Part 9 (1/2)
What is the explanation of this?
Well, Christians when presented with these facts have two answers. One is that these men are all shams--an impossible explanation. The other is a mournful shake of the head, and the statement that such a connection ought not to be; religion should always purify a man. ”Should” and ”ought!” What answers are these? Who can tell what ”should” and what ”ought” to happen? The question is what _does_ happen? And all history tells us that there is nothing so deplorable, nothing that results in such certain catastrophe, nothing that ends by so outraging all our better feelings, as the bringing of religion into affairs. Let us recall at random the greatest abominations we can remember. The Thirty Years'
War, the Dragonnades, St. Bartholomew, the Witch Trials, the fires of Smithfield, the persecution of the Catholic priests in Elizabeth's time, the Irish Penal Laws. All these were done by religious people in the name of religion. No faith is free from the stain. Can anyone possibly say that the men responsible for these were shams? Was Cortez a sham, was Cromwell, were all the Catholics in France shams? Were the Crusaders, who celebrated the victory that gave back the city of the Prince of Peace to His believers by an indiscriminate ma.s.sacre, shams?
Did not the German Emperor in one breath tell his army that their model was Christ, and then in the next to show no quarter in China? Who were the most ruthless suppressers of the Mutiny? Did not blood-thirstiness and religion go together? Is the Boer religion sham? Yet they lie and rob as well as any other man, or better. Is it not a maxim that a fanatic in any religion is simply blind, not only to his own code, but to all morality? Does not the religious press of all countries furnish examples of the deplorable lengths to which religion, unrestrained by worldly common sense and worldly decency and honour, will go? I do not wish to press the point; it is a very unpleasant one. No one who honours religion can touch it without sorrow; no one who is trying clearly to see what religions are can overlook it. Religion requires to be tempered with common sense, with worldly moderation and restraint; taken by itself it is simply a calamity. But if religion has its failures, has it not its successes? Have not great and beautiful things been done in its name? Are not almost all the great heroisms outcomes of religion?
Yes, that is true, too. If religion has much to be ashamed of it has very much to be proud of. In its name has been done much of which we are proud. No one will deny that. More than enough to set off the evil?
Well, that is hardly what I am seeking. I am trying to find out what is the effect of religion--or, rather, of an excess of religion--when imported into life. Is the influence all for good? I think in face of history we cannot say that. Has it been all for evil? That answer is also impossible. Then what effect has it had? And I think the reply is this.
When religion (any religion, for it is as true of the East as the West) is brought out or into daily life and used as a guide or a weapon in the world it has no effect either for good or evil. Its effect is simply in strengthening the heart, in blinding the eyes, in deafening the ears. It is an intensive force, an intoxicant. It doubles or trebles a man's powers. It is an impulsive force sending him headlong down the path of emotion, whether that path lead to glory or to infamy. It is a tremendous stimulant, that is all. It overwhelms the reason in a wave of feeling; and therefore all men rightly distrust it, and the tendency grows daily stronger to keep it away from ”affairs.” For the people who are most apt to bring religious motives into daily use are not the clearest and the steadiest; they are the more emotional, the least self-controlled, those who are fondest of ”sensation.” And the want of self-control, the thirst for emotion, when it pa.s.ses a certain point is, we know, always allied to immorality, is very frequently a form of incipient insanity, and not seldom results in crime.
It is not probable any believer will think the above true of his own faith, but he will do so of every other. If you are an European, think of Mahommedanism, of some forms of Hinduism, of the Boxers, who are a religious sect. You will admit it to be true of them certainly, as they will of you. And to come nearer, if you are a Catholic, you will see how true it is of Protestantism; if you are a Protestant, of Catholicism.
And that is enough. Each believer must and will defend his own faith; that is the exception, the one absolute Truth. So we will suppose this chapter to refer only to others, the false faiths. Everyone will admit it to be true of them.
It must not be forgotten that this chapter is not of the general effect or the ordinary results of religion. It applies only to the excess when brought into public or business life. Do not let us have any mistake. Of the ordinary effect of religion in an ordinary person there is here no word at all. The general effect of religion on private natural life is quite another subject, a very different subject indeed. Therefore let us have no misunderstanding.
CHAPTER XVI.
STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS.
Has, then, a force, or a teaching that is capable of excess, no use?
If you look back at the histories of peoples, at the histories of their great wars, their movements, their enthusiasms, you will find that on one side or another, usually on both, religion has been invoked to their aid. For one side or for both the enthusiasm has been declared to be a religious enthusiasm, the war a religious war, the awakening of thought a religious awakening. The G.o.ds fought for the Greeks before Troy as the saints did for the Spaniards against the Huns, as the Boers expected the Almighty to fight in South Africa to-day. The intellectual revolt of the Teuton against the mental leading-strings of the Latins became a conflict of religion, as did the political conflict of the Puritans against the Stuart Kings. It has been religion always, if possible, that has been called on to lend strength and enthusiasm to the fighters to attempt forlorn hopes, to carry out far-reaching reforms, to dare everything for the end.
There is one great exception.
In the conflict that broke out in France at the end of the last century, that storm which swept before it the breakwaters of a world and changed mediaeval Europe into that of to-day, religion was not the motive power.
Those six hundred men of Ma.r.s.eilles ”who knew how to die” were sustained by no religious belief. Those armies which affronted the world in arms had no celestial champions in their ranks. Those iconoclasts, who broke down the barriers that made the good things of the world a forbidden city to all but a caste, had no religious doctrine to work by.
Indeed, it may be said that it was quite the reverse, that the war of the Revolution was against religion; but I doubt if that is quite the truth. That the war was against the priests is in great measure true, but it was because of their support to the n.o.bles, because of their connection with worldly abuses, because of their irreligion, that they were attacked. Religion, too, suffered, it is true, but only incidentally and for a time. And anyhow, you cannot get force out of a negation. But however this may be, the point as far as I am now concerned is not material; for all I want here to a.s.sert is that the enthusiasm which acted as a breath of life to the half-dead millions of France was not a religious enthusiasm. It never even a.s.sumed at any time a religious basis. It was not an enthusiasm of G.o.d, but of Humanity, and the war cry was ”Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” It was a revolt of the bond against the gaoler, of the spoiled against the ravishers; it was the a.s.sertion of the absolute equality and liberty of man.
Looking back at that turmoil now from the security of a hundred years it is easy to scorn these enthusiasts. We can point to their excesses, to the horrible crimes that were committed, and ask where was Liberty then; to their wars, and ask in vain for the Fraternity; to their proscription of whole cla.s.ses made in the name of Equality. The excesses are so black, so prominent, that it is even possible sometimes to forget the great vitalising and regenerating effect of that enthusiasm.
It is easy, too, now that all is past, to criticise the very war cry itself. Liberty, we say! Yes, liberty is good--in moderation and according to circ.u.mstances. All liberty is not good. Children must be under government, they cannot be quite free. They have to be directed in the right way. And peoples, too, and cla.s.ses who have fallen behind in the race, who are unable to live up to the higher standards of greater nations, they cannot be free. Then the citizen of a great nation must in many matters resign his liberty for better things. Liberty is good, in moderation, and so are Equality and Fraternity, but they are not absolute truths. To cry them aloud, as did the Revolutionists of France, to insist upon them in season and out of season, is to fall into an error almost as great as their opponents'. We have little doubt now that in every well-ordered state there must be inequality, submission to masters as well as freedom, and that there are many people it is quite undesirable to fraternise with. Truth lies in the mean.
And yet consider, does truth always lie in the mean? There were the peasants of France ground into the very earth, denied any sort of equality with the n.o.bles, any sort of liberty at all, hopelessly unable to fraternise with anyone. To breathe into them the breath of life, to rouse them from their deadly lethargy to a furious enthusiasm, to fill their hearts so full that they would go forward and never cease till they had won, that was the eminent necessity. The difficulties were so immense, the arms of the people so weak, the chains so rivetted into their souls that only from a furious and uncontrollable impulse could any help be obtained. If the philosopher had gone to these dry bones of men, thras.h.i.+ng the ponds all night to prevent the frogs annoying their seigneur by croaking, sowing for others to reap, raising up sons to be slaves, and daughters to be worse than slaves--if he had gone to them and said, ”My friends, you are ground down too much; you want a little more freedom--not too much, but some; you require more equality--not complete, for the perfect state requires certain inequalities, but more than you have; you require also a modic.u.m of fraternity,” what would he have effected? That level-headed philosopher would be saying the truth doubtless, and Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, as the Revolutionists understood it, were impossibilities, therefore untruths; but what would he have effected? Would his ”truth” have freed the slaves, have burst their chains; have restored sunlight to a continent, as the exaggeration did? Never imagine it. It may be that in the mean lies truth, but in exaggeration lies motive power. It was in the glorious dreams, the beautiful imaginings, the surgings of the heart that arose from that war cry _Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite_, that the strength lay. There is no strength in the mean. It is the enthusiasts that make the world move. If they have been guilty of half the misery, they have achieved half the joy of the world. And therefore consider again, before you brand beliefs and the teachings and enthusiasms as untruths, because they are exaggerations, because they are unworkable as they stand. What _is_ Truth and Untruth? Is not truth also to be judged by its results? May not what is an untruth now have been a living truth then? Have we reduced truth to measure? If, therefore, this which is an exaggeration now was then a necessary revivifying truth may there not be others like it? Consider the conditions of the world into which the Buddha preached first the teaching of peace, of purity, of calm, of holiness. It was a world of unrest, of fierce striving, of savage pa.s.sions, expressed to their full. It was a world wherein these were virtues wors.h.i.+pped to exaggeration. It was a world without balance, and to redress this balance there came the Buddha with his teaching of the rejection of all the glories of the world, the teaching of the cult of the soul, the aspiration after peace, and beauty, and rest.
As was the world to whom the Buddha preached so was the world to whom the Christ preached six hundred years later. Their codes of conduct were the same. Against violence they taught resignation, against the search for glory they taught renunciation; they opposed pride with meekness, struggle with calm, success in this world by happiness in the next. They came to redress the balance of the world; they came to make men hope. And therefore it is impossible to take their codes by themselves and consider them, to reject them because they do not express the exact truth. What is to be considered is not that code alone, but the purpose it came to fulfil. The codes of Buddha and of Christ are exaggerations, that is true; they cannot be lived up to in their entirety, that is also true. Taken alone they are impossible; that is true. Are they then untrue, useless, valueless guides to conduct?
Not quite so. For man is so built that he requires an exaggeration. If you would persuade him to go with you a mile you must urge him to come two; if you would have him acquire a reasonable freedom you must create in him an enthusiasm for unreasonable freedom; if you would have him moderate his pa.s.sions he must be adjured to wholly suppress them.
And therefore, it may be, do these codes of Buddha and Christ live. Not because they are absolutely true, not because they furnish an ideal mode of life, not in order to be fully accepted, but because they are exaggerations that balance exaggerations; and out of the mean has come what is worth having; because they have an effect which the exact truth would not have in the ma.s.ses of men.
They have been truth, because their results were true.
But the world is growing older, it is learning many things. Never again can we hear that cry of _Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite_, the enthusiasms of a nation for its ideals. These ideals were true then, they were true because their work was true. But their work is done; men's eyes are open now, we do not require such exaggerations to move us to our work. They were in themselves but half truths. It required the violent a.s.sertions of inequality, of slavery, to make up a whole truth. With one has died the necessity for the other.