We have dealt with the Genesis of Christianity; we now come to the
Exodus. For that Christianity can CONTINUE to hold the field of Religion
in the Western World is neither probable nor desirable. It is true, as
I have remarked already, that there is a certain trouble about
defining what we mean by "Christianity" similar to that about the word
"Civilization." If we select out of the great mass of doctrines and
rites favored by the various Christian Churches just those which commend
themselves to the most modern and humane and rational human mind and
choose to call that resulting (but rather small) body of belief and
practice 'Christianity' we are, of course, entitled to do so, and to
hope (as we do hope) that this residuum will survive and go forward into
the future. But this sort of proceeding is hardly fair and certainly not
logical. It enables Christianity to pose as an angel of light while at
the same time keeping discreetly out of sight all its own abominations
and deeds of darkness. The Church--which began its career by destroying,
distorting and denying the pagan sources from which it sprang; whose
bishops and other ecclesiastics assassinated each other in their
theological rancour "of wild beasts," which encouraged the wicked folly
of the Crusades--especially the Children's Crusades--and the shameful
murders of the Manicheans, the Albigenses, and the Huguenots; which
burned at the stake thousands and thousands of poor 'witches' and
'heretics'; which has hardly ever spoken a generous word in favor or
defence of the animals; which in modern times has supported vivisection
as against the latter, Capitalism and Commercialism as against the
poorer classes of mankind; and whose priests in the forms of its various
sects, Greek or Catholic, Lutheran or Protestant, have in these last
days rushed forth to urge the nations to slaughter each other with every
diabolical device of Science, and to glorify the war-cry of Patriotism
in defiance of the principle of universal Brotherhood--such a Church can
hardly claim to have established the angelic character of its mission
among mankind! And if it be said--as it often IS SAID: "Oh! but you must
go back to the genuine article, and the Church's real origin and one
foundation in the person and teaching of Jesus Christ," then indeed you
come back to the point which this book, as above, enforces: namely, that
as to the person of Jesus, there is no CERTAINTY at all that he ever
existed; and as to the teaching credited to him, it is certain that that
comes down from a period long anterior to 'Christianity' and is part of
what may justly be called a very ancient World-religion. So, as in the
case of 'Civilization,' we are compelled to see that it is useless to
apply the word to some ideal state of affairs or doctrine (an ideal
by no means the same in all people's minds, or in all localities and
times), but that the only reasonable thing to do is to apply it in each
case to a HISTORICAL PERIOD. In the case of Christianity the historical
period has lasted nearly 2,000 years, and, as I say, we can hardly
expect or wish that it should last much longer.
The very thorough and careful investigation of religious origins which
has been made during late years by a great number of students and
observers undoubtedly tends to show that there has been something like
a great World-religion coming down the centuries from the remotest times
and gradually expanding and branching as it has come--that is to say
that the similarity (in ESSENCE though not always in external detail)
between the creeds and rituals of widely sundered tribes and peoples is
so great as to justify the view--advanced in the present volume--that
these creeds and rituals are the necessary outgrowths of human
psychology, slowly evolving, and that consequently they have a common
origin and in their various forms a common expression. Of this great
World-religion, so coming down, Christianity is undoubtedly a branch,
and an important branch. But there have been important branches before;
and while it may be true that Christianity emphasizes some points which
may have been overlooked or neglected in the Vedic teachings or in
Buddhism, or in the Persian and Egyptian and Syrian cults, or in
Mahommedanism, and so forth, it is also equally true that Christianity
has itself overlooked or neglected valuable points in these religions.
It has, in fact, the defects of its qualities. If the World-religion
is like a great tree, one cannot expect or desire that all its branches
should be directed towards the same point of the compass.
Reinach, whose studies of religious origins are always interesting
and characterized by a certain Gallic grace and nettete, though with a
somewhat Jewish non-perception of the mystic element in life, defines
Religion as a combination of animism and scruples. This is good in
a way, because it gives the two aspects of the subject: the inner,
animism, consisting of the sense of contact with more or less
intelligent beings moving in Nature; and the outer, consisting in
scruples or taboos. The one aspect shows the feeling which INSPIRES
religion, the other, the checks and limitations which DEFINE it and give
birth to ritual. But like most anthropologists he (Reinach) is a little
TOO patronizing towards the "poor Indian with untutored mind." He is
sorry for people so foolish as to be animistic in their outlook, and he
is always careful to point out that the scruples and taboos were quite
senseless in their origin, though occasionally (by accident) they turned
out useful. Yet--as I have said before--Animism is a perfectly sensible,
logical and NECESSARY attitude of the human mind. It is a necessary
attribute of man's psychical nature, by which he projects into the great
World around him the image of his own mind. When that mind is in a very
primitive, inchoate, and fragmentary condition, the images so projected
are those of fragmentary intelligences ('spirits,' gnomes, etc.--the age
of magic); when the mind rises to distinct consciousness of itself the
reflections of it are anthropomorphic 'gods'; when finally it reaches
the universal or cosmic state it perceives the presence of a universal
Being behind all phenomena--which Being is indeed itself--"Himself to
Himself." If you like you may call the whole process by the name of
Animism. It is perfectly sensible throughout. The only proviso is that
you should also be sensible, and distinguish the different stages in the
process.
Jane Harrison makes considerable efforts to show that Religion is
primarily a reflection of the SOCIAL Conscience (see Themis, pp.
482-92)--that is, that the sense in Man of a "Power that makes for
righteousness" outside (and also inside) him is derived from his feeling
of continuity with the Tribe and his instinctive obedience to its
behests, confirmed by ages of collective habit and experience. He
cannot in fact sever the navel-string which connects him with his tribal
Mother, even though he desires to do so. And no doubt this view of the
origin of Religion is perfectly correct. But it must be pointed out that
it does not by any means exclude the view that religion derives
also from an Animism by which man recognizes in general Nature his
foster-mother and feels himself in closest touch with HER. Which may
have come first, the Social affiliation or the Nature affiliation, I
leave to the professors to determine. The term Animism may, as far as I
can see, be quite well applied to the social affiliation, for the latter
is evidently only a case in which the individual projects his own degree
of consciousness into the human group around him instead of into the
animals or the trees, but it is a case of which the justice is so
obvious that the modern man can intellectually seize and understand it,
and consequently he does not tar it with the 'animistic' brush.
And Miss Harrison, it must be noticed, does, in other passages of the
same book (see Themis, pp. 68, 69), admit that Religion has its origin
not only from unity with the Tribe but from the sense of affiliation to
Nature--the sense of "a world of unseen power lying behind the visible
universe, a world which is the sphere, as will be seen, of magical
activity and the medium of mysticism. The mystical element, the oneness
and continuousness comes out very clearly in the notion of Wakonda among
the Sioux Indians.... The Omahas regarded all animate and inanimate
forms, all phenomena, as pervaded by a common life, which was continuous
and similar to the will-power they were conscious of in themselves. This
mysterious power in all things they called Wakonda, and through it
all things were related to man, and to each other. In the idea of the
continuity of life, a relation was maintained between the seen and
the unseen, the dead and the living, and also between the fragment of
anything and its entirety." Thus our general position is confirmed,
that Religion in its origin has been INSPIRED by a deep instinctive
conviction or actual sense of continuity with a being or beings in the
world around, while it has derived its FORM and ritual by slow degrees
from a vast number of taboos, generated in the first instance chiefly
by superstitious fears, but gradually with the growth of reason and
observation becoming simplified and rationalized into forms of use. On
the one side there has been the positive impulse--of mere animal Desire
and the animal urge of self-expression; on the other there has been
the negative force of Fear based on ignorance--the latter continually
carving, moulding and shaping the former. According to this an organized
study and classification of taboos might yield some interesting results;
because indeed it would throw light on the earliest forms of both
religion and science. It would be seen that some taboos, like those
of CONTACT (say with a menstruous woman, or a mother-in-law, or a
lightning-struck tree) had an obvious basis of observation, justifiable
but very crude; while others, like the taboo against harming an enemy
who had contracted blood-friendship with one of your own tribe, or
against giving decent burial to a murderer, were equally rough and rude
expressions or indications of the growing moral sentiment of mankind.
All the same there would be left, in any case, a large residuum of
taboos which could only be judged as senseless, and the mere rubbish of
the savage mind.
So much for the first origins of the World-religion; and I think enough
has been said in the various chapters of this book to show that the same
general process has obtained throughout. Man, like the animals, began
with this deep, subconscious sense of unity with surrounding Nature.
When this became (in Man) fairly conscious, it led to Magic and
Totemism. More conscious, and it branched, on the one hand, into figures
of Gods and definite forms of Creeds, on the other into elaborate
Scientific Theories--the latter based on a strong INTELLECTUAL belief in
Unity, but fervently denying any 'anthropomorphic' or 'animistic'
SENSE of that unity. Finally, it seems that we are now on the edge of
a further stage when the theories and the creeds, scientific and
religious, are on the verge of collapsing, but in such a way as to leave
the sense and the perception of Unity--the real content of the whole
process--not only undestroyed, but immensely heightened and illuminated.
Meanwhile the taboos--of which there remain some still, both religious
and scientific--have been gradually breaking up and merging themselves
into a reasonable and humane order of life and philosophy.
I have said that out of this World-religion Christianity really sprang.
It is evident that the time has arrived when it must either acknowledge
its source and frankly endeavor to affiliate itself to the same, or
failing that must perish. In the first case it will probably have to
change its name; in the second the question of its name 'will interest
it no more.'
With regard to the first of these alternatives, I might venture--though
with indifference--to make a few suggestions. Why should we
not have--instead of a Holy Roman Church--a Holy HUMAN Church,
rehabilitating the ancient symbols and rituals, a Christianity (if you
still desire to call it so) frankly and gladly acknowledging its own
sources? This seems a reasonable and even feasible proposition. If such
a church wished to celebrate a Mass or Communion or Eucharist it would
have a great variety of rites and customs of that kind to select from;
those that were not appropriate for use in our times or were connected
with the worship of strange gods need not be rejected or condemned,
but could still be commented on and explained as approaches to the same
idea--the idea of dedication to the Common Life, and of reinvigoration
in the partaking of it. If the Church wished to celebrate the
Crucifixion or betrayal of its Founder, a hundred instances of such
celebrations would be to hand, and still the thought that has underlain
such celebrations since the beginning of the world could easily be
disentangled and presented in concrete form anew. In the light of such
teaching expressions like "I know that my Redeemer liveth" would be
traced to their origin, and men would understand that notwithstanding
the mass of rubbish, cant and humbug which has collected round them they
really do mean something and represent the age-long instinct of Humanity
feeling its way towards a more extended revelation, a new order of
being, a third stage of consciousness and illumination. In such a Church
or religious organization EVERY quality of human nature would have to
be represented, every practice and custom allowed for and its place
accorded--the magical and astronomical meanings, the rites connected
with sun-worship, or with sex, or with the worship of animals; the
consecration of corn and wine and other products of the ground,
initiations, sacrifices, and so forth--all (if indeed it claimed to be
a World-religion) would have to be represented and recognized. For they
all have their long human origin and descent in and through the pagan
creeds, and they all have penetrated into and become embodied to some
degree in Christianity. Christianity therefore, as I say, must either
now come frankly forward and, acknowledging its parentage from the great
Order of the past, seek to rehabilitate THAT and carry mankind one step
forward in the path of evolution--or else it must perish. There is no
other alternative. (1)
(1) Comte in founding his philosophy of Positivism seems to have
had in view some such Holy Human Church, but he succeeded in making it
all so profoundly dull that it never flourished, The seed of Life was
not in it.
Let me give an instance of how a fragment of ancient ritual which has
survived from the far Past and is still celebrated, but with little
intelligence or understanding, in the Catholic Church of to-day, might
be adopted in such a Church as I have spoken of, interpreted, and made
eloquent of meaning to modern humanity. When I was in Ceylon nearly 30
years ago I was fortunate enough to witness a night-festival in a Hindu
Temple--the great festival of Taipusam, which takes place every year in
January. Of course, it was full moon, and great was the blowing up of
trumpets in the huge courtyard of the Temple. The moon shone down above
from among the fronds of tall coco-palms, on a dense crowd of native
worshipers--men and a few women--the men for the most part clad in
little more than a loin-cloth, the women picturesque in their colored
saris and jewelled ear and nose rings. The images of Siva and two other
gods were carried in procession round and round the temple--three or
four times; nautch girls danced before the images, musicians, blowing
horns and huge shells, or piping on flageolets or beating tom-toms,
accompanied them. The crowd carrying torches or high crates with flaming
coco-nuts, walked or rather danced along on each side, elated and
excited with the sense of the present divinity, yet pleasantly free from
any abject awe. The whole thing indeed reminded one of some bas-relief
of a Bacchanalian procession carved on a Greek sarcophagus--and
especially so in its hilarity and suggestion of friendly intimacy with
the god. There were singing of hymns and the floating of the chief
actors on a raft round a sacred lake. And then came the final Act. Siva,
or his image, very weighty and borne on the shoulders of strong men, was
carried into the first chamber or hall of the Temple and placed on an
altar with a curtain hanging in front. The crowd followed with a rush;
and then there was more music, recital of hymns, and reading from sacred
books. From where we stood we could see the rite which was performed
behind the curtain. Two five-branched candlesticks were lighted; and the
manner of their lighting was as follows. Each branch ended in a
little cup, and in the cups five pieces of camphor were placed, all
approximately equal in size. After offerings had been made, of fruit,
flowers and sandalwood, the five camphors in each candlestick were
lighted. As the camphor flames burned out the music became more wild and
exciting, and then at the moment of their extinction the curtains
were drawn aside and the congregation outside suddenly beheld the god
revealed and in a blaze of light. This burning of camphor was, like
other things in the service, emblematic. The five lights represent
the five senses. Just as camphor consumes itself and leaves no residue
behind, so should the five senses, being offered to the god, consume
themselves and disappear. When this is done, that happens in the soul
which was now figured in the ritual--the God is revealed in the inner
light. (1)
(1) For a more detailed account of this Temple-festival, see
Adam's Peak to Elephanta by E. Carpenter, ch. vii.
We are familiar with this parting or rending of the veil. We hear of it
in the Jewish Temple, and in the Greek and Egyptian Mysteries. It had
a mystically religious, and also obviously sexual, signification. It
occurs here and there in the Roman Catholic ritual. In Spain, some
ancient Catholic ceremonials are kept up with a brilliance and splendor
hardly found elsewhere in Europe. In the Cathedral, at Seville the
service of the Passion, carried out on Good Friday with great
solemnity and accompanied with fine music, culminates on the Saturday
morning--i.e. in the interval between the Crucifixion and the
Resurrection--in a spectacle similar to that described in Ceylon. A rich
velvet-black curtain hangs before the High Altar. At the appropriate
moment and as the very emotional strains of voices and instruments reach
their climax in the "Gloria in Excelsis," the curtain with a sudden
burst of sound (thunder and the ringing of all the bells) is rent
asunder, and the crucified Jesus is seen hanging there revealed in a
halo of glory.
There is also held at Seville Cathedral and before the High Altar every
year, the very curious Dance of the Seises (sixes), performed now by 16
instead of (as of old) by 12 boys, quaintly dressed. It seems to be a
survival of some very ancient ritual, probably astronomical, in which
the two sets of six represent the signs of the Zodiac, and is celebrated
during the festivals of Corpus Christi, the Immaculate Conception, and
the Carnival.
Numerous instances might of course be adduced of how a Church aspiring
to be a real Church of Humanity might adopt and re-create the rituals
of the past in the light of a modern inspiration. Indeed the difficulty
would be to limit the process, for EVERY ancient ritual, we can now
see, has had a meaning and a message, and it would be a real joy to
disentangle these and to expose the profound solidarity of humanity and
aspiration from the very dawn of civilization down to the present day.
Nor would it be necessary to imagine any Act of Uniformity or dead
level of ceremonial in the matter. Different groups might concentrate on
different phases of religious thought and practice. The only necessity
would be that they should approach the subject with a real love of
Humanity in their hearts and a real desire to come into touch with the
deep inner life and mystic growing-pains of the souls of men and women
in all ages. In this direction M. Loisy has done noble and excellent
work; but the dead weight and selfish blinkerdom of the Catholic
organization has hampered him to that degree that he has been unable
to get justice done to his liberalizing designs--or, perhaps, even to
reveal the full extent of them. And the same difficulty will remain. On
the one hand no spiritual movement which does not take up the attitude
of a World-religion has now in this age, any chance of success; on the
other, all the existing Churches--whether Roman Catholic, or Greek,
or Protestant or Secularist--whether Christian or Jewish or Persian or
Hindu--will in all probability adopt the same blind and blinkered and
selfish attitude as that described above, and so disqualify themselves
for the great role of world-wide emancipation, which some religion at
some time will certainly have to play. It is the same difficulty which
is looming large in modern World-politics, where the local selfishness
and vainglorious "patriotisms" of the Nations are sadly impeding and
obstructing the development of that sense of Internationalism and
Brotherhood which is the clearly indicated form of the future, and
which alone can give each nation deliverance from fear, and a promise of
growth, and the confident assurance of power.
I say that Christianity must either frankly adopt this generous attitude
and confess itself a branch of the great World-religion, anxious only to
do honor to its source--or else it must perish and pass away. There is
no other alternative. The hour of its Exodus has come. It may be, of
course, that neither the Christian Church nor any branch of it, nor any
other religious organization, will step into the gap. It may be--but I
do not think this is likely--that the time of rites and ceremonies and
formal creeds is PAST, and churches of any kind will be no more needed
in the world: not likely, I say, because of the still far backwardness
of the human masses, and their considerable dependence yet on laws and
forms and rituals. Still, if it should prove that that age of dependence
IS really approaching its end, that would surely be a matter for
congratulation. It would mean that mankind was moving into a knowledge
of the REALITY which has underlain these outer shows--that it was coming
into the Third stage of its Consciousness. Having found this there would
be no need for it to dwell any longer in the land of superstitions and
formulae. It would have come to the place of which these latter are only
the outlying indications.
It may, therefore, happen--and this quite independently of the growth of
a World-cult such as I have described, though by no means in antagonism
to it--that a religious philosophy or Theosophy might develop and
spread, similar to the Gnonam of the Hindus or the Gnomsis of the
pre-Christian sects, which would become, first among individuals and
afterwards among large bodies over the world, the religion of--or
perhaps one should say the religious approach to the Third State. Books
like the Upanishads of the Vedic seers, and the Bhagavat Gita, though
garbled and obscured by priestly interferences and mystifications, do
undoubtedly represent and give expression to the highest utterance of
religious experience to be found anywhere in the world. They are indeed
the manuals of human entrance into the cosmic state. But as I say,
and as has happened in the case of other sacred books, a vast deal of
rubbish has accreted round their essential teachings, and has to be
cleared away. To go into a serious explication of the meaning of these
books would be far too large an affair, and would be foreign to the
purpose of the present volume; but I have in the Appendix below inserted
two papers, (on "Rest" and "The Nature of the Self") containing the
substance of lectures given on the above books. These papers or lectures
are couched in the very simplest language, free from Sanskrit terms and
the usual 'jargon of the Schools,' and may, I hope, even on that account
be of use in familiarizing readers who are not specially STUDENTS with
the ideas and mental attitudes of the cosmic state. Non-differentiation
(Advaita (1)) is the root attitude of the mind inculcated.
(1) The word means "not-two-ness." Here we see a great subtlety
of definition. It is not to be "one" with others that is urged, but to
be "not two."
We have seen that there has been an age of non-differentiation in the
_Past_—non-differentiation from other members of the Tribe, from the
Animals, from Nature and the Spirit or Spirits of nature; why
should there not arise a similar sense of non-differentiation in the
_Future_--similar but more extended more intelligent? Certainly this _will_
arrive, in its own appointed time. There will be a surpassing of the
bounds of separation and division. There will be a surpassing of all
Taboos. We have seen the use and function of Taboos in the early stages
of Evolution and how progress and growth have been very much a matter
of their gradual extinction and assimilation into the general body
of rational thought and feeling. Unreasoning and idiotic taboos still
linger, but they grow weaker. A new Morality will come which will shake
itself free from them. The sense of kinship with the animals (as in the
old rituals) (1) will be restored; the sense of kinship with all the
races of mankind will grow and become consolidated; the sense of the
defilement and impurity of the human body will (with the adoption of a
generally clean and wholesome life) pass away; and the body itself will
come to be regarded more as a collection of shrines in which the
gods may be worshiped and less as a mere organ of trivial
self-gratifications; (2) there will be no form of Nature, or of human
life or of the lesser creatures, which will be barred from the approach
of Man or from the intimate and penetrating invasion of his spirit; and
as in certain ceremonies and after honorable toils and labors a citizen
is sometimes received into the community of his own city, so the
emancipated human being on the completion of his long long pilgrimage on
Earth will be presented with the Freedom of the Universe.
(1) The record of the Roman Catholic Church has been sadly
callous and inhuman in this matter of the animals.
(2) See The Art of Creation, by E. Carpenter.