THE CHIEF MOMENTS IN THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE
INDIVIDUALLY-SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
I
With the establishment of the national state the moral outlook of the
individual is no doubt considerably widened and a greater field is
opened for the exercise of his good feelings and of his active will
in moral conduct. The conception of the deity becomes higher and more
general, a certain religious development takes place. Altruism, or
moral solidarity with other human beings, increases quantitatively or
in extension and becomes qualitatively higher, losing its dominant
character of natural instinct and being directed upon invisible and
ideal objects--the state, the fatherland. These ideal objects are
sensuously realised in the unity of language, customs, in the actual
representatives of authority, etc., but, as is clear to every one,
they are not exhausted by these concrete facts. The nation does not
disappear with the change of its customs, the state does not cease
to exist when its particular rulers pass away. The spiritual nature
and the ideal significance of objects such as the nation and the
state are preserved in any case, and the individual’s moral relation
to them, expressing itself as true patriotism or civic virtue, is in
this sense, other conditions being equal, a higher stage of morality
than the simple feeling of kinship or of the blood-tie. On the other
hand, however, it is often pointed out that as the range of moral
relations or the social environment becomes wider, the inner personal
basis of morality loses its living force and reality. It is urged that
the intensity of moral motives is in inverse ratio to their objective
extension; that it is impossible to love one’s country as sincerely
and immediately as one’s friends or relatives, and that the living
interest in one’s private welfare can never be compared with the
abstract interest in the welfare of the state, not to speak of the
general welfare of humanity. The interest in the latter is indeed often
denied as fictitious.
Leaving aside for the moment the question of humanity, it must be
admitted that the argument concerning the inverse relation between
the intensity and the extension of moral feelings has a foundation in
fact. But to be correctly understood it requires the following three
reservations:
(1) Independently of the relation of individual persons, taken
separately, to the more or less wide social whole, there exists
_collective_ morality, which embraces these persons in their
totality--as a crowd or as a people. There is such a thing as the
criminal crowd, upon which the criminologists have now turned their
attention; still more prominent is the senseless crowd, the human
herd; but there is also the splendid, the heroic crowd. The crowd
excited by brutal or bestial instincts lowers the spiritual level
of individuals that are drawn into it. But the human mass animated
by collectively-moral motives lifts up to its level individuals
in whom these motives are, as such, devoid of genuine force. At
the kinship-group stage, the striving of the best men for a wider
collective morality conditioned the appearance of the state or the
nation, but once this new social whole, real and powerful in spite
of its ideal nature, has been created, _it begins to exert direct
influence not only upon the best, but also upon the average and even
the bad men that form part of it_.
(2) Apart from collective morality, the quantitative fact that most men
taken separately are bad patriots and poor citizens, is qualitatively
counterbalanced by the few high instances of true patriotism and civic
virtue which could not have arisen in the primitive conditions of life,
and only became possible when the state, the nation, the fatherland had
come into being.
(3) Finally, whether the moral gain obtained by the widening of the
social environment in the national state be great or small, it is in
any case a _gain_. The good contained in the tribal morality is not
annulled by this extension but is merely modified and made more pure as
it assumes the form of family ties and virtues, which are supplemented
and not replaced by patriotism. Thus, even from the individual point
of view, our love for millions of our fellow-citizens, even though it
cannot be as great as our love for some dozens of our friends, is a
direct gain, for the wider love that is less intense does not destroy
the more intense one. Consequently, from whatever point of view we
look at it, the extension of the sphere of life from the limits of the
clan to the state unquestionably means moral progress. This progress
is apparent both in man’s relation to the gods and to his neighbours,
and also, as will be presently shown, in man’s relation to his lower
material nature.
II
The moral principle which demands from man subordination to the higher
and solidarity with his neighbours, requires him to dominate physical
nature as the basis upon which reason works. This domination has for
its immediate object the body of the individual himself--hence the
ascetic morality in the narrow sense of the term. But the material life
of the single individual is only a portion of the general material
life that surrounds him, and to separate this portion from the whole
is neither logically legitimate nor practically possible. So long as
the outer nature completely overwhelms man, who, helpless and lost in
virginal forests among wild beasts, is compelled to think of nothing
but the preservation and maintenance of his existence, the thought
of the mastery of the spirit over the flesh can hardly even arise,
let alone the attempt to carry it out. Man who starves from necessity
is not given to fasting for ascetic purposes. Suffering all kinds of
privations from his birth onwards, living under the constant menace
of violent death, man in the savage state is an unconscious and
involuntary ascetic, and his marvellous endurance has as little moral
worth as the sufferings of small fish pursued by pikes or sharks.
The manifestation of the inner moral power of the spirit over the flesh
presupposes that man is to a certain extent secure from the destructive
powers of external nature. Now such security cannot be attained by a
single individual--it requires social union. Although ascetic morality
in some of its aspects seeks to sever the social ties, it is clear
that such a striving could only have arisen on the basis of an already
existing society. Both in India of the Brahmins and in Christian Egypt
ascetic hermits were the product of a civilised social environment.
They had spiritually outgrown it, but without it they themselves would
have been historically and physically impossible. Solitary hermits who
had voluntarily forsaken society for the desert by their very presence
subdued wild beasts, which had no reason whatever for being subdued by
the enforced solitude of vagrant savages, inferior to them in physical
strength, but inwardly very much on their level. For the victory both
over evil beasts without and over evil passions within a certain amount
of civilisation was necessary, which could only be attained through the
development of social life. Consequently ascetic morality is not the
work of the individual taken in the abstract; it can only be manifested
by man as a social being. The inner foundations of the good in man do
not depend upon the forms of social life, but the actual realisation of
them does presuppose such forms.
At the early beginnings of social life--at the kinship-group
stage--ascetic morality is purely negative in character. In addition to
the regulation of the sexual life by marriage, we find prohibitions of
certain kinds of food (_e.g._ of the ‘totemic’ animals, connected with
a given social group as its protecting spirits or as the incarnation of
its ancestors), and also the restriction of meat foods to sacrificial
feasts (thus, among the Semitic peoples especially, the flesh of
domestic animals was originally for religious uses only.[94])
But in the conditions of the tribal life asceticism could not from the
very nature of the case go beyond such elementary restrictions. So long
as personal dignity finds its realisation in a social organisation
determined by kinship, or, at any rate, is conditioned by it, there
can be no question of the ideal of complete continence or of the moral
duty to struggle with such passions upon which the very existence
of the tribe depends. The virtuous tribesman must be distinguished
by vindictiveness and acquisitiveness, and has no right to dream of
perfect purity. The ideal representative of tribal morality is the
Biblical Jacob, who had two wives and several concubines, who begat
twelve sons, and increased the family property without troubling about
the means whereby he did it.
The formation of the state had an enormous, though indirect, influence
upon ascetic morality in the wide sense of the term, _i.e._ upon that
aspect of morality which is concerned with the material nature of man
and of the world, and aims at the complete mastery of the rational
spirit over the blind material forces. Power over nature is utterly
impossible for a lonely savage or for the bestial man, and only a
rudimentary degree of it is acquired at the barbarous stage of the
tribal life. Under the conditions of civilised existence in strong and
extensive political unions it becomes considerable and lasting, and is
continually on the increase. The means of spiritual development for the
individual, the school of practical asceticism for the masses of the
people, and the beginning of subjugating the earth for humanity, is to
be found in the military and theocratic empires which united men into
large groups for carrying on the work of civilisation in four different
quarters of the globe--between the Blue and the Yellow rivers, between
the Ind and the Ganges, between the Tigris and Euphrates, and,
finally, in the valley of the Nile. These military and theocratic
monarchies--which Araktcheev’s ‘military settlements’[95] recalled to
us in miniature--were, of course, very far from the ideal of human
society. But their great historical importance as a necessary moral
school for primitive humanity is recognised even by the champions of
absolute anarchism.[96]
Speaking generally, _in order to rise above the compulsory form of
social morality, savage humanity had to pass through it--in order to
outgrow despotism it had to experience it_. More particularly, three
considerations are undoubtedly involved here. (1) The harder the
original struggle with primitive nature was, the more necessary it was
for men to be united into wide but closely-connected communities. And
the wide extension of a social group could only be combined with an
intimate and strong tie between its members by means of the strictest
_discipline_, supported by the most powerful of all sanctions, namely,
the religious sanction. Therefore political unions which had for the
first time subdued wild nature and laid the corner-stone of human
culture were bound to have the character of a religious and military
monarchy, or of compulsory theocracy. This work of civilisation done
under the pressure of the moral and the material needs--this ‘Egyptian
labour’--was by its very nature a school of human solidarity for the
masses and, from the point of view of its objective purpose and result,
it was the first achievement of collective asceticism in humanity, the
first historical triumph of reason over the blind forces of matter.
(2) The compulsory character of this collective achievement prevents
us from ascribing ideal worth to it, but does not altogether deprive
it of moral significance. For compulsion was not merely material. It
rested in the last resort upon the faith of the masses themselves in
the divine character of the power which compelled them to work. However
imperfect in its form and content that faith might be, to subordinate
one’s life to it, to endure at its behest all kinds of privation and
hardship, is in any case a moral course of action. Both its general
historical result and its inner psychological effect upon each
individual composing the mass of the people had the character of true,
though imperfect, asceticism--that is, of victory of the spiritual
principle over the carnal. If the innumerable Chinese genuinely
believe that their Emperor is the son of the sky; if the Hindus were
seriously convinced that the priests sprang from the head of Brahma
and the kings and princes from his arms; if the Assyrian king really
was in the eyes of his people the incarnation of the national deity
Assur, and the Pharaoh truly was for the Egyptians the manifestation
of the solar deity--then absolute submission to such rulers was for
these peoples a religiously-moral duty, and compulsory work at their
command an ascetic practice. This, however, did not apply to slaves
in the strict sense--prisoners of war to whom their masters’ gods
were _strange gods_. And even apart from this national limitation the
whole structure of these primitive religiously-political unions was
essentially imperfect because the gods who received the voluntary and
involuntary human sacrifices (both in the literal and in the indirect
sense) did not possess absolute inner worth. They stood merely for the
infinity of force, not for the infinity of goodness. Man is morally
superior to such gods by his power of renunciation; and therefore in
sacrificing himself for these gods and their earthly representatives
he does not find the higher for the sake of which it is worth while to
sacrifice the lower. If the meaning of the sacrifice is to be found
in the progress of civilisation, this meaning is purely relative, for
progress itself is obviously only a means, a way, a direction, and
not the absolute and final goal. But human personality contains an
element of intrinsic value, which can never be merely a means--the
possibility, namely, inherent in it, of infinite perfection through
the contemplation of and union with the absolute fulness of being. A
society in which this significance of personality is not recognised
and in which the individual is regarded as having only a relative
value, as a means for political and cultural ends--even the most lofty
ones,--cannot be the ideal human society but is merely a transient
stage of the historical development. This is particularly true of the
military and theocratic monarchies with which universal history begins.
(3) The primitive forms of the religiously-political union were so
imperfect that they made further progress inevitable, and at the
same time they naturally produced the external conditions necessary
for that progress. Within the limits of the tribal life each member
of a given social group was both physically and morally compelled
to prey, plunder, and kill, to fight wild beasts, breed cattle, and
produce numerous offspring. Obviously there was no room there for
the higher spiritual development of the human personality. It only
became possible when, with the compulsory division of labour in the
great religiously-political organisations of the past, there arose, in
addition to the masses doomed to hard physical work, the leisurely,
propertied class of free men. By the side of warriors there appeared
professional priests, scribes, diviners, etc., among whom the higher
consciousness was first awakened. This great historical moment is
recorded in the Bible in the significant and majestic story of the
best representative of the patriarchal order, Abraham, with the crowd
of his armed dependants, bowing down before the priest of the Most
High, Melchizedek, who was _without descent_ and came before him with
the gifts of the new higher culture--bread and wine and the spiritual
blessing of Truth and Peace.[97]
While by the sword of the great conquerors the hard collective work of
the masses was gradually made to extend over a wider and wider area,
securing the external material success of human culture, the inner
work of thought among the leisured and peaceful representatives of the
nationally-theocratic states was leading human consciousness to a more
perfect ideal of individual and social _universalism_.
III
In the course of the world-history the first awakening of human
self-consciousness took place in the land where its sleep had most
abounded with fantastic and wild dreams--in India. To the overwhelming
variety of Indian mythology corresponded a confusing variety of
religious, political, and customary forms and conditions of life.
Nowhere else had the theocratic order been so complex and burdensome,
so full of national and class exclusiveness. Not from Egypt or China,
not from the Chaldeans, Phoenicians, or the Greco-Roman world, but
from India have we borrowed conceptions expressive of the extreme
degree of separation between the classes of men[98] and of the denial
of human dignity. The ‘pariahs’ were deprived of human dignity as
standing outside the law; men belonging to castes within the law and
even to the highest of them were deprived of all freedom owing to a
most complex system of religious and customary rites and regulations.
But the more narrow and artificial the fetters fashioned by the spirit
for itself and out of itself, the more they testify to its inner
strength and to the fact that nothing external can finally bind and
conquer it. The spirit awakes from the nightmare of sacrificial rites,
compulsory actions, and ascetic tortures, and says to itself: All this
is my own invention which in my sleep I took to be reality; if only I
can keep awake, the fear and the pain will vanish. But what will then
remain? A subtle and significant, though not at first sight a clear,
answer is given to this question by _the religion of awakening_. It
perpetuates the moment when human personality turns from external
objects into itself, and comes to know its purely negative or formal
infinity devoid of all definite content. The individual is aware of his
infinitude, freedom, and universality simply because he transcends all
given determination, relation, and character, because he is conscious
of something within himself which is more and higher than this caste,
this nationality, this cult, this manner of life--of something
that is higher than _all this_. Whatever objective determination a
self-conscious person might put before himself, he does not stop there;
he knows that he had himself posited it and that his own creation is
not worthy of him and therefore he forsakes it: ‘_all is empty_.’
All that belongs to the external world is rejected, nothing is found
to be worthy of existence, but man’s spiritual power of rejecting
remains; and it is very significant that Buddhism recognises this
power not as belonging to the solitary individual, but as having an
individually-social form of the so-called _Triratna_, _i.e._ ‘three
jewels’ or ‘three treasures,’ in which every Buddhist must believe:
“I take my refuge in the Buddha; I take my refuge in the doctrine or
the law (_Dharma_); I take my refuge in the order of the disciples
(_Sangha_).” Thus even in the consciousness of its negative infinity
human personality cannot remain separate and isolated, but by means of
a universal doctrine is inevitably led to a social organisation.
All is deception except three things that are worthy of belief: (1)
the spiritually-awakened man; (2) the word of awakening; (3) the
brotherhood of those who are awake. This is the true essence of
Buddhism which still nurtures millions of souls in distant Asia.[99]
This is the first lasting stage of human universalism that rose above
the national and political exclusiveness of the religious and social
life.
Born in the country of caste, Buddhism did not in the least reject the
division of society into castes, or seek to destroy it; its followers
simply ceased to believe in the principle of that organisation, in the
absolute hereditary inequality of the classes. Appearing in the midst
of a nation with a distinct character of its own, it did not reject
nationality, but simply transferred human consciousness into the domain
of other, universal and super-national ideas. In consequence of this,
this Indian religion, the outcome of Hindu philosophy, was able, when
finally rejected in India, to take root among many various peoples of
different race and different historic education.
The negative infinity of human personality had been apparent to
individual philosophers before the time of Buddhism.[100] But it was
in Buddhism that this view found its first historical expression
in the collective life of humanity. Owing to his morally-practical
universalism which proceeded from the heart even more than from the
mind, Buddha Sakya-muni created a form of common life hitherto unknown
in humanity--the brotherhood of beggar-monks from every caste and
nation,--the ‘listeners’ (Shravaki) of the true doctrine, the followers
of the true way. Here for the first time the worth of the individual
and his relation to society was finally determined not by the _fact_ of
being born into a certain class or a definite national and political
organisation, but by the inner _act_ of choosing a certain moral ideal.
The theoretical conceptions of the first Buddha and the conditions of
life of his monastic brotherhood have undergone a number of changes
in the course of history, but the moral essence of his teaching and
work has remained in a clear-cut, crystallised form in the Lamaian
monasteries of Mongolia and Tibet.
The moral essence of Buddhism as an individually-social system has,
during the two and a half thousand years of its historical existence,
evinced itself as the feeling of religious reverence for the blessed
master, who was the first to awake to the true meaning of reality,
and is the spiritual progenitor of all who subsequently became awake;
as the demand for holiness or perfect _absence of will_ (the inner
asceticism in contradistinction to the external mortification of the
flesh which had been and still is practised by the ‘Gymnosophists,’
and which did not satisfy Buddha Sakya-muni); and, finally, as the
commandment of universal benevolence or kindly compassion to all
beings. It is this latter, the simplest and most attractive aspect of
Buddhism, that brings to light the defects of the whole doctrine.
IV
What, from the Buddhistic point of view, is the difference between
the man who is spiritually awake and the man who is not? The latter,
influenced by the delusions of sense, takes apparent and transitory
distinctions to be real and final, and therefore desires some things
and fears others, is attracted and repelled, feels love and hate. The
one who has awakened from these dream emotions understands that their
objects are illusory and is therefore at rest. Finding nothing upon
which it would be worth his while to concentrate his will, he becomes
free from all willing, preference, and fear, and therefore loses all
cause for dissension, anger, enmity and hatred, and, free from these
passions, he experiences for everything, without exception, the same
feeling of benevolence or compassion. But why should he experience
precisely _this_ feeling? Having convinced himself that _all is empty_,
that the objective conditions of existence are vain and illusory,
the awakened sage ought to enter a state of perfect _impassibility_,
equally free both from malice and from pity. For both these opposed
feelings equally presuppose to begin with a conviction of the reality
of living beings; secondly, their distinction from one another (_e.g._
the distinction between the man who suffers in his ignorance and
appeals to my pity, and the perfectly blessed Buddha who stands in no
need of it); and, thirdly, pity, no less than malice, prompts us to
perform definite actions, determined by the objective qualities and
conditions of the given facts. Now all this is absolutely incompatible
with the fundamental principle of universal emptiness and indifference.
The moral teaching of Buddhism demands active self-sacrifice, which is
involved in the very conception of a Buddha. The perfect Buddha--such
as Gautama Sakya-muni--differs from the imperfect or solitary Buddha
(Pratyeka Buddha) precisely by the fact that he is not satisfied
by his own knowledge of the agonising emptiness of existence, but
decides to free from this agony all living beings. This decision was
preceded in his former incarnations by individual acts of extreme
self-sacrifice, descriptions of which abound in Buddhist legends.
Thus in one of his previous lives he gave himself up to be devoured
by a tiger in order to save a poor woman and her children. Such holy
exploits, in contradistinction to the aimless self-destruction of the
ancient ascetics of India, are a direct means to the highest bliss for
every one who is ‘awake.’ A well-known and typical story is told of
one of the apostles of Buddhism--Arya-Deva. As he was approaching a
city, he saw a wounded dog covered with worms. To save the dog without
destroying the worms, Arya-Deva cut a piece off his own body and placed
the worms upon it. At that moment both the city and the dog disappeared
from his eyes, and he entered at once into Nirvana.
Active self-sacrifice out of pity for all living beings, so
characteristic of Buddhist morality, cannot be logically reconciled
with the fundamental principle of Buddhism--the doctrine that all
things are empty and indifferent. To feel equal pity for every
one, beginning with Brahma and Indra, and ending with a worm, is
certainly not opposed to the principle of indifference; but as soon
as the feeling of universal compassion becomes the work of mercy,
the indifference must be given up. If instead of a dog with worms,
Arya-Deva had met a man suffering from vice and ignorance, pity to
_this_ living creature would require from him not a piece of his
flesh, but words of true doctrine--while to address words of rational
persuasion to a hungry worm would be no less absurd than to feed with
his own flesh a satisfied, but erring, man. _Equal pity to all beings
demands not the same, but quite a different active relation to each
one of them._ Even for a Buddhist this difference proves to be not
merely illusory, for he too would certainly admit that had Arya-Deva
not distinguished a worm or a dog from a human being, and offered
moral books to suffering animals, he would hardly be likely to have
performed any holy exploit and deserved Nirvana. _All-embracing pity_
necessarily involves _discriminating truth_, which gives each his due:
a piece of meat to the animal, and words of spiritual awakening to the
rational being. But we cannot stop at this. Pity for every one compels
me to desire for all and each the supreme and final blessedness which
consists not in satiety, but in complete freedom from the pain of
limited existence and of the necessity of rebirth. This freedom, this
only true blessedness, the worm--so long as it remains a worm--cannot
attain; it is possible only to a self-conscious and rational being.
Therefore if I am to extend my pity to the lower creatures, I cannot be
content with simply alleviating their suffering at a given moment. I
must help them to attain the final end through rebirth in higher forms.
But the objective conditions of existence are rejected by Buddhism as
an illusion and empty dream, and consequently the ascent of living
beings up the ladder of rebirths depends exclusively on their own
actions (the law of _Karma_). The form of the worm is the necessary
outcome of former sins, and no help from without can lift that worm to
the higher stage of dog or elephant. Buddha himself could directly act
only upon rational self-conscious beings, and that only in the sense
that his preaching enabled them to accept or to reject the truth, and,
in the first case, to escape from the torture of rebirth, and, in the
second, continue to endure it. The work of salvation that those who
are ‘awake’ can accomplish amounts simply to pushing their sleeping
neighbours, some of whom are awakened by it, while others merely
exchange one series of bad dreams for another, still more agonising.
The principle of active pity to all living beings, however true it
is in itself, can, from the Buddhist point of view, have no real
application. We are utterly incapable of bringing true salvation to
the lower creatures, and our power of influencing rational creatures
in this respect is extremely limited. Whatever their commandments and
legends may be, the very formula of the faith[101] indicates that the
true sphere of moral relations and activity is for the Buddhist limited
to the brotherhood of those who, like himself, are ‘awake,’ and support
one another in a peaceful life of contemplation--the last remainder of
their former activities--before they finally pass into Nirvana.
V
The significance of Buddhism in the world-history lies in the fact
that in it the human individual was for the first time valued not as
the member of a tribe, a caste, a state, but as the bearer of a higher
consciousness, as a being capable of awakening from the deceptive
dream of everyday existence, of becoming free from the chain of
causality. This is true of man belonging to any caste or nationality,
and in this sense the Buddhist religion signalises a new stage in the
history of the world--the universal as opposed to the particular tribal
or national stage. It is clear, however, that the universality of
Buddhism is merely abstract or negative in character. It proclaims the
principle of indifference, rejects the importance of the caste or the
national distinctions, gathers into a new religious community men of
all colours and classes--and then leaves everything as it was before.
The problem of gathering together the _disjecta membra_ of humanity and
forming out of them a new and higher kingdom, is not even contemplated.
Buddhism does not go beyond the universalism of a monastic order.
When the transition is effected from the clan to the state, the
former independent social wholes--the clans--enter as subordinate
parts into the new and higher whole, the organised political union.
Similarly, the third and highest stage of human development--the
universal--demands that states and nations should enter as constituent
parts into the all-embracing new organisation. Otherwise, however broad
the theoretical principles might be, the positive significance in
concrete life will entirely remain with the already existing national
and political groups. ‘All men’ and, still more, ‘all living beings’
will simply be an abstract idea symbolically expressed by the monastery
that is severed from life. Buddhism remains perfectly strange to the
task of truly uniting all living beings, or even the scattered parts of
humanity, in a new, universal kingdom. It therefore proves to be merely
the first rudimentary stage of the human understanding of life.
The personality manifests here its infinite worth in so far as the
absolute self negates all limitation, in so far as it asserts, “I am
not bound by anything, I have experienced all things, and know that
all is an empty dream and I am above it all.” _Negation of existence
through the knowledge of it_--this is in what, from the Buddhist point
of view, the absolute nature of the human spirit consists. It lifts man
above all earthly creatures and even above all gods, for they are gods
by nature only, while the awakened sage becomes god through his own
act of consciousness and will: he is an _auto-god_, a _god self-made_.
All creation is material for the exercise of will and of knowledge, by
means of which the individual is to become divine. Single individuals
who have entered upon the path that leads to this end form the normal
society or brotherhood (the monastic order) which is included in the
Buddhist confession of faith (I take my refuge ... in the Sangha).
But this society obviously has significance temporarily only, until
its members attain perfection; in Nirvana communal life, like all
other determinations, must disappear altogether. In so far as the
absolute character of the personality is understood in Buddhism in the
negative sense only, as freedom from all things, the individual stands
in no need of completion. All his relations to other persons simply
form a ladder which is pushed away as soon as the height of absolute
indifference is attained. The negative character of the Buddhist ideal
renders morality itself, as well as all social life, a thing of purely
transitory and conditional significance.
The religiously-moral feeling of reverence (_pietas_) has in Buddhism
no true and abiding object. The sage who knows all things and has
become free from everything finds no longer anything to worship. When
Buddha Sakya-muni attained to the supreme understanding, not only
Indra with the host of all the Vedanta deities, but the supreme god of
the all-powerful priests, Brahma, came like a humble listener to hear
the new doctrine, and, becoming enlightened, worshipped the teacher.
And yet Buddha was a man, who by his own power became god or reached
the absolute state--and this is the supreme goal for every human
being. Buddhists reverence the memory and the relics of their teacher
to the point of idolatry, but this is only possible so long as the
worshippers are still imperfect. The perfect disciple who has attained
Nirvana no longer differs from Buddha himself, and loses all object
of religious feeling. Therefore, in principle, the Buddhist ideal
destroys the possibility of the religious relation, and, in its inmost
essence, Buddhism is not only a religion of negation, but a religion of
self-negation.
The altruistic part of morality also disappears at the higher stages
of the true way, for then all distinctions are seen to be illusory,
including those which evoke in us a feeling of pity towards certain
objects, events, and states. “Be merciful to all beings,” proclaims
the elementary moral teaching of the Sutras. “There are no beings,
and all feeling is the fruit of ignorance,” declares the higher
metaphysics of Abhidhamma.[102] Not even the ascetic morality has
positive justification in Buddhism, in spite of its monasteries. These
monasteries are simply places of refuge for contemplative souls who
have given up worldly vanity and are awaiting their entrance into
Nirvana. But the positive moral asceticism--struggle with the flesh for
strengthening the spirit and _spiritualising the body_--lies altogether
outside the range of Buddhist thought. The spirit is for it only the
knower, and the body a phantom known as such. Bodily death, the sight
of which had so struck Prince Siddhartha, merely proves that life is
illusion, from which we must become free; but no Buddhist would dream
of resurrection. If, however, the supreme goal of asceticism is absent,
the means towards it can have no significance. From the point of view
of absolute indifference ascetic rules, like all other, lose their
own inherent meaning. They are preserved in the external practice of
Buddhism simply as pedagogical means for spiritual babes, or as the
historical legacy of Brahmanism. The perfect Buddhist will certainly
not refrain from plentiful food, or distinguish between meat and
vegetable diet. It is very remarkable that according to the legend,
the truth of which there is no reason to doubt, the founder of this
religion, which is supposed to demand strict vegetarianism, died of
having unwisely partaken of pig’s flesh.
VI
Like every negative doctrine Buddhism is dependent upon what it
denies--upon this material world, this sensuous and mortal life. “All
this is illusion,” it repeats--and it gets no further, for to it this
illusion is everything. It knows with certainty only what it denies. Of
what it affirms, of what it regards as not illusory, it has no positive
idea at all, but determines it negatively only: Nirvana is inaction,
immovability, stillness, non-existence. Buddhism knows only the lower,
the illusory; the higher and the perfect it does not know, but merely
_demands_ it. Nirvana is only a postulate, and not the idea of the
absolute good. The _idea_ came from the Greeks and not from the Hindus.
Human reason, having discovered its own universal and absolute
nature by rejecting everything finite and particular, could not
rest content with this first step. From the consciousness that the
material existence is illusory it was bound to pass to that which is
not illusory, to that for the sake of which it rejected deceptive
appearance. In Indian Buddhism the personality finds its absolute
significance in the rejection of being that is unworthy of it. In Greek
thought, which found its practical embodiment in Socrates, and was put
into a theoretical form by his pupil, the absolute value of personality
is justified by the affirmation of being that is worthy of it--of
the world of ideas and ideal relations. Greek idealism no less than
Buddhism realises that all transitory things are illusory, that the
flux of material reality is only the phantom of being, is essentially
non-being (τὸ μὴ ὄν). The practical pessimism of the Buddhist is
entirely shared by the Greek consciousness.
“Whoso craves the ampler length of life, not content to desire a modest
span, him will I judge with no uncertain voice: he cleaves to folly.
For the long days lay up full many things nearer grief than joy; but as
for thy delights, their place shall know them no more, when a man’s
life hath lapsed beyond the fitting term.”[103]
Although there is here involved the conception of _measure_ so
characteristic of the Greek mind, reflection does not stop at this. Not
only a disproportionately long life, but _all_ life is nothing but pain.
“Not to be born is, past all prizing, best; but when a man hath seen
the light, this is next best by far, that with all speed he should go
thither, whence he hath come.
“For when he hath seen youth go by, with its light follies, what
troublous affliction is strange to his lot, what suffering is not
therein?--envy, frictions, strife, battles, and slaughters; and last of
all, age claims him for her own--age, dispraised, infirm, unsociable,
unfriended, with whom all woe of woe abides.”[104]
It was as clear to the Greek higher consciousness as to the Hindu that
human will blindly striving for material satisfaction cannot find it
under any material conditions, and that therefore the real good from
this point of view is not the enjoyment of life but the absence of life.
“The Deliverer comes at the last to all alike--when the doom of Hades
is suddenly revealed, without marriage song, or lyre, or dance--even
Death at the last.”[105]
This pessimistic conception expressed by poetry was also confirmed
by Greek philosophy in sentences which have become the alphabetic
truths of all idealistic and spiritualistic morality: sensuous life
is the prison of the spirit, body is the coffin of the soul, true
philosophy is the practice of death, etc. But although the Greek genius
appropriated this fundamental conception of Buddhism, it did not stop
there. The non-sensuous aspect of reality revealed to it its ideal
content. In the place of Nirvana the Greeks put the Cosmos of eternal
intelligible essences (Platonic Ideas) or the organism of universal
reason (in the philosophy of the Stoics). Human personality now affirms
its absolute significance not by merely denying what is false, but
by intellectually participating in what is true. The personal bearer
of this higher universal consciousness is not the monk who renounces
the illusion of the real being, in accordance with the principle of
indifference, but the philosopher who shares in the fulness of the
ideal being in the inner unity of its many forms. Neither the one nor
the other wishes to live by the senses, but the second lives by his
intellect in the world of pure Ideas, that is, of what is worthy of
existence, and is therefore true and eternal. It is a dualistic point
of view: all that exists has a true positive aspect, in addition to the
false, material side. With regard to the latter the Greek philosophers
adopt an attitude as negative as the Hindu ‘Gymnosophists.’ That which
to the senses and sensibility is a deceptive appearance contains for
reason ‘a reflection of the Idea,’ according to Plato, or ‘the seed of
Reason,’ according to the Stoics (λόγοι σπερματικοί). Hence in human
life there is an opposition between that which is conformable to Ideas
and in harmony with Reason, and that which contradicts the ideal norm.
The true sage is no longer a simple hermit or a wandering monk, who
has renounced life and is mildly preaching the same renunciation to
others; he is one who boldly denounces the wrong and irrational things
of life. Hence the end is different in the two cases. Buddha Sakya-muni
peacefully dies after a meal with his disciples, while Socrates,
condemned and put to prison by his fellow-citizens, is sentenced by
them to drink a poisoned cup. But in spite of this tragic ending, the
attitude of the Greek idealist to the reality unworthy of him is not
one of decisive opposition. The highest representative of humanity at
this stage--the philosopher--is conscious of his absolute worth in so
far as he lives by pure thought in the truly-existent intelligible
realm of Ideas or of the all-embracing rationality, and despises the
false, the merely phenomenal being of the material and sensuous world.
This contempt, when bold and genuine, rouses the anger of the crowd
which is wholly engrossed with the lower things, and the philosopher
may have to pay for his idealism with his life--as was the case with
Socrates. But in any case his attitude to the unworthy reality is
merely one of contempt. The contempt is certainly different in kind
from that characteristic of Buddhism. Buddha despises the world because
everything is illusion. The very indefiniteness of this judgment,
however, takes away its sting. If all is equally worthless, no one
in particular is hurt by it, and if nothing but Nirvana is opposed
to the bad reality, the latter may sleep in peace. For Nirvana is an
absolute state and not the norm for relative states. Now the idealist
does possess such a norm and he despises and condemns the life
that surrounds him not because it inevitably shares in the illusory
character of everything, but because it is abnormal, irrational,
opposed to the Idea. Such condemnation is no longer neutral, it has an
element of defiance and demand. It is slighting to all who are bound by
worldly irrationality and therefore leads to hostility, and sometimes
to persecution and the cup with poison.
And yet there is something accidental about this conflict. Socrates
condemned Athenian customs all his life long but he was not persecuted
for it until he was an old man of seventy; the persecution was
obviously due to a change in political circumstances. The irrationality
of the Athenian political order was a local peculiarity; the customs
of Sparta were better. The greatest of Socrates’ pupils, Plato, went
later on to Sicily in order to found there, with the help of Dionysius
of Syracuse, an ideal state in which philosophers would receive the
reins of government instead of a cup of poison. He did not succeed,
but on returning to Athens he was able to teach in his academy without
hindrance, and lived undisturbed to a profound old age. The disciples
of Socrates, as well as other preachers of idealism, never suffered
systematic persecution; they were disliked but tolerated. The fact
is that idealism by the nature of the case has its centre of gravity
in the intelligible world. The opposition it establishes between the
normal and the abnormal, the right and the wrong, though comparatively
definite, remains essentially intellectual and theoretical. It touches
upon the reality it condemns but does not penetrate to the heart of
it. We know how superficial were the practical ideals of Plato, the
greatest of the idealists. They come much nearer to the bad reality
than to what truly is. The realm of Ideas is an all-embracing,
absolutely-universal unity; there are no limitations, dissensions,
or hostility in it. But Plato’s pseudo-ideal state, though involving
some bold conceptions and a general beauty of form, is essentially
connected with such limitations of which humanity soon freed itself not
in idea only but in reality. His state of philosophers is nothing more
than a narrow, local, nationally Greek community based upon slavery,
constant warfare, and such relations between the sexes as remind one
of stables for covering. It is clear that the political problem is not
in any inner connection with Plato’s main interest and that he does
not really care in what way men are going to live upon earth, where
truth does not and will not dwell. He finds his own true satisfaction
in the contemplation of eternal intelligible truth. The natural impulse
to realise or embody truth in the environment is checked by two
considerations, which idealism necessarily involves. The first is the
conviction that though the ideal truth can be reflected or impressed
upon the surface of real existence, it cannot become substantially
incarnate in it. The second is the belief that our own spirit is
connected with this reality in a purely transitory and external
fashion, and therefore can have no absolute task to fulfil in it.
The dying Socrates rejoiced at leaving this world of false appearance
for the realm of what truly is. Such an attitude obviously excludes
in the last resort all practical activity; there can in that case be
neither any obligation nor any desire to devote oneself to the changing
of this life, to the salvation of this world. Platonic idealism, like
Buddhist nihilism, lifts up human personality to the level of the
absolute, but does not create for it a social environment corresponding
to its absolute significance. The brotherhood of monks, like the state
of philosophers, is merely a temporal compromise of the sage with the
false existence. His true satisfaction is in the pure indifference
of Nirvana, or in the purely intelligible world of Ideas. Are we to
say, then, that for idealism too the actual life is devoid of meaning?
We discover at this point so great an inner contradiction in the
idealistic line of thought that human consciousness is unable to stop
at this stage and to accept it as the highest truth.
VII
If the world in which we live did not share in the ideal or the
true being at all, idealism itself would be impossible. The direct
representative of the ideal principle in this world is, of course,
the philosopher himself, who contemplates that which truly is. But
the philosopher did not drop down from heaven; his reason is only the
highest expression of the universal human reason embodied in _the
word_ which is an essentially universal fact and is the real idea or
the sensible reason. This was clearly perceived by Heraclitus, worked
out and explained by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno the Stoic.
But the presence of the higher principle is not limited to the human
world. The purposive organisation and movements of living creatures
and the general teleological connection of events provided Socrates
himself with his favourite argument for proving the presence of reason
in the world. The ideal principle, however, is found not only where
there is evidence of purpose; it extends to all determinate being and
excludes only the principle directly opposed to it--the unlimited,
the chaos (τὸ ἄπειρον = τὸ μὴ ὄν). Measure, limit, norm, necessarily
involve Reason and Idea. But if so, the opposition, so essential for
idealism, between the world of sensible appearances and the world of
intelligible essences proves to be relative and changeable. Since all
determinate existence participates in Ideas, the difference can only
be in the degree of the participation. A plant or an animal exhibits
a greater wealth of definitely-thought content, and stands in more
complex and intimate relations to all other things than a simple stone
or an isolated natural event. Therefore we must admit that animal and
vegetable organisms have a greater share of the Idea or a greater
degree of ideality than a stone or a pool of water. Further, every
human being as possessing the power of speech or capable of rational
thought, presents, as compared with an animal, a greater degree of
ideality. The same relation holds between an ignorant man given to
passions and vices and the philosopher whose word is an expression of
reason not only in the formal sense but in its concrete application.
Finally, even philosophers differ from one another in the degree to
which they have mastered the higher truth. This difference in _the
degree of rationality_ in the world, ranging from a cobblestone to
the ‘divine’ Plato, is not anything meaningless or opposed to the
Idea. It would be that if reason demanded indifference and the ‘Idea’
designated uniformity. But reason is the universal connectedness of
all things, and the Idea is the form of the inner union of the many
in the one. (Take, _e.g._, the idea of the organism which includes
many parts and elements subservient to a common end; or the idea of
the state combining a multitude of interests in one universal good; or
the idea of science, in which many pieces of information form a single
truth.) Therefore our reality, in which innumerable things and events
are combined and coexist in one universal order, must be recognised
as essentially rational or conformable to the Idea. Condemnation of
this reality on the part of the idealist can in justice refer not
to the general nature of the world, or to the differences of degree
that follow from it and are essential to the higher unity, but only
to such mutual relation of degrees as does not correspond to their
inner dignity. The Idea of man is not violated but completed by the
fact that in addition to intellect man has active will and sensuous
receptivity. But since intellect, which contemplates universal truth,
is essentially higher than desires and sensations, which are limited
to the particular, it ought to dominate them. If, on the contrary,
these lower aspects gain the upper hand in the life of man, his
Idea becomes distorted and what takes place in him is abnormal and
meaningless. In the same way, the distinction of state or class is
not opposed to the idea of civic community provided the interrelation
between the classes is determined by their inner quality. But if a
group of men who have more capacity for menial work than for knowledge
and realisation of higher truth dominate the community and take into
their hands the government and the education of the people, while men
of true knowledge and wisdom are forced to devote their powers to
physical labour, then the state contradicts its Idea and loses all
its meaning. The supremacy of the lower faculties of the soul over
reason in the individual, and the supremacy of the material class over
the intellectual in society, are instances of one and the same kind
of distortion and absurdity. This is how idealism regards it when it
resolutely denounces the fundamental evil both of the mental and of the
social life of man. It is for thus denouncing it that Socrates had to
die, but, strange to say, not even this tragic fact made his disciples
realise that in addition to the _moral_ and _political_ there exists in
the world a third kind of _evil_--the _physical_ evil, _death_. This
illogical limitation to the first two anomalies--the bad soul and the
bad society,--this artificial break between the morally-social and the
naturally-organic life is characteristic of the idealist point of view
as of an intermediary and transitional stage of thought, a half-hearted
and half-expressed universalism.
And yet it is clear that the dominion of death in the world of the
living is the same kind of _disorder_, the same distortion of degrees,
as the mastery of blind passions in the rational soul or the mastery
of the mob in human society. There is no doubt that the inwardly
purposive structure and life of the organism realises the ideal
principle in nature in a greater measure and a higher degree than do
the elementary forces of inorganic substance. It is clear then that
the triumph of these forces over life, their escape from its power and
the final disruption of the organism by them, is contradictory to the
normal, ideal order, is senseless or anomalous. Life does not destroy
the lower forces of substance but subordinates them to itself and
thereby vivifies them. It is clear that such subordination of the lower
to the higher is the norm, and that therefore the reverse relation,
involving, as it does, the destruction of the higher form of existence
in its given reality, cannot be justified or pronounced legitimate from
the point of view of reason and of the Idea. Death is not an Idea, but
the rejection of the Idea, the rebellion of blind force against reason.
Therefore Socrates’ joy at his death was, strictly speaking, simply an
excusable and touching weakness of an old man wearied by the troubles
of life, and not an expression of the higher consciousness. In a mind
occupied with the essence of things and not with personal feeling, this
death ought to evoke, instead of joy, a double grief. Grievous was the
sentence of death as a social wrong, as the triumph of the wicked and
ignorant over the righteous and the wise; grievous was the process of
death as a physical wrong, as the triumph of the blind and soulless
power of a poisonous substance over a living and organised body, the
abode of a rational spirit.
_All_ the world--not merely the mental and political, but the physical
world as well--suffers from the violated norm and stands in need of
help. And it can be helped not by the will-lessness of the ascetic,
renouncing all life and all social environment, not by the intellectual
contemplation of the philosopher who lives by thought alone in the
realm of Ideas, but by the living power of the entire human being
possessing absolute significance not negatively or ideally only, but
as a concrete reality. Such a being is the perfect man or the God-man,
who does not forsake the world for Nirvana or the realm of Ideas, but
comes into the world in order to save it and regenerate it and make
it the Kingdom of God, so that the perfect individual could find his
completion in the perfect society.
VIII
The absolute moral significance of human personality demands perfection
or fulness of life. This demand is not satisfied either by the mere
negation of imperfection (as in Buddhism) or by the merely ideal
participation in perfection (as in Platonism and all idealism). It can
only be satisfied by perfection being _actually present and realised
in the whole man and in the whole of human life_. This is what true
Christianity stands for and wherein it essentially differs from
Buddhism and Platonism. Without going at present into the metaphysical
aspect of Christianity, I am simply referring here to the fact that
Christianity--and it alone--is based upon the idea of the really
perfect man and perfect society, and therefore promises to fulfil the
demand for true infinity, inherent in our consciousness. It is clear
that in order to attain this purpose it is necessary first of all to
cease to be satisfied with the limited and unworthy reality, and to
renounce it. It is equally clear, however, that this is only the first
step, and that if man goes no further he is left with a mere negation.
This first step which the universal human consciousness had to take,
but at which it ought not to stop, is represented by Buddhism. Having
renounced the unworthy reality, I ought to replace it by what is
worthy of existence. But to do so I must first understand or grasp the
very idea of worthy existence--this is the second step, represented
by idealism. And once more it is clear that we cannot stop at this.
Truth which is thinkable only and not realisable--truth which does not
embrace the whole of life--is not what is demanded, is not absolute
perfection. The third and final step which Christianity enables us to
take consists in a positive realisation of worthy existence in all
things.
The Nirvana of the Buddhists _is external to everything_--it is
_negative universalism_. The ideal cosmos of Plato represents
only the intelligible or _the thinkable aspect of everything_--it
is _incomplete_ universalism. The Kingdom of God, revealed by
Christianity, alone _actually_ embraces _everything_, and is
_positive_, _complete_, and _perfect_ universalism. It is clear that
at the first two stages of universalism the absolute element in man is
not developed to the end, and therefore remains _fruitless_. Nirvana
lies outside the boundaries of every horizon; the world of Ideas, like
the starry heaven, envelops the earth but is not united to it; the
absolute principle incarnate in the Sun of Truth alone penetrates to
the inmost depths of earthly reality, brings forth a new life, and
manifests itself as a new order of being--as the all-embracing Kingdom
of God: _virtus ejus integra si versa fuerit in terram_.[106] And
without the earth there can be no heaven for man.
We have seen that Buddhism, unable to satisfy the unconditional
principle of morality and bring about the fulness of life or the
perfect society, is destructive, when consistently worked out, of the
chief foundations of morality as such. The same thing must be said
with regard to Platonism. Where is a consistent idealist to find an
object for his piety? The popular gods he regards sceptically, or
at best with wise restraint. The ideal essences, which are for him
the absolute truth, cannot be an object of religious worship neither
for his mortal ‘body,’ which knows nothing about them, nor for his
immortal spirit, which knows them too intimately and, in immediate
contemplation, attains complete equality with them. Religion and
religious morality is a bond between the higher and the lower--a bond
which idealism, with its dual character, breaks up, leaving on the one
side the divine incorporeal and sterile spirit, and on the other, the
material body utterly lacking in what is divine. But the bond thus
severed by idealism extends farther still. It is the basis of pity as
well as of reverence. What can be an object of pity for a consistent
idealist? He knows only two orders of being--the false, material, and
the true, ideal being. The false being, as Anaximander of Miletus had
taught before Plato, _ought_ in justice to suffer and to perish, and
it deserves no pity. The true, from its essence, _cannot_ suffer, and
therefore cannot excite pity--and this was the reason why the dying
Socrates did nothing but rejoice at leaving a world unworthy of pity
for a realm where there is no object for it. Finally, idealism provides
no real basis for the ascetic morality either. A consistent idealist
is ashamed of the _general_ fact of having a body, in the words of
the greatest of Plato’s followers--Plotinus, but such shame has no
significance from the moral point of view. It is impossible for man
so long as he lives on earth to be incorporeal, and, according to the
indisputable rule _ad impossibilia nemo obligatur_, the shame of one’s
corporeality either demands that we should commit suicide or demands
nothing at all.
If instead of taking Buddhism and Platonism to be what they really
were, viz. necessary stages of human consciousness, we regard either
the one or the other as the last word of universal truth, the question
is, what precisely had they given to humanity, what did they gain for
it? Taken in and for themselves they have neither given nor promised
anything. There had been from all eternity the opposition between
Nirvana and Sansara--empty bliss for the spiritually awake, and empty
pain for the spiritually asleep; there had been the inexorable law of
causal actions and caused states--the law of Karma, which through a
series of innumerable rebirths leads a being from painful emptiness to
empty bliss. As it was before Buddha, so it remained after him, and so
it will remain for all eternity. From the point of view of Buddhism
itself, not one of its followers capable of critical reflection can
affirm that Buddha had changed anything in the world order, had created
anything new, had actually saved any one. Nor is there any room for
promise in the future. The same thing must in the long-run be said of
idealism. There is the eternal realm of intelligible essences which
truly is and the phenomenal world of sensuous appearance. There is
no bridge between the two; to be in the one means not to be in the
other. Such duality has always been and will remain for ever. Idealism
gives no reconciliation in the present and no promise of it in the
future.[107]
Christianity has a different message. It both gives and promises to
humanity something new. It gives the living image of a personality
possessing not the merely negative perfection of indifference or the
merely ideal perfection of intellectual contemplation, but perfection
absolute and entire, fully realised, and therefore victorious over
death. Christianity _reveals_ to men the absolutely perfect and
therefore physically immortal personality. It promises mankind a
perfect society built upon the pattern of this personality. And since
such a society cannot be created by an external force (for in that
case it would be imperfect), the _promise_ of it sets a _task_ before
humanity as a whole and each man individually, to co-operate with the
perfect personal power revealed to the world in so transforming the
universe that it might become the embodiment of the Kingdom of God. The
final truth, the absolute and positive universalism obviously cannot be
either exclusively individual or exclusively social: it must express
the completeness and fulness of the individually-social life. True
Christianity is a perfect synthesis of three inseparable elements: (1)
the _absolute event_--the revelation of the perfect personality, the
God-man--Christ, who had bodily risen from the dead; (2) the absolute
_promise_--of a community conformable to the perfect personality, or,
in other words, the promise of the Kingdom of God; (3) the absolute
_task_--to further the fulfilment of that promise by regenerating all
our individual and social environment in the spirit of Christ. If any
one of these three foundations is forgotten or left out of account
the whole thing becomes paralysed and distorted. This is the reason
why the moral development and the external history of humanity have
not stopped after the coming of Christ, in spite of the fact that
Christianity is the absolute and final revelation of truth. That which
has been fulfilled and that which has been promised stands firmly
within the precincts of eternity and does not depend upon us. But the
task of the present is in our hands; the moral regeneration of our life
must be brought about by ourselves. It is with this general problem
that the special task of moral philosophy is particularly concerned.
It has to define and explain, within the limits of historical fact,
what the relation between all the fundamental elements and aspects
of the individually-social whole ought to be in accordance with the
unconditional moral norm.
FOOTNOTES:
[94] See Robertson Smith’s _The Religion of the Semites_.
[95] The so-called ‘military settlements’ were villages in which
every peasant was compelled to be a soldier and to live under
military discipline. Minute regulations with regard to the home
life, work, dress, etc., were enforced with ruthless severity and
made the life of the settlers intolerable. The idea of establishing
military settlements belonged to Alexander I. and was carried out
by Araktcheev, his favourite, who founded the first settlement in
1810. Military settlements were finally abolished by Alexander II. in
1857.--_Translator’s Note._
[96] I would like especially to mention the interesting work by Leon
Metchnikov, _La Civilisation et les grands fleuves_. See my article
about it, “Iz istorii philosophii” (Concerning the philosophy of
history), in the _Voprosi Philosophii_ (1891), and also Professor
Vinogradov’s article in the same magazine. One worthy critic imagined
that in speaking of the military theocracy as the historical school of
asceticism I was referring to the _personal intentions_ of the Egyptian
Pharaohs and Chaldean kings!!
[97] I am referring here, of course, simply to the historical meaning
of the fact, and not to its mystical significance.
[98] Although the word _caste_ is Portuguese and not Indian, it had
arisen (in the sense in question) precisely for the designation of the
social relations of India.
[99] It should be noted, by the way, that after the fashion set by
Schopenhauer, who was prejudiced in favour of Buddhism, the number
of Buddhists is usually exaggerated beyond all measure; one hears of
400, 600, 700 million followers of this religion. These figures would
be probable were China and Japan wholly populated by Buddhists. In
truth, however, the teaching of Buddha in its various modifications is
the religion of the masses only in Ceylon, Indo-China, Nepal, Tibet,
Mongolia, and among the Bouriats and Kalmucks; this amounts at most
to 75 or 80 millions. In China and Japan Buddhism is simply one of
the permitted religions which is more or less closely followed by the
educated people, who do not, however, give up their national cult;
in a similar manner in Russia, for instance, under Alexander I. many
Orthodox people used to frequent the meetings of the Freemasons.
[100] Many fantastic ideas used to prevail with regard to the antiquity
of the Hindu philosophy, but they are beginning to disappear in the
light of the more scientific inquiry. Most of their philosophic
wealth the Hindus acquired in later times, partly under the direct
influence of Greeks after Alexander the Great, and partly later still
with the help of the Arabs who brought Aristotle to the East no less
than to the West. But, on the other hand, there is no doubt that even
the Greeks--not to speak of Arabs--on their first acquaintance with
India found there a peculiar local philosophy of the ‘naked wise men’
(_Gymnosophists_) as a typical and traditional institution of ancient
standing. From their outward appearance these Indian adamites cannot
be identified with the followers of Buddhism; most probably they were
adepts of ascetic mysticism--Yoga, which existed before the time of
Buddha. Still more ancient was the pantheism of the Upanishads. There
is ground to believe that the immediate forerunner of Sakya-muni
was the author of the system of spiritualistic dualism (expounded
in Sankya-Karika), although the person and even the name of this
sage--Kapila--are somewhat doubtful.
[101] See above.
[102] The Buddhist doctrine is divided into three sections of the Holy
Law, called, therefore, ‘The three baskets’ (Tripitaka): Sutra contains
the moral doctrine, Vinâya the monastic rules, and Abhidhamma the
transcendental wisdom.
[103] The _Oedipus Coloneus_.
[104] _Ibid._
[105] _Ibid._
[106] “Its power is whole when it turns to the earth” (_Tabula
smaragdina_).
[107] Plato’s thought rose for a moment to the conception of Eros as
the bridge between the world of true being and the material reality,
but did not follow it out. In enigmatic expressions the philosopher
indicated this bridge, but was incapable of crossing it himself or
leading others across it.