CHAPTER VIITHE MODULUS OF NATURE AND THE THEOREM OF PSYCHOLOGY
The Science of Psychology, like any other science, must deal with demonstrated facts, classify them, and systematize the resulting categories.
Strictly logical conclusions drawn from categories of facts so derived, deserve the name of Science.
Science is, therefore, a definite method of arriving at exact conclusions. No other method can legitimately bear the name of science.
No one pretends to dispute the conclusions logically involved in the Binomial Theorem; or in the Parallelogram of forces; or in correlative mechanical equivalents; or in many of the known laws of chemistry and physiology.
When, however, we come to mental processes and psychical phenomena, the facts are so redundant, and so differently reported and apprehended, that argument, belief and prejudice, credulity and incredulity, overshadow and drown with a war of words all clear, scientific methods or conclusions.
But if man, as a whole, is a fact in nature; or if “God made Man a Living Soul,” then the whole nature of man exists under law, and is apprehensible to science.
Man’s function as a scientist is to read, to reflect, to weigh, to measure, and to understand.
There are those who object to Natural Science as applied to “Divine” things. They would preserve the mystery, and seem to prefer miracle and dogma to knowledge and law.
Their preference is to be respected, even though ignorance and superstition result. Since the domain of science, in America at least, is no longer restricted by ecclesiastic law, the conflict between Religion and Science has gradually disappeared, and the conflict is rather that between knowledge and ignorance, with ignorance on the wane.
“Things settled by long use, if not absolutely good, at least fit well together.”
This transition period seems confusing to many earnest souls with its “New Thought,” its “occultisms” and its “Lo here’s” and “Lo there’s.” But through and beneath it all, may be heard a note of harmony, the promise and the potency of the triumph of light and knowledge.
We may not know the final results, but every sincere and earnest seeker may have the peaceful assurance that he is on the open highway that leads to the noblest and the best.
The assurance of knowledge but makes clearer the revelations of faith.
That “absentee God”—of which Carlyle wrote, has been discerned as the Universal Intelligence, and equally Love and Law.
Among recent writers and books on the subjectof psychology, Professor Hugo Münsterberg’s “Psychotherapy” occupies a very high place. It appeals especially to the physician, more familiar than others with morbid psychical states. Here I can look back on almost half a century of experience, the most active, in dealing with these cases.
But I am at present less concerned with mental pathology and therapy, than with the general psychological basis; thecausativecategories upon which they are based, and which occupy the first half of Münsterberg’s book.
Dividing the whole subject—the content of consciousness, all the faculties, capacities and powers, all processes and sequences—into two general groups or classes, thepurposiveand thecausal, Münsterberg declares that “thecausalview only is the view of psychology”; “thepurposiveview lies outside of psychology.” (P. 14.)
I hold, that without thepurposiveview equally included and co-ordinated, there can be no such thing as Scientific Psychology. Half views will hardly admit of synthetic generalizations.
The complete separation here instituted, between the purposive and causal factors, in itself, for purposes of definition and study, need not be objected to, if it were consistently carried out, which it is not. He so nearly pre-empts the whole ground for thecausal, giving scant courtesy to thepurposive, merely a few crumbs of comfort, so that it cannot be said to be ignored altogether, and drops the scientific method entirely in dealing with it; assentingto moral precepts and principles, without a clew to any scientific basis, that one must object to thename—Psychology—as being applied to it at all. It contains no hint of a “knowledge of the Soul.”
It is the Vito-Motor mechanism of the Mind. The Automatism of the elements, incidents, changes, and sequences of our states of consciousness; based upon, and including all that we know of physiology. Along these lines, Münsterberg’s work has probably never been equaled. It is concise, comprehensive, and exhaustive.
His physical, physiological, and mental syntheses are well-nigh complete.
Whenever, in the future, what he calls “thepurposiveview” shall be resurrected from the obscurity and nescience to which he has assigned it, and really habilitated in the garb of Science, and recognized as the lawful spouse of thecausal, we shall indeed have a true Psychology, a Science of the Human Soul.
Münsterberg neither scouts nor denies the possibility of such a future discovery. In the meantime, his viewpoint, and necessarily some of his conclusions and generalizations, are one-sided, and out of focus.
Emphasizing thecausalas he does, this could hardly be otherwise; and from this point of view, and for this reason, his practical Psychotherapy is purely empirical.
We need not deny his facts, or his results, evenwhen mixed with hypnosis, more than he does the “cures” in “Christian Science,” “Faith Cures,” at Lourdes, or by the “laying on of hands.” All these things are too well known, and not one of them deserves the name of Science. They are solely empirical methods. Münsterberg’s broader view and deeper analysis give to his methods great prominence, and he can point to no results that transcend the others. These facts and these results are as old as the history of man. They have, even as he points out, constituted epidemics of “cure.”
There is, moreover, a scientific view and method regarding what he calls the purposive view which he overlooks entirely, and which by emphasis of the causal, makes seemingly impossible. It is our purpose to try and make this clear.
His analysis of Suggestion, though largely automatic, is well-nigh exhaustive. Awareness, and Attention, are illustrated copiously; but not clearly differentiated as they may be, and actually are in the experience of individual life.
Fortunately, and wisely, he eliminates the “Subconscious” as having no real meaning or scientific value as now used.
But it might be applied to the Mental awareness of physiological automatism (bodily habits, often beginning in an act of will, or attention; writing, speaking, music, dancing, and the like, and in less degree, all life impulses and movements below the line of attention or awareness).
If, by courtesy, these might be called sub-conscious, then there is another group above the habitual plane of awareness, that, by equal courtesy, might be called Supra-conscious. But, unless it is remembered, as Münsterberg points out, that, regardless of phenomena,Consciousness is one, these terms can only lead to confusion.
Certain cases designated “multiple” or “dissociated personalities” have only served to increase this confusion still further; and more especially, when the effort has been made to patch them together, or to control them from without, by hypnosis. The well-known case of “Sally,” reported by Dr. Morton Prince, stands at last, as a “personally conducted” psychological excursion, with Sally still preserving her incognito, and as much a mystery as ever.
That automatism incident to all progressive organization and perfection of function, and through which physical, physiological, mental, and psychic synthesis becomes possible, has been allowed to usurp the place of the “Builder of the Temple,” the “Driver of the Chariot,” and the “Player” upon the “Harp of a thousand strings.” Harmony and equilibrium are incidents resulting fromcausativeprocesses! We need only to know the construction, relations of parts, and principles involved in the vibrations of the Harp, in order to understand and appreciate the music. The player, the musician—drunk, or sober, tone-blind or genius—is a mere incident, and howeverpurposiveor competent, isadmitted by courtesy only, and warned not to interfere too much with the Harp!
To build, and keep in order, and tune the Harp, constitutes the science of music. Some day, when we have leisure and inclination, we may turn our attention to the Musician, but that day seems far off. We admit that his function ispurposive. He, no doubt, has designs on the Harp, and upon us, but we are handling musical instruments at present, and if he objects to our calling ourselves “Musicians” (psychologists) he is impertinent, and should study the science of music, or keep silent.
I am not “begging the question” in regard to the human soul. I am simply emphasizing the fact of the Individual Intelligence, which, at the point of equilibrium, sweeps the strings with that harmony which is the soul of music.
This Harp of a thousand strings, is indeed, “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Its physics and kinetics; its consonants and dissonants; its shifting keyboards; its changes in pitch, rhythm, and harmony from atom and molecule, to neurons, cells and mass; with the tides of life—blood, plasma, water, air, magnetism—sweeping the whole at every breath or pulse beat, to the cry of the builder—Life—“out with the old! in with the new!” and yet theconscious identityin health, typically unchanged and unchanging—causative,designed,scientific—yea verily! andpurposive,human,intelligent,spiritual,divine, but a dead corpse, given over to decomposition the moment it is bereft of that somethingwe feel, and know, and name—theIndividual Intelligence—the Master Musician; or the staggering, drunk, crazy fiddler, with this Harp of a thousand strings, twanging perhaps in a mad-house!
Put the house in order; analyze, and classify; adjust the furniture with the handmaids of science, art, and beauty in evidence and at call; but for goodness’ sake! stop hypnotizing the musician—“Just a little”—under the fallacy or the pretense ofstrengtheningthe Will byweakeningit just a little more! This is “giving your patients fits, because you are death on fits”! Rescue Science from this atheromatous degeneration, and then suppress the dabblers in “black magic” who pose as Hypnotists, as Münsterberg advises.
For clear intelligence and exhaustive analysis, Münsterberg’s “Psychotherapy” is a masterpiece, but his psychic equation ofcausativeandpurposive, with all his mathesis, not only remains unsolved, but leads to confusion, from the false light shed on the unknown quantity, and his failure to indicate the gnosis; the demarcation between automatism and purposive Intelligence.
That this confusion exists in the daily life of the average individual whose evolution is still incomplete; that it constitutes a large per cent. of all cases of “dominant ideas,” obsessions, riotous emotions and passions; that it is nowhere recognized and defined in modern psychology, or made synthetically clear in modern philosophy, all these lapses make it all the more necessary that it should beclearly defined and made plain as the basis of Scientific Psychology.
In addition to all this, if Münsterberg’s conclusions and applications are unsound because psychologically unscientific at the point; for example, where he almost hesitatingly indorses hypnosis, however qualified or safeguarded, he is certain to be quoted as authority on the subject by those who will ignore all his qualifications to justify the practice.
In order to meet these imperative conditions, the attempt to formulate any philosophy of psychology will not be made.
Even were such an attempt made successfully, that would remove the discussion from the field of science, where it should by all means remain. What we need is a real science of life, and this should involve the whole mental and psychical realm, and lead ultimately to a knowledge of the human soul.
Recognized facts in common experience only need be appealed to, though different values will have to be placed upon some of these facts as their importance is made plain.
We begin with the fact of consciousness. What it is, we do not know. What it means and does, we know very largely and broadly. In itself, it is purely passive. It never acts. Like space, it is the “all container.” It is the background, the theatre of our intelligence.
With the individual intelligence, plus, or with consciousness, we have awareness. This is perception, or cognition, still negative.
These basic conditions, faculties and capacities, are like a company of soldiers on parade. Now comes the “word of command”—Attention!
Latent consciousness—awareness—now becomes concentrated, focalized on one point, one feeling, or emotion, or act. The soldiers “dress up,” glance down the line, and are ready to act. Then comes the action, the movement, the drill, or the fight.
The drill master is also a soldier, but he is in command. He is called the Will. Without him and his recognized authority, the soldiers may be a mob, or a rabble. With him, they “fall in line,” give “attention,” “dress up,” and are ready to act.
These are facts, and are basic and primary in our consciousawarenessandattentionin consciousness; the one negative, though inclusive; the other positive, and motor, or active.
In his “Psychotherapy” under the heading “The Subconscious,” Münsterberg has much to say upon the meaning and differentiation of awareness, attention, and recognition, but he fails to point out in direct relation, at this point, the primary power—the Will, moved by the Individual Intelligence.
Later in his work the will is recognized and frequently referred to, but from beginning to end he makes it incidental, rather than basic. When he comes to broad groups of psychic phenomena, or pathological symptoms, the sounding board of Rational Volition is cracked and there is where hypnosis slips in.
Broad as he has laid his foundations in physicaland physiological synthesis, he loses sight of its importance in the psychological; regarding as an incident that which is a basic principle of prime importance. Schopenhauer went, perhaps, as far to the opposite extreme. Perhaps “the truth will be found in the middle of the road.”
The heir apparent, the prince regent, the lawful Sovereign, by heredity, by the laws of Nature, and “by the Will of God,” in this Tabernacle of Man, is the Individual Intelligence; no matter whether we recognize or dispute his rightful authority. His Prime Minister is the Human Will; whether conspiring against, or co-operating with, the King. We may analyze the foundation of the kingdom, and the affairs of state, and designate them ascausative, orpurposive. We may see monarchy, or anarchy; democracy or republicanism; we may dethrone the king, and turn the state, literally, into a mad-house; but all the facts of nature, conscious awareness, and Scientific Psychology, cry, with one voice, Hail to the King! Long Live the King! I! Me! Mine! Myself! A fact so basic, that it is as patent to the child as to the man.
Now comes the Juggler, the little Joker. Münsterberg has sufficiently revealed the variety-stage, “the Subconscious,” and his biography of the various individual players and troupes is very elaborate. They are, one and all,Suggestions. And suggestion is the “Juggler,” and the “little Joker.”
After the Intelligence and the Will, our awarenessfinds subjects and objects, ideas, images, pictures, percepts and concepts.
That all these, both within and without, are Suggestive; that one idea, or image, or object, suggests another, or others, no one will deny, who has everthoughtabout his own thinking. It is like saying, all mental pictures are composite; the elements of many kinds coming from many sources.
So far,Suggestionis all right. It is awareness of an idea, percept, concept, or act awakened, called to attention by another, with the question, how does it strike you? what do you think of it? what, if anything, do you wish, or propose to do about it?
It is purely negative, and suggests action or inhibition, without the slightest domination.
Remember that the Will—rational Volition—is that power, which, from the point of attention enables the individual to act, or refuse to consider, as he pleases.
If I suggest to my friend here in my library, that it is near train time; that he can go if he chooses or remain with me all night, he is free to act on the suggestion and go or stay as he chooses. I have called to his attention certain facts of time, place, or circumstance, but left his will untrammeled. If I am tired of him and wish him to go, or really wish him to stay, in either case it is still a suggestion, because I have left him free to act or not. But in this case certain tones of my voice, not direct by touching the will, but coloring the feelings or emotions, color both his preferences and my own. Evenpersuasion, the power of another example, the placing of certain views or considerations before another, all these but make the more clear and specific the suggestion. They reach the will through the inside, in the realm of ideation, and not from the outside, in the way of domination. All these things are essential elements in social intercourse.
If, however, I have a motive in wishing my friend to go, or to stay, and have determined in my own mind which it shall be; ignoring or overriding his own choice; and if I use my will, or passes, or touch his eyes, or forehead, with the purpose of concentratinghisattention or will, onmywish, or idea, or command, it is no longer free choice with him, but domination; no longer suggestion, but hypnosis, pure and simple.
The confusion and juggling at this point has been made the sole excuse for hypnotism, through belittling or ignoring the importance, normal action, and supremacy of the human will.
No one denies that the exchange or forcible expression of ideas, percepts, mental pictures, or concepts, is suggestive. But the normal individual is free to accept or reject them.
Education, bias, prejudice, and the like, have also much to do in determining results.
But the moment you interfere with the free choice of the individual and dominate toward your choice, regardless of his own, you enter the realm of hypnosis; deprive him, just to that degree, of free choice, and might as well call it “fiddlesticks”as “suggestion.” It is domination, the mastery, so far as it goes or exists at all, of the will, voluntary powers, and sensory organs of one individual, by the will of another; thus reversing completely the process of nature.
To dominate the will of another is to weaken it. Timidity, apprehension, fear, are in inverse ratio to confidence, self-assurance, courage, and self-control.
Health, happiness, and self-development lie along the lines of man’s higher evolution, and the basic principle, the primary power, the minister of state, is the rational and intelligent Will.
The scientific theorem of Psychology can be nothing else than Nature’s Modulus of Man, with its root in Universal Intelligence. Man individualizes and involves this Intelligence as he evolves form, function, adaptation, and adjustment, and at least secures and maintains perfect equilibrium.
This is Nature’s Modulus, else the whole of human life is purposeless and meaningless.
Given, then, an Individual Intelligence, endowed with self-consciousness; with Rational Volition, the power to choose and to act or refuse to act; how shall it master its environment; adapt itself to any conditions; secure adjustment and becomeMaster?
The starting point and the keynote from first to last is Self-Control.
Then come high Ideals, intelligent choice, and the will backed by discrimination and judgment. These lead to understanding and wisdom.
The “courage of one’s convictions,” can be neither conceited nor blatant egotism, but a readiness to assume full responsibility of motives, acts, and results.
This recognition of Personal Responsibility is what we callConscience. It is the Judgment-seat of the Individual Intelligence in the Kingdom of its own Soul, or realm of consciousness. The moment this throne totters, or is obscured, devolution begins, and degeneration, insanity, and Inferno lie that way.
It does not change one principle involved, or weaken either Modulus or Theorem when we reflect that most equations are ended by death, long before being brought to successful solution. For the time they are certainly interrupted.
Neither do the babel of tongues, the theories, theologies, or philosophies change either Modulus or Theorem, because they are grounded in demonstrated facts, recognized, either vaguely or clearly, in the conscious experience of every intelligent thinking man and woman.
Constructive Psychology, based upon Science, for the building of character by persistent effort, increasing continually all personal resources, means the normal higher evolution of man.
So-called religions and the life after death have been purposely left unconsidered.
If we really have a Science of the Soul—the Individual Intelligence—based upon psychological facts, demonstrated in the daily experience of every healthy individual, it touches religion at its mostvital point, viz.: ethics or morals. If these ethical principles are true and demonstrable, they must constitute the foundation of religion as of ethics. If morals are strengthened and made clear, and Personal Responsibility as Conscience, is recognized and accepted, the Vicarious Atonement will have to go, and Theologians will have to change their mystical and miraculous interpretations from Vicarious Atonement to personal at-one-ment withChristos.
The “miraculous conception,” and “virgin birth,” held equally in regard to Christna centuries before, and also the literal resurrection of the physical body will have to be otherwise explained.
The purposive view as one full term of the psychological equation, will find uniform law and order in place of the credulous legends of ignorant and superstitious monks, while the Divine Man will be taken down from the cross and restored to the heart of humanity, as the Modulus of Nature,realizedas a normal evolution, under natural and spiritual law.
Salvation from sin, ignorance, superstition, and fear, will be recognized as the result of “Leading the Life,” and Vicarious only through a divine example; or, if you please,legitimate Suggestion; with personal effort, rational volition, and personal responsibility working in harmony toward the desired result.
SECTION TWOTHE NEW AVATAR OF NATURAL SCIENCE
SECTION TWO
THE NEW AVATAR OF NATURAL SCIENCE
CHAPTER VIIIOUR INDEBTEDNESS TO ANCIENT INDIA
It is more than thirty years since in Southern Europe, England, and America, a genuine Renaissance of Vedic literature, philosophy, and religion began to assume a popular form and to become accessible to the general reading public.
Scholars, like Sir William Jones, had for the past century been familiar with the ancient civilization and the Vedic literature and the study of Sanscrit had made some progress in the Universities.
The idea, however, that these antiquities had any vital interest to us, beyond curious myths and obsolete superstitions, had not been perceived, much less admitted.
The antiquity of man, and the Philosophy of Evolution, had opened new fields for thought, and necessitated a revision of all previous concepts of man and nature.
Old records and interpretations were everywhere revised, and the interpretations of the Mosaic records were challenged at every point.
Popular religions were up in arms and were compelled to adjust themselves to the new régime.
But even after this century of progress and enlightenment, it has scarcely yet dawned on the mindof theologians that the challenge of science was, after all, insignificant, compared with that which was to come, and for which modern science had paved the way.
The whole realm of theology, and the foundations of religion, were to undergo revision.
Facts incontestable were being gathered and proofs established beyond all possible denial, or controversy, that all modern theologies and religions were copied and adapted from Vedic and ante-Vedic sources, antedating our present era by more than two thousand years.
The superficial and devout churchman, whose faith is fortified on the one hand by superstition, and on the other at least borders on fanaticism, is apt to be resentful in the presence of these facts, and, falling back on the infallibility and plenary inspiration of the Bible, to declare that if his own superficial interpretations are questioned or denied, Religion will be done for and mankind left in utter darkness.
He does not perceive that the facts of nature and the essentials of religion are one thing, and man’sinterpretationof them another thing entirely.
He does not perceive how these ignorant and superstitious interpretations of men have set at naught the real life of Jesus and the teachings of the Christ.
He does not realize how doctrine has usurped the place of duty, and dogmatism has hardened the soul of man.
One thing, however, is inevitable. Facts and evidence as to origin, analogies, and adaptation of the Christian Mysteries from ancient India, are widely known, and the time has come when these mysteries are being examined as to their intrinsic meaning and their bearing on the daily life of man and the progress of the human race.
The author of this little book has only attempted a bare outline of these great facts, and to put them in such shape that the reader may perceive their general bearing, and the sources whence they are derived.
The following extracts made almost at random, the quantity of evidence being so redundant, from Jacolliot’s “Bible in India,” a translation of which was made in this country as early as 1873, and Prof. Max Müller’s Lectures, “India, What Can It Teach Us?” printed here more than a quarter of a century ago, will give the reader the evidence and the assurance that these ancient sources of wisdom are scarcely yet known in outline to the Western World.
Jacolliot spent many years in India, studying its present civilization and its ancient lore, while Prof. Max Müller derived his knowledge largely from study of Sanscrit and the Vedanta.
“Soil of Ancient India, cradle of humanity, hail! Hail, venerable and efficient nurse, whom centuries of brutal invasion have not yet buried under the dust of oblivion! Hail, fatherland of faith, of love, ofpoetry, and of science. May we hail a revival of thy past in our Western future.
“I have dwelt ’midst the depths of your mysterious forests, seeking to comprehend the language of your lofty nature, and the evening airs that murmured ’midst the foliage of banyans and tamarinds whispered to my spirit these three magic words: Zeus, Jehovah, Brahma.
“I have inquired of Brahmins and priests under the porches of temples and ancient pagodas, and they have replied:
“‘To live is to think, and to think is to study God, who is all, and in all....
“‘To live is to learn, to learn is to examine and to fathom in all their perceptible forms the innumerable manifestations of celestial power.
“‘To live is to be useful; to live is to be just; and we learn to be useful and just in studying this book of the Vedas, which is the word of eternal wisdom, the principle of principles as revealed to our fathers.’” (“The Bible in India,” p. 15.)
Plotinus, the Neoplatonist, said: “God is not the principal of beings, but the principle of principles.”
This was the Hindoo concept ofPara Brahmtwo thousand years before.
“In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life—it will be the solace of my death. [Schopenhauer, quoted by Max Müller.] ... If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richlyendowed with all the wealth, power and beauty that nature can bestow—in some parts a very paradise on earth—I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind had most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant—I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we, here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life, not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life—again I should point to India.”
The reader should remember that this is not theopinionof an ignorant enthusiast, but the mature judgment of one of the most profound scholars and Sanscritists in Europe in his day—Prof. Max Müller.
“The study of Mythology has assumed an entirely new character, chiefly owing to the light that has been thrown on it by the ancient Vedic Mythology of India.
“Buddhism is now known to have been the principal source of our legends and parables.”
The story of the two women who claimed each to be the mother of the same child is found literallyin the Kanjur, translated from the Buddhist Tripitake, and the “Judgment of Solomon” is only a copy of the older story.
“The history of all histories, and yet the mystery of all mysteries—take religion, and where can you study its true origin, its natural growth and its inevitable decay better than in India, the home of Brahmanism, the birthplace of Buddhism, and the refuge of Zoroastrianism.
“Take any of the burning questions of the day—popular education, higher education, parliamentary representation, codification of laws, finance, emigration, poor-law, and whether you have anything to teach and to try, or anything to observe and to learn, India will supply you with a laboratory such as exists nowhere else.
“And in the study of the history of the human mind, and the study of ourselves, of our true selves, India occupies a place second to no other country. Whatever sphere of the human mind you may select for your special study, whether it be language, or religion, or mythology, or philosophy, whether it be laws or customs, primitive art or primitive science, everywhere, you have to go to India, whether you like it or not, because some of the most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India, and in India only.
“Sleeman tells us men (in India) adhere habitually and religiously to the truth, and ‘I have had before me hundreds of cases,’ he says, ‘in which aman’s property, liberty, and life have depended upon his telling a lie, and he has refused to tell it.’ Could many an English judge say the same?” (Remarks by Prof. Müller.)
Prof. Müller quotes from an Arabian writer of the thirteenth century, “The Indians are innumerable, like grains of sand, free from all deceit and violence. They fear neither death nor life.”
And again, from Marco Polo, in the thirteenth century, “You must know, Marco Polo says, that these Abralaman (Hindoos) are the best merchants in the world, and the most truthful, for they would not tell a lie for anything on earth.”
“In the sixteenth century Abu Fazl, the minister of the Emperor Akbar, says in his ‘Ayin Akbari,’ ‘The Hindus are religious, affable, cheerful, lovers of justice, given to retirement, able in business, admirers of truth, grateful and of unbounded fidelity, and their soldiers know not what it is to fly from the field of battle.’”
(How badly these “poor heathen” were in need of the Jesuit missionary, and the British government and civilization!)
Prof. Müller quotes Warren Hastings regarding the Hindus in general, as follows, “They are gentle and benevolent, more susceptible of gratitude for kindness shown them, and less prompted to vengeance for wrongs inflicted, than any people on the face of the earth—faithful, affectionate, submissive to legal authority.”
Bishop Heber said, “The Hindus are brave,courteous, intelligent, most eager for knowledge and improvement, sober, industrious, dutiful to parents, affectionate to their children, uniformly gentle and patient, and more easily affected by kindness and attention to their wants and feelings than any people I ever met with.”
Elphinstone said, “No set of people among the Hindus are so depraved as the dregs of our own great towns.” (It might have been wiser to have employed English missionaries at home.)
Sir Thomas Munro bears even stronger testimony. He writes, “If a good system of agriculture, unrivaled manufacturing-skill, a capacity to produce whatever can contribute to either convenience or luxury, schools established in every village for teaching reading, writing and arithmetic, the general practice of hospitality, and charity among each other, and above all, a treatment of the female sex full of confidence, respect, and delicacy, are among the signs which denote a civilized people—then the Hindus are not inferior to the nations of Europe—and if civilization is to become an article of trade between England and India,I am convinced that England will gain by the import cargo.
“Even at the present moment, after a century of English rule and English teaching, I believe that Sanskrit is more widely understood in India, than Latin was in Europe at the time of Dante.
“There are thousands of Brahmans, even now, when so little inducement exists for Vedic studies, who know the whole of the Rig-Veda by heart,and can repeat it, and what applies to the Rig-Veda, applies to many other books.” (Ten thousand and seventeen hymns.)
Speaking of other and later literature, Prof. Müller says, “It is different with the ancient literature of India, the literature dominated by the Vedic and Buddhistic religions. That literature opens to us a chapter in what has been called the Education OF THE HUMAN RACE, TO WHICH WE CAN FIND NO PARALLEL anywhere else. Whoever cares for the historical growth of our language, that is, of our thoughts; whoever cares for the intelligible development of religion and mythology, whoever cares for the first foundation of what in later times we call the sciences of astronomy, metronomy, grammar and etymology; whoever cares for the first intimations of philosophical thought; for the first attempts at regulating family life, village life, and state life, as founded on religion, ceremonial, tradition and contact (Samaya), must in future pay the same attention to the literature of the Vedic period as to the literature of Greece and Rome and Germany.
“I maintain then that for a study of man, or, if you like, for a study of Aryan humanity, there is nothing in the world equal in importance with the Veda.
“The aristocracy of those who know—di color che sanno—or try to know, is open to all who are willing to enter, to all who have a feeling for the past; an interest in the genealogy of our thoughts, and a reverence for the ancestry of our intellect, whoare, in fact, historians in the true sense of the word, i.e. inquirers into that which is past, but not lost.
“But if we mean by primitive the people who have been the first of the Aryan race to leave behind literary relics of their existence on earth, then I say the Vedic poets are primitive; the Vedic language is primitive; the Vedic religion is primitive, and, taken as a whole,more primitive than anything else that we are ever likely to recover in the whole history of our race....
“For this reason, because the religion of the Veda was so completely guarded from all strange infection, it is full of lessons which the student of religion could learn nowhere else.”
The foregoing quotations have been made from a little volume, “India: What Can It Teach Us?” published by Funk and Wagnalls in 1883, and sold at 25 cents, so that these statements of Prof. Max Müller have been accessible for more than a quarter of a century.
Since 1883, however, we have heard more and more of the “Wisdom of Old India.”
The whole Theosophical movement, degenerate as it may have become in some directions, and much as it has been misinterpreted, and ridiculed and exploited in others, was primarily a sincere and earnest attempt “to bring the Secret Doctrine of ancient India within reach of Western students,” to promote the brotherhood of man; the study of ancient philosophy and the psychical powers latent in man. There are thousands of intelligent andearnest students all over the world who have been uplifted, illuminated, and encouraged by these studies. When the true history of the present epoch comes to be written, there can be no shadow of doubt as to the recognition that will be accorded to H. P. Blavatsky and her aims, her life, and her work.
But such movements as are going on in the world, continually change their base, their methods, and their prospective. While the new awakening unmistakably goes back to old India, and compels a review and a readjustment of all our knowledge, and all our hopes and aims, another spirit has entered our intellectual realm, and compelled attention and recognition.
It has made for itself a habitation and a name, and nothing less than a cataclysm can altogether overthrow it.
It is the Genius of Scientific Criticism, Research, and Demonstration.
The “Mistakes of Moses” may indeed be paralleled by those of modern physical science, and these are being revealed side by side with those of theology and dogmatic assertion.
It has hardly yet dawned upon the mind of the physical scientist that the concept of the psychical and spiritual life and nature of man comprises, with the world of matter and form, a complete theorem of human life. He is often as incredulous, resentful, and contemptuous as the creed-bound religionist at the approach of more light, and thesuggestion that all these essential problems were included and solved ages ago in ancient Aryavarta; and that “the few who know,” the ancient order of theIlluminati, now designated the “School of Natural Science,” has treasured this knowledge for ages.
The Vedas are not only ancient, but complicated and diffuse, and the busy life of the modern student will hardly suffice for the mastery of their wisdom, or the understanding of their secrets.
When, however, this ancient wisdom is condensed and epitomized, in perfect harmony with the concepts, the methods, and the demonstrations of Natural Science, the “Jewel in the Lotus,”—to use a Vedic synonym,—will appear in all its beauty and glory, to all who have eyes to see, and ears to hear, with determination to “honor every truth by use,” and loyal service.
In the foregoing quotations it may be seen what this real knowledge did for the people of ancient India in building character on constructive lines, promoting justice, equity, charity, and kindness among the common people, and the teeming millions of India, when our Saxon and Norman ancestors were still barbarians, and before the Jew or the Christian were even dreamed of.
In the following quotations from Jacolliot’s “Bible in India,” an outline will be given as to the source of some of our myths, pantheons, and religions.
These brief and imperfect outlines from two smalland generally forgotten books, ought to satisfy any intelligent and unbiased student how completely the general thesis may be demonstrated from the ancient records themselves.
The books from which these quotations are made are like kindergarten primers for the use of beginners.
The present writer’s interest in and study of Theosophy and the Secret Doctrine were instigated by Schopenhauer’s “World as Will and Idea.” He found how largely Schopenhauer had drawn from the Upanishads (see previous quotation), and how little, after all, his “Philosophy” had utilized the ancient Wisdom. Hence he resolved to seek the ancient sources of knowledge, and has been trying his best to apprehend and utilize them, the hoarded wisdom of the ages.
He is not in the least anxious to gain recognition for, or to seek to rehabilitate old India, for its own sake. She speaks for herself, through the centuries of the past, and will continue to speak and to influence all coming time.
Jacolliot shows, however, a little irritation at this point over the suppression of facts, the brutality of marauding invaders, and the wholesale and brazen appropriation without the least credit to India’s store of wisdom.
The present writer is, however, exceedingly desirous that his fellow-students in the West should discover, recognize, and utilize this ancient mine of wisdom for themselves.
Its day of recognition is just now at the dawn, and the most pressing problems concerning the real nature, the spiritual possibilities, and the eternal destiny of the soul of man, are pressing and burning questions to-day.
That these problems do not wait solution by modern physical science and physio-psychology, but await only the understanding and acceptance of every earnest and intelligent student, is easily demonstrated. It challenges the world to-day, as it has not done before for many millenniums, and the issues are to be tried out to a scientific demonstration.
The preferences and prejudices of partisans will not be consulted, nor will they in the least interrupt the progress, nor interfere with the solution.
The question is no longer, “What think ye of Jesus?” but “Whatknowye of your own soul?” A new faith will supersede the old superstitions.
Faith, from the viewpoint of Natural Science, is “the soul’s intuitiveconvictionof that which both reason and conscience approve.” Blind faith, or belief, is ever the handmaid of superstition. The new faith is the harbinger, the promise, and the potency of knowledge, the anchor of the soul, and the armor of righteousness.
This is indeed the language of confidence, and it should be put to the test of science and experience.
The scornful and the contemptuous are not eveninvited! They are left alone with their Idols.
Coming now more directly to the splendid work of Jacolliot, one thing I think ought to be apparent to every honest and intelligent reader of “The Bible in India,” and that is, that its author is in no sense a partisan of Hinduism, but a searcher and witness for the simple Truth as he finds and apprehends it.
He puts aside mystery, miracle, and Divine Revelation, as dispassionately in the Vedic, Brahmanical, and Buddhistic cults, as in the Mosaic and Christian. Belief in God, and reverence for Truth in the light of reason and conscience, shine from every page of his work.
To flippantly call him an “atheist,” or a “destroyer of holy things,” as though that were in any sense an answer to his thesis, and which formerly was the rule, and may even now be attempted in certain quarters, will simply brand the bigot as by no means intelligent—if indeed honest—who attempts it. The majority of such sectarians have grown wise or prudent enough to ignore all such issues.
There has been a great change in public sentiment since Jacolliot went to India as an earnest student of these subjects, and in the nearly forty years since he wrote this book.
The saying that “Truth passes through three phases before being accepted,” specially applies here. First, people say, “It is not true.” Second, “It contradicts Scripture,” and when it at last is triumphant, that “Everybody knew it before.”
The truths of which Jacolliot writes have already reached at least the beginning of the third stage. Of course, “Everybody” here means those who read, and think, and dare to use conscience and reason.
In referring to a religious debate between a missionary and a Brahman, and the universal interest manifested among all classes as to the outcome of the encounter, “hooting the vanquished in either case with strict impartiality,” Jacolliot adds, “We shall be less surprised at this when it is known that there is not a Hindoo, whatever his rank or caste, who does not know the principles of the Holy Scripture, that is, the Vedas, and who does notperfectly know how to read and write.”
Three hundred and forty millions of people, thousands of them pariahs and outcasts, sharing refuse with the dogs, with no rights that any one else is bound to respect, bowing their faces in the dust when a Brahman passes ten paces away—and yet everyone can read and write!
Max Müller said he had had in his study at Oxford a young Hindoo who could repeat the whole of the Mahabharatawithout missing a word or an inflectionfrom beginning to end.
These are some of theremnantsin the decline of old India after thousands of years of Brahman rule and slavish domination of the people to preserve their own exclusive caste and exploitation. Western people have yet to learn the inevitable tendency, and the invariable rule of exploitation of the people,by a dominant priesthood, and the poverty and degradation of the masses that always results. It has never once failed in this result in three thousand years.
The whole of Southern Europe is already awakening to a realization of this result to-day. It is accomplished in the name of “Religion” by those who call themselves “Viceregents of God,” and who arrogantly trample on the rights of conscience, and the freedom of man.
Brahmanism first set the example as originators of this slavish abomination.
The studies and investigations of Jacolliot in India, go back to the Vedic or pre-Brahmanic age; then to the rise, development, and slow decline of Brahmanism; then the epoch of Christna; the influence of Buddha, and his being driven out of India by the powerful Brahmans; and finally, to the present poverty and degradation of the millions through foreign invasion and domination.
The ruling Brahmans had neither thought nor desire forConstructive Nationality. In their pride and lust for power and gold, even in their just pride over their inheritance from Vedic ancestors, and wisdom, Patriotism was unknown to them. Invaders contended with them in robbing and enslaving the people.
The people who despised and hated the foreign invader dare not, even yet, to rise against their real despoilers—the Brahmans—or defy or break their power.
It is the Vedic literature, and the earliest, or pre-Brahmanic time that Jacolliot lauds so highly, and in which he finds and demonstrates, the existence of the sources of all human knowledge.
It will be ignorant folly, therefore, for the bigot and the sectarian to attempt to answer or oppose him, by referring to the condition of the people of India as it is to-day.
Jacolliot simply shows the causes that have led to the present degradation.
It ispriestcraft, despite the Vedic wisdom, and the missions and teaching of Christna and Buddha.
All this Jacolliot demonstrates beyond all controversy.
The bulk of his work consists in demonstrating the source of Greek and Roman Mythology, Language, Law, Philosophy, etc., and equally of every Jewish and Christian doctrine and tradition.
Jacolliot shows that as the French code is copied or adapted from the Justinian, so equally the Justinian was derived from that of Manu, many centuries previously. And what is true of Law is equally true of philosophy, theology, morals, and the principles of science, art, architecture, and all the rest.
The Hindoos were demoralized by the priests, but the moral degradation extended even to them, and the arms they employed were turned against themselves.
“The first result of the baneful domination of priests in India was the abasement and moraldegradation of woman, so respected and honored during the Vedic period.
“If you would reign over the persons of slaves, over brutalized intelligence, the history of these infamous epochs presents a means of unequaled simplicity.Degrade and demoralize the woman, and you will soon have made of man a debased creature, without energy to struggle against the darkest despotisms; for, according to the fine expression of the Vedas, ‘the woman is the soul of humanity.’”
As did the Brahman priesthood, when through greed and ambition they forsook the ancient wisdom, so do the priesthood of Rome, with their celibacy added to the abominations and opportunities of the confessional.
Search the records of all time, and the traditions and customs of every people, and you will find nowhere else such recognition and reverence paid to woman as in the early Vedic days.
“Let it be well understood,” says Jacolliot, “that it was but sacerdotal influence and Brahminical decay that, in changing the primitive condition of the East, reduced woman to a state of subordination which has not yet disappeared from our social system.
“Let us read these maxims taken at hazard from the sacred books of India.” (I quote only a few.) “Man is strength—woman is beauty; he is the reason that governs, but she is the wisdom that moderates; the one cannot exist without the other,and hence the Lord created them two, for the one purpose.
“He who despises woman, despises his mother.
“Who is cursed by a woman, is cursed by God.
“The tears of woman call down the fire of heaven on those who make them flow.
“The songs of women are sweet in the ears of the Lord; men should not, if they wish to be heard, sing the praise of God without women.
“Women should be protected with tenderness, and gratified with gifts, by all who wish for length of days.
“It was at the prayer of a woman that the Creator pardoned man; cursed be he who forgets it.” (See the Vedic “Garden of Eden.”)
Moses, trained only in the decay of the old religion by the degenerate priests of Egypt, while drawing his legend of creation from the ancient Vedic source, reverses all this and places the blame of the “Fall” on woman, and the women of the Bible are more often concubines and prostitutes than Love’s pure evangels as in the ancient days. Jacolliot proves this from many citations, as witness also the following: (Numbers, Chapter XXI.)
“And Moses was enraged against the chief officers of the army, against the tribunes, and the centurions who returned from battle.
“And he said unto them, Why have you saved the women and the children?
“Slay therefore all the males amongst the children, and the women who have been married.
“But reserve for yourselves all the young girls who are still virgins.”
Moses spoke “in the name of God,” as does his Holiness at Rome to-day. Comment is hardly necessary. A few more quotations from the Vedas:
“A virtuous woman needs no purification, for she is never defiled, even by contact with impurity.
“Women should be shielded by fostering solicitude by their fathers, their brothers, their husbands, and the brothers of their husbands, if they hope for great prosperity.
“When women are honored, the divinities are content, but where they are not honored, all undertakings fail.”
The sacerdotal caste in Egypt followed the inspiration of the Brahmans, and took care to make no change in that situation.
And Moses followed the example of the priests of Egypt, where woman was a slave or a prostitute in the temples as out.
The degeneracy of a people, the decay of religion, and the degradation of woman are inseparable, and it is so-called “religion” that institutes the change, and sets the pace, “down the steep descent.”
The Brahmans “forgot God” and instituted the worship of saints and holy men, and mythological characters, just as Rome does to-day. The women of America to-day by a consensus of public opinion should make auricular confessiondisreputable.
Excommunication, which is such a power in the hands of Rome, is merely a subterfuge and substitutefor the degradation of “outcasts,” and pariahs, instituted by the Brahman priests to terrify the disobedient and retain their power.
If the reader cares to know the danger and the degradation to woman fostered and protected through the Confessional by the Celibate Roman priesthood, he should read “The History of Auricular Confession,” by De Lasteyrie, translated into English and printed in London in 1848. Now and then a Pope or a council undertook to institute reform, but found, as in Spain, prostitution of women by priests through the confessional so widespread and universal that they more often gave up the attempt through fear of scandal and contempt for the Church itself.
Lecky, in his “History of European Morals,” records the case of “the abbot-elect of St. Augustine, at Canterbury, who in 1171 was found on investigation to haveseventeen illegitimate children in a single village; or, an abbot of St. Pelayo, in Spain, who in 1130 was proved to have kept no less than seventy concubines; or Henry III, Bishop of Liège, who was deposed in 1274 for having sixty-five illegitimate children.” (History of European Morals. P. 350.)
If the reader remarks that “this is ancient history,” he should remember that a celibate priesthood to-day have the same opportunity, through the secrecy and power of the Confessional, as ever.
I have barely touched on this disgusting but all-important question on the general thesis of Jacolliot,viz.: “The first result of the baneful domination of priests in India was the abasement and moral degradation of woman.”
Rome, who derived her religious code from paganized Egypt, added celibacy to the opportunities and inducements for the degradation of woman. Rome never attained the heights from which the Brahman priesthood plunged into debauchery. Even to-day in the festivals in the Brahman temples wholesale orgies of prostitution are sometimes found, as witnessed and recorded by Jacolliot. From the first, Brahman priests have married and reared families. Their degradation and debauchery, therefore, cannot be charged to their original “Divine Revelation,” but to their corruption of it.
I have given a few brief quotations among hundreds recorded by Jacolliot as to the respect and veneration accorded to woman in early Vedic times, and in the Laws of Manu.
“The Brahman may not approach the altar of sacrificebut with a soul pure, in a body undefiled.
“Spirituous liquors beget drunkenness, neglect of duty, and they profane prayer.
“The antiquity of India stands forth to establish its priority of religious legislation in prohibiting to priests the use of spirituous liquors, and especially in forbidding the pleasures of love when they are about to offer sacrifice.
“The woman whose words and thoughts and person are pure is a celestial balm.
“Happy shall he be whose choice is approved by all the good.
“It is ordained that a devotee shall choose a wife from his own class.
“The Brahman who marries a woman who is not a virgin, who is a widow, or divorced by her husband, or who is not known as a virtuous woman, cannot be permitted to offer sacrifice, for he is impure, and nothing can cleanse him from his impurities.”
And Jacolliot adds, “It is not recorded, says the divine Manu, that a Brahman has ever, even by compulsion, married a girl of low class.
“Let the Brahman espouse a Brahmine, says the Veda.
“Let him take a well-formed virgin, of an agreeable name, of the graceful carriage of the swan, or of the young elephant, whose body is covered with light down, her hair fine, her teeth small, and her limbs charmingly graceful.”
Jacolliot compares these early Vedic injunctions with Leviticus, Chapter XXI, and the absurdities introduced by Moses as to a “crooked nose or a squint eye.”
Woman here in the West is just emerging from the slavery and degradation of ages, and sheoughtto know that that degradation was not the handicap of barbaric and undeveloped races, so far as the Aryan race is concerned, but a demoralization and degradation instituted by priests, in the name of religion, through which they have sought to rule the world, and so far as institutional religions are concerned,woman has had to progressin spite of them.
Without the aid and influence of woman to-day, neither Protestant nor Roman Church could exist at all, as witness almost any Sabbath service where women outnumber men often ten to one.
One day woman will be wise enough and brave enough to dictate terms, as she did ages ago in old Aryavarta. When that day comes, and the really Divine Motherhood planted in every true woman’s soul is recognized by man and woman alike, God grant that she may thenceforth hold the fort till the Kali-Yuga is at full tide, and the Spiritual Evolution of our present Humanity is fully accomplished.
In the meantime the world will have learned toknowJesus, who and what he was, and how he became the Christ, and will have joined in his Divine Mission to man, as the teeming millions joined in old India under Christna ages ago.