The Hearts of Men Part 8

What were his peculiarities?

I found many of them. To take one as instance. The Burman has a very strong objection to authority. There is nothing he dislikes so much, not only as submitting to an interfering authority, but to exercising it.

Thus he has never developed any aristocracy, nor any feudal system. His Government was of the slightest, his villages were almost entirely self-directed. No other people in the same stage of civilisation can show so much local freedom. He would never serve another if he could help it. He liked freedom even if accompanied by poverty. The ideas of obedience and of reverence for authority did not appeal to him as the highest emotions. He dislikes interference. He will not give advice often even if sought.

Now I said if this be one of his greatest instincts, and if my theory be true, this instinct will be exhibited in his religion. Either Buddhism must accept it, or I shall find that the Burman in this case ignores his creed. So I looked, and I found that Buddhism was the very thing to a.s.sist such a feeling. Buddhism knew no G.o.d, no one to be always directing and interfering, no one to demand obedience and reverence.

There was only Law. Buddhism was the very ideal faith for such a man.

But in other matters it was not so. The instinct of prayer is in the Burman as in all people, though perhaps less with him than others. The Buddhist theory allows of no prayer. Then does the Burman not follow his instinct? My observation told me that here the Burman ignored his creed and satisfied his instinct despite of all. But his instinct of prayer is slight, of dislike to authority very great; therefore he remains a Buddhist. Had it been the other way he would probably have been a Hindu.

And so with many other things. The Burman might fairly be called a Buddhist, not because he so dubbed himself, but because his religious instincts were mainly in accordance more or less with the Buddhist theory.

Further, I thought if this is true with the Burman, is it not likely to be true of all people? I know that a creed, a religious theory, is no guide to the belief of a people. If it were, would not all Christian nations believe much the same, have the same ideals, the same outcome of their beliefs? But they do not. They vary in a most extraordinary way.

Each people has its own beliefs, and no one agrees with another on more than one or two points. And not one at all agrees with the theories they profess. Now as every European nation has the same holy book, the same Teacher, the same Example, how is this? Can it be explained by arguing from the creed down? No. But may be it can by reasoning from the people up. It may be that I shall find elsewhere what I have found here, that creeds do not influence people, but people their creeds, and that where the creed will not give way the people simply ignore it. Each people may have its own instinctive beliefs from within differing from all others.

And because they require a theory to explain, and as it were codify, these instincts, they adopt nominally some great creed, but with the reservation that in practice they will follow that creed only where it meets or can be made to meet their necessities, and ignore it where it does not. That may work out. Let me study mankind to find what they believe.

This I have tried to do, and what I have found comes in the next chapters, but no one who has not tried knows how difficult it has been; for I have found no one to help me, no facts hardly, except what I myself might gather to go on. Books on religion and on folk-lore there are in plenty. They have been of little use to me. They all begin at the wrong end. They all a.s.sume as facts what I do not think exist at all.

They talk, for instance, of Christianity as if in practice there is now or ever has been any such clear or definite thing. There is Roman Catholicism of different forms, the ideas of the Latin races; there are the many religions of the Slavs, of the Teutons, of the Anglo-Saxons, of the Iberians, of the western Celts, all differing enormously, all calling themselves Christian. There is the religion of the Boers, of the Quakers, of the Abyssinians, of the Unitarians. There used to be the Puritans, the Fifth Monarchy men, the Arians, and many another heresy.

They call themselves Christians. What are their real beliefs? Whence do they come?

It is the same with Buddhism. There are the Burmese, Ceylon, Chinese, j.a.panese, Jain, Thibetan, and many another people that call themselves Buddhist. What are the real beliefs of these people? I have found the Burmese beliefs; who has found the others? The answer is, no one has even looked for them. They have started at the very end and reasoned down; they have coloured the facts with their theories till they are worthless.

And the religions of Greece and Rome, of Egypt, of Chaldea, of many an ancient people, out of what instincts did these people form their creeds?

As in tracing the Burmese religion, so in this further and wide attempt I have had practically only my own observation of facts to go on. How narrow one man's observation must be can quickly be judged. Some knowledge of the Burmese, a very little of Mahommedans and Hindus, a little of the wild tribes, and in Europe some little knowledge of my own people and their history, of Anglicanism and Puritanism and Lutheranism, some observation of the Latin peoples and their beliefs. Yet still, narrow as the range is, I think my theory works out. I think that even in my narrow circle, with my own limited knowledge and sympathies, I have found enough to prove my case. The evidences in the next chapter are, it is true, few, and the discussion of the subject must be greatly condensed. Still, wherever I have been able to investigate a point I have always found that my theory does prove true and the old theory false. Out of my theory is explained at once the divergences of the Latins and Teutons, why one Christian people worship the Madonna and another not, why one has confession and another not. I have never applied my key but the lock has turned. I have never tried to reason the other way without coming to a full stop, and I have never met anyone else or read any book that did not do the same.

For my belief is that religion is not a creed and does not come from creeds. There are in men certain religious instincts, existing always, modified from time to time by circ.u.mstances and brain developments. Out of these instincts grows religion, and when a creed, which is a theory of religion, comes along and agrees with the main instincts of the people they adopt the name of the creed, they use it to codify and organise their instincts, but they keep and develope their instincts nevertheless, regardless of the creed. It is a fundamental error to talk of Christianity or Buddhism. We ought to speak of Latinism, Teutonism, Burmanism, Tartarism, Quakerism. In all essentials the Quaker is infinitely nearer the Burman than he is to the Puritan.

CHAPTER XIV.

RELIGIOUS PEOPLE.

It will not be denied, I think, that even in England, where we pride ourselves so much upon our religiousness, where we have a hundred religions and only one sauce, the only country except Russia where the head of the State is also the head of the National Church, that even in England religion is unevenly divided. Men do not take to it so much as women, some men are attracted by it more than others, some women more than the rest of women. We find it in all qualities, in all depths, from the thin veil above the scepticism of many men of science to the deep emotional feeling of the enthusiast, and it is nowhere a question of cla.s.s, of education, or of occupation. It would be very difficult, I think, to a.s.sert, and quite impossible to prove, that religion affects any one cla.s.s more than another; for it must not be forgotten that, although more perhaps of certain cla.s.ses go to religious services than of others, the explanation may not be any comparative excess of religious feeling. In a cla.s.s where the women greatly exceed the men in numbers, there will be apparently comparatively more religion, and the rank of society also influences the result. For some it is easier and pleasanter to attend church or chapel than for others, and a cla.s.s which is not hardly worked during the week can more easily spare the leisure for religious exercises than others to whom the need for air, for exercise, for change, appeals more strongly. There may also be other factors at work. But indeed it is unnecessary to press the matter closely, for it will hardly be a.s.serted, I think, that religion is ever a question of cla.s.s. _One_ religion may be so, but not religion broadly speaking, not the religious temperament as it is called. To whom, then, does religion appeal most, and to what side of their nature does it appeal?

Generally speaking, I think, to the more emotional and less intellectual.

That this is but a general rule, with many exceptions of which I will speak later, I admit. But I think it will be admitted that it is a general rule. Intellect, reason, whether cultivated or not, hard-headed common sense, whether in the great thinker or the artisan, is seldom strongly religious. Faith of a kind they may retain, but they usually restrain it to such a degree that it is not conspicuous. Hard-headed thinkers are rarely "deeply religious." But as you leave the domain which is the more dominated by thought, and descend or ascend--I have no wish to infer inferiority or the reverse,--to the natures more accessible to sentiment, more governed by the emotions, religiosity increases. Till finally you arrive at the fanatic, where reason has disappeared and emotion is the sole guide.

They are easily recognised, these enthusiasts, by their lined faces, by their nervous speech, but above all by their eyes. You can see there the emotional strain, the too highly strung system which has abandoned itself to the excesses of religion. But there seems to be another rule; religion varies according to the interests a person has in life. A man, or a woman, with many interests, with much work, living a full life in the world, has but little time usually for religion; he can devote but a small part of his life to it. Its call is to him less imperative, less alluring; it is but one among many notes. But as the absorption in daily life decreases, as the demands from without are less, so does the devotion to religion increase. Until at last among these rural people, who with strong feelings have but little to gratify them, whose lives are the dreary monotony of a daily routine into which excitement or novelty never enters, we find often the greatest, the strongest, and narrowest faith. So too among those many women of our middle cla.s.ses whose lives, from the want of mankind or of children, fall into narrow ways, whose lives are dull, whose natural affections and desires are too often thwarted, there lives the purest and strongest, if often, too, the narrowest religion. It comes to them as a help where there is none other, it brings to them emotions when the world holds for them none, it contains in itself beauty and love and interest when the world has refused them. How much, how very much of the deeper religious feeling is due to the want of other pleasure in life, to the forced introspection of solitude, to the desire to feel emotion when there is nothing without to raise it.

The old and disappointed turn almost always to religion. Thus it seems as if the quality of religion in mankind were due to two causes; to temperament, according to the emotional necessity, the desire for stimulation and the absence of mental restriction; and to environment, according as the life led furnishes excitement and interest or is dull, leading to a search within for that which does not come from without. Of such are the ultra religious.

And the irreligious, those who say openly that they have no religion, amongst whom are they to be found? They can, I think, be divided into three cla.s.ses.

There are first of all those who are very low down in the scale of humanity, who are wanting in all the finer instincts of mankind. You will find them usually in cities, amongst the dregs of the people; for in the country it is difficult to find any who are quite without the finer emotions. The air and land and sky, the sunset and the sunrise, the myriad beauties of the world, do not leave them quite unmoved. And then solitude, which gives men time to think, not to reason but to think; which gives their hearts peace to hear the echoes of nature, is a great refiner. Countrymen are often stupid, they are rarely brutalised.

Then there are the sensualists of all cla.s.ses in life. It is a strange thing to notice that of all the commands of religions, of all laws of conduct they have given forth, but one only is almost invariably kept.

There is but one crime that the religious rarely commit, and that is sensuality. It is true the rule is not absolute. There are the Swedenborgians, if theirs can be called a religion. I doubt myself if it be so, if this one fact did not oust it from the family of faiths. But however that may be, sensuality in all history has been almost always allied to irreligion. Not as a consequence, but because I think both proceed from the same cause, a nerve weakness and irritability arising from deficient vitality, a want of the finer emotions, which are religion.

Finally, there are the philosophers. In all history, in all countries, in all faiths there have been the thinkers, the reasoners, the "lovers of wisdom," and they have rejected the religion of their people.

Of what sort are these philosophers? Are they, as they claim to be, the cream of mankind, those who have the pure reason? Are they such as the world admires? I think not. For pure reason does not appeal to mankind.

It is too cold, too hard, too arid. It is barren and produces nothing.

What has philosophy given the world but unending words? It is the denial of emotion, and emotion is life. It is the reduction of living to the formula of mathematics--a grey world. Those who, rejecting religion, rely on pure reason, are those who have lost the stronger emotions, who have heads but no hearts, while the enthusiasts have hearts but no heads. And in between these lie the great ma.s.s of men who are religious but not fanatics, who reason but who do not look to reason to prove their religion, the men and women who live large lives, and are lost neither in the tumult of unrestrained emotion, nor bound in the iron limits of a mental syllogism.

"Do you infer," it will be asked, "that religion is in inverse ratio to reason? But it is not so. Many men, most men of the highest intellectual attainments, have been deeply religious, great soldiers, sailors, statesmen, discoverers; the great men are on our side, the thinkers have been with us." I am not sure of that. The great _doers_ have always been religious, the great thinkers rarely so. No man has ever, I think, sat down calmly unbia.s.sed to reason out his religion and not ended by rejecting it. The great men who have also been religious do not invalidate what I say. Newton was a great thinker, perhaps one of the greatest thinkers of all time. He could follow natural laws and occurrences with the keenest eye for flaws, for mistakes, for rash a.s.sumption. He could never accept until he had proved. But did he ever apply this ac.u.men to religion? Not so; he accepted at once the chronology of the Old Testament unhesitatingly, blindly, and worked out a chronology of the Fall much as did Archbishop Usher.

Indeed, I think it is always so. There is no a.s.sumption more fallacious than that because a man is a keen reasoner on one subject he is also on another, that because one thing is fair ground for controversy other things are so also. Men who are really religious, who believe in their faith whatever that faith may be, consider it above proof, beyond argument. It is strange at first, it is to later thoughts one of the most illuminating things, to hear a keen reasoner who is also a religious man talk, to note the change of mental att.i.tude as the subject changes. In ordinary matters everything is subject to challenge, to discussion, to rules of logic. But when it is religion that comes up, note the dropped voice, the softened face, the gentle light in the eye.

It is emotion now, not reason; feeling, not induction. It is a subject few religious men care to discuss at all, because they know it is not a matter of pure reason. True religion, therefore, that beautiful restrained emotion which all who have it treasure, which those who have not envy and hate, lives among the men who are between these extremes.

Those who with strong emotions have but narrow outlets for it become unduly religious, narrow sectarians.

Those with uncontrolled religious emotions become fanatics, those with none but brute emotions remain brutes. Those whom the cult of sensual desires has overcome follow Horace and Omar Khayyam. Those in whom reason has overpowered and killed the emotions become those most arid of people, philosophers. True and beautiful faith is to be found only amongst those who lie between all these extremes. They have many and keen emotions, but they find many outlets for them all, so that the stream of feeling is not directed into one narrow channel. And they employ reason not as a murdering dissecting power, but as an equaliser and balancer of the living. Reason is not concerned with what religion is, but only with the relative position religious emotions shall occupy in life. Too little lets it run wild, too much kills it.

But religion is never reason. It is a cult of certain of the emotions.

What these emotions are I hope to explain further on.

CHAPTER XV.

ENTHUSIASM.

Such are the qualities and such the circ.u.mstances that increase and nourish religious feeling, of such are the more religious of all peoples. What is the result in their lives? Does their religion cause them to live more worthy lives? Are the more deeply religious those whom the world at large most deeply respects? What is the effect of their religion in their lives?

I am not speaking here of professors of religion, of priests or monks, of fakirs or yogis, of any whose lives are directly devoted to the practice of the teaching of religion. They are a cla.s.s apart, and are judged by standards other than ordinary men. Their world is another than that of ordinary folk. I speak now of the religion of those who still live the lives of ordinary people. What effect has religion upon them, and how are they ordinarily regarded in the world?

It is strange that if indeed religion be the truth of truths it should be regarded with such impatience, with such suspicion, if brought into ordinary life. For so it is. Every cla.s.s has its own rules, its own conventions; every profession, every teacher, every form of society has its own rules, which are not founded at all upon religion. In every walk of life it is a.s.sumed that, subject to the special etiquette of that trade or profession and to the observance of what is considered honourable conduct therein, every man's actions are governed by self-interest alone. If a man allege any reasons but this he is regarded with doubt and suspicion. He is avoided. I will give an instance in point. There was a doctor once whom I knew who practised a certain "cure" for disease--it is quite immaterial what the system was; it was especially good for tropical diseases--and as some of us were conversing with him on the subject, and recalling with grat.i.tude and pleasure the benefit we had derived, it was suggested to him that he might do well in India. "If in a hill station," we said, "you were to establish yourself and practise your treatment, you would have a large clientele. Many Englishmen who could not afford the time to come home would come to you, and there would be natives also. Such treatment as yours would hurt no one's caste. No doubt you would do well, you would make a name and be rich." This was his answer: "I would not care about that if I could only do those poor natives some good." It was sincerely uttered, I doubt not.

There was no conscious cant, but it fell upon his hearers as a chill.

The conversation dropped, it changed, and gradually we went away. The remark pained. Why? It is always so. Trade is trade and professions are professions, but religion is apart. It is not to be intruded into daily life; it is to be kept sedulously away. Not because its introduction suggests something higher and shames or discountenances the observances of life. The feeling is the very reverse. We suspect it. It does not suggest a higher code of morality at all. No man of experience but would instinctively avoid doing business with anyone who brought his religious motives into daily intercourse. Let a man be as honourable, as scrupulous, as high-minded as he can. We honour him for it. But religious! No. To say that we suspect the speaker of cant is not always correct. It may in cases be so, but not always, not generally. It is not the reason of the instinctive withdrawal. To say that religious feeling is a handicap in the struggle for life is also incorrect. It is not a handicap at all. Let a man be as religious as he likes provided he tempers it with common sense and keeps the expression of it for home consumption. To say that a man is highly religious in his private life is praise, and creates confidence. To say that a man intrudes religious principles into his business or profession or daily intercourse is enough to make men shun him at once. He becomes an impossible person.

This is a strange commentary on the theory of religion, that what is supposed to elevate life is, when introduced into everyday affairs, almost always a sign of incompetence or fraud. Yet it may be so. Some years ago all Britain was alarmed by a terrible bank failure. It was colossal, the biggest perhaps that has ever occurred. There were no a.s.sets, and there were liabilities of over ten million pounds. The shares were unlimited, and the shareholders liable for all this great sum of money made away with by dishonesty and crime.

It brought ruin, absolutely blank ruin, to many thousands of people.

The directors of this bank were known in the city as religious men. They were kirk elders, Sunday school teachers, preachers--I know not what.

They were steeped in religion and iniquity to the lips. They were tried, and some went to penal servitude.

There was again some years later another terrible failure. It was a building society and its allied concerns. And again the chief managers were known as intensely religious men. They too, were prominent members of the religious community to which they belonged; they gave freely to charity; they held, it was stated, prayer meetings before each consultation of the Board. They were steeped in lying and fraud also.

And again quite recently a solicitor absconded with great sums of trust money. The same story. It has been the same story over and over and over again.

The writer can remember being concerned in the trial of a similar case in the East.

It is useless to a.s.sert that all these men were hypocrites, that they shammed religion, that they used it as a bait to catch the unwary. It may be true in one case or two, but not in the majority. It is useless to a.s.sert that their a.s.sumption of religion was false. Who discovered it to be false until the catastrophe? No one. They lived among religious men, their lives were to a great extent open. Was there any doubt about the truth of their religion then? No one has suggested such a thing.

These men were religious from boys, they lived among religious people all their lives. They were honoured and respected for that religion. No man could sham such a thing. It is easy to talk of deceit; but a life of such deceit, such sham is impossible. It is quite absolutely impossible.

That the religion of these men was and is as good and as real as that of other men it is impossible to doubt. Criminals are often very religious.