Chapter XI: Man’s Conceptions of Religion (2)

Spinoza asserts plainly that he receives the Bible as an inspired book; in this he perhaps differs from some of our more recent exegetes who examine the Bible as any other literary work of history and morality.

Christians grow up in the truth that the Bible contains the Word of God, and they claim that their teaching has its basis in the Old Testament. But others have argued thus: What do these know of the history of the Hebrews? They do not understand the language of their writings, and they cannot say what caused those sublime teachers of the people, the prophets, to speak on such and such an occasion, in such and such a manner. Being ignorant on all these points it is possible that interpretations of the Old Testament may have led us into error.

The existence of what are now called the laws of nature being unknown in those far-off days, the Hebrews were unable to recognise secondary or mediate causes; the book of Job is an example of this. God intervenes personally on each occasion. Our attention is directed solely to two points: man who suffers, that is, who consents or is in revolt, and God who wills or wills not.

As everything without exception is placed in direct relationship with God in the Old Testament, all is said to emanate from God; the cedars of Lebanon are the cedars of God;[123] men of great stature, the giants, are called in Genesis sons of God; the knowledge of nature and of natural things which Solomon possessed is called the wisdom of God; the discretion of a judge and the gains of a merchant are the gifts of God; Assyria is the scourge of God, and the lightning His arrows. And Spinoza asks: why are the children of Israel called God’s chosen people? Because the Lord, having delivered them out of Pharaoh’s hands, led them into the land of Canaan, where they lived under the laws revealed to Moses, to which the surrounding nations were not subject. “I will be your God, and ye shall be My people,” Jehovah had said by the mouth of Moses. This was the covenant concluded on Mount Sinai between the Lord God and the Jewish nation. These laws, which were at the same time civil and religious, were included under the general term, the Law of the Lord, and the Book containing these precepts was called the Word of God.

According to an ancient tradition, God revealed to Noah seven precepts which corresponded to commandments given generally to all mankind without distinction of race; there was thus perhaps a revelation given at the beginning of time, even before the first and greatest of the prophets, Moses; and this revelation the patriarchs knew. The light which lightens every man born into the world impressed these first precepts on the human heart; to the Jewish race it seemed perhaps improbable that a divine law not promulgated by a human mouth nor delivered in the name of the God of Israel, could be imposed on man; as Moses was permitted to hear God’s voice amongst the lightnings and thunders, the Israelites considered themselves on a higher level than the rest of humanity, and held in less esteem eternal verities which were the possession of all mankind. Moses told them that after his death God would raise up a prophet amongst them on condition that they should keep His Covenant and His Commandments to do them, and he warned them of the consequences of breaking these: “I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish.”

We find the second revelation in the books ascribed to Moses; written in our memory as distinctly as in the Bible; it has so entirely eclipsed the first that the greater number of us do not remember ever to have heard of the seven precepts of Noah.

After the death of Moses, prophets succeeded each other in Israel; all from the first to the last acknowledged that they received the revelation either by symbols or illustrations, or by the word; their eyes saw certain objects and their ears heard the explanation of what they saw. Ezekiel, like Moses, saw God under the appearance of a flaming fire; Daniel saw Him as the “Ancient of Days, whose garment was white as snow”; the disciples of Christ saw the Spirit of God under the form of a dove; the Apostles as tongues of fire; and Saul, at the moment of his conversion, recognised it in a bright light, and these visions were always accompanied by words.

The prophets rise above the level of other men by the intensity of their faith, and by their vivid imagination; but imagination is mobile, and their ecstatic conditions were not permanent; how could they feel assured of being in direct communication with the Lord Himself? They were so lacking in assurance that they often required some palpable sign, thus did Abraham, Moses, Gideon and many others. Each time the sign was granted to them; a fire descending from heaven to consume the offering; a rod changed into a serpent; a healthy hand instantly covered with leprosy; a fleece of wool remaining dry on ground that was wet with dew, and other miraculous signs.

According to Spinoza the gift of prophecy is on a lower level than that of ordinary intellectual knowledge which requires no outward sign of confirmation.

The nature of the revelation depended also upon the temperament of each prophet, on his education and his own personal opinions; the Magi who studied astronomy and astrology, seeing a star in the east, at once went in search of the expected child. But on one point all were agreed, they all said with Moses: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might, and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” And they said with Isaiah: “Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings, cease to do evil, learn to do well, relieve the oppressed.”

OBEDIENCE

A striking feature of Spinoza’s philosophical system was the basis of obedience upon which the whole edifice of a religious life rested; now obedience presupposes the existence of a law.

As the Israelites seemed incapable of appreciating the intrinsic excellence of the precepts delivered to them, Moses enforced their fulfilment, and spoke of God to them as a just and righteous law-giver who would reward those who kept the commandments and punish those who transgressed them. And when this law was given out, amongst thunders and lightnings, the children of Israel acknowledged it with acclaim--though not always fulfilling it--because they were the only people possessing it.

At last the time came when it was possible to say: “The appointed hour has come.” The Jewish nation, for whose sake the Mosaic law had been revealed, was on the point of crumbling to pieces, when Christ appeared proclaiming the universal and divine law. Christ was no prophet in the ordinary acceptation of the word, since neither word nor vision revealed God’s Will to Him, the truth was in Him in all its plenitude, His mind was identical with that of the Father, and Eternal Wisdom took the form of humanity.

Jewish as well as Christian theologians have equally contributed at times to obscure the sense of the Holy Scriptures; they have taught that man’s reason is unsound and can with difficulty penetrate the mysteries of religion; and that the only way, therefore, was to accept the Bible as infallible in all its details. The faithful extended this doctrine of infallibility to every verbal peculiarity and failed to distinguish the eternal principles, always clearly and simply expressed by the prophets, from those vivid illustrations which enabled them to speak, without hindrance, in terms most adapted for arousing the wonder and belief of the ordinary hearer, of matters _per se_ inexpressible, as for instance of the Divine Nature. Spinoza especially blames the theologians for having introduced in their commentaries notions borrowed from Grecian philosophers, which they adapted to the Old and New Testament, clothing them in biblical language; this mixture of divine inspiration and subtle argument more and more disturbed pious souls who went to their Bibles for edification only.

To those capable of understanding them Christ revealed the secrets of the Kingdom of God; they were the higher truths of eternal life, the counsels of perfection; to the multitude He spoke in parables and gave them commandments which were to be obeyed that they might enter the kingdom of heaven. The Apostles spread abroad the teachings of Christ; they preached the love of God with that of our neighbour, not as sufficing in itself, but as a commandment spoken in the name of the Life and Passion of our Saviour. And then each one added to these great truths minor teachings, varying the subjects according as they addressed Jews or Gentiles; many different teachings were thus promulgated, giving rise in the early Church to misunderstandings, gradually leading to disputes and schisms; and after nineteen centuries of study of the subject we still have not arrived at perfect mutual understanding. Spinoza quotes in this connection a Dutch proverb: “Geen ketter; sonder letter.” Without a text, no heresy.

When shall we learn that the revelation of God is not confined to a certain number of books, to a certain number of words? It must of necessity be inscribed elsewhere also, since words are patient of more than one interpretation, books go astray and are lost, paper becomes mildewed and is torn, stones are smashed even in the hands of a prophet.

Spinoza tells us that he read and re-read the Holy Scriptures with the greatest care before commenting on them, and he undertakes to demonstrate to the Christian governments the necessity of reforming the constitutions of the established churches by replacing a phantom Bible by the Bible understood in spirit and in truth.

The scientific portion of the task would not be complicated, since the commandments of God are few in number, in fact they may be reduced to one. “He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him”; and as a proof that they seek Him they must practise justice and charity; these are the foundations of the faith, and they are so clear and so simple, that no commentary thereon is needed, nor are they affected by any of the verbal differences or inaccuracies.

The ecclesiastical authorities thus act sometimes contrary to the divine will when they declare those who are leading a good and virtuous life to be the enemies of God, simply because their opinions are not in exact conformity with the theological definitions put forth by the churches. The civil power ought to be able to judge of the belief of its citizens by the fruits they produce, if their works are good, it may be thought that in the eyes of God their belief is also correct, but personal theological opinions, though in conformity with the decrees permitted by the Church, would not prevail in God’s sight over wrong doing. When governments act in accordance with these views, all is well--individuals, the nation, and the governments.

In order to believe that God’s Word may be found elsewhere, it is necessary to believe that He exists. His existence cannot be known;[124] we can, however, obtain some knowledge of it by certain means of which we can know the reality; they are so real that we cannot imagine any force that can invalidate them; these means or notions are the fundamental axioms inherent in the human mind, and are the bases of all knowledge; it is to these that we owe the power of being able to distinguish good from evil, and this faculty we may regard as the forerunner of the divine revelation. If we once admit the possibility of these first principles--these axioms--becoming obliterated, we should then admit a doubt of their intrinsic truth, which would attack and weaken their immediate conclusion, which is the existence of God; from that time we should possess no element of certainty. This is why it has been said that attacks against reason are more dangerous than attacks against the faith, because they destroy with one blow the sacred edifice and the foundation which bears it.

THE LAW

In a system where law is everything, how does Spinoza understand the action of Providence?

Men are accustomed to call that knowledge divine which surpasses the human understanding, and that event miraculous when the cause is unknown to them; and nothing better demonstrates to them the existence of God, His power and His providence, than those things which appear to them to change the order of nature. We sometimes show our ignorance by attributing things of which we are ignorant to a special interposition of providence. Those who think thus are not in a position to explain what they mean by the order of nature.

This manner of viewing things might well date from the time of the early Hebrews, who wished to prove to those nations who were not Semitic, and who worshipped visible objects, such as the heavenly bodies, that these were subordinate deities, subject to the will of the invisible God, whose miracles on their behalf they related, since they were convinced that the whole of nature contributed to the well-being of the Hebrew people exclusively.

With God the understanding and the will are the same; to know and to will is a single act; to know an object as it is in itself, and to realise it effectively, is a necessity inherent in the Divine perfection; since all truths come inevitably from the Divine intellect, the universal laws of nature are the eternal decrees of God.

If any event takes place in nature not in accordance with these universal laws, then the mind of God has not conceived it; in other words, he who affirms that in a certain case God has acted contrarily to the laws of nature, affirms also that God has acted contrarily to His own Divine nature, which would prove the speaker’s perversity. No event happens that is not by the will and eternal decrees of God, each event conforms to laws eternally necessary and absolutely true. To believe that this could be otherwise would be to admit that God made an imperfect nature, and established laws so incomplete that they required to be retouched each time that they failed to realise the divine plan, a strange conception, and for which there is no necessity. Those who seek and find their supreme happiness in the love of God, and in doing the greatest good, have no wish that nature should obey them; they desire to submit to nature, knowing indubitably, that God governs all things in accordance with general laws which are in agreement with universal life.

From this statement it will be seen that it is no longer a question of resignation--of passive submission; man responds in every part of his being to the supreme law which, as is the case with all men, leads them blindly, and, for the most part, unconsciously towards happiness; and causes, in a great nature, such as Spinoza’s, an unceasing effort to maintain and to raise itself; the passage from excellence to perfection is always accompanied by a feeling of joy, and sadness marks each backward step towards imperfection. The being--Spinoza’s monad--thus typifies perfection, and good, and evil consists in the increase or diminution of the being. The natural love of man for life has been transformed by Spinoza into law; his maxim is well known: Every being tends to preserve its existence.

THE LAW IN THE GOSPEL

The Old and New Testaments are an exposition of a long discipline of obedience, this makes their power, and those who study them without preconceived ideas discover this.

Spinoza distinguishes between the spiritual needs of the majority of men and the minority, and between the religions which suit the one and the other. But all men, without exception, must acquire the religion demanded by all, that is practical religion, which consists in keeping those commandments given us in the sacred books. This obedience serves to weaken passions; in the same proportion as man attains this end, so a light, ever increasing in purity, illumines his intellect, and so much the more does he comprehend that true happiness is the result of virtue. Few men go beyond this, or--without any other guide than their reason--experience that intellectual love of God, inseparable from the true knowledge of God and man; this love, when entirely disinterested, yields a joy which is not the reward of virtue, since it is one with virtue itself.

The divine law was in the world, as St John said, before the coming of Moses or of Christ, but the world as a whole was ignorant of it; reason leads us to it, and reason tells us that it leads to the highest beatitude, and that those who follow it will not need to seek any other.

But there is one thing of which reason cannot tell us; this--that the moral effect of this universal law, which is obeyed, not because it is true, necessary and perfect, but simply because Moses commanded the observance of it, by reason of the covenant made by God, and because Christ commands it in His own name, is the power of leading to this beatitude, which those obtain who strive after the spirit of Christ, perceiving in this law of God, absolute truth. This reason alone could not have taught us, it is not written in the human heart, this we learn in the Bible.

That obedience only to a truth should inevitably produce certain results can hardly be asserted with mathematical certainty, since mathematical results are the effects only of those things which can be deduced from the elements contained in them; but a moral certainty we can feel, and this was the privilege and portion of the prophets; and it was possible, as it was not contrary to reason.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Spinoza belonged to a family of Portuguese Jews settled in Amsterdam. He led an exemplary life; he was poor and apparently content to be so, since he refused help from his friends, which he might have accepted with a clear conscience; what he obtained by polishing spectacle lenses seems to have satisfied him. He was advised to dedicate one of his books to Louis XIV., a munificent patron of literary men, but he did not do so.

_Ethics_--the work to which he owes his fame--in accordance with his express wish, only appeared after his death, and without the name of the author, because, he said, the truth should go forth under no man’s name; he feared also to attach his to a new school of philosophy.

The Rabbis of Amsterdam had long sought to bring Spinoza into a more orthodox path than the one he trod; his idea that the institution of prophets had been a source of weakness rather than of strength to the Hebrew people, threatened to develop into a formal heresy.

The appearance in 1656 of Spinoza’s _Tractatus theologico-politicus_, raised a storm of indignation; it was the only work of importance which he published during his lifetime; it was followed by a sentence of excommunication, read at the gate of the synagogue, and was in these terms:--

“In the name of the Angels and by a decree of the Saints, we anathematise and exorcise Baruch Spinoza, in the presence of the Sacred Books and the six hundred and thirty precepts they contain. Cursed be he by day and night; may the fury of the Lord consume this man, and may all the maledictions written in the Book of the Law light on him; may the Lord destroy him from amongst the tribes of Israel; let no man go near him, nor speak to him, nor write to him, nor show him any compassion.”

How eloquent men can be when they are angry! Spinoza left his native town on that day; he took refuge at the Hague, where he died in 1677, at forty-four years of age.

In reading the pages in which eminent critics have examined Spinoza’s system, one seems to see not the man whose writings are known, but two different men, or rather perhaps several different men; I do not think even the philosopher would have recognised himself in these résumés.

As has been noticed, Spinoza is neither a true Jew nor, apparently, a Christian, since the negation of final causes is as foreign to the spirit of the Old Testament, as his joyous stoicism is to that of the New; some have remembered the words of Novalis: “Spinoza is inebriated with God.” They added that with him the crown of the intellectual love of God was the transport of a soul carried out of itself, but that this transport must have differed from the ecstasies in which so many of the saints of the Christian Church found the supreme delight of the religious life. But amongst Christians what is their conception of the highest beatitude? I see God in His heaven, but my neighbour, where is he? On the one side are the happy, on the other the faulty; we recognise ourselves in each, we see ourselves, we have fellowship with all; painters have so often represented this scene on theological lines, that it is familiar to us; is this really the beatitude we picture to ourselves?

The mental and moral condition of this philosopher lends itself little to analysis; he who has the most carefully studied his views, would be the most diffident in expounding them, having found so many obscure points in them. In any case it is well to remember this circumstance, Spinoza has now been dead more than two hundred years, and the discovery that before speaking it is advisable to know something of the meaning of the words used, dates from yesterday only. Spinoza in his _Tractatus theologico-politicus_, uses constantly the words prophecy, inspiration, revelation, faith, and theology, and the reader who has sacrificed his rest for several nights that he may know what he means by these five words, ends by acknowledging that his devotion has been in vain. Happily, no one knows better than our philosopher the meaning of the word obedience; this helps the reader; he only regrets that the critics have laid little stress on this crucial point.

Since no man’s writings are capable of being clearly understood if he is isolated from those who have written on similar lines--beginning from Novalis (that poetic and charming writer whose true name was Hardenberg), points of comparison have been established between the Dutch philosopher (Spinoza), the ecstatic Saint Theresa and the enthusiastic Saint Francis d’Assisi. Let us now turn to the more sober genius of Aristotle and see if he will succeed in throwing daylight on the obscure thought of Spinoza.

“Infinity attracts,” this word of Aristotle would have sufficed, but the prince of critics gives a further explanation. “Man is face to face with a truth, and the light lighteth every one that cometh into the world; all who see see the same things, and all that man has seen is true.... God works in us not as a workman who tires himself, but as an all-powerful virtue which acts; He moves as an object of love.”[125]

This opinion of Aristotle is shared by Plato, St Thomas Aquinas and St Augustine. A complete unanimity.

When I am sometimes struck by certain truths, dressed in all the brilliance which pure virtues possess, but feeling unable to form a rational whole of these virtues when they are not arranged in an orderly manner, I should often have yielded to discouragement, if I had not read in Bossuet’s _Traité du libre arbitre_ these words: “When we begin to reason, we must first consider this as indubitable, that we may know _with complete certainty_ many things of which we do not understand their corollaries, nor all their results. The first rule of our logic is that we must not abandon truths which we have once known, whatever difficulties may present themselves when we are trying to deal with them; but that we must hold both ends of the chain firmly, although we may not be able to see the middle by which the two ends are linked.”

THE IDEAS OF PLATO

A philosopher said to me: “Since we can know nothing of the beyond, let us make a virtue of necessity, and learn exactly what there is on our side of the veil.” The advice is excellent. Astronomy teaches us that perfect order reigns in the sphere studied by that science. The world may be the result of certain chemical combinations which have met by chance; but if chance has introduced order in these chemical combinations, it might as easily derange them and replace them by disorder; yet the astronomers have not succeeded in discovering the least indication of disorder in their domain; that we know positively.

It is generally admitted that the world has had a beginning; is it reason or the absence of reason that we should expect to find at the origin of the world? Does it proceed so regularly in obedience to laws? Sages have said, “Laws govern matter, forces, movements, all things that _are_, but might not have been, just as the world is or exists, but might not have been.”

Since Darwin wrote, much discussion has taken place with regard to the origin of species, no one has thought of asking whether the Greek philosophers had anything to say on the subject. If, for instance, it had been discovered that the law of certain sidereal phenomena compelled a circular or elliptical movement, or any other geometrical form, then this law, in itself, would be a geometrical idea; that could exist, although the phenomenon in which it was realised, might disappear with the world itself.

According to Kepler, geometry has given forms for all creation, and Kepler has also said that God governs all things in conformity with Himself; in that case geometry would be anterior to the world and co-eternal with God, and if these geometrical forms which are perfect have been thought out by a perfect intelligence, is it not the same with all the component parts of the vegetable and animal kingdoms? Would a horse, or whatever the ancestor of a horse may be, have been produced spontaneously by nature? Must there not have been a type of some kind, which was realised in all horses, multiplying and varying for every new species? And in the same manner also for all trees and plants. The first types of these things existed before man, that other part of nature, and before all that man calls the good, the beautiful. Were not all these things thought and willed by a mind capable of thinking and willing?

Thus Plato reasons.

It is received in theology as in philosophy that all things have their ideal in God; matter itself has its conception and _raison d’être_ in God; St Thomas Aquinas was able to say with no trace of pantheism, “God is eminently all things.”

EPISODIAL

Two English travellers, Gatchet and Hall, finding themselves once amongst the Klamaths, a tribe of Red Indians, asked them concerning their beliefs; these Indians worshipped a supreme being who made the world with its plants, animals and men, whom they called “The most Ancient,” “The Ancient One on high.” The travellers then asked how He had created the world, whether by means of tools or instruments; they replied, “By thinking and willing.” This wonderful answer contains the germ of the thought which, on Greek soil, became the _Logos_, the act of thinking and speaking, the unique act which in the Creator means willing and producing. This answer is an echo, and by no means a feeble one, of the celebrated saying: “God is the Living One who is, in whom is the Idea of Good” (Timaeus). Plato affirms that the world and all that it contains has been made in the eternal pattern of the Idea of Good, and this Idea of Good is not separable from the Creator.

Again perfect unanimity, extending this time to the Red Indians.

It might be thought that an electric current ran round the world; certain psychical phenomena cannot otherwise be explained.

AN EXCURSION INTO A COUNTRY LITTLE KNOWN

If there are proofs of the existence of God, they should be within reach of all the world, both the learned and the ignorant, since God is no more the God of a certain class of person than He is of a certain nation.

In some modern books on philosophy we see this phrase, “The influence of the Infinite on souls,” though we may not pay much attention to it, we perhaps have the feeling that the infinite does not exercise much influence on us; but it does not allude to ourselves, it refers to our primitive ancestors, who sought to discover what there could be behind all they saw and heard; common sense, with its uncertain but powerful instincts directed primitive man towards an invisible magnet. This is not our common sense, that is, not as we should define it, self-evident principles, spontaneous judgments, which direct our acts; but common sense as Aristotle would understand the word; the faculty of feeling and perceiving, where all our sensations are united, because all our external senses converge thither; this common sense is so truly a sense, that it has its own central organ, which is what we call heart. But this influence of the invisible--another name for the infinite--had at first no connection with religion; it merely deposited a germ in the soul, without which no religious tendency could make itself felt; and under the impulse of this power--this divine sense which Aristotle calls the attraction of the desirable and the intelligible--the passing from the finite to the infinite--the most natural and the most necessary act of the moral life--is accomplished by a simple flight or upward movement of the human spirit.

Plato explains this mental phenomenon: “There is in the depth of our soul a point which is the root of the soul and which forms a connecting link between God and the soul; the soul apprehends because God has touched it.”

Perceiving in itself and all around it traces of goodness, beauty, justice, love, and joy; feeling in itself and around it, life and its forces; it is only necessary for the soul to send its ideas beyond the limits of its own confined being, with its imperfect capabilities and joys, and it will approach God.

Kepler, when discovering the laws governing the planetary system, found geometry in the sky; since then, the learned have found mathematics in all the branches of physics. They have seen numbers and geometrical figures in light and colour, in sound and in music under its sensible form. Leibnitz, one of the world’s greatest mathematicians, who discovered the infinitesimal calculus, saw that in this way one could pass from finite grandeur to mathematical laws and forms such as belong eternally to God--independent of all dimensions.

Between the spontaneous flight of the soul with spreading wings, going from finite facts to infinite, and the highest mathematics, which have existed for about two hundred years only, the analogy is complete; the learned demonstrations of the existence of God given by all true philosophers are results which correspond with those obtained by the ordinary methods used by all men. Thus the identity of the fundamental process of a reasonable life with that of the geometrical process, which both demonstrate the existence of God, is established. The metaphysical certainty of the first process equals the geometrical certainty of the second. For this reason Leibnitz could say, “There are geometry, metaphysics, harmony, and morality everywhere.”

I have well said that the human Ego used science and philosophy, before the appearance of philosophers, to attest that the true path leading to God is that natural movement of the soul described by the Hindoo poets--during a time of great ignorance--in the Vedic hymns. This movement is the universal act of prayer.

For the philosopher, the proof of the existence of God may appear to rest on a syllogism; for the historian it rests on the complete evolution of the human mind.

Is it necessary still to ask how the idea of a super-sensible principle penetrated into the human mind, and how it is diffused over the world? The reply to this question is in the Veda, where the hymns show methodically, under an apparent confusion, what we have been able to glean here and there from the mouth of sages of all times. This idea revealed itself to man at first in external nature; then man discovered it in his own personal and phenomenal self, the abridgment of humanity in its entirety with its living and its dead. “At last the consciousness of self arose from out the clouds of psychological mythology, and became the consciousness of the Infinite or the Divine within us. The individual self found itself again in the Divine Self. Socrates knew it, but he called it _Daimonion_, the indwelling God. The early Christian philosophers called it the _Holy Ghost_, a name which received many interpretations and misinterpretations in different schools of theology, but which ought to become again what it was meant for in the beginning, the spirit which unites all that is holy within man, with the Holy of Holies, or the Infinite.”[126] This may be called natural religion, since it was revealed by nature, and the truth of this revelation is demonstrated mathematically.

All that I have just said has been epitomised in a few lines by a thinker of our century, Bordas-Desmoulins: “Without mathematics it would be impossible to penetrate to the depths of philosophy; without philosophy it would be impossible to arrive at the foundations of mathematics; without the two we could penetrate nothing.”

Aristotle quotes these words of Anaxagoras, who lived one hundred and fifty years before him: “The man who recognised in nature an intelligence which is the cause of the arrangement and order of the universe has alone kept his reason in the midst of the follies of his predecessors.”

There has been no break in the continuity of the first impression experienced by man at the sight of lightning, and God whom each nation named after its own way, and Him whom the Athenians worshipped without knowing, whom the Apostle declared to them.

I will here repeat the words of Aristotle, which must never be effaced from our memories: “Man is face to face with the light that lighteth every one that cometh into the world.” It was this that caused the same philosopher to use those other surprising words, so difficult to grasp when reading them for the first time in a book: “All who see see the same things, and all that a man has seen is true.”

ANTHROPOMORPHISM

Man at the beginning, knowing of two kinds of agents only, both tangible, themselves and the beasts, conceived the idea that the phenomena of nature were set in motion by invisible agents of some kind, their imagination followed its natural bent in picturing these agents under one or the other of the two aspects familiar to them, and sometimes under the two united; since these unknown powers--for instance amongst the Egyptians--often assumed the shape of creatures half man and half fish, or bird, or quadruped. But with the progress of civilisation these representations of divinities were modified. Man having obtained glimpses of the difference between the phenomenal and the non-phenomenal, was led to suspect the existence of an author for the one and the other; and this author or agent was perceived by him anthropomorphically, that is to say, arrayed with a human personality, but endowed with all the qualities of goodness and beauty which distinguish the highest and noblest of men. We know that anthropomorphism in the abstract is wrong, yet without it man could never have found the way of approach to this unknown author of all created things, and the desire to know him nearer was irresistible.

In one sense we are less advanced than our primitive ancestors. Attracted on the one hand by the occult properties of the magnet, and impelled by sensation, they advanced in all simplicity. At a later date they desired to have those things explained to them which they did not understand; men undertook this duty, greater distances grew up between them, and the sacred code was the result.

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.