CHAPTER VII
THE TRADITION OF THE HUMAN RACE.
“Tradition reveals the past to us, and consequently it reveals to us also the future. It is the tie which binds the past, the present, and the future together, and is the science of them all. If we possessed the memory of mankind, as we do that of our personal existence, we should know all. But if we have not the memory of mankind, does not mankind possess it? Is mankind without memory, without tradition?... There is no nation which does not exist through tradition, not only historical traditions relative to its earthly existence, but through religious traditions relative to its eternal destiny. To despise this treasure, what is it but to despise life, and that which constitutes its connection, its unity, its light, as we have just seen?... When God spoke to men His Word passed into time ... Happily tradition seized upon it as soon as it left the threshold of eternity; and tradition is neither an ear, nor a mouth, nor an isolated memory, but the ear, the mouth, and the memory of generations united together by tradition itself, and imparting to it an existence superior to the caprices and weakness of individuals. Nevertheless, God would not trust to oral tradition alone ... Symbolical tradition was to add itself to oral tradition by sustaining and confirming it ... The five terms constituting the mystery of good and evil: the existence of God, the creation of the world and of man by God, the fall of man, his restoration by a great act of divine mercy, and, lastly, the final judgment of mankind ... and that which oral tradition declared, symbolical tradition should repeat at all times and in all places, in order that the obscured or deceived memory of man might be brought back again to truth by an external, a public, an universal, all-powerful spectacle. [Lacordaire is speaking principally with reference to sacrifice and the sacrifice of Mount Calvary.] ... Each time that oral tradition underwent a movement of renovation by the breath of God, symbolical tradition felt the effects of it. The sacrifice of Abel marks the era of patriarchal tradition; the sacrifice of Abraham marks the era of Hebrew tradition; the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the final and consummating sacrifice, marks the era of Christian tradition.... Such is the nature of tradition, and such its history. Tradition is the connection of the present with the past, of the past with the future; it is the principle of identity and continuity which forms persons, families, nations, and mankind. It flows in the human race by three great streams which are clearly perceptible—the Christian, the Hebrew, and the patriarchal or primitive; in all these three it is oral and symbolical, and whether as oral or symbolical it speaks of God, the creation, the fall, reparation and judgment.... Without occupying ourselves with the question as to whether Scripture was a gift from above or an invention of men, we see that there exists two kinds of it—human and sacred scripture. I understand by human scripture, that which is considered by men as the expression of the ideas of a man; I understand by sacred scripture that which is venerated by nations as containing something more than the ideas of a man.... There are in the world an innumerable quantity of books, nevertheless there are but six of them which have been venerated by nations as sacred. These are the ‘Kings’ of China, the Vedas of India, the Zend-Avesta of the Persians, the Koran of the Arabs, the Law of the Jews, and the Gospel. And at first sight I am struck with this rarity of sacred writings. So many legislators have founded cities, so many men of genius have governed the human understanding, and yet all these legislators, all these men of genius, have not been able to cause the existence of more than six sacred books upon earth!... Every sacred book is a traditional book, it was venerated before it existed, it existed before it appeared. The Koran, which is the last of the sacred writings in the order of time, offers to us a proof of this worthy of our thoughtful attention. Without doubt, Mahommed relied upon pretended revelations; however, it is clear to all those who read the Koran, that the Abrahamic tradition was the true source of its power.... The same traditional character shines upon each page of the Christian and Hebrew books; we find it also in the Zend-Avesta, the Vedas, and the Kings of the Chinese. Tradition is everywhere the mother of religion; it precedes and engenders sacred books, as language precedes and engenders scripture; its existence is rendered immovable in the sacred books ... a sacred book is a religious tradition which has had strength enough to sign its name.... The sacred writings are, then, traditional; it is their first character. I add that they are constituent, that is to say, they possess a marvellous power for giving vitality and duration to empires. Strange to say, the most magnificent books of philosophers have not been able to found, I do not say a people, but a small philosophical society; and the sacred writings, without exception, have founded very great and lasting nations. Thus the Kings founded China, the Vedas India, &c... Look at Plato ... how is it that Plato has not been able to constitute, I do not say a nation, but simply a permanent school? How is it that communities totter when thinkers meddle with them, and that the precise moment of their fall is that when men announce to them that mind is emancipated, that the old forms which bound together human activity are broken, that the altar is undermined and reason is all-powerful? Philosophers! if you speak the truth, how is it that the moment when all the elements of society become more refined and develop themselves, is the moment of its dissolution?”—From Père Lacordaire’s “Conferences.” Conf. 9 and 10. (Tran. H. Langdon; Richardson, 1852.)
I should also wish M. Auguste Nicolas’ “Etudes Philosophiques sur le Christianisme”—particularly lib. I. chap. v., “Necessite d’une revelation Primitive;” and lib. II. chap. iv., “Traditions universelles”—to be read in connection with the following chapter. I did not become acquainted with M. Nicolas until after the chapter was concluded. I have, however, fulfilled my obligations in the above extract from L’Abbe Lacordaire, which lies more au fond of my view than the chapters referred to in M. Nicolas. I also wish to direct attention to a remarkable article in the Home and Foreign Review, Jan. 1864, entitled “Classical Myths in relation to the Antiquity of Man,” signed F. A. P.
Tradition, in the sense in which we have just seen it used by Lacordaire, in what we may call its widest signification, is not limited to oral tradition, but may be termed the connection of evidence which establishes the unity of the human race; and, with this evidence, establishes the identity and continuity of its belief, laws, institutions, customs, and manners (Manners, vide Goguet’s “Origin of Laws,” i. 327–329). The more closely the tradition is investigated, the more thoroughly will it be found to attest a common origin, and the more fully will its conformity with the scriptural narrative be made apparent.
Now, although in all ages there have been men of great intellect who have held to tradition, it may be stated as one of those truths, qui saute aux yeux, and which will not be gainsaid, that the human intellect has been throughout opposed to tradition, has been its most constant adversary, equally when it was the tradition of a corrupt polytheism, as when it was the tradition of uncontested truth; and so active has been this antagonism, that the marvel is that anything of primitive tradition should have remained.
Hence arose the divergence between religion and philosophy—a divergence which, as it seems to me, is inexplicable from the point of view of those who believe that, in the centuries which preceded the coming of our Lord,[78] religion simply was not, had ceased to be; unless we suppose that a tradition of the antagonism had survived, which would still partially disclose how it came about that when religion had ceased to be (pro argumento), or had become corrupt, philosophy, which then (ex hypothesi) alone soared above the intellect of the crowd, did not, and could not become a religion to them, infra, pp. [142], [145], [146].
And the history of this antagonism seems to be, that the human intellect has ever had, and now more confidently than ever, the aim and ambition to substitute something better than the revelation of primitive tradition, and the experiences of the human race.
It is quite conceivable that human life and human institutions might have been arranged upon some scheme different from that of the divine appointment; and although we may believe that any such scheme would result in ultimate confusion and the final extinction of the human race, it is still theoretically possible that the experiment might have been made.[79]
Here comes in, with its full significance, the great saying of Lacordaire’s—“Order I compare to a pyramid reaching from heaven to earth. Men cannot overthrow its base, because the finger of God rests upon its apex.”