MIRACLE.
It is some years ago now--about twenty, I think--that we first heard of
the beginning of a new religion, the arrival of a new prophetess who was
to unfold to us the mystery of the world and teach us the truths of
life. And this religion began as other religions have been said to
begin, this prophetess claimed belief as other teachers are said to have
done, by her miraculous powers. She could do things that no one else
could do: she could divide a cigarette paper in halves, and waft half
through the air to great distances; she could piece together broken
teacups in an extraordinary way. And because she could perform these
feats she claimed for herself an authority in speaking of the hearts of
men and of the before and after death, an authority which was accorded
to her by many.
I have expressly refrained from suggesting either the truth or the
falsehood of these miracles. I am aware that the whole process is said
to have been fully exposed. The question is immaterial, for they were,
true or false, believed by many, and it is this question of belief in
miracle which I wish to discuss, not the possibility of miracle or the
reverse.
There is another point I wish to make clear. I have said that other
religions are said to have started in the same way, other teachers to
have claimed authority on the same ground. This may or may not be true.
The theory of Buddhism is so essentially anti-miraculous that the
miracles attributed to the Buddha seem almost certainly outside
additions, as they are in direct variance with his known acts and
beliefs. And the words and acts of Christ in His life seem all so at
variance with the miracles attributed to Him that they, too, may be
later additions or contemporary exaggerations. This has already been
obvious to some, and had not the absolute inspiration of the Sacred
Books been insisted on, thus stifling criticism, it would have been
obvious to more. All this is immaterial. True or false, all religions
have an embroidery, more or less deep, of miracle, and on these miracles
their claim to truth was in the early days more or less pressed. If
Madame Blavatsky performed miracles with teacups it was because she saw
that there was an attraction to many people in miracle that nothing else
could supply. Miracle to many is the proof of truth. Had Madame
Blavatsky performed no miracles, had there been no teacups, were there
now no Mahatmas, who would have stopped to listen to her compote of
Brahmanism, Buddhism, and truly western mysticism which she called
Theosophy?
How can miracle be the proof of supernatural knowledge?
Suppose there arose to-morrow in England a man who could make one loaf
into five, what should those of us who are without the instinct for
miracle say? Merely that he knew some way of increasing bread which we
did not know. The inference would end there. We should not suppose that
he therefore knew anything more about the next world than we do. Where
is the connection, we would ask? The telephone or the Roentgen rays would
have been a miracle a hundred years ago. Two thousand years ago a
phonograph would have been supposed to hold a devil, and the proprietor
would have been a prophet, no doubt. But we do not now go to Edison or
Maxim for our religions. Still, Madame Blavatsky started with miracles,
and was wise in her generation. Still, all religions retain more or less
of the miraculous, because there are many to whom this appeals before
everything, because they are sure that miracle is the proof of truth.
Again, Theosophy claims to be Esoteric Buddhism. The country _par
excellence_ of practical Buddhism is Burma. Yet the Burmans generally
laugh at Theosophy. How is this? The answer lies, I think, like the
answer to all these questions of religion, in the varying instincts of
the people. It is an idea with us in the West that the East is the land
of enchantment, of mystery, of the unknown, of miracle and all that is
akin to it. We are never tired of talking of the mysterious East; it
seems to us one vast wonderland full of things we cannot understand,
full of marvels of the unknowable, the very home of superstition; while
the West is matter of fact, material and reasonable, and easily
understood. And yet I think the very first thing a man learns when he
goes to the people of the East, certainly to the Burmese people, and
tries to see with their eyes and understand with their hearts, that all
this is the very reverse of the facts. Will anyone who wishes to see how
very far they are from the cult of the mysterious, of dreams, of
miracles, of visions, how very _little_ such things appeal to them, turn
to my chapters on the Buddhist monkhood in "The Soul of a People," and
read them? I do not wish to repeat what I said there, only that a monk
who saw visions or performed miracles would be ejected from his
monastery as unworthy of his faith.
I do not say that there are no superstitions among the people. Their
stage of civilisation is as yet low, as low perhaps as ours five hundred
years ago. They have their strange fancies here and there; I have heard
many of them. They are amusing sometimes and curious. I very much doubt,
however, if the Burman of to-day is as superstitious as an ordinary
countryman in England. I have heard English soldiers tell tales of old
women changing into hares, _that they themselves had seen_, quite as
seriously as any Burman could. And if you compare the Burman of to-day
with the European peasant of even two hundred years ago, there is no
comparison at all. The West simply reeks with superstition and all that
is allied to it compared to the East. (I exclude the belief in ghosts,
which is, I think, a separate matter.)
The delusion has, I think, arisen in many ways. To begin with, we are
always looking out in the East for the mysterious. It is the East, and
therefore mysterious. We very seldom try to understand the people, to
see them from their standpoint. We prefer generally to assume that they
have no standpoint and to talk of the incomprehensible Oriental mind,
because it is easier to do so and it sounds superior. And again, we are
apt to make absurd comparisons and reason without remembrance. An
English officer will come across a Burman from the back country of the
hills who has a charm against bullet wounds, and he will sit down and
indite a letter to the paper on the "incredibly foolish superstition of
these people," oblivious of the fact that he will find even now amongst
his own countrymen quite as many people who believe in charms as among
the Burmese, that Dr. Johnson touched various articles as charms, and
that he himself throws salt over his shoulder. Yet he is of the better
class of a people five hundred years older in civilisation than the
Burman.
I confess that, personally, I have found even to-day infinitely more
superstition and leaning to the miraculous among my own people than
among Burmans. There are classes of English people who are almost free
from it, there are other Englishmen, and especially Englishwomen, who
are steeped in it to a degree that would astound any Oriental. And what
was it a few hundred years ago? Have there ever been witch trials in the
East, have there ever been ordeals, or casting lots "for God to decide"?
Magicians have come to us from the East, truly; they were made for
export, the use for them at home being limited. Theosophy was started in
the East, truly, but not by Orientals. Madame Blavatsky is believed to
have been a Russian; her supporters were English and American. Palmistry
and fortune-telling appeal as serious matters to many people in England
and Europe generally. To the Burman they are matters of amusement. Do
you think "Christian Science" would gain any foothold in the East? or
spiritualism or a hundred forms of superstition that cling to the
civilised people of the West?
The East is the home of religion, of emotion, of asceticism, of the
victory of the mind over the body. The West is the home of superstition,
of second sight, of miracle, of conjuring tricks of all kinds exalted
into the supernatural. You may search all the records of the East and
find no superstition--like touching for the King's evil, for instance.
Can anyone imagine Joanna Southcote in India or in the further East? I
have tried not to hear, I could never repeat, what the East says of the
miraculous in Christianity. Superstition there is, of course, legend and
miracle; they are the outcomes always of a certain stage of
pre-civilisation. But even in India how scarce and faint they are
compared to the West. For one thing must be carefully remembered.
Ignorance of the power of natural causes must not be put down to
attribution of miraculous causes. The peasant in the East will often
attribute a property to a herb, a mineral, a ceremony that it has not
got. That is their ignorance of natural law, never their attribution of
unnatural power. If a Burman peasant sometimes thinks a certain medicine
can render his body lighter than water, it is simply that he is unaware
of the limited power of drugs, not that he supposes there is anything
miraculous in it. The power of phenacetin on a feverish patient seems to
him far more astonishing. Indeed, from miracle as miracle he shrinks. To
miracle as miracle the average European is greatly attracted. To the one
it spells always charlatanism, to the latter supernatural power.
And therefore, even in the religions of Hindustan--Hinduism in its
myriad forms, Mahommedanism, Sihkism, Jainism, and Parseeism--miracle
plays a very minor part. I think there is no doubt that this repugnance
to miracle is one reason why the Semites eventually rejected
Christianity. How very few and unaffecting the essence are the miracles
in Mahommedanism. But in Christianity it plays the major part. Christ
was born and lived and died and rose again in miracle. In Latin
countries miracles are of daily occurrence--as at Lourdes, for instance.
And though in Teutonic Christianity it is less than in Latin countries,
it plays a great part also. The miracles of Christ's life are retained.
Truly they say that now the age of miracle is past. The Church believes
no more in prophecy, in miraculous cures, in risings from the dead. The
bulk of the people reject miracle. But what a large minority is still
left who absolutely crave for it, let the records of Theosophy and many
another miraculous religion show. Miracle satisfies a craving, an
instinct, that nothing else will meet. It is curious to note how the
inclusion of miracle in religion varies inversely with the inclusion of
conduct. With the Latins miracle is most, the Latin Christianity is the
most miraculous of all religions, and therein conduct is least. With the
Teutons miracle and conduct are both accepted, the former
authoritatively of the past, privately also of the present. With the
Burmans miracle and the supernatural are rejected absolutely as part of
the religion of to-day, and conduct is all in all. Thus again do the
instincts of the people find expression in their religion.
As to the growth of the instinct it is more difficult to reply.
Instincts are very hard to account for. Indeed, in their origin all are
quite beyond the scope of inquiry at all. We can only see that they
exist. But with this instinct for miracle there is one cause that no
doubt contributes to its increase or decrease. It does not explain the
instinct, but it does show why in some cases it is greater than in
others.
It is greater in the West than in the East because many people in the
West, with greater emotional power, from better food and little work,
live narrower lives than any in the East. It is astonishing to see the
difference. In the East every peasant lives surrounded by his relatives,
very many of them; he is friends with all his village, he has always his
work, his interests in life. He is hardly ever alone among strangers,
with no work to occupy him. But in the West, how many there are who live
alone, their relations elsewhere, with few friends, with no necessity
for work, with no interests in life? It is terrible to see how many
there are living lives empty of all emotion. These are they who seek the
miraculous as a relief from their daily monotony of stupidity. These are
they who run after new things. It is
"The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the day for the morrow,
The longing for something afar
From the scene of our sorrow."
It is the result of high emotional power with no food to feed on. There
are other factors, for instance--that people who live in mountains are
more superstitious than people of plains, due again to narrower, more
isolated lives, I think; and as a rule country people are more
superstitious than town people, due to the same reason. Nothing exists
without its use, and this is some of the use of the miraculous instinct
in man. It has played its part in the world, a great part no doubt.
Where it exists still it does so because it fills a necessity. Never
doubt it. Those who live full lives find it so easy to laugh at this
craving for the supernatural. Would you do away with it? Make, then,
their lives such that they do not need it. Give to them the knowledge,
the sympathy, the love, the wider life that makes it unnecessary.
Nurtured in narrowness on the ground that should grow other instincts,
it disappears in the sunshine of happiness, when the heart is furrowed
and tilled by the experiences of life and planted with the fruit of
happiness.
If we cannot do that, at least we can recognise that it, as all
instincts, has its uses, and exists in and because of that use, never
because of any abuse.
And where the instinct exists it is attracted as are nearly all the
instincts into that great bundle of emotions called religion.
But if those who support Christian missions wonder why they are not more
successful, here is another reason. What satisfies your instinct revolts
theirs. They do not require it. Orientals, even peasants, live such wide
lives compared with many in the West, that they need not the stimulus,
and their hard lives lessen the emotional powers. And if Christians are
often unable to understand the charm of Buddhism to its believers, it is
because western people seek and require the stimulus of miracle which is
here wanting. It is as if you offered them water while they cared only
for wine. But Easterns care not for your strong emotions. They are
simpler and more easily pleased.