2. This theory is utterly inadequate to the explanation of the universality of religious rites, and especially of religious ideas.
Take, for example, the idea of God. As a matter of fact we affirm, in opposition to Watson, the universality of this idea. The idea of God is connatural to the human mind. Wherever human reason has had its normal and healthy development [87], this idea has arisen spontaneously and necessarily. There has not been found a race of men who were utterly destitute of some knowledge of a Supreme Being. All the instances alleged have, on further and more accurate inquiry, been found incorrect. The tendency of the last century, arbitrarily to quadrate all the facts of religious history with the prevalent sensational philosophy, had its influence upon the minds of the first missionaries to India, China, Africa, Australia, and the islands of the Pacific. They expected to find that the heathen had no knowledge of a Supreme Being, and before they had mastered the idioms of their language, or become familiar with their mythological and cosmological systems, they reported them as utterly ignorant of God, destitute of the idea and even the name of a Supreme Being. These mistaken and hasty conclusions have, however, been corrected by a more intimate acquaintance with the people, their languages and religions. Even in the absence of any better information, we should be constrained to doubt the accuracy of the authorities quoted by Mr. Watson in relation to Hindooism, when by one (Ward) we are told that the Hindoo "believes in a God destitute of intelligence" and by another (Moore) that "Brahm is the one eternal Mind, the self-existent, incomprehensible Spirit". Learned and trustworthy critics, Asiatic as well as European, however, confidently affirm that "the ground of the Brahminical faith is Monotheistic;" it recognizes "an Absolute and Supreme Being" as the source of all that exists. [88] Eugene Burnouf, M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, Kœppen, and indeed nearly all who have written on the subject of Buddhism, have shown that the metaphysical doctrines of Buddha were borrowed from the earlier systems of the Brahminic philosophy. "Buddha." we are told, is "pure intelligence" "clear light", "perfect wisdom;" the same as Brahm. This is surely Theism in its highest conception. [89] In regard to the peoples of South Africa, Dr. Livingstone assures us "there is no need for beginning to tell even the most degraded of these people of the existence of a God, or of a future state--the facts being universally admitted.... On questioning intelligent men among the Backwains as to their former knowledge of good and evil, of God, and of a future state, they have scouted the idea of any of them ever having been without a tolerably clear conception on all these subjects." [90] And so far from the New Hollanders having no idea of a Supreme Being, we are assured by E. Stone Parker, the protector of the aborigines of New Holland, they have a clear and well-defined idea of a "Great Spirit," the maker of all things.
[Footnote 87: ][ (return) ] Watson, "Theol. Inst.," vol. i. p. 46.
[Footnote 88: ][ (return) ] Maurice, "Religions of the World," p. 59: Edin. Review,1862, art "Recent Researches on Buddhism." See also Müller's "Chips from a German Workshop," vol. i. ch. i. to vi.
[Footnote 89: ][ (return) ] "It has been said that Buddha and Kapila were both atheists, and that Buddha borrowed his atheism from Kapila. But atheism is an indefinite term, and may mean very different things. In one sense every Indian philosopher was an atheist, for they all perceived that the gods of the populace could not claim the attributes that belong to a Supreme Being. But all the important philosophical systems of the Brahmans admit, in some form or another, the existence of an Absolute and Supreme Being, the source of all that exists, or seems to exist."--Müller, "Chips from a German Workshop," vol. i. pp. 224,5.
Buddha, which means "intelligence," "clear light," "perfect wisdom," was not only the name of the founder of the religion of Eastern Asia, but Adi Buddha was the name of the Absolute, Eternal Intelligence.--Maurice, "Religions of the World," p. 102.
[Footnote 90: ][ (return) ] "Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa," p. 158.
Now had the idea of God rested solely on tradition, it were the most natural probability that it might be lost, nay, must be lost, amongst those races of men who were geographically and chronologically far removed from the primitive cradle of humanity in the East. The people who, in their migrations, had wandered to the remotest parts of the earth, and had become isolated from the rest of mankind, might, after the lapse of ages, be expected to lose the idea of God, if it were not a spontaneous and native intuition of the mind,--a necessity of thought. A fact of history must be presumed to stick to the mind with much greater tenacity than a purely rational idea which has no visible symbol in the sensible world, and yet, even in regard to the events of history, the persistence and pertinacity of tradition is exceedingly feeble. The South Sea Islanders know not from whence, or at what time, their ancestors came. There are monuments in Tonga and Fiji of which the present inhabitants can give no account. How, then, can a pure, abstract idea which can have no sensible representation, no visible image, retain its hold upon the memory of humanity for thousands of years? The Fijian may not remember whence his immediate ancestors came, but he knows that the race came originally from the hands of the Creator. He can not tell who built the monuments of solid masonry which are found in his island-home, but he can tell who reared the everlasting hills and built the universe. He may not know who reigned in Vewa a hundred years ago, but he knows who now reigns, and has always reigned, over the whole earth. "The idea of a God is familiar to the Fijian, and the existence of an invisible superhuman power controlling and influencing nature, and all earthly things, is fully recognized by him." [91] The idea of God is a common fact of human consciousness, and tradition alone is manifestly inadequate to account for its universality.
[Footnote 91: ][ (return) ] "Fiji and the Fijians," p. 215.
3. A verbal revelation would be inadequate to convey the knowledge of God to an intelligence "purely passive" and utterly unfurnished with any à priori ideas or necessary laws of cognition and thought.
Of course it is not denied that important verbal communications relating to the character of God, and the duties we owe to God, were given to the first human pair, more clear and definite, it may be, than any knowledge attained by Socrates and Plato through their dialectic processes, and that these oral revelations were successively repeated and enlarged to the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament church. And furthermore, that some rays of light proceeding from this pure fountain of truth were diffused, and are still lingering among the heathen nations, we have no desire, and no need to deny.