CHAPTER VII - Religion

Summary

Besides the education of the young, there is another important means of exercising an influence on the morals and character of a nation, through which the State endeavours to educate, as it were, the full-grown man, accompanies him throughout the whole course and conduct of his life—his ways of thinking and acting—and aims at giving them some specific and preconceived direction, or forestalling probable deviations from the path it prescribes—this is religion.

History shows us that all States have used this source of influence, but with very different designs, and in very different degrees. In the ancient nations it was completely interwoven with the political constitution, it was, in fact, a guiding principle and essential pillar of the State; and hence all that I have said of other ancient institutions, applies no less aptly to religion. When the Christian religion, instead of the earlier local deities of nations, taught men to believe in a universal God of humanity, thereby throwing down one of the most dangerous barriers which separated the different tribes of the great human family from each other; and when it thus succeeded in laying the foundation for all true human virtue, human development, and human cooperation, without which, enlightenment and even science and learning would have long, and perhaps always, remained the rare property of a few; it also directly worked to loosen the strong bond that formerly existed between religion and the political constitution.