64 Making of the Complete Citizen
hold on western civilization, and philosophy rather than
religion is the term I would use of the activity of the think-
ers to whom I have referred. My purpose is not to enter
upon a broad discussion of Religion, but to keep in view its
place in the making of a citizen of the western world.
Here, however, I may be challenged as to my definition
of what in the western mind constitutes religion, by those
who are applying the term to the attitude of the Russians to
their social experiment and industrial Plan. Recently Lord
Passfield, better known as Sydney Webb, said that “he was
inclined to think that here was the emergence not only of
a new civilization but of a new religion, a religion amazingly
like the religion of humanity identified with the name of
Auguste Comte.” Also Professor Arnold Toynbee has
recently said: “For the Russian Communist Party member,
his Communism is a religion. At least, it is a Cause to which
he devotes his life ; it is a view of life which embraces every
side of life and inspires every social and almost every per-
sonal activity; and it is a way of life for which he feels such
enthusiasm that he cannot be happy unless he is propagating
it to the ends of the earth and trying to convert the whole
of mankind to it. And if that isn’t a religion, I do not know
what the word religion means. . . . And unless you grasp
the fact that Russian Communism is a religion of a kind, you
will not be able to understand ‘The Anti-God Campaign.’ ”
Having officially deposed the old religion they have sub-
stituted the new order of the State as its surrogate, calling
a new creation into being to redress the balance of
the former world of superstition, which they assert re-
ligion always is. They have been fired by the idea of the
Plan; it has become to them an almost mystical ideal;
the hope of its realization has swept with emotional
effect over the nation, and average folk have such faith in