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| Gaetano Mosca April 1, 1858—Nov. 8, 1941 Sicilian jurist and philosopher |
One could not maintain that it makes no difference whether a people embraces one religion or political doctrine or another. It would be difficult to show that the practical effects of Christianity are not different from those of Mohammedanism or socialism. In the long run a belief does give a certain bent to human sentiments, and such bents may have far-reaching consequences. But it seems certain that no belief will ever succeed in making the human being anything essentially different from what he is. To state the situation in other words, no belief will ever make men wholly good or wholly bad, wholly altruistic or wholly selfish. Some adaptation to the lower moral and emotional level that corresponds to the human average is indispensable in all religions. Those who refuse to recognize that fact make it easier, it seems to us, for people who use the relative inefficacy of religious sentiments and political doctrines as an argument to prove their absolute inefficacy. There comes to mind in this connection an opinion that has often been expressed. The bandits of southern Italy usually went about in true South Italian style, laden with scapulars and images of saints and madonnas. At the same time they were often guilty of murders and other crimes—whence the conclusion that religious beliefs had no practical influence upon them. Now, before such an inference could with justice be drawn, one would have to show that if the bandits had not carried scapulars and madonnas they would not have committed additional murders or acts of ferocity. If the images saved a single human life, a single pang of sorrow, a single tear, there would be adequate grounds for crediting them with some influence.
Reprinted from The Ruling Class by Gaetano Mosca, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1939, pp. 183-184
