Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/311

 VV^HAT IS RELIGION? 295

establish any relation between man and the Infinite (as^ for instance, is the case with idolatry or sorcery), then it is not a real religion, but only a degeneration. If, even, religion establishes some relation between man and God, but does this by means of assertions not accordant with reason and present-day knowledge, so that one cannot really believe the assertions — that also is not a religion, but only a counterfeit. If a religion does not unite the life of man with the infinite life, again it is not a religion. Nor does a belief in proposi- tions from which no definite direction for human activity results constitute a religion.

True religion is a relation, accordant with reason and knowledge, which man establishes with the infinite life surrounding him, and it is such as binds his life to that infinity, and guides his conduct.

IV.

Though there never was an age when, or a place where, men lived without a religion, yet the learned men of to-day say, like Moliere's ' Involuntary Doctor ' who asserted that the liver is on the left side : Nous avons change tout cela (We have changed all that) ; and they think that we can and should live without any religion. But, nevertheless, religion remains what it has been in the past : the chief motor and heart of human societies ; and without it, as without a heart, human life is impossible. There have been, and there are, many different religions — for the expression of man^s relation to the Infinite and to God, or to the Gods, differs at different times and in different places, according to the stages of development of different nations — but never in any society of men, since men first became rational creatures, could they live, or have they lived, without a religion.

It is true that there have been, and sometimes are, periods in the life of nations when the existing religion has been so perverted and has lagged so far behind life as to cease to guide it. But this cessation of its action on men^s lives (occurring at times in all religions) has