Kitabı oku: «The Hearts of Men», sayfa 7
CHAPTER XIV
RELIGIOUS PEOPLE
It will not be denied, I think, that even in England, where we pride ourselves so much upon our religiousness, where we have a hundred religions and only one sauce, the only country except Russia where the head of the State is also the head of the National Church, that even in England religion is unevenly divided. Men do not take to it so much as women, some men are attracted by it more than others, some women more than the rest of women. We find it in all qualities, in all depths, from the thin veil above the scepticism of many men of science to the deep emotional feeling of the enthusiast, and it is nowhere a question of class, of education, or of occupation. It would be very difficult, I think, to assert, and quite impossible to prove, that religion affects any one class more than another; for it must not be forgotten that, although more perhaps of certain classes go to religious services than of others, the explanation may not be any comparative excess of religious feeling. In a class where the women greatly exceed the men in numbers, there will be apparently comparatively more religion, and the rank of society also influences the result. For some it is easier and pleasanter to attend church or chapel than for others, and a class which is not hardly worked during the week can more easily spare the leisure for religious exercises than others to whom the need for air, for exercise, for change, appeals more strongly. There may also be other factors at work. But indeed it is unnecessary to press the matter closely, for it will hardly be asserted, I think, that religion is ever a question of class. One religion may be so, but not religion broadly speaking, not the religious temperament as it is called. To whom, then, does religion appeal most, and to what side of their nature does it appeal?
Generally speaking, I think, to the more emotional and less intellectual.
That this is but a general rule, with many exceptions of which I will speak later, I admit. But I think it will be admitted that it is a general rule. Intellect, reason, whether cultivated or not, hard-headed common sense, whether in the great thinker or the artisan, is seldom strongly religious. Faith of a kind they may retain, but they usually restrain it to such a degree that it is not conspicuous. Hard-headed thinkers are rarely "deeply religious." But as you leave the domain which is the more dominated by thought, and descend or ascend – I have no wish to infer inferiority or the reverse, – to the natures more accessible to sentiment, more governed by the emotions, religiosity increases. Till finally you arrive at the fanatic, where reason has disappeared and emotion is the sole guide.
They are easily recognised, these enthusiasts, by their lined faces, by their nervous speech, but above all by their eyes. You can see there the emotional strain, the too highly strung system which has abandoned itself to the excesses of religion. But there seems to be another rule; religion varies according to the interests a person has in life. A man, or a woman, with many interests, with much work, living a full life in the world, has but little time usually for religion; he can devote but a small part of his life to it. Its call is to him less imperative, less alluring; it is but one among many notes. But as the absorption in daily life decreases, as the demands from without are less, so does the devotion to religion increase. Until at last among these rural people, who with strong feelings have but little to gratify them, whose lives are the dreary monotony of a daily routine into which excitement or novelty never enters, we find often the greatest, the strongest, and narrowest faith. So too among those many women of our middle classes whose lives, from the want of mankind or of children, fall into narrow ways, whose lives are dull, whose natural affections and desires are too often thwarted, there lives the purest and strongest, if often, too, the narrowest religion. It comes to them as a help where there is none other, it brings to them emotions when the world holds for them none, it contains in itself beauty and love and interest when the world has refused them. How much, how very much of the deeper religious feeling is due to the want of other pleasure in life, to the forced introspection of solitude, to the desire to feel emotion when there is nothing without to raise it.
The old and disappointed turn almost always to religion. Thus it seems as if the quality of religion in mankind were due to two causes; to temperament, according to the emotional necessity, the desire for stimulation and the absence of mental restriction; and to environment, according as the life led furnishes excitement and interest or is dull, leading to a search within for that which does not come from without. Of such are the ultra religious.
And the irreligious, those who say openly that they have no religion, amongst whom are they to be found? They can, I think, be divided into three classes.
There are first of all those who are very low down in the scale of humanity, who are wanting in all the finer instincts of mankind. You will find them usually in cities, amongst the dregs of the people; for in the country it is difficult to find any who are quite without the finer emotions. The air and land and sky, the sunset and the sunrise, the myriad beauties of the world, do not leave them quite unmoved. And then solitude, which gives men time to think, not to reason but to think; which gives their hearts peace to hear the echoes of nature, is a great refiner. Countrymen are often stupid, they are rarely brutalised.
Then there are the sensualists of all classes in life. It is a strange thing to notice that of all the commands of religions, of all laws of conduct they have given forth, but one only is almost invariably kept. There is but one crime that the religious rarely commit, and that is sensuality. It is true the rule is not absolute. There are the Swedenborgians, if theirs can be called a religion. I doubt myself if it be so, if this one fact did not oust it from the family of faiths. But however that may be, sensuality in all history has been almost always allied to irreligion. Not as a consequence, but because I think both proceed from the same cause, a nerve weakness and irritability arising from deficient vitality, a want of the finer emotions, which are religion.
Finally, there are the philosophers. In all history, in all countries, in all faiths there have been the thinkers, the reasoners, the "lovers of wisdom," and they have rejected the religion of their people.
Of what sort are these philosophers? Are they, as they claim to be, the cream of mankind, those who have the pure reason? Are they such as the world admires? I think not. For pure reason does not appeal to mankind. It is too cold, too hard, too arid. It is barren and produces nothing. What has philosophy given the world but unending words? It is the denial of emotion, and emotion is life. It is the reduction of living to the formula of mathematics – a grey world. Those who, rejecting religion, rely on pure reason, are those who have lost the stronger emotions, who have heads but no hearts, while the enthusiasts have hearts but no heads. And in between these lie the great mass of men who are religious but not fanatics, who reason but who do not look to reason to prove their religion, the men and women who live large lives, and are lost neither in the tumult of unrestrained emotion, nor bound in the iron limits of a mental syllogism.
"Do you infer," it will be asked, "that religion is in inverse ratio to reason? But it is not so. Many men, most men of the highest intellectual attainments, have been deeply religious, great soldiers, sailors, statesmen, discoverers; the great men are on our side, the thinkers have been with us." I am not sure of that. The great doers have always been religious, the great thinkers rarely so. No man has ever, I think, sat down calmly unbiassed to reason out his religion and not ended by rejecting it. The great men who have also been religious do not invalidate what I say. Newton was a great thinker, perhaps one of the greatest thinkers of all time. He could follow natural laws and occurrences with the keenest eye for flaws, for mistakes, for rash assumption. He could never accept until he had proved. But did he ever apply this acumen to religion? Not so; he accepted at once the chronology of the Old Testament unhesitatingly, blindly, and worked out a chronology of the Fall much as did Archbishop Usher.
Indeed, I think it is always so. There is no assumption more fallacious than that because a man is a keen reasoner on one subject he is also on another, that because one thing is fair ground for controversy other things are so also. Men who are really religious, who believe in their faith whatever that faith may be, consider it above proof, beyond argument. It is strange at first, it is to later thoughts one of the most illuminating things, to hear a keen reasoner who is also a religious man talk, to note the change of mental attitude as the subject changes. In ordinary matters everything is subject to challenge, to discussion, to rules of logic. But when it is religion that comes up, note the dropped voice, the softened face, the gentle light in the eye. It is emotion now, not reason; feeling, not induction. It is a subject few religious men care to discuss at all, because they know it is not a matter of pure reason. True religion, therefore, that beautiful restrained emotion which all who have it treasure, which those who have not envy and hate, lives among the men who are between these extremes. Those who with strong emotions have but narrow outlets for it become unduly religious, narrow sectarians.
Those with uncontrolled religious emotions become fanatics, those with none but brute emotions remain brutes. Those whom the cult of sensual desires has overcome follow Horace and Omar Khayyam. Those in whom reason has overpowered and killed the emotions become those most arid of people, philosophers. True and beautiful faith is to be found only amongst those who lie between all these extremes. They have many and keen emotions, but they find many outlets for them all, so that the stream of feeling is not directed into one narrow channel. And they employ reason not as a murdering dissecting power, but as an equaliser and balancer of the living. Reason is not concerned with what religion is, but only with the relative position religious emotions shall occupy in life. Too little lets it run wild, too much kills it.
But religion is never reason. It is a cult of certain of the emotions. What these emotions are I hope to explain further on.
CHAPTER XV
ENTHUSIASM
Such are the qualities and such the circumstances that increase and nourish religious feeling, of such are the more religious of all peoples. What is the result in their lives? Does their religion cause them to live more worthy lives? Are the more deeply religious those whom the world at large most deeply respects? What is the effect of their religion in their lives?
I am not speaking here of professors of religion, of priests or monks, of fakirs or yogis, of any whose lives are directly devoted to the practice of the teaching of religion. They are a class apart, and are judged by standards other than ordinary men. Their world is another than that of ordinary folk. I speak now of the religion of those who still live the lives of ordinary people. What effect has religion upon them, and how are they ordinarily regarded in the world?
It is strange that if indeed religion be the truth of truths it should be regarded with such impatience, with such suspicion, if brought into ordinary life. For so it is. Every class has its own rules, its own conventions; every profession, every teacher, every form of society has its own rules, which are not founded at all upon religion. In every walk of life it is assumed that, subject to the special etiquette of that trade or profession and to the observance of what is considered honourable conduct therein, every man's actions are governed by self-interest alone. If a man allege any reasons but this he is regarded with doubt and suspicion. He is avoided. I will give an instance in point. There was a doctor once whom I knew who practised a certain "cure" for disease – it is quite immaterial what the system was; it was especially good for tropical diseases – and as some of us were conversing with him on the subject, and recalling with gratitude and pleasure the benefit we had derived, it was suggested to him that he might do well in India. "If in a hill station," we said, "you were to establish yourself and practise your treatment, you would have a large clientèle. Many Englishmen who could not afford the time to come home would come to you, and there would be natives also. Such treatment as yours would hurt no one's caste. No doubt you would do well, you would make a name and be rich." This was his answer: "I would not care about that if I could only do those poor natives some good." It was sincerely uttered, I doubt not. There was no conscious cant, but it fell upon his hearers as a chill. The conversation dropped, it changed, and gradually we went away. The remark pained. Why? It is always so. Trade is trade and professions are professions, but religion is apart. It is not to be intruded into daily life; it is to be kept sedulously away. Not because its introduction suggests something higher and shames or discountenances the observances of life. The feeling is the very reverse. We suspect it. It does not suggest a higher code of morality at all. No man of experience but would instinctively avoid doing business with anyone who brought his religious motives into daily intercourse. Let a man be as honourable, as scrupulous, as high-minded as he can. We honour him for it. But religious! No. To say that we suspect the speaker of cant is not always correct. It may in cases be so, but not always, not generally. It is not the reason of the instinctive withdrawal. To say that religious feeling is a handicap in the struggle for life is also incorrect. It is not a handicap at all. Let a man be as religious as he likes provided he tempers it with common sense and keeps the expression of it for home consumption. To say that a man is highly religious in his private life is praise, and creates confidence. To say that a man intrudes religious principles into his business or profession or daily intercourse is enough to make men shun him at once. He becomes an impossible person. This is a strange commentary on the theory of religion, that what is supposed to elevate life is, when introduced into everyday affairs, almost always a sign of incompetence or fraud. Yet it may be so. Some years ago all Britain was alarmed by a terrible bank failure. It was colossal, the biggest perhaps that has ever occurred. There were no assets, and there were liabilities of over ten million pounds. The shares were unlimited, and the shareholders liable for all this great sum of money made away with by dishonesty and crime.
It brought ruin, absolutely blank ruin, to many thousands of people.
The directors of this bank were known in the city as religious men. They were kirk elders, Sunday school teachers, preachers – I know not what. They were steeped in religion and iniquity to the lips. They were tried, and some went to penal servitude.
There was again some years later another terrible failure. It was a building society and its allied concerns. And again the chief managers were known as intensely religious men. They too, were prominent members of the religious community to which they belonged; they gave freely to charity; they held, it was stated, prayer meetings before each consultation of the Board. They were steeped in lying and fraud also. And again quite recently a solicitor absconded with great sums of trust money. The same story. It has been the same story over and over and over again.
The writer can remember being concerned in the trial of a similar case in the East.
It is useless to assert that all these men were hypocrites, that they shammed religion, that they used it as a bait to catch the unwary. It may be true in one case or two, but not in the majority. It is useless to assert that their assumption of religion was false. Who discovered it to be false until the catastrophe? No one. They lived among religious men, their lives were to a great extent open. Was there any doubt about the truth of their religion then? No one has suggested such a thing. These men were religious from boys, they lived among religious people all their lives. They were honoured and respected for that religion. No man could sham such a thing. It is easy to talk of deceit; but a life of such deceit, such sham is impossible. It is quite absolutely impossible. That the religion of these men was and is as good and as real as that of other men it is impossible to doubt. Criminals are often very religious. What is the explanation of this?
Well, Christians when presented with these facts have two answers. One is that these men are all shams – an impossible explanation. The other is a mournful shake of the head, and the statement that such a connection ought not to be; religion should always purify a man. "Should" and "ought!" What answers are these? Who can tell what "should" and what "ought" to happen? The question is what does happen? And all history tells us that there is nothing so deplorable, nothing that results in such certain catastrophe, nothing that ends by so outraging all our better feelings, as the bringing of religion into affairs. Let us recall at random the greatest abominations we can remember. The Thirty Years' War, the Dragonnades, St. Bartholomew, the Witch Trials, the fires of Smithfield, the persecution of the Catholic priests in Elizabeth's time, the Irish Penal Laws. All these were done by religious people in the name of religion. No faith is free from the stain. Can anyone possibly say that the men responsible for these were shams? Was Cortez a sham, was Cromwell, were all the Catholics in France shams? Were the Crusaders, who celebrated the victory that gave back the city of the Prince of Peace to His believers by an indiscriminate massacre, shams? Did not the German Emperor in one breath tell his army that their model was Christ, and then in the next to show no quarter in China? Who were the most ruthless suppressers of the Mutiny? Did not blood-thirstiness and religion go together? Is the Boer religion sham? Yet they lie and rob as well as any other man, or better. Is it not a maxim that a fanatic in any religion is simply blind, not only to his own code, but to all morality? Does not the religious press of all countries furnish examples of the deplorable lengths to which religion, unrestrained by worldly common sense and worldly decency and honour, will go? I do not wish to press the point; it is a very unpleasant one. No one who honours religion can touch it without sorrow; no one who is trying clearly to see what religions are can overlook it. Religion requires to be tempered with common sense, with worldly moderation and restraint; taken by itself it is simply a calamity. But if religion has its failures, has it not its successes? Have not great and beautiful things been done in its name? Are not almost all the great heroisms outcomes of religion? Yes, that is true, too. If religion has much to be ashamed of it has very much to be proud of. In its name has been done much of which we are proud. No one will deny that. More than enough to set off the evil? Well, that is hardly what I am seeking. I am trying to find out what is the effect of religion – or, rather, of an excess of religion – when imported into life. Is the influence all for good? I think in face of history we cannot say that. Has it been all for evil? That answer is also impossible. Then what effect has it had? And I think the reply is this.
When religion (any religion, for it is as true of the East as the West) is brought out or into daily life and used as a guide or a weapon in the world it has no effect either for good or evil. Its effect is simply in strengthening the heart, in blinding the eyes, in deafening the ears. It is an intensive force, an intoxicant. It doubles or trebles a man's powers. It is an impulsive force sending him headlong down the path of emotion, whether that path lead to glory or to infamy. It is a tremendous stimulant, that is all. It overwhelms the reason in a wave of feeling; and therefore all men rightly distrust it, and the tendency grows daily stronger to keep it away from "affairs." For the people who are most apt to bring religious motives into daily use are not the clearest and the steadiest; they are the more emotional, the least self-controlled, those who are fondest of "sensation." And the want of self-control, the thirst for emotion, when it passes a certain point is, we know, always allied to immorality, is very frequently a form of incipient insanity, and not seldom results in crime.
It is not probable any believer will think the above true of his own faith, but he will do so of every other. If you are an European, think of Mahommedanism, of some forms of Hinduism, of the Boxers, who are a religious sect. You will admit it to be true of them certainly, as they will of you. And to come nearer, if you are a Catholic, you will see how true it is of Protestantism; if you are a Protestant, of Catholicism. And that is enough. Each believer must and will defend his own faith; that is the exception, the one absolute Truth. So we will suppose this chapter to refer only to others, the false faiths. Everyone will admit it to be true of them.
It must not be forgotten that this chapter is not of the general effect or the ordinary results of religion. It applies only to the excess when brought into public or business life. Do not let us have any mistake. Of the ordinary effect of religion in an ordinary person there is here no word at all. The general effect of religion on private natural life is quite another subject, a very different subject indeed. Therefore let us have no misunderstanding.
