The Hearts of Men Part 5

"All men," he said, "have religion. They love their faiths, they find in them help and consolation and guidance, at least they tell me so. Why am I to be left out? Men say that religion is a treasure beyond words.

Then I, too, would share in the treasure. But I cannot take what has been offered me. It does not seem to me to be true. I _cannot_ believe it. This religion repels me. I cannot say how greatly it repels me. They say it is beautiful. It must be so to some. It is not so to me. Its music to me is not music, but harshest discord. It is not surely that I have no desire for religion, no eye for beauty, no ear for harmony, I know it is not that. No man loves beauty more than I do. There are things in this faith I have rejected that appeal to me. I see in other faiths, too, ideas that are beautiful. But no one seems all true, and none answers my three questions. Yet will I look till I find.

"And meanwhile there are the hills and the woods. These are my dreams.

"But surely in my scheme I shall discover something."

CHAPTER VIII.

G.o.d.

Sitting on the hillside when the hot season was coming near its end he saw the thunderstorms come across the hills. From far away they came, black shadows in the distance, and the thunder like far off surf upon the sh.o.r.e. Nearer they would grow and nearer, pa.s.sing from ridge to ridge, their long white skirts trailing upon the mountain sides, until they came right overhead and the lightning flashed blindingly, while the thunder roared in great trumpet tones that shuddered through the gorges.

The man watched them and he saw how G.o.ds were born. It was Thor come back again--Thor with his hammer, Thor with his giant voice. Thus were born the G.o.ds, Thor and Odin, Balder G.o.d of the Summer Sun, Apollo and Vulcan, Ahriman and Ormuz, night and day.

So were born all the G.o.ds. You can read of it in Indian, in Greek, in Roman, in Norwegian mythology, in any mythology you like. You can see the belief living still among the Chins, the Shans, the Moopers; for them the storm-wind and earthquake, the great rivers and the giant hills, all these have causes, and they who cause them are G.o.ds. From these have grown all the ideas of G.o.d that the peoples hold now. They were originally local, local to the place, local to the people, and as the people progressed so did their ideas of G.o.d.

It seemed to the man lying on his hillside easy to follow how it all arose; for, indeed, was it not going on about him? Did not the forest people speak of a G.o.d in the great bare rock behind him? Were there not G.o.ds in the ravines, G.o.ds in the hidden places of the hills? It was so easy to realise as he watched the storm-cloud bursting before him, as the lightning flashed and the thunder trumpet sounded in the hills, that men should personify these. Nay, more, he saw the wild men about him actually personifying them. He could understand.

G.o.d was the answer to a question; as the question grew so did the reply.

The savage asks but little. He does not ask "Who am I?" "Who made the world, and why?" Such questioning comes but in later years. He fears the thunder; it is to him a great and wonderful and overpowering thing. It forces itself upon his notice, and he explains it as the voice of a greater man, a G.o.d. He lives in the heavens, for His voice comes from thence. The giant peaks that swathe themselves in clouds, the volcano and the earthquake, the great river flowing for ever to the sea, with its strange floods, its eddies, its deadly undertow, in these too must be G.o.ds. These are the first things that force themselves upon his dim observance. He wonders, and from his wonder is born a G.o.d. But as he grows in mental stature, in power of seeing, in power of feeling, he observes other forces. How is the heaven held up, the great heavy dome as he imagines it? It is Atlas who does so. There is a G.o.d of the Autumn and Spring, of the Summer and Winter. So he personifies all forces he perceives but does not understand. For he has no idea of force except as emanating from a Person, of life which is not embodied in some form like his own or that of some animal. Whenever anything is done it must be Some One who does it, and that Some One is like himself, only greater and stronger.

There is not in the savage G.o.d any conception differing from that of man. There is not in any G.o.d any realisable conception different from that of man. The savage G.o.d is hungry and thirsty, requires clothes and houses, has in all things pa.s.sions and wants like a man. That makes the G.o.d near to the man. With later G.o.ds is it different? G.o.d can be realised only by means of the qualities He shares with man. Deduct from your idea of G.o.d all human pa.s.sions, love and forgiveness, and mercy, and revenge, and punishment, and what is left? Only words and abstractions which appeal to no one, and are realisable by no one.

Declare that G.o.d requires neither ears to hear nor eyes to see, nor legs to walk with, nor a body, and what is left? Nothing is left. When anyone, savage or Christian, realises G.o.d he does so by qualities G.o.d shares with man. G.o.d is the Big Man who causes things. That is all. To say that G.o.d is a spirit and then to declare that a spirit differs in essence from a man is playing with words. No realisable conception does or can differ.

The conception of force by itself is but a very late idea. As one by one the phenomena of nature attract man's observation he personifies them. It will be noticed that unless a force intrudes itself on him he does not personify it. What people ever personified gravity? And why not? Surely gravity is evident enough. Every time a savage dropped a stone on his toes he would recognise gravity. But no. That a stone falls to the ground because a force draws it is an idea very late to enter man's brain. It seems to him, as he would say, the nature of a stone to fall. And then gravity acts always in the same way. It is not intermittent--like lightning, for instance. Therefore he never conceives of gravity as a force at all. When men had come to perceive that it was a force, they had pa.s.sed the personifying stage. But the savage personified each force as he perceived it. First the sun and storm, till at last he came to himself and began to study his own life. He had good and bad luck; that was Fortune. Evil deeds are done, and good; he is beginning to cla.s.sify and generalise; there are G.o.ds of Good and Evil.

He has come to Ormuz and Ahriman little by little; as his power of generalising progresses, he drops the smaller G.o.ds. They disappear, they are but attributes of greater G.o.ds. And as he grows in mental grasp and makes himself the centre of his world, so does the G.o.d of Man become the G.o.d of Nature too. The greater absorbs the lesser.

The G.o.d who cared for man, the G.o.d of his past, of his present, of his future, is become the great G.o.d. He rules all the G.o.ds until he alone is G.o.d.

So it seemed to the man that G.o.d arose, never out of reason, always out of instinct. There was no difference. It is all the same story. There is innate in all men a tendency to personify the forces they cannot understand. Because they want an explanation, and personality is the only one that offers at first. To attribute effects to persons is aboriginal science. To attribute them to natural laws is later science.

Each is the answer to the same question. Men personify forces in different ways according to their mental and emotional stature, to their capacity for generalising. They express their ideas in different ways according to their race and their country. The Hindu began with a G.o.d in each force, to represent each idea, and so the lower people still remain, afraid of many G.o.ds. But those of mental stature gradually generalised, till at last they came to one G.o.d, Brahm, and the lesser G.o.ds as emanating from him. This was a hierarchy; and then finally the greatest thinkers came to one G.o.d only, and the idea that the lesser G.o.ds are but representatives of His manifold nature. You can see all the stages before you now. It is simply a question of brain power, and the sequence remains the same. First the lesser, then the greater. It is never the other way on.

So does Christian mythology personify three ideas of G.o.d, as a Trinity, as three Persons in One, and a Devil. The Hindu would express such a conception of G.o.d by a G.o.d with three heads. Christianity, rejecting such crude symbolism, does so by a mystical creed. The Devil is being dropped. But the Jew and the Mahommedan have only one G.o.d. All force emanates from Him. He is the Cause of all things. He is One.

And yet it is not a reasoned answer, but an instinctive one. The savage, no more than the Christian, does not reason out his G.o.d. The feeling, the understanding of G.o.d is innate, abiding--never the result of a mental process. The idea of G.o.d is a thing in itself; it grows with the brain, but it is not the result of any process of the brain; just as a forest tree grows the greater in richer soil.

As the idea of G.o.ds increased in majesty, as the numbers decreased and became merged in three, in two, or in one, so did their power increase.

The G.o.ds were at first but local, local to the place, local to the tribe. So was the G.o.d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who was jealous of the other G.o.ds. And gradually their local G.o.d or G.o.ds grew into the G.o.d of the whole world. It was only a question of mental development, of the power of generalisation in conception. Man conceived a ruler of the world in the Roman Emperor before he conceived an all-powerful G.o.d. The man as he meditated, as he watched, would see the stages before his eyes. There was the savage, the Kurumba and Moopa with his many G.o.ds in the hills all about; there were the Hindus, the traders whose temples shewed white in the groves beneath, many steps higher in civilisation with their supreme Brahm and minor G.o.ds emanating from him; there was the Moslem with his "G.o.d is G.o.d." He had the stages before his eyes.

Therefore when he came to consider this question of G.o.d he found in G.o.d-worship in Hinduism, Pa.r.s.eeism, Mahommedanism, Judaism, Christianity, no differing conception. They held all the same idea in different shapes. There was nothing new. G.o.d, one or multiple, made the world according to His own good pleasure, ruled it according to His will. The savage knew most of G.o.d, because his G.o.d was but a man enlarged and the nearer to him for that. With greater contemplation the crudities have been removed, the manlike qualities disappear one by one, until with the few greatest thinkers they are all gone. G.o.d has become a "Spirit," an abstraction, an unthinkable, incomprehensible G.o.d that is of no use to anyone; for He cannot be influenced by prayer, He has no pa.s.sions to be roused, He has become lost in the heavens, an inscrutable force. Such was the evolution of G.o.d.

Only when he came to Buddhism was there a new thing. He found no longer G.o.d or G.o.ds, but Law. That was indeed new, that was indeed very different from the other faiths. The world came into being under Law, it progressed under Law, it would end, if it ever did end, under Law. And this Law was unchanged, unchangeable for ever. Let me consider, he said, these two conceptions, Personality and Law.

What is this world to the Buddhist? It is a place that has evolved and is evolving under Law. He does not speak of G.o.d creating one thing or another, but of a sequence of events. The Buddhist was Darwin two thousand years before Darwin. He saw the rule of Law long before our scientific men found it in the stars. I do not think it is so easy to follow the origin of this idea as it is of the idea of G.o.d. With the latter we have the stages before our eyes, but how the Buddhist idea of law arose we can only conjecture. It is not, I think, an instinct like the knowledge of G.o.d. It is more of a mental process, like the reasoning of science. It is a negation as opposed to an a.s.sertion. It is the negative pole. It must surely have arisen like modern science from the observation of facts. I do not say that the idea of law is absent from other faiths. You see it in the Commandments. Certain sequences were recognised, but with Judaism they were ascribed to the order of a Personality. Buddhism, like science, knows of no Personality. The laws of a Theocracy were always liable to change and correction. The laws of the Buddhist are inviolable. The Christian thinks laws can be violated, the Buddhist knows they are inviolable.

You cannot break a law. It is true that many declare otherwise, that Charles Kingsley in a famous lecture declared you could break the law of gravity. "The law is," says he, "that a stone should fall to the earth; but by stretching out your hand you can prevent the stone falling. Thus you can break the law." So argued Charles Kingsley, so think mistily many men because they have never troubled to define the words they use.

There is no law that a stone should fall to the earth. The law of gravity is that bodies attract each other directly as their ma.s.s, and inversely as the square of the distance. You do not break this law by holding a stone in your hand. Nay, you can feel it acting all the time you do so. You cannot break this law. You cannot break any law. Law is another word for the inevitable. Whom did the Greeks put above all the G.o.ds? It was [Greek: anachke], Necessity. Did, then, the Greeks see that behind all their personification of forces Law ruled? It may be so. They have the two ideas, G.o.d and Law. It is perhaps the old battle of free will and destination. And which is true? To the Greek Necessity was behind G.o.d, to the Theist G.o.d is behind Law. The laws are but His orders. He can break them and change them and modify them. And yet, it is so hard to see clearly how Theists can avoid the difficulty. If G.o.d's laws are perfect truths they cannot be alterable. Only the imperfect would be changed. Yet if G.o.d's laws are perfect, is not He, too, bound by them? And if He be bound, is not His free will, His omnipotence limited? Surely G.o.d cannot transgress His own laws of righteousness; is there not "necessity" to Him too? But if this be so, then where is the need of any knowledge beyond the knowledge of law? If it be indeed eternal, as the Buddhists say, what need for more? In the science of nature we need not go beyond, we cannot. In the science of man, who is but part of nature, why should we do so? Is it not better, truer, more beautiful to believe in everlasting laws of righteousness that rule the world than to believe that a Personality has to be always arranging and interfering? Would we not in a state prefer perfect laws to a perfect king, who, however, was imperfect in this that his laws were imperfect and had to be checked in their working? Which is the more perfect conception? Surely that of law. If crime and ignorance, if mistake and waywardness brought always inevitably their due punishment and correction, where is a ruler needed? It is imperfection that requires changing.

CHAPTER IX.

G.o.d AND LAW.

Think what a difference, what an immense difference, it makes to a man which he believes, how utterly it alters all his att.i.tude to the Unknown, to the Infinite, whether he believes in G.o.d or in Law. For among all religions, all faiths, all theories of the unknown there are only these two ideas, Personality or Law, free will or inevitableness.

And how different they are.

In the face of eternity there are two att.i.tudes: that of the Theist, whether Christian or Jew, Hindu or spirit worshipper; and that of the Buddhist, the believer in Law. To the believer in G.o.d or in G.o.ds, what is the world and what is man? They are playthings in the hands of the Almighty. G.o.d is responsible to no one, He knows no right and wrong, no necessity beyond Himself, all He does must be right. He is All-powerful.

Man must crouch before Him in fear. If man suffer he must not cry out against G.o.d; he must say in due submissiveness, "Thy will be done." A man must even be thankful that matters are not worse. If in a shipwreck many are drowned and few, bereft of all but life, are hardly saved, what must they do? They must render thanks to G.o.d that He didn't drown them too. Not because they are aware of being punished for any sin, that does not come to man in calamity. You cannot imagine a common sin that engulphs men and women, children and babes, from all countries, of all professions, of many religions, in one common disaster. No! G.o.d can be bribed, not with presents perhaps now, but with reverence. It is the cringe that deprecates uncontrollable Power. It is the same feeling that makes the savage lay a fruit or a flower before the Spirit of the Hills lest he too be killed by the falling rocks.

For what do men imagine G.o.d to be? Do you think that each man holds one wonderful conception of G.o.d? Not so. The civilised man's idea of G.o.d is as the savage idea. Each man builds to himself his own G.o.d, out of his ideals, civilised or savage. Truly, if you ask a man to tell you his idea of G.o.d he will answer you vaguely out of his creeds or sacred books; but if you watch that man's actions towards G.o.d, you will soon discover that his G.o.d is but his ideal man glorified.

To a tender woman her G.o.d is but the extreme of the tenderness, the beauty, the compa.s.sion which she feels, and the narrowness which she has but does not realise. And cannot you see in your mind's eye the German Emperor's G.o.d clanking round the heavenly mansions wearing a German pickelhaube and swearing German oaths? Man's G.o.d is but what he admires most in himself. He can be propitiated, he can be bribed. The savage does it with a bowl of milk or a honey cake, the mediaeval man did it with a chapel or a painted window. You say this idea has ceased. Have you ever prayed to G.o.d and said, "Spare me this time and I will be good in future. I will do this. I will do that." Or, more beautifully, "Spare him that I love and let the punishment fall on me. Let me bear his sins." Is not the very idea of atonement expressed by Christ's life? A price has to be paid to G.o.d. He must be bought off. Man's att.i.tude before G.o.d must be that of the child, submissive with downcast eyes, full of praise, never daring to blame. "Tell me and I will obey, do not punish me or I perish." Then there is the att.i.tude of the believer in eternal law. For him the world holds no caprice, no leaning to one side or another, no revenge, no mercy. Each act carries with it an inevitable result: reward if the act be good, punishment if it be bad. You can break a command of G.o.d. He may tell you to do a thing and you may refuse. You cannot break a law. It is the inevitable, the everlasting.

You cannot rebel against law. The sin is not rebellion, but ignorance.

The att.i.tude is not submission, but inquiry, the thirst for truth. Adam lost Eden because he sought for the knowledge of good and evil. But the law-believer says that only in wisdom, only in truth, is there any hope.

He stands before the eternal verities with clear eyes to see them, with a strong heart to bear what his ignorance may make him suffer. Out of his pain he will learn the sequences of life. He has gained much.

What has he lost? Are not mercy and fatherly care, forgiveness and love, beautiful things? Yet they, too, are of G.o.d. If you know not of Him, only of Law, have you not lost out of your life some of the greatest thoughts? How will you comfort your heart when it is sore if you have not G.o.d? Is prayer nothing?

Truly, said the man, these are beautiful things. If I could have them alone. But I cannot. I fear the other qualities more than I love these.

I would have neither. I would be a man and live under Law. It seems to me enough. If Law be absolute I see no room for G.o.d.

Over against him were the long ridges of the hills where the rain-clouds gathered from the south. He saw them come in great ma.s.ses surging up the valleys and hiding the contours of the hills. The lightning flashed across the peaks and the thunder echoed in long-drawn trumpet blasts.

"The savage," he said, "saw there only G.o.ds warring with one another.

Now with wiser eyes we see the reign of Law. We do not know all the laws; we cannot even yet tell how much rain will come, whether it will be famine or plenty. We cannot see the Law, but we never doubt the Law is there. With man it is the same. Births and deaths, suicides and murders, are they too not all under Law? Why should not man's soul be so too? Where is the need of G.o.d?"

As he came down the mountain side the rain was falling heavily, as it can only in the tropics. The dry hollows were already streams, the streams were foaming torrents. "They act under Law," he said. "Their life is bounded all by Law." And then of a sudden, watching the foaming water, he saw more clearly.

"True, the stream runs within its banks, but banks do not make the stream. Gravity, that drags down these waters, acts in certain sequence, but that sequence is not gravity. Gravity is a force. When we enumerate the law we do not define, or know, or understand the force, only the way it acts. Force is force, and law is law. They are not the same. They do not explain each other. What a dead thing would law be that had no force acting within it. Truly, I must see more clearly. Law does not deny force; nay, but it predicates it--is, in fact, an outcome of it. Law is a sequence along which force acts; neither can exist without the other.

All force is ruled by law. Yes, but what is force--what are any of the forces that exist: gravity, and electricity, and heat, and life? Forms of motion? May be; but whence the motion?

"Ah me!" said the man, "then am I back again at the beginning. Have I learnt nothing? I thought law might suffice, but it will not. If law is inevitable, then are we but helpless atoms following the stream of necessity. Then is freewill dead. Yet there is freewill. There is force, there is life, whence come these forces? And if one say that force is G.o.d, what then?

"Perhaps there is this: there are two truths--there is G.o.d and there is Law. Both are true, as there is destiny and there is freewill. But how can that be? I see it is so, that it must be so. But how? Is it that there are facets of some great truth behind which we can never know?"

The man was weary. "What have I gained? Only that I have a truth, which I cannot understand, which gives me no help, or but little? Have I gained anything to help me in life? I have gained this, perhaps, that if Law be not a full explanation, it is true, as far as it goes; if not a whole truth, yet it is a truth. Why go further? The scientist cares for nothing more when he has learned the laws of gravity. He is content to be ignorant of whence the force comes, because he can go no further. In the battle of life is not this enough? Can we not, too, be as the scientist, denying nothing, but searching only for that which we can know and which will be useful to us? If force be G.o.d, yet should His ways not be mysterious. Let us not shut our eyes and comfort ourselves in ignorance by saying, 'There is no Law; G.o.d is inscrutable, G.o.d knows no Law. He is inexpressible, changeable and uncertain.' But truly there is Law. Behind the G.o.ds, behind G.o.d, there _is_ [Greek: anachke], there is Necessity, there is an unfailing sequence of events, which is righteousness. Let us learn then what righteousness is. Let us learn what is true in order to do what is right."

But after all it is all speculation. There is no evidence. It is a theory built on nothing. What is the value of it? Nothing at all. What is to be gained by all this? Only barren words, finely spun theories made of air. Where is the proof of G.o.d or of Law? There is none.