Download SECULARISM AND SOCIAL CONTROL IN THE WEST: THE

SECULARISM AND SOCIAL CONTROL IN THE WEST:
THE MATERIAL AND THE ETHEREAL
A. R. Blackshield
I.
THE CONCEPT OF SECULARISM
The Indian Law Institute's seminar on secularism, of which this volume
is a record, heard many pleas-beginning with the stirring opening statement of Chief Justice Gajendragadkar-for an approach to the problem of
secularism which would not be merely "ethereal," but would point to concrete practical measures for the implementation of the constitutional attitudes
relating to religion, and of the positive secular ideology which those attitudes embody. The problem which seemed to bedevil every paper, and
every hour of discussion, was that secularism is a protean concept, defying
all efforts to pin it down in precise, concrete propositions. This pervasive
elusiveness of subject-matter means that precise, concrete directives for
action are also impossible; we are in an area in which all our ideas must be
.
inherently "ethereal."
We might try to escape onto firmer ground by saying that at any
rate secularism is a movement away from religion, with the result that by
saying what religion is, we can at least say, what secularism is not. But,
of course, this does not really help us. Even if we assume that this kind
of argument by opposites is helpful,' "secularism" is not exactly the opposite
of religion; and in any case we soon discover that we cannot say what
religion is, either. The forms of religion, and the primal motivations which
it embodies, have a diversity which in conceptual terms is almost unmanageable. Indians and Indologists are fond of insisting that "it is impossible
to define Hinduism because there are no beliefs or institutions which are
common tv all Hindus.'?' but the point is equally apt, and equally baffling,
when we try to define "religion" in general. The concepts and categories
accepted in popular and even sociological usage turn out on closer examination to be vague, unfocussed, inconsistent and sometimes quite unsubstantial; and the social phenomena we want to examine by applying
these amorphous notions turn out to be equally amorphous.
We discover, too, that on a subject so fraught with ideological and
emotive overtones, objective discussion is almost impossible. Some of us
1. On the doubts here arising see A. R. Blackshield, "The Game They Dare
Not Bite" (1963) 3 Jaipur LJ. 44 at 45, esp. n. I.
2. M. N. Srinivas, Caste in Modern India (1962) 149.
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believe that in all things religion is man's one true way to salvation, to
righteousness, and even to manhood. Others "count religion but a childish
toy,"3 if not a wicked fraud. Yet others may hold either of these views as
to some areas only of religious activity, or may even hold both views at
once as to aifferent activit ies. And whatever our position, we will tend to
hold to it with peculiar intensity. Perhaps, indeed, this intensity of belief
e
is a feature that we can safely predicate of religiousness in general;' but we
must then extend "religiousness" to include anti-religiousness as well.
One striking aspect of the essays here collected is to see how all the
writers have found themselves struggling with the same confusions and
cognitive waylessness. Nor are we alone in this. Howard Becker has told
us of his years of personal struggle for a satisfying concept of the secular;"
and even as the Indian Law Institute seminar was being organized,
Mr. David Martin, of the London School of Economics and Political Science,
published a challenging essay 'Towards Eliminating the Concept of
Secularization."! In it he argued that we should frankly admit that the
various distinctions from time to ti me offered between the "religious" and the
"secular" are all of them inadequate, inaccurate and inoperable; and that
there is no way of sorting through their variety to any clear and operable
definition either of "secularism" or of "religion." Consequently he argued
that there exists no process in social and cultural development which can
meaningfully be called "secularization."? For this would have to refer to a
process to which all religious institutions may alike be liable-involving
commonly-shared deterioration, through commonly-shared causes, of
commonly-shared characteristics. And since religious phenomena have no
commonly-snared characteristics, "secularization" can only be a proselytizing slogan invented by ideologists (for instance of Marxism) as a weapon
in the campaign to hasten the decline of religion."
3. Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, 1.14. And cf, with the general tenor
of the above paragraph R. Carrington, A Million Years of Man (1963) 280-81; B.
Malinowski, Foundations of Faith 'and Morals (1936).1.
4. See H. Becker, "Current Sacred-Secular, Theory and its Development," in
H. Becker and A. Boskoff (eds.), Modern Sociological Theory in Continuity and Change
(1957) 133.at 142ff., discussed infra at nn. 80-85.
5. See id. li8ff.
6. Published in J. Gould (ed.), Penguin Survey of the Social Sciences 1965 (1965)
169-182.
7. ld. 170-175.
8. See id. 176 :
The whole concept appears as a tool of counter-religious ideologies
which identify the "real" element in religion for polemical purposes and
then arbitrarily relate it to the notion of a unitary and irreversible process, partie' for the aesthetic satisfactions found in such notions and
partly as a psychological boost to the movements with which they are
associated.
And E. E. Aubrey, Secularism a Myth (1954).
ct.
A. R. Blackshield
11
Yet clearly enough Martin is himself here ideologizing. Many of his
difficulties arise not from the factors so far discussed, but from his determination to see "secularization" a~ a process that happens to religious institut.ons thefnselves. The truth is that if we ask ourselves what is secularized,
this obviously cannot be religion itself. The intuitive clue already mentioned-that secularism is in some sense a movement away from religionmay not lead us into clarity. But, at least with regard to "secularism" in
Western language. cultures, it is the one firm lifeline that a scholar can cling
to when he ventures into the tossing conceptual seas of "secularism." So
long as we do cling to it, we have to add that obviously, religion cannot
move away from itself.
Nor does secularism as commonly understood in Western cultures
involve the counter-religiousness on which Martin lays so much stress.
The secular movement away from religion need by no means be a total
abandonment of it. It is perfectly possible to advocate both secularism
and religion; and while non-religious, anti-religious, sceptical and profane
positions may exemplify "secularism," or offer one kind of basis for it,
it would be a fatal a limine error to identify it with these."
In discussions of the "secular" provisions of the Indian Constitution
from the drafting stage onwards, this last point at least has been repeatedly
made clear.
When I say that a State should not identify itself with any particular
religion, I do not mean to say that a State should be anti-religious
or irreligious. We have certainly declared India to be a secular State.
But to my mind, a secular State is neither a God-less State nor an
irreligious State.tv
Yet the very Indian statements which so vehemently insist that
secularism is not "non-religious, anti-religious, sceptical and profane,"
also insist that secularism is a complex cluster of socio-ideological
aspirations, thoughtways and attitudes which at first sight seem to amount
to much the same thing. In the present volume this approach is given
sociological accreditation in the extremely cogent essay of Professor
Y.R. Damle." That writer insists that the "structural characteristics"
of secularism include rationality and emphasis on cognition; the scientific
spirit; individuation and individualism; universalism and freedom from
9. See Becker, cit. supra n. 4, at 142. See also Lord Devlin, The Enforcementof Morals (1965) 3-4; and see the further discussion infra § III.
10. H. V. Karnath , in 7 C.A.D. (1948) 837, quoted by l\!. V. Pylee, Constitutional
Government of India (1960) 253. And see the related views collected id. 253·55, esp. of
S. Radhakrishnan, Recovery of Faith (1955) 202; and for a more extensive anthology of
largely similar quotations see appendix I to V. P. Luthera, The Concept of the Secular
State in India (1964) 159.166'
.11. See infra,
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particularistic loyalties; achievement rather than ascription as the basis
of social ethics; and even "the rule of law." We might add to the list
materialism, humanism, the pursuit 01 economic progress, scientific
progress, technology, industrialization, and generally what will later be
called a concern with "thing-techniques." We might also add political
pluralism, religious tolerance, and religious freedom. Perhaps, however,
two ingredients above all stand out. One is the serious and positive
pursuit of what Roscoe Pound calls "the social interest in minimum
standards of individual life;"12 that is, the attainment of socio-economic
justice for all. The other is an easy adaptability; a creative, constructive
pragmatism; a lack of emotional resistance to change in social norms.P
This comprehensive interpretation of what "secularism" means
may here be referred to as the "rol!ed-up materialist" view; and I shall
suggest at the end of this essay that, like it or not, we may simply have
to accept the fact that this is the Indian concept of secularism. Nevertheless such a concept sounds rather strangely in Western ears. No doubt
(as we shall see in section III) all of the attitudes embraced in "rolled-up
materialism" are historically connected with the growth of secularism in
the West. But it seems merely confusing to say that the merger of all
of them is what secularism means. "Secularism" then becomes a mere
ideological label summing up everything that we want to see in a strong,
vital modern society. Nor does it even seem to do that successfully.
, For, on the one hand, our desiderata for modern societies should surely
include a deep and abiding faith in ethical values; and it can hardly be
suggested that secularism means this. On the other hand, some of the
desiderata that rolled-up materialism includes are things that we do
want, but only in a qualified way. We want a healthy, realistic materialism; but not a crass, obsessive materialism. We want more and more
industrialization; but not a soul-destroying industrialization. We want
individualism; but not an anti-social individualism. To lump all our
aspirations together in a rolled-up materialist view of secularism seems
at first sight to leave us no conceptual lebensraum within which to make
such vital distinctions.
Furthermore, the very fact that we detect a socio-historical relationship between secularism and "rolled-up materialism" requires us to
define the former as something different from the latter. If all the distinc'tive attitude-components of modern Western-type cultures, and all the
factors which have eased the emergence of such cultures, are simply to
be lumped together finder a single name, we are left with no conceptual
12. See R. Pound, 3 Jurisprudence (1959) 315ff.; J. Stone, Social Dimensions of
Law and Justice (1966) 352-57 •
13. See Becker, cit. supra n. 4. at 142ff., discussed inta at nn. 80-85.
A. R. Blackshield
13
means for studying their interrelationships. To say that secularism has
contributed to (and been fostered by) the rise of individualism may be
sociologically, historically, and practically illuminating. So may be
similar statement about secularism and materialism, or secularism and
readiness to change, or secularism and science. But a similar statement
about secularism is either tautologous or nonsensical. "Secularism," in
short, must refer to some specific ingredient within modern Western
ideologies; and this returns us again to insisting that it means a movement
away from religion, and that what we have to do is somehow to make
this insistence precise.
Of course, the range of areas in which this movement away from
religion may occur is as wide as culture itself. But when we first try to
think of what secularism means, two areas above all stand out as foci of
secularist controversy. One is that of the state and its law; the other is
that of education. This seems to suggest that secularism is to be some
kind of adjustment amongst law, education and religion; and this in turn
suggests a hypothesis on which our exploration of secularism can get
under way. Later this hypothesis will need to be modified; but it
serves at least to bring into focus the problems we want to discuss.
This hypothesis is simple enough. Secularism, it suggests, is not
opposed to religion as such; it is opposed rather to the use of religious
institutions, and religious motivations, in the legal-political and educative
processes. It insists on a functional division of aptitudes-a kind of social
separation of powers-t-s-between different kinds of social activity. Reli,gion, education and law should not encroach on each other's territory;
~hould not overreach their own spheres of propriety. So long as religion
does keep to its own sphere, secularism is religiously neutral; it neither
endorses nor disapproves of religiousness. Secularism, then, is (or is perhaps strictly the advocacy of) that disposition of social affairs in which
law and education are independent of religious institutions an
ligious
motivations. Secularization is an historical development by which t .
legal and educative non-dependence on religion tends to be established.
In the educative context, secularism is "the attempt to establish an autonomous sphere of knowledge purged of supernatural, fideistic presuppositions;'?" in the legal context, it is the attempt to establish a similarly
autonomous sphere of social ordering.
The following sections are designed to explore the implications and
ramifications of this hypothesis. Section II seeks to 1111 in the sociological
background which the hypothesis presupposes (though this background
turns out to have its own amorphousness and apori3e). This excursus
14. C/' Sit E. Barker, Principles 0/ Social and Political Theory (1951) 7.
15. B. Groethuysen, "Secularism," in 13 Encyc, Soc. Sc. 631,·at 631.
t
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Secularism and Social Control
into matters not immediately relevant vastly compounds the complexities
of our approach to secularism; but it seems unavoidable if we are to find
our way around in discussing secularism itself. In section III an attempt
will be made to identify some of the [(lctors in secularization in the West,
and in section IV this will lead to a renewed attack on the conceptual
problem. We shall there see (pursuant to the caveat already lodged) that
the various sociological factors which our "separation of powers" hypothesis will have served to bring together, finally require us to abandon
that hypothesis; and to substitute a more modest and flexible definition of
Western "secularism." In this sense .my propositions are like those of
Wittgenstein's "ladder," which must be thrown away after our thinking
"has climbed out through them, on them, over them. "16
The two final sections will be somewhat less "ethereal." One will
pass in rapid review the continuing (though peripheral) problems of
secularism in the West. The other- section VI-will seek to open a way
into some of the intractable cultural problems of "secularism" in India.
II.
SOCIOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS OF THE CONCEPT OF SECULARISM
A.
Concept of Social Control
If "secularism" as a mutually exclusive autonomy of law, education,
and religion is to make overall sociological sense, we need a wider frame
of reference. In the traditional materials of sociological jurisprudence
we find this in the subsumption of all three phenomena-law, religion,
education-under the rubric "social control." That term is taken to mean
any social process, planned or unplanned by which the regular patterns
of behaviour found acceptable in a given culture are created or clarified,
enforced or conserved, transmitted or inculcated. A social control may
be a body of norms, or an institution, or merely a social "process" or
"mechanism" such as imitation or competition; or it may combine all
three of these aspects.
Yet "social control" as a point of reference is really in no better
case than we have seen "religion" to be. The above usage has been well
established eversince E.A. Rose wrote his classic work Social Control at
the turn of the century." Yet the usage still causes uneasiness.v due to
the extremely flexible and shifting use of language which it involves.
Probably we carr say, for example, that a paradigmatic "social control"
16. Cf, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tract atus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) prop. 6. 54.
17. E. A. Ross, Social Control (1901, reprinted 1908). That work seeks "to
determine how far the order we see all about us is due to influences that reach men and
women from without, that is, social influences" (id. vii).
18. See recently G. Sawer, Law in Society (1965) 126ff.
A. R. Blackshiel d
15
would involve all three of the aspects just mentioned: norms, and institutional arrangements for the creation and implementation of these, and
processes and mechanisms for such creation and implementation. Yet
when we think of particular social ccntrols we think normaIly of only one
of these aspects. Morality, for example, is thought of primarily as a body
of norms, with little awareness of the institutions or processes associated
with their emergence.. The family, seen as an institution for social control,
is thought of only as an institution, and economic competition as a social
control is thought of as a kind of pure "process," independent of the
institutions by which it is fostered and of the norms which it throws up.
Only perhaps when we think of "law" itself are we consciously advertent
to all three aspects; and even then the aspect presenting "law" as a body
of norms tends to be primary.
Moreover, this assimilation under a single term of referents which we
subjectively think of as quite different kinds of phenomena (even when we
recognize that they are in fact interdependent) is only one way in which
the present usage of "social control" strains ordinary language assumptions. We are here required to apply the word "control" to every kind
of influence playing a part in the emergence of regular behaviour patterns,
whether planned or unplanned, strong or weak, direct or indirect; and
whether attributable to the causative action of identifiable persons, or
merely to blind "social forces." And insofar as we think of the end
product of "social control" in terms of norms, we are required to give the
term "norms" a similar wide and flexible meaning, covering not only
expressly formulated rule prescriptions, but also vague and indeterminate
ideal standards, and mere de facto regularities of behaviour which are
"norms" only in the statistical sense.
In view of these difficulties it seems necessary at the outset to
attempt to clarify what is meant by "social control." For present purposes
this can be done by listing twenty-four questions which may meaningfully
be asked in relation to any social datum (that is, any body of norms,
institution, or social "mechanism") which is offered as a "social control."
1.
What degree of clarity, precision, and conscious articulateness
attaches to the norms of behaviour produced?
2.
What degree of specific, immediate applicability to concrete
situations attaches to such norms?
3. To what extent is the exercise of control rational, in the sense
that the norms it produces are efficient solution responsively
adapted to an informed understanding of the social situation to
be controlled?
4.
To what extent is the exercise of control rational, in the sense
that the norms it produces are consistent and coherent with the
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Secularism and Social Control
overall pattern of other norms produced by the same social
control?
5.
What is the degree of conscious, deliberate purposiveness with
which control is wielded?
6.
To what extent is the functioning of the particular datum as a
social con trot central (or "essential") rather than merely incidental to the main purposes or concerns for which the datum
has grown up ?
7.
To what extent does the control exercised operate directly on
the behaviour involved, rather than by the more indirect
means of altering the social, physical or attitudinal environment within which the behaviour occurs?
8.
What is the degree and depth of awareness on the part of
those controlled, that their behaviour is in fact being influenced?
9.
To what degree are those exercising the control themselves
obedient to its norms?
10. To what degree are those exercismg the control obedient, in
their exercise of it, to other norms not themselves produced by
the specific control in question, but arising from other forms
of social control (including "popular morality") to which all
those in the instant situation are subject ?
1I.
What degree of creative invention, elaboration and adaptation
of norms (whether conscious or not) does the exercise of the
control involve?
12.
To what extent is the performance of these creative and
elaborative tasks facilitated by ready availability, variety,
sophistication and easy manipulability of creative and elaborative
techniques?
13.
To what extent is the control concerned rather with the transmission and inculcation of existing norms, whether these arise
from other social controls or from past exercises of the control
now in question ?
14.
What degree of elaborateness and social entrenchment attaches
to the institutional arrangements through which control is
wielded?
15.
What degree of stability and continuity through time attaches
to the' functioning of the control?
A.
R.
Blackshield
17
16. Bow great a range of the members of the community is affected
by the exercise of control?
17. How great a range of tye interests of those affected is subject
to the exercise of control ?
18. To what degree do the norms produced in fact govern the
behaviour of those to whom they are directed?
19. How important to society are the interests fostered or protected
by the particular control?
20.
To what degree is the presence (or even the absence) of actual
obedience accompanied by emotional commitment to the
content of the norms produced?
21.
What range, weight and severity of sanctions are available for
the correction or punishment of non-conformity?
22.
With what degree of inexorability will the application of such
sanctions follow on non-conformity?
23.
To what extent is the efficacy of the particular datum as a
control independent of the operation of other social controls?
24.
To what extent is the operation of other social controls dependent upon the efficacy of the particular datum?
The significance of these questions will emerge from the following
comments.
(i) The term "norm" and the term "control" are used throughout
in the wide and flexible senses already referred to.
(ii) Each question is so framed that (in theory at least) it is open
to a simple answer in quantitative terms. It is not envisaged that these
quantitative answers can be given with mathematical exactitude; we cannot say, for instance, that law as an instrument of social control has x
units of articulate precision, whereas morality has only y units, But we
can say that the norms of law are more precise and articulate that those
of morals. In other words, what is here involved is the notion of a
spectrum of degrees. Each of our twenty-four questions has a range of
theoretically possible answers running from "Totally" to "Not at all."
In this use of the spectrum notion I follow Julius Stone's recent analysis
of power relations," itself building on P.H. Partridge's point that "power"
is a matter for analysis in terms of different "dimensions" or "continuums.Y" Several of the above questions, indeed are derived from the
19. Stone, op, cit. supra n. 12, at 589ff., esp, 596-600.
20. P. H. Partridge, "Some Notes on the Concept of Powerl' (1963) Political
Studies 107, esp, at 110, 113.
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Secularism and Social Control
six "spectrums" which Stone envisages as relevant to an understanding
of power."
l'
(iii) Even when quantitative precrsron is disclaimed, the claim to
rough estimates of more or less, of higher or lower on the spectrum, is
still a rather misleading one as to some of the above questions, notably
for instance as to questions (6) and (I 8). Such questions as to degree of
importance of some interests over others, and degree of centrality to
the "main purpose of a social phenomenon, may be verbally questions of
degree, but in fact turn on complex questions of the substantive evaluation of some interests or purposes as concerned with others. Moreover,
the evaluations involved may be made differently from different viewpoints. The spiritual interests which are furthered by religion, for
example, may from the religious viewpoint itself be overwhelmingly the
most important of all human interests; from an anti-religious or religiously neutral viewpoint, these interests may be quite immaterial. (The
wording of question (18) in terms of what is important to society may
to some extent insulate the question from this diversity of viewpoints.
But even importance to society will still be estimated differently by the
holy man, the legislator, and the industrial magnate.) Again, as to
question (6), it is conceivable that the role played by the world's great
religions in inculcating norms of morality, hygiene and even technology,
and in securing their observance, might be thought of by a lawyer or
sociologist as the central function of religion, while seeming the merest
incidental to the holy man. The "spectrum" device here adopted is
frankly inadequate to handle these complexities.
(iv) Even where the questions of degree which the spectrum device
imports can be answered in a meaningful and manageable way, they
may not alway s be the most significant questions for an understanding
of social control. As to question (17) above, for example, what is really
important as we examine a particular social control is not how many
human interests it affects, but which interests-vwhat kind of interestsit is characteristically or predominantly concerned with. The addition
of question (18) does not really solve this problem. Similarly, as to the
sanctions referred to in question (21), what really counts in characterizing
and evaluating a particular social control is not merely the weight
of sanctions, but the kind of sanctions available. When we seek to
21. Questions (15), (16) and (17) relate respectively to Stone's Time Count
Spectrum, Head Count Spectrum, and Interests Affected Spectrum. Questions (9) and
(10) are suggested ~. his Ethical Component Spectrum, questions (19) and (20) by his
Influence Spectrum, and questions (21) and (22) by his Coercion Spectrum. In addition
some of the questions presented-notably questions (5), (7), (8) and (24)-are directly
suggested by Stone's own discussion of the concept of "social control." See op. cit.
supra n. 12, at 743-~59, esp. 750ff.
A. R. Blackshield
19
understand the social-control significance of an excommunication for
heresy, quantitative questions of the weight of sanctions and of the
number of interests protected or affected are simply not a sufficient key.
(v) It might seem possible to reduce the complex unwieldiness of this
double dozen of questions by showing that as between specific pairs of
spectrums, placement on one will control placement on the other, so that
only one of the two need be referred to. Certainly such correlations may
be present, and the exploration of the possibility of a particular correlation, and of the conditions on which it will be present, may be of great
sociological importance." But jurisprudents even more than sociologists
should be aware that to assume such correlations ab initio will always be
hazardous and often oversimplificatory. The assumptions that actual
obedience [question (19)] can be automatically correlated with emotional
commitment [question (20)] or with sanctioning power [question (21)] have
distorted a good deal of legal theory. This is quite apart from the oversimplifications that may arise through simple failure to distinguish what
are in fact separate questions, as with questions (1) and (2), or (21) and
(22). The result is that at the present stage of sociological knowledge this
cumbrous apparatus of twenty-four questions can probably not be
simplified.
(vi) Subject to comments (iii) and (il'), we may therefore say that the
location of a particular form of social control on each of the twenty-four
spectrums here indicated seems to offer an illuminating, a reasonably sufficient, and a not excessively unwieldy guide, to understanding the nature
and the functioning of that particular control.
(vii) Moreover, the displaying of these twenty-four spectrums seems
to offer a similar guide to understanding of the nature and functioning of
social control in general. Each spectrum is made meaningful by the supposition that the characteristic to which it refers might be found in a
"pure" or "total" form. The spectrums direct us to ideas of articulate
precision, concrete applicability, purposiveness, creativity, and the like, in a
way that implies that an "ideal type"23 of social control would possess all
these features simpliciter. And this is so, in the overlapping senses next to
be explained.
22. One main aspect of the theme of H. Becker, cit. supra n. 4, is the correlation of emotional commitment [question (2)J directly with 'transmission" and inversely
with creativity [questions (13), (II)]-i.e., emotional commitmens-c-reluctance to change
-and of articulateness with "consistent" rationality [questions (I), (4)]. See infra at
nn.80·85.
23. See Max Weber, c, 'Objectivity' in Social Science and Social Policy," in
E. A. Shils and H. A. Finch (transl. and ed.), Max Weber on-the Methodology of the
Social Sciences (1949) 49, at 90-93.
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Secularism and Social Control
(viii) The twenty-four features of "ideal" social control might in theory
be divided into four groups. One group would consist of features constitutive of the very idea of "social control." Unless, for example, the norms
produced do in fact govern the behaviour of those to whom they are
directed [question (19)], we might want to say that "social control" is
simply not present at all. Similarly, perhaps, as to the feature of purposiveness referred to in question' (5) above. As to such defining characteristics
of social control, the notion of a cluster of spectrums, despite its inadequacies, serves two very important purposes. First, it alerts us to the fact that
in real-life examples of social control we must not expect to find the defining characteristics in the absolute form that a formal definition might lead
us to expect. It leads us (for example) to say, not that social control must
be purposive, and must in fact succeed in governing the relevant human
behaviour, but, at the very most, that it must exhibit a fairly high degree
of purposiveness and governance. Mort' persuasively still, it leads us to
say merely that we may usually expect a social control to rate higher rather
than lower on the purposiveness and governance spectrums. Only ifpurposiveness or governance are altogether lacking may we say that what we are
looking at is not a social control at all. Secondly, the notion of a cluster
of spectrums enables us to say that even if one of the "constituent" features
is missing altogether, a high rating on other "constituent" spectrums may
still enable us meaningfully to speak of "social control. "24
(ix) A second group of features of "ideal" social control may not be
at all relevant to the identification of social data as social controls, not
even in the flexible way that a cluster of spectrums entails. They are relevant rather to the evaluation of particular controls, once these have been
identified as such. Thus obedience by the wielders of control to their own
norms [question (9)] is in no way relevant to the question whether control
is present or not; but most of us regard it as an important factor in deciding whether the particular means of control merits our ethical approval.
So, perhaps, with the features referred to in questions (7) and (8).
(x) A third group of features of "ideal" social control relates neither to
the existence nor to the admirability of control, but merely to the efficiency
with which the particular control is wielded. Concrete applicability
[question (2)] and "purposive" rationality [question (3)] are probably
among the features which fall within this group.
(Xi) Finally, some of the features to which the twenty-four questions
direct us may be significant merely as helping us to characterize the nature
and methods of particular forms of social controls, and to distinguish one
from another. The contrast in question (11) and (13) between creation of
~sp.
24. C! Lon L. Ruller's use of the spectrum notion in The Morality of Law (1964),
at 4144.
A. R. Blackshield
21
new norms and inculcation of old ones is probably significant only at this
limited level.
(xii) The four groups of features just identified may be referred to
respectively as constituent factors, evaluative factors, efficiency factors and
distinguishing factors. In practice, however, it is more often than not
quite impossible to say with assurance that any particular spectrum is
relevant to one of these groups, and one only. Is the precise formulation of
articulate rules to govern human behaviour an indispensable characteristic,
or at least a probable and important one, of all social control?
Or is it an ideal result which we can say on ethical grounds that social
control ought to attain ?25 Or should we say merely that control is likely
to be more efficient with such rules than without them; or even merely
that as a matter of fact some controls work with such rules and some do
not? Similar questions arise in relation to almost every spectrum referred
to. Moreover, the answers to such questions may be different for different
controls. Awareness of the exercise of control by those subjected to it
[question (8)] is probably (we said) an evaluative factor for all forms of
control; and for some controls, for instance law, it is also an obvious and
important efficiency factor. Yet for other controls it may be vital to
efficiency and effectiveness that Such awareness is not allowed to enter.
And similarly with the direct and indirect controls referred to in
question (7).
(xiii) Accordingly when, in examining any particular social control,
we seek to locate it on each of the various spectrums, this location may
have to be made differently from each of three different viewpoints. First,
we need to ask, what place on each spectrum does this control in/act
occupy? Second, what place ought it to occupy? And third, what place
ought it to occupy, as this is seen by its architects and servitors themselves?
In short, what place does it aspire to?
(xiv) "Secularism" clearly refers to some adjustment, on one or
more of these spectrums, of law, religion and education in their function
as social controls. The precise nature of this adjustment will be examined
in section IV. But if any such adjustment is to be meaningfully visualized,
each of the controls involved must be briefly characterized in the light of
the preceding questions. To this task we now turn.
B. Law as an Instrument of Social Controls"
The notion that law is somehow preeminent among
.., all other social
controls is' a reflection of three facts. First, law in Western societies
25. See, e.g., id, 63-65.
26. Cf Ross, op, cit. supra n, 17, at 106-125 j R. Pound, Social Control Through
Law (1942).
Secularism and Social Control
22
represents an unusually full development of all three of the broad aspects
of a social control which were projected above. Whether we think of law as
a body of norms, or a set of institutional arrangements, or a set of techniques and processes, it has in all three aspects a richness, an elaborateness,
and an explicitness that no other method of social control can match.
Second, the law is remarkable for the very high place which it occupies on
all twenty-four of the spectrums here presented. If we ask what place on
each spectrum lawyers and lawgivers aspire to, the answer will be in
every case that they aspire to absoluteness. This aspiration, indeed, or
rather this cluster of twenty-four aspirations, may be as close as we can
come to a definition of law. ("Law is that form of social control which
aspires to absolute precision and articulateness of norms, etc."?") If we
ask what place on each spectrum the law ought to have, we shall receive
conflicting answers; but on each spectrum there will not be lacking those
who argue that the law should have an absolute place, and usually even the
opponents of such a view will favour a high place on the spectrum. Thus
clarity, precision, and conscious articulateness of norms mayor may not
be absolute values for the law; but even those who insist that they are not
will usually concede that they are values of considerable importance. At
the very least, we can say that there is no one of our twenty-four features
which it would be nonsensical to speak of as a value-standard for law.
And even this modest claim can probably not be made in respect of any
other social control.
When we turn from questions of aspiration and oughtness, to questions of where in fact law is located on each spectrum, all talk of absoluteness must of course vanish. Even when the law's place at first appears
to be absolute [questions (5), (6), and (8), for example], wiser second
thoughts must lead to more cautious answers. Law does sometimes
influence behaviour in ways which the lawgiver does not intend, and of
which those influenced are not aware; and as to question (6), are we really
prepared to say that the central purpose of law is social control rather
than the doing of justice? Seen as questions of fact, moreover, our
twenty-four questions will call for different answers for different systems of
law, and even for the same system at different stages of its development.
Here again, however, it is possible to say that the degree to which
law possesses any particular feature will almost always be very considerable; and if we survey the whole history of Western civilization, it will
often be found to be expanding-for examples, as to questions (9), (14),
(17), (21). (Or is the apparent expansion merely a fluctuation ?)
c
27. On the complexities here involved see A. R. Blackshield, "Some Approaches
and Barriers to the Definition of Law," in I. Tammelo, A. Black shield, and E. Campbell
(eds.), Australian Stxdies in Legal Philosophy (1963, published as A.R.S.P. Beiheft
No. 39) 35.
A. R. Black shield
23
The third way in which law claims preeminence among social
controls can be more shortly stated. But it must probably be stated as a
matter of legal aspiration, rather than one of fact. This is the double
aspiration indicated by questions (1'3) and (24). Law aspires both to be
itself independent of all other social controls, and to insist that no other
social control be similarly independent of it. In other words, as Western
legal systems have become progressively more elaborate and more strongly
institutionalized, protecting progressively more (and more important)
interests, and moving progressively closer to monopoly of the application
of sanctions, law as here manifest has correspondingly tended to oust
other social controls from its domain, except so far as these others are
especially "endorsed" or "licensed" by law-in which case they may continue to operate with a kind of delegated validity. This legal development
vis-a-vis religion has been one main strand in the growth of secularism in
the West; but conversely, the secularist ouster of religion must be seen as
only one strand in the legal tendency to oust all other social controls.
C.
Education as a Social Control'"
The function of education as a means of social control is central to
modern educational theory, especially in the United States, where educationists are found squarely to assert that "the imparting of knowledge is
not the principal end of education.l's" At first, one may be indignantly
prompted to take issue with such an assertion. No doubt it stops short
of the cynical disregard for truth seen in the propagandist manipulations of
a Hitler or a Goebbels. But it does seem to involve a triumph of pragmatism over truth," whose results may be hardly less disastrous.
The conception of education as having to be directed beyond itself to
social usefulness, to "serving the community" in non-educational ways,...
is responsible not only for the steady fall in educational standards, the
slighter and slighter literacy of the supposedly educated, but for what
may fairly be called the growing industrialisation of educational
institutions. This is exhibited not merely in their directing students to
industry and thus engaging in the provision of the techniques which
industry requires, but in their becoming more and more technological,
applying techniques of teaching, overcoming "wastage" learning how to
turn out the maximum number of technicians-and losing scholarship in
theprocess.u
28. Cf. Ross, op, cit. supra n. 17, at 163-179; J. Dewey, "Education and Social
Change" (1937) 3 Soci al Frontier 235, reprinted in W. O. Stanley, B. O. Smith, K. D.
Benne, and A. W. Anderson (eds.), Social Foundations of Education (1956) 457-59.
29. Stanley et al., op. cit. 581.
30. On the broad philosophical issue here see A. R. Blackshield, "Pragmatism
and Valid Law" (1961) 3 Syd, L. Rev. 492 ; id., "Empiricist and Rationalist Theories of
Justice" (l962) 48 A.R.S.P. 25, § VIII.
31. John Anderson, "Classicism" [a paper presented to the Australian Humanities Research Council, originally printed in that Council's Fourth Annual Report
(1960) 19-30], reprinted in id., Studies in Empirical Philosophy (1962) 189, at 190,
24
Secularism and Social Control
This "inescapable contemporary phenomenon," and the controversies
surrounding it, are linked by some with the increasing secularization of
educational institutions in the West, and. in that regard must again be
referred to in section V of this paper: At this stage, however, the matter
need not be pursued. The present view, which may perhaps be dubbed
"classical" view, is that the imparting of knowledge and the search for
truth are important for their own sake, and that these must be the central
concerns of educational activity. Yet even on this "classical" view, it
must be conceded that education is also important for two other reasons.
One is that it serves to equip those who exercise social controls with the
shared understanding of factual knowledge and normative beliefs on which
alone a wise and effective exercise of social control can be based. This
educative function is not itself a social control, but is preparatory and
indeed prerequisite for all "Social controls-above 'all for the conceptually
puzzling yet crucial and all-pervasive "control" of individual initiative.
The other reason for its importance is that education, seen as the means
par excellence for "the transmission of culture," is itself a means of social
control.
Common educationss is concerned with the problem of maintaining the
society as a closely knit and well integrated unit. It is only natural,
therefore, that the rules and know ledges by which the people as a whole
regulate their conduct and anticipate the behavior of one another should
be its principal content. Not all the universals, however, will be
contained in the common curriculum .... [Sjuch superficial elements as the
method of greeting friends or the way to tie shoes ... are left to the
individual to acquire informally and often unconsciously through participation in the common life of the people. Instead, the curriculum
will tend to emphasize the more fundamental universals, or cultural
core, such as the values, sentiments, knowledges, and skills that provide
the society with stability and vitality and the individual with motivation
and deep-lying controls of conduct,33
Conversely, even pragmatic views which most stress these "control"
aspects, usually concede that the pursuit of knowledge as such is one
important aspect of education. The imparting of knowledge may not be
the "principal" end of education,
but it is an indispensable end, without which the other ends are distorted and defeated. Knowledge has always been a primary concern of
the educator. It is the basis for his expert authority. Without knowledge of the truth, and of the method by which it is attained, intelligent,
self-directing personalities cannot be developed....The ideal of truth
and the scientific method is not, of course, exclusive to the educational
profession. But, by the very nature of their craft, the educator and the
32. Here distinguished from "special" education for particular skills and tasks
(including, of course, those of social control referred to above).
33. B. 0. Smith, W.O. Stanley, and J. H. Shores (eds.), Fundamentals of Curriculum Development (1950) 10-11, reprinted in Stanley et al., op, cit. supra n. 23, at 38.
A. R. Blackshield
25
scholar are devoted to that idea; many would say that it is their first
and primary loyalty.st
In short, it is common ground that education is concerned (i) with
the imparting of knowledge for-its own sake; (ii) with the imparting of
knowledge, values and skills to be used in individual and "professional"
Q
exercise of social control; and (iii) with social control by inculcation of
the society's accepted norms. Controversy arises only as to the order of
priority amongst these concerns. The totalitarian propagandist would
see (iii) as primary, (ii) as important only insofar as incidental to (iii),
and (i) as of slight concern. The pragmatist sees (ii) as primary,
(i) as important because incidental to (ii), and (iii) as of very great
importance, but nevertheless as qualified by the demands of both (i) and
(ii). On the present "classical" view (i) is primary, (ii) and (iii) being
alike important in an undeniable but incidental way.
In the present terms the conflict between these views may be said
to relate to the desirable placement of education on the "control orientation" spectrum referred to in question (6). On the classical view education
ought to rank low on this spectrum; on the pragmatist and propagandist
views it ought to rank high. The aspirations of teachers themselves will
generally accord with the classical view; indeed, pragmatist educationists
s.ee their main role in terms of raising and widening what they regard as
unduly narrow teacher-aspirations. (They may even be thus led to some
overstatement of their position for rhetorical, "crusading" reasons.") But
in terms of sociological fact, education will always have a high degree of
control-orientation; whatever the educators' aspirations, their "socializing" function will always be a vital aspect of their work.
These complexities as to education's control-orientation must of
course affect the nature of its actual social control. But some main
points can be shortly stated. On the propagandist view, education will
be characterized by its high place on the purposiveness and emotional
commitment spectrums [questions (5) and (20)], its low place on the
directness and awareness spectrums [questions (7) and (8)], and its probable low place on the reflexivity and external limitation spectrums [questions
(9) and (10)]. On the pragmatist view, such norms as do emerge from
the educational process may perhaps be characterized by a high degree of
"purposive" rationality [question (3)]; but in point of fact (this view will
add) the production of norms will not be a significant feature of social
control through education at all. The significant thing will be the high
place of education on the "control of controls" spectrum [question (24)];
and education will then need to be characterized by the, qualities it induces
Op, et loco cit. supra n. 29.
35. Leading others in turn to revive the old gibe that "Those who can, do; those
who cannot, teach"-adding that those who cannot even teach write about education,
34.
26
Secularism and Social Control
in the norms produced by other social controls. Its aspiration for those
other norms will be to a high place on the creativity and technique
spectrums [questions (11) and (12)], as well as on the "purposive"
rationality spectrum [question (3)]. Q'l the Classical view, insofar as this
recognizes "social control" functions for education at all, these will still
be characterized by a low rating as to purposiveness of control [question
(5)]; but also by a very high place on the transmission spectrum [question
(l3)]-and (since this view will tend to stress the general intellectual values
which are sought in education) on the "consistent" rationality spectrum
[question (14)] as well.
Perhaps (though more hazardously) some further remarks can be
ventured which will apply on any view of the educative process. One
is that a high place on the transmission spectrum [question (13)] is probably constitutive of the very idea of education as a social control. For
education is "the transmission from one generation to the next by word
of mouth or written symbols of the accumulated knowledge of the
species.?" Its actual transmission rating will be somewhat lower on the
propagandist and pragmatist views than on the classical, but it will stilI
be considerable; and if it drops too low, most of us will want to say that
we are no longer talking about "education" at all. Beyond this, we can
say that social control through education is always likely to display a low
rating in terms of directness and awareness [questions (7) and (8)]. Propaganda techniques exploit these low ratings; but they exist in any
case. Similarly, education is likely always to rank high in terms of
interests affected, actual obedience, emotional attachment and "control of
controls" [questions (17), (19), (20), (24)]. Finally, it should be noted
that as Western civilization has proceeded, education has come to occupy
an increasingly significant place on the institutionalization spectrum
[question (14)].37 If the gradual specialization and institutionalization of
schooling was slow at first, it has steadily increased as the skills required
for ordinary social intercourse and for the fulfilment of social roles become
ever more multiple and diversified; and the very gradualness of the process
suggests a general "law of social evolution" that "the worth of a function
must be demonstrated through the services of the unspecialized agency
before a specialized agency is brought into existence in the social order."38
The implication that once worth is proven, specific agencies tend to evolve,
would explain the overall trend to specialization of soc.al institutions of
which secularization is but a part.
Yet equally interesting, and of rather converse significance, is the
36. Carrington,.'Jp. cit. supra n, 3, at 145.
37. For a good short summary of the development from primitive times to the
present, see J. C. Chapman and G. S. C c unts, Principles of Education (1924) 37-45,
reprinted in Stanley et al., op, cit. supra n, 28, at 53-57.
38. Chapmanand Counts, op, cit. 38 (Stanley et al., op, cit. 54).
27
A. R. Blackshield
fact that the most potent single influence, in the institutionalizing process
seems to have been that of religion. The role of the medieval "schoolmen" in building the first Western schools and universities round a nucleus
of half-informal monastic lessons is well known.t" but even in pre-history
the religious role was significant. Around the "immeasurably precious"
religious traditions of every people,
there gradually evolved an order of specialists whose sole business was to
preserve this lore and, through its use, to promote the welfare of
the group. In the hands of the specialist, whether priest, shaman,
medicine man, or magician, this body of tradition was graduaIly elaborated and consequently became, in yet greater measure, the unique
possession of a class. This made necessary the formal organization of
instruction about certain callings intimately associated with the life of
the group. In one way or another, provision was made for the selection
of promising youth who, under the direct tuition of the elders, were
trained to discharge this important and esoteric social function. Out
of this situation emerge the beginnings of professional training.s?
D. Religion as a Social Control'?
On the "classical" view of education, perhaps the most significant
feature of its function as a social control is its intrinscally low rating on
the control-orientation spectrum [question (6)]. At first sight, this might
seem to apply to religion as a social control as well. Certainly religion
presents itself to the modern Western mind as distinctively and centrally
oriented to other-worldly ends, or at least to ends which are not of this
world; and certainly the attempt to confine religion to such ends is a
major feature of many "secularist" ideologies. Yet to an important degree
this religious unworldliness seems to be a result of the secularizing process,
rather than a datum which can be presupposed in our discussion of that
process. In other words, religion may tend to be pushed into unworldliness as its worldly concerns come progressively to be duplicated, overridden and ousted by other cultural forces.
In any case, the emphasis on religious unworldliness is just the kind
of oversimplification against which David Martin's essay should be taken
as sounding a warning. Max Weber long ago pointed out that
For the empirical student, the sacred values, differing among themselves, are by no means only, nor even preferably, to be interpreted as
"other-worldly." This is so quite apart from the fact that not every
religion, nor every world religion, knows of a "beyond" as a locus of
definite promises. At first the sacred values of primitive as weIl as of
cultured, prophetic or non-prophetic, religions were quite solid goods of
39. See David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought (1962) 71-92,
40. Chapman and Counts, op, cit. 40 (Stanley et al., op, cit. 55).
41. C{. Ross, op. cit. supra n. 17, at 126-145, 196-217.
<
<
28
Secularism and Social Control
this world. With the only partial exception of Christianity42 and a few
other specifically ascetic creeds, they have consisted of health, a long
life, and wealth .... Only the religious virtuoso, the ascetic, the monk,
the Sufi, the Dervish strove for sacred values, which were "otherworldly" as compared with sucri! solid goods of this world, as health,
wealth, and long life. And (even) these other-worldly sacred values
were by no means only values of the beyond. ~3
Martin" adds the further point that the supposed criterion of
"other-worldiness" is in any event a category of concealed multiple
reference. It may refer to "a belief in life after death which serves to
render life here and now more tolerable." But it may also refer to the
lack of concern with material practicalities personified by "the hobo, or
fakir, who is only interested in an intrinsically worthwhile state of being
(or non-being), which he achieves within the world as now constituted
either by the discovery of the true self or by the immolation of self." The
rejection of material benefits then extends to the benefits of "life after
death" as well. Thirdly, the "other world" on which belief is focused
may be a Utopia which is ultimately to be realized in this world, or "an
eternally present and perfect original of which the corrupted material
world is but a copy." And all these "types" of other-worldly belief may
themselves conceal a further multiplicity of actual beliefs, in which features
of the different "types" cross and interpenetrate with each other.
The concept of a life to come might be couched either in the form of
an intrinsically worth-while state or in the form of gross materiality.
Alternatively, the progress towards an intrinsically worth-while state might
be conceived either solely in terms of the present world or in tern.s of
several lives to come. Nor would belief in a world hereafter prevent
proper and successful attention to events here and now. 45
We cannot, in short, assign anyone meaning to "other-worldliness"
which would allow us intelligibly to refer to it as a significant "constituent
factor" or "primal motivation" of religiousness; and even if we could, we
would not be able to affirm with any empirical accuracy that this was in
42. See infra at nn. 140-145.
43. Max Weber, "The Social Psychology of the World Religions," in H. H.
Gerth and C. Wright Mills (transl, and ed.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology
(1947) 267, at 277. At 278 he adds that even those objectives which are "other-worldly"
from the religious viewpoint are not so socio-psychologically. States of religious ecstasy,
grace, bh akti, and the like "have been sought, first of all, for the sake of such emotional
value as they directly offered the devout"-as much as "the religious and alcoholic
intoxication of the Dionysian or the soma cult:' Cf. in like vein Auguste Comte, 2
The Positive Philosophy (transl. H. Martineau, 1896) 546 : "It is so difficult to us to conceive of any but a "metaphysical theology, that we are apt to fall into perpetual mistakes
in contemplating... its gross origin."
44. Essay cited supra n. 6, at 171-72,
45. [d. l'Zl.
A. It Blackshield
fact the "constituent factor" or "primal motivation." It follows that an
inlferently low placement of religion on the "control-orientation" spectrum
simply cannot be sustained, at any rale not on the "other-worldliness"
ground.
Nor, indeed, are we really able to make any general assertion about
the placement of religion on the "control-orientation" spectrum at all.
For the test to which question (6) above refers us ["central (or 'essential')
" to the main purposes or concerns for which the datum has grown up"]
must refer either to some supposed "constituent factor" of religion, having
conceptual primacy in our understanding of the religious way of life, or
to some historically first motivation to religiousness which is supposed to
set the key for the "proper" sphere of development of religious influence.
But any attempt to describe religion in terms of a central "constituent
factor" faces difficulties of conceptual unclarity, and of actual religious
diversity," as great as those affecting the "other-worldly" criterion just
examined. And if we seek instead for historical and anthropological
guidance to some historically first motivation, we find only that further
difficulties, of the inaccessibility to modern knowledge of the birth of
human culture, must be added to all the others. We cannot even begin to
guess what the "central" or "essential" motivations leading to the growth
of religious institutions might have been.
Neither religions nor men arc open books. They have been historical
rather than logical or even psychological constructions without contradiction. Often they have borne within themselves a series of motives,
each of which, if separately and consistently followed through, would
have stood in the way of the others or run against them head-on. In
religious matters "consistency" has been the exception and not the
rule.t?
Our characterization of religion as a means of social control must
therefore be cautious and fragmentary. The most that we can do is to
list some of the features, and some of the motivations, that may be significant in the growth of religion, or in its cultural specialization. In the
present state of knowledge the list must be treated as a random one, with
no implication that its numerical ordering represents either a graduated
order of "centrality" to religion, or a chronological order of historical
emergence. We need to bear in mind, too, that the features listed are by
no means all applicable to all religions. Some of them, indeed, may be
mutually inconsistent; and even when certain groups of features seem
naturally consonant with one another, we must be cautious about assuming
that such apparently related features do in fact entail or grow, out of one
another. Only within such a fragmentary, unsystematic framework as
46. See supra p. 1 (pace Malinowski, up. cit. supra n. 3, at 61, who thinks that
the unity of religion in "s.ubstance, for!E.i!!l.d. f!!nctionis t~ound everywhere").
47. Weber, op, ~it":"'supritii~ 43, at 291;,.
Secularism and Social Control
this can we begin to assess the possible ratings of "religion" on OUr spectrunis of social control.
(i) The first item in the list can perhaps be asserted (though even here
not without hazard) as the historically first motivation to religiousness. As
men or their hominoid ancestors come together in social groups, they
develop very early in' pre-history a sympathy and affection for one
another. When a beloved member of the group dies, he will be mourned,
his memory will be respected, and his mortal remains will be disposed of
with some simple, reverential form of ritual. In China archaeologists have
found remains of ritual burials among the pithecanthropoids of the Pleistocene Age, about 400,000 years ago-"the evidence of the earliest reverence for the dead in human history.":" And with Neanderthal man in
the Mousterian period (some 160,000 years ago, still many thousands of
years before the beginnings of human history), magico-religious ritual
burials appear in a much advanced form, suggesting "both genuine love,
and also fear of the possible supernatural consequences of neglect." Moreover, the fact that in one find all the males had been buried facing west,
but the sole female had not, "suggests that the Neanderthalers may have
conceived of a heaven, comparable to the ancient Egyptian 'land of the
dead,' which lay in the direction of the setting sun. The woman, we may
assume, was either denied access to this heaven, or had one of her own in
the opposite direction.'?"
When, as in China or among the Bantu, this bare minimal "religiousness"-the ritual expression of reverence and affection for the memory of
the dead-s-is extended and elaborated into ancestor worship, the channelling of this motivation into significant social control would appear to be
obvious.s? Yet we cannot assume that such a development of this motif
will automatically follow. From the standpoint of simple social evolutionism
this assumption has indeed often been made, ancestor worship being then
presented as a phase through which all religions must pass;" but in fact true
ancestor worship seems comparatively rare." Even when it does occur, its
influence as social control may be less marked than it seems. Max Weber has
pointed out that in some areas where we might expect Chinese ancestor
worship to operate as a social control, the position is just the reverse. Far
from a man's social status and public office being determined by the number
48. See Carrington, op, cit. supra n. 3, at 93.
49. [d. 107-111, esp. at 110. And on the still greater development in Neolithic
time see id. 182.
50. See Ross, op, cit. supra n. 17, at 133-34.
51. See W.G. Sumner and A.G. Keller, 3 Science of Society (1928) 941·46 4
id. 412-17; E.W. Hopkins, Origin and Evolution of Religion (1923) ch. 7. And for an
example of how true theism might evolve out of ancestor worship, see N.D. Fustel de
Coulanges, The Ancient City (transi. W. Small, 1874) 164·67.
52. Paul Radin, "Ancestor Worship:' in I Encyc, Soc. Sc, 53, at 54.
A. R. Black shield
j1
or dignity of his ancestors or by the elaborateness or piety of his worship of
them, status and role dictate how many ancestors may be worshipped,
and with what degree of ceremony." Arid generally, "whether ancestor
worship has any marked influence oh so-called progress and whether it in
any way circumscribes thought and action and makes for rigid conformity,
is more than doubtful.v'"
Yet, even if we look only to "the milder form of this same phenomenon, the veneration of one's ancestors.?" this does seem to offer at least
potentialities for social control. The mere remembering of these past
lives, a fortiori when conjoined with and reinforced by emotions of reverence
and affection, will tend to induce the repetition and perpetuation of the
ways of conduct of those lives. Not only can the "great men" of the
past, "prophets, saviors, saints, revolutionary heroes, and great presidents
and lawgivers" be "invoked as socializing examples;" but on a humbler
level notions of "what our grandfathers did" can operate as a social
control." "Commemorative ceremonial. .. plays a significant part in the
perpetuation of. .. evaluations."?"
(ii) Dating also from palaeolithic pre-history is what Auguste Comte
called "fetishism"-"that tendency of our nature by which Man conceives
of all external bodies as animated by a life analogous to his own, with
differences of mere intensity.r" It is, more briefly, the spiritualization of
materiality: "the ascription of being, on the pattern of that known in
human beings, to the external world. "59 Since E.B. Tylor's Primitive
Culture (1871), it has been more satisfactorily referred to as "animism,"
the word "fetishism" being reserved rather for the converse process of
materialization of spirituality ("any sort of materialism in religion, any
tendency to treat divine power or mind as having a body or as operating
like a physical force")."
Tyler's view of animism as the belief that natural phenomena have
spiritual, "personalized" souls perhaps insufficiently stresses its potential
for social control. Such a belief can never be mere belief, but must
53. Max Weber, "The Chinese Literati," in Gerth and Mills, op, cit. supra n. 37,
416 at 423.
54. Radin, Encyc, Soc. Sc. article cited supra n. 52, at 55.
55. Ibid.
56. Becker, cit. supra n. 4, at 150-51.
57. Id, 151,52. On the social functions of religious ritual generally, see
Malinowski, op, cit. supra n. 3, at 4-5.
58. See Comte, 2 op, cit. supra n. 43, at 545-561.
59. Ruth Benedict, "Animism," in 1 Encyc, Soc. Sc, 65, at 65.
60. R.R. Marett, "Fetishism," in 6 id. 201. at 201. And cf, id.. 202, quoting E.B.
Tylor, 2 Primitive Culture (3 ed. 1891) 144.
32
Secularism and Social Control
operate directly to determine human behaviour;" and since Tylor wrote
its behaeioural aspect has been increasingly stressed.
Our present day dichotomy of behavior has two distinct types: the type
directed toward things, which follows strictly a cause and effect
sequence; and the type directed toward persons, which, runs the
gamut from love to manipulation. but which deals in only small degree
with measurable cause end effect. Of this dichotomy primitive man
knew little ... [HJe knew thing-techniques, but he did not regard them as
ruling out person-techniques. He harangued the tree as bride or as
child, taking it to wife with the ordinary marriage rites, or cradling it
according to the ceremonial of childbirth, at the same time and place
that he demonstrated his mastery of felling large trees without the use
of iron. He simply made no dichotomy where with us it has become
fundamental. 62
Nor is it merely a matter of pleasant social intercourse with animals
and trees. "The first manifestation of religion springs from a basic practical need just as surely as pure science evolves from the technological
organization of the environment."63 In a simple hunting society the
forests and their denizens are the foundation of human survival, and if
these are endowed with personalized "spirits," then the maintenance of
good relations with these must be a basic goal of social life. Hunting, and
later agriculture, must depend on "person-techniques" as well as "thingtechniques;" and even after a hunted animal is captured and eaten, its
remains must be subjected to an elaborate propitiatory ritual "to ensure
that another ... wilI be sent to the hunters by the spirits of the forest, and
equally successfully slain. "64 Here again, remains of ritual disposition of
bear skulls among the Neanderthals suggest that this motivation to
religiousness pre-dates human history itself."
(iii) R. R. Marett has suggested that animism, which spiritualizes
the natural world in a specific, personalized way, is not sufficient as a key
to understanding of primal religiousness. It needs to be supplemented,
he thinks, by reference to two other phenomena found in the most primitive societies, related to but "not wholly explicable in terms of" animism.
One is belief in mana, "a contagious wonder working power of a more or
less impersonal kind," which he calls "animatism" as distinct from animism." The other is "anthropomorphic theism involving high gods conceived
61. On this essential action-motivating power as a haIlmark of all religious
beliefs, see E. Durkheim, Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (trans!. l.W. Swain,
1954) 416. Durkheim's thesis however oversimplifies certain deep contrasts between,
e.g., Christianity and Hinduism. See infra §§ Il l, IV.
62. Ruth Benedict, Encyc. Soc. Sc. article cited supra n. 59, at 66.
63. Carringfpn, op. cit. supra n. 3, at 177.
64. Id.178.
65. ld. 105-07.
66. Cf. M. Mauss and H. Hubert, "Esquisse d'une Theorie Generate de fa Magie"
(1902) Annee Sociol.rgique 16, as reprinted in part in 1. Parsons, E. Shils, K.D, Naegele
and l.R. Pitts (eds.), 2 Theories of Society (1961) 1081-91.
A. R. B1ackshield
33
as 'magnified non-natural men.' "67 As with animism, such beliefs have an
impact on human behaviour; but here the incipient social control
is much more potent. For here, the belief is in spirits not merely like
additional reduplications of the human spirit, but other than and more
than the human spirit. As the power of the spirit is greater, so is the
need to propitiate and obey that power; and as the nature of the spirit
is more transcendent, so is the experience of communicating with the spirit.
Talking to a tree in which a "personal" spirit lives is no more precious a
spiritual experience than talking to one's neighbour-perhaps less so,
since trees are so much harder to talk to. But talking to a god is a rare
and privileged experience which even in one's own eyes lifts one altogether
out of the ordinary realm of everyday life. In the eyes of one's fellows
it lifts one almost into the transcendent realms which the gods themselves
inhabit.
~nevitable
(iv) These various movements towards religion merge into a single
theme which perhaps can be taken as a generalization about what is meant
by religion. This is simply that "religion" turns on a belief that the shaping
of the external world and of the events in it must be attributed not merely
to the natural physical phenomena themselves, and to the purposive
action of the human will, but also (or even rather) to the presence of
purposeful agencies which transcend, or lie hidden in, such "natural"
agencies. It has as its object some imputed, non-natural "soul" (or
"souls")-whether these be former human souls revered retrospectively (or
as supposedly continuing to exist de praesenti in some other world); or
"human" souls imputed to non-human but actual entities; or super-human
souls imputed to super-human and themselves putative entities; or some
generalized super-human "soul" unfettered by imputation to any existent
or even imagined entity. Religion, in short, is always a super-naturalism.
Howard Becker suggests that this is the "essence" of religion, which we
have here despaired of finding; and he blames such epochal figures as
Emile Durkheim'" and W.G. Sumner" for having "befogged" this simple
truth "by using all-inclusive and vague categories.:"?
(v) On such a basis religion in all undeveloped societies reaches out
inevitably to a very high place on a number of significant "spectrums" of
social control. Certainly "supernaturalism" as a concept for sociologists
needs to be sharply defined and carefully hemmed in if it is to be a useful
67. Marett, Encyc, Soc. Sc. article cited supra n. 60, at 202; and cf id., The
Threshold of Religion 12 ed. 1914).
68. See his classic study cited supra n. 61 (first published in.French in 1912).
69. See Sumner and Keller, o p, cit. supra n. 51; and cf, Sumner's monumental
work Folkways (1906).
70. Becker, cit. supra n. 4, at 144. As a modern example of the fruitful use of
this simple notion he cites W. J. Goode, Religion Among the Primitives (1951).
.
34
Secularism and Social Control
concept; yet supernaturalism as a fact for primitive man is indeed potentially all-inclusive. It follows that the rating of religion in terms of "head
count," "interests affected," and" importance" [questions (16), (17), (18)]
is potentially a total one." There is no object of human endeavour, no
area of human activity, which is not open to spiritualization in animist,
animatist, or even theist terms, and therefore in need not only of "thingtechniques" of behaviour, but of "person-techniques" and even "superperson techniques" as well. And it is precisely in relation to those objects
and activities that are most important to society that these needs are most
strongly felt. "What but the theological spirit could afford a ground
for social discipline at a time when foresight, collective and individual,
was far too restricted to sustain any influence of rationality ?"7 2
On such a basis, we must finally abandon any notion that the religious rating in terms of control-orientation is inherently a low one. Those
very activities which are seen as so vital as to demand some social control
are those which most urgently give rise to religious behaviour. We need
not dwell on the point that when animist belief brings non-human entities
into the "personalized" community, attempts to propitiate and influence
these are themselves exertions in "social" control. The more important
point is that it is human behaviour towards these entities which it is sought
to regulate.
(vi) On such a basis, too, the range of sanctions involved in religion
is potentially unlimited-both in number and in weight. Once any form
of supernaturalism is accepted, all the forms of misfortune and suffering
that befall a man can be explained by the fact that he displeased the
supernatural power in question, or even that he has simply failed to
get it on his side." Nor are the supernatural sanctions limited, as John
Austin sought to limit legal sanctions," to the infliction of punishment.
Precisely because suffering is treated as "a symptom of odiousness in the
eyes of the gods and as a sign of secret guilt,"75 its converse can be treated
as a sign of favour.
The fortunate is seldom satisfied with the fact of being fortunate.
Beyond this, he needs to know that he has a right to his good fortune ....
If the general term "fortunate" covers all the "good" of honour,
71. The thesis "that nearly all the great social institutions have been born in
religion," that "religion has given birth to all that is essential in society," was the main
theme of Durkheirn , op, cit. supra n. 61. See his summation at 418.
72. Cont,e, op, cit. supra n. 43, at 552.
73. On the range and effectiveness of supernatural sanctions see the materials
collected in S.P. Simpson and J. Stone (eds.), 1 Law and Society (1949) 19 ff'., 150160.
74. J~hPl\u.stin, 1 Lectures on Jurisprudence (5 ed. by R. Campbell, 1885) 90-91.
75. Weber, cit. supra n, 43, at 271,
36
Secularism and Social Control
general" are characterized by their high placement on what I have here
called the "emotional commitment" spectrum [question (2' )]. The
corollary of this, he urges, is that far from displaying the easy adaptability
apparently envisaged by Comte, "sacred" beliefs in general will show a
positive resistance to change. The whole broad contrastbetween "sacred"
and "secular" phenomena is itself to be understood by reference to a
spectrum or continuum of shadings of degree. Placement on this spectrum is to be determined by the question: To what degree are the norms
and values which the social mechanism "imparts to or elicits from its
members" open to alteration, "if at all, only in the fact of definite
emotionalized reluctance?"81 High placement on this "emotional
resistance" spectrum denotes sacredness; low placement, secularity."
In the present terms, this important test involves the following findings. First, "problems relating to social and cultural change ... are built
into the sacred-secular scale, as are also what in some ways are their
counterparts, problems of social contro]."83 Religion" must always have
a significant place on our control-orientation spectrum [question (6)];
social control, if not "central" to religion, will at any rate be intimately
bound up with it. Second, religion as a social control will now tend to a
low rating on the creativity spectrum [question (11)]. It will tend, indeed,
to induce positive hostility to creative adaptations and to reinforce this
hostility with the same emotive intensity as it brings to the existing
norms themselves." Third, consequentially, the inculcation of these existing
80. See infra n. 84.
81. See Becker, cit. supra n. 4, at 142 if. His consequential definition of the
"secular" is however more puzzling. He is concerned to stress that "the secular is not
merely the reverse of the sacred;" and he therefore defines it as the single-minded
pursuit of "ends, tangible or intangible" regardless of what changes this involves in our
felt "needs" or in the realization of these (ibid.). On this view his earlier example (id.
134) or" Father Damien's "missionary martyrdom" among the lepers of Molokai would
seem to be a "secular" and not a "sacred" pursuit of values. And this would sit strangely
both with popular understanding, and with his own main analysis. [See also his
Through Values to Social Interpretation (1946).1 It seems better to say that on the above
view of the "sacred," the "secular" is merely its reverse: that is a willingness to accept
change even in basic values. And his 1957 essay here cited seems finally to slip back
into this view (e.g., at 143-44). Perhaps it is just a matter of unfortunate wording at
142.
82. Cf, Carrington, op. cit. supra n. 3, at 197.
83. Becker, cit. supra n. 4, at 142.
84. We have already seen (supra at n, 70) that the "sacred" on this basis will
comprise far more than "the religious, divine, spiritual and so on;" and the "secular"
far more than "the avowedly non-religious, profane, or skeptical." See Becker's 1957
essay at 142; aIM cf. his 1946 work cited supra n.81 at 43-44, 24850. But he still
places religion at the "maximum-plus" end of the sacred-secular spectrum. See the 1957
essay at 144; but cf'. his further caveats at 145.
85. C/' ~ main theme of J.B. Bury, A History of Freedom of Thought (2 ed. 1952),
e.g., at 2-4.
A.
R.
Blackshield
37
norms in new generations will be of vital religious concern; religion
will rank high on our norm-transmission spectrum [question (13)]. And
similarly as to the continuity spectrum [question (15)]. Finally, insofar
as emotionalized attachment to norms is of the essence of religious control,
this view again confirms our finding that such control may often rank
low on the "rationality" spectrums referred to in questions (3) and (4). At
any rate "rationality," in either of the senses there referred to, will not be
of primary religious importance.
(x) The high control-orientation of religion has already been sufficiently stressed; but perhaps something should be added as to its special
linkage with those aspects of interpersonal behaviour which we think of as
"ethical" or "moral."?" We have seen that in animism behaviour towards
natural and spiritual non-human entities is seen as continuous with that
towards other human beings, in an undifferentiated range of "persontechniques." But this continuity works both ways. The greater socioeconomic importance of relations with non-human entities may tend even
from the beginning to associate religious requirements and sanctions especially with these; but the power which such requirements and sanctions
acquire in this area will then extend without interruption to the whole
range of "person-techniques." And as supernatural sanctions come to
cover every kind of human misfortune, notions of ethical wrongdoing will
develop in direct response to this sanctioning power. Not only does this
explanatory justification for ethical prescriptions lie naturally and readily
to hand, but it is often difficult to see what other explanation or justification
there can be. "Morals and religion are inextricably joined-the moral
standards generally accepted in Western civilization being those belonging
to Christianity. Outside Christendom other standards derive from other
religions. None of these moral codes can claim any validity except by
virtue of the religion on which it is based.':"
(Xi) In general, the qualities so far surveyed in relation to "primitive" religions persist into "advanced" religions as well, though with some
shifts and fluctuations in emphasis. But there are at least two interrelated
factors in the rise of "advanced" religions that lead to important changes
in the nature of religion as a social control. The first of these is the great
drive, as human rationality grows, to "rationalize" religion. This drive
presents itself in many manifestations. But "behind them always lies a
stand towards something in the actual world which is experienced as
specifically 'senseless';" a demand "that the world order in its totality is,
could, and should somehow be a meaningful 'cosmos.' "88 This association
86. Cf generally Malinowski, op, cit. supra n. 3.
87. Devlin, op. cit. supra n. 9, at 4-5.
88. Weber, cit. supra n. 43, at 281. Thus in Comte's view (op. cit. supra n. 43,
at 547) "The obscure pantheism which is so rife among German metaphysicians, is only
fetichism generalised and made systematic."
38
Secularism and Social Control
of religious belief with the search for rationally-ordered knowledge is, of
course, at the basis of the religious midwifery of the educational quest for
khowledge, ultimately to be differentiated as a distinct social phenomenon.
But it also leads, within the corpus of religious norms and r..eliefs themselves, to aspiration for-and partial attainment of-s-a much higher place
on the "consistent" rationality spectrum," and perhaps on that of "purposive" rationality as.well [question (4), (3)]. Certainly it is through the
quest for metaphysical, cosmological, "religious" rationality that our appreciation of "purposive" rationality gradually emerges.
(Xii) The other development, reaching back into "primitive" times
but attaining its real significance for social control in the West only in the
Middle Ages, is the development of a specialized priesthood.
Sacerdotal authority is indispensable to render available the civilizing
quality of theological philosophy. All doctrine must have special organs,
to direct its social application; and the necessity is strongest in the case
of religious doctrine, on account of its indefinite character, which compels
a permanent exercise of active discipline, to keep the vagueness and
indefiniteness within bounds.v?
In other words, as religion as a social control develops, it moves to a
steadily burgeoning place on the institutionalization spectrum [question (14)].
This development, moreover, shifts religious control to a significant place on
the purposiveness spectrum [question (5)J, and makes a high degree of control-orientation finally unequivocal. It joins with and intensifies the trend to
conscious rationalization just discussed; and it brings the high placement
of religion on most of the spectrums here reviewed from the level of mere
sociological fact, to the level of conscious aspiration. With reference to at
least half of our twenty-four questions [(13) to (24) inclusive], we can then
say that even when in fact the rating of religion is short of a total one, and
is even declining, the aspiration of the specialized priesthood will still be
for a total rating. Above all, of course, this will be true for what gradually
begin to emerge as the specialized religious values: the priestly aspiration
that human activities "be regulated ritually and, above all, controlled hierocratically" will be asserted specifically in relation to the "quest for salvation."?' But the range of human activities deemed relevant to this quest
will tend to be extended, by the priesthoods of almost all religions, to cover
virtually every aspect of life in human society.
III.
SOME FACTORS IN SECULARIZATION IN THE WEST
Just as in the previous section my purpose was not to describe the
functioning of religion as a social control, but to draw together some of the
89. See M ..x Weber, "Religious Rejections of the World and their Directions,"
in Gerth and Mills, op. cit. supra n. 43, 323 at 324.
90. Comte,2 op. cit. supra n. 43, at 549.
91. See ",;,eber, cit. supra n. 43, at 282-83. And cf, Bury, op, cit. supra n. 85
at 3.
A. R. Blackshield
39
factors that may lead to its assuming such a function, so in the present
J'sectio'}'I am concerned not to recount the history of the gradual shift to
secularism in Western civilization, but merely to list at random some of the
factors that may have contributed to sbe shift. Such an enterprise calls for
caveats similar to those lodged elsewhere in this essay. We must not assume
that these factors or any of them necessarily entail each other; some of
them may indeed squarely conflict with each other. Nor can we assume
that the occurrence of any or even all of these factors will automa tically
induce secularization, nor that when secularization does occur it is always
explicable in terms of such factors. "All institutions expand and decline
for a wide variety of reasons, and religious institutions are no exception.
For example, the contemporary decline in religious institutions may be part
of the general malaise which is offsetting every social institution in a
time of rapid social change.t'v- Even when more specific factors can be
asserted to be in play in a particular time and place, they may be neither
amenable to formulation in sociological laws, nor in any case likely to be
repeated. Nor, finally, can we assume that even when secularization is set
in train, its subsequent progress is always automatic and irreversible. In
many instances secularization has been followed by renewed "sacralization,"
sometimes as a direct result."
One complexity must be stressed above all. We have here hypothesized that secularization is not to be understood in terms of the decline,
dissipation or denigration of religious faith, but rather as a disengagement
of other social controls (particularly the legal and educative) from dependence on religious controls, which in the sphere remaining to them may
continue to be strong. Yet plainly, in a community in which religious
convictions retain their full share of emotional commitment, the emancipation of law and education is not likely to be tolerated. However it be in
theory, the historical fact is that the increasing range and self-sufficiency
of "secular" legal-political and educational institutions has been accompanied by a waning of religious influence. On the one hand, as effective
religious control fades from specific areas of social life, the functions thus
vacated are filled by expanded legal power, whether by conscious lawyers'
movement to fill the breach, or by an unplanned compensatory tendency.
On the other hand, as legal expansion consciously ousts or reduplicates the
functions of religious control, the effectiveness of the latter is weakened not
only in the disputed terrain, but by reaction also throughout the range of
religious operations. Secularism, in short, involve, both a weakening of
religion and a strengthening of law, as factors which mutually accelerate
each other. Whether the causal or dominant role in any particular transfer
92. Martin, essay cited supra n. 6, at 176.
93. This is another important theme of Becker's essay cited supra
173-76.
D.
4; see esp,
40
Secularism and Social Control
of power from religion to the law is to be accorded to religious decline
or to legal aggressiveness, is a question we must decline to answer.
The practical difficulty which confronts us in this interplay between
the shifting fortunes of religion and other social controls Is obvious enough.
In the search for "secularizing" factors we must necessarily look to the
growth of cultural attitudes of indifference, neutrality and hostility to
religion, and of concern with, and positive valuing of, materialist "values."
We cannot explain secularism in terms of secularism itself: we must somehow struggle to take account of the whole of "rolled-up materialism," in
all its amorphous massiveness. The conceptual difficulty is more troublesome still. If secularism is so intimately bound up with the cultural attitudes just mentioned, how can we then maintain our hypothesis that these
cultural attitudes must be kept conceptually distinct from secularism itselfthat "secularism" is one thing and "rolled-up materialism" another? This
difficulty leads V. P. Luthera, in his valuable study of India as a secular
state," to a rather puzzling conclusion. Though his main positions on "the
secular state" closely parallel the present view," he insists that "secularism"
is an altogether different concept; and that this concept does refer to an
anti-religious "ideology," which is "materialistic in tone and holds that
human improvement can be sought through material means alone.'?"
The following paragraphs will often seem to support this interpretation; for "secularism," "rolled-up materialism," and even "anti-religiousness" will here seem to run together. Yet it remains true that these three
notions can be held apart. The growth of "rolled-up materialism" may
for some men have led to some tendency to anti-religiousness, but it does
not necessarily do so. "Rolled-up materialism" has also developed (and
continued to flourisb) side by side with continuations, and even revivals, of
deep religious fervour. We shall even see that religious movements have
played their part in inducing "materialist" attitudes. A fortiori, though
both "rolled-up materialist" and "anti-religious" forces will here be assigned
significant roles in Western secularization, it remains true in the Western
context that forces of both kinds are relevant merely as presuppositions of
secularism, or even merely as probably conducive to it. They are not
constitutive of it. Hence our insistence that the following paragraphs be
understood as no more than a survey of factors contributing to the growth
and consolidation of secularism in the West.
94. Op. cit. supra n. 10.
9S. See esp, id. 14 ff.
96. [d. II. If we are content, as some writers are, to treat "secularism," "the
secular state," and "secularization" as three quite different concepts, Luthera's distinction may be a welcome solution to our whole conceptual dilemma. The present
approach, however, is built upon an assumption that the "secular" limb of all three of
the above concepts must have the same referent in each case.
A. R. Blackshield
41
(i) We have suggested that religion as super-naturalism has a tendency to expand its principle so as to read religious significance and "spirit"
into every aspect of the universe. But once its scope actually reaches allinclusiveness, it can thereafter only ~iminish. Unless some factor (which
may of course. be religion itself) induces social stagnation, in which no
cultural change whatever ensues, a totally spiritualized universe can only
thereafter become progressively secularized-so that "thing-techniques" of
knowing and behaving are progressively freed from religious implications,
and given progressively greater scope. Comte's assumption that allinclusive animism is the initial stage of religion, so that the whole of human
history is a process of steady secularization, is not only quite unsupported
by the evidence, but is actually rendered improbable by such evidence as
we have." But with that caveat, his summation on the present point
remains brilliant. "Everything was God, except God himself; and from
that moment forward, the number of gods steadily decreased.?"
(ii) As long as the notion of retaliatory balance between wrongdoing
and suffering, virtue and good fortune, can be maintained, the hold of
religion over ethical convictions will tend to remain strong. Yet this is an
\ area in which religion itself cannot stand still.
The need for an ethical interpretation of the "meaning" of the distribution of fortunes ... increased with the growing rationality of conceptions
of the world. As the religious and ethical reflections upon the world were
increasingly rationalized, and primitive and magical notions were eliminated, the theodicy of suffering encountered increasing difficulties.
Individually "undeserved" woe was all too frequent; not "good" but
"bad" men succeeded.v?
To this challenge "rational" religion "could produce ... only three .. ,
rationally satisfactory answers"; the Indian doctrine of karma, Zoroastrian
dualism, and "the predestination decree of the deus abscondidusl'P"
Yet predestination does not itself long satisfy a burgeoning sense of justice,
nor Zoroastrian dualism that of rationality. "Even as late as 1906, a mere
minority among a rather considerable number of proletarians gave as
reasons for their disbelief in Christianity conclusions derived from modern
97. Though if, like Comte himself, we are tempted by the liaison dangereuse of
analogy between individual and social development, we may find support for his version
in the theories of gestalt psychology, which imputes to the mind of the newborn child
a state of "massive and relatively undirected" emotional excitation in face of the whole
universe. As the child grows this "global" excitation is differentiated into "selective,
situationally-polarized excitements," with an increasing number of features of the
environment being recognized as not proper foci of excitement .\1 all. See F. Perls,
R.F. Hefferline, and P. Goodman, Gestalt Therapy (1951), esp. 95-96.
98. See Comte, op. et lac. cit. supra n. 43.
59. Weber, cit. supra n. 43, at 275. Cf. Comte, op, cit. supra n. 43, at 554.
100. Ibid.
42
Secularism and Social Control
theories of natural sciences. The majority: .. referred to the 'injustice' of
tbe order of this world."!"
(iii) Quite generally, tbe gradual acquisition and entrenchment in
Western society of what Julius Stone bas called "enclaves" of justice':" has
101. Id.275-76.
102. See J. Stone, Human Law and Human Justice (1965) 338·355; id., op, cit.
supra n. 12, at 555, n. 24. In an unpublished discussion of April 20,1963, Stone
explained:
The "enclaves" of justice cannot be formulated in terms of ideas as distinct from concrete historical situations. In taking stock of the human
situation, it is important to see what areas of dealings between man and
man at the given time have settled down into a stable control by some
norm that for the time being is acknowledged; to recognize what those
areas are; to recognize that the hold we have on those areas first of all
is shadowy at the edges. The right of labour to organise for the purposes
of bargaining concerning the conditions of economic exchange (for
example) is now so well established that it is within what we would call
an enclave of justice. Nevertheless this enclave is very uncertain at the
edges; we are having problems determining how far we ought to allow
the collective power of the unions to impinge on the rights of workers
by controlling access to the union for example. Hence the enclaves are
not directives: they have a core, but no clear edges. Western societies
have developed a capacity for handling the uncertainties of the periphery;
somehow we struggle through them. But our hold on the enclaves is
fragile-this is obvious when one remembers how one of the great societies from the point of view of human culture and civilisation and science
completely lost not only the core of some of the settled enclaves, but the
very core of all the enclaves, namely the respect for the physical integrity
of the human being. Hence it is crucial for the survival of any aspiration to justice, that there be an awareness from generation to generation
of what these enclaves are: of the fact that they have had to be struggled
for, that they have constantly to be re-interpreted to our circumstances.
Without attempting a definition of "enclave," it could be described
as the institutionalisation of men's private ideas of what should be their
relations to their fellows, or their private attitudes to their fellows. The
enclaves themselves are not ideas; they are settled relationships, attitudes, ways of acting, of men to other men. Theorizings about justice...
can be seen as an instrument, a vehicle, a device, for transmitting awareness of the enclaves that are for the moment held, from one generation
to another. The enclaves as held are a product of the experience of
living men and women. Such experience cannot be directly communicated; but it can be rationalised and parts of it can be caught, like the
still of a moving scene, in some theory of justice. Theories of justice
are emanations of the enclaves of justice for the time being. They
serve to transmit to the next generation, they also serve to transfer or
translate ~hat is assumed in the enclaves over the familiar areas of social
life into new areas.
J. Stone, as reported in J. P. Bryson (ed.), "The Enclaves of Justice" (Mimeographed Report on Discussion of Preliminary Working Paper No.1, 1963, The Australian Society of Legal..Philosophy).
A. R. Blackshield
43
led to an increasing reluctance to be content with the inscrutable "divine
justice" on which religious sanctions depend.
It seems apparent that very considerable gains had been made in terms
of human decency, that men had-rome to be animated by an increasing
sensitivity to human pain and suffering. This significant and obscure
development ... contributed most immediately and notably to the rise
of religious toleration. It might be suggested, indeed, that the history
of culture can in one sense be interpreted in terms of the rising and faIling curve of man's sensitivity to cruelty and of his reaction to needless
suffering. There was in religious persecution a very considerable and a
very ugly psychological ana moral element which rr.ust be described as
sadism. Innate barbarism relieved and justified itself by the infliction
of suffering for what was conceived as a moral end..., The mass of men
in England came to make a very sharp and important distinction between punishment imposed for the judicially demonstrable fact of crime
and the infliction of punishment for the retention of opinion. This must
be regarded as one of the most significant cultural gains in human history. These gains of the human race are painfully and slowly attained
and they may be lost before the mass of men realize that they are
threatened. Brutality and sadism are deeply rooted in man's nature. They
are restrained by no surer sanction than a decent attitude toward the
fact of difference, which man's biological nature apparently teaches him
to abhor but which his history has taught him he must respect in the
interest of sheer survivapo3
(iv) In particular, Stone suggests the acceptance in Western societies
of an enclave of justice which is of vital relevance here. This is that "the
adjustment or shifting of advantages and burdens (including rewards and
punishments) for purposes of social control through law, should proceed in
terms of the goods and evils of this world only."?"
Prime importance is attached to the recognition that in the Earthly City
justice requires law, even though it cannot be wholly replaced by law ...
We are not entitled to excuse (as many if not most earlier ages have done)
the continuance of human injustice. by flourishing the blandishments of the
Heavenly City ... Justice is a function of material as well as psychologtcal and spiritual well-being, and of concrete opportunity as well as
abstract liberty. John Cogley has recently affirmed, from the viewpoint
of natural law, that "even its most ardent proponents do not hold that
observance of natural law will produce the Kingdom of God. Natural
law, rather, is directed towards making a decent place of the city of man
by bringing moral order to the human communities found on earth."I05
103. W. K. Jordan, 4 The Development of Religious Toleration in England (1940)
476-77.
104. Stone, work first cited supra n. 102, at 341.
105. [d. 342. The quotation is from J. Cogley, Introduction to id. (ed.), Natural
Law and Modern Society (1963) at 27-28. On the historica I emergence and influence of
these humanitarian values on the basis of "secularized" natural law, see Groethuysen,
Encyc. Soc. Sc, article cited supra n. 15, at 632, 634; J. Bowle, Western Political Thought
(1947) 376·398; Bury, op. cit. supra n. 85, at 101ff. And see esp, as to the crucial role
of John Locke, R. H. Cox, "Justice as the Basis of Political Order in Locke" (1963)
6 Nomos 243.
44
Secularism and Social Control
(I') Underlying the factors so far discussed is a basic paradox to
whic~Max
Weber drew attention.
The general result of the modern focrn of thoroughly rationalizing the
conception of the world and of the way of life, theoretically and
practically, in a purposive manner, has been that religion has been
shifted into the realm of the irrationaJ. ... The irrational elements in the
rationalization of reality have been the loci to which the irrepressible
quest of intellectualism for the possession of supernatural values has
been compelled to retreat. That is the more so the more denuded of
irrationality the world appears to be. The unity of the primitive
image of the world, in which everything was concrete magic, has tended
to split into rational cognition and mastery of nature, on the one hand,
and into "mystic" experiences, on the other. The inexpressible contents
of such experiences remain the only possible "beyond," ... an incorporeal
and metaphysical realm in which individuals intimately possess the
holy. Where this conclusion has been drawn without any residue, the
individual can pursue his quest for salvation only as an individual. This
phenomenon appears in some form, with progressive intellectualist
rationalism, wherever men have ventured to rationalize the image of the
world as being a cosmos governed by impersonal rules. Naturally it
has occurred most strongly among religions and religious ethics which
have been quite strongly determined by genteel strata of intellectuals
devoted to the purely cognitive comprehension of the world and of its
"meaning." This was the case with Asiatic and, above all, Indian world
religions. For all of them, contemplation became the supreme and
ultimate religious value accessible to man,l06
The point that "rational" religion fosters the emergence of individualism calls for further elaboration (and some qualification) in the succeeding
paragraphs. The further paradoxes introduced by the "rationalism" of
Indian religions will be explored in section VI. We are here concerned only
with Weber's main point, that religious "rationalism" leads ineluctably
to a stress on religious "irrationalism," and so to confinement of religion
to concern with the "other-worldly." At this point, at least for the West,
is undeniable for alI its paradox. Not only is religion confined (as it
were) to islands of irrationality in a sea of rationalism, but those islands
tend to be visited less and less frequently, and less and less urgently. Not
only (in our present terms) is the spread of religion in terms of interests
affected [question (17)] drastically curtailed, but even in the areas that
remain to it, its rating in terms of importance to society, actual influence,
and emotional commitment [questions (I 8), (19) and (20)} is increasingly
lowered as man's "capacity for critical analysis" increases.v"
106. Weber, cit. supra n. 43, at 281-82.
107. Cf. Carrington, op, cit. supra n. 3, at 197. Probably this is not what is meant
by Cornte's generalization iop, cit. supra n. 43, at 550) that "perfect realization" of the
"civilizing faculty" of religion presupposes its "intellectual decline;" and conversely
"that its greater intellectual extension is coincident with its smaller social influence."
In his context, indeed, those phrases are quite puzzling.
A. R. Blackshield
45
The fact that in Christian history the "irrationalization of religion"
reaches a peak in late medieval scholasticism-e-the pinnacle of theological
rationality-simply underlines the paradox. The scholastic distinction
between faith and knowledge calved out preemptive space for a theology
based on revelation, but also asserted the possibility of a philosophical
theology of thetruths perceptible by the human reason-including not only
all physical knowledge but metaphysical knowledge of God. Aquinas,
"by interpreting reason as merely the preliminary to faith, minimized the
antagonism between rational knowledge and revelation." But
the more radical contention of Duns Scotus and Ockham that all
doctrines of faith are permeated with contradictions which the reason
is incapable of accepting 108 led to the conclusion that reason can
operate only in the realm of verifiable experience and not in the supernatural world. In the eyes of the nominalists therefore a line of
demarcation had to be drawn between the sphere of knowledge accessible
to the human reason and the sphere of faith posited on ecclesiastical
authority. It was no longer a question, as in the case of Aquinas, of a
difference in degree as between natural and revealed theology but of
a difference in kind as between theology and science. The distinction
between faith and knowledge was given a new and even stronger
emphasis by the Protestant reformer Luther, who, in accordance with
his conception of faith as an immediate relation between the individual
seeker after salvation and God as revealed in Christ, rigidly excluded
from the religious experience all knowledge, even of supernatural matters,
and all metaphysical rational knowledge of God,109
(vi) The above passage returns us again to the point that Western
civilization, partly under the influence of "rationalized" religion itself,
has shown over the centuries an increasingly central concern with the
intellectual and spiritual liberty of the individual human being. The
relaxation of religious control which this entails is obvious.
The Englishman's attitude ... now is that a man's religion is his private
affair; he may think of another man's religion that it is right or wrong,
true or untrue, but not that it is good or bad. In earlier times that was
not so; a man was denied the right to practise what was thought of as
heresy, and heresy was thought of as destructive of society.uo
The growth of the religious toleration is of course a product of, as
well as a factor in, a great many of the interrelated trends which I here
enumerate; but Western individualism is one important contributing factor.
And this individualism is also bound up with the trends to ethical sensitivity and 'earthly" justice already mentioned with the humanist exaltation
of man that gave birth to such trends in the Renaissance, and with the
practical materialism presently to be discussed.
108. See Stone, work first cited supra n. 102, at 55-60.
109. Groethuysen, Encyc, Soc. Sc. article cit. supra n. 15, at 631,
qO. Devlin, op. cit. supra n, 9, at ~,
.
46
Secularism and Socia! Control
(vii) There is a further insight of Weber's, however, which seems
paradoxically at odd, with the stress on individualism; and this again,
like his point about rationality, contains a further, internal, paradox. Just
as the rationalization of religion seems to strengthen religious control but
in fact operated in the long run in the West to weaken this, so too with
institutionalization. That this trend militates against individualism is
obvious enough;'!' but what Weber now adds is that this anti-individualism
may itself foster secularization. For the contemplative, otber-worldy,
"passive" type of religion which tends not to be secularized is dependent
for its operation On the private pursuit of religious transcendence by what
Weber calls "virtuosos" of religion. "'Virtuoso' religiosity is opposed to
mass religiosity;'?" and conversely the institutionalized authority of a
"church"
fights principally against all virtuoso-religion and against its autonomous
development. For the church, being the holder of institutionalized
grace, seeks to organize the religiosity of the masses and to put its own
officially monopolized and mediated sacred values in the place of the
autonomous and religious status qualifications of the religious virtuosos.
By its nature, that is, according to the interest-situation of its
officeholders, the church must be "democratic" in the sense of making
the sacred values generally accessible. This means that the church
stands for a universalism of grace and for the ethical sufficiency of all
those who are enrolled under its institutional authority,l13
To see secularism as facilitated by the exclusion of "virtuosos" may
still seem somewhat strained.'!' But church "democratization" may also
support secularization-and even, after all, individualization-in a way
which is more substantial, though longer in coming. In the clear-cut
distinction within religious institutions between priestly hierarchy and laity,
lay incompetence and ignorance in spiritual matters is at first taken for
granted. In some instances, notably the ancient Maya religion of the
central Americas, the increasing esotericism of the institutionalized faith
has built up "extreme authoritarianism" of an inner band of initiates whose
interpretation could not be questioned by ordinary men," leading in the
short run to a high degree of social stability under firm religious control,
but in the long run to moral, intellectual, and social decay ... and, in the
case of the Mayas, to the collapse of the whole civilization.P" But in
Ill. Thus Bury op. cit. supra n, 85, at 15, points out that in ancient Greece,
traditionally the "home" of Western freedom of thought, such freedom was made
possible by "the absence of sacerdotalism. The priests of the temples never became
powerful castes, tyrannizing over the community in their own interests and able to
silence voices raised af,amst religious beliefs."
112. Weber, op , cit. supra n. 43, at 287.
113. Id. 288.
114. Though Weber's point was anticipated by David Hurne, Essays: Moral ,
Political and Literary (1882) 145 fl', And see on its fuller significance infra at nn. 205-210.
lIS. Carrington, op. cit. supra n. 3, at 255-56.
A. R. Blackshield
47
European Christendom such extreme results of the distinction between
priesthood and laity were forestalled until in the sixteenth century that
distinction was completely transforrned.v" The Protestant Reformation,'!"
by eliminating esoteric accumulations of dogma and restricting church
doctrine to theBible, rendered the entire body of doctrine accessible to
the layman, at toe same time eliminating priestly monopoly of the
sacraments.!" At first this may seem like a de-institutionalization of
Protestant Christianity: and on this basis the hypothesis has sometimes
been ventured that Protestant religious zeal, at first fiery, soon became
dissipated into religious indifference for want of purposive control.!" The
116. The history of the preceding five centuries was indeed one of a constant,
never-quite-crystallized backing and advancing towards the clear emergence of the laity
which the Reformation finally brought about. For a brilliant survey of these medieval
trends as embodied in the so-called mendicant brotherhoods, and notably the Franciscan
order, see A. von Harnack, Monasticism: Its Ideals and History and The Confessions
of St. Augustine (1901) 81-116. V. H. H. Green, Renaissance and Reformation (1952)
1I1ff., rightly sees the Protestant movement as essentially a continuation of these older
trends.
117. In those countries where Roman Catholicism remained the dominant form
of Christianity, the long-forestalled movement to secularization within the Church
institution found a less easy and in the long run a more traumatic fruition. The Catholic
church
persisted in its refusal to accept a set of doctrines which would be as
intelligible to the amateur as to the carefully trained priest; the body of
explicit dogma might be whittled away, but that far larger body of implicit dogma which must be received on the authority of the church was
held to be sacrosanct. Under the circumstances the only alternative for
the Catholic layman who sought some form of individual self-expression
was to transfer his questionings and activities to a sphere in which the
church had no jurisdiction.
In France, for example, the layman first sought through movements such as Jansenism
"to create a more vital role for himself inside a church which was committed to a policy
of ignoring him," but failing in this transferred his activity
to the social and political realm. And since the Catholic church had
denied him any part in theological matters, he was determined that the
forces of clericalism should be rigidly excluded from participation in
secular affairs .... [T'[his worldly, antitheological, anticlerical point of view
coincided with the rise of the middle class. The cultured bourgeois,
unable to find a place for himself as a layman in the church and resenting
the partiality shown by the ecclesiastical heirarchy to the clerical
expounder of doctrine, broke away from the church altogether and became
a prime mover in the increasingly radical attacks on the other-worldliness
of the traditional theologians.
Groethuysen, Encyc, Soc. Sc, article cited supra n. 15, at 633-34.
118. /d. 632·33 ; cf'. Max Weber, "The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism," in Gerth and Mills, op. cit. supra n. 43, 302 at 317. And on the linkage with
individualism see id. 321. The above analysis picks out only a few' main strands in the
complex and contradictory impact of Protestant sectarianism. For a fuller analysis,
with many additional insights also here relevant, see the classic statement in E. Troeltsch,
1 The So rial Teaching of the Christian Churches (transl. O. Wyon, 1931) 331-343.
H9. See Hume, op. cit. supra n. 114, at 148-150.
48
Secularism and Social Control
deeper analysis is rather that
In Protestant countries ... there developed a new type of layman, who
strove to carryover the Old Testament doctrines which he had absorbed
as a member of the religious community into the everyday world
where he moved as citizen and member of the social community. At
the outset this process of identifying the ideals of the social and religious
communities retarded the spread of secularism. Soon, lr,:,wever, as a
result of the bitter struggles between the various sects and confessions
it became imperative to discover certain basic elements of social control
on which all citizens, whatever their ecclesiastical affiliation, could
agree. 120
(viii) The bitterness of sectarian struggle was, of course, a main
practical factor leading to the growth of religious toleration, and to the
secular "separation" of Church and State.'>' So long as Western Europe
could be identified with "Christendom," with religious unity underlying
and reduplicating political unity in a massive overall feudal "commonwealth
of Christian men, working in a harmonious hierarchy under God,"1Z2 the
overlapping and intermingling of Church and State controls could be
tolerated and, indeed, desired. The stability of "the feudal archetype of
order through a firm social hierarchy" was dependent on Christianity.'!"
Yet once religious unity was shattered by the proliferation of Reformed
and Protestant sects, legal-political reliance on religion was not only
stripped of its efficaciousness as an inducement to social stability and
order, but became rather a constant provocation and aggravation of
disorder and disruption. Aggrieved minorities and zealous orthodoxies
were equally led to senseless and incontinent controversy, and even to
bloodshed. "Every historian who has catalogued the historical factors
which made for religious liberty and separation of church and state ... would
doubtless agree that these institutions came into being under the pressure
of their necessity for the public peace. "124 "The convincing fact of religious
diversity imposed a spiritual necessity of religious liberty quite as
persuasively as it suggested the political necessity for the legal toleration
of orderly dissent"!" Moreover, the social interests and spiritual interests
thus tending to tolerance and to secularization were powerfully
reinforced by individual interests of substance. "A many-sided business
community could escape constant friction and obstruction only if it were
free to absorb elements drawn from a multitude of different sources, and
if each of these elements were free to pursue its own way of life, and ... in
120. Groethuysen, article cited supra n. 15. at 633.
121. See generally Bury, op, cit. supra n. 85, at 72-100.
122. Bowie, op. cit. supra n, 105, at 194. The whole of Bowle's Book Two (pp.
145-244) is a capital study of the shifting relations between religious and legal-political
controls from the dj\wn of the Middle Ages to their decline.
123. Stone, work first cited supra n. 102, at 4~. And see infra n. 145.
124. J. C. Murray, S. J., We Hold These Trlllhs (1960) 58. ct. Lurhera, op. cit,
supra n. to, at 20·21.
125. Jordan,"4 op, cit. supra n, 103, at 482,
A. R. Blackshield
49
that age the same thing to pursue its own religion."126 "Persecution and
discrimination were as bad for business affairs as they were for the affairs
of the sOUl."127
(ix) The religious fragmentation of the old feudal unity was of
course a late stage in the break-up of feudalism, and was interwoven with
many other factors contributing to this break-up.!" Perhaps chief among
these was the growth of thriving international commerce, which sent waves
of worldliness, mobility, and habituation to change rippling through the
stagnation of feudal society. All these factors militated against the fixation
of religious control.
While the States were fighting one another, trade found out and
levelled the road that lead from one nation to another, and established
between them a relation of exchange of goods and ideas; a pathfinder
in the wilderness, a herald of peace, a torchbearer of culture. 129
No doubt it is easy to romanticize the extent to which the merchants
and tradesmen of the later Middle Ages were consciously moving away
from feudalism to new social patterns of economic individualism.P'' Yet
the rise of international commerce, and of intra-national regrouping
around commercial towns, certainly had this effect. Not only were
worldly, materialist "business" concerns increasingly recognized as
worthwhile,'!' and technologies developed for the spread of new ideas
and for the layman's sharing of old ones,132 but the whole traditional
culture was permeated by a new "open texture." On the one hand,
economic individualism leads to moral independence as well; economic
laissez-fair e fosters culturallaissez-faire. 133
The more adept the members of the middle class became in regulating
their lives according to fixed principles and the more they were made
aware by their daily experiences in the economic realm that they could
rely upon their own foresight, the less they felt moved to turn to the
church for guidance or support. The traditional idea of an otherworldly
sphere, over which the church exercised a divinely ordained monopoly,
126. R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926) 205.
127. Murray, op. cit. supra n. 124, at 59.
128. See Green, op, cit. supra n, 116, at 18-24 and passim; Bowl e, loco cit. supra
n.122.
129. Rudolf von Ihering, Law as a Means to an End (transl. I. Husik, 1913) 175.
130. See, e. g., C. E. Ayres, Toward a Reasonable Socicty: The Values of Industrial Civilization (1961) 1'12-73.
131. See Green, op, cit. supra n. 116, at 23.
132. The contribution of technology, and especially of the printing press, to
Western secularism and materialism, is a main theme of Ayres, ('p. cl ', supra n, 130.
See esp. id, 177-183, 1%-206,277-79.
133.
~ee id,
45·47.
Secularism and Social Control
50
was gradually robbed of the bulk of its significance.iss
On the other hand,
When a man is acquainted only with the habits of his own country, they
seem so much a matter of course that he ascribes them to nature, but
when he travels abroad and finds totally different habits ani standards of
conduct prevailing, he begins to understand the power of custom; and
learns that morality and religion are matters of latitude. This discovery
tends to weaken authority.... 135
(x) In section II animism was defined as "the spiritualization of
materiality," and fetishism as "the materialization of spirituality." An
important strand in the interrelation of factors giving rise to the modern
"secular" culture of the West was the realization that spirituality and
materiality are not in fact to be identified in either of these ways. In
other words, "thing-techniques" as distinct from "person-techniques"
have come to be seen as the rational way of relating human activity to the
physical world. The development and sophistication of such techniques
have increasingly preoccupied Western man; and in this preoccupation he
has come to insist on dispensing with the limitations and the confusions
that spiritualization involves.
In this development trade and technology have both 'played their
part; but the factor of fundamental importance has been the rise of
science-"the increasingly pronounced divergence between religion, which
sought to cut free from the confusion of rationalistic speculation, and
scientific inquiry, which felt the necessity of discarding fideistic presuppositions."136 The whole scientific movement grew up within the "pattern of
compartmentalization"137 between knowledge as the realm of reason, and
religion as the realm of faith, whose origins in scholastic theology have
already been noted. The scholars and philosophers of the Renaissance
brought new strength and sophistication to the separation of these realms,
and "their indefatigable interest in the manifold phenomena of the
immediate world of nature and of man served to dim the prestige of
theological otherworldliness 'and fideism." Finally, in the seventeenth
century,
The comprehensive metaphysical systems of Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza
and Leibniz represented the first sustained attempt to construct a rational
picture of the universe on the basis of scientifically established knowledge. In perpetuating and amplifying this type of inquiry the eighteenth
century gradually shifted the emphasis of secularism from explanation in
metaphysical terms of universal ultimates to a more empiric and intensive
quest of knowledge in its concrete practical :manifestations. 138
·~-----r
Groethuysen, Encyc. Soc. Sc. article cited supra n. 15, at 634.
Bury, op, cit. supra n. 85, at 17 (as to ancient Greece).
Groethuysen, article cited at 631.
Ayres, op, cit. supra n, 130, at 43.
138. Groethuysen, article cited at 631. And cf, the citations supra n, 105.
134.
135.
136.
137.
A. R. Blackshield
51
Certain undesirable effects of this sharp compartmentalization will
be referred to in section V. Yet
It may be true that such a scient ific-technological revolution as the last
five centuries have witnessed could have come about in no other way. If
the political ,and ecclesiastical authorities of feudal Europe had somehow
been able to realize what was going to happen to their world in consequence of the innovations by which they were so vaguely troubled, it
seems most likely that every trace of every novelty would have been
obliterated, and that Europe would have been sealed off from penetration
by such foreign influences as the Arabic numerals and Chinese block
printing, just as Islam was actually sealed off from those "graven mages"
and China from all the tricks of the "outer barbarians." Indeed, it may
be that the wonder is not that Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake
but that Copernicus and Galileo were not. The compartmentalization
of Western culture may indeed be the price at which alone Western
civiliza tion could have been won.l 39
(xi) Some religions may permit (and even encourage) secularization
much more than others; it might even be possible to construct a typology
of religions arranged in gradations of receptiveness to secularism. The
overwhelmingly dominant religion of Western civilization has been
Christianity, which would be drawn towards the "pro· secular" reaches
of such a typology by at least two factors.
First, Christianity is self-proclaimedly an "other-worldly" religion,
confining itself by its own teaching to concerns which do not impinge on
or detract from those of political governance of this world. The "separation of powers doctrine" with which our present hypothesis equates
secularism is itself a Christian doctrine. "Render unto Caesar the things
that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's."140 As
John Bowle has sharply observed, this "does not sound, on the face of it,
a socially subversive attitude; it is in making the distinction at all that the
political sting of the remark lies." Social control had hitherto been
universally a matter for spiritual and political synthesis; "to separate
the religious and social spheres is to strike at the roots of this position."141
Second, moreover, the demands that Christianity makes are squarely
addressed to this world: Christ exemplifies what Weber calls "the emissary
type of prophecy," as distinct from "exemplary prophecy" which "points
out the path to salvation by exemplary Jiving, usually by a contemplative
and apathetic-ecstatic life."142 Weber hypothesized that where God is
139. Ayres, op, cit. 44.
140. Mark 13. 7. The interpretation of this text is the subject of an unpublished
thesis by my friend R.C.L. Moffat, under the title, What is Caesar's? (thesis submitted
for the degree of Master of Laws, University of Sydney). Its significance in the present
context is well discussed by Luthera, op, cit. supra n. 10, at 15-17.
141. Op. cit. supra n. 105, at 106.
142. Weber, cit. supra n. 43, at 285.
52
Secularism and Social Control
conceived as an active Being, His prophecy will be of the active, "emissary"
type, and believers will thereby also be led to active, affirmative exertion
in the terrestrial world. Where on the other hand God is conceived as
"a supreme and static being," as in Indian and Chinese religions, prophets
and believers will be led to similar passivity and negativism with regard to
the affairs of this world.':" Christian "freedom" is "in spite of all vacillation, not only a freedom of the individual/rom the world, but the freedom
of Christendom for the service of God in the world."lH So that in the
West the believing Christian is simultaneously encouraged to respect the
competence in its own field of legal-political social control, and to busy
himself with active interest in his "worldly" affairs.>"
(xii) The influence of this latter limb of pro-secular Christian teaching has been seen in several of the preceding paragraphs. It was exhaustively studied by Weber himself whose best-known work showed now
active Christian concern in worldly busy-ness found its logical conclusion
in the rise of capitalism in the wake of the Protestant Reforrnation.!"
Perhaps, however, a word should be added as to the later political-philosophical development of the former limb-the recognition of "what is
Caesar's" as an autonomous realm-as this was combined by medieval
scholasticism with the Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy of the state. It
was by means of this combination of "indigenous" Christian doctrine with
"alien" Greek ideas, that the "rationalism" so triumphantly exemplified
by Aquinas was able to move Christian thought away from the traditional
Augustinian view of the state as at best a negative institution, to acceptance of the contrary view. This was that the state in itself is an institution
of positive value, entrusted with the functions of perpetuating in this world
the social conditions for attainment of salvation in the next.r" Thereafter,
143. [d. 285-86.
144. Von Harnack, op, cit. supra n. 116, at 82-83. And see id, 82-110 passim for a
remarkable study of the working-out in the later Middle Ages of the Christian ambivalence between "worldliness" and "other-worldliness."
145. At first. of course, this tendency leads to theocratic rather than secular
aspirations. See Bury, op: cit. supra n. 85, at 37-53: Bowle, op, cit. supra n. 105, at
196-203. The latter work, at 109-115, encounters some difficulty in explaining this
development because the author takes Christian "other-worldliness" too much at face
value. The fact is, of course, that the very frustrations of worldly aspirations by
mediaeval theocracy ultimately contributed greatly to the secular trend. See Green, op,
cit. supra n. 116, at 19-22.
146. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capit alism (transl. T.
Parsons, 1930). C/ id., essay cited supra n. 118, p as iim; and id., essay cited supra
n. 43, at 29J. And see G. O'Brien, An Essay on the Economic Effects of the Reformation
(1923); R.H. Tawxey, op. cit. supra n. 126; V.H.H. Green, "Religion and the Riseof
Capitalism," printed as Appendix I to id.,op. cit. supra n. 116, at 393-401, and other
literature there cited.
147. Groethuysen, Encyc, Soc. Sc. article cited supra n. 15, at 631-32. And see
Bowle,op. cit. s/1pra n, 105, at 204-210; T. Gilby, Principality and Polity (1958).
A. R. Blackshleld
~s
autonomous national sovereignty burgeoned, it
bolstered by the ramifications of this philosophy.
53
was progressively
In the later stages of the protracted contest between imperium and
sacerdotiumg number of secularly minded thinkers, like Dante, formulated
the thesis that the temporal ruler was entitled to exercise power in his
own right.. .. 1J8 The Renaissance marked a distinct stage in the
direction of secularism while the Reformation tended to perpetuate
older ecclesiastical and otherworldly attitudes. While Machiavelli and
his numerous disciples emphasized the duty of the pr.nce to rule independently according to his own canons, luther advocated the subordination
of temporal institutions to the religious, and Calvin, drawing upon Old
Testament models, succeeded in reesta blishing a theocratic type of
government. The seventeenth century in turn was predominantly
secularistic... (due mainly to) the revival and systematic elaboration of
stoic natural law by Althusius, Grotius and Hobbes. According to the
new rationalistic interpretation, which proceeded from more or less
universalistic premises regarding the nature of man, the essence and
function of the state is determined... by its own inherent characteristics
and aims. Thus in place of the older doctrines of a universal mediaeval
empire existing as counterpart to the universal church, there emerged
the conception of an independent, sovereign state. The universally
valid laws of nature are utilized by the state in the pursuit of its own
particular aims .... Therefore these national objectives are the crucial
determinants in the actual application of rational political principles, in
the sense that these principles undergo modification in the process of
adaptation to the genius of a particular political system. This new
approach eventuated, with Montesquieu, in a type of political relativism
which in striking contrast to the theological claims to absolute and
universal truth declared that political maxims are valid only in so far as
they take account of shifting and changing local variations.t rs
IV.
CAN THE "SEPARATION OF POWERS" HYPOTHESIS BE SUSTAINED?
It is clear that out of this confluence of factors in Western civilization there has emerged a social aspiration to "secularism" in roughly the
sense here hypothesized. Men generally in Western societies do believe
that the state and its law should be free from the influence of particular
religious institutions and beliefs, and should be concerned with goals of
public order, material welfare and social utility, rather than with spiritual
salvation. They do believe that the pursuit and transmission of knowledge
should be independent of religious control, and should be indeed a fully
autonomous field of social activity, whose only controls are values of
scholarship and wisdom, and the fearless pursuit of truth. And they do
also believe that neither legal nor educative institutions should denigrate
-,
148. Cf. generally as to these developments Bowle, op, cit. supra D. 105, at 231309, and esp. as to Dante 233-36. And (f. even within the scholastic tradition the
remarkable fourteenth century formulations of Marsilio of Padua, on whom see id.
236·241; Green, op. cit. 23.
149. Groethuysen, article cited at 632.
54
Secularism and Social Control
,.
from religion, but should leave religious institutions free to flourish in the
spiritual realm, and indeed should act where necessary to ensure this
freedom. In a vague, impressionistic unfocused way, secularism as a
"separation of powers" in the field of social control is an established ideal,
or topoS;150 of Western civilization; and vagueness and lack of focus are
after all characteristic of topoi.
Yet if we want to ask how far these secularist ideals have been
attained in Western (or Eastern) civilization as a matter of sociological
fact, or even how far we think such ideals ought to be attained, vagueness
and lack of focus will not do. In order to put concrete meaning into our
"separation" hypothesis, we found it necessary at the threshold to seek a
general understanding of the nature of the field of social control which
is to be apportioned; and to attempt a more precise characterization of
each of the controls amongst which the apportionment of functions is to
be made. In both these endeavours we were able to make use of twentyfour questions concerning what is to be apportioned; can we also make
use of these same questions in trying to say how the apportionment is to
be made?
There is one way in which all twenty-four questions might potentially
be relevant. Question (2), as to concrete applicability, may serve as an
example. An examination of this question in relation to social controls
generally might show that while there is a need for social controls with a
high degree of concrete applicability, there is also a need for vaguer, more
flexible, more generalized controls; so that placement of various controls
along this spectrum might be one way of allocating to each its "appropriate" kind of contribution to overall control. If, for instance, we find
that law is characterized by the specific, immediate applicability of the
norms which it provides, then even though we recognize that such
norms need to be complemented by (and even based upon) more generalized
"ideas" or "principles" or "values," we might want to conclude that
law should keep out of the attempt to provide these, and should be content
when it needs such generalities to draw on other social controls. But as a
matter of fact I myself would not want to say this; this kind of division of
functions seems to bring confusion rather than clarity.
In turn, therefore, to certain limited groups of our twenty-four
questions whose significance for control "separation" is more direct, and
perhaps more reliable. These directly relevant questions fall into two
groups. One group centres on questions (16), (17) and (21): over how
many people, over pursuit of what interests, and with the aid of what
range of sanctidns, does the particular control exert its power?
150. For the notion of "tcpoi" as here employed see J. Stone, Legal System and
Lawyers' Reasonings (1964) 327 If., esp. 333-35; J. Tammelo, "The Law of Nations and
the Rhetorical Tradition of Legal Reasoning' (1964) 13 Ind. Y.B. Int. Affairs 227, at
235 ff., esp. 242-45.
.
A. R. Blackshield
55
In the attempt to assign a social control to a particular role and keep
it there, anyone of the questions may be decisive. The fact that a particular control by its nature is capable of wielding only certain limited
sanctions, may be an excellent reason for assigning to it a correspondingly
limited share of the interests to be affected. But, at any rate for law,
religion and education, the more probable situation is just the converse:
the sanctions al1~cated to these means of control will depend on the range
and nature of the interests respectively affected.
Again, with controls dependent on particular social groups (the
archetype here being the family) the natural limitation of control to the
members of the particular group in each case is usually determinative of
the place of the group among social controls generally. The range of
interests to be affected, and the allocation of sanctions, will become largely
secondary matters, "naturally" determined by reference to the limited
numbers of persons involved. Insofar as law, religion and education may
by institutionalization or exclusiveness become specially associated with
specific sub-groups of the society, this kind of calculation may be relevant
to allocation of their roles in overall social control; but again it cannot be
determinative.
For law, religion and education are all at least potentially applicable
not to isolated social sub-groups, but to the all-inclusive social group as a
whole. Accordingly the primary allocation of competence amongst them
must be by reference to the interests to be affected. We might say, for
example, as to religion that however all-inclusive its primal social ambit,
and despite all the caveats in section II (d), religious forces have now become
distinctively concerned with the pursuit of "other-worldly" interests, with
the attainment of "salvation," "redemption" bhakti, or "grace" through
non-material means. On a similar basis of cultural "compartmentalization" (we might add) education must be distinctively concerned with the
pursuit of truth, the discovery of knowledge, and its transmission to future
generations. And similarly, law must be concerned with the pursuit of
justice and regularity in relations between man and man, and with the
pursuit of peace, order and social stability as conducive to these ends.
Within the respective spheres thus specified, each is to be supreme and
autonomous, free from interference and even supervision by the others.
Yet this kind of "separation of powers" amongst law, religion, and
education flies counter to every implication of our survey of these forces as
social controls in section II above. In the first place, we saw that in the
historical development of social controls, specific controls-are not characterized by specific functions in the way just postulated. The above allocations
of functions can at best represent analytical rationalizations made late in
the historical process. In the second place, our sketches of law education
56
Secularism and Social Control
and religion in their function as social controls have surely displayed at least
one common tendency. It is a tendency which may indeed be common
to all social controls, or at any to those Which become specifically
institutionailzed. This is that once 'a particular social phenomenon gains
a foothold in social control through recognized competence to control
human behaviour with regard to certain objects, or in certain fields of
activity, its influence and competence-at least in aspiration-will tend
to expand until they "cover the field" of social control. Law, religion and
education-and, for that matter, morality, economic competition, the
family, and group and personal influences general1y-do not keep making
to their alloca ted roles in the fabric of social control, but work to further or
frustrate each other in a thousand ways. They overlap, reduplicate and
compete with each other in a constant ongoing interactive process.P' And
if we think that in Western nations this all-inclusive involvement is
even more true oflaw than of religion or education, that is only because
we believe that law has established itself/or the time being as the dominant
social control.
This idea that one social control can be "dominant" over others
directs us to the second group of our twenty-four questions which seems
special1y relevant to the present view of secularism. This group brings
together those questions touching on the relationship amongst social
controls inter se: questions (10), (13), (23) and (24), as to external
limitation, norm-transmission, independence, and "control of controls."
In the light of these questions, the difficulties already encountered with
the "separation of powers" notion final1y become crystallized in the
following ways.
(i) Even if the wielders of competing social controls aspire to
independence of each other, they do not and cannot aspire to total freedom
from mutual influence. We may insist that the state and law be not
subservient to religion; but the men wielding powers of state and law (not
to mention the subjects to whose lives the law must be tailored) are
frequently religious men, and their norm-creation and norm-application
must inevitably be Shaped by religious norms. Conversely religion may
151. The continued involvement of all social controls with law is a main theme
of Stone, op. cit. supra n. 12, esp. at 746-49; on the continued involvement of all with
education see J.K. Hart, A Social Interpretation of Education (1929) 247 if. And see G.
Santayana, "Liberalism and Culture," in id., Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies
(1922); T. Parsons""Propaganda and Social Control," in id., Essays in Sociological
Theory (revised ed. 1954) 142, at 143 if. But for fears that even the organic "system of
interdependent structures and processes" of which Parsons there speaks i~ too systematic
a model to be usefnl, see Stone, op, cit. 16 ff., esp, 27-28~
A. R. Blackshield
57
demand to be independent of state control and state interference; but it
must still live and move within a law-state, and its norms must be shaped
accordingly.v" In other words, asocial control can have a high place on
the "independence" spectrnm [question (23)], and yet also have a high
'place on the, "external limitation" spectrum [question (10)]. If our
"separation" hypothesis involves denial of these truths, that hypothesis
cannot be sustained.
(ii) Even if we can allocate specific functions and subject-matters to
specific social controls, certain functions connected with social control
transcend "all such allocations. One of these functions is perhaps that of
social control itself; another is the transmission of norms. This may, as
we have seen, be peculiarly associated with education; but it is also of
central importance to religion. Ritualization and "sacralization" are vital
techniques for ensuring the continuity of social norms through generations.
Even law-making itself may be seen in one aspect as simply a technique
for projecting our present norms into future generations. Apart from this
overlapping of functions, there may be overlap in the need for functions;
and here, too, norm-transmission offers apt examples. Demands are
frequently heard in Western countries for educational institutions to include
in their curricula some introduction to the community's rules of law; and
from the religious side for a similar introduction to religion. 153 If educational institutions were ever to establish a true monopoly of "the
transmission of culture" (as our "separation" hypothesis might seem to
suggest), these pressures would obviously be enormously increased. But,
of course, we have only to conceive of such a monopoly to see that it is
really inconceivable.
(iii) In fact, when we spell out the exact implications of the
"separation of powers" hypothesis, we see that it commits us to several
propositions which are simply nonsensical. Certainly it makes sense to
say that law shall be free from religion; that religion shall be free from
law; perhaps that education shall be free from religion; and possibly even
that religion shall be free from education (in the sense that education shall
not be used to instil anti-religious ideas). But it is difficult to see what it
means to say that education shall be free from law; and one shudders to
think what it might mean to say that law shall be free from education!
(iv) Even if the "separation of powers" model could be made
meaningful, this could only be on the basis of a major sociological inquiry
on the lines which section II of this essay has barely sketched. The fact
that the "separation" model requires us to carry such unmanageable
152. This, too, is a main theme of the Jines of thought proceeding from Aquinas.
See the citations supra n. 147.
153. See infra n. 177.
58
Secularism and Social Control
impediments on our excursion into the study of secularism does not of
course mean that the model is false. But it does mean that it is too
cumbersome to be a cognitively useful model.
(v) It ought in any case to be clear that we cannot really discuss
secularism in terms of only the three social controls of la'iv, religion and
education. Once we think of a carving-up of the field of social control
amongst particular competing controls, there is no justification for picking
out three controls for special attention: all social controls must be brought
into the picture. This, after all, merely reflects COmmon usage of the
notion of "secularism." We may speak of the secular approach to
marriage, for example, meaning that the family as a social institution
should not be controlled by the fact that it happens to be a religious
institution. Again, we can speak of a secular ethics, meaning a set of
ethical values whose content is not dictated by religious ideas. Secularism
can then be "defined" only by providing a matrix form, "Secularism is
the attempt to establish an autonomous sphere of .... purged of
supernatural, fideistic presuppositions,"154 the blank being filled in with
the appropriate objective in each case. 155
(vi) The very analogy which our use of the term "separation of
powers" imports, should warn us of the dangers that come from conceptual
attachment to such notions.!" Even if we can in an impressionistic way
allot specific functions to specific social controls, we should recognize that
what is involved is likely to be a matter of mutual checking and mutual
adjustment rather than mutual independence.l'" that any division of
functions on the basis of efficiency, influence, and possession of the facilities
for the control, must shift and change as the rating of particular controls
in these regards waxes and wanes; and that to attempt to freeze the
functional adjustment at any given moment into conceptual separation
may simply frustrate vital functions altogether.t" "We must .... be
careful when we recognise the process of complex and mobile adjustment
underlying democratic stability, not to assume that the adjustment as it
appears at any particular time is the only one that could have come
about, or that it is not vulnerable to disturbance.v'F"
(vii) If notwithstanding we do approach the relations between law,
religion and education in terms of conceptual separation, this would seem
154. I here follow the form of Groethuysen's definition in relation to the pursuit
of knowledge, quoted supra at n, 15.
155. Sed quo How would such a matrix be used to define "the secular view of
marriage? "
..
156. See Stone, op. cit. supra n. 12, at 653-56, 696-98. 702-03.
157. C/. as to separation of powers stricto sensu id. 618.
158. C/. similarly id. 655-56,697.
159. ld. 631.~
A. R. Blackshield
59
to imply that all three of them should indeed be totally independent of each
other; and this may very well accord with the aspirations of each. Yet
this would also correlatively entail that all three of them, at least vis-a-vis
each other, should be totally deprived of "control of controls" : if each is
to have a "total:' rating on the independence spectrum, each must have a
"zero" rating on the "control of controls" spectrum. V. P. Luthera,
indeed, is led by' a priori adherence to the "separation" hypothesis-to
insist both that in a genuinely secular state the law should not carry its
prohibitions of caste discrimination into the pre-emptively religious
sphere of admission to worship in temples, and that the Temple Entry
Authorization Acts, which have done precisely this, are therefore major
proof of his thesis that India does not conform to the "concept" of the
secular state.
The state can, of course, consistently with the concept ban the practice
of untouchability... from non-religious places such as restaurants.
hotels, sarais, musafirkhanas, rivers, streams, springs, wells, tanks.
cisterns, water-taps, bathing ghats, roads and passages. But can it
consistently with the concept, ban untouchability from religious
places? Can it throw open the religious institutions.... to persons
to whom these institutions are closed according to the tenets of their
religion ...1160
Clearly, on Luthera's separatist conception of the secular state, and
on our own parallel hypothesis as to secularism generally, the answer to
this question must be "No." Yet in social reality-not to mention
social justice-the answer must just as clearly be "Yes." In the complex
interactive process glimpsed in the preceding pages, no social control can
ever be totally independent of others, nor totally debarred from the power
to direct the operation of those others. Luthera's thesis seeks to place
religion in the former of these impossible positions, and the state and
law in t~ latter. The very fact that temple entry authorization is inconsistent with the "separation of powers" model of secularism, ought to
suggest that the "separation of powers" model must be wrong.
(viii) Even if we can allocate specific functions and subject-matters
to specific social controls, situations will still arise to be regulated which
seem to fall within the domain of two or more controls. Again, the
problem of temple entry for untouchables is a nice example. We might
say that entry to temples for the purposes of worship is a matter peculiarly
within the religious realm; or we might say that a matter so personally
precious is a peculiarly vital matter of social discrimination. In such a
clash between a religious interest and an interest of social ordering, there
must be some way of determining which of the competing controls may
. prevail. The issue may, of course, be left to the outcome of un patterned
160. Luthera, op. cit. supra n. 10, at 106-07, where the relevant statutes are
collected. And see generally id. 102-09.
60
Secularism and Social Control
social flux; or we might want to resolve it ad ho: in each' case, depending
On which of the competing interests in title of which control is sought is
more "important to society" [question (18) ),16 1 But we might also want
overall arbitral function to some
to resolve it by allocating a kind
particular social control, even if it be one of the controls "involved in the
particular contest. And regardless of what we want, the jostling for
supremacy among social' controls is likely to mean that, in any given
society at any given time, this last device will usually be the one in fact in
play. One indisputable meaning of Western secularism is that over the
centuries Western societies have resolved that this overall arbitral role
shall faJl to law - or, at any rate, that it shall not fall to religion. And,
of course, even if we opt for ad hoc adjustment according to the importance of the interests involved, the outcome will be the same. For the
question of what interests are important to society is itself allocated to law
(or at any rate, not to religion).
at
(ix) Even apart from such situations "affected with a double interest,"
the very idea of apportioning functions of social control according to
subject-matter involves a need for some mechanism to make the apportionment. Again, this may be unpatterned social flux or ad hoc determination but in modern "planned" or "rational" societies it will in fact
involve allocation of "the say" to some dominant social control. In short,
"social control" includes the function of regulative oversight and adjustment of the working and of the interlocking of particular social controls;
and planned social control involves the idea that this function be allocated
(at any rate predominantly) to some particular control which at a pinch
prevails over the rest. Even this dominant control will not have total
independence nor total "control of controls;" but it will rank significantly
higher on these spectrums than any other control.
(x) On this basis, we may finally venture a definition of secularism
as evolved in the West which is more modest than our original hypothesis,
but also less troublesome. Secularism, we may now say, is that approach
to social control which insists that any other social control viewed vis-a-vis
161. This kind of determination might itself go in either of two ways. If we feel
strongly enough that (e.g.) eradication of untouchability is important to society, we
might allow the merest colourable connection with that interest to bring the matter
within the field of social action. Alternatively we might also want to test the strength
of the subject-matter's relevance to the competing interests, so that even if we deemed
anti-discrimination more important than religion, a matter vitally connected with
religion and only incidental to caste might be left to the religious control. We might
also want to take int", account the probable consequences of legal action or otherwise.
Thus Luthera supports his argument against the temple entry laws by arguing that the
desired reform would in any case be brought about by voluntary religious action (up.
cit. 108.09). In view of the controversy with which Ow Acts were received (see id. 107,
n. 1) this seems rath!r sanguine.
A. R. Black shield
61
religion shall rank high on the independence spectrum [question (23)].
Or, correlatively, and more simply still, it is that approach to social
control which insists that religion shall not attain a significant place on
the "controls" spectrum [question (24)]. It will be noted that this
definition does not depend on any particular characterization of religion
(nor a fortiori of''any other controls) in terms of some "central concern" or
"essential interest" or "primal motivation" or otherwise. It does not require
an illusory "total independence" from religion, nor any degree of independence of religion itself at all. And while it suggests an obvious likelihood
of causal connection of secularism with "rolled-up materialism," antireligiousness, and religious indifference, it does not identify it with any
of these. It says simply that in modern societies, religion shall not be
the "control of controls."162
V.
SOME CONTINUING PRACTICAL PROBLEMS IN THE WEST
It follows from our picture of social control as an ongoing process of
"complex and mobile adjustment" that the balance struck between religion
and law, or religion and education, will be subject to stress, fluctuation
and controversy at any given moment. Most of the current areas of
difficulty are well known. The most spectacular problems arise from the
attempt at complete separation of church and state in the United
States;':" as to these, it need only be said that on our present conclusions
(and pace Justice Black) the whole enterprise seems misco nceived.l'" For,
first, it requires us to strike down social arrangements which are perfectly
harmless in the light of the basic objectives of secularism itself. (This,
surely, was the position in the School Prayer Case),165 Second, conversely,
a literalist "separation" is at least in theory impotent to strike down social
162. Even this modest and flexible definition would have certain dogmatic consequences. One is that the function of deciding what mar ters can be allotted to what
controls at any particular time should never itself be allotted to religion; for this function
is one vital aspect of "control of controls." So that however it be as to temple entry,
the Indian Supreme Court's experiments with "auto-determination" by religious institutions of what matters are "religious," do seem inconsistent with secularism. See, e.g.,
in the context of temple entry itself Venkataramana Devaru v. State of Mysore (1958)
S.C.R. 895, at 908-09, applying a dictum of Mukherjea, J., in Hindu Religious
Endowments Commissioner (Madras) v. Lakshmindra Thirtha Swamiar (1954) S C,R.
1005, at 1025.
163. On the earlier cases see M. de Wolfe Howe, Cases on Church and State in the
U.S. (1953); D.R. Manwaring, Render unto Caesar (196~). On Engel v. Vitale (1961)
370 U.S, 421, concerning (non-denominational) prayers in state schools, see E.N.
Griswold, "Absolute is in the Dark" (1963) ls Utah L. Rev. 167; Stone, op. cit. supra
n. 12, at 226, and other literature there cited. And see for related problems P.H.
Odegard (ed.), Religion and Politics (America's Politics Series, No. I, 1960); W.G.
Torpey, Judicial Doctrines of Religious Rights in America (1949).
164. It is interesting that in the U.S. context Professor Luthera shows considerabe sensitivity to the untenability of strict separatism. See op, cit. supra n. 10, at
50-52.
165. Engel v, Vital ,supra n. 163.
62
Secularism and Social Control
arrangements which are socially harmful in terms of the basic objectives
of secularism. (The "inconsistency" argument against the Temple Entry
Acts yields an Indian illustration of this danger.) Third, the attempt
at strict separation overlooks the ubiquity of religion, its pervasiveness in
social patterns and institutions.l'" And fourth, its inflexibility seems
strangely at odds with accepted canons of constitutional "interpretation.167
But most of the continuing problems in the West are more limited,
and more peripheral. The secularism of Western legal systems is well
established; difficulty mainly arises as to how far such secular systems can
and should be used to nurture the validity of religious institutions in their
own sphere.!" Should blasphemy be subject to censorship, or to punishment as a crime?169 Should religious institutions command special
privileges as to municipal rates and zoning laws,':" or under the law of
charitable trusts?l7l Or conversely, should law extend its legitimizing
approbation to trusts for anti-religious purposes.r" or to testamentary
conditions plainly based on sectarian intolerance?"!
Similarly as between religion and education, it is now well established
in British countries that the principal educational institutions shall be
state-owned, non-denominational, "secular" schools. But does this mean
that denominational, privately-owned schools shall be abolished, as
mooted in England a few years ago ?17J Or that they shall be held to strict
166. This of course would apply a fortiori in the Indian context: see infra § VI.
167. Cj. Chief Justice Marshall's famous manifesto in McCulloch v. Maryland
(1819) 4 Wheat. 316,407. This argument may also apply a fortiori in India. Secularism
is perhaps expressly embodied in the U,S. First Amendment; and in that event, while it
still demands a broad and flexible "constitutional" construction quite transcending
legalistic conceptualism, it is obviously held down somewhat to legalist formulation.
But it might be said that in the Indian Constitution, secularism is not expressly incorporated at all, but is simply "secreted in the interstices" of articles 25-28. We might even
say (as in the U.S. Justice Douglas might: see Griswold v . Connecticut (1965) 85 Sup,
Ct. 1678, 1681) that "zones" of secularism "emanate" from the "penumbra" of those
articles. The flexibility then arising must transcend even what Marshall envisaged.
The dicta of Kania, C.l., in A.K. Gop alan v. State of Madras (1950) S.C.R. 88, at 120,
abjuring reliance on "a spirit supposed to pervade the Constitution but not expressed
in words" are of course of contrary tenor.
168. Materials on various aspects of the problem are collected in Simpson and
Stone, 2 op, cit. supra n. 73, at 975-1007. And see Stone, op, cit. supra n. 12, at 333-36.
169. See the charming old New York case of People v. Ruggles (18H) 5 Am.
Dec. 335, reprinted in part in Simpson and Stone, 2 op, cit. 978·982; and more recently
Burstyn v, Wilson (1952) 343 U.S. 495.
170. See J.E. Curry, Public Regulation of the Religious Use of Land (1964).
171. Gilmour v, Coats (1949) A.C. 426; Congregational Union of New South
Wales v. Thlstlethwayte (1952) 87 C.L.R. 375.
172. Bowman v, Secular Society (1917) A.C. 406, esp, Lord Sumner at 464 1f.
173. Church Property Trustees v. Ebbeck (1960) 104 C.L.R. 394.
174. See A.~. Gilkes, Independent Education: In Defence of the Public Schools
(1957).
A. R. Blackshield
63
financial independence, with no claim to "state aid"?!7 5 Does it mean
that in the state-owned schools there be no religious instruction ?176 Or
that there shall be "general religious teaching as distinct from dogmatical
or polemical theology?"!"
Running ihrough these particular issues are certain important themes
touching the fundamental relations of law, education and religion as
social controls. As to law and religion, it is argued, religion remains an
indispensable source of social cohesion and stability. Law must remain
175. This issue remains hotly controversial in both Australia and the U.S. For
a survey of the arguments in the latter country see J.K. Norton, "Church, State and
Education" (1949) 38 Journal of the National Education Association 21-24.
176. This of course is the solution adopted in India by article 28 of the Constitution. On the arguments for and against the provision see M. V. Pylee, op, cit. supra
n. 10, at 260-61.
177. N.S.W. Public Instruction Act, 1880, § 7, repeating an earlier provision of
1866. On the background history prior to 1866 see W.J. Relton, "The Defeat of Denominationalism in N.S.W. Education" (1963) 7 Aust, J.E::!. 122. The 1866 provision was
introduced in Parliament by Sir Henry Parkes, who said:
It W,iS never intended by the Government, by the term secular instruction, to exclude such religious knowledge as was common to a Christian
people. (Loud cheers.) He frankly admitted that the wording of the
Bill, which said that secular instruction exclusively should be given,
might be fairly taken to mean that; but certainly, after this candid admission, he hoped th rt he should have credit given to him when he declared that it was never the intention of the framers of this Bill to exclude
such a knowledge of the Bible as all divisions of the Christian Church
must possess, or a knowledge of the great truths of Revelation. (Hear,
hear.) Well, then, we intended at the proper time to introduce a clause
to make this plain beyond all doubt.
The Sydney Morning Herald, October 4, 1866.
The Act also provides (§ 18) for "special religious instruction" in denominational groups (for which the appropriate clergymen are to visit the school) for "a
portion of each day not more than one hour." In practice the convenience of schoolteachers and clergy alike has reduced this to one hour per week. In a recent highly
controversial revision of the teaching syllabus prescribed under the Act, the N.S.W.
Department of Education has further watered down "general religious teaching" by
transferring this substantially into the framework of the social studies curriculum,
where the religious teaching becomes a kind of simplified introduction to comparative
religion, in which simple stories concerning good men of all religions are offered as
exemplars of social ethics. Criticism has come mainly from (i) Christians, who maintain that in a Christian country secular education should offer "an awar~ness and understanding of the place of Christianity in the cultural heritage of the community of which
he forms a part," "an intelligent understanding of the scriptual background to and the
basic teaching of the Christian faith," and "a knowledge of the moral and ethical
teachings of Christianty;" (ii) rationalist libertarian groups, who see the new syllabus
as "reminiscent of the Dark Ages, because it binds secular ,-~achers to propagate
sectarian religious views," and as "socially disruptive, because of the discrimination it
causes;" (Iii) Jewish spokesmen, who object to the inclusion of Christ's Crucifixion and
Resurrection as stories in social studies ; (iv) teachers, who findthemselves required to
bring much unfamiliar material into an already overcrowded syllabus,
64
Secularism and Social Control
distinct from rclig.on, but it must also cherish religion, or risk the destruction of society itseif; Religious morality "is built into the house in which
we nve and could not be removed without bringing it down."!" In
particular, it is said, religion is the basis of the institution of marriageI 79
and however it be as to more obviously secular matters, the law of
marriage and divorce must remain firmly rooted in its thedlogical basis.P?
Oddly, Lord Devlin in this overall plea for common law implementation
of Christianity, urges a "clean break" in the field of divorce: "the mingling
of the spiritual and the temporal jurisdictions has been good for
neither. "181 But whatever the outcome, the tension between the religious
and secular approaches to divorce is a major contemporary strain upon
Western legal systems.!"
In relation to religion and education such arguments assume even
wider implications.l'" Western civilization, it is widely thought, has
become preoccupied with material things. The worldly busy-ness which
allowed Western man to escape from theocratic stagnation has established
a sterile and misplaced "theology" of its own. The result has been an
Umwertung aile Werte, a devaluation of values; cultural relativism and
religious agnosticism have led to a moral agnosticism as well. Instability,
confusion and anomie have replaced our moral certitudes. We need to
restore ourselves and society to a sound grasp on values.P' And since
materialism and normlessness (as we have seen) have been so closely
bound up with secularism, the answer must lie in a reversal of the secularist trend. Science and technology must be reintegrated with values and
with religion.V"
178. Devlin, op, cit. supra n. 9, at 9. And see id. passim for a cogent and
moderate statement of this kind of view. Many natural law writings might of course
also be vouched.
179. See id. 9-10,61-85; but (f. infra at n. 181.
180. See, e.g., P.A. Ryan and D. Granfield, Domestic Relations: Chi! and Canon
Law (1963) 258-59, 317·325.
181. Devlin, op . cit. 84-85.
182. See the Report of the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce, 19521955 (Morton Commission) (Cmd. 9678, 1956) esp. paras. 34-71; Slone, op. cit. supra
n. 12, at 303-315. For a striking Australian example of direct conflict between religious
and secular approaches see Macrae v. Macrae (1964) 6 F.L.R. 224, discussed in
Stone, o». cit. 311-312, n. 154a.
183. The issue is seen in its pure form in the United States, whc reas in India
education is at present completely secular. See the invaluable collection of materials
in Stanley et al. op. cit. supra n. 28. at 332·374, esp. the passages from A.S. Nash
(The University and the Modern World (1964) 252·261, 262, 287-288,291) at 345·349.
184. See gene~~lly Stanley et al., op, cit. 375-451; Stone, op, cit. supra n. 12,
at 154-!63.
185. This kind of view is expressed from the viewpoint of industrial technology
itselfin Ayres, op . cit. supra n. 130, passim; and from the viewpoint of scientific
evolutionism in Carrington op, cit. supra n. 3, esp, at 275-283, 300·307.
A. R. Blackshield
65
No doubt crassness and acquisitiveness are all too evident in
Western society. And there is also much moral anomie, though this in
particular is often exaggerated. But we have here seen that secularism,
far from being the cause of materialism and normlesness, has rather been a
by-product of these. And on the t whole it has been a valuable byproduct. No doubt we need to improve our "person-techniques" as well
as our "thing-techniques," and perhaps even to learn again to integrate the
two. But "person-techniques" are not really "spirit-techniques;" and
though a spontaneous revival of religious fervour might bring a new
strong sense of values, a flight from secularism by elevating religion over
law or education would by no means necessarily do so. Nor, in any
case, is a sense of values always desirable in itself. The important point
is always rather, What are the values sensed?
VI.
SOME SPECIAL PROBLEMS FOR DEMOCRATIC INDIA
The conceptual, cognitive, practical and political problems which
have here been seen to shift and twist within the Western notion of secularism, and the impossibility of bringing all of these into one order of
reason even as a preliminary basis for discussion, must certainly daunt
any simple ideological commitment to "secularism" as a clear standard
for action. If nevertheless such a standard remains accepted and even
cherished in Western societies, it is because in a cultural climate of
diverse religious sectarianism coupled with general religious tolerance
(and much religious indifference as well), of passions for liberty and for
truth, of empiricism, pragmatism, institutional specialization, and the
seeking (and substantial achievement) of a fair minimum of material
standards of living for ali, even religious intellectuals can take it for granted
that the search for justice and for truth should not be fettered by
dogma; and even non-intellectuals can take it for granted that the jobs
of law, government and schooling should be got on with without undue
religious intrusion. The complexities and problems here reviewed simply
do not reach these basic assumptions. Another way of saying this is that
the presuppositions of "secularism"-the values and attitudes embodied
in "rolled-up materialism "-are well established in the West. If in peripheral areas the implications of "secularism"-in the sense of no
religious "control of controls"-have still to be finally sorted out, and so
for the time being remain open to ideological debate, nevertheless the
"rolled-up materialist" foundations for the debate are taken for granted
on both sides.
Yet in India the position is different. Socio-economic justice-the
equal distribution of minimum standards of individual life-is the most
urgent and the most crucial goal of all modern Indian development; but
it is not an established reality. Even as a goal, it seems not to be fully
shared (or at any rate not fully heartfelt) by the whole of Indian society,
66
Secularism and Social Control
but to be accepted as an object of striving only by a small intellectual
minority, influenced by Western ideals. Even among this minority, the
valuing of socio-economic justice is often not accompanied by a similar
positive valuing of economic individualism as the means of achieving the
goal: and the acceptance of "indIvidualism" in the wider sense of the
libertarian-utilitarian tradition is even more uncertain. .Even among the
intellectual minority, the aspiration to socio-economic justice tends to be
inhibited by a yearn ing to cling to the values of the great Indian past.
Industrialization is mistrusted as deeply as it is sought after; and even
scientific minds are in some respects ambivalent in their attitudes towards
science. In short, the "rolled-Up materialism" into which I have here
lumped the cultural pre-suppositions of secularism in the West, is not a
consolidated achievement in India, but only a goal for future progress:
and even as a goal it is rather uncertainly held.
It is against this background that the Indian search for concrete
practical ways of implementing "secularism," and even for conceptualization of the mea' ing of "secularism," has to be conducted. And against
this background, a disconcerting conclusion seems unavoidable. This
essay has insisted throughout that "secularism" in the West somehow has
to be understood as a formal, relational concept, describing the adjustment
between religion and other forms of social control. At first we tried
tentatively to describe this adjustment in terms of a "separation of powers"
between law, religion and education; later we shifted to the less rigorous
notion that the adjustment must be such that religion is not a "control of
controls." Throughout, the objective was to find some description of the
secular adjustment which would enable us to keep secularism conceptually distinct from "rolled-up materialism." But the fact that must now
be faced is that at least in the Indian context, this hankering after COnceptual clarity cannot be satisfied: "secularism" in India must refer to the
full cluster of "rolled-up materialist" aspirations and attitudes, in all their
amorphous complexity.P"
We have seen tbat even in the West a full study of the growth and
consolidation of secularism might lead to such a conclusion. We might
have to say tbat pragmatism, religious tolerance, socio-economic justice,
adaptability to change, and the like, were not merely historically linked
with the wane of religion as a "control of controls," but were so intimately
186. The original version of this essay as presented for discussion was insufficiently
on guard against the dangerous assumption that the meaning of the word "secularism"
must be the same in any culture. This led to doubts whether "secularism" (no religious
"control of condoIs") could be significant or even relevant in tackling the important
social problems of India. I would now see those doubts as a further reason why
in Indian discussion the concept should be given a meaning which really does have
such relevance.
A. R. Blackshield
67
and inseparably linked with it that they cannot be conceptually distinguished. For my part I would still resist such a conclusion for the West,
insisting that ordinary language-institutions associated with the usage of
"secularism" in Western language cultures do confine it to relational propositions about religion as a social control. But by the very same test, it is
equally clear that '"Secularism" in Indian usage cannot be so confined. In
Indian parlance "s-ecularism" is a broad, all-inclusive ideological symbol, in
which all the aspirations of "rolled-up materialism" are in fact summed
up.187 Furthermore, this is an ideological symbol of such powerful popular
appeal-in an area where powerful ideologizing is still so direly neededthat even if we thought conceptually that "secularism" could be limited
to exclude the rolled-up materialist aspirations, we might have to conclude
that we ought not so to limit it. For to do so would be to throwaway a
powerful emotive weapon in a struggle for social progress where we need
all the weapons we can find. If the equation of "secularism" with
"rolled-up materialism" did not exist in the Indian mind, it might be
necessary to invent it.
Yet, though "secularism" may be a powerful symbol in the Indian
struggle for progress, it is not an unambiguous one. It is still subject to
all the complexities, dubieties, problems and ambiguities which have here
been reviewed: and in the Indian cultural setting new complexities,
dubieties, problems and ambiguities rise cumulatively on all the rest. The
fact is that the three preceding paragraphs beg some rather crucial
questions which it should rather be the function of the present volume to
pose, and where possible to answer. Is secularism already achieved in
India, either as a result of Western importations or independently of
these? Does Indian culture offer receptive soil for its transplantation? Is
the transplantation even desirable at India's present stage of social development? Is it possible at all ?
Above all, the answers to such questions turn on certain basic
ambivalences within the mighty synthesis of the Hindu tradition. The
philosophical virtue of synthesis may well be overall truth; but its
philosophical defect is that on particular questions, the synthesis may
well point both ways. The questions to which I now finally come are all
relevant to Indian secularism and respectively to this; but in which
direction this relevance points is a matter on which often the devout Hindu,
187. Perhaps this is part of the synthesizing tendency in Indian thought, presently
to be mentioned. The usage of "independence" iswarajv often shows an identical
tendency. So the Indian Vice-President, Dr. Zakir Husain, points out that for the late
Prime Minister Nehru "independence was not a formal negative stait of absence of
foreign domination, but had a positive content of social justice and full economic development." (Memorial Address at Jawahar Bharathi College, Kavali, November 14,
1965). If we substitutevsecularism" and "religious" for "independence" and "foreign,"
the present point emerges exactly.
68
Secularism and Social Control
and a fortiorl the non-Hindu, must hesitate to speak. From this
poiat onwards, even more than before, this
essay
ventures
into the realm of the conceptually unmanageable. It seeks to pose
questions, and also counter questions; to state opposite assertions both
of which are usually tenable. Even where I seem to speak dogmatically,
my propositions must be understood as open to refutatrcn, and sometimes
as containing their own refutation. Only this can be said without refutation: that the areas I shall point to are areas where clarity must somehow
or other be found.
(i) Syncretism or Fragmentation? Many of the problems to be mentioned arise from the very nature of the Hindu synthesis itself. "Secularism"
in the Western sense is simply one aspect of the fragmentation of social
institutions which has characterized Western history -the steady tendency
to isolation and precisation of separate fields of human desire and
human endeavour, and the cultural proliferation and adaptation of
specialized social institutions or groups for each separate field. In traditional Indian culture this institutional fragmentation seems to be lacking.
"Just where the line can be appropriately drawn between Hindu religious
belief, practice, and feeling as such, on the one hand, and the intermeshing evaluative conduct constituting the structure of Hindu castes, guilds,
village councils, and similar loyalty-eliciting groups on the other, baffles
the most thoroughly informed students of such matters." 188 The very
notion of differentiation amongst social controls seems alien to Hindu
tradition.
It is true that the all-inclusive caste system itself is in one aspect an
unparalleled example of the specialization of social functions; and the
sharp distinction of artha and dharma in one aspect, as we shall see,
carries secularism to the extreme point of "separation of powers." Yet
functional specialization in Indian society remains always related to, and
rooted in wider linkages and loyalties which persistently channel specialization back into themselves. The idea of being a scientist, or a teacher, or
a lawyer, or an administrator, in a way that concentrates single-minded
attention on the objective job thus designated-divorced from and if need
be overriding the loyalties of caste, joint family, religious community, and
even personal friendship-is an idea that still too often seems alien to the
Indian mind. All loyalties, all duties, all mora lities, all social functions,
are woven together in a mystical whole; and the whole is saturated with
religion.
In the i.nterweaving of this whole lies nothing than the problem of
India. Indian philosophy, and Indian social structure, create endless
distinctions and specializations with a thoroughness and fineness, a
188. Becker, op. cit. supra n, 4, at 145.
A. R. Blackshield
69
patience and precision, that the Western mind cannot rival nor even
comprehend. But whatever is thus put asunder is always welded together
again, in a solid totality of interlocking layers so complex, so continuous
in emotive experience, and so fundamentally spiritualized-and even
"etherealized" -that distinctions and specializations, and the very
discontinuities thpt "interlocking" entails, finally melt away. We are
left with an impenetrable solidarity of social roles, beliefs, aspirations,
and attitudes, which overlay each other and seal each other away from
social change. This, indeed, is a deeper reason why the various aspirations which come together in "secularism" and "rolled-up materialism"
cannot be separated from one another in Indian discussion, even if they
can and should be kept apart in Western contexts. Precisely because the
traditional Indian society is all of a piece, modern India's problems are
also all of a piece. Economic, industrial, legal, political, religious,
educational, agricultural, and social problems cannot be separated out
for discussion, but must all be tackled at once.l'" for these, too are caught
within the traditional welded unity.
In the past, of course, this unity bore the world's oldest civilization
to triumphant self-contained survival through unparalleled centuries. But
in the modern world mere self-containedness, and even mere survival, are
neither sufficient nor even possible for any nation. The twentieth century
inexorably challenges all of us to progress, and to participation in a wider
human destiny. In order for India to meet this challenge, and the lesser
but still insistent challenge of the "Western" culture with which she must
now also live, the traditional welded unity needs to be broken open. To
the extent that it is broken open all of her problems can in time be solved;
to the extent that the old welded closure remains, progress in any area
can only be piecemeal and tenuous.
To say this is but to emphasize the enormity of the problem. It is
not to minimize the remarkable progress that has already been made since
independence; still less to suggest that further progress is likely to be
more difficult. Indeed, the same interlocking of problems that makes the
task so overwhelming may well give us reason also to predict that progress will now continue at a steadily accelerating rate. For the nature of
this welded interlocking is such that any progress in any area, however
trivial when compared with the magnitude of the task, will tend to loosen
the whole structure, and make further progress in other areas correspondingly easier. It is in this sense above all that the merger of all Indian
189. Within their interlocking the economic problems might seem so dominant as
to call for primary-if not (for the time being) exclusive-s-attention. '~ut on the impossibility of abstracting economic growth from cultural growth in general, and on the
temptations to totalitarianism if the economy is too obsessively stressed, see Stone,
op. cit. supra n. 12, at 585-86, 768 (with special reference to the Indian problem),
70
Secularism and Social Control
strivings in a "rolled-up materialist" notion of secularism is not merely
confusing, as it might be in the West, but a realistic and practical response
to the unique Indian problem.
(ii) The Problem of Caste. In Hie tradiitonal welded unity of Indian
society, the chief structural matrix and the chief cohesive bond has been
the system of caste.l'" Correspondingly, the gravest social problem facing
independent India has been that of caste discrimination. The involvement
of the discrimination with the pervasive influence of religious social control
seems quite unique. Members of a religious community here discriminate
against others in the same religious community; and the same religion
enjoins the ones to discriminate, and the others to submit. "Caste cannot
be properly understood in isolation from Hinduism, for it is Hinduism that
provides caste with its sanctions and gives to the whole system its moral
meaning." 191 Yet within this religious structuring the caste system is also
shaped by materialist and economic forces; and these forces can even
effectuate social change within caste hierarchy.l'" At least in Howard
Becker's terminology /93 caste involves "secular" as well as "sacred"
elements; and some sociologists'!' suggest that the former may even be
primary. If the caste system is itself already a secular social control, which
the doctrine of varna merely reinforces, what then?
Clearly the need to hold down caste structures to an insignificant
place on the "control of controls" spectrum [question (24)] remains pressing in modern India;195 caste influence on state politics is good neither
for politics nor even for caste.!" If indeed caste habits of communication
and forms of cohesiveness can be used as a vehicle for formation of the
interest-groups on which a pluralist, "secular" society depends for the
voicing and even for the formation of demands, then to condemn such
groups merely because they are nominately "castes" would to be fall prey
to the most foolish kind of verbalism. As a matter of social reality reform
190. For a brief account from the standpoint of sociological jurisprudence see
Stone, op. cit. supra n. 12. at 139-140.
191. R. Segal, The Crisis of India (Penguin Books, 1965) 35.
192. Insofar as this view is based on studies of caste flexibility in Ceylon, its
application to India is questionable, but seems in fact valid. See A. M. Hocart, Caste:
A Comparative Study (1950); Nur Yalman, "The Flexibility of Caste Principles in a
Kandyan Community," in E. R. Leach (ed.), Aspects of Caste in South India, Ceylon
and North-West Pakistan (Carnbridge'Papers in Social Anthropology, No.2, 1962) 78-112.
Similar trends in South India are reported by K. Gough, "Caste in a Tanjore Village,"
in id, 11, at 55ff.
193. See supra at nn. 80-85.
194. See, e.lf., Srinivas, op. cit. supra n. 2, at 7-8, 42ff. And cf, Max Weber,
"India: the Brahman and the Caste," in Gerth and Mills, op. cit. supra n. 43, at 396-415.
195. See Srinivas, op . cit. 15·41.
196. See Gough, cited supra n. 192, a 158-59.
A. R. Blackshield
71
will then have been achieved. If on the other hand patterns of interest
representation in fact perpetuate caste inhibitions of mobility, adaptability,
and independence of outlook, then as a matter of social reality reform
will still be needed; and to insist that caste has been legally abolished will
equally be mere verbalism.P? In either case, it is clear that a "secularism"
conceptually held down to a demand for independence of other social
controls from religious controls, is simply not an adequate slogan to base
the needed reforms. Only a "secularism" understood as "rolled-up
materialism" can effectively undermine the caste-attitudes that linger on
after caste control has been formally destroyed. Can this in fact be done
by selectively building on secular ingredients within the caste ideology? Or
does such a suggestion merely allow the old welded unity to close again,
even as we break it open?
(iii) Tolerance or Communal Strife? India's endless proliferation of
religions, and of sects within religions, would seem to make the religious
toleration which the West achieved only through secularism an urgent
necessity. India has undergone partition for the sake of religious Communities; and the continued tension with Moslem Pakistan, and the continued presence of millions of Moslems within Indian society, would seem
in the light of European history to threaten religious dissension of the
most appalling kind. The religious riots that occur from time to time
would seem to make good the threat. Yet on the whole the very spawning
of sects and variations within Hinduism has led rather to a remarkable
tolerance. Despite constant "temptations to religious fervour, indeed
frenzy," India gently clings to
the tradition of tolerance so fundamental to Hinduism. It is not
merely that Hinduism does not recognize heresy, that a Hindu born
remains a Hindu whatever he believes, but that Hindu society as a
whole has historically displayed tolerance toward religious minorities.
It is no accident that a community of sun-worshipping Parsees,
originaIly from Persia, with strange-and to most Hindus probably
repugnant-ways of disposing their dead, should have been permitted
in peace to establish themselves as a prosperous communtity in India....
Tolerance is of the very material from which the Indian character is
formed. 198
Does this mean that on this front, too, secularism can build on
fore-echoes of the secular within the indigenous tradition? Does it even
mean that on this front at least, secularism is not needed, or has even
been established for centuries? Or should both these questions be resisted,
197. C! as to caste and trade unions Stone, op, cit. supra n. 1~~ at 339, n. 286:
"A union disguised as a caste may be an admirable way ofmaking progress palatable;
a caste disguised as a union can result only in regress sub rosa."
198. Segal, op. cit. supra n. 191, at 31-33.
72
Secularism and Social Control
as tempting us to a comforting reliance on tradition, which may leave us
unequipped to face contemporary problems?
(iv) The Absence of Religious Institutions. We have seen that the
institutionalization of religion in the \vest has played a complex and manysided role in the fluctuations of religion as a social, control. It may
strengthen the power, the purposiveness, and the range of influence of the
religious creed; it may cramp the potential influence of religion into
sterile esotericism; it may sap the socio-religious influence of the individual,
but it may also provide a womb from which individualism can emerge. In
India none of these conflcting potentialities are open.
The secularization of the state... presupposes... an organized religion.
It presupposes a religion which has its own laws, its own courts to interpret these laws and to settle disputes, its own discipline, and its own
hierarchy of officials to administer its affairs and to (ejffect religious
reforms Hinduism is not organized and has no such mechanism of
its own The state has, of necessity, to deal with questions relating to
doctrinal interpretation, settlement of disputes, administration of religious institutions and the effecting of religious reforms. But the performance of such functions by the state cuts at the very root of the
concept of the secular state.l 99
Yet the point is not really that India has no "religious institutions."
It is rather that there "institutions" are either so limited and localized, or
else so macroscopic, that Western models of religious institutionalization,
and of its probable effect, can simply have no relevance to the Indian situation. On the one hand, the whole sub-continent teems with religious institutions. But these thousands of temples and endowments always represent
only (as it were) ad hoc institutionalization - for a particular god, a particular
relic, or a particular local variation of a particular sect or creed. There is
no overall hierarchy, no "church," to knit these "institutions" together as
a unified force for social action. (Does this make resistance to secularism
weaker, or merely harder to pin down?) On the other hand, when we
look at the welded Indian unity, we have to add that the reason why
Hinduism and its offshoots have no organized "church" is that in a certain
sense the whole of Indian society provides them with a religious
"institution"-that the strength and range of influence, the repressiveness
and the frame of reference for individual effort, which Western religion finds
in churches and sectarian organizations, are here found in nothing less
than society itself. Non-Hindu religions, and deviant forms of Hinduism,
then gravitate to a readily tolerated but still subordinate place within the
nooks and crannies of this overall "institution." What are the implications of this s~uation for secularism, for religious freedom, for religious
equality, and for the vital ferment of individual questing for salvation '!
199. Luthera, op, cit. supra n, 10, at 147-48.
A. R. Blackshield
73
(v) Tat Tram Asi, Intimately bound up with the emergence of
Western secularism was the high Western valuing of, and preoccupation
with, the human individual. Indian culture, too, is a "self-centred" culture;
but here the self at the centre is the, all-inclusive and infinite atman. Here
above all the Western mind encounters a baffling ambivalence in Hindu
thought. Doer. Hinduism exalt the individual even more than the worldly
West, or does it rather submerge the individual in contemplation of the
infinite? Clearly, self-realization is seen as the highest aim of the
life; yet
the highest aim of life is not necessarily the realization of the highest
personality, as usually understood .The question of personality and its
development through integration is outside the scope of the problem of
salvation as understood by Indian philosopher. .. .It may be said that
the central aim of Indian philosophy is the discovery of the true nature of
the "I," of the basis of the experience of the "1." The "I" is ultimately
regarded as the inwardness of the physical body. It maintains itself
through a process of inwardness, the "I" consciousness being the activity
of this inwardization .... Indian ethical discipline may be interpreted
in two ways; positively it is the realization of one's self (atman):
negatively it is liquidation or complete surrender of the ego and its
activities. 2oo
Some European writers have suggested that confusion in this area
effects Western rather than Indian thinking.
For in our Occidental concept of the "soul" we have mixed up, on
the one hand, elements that belong to the mutable sphere of the psyche
(thoughts, emotions, and similar elements, of ego-consciousness), and
on the other, what is beyond, behind, or above these: the indestructible
ground of our existence, which is the anonymous Self (Self with a
capital S; by no means the bounded ego), far aloof from the trials and
history of the personality. This invisible source of life is not to be
confused with the tangible ... gross body; neither with any of the various
highly individualized faculties, states of reasoning, emotions, feelings,
or perceptions that go to make up the subtle body. The true self
iatman, brahman) is wrapped within, and oot to be confused with;
all the "spiritual" and "material" stratifications of its perishable
covering. 201
Yet the Indian grounding of the self in a universal Self seems often
merely to restate the Western confusion as a deliberate confluence. And
it then seems to strike echoes in such aggressively individualist outcroppings of Western thought as existentialism (for which the individual
Existenz is to be rooted in Being),202 and even Kantianism (for which you
200. P. T. Raju, "The Concept of Man in Indian Thought," in id. (cd.), The
Concept of Man (1960) 206, at 299-300, 301. And cf, id. 224-237.
201. H. Zimmer, Philosophies of India (ed, J. Campbell, 1951) 78·80. And see id.
3-4 and passim.
-.
202. See A. R. Blackshield, "The Importance of Being: Some Reflections on
Existentialism in Relation to Law" (1965) 10 Natural Law Forum 67-145; and see K.
Guru Dutt, Existentialism and Indian Thought (1960) esp, at 90-92..
74
Secularism and Social Control
are to "regard humanity in your own person as well as in the person of
everybody else always as an end in itself, and never as a means only").203
The dilterence is that whereas these Western groundings of the unique in
the universal seek to direct the universal outwards to seek expression
through the unique, the parallel linkage in Indian thought seeks to direct
the unique inwards into the universal. Here again, Western fragmentation
confronts Indian synthesis., Individualism loses its secularizing role, and
leads rather to a mystic merging of all social forces, if not to their
abnegation. The individual is the focus of the philosopher's world. But he
is "passive in relation to the world," in the sense "that all his activity leads
to a reabsorption or involution instead of a creation or evolution.t'P'"
Moreover, this whole ambivalence as to individualism is an ambivalence contained within a single strand of classical culture-the philosophical strand. In a certain sense this philosophical strand has succeeded over
the centuries in escaping the confines of the "we lded unity" of Indian
society. Louis Dumont has hypothesized that creative and elaborative
philosophical thinking has always proceeded in Indian history from those
religious "virtuosos" whom Weber saw as the Indian (and anti-secular)
alternative to "institutionalized" religion.s'" For this kind of thinker, says
Dumont.i'" individualism does have concrete and central reality; but this
reality is achieved only by renouncing the world, and thereby breaking
free from the welded social unity. Within that unity individuals "have no
substance: they exist empirically, but they have no reality in thought, no
Being.... On the level of life in the world the individual is not." Only
the philosophy of the samnyasin, the renouncer, "conceives of the individual as being.r"?" But by committing himself to this conception, the
samnyasin in a sense denies his own purpose, "finds himself invested with
an individuality which he apparently finds uncomfortable since all his
efforts tend to its extinction or its transcendence. "208 Hence the apparent
philosophical contradictions with which we have just been struggling.
Hence, moreover, both sides of such contradictions-both philosophical individualism, and its renunciation or submergence-are in opposition to the realities of life within the traditional society. But this is rarely
likely to be a reformative or even practical opposition. In a certain sense,
203. Kant, Grundlegung der Met aphysik der Sitten (1785), transl, in T. K. Abbott,
Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and other Works on the Theory of Ethics (4 ed,
1889) 47.
204. L. Dumont, "World Renunciation in Indian Religions" (1960) 4 Contributions to Indian Soci%eY 33, at 56.
205. See supra at nn. 112-14.
206. Essay cited supra n. 204, at 43-51.
207.
42-43.
208.
46.
u.
u.
A. R. Blackshield
75
the samnyasin in committing himself to individuality makes himself
irrelevant to the social world. For the non-individuals within the world,
goes on as before. The samnyasin, instead of functioning as a Trojan
horse within the gates of the established order, has furnished it instead with
a kind of "safety valve." The Brahmanic order has thereby been "able to
give the transcendent a permanent place while remaining out of the range
of its attacks. By means of this compromise the Brahman rules over the
world in peace."209 An individualism emerging within a religious orthodoxy can (as we have seen) work to leaven the whole into secularism; but
samnyasin individualism is neutralized from any such leavening role. Even
when the samnyasin as guru preaches and teaches to "men-in-the-world"even when his preaching leads to new sects or (as with Buddha) new
faiths-such teachings are neutralized, like the teacher, from touching the
existing order. From the orthodox viewpoint, as we have seen, they are
merely absorbed into the nooks and crannies of the whole society, which
is India's "religious institution." From the sectarian viewpoint,
the sect appears as a religion for the individual superimposed upon common
religion, even if this latter is relativized to the point at which Brahmanism is
viewed simply as the order, or disorder, of the day-to-day world. The caste
order continues to be respected, even if it is seen, in the light of sectarian
truth, as a profane concern.i.. Situated outside the world but linked to it,
the renouncer is impotent against it; if he ventures in that direction his ideas
become ephemeral.xt?
Of course ideas cannot be wholly irrelevant to life in the world. Even
though-and partly because-the samnyasin is not "in the world," his
individualism, and his negation of it, are ideas which his physical presence
inescapably symbolizes for those who remain there. These continually
re-presented ideas are a focus for much of the idealizations, aspirations
and half-yearnings, of even the most worldly Hindus. But even insofar
as these ideals and aspirations do introduce a certain kind of individualism
into day-to-day Hindu culture, it is still not the right kine! of individualism
to playa secularizing role. Secularism depends upon an individualism
in the world, an active individualism. It begins in Europe (as we have
seen) with economic individualism. Indian individualism, as personified in
the samnyisin and explored in his speculations, is an individualism
renouncing the world, a passive individualism. It is not an economic but a
philosophical force.
Even this does not exhaust the puzzles to be solved. On this, as on
all the matters here discussed, myraid false paths of romanticizing and
mysticizing our view of Indian culture lure Indians and non-Indians alike.
To see that the idealized universalism of Indian philosophy conceals a
209. Id. 52.
210. [d. 60-61.
Secularism and Social Control
76
questing personalism may help us to avoid one false path; to realize that
Indian philosophy is one thing, and daily life in Indian cities and villages
another, avoids another which is far more treacherous. "Living India" is
a different matter from" India in the books." Yet even when we think we
are looking at living India, we may still•be seeing it through ideas derived
from books. That "individualism" is absent from India's ~cial system so
far as the study of culture can ,see it is indisputable. But it is also indisputable that Indians in their homes and at work, in city and village streets,
are not the vaguely passive, "faceless" nonentities that our stress on nonindividualism might imply. No doubt many of them are. But many
others-and not merely modernized, urbanized, "Westernized" Indiansare eager and alert, inquisitive and acquisitive, frank and curious, gay and
self-assertive. In short, Indians are personalities. In an age of mass conformism, they remain among the least homogenized of peoples. Should
this prompt us to forget philosophies and concentrate on the facts of life?
Or should it prompt us merely to concede with Dumont that (obviously)
the individual-in-the-world "exists empirically," while still insisting that
culturally he "is not?" How far, in either case, can this merely de facto
"individualism" be a foundation or even a foothold for a cultural
secularism?
(vi) Worldliness or Other-Worldliness? The doctrine of the four
life stages and the four aims of life2I1 seems clearly secularist at its roots.
The pursuits of material riches and worldly power (artha) and of sensory
pleasure (kama) are not only recognized as worthwhile in their own right,
but are even more sharply separated from ethical and spiritual limits than
in the typical Western mind. Yet the ethico-religious adherence to
dharma, and above all the contemplative search for (or sinking into) the
spiritual release of moksa, seem to set off against this worldliness an
insistent other-worldliness, which differs from Western "other-worldliness"
in three crucial ways. Each of these must be considered at some length.
(a) First, the unworldly is here not merely separated from the
worldly, but is set above it as a transcendent concern in the light of which
worldly concerns must fall away. Certainly, here as in Western secularism,
there is a "complete differentiation between the spiritual and the temporal;"
but in this case the differentiation "allows society, in relegating the temporal to a subordinate position, ... to found itself directly upon the absolute
order."212 If this is a "separation of powers," it is one in which the
spiritual powers still exert a "control of controls" with regard to the secular,
and even (by virtue of their hierarchical transcendence) insistently suffuse
the secular. Where the Christian distinction between (spiritual) good and
<.
2[]' See Zimmer, op, cit. supra n. 201, at 34-42.
212. Dumont, essay cited supra n. 204, at 52.
<0
· '. R. Blackshield
77
(worldly) evil would "condemn and exclude, India hierarchizes and
includes."213
Yet this ultimately anti-secular reading of the four aims of life, for all
its currency, is only one interpretation among others that are also available.
The above reading depends on analogizing or even assimilating dharma to
moksa, by reason of their dearness to one another on the hierarchy. "For
the Hindu common sense, moksa and dharma are not felt as heterogeneous."214 Dharma, insofar as it is a law, is an ideal law having the same
relation factually with positive law as our Natural Law. Since it is conformity with the order of the world, it is, at its deepest, that which becomes
Natural Law when nature and convention are distinguished. "215 Yet
by the same token, if we read downwards instead of upwards on the
hierarchy, dharma might also be analogized or assimilated to artha. 216 It
then becomes positive law as distinct from natural law.s'? comprising what
is "posited" not only by wielders of kingly power, but by judicial exegesis
and above alI by customary usage. Later in this volume Judge S. S.
Dhavan, of the Allahabad High Court, will argue powerfully that in this
sense dharma is essentially secular, even (indeed especially) in its classical
manifestations.v" Among the most cogent factors he adduces to support
this thesis are the early abandonment of mechanical-magical modesof proof
in Hindu law; the overwhelming preoccupation of the ancient courts with
commercial issues, debt-colIecting and the like;219 and above all the almost
u.
213.
42, n. 14.
214. [d. 45, n. 19.
215. [d. 43, n. 16.
216. Indeed, a main theme of the essay by Dumont here referred to is that
dharma, arrha, and kama form a homogeneous trilogy of distinctively "human ends,"
to which moksa is a later and extraneous addition. He sees this addition, indeed, as
the master stroke by which Brahmanism neutralized the "virtuoso" renouncer. (See
supra at nn. 209-210.) For this "masks the heterogeneity between the three legitimate
and necessary worldly ends and the negation of the world which, although optional, is
fatal to the other three once it is adopted." Similarly as to the four life stages, the
intention seems to be "on the one hand to represent samnyasa merely as a moment in
the life of the Brahman, reserving renunciation more or less to the Brahman class, and
on the other hand to delay renunciation until the latest possible period of man's life,
after his worldly obligations... have been accomplished. In short, over and above the
habitual orthodox tendency to aggregate, there seems to be here an attempt to limit
renunciation in its relation to worldly conditions and, finally, a subdued hostility to
renunciation itself." (ld. 45). Some of his remarks already quoted (supra nn. 212-15)
are of course inconsistent with this thesis; in a note at 43-46 he seems to regard this as
a matter for concession and justification. Yet the inconsistency seems to be rather
inherent in the data.
217. See Max Weber, Hinduismus lind Budd.iisntus (1923) 143.
218. S. S. Dhavan, "Secularism in Indian Jurisprudence," infra at 102.
219. This, however, might merely suggest that the ancjent law, by its very
secularity and objectivity, was largely confined as an effective social instrument to
merely commercial fields, secularism in "person-techniques" being socially unacceptable.
For a parallel hypothesis as to modern Indian law see G. S. Sharma, "Horizons of
Indian Legal Philosophy" (1962) 2 Jaipur L. J. 170, at 190.
78
Secularism and Social Control
total absence of any "sacred" resistance to change, the ready creative
responsiveness to shifting social needs which is "secularism" in Howard
Beckerls sense.F" Yet he also insists, both as a matter of classical interpretation and as a passionate exhortation de lege praesenti et ferenda that
even this "secular" dharma does not and must not countenance "individualism." We are returned to one of the central unsolved <jilemmas of the
present essay: can "secularism" either in the Western sense (no religious
"control of controls") or in" the Indian sense ("roBed··up materialism") be
divorced from the concrete positive valuing of the human individual?
(b) So far as these perplexities turn on the ambivalence of dharma,
we can say that a similar ambivalence is also to be found in the Western
concept of "law."221 When however we turn our attention to the second
apparent consequence of Indian "other-worldliness," we are dealing with
ambivalencies that are more distinctly Indian. The point here is that
liberation from the world (moksa), which crowns the aims of life, is the
converse side of a doctrine of endless involvement in the world. In
Martin's terms,222 the Indian version of "other-worldliness" is one in which
"progress" towards the "intrinsically worth-while state" is seen "in terms
of several lives to come." This "progress," moreover, is by no means an
automatic succession of modes of existence ever closer to an ultimate
inevitable moksa. The ontic doctrine of samsara (successive reincarnation)
is conditioned on a deontic doctrine of karma, by which the mode of each
life is predetermined as retribution or reward for what was done in the
previous life. The mode of life thus predetermined must be unquestioningly accepted, precisely because it is one's just reward. This is man's
dharma, and the way to moksa is not to try to rise in the world-to
arrogate to oneself some other man's dharma, some other man's lot-but
to try to transcend oneself within the allocated role, and to transcend it
first of all by accepting it and taking it unto oneself.
These, above all, are the strands of belief that tie the individual existence into place in the cosmos-wide and eternity-wide "synthesis" of India.
220. See supra at nn, 80·85. For intriguing parallels, on all these points, with
the Jewish legal tradition (the "secular" attitude there being achieved within the leeways of a theocracy), see H. Cohn, "Prolegomena to the Theory and History of Jewish
Law" in R. A. Newman (ed.), Essays in Jurisprudence in Honour of Roscoe Pound
(1962) 44.
221. Etymologically "dharma" (from dhri) , "lex" (from figare), and "ius" (from
iuneerei all mean simply "that which is binding;" so that strictly perhaps the ambivalence between natural and positive law is rather a neutrality. The ambivalence between factual and normative connotations, (and also the suggestion that a man's dharma
is peculiarly his, in thezense that it originates in him) may be seen (only half-buried by
usage) in a wide range of English words, including "valid," "proper," and "authentic."
See my article cited supra n. 202.
222. See the passage
., quoted supra at n, 45 .
A. R. Blackshie!d
79
Their implications for "secularism" a.re deeply troubling. First, we are here
confronted with a web of religious belief which spreads out its religious
control to cover the entire social system. How can this kind of "otherworldliness" be itself held in or "controlled" so as to leave free play to the
worldly? Second, the ethico-religious duty here entailed, of acceptance of
the inherited lot, not only affords no cultural room for the "secular"
attitude of easy acceptance and even eager exertion for change, but marks
this out as alien to what man's true dharma enjoins. Third. in particular,
this ethico-religious duty has for centuries identified itself with support
for the system of caste. Fourth, above all, this web of doctrine provides an
almost unassailable rationalization of the injustice of this world. Rebellion
against such injustice is to that extent not available as a prod to the movement away from religion; for this religion can explain all injustices with
consistency and even with beauty. The Christian doctrine of predestination,
for example, was never really consistent with the belief in divine love, and
in human freedom of will; the doctrine of karma can accommodate both,
and the mysteries of birth and death as well.
On the other hand, here yet again, we find acceptance of worldly
affairs, and of individuality in the world, emphasized on the very basis of
"other-worldliness." Above all, as to individualism, we find here offered
on a fully rational basis, ethical teachings which have been achieved in the
West only on the basis of a "flight from rationalism'vwinto existentialismthat every individual is "thrown" into a unique "role," a unique mode of
"being-in-the-world;" and that the path to authentic being lies in accepting what one is, in being what one is, and in a constant striving to transcend oneself from within one's place-in-the-world.w'
(c) The exhortation to transcend one's being-in-the-world while yet
accepting this, links with a final distinctive feature of Indian "other-worldliness." This is that whereas Christian unworldliness (as we have seen)
may actually foster worldly busy-ness, the acquisition of things and of
"thing-techniques," Indian unworldliness relegates all these to the realm
of illusion and distraction.f"
Wherever the sacred values and the redemptory means of a virtuoso
religion bore a contemplative or orgiastic character, there has been no
bridge between religion and the practical action of the workaday world.
In such cases, the economy and all other action in the world has been
considered religiously inferior, and no psychological motives for worldly
action could be derived from the attitude cherished as the supreme value. In their innermost beings, contemplative and ecstatic religions have been
rather specifically hostile to economic life. Mystic, orgiastic, and
223. See W. Barrett, Irrational Man (1961).
224. See the citations supra n. 202.
225. C[ Albert Schweitzer, Indian Thought and its Development (1951).
80
Secularism and Social Control
ecstatic experiences are extraordinary psychic states; they lead away
from everyday life and from all expedient conduct. 226
Wijhin the sphere of influence of Eastern religions generaIly, writes
Richard Carrington in his rather Teilhardian study of the "evolution" of
civilization."?
a reasonably high level of material culture was achieved, but the urge
towards its expansion was then lost through the influence '~f a myst.cal
philosophy which held that no present disturbance of mind was ultimately
worth while, as the purpose of man was to lose himself in the quietude of
a harmony which intellectual effort could only destroy, This allowed
the individual to support a degree of personal suffering and frustration
that might otherwise have proved intolerable ..
The consequences of this rejection of the world are incalculable.s"
Not only is India turned away ab initio from the positive valuing of material possessions and activities, and even of human welfare, which has been
so intimately associated with secularism in the West; but even the objective pursuit of knowledge becomes a matter which the thoughtful and
earnest Hindu must often find it hard to take seriously. The whole
"observed and manipulated world, as well as ... the mind itself"229 are
identified with maya, illusory and unsubstantial. The development of
science and technology are not merely controlled by religion; they are
subtly eroded into meaninglessness. Carrington goes so far as to say that
"Hinduism kept the humam mind in a state of mental retardation from
which it has only recently emerged as a result of western influences.t'v"
Yet here again we must be careful not to read too much of the
"ethereal" wisdom of India's great virtuoso-philosophers into the "material" world in which Indian villagers, merchants, scholars, and rulers have
lived. 231 The greatness of India's history, in civilization and knowledge, is
226. Weber, cit supra n. 43, at 289.
227. Op, cit ..supra n. 3, at 231-32. Cf, id. 226. and 0 1 Taoism as the "extreme
form" of this passivity, see id. 228-29.
228. Yet here. too, troublesome subsidiary questions arise as to how far Hinduism
and Christianity really differ in this regard. Weber, essay cited supra n. 89, finds many
examples of Christian tendencies approaching those here discussed. Yet however the
line between the two kinds of unworldliness be blurred by such complexities, a line undoubtedly remains.
229. Zimmer, op. cit. supra n. 201, at 19-20.
230. Carrington, op. cit. supra n. 3, at 255. His prediction that this state of affairs
is now changing is yet another matter on which interpretations will differ. Carrington
for his part confidently asserts that "the gradual replacement of both Hinduism and
Buddhism by the values of scientific humanism is already under way ... , and may well
be completed within the next hundred years" (id. 225).
231. See D. Chattopadhyaya, Lokayata: A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism
(1959). The attempt here to study ideas as social realities deserves emulation, the
Marxist tinge notwithstanding. The theme of the work is that the oldest Indian "philosophy of the masses" is one of materialism; that traces of this survive into the latter
ages of obsession with maya, in particular in the tantras; and that a modern Indian
materialism is therefore possible. He is ca eful, however, to disclaim any suggestion
that this should involve a "return" to some misleadingly romanticized pact.
A. R. Blackshield
81
too solid a refutation of Carrington's sweeping judgments, to be dismissed
by condescending acknowledgment of "a reasonably high level of material
culture" achieved up to a certain time. Here again, the doctrine of the
four life stages has its own ambiguous part to play in Indian cultural
attitudes. If study and learning, wealth and worldliness, are to be dismissed as "illusion ," they are also to be sought after as important in their
own right. Above all as to the search for knowledge, it is necessary to add
that this search is sustained and controlled by the Hindu religion, in a
way that almost equates the search with religiousness itself.
"
Perhaps, here again (as with "dharma" and "law") we are dealing
with an ambivalence which is not uniquely Indian. Attitudes to knowledge
in most religions tend to be ambivalent. Knowledge may be regarded as
nothing less than the most important human avenue of approach to
divinity; the search for it, and the handing on of the findings to future
generations, are then of the essence of religious concern. On the other
hand, intellectual questing may be seen as the very antithesis of the religious way of life-sometimes as prying into matters which are not for man to
know, and at any rate as diverting the mind from its true concern with faith.
Even those religions which are most fundamentally philosophico-scholarly
movements may sometimes tend to conservatism and incuriosity; and even
those which are fundamentally assertions of the soul and not of the mind
may become intellectualized, often with richly stimulating results.
The fact remains that the Christianity of the West, even in the hands
of the medieval schoolmen, has never had the intrinsic, self-evident identification with knowledge that is built into Hinduism at its rootS.232 If
Hinduism denigrates the search for knowledge as illusory, it also untiringly
insists on this search as the very essence of religion.
(vii) The Problems of Volksgeist. Indian aspiration still tends to
hover somewhat uncertainly over a final choice of three possible commitments. We might dub them "Indian" secularism; "Western" secularism;
and a "meeting of East and West." What, in the light of the preceding
(and far from exhaustive) sampling of social and philosophical puzzles, are
likely to be the realities underlying each?
(a) Obviously there are contained in the traditional unity trends of
thought and of social practice already imbued with secularism, or at least
232. Weber, cit. supra n. 43, at 268-69, points out that Hinduism begins as the
creed of "a hereditary caste of cultured literati," Confucianism "oemen with literary
educations who were characterized by a secular rationalism," and Buddhism of "strictly
contemplative, mendicant monks." On the other hand Muhammadanism is the creed
of "world-conquering warriors," Judaism of "a civic 'pariah people'," and Christianity
.. ,
Of "itinerant artisan journeymen."
82
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congenial to it. Yet it is also obvious that modern secular aspirations
cannot merely rely on these trends, nor even merely build on them. For
within 'their cultural context such trends are usually accompanied by other
trends of opposite tenor; and even when secularism is not altogether overborne or drowned out by these, it may still be effectively neutralized. And
if we selectively lift out of context those elements that seem useful, then as
soon as we do so they art: no longer what they were. If Indian individualism (for instance) isonly ambiguously present, oronly ambiguously secular,
we cannot make it fully real or secular simply by husking away its unreal
and spiritual elements. This would fully be to falsify Indian culture, not to
build upon it. Moreover, the continuity of the ancient tradition into the
1960's is not whole and uninterrupted. It is partially confused, interrupted,
and drained away, by fifteen years of progress since independence, and
before that by 1: 0 years of British rule which now stand as a barrier
between India and her past. On the one hand this means that in building
on indigenous values and practices we would not be building on a sure
foundation of vital "living law;" 233 on the other hand it means that the
would-be architects themselves often cannot be sure precisely what the
tradition offers. However, of course, to be sure of this, we should have to
break fully open to daylight the welded unity of the traditional society, to
layout its components for inspection. In doing this we should probably
be achieving substantial secularization in any event.
(b) If secularism cannot be revealed or created on the basis exclusively of what is "built-in" in Indian tradition, it must represent in wholeor
in part a transplantation from Western civilization. The question then
arises as with all such transplants whether the alien concentration can
take root. Indian thinkers-sometimes in defiance, sometimes in despair
- are often heard to maintain that it cannot.
Culture is a gift of history. India is an ancient country; consequently, DO
new culture can be imposed on it. Whosoever atternits to do so is bound to
fail; he can never succeed. Ours is a culture that has gradually developed
with our long history. Swaraj (independence) will have no meaning for our
people in the absence of (Indian) cultur.::.234
The problem is not merely that secularism does not "grow out off"
the indigenous social inheritance. It is rather that many factors embodied
in that inheritance are specifically hostile to "secularism. "i35 The very
233. See Engen Ehrlich, Fundamental Principles of the Sociology 0/ Law (transl,
W.L. Moll, 1936) chs, 2-3.
234. S.c. Dq,,~, in 7 C.A.D. (1948) 571, quoted in Luthera, op, cit. supra n. 10, at
143.
235. See the challenging discussion in Stone, op, cit. supra D. 12, at 112-14, where
many of these factors are reviewed. And cf, the other passages in that work cited supra
nn 189-19::>.
A. R. Blackshield
83
fact that Western secularism was to some extent dependent on special
features of Christianity, must also give us pause. For religion as we have
repeatedly seen is not a homogeneous phenomenon, and what can be done
with one religion cannot be done with another. "In no respect can one
simply integrate various world religions into a chain of types, each of
them signifying i new 'stage.' All the great religions are historical
individualities of a highly complex nature."236
(c) In the end, then, independent India is left with the only choice
that has ever really been open to her. In a certain sense, neither the
Western nor even the Indian tradition is hers. She is separated from the
one by foreignness, and from the other by 150 years of British rule. But
in another sense she is heir to both. Willy-nilly, the British experience
is now itself merely a part of Indian history. It has left deposits of
Western practice, social, commercial, legal, political, and administrative
structures, and above all broad social values, ideals, and thoughtways, not
merely superimposed upon nor tacked on to what is Indian, but incorporated along with the latter into one social inheritance. The Volksgeist of
modern India is-in part-a Western Volksgeist,
This is not to say that this Eastern/Western ideological patrimony
is an easy one to manage. We must not glibly think of the task in terms
of abstraction of common elements, or synthesis of the best in both, as
if this could automatically follow from acceptance and understanding of
both. Acceptance and understanding are themselves what are needed.
We cannot merely build upon either of the traditions: by a creative,
visionary grasp of both, a new fabric must be woven out of the strands
which they have to offer. In part, the task is one of social control, and
so f.ills primarily to law (but also to education). In part it is a task of
"transmission of culture," and falls primarily to education (but also to
law) More than either, it is a task of what might be called "the cultivation of culture"-the sedulous and painstaking nature of both Western
and Indian ideals-in which thoughtful men of all professions and walks
of life must join. But law and education must still give the lead.
Each must seek to instil the secular, but above all to be secular.
To be free of specifically religious "control" is hardly even a beginning.
Lawyers and judges, as well as legislators and administrators, must seek a
new degree of concrete, hard-headed, accurate focus on factual soical
issues; a constant search for objective relevancies to the core of dispute,
rather than mere verbal echoes of dicta; an easy readiness for distinction
~36.
Weber, essay cited supra n, 43, at 292.
84
Secularism and Social Control
and fragmentation of specialized rules and concepts.r" rather than escape
into 111usory synthesis under the guise of "harmonious construction;"
an easy readiness to change and change again, whenever the existing rules
- however well settled-do not exactly fit the needs of the case at bar;
and above all a constant practical drive for the achievement of socioeconomic justice through law. Only thus (if "secularism"'" means "rolled-up
materialism") can Indian law be secular. If this means that Western
pragmatism must overcome Indian illusion, so be it. If it means that
Indian dharma must overcome Western legalism, so be it also.
Education, for its part must continue to be a process of thoroughgoing objectivity and realism. The idea of wholehearted objective devotion
to a job; the need for thoroughness and precision and depth of understanding in basic and advanced skills; an ever-ready willingness to
experiment and explore; the constant drive to "make good" rather than
"make do," but the ability to measure success in terms of quality rather
than quantity, whether of handicrafts, agricultural and industrial products,
books, or academic degrees; an absolute respect for truth, even (when
need be) at the cost of courtesy; a fundamental appreciation of the
importance of every human individual, and of the seriousness and
worthwhileness and intrinsic interest of "thing-techniques," from handloom
weaving to atom-splitting, and of objective factual knowledge generallyall of these must be instilled in the pupils above all the mainfest and
unfaltering example of the teacher. This (if "secularism" means "rolledup materialism") is secular education.
Yet all this is still not enough. The broad and still perturbing
problems that we have noted in the West, of the balance between materialism and crassness; individualism and anti-socialism, moral freedom and
moral anomie, already trouble India as well. To the very extent that
secularization progressively succeeds, these problems will become more
pressing. Indian intellectuals of an older generation were wont to admire
and espouse Western ethical ideals, but to distrust Western technology.
If India were to finish up by adopting the technology and losing the
ideals, it would be a tragedy of agonizing irony for India, and perhaps
for the world. Judges and legislators in their zeal for social reform must
somehow hold short of ruthlessness; and here perhaps judges, backed by
the "fundamental rights" in part III of the Constitution, have a special
role to play. Educators must never become so preoccupied with "thingtechniques" that they understress or overlook the need for "cultural"
237. I e. ~or "multiplic'atic;n of working categories." See J. Stone, op. cit.
n, 150, at 307-310.
supr«
A. R. Blackshield
85
education as well. For Rabindranath Tagore,338 eduation was centred on
spiritual, humanist and aesthetic values, on "the bond of kinship," the
"complete meeting of East or West in a common fellowship of learning
and common spiritual striving for .the unity of the human race," and
above all on the search for knowledge-e-vthe greatest factor in the unification of mankind';'239 On the brink of an "economic precipice.l'v'?
Tagore's aspirations may seem unreal; but some measure of their fulfilment
seems essential if India is to continue in her great contribution to the
culture of the world, or even in the preservation of her own. Not only,
in short, must India's "cultivation of culture" give nurture to both Western
and Indian ideals; but beyond this, within each of the two traditions, there
must be a nurture of the "ethereal" as well as the "material."
238. It is remarkable fact that in the Indian version of this search for educative
balance, the competing views are identified with two of twentieth-century India's greattest charismatic figures, Gandhi and Tagore, See N.C. Bhattacharyya, "Search for a
Perspective: Educational Thought in Contemporary India" (1965) 9 Aust. J. Ed. 29.
Gandhi's "Basic Education" ("begin the child's education by teaching it a useful handicraft and enabling it to produce from the moment it begins its training") no doubt sits
well with economic necessity. with his idealization of village India, and with Indian
secularism. But despite acknowledgment of the need for "all-round drawing-out of the
best in child and man-body, mind and spirit," it offered "hardly any place for modern
science and advanced technology and little concern for higher education" (id. 30). It
therefore sits oddly with his own spiritual and cultural greatness, and even with his
antipathy to Western materialism and industrialization, G. Ramanathan, Education
from Dewey to Gandhi: The Theory of Basic Education (1952) is clearly much too uncritical of both Dewey and Gandhi. But his main thesis as to the link between
Gandhi's plans and Dewey's pragmatism rings truer than Bhattacharyya (article cited,
at 30-31) would admit.
239. Bhattacharyya, article cited, at 32-33. The quotations are from H.B.
Mukherjee, Education for Fulness: A Study ofthe Educational Thought of Rabindranath
Tagore (1962) 46, 96, 98, 401.
240. See Segal, op, cit. supra n, 191, at 1730.