THE ESSAYS OF ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

RELIGION: A DIALOGUE, ETC. 

TRANSLATED BY T. BAILEY SAUNDERS, M. A. 

CONTENTS. 

PREFATORY NOTE

RELIGION: A DIALOGUE

A FEW WORDS ON PANTHEISM

ON BOOKS AND READING

ON PHYSIOGNOMY

PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS

THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM

PREFATORY NOTE

Schopenhauer is one of the few philosophers who can be generallyunderstood without a commentary. All his theories claim to be drawndirect from the facts, to be suggested by observation, and to interpretthe world as it is; and whatever view he takes, he is constant in hisappeal to the experience of common life. This characteristic endows hisstyle with a freshness and vigor which would be difficult to match inthe philosophical writing of any country, and impossible in that ofGermany. If it were asked whether there were any circumstances apartfrom heredity, to which he owed his mental habit, the answer might befound in the abnormal character of his early education, his acquaintancewith the world rather than with books, the extensive travels of hisboyhood, his ardent pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and withoutregard to the emoluments and endowments of learning. He was trained inrealities even more than in ideas; and hence he is original, forcible, clear, an enemy of all philosophic indefiniteness and obscurity; so thatit may well be said of him, in the words of a writer in the _RevueContemporaine, ce n'est pas un philosophe comme les autres, c'est unphilosophe qui a vu le monde_. 

It is not my purpose, nor would it be possible within the limits of aprefatory note, to attempt an account of Schopenhauer's philosophy, toindicate its sources, or to suggest or rebut the objections which may betaken to it. M. Ribot, in his excellent little book, [Footnote: _LaPhilosophie de Schopenhauer_, par Th. Ribot. ] has done all that isnecessary in this direction. But the essays here presented need a wordof explanation. It should be observed, and Schopenhauer himself is atpains to point out, that his system is like a citadel with a hundredgates: at whatever point you take it up, wherever you make yourentrance, you are on the road to the center. In this respect hiswritings resemble a series of essays composed in support of a singlethesis; a circumstance which led him to insist, more emphatically eventhan most philosophers, that for a proper understanding of his system itwas necessary to read every line he had written. Perhaps it would bemore correct to describe _Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_ as hismain thesis, and his other treatises as merely corollary to it. Theessays in this volume form part of the corollary; they are taken from acollection published towards the close of Schopenhauer's life, and byhim entitled _Parerga und Paralipomena_, as being in the nature ofsurplusage and illustrative of his main position. They are by far themost popular of his works, and since their first publication in 1851, they have done much to build up his fame. Written so as to beintelligible enough in themselves, the tendency of many of them istowards the fundamental idea on which his system is based. It maytherefore be convenient to summarize that idea in a couple of sentences;more especially as Schopenhauer sometimes writes as if his advice hadbeen followed and his readers were acquainted with the whole of hiswork. 

All philosophy is in some sense the endeavor to find a unifyingprinciple, to discover the most general conception underlying the wholefield of nature and of knowledge. By one of those bold generalizationswhich occasionally mark a real advance in Science, Schopenhauerconceived this unifying principle, this underlying unity, to consist insomething analogous to that _will_ which self-consciousness reveals tous. _Will_ is, according to him, the fundamental reality of the world, the thing-in-itself; and its objectivation is what is presented inphenomena. The struggle of the will to realize itself evolves theorganism, which in its turn evolves intelligence as the servant of thewill. And in practical life the antagonism between the will and theintellect arises from the fact that the former is the metaphysicalsubstance, the latter something accidental and secondary. And further, will is _desire_, that is to say, need of something; hence need and painare what is positive in the world, and the only possible happiness is anegation, a renunciation of _the will to live_. 

It is instructive to note, as M. Ribot points out, that in finding theorigin of all things, not in intelligence, as some of his predecessorsin philosophy had done, but in will, or the force of nature, from whichall phenomena have developed, Schopenhauer was anticipating something ofthe scientific spirit of the nineteenth century. To this it may be addedthat in combating the method of Fichte and Hegel, who spun a system outof abstract ideas, and in discarding it for one based on observation andexperience, Schopenhauer can be said to have brought down philosophyfrom heaven to earth. 

In Schopenhauer's view the various forms of Religion are no less aproduct of human ingenuity than Art or Science. He holds, in effect, that all religions take their rise in the desire to explain the world;and that, in regard to truth and error, they differ, in the main, not bypreaching monotheism polytheism or pantheism, but in so far as theyrecognize pessimism or optimism as the true description of life. Henceany religion which looked upon the world as being radically evilappealed to him as containing an indestructible element of truth. I haveendeavored to present his view of two of the great religions of theworld in the extract which concludes this volume, and to which I havegiven the title of _The Christian System_. The tenor of it is to showthat, however little he may have been in sympathy with the supernaturalelement, he owed much to the moral doctrines of Christianity and ofBuddhism, between which he traced great resemblance. In the following_Dialogue_ he applies himself to a discussion of the practical efficacyof religious forms; and though he was an enemy of clericalism, hischoice of a method which allows both the affirmation and the denial ofthat efficacy to be presented with equal force may perhaps have beendirected by the consciousness that he could not side with either view tothe exclusion of the other. In any case his practical philosophy wastouched with the spirit of Christianity. It was more than artisticenthusiasm which led him in profound admiration to the Madonna di SanSisto:

 Sie trägt zur Welt ihn, und er schaut entsetzt In ihrer Gräu'l chaotische Verwirrung, In ihres Tobens wilde Raserei, In ihres Treibens nie geheilte Thorheit, In ihrer Quaalen nie gestillten Schmerz; Entsetzt: doch strahlet Rub' and Zuversicht Und Siegesglanz sein Aug', verkündigend Schon der Erlösung ewige gewissheit. 

Pessimism is commonly and erroneously supposed to be the distinguishingfeature of Schopenhauer's system. It is right to remember that the samefundamental view of the world is presented by Christianity, to saynothing of Oriental religions. 

That Schopenhauer conceives life as an evil is a deduction, and possiblya mistaken deduction, from his metaphysical theory. Whether his schemeof things is correct or not--and it shares the common fate of allmetaphysical systems in being unverifiable, and to that extentunprofitable--he will in the last resort have made good his claim to beread by his insight into the varied needs of human life. It may be thata future age will consign his metaphysics to the philosophicallumber-room; but he is a literary artist as well as a philosopher, andhe can make a bid for fame in either capacity. What is remarked withmuch truth of many another writer, that he suggests more than heachieves, is in the highest degree applicable to Schopenhauer; and his_obiter dicta_, his sayings by the way, will always find an audience. 

T. B. SAUNDERS. 

RELIGION. 

A DIALOGUE. 

_Demopheles_. Between ourselves, my dear fellow, I don't care about theway you sometimes have of exhibiting your talent for philosophy; youmake religion a subject for sarcastic remarks, and even for openridicule. Every one thinks his religion sacred, and therefore you oughtto respect it. 

_Philalethes_. That doesn't follow! I don't see why, because otherpeople are simpletons, I should have any regard for a pack of lies. Irespect truth everywhere, and so I can't respect what is opposed to it. My maxim is _Vigeat veritas et pereat mundus_, like the lawyers' _Fiatjustitia et pereat mundus_. Every profession ought to have an analogousadvice. 

_Demopheles_. Then I suppose doctors should say _Fiant pilulae et pereatmundus_, --there wouldn't be much difficulty about that!

_Philalethes_. Heaven forbid! You must take everything _cum granosalis_. 

_Demopheles_. Exactly; that's why I want you to take religion _cum granosalis_. I want you to see that one must meet the requirements of thepeople according to the measure of their comprehension. Where you havemasses of people of crude susceptibilities and clumsy intelligence, sordid in their pursuits and sunk in drudgery, religion provides theonly means of proclaiming and making them feel the hight import of life. For the average man takes an interest, primarily, in nothing but whatwill satisfy his physical needs and hankerings, and beyond this, givehim a little amusement and pastime. Founders of religion andphilosophers come into the world to rouse him from his stupor and pointto the lofty meaning of existence; philosophers for the few, theemancipated, founders of religion for the many, for humanity at large. For, as your friend Plato has said, the multitude can't be philosophers, and you shouldn't forget that. Religion is the metaphysics of themasses; by all means let them keep it: let it therefore command externalrespect, for to discredit it is to take it away. Just as they havepopular poetry, and the popular wisdom of proverbs, so they must havepopular metaphysics too: for mankind absolutely needs _an interpretationof life_; and this, again, must be suited to popular comprehension. Consequently, this interpretation is always an allegorical investitureof the truth: and in practical life and in its effects on the feelings, that is to say, as a rule of action and as a comfort and consolation insuffering and death, it accomplishes perhaps just as much as the truthitself could achieve if we possessed it. Don't take offense at itsunkempt, grotesque and apparently absurd form; for with your educationand learning, you have no idea of the roundabout ways by which people intheir crude state have to receive their knowledge of deep truths. Thevarious religions are only various forms in which the truth, which takenby itself is above their comprehension, is grasped and realized by themasses; and truth becomes inseparable from these forms. Therefore, mydear sir, don't take it amiss if I say that to make a mockery of theseforms is both shallow and unjust. 

_Philalethes_. But isn't it every bit as shallow and unjust to demandthat there shall be no other system of metaphysics but this one, cut outas it is to suit the requirements and comprehension of the masses? thatits doctrine shall be the limit of human speculation, the standard ofall thought, so that the metaphysics of the few, the emancipated, as youcall them, must be devoted only to confirming, strengthening, andexplaining the metaphysics of the masses? that the highest powers ofhuman intelligence shall remain unused and undeveloped, even be nippedin the bud, in order that their activity may not thwart the popularmetaphysics? And isn't this just the very claim which religion sets up?Isn't it a little too much to have tolerance and delicate forbearancepreached by what is intolerance and cruelty itself? Think of theheretical tribunals, inquisitions, religious wars, crusades, Socrates'cup of poison, Bruno's and Vanini's death in the flames! Is all thisto-day quite a thing of the past? How can genuine philosophical effort, sincere search after truth, the noblest calling of the noblest men, belet and hindered more completely than by a conventional system ofmetaphysics enjoying a State monopoly, the principles of which areimpressed into every head in earliest youth, so earnestly, so deeply, and so firmly, that, unless the mind is miraculously elastic, theyremain indelible. In this way the groundwork of all healthy reason isonce for all deranged; that is to say, the capacity for original thoughtand unbiased judgment, which is weak enough in itself, is, in regard tothose subjects to which it might be applied, for ever paralyzed andruined. 

_Demopheles. _ Which means, I suppose, that people have arrived at aconviction which they won't give up in order to embrace yours instead. 

_Philalethes_. Ah! if it were only a conviction based on insight. Thenone could bring arguments to bear, and the battle would be fought withequal weapons. But religions admittedly appeal, not to conviction as theresult of argument, but to belief as demanded by revelation. And as thecapacity for believing is strongest in childhood, special care is takento make sure of this tender age. This has much more to do with thedoctrines of belief taking root than threats and reports of miracles. If, in early childhood, certain fundamental views and doctrines areparaded with unusual solemnity, and an air of the greatest earnestnessnever before visible in anything else; if, at the same time, thepossibility of a doubt about them be completely passed over, or touchedupon only to indicate that doubt is the first step to eternal perdition, the resulting impression will be so deep that, as a rule, that is, inalmost every case, doubt about them will be almost as impossible asdoubt about one's own existence. Hardly one in ten thousand will havethe strength of mind to ask himself seriously and earnestly--is thattrue? To call such as can do it strong minds, _esprits forts_, is adescription more apt than is generally supposed. But for the ordinarymind there is nothing so absurd or revolting but what, if inculcated inthat way, the strongest belief in it will strike root. If, for example, the killing of a heretic or infidel were essential to the futuresalvation of his soul, almost every one would make it the chief event ofhis life, and in dying would draw consolation and strength from theremembrance that he had succeeded. As a matter of fact, almost everySpaniard in days gone by used to look upon an _auto da fe_ as the mostpious of all acts and one most agreeable to God. A parallel to this maybe found in the way in which the Thugs (a religious sect in India, suppressed a short time ago by the English, who executed numbers ofthem) express their sense of religion and their veneration for thegoddess Kali; they take every opportunity of murdering their friends andtraveling companions, with the object of getting possession of theirgoods, and in the serious conviction that they are thereby doing apraiseworthy action, conducive to their eternal welfare. [Footnote: Cf. Illustrations of the history and practice of the Thugs, London, 1837;also the _Edinburg Review_, Oct. -Jan. , 1836-7. ] The power of religiousdogma, when inculcated early, is such as to stifle conscience, compassion, and finally every feeling of humanity. But if you want tosee with your own eyes and close at hand what timely inoculation willaccomplish, look at the English. Here is a nation favored before allothers by nature; endowed, more than all others, with discernment, intelligence, power of judgment, strength of character; look at them, abased and made ridiculous, beyond all others, by their stupidecclesiastical superstition, which appears amongst their other abilitieslike a fixed idea or monomania. For this they have to thank thecircumstance that education is in the hands of the clergy, whoseendeavor it is to impress all the articles of belief, at the earliestage, in a way that amounts to a kind of paralysis of the brain; this inits turn expresses itself all their life in an idiotic bigotry, whichmakes otherwise most sensible and intelligent people amongst themdegrade themselves so that one can't make head or tail of them. If youconsider how essential to such a masterpiece is inoculation in thetender age of childhood, the missionary system appears no longer only asthe acme of human importunity, arrogance and impertinence, but also asan absurdity, if it doesn't confine itself to nations which are still intheir infancy, like Caffirs, Hottentots, South Sea Islanders, etc. Amongst these races it is successful; but in India, the Brahmans treatthe discourses of the missionaries with contemptuous smiles ofapprobation, or simply shrug their shoulders. And one may say generallythat the proselytizing efforts of the missionaries in India, in spite ofthe most advantageous facilities, are, as a rule, a failure. Anauthentic report in the Vol. XXI. Of the Asiatic Journal (1826) statesthat after so many years of missionary activity not more than threehundred living converts were to be found in the whole of India, wherethe population of the English possessions alone comes to one hundred andfifteen millions; and at the same time it is admitted that the Christianconverts are distinguished for their extreme immorality. Three hundredvenal and bribed souls out of so many millions! There is no evidencethat things have gone better with Christianity in India since then, inspite of the fact that the missionaries are now trying, contrary tostipulation and in schools exclusively designed for secular Englishinstruction, to work upon the children's minds as they please, in orderto smuggle in Christianity; against which the Hindoos are most jealouslyon their guard. As I have said, childhood is the time to sow the seedsof belief, and not manhood; more especially where an earlier faith hastaken root. An acquired conviction such as is feigned by adults is, as arule, only the mask for some kind of personal interest. And it is thefeeling that this is almost bound to be the case which makes a man whohas changed his religion in mature years an object of contempt to mostpeople everywhere; who thus show that they look upon religion, not as amatter of reasoned conviction, but merely as a belief inoculated inchildhood, before any test can be applied. And that they are right intheir view of religion is also obvious from the way in which not onlythe masses, who are blindly credulous, but also the clergy of everyreligion, who, as such, have faithfully and zealously studied itssources, foundations, dogmas and disputed points, cleave as a body tothe religion of their particular country; consequently for a minister ofone religion or confession to go over to another is the rarest thing inthe world. The Catholic clergy, for example, are fully convinced of thetruth of all the tenets of their Church, and so are the Protestantclergy of theirs, and both defend the principles of their creeds withlike zeal. And yet the conviction is governed merely by the countrynative to each; to the South German ecclesiastic the truth of theCatholic dogma is quite obvious, to the North German, the Protestant. Ifthen, these convictions are based on objective reasons, the reasons mustbe climatic, and thrive, like plants, some only here, some only there. The convictions of those who are thus locally convinced are taken ontrust and believed by the masses everywhere. 

_Demopheles_. Well, no harm is done, and it doesn't make any realdifference. As a fact, Protestantism is more suited to the North, Catholicism to the South. 

_Philalethes_. So it seems. Still I take a higher standpoint, and keepin view a more important object, the progress, namely, of the knowledgeof truth among mankind. And from this point of view, it is a terriblething that, wherever a man is born, certain propositions are inculcatedin him in earliest youth, and he is assured that he may never have anydoubts about them, under penalty of thereby forfeiting eternalsalvation; propositions, I mean, which affect the foundation of all ourother knowledge and accordingly determine for ever, and, if they arefalse, distort for ever, the point of view from which our knowledgestarts; and as, further, the corollaries of these propositions touch theentire system of our intellectual attainments at every point, the wholeof human knowledge is thoroughly adulterated by them. Evidence of thisis afforded by every literature; the most striking by that of the MiddleAge, but in a too considerable degree by that of the fifteenth andsixteenth centuries. Look at even the first minds of all those epochs;how paralyzed they are by false fundamental positions like these; how, more especially, all insight into the true constitution and working ofnature is, as it were, blocked up. During the whole of the Christianperiod Theism lies like a mountain on all intellectual, and chiefly onall philosophical efforts, and arrests or stunts all progress. For thescientific men of these ages God, devil, angels, demons hid the whole ofnature; no inquiry was followed to the end, nothing ever thoroughlyexamined; everything which went beyond the most obvious casual nexus wasimmediately set down to those personalities. "_It was at once explainedby a reference to God, angels or demons_, " as Pomponatius expressedhimself when the matter was being discussed, "_and philosophers at anyrate have nothing analogous_. " There is, to be sure, a suspicion ofirony in this statement of Pomponatius, as his perfidy in other mattersis known; still, he is only giving expression to the general way ofthinking of his age. And if, on the other hand, any one possessed therare quality of an elastic mind, which alone could burst the bonds, hiswritings and he himself with them were burnt; as happened to Bruno andVanini. How completely an ordinary mind is paralyzed by that earlypreparation in metaphysics is seen in the most vivid way and on its mostridiculous side, where such a one undertakes to criticise the doctrinesof an alien creed. The efforts of the ordinary man are generally foundto be directed to a careful exhibition of the incongruity of its dogmaswith those of his own belief: he is at great pains to show that not onlydo they not say, but certainly do not mean, the same thing; and withthat he thinks, in his simplicity, that he has demonstrated thefalsehood of the alien creed. He really never dreams of putting thequestion which of the two may be right; his own articles of belief helooks upon as _à priori_ true and certain principles. 

_Demopheles_. So that's your higher point of view? I assure you there isa higher still. _First live, then philosophize_ is a maxim of morecomprehensive import than appears at first sight. The first thing to dois to control the raw and evil dispositions of the masses, so as to keepthem from pushing injustice to extremes, and from committing cruel, violent and disgraceful acts. If you were to wait until they hadrecognized and grasped the truth, you would undoubtedly come too late;and truth, supposing that it had been found, would surpass their powersof comprehension. In any case an allegorical investiture of it, aparable or myth, is all that would be of any service to them. As Kantsaid, there must be a public standard of Right and Virtue; it mustalways flutter high overhead. It is a matter of indifference whatheraldic figures are inscribed on it, so long as they signify what ismeant. Such an allegorical representation of truth is always andeverywhere, for humanity at large, a serviceable substitute for a truthto which it can never attain, --for a philosophy which it can nevergrasp; let alone the fact that it is daily changing its shape, and hasin no form as yet met with general acceptance. Practical aims, then, mygood Philalethes, are in every respect superior to theoretical. 

_Philalethes_. What you say is very like the ancient advice of Timaeusof Locrus, the Pythagorean, _stop the mind with falsehood if you can'tspeed it with truth_. I almost suspect that your plan is the one whichis so much in vogue just now, that you want to impress upon me that

 The hour is nigh When we may feast in quiet. 

You recommend us, in fact, to take timely precautions, so that the wavesof the discontented raging masses mayn't disturb us at table. But thewhole point of view is as false as it is now-a-days popular andcommended; and so I make haste to enter a protest against it. It is_false_, that state, justice, law cannot be upheld without theassistance of religion and its dogmas; and that justice and public orderneed religion as a necessary complement, if legislative enactments areto be carried out. It is _false_, were it repeated a hundred times. Aneffective and striking argument to the contrary is afforded by theancients, especially the Greeks. They had nothing at all of what weunderstand by religion. They had no sacred documents, no dogma to belearned and its acceptance furthered by every one, its principles to beinculcated early on the young. Just as little was moral doctrinepreached by the ministers of religion, nor did the priests troublethemselves about morality or about what the people did or left undone. Not at all. The duty of the priests was confined to temple-ceremonial, prayers, hymns, sacrifices, processions, lustrations and the like, theobject of which was anything but the moral improvement of theindividual. What was called religion consisted, more especially in thecities, in giving temples here and there to some of the gods of thegreater tribes, in which the worship described was carried on as a statematter, and was consequently, in fact, an affair of police. No one, except the functionaries performing, was in any way compelled to attend, or even to believe in it. In the whole of antiquity there is no trace ofany obligation to believe in any particular dogma. Merely in the case ofan open denial of the existence of the gods, or any other reviling ofthem, a penalty was imposed, and that on account of the insult offeredto the state, which served those gods; beyond this it was free toeveryone to think of them what he pleased. If anyone wanted to gain thefavor of those gods privately, by prayer or sacrifice, it was open tohim to do so at his own expense and at his own risk; if he didn't do it, no one made any objection, least of all the state. In the case of theRomans, everyone had his own Lares and Penates at home; they were, however, in reality, only the venerated busts of ancestors. Of theimmortality of the soul and a life beyond the grave, the ancients had nofirm, clear or, least of all, dogmatically fixed idea, but very loose, fluctuating, indefinite and problematical notions, everyone in his ownway: and the ideas about the gods were just as varying, individual andvague. There was, therefore, really no _religion_, in our sense of theword, amongst the ancients. But did anarchy and lawlessness prevailamongst them on that account? Is not law and civil order, rather, somuch their work, that it still forms the foundation of our own? Wasthere not complete protection for property, even though it consisted forthe most part of slaves? And did not this state of things last for morethan a thousand years? So that I can't recognize, I must even protestagainst the practical aims and the necessity of religion in the senseindicated by you, and so popular now-a-days, that is, as anindispensable foundation of all legislative arrangements. For, if youtake that point of view, the pure and sacred endeavor after truth would, to say the least, appear quixotic, and even criminal, if it ventured, inits feeling of justice, to denounce the authoritative creed as a usurperwho had taken possession of the throne of truth and maintained hisposition by keeping up the deception. 

_Demopheles_. But religion is not opposed to truth; it itself teachestruth. And as the range of its activity is not a narrow lecture room, but the world and humanity at large, religion must conform to therequirements and comprehension of an audience so numerous and so mixed. Religion must not let truth appear in its naked form; or, to use amedical simile, it must not exhibit it pure, but must employ a mythicalvehicle, a medium, as it were. You can also compare truth in thisrespect to certain chemical stuffs which in themselves are gaseous, butwhich for medicinal uses, as also for preservation or transmission, mustbe bound to a stable, solid base, because they would otherwisevolatilize. Chlorine gas, for example, is for all purposes applied onlyin the form of chlorides. But if truth, pure, abstract and free from allmythical alloy, is always to remain unattainable, even by philosophers, it might be compared to fluorine, which cannot even be isolated, butmust always appear in combination with other elements. Or, to take aless scientific simile, truth, which is inexpressible except by means ofmyth and allegory, is like water, which can be carried about only invessels; a philosopher who insists on obtaining it pure is like a manwho breaks the jug in order to get the water by itself. This is, perhaps, an exact analogy. At any rate, religion is truth allegoricallyand mythically expressed, and so rendered attainable and digestible bymankind in general. Mankind couldn't possibly take it pure and unmixed, just as we can't breathe pure oxygen; we require an addition of fourtimes its bulk in nitrogen. In plain language, the profound meaning, thehigh aim of life, can only be unfolded and presented to the massessymbolically, because they are incapable of grasping it in its truesignification. Philosophy, on the other hand, should be like theEleusinian mysteries, for the few, the _élite_. 

_Philalethes_. I understand. It comes, in short, to truth wearing thegarment of falsehood. But in doing so it enters on a fatal alliance. What a dangerous weapon is put into the hands of those who areauthorized to employ falsehood as the vehicle of truth! If it is as yousay, I fear the damage caused by the falsehood will be greater than anyadvantage the truth could ever produce. Of course, if the allegory wereadmitted to be such, I should raise no objection; but with the admissionit would rob itself of all respect, and consequently, of all utility. The allegory must, therefore, put in a claim to be true in the propersense of the word, and maintain the claim; while, at the most, it istrue only in an allegorical sense. Here lies the irreparable mischief, the permanent evil; and this is why religion has always been and alwayswill be in conflict with the noble endeavor after pure truth. 

_Demopheles_. Oh no! that danger is guarded against. If religion mayn'texactly confess its allegorical nature, it gives sufficient indicationof it. 

_Philalethes_. How so?

_Demopheles_. In its mysteries. "Mystery, " is in reality only atechnical theological term for religious allegory. All religions havetheir mysteries. Properly speaking, a mystery is a dogma which isplainly absurd, but which, nevertheless, conceals in itself a loftytruth, and one which by itself would be completely incomprehensible tothe ordinary understanding of the raw multitude. The multitude acceptsit in this disguise on trust, and believes it, without being led astrayby the absurdity of it, which even to its intelligence is obvious; andin this way it participates in the kernel of the matter so far as it ispossible for it to do so. To explain what I mean, I may add that even inphilosophy an attempt has been made to make use of a mystery. Pascal, for example, who was at once a pietist, a mathematician, and aphilosopher, says in this threefold capacity: _God is everywhere centerand nowhere periphery_. Malebranche has also the just remark: _Libertyis a mystery_. One could go a step further and maintain that inreligions everything is mystery. For to impart truth, in the propersense of the word, to the multitude in its raw state is absolutelyimpossible; all that can fall to its lot is to be enlightened by amythological reflection of it. Naked truth is out of place before theeyes of the profane vulgar; it can only make its appearance thicklyveiled. Hence, it is unreasonable to require of a religion that it shallbe true in the proper sense of the word; and this, I may observe inpassing, is now-a-days the absurd contention of Rationalists andSupernaturalists alike. Both start from the position that religion mustbe the real truth; and while the former demonstrate that it is not thetruth, the latter obstinately maintain that it is; or rather, the formerdress up and arrange the allegorical element in such a way, that, in theproper sense of the word, it could be true, but would be, in that case, a platitude; while the latter wish to maintain that it is true in theproper sense of the word, without any further dressing; a belief, which, as we ought to know is only to be enforced by inquisitions and thestake. As a fact, however, myth and allegory really form the properelement of religion; and under this indispensable condition, which isimposed by the intellectual limitation of the multitude, religionprovides a sufficient satisfaction for those metaphysical requirementsof mankind which are indestructible. It takes the place of that purephilosophical truth which is infinitely difficult and perhaps neverattainable. 

_Philalethes_. Ah! just as a wooden leg takes the place of a naturalone; it supplies what is lacking, barely does duty for it, claims to beregarded as a natural leg, and is more or less artfully put together. The only difference is that, whilst a natural leg as a rule preceded thewooden one, religion has everywhere got the start of philosophy. 

_Demopheles_. That may be, but still for a man who hasn't a natural leg, a wooden one is of great service. You must bear in mind that themetaphysical needs of mankind absolutely require satisfaction, becausethe horizon of men's thoughts must have a background and not remainunbounded. Man has, as a rule, no faculty for weighing reasons anddiscriminating between what is false and what is true; and besides, thelabor which nature and the needs of nature impose upon him, leaves himno time for such enquiries, or for the education which they presuppose. In his case, therefore, it is no use talking of a reasoned conviction;he has to fall back on belief and authority. If a really true philosophywere to take the place of religion, nine-tenths at least of mankindwould have to receive it on authority; that is to say, it too would be amatter of faith, for Plato's dictum, that the multitude can't bephilosophers, will always remain true. Authority, however, is an affairof time and circumstance alone, and so it can't be bestowed on thatwhich has only reason in its favor, it must accordingly be allowed tonothing but what has acquired it in the course of history, even if it isonly an allegorical representation of truth. Truth in this form, supported by authority, appeals first of all to those elements in thehuman constitution which are strictly metaphysical, that is to say, tothe need man feels of a theory in regard to the riddle of existencewhich forces itself upon his notice, a need arising from theconsciousness that behind the physical in the world there is ametaphysical, something permanent as the foundation of constant change. Then it appeals to the will, to the fears and hopes of mortal beingsliving in constant struggle; for whom, accordingly, religion createsgods and demons whom they can cry to, appease and win over. Finally, itappeals to that moral consciousness which is undeniably present in man, lends to it that corroboration and support without which it would noteasily maintain itself in the struggle against so many temptations. Itis just from this side that religion affords an inexhaustible source ofconsolation and comfort in the innumerable trials of life, a comfortwhich does not leave men in death, but rather then only unfolds its fullefficacy. So religion may be compared to one who takes a blind man bythe hand and leads him, because he is unable to see for himself, whoseconcern it is to reach his destination, not to look at everything by theway. 

_Philalethes_. That is certainly the strong point of religion. If it isa fraud, it is a pious fraud; that is undeniable. But this makes priestssomething between deceivers and teachers of morality; they daren't teachthe real truth, as you have quite rightly explained, even if they knewit, which is not the case. A true philosophy, then, can always exist, but not a true religion; true, I mean, in the proper understanding ofthe word, not merely in that flowery or allegorical sense which you havedescribed; a sense in which all religions would be true, only in variousdegrees. It is quite in keeping with the inextricable mixture of wealand woe, honesty and deceit, good and evil, nobility and baseness, whichis the average characteristic of the world everywhere, that the mostimportant, the most lofty, the most sacred truths can make theirappearance only in combination with a lie, can even borrow strength froma lie as from something that works more powerfully on mankind; and, asrevelation, must be ushered in by a lie. This might, indeed, be regardedas the _cachet_ of the moral world. However, we won't give up the hopethat mankind will eventually reach a point of maturity and education atwhich it can on the one side produce, and on the other receive, the truephilosophy. _Simplex sigillum veri_: the naked truth must be so simpleand intelligible that it can be imparted to all in its true form, without any admixture of myth and fable, without disguising it in theform of _religion_. 

_Demopheles_. You've no notion how stupid most people are. 

_Philalethes_. I am only expressing a hope which I can't give up. If itwere fulfilled, truth in its simple and intelligible form would ofcourse drive religion from the place it has so long occupied as itsrepresentative, and by that very means kept open for it. The time wouldhave come when religion would have carried out her object and completedher course: the race she had brought to years of discretion she coulddismiss, and herself depart in peace: that would be the _euthanasia_ ofreligion. But as long as she lives, she has two faces, one of truth, oneof fraud. According as you look at one or the other, you will bear herfavor or ill-will. Religion must be regarded as a necessary evil, itsnecessity resting on the pitiful imbecility of the great majority ofmankind, incapable of grasping the truth, and therefore requiring, inits pressing need, something to take its place. 

_Demopheles_. Really, one would think that you philosophers had truth ina cupboard, and that all you had to do was to go and get it!

_Philalethes_. Well, if we haven't got it, it is chiefly owing to thepressure put upon philosophy by religion at all times and in all places. People have tried to make the expression and communication of truth, even the contemplation and discovery of it, impossible, by puttingchildren, in their earliest years, into the hands of priests to bemanipulated; to have the lines, in which their fundamental thoughts arehenceforth to run, laid down with such firmness as, in essentialmatters, to be fixed and determined for this whole life. When I take upthe writings even of the best intellects of the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries, (more especially if I have been engaged inOriental studies), I am sometimes shocked to see how they are paralyzedand hemmed in on all sides by Jewish ideas. How can anyone think out thetrue philosophy when he is prepared like this?

_Demopheles_. Even if the true philosophy were to be discovered, religion wouldn't disappear from the world, as you seem to think. Therecan't be one system of metaphysics for everybody; that's renderedimpossible by the natural differences of intellectual power between manand man, and the differences, too, which education makes. It is anecessity for the great majority of mankind to engage in that severebodily labor which cannot be dispensed with if the ceaselessrequirements of the whole race are to be satisfied. Not only does thisleave the majority no time for education, for learning, forcontemplation; but by virtue of the hard and fast antagonism betweenmuscles and mind, the intelligence is blunted by so much exhaustingbodily labor, and becomes heavy, clumsy, awkward, and consequentlyincapable of grasping any other than quite simple situations. At leastnine-tenths of the human race falls under this category. But still thepeople require a system of metaphysics, that is, an account of the worldand our existence, because such an account belongs to the most naturalneeds of mankind, they require a popular system; and to be popular itmust combine many rare qualities. It must be easily understood, and atthe same time possess, on the proper points, a certain amount ofobscurity, even of impenetrability; then a correct and satisfactorysystem of morality must be bound up with its dogmas; above all, it mustafford inexhaustible consolation in suffering and death; the consequenceof all this is, that it can only be true in an allegorical and not in areal sense. Further, it must have the support of an authority which isimpressive by its great age, by being universally recognized, by itsdocuments, their tone and utterances; qualities which are so extremelydifficult to combine that many a man wouldn't be so ready, if heconsidered the matter, to help to undermine a religion, but wouldreflect that what he is attacking is a people's most sacred treasure. Ifyou want to form an opinion on religion, you should always bear in mindthe character of the great multitude for which it is destined, and forma picture to yourself of its complete inferiority, moral andintellectual. It is incredible how far this inferiority goes, and howperseveringly a spark of truth will glimmer on even under the crudestcovering of monstrous fable or grotesque ceremony, clingingindestructibly, like the odor of musk, to everything that has once comeinto contact with it. In illustration of this, consider the profoundwisdom of the Upanishads, and then look at the mad idolatry in the Indiaof to-day, with its pilgrimages, processions and festivities, or at theinsane and ridiculous goings-on of the Saniassi. Still one can't denythat in all this insanity and nonsense there lies some obscure purposewhich accords with, or is a reflection of the profound wisdom Imentioned. But for the brute multitude, it had to be dressed up in thisform. In such a contrast as this we have the two poles of humanity, thewisdom of the individual and the bestiality of the many, both of whichfind their point of contact in the moral sphere. That saying from theKurral must occur to everybody. _Base people look like men, but I havenever seen their exact counterpart_. The man of education may, all thesame, interpret religion to himself _cum grano salis_; the man oflearning, the contemplative spirit may secretly exchange it for aphilosophy. But here again one philosophy wouldn't suit everybody; bythe laws of affinity every system would draw to itself that public towhose education and capacities it was most suited. So there is always aninferior metaphysical system of the schools for the educated multitude, and a higher one for the _élite_. Kant's lofty doctrine, for instance, had to be degraded to the level of the schools and ruined by such men asFries, Krug and Salat. In short, here, if anywhere, Goethe's maxim istrue, _One does not suit all_. Pure faith in revelation and puremetaphysics are for the two extremes, and for the intermediate stepsmutual modifications of both in innumerable combinations and gradations. And this is rendered necessary by the immeasurable differences whichnature and education have placed between man and man. 

_Philalethes_. The view you take reminds me seriously of the mysteriesof the ancients, which you mentioned just now. Their fundamental purposeseems to have been to remedy the evil arising from the differences ofintellectual capacity and education. The plan was, out of the greatmultitude utterly impervious to unveiled truth, to select certainpersons who might have it revealed to them up to a given point; out ofthese, again, to choose others to whom more would be revealed, as beingable to grasp more; and so on up to the Epopts. These grades correspondto the little, greater and greatest mysteries. The arrangement wasfounded on a correct estimate of the intellectual inequality of mankind. 

_Demopheles_. To some extent the education in our lower, middle and highschools corresponds to the varying grades of initiation into themysteries. 

_Philalethes_. In a very approximate way; and then only in so far assubjects of higher knowledge are written about exclusively in Latin. Butsince that has ceased to be the case, all the mysteries are profaned. 

_Demopheles_. However that may be, I wanted to remind you that youshould look at religion more from the practical than from thetheoretical side. _Personified_ metaphysics may be the enemy ofreligion, but all the same _personified_ morality will be its friend. Perhaps the metaphysical element in all religions is false; but themoral element in all is true. This might perhaps be presumed from thefact that they all disagree in their metaphysics, but are in accord asregards morality. 

_Philalethes_. Which is an illustration of the rule of logic that falsepremises may give a true conclusion. 

_Demopheles_. Let me hold you to your conclusion: let me remind you thatreligion has two sides. If it can't stand when looked at from itstheoretical, that is, its intellectual side; on the other hand, from themoral side, it proves itself the only means of guiding, controlling andmollifying those races of animals endowed with reason, whose kinshipwith the ape does not exclude a kinship with the tiger. But at the sametime religion is, as a rule, a sufficient satisfaction for their dullmetaphysical necessities. You don't seem to me to possess a proper ideaof the difference, wide as the heavens asunder, the deep gulf betweenyour man of learning and enlightenment, accustomed to the process ofthinking, and the heavy, clumsy, dull and sluggish consciousness ofhumanity's beasts of burden, whose thoughts have once and for all takenthe direction of anxiety about their livelihood, and cannot be put inmotion in any other; whose muscular strength is so exclusively broughtinto play that the nervous power, which makes intelligence, sinks to avery low ebb. People like that must have something tangible which theycan lay hold of on the slippery and thorny pathway of their life, somesort of beautiful fable, by means of which things can be imparted tothem which their crude intelligence can entertain only in picture andparable. Profound explanations and fine distinctions are thrown awayupon them. If you conceive religion in this light, and recollect thatits aims are above all practical, and only in a subordinate degreetheoretical, it will appear to you as something worthy of the highestrespect. 

_Philalethes_. A respect which will finally rest upon the principle thatthe end sanctifies the means. I don't feel in favor of a compromise on abasis like that. Religion may be an excellent means of training theperverse, obtuse and ill-disposed members of the biped race: in the eyesof the friend of truth every fraud, even though it be a pious one, is tobe condemned. A system of deception, a pack of lies, would be a strangemeans of inculcating virtue. The flag to which I have taken the oath istruth; I shall remain faithful to it everywhere, and whether I succeedor not, I shall fight for light and truth! If I see religion on thewrong side--

_Demopheles_. But you won't. Religion isn't a deception: it is true andthe most important of all truths. Because its doctrines are, as I havesaid, of such a lofty kind that the multitude can't grasp them withoutan intermediary, because, I say, its light would blind the ordinary eye, it comes forward wrapt in the veil of allegory and teaches, not indeedwhat is exactly true in itself, but what is true in respect of the loftymeaning contained in it; and, understood in this way, religion is thetruth. 

_Philalethes_. It would be all right if religion were only at liberty tobe true in a merely allegorical sense. But its contention is that it isdownright true in the proper sense of the word. Herein lies thedeception, and it is here that the friend of truth must take up ahostile position. 

_Demopheles_. The deception is a _sine qua non_. If religion were toadmit that it was only the allegorical meaning in its doctrine which wastrue, it would rob itself of all efficacy. Such rigorous treatment asthis would destroy its invaluable influence on the hearts and morals ofmankind. Instead of insisting on that with pedantic obstinacy, look atits great achievements in the practical sphere, its furtherance of goodand kindly feelings, its guidance in conduct, the support andconsolation it gives to suffering humanity in life and death. How muchyou ought to guard against letting theoretical cavils discredit in theeyes of the multitude, and finally wrest from it, something which is aninexhaustible source of consolation and tranquillity, something which, in its hard lot, it needs so much, even more than we do. On that scorealone, religion should be free from attack. 

_Philalethes_. With that kind of argument you could have driven Lutherfrom the field, when he attacked the sale of indulgences. How many a onegot consolation from the letters of indulgence, a consolation whichnothing else could give, a complete tranquillity; so that he joyfullydeparted with the fullest confidence in the packet of them which he heldin his hand at the hour of death, convinced that they were so many cardsof admission to all the nine heavens. What is the use of grounds ofconsolation and tranquillity which are constantly overshadowed by theDamocles-sword of illusion? The truth, my dear sir, is the only safething; the truth alone remains steadfast and trusty; it is the onlysolid consolation; it is the indestructible diamond. 

_Demopheles_. Yes, if you had truth in your pocket, ready to favor uswith it on demand. All you've got are metaphysical systems, in whichnothing is certain but the headaches they cost. Before you take anythingaway, you must have something better to put in its place. 

_Philalethes_. That's what you keep on saying. To free a man from erroris to give, not to take away. Knowledge that a thing is false is atruth. Error always does harm; sooner or later it will bring mischief tothe man who harbors it. Then give up deceiving people; confess ignoranceof what you don't know, and leave everyone to form his own articles offaith for himself. Perhaps they won't turn out so bad, especially asthey'll rub one another's corners down, and mutually rectify mistakes. The existence of many views will at any rate lay a foundation oftolerance. Those who possess knowledge and capacity may betakethemselves to the study of philosophy, or even in their own personscarry the history of philosophy a step further. 

_Demopheles_. That'll be a pretty business! A whole nation of rawmetaphysicians, wrangling and eventually coming to blows with oneanother!

_Philalethes_. Well, well, a few blows here and there are the sauce oflife; or at any rate a very inconsiderable evil compared with suchthings as priestly dominion, plundering of the laity, persecution ofheretics, courts of inquisition, crusades, religious wars, massacres ofSt. Bartholomew. These have been the result of popular metaphysicsimposed from without; so I stick to the old saying that you can't getgrapes from thistles, nor expect good to come from a pack of lies. 

_Demopheles_. How often must I repeat that religion is anything but apack of lies? It is truth itself, only in a mythical, allegoricalvesture. But when you spoke of your plan of everyone being his ownfounder of religion, I wanted to say that a particularism like this istotally opposed to human nature, and would consequently destroy allsocial order. Man is a metaphysical animal, --that is to say, he hasparamount metaphysical necessities; accordingly, he conceives life aboveall in its metaphysical signification, and wishes to bring everythinginto line with that. Consequently, however strange it may sound in viewof the uncertainty of all dogmas, agreement in the fundamentals ofmetaphysics is the chief thing, because a genuine and lasting bond ofunion is only possible among those who are of one opinion on thesepoints. As a result of this, the main point of likeness and of contrastbetween nations is rather religion than government, or even language;and so the fabric of society, the State, will stand firm only whenfounded on a system of metaphysics which is acknowledged by all. This, of course, can only be a popular system, --that is, a religion: itbecomes part and parcel of the constitution of the State, of all thepublic manifestations of the national life, and also of all solemn actsof individuals. This was the case in ancient India, among the Persians, Egyptians, Jews, Greeks and Romans; it is still the case in the Brahman, Buddhist and Mohammedan nations. In China there are three faiths, it istrue, of which the most prevalent--Buddhism--is precisely the one whichis not protected by the State; still, there is a saying in China, universally acknowledged, and of daily application, that "the threefaiths are only one, "--that is to say, they agree in essentials. TheEmperor confesses all three together at the same time. And Europe is theunion of Christian States: Christianity is the basis of every one of themembers, and the common bond of all. Hence Turkey, though geographicallyin Europe, is not properly to be reckoned as belonging to it. In thesame way, the European princes hold their place "by the grace of God:"and the Pope is the vicegerent of God. Accordingly, as his throne wasthe highest, he used to wish all thrones to be regarded as held in feefrom him. In the same way, too, Archbishops and Bishops, as such, possessed temporal power; and in England they still have seats and votesin the Upper House. Protestant princes, as such, are heads of theirchurches: in England, a few years ago, this was a girl eighteen yearsold. By the revolt from the Pope, the Reformation shattered the Europeanfabric, and in a special degree dissolved the true unity of Germany bydestroying its common religious faith. This union, which had practicallycome to an end, had, accordingly, to be restored later on by artificialand purely political means. You see, then, how closely connected acommon faith is with the social order and the constitution of everyState. Faith is everywhere the support of the laws and the constitution, the foundation, therefore, of the social fabric, which could hardly holdtogether at all if religion did not lend weight to the authority ofgovernment and the dignity of the ruler. 

_Philalethes_. Oh, yes, princes use God as a kind of bogey to frightengrown-up children to bed with, if nothing else avails: that's why theyattach so much importance to the Deity. Very well. Let me, in passing, recommend our rulers to give their serious attention, regularly twiceevery year, to the fifteenth chapter of the First Book of Samuel, thatthey may be constantly reminded of what it means to prop the throne onthe altar. Besides, since the stake, that _ultima ration theologorum_, has gone out of fashion, this method of government has lost itsefficacy. For, as you know, religions are like glow-worms; they shineonly when it is dark. A certain amount of general ignorance is thecondition of all religions, the element in which alone they can exist. And as soon as astronomy, natural science, geology, history, theknowledge of countries and peoples have spread their light broadcast, and philosophy finally is permitted to say a word, every faith foundedon miracles and revelation must disappear; and philosophy takes itsplace. In Europe the day of knowledge and science dawned towards the endof the fifteenth century with the appearance of the RenaissancePlatonists: its sun rose higher in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies so rich in results, and scattered the mists of the Middle Age. Church and Faith were compelled to disappear in the same proportion; andso in the eighteenth century English and French philosophers were ableto take up an attitude of direct hostility; until, finally, underFrederick the Great, Kant appeared, and took away from religious beliefthe support it had previously enjoyed from philosophy: he emancipatedthe handmaid of theology, and in attacking the question with Germanthoroughness and patience, gave it an earnest instead of a frivoloustone. The consequence of this is that we see Christianity undermined inthe nineteenth century, a serious faith in it almost completely gone; wesee it fighting even for bare existence, whilst anxious princes try toset it up a little by artificial means, as a doctor uses a drug on adying patient. In this connection there is a passage in Condorcet's"_Des Progrès de l'esprit humain_" which looks as if written as awarning to our age: "the religious zeal shown by philosophers and greatmen was only a political devotion; and every religion which allowsitself to be defended as a belief that may usefully be left to thepeople, can only hope for an agony more or less prolonged. " In the wholecourse of the events which I have indicated, you may always observe thatfaith and knowledge are related as the two scales of a balance; when theone goes up, the other goes down. So sensitive is the balance that itindicates momentary influences. When, for instance, at the beginning ofthis century, those inroads of French robbers under the leadership ofBonaparte, and the enormous efforts necessary for driving them out andpunishing them, had brought about a temporary neglect of science andconsequently a certain decline in the general increase of knowledge, theChurch immediately began to raise her head again and Faith began to showfresh signs of life; which, to be sure, in keeping with the times, waspartly poetical in its nature. On the other hand, in the more thanthirty years of peace which followed, leisure and prosperity furtheredthe building up of science and the spread of knowledge in anextraordinary degree: the consequence of which is what I have indicated, the dissolution and threatened fall of religion. Perhaps the time isapproaching which has so often been prophesied, when religion will takeher departure from European humanity, like a nurse which the child hasoutgrown: the child will now be given over to the instructions of atutor. For there is no doubt that religious doctrines which are foundedmerely on authority, miracles and revelations, are only suited to thechildhood of humanity. Everyone will admit that a race, the pastduration of which on the earth all accounts, physical and historical, agree in placing at not more than some hundred times the life of a manof sixty, is as yet only in its first childhood. 

_Demopheles_. Instead of taking an undisguised pleasure in prophesyingthe downfall of Christianity, how I wish you would consider what ameasureless debt of gratitude European humanity owes to it, how greatlyit has benefited by the religion which, after a long interval, followedit from its old home in the East. Europe received from Christianityideas which were quite new to it, the Knowledge, I mean, of thefundamental truth that life cannot be an end-in-itself, that the trueend of our existence lies beyond it. The Greeks and Romans had placedthis end altogether in our present life, so that in this sense they maycertainly be called blind heathens. And, in keeping with this view oflife, all their virtues can be reduced to what is serviceable to thecommunity, to what is useful in fact. Aristotle says quite naively, _Those virtues must necessarily be the greatest which are the mostuseful to others_. So the ancients thought patriotism the highestvirtue, although it is really a very doubtful one, since narrowness, prejudice, vanity and an enlightened self-interest are main elements init. Just before the passage I quoted, Aristotle enumerates all thevirtues, in order to discuss them singly. They are _Justice, Courage, Temperance, Magnificence, Magnanimity, Liberality, Gentleness, GoodSense_ and _Wisdom_. How different from the Christian virtues! Platohimself, incomparably the most transcendental philosopher ofpre-Christian antiquity, knows no higher virtue than _Justice_; and healone recommends it unconditionally and for its own sake, whereas therest make a happy life, _vita beata_, the aim of all virtue, and moralconduct the way to attain it. Christianity freed European humanity fromthis shallow, crude identification of itself with the hollow, uncertainexistence of every day, coelumque tueri Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus. 

Christianity, accordingly, does not preach mere Justice, but _the Loveof Mankind, Compassion, Good Works, Forgiveness, Love of your Enemies, Patience, Humility, Resignation, Faith_ and _Hope_. It even went a stepfurther, and taught that the world is of evil, and that we needdeliverance. It preached despisal of the world, self-denial, chastity, giving up of one's will, that is, turning away from life and itsillusory pleasures. It taught the healing power of pain: an instrumentof torture is the symbol of Christianity. I am quite ready to admit thatthis earnest, this only correct view of life was thousands of yearspreviously spread all over Asia in other forms, as it is still, independently of Christianity; but for European humanity it was a newand great revelation. For it is well known that the population of Europeconsists of Asiatic races driven out as wanderers from their own homes, and gradually settling down in Europe; on their wanderings these raceslost the original religion of their homes, and with it the right view oflife: so, under a new sky, they formed religions for themselves, whichwere rather crude; the worship of Odin, for instance, the Druidic or theGreek religion, the metaphysical content of which was little andshallow. In the meantime the Greeks developed a special, one mightalmost say, an instinctive sense of beauty, belonging to them alone ofall the nations who have ever existed on the earth, peculiar, fine andexact: so that their mythology took, in the mouth of their poets, and inthe hands of their artists, an exceedingly beautiful and pleasing shape. On the other hand, the true and deep significance of life was lost tothe Greeks and Romans. They lived on like grown-up children, tillChristianity came and recalled them to the serious side of existence. 

_Philalethes_. And to see the effects one need only compare antiquitywith the Middle Age; the time of Pericles, say, with the fourteenthcentury. You could scarcely believe you were dealing with the same kindof beings. There, the finest development of humanity, excellentinstitutions, wise laws, shrewdly apportioned offices, rationallyordered freedom, all the arts, including poetry and philosophy, at theirbest; the production of works which, after thousands of years, areunparalleled, the creations, as it were, of a higher order of beings, which we can never imitate; life embellished by the noblest fellowship, as portrayed in Xenophen's _Banquet_. Look on the other picture, if youcan; a time at which the Church had enslaved the minds, and violence thebodies of men, that knights and priests might lay the whole weight oflife upon the common beast of burden, the third estate. There, you havemight as right, Feudalism and Fanaticism in close alliance, and in theirtrain abominable ignorance and darkness of mind, a correspondingintolerance, discord of creeds, religious wars, crusades, inquisitionsand persecutions; as the form of fellowship, chivalry, compounded ofsavagery and folly, with its pedantic system of ridiculous falsepretences carried to an extreme, its degrading superstition and apishveneration for women. Gallantry is the residue of this veneration, deservedly requited as it is by feminine arrogance; it affords continualfood for laughter to all Asiatics, and the Greeks would have joined init. In the golden Middle Age the practice developed into a regular andmethodical service of women; it imposed deeds of heroism, _coursd'amour_, bombastic Troubadour songs, etc. ; although it is to beobserved that these last buffooneries, which had an intellectual side, were chiefly at home in France; whereas amongst the material sluggishGermans, the knights distinguished themselves rather by drinking andstealing; they were good at boozing and filling their castles withplunder; though in the courts, to be sure, there was no lack of insipidlove songs. What caused this utter transformation? Migration andChristianity. 

_Demopheles_. I am glad you reminded me of it. Migration was the sourceof the evil; Christianity the dam on which it broke. It was chiefly byChristianity that the raw, wild hordes which came flooding in werecontrolled and tamed. The savage man must first of all learn to kneel, to venerate, to obey; after that he can be civilized. This was done inIreland by St. Patrick, in Germany by Winifred the Saxon, who was agenuine Boniface. It was migration of peoples, the last advance ofAsiatic races towards Europe, followed only by the fruitless attempts ofthose under Attila, Zenghis Khan, and Timur, and as a comic afterpiece, by the gipsies, --it was this movement which swept away the humanity ofthe ancients. Christianity was precisely the principle which set itselfto work against this savagery; just as later, through the whole of theMiddle Age, the Church and its hierarchy were most necessary to setlimits to the savage barbarism of those masters of violence, the princesand knights: it was what broke up the icefloes in that mighty deluge. Still, the chief aim of Christianity is not so much to make this lifepleasant as to render us worthy of a better. It looks away over thisspan of time, over this fleeting dream, and seeks to lead us to eternalwelfare. Its tendency is ethical in the highest sense of the word, asense unknown in Europe till its advent; as I have shown you, by puttingthe morality and religion of the ancients side by side with those ofChristendom. 

_Philalethes_. You are quite right as regards theory: but look at thepractice! In comparison with the ages of Christianity the ancient worldwas unquestionably less cruel than the Middle Age, with its deaths byexquisite torture, its innumerable burnings at the stake. The ancients, further, were very enduring, laid great stress on justice, frequentlysacrificed themselves for their country, showed such traces of everykind of magnanimity, and such genuine manliness, that to this day anacquaintance with their thoughts and actions is called the study ofHumanity. The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives in America, and theintroduction of African slaves in their place; and among the ancientsthere is nothing analogous to this, nothing that can be compared withit; for the slaves of the ancients, the _familia_, the _vernae_, were acontented race, and faithfully devoted to their masters' service, and asdifferent from the miserable negroes of the sugar plantations, which area disgrace to humanity, as their two colors are distinct. Those specialmoral delinquencies for which we reproach the ancients, and which areperhaps less uncommon now-a-days than appears on the surface to be thecase, are trifles compared with the Christian enormities I havementioned. Can you then, all considered, maintain that mankind has beenreally made morally better by Christianity?

_Demopheles_. If the results haven't everywhere been in keeping with thepurity and truth of the doctrine, it may be because the doctrine hasbeen too noble, too elevated for mankind, that its aim has been placedtoo high. It was so much easier to come up to the heathen system, or tothe Mohammedan. It is precisely what is noble and dignified that is mostliable everywhere to misuse and fraud: _abusus optimi pessimus_. Thosehigh doctrines have accordingly now and then served as a pretext for themost abominable proceedings, and for acts of unmitigated wickedness. Thedownfall of the institutions of the old world, as well as of its artsand sciences, is, as I have said, to be attributed to the inroad offoreign barbarians. The inevitable result of this inroad was thatignorance and savagery got the upper hand; consequently violence andknavery established their dominion, and knights and priests became aburden to mankind. It is partly, however, to be explained by the factthat the new religion made eternal and not temporal welfare the objectof desire, taught that simplicity of heart was to be preferred toknowledge, and looked askance at all worldly pleasure. Now the arts andsciences subserve worldly pleasure; but in so far as they could be madeserviceable to religion they were promoted, and attained a certaindegree of perfection. 

_Philalethes_. In a very narrow sphere. The sciences were suspiciouscompanions, and as such, were placed under restrictions: on the otherhand, darling ignorance, that element so necessary to a system of faith, was carefully nourished. 

_Demopheles_. And yet mankind's possessions in the way of knowledge upto that period, which were preserved in the writings of the ancients, were saved from destruction by the clergy, especially by those in themonasteries. How would it have fared if Christianity hadn't come in justbefore the migration of peoples. 

_Philalethes_. It would really be a most useful inquiry to try and make, with the coldest impartiality, an unprejudiced, careful and accuratecomparison of the advantages and disadvantages which may be put down toreligion. For that, of course, a much larger knowledge of historical andpsychological data than either of us command would be necessary. Academies might make it a subject for a prize essay. 

_Demopheles_. They'll take good care not to do so. 

_Philalethes_. I'm surprised to hear you say that: it's a bad look outfor religion. However, there are academies which, in proposing a subjectfor competition, make it a secret condition that the prize is to go tothe man who best interprets their own view. If we could only begin bygetting a statistician to tell us how many crimes are prevented everyyear by religious, and how many by other motives, there would be veryfew of the former. If a man feels tempted to commit a crime, you mayrely upon it that the first consideration which enters his head is thepenalty appointed for it, and the chances that it will fall upon him:then comes, as a second consideration, the risk to his reputation. If Iam not mistaken, he will ruminate by the hour on these two impediments, before he ever takes a thought of religious considerations. If he getssafely over those two first bulwarks against crime, I think religionalone will very rarely hold him back from it. 

_Demopheles_. I think that it will very often do so, especially when itsinfluence works through the medium of custom. An atrocious act is atonce felt to be repulsive. What is this but the effect of earlyimpressions? Think, for instance, how often a man, especially if ofnoble birth, will make tremendous sacrifices to perform what he haspromised, motived entirely by the fact that his father has oftenearnestly impressed upon him in his childhood that "a man of honor" or"a gentleman" or a "a cavalier" always keeps his word inviolate. 

_Philalethes_. That's no use unless there is a certain inbornhonorableness. You mustn't ascribe to religion what results from innategoodness of character, by which compassion for the man who would sufferby his crime keeps a man from committing it. This is the genuine moralmotive, and as such it is independent of all religions. 

_Demopheles_. But this is a motive which rarely affects the multitudeunless it assumes a religious aspect. The religious aspect at any ratestrengthens its power for good. Yet without any such natural foundation, religious motives alone are powerful to prevent crime. We need not besurprised at this in the case of the multitude, when we see that evenpeople of education pass now and then under the influence, not indeed ofreligious motives, which are founded on something which is at leastallegorically true, but of the most absurd superstition, and allowthemselves to be guided by it all their life long; as, for instance, undertaking nothing on a Friday, refusing to sit down thirteen at atable, obeying chance omens, and the like. How much more likely is themultitude to be guided by such things. You can't form any adequate ideaof the narrow limits of the mind in its raw state; it is a place ofabsolute darkness, especially when, as often happens, a bad, unjust andmalicious heart is at the bottom of it. People in this condition--andthey form the great bulk of humanity--must be led and controlled as wellas may be, even if it be by really superstitious motives; until suchtime as they become susceptible to truer and better ones. As an instanceof the direct working of religion, may be cited the fact, common enough, in Italy especially, of a thief restoring stolen goods, through theinfluence of his confessor, who says he won't absolve him if he doesn't. Think again of the case of an oath, where religion shows a most decidedinfluence; whether it be that a man places himself expressly in theposition of a purely _moral being_, and as such looks upon himself assolemnly appealed to, as seems to be the case in France, where theformula is simply _je le jure_, and also among the Quakers, whose solemn_yea_ or _nay_ is regarded as a substitute for the oath; or whether itbe that a man really believes he is pronouncing something which mayaffect his eternal happiness, --a belief which is presumably only theinvestiture of the former feeling. At any rate, religious considerationsare a means of awakening and calling out a man's moral nature. How oftenit happens that a man agrees to take a false oath, and then, when itcomes to the point, suddenly refuses, and truth and right win the day. 

_Philalethes_. Oftener still false oaths are really taken, and truth andright trampled under foot, though all witnesses of the oath know itwell! Still you are quite right to quote the oath as an undeniableexample of the practical efficacy of religion. But, in spite of allyou've said, I doubt whether the efficacy of religion goes much beyondthis. Just think; if a public proclamation were suddenly made announcingthe repeal of all the criminal laws; I fancy neither you nor I wouldhave the courage to go home from here under the protection of religiousmotives. If, in the same way, all religions were declared untrue, wecould, under the protection of the laws alone, go on living as before, without any special addition to our apprehensions or our measures ofprecaution. I will go beyond this, and say that religions have veryfrequently exercised a decidedly demoralizing influence. One may saygenerally that duties towards God and duties towards humanity are ininverse ratio. 

It is easy to let adulation of the Deity make amends for lack of properbehavior towards man. And so we see that in all times and in allcountries the great majority of mankind find it much easier to beg theirway to heaven by prayers than to deserve to go there by their actions. In every religion it soon comes to be the case that faith, ceremonies, rites and the like, are proclaimed to be more agreeable to the Divinewill than moral actions; the former, especially if they are bound upwith the emoluments of the clergy, gradually come to be looked upon as asubstitute for the latter. Sacrifices in temples, the saying of masses, the founding of chapels, the planting of crosses by the roadside, sooncome to be the most meritorious works, so that even great crimes areexpiated by them, as also by penance, subjection to priestly authority, confessions, pilgrimages, donations to the temples and the clergy, thebuilding of monasteries and the like. The consequence of all this isthat the priests finally appear as middlemen in the corruption of thegods. And if matters don't go quite so far as that, where is thereligion whose adherents don't consider prayers, praise and manifoldacts of devotion, a substitute, at least in part, for moral conduct?Look at England, where by an audacious piece of priestcraft, theChristian Sunday, introduced by Constantine the Great as a subject forthe Jewish Sabbath, is in a mendacious way identified with it, and takesits name, --and this in order that the commands of Jehovah for theSabbath (that is, the day on which the Almighty had to rest from his sixdays' labor, so that it is essentially the last day of the week), mightbe applied to the Christian Sunday, the _dies solis_, the first day ofthe week which the sun opens in glory, the day of devotion and joy. Theconsequence of this fraud is that "Sabbath-breaking, " or "thedesecration of the Sabbath, " that is, the slightest occupation, whetherof business or pleasure, all games, music, sewing, worldly books, are onSundays looked upon as great sins. Surely the ordinary man must believethat if, as his spiritual guides impress upon him, he is only constantin "a strict observance of the holy Sabbath, " and is "a regularattendant at Divine Service, " that is, if he only invariably idles awayhis time on Sundays, and doesn't fail to sit two hours in church to hearthe same litany for the thousandth time and mutter it in tune with theothers, he may reckon on indulgence in regard to those littlepeccadilloes which he occasionally allows himself. Those devils in humanform, the slave owners and slave traders in the Free States of NorthAmerica (they should be called the Slave States) are, as a rule, orthodox, pious Anglicans who would consider it a grave sin to work onSundays; and having confidence in this, and their regular attendance atchurch, they hope for eternal happiness. The demoralizing tendency ofreligion is less problematical than its moral influence. How great andhow certain that moral influence must be to make amends for theenormities which religions, especially the Christian and Mohammedanreligions, have produced and spread over the earth! Think of thefanaticism, the endless persecutions, the religious wars, thatsanguinary frenzy of which the ancients had no conception! think of thecrusades, a butchery lasting two hundred years and inexcusable, its warcry "_It is the will of God_, " its object to gain possession of thegrave of one who preached love and sufferance! think of the cruelexpulsion and extermination of the Moors and Jews from Spain! think ofthe orgies of blood, the inquisitions, the heretical tribunals, thebloody and terrible conquests of the Mohammedans in three continents, orthose of Christianity in America, whose inhabitants were for the mostpart, and in Cuba entirely, exterminated. According to Las Cases, Christianity murdered twelve millions in forty years, of course all _inmajorem Dei gloriam_, and for the propagation of the Gospel, and becausewhat wasn't Christian wasn't even looked upon as human! I have, it istrue, touched upon these matters before; but when in our day, we hear of_Latest News from the Kingdom of God_ [Footnote: A missionary paper, ofwhich the 40th annual number appeared in 1856], we shall not be weary ofbringing old news to mind. And above all, don't let us forget India, thecradle of the human race, or at least of that part of it to which webelong, where first Mohammedans, and then Christians, were most cruellyinfuriated against the adherents of the original faith of mankind. Thedestruction or disfigurement of the ancient temples and idols, alamentable, mischievous and barbarous act, still bears witness to themonotheistic fury of the Mohammedans, carried on from Marmud, theGhaznevid of cursed memory, down to Aureng Zeb, the fratricide, whom thePortuguese Christians have zealously imitated by destruction of templesand the _auto de fé_ of the inquisition at Goa. Don't let us forget thechosen people of God, who after they had, by Jehovah's express command, stolen from their old and trusty friends in Egypt the gold and silvervessels which had been lent to them, made a murderous and plunderinginroad into "the Promised Land, " with the murderer Moses at their head, to tear it from the rightful owners, --again, by the same Jehovah'sexpress and repeated commands, showing no mercy, exterminating theinhabitants, women, children and all (Joshua, ch. 9 and 10). And allthis, simply because they weren't circumcised and didn't know Jehovah, which was reason enough to justify every enormity against them; just asfor the same reason, in earlier times, the infamous knavery of thepatriarch Jacob and his chosen people against Hamor, King of Shalem, andhis people, is reported to his glory because the people wereunbelievers! (Genesis xxxiii. 18. ) Truly, it is the worst side ofreligions that the believers of one religion have allowed themselvesevery sin again those of another, and with the utmost ruffianism andcruelty persecuted them; the Mohammedans against the Christians andHindoos; the Christians against the Hindoos, Mohammedans, Americannatives, Negroes, Jews, heretics, and others. 

Perhaps I go too far in saying _all_ religions. For the sake of truth, Imust add that the fanatical enormities perpetrated in the name ofreligion are only to be put down to the adherents of monotheisticcreeds, that is, the Jewish faith and its two branches, Christianity andIslamism. We hear of nothing of the kind in the case of Hindoos andBuddhists. Although it is a matter of common knowledge that about thefifth century of our era Buddhism was driven out by the Brahmans fromits ancient home in the southernmost part of the Indian peninsula, andafterwards spread over the whole of the rest of Asia, as far as I know, we have no definite account of any crimes of violence, or wars, orcruelties, perpetrated in the course of it. 

That may, of course, be attributable to the obscurity which veils thehistory of those countries; but the exceedingly mild character of theirreligion, together with their unceasing inculcation of forbearancetowards all living things, and the fact that Brahmanism by its castesystem properly admits no proselytes, allows one to hope that theiradherents may be acquitted of shedding blood on a large scale, and ofcruelty in any form. Spence Hardy, in his excellent book on _EasternMonachism_, praises the extraordinary tolerance of the Buddhists, andadds his assurance that the annals of Buddhism will furnish fewerinstances of religious persecution than those of any other religion. 

As a matter of fact, it is only to monotheism that intolerance isessential; an only god is by his nature a jealous god, who can allow noother god to exist. Polytheistic gods, on the other hand, are naturallytolerant; they live and let live; their own colleagues are the chiefobjects of their sufferance, as being gods of the same religion. Thistoleration is afterwards extended to foreign gods, who are, accordingly, hospitably received, and later on admitted, in some cases, to anequality of rights; the chief example of which is shown by the fact, that the Romans willingly admitted and venerated Phrygian, Egyptian andother gods. Hence it is that monotheistic religions alone furnish thespectacle of religious wars, religious persecutions, hereticaltribunals, that breaking of idols and destruction of images of the gods, that razing of Indian temples, and Egyptian colossi, which had looked onthe sun three thousand years, just because a jealous god had said, _Thoushalt make no graven image_. 

But to return to the chief point. You are certainly right in insistingon the strong metaphysical needs of mankind; but religion appears to meto be not so much a satisfaction as an abuse of those needs. At any ratewe have seen that in regard to the furtherance of morality, its utilityis, for the most part, problematical, its disadvantages, and especiallythe atrocities which have followed in its train, are patent to the lightof day. Of course it is quite a different matter if we consider theutility of religion as a prop of thrones; for where these are held "bythe grace of God, " throne and altar are intimately associated; and everywise prince who loves his throne and his family will appear at the headof his people as an exemplar of true religion. Even Machiavelli, in theeighteenth chapter of his book, most earnestly recommended religion toprinces. Beyond this, one may say that revealed religions stand tophilosophy exactly in the relation of "sovereigns by the grace of God, "to "the sovereignty of the people"; so that the two former terms of theparallel are in natural alliance. 

_Demopheles_. Oh, don't take that tone! You're going hand in hand withochlocracy and anarchy, the arch enemy of all legislative order, allcivilization and all humanity. 

_Philalethes_. You are right. It was only a sophism of mine, what thefencing master calls a feint. I retract it. But see how disputingsometimes makes an honest man unjust and malicious. Let us stop. 

_Demopheles_. I can't help regretting that, after all the trouble I'vetaken, I haven't altered your disposition in regard to religion. On theother hand, I can assure you that everything you have said hasn't shakenmy conviction of its high value and necessity. 

_Philalethes_. I fully believe you; for, as we may read in Hudibras--

 A man convinced against his will Is of the same opinion still. 

My consolation is that, alike in controversies and in taking mineralwaters, the after effects are the true ones. 

_Demopheles_. Well, I hope it'll be beneficial in your case. 

_Philalethes_. It might be so, if I could digest a certain Spanishproverb. 

_Demopheles_. Which is?

_Philalethes. Behind the cross stands the devil_. 

_Demopheles_. Come, don't let us part with sarcasms. Let us rather admitthat religion, like Janus, or better still, like the Brahman god ofdeath, Yama, has two faces, and like him, one friendly, the othersullen. Each of us has kept his eye fixed on one alone. 

_Philalethes_. You are right, old fellow. 

A FEW WORDS ON PANTHEISM. 

The controversy between Theism and Pantheism might be presented in anallegorical or dramatic form by supposing a dialogue between two personsin the pit of a theatre at Milan during the performance of a piece. Oneof them, convinced that he is in Girolamo's renowned marionette-theatre, admires the art by which the director gets up the dolls and guides theirmovements. "Oh, you are quite mistaken, " says the other, "we're in theTeatro della Scala; it is the manager and his troupe who are on thestage; they are the persons you see before you; the poet too is taking apart. "

The chief objection I have to Pantheism is that it says nothing. To callthe world "God" is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our languagewith a superfluous synonym for the word "world. " It comes to the samething whether you say "the world is God, " or "God is the world. " But ifyou start from "God" as something that is given in experience, and hasto be explained, and they say, "God is the world, " you are affordingwhat is to some extent an explanation, in so far as you are reducingwhat is unknown to what is partly known (_ignotum per notius_); but itis only a verbal explanation. If, however, you start from what is reallygiven, that is to say, from the world, and say, "the world is God, " itis clear that you say nothing, or at least you are explaining what isunknown by what is more unknown. 

Hence, Pantheism presupposes Theism; only in so far as you start from agod, that is, in so far as you possess him as something with which youare already familiar, can you end by identifying him with the world; andyour purpose in doing so is to put him out of the way in a decentfashion. In other words, you do not start clear from the world assomething that requires explanation; you start from God as somethingthat is given, and not knowing what to do with him, you make the worldtake over his role. This is the origin of Pantheism. Taking anunprejudiced view of the world as it is, no one would dream of regardingit as a god. It must be a very ill-advised god who knows no better wayof diverting himself than by turning into such a world as ours, such amean, shabby world, there to take the form of innumerable millions wholive indeed, but are fretted and tormented, and who manage to exist awhile together, only by preying on one another; to bear misery, need anddeath, without measure and without object, in the form, for instance, ofmillions of negro slaves, or of the three million weavers in Europe who, in hunger and care, lead a miserable existence in damp rooms or thecheerless halls of a factory. What a pastime this for a god, who must, as such, be used to another mode of existence!

We find accordingly that what is described as the great advance fromTheism to Pantheism, if looked at seriously, and not simply as a maskednegation of the sort indicated above, is a transition from what isunproved and hardly conceivable to what is absolutely absurd. Forhowever obscure, however loose or confused may be the idea which weconnect with the word "God, " there are two predicates which areinseparable from it, the highest power and the highest wisdom. It isabsolutely absurd to think that a being endowed with these qualitiesshould have put himself into the position described above. Theism, onthe other hand, is something which is merely unproved; and if it isdifficult to look upon the infinite world as the work of a personal, andtherefore individual, Being, the like of which we know only from ourexperience of the animal world, it is nevertheless not an absolutelyabsurd idea. That a Being, at once almighty and all-good, should createa world of torment is always conceivable; even though we do not know whyhe does so; and accordingly we find that when people ascribe the heightof goodness to this Being, they set up the inscrutable nature of hiswisdom as the refuge by which the doctrine escapes the charge ofabsurdity. Pantheism, however, assumes that the creative God is himselfthe world of infinite torment, and, in this little world alone, diesevery second, and that entirely of his own will; which is absurd. Itwould be much more correct to identify the world with the devil, as thevenerable author of the _Deutsche Theologie_ has, in fact, done in apassage of his immortal work, where he says, "_Wherefore the evil spiritand nature are one, and where nature is not overcome, neither is theevil adversary overcome_. "

It is manifest that the Pantheists give the Sansara the name of God. Thesame name is given by the Mystics to the Nirvana. The latter, however, state more about the Nirvana than they know, which is not done by theBuddhists, whose Nirvana is accordingly a relative nothing. It is onlyJews, Christians, and Mohammedans who give its proper and correctmeaning to the word "God. "

The expression, often heard now-a-days, "the world is an end-in-itself, "leaves it uncertain whether Pantheism or a simple Fatalism is to betaken as the explanation of it. But, whichever it be, the expressionlooks upon the world from a physical point of view only, and leaves outof sight its moral significance, because you cannot assume a moralsignificance without presenting the world as means to a higher end. Thenotion that the world has a physical but not a moral meaning, is themost mischievous error sprung from the greatest mental perversity. 

ON BOOKS AND READING. 

Ignorance is degrading only when found in company with riches. The poorman is restrained by poverty and need: labor occupies his thoughts, andtakes the place of knowledge. But rich men who are ignorant live fortheir lusts only, and are like the beasts of the field; as may be seenevery day: and they can also be reproached for not having used wealthand leisure for that which gives them their greatest value. 

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mentalprocess. In learning to write, the pupil goes over with his pen what theteacher has outlined in pencil: so in reading; the greater part of thework of thought is already done for us. This is why it relieves us totake up a book after being occupied with our own thoughts. And inreading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another'sthoughts. So it comes about that if anyone spends almost the whole dayin reading, and by way of relaxation devotes the intervals to somethoughtless pastime, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking; justas the man who always rides, at last forgets how to walk. This is thecase with many learned persons: they have read themselves stupid. For tooccupy every spare moment in reading, and to do nothing but read, iseven more paralyzing to the mind than constant manual labor, which atleast allows those engaged in it to follow their own thoughts. A springnever free from the pressure of some foreign body at last loses itselasticity; and so does the mind if other people's thoughts areconstantly forced upon it. Just as you can ruin the stomach and impairthe whole body by taking too much nourishment, so you can overfill andchoke the mind by feeding it too much. The more you read, the fewer arethe traces left by what you have read: the mind becomes like a tabletcrossed over and over with writing. There is no time for ruminating, andin no other way can you assimilate what you have read. If you read onand on without setting your own thoughts to work, what you have read cannot strike root, and is generally lost. It is, in fact, just the samewith mental as with bodily food: hardly the fifth part of what one takesis assimilated. The rest passes off in evaporation, respiration and thelike. 

The result of all this is that thoughts put on paper are nothing morethan footsteps in the sand: you see the way the man has gone, but toknow what he saw on his walk, you want his eyes. 

There is no quality of style that can be gained by reading writers whopossess it; whether it be persuasiveness, imagination, the gift ofdrawing comparisons, boldness, bitterness, brevity, grace, ease ofexpression or wit, unexpected contrasts, a laconic or naive manner, andthe like. But if these qualities are already in us, exist, that is tosay, potentially, we can call them forth and bring them toconsciousness; we can learn the purposes to which they can be put; wecan be strengthened in our inclination to use them, or get courage to doso; we can judge by examples the effect of applying them, and so acquirethe correct use of them; and of course it is only when we have arrivedat that point that we actually possess these qualities. The only way inwhich reading can form style is by teaching us the use to which we canput our own natural gifts. We must have these gifts before we begin tolearn the use of them. Without them, reading teaches us nothing butcold, dead mannerisms and makes us shallow imitators. 

The strata of the earth preserve in rows the creatures which lived informer ages; and the array of books on the shelves of a library storesup in like manner the errors of the past and the way in which they havebeen exposed. Like those creatures, they too were full of life in theirtime, and made a great deal of noise; but now they are stiff andfossilized, and an object of curiosity to the literary palaeontologistalone. 

Herodotus relates that Xerxes wept at the sight of his army, whichstretched further than the eye could reach, in the thought that of allthese, after a hundred years, not one would be alive. And in lookingover a huge catalogue of new books, one might weep at thinking that, when ten years have passed, not one of them will be heard of. 

It is in literature as in life: wherever you turn, you stumble at onceupon the incorrigible mob of humanity, swarming in all directions, crowding and soiling everything, like flies in summer. Hence the number, which no man can count, of bad books, those rank weeds of literature, which draw nourishment from the corn and choke it. The time, money andattention of the public, which rightfully belong to good books and theirnoble aims, they take for themselves: they are written for the merepurpose of making money or procuring places. So they are not onlyuseless; they do positive mischief. Nine-tenths of the whole of ourpresent literature has no other aim than to get a few shillings out ofthe pockets of the public; and to this end author, publisher andreviewer are in league. 

Let me mention a crafty and wicked trick, albeit a profitable andsuccessful one, practised by littérateurs, hack writers, and voluminousauthors. In complete disregard of good taste and the true culture of theperiod, they have succeeded in getting the whole of the world of fashioninto leading strings, so that they are all trained to read in time, andall the same thing, viz. , _the newest books_; and that for the purposeof getting food for conversation in the circles in which they move. Thisis the aim served by bad novels, produced by writers who were oncecelebrated, as Spindler, Bulwer Lytton, Eugene Sue. What can be moremiserable than the lot of a reading public like this, always bound toperuse the latest works of extremely commonplace persons who write formoney only, and who are therefore never few in number? and for thisadvantage they are content to know by name only the works of the fewsuperior minds of all ages and all countries. Literary newspapers, too, are a singularly cunning device for robbing the reading public of thetime which, if culture is to be attained, should be devoted to thegenuine productions of literature, instead of being occupied by thedaily bungling commonplace persons. 

Hence, in regard to reading, it is a very important thing to be able torefrain. Skill in doing so consists in not taking into one's hands anybook merely because at the time it happens to be extensively read; suchas political or religious pamphlets, novels, poetry, and the like, whichmake a noise, and may even attain to several editions in the first andlast year of their existence. Consider, rather, that the man who writesfor fools is always sure of a large audience; be careful to limit yourtime for reading, and devote it exclusively to the works of those greatminds of all times and countries, who o'ertop the rest of humanity, those whom the voice of fame points to as such. These alone reallyeducate and instruct. You can never read bad literature too little, norgood literature too much. Bad books are intellectual poison; theydestroy the mind. Because people always read what is new instead of thebest of all ages, writers remain in the narrow circle of the ideas whichhappen to prevail in their time; and so the period sinks deeper anddeeper into its own mire. 

There are at all times two literatures in progress, running side byside, but little known to each other; the one real, the other onlyapparent. The former grows into permanent literature; it is pursued bythose who live _for_ science or poetry; its course is sober and quiet, but extremely slow; and it produces in Europe scarcely a dozen works ina century; these, however, are permanent. The other kind is pursued bypersons who live _on_ science or poetry; it goes at a gallop with muchnoise and shouting of partisans; and every twelve-month puts a thousandworks on the market. But after a few years one asks, Where are they?where is the glory which came so soon and made so much clamor? This kindmay be called fleeting, and the other, permanent literature. 

In the history of politics, half a century is always a considerabletime; the matter which goes to form them is ever on the move; there isalways something going on. But in the history of literature there isoften a complete standstill for the same period; nothing has happened, for clumsy attempts don't count. You are just where you were fifty yearspreviously. 

To explain what I mean, let me compare the advance of knowledge amongmankind to the course taken by a planet. The false paths on whichhumanity usually enters after every important advance are like theepicycles in the Ptolemaic system, and after passing through one ofthem, the world is just where it was before it entered it. But the greatminds, who really bring the race further on its course do not accompanyit on the epicycles it makes from time to time. This explains whyposthumous fame is often bought at the expense of contemporary praise, and _vice versa_. An instance of such an epicycle is the philosophystarted by Fichte and Schelling, and crowned by Hegel's caricature ofit. This epicycle was a deviation from the limit to which philosophy hadbeen ultimately brought by Kant; and at that point I took it up againafterwards, to carry it further. In the intervening period the shamphilosophers I have mentioned and some others went through theirepicycle, which had just come to an end; so that those who went withthem on their course are conscious of the fact that they are exactly atthe point from which they started. 

This circumstance explains why it is that, every thirty years or so, science, literature, and art, as expressed in the spirit of the time, are declared bankrupt. The errors which appear from time to time amountto such a height in that period that the mere weight of their absurditymakes the fabric fall; whilst the opposition to them has been gatheringforce at the same time. So an upset takes place, often followed by anerror in the opposite direction. To exhibit these movements in theirperiodical return would be the true practical aim of the history ofliterature: little attention, however, is paid to it. And besides, thecomparatively short duration of these periods makes it difficult tocollect the data of epochs long gone by, so that it is most convenientto observe how the matter stands in one's own generation. An instance ofthis tendency, drawn from physical science, is supplied in the Neptuniangeology of Werter. 

But let me keep strictly to the example cited above, the nearest we cantake. In German philosophy, the brilliant epoch of Kant was immediatelyfollowed by a period which aimed rather at being imposing than atconvincing. Instead of being thorough and clear, it tried to bedazzling, hyperbolical, and, in a special degree, unintelligible:instead of seeking truth, it intrigued. Philosophy could make noprogress in this fashion; and at last the whole school and its methodbecame bankrupt. For the effrontery of Hegel and his fellows came tosuch a pass, --whether because they talked such sophisticated nonsense, or were so unscrupulously puffed, or because the entire aim of thispretty piece of work was quite obvious, --that in the end there wasnothing to prevent charlatanry of the whole business from becomingmanifest to everybody: and when, in consequence of certain disclosures, the favor it had enjoyed in high quarters was withdrawn, the system wasopenly ridiculed. This most miserable of all the meagre philosophiesthat have ever existed came to grief, and dragged down with it into theabysm of discredit, the systems of Fichte and Schelling which hadpreceded it. And so, as far as Germany is concerned, the totalphilosophical incompetence of the first half of the century followingupon Kant is quite plain: and still the Germans boast of their talentfor philosophy in comparison with foreigners, especially since anEnglish writer has been so maliciously ironical as to call them "anation of thinkers. "

For an example of the general system of epicycles drawn from the historyof art, look at the school of sculpture which flourished in the lastcentury and took its name from Bernini, more especially at thedevelopment of it which prevailed in France. The ideal of this schoolwas not antique beauty, but commonplace nature: instead of thesimplicity and grace of ancient art, it represented the manners of aFrench minuet. 

This tendency became bankrupt when, under Winkelman's direction, areturn was made to the antique school. The history of painting furnishesan illustration in the first quarter of the century, when art was lookedupon merely as a means and instrument of mediaeval religious sentiment, and its themes consequently drawn from ecclesiastical subjects alone:these, however, were treated by painters who had none of the trueearnestness of faith, and in their delusion they followed FrancescoFrancia, Pietro Perugino, Angelico da Fiesole and others like them, rating them higher even than the really great masters who followed. Itwas in view of this terror, and because in poetry an analogous aim hadat the same time found favor, that Goethe wrote his parable_Pfaffenspiel_. This school, too, got the reputation of being whimsical, became bankrupt, and was followed by a return to nature, whichproclaimed itself in _genre_ pictures and scenes of life of every kind, even though it now and then strayed into what was vulgar. 

The progress of the human mind in literature is similar. The history ofliterature is for the most part like the catalogue of a museum ofdeformities; the spirit in which they keep best is pigskin. The fewcreatures that have been born in goodly shape need not be looked forthere. They are still alive, and are everywhere to be met with in theworld, immortal, and with their years ever green. They alone form what Ihave called real literature; the history of which, poor as it is inpersons, we learn from our youth up out of the mouths of all educatedpeople, before compilations recount it for us. 

As an antidote to the prevailing monomania for reading literaryhistories, in order to be able to chatter about everything, withouthaving any real knowledge at all, let me refer to a passage inLichtenberg's works (vol. II. , p. 302), which is well worth perusal. 

I believe that the over-minute acquaintance with the history of scienceand learning, which is such a prevalent feature of our day, is veryprejudicial to the advance of knowledge itself. There is pleasure infollowing up this history; but as a matter of fact, it leaves the mind, not empty indeed, but without any power of its own, just because itmakes it so full. Whoever has felt the desire, not to fill up his mind, but to strengthen it, to develop his faculties and aptitudes, andgenerally, to enlarge his powers, will have found that there is nothingso weakening as intercourse with a so-called littérateur, on a matter ofknowledge on which he has not thought at all, though he knows a thousandlittle facts appertaining to its history and literature. It is likereading a cookery-book when you are hungry. I believe that so-calledliterary history will never thrive amongst thoughtful people, who areconscious of their own worth and the worth of real knowledge. Thesepeople are more given to employing their own reason than to troublingthemselves to know how others have employed theirs. The worst of it isthat, as you will find, the more knowledge takes the direction ofliterary research, the less the power of promoting knowledge becomes;the only thing that increases is pride in the possession of it. Suchpersons believe that they possess knowledge in a greater degree thanthose who really possess it. It is surely a well-founded remark, thatknowledge never makes its possessor proud. Those alone let themselves beblown out with pride, who incapable of extending knowledge in their ownpersons, occupy themselves with clearing up dark points in its history, or are able to recount what others have done. They are proud, becausethey consider this occupation, which is mostly of a mechanical nature, the practice of knowledge. I could illustrate what I mean by examples, but it would be an odious task. 

Still, I wish some one would attempt a _tragical_ history of literature, giving the way in which the writers and artists, who form the proudestpossession of the various nations which have given them birth, have beentreated by them during their lives. Such a history would exhibit theceaseless warfare, which what was good and genuine in all times andcountries has had to wage with what was bad and perverse. It would tellof the martyrdom of almost all those who truly enlightened humanity, ofalmost all the great masters of every kind of art: it would show us how, with few exceptions, they were tormented to death, without recognition, without sympathy, without followers; how they lived in poverty andmisery, whilst fame, honor, and riches, were the lot of the unworthy;how their fate was that of Esau, who while he was hunting and gettingvenison for his father, was robbed of the blessing by Jacob, disguisedin his brother's clothes, how, in spite of all, they were kept up by thelove of their work, until at last the bitter fight of the teacher ofhumanity is over, until the immortal laurel is held out to him, and thehour strikes when it can be said:

 Der sehwere Panzer wird zum Flügelkleide Kurz ist der Schmerz, unendlich ist die Freude. 

PHYSIOGNOMY. 

That the outer man is a picture of the inner, and the face an expressionand revelation of the whole character, is a presumption likely enough initself, and therefore a safe one to go by; evidenced as it is by thefact that people are always anxious to see anyone who has made himselffamous by good or evil, or as the author of some extraordinary work; orif they cannot get a sight of him, to hear at any rate from others whathe looks like. So people go to places where they may expect to see theperson who interests them; the press, especially in England, endeavorsto give a minute and striking description of his appearance; paintersand engravers lose no time in putting him visibly before us; and finallyphotography, on that very account of such high value, affords the mostcomplete satisfaction of our curiosity. It is also a fact that inprivate life everyone criticises the physiognomy of those he comesacross, first of all secretly trying to discern their intellectual andmoral character from their features. This would be a useless proceedingif, as some foolish people fancy, the exterior of a man is a matter ofno account; if, as they think, the soul is one thing and the bodyanother, and the body related to the soul merely as the coat to the manhimself. 

On the contrary, every human face is a hieroglyphic, and a hieroglyphic, too, which admits of being deciphered, the alphabet of which we carryabout with us already perfected. As a matter of fact, the face of a mangives us a fuller and more interesting information than his tongue; forhis face is the compendium of all he will ever say, as it is the onerecord of all his thoughts and endeavors. And, moreover, the tonguetells the thought of one man only, whereas the face expresses a thoughtof nature itself: so that everyone is worth attentive observation, eventhough everyone may not be worth talking to. And if every individual isworth observation as a single thought of nature, how much more so isbeauty, since it is a higher and more general conception of nature, is, in fact, her thought of a species. This is why beauty is so captivating:it is a fundamental thought of nature: whereas the individual is only aby-thought, a corollary. 

In private, people always proceed upon the principle that a man is whathe looks; and the principle is a right one, only the difficulty lies inits application. For though the art of applying the principle is partlyinnate and may be partly gained by experience, no one is a master of it, and even the most experienced is not infallible. But for all that, whatever Figaro may say, it is not the face which deceives; it is we whodeceive ourselves in reading in it what is not there. 

The deciphering of a face is certainly a great and difficult art, andthe principles of it can never be learnt in the abstract. The firstcondition of success is to maintain a purely objective point of view, which is no easy matter. For, as soon as the faintest trace of anythingsubjective is present, whether dislike or favor, or fear or hope, oreven the thought of the impression we ourselves are making upon theobject of our attention the characters we are trying to decipher becomeconfused and corrupt. The sound of a language is really appreciated onlyby one who does not understand it, and that because, in thinking of thesignification of a word, we pay no regard to the sign itself. So, in thesame way, a physiognomy is correctly gauged only by one to whom it isstill strange, who has not grown accustomed to the face by constantlymeeting and conversing with the man himself. It is, therefore, strictlyspeaking, only the first sight of a man which affords that purelyobjective view which is necessary for deciphering his features. An odoraffects us only when we first come in contact with it, and the firstglass of wine is the one which gives us its true taste: in the same way, it is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impressionupon us. Consequently the first impression should be carefully attendedto and noted, even written down if the subject of it is of personalimportance, provided, of course, that one can trust one's own sense ofphysiognomy. Subsequent acquaintance and intercourse will obliterate theimpression, but time will one day prove whether it is true. 

Let us, however, not conceal from ourselves the fact that this firstimpression is for the most part extremely unedifying. How poor mostfaces are! With the exception of those that are beautiful, good-natured, or intellectual, that is to say, the very few and far between, I believea person of any fine feeling scarcely ever sees a new face without asensation akin to a shock, for the reason that it presents a new andsurprising combination of unedifying elements. To tell the truth, it is, as a rule, a sorry sight. There are some people whose faces bear thestamp of such artless vulgarity and baseness of character, such ananimal limitation of intelligence, that one wonders how they can appearin public with such a countenance, instead of wearing a mask. There arefaces, indeed, the very sight of which produces a feeling of pollution. One cannot, therefore, take it amiss of people, whose privilegedposition admits of it, if they manage to live in retirement andcompletely free from the painful sensation of "seeing new faces. " Themetaphysical explanation of this circumstance rests upon theconsideration that the individuality of a man is precisely that by thevery existence of which he should be reclaimed and corrected. If, on theother hand, a psychological explanation is satisfactory, let any one askhimself what kind of physiognomy he may expect in those who have alltheir life long, except on the rarest occasions, harbored nothing butpetty, base and miserable thoughts, and vulgar, selfish, envious, wickedand malicious desires. Every one of these thoughts and desires has setits mark upon the face during the time it lasted, and by constantrepetition, all these marks have in course of time become furrows andblotches, so to speak. Consequently, most people's appearance is such asto produce a shock at first sight; and it is only gradually that onegets accustomed to it, that is to say, becomes so deadened to theimpression that it has no more effect on one. 

And that the prevailing facial expression is the result of a longprocess of innumerable, fleeting and characteristic contractions of thefeatures is just the reason why intellectual countenances are of gradualformation. It is, indeed, only in old age that intellectual men attaintheir sublime expression, whilst portraits of them in their youth showonly the first traces of it. But on the other hand, what I have justsaid about the shock which the first sight of a face generally produces, is in keeping with the remark that it is only at that first sight thatit makes its true and full impression. For to get a purely objective anduncorrupted impression of it, we must stand in no kind of relation tothe person; if possible, we must not yet have spoken with him. For everyconversation places us to some extent upon a friendly footing, establishes a certain _rapport_, a mutual subjective relation, which isat once unfavorable to an objective point of view. And as everyone'sendeavor is to win esteem or friendship for himself, the man who isunder observation will at once employ all those arts of dissimulation inwhich he is already versed, and corrupt us with his airs, hypocrisiesand flatteries; so that what the first look clearly showed will soon beseen by us no more. 

This fact is at the bottom of the saying that "most people gain byfurther acquaintance"; it ought, however, to run, "delude us by it. " Itis only when, later on, the bad qualities manifest themselves, that ourfirst judgment as a rule receives its justification and makes good itsscornful verdict. It may be that "a further acquaintance" is anunfriendly one, and if that is so, we do not find in this case eitherthat people gain by it. Another reason why people apparently gain on anearer acquaintance is that the man whose first aspect warns us fromhim, as soon as we converse with him, no longer shows his own being andcharacter, but also his education; that is, not only what he really isby nature, but also what he has appropriated to himself out of thecommon wealth of mankind. Three-fourths of what he says belongs not tohim, but to the sources from which he obtained it; so that we are oftensurprised to hear a minotaur speak so humanly. If we make a still closeracquaintance, the animal nature, of which his face gave promise, willmanifest itself "in all its splendor. " If one is gifted with an acutesense for physiognomy, one should take special note of those verdictswhich preceded a closer acquaintance and were therefore genuine. For theface of a man is the exact impression of what he is; and if he deceivesus, that is our fault, not his. What a man says, on the other hand, iswhat he thinks, more often what he has learned, or it may be even, whathe pretends to think. And besides this, when we talk to him, or evenhear him talking to others, we pay no attention to his physiognomyproper. It is the underlying substance, the fundamental _datum_, and wedisregard it; what interests us is its pathognomy, its play of featureduring conversation. This, however, is so arranged as to turn the goodside upwards. 

When Socrates said to a young man who was introduced to him to have hiscapabilities tested, "Talk in order that I may see you, " if indeed by"seeing" he did not simply mean "hearing, " he was right, so far as it isonly in conversation that the features and especially the eyes becomeanimated, and the intellectual resources and capacities set their markupon the countenance. This puts us in a position to form a provisionalnotion of the degree and capacity of intelligence; which was in thatcase Socrates' aim. But in this connection it is to be observed, firstly, that the rule does not apply to moral qualities, which liedeeper, and in the second place, that what from an objective point ofview we gain by the clearer development of the countenance inconversation, we lose from a subjective standpoint on account of thepersonal relation into which the speaker at once enters in regard to us, and which produces a slight fascination, so that, as explained above, weare not left impartial observers. Consequently from the last point ofview we might say with greater accuracy, "Do not speak in order that Imay see you. "

For to get a pure and fundamental conception of a man's physiognomy, wemust observe him when he is alone and left to himself. Society of anykind and conversation throw a reflection upon him which is not his own, generally to his advantage; as he is thereby placed in a state of actionand reaction which sets him off. But alone and left to himself, plungedin the depths of his own thoughts and sensations, he is wholly himself, and a penetrating eye for physiognomy can at one glance take a generalview of his entire character. For his face, looked at by and in itself, expresses the keynote of all his thoughts and endeavors, the _arrêtirrevocable_, the irrevocable decree of his destiny, the consciousnessof which only comes to him when he is alone. 

The study of physiognomy is one of the chief means of a knowledge ofmankind, because the cast of a man's face is the only sphere in whichhis arts of dissimulation are of no avail, since these arts extendedonly to that play of feature which is akin to mimicry. And that is why Irecommend such a study to be undertaken when the subject of it is aloneand given up to his own thoughts, and before he is spoken to: and thispartly for the reason that it is only in such a condition thatinspection of the physiognomy pure and simple is possible, becauseconversation at once lets in a pathognomical element, in which a man canapply the arts of dissimulation which he has learned: partly againbecause personal contact, even of the very slightest kind, gives acertain bias and so corrupts the judgment of the observer. 

And in regard to the study of physiognomy in general, it is further tobe observed that intellectual capacity is much easier of discernmentthan moral character. The former naturally takes a much more outwarddirection, and expresses itself not only in the face and the play offeature, but also in the gait, down even to the very slightest movement. One could perhaps discriminate from behind between a blockhead, a fooland a man of genius. The blockhead would be discerned by the torpidityand sluggishness of all his movements: folly sets its mark upon everygesture, and so does intellect and a studious nature. Hence that remarkof La Bruyère that there is nothing so slight, so simple orimperceptible but that our way of doing it enters in and betrays us: afool neither comes nor goes, nor sits down, nor gets up, nor holds histongue, nor moves about in the same way as an intelligent man. (And thisis, be it observed by way of parenthesis, the explanation of that sureand certain instinct which, according to Helvetius, ordinary folkpossess of discerning people of genius, and of getting out of theirway. )

The chief reason for this is that, the larger and more developed thebrain, and the thinner, in relation to it, the spine and nerves, thegreater is the intellect; and not the intellect alone, but at the sametime the mobility and pliancy of all the limbs; because the braincontrols them more immediately and resolutely; so that everything hangsmore upon a single thread, every movement of which gives a preciseexpression to its purpose. 

This is analogous to, nay, is immediately connected with the fact thatthe higher an animal stands in the scale of development, the easier itbecomes to kill it by wounding a single spot. Take, for example, batrachia: they are slow, cumbrous and sluggish in their movements; theyare unintelligent, and, at the same time, extremely tenacious of life;the reason of which is that, with a very small brain, their spine andnerves are very thick. Now gait and movement of the arms are mainlyfunctions of the brain; our limbs receive their motion and every littlemodification of it from the brain through the medium of the spine. 

This is why conscious movements fatigue us: the sensation of fatigue, like that of pain, has its seat in the brain, not, as people commonlysuppose, in the limbs themselves; hence motion induces sleep. 

On the other hand those motions which are not excited by the brain, thatis, the unconscious movements of organic life, of the heart, of thelungs, etc. , go on in their course without producing fatigue. And asthought, equally with motion, is a function of the brain, the characterof the brain's activity is expressed equally in both, according to theconstitution of the individual; stupid people move like lay-figures, while every joint of an intelligent man is eloquent. 

But gesture and movement are not nearly so good an index of intellectualqualities as the face, the shape and size of the brain, the contractionand movement of the features, and above all the eye, --from the small, dull, dead-looking eye of a pig up through all gradations to theirradiating, flashing eyes of a genius. 

The look of good sense and prudence, even of the best kind, differs fromthat of genius, in that the former bears the stamp of subjection to thewill, while the latter is free from it. 

And therefore one can well believe the anecdote told by Squarzafichi inhis life of Petrarch, and taken from Joseph Brivius, a contemporary ofthe poet, how once at the court of the Visconti, when Petrarch and othernoblemen and gentlemen were present, Galeazzo Visconti told his son, whowas then a mere boy (he was afterwards first Duke of Milan), to pick outthe wisest of the company; how the boy looked at them all for a little, and then took Petrarch by the hand and led him up to his father, to thegreat admiration of all present. For so clearly does nature set the markof her dignity on the privileged among mankind that even a child candiscern it. 

Therefore, I should advise my sagacious countrymen, if ever again theywish to trumpet about for thirty years a very commonplace person as agreat genius, not to choose for the purpose such a beerhouse-keeperphysiognomy as was possessed by that philosopher, upon whose face naturehad written, in her clearest characters, the familiar inscription, "commonplace person. "

But what applies to intellectual capacity will not apply to moralqualities, to character. It is more difficult to discern itsphysiognomy, because, being of a metaphysical nature, it liesincomparably deeper. 

It is true that moral character is also connected with the constitution, with the organism, but not so immediately or in such direct connectionwith definite parts of its system as is intellectual capacity. 

Hence while everyone makes a show of his intelligence and endeavors toexhibit it at every opportunity, as something with which he is ingeneral quite contented, few expose their moral qualities freely, andmost people intentionally cover them up; and long practice makes theconcealment perfect. In the meantime, as I explained above, wickedthoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mask upon the face, especially the eyes. So that, judging by physiognomy, it is easy towarrant that a given man will never produce an immortal work; but notthat he will never commit a great crime. 

PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 

For every animal, and more especially for man, a certain conformity andproportion between the will and the intellect is necessary for existingor making any progress in the world. The more precise and correct theproportion which nature establishes, the more easy, safe and agreeablewill be the passage through the world. Still, if the right point is onlyapproximately reached, it will be enough to ward off destruction. Thereare, then, certain limits within which the said proportion may vary, andyet preserve a correct standard of conformity. The normal standard is asfollows. The object of the intellect is to light and lead the will onits path, and therefore, the greater the force, impetus and passion, which spurs on the will from within, the more complete and luminous mustbe the intellect which is attached to it, that the vehement strife ofthe will, the glow of passion, and the intensity of the emotions, maynot lead man astray, or urge him on to ill considered, false or ruinousaction; this will, inevitably, be the result, if the will is veryviolent and the intellect very weak. On the other hand, a phlegmaticcharacter, a weak and languid will, can get on and hold its own with asmall amount of intellect; what is naturally moderate needs onlymoderate support. The general tendency of a want of proportion betweenthe will and the intellect, in other words, of any variation from thenormal proportion I have mentioned, is to produce unhappiness, whetherit be that the will is greater than the intellect, or the intellectgreater than the will. Especially is this the case when the intellect isdeveloped to an abnormal degree of strength and superiority, so as to beout of all proportion to the will, a condition which is the essence ofreal genius; the intellect is then not only more than enough for theneeds and aims of life, it is absolutely prejudicial to them. The resultis that, in youth, excessive energy in grasping the objective world, accompanied by a vivid imagination and a total lack of experience, makesthe mind susceptible, and an easy prey to extravagant ideas, nay, evento chimeras; and the result is an eccentric and phantastic character. And when, in later years, this state of mind yields and passes awayunder the teaching of experience, still the genius never feels himselfat home in the common world of every day and the ordinary business oflife; he will never take his place in it, and accommodate himself to itas accurately as the person of moral intellect; he will be much morelikely to make curious mistakes. For the ordinary mind feels itself socompletely at home in the narrow circle of its ideas and views of theworld that no one can get the better of it in that sphere; its facultiesremain true to their original purpose, viz. , to promote the service ofthe will; it devotes itself steadfastly to this end, and abjuresextravagant aims. The genius, on the other hand, is at bottom a_monstrum per excessum_; just as, conversely, the passionate, violentand unintelligent man, the brainless barbarian, is a _monstrum perdefectum_. 

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_The will to live_, which forms the inmost core of every living being, exhibits itself most conspicuously in the higher order of animals, thatis, the cleverer ones; and so in them the nature of the will may be seenand examined most clearly. For in the lower orders its activity is notso evident; it has a lower degree of objectivation; whereas, in theclass which stands above the higher order of animals, that is, in men, reason enters in; and with reason comes discretion, and with discretion, the capacity of dissimulation, which throws a veil over the operationsof the will. And in mankind, consequently, the will appears without itsmask only in the affections and the passions. And this is the reason whypassion, when it speaks, always wins credence, no matter what thepassion may be; and rightly so. For the same reason the passions are themain theme of poets and the stalking horse of actors. Theconspicuousness of the will in the lower order of animals explains thedelight we take in dogs, apes, cats, etc. ; it is the entirely naive wayin which they express themselves that gives us so much pleasure. 

The sight of any free animal going about its business undisturbed, seeking its food, or looking after its young, or mixing in the companyof its kind, all the time being exactly what it ought to be and canbe, --what a strange pleasure it gives us! Even if it is only a bird, Ican watch it for a long time with delight; or a water rat or a hedgehog;or better still, a weasel, a deer, or a stag. The main reason why wetake so much pleasure in looking at animals is that we like to see ourown nature in such a simplified form. There is only one mendacious beingin the world, and that is man. Every other is true and sincere, andmakes no attempt to conceal what it is, expressing its feelings just asthey are. 

 * * * * *

Many things are put down to the force of habit which are rather to beattributed to the constancy and immutability of original, innatecharacter, according to which under like circumstances we always do thesame thing: whether it happens for the first or the hundredth time, itis in virtue of the same necessity. Real force of habit, as a matter offact, rests upon that indolent, passive disposition which seeks torelieve the intellect and the will of a fresh choice, and so makes us dowhat we did yesterday and have done a hundred times before, and of whichwe know that it will attain its object. But the truth of the matter liesdeeper, and a more precise explanation of it can be given than appearsat first sight. Bodies which may be moved by mechanical means only aresubject to the power of inertia; and applied to bodies which may beacted on by motives, this power becomes the force of habit. The actionswhich we perform by mere habit come about, in fact, without anyindividual separate motive brought into play for the particular case:hence, in performing them, we really do not think about them. A motivewas present only on the first few occasions on which the actionhappened, which has since become a habit: the secondary after-effect ofthis motive is the present habit, and it is sufficient to enable theaction to continue: just as when a body had been set in motion by apush, it requires no more pushing in order to continue its motion; itwill go on to all eternity, if it meets with no friction. It is the samein the case of animals: training is a habit which is forced upon them. The horse goes on drawing his cart quite contentedly, without having tobe urged on: the motion is the continued effect of those strokes of thewhip, which urged him on at first: by the law of inertia they havebecome perpetuated as habit. All this is really more than a mereparable: it is the underlying identity of the will at very differentdegrees of its objectivation, in virtue of which the same law of motiontakes such different forms. 

 * * * * *

_Vive muchos años_ is the ordinary greeting in Spain, and all over theearth it is quite customary to wish people a long life. It is presumablynot a knowledge of life which directs such a wish; it is ratherknowledge of what man is in his inmost nature, _the will to live_. 

The wish which everyone has that he may be remembered after hisdeath, --a wish which rises to the longing for posthumous glory in thecase of those whose aims are high, --seems to me to spring from thisclinging to life. When the time comes which cuts a man off from everypossibility of real existence, he strives after a life which is stillattainable, even though it be a shadowy and ideal one. 

 * * * * *

The deep grief we feel at the loss of a friend arises from the feelingthat in every individual there is something which no words can express, something which is peculiarly his own and therefore irreparable. _Omneindividuum ineffabile_. 

 * * * * *

We may come to look upon the death of our enemies and adversaries, evenlong after it has occurred, with just as much regret as we feel for thatof our friends, viz. , when we miss them as witnesses of our brilliantsuccess. 

 * * * * *

That the sudden announcement of a very happy event may easily provefatal rests upon the fact that happiness and misery depend merely on theproportion which our claims bear to what we get. Accordingly, the goodthings we possess, or are certain of getting, are not felt to be such;because all pleasure is in fact of a negative nature and effects therelief of pain, while pain or evil is what is really positive; it is theobject of immediate sensation. With the possession or certainexpectation of good things our demands rises, and increases our capacityfor further possession and larger expectations. But if we are depressedby continual misfortune, and our claims reduced to a minimum, the suddenadvent of happiness finds no capacity for enjoying it. Neutralized by anabsence of pre-existing claims, its effects are apparently positive, andso its whole force is brought into play; hence it may possibly break ourfeelings, _i. E. _, be fatal to them. And so, as is well known, one mustbe careful in announcing great happiness. First, one must get the personto hope for it, then open up the prospect of it, then communicate partof it, and at last make it fully known. Every portion of the good newsloses its efficacy, because it is anticipated by a demand, and room isleft for an increase in it. In view of all this, it may be said that ourstomach for good fortune is bottomless, but the entrance to it isnarrow. These remarks are not applicable to great misfortunes in thesame way. They are more seldom fatal, because hope always sets itselfagainst them. That an analogous part is not played by fear in the caseof happiness results from the fact that we are instinctively moreinclined to hope than to fear; just as our eyes turn of themselvestowards light rather than darkness. 

 * * * * *

Hope is the result of confusing the desire that something should takeplace with the probability that it will. Perhaps no man is free fromthis folly of the heart, which deranges the intellect's correctappreciation of probability to such an extent that, if the chances are athousand to one against it, yet the event is thought a likely one. Stillin spite of this, a sudden misfortune is like a death stroke, whilst ahope that is always disappointed and still never dies, is like death byprolonged torture. 

He who has lost all hope has also lost all fear; this is the meaning ofthe expression "desperate. " It is natural to a man to believe what hewishes to be true, and to believe it because he wishes it, If thischaracteristic of our nature, at once beneficial and assuaging, isrooted out by many hard blows of fate, and a man comes, conversely, to acondition in which he believes a thing must happen because he does notwish it, and what he wishes to happen can never be, just because hewishes it, this is in reality the state described as "desperation. "

 * * * * *

That we are so often deceived in others is not because our judgment isat fault, but because in general, as Bacon says, _intellectus luminissicci non est, sed recipit infusionem a voluntate et affectibus_: thatis to say, trifles unconsciously bias us for or against a person fromthe very beginning. It may also be explained by our not abiding by thequalities which we really discover; we go on to conclude the presence ofothers which we think inseparable from them, or the absence of thosewhich we consider incompatible. For instance, when we perceivegenerosity, we infer justice; from piety, we infer honesty; from lying, deception; from deception, stealing, etc. ; a procedure which opens thedoor to many false views, partly because human nature is so strange, partly because our standpoint is so one-sided. It is true, indeed, thatcharacter always forms a consistent and connected whole; but the rootsof all its qualities lie too deep to allow of our concluding fromparticular data in a given case whether certain qualities can or cannotexist together. 

 * * * * *

We often happen to say things that may in some way or other beprejudicial to us; but we keep silent about things that might make uslook ridiculous; because in this case effect follows very quickly oncause. 

 * * * * *

The pain of an unfulfilled wish is small in comparison with that ofrepentance; for the one stands in the presence of the vast open future, whilst the other has the irrevocable past closed behind it. 

 * * * * *

_Geduld, patientia_, patience, especially the Spanish _sufrimiento_, isstrongly connected with the notion of _suffering_. It is therefore apassive state, just as the opposite is an active state of the mind, withwhich, when great, patience is incompatible. It is the innate virtue ofa phlegmatic, indolent, and spiritless people, as also of women. Butthat it is nevertheless so very useful and necessary is a sign that theworld is very badly constituted. 

 * * * * *

Money is human happiness in the abstract: he, then, who is no longercapable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete, devotes his heartentirely to money. 

 * * * * *

Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of theintellect. 

 * * * * *

If you want to find out your real opinion of anyone, observe theimpression made upon you by the first sight of a letter from him. 

 * * * * *

The course of our individual life and the events in it, as far as theirtrue meaning and connection is concerned, may be compared to a piece ofrough mosaic. So long as you stand close in front of it, you cannot geta right view of the objects presented, nor perceive their significanceor beauty. Both come in sight only when you stand a little way off. Andin the same way you often understand the true connection of importantevents in your life, not while they are going on, nor soon after theyare past, but only a considerable time afterwards. 

Is this so, because we require the magnifying effect of imagination? orbecause we can get a general view only from a distance? or because theschool of experience makes our judgment ripe? Perhaps all of thesetogether: but it is certain that we often view in the right light theactions of others, and occasionally even our own, only after the lapseof years. And as it is in one's own life, so it is in history. 

Happy circumstances in life are like certain groups of trees. Seen froma distance they look very well: but go up to them and amongst them, andthe beauty vanishes; you don't know where it can be; it is only treesyou see. And so it is that we often envy the lot of others. 

 * * * * *

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind, the lawyer all thewickedness, the theologian all the stupidity. 

 * * * * *

A person of phlegmatic disposition who is a blockhead, would, with asanguine nature, be a fool. 

 * * * * *

Now and then one learns something, but one forgets the whole day long. 

Moreover our memory is like a sieve, the holes of which in time getlarger and larger: the older we get, the quicker anything entrusted toit slips from the memory, whereas, what was fixed fast in it in earlydays is there still. The memory of an old man gets clearer and clearer, the further it goes back, and less clear the nearer it approaches thepresent time; so that his memory, like his eyes, becomes short-sighted. 

 * * * * *

In the process of learning you may be apprehensive about bewildering andconfusing the memory, but not about overloading it, in the strict senseof the word. The faculty for remembering is not diminished in proportionto what one has learnt, just as little as the number of moulds in whichyou cast sand, lessens its capacity for being cast in new moulds. Inthis sense the memory is bottomless. And yet the greater and morevarious any one's knowledge, the longer he takes to find out anythingthat may suddenly be asked him; because he is like a shopkeeper who hasto get the article wanted from a large and multifarious store; or, morestrictly speaking, because out of many possible trains of thought he hasto recall exactly that one which, as a result of previous training, leads to the matter in question. For the memory is not a repository ofthings you wish to preserve, but a mere dexterity of the intellectualpowers; hence the mind always contains its sum of knowledge onlypotentially, never actually. 

It sometimes happens that my memory will not reproduce some word in aforeign language, or a name, or some artistic expression, although Iknow it very well. After I have bothered myself in vain about it for alonger or a shorter time, I give up thinking about it altogether. Anhour or two afterwards, in rare cases even later still, sometimes onlyafter four or five weeks, the word I was trying to recall occurs to mewhile I am thinking of something else, as suddenly as if some one hadwhispered it to me. After noticing this phenomenon with wonder for verymany years, I have come to think that the probable explanation of it isas follows. After the troublesome and unsuccessful search, my willretains its craving to know the word, and so sets a watch for it in theintellect. Later on, in the course and play of thought, some word bychance occurs having the same initial letters or some other resemblanceto the word which is sought; then the sentinel springs forward andsupplies what is wanting to make up the word, seizes it, and suddenlybrings it up in triumph, without my knowing where and how he got it; soit seems as if some one had whispered it to me. It is the same processas that adopted by a teacher towards a child who cannot repeat a word;the teacher just suggests the first letter of the word, or even thesecond too; then the child remembers it. In default of this process, youcan end by going methodically through all the letters of the alphabet. 

In the ordinary man, injustice rouses a passionate desire for vengeance;and it has often been said that vengeance is sweet. How many sacrificeshave been made just to enjoy the feeling of vengeance, without anyintention of causing an amount of injury equivalent to what one hassuffered. The bitter death of the centaur Nessus was sweetened by thecertainty that he had used his last moments to work out an extremelyclever vengeance. Walter Scott expresses the same human inclination inlanguage as true as it is strong: "Vengeance is the sweetest morsel tothe mouth that ever was cooked in hell!" I shall now attempt apsychological explanation of it. 

Suffering which falls to our lot in the course of nature, or by chance, or fate, does not, _ceteris paribus_, seem so painful as suffering whichis inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another. This is because welook upon nature and chance as the fundamental masters of the world; wesee that the blow we received from them might just as well have fallenon another. In the case of suffering which springs from this source, webewail the common lot of humanity rather than our own misfortune. Butthat it is the arbitrary will of another which inflicts the suffering, is a peculiarly bitter addition to the pain or injury it causes, viz. , the consciousness that some one else is superior to us, whether by forceor cunning, while we lie helpless. If amends are possible, amends healthe injury; but that bitter addition, "and it was you who did that tome, " which is often more painful than the injury itself, is only to beneutralized by vengeance. By inflicting injury on the one who hasinjured us, whether we do it by force or cunning, is to show oursuperiority to him, and to annul the proof of his superiority to us. That gives our hearts the satisfaction towards which it yearns. So wherethere is a great deal of pride and vanity, there also will there be agreat desire of vengeance. But as the fulfillment of every wish bringswith it more or less of a sense of disappointment, so it is withvengeance. The delight we hope to get from it is mostly embittered bycompassion. Vengeance taken will often tear the heart and torment theconscience: the motive to it is no longer active, and what remains isthe evidence of our malice. 

THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 

When the Church says that, in the dogmas of religion, reason is totallyincompetent and blind, and its use to be reprehended, it is in realityattesting the fact that these dogmas are allegorical in their nature, and are not to be judged by the standard which reason, taking all things_sensu proprio_, can alone apply. Now the absurdities of a dogma arejust the mark and sign of what is allegorical and mythical in it. In thecase under consideration, however, the absurdities spring from the factthat two such heterogeneous doctrines as those of the Old and NewTestaments had to be combined. The great allegory was of gradual growth. Suggested by external and adventitious circumstances, it was developedby the interpretation put upon them, an interpretation in quiet touchwith certain deep-lying truths only half realized. The allegory wasfinally completed by Augustine, who penetrated deepest into its meaning, and so was able to conceive it as a systematic whole and supply itsdefects. Hence the Augustinian doctrine, confirmed by Luther, is thecomplete form of Christianity; and the Protestants of to-day, who takeRevelation _sensu proprio_ and confine it to a single individual, are inerror in looking upon the first beginnings of Christianity as its mostperfect expression. But the bad thing about all religions is that, instead of being able to confess their allegorical nature, they have toconceal it; accordingly, they parade their doctrine in all seriousnessas true _sensu proprio_, and as absurdities form an essential part ofthese doctrines, you have the great mischief of a continual fraud. And, what is worse, the day arrives when they are no longer true _sensuproprio_, and then there is an end of them; so that, in that respect, itwould be better to admit their allegorical nature at once. But thedifficulty is to teach the multitude that something can be both true anduntrue at the same time. And as all religions are in a greater or lessdegree of this nature, we must recognize the fact that mankind cannotget on without a certain amount of absurdity, that absurdity is anelement in its existence, and illusion indispensable; as indeed otheraspects of life testify. I have said that the combination of the OldTestament with the New gives rise to absurdities. Among the exampleswhich illustrate what I mean, I may cite the Christian doctrine ofPredestination and Grace, as formulated by Augustine and adopted fromhim by Luther; according to which one man is endowed with grace andanother is not. Grace, then, comes to be a privilege received at birthand brought ready into the world; a privilege, too, in a matter secondto none in importance. What is obnoxious and absurd in this doctrine maybe traced to the idea contained in the Old Testament, that man is thecreation of an external will, which called him into existence out ofnothing. It is quite true that genuine moral excellence is reallyinnate; but the meaning of the Christian doctrine is expressed inanother and more rational way by the theory of metempsychosis, common toBrahmans and Buddhists. According to this theory, the qualities whichdistinguish one man from another are received at birth, are brought, that is to say, from another world and a former life; these qualitiesare not an external gift of grace, but are the fruits of the actscommitted in that other world. But Augustine's dogma of Predestinationis connected with another dogma, namely, that the mass of humanity iscorrupt and doomed to eternal damnation, that very few will be foundrighteous and attain salvation, and that only in consequence of the giftof grace, and because they are predestined to be saved; whilst theremainder will be overwhelmed by the perdition they have deserved, viz. , eternal torment in hell. Taken in its ordinary meaning, the dogma isrevolting, for it comes to this: it condemns a man, who may be, perhaps, scarcely twenty years of age, to expiate his errors, or even hisunbelief, in everlasting torment; nay, more, it makes this almostuniversal damnation the natural effect of original sin, and thereforethe necessary consequence of the Fall. This is a result which must havebeen foreseen by him who made mankind, and who, in the first place, madethem not better than they are, and secondly, set a trap for them intowhich he must have known they would fall; for he made the whole world, and nothing is hidden from him. According to this doctrine, then, Godcreated out of nothing a weak race prone to sin, in order to give themover to endless torment. And, as a last characteristic, we are told thatthis God, who prescribes forbearance and forgiveness of every fault, exercises none himself, but does the exact opposite; for a punishmentwhich comes at the end of all things, when the world is over and donewith, cannot have for its object either to improve or deter, and istherefore pure vengeance. So that, on this view, the whole race isactually destined to eternal torture and damnation, and createdexpressly for this end, the only exception being those few persons whoare rescued by election of grace, from what motive one does not know. 

Putting these aside, it looks as if the Blessed Lord had created theworld for the benefit of the devil! it would have been so much betternot to have made it at all. So much, then, for a dogma taken _sensuproprio_. But look at it _sensu allegorico_, and the whole matterbecomes capable of a satisfactory interpretation. What is absurd andrevolting in this dogma is, in the main, as I said, the simple outcomeof Jewish theism, with its "creation out of nothing, " and really foolishand paradoxical denial of the doctrine of metempsychosis which isinvolved in that idea, a doctrine which is natural, to a certain extentself-evident, and, with the exception of the Jews, accepted by nearlythe whole human race at all times. To remove the enormous evil arisingfrom Augustine's dogma, and to modify its revolting nature, Pope GregoryI. , in the sixth century, very prudently matured the doctrine of_Purgatory_, the essence of which already existed in Origen (cf. Bayle'sarticle on Origen, note B. ). The doctrine was regularly incorporatedinto the faith of the Church, so that the original view was muchmodified, and a certain substitute provided for the doctrine ofmetempsychosis; for both the one and the other admit a process ofpurification. To the same end, the doctrine of "the Restoration of allthings" [Greek: apokatastasis] was established, according to which, inthe last act of the Human Comedy, the sinners one and all will bereinstated _in integrum_. It is only Protestants, with their obstinatebelief in the Bible, who cannot be induced to give up eternal punishmentin hell. If one were spiteful, one might say, "much good may it dothem, " but it is consoling to think that they really do not believe thedoctrine; they leave it alone, thinking in their hearts, "It can't be sobad as all that. "

The rigid and systematic character of his mind led Augustine, in hisaustere dogmatism and his resolute definition of doctrines only justindicated in the Bible and, as a matter of fact, resting on very vaguegrounds, to give hard outlines to these doctrines and to put a harshconstruction on Christianity: the result of which is that his viewsoffend us, and just as in his day Pelagianism arose to combat them, sonow in our day Rationalism does the same. Take, for example, the case ashe states it generally in the _De Civitate Dei_, Bk. Xii. Ch. 21. Itcomes to this: God creates a being out of nothing, forbids him somethings, and enjoins others upon him; and because these commands are notobeyed, he tortures him to all eternity with every conceivable anguish;and for this purpose, binds soul and body inseparably together, so that, instead, of the torment destroying this being by splitting him up intohis elements, and so setting him free, he may live to eternal pain. Thispoor creature, formed out of nothing! At least, he has a claim on hisoriginal nothing: he should be assured, as a matter of right, of thislast retreat, which, in any case, cannot be a very evil one: it is whathe has inherited. I, at any rate, cannot help sympathizing with him. Ifyou add to this Augustine's remaining doctrines, that all this does notdepend on the man's own sins and omissions, but was already predestinedto happen, one really is at a loss what to think. Our highly educatedRationalists say, to be sure, "It's all false, it's a mere bugbear;we're in a state of constant progress, step by step raising ourselves toever greater perfection. " Ah! what a pity we didn't begin sooner; weshould already have been there. 

In the Christian system the devil is a personage of the greatestimportance. God is described as absolutely good, wise and powerful; andunless he were counterbalanced by the devil, it would be impossible tosee where the innumerable and measureless evils, which predominate inthe world, come from, if there were no devil to account for them. Andsince the Rationalists have done away with the devil, the damageinflicted on the other side has gone on growing, and is becoming moreand more palpable; as might have been foreseen, and was foreseen, by theorthodox. The fact is, you cannot take away one pillar from a buildingwithout endangering the rest of it. And this confirms the view, whichhas been established on other grounds, that Jehovah is a transformationof Ormuzd, and Satan of the Ahriman who must be taken in connection withhim. Ormuzd himself is a transformation of Indra. 

Christianity has this peculiar disadvantage, that, unlike otherreligions, it is not a pure system of doctrine: its chief and essentialfeature is that it is a history, a series of events, a collection offacts, a statement of the actions and sufferings of individuals: it isthis history which constitutes dogma, and belief in it is salvation. Other religions, Buddhism, for instance, have, it is true, historicalappendages, the life, namely, of their founders: this, however, is notpart and parcel of the dogma but is taken along with it. For example, the Lalitavistara may be compared with the Gospel so far as it containsthe life of Sakya-muni, the Buddha of the present period of the world'shistory: but this is something which is quite separate and differentfrom the dogma, from the system itself: and for this reason; the livesof former Buddhas were quite other, and those of the future will bequite other, than the life of the Buddha of to-day. The dogma is by nomeans one with the career of its founder; it does not rest on individualpersons or events; it is something universal and equally valid at alltimes. The Lalitavistara is not, then, a gospel in the Christian senseof the word; it is not the joyful message of an act of redemption; it isthe career of him who has shown how each one may redeem himself. Thehistorical constitution of Christianity makes the Chinese laugh atmissionaries as story-tellers. 

I may mention here another fundamental error of Christianity, an errorwhich cannot be explained away, and the mischievous consequences ofwhich are obvious every day: I mean the unnatural distinctionChristianity makes between man and the animal world to which he reallybelongs. It sets up man as all-important, and looks upon animals asmerely things. Brahmanism and Buddhism, on the other hand, true to thefacts, recognize in a positive way that man is related generally to thewhole of nature, and specially and principally to animal nature; and intheir systems man is always represented by the theory of metempsychosisand otherwise, as closely connected with the animal world. The importantpart played by animals all through Buddhism and Brahmanism, comparedwith the total disregard of them in Judaism and Christianity, puts anend to any question as to which system is nearer perfection, howevermuch we in Europe may have become accustomed to the absurdity of theclaim. Christianity contains, in fact, a great and essentialimperfection in limiting its precepts to man, and in refusing rights tothe entire animal world. As religion fails to protect animals againstthe rough, unfeeling and often more than bestial multitude, the dutyfalls to the police; and as the police are unequal to the task, societies for the protection of animals are now formed all over Europeand America. In the whole of uncircumcised Asia, such a procedure wouldbe the most superfluous thing in the world, because animals are theresufficiently protected by religion, which even makes them objects ofcharity. How such charitable feelings bear fruit may be seen, to take anexample, in the great hospital for animals at Surat, whither Christians, Mohammedans and Jews can send their sick beasts, which, if cured, arevery rightly not restored to their owners. In the same way when aBrahman or a Buddhist has a slice of good luck, a happy issue in anyaffair, instead of mumbling a _Te Deum_, he goes to the market-place andbuys birds and opens their cages at the city gate; a thing which may befrequently seen in Astrachan, where the adherents of every religion meettogether: and so on in a hundred similar ways. On the other hand, lookat the revolting ruffianism with which our Christian public treats itsanimals; killing them for no object at all, and laughing over it, ormutilating or torturing them: even its horses, who form its most directmeans of livelihood, are strained to the utmost in their old age, andthe last strength worked out of their poor bones until they succumb atlast under the whip. One might say with truth, Mankind are the devils ofthe earth, and the animals the souls they torment. But what can youexpect from the masses, when there are men of education, zoologistseven, who, instead of admitting what is so familiar to them, theessential identity of man and animal, are bigoted and stupid enough tooffer a zealous opposition to their honest and rational colleagues, whenthey class man under the proper head as an animal, or demonstrate theresemblance between him and the chimpanzee or ourang-outang. It is arevolting thing that a writer who is so pious and Christian in hissentiments as Jung Stilling should use a simile like this, in his_Scenen aus dem Geisterreich_. (Bk. II. Sc. I. , p. 15. ) "Suddenly theskeleton shriveled up into an indescribably hideous and dwarf-like form, just as when you bring a large spider into the focus of a burning glass, and watch the purulent blood hiss and bubble in the heat. " This man ofGod then was guilty of such infamy! or looked on quietly when anotherwas committing it! in either case it comes to the same thing here. Solittle harm did he think of it that he tells us of it in passing, andwithout a trace of emotion. Such are the effects of the first chapter ofGenesis, and, in fact, of the whole of the Jewish conception of nature. The standard recognized by the Hindus and Buddhists is the Mahavakya(the great word), --"tat-twam-asi" (this is thyself), which may always bespoken of every animal, to keep us in mind of the identity of his inmostbeing with ours. Perfection of morality, indeed! Nonsense. 

The fundamental characteristics of the Jewish religion are realism andoptimism, views of the world which are closely allied; they form, infact, the conditions of theism. For theism looks upon the material worldas absolutely real, and regards life as a pleasant gift bestowed uponus. On the other hand, the fundamental characteristics of the Brahmanand Buddhist religions are idealism and pessimism, which look upon theexistence of the world as in the nature of a dream, and life as theresult of our sins. In the doctrines of the Zendavesta, from which, asis well known, Judaism sprang, the pessimistic element is represented byAhriman. In Judaism, Ahriman has as Satan only a subordinate position;but, like Ahriman, he is the lord of snakes, scorpions, and vermin. Butthe Jewish system forthwith employs Satan to correct its fundamentalerror of optimism, and in the _Fall_ introduces the element ofpessimism, a doctrine demanded by the most obvious facts of the world. There is no truer idea in Judaism than this, although it transfers tothe course of existence what must be represented as its foundation andantecedent. 

The New Testament, on the other hand, must be in some way traceable toan Indian source: its ethical system, its ascetic view of morality, itspessimism, and its Avatar, are all thoroughly Indian. It is its moralitywhich places it in a position of such emphatic and essential antagonismto the Old Testament, so that the story of the Fall is the only possiblepoint of connection between the two. For when the Indian doctrine wasimported into the land of promise, two very different things had to becombined: on the one hand the consciousness of the corruption and miseryof the world, its need of deliverance and salvation through an Avatar, together with a morality based on self-denial and repentance; on theother hand the Jewish doctrine of Monotheism, with its corollary that"all things are very good" [Greek: panta kala lian]. And the tasksucceeded as far as it could, as far, that is, as it was possible tocombine two such heterogeneous and antagonistic creeds. 

As ivy clings for the support and stay it wants to a rough-hewn post, everywhere conforming to its irregularities and showing their outline, but at the same time covering them with life and grace, and changing theformer aspect into one that is pleasing to the eye; so the Christianfaith, sprung from the wisdom of India, overspreads the old trunk ofrude Judaism, a tree of alien growth; the original form must in partremain, but it suffers a complete change and becomes full of life andtruth, so that it appears to be the same tree, but is really another. 

Judaism had presented the Creator as separated from the world, which heproduced out of nothing. Christianity identifies this Creator with theSaviour, and through him, with humanity: he stands as theirrepresentative; they are redeemed in him, just as they fell in Adam, andhave lain ever since in the bonds of iniquity, corruption, suffering anddeath. Such is the view taken by Christianity in common with Buddhism;the world can no longer be looked at in the light of Jewish optimism, which found "all things very good": nay, in the Christian scheme, thedevil is named as its Prince or Ruler ([Greek: ho archon toukosmoutoutou. ] John 12, 33). The world is no longer an end, but a means:and the realm of everlasting joy lies beyond it and the grave. Resignation in this world and direction of all our hopes to a better, form the spirit of Christianity. The way to this end is opened by theAtonement, that is the Redemption from this world and its ways. And inthe moral system, instead of the law of vengeance, there is the commandto love your enemy; instead of the promise of innumerable posterity, theassurance of eternal life; instead of visiting the sins of the fathersupon the children to the third and fourth generations, the Holy Spiritgoverns and overshadows all. 

We see, then, that the doctrines of the Old Testament are rectified andtheir meaning changed by those of the New, so that, in the mostimportant and essential matters, an agreement is brought about betweenthem and the old religions of India. Everything which is true inChristianity may also be found in Brahmanism and Buddhism. But inHinduism and Buddhism you will look in vain for any parallel to theJewish doctrines of "a nothing quickened into life, " or of "a world madein time, " which cannot be humble enough in its thanks and praises toJehovah for an ephemeral existence full of misery, anguish and need. 

Whoever seriously thinks that superhuman beings have ever given our raceinformation as to the aim of its existence and that of the world, isstill in his childhood. There is no other revelation than the thoughtsof the wise, even though these thoughts, liable to error as is the lotof everything human, are often clothed in strange allegories and mythsunder the name of religion. So far, then, it is a matter of indifferencewhether a man lives and dies in reliance on his own or another'sthoughts; for it is never more than human thought, human opinion, whichhe trusts. Still, instead of trusting what their own minds tell them, men have as a rule a weakness for trusting others who pretend tosupernatural sources of knowledge. And in view of the enormousintellectual inequality between man and man, it is easy to see that thethoughts of one mind might appear as in some sense a revelation toanother.