Content introduction n. Hawthorne' life, novels and the contributions and achievements of his works Nathaniel Hawthorne's great novel " The Scarlet Letter " Religious and social aspects of the novel "The Scarlet Letter " 15 internet

2. Nathaniel Hawthorne's great novel " The Scarlet Letter "

The Scarlet Letter: A Romance is a work of historical fiction by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1850.Set in Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony during the years 1642 to 1649, the novel tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an affair and then struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Containing a number of religious and historic allusions, the book explores themes of legalism, sin, and guilt.The Scarlet Letter was one of the first mass-produced books in the United States. It was popular when first published and is considered a classic work today. It inspired numerous film, television, and stage adaptations. Critics have described it as a masterwork, and novelist D. H. Lawrence called it a "perfect work of the American imagination".In Puritan Boston, Massachusetts, a crowd gathers to witness the punishment of Hester Prynne, a young woman who has given birth to a baby of unknown parentage. Her sentence required her to stand on the scaffold for three hours, exposed to public humiliation, and to wear the scarlet "A" for the rest of her life. As Hester approaches the scaffold, many of the women in the crowd are angered by her beauty and quiet dignity. When commanded and cajoled to name the father of her child, Hester refuses.

As Hester looks out over the crowd, she notices a small, misshapen man and recognizes him as her long-lost husband, who has been presumed lost at sea. When the husband sees Hester's shame, he asks a man in the crowd about her and is told the story of his wife's adultery. He angrily exclaims that the child's father, the partner in the adulterous act, should also be punished and vows to find the man. He chooses a new name, Roger Chillingworth, to aid him in his plan.The Reverend John Wilson and the minister of Hester's church, Arthur Dimmesdale, question her, but she refuses to name her lover. After she returns to her prison cell, the jailer brings in Chillingworth, now a physician, to calm Hester and her child with his roots and herbs. He and Hester have an open conversation regarding their marriage and the fact that they were both in the wrong. Her lover, however, is another matter and he demands to know who it is; Hester refuses to divulge such information. He accepts this, stating that he will find out anyway, and forces her to conceal that he is her husband. If she ever reveals him, he warns her, he will destroy the child's father. Hester agrees to Chillingworth's terms although she suspects she will regret it.Following her release from prison, Hester settles in a cottage at the edge of town and earns a meager living with her needlework, which is of extraordinary quality. She lives a quiet, somber life with her daughter, Pearl, and performs acts of charity for the poor. She is troubled by her daughter's unusual fascination with the scarlet "A". The shunning of Hester also extends to Pearl, who has no playmates or friends except her mother. As she grows older, Pearl becomes capricious and unruly. Her conduct starts rumors, and, not surprisingly, the church members suggest Pearl be taken away from Hester.
Hester, hearing rumors that she may lose Pearl, goes to speak to Governor Bellingham. With him are ministers Wilson and Dimmesdale. Hester appeals to Dimmesdale in desperation, and the minister persuades the governor to let Pearl remain in Hester's care.Because Dimmesdale's health has begun to fail, the townspeople are happy to have Chillingworth, the newly arrived physician, take up lodgings with their beloved minister. Being in such close contact with Dimmesdale, Chillingworth begins to suspect that the minister's illness is the result of some unconfessed guilt. He applies psychological pressure to the minister because he suspects Dimmesdale is Pearl's father. One evening, pulling the sleeping Dimmesdale's vestment aside, Chillingworth sees a symbol that represents his shame on the minister's pale chest.Tormented by his guilty conscience, Dimmesdale goes to the square where Hester was punished years earlier. Climbing the scaffold in the dead of night, he admits his guilt but cannot find the courage to do so publicly in the light of day. Hester, shocked by Dimmesdale's deterioration, decides to obtain a release from her vow of silence to her husband.Several days later, Hester meets Dimmesdale in the forest and tells him of her husband and his desire for revenge. She convinces Dimmesdale to leave Boston in secret on a ship to Europe where they can start life anew. Inspired by this plan, the minister seems to gain new energy. On Election Day, Dimmesdale gives one of his most inspired sermons. But as the procession leaves the church, Dimmesdale climbs upon the scaffold and confesses his sin, dying in Hester's arms. Later, most witnesses swear that they saw a stigma in the form of a scarlet "A" upon his chest, although some deny this statement. Chillingworth, losing his will for revenge, dies shortly thereafter and leaves Pearl a substantial inheritance.After several years, Hester returns to her cottage and resumes wearing the scarlet letter. When she dies, she is buried near the grave of Dimmesdale, and they share a simple slate tombstone engraved with an escutcheon described as: "On a field, sable, the letter A, gules" ("A red letter A written on a black background").The major theme of The Scarlet Letter is shaming and social stigmatizing, both Hester's public humiliation and Dimmesdale's private shame and fear of exposure. Notably, their liaison is never spoken of, so the circumstances that led to Hester's pregnancy, and how their affair was kept secret never become part of the plot.
Elmer Kennedy-Andrews remarks that Hawthorne in "The Custom-house" sets the context for his story and "tells us about 'romance', which is his preferred generic term to describe The Scarlet Letter, as his subtitle for the book – 'A Romance' – would indicate." In this introduction, Hawthorne describes a space between materialism and "dreaminess" that he calls "a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and fairy-land, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and each imbues itself with nature of the other". This combination of "dreaminess" and realism gave the author space to explore major themes.The experience of Hester and Dimmesdale recalls the story of Adam and Eve because, in both cases, sin results in expulsion and suffering. But it also results in knowledge – specifically, in knowledge of what it means to be immoral. For Hester, the Scarlet Letter is a physical manifestation of her sin and reminder of her painful solitude. She contemplates casting it off to obtain her freedom from an oppressive society and a checkered past as well as the absence of God. Because the society excludes her, she considers the possibility that many of the traditions upheld by the Puritan culture are untrue and are not designed to bring her happiness.As for Dimmesdale, the "cheating minister", his sin gives him "sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind, so that his chest vibrate[s] in unison with theirs." His eloquent and powerful sermons derive from this sense of empathy.The narrative of the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is quite in keeping with the oldest and most fully authorized principles in Christian thought.[citation needed] His "Fall" is a descent from apparent grace to his own damnation; he appears to begin in purity but he ends in corruption. The subtlety is that the minister's belief is his own cheating, convincing himself at every stage of his spiritual pilgrimage that he is saved.
The rose bush's beauty forms a striking contrast to all that surrounds it; as later the beautifully embroidered scarlet "A" will be held out in part as an invitation to find "some sweet moral blossom" in the ensuing, tragic tale and in part as an image that "the deep heart of nature" (perhaps God) may look more kindly on the errant Hester and her child than her Puritan neighbors do. Throughout the work, the nature images contrast with the stark darkness of the Puritans and their systems.Chillingworth's misshapen body reflects (or symbolizes) the anger in his soul, which builds as the novel progresses, similar to the way Dimmesdale's illness reveals his inner turmoil. The outward man reflects the condition of the heart; an observation thought inspired by the deterioration of Edgar Allan Poe, whom Hawthorne "much admired".Another theme is the extreme legalism of the Puritans and how Hester chooses not to conform to their rules and beliefs. Hester was rejected by the villagers even though she spent her life doing what she could to help the sick and the poor. Because of the social shunning, she spent her life mostly in solitude and would not go to church.
As a result, she retreats into her own mind and her own thinking. Her thoughts begin to stretch and go beyond what would be considered by the Puritans as safe. She still sees her sin, but begins to look on it differently than the villagers ever have. She begins to believe that a person's earthly sins do not necessarily condemn them. She even goes so far as to tell Dimmesdale that their sin has been paid for by their daily penance and that their sin will not keep them from getting to heaven, although the Puritans believed that such a sin surely condemns. Hawthorne, describing "a tale of human frailty and sorrow", insisted that The Scarlet Letter was "a Romance", not a novel. This distinction, in his mind, was important. Where a novel, as he put it, "aims at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man's experience", a romance expressed "the truth of the human heart". Here, in short, is the prototype of the psychological novel, a brilliant and groundbreaking example of a new genre within 19th-century fiction.Hawthorne's tale has a stark simplicity. In the 17th-century town of Boston, a young woman, Hester Prynne, is publicly disgraced for committing adultery and giving birth to an illegitimate child, a girl named Pearl. Forced to wear a scarlet "A", Hester slowly redeems herself in the eyes of Puritan society. Over many years, she challenges the two men in her life – her husband and her lover – with the dark truth of their emotional responsibilities and failures, while at the same time wrestling with her own sinful nature. After seven long years of painful rehabilitation, she emerges as a strong, inspiring woman, while the pastor, Arthur Dimmesdale, who seduced her dies of shame. Hester, too, eventually dies and is buried near Dimmesdale under a tombstone marked with a simple "A".
Such a bare summary does few favours to an extraordinary work of the imagination that burns from page to page with the fierce simplicity of scripture and an almost cinematic clarity of vision. The Scarlet Letter is an astounding book full of intense symbolism, as strange and haunting as anything by Edgar Allan Poe (No 10 in this series), a writer whom we know Hawthorne much admired.The process of Hester Prynne's acquisition of self-knowledge, the recognition of her sin and her ultimate restoration in a sequence of enthralling scenes, punctuated by moments of confrontation with Dimmesdale, is utterly compelling and, at times, deeply moving. Nathaniel Hawthorne's understanding of the emotional transactions of the sexes is profound and modern, too. And very interesting about the price paid for the loss of love. Hester's reflections on her relationship with Dimmesdale ("How deeply had they known each other then! And was this the man? She hardly knew him now") could be found in many modern novels.
The most memorable and original aspect of The Scarlet Letter lies in Hawthorne's portrait of Hester Prynne, who has been described as "the first true heroine of American fiction", a woman whose experience evokes the biblical fate of Eve. Hawthorne's achievement is to make her passion noble, her defiance heartbreaking and her frailty inspiring. She becomes the archetype of the free-thinking American woman grappling with herself and her sexuality in a cold, patriarchal society.There is also something emblematic of the newly settled American society about The Scarlet Letter, the belief that the public individual, subjected to a merciless democratic scrutiny, is owed the human right of ultimate restoration, if he or she deserves it. Hester Prynne is more than just a mother with a baby, she is an outcast woman who will ultimately be welcomed back into American life, purged and cleansed of her sin. Readers of The Scarlet Letter during, for instance, the Monica Lewinsky scandal of the 1990s, could not fail to miss the resonance of Hawthorne's "romance" with that bizarre political drama.By chance, in his own time, Hawthorne was not alone in wanting to explore the mysteries of the American psyche through fiction. In summer 1850, after the successful publication of The Scarlet Letter, he met the young Herman Melville who had just begun, and was grappling with, his own dark meditation on America, the next volume (No 17) in this series, Moby-Dick.

3. Religious and social aspects of the novel "The Scarlet Letter "

The Scarlet Letter was published in Boston in the spring of 1850 by Ticknor, Reed and Fields. When he delivered the manuscript in February 1850, Hawthorne said "some portions of the book are powerfully written", but cautiously added that it would probably not prove popular. Secretly, he hoped for much more. After the night of 3 February 1850, when he read the final part of the novel to his wife, he told a friend that "it broke her heart … which I look upon as a triumphant success. Judging from its effect," he went on, "I may calculate on what bowlers call a 10-strike!" Hawthorne had struggled, with almost no recognition, for some 25 years. It's clear that he anticipated some success. Religious Oppression in The Scarlet Letter

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne has committed adultery, and her subsequent bearing of an illegitimate child has cast her beyond the pale of polite society. It is difficult for us, in the late twentieth century, to comprehend exactly what this means. She is permitted to remain in Salem, and to work among the townspeople and interact with them. But she is never to be allowed to forget for a minute the enormity of her sin. To reinforce this, she is obligated to wear on her chest a huge embroidered “A” at all times. This may, on the surface, seem like a peculiar punishment; everyone in town already knows Hester’s story, and with Pearl in tow it would be difficult for Hester to act as if the thing never happened. But the wearing of the “A”, and more generally the way Hester is required to live, shows the extent of the religious oppression under which the Puritans lived.Initially it would help to understand something about the background of the Puritan movement. The separation of the Puritans from the mainline Anglican church began in England in the late sixteenth century. Although England was nominally a Protestant country, the Anglican church had been created for political reasons, not religious ones, and the church established by the English monarchy was very similar to the Roman Catholic one they had just left. Carroll and Noble point out that many fundamentalist minded Protestants felt that Henry and Elizabeth’s reforms had not gone nearly far enough: “The Protestant dissenters objected to the ‘popish’ practices in the established church and hoped to further the reformation by eliminating such ‘impurities’. In particular, they wished to simplify the religious service by curtailing certain ceremonies, and they advocated the removal of higher church officials such as bishops and archbishops” (Carroll and Noble, 30).All of these dissenters wished to purify the church, although not all wanted to separate from it. Carroll and Noble continue: “The Puritans, more moderate and more numerous than the Separatists, believed that the Church of England was a true church even though it desperately needed reformation. The Separatists, on the other hand, insisted that the established church was beyond salvation and felt that a believer who worshipped in that church would be contaminated by its sins” (Carroll and Noble, 30).Both groups, which in America soon became virtually indistinguishable, were strongly influenced by the teachings of sixteenth century theologian John Calvin, who believed that God selected a few saints as His chosen people and condemned the remainder of humanity to eternal damnation. “Whether one was saved or damned depended not on human action or the quality of one’s life but rather on the inscrutable will of God. The Lord, according to the adherents of Puritanism, imputed His grace into the souls of otherwise corrupt people, thereby confirming their eternal salvation. This act of conversion became the central aspect of Puritanism, the single event that separated the saint from the sinner for eternity. Although in theory, a belief in these principles of predestination freed the saints from specific moral obligations in this world, Puritans expected believers to live godly lives on earth as a way of preparing for the comforts of heaven” (Carroll & Noble 30-31). And Edmund S. Morgan in his Visible Saints: A History of the Puritan Idea, observes that “A church, the Separatists insisted, must be composed entirely of persons who understood and accepted the doctrines of Christianity, submitted voluntarily to the church, and led lives free of apparent sin” (Morgan, 53).Officially, Puritans were willing to acknowledge that occasionally even godly people fell from grace, possibly not as dramatically as Hester, but at least a little bit. They felt, however, that in order to return to communion with God’s saints, a public confession, not only of sin but also of repentance and abject subjugation to the will of God and the church community, was required. Edmund S. Morgan notes that among the Separatist churches, “in cases of adultery, the church refused to forgive unless the offender publicly expressed his repentance before the church. So attentive were the Separatists in their exercise of discipline that they finally found themselves maintaining that the failure to punish a single known offense was sufficient to destroy a church” (Morgan, 52). Looking at this in the context of Hawthorne’s novel, we can see that this is what the elders were seeking from Hester in Chapter 3, when Governor Bellingham says to Dimmesdale, “It behooves you, therefore, to exhort her to repentance and to confession, as a proof and consequence thereof” (Hawthorne, 64).What they claimed to want was the name of the child’s father. What would this have accomplished? Certainly it would have ended Dimmesdale’s career, and subjected him to the same type of treatment given Hester. On this point, the Puritans were no supporters of the double standard. And, except for allowing Hester to remove the letter “A” from her chest, identifying the father would not have helped her at all if in fact she does not believe that confession will save her immortal soul.Craig Milliman has written an entire article for the magazine The Explicator on Hester and Dimmesdale’s veiled meanings when they address each other in this scene. Dimmesdale is caught between a rock and a hard place; the Governor has ordered him to try to get Hester to identify the father of her child, who, of course, is Dimmesdale himself. To have Hester confess this would ruin him; therefore he phrases his words in such a way that they sound good for the general public, but contain an entirely separate level of meaning for Hester alone (Milliman, 83). He speaks, Hawthorne tells us, in a voice “tremulously sweet, rich, deep, and broken” (Hawthorne, 65). The audience perceives this as reflecting the depth of his pastoral feeling for the young sinner. It certainly reflects his depth of feeling for Hester, he loves her, but it reflects just as much his terror at the situation in which he finds himself, and his fear at what she might say.Consider his words: “If thou feelest it to be for thy soul’s peace, and that thy earthly punishment will thereby be made more effectual to salvation, I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer!” (Hawthorne, 65). What he is hoping is that she will decide that ruining his reputation would in no way add to her soul’s peace. He twists the knife by pointing out that not only is he a fellow sinner with her, but he is a fellow sufferer as well. He concludes his speech with: “Heaven hath granted thee an open ignominy, that thereby thou mayest work out an open triumph over the evil within thee, and the sorrow without. Take heed how thou deniest to him who, perchance, hath not the courage to grasp it for himself the bitter, but wholesome, cup that is now presented to thy lips!” (Hawthorne, 65). Again he is speaking on two levels, trying to say what a caring pastor would say on the one hand and trying to get her sympathy on the other. He is saying, “Your part in this is out in the open, manifested in the presence of the child. What good would it do you to involve me, who has not the courage to involve myself? Can’t you see I’m suffering with you as it is?” She apparently buys this argument, because she refuses to tell the crowd his name, and keeps her letter “A” with pride. In Mara Dukats’ words, “Hester transforms the sign into a complex and ambiguous symbol, one that signifies both Puritan control and domination, and the refusal and delegitimation of this control” (Dukats, 51).John K. The novel of Nathaniel Hawthorne has use the subject of religion and sexuality throughout the novel. The thesis of the study discusses symbols that Hawthorne utilized in order to portray the message of the novel about religion, and the significance of religion towards the characters of Hester and Dimmesdale.
The novel usually possesses specific events that show the effects of religion in their society from the sexual aggression towards women. In the novel, women are understood to possess powers to fight the sexual abuses from the religious antagonists of the novel. This has been illustrated by the character of Hester Prynne, who is the main character of the novel, through her spiritual writings of the “hapless Dimmesdale”. The presenting irony between the characters of Hester, Pearl and Dimmesdale is the main illustration of religion and sexuality issues of the novel. The novel of Nathaniel Hawthorne revolves in the tragedy that occurred to Hester Prynne. In the story overview, Hester Prynne has had her child from the adultery that she committed. After giving birth, Hester denies the identity of the father to her child, and throughout her life, she has struggled moving on from the guilty feelings that she possessed. Within the novel, different symbolisms of religion and sexual tragedies are applied in order to relay the concept of the scarlet letter to the audience. In the study, the aim is to determine these symbolisms in order to answer the thesis statement.
The events in the scarlet letter have involved two issues that are linked to the subject of religion. Essentially, the two issues are adultery and womanhood, which are evidently symbolized by the scarlet letter “A” (adultery) and the struggles of Hester and Pearl (womanhood). The main figure of religion is portrayed by the character of Arthur Dimmesdale, which is the minister in the community of Hester.
The three characters are confronted by Chillingworth, who serves as the antagonists of the novel. In the story, Hawthorne has involved the subjective values of lust, guilt, repentance, forgiveness and secrecy intertwined with the tragedies of this love triangle in order to emphasize the impact of the sexual scandal with the religious component of the novel. The analysis of this study has identified three symbolisms that provide certain significance to the subject of religion.
The letter “A” has played significant role in the entire novel of Hawthorne. Some of the reasons for using this letter symbol are the sin, adultery and the religious conflict of the story. The letter A stands out as a simply acronym for the word “adultery”, which has been considered by Dimmesdale in the latter parts of the story. In addition, the letter symbolizes the sin that Dimmesdale and Hester have committed, which brought Pearl. Considering the first and second reasons, according to the book of Carmichael (2003) entitled, Sin and Forgiveness: New Responses in a Changing World, letter is an actual symbol to remind the religious conflict that Hester and Dimmesdale committed (24).
In the era present in the novel, the trend of Post-Reformation Scotland is the governing culture wherein religion and common law are strictly implemented in the community. People in line with religious careers are very much regarded by the public to the point of extreme admiration and consideration. On the other hand, the public sees adultery as something gravely punishable by death. Hawthorne has used the two character dilemmas to facilitate the gender and religious irony of the novel wherein both sinners did not acquire the same consequences of action.
At this point, the civil laws and the rules of the Church are highly regarded as sacred; hence, those who violate these should expect extreme punishment. The inscription of letter “A” for both characters, Dimmesdale and Hester give two considerable arguments. First, with the character of Hester being the female and temptation symbol of the novel, she triggers the feminine sexual tempting that has been directed towards the religious figure, Dimmesdale. Second, Dimmesdale, being the minister and under the figure of religious character, he portrays the tendencies of sexual weakness that can even be present among religious personnel since their manhood still comprise of human components.
Hawthorne uses the symbol of letter “A” to link history of physical attraction that has occurred between the Dimmesdale and Hester. According to Johnson (2005), Hawthorne has utilized this symbolism in order to illustrate the dark side of religious men that can be reveled through sexual encounters (143). Therefore, despite the absence of Hester’s sexual intentions, the letter “A” symbolizes the religious violations and weakness of the minister against Hester’s female temptation. The next religious symbolism that can be encountered in the story is Dimmesdale’s preaching during the last part of the story. In this scenario, Dimmesdale provides his most significant and emphasized sermon to the public wherein, during that time, he, Hester, and their daughter, Pearl, are planning to leave the outskirts of the community and settle in for a new start. During the last part of his sermon, Dimmesdale publicly recognized Hester and Pearl as his family, and during the same scene, he left the two ladies of his life permanently for he dies right after kissing Pearl.
This event gives the following symbolisms under the subject of religion wherein the plans of escape behind the scenario illustrate the weakness of Dimmesdale’s duty for church against his personal emotions towards his family. In addition, through the illustration of Dimmesdale’s death right after his admittance, the event is able to portray the idea of freeing oneself from sin. The real escape that should resolve the conflicts of Hester and Dimmesdale against their sin is not by relocation, but rather through admittance.
“People of New England! Ye, that have loved me! – ye, that have deemed me holy! – behold me here, the one sinner of the world! (Hawthorne 254)”
As according to Kopey (2003), the death of Dimmesdale cannot be considered as an escape from the sins they have committed but rather freedom from the lies that they placed upon themselves (88). Hawthorne somehow inculcates the concept or escape as a natural human instinct to avoid the consequences of sin; however, he further corrects this notion by suggesting the value of truth in freeing one’s self from sin’s consequences.
“the gaze of the horror-stricken multitude was concentrate on the ghastly miracle… the minister stood with a flush of triumph in has face (Hawthorne 255)”
In analysis of these two statements, Hawthorne somehow revealed the religious message of finding freedom not escape in the sense of truth. Soon after his acceptance, Hester and Pearl are able to leave a normal life (though not in an instant) with lesser pressure from the society. In the latter parts of the story, the religious sense has shifted to the character of Hester and her relationship with the village. At this point, the act of truth has obtained the blessings of forgiveness, which is manifested in the character of Hester. Although, Hawthorne has utilized the female characters of Hester and Pearl in order to create a more sensible argument towards the portrayal of Dimmesdale as the religious figure of the novel.
The feminine characters in the novel are the identifiers of human sorrows, guilty feelings, instinct of escape and sinful nature. The showing of Hester and Pearl in the public while they are being watched intently by the community people forms the symbolism of womanly rejection. On the other hand, the reverence of the people to the Minister Dimmesdale provides the irony against the humiliation being experienced by Hester and her daughter. While the character of Dimmesdale being revered as holy, pure and morally upright, the women are to face significant ridicule from the public and the humiliation towards their sexuality.
The implications of the feminine symbol in religious interpretations are the following: (a) the feminine characters of Hester and Pearl signify the origin and the product of sin; (b) the character of Hester provides this implication of temptation against the weakness of religious figures (e.g. ministers, priests, etc.), such as with the character of Dimmesdale. According to Ousby (1996), Hawthorne uses the character of Hester to point out the sinful act of adultery in her character, and the sin of failing the duties of celibacy under the contract of being a minister before men and God as well as the sin of adultery (343). These symbols have provided the significant impact of religion in the characters of Hester and Dimmesdale wherein the main implication of religious insights towards their tragedy is the sin of adultery and breaking the law of celibacy. In answering the thesis statement, the religious implications in the story of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter are manifested in three identified symbols, namely the letter “A” mark of Hester and Dimmesdale that signify the sin they have committed, the last sermon of Dimmesdale and his death that symbolizes truth as freedom from guilt of sin and the female characters that symbolizes the presence of sin that reveals the dark side of the spiritual figure, Dimmesdale. Hence, the main analysis in the novel states that the presence of sin can occur to any man and woman despite of their religious inclinations since human beings, by instinct, are weak and easily perted.