The Hearts of Men

CHAPTER XXIX

OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM

Thus are the heavens of all religions explanations to materialise, as it were, the vague instincts of men's hearts. The Mahommedan's absolutely material garden of the houris, the Christian semi-material heaven, the Buddhist absolutely immaterial Nirvana, are all outcomes of the people's capability of separating soul from body. These heavens are just as the dogmas of Godhead, or Law, or Atonement, but the theory to explain the fact, which is in this case the desire for immortality. And in exactly the same way as the theories of other matters are unsatisfying, so are these theories of heaven. The desire for immortality is there, one of the strongest of all the emotions; but the ideal which the theologian offers to the believer to fulfil his desire has no attraction. The more it is defined the less anyone wants it. Heaven we would all go to, but not that heaven. The instinct is true, but the theory which would materialise the aim of that desire is false. No heaven that has been pictured to any believer is desirable.

It is strange to see in this but another instance of the invincible pessimism of the human reason. No matter to what it turns itself it is always the same.

I have read all the Utopias, from Plato's New Republic to Bellamy's, from the Anarchist's Paradise to that of the Socialists, and I confess that I have always risen from them with one strong emotion. And that was, the relief and delight that never in my time – never, I am sure, in any time – can any one of them be realised. This world as it exists, as it has existed, may have its drawbacks. There is crime, and misfortune, and unhappiness, more than need be. There are tears far more than enough. But there is sunshine too; and if there be hate there is love, if there is sorrow there is joy. Here there is life. But in these drab Utopias of the reason, what is there? That which is the worst of all to bear – monotony tending towards death.

No one, I think, can study philosophy, that grey web of the reason, without being oppressed by its utter pessimism. No matter what the philosophy be, whether it be professedly a pessimism as Schopenhauer's or not, there is no difference. It is all dull, weary barrenness, with none of the light of hope there. Hope and beauty and happiness are strangers to that twilight country. They could not live there. Like all that is beautiful and worth having, they require light and shadow, sunshine and the dark.

And the lives of philosophers, what do they gain from the reason alone? Is there anyone who, after reading the life of any philosopher, would not say, "God help me from such." What did his unaided reason give him? Pessimism, and pessimism, and again pessimism. No matter who your philosopher is – Horace or Omar Khayyam, or Carlyle or Nietsche: – where is the difference? See how Huxley even could not stifle his desire for immortality that no reason could justify. What has reason to offer me? Only this, resignation to the worst in the world, and of it knows nothing.

To which it would be replied:

And religion, what has that to offer either here or in the next world? For in this world they declare – at least Christianity and Buddhism both declare – that nothing is worth having. It is all vanity and vexation, fraud and error and wickedness, to be quickly done with. The philosopher has Utopias of sorts here, but these two religions have no Utopia, no happiness at all here to offer. All this life is denounced as a continued misery.

And you say that neither heaven nor Nirvana appeal to men, that men shrink from them. If philosophy be pessimism, what then is religion? Do you consider the Christian theory of the fall of man, the sacrifice of God to God, the declaration that the vast majority of men are doomed to everlasting fire, a cheerful theory?

Do you consider the Buddhist theory that life is itself an evil to be done with, that no consciousness survives death, but only the effects of a man's actions, an optimism?

Philosophies may not be very cheerful, but what are religions? Whatever charge you may bring against philosophy, it can be ten times repeated of any religion. Compared with any religious theory, even Schopenhauer's philosophy is a glaring optimism.

To which I would answer, No!

I do not agree, because what you call religion I call only a reasoning about religion. The dogmas and creeds are not religion. They are summaries of the reasons that men give to explain those facts of life which are religion, just as philosophies are summaries of the theories men make to explain other facts of life. Both creeds and philosophies come from the reason. They are speculations, not facts. They are pessimistic twins of the brain. Religion is a different matter. It is a series of facts. What facts these are I have tried to shew chapter by chapter, and they are summarised in Chapter XXX., at the end. I will not anticipate it. What I am concerned with is whether religion is pessimistic or not. Never mind the dogmas and creeds; come to facts. When you read books written by men who are really religious, what is their tone? You may never agree with what is urged in them, but can you assert that they are pessimistic? It seems to me, on the contrary, that they are the reverse.

And when you know people who are religious – not fanatics, but those men and women of sober minds who take their faith honestly and sincerely as a part of life, but not the whole – are they pessimistic? I am not speaking of any religion in particular, but of all religions. Can you see religious people, and live with them and hear them talk, and watch their lives, and not recognise that religion is to them a strength, a comfort, and resource against the evils of life? Never mind what the creeds say; watch what the believers do. Is life to them a sorry march to be made with downcast eyes of thought, to be trod with weary steps, to be regarded with contempt? The men who act thus are philosophers, not religious people.

To those who are really religious, life is beautiful. It is a triumphal march made to music that fills their ears, that brightens their eyes, that lightens their steps, now quicker, now slower, now sad, now joyous, always beautiful. Who are the happy men and women in this world? Let no one ever doubt – no one who has observed the world will ever doubt; they are the people who have religion. No matter what the religion is, no matter what the theory or dogma or creed, no matter the colour or climate, there is no difference. If you doubt, go and see. Never sit in your closet and study creeds and declare "No man can be happy who believes such," but go and see whether they are happy. Go to all the peoples of the world, and having put aside your prejudices, having tuned your heart-strings to theirs, listen and you will know. Watch and you will see. What is the keynote of the life of him who truly believes? Is it disgust, weariness, pessimism? Is it not courage and a strange triumph that marks his way in life? And who are those who go through life sadly, who find it terrible in its monotony, who have lost all savour for beauty, whom the sunlight cannot gladden, who neither love nor hate, neither fear nor rejoice, neither laugh nor cry? I will tell you who they are. There are two kinds, who think they are different, but are the same.

First, there are those who call themselves philosophers, men who have abandoned all religion and accepted "barren reason." For reason cannot make you love or hate, or laugh or weep. There is no beauty there, no light and shadow, no colour, only the greyness of unliving outline.

And there are those who mistake what religion is. They think it consists of creeds. They do not know it consists of emotions. And so they take their creeds to their hearts, and see what they make of them! Or they, abandoning their creeds, search all through the world to find new creeds. They speculate on Nirvana, on Brahm, on the doctrine of Averroes. They are for ever digging out some abstruse problem from the sacred books of the world to make themselves miserable over.

They, too, are the victims of a barren reason.

But religion is not reason; it is fact. It is beyond and before all reason. Religion is not what you say, but what you feel; not what you think, but what you know. Religions are the great optimisms. Each is to its believers "the light of the world."

I cannot think how this has not been evident long ago to everyone. Have men no eyes, no ears, no understanding? Yes, perhaps they have all these things. But what they have not got is sympathy, and without this of what use are the rest? For what men see and hear in any matter are the things they are in sympathy with. If your heart is out of tune, there is never any echo of the melody that is about you.

To this chapter on optimism and pessimism I would add a small postscript. I would fain have made it a chapter or many chapters, but I have not the room. It is the strong connection between religion and optimism as evinced in a high birth rate, between irreligion and pessimism as shown in a falling off in the population. For that is the great complaint in France to-day. It is noticeable especially amongst the cultured classes, who are absolutely irreligious, and who are absolutely pessimistic: the birth rate is falling so rapidly that France ceases to increase. Only in Normandy, where religion yet retains power, does the birth rate keep up. This is not a solitary instance. All history repeats it. Do you remember Matthew Arnold's lines:

The Roman Empire fell because there were no more Romans left. They had died out and left no children to succeed them. Where is the highest birth rate to-day in Europe? It is in "priest-ridden" Russia, where the people are without doubt more deeply imbued with their faith than any other people of the West now. In Burma, where religion has such a hold on the people as the world has never known, the birth rate is very high indeed. The Turks in the heyday of their religious enthusiasm increased very rapidly, but now and for long they seem to be stationary, and in the Boers we see again a high birth rate and very strong religious convictions. Our birth rate, on the contrary, is falling with the growing irreligion in certain classes. Not that I wish for a moment to infer that religious feeling causes more children to be born. I have no belief whatever in the usual theories that the fall in birth rates is due to preventive measures, which religion disallows, or to debauchery, which religion controls. The supporters of such a theory admit that they cannot prove it. And there is very much against such an idea. When religion in the early ages of Christianity discouraged marriage and did all in its power to encourage celibacy, it never succeeded in the end. Men and women might go into convents for certain reasons – not, I think, mainly religious – the birth of children from those outside did not alter. And during the priestly rule in Paraguay population disappeared so rapidly the monks were alarmed, and took stringent and strange methods to stop the decay, but in vain – the people had lost heart.

Why are the Maories and many other people disappearing? From disease? That is not a reason. It is a fact that with a virile people a plague or famine is followed by an increase in the birth rate. This is proved in India. The Maories, too, have lost heart. They may have acquired Christianity, but that is no help. No; the adoption of a religion does not affect the question.

But still they go together, and the answer seems to be here: A nation that is virile, that is full of vitality, finds an outlet for that vitality in children, an expression of it in religion. A virile people is optimistic always. Pessimism, whether in nations or individuals, comes from a deficiency of nerve strength. But why peoples lose their vitality no one yet knows. There is a tribe on the Shan frontier of Burma that twenty years ago was a people of active hunters, always gun or bow in hand, scouring the forests for game, fearing nothing. And now they have lost their energy. Their nerve is gone. They are listless and depressed. For a gun they substitute a hoe and do a little feeble gardening. Their children are few, and shortly the tribe will be dead.

No one knows why.

Religion, deep and true, and strong faith is possible only to strong natures; it is the outcome of strong feeling. It is a companion always to that virility that is optimism, that does not fear the future; it knows not what may come, but faces the future with confidence. It takes each day as it comes. Such are the nations that replenish the earth. The world is the heritage of the godly. The Old Testament is full of that truth, and it is no less true now than then. But one does not proceed from the other. They both come from that fount whence springs the life of the world.

CHAPTER XXX

WAS IT REASON?

Reason and religion have but little in common. They come from different sources, they pursue different ways. They are never related in this order as cause and effect. No one was ever reasoned into a religion, no one was ever reasoned out of his religion. Faith exists or does not exist in man without any reference to his reason. Reason may follow faith, does follow faith; never does faith follow reason.

Is it indeed always so? Then how about the boy told of in the earlier chapters? He was born into a religion, he was educated in it, and he rejected it. Why? He himself tells why he did so, because his reason drove him away from it. His reason, looking at the world as he found it, could not accept the way of life inculcated by his faith. He found it impossible, unworkable, and therefore not beautiful. His reason told him it was impracticable, not in accordance with facts, and therefore he would have none of it.

His reason, too, following Darwin, told him that the earlier part of the Old Testament could not be correct. Man has risen, not fallen; he had his origin not six thousand years ago, but perhaps sixty thousand, perhaps much more. In many ways his reason fought with his religion, and it prevailed. Was no one ever reasoned out of a faith? Surely this boy was, surely many boys and men equally with him have so been deprived by reason of their faiths. Reason is the enemy of faith. Is not this so?

When that boy was fighting his battle long ago I am sure he thought so. Certainly he said so to himself. Was he insincere or mistaken? Surely he should know best of what was going on in his mind. He tells how reason drove him from his faith. Was he not right?

I think that he had not then learned to look at the roots of things. If there is one truth which grows upon us in life as we go on, as we watch men and what they say and do, as we watch ourselves and what we say or do, it is this, that men do not do things nor feel things because they think them, but the reverse. Men think things because they want to do them; their reason follows their instincts. No man seeks to disprove what he likes and feels to be good, no man seeks to prove what he instinctively dislikes and rejects. You cannot argue yourself into a liking or a distaste. If, then, you find a man seeking reasons to disprove his faith, it is because his faith irks him, because he would fain shake it off and be done with it. If he were happy in it and it suited him, reasons disproving any part of it would pass by him harmlessly. You cannot shake a man's conviction of what he feels to be useful and beautiful.

To the man, therefore, looking back it seems that all the boy's thoughts, his arguments, his reasoning, arise from this, that his religion did not suit. It galled him somewhere, perhaps in many places; it was a burden, and instead of being beautiful it was the reverse. So to rid himself of what he could not abide he sought refuge in his reason. And his reason going, as reason has always done, to the theories of faith instead of to the facts, he found that the creeds and beliefs had no foundation in fact, were but formulæ thrown upon an ignorant world, and should be rejected. So he left them. But it was never his reason that made him do so; reason came in but as the judge, openly justifying what had happened silently and unnoticed in his heart.

What was it, then, that drove the boy from his faith? What were his instincts that remained unfulfilled, roused against his religion till they drove him to find reasons for leaving it? What was it that galled him till he revolted? There were, I think, mainly two things – the rise of an intense revolt to the continual exercise of authority, and the greater effect of the code of Christ upon him.

When a boy is frequently ill, when his constitution is delicate and easily upset, it is necessary that he should be very careful what he does, how he exposes himself to damp or cold, how he over-exerts himself at work or play. But for a boy to exercise this care is very difficult. He feels fairly well, and the other boys are going skating or boating, why should he not do so? The day is not very cold, and the other boys do not wear comforters; they laugh at him if he does so. He will not admit that he cannot do what other boys can do. So he has to be looked after and guarded, and cared for and watched, and made to do things he dislikes. If, too, the supervision becomes unnecessarily close, if there is a tendency to interfere not only where he is wrong and wants correction, but in many details where it is not required, is it not natural? If in time it so comes, or the boy thinks it so comes, that he cannot move hand or foot, cannot go in or out, cannot think or read, or even rest, without perpetual correction, is it so very unnatural? Mistake? Who shall say where the mistake lay? Who shall say if there was any mistake at all, unless great affection be a mistake? Maybe it was the inevitable result of circumstances. But still there it was. And though a small boy may accept such rule without question, yet as he grows up it irks him more and more, until at last it may become a daily and hourly irritation growing steadily more unbearable, more exasperating, month by month.

There is, too, in many people – women, I think, mostly, and with women chiefly in reverse proportion to their knowledge – a tendency to give advice. Few are without the desire, maybe a kindly desire in its inception, to advise others. The world at large does not take to it kindly, so the advice has to be bottled up, to be expended in its fulness where it can. This boy got it all. He received advice from innumerable people, enough to have furnished a universe. Most of it he felt to be worthless, almost all of it he was sure was impertinence. Yet he could not resent it, because he was under authority.

And now perhaps you may see how there grew up slowly in him an utter loathing of authority, a hatred to being checked and supervised, and advised and lectured for ever. Sometimes he would revolt and say, "Can't you leave me alone?" and this was insubordination. He would have given all he could, everything, for liberty. "I would sooner," he said to himself, "catch cold and die than be worried daily not to forget my comforter. I would sooner grow up a fool and earn my living by breaking stones in the road than be supervised into my lessons like this, that I may be learned. But when I am grown up it must cease. It SHALL cease. Then I shall be free to go my own way, and do wrong and suffer for it."

And now imagine a boy in a state of mind like this told that he would never be free. A boy's authorities might pass, school and home might be left behind, but God would remain. Masters can be avoided and deceived, God cannot be deceived. His eye is always on you. He sees everything you do. His hand is always guiding and directing and checking you. It seems to him that the exasperation was never to end, was to last even into the next life, if this be true. Then you may understand how his instincts drove his reason to find good and sufficient cause for rejecting this God and for seeking freedom. "Give me freedom," he cried, "freedom even to do wrong and suffer for it. I will not complain. Only let me alone. Do not interfere. I will not have a God who interferes." His reason helped him and showed him the emptiness of the creeds, and he went on his way without.

Then there was the Sermon on the Mount. To most boys this does not appeal at all. They hear it read. It is to them part of "religion" – that is, for consumption on Sunday. It is not of any consequence, only words. They do not think twice of it. But with this boy it was different. The Sermon on the Mount did appeal to him. He thought it very beautiful as a little boy. It seemed worth remembering. He did remember it. It seemed worth acting up to as much as possible.