“No one sufficiently recognises the power of reason.”
--ST THOMAS AQUINAS.
“De nos jours, nous mouquons encore plus de raison que de religion.”
--FENELON.
This question: “What is atheism?” has aroused me with a start. Led
aside as I had been by many beautiful, true, and striking thoughts,
which I noted as they presented themselves to me; being also very
preoccupied by depressing observations that I had made on my chronic
inability to turn them to account, I lost sight of the fact that it
is not sufficient to write and think at will merely, without definite
plan, not keeping the goal in sight. This is my eleventh chapter, and I
see with dismay that it is likely to exceed the two which precede it in
length, and that it follows one concerned more with the repetition of
words often spoken and seldom understood. I fear that I lack method.
During our own time we have seen a school arise, the Historical School;
it was heralded in Germany by such men as Niebuhr, the two Humboldts,
Bopp--the author of the first Comparative Grammar--Grimm, and many
others. This School shows that an uninterrupted continuity connects
what has been thought of old with what is being thought at present;
that there is no break between the present and the past; and that the
difficulties which are presented to us by the study of the present
philosophical problems, would in a great measure disappear, if we knew
under what form these same problems presented themselves to man for the
first time.
The Historical School advances step by step with the study of
comparative philology; this latter has shown that at the beginning the
number of words was very small; they lay, as it were, side by side,
before man’s eyes, as evenly and as regularly as the threads on a
weaver’s loom. But gradually, on account of our neglect, and our many
misunderstandings, the idea contained in these words became entangled,
and we have ceased to follow the course of the thread; the words have
remained in our memory, but the meaning has changed; they may even have
several meanings which contradict each other; the result is that we are
ignorant of many things it would be well for us to know with certainty.
All problems whether of philosophy or of philology, are best solved
by the historical method; let us bravely face each obscure question
to which we have no key; each doubtful term the meaning of which is
lost, and bid all retrace their steps in the path by which they arrived
at us; avoiding the peril of the idle worker who has a theory, and a
remedy ready for everything; and the walks in the country of dreams
which have no chart to direct travellers.
For us who are not learned linguists there is more than one method of
gaining information concerning words; the easiest is to note the use
made of them at various times in the past; another way which is more
important and more certain is to study their biographies, we should
find them in ancient documents; a third method that exacts neither a
knowledge of their history, nor their genealogy, consists simply in
reflection; this process, which should be within the reach of all, is
seldom used.
As I am constrained to follow the development of the Vedic religion
at the commencement of what was neither polytheism nor monotheism; I
recur to the last word of the preceding chapter in order to find its
historical antecedents.
History tells us that much in the same way as a wild beast pursues its
prey, this epithet of atheist is hurled at men who in truth have little
in common. “In the eyes of his Athenian judges Socrates was an atheist;
yet he did not even deny the gods of Greece, but he reserved to himself
the right to believe in something higher and more truly divine than
Hephaistos and Aphrodite.”[109] Spinoza was called an atheist by the
Jews, his co-religionists, because his conception of Jahveh or Jehovah
was wider than theirs. The early Christians were called _átheoi_ by the
Jews and Greeks because they believed not as the Jews and Christians
believed. Were the Hindoos atheists when they said, “What is Indra?
it is the sun, the rain only.” Were they atheists when they ceased to
believe in their Devas, the brilliant objects, the stars, the fields,
the rivers, the eyes of man? If the history of the word atheist had
only taught us one thing, _e.g._ that those who think differently
from ourselves do not deserve the reproach of atheism, it would have
extinguished the fires of many an _auto da fé_.
But are there real atheists? Do those persons exist who are convinced
that the word God represents nothing? There may be; if you have
succeeded in convincing human reason that there can be an act without
a cause, a boundary without a beyond, a finite without an infinite;
then you will have proved without doubt that there is no God. “God is a
_great_ word,” said a German theologian, lately deceased, whose honesty
and piety have never been questioned, “he who feels and understands
that, will judge more mildly and more justly of those who confess that
they dare not say that they believe in God.”[110]
We ought never to call a man an atheist till we know what kind of God
it is that he has been brought up to believe in, and what kind of God
it is that he rejects, it may be, from the best and highest motives. If
we can respect the childlike faith of a charcoal-burner, let us also
respect philosophical doubt; it may well indicate a turning-point in
the life of a man, in which he is perhaps abandoning a belief of which
he has seen the error, or is perhaps seeking to replace the less worthy
faith, however dear it may be to him, by one more perfect, however its
novelty may distress him; without such “atheism” as this our religion
would long ago have only been a congealed hypocrisy.
In the life of an individual, as in the life of a nation, there comes
a moment when opinion becomes modified; the old theory of the world
being fashioned by a workman as a potter moulds his vessels of clay,
has gradually disappeared. These ideas were so repugnant to the
enlightened mind of Sakya-muni, the Hindoo Prince--universally known as
Buddha--that he considered it irreverent to enquire how the world was
made, and still more audacious to attempt to answer the enquiry.
That which took the place of henotheism amongst the Hindoos might aptly
be termed adivism, a denial of the old Devas. Such a denial, however,
of what was once believed, but could be honestly believed no longer, so
far from being the end of religion, is in reality its vital principle.
Whilst about to deal with ideas which I know are true, it is gratifying
to expose at the same time certain false opinions which have been
put forth on the subject; it is curious to note how to start with a
false opinion brings one to a wrong conclusion. Herodotus, Cæsar, and
Quintus Curtius, who have all written on popular religious beliefs,
relate that men adored the sun, the earth, the sky, fire, and water;
that they worshipped certain rivers, and certain trees, and considered
as gods all things that were useful to them. This was the opinion of
the ancient writers who knew no better, and modern theorists repeated
also: “Primitive men deified the grand natural phenomena of nature,
especially the stars, taking them for gods.”
It is not a matter for surprise that primitive man should have formed
the opinion that either in the world or out of it there should be a
sovereign power which they considered as their gods.
In the eighteenth century the theory of fetishism was held to explain
all the intuitions of primitive man; although not pertinent to the
subject, this was not perceived until afterwards, and the theory was
considered reasonable.
Whilst the _Theorists_ take the predicate of God, when applied even to
a fetish, as requiring no explanation, the _Historical School_ sees in
it the result of a long continued evolution of thought. It was evident
that the human soul was so constituted that it must tend naturally and
inevitably towards the Unknown; it was also necessary that man should
learn that he possessed a soul.
We recognise that we have one; but are we equally clear as to what it
is?
We answer perhaps: “Yes, it is that part of us which is not the body
which perishes--the soul is immortal.” It is well to be able to make
such a reply, since it is true; our catechisms have sown the seed of
which this is the result.
But since all human knowledge, whether abstract or practical, has the
same beginning, through the senses, and that neither eye, ear, nor hand
has to do with the soul, what can we know of it? Above all, what can
we learn of its existence after death, the time when immortality has
passed beyond the sphere of the experience of the senses? As man we
recognise the spirit inhabiting the body, but with no form, such as it
might receive after death; we can hardly clothe these ideas in words.
This belief in a soul, exactly like the belief in gods, and at last in
One God, can only be understood as the outcome of constantly renewed
observations and long meditations; the annals of language furnish
material for this study, those ancient words, which, meaning originally
something quite tangible and visible, came in time to mean that which
is invisible and infinite.
The last breath of a dying person gave the first conception of the
presence in man of a non-corporeal principle; it was recognised that
this perceptible breath, at the moment of death, was an accident and
transient. Language marks clearly the difference between the act of
breathing or breath, and that which breathed, the invisible agent of
this act--the living soul, the spirit. This agent received different
names, in the different languages; the Greeks named it Psyche, saying
that it was the breath which, at the hour of death, passed out through
the bars of the teeth; amongst the Hindoos it was called _Atman_, and
_Anima_ amongst the Latins, two words which originally were understood
by those using them as meaning something breathing. Cicero spoke of
_Anima_, but he refrained from defining it, and frankly avowed that he
did not know whether to call it breath or fire.
The word breath has been used figuratively to express the Power
governing the world.[111] A poet in the Veda when speaking of the
Supreme Being says, “It breathed without air.”
Although the word breath was most frequently used to denote the
principle of life, another expression was employed at a much earlier
period; in countries the most remote from each other, the words,
_the shadow of the dead_, were used, in order to express the idea of
something intangible yet closely related to the body. The influence
of language on thought is so real and so much more powerful than the
testimony of our senses, that those who named the soul a shadow, came
at last to believe that corpses threw no shadow because it had left
them.
It was then considered that the soul was not a homogeneous whole, but
composed of parts of which some are ephemeral, destined to disappear
with the body; these parts form what the Greek and Latin writers call
the Ego, and the Hindoos _Aham_, what in French would be termed the
_moi_--three words for one thing--an object of contingency, since it
depends on circumstances--on the body, on age, and on sex.
All men have endeavoured to solve the riddle of human life; but the
Hindoos, who especially excelled in researches dealing with the
formation of words, that is to say, with the birth or development of
ideas, whilst penetrating deeply into the mysteries of their soul,
their Atman, arrived at an abstraction of this Atman, entirely freed
from all earthly or physical particles, and this “vehicle of an
abstraction” they considered to be incapable of perishing, since it
had no connection with breath, it was the pure self, “freed from the
fetters and conditions of the human Ego,” hidden in the _Aham_; not
contingent on circumstances--the self-existent One.
This new conception demanded a new name; the word Atman, which at first
signified all the concomitant elements of the soul--those which pass,
equally with those that remain--the Hindoos retained in their language,
and it was used to define the essence itself, the being with no
attributes, identical with the Being who vivified nature, the Infinite
that supported man’s own being, the Highest Self. Socrates knew this
same Self, but he called it _Daimonion_, the indwelling God, whom the
early Christians called the Holy Ghost.
From the Hindoo point of view this idea holds in itself the solution of
the world’s great enigma. The commandment indicating the kernel of all
philosophy, “Know thyself,” was the Hindoo doctrine. Know thyself as
the self, or if we translate it into religious language, “Know that we
live and move and have our being in God” (Acts xvii. 28).[112]
In recognising the soul as that which is the _self_, we see that this
fact of existing is more wonderful than the acts of breathing, feeling,
thinking, living, since none of these manifestations are possible but
on the sole condition of having proceeded from the Being--who _is_.
After having analysed the human soul, the Hindoos followed it from
phase to phase from the moment when the breath which makes man a living
being received its first names. They thus traced its history through
time, and believed that they could follow it through eternity.
Years were employed in the elaboration of this history, and we only
find its completion in a work which is posterior to the Vedic hymns,
the Upanishads. The study of the human soul is the central point in
Hindoo philosophy, and the Upanishads are the first psychological work
which has ever been made.
There are persons who doubt the existence of things, of which others
feel certain; but no one ever doubted the existence of his own
soul. Why did the theologians who arranged the creeds not include
the article, “I believe in my soul.” It would not have found men
incredulous.
Reflection enables us to admit that the soul without God could possess
no history, since neither the soul without God, nor God without the
soul, could constitute religion. For this which is called religion,
if under the form only of a soaring towards an unknown but longed-for
Being, has always existed since there have been men on the earth.
We often meet the recurring questions “Whence?” “Why?” and the frequent
“Because”; and now we are told by a small number of thinkers that all
the explanations of speculative philosophy on the first impulses of
the human soul towards religion, are only worthless suppositions,
unless philosophers--as historians have done--have recognised that
there was a revelation at the beginning of time in the true sense of
the word; but opinions differ as to “the true sense of the word.”
We are so accustomed to apply the expression “the Word of God” to the
sacred canon of Scripture, that we are inapt at seeking for God’s Word
elsewhere. But our first fathers read and studied it before the Bible
existed.
To reflective minds, primitive man presents a moving spectacle,
drawn towards the Unknown--the Unseen--they abandoned themselves
unresistingly to the current leading them in certain directions.
I imagine that our Aryan ancestors would not have fixed their attention
with such tenacity on the objects in nature which environed them, had
the stars and heavenly bodies been immovable. But the sun appearing on
the one side, traversing the sky and then disappearing on the opposite
side, made the remark of the Incas prince very natural: “There is some
power behind the sun causing it to ascend and descend.” It did not
occur to him that the sun travelled in accordance with natural laws.
Other princes and poets, with their eyes fixed on the moving objects
of the firmament, would have made the same reflection and sought the
invisible cause.
If the world had been propelled by a moving power within itself,
creatures possessing reason would have been vaguely conscious of
it from the first. They would have been like the plants which turn
regularly and infallibly in one direction, since they are not free to
do otherwise.
“You premise a revelation,” may be said to me, “and yet you direct us
towards Evolution; choose one of the two since the one contradicts the
other.”
That remains to be proved. Apply the theory of the evolutionist to
the mollusc; we see it directing itself, and extending its tentacles,
towards a crumb of bread that floats on the water. If they touch
it the contact calls forth in the mollusc the act of seizing its
prey. This is only a movement of semi-consciousness, or perhaps
rather it is not entirely involuntary. Under the aspect of immediate
cause and effect, we see a principle anterior to the phenomenon;
certain perceptions which appear in the sight of many psychologists
to be innate, that is to say, impressions received on our mind
before we became conscious of ourself, may well be the result of the
receptability of our Ego, which enables us, when it is affected in
a certain fashion, to represent these affections to ourselves under
certain forms.
The presentiment that unknown powers were to be found behind the
visible world only showed itself when the Aryans first named them sky,
sun, moon, storm, day, night, all terms previously used for various
parts of nature.
With the perception of a Beyond, with the desire to know what it
contained, a gap made itself felt which separated it from the known
world. It must be crossed--a bridge was necessary. This thought spread
from one end of the globe to the other, but our ancestors were the
first bridge-makers. Scandinavian mythology mentions a bridge built by
the gods which was of three colours; it was clearly intended originally
for the rainbow. The Milky Way provided the Hindoos with a bridge; and
in the Upanishads mention is made of a path having five colours. Here
we have the rainbow again probably. The source of these legends is the
ineradicable belief in the heart of man, that the here and hereafter,
the immortal and the mortal, the divine and the human, cannot remain
apart for ever.
Here I will comment on a striking feature of the _Rig-Veda_. The rishis
give accounts of the manner in which the hymns are composed. They say
that they worked at them as other workmen do, such as carpenters,
weavers, and potters. Sometimes they speak of the verses as coming
direct from the heart; another says his hymn moves as a skiff on the
river. Sometimes they speak of their hymns as god-given, and that the
gods themselves are seers and poets. In no part of the _Rig-Veda_ are
there traces of the theories of the verbal inspiration with the meaning
which the Greeks attached to the word as a theophany or manifestation
of divinity, nor as it was understood afterwards in all religions,
beginning with Brahmanism.
It would be useless to seek for a complete exposition of Vedic thought
in the _Rig-Veda_; all the hymns found in it are not ancient; the
collection was made by the priests, and if they retained much that
was useless for our purpose in their worship, yet we should be very
grateful to them, as in this manner much has been preserved to us of
the ancient poetry of India, and it is they who recount the pilgrimage
undertaken by the Aryans in search of the invisible lodestone which
attracted them beyond what they could see and hear. As they advanced
they rejoiced, seeming to attain their desire; but cast down under the
weight of their sadness, as at times they found themselves misled.
It is said in the Bible, that for God a thousand years is as one day,
and as I read the sacred books of India, not as a learned critic, but
as a man who is rejoiced to discover his own thoughts in the writings
of the Hindoo poets, the three or four thousand years appear to me as
one day during which these poets have not ceased to pour themselves out
in their hymns, and it would be possible to condense in one page the
sentiments expressed in the first hymns and the last Upanishads.
“Simple minded, not comprehending in my mind, I ask for the hidden
places of the gods.”[113] “My ears vanish, my eyes vanish, and the
light also which dwells in my heart; my mind with its far-off longings
leaves me; what shall I say, and what shall I think?”[114]
“There is no likeness of Him whose name is Great Glory. He is not
apprehended of the eye, nor by the other senses, nor by speech; not
by penance, or good works. We do not know, we do not understand, how
anyone can teach it. It is different from the known, it is also above
the unknown, thus we have heard from those of old who taught us this.”
“You will not find Him who has created these things; something else
stands between you and Him.”[115]
These detached sentences acquire a very special value, when it is
remembered that they are not quotations drawn from some modern works,
which imitate the writings of another epoch; these exist nowhere but
in the _Veda_, a literary work composed in the silence and shade, by
writers who themselves were ignorant of the object of their desire.
One point at last becomes clear in the mist; a thousand years probably
before the coming of Christ in Palestine, this verse was pronounced in
the north of India, “He who is above the gods alone is God.”[116]
The Grecian, Roman, and German divinities disappeared before other
beliefs; but the Hindoos who knew that their gods were nothing more
than mere names, had no dawning religion within their reach that they
could adopt; therefore they did not abandon their traditions, and they
continued to grope, as one of their own poets says, “Enveloped in mist
and with faltering voices.”
All the religious thought of the Vedic period can be found in the
Upanishads (the literal meaning of this name is, sessions or assemblies
of pupils round their master). There is not what could be called a
philosophical system in these Upanishads; they are fragments, and are
in the true sense of the word, guesses at truth; the spirit of the
work is liberal, all shades of opinion are represented in it, the most
divers, and sometimes contradictory. Conjectures abound with regard
to the creation, all start from the theory that the world we see is
not the true world, and that before it appeared there was the true
Self--the Self-existent--the One which underlies the whole world, from
which has come all that seems to exist and does actually exist. This
was the final solution of the search after the Unknown, the Invisible,
which had been foretold through a long chain of centuries; an intuition
more convincing than all the arguments which were used at a later
period to prove the existence of the Causa Causæ.
The difficulties of the Brahmans in making a complete collection of
these vague presentiments, confused thoughts, and true intuitions,
were increased a hundredfold by the fact that they had to accept every
word and every sentence of the Upanishads as supernaturally revealed.
However contradictory at first sight, all that was said in the
Upanishads had to be accepted and explained. It would seem difficult to
construct a well-arranged literary monument out of such heterogeneous
materials; but it was harmonised and welded into a system of philosophy
that for solidity and unity will bear comparison with any other system
of philosophy in the world.[117]
This gigantic work, which commenced with the Vedic hymns and ended in
the book called the Vedanta, or End, and was the end or supreme object
of the Veda, is also known under the name of Mîmâmsâ-sutras. Mîmâmsâ is
a desiderative form of the root _man_, to think, and a very appropriate
name for a philosophical work of this kind; and sûtra means literally
a string; but it is here used as the name of short and abstract
aphorisms, rendered still more enigmatical by the conciseness of the
language. There are several hundreds of these sayings or headings,
forming tables of contents, a magic chaplet of immeasurable length,
each word containing condensed thought. This work must have required a
concentration of mind which it is difficult for us to realise.
The meaning and form of these aphorisms are characteristic--here is one.
“I will declare in a line, that which has required millions of volumes.
“Brahma is true, the world is false; the soul is Brahma and nothing
else.”
Those who consider the Supreme Being as the Infinite in nature, and
the individual soul as the Infinite in man, must consider God and the
soul as one, not two, seeing there cannot be two Infinites; such is
the belief of the Hindoos; but this belief does not belong to them
exclusively, it existed amongst the Greeks, and it is encountered in
other places in our day besides India.
As works of art these sûtras are of course nothing, but for giving a
complete and accurate outline of a whole system of philosophy they are
admirable. Under these fragmentary forms can be found treatises of
grammar, etymology, exegesis, phonetics, ceremonial, and jurisprudence.
The aphorism which I have quoted is the pure quintessence of the
Vedanta.
And of Pantheism also, it may be said. This word Pantheism is one of
the most difficult to define, and I shall not attempt to explain it.
I have a horror of epithets, and I am sorry that it is not always
possible to avoid them. I do not examine philosophical systems too
minutely, lest I should be drawn into hurling at them such words as
pantheism, mysticism, positivism, materialism, naturalism, without
being quite clear when it is no longer lawful to express myself in
these terms; epithets and labels are very apt to return home to roost.
I will therefore confine myself to this remark, with regard to the
belief of the Hindoos; if each definite colour can be broken up into
a number of tints too numerous to name, may it not be the same with
certain shades and meanings in words and thoughts?
The Greeks hardly suspected the existence of the Veda; in more modern
times Europe caught glimpses of it; and now, although completely
discovered and studied, it is thoroughly known only to a few erudite
scholars, which explains the fact that this ancient creation of the
Hindoo mind has exercised so small an influence on our philosophy.
THE SACRED WRITINGS OF THE HEBREWS
Whilst the hymns of the Rig-Veda, with their simple meditations,
invocations and interrogations--sent out by chance, as it were, into
space--accurately trace the march of thought which accompanies the
search for indications of the Unknown--the Infinite; we look in vain in
the Old Testament for the first dawnings, the first impressions made on
the human soul by the existence of things divine. From the time when,
in the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve entered into communion with the
Eternal, the sacred narrative of facts, evidently historical, continues
in such a manner as to have led some to regard it as merely allegorical.
To verify in the light of scientific knowledge the titles which the
Bible can truly present to the veneration of the Christian world
appears to some more and more advisable.[118] Few persons amongst the
critical students of the Old Testament doubt that the books said to be
by Moses are a collection of ancient documents, a compilation made by
different individuals living at different periods, with long intervals
between them, each with his own point of view. The conscientious
examination to which these portions of the sacred writings have been
subjected was directed at first to isolated points, and in order to
exercise freely the critical faculties so much in evidence now, it was
necessary to modify the generally accepted view that the religion
of the Jews was cast in one piece, and perfect at the first. It was
necessary to separate the ancient documents from those of a more
recent date, but the attempt to make an exact chronological table of
the earlier history of the Hebrews was abandoned. Until the death
of Solomon only round numbers could be used, even the date of the
oldest fact in history, the exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt,
cannot definitely be fixed. Amongst the Egyptologists, whose testimony
is of the greatest value, there is great hesitation in assigning a
date, though the greater number hold to the fifteenth century B.C.
Their representations with regard to Moses are so devoid of definite
historical data as to envelop his personality in great mystery.
The idea of a revelation expressly delivered to the Jewish people
acquired a more definite form in the Middle Ages; and from the
Reformation the theory was promulgated, amongst those to whom the
idea was not repugnant, that to a small portion of humanity only--the
elect--had been consigned the task of disseminating the knowledge of
religious truth in the world. The study of the Scriptures spread to all
classes where it was not forbidden to the laity, and from that time
millions of human beings knew no other literature.
Assured that the Old Testament contained the inspired words, Jews
and Christians alike read it with feelings of reverence which
naturally excluded all idea of captious criticism. But the spirit of
biblical criticism which animated the reformers was never afterwards
extinguished, and attentive readers discovered variations in the
construction of the Pentateuch which at that time were inexplicable.
The fact that the Bible contained many narratives which could not
always be reconciled the one with the other was known long before the
period of which we are speaking. St Jerome, when feeling the want of
more accurate Greek and Latin translations than those in use in his
time, undertook to make one, and wrote thus to a friend of his, a
priest: “Re-read the books of the Old and New Testaments, and you will
find so many contradictions in the numbers referring to the years,
and to the kings of Judah and Israel, that it would require a man of
leisure rather than a student to enter thoroughly into the matter.”[119]
Side by side with this historical reconstruction which is now carried
on, there is a work of examination being pursued. It is asked by what
means did the Jewish people become so strong, so compact, whilst in
the midst of strange nations, and in spite of all vicissitudes. It is
also asked what was the earliest history of the Hebrews, and whether
it is due to the supernatural element that the tribes assembled at
the base of Mount Sinai were enabled to become an united people; and,
finally, these keen questioners desire to know the stages by which the
conception of the Deity entered the Semitic mind.
The scholars who give themselves to these enquiries, generally
eliminate the question of popular orthodoxy from the subject, since
they consider that when theoretical theology finds its way amongst
such workers it does not assist research; it confuses their point
of view; they look upon the whole race as becoming prophets, and
the prophets become apostles, and thus, out of proportion. The work
advances slowly; each critic puts forth his own special lucubrations
concerning the biblical settings which all are naturally anxious to
retain; contentions are rife on the subject of the Hebrew writers;
their lack of Christianity, and their philosophy are both made matters
for discussion, and disputes between the commentators did not cease.
Amongst those who are passive witnesses of the scientific
investigations, there are many who, without closely following this
modern exegesis, are sufficiently enlightened to recognise its aim and
its use, and they exclaim with a satisfaction mixed with astonishment,
“Whatever may be said one fact remains certain, our holy Scriptures
speak of God as God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, as He most truly
is, therefore the Old Testament, the product of the Semitic mind, is
free from the taint which is perceptible in ancient Aryan literature,
that of mythology.”
Let us seek the reason of this immunity accorded to the sacred books of
the Hebrews, let us seek it _in_ the language, not _apart_ from it, as
some do when looking for the origin of thought.
THE VARIOUS NAMES OF GOD
According to the historians who have made a study of the ancient
religions, each name given to or descriptive of a deity corresponded to
a special conception formed by the people. This has been a generally
received principle, and it serves as a clue to guide us in our study of
primitive creeds.
The Semitic languages, like the Aryan, possessed a number of names of
the Deity in common, all expressive of certain general qualities of
the Deity, but all raised by one or other of the Semitic tribes to be
the names of God, or of that idea which the first breath, the first
sight of the world, the feeling of absolute dependence on a power
beyond ourselves, had for ever impressed and implanted in the human
mind. These names were all either honorific titles, or represented
some moral qualities. El and El-Schadai--Strong, Powerful; Bel or
Baal--Lord; Adon or Adonai--my Lord, Master; Melk or Moloch--King;
Eliun--the Highest God. Such names as these, so clear and easily
understood, did not readily lend themselves to mythological contagion,
and they were adopted by Christian phraseology because they contained
nothing but what might be rightly ascribed to God.
I could have wished to pass over the name Eloha, which eventually
became Elohim, in silence, as its history is a long one, but I shall
say a few words about it, as it is one of the most primitive names,
and indicates to us what the Semites understood by divine. The name
Elohim, applied to an unknown, invisible power, one not grasped by the
senses, was the expression of all that was superior and beyond what was
seen and known on the earth. At the same time the name was used not
exclusively for the Deity, but for others whose attributes, whether
physical or moral, demanded a superlative appellative ... there were
thus several Elohims of varying natures, the Semitic termination in
_im_ turning Eloha into a plural, still always took a singular verb
after it, and Elohim or the Elohim (pl.) were both used.
If a comparison be made between the Semitic and Aryan methods of
treating the same subjects, the assertion seems amply justified that
mythology has not ventured to effect an entrance into the thoughts of
the Hebrew writers. If the subject Dawn be taken, it would remain with
the Semitic authors a natural daily occurrence, but the Aryan writers
would transform it into a personal agent taking the form of gracious,
kindly mythical personages. An example presents itself in the book of
Job.
Jehovah, the Creator of the universe, “answered Job out of the
whirlwind,” who had sought to learn the secrets of nature. Jehovah said
to him:--
“Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days began, and caused the
dayspring to know its place?
“Declare if thou knowest it all.
“Where is the way to the dwelling of light; and as for darkness,
where is the place thereof?
“Doubtless thou knowest, for thou wast then born. And the number of
thy days is great.” (Job xxxviii. 12, 18, 19, 21).
This is dawn in biblical language and in nature; but who would
recognise it under the figure of Daphne, Eos, or Ahana? All of whom
have so exercised the brains of our mythologists.
But Jehovah drives still more deeply the point of His discourse into
the conscience of Job.
“Who hath cleft a channel for the water flood, to cause it to rain on
a land where no man is?
“Hath the rain a father?
“Or who hath begotten the drops of dew?
“Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that abundance of waters
may cover thee?” (Job xxxviii. 25, 26, 28, 34).
The Aryans had also described the rain, and their thoughts on the
subject coincided with those of the Semitic race, but they were clothed
in the grotesque language generally associated with myths.
“The rain is represented in all the primitive mythologies of the Aryan
race as the fruit of the embraces of Heaven and Earth.”[120] This is
an advance towards the poetical metaphor which Æschylus at a later
date thus expressed: “The bright sky loves to fructify the earth; the
earth on her part aspires to the heavenly marriage. Rain falling from
the loving sky impregnates the earth, and she produces for mortals her
fruit.”
It is necessary to possess a somewhat profound knowledge of the
morphological characteristics of the Semitic and Aryan languages
in order to note accurately the particulars to which I have drawn
attention, and to understand the amount of influence they exercise on
religious phraseology.
THE GENIUS OF LANGUAGES
Each linguistic family has special features, just as each race has
its own physiognomy; the distinctive feature of the Semitic languages
is that the significative elements destined to form appellatives,
when once incorporated as roots in the body of a word, suffered no
modification, and the original meaning could never be ignored. Thus all
Semitic names for the dawn, the sun, the vault of heaven, the rain,
and other natural phenomena, preserving their appellative character,
could not be used for any other object; thus they could never express
an abstract idea, such as that of the Deity. The method followed with
regard to the arrangement of words in the greater number of Semitic
dictionaries, which are generally arranged according to their roots,
attest the truth of this fact. When we wish to find the meaning of a
word in Hebrew or Arabic, we first seek for its root, and then look in
the dictionary for that root and its derivatives. In similar languages
no ambiguity is possible; nothing lends itself to myths.
In the Aryan languages, on the contrary, such an arrangement would
have been extremely inconvenient; here the roots were apt to become
so completely absorbed by the derivative elements, whether prefixes
or suffixes, that often substantives ceased almost immediately to be
appellative, and were changed into mere names or proper names; this
peculiarity of the language enabled the Hindoos to form such words
as Dyaus, Aditi, Varuna, Indra, which at first designate various
aspects of nature, and afterwards were applied to different aspects of
divinities. The preceding pages have afforded us many examples, and I
hope that the comparison I have drawn between the two representations
of the same object will suffice to explain why it is that we possess a
Grecian and Hindoo mythology, but that there was no Hebrew mythology.
METAPHOR
But, on the other hand, the Old Testament is full of metaphor--these
pearls of discourse; these expressions so light and effective in
the mouths of poets as they skim over the surface of the subject in
hand, but which we make so ponderous and ungraceful with our literal
interpretations. When David speaks of God as a rock, a fortress, a
buckler, we have no difficulty in understanding his meaning, although
we might express ourselves differently, and probably speak of the
ever-present help of God. Where we allude to a temptation from within
or from without, it was more natural for the ancients to speak of a
tempter, whether in a human or animal form. What with us is a heavenly
message or a godsend was to them a winged messenger.
What is really meant is perhaps the same, and the fault is ours, not
theirs, if we persist in understanding their words in their outward and
material aspect only; and forget that before language had sanctioned
a distinction between the concrete and the abstract, the intention of
the speakers comprehended both the concrete and the abstract, both
the material and the spiritual, in a manner which has become quite
strange to us.[121] I believe it can be proved that more than half
the difficulties in the history of religion owe their origin to this
constant misinterpretation of ancient language by modern language, of
ancient thought by modern thought, particularly whenever the word has
become more sacred than the spirit.
THE LATER NAME FOR GOD AMONGST THE HEBREWS
Each divine name mentioned hitherto represented a quality or an
attribute; we now come to one of comparatively more recent date, which
contains neither attribute nor similitude; it is mentioned for the
first time in a conversation between God and Moses. God speaks from the
burning bush, and tells Moses to bring the children of Israel out of
Egypt. “And Moses said unto God: Behold, when I come unto the children
of Israel and shall say unto them: ‘The God of your fathers hath sent
me unto you’; and they shall say to me: ‘What is His name?’ what shall
I say unto them? And God said unto Moses: ‘I Am that I Am.’ And he
said: ‘Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent
me unto you’” (Exod. iii. 14, 15).
God in speaking of Himself said: “I Am that I Am,” or, “I Am”; but
man in designating God used the word Jehovah. The etymology of this
word was sought, and it was regarded by many, rightly or wrongly, as a
derivative of the verb to be. Jehovah was thus--absolute existence, or
the Being.
“And God spake unto Moses and said unto him: ‘I am Jehovah; and I
appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob as El Shaddai, but by
my name Jehovah I was not known to them’” (Exodus vi. 2, 3).
Writers are now generally agreed that Jehovah should be pronounced
Jahveh. Renan notices this striking fact. “The name of God which
has conquered the world,” he says, “is unknown to all who are not
Hebraists, and even they do not know how to pronounce it.”
By a superstition which some writers trace back to a very remote
period, the Israelites considered the name which God had used of
Himself to be too sacred to be uttered by human lips; gradually its use
was discontinued; and the name Lord was used in its place.
Although the names of God all indicated the one true God, they did not
preserve the children of Israel from polytheism, since there was hardly
a tribe that did not forget the original meaning of the titles used. If
the Jews had remembered the meaning of the word El, they could not have
worshipped Baal as distinct from El; but in the same way as the Greeks
connected the worship of Apollos and Uranus with that of Zeus, so the
Jews were ready at times to invoke the gods of their neighbours.
It is not that the earlier names of the Deity contained no second
meaning as qualificative adjective; Force, for instance, could be
symbolised, but the idea of absolute existence expressed by the words,
“I Am,” excluded all symbol and all likenesses.
The Jews did not profit by this preservative from error; on the
contrary, with the advent in Israel of this new conception of the
Deity, the partial eclipse which so often obscured their reason seems
at times to have given place to one more complete. As soon as Moses had
constituted them a nation, they appear to have looked upon God as a
national God, ignoring His relationship with other peoples.
The salient point in the Old Testament is the relation of God with His
people, an alliance or covenant between Jehovah and Israel of which
the rainbow became the first type. Threatenings and promises enforced
the keeping of the moral law, the good and evil things of this life;
if Israel obeyed the Lord and kept His commandments, the fields would
yield their crops, the trees their fruits, and peace would reign in the
land; if they were disobedient, the heaven would become brass, and
famine and pestilence would decimate the people, and the rest would be
led captive by foreign kings.
Although no definite assertion concerning the immortality of the soul
may be found in the Old Testament, a belief in personal immortality is
taken for granted in several passages, and mention is frequently made
of an abode in which the spirits remain after their separation from the
body, that is Sheol, in which joy and suffering are equally unknown.
The picture drawn by David in some of the Psalms, of the abode of the
departed is sad and desolate. Though the word is not meant for an
individual grave, this idea may have been borrowed from it; the meaning
is that of a vast space in the interior of the earth; the dead lie down
and are together and at rest, but separated not only from man but also
from God.
The Hebrews naturally mourned and compassionated their dead most
sincerely. “Alas my father, alas my mother, my poor children.” But why
should we Aryans, whose language is not allied philologically with
the Semitic, copy their phrases? Why should we Christians, who are
not linked to them by dogma, allow ourselves to use the same hopeless
expressions, instead of words instinct with life and hope?
ON THE PROPHETS (NĀBHĪ)
The phenomenon of prophecy, one of the earlier developments of the
human mind, has been found amongst all peoples, at one time or other
of their history. Certain spontaneous psychical movements dominated
men. The important rôle played by the oracles in the history of Greece,
is well known; the Greeks classed both the priests who interpreted
the auguries, and those persons who considered themselves inspired by
the gods and claimed a knowledge of hidden things, under the name
of prophets, indifferently. In the third century B.C. the Jews of
Alexandria, when writing the Septuagint, translated the Hebrew word
_Nābhī_ by prophet. As amongst Hebraists the word Nābhī does not
necessarily imply the power of foretelling the future, whilst the word
prophet conveys that meaning, it might have been well to employ both
terms.
The original meaning of the word Nābhī seems to have been “agitated
outbursts.” These men seem to have passed through a phase of nervous
exaltation before beginning their exhortations; when once they had
started their outpourings they no longer had control over their
spirit’s impulse; and were often physically prostrated, showing signs
of an overpowering compelling physical force, divinely irresistible.
These Nābhīs, who appeared on the occasion of any crisis, when the
welfare of the public was at stake, were at the head of popular
movements, giving them a right direction; they were the first to rise
against the oppression of the ruling powers, and thousands of them
perished in misery. Isaiah likens them to sentinels, or watchmen always
on the alert, watching with eyes fixed on the horizon, charged with
the duty of sounding the alarm on the approach of danger. “One calleth
unto me out of Seir; Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the
night?” This same Isaiah compares the negligent prophets to “dumb dogs,
that cannot bark, lying down, loving to slumber.”
Their preaching must have been very powerful; Luther, in speaking of
the prophecies of Isaiah, says, “Every word is a furnace.”
Until now Jehovah had by the mouth of the Nābhīs addressed the people
as a nation; the individual was not singled out. But imperceptibly a
change took place; new indications presented themselves. Instead of the
order, “Slay, slay,” milder accents were heard; it was as though heart
spoke to heart: “Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself
before the high God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings; with
calves of a year old? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O
man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do
justly, and to love mercy” (Micah vi.).
The individual becomes more evident; like the rishis, Elijah sought the
Lord; and he came to Mount Horeb: “And a great and strong wind rent the
mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord
was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was
not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord
was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice,” I imagine
that Elijah said to himself: “That still small voice is for _me_.”
There were in certain places assemblies of Nābhīs, and schools in
which the young prophets were trained in rhetoric and in composing
discourses; for though some improvised, others--amongst them probably
Isaiah--previously wrote their messages. All used a rhythmical language
akin to poetry; the teaching of music no doubt formed a part of their
education, since we know that the sound of music helped to produce the
ecstasy which resulted in prophesy.[122] The gift seems to have been to
some extent contagious. Prophets were found in bands, prophesying, and
followed by musicians.
During the eight centuries preceding our era, a succession of terrible
calamities took place. The Nābhīs upheld the courage of the people
by their immovable conviction that the Lord would send a leader, and
deliverer of the people from their enemies. Through the whole of this
time Israel, though often despairing and sometimes in revolt, resisted
doubt; an unknown phenomenon amongst the heathens of antiquity. That
which strikes us as so inexplicable is that Judaism showed itself
capable of such prodigies of devotion and self-sacrifice, though so
little sustained by the bright glimpses of the future life.
The Elohim with whom the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were
permitted to hold intercourse, appeared more accessible to the
Israelites than the mighty Jehovah of whom they were forbidden to make
an image. The more we contemplate the infinite grandeur of the majesty
of God, of whom there is no similitude, whose name is “I Am,” to whom,
according to Fenelon, even the word spirit is inapplicable, and of
whom, according to Descartes and Bossuet, nothing may be said but this,
“The Being,” the more it seems possible to fear, to reverence Him; but
to love in those days seemed difficult--love was rarely seen.
I desired to know what the best and most profound thinkers could say on
the ties uniting them with their Creator, those who had experienced the
action of the Divine love in themselves. At the same time I determined
to emphasise as little as possible the various forms these thoughts
might wear, whether in philosophical systems or in religions which had
been founded or organised in the visible Church.
Amongst the thinkers who have occupied themselves with these matters,
I will mention one who, about two hundred years ago, was looked upon
as a dangerous heretic. Since that time Baruch Spinoza has been
anathematised as an atheist, and venerated as a saint; afterwards he
was declared by certain philosophers to be no atheist, but was counted
as a Pantheist. In our day he is known to be less of a Pantheist than
was thought.
Shrinking from such epithets, which disturb my judgment, I will not
enter into the question as to which approaches more nearly to the
truth.
I spoke once after this manner to some friends of mine, in the presence
of one whom I had not seen before.
“You are too diffident,” he said to me, “I will give you a safeguard
against obscurity of judgment. Read any system of philosophy you like,
you will doubtless discover that error predominates in it; put it aside
for the time being and read another, make the round of several systems.
With each your first impression will probably be renewed. After that go
over each in your mind, not in detail, but taking each in its entirety.
You will find that you can point out a certain truth, _one_ truth which
will have occurred in all. Let this gradually expand in your mind
without unduly forcing it; you will have forgotten the epithets used,
and will find one dominant note which will enlighten your judgment.”
The manner in which Spinoza interpreted the sacred writings of his race
has perhaps not attracted sufficient attention. His most important work
from this point of view has the somewhat repellant title of _Tractatus
theologico-politicus_. It is diffuse and heavy, and its translators
have not succeeded in rendering it more agreeable. It is very difficult
to grasp in detail, as omissions and reservations abound.
THE VIEWS OF SPINOZA
When reading Spinoza it is necessary to bear in mind--which is not
easy--that he is neither a heathen philosopher nor a Father of the
Church nor a modern critic, but a learned Jew, living in the middle
of the seventeenth century. I will try to reproduce his opinions in
his own words, and endeavour to keep them uncontaminated, as far as
possible, with the views of the end of the nineteenth century.
Spinoza asserts plainly that he receives the Bible as an inspired book;
in this he perhaps differs from some of our more recent exegetes who
examine the Bible as any other literary work of history and morality.
Christians grow up in the truth that the Bible contains the Word of
God, and they claim that their teaching has its basis in the Old
Testament. But others have argued thus: What do these know of the
history of the Hebrews? They do not understand the language of their
writings, and they cannot say what caused those sublime teachers of the
people, the prophets, to speak on such and such an occasion, in such
and such a manner. Being ignorant on all these points it is possible
that interpretations of the Old Testament may have led us into error.
The existence of what are now called the laws of nature being
unknown in those far-off days, the Hebrews were unable to recognise
secondary or mediate causes; the book of Job is an example of this.
God intervenes personally on each occasion. Our attention is directed
solely to two points: man who suffers, that is, who consents or is in
revolt, and God who wills or wills not.
As everything without exception is placed in direct relationship with
God in the Old Testament, all is said to emanate from God; the cedars
of Lebanon are the cedars of God;[123] men of great stature, the
giants, are called in Genesis sons of God; the knowledge of nature and
of natural things which Solomon possessed is called the wisdom of God;
the discretion of a judge and the gains of a merchant are the gifts
of God; Assyria is the scourge of God, and the lightning His arrows.
And Spinoza asks: why are the children of Israel called God’s chosen
people? Because the Lord, having delivered them out of Pharaoh’s hands,
led them into the land of Canaan, where they lived under the laws
revealed to Moses, to which the surrounding nations were not subject.
“I will be your God, and ye shall be My people,” Jehovah had said by
the mouth of Moses. This was the covenant concluded on Mount Sinai
between the Lord God and the Jewish nation. These laws, which were at
the same time civil and religious, were included under the general
term, the Law of the Lord, and the Book containing these precepts was
called the Word of God.
According to an ancient tradition, God revealed to Noah seven precepts
which corresponded to commandments given generally to all mankind
without distinction of race; there was thus perhaps a revelation given
at the beginning of time, even before the first and greatest of the
prophets, Moses; and this revelation the patriarchs knew. The light
which lightens every man born into the world impressed these first
precepts on the human heart; to the Jewish race it seemed perhaps
improbable that a divine law not promulgated by a human mouth nor
delivered in the name of the God of Israel, could be imposed on man;
as Moses was permitted to hear God’s voice amongst the lightnings and
thunders, the Israelites considered themselves on a higher level than
the rest of humanity, and held in less esteem eternal verities which
were the possession of all mankind. Moses told them that after his
death God would raise up a prophet amongst them on condition that they
should keep His Covenant and His Commandments to do them, and he warned
them of the consequences of breaking these: “I testify against you this
day that ye shall surely perish.”
We find the second revelation in the books ascribed to Moses; written
in our memory as distinctly as in the Bible; it has so entirely
eclipsed the first that the greater number of us do not remember ever
to have heard of the seven precepts of Noah.
After the death of Moses, prophets succeeded each other in Israel;
all from the first to the last acknowledged that they received the
revelation either by symbols or illustrations, or by the word; their
eyes saw certain objects and their ears heard the explanation of what
they saw. Ezekiel, like Moses, saw God under the appearance of a
flaming fire; Daniel saw Him as the “Ancient of Days, whose garment was
white as snow”; the disciples of Christ saw the Spirit of God under
the form of a dove; the Apostles as tongues of fire; and Saul, at the
moment of his conversion, recognised it in a bright light, and these
visions were always accompanied by words.
The prophets rise above the level of other men by the intensity of
their faith, and by their vivid imagination; but imagination is mobile,
and their ecstatic conditions were not permanent; how could they feel
assured of being in direct communication with the Lord Himself? They
were so lacking in assurance that they often required some palpable
sign, thus did Abraham, Moses, Gideon and many others. Each time the
sign was granted to them; a fire descending from heaven to consume
the offering; a rod changed into a serpent; a healthy hand instantly
covered with leprosy; a fleece of wool remaining dry on ground that was
wet with dew, and other miraculous signs.
According to Spinoza the gift of prophecy is on a lower level than that
of ordinary intellectual knowledge which requires no outward sign of
confirmation.
The nature of the revelation depended also upon the temperament of each
prophet, on his education and his own personal opinions; the Magi who
studied astronomy and astrology, seeing a star in the east, at once
went in search of the expected child. But on one point all were agreed,
they all said with Moses: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might, and thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” And they said with Isaiah: “Wash
you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings, cease to do
evil, learn to do well, relieve the oppressed.”
OBEDIENCE
A striking feature of Spinoza’s philosophical system was the basis of
obedience upon which the whole edifice of a religious life rested; now
obedience presupposes the existence of a law.
As the Israelites seemed incapable of appreciating the intrinsic
excellence of the precepts delivered to them, Moses enforced their
fulfilment, and spoke of God to them as a just and righteous law-giver
who would reward those who kept the commandments and punish those
who transgressed them. And when this law was given out, amongst
thunders and lightnings, the children of Israel acknowledged it with
acclaim--though not always fulfilling it--because they were the only
people possessing it.
At last the time came when it was possible to say: “The appointed hour
has come.” The Jewish nation, for whose sake the Mosaic law had been
revealed, was on the point of crumbling to pieces, when Christ appeared
proclaiming the universal and divine law. Christ was no prophet in
the ordinary acceptation of the word, since neither word nor vision
revealed God’s Will to Him, the truth was in Him in all its plenitude,
His mind was identical with that of the Father, and Eternal Wisdom took
the form of humanity.
Jewish as well as Christian theologians have equally contributed at
times to obscure the sense of the Holy Scriptures; they have taught
that man’s reason is unsound and can with difficulty penetrate the
mysteries of religion; and that the only way, therefore, was to accept
the Bible as infallible in all its details. The faithful extended this
doctrine of infallibility to every verbal peculiarity and failed to
distinguish the eternal principles, always clearly and simply expressed
by the prophets, from those vivid illustrations which enabled them
to speak, without hindrance, in terms most adapted for arousing
the wonder and belief of the ordinary hearer, of matters _per se_
inexpressible, as for instance of the Divine Nature. Spinoza especially
blames the theologians for having introduced in their commentaries
notions borrowed from Grecian philosophers, which they adapted to the
Old and New Testament, clothing them in biblical language; this mixture
of divine inspiration and subtle argument more and more disturbed pious
souls who went to their Bibles for edification only.
To those capable of understanding them Christ revealed the secrets
of the Kingdom of God; they were the higher truths of eternal life,
the counsels of perfection; to the multitude He spoke in parables and
gave them commandments which were to be obeyed that they might enter
the kingdom of heaven. The Apostles spread abroad the teachings of
Christ; they preached the love of God with that of our neighbour,
not as sufficing in itself, but as a commandment spoken in the name
of the Life and Passion of our Saviour. And then each one added to
these great truths minor teachings, varying the subjects according as
they addressed Jews or Gentiles; many different teachings were thus
promulgated, giving rise in the early Church to misunderstandings,
gradually leading to disputes and schisms; and after nineteen centuries
of study of the subject we still have not arrived at perfect mutual
understanding. Spinoza quotes in this connection a Dutch proverb: “Geen
ketter; sonder letter.” Without a text, no heresy.
When shall we learn that the revelation of God is not confined to a
certain number of books, to a certain number of words? It must of
necessity be inscribed elsewhere also, since words are patient of
more than one interpretation, books go astray and are lost, paper
becomes mildewed and is torn, stones are smashed even in the hands of a
prophet.
Spinoza tells us that he read and re-read the Holy Scriptures with
the greatest care before commenting on them, and he undertakes to
demonstrate to the Christian governments the necessity of reforming the
constitutions of the established churches by replacing a phantom Bible
by the Bible understood in spirit and in truth.
The scientific portion of the task would not be complicated, since the
commandments of God are few in number, in fact they may be reduced
to one. “He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He
is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him”; and as a proof that
they seek Him they must practise justice and charity; these are the
foundations of the faith, and they are so clear and so simple, that
no commentary thereon is needed, nor are they affected by any of the
verbal differences or inaccuracies.
The ecclesiastical authorities thus act sometimes contrary to the
divine will when they declare those who are leading a good and virtuous
life to be the enemies of God, simply because their opinions are not
in exact conformity with the theological definitions put forth by the
churches. The civil power ought to be able to judge of the belief of
its citizens by the fruits they produce, if their works are good, it
may be thought that in the eyes of God their belief is also correct,
but personal theological opinions, though in conformity with the
decrees permitted by the Church, would not prevail in God’s sight over
wrong doing. When governments act in accordance with these views, all
is well--individuals, the nation, and the governments.
In order to believe that God’s Word may be found elsewhere, it
is necessary to believe that He exists. His existence cannot be
known;[124] we can, however, obtain some knowledge of it by certain
means of which we can know the reality; they are so real that we
cannot imagine any force that can invalidate them; these means or
notions are the fundamental axioms inherent in the human mind, and
are the bases of all knowledge; it is to these that we owe the power
of being able to distinguish good from evil, and this faculty we may
regard as the forerunner of the divine revelation. If we once admit
the possibility of these first principles--these axioms--becoming
obliterated, we should then admit a doubt of their intrinsic truth,
which would attack and weaken their immediate conclusion, which is
the existence of God; from that time we should possess no element of
certainty. This is why it has been said that attacks against reason are
more dangerous than attacks against the faith, because they destroy
with one blow the sacred edifice and the foundation which bears it.
THE LAW
In a system where law is everything, how does Spinoza understand the
action of Providence?
Men are accustomed to call that knowledge divine which surpasses the
human understanding, and that event miraculous when the cause is
unknown to them; and nothing better demonstrates to them the existence
of God, His power and His providence, than those things which appear to
them to change the order of nature. We sometimes show our ignorance by
attributing things of which we are ignorant to a special interposition
of providence. Those who think thus are not in a position to explain
what they mean by the order of nature.
This manner of viewing things might well date from the time of the
early Hebrews, who wished to prove to those nations who were not
Semitic, and who worshipped visible objects, such as the heavenly
bodies, that these were subordinate deities, subject to the will of the
invisible God, whose miracles on their behalf they related, since they
were convinced that the whole of nature contributed to the well-being
of the Hebrew people exclusively.
With God the understanding and the will are the same; to know and
to will is a single act; to know an object as it is in itself, and
to realise it effectively, is a necessity inherent in the Divine
perfection; since all truths come inevitably from the Divine intellect,
the universal laws of nature are the eternal decrees of God.
If any event takes place in nature not in accordance with these
universal laws, then the mind of God has not conceived it; in other
words, he who affirms that in a certain case God has acted contrarily
to the laws of nature, affirms also that God has acted contrarily to
His own Divine nature, which would prove the speaker’s perversity. No
event happens that is not by the will and eternal decrees of God, each
event conforms to laws eternally necessary and absolutely true. To
believe that this could be otherwise would be to admit that God made an
imperfect nature, and established laws so incomplete that they required
to be retouched each time that they failed to realise the divine plan,
a strange conception, and for which there is no necessity. Those who
seek and find their supreme happiness in the love of God, and in doing
the greatest good, have no wish that nature should obey them; they
desire to submit to nature, knowing indubitably, that God governs all
things in accordance with general laws which are in agreement with
universal life.
From this statement it will be seen that it is no longer a question of
resignation--of passive submission; man responds in every part of his
being to the supreme law which, as is the case with all men, leads them
blindly, and, for the most part, unconsciously towards happiness; and
causes, in a great nature, such as Spinoza’s, an unceasing effort to
maintain and to raise itself; the passage from excellence to perfection
is always accompanied by a feeling of joy, and sadness marks each
backward step towards imperfection. The being--Spinoza’s monad--thus
typifies perfection, and good, and evil consists in the increase or
diminution of the being. The natural love of man for life has been
transformed by Spinoza into law; his maxim is well known: Every being
tends to preserve its existence.
THE LAW IN THE GOSPEL
The Old and New Testaments are an exposition of a long discipline of
obedience, this makes their power, and those who study them without
preconceived ideas discover this.
Spinoza distinguishes between the spiritual needs of the majority of
men and the minority, and between the religions which suit the one and
the other. But all men, without exception, must acquire the religion
demanded by all, that is practical religion, which consists in keeping
those commandments given us in the sacred books. This obedience serves
to weaken passions; in the same proportion as man attains this end, so
a light, ever increasing in purity, illumines his intellect, and so
much the more does he comprehend that true happiness is the result of
virtue. Few men go beyond this, or--without any other guide than their
reason--experience that intellectual love of God, inseparable from the
true knowledge of God and man; this love, when entirely disinterested,
yields a joy which is not the reward of virtue, since it is one with
virtue itself.
The divine law was in the world, as St John said, before the coming
of Moses or of Christ, but the world as a whole was ignorant of it;
reason leads us to it, and reason tells us that it leads to the highest
beatitude, and that those who follow it will not need to seek any other.
But there is one thing of which reason cannot tell us; this--that the
moral effect of this universal law, which is obeyed, not because it is
true, necessary and perfect, but simply because Moses commanded the
observance of it, by reason of the covenant made by God, and because
Christ commands it in His own name, is the power of leading to this
beatitude, which those obtain who strive after the spirit of Christ,
perceiving in this law of God, absolute truth. This reason alone could
not have taught us, it is not written in the human heart, this we learn
in the Bible.
That obedience only to a truth should inevitably produce certain
results can hardly be asserted with mathematical certainty, since
mathematical results are the effects only of those things which can be
deduced from the elements contained in them; but a moral certainty we
can feel, and this was the privilege and portion of the prophets; and
it was possible, as it was not contrary to reason.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Spinoza belonged to a family of Portuguese Jews settled in Amsterdam.
He led an exemplary life; he was poor and apparently content to be so,
since he refused help from his friends, which he might have accepted
with a clear conscience; what he obtained by polishing spectacle lenses
seems to have satisfied him. He was advised to dedicate one of his
books to Louis XIV., a munificent patron of literary men, but he did
not do so.
_Ethics_--the work to which he owes his fame--in accordance with his
express wish, only appeared after his death, and without the name of
the author, because, he said, the truth should go forth under no man’s
name; he feared also to attach his to a new school of philosophy.
The Rabbis of Amsterdam had long sought to bring Spinoza into a more
orthodox path than the one he trod; his idea that the institution of
prophets had been a source of weakness rather than of strength to the
Hebrew people, threatened to develop into a formal heresy.
The appearance in 1656 of Spinoza’s _Tractatus theologico-politicus_,
raised a storm of indignation; it was the only work of importance which
he published during his lifetime; it was followed by a sentence of
excommunication, read at the gate of the synagogue, and was in these
terms:--
“In the name of the Angels and by a decree of the Saints, we
anathematise and exorcise Baruch Spinoza, in the presence of the Sacred
Books and the six hundred and thirty precepts they contain. Cursed be
he by day and night; may the fury of the Lord consume this man, and
may all the maledictions written in the Book of the Law light on him;
may the Lord destroy him from amongst the tribes of Israel; let no
man go near him, nor speak to him, nor write to him, nor show him any
compassion.”
How eloquent men can be when they are angry! Spinoza left his native
town on that day; he took refuge at the Hague, where he died in 1677,
at forty-four years of age.
In reading the pages in which eminent critics have examined Spinoza’s
system, one seems to see not the man whose writings are known, but two
different men, or rather perhaps several different men; I do not think
even the philosopher would have recognised himself in these résumés.
As has been noticed, Spinoza is neither a true Jew nor, apparently,
a Christian, since the negation of final causes is as foreign to the
spirit of the Old Testament, as his joyous stoicism is to that of the
New; some have remembered the words of Novalis: “Spinoza is inebriated
with God.” They added that with him the crown of the intellectual love
of God was the transport of a soul carried out of itself, but that
this transport must have differed from the ecstasies in which so many
of the saints of the Christian Church found the supreme delight of
the religious life. But amongst Christians what is their conception
of the highest beatitude? I see God in His heaven, but my neighbour,
where is he? On the one side are the happy, on the other the faulty;
we recognise ourselves in each, we see ourselves, we have fellowship
with all; painters have so often represented this scene on theological
lines, that it is familiar to us; is this really the beatitude we
picture to ourselves?
The mental and moral condition of this philosopher lends itself little
to analysis; he who has the most carefully studied his views, would be
the most diffident in expounding them, having found so many obscure
points in them. In any case it is well to remember this circumstance,
Spinoza has now been dead more than two hundred years, and the
discovery that before speaking it is advisable to know something of the
meaning of the words used, dates from yesterday only. Spinoza in his
_Tractatus theologico-politicus_, uses constantly the words prophecy,
inspiration, revelation, faith, and theology, and the reader who has
sacrificed his rest for several nights that he may know what he means
by these five words, ends by acknowledging that his devotion has been
in vain. Happily, no one knows better than our philosopher the meaning
of the word obedience; this helps the reader; he only regrets that the
critics have laid little stress on this crucial point.
Since no man’s writings are capable of being clearly understood if he
is isolated from those who have written on similar lines--beginning
from Novalis (that poetic and charming writer whose true name was
Hardenberg), points of comparison have been established between the
Dutch philosopher (Spinoza), the ecstatic Saint Theresa and the
enthusiastic Saint Francis d’Assisi. Let us now turn to the more sober
genius of Aristotle and see if he will succeed in throwing daylight on
the obscure thought of Spinoza.
“Infinity attracts,” this word of Aristotle would have sufficed, but
the prince of critics gives a further explanation. “Man is face to face
with a truth, and the light lighteth every one that cometh into the
world; all who see see the same things, and all that man has seen is
true.... God works in us not as a workman who tires himself, but as an
all-powerful virtue which acts; He moves as an object of love.”[125]
This opinion of Aristotle is shared by Plato, St Thomas Aquinas and St
Augustine. A complete unanimity.
When I am sometimes struck by certain truths, dressed in all the
brilliance which pure virtues possess, but feeling unable to form
a rational whole of these virtues when they are not arranged in an
orderly manner, I should often have yielded to discouragement, if I
had not read in Bossuet’s _Traité du libre arbitre_ these words: “When
we begin to reason, we must first consider this as indubitable, that
we may know _with complete certainty_ many things of which we do not
understand their corollaries, nor all their results. The first rule of
our logic is that we must not abandon truths which we have once known,
whatever difficulties may present themselves when we are trying to
deal with them; but that we must hold both ends of the chain firmly,
although we may not be able to see the middle by which the two ends are
linked.”
THE IDEAS OF PLATO
A philosopher said to me: “Since we can know nothing of the beyond,
let us make a virtue of necessity, and learn exactly what there is on
our side of the veil.” The advice is excellent. Astronomy teaches us
that perfect order reigns in the sphere studied by that science. The
world may be the result of certain chemical combinations which have
met by chance; but if chance has introduced order in these chemical
combinations, it might as easily derange them and replace them by
disorder; yet the astronomers have not succeeded in discovering the
least indication of disorder in their domain; that we know positively.
It is generally admitted that the world has had a beginning; is it
reason or the absence of reason that we should expect to find at the
origin of the world? Does it proceed so regularly in obedience to laws?
Sages have said, “Laws govern matter, forces, movements, all things
that _are_, but might not have been, just as the world is or exists,
but might not have been.”
Since Darwin wrote, much discussion has taken place with regard to
the origin of species, no one has thought of asking whether the Greek
philosophers had anything to say on the subject. If, for instance,
it had been discovered that the law of certain sidereal phenomena
compelled a circular or elliptical movement, or any other geometrical
form, then this law, in itself, would be a geometrical idea; that
could exist, although the phenomenon in which it was realised, might
disappear with the world itself.
According to Kepler, geometry has given forms for all creation, and
Kepler has also said that God governs all things in conformity with
Himself; in that case geometry would be anterior to the world and
co-eternal with God, and if these geometrical forms which are perfect
have been thought out by a perfect intelligence, is it not the same
with all the component parts of the vegetable and animal kingdoms?
Would a horse, or whatever the ancestor of a horse may be, have been
produced spontaneously by nature? Must there not have been a type of
some kind, which was realised in all horses, multiplying and varying
for every new species? And in the same manner also for all trees and
plants. The first types of these things existed before man, that other
part of nature, and before all that man calls the good, the beautiful.
Were not all these things thought and willed by a mind capable of
thinking and willing?
Thus Plato reasons.
It is received in theology as in philosophy that all things have their
ideal in God; matter itself has its conception and _raison d’être_ in
God; St Thomas Aquinas was able to say with no trace of pantheism, “God
is eminently all things.”
EPISODIAL
Two English travellers, Gatchet and Hall, finding themselves once
amongst the Klamaths, a tribe of Red Indians, asked them concerning
their beliefs; these Indians worshipped a supreme being who made the
world with its plants, animals and men, whom they called “The most
Ancient,” “The Ancient One on high.” The travellers then asked how He
had created the world, whether by means of tools or instruments; they
replied, “By thinking and willing.” This wonderful answer contains the
germ of the thought which, on Greek soil, became the _Logos_, the act
of thinking and speaking, the unique act which in the Creator means
willing and producing. This answer is an echo, and by no means a feeble
one, of the celebrated saying: “God is the Living One who is, in whom
is the Idea of Good” (Timaeus). Plato affirms that the world and all
that it contains has been made in the eternal pattern of the Idea of
Good, and this Idea of Good is not separable from the Creator.
Again perfect unanimity, extending this time to the Red Indians.
It might be thought that an electric current ran round the world;
certain psychical phenomena cannot otherwise be explained.
AN EXCURSION INTO A COUNTRY LITTLE KNOWN
If there are proofs of the existence of God, they should be within
reach of all the world, both the learned and the ignorant, since God is
no more the God of a certain class of person than He is of a certain
nation.
In some modern books on philosophy we see this phrase, “The influence
of the Infinite on souls,” though we may not pay much attention to it,
we perhaps have the feeling that the infinite does not exercise much
influence on us; but it does not allude to ourselves, it refers to our
primitive ancestors, who sought to discover what there could be behind
all they saw and heard; common sense, with its uncertain but powerful
instincts directed primitive man towards an invisible magnet. This is
not our common sense, that is, not as we should define it, self-evident
principles, spontaneous judgments, which direct our acts; but common
sense as Aristotle would understand the word; the faculty of feeling
and perceiving, where all our sensations are united, because all our
external senses converge thither; this common sense is so truly a
sense, that it has its own central organ, which is what we call heart.
But this influence of the invisible--another name for the infinite--had
at first no connection with religion; it merely deposited a germ in
the soul, without which no religious tendency could make itself felt;
and under the impulse of this power--this divine sense which Aristotle
calls the attraction of the desirable and the intelligible--the
passing from the finite to the infinite--the most natural and the most
necessary act of the moral life--is accomplished by a simple flight or
upward movement of the human spirit.
Plato explains this mental phenomenon: “There is in the depth of our
soul a point which is the root of the soul and which forms a connecting
link between God and the soul; the soul apprehends because God has
touched it.”
Perceiving in itself and all around it traces of goodness, beauty,
justice, love, and joy; feeling in itself and around it, life and its
forces; it is only necessary for the soul to send its ideas beyond the
limits of its own confined being, with its imperfect capabilities and
joys, and it will approach God.
Kepler, when discovering the laws governing the planetary system, found
geometry in the sky; since then, the learned have found mathematics in
all the branches of physics. They have seen numbers and geometrical
figures in light and colour, in sound and in music under its sensible
form. Leibnitz, one of the world’s greatest mathematicians, who
discovered the infinitesimal calculus, saw that in this way one could
pass from finite grandeur to mathematical laws and forms such as belong
eternally to God--independent of all dimensions.
Between the spontaneous flight of the soul with spreading wings, going
from finite facts to infinite, and the highest mathematics, which have
existed for about two hundred years only, the analogy is complete;
the learned demonstrations of the existence of God given by all true
philosophers are results which correspond with those obtained by the
ordinary methods used by all men. Thus the identity of the fundamental
process of a reasonable life with that of the geometrical process,
which both demonstrate the existence of God, is established. The
metaphysical certainty of the first process equals the geometrical
certainty of the second. For this reason Leibnitz could say, “There are
geometry, metaphysics, harmony, and morality everywhere.”
I have well said that the human Ego used science and philosophy, before
the appearance of philosophers, to attest that the true path leading
to God is that natural movement of the soul described by the Hindoo
poets--during a time of great ignorance--in the Vedic hymns. This
movement is the universal act of prayer.
For the philosopher, the proof of the existence of God may appear
to rest on a syllogism; for the historian it rests on the complete
evolution of the human mind.
Is it necessary still to ask how the idea of a super-sensible principle
penetrated into the human mind, and how it is diffused over the world?
The reply to this question is in the Veda, where the hymns show
methodically, under an apparent confusion, what we have been able
to glean here and there from the mouth of sages of all times. This
idea revealed itself to man at first in external nature; then man
discovered it in his own personal and phenomenal self, the abridgment
of humanity in its entirety with its living and its dead. “At last
the consciousness of self arose from out the clouds of psychological
mythology, and became the consciousness of the Infinite or the Divine
within us. The individual self found itself again in the Divine Self.
Socrates knew it, but he called it _Daimonion_, the indwelling God.
The early Christian philosophers called it the _Holy Ghost_, a name
which received many interpretations and misinterpretations in different
schools of theology, but which ought to become again what it was meant
for in the beginning, the spirit which unites all that is holy within
man, with the Holy of Holies, or the Infinite.”[126] This may be called
natural religion, since it was revealed by nature, and the truth of
this revelation is demonstrated mathematically.
All that I have just said has been epitomised in a few lines by a
thinker of our century, Bordas-Desmoulins: “Without mathematics it
would be impossible to penetrate to the depths of philosophy; without
philosophy it would be impossible to arrive at the foundations of
mathematics; without the two we could penetrate nothing.”
Aristotle quotes these words of Anaxagoras, who lived one hundred
and fifty years before him: “The man who recognised in nature an
intelligence which is the cause of the arrangement and order of the
universe has alone kept his reason in the midst of the follies of his
predecessors.”
There has been no break in the continuity of the first impression
experienced by man at the sight of lightning, and God whom each nation
named after its own way, and Him whom the Athenians worshipped without
knowing, whom the Apostle declared to them.
I will here repeat the words of Aristotle, which must never be effaced
from our memories: “Man is face to face with the light that lighteth
every one that cometh into the world.” It was this that caused the same
philosopher to use those other surprising words, so difficult to grasp
when reading them for the first time in a book: “All who see see the
same things, and all that a man has seen is true.”
ANTHROPOMORPHISM
Man at the beginning, knowing of two kinds of agents only, both
tangible, themselves and the beasts, conceived the idea that the
phenomena of nature were set in motion by invisible agents of some
kind, their imagination followed its natural bent in picturing these
agents under one or the other of the two aspects familiar to them,
and sometimes under the two united; since these unknown powers--for
instance amongst the Egyptians--often assumed the shape of creatures
half man and half fish, or bird, or quadruped. But with the progress
of civilisation these representations of divinities were modified.
Man having obtained glimpses of the difference between the phenomenal
and the non-phenomenal, was led to suspect the existence of an author
for the one and the other; and this author or agent was perceived
by him anthropomorphically, that is to say, arrayed with a human
personality, but endowed with all the qualities of goodness and
beauty which distinguish the highest and noblest of men. We know that
anthropomorphism in the abstract is wrong, yet without it man could
never have found the way of approach to this unknown author of all
created things, and the desire to know him nearer was irresistible.
In one sense we are less advanced than our primitive ancestors.
Attracted on the one hand by the occult properties of the magnet, and
impelled by sensation, they advanced in all simplicity. At a later date
they desired to have those things explained to them which they did not
understand; men undertook this duty, greater distances grew up between
them, and the sacred code was the result.
THE SACRED CODES AND THE CODES OF LAWS
History teaches us that each sacred Code grew gradually, and in the
same way as the Codes of Laws. A religion peculiar to each people
existed, though vague and indefinite, before the written Code. If there
had not been a growth of the law by means of decrees, pronounced at
various times by the heads of the people, accumulating slowly, and
accepted in the same degree by the people in general, there would have
been no definite Codes of Laws, such as those of Solon and Draco and
others. If there had not been a religious growth formulated in oracles
and prayers, and in commandments promulgated at different times by the
prophets, accumulating slowly, and accepted in the same degree by the
people in general, there would have been no sacred writings, such as
those of Moses, Confucius, Buddha, and others.
It sometimes happens that Codes of Laws become transformed into
petrified fetishes, to which submission is blindly yielded, whilst
their origin is forgotten, and the sense of what is just or unjust
is lost in the question of what is written and thus legal; and some
sacred books are treated as fetishes, to which an implicit submission
is exacted, whilst their origin is forgotten and the sense of what is
true and divine is absorbed in the sole thought of what is written and
therefore orthodox.
The sense of responsibility of the citizen with regard to the law of
his country is in danger of becoming paralysed when that law is applied
with such mechanical exactitude as to confuse the ideas of _law_ and
_equity_;[127] and the responsibility of the believer with regard to
the religion of his country may run risks of becoming paralysed when
that religion is framed in accordance with a ceremonial exactitude
rather than with a human feeling for what is true or false. The mere
possession of the sacred Scriptures may have become a substitute
for the love of God; the effective influence of the Infinite became
changed into a mere habit which drove away the spontaneous action of
the soul. We distinguish with difficulty organised religions from
religions as practised by each one, which was our primitive religion.
There are rites that we love; rites which at first reflected God have
imperceptibly taken the place of God who vivified our religious life.
We possess dogmas, but lose perhaps our hold of the personal assurance
of the existence of a Being whom Plato named “the Being apart,” or “the
self-existent Being.” The results of this are serious, since dogmata,
of themselves, do not always furnish sufficing arguments against
atheism.
It may be asked for how many people is this Supreme Being anything more
than a name encountered in a book? To a small number of individuals
He was an intense reality at intervals during the course of ages, to
saints of the Christian Church and some of the heathen philosophers.
He may still be a reality for certain individualities which modern
philosophies have not classified, as amongst pantheists or atheists,
or minds full of inconsequent enthusiasm. This Being is also a reality
for the erudite mind, or the contemplative who make Him an object of
study. But the greater number of men, even the civilised, the baptised,
are content to pass by; they are satisfied with the reflection only.
Some might say that it is by means of our reason rather than of
our heart that we are enabled to trace in God “the Being apart” or
“self-existent Being,” but Seneca says: “Reason is not only composed of
evidence; its best part is obscure and hidden.”
In our days this remark of Seneca’s has been paraphrased and rendered
more in detail, it has been said: “There are certain minds which are
illumined, and there are others full of warmth; the warmth and the
clarity at times separate, but never the warmth and the nobility; in
the more noble minds there is more warmth.”
If, as Spinoza thought, reason becomes less apt at raising itself to
the knowledge of God, in proportion as imagination and enthusiasm--to
which it gives rise--gain in strength, yet, on the other hand, the
world in general would no doubt have benefited by the work of prophets
which characterised the history of the Hebrew people; the greater
number of intellectual men amongst the ancient philosophers would not
have sought after the knowledge of God, when it was presented in a
form too pure and too abstract to impress the multitude. The divine
conception therefore descended and captivated them by a union of the
divine and human; and it is because the Bible contains this universal
element that the idea of a supernatural revelation has become deeply
engraved in the human conscience, and has caused some to consider the
Bible as the unique source of all revelation. For this reason the
people of Israel, though less prone to action than many of whom history
speaks, are, to those who think, the most important amongst the nations
of antiquity, since they have proved, as none others have done, the
power of the spiritual element in humanity.
It is displeasing to many persons to hear the term “Science of
Religion” used. “How can a science be made,” they say, “of what is a
natural sentiment? We can believe without study.” Why do they not add,
“and without reflection?”
Certainly religion did not commence in this world by study; men first
applied themselves to the natural sciences; they have hardly arrived,
at the present time, at the social sciences; and in the opinion
of certain theologians--Père Gratry, for instance--it was several
centuries before the science of religion became known, but it may be a
science without the religious sentiment suffering in any way. With this
view before us, let us begin not to build but to bring together the
materials; following the advice of the excommunicated philosopher of
Amsterdam, let us look at the sacred writings of the people in order to
form some idea of the different religions, which is much easier than to
know what religion is.
Indifference and ignorance are so common that sometimes young men are
found--even those about to take orders--who would be incapable of
answering these questions: “What are the chief historical religions
of our day? How many are there? Who are their founders? What are the
titles of the sacred writings considered by these communities as
authorities in matters of Faith?” We know that it is not of Faith to
consider that the world was created in six days of ordinary length, but
we do not know the constitution and names of the religions whence for
thousands of years millions of human creatures have drawn their hope,
their consolation, and their rules of conduct.
Eight supreme or “book” religions, as Max Müller calls them, are in
possession of Sacred Writings; Brahmanism, which is the religion of
the Veda, and the most ancient of the Aryan family, with Buddhism form
the two religions of India; Zoroastrianism, or Magism, the Persian
religion; two religions in China, one the result of the philosophical
teachings of Lao-tse; the other--which is more practical--of Confucius;
Judaism and Christianity; and Mohammedanism, the religion of
Arabia.[128]
With regard to the non-Christian religions, there is one with which we
are little familiar; it seems to have an attraction for some people,
probably because we imagine it to contain much occult knowledge, which
stimulates us to search for its mysteries; this religion is Buddhism.
With what complacency we discuss it in our drawing-rooms, without
suspecting that we have erred from the first; we generalise on the
religious opinions of millions of souls separated from us by half
the globe, and by thousands of years, without remembering that these
opinions have varied and continue to vary amongst numerous sects, just
as the dialects of a language vary; and all the time the fundamental
principles of the religion have escaped us.
I shall say a few words only as to Buddhism, and these will relate
first to orthography; it is necessary to distinguish between the words
Buddha and Budha, which are often confounded; they have nothing in
common but their roots. Buddha with two _ds_ is a participle of _budh_
which means awakened, or enlightened with a special light; this name is
given to those who have attained the highest degree of human wisdom;
Budha with one _d_ is simply a wise man; and when the Hindoos taught
the Greeks a knowledge of the planets, they gave this name to the
planet Mercury.
The custom of immolating the widow on the funeral pile of her dead
husband is naturally spoken of with astonishment and horror; for many
centuries neither the Hindoos nor Europeans knew that it arose from a
mistaken interpretation of some lines in the Veda.
At last a time arrived when the Brahmans, who were the religious
nobility of the country and had the control of the Vedic religion,
pretended that each word of the Veda had been supernaturally revealed;
voices were now raised in protest against this affirmation; the Hindoo
people, who submitted patiently to the yoke of political despotism,
would not permit a monopoly of the teaching of eternal truths; and
to shake the authority of the clergy it was quite sufficient for one
man to step forth from amongst the multitude and assert that it was
possible to obtain eternal happiness without the intervention of the
Brahmanic priesthood, and without a blindfold faith in the books on
which they had placed the seal of infallibility. Five hundred years
before our present era this man appeared, the son of a king, of the
warrior caste, not belonging to the Brahman class; he was Gautama
Sâkya-Muni, known to the entire world afterwards as the Buddha. He
claimed the right of giving instruction, and handed it on to others who
were also enlightened. Two hundred years after his death, the famous
king Asoka convened a great council in order to determine the various
points of doctrine; and his edicts were engraved in the Sanscrit
dialect then in use, on rocks in various parts of his kingdom.
If the teaching of Buddha awakened such an ardent sympathy amongst men,
and was propagated with so much rapidity, it was owing to the fact
that the Hindoo mind had been prepared to receive it by centuries of
meditation.
In all probability it was not Buddha who coined the term Nirvâna;
he may have found it ready made in the Upanishads, where it meant
originally not annihilation of the soul, or absorption, but a “blowing
out, an extinction,” then an extinction of passions, a final moral
emancipation, and the union of the individual soul with eternal truth.
In ending this short appreciation of Buddhism, I will add that, even
in our day, there are begging Brahmans, some living in communities,
others dispersed in villages, who know the entire Rig-Veda by heart,
as their ancestors did three thousand years ago; and although they had
manuscripts and even printed texts they made no use of them.
Our knowledge of established religions has rendered one indubitable
fact clear to us, that is the deterioration to which all are subject;
none has remained what it was in its initial period; the most perfect
suffers from contact with the world, in the same way as pure air
undergoes a change when breathed by thousands of lungs.
Christ’s teaching conquered alike the ignorant multitude and the most
civilised portions of the world, because from the first He used words
with which to express the most exalted truths, which could equally
be understood by the young Jew, the Roman publican, and the Greek
philosopher. Christianity broke down the barrier which divided nations;
until that time everyone who did not speak Greek, was, to the Greek, a
barbarian; to the Jew all the uncircumcised were strangers; the nascent
Christianity drew white and black together; the idea of the whole human
race forming one family had its birth at the word of Christ.
The narrowness of outlook disappeared for a time; it returned when
efforts were made to confine the words of Christ within the narrow
compass of a rigid formula; and thus it came to pass that the recently
established doctrine soon ceased to fulfil its chief object, that
of being a link of universal charity. Zealous disciples, whilst
depreciating dissident religions, endeavoured to detach Christianity
from the uninterrupted chain of the government of the world or divine
Providence, thus forming an isolated branch in the history of the human
family.
Each religion, like each language, has a past history, only we neglect
to study the beginnings, because we lose sight of the fact that the
founders of the great religions claim no exclusive right to the name of
sole author.[129]
Justin Martyr, in his _Apology_ (A.D. 139), has this memorable passage
(_Apol._ i. 46): “One article of our faith, then, is that Christ is the
true Logos (or universal Reason) of which mankind are all partakers;
and therefore those who live according to the Logos are Christians,
notwithstanding they may pass with you for atheists; such among the
Greeks were Socrates and Heracleitus, and the like; and such among the
barbarians were Abraham, and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, and
Elias, and many others; ... and those who have lived in former times
in defiance of the Logos or Reason were evil, and enemies of Christ,
and murderers of such as lived according to the Logos; but they who
have made or make the Logos or Reason the rule of their actions are
Christians, and men without fear and trembling.”[130]
St Augustine, speaking in the same strain, says: “What is now called
the Christian religion, has existed among the ancients, and was not
absent from the beginning of the human race, until Christ came in the
flesh, from which time the true religion, which existed already, began
to be called Christian” (_Retr._ i. 13).
We know by heart certain passages of the New Testament, but it is
rather the sound than the meaning which is impressed on our memory;
when we come upon similar remarks made some centuries before the Gospel
was preached, they strike us forcibly; and it is as though we heard
them for the first time. Jesus Christ declared before the assembled
multitude: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born anew,
he cannot see the kingdom of God.” These words were said to a ruler of
the Jews named Nicodemus, who had come to Jesus by night, and he asked
Him to explain how these things could be. Jesus answered: “Art thou the
teacher of Israel, and understandest not these things?”
No, the teacher of Israel understood not these things, but the heathen
Aristotle knew them; he had said in speaking of the contemplation of
God: “Such a life is superior to the ordinary life of man; it is not as
man that man lives this life, but by merit of a divine principle living
in him.”
Jesus said unto the woman of Samaria who was sitting at the foot of
Mount Gerizim, a place sacred to those of her belief: “Woman, believe
Me, the hour cometh, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem,
shall ye worship the Father; ... but the true worshippers shall worship
the Father in spirit and truth.” Although nearly two thousand years
have passed men do not yet believe it.
Origen, one of the early Fathers of the Church, wrote: “If we wish
at last to emerge from infancy, we must translate the temporal and
visible Gospel into that which is eternal and intelligible.” This
same Father was condemned by a council for certain opinions deemed
erroneous, amongst others those on the plurality of worlds, which he
said he found in the Gospel, this opinion might well be true. St Jerome
mentions the anathema used: “Like Satan, of whom he is the son, Origen
fell as lightning from heaven.” As a piece of eloquence it rivals the
condemnation of the philosopher of Amsterdam.
* * * * *
Many legends were disseminated amongst the people, they were the
natural productions of the moral atmosphere of Europe at the time when
the first germs of Christianity sank into a soil strewn with the debris
of ancient mythology. What happened then will always happen when the
multitudes learn the language of their rulers without at the same time
assimilating their ideas.
It is related that in the thirteenth century, in a little town of
Italy, a Brother Thomas asked Brother Bonaventure whence came the power
and unction of which all his sermons were so full. Bonaventure pointed
to a crucifix hanging on the wall of his cell: “He it is who dictates
to me all that I say.” This reply was reported to the people, who
believed it literally, and the inhabitants of the town were convinced
that Brother Bonaventure possessed a crucifix that spoke. The painters
adopted the subject, amongst the first were those of Spain. Thus a
symbol took the place of a sacred truth.
The Church has often been accused of tolerating like superstitions;
yet she endeavours to stop their propagation; but the task of trying
to restore each stone to its place is one of great delicacy, lest the
foundations should be shaken upon which the spiritual life of long
centuries has been built. Miracles are a prominent feature in all
religions; nevertheless, when the disciples of Buddha asked their
master to enable them to perform them, he replied: “I will teach you to
perform the greatest moral miracle. Hide your good deeds, and confess
before the world the sins you have committed” (_Phy. Religion_, p. 339).
Mohammed, in the Koran, expresses the strongest contempt for miracles,
in the usual sense of that word, and he appeals to the true miracles,
the great works of Allah in nature: “I cannot show you,” he said to his
disciples, “signs more wonderful than what you see every day and every
night.” But the orthodox Mohammedans delight in relating the miracles
wrought by Mohammed, and which have made him the marvel of Arabia.
Miracles seem to serve the purpose of impressing upon us that the
religion is true in which name they are performed; it has also been
observed that the same miracle is not generally performed twice, as
the second time it appears natural; it is extraordinary the faculty
man possesses of feeling no astonishment at those things which should
awaken his most profound astonishment.
As critics we are now in a position to take note of the mental
aberrations of the mythological period; we can understand that when
the ancient peoples attributed a divine descent to their kings and
heroes, it was the highest praise that one man could give to another;
we know that the mythology as taught in the schools, was no more the
religion of the Greeks and Romans than rust is iron. Yet it is this
homage which has perhaps obscured our minds as we imagine absolutely
human intercourse taking place between mortals and immortals. The
action of metaphor overstepped the boundary of the fabulous ages; it
invaded, unknown to us, the domain of the modern thinker, and even
our religion was not sheltered from its attacks; we now use in our
religious phraseology the words of _father_ and _son_, without having
first despoiled them of their material meaning; and we hardly realise
that in this different sphere these words are a daring metaphor, upon
which, of our own initiative, we could not have ventured. A vague
idea that God is separated from us by space dominates us, so that the
belief that there can be no barrier between the divine and human is
often confounded with pantheism; yet without pantheism of this kind,
which differs _in toto_ from the dogmatic pantheism, Christianity would
not have made its appearance in the world. We invoke neither Jupiter
nor Jehovah; God is for us the God whose name is found in all modern
languages; but it is God around us, beyond us; in speaking of Him our
thoughts follow Him to Heaven. When a man takes God to witness of
his innocence, he involuntarily lifts his hand to Heaven; in a time
of disastrous drought, when the earth refuses its nourishment to man
and beast, pious souls are invited to pray to God for the blessing of
rain. Whilst the work of science has been specially directed to causes,
religion is content, as in the past, to attribute each act to an agent;
the influence of ancient ideas on our present thought is still in
force, and our mind has to live as the oyster, under a cover which it
has made for itself. But we must submit to evidence, and acknowledge
that if we do not yet escape from the power of mythology, it is that we
meet its language everywhere, even in our sacred writings.
Language has moulded our thoughts; when they tend towards God, we make
a representation of Him as a person, we are not able to avoid such
representations; we know that the sun does not rise each morning, but
we cannot do otherwise than see it rise; we know that the sky is not
blue, but to us it wears no other appearance.
We hear it repeated that an impersonal God is no God; but it is
forgotten that personification implies limitations, since it cannot be
conceived but from a human point of view, and thus with limits. When
Spinoza denied a Divine personality, his opposers believed him to be
denying God; the philosophers of the seventeenth century, including
Catholic theologians, did not define the personality of God.[131]
Descartes and Fenelon’s definition is “The Infinitely perfect Being,
without restrictions, the Being, to which nothing can be added.” In
regarding God’s personality as we do that of a human being, we might
logically say with Massillon: “God, in His anger, hears unwise prayers,
in order to punish those who use them”; you would also be logical if
you thought with that mother that God had taken away her child because
she had loved it too well.
In tracing the progress of ideas concerning God throughout the
course of ages, it would be a sorry task to gather together the
characteristics chosen by Christian writers as those which mark
the supreme Being; these traits would furnish a whole Pantheon of
mythological divinities.
All philosophers and all truly philosophical theologians have held that
God is impersonal Reason; Bossuet called Him “La Raison-Dieu.” This
Light that lighteth every one that cometh into the world is the source
of a principle of certitude; Aristotle, St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas
thus understood it when they said that mind cannot be mistaken.
If we would make an approximate conception of God we must scrupulously
follow the advice of St Thomas Aquinas, “Eliminate, eliminate,” then
only shall we understand the meaning of the sages who said that
negation is fuller than affirmation.
Thousands of years before St Thomas Aquinas, the Hindoos practised
his method; for it was the inadequacy of the names used to express
the indefinable attributes of divinity that led them always to search
for new ones, until at last, all the phenomena of nature having been
examined and rejected, the Hindoos in despair cried, “It is impossible
to seize that which we seek; it is not this, nor that, nor anything for
which we have a name.” At last they came to the conclusion that there
was no name worthy of God in the language of humanity, and that all
that could be said was, “No, no.”
It is necessary, however, to use names as soon as we possess the ideas.
All those which have contributed to the education of humanity have been
the production of an impersonal work, the result of a long meditation
by the human mind. It has been said that the idea and name of “the
Being” for God, originated in the mind of Moses; perhaps this prophet
put the last touch. “I Am that I Am” was the name used by him for the
Eternal. The Hebrews employed another method when speaking of God,
they used the word Il or El. In Hebrew it occurs both in its general
sense of strong or hero, and as a name of God. Something equivalent is
found in the Zend-Avesta; “Looking around him, Il (Ahuramazda, the Zend
name for Ormazd) sees nothing but himself; and Il said, ‘I Am,’ and his
name became ‘I Am.’”
But man at times yearns for a closer union with God than is expressed
by the name “Being.” When troubled and in pain he says, “My Father!”
and he remembers the names which he lisped as a child, and all come
crowding to his lips; and He who is above all hears and understands.
We must not separate religion from philosophy; the subjects touching on
religion have always been those which have given birth to philosophy;
even if religion existed only on sentiment, as some people maintain,
it would be for philosophy to determine if this sentiment were an
illusion, or if it had a rational base; to separate them is to lessen
both.
FOOTNOTES:
[109] _Origin and Growth of Religion_, p. 312.
[110] Rothe in his “Stille Stunden,” _Anthropological Religion_, p. 16.
[111] Psalm xxxiii. 6; Isaiah xi. 4.
[112] _Natural Religion_, p. 164.
[113] _Rig-Veda_, I. 164. 6.
[114] _Ibid_., VI. 9. 6.
[115] _Rig-Veda_, X. 82. 7.
[116] _Ibid._, 121. 8.
[117] _Theosophy or Psychological Religion_, p. 97.
[118] Higher Critics.
[119] We find from a letter of St Jerome’s to Paula that he was in the
habit of advising his disciples to read the Scriptures, which he so
reverenced, in the following order. He began by the Psalms, then took
the books of Solomon, then he would come to Job. After going through
this course of Old Testament history he would come to the Gospels and
then to the Acts and the Epistles. After this preparation he would turn
to the Prophets, who had foretold all that the Gospels related, and
ended by allowing his disciples to read the historical Books of the Old
Testament, which might, he thought, without such previous training,
trouble and perplex them.--TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.
[120] From M. Renan’s work on Semitic languages.
[121] _Introduction to the Science of Religion_, pp. 31, 32.
[122] 2 Kings iii. 15.
[123] Ezekiel xxxi. 8.
[124] “A God understood would be no God at all.”--Dean Mansel,
seventeenth century.
[125] _Metaphysics_, xii.
[126] _Physical Religion_, p. 4.
[127] Cf. _Summum jus est summa injuria_.
[128] This study of religions hardly gives sufficient prominence
to Christianity; Max Müller says: “I make no secret that true
Christianity, I mean the religion of Christ, seems to me to become
more and more exalted the more we know and the more we appreciate
the treasures of truth hidden in the despised religions of the
world.”--_Introduction to the Science of Religion_, p. 28.
“It may be said that my chief object has been to magnify Christianity,
by showing that it is the fulfilment of all that the world has been
hoping and striving for. In one sense that is true. But if I hold that
Christianity has given the best and truest expression to what the old
world had tried to express in various and less perfect ways, I have at
least given the facts on which I rely.”--_Anthropological Religion_, p.
388.
[129] On this subject Max Müller says: “The ancient Fathers of the
Church spoke on these subjects with greater freedom than we venture to
use in these days.”--_Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. i., Pref.
xxix.
[130] _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. i., Pref. xxix.
[131] In the seventh century the Personality was clearly set forth in
the Athanasian Creed.