Out of what necessity, to justify what feeling, does the Christian require a Triune God, the Hindu many Gods, and the Buddhist no God but Law? Why does each reject the conception of the other? It is not what code is the true code of life, the Jewish code, the Christian, the Buddhist, but why are these Codes at all?
Why had the Jews their ruthless code? Why have the Christians and Buddhists adopted codes they cannot act up to? Why have the Hindus in "caste" the most elaborate codes we know.
Why did the Jews have no hereafter at all, the Mahommedans a sensual paradise, the Greeks the Shades, the Brahmins and Buddhists a transmigration of souls leading to Nirvana? These are very different ideas. What necessities do they serve? And so with the many facets of religions. Faiths do not explain man, perhaps man can explain his faiths. That is my new standpoint from which I shall see.
CHAPTER XIII.
CREED AND INSTINCT.
I had six years of that life in India. I passed six years living in a solitary bungalow miles away from any other European, meeting them but occasionally, six years with practically no intercourse at all with the natives. For the jungle people who lived in the hills were few, and savage, and shy; and besides these, there were only a few Hindu or Mahommedan shop-keepers in the main bazaar, and the great crowd of coolie-folk who cultivate the estates. It was not a life in which it was possible to learn much of any people. Solitary planters living unnatural lives in isolated bungalows do not usually offer much of interest to an observer. The wild tribes were mere savages. The coolies came in gangs and worked for a few months and went home. It was a life of almost complete solitude, a life where for days and weeks perhaps, except for a few orders in the native tongues to headmen of gangs, or a short discussion about the work, no word was spoken. It was, may be, a time for reflection and thought, for reading and meditation, for such a search as was made. But it was no life for observation, for collection of facts, for seeing and understanding. Even had one tried to know the coolies or the jungle people, it had been impossible; for they too have the inaccessability of the Indian, and are not to be approached too near.
But after these six years there came a change. Of the reasons, the methods of that change there is no necessity to write. It was a great change. From a country of mountains to a great plain, from forests to vast open spaces, widely cultivated; from a life of stagnation to a life full of the excitement of war and danger, from a life of books and dreams to a life of acts almost without books; from a people sulky and savage and unapproachable to a nation of the widest hospitality, where caste was unknown, where the women were free, a people with whom intimacy was not only easy but very pleasant; and, finally, from the life of a private person pursuing private ends to the working life of an official, where responsibility was piled on responsibility, and the necessity of knowing the language and the people was obvious if they were to be discharged even decently. Yet still it was a life of solitude. True, in the cold weather there were columns and expeditions made with troops, when there was pleasant companionship of my own people. But there were great stretches of solitude, months and months together, with no Englishman, and especially no Englishwoman, near. For four years I saw never an English girl or woman. And there were no books. What few I had were burnt one night with all my possessions, and thereafter I had hardly any. They were years of hardship, of scanty lodging, little better than the natives, ill-cooked, unvaried food, a life that had in it none of the delights of civilisation. And yet I can look back to it with pleasure. For there were always the people to talk to, the people to study, to try and understand, their religion to observe and try to understand.
I have written in "The Soul of a People" about that religion, of the things I learned about it, of what it taught me. I tried to understand it not from without but from within, to see it as they saw it, not to criticise but to believe. If I am to credit my reviewers I have done this, for the thoughts in the book are all considered to be my own also.