WAS IT REASON?
Reason and religion have but little in common. They come from different
sources, they pursue different ways. They are never related in this
order as cause and effect. No one was ever reasoned into a religion, no
one was ever reasoned out of his religion. Faith exists or does not
exist in man without any reference to his reason. Reason may follow
faith, does follow faith; never does faith follow reason.
Is it indeed always so? Then how about the boy told of in the earlier
chapters? He was born into a religion, he was educated in it, and he
rejected it. Why? He himself tells why he did so, because his reason
drove him away from it. His reason, looking at the world as he found it,
could not accept the way of life inculcated by his faith. He found it
impossible, unworkable, and therefore not beautiful. His reason told him
it was impracticable, not in accordance with facts, and therefore he
would have none of it.
His reason, too, following Darwin, told him that the earlier part of the
Old Testament could not be correct. Man has risen, not fallen; he had
his origin not six thousand years ago, but perhaps sixty thousand,
perhaps much more. In many ways his reason fought with his religion, and
it prevailed. Was no one ever reasoned out of a faith? Surely this boy
was, surely many boys and men equally with him have so been deprived by
reason of their faiths. Reason is the enemy of faith. Is not this so?
When that boy was fighting his battle long ago I am sure he thought so.
Certainly he said so to himself. Was he insincere or mistaken? Surely he
should know best of what was going on in his mind. He tells how reason
drove him from his faith. Was he not right?
I think that he had not then learned to look at the roots of things. If
there is one truth which grows upon us in life as we go on, as we watch
men and what they say and do, as we watch ourselves and what we say or
do, it is this, that men do not do things nor feel things because they
think them, but the reverse. Men think things because they want to do
them; their reason follows their instincts. No man seeks to disprove
what he likes and feels to be good, no man seeks to prove what he
instinctively dislikes and rejects. You cannot argue yourself into a
liking or a distaste. If, then, you find a man seeking reasons to
disprove his faith, it is because his faith irks him, because he would
fain shake it off and be done with it. If he were happy in it and it
suited him, reasons disproving any part of it would pass by him
harmlessly. You cannot shake a man's conviction of what he _feels_ to be
useful and beautiful.
To the man, therefore, looking back it seems that all the boy's
thoughts, his arguments, his reasoning, arise from this, that his
religion did not suit. It galled him somewhere, perhaps in many places;
it was a burden, and instead of being beautiful it was the reverse. So
to rid himself of what he could not abide he sought refuge in his
reason. And his reason going, as reason has always done, to the theories
of faith instead of to the facts, he found that the creeds and beliefs
had no foundation in fact, were but formulae thrown upon an ignorant
world, and should be rejected. So he left them. But it was never his
reason that made him do so; reason came in but as the judge, openly
justifying what had happened silently and unnoticed in his heart.
What was it, then, that drove the boy from his faith? What were his
instincts that remained unfulfilled, roused against his religion till
they drove him to find reasons for leaving it? What was it that galled
him till he revolted? There were, I think, mainly two things--the rise
of an intense revolt to the continual exercise of authority, and the
greater effect of the code of Christ upon him.
When a boy is frequently ill, when his constitution is delicate and
easily upset, it is necessary that he should be very careful what he
does, how he exposes himself to damp or cold, how he over-exerts himself
at work or play. But for a boy to exercise this care is very difficult.
He feels fairly well, and the other boys are going skating or boating,
why should he not do so? The day is not very cold, and the other boys do
not wear comforters; they laugh at him if he does so. He will not admit
that he cannot do what other boys can do. So he has to be looked after
and guarded, and cared for and watched, and made to do things he
dislikes. If, too, the supervision becomes unnecessarily close, if there
is a tendency to interfere not only where he is wrong and wants
correction, but in many details where it is not required, is it not
natural? If in time it so comes, or the boy thinks it so comes, that he
cannot move hand or foot, cannot go in or out, cannot think or read, or
even rest, without perpetual correction, is it so very unnatural?
Mistake? Who shall say where the mistake lay? Who shall say if there was
any mistake at all, unless great affection be a mistake? Maybe it was
the inevitable result of circumstances. But still there it was. And
though a small boy may accept such rule without question, yet as he
grows up it irks him more and more, until at last it may become a daily
and hourly irritation growing steadily more unbearable, more
exasperating, month by month.
There is, too, in many people--women, I think, mostly, and with women
chiefly in reverse proportion to their knowledge--a tendency to give
advice. Few are without the desire, maybe a kindly desire in its
inception, to advise others. The world at large does not take to it
kindly, so the advice has to be bottled up, to be expended in its
fulness where it can. This boy got it all. He received advice from
innumerable people, enough to have furnished a universe. Most of it he
felt to be worthless, almost all of it he was sure was impertinence. Yet
he could not resent it, because he was under authority.
And now perhaps you may see how there grew up slowly in him an utter
loathing of authority, a hatred to being checked and supervised, and
advised and lectured for ever. Sometimes he would revolt and say, "Can't
you leave me alone?" and this was insubordination. He would have given
all he could, everything, for liberty. "I would sooner," he said to
himself, "catch cold and die than be worried daily not to forget my
comforter. I would sooner grow up a fool and earn my living by breaking
stones in the road than be supervised into my lessons like this, that I
may be learned. But when I am grown up it must cease. It SHALL cease.
Then I shall be free to go my own way, and do wrong and suffer for it."
And now imagine a boy in a state of mind like this told that he would
_never_ be free. A boy's authorities might pass, school and home might
be left behind, but God would remain. Masters can be avoided and
deceived, God cannot be deceived. His eye is always on you. He sees
everything you do. His hand is always guiding and directing and checking
you. It seems to him that the exasperation was never to end, was to last
even into the next life, if this be true. Then you may understand how
his instincts drove his reason to find good and sufficient cause for
rejecting this God and for seeking freedom. "Give me freedom," he cried,
"freedom even to do wrong and suffer for it. I will not complain. Only
let me alone. Do not interfere. I will not have a God who interferes."
His reason helped him and showed him the emptiness of the creeds, and he
went on his way without.
Then there was the Sermon on the Mount. To most boys this does not
appeal at all. They hear it read. It is to them part of "religion"--that
is, for consumption on Sunday. It is not of any consequence, only words.
They do not think twice of it. But with this boy it was different. The
Sermon on the Mount did appeal to him. He thought it very beautiful as a
little boy. It seemed worth remembering. He did remember it. It seemed
worth acting up to as much as possible.
But as he grew older and learned life as it is, he became able to see
that it was not applicable at all to life, that life was much rougher
and harder than he supposed, and required very different rules. He
slowly grew disillusioned. And with the disillusion came bitterness. If
you have never believed in any certain thing, never taken it to
yourself, you can go on theoretically admiring it, and, if that becomes
impossible, you can eventually let it go without trouble. But if you
have believed, if you have strongly believed and desired to accept, when
you find that your belief and acceptance have been misplaced, there
comes a revulsion. If it cannot be all, it must be none. Love turns to
hate, never to indifference. Belief changes to absolute rejection, never
to toleration.
This code of Christ could not be absolutely followed in daily life,
therefore it was absolutely untrue. And being untrue he could not bear
to hear it preached every Sunday as a teaching from on High. He shrank
from it unconsciously as from a theory he had loved and which had
deceived him: the love remained, the confidence was gone. He was
betrayed. But he never reasoned about it till he had rejected it. Then
he sought to justify by reason what he had already accomplished in fact.
So do men think things, because they have done or wish to do them; never
the reverse.
* * * * *
It seems trivial after the above to recall a minor point wherein
instinct has had much to say.
I can remember as a boy how I disliked to hear the church bells ringing
for service. I hated them. They made me shudder. And I used to think to
myself that I must be naturally wicked and irreligious to be so
affected. "They ring for God's service and you shudder. You must be
indeed the wicked boy they say." So I thought many a time.
And now I know that I disliked the bells then, as I dislike them now,
because of all sounds that of bells is to me the harshest and noisiest.
I dislike not only church bells, but all bells. I have no prejudice
against dinner, yet I would willingly wait in some houses half an hour,
or even have it half-cold if it could be announced without a bell. And
church bells! Very few are in tune, none are sweet toned, all are rung
far louder and faster than they should be, so that their notes, which
might be bearable, become a wrangling abomination.
But I love the monastery gongs in Burma because they are delicately
tuned, and they are rung softly and with such proper intervals between
each note that there is no jar, none of that hideous conflict of the
dying vibrations with the new note that is maddening to the brain.
It is trivial, maybe, but it is real. And out of such trivialities is
life made. Out of such are our recollections built. I shall never
remember the call to Christian prayer without a shudder of dislike, a
putting of my fingers in my ears. I shall never recall the Buddhist
gongs ringing down the evening air across the misty river without there
rising within me some of that beauty, that gentleness and harmony, to
which they seem such a perfect echo.