The Hearts of Men

CHAPTER XXV

MIRACLE

It is some years ago now – about twenty, I think – that we first heard of the beginning of a new religion, the arrival of a new prophetess who was to unfold to us the mystery of the world and teach us the truths of life. And this religion began as other religions have been said to begin, this prophetess claimed belief as other teachers are said to have done, by her miraculous powers. She could do things that no one else could do: she could divide a cigarette paper in halves, and waft half through the air to great distances; she could piece together broken teacups in an extraordinary way. And because she could perform these feats she claimed for herself an authority in speaking of the hearts of men and of the before and after death, an authority which was accorded to her by many.

I have expressly refrained from suggesting either the truth or the falsehood of these miracles. I am aware that the whole process is said to have been fully exposed. The question is immaterial, for they were, true or false, believed by many, and it is this question of belief in miracle which I wish to discuss, not the possibility of miracle or the reverse.

There is another point I wish to make clear. I have said that other religions are said to have started in the same way, other teachers to have claimed authority on the same ground. This may or may not be true. The theory of Buddhism is so essentially anti-miraculous that the miracles attributed to the Buddha seem almost certainly outside additions, as they are in direct variance with his known acts and beliefs. And the words and acts of Christ in His life seem all so at variance with the miracles attributed to Him that they, too, may be later additions or contemporary exaggerations. This has already been obvious to some, and had not the absolute inspiration of the Sacred Books been insisted on, thus stifling criticism, it would have been obvious to more. All this is immaterial. True or false, all religions have an embroidery, more or less deep, of miracle, and on these miracles their claim to truth was in the early days more or less pressed. If Madame Blavatsky performed miracles with teacups it was because she saw that there was an attraction to many people in miracle that nothing else could supply. Miracle to many is the proof of truth. Had Madame Blavatsky performed no miracles, had there been no teacups, were there now no Mahatmas, who would have stopped to listen to her compote of Brahmanism, Buddhism, and truly western mysticism which she called Theosophy?

How can miracle be the proof of supernatural knowledge?

Suppose there arose to-morrow in England a man who could make one loaf into five, what should those of us who are without the instinct for miracle say? Merely that he knew some way of increasing bread which we did not know. The inference would end there. We should not suppose that he therefore knew anything more about the next world than we do. Where is the connection, we would ask? The telephone or the Röntgen rays would have been a miracle a hundred years ago. Two thousand years ago a phonograph would have been supposed to hold a devil, and the proprietor would have been a prophet, no doubt. But we do not now go to Edison or Maxim for our religions. Still, Madame Blavatsky started with miracles, and was wise in her generation. Still, all religions retain more or less of the miraculous, because there are many to whom this appeals before everything, because they are sure that miracle is the proof of truth. Again, Theosophy claims to be Esoteric Buddhism. The country par excellence of practical Buddhism is Burma. Yet the Burmans generally laugh at Theosophy. How is this? The answer lies, I think, like the answer to all these questions of religion, in the varying instincts of the people. It is an idea with us in the West that the East is the land of enchantment, of mystery, of the unknown, of miracle and all that is akin to it. We are never tired of talking of the mysterious East; it seems to us one vast wonderland full of things we cannot understand, full of marvels of the unknowable, the very home of superstition; while the West is matter of fact, material and reasonable, and easily understood. And yet I think the very first thing a man learns when he goes to the people of the East, certainly to the Burmese people, and tries to see with their eyes and understand with their hearts, that all this is the very reverse of the facts. Will anyone who wishes to see how very far they are from the cult of the mysterious, of dreams, of miracles, of visions, how very little such things appeal to them, turn to my chapters on the Buddhist monkhood in "The Soul of a People," and read them? I do not wish to repeat what I said there, only that a monk who saw visions or performed miracles would be ejected from his monastery as unworthy of his faith.

I do not say that there are no superstitions among the people. Their stage of civilisation is as yet low, as low perhaps as ours five hundred years ago. They have their strange fancies here and there; I have heard many of them. They are amusing sometimes and curious. I very much doubt, however, if the Burman of to-day is as superstitious as an ordinary countryman in England. I have heard English soldiers tell tales of old women changing into hares, that they themselves had seen, quite as seriously as any Burman could. And if you compare the Burman of to-day with the European peasant of even two hundred years ago, there is no comparison at all. The West simply reeks with superstition and all that is allied to it compared to the East. (I exclude the belief in ghosts, which is, I think, a separate matter.)

The delusion has, I think, arisen in many ways. To begin with, we are always looking out in the East for the mysterious. It is the East, and therefore mysterious. We very seldom try to understand the people, to see them from their standpoint. We prefer generally to assume that they have no standpoint and to talk of the incomprehensible Oriental mind, because it is easier to do so and it sounds superior. And again, we are apt to make absurd comparisons and reason without remembrance. An English officer will come across a Burman from the back country of the hills who has a charm against bullet wounds, and he will sit down and indite a letter to the paper on the "incredibly foolish superstition of these people," oblivious of the fact that he will find even now amongst his own countrymen quite as many people who believe in charms as among the Burmese, that Dr. Johnson touched various articles as charms, and that he himself throws salt over his shoulder. Yet he is of the better class of a people five hundred years older in civilisation than the Burman.

I confess that, personally, I have found even to-day infinitely more superstition and leaning to the miraculous among my own people than among Burmans. There are classes of English people who are almost free from it, there are other Englishmen, and especially Englishwomen, who are steeped in it to a degree that would astound any Oriental. And what was it a few hundred years ago? Have there ever been witch trials in the East, have there ever been ordeals, or casting lots "for God to decide"? Magicians have come to us from the East, truly; they were made for export, the use for them at home being limited. Theosophy was started in the East, truly, but not by Orientals. Madame Blavatsky is believed to have been a Russian; her supporters were English and American. Palmistry and fortune-telling appeal as serious matters to many people in England and Europe generally. To the Burman they are matters of amusement. Do you think "Christian Science" would gain any foothold in the East? or spiritualism or a hundred forms of superstition that cling to the civilised people of the West?

The East is the home of religion, of emotion, of asceticism, of the victory of the mind over the body. The West is the home of superstition, of second sight, of miracle, of conjuring tricks of all kinds exalted into the supernatural. You may search all the records of the East and find no superstition – like touching for the King's evil, for instance. Can anyone imagine Joanna Southcote in India or in the further East? I have tried not to hear, I could never repeat, what the East says of the miraculous in Christianity. Superstition there is, of course, legend and miracle; they are the outcomes always of a certain stage of pre-civilisation. But even in India how scarce and faint they are compared to the West. For one thing must be carefully remembered. Ignorance of the power of natural causes must not be put down to attribution of miraculous causes. The peasant in the East will often attribute a property to a herb, a mineral, a ceremony that it has not got. That is their ignorance of natural law, never their attribution of unnatural power. If a Burman peasant sometimes thinks a certain medicine can render his body lighter than water, it is simply that he is unaware of the limited power of drugs, not that he supposes there is anything miraculous in it. The power of phenacetin on a feverish patient seems to him far more astonishing. Indeed, from miracle as miracle he shrinks. To miracle as miracle the average European is greatly attracted. To the one it spells always charlatanism, to the latter supernatural power.

And therefore, even in the religions of Hindustan – Hinduism in its myriad forms, Mahommedanism, Sihkism, Jainism, and Parseeism – miracle plays a very minor part. I think there is no doubt that this repugnance to miracle is one reason why the Semites eventually rejected Christianity. How very few and unaffecting the essence are the miracles in Mahommedanism. But in Christianity it plays the major part. Christ was born and lived and died and rose again in miracle. In Latin countries miracles are of daily occurrence – as at Lourdes, for instance.

And though in Teutonic Christianity it is less than in Latin countries, it plays a great part also. The miracles of Christ's life are retained. Truly they say that now the age of miracle is past. The Church believes no more in prophecy, in miraculous cures, in risings from the dead. The bulk of the people reject miracle. But what a large minority is still left who absolutely crave for it, let the records of Theosophy and many another miraculous religion show. Miracle satisfies a craving, an instinct, that nothing else will meet. It is curious to note how the inclusion of miracle in religion varies inversely with the inclusion of conduct. With the Latins miracle is most, the Latin Christianity is the most miraculous of all religions, and therein conduct is least. With the Teutons miracle and conduct are both accepted, the former authoritatively of the past, privately also of the present. With the Burmans miracle and the supernatural are rejected absolutely as part of the religion of to-day, and conduct is all in all. Thus again do the instincts of the people find expression in their religion.

As to the growth of the instinct it is more difficult to reply. Instincts are very hard to account for. Indeed, in their origin all are quite beyond the scope of inquiry at all. We can only see that they exist. But with this instinct for miracle there is one cause that no doubt contributes to its increase or decrease. It does not explain the instinct, but it does show why in some cases it is greater than in others.

It is greater in the West than in the East because many people in the West, with greater emotional power, from better food and little work, live narrower lives than any in the East. It is astonishing to see the difference. In the East every peasant lives surrounded by his relatives, very many of them; he is friends with all his village, he has always his work, his interests in life. He is hardly ever alone among strangers, with no work to occupy him. But in the West, how many there are who live alone, their relations elsewhere, with few friends, with no necessity for work, with no interests in life? It is terrible to see how many there are living lives empty of all emotion. These are they who seek the miraculous as a relief from their daily monotony of stupidity. These are they who run after new things. It is

It is the result of high emotional power with no food to feed on. There are other factors, for instance – that people who live in mountains are more superstitious than people of plains, due again to narrower, more isolated lives, I think; and as a rule country people are more superstitious than town people, due to the same reason. Nothing exists without its use, and this is some of the use of the miraculous instinct in man. It has played its part in the world, a great part no doubt. Where it exists still it does so because it fills a necessity. Never doubt it. Those who live full lives find it so easy to laugh at this craving for the supernatural. Would you do away with it? Make, then, their lives such that they do not need it. Give to them the knowledge, the sympathy, the love, the wider life that makes it unnecessary.

Nurtured in narrowness on the ground that should grow other instincts, it disappears in the sunshine of happiness, when the heart is furrowed and tilled by the experiences of life and planted with the fruit of happiness.

If we cannot do that, at least we can recognise that it, as all instincts, has its uses, and exists in and because of that use, never because of any abuse.

And where the instinct exists it is attracted as are nearly all the instincts into that great bundle of emotions called religion.

But if those who support Christian missions wonder why they are not more successful, here is another reason. What satisfies your instinct revolts theirs. They do not require it. Orientals, even peasants, live such wide lives compared with many in the West, that they need not the stimulus, and their hard lives lessen the emotional powers. And if Christians are often unable to understand the charm of Buddhism to its believers, it is because western people seek and require the stimulus of miracle which is here wanting. It is as if you offered them water while they cared only for wine. But Easterns care not for your strong emotions. They are simpler and more easily pleased.

CHAPTER XXVI

RELIGION AND ART

"This is not the place, nor have I space left here, to explain all I mean when I say that art is a mode of religion, and can flourish only under the inspiration of living and practical religion." —Frederic Harrison.

"No one indeed can successfully uphold the idea that the high development of art in any shape is of necessity coincident with a strong growth of religious or moral sentiment. Perugino made no secret of being an atheist; Leonardo da Vinci was a scientific sceptic; Raphael was an amiable rake, no better and no worse than the majority of those gifted pupils to whom he was at once a model of perfection and an example of free living; and those who maintain that art is always the expression of a people's religion have but an imperfect acquaintance with the age of Praxiteles, Apelles, and Zeuxis. Yet the idea itself has a foundation, lying in something which is as hard to define as it is impossible to ignore; for if art be not a growth out of faith, it is always the result of a faith that has been." —Marion Crawford.

Quotation on both sides could be multiplied without end, but there seems no reason to do so. The question is the relation of religion to art, and it has but the two sides. Indeed, the subject seems difficult, for there is so much to be said on both sides.

On one side it may be said: – Art is the result of and the outcome of religion. Look at the greatest works of art the world has to show. Are they not all religious? There are the Parthenon, the temples of Karnac, the cathedral at Milan, St. Peter's at Rome, and others too numerous to mention; the Mosque of St. Sophia and the Kutub Minar, the temples of Humpi, the Shwe Dagon pagoda, the temples of China and Japan. What has secular art to show to compare with these? Are not the Venus de Milo, the statue of Athena, and all the famous Greek sculptures those of gods? What is the most famous painting in the world? It is the Sistine Madonna of Raphael. Even in literature, is there anything secular to compare with the sacred books of the world? The oratorios and masses are the finest music. What can be more certain than that only religion gives the necessary stimulus to art and furnishes the most inspiring subjects? Great art is born of great faiths, great faiths produce great art.

To which there is the reply: – Many of the greatest Greek statues were of gods truly, but was it a religious age that produced them? Were Phidias and Zeuxis religious or moral men?

Was the thirteenth century which saw the building of most of the best cathedrals, a religious age? Is it not the fact that for many cathedrals the capital was borrowed from the Jews, enemies of Christ, and the interest paid by the sweat of slaves; and when the interest was too heavy, religious bigotry was resorted to and the Jews persecuted, killed, and banished. It is probable that of all ages the thirteenth century was the worst. Were the painters of great pictures religious or moral? Raphael painted the most wonderful religious paintings the world has seen – how much religion had Raphael? Leonardo da Vinci painted "The Last Supper"; he was a sceptic. Are not artistic people notoriously irreligious? The pyramids of Egypt and the Taj at Agra are not religious buildings; they are tombs. The sentiment that raised them was the emotion of death. In music and literature secular art rivals religion. And even if great art be allied to religion, deep religious feeling does not necessarily produce art. Indeed, it is the reverse. The most serious forms of belief have not done so. Where is the art of the Reformation? Protestants will be slow to admit that there was no deep religious feeling there. Yet their great cathedrals were all built by Roman Catholics. Were not the Puritans religious? They hated all art. Is there no religious feeling in the North of America? Where is its religious art? In Europe there is no religious art out of Catholicism. In that alone has it succeeded. And again, although some religious art is great, such is the exception. The bulk of religious art all over the world is bad – very bad – the worst. What art is there in the crucifixes of the Catholic world, in the sacred pictures in their chapels, in the eikons of Russia, in the gods of the Hindus, in the Buddhas of Buddhism, and the popular religious pictures of England? They are one and all as Art simply deplorable. There is grand religious literature, but what of the bulk of it? Most of the hymns, the sermons, the tracts, the religious literature of England and other countries cannot be matched for badness in any secular work. It is the same everywhere. The Salvation Army had to borrow secular music to make its hymns attractive. Striking an average, which is best – secular or religious literature, art, music, and architecture? Without a doubt secular art is the best all round.

Art may often be the representative of religion, it is never the outcome of religious people or a religious age. The very contrary is the fact.

These are strong arguments, and there are more. But these will suffice.

What is the truth? What connection has art with religion?

I do not think the answer is difficult. The connection depends upon what you define religion and art respectively to be. With the old definitions no answer is forthcoming. But when you see religion as it really is, when you understand its genesis and its growth, the answer is clear.

Religion, as I have tried to show, arises from instincts. The instincts of the savage are few, the emotions he is capable of feeling are limited. As his civilisation progresses his instinctive desires increase, his emotions are more numerous. And as the greater attracts the less, the older and more established attract the newer, so religion attracts to itself and incorporates all it can. Religions have varied in this matter; but of all, Catholicism has been the most wide-armed, it has always justified its name. Where a new emotion arose and became strong the Roman Church always if possible attracted it into the fold. I have already shown how this was done. There is hardly an emotion of the human heart that Roman Catholicism has not made its own.

Now what is Art?

Art, as Tolstoi explains, is also an expression of the emotions, and therefore the difference between religion and art lies in the emotions expressed and the method of expression.

Different peoples express in their religions different emotions. What some of these emotions are I explain in Chapter XXX. Different people are also more or less susceptible to art, and express in their art different emotions. Where a great religion has absorbed certain emotions, and a great art subsequently arises and wishes to express in art some of the same emotions, then the art becomes religious art. The two domains have overlapped. But there is no distinction between secular and religious art. Nor is there any necessary connection between Art and Religion. Neither is dependent on the other. They are quite distinct domains, each existing to fulfil the necessities and desires of man.

How they came frequently to overlap is easily enough seen.

Consider the religion of Rome. It came, as I have said, out of the necessity for expressing and cultivating certain emotions. It is a very catholic religion, the product of a highly emotional people who had many and strong feelings. As much as possible these were accepted into the religion.

Therefore, when there came the great outbreak of art in the fourteenth century, when there were great painters and sculptors desiring to paint pictures that appealed to the heart, all the ground was occupied.

Did they want to depict feminine beauty, there was the Madonna accepted as the ideal. Did they want to awaken the emotion of maternity, there was the Madonna again; of pity, there were the martyrs; of sacrifice, there was the Christ. Long before these emotions had been crystallised by the Church round religious ideals, and a change would not be understood.

And with the Architects. There is but one emotion common to a whole people – catholic, so to speak – namely, religion. A town hall, a palace, a secular building would be provincial; a church only is catholic. In palaces only princes live, in municipal buildings only officials, in markets only the people, but in churches all are gathered together, and not only occasionally but frequently. Therefore, given a great architect, what could he design that would give him scope, and freedom, and fame like a cathedral? His feelings were immaterial, it was a professional necessity that drove artists then to religious matters. What was Raphael, the free-liver, thinking of when he drew his Madonnas? Was it the Jewess of Galilee over a thousand years before or the ripe warm beauty of the Florentine girls he knew?