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.
CHAPTER XII
OF WORDS
“Nomina si nescis, perit et cognitio rerum.”—Linné.
If language is the true autobiography of the human mind, our present language may also be called a perfect photograph of our mind in its present state of fog. Whether ignorant or learned we still talk and discuss, and we seldom arrive at an understanding of the subject, owing to our want of knowledge of the precise meaning of the terms. The most advanced sciences are those about whose terms we no longer dispute, mathematics, for instance. When we are quite convinced of the identity of thought and speech, we shall introduce into our ideas, and consequently into all our discourses, whether familiar or philosophical, a clearness impossible to obtain in any other manner.
It would be a great help to know the etymology of words, but that would not suffice. “L’étymologie,” said Voltaire, “est une science où les voyelles ne font rien, et les consonnes fort peu de choses.” This sally bears on its face the date of the century of which this could be said in all truth. At the time of Voltaire the science of etymology was confined to ascribing the derivation of a word to another word to which it bore a close resemblance in sound; and the clever writer was not the only one to rally the few learned men who considered it possible to trace words to a source which one can hardly suspect of being related to them. If Voltaire had known that his sarcasm was nothing more than a simple scientific truth, he would perhaps have found less pleasure in expressing it. The science of etymology—a growth of our day—has discovered that words, which in appearance have nothing in common, neither sound nor meaning, yet have a common origin.
That would be a curious chapter of the history of thought, in which were demonstrated the errors that had been introduced and embedded in our minds by the use of certain words, which in the course of time gradually developed a meaning the exact opposite of that which they had at the first.
For instance, matter is generally represented as something tangible, that is to say, all are agreed in finding it devoid of mind, and it is a sign of condemnation to say of a century it is materialistic. Yet we who daily touch tangible objects, such as stone, metal, wood, never succeed in putting our hands on matter as such; we should not know where to find it. Does this arise from the fact that matter is not tangible? The Latin word materia had originally the meaning of the wood of a tree, then of wood or timber for building. This meaning was generalised so as to include solid bodies capable of taking various shapes. When idols were fashioned a distinction was made between the wood and the shape which emerged; and afterwards, when sculptors carved statues of marble or of metal, the marble and metal again received the name of matter or material; and when it was asked of what all tangible objects were made, even the world on which we live, the answer was that all were made of matter whilst they differ in form. In this way have we become possessed of our word matter, to which nothing tangible quite corresponds; and no doubt, owing to its complexity of meaning, it has not ceased to exercise the minds of learned men.
If philosophers have not been able to explain accurately the meaning of matter, physicists have not been more successful, since what we call matter does not come under our senses. The word might have escaped this ill fate had it always been used only by philosophers “who try only to use words that have been clearly defined, but names are used by the wise and the foolish, and the foolish, as we know, are in such an immense majority that the wonder is that words have any definite sense left at all.”[132]
Max Müller says: “I am quite willing to admit that matter may be called the objective cause of all that we perceive. For the very reason, however, that it is a cause, matter can never fall under the cognisance of our senses. All that we can predicate of matter is that it causes our sensations, that it exists in space and time, that it is one, but appears under an endless variety of phenomenal forms, that it remains unchanged in the change of outward appearances.”[133]
The history of the word matter teaches us then that speech, whose sole duty it is to introduce light into our minds, admits error also as long as we are ignorant of the original meaning of words: matter, whilst it was the solid wood of a tree and wood for building, became for those who had coined the word a fit object for perception and conception; later, others, differently constituted, saw in it a word “which contains to every man exactly what he has found in it or added to it.”[134]
There are many words whose transformations we are able to follow from one language to another, but, on the other hand, there are others whose history it is not possible to know with exactness, owing to the many revolutions, the many breaks and pauses which here and there have destroyed and scattered the links; but the science of language progresses, and those who study it look forward to the day when its foundations will be placed on philosophical bases.
Many of the false ideas we have conceived of words are no doubt owing to the translations we read of books. When we first begin the study of a new language the task appears a simple one, the dictionary supplies us with the equivalent words and the grammar with the correct forms; but the further we advance the less we are satisfied; the difficulties of finding expressions which content us increase; words are too abundant, or too scarce; our conceptions are invaded by ideas of complete disparity; and we seem to be entering an unknown land, because new effects of light and shade have lent a novel character to the country. A translation is therefore at best but an effort to bring together thoughts which were designed to remain always apart.
If in our modern languages certain words necessarily change their meaning during the course of three or four centuries, ancient languages are under the same necessity in an infinitely greater degree.
Many scholars have devoted their entire lives to the task of deciphering old documents, as it is impossible for literature of an age anterior to our present era by many centuries to preserve its original physiognomy two thousand years later. A translation of the hymns of the Veda, or of the Zend-Avesta, requires exactly the same process as the deciphering of the inscriptions in the time of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes. The only certain way is to compare every passage in which the same word occurs, and look for a meaning that is equally applicable to all. From the lack of this method Sanscrit and Zend texts have been rendered most incorrectly. It is precisely the Sacred Writings that have suffered the most from the efforts of interpreters. Those passages of the hymns which have no close connection with religious or philosophical doctrines are generally correctly rendered, but as each generation expects to find the ideas reflecting its own time in the words of the ancient seers, the most simple discourse—if it can in any way be construed to represent modern thought—is tortured and twisted so as to coincide with preconceived ideas, however foreign to the mind of the writer.
It is the same with the Hebrew version of the Old Testament. At the time when the seventy Jews at Alexandria were occupied in translating the Scriptures into Greek, 250 B.C., although Hebrew could not be looked upon as a dead language, yet even the most learned amongst these elders did not understand the original of many of the expressions, and probably few of the translators undertook the task of explaining how far those to whom Moses’ discourses were addressed, understood them.
If the Old Testament has lost amongst the Higher Critics some of its ancient glories, it has, on the other hand, acquired a historical value which theologians of former times had never contemplated. The knowledge of comparative philology having been used in deciphering the cuneiform inscriptions or hieroglyphics engraved on the ruined walls of the temples and palaces of Nineveh and Babylon, we possess information concerning the worship of the Phœnicians, the Carthaginians, and the Nomads of the Arabian peninsula. We no longer seek the help of the inscriptions in proving the truth of the biblical records; it is rather these which confirm the correctness of all that we learn from the inscriptions.
One more remark on the subject of our venerable and venerated Bible. I do not understand how it is that some people with literary tastes never open the Old Testament to satisfy them. Lack of habit perhaps. Some of the wits of the Renaissance looked down on the Old Testament; now the admirers of classic literature know better how to appreciate its literary beauties of many kinds of which it is full; some of our modern writers have been much commended for their perorations; the perorations of the chapters contained in the Bible are superb.
“I will give an instance how the peculiar character of a language may influence even religious expressions. A Mohawk (coming originally from North America) was questioned concerning his mother-tongue. It seems that in Mohawk it is impossible to say father, mother, child, nor the father, the mother, the child. We must always say, my father, thy mother, or his child. Once when I asked him to translate the Apostles’ Creed for me, he translated ‘I believe in our God, our Father, and his Son’ all right. But when he came to the Holy Ghost, he asked is it their or his Holy Ghost? I told him there was a difference of opinion on that point between two great divisions of the Christian Church, and he then shook his head and declared that he could not translate the Creed till that point had been settled.”[135] This fact has an interest for linguists; what I am about to relate concerns all.
A lady wishing to practise a little philosophy with the means within her reach, wrote to me once: “I am perplexed; my heart tells me one thing, and my soul another.” It required some moments of reflection to understand what my correspondent meant; the heart was, in her eyes, obviously, the seat of earthly affections; and the soul that of purely spiritual aspirations. This hazy manner of explanation might, at first sight, appear harmless, but on looking at it more closely, it is seen to be unfortunate, for this confusion between thoughts and words, meets one in many a book of so-called edification, where the reader seldom takes note of it, especially if he be hurried or careless; but one regrets to see good women waste daily half an hour in reading such indefinite nothings, thinking to accomplish thereby a religious duty; these persons, with intellectual culture would draw greater benefit to themselves in devoting their half hour to the perusal of books of a more sturdy tone.
We believe ourselves to be in the possession of very clear notions concerning conscience; earnest men speak of it as an inward monitor; simple folk like ourselves call it the Voice of God; for the one and for the other conscience seems to be a guide on which they can rely, and the Greek poet Menander was not mistaken when he wrote the line “Conscience is a god to all mortals.” But if we possessed within us a faculty to tell us what is our duty, how could Pascal have said that good and evil differ with a few degrees of latitude? It is a well-known fact that the conscience of a Mormon speaks another language to that of a non-Mormon. We say with truth that we are conscious of having done well or ill, but it does not follow that it is to our conscience that we owe the fact of knowing right from wrong; this consciousness is the result of instruction from without, which we accept when our own judgment and our own experience demonstrate its truth.
In subjects of general interest, the task of defining terms should consist in choosing amongst the various interpretations which have gradually become attached to certain words, not always that one which is most intimately or etymologically connected with the primary root, but that which would indicate an important practical difference. Yet by an unforeseen misfortune, the daily necessity comes before us of using words whose meaning has never been clearly defined, so that at no time has one meaning prevailed more than another; this is especially the case with words connected with religion, faith, and objects of belief, which each one understands after his own manner.
In our days the possibility of an agreement between religion and science is often debated; how can we enter on the discussion without being quite clear as to what religion is? According to some it is simply the feeling of love for God; according to others it is the expression of our faith under the form of acts of worship, acts of charity, or perhaps the holding of certain dogmas.
The same holds good with that which we call faith, and which is often a feeling of confidence—not always the result of thought—in the faith of those surrounding us. Some give the name of faith to that enthusiasm which has sufficed to cause men joyfully to meet martyrdom; others apply it to the confidence with which the wise men followed the guiding of the star, when it indicated the road they should follow. Faith is only worthy of the name when it can be said to be a reasonable faith, and thus accounting for its existence. If we are not amongst the number of those who can give a reason for the faith that is in them, we must take care that credulity does not glide in before we are aware of its approach; it arises from a weakness of the mind and is compatible with a tranquillity that differs very widely from peace; and when once mistress of the situation, it increases, and occupies it. A wise Arab well said, “He who builds his house on human credulity builds on a rock.”
“Abstract,” this word which we can trace back to Aristotle, has an interesting history. Aristotle used it at first to characterise the creation of a work of art; the sculptor carves out of a block of marble the statue of a man or of a woman, rejecting the chips and dust which serve no purpose. Afterwards Aristotle applied this same word to an idea which an accurate thinker forms, giving it a suitable shape, and separating it from all accidental thoughts that may have surrounded it; that done, what remains is an abstract idea. Aristotle has so well explained the meaning of abstract, that if our logicians had simply spoken of concrete as that which is non-abstract, all the world would more readily have understood the meaning of the word—concrete.
We possess and employ a vast number of words, and we apparently increase them by endowing the same word—from a want of clearness in our perceptions—with various meanings. The ancient Hindoos must have felt that an over-abundance of words is pernicious, and for this reason, no doubt, the Brahmans at a certain period of their literature, imposed on themselves the rule of expressing their thoughts in the fewest words possible. They succeeded in presenting each point of doctrine denuded of all but the barest outline of words; they are the authors of the aphorism, “A writer of the Sutras is happier in having economised a portion of a diphthong than from the birth of a son.” The full force of this sentence becomes apparent when it is remembered that the Brahman who has no son to perform his funeral rites cannot hope to enter heaven. It would be difficult to express more forcibly a respect for words, and the great necessity there is for cultivating clearness of thought.
What I am about to say concerns a word to which I owe the direction of my views of life, and my resolution to undertake the study of the subjects forming my present work; this word is the name of a man.
When I was young I made the acquaintance of a very learned Jesuit Father who employed his time in researches on the ecclesiastical antiquities of the East. We once found ourselves in the company of certain persons who were surveying the most remarkable of all the scientific and philosophical works published in our day; Darwin, Pasteur, Helmholtz and Max Müller were named. When the reverend Father heard this last name, he exclaimed, with his accustomed impetuosity, “Oh! Max Müller, his works are absolutely magnificent.”
Twenty years later the announcement of a new work of Max Müller reminded me of the Jesuit Father’s exclamation; hitherto I had read nothing of this author’s; I procured the book which had appeared recently; afterwards I read those that had preceded it. At the end of some years I wrote to the reverend Father; the state of his health had obliged him to settle in a town in the south, and I had not seen him for some time. I thanked him for having drawn my attention to Max Müller’s name. I received an immediate reply, the first lines of which I will quote. “Your thanks are unexpected. Max Müller seems to me an incomparable philosopher, but my admiration does not surpass his merit.” A few weeks later the worthy Father died of consumption.
CHAPTER XIII
OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS
I had not decided beforehand on the number of my chapters; it seems that there will be thirteen. If these pages have readers to whom the number thirteen is distressing, I beg of them at once to dismiss this feeling by saying: “He who objects to sit down thirteen at table, acknowledges by this that he does not believe in a supreme intelligence, superior to his own, which governs the world.”
Science, religion, reason, and faith, these four words form the circle in which all intellects move, now more than ever; on this all the world is agreed, but all the world does not know what the greatest thinkers have understood by these four words.
If we do not wish to deserve the title given to that collective being, “the man in the street,” the best means of avoiding it is to acknowledge openly that there are many unexplained problems facing us, and that man exists in order to do his part in solving them. Humanity is not composed of individuals who have been poured forth from a horn of plenty, its destiny cannot therefore be to diffuse itself over the surface of the earth without the means of knowing why it is there.
An ancient Greek said once that the gods were ready to sell all kinds of good things to mortals but at a high price, at the cost of hard work. If then we can only acquire the promised good things by the aid of hard work, our thoughts carry us at once to science, and we ask what can this science do, upon which we so pride ourselves in this century, to explain the motive of our existence?