The Pferdebürla (Horseherd)
A contributor to a periodical, which, like the _Deutsche Rundschau_, has a
world-wide circulation, receives many letters from every corner of the
earth. Many of them are nothing more than the twitter of birds in the
trees; he listens and goes his way. Others contain now and then something
of use, for which he is thankful, usually of course in silence, for a day
and night together contain only twenty-four hours, and but little time
remains for correspondence. It is interesting to note how radically one is
often misunderstood. While one person anonymously accuses the writer of
free thinking and heresy, another, and he generally gives his name,
complains of his orthodox narrow-mindedness, hypocrisy, and blindness,
which for the most part are attributed to poor Oxford, which, in foreign
countries at least, still has the reputation of high church orthodoxy.
Yet, in spite of all this, such letters are useful, for they give us a
knowledge of the public which we desire to influence, but which for the
most part goes its own way, as it may find most convenient. Often such
opinions come to us from the highest circles, at times also from the
lowest, and it is difficult to tell which of the two are the more
instructive. The problems of humanity in all their simplicity are after
all the same for us all, only they are viewed from different standpoints,
and are treated with scientific or practical design. Members of the same
profession readily understand each other; they employ their own technical
language; but the unprofessional person often goes straighter to the heart
of a question, and refuses to be satisfied with authorities or traditional
formulas. These gentlemen it is often difficult to silence. We can easily
contend with combatants who wield their weapons according to the rules
laid down by the schools; we know what to expect, and how to parry a quart
or a tierce. But an opponent who strikes regardless of all rule is often
hard to manage, and we get a scar where it is least expected or deserved.
In this wise I was served by an unknown opponent, who wrote to me from a
place in the neighbourhood of Pittsburgh, not far from Ohio. He had read
in his country solitude my article on Celsus in the _Deutsche Rundschau_.
I know nothing of him, except what he himself writes, but the man
interested me. After all, he says in his rude way very much the same
things as others veil in learned phrases, and his doubts and difficulties
are manifestly products of his heart as well as of his brain. The problems
of humanity have troubled him with genuine pain, and after honestly
thinking them out as well as he knew how, his convictions stand firm as a
rock, and all who disagree with him seem to him not only fools, but
unfortunately hypocrites as well. It is the misfortune of these lonely
thinkers that they cannot comprehend how any one can hold opinions
differing from their own without being dishonest. They cannot doubt that
they have been honest toward themselves, and as a consequence they cannot
conceive how others, who are of a different mind, can be equally honest,
and have come by their convictions by a straightforward path. Often it has
been very difficult for them to break with their old faith, cherished from
childhood, and they can only look upon it as cowardice and weakness if
others, as they think, have not made or wished to make this sacrifice. But
we shall let the horseherd who emigrated to America speak for himself.
I here print his letter exactly as I received it, without any
alterations.(34) To me it seems that the man speaks not only for himself,
but for many who think as he does, but who have not the ability nor the
opportunity to express themselves clearly. I resolved, accordingly, to
reply to him, and once begun, my pen ran on, and my letter unexpectedly
covered more ground than I had intended. Whether he received the letter or
not, I do not know; at least it must have been delivered to his address,
for it was not returned to me. As I have not, however, heard from him
again since February, and as he speaks in his letter of chest catarrh,
which he hopes will in no long time bring him to a joyful end, I must wait
no longer for an answer, and publish the correspondence in the hope that
there are other “Pferdebürle” in the world to whom it may be of value.
* * * * *
“
Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S., February 26, 1896.
Dear Colleague Max Müller:
“Your article in the _Deutsche Rundschau_ on Celsus pleased me very much.
What does it matter that you do not know me? I love you, and that gives me
a right to address you. Why those vain regrets over the loss of the
original? I would not stretch out my little finger for that Celsus; gone
is gone like the lost parts of the Annals of Tacitus. More than likely
both of these losses are to be ascribed to Christian fanaticism. Tacitus
hated the Jews and the Christian sect derived from them. But, father Max,
have we not much greater modern Celsuses and Tacituses, for instance David
Hume and Schopenhauer? One would think that after the writings of these
heroes positive Christianity would be an impossibility, and yet the
persistence of error is so great that it may take several centuries more
before the end of the Christian era is reached. Has there ever been
anything in the history of the world more humiliating to the human
understanding than this false and lying tale of the Christian religion?
And is there anything in face of our knowledge, and of the realm of nature
and of man’s position in it, so unbearable, yes so odious, as the
inoculation of such error in the tender consciousness of our school
children? I shudder when I think that in thousands of our churches and
schools this systematic ruin of the greatest of all gifts, the
consciousness, the human brain, is daily, even hourly, going on. Max, can
you, too, still cling to the God-fable? The English atmosphere may serve
as an apology. I could not strike a dog, but I am filled with
bloodthirstiness toward the Jewish idea of God, the soul-phantom, and the
hallucination of immortality.—The facts are so simple and clear; we are
the highest existing forms of being in the animal world of this planet,
and share one and the same nature with them. After death we are just as
entirely reduced to nothing as before our birth. Nature tells us so
plainly that the eternal conditions before and after our birth are
identical.
“You ask me what this juggling means;
Take this short answer for your pains;
A game of chance from the eternal sea
By the same sea again will swallowed be.
—OMAR KHAYYAM (Bodenstedt).
“But there is nothing in this world so false as the statement that good
can ever come out of lies. Nothing in the world is so wholesome as truth,
and truth is under all circumstances lovable, beautiful, and holy. Let us
kneel before the truth of nature; nature cannot go astray. The distinction
between good and evil, the evil heritage of Judaism, must fall in the end.
Max, on quiet fields, in a mountain village of Silesia, I turned
somersaults with joy at the discovery that this distinction is false, and
that good and evil are identical. Max, you will not be angry with me? I am
no learned fellow. I never attended a high school, and now I rejoice at
it, for what a German calls education can only serve to miseducate after
all. Modern life is, for every open-minded person, the real high school.
Max, all German savants, or, if you please, the majority of them, still
labour under the delusion that the mind is a ‘prius.’ By no means, Max!
Mind is a development, an evolving phenomenon. One would suppose it
impossible that a thinking man, who has ever observed a child, could be of
any other opinion; why seek ghosts behind matter? Mind is a function of
living organisms, which belongs also to a goose and a chicken. Then, Max,
why not be content with the limits of our knowledge, conditioned by
experience, and give up this infamous romancing and tyrannical lying? The
only affection which after fifty years I still cherish in my bosom is the
sweet, unquenchable longing for that truth which fate has denied us.
“Max, you are by no means a free man, as I observe that the religious
congress in Chicago impressed you very much.(35) I was present when the
gayly dressed idolators from Cardinal Gibbons down to the stupid Shinto
priest and the ill-favoured Baptist woman preacher sat together on the
platform. It was very pretty and refreshing to look upon. They all talked
nonsense and thought themselves very wise. There was but one exception
which interested me: a yellow Buddhist monk inquired, what they thought of
English missionaries, who in time of famine distributed bread to the poor,
but only on one condition, that they adopted the Christian superstition
(indifferent whether honestly or not). The so-called ‘Ethical Culture
Societies’ were not admitted by the committee to their congress of many
religions. Max, it was pitiful to listen to the tittle-tattle that was
read. None had learned beforehand what he wanted to say. _Dicere de
scripto_ is a shame for learned men. Only Cardinal Gibbons made a short,
but colourless and dull extemporaneous address, which closed with the
hypocrisy, what a great thing it is to keep oneself unspotted by this
world. Accursed hypocrites, you yourselves are this world,—pitifully
incarnate, it is true,—but you yourselves are this ‘spotted world.’ Why
then still hold to the stupid distinction between good and evil, when we
must admit that evil is essential to the very existence of things, and it
would be impossible for the world to be, except as it is. We must be as we
are, or we should not be at all. O beautiful longing for the primeval
cause! Our ignorance is like evil, welcome. Let us, O Max, embrace the
evil and ignorance, for if we were nothing but wretched cripples of
virtue, and knew everything, we could not bear to live. As it is, we enjoy
the spirited battle, and carry a sweet yearning in our breasts.
“Max, how are you personally? Have you a family? How is your health? How
old are you? What relation do you bear to the learned set in England? Do
you know the one German philosopher, with the courage of his convictions,
Emil Dühring, in Berlin. I consider my knowledge of the writings of Dr.
Dühring as the greatest gift of fate which has been vouchsafed to me. The
Jews and state professors hide his fame under a bushel. Oh! could not such
independent men as you, honoured Max Müller, do something to bring this
hero nearer to our young students? Dühring is the only writer of the
present day who is to be enjoyed almost without drawback. What is to be
said of our German set which is cowardly enough to repress so long the
greatest mind which our century has produced? Were I in _your_ position,
how would I shout my ‘Quos Ego’ across to Germany! Please, my countryman,
favour me with a few lines in answer to this effusion, in order that I may
learn who and what you are. I am a Silesian horseherd (to be distinguished
from the cowherds [_kühbürla’s_], who till their field with pious
moo-moos). Instead of attending a high school, I herded cows, ploughed,
harvested, and helped to thrash in the winter. While herding I played the
flute in the valleys of the Sudetic Mountains; and because the hands of
the old village schoolmaster trembled very much, I begged of him to let me
try to play the organ for him. ‘Ah, you rascal, you can play better than
I,’ and he boxed my ears. Then my eldest brother took possession of the
farm of seventy-five acres, gave us no compensation, and the rest of us
lads had to pack off. We scraped together the passage money to America,
and about thirty years ago I arrived here, where—I almost said God be
praised—it has always gone pretty hard with me. Whether I fare well or ill
is the same to me. I make no distinction, for in view of the rapid passing
of life, it does not pay to give much thought to unnecessary distinctions.
I never could think of marrying, chiefly because the majority of the women
in this country are shrews, cannot cook, and spend much too much money on
the housekeeping. Besides, I have but a short time to live, for I possess
a chest catarrh most loyally devoted to me, verging upon a perfect asthma,
which I hope erelong will bring me to a joyful end. No doubt you will
think what a disconsolate fellow this is who has written to me. O pshaw! I
have always enjoyed the sunshine, and have sat alone hundreds of snug
hours before my winter’s companion, a small iron stove. During the last
three nights I have repeatedly read through your article on Celsus,
published in the _Deutsche Rundschau_, by a tallow-candle. In relation to
your enthusiasm over the religious clap-trap in Chicago, I should like to
observe that you would have been entirely in the right if you had
represented the Exhibition as the greatest event of the past ten years. I
came through Chicago in September, 1892, visited the prospective site of
the Exposition, and found there a mere wilderness, scarcely a single
building half finished, and it was a wonder of wonders what American
enterprise and genius for organisation accomplished within the single
intervening winter. One could scarcely recover from one’s astonishment at
what ten thousand labourers, urged on by the Yankee lash, could make ready
in six months. ‘There was money in the business,’ and for money Jonathan
works real miracles. Its like the world has never produced. The American
is cut on a large pattern, and in spite of his political delusions I
entertain the greatest hopes for the future of a country which is in such
hands.”
With many friendly greetings,
A Silesian Horseherd.
Emigrated to America.
”
* * * * *
I answered my unknown friend and correspondent as follows:—
* * * * *
“
“MY GOOD FRIEND: You are an honest fellow, and I believe that I am one
too, but our views are widely divergent. I am an old professor, am now
seventy-two years old, or as has been often said to me, seventy-two years
young. Like yourself I commenced life with nothing, and have laboured till
I have become not rich, but independent. Here in wealthy England and in
wealthy Oxford I am considered a poor man, but I am quite content, and
call that riches. I have been married thirty-seven years, have one son,
secretary to the Embassy at Constantinople, and a happily married
daughter, with four grandchildren. Now you know all that you wished to
know. Of my sorrow, the loss of two daughters, I must remain silent.
“All my life I have been engaged in investigating the past; I am a
philologist and have therefore been also a student of history, have
especially studied the historical development of the various religions of
mankind, and to this end have had to make a study of ancient languages,
particularly Oriental languages. When one consecrates one’s life to such a
cause, one acquires an interest in and a love for the ancients, and a wish
to know what has consoled them in this vale of grief. As you probably
acquired a love for your colts, mares, and stallions, I acquired an
interest in ancient and modern religions. And as you probably do not
immediately kill or reject your horses because they possess a blemish,
shy, kick, prance about, etc., so I do not immediately destroy all
beliefs, and least of all my own mount, because they are not faultless,
occasionally leave me in the lurch, behave foolishly, even dance on their
hind legs with head in air; but I endeavour to understand them. When we
understand even a little, we can forgive much. That many religions,
including our own, contain errors and weak points, just as your horses do,
I know perhaps even better than you. But have you ever asked yourself,
what would have become of mankind without any religion, without the
conviction that beyond our horizon, that is beyond our limit, there still
must be something? You will answer, ‘How do we know that?’ Well, can there
be any boundary without something beyond it? Is not that as true as any
theorem in geometry? If it were not so, how could we explain the fact that
mankind has never been without a belief in a world beyond, nor without
religion, either in the lowest or in the highest levels.
“This horizon, this boundary, does not relate only to space, as all will
agree, even when carried beyond the Milky Way; it relates as well to time.
You assert, ‘The world is much older than we suppose;’ you are right, but
if it were a million years, still there must have been a time before it
was even a day old. That also is indisputable. But when we reach the limit
of our senses and our understanding, then the horse shies, then we imagine
that nothing can go beyond our understanding. Now let us begin with our
five senses. They seem to be our wings, but seen in the light they are our
fetters, our prison walls. All our senses have their horizon and their
limits; and the limits in the external world are our making. Our sight
scarcely reaches a mile, then it ceases; we can observe the movement of
the second hand, but that of the minute hand escapes us. Why? We might
know that a cannon-ball passes through our field of vision, but we cannot
locate it. Why not? Our sense of touch is also very weak and only extends
over a very limited space. And as it is on the large scale, so is it with
the small. We see the eye of a needle, but infusoria and bacteria, which
we know to be there and which affect us so much, we cannot see. With
telescopes and microscopes we can slightly extend the field of our
perception, but the limitations and weakness of our sense-impressions
remain none the less an undeniable fact. We live in a prison, in a cave as
Plato said, and yet we accept our impressions as they are, and form out of
them general notions and words, and with these words we erect this stately
building, or this tower of Babel, which we then call human science.
“Yes, say certain philosophers, our senses may be finite and
untrustworthy, but our understanding, and still further our reason, they
are unlimited, and recognise nothing which is beyond them. Well, what does
this most wise understanding do for us? Has not Hobbes long since taught
us that it adds and subtracts, and _voilà tout_? It receives the
impressions of the senses, combines them, feels them, comprehends and
designates or names them after any characteristic, and when man has found
words, then the adding and subtracting begin, but unfortunately also the
jumbling and chattering, till we finally establish that philosophy and
religion, which have aroused in so great degree your anger, and even your
blood thirstiness. In spite of all it remains true that we can no more get
beyond the horizon of our senses than we can jump out of our skins. You
know that old saying of Locke’s, although it is much older than Locke,
that there is nothing in our intellect which was not first in our senses.
And therefore, however much we may extend our knowledge by adding and
subtracting, everywhere we feel in the end our horizon, our limitations,
our ignorance, for with the limitations of our senses it cannot be
otherwise. Invariably we receive the old answer, ‘You are like the mind
which you conceive, not me.’
“But you say that we have no right whatever to speak of a mind. That is
possible, but everything depends upon what we understand by the term
‘mind.’ Is not mind, that is to say, a recipient, essential to our seeing
and hearing? The eye can no more see than a camera obscura. True seeing,
hearing, and feeling are not perceptible through the organs of sense, but
through the recipient, for without it the organs of sense could make no
resistance, could not receive, could not perceive. This unknown element
which lies beyond the senses, this recipient must be there. It is true he
cannot be named. Perhaps it would have been better to have called him
‘_x_’ or the Unknown; but when we know what is meant, why not call it mind
or spirit, that is, breath? You call it a soul-phantom. Well, good, but
without such a soul-phantom we cannot get on; you would have to consider
yourself a mere photographic apparatus, and I do not believe that you do.
“Of course you can still say that the mind is a development, a
self-evolving phenomenon. Rightly understood that is quite true, but how
misleading that word ‘evolution’ has been in these latter days. Darwin
certainly brought much that is beautiful and true to the light of day. He
demonstrated that many of the so-called species are not independent
creations, but have been developed from other species. That means that he
has corrected the earlier erroneous nomenclature of Natural History and
has introduced a more correct classification. He has greatly simplified
the work of the Creator of the world. Of that merit no one will deprive
him, and it is a great merit. And those who believed that every species
required its own act of creation, and had to be finished by the Creator
separately (as was the established opinion in England, and still is in
some places), cannot be grateful enough to Darwin for having given them a
simpler and worthier idea of the origin of the earth and of its animal and
vegetable kingdoms.
“But now comes Mr. Herbert Spencer and tells us, ‘We have to deal with man
as a product of evolution, with society as a product of evolution, and
with moral phenomena as products of evolution.’ That sounds splendid, but
every one who does not quite ignore the past, knows that evolution or
development is neither anything very new or very useful. Formerly we used
simply to say the tree grows, the child develops, and this was
metaphorically transferred to society, the state, science, and religion.
The study of this development was called history, and occasionally genetic
or pragmatic history; but instead of talking as we do now of evolution
with imperceptible transitions, it was these transitions which industrious
and honest investigators formerly sought to observe. They aimed at
learning to know the men, and the events, which marked a decided step in
advance in the history of society, or in the history of morals. This
required painstaking effort, but the result obtained was quite different
from the modern view, in which everything is evolved, and, what is the
worst, by imperceptible degrees. In Natural History this is otherwise; in
it the term ‘evolution,’ or ‘growth,’ may be correctly applied, because no
one really has ever seen or heard the grass grow, and no one has ever
observed the once generally accepted transition from a reptile to a bird.
In this we must doubtless admit imperceptible transitions. Yet even in
this we must not go beyond the facts; and if a man like Virchow assures us
that the intermediate stages between man and any sort of animal have never
been found to this day, then in spite of all storms we shall probably have
to rest there. But I go still farther. Even supposing, say I, that there
is an imperceptible transition from the Pithecanthropos to man, affecting
his thigh, his skull, his brain, his entire body, have we then found a
transition from the animal to man? Certainly not; for man is man, not
because he has no tail, but because he speaks, and speech implies not only
communication,—an animal can do that perhaps better than a man,—but it
implies thinking, and thinking not only as an animal thinks, but thinking
conceptually. And this small thing, the concept, is the transition which
no animal has ever accomplished. The moment an ape achieved it, he would
be _ipso facto_ a man, in spite of his miserable brain, and in spite of
his long tail.
“Concepts do not present themselves spontaneously (or we should find them
also among animals), but they are a special product, in part the work of
our ancestors, and inherited by us with our language, and in part even now
the work of more gifted men from time to time. This making necessarily
implies the existence of a maker, and if we now provisionally call this
maker, this transcendent, invisible, but very powerful ‘_x_,’ mind, are we
thereby chargeable, as you say, with having conjured up a soul-phantom?
Call it a phantom if you will, but even as a phantom it has a right to
exist. Call it mind, breath, breathing, willing, or (with Schopenhauer)
will, there is always a He or It to be reckoned with. Of this He or It,
this pronominal soul-phantom, you will never rid yourself.
“And if we now perceive with our senses a world as it is given us whether
we will or no, and in this objective world, without us, which so many
regard as within us, we everywhere recognise the presence of purpose, must
we then not also have a name for that which manifests itself in nature as
purposive or rational? Shall we only call it ‘_x_,’ or may we transfer the
word designating what works purposively in us to this Unknown, and speak
of a universal Mind without which nature could not be what it is? Nature
is not crazy nor incoherent. When the child is born, has the mother milk,
and to what purpose? Why, certainly, to nourish the child. And the child
has the lips and muscles to suck. When the fruit has ripened on the tree,
it falls to the earth full of seed. The husk breaks, the seed falls in the
soil, it rains and the rain fertilises the seed, the sun shines and makes
it grow, and when the tree has grown and again bears blossoms and fruit,
this fruit is useful to man, is food and not poison to him. Is all this
without purpose, without reason? Is it a symphony without a composer? Man,
too, needs rain and sunshine, and warmth and darkness; and all this is
given to him so that he may live and work and think. What would man be
without darkness, without the rest afforded by night? Probably crazy. What
would he be without sunshine? Perhaps an Esquimau or a mole. But how
remarkable it is that as the tree always reproduces itself, so also does
man. The son differs from the father, and yet how like they are. Where is
the form which retains the continuous resemblance to itself, and yet
leaves to each separate person freedom and individuality? Whence comes
this purpose in all nature? That is an old question which has received
many answers, both wise and foolish. Unfortunately men so frequently
forget what has already been attained, and then begin again at the
beginning. Darwin was an industrious and delicate observer, and showed
admirable power of combination. But he was no philosopher, and never
sought to be one. He was of opinion that everything in nature which
appeared to show purpose proceeded from the survival of the fittest. But
that is no answer. We ask, Why does the fittest survive? And what is the
answer? Because only the fittest survives. And when we come to Natural
Selection, who is the selector that selects? These are nothing but
phrases, which have long been known and long since been abandoned, and
still are always warmed up again. If we recognise in nature purpose or
reason, then we have a right to conclude that the source of it lies in the
eternal reason, in the eternally rational. Behind all objects lies the
thought or the idea. If there are rational ideas in nature, then there
must be a rational thinker. Behind all trees—oaks, birches, pines—lies the
thought, the idea, the form, the word, the _logos_ of tree. Who made or
thought it before ever the first tree existed? We can never see a tree; we
see only an oak, a birch, a pine, never a tree. But the thought or idea of
tree meets us, realised and diversified in all trees. This is true of all
things. No one has ever seen an animal, a man, a dog, but he sees a St.
Bernard, a greyhound, a dachshund, and strictly not even that. What, then,
is it that is permanent, always recurring in the dog, by means of which
they resemble each other, the invisible form in which they are all cast?
That is the thought, the idea, the _logos_ of dog. Can there be a thought
without a thinker? Did the ideas in nature, the millions of objects which
make up our knowledge, fall from the clouds? Did they make themselves or
did nature make them? Who, then, is nature? Is it a masculine, feminine,
or neuter? If nature can choose, then it can also think and produce. But
can it? No, nature is a word, very useful for certain purposes; but empty,
intangible, and incomprehensible. Nature is an abstraction, as much as dog
or tree, but far more inclusive. When we recognise thought, reason,
purpose in nature, still it is all in vain, we must assume a thinker in,
above, behind nature, and we must as a matter of course have a name for
him. The infinite thinker of all things, of all ideas, of all words, who
can never be seen and never comprehended, because he is infinite, but in
whose thoughts all creatures, the entire creation, have their source, and
who when rightly understood approaches us palpably or symbolically in all
things, in the sole path of sense by which he can approach us sentient
beings, why should we not call him Mind, or God, or as the Jews called
him, Jehovah, or the Mohammedans, Allah, or the Brahmins, Brahman? Either
reason operates in nature, or nature is without reason, is chaos and
confusion. Neither survival of the fittest nor natural selection could
bring order into this confusion; we might as well believe that if the type
in a printing office be thoroughly shaken and mixed, it could produce
Goethe’s _Faust_ by chance. If we insist upon adhering to the theories of
natural selection, or survival of the fittest, be it so; we only transfer
the choice to a Something which can choose, and leave the fitness or
adaptability to the judgment of an originator, who can really judge and
think.
“I hope that I have made this plain to you; but what would be plain to us
would not be plain to children, and still less to mankind in its infancy
five thousand or fifty thousand years ago. I have especially endeavoured
to discover what led these men of old, in many respects so uncultivated,
to believe in something beyond, invisible, superhuman, supernatural. We
can see from their language and from the oldest monuments of their
religion that they early observed that something happened in the world.
The world was not dark, nor still, nor dead. The sun rose, and man awoke,
and asked himself and the sunshine. ‘Whence?’ he said; ‘stop, what is
there? who is there?’ Such an object as the sun cannot rise of its own
volition. There is something behind it. At first the sun itself was
considered a labourer; it accomplished the greatest work on earth, gave
light, heat, life, growth, fruits. It was quite natural, then, to pay
great honour to the sun; to be grateful to it, to appeal to it for light,
heat, and increase. And therefore the sun became a God, _e.g._ a Deva
(deus), which originally meant nothing more than light. But even then an
old Inca in Peru observed that the sun was not free; could not, therefore,
be a being, to whom man could be grateful, to whom he could pray. It is,
said he, like a beast of burden, which must daily tread its appointed
round. And although the worship of the sun was the religion of his
country, and he himself was worshipped as a child of the sun, he renounced
the ancient faith of his country, and became what is now frequently called
an atheist; that is, he longed after a truer God. What say you to this
Inca? This same thing occurred also in other lands, and instead of
continuing to worship the sun and moon, the dawn, the storm-wind, or the
sky, they worshipped that which must be behind it all, which was called
Heaven-Father, Jupiter, and every conceivable name. These names were no
longer to indicate the visible object, but Him who had thought and created
the object, the thinker and ruler of the world. This is the fundamental
idea from which all religions have arisen: not animism, fetishism,
totemism, or whatever the little tributaries may be called, which have
poured for thousands of years into the main stream. Every people has
produced its own religion, its own language, in the course of thousands of
years; later, religions have been framed for all mankind, and we are still
engaged in that task, even in what you call that clap-trap of Chicago.
Even though we have all been born and educated in some religion, we
nevertheless have the right, even the duty, like the old Inca, to examine
every article of our hereditary religion, to retain it or to cast it
aside, according to our own judgment and conception of the truth. Only the
fundamental principle must remain; there is a thinker and a ruler of the
universe. Of Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas, of Joseph and Mary, of the
resurrection and ascension, let each one believe what he will, but the
highest commandment applies to all, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself.’
“You see, therefore, that I, too, am a God-romancer. And what objection
can you raise against it? You are of opinion that to love God and your
neighbour is equivalent to being good, and are evidently very proud of
your discovery that there is no distinction between good and evil. Well,
if loving God and your neighbour is equivalent to being good, then it
follows that not loving God and not loving your neighbour is equivalent to
not being good, or to being evil. There is, then, a very plain distinction
between good and bad. And yet you say that you turned a somersault when
you discovered that there was no such distinction. It is true that the
nature of this distinction is often dependent on the degree of latitude
and longitude where men are congregated, and still more on the intention
of the agent. This is very ancient knowledge. The old Hindu philosophers
went still farther, and said of an assassin and his victim, ‘The one does
not commit murder, and the other is not murdered.’ That goes still farther
than your somersault. At all events, we entirely agree with each other,
that everything which is done out of love to God and our neighbour is
good, and everything which is done through selfishness is bad. The old
philosopher in India must have turned more somersaults than you; but what
he had in his mind in doing it does not concern us here. But it was not so
bad as it sounds, and I believe that what you say, that there is no real
distinction between good and evil, is not so bad as it sounds.
“We have now reached that stage that we must admit that there is a mind
within us, in our inner world, and a mind without us, in the outer world.
What we call this mind, the Ego, the soul within us, and the Non-ego, the
world-soul, the God without us, is a matter of indifference. The Brahmans
appear to me to have found the best expression. They call the fundamental
cause of the soul, of the Ego, the Self, and the fundamental cause of the
Non-ego, of the World-soul, of God, the highest Self. They go still
farther, and hold these two selves to be in their deepest nature one and
the same—but of this another time. To-day I am content, if you will admit,
that our mind is not mere steam, nor the world merely a steam-engine, but
that in order that the machine shall run, that the eye shall see, the ear
hear, the mind think, add, and subtract, we need a seer, a hearer, a
thinker. More than this I will not inflict on you to-day; but you see that
without deviating a finger’s breadth from the straight path of reason,
that is from correct and honest addition and subtraction, we finally come
to the soul-phantom and to the idea of God, which you look upon with such
blood-thirstiness. I have indicated to you, with only a few strokes, the
historical course of human knowledge. There still remains much to fill in,
which must be gained from history and the diligent study of the sacred
books of mankind, and the works of the leading philosophers of the East
and the West. We shall then learn that the history of mankind is the best
philosophy, and that not only in Christianity and Judaism, but that in all
religions of the world, God has at divers times spoken through the
prophets in divers manners, and still speaks.
“And now only a few words more over another somersault. You say that the
mind is not a _prius_, but a development out of matter. You are right
again, if you view the matter only from an embryological or psychological
standpoint. A child begins with deep sleep, then comes dream-sleep, and
finally awakening, collecting, naming, adding, subtracting. What is that
which awakens in the child? Is it a bone, or is it the soft mass which we
call brain? Can the gray matter within our skulls give names, or add? Why,
then, has no craniologist told us that the monkey’s brain lacks precisely
those tracts which are concerned with speech or with aphasia?(36) I ask
again, Can the eye see, the ear hear? Try it on the body under dissection,
or try it yourself in your sleep. Without a subject there is no object in
the world, without understanding there is nothing to understand, without
mind no matter. You think that matter comes first, and then what we call
mind. Where is this matter? Where have you ever seen matter? You see oak,
fir, slate, and granite, and all sorts of other _materies_, as the old
architects called them, never matter. Matter is the creation of the mind,
not the reverse. Our entire world is thought, not wood and stone. We learn
to think or reflect upon the thoughts, which the Thinker of the world,
invisible, yet everywhere visible, has first thought. What we see, hear,
taste, and feel, is all within us, not without. Sugar is not sweet, we are
sweet. The sky is not painted blue, we are blue. Nothing is large or
small, heavy or light, except as to ourselves. Man is the measure of all
things, as an ancient Greek philosopher asserted; and man has inferred,
discovered, and named matter. And how did he do it? He called everything,
out of which he made anything, matter; _materia_ first meant nothing more
than wood used for building, out of which man built his dwelling. Here you
have the whole secret of matter. It is building-material, oak, pine,
birch, whichever you prefer. Abstract every individual characteristic,
generalise as you will, the wood, the _hyle_, always remains. And you will
have it that thought, or even the thinker, originated from this wood. Do
you really believe that there is an outer world such as we see, hear, or
feel? Where have we a tree, except in our imagination? Have you ever seen
a whole tree, from all four quarters at once? Even here we have something
to add first. And of what are our ideas composed, if not our
sense-perceptions? And these perceptions, imperfect as they are, exist
only in us, for us, and through us. The thing perceived is and always
remains, as far as we are concerned in the outer world, transcendent, a
thing in itself; all else is our doing; and if you wish to call it matter
or the material world, well and good, but at least it is not the _prius_
of mind, but the _posterius_, that which is demanded by the mind, but is
always unattainable. Even the professional materialist ascribes inertia to
matter. The atoms, if he assumes atoms, are motionless, unless disturbed.
From whence comes this disturbance? It must proceed from something outside
the atoms, or the matter, so that we can never say that there is nothing
in the universe but matter. And now if we ascribe motion to the atoms, or
like other philosophers, perception, then that is nothing more nor less
than to ascribe mind to them, which, however, if you are right, must first
evolve itself out of this matter. If we wind something into these atoms,
then we can also wind something out of them; in doing this, however, we
give up at the outset the experiment of letting mind evolve itself out of
matter. Give an atom the germ-power of an acorn, and it will develop into
an oak. Give an atom the capacity of sense-perception, and it will become
an animal, possibly a man. But what was promised us was the development of
feeling and perception out of the dead atoms of hydrogen, oxygen,
nitrogen, carbon, etc. Even if we could explain life out of the activities
of these atoms, which may be possible,—although denied by Haeckel and
Tyndall,—still feeling, perception, understanding, all the functions of
mind, would remain unexplained. J. S. Mill is certainly no idealist, and
no doubt is one of your heroes. Well Mr. Mill declares that nothing but
mind could produce mind. Even Tyndall, in his address as President of the
British Association in Belfast, declared in plain words that the
continuity of molecular processes and the phenomena of consciousness
constitute the rock on which all Materialism must inevitably be shattered.
“Think over all of this by your iron stove, or better still at some
beautiful sunrise in spring, and you will see before you a more glorious
revelation than all the revelations of the Old World.”
Yours faithfully,
F. Max Müller
Oxford, November, 1896.
”