by trade, have preached and still preach the doctrines of chastity, abstinence, and renunciation belie their teachings by their example. It is not without reason, but because of several centuries' experience, that among the people of all countries these phrases have become by-words: As licentious as a priest; as gluttonous as a priest; as ambitious as a priest; as greedy, selfish, and grasping as a priest. It is, then, established that the professors of the Christian virtues, consecrated by the Church, the priests, in the immense majority of cases, have practised quite the contrary of what they have preached. This very majority, the universality of this fact, show that the fault is not to be attributed to them as individuals, but to the social position, impossible and contradictory in itself, in which these individuals are placed.
The position of the Christian priest involves a double contradiction. In the first place, that between the doctrine of abstinence and renunciation and the positive tendencies and needs of human nature - tendencies and needs which, in some individual cases, always very rare, may indeed be continually held back, suppressed, and even entirely annihilated by the constant influence of some potent intellectual and moral passion; which at certain moments of collective exaltation, may be forgotten and neglected for some time by a large mass of men at once; but which are so fundamentally inherent in our nature that sooner or later they always resume their rights: so that, when they are not satisfied in a regular and normal way, they are always replaced at last by unwholesome and monstrous satisfaction. This is a natural and consequently fatal and irresistible law, under the disastrous action of which inevitably fall all Christian priests and especially those of the Roman Catholic Church. It cannot apply to the professors, that is to the priests of the modern Church, unless they are also obliged to preach Christian abstinence and renunciation.
But there is another contradiction common to the priests of both sects. This contradiction grows out of the very title and position of the master. A master who commands, oppresses, and exploits is a wholly logical and quite natural personage. But a master who sacrifices himself to those who are subordinated to him by his divine or human privilege is a contradictory and quite impossible being. This is the very constitution of hypocrisy, so well personified by the Pope, who, while calling himself the lowest servant of the servants of God - in token whereof, following the example of Christ, he even washes once a year the feet of twelve Roman beggars - proclaims himself at the same time vicar of God, absolute and infallible master of the world. Do I need to recall that the priests of all churches, far from sacrificing themselves to the flocks confided to their care, have always sacrificed them, exploited them, and kept them in the condition of a flock, partly to satisfy their own personal passions and partly to serve the omnipotence of the Church? Like conditions, like causes, always produce like effects. It will, then, be the same with the professors of the modern School divinely inspired and licensed by the State. They will necessarily become, some without knowing it, others with full knowledge of the cause, teachers of the doctrine of popular sacrifice to the power of the State and to the profit of the privileged classes.
Must we, then, eliminate from society all instruction and abolish all schools? Far from it! Instruction must be spread among the masses without stint, transforming all the churches, all those temples dedicated to the glory of God and to the slavery of men, into so many schools of human emancipation. But, in the first place, let us understand each other; schools, properly speaking, in a normal society founded on equality and on respect for human liberty, will exist only for children and not for adults: and, in order that they may become schools of emancipation and not of enslavement, it will be necessary to eliminate, first of all, this fiction of God, the eternal and absolute enslaver. The whole education of children and their instruction must be founded on the scientific development of reason, not on that of faith; on the development of personal dignity and independence, not on that of piety and obedience; on the worship of truth and justice at any cost, and above all on respect for humanity, which must replace always and everywhere the worship of divinity. The principle of authority, in the education of children, constitutes the natural point of departure; it is legitimate, necessary, when applied to children of a tender age, whose intelligence has not yet openly developed itself. But as the development of everything, and consequently of education, implies the gradual negation of the point of departure, this principle must diminish as fast as education and instruction advance, giving place to increasing liberty. All rational education is at bottom nothing but this progressive immolation of authority for the benefit of liberty, the final object of education necessarily being the formation of free men full of respect and love for the liberty of others. Therefore the first day of the pupils' life, if the school takes infants scarcely able as yet to stammer a few words, should be that of the greatest authority and an almost entire absence of liberty; but its last day should be that of the greatest liberty and the absolute abolition of every vestige of the animal or divine principle of authority.
The principle of authority, applied to men who have surpassed or attained their majority, becomes a monstrosity, a flagrant denial of humanity, a source of slavery and intellectual and moral depravity. Unfortunately, paternal governments have left the masses to wallow in an ignorance so profound that it will be necessary to establish schools not only for the people's children, but for the people themselves. From these schools will be absolutely eliminated the smallest applications or manifestations of the principle of authority. They will be schools no longer; they will be popular academies, in which neither pupils nor masters will be known, where the people will come freely to get, if they need it, free instruction, and in which, rich in their own experience, they will teach in their turn many things to the professors who shall bring them knowledge which they lack. This, then, will be a mutual instruction, an act of intellectual fraternity between the educated youth and the people.
The real school for the people and for all grown men is life. The only grand and omnipotent authority, at once natural and rational, the only one which we may respect, will be that of the collective and public spirit of a society founded on equality and solidarity and the mutual human respect of all its members. Yes. this is an authority which is not at all divine, wholly human, but before which we shall bow willingly, certain that, far from enslaving them, it will emancipate men. It will be a thousand times more powerful, be sure of it than all your divine, theological metaphysical, political, and judicial authorities, established by the Church and by the State, more powerful than your criminal codes, your jailers, and your executioners.
The power of collective sentiment or public spirit is even now a very serious matter. The men most ready to commit crimes rarely dare to defy it, to openly affront it. They will seek to deceive it, but will take care not to be rude with it unless they feel the support of a minority larger or smaller. No man, however powerful he believes himself, will ever have the strength to bear the unanimous contempt of society; no one can live without feeling himself sustained by the approval and esteem of at least some portion of society. A man must be urged on by an immense and very sincere conviction in order to find courage to speak and act against the opinion of all, and never will a selfish, depraved, and cowardly man have such courage.
Nothing proves more clearly than this fact the natural and inevitable solidarity - this law of sociability - which binds all men together, as each of us can verify daily, both on himself and on all the men whom he knows But, if this social power exists, why has it not sufficed hitherto to moralise, to humanise men? Simply because hitherto this power has not been humanised itself; it has not been humanised because the social life of which it is ever the faithful expression is based, as we know, on the worship of divinity not on respect for humanity; on authority, not on liberty; on privilege, not on equality; on the exploitation, not on the brotherhood of men; on iniquity and falsehood, not on justice and truth. Consequently its real action, always in contradiction of the humanitarian theories which it professes, has constantly exercised a disastrous and depraving influence. It does not repress vices and crimes; it creates them. Its authority is consequently a divine, anti-human authority; its influence is mischievous and baleful. Do you wish to render its authority and influence beneficent and human? Achieve the social revolution. Make all needs really solidary, and cause the material and social interests of each to conform to the human duties of each. And to this end there is but one means: Destroy all the institutions of Inequality; establish the economic and social equality of all, and on this basis will arise the liberty the morality, the solidary humanity of all.
I shall return to this, the most important question of Socialism.
Bakunin
God and the State
III
Nevertheless, we must not rely too much on this. Though we may be well nigh certain that a savant; would not dare to treat a man today as he treats a rabbit, it remains always to be feared that the savants; as a body, if not interfered with, may submit living men to scientific experiments, undoubtedly less cruel but none the less disagreeable to their victims. If they cannot perform experiments upon the bodies of individuals, they will ask nothing better than to perform them on the social body, and that what must be absolutely prevented.
In their existing organisation, monopolising science and remaining thus outside of social life, the savants; form a separate caste, in many respects analogous to the priesthood. Scientific abstractions is their God, living and real individuals are their victims, and they are the consecrated and licensed sacrificers.
Science cannot go outside of the sphere of abstractions. In this respect it is infinitely inferior to art, which, in its turn, is peculiarly concerned also with general types and general situations, but which incarnates them by an artifice of its own in forms which, if they are not living in the sense of real life none the less excite in our imagination the memory and sentiment of life; art in a certain sense individualizes the types and situations which it conceives; by means of the individualities without flesh and bone, and consequently permanent and immortal, which it has the power to create, it recalls to our minds the living, real individualities which appear and disappear under our eyes. Art, then, is as it were the return of abstraction to life; science, on the contrary, is the perpetual immolation of life, fugitive, temporary, but real, on the altar of eternal abstractions.
Science is as incapable of grasping the individuality of a man as that of a rabbit, being equally indifferent to both. Not that it is ignorant of the principle of individuality: it conceives it perfectly as a principle, but not as a fact. It knows very well that all the animal species, including the human species, have no real existence outside of an indefinite number of individuals, born and dying to make room for new individuals equally fugitive. It knows that in rising from the animal species to the superior species the principle of individuality becomes more pronounced; the individuals appear freer and more complete. It knows that man, the last and most perfect animal of earth, presents the most complete and most remarkable individuality, because of his power to conceive, concrete, personify, as it were, in his social and private existence, the universal law. It knows, finally, when it is not vitiated by theological or metaphysical, political or judicial doctrinairisme, or even by a narrow scientific pride, when it is not deaf to the instincts and spontaneous aspirations of life - it knows (and this is its last word) that respect for man is the supreme law of Humanity, and that the great, the real object of history, its only legitimate object is the humanization and emancipation, the real liberty, the prosperity and happiness of each individual living in society. For, if we would not fall back into the liberticidal fiction of the public welfare represented by the State, a fiction always founded on the systematic sacrifice of the people, we must clearly recognize that collective liberty and prosperity exist only so far as they represent the sum of individual liberties and prosperities.
Science knows all these things, but it does not and cannot go beyond them. Abstraction being its very nature, it can well enough conceive the principle of real and living individuality, but it can have no dealings with real and living individuals; it concerns itself with individuals in general, but not with Peter or James, not with such or such a one, who, so far as it is concerned, do not, cannot, have any existence. Its individuals, I repeat, are only abstractions.
Now, history is made, not by abstract individuals, but by acting, living and passing individuals. Abstractions advance only when borne forward by real men. For these beings made, not in idea only, but in reality of flesh and blood, science has no heart: it considers them at most as material for intellectual and social development. What does it care for the particular conditions and chance fate of Peter or James? It would make itself ridiculous, it would abdicate, it would annihilate itself, if it wished to concern itself with them otherwise than as examples in support of its eternal theories. And it would be ridiculous to wish it to do so, for its mission lies not there. It cannot grasp the concrete; it can move only in abstractions. Its mission is to busy itself with the situation and the general conditions of the existence and development, either of the human species in general, or of such a race, such a people, such a class or category of individuals; the general causes of their prosperity, their decline, and the best general methods of securing, their progress in all ways. Provided it accomplishes this task broadly and rationally, it will do its whole duty, and it would be really unjust to expect more of it.
But it would be equally ridiculous, it would be disastrous to entrust it with a mission which it is incapable of fulfilling. Since its own nature forces it to ignore the existence of Peter and James, it must never be permitted, nor must anybody be permitted in its name, to govern Peter and James. For it were capable of treating them almost as it treats rabbits. Or rather, it would continue to ignore them; but its licensed representatives, men not at all abstract, but on the contrary in very active life and having very substantial interests, yielding to the pernicious influence which privilege inevitably exercises upon men, would finally fleece other men in the name of science, just as they have been fleeced hitherto by priests, politicians of all shades, and lawyers, in the name of God, of the State, of judicial Right.
What I preach then is, to a certain extent, the revolt of life against science, or rather against the government of science, not to destroy science - that would be high treason to humanity - but to remand it to its place so that it can never leave it again. Until now all human history has been only a perpetual and bloody immolation of millions of poor human beings in honor of some pitiless abstraction - God, country, power of State, national honor, historical rights, judicial rights, political liberty, public welfare. Such has been up to today the natural, spontaneous, and inevitable movement of human societies. We cannot undo it; we must submit to it so far as the past is concerned, as we submit to all natural fatalities. We must believe that that was the only possible way, to educate the human race. For we must not deceive ourselves: even in attributing the larger part to the Machiavellian wiles of the governing classes, we have to recognize that no minority would have been powerful enough to impose all these horrible sacrifices upon the masses if there had not been in the masses themselves a dizzy spontaneous movement which pushed them on to continual self-sacrifice, now to one, now to another of these devouring abstractions the vampires of history ever nourished upon human blood.
We readily understand that this is very gratifying, to the theologians, politicians, and jurists. Priests of these abstractions, they live only by the continual immolation of the people. Nor is it more surprising that metaphysics too, should give its consent. Its only mission is to justify and rationalize as far as possible the iniquitous and absurd. But that positive science itself should have shown the same tendencies is a fact which we must deplore while we establish it. That it has done so is due to two reasons: in the first place, because, constituted outside of life, it is represented by a privileged body; and in the second place, because thus far it has posited itself as an absolute and final object of all human development. By a judicious criticism, which it can and finally will be forced to pass upon itself, it would understand, on the contrary, that it is only a means for the realization of a much higher object - that of the complete humanization of the real situation of all the real individuals who are born, who live, and who die, on earth.
The immense advantage of positive science over theology, metaphysics, politics, and judicial right consists in this - that, in place of the false and fatal abstractions set up by these doctrines, it posits true abstractions which express the general nature and logic of things, their general relations, and the general laws of their development. This separates it profoundly from all preceding doctrines, and will assure it for ever a great position in society: it will constitute in a certain sense society's collective consciousness. But there is one aspect in which it resembles all these doctrines: its only possible object being abstractions, it is forced by its very nature to ignore real men, outside of whom the truest abstractions have no existence. To remedy this radical defect positive science will have to proceed by a different method from that followed by the doctrines of the past. The latter have taken advantage of the ignorance of the masses to sacrifice them with delight to their abstractions, which by the way, are always very lucrative to those who represent them in flesh and bone. Positive science, recognizing its absolute inability to conceive real individuals and interest itself in their lot, must definitely and absolutely renounce all claim to the government of societies; for if it should meddle therein, it would only sacrifice continually the living men whom it ignores to the abstractions which constitute the sole object of its legitimate preoccupations.
The true science of history, for instance, does not yet exist; scarcely do we begin today to catch a glimpse of its extremely complicated conditions. But suppose it were definitely developed, what could it give us? It would exhibit a faithful and rational picture of the natural development of the general conditions - material and ideal, economical, political and social, religious, philosophical, aesthetic, and scientific - of the societies which have a history. But this universal picture of human civilization, however detailed it might be, would never show anything beyond general and consequently abstract estimates. The milliards of individuals who have furnished the living and suffering materials of this history at once triumphant and dismal - triumphant by its general results, dismal by the immense hecatomb of human victims "crushed under its car" - those milliards of obscure individuals without whom none of the great abstract results of history would have been obtained - and who, bear in mind, have never benefited by any of these results - will find no place, not even the slightest in our annals. They have lived and been sacrificed, crushed for the good of abstract humanity, that is all.
Shall we blame the science of history. That would be unjust and ridiculous. Individuals cannot be grasped by thought, by reflection, or even by human speech, which is capable of expressing abstractions only; they cannot be grasped in the present day any more than in the past. Therefore social science itself, the science of the future, will necessarily continue to ignore them. All that, we have a right to demand of it is that it shall point us with faithful and sure hand to the general causes of individual suffering - among these causes it will not forget the immolation and subordination (still too frequent, alas!) of living individuals to abstract generalities - at the same time showing us the general conditions necessary to the real emancipation of the individuals living in society. That is its mission; those are its limits, beyond which the action of social science can be only impotent and fatal. Beyond those limits being the doctrinaire and governmental pretentious of its licensed representatives, its priests. It is time to have done with all popes and priests; we want them no longer, even if they call themselves Social Democrats.
Once more, the sole mission of science is to light the road. Only Life, delivered from all its governmental and doctrinaire barriers, and given full liberty of action, can create.
How solve this antinomy?
On the one hand, science is indispensable to the rational organization of society; on the other, being incapable of interesting itself in that which is real and living, it must not interfere with the real or practical organization of society.
This contradiction can be solved only in one way: by the liquidation of science as a moral being existing outside the life of all, and represented by a body of breveted savants; it must spread among the masses. Science, being called upon to henceforth represent society's collective consciousness, must really become the property of everybody. Thereby, without losing anything of its universal character, of which it can never divest itself without ceasing to be science, and while continuing to concern itself exclusively with general causes, the conditions and fixed relations of individuals and things, it will become one in fact with the immediate and real life of all individuals. That will be a movement analogous to that which said to the Protestants at the beginning of the Reformation that there was no further need of priests for man, who would henceforth be his own priest, every man, thanks to the invisible intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ alone, having at last succeeded in swallowing his good God. But here the question is not of Jesus Christ, nor good God, nor of political liberty, nor of judicial right - things all theologically or metaphysically revealed, and all alike indigestible. The world of scientific abstractions is not revealed; it is inherent in the real world, of which it is only the general or abstract expression and representation. As long as it forms a separate region, specially represented by the savants as a body, this ideal world threatens to take the place of a good God to the real world, reserving for its licensed representatives the office of priests. That is the reason why it is necessary to dissolve the special social organization of the savants by general instruction, equal for all in all things, in order that the masses, ceasing to be flocks led and shorn by privileged priests, may take into their own hands the direction of their destinies. [5]
But until the masses shall have reached this degree of instruction, will it be necessary to leave them to the government of scientific men? Certainly not. It would be better for them to dispense with science than allow themselves to be governed by savants. The first consequence of the government of these men would be to render science inaccessible to the people, and such a government would necessarily be aristocratic because the existing scientific institutions are essentially aristocratic. An aristocracy of learning! from the practical point of view the most implacable, and from the social point of view the most haughty and insulting - such would be the power established in the name of science. This rgime would be capable of paralyzing the life and movement of society. The savants always presumptuous, ever self-sufficient and ever impotent, would desire to meddle with everything, and the sources of life would dry up under the breath of their abstractions.
Once more, Life, not science, creates life; the spontaneous action of the people themselves alone can create liberty. Undoubtedly it would be a very fortunate thing if science could, from this day forth, illuminate the spontaneous march of the people towards their emancipation. But better an absence of light than a false and feeble light, kindled only to mislead those who follow it. After all, the people will not lack light. Not in vain have they traversed a long historic career, and paid for their errors by centuries of misery. The practical summary of their painful experiences constitutes a sort of traditional science, which in certain respects is worth as much as theoretical science. Last of all, a portion of the youth - those of the bourgeois students who feel hatred enough for the falsehood, hypocrisy, injustice, and cowardice of the bourgeoisie to find courage to turn their backs upon it, and passion enough to unreservedly embrace the just and human cause of the proletariat - those will be, as I have already said, fraternal instructors of the people; thanks to them, there will be no occasion for the government of the savants.
If the people should beware of the government of the savants, all the more should they provide against that of the inspired idealists. The more sincere these believers and poets of heaven, the more dangerous they become. The scientific abstraction, I have said, is a rational abstraction, true in its essence, necessary to life, of which it is the theoretical representation, or, if one prefers, the conscience. It may, it must be, absorbed and digested by life. The idealistic abstraction, God, is a corrosive poison, which destroys and decomposes life, falsifies and kills it. The pride of the idealists, not being personal but divine, is invincible and inexorable: it may, it must, die, but it will never yield, and while it has a breath left it will try to subject men to its God, just as the lieutenants of Prussia, these practical idealists of Germany, would like to see the people crushed under the spurred boot of their emperor. The faith is the same, the end but little different, and the result, as that of faith, is slavery.
It is at the same time the triumph of the ugliest and most brutal materialism. There is no need to demonstrate this in the case of Germany; one would have to be blind to avoid seeing it at the present hour. But I think it is still necessary to demonstrate it in the case of divine idealism.
Man, like all the rest of nature, is an entirely material being. The mind, the facility of thinking, of receiving and reflecting upon different external and internal sensations, of remembering them when they have passed and reproducing them by the imagination, of comparing and distinguishing them, of abstracting determinations common to them and thus creating general concepts, and finally of forming ideas by grouping and combining concepts according to different methods - intelligence, in a word, sole creator of our whole, ideal world, is a property of the animal body and especially of the quite material organism of the brain.
We know this certainly, by the experience of all, which no fact has ever contradicted and which any man can verify at any moment of his life. In all animals, without excepting the wholly inferior species, we find a certain degree of intelligence, and we see that, in the series of species, animal intelligence develops in proportion as the organization of a species approaches that of man, but that in man alone it attains to that power of abstraction which properly constitutes thought.
Universal experience, [6]
[7]
On the other hand, it is certain that no man has ever seen or can see pure mind, detached from all material form existing separately from any animal body whatsoever. But if no person has seen it, how is it that men have come to believe in its existence? The fact of this belief is certain and if not universal, as all the idealists pretend, at least very general, and as such it is entirely worthy of our closest attention, for a general belief, however foolish it may be, exercises too potent a sway over the destiny of men to warrant us in ignoring it or putting it aside.
The explanation of this belief, moreover, is rational enough. The example afforded us by children and young people, and even by many men long past the age of majority, shows us that man may use his mental faculties for a long time before accounting to himself for the way in which he uses them, before becoming clearly conscious of it. During this working of the mind unconscious of itself, during this action of innocent or believing intelligence, man, obsessed by the external world, pushed on by that internal goad called life and its manifold necessities, creates a quantity of imaginations, concepts, and ideas necessarily very imperfect at first and conforming but slightly to the reality of the things and facts which they endeavour to express Not having yet the consciousness of his own intelligent action, not knowing yet that he himself has produced and continues to produce these imaginations, these concepts, these ideas, ignoring their wholly subjective - that is, human-origin, he must naturally consider them as objective; beings, as real beings, wholly independent of him, existing by themselves and in themselves.
It was thus that primitive peoples, emerging slowly from their animal innocence, created their gods. Having created them, not suspecting that they themselves were the real creators, they worshipped them; considering them as real beings infinitely superior to themselves, they attributed omnipotence to them, and recognised themselves as their creatures, their slaves. As fast as human ideas develop, the gods, who, as I have already stated, were never anything more than a fantastic, ideal, poetical reverberation of an inverted image, become idealised also. At first gross fetishes, they gradually become pure spirits, existing outside of the visible world, and at last, in the course of a long historic evolution, are confounded in a single Divine Being, pure, eternal, absolute Spirit, creator and master of the worlds.
In every development, just or false, real or imaginary collective or individual, it is always the first step, the first act that is the most difficult. That step once taken, the rest follows naturally as a necessary consequence. The difficult step in the historical development of this terrible religious insanity which continues to obsess and crush us was to posit a divine world as such, outside the world. This first act of madness, so natural from the physiological point of view and consequently necessary in the history of humanity, was not accomplished at a single stroke. I know not how many centuries were needed to develop this belief and make it a governing influence upon the mental customs of men. But, once established, it became omnipotent, as each insane notion necessarily becomes when it takes possession of man's brain. Take a madman, whatever the object of his madness - you will find that obscure and fixed idea which obsesses him seems to him the most natural thing in the world, and that, on the contrary, the real things which contradict this idea seem to him ridiculous and odious follies. Well religion is a collective insanity, the more powerful because it is traditional folly, and because its origin is lost in the most remote antiquity. As collective insanity it has penetrated to the very depths of the public and private existence of the peoples; it is incarnate in society; it has become, so to speak, the collective soul and thought. Every man is enveloped in it from his birth; he sucks it in with his mother's milk, absorbs it with all that he touches, all that he sees. He is so exclusive]y fed upon it, so poisoned and penetrated by it in all his being that later, however powerful his natural mind, he has to make unheard-of efforts to deliver himself from it, and then never completely succeeds. We have one proof of this in our modern idealists, and another in our doctrinaire; materialists - the German Communists. They have found no way to shake off the religion of the State.
The supernatural world, the divine world, once well established in the imagination of the peoples, the development of the various religious systems has followed its natural and logical course, conforming, moreover, in all things to the contemporary development of economical and political relations of which it has been in all ages, in the world of religious fancy, the faithful reproduction and divine consecration. Thus has the collective and historical insanity which calls itself religion been developed since fetishism, passing through all the stages from polytheism to Christian monotheism.
The second step in the development of religious beliefs, undoubtedly the most difficult next to the establishment of a separate divine world, was precisely this transition from polytheism to monotheism, from the religious materialism of the pagans to the spiritualistic faith of the Christians. She pagan gods - and this was their principal characteristic - were first of all exclusively national gods. Very numerous, they necessarily retained a more or less material character, or, rather, they were so numerous because they were material, diversity being one of the principal attributes of the real world. The pagan gods were not yet strictly the negation of real things; they were only a fantastic exaggeration of them.
We have seen how much this transition cost the Jewish people, constituting, so to speak, its entire history. In vain did Moses and the prophets preach the one god; the people always relapsed into their primitive idolatry, into the ancient and comparatively much more natural and convenient faith in many good gods, more material, more human, and more palpable. Jehovah himself, their sole God, the God of Moses and the prophets, was still an extremely national God, who, to reward and punish his faithful followers, his chosen people, used material arguments, often stupid, always gross and cruel. It does not even appear that faith in his existence implied a negation of the existence of earlier gods. The Jewish God did not deny the existence of these rivals; he simply did not want his people to worship them side by side with him, because before all Jehovah was a very Jealous God. His first commandment was this:
"I am the Lord thy God, and thou shalt have no other gods before me."
Jehovah, then, was only a first draft, very material and very rough, of the supreme deity of modern idealism. Moreover, he was only a national God, like the Russian God worshipped by the German generals, subjects of the Czar and patriots of the empire of all the Russias; like the German God, whom the pietists and the German generals, subjects of William I. at Berlin, will no doubt soon proclaim. The supreme being cannot be a national God; he must be the God of entire Humanity. Nor can the supreme being be a material being; he must be the negation of all matter - pure spirit. Two things have proved necessary to the realisation of the worship of the supreme being:
(1) a realisation, such as it is, of Humanity by the negation of nationalities and national forms of worship;
(2) a development, already far advanced, of metaphysical ideas in order to spiritualise the gross Jehovah of the Jews.
The first condition was fulfilled by the Romans, though in a very negative way no doubt, by the conquest of most of the countries known to the ancients and by the destruction of their national institutions. The gods of all the conquered nations, gathered in the Pantheon, mutually cancelled each other. This was the first draft of humanity, very gross and quite negative.
As for the second condition, the spiritualisation of Jehovah, that was realised by the Greeks long before the conquest of their country by the Romans. They were the creators of metaphysics. Greece, in the cradle of her history, had already found from the Orient a divine world which had been definitely established in the traditional faith of her peoples; this world had been left and handed over to her by the Orient. In her instinctive period, prior to her political history, she had developed and prodigiously humanised this divine world through her poets; and when she actually began her history, she already had a religion readymade, the most sympathetic and noble of all the religions which have existed, so far at least as a religion - that is, a lie - can be noble and sympathetic. Her great thinkers - and no nation has had greater than Greece - found the divine world established, not only outside of themselves in the people, but also in themselves as a habit of feeling and thought, and naturally they took it as a point of departure. That they made no theology - that is, that they did not wait in vain to reconcile dawning reason with the absurdities of such a god, as did the scholastics of the Middle Ages - was already much in their favour. They left the gods out of their speculations and attached themselves directly to the divine idea, one, invisible, omnipotent, eternal, and absolutely spiritualistic but impersonal. As concerns Spiritualism, then, the Greek metaphysicians, much more than the Jews, were the creators of the Christian god. The Jews only added to it the brutal personality of their Jehovah.
That a sublime genius like the divine Plato could have been absolutely convinced of the reality of the divine idea shows us how contagious, how omnipotent, is the tradition of the religious mania even on the greatest minds. Besides, we should not be surprised at it, since, even in our day, the greatest philosophical genius which has existed since Aristotle and Plato, Hegel - in spite even of Kant's criticism, imperfect and too metaphysical though it be, which had demolished the objectivity or reality of the divine ideas - tried to replace these divine ideas upon their transcendental or celestial throne. It is true that Hegel went about his work of restoration in so impolite a manner that he killed the good God for ever. He took away from these ideas their divine halo, by showing to whoever will read him that they were never anything more than a creation of the human mind running through history in search of itself. To put an end to all religious insanities and the divine mirage, he left nothing lacking but the utterance of those grand words which were said after him, almost at the same time, by two great minds who had never heard of each other - Ludwig Feuerbach, the disciple and demolisher of Hegel, in Germany, and Auguste Comte, the founder of positive philosophy, in France. These words were as follows:
"Metaphysics are reduced to psychology." All the metaphysical systems have been nothing else than human psychology developing itself in history.
To-day it is no longer difficult to understand how the divine ideas were born, how they were created in succession by the abstractive faculty of man. Man made the gods. But in the time of Plato this knowledge was impossible. The collective mind, and consequently the individual mind as well, even that of the greatest genius, was not ripe for that. Scarcely had it said with Socrates: "Know thyself!" This self-knowledge existed only in a state of intuition; in fact, it amounted to nothing. Hence it was impossible for the human mind to suspect that it was itself the sole creator of the divine world. It found the divine world before it; it found it as history, as tradition, as a sentiment, as a habit of thought; and it necessarily made it the object of its loftiest speculations. Thus was born metaphysics, and thus were developed and perfected the divine ideas, the basis of Spiritualism.
It is true that after Plato there was a sort of inverse movement in the development of the mind. Aristotle, the true father of science and positive philosophy, did not deny the divine world, but concerned himself with it as little as possible. He was the first to study, like the analyst and experimenter that he was, logic, the laws of human thought, and at the same time the physical world, not in its ideal, illusory essence, but in its real aspect. After him the Greeks of Alexandria established the first school of the positive scientists. They were atheists. But their atheism left no mark on their contemporaries. Science tended more and more to separate itself from life. After Plato, divine ideas were rejected in metaphysics themselves; this was done by the Epicureans and Sceptics, two sects who contributed much to the degradation of human aristocracy, but they had no effect upon the masses.
Another school, infinitely more influential, was formed at Alexandria. This was the school of neo-Platonists. These, confounding in an impure mixture the monstrous imaginations of the Orient with the ideas of Plato, were the true originators, and later the elaborators, of the Christian dogmas.
Thus the personal and gross egoism of Jehovah, the not less brutal and gross Roman conquest, and the metaphysical ideal speculation of the Greeks, materialised by contact with the Orient, were the three historical elements which made up the spiritualistic religion of the Christians.
Before the altar of a unique and supreme God was raised on the ruins of the numerous altars of the pagan gods, the autonomy of the various nations composing the pagan or ancient world had to be destroyed first. This was very brutally done by the Romans who, by conquering the greatest part of the globe known to the ancients, laid the first foundations, quite gross and negative ones no doubt, of humanity. A God thus raised above the national differences, material and social, of all countries, and in a certain sense the direct negation of them, must necessarily be an immaterial and abstract being. But faith in the existence of such a being, so difficult a matter, could not spring into existence suddenly. Consequently, as I have demonstrated in the Appendix, it went through a long course of preparation and development at the hands of Greek metaphysics, which were the first to establish in a philosophical manner the notion of the divine idea, a model eternally creative and always reproduced by the visible world. But the divinity conceived and created by Greek philosophy was an impersonal divinity. No logical and serious metaphysics being able to rise, or, rather, to descend, to the idea of a personal God, it became necessary, therefore, to imagine a God who was one and very personal at once. He was found in the very brutal, selfish, and cruel person of Jehovah, the national God of the Jews. But the Jews, in spite of that exclusive national spirit which distinguishes them even to-day, had become in fact, long before the birth of Christ, the most international people of the world. Some of them carried away as captives, but many more even urged on by that mercantile passion which constitutes one of the principal traits of their character, they had spread through all countries, carrying everywhere the worship of their Jehovah, to whom they remained all the more faithful the more he abandoned them.
In Alexandria this terrible god of the Jews made the personal acquaintance of the metaphysical divinity of Plato, already much corrupted by Oriental contact, and corrupted her still more by his own. In spite of his national, jealous, and ferocious exclusivism, he could not long resist the graces of this ideal and impersonal divinity of the Greeks. He married her, and from this marriage was born the spiritualistic - but not spirited - God of the Christians. The neoplatonists of Alexandria are known to have been the principal creators of the Christian theology.
Nevertheless theology alone does not make a religion, any more than historical elements suffice to create history. By historical elements I mean the general conditions of any real development whatsoever - for example in this case the conquest of the world by the Romans and the meeting of the God of the Jews with the ideal of divinity of the Greeks. To impregnate the historical elements, to cause them to run through a series of new historical transformations, a living, spontaneous fact was needed, without which they might have remained many centuries longer in the state of unproductive elements. This fact was not lacking in Christianity: it was the propagandism, martyrdom, and death of Jesus Christ.
We know almost nothing of this great and saintly personage, all that the gospels tell us being contradictory, and so fabulous that we can scarcely seize upon a few real and vital traits. But it is certain that he was the preacher of the poor, the friend and consoler of the wretched, of the ignorant, of the slaves, and of the women, and that by these last he was much loved. He promised eternal life to all who are oppressed, to all who suffer here below; and the number is immense. He was hanged, as a matter of course, by the representatives of the official morality and public order of that period. His disciples and the disciples of his disciples succeeded in spreading, thanks to the destruction of the national barriers by the Roman conquest, and propagated the Gospel in all the countries known to the ancients. Everywhere they were received with open arms by the slaves and the women, the two most oppressed, most suffering, and naturally also the most ignorant classes of the ancient world. For even such few proselytes as they made in the privileged and learned world they were indebted in great part to the influence of women. Their most extensive propagandism was directed almost exclusively among the people, unfortunate and degraded by slavery. This was the first awakening, the first intellectual revolt of the proletariat.
The great honour of Christianity, its incontestable merit, and the whole secret of its unprecedented and yet thoroughly legitimate triumph, lay in the fact that it appealed to that suffering and immense public to which the ancient world, a strict and cruel intellectual and political aristocracy, denied even the simplest rights of humanity. Otherwise it never could have spread. The doctrine taught by the apostles of Christ, wholly consoling as it may have seemed to the unfortunate, was too revolting, too absurd from the standpoint of human reason, ever to have been accepted by enlightened men According with what joy the apostle Paul speaks of the scandale de la foi; and of the triumph of that divine folie; rejected by the powerful and wise of the century, but all the more passionately accepted by the simple, the ignorant, and the weak-minded!
Indeed there must have been a very deep-seated dissatisfaction with life, a very intense thirst of heart, and an almost absolute poverty of thought, to secure the acceptance of the Christian absurdity, the most audacious and monstrous of all religious absurdities.
This was not only the negation of all the political, social, and religious institutions of antiquity: it was the absolute overturn of common sense, of all human reason. The living being, the real world, were considered thereafter as nothing; whereas the product of man's abstractive faculty, the last and supreme abstraction in which this faculty, far beyond existing things, even beyond the most general determinations of the living being, the ideas of space and time. having nothing left to advance beyond, rests in contemplation of his emptiness and absolute immobility.
That abstraction, that caput mortuum, absolutely void of all contents the true nothing, God, is proclaimed the only real, eternal, all-powerful being. The real All is declared nothing and the absolute nothing the All. The shadow becomes the substance and the substance vanishes like a shadow. [8]
All this was audacity and absurdity unspeakable, the true scandale de la foi, the triumph of credulous stupidity over the mind for the masses; and - for a few - the triumphant irony of a mind wearied, corrupted, disillusioned, and disgusted in honest and serious search for truth; it was that necessity of shaking off thought and becoming brutally stupid so frequently felt by surfeited minds:
Footnotes
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
Bakunin
God and the State
Credo quod absurdum
신은 불합리하기에 믿는다( quod -> 오기일까요? )
I believe in the absurd; I believe in it, precisely and mainly, because it is absurd. In the same way many distinguished and enlightened minds in our day believe in animal magnetism, spiritualism, tipping tables, and - why go so far? - believe still in Christianity, in idealism, in God.
저는 불합리를 믿습니다. ; 저는 그것이 불합리하기에 완전하고 주되며 그렇기에 믿습니다. 똑같은 까닭에 오늘날 많은 저명함과 계몽된 마음에 믿어지는 동물자기와 심령술 테이블 움직이기 그리고 - 어 이게 왜 그리 멀다고 생각하시죠? - 아직도 기독교를 믿고 형이상학과 신을 믿습니다. ( 조롱이죠... )
The belief of the ancient proletariat, like that of the modern, was more robust and simple, less haut got. The Christian propagandism appealed to its heart, not to its mind; to its eternal aspirations, its necessities, its sufferings, its slavery, not to its reason, which still slept and therefore could know nothing about logical contradictions and the evidence of the absurd.
고대의 무산자들의 믿음은 현대의 것과 비교한다면 좀 더 완고하고 단순했으며 ( haut gout ? ) 상류의 문화의 것은 적었습니다. 기독교의 전도는 이것의 정신이 아닌 마음에 간청하였습니다. ; 이 영원한 소망들이란 것은 어떠한 까닭도 없이 필연적이고 고통스러우며 노예의 상황에 있는 아직까지도 잠들어 있으며 그렇기에 논리적인 자가당착과 불합리의 증거에 대해서 알 수 없습니다.
It was interested solely in knowing when the hour of promised deliverance would strike, when the kingdom of God would come. As for theological dogmas, it did not trouble itself about them because it understood nothing about them The proletariat converted to Christianity constituted its growing material but not its intellectual strength.
이것은 언제 약속된 구원이 닥칠 것인가 언제 신의 왕국이 올것인가라는 것에만 오직 관심을 갇고 알려고 하고 있었습니다. 신학적인 교리란 그 스스로에 대해서는 어떤 문제도 가지고 있지 않았습니다. 왜냐하면 이것에 대해서 그들이 아무것도 이해하고 있지 않았기 때문입니다. 무산자들은 기독교의 구성원으로 개종하였지만 이것은 지적인 힘에 의해서가 아니라 물질적인 성장에 따른것이 었습니다.
As for the Christian dogmas, it is known that they were elaborated in a series of theological and literary works and in the Councils, principally by the converted neo-Platonists of the Orient.
기독교의 교리는 주로 개종된 동방의 신 플라톤주의자의 신학과 문학적 작업과 협의를 거쳐서 이 우리가 알고 있다 싶이 복잡한 신학적 교리의 시리즈(연속된출판물 성경은 잡다한 경전의 셋트죠)가 된것입니다.
The Greek mind had fallen so low that, in the fourth century of the Christian era, the period of the first Council, the idea of a personal God, pure, eternal, absolute mind, creator and supreme master, existing outside of the world, was unanimously accepted by the Church Fathers; as a logical consequence of this absolute absurdity, it then became natural and necessary to believe in the immateriality and immortality of the human soul, lodged and imprisoned in a body only partially mortal, there being in this body itself a portion which, while material is immortal like the soul, and must be resurrected with it.
그리스인의 정신은 기독교 세계의 개인적인 신(유일신)의 관념과 순수하고 영원한 절대적인 정신, 창조주와 세계에 밖에 존재하는 거대한 주인에 대한 첫 번째의 회의가 열렸던 4세기동안 너무나도 추락해 만장일치의 동의로 교회의 아버지가 되게 됩니다. ; 당연한 이 절대적 불합리의 귀결은 자연적이며 필연적인 인간영혼의 불멸성과 비 물질성을 믿고 몸에 대해서 영원을 품는 혹은 가두는 오직 죽어 사라지는 부정적인 것으로 몸 자신의 일부에 대해서는 물질이 영원한것처럼 영혼도 그렇고 그것이 소생될것이라는 믿음을 만들어냈습니다.
We see how difficult it was, even for the Church Fathers; to conceive pure minds outside of any material form. It should be added that, in general, it is the character of every metaphysical and theological argument to seek to explain one absurdity by another.
우리는 교회의 아버지와 같이 되는 것이 얼마나 어려운 것인가를 볼 수 있습니다. ; 순수한 정신이 어떤 물질적인 형태의 밖에 있다고 상상해 봅시다. 이것은 일반적인 모든 형이상학적이고 신학적인 논쟁의 특성에서 찾을 수 있는 부조리한 설명의 다른 하나에 더해질 것입니다.
It was very fortunate for Christianity that it met a world of slaves. It had another piece of good luck in the invasion of the Barbarians. The latter were worthy people, full of natural force, and, above all, urged on by a great necessity of life and a great capacity for it; brigands who had stood every test, capable of devastating and gobbling up anything, like their successors, the Germans of today; but they were much less systematic and pedantic than these last, much less moralistic, less learned, and on the other hand much more independent and proud, capable of science and not incapable of liberty, as are the bourgeois of modern Germany. But, in spite of all their great qualities, they were nothing but barbarians - that is, as indifferent to all questions of theology and metaphysics as the ancient slaves, a great number of whom, moreover, belonged to their race. So that, their practical repugnance once overcome, it was not difficult to convert them theoretically to Christianity.
For ten centuries Christianity, armed with the omnipotence of Church and State and opposed by no competition, was able to deprave, debase, and falsify the mind of Europe It had no competitors, because outside of the Church there were neither thinkers nor educated persons. It alone though,, it alone spoke and wrote, it alone taught. Though heresies arose in its bosom, they affected only the theological or practical developments of the fundamental dogma never that dogma itself. The belief in God, pure spirit and creator of the world, and the belief in the immateriality of the soul remained untouched. This double belief became the ideal basis of the whole Occidental and Oriental civilization of Europe; it penetrated and became incarnate in all the institutions, all the details of the public and private life of all classes, and the masses as well.
After that, is it surprising that this belief has lived until the present day, continuing to exercise its disastrous influence even upon select minds, such as those of Mazzini, Michelet, Quinet, and so many others? We have seen that the first attack upon it came from the renaissance; of the free mind in the fifteenth century, which produced heroes and martyrs like Vanini, Giordano Bruno, and Galileo. Although drowned in the noise, tumult, and passions of the Reformation, it noiselessly continued its invisible work, bequeathing to the noblest minds of each generation its task of human emancipation by the destruction of the absurd, until at last, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, it again reappeared in broad day, boldly waving the flag of atheism and materialism.
The human mind, then, one might have supposed, was at last about to deliver itself from all the divine obsessions. Not at all. The divine falsehood upon which humanity had been feeding for eighteen centuries (speaking of Christianity only) was once more to show itself more powerful than human truth. No longer able to make use of the black tribe, of the ravens consecrated by the Church, of the Catholic or Protestant priests, all confidence in whom had been lost, it made use of lay priests, short-robed liars and sophists. among whom the principal rles devolved upon two fatal men, one the falsest mind, the other the most doctrinally despotic will, of the last century - J. J. Rousseau and Robespierre.
The first is the perfect type of narrowness and suspicious meanness, of exaltation without other object than his own person, of cold enthusiasm and hypocrisy at once sentimental and implacable, of the falsehood of modern idealism. He may be considered as the real creator of modern reaction. To all appearance the most democratic writer of the eighteenth century, he bred within himself the pitiless despotism of the statesman. He was the prophet of the doctrinaire State, as Robespierre, his worthy and faithful disciple, tried to become its high priest. Having heard the saying of Voltaire that, if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him, J. J. Rousseau invented the Supreme Being, the abstract and sterile God of the deists. And It was in the name of the Supreme Being, and of the hypocritical virtue commanded by this Supreme Being, that Robespierre guillotined first the Hbertists and then the very genius of the Revolution, Danton, in whose person he assassinated the Republic, thus preparing the way for the thenceforth necessary triumph of the dictatorship of Bonaparte I. After this great triumph, the idealistic reaction sought and found servants less fanatical, less terrible nearer to the diminished stature of the actual bourgeoisie. In France, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, and - shall I say it? Why not? All must be said if it is truth - Victor Hugo himself, the democrat, the republican, the quasi-socialist of today! and after them the whole melancholy and sentimental company of poor and pallid minds who, under the leadership of these masters, established the modern romantic school in Germany, the Schlegels, the Tiecks, the Novalis, the Werners, the Schellings, and so many others besides, whose names do not even deserve to be recalled.
The literature created by this school was the very reign of ghosts and phantoms. It could not stand the sunlight; the twilight alone permitted it to live. No more could it stand the brutal contact of the masses. It was the literature of the tender, delicate, distinguished souls, aspiring to heaven, and living on earth as if in spite of themselves. It had a horror and contempt for the politics and questions of the day; but when perchance it referred to them, it showed itself frankly reactionary, took the side of the Church against the insolence of the freethinkers, of the kings against the peoples, and of all the aristocrats against the vile rabble of the streets. For the rest, as I have just said, the dominant feature of the school of romanticism was a quasi-complete indifference to politics. Amid the clouds in which it lived could be distinguished two real points - the rapid development of bourgeois materialism and the ungovernable outburst of individual vanities.
To understand this romantic literature, the reason for its existence must be sought in the transformation which had been effected in the bosom of the bourgeois class since the revolution of 1793.
From the Renaissance and the Reformation down to the Revolution, the bourgeoisie, if not in Germany, at least in Italy, in France, in Switzerland, in England, in Holland, was the hero and representative of the revolutionary genius of history. From its bosom sprang most of the freethinkers of the fifteenth century, the religious reformers of the two following centuries, and the apostles of human emancipation, including this time those of Germany, of the past century. It alone, naturally supported by the powerful arm of the people, who had faith in it, made the revolution of 1789 and '93. It proclaimed the downfall of royalty and of the Church, the fraternity of the peoples, the rights of man and of the citizen. Those are its titles to glory; they are immortal!
Soon it split. A considerable portion of the purchasers of national property having become rich, and supporting themselves no longer on the proletariat of the cities, but on the major portion of the peasants of France, these also having become landed proprietors, had no aspiration left but for peace, the re-establishment of public order, and the foundation of a strong and regular government. It therefore welcomed with joy the dictatorship of the first Bonaparte, and, although always Voltairean, did not view with displeasure the Concordat with the Pope and the re-establishment of the official Church in France: "Religion is so necessary to the people!" Which means that, satiated themselves, this portion of the bourgeoisie then began to see that it was needful to the maintenance of their situation and the preservation of their newly-acquired estates to appease the unsatisfied hunger of the people by promises of heavenly manna. Then it was that Chateaubriand began to preach. [9]
Napoleon fell and the Restoration brought back into France the legitimate monarchy, and with it the power of the Church and of the nobles, who regained, if not the whole, at least a considerable portion of their former influence. This reaction threw the bourgeoisie back into the Revolution, and with the revolutionary spirit that of scepticism also was re-awakened in it. It set Chateaubriand aside and began to read Voltaire again; but it did not go so far as Diderot: its debilitated nerves could not stand nourishment so strong. Voltaire, on the contrary, at once a freethinker and a deist, suited it very well. Branger and P. L. Courier expressed this new tendency perfectly. The God of the good people" and the ideal of the bourgeois king, at once liberal and democratic, sketched against the majestic and thenceforth inoffensive background of the Empire's gigantic victories such was at that period the daily intellectual food of the bourgeoisie of France.
Lamartine, to be sure, excited by a vain and ridiculously envious desire to rise to the poetic height of the great Byron, had begun his coldly delirious hymns in honour of the God of the nobles and of the legitimate monarchy. But his songs resounded only in aristocratic salons. The bourgeoisie did not hear them. Branger was its poet and Courier was its political writer.
The revolution of July resulted in lifting its tastes. We know that every bourgeois in France carries within him the imperishable type of the bourgeois gentleman, a type which never fails to appear immediately the parvenu acquires a little wealth and power. In 1830 the wealthy bourgeoisie had definitely replaced the old nobility in the seats of power. It naturally tended to establish a new aristocracy. An aristocracy of capital first of all, but also an aristocracy of intellect, of good manners and delicate sentiments. It began to feel religious.
This was not on its part simply an aping of aristocratic customs. It was also a necessity of its position. The proletariat had rendered it a final service in once more aiding it to overthrow the nobility. The bourgeoisie now had no further need of its co-operation, for it felt itself firmly seated in the shadow of the throne of July, and the alliance with the people, thenceforth useless, began to become inconvenient. It was necessary to remand it to its place, which naturally could not be done without provoking great indignation among the masses. It became necessary to restrain this indignation. In the name of what? In the name of the bourgeois interest bluntly confessed ? That would have been much too cynical. The more unjust and inhuman an interest is, the greater need it has of sanction. Now, where find it if not in religion, that good protectress of al I the well-fed and the useful consoler of the hungry? And more than ever the triumphant bourgeoisie saw that religion was indispensable to the people.
After having won all its titles to glory in religious, philosophical, and political opposition, in protest and in revolution, it at last became the dominant class and thereby even the defender and preserver of the State, thenceforth the regular institution of the exclusive power of that class. The State is force, and for it, first of all, is the right of force, the triumphant argument of the needle-gun, of the chassepot. But man is so singularly constituted that this argument, wholly eloquent as it may appear, is not sufficient in the long run. Some moral sanction or other is absolutely necessary to enforce his respect. Further, this sanction must be at once so simple and so plain that it may convince the masses, who, after having been reduced by the power of the State. must also be induced to morally recognise its right.
There are only two ways of convincing the masses of the goodness of any social institution whatever. The first, the only real one, but also the most difficult to adopt - because it implies the abolition of the State, or, in other words, the abolition of the organised political exploitation of the majority by any minority whatsoever - would be the direct and complete satisfaction of the needs and aspirations of the people, which would be equivalent to the complete liquidation of the political and economical existence of the bourgeois class, or, again, to the abolition of the State. Beneficial means for the masses, but detrimental to bourgeois interests; hence it is useless to talk about them.
The only way, on the contrary, harmful only to the people, precious in its salvation of bourgeois privileges, is no other than religion. That is the eternal mirage; which leads away the masses in a search for divine treasures, while much more reserved, the governing class contents itself with dividing among all its members - very unequally, moreover and always giving most to him who possesses most - the miserable goods of earth and the plunder taken from the people, including their political and social liberty.
There is not, there cannot be, a State without religion. Take the freest States in the world - the United States of America or the Swiss Confederation, for instance - and see what an important part is played in all official discourses by divine Providence, that supreme sanction of all States.
But whenever a chief of State speaks of God, be he Wil1iam I., the Knouto-Germanic emperor, or Grant, the president of the great republic, be sure that he is getting ready to shear once more his people-flock.
The French liberal and Voltairean bourgeoisie, driven by temperament to a positivism (not to say a materialism) singularly narrow and brutal, having become the governing class of the State by its triumph of 1830, had to give itself an official religion. It was not an easy thing. The bourgeoisie could not abruptly go back under the yoke of Roman Catholicism. Between it and the Church of Rome was an abyss of blood and hatred, and, however practical and wise one becomes, it is never possible to repress a passion developed by history. Moreover, the French bourgeoisie would have covered itself with ridicule if it had gone back to the Church to take part in the pious ceremonies of its worship, an essential condition of a meritorious and sincere conversion. Several attempted it, it is true, but their heroism was rewarded by no other result than a fruitless scandal. Finally, a return to Catholicism was impossible on account of the insolvable contradiction which separates the invariable politics of Rome from the development of the economical and political interests of the middle class.
In this respect Protestantism is much more advantageous. It is the bourgeois religion par excellence. It accords just as much liberty as is necessary to the bourgeois, and finds a way of reconciling celestial aspirations with the respect which terrestrial conditions demand. Consequently it is especially in Protestant countries that commerce and industry have been developed. But it was impossible for the French bourgeoisie to become Protestant. To pass from one religion to another - unless it be done deliberately, as sometimes in the case of the Jews of Russia and Poland, who get baptised three or four times in order to receive each time the remuneration allowed them - to seriously change one's religion, a little faith is necessary. Now, in the exclusive positive heart of the French bourgeois there is no room for faith. He professes the most profound indifference for all questions which touch neither his pocket first nor his social vanity afterwards. He is as indifferent to Protestantism as to Catholicism. On the other hand, the French bourgeois could not go over to Protestantism without putting himself in conflict with the Catholic routine of the majority of the French people, which would have been great imprudence on the part of a class pretending to govern the nation.
There was still one way left - to return to the humanitarian and revolutionary religion of the eighteenth century. But that would have led too far. So the bourgeoisie was obliged, in order to sanction its new State, to create a new religion which might be boldly proclaimed, without too much ridicule and scandal, by the whole bourgeois class.
Thus was born doctrinaire Deism.
Others have told, much better than I could tell it, the story of the birth and development of this school, which had so decisive and - we may well add - so fatal an influence on the political, intellectual, and moral education of the bourgeois youth of France. It dates from Benjamin Constant and Madame de Stal; its real founder was Royer-Collard; its apostles, Guizot, Cousin, Villemain, and many others. Its boldly avowed object was the reconciliation of Revolution with Reaction, or, to use the language of the school, of the principle of liberty with that of authority, and naturally to the advantage of the latter.
This reconciliation signified: in politics, the taking away of popular liberty for the benefit of bourgeois rule, represented by the monarchical and constitutional State; in philosophy, the deliberate submission of free reason to the eternal principles of faith. We have only to deal here with the latter.
We know that this philosophy was specially elaborated by M. Cousin, the father of French eclecticism. A superficial and pedantic talker, incapable of any original conception, of any idea peculiar to himself, but very strong on commonplace, which he confounded with common sense, this illustrious philosopher learnedly prepared, for the use of the studious youth of France, a metaphysical dish of his own making the use of which, made compulsory in all schools of the State under the University, condemned several generations one after the other to a cerebral indigestion. Imagine a philosophical vinegar sauce of the most opposed systems, a mixture of Fathers of the Church, scholastic philosophers, Descartes and Pascal, Kant and Scotch psychologists all this a superstructure on the divine and innate ideas of Plato, and covered up with a layer of Hegelian immanence accompanied, of course, by an ignorance, as contemptuous as it is complete, of natural science, and proving just as two times two make five; the existence of a personal God.....
Footnotes
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