The secret of Christianity

Preface

THIS little book, it is. easy to see, is one of very grand pretensions. It promises to show the essential difference between Christianity and all other religions, — to describe the causes of that modem progress which has raised our life so far above that of antiquity. In a word, it claims to unfold the true philosophy of history.

These may seem narrow limits in which to deal with such vast questions. Bnt the author beli< that there is here to be found every thing necessary for the understanding and testing of his theory; and beyond that he does not care to go. He has net attempted to write the history of civilization, lie lias desired only to present and to verify, in the simplest manner possible, the great law which through all ages has governed the life of Christendom. If he has accomplished his design, the book is large enough. If he has failed, it could well be smaller.

Chapter I. The Civilization Of India

PAGE

The Law of Paganism 9

Brahminism 10

The Buddhistic Revolt 25

Triumph op Brahminism 38

CHAPTER H.

HELLENIC CIVILIZATION.

The Hellenic System 48

The Greek Protest 61

Pythagoras 63

Plato 05

Aristotle 72

Neo-Platonism 79

Comparison of Greek and Indian Civilization .... 82

CHAPTER ni.

THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

Faith in Christ 88

The Hellenic Factor 90

The Oriental Factor 91

Doctrines of Christianity % 93

Law of Christian Development 90

CHAPTER IV.

THE CATHOLIC AGE.

PAGE

Germanic Life yy

The Catholic System 104

Feudalism 114

The Love of Country 125

Condition of Woman in the Middle Ages 127

CHAPTER V.

THE CATHOLIC AGE. (Continued.)

Medieval Art 131

The Origin of Love of Nature 132

Catholic Philosophy 143

CHAPTER VI.

THE PROTESTANT AGE.

Final Results of Catholicism 152

The Protestant System 154

Modern Society. Doctrine of Equality 156

Rise of the Industrial Movement 159

Revival of Historic Sense . 171

CHAPTER Vn.

THE PROTESTANT AGE. (Continued.)

The Origin of Science 173

The Failure of Greek Science 174

The School of Alexandria 182

The Influence of Middle Ages 187

Analysis of the Inductive Process 191

History of Modern Science 194

CHAPTER VLH.

Conclusion 209

THE SECRET OF CHRISTIAOTTY.

CHAPTER I.

THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA.

r I ^HERE are two moral tendencies by the one or the other of which all ancient civilization was controlled. The one tendency turns the spirit to the outer world, to seek for objects of reverence, of support, and guidance: the other turns the spirit inward upon itself, teaching it to rely upon its own impulses and powers. Under the influence of the one, man becomes submissive and reverent : he is weighed down by a, deep sense of his own un worthiness ; he puts his trust only in an external and divine authority; he yields readily to every bond that may be placed upon him. Under the influence of the other, man grows proudly conscious of human dignity: he trusts in his own intellectual energies rather than in things divinely revealed ; he is animated by the spirit of enterprise and of freedom. In a word, two generic types of character are formed, which stand at the very opposite poles of human development.

There are two nations — India and Greece — which have carried out this process of development so perfectly that they may well be considered the representative nations of antiquity. To them we shall confine our attention in the present and the following chapter. It is our object to show that the one-sided, unchecked, and unrestrainable development of one of these moral impulses, to the exclusion of the other, was at once the law and the fatal curse of ancient civilization. First of all, we shall examine the system of India.

The Hindoo system follows the first of the two impulses that we have described. It constantly tends to degrade human personality, and to glorify the external universe. Its religion is the worship of nature. But just as soon as a people begin to emerge from barbarism, they must begin to lose the reverence for merely sensible objects: they seek to sublimate their first rude conceptions. Even in the earliest Yedic hymns, the poet, while adoring the fire, is careful to say that it is something different from the visible earthly fire that he worships. 1 In that we see the constant tendency of Hindoo thought. The Greek, starting from the same primitive conceptions,

gradually pushes the elements of nature worship into the background, and humanizes his theology. He invests his divinities with a living personality ; he pictures them in the most beautiful forms of art ; he bestows upon them the noblest endowments of human nature. But Hindoo theology, even in its highest development, still clings to the worship of nature and the impersonal : the only change is that its conceptions grow more subtile. It passes beyond the merely phenomenal into the region of the ideal and the absolute. Its divinities, so far from putting on the human form, put off all form and every attribute of personality. Nature is still worshipped, but under conceptions the most severely abstract, the most idealistic which the human intellect can grasp.

We see, then, what gradually came to be the supreme object of worship in Hindoo theology. It is Absolute Existence, the mysterious and unapproachable substrate of all natural phenomena. The source of all things, it yet possesses no attribute either physical or moral. The source of all activity, it is itself inactive". Even intellect and consciousness form no part of its nature, are only emanations from its pure passivity. It is the unknown Entity which dwells in every form of being — " has complete existence in all things whether extremely high or extremely low." 2

Thus upon its theological side the Hindoo impulse 1 Menu, Institutes, vi. (>5.

develops into pantheism ; upon its philosophical side it becomes a system of idealism. At first Indian thought had been dazzled by the beauty and splendor which lie upon the surface of things. But soon men began to see that all this is fleeting and perishable ; scenes of apparent disorder, of gloom, of decay and disease, crowded rapidly upon the attention. The world of sense became for them a gloomy chaos where law and accident, beauty and deformity, life and death, are constantly contending for the mastery. And now, in order to preserve their primitive reverence for nature, there was no refuge for them but in a system of idealism. The decaying chaotic world of sense came to be regarded as a mere illusion. It was the dim, imperfect shadow of an ideal universe which was alone real, was subject to no changes of birth and decay, had nothing gross or disorderly'in its nature. Those universal ideas, which seem to the materialist to be only creations of the human intellect, came to be regarded by the Hindoo thinker as the sole realities, — as the component parts of that spiritual universe of which the sensible world was only a faint and feeble copy. This idealistic tendency was universal : it seemed impossible to make any real departure from it, even amid the wildest vagaries of speculation. Of all the different schools of Indian philosophy, no one is essentially materialistic : 3 all teach the doctrines of

3 Haughton, As. Trans., iii. 412.

idealism with an emphasis which diminishes only as they depart from the standards of orthodoxy. The Yedanta school — the most orthodox of all — constantly teaches that nothing in the world of sense is really existent : God being like one asleep, all has been made by Maya or illusion. 4 True salvation — final deliverance from error and evil — is attained only when the sonl has begun to understand that all visible things are nothing more than fleeting shadows of unseen realities. 5 With this the doctrines of the Nyaya and the Vaiseshica schools essentially coincide. 6 Even the Sankhya philosophy, that great fountainhead of Hindoo heresy, is as decidedly idealistic as its more orthodox rivals. 7

4 Vans Kennedy, On Vedantism, As. Trans.

6 The logical school of the Nyaya is as decidedly realistic as any branch of Mediaeval scholasticism. " Community/* it teaches, " the Common nature, the universal, is one, is eternal." ( Dallantyne, Nyaya Philosophy, 89.) In fact, all Braminical Bchools were realistic The Buddhists are alone cited as denying the category of universals, and as asserting that particulars only have real existence. (Colebrooke, Misc. Essays, i. 287.) But even that is doubtful.

1 In the Sankhya Karika, xxxviii., it is taught that all material elements are only gross emanations from more subtle rudiments imperceptible to the Besses; and, according to the commentary, the species are enfolded within these. Furthermore, these subtle rudiments are evolved from consciou.-ue>s or Bgotiem [Ibid. XXV.), and this from intellect, which is the first great principle or emanation of nature. (Ibid, xxii. Consult also Barth. St. llilaire. M€moires <l> V Academic des Sciences M<>r. d Pol., xx. 816, /> Sankhya.) Nor does the idealism of Kapila pause here. In his doctrine of the three qualities, which has gained so wide an influence over Indian thought,

Idealism, then, is the faith of Hindoo philosophy in all its schools. Nor was this belief confined to the philosophers alone : it was a universal sentiment which pervaded all hearts, and moulded the life of the Indian people during every stage of their development. It constitutes the inbreathing spirit of the national poetry ; the Vedic scriptures affirm it ; 8 and even the law of the land proclaims that the material universe is formed from immaterial ideas, that nature exists only in the spirit of God. 9

We have seen, then, in what way the Hindoo system looks upon God and the Universe. Turn now to its conception of human nature, and we shall find it controlled by precisely the same impulse. It exhibits no trace of the spirit of individualism, no disposition to dwell upon those high prerogatives which so sharply distinguish the life of man from all lower forms of existence. Its reverence for the outer world tends constantly towards a degradation of the moral

Nature is described as a state of equilibrium between three spiritual forces, — goodness, foulness or passion, darkness or ignorance. (Ibid. xii.) Thus, all existence, whether physical, moral, or intellectual, is explained as resulting from the combination of consciousness witb these still more abstract energies. After this, we can readily comprehend that the wild mysticism of the Puranas and of the Bhagavat- Gita could easily find its basis in the doctrines of Kapila. (Burnouf, Bhagavat Pourana, i. 130; Thomson, Bhagavat-Gita, lntrod'n, 80.)

8 Eckstein, Die Grundlagen der Ind. Philos. in Weber's Indische Studien, ii. 385.

9 Menu, Institutes, xii. 118.

sense and of human personality. Man is regarded only as a constituent part of the surrounding universe. Reason, conscience, volition, are nothing more than the subtle manifestations of a force which exists everywhere in nature. As for human personality, that is altogether illusory : the apparent existence of the individual soul is one of the many mockeries by which man is deceived. 10

With this conception of human nature, the doctrine of fatalism is necessarily linked. Man is regarded as an insignificant atom in the all-pervading system, bound by the same conditions, and subject to the same necessit}' that is imposed upon all created life. From the meshes of this brute necessity there is but one avenue of escape, and that is through the absorption of the individual soul into the universal spirit. In other words, the only idea of deliverance that ever conies to the Hindoo mind is associated with the end^ of all true human life.

We turn now from these theoretical conceptions, which embrace the entire round of existence, to note their practical results upon the life of the Indian people. And first of all is presented, as the most salient feature of Hindoo character, its profound engross-

10 The BCeptical philosophy of Kapila proclaims the real existence of the individual soul. But even in that there is no affirmation of any true human individuality, as we shall see when we come to study the cognate doctrine of Buddhism.

nient with futurity. Here on earth, as it seemed to them, was only the grossness of perishable matter, a never-ending round of changes, a mass of corruption, amid which man found himself hopelessly entangled. Beyond was an ideal universe, eternal, free from all changes, endowed with a perfect beauty, order, and harmony. In the light of such a contrast, the Hindu was naturally led to fix his thought upon the future. He was without that profound faith in human nature which enabled the Greek to invest the present life with so delightful a charm. Lacking that, the Hindoo turned to the eternal and the unseen. Never has there been a people so disdainful of the present, so entirely engrossed with the affairs of futurity. With a grand though fatal consistency they have carried the objective tendency of the human spirit to its final extreme. Revering the external, their reverence has not been confined to the sensuous, the material : rising above all that, their thought has concentrated itself upon what seemed to them the realities of an unknown world. Their highest aspirations have been for deliverance from the earthy ; their supreme hope, the attainment of eternal repose. 11

And this engrossment with the affairs of futurity, so grand in certain of its aspects, has proven the in-

11 The Greek Megasthenes (Indica ed. SchwanbecJc, 137) noted this engrossment with futurity as the most salient feature of Indian philosophy.

curable plague of Indian life. It has made human life cheap and almost worthless. It has induced apathy where there should be enterprise, and fostered a fatal indifference to all the practical interests of life. Above all, it has engendered a superstition so universal, so wild and intense, as to be almost inconceivable to our Western thought. It has created an eschatology grotesque and monstrous beyond all power of description. It has robbed literature of an element which to the Greek and the modern seems the most valuable of all. Indian history is almost an utter blank. We moderns pay but little attention to what we call dreams of the future. The Hindoo cared still less for what seemed to him only dreams of the past. 12

Closely connected with this engrossment with futurity is the Hindoo belief in the transmigration of souls. It has often been a subject of inquiry, how this strange doctrine, never any thing but an exotic in the Wist, came to be so universally accepted in the East, especially in India. In the light of our theory, the explanation becomes an easy one. The doctrine of transmigration is founded upon the union of two conceptions. The one of these is that con-

12 "Bei dem Hindu hat die Religion alle Geschichte zerstdrt." (Klaproth, Wvrdigung der As. Qesck., quoted in Lassen's Indisehe AUerthumskunde, ii. 3.) Lassen also notes other causes, but this is the generic one. Concerning the low estimate of history in modem India, consult Malcolm, Memoirs of India, ii. 193, and i. 50.

B

18 THE SECRET OE CHRISTIANITY.

temptuous opinion of human individuality which can discover no essential difference between the life of man and that of the animal, and, therefore, regards the transition from one to the other as a most natural event. The other is the sense of the wretched entanglement of man amid the miseries of material existence. Even death, which is only a physical phenomenon, cannot free us from this entanglement : the decay of our present bodies only pushes us into some new form of sensible life. Now, both of these conceptions, as we have seen, are necessarily evolved from that peculiar tendency which rules in India and throughout the East. 13 And, wherever these conceptions are fully developed, the belief in transmigration must inevitably follow.

Asceticism is another natural product of the Hindoo impulse, closely allied with the two last named. In India, the ascetic sentiment has reached its climax. It does not, as in the West during the middle ages, direct its attention to the body and the bodily passions alone. The true goal of the ascetic is considered to be the complete destruction of every natural faculty, whether physical or moral. Even reason, conscience, and volition are to be surrendered, and the soul reduced to that state of utter and unconscious repose which unites it with the Supreme Being.

13 The veneration of animal life characterizes the Jains in India, who are heretics, and atheists perhaps. (Kalpa Sutra, xxi. and 123.)

In a word, the Hindoo ideal demands the complete sacrifice of all individuality as illusory in itself, and the source of every other illusion winch afflicts the spirit of man.

We notice, again, that the Hindoo impulse tends to weaken the ethical sense. In the ethics of India, conscience is almost entirely ignored. The knowledge of right and wrong is gained from without, — not from internal conviction, but from the minute prescriptions of a supernatural authority. The obligation to obey comes also from without. Men are to do right for the sake of ulterior considerations. Virtue is valued only as a means of obtaining final deliverance ; and, even for this purpose, it is not so efficacious as speculative knowledge. 14 Last and most important of all, virtue is not eternal nor immutable. It is simply a transient mode of nature, as purely phenomenal as color or sound. It cannot be predicated of the Universal soul ; and man, when he attains final deliverance from the entanglements of nature, will be delivered from the bonds of moral obligation. 15

Evidently such conceptions must have *a very disastrous effect upon the moral life of the people. Let

14 Koeppen (Die Religion des Buddha, i. 226) asserts that Buddhism makes virtue the primary and chief means of deliverance. But , concerning this, hereafter.

15 St. Hilaire, Des Vedas, 170 ; Sankhya Karika, lxiii.

us adduce a single example. The Greek, in his search for knowledge, was impelled by an unselfish love of the truth itself : he surrendered himself to his instinctive craving after the true. But Hindoo philosophy seems hardly to have dreamed that the truth was desirable for its own sake. Even in the sceptical school of the Sankhya, knowledge was valued only because it opened the path to final deliverance. 16 Everywhere truth is regarded as a means, not an end. 17 This low conception has led to a still lower practice ; and to this day the lack of veracity is a universal and incurable vice of Hindoo character. 18 Intellectual slavery was another necessary product of the Oriental impulse. Without that proud faith in human nature and its powers which leads men to free inquiry, the Hindoo clings servilely to the traditions of antiquity. Reason is always subordinate to faith. The final criterion of the truth is, that it should be divinely revealed: the only test of the revelation, that it should have been .handed down from the remotest past. It was the work of human intellect to develop and to systematize these ancient traditions : no one ever dreamed of challenging their truth. Even the boldest of all Indian sceptics, Ka-

16 Colebrooke, Philosophy, Hindus, As. Trans., i. 26.

17 Menu {Institutes, iv. 123) advises one "to speak no disagreeable truth."

18 Elphinstone, History of India, i. 378 ; Macleod, On India, and almost every Indian authority.

pila, labors painfully to reconcile his chief heresies with the teachings of the Hindoo scriptures. 19 Logic, philosophy, medicine, and science in general, were all founded upon revealed principles whose truth no one dared to investigate : the only privilege of the thinkei was to draw deductions from the sacred text. Thus the entire literature of India has become an endless series of commentaries, — subtle, profound, but utterly servile. Art, likewise, has been condemned to the same servitude : forced to slavishly copy the conceptions of antiquity, it has sadly failed to realize the brilliant promises of its youth. 20 In science and philosophy, endless commentation ; in art, the utter lack of freedom and spontaneity. These are the secrets of the intellectual decrepitude of India.

The social institutions of India, before the advent of foreign rule, were also developed from that peculiar tendency which has been found to control every part of Hindoo life. The same spirit which degraded human nature and its [towers, tended likewise to ignore its rights. According to the ancient law of

des Sciences, \x. 317) intimates that Kapila was insincere in his efforts at reconciliation. But the intimation — if I may he allowed to express the opinion — seems to me to betoken a certain lack of appreciation of the fundamental tendencies of the Hindoo spirit.

India, the king is to be regarded as a divine being. 21 The subject, on the contrary, has no rights, or hardly any: even those which are usually held sacred are only very vaguely and imperfectly granted by the Brahminical system. Even the right of property in the land is nowhere strictly defined ; and it is very difficult to decide in whom the ownership of the soil is really vested. By some it is supposed to reside in the individual holder ; 22 by others to be divided between the proprietor and the sovereign: 23 and the truth seems to be that the ownership floats vaguely and indecisively about between the individual holder, the village community, and the king. 24 At all events, it was a right of property so vague, so restricted, that the sale of lands — the transfer even of the feeble possessory title of the holder — was something virtually unknown in India before the advent of British rule. 25

Of similar origin is the system of castes, that most salient feature of the Brahminical polity. Its principle is, that the condition of every man is imposed upon him at the very hour of his birth by divine

21 Menu, Institutes, vii. 4.

22 The well-known text of Menu {Institutes, ix. 44) seems to substantiate this view. In the Mimansa, it is also said that the earth belongs not to the sovereign, but to all alike. (Colebrooke, Misc. Essays, i. 320. )

23 Tod, Feudal System in India, Asiatic. Journal, N. S., v. 42.

24 Elphinstone, History of India, i. 141, seq.

25 Campbell, Tenure of Land in India, Cobden Club Essays, 165.

authority, and that the barriers thus erected must be maintained by the most rigorous restrictions of the law. In a word, caste is a perfect expression in social life of the Indian spirit, — a spirit which frowns upon every free impulse of the human soul, and seeks to subordinate the individuality of man, even in the .minutest details of living, to the dictates of an external authority.

The third most notable element of this social system is the ascendancy of the sacerdotal order, — the representatives of that external and superhuman authority in which the Hindoo solely confides. To the priestly class, even princes yield precedence. 26 With them rest all judicial functions. 27 Their authority is maintained not by brute force, but by supernatural means. 28 The courts of Heaven interfere to protect their dignity, so that to strike a Brahmin renders one liable to imprisonment in hell for a thousand years. 29 Finally, " whatever exists in the universe is in effect the wealth of the Brahmin ; since he is entitled to it by his primogeniture and pre-eminence of birth." 3° These high prerogatives, it is true, have been greatly weakened under Mahometan and British rule ; above all, by the usurpations of the military class, holding in their hands that power

28 Menu, Institutes, i. 96. 27 Ibid., viii. 1, 9, &c.

of the sword which is often stronger than any theory. Nevertheless, the complete ascendancy of the spiritual power has always remained a prime element in the Hindoo ideal of society.

We have thus followed the evolution of the Hindoo tendency through every department of thought and life. The idealism that finds nothing real in the sensible world, the fatalism founded upon an utter disdain of human nature, the constant engrossment with the affairs of futurity, the apathy and superstition consequently engendered, the doctrine of transmigration and the ascetic temper, the weakening of the moral sense and the subordination of reason to faith, the repression of all individualit}^ by onerous restrictions of the law, and the ascendancy of the spiritual power, — these are the essential characteristics of the Indian system. It was, from many points of view, a sublime impulse of the human spirit which had created so profound a faith in the unseen and eternal world, — which had filled the soul with a sense of its sinfulness, — which had taught to all lessons of child-like trust and devotion. And yet from the unchecked and complete development of this impulse what mournful results have sprung ! Starting from so fair an ideal, Indian civilization ends at last in the abasement of the noblest elements of human nature, in a fatal incapacity for progress, in universal apathy and hopeless indifference to the true interests of mankind.

We come now to notice the efforts at reformation that were made in the course of Indian history. Of course', the counter-impulse of the human spirit — the proud consciousness of human dignity — could not be entirely destroyed. In spite of every restriction, it would be constantly striving to assert itself: it would struggle to arrest this one-sided development, to bring in a new order of ideas more in accord with its own spirit. In the earlier periods of Indian history, this desire of reformation vaguely manifests itself in two ways, — practically, in the struggles of the military class against the priestly power ; 31 speculatively, in the rise and spread of the Sankhya philosophy. But the time came when the revolt grew into something more than a spasmodic struggle, — when discontent ripened into revolution, — when, by the genius of one man, all the different elements of opposition, both practical and speculative, were united in a memorable crusade against the Brahminical system. This great leader was Sakyamuni ; and the revolt organized by his genius we call Buddhism,

Sakyamuni, himself born of a royal family, was not apt to ignore that practical element of opposition

31 Rothe, Literutur und Geschichte d<s Weda, 119; Menu, Institutes, vii. 40, Beq.; Wheeler, History of India, i. 160. Of similar import is the origin of the Jain belief, — that primitive heresy of India. " The Jains," say the orthodox, "are misguided cshatryas," or members of the military caste. (Colebrooke, Misc. Essays, i. oT'J.) 2 represented by the struggle of the military class against the priests. Hence we find that a fundamental characteristic of his religion was its contempt for those caste distinctions upon which the ascendancy of the Brahmins was founded. 32 The principle of Buddhism is that of absolute equality : into its sacred order all men, whatever their birth, may gain admission. The Brahmin and the Sutra stand upon a common level : 33 the lowest orders may attain to the highest ecclesiastical honors ; ^ may, above all, gain deliverance and final salvation. Thus the new religion becomes a doctrine of universal charity, offering a common salvation to all. 35 While Brahminism seeks the aggrandizement of a class, Buddhism is a free gospel to be preached to the high and the low : in that lies the chief secret of its first brilliant success.

With equal boldness, Buddhism availed itself of the speculative element in the opposition to Brahminism. There is still a wide difference of opinion concerning the relations of Sakyamuni to the philosophy of his time : to some his teachings seem to have been

32 Burnouf, Introduction a VHistoire du Buddhisme, i. 14 ; and all the authorities.

34 Hiouen Thsang (Memoires sur les Contre'es Occidentales, i. 191) recounts a fine legend showing the indifference of the primitive Buddhists to all distinctions of rank.

3 * Barth. St. Hilaire, Du Buddhisme, 148, 209, et aL, Burnouf, 217.

purely speculative ; ^ to others they appear essentially ethical and practical ; 37 and there are still others who look upon Sakya as a mere enthusiast whose conceptions were all of a crude indefinite kind. 38 "Without pretending to decide this question, 39 we say only that the chief heresy of the Sankhya philosophy and that of Sakyamuni are at heart identical. The Sankhya, by affirming the existence of the individual soul, had made itself the champion of human personality. Sakyamuni carries out this conception of individuality to the most daring conclusions. The human sold, he teaches, not only exists, but it has the power of development : it may stand at the very summit of existence ; it may attain absolute perfection and power. More than that, only man can attain this immense elevation ; even the gods desire to become Buddhas, but such aspirations are to be realized only through the pathway of human life. 40 Never has humanity been glorified elsewhere with so wild an extravagance as this. Even Hellenism was satisfied to teach that man might sometimes attain the rank of divinity ;

36 Weber, Indische Litcraturgcschichte, 248.

37 Koppen, Die Religion des Buddha, ii. 125.

38 Vassilief, Le Bouddisme, 12, etc.

89 One thing, however, is certain. The earliest philosophy of the Buddhists, whenever formed, was almost entirely modelled after the doctrine of the Sankhya: one can hardly doubt the original identity of the two systems. (Weber, Die neueatw Forsekvngen auf dan Gtbiet des Buddhismus, Tnd. Studien, iii. 182.)

40 Burnouf, Hist, du Buddhism , i. 197.

but Buddhism proclaimed that he might reach an elevation towards which even the gods would look with envy. Faith in human nature, it would seem, could hardly be carried further.