CHAPTER VII

RELIGIOUS ATTEMPTS TO COMBAT THE ILLS ARISING FROM THE DISHARMONIES OF THE HUMAN CONSTITUTION

Animism as the foundation of primitive religions—The Jewish religion in relation to the doctrine of immortality of the soul—The religions of China—Ancestor-worship in Confucianism—The conception of immortality in Taoism—The persistence of the soul in the Buddhist religion—The paradise of the Chinese Buddhists—Ancestors worshipped as gods—Influence of religious faith on the fear of death—Pessimism of the doctrine of Buddha—The meaning of Nirvâna—Resignation as preached by Buddha—Objections to the immortality of the soul—Irritability of the tissues and cells of the body—Religious hygiene—Religious means of controlling the reproductive functions and of preventing diseases—Failure of religions in their attempts to combat the ills arising from the disharmonies of the human constitution

Humanity did not await the discovery by science of the existence of disharmonies before trying to find remedies for them. The will to live, to preserve health, to satisfy the instincts and to make them act in unison, have driven mankind, in the very earliest days of reflection, to invent remedies for the imperfection of the human constitution.

I have shown that, even in the case of animals, the instinct as to choice of food does not save them from certain harmful substances. Man himself has for long recognised that this instinct of his is no safe guide, and has tried to discover surer methods of distinguishing between substances that are useful as foods and substances that may cause disease or death. The best wisdom of primitive man must have been given to the observation of the effects of substances which had been eaten, and to a consequent framing of dietary rules.

The reproductive functions, in the same way, must have attracted the notice of man in very early times, as he must have found the harm that came from a blind following of instinctive desire.

Above all other reasons, man must have been impelled by his instinctive love of life and fear of death to find some way out of his dangerous situation. To preserve his life, man must have sought wise choice of food and control of sexuality.

Since the dawn of intelligence, man has tried to judge the unknown from the analogies given by what he knows best, that is to say, by his own self. Thus he came to attribute to everything around him qualities like his own qualities, and motives like his own motives. He came to think not only that all living beings were possessed of will and intelligence, but that inanimate things conducted themselves like human beings.

Such a primitive idea is the basis of what Tylor has called “Animism,” the foundation of the philosophy and religion of savage and civilised man alike. When a man was seen to die, it was plain that he did not entirely disappear, but merely became transformed into a new condition. The dead body was not alive as we are, but, none the less, it was alive in a fashion of its own. This was the answer to the desire for the preservation of life, to the fear of death, that is to say, of total extinction. It is practically identical with faith in immortality and a future life.

The animistic conception is almost world wide. It is plain that it afforded the most efficacious palliative for minds revolting against the inevitability of death, and that it harmonised with our intense will to live. “Such child-like ignoring of death,” wrote Tylor,[162] “such child-like make-believe, that the dead can still do as heretofore, may well have led the savage to bury with his kinsman the weapons, clothes, and ornaments that he used in life, to try to feed the corpse, to put a cigar in the mouth of the skull before its final burial, to lay playthings in the infant’s grave. But one thought beyond would carry this dim blind fancy into the range of logical reasoning. Granted that the man is dead, and his soul gone out of him, then the way to provide that departed soul with food or clothes or weapons is to bury or burn them with the body.”

It is needless to recapitulate the various animistic customs which were in vogue among primitive peoples, and which have left marked traces amongst nearly if not all civilised races. The details may be found in the works of several authors, notably Tylor, Lubbock, and Waitz-Gerland.[163] I shall mention only a few, choosing those that seem most plain. The Turanians of Eastern Asia bury with their dead all sorts of implements, such as axes and flints, and food, such as meat and butter, believing that the departed will have need of these during the long voyage in the land of the spirits. A Tasmanian, on being asked why spears were buried with the dead, replied, as if the answer were self-evident, “Of course for the use in combat of him who has fallen asleep.” The Greenlanders place bows and other weapons in the tombs of their men, and knives, needles, and other instruments for sewing are buried with their women, in the full belief that such objects will be useful in the other world. In the Congo region, the curious custom exists of leaving a hole in the grave over the mouth of the dead body, and once a month passing into this hole meat and drink.

Many races are not content to place merely inanimate objects in the graves. The Caribbeans, believing that the human spirit after death is carried to the kingdom of dead souls, sacrifice slaves on the tombs of their chiefs, in order that the latter may be attended in the next world. With the same object they bury dogs and weapons. The negroes of the Gold Coast, at the funeral of a great man, kill women and slaves that he may be provided for in the next world. Moreover, they bury with him his finest apparel, his gilded fetishes, and corals and pearls, so that the dead man may continue to make use of them.

Tylor states that such animistic conceptions occur amongst all savages without exception. According to Herbert Spencer, if we take groups of the human race, such as tribes, societies, and nations, we find abundant evidence that all, or nearly all, have a belief, vague or clear, in the resurrection of a double of the dead man. It has been suggested that the origin of this widespread belief is the image of the departed that comes to us in dreams. These images are taken as real visits of the dead.

In civilised races there are numerous relics of the old beliefs. The Spaniards set bread and wine on the graves of their relatives on the anniversaries of their deaths. The Bulgarians hold a feast of the dead on Palm Sunday. They eat and drink well, and then leave the remains of the banquet on the graves of their relatives that these may consume them in the night.

Saint-Foix[164] relates that when Bertrand du Guesclin was buried at St. Denis, in 1389, several horses were sacrificed. The Bishop of Auxerre first blessed them, laying his hands on their heads, and then they were killed. At Treves, in 1781, at the burial of General Frederic Casimir, his horse, according to the custom of the Teutonic Order, was led in front of the bier, and when the General had been laid in the tomb, the horse was killed and buried with him.[165]

Although the sacrifice of men and animals is no longer made by civilised peoples at burials, many funeral customs have an obviously animistic origin. In Russia, for instance, rice is placed alongside the corpse, and pine branches are strewed along the way to be traversed by the procession. The wreaths of “immortelles,” used so largely at funerals by the modern French, have an extremely ancient origin. They were employed by the Romans, and probably their use implied a conception of a future life in a region where plants and flowers grew.

The belief in life after death, so widespread in the world, has been the foundation of all religions. I cannot follow this question here as closely as it deserves. To investigate it elaborately would take more space than this volume affords, and more knowledge than I possess. However, it is important to my argument to insist that, among races that have inhabited very different parts of the earth, that have had very different manners and have passed through different stages of civilisation, the conviction has been strong that death is not the end of all, but only a door leading from one kind of existence to another. Because of the high importance of the existence of this conviction, however, I must discuss some of the criticisms that have been made as to its universality.

It has been asserted repeatedly that the idea of a future life was not a part of the Jewish religion, as formulated in the Bible. Haeckel has recently repeated a common opinion that belief in the immortality of the soul was absent from the oldest and purest form of the Jewish religion. “There is not to be found,” he said, “either in the Pentateuch or in those more ancient parts of the Old Testament which were written before the Babylonian captivity, any idea of the persistence of the human soul.” This is true only within limits. No doubt the books of Moses contain no reference to a future life nor to heaven and hell in the sense of modern creeds, but it is no less true that the ancient Jews shared with other races the conception of a survival after death. “Like almost all primitive nations,” wrote Renan,[166] “the Hebrews believed in a kind of double personality, in a shadow pale and thin which, after death, descended underground and passed a sad and colourless existence in the sombre halls of the dead. The dead dwelt there, without feeling, or knowledge, or memory, in a world without light, abandoned by God. At the most the old Hebrews hoped to obtain for themselves a quiet resting-place, a pleasant couch for the time when they would be with the dead. It comforted them to picture themselves as lying amongst their ancestors in quiet communion.”

Ancestor-worship, which is associated closely with the idea of a future life, appears repeatedly in the Pentateuch. Jacob, when he felt death coming upon him, called his son Joseph and said unto him, “Bury me not, I pray thee, in Egypt; but I will lie with my fathers, and thou shalt carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their burying-place.” According to Chantepie de la Saussaye,[167] “we are coming to recognise more and more how strongly the children of Israel, and in fact all other peoples, were tinged with animism and ancestor-worship.”

It is very remarkable how the idea of a future life, which was vague in the early days of Israel, grew more and more clear. Ezekiel (sixth century B.C.), when he had “seen the visions of God,” prophesied of things to come, and declared that God would breathe life into the dry bones of the dead. The Book of Daniel (second century B.C.) expressed the same idea in a stronger fashion: “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel xii. 2). “It is plain,” said Renan,[168] after quoting these words, “that Israel had now reached the last stage in the secular development of her ideas, and had reached the conception of the kingdom of God, as synonymous with the future world and the resurrection. As the conception of a soul distinct from the body was foreign to her, she could not conceive of a future life apart from resurrection of the body.”

Still later, in the Talmud, the conception of a future life is clothed with details. Paradise is depicted as a region filled with sweet odours, while hell is an unclean place, thick with mire and smoke. According to the Talmud, in the life beyond the grave, “there is neither eating nor drinking; the good sit there with crowns on their heads and see God in bliss.”[169]

At the date of the Cabalistic philosophy, the Jews had embraced the doctrine of transmigration of souls, and had come to believe that the spirit of Adam had entered David and would pass on to the Messiah. Some human souls passed into the bodies of animals, into the leaves of trees, or even into stones.

It is plain that the idea of a future life was a part of the Jewish religion.

It has been said, also, that the idea of a future life was absent from the religions of the Chinese. Büchner,[170] for instance, who came to be almost the official representative of the materialism of the second half of last century, asserts that “Buddhism, that famous religion, the most widespread and one of the most ancient, which counts among its followers nearly a third of the inhabitants of the earth, ignores completely the immortality of the soul.” Haeckel, also, in the “Riddle of the Universe,” a volume that sums up the materialism of the end of the last century, makes a similar statement. “The higher oriental religions include no belief whatever in the immortality of the soul; it is not found in Buddhism, the religion that dominates 30 per cent. of the entire human race; it is not found in the ancient popular religion of the Chinese, nor in the reformed religion of Confucius which succeeded it.”[171]

This question demands a somewhat closer investigation. It has been thoroughly proved that the basis of the ancient religion of the Chinese was no more than an extreme development of ancestor-worship. Every important event in family affairs was accomplished “in the presence of the ancestors.” It was a bond with relatives beyond the grave. As in other cases of animism and ancestor-worship, meats were offered to the dead, and objects were buried with them to be of service to them. According to A. Réville,[172] the Chinese as a whole “fully recognised the conception of personal survival after death; if there were no other reason for stating this, it would be enough to point out that offerings of real food would be incomprehensible, if made to persons supposed to be non-existent or reduced to complete unconsciousness.” As they offer to the dead, food and clothing and precious things, it is plain that the Chinese think of life beyond the grave as not very different from this life. “The dead maintain their interest in the affairs and persons and food that was familiar to them.”

As the idea of immortality became developed further, the Chinese modified their customs. Instead of offering to the dead material objects, as is still done by many peoples, they came to substitute emblems. “Houses and clothing and food imitated in paper, and dolls of paper and straw to represent slaves, are burned, so that the spiritual forms of these objects may be offered to the spirit they wish to honour.”[173]

One of the chief motives of ancestor-worship is fear lest the dead, if neglected, may visit their wrath on the living by sending plagues and pestilence upon them.[174]

The worship of the dead had laid hold of the Chinese so firmly that even Confucius, notwithstanding his intelligence and scepticism, paid it a large tribute. “Confucius the philosopher,” said Réville, “regarded it as a duty to offer to his ancestors the gifts of food that princes had sent to him desiring to honour him.”[175]

Confucius and his followers were reticent and ambiguous in their references to a future life, but that attitude did not prevent them from “observing the customs and ceremonies as carefully as if they had had a confident faith in the immortality of the soul.”[176] Although Lao-tseu himself believed neither in heaven nor hell, and professed the most rationalistic views, his disciples none the less accepted the doctrine of immortality, and even came to believe in rewards and punishments after death.

The followers of Lao-tseu, the Taoists, devoted themselves specially to the problem of immortality. They made efforts to discover an elixir that would be capable of prolonging earthly life to eternity. “One of the chief claims of Taoism,” wrote Réville, “was the possession of a specific against death. It was true that they admitted this to be not only very difficult to obtain, but still more difficult to employ. However, if certain rules were observed strictly they were at least confident of great prolongation of life. It was only the very few Taoists who had reached perfection who could hope to pass into the better world without being subjected to the pains of death.”[177] “And so some of the masters of Taoism, such, for instance, as Chang-Tao-Ling, ascended to heaven without dying, by climbing a lofty peak and vanishing into the skies.”[178]

The ordinary Taoists accepted fully the idea of immortality. They “taught the doctrine of purgatory for those who were not evil. To arrive at this, Lao-tseu simply expanded and applied to mankind generally an idea that was already familiar to him, the conception of the transmigration of one soul through several successive bodies. By means of such expiatory transformations, a man who had not reached it directly through the holiness of his life, could attain the immortality of genii and the blessed.”[179]

It was believed for long that the Taoists, following the teaching of their master, did not recognise a hell. But this opinion has had to be abandoned, because the “Taoist clergy have provided, in the temples dedicated to the tutelary deities of their cities, paintings illustrating the torments prepared for the guilty by the ten courts of justice that sit in the depths of an ocean hidden in the interior of the earth.”[180]

Clearly then, many Chinese, both Taoists and followers of Confucius, believe in the existence of a world beyond the grave. However, the denial of immortality has been ascribed to Buddhists in particular.

Buddha accepted the Brahmanist doctrine of transmigration of the soul. This has been established clearly on the evidence of several documents of admitted authenticity. Orthodox Buddhism is somewhat vague on the immortality of the soul. Buddha himself avoided making a decisive statement on this matter. In such circumstances “those who were terrified at annihilation, and who could not give up the hope of eternal happiness, interpreted the silence of Buddha according to their own desire, and inferred that he did not forbid them to hope.”[181]

There are many instances of the evasions of Buddhist teachers when they were pressed with this disturbing question. Pasénadi, the king, once met Khémâ, the nun, a disciple of Buddha, renowned for her wisdom. The king put to her the following question: “Does the Perfect One (Buddha) exist after death?” “The Sublime One, O great king, has not revealed to us the existence of paradise beyond the grave.” “Then the Perfect One exists no longer now that he is dead, O reverend lady?” “Neither, O king, has the Sublime One revealed that He who is perfect does not exist now that He is dead.” “Am I to believe, then, O reverend lady, that the Perfect One still lives, although He is dead, and at the same time does not live? Am I to believe, O wise lady, that the Perfect One being dead, neither exists nor does not exist?”[182]

Take again the mode in which Soumirmitá,[183] “the son of a god, and surrounded and preceded by a crowd of gods,” worshipped Bouddha (Tathâgata): “Thou art the physician, skilful to save, and who givest the gift of life everlasting.”

The Buddhists, as they were not given clear doctrines on this subject, very naturally followed their inclinations by accepting the idea of life beyond the grave. And certainly Buddhism does not teach annihilation of the body after death, although this has been lightly taken for granted. On the contrary, it is so persuaded of survival after death as being the rule, that it grants only to rare and elect souls the privilege of at length laying down the burden of continuous life.[184]

The Chinese Buddhists retained the fundamental conceptions of the ancient religion of their land and continued to worship their ancestors and to seek the readiest path to immortality. They soon came to transform Nirvâna into paradise, and to inculcate in the Chinese race the doctrine of future rewards and punishments. “The Buddhist monasteries in China for the most part possessed a set of little rooms, in which there were depicted, in vivid colours, crowded scenes from the eighteen hells of tribulation and lamentation. For there exist under the earth eight hells filled with the torments of fire, and ten with the equally terrible horrors of ice.”[185]

The paradise of the Chinese Buddhists, or Ni-pan (Land of the Pure), is a region abounding in “gold and silver, and precious stones. Rivers of crystal run on golden sands covered with splendid lotus-flowers and traversed by delightful paths. Lovely music is always to be heard. Three times a day a shower of blossoms falls. There are to be seen there gorgeous birds, pheasants, and parrots, and many others; and these, every quarter of an hour, in a choir of melodious voices, trill out the beauties of religion and recall to their hearers the Buddha, Dharma, and Sungha. These are some of the wonders prepared for those who are born again after death. Into that land neither sin nor any evil enters.”[186]

I need no longer accumulate details to show the falseness of the view that a third of humanity profess materialism to the exclusion of any belief in survival after death. On the other hand, it is quite certain that the vast majority of mankind is convinced that death puts no definite term to existence, and that this life is no more than a passing stage leading to a life to come. However, although many simple races believe that the future life is merely a continuation of this life, the more subtle-minded races present the future life as filled with delights for the good and with torments for the wicked.

Such an idea of the next world, which is very generally accepted, is probably the basis of religions. From it have come the conceptions of supreme beings and divinities Many facts go to show that the primitive gods were no other than the relatives and ancestors of the living, now dead, yet living in another world and ruling the affairs of this world. Wicked ancestors became transformed into evil spirits, while good ancestors became mild and benevolent deities.

Very many peoples offer prayers to their ancestors and treat them as gods. The Kaffirs pray and sacrifice to their dead relatives, believing that the spirits of the dead haunt their late dwelling-places, and, according to their characters, help or torment their descendants. As they are able to cause good or evil after death, these play the part of gods. But, as Lubbock points out (“Origin of Civilisation”), it must be remembered that the god of a savage is only a being like unto himself, although probably rather more powerful, and I shall show that there are many intermediate stages between true gods and mere dead parents whose malice is to be feared, or whose kindness is to be supplicated.

The North American Indians[187] pray to the spirits of their forefathers for good weather or luck in hunting, and fancy when an Indian falls into the fire that the ancestral spirits pushed him in to punish neglect of the customary gifts, while the natives of Louisiana are said to have even gone so far as to build temples for dead men. In Polynesia “at Tanna, the gods are spirits of departed ancestors, aged chiefs becoming deities after death, presiding over the growth of yams and fruit-trees, and receiving from the islanders prayer and offerings of first fruits.”[188] In the Malay Islands “the souls of deceased ancestors are looked to for prosperity in life and help in distress.” In Africa ancestor-worship is well developed. The Zulu warriors, “aided by the amatongo,’ the spirits of their ancestors, conquer in the battle. Even the little children and old women, of small account in life, become at death spirits having much power, the infants for kindness, the crones for malice. But it is especially the head of each family who receives the worship of his kin.”[189] The Zulu adores his father, when he is a chief, above all others, and is convinced that a father remembering his love for his children, will not forget them when he is dead. “The Zulu follows up the doctrine of divine ancestors till he reaches a first ancestor of man and creator of the world, the primeval Unkulunkulu.”[190]

So great is the number of instances that it is too difficult to choose from them. The fundamental idea is always identical, although details and accessories vary, as one passes from the hardly idealised relatives of negro tribes and goes progressively to the “Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth” of the Nicene Creed.

The conception of a future life in the form of immortality or some kindred state, associated with the conception of many gods or of one God, has been developed to satisfy the craving for life and to combat the fear of death, that is to say, to defeat the greatest contradiction in the constitution of man. I must now inquire how far the different religions have been successful in this object.

Many primitive races have absolute faith in the tenets of their religion, and believe in the promise of life beyond the grave as in a certain fact. Thus the aborigines of the Fiji islands are convinced that they will be born again, in another world, in the exact condition in which they leave this life; and so they wish to die before being afflicted with any infirmity. As it is very difficult to reach old age without being the victim of some illness or infirmity, when a man feels the approach of age, he tells his children that the time has come for him to die. If he himself fails to give this notice, the children undertake the duty. A family council is called, the day is appointed, and the grave made ready. The old man is allowed to choose between being strangled and being buried alive. The following instance will show the strength of a belief in life to come. Hunt, an English traveller, quoted by Lubbock, received a visit from a young native of Fiji, whose purpose was to give an invitation to the funeral of his mother which was to take place next day. Mr. Hunt accepted the invitation and joined the procession, but as he was surprised to see no dead body, inquired about it from the son. The son pointed out his mother, walking in the procession and as gay and animated as any of the others. Mr. Hunt stated his surprise, and asked why he had been deceived by being told that the mother was dead, when she was plainly as much alive and as well as any one else. He received the reply that the death festival was about to be celebrated; that presently they would bury her; that she was old, and that his brother and he, thinking that she had lived long enough, and should be put to death, had obtained her cheerful consent.

This case is far from being solitary, because many villages have been described as containing no inhabitants of a greater age than forty years, all those older having been buried. It is not difficult to understand that death should have no terrors for persons possessed of a faith as strong as this. The American Indian, according to Lubbock, has very little fear of death. He does not fear transference to a realm in which, as he has been told all his life, there is no sorrow and abundance of joy.

I know a case of a young girl of the Catholic faith who believed so firmly in the joys of Paradise that, when stricken with a mortal illness, she awaited death with a great impatience. Before she died, she cried out that “already she could see the beautiful flowers and hear the sweet music of the birds that fill heaven.”

But it is rare to find faith so strong in such a case. More often faith is not strong enough to subdue the fear of death, and in proof of this I may recall the instance of the clergyman already given.[191] Stricken with an incurable disease, he, in spite of his religion, underwent extreme agony, and could not reconcile himself to the idea of death. The fear of death showed itself so strongly in this case that I have chosen it as a characteristic instance of the feeling.

It is only with fanatics and simple or primitive persons that blind faith can subdue this instinctive fear. For this reason, since the most ancient times, religions have sought out something more than the promise of paradise to mitigate this chief disharmony of our nature. In this connection the doctrines of Buddha are those most interesting. Here I shall not deal with that modified and transformed Buddhism, in which, as I have already shown, there was a return to the doctrine of future life, with its hell of torments and heaven filled with delights.

Buddha made no reference to the great blot on human life. His doctrine, in its original form, was extremely pessimistic. Take, for instance, some of his sayings on this subject: “Miserable in truth is this world, in which there is beginning, birth, growing old, death, disappearance and renewal. But we know not how to escape from this world, full of horror though it be. Alas, because of old age, illness, death, and their like, we know not who shall put an end to this world, which is so full of horror. To all who are, there comes old age, and illness, and death, and their like.”[192]

When the Buddha came upon the sorrows of the world, as I have already described (p. 119), he reflected as follows: “Woe upon youth, threatened by old age! Woe upon health, which so many maladies destroy! Woe upon the life of man, which lasts but a little space! Woe on the temptations of the flesh, which lure the heart of the wise! Would that there were neither old age nor illness, nor death and the pains of death, which come from the five elements of life (Skandhas)! Would that there were neither old age nor illness nor death, which are for ever bound up together! Nevertheless, when I return again I shall consider deliverance.”[193]

Having pondered for many days on these problems, Buddha thought that he had discovered the only solution, and taught men resignation. When a man was young he would ask of his father: “Lord, would that old age would never come upon me, and that I should keep for ever the warm colour of my youth; that I should be always filled with health, and that no disease should come near me; that my life should be prolonged for ever, and that death should pass me by! Such an one later on must learn to give up these longings.”[194]

In his famous “Sermon at Benares,” Buddha gave in brief the outlines of his doctrines in the following words: “Hear, oh monks! the holy truth of the springs of sorrow! Sorrow is born of lust of life, that drags us from incarnation to incarnation, and of pleasure and desire, which seek their fulfilment hither and thither; the lust of pleasure, the lust of life, the lust of power. Hear, oh monks! the holy truth of the conquest of sorrow; it is the killing of this lust by the utter abandonment of desire, the giving up of all desire, the forgetting of all desire, the freeing of the body of all desire, until there is no place left for desire.”[195]

In such a spirit of resignation, Buddha became himself a monk, and lived according to the strict rules of the pure life that he himself had laid down (“the belief pure, the will pure, the language pure, the deeds pure, the means of livelihood pure, the study pure, the attention pure, the meditation pure”). However, he did not find many kindred souls to follow the same precepts. Buddhism soon moved away from these original tenets, and became a religious doctrine of the ordinary kind.

We are inclined to associate with Buddhism the doctrine of Nirvâna, as if the latter were the goal to which human life should be directed. Many philosophers, and the pessimists chief among them, naturally with Schopenhauer at their head, have adopted Nirvâna as the goal of mankind, as they see the world. However, the word Nirvâna has had many interpretations put upon it, the which is less surprising as Sanscrit scholars differ. I do not intend to join in the discussion, as I myself am not acquainted with Sanscrit, upon which the argument must be founded. However, I cannot pass it by without comment on the pretext that it has not yet been settled definitely by specialists, as it is the case that many thinkers regard Nirvâna as the goal of human existence.

For long Nirvâna was represented as a sort of blank, in which there was no display of any mental operations. Max Müller,[196] the celebrated Oxford professor, opposed this interpretation on the ground that, according to him, in “all passages of Buddhistic origin in which Nirvâna occurs there is nothing to betoken annihilation. Most of these passages, if not all of them, would be quite unintelligible if we were to replace in them the word Nirvâna by the word annihilation.”

Many other specialists share this view, and cannot agree that the goal of human life was to be annihilation. Rhys Davids, for instance, thinks that Nirvâna is to be interpreted as a tranquillity of the soul, possible of achievement in this life, and that the word is best translated by the term “sanctity.” According to him, Nirvâna does not mean extinction or annihilation, but rather freedom from the great passions, such as envy and hate. Pfungst[197] agrees with Max Müller; he is convinced that the first adepts of Buddha could not have conceived of Nirvâna as extinction. Dahlmann[198] on the other hand, tries to prove that Nirvâna in its primitive signification implied the abolition of the will to live, and really corresponded to annihilation.

I must add, however, that Nirvâna did not occupy a place in Buddhism so important as has been ascribed to it by several commentators. In many of the Buddhist authorities mention of Nirvâna is only accidental. In the “Lalita Vistara,” for instance, the word occurs very seldom, and then only in unimportant connections. However, the latter document contains a good deal that serves to explain the conception of Nirvâna.

When the young Buddha, still very exacting, asked his father to obtain for him perpetual youth, health, life everlasting, and freedom from death, he added the following words: “Lord, if you cannot give me these four gifts, at least bring it about that after this life I shall have no more metempsychoses.”[199]

As I have already stated, Buddhism had embraced the Brahmanistic doctrine of transmigration of souls. According to the legend, before his birth as a prince, the Buddha had passed hundreds of earlier existences. His soul had been the soul not only of fifty-eight kings, but of eighteen monkeys, four horses, four snakes, three lizards, two fish, and of other creatures.[200] Such continual transferences of the soul to so many different animals was a source of perplexity and sorrow to believers. It was natural that a great thinker like Buddha should have conceived the desire of sparing himself and his faithful followers so many transmigrations. He thought of these rebirths as a great evil, from which a pure life might set one free.

In the poetical language of the Hindoo Buddhists, metempsychosis was compared to the ocean; the waves that change from moment to moment were the continual rebirths; our temporary body was the foam of the crests of the waves, while Nirvâna was the opposite shore. He who reaches Nirvâna would never again plunge into the great sea of Sangsâra. In a passage quoted by Rhys Davids, and ascribed to Kâma Sutta, it is stated expressly that “the sea is an image of the Sangsâra or transmigrations, while Nirvâna is an island upon it. Once the shores have been reached, a soul will no longer be plunged in the waves of the ocean, and will be freed from the successive births of metempsychosis.”

In other words, to avoid being tormented after death by perpetual rebirths, some of which may be humiliating, it is necessary to live a pure life and so to secure repose or Nirvâna. Nirvâna is by no means the cessation of all consciousness, but merely the end of transmigrations. From such a point of view, it is possible to interpret all, or at least nearly all, the passages in which Nirvâna is spoken of.

When he was old and full of disease and afflicted with grievous pain, Buddha, being at the point of death, thought of his disciples and called them to him and said: “It is not meet that I should enter Nirvâna without having spoken with those who have cared for me, without speaking to the community of disciples. By the force of my will I shall subdue this disease and hold the life within me.” Some time afterwards, the reverend Ananda went to Buddha and spoke to him, saying amongst other words as follows: “The Sublime One will surely not enter into Nirvâna ere he has made known unto the community of disciples his wishes regarding them.” “Growing more and more feeble, the spirit of Buddha passed from ecstacy to ecstacy without ceasing, and knew every delight; then he entered into Nirvâna. And the earth trembled, and thunder rolled across the skies.”[201]

It is clear that in this passage Nirvâna was associated with death. But it was with the death of a saint who had lived a pure life. Metempsychosis would not be inflicted on him, and he would enjoy repose. It is probable that the term Nirvâna later on came to be applied to the state of mind of a saint who, by living the pure life, would avoid transmigration after death.

As the importance of Nirvâna lies in its contrast with metempsychosis, it is easy to see why the precise state of mind involved in it has not been described exactly. However, a survey of the Buddhistic writings makes it plain that at least Nirvâna was not associated with annihilation. In this respect Max Müller’s verdict must be taken as correct.

Buddha’s attempt to remedy the ills of human life, then, lay in a complete renunciation of all the joys and pleasures of life, and in perfect resignation. The mere fact that primitive Buddhism did not persist, but rapidly passed into an ordinary religion, is sufficient proof that Buddha did not achieve his purpose. It was the promise of a life to come that attracted so many men and spread Buddhism over so large a part of the earth. However, this faith has been able to maintain itself only in certain strata of society to which the rationalistic conception of the mental processes has not penetrated. Since the awakening of the scientific spirit in Europe, it has been recognised that the promise of a future life has no basis of fact to support it. The modern study of the functions of the mind has shown beyond all question that these are dependent on the functions of the body, in particular of those of the central nervous system. A slight lowering of the rate of the circulation of the blood, a fleeting anæmia of the brain, at once arrests consciousness, that is to say, the fundamental sensation of the individual mental life. Anæsthetics, used in doses so small that they do not influence certain parts of the nervous system, as, for instance, those that control the heart and lungs, completely abolish consciousness. Persons who are put under chloroform for surgical purposes fall into a state of absolute unconsciousness. Sometimes, after undergoing painful sensations, especially sensations of oppression, the patients imagine themselves to be in rapid motion, and in a few moments have the sensation of falling into an immense gulf, after which comes nothingness, the annihilation of sensations and of consciousness. In other cases, patients, without any sensation of catastrophe, lose all idea of reality, and every psychic and sensorial function is abolished. Such states are very closely similar to death, which indeed is the result, in certain rare instances, of the ordinary process of being chloroformed.

Neither the narcosis produced by chloroform nor that produced by any other form of anæsthetic, affords any particle of ground for the view that there is consciousness in any form apart from the body. The action of morphine sometimes brings about a strange current of happiness and an apparent weightlessness of the body; but here again there is no suspicion given as to the existence of any mental phenomena apart from the body.

Consciousness of personality is of supreme interest from the point of view of personal immortality, and this mental phenomenon develops only slowly and progressively in an infant. This fact, again, like the facts of narcosis, shows the dependence of consciousness on the action of the bodily organs. Just as our consciousness comes out of nothing in the first months, or years, of our life, so it will pass into nothing at the end of our life.

Mental disease confirms this conclusion, and it, too, gives no ground for the belief in a survival of the mind after death.

Certain internal sensibilities in the depths of our organism survive our personal consciousness. When the heart has ceased to beat, and when the anæmic brain is certainly incapable of personal consciousness, some portions of the body may still retain vitality. The muscular fibres are still able to contract when they are stimulated, and the white corpuscles of the blood can still exhibit their specific movements. It is certain, moreover, that these white corpuscles possess a specific sensibility, and, by a sort of sense of taste, respond to the kind of environment that surrounds them. Our consciousness, however, is absolutely out of touch with the sensations of these globules, which, however, none the less are part of our organism. It happens, therefore, that in certain diseases, the white corpuscles, stimulated by the presence of particular substances, perform extensive movements of migration within our bodies. Such migration is quite outside the sphere of consciousness. The corpuscles, directed by their sensibility, are in constant pursuit of microbes that have entered the body, and yet these actions, too, are not made known to our consciousness. In the same fashion, the thousands of active spermatozoa in the male organs and the ova in the female possess specific sensibility. These reproductive elements contain the germ of individual consciousness, but it is not until they have developed into the new generation that it is possible to impute to them individual consciousness, and the organism that shelters them has no idea of what it harbours. The sensibility of the white corpuscles and of the many other cells composing our body, although certainly a reality, has no part in the absolutely special sensation that we call individual consciousness, and which is all we think of in wishing to escape death.

The idea of a future life is supported by not a single fact, while there is much evidence against it. The phenomenon of intercommunication across a distance, sometimes called telepathy, may be actual, but affords no support to the conception of the existence of souls apart from bodies. It may be that emanations are given off by certain organs, and that these are capable of being appreciated by the organs of another body at a distance; but, even if such were the case, we should have to deal simply with other bodily functions. Moreover, the supposed phenomena that fall within this category are so rare, so difficult to observe, and so obscure, that no certain argument for the continuance of existence after death can be deduced from them.

It is easy to see why the advance of knowledge has diminished the number of believers in the persistence of consciousness after death, and that complete annihilation at death is the conception accepted by the vast majority of enlightened persons.

Apart from their chief function of consoling men for the inevitability of death, religions have concerned themselves with some of the results of other disharmonies of the human constitution. From time immemorial they have claimed the direction of diet, the control of the reproductive functions and the prevention or cure of all kinds of disease.

The dietary regulations given by the religions are familiar. Even at the present day, the cookery of many races is regulated by their religion. The Jewish diet, notably, is regulated by the Mosaic law, down to the most minute detail. For instance, it was forbidden to eat the blood of animals. Moses commanded: “Notwithstanding, thou mayest kill and eat flesh in all thy gates, whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, according to the blessing of the Lord thy God, which he hath given thee; the unclean and the clean may eat thereof, as of the roebuck, and as of the hart. Only ye shall not eat the blood; ye shall pour it on the earth as water.”[202] Later on: “Only be sure that thou eat not the blood; for the blood is the life; and thou mayest not eat the life with the flesh.”[203] “Thou shalt not eat it, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, when thou shalt do that which is right in the sight of the Lord.”[204] The Books of Moses also contain receipts for the cooking of certain meats. “Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire, his head with his legs, and with the purtenance thereof.”[205]

It has been suggested that these rules were founded on ideas of hygiene in consonance with the results of modern science. Some of them, it is true, such as the prohibition of uncooked or partially cooked meat, are confirmed by our modern knowledge. But the greater number of the Mosaic rules, as, for instance, the prohibition of the consumption as food of blood or the flesh of pigs or hares and so forth, are in direct opposition to a modern knowledge of hygienic diet. Religious cookery has no more than a historical interest.

The religions have been greatly occupied with the functions of the reproductive organs. Most of the founders of the great faiths have paid a keen attention to the disharmonies of this side of our constitution. They became persuaded of the merit of abstention, which they practised themselves and preached to others. Buddha, after devoting his youth to all the pleasures and not being satisfied, passed to absolute asceticism. He and his adepts formed an order of monkhood, on which an absolute celibacy was imposed. If a member of the order had intercourse with a woman, he was considered to be as guilty as a murderer or a thief. In the Buddhist rules framed even for laymen, “sexual intercourse outside marriage was forbidden, on the ground that it was degrading.”[206]

The views of the Christian religion on sexual matters are well known. The leaders of Christianity abstained from sexual intercourse and recommended their conduct to others. St. Paul more than once affirmed his own continence. “For I would that all men were even as I myself; but every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. I say therefore, to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I; but if they cannot contain, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn.”[207]

The religions of savage races are equally concerned with the reproductive functions. There are many extremely strange facts known concerning this matter, and among such I may mention that the Sandwich Islanders have a deity who presides at abortions. This god is made in the form of an elongated wooden instrument, and is known as “Kapo.” The upper part of the deity is shaped into a grotesque head, while the lower portion terminates in a point and serves to induce abortion by entering the uterus and rupturing the fœtal membranes.[208]

Many other idols are used by savages as protections against disease. Ploss-Bartels,[209] in his treatise on “Medicine among Primitive Races,” has described a large collection of talismans of this kind. The ruling idea in the manufacture of these is that diseases are due to the presence of evil spirits, who are to be scared away as soon as possible. The Goldi of Siberia construct straw or wooden figures of men and animals to absorb the spirits of diseases. The Guilaks make wooden human figures, on the breasts of which are fashioned images of toads. These talismans are used as remedies for diseases of the chest and stomach.

In higher forms of religion there remain abundant traces of such notions. Even Martin Luther declared that disease was supernatural in origin. “Behold a matter on which there is no room for doubt,” he stated, “and that is that the plague, fevers, and other diseases are the work of the devil.” A number of religious ceremonies were specified as the best remedies for diseases.

The plague has left many deep marks on human history, and it is natural that a malady so terrible should have attracted serious attention. It was usually attributed to divine wrath, which was to be appeased by purification and sacrifice. Human beings were slain on altars to appease the wrath of God and to lessen the mortality from plague.

Such religious customs have disappeared almost completely with the advancing culture of man, but traces of them survive and become apparent on occasions. Quite recently, when the King of England, Edward VII., was afflicted with an abdominal suppuration, he was given the assistance of the most highly skilled modern surgery, but at the same time special services were held in the churches to aid the cure of the royal invalid.

Every one has now come to regard such events as mere relics of old customs without intrinsic importance. Hygiene in the kitchen and the prevention of disease are no longer under the control of religion, but are regulated on scientific knowledge obtained by the experimental method. I need pay no further attention to these matters. However, religion is still occupied with the problem of death. The solutions which as yet it has offered cannot be regarded as satisfactory. A future life has no single argument to support it, and the non-existence of life after death is in consonance with the whole range of human knowledge. On the other hand, resignation as preached by Buddha will fail to satisfy humanity, which has a longing for life, and is overcome by the thought of the inevitability of death.

It was to be expected that in such a state of affairs philosophers would have sought an issue from the dilemma. Certainly many philosophical theories have been propounded to explain life and death. As the subject is of extreme importance I shall reserve a chapter for it.