M. Stanislas Julien. After Fa-hian, we have the

travels of Hoei-seng and Song-yan, who were sent to India in 518 by command of the Empress, with a view to collecting MSS. and other relics. Then follow the travels of Hiouen-thsang (629-645 a.d.). Of these too we possess an excellent translation by Stanislas Julien. One of the last and certainly most interesting journeys is that of I-tsing, who travelled in India from 671 to 695 a.d. Takakusu, a Japanese pupil of mine, has rendered a real service to the study of Sanskrit, more particularly to the history of San- skrit literature in the seventh century A. D., by trans- lating I-tsing’s Chinese memoirs into English.
These travels, lasting from the fourth to the seventh century, give us some idea of the literary and religious intercourse between China and India. Some of the Chinese travellers made themselves excellent scholars in Sanskrit, and were able to take an active part in the religious congresses and public disputations held every year in the towns of India. At the same time the number of Buddhist monasteries in China is said by Hiouen-thsang to have amounted in his time to 3,716. What is still a great puzzle is what became of the thousands of Buddhist MSS. which we know to
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have been taken to China by Indian missionaries, for the reception and preservation of which large and magnificent public libraries were built by various emperors, and which seem now to have entirely dis- appeared from China. Many researches have been made for them by friends of mine in China and Corea, but all that could be found was one not very interest- ing MS., the Kalachakra (Wheel of Time), which was sent to the India Office. Of course there were in China from time to time violent persecutions of Bud- dhists, and during those scenes of violence monas- teries were razed to the ground and many public buildings burnt. Still, all hope should not be given up ; and if China should ever become more accessible, new investigations should be made wherever Bud- dhist monasteries and settlements are known to have existed, it being quite possible that a whole library of Buddhist literature and ancient Buddhist MSS. may still be recovered. What we want more particularly is to learn, if possible, what caused the great bifurca- tion of Buddhism into Hinayana and Mahayana, the Little Way and the Great Way, or whatever transla- tion we may adopt for these two schools. Both systems are clearly Buddhistic, but they are in some respects so different from one another that sometimes we can hardly imagine that they had both the same origin or that one was derived from the other. Long passages in the books of the two schools are some- times identically the same, but on certain points of doctrine the two are often diametrically opposed. To mention a few points only. The Buddhist of the Hinayana, or the Pali canon, denies most decidedly a personal soul and a personal God. The Mahayana
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admits a personal God, such as Amitabha (Endless Light), residing in the paradise of Sukhavati, and it evidently believes in the existence of personal souls. After death the souls enter into the calyx of a lotus, and remain there for a longer or shorter time, accord- ing to their merits, then rise into the flower itself and, reclining on its petals, listen to the Law as preached for them by Buddha Amitabha. A trans- lation of the description of this paradise, Sukhavati, was published by me for the first time in the S. B. E., vol. xlix. It is quite possible, as has been supposed, that the absence of any information as to the fate of the soul after death may have made the stories about the paradise of Sukhavati particularly attractive both to the followers of Confucius and to the original Hinayana Buddhists. Still, it is difficult to believe that this would have induced the Chinese to adopt what was a foreign religion, even in its Mahayana disguise. Nor could miracles such as Matanga, one of the two missionaries who arrived first at the Court of Mingti, is said to have performed, have had. suffi- cient persuasive power to produce a ehange of religion on a large scale among the inhabitants of China. It is said that he sat in the air cross-legged and without any support. But of what Yogin has not the same been believed % It is quite possible that other miracles also of the Indian Yogins made some impression on the Chinese mind ; but all this leaves the recogni- tion of Buddhism as a State religion, and the growth of what may almost be called a new religious litera- ture, entirely unexplained. The change of the early Buddhism, Hinayana (the Small Way) into that of Mahayana (the Great Way) has never, as yet, been n. x
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satisfactorily accounted for. Some people think that the Mahayana was so called because it led to a higher goal, others that it was a way for a larger number, the Small Way being so called, evidently by the seceders, because it led to a lower goal or was followed by a smaller number. Even the priority of the Small Way to the Great Way is by no means admitted by the supporters of the latter system. Chronology, in fact, in our sense of the word, does not exist for the Mahayana Buddhists, and where there are no histori- cal records, fables spring up all the more readily. Thus we are told that the founder of the Mahayana system of Buddhism was Nagarguna; that he had travelled to the South and North of India, and there come across a race of men more or less fabulous, called Nagas, i.e. Serpents ; that they possessed copies of the canonical books of the Mahayana, and gave them to Nagarguna. These Nagas are frequently mentioned, and there may well have been a real race of men called Nagas or Serpents ; but how they should have come into possession of these books, written in Sanskrit, how they should have hidden them, as we are told, in a large lake, and produced them at the time of Nagarguna’s visit has never been explained. Nagarguna is mentioned as present at the fourth Buddhist council, that at Ga- landhara, called by King Kanishka, at the end of the first century a.d. This date, however, has been very much contested. He is the fourth in the list of Buddhist patriarchs ; but that list again is purely imaginary, and for chronological purposes useless. What seems certain is that he was a contemporary of King Kanishka, a King of India, of Mongolian rather than Aryan blood, whose coins give him an
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historical background. He is called there Ivanerkes, a Kuskana king, and his life must have extended beyond the end of the first century of our era, say a.d. 85-106. But all this does not help us towards an explanation of the true origin of the Mahayana Buddhism. We see no causes for a change in Bud- dhism. no new objects that were to be obtained by this reformation, if indeed it deserves to be called by such a name. We cannot possibly ascribe the elaboration of the new system of Buddhism to one man, such as Nagarguna, nor does he put forward any such claim. On the contrary, we are told that the Mahayana books existed long before his time, and were handed to him by the Nagas. Besides, where did he find the disciples ready to follow him ? There was no widespread discontent with the old Bud- dhism, as far as we can judge. But the fact remains that we find a new Buddhism with its canon written in Sanskrit, and it was this Buddhism that found such decided favour in China. It may in some respects be called a more popular form of Buddhism, but its highest speculations must have been at the same time quite beyond the grasp of the multitude. It has a kind of personal Deity ; it has saints in large num- bers, and a worship of saints ; it has its future life and a paradise which is described in the most attrac- tive colours. But whatever we may think of it, the Mahayana was at all events the Buddhism which found favour in the eyes not only of the Chinese, but of Tibet, Corea, Japan, and of the greater part of Central Asia. While the Hinayana kept itself pure in Ceylon, Burmah, and Siam, the Mahayana Bud- dhism took possession, not only of China, but of
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Turkestan also, of the Uigurs in Hami and on the iii. it is quite true that Asoka at the time of the third council sent missionaries to Kashmir, Kabul, and Gandhara, and it may have spread from there to the countries on the Oxus, to Bucharia, nay even to Persia. But the legend that a son of Asoka became the first king of Khotan seems to have no historical foundation. Khotan, no doubt, became the chief seat of Buddhism till it was expelled from there by Mohammedanism, but that is different from counting a son of Asoka as tbeir first king. That Buddhism had spread in Asia before its recognition by the Emperor Mingti in China, is an impression that it is difficult to resist. We saw already that a Buddhist missionary is mentioned in the Chinese annals in 217 B. c., and that about the year 120 B. c. a Chinese general brought back a golden statue of Buddha1. Is that the golden Buddha who suggested to the Emperor the golden Buddha in his famous dream ? Much still remains obscure in these early conquests of Buddhism in Central Asia, conquests never achieved by force, it would seem, but simply by teaching and example ; but the fact remains that Buddha’s doctrine took possession, not only of China, but of adjacent countries also.
Highly interesting as these conquests of Buddhism outside of China are, what interests us at present is not the reception which that religion met with outside of China, but the reception which it received when once introduced into the Middle Kingdom. We must not imagine that when the Emperor had dreamt his dream, and given his sanction to the introduction of 1 Koppea, Buddhism, ii. p. 33.
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Buddha’s religion into China, it was at once embraced by thousands of people. Its progress was slow, and it does not seem as if Confucianism had even approved of it very hastily. Taoism, on the contrary, was evidently very much attracted by Buddhism. It was found that the two shared several things in common, both in superstitions and in customs and ceremonial. It has been supposed that the introduction of Buddhism gave a certain impulse to Taoism, particularly in its ecclesiastic constitution ; that Buddhism exercised, in fact, the beneficial influence on Taoism which a rival often exercises, and that yet the two rivals remained better friends than might have been expected.
What may seem still more extraordinary are the neighbourly relations, nay, the real sympathy, which existed from the first arrival of Christian missionaries in China, between them and the Buddhists. It is true the Christian rebgion never became a State religion in China, but there were times when it enjoyed every kind of support from the Emperor and the Imperial Court. The missionaries themselves, so long as they did not concern themselves with political questions, were looked upon by the Government as useful teachers, not of morality only, but of several sciences — particularly of astronomy and chronometry, though this happened at a later time. European watches proved excellent weapons for Christian mis- sionaries, and the. regulation of the calendar was left very much to them. It happened even that, when at times they incurred the Imperial displeasure and had to leave Pekin, all the clocks in China stopped, and there was no one to mend them and to wind them up again. It is still more extraordinary that at that
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early time already Chinese Emperors should have discovered a number of coincidences between Chris- tianity and Buddhism, but so far from approving of a mixing up of the two, such as we often have seen in our own time, should have protested solemnly against all such attempts. Thus the Emperor Te-tsung decided that the monastery of the Buddhists at Hsian - fu and the monastery of Ta-tsin (Rome) are quite different in their customs, and their religious practices entirely opposed. Adam, a Christian monk, ought therefore to hand down the teaching of Mishiho (Messiah), and the Buddhist monks should propagate the Sutras of Buddha. ‘ It is to be wished,’ he adds, ‘that the boundaries of the two doctrines should be kept distinct, and that their followers should not intermingle. The right must remain distinct from the wrong, as the rivers Ching and Wei flow in different beds.’ What will the so-called Neo-Buddhists or Christian Buddhists say to this ? And yet at the time of Adam or King-shing, at the time of the Emperor Te-tsung, this intermingling of Buddhism and Christianity was a fact the study of which has been strangely neglected. Christian, chiefly N estorian, missionaries were very active in China from the middle of the eighth century1. Their presence and activity there are mentioned not only in Chinese books, but they are attested by the famous monument of Hsian-fu, often called Segan-fu, or Slngan-fu, the old capital of China. The monument had been erected in the year 781 by the Nestorians who were settled there, and who lived in a monastery of their own, called by the Emperor the monastery of Ta-tsin, just
1 See Christianity in China, by James Legge, iSSS.
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as another Emperor called Christianity the religion of Ta-tsin. In that monastery we see that Buddhists and Christians lived together most amicably, and even worked together, and were evidently not fright- ened if they saw how on certain points their religious convictions agreed. The Buddhists then seemed by no means the Yellow Terror of which we have heard so much of late. It was near Hsian-fu that a Nestorian monument was seen among the ruins by early travellers, and last in 1866 by Dr. Williamson. It was just as it had been described by the people who unearthed it in 1625; the principal portion of the inscription is in Chinese, but there are also a number of lines in Syriac. When that inscription was first published it was the fashion to consider everything that came from mission- aries abroad as forged : the very presence of Christian missionaries in China in the seventh century A. D. was doubted; but Gibbon, no mean critic, not to say sceptic, writes in the forty-seventh chapter of his history
‘The Christianity of China between the seventh and thirteenth centuries is invincibly proved by the consent of Chinese, Arabian, Syriac, and Latin evidence. The inscription of Sighan-Fu, which describes the fortunes of the Nestorian Church, from the first mission in the year 636 a.d. to the current year 781, is accused of forgery by La Crose, Voltaire, and others who become the dupes of their own cunning whilst they are afraid of a Jesuitical fraud.’
The doctrinal portion of that inscription does not concern us much beyond the fact that it contains nothing which a Nestorian missionary at that time might not have said. It seems intentionally to avoid all controversial topics, and it keeps clear of any attacks on paganism, which would have been equally out of place and dangerous. From the historical portion and the signatures we learn that the first
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Nestorian missionary, called Olopun, arrived in China in 635, that he was well received by the Emperor and allowed to practise and teach his own religion by the side of the three religions then already established in China, that of Confucius, that of Lao-tzd, and that of Fo or Buddha. These three religions are alluded to in the Nestorian monument as ‘Instruction’ (Con- fucianism), ‘the Way’ (Taoism), and ‘the Law’ (Dharma, that is, Buddhism), while Christianity is simply spoken of as the ‘ Illustrious Doctrine.’ These religions seem to have existed side by side in peace and harmony, at least for a time. Christianity spread rapidly, if we may judge by the number of mona- steries built, as we are told, in a hundred cities. This prosperity had continued with but few interruptions till the year 781, when the monument was erected. It must be remembered that during these two centuries Christian doctrines were carried to Persia, Bactria, probably to India also, by persons connected with the Nestorian mission, and that about the same time Chinese Buddhists, such as Hiouen-thsang (a. d. 629-45) and I-tsing (671-95), explored India, while Indian Buddhists migrated to China to help in the work of translating the sacred canon of the Buddhists from Sanskrit into Chinese. We see, therefore, that during these centuries the roads for intellectual, chiefly religious, intercourse were open between India, Bactria, Persia, China, and the West, and that all religions were treated with toleration and without that jealousy and hatred which we find in later times. There must have been a certain camaraderie between Christian and Buddhist missionaries in the monastery of Hsian- fu — also called Si-gnan-fu, the present residence of
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the Chinese Court, and possibly the future capital of China — for we read in the travels of I-tsing, p. 169, that a well-known Indian monk from Kabul named Prary/ia translated a number of Sanskrit texts into Chinese, and among them the Sha^paramita Sutra, as may be seen in the catalogue of the Chinese Tripkaka, published in 1883. Now it was in the monastery of Ta-tsin, founded by Olopun, that this Buddhist monk finished his translation of the Sha£paramita Sutra, assisted by a priest from Persia. On the monument of Hsian-fu the Chorepi scopus signed his name in Syriac, and this is the very name of the fellow worker of Pragma, or in Chinese King-ching. The case becomes still more curious, for it is said that Adam at that time did not know Sanskrit very well, and that Pra was not very familiar with Chinese, both therefore availed themselves of a Mongolian translation of the Sutra which they had undertaken to render into Chinese; but as Pragma was not a good Mongolian scholar either, the result seems to have been, as in the case of several of the Chinese translations of Buddhist texts, a complete failure. The Emperor Te-tsung, when appealed to on the subject, declared that the translation was indeed very rough and obscure, and it was at that time that he expressed his disapproval of mixing up Christianity and Buddhism. What is important to us to know, whether the translation itself be correct or incorrect, is the co-operation of Christian and Buddhist missionaries in the monastery of Hsian-fu, and probably in other monasteries also.
But while Christians and Buddhists shared in their prosperity in China, they had also to share in their adversity. Whenever the persecutions of the Bud-
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dliists in China began— and they were terrible and frequent — the Christians shared their fate, with this difference however, that while the Buddhists recovered after a time, the Christians, having to be supplied from their distant homes, were altogether annihilated in China. While under the enlightened Emperor Tai-tsung (627-49) the number of Buddhist mona- steries in China seems to have been about 3,716 1, the edict of the Emperor Won-tung reduced their number considerably, and after the edict of Khang-hi few Buddhists and hardly any Christian monasteries re- mained in China.
It is carious, however, to see with what pertinacity the Church of Rome and its various orders clung to the idea that the East, and more particularly India and China, should be won for the Roman Church. After the Reformation particularly, the Roman See, as well as the Dominicans, Franciscans, and above all the Jesuits, seem never to have lost sight of the idea that the ground which their Church had lost in Europe should be reconquered in China. Already under Benedict XII (1342-6) attempts were made to send out again Christian missionaries to China, but they soon shared the fate of the Nestorian Christians, and in the sixteenth century, when Roman Catholic missions were organized on a larger scale, no traces of earlier Christian settlements seem to have been forthcoming. Francis Xavier, who after his suc- cesses in India and Japan was burning with a desire to evangelize China, died in 1552, almost in sight of China 2. Then followed Augustine monks under
1 Hiouen-thsang , p. 309.
2 See Canon Jenkins’s Jesuits in China, 1S94.
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Herrada, and Franciscans under Alfara. Both had to leave China again after a very short sojourn there. Then came the far more important missions of the Jesuits under Ricci, who landed in 1581. They were better prepared for their work than their predecessors. Anyhow, they had studied the language and the customs of the country before they arrived, and in order to meet with a friendly reception in China they arrived in the dress of Buddhist monks. They became in fact all things to all men ; they were received with open arms by the Emperor and the learned among the mandarins. It was Ricci who made such pro- paganda by means of his clocks ; but he did not neglect his missionary labours, though it is sometimes difficult to say whether he himself was converted to Confucianism, or the Chinese to Christianity. He wrote in Chinese a book called Domini Gaelorum verci ratio. He adopted even the Chinese name for God, Tien or Shang-Ti, and joined publicly in the worship of Confucius. That was the policy of the Jesuits in China, as it was their policy in India, when about the same time Roberto de Nobili (1577- 1 656) 1 taught as a Christian Brahmin, adopting all their customs and speaking even Sanskrit, being no doubt the first European to venture on such a task. The history of these missions is full of interest, but it would require considerable space to touch upon even the most salient points and the most marked personalities. Many Chinese, particularly in the higher classes, became Christians, and they thought they could do so without ceasing to be Confucianists, Taoists, or Buddhists. The Jesuits survived even the
1 See Science of Language, i. p. 209.
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Great Revolution in 1644, which brought in the present Manchu dynasty, and one of them, the Father Schaal, was actually appointed governor of the Crown Prince, the son of Chun-ki. The widow of the Emperor and her son allowed themselves to be baptized in 1630. In Europe people were full of enthusiasm for China, and. many imagined that Christianity had really conquered that vast empire. But a reaction began slowly. Some missionaries, not Jesuits, became frightened, and laid their complaints before the Pope at Rome. Even at Rome the so-called Accommodation Question became the topic of the day, and at last, after various legates and Vicars Apostolic had been sent to Pekin to report, and numerous witnesses had been listened to as to murders, poisonings, and im- prisonments of the various missionaries then settled in China and striving each and all for supremacy, the Papal See could not hesitate any longer, and had at last to condemn the work of the Jesuits both in China and in India. It is difficult for us to judge at this distance of time. Certainly, Christian ideas had gained an entrance into China, particularly among the highest classes, and it was hoped that in time the mere chinoiseries of their faith would be stripped off, and true Christianity, relieved of its Chinese trappings, would step forward in its native purity. How far the Jesuits thought that they could safely go we may learn from a list of doctrines and customs which the Curia condemned as pagan rather than Christian. Such things must have existed to account for their official condemnation. The Pope declared he would not allow the Chinese names for God, Tien and Shang-Ti, but would recognize but one reading, Tien
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Chu, i. e. the Lord of Heaven. He prohibits the tablets then placed in many of the Christian churches inscribed ‘ Kien Tien ’ (Worship Heaven). The worship of Confucius and of ancestors, that had been sanctioned for a time on the strength of false information, was condemned as pagan. Missionaries were distinctly forbidden to be found at festivals and sacrifices con- nected with his worship, and no tablets were allowed to be erected in Christian churches that contained more than the name of the departed. Such propo- sitions as that Chinese philosophy, properly under- stood, has nothing in it contrary to Christian law, that the worship assigned by Confucius to spirits has a purely civil and not a religious character, that the Teh-King of the Chinese was a source of sound doctrine, both moral and physical, were all condemned as heretical, and the missionaries were warned against allowing any Chinese books to be read in their schools, because they all contained superstitious and atheistic matter.
This of course put an end to the Christian propa- ganda in China, and crushed all the hopes of the Jesuits. The Roman Curia seem to have regretted their having to take such severe measures against their old friends. The missionaries struggled on for a time ; but when the Emperors of China, their former friends and protectors, began to take offence at the Pope’s issuing edicts in their own empire, most of the Christian missionaries were dismissed, because they felt they had to obey the Pope more than the Emperor. They were in consequence deprived of all their appointments, some of them very lucrative and influential, and expelled from China, and new arrivals
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were likewise subjected to very severe measures. The persecutions of the Christians at various times, and as late as 1747, 1805, 1815, 1832, seem to have been terrible. The Emperors complained of lese-mcijeste on the part of the Pope, who, as a foreign sovereign, ought not to have issued edicts in the Chinese Empire. The Emperors, in fact, knew very little what the Pope really was, and the Popes looked upon the Emperors as Chinamen, as pagan and half-savages. The Pope, however, insisted on his right of jurisdiction all over the world in all spiritual and ecclesiastical questions, and the result was that the Christian Church, so carefully planted and built up by the Jesuits, crumbled away and became extinct in China. The whole of that history, bristling with heroes, martyrs, and saints, can be read in any of the histories of Christian missions. We see clearly that what the Chinese hated was not the teaching of Christ, but the foreigners themselves who had come to preach His doctrine, and who were making proselytes in China. If the missionary was submissive he was generally free to teach his doctrine, but the anti- foreign sentiment came out at the same time with unexpected strength, a sentiment so deeply engrained in the Chinese mind that nothing but clocks and other useful mechanical and scientific inventions found per- manent favour with the Chinese. There is no passage in their Kings prescribing hospitality and kindness to the stranger within the gate. There is nothing even about the sacrosanct character of envoys, though embassies from and to China were of frequent occur- rence. In the Li Ki, iii. ] 7, we read : ‘ At the frontier gates, those in charge of the prohibitions examined
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travellers, forbidding such as wore strange clothes, and taking note of such as spoke a strange language.’ So it has been and so it will be again and again in China, unless the Foreign Powers are able to impress the people with fear and respect. It was under the protection of the European Powers that the missions of the reformed churches began their work in China at the beginning of this century ; but, trusting in that protection, they seem on various occasions to have provoked the national sensibilities of the Chinese, and thus, particularly in the case of their native converts, to have encouraged the Chinese to commit such atrocities as those we have just been witnessing. Although they could not possibly, like the Jesuits, adapt themselves to the prejudices of the Chinese, they seem to have given greater offence than in their ignorance they imagined. To give one instance only. The European missions would send out not only married but unmarried ladies, and persisted in doing so, though warned by those who knew China that the Chinese recognize in public life two classes of women only — married women, and single women of bad character. What good results could the missions expect from the missionary labours of persons so despised by the Chinese'? It will be long before Christianity finds a new and better soil in China than it found at the time of Ricci. To claim any privileges, however small, for Chinese converts was certainly an imprudence on the part of the Great European Powers, who after all were powerless to protect their faithful martyrs. In Chinese society any attempt to raise the social status of these Christian converts was sure to excite jealousy and even hatred. After our late
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experience it must be quite clear that it is more than doubtful whether Christian missionaries should he sent or even allowed to go to countries, the Governments of which object to their presence. It is always and everywhere the same story. First commercial adven- turers, then consuls, then missionaries, then soldiers, then war.
In the course of centuries it could hardly be other- wise than that sects should arise in the three State religions of China, Confucianism, Taoism, and Bud- dhism. Persecutions were frequent, but at the bottom of each we can generally see political and social questions more active than mere questions of dogma. The rebellion of the Tae-Pings in 1 854 is still vivid in the memories of many people, particularly as it was General Gordon, the martyr of Khartoum, who had to quell the insurrection against the Imperial Government. The strange feature of that insurrection was the leaning of the chief and his friends to what we can only call Christian ideas. Tae-Ping-Wang looked upon himself as a Messiah ; he worshipped a kind of Trinity, he actually introduced baptism ana the Lord’s Supper, and repudiated the worship of idols. His favourite books were those of the Old Testament which treat of the wars of the Israelites, the very chapters which Ulfilas, the apostle of the Goths, left out in his translation as likely to rouse the bellicose tendencies of his countrymen.
While the hatred of Tae-Ping-Wang was chiefly directed against the Manchu dynasty and aristocracy, who for the last two hundred years have kept the real Chinese under their sway, and while, like other rebels, his object was to upset that dynasty and to found
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a truly national one, another conspiracy, that of the Boxers, of whom we have lately heard so much, was principally directed against all foreigners, particu- larly against all Christians and their converts, and aimed at a restoration of a Chinese religion for the Chinese. The Boxers, whether so called from their emblem, the Fist, in the sense of fighting or in the sense of confederates, are one of those many societies or brotherhoods which have undermined the whole soil of China, and are ready to spring up at a moment’s notice when they imagine there is work for them to do. Different from the Tae-Pings they hate Christianity, and hope to extirpate everything foreign that is found to have entered China. There is no special religion of the Boxers ; they seem to come from all the three religions, but they are decidedly religious, and, before all things, patriotic. Hence we must admit a certain difficulty found by the Chinese Government in their treatment of the Boxers. It is very probable that some of the highest officials in China had strong sympathies with these francs-tireurs, and even when these free-lances became mere brigands they had not always the courage to declare openly against them. But this is no excuse for the Chinese Government in tolerating and even encouraging such dastardly deeds as have lately been committed in Pekin against the representatives of European Governments and against missionaries and their converts throughout China. Such conduct will put China for many years outside the pale of civilized nations, and would almost justify that spirit of revenge which has found such plain expression from one who cannot be suspected of lack of chivalrous sentiments.
II.
Y
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The origin and spreading of the three established religions in China is of great interest, not only for studying the ramifications of these systems of faith, hut also as opening before our eyes a chapter of history and geography of which we had no idea. Before the travels of the Buddhist pilgrims from China to India and from India to China were published, who could have guessed that in the fifth century a.d. human beings would have ventured to climb the mountains that separate China from India, and find their way back by sea from Ceylon along the Burmese, Siamese, and Cambodian coast to their own home? Who had any suspicion that after the third Buddhist council, in the third century B. o., Buddhist missionaries pushed forward to Kashmir and the Himalayan passes, founded settlements not only in China, but among the races of Central Asia, and thus came in contact with the Greeks of Bactria, and with Mongolian and Tartar races settled along the greater rivers, nay, in the very heart of Central Asia? When we consider how Bud- dhist and Christian settlements existed in Asia from the seventh century, as at Si-gnan-fu, and that these pilgrims must have found practicable or impracticable roads as far as Alexandria in the West, Odessa and Nisibis in Syria, and as far as Hsian-fu in the East ; that Persia, too, was open to them, and that they helped each other in teaching and learning their languages, nay, even their alphabets, does not the Asiatic continent assume a totally different aspect? We wonder that here and there in China, Tibet, and Mongolia (Kashgar) books are now forthcoming, as yet almost unintelligible, but most likely of Buddhist origin, which indicate at least the highways on which
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travels were possible for the purposes of religious propaganda. The interior of Asia, which formerly looked like an unknown desert, appears now like the back of our hand, intersected by veins indicating something living beneath. Many discoveries await the patient student here, but we shall want for their realization not only the ingenuity of Senart, Hoernle, and Leumann x, but the plucky and lucky spade of a Schliemann.
Tiber eine von den unbekannten Literaiursprachen Mitfelasiens, 1900.
THE PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS,
Chicago, 1893b
THERE are few things which I so truly regret having missed as the great Parliament of Reli- gions held in Chicago as a part of the Columbian Exhibition in 1893. Who would have thought that what was announced as simply an auxiliary branch of that exhibition could have developed into what it was, could have become the most important part of that immense undertaking, could have become the greatest success of the }7ear, and I do not hesitate to say, could now take its place as one of the most memorable events in the history of the world ?
As it seems to me, those to whom the great success of this oecumenical council was chiefly due, I mean President Bonney and Dr. Barrows, hardly made it sufficiently clear at the beginning what was their real purpose and scope. Had they done so, every one who cares for the future of religion might have felt it his bounden duty to take part in the congress. But it seemed at the first glance that it would be a mere show, a part of the great show of industry and art. But instead of a show it developed into a reality, which, if I am not greatly mistaken, will be re- membered, aye, will bear fruit, when everything else
1 Substance of a Lecture delivered in Oxford in 1894, reprinted by permission, from the Arena.
THE PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS AT CHICAGO. 325
of the mighty Columbian Exhibition has long been swept away from the memory of man.
Possibly, like many bright ideas, the idea of exhibiting all the religions of the world grew into something far grander than its authors had at first suspected. Even in America, where people have not yet lost the faculty of admiring, and of giving hearty expression to their admiration, the greatness of that event seems to me not yet fully appreciated, while in other countries vague rumours only have as yet reached the public at large of what took place in the religious parliament at Chicago. Here and there, I am sorry to say, ridicule also, the impotent weapon of ignorance and envy, has been used against what ought to have been sacred to every man of sense and culture ; but ridicule is blown away like offensive smoke; the windows are opened, and the fresh air of truth streams in.
It is difficult, no doubt, to measure correctly the importance of events of which we ourselves have been the witnesses. We have only to read histories and chronicles, written some hundreds of years ago by eye- witnesses and by the chief actors in certain events, to see how signally the observers have failed in correctly appreciating the permanent and historical significance of what they saw and heard, or of what they them- selves did. Everything is monumental and epoch- making in the eyes of ephemeral critics, but History must wait before she can pronounce a valid judge- ment, and it is the impatience of the present to await the sober verdict of History which is answerable for so many monuments having been erected in memory of events or of men whose very names are now
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unknown, or known to the stones of their pedestals oniy.
But there is one fact in connexion with the Parlia- ment of Religions which no sceptic can belittle, and on which even contemporary judgement cannot be at fault. Such a gathering of representatives of the principal religions of the world has never before taken place ; it is unique, it is unprecedented ; nay, we may truly add, it could hardly have been conceived before our own time. Of course even this has been denied, and it has been asserted that the meeting at Chicago was by no means the first realization of a new idea upon this subject, but that similar meetings had taken place before. Is this true or is it not1? To me it seems a complete mistake. If the religious parlia- ment was not an entirely new idea, it was certainly the first realization of an idea which has lived silently in the hearts of prophets, or has been uttered now and then by poets only, who are free to dream dreams and to see visions. Let me quote some lines of Browning s, which certainly sound like true prophecy : —
1 Better pursue a pilgrimage Through ancient and through modern times,
To many peoples, various climes,
Where I may see saint, savage, sage Fuse their respective creeds in one Before the general Father’s throne.’
Here you have no doubt the idea, the vision of the religious parliament of the world ; but Browning was not allowed to see it. You have seen it, and America may be proud of having given substance to Browning’s dream and to Browning s desire, if only it will see that what has hitherto been achieved must not be allowed to perish again.
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To compare that parliament with the council of the Buddhist King Asoka, in the third century before Christ, is to take great liberties with historical facts. Asoka was no doubt an enlightened sovereign, who preached and practised religious toleration more truly than has any sovereign before or after him. I am the last person to belittle his fame ; but we must remem- ber that all the people who assembled at his council belonged to one and the same religion, the religion of Buddha, and although that religion was even at that early time (242 B.c.) broken up into numerous sects, yet all who were present at the Great Council pro- fessed to be followers of Buddha only. We do not hear of Gainas nor Agivikas or Brahmans, nor of any other non-Buddhist religion being represented at the Council of Bataliputra.
It is still more incongruous to compare the Council of Chicago with the Council of Nicaea. That council was no doubt called an oecumenical council, but what was the olkov^vt], the inhabited world, of that time (325 A. D.) compared with the world as represented at the Columbian Exhibition of last year? Nor was there any idea under Constantine of extending the hand of fellowship to any non- Christian religion. On the contrary the object -was to narrow the limits of Christian love and toleration, by expelling the fol- lowers of Arius from the pale of the Christian church. As to the behaviour of the bishops assembled at Nicaea, the less that is said about it the better ; but I doubt whether the members of the Chicago council, including bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, would feel flattered if they were to be likened to the fathers assembled at Nicaea.
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One more religious gathering has been quoted as a precedent of the Parliament of Religions at Chicago; it is that of the Emperor Akbar. But although the spirit which moved the Emperor Akbar (1,542-1605) to invite representatives of different creeds to meet at Delhi, was certainly the same spirit which stirred the hearts of those who originated the meeting at Chicago, yet not only was the number of religions represented at Delhi much more limited, but the whole purpose was different. Here I say again, I am the last person to try to belittle the fame of the Emperor Akbar. He was dissatisfied with his own religion, the religion founded by Mohammed; and for an emperor to be dissatisfied with his own religion and the religion of his people, augurs, generally, great independence of judgement and true honesty of pur- pose. We possess full accounts of his work as a religious reformer, from both friendly and unfriendly sources ; from Abufazl on one side, and from Badaoni on the other (Introduction to The Science of Religion, p. 209 et seq.).
Akbar’s idea was to found a new religion, and it was for that purpose that he wished to become acquainted with the prominent religions of the world. He first invited the most learned ulemahs to discuss certain moot points of Islam, but we are told by Badaoni that the disputants behaved very badly, and that one night, as he expresses it, the necks of the ulemahs swelled up, and a horrid noise and confusion ensued. The emperor announced to Badaoni that all who could not behave, and who talked nonsense, should leave the hall, upon which Badaoni remarked that in that case they would all have to leave
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(loc. cit., p. 221). Nothing of this kind happened at Chicago, I believe. The Emperor Akbar no doubt did all he could to become acquainted with other religions, but he certainly was not half so successful as was the president of the Chicago religious congress in assembling around him representatives of the principal religions of the world. Jews and Christians were summoned to the imperial court, and requested to translate the Old and the New Testament. We hear of Christian missionaries, such as Rodolpho Aquaviva, Antonio de Monserrato, Francisco Enriques and others ; nay, for some time a rumour was spread that the emperor himself had actually been converted to Christianity.
Akbar appointed a regular staff of translators, and his library must have been very rich in religious books. Still he tried in vain to persuade the Brahmans to communicate the Vedas to him or to translate them into a language which he could read. He knew nothing of them, except possibly some portions of the Atharva-veda, probably the Upanishads only. Nor was he much more successful with the Zend Avesta, though portions of it were translated for him by one Ardshiv. His minister, Abufazl, tried in vain to assist the emperor in gaining a knowledge of Buddhism ; but we have no reason to suppose that the emperor ever cared to become acquainted with the religious systems of China, whether that of Confucius or that of Lao-tzd. Besides, there was in all these religious conferences the restraining presence of the emperor and of the powerful heads of the different ecclesiastical parties of Islam. Abufazl, who entered fully into the thoughts of Akbar, expressed his conviction that the
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religions of the world have all one common ground (loc. cit., p. 210). ‘One man,’ he writes (p. 211),
‘ thinks that he worships God by keeping his passions in subjection ; another finds self-discipline in watch- ing over the destinies of a nation. The religion of thousands consists in clinging to a mere idea ; they are happy in their sloth and unfitness of judging for themselves. But when the time of reflection comes, and men shake off the prejudices of their education, the threads of the web of religious blindness break, and the eye sees the glory of harmoniousness.’ ! But,’ he adds, ‘the ray of such wisdom does not light up every house, nor could every heart bear such know- ledge.’ ‘ Again,’ he says, ‘ although some are enlight- ened, many would observe silence from fear of fanatics, who lust for blood though they look like men. And should any one muster sufficient courage, and openly proclaim his enlightened thoughts, pious simpletons would call him a madman, and throw him aside as of no account, whilst the ill-starred wretches would at once think of heresy and atheism, and go about with the intention of killing him.’
This was written, more than three hundred years ago, by a minister of Akbar, a contemporary of Henry VIII ; but if it had been written in our own days, in the days of Bishop Colenso and Dean Stanley, it would hardly have been exaggerated, barring the intention of killing such ‘madmen as openly declare their enlightened thoughts ’ ; for burning heretics is no longer either legal or fashionable. How closely even the emperor and his friends were watched by his enemies we may learn from the fact that in some cases he had to see his informants in the dead of night,
THE PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS AT CHICAGO. 331
sitting on a balcony of his palace, to which his guest had to be pulled up by a rope ! There was no necessity for that at Chicago. The parliament at Chicago had not to consider the frowns or smiles of an empeioi like Constantine ; it was encouraged, not intimidated, by the presence of bishops and cardinals ; it was a fiee and friendly meeting, nay, I may say a brotherly meeting, and what is still more — for even biotheis will sometimes quarrel — it was a harmonious meeting from beginning to end. All the religions ol the world were represented at the congress, far more completely and far more ably than in the palace at Delhi, and I repeat once more, without fear of contradiction, that the Parliament of Religions at Chicago stands unique, stands unprecedented in the whole history of the world.
There are, after all, not so many religions in the world as people imagine. There are only eight great historical religions which can claim that name on the strength of their possessing sacred books. All these religions came from the East ; three from an Aryan, three from a Semitic source, and two from China. The three Aryan religions are the Vedic, with its modern offshoots in India, the Avestlc of Zoroaster in Persia, and the religion of Buddha, likewise the offspring of Brahmanism in India. The three great religions of Semitic origin are the Jewish, the Christian, and the Mohammedan. There are, besides, the two Chinese religions, that of Confucius and that of Lao-tze, and that is all; unless we assign a separate place to such creeds as Crainism, a near relative of Buddhism, which was ably represented at Chicago, or the religion of the Sikhs, which is after all but
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a compromise between Brahmanism and Moham- medanism.
All these religions were represented at Chicago ; the only one that might complain of being neglected was Mohammedanism. Unfortunately the Sultan, in his capacity as Khalif, was persuaded not to send a representative to Chicago. One cannot help thinking that both in his case and in that of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who likewise kept aloof from the congress, there must have been some unfortunate misappre- hension as to the real objects of that meeting. The consequence was that Mohammedanism was left with- out any authoritative representative in a general gathering of all the religions of the world. It was different with the Episcopalian Church of England, for although the archbishop withheld his sanction his church was ably represented both by English and American divines.
But what surprised everybody was the large atten- dance of representatives of all the other religions of the world. There were Buddhists and Shintoists from Japan, followers of Confucius and Lao-tze from China ; there was a Parsee to speak for Zoroaster, there were learned Brahmans from India to explain the V eda and Vedanta. Even the most recent phases of Brahmanism were ably and eloquently represented by Mozoomdar, the Mend and successor of Keshub Chunder Sen, and the modern reformers of Buddhism in Ceylon had their powerful spokesman in Dharmapala. A brother of the King of Siam came to speak for the Buddhism of his country. Judaism was defended by learned rabbis, while Christianity spoke through bishops and archbishops, nay, even through a cardinal who is
THE PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS AT CHICAGO. 333
supposed to stand very near the papal chair. How had these men been persuaded to travel thousands of miles, to spend their time and their money in order to attend a congress, the very character and object of which were mere matters of speculation 1
Great credit no doubt is due to Dr. Barrows and his fellow labourers; but it is clear that the world was really ripe for such a congress, nay, was waiting and longing for it. Many people belonging to different religions had been thinking about a universal religion, or at least about a union of the different religions, resting on a recognition of the truths shared in common by all of them, and on a respectful toleration of what is peculiar to each, unless it offended against reason or morality. It was curious to see, after the meeting was over, from how many sides voices were raised, not only expressing approval of what had been done, but regret that it had not been done long ago. And yet I doubt whether the world would really have been ready for such a truly oecumenical council at a much earlier period. We all remember the time, not so very long ago, when we used to pray for Jews, Turks, and infidels, and thought of all of them as true sons of Belial. Mohammed was looked upon as the arch enemy of Christianity, the people of India were idolaters of the darkest die, all Buddhists were athe- ists, and even the Parsees were supposed to worship the fire as their god.
It is due to a moi'e frequent intercourse between Christians and non-Christians that this feeling of aver- sion towards and misrepresentation of other religions has of late been considerably softened. Much is due to honest missionaries, who lived in India, China, and
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even among the savages of Africa, and who could not help seeing the excellent influence which even less perfect religions may exercise on honest believers. Much also is due to travellers who stayed long enough in countries such as Turkey, China, or Japan to see in how many respects the people there were as good, nay, even better, than those who call themselves Christians. I read not long ago a book of travels by Mrs. Gordon, called Clear Round. The author starts with the strongest prejudices against all heathens, but she comes home with the kindliest feelings towards the religions which she has watched in their practical working in India, in Japan, and elsewhere.
Nothing, however, if I am not blinded by my own paternal feelings, has contributed more powerfully to spread a feeling of toleration, nay, in some cases, of respect for other religions, than has the publication of the Sacred Books of the East. It reflects the highest credit on Lord Salisbury, at the time Secretary of State for India, and on the university of which he is the chancellor, that so large an undertaking could have been carried out ; and I am deeply grateful that it should have fallen to my lot to be the editor of this series, and that I should thus have been allowed to help in laying the solid foundation of the large temple of the religion of the future — a foundation which shall be broad enough to comprehend every shade of honest faith in that Power which by nearly all religions is called Our Father, a name only, it is true, and it may be a very imperfect name ; yet there is no other name in human language that goes nearer to that for-ever- unknown Majesty in which we ourselves live and move and have our being.
THE PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS AT CHICAGO. 335
But although this feeling of kindliness for and the desire to be just to non-Christian religions has been growing up for some time, it never before found such an open and solemn recognition as at Chicago. That meetiug was not intended, like that under Akbar at Delhi, for elaborating a new religion, but it established a fact of the greatest significance, namely, that there exists an ancient and universal religion, and that the highest dignitaries and representatives of all the relio'ions of the world can meet as members of one
O
common brotherhood, can listen respectfully to what each religion had to say for itself, nay, can join in a common prayer and accept a common blessing, one day from the hands of a Christian archbishop, another day from a Jewish rabbi, and again another day from a Buddhist priest (Dharmapala). Another fact, also, was established once for all, namely, that the points on which the great religions differ are far less numerous, and certainly far less important, than are the points on which they all agree. The words, ‘that God has not left Himself without a witness,’ became for the first time revealed as a fact at this congress.
Whoever knows what human nature is will not feel surprised that every one present at the religious parliament looked on his own religion as the best, nay, loved it all the same, even when on certain points it seemed clearly deficient or antiquated as compared with other religions. Yet that predilection did not interfere with a hearty appreciation of what seemed good and excellent in other religions. When an old Jewish rabbi summed up the whole of his religion in the words, ‘Be good, my boy, for God’s
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sake,’ no member of the Parliament of Religions would have said No ; and when another rabbi declared that the whole law and the prophets depend on our loving God and loving our neighbour as ourselves, there are few religions that could not have quoted from their own sacred scriptures more or less perfect expressions of the same sentiment.
I wish indeed it could have been possible at this parliament to put forward the most essential doctrines of Christianity or Islam, for example, and to ask the representatives of the other religions of the world whether their own sacred books said Yes or No to any of them. For that purpose, however, it would have been necessary, no doubt, to ask each speaker to give chapter and verse for his declaration, — and here is the only weak point that has struck me, and is sure to strike others, in reading the transactions of the Parliament of Religions. Statements were put forward by those who professed to speak in the name of Buddhism, Brahmanism, Christianity, and Zoroas- trianism— by followers of these religions who happened to be present — which, if the speakers had been asked for chapter and verse from their own canonical books, would have been difficult to substantiate, or, at all events, would have assumed a very modified aspect. Perhaps this was inevitable, particularly as the rules of the parliament did not encourage anything like discussion, and it might have seemed hardly courteous to call upon a Buddhist archbishop to produce his authority from the TripRaka, or from the nine Dharmas.
We know how much our own Christian sects difter in the interpretation of the Bible, and how they
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contradict one another on many of their articles of faith. Yet they all accept the Bible as their highest authority. Whatever doctrine is contradicted by the Bible they would at once surrender as false ; what- ever doctrine is not supported by it they could not claim as revealed. It is the same with all the other so-called book-religions. Whatever differences of opinion may separate different sects, they all submit to the authority of their own sacred books.
I may therefore be pardoned if I think that the Parliament of Religions, the record of which has been assembled in fifty silent volumes, is in some respects more authoritative than the Parliament that was held at Chicago. At Chicago you had, no doubt, the im- mense advantage of listening to living witnesses ; you were making the history of the future — my parliament in type records only the history of the past. Besides, the immense number of hearers, your crowded hall joining in singing sacred hymns, nay, even the mag- nificent display of colour by the representatives of oriental and occidental creeds — the snowy lawn, the orange and crimson satin, the vermilion brocade of the various ecclesiastical vestments so eloquently described by your reporters — all this contributed to stir an enthusiasm in your hearts which I hope will never die. If there are two worlds, the world of deeds and the world of words, you moved at Chicago in the world of deeds. But in the end what remains of the world of deeds is the world of words, or, as we call it, history, and in those fifty volumes you may see the history, the outcome, or, in some cases, the short inscription on the tombstones of those who in their time have battled for truth, as the speakers assembled
II.
z
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at Chicago have battled for truth, for love, and for charity to our neighbours.
I know full well what may be said against all sacred books. Mark, first of all, that not one has been written by the founder of a religion ; secondly, that nearly all were written hundreds, in some cases thousands, of years after the rise of the religion which they profess to represent ; thirdly, that even after they were written they were exposed to dangers and interpolations ; and fourthly, that it requires a very accurate and scholarlike knowledge of their language and of the thoughts of the time when they were com- posed, in order to comprehend their true meaning. All this should be honestly confessed; and yet there remains the fact that no religion has ever recognized an authority higher than that of its sacred book, whether for the past, or the present, or the future. It was the absence of this authority, the impossibility of checking the enthusiastic descriptions of the supreme excellence of every single religion, that seems to me to have somewhat interfered with the usefulness of that great oecumenical meeting at Chicago.
But let us not forget, therefore, what has been achieved by this parliament in the world of deeds. Thousands of people from every part of the world have for the first time been seen praying together, ‘ Our Father, which art in heaven,’ and have testified to the words of the prophet Malachi,— ‘ Have we not all one Father, hath not one God created us?’ They have declared that ‘ in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is acceptable to Him. They have seen with their own eyes that God is not far from each one of those who seek God, if haply
THE PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS AT CHICAGO. 339
they may feel after Him. Let theologians pile up volume upon volume of what they call theology ; religion is a very simple matter, and that which is so simple and yet so all-important to us, the living kernel of religion, can be found, I believe, in almost every creed, however much the husk may vary. And think what that means ! It means that above and beneath and behind all religions there is one eternal, one universal religion, a religion to which every man, whether black, or white, or yellow, or red, belongs or may belong.
What can be more disturbing and distressing than to see the divisions in our own religion, and likewise the divisions in the eternal and universal religion of mankind ? Not only are the believers in different religions divided from each other, but they think it right to hate and to anathematize each other on ac- count of their belief. As long as religions encourage such feelings none of them can be the true one.
And if it is impossible to prevent theologians from quarrelling, or popes, cardinals, archbishops and bishops, priests and ministers, from pronouncing their anathemas, the true people of God, the universal laity, have surely a higher duty to fulfil. Their religion, whether formulated by Buddha, Mohammed, or Christ, is before all things practical, a religion of love and trust, not of hatred and excommunication.
Suppose that there are and that there always will remain differences of creed, are such differences fatal to a universal religion 1 Must we hate one another because we have different creeds, or because we express in different ways what we believe ?
Let us look at some of the most important articles
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of faith, such as miracles, the immortality of the soul , and the existence of God. It is well known that both Buddha and Mohammed declined to perform miracles, nay, despised them if required as evidence in support of the truth of their doctrines. If, on the contrary, the founder of our own religion appealed, as we are told, to His works in support of the truth of His teach- ing, does that establish either the falsehood or the truth of the Buddhist, the Mohammedan, or the Christian religion ? May there not be truth even without miracles ? Nay, as others would put it, may there not be truth even if resting apparently on the evidence of miracles only ? Whenever all three religions proclaim the same truth, may they not all be true, even if they vary slightly in their expression, and may not their fundamental agreement serve as stronger evidence even than all miracles ?
Or take a more important point, the belief in the immortality of the soul. Christianity and Moham- medanism teach it, ancient Mosaism seems almost to deny it, while Buddhism refrains from any positive utterance, neither asserting nor denying it. Does even that necessitate rupture and excommunication 'l Are we less immortal because the Jews doubted and the Buddhists shrank from asserting the indestructible nature of the soul ?
Nay, even what is called atheism is, often, not the denial of a Supreme Being, but simply a refusal to recognize what seem to some minds human attributes, unworthy of the Deity. Whoever thinks that he can really deny Deity, must also deny humanity ; that is, he must deny himself, and that, as you know, is a logical impossibility.
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But true religion, that is practical, active, living religion, has little or nothing to do with such logical or metaphysical quibbles. Practical religion is life, is a new life, a life in the sight of God ; and it springs from what may truly be called a new birth. And even this belief in a new birth is by no means an exclusively Christian idea. Nicodemus might ask, How can a man be born again ? The old Brahmans, however, knew perfectly well the meaning of that second birth. They called themselves Dvi-ga, that is Twice-born, because their religion had led them to discover their divine birthright, long before we were taught to call ourselves the children of God.
In this way it would be possible to discover a number of fundamental doctrines, shared in common by the great religions of the world, though clothed in slightly varying phraseology. Nay, I believe it would have been possible, even at Chicago, to draw up a small number of articles of faith, not, of course, thirty-nine, to which all who were present could have honestly subscribed. And think what that would have meant ! It rests with us to carry forth the torch that has been lighted in America, and not to allow it to be extinguished again till a beacon has been raised lighting up the whole world, and drawing towards it the eyes and hearts of all the sons of men in brotherly love and in reverence for that God who has been worshipped since the world began, albeit in different languages and under different names, but never before in such unison, in such world-embracing harmony and love, as at the great religious council at Chicago.
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Letter to the Rev. John Henry Barrows, D.D., Chairman of the General Committee.
Easter Sunday, April 2nd, 1893.
Dear Sir, — What I have aimed at in my Gifford Lectures on ‘ Natural Religion ’ is to show that all religions are natural, and you will see from my last volume on Theosophy or Psychological Religion that what I hope for is not simply a reform, but a complete revival of religion, more particularly of the Christian religion. You will hardly have time to read the whole of my volume before the opening of your Reli- gious Congress at Chicago, but you can easily see the drift of it. I had often asked myself the question how independent thinkers and honest men like St. Clement and Origen came to embrace Christianity, and to elaborate the first system of Christian theology. There was nothing to induce them to accept Christi- anity, or to cling to it, if they had found it in any way irreconcilable with their philosophical convic- tions. They were philosophers first, Christians after- ward. They had nothing to gain and much to lose by joining and remaining in this new sect of Christians. We may safely conclude therefore that they found their own philosophical convictions, the final outcome of the long preceding development of philosophical thought in Greece, perfectly compatible with the religious and moral doctrines of Christianity as con- ceived by themselves.
Now, what was the highest result of Greek philo- sophy as it reached Alexandria, whether in its Stoic or neo-Platonic garb ? It was the ineradicable con-
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viction that there is Reason or Logos in the world. When asked, Whence that Reason, as seen by the eye of science in the phenomenal world, they said : ‘ From the cause of all things which is beyond all Dames and comprehension, except so far as it is manifested or revealed in the phenomenal world.’
What we call the different types or ideas, or logoi, in the world, are the logoi or thoughts or wills of that Being whom human language has called God. These thoughts, which embraced everything that is, existed at first as thoughts, as a thought- world (koV/xo? votitos), before by will and force they could become what we see them to be, the types or species realized in the visible world (koct/xos dparos). So far all is clear and incontrovertible, and a sharp line is drawn between this philosophy and another, likewise powerfully represented in the previous history of Greek philo- sophy, which denied the existence of that eternal Reason, denied that the world was thought and willed, as even the Klamaths, a tribe of Red Indians, profess and ascribe the world, as we see it as men of science, to purely mechanical causes, to what we now call uncreate protoplasm, assuming various casual forms by means of natural selection, influence of environment, survival of the fittest, and all the rest.
The critical step which some of the philosophers of Alexandria took, while others refused to take it, was to recognize the perfect realization of the Divine Thought or Logos of manhood in Christ, as in the true sense the Son of God ; not in the vulgar mythological sense, but in the deep metaphysical meaning of which the term vlos [xovoyevijs had long been possessed in Greek philosophy. Those who declined to take that
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step, such as Celsus and his friends, did so either because they denied the possibility of any Divine •Thought ever becoming fully realized in the flesh or in the phenomenal world, or because they could not bring themselves to recognize that realization in Jesus of Nazareth. St. Clement’s conviction that the pheno- menal world was a realization of the Divine Reason was based on purely philosophical grounds, while his conviction that the ideal or the Divine conception of manhood had been fully realized in Christ and in Christ only, dying on the Cross for the truth as revealed to Him and by Him, could have been based on historical grounds only.
Everything else followed. Christian morality was really in complete harmony with the morality of the Stoic school of philosophy, though it gave to it a new life and a higher purpose. But by means of Chris- tian philosophy the whole world assumed a new aspect. It was seen to be supported and pervaded by Reason or Logos, it was throughout teleological, thought and willed by a rational power. The same Divine presence was now perceived for the first time in all its fullness and perfection in the one Son of God, the pattern of the whole race of men henceforth to be called ‘ the sons of God.’
This was the groundwork of the earliest Christian theology, as presupposed by the author of the fourth Gospel, and likewise by many passages in the Synop- tical Gospels, though fully elaborated for the first time by such men as St. Clement and Origen. If we want to be true and honest Christians, we must go back to those earliest ante-Nicene authorities, the true Fathers of the Church. Thus only can we use the words :
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‘ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word became flesh,’ not as thoughtless repeaters, but as honest thinkers and believers. The first sentence, ‘In the beginning was the Word,’ requires thought and thought only ; the second, ‘ and the Logos became flesh,’ requires faith — faith such as those who knew Jesus had in Jesus, and which we may accept unless we have any reasons for doubting their testimony.
There is nothing new in all this, it is only the earliest Christian theology restated, restored, and revised. It gives us at the same time a truer con- ception of the history of the whole world, showing us that there was a purpose in the ancient religions and philosophies of the world, and that Christianity was really from the beginning a synthesis of the best thoughts of the past, as they had been slowly elaborated by the two principal representatives of the human race, the Aryan and the Semitic.
On this ancient foundation, which was strangely neglected, if not purposely rejected, at the time of the Reformation, a true revival of the Christian reli- gion and a reunion of all its divisions may become possible, and I have no doubt that your Congress of the religions of the world might do excellent work for the resuscitation of pure and primitive ante-Nicene Christianity.
Yours very truly,
F. Max Muller.
WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC1.
WHEN I was lately asked to take part in a Symposium in the Agnostic Annual on the question ‘ Why live a Moral Life ? ’ I felt it an honour to join a company of thinkers and writers so eminent, each in his own subject, as the supporters of that journal. But I felt bound at the same time to declare that I had really no right to claim the title of Agnostic. If, as we have been told, Agnosticism implied no more than a negation of Gnosticism, and if by Gnosticism were meant the teaching of such philosophers as Cerinthus or Valentinus or Marcion, I believe I might say that I do not hold their opinions, that I am certainly not a Gnostic, although I strongly sympathize with what was meant originally by Gnosis, as distinct from Pistis.
But this merely negative definition of Agnosticism would hardly be satisfactory to the leading Agnostics of our time. For though Agnosticism excluded Aiexan- drian Gnosticism, it might include ever so many views of the universe, opposed to each other on many points, though agreeing in a common renunciation of Gnosticism.
Agnosticism, however, as now understood, seems to mean something very different. It has been explained to mean ‘that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for
1 Nineteenth Century, December, i S94.
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professing to know or believe.’ Perhaps this, too, is an article which few men would object to sign, though it leaves the door open to a good deal of controversy as to what is meant by ‘ scientific grounds.’ Some astronomers held that the earth formed the centre of the world, others denied it ; both, as they thought, on scientific grounds. The opponents of Galileo produced what they considered scientific grounds for their opinions ; Galileo produced scientific grounds for his own conviction, and no one would wish that the two parties should have confined themselves to mere Agnosticism, to a profession of ignorance of the true position of the earth or the sun in our planetary system — should have shrugged their shoulders and said ‘ Who knows ? ’
We enter into a new atmosphere of thought if, as Agnostics, we are asked c to confess that we know nothing of what may be beyond phenomena.’ But this, too, if properly interpreted, is an article which few who can see through the meaning of words would decline to accept, while people accustomed to philosophical terminology might possibly consider such a statement as almost tautological. What may be, or even what is, beyond phenomena is the same as what we call transcendent ; that is, what transcends or lies beyond the horizon of our knowledge, and therefore leaves us ignorant, or Agnostics. Phenomenal means what appears to be, in distinction from what is, and if knowledge were restricted to what is, then what only appears to be could not possibly claim to produce real knowledge.
But if all these propositions are so self-evident as to make controversy almost impossible, it may seem
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strange that Agnosticism, not only the name, but the thing itself, should of late have been represented as the peculiar property of the nineteenth century. The whole history of philosophy forms but one continuous commentary on the fact that there are things which we can, and others which we cannot, know ; nay, it is the chief object of all critical philosophy to draw a sharp line between the two. If we begin the history of systematic philosophy with Socrates, as represented to us by his disciples, we know that Socrates, though declared the wisest of men by the oracle of Delphi, declared that he knew one thing only, and that was that he knew nothing. This has been thought by some to be a mere expression of excessive humility on the part of Socrates, just as when, in the Hippias Minor, he says, ‘My deficiency is proved to me by the fact that when I meet one of you who are famous for wisdom, and to whose wisdom all the Hellenes are witnesses, I am found out to know nothing.’ But there was really a much deeper meaning in his confession of ignorance, for he claimed this knowledge of his ignorance as a proof of his wisdom. He can only have meant, therefore, that he knew all human knowledge to be concerned with phenomena only, and that he knew nothing of what may be beyond phenomena. If this was the beginning of all philosophy, the end of all philosophy was to find out how we know even this ; how we know that we are ignorant, and why we must be ignorant of everything beyond what is phenomenal.
That question had to wait for its final answer till Kant wrote his Kritik der reinen Vemunft, and gave a scientific demonstration of the inherent limits of
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human knowledge. In the meantime the confession of our ignorance, the true philosophical Agnosticism, had found utterance again and again from the lips of all the most eminent philosophers. They did not call it Agnosticism, because that word, as seeming to exclude Gnosticism only, would have conveyed a too narrow and therefore a false idea. Greek philoso- phers called it with a technical name, Agnoict x, or, if they wished to express the proper attitude of the mind towards transcendental questions, they called it EpoeTte, i. e. suspense of judgement. During the Middle Ages exactly the same idea which now goes by the name of Agnosticism was well known as Docta Ignorantia, i. e. the ignorance founded on the know- ledge of our ignorance, or of our impotence to grasp anything beyond what is phenomenal.
In both these senses, therefore, i. e. in the sense of not being a follower of the Alexandrian. Gnostics, and in that of admitting that all the objects of our knowledge are ipso facto phenomenal, I should not hesitate to call myself an Agnostic. And yet I can- not do so for two reasons : (i) because I strongly
sympathize with the objects which in the beginning Alexandrian Gnosticism and neo-Platonism had in view, and (2) because I hold that the human mind in its highest functions is not confined to a knowledge of phenomena only.
To begin with the second point, I need hardly say that the very name phenomenal or apparent implies that there is something that appears, something of which we can therefore predicate that it appears, something that seems to be, that is relative to us, and
1 M. M., Natural Religion, p. 225.
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so far, but so far only, known to us. That which appears is, before it appears, unknown to us, but it becomes known to us in the only way in which it can be known, that is by its appearance, by its phenomenal manifestation, by its becoming an object of human knowledge. It is known to us as that without which the phenomenal would be impossible, nay, unthinkable. That wdthout which the phenomenal would be un- thinkable is sometimes called the noumenal, the real, the absolute, and if we call its absence unthinkable, we imply that there are certain forms of our thought from which our phenomenal knowledge cannot escape, the well-known Kantian forms of intuition and under- standing. These, as Kant has shown, cannot be the mere result of phenomenal experience because they possess a character of necessity which no phenomenal experience can ever claim. To take a very simple case. It is well known that we never see more than one side of the moon. Yet such are the powers both of our sensuous intuition (Anschauungsformen) and of the categories of our understanding, that we know with perfect certainty, a certainty such as no ex- perience, if repeated a thousand times, could ever give us, that there must be another side which on this earth we shall never see, but which to our consciousness is as real as the side which we do see. These forms of sensuous intuition admit of no exception. The rule that every material body must have more than one side is absolute. In the same way, if we think at all, we must submit to the law of causality, a category of our understanding, without which even the simplest phenomenal knowledge would be impossible. We never see a horse, we are only aware of certain states
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of our own consciousness, produced through our senses; but that these affections presuppose a cause, or, as we call it, an object outside us, is due to that law of causality within us which we must obey, whether we like it or not.
If, then, we have to recognize in every single object of our phenomenal knowledge a something or a power which manifests itself in it, and which we know, and can only know, through its phenomenal manifestation, we have also to acknowledge a power that manifests itself in the whole universe. We may call that power unknown or inscrutable, but we may also call it the best known, because all our knowledge is derived from a scrutiny of its phenomenal manifestations. That it is, we know ; what it is by itself, that is, out of relation to us or unknown by us, of course we cannot know, as little as we can eat our cake and have it ; but we do know that without it the manifest or phenomenal universe would be impossible.
This is the first step which carries us beyond the limits of Agnoia, and by which I am afraid I should forfeit at once the right of calling myself an Agnostic. But another and even more fatal step is to follow, which, I fear, will deprive me altogether of any claim to that title. I cannot help discovering in the uni- verse an all-pervading causality or a reason for every- thing ; for, even when in my phenomenal ignorance I do not yet know a reason for this or that, I am forced to admit that there exists some such reason ; I feel bound to admit it, because to a mind like ours nothing can exist without a sufficient reason. But how do I know that ? Here is the point where I cease to be an Agnostic. I do not know it from experience,
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and yet I know it with a certainty greater than any which experience could give. This also is not a new discovery. The first step towards it was made at a very early time by the Greek philosophers, when they turned from the obsexwation of outward nature to higher sphex-es of thought, and recognized in nature the working of a mind or Now?, which pervades the universe. Anaxagoras, who was the first to postulate such a Nor? in nature, ascribed to it not much more than the first impulse to the intei’action of his Homoio- meries. But even his NoC? was soon perceived to be more than a mere primum mobile, more than the klvovv aKLvrjTov. We ourselves, after thousands of years of physical and metaphysical reseai'ch, can say no more than that there is NoS?, that there is mind and l’eason in nature. Sa Majeste le Hascird has long been dethroned in all scientific studies, and neither natural selection, nor struggle for life, nor the influence of environment, or any other aliases of it, will account for the Logos , the thought, which with its thousand eyes looks at us through the transpai’ent cui’tain of nature and calls for thoughtful recognition from the Logos within us. If any philosopher can persuade himself that the true and well-ordei'ed genera of nature are the result of mechanical causes, whatever name he may give them, he moves in a world alto- gether diffei-ent from my own. He belongs to a period of thought antecedent to Anaxagoras. To Plato these genera were ideas ; to the Peripatetics they were words or Logoi ; to both they were manifestations of thought. Unless these thoughts had existed previous to their manifestation or individualization in the phenomenal world, the human mind could never have discovered
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them there and named them. We ought not to say any longer in the language of the childhood of our race, ‘ In the beginning God created heaven and earth.’ As Christians we have to say in the language of St. John and his Platonic and Gnostic predecessors, ‘ In the beginning there was the Logos.’ If we call that Logos the Son, and if we speak of a Father whom no one knows but the Son, the so-called Deus ante intellectum, we are using human language, but if we know that all human language is metaphorical we shall never attempt to force these words into a narrow literal meaning. To do so is to create mythology, and with it all its concomitant dangers. What lies behind the curtain of these words is, in fact, the legitimate realm of Agnoia or Agnosticism. But all that lies on this side of the curtain is our domain, the domain of language and afterwards of science, which in the chaos of phenomena has discovered, and with every new generation of Aristotles, Bacons, and Darwins is bent on discovering more and more, a hidden Cosmos, or the reflex of that Logos, without which Nature would be illogical, irrational, chaotic, and existing by accident only, not by the will of a rational Power. Call that Power the Father, or call it a Person, and you neither gain nor lose anything, for these words also are metaphorical only, and what constitutes the personal element in man or any other living being is as unknown to us as what constitutes the personal element in the author, the thinker, the speaker, or creator of the logoi. All I maintain is, that if we ever speak of a Logos and of logoi, and understand clearly what we mean by these words, we can no longer say that in the beginning there was