Pitiable spectacle of weakness and folly, is it capable of any explanation which can redeem man from the imputation of unreason? Is Wisdom even here justified of her children by some deeper law of being?
The theologian explains it as the unrest of the soul penned in its house of clay; the physiologist attributes it to the unceasing effort of organic functions to adapt themselves to ever varying external conditions. They are both right, for the theologian, were his words translated into the language of science, refers to the effort to adapt condition to function, which is the peculiar faculty of intelligence, and which alone renders man unable to accept the comfort of merely animal existence, an inability which he need never expect to outlive, for it will increase in exact proportion to his mental development. Action, not rest, as I have elsewhere said, must be his ideal of life.
In even his lowest levels man experiences this dissatisfaction. It may there be confined to a pain he would be free from, or a pleasure he dreams of. Always the future charms him, and as advancing years increase the number of his disappointments and bring with them the pains of decrepitude, he also recurs to the past, when youth was his, and the world was bright and gay. Thus it comes that most nations speak of some earlier period of their history as one characterized by purer public virtues than the present, one when the fires of patriotism burned brighter and social harmony was more conspicuous. In rude stages of society this fancy receives real credit and ranks as a veritable record of the past, forming a Golden Age or Saturnian Era. Turned in the kaleidoscope of the mythus, it assumes yet more gorgeous hues, and becomes a state of pure felicity, an Eden or a Paradise, wherein man dwelt in joy, and from which he wandered or was driven in the old days.
It is almost needless to quote examples to show the wide distribution of this myth. The first pages of the Vendidad describe the reign of Yima in “the garden of delight,” where “there was no cold wind nor violent heat, no disease and no death.” The northern Buddhist tells of “the land of joy,” Sukhavati, in the far west, where ruled Amitabha, “infinite Light.”[175-1] The Edda wistfully recalls the pleasant days of good King Gudmund who once held sway in Odainsakr, where death came not.[175-2] Persian story has glad reminiscences of the seven hundred years that Jemschid sat on the throne of Iran, when peace and plenty were in the land.
The garden “eastward in Eden” of the Pentateuch, the land of Tulan or Tlapallan in Aztec myth, the islands of the Hesperides, the rose garden of Feridun, and a score of other legends attest with what strong yearning man seeks in the past the picture of that perfect felicity which the present never yields.
Nor can he be persuaded that the golden age has gone, no more to return. In all conditions of progress, and especially where the load of the present was the most wearying, has he counted on a restoration to that past felicity. The paradise lost is to be regained. How it is to be done the sages are not agreed. But they of old were unanimous that some divinity must lend his aid, that some god-sent guide is needed to rescue man from the slough of wretchedness in which he hopelessly struggles.
Therefore in the new world the red men looked for the ruler who had governed their happy forefathers in the golden age, and who had not died but withdrawn mysteriously from view, to return to them, protect them, and insure them long bliss and ease. The ancient Persians expected as much from the coming of Craoshanç; the Thibetan Buddhists look to the advent of a Buddha 5000 years after Sakyamuni, one whose fortunate names are Maîtrêya, the Loving one, and Adjita, the Unconquerable;[176-1] and even the practical Roman, as we learn from Virgil, was not a stranger to this dream. Very many nations felt it quite as strongly as the Israelites, who from early time awaited a mighty king, the Messiah, the Anointed, of whom the Targums say: “In his days shall peace be multiplied;” “He shall execute the judgment of truth and justice on the earth;” “He shall rule over all kingdoms.”
The early forms of this conception, such as here referred to, looked forward to an earthly kingdom, identified with that of the past when this was vigorous in the national mythology. Material success and the utmost physical comfort were to characterize it. It was usually to be a national apotheosis, and was not generally supposed to include the human race, though traces of this wider view might easily be quoted from Avestan, Roman, and Israelitic sources. Those who were to enjoy it were not the dead, but those who shall be living.
As the myth grew, it coalesced with that of the Epochs of Nature, and assumed grander proportions. The deliverer was to come at the close of this epoch, at the end of the world; he was to embrace the whole human kind in his kingdom; even those who died before his coming, if they had obeyed his mandates, should rise to join the happy throng; instead of a mere earthly king, he should be a supernatural visitant, even God himself; and instead of temporal pleasures only, others of a spiritual character were to be conferred. There are reasons to believe that even in this developed form the myth was familiar to the most enlightened worshippers of ancient Egypt; but it was not till some time after the doctrines of Christianity had been cast into mythical moulds by the oriental fancy, that it was introduced in its completed form to modern thought. Although expressly repudiated by Jesus of Nazareth himself, and applied in maxim and parable as a universal symbol of intelligence to the religious growth of the individual and race, his followers reverted to the coarser and literal meaning, and ever since teach to a greater or less extent the chiliastic or millennial dogma, often mathematically computing, in direct defiance of his words, the exact date that event is to be expected.
If we ask the psychological construction of this myth, and the ever present conditions of man’s life which have rendered him always ready to create it and loath to renounce it, we trace the former distinctly to his sense of the purposive nature of the laws of thought, and the latter to the wide difference between desire and fulfilment. His intellectual nature is framed to accord with laws which are ever present but are not authoritative; they admonish but they do not coerce; that is done surely though oft remotely by the consequences of their violation. At first, unaware of the true character of these laws, he fancies that if he were altogether comfortable physically, his every wish would be gratified. Slowly it dawns upon him that no material gratification can supply an intellectual craving; that this is the real want which haunts him; and that its only satisfaction is to think rightly, to learn the truth. Then he sees that the millennial kingdom is “not of this world;” that heaven and earth may pass away, but that such truth as he seeks cannot pass away; and that his first and only care should be as a faithful and wise servant to learn and revere it.