"Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle"
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Washington isn’t musing about private faith here; he’s issuing a stability memo to a fragile republic. The key move is the phrase “with caution indulge the supposition”: he grants the Enlightenment premise that morality might be grounded in reason, then immediately quarantines it as a risky experiment. It’s elegant rhetorical jujitsu. By seeming open-minded, he frames secular ethics not as an alternative worth debating but as a wager the nation can’t afford.
The second sentence tightens the screw. “Reason and experience” invokes the era’s prized authorities, but the conclusion isn’t a philosophical proof; it’s a political forecast. Washington is arguing from consequences: public virtue is the lubricant of self-government, and religion is the most reliable mass technology for producing it. “National morality” matters because the American project depends on voluntary compliance - taxes paid, contracts honored, power relinquished - without the dense enforcement apparatus of an old-world state. In that context, religious principle functions as internal policing, a way to make restraint feel supervised even when no one is watching.
The subtext is also managerial. He’s speaking to a plural, quarrelsome population that might mistake liberty for license, and to elites flirting with deism who underestimate how thin civic norms can get once unmoored. Washington doesn’t demand a theocracy; he sketches a social bargain: keep religion in the civic ecosystem because it supplies the habits and fears that make republican freedom workable. It’s less sermon than early American risk assessment.
The second sentence tightens the screw. “Reason and experience” invokes the era’s prized authorities, but the conclusion isn’t a philosophical proof; it’s a political forecast. Washington is arguing from consequences: public virtue is the lubricant of self-government, and religion is the most reliable mass technology for producing it. “National morality” matters because the American project depends on voluntary compliance - taxes paid, contracts honored, power relinquished - without the dense enforcement apparatus of an old-world state. In that context, religious principle functions as internal policing, a way to make restraint feel supervised even when no one is watching.
The subtext is also managerial. He’s speaking to a plural, quarrelsome population that might mistake liberty for license, and to elites flirting with deism who underestimate how thin civic norms can get once unmoored. Washington doesn’t demand a theocracy; he sketches a social bargain: keep religion in the civic ecosystem because it supplies the habits and fears that make republican freedom workable. It’s less sermon than early American risk assessment.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
|---|---|
| Source | George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796; passage stating that 'national morality cannot prevail in exclusion of religious principle.' |
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