The Future of an Illusion quotes

for these prove to be dependent on purely personal factors in his own experience, on his more or less hopeful attitude to life, according as temperament, success or failure has prescribed for him.

And finally one must take into account the remarkable fact that in general men experience the present naïvely, so to speak, without being able to estimate its content; they must first place it at a distance, i.e. the present must have become the past before one can win from it points of vantage from which to gauge the future.

1. The German word Kultur has been translated sometimes as ‘culture’ and sometimes as ‘civilization’, denoting as it does a concept intermediate between these and at times inclusive of both.—Ed.

they aim not only at establishing a certain distribution of property, but also at maintaining it; in fact, they must protect against the hostile impulses of mankind everything that contributes to the conquest of nature and the production of wealth.

Human creations are easy to destroy, and science and technical skill, which have built them up, can also be turned to their destruction.

So one gets the impression that culture is something which was imposed on a resisting majority by a minority that understood how to possess itself of the means of power and coercion.

That would be the golden age, but it is questionable if such a state of affairs can ever be realized.

It seems more probable that every culture must be built up on coercion and instinctual renunciation; it does not even appear certain that without coercion the majority of human individuals would be ready to submit to the labour necessary for acquiring new means of supporting life.

One has, I think, to reckon with the fact that there are present in all men destructive, and therefore anti-social and anti-cultural, tendencies, and that with a great number of people these are strong enough to determine their behaviour in human society.

One may question whether and in what degree it would be possible for another cultural milieu to efface the two characteristics of human masses that make the guidance of men’s affairs so very difficult.

The experiment has not yet been made.

Probably a certain percentage of mankind—owing to morbid predisposition or too great instinctual vigour—will always remain asocial, but if only one can succeed in reducing to a minority the majority that is to-day hostile to culture, one will have accomplished a great deal, perhaps indeed …

cannibalism alone seems to be proscribed by everyone, and—to other than analytic observation—completely overcome; the strength of the incest wishes can still be perceived behind the prohibition; and under certain conditions murder is still practised, indeed enjoined, by our culture.

It is possible that cultural developments lie before us, in which yet other wish-gratifications, which are to-day entirely permissible, will appear just as disagreeable as those of cannibalism do now.

Already in these earliest instinctual renunciations a psychological factor is involved, which remains of great importance for everything that follows.

To our surprise we have found that they are still operative, that they still form the kernel of the hostility to culture.

The instinctual wishes that suffer under them are born anew with every child; there is a class of men, the neurotics, who react already to this first group of frustrations by an asocial attitude.

Such instinctual wishes are those of incest, of cannibalism, and of murder. It seems strange to classify these, in repudiating which all men seem to be at one, with those others, about whose permissibility or impermissibility in our culture there is so vigorous a dispute;

These classes are so manifestly hostile to culture that on that account the more latent hostility of the better provided social strata has been overlooked.

It need not be said that a culture which leaves unsatisfied and drives to rebelliousness so large a number of its members neither has a prospect of continued existence, nor deserves it.

The extent to which cultural rules have been internalized—to express it popularly and unpsychologically: the moral level of the members—is not the only psychical asset to be considered if one is estimating the value of a culture.

To make this satisfaction complete the culture compares itself with others which have applied themselves to other tasks and have developed other ideals.

On the strength of these differences every culture claims the right to despise the rest.

In this way cultural ideals become a source of discord and enmity between different cultural groups, as can be most clearly seen among nations.

To make this satisfaction complete the culture compares itself with others which have applied themselves to other tasks and have developed other ideals. On the strength of these differences every culture claims the right to despise the rest.

In this way cultural ideals become a source of discord and enmity between different cultural groups, as can be most clearly seen among nations.

The narcissistic satisfaction provided by the cultural ideal is also one of the forces that effectively counteract the hostility to culture within the cultural group.

Different in kind is the satisfaction that art yields to the members of a cultural group. As a rule it remains inaccessible to the masses, who are engaged in exhausting labour and who have not enjoyed the benefits of individual education.

As we have long known, art offers substitutive gratifications for the oldest cultural renunciations, still always most deeply felt, and for that reason serves like nothing else to reconcile men to the sacrifices they have made on culture’s behalf.

On the other hand, works of art promote the feelings of identification, of which every cultural group has so much need, in the occasion they provide for the sharing of highly valued emotional experiences.

how splendid, what a succession of delights, life would be!

True, one soon finds the first difficulty: everyone else has exactly the same wishes, and will treat one with no more consideration than one will treat him.

And so in reality there is only one single person who can be made unrestrictedly happy by abolishing thus the restrictions imposed by culture, and that is a tyrant or dictator who has monopolized all the means of power;

and even he has every reason to want the others to keep at least one cultural commandment: thou shalt not kill.

But how ungrateful, how short-sighted after all, to strive for the abolition of culture!

What would then remain would be the state of nature, and that is far harder to endure. It is true that nature does not ask us to restrain our instincts, she lets us do as we like;

But how ungrateful, how short-sighted after all, to strive for the abolition of culture! What would then remain would be the state of nature, and that is far harder to endure.

It is true that nature does not ask us to restrain our instincts, she lets us do as we like; but she has her peculiarly effective mode of restricting us: she destroys us, coldly, cruelly, callously, as it seems to us, and possibly just through what has caused our satisfaction.

It was because of these very dangers with which nature threatens us that we united together and created culture, which, amongst other things, is supposed to make our communal existence possible.

… noble and gratifying spectacles that men can offer, when in the face of an elemental catastrophe they awake from their muddle and confusion, forget all their internal difficulties and animosities, and remember the great common task, the preservation of mankind against the supremacy of nature.

For the individual, as for mankind in general, life is hard to endure.

The culture in which he shares imposes on him some measure of privation, and other men occasion him a certain degree of suffering, either in spite of the laws of this culture or because of its imperfections.

We know already how the individual reacts to the injuries that culture and other men inflict on him: he develops a corresponding degree of resistance against the institutions of this culture, of hostility towards it.

But how does he defend himself against the supremacy of nature, of fate, which threatens him, as it threatens all?

Culture relieves him of this task: it performs it in the same way for everyone. (It is also noteworthy that pretty well all cultures are the same in this respect.)

With the first step, which is the humanization of nature, much is already won.

Nothing can be made of impersonal forces and fates; they remain eternally remote.

But if the elements have passions that rage like those in our own souls, if death itself is not something spontaneous, but the violent act of an evil Will, if everywhere in nature we have about us beings who resemble those of our own environment, …

In the course of time the first observations of law and order in natural phenomena are made, and therewith the forces of nature lose their human traits. But men’s helplessness remains, and with it their father-longing and the gods.

The gods retain their threefold task: they must exorcise the terrors of nature, they must reconcile one to the cruelty of fate, particularly as shown in death, and they must make amends for the sufferings and privations that the communal life of culture has imposed on man.

But within these there is a gradual shifting of the accent. It is observed that natural phenomena develop of themselves from inward necessity; without doubt the gods are the lords of nature: they have arranged it thus and now they can leave it to itself.

As far as the vicissitudes of fate are concerned, an unpleasant suspicion persists that the perplexity and helplessness of the human race cannot be remedied.

This is where the gods are most apt to fail us; if they themselves make fate, then their ways must be deemed inscrutable.

The most gifted people of the ancient world dimly surmised that above the gods stands Destiny and that the gods themselves have their destinies.

An enquiry that proceeds uninterruptedly, like a monologue, is not altogether without its dangers.

One is too easily tempted to push aside thoughts that would interrupt it, and in exchange one is left with a feeling of uncertainty which one will drown in the end by over-decisiveness.

I do not find that so striking.

For do you suppose that men’s thought-processes have no practical motives, that they are simply the expression of a disinterested curiosity?

That is surely very improbable. I believe, rather, that when he personifies the forces of nature man is once again following an infantile prototype.

one does not need to comprehend them. But this Credo is only of interest as a voluntary confession; as a decree it has no binding force. Am I to be obliged to believe every absurdity? And if not, why just this one?

There is no appeal beyond reason.

And if the truth of religious doctrines is dependent on an inner experience which bears witness to that truth, what is one to make of the many people who do not have that rare experience?

There is no appeal beyond reason. And if the truth of religious doctrines is dependent on an inner experience which bears witness to that truth, what is one to make of the many people who do not have that rare experience?

One may expect all men to use the gift of reason that they possess, but one cannot set up an obligation that shall apply to all on a basis that only exists for quite a few.

Of what significance is it for other people that you have won from a state of ecstasy, which has deeply moved you, an imperturbable conviction of the real truth of the doctrines of religion?

When I say that they are illusions, I must define the meaning of the word.

An illusion is not the same as an error, it is indeed not necessarily an error.

Aristotle’s belief that vermin are evolved out of dung, to which ignorant people still cling, was an error; so was the belief of a former generation of doctors that tabes dorsalis was the result of sexual excess.

Of the reality value of most of them we cannot judge; just as they cannot be proved, neither can they be refuted. We still know too little to approach them critically.

The riddles of the universe only reveal themselves slowly to our enquiry, to many questions science can as yet give no answer; but scientific work is our only way to the knowledge of external reality.

Again, it is merely illusion to expect anything from intuition or trance; they can give us nothing but particulars, which are difficult to interpret, about our own mental life, never information about the questions that are so lightly answered by the doctrines of religion.

it is only in the highest and holiest things that he allows this. In reality these are only attempts to delude oneself or other people into the belief that one still holds fast to religion, when one has long cut oneself loose from it.

Where questions of religion are concerned people are guilty of every possible kind of insincerity and intellectual misdemeanour.

Philosophers stretch the meaning of words until they retain scarcely anything of their original sense; by calling ‘God’ some vague abstraction which they have created for themselves, they pose as deists, as believers, before the world;

But do not deceive yourself into thinking that with such arguments you are following the path of correct reasoning. If ever there was a case of facile argument, this is one.

Ignorance is ignorance; no right to believe anything is derived from it.

No reasonable man will behave so frivolously in other matters or rest content with such feeble grounds for his opinions or for the attitude he adopts; it is only in the highest and holiest things that he allows this.

Having recognized religious doctrines to be illusions, we are at once confronted with the further question: may not other cultural possessions, which we esteem highly and by which we let our life be ruled, be of a similar nature?

Should not the assumptions that regulate our political institutions likewise be called illusions, and is it not the case that in our culture the relations between the sexes are disturbed by an erotic illusion, or by a series of erotic illusions?

Once our suspicions have been roused, we shall not shrink from asking whether there is any better foundation for our conviction that it is possible to discover something about external reality through the applying of observation and reasoning in scientific work.

Certainly I might be asked at this point why I write such things if I am convinced of their ineffectiveness. But we shall come back to that later.

The one person this publication may harm is myself.

I shall have to listen to the most unpleasant reproaches on the score of shallowness, narrow-mindedness, and lack of idealism and of understanding for the highest interests of mankind. But on the one hand these remonstrances are not new to me;

It is well known that the priests could only keep the masses submissive to religion by making these great concessions to human instincts. And so it was settled: God alone is strong and good, man is weak and sinful.

Immorality, no less than morality, has at all times found support in religion.

If the achievements of religion in promoting men’s happiness, in adapting them to civilization, and in controlling them morally, are no better, then the question arises whether we are right in considering it necessary for mankind, and whether we do wisely in basing the demands …

Criticism has nibbled at the authenticity of religious documents, natural science has shown up the errors contained in them, and the comparative method of research has revealed the fatal resemblance between religious ideas revered by us and the mental productions of primitive ages and peoples.

The scientific spirit engenders a particular attitude to the problems of this world; before the problems of religion it halts for a while, then wavers, and finally here too steps over the threshold.

In this process there is no stopping. The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief, at first only of the obsolete and objectionable expressions of the same, then of its fundamental assumptions, also.

it appears to be merely a rationalistic construction. With the help of psycho-analysis we have studied this very point in the history of human culture, and supported by this study we are bound to say that in reality it did not happen like this.

Even in men to-day purely reasonable motives are of little avail against passionate impulses.

How much weaker, then, must they have been in the primordial animal man!

Can an anthropologist give the cranial index of a people whose custom it is to deform their children’s heads by bandaging them from their earliest years?

Think of the distressing contrast between the radiant intelligence of a healthy child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.

Is it so utterly impossible that it is just religious up-bringing which is largely to blame for this relative degeneration?

Perhaps the effect of the religious thought-prohibition is not as bad as I assume, perhaps it will turn out that human nature remains the same even if education is not abused by being subjected to religion.

I do not know, and you cannot know either.

It is not only the great problems of this life that seem at present insoluble; there are many smaller questions also that are hard to decide.

The believer will not let his faith be taken from him, neither by arguments nor by prohibitions. And even if it did succeed with some, it would be a cruel thing to do.

A man who has for decades taken a sleeping draught is naturally unable to sleep if he is deprived of it.

That the effect of the consolations of religion may be compared to that of a narcotic is prettily illustrated by what is happening in America.

He will be in the same position as the child who has left the home where he was so warm and comfortable.

But, after all, is it not the destiny of childishness to be overcome?

Man cannot remain a child for ever; he must venture at last into the hostile world. This may be called ‘education to reality’; need I tell you that it is the sole aim of my book to draw attention to the necessity for this advance?

He will be in the same position as the child who has left the home where he was so warm and comfortable. But, after all, is it not the destiny of childishness to be overcome?

Man cannot remain a child for ever; he must venture at last into the hostile world.

This may be called ‘education to reality’; need I tell you that it is the sole aim of my book to draw attention to the necessity for this advance?

You fear, probably, that he will not stand the test? Well, anyhow, let us be hopeful.

It is at least something to know that one is thrown on one’s own resources.

One learns then to use them properly. And man is not entirely without means of assistance; since the time of the deluge science has taught him much, and it will still further increase his power.

I think you are defending a lost cause. We may insist as much as we like that the human intellect is weak in comparison with human instincts, and be right in doing so. But nevertheless there is something peculiar about this weakness.

The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing.

Ultimately, after endlessly repeated rebuffs, it succeeds. This is one of the few points in which one may be optimistic about the future of mankind, but in itself it signifies not a little. And one can make it a starting-point for yet other hopes.