BUDDHISM AS A STICK WITH WHICH TO BEAT THE CHRISTIAN
The general survey of recorded antiquity continues to be very well set
down in the _Outline of History_ in every respect where the author is
dealing with known facts.
Of all parts of the book this is perhaps the most successful: I mean the
setting down of what we know of Man between the origins of record and
the growth of the Roman Empire. But even in this well-written and
straightforward section, Mr. Wells falls into that common fault of the
modern book-led townsman: the acceptation of something he has seen in
print against the evidence of his own senses.
This is particularly noticeable in his account of the Jewish people.
Theories as to the early history of Jewish thought remain mere theories,
and their statement as fact, though very common nowadays, is
unhistorical; as is, for that matter, the great bulk of what is called
“the higher criticism.” But the statement that the Jews are not a race
but a religion, is a statement which flies in the face of ordinary
experience. It is a statement constantly met with, for it has a very
obvious motive on the part of the Jews, the motive of a people in peril
who seek protection through concealment. But as History, i.e. statement
of fact, it is nonsense. What proves it nonsense is the simple fact that
when a Jew comes into the room, everybody knows that he is a Jew, and
nobody either knows or cares what his religion may be. The Jews are not
a religion; they are a race and nation: and a race and nation very
distinct indeed. Though it should be reprinted twenty thousand times in
twenty thousand popular textbooks that they are not a race, no sensible
man would be convinced; for sensible men prefer the evidence of their
senses to the authority of print.
The account of early Greek civilization is also well done, with only a
little admixture of modern myth, including, unfortunately, one very
stupid statement quoted from Jung, to the effect that human thought
before the Athenians was a mere jumble of emotions. Human thought at all
times was human thought, and was always clear or muddled according to
the intelligence of the individual at work.
If Mr. Wells had dealt with ancient Asia as he has dealt with ancient
Greece, one would be able to say that, save for certain characteristic
swallowing of guesswork without criticism, and for rather comic personal
animosities (such as a passionate dislike of soldiers which makes him
furious with Alexander the Great!), it is well enough; and, in
proportion, selection and accuracy, not merely well enough, but
admirable.
Unfortunately, in the Asiatic section he inevitably comes across that
kind of matter which always arouses in him an unbalanced anger: matter
relating to the existence and quality of the Catholic Church. For in
dealing with Asia he has to deal with Buddhism—and Buddhism has been
used now for at least a hundred years as a stock example with which to
attack the Faith. Not that the Europeans who profess such a strange and
sudden affection for what is alien and inferior love Buddha, but that
they hate Christ and His Church.
I say that a use of Buddhism as a stick with which to beat the Christian
is a stock trick of the anti-Christian, and therefore it was bound to
appear in Mr. Wells’s _Outline_ with all the other old properties of the
trade. And appear it duly does.
The reason for this old trick is that Buddhism presents two features,
both of which necessarily provoke the anti-Christian to a simulated
friendship for it.
In the first place, Buddhism is philosophically the negation of the
Catholic idea, for it makes Personality an illusion, denies God, and
reconciles man to life through despair. The Church, on the other hand,
affirms Personality not only in ourselves but in God, Whom she proclaims
and glorifies. She reconciles man to life not through despair but
through hope.
Now Buddhism, justly repugnant to the high life and intelligence of the
West, is none the less a powerful instance to bring up against us.
Affecting as it does something like one-third of the world, Buddhism can
be set up as a rival to the Faith. It is not, like Mohammedanism, a
heresy grafted upon the Catholic stock. It is a separate thing; and the
hater of the Church cannot resist the temptation of saying, “Look! how
much better than the Faith”!
In the second place, Buddhism has acquired a well-developed system of
ritual and organized veneration, with all the natural accompaniments of
that human function—vestments and ornament and light, communal worship,
and all the details wherein the body may sacramentally act with the
soul.
There again is an irresistible occasion for our anti-Christian: though,
with characteristic muddle-headedness, he does not see that he is using
it in contradiction to the first opportunity. Just as Buddhism is an
obvious weapon to use against the Catholic Church on the lines, “Look
what a much better thing the rival religion is”! So it can be used the
other way about, “Look at this degraded religion, and see what a lot you
have in common with it”!
The contradiction is resolved, of course, by the very simple dodge of
saying that the good Buddhism which is so superior to the Faith of
civilized men, the maker of Europe, is “the simple, pure, original
Buddhism”—in plain English, the Protestant Buddhism—while the developed
Buddhism is the naughty, “ritualist,” Buddhism. And as the original
Buddhism seems to have differed in doctrine and idea from the later
Buddhism, the opportunity of saying “Modern Buddhism is a corruption of
a simple original: therefore Catholicism is a similar corruption,” seems
too good to be missed.
Mr. Wells (as we shall see in a later article) shirks the essential
point, whether the Catholic Church _is as a fact_ of different substance
to-day from what it was at its origins. He prefers to put forward the
false Buddhist parallel, and let it work in minds as ill-instructed as
his own.
Thus we poor Christian remnants catch it both ways. “Buddhism is a
degraded man-made thing, full of ceremonies and perverse human
imaginings—look how like it is to the Catholic Church, and judge from
that what a perverse, man-made thing is the Catholic Church also! At the
same time, Buddhism is a supremely noble doctrine, especially in its
denial of a personal God and of the immortality of the human soul. Judge
from that how degraded you Catholics are with your absurd ideas of a
personal God and of the immortality of the human soul”! The reader who
turns to Mr. Wells’s chapter, “The Rise and Spread of Buddhism,” in Book
IV (beginning with page 237), will appreciate what I mean.
Within a brief twenty-three pages, more than half of which, I think, are
illustrations, he manages to put the whole anti-Catholic emotion (by
innuendo) in the fullest fashion, and not only to do that, but to
sacrifice common sense (as fanaticism must always sacrifice common
sense) in the process.
On page 241 you get the note of the whole thing, “the teaching of
History, as we are unfolding it in this book,” says Mr. Wells, “is
strictly in accordance with this teaching of Buddha”: that is an example
of what I mean. It is childish, not only as vanity in the Author, but as
praise of a great, though perverted, philosophy.
Mr. Wells’s _Outline of History_ is not a Buddhist _magnum opus_; it is
an ephemeral popular book written by a simple Protestant Englishman who
has lost what relics of doctrine he once possessed but still preserves a
fine dislike of the Papacy. His attraction to Gautama Buddha as much
resembles that of an Indian mystic as his style resembles the prose of
Voltaire. When he tells us with approval that Buddhism regards the
desire for Immortality as an evil and the loss of being (for impersonal
being is not being at all) as a good, he tells us what is undoubtedly
true: though in the strong light of Western thought, obviously a
muddlement—for there must be being, and conscious being, and discrete
being, if there is to be the sense of joy or of good. But however much
Mr. Wells pats Buddha on the back he will persuade no one that he is a
Buddhist with a yearning desire to have done with notoriety and the
flesh.
What of Mr. Wells’s desire (which he earnestly presents to his readers)
to be rid of Mr. Wells’s own immortal soul?
It is pretty clear on page 242 what he feels in the matter of
Immortality. He praises the Buddhist Atheism in this particular, because
he dislikes “an endless continuation” of his “mean little individual
life,” which in his judgment is man’s conception of Immortality, whether
in the Egyptian whom he mentions by name, or in the Christian whom he
really has in mind.
Now there is in this profession of dislike for the doctrine of
Immortality, and ridicule of it, a positive element beyond the negative
element of mere opposition to Catholicism and to the high tradition of
Europe. The positive element is the very natural distaste for following
on the dreary round of suburban life in London or New York; and in this
our Author is to be applauded. But it is characteristic of him and of
the time and audience in which and for which he writes, that he should
have had any such appalling conception of the profound and majestic
dogma of Immortality.
It exactly corresponds to what the same type of thought produces when it
_demands_ Immortality instead of denying it. The present-day English
Modernist, who writes a book saying that he has had communication with
his son killed during the War, and that the son is drinking whiskies and
sodas and smoking cigars in Purgatory or Paradise (whichever you like to
call the fashionable idea of the next world), is in exactly the same
mental state as Mr. Wells. Certainly, if the dogma of Immortality (that
very summit of the dignity of man and characteristic of all our race and
its achievements) meant an endless succession of going up by train to
the office and reading the _Daily Howl_ on the way, we should be better
without it. But it does not mean that, Mr. Wells; I assure you it does
not. There is far more glory about Immortality and far more
elbow-room—and far more peril.
There is, by the way, in this panegyric of Buddhism as a beautiful model
(to the shame of the unmentioned Catholics) one little gem which I
cannot pass over, though it has nothing to do with the subject. I
mention it because it is so characteristic of the whole book. It is on
page 243, and runs thus:
“Modern science has made clear to us that there is no such exact
recurrence as we are apt to suppose; every day is by an infinitesimal
quantity a little longer than the day before; no generation repeats the
previous generation precisely.”
If a man wanted to take a sample out of this book to show the futility
of its Author as a thinker, I do not think he could get a better six
lines. Only look at the mass of false statement and confusion of
thinking packed into this little space!
First of all, there is the assertion that we—you and I—are apt to
suppose exact recurrence in human affairs. When on earth was there any
human being who imagined any such thing?
Then we have the alarming folly that this imaginary idiocy is corrected
by a God called “Modern Science.” It would be corrected, if ever it
arose in the mind of a lunatic, by simple daily experience; it is so
corrected, or rather prevented from ever arising, in the mind of every
man or woman, learned or unlearned.
Then there is the statement that “modern science teaches us that every
day is slightly longer than the day before.” That again is
characteristic. No “modern science” teaches us anything of the kind. On
the contrary, the theory of tidal drag and of a gradual lengthening of
the terrestrial day, for which there is a good deal to be said, has
provokingly failed to furnish sufficient proof. It looks probable, on
the face of it, and we have the moon as an example where apparently the
thing has worked itself out. But when you come to the establishment of
concrete definite proofs, that the day is longer by such and such a
fraction than it was for the Alexandrian astronomers, you do not get it.
You can find arguments for and against. Nothing is yet decided. One new
discovery might destroy the whole hypothesis—and hypothesis only it
remains. It is the very opposite of science. It is probability, and an
interesting hypothesis. Science it is not, and it will not be science
until the day when conclusive proof is advanced.
Then there is the characteristic fact that Mr. Wells, who here affirms
as scientific fact that interesting (but unimportant) statement of the
possible lengthening of the terrestrial day, on an earlier page was more
cautious.
Lastly, we have the monumental phrase: “Modern science has made clear to
us that no generation repeats the previous generation precisely.” You
might just as well say that “modern science” has proved to us that the
weather on Tuesday is never exactly the same as the weather on Monday.
This is a digression, but a digression worth making, for it is a most
illuminating example of the sham culture I have to deal with.
But to return to the use of Buddhism as a stick to beat the Catholic
Church with. After the glorification of the pure doctrine we get the
“awful example” business of the ritual. First we are told (on page 244)
that it was the fate of Gautama to have marvellous falsehoods told about
him—as has been the fate of “most religious founders” since his days.
That word “most” means, of course, Jesus Christ. There have not been a
crowd of religious founders since 500 B.C., and all this innuendo in the
description of Buddhism is an innuendo delivered at the Faith.
On the same page, a little further on, there is the sneer, “of course it
was impossible to believe that Buddha was the son of a mortal father.”
That is a sneer at the Incarnation, as is the sentence a few lines
further on, “a theology grew up about the Buddha. He was discovered to
be a God.”
Then on the next page there is the familiar taunt against the titles of
affection and veneration given to Our Lady. A certain Eastern goddess is
Queen of the Sea, so Mr. Wells must put in quite gratuitously and out of
place the words “Stella Maris,” which some very learned man has told him
means “Star of the Sea.”
Then there is a completely misleading quotation from Huc. The misleading
is no doubt unconscious, for I very much doubt whether Mr. Wells has
ever read Huc; he is probably depending upon what he may have heard
vaguely on the matter in conversation. At any rate, the grossly
misleading character of the passage must be pointed out.
He quotes Huc’s interesting description of the similarities between
Christian (or Catholic) and Buddhist liturgical details, and puts the
whole thing in a completely false light by using the word “perplexing.”
He says, “We read in Huc’s travels” how “_perplexing_” he found “all
these things,” the innuendo being that Catholics regard ritual as the
soul of their religion and are disturbed in their Faith on finding
foreign analogies to it.
No doubt Mr. Wells was told by those who coached him that the Abbé Huc
was thrown into an agony of doubt by finding Buddhist ceremonies so like
our own. But he would have done well to verify the point. It was foolish
in him not to do so.
I know the passage well: there is not a word in it about Huc being
perplexed. Why should he be? There is not an indication in Huc’s style
or tone in the matter that he was perplexed. He noted with great
interest the very exact correspondence between many details of
ritual—down to such a tiny point as the chains and cover of the
Thurible—and he gives a lucid, probable, learned and very rational
account of when and how the later Buddhism may have copied such things
(p. 112, Vol. II, of the third edition).
Mr. Wells ends this excursion against the Catholic Church (for that is
what his new-found enthusiasm for Buddhism really means) by a passage on
page 250 in the very best traditions of the “No Popery” lecturers of my
youth. Buddhism caught “almost every disease of corrupt religions:
idols, temples, altars, and censers.” It is a funny list, with a
horrible bathos on the word censers. Idols mean images; altar means
altar all right; temples mean buildings put up with care and made as
beautiful as possible—or at least what the putter-up thinks beautiful—in
honour of the thing worshipped. But censers are only things in which you
burn incense; and though they are an excellent adjunct to liturgy, they
really have not the importance which Mr. Wells, in common with most
Kensitites, attaches to them. I assure him I could get on perfectly well
without incense. On the other hand, I could not get on without an altar;
and a lack of images in a Christian church would seem to me very
deplorable: a sort of empty, hungry, mean, absence of a very proper and
natural religious function which, if there be a true religion, would
certainly be found attached to that religion.
Then we have, just before the end of all the affair, the weary old
business copied from Gibbon, and much older than Gibbon, “What would
Christ and His apostles think of High Mass at St. Peter’s”? (By the way,
Low Mass in Huddersfield is just as much to the purpose as High Mass in
St. Peter’s.) Only here it is not High Mass at St. Peter’s shocking the
Creator of the Catholic Church, but a Buddhist ceremony shocking poor
Buddha.
But more important than his ignorance of Huc’s testimony of other
special points is his complete failure to set down the prime contrast
between Catholicism and Buddhism: that the latter is founded on Despair.
_That_ is the whole point. It is _that_ which makes between the living
Church which Jesus Christ founded and the negative philosophy of Asia a
difference of day and night. Mr. Wells does not omit this essential
point from malice: he does it from ignorance. His whole account of
essential Buddhism takes for granted that it is the religion he himself
holds—a highly rarefied Protestantism.
But to fall into such an error as that is like taking vitriol for water.