The Hearts of Men Part 7

PART II.

CHAPTER XII.

THEORIES AND FACTS.

There is a festival to-day among the coolies. All night, from down in the valley where their huts are, has come the sound of tom-toms beating.

And this morning there has been no roll-call, no telling off the men to making pits and the women to weeding. The fields have been empty, and the village which is usually so abandoned by day, is full of people.

They have roamed lazily to and fro or sat before their doorways in the sun talking and waiting, for the ceremony is not till noon.

It begins with a procession. It is a long procession, all of men or boys, for it seems that among these people women are not concerned in the acting of the ceremonies. They are all men, mostly the elders and the headsmen of gangs, and before them dances a man half naked, half mad, who cries and throws his arms about. He is possessed of the Spirit.

I do not know what the procession means, and I ask. No one can tell me; only it "is the custom." And so they pa.s.s up the main road near my house with tom-toms beating and flowers about their necks, and the "possessed"

priest dancing ever before them. They go perhaps a mile about and then return, and by the entrance to the village, where are boys who carry rice and cocoanuts; and as the priest approaches they throw this rice before him and break the cocoanuts at his feet. So they enter the village. In the centre is an open s.p.a.ce and they stop, the procession breaks, for the priest goes to the centre still dancing, and the people form a great ring about him. He dances more and more wildly as the tom-toms quicken their beat, his eyes are bloodshot, his hands are clenched, there is foam upon his lips. "He has the Spirit," the people murmur with wonder. Then into the centre of this ring come two men dragging a goat. It is a black goat with a white star on his forehead.

His horns are painted and there are flowers about his neck. When the priest sees the goat he rushes forward. He grips the goat by the ears, the men let go and depart, and the priest and goat are left alone. He is about to sacrifice the goat, I know that, but I do not know how, for he has no knife. But I quickly understand. He has seized the goat by both ears in a grip of steel. Then bending down he bares his teeth and catches the lower lip of the goat between them. He tears and worries, and the goat struggles ineffectually, for with savage energy the priest has torn at the lip till it peels off in a long strip down the throat, so that the veins and arteries are laid bare. And then with a sudden jerk he lets go the torn skin and buries his teeth deep in the palpitating throat. You see his jaw work, you see the goat give a great convulsive struggle, there is a sudden rush of blood from the torn arteries pouring over the priest in a great red stream. For a minute there is stillness, and then the goat's tense limbs relax. They droop, for he is dead; and with a tremor in all his limbs the man stands for a second and then drops too senseless, his face falling on the goat that he has slain. For two, three, five minutes, I know not how long, there is a dead silence. The sun is at its height and pours down upon the intense crowd, upon the victim lying in its pool of blood, upon the priest a huddled heap beside it. And then with a great sigh the people awake. There is a movement and a murmur. Some elders go and carry away the goat, and the priest is supported to the little temple near by. The blood is covered up with fresh earth, the ceremony is over, and the people break up.

In the evening my writer Antonio tells me all he knows. What is the G.o.d who entered into the priest? I ask, and he shakes his head. "For sure,"

he answers, "I do not know. They only tell me 'Sawmy, Sawmy'; that is, 'G.o.d, G.o.d.' They say he want sacrifice, he want people to give him present. I do not know why he want present, except he big G.o.d and must be worship. If he not get sacrifice he angry. If he get sacrifice he pleased."

So Antonio explains to me the scene. He argues like my books do. Let me consider. They would explain it some way like this. They would say that the "Sawmy" was the Sun G.o.d, or some other idealisation; that first of all the Indians imagined this Sawmy out of ghosts or dreams; that having done so they gave this G.o.d certain attributes and powers; that subsequently they imagined the G.o.d angry and punishing the people, and so they would proceed to a priest suffering from hysteria, which they supposed to be the possession of this Sawmy, and finally arrive at the procession and sacrifice. They would point out how the flesh of the goat was divided among the coolies, thus bringing them into communion with their G.o.d. And so they would come at last to the concrete fact, as caused by a long process of imagination, an explanation quite incredible to me. I read the facts differently, much more simply. As to imagination the people have hardly any; they are hopelessly incapable of such a train of thought. The priest himself admits that not one in fifty has the least glimmering of any meaning in the ceremony. Nevertheless they like it, they are awed by it, they would by no means allow it to be omitted. And as to this feast of communion with their divinity, what are the facts?

The coolies are poor, they live almost entirely on rice and vegetables.

Meat can very rarely be afforded. Yet they long for it, and a few times in the year they all subscribe and buy a goat for food as a very special luxury.

The goat being bought has to be killed. Now, to people in this stage of civilisation, to people in _any_ stage of civilisation, the taking of life is very attractive, it is an awe and wonder-inspiring act. These people are so poor they can seldom afford such a sight, and therefore it must be made the most of. You may note exactly the same pa.s.sion in bull fights, the execution of martyrs, in public executions of all countries. What greater treat can you offer a boy than to see a pig killed? So the death of the goat is compa.s.sed with much show and in a peculiarly impressive way. That done the meat is divided as already arranged, and everyone is pleased. They have got their food and their sensation. The priest, too, is pleased, and makes his little scientific theology to explain and apologise for this peculiar emotion. It has the further result of making him powerful and revered. For he alone can see and tell the coolies the inwardness of it all; and he can further claim the t.i.t-bits as representative of the Deity.

So arose sacrifice out of some inward hidden emotion of men's hearts. Do not say this emotion is purely savage. It is allied often to the purest pity, to awe, to strange searchings of the heart. To some it may be hardening, but to most it is not so.

How do I know? I know by two ways, because I have watched the faces of this and many crowds to see how they felt, and that is what I saw. I have seen death inflicted so often, on animals and on man, that I know and have felt what the emotion is. I cannot explain the emotion--who can explain any emotion?--but I know it is there. And I know that, if not witnessed too often or in wrong circ.u.mstances, the sight of suffering and death, rightfully inflicted, is not brutalising, but very much the reverse.

Who are the most kind-hearted, even soft-hearted, of men? They are soldiers and doctors. The sights they have seen, the suffering and even death they may themselves have inflicted of necessity, have never hardened them. They have but made their sympathies the deeper and stronger. Look at the contemporary history of any war, of that in Burma fifteen years ago, of that in the Transvaal to-day. Who are they who call out for stringent measures, for much shooting, for plenty of hanging? Never the soldiers. Never those who know what these things are.

It is the civilians and journalists who know not what death is. Who wrote "The Drums of the Fore and Aft," "La Debacle," "The Red Badge of Courage," with their delight in blood? Not men who had seen war. Nor is it they who read such books with pleasure. Men who have seen death and watched it could never make the telling an hour's diversion. It is those who have never seen the reality, who seek in art that stimulus which they know they require.

The sight and knowledge and understanding of unavoidable suffering and death is the greatest of all purifiers to the heart. The weak cannot bear it. Women may avoid it because they know they are unable to sustain it, because they know it does brutalise them. But with men it is never so.

Suffering and death are facts; they are part of the world, and men must know them. They are needed to strengthen and deepen the greatest emotions of men.

And therefore there is in man this instinct, this attraction to the sight of suffering and death, an instinct that, rightly followed, has in it nothing but good.

So I read the ceremony I had witnessed. Such is, I am sure, the meaning of all such ceremonies. They never arise from mental theories, always from inner emotion. The scientific theologian of the tribe has explained them in his way, and when enquirers have tried to understand these ceremonies they have gone to the priest instead of the people. Hence the absolute futility of all that has been written on the origins of faiths.

Men have begun at the wrong end: they have argued down instead of up; they have begun their pyramid at the top. Yet surely if there is any fact that ought to be impressed on us since Darwin, it is to begin at the bottom. Reason never produces facts or emotion. It can but theorise on them.

And meditating on what I had seen, I came to see at last all my mistakes.

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 companionship of my own people. But there were great stretches of solitude, months and months together, with no Englishman, and especially no Englishwoman, near. For four years I saw never an English girl or woman. And there were no books. What few I had were burnt one night with all my possessions, and thereafter I had hardly any. They were years of hardship, of scanty lodging, little better than the natives, ill-cooked, unvaried food, a life that had in it none of the delights of civilisation. And yet I can look back to it with pleasure. For there were always the people to talk to, the people to study, to try and understand, their religion to observe and try to understand.

I have written in "The Soul of a People" about that religion, of the things I learned about it, of what it taught me. I tried to understand it not from without but from within, to see it as they saw it, not to criticise but to believe. If I am to credit my reviewers I have done this, for the thoughts in the book are all considered to be my own also.

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?