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chapter seven: On the Utilitarian Case for Religion - Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments [1815]

Edition used:

Principles of Politics Applicable to a all Governments, trans. Dennis O’Keeffe, ed. Etienne Hofmann, Introduction by Nicholas Capaldi (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003).

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chapter seven

On the Utilitarian Case for Religion

The defenders of religion often believe they can work wonders representing it as above all useful. What would they say if it were demonstrated to them that they are rendering religion the worst service?

Just as in seeking in all nature’s beauties a positive purpose, an immediate use and application to everyday life, one causes all the charm of this magnificent whole to fade, so in constantly endowing religion with a vulgar utility, one makes it dependent on that utility. It now has only a secondary status, now seeming only a means, and it is consequently degraded.

The word “utilize” [utiliser] has rightly been banned from the French language.8 I do not know if I am wrong, but it seems to me that in everything relating to the soul’s affections and to noble ideas, one should reject the thing, just as in language the word has been rejected.

Moreover, this need for utility both close to hand and, so to speak, material is perhaps the inherent vice of the French character. We could apply to the moral character of our nation what is recounted about the physical laziness of the Turks. It is said that the secretary of a French ambassador to Constantinople took a stroll for a while every evening in a garden. The Turkish neighbors of the ambassador begged him to pardon his secretary and no longer impose on him such a severe punishment. They [172] could not conceive that one could walk for nothing. We apparently cannot conceive that one might believe for nothing. So we are of all the nations the one whose writers have almost always envisaged religion in the most imperfect and narrowest way.9

[8. ]Jacques Necker, Du pouvoir executif dans les grands Etats, s.l., 1792, t. II, p. 205. Here the economist makes himself a grammarian and criticizes the use of certain neologisms.

[9. ]See Constant’s Note C at the end of Book VIII.

[C. [Refers to page 142.]]Justice demands that I except Bossuet, Fénelon, M. Necker,21 and M. de Chateaubriand. Even so, the latter thought it necessary in order to uphold Christianity to paint it as particularly useful to poetry.22 This urge to see religion as useful has led its defenders among us to endless childish arguments. Lent has been justified as good for the navy. What a wretched point of view! Moreover, how could this justification apply to landlocked countries which cannot have a navy?

[C. [Refers to page 142.]]Justice demands that I except Bossuet, Fénelon, M. Necker,21 and M. de Chateaubriand. Even so, the latter thought it necessary in order to uphold Christianity to paint it as particularly useful to poetry.22 This urge to see religion as useful has led its defenders among us to endless childish arguments. Lent has been justified as good for the navy. What a wretched point of view! Moreover, how could this justification apply to landlocked countries which cannot have a navy?

[21]For example, in De l’importance des opinions religieuses, London, 1788, and in the Cours de morale religieuse, Geneva, 1800.

[22]François-René de Chateaubriand, Génie du christianisme. Deuxième Partie: Poétique du christianisme. The first edition of this work appeared in 1802.