Part 7 (2/2)

Instead of beginning with ideas of G.o.d, to find man I ought to have gone first to man, to see how arise the ideas of the First Cause. Instead of examining codes of conduct as supernaturally given and impossible, I ought to have gone to man and tried to discover how he came to frame and to uphold these codes. And so also with heaven and h.e.l.l, man has but imagined them to suit his needs: and if so, what needs? I have tried all the creeds to find an explanation of man, and there is none. I begin now with man to find an explanation of the creeds. Man and his necessities are the eternal truth, and all his religions are but framed by himself to minister to his needs. This is the theory on which to work and try for results.

We have an authority for such a method in science, for she proceeds not from the unknown to the known, but from the observed to the imagined.

Thus has she imagined the unimaginable ether to explain certain phenomena and to act as a working theory to proceed on. Scientific men did not invent ether and the laws of ether first, and so descend to light and electricity. They felt the light and heat, and gradually worked inwards and upwards.

So perhaps has man felt certain needs, certain emotions and certain impulses, and has imagined his First Cause, his Law, his codes, his religious theories, one and all, to explain his needs and help himself.

The whole series of questions becomes altered.

It is no longer which is true, the Christian Triune G.o.d, the Hindu million of G.o.ds, the Mahommedan one G.o.d, the Buddhist Law? but from what facts did these arise, and why do they persist to-day?

Out of what necessity, to justify what feeling, does the Christian require a Triune G.o.d, the Hindu many G.o.ds, and the Buddhist no G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ces, 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 companions.h.i.+p 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 hards.h.i.+p, 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.

That may not be so, and yet I may have learnt much that I could only have learnt by adopting the att.i.tude I did. It is possible to understand if not always to accept, and out of understanding to reach something needful. A critic can never understand; he destroys but does not create.

So I learnt many things. I learnt among others these.

That the religion of the Burman is a religion of his heart, never of his head. It is spontaneous, as much as the forest on the hillside. He has in his heart many instincts, that have come there who knows how, and out of these he has made his faith. What that faith is I have told in my first book. It is not pure Buddhism. But because Buddhism has come nearest to what his heart tells him is true, because its tenets appeal to him as do none others, because they explain the facts he feels, therefore he professes the faith of the Buddha and calls himself a Buddhist. That is what I learnt to be sure of. And what I heard from others, what I read in many books I learned absolutely to disbelieve. I was told, for instance, that a Burman villager far away in the hills thought he could remember his former lives _because_ the doctrine of the transmigration of souls had been introduced by Buddhist monks. But I, looking into his heart, was sure that the villager was a Buddhist because the Buddhist doctrine of transmigration resembled the instinct and knowledge of his own soul. It is not the same. The Buddhist faith recognises no ego. The Burman does. But in some sort or other he could fit the imported theory to his facts, and he therefore was a Buddhist.

Communities of Christians and Mahommedans, Jews and Hindus, have lived among the Burmans for hundreds of years; there have been no converts to any of these faiths. Burma now is full of Christian missions and there are converts--a few--but never, I believe, pure Burmans; they have always some other blood in their veins, usually Mahommedan. And why?

Because Buddhism accords with the instincts of the Burman and no other faiths do.

Yet pure Buddhism knows no prayer, and the Burman prays. Why? Ah! again it is the instinct of the heart. He wants to pray, and pray he will, let his adopted faith say what it will.

But on the whole the beliefs of his heart are nearer akin to the theories of Buddhism than the theories of any other faith, and therefore he is a Buddhist. That was one thing I learnt, that religious systems are one thing and a man's religion another. The former proceeds from the latter and never the reverse, and men profess creeds because the creeds agree more or less with their religious feelings; they do not have religious feelings because they have adopted a creed, whatever that creed may be.

I had at last come down from creeds, which are theories, to religions, which are feelings and instincts; I had left books, which are of the intellect, and come to the hearts of men.

From these facts was born a large distrust. I had learnt what the Burman's faith was. I learnt that his beliefs came from his heart, were innate, that they agreed only partially with his creed. I found that so much stronger were they that where possible the observance of the faith had been altered to suit him, that where the rigidity of the creed forbade, he simply put the creed aside--as with prayer. I found also that to begin with the theory of Buddhism and reason down landed me nowhere, but to begin with the Burman and reason up explained everything that at first I could not understand.

Clearly the way to arrive at things was to begin with facts. What were the Burman's instincts, not only as referred to religion; but generally?

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