STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS.
Has, then, a force, or a teaching that is capable of excess, no use?
If you look back at the histories of peoples, at the histories of their
great wars, their movements, their enthusiasms, you will find that on
one side or another, usually on both, religion has been invoked to their
aid. For one side or for both the enthusiasm has been declared to be a
religious enthusiasm, the war a religious war, the awakening of thought
a religious awakening. The gods fought for the Greeks before Troy as the
saints did for the Spaniards against the Huns, as the Boers expected the
Almighty to fight in South Africa to-day. The intellectual revolt of the
Teuton against the mental leading-strings of the Latins became a
conflict of religion, as did the political conflict of the Puritans
against the Stuart Kings. It has been religion always, if possible,
that has been called on to lend strength and enthusiasm to the fighters
to attempt forlorn hopes, to carry out far-reaching reforms, to dare
everything for the end.
There is one great exception.
In the conflict that broke out in France at the end of the last century,
that storm which swept before it the breakwaters of a world and changed
mediaeval Europe into that of to-day, religion was not the motive power.
Those six hundred men of Marseilles "who knew how to die" were sustained
by no religious belief. Those armies which affronted the world in arms
had no celestial champions in their ranks. Those iconoclasts, who broke
down the barriers that made the good things of the world a forbidden
city to all but a caste, had no religious doctrine to work by.
Indeed, it may be said that it was quite the reverse, that the war of
the Revolution was against religion; but I doubt if that is quite the
truth. That the war was against the priests is in great measure true,
but it was because of their support to the nobles, because of their
connection with worldly abuses, because of their irreligion, that they
were attacked. Religion, too, suffered, it is true, but only
incidentally and for a time. And anyhow, you cannot get force out of a
negation. But however this may be, the point as far as I am now
concerned is not material; for all I want here to assert is that the
enthusiasm which acted as a breath of life to the half-dead millions of
France was not a religious enthusiasm. It never even assumed at any time
a religious basis. It was not an enthusiasm of God, but of Humanity, and
the war cry was "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." It was a revolt of the
bond against the gaoler, of the spoiled against the ravishers; it was
the assertion of the absolute equality and liberty of man.
Looking back at that turmoil now from the security of a hundred years it
is easy to scorn these enthusiasts. We can point to their excesses, to
the horrible crimes that were committed, and ask where was Liberty then;
to their wars, and ask in vain for the Fraternity; to their proscription
of whole classes made in the name of Equality. The excesses are so
black, so prominent, that it is even possible sometimes to forget the
great vitalising and regenerating effect of that enthusiasm.
It is easy, too, now that all is past, to criticise the very war cry
itself. Liberty, we say! Yes, liberty is good--in moderation and
according to circumstances. All liberty is not good. Children must be
under government, they cannot be quite free. They have to be directed in
the right way. And peoples, too, and classes who have fallen behind in
the race, who are unable to live up to the higher standards of greater
nations, they cannot be free. Then the citizen of a great nation must in
many matters resign his liberty for better things. Liberty is good, in
moderation, and so are Equality and Fraternity, but they are not
absolute truths. To cry them aloud, as did the Revolutionists of France,
to insist upon them in season and out of season, is to fall into an
error almost as great as their opponents'. We have little doubt now that
in every well-ordered state there must be inequality, submission to
masters as well as freedom, and that there are many people it is quite
undesirable to fraternise with. Truth lies in the mean.
And yet consider, does truth always lie in the mean? There were the
peasants of France ground into the very earth, denied any sort of
equality with the nobles, any sort of liberty at all, hopelessly unable
to fraternise with anyone. To breathe into them the breath of life, to
rouse them from their deadly lethargy to a furious enthusiasm, to fill
their hearts so full that they would go forward and never cease till
they had won, that was the eminent necessity. The difficulties were so
immense, the arms of the people so weak, the chains so rivetted into
their souls that only from a furious and uncontrollable impulse could
any help be obtained. If the philosopher had gone to these dry bones of
men, thrashing the ponds all night to prevent the frogs annoying their
seigneur by croaking, sowing for others to reap, raising up sons to be
slaves, and daughters to be worse than slaves--if he had gone to them
and said, "My friends, you are ground down too much; you want a little
more freedom--not too much, but some; you require more equality--not
complete, for the perfect state requires certain inequalities, but more
than you have; you require also a modicum of fraternity," what would he
have effected? That level-headed philosopher would be saying the truth
doubtless, and Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, as the Revolutionists
understood it, were impossibilities, therefore untruths; but what would
he have effected? Would his "truth" have freed the slaves, have burst
their chains; have restored sunlight to a continent, as the exaggeration
did? Never imagine it. It may be that in the mean lies truth, but in
exaggeration lies motive power. It was in the glorious dreams, the
beautiful imaginings, the surgings of the heart that arose from that war
cry _Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite_, that the strength lay. There is no
strength in the mean. It is the enthusiasts that make the world move. If
they have been guilty of half the misery, they have achieved half the
joy of the world. And therefore consider again, before you brand beliefs
and the teachings and enthusiasms as untruths, because they are
exaggerations, because they are unworkable as they stand. What _is_
Truth and Untruth? Is not truth also to be judged by its results? May
not what is an untruth now have been a living truth then? Have we
reduced truth to measure? If, therefore, this which is an exaggeration
now was then a necessary revivifying truth may there not be others like
it? Consider the conditions of the world into which the Buddha preached
first the teaching of peace, of purity, of calm, of holiness. It was a
world of unrest, of fierce striving, of savage passions, expressed to
their full. It was a world wherein these were virtues worshipped to
exaggeration. It was a world without balance, and to redress this
balance there came the Buddha with his teaching of the rejection of all
the glories of the world, the teaching of the cult of the soul, the
aspiration after peace, and beauty, and rest.
As was the world to whom the Buddha preached so was the world to whom
the Christ preached six hundred years later. Their codes of conduct
were the same. Against violence they taught resignation, against the
search for glory they taught renunciation; they opposed pride with
meekness, struggle with calm, success in this world by happiness in the
next. They came to redress the balance of the world; they came to make
men hope. And therefore it is impossible to take their codes by
themselves and consider them, to reject them because they do not express
the exact truth. What is to be considered is not that code alone, but
the purpose it came to fulfil. The codes of Buddha and of Christ are
exaggerations, that is true; they cannot be lived up to in their
entirety, that is also true. Taken alone they are impossible; that is
true. Are they then untrue, useless, valueless guides to conduct?
Not quite so. For man is so built that he requires an exaggeration. If
you would persuade him to go with you a mile you must urge him to come
two; if you would have him acquire a reasonable freedom you must create
in him an enthusiasm for unreasonable freedom; if you would have him
moderate his passions he must be adjured to wholly suppress them.
And therefore, it may be, do these codes of Buddha and Christ live. Not
because they are absolutely true, not because they furnish an ideal
mode of life, not in order to be fully accepted, but because they are
exaggerations that balance exaggerations; and out of the mean has come
what is worth having; because they have an effect which the exact truth
would not have in the masses of men.
They have been truth, because their results were true.
* * * * *
But the world is growing older, it is learning many things. Never again
can we hear that cry of _Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite_, the enthusiasms
of a nation for its ideals. These ideals were true then, they were true
because their work was true. But their work is done; men's eyes are open
now, we do not require such exaggerations to move us to our work. They
were in themselves but half truths. It required the violent assertions
of inequality, of slavery, to make up a whole truth. With one has died
the necessity for the other.
And so it may be with the codes of Buddhism and Christianity. They were
true in their day, because they had their work to do. To have any effect
at all they had to be enormous exaggerations; to earn any respect or
attention they had to be proclaimed as perfect, as divine. But now, with
the dying of the old brutalities, with the growth of civilisation, of
humanity, and culture, the old savage exaggerations are dying out. The
world is more refined, more effeminate, more clear-sighted. It says to
itself, "These codes, if divine and perfect, must be capable of being
implicitly obeyed; but they cannot be obeyed, and therefore they are not
divine."
And in the increased civilisation we feel less the need of a teaching of
gentleness; our nature is no longer too coarse; it may be it is going
the other way, that the softening process is going too far, and that our
need is a new savagery. And above all we hate exaggeration. To minds
capable of thought, of reason, and of culture, exaggeration on one side
is no excuse for exaggeration on the other. We are changing from the
older men who required enthusiasms to drive them and violent
exaggerations to cause them to move. We like exactitude.
These codes were made for rougher days than ours. They were true then.
They are not true now--not true, at least, to the more thoughtful. But
that they were true once, that the world owes to them its rescue from
the exaggeration of the passions, we must never forget. They were truths
while opposed. When opposed no longer they become false and fall. An
exaggeration can only be useful as long as it is not perceived to be
so. Set up two beams against each other, they are savagery and the
purist codes. While one stands so does the other, and they make an
equilibrium. But take away one and straightway the other must fall too.
One cannot stand alone.