THE RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 
 
THE RELIGIONS 
 AND PHILOSOPHIES 
 OF THE EAST m 58 
 
 BY 
 
 J. M. KENNEDY 
 
 Author of "THE QUINTESSENCE OF NIETZSCHE" 
 
 "Tout ce que nous pensons, et toutes les 
 mani&res dont nous pensons, ont leur origine en 
 Asie." 
 
 Gobineau. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 JOHN LANE COMPANY 
 
 MCMXI 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE ...... ix 
 
 CHAPTER I ..... i 
 
 Primitive civilisation Origin of religion Influence 
 of politics on religion Meaning of the word. 
 
 CHAPTER II . . . .11 
 
 The Aryans Early wanderings Brahma Aryan and 
 Semitic mythology The caste system The 
 Aryans in Europe The priestly caste Early 
 Brahmanical writings Law codes The Vedas 
 Literary development Gods. 
 
 CHAPTER III . . . . .43 
 
 Later Brahmanism The Bhagavad-Gita Krishna 
 Development of Krishnaism Krishna and the 
 New Testament Religious system of the 
 Bhagavad-Gita Chandals Pariahs. 
 
 CHAPTER IV . . . .54 
 
 The rise of Buddhism Religion in theory and practice 
 Birth of the Buddha His early years Studies 
 and temptations His system of propagating the 
 faith Illness and death Character of the Buddha 
 European influence of Buddhism. 
 
 CHAPTER V . , . . -77 
 
 Buddhism continued. Nirvana Transmigration 
 Commandments for monks and laymen Relics 
 of Buddha Distinction between Buddhism and 
 Christianity King Asoka the Buddhist The 
 Edicts of Asoka Bureaucracy foiled Buddhistic 
 writings. 
 
 vii 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER VI . . . .98 
 
 The early Arabs Their religious system Birth of 
 Mohammed His early studies The Hanifs 
 Mohammed's alleged "epilepsy" His lonely 
 meditations His first revelation Early converts 
 Quarrels with the Meccans Flight to Medina 
 Progress of Islamism Capture of Medina 
 Death of the Prophet His successors. 
 
 CHAPTER VII . . . . .142 
 
 Mohammedanism continued. The Koran Its form 
 The psychology of Mohammed Themes dealt 
 with in the Koran The poetical Suras Legal 
 decisions Holy wars The ethics of Islamism 
 Commentaries on the Koran Islamic fatalism 
 Development of Mohammedanism Sunnites 
 Shiites Babism Behaism . 
 
 CHAPTER VIII . . . . .185 
 
 The Jews Their condition under the Egyptians 
 Moses Monotheism v. Polytheism The 
 Israelites leave Egypt Sinai The Ten Com- 
 mandments Jewish morality Its aristocratic 
 nature The Promised Land The kings The 
 Babylonian Captivity Toleration. 
 
 CHAPTER IX . . . .204 
 
 Indian philosophy The Jains China Confucius, 
 his system of morals Lao-Tze Taoism 
 Mencius Lack of poetry in China Japan, its 
 early religious system Shintoism Buddhism 
 Bushido The Samurai. 
 
 CHAPTER X ..... 234 
 
 Minor Asiatic religions The Babylonians Zoroaster 
 Parsees Hittites Mithraism. 
 
 CHAPTER XI . . . .252 
 
 Summary and conclusion East and West The influ- 
 ence of Asia in Europe. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY . , . . .269 
 
 INDEX ... . 273 
 
PREFACE 
 
 AMONG the comparatively few people in 
 England who take any interest in philosophy, 
 religion, metaphysics and allied subjects, it is 
 certain that Nietzsche's works have during the 
 last year or two been studied with increasing 
 attention. It is not, perhaps, surprising that 
 his views should have been at first received 
 with astonishment and impatience ; for England 
 seems fated to be separated from the Continent, 
 wherever thought is concerned, by a distance 
 which it takes a quarter of a century to traverse. 
 Again, the absurd methods of teaching foreign 
 languages adopted in our schools cut us off 
 from communication with many an excellent 
 book or review article which shows the trend 
 of the times abroad, particularly in Germany 
 and Italy, the two countries where the phil- 
 osophy of morality has been for some years in 
 its most flourishing condition. 
 
x PREFACE 
 
 Nietzsche and his school, however, have 
 come to stay ; and I merely mention these 
 matters by way of showing that, if any views 
 on the moral side of religion expressed in the 
 following pages should seem strange to the 
 less advanced section of the British public, they 
 are nevertheless founded on a basis which has 
 the authority of most of the best Continental 
 thinkers of repute : the Nietzschian standard 
 of good and bad. 
 
 What is good ? Everything that increases the feeling of 
 power, the will to power, power itself, in man. 
 
 What is bad ? All that proceeds from weakness. 
 
 What is happiness ? The feeling that power is increas- 
 ing, that resistance is being overcome. 
 
 The pages that follow, then, do not merely 
 record the main principles of the most important 
 religions of the East, but they also indicate an 
 attempt to apply to those religions the standards 
 of moral values referred to above. I believe I 
 am correct in saying that no such attempt has 
 hitherto been made. In the bibliography at 
 the end of the book I have named about a 
 third of the works to which I am mainly in- 
 debted ; but I have also had the advantage of a 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 sufficiently long period of residence in the East 
 to enable me to observe personally certain 
 characteristics which I have referred to here 
 and there. For several interesting suggestions 
 concerning Mohammed, I have to thank Dr 
 Oscar Levy ; while Mr A. R. Orage, Editor of 
 The New Age, who deserves to be better known 
 for the keen psychological insight he has brought 
 to bear on Oriental problems, has communicated 
 to me his views upon the sources of the Laws 
 of Manu. Lastly, Mr A. M. Ludovici has 
 reminded me of some points, usually forgotten, 
 in connection with Greek art. As the views 
 expressed are entirely my own, however, none 
 of these gentlemen is to be saddled with the 
 responsibility for any of the statements, con- 
 troversial or otherwise, which I have made. 
 
 J. M. KENNEDY. 
 
THE RELIGIONS AND 
 PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Primitive civilisation Origin of religion Influence of 
 politics on religion Meaning of the word. 
 
 WITHIN the last fifty years probably more 
 light has been thrown, directly and indirectly, 
 on the problem of the origin of civilisation and 
 society than on any other subject within the range 
 of science. Geology, for example, has enabled us 
 to gauge, with something resembling accuracy, 
 the age of the earth. The fossil remains of 
 animals which we find it difficult even to name, 
 provide us with a means of ascertaining what 
 kind of living creatures the earth actually 
 supported millions of years ago. To these we 
 must add the discoveries made in the domains 
 of philology and archaeology. Even so conser- 
 vative a philologist as Prof. Henry Sweet, for 
 example, estimates that the Aryan language 
 
3 ' THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 was spoken in a pure form not less than 12,000 
 years ago. Fragments of monuments and 
 inscriptions, portions of the ruins of long- 
 buried cities, have enabled us to construct the 
 history of past nations and empires. More 
 than all, the enormous impetus given to 
 psychological investigations, first by Nietzsche, 
 and continued by his followers, more especially 
 the younger school of Italian psychologists, 
 represented by Sera, has led us to read history 
 and study sciences in an entirely new frame of 
 mind. To take another branch of the subject, 
 until comparatively recently the morality of 
 religion was inextricably confused with its 
 dogma. The former is all-important, the 
 latter of trifling and ephemeral value. Kant, 
 Schopenhauer, Hegel, Darwin, Huxley, 
 Spencer, and their numerous followers and 
 imitators, spent a great part of their energies 
 in consciously or unconsciously disproving 
 Christian dogma, while all the time leaving its 
 morality, its values of good and evil, unharmed. 
 For centuries, ever since the establishment of 
 Christianity as the religion of Western Europe, 
 all the views of eminent scientists, even those 
 who turned against the Christian religion and 
 sought to disprove it, were subconsciously 
 influenced by Christian morality. It is only 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 3 
 
 since the advent of Nietzsche (for Goethe, 
 when he referred to this matter, did so in 
 cautious sentences, not meant for general per- 
 ception) that scientists have begun to see their 
 errors in this respect, and it is only since the 
 beginning of the nineteenth century that the 
 dawn of a new era in thought may be said to 
 have appeared. For the first time in nineteen 
 long centuries centuries of bigotry and super- 
 stition never before equalled in the history of the 
 world men have an opportunity of consider- 
 ing scientific and ethical problems with their 
 minds untrammelled by the Christian values of 
 good and evil. But the Goddess of Wisdom 
 has been imprisoned in an underground dungeon 
 since the dawn of the Christian era, and she 
 still feels ill at ease in the light of day. 
 
 When we endeavour to trace the origin of 
 civilisation as a stepping-stone to the origin 
 and formation of religions, we find the back- 
 ward path even more difficult than might have 
 been expected. China, I ndia, and Egypt are the 
 three great strongholds of ancient learning, and 
 in these countries the records go back some- 
 thing like 6000 years. But what we can now 
 know of, say, China in the year 4000 B.C., is 
 sufficient to show us that even at that time a 
 portion of the country was highly civilised, 
 
4 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 possessing all the arts of a progressive com- 
 munity, including even a fully-developed 
 system of handwriting. In India the story is 
 the same. The further we trace back what we 
 conceive to be the primitive origins of society, 
 we find that we are not engaged in a study 
 of primitive origins at all, but of something 
 highly complex, something which has evolved 
 scientifically in the course of thousands of 
 years. To return to Professor Sweet again, 
 we know, as every philologist knows, that the 
 Aryan language dates from at least 10,000 B.C. 
 But the very fact that such a language could 
 be in existence one hundred centuries before 
 the birth of Christ is sufficient to show us that 
 it must have been spoken and inscribed on 
 rocks and cavern-roofs hundreds of years before 
 that, and that those who spoke it in such a 
 manner as to make it endure for a long time 
 must have been a highly-organised body of 
 men an early society, in fact ; the ancestors 
 of those who were destined in later ages to 
 found the first great Indian Empire. The 
 mind may well become appalled when contem- 
 plating the consequences of what has happened 
 in the world during a period of 12,000 years ; 
 but a close psychological examination of the 
 question makes it clear that the change which 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 5 
 
 has taken place in the essential nature of man 
 between 10,000 B.C. and the present day is so 
 slight as to be almost imperceptible. Some 
 instinct has always actuated animals and men 
 from the beginnings of life on earth. Darwin 
 and the evolutionists called it the struggle for 
 existence ; Schopenhauer named it the Will to 
 live ; Nietzsche designated it more correctly 
 by the term Will to Power. In any case, 
 all three definitions connote the idea of a cease- 
 less struggle, in which the fittest, though 
 doubtless not always the best, survive. 
 
 In the case of the human kind this struggle 
 led to the elimination of those who were unfitted 
 to stand the ruthless competition the weak, 
 the degenerate, the crippled, the physically and 
 mentally defective. To trace how the weak 
 gradually assured their safety by influencing 
 the sacerdotal classes, and little by little formed 
 religions of their own, which they sedulously 
 upheld, cultivated and propagated, forms one 
 of the most fascinating studies a psychologist 
 can undertake. Such a religion, as Nietzsche 
 and others have conclusively demonstrated, is 
 Christianity ; such also, but, as will be seen 
 later on, to a much less extent, is Buddhism. 
 
 In entering upon the investigation of any 
 Eastern religion, however, the student will 
 
6 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 find himself in difficulties if he wishes to make 
 an impartial study of the question through 
 books written in English. It has, unfortunately, 
 happened that nearly all the English works 
 dealing with this question have been written 
 either by missionaries or by travellers and 
 Government officials without any psychological 
 insight. As a consequence, nearly every book 
 by these people is written with a conscious or 
 unconscious prejudice that Christianity is the 
 final word in religion, and that all other faiths 
 must necessarily be inferior. When endeavour- 
 ing to examine into the origin of religions, and 
 to ascertain the distinctions between the different 
 faiths of the East and the West, I was unable 
 to find any English book which did not, in 
 some chapter or another, read like a tract. 
 One cannot but marvel at the impudence and 
 conceit of the Christian missionary who goes 
 to, say, India, after a short course of training 
 and straightway proceeds to confute with 
 specially-prepared arguments the doctrines of 
 a belief devised by a much superior class of 
 men a belief, indeed, to which Christianity 
 itself can easily be traced. 
 
 Two world-wide religions owe their huge 
 followings and development to the hazard of 
 politics. The first in order of time is Buddhism, 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 7 
 
 which was adopted by the Indian king, Asoka, 
 about 250 B.C. to keep his turbulent subjects 
 quiet in order that he might consolidate the 
 fruits of his victories. The second was 
 Christianity, elevated to a State religion by 
 Constantine the Great in 324 A.D., though the 
 Roman emperor himself did not show any 
 particular eagerness to be baptised. But, if 
 Christianity suits the people of Europe, it does 
 not follow that it suits the people of India, any 
 more than we can say that Buddhism is a good 
 religion for Burmah, and is therefore suitable 
 for England. But we must come back to 
 Nietzsche's outlook again. A religion, or a 
 system of morals, which comes to the same 
 thing, is invented by a certain type of people 
 in order that they may propagate and preserve 
 their race. What tends to their preservation, 
 i.e., what helps them to attain to power over 
 their competitors will be, to them, " good " ; 
 what hinders them from attaining their object 
 will be "bad." It naturally follows that the 
 "good" of Buddhism will not necessarily 
 correspond to the "good" of Judaism, and 
 vice versa. We can thus perceive, to some 
 extent, the mistake made by the Christian 
 missionaries who proceeded to write about and 
 criticise other religions. They neglect the 
 
8 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 early history of Christianity and the influence 
 upon Christ's teaching of the Ebionites and the 
 Essenes. 
 
 Before we proceed further, however, what is 
 religion ? Possibly we might define it briefly 
 as that which endeavours to bring man into 
 contact with a higher power ; but the actual 
 meaning of the word has varied from century 
 to century. Religion may now mean faith, 
 cult, morality, hope, terror, ecstasy, fear of the 
 gods. A Central African negro kneels down 
 before some fetish and would understand by 
 the " religion " the instinct which urges him to 
 do this. For Kant, on the other hand, religion 
 simply means morality. The Brahman has 
 one form of religion in his youth, when he 
 offers up his little sacrifices at daybreak and 
 prays " Enlighten us, we beseech thee," and 
 another in his old age when, looking upon 
 prayer and sacrifice as useless, he retires to 
 some solitary spot and gives himself up to 
 meditation. Fichte regards religion merely as 
 a science. Schleiermacher knows it as "the 
 knowledge of our absolute dependence, some- 
 thing which determines us and which we cannot 
 determine in return/' Hegel defines it as 
 " unconstrained liberty." " For," he says, " if 
 it is dependence which makes religion, then the 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 9 
 
 dog is the most religious of all beings." For 
 Feuerbach, again, religion is love of one's self. 
 " For the feeling which is at the base of all 
 the feelings, desires and actions of man is the 
 satisfying of the human being and human 
 egoism : it is the sick heart of man which is 
 the source of all religion and all misery." 
 
 In tracing the development of religions, we 
 find that they are always associated with one 
 powerful mind : a mind which interprets the 
 inarticulate aspirations and desires of a race 
 or a nation and formulates them into a series 
 of rules which, in order that their value may not 
 be doubted, are ascribed to some supernatural 
 source. Around such personalities it is but 
 natural that numerous legends should grow 
 up, not only rendering the theologian's 
 path more difficult, but leading many critics, 
 particularly Germans, to incline to the belief 
 that such personages did not exist at all, 
 but were merely the assumptions of daring 
 poets and soothsayers endeavouring to explain 
 the origin of their faith. Another common 
 characteristic of such great teachers is the 
 fact that, while history has with more or 
 less accuracy recorded their performances and 
 sayings in middle and later life, we find very 
 little material dealing with their youth. The 
 
io RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES 
 
 critics are rapidly becoming fewer in number, 
 however, who hold that this very fact is 
 sufficient to confirm the theory that all these 
 great teachers were made and not born. In 
 regard to the Buddha, for example, the tales 
 about his youth are purely traditional : he 
 only really comes into prominence at twenty- 
 nine or thirty. The same remark applies to 
 Moses, to Zarathustra, to Mohammed, and, 
 in a lesser degree, to Christ. But it is surely 
 evident that men like these would not be 
 likely to come into much prominence in youth, 
 and history would not need to consider them 
 at such a time. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 The Aryans Early wanderings Brahma Aryan and 
 Semitic mythology The caste system The Aryans 
 in Europe The priestly caste Early Brahmanical 
 writings Law codes The Vedas Literary de- 
 velopment Gods. 
 
 THE remote antiquity of the Aryan language 
 has already been referred to. In regard 
 to the tribe itself the direct evidence now 
 at our disposal is scanty, and it is only 
 by the patient investigations of various 
 scientists, assisted by the recent progress in 
 the applications of psychological principles to 
 historical affairs, that we have been able to 
 trace the probable development of the Aryans. 
 No doubt, however, remains as to the descent 
 of the fair-skinned tribes from the Pamir 
 plateau into the lower plains of India and 
 the great empire which they succeeded in 
 founding there. Racial pride naturally raised 
 a barrier between these conquerors and the 
 aborigines whom they subdued, another 
 barrier separating the ruling nobles from the 
 lower classes of the tribes, and in the course 
 of time the priestly caste managed, after many 
 
 ii 
 
12 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 generations of bitter controversy and struggle, 
 to secure the supreme spiritual power. Thus 
 the insurmountable, or almost insurmountable, 
 barriers of caste gradually came into being, 
 and upon them the religious order of the 
 community was based. 
 
 Philological and ethnological discoveries have 
 led to the conclusion that the Englishman and 
 the Hindoo had a common ancestor, the 
 one belonging to the Eastern and the other 
 to the Western branch of the Aryan race. It 
 is probable, in view of the length of time 
 which it is calculated a race needs in order 
 to develop, that the Aryans cannot have 
 originated much less than 60,000 years ago 
 in the territory which we now know as Persia, 
 Afghanistan, and Asia Minor. Generations 
 afterwards the increased population would 
 have overspread all North-western India and 
 probably encroached upon what is now known 
 as the Punjab. Then would naturally begin 
 the descent of the warriors upon Middle and 
 Southern India, while the western division 
 of the huge tribe would be making its way 
 through Southern Russia into what is now 
 Poland and Austria. After centuries of 
 residence in the different climates, the de- 
 scendants of the original stock would become 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 13 
 
 entirely unlike their forbears, and thousands 
 of years after their first wanderings it is left 
 to the philologist to put words and fragments 
 of words together and gradually trace back 
 the prehistoric origin of the race. Thus, in 
 the Rig-Veda (a book, the contents of which 
 will be explained later in this chapter), we 
 find the chief of a tribe referred to as " vis- 
 pati," i.e., " ruler of settlers/* the same meaning 
 being seen in the old Persian c< vis-paiti," and 
 also in the modern Lithuanian cc wiez-patis," 
 one of the numerous links which establishes 
 the connection between East and West. 
 
 As an Indian writer has pointed out, 1 the 
 Hindoos alone, of all the Aryan-speaking 
 peoples, seem to have preserved some recollec- 
 tion of having been foreign settlers in the 
 country of their adoption. Few nations forgot 
 their origin sooner than did the Greeks, who 
 considered themselves as the original inhabitants 
 of the Hellenic peninsula, although they un- 
 consciously preserved some traditions which 
 suffice to indicate their foreign origin, as a 
 reference to Homer and the famous catalogue 
 of ships will show. The mythological account 
 of the war between gods and demons is 
 common to all the Aryan nations, and the 
 
 1 M. Venkata Ratnam : The Hebrew Origin of the Brahmins. 
 
14 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 Greek legend of the war between the Titans and 
 the gods is paralleled in Indian mythology by 
 the tales of the conflicts between the Suras 
 and the Asuras, i.e., between the gods and 
 the demons, which is described in the earliest 
 remnants of Indian literature we possess. The 
 Trojan war, again, is but the legendary Greek 
 version of the struggle described in the 
 Ramayana. 
 
 Undoubtedly one of the halting-places of 
 the Aryans on their journey towards the East 
 was Meru (modern Merv) in Turkestan, which 
 occupies much the same place in Hindoo 
 mythology as does Olympus in the case of the 
 Greeks. The researches of Prof. Sayce and 
 other eminent investigators in this field have 
 thrown much light on the relation of Assyria 
 to the Aryans ; but a discussion of this ques- 
 tion belongs more to a purely ethnological 
 work. There is no doubt that this part of 
 Western Asia bore the seeds from which sprang 
 every religion on the face of the earth ; but to 
 so great an extent did the travelling Aryans 
 split up into different nations and religious 
 groups, that an extended enquiry into the 
 common origin of their faiths would be of 
 little value for an interpretation of their 
 subsequent development. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 15 
 
 As for Brahma himself, who gave his name 
 to the religion of the Hindoos, there seems to 
 be good reason for supposing that the name 
 originally referred to the Biblical Abraham. 
 While the modern Hindoo looks upon Brahma, 
 plus Krishna, as " God/' and, the Eastern mind 
 naturally running to pantheism, sees " Brahma " 
 in everything, the ancient Hindoos regarded 
 Brahma as the Greeks did Zeus (Jupiter), as 
 a being possessing a human form. It has been 
 pointed out that a comparison of the legend 
 concerning Zeus and Brahma tends to show that 
 they were one and the same person, the western 
 branch of the Aryans taking the legend with 
 them to Greece, and the ancestors of the 
 Hindoos bearing it towards India. Zeus, the 
 king of the gods, married his sister Hera and 
 made her queen. Brahma, according to the 
 old Sanskrit chronicle, married his daughter 
 Sarasvati. Compare this with the old Jewish 
 legend (Gen. xix. 33-38). Again, the word 
 Brahman comes from the root brih, meaning 
 to increase, while Abraham would appear to 
 signify "father of a multitude." Brahma 
 (masculine) was at first Brahmam (neuter), which 
 to some extent parallels the Biblical statement 
 that Abraham's name was at first Abram, <c the 
 high father." Abraham, too, was the " Father 
 
16 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 of the Israelites," and Brahma is often referred 
 to as Pitra-maha, "the great father/' (Cf. 
 Jupiter, which is made up of Jovis plus pater.) 
 Finally, the name of Brahma's wife, Sarasvati, 
 was originally written Sarada, from the same 
 root as the name of Abraham's wife, Sarah. 
 Other analogies could readily be quoted, but 
 these will be sufficient to show the reader the 
 close connection between the Greeks, the 
 Semites, and the Hindoos. 
 
 Thousands of years before the Christian era 
 the Aryans developed their wandering instinct 
 already referred to ; and it is recorded that 
 when the tribes moved from place to place 
 they invariably drove their cattle with them. 
 From time immemorial the cow has been 
 considered as sacred in India, doubtless because 
 to it was largely due the prosperity of the 
 white-skinned invaders. Strangely enough, 
 the early settlers, as we can see from references 
 in the sacred books, ate meat and drank a 
 liquid resembling beer, contrary to the modern 
 practice. The vitality of the Hindoo seemed 
 to leave him when he gave up his meat for rice. 
 Little by little the Aryans made their way east 
 of the Indus, through the Punjab, and into the 
 central plains. This was a slow process, and 
 during the time it was proceeding whole nations 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 17 
 
 had sprung up from among the original tribe 
 of invaders. A similar development was going 
 on in the West, where the Aryans gradually 
 became the ruling castes throughout Europe ; 
 but a survey of this long and complicated 
 process would be rather out of place in the 
 present work. 
 
 It may be interesting, however, to mention 
 one point. It has virtually been established, 
 for instance, that the present upper or 
 governing classes throughout Europe are the 
 descendants of the invading western Aryans, 
 the menials (i.e., the so-called " working " 
 classes) being the descendants of the uncivilised 
 and ill-developed aborigines. The caste system 
 did not develop in Europe to the same extent 
 as in Asia, and not even feudalism could prevent 
 constant intermarrying between the Aryans and 
 the natives. The result is that at this day the 
 two races, the higher and the lower, appear to 
 the superficial eye to have fused, more especially 
 as common advantages and necessities have 
 long since developed what, for want of a better 
 term, we may call a semi-instinct, " patriotism/' 
 Nevertheless, when great moral (not political) 
 crises occur, the difference between the high 
 and low races becomes apparent. Christianity, 
 for instance, was seized upon by the lower 
 
i8 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 classes with delirious joy at the time of its 
 introduction into Europe as an excuse for 
 rendering themselves morally independent of 
 their rulers. The process of weakening the 
 power of the strong by every conceivable means 
 has proceeded steadily for nineteen hundred 
 years, and is fast reaching its culminating point. 
 The less-developed masses, that is to say, the 
 lower castes of northern European countries, 
 cannot understand or appreciate beauty, though, 
 as Nietzsche indicated, the world can be 
 justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon. 
 Hence, as early Christianity had fortunately 
 borrowed many beautiful symbols from 
 paganism (many of which may be seen in the 
 modern Roman Catholic Church), these 
 barbarously-minded people made several 
 attempts to deprive the religion of its beauty, 
 since beauty can be understood and created 
 only by the aristocratic castes, though it may 
 be highly valued by lower castes which have 
 come through a long period of evolution, such, 
 for example, as are to be found in Italy and 
 France. The result was Huss, the Lollards, 
 Luther, and the " Reformation." Happily, the 
 aristocratic Church of England was left unin- 
 fluenced, so far as its symbols were concerned, 
 though a few unimportant changes were made 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 19 
 
 in its dogma. But the Lutheran Church, 
 which, in Germany, corresponds to the 
 Dissenters in England and Scotland, spread an 
 appalling, thick blanket of dreariness, ignorance, 
 and bigotry over millions of Europeans which 
 subsists to this day. The consequence has 
 been an endeavour to carry into practice the 
 extreme tenets interpolated into the New 
 Testament by the Essene and Ebionite sects ; 
 hence in Teutonic countries we see beauty disre- 
 garded and even looked on with suspicion, the 
 dissemination of the most ridiculous of modern 
 movements, humanitarianism, which would 
 almost 1 compel man by law to be responsible 
 for his neighbour, socialism, and the pampering 
 of the lower classes to the detriment of the 
 higher castes. 
 
 To return to our Hindoo brethren, we find 
 the single race of Aryans separated in the 
 course of time into distinct nations, but always 
 preserving the essential characteristic of caste : 
 first, the priests, or Brahmans ; secondly, the 
 nobles and warriors, known in ancient times 
 as the Kshatriyas, and at present as Rajputs ; 
 thirdly, the husbandmen and merchants ; and, 
 fourthly, the lowest caste, the Sudras, who 
 formed the descendants of the conquered 
 aborigines. They are often referred to in 
 
20 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 the Brahmanical writings by many contemp- 
 tuous epithets. 
 
 The priesthood was the last of the castes to 
 be formed. In very early times, indeed, we 
 can easily see from passages in the Rig-Veda 
 that the caste system was almost unknown. 
 The warrior is naturally separated from his 
 dependents and servants ; but the head of each 
 family acted as his own priest. In later times 
 the ruler of a tribe would perhaps select some 
 person of great Vedic learning to prepare a 
 sacrifice to the local god, and in time such 
 men came to form an important section of a 
 warrior's retinue. Years afterwards, by their 
 appropriation of the sacred books and the 
 increase in their numbers^ they endeavoured to 
 arrogate to themselves the supreme power in 
 the Aryan community. But this pretension was 
 at once disputed by the warrior caste, and a 
 long struggle ensued for the mastery. Dr 
 Sera has concisely summed up this warfare : 
 
 The primitive relationships between masters and 
 servants were those which necessitated muscular and 
 brute force, and violent physical superiority, for it was 
 precisely by their physical supremacy and warlike gifts 
 that aristocrats arose. The share of intelligence in 
 mastering men began with the rise to power of the clergy. 
 It may even be said that the clergy were the first thinkers, 
 and as such were at first reviled by the strong men and 
 the warriors. . . . The clergy, however, with their 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 21 
 
 cunning, their indirect and equivocal manners, and the 
 seduction of their spirituality, knew how to possess them- 
 selves of power as well as the fierce aristocrats, by whom, 
 although at first looked upon with suspicion, they were at 
 length considered almost as equals. The succession of these 
 stages appears to be an inherent rhythm in human society, 
 and the effect of laws which are to be found identically 
 the same almost everywhere, for we observe the same 
 phenomena in the East and particularly in India. Thus 
 Indian tradition speaks of a terrible battle which took place 
 between the Brahmans the higher orders of the clergy 
 and the ancient race of warriors, although both classes sprang 
 from the nation of Aryan conquerors which descended into 
 India and there founded their civilisation. What is even 
 more noteworthy is that this battle between the religious 
 and aristocratic classes ended in the defeat, even in the 
 annihilation, of the latter ; but after a short time the priests 
 saw that they had committed a grave error, and were com- 
 pelled to gather together the bastard lines of the ancient 
 stock to save Indian society from utter dissolution. 1 
 
 Having laid claim to religion and philosophy 
 as their special subjects, the Brahmans lost no 
 time in securing their social supremacy by law. 
 Early legal Brahmanical writings are found in 
 the Vedas ; and about 400 B.C. and 200 A.D. 
 they formulated their code of laws in two 
 great digests, upon which all later Hindoo 
 jurisprudence has been founded. The first of 
 these is the law book of Manu, and shows us 
 the social organisation of the Brahmans shortly 
 after their supremacy in the community had been 
 undisputedly made to prevail. The Brahmans, 
 
 1 Dr L, G. Sera ; On the Tracks of Life, chap, ix, 
 
22 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 indeed, claimed Divine origin for these laws, 
 and ascribed their written form to Manu, the first 
 Aryan man, who had lived some 30,000,000 
 years before. In reality, however, the laws of 
 Manu are but an attempted codification of 
 the customs of the Brahmans in Northern India, 
 handed down orally through generations, and 
 finally condensed into a written form. 
 
 The second great digest is that of Yajna- 
 valkya. It represents the legal side of the 
 great controversy between Brahmanism and 
 Buddhism, when the latter faith had dislodged 
 the former in many parts of India. 
 
 In both codes we find three great divisions 
 ofjjiadoojaw. The first applies to djomestic 
 matters and the righits and duties of the 
 various castes ; the second relates to the ad- 
 ministration of justice ; and the third to 
 
 religious observances. It is obvious that the 
 Brahmans, although professing to codify cer- 
 tain hitherto unwritten usages of the race, 
 took care to carry out the task in such a way 
 as to assure their own predominance. The 
 exact boundaries of the castes are clearly 
 specified. Each has certain hereditary duties 
 allotted to it, and intermarriage between them 
 is prohibited. It is hardly necessary to add 
 that the Brahmans reserve for their own caste 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 23 
 
 the sole spiritual power in the commonwealth. 
 Nevertheless, from the penalties prescribed in 
 the codes, it is apparent that even in early 
 times there were illicit connections between the 
 castes by marriage. Provision is also made 
 for " mixed " castes and tribes, so that the four 
 great divisions Brahmans, warriors, husband- 
 men, serfs occasionally encroached upon one 
 another. The lowest caste, or Sudras, hope- 
 lessly cowed down for generations, never made 
 any attempt to rise from its state of servitude ; 
 but there appear to be many instances of 
 courageous and wealthy men of the third caste 
 becoming members of the warrior caste, and 
 it would likewise seem that the Brahmans 
 occasionally admitted recruits from the warrior 
 caste immediately below them. The Brahmans 
 owed their constantly increasing power to the 
 fact that they not only held the sacred books of 
 the race, but, in addition, monopolised philo- 
 sophy and science. For centuries they were 
 the only teachers, and even the secular or f ' pro- 
 fane " literature had its origin among them. 
 
 It must not be assumed that the English 
 occupation of India and the consequent different 
 trend given to education, or the Buddhistic 
 conquest a century or so before the Christian 
 era, had any effect in undermining the authority 
 
24 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 of the Brahmans. Their power was succes- 
 sively assailed by the rise of the Buddhists, 
 the Greek invasion, the Mohammedan invasion, 
 and the English occupation, but it was never 
 altogether taken away from them. Buddhism, 
 as will be seen in another chapter, was at one 
 time spread throughout India, but, as its 
 missionaries gradually made their way further 
 afield to Thibet, China, Burmah, and Japan 
 their faith seemed to leave India with them, 
 and Brahmanism regained the ascendency which 
 it still holds. True, Buddhism left its traces, 
 and modern Hinduism is partly an amalgama- 
 tion of both religions, but the essential principles 
 of the Brahmanical learning are still respected 
 and followed. And this long-enduring power 
 is chiefly the result of the plasticity of the law 
 codes, and the subtlety with which the priests 
 applied them. As the Brahmans multiplied 
 and moved with the other divisions of the 
 tribes throughout India, they brought their 
 codes with them and established them on the 
 conquered nations in much the same way as 
 the Romans established not only their laws but 
 their language also. In many instances, how- 
 ever, it was found necessary to adapt the formal 
 digest to suit local conditions, and the codes 
 fortunately lent themselves to such changes. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 25 
 
 The collected writings of the Brahmans, the 
 substance of which was handed down verbally 
 from generation to generation, appear to date, 
 in their written form, from about 3000 B.C. 
 Although, of course, gradually compiled, 
 memorised, and written down by the priests 
 in the first instance, later generations came to 
 look upon them as directly inspired by the 
 gods, nor is this the only comparison which 
 can be made between the writings of the 
 Brahmans and the Old Testament. To all 
 these Hindoo scriptures is applied the collec- 
 tive name Veda (knowledge) or, less commonly, 
 Sruti (revelation). The collections (Sanhitas) 
 of sacred writings (Mantras) comprise (i) the 
 Rig-Veda, (2) the Saman or Samaveda, (3) the 
 Yajush or Yajurveda, (4) the Atharvan or 
 Atharvaveda. To each of these text-books 
 or manuals of religion is attached a series of 
 prose works (Brahmanas), the aim of which is 
 to explain the text-books and the nature of the 
 sacrificial rites mentioned in them. In some 
 cases two much more modern commentaries 
 are added, the Aranyakas and the Upanishads. 
 The Aranyakas do little more than supple- 
 ment the Brahmanas in a few points of little 
 interest to Europeans, but the Upanishads 
 are of somewhat greater value to us, since in 
 
26 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 them we find the fruits of early Indian specu- 
 lation on the problems of the universe. The 
 Saman and the Yajush, dealing mainly with 
 matters of ritual, and containing many quota- 
 tions from the Rig-Veda, are of small importance 
 to all but earnest theologians. 
 
 The hymns of the Rig- Veda, on the other 
 hand, are of very great value. By a careful 
 comparison of the different divisions of this 
 work, philologists have shown conclusively that 
 the interval between the writing of the first 
 poem and the writing of the last cannot be 
 much less than 1000 years. The actual date 
 of the composition of the poems, however, is 
 a question which it is now practically impossible 
 to answer. They were handed down from 
 father to son, from warrior to warrior, from 
 Brahman to Brahman, for many generations, 
 and they serve to a great extent to show us, 
 in view of their descriptive passages, the routes 
 taken by the Aryans in their wanderings 
 throughout India. An analysis of the Iliad and 
 Odyssey is simplicity itself as compared with 
 an analysis of the Rig-Veda. It is easier to 
 ascertain who wrote the Pentateuch than to 
 find out who, at various times and places, drew 
 up the Hindoo scriptures. 
 
 The period of Indian history represented by 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 27 
 
 / 
 
 the Vedas is the period of conquest, and 
 corresponds in point of time to the invasion of 
 the Aryans and the beginning of their long 
 march through the Indian continent, until at 
 last the tribes settled down in various districts. 
 The Rig-Veda speaks of the natives of India 
 as Dasyrus, calling them " bull-faced " men, 
 almost noseless, and with very short arms. 
 These aborigines were probably allied ethno- 
 logically to the Mongolians : in the first place 
 they were yellow-skinned ; * and in the second 
 they possessed the Chinese characteristic of 
 never having evolved the idea of a God. This 
 is a distinct trait of the yellow races, and it is 
 seen in the success which Buddhism met with 
 in China and Japan ; for Buddha, too, makes 
 no mention of God, and the Chinese philo- 
 sophers contented themselves with building 
 up a system of morals on a purely rationalistic 
 basis. 
 
 With people like these, it was but natural 
 that the Aryans should have nothing to do. 
 The white conquerors were proud of their 
 intellectual and physical superiority, and to 
 such an extent did they leave their traces on 
 India that, for sixty centuries, down to the 
 
 1 A few of the northern aboriginal tribes seem to have bee|Kf a 
 yellowish-black colour ; in the centre and south they were quite yellow. 
 
28 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 present day, we find that the word Arya always 
 connotes nobleness and pre-eminence. It re- 
 appears another tribute to the spread of the 
 race in the German Ehre (honour, nobleness), 
 which forms part of the name of the German 
 warrior whom the Romans found so redoubt- 
 able an antagonist, Arminius, i.e., Ehrmann, a 
 man of honour. The Aryans, not being 
 afflicted with the Christian disease of humility, 
 which is philosophically a sin and riot a virtue, 
 made no secret of the fact that they looked 
 upon themselves as the salt of the earth far 
 excellence. " The Pure," " the White Race," 
 "the Sons of Light/' " the Noble Ones," are 
 a few of the terms by which they designated 
 themselves, as we see by the literary works 
 which have come down to us. 
 
 When we come to analyse the hymns, we 
 find that the poetry of the Rig- Veda deals to 
 a great extent with the ordinary life of the 
 Aryans themselves. But, besides the recital 
 of material facts, these works present us with a 
 mass of symbolic conceptions. We find in the 
 Rig-Veda a description of the places where the 
 hymns were first sung (an invaluable guide in 
 tracing the progress of the race), stories of 
 natural phenomena, of the march of the con- 
 querors through India, in spite of the resistance 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 29 
 
 of the aborigines, of birth, marriage, death 
 and burial ; and a fairly complete account of 
 the Brahman cultus. We learn that the 
 primitive Aryans lived under patriarchal rule, 
 that they did not build towns, but led a 
 wandering life with their herds of cattle, and 
 that in times of danger they combined their 
 forces to repel any common enemy. The 
 father was the master of the household, his 
 wife was his property : there was most de- 
 cidedly no trace of a women's suffrage move- 
 ment, and there were no 4f rights of man." 
 The caste system had not developed to a very 
 large extent when the early poems of the Rig- 
 Veda were being written, and the head of the 
 family was likewise its priest. 
 
 The form of worship was simple enough. 
 Two pieces of wood were rubbed together ; a 
 fire was lighted ; and a sacrifice of malted liquor 
 and bread was offered up on a rude altar. This 
 simple ceremony was performed thrice daily 
 at sunrise, noon, and sunset. The Vedas in- 
 dicate that for a long time the Aryans possessed 
 a kind of naturalistic religion which confined 
 itself to invoking the forces of Nature : in other 
 words, they were polytheists. Fire was wor- 
 shipped under the name of Agni (observe the 
 close connection with the Latin ignis), the sky 
 
30 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 was adored as Indra (the god of rain), the sun 
 as Surya, water as Varuna. For the Aryans 
 the hymn was always a prayer. " It would 
 appear/' says the great Orientalist, Emile 
 Burnouf, " that the prayer uttered from their 
 hearts, of which the hymn was the outward 
 expression, not only exercised its action on the 
 variable movements of the rain and winds, but 
 even accompanied and brought about the most 
 constant and regulated natural phenomena." 
 Lafont compares this with the Christian 
 "rogations," and is not alone in thinking 
 that they spring from the same belief. 
 
 " Our ancestors moulded the forms of the 
 gods as the workman fashions a piece of iron," 
 we read in the Vamadeva, startlingly clear proof, 
 which the Brahmans afterwards kept out of 
 sight as much as possible, of the terrestrial and 
 non-supernatural origin of the gods and the 
 god-idea. During long centuries, Vedism, to 
 use the term now generally applied to the 
 religion of the Vedas, slowly developed into a 
 more deeply metaphysical faith and finally into 
 Brahmanism. The great distinction is the 
 fact that in time it came to be recognised that, 
 in addition to a number of inferior deities, 
 there was one supreme god, Brahma, and all 
 Indian polytheism was sublimated in him. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 31 
 
 The Indian mind, however, could not conceive 
 of a single omnipotent god such as the Semitic 
 Jehovah, and it was not long before the one 
 superior Hindoo deity became pantheistic. 
 Brahma was seen in everything in an idol, in 
 a tree, in a sword. The one great step had 
 been taken in the development of Hinduism : 
 there was one recognised god, Brahma, where 
 there had formerly been twenty, and the highest 
 caste, the Brahmans, were his interpreters and 
 the keepers of his sacred books. With this 
 conception once definitely established, there 
 began a magnificent period of development. 
 From this epoch, the beginnings of which may 
 safely be placed at 3000 B.C., we have the 
 splendid poems of the Mahabharata and the 
 Ramayana ; the lore of centuries, including 
 the Vedic hymns, was put into written form ; 
 laws were coded ; the Indian drama was slowly 
 formed, and a school of lyric poetry arose. 
 
 This great literary development was only 
 possible, of course, when the intellectual power 
 of the community was concentrated in the 
 Brahmans, and to some extent also the 
 warriors. The first two castes, even though 
 weighed down under the load of a nihilistic 
 religion, were able to display their creative 
 faculty in spite of their pessimism, while the 
 
32 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 lower castes had no right to an opinion on 
 any subject at all. The Brahmans recognised 
 clearly enough that, no matter how the lower 
 classes of a society were " educated " in what 
 would correspond to a modern board-school, 
 they were unable, on account of their low 
 descent (like our own lower classes) to enter 
 into the lofty spirit of the nobler castes. To a 
 modern philosophical enquirer, unbiassed by 
 democratic heresies, this was a right and 
 proper course to pursue ; for there is no 
 reason why the children of the working-classes 
 (the modern serf caste) should be provided 
 with free schools in which to acquire an ex- 
 ceedingly superficial knowledge of subjects 
 that will never be of the slightest use to them 
 in their journey through the world. The 
 modern school of continental thought clearly 
 recognises that the world has only one real 
 " use " for the serf caste, whether they are 
 plainly called serfs or disguise themselves as 
 " noble sons of toil," or " honest workmen," 
 and that is that they shall be employed as 
 the basis of servitude upon which a noble and 
 aristocratic culture may be founded. The 
 Brahmans saw this, so did the pre-Platonic 
 philosophers, and so also did Aristotle. The 
 final touch of modern anarchy is shown by the 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 33 
 
 fact that in the " civilised " countries of the 
 West the dregs of society are permitted to rule 
 :he whole community ; for the principle of 
 government is one man one vote, and it follows 
 that the uneducated riff-raff must inevitably 
 outnumber the cultured few. Parasites are 
 ilways fecund. Little wonder that the better- 
 educated classes of Indians protest emphatically 
 igainst the introduction of these revolutionary 
 r orms of government into their country, and 
 :hat the Chinese and Japanese look with 
 ustifiable suspicion on all u foreign devils/' 
 
 In dealing with Hinduism or Brahmanism it 
 ,s almost an impossible task to disentangle and 
 to bring into some sort of order the confused 
 mass of Indian gods, demons, deified mortals, 
 household gods, local gods, tribal gods, and so 
 Dn. Theoretically a Hindoo is one who 
 believes in the Brahmanic scriptures as ex- 
 pounded for centuries by the Brahmans. This 
 teaching was influenced to some extent by 
 Buddhism and later on by Mohammedanism, 
 not to speak of the natural changes which one 
 would expect to find in any religion which had 
 lasted for from four to five thousand years. It 
 
 may be convenient to take the three periods 
 c 
 
34 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 into which Hinduism is generally divided, viz., 
 Vedic, Epic, and Puranic. What we know of 
 the first period is learnt from the Vedas, of the 
 second from the two great epic poems, the 
 Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and of the 
 third from certain theological works known as 
 Puranas or Tantras. Amongst the numerous 
 deities referred to in the Vedas may be 
 mentioned Agni, the god of fire, lightning, 
 and the sun ; Indra, the god of the firmament ; 
 Varuna, who corresponds in general to the 
 Greek Uranus, and Soma, who corresponds to 
 Bacchus. We also find the Maruts, or winds, 
 and Ushas, the dawn. 
 
 Besides being the god of wine, Soma is also 
 the name given to the juice of the soma plant. 
 In the early stages of Vedism this juice seems 
 to have been the sole sacrifice offered up by 
 the Aryans, and it has been ingeniously con- 
 jectured that, having at first been the object 
 with which the deities were propitiated, it was 
 afterwards deified itself. Soma is conceived of 
 as a powerful deity who inspires men to deeds 
 of arms, as well as being the bestower of health, 
 and one who assists his worshippers against 
 their enemies ; witness the Rig-Veda : 
 
 This Soma is a god ; he cures 
 The sharpest ills that man endures. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 35 
 
 He heals the sick, the sad he cheers, 
 He nerves the weak, dispels their fears, 
 The faint with martial ardour fires, 
 With lofty thoughts the bard inspires, 
 The soul from earth to heaven he lifts 
 So great and wondrous are his gifts. x 
 
 While the worship of Soma was associated 
 chiefly with Bacchanalian feasts, a perusal of 
 the Vedic hymns shows the high state of 
 culture at which even the primitive Aryan 
 settlers in India had arrived, and the researches 
 into the mysteries of the creation which they 
 had begun to make. Take, for example, the 
 hymn from the Rig-Veda addressed to Varuna, 
 excellently translated by Muir : 
 
 He, righteous Lord, the sceptre wields, 
 
 Supreme, of universal sway ; 
 
 His law both men and gods obey ; 
 To his decree the haughtiest yields. 
 
 He spread the earth and water waste ; 
 He reared the sky, he bade the sun 
 His shining circuit daily run ; 
 
 In him the worlds are all embraced. . . . 
 
 The path of ships across the sea, 
 
 A soaring eagle's flight he knows, 
 The course of every wind that blows, 
 
 And all that was or is to be. 2 
 
 1 J. Muir : Translations from the Fedas. 
 
 2 Muir, //</., p. 20, from Rig-Veda, xxv. 7, 9, 1 1. Cf. Proverbs 
 xxx. 1 8 ff. : " There are three things which are too wonderful for 
 me. . . . The way of an eagle in the air ; the way of a serpent upon 
 a rock ; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea. . . ." 
 
36 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 To thoughtful men who truth discern, 
 And deeply things divine explore, 
 The god reveals his hidden lore ; 
 
 But fools -his secrets may not learn. I 
 
 Part of the prose form of this has been given 
 by Petersen, in his selections from the Vedic 
 Hymns : 
 
 Though we break thy law daily, men as we are, O 
 God Varuna : 
 
 Yet give us not over to the deadly stroke of our enemy ; 
 give us not over to the wrath of our foe. 
 
 Varuna knows the way of the birds that fly in the air ; 
 he knows the way of the ship on the sea : 2 
 
 He knows the track of the wide, high, and great wind : 3 
 he knows them that sit thereon. 4 
 
 My prayers go up to him like kine to their pasture- 
 lands, seeking him whose eyes are over all. 5 
 
 Come now and let us talk together : here me call, O 
 Varuna, and to-day have mercy on me : I am needy, and 
 call upon thee. 6 
 
 Rig- Veda i. 25 (Petersen's ed.). 
 
 The same high standard is maintained in the 
 hymns addressed to Agni, the god of fire : 
 
 Great Agni, though thine essence be but one, 
 
 Thy forms are three ; as fire, thou blazest here, 
 As lightning flashest in the atmosphere, 
 
 In heaven thou flamest as the golden sun. 
 
 'From Rig-Veda 7, Ixi. 5. Cf. Matt. xiii. 11-12, and Prov. xiv. 6 : 
 " A scorner seeketh wisdom and findeth it not : but knowledge is easy 
 to him that understandeth." 
 
 2 Cf. Song of Solomon, v. 10-11, and Prov. xxx. 19. 
 
 3 Cf. St John, iii. 8. 
 
 4 C/i 2 Sam., xxii. and Psalms civ. 3. 
 *Cf. Psalms, xlii. i. 
 
 6 Cf. "Come now let us reason together" (Isaiah i. 18 ; Psalms 
 xl. 17 ; and Psalms Ixxxvi. I.) 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 37 
 
 Sprung from the mystic pair, by priestly hands l 
 In wedlock joined, forth flashes Agni bright ; 
 But oh, ye heavens and earth, I tell you right 
 
 The unnatural child devours the parent brands. 
 
 But Agni is a god ; we must not deem 
 
 That he can err, or dare to reprehend 
 
 His acts, which far our reason's grasp transcend ; 
 
 He best can judge what deeds a god beseem. 2 
 
 Thou art the cord which stretches to the skies, 
 
 The bridge that spans the chasm, profound and vast, 
 Dividing earth from heaven, o'er which at last 
 
 The good shall safely pass to Paradise. 
 
 No god, no mortal is stronger than thee, O mighty 
 Agni : Come, Agni, with the Maruts (Storm-Gods). 
 
 Bright, fearful to look upon, strong rulers, devourers of 
 their foes : Come, Agni, with the Maruts. 
 
 Who sit as gods in the sky on the bright vault of 
 heaven : Come, Agni, with the Maruts. 
 
 Rig- Veda, i. 19 ; (Petersen's ed.). 
 
 Again, compare the prose and poetic form 
 of the hymn to Ushas, the Dawn : 
 
 Hail, Ushas, daughter of the sky, 
 
 Who, borne upon thy shining car, 
 By ruddy steeds from realms afar, 
 
 And ever lightening, drawest nigh : 
 
 Thou sweetly smilest, goddess fair, 
 
 Disclosing all thy youthful grace, 
 Thy bosom bright, thy radiant face, 
 
 And lustre of thy golden hair. . . 
 
 1 This refers to the two pieces of wood from which fire is obtained 
 when they are rubbed together. In the Vedas they are represented as 
 husband and wife (Muir's Note). 
 
 3 A sentiment which may be commended to all democrats. 
 
38 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 But closely by the amorous sun 
 
 Pursued and vanquished in the race, 
 Thou soon art locked in his embrace, 
 
 And with him blendest into one. 
 
 (Muir, Translations from the Vedas, p. 28.) 
 
 " Oh, Ushas, rich in blessing, wise and bountiful, accept 
 the song of thy worshipper : for now thou comest in due 
 time, goddess ever old, ever young, and bringest with 
 thee all good things. Shine out, O Dawn, a goddess and 
 immortal, on thy golden car ; awaken the sweet nature 
 of the birds : let thy well-managed horses, whose splendour 
 spreads all around, bring thee, O golden goddess, to us. 
 
 The holy goddess has been awakened by the songs of 
 the sky, and her glory spreads over the fruitful worlds : 
 the shining Dawn is coming : Agni, go forth to meet her, 
 and ask for us the wealth which we desire." 
 
 Rig-Veda, iii. 6. 
 
 The powers of Indra are shown in the 
 following : 
 
 Thou, Indra, art a friend and brother, 
 A kinsman dear, a father, mother. 
 Though thou hast troops of friends, yet we 
 Can boast no other friend than thee. . . 
 With faith we claim thine aid divine, 
 For thou art ours and we are thine. 
 Thou art not deaf though far away, 
 Thou hearest all, whate'er we pray. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 15-16. 
 
 The fierce god who, so soon as he was born their chief, 
 surpassed all the gods in strength, from before whose 
 breath heaven and earth trembled, he, O men, is Indra : 
 
 Who fixed fast the quivering earth, who made the 
 moving mountains rest, who measured out the wide sky, 
 who propped up heaven, he, O men, is Indra : 
 
 On Whom call heaven and earth, who are joined, and 
 all enemies, high and low : he, O men, is Indra : 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 39 
 
 Heaven and earth bow down before him : at his very 
 breath the hills are in fear. 
 
 Rig-Veda, ii. 12 (Petersen's ed.). 
 
 Beyond a doubt, however, the two most 
 exquisite hymns in Vedic literature are those 
 dealing with the Origin of Things and the 
 Death of the First Man, King Yama. The 
 first hymn, dealing with the creation, probably 
 marks the beginning of philosophic Vedism, 
 when the Hindoos not only worshipped the 
 elementary powers of Nature but were begin- 
 ning to form conceptions of a Supreme Deity, 
 who, in addition to having certain attributes 
 of his own, would be powerful enough to rule 
 all the other gods. 
 
 There then was neither Naught nor Aught, 
 
 No air, no sky beyond. 
 What covered all ? where rested all ? 
 In watery gulf profound. 
 
 Nor death was then, nor deathlessness, 
 
 No change of night and day. 
 That One breathed calmly, self-sustained : 
 
 Naught else beyond It lay. 
 
 Who knows, who ever told, from whence 
 
 This great creation rose ? 
 No gods had then been born then who 
 
 Can e'er the tale disclose ? 
 
 Whence sprang this world, and whether framed 
 
 By hand divine or no, 
 Its Lord in Heaven alone can tell 
 
 If even He can show. Muir, Ibid,, p. 36. 
 
40 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 The second poem shows a still later develop- 
 ment : 
 
 To great King Yama homage pay, 
 Who was the first of men that died, 
 That crossed the mighty gulf and spied 
 
 For mortals out the heavenward way. 
 
 No power can ever close the road 
 
 Which he to us laid open then, 
 
 By which in long procession men 
 Ascend to his sublime abode. 
 
 By it our fathers all have passed ; 
 
 And that same path we too shall trace, 
 
 And every new succeeding race 
 Of mortal men, while time shall last . . . 
 
 First must each several element 
 
 That joined to form thy living frame 
 Fly to the regions whence it came, 
 
 And with its parent source be blent. 
 
 Thine eye shall seek the solar orb 
 Thy life breath to the wind shall fly, 
 Thy part ethereal to the sky ; 
 
 Thine earthly part shall earth absorb. 
 
 Thy unborn part shall Agni bright 
 With his benignant rays illume, 
 And guide it through the trackless gloom 
 
 To yonder sphere of life and light. 
 
 Muir, Ibid., p. 32. 
 
 The translator compares Euripides (Supp. 
 532/0 : 
 
 'tKoidrov iig rb 
 ' Evravd' awtXQsiv, frvtvpa, fjt,sv vpbs aidtpa, 
 Tb ffua d' i/s qv, 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 41 
 
 ( c< But each element of the body has departed 
 to the quarter whence it came, the breath to 
 the other, the body itself to the earth.") 
 
 After this we come to the period of the 
 Epics and Puranic philosophy. This period 
 may be said to witness the early development 
 of the six orthodox systems of Indian Philo- 
 sophy, mentioned in a subsequent chapter, and 
 doubtless also the Bhagavad-Gita, which will 
 be referred to shortly. This period is chiefly 
 noted for the rise of two gods to the highest 
 rank, viz., Vishnu and Siva, who with Brahma 
 form the Hindoo Tramurit, or Triad. These 
 three gods are usually represented as one body 
 with three heads. In the middle is that of 
 Brahma, at its right of Vishnu, and at its left 
 that of Siva. The symbol of this triad is the 
 mystic syllable OM. This is a Sanskrit word 
 which acquired much importance in the early 
 development of the Hindoo religion. While 
 at first simply meaning assent or solemn affirma- 
 tion, it later became an auspicious word of 
 prayer which had to be uttered by the teachers 
 before beginning to read the sacred writings. 
 At length it came to be looked upon as the 
 abbreviated method of naming the Hindoo 
 Trinity, without taking the trouble to repeat 
 the names of three gods. The syllable was 
 
42 RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES 
 
 even adopted by the Buddhists, and forms the 
 first word of the prayer which is taught to 
 Buddhist children, but which no one has yet 
 succeeded in interpreting " Om Mani Padme 
 hum/' 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Later Brahmanism The Bhagavad-Gita Krishna 
 Development of Krishnaism Krishna and the New 
 Testament Religious system of the Bhagavad-Gita 
 Chandals Pariahs. 
 
 ONE of the most popular books in India, the 
 Bhagavad-Gita, is read by practically all castes 
 and creeds of Hindoos ; for it forms the basis 
 of popular Hinduism modern Hinduism 
 being a corrupt form of the ancient Vedism, 
 influenced to some small extent by the cult of 
 the Buddhists. The word " Bhagavad-Gita " 
 means " The Song of the Adored One " or the 
 "Divine Lay/' Bhagavad, "the Adored One," 
 being a term applied to Krishna, when he 
 is identified with the deity hence the expres- 
 sion " Krishnaism/* which is so often used 
 when speaking of the faith outlined in the 
 Bhagavad-Gita. Although nominally a part 
 of the epic poem, the Mahabharata, there is no 
 connecting-link between the Bhagavad-Gita 
 and the other works which go to make up 
 this long epic. Modern critics are therefore 
 inclined to believe that it was added at a 
 relatively late date to give it the authority of 
 divine inspiration and antiquity. The name of 
 
 43 
 
44 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 the author is not known ; but the book was 
 probably written or, at all events, parts were 
 added to it about the first century of our era. 
 Many of the thoughts and ideas in it are to 
 be found in the New Testament, from which 
 some scholars have concluded that the later 
 additions to the work were taken from the 
 Christian gospels ; though others, with much 
 more evidence to justify their views, hold that 
 parts of the New Testament were borrowed 
 from the Bhagavad-Gita. Krishna says, for 
 example : " Whatever thou doest, whatever 
 thou eatest, whatever thou sacrificest, whatever 
 thou givest away, whatever mortification thou 
 performest, do all as if to me" (ix. 27), with 
 which compare i Cor. x. 31: "Whether 
 therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye 
 do, do all to the glory of God." Again, 
 Krishna says : " I am the beginning, the 
 middle, the end, the eternal time, the birth, 
 the death, of all/' Compare this with Christ's 
 words in Revelation i. 17-18 : "And when I 
 saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he 
 laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, 
 Fear not ; I am the first and the last : I am he 
 that liveth and was dead ; and, behold, I am 
 alive for evermore, Amen, and have the keys 
 of hell and of death/' c< Be not sorrowful ; 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 45 
 
 from all thy sins I will deliver thee," says 
 Krishna. " Be of good cheer ; thy sins be 
 forgiven thee," we read in Matt. ix. 2. 
 Then, too, the transfiguration of Krishna in 
 the eleventh book of the Bhagavad-Gita is 
 described in terms not unlike those used in 
 connection with the Transfiguration of Christ. 
 Another remarkable coincidence is Krishna's 
 description of Heaven : " In which neither sun 
 nor moon has need to shine ; for all the lustre 
 it possesses is mine." The heaven described 
 in Revelation xxi. 23, is a city which "had no 
 need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine 
 in it ; for the glory of God did lighten it." 
 
 Since the main theme of the Mahabharata is 
 the war between the Indian tribes of the Kurus 
 and Pandus, the author of the Bhagavad-Gita, 
 in order that his poem might appear to form 
 an integral part of the great epic, began it with 
 a description of the battlefield and the warriors. 
 It is worthy of note that the scene of the 
 struggle is laid at Kurukshetra, east of the 
 Jumna, and in the upper part of the district 
 called Doab, the capital of which was 
 Hastinapura, identified with the modern Delhi 
 in other words, it was at that time one of 
 the strongholds of Buddhism. The opening 
 scene of the poem is the battlefield, and long 
 
46 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 colloquies take place among the leaders to put 
 the reader in possession of the rather compli- 
 cated births, deaths and intermarriages leading 
 up to the main theme. Another New Testa- 
 ment analogy occurs in these preliminary 
 speeches ; for some Indian Herod is described 
 as having put to death all the first-born in a 
 certain district. Then the two principal 
 personages are introduced, Krishna and his 
 disciple Arjuna, and their subsequent dialogue 
 develops the conception of the supreme deity, 
 Krishna himself being, broadly speaking, the 
 god turned man who created the world. 
 
 Krishna, according to the Bhagavad-Gita, is 
 the supreme god. He is above all other gods, 
 such as Brahma, Vishnu and Siva : further, he 
 is the <{ only existence, the only real substance 
 of ail things/' " I am the cause of the pro- 
 duction and destruction of the whole uni- 
 verse." " There exists nothing superior to 
 me." "I am the origin of all gods, the 
 great Lord of the world without beginning/* 
 " I am the eternal seed of all things that 
 exist." " I have established and continue to 
 establish the universe by one portion of myself." 1 
 On the other hand the Vishnu-Purana, one 
 
 1 I quote these senten from Maurice Phillips' The Bhagavad-Gita. 
 Madras, 1893. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 47 
 
 of the sacred books of the Hindoos, represents 
 Krishna from two aspects : (i) as a warrior- 
 king ; and (2) as the incarnation of Vishnu, 
 although in the course of the book Krishna 
 explicitly claims superiority over Vishnu. As 
 a boy, it appears, Krishna was very unruly, and 
 many of his pranks remind us of the story of 
 Hercules and the serpents. Later on he urged 
 the cowherds to leave off worshipping Indra, 
 the god of rain, and to worship the cows which 
 supported them, instead of the grass on the 
 mountain that supported the cows. Angered 
 at this, Indra opened the gates of heaven and 
 would have deluged the whole earth, had not 
 Krishna lifted the mountain, Govardhana, and 
 held it above his head like an umbrella. Later 
 events in his career include his marriage with 
 16,000 women, by whom he had 180,000 sons, 
 an attack on the gods, whom he defeated, and 
 the destruction of the city of Benares, after 
 which latter feat he was accidentally shot dead 
 by a hunter in somewhat similar circumstances 
 to those in which William Rufus met his fate. 
 Such was Krishna the warrior, and in the 
 minds of the devout he is always distinguished 
 by the qualities of Vishnu, which, it may be 
 added, was formerly one of the names of the sun. 
 According to the Bhagavad-Gita, the 
 
48 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 world is not a creation, but was produced 
 by Krishna from his own nature (Prakriti). 
 He says : " All things exist in me. Supported 
 by my material essence, I cause this entire 
 system of existing things to emanate again and 
 again, without any power of their own, by the 
 power of this material essence. When a 
 devotee recognises the individual essence of 
 everything to be comprehended in one and to 
 be only an emanation from it, he the^- attains 
 to the supreme spirit. Earth, water, fire, 
 wind, ether, heart, intellect, and egoism ; into 
 these eight components is my nature (Prakriti) 
 divided. This nature is an inferior one ; but 
 learn my superior nature other than this, of a 
 vital kind, by means of which this universe is 
 sustained. Understand that all things are pro- 
 duced from this latter, or higher, nature." In 
 its complete development the doctrine adds 
 fifteen component parts to the eight mentioned 
 above, designating the inferior nature as 
 avyakta, or non-developed matter, which is 
 turned into vyakta, or developed matter, by 
 the superior nature. 
 
 Such is a brief outline of the explanation of 
 the origin of the world given in the Bhagavad- 
 Gita, but it must be remembered that almost 
 as many Indian commentaries have been written 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 49 
 
 upon it as on the New Testament, and to as 
 little purpose. 
 
 Man, according to this Hindoo Bible, is com- 
 posed of an eternal immortal soul, an emanation 
 from Krishna's superior nature, and of a 
 mortal and perishable body, derived from 
 Krishna's inferior nature. The soul is subject 
 to transmigration from body to body (as in 
 Buddhism or Brahmanism) until it is finally 
 absorbed again into Krishna's " essence/' which, 
 of course, is but another conception of Nirvana. 
 The only real existence is spirit, which is 
 eternal. What we call matter does not exist 
 at all ; it is only the delusion of Maya, the 
 mystic power by which Krishna, the supreme 
 god, has created an ephemeral world, which 
 seems to be but is not. " Krishna " is indestruc- 
 tible. "As a man abandons worn-out clothes 
 and dons new ones, so the soul leaves worn- 
 out bodies and enters other new ones." 
 
 Nature (Prakriti) is composed of three 
 qualities (Gunas), goodness, passion, and ignor- 
 ance (Sattwa, Rajas, and Tamas), and the soul, 
 being united with nature, comes under their 
 influence. Hence these qualities mentioned 
 unite the soul with illusion and bring about 
 transmigration. And God (Krishna) is respon- 
 sible for all our actions, good or evil ; for "all 
 
50 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 qualities (Gunas), whether goodness (Sattwa), 
 passion (Rajas), or ignorance and darkness 
 (Tamas) proceed from me." Thus is the 
 question of free-will disposed of. 
 
 The caste system is divine according to the 
 teaching of the Bhagavad-Gita ; u Krishna is 
 the creator of the institution of the four castes 
 according to the distribution of natural quali- 
 ties and actions. The Brahman has a pre- 
 ponderance of goodness, the Kshatriya (warrior) 
 of goodness and passion, the Vaisya (i.e., the 
 merchant and husbandmen-class) of passion 
 and darkness (i.e., ignorance), and the Sudra 
 of darkness alone." The actions of the first 
 are knowledge, prayer, inspiration, and self- 
 restraint ; of the second, sovereignty and pro- 
 tection of the people ; of the third, commerce 
 and agriculture ; of the fourth, servitude. 1 
 Such is the system, admirable at all events in 
 theory, of Indian society. The main objection 
 made to it by the Christian missionaries is a 
 characteristic one ; that it is contrary to the 
 " brotherhood of man " and this, in the eyes 
 of a modern thinker, is its chief advantage 
 and salient merit. Men are not born equal, 
 they do not grow up equal, they never become 
 
 1 Maurice Phillips has given the most concise summary of this 
 section of the Bhagavad-Gita in his book already quoted. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 51 
 
 equal ; and a religious system which is based 
 on the equality of mankind is naturally founded 
 on an essential fallacy from the very beginning. 
 To the author of the Bhagavad-Gita, 
 salvation is the release of the soul from 
 the bond of illusory matter and from the 
 influence of the three " qualities'* mentioned 
 above. The best way of effecting this release 
 is by meditation ; a man is to go about his 
 business as usual, but at the same time he 
 should constantly meditate on the supreme 
 being until he is fit to be absorbed into him. 
 The writer of the Bhagavad-Gita endeavoured 
 to reconcile the ascetic Inanayoga of Kapila and 
 the Yoga of Patanjali with action, for the 
 nature of asceticism proved so attractive to the 
 Hindoos that everyone wanted to become an 
 ascetic and thus society for a time threatened 
 to be entirely disorganised. The Bhagavad- 
 Gita shows that it is impossible for a man to 
 live without action, and imposed upon all the 
 castes the obligation of regularly performing 
 their prescribed duties, while at the same time 
 renouncing the world as much as possible. To 
 this end the passions should be subdued, and 
 certain rules are given to show how this may 
 be done : " A devotee should always exercise 
 himself, remaining in seclusion and solitude, 
 
52 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 restraining his thoughts, without indulging 
 hopes and without possessions, keeping a couch 
 for himself in an undefiled spot, not too lofty 
 or too low. Then, fixing his heart on the 
 supreme being, restraining his thoughts, senses, 
 and actions, he should practise devotion for 
 the purification of his soul. Holding his body, 
 head, and neck, all even and immovable, firmly 
 seated ; regarding only the tip of his nose, 
 and not looking round in different directions, 
 the devotee should remain quiet with passion- 
 less soul, free from anxiety, and intent on me 
 [Krishna]. . . . Hear my supreme words, 
 most sacred of all. Thou art very much be- 
 loved of me, and therefore I will tell thee what is 
 good. Place thy affections on me, worship me, 
 sacrifice to me, and reverence me. Seek me as 
 thy refuge, and I will deliver thee from all sin.*' 
 Pantheism, of course, is an essential doctrine 
 of this book. All things are emanations from 
 God (Krishna) : therefore, no matter what things 
 may be worshipped, he is worshipped in them. 
 The teachings, however, apply only to the four 
 castes mentioned, and leave altogether out of 
 account the Pariahs and Chandalas, the outcasts 
 who are altogether beyond the pale. 1 
 
 1 Chandal, or Chandala, is the name of a caste which was said to 
 have sprung from the union of a Sudra man and a Brahma woman. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 53 
 
 Such, then, is a condensed summary of the 
 remarkable Bhagavad-Gita. We may compare 
 it to some extent with the Koran : it was de- 
 vised in a fairly later period of religious history 
 to satisfy the pressing needs of a certain large 
 class of people ; it clearly originated in an aristo- 
 cratic source, as did Mohammed ; written by a 
 man, it was ascribed to, and believed to be 
 the work of, God ; and many of its texts and 
 incidents are taken from older works. But 
 the analogy will not go much further. The 
 Bhagavad-Gita is nihilistic, and the faith out- 
 lined in it suffers from the lack of a single 
 concentrated deity to superintend a host of 
 minor gods. Then again the magnificent 
 fighting spirit of Mohammed is absent, and 
 the glowing Arabic frenzy of the Prophet of 
 Allah is ill-compensated by transmigration, 
 Nirvana, and finally extinction. 
 
 As this was regarded as the worst possible form of pollution, all the 
 descendants of the couple were regarded as outcasts. The Lawg of 
 Manu refer to the Chandal as the lowest of mankind, and ordain that 
 he shall live strictly apart from the four regular castes, his clothes to be 
 those of dead men, and his sole possession dogs and asses. In some 
 places, e.g., Bengal, the Chandal is employed for labouring work, but 
 sleeps and eats by himself, while they are also to be found as palanquin- 
 bearers and gardeners. Pariah is a corruption of the Tamil word 
 Paraiyan, applied to a man practically corresponding to the Sanskrit 
 Chandal. The original occupation of these outcasts was that of beating 
 the parai, or tom-tom, at funerals or other solemn occasions. Chandal 
 must not be confused with Chandel, the name of a Rajput tribe, with 
 Chandeli, a fine sort of cotton cloth, or with Chandla, a small ornament 
 usually worn on the forehead, 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 The rise of Buddhism Religion in theory and practice 
 Birth of the Buddha His early years Studies and 
 temptations His system of propagating the faith 
 Illness and Death Character of the Buddha Euro- 
 pean Influence of Buddhism 
 
 THE position of the Brahman domination about 
 600 B.C. may not unreasonably be compared to 
 that of the Roman Empire in the first century 
 of our era. A superabundance of energy ex- 
 tending over a long period of time seemed to 
 have spent itself, and an age of mediocrity had 
 set in. Life had become more complicated. 
 The beautiful nature-worship of a pagan time 
 had given place to an intricate system of gods. 
 Faith had yielded to cynicism ; an age of 
 creative minds was replaced by an age of com- 
 mentators ; grammarians and pedants had taken 
 the place of poets and dramatists. The spiritual 
 rout of the Roman Empire was completed by 
 the introduction of Christianity, which, acting 
 up to its essential principle of upholding the 
 weak against the strong, overawed the relatively 
 few wealthy and energetic Roman nobles who 
 remained by solemn tales of their eternal dam- 
 
 54 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 55 
 
 nation in the world to come. Women were 
 little by little exalted to the level of men, the 
 slave was as good as his master, the wretched 
 cripple, the imbecile, the dunce, were equal in 
 the sight of God to the strong, the mentally 
 and physically creative, the energetic, and the 
 powerful. 
 
 A somewhat similar narcotic was injected 
 into Brahmanism in the sixth century B.C. 
 True, the Brahman and the Roman noble dif- 
 fered in their vitality, their creativeness, and 
 their outlook on life to an almost infinite extent ; 
 but the Indian system of faith had at all events 
 one enormous advantage : it upheld the caste 
 system under the severest penalties. But for 
 the religious poison which caused the highest 
 caste to look forward to extinction, with the 
 most profound pessimism, as the final boon, 
 the last refuge, it might have been recorded to 
 the credit of the Brahmans that they continu- 
 ously upheld a society which was almost perfect 
 in its organisation. We have the broad basis 
 of servitude, upon which, as Nietzsche justly 
 remarks, all culture must be founded. Next 
 in the scale come the merchants, farmers, and 
 skilled workmen. Then, still ascending, we 
 have the kings and warriors, the ruling and the 
 military caste. But, instead of the highest 
 
56 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 caste of all being creative, constantly engaged 
 in forming fresh moral values, as Nietzsche 
 suggests in Der Antichrist, we have a caste 
 which commits the greatest of crimes by deny- 
 ing life not merely life on this earth, in 
 accordance with Christian moral values ; but 
 all life. There is to be no future existence 
 except in the form of transmigration, and, if 
 our deeds in our present state are " good," we 
 may expect to go through life again in a" better 
 form ; but the ultimate aim held out by the 
 Brahman is utter extinction. We have no 
 soul. We have nothing to look forward to. 
 Life is a burden which it is not worth while to 
 bear ; and our sole aim should be to get entirely 
 rid of it as quickly as we possibly can. 
 
 No religion, of course, works out exactly in 
 practice as it does in theory ; and in spite of 
 all this depressing teaching battles were fought, 
 literature of a sort was gradually formed, and 
 merchants cheated one another just as they 
 do in Christian countries at the present day. 
 Kings and warriors kept clients and followers, 
 and the Brahman himself was often a welcome 
 guest at the table of the great man belonging 
 to the caste immediately beneath him. Certain 
 religious rites had been invented, which, though 
 not obligatory, were held to be efficacious in 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 57 
 
 securing the Hindoo's speedy annihilation. 
 These ceremonies necessitated the presence of 
 representatives of the priestly caste, and, if we 
 may trust the commentators on the Vedas, 
 they were not performed without a series of 
 feasts, extending, in some cases, over three 
 weeks, or without sums of money changing 
 hands. (The analogy in the Roman Catholic 
 religion of paying for masses, which, though 
 not essential, are desirable in order that release 
 from Purgatory may be secured sooner than 
 would otherwise be the case, will at once occur 
 to the reader.) Less elaborate rites were 
 apportioned to the merchant class ; and thus 
 for thousands of years the natural vitality of 
 the race, due, in the first instance to the warrior 
 caste, enabled the development of the tribe to 
 be carried on for many generations. The 
 seizure of the supreme power by the Brahmans, 
 however, gradually checked this development 
 in the course of ages, and it wanted but the 
 overthrow of the caste system to degrade 
 Brahmanism to as low a level as it was possible 
 for it to reach. An assailant of the old order 
 of things was soon destined to appear. 
 
 One of the ruling chieftains of the numerous 
 tribes into which the Aryans were now split 
 up was the Rajah Suddhodana. His people, 
 
58 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 known as the Sakyas, occupied the district of 
 Kapilavastu, not far from Benares. The two 
 principal wives of the Rajah, both of whom 
 were the daughters of a neighbouring 
 chieftain, were long thought to be barren ; 
 but the elder sister, Mahamaya, when just over 
 forty years of age, bore her husband a son. 
 It is related that she was on her way to her 
 parents' home, where she wished to give birth to 
 the child, when, as the party halted on the way 
 under the shade of some trees, her son, the 
 future Buddha, and deadly opponent of the 
 Brahmans, unexpectedly came into the world 
 that world and life which he afterwards came 
 to look upon with loathing and contempt, and 
 from which, by diligent study and learning, he 
 endeavoured to save his own and succeeding 
 generations. 
 
 The Lalita-Vistara, an old Sanskrit work 
 containing an account of Buddha's life, gives 
 a long list of the qualities of the teacher's 
 mother ; but these may merely form part of 
 the legends which grew up around his name a 
 few years after his death. " The ravishing 
 wife of Suddhodana," so begins the narrative, 
 " is one of a thousand, for she has attained per- 
 fection. Bewitching the hearts of all who see 
 her, like some queen of an illusive fairyland, 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 59 
 
 she is known as Mahamaya or Maya- Devi, the 
 queen of illusion. Her beauty is perfect, like 
 that of a child of the gods ; the shape of her 
 body is faultless. She is carried away by 
 affection, and at times aroused with anger ; 
 but throughout she remains ever amiable, 
 sweet, just, and good. Modest and chaste, 
 she observes the Law. She exhibits neither 
 pride nor frivolity ; lying and deceit are un- 
 known to her. The faults that may easily be 
 found in other women do not exist in her. 
 She practises the penances called for by the 
 Law. With the consent of the king, she has 
 obtained the privilege of not submitting to 
 sexual intercourse with him for the period of 
 thirty-two months. . . . No man can look 
 upon this woman with amorous desire ; and on 
 account of the good works of the queen the 
 great family of the king continues to prosper." 
 The qualities ascribed to the mother of 
 Buddha may be compared by the curious with 
 those ascribed five centuries later to the Virgin 
 Mary, and for purposes of comparison a few of 
 the other legends which were circulated con- 
 cerning the Buddha from time to time are well 
 worth giving. One tradition states that the 
 queen died seven days after having given birth 
 to the child, " For alas ! having once been the 
 
60 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 primary dwelling-place of the Buddha, the 
 good queen's body was too sacred a place to 
 bear another human burden on any future 
 occasion." The young prince was said to be 
 provided with the thirty-two characteristics of 
 a great man, and with the eighty secondary 
 characteristics. A few of these are chronicled 
 m the Lalita-Fistara. " The young Siddhartha 
 possesses a large skull. His forehead is broad, 
 his eyes dark. His forty teeth are equal and 
 beautifully white, his skin is fine and of the 
 colour of gold. His limbs are like those of 
 Ainaya, the king of the gazelles ; his hands 
 and feet are small and delicate. His head is 
 well shaped ; his hair black and curly." 
 Other legends, obviously inventions based on 
 some greatly exaggerated truth, inform us 
 that the Buddha was born with a full set of 
 teeth, and that he spoke from his mother's 
 womb seven days before birth. 
 
 The child's family name was Gautama, by 
 which the saint was usually known in his life- 
 time, the name Siddhartha mentioned in the 
 tradition given above being prefixed by the 
 family. We also find him referred to as Sakya- 
 muni, from the tribe over which his father 
 ruled. When nineteen years of age Gautama 
 married his cousin Yasodhara, and for several 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 61 
 
 years, in the intervals of deep studies, lived the 
 customary life of pleasure usually associated 
 in the western mind with Oriental princes. 
 Then we come to the well-known anecdote 
 concerning the awakening of his religious 
 instinct. We learn that, in his thirtieth year, 
 as he was being driven through his estates, he 
 caught sight of an infirm man bent down by 
 extreme old age. On another occasion, soon 
 afterwards, he beheld a man who was suffering 
 from some loathsome disease, and a few 
 months later his attention was drawn to the 
 spectacle of a decomposing corpse. On each 
 occasion his charioteer, a man named Channa, 
 who seems to have been something of a 
 lugubrious philosopher, told him that this was 
 the fate of all living things. Some weeks after 
 having seen the corpse, it is said, he met with 
 an ascetic, who explained to him the ascetic 
 philosophy of the Brahmans. 
 
 There is a certain amount of variation in 
 these anecdotes, numbers of which were invented 
 and circulated about the Buddha from time to 
 time. A few chronicles, for example, add that 
 on the three occasions mentioned above it 
 was really an angel who appeared to Gautama 
 in the guise of an old man, a corpse, etc. 
 The general trend of such stories, however, is 
 
62 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 sufficient to show that, when about twenty- 
 nine or thirty years of age, Gautama's mind 
 was suddenly, or, it may be, gradually, 
 awakened to the influence of religion. When 
 bathing in the river after an earnest conversa- 
 tion with the ascetic Brahman, news was 
 brought to him that his wife had given birth 
 to a son, and he is said to have muttered 
 something about having now a stronger bond 
 to break. During the remainder of the evening 
 he found himself obliged to take part in the 
 rejoicings to which the event gave rise ; but 
 at midnight, having taken a final look at his 
 wife and child, he ordered Channa to saddle 
 his horse. Then, with his charioteer as his sole 
 companion, he left his palace, saying, it is 
 related, that he would not return until he had 
 become the Buddha i.e., the enlightened one. 
 This flight is chronicled as having taken place 
 in midsummer. 
 
 The next event recorded of Gautama is one 
 which cannot fail to remind us of a somewhat 
 similar incident in the New Testament. The 
 Tempter, Mara, appears to him and urges him, 
 with many blandishments and promises, to 
 return. Although the attempt fails, Mara 
 consoles himself with the thought that he will 
 obtain complete control over the prince when 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 63 
 
 the latter is seized with some sensual feeling or 
 angry wish. On the following morning a halt 
 was made on the bank of the Anoma, and here 
 the prince cut off his flowing hair one indica- 
 tion of his high rank and took off his orna- 
 ments, sending them back to his father's palace 
 in charge of his servant Channa, together with 
 his horse. A shrine was afterwards erected at 
 this spot. A visit to two Brahman teachers, 
 Alara and Udraka, followed, and when Gautama, 
 in the course of the seven years prescribed by 
 the custom of the period, had learnt all that 
 was known about Hindoo philosophy, he re- 
 tired to the jungle of Uruvela in the Vindhya 
 mountains and led the life of a strict ascetic 
 for six years. So severe was the treatment he 
 meted out to himself that his fame as an ascetic 
 spread " like the sound of a huge bell suspended 
 in the belfry of heaven." This led to a break- 
 down, and for some time the teacher felt con- 
 strained to live more rationally. 
 
 And now came Gautama's great period of 
 temptation. It lasted less than twenty-four 
 hours ; but the whole event has become almost 
 obliterated under a heap of legends and incred- 
 ible stories. Briefly, Gautama seems to have 
 reasoned with himself in an endeavour to weigh 
 what he had given up, what he had gained by 
 
64 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 it, and whether the one balanced the other. 
 He had lost home, wife, child, wealth, princely 
 rank ; but, although he had almost killed 
 himself by severe penance, deep studies, and 
 intense thinking, he had not yet attained to 
 the wisdom which raised man above the gods. 
 Even five young disciples who had joined him 
 in the jungle left him when his health broke 
 down. The Brahman philosophy had taught 
 him that everything the earth itself, and every 
 man and animal on it carried within itself 
 the germs of bitterness and impermanency ; but 
 now he felt the want of the power and comforts 
 he had given up, and he began to doubt the 
 value of what he had actually accomplished. 
 All this meditation took place on the banks of 
 the Nairanjara, under a tree which was known 
 long afterwards as the sacred Bo tree, or tree 
 of wisdom. As the sun was setting, how- 
 ever, the religious instinct of the man pre- 
 vailed, and he decided against the joys of the 
 earth. 
 
 Henceforth Gautama's way of life was 
 definitely established : when he rose he was 
 the Buddha, the Illuminated ; and it was now 
 his task to spread among the rest of mankind 
 the happiness he had acquired. If the traditions 
 recorded in the Buddhist writings can be trusted, 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 65 
 
 Gautama was at this period a little over forty 
 years of age. 
 
 As might have been expected, a crop of 
 legends grew up around the subject of the 
 temptation to which the Buddha had been 
 exposed under the Bo tree ; and Mara, the 
 supreme tempter, was said to have made 
 several final efforts to seduce him from his 
 high ideal. This led to as great an explosion 
 of wrath as a Buddhist could be expected to 
 reach. " Soon shall I vanquish thee ! " cries 
 the saint ; " the passions are thy first army, dis- 
 content the second, hunger and thirst the third, 
 avarice the fourth. Idleness and indolence form 
 the fifth ; fear is the sixth, doubt the seventh, 
 anger and hypocrisy the eighth. Ambition 
 and praise, the admiration of men, falsely- 
 acquired renown, glorification of self and de- 
 preciation of others : all these combine to form 
 the allied forces of the demon, and this is thine 
 army that conquers the world. But I will 
 crush it by means of wisdom, as a lump of clay 
 crumbles to pieces when washed by the rolling 
 
 stream." 
 
 Having tried all other means in vain, Mara 
 as a last resort sends a bevy of young women, 
 ideally beautiful, to surround the saint and 
 tempt his virtue, in the hope that, as Gautama 
 
66 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 must be greatly weakened in body and mind 
 by long fasting and meditation, he will yield 
 to feminine charms when all other means of 
 temptation have proved unavailing. The 
 Lalita-Vistara describes at almost wearisome 
 length the beauty of the nymphs, the songs 
 they sing, their dances, and the calm words 
 in which the saint replies to them. " Ah ! 
 between griefs and passions the difference is 
 not great, and the passions are at the roots 
 of all the griefs which little by little destroy 
 contemplation, that supernatural power. Im- 
 possible, say the sages, to satisfy one's desire 
 for women. But I, by means of wisdom, can 
 satisfy this desire in myself and others. The 
 passions, left to themselves, go on increasing, 
 like the thirst of a man who has drunk salt 
 water, and a man who gives himself up to 
 them is useful neither to himself nor to 
 others.'' 
 
 Heedless of the sage's refusal to yield to 
 them, the nymphs continue their song in 
 praise of lust. " What man is there who 
 could refuse to be tempted by so much 
 beauty? Behold our long hair, perfumed 
 by the sweetest scents, our dark eyes, our 
 beautiful teeth, our ornaments of gold . . ." 
 
 But the saint interrupts : " The passions 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 67 
 
 are inconstant and impermanent, like the 
 drop of dew on a blade of grass. Your 
 bodies, beautiful to you, are in my sight 
 unclean and impure, soon to be eaten by 
 worms, filled with grief: while wisdom will 
 assure me all that imperishable dignity held 
 in reverence by the wise." 
 
 The end of this temptation is spoken of in 
 the LaHta-Vistara,) in the very words used by 
 the Buddha himself to his disciple, Ananda. 
 " Since it was impossible for Mara to tempt 
 me with beautiful women, he endeavoured 
 to make me stray from my path by appearing 
 himself in a different form, and trying to 
 make me believe that I had already entered 
 into Nirvana. Standing upright beside me, 
 Ananda, Mara spoke thus : ' Now, O sublime 
 one, enter into Nirvana ! Now has Nirvana 
 come to thee, thou perfect one.' But when 
 I heard these words, O Ananda, I answered : 
 ( I will not enter into Nirvana, O Mara, until 
 1 have gained disciples for myself, and wise 
 monks, who will gradually come to understand 
 my doctrine, and who will be able to spread 
 and propagate in distant lands what they have 
 heard from the lips of their master. Then, 
 O tempter, will I enter into Nirvana, but not 
 before.' " 
 
68 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 After the departure of the angry Mara, the 
 Buddha fell into a reverie on the subject of 
 penance, and was not comforted until the 
 archangel Brahma came and explained away 
 his doubts. We learn, at all events, that he 
 ever afterwards declared to his disciples and 
 followers that such great self-mortification 
 as he had passed through was unnecessary, 
 and that extreme penance was of but little 
 value. Having fasted in the neighbourhood 
 of the Bo tree for seven days and nights, 
 his wants being supplied by the angel Brahma, 
 the Buddha set out to preach his gospel. As 
 might naturally be expected, he met with 
 but poor success at first, but neither the ill- 
 concealed contempt of his former disciples 
 nor the scoffing of his old acquaintances was 
 sufficient to damp his prophetic ardour. 
 
 Having spent some time near Benares and 
 gathered around him fifty or sixty followers, 
 the Buddha fell in with the five disciples who 
 had accompanied him for some time in the 
 jungle. They now rejoined him, with many 
 protestations of devotion, and were selected, 
 together with a few others, to travel through 
 different parts of the country and spread the 
 new teaching. This selection and distribution 
 of disciples was a plan which the Buddha 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 69 
 
 adopted every year, a certain number of the 
 more advanced and intelligent pupils being 
 chosen, specially instructed, and despatched 
 as missionaries to distant towns and provinces. 
 
 After the Buddha had spent a year or two 
 in teaching his new doctrine, it came to the 
 ears of his father the Rajah Suddhodana, that 
 his son had forsaken his ascetic life to become 
 a teacher. He therefore sent for the former 
 prince and begged him to return home. An 
 affecting interview took place on the outskirts 
 of Kapilavastu between Gautama and the 
 various members of his family ; but it ended 
 in the teacher's starting to beg his bread as 
 usual, in accordance with the custom he had 
 laid down for himself. Ashamed of this, the 
 Rajah urgently begged his son to come to 
 the palace, if only to see his wife and child. 
 Apparently this wish was acceded to, and 
 we learn that a pathetic scene took place 
 between Gautama and his wife. The latter, 
 it seems, long afterwards became one of the 
 Buddhist nuns when the founder of the religion 
 was persuaded, somewhat against his own views, 
 to establish such an order for females. 
 
 We do not possess very complete records of 
 what happened at the palace after Gautama's 
 return ; nor, indeed, so far as the development 
 
70 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 of his faith is concerned, is this of very great 
 importance. It would appear that he took 
 full advantage of the liberty offered him to 
 make further converts, including in the 
 number his own son. This greatly distressed 
 his father, who thus saw himself shorn of any 
 hope of a successor to the throne. By way of 
 securing other families from a similar calamity, 
 he obtained an assurance from the Buddha 
 that in future no young person would be 
 admitted to membership of the society without 
 the consent of his parents. 
 
 From this time forward, unfortunately, we 
 have no very connected accounts concerning 
 the future career of the teacher. Several 
 alleged sayings of his have been recorded, and 
 there are numerous anecdotes about him ; but 
 it is now difficult, after the lapse of twenty- 
 four centuries, to distinguish the true from the 
 false, except in a very few cases. These 
 confused accounts, however, grow clearer when 
 we come to the last few weeks of the Buddha's 
 life, though even then little is reported beyond 
 the bare facts. When nearly eighty-two years 
 old (about 420 B.C.), he set out from Pawa to 
 travel to Kusinagara, 120 miles to the north- 
 west of Benares. Several stoppages had to be 
 made on the way, owing to the teacher's 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 71 
 
 declining health, and it was some days before 
 the River Hiranyavati, close to their destina- 
 tion, was reached. Here the party rested 
 again, and Gautama had a long conversation 
 with his disciple Ananda regarding certain 
 rules to be observed by the Society of 
 Buddhists. In the course of this conversation, 
 however, Ananda observed that a brilliant 
 light seemed to be surrounding his master, 
 and a garment of golden cloth offered earlier 
 in the day by another fervent disciple of the 
 Buddha seemed to lose colour by comparison. 
 Astonished, Ananda referred to the phen- 
 omenon, and the sage said quietly : " What 
 you observe is right and proper, Ananda. 
 The Buddha is twice transfigured in his earthly 
 career : once on the evening of the day he 
 attains supremest wisdom, and a second time 
 in the night when he enters into eternal peace. 
 And it is now, Ananda, in the third hour of 
 the night, that the Buddha is going to enter 
 into eternal peace/' During the night, as 
 the teacher lay dying, celestial hymns were 
 heard from afar, and strange forms were 
 visible in the heavens. At the last moment 
 Gautama summoned his disciples, and, finding 
 they had no further questions to ask him, he 
 uttered the words : " Always remember what I 
 
72 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 have told you ; everything that is born is 
 perishable. Endeavour, therefore, to act in 
 such a way as to merit deliverance." These 
 were his last words. When Ananda softly 
 approached the couch to see whether his master 
 slept or lay awake, he found that the Buddha 
 " had fallen into the profound ecstasy of the 
 elect from which no man returns or is born 
 again : no, not one." 
 
 Gautama the Buddha was a man of an un- 
 usually high order of intellect, but his goodness 
 and charity, as Lafont and others have pointed 
 out, far outweighed his merely intellectual 
 qualities. His long years of study and medi- 
 tation led him to the conclusion that penance 
 was useless and that science was available only 
 to a few select minds. Then, with the object 
 of setting common mortals on the road to 
 " salvation " (in the Buddhist sense of this 
 word, i.e., Nirvana, or utter extinction), and of 
 sparing them as much as possible from the 
 sufferings which are necessarily inflicted by life 
 in this world (or in our next existence after 
 our reincarnation), he established his system of 
 morality on the basis of a material life ; the 
 repression of the senses, the purity of body 
 and "soul," and a spirit of universal charity, 
 developing human sensitiveness to the extent 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 73 
 
 of making his followers respect the lives of 
 even the most insignificant animals because, 
 of course, even a mouse or a flea might once 
 have been a fellow-creature, reincarnated in 
 this form owing to his misdeeds in a former 
 life. If, therefore, we do not find the meta- 
 physics of Buddhism developed to the same 
 extent as the metaphysics of Brahmanism, or 
 even of Christianity, we must remember that 
 this is not due to insusceptibility of develop- 
 ment, but merely because the founder of the 
 Buddhist faith paid more attention to certain 
 other qualities which he deemed of greater 
 benefit for the human race. 
 
 Nor does Buddha think it necessary to 
 concern himself about the Cosmos : it is not 
 worth while, in his opinion, trying to find 
 out how the world came into existence. He 
 would sternly restrict himself to an explanation 
 of his belief. a My law is a law of mercy for 
 all. And what kind of a law is this? It is a 
 law under which the very beggars can become 
 saints." (A far cry, this, from the stringent, 
 aristocratic caste system of the Brahmans, who 
 refused to be polluted with the lower orders !) 
 But even the beggar must first show himself 
 capable of self-control. " Let him not despise 
 what he has received, or ever envy others : a 
 
74 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 mendicant who envies others does not obtain 
 peace of mind." ' < f For self is the law of self, 
 self is the refuge of self; therefore curb thy- 
 self as a merchant curbs his horse." 2 
 
 At other times the Buddha's disciples 
 torment him with questions about eternity 
 and definitions of the ego. But he refuses to 
 be drawn. " Why has not the Buddha taught 
 his followers whether the world is finite or 
 infinite, whether the saint continues to live or 
 not in the Beyond ? Because the mere know- 
 ledge of these things does not lead to any 
 progress in sanctity, because such knowledge 
 does not necessarily conduce to spiritual peace 
 and illumination. But the Buddha does teach 
 that which leads to spiritual peace and illumina- 
 tion : he teaches the truth about pain, the truth 
 about the origin of pain, about the suppression 
 of pain, about the path leading to the suppres- 
 sion of pain. Hence, let that which has not 
 been revealed by me remain unrevealed, and 
 that which has been revealed by me remain 
 revealed ! " No explanation of the ego can 
 be had from him. " The mind has come into 
 existence by means of unfathomable mystery, 
 and it is useless to try to discover what this 
 
 1 Dhammapadha : Deal's translation, p. 22. 
 
 2 Ibid., page 24. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 75 
 
 mystery is. The monk who is striving to 
 secure the safety of his soul has something else 
 to do." 
 
 Indeed, this attitude of the teacher partly 
 serves to explain the success of Buddhism 
 among different races. Gautama's aim was 
 to found a practical morality on the basis of 
 material existence and self-control. There are 
 many differences in the principles upon which 
 professedly Buddhistic nations have erected 
 their own religious structure ; but in all cases 
 the faith seems to have exercised a remarkable 
 influence for good in the populations among 
 which it penetrated. The activity of the 
 Buddhist missionaries has only within recent 
 years become properly known. Not long after 
 the master's death earnest disciples were 
 spreading the faith in Thibet. In a generation 
 or two converts had been made in Ceylon, 
 Burmah, China, and Tartary. In later years 
 the Chinese carried the new doctrine into 
 Japan, where, as we shall see, it absorbed the 
 old gods. The activity of these enthusiasts, 
 however, did not end here. With all the zeal 
 and none of the intolerance displayed by the 
 Jesuits after the founding of their order, the 
 Buddhist disciples spread over the known 
 world. The faith was propagated so far away 
 
76 RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES 
 
 as Egypt and Abyssinia ; and Leon de Rosny, 
 Lafont, and other eminent authorities, are 
 inclined to hold that traces of it were found 
 long afterwards among the natives of Mexico. 
 Places so far apart as Australia and the Balkans 
 appear to have fallen under the influence of 
 the Buddhists even so early as the time when 
 Pontius Pilate was just setting out for the East 
 to take up his appointment as fifth Roman 
 Procurator of Judaea and Samaria. 
 
 If the metaphysical part of Buddhism, 
 however, was not fully developed by the 
 founder, there is no doubt that it has exercised 
 a powerful influence on men of different 
 calibre. The " intellectuals " of Siam and 
 Japan look upon Buddhism at the present day 
 as a philosophy rather than as a faith ; but the 
 best-known example of intellectual Buddhism 
 is, of course, the German philosopher, Arthur 
 Schopenhauer. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Buddhism continued. Nirvana Transmigration 
 Commandments for monks and laymen Relics of 
 Buddha Distinction between Buddhism and 
 Christianity King Asoka the Buddhist The Edicts 
 of Asoka Bureaucracy foiled Buddhistic writings. 
 
 ACCORDING to the Buddhist teaching, every- 
 thing corporeal is material. It is, therefore, 
 non-permanent, carrying within itself as it does 
 the elements of dissolution. So long as man is 
 linked to the material world he will be possessed 
 of constantly unsatisfied desires, weariness, 
 pain, and care. All this cannot be overcome 
 by a form of penance which merely punishes 
 the body ; it is a man's evil heart which binds 
 him down to this bodily life. Nor yet does it 
 make much difference if he endeavours to 
 follow a virtuous path ; for a certain proportion 
 of evil is Jeft, and this fact itself ensures that 
 a virtuous man will merely lead a higher form 
 of material life after his re-birth. What is 
 necessary is to free man entirely from all evil, 
 which alone will enable him to attain Nirvana, 
 i.e., complete annihilation. The bases of the 
 Buddhist creed, drawn up by the founder 
 himself, are contained in the " four great 
 
 77 
 
78 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 truths/' which have been summed up by 
 various authorities : 
 
 (1) Misery invariably accompanies existence. 
 
 (2) Every type of existence, whether of 
 
 man or of animals, results from 
 passion or desire. 
 
 (3) There is no freedom from existence 
 
 but by the annihilation of desire. 
 
 (4) Desire may be destroyed by following 
 
 the " eight paths " leading to 
 
 Nirvana. 
 
 These u eight" paths are right views, right 
 feelings, right words, right behaviour, right 
 exertion, right obedience, right memory, and 
 right meditation. The natural state of the 
 individual, as has been mentioned a few pages 
 before, is to be born again and again, each 
 time in a fresh incarnation, but seeing that 
 misery invariably accompanies all existence, 
 the great object of the individual should be 
 to act in such a way in his present life as not 
 to necessitate his being born again. The only 
 thing permanent is the individual's " karma," 
 i.e., his actions and thoughts in this life, which 
 decide which form his incarnation shall take 
 in his future existence. This notion, which 
 is common to Brahraanism and Buddhism, 
 though greatly accentuated in the latter faith, 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 79 
 
 may well explain to us why Eastern peoples, like 
 theHindoos,Chinese,and Japanese, showso little 
 fear of death and set so little value upon life ; for 
 they cherish the belief that the soul, if taken 
 away from its present dwelling, will at once find 
 another, and there is always the possibility that 
 the new one will be better than the old. 
 
 When developing these eight theoretical 
 paths to Nirvana into a set of precepts appli- 
 cable to everyday life, the Buddha looked upon 
 men as being divided into two classes, the 
 monks and teachers (Sramanas) and the laymen 
 engaged in ordinary employment. Although 
 the latter have too many ties to life to secure 
 emancipation from it at the end of their 
 present existence, there are nevertheless certain 
 rules which are binding upon them as well 
 as upon the monks. They may not kill, steal, 
 lie, commit adultery, or become intoxicated. 
 The monks, in addition to obeying these five 
 commandments, must bear in mind five others : 
 to abstain from all food after midday, from 
 songs and dances, etc., from personal adorn- 
 ments, from luxurious couches, and from ac- 
 cepting presents of gold and silver for their 
 personal use. There are also many severe 
 monastic rules. The Buddhist monks must 
 dress in rags, which they must sew together 
 
80 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 themselves, and for a part of the year they 
 are compelled to live in forests, sitting on 
 a carpet under the shadow of a tree, being 
 forbidden by the regulations even to lie down 
 to sleep. They must also exhibit charity, 
 benevolence and kindness to animals. 
 
 Although the Buddha is supposed by his 
 followers to have attained to Nirvana and thus 
 to be no longer in existence, statues of him 
 form the central object of all Buddhist temples. 
 Here he continues to be worshipped, and 
 incense, flowers and fruits are offered to him 
 daily. This does not necessarily mean idolatry 
 of any kind, however, for the disciples of the 
 great teacher never actually looked upon him 
 as a god. Gautama was merely the latest 
 Buddha, the Buddha of the present cycle. It 
 is believed that there were twenty-four Buddhas 
 previously to his appearance on earth, and that, 
 when at the end of the present cycle of 
 existence all things are reduced to their primal 
 elements and another world springs up, a 
 further Buddha will be born to preach the 
 gospel of Nirvana in a new universe. It follows 
 therefore that the service celebrated in the 
 Buddhist temples is not worship in the 
 Christian or Judaic sense of the word, but 
 is merely commemorative, the sight of the 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 81 
 
 numerous relics of the Illuminated One serv- 
 ing as an encouragement for men to follow in 
 the path which he trod centuries ago. Among 
 these relics^ by the way, is said to be one of 
 Buddha's teeth. This is a piece of ivory about 
 an inch long. It is preserved in Ceylon and 
 is very rarely exhibited. 
 
 It is clear from the Buddha's own writings 
 and sayings, and from the traditions which 
 have come down to us respecting him, that 
 his learning, however it may have been ac- 
 quired, was superior to that of most men of 
 his age. His works show traces of profound 
 study ; similes, metaphors, analogies come aptly 
 to him. Whatever the modern philosopher 
 may think of Buddhism as a stage in the 
 solution of world-problems, it must not be 
 overlooked that every religion does not re- 
 present the highest form of a philosophical 
 system, but the lowest form ; for, in order to 
 succeed and gain ground, it must appeal to 
 the unintelligent and unthinking masses. 
 4 * Every law-giver," says Lafont, " must make 
 an abstract of his intelligence and wisdom to 
 find a formula applicable to all, and it is in 
 this sense that he must be judged superior 
 to his doctrine." 
 
 It is easy to see that the salient characteristic of 
 
82 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 Gautama is goodness. Touched by compassion 
 for the misfortunes of humanity, he gave up 
 his role of philosopher and reasoner ; greatly 
 affected by the sight of the low castes, the 
 innumerable woes they had to endure in this 
 life, and their long successions of painful trans- 
 formations in lives to come, this Brahman 
 and prince endeavoured to find a formula 
 which should save all men. In this he bears 
 a striking resemblance to the Christ of five 
 centuries later, and the likeness between the two 
 is increased when we remember that Buddha 
 called round him, not the rich men and the 
 nobles, but the poor and lowly. Unlike Christ, 
 however, Buddha did not openly and covertly 
 appeal to the cupidity of the poor and their 
 envy of the rich, thus starting a class warfare 
 which has endured in Christian countries to 
 this day. It may possibly, for example, be as 
 difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom 
 of heaven as for a camel to pass through the 
 eye of a needle ; but Buddha saw no reason 
 for mentioning this fact and using it as a 
 weapon of religious propaganda. The fewer 
 man's wants, the better, was the doctrine of 
 the Indian teacher, and he preached it with 
 such good effect that the Buddhist monks beg 
 their bread even at the present time, and are 
 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 83 
 
 not permitted to hold any personal property 
 beyond what is absolutely necessary for the 
 purposes of their religion. A state of things 
 in which the Church would be allowed to hold 
 the best of the land, and to play a foremost 
 part in things political in addition to things 
 spiritual, as in modern Spain and mediaeval 
 England, would be impossible under Buddhism. 
 Where spiritual matters are concerned, 
 indeed, the Buddhist is stronger than the 
 Christian. The introduction of a Saviour 
 into a faith to perform tasks for the followers 
 of the faith which they are unable to carry out 
 for themselves, is always a decided symptom of 
 psychological weakness. The Christian cannot 
 " save " himself his salvation can be ensured 
 only through the medium of his Saviour. The 
 Buddhistic doctrine, on the other hand, de- 
 pends entirely on the self-reliance of the man. 
 No outside intervention or pleading is of the 
 slightest avail : the Buddhist must save him- 
 self; he must, and can, attain to Nirvana 
 through his own unaided efforts. This strik- 
 ing distinction between the two beliefs has been 
 clearly summed up by the greatest psychologist 
 and philosopher since Aristotle : 
 
 BUDDHA versus CHRIST. Among the Nihilistic re- 
 ligions, Christianity and Buddhism must always be 
 
84 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 sharply distinguished. Buddhism is the expression of a 
 fine evening, perfectly sweet and mild it is a sort of 
 gratitude towards all that lies hidden, including that which 
 it entirely lacks, viz., bitterness, disillusionment, and re- 
 sentment. Finally, it possesses lofty intellectual love ; it 
 has got over all the subtlety of philosophical contradictions, 
 and is even resting after it, though it is precisely from that 
 source that it derives its intellectual glory and its glow as 
 of a sunset (it originated in the higher classes). 
 
 Christianity is a degenerative movement, consisting of 
 all kinds of decaying and excremental elements : it is not 
 the expression of the downfall of a race, it is, from the 
 root, an agglomeration of all the morbid elements which 
 are mutually attractive and which gravitate to one another. 
 It is therefore not a national religion, not determined by 
 race : it appeals to the disinherited everywhere ; it con- 
 sists of a foundation of resentment against all that is 
 successful and dominant : it is in need of a symbol which 
 represents the damnation of everything successful and 
 dominant. It is opposed to every form of intellectual 
 movement, to all philosophy : it takes up the cudgels for 
 idiots, and utters a curse upon all intellect. Resentment 
 against those who are gifted, learned, intellectually inde- 
 pendent : in all these it suspects the element of success 
 and domination. 1 
 
 Another contrast between Buddhism and 
 Christianity is well put by Nietzsche : 
 
 In Buddhism this thought prevails : " All passions, 
 everything which creates emotions and leads to blood, is a 
 call to action " to this extent alone are its believers 
 warned against evil. For action has no sense, it merely 
 binds one to existence. All existence, however, has no 
 sense. Evil is interpreted as that which leads to irra- 
 tionalism : to the affirmation of means whose end is denied. 
 A road to nonentity is the desideratum, hence all 
 emotional impulses are regarded with horror. For 
 
 1 Nietzsche, The Will to Power, i. Aph. 154., 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 85 
 
 instance : " On no account seek after revenge ! Be the 
 enemy of no one ! " The Hedonism of the weary finds 
 its highest expression here. Nothing is more utterly 
 foreign to Buddhism than the Jewish fanaticism of St 
 Paul : nothing could be more contrary to its instinct than 
 the tension, fire and unrest of the religious man, and, 
 above all, that form of sensuality which Christianity 
 sanctifies with the name " Love." Moreover, it is the 
 cultured and very intellectual classes who find blessedness 
 in Buddhism : a race wearied and besotted with centuries 
 of philosophical quarrels, but not beneath all culture, as 
 those classes were from which Christianity sprang. In 
 the Buddhistic ideal, there is essentially an emancipation 
 from good and evil : a very subtle suggestion of a Beyond 
 to all morality is thought out in its teaching, and this 
 Beyond is supposed to be compatible with perfection 
 the condition being, that even good actions are only needed 
 pro tern., merely as a means, that is to say, in order to be 
 free from all action. 1 
 
 The philosophical side of a religion consists 
 of a number of doctrines, which form its 
 dogma ; and there is also a certain ritual 
 to be carried out at regular intervals, which 
 forms the cult of the religion. At the 
 inception of a faith its cult is extremely 
 simple and its dogmas few in number. Then, 
 by a regular process, new theories are developed, 
 the ritual is modified accordingly, and learned 
 priests bring about changes in the metaphysical 
 side. As the result of such constant progres- 
 sion, a religion in time differs a great deal 
 from its original form. We have only to turn 
 
 1 The Will to Power, i. Aph. 155. 
 
86 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 to Christianity for an example of this continual 
 process of transformation. 
 
 After Buddha's death, too, various changes 
 were made in the form of his doctrines. 
 Disciples wrangled with one another as to 
 the precise meaning to be attached to the 
 master's parables and definitions, and the faith, 
 scarcely able for a few years to hold its own 
 against Brahmanism in Gautama's own district, 
 seemed in danger of being split up into a 
 number of jarring sects, like Christianity at 
 the present day. Immediately after the Buddha's 
 death a council was held and a certain number 
 of doctrines standardised, these proceedings 
 being confirmed by a second council held about 
 a century later. But, even then, Buddhism 
 might have flickered out had it not been for 
 the exertions of a ruler who is venerated even 
 to-day wherever Buddhists are to be found. 
 To King Asoka belongs the credit of having 
 elevated Buddhism from the position of a sect 
 to the position of a state religion. 
 
 This King Asoka was the grandson of the 
 famous Chandragupta, who is known to 
 historians as the founder of the Northern 
 Empire of India. He was a contemporary 
 of Alexander the Great. A warrior and 
 Brahman, uniting the virtues of the two 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 87 
 
 higher castes, Asoka, after a series of brilliant 
 campaigns, added the kingdoms of Bengal 
 and Orissa to his dominions shortly after 
 having ascended his own throne of Magadha 
 (the modern Behar) in 273 B.C. Determined 
 to let nothing stand in the way of his ambition, 
 he had his brothers assassinated in order that 
 he might enjoy the sole power, and he is charged 
 with other crimes of an equally serious nature. 
 As in the case of Gautama, however, Asoka, 
 towards middle life, seems to have been over- 
 come by a feeling of pessimism. After long 
 meditation on the sins, iniquities, and vanities 
 of the world, he was converted to Buddhism, 
 and at once proceeded to summon a council 
 the third in order that the essential doctrines 
 of the faith might be properly defined. As 
 Mr Vincent A. Smith, his best biographer, 
 has pointed out, 1 King Asoka confined his 
 efforts to drawing up a practical code of morals, 
 and did not base his teaching upon any meta- 
 physical or theological principle. The council 
 appears to have been called together about 
 260 or 259 B.C., i.e. y nearly two centuries after 
 the Buddha's death. About 257 B.C. King 
 Asoka began his practice of inscribing his 
 
 1 See his Asoka^ the Buddhist Emperor (Oxford Univ. Press, 1909), 
 chaps, i. and ii. 
 
88 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 Buddhistic precepts upon rocks and pillars, 
 and it is from these edicts that we have gained 
 a great deal of information regarding practical 
 Buddhism. The Rock and Pillar Edicts of 
 the Buddhist emperor are found principally in 
 Rajputana, Southern Behar, Mysore, Peshawar, 
 Madras, Delhi (U.P.), and Northern Behar. 
 The Sarnath Pillar Edict was discovered a 
 few years ago at Sarnath, about three miles 
 to the north of Benares. Inscriptions on the 
 roofs of caves have also been discovered in 
 the Barabar Hills of the Gaya district of 
 Southern Behar. Mr V. A. Smith, the author 
 of the biography of King Asoka just referred 
 to, has edited what is probably the best edition 
 of the Edicts, and a few typical quotations 
 cannot fail to be of interest : 
 
 Even by the small man who exerts himself, immense 
 heavenly bliss may be won. (Minor Rock Edicts, I.) 
 
 Here in the capital no animal may be slaughtered for 
 sacrifice, nor may holiday feasts be held, because his 
 sacred and gracious Majesty the King sees manifold evil 
 in holiday feasts, although holiday feasts in certain places 
 are meritorious in the sight of his Majesty the King. 
 (Rock Edict I., entitled : "The Sacredness of Life.") 
 
 Everywhere in his dominions his sacred and gracious 
 Majesty the King has made two kinds of curative arrange- 
 ments, to wit, curative arrangements for men and curative 
 arrangements for beasts. Medicinal herbs also, medicinal 
 for man and medicinal for beast, wherever they were 
 lacking, have been imported and planted ; roots also and 
 fruits, wherever they were lacking, everywhere have been 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 89 
 
 imported and planted. On the roads both wells have 
 been dug and trees planted for the enjoyment of man 
 and beast. (Rock Edict II.) 
 
 Everywhere in my dominions the officials and the 
 commissioners for five years must proceed on circuit 
 as well as for their other duties as for this special purpose, 
 namely, to proclaim the Law of Piety, to wit : a 
 meritorious thing is the hearkening to father and mother ; 
 a meritorious thing is liberality to friends, acquaintances, 
 relatives, Brahmans, and ascetics ; a meritorious thing 
 it is to abstain from slaughter of living creatures ; a 
 meritorious thing it is to spend little and store little. 
 (Rock Edict III.) 
 
 People perform ceremonies on occasions of sickness, 
 the weddings of sons, the weddings of daughters, the 
 birth of children, the departure on journeys. On these 
 and other similar occasions people perform various 
 ceremonies. But at such times the womenkind perform 
 many, manifold, trivial, and worthless ceremonies. 
 
 Ceremonies certainly have to be performed, although 
 that sort bears little fruit. This sort, however the 
 ceremonial of piety bears great fruit. In it are included 
 the proper treatment of slaves and servants, honour to 
 teachers, gentleness towards living creatures, and liberality 
 towards ascetics and Brahmans. These things, and others 
 of the same kind, are called the ceremonial of piety. . . . 
 By what sort of ceremonies is the desired end attained ? 
 for the ceremonial of this world is of doubtful efficacy ; 
 perchance it may accomplish the desired end ; perhaps it may 
 not, and its effect is merely of this world. The ceremonial 
 of piety, on the contrary, is not temporal ; for, even if it 
 fails to attain the desired end in this world, it certainly 
 begets endless merit in the other world. (Rock Edict IX.) 
 
 The Kalingas were conquered by his sacred and gracious 
 Majesty the King when he had been consecrated eight 
 years. One hundred and fifty thousand people were 
 thence carried away captive, one hundred thousand were 
 there slain, and many times that number perished. 
 Directly after the annexation of the Kalingas began his 
 
90 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 sacred Majesty's zealous protection of the law of piety, his 
 love of that law, and his giving instruction in that law 
 (dharma). Thus arose his sacred Majesty's remorse for 
 having conquered the Kalingas, because the conquest of a 
 country previously unconquered involves the slaughter, 
 death and carrying away captive of the people. That is 
 a matter of profound sorrow and regret to his sacred 
 Majesty. . . . And for this purpose has this pious Edict 
 been written, in order that my sons and grandsons, who 
 may be, should not regard it as their duty to conquer a 
 new conquest. If, perchance, they become engaged in a 
 conquest by arms, they should take their own patience 
 and gentleness, and regard as the only true conquest the 
 conquest won by piety. That avails for both this world 
 and the next. Let all joy be in effort, because that avails 
 for both this world and the next. (Rock Edict XIII.) 
 
 All men are my children, and just as I desire for my 
 children that they may enjoy every kind of prosperity and 
 happiness in both this world and the next, so also I desire 
 the same for all men. (Kalinga Edict I.) 
 
 With certain natural dispositions, success [towards a 
 religious end] is impossible, to wit, envy, lack of persever- 
 ance, harshness, impatience, want of application, laziness, 
 indolence. You must desire that such dispositions be not 
 yours. (Kalinga Edict II.) 
 
 This world and the next are hard to secure save by 
 intense love of the Law of Piety, intense self-examina- 
 tion, intense obedience, intense dread and intense effort. 
 (Pillar Edict I.). 
 
 After I had been consecrated twenty-six years, the 
 following species were declared exempt from slaughter, 
 to wit : parrots, starlings, ducks, geese, bats, queen-ants, 
 female tortoises. . . . The living must not be fed with 
 the living. (Pillar Edict V.) 
 
 After I had been consecrated twelve years I caused 
 pious Edicts to be written for the welfare and happiness 
 of mankind, with the intent that they, giving up their old 
 courses, might attain growth in piety one way or another. 
 Thus, aiming at the welfare and happiness of mankind, 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 91 
 
 with that object I devote my attention alike to my 
 relatives, to persons near, and to persons afar off. . . . 
 For all denominations are reverenced by me with various 
 forms of reverence. 1 Nevertheless, this personal adher- 
 ence to one's own creed is the chief thing, in my opinion. 
 (Pillar Edict VI.) 
 
 The growth of piety . . . has been effected by two- 
 fold means, to wit, pious regulations and meditation. Of 
 these two means, however, pious regulations are of small 
 account, whereas meditation is superior. (Pillar Edict VII.) 
 
 King Asoka, however, was not content with 
 merely setting forth the Buddha's doctrines in 
 a permanent form. He advanced the faith 
 enormously, as already mentioned, by making it 
 a state religion ; but his enthusiasm did not 
 stop here. By his orders trained missionaries 
 were sent to all parts of India and Ceylon, 
 and he extended his operations even further. 
 Antiochus Theos,* King of Syria; Ptolemy 
 Philadelphus, King of Egypt ; Magas, King 
 of Cyrene ; Antigonus Gonatas, King of 
 Macedonia, and Alexander, King of Epirus, 
 were all courteously invited to give up their 
 false gods in favour of the new faith expounded 
 by the Indian emperor, though, unfortunately, 
 records are wanting to show in what precise 
 spirit this invitation was received. 
 
 When on the subject of King Asoka, it 
 should not be forgotten that to his reign 
 
 1 This instance of toleration, two centuries and a half before the 
 beginning of our era, is surely worthy of notice. 
 
92 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 belongs the first recorded attempt at bureau- 
 cratic Socialism. In order that the " rules of 
 piety " might be properly enforced, a swarm of 
 officials as mentioned in one of the Edicts 
 just quoted were appointed to visit every 
 household in the name of the emperor and to 
 see that the religious functions ordered were 
 duly carried out. This, however, caused even 
 the mild Hindoo to turn ; for scenes, it would 
 appear, took place resembling that which led 
 to Wat Tyler's memorable dispute with a tax- 
 collector, and after the emperor's death in 
 232 B.C. there was an insurrection which put 
 an end for ever to the odious system of 
 personal inspection. It may be worth while 
 mentioning this two-thousand-year-old incident 
 as a warning to the socialistically inclined. 
 
 Apart from King Asoka's propagation of the 
 faith, we have a collection of sacred Buddhistic 
 writings, known as the Tripitaka, or the Three 
 Baskets. 
 
 (1) The Sutra-Pitaka, containing the Sutras. 
 This is the essential part of the Buddhist teach- 
 ing, which is set forth in maxims, apophthegms, 
 short sermons and parables. This book may be 
 in the hands of either the monks or the laity. 
 
 (2) The Vinaya-Pitaka, containing the rules 
 of conduct of members of the Order. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 93 
 
 (3) The Abhidharma, or writings dealing 
 with the more profound metaphysical doctrines 
 of Buddhism. 
 
 Buddhism is distinguished from all other 
 religions, especially, of course, Judaism, Chris- 
 tianity, and Mohammedanism, by the fact that 
 all these writings do not profess to be inspired 
 from a supernatural source. Buddhism entirely 
 rejects the doctrine that there is any such 
 source. The rules of conduct set forth by the 
 master are the results of long study and medita- 
 tion, and they may be followed by any one. 
 Unlike Christianity, as has previously been 
 mentioned, there is no Saviour : man must 
 depend upon himself alone to attain supreme 
 moral perfection, and when he has done so he 
 himself becomes a Buddha, an enlightened one. 
 Truth is eternal ; and it is by his own intuition 
 that a Buddhist knows when he has arrived at 
 the highest stage of perfection. Hence, pos- 
 sibly, the eagerness with which the Chinese 
 and Japanese welcomed Buddhism, and the 
 ease with which they adapted themselves to it 
 and it to themselves. For these yellow nations 
 are noted for having passed through years of 
 evolution without having formed the conception 
 of a supernatural deity, basing their conduct 
 merely on reason and codes of morals in accord- 
 
94 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 
 ance with rules laid down by a long line of 
 thinkers, of whom Confucius, for example, far 
 from being the first or even one of the earliest, 
 is merely the representative type. 
 
 Without setting science aside or frowning 
 upon it, Gautama's teaching rests on the prin- 
 ciple that virtue is superior to it ; that virtue 
 consists in doing good, and that it is the same 
 for all men, independently of riches or poverty, 
 knowledge or ignorance, suited equally to the 
 practical affairs of life and to preparations for 
 Nirvana. This principle was a radical departure 
 from the teaching of the Brahmans, in that it 
 proclaimed every man to be equal before the 
 moral law (as Christianity proclaimed every 
 man to be equal in the sight of God), together 
 with the superiority of the virtuous man over 
 the man of wisdom another resemblance to 
 Christianity. 
 
 Virtue, of course, included sexual chastity. 
 Life was miserable for every one, and the best 
 way to escape it was to abolish it as far as pos- 
 sible. But women's temptations induced men 
 to carry life onwards, and the Master disliked 
 the female sex accordingly. Buddha's great 
 European disciple, Schopenhauer, shows numer- 
 ous traces of this hatred of womenkind. The 
 great pessimist's bitterness on this particular 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 95 
 
 point is well known, yet his great predecessor 
 was just as bitter, though in Buddha's case the 
 bitterness is scattered rather than concentrated. 
 Buddha had a keen eye for female beauty, but 
 the sight of it merely awoke sad thoughts in 
 him, instead of provoking his passions. Par- 
 ables are not wanting to express the imperman- 
 ency of beauty as well as of everything else. 
 
 Once when the Buddha was residing on the Gridhrakuta 
 mountain, near Rajagriha, there was a certain famous 
 courtesan in the city, called Pundari, or Padma, most 
 beautiful in form and incomparable for grace. This woman 
 wearied of her mode of life, and resolved to join herself to 
 Buddha, and to become a Bhikshuni. Accordingly she 
 proceeded to the place where he was, and, having half 
 ascended the mountain, she halted a while at a fountain to 
 drink. Whilst lifting the water to her mouth, she saw 
 her face reflected in the fountain, and she could not but 
 observe her own incomparable beauty, the delicacy of her 
 complexion, her rosy hair, her graceful figure. On seeing 
 herself thus, she altered her mind and said : "Shall one 
 born so beautiful as I am go out of the world and become 
 a recluse ? no ! rather let me have my fill of pleasure 
 and be satisfied," on this she made ready to turn back 
 and go home. But in the meantime Buddha, seeing the 
 circumstance, and knowing that Pundari was in a con- 
 dition to be converted, transformed himself at once into 
 a beautiful woman, infinitely more charming than Pundari. 
 Meeting as they went, the courtesan was amazed at the 
 beauty of the strange woman, and asked her : " Whence 
 come you, fair one ! And where dwell your kindred ? 
 and why do you travel thus alone, without attendants ? " 
 On which the stranger replied : " I am returning to yonder 
 city, and though we be not acquainted let us join company 
 and go together." On this they went on their way till 
 
96 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 they came to a certain fountain on the road, where they 
 sat down. At length, the conversation having ceased, the 
 strange beauty, resting herself against the knees of Pundari, 
 fell asleep. After a time the courtesan, looking down at 
 her friend, was amazed to behold her form entirely changed ; 
 she had become loathsome as a corpse, her face pallid, her 
 teeth gone, the hair fallen from her head, hateful insects 
 feeding on her flesh. Frightened and aghast at the sight, 
 Pundari hastened away from the spot, and as she exclaimed, 
 " How transient is human beauty ! " she hurried back again 
 in the direction of Buddha's dwelling-place, and, having 
 arrived, cast herself prostrate at his feet, and related to him 
 what she had seen, on which Buddha addressed her thus : 
 " There are four things, Pundari, which must ever cause 
 sadness and disappointment. That one, however beautiful, 
 must yet become old ; that one, however firmly established, 
 must die ; that one, bound in closest ties of friendship and 
 affection, must yet be separated from those one loves ; 
 and that wealth, heaped up in ever such profusion, must 
 yet be scattered and lost." 
 
 And then the World- Honoured added these 
 lines and said : 
 
 " Old age brings with it loss of all bodily 
 attraction ; through decay and disease a man 
 perishes ; his body bent, and his flesh withered, 
 this is the end of life. What use is this body 
 when it lies rotting beside the flowings of the 
 Ganges ? It is but the prison-house of disease, 
 and of the pains of old age and death. To 
 delight in pleasure, and to be greedy of self- 
 indulgence, is but to increase the load of sin, 
 forgetting the great change that must come, 
 and the inconstancy of human life." 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 97 
 
 The courtesan having heard these words was 
 able to see that life is but as the flower, that 
 there is nothing permanent but Nirvana, and 
 so she requested permission to become a Bhik- 
 shuni, which was readily granted. 1 
 
 " How," said his disciple, Ananda, to him on 
 one occasion, " how should we conduct our- 
 selves towards women ?" "Turn away your 
 head ! " " But if we should see her ? " " Not 
 speak to her ! " " But if we should happen to 
 speak to her ? " " Then you must be very 
 watchful, Ananda ! " 
 
 " Women are the worst enemies of wise 
 men ; guard yourselves from them as from a 
 poisonous snake/' was another piece of advice 
 to his followers. 
 
 " Lewdness," he once declared, " clings to 
 women like filth ! " an exaggerated statement 
 of the unconsciously sexual or child-bearing 
 nature of all real women, and a characteristic 
 which has been observed by every keen critic of 
 human nature, from Juvenal to Weininger. It 
 is likewise a characteristic, however, which all 
 men of thought seem to detest when in the com- 
 pany'of such women, because it interferes with 
 their own child-bearing their books. 
 
 1 Texts from the Buddhist Canon (Dhamtnafadha) Beal's translation, 
 pp. 42-3. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 The early Arabs Their religious system Birth of 
 Mohammed His early studies the Hanifs 
 Mohammed's alleged " epilepsy " His lonely medita- 
 tions His first revelation Early converts Quarrels 
 with the Meccans Flight to Medina Progress of 
 Islamism Capture of Medina Death of the Prophet 
 His successors. 
 
 ABOUT 500 A.D. the Persians secured a firm 
 footing in Arabia through helping the native 
 princes to expel the Christians from the 
 Northern frontier. Their influence, however, 
 did not extend to the Western or Southern 
 part of the Peninsula, and in the Nejd, the 
 Hijaz and the Yemen, the wandering bands of 
 Arabian hunters and even the village com- 
 munities were left comparatively unmolested. 
 The religious state of these tribes presents a 
 strong analogy to that of the Jews before the 
 appearance of Moses. It may best be described 
 as Pagan pantheism, though, out of the 
 numerous gods, Allah was after a time recog- 
 nised as the supreme power, the remaining 
 gods being looked upon as his children. It 
 would appear that the subordinate deities were 
 
 the special protectors of individual tribes and 
 
 98 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 99 
 
 families, in the same manner as the Italians 
 even at the present day carry about the images 
 of certain saints : but all oaths were sworn in 
 the name of Allah. It by no means follows, 
 however, that Allah was specially feared or rever- 
 enced, for in worship or sacrifice the last place 
 was allotted to him, in order that the other 
 deities, representing as they did certain specific 
 interests, might be worshipped first. 
 
 The Arab of ancient times, however, and 
 the trait is seen to a great extent even in his 
 modern descendant was an extreme indi- 
 vidualist. Most of his time was spent in hunt- 
 ing, varied by wine, gambling, and love, 
 together with an occasional feud. These hardy 
 fighters endeavoured to perform noble deeds, 
 and to sustain and raise the prestige of their 
 family or tribe ; but in doing so they trusted 
 to themselves alone. They appeal to no super- 
 natural power, and in times of danger they 
 rely upon their swords. 
 
 From the time they come within the ken of 
 history the Arabs seem to have been influenced 
 by the deities mentioned above, but about the 
 fifth or sixth century of our era the want of a 
 new religion began to be felt. As they were 
 partly allied to the Jews from an ethnological 
 standpoint, it may have been thought that the 
 
ioo THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 Arabs would have come under the sway of the 
 Old Testament. But it must be recollected 
 that at this period Judaism was represented 
 merely by commentators, grammarians and 
 subtle casuists. The fighting spirit of Judaism 
 was applied intellectually and not physically in 
 an endeavour to maintain the race, which was 
 now without a country and scattered among 
 many hostile populations. The once agri- 
 cultural Hebrews had become merchants and 
 money-lenders, and were despised by a righting 
 people like the Arabs accordingly. A faith 
 was wanting which should unite the scattered 
 Arab tribes and mould them into a great nation 
 by means of a firm spiritual discipline. 
 
 Among the numerous Arab tribes one in 
 particular early came into prominence. This 
 was the Beni-Kinana, and one branch of it, the 
 Koraish, who had settled in and about Mecca, 
 were noted for their long trading journeys, 
 and, for that time, wide knowledge of the 
 world. Their culture, we learn, was naturally 
 superior to that of the nomadic tribes, and 
 even to that of the more agricultural inhabitants 
 of Medina, a city some 240 miles off. Among 
 the most powerful and influential families of 
 Mecca were Beni-Omayya, the Beni-Makhsum 
 and the Beni-Hashim, and from a branch of the 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 
 
 latter, the Abdulmottalib, was born Mohammed 
 ben Abdullah, on 29th August 570. The 
 Prophet's father died before his son's birth, and 
 his mother, Anina, died when he was still com- 
 paratively young. Mohammed's grandfather, 
 Abdul mottalib, then took charge of the boy for 
 a time, and he was afterwards taken under the 
 protection of his uncle, Abu Talib ben Abdul- 
 mottalib. The family had been wealthy at one 
 time, but a series of misfortunes had reduced 
 their worldly resources, though their influence 
 was still very powerful. 
 
 When twenty-four years of age Mohammed 
 entered the business house of a rich widow 
 named Khadija, and in her behalf he made 
 several trading journeys in Palestine and Syria, 
 thus gaining some knowledge of the world and 
 coming into contact with foreign learning, 
 customs, and religions. Although the widow 
 was several years his senior, he married her, 
 after having been in her employment for some 
 time, and several children resulted from the 
 union. Mohammed's two sons died in child- 
 hood, and of his daughters one in particular, 
 Fatima, afterwards became well known in con- 
 nection with the promulgation of her father's 
 faith. 
 
 At the age or thirty-four or thirty-five 
 
102 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 Mohammed began to be influenced by the re- 
 ligious movement already referred to. Among 
 those who felt the narrowness of the beliefs 
 generally prevailing and the need for something 
 better, were Omayya ben abi'1-Salt, Zaid ben 
 Amur, Abu Kais and Abu Amir, the first two 
 belonging to Mecca and the latter two to 
 Medina. These men were known as Hanifs, 
 which is generally supposed to mean penitents, 
 though hardly in the Christian sense of the 
 word. They devoted their time chiefly to re- 
 flection and meditation upon the actual religion 
 of the Arabs ; but they were not possessed of the 
 genius of the man who was soon to join them. 
 Mohammed in early life was subject to fits 
 resembling epilepsy, though the exact nature of 
 his disease has long been a matter of dispute. 
 As it is also fairly evident that he possessed 
 the faculty of seeing visions, we shall not be 
 straining a point in deciding that his supposed 
 epilepsy or ecstasy was simply the result of 
 his strong religious fervour, which was merely 
 waiting to be drawn forth and developed to 
 become a potent instrument. The future 
 prophet proceeded to study the Hanifs and 
 their beliefs, but found that they were merely 
 ascetics, acknowledging Allah and resigning 
 themselves to his will, being at the same time 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 103 
 
 much more interested in saving their own 
 individual souls than in planning a widespread 
 movement for the benefit of the Arabian race 
 as a whole. Following the example of these 
 ascetics, however, Mohammed withdrew for 
 long periods to a remote part of the mountains, 
 in order that he himself might meditate. 
 Undoubtedly his thoughts were influenced by 
 the teachings of the Hanifs, though who actu- 
 ally influenced the Hanifs is a matter of some 
 doubt. Tradition and written evidence tend 
 to show that they had come into contact with 
 both Jews and Christians, and in particular 
 with members of the Essene sect. In spite 
 of all this, however, an impartial enquirer will 
 admit that, no matter what superficial analogy 
 there may seem to be between Mohammedan- 
 ism and Judaism, or even Mohammedanism 
 and Christianity, the main features of the faith 
 were entirely original. No doubt, however, 
 many Islamic sayings may be found in the Old 
 Testament, and even some in the New, as we 
 shall see when we come to consider the Koran. 
 A well-known tradition says that one night, 
 as Mohammed was meditating on Mount Hira, 
 the Angel Gabriel appeared to him as he lay 
 sleeping, and, although the prophet could not 
 read, compelled him to study a sentence written 
 
104 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 on a silken scroll. This was the first appear- 
 ance on earth of a text from a heavenly 
 volume, out of which other prophets, such as 
 Moses and Jesus, had, through inspiration, 
 derived their knowledge. The words are 
 repeated in Sura 1 xcvi. of the Koran : " Read ! 
 in the name of thy Lord who created man 
 from a drop of blood ! For thy Lord is the 
 Most High, who hath taught by the pen, hath 
 taught to man what he knew not. Know 
 truly man walketh in delusion when he deems 
 that he sufficeth for himself ; to thy Lord they 
 must all return." Weil has pointed out that 
 this vision experienced by Mohammed (Sura 
 xcvii. i, 2) was based upon the traditional 
 conception of revelation and prophecy which 
 he had learnt to expect as the result of his 
 experiences with the Hanifs, and compares 
 Sura Ixxxvii. 6 : <( We will cause thee so to read 
 that thou mayest forget nothing save what God 
 will." Isaiah's lips are, it may be remembered, 
 "touched" to purge them of sin (Is. vi. 7) ; 
 Jeremiah's are " touched " by the Lord to put 
 the words in his mouth (Jer. i. 9) ; Ezekiel 
 
 1 Sura. As Rodwell points out, the word " Sura " occurs nine 
 times in the Koran, but it is not easy to determine whether it means a 
 whole chapter or only part of a chapter, or whether it is used in the 
 sense of "revelation." It is understood by the Mohammedan commen- 
 tators to have a primary reference to the succession of subjects or parts. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 105 
 
 receives the revelation as the roll of a book 
 which he has to swallow (Ezek. iii. 2). The 
 central ideas of Mohammedanism are contained 
 in the early Suras, in which category we may 
 include those just referred to. " Man lives on 
 content with himself; but he must one day 
 return to his Creator and Lord and account to 
 him for his actions on earth/' This is an old 
 Arabic principle ; but Mohammed made it 
 supreme by having it written down from the 
 revelation which he received direct from on 
 
 high- 
 Having collected his thoughts after the 
 angel had disappeared, Mohammed descended 
 the mountain and communicated the news 
 to his wife, Khadija. Apparently he was 
 perturbed and dazed, hardly able to believe 
 what he had read and heard. Khadija 
 consoled him and endeavoured to dispel his 
 doubts. But the Prophet was still anxious. 
 Day after day he would ascend Mount Hira 
 and often thought of casting himself from the 
 summit. After two or three years of mental 
 anguish he suddenly rushed into his wife's 
 presence, crying : " Wrap me up ! Wrap me 
 up ! " This time, it is said, he fell into a swoon, 
 and when any further revelations were vouch- 
 safed him, he seems to have had an attack 
 
io6 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 resembling epilepsy. On his recovery he 
 dictated Sura Ixxiv. beginning, " Oh ! thou 
 enveloped one ! " From this time onward 
 revelation regularly followed revelation, and 
 Mohammed became convinced of his Divine 
 mission, although before he had experienced 
 many doubts (Sura xciii.) : 
 
 By the noon-day BRIGHTNESS, 
 
 And by the night when it darkeneth ! 
 
 Thy Lord hath not forsaken thee, neither hath 
 
 he been displeased. 
 And surely the Future shall be better for thee 
 
 than the Past, 
 And in the end shall thy Lord be bounteous to 
 
 thee and thou be satisfied. 
 Did he not find thee an orphan and gave thee a 
 
 home ? 
 
 And found thee erring and guided thee, 
 And found thee needy and enriched thee. 
 As to the orphan therefore wrong him not ; 
 And as to him that asketh of thee, chide him not 
 
 away ; 
 And as for the favours of thy Lord tell them 
 
 abroad. 
 
 The process of conversion then began. The 
 first to yield to the solicitations of the Prophet 
 was his wife Khadija, then his freedman, Zaid 
 ben Haritha, his cousin Ali, and his friend 
 Abu Bekr or Abubekr ben Abi Kohafa. Owing 
 to the influence of the latter, several influential 
 men were induced to embrace the doctrines 
 of Mohammed, among them being Othman 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 107 
 
 ben Affan, Zobair ben al-Awwam, Abdul 
 Rahman ben Auf, and Sad ben Abi Wakkas, 
 whose names occur frequently in the history 
 of the great religious movement. Mohammed 
 himself at this period did not think he was 
 founding a new religion, but that he was 
 merely reminding his brethren of old truths 
 and duties which had long been forgotten. 
 His conviction that he was a second Moses 
 and had a Divine mission to promulgate 
 the commands of the Almighty on earth, urged 
 him to make a public profession of his faith 
 and to secure converts, and in order that 
 suitable meetings might be held, one of his 
 disciples offered him a house in the centre 
 of the town of Mecca. Here prayers were 
 made and the deity worshipped in accordance 
 with the teachings of the Prophet ; but many 
 of the influential Arabs held aloof from the 
 proceedings on the ground that, although 
 Mohammed himself had come from the upper 
 classes of Arabian society, most of his followers 
 came from the lower elements. It seems to 
 have been chiefly on this account that the 
 enthusiasm of the Prophet did not appeal to 
 them ; and Mohammed appears to have felt 
 considerable irritation at their attitude. In 
 Sura Ixxx., for example, we find him rebuked 
 
io8 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 by God for having thrust aside a beggar who 
 addressed him as he was engaged in trying 
 to convert a man of a higher order of 
 society : 
 
 HE FROWNED, and he turned his back, 
 
 Because the blind man came to him ! 
 
 But what assured thee that he would not be 
 cleansed by the Faith, 
 
 Or be warned, and the warning profit him ? 
 
 As to him who is wealthy 
 
 To him thou wast all attention : 
 
 Yet is it not thy concern if he be not cleansed : 
 
 But as to him who cometh to thee in earnest, 
 
 And full of fears 
 
 Him dost thou neglect. 
 
 Nay ! but it (the Koran) is a warning ; 
 
 (And whoso is willing beareth it in mind) 
 
 Written on honoured pages, 
 
 Exalted, purified, 
 
 By the hands of Scribes, honoured, righteous. 
 
 Cursed be man ! What hath made him un- 
 believing ? 
 
 Of what thing did God create him ? 
 
 Out of moist germs. 
 
 He created him and fashioned him, 
 
 Then made him an easy passage from the womb, 
 
 Then causeth him to die and burieth him ; 
 
 Then, when he pleaseth, will raise him again 
 to life. 
 
 Ay ! but man hath not yet fulfilled the bidding 
 of his Lord. 
 
 Let man look at his food : 
 
 It was We who rained down the copious rains, 
 
 Then cleft the earth with clefts, 
 
 And caused the upgrowth of the grain, 
 
 And grapes and healing herbs, 
 
 And the olive and the palm, 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 109 
 
 And enclosed gardens thick with trees, 
 
 And fruits and herbage, 
 
 For the service of yourselves and of your cattle. 
 
 But when the stunning trumpet-blast shall arrive, 
 
 On that day shall a man fly from his brother, 
 
 And his mother and his father, 
 
 And his wife and his children ; 
 
 For every man of them on that day his own 
 
 concern shall be enough. 
 There shall be faces on that day radiant, 
 Laughing and joyous : 
 
 And faces on that day with dust upon them : 
 Blackness shall cover them ! 
 These are the Infidels, the Impure. 
 
 As has already been stated, the Arabs were 
 polytheists and worshipped several minor gods 
 besides Allah. Mohammed's teaching, on the 
 contrary, was, like that of Moses in the case 
 of the Hebrews, entirely monotheistic : and 
 as he found himself and his divine mission 
 more and more neglected, he accentuated his 
 diatribes against the polytheism of his fellow- 
 countrymen. Furthermore, he threatened the 
 Meccans with punishment on account of their 
 neglecting God's chosen messenger. Attack 
 after attack followed upon various Meccan 
 customs and superstitions, so that finally the 
 irritated inhabitants appealed to Mohammed's 
 uncle to withdraw his protection, or else to 
 desire his nephew to cease from what they 
 naturally regarded as unjustified slanders. This 
 
no THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 the uncle refused at first to do, but another 
 strong deputation of the townspeople induced 
 him to send for his nephew and explain matters. 
 The Prophet, however, was unmoved. " Though 
 they give me the sun in my right hand and the 
 moon in my left to entice me away from my 
 undertaking, yet will I not pause till the Lord 
 carry my cause to victory, or till I die for it," 
 was his reply, saying which he wept and turned 
 away. His uncle, however, went after him 
 and solemnly promised never to abandon him. 
 
 While Mohammed himself suffered no 
 serious injury (largely due, it must be ad- 
 mitted, to the protection of his uncle), his 
 followers, especially those in the lower ranks of 
 society, were so much harassed by insults and 
 cruel treatment that many of them fled to 
 Abyssinia, for this latter country had merely 
 become Christian by accident, and a bond, 
 which might almost have been called racial, 
 united its inhabitants with the Arabian 
 refugees. 
 
 When the Prophet heard of this, he took 
 instant steps to effect a reconciliation. One of 
 his best-known attempts was that of meeting 
 the heads of the Koraish tribe and beginning 
 to recite to them Sura liii. When he came 
 to one passage "What think ye of al-Lab? " 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST in 
 
 the adverse influence caused him to interpret 
 the passage favourably to the old Arabian 
 deities. Pleased at this, the tribesmen ex- 
 pressed their willingness to recognise the teach- 
 ing of Mohammed ; but in the evening of the 
 same day the angel Gabriel appeared to the 
 prophet and reproached him with what he had 
 done. When Mohammed proceeded to circu- 
 late the revised version of the text, the Koraish 
 chiefs angrily repudiated him, and the old 
 state of things was once more in evidence. 
 Several of the Arabian emigrants to Abyssinia, 
 who had returned to Mecca in the hope of 
 finding some improvement in the condition of 
 the Mohammedans there, were disappointed, 
 and soon afterwards a second emigration took 
 place. 
 
 Throughout all this, however, the prophet 
 never lost faith in himself ; and his confidence 
 in his mission was to some extent rewarded by 
 two important conversions ; one of his uncle 
 and the other of Omar ben al-Khattab, a young 
 man of good family. About this time, too, 
 the Mohammedans irritated their fellow- 
 townsmen still more by praying in public and 
 making no secret of their faith, as they had 
 hitherto been compelled to do. The continued 
 sneers and gibes of the Meccans drew from the 
 
H2 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 seer further prophecies of the downfall of the 
 city ; but the longer this " downfall " was 
 postponed, the more did the people mock 
 him. 
 
 From the commentators on the Koran, 
 whose writings have been so carefully examined 
 by Weil, we can judge that Mohammed was 
 at this period in close touch with the Jews ; 
 and this may well have been one reason why 
 his countrymen did not attach any importance 
 to his mission ; for at times they taunted him 
 with the human sources of the revelations 
 which he professed, and, we may be sure, 
 sincerely believed, to have received through 
 inspiration. 
 
 But the struggle between Mohammed and 
 the Meccans now broke out into open warfare. 
 The Prophet's followers were practically ex- 
 communicated ; they could neither buy nor 
 sell, except among themselves, and this drastic 
 treatment soon had its effect. Mohammed's 
 more lukewarm converts fell off by degrees, 
 and it would appear that he had some difficulty 
 in retaining even his more attached supporters. 
 To add to his troubles at this time, his wife, 
 Khadija, fell ill and died. He therefore re- 
 solved to abandon Mecca, for a time at least, 
 and to carry his propaganda in another direction. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 113 
 
 His first visit was to the neighbouring tribe 
 inhabiting the Taif country, but he had scarcely 
 begun to explain his doctrines before he was 
 attacked by a mob, who drove him out of the 
 city of Taif to the accompaniment of showers 
 of stones, and he was glad to take refuge in a 
 vineyard belonging to two friendly Meccans. 
 Fearing the reception which might await him 
 in Mecca, Mohammed did not venture near 
 his native city for two months more, and even 
 then he would not enter the precincts of the 
 town without having first assured himself that 
 he would be under the protection of a wealthy 
 and influential citizen, Mot'im ben Adi. 
 Shortly after having once more taken up his 
 quarters at Mecca, he married a second time, 
 his new wife being Sanda bint Zama, the widow 
 of one of the emigrants who had returned from 
 Abyssinia. 
 
 On the numerous occasions when fairs were 
 held in Mecca, Mohammed made a point of 
 going among the visitors and preaching to 
 them. As a rule he did not meet with much 
 success ; but in the year 619 of our era he fell 
 in with a party of traders from Medina, who 
 seemed not only disposed to listen to the new 
 teaching, but quick to grasp its essential 
 doctrines. This meeting, which was purely 
 
ii 4 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 accidental, led to Mohammed's eventual 
 success. He enquired from the visitors 
 whether they thought their fellow-townsmen 
 would be equally ready to hear the word of 
 Allah, and they promised to tell him when 
 they returned the following year. Accordingly, 
 at a feast which was celebrated early in 620, 
 twelve of the leading citizens of Medina met 
 the prophet at Akaba, and, after having heard 
 his exposition of his revelations, they solemnly 
 promised to observe no god but Allah, and to 
 carry out the other commandments laid down. 
 This meeting was ever afterwards known as 
 ths First Homage on the Akaba ; and it 
 resulted in the twelve citizens returning to 
 Medina as propagandists of Mohammedanism. 
 They were accompanied by one of the prophet's 
 Meccan followers, whose duty it was to instruct 
 the inhabitants of Medina how to read the 
 Koran, and also to help to teach and explain 
 the doctrines in the book. 
 
 According to an agreement made, the 
 pilgrims returned in the following year (621), 
 and reported good progress, some seventy men 
 and women, who came with them, having been 
 converted to Islamism. This was known as 
 the Second Homage on the Akaba, and at this 
 interview it was definitely settled that, in view 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 115 
 
 of Mohammed's ill-success in Mecca, and the 
 probabilities of securing a much larger number 
 of converts in Medina, he should go to the 
 latter city and take up his residence there, 
 together with his Meccan disciples. They 
 swore to guard the Prophet, and he in his turn 
 promised to look upon himself as one of their 
 community. 
 
 Although all the arrangements in connection 
 with this emigration were kept as secret as 
 possible, it soon came to the knowledge of the 
 Meccans that many of their fellow-citizens 
 were taking flight, seduced from the true faith 
 by one whom they continued to consider as a 
 hypocritical impostor. Steps were at once 
 taken to prevent the departure of the visitors 
 from Medina, but the discovery was made too 
 late for this purpose. Failing this, the Meccans 
 turned their attention to the Moslems who 
 wished to emigrate. Some of them were 
 imprisoned and others bullied into disavowing 
 Mohammed's teachings. Neither threats nor 
 imprisonment, however, had any effect in post- 
 poning the crisis, and in April, 622, the 
 emigrants started, about 150 reaching Medina 
 within two months. From this date, so 
 momentous in the annals of the new faith, 
 the Mohammedan calendar was reckoned, and 
 
u6 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 April 622 was recognised as the first month of 
 the Year of the Flight (the Hijra). 
 
 To the last the Prophet remained behind, 
 doubtless hoping against hope for some change 
 in the attitude exhibited towards him of the 
 inhabitants of his native place. Abubekr and 
 AH remained with him ; but when they heard 
 that a plot had been laid for assassinating 
 Mohammed, a hurried departure was taken. 
 Ali remained in Mecca for a short time ; but 
 for three days the two fugitives, Mohammed 
 and Abubekr, remained hidden in a cave on 
 Mount Thaur. At times they could hear the 
 muffled thuds of the horses' feet as their 
 pursuers vainly searched for them overhead, 
 and Abubekr expressed his fears to the Prophet 
 lest they should be captured. " We are only 
 two against a multitude/' he added. " But," 
 answered the prophet sternly, (c is there not 
 a Third with us ? n And, thus reminded that 
 Allah was aiding them, the fears of the 
 Prophet's companion gave place to joy. This 
 flight is referred to in the Koran (Sura ix. 40) : 
 
 If ye assist not your Prophet . . . God assisted him 
 formerly, when the unbelievers drove him forth, in 
 company with a second only when they two were in the 
 cave ; when the Prophet said to his companion: "Be not 
 distressed ; verily, God is with us." And God sent down 
 his tranquillity upon him, and strengthened him with 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 117 
 
 hosts ye saw not, and made the word of those who believed 
 not the abased, and the word of God was the exalted ; for 
 God is Mighty, Wise. 
 
 Having returned to its owners certain 
 property entrusted to Mohammed for safe 
 keeping, Ali likewise started for Medina, 
 where he arrived unmolested. His two friends 
 had eluded pursuit and preceded him by a few 
 days. It was a tradition afterwards that the 
 Prophet was born, arrived at Medina, and died 
 on the 1 2th day of the month of Rabi ; but 
 although his death did actually take place on 
 this day (corresponding to 8th June 632), it is 
 not probable that his birth and arrival in 
 Medina also fell on the same day of the month. 
 
 Well might the Mohammedan calendar 
 date from the Hijra ; for with Mohammed's 
 arrival in Medina the real history of the move- 
 ment he inaugurated may be said to have 
 begun. From his new headquarters in the 
 village of Koba, near Medina, the prophet 
 carried his cause to victory, and lived to see a 
 great and powerful state founded upon his 
 religious doctrines. For this he has been 
 blamed by Christian historians, who see in his 
 efforts to use his religion for the founding of 
 a commonwealth a " want of spirituality," and 
 several other heinous offences. The modern 
 
n8 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 student, however, will be inclined to think 
 differently. Such a religion was obviously 
 wanted for the preservation of the Arab race, 
 however scattered and hostile to each other the 
 various tribes might be. Far from exhibiting 
 a lack of perspicacity and low spiritual ideals, 
 Mohammed perceived with an insight which 
 cannot be too highly praised the opportunities 
 which it was necessary to seize in order to 
 attain his object. If the Arabs could only be 
 saved by the founding of a state upon his 
 doctrines, no present-day thinker would 
 seriously deny that the Prophet was right in 
 adapting means to ends. Once the facts of 
 the case were properly grasped by himself and 
 his intimate associates, Islamism spread with 
 astonishing rapidity throughout the land ; and 
 in a relatively short time the Arab soldiers had 
 proved the prowess of their arms to the entire 
 satisfaction of all those who had the misfortune 
 to come into contact with them, from the 
 Persian Gulf to the Iberian Peninsula. 
 
 Two circumstances combined to render 
 Mohammed's task fairly easy easy, that is, 
 when compared with the difficulties with which 
 he had previously been obliged to cope. In 
 the first place, the Arabs in and around Medina, 
 although merely two different branches of the 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 119 
 
 same tribe, were almost continuously at logger- 
 heads with each other. At times each in turn 
 sought the aid of the Jews, who had occupied 
 the district before the Arabs succeeded in 
 partly dislodging them. It was clear that this 
 would be splendid raw material if brought 
 under the control of a great individuality who 
 would know how to use it ; and Mohammed 
 was exactly the man to rule the tribes with a 
 firm hand. In the second place, both tribes 
 were in the habit of laying their grievances 
 before their Kahins, a body of men who might 
 be described as half-priest, half -sage ; but 
 when Mohammed, with his magnetic personality 
 and imposing presence, came into the midst of 
 them, it was unanimously agreed forthwith 
 that his reputation entitled him to a final 
 decision in all matters which were formerly 
 submitted to the Kahins. This gave him the 
 supreme spiritual power over the Arabs ; but 
 it must never be overlooked, in dealing with 
 the religion which he founded, that the people 
 he was now ruling over were not likely to 
 be deluded by a mere impostor, which some 
 Christians have accused him of being. Again, 
 his judgments, so far as we can trace the 
 history of his life at this period, appear to have 
 been invariably sound, and the veneration felt 
 
120 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 for him as a prophet would not have protected 
 him to any great extent if they had been other- 
 wise. In short, wherever we endeavour to 
 consider his life in an impartial spirit, 
 Mohammed must inevitably strike us as a 
 man of far more than average insight, energy, 
 tact, and command over his fellows, all these 
 qualities being tinctured with that spirit of 
 ecstasy and reverence which animated Moses, 
 Buddha, and the other great seers of antiquity. 
 It is on minute points like these that Sir 
 William Muir's bias in favour of Christianity 
 leads him astray. His Life of Mohammed 
 a work which exhibits much research and 
 industry is spoiled from the outset by the 
 defect of nearly every English thinker, viz., 
 a prejudice in favour of his country in 
 philosophy and religion, the two subjects of 
 which English writers have notoriously always 
 been the worst possible exponents. 
 
 While Mohammed's decision on any matter 
 brought before him for judgment was taken 
 as final, he was at first looked upon by the 
 Medinians as merely exercising a privilege 
 when giving such pronouncements. After a 
 time, however, the Prophet claimed this pro- 
 cedure as a right ; and no objection seems to 
 have been made. Indeed, a rebuke may be 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 121 
 
 noted in Sura iv. 63, of the Koran, obviously 
 levelled at a few Arabs who took their com- 
 plaints before the Kahins instead of bringing 
 them to him : " Hast thou not taken note of 
 those who professed to be believers, yet wish 
 to carry on their suit before the false gods ? " 
 In short, Mohammed was not long in Medina 
 before he became the foremost man in the 
 community, his revelations and prophecies not 
 merely giving him a special status as spiritual 
 adviser, but the exercise of his practical 
 common-sense showing him to be the wisest 
 ruler a state could have when dealing with 
 affairs of everyday life. As soon as he had 
 made himself the indisputable master of the 
 bodies and souls of the inhabitants of Medina, 
 Mohammed used his power to carry out a 
 thorough reform of the legal and religious 
 systems prevailing. The law (Sunna) grew 
 naturally out of his decisions, as the Torah 
 grew out of the decisions of Moses ; Exod. xviii. 
 may be compared as proof of the analogy : 
 
 And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses sat to 
 judge the people ; and the people stood by Moses from 
 the morning unto the evening. 
 
 And when Moses* father-in-law saw all that he did to 
 the people, he said, What is this thing that thou doest to 
 the people ? why sittest thou thyself alone, and all the 
 people stand by thee from morning unto even ? 
 
122 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 And Moses said unto his father-in-law, Because the 
 people come unto me to enquire of God : 
 
 When they have a matter, they come unto me ; and I 
 judge between one and another, and I do make them 
 know the statutes of God, and his laws. (Verses 13-16.) 
 
 Mohammed devoted himself chiefly to the 
 rights of property, and made many salutary 
 laws in this connection. He also paid some 
 attention to the position of married women ; 
 and retained for himself the right of permitting 
 or withholding capital punishment, thus putting 
 an end at one stroke to the blood feuds which 
 had been the curse of Arabia for centuries. 
 That all these various measures were unhesitat- 
 ingly accepted by the community in general 
 well testifies to his powers as an administrator 
 and law-giver. 
 
 When Mohammed had settled in Medina 
 for a short time, he began to entertain great 
 expectations from the Jews, from whom he had 
 previously sometimes deliberately, but more 
 often without knowing it adopted many 
 religious practices in connection with the less 
 important parts of his system. He gradually 
 came to see, however, that his hopes were 
 bound to be disappointed in the long run. 
 While religion had the effect of bringing the 
 Arabs together in a political sense, it had not 
 this effect on the Jews, and their mutual 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 123 
 
 quarrels and recriminations were of much 
 assistance to the Prophet in developing and 
 strengthening his own position. But as the 
 Arabs gradually became welded together into 
 a single organic, political body, they found 
 themselves unable to tolerate foreign elements 
 within their regions, and a spirit of hostility 
 against the Jews was not long in making itself 
 felt. 
 
 As this feeling of revolt against the presence 
 of the Jews became stronger and stronger, the 
 prophet made a few alterations in his system 
 to correspond to it. Hitherto the Arabs 
 had prayed with their faces turned towards 
 Jerusalem ; now they were directed to face 
 Mecca. For the Jewish fast held on the loth 
 of Tishri there was substituted the month 
 of Ramadan. While the Jews recognised 
 Mohammed's authority as a kind of omni- 
 potent judge, they were not satisfied with the 
 development of a civil kingdom out of religion ; 
 so in Sura ii. we find a long diatribe against 
 them, doubtless brought about by some indis- 
 creet protest which had come to the ears of the 
 Prophet. Other minor features of the Moslem 
 ritual, which had hitherto had a Jewish tinge, 
 were also changed. The alteration in the 
 direction of prayer (kibla), when Mohammedans 
 
124 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 were directed to face Mecca instead of Jerusalem, 
 was one of the most important. 
 
 As the result of these various changes the 
 basic principle of Islam (i.e., the Unity of God) 
 was accentuated, and the remaining four of 
 the five Islam precepts were gradually evolved, 
 viz., prayer at stated times, almsgiving to the 
 poor, the fast of Ramadan, the observance of 
 the festival of Mecca. The prayers, each of 
 which at first consisted of two and afterwards 
 of four protestations, were to be said five times 
 daily at sunrise, noon, afternoon, sunset, and 
 late in the evening. No matter what occupa- 
 tion the Moslem might be engaged upon, 
 when the hour came round for prayer he 
 must cease it and fulfil his religious duties. 
 The almsgiving was a device of Mohammed's 
 for introducing a spirit of fellowship among 
 the Moslems. The moneys appear to have 
 been paid to Mohammed himself in the first 
 instance, and distributed by him among the 
 needy, but they afterwards became a sort of 
 tithe, forming the foundation of the Moslem 
 fiscal system. 
 
 By these five regulations Mohammed seems 
 to have made his personal influence very strong. 
 La ilah ilia 'llah (no god but the one God) 
 was the rule of life ; but upon this short 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 125 
 
 summing up of the faith followed the corollary : 
 " and Mohammed is His Prophet." When 
 the Prophet spoke he spoke in the name of 
 the Almighty ; when he gave a command, the 
 command was an injunction from God and 
 must be obeyed. Hence the terse sentence 
 in one of the commentaries on the Koran : 
 " Brother would have slain brother, had 
 Mohammed willed it." Formerly the head 
 of the family had ruled undisputably over 
 the family ; but now God, in the person of 
 His only Prophet, ruled over all ; anarchy 
 gave place to order ; a heterogeneous confusion 
 of different tribes became a homogeneous and 
 compact mass of warriors. Every Moslem 
 was the brother of every other Moslem, so 
 far at all events as related to his protection 
 from injury at the hands of a non-Moslem. 
 There was no law outside of Islam ; and the 
 followers of Mohammed were under the 
 watchful care of Allah. 
 
 It is worth while devoting so much space 
 to an account of Mohammed's procedure and 
 success in Medina, for it was the turning of 
 his religion into a political and warlike state 
 that may be reckoned almost a miracle, and 
 not the fact that this state within a state 
 afterwards developed into a world-wide empire. 
 
126 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 The nominal brotherhood of all the Moslems 
 which some writers have grotesquely suggested 
 would have led to Communism was reconciled 
 in practice with strict obedience to the leaders 
 of the commonwealth, and respect for the 
 higher spirits in the people on the part of 
 the lower. The almost uncanny ability of 
 the Asiatic to recognise a man of a superior 
 order of mind and to follow him unswervingly, 
 has already been referred to by Mr Meredith 
 Townsend ; and, though the Arabs are un- 
 doubtedly slower in this respect than the 
 Hindoos, it is evident that they did recognise 
 Mohammed's genius in a comparatively short 
 time, apart altogether from his position as 
 Allah's only Prophet. While the trait 
 mentioned holds good in regard to the Asiatic 
 even at the present day, it would be practically 
 impossible for this recognition to be extended 
 to any superior mind in our modern Europe 
 the sneers at Schopenhauer and Nietzsche for 
 example, from the men who should in the 
 ordinary course of events be entitled to no 
 opinions at all, are enough to assure us of 
 this. The moral and artistic chaos into which 
 the one-man, one-opinion spirit of democracy 
 is landing us makes one feel a large measure 
 of sympathy for the English bishop who said 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 127 
 
 about a century ago : " The common people 
 have nothing to do with the laws except to 
 obey them." 
 
 Having thoroughly organised his community, 
 Mohammed now proceeded to utilise his forces. 
 From this time onward the history of Islam is 
 political rather than religious, for it refers 
 principally to the numerous campaigns (maghazi) 
 waged by the apostle of God against the un- 
 believers. When the Prophet's reputation had 
 extended beyond Medina to the neighbouring 
 villages, a few allied tribes became converts 
 and made common cause with him. Such 
 tribes were the Johaina, Mozaina, the Ghifar, 
 and the Aslam. Thus reinforced, Mohammed 
 determined to show that he rather than Christ 
 had come with a sword and not with peace. 
 It was almost inevitable that the first holy war 
 (jihad) should be against the Meccans. True, 
 the prophet had been born amongst them ; 
 but faith was stronger than blood. 
 
 As Medina was situated on a mountain 
 ridge on the long highway from the Yemen 
 to Syria, Mohammed took advantage of this 
 position to plunder the Meccan caravans. 
 The first attempt, which proved entirely 
 successful, was made in the autumn of 623. 
 Mohammed sent out a band of his followers 
 
128 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 under sealed orders, and a caravan returning 
 from Taif was attacked in accordance with 
 the instructions of the Prophet. Many 
 Meccans were killed in the struggle, but the 
 men who were sent out to perform this work 
 had to be disavowed by the Prophet afterwards, 
 as an attack during the sacred month of Rahab 
 was far from finding favour with the inhabitants 
 of Medina. Another expedition soon followed in 
 the month of Ramadan, 623 (which in that year 
 would correspond to December). An important 
 caravan was expected to return from Syria. Mo- 
 hammedset out to meet it to thenorth of Medina, 
 having with him three hundred and eight men. 
 The leader of the caravan, Abu Sofyan, heard of 
 the attack which had been planned against him, 
 and sent a special messenger to the Koraish in 
 Mecca for help. In response to this appeal 
 some nine hundred men were soon on their 
 way to Bedr, near where Mohammed was 
 lying in wait. The caravan took a circuitous 
 route and arrived safely ; but the Koraish 
 advanced to defend the honour of their city. 
 When they came in sight of Bedr Mohammed's 
 party mistook ithem for the caravan for which 
 they had been waiting, and a short period of 
 anxious excitement ensued when they learned 
 the truth. Confident in the ability of their 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 129 
 
 leader, however, they awaited the onslaught 
 of the enemy. 
 
 The battle took place on Friday, the I7th or 
 Ramadan. At first single combats were fought, 
 and the accounts describing them resemble not 
 a little the Homeric stories of the Trojan War. 
 Although outnumbered by three to one, the 
 Mohammedans had the advantage in two 
 respects. In the first place the Meccans saw 
 no particular reason for shedding the blood of 
 their fellow-countrymen, and in the second 
 place Mohammed's followers were animated 
 by that intense religious fervour with which 
 Asiatics always fight for new ideas, but which 
 Europeans, who do not understand new ideas, 
 call fanaticism. The struggle came to an end 
 late in the day, when the heads of many well- 
 known Meccan families had been slain. Two 
 of the prisoners, the Prophet's deadly enemies 
 when he was in Mecca, were put to death in 
 cold blood by his orders. The others were 
 permitted to depart on payment of a heavy 
 ransom, though Mohammed afterwards re- 
 gretted this clemency, saying that they all 
 deserved to be sent to hell. 
 
 Two important results to the benefit of 
 Islam resulted from this. Mohammed was 
 now in a strong enough position to break 
 
130 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 down the influence and prestige of the Jews 
 in Medina. He went about this task by 
 calling upon the Beni Kainoka to accept Islam ; 
 and on their refusal he declared war against 
 them. A few short skirmishes settled the 
 matter, and the Jews were able to escape with 
 merely being banished from Medina. Again, 
 the Meccans were greatly impressed they 
 could not be otherwise by their defeat. 
 They spent about a year in planning how they 
 could best avenge themselves, and in January 
 625 they pitched their camp at the foot of 
 Mount Ohod, to the north-east of Medina. 
 Here another battle was engaged in, and after 
 a long struggle the victory went in favour 
 of the Meccans. Mohammed himself was 
 wounded in the face and lay on the ground 
 for some time as if dead, while his uncle was 
 killed outright. The Meccans were too 
 greatly weakened to follow up their victory, 
 and returned home again as soon as they could 
 collect their scanty forces. In order that the 
 Moslems might not appear to be daunted by 
 their defeat, Mohammed led a party of his 
 followers after them the next day and cut 
 down a few stragglers. 
 
 The summer of the same year witnessed the 
 expulsion of a powerful Jewish family from 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 131 
 
 Medina, the Beni Nadir, their land being 
 seized by Mohammed for his own personal use. 
 The expelled tribe, angered at the drastic treat- 
 ment which had been meted out to them, suc- 
 ceeded in bringing together the Bedouin tribes 
 of Solaim and Ghatafan. The Beni Nadir 
 arranged a compact between these tribes, the 
 ultimate object being to attack and exterminate 
 Mohammed and his followers. By March 
 627 they had succeeded so well that an army 
 of ten thousand men was ready to march on 
 Medina. Through his numerous spies, how- 
 ever, the Prophet learned of the arrangements 
 which were being directed against him, and he 
 was not long in making preparations for a siege. 
 The houses of Medina sufficed in themselves to 
 form a wall, except to the north-western part 
 of the town, where there was an open space. 
 Acting on the advice of his Persian freedman, 
 Salman, Mohammed gave orders for a fosse to 
 be dug, and here he entrenched his army. In 
 spite of the efforts of the huge force opposed 
 to them, the ranks of the Prophet's followers 
 could not be broken, and the besiegers en- 
 deavoured to prevail on the only Jewish family 
 left in Medina, the Koraiza, to help them from 
 the inside of the town. In response to the appeal, 
 the Jews made a half-hearted attempt at insur- 
 
132 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 rection ; but the fear of Mohammed's power, 
 and the still greater fear that the forces opposed 
 to him would leave them in the lurch at the 
 end of the fighting, nullified their efforts from 
 the very beginning. Dissensions between the 
 Ghatafan and the other tribes, coupled with 
 the fact that provisions were beginning to run 
 short, ended in the withdrawal of the attack- 
 ing forces, after a siege lasting just two weeks. 
 They had scarcely been out of sight for more 
 than twenty-four hours when Mohammed called 
 his followers together for the purpose of at- 
 tacking the Jews the unlucky Koraiza family 
 which had endeavoured to assist his assailants. 
 They were penned up in their own quarter of 
 the city, and captured after a siege of several 
 days. Offered the choice of Islam or death, 
 they preferred the latter, and were duly exe- 
 cuted. The clan numbered in all nearly seven 
 hundred men, apart from the women and 
 children. All the men were slain, the women 
 and children being sold into slavery. A more 
 magnificent martyrdom, as Weil justly remarks, 
 has seldom been known in history. 
 
 Desirous now of bringing Mecca under his 
 control, Mohammed in March 628, set out on 
 one of the feast-days to visit his native place, 
 taking with him the respectable bodyguard of 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 133 
 
 fifteen hundred men. He halted at Hodaibiya, 
 on the borders of the town : but the Meccans 
 refused him admission. The Prophet scarcely 
 felt that he had a sufficient number of men with 
 him to force his way, and some alarm was caused 
 among his small army by a report that the 
 Meccans intended to attack him suddenly and 
 slay them to a man. This gave rise to an 
 event which became famous in the early history 
 of Islam; the " Homage under the Tree." 
 Mohammed made his followers swear, by strik- 
 ing hands, that they would support him through 
 anything that might happen and die if necessary 
 for his sake. The solemnity of the scene and 
 the intense devotion shown to the Prophet by 
 his followers were factors which greatly influ- 
 enced such of the Koraish as happened to be 
 present, and it was thought advisable to come 
 to terms. It was agreed that the Prophet 
 should not enter Mecca, in order that he 
 might not have it to say that he actually forced 
 his way into the town ; but that on the follow- 
 ing year he was to return and be admitted to 
 the precincts of Mecca for three days. After 
 some deliberation this proposal was accepted 
 and a treaty was drawn up accordingly. 
 
 Mohammed now led an expedition against 
 the wealthy Jews of Khaibar, to the north of 
 
134 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 Medina, in order to compensate his disciples 
 for their set-back at Mecca. Taken by sur- 
 prise, and being without capable leaders, no 
 real resistance was offered to the forces of the 
 Prophet, and Jewish executions were once more 
 the rule. 
 
 The treaty which had been drawn up between 
 Mohammed and the Meccans lasted for nearly 
 two years, and in this time Islam began to 
 spread with astonishing rapidity. Many of the 
 tribes scattered about Medina and Mecca were 
 amazed at the ease with which the Prophet's 
 soldiers had routed hostile armies three or four 
 times their number, and at their steadfast ad- 
 herence to Mohammed himself. That faith 
 was worth more than force was an axiom which 
 the Arab tribes now began to observe, and as 
 a consequence the ranks of the Moslems were 
 swollen by thousands of new disciples in the 
 course of a year. In many cases these new 
 adherents of Allah were undoubtedly attracted 
 by the booty which so often fell to the lot of 
 the Moslem warriors. At the end of the first 
 twelve months Mohammed took advantage of 
 his treaty rights and visited Mecca with two 
 thousand men, and he was successful in con- 
 verting the heads of three very important 
 Meccan families. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 135 
 
 Everything was now ready for the Moslem 
 invasion of Mecca, but an excuse was wanting. 
 Fortunately this was soon supplied. An un- 
 important Koraish tribe attacked a tribe which 
 was allied with the Moslems, and though little 
 damage was done on either side, the Prophet 
 seized the opportunity to declare war. An 
 army of one hundred thousand men was soon 
 mustered, and in January 630 (or the month 
 of Ramadan A. H. 8) the campaign began. 
 Indeed, so secret did Mohammed keep his 
 movements until the last moment that his 
 troops were almost at the gates of Mecca before 
 the Koraish knew anything of the matter ; the 
 first intimation they had being the glow of ten 
 thousand camp fires a little to the west of the 
 city. Abu Sofyan, who, although one of the 
 principal Meccans, was secretly in the pay of 
 the Prophet, was sent to negotiate. He re- 
 turned to the citizens to say that their best 
 course was immediate surrender, Mohammed 
 having promised security to those who refrained 
 from interfering with him. This was agreed 
 to, and with the exception of one unimportant 
 struggle the Prophet and his followers were 
 able to enter Mecca with comparative ease. 
 In order not to alienate the sympathies of the 
 more important Arab tribes, Mohammed pro- 
 
136 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 hibited his men from pillaging the city, and he 
 also took an early opportunity of confirming 
 all the old-established rights and privileges of 
 Mecca. By destroying every sanctuary outside 
 of Mecca, too, he made his native city an im- 
 portant centre of worship. About this time 
 also he remodelled the Moslem Calendar and 
 made certain alterations in the ceremonials 
 connected with the feasts. 
 
 The submission of the Koraish was the 
 signal for the neighbouring tribes to follow 
 suit. Only one important tribe held aloof, 
 the Howazin, and a short campaign soon made 
 them willing to throw in their lot with the 
 others. It was remarked after this that 
 Mohammed did all in his power to soothe the 
 Koraish chiefs. He left them with the property 
 they had already owned before he took posses- 
 sion of Mecca, and, in addition, gave them 
 a considerable share in the booty which had 
 been captured elsewhere by the men of Medina. 
 Indeed, the latter, who had done all the fight- 
 ing and helped in the greatest degree to 
 propagate the doctrines of Islam, felt slighted 
 when they saw the Koraish reaping the fruits 
 of the victory. The Prophet, however, 
 assembled them together and made a touch- 
 ing speech, reminding them of the dangers 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 137 
 
 they had endured in the past, and of the fact 
 that Allah might manifest himself in ways that 
 would seem strange to them, whereupon "all 
 the Moslems wept till their beards were wet," 
 and said with one voice : " O Apostle of God, 
 we are satisfied with our portions ! " 
 
 In acting as he had done, however, 
 Mohammed was influenced by his own political 
 principles, and in this he was wise, however 
 much theologians may be inclined to censure 
 him. He saw that the future of Islam lay with 
 the powerful Arab aristocracy, such as were to 
 be found among the Koraish chiefs, hence the 
 importance he attached to their friendship, and 
 the steps he took to prepare the way for their 
 sovereignty over the other tribes after his death. 
 
 The conquest of Mecca was followed by 
 only one other great event in Mohammed's life. 
 On hearing a rumour that the Greek emperor 
 was about to march upon him, he gathered 
 together the largest army that had ever been 
 seen in Arabia, including twenty thousand foot 
 soldiers and ten thousand horse. He led this 
 force in person towards the Syrian borders, and 
 the expedition resulted in the complete subjuga- 
 tion of all the Christian and semi-Christian 
 tribes in the north. The Prophet's reputation 
 was at its zenith, and from all parts deputations 
 
138 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 came to him to do homage in the name of the 
 various tribes, to such an extent that the years 
 8 and 9 of the Hijra were known as the Years 
 of the Deputations. The last great tribe to 
 yield was the Beni Amir, but it, too, was 
 conquered, and in 630 the Prophet, now 
 complete master of all Arabia, made his 
 pilgrimage to Mecca with the knowledge that 
 his divine mission had been successfully 
 accomplished. He had, in twenty years, as 
 Meredith Townsend justly says, lived a life 
 which would have hardened the heart and 
 ulcerated the temper of almost any man a life 
 such as that which in seven years turned 
 Frederick the Great into a military despot ; 
 but Mohammed's serene character was proof 
 against all the trials and temptations to which 
 he had been subjected, and in his last address 
 to the pilgrims from Mount Arafat, at Mecca, 
 he was able to proclaim a universal brotherhood 
 throughout Arabia and to exhort his disciples 
 to righteousness and piety. 
 
 " Ye people ! hearken to my speech and 
 comprehend the same. Know that every 
 Moslem is the brother of every other Moslem. 
 All of you are on the same equality " (and 
 as he pronounced these words, he raised his 
 arms aloft and placed the forefinger of one 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 139 
 
 hand on the forefinger of the other), " ye are 
 one brotherhood." 
 
 u Know ye what month is this ? What 
 territory is this ? What day ? " To each 
 question the people gave the appropriate 
 answer, viz., " The Sacred Month The Sacred 
 Territory the Great Day of Pilgrimage." 
 After every one of these replies Mohammed 
 added : " Even thus sacred and inviolable hath 
 God made the Life and the Property of each of 
 you unto the other until ye meet your Lord. 
 
 " Let him that is present tell it unto him 
 that is absent. Haply, he that shall be told, may 
 remember better than he who hath heard it." 
 
 On his return to Medina Mohammed 
 occupied himself with preparations for another 
 expedition to Syria, but the time had arrived 
 when he was soon to meet Allah face to face. 
 He was seized with a dreadful fever, and was 
 scarcely able to drag himself to the mosque, 
 where, amidst the loud lamentations of the 
 assembled congregation, he announced his 
 approaching death. This exertion by no means 
 helped him, and during the next few days he 
 gradually sank. His wives insisted on dosing 
 him with physic, and that he maintained his 
 sense of humour to the last may be seen in the 
 fact that he punished them by making them 
 
140 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 take it also. On the 8th of June 862, he died 
 peacefully, praying to Allah almost to the last. 
 
 Even while the body of Mohammed lay 
 unburied, quarrels began to arise among his 
 disciples as to his successor. Finally, however, 
 Abu-Bekr, who was the father of Mohammed's 
 favourite wife, Ayeshah, received the homage 
 of the principal chiefs at Medina, and his 
 election was confirmed by an assembly of the 
 Faithful in 632 as the first of the long line 
 of Califs. Abu-Bekr led the Moslems in the 
 war which had been declared against Syria. 
 The triumph of the Mohammedan army was 
 everywhere complete, for the Persians were 
 routed in several battles and even a Roman 
 imperial army was utterly annihilated. At his 
 death Abu-Bekr named Omar as his successor, 
 and under him Jerusalem was captured. 
 Under his able leadership, too, Persia was 
 utterly subjugated, Egypt invaded, and 
 Alexandria captured. When Omar was 
 assassinated in 644, a Council of Six appointed 
 Othman, a son-in-law of the Prophet, to the 
 Califate. It was under this sovereign that th>e 
 text of the Koran was definitely established, 
 but his rule was too weak to suit the warlike 
 

 PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 141 
 
 race he had been appointed to command, and 
 he was murdered at Medina in 656. 
 
 The various conquests made by the Moslems, 
 however, belong henceforth to the province of 
 history rather than of religion, and it only 
 remains to mention the two sects into which 
 the Faith was at an early period divided. 
 Mention has already been made of one of 
 the early converts of Mohammed, his cousin 
 AH. After the Prophet's death there was a 
 large party which believed that Ali and 
 not Abu-Bekr was entitled to the leader- 
 ship of the Faithful, and they have ever since 
 championed the descendants of Ali against the 
 orthodox califs. The members of this sect are 
 known as Shiites (" Sectaries"), as opposed to 
 the Sunnites or Orthodox Moslems. Generally 
 speaking, the Shiites are much stronger in 
 Persia than elsewhere, but they are also 
 found scattered through India, Egypt and 
 Turkey to the number of ten millions. The 
 theological differences of opinion, often mere 
 quibbles, which divide the two sects, scarcely 
 merit discussion here. Whatever other 
 divergences there may be, both Shiites and 
 Sunnites maintain firm and unaltered the 
 essential principle of recognising Allah as the 
 only God and Mohammed as his only Prophet. 
 
- 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Mohammedanism continued. The Koran Its form 
 The psychology of Mohammed Themes dealt 
 with in the Koran The poetical Suras Legal 
 decisions Holy wars The ethics of Islamism 
 Commentaries on the Koran Islamic fatalism 
 Development of Mohammedanism Sunnites 
 Shiites Babism Behaism. 
 
 THE religion of some 200,000,000 Moslems 
 all the world over is founded upon the Koran. 
 This is a book about which there can be little 
 " higher criticism/' The revelations in it 
 came direct from Allah to Mohammed- 
 revelations which are attested by hundreds 
 of the Prophet's contemporaries and confirmed 
 by a long Arabic tradition. The Koran is 
 probably entitled to the claim of the 
 Mohammedans that it is the most widely- 
 read book in existence ; for it enters into the 
 life of the people even more than the Bible does 
 in a country like England, and consequently 
 much more, of course, than the Bible does 
 in the countries on the continent of Europe. 
 Besides, as an index to the spiritual develop- 
 ment of a remarkable man, the Koran has a 
 
 further claim upon our attention. 
 
 142 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 143 
 
 To state the case thus, however, is hardly put- 
 ting the matter before the reader with sufficient 
 emphasis. For something like three-quarters 
 of a century both the Old and the New Testa- 
 ments have been subjected to a strict investi- 
 gation at the hands of scholars, philologists, 
 archaeologists, and historians, and this minute 
 enquiry has not left the once powerful book 
 altogether uninjured. We can now distinguish 
 better between the mythological part of the Old 
 Testament, such as the story of the Creation, 
 and matters of actual fact, such as the par- 
 ticulars concerning Babylon. A psychological 
 analysis shows us what a magnificent and 
 virile race the Jews were about the time of their 
 kings, and how they had gradually degenerated 
 about the time when Jeremiah was permitted to 
 lament with the enemy at the gates. On the 
 other hand, the complete distinction between 
 the strong and masculine morality of the Old 
 Testament and the rather effeminate morality 
 of the New, led Nietzsche to suggest that it was 
 inadvisable to continue to mix oil and water by 
 continuing to bind the two Testaments together. 
 
 The morality of even the later Jewish 
 prophets, however, is masculine and aristo- 
 cratic as compared with that of the Christian 
 apostles, which is feminine and democratic. 
 
144 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 Complaints of this nature cannot be laid 
 against the Koran. It did not develop in the 
 course of thousands of years, but was com- 
 posed in the lifetime of one man. True, the 
 impression left on the reader's mind by a first 
 perusal of the Koran it is somewhat shorter 
 than the New Testament may be one of 
 chaos, but the book is nevertheless an organic 
 unity. It represents the fundamental tenets of 
 Islam, a healthy morality, an adequate rule 
 of life. Since the quietism of the Buddhist 
 is influencing Europe through the theosophists, 
 since the modern Jews are neglecting the hard- 
 ness of the earlier parts of the Old Testament 
 for the weaker morality preached by the later 
 prophets, since Christianity, as is natural, is 
 inoculating as much of the world as it can 
 reach with the degenerate principles of humani- 
 tarianism, let us be thankful that there are many 
 millions of Moslems to show us a religion which 
 is not afraid to acknowledge the manly virtues 
 of war, courage, strength, and daring --a 
 religion which does not seek new followers by 
 means of cunning dialectics ; but which boldly 
 makes converts with the sword. 
 
 How the Koran was developed is told in 
 the book itself. The " mother of the book "- 
 i.e., the original text is in Heaven. Section 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 145 
 
 by section it was conveyed to the Prophet by 
 a process of " sending down " (tanzil). Some- 
 times the medium is an angel, called in Sura 
 xxvi. 193, "the spirit," in Sura xvi. 104, 
 " the holy spirit," and in Sura ii. 91 " Gabriel." 
 The Prophet repeats the revelation after the 
 angel and then communicates it to the world 
 at large. 
 
 We will teach thee to recite the Koran, nor aught 
 shalt thou forget. . . . Warn, therefore, for the warning 
 is profitable : He that feareth God will receive the 
 warning, and the most reprobate only will turn aside 
 from it. (Sura Ixxxvii.) 
 
 Nflldeke suggests that all this was but 
 " Mohammed's own crude attempt to show 
 how the ideas he put forth really took shape 
 in his own mind." But, in the light of 
 modern psychological research, this explanation 
 is untenable, and smacks of the scholar who 
 is but rarely troubled with visions of any 
 sort himself. Mohammed was simply gifted 
 with that extreme sensibility which, even in 
 our own cold climate, has given to many 
 a genius the outward aspect of a shy, stammer- 
 ing imbecile not to mention the periods of 
 nervous depression from which so many great 
 men have been known to suffer. Standing 
 in awe of the Almighty, Mohammed believed 
 
 K 
 
146 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 that the divine commands came to him 
 through a mediator. This, however, is far 
 from the Christian concept of a Saviour, whose 
 intercession is necessary to save the souls of 
 his followers. Mohammed never claimed any 
 of the qualities which are ascribed to Christ, 
 who has probably suffered more through his 
 disciples than any other ancient prophet. 
 
 It is explicitly affirmed in the Koran that 
 the sacred book was revealed gradually and 
 not all at one time. This is particularly clear 
 in Sura xxv. 34, where we also find traces 
 of the Jewish influence under which the Prophet 
 had come, probably through the Hanifs : 
 
 We have given to every prophet an enemy from among 
 the wicked ones but thy Lord is sufficient guide and helper. 
 
 And the infidels say, " Unless the Koran be sent down 
 to him all at once. . . ." But in this way We would 
 stablish thy heart by it ; in parcels have We parcelled 
 out to thee ; 
 
 Nor shall they come to thee with puzzling questions, 
 but We will come to thee with the truth and their best 
 solution. 
 
 Heretofore We gave the law to Moses, and appointed 
 his brother Aaron to be his councillor : 
 
 And We said : Go ye to the people who treat our signs 
 as lies." And them destroyed We with utter destruction. 
 
 And as to the people of Noah ! When they treated 
 their apostles as impostors, We drowned them ; and We 
 made them a sign to mankind : a grievous chastisement 
 have We prepared for the wicked. 1 
 
 1 The "We" is the Almighty, being often represented by the 
 Prophet as using this royal form. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 147 
 
 The revelations issued piece by piece were 
 known singly as a "Koran," i.e., a reading, 
 a recitation, a "kitab," or writing, and a 
 "Sura," the late Hebrew "shuran," meaning 
 "series." The latter name even during 
 Mohammed's lifetime, came to be given to 
 the separate chapters of the work, the whole 
 being known as the Koran. The very unequal 
 length of the chapters has led critics to believe 
 that the longer ones since the short ones are 
 complete in themselves are merely several 
 revelations strung together. It is often 
 difficult for the student to decide how to pick 
 out of the longer Suras the shorter sections 
 which should really be placed separately; but 
 Rodwell, in his excellent translation and re- 
 arrangement of the Koran, has done this 
 probably as well as it can ever be done. A 
 few of the longer Suras, nevertheless, are 
 undoubtedly homogeneous, such as xx, which 
 deals with the history of Moses. In the 
 different narrations, however, the Prophet 
 sometimes passes carelessly from one branch 
 of the subject to another, or, indeed, often 
 to a totally different subject, and transitional 
 clauses are often omitted. Both Weil and 
 Noldeke remind us that such abrupt transitions 
 are also common in Arabic poetry. 
 
148 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 For centuries men gravely disputed whether 
 Mohammed was really inspired, whether he 
 was a madman, or whether he was an impostor. 
 In one of his most brilliant aphorisms, however, 
 Nietzsche had dealt with the question of 
 madness and its influence on religious spirits. 
 Mohammed's prophetic ecstasy, like the 
 prophetic ecstasy of Nietzsche himself, who 
 also boldly claimed inspiration, must not be 
 mistaken for the ordinary insanity of, say, 
 an over-worked financier. 
 
 "If," says Nietzsche, "despite that formid- 
 able pressure of the 'morality of custom,' 
 under which all human communities lived, 
 new and divergent ideas, valuations, and 
 impulses have made their appearance time 
 after time, this state of things has been brought 
 about only with the assistance of a dreadful 
 associate : it was insanity almost everywhere 
 that paved the way for the new thought and 
 cast off the spell of an old custom and supersti- 
 tion. ... In our own time we continually 
 hear the statement reiterated that genius is 
 tinctured with madness instead of good sense. 
 Men of earlier ages were far more inclined to 
 believe that, wherever traces of insanity showed 
 themselves, a certain proportion of genius 
 and wisdom was likewise present something 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 149 
 
 6 divine,' as they whispered to one another. . . 
 ' All the greatest benefits of Greece have sprung 
 from madness,' said Plato, setting on record 
 the opinion of the entire ancient world. Let 
 us take a step further : All those superior men 
 who felt themselves irresistibly urged on to 
 throw off the yoke of some morality or other, 
 had no other resource // they were not really 
 mad than to feign madness, or actually to 
 become insane. And this holds good for 
 innovators in every department of life, and 
 not only in religion and politics." 
 
 Mohammed corresponded in many respects 
 to the type thus outlined ; and that such a 
 man could be a comparatively late-comer in 
 the domain of religions may be easily traced to 
 his Arabic origin. Unmolested by the Greeks 
 and Romans, and interfered with only very 
 slightly by the missionaries of the early 
 Christian churches, the Arabs maintained 
 their healthy pagan state, as has already been 
 indicated, until the fifth or sixth century of 
 our era. The Arabs owed their good fortune 
 in this respect to their purity of race a purity 
 which the Romans had lost, owing to the influx 
 of the barbarians and the rise of the slave 
 classes under the influence of Christianity. 
 All the Prophet's epileptic fits were but the 
 
150 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 ecstasy of an inspired feeling, and in his later 
 years he was able to make good use of this 
 power to promulgate laws for the benefit of 
 his subjects to which they might not otherwise 
 have submitted so tractably the common 
 people never know what is good for them. 
 When Mohammed, for instance, condemned 
 the unlimited polygamy of the Arabs and 
 directed that a man should not take more than 
 four wives, and only then if he could treat them 
 all with equal love and justice, he was effecting 
 a tremendous revolution. But it was the Word 
 of God ; and no complaints were made against 
 the pronouncements of the Prophet of God. 
 
 As to the literary form of the work, it is 
 fairly clear that Mohammed himself did not 
 write down any part of it. It would appear that 
 he always had someone ready at hand in Mecca 
 to take down his later revelations shortly after 
 he had " heard " them ; and this practice was 
 kept up at Medina, where one of his followers 
 was always summoned to write down the legal 
 decisions given by the Prophet. Sometimes, 
 indeed, Mohammed altered his early Suras by 
 having certain passages erased and others 
 added ; while at times, doubtless misled by 
 his memory, he would dictate the same Sura 
 in almost identical terms to two or three 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 151 
 
 different disciples. In Sura xvi. 103, we 
 find that unbelievers sometimes taunted the 
 Moslems with this: "And when we change 
 one verse for another, and God knoweth best 
 what he revealeth, they say : ' Thou art only 
 a fabricator.' Nay ! but most of them have 
 no knowledge." And it may be remarked in 
 passing that if Mohammed had been the mere 
 hypocrite and impostor made familiar to us by 
 the works of intolerant Christians, verses like 
 these would scarcely ever have made their 
 appearance in the Koran. 
 
 A ready answer is forthcoming from the 
 Prophet when he is taunted with even chang- 
 ing the legal decisions given in certain parts 
 of the Koran. God, he explains, is a despot, 
 who varies his commands at pleasure, regard- 
 ing right and wrong as merely relative and not 
 absolute terms. Thus, God may prescribe one 
 law for the Christians, another for the Jews, 
 and a third for the Moslems, while, if it 
 pleases him to do so, he will even alter 
 his commands to the Moslems. Therefore, 
 although a revelation might abrogate one 
 which had gone before, Mohammed some- 
 times permitted the earlier one to stand, in 
 order that his followers might be instructed 
 and edified by both. It has been remarked 
 
152 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 that Mohammed's foresight did not extend to 
 the great empire which his teaching was 
 destined to build up ; but, on the other 
 hand, his revelations easily kept pace with 
 current events. The faithful in Medina used 
 often to give utterance to loud expressions of 
 admiration when a question of momentary 
 urgency was answered by a revelation just at 
 the right time. It would seem, too, that the 
 revelation coincided at times with the opinions 
 previously expressed by Mohammed's most 
 attached disciples. " Omar would expound 
 certain views," says a Moslem commentator 
 with much naivete, f< and the Koran would be 
 revealed in accordance therewith." 
 
 Like the books of the Bible, the different 
 chapters of the Koran deal with varied themes. 
 In some passages we find moral reflections, 
 meditations on the greatness of God as mani- 
 fested in nature and history, and condemna- 
 tions of idolatry. Other passages depict the 
 joys of Heaven and the terrors of Hell, and also 
 the terror of the last day, when the world is 
 to be judged. There are general directions for 
 believers, rebukes for backsliders and the luke- 
 warm, and there is a punishment for the enemies 
 of Islam. The later Suras especially deal with 
 legal decisions. Murder may be punished 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 153 
 
 with death or, in certain cases, by the pay- 
 ment of a fine to the family of the murdered 
 man. Thefts were punished at first by mutila- 
 tion, such as the cutting off" of a hand or foot. 
 But, in later times, the ordinary European 
 punishment of imprisonment, or the more 
 Oriental punishment of the bastinado, has 
 been substituted. No punishment, however, 
 was inflicted for theft if the property were 
 easy of access to the thief, or if it con- 
 sisted of food which a starving man took to 
 satisfy his hunger. The poor, it may be re- 
 marked, are much better looked after among 
 Mohammedans than among Christians, for 
 each man gives up a fortieth part, that is 2j 
 per cent., of his possessions to the poor. This 
 money goes into the public treasury, and 
 besides being used to help the needy, is applied 
 to the redemption of slaves. Unchastity on 
 the part of a woman was at first punished by 
 imprisonment for life, but this penalty was 
 afterwards altered to stoning in the case of a 
 married woman, and a hundred stripes and a 
 certain period of exile in the case of an un- 
 married woman. Slaves were punished less 
 severely. Apostasy from Islam is, according 
 to the Koran, to be punished with death unless 
 the offender comes back to the fold after having 
 
154 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 been thrice warned. Severe penalties are also 
 inflicted for blasphemy, whether against God, 
 Mohammed, Christ, Moses, or any other 
 prophet. 
 
 Another injunction in the Koran which was 
 for centuries carried out on an extended scale 
 relates to the making of war against infidels. 
 A Moslem slain while carrying out a holy war 
 was looked upon as a martyr and admitted to 
 the joys of Heaven, while it was prescribed 
 that a deserter should forfeit his life not only 
 in this world but also in the world to come. 
 At first all prisoners taken in battle were slain 
 on the spot, but later on it became the practice 
 to give captives three choices : (i) To become 
 followers of Mohammed, in which case they 
 were at once freed and became entitled to all 
 the privileges of Moslems ; (2) To pay an 
 agreed tribute, in which case, if the religion of 
 the unbelievers did not include gross idolatry, 
 their spiritual affairs were left to themselves ; 
 or (3) to decide the quarrel by a further com- 
 bat, in which case, if the Moslems won, as they 
 almost invariably did, the captive women and 
 children were carried off as slaves, while the 
 men had the alternatives of being slain or 
 becoming Moslems. When in the course of 
 time cases arose for discussion which could not 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 155 
 
 be settled by appealing to the Koran for a 
 precedent, the few additional sayings of 
 Mohammed not included in the Koran were 
 sometimes used as the basis for a decision, 
 though as a rule the pronouncement of the 
 calif was binding. As a result of these post- 
 Mohammedan decisions, however, certain con- 
 tradictions, usually of little importance, are to 
 be found between the actual practice of to- 
 day and the spirit of the Moslem Bible. 
 
 It has often been remarked by critics, includ- 
 ing even scholars so different in temperament 
 as Sale, De Sacy, Muir, Burckhardt, and 
 Noldeke, that what has least changed about 
 Islamism in the course of centuries is its ethics. 
 The complete ethical system of the Koran can- 
 not naturally be found summed up in two or 
 three Suras, but must be judged from the spirit 
 of the book taken as a whole. Injustice, lying, 
 revengefulness, and avarice are all inveighed 
 against in the Koran, as they are by Moham- 
 medan preachers at the present day. The 
 Mohammedans of the twentieth century, how- 
 ever, like the Mohammedans of the seventh, 
 endeavour to act up to their professions. 
 
 Whether Mohammed really made use of 
 written sources or not for his revelations is a 
 question which it is scarcely possible to settle 
 
156 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 now. But, in view of the many anachronisms 
 and misquotations scattered through the stories, 
 it would seem not. In one chapter, for 
 example, Noah is made to declaim against the 
 worship of certain false gods who, however, 
 do not appear to have been adored by the 
 early Jews at all, but by the inhabitants of 
 Mecca and the neighbouring districts in 
 Mohammed's own time. Many of the his- 
 torical sections of the Koran deal with scriptural 
 characters, but there are many divergences in 
 the quotations concerning them. For example, 
 Miriam, the sister of Moses, is identified with 
 the Virgin Mary, from which we can only con- 
 ceive that Mohammed entirely misunderstood 
 some anecdote related to him by one of the 
 Hanifs, or which is just as likely, that the 
 Hanif himself had confused what he had heard 
 or read. There are, however, a few passages 
 in the Koran which directly resemble the text 
 of the Old Testament. Compare, for example, 
 Sura xxi. 105, with Psalms xxxvii. 29, where 
 Mohammed quotes the sentence : " My servants, 
 the righteous, shall inherit the earth." Again, 
 Sura vii. 48, may be compared with Luke xvi. 
 24. But, even here, Mohammed might easily 
 have picked up these texts in conversation with 
 a Jew or a Christian, or even from some of the 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 157 
 
 Hanifs who had come into contact with Jews or 
 Christians. It is undisputed that Mohammed 
 became friendly with highly-cultured Jews 
 when he had resided for some time at Medina, 
 and it would appear that he had an opportunity 
 of studying some of the later Jewish writings, 
 such as the Talmud or the Mishna. In Sura 
 iv. 46, for example, we find the verse : " If ye 
 be sick or on a journey or have come from 
 the unclean place or have touched a woman 
 and ye find not water, then rub pure sand and 
 bathe your face and your hands in it," which, 
 as both Rodwell and Noldeke point out, corre- 
 sponds to one of the Talmudic ordinances. In 
 regard to the style and aesthetic value of the 
 Koran, it must be recognised that different 
 parts of the book are of unequal value. The 
 early Suras are distinguished by their passion 
 and their vigorous imagination, interspersed 
 with scraps of poetical phraseology, which 
 enables us to perceive why a trading community, 
 such as that of Mecca, should regard their 
 eccentric fellow-citizen as a " possessed poet." 
 While in places the style of the Koran is touch- 
 ing and impressive, much of it is decidedly 
 stiff, prosaic. Of course one would scarcely 
 expect to find the legal decisions set down with 
 the passion of a Hebrew prophet, but 
 
158 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 Mohammed made what would seem to most 
 critics the grave mistake of employing a 
 rhyming and poetical form when dealing with 
 prosaic themes, such as the punishment of 
 theft. But we must not forget that, however 
 unsuitable this form of writing may seem to us 
 now, it had quite a different effect when recited 
 on Arabian soil twelve centuries ago. Both 
 style and matter were necessarily new to the 
 Prophet's hearers. Let it be agreed that many 
 passages in the Koran are awkwardly composed, 
 that the iterations are tiresome, that the 
 rhymed prose ambles along in a jingling fashion 
 now and then, these defects of language will 
 hardly surprise us if we always bear in mind 
 that beginnings are difficult, and that, however 
 much poetry might have been written in Arabic 
 before Mohammed's time, the Koran was the 
 first prose work. Besides, if Mohammed's 
 primary aim was to persuade and convince, as 
 we must admit that it was, we cannot deny that 
 that aim has been achieved on a scale undreamt 
 of even by the Prophet himself. 
 
 Weil would divide the Koran chronologically 
 into three distinct periods ; but it is not easy, 
 even with the help of RodwelPs notes, to draw 
 any sharp lines of demarcation between the 
 divisions. A certain broad distinction between 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 159 
 
 the Suras given out at Mecca and those written 
 down at Medina is tolerably clear. In Mecca 
 Mohammed was merely a preacher of little 
 importance, addressing a congregation of equally 
 little importance. Hence the short early Suras 
 are characterised by all the passion of the neg- 
 lected prophet, the pent-up excitement of the 
 man with a message. There are strange oaths 
 and visions, powerful advocates of the joy or 
 torments to be experienced in the next world. 
 Then come the terrible imprecations against 
 the Meccans for their sneers at the messenger 
 of God. In the second period, as the Prophet 
 began to gather a small congregation about him, 
 the glowing imagination of the Suras gives 
 way to arguments and proofs. References are 
 made to the prophets of an earlier day, and 
 the style gradually become less poetical. It is 
 to the beginning of this period that the Moslem 
 Lord's Prayer is assigned a touching appeal : 
 
 IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE COMPASSIONATE THE MERCIFUL. 
 
 Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds ! 
 The compassionate, the merciful ! 
 King on the day of reckoning ! 
 
 Thee only do we worship, and to thee do we cry for help. 
 Guide thou us on the straight path, 
 
 The path of those to whom thou hast been gracious with 
 whom thou art not angry, and who go not astray. 
 
 Rodwell gives the following transliteration 
 
160 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 of the Arabic characters as a specimen of the 
 rhymed prose in which the Koran is written : 
 
 Bismillahi 'rahhmani 'rahheem. 
 El-hamdoo lillahi rabi 'lalameen. 
 Arrahhmani raheem. 
 Maliki Yewmi-d-deen. 
 Eyaka naboodoo, waeyaka nestaeen. 
 Ihdina 'ssirat almostakeem. 
 
 Sirat alezeena anhamta aleihim, gheiri-'l nughdoobi alei- 
 him, wala dsaleen. Ameen. 
 
 Many of the expressions in the original 
 Arabic of the prayer are borrowed from Jewish 
 sources, in particular the word " 'rahhmani," 
 meaning literally " compassioner," the Jewish 
 word for God during the Talmudic period. 
 Mohammed apparently thought of using it 
 instead of Allah, the name of the supreme 
 heathen deity worshipped by the Arabs, think- 
 ing possibly that, as the Arabic root "rhm," 
 also meant pity, the new name would be better 
 understood. He ultimately gave up this plan, 
 but the Jewish word is often met with in the 
 Suras of the second period. 
 
 The third division of the Koran is that in 
 which we meet with the more logical arguments, 
 legal decisions, etc. Noldeke thinks it was 
 largely instrumental in promoting the faith 
 among the higher classes of Arabs, who were 
 more inclined to listen to reasoned discourses 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 161 
 
 than to the fiery words of the early Suras. 1 
 There are also frequent outbursts against the 
 Jews, with whom, as already remarked, Mo- 
 hammed came into contact at Medina, but 
 there is comparatively little concerning the 
 Christians, who were few in number in the 
 district. 
 
 After the Prophet's death began the task of 
 collecting the scattered fragments of the Koran. 
 The work was entrusted by the Calif Abu-Bekr 
 to Zaid, a native of Medina, who had often 
 acted as Mohammed's secretary. According 
 to the account which has come down to us, 
 and which is looked upon as being, on the 
 whole, accurate, Zaid collected the revelations 
 from copies written on flat stones, pieces of 
 leather, the "ribs" of palm-leaves, and lastly 
 " from the breasts of men," i.e., memory. From 
 all these materials he was able to compile a fair 
 copy of the sacred book. This he handed over 
 to the calif ; but in the course of time, when 
 other copies were made from this and diver- 
 gences began to creep into the text, the necessity 
 of having an authorised version, especially in 
 view of political difficulties which were impend- 
 ing, was urged upon the Calif Othman. The 
 services of Zaid were once more requisitioned, 
 
 1 For a counter-argument, -vide p. 168. 
 
162 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 and with three Koraish chiefs he prepared a 
 canonical edition of the Koran from as many 
 different copies as they could gather. To pre- 
 vent further disputes, all the earlier codices 
 were burnt, an action which, however much 
 later textual critics may regret it, effectually 
 silenced all disputes as to the authenticity of 
 this or that text. 
 
 When issuing this new version of the Koran, 
 the Suras were not set down in any particular 
 order. The short Moslem prayer just quoted 
 was placed first, and is usually referred to as 
 the first Sura, though Rodwell makes it the 
 eighth in his edition of the Koran. The remain- 
 ing chapters seemed to be arranged on the prin- 
 ciple that the long Suras should be placed first 
 and the shorter ones last, though even this plan 
 was not adhered to in many instances. There 
 is no doubt, however, that the editors were 
 fully aware of the importance of their task, 
 and that their version is genuine. No interpola- 
 tions were made in the text, and apparently 
 nothing that really belonged to it was excluded. 
 When the edition had been prepared, four 
 manuscript copies were at once written out. 
 One copy was sent to Damascus, a second 
 to Basra, and a third to Cufa, the fourth 
 being retained at Medina. It is from these 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 163 
 
 four originals that all later copies have been 
 derived. 
 
 There was a tradition afterwards among the 
 Arabs that one codex had not been destroyed 
 by Zaid and his assistants, viz., the Obay codex. 
 From the few particulars we have concerning 
 it, however, it was apparently composed of the 
 same material as Zaid's edition, though the 
 Suras were not arranged in the same order. A 
 few of the different readings have been pre- 
 served, but they are of very little importance. 
 The later history of the text of the Koran is 
 principally concerned with the introduction of 
 vowel signs which it was found necessary to 
 add to the consonants as the Arabic alphabet 
 became more developed. Previously to the 
 use of these vowel signs, certain consonants, 
 closely resembling one another in outline, 
 would appear to have become confused. 
 
 From the first or second century of the 
 Flight various commentators have applied 
 themselves to the task of elucidating and 
 developing the theological and ethical systems 
 of the Koran. One famous early commentary 
 was that of Tabari (839-923), who ably 
 summed up the labours of his predecessors. 
 Another is that of Zamakhshari (1075-1144), 
 whose subtlety will no doubt remind the reader 
 
164 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 of Duns Scotus. In the course of time a whole 
 literature has naturally grown up around the 
 book, a literature which it would almost be as 
 difficult a task to classify as that which has 
 grown up around the Bible. Two more com- 
 mentaries may deserve to be mentioned that 
 of Baidawi (thirteenth century), which is practi- 
 cally an abridgment of Zamakhshari's, and 
 that which was prepared under the patronage 
 of Khalaf, a tenth-century calif. It runs to a 
 hundred volumes. 
 
 The fatalism of the Mohammedans has been 
 well summed up by Baron Carra de Vaux, 1 who 
 divides it into three categories. The first he 
 designates by the name " Moral Fatalism." 
 Man is predestined to good or evil, Heaven 
 or Hell. No matter what he may do, he is 
 doomed to salvation or perdition, though, of 
 course, this does not necessarily mean that God 
 will save him if he commits a bad action or 
 condemn him if he performs a good one. This 
 doctrine has also been found among certain 
 Christian sects, such as the Jansenists and the 
 Calvinists. The doctrine itself is not, com- 
 mentators are generally agreed, to be found in 
 
 1 Art. L'hlamisme in Religions et Societet. Alcan, 1905. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 165 
 
 the Koran ; but is much more likely a survival 
 of the ancient paganism of the Arab tribes. 
 This feeling of moral fatalism, however, does 
 not seem to have any effect on the practical life 
 of the Moslems. f ( The sects which are imbued 
 with this feeling/' says Carra de Vaux, a have 
 communicated to the physiognomy of their 
 adherents something bitter, sombre and rest- 
 less, which we do not observe in the appearance 
 of the other Moslems, who are calm in manner 
 and who appear to be resigned to the will of 
 God rather than perturbed by the mystery of 
 his justice." x 
 
 The second type of fatalism is the physical ; 
 but this, too, is rather a popular superstition 
 than a theological doctrine. It is principally 
 concerned with the nature of the death reserved 
 for us : whatever you may do you cannot 
 avoid this fate. Take every precaution, if you 
 will, keep away from danger as much as you 
 may, at the destined hour, whatever has been 
 predestined to kill you will kill you. Your 
 precautions are vain. What is written is 
 written. This physical fatalism has given rise 
 to numerous anecdotes, and one of the tales is 
 common to the Arabian Nights and to Russian 
 folk-lore. A certain conqueror had a horse 
 
 1 Art. L'lslamisme in Religions et Societes, p, 127. Alcan, 1905 
 
166 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 which he greatly loved. One day a seer told 
 him : <( That animal will bring you your death." 
 Alarmed at this, the warrior sent the horse to 
 one of his most distant castles, and after a time 
 news of its death was brought to him. Long 
 afterwards he happened to be staying in this 
 castle, and he was taken to a field to see the 
 bones of the horse. The conqueror laughed 
 at the Fates which had foretold his death 
 through this animal, and, to show his contempt, 
 kicked the head with his foot. The movement 
 dislodged a serpent which was lying inside the 
 horse's skull ; it bit the warrior, and he died 
 from the effects of the poison. 
 
 But there is a third fatalism, one which is 
 almost contained in the word Islam itself 
 (" resignation "). This consists in viewing 
 fatalism merely as a profound and intense 
 abandonment of one's self to God and His 
 Will. This is really the foundation of 
 Mohammedanism, and may be noted not only 
 in the Koran but in the works of Moslem poets 
 and historians, and in the demeanour of the 
 people at all times. As de Vaux points out at 
 the conclusion of one of his lectures, this con- 
 ception of fatalism is quite opposed to the 
 outlook of Western civilisation, which has 
 more and more, in spite of its religion, come 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 167 
 
 to look upon life as a struggle for existence, in 
 which reliance cannot be placed on a Supreme 
 Being, but on the concentrated efforts of the 
 individual himself to survive. 
 
 While on this subject of fatalism, however, 
 a strong distinction must be made between 
 what is understood in Europe by this word 
 and its signification to Orientals. It is 
 generally believed in the West that a Hindoo 
 or an Arabian thinks that all his acts are 
 controlled by a destiny which he cannot avoid. 
 The fact is that this "destiny" or " fate " is 
 nothing more or less than the strongly de- 
 veloped Eastern will. It is this innate influence, 
 and not an influence from any outside source, 
 which a man must bow to and follow in spite 
 of himself. It is this also that Nietzsche 
 referred to when he made a distinction between 
 strong wills and weak wills ; but it is a dis- 
 tinction which it is almost impossible to 
 convey to a European, whose will, owing to 
 the influence of a degenerate religion and a 
 degenerate philosophy, has almost disappeared. 
 The traveller in Thibet, Burmah, or indeed 
 India proper, cannot help observing Buddhist 
 and other ascetics who perform marvellous 
 feats solely owing to an enormously developed 
 will-power. There are numerous instances of 
 
168 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 religious men, who, in an endeavour to mortify 
 the flesh, hold out one arm at right angles to 
 the body and keep it in this position for years. 
 There are instances of others who clench a fist, 
 and by the exertion of their will-power keep it 
 in this position until in time the nails grow 
 through the back of the hand. 
 
 Again, the influence of an idea on the 
 
 Oriental mind cannot be fully conceived by 
 
 the Westerner, who is so much accustomed 
 
 to rely merely upon his reason or dialectical 
 
 arguments. Napoleon himself complained that 
 
 he found it practically impossible to inspire 
 
 his European soldiers with enthusiasm through 
 
 ideas, and he more than once expressed a wish 
 
 that he had gone further east when he invaded 
 
 Egypt, put a turban on his head, and founded 
 
 a new empire. It is for this reason that I 
 
 am inclined to disagree with Noldeke, who, as 
 
 already mentioned, thought that the logical and 
 
 legal divisions of the Koran were more likely 
 
 to be listened to by the higher class of Arabs 
 
 than the fiery words of the early Suras the 
 
 fact being that only the poetical portions of the 
 
 book would have appealed to Arabs of any 
 
 class, the legal divisions being looked upon as 
 
 necessary evils. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 169 
 
 The Sunnites as we have seen, consider the 
 califs from Abu-Bekr, Omar, and Othman as 
 the true successors of the Prophet Mohammed, 
 while the Shiites look upon these three califs 
 as usurpers, and consequently their descendants 
 also. The Shiites do not recognise the spiritual 
 authority of the Sultan at Constantinople, and 
 they believe that Mohammed's power passed at 
 his death to his son-in-law Ali, whose followers 
 were massacred by the forerunners of the 
 Sunnites at Kerbela a place to which the 
 Shiites now make regular pilgrimages in order 
 to visit the tomb of the Imam Hussain. Ali's 
 authority descended to twelve Imams (priests), 
 the last of whom disappeared about the year 940. 
 The Shiites wept over his absence and awaited 
 his return some day, just as the Christians 
 await the second coming of Christ. 
 
 In 1 844 (the year 1260 of the Mohammedan 
 Calendar) a young man of twenty-five, known 
 as Mirza-Ali-Mohammed, declared that he was 
 the missing Imam Mahdi. He took the name 
 of Bab, meaning, in Persian, a gate or door, 
 i.e., representing himself as the gate through 
 which men would have to pass to acquire a 
 knowledge of God. He was, in other words, 
 the mediator between the Supreme Being and 
 ordinary mortals. Little is known about the 
 
170 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 early years of the Bab. He was born at Shiraz 
 on 2Oth October 1819, belonging to a branch 
 of one of those families which claimed descent 
 from the Prophet himself, and are thus entitled 
 to special privileges. We may safely pass over 
 the numerous miracles which are attributed to 
 him, contenting ourselves with the knowledge 
 that when he was still young his father died, 
 leaving him to be brought up by an uncle, who 
 gave him some training in his business establish- 
 ments at Shiraz and Bushire (Abu-Shehr), on 
 the Persian Gulf. Having little aptitude for 
 business, however, the future Bab left his 
 uncle and visited the tomb of the Imam at 
 Kerbela, where he fell in with a sect of Shiites, 
 known as the Sheikhis, led by one Seyyed 
 Kazim, who were known among the Shiites 
 for the earnestness with which they looked 
 forward to the second coming of their lost 
 Imam. All their conversation bore upon this 
 particular point, and their prayers were directed 
 to this end, all of which no doubt influenced 
 the mind of their new and enthusiastic disciple. 
 Shortly afterwards Mirza became friendly with 
 the well-known theological student Mullah- 
 Hussain-Bushruzeh, another disciple of Seyyed 
 Kazim. 
 
 On the death of Seyyed Kazim in a few 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 171 
 
 years' time, Mullah-Hussain-Bushruzeh sought 
 out Mirza, who had returned to Shiraz, in 
 order to talk over the position of the sect. 
 It was then that Mirza said that he himself 
 was the embodiment of the missing Imam, 
 whose return had been awaited century after 
 century, and he felt himself to be the man 
 who was destined to abolish the ancient state 
 of things and prepare the way for new examples 
 of the divine power. The day was come, he 
 held, when man should be freed from the 
 tyranny of the priests and civil authorities and 
 left to follow the dictates of his own conscience, 
 apart from ancient commandments and super- 
 stitions. His friend was naturally alarmed at 
 this display of what may very justly be called 
 Moslem Protestantism, but the eloquence of 
 the new prophet disarmed all his suspicions, 
 and he began to read with much favour the 
 different works which the Bab had composed 
 during the previous two years. Amongst 
 these a commentary on Sura xii. of the Koran, 
 dealing with the history of Joseph, is one of 
 the most celebrated. The connection between 
 the new faith and the earlier forms of 
 Christianity will seem to a modern student to 
 be very close. Justice, liberty and equality were 
 constantly on the lips of the few followers 
 
172 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 whom the Bab had gathered round him, 
 though, like the early Christians, they failed 
 to see what the consequences of liberty and 
 equality might be when carried out to their 
 logical conclusions. It was not long before 
 the faith began to spread with great rapidity. It 
 appealed to what Nietzsche would have called 
 the disinherited Moslems, and in a few months 
 the Bab was surrounded by the Persian free- 
 will men, who could "think for themselves" 
 without the help of the priests, and by the 
 usual crowd of penniless, landless, uninfluential 
 and uncultured revolutionaries, who were 
 charmed to hear that, after all, the priests and 
 prophets were not better than they ought to 
 be, and that they were all brothers in Allah. 
 Had not the Bab said so, and was not he the 
 missing Imam, whose appearance they and 
 their forefathers had awaited with such anxiety 
 for centuries ? Charming ! 
 
 In 1845 tne Bab carried out one of the 
 Moslem precepts by making his pilgrimage 
 to Mecca, whence he returned, we are informed, 
 more than ever determined to undermine the 
 authority of the clergy and to establish 
 "equality/' i.e., to abolish order and harmony 
 and raise up chaos and disorder. While the sect 
 had been making progress in his absence, the 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 173 
 
 authorities became alarmed, doubtless at the 
 political animosities which the new theologian 
 was raising in the minds of the lower classes. 
 The command was therefore issued for the 
 arrest of the Bab, who was pounced upon by 
 a squad of infantry when he arrived from 
 Mecca, and taken to Shiraz. The Shah was 
 not particularly hostile to him, and sent a high 
 dignitary of the palace clergy to speak to the 
 young man and ascertain precisely what his 
 doctrine actually meant. To his surprise, 
 however, his messenger was persuaded by the 
 Bab into becoming his follower ; a fact which 
 seems to indicate that the young prophet 
 was at all events well qualified dialectically. 
 Irritated, not unnaturally, the Shah then 
 ordered an assembly of Mullahs to be held, 
 who, without, however, hearing the Bab's ex- 
 planation, declared him to be a schismatic, 
 and ordered him to be placed under arrest. 
 His followers were also subjected to certain 
 penalties, the most common being that of "ham- 
 stringing," in order that they might not be in 
 a condition to propagate the heresy further. 
 
 These precautions, however, proved in- 
 effective. The Bab was imprisoned in a 
 private house, but he succeeded in converting 
 his guards and in escaping to Ispahan. -Besides 
 
174 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 this, his followers were scattered throughout 
 the country, and it was therefore difficult for 
 the Government to run them all to earth, and 
 the imprisonment of their leader led to renewed 
 agitation on the part of the Bab's followers. 
 Matters were allowed to drag for a time until 
 the death of the Shah, whose successor, being 
 little more than a tool in the hands of the 
 clergy, proceeded to adopt vigorous measures 
 against the new faith. Mirza wrote to his 
 Highness before the drastic measures proposed 
 by the Government were put into execution, 
 begging that he might be permitted to go to 
 Teheran and discuss publicly with the Mullahs 
 and the priests the theological questions at 
 issue. This dialectical proposal, however, the 
 invariable subterfuge of weak demagogues, 
 was rejected by the aristocratic Mullahs, and 
 the Shah, anxious lest the young agitator 
 should create a disturbance in the capital, gave 
 orders that he should be imprisoned in the 
 fortress of Maku, in the north of Persia. 
 
 These commands, however, were given out 
 too late to be effective. The Bab had carried 
 his propaganda even into every village in the 
 land, and the movement had gathered in force. 
 One of the principal intellects which had been 
 awakened by it was that of a woman belonging 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 175 
 
 to the pecular type whose mentality has been 
 partly explained to us by the investigations of 
 psychologists like Weininger. She was known as 
 Kurrat-ul-ayn ( " the consolation of the eyes " ), 
 and was very beautiful and well educated ; but, 
 it would seem, as is usual in such cases, without 
 sexual feelings, her womanly passions having, 
 in the words of a well-known German philo- 
 sopher, "mounted into the brain." 1 
 
 It was one of the doctrines of the Bab, as it 
 was of his Christian forerunners, that women 
 
 1 should be unsexed, dragged from the pro- 
 
 I tecting seclusion of the harem, and put on 
 an " equality " with man. Easily convinced 
 of the truthfulness of the Prophet's mission, 
 
 1 Kurrat willingly helped him, and undertook 
 a propaganda among the women of Persia. 
 
 i Gobineau in his Histoire des Religions et Philo- 
 sophies dans I'Asie Centrale has given a lengthy 
 account of the progress of the Bab, particularly 
 from 1848 to 1850, when the sect was closely 
 pursued by the Shah's troops, during which 
 time the Bab was once more arrested and kept 
 in close confinement. He was still able to com- 
 municate with his friends, however, and he also 
 revised the greater portion of his works dealing 
 
 1 The same characteristics will have been remarked by those who 
 have come into contact with the English Suffragists or the " emanci- 
 pated " American woman. 
 
176 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 with the doctrines of his sect the " Biyan," 
 or exposition. He explains that no revelation 
 is final, but that each different prophet repre- 
 sents the amount of truth which the men of his 
 time are capable of grasping. He believed that 
 the time had come for his countrymen to live 
 more strictly in accordance with the divine law, 
 and he inveighed at length against the corrup- 
 tion of the priests. A modern thinker may 
 find much to agree with in all this, but the 
 fatal defect of the Bab's doctrine is his putting 
 of the lower orders on a level with the higher, 
 and thus accentuating the chaos introduced into 
 Europe by Christianity. The high position 
 he allocates to women is also unwarranted by 
 certain moral and physical factors which Goethe 
 on one occasion referred to in rather blunt 
 terms. 
 
 Determined to check the progress of the 
 new sect, the Government had the Bab taken 
 to Tabriz, where, after being tried, he was 
 condemned to be shot on 9th July 1850. As 
 Moslem soldiers were afraid to execute one who 
 was in all likelihood a descendant of the family 
 of the Prophet, the work was entrusted to 
 Christians. The Bab and one of his disciples 
 were bound to pillars and the word to fire was 
 given. When the smoke cleared away, we are 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 177 
 
 told, the disciple was found to be dead, but 
 the Bab had not been touched. More : as if 
 by magic, the cords which bound him to the 
 pillar had been cut through by the bullets, and 
 the young prophet was free. If, as Hippolyte 
 Dreyfus suggests in his lecture on Babism, l 
 the Bab had had the presence of mind to walk 
 towards the crowd, then overawed by what 
 looked like a miracle, and urged them to follow 
 him, there is no knowing what might not have 
 happened. But he hesitated, and it was instinc- 
 tively recognised by, those who witnessed the 
 scene that this was a sign of spiritual weakness. 
 An officer sprang forward and cut down the 
 young prophet with a single stroke of his 
 sword, and the soldiers hastily tied the bleed- 
 ing figure to the pillar again. Another volley 
 was fired, but the bullets entered a corpse. 
 
 Later critics have suggested that the Govern- 
 ment, having thus disposed of the leader of 
 the sect, should not have troubled about his 
 followers, when the movement would probably 
 have died a natural death. But it is easy to 
 be wise after the event, and doubtless the Shah's 
 advisers acted for the best when they proceeded 
 to inaugurate a campaign against the Babis. 
 While the weaker spirits fell off, the stronger, 
 
 1 Religions et Societe's. Alcan, 1905. 
 
 M 
 
178 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 as is always the case in such circumstances, 
 remained firm, and the faith gradually spread to 
 Turkey and Egypt. In 1852, however, some- 
 one attempted to assassinate the Shah. This 
 outrage was traced to a Babi who wished to 
 avenge the death of his leader. He had taken 
 a friend into his confidence, and the two dis- 
 charged their pistols at the Shah as he was 
 coming out of his palace at Teheran. They 
 were at once seized and put to death ; and 
 the incident afforded an excuse for a re- 
 doubled campaign of violence against the 
 Babis. Amongst others who were tried and 
 killed in the course of this campaign was the 
 female disciple of the Bab, Kurrat-ul-Ayn. 
 
 When the Bab's execution became known 
 throughout Persia, one of his best-known 
 followers, Sobh-I-Ezel, was appointed to 
 succeed him ; but the latter's half-brother, 
 Mirza-Hussain-Ali, was destined to exercise 
 even greater influence on the sect and its 
 progress. His father, although connected with 
 the Court by several strong ties, took little 
 interest in politics or worldly matters of any 
 kind, and preferred to lead a quiet life, 
 devoted to his books, and his studies, a 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 179 
 
 characteristic which did not descend to his 
 children. Mirza-Hussain-Ali was one of the 
 first to ally himself with the Bab when the 
 young prophet began to preach, and he suffered 
 imprisonment with his leader during the early 
 stages of the propaganda. When the massacres 
 in Persia grew to such a pitch as to call forth 
 much disapprobation from Europe, certain 
 prisoners, who would otherwise have almost 
 certainly been executed, were exiled, and among 
 them was Mirza. The Babis combined to 
 form a little colony at Bagdad under the 
 surveillance of the Ottoman Government, and 
 in a short time Mirza had successfully proved 
 his superiority over his half-brother, in spite 
 of the belief of the members of the sect that 
 all men were equal. Sobh-I-Ezel was only 
 too willing to relinquish his authority as leader 
 in favour of Mirza, under whom the little 
 colony prospered exceedingly. 
 
 It is then that the new leader of the sect 
 started to codify its principles, his object being 
 to efface anything of an Oriental nature from 
 the doctrine of the Bab, in order that a declara- 
 tion or confession of faith might be drawn up 
 to suit every nation in the world. He thus 
 hoped that in time the doctrines promulgated 
 by the Bab might spread through the five 
 
180 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 continents and embrace the inhabitants of 
 the universe in a single religion. This 
 grandiose scheme was unfolded in two books, 
 the MSS. of which may be seen in the British 
 Museum. One is the Kitab-el-Ikan, or the 
 " Book of Certainty," the other is the Kitab- 
 el-Akdas, the " Book of Laws." They form 
 a sort of Moslem New Testament, with all the 
 defects that such a work might be expected to 
 contain. They were not, however, long in 
 procuring for the author the title which he 
 has ever since borne, viz., Beha-Allah (the 
 Glory of God). 
 
 In 1864 the Sultan deemed it prudent to 
 have the Babis moved from Bagdad to 
 Constantinople and afterwards to Adrianople. 
 Being now in Europe instead of Asia, the 
 religion was perceptibly changed in the direc- 
 tion desired by Beha-Allah, i.e., it tended to 
 throw off its Asiatic character. The Babis 
 were gradually becoming Behais. But a schism 
 took place. Those who viewed with some 
 suspicion the "liberal" ideas advocated by 
 Beha-Allah grouped themselves round his 
 deposed half-brother, Sobh-I-Ezel, and from 
 this moment the two sects became deadly 
 enemies. The distinction, trivial and un- 
 important as it may seem to us, was clearly 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 181 
 
 visible to those concerned. The doctrines 
 preached by the Bab tended to make Islam 
 "liberal," as the New Testament tended to 
 turn the degenerate Jews of the time of Julius 
 Caesar and Augustus into Christians. The 
 Bab's faith, however, remained strongly Moslem 
 and Shiite in character. A Holy War against 
 unbelievers, for example, was still preached ; 
 and infidels were still infidels and subject to 
 the restrictions imposed by Mohammed him- 
 self. But Beha-Allah swept away these and 
 other Oriental characteristics and endeavoured 
 to give the religion a stamp of universality, 
 hence the division in the ranks. 
 
 When the followers of the two sections 
 began to disturb the peace of mind of the 
 Ottoman Government, another removal was 
 effected. Sobh-I-Ezel was sent with his 
 followers to Famagusta, in the Island of Cyprus. 
 Beha-Allah and his party were taken to Saint 
 Jean d'Acre, where they arrived at the end 
 of August 1868. They at once set themselves, 
 under the direction of their energetic leader, 
 to sink wells and to cultivate the then barren 
 surrounding country as much as possible ; and 
 in a short time the colony was once again 
 thriving. They had pledged their word not 
 to attempt to make converts in the Sultan's 
 
i8a THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 dominions ; but, as they thought they would 
 soon make their cause known much further 
 afield, this did not seem to distress them. It 
 is on record that orthodox Moslems of the 
 neighbourhood did not view them with very 
 great favour, but that their most bitter opposi- 
 tion came from the most intolerant of all 
 people, the Christian foreign missionaries. 
 
 Beha- Allah died on 29th May 1892, leaving 
 his power to his son, Abbas Effendi ; but not 
 without having seen his faith spread into nearly 
 every country in the world. The propaganda 
 of the new religion was peaceful : indeed, the 
 post-office must have benefited to a consider- 
 able extent, in view of the number of letters, 
 tracts and pamphlets distributed hither and 
 thither by the little colony at Saint Jean d'Acre. 
 
 It is as yet difficult to speak definitely on 
 the future progress likely to be made by the 
 faith : it is of too recent growth for us to do 
 so. A small literature has grown up around 
 it in England, France, and Germany ; and it 
 would seem that, while Babism is practically 
 extinct, Behaism has come to stay for some 
 time yet. 
 
 The Behais, or neo-Babis, endeavoured to 
 reconcile the different messages preached by 
 the various prophets who have made their 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 183 
 
 appearance in the world. They believe that 
 at the proper time humanity will be combined 
 into one religious family, basing their conduct 
 on one single law ; swords will be transformed 
 into ploughshares, and the secret truths written 
 in the different religious books will be revealed 
 to us. To them Buddha, Moses, Christ, 
 Mohammed, and Beha-Allah are all emanations 
 from the same spirit, incarnated in successive 
 human forms, bringing a new message on each 
 occasion, but always a message based on the 
 same eternal principles. God is represented in 
 the works of Beha-Allah rather as an essence 
 or infinite Spirit than a Supreme Being : an 
 entirely indefinable something, which we can 
 only know by His attributes, as we know 
 certain things by their qualities when we cannot 
 grasp their substance. 
 
 Everything on earth, according to the Behais, 
 reflects the attributes of God, even if only to a 
 slight degree, but as the prophets are the most 
 perfect of His creatures, they reflect Him to the 
 greatest extent. It is on certain principles such 
 as these, which, broadly speaking, may be con- 
 sidered as common to Buddhism, Confucianism, 
 Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism 
 that the Behais profess to appeal to the whole 
 world, and not merely to one particular country 
 
184 RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES 
 
 or continent. There are no special rites ; the 
 religion must be manifested in a person's daily 
 life and not in any special ceremonies. There 
 is therefore no sacerdotal hierarchy, for, since 
 all men are equal, they may all turn towards 
 the Almighty and worship Him in any manner 
 they may think fit. Since, too, all men are 
 equal, all wars must in the course of time cease ; 
 hence the invitation extended to the different 
 nations to enter into reciprocal relations. Any 
 difficult question which may crop up is to be 
 settled by arbitration. Men and women are to 
 be treated alike, and monogamy is to be insisted 
 upon. The charming manner of the sects may 
 be imagined from the Persian saying : " You 
 cannot drink a cup of tea with a party of Behais 
 without wishing to join their society." 
 
 It will thus be seen that Behaism is not so 
 much a collection of dogmas as a rule of life, in 
 which respect it may be compared to Confucian- 
 ism ; but surely the ironical gods must have 
 acted strangely indeed when they caused these 
 curious principles to develop as an offshoot 
 from Mohammedanism. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The Jews Their condition under the Egyptians Moses 
 Monotheism v. Polytheism The Israelites leave 
 Egypt Sinai The Ten Commandments Jewish 
 morality Its aristocratic nature The Promised 
 Land The kings The Babylonian Captivity 
 Toleration. 
 
 The Jewish intellect resembles the Midas of mytho- 
 logy : whatever it touches it turns to gold. 1 
 
 THE recorded history of Egypt goes back to 
 about 5000 B.C., so that when the Jews entered 
 the land about 1 600 B.C., they were looked upon 
 as coarse aliens in a country which had already 
 passed through several millennia of culture. 
 The Egyptians had built large cities and erected 
 huge temples, pyramids and tombs. The 
 priests and higher castes had become masters 
 of certain technical arts which the requirements 
 of the country called for, such as geometry, 
 architecture and hydraulics. Even before the 
 Jewish immigration they had grasped the details 
 of the processes connected with embalming, the 
 artistic modelling of gold and silver, and the 
 cutting of precious stones. The overflowing 
 of the Nile at regular intervals had led to the 
 
 1 Cornill : Der IsraelitiscAe Prophethmus, p. 15. 
 I8 5 
 
186 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 study of chronology and astronomy, and hand- 
 writing was practised. At first the priests ap- 
 pear to have employed columns of hieroglyphics 
 to record on metals the deaths of their kings 
 and heroes, and in later times the symbols were 
 written on papyrus fibre. These educational 
 factors were eagerly taken advantage of by the 
 Israelites, but one Jewish tribe in particular 
 distinguished itself in the higher regions of 
 culture. This was the tribe of Levi, the 
 members of which, by virtue of their superior 
 knowledge and perspicacity, immediately made 
 themselves masters of everything in the way of 
 culture which Egypt had to afford. In parti- 
 cular they mastered the art of writing and the 
 study of the Egyptian gods, thus raising them- 
 selves, with the approbation of the other tribes, 
 to the position of a sacerdotal caste. 
 
 The Egyptians, however, resembled the 
 Hindoos rather than the Semites by the fact 
 that their religious system was polytheistic. 
 Their climate led to sexual excesses, and this 
 was naturally seen in their theology. Their 
 gods were endowed with the shape of the more 
 lascivious animals, such as the goat. The bull, 
 the dog, the cat and the snake were also wor- 
 shipped, and phallicism would appear to have 
 been rampant. By witnessing the excesses of 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 187 
 
 the Egyptians the Israelities were influenced 
 for the worse, and though they gained in culture 
 they lost in so far as they were induced to be- 
 come polytheistic and to forget the single God 
 of their forefathers. When a century had passed, 
 the Egyptians, grudging the emigrants certain 
 privileges denied to their own people, declared 
 them to be bondsmen, and set them to perform 
 manual labour of the coarsest description. In 
 order that their numbers might be decreased, a 
 command was given that the male children 
 should be drowned in the Nile and the females 
 reserved for the licentiousness of the Egyptians. 
 Formerly free in the Land of Goshen, the Jews 
 were now beyond all doubt in the House of 
 Bondage. The result was a still further for- 
 getfulness of the God of their ancestors, and 
 a greater amount of adoration for the gods of 
 their actual masters. They worshipped the 
 bull and the goat (cf. Levit. xvii. 7), and their 
 daughters were compelled to sacrifice their 
 virtue to the libidinous Egyptians (cf. Ezek. 
 xxiii. 7, 8). The tribes were soon split into 
 numerous divisions, and a historian of the period 
 might have been justified in thinking that the 
 emigrants in a few centuries would either become 
 extinct or would have been absorbed into the 
 lower classes of Egyptians. 
 
i88 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 The moulding of the scattered tribes into a 
 single nation, which was to shake itself free 
 from its oppressor and make its way across 
 the Red Sea to a happier territory under its 
 own leaders ; its century-long struggle with 
 hostile peoples, its constant hankering after 
 polytheism in spite of itself, its elevation to 
 the higher stage of civilisation : all these things 
 were to come, and were destined to be due, as 
 all creative work is, to the single powerful 
 mind of one man, acting on the minds of other 
 men for their own benefit, exploiting, kneading, 
 twisting, torturing the bodies of his fellow- 
 countrymen, in order that they might, through 
 him, reach the condition of existence which 
 they vaguely looked for but could not attain 
 by themselves alone. 
 
 Of MoseSj one of the most powerful person- 
 alities in history, we have unfortunately but 
 few definite particulars. Those who have 
 looked at Michael Angelo's statue of him may 
 judge from it the extent of his forcefulness, 
 and may also appreciate the truth of Schopen- 
 hauer's saying that great men tower up above 
 the little men and shake hands with each other 
 across the centuries. Moses belonged to the 
 highest Jewish caste, that of the Levi, the sacer- 
 dotal tribe ; the tribe which had longest pre- 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 189 
 
 served the memory of its monotheism, and 
 was the last to be tainted with the corruption 
 of the Egyptian polytheism. Endowed with 
 a fine intellect and glowing imagination, 
 Moses sedulously cultivated his natural gifts 
 by such learning as Egypt could afford. As 
 the actual condition of Israel became clear to 
 him, he turned away in horror from the vices 
 and idolatry of the Egyptians, and gave 
 himself up to meditation as to how he could 
 best deliver his countrymen from the yoke 
 which bound them down. One day when he 
 saw an Egyptian unjustly punishing a Jew, 
 he slew the offender, overcome by passion and 
 wrath. Fearing to be discovered, he fled into 
 the desert and stopped at the oasis near Mount 
 Sinai, dwelling for a time among the Kenites, 
 a branch of the Midianite tribe. Here he 
 tended the herds of his father-in-law at a spot 
 between the Red Sea and the mountains. Influ- 
 enced, like Mohammed later on, by his deserted 
 surroundings, which accentuated and further 
 heightened his imagination, the prophetic spirit 
 of the man was gradually developed. " If 
 ever the soul of a mortal was endowed with 
 human prophetic foresight," writes Graetz, 
 "this was the case with the pure inspiration 
 and sublime soul of Moses." In the desert of 
 
190 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 Sinai, at the foot of Mount Horeb, where the 
 flocks of his father-in-law were grazing, Moses 
 received his first divine revelation in other 
 words, long meditation on a single problem 
 had blossomed into religious and prophetic 
 ecstasy, the " epilepsy " and " insanity " of 
 Mohammed. Aaron, his brother, had likewise 
 received inspiration to go to Mount Horeb, 
 there to prepare with Moses for the task of 
 setting free the Hebrews, doubtless an early 
 instance of telepathy. Both men relied on the 
 support of God to proclaim their message to the 
 tribesmen. The elders and those of the higher 
 class eagerly supported Moses ; but the masses, 
 actuated by their "reason," were distrustful, and 
 pointed out quite naturally that they might as 
 well continue to be the slaves of the Egyptians 
 as die in the desert whither Moses proposed 
 to lead them. Appearing before the Egyptian 
 king, the two leaders demanded the release of 
 the Israelites in the name of Jehovah. The 
 sovereign, however, was disinclined to liberate 
 several hundred thousand slaves, who were so 
 useful to his own subjects ; and, accordingly, 
 in order to put the wish for freedom out of 
 their heads, he had their hours of labour 
 doubled. A chorus of reproaches was then 
 directed against Moses as the cause of this 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 191 
 
 unpleasantness ; but about this time Egypt was 
 suddenly afflicted by plagues. Apparently, in 
 so far as we may judge from the particulars 
 which have come down to us, the disease was 
 leprosy, and Pharaoh was induced to believe 
 that it was due to the anger of the strange 
 God of the Jews. Successive outbreaks of the 
 disease led the king to urge the departure of 
 the Israelites, and on the i5th of Nizan (March) 
 the slaves were permitted to set out. 
 
 Of this event several conflicting statements 
 have come down to us. According to the 
 Egyptian accounts, the Israelites were actually 
 chased from Egypt, owing to the frequent out- 
 breaks of leprosy, which were said to have 
 occurred among them, and by which the Egyp- 
 tians were contaminated. Flavius Josephus has 
 endeavoured to refute the Egyptian version of 
 the story, as set forth by Manethon, Cherimon, 
 and Lysimachus, but without much success; 
 and it is further looked upon as being histori- 
 cally accurate by Diodorus (xxxiv.), Tacitus 
 (Hist., xv. 3-4), Justin (Hist. Phil., xxxi. 2) 
 and Voltaire. Readers of the Old Testament 
 will be familiar with the many laws introduced 
 to combat leprosy ; for example Levit. x., xiii. 
 and xiv. ; Num., v. 2-3, and Deut. xxiv. 8. 
 Again, as we find similar severe laws in 
 
THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 
 the Koran, which is of course, also the work 
 of a Semitic race, and very little mention of 
 leprosy in the books of the other religions of 
 antiquity, it may be justifiable to assume that 
 leprosy was much more common among the 
 Semites, and that therefore there is some ground 
 for believing that the departure of the Hebrews 
 from Egypt was regarded as not altogether an un- 
 mixed blessing. The Egyptians, who are stated 
 to have killed nearly one hundred thousand of 
 their shepherds for spreading the dread disease, 
 may not have pursued the Jews for the purpose 
 of bringing them back as slaves, but rather in 
 order to kill them to a man, and thus make 
 sure of stamping out the disease for ever. 
 
 Once fairly on their way, the Jews were 
 joined by other strange tribes of Semites, who 
 had likewise become tired of Egyptian rule, 
 and it was out of this mixed crew, partly savage 
 and partly civilised, that Moses had to form a 
 nation seeking a home for them, drawing up 
 a code of laws, and, in short, transforming 
 confusion and anarchy into order and discipline. 
 The only helpers he could count upon were the 
 priests of the Levite tribe, for the men who 
 were following him were too much under the 
 influence of their slave mentality to do any- 
 thing for themselves. At the least sign of 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 193 
 
 danger they would give way to terror and 
 despondency ; they would enquire with the 
 sarcastic wit of the demagogue whether there 
 were not graves enough in Egypt that they 
 should be brought into the desert to die, and 
 they raised the usual objections with which the 
 herd always strives, often deliberately, more 
 often unconsciously, to confound the superior 
 intellect and drag it down to its own level. 
 
 The first destination of the wanderers was 
 Mount Sinai, where they were to receive laws 
 and precepts from the Almighty through 
 Moses. 1 On their way, however, they were 
 followed by Pharaoh, who had repented of 
 his unwisdom in letting so many slaves leave 
 the country. When the huge Egyptian host 
 was seen approaching, the fugitives gave utter- 
 ance to loud cries of despair, while the mind 
 of their leader rather sought a means of escape. 
 The party had now reached the shores of the 
 Red Sea, and a hurricane from the north-east 
 had driven the water to the south during the 
 night, leaving part of the bed dry. Moses 
 therefore urged his terrified followers across 
 the bed of the sea, and a safe passage was made 
 to the other side. The Egyptians soon hurried 
 
 1 As Graetz points out, Sinai was situated near the Land of Edom, 
 on the borders of the Desert of Paran, and not in the so-called Sinaitic 
 Peninsula. 
 N 
 
194 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 
 up to the spot to wade after them ; but the 
 tempest had ceased, the waves rolled back, and 
 most of Pharaoh's troops were engulfed. This 
 entirely natural phenomenon is one of the 
 most interesting coincidences on record, and 
 it is hardly surprising that the old Jewish 
 poets and bards should have given to it a 
 supernatural interpretation, and ascribed the 
 safety of the Israelites and the destruction of 
 their pursuers to the alternate mercy and 
 vengeance of Jehovah. The event, at any 
 rate, confirmed the trust of the Jews in their 
 leader, Moses ; but it did not prevent them 
 from falling into despondency, as usual, at 
 the sight of every new difficulty, a state of 
 mind which did not leave them for a long 
 time afterwards. 
 
 On their further journey towards the moun- 
 tain ranges of Sinai the wanderers seemed to 
 be threatened with famine ; but the place of 
 their ordinary food was taken by manna, a sub- 
 stance which was found in such large quantities 
 every morning that the Jews naturally came 
 to look upon its presence as a miracle. Manna 
 is the name given to the honey-like substance 
 which was exuded from the tamarisk trees so 
 common in that district. The little drops 
 begin to form early in the morning, and attain 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 195 
 
 the size of peas before the sun's rays cause 
 them to melt away. 
 
 It was in the third month of the exodus 
 from Egypt that Moses led his party to the 
 highest of the mountain ranges and prepared 
 them, by working upon their sense of terror 
 and superstition, for the strange event which 
 was to take place in three days. Doubtless 
 the early training which the prophet had 
 received among the Egyptians enabled him 
 to foretell what natural phenomena were likely 
 to occur. On the third day, it is recorded, 
 a heavy cloud covered the mountain-top ; 
 lightning enveloped the ridge in fire, and 
 thunder echoed and re-echoed in the valleys 
 below. But this was little as compared with 
 the awful voice of God, conveying to Moses 
 the Ten Commandments which He expected 
 His chosen people to follow. A clear rule 
 of life was laid down ; and the trembling 
 Israelites, who had been led to the top of 
 the mountain as escaped bondsmen, descended 
 to their tents as God's righteous people 
 (Jeshurun). The Israelites were constituted the 
 teachers of the human race, and through them 
 all the nations of the earth were to be blessed. 
 Never before in the history of the world 
 had a few insignificant tribes been entrusted 
 
196 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 with such a mighty task ; seldom indeed has 
 any race influenced the universe so much. 
 Whether we take the Christian view, bearing the 
 later and somewhat degenerate Jewish morality 
 in mind, and say that this influence has been 
 good, or judge the matter from the Nietzschian 
 standpoint and note the drawbacks, both 
 Christians and anti-Christians will agree in 
 saying that no race under the sun has ever 
 accomplished more. There is little need to 
 seek to prove the miracles recorded in the 
 Old Testament when we recollect this fact, 
 for surely it is a miracle in itself ; and another 
 is the survival of the Jews for the last two 
 thousand years. Without a country, weighed 
 down by persecution, oppression, prejudice, 
 and unjust laws, they have yet been able to 
 maintain their existence as an aristocratic race 
 in the midst of the most profound hostility 
 which has ever been vented on any sect. The 
 early Christians, persecuted by the Romans 
 for a few short years, could find refuge 
 among numerous sympathisers ; the persecuted 
 Huguenots could fly to England, the persecuted 
 Puritans could fly to America, the persecuted 
 Irish Catholics could fly to France ; but no 
 haven was ever open to the persecuted Jews ; 
 for every man's hand was against them. Yet 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 197 
 
 that, in spite of all this, the race has been 
 able to survive without being afflicted by that 
 intellectual degradation which always accom- 
 panies a mere " survival " and nothing more, 
 that this race has, in spite of persecution and 
 moral boycotting, produced a series of brilliant 
 authors, poets, lawyers, artists, and musicians, 
 is surely entitled to be ranked as another 
 wonder of the world, as worthy of admiration 
 as the hanging gardens of Babylon or the 
 Temple of Diana at Ephesus. 
 
 The aristocratic nature of the Jewish Com- 
 mandments is shown in the fact that they were 
 not meant for all men, but only for a select 
 number. They were interpreted in the light 
 of God's promise to Abraham to give him a 
 posterity : 
 
 " In blessing I will bless thee, and in 
 multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the 
 stars of the heavens and as the sand which 
 is upon the sea-shore," l and also to con- 
 sider the tribe of Abraham as His only 
 children, and to bind all other nations in 
 slavery, so that Israel should reign supreme 
 over the world. 
 
 It was thus the task of the Hebrews to 
 exterminate without pity all other peoples, 
 
 1 Genesis xxii. 17. 
 
THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 to seize their lands and possessions, and to 
 practise usury upon them (cf. Deut. vii. and 
 xiv.). Other similar precepts are to be found 
 in the Talmud, that stupendous book of the 
 Jewish law and custom complied by the great 
 Rabbana ("Our Teacher") Ashi, between 380 
 and 420 A.D. : e.g., "As man is superior to 
 the other animals so are the Jews superior 
 to all other men/' " Those who are not Jews 
 are dogs and asses." From some of the 
 writings of the great teacher Maimonides, 
 universally acknowledged by Jews all the 
 world over as their second Moses in point 
 of sagacity, penetration and wisdom, many 
 similar maxims could be gathered, all tending 
 to uphold Nietzsche's contention that there 
 is one morality for the masters and another 
 for the slaves ; and the Jews have always, 
 and with reason, although for the most part 
 secretly, regarded themselves as the masters 
 and aristocrats of the world. 
 
 The history of the Chosen People from 
 leaving Sinai is well known to every English- 
 man through the medium of the Old Testament, 
 a narrative which, from the historical and legal 
 point of view is substantially accurate, although 
 critics have long quarrelled, and will doubtless 
 continue to quarrel, as to the inspiration, non- 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 199 
 
 inspiration and dates of composition of the 
 particular books. 
 
 Under Joshua, the successor of Moses, the 
 Jews reached the "Promised Land," the 
 splendid pastoral region to the east of the 
 Jordan, the natives either being slaughtered 
 wholesale or forced to fly from the district. 
 The Mosaic Law fell into neglect after the 
 death of Joshua (about 1255 B.C.), and the 
 Jews became hard pressed by various tribes, 
 such as the Moabites, the Ammonites, the 
 Amalekites, and the Philistines. The hour 
 brought forth the men, and the efforts of 
 Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, and Samuel helped 
 in a great measure to free the harassed people 
 from their oppressors. 
 
 About noo B.C. the Jews had practically 
 reached the zenith of their prosperity and 
 power, and they insisted upon "being like 
 other nations" (i Sam. viii. 5), and having a 
 king. The first to exercise the regal authority 
 was Saul, the Benjamite, who reigned from 
 1067 to 1055 B.C., followed by his renowned 
 son-in-law, David, who held the throne (1055- 
 1015 B.C.) during what was probably the most 
 glorious period in the history of Israel. The 
 reign of his equally famous son, Solomon, 
 witnessed the complete subjugation of the 
 
200 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 aboriginal inhabitants of Canaan, the boundaries 
 of the kingdom being extended as far as the 
 Euphrates and the Red Sea. Under Solomon's 
 rule Jerusalem was captured and made the 
 capital, the priesthood was re-organised on a 
 more magnificent scale than before, while 
 schools of poetry, architecture, and prophecy 
 were started and flourished. 
 
 A succession of monarchs followed, but not 
 even regal ordinances and the murmurs of the 
 prophets could prevent the introduction of 
 idolatrous practices. At last the power of 
 the Hebrews was successfully assailed by the 
 Egyptians, the Assyrians, and the Babylonians ; 
 and Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem by storm 
 in 558 B.C., put out the eyes of King Zedekiah, 
 and carried most of the inhabitants prisoners 
 to Babylon. A large number of Israelites had 
 previously been captured by the Babylonians 
 in 722 B.C., and the ultimate fate of these early 
 prisoners has long been a matter of vague 
 conjecture. When Cyrus overthrew the 
 Babylonian empire in 538 B.C., half a century 
 after the fall of Jerusalem, he gave the Jews 
 permission to return to their own country, but 
 only some forty thousand took advantage of 
 the conqueror's clemency. This would seem 
 to show that the Jews were fairly well treated 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 201 
 
 during their period of captivity indeed, the 
 particulars which have come down to us bear 
 testimony to this. Five and a half centuries 
 before the beginning of our era Babylon had 
 attained to an exceedingly high stage of civilisa- 
 tion, and the Jews apparently benefited by it 
 as much as they had done centuries before 
 when in Egypt. In fact, Babylon up to the 
 year 1000 A.D., has often been referred to as 
 "the Second Land of Israel." Not only 
 were the services in the synagogues consider- 
 ably influenced by what was observed in the 
 Babylonian temples, but the early division of 
 the Talmud also began to take shape the 
 "oral law" which, as already stated, was 
 compiled and edited by the Rabbana Ashi 
 between 380 and 480 A.D. 
 
 Under the rule of Darius and Xerxes the 
 Jews would appear to have prospered, and even 
 Alexander the Great, when on his way to 
 conquer the East, left the inhabitants of 
 Jerusalem unmolested. After him came 
 Ptolemy Soter, one of his generals, who had 
 become King of Egypt. He invaded Syria, 
 captured Jerusalem in 301 B.C., and carried 
 off several thousands of the inhabitants, whom 
 he compelled to settle at Alexandria. This 
 was also to a great extent a fortunate matter 
 
202 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 for the Jews, for they enjoyed equal rights 
 with their Greek and Egyptian fellow-subjects, 
 and came under the influence of Hellenistic 
 thought. The first thing to which the Jews 
 devoted themselves here resulted in the Greek 
 translation of the Bible, known as the Septuagint, 
 not to speak of a huge mass of apocryphal 
 literature and a composite philosophy, half 
 Greek, half Jewish, which was brought about 
 by the union of Hellenism and Orientalism. 
 
 After this the discussion of the Jewish race 
 belongs to the historian rather than to the 
 theologian. The melancholy events of the 
 Roman conquest, which was terminated by 
 the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in 
 70 A.D., and the demolition of the Temple, 
 amid horrible scenes of carnage, are but too 
 well known. The Jews, however, seem to 
 have flourished fairly well under the late 
 emperors until Christianity became the state 
 religion under Constantine the Great, after 
 which the era of persecution began. Even 
 making all allowances for the hatred which 
 may be engendered by religious differences, it 
 would be difficult for the historian, without 
 the aid of the psychologist, to explain the 
 persecutions, tortures and outrages to which 
 the Jews had to submit for many centuries in 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 203 
 
 Christian lands. The truth is that there can 
 be no toleration without contempt. Tolera- 
 tion, in a word, springs from contempt. In 
 Mohammedan countries Christians and Jews 
 are seldom persecuted or attacked except for 
 purely political reasons ; very rarely for merely 
 theological reasons. In other words, the Moslem 
 feels he is so strong in character that he can 
 afford to despise the members of other creeds 
 which may be settled near him. The Hindoo 
 despises the Englishman in India for the same 
 reason a fact which, by the way, has already 
 been noted by Mr Meredith Townsend. The 
 physically or spiritually weak, however, invari- 
 ably envy the stronger, hence we find that in 
 Russia the millions of Christians belonging to 
 the Orthodox Church cannot afford to tolerate 
 the proportionately small number of Jews 
 settled among them merely because the Jews 
 belong to a stronger race, and the Christians 
 cannot look upon them with contempt, which 
 is necessary for toleration, but only with envy, 
 which invariably gives rise to intolerance. I 
 am aware that this opinion may be contested by 
 a few of the obsolete schools of thought to be 
 found in England, but as it has the support of 
 practically all Continental psychologists and phi- 
 losophers, I feel on safe ground in expressing it. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Indian philosophy The Jains China Confucius, his 
 system of morals Lao-Tze Taoism Mencius 
 Lack of poetry in China Japan, its early religious 
 system Shintoism Buddhism Bushido The 
 Samurai. 
 
 WHEREVER we find a religious system well 
 developed and capable of influencing almost 
 every branch of even the everyday life of a 
 nation, we find, as a rule, that there is com- 
 paratively little room or necessity for a supple- 
 mentary system of philosophy. Thus, the 
 Koran, for example, deals with so many 
 minute points that we find very few Moslem 
 philosophers setting up a different system of 
 thought. In the case of India, where the 
 wants of the people of almost every class are 
 so few, and where Nature has for centuries 
 supplied them so well, the higher castes have 
 had little to do but to give themselves up for 
 ages almost entirely to abstruse metaphysical 
 meditation. As a result we find throughout 
 India certain views and tenets which, on a 
 superficial examination, almost appear to be 
 
 philosophical systems. When examined more 
 
 204 
 
RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES 205 
 
 closely, however, these systems almost always 
 resolve themselves into commentaries on the 
 Vedas or Buddhistic writings. The two 
 principal systems of Indian philosophy are the 
 Vedanta and the Sankhya. It is true that the 
 Orthodox Hindoos recognised six philosophical 
 systems (Darshana), but these six systems fall 
 into three pairs so closely connected with one 
 another that each pair may be said to form a 
 common school of philosophy. These are (i) 
 Mimamsa and Vedanta, (2) Sankhya and Yoga, 
 and (3) Nyaya and Vaiseshika. Mimamsa, 
 which is more properly known as Purva- 
 Mimamsa, that is, preliminary enquiry, is an 
 attempt at a systematic exposition of the 
 principles of the interpretation of scripture, 
 that is, of the Vedas ; or, to put its object in 
 one word, exegesis. Its aim is to uphold the 
 authority of the Vedas and to urge upon all 
 Hindoos the necessity of performing the duties 
 enjoined in them. Prof. Max Miiller was 
 apparently in some doubt as to whether the 
 Mimamsa was entitled to be reckoned as a 
 system of philosophy at all. The reputed 
 founder of the school was a seer named 
 Jaimini, who may possibly have flourished 
 about the second or third century A.D. He 
 might be said to hold the same position in 
 
206 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 India as Thomas Aquinas does among the 
 Schoolmen. 
 
 Vedanta, the second system, means literally 
 " end of the Veda/' while it is also known 
 as Uttara-Mimamsa, that is, "later enquiry." 
 Max Mtiller, in his Three Lectures on the 
 Vedanta, has quoted a remark from a Hindoo 
 writer which serves to sum up the science of 
 this system. u Brahman is true, the world 
 is false, the soul is Brahman and nothing else. 
 There is nothing worth gaining, there is 
 nothing worth enjoying, there is nothing worth 
 knowing but Brahman alone, for he who knows 
 Brahman is Brahman.'* In other words, ac- 
 cording to this system, God, that is, Brahman, 
 is the efficient and material cause of the world. 
 He is both Creator and end. All things 
 spring from him and in the course of time are 
 again resolved into him. The soul of the 
 individual is of his essence, but it, too, returns 
 to him. The individual has no will of his 
 own, his actions being predestined by Brahma, 
 just as in the case of Bhagavad-Gita they are 
 predestined by Krishna. About the eighth or 
 ninth century of our era, the school of Vedantists 
 appears to have broken up into two sects, the 
 best known being that represented by a famous 
 Indian theologian, Sankara-Acharya. While 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 207 
 
 according to one Indian tradition he was born 
 about 200 B.C., he is assigned by the best 
 authorities to the ninth century A.D. He was 
 principally known for his commentary on the 
 Vedanta-Sutras, and also for his interpretation 
 of the Bhagavad-Gita. Although he died at 
 the early age of thirty-one or thirty-two, his 
 extraordinary learning gained for him a great 
 reputation, and he was for many years looked 
 upon as the incarnation of the god Siva. The 
 other sect of Vedantists identifies the supreme 
 spirit with Vishnu rather than with Siva. 
 
 The third or Sankhya system is ascribed 
 to Kapila, and represents the materialistic 
 school of Indian philosophy. The Sankhyaists 
 ascribe the origin of the world to a material 
 First Cause, devoid of all intelligence, out of 
 which the universe has been developed by a 
 process of unconscious evolution. From this 
 it will be seen that the third system of Indian 
 philosophy has much in common with the older 
 school of English evolutionists. 
 
 The fourth or Yoga system generally accepts 
 the speculations of the Sankhyaists, adding 
 a 25th principle to the 24th laid down by 
 their immediate predecessors, viz., Nirguna 
 Purrusha, that is cf Self without attributes." 
 This assumes evolution founded upon some 
 
208 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 theistic principle, on which account the Yoga 
 system is sometimes known as the theistic or 
 Sesvara Sankhya. A characteristic feature of 
 the Yogas is their exceedingly complicated 
 system of ascetic practices in order that the 
 senses and passions may undergo a process of 
 mortification in such a way that a union may 
 be formed with the supreme spirit during one's 
 lifetime. 
 
 The remaining two systems, the Nyaya and 
 Vaiseshika, differ from one another in a few 
 points of little interest, but are usually con- 
 sidered as two branches of a single system 
 of philosophy, supplementary to one another 
 and hence generally studied together. Nyaya, 
 which means literally, method or rule, is 
 ascribed to one Gotama or Akshapada. It is 
 principally remarkable for its complicated 
 system of dialectics, which has gained for it 
 the designation of the Hindoo science of logic. 
 The Vaiseskiha derives its name from its 
 main premiss, that is, each separate atom 
 (Visesha) is possessed of its own individuality, 
 and that the cosmos is formed from an ag- 
 glomeration of such atoms. These latter two 
 philosophical systems are generally thought to 
 have arisen about the fourth or fifth century of 
 our era, and if we had a few clear particulars 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 209 
 
 regarding the Vaiseshika system it would be 
 interesting to compare it with the atomic 
 theory set forth by Lucretius. 
 
 Among the numerous other systems and 
 sub-systems of Indian philosophies, only one 
 calls for any special notice, viz., that of the 
 Charvakas or Lokayatikas, both of which 
 names correspond approximately to materialists. 
 Followers of this school admit perception alone 
 as a source of knowledge, deny a supreme 
 spirit or a soul apart from the body, and hold 
 that man's only aim in life should be the enjoy- 
 ment derived from sensuality. 
 
 There is another heterodox sect of Hindoos 
 which calls for some passing mention. This 
 is the Jains, who, although generally scattered 
 throughout the Peninsula, are found chiefly 
 in Upper India. They are comparatively few 
 in number, but wealthy and influential. Like 
 the Buddhists, they deny the divine source 
 of the Veda and repudiate its authority. They 
 agree with the Brahmanical Hindoos, however, 
 in recognising the caste system and also some 
 of the lesser Hindoo deities, but they differ 
 from the Brahmans in certain sacrifices which 
 involve the destruction of animal life. It is 
 their belief that not only men have souls but 
 animals and plants as well, and they exhibit 
 o 
 
210 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 their kindness for the dumb creation so far 
 as to provide hospitals for sick animals. The 
 more strict members of the sect, indeed, refuse 
 to drink water until it has been strained, in case 
 they should unwittingly swallow some small 
 insect with it. There are two classes of Jains, 
 as of Buddhists : Firstly, the Sravakas, who 
 are engaged in ordinary employment, and 
 secondly, the Yatis, or monks. The latter 
 chiefly reside in the Jain temples, of which 
 there are large numbers, liberally decorated and 
 provided with numerous images. Like the 
 Buddhists, too, the Jains believe in a Nirvana, 
 where the soul will be freed from the sorrows 
 of transmigration. It seems almost impossible 
 now to trace the origin of this sect. Its 
 founder is reputed to be one Mahavira, of 
 noble birth, who is said to have lived about the 
 fifth or sixth century B.C., which would almost 
 make him a contemporary of Buddha. Other 
 authorities, however, declare that the sect did not 
 come into existence until about a century after 
 Buddha's death, forming their philosophical and 
 religious systems partly out of the Buddhistic 
 and partly out of Brahmanical tenets. 
 
 Very obscure indeed is the early history of 
 China. The people now known as the Chinese 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 211 
 
 seem to have invaded the country not later 
 than 6000 B.C., and probably centuries earlier. 
 Following the course of the Hoang-Ho River 
 they gradually settled down as agriculturists, 
 after having, like the Aryans in India, almost 
 annihilated the native population. The first 
 king of whom we have any connected historical 
 account is Yao, who "flourished " about 2500 
 B.C. He and his successor Shun were good men 
 goody-goody perhaps ; and it would appear 
 that they set an example of moral perfection 
 which all succeeding rulers who felt inclined 
 endeavoured to emulate. But the dynasty died 
 out after many years, and the sovereigns of 
 later times appear, to say the least, to have 
 been of a much more worldly disposition. 
 About 1000 B.C. a certain emperor named 
 Wu Wang divided his kingdom into seventy- 
 two feudal states, but the jealousy between the 
 different princes soon led to internecine warfare. 
 The Tartars also began to make themselves 
 troublesome, and it was in the midst of internal 
 confusion and the sudden descents of daring 
 and skilful foes that Confucius was born. 
 
 The date usually given for his birth is 551 
 B.C., a year when Buddha was in the prime of 
 life, fifty years before Heraclitus propounded 
 his theory of the flux, and more than a century 
 
212 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 before the birth of Plato. The philosopher's 
 clan name was Kung, and he was known to his 
 fellow-countrymen as Kung-fu-tze, that is, 
 Kung the Philosopher, Confucius being merely 
 the Latinised form of the Chinese word. The 
 Kung family had removed to the territory of 
 the Lu, in the present province of Shantung, 
 and it was here, in the village of Chueh, that 
 the philosopher was born. 
 
 The death of his father left Confucius and 
 his mother in somewhat straitened circum- 
 stances, but we know that the sage married at 
 the age of nineteen. About this period of his 
 life he held some minor municipal appointments. 
 When he was about twenty-two or twenty-three 
 years old he began his career as a teacher. He 
 left his native place for a time and is said to 
 have met the other famous Chinese philosopher, 
 Lao-Tze, at Loh, the capital of the state. In 
 510 B.C. we find Confucius appointed to the 
 governorship of Chung-tu, where his teachings 
 and exemplary conduct led to a great reforma- 
 tion in the habits and manners of the people. 
 The successful progress of the state under the 
 guidance of Confucius, however, led to jealousy 
 on the part of the neighbouring rulers, and the 
 sovereign Duke of Chung-tu received from 
 the Marquis of Chi a present of handsome 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 213 
 
 courtesans, fine horses, etc. The gift had the 
 effect wished for, and the charm of the women 
 drew the weak-minded duke's attention away 
 from the philosopher and his reforms. 
 
 As a result, Confucius made up his mind to 
 travel, and departed from Lu in 497 B.C. 
 Accompanied by numerous disciples he is said 
 to have had about three thousand in all during 
 his life he visited many states, and his fame 
 as a philosopher and teacher usually made him 
 welcome. In 495 B.C. the Duke of Chung- tu 
 died, and his successor invited the sage to return 
 to his old surroundings, though Confucius does 
 not seem to have done this until 485 or 484 B.C. 
 His few remaining years were spent in editing 
 certain Chinese Classics and in the composition 
 of the only work which can be definitely as- 
 signed to him, the Chun-Chiu, an account of 
 the history of Lu from 722 to 481 B.C. Two 
 years after the last entry, or early in 479 B.C., 
 the philosopher died. 
 
 After the death of Confucius his disciples com- 
 piled books of his say ings, anecdotes of his travels, 
 and numerous reminiscences of his everyday life. 
 We thus possess fairly complete information 
 regarding the great Chinese sage, and from all 
 that has been recorded it is a fairly simple 
 matter to give an outline of his moral system, 
 
214 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 It has been stated in a previous chapter that 
 the Chinese were one of the peoples who evolved 
 from barbarism to a state of high culture 
 and civilisation without developing the idea of 
 a god. This statement holds true, in spite of 
 the fact that from very early times we find the 
 heavens worshipped under the name of Tien or 
 Ti, meaning ruler. No god, however, was 
 ever devised like the Hindoo Brahma or the 
 Arabian Allah. The worship of any superior 
 power is vested in the emperor as the supreme 
 sovereign and priest of his people, just as in 
 Japan the Mikado is looked upon as a descendant 
 of the gods. 
 
 The Chinese, even before they were conquered 
 by the Manchus in the seventeenth century of 
 our era, exhibited the typical Asiatic quality of 
 amenability to superior minds, as may be judged 
 from a saying which was current in China at least 
 eighteen centuries before the beginning of the 
 Christian era : " Heaven gives birth to the 
 people with such desires that without a ruler 
 they would fall into all kinds of disorder, and 
 Heaven again gives birth to the man of intelli- 
 gence to regulate them." The sovereign and 
 the philosopher are thus both sent by Heaven, 
 and we meet with them at every turn in Chinese 
 history. How far Confucius was influenced by 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 215 
 
 his predecessors it is now impossible to say, 
 but there is no doubt that he devoted an im- 
 mense amount of attention to the works of those 
 who had preceded him. <( The ancients," he 
 would say, " hesitated to give utterance to their 
 thoughts ; they were afraid that their actions 
 might not be equal to their^ words." That he 
 himself was not afraid to do so may easily be 
 observed from the respectable collection of 
 sayings attributed to him, no doubt justly, in- 
 cluding one in particular recorded by a disciple : 
 " Chu-wen-tzu used to reflect thrice before he 
 acted. When told of this the Master said, 
 'Twice would do.'" The whole philosophy 
 of Confucius may be said to be directed to one 
 end : to influence people in such a way that 
 they should recompense good with good and 
 evil with justice, unlike Lao-Tze, who was 
 hailed with delight by the descendants of the 
 Ebionites because he elaborated the so-called 
 very impractical Golden Rule : " Reward evil 
 with good and good with better." 
 
 During his tenure of office as Governor of 
 Chung-tu, Confucius took full advantage 
 of the numerous opportunities he had to 
 study men and things. Hence we find^him 
 expressing shrewd opinions on what con- 
 stitutes good government, the duties of the 
 
216 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 people, the privileges of the rulers, etc. 
 " The people/' he says, for example, " can 
 be made to follow a certain path, but they 
 cannot be made to know the reason why." 
 Although in general Confucius exhibits the 
 vice common to all Chinese philosophers 
 of relying upon " facts" and " reason" more 
 than upon instinct, there is at least one 
 instance in which he shows his disbelief in 
 the strict type of morality which we might 
 expect, say, from Socrates. The example 
 I have in mind is the anecdote concerning 
 the Duke of She, who addressed the sage, 
 saying : (< We have an upright man in our 
 country. His father stole a sheep, and the 
 son bore witness against him." " In our 
 country," Confucius replied, " uprightness is 
 something different from this. A father 
 hides the guilt of his son, and a son hides 
 the guilt of his father. It is in such conduct 
 that true uprightness is to be found." Again, 
 the distinction between an aristocrat and a 
 democrat when holding office is well summed 
 up in the pithy remark : " The nobler sort 
 of man is dignified but not proud ; the 
 inferior man is proud but not dignified" 
 obviously a reminiscence of some jack-in- 
 office whom Confucius had observed in his 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 217 
 
 own or some other state. That he knew his 
 own defects as a Socratian rather than as one 
 of the earlier Greeks is seen in his saying : 
 " There may be men, I daresay, who act 
 rightly without knowing the reason why, 
 but I am not one of them. Having heard 
 much I sift out the good and practise it ; 
 having seen much I retain it in my memory. 
 This is the second order of wisdom. " 
 
 A surprisingly modern statement, and one 
 which Christian commentators have apparently 
 overlooked is : " It is the man that is able 
 to develop his virtue, not virtue which 
 develops the man." Another anti-socialistic 
 opinion is found in the anecdote : " The 
 Master wished to settle among the nine 
 eastern tribes. Some one said : ( How can 
 you ? they are savages/ The Master replied : 
 ' If a higher type of man dwelt in their midst, 
 how could their savage condition last?' 1 In 
 modern times, of course, it is the lower spirits 
 which are trying to drag down the higher to 
 their own level, and in only too many cases, 
 unfortunately, they succeed. Like the 
 writings of all Chinese philosophers, the 
 works of Confucius are set forth in an 
 anarchical fashion ; there is no attempt at 
 order or arrangement, and the student is left 
 
2i8 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 to read through apophthegm after apophthegm 
 to discover the kernel of the teaching. Apart 
 from the good-for-good and justice-for-evil 
 regulations already referred to, the wisdom 
 of the great sage has been summarised by one 
 of his followers almost as well as it is possible 
 to do so : " The Master said : Shen, a single 
 principle runs through all my teaching/ Tseng 
 Tzu answered, ( Yes.' When he had gone 
 out, the disciples asked, saying : ( What does 
 he mean ? ' Tseng Tzu said : f Our Master's 
 teaching simply amounts to this : loyalty to 
 one's self and charity to one's neighbours : ' 
 
 So greatly have the maxims of Confucius on 
 government and morals influenced the rulers 
 of China that the reigning emperor does 
 homage to him twice a year in the Imperial 
 College at Pekin, while the descendants of the 
 great philosopher bear the title of Kung (Duke), 
 and own a large amount of property. In spite 
 of the attempts of the Student-Missionary 
 Legge to saddle Confucius with a belief in a 
 superior being and a future life, the fact 
 remains that there is no justification for this. 
 The sayings of Confucius have exercised a 
 
 1 Mr L. Giles, in his Sayings of Confucius (Wisdom of the East 
 series), was the first European to give a correct interpretation and 
 translation of this apophthegm. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 219 
 
 wide and profound influence throughout China 
 and Japan for centuries ; but they form a 
 system of morality and not a religion in the 
 modern sense of the word. Of course, for 
 the purposes of a modern thinker, there is 
 no difference between "religion" by which is 
 usually meant merely the ritual and dogmas 
 of a faith and the system of morality it 
 advocates, and there is therefore no reason 
 why Confucianism should not be treated as 
 a religious system, but it certainly cannot be 
 called a religion as we should apply this word 
 to faiths in which deities are introduced, as, 
 for example, Brahmanism or Mohammedanism. 
 Although Confucius was a man of a fairly 
 high order of intellect, he nevertheless did not 
 possess the creative faculty in any marked 
 degree, but a Chinese philosopher who did, 
 and who actually founded another " religion," 
 was Lao-Tze, some of whose sayings, thrown 
 at the reader in the usual haphazard Chinese 
 fashion, are much more aristocratic than those 
 of Confucius. Lao-Tze devised Taoism, or 
 "the way," which, in a greatly corrupted 
 form, shares with Buddhism and Confucianism 
 the distinction of being one of the three great 
 religions of China, and which at times is so 
 subtle as almost to merit the praise of being 
 
220 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 Machiavellian. Indeed, since Lao-Tze was 
 born at Loh, not far from the present city 
 of Loh-Yang in Ho-nan, in 604 B.C., it is 
 not too much to imagine that some of his 
 opinions may have circulated as far as Greece, 
 in time to be picked up by Aristotle, who was 
 not born until nearly two centuries later, 
 and in whose works Machiavelli found many 
 hints for his Prince. Among the numerous 
 legends which were not long in gathering 
 about Lao-Tze, the most remarkable is that 
 he was carried in his mother's womb for 
 eighty years, hence his name, which means 
 Old Son, or, as at least one English critic has 
 irreverently suggested, the Old Boy. Very 
 few particulars of his life have come down to 
 us, and we do not even know the date of his 
 death. That he met Confucius about 517 B.C. 
 seems to be tolerably well established. 
 
 Taoism as a system of morality at the 
 present day has been, like Shintoism in Japan, 
 greatly corrupted by Buddhism, and its pursuit 
 of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of 
 life, together with many other superstitions 
 which have gathered round it, are very far 
 removed indeed from the teaching of its 
 founder. In form, Lao-Tze's doctrines 
 resemble those of Confucius, except that they 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 221 
 
 are, as already mentioned, rather more aristo- 
 cratic. Tao, a word which it is almost 
 impossible to define fully and accurately, refers 
 to " the way " in which things first came into 
 being out of primordial nothingness, and how, 
 without struggling or striving, the phenomena 
 of nature still continue. There should also, 
 according to Lao-Tze, be no striving in the 
 life of man, in order that things may come to 
 a successful issue without effort, which is the 
 rule laid down for all human action, or rather 
 inaction. The secret of government is to let 
 men alone as much as possible. While un- 
 doubtedly the right ideal at which to aim, this 
 is enough to drive the modern democratic 
 sociologist quite frantic. " The empire has 
 ever been won by letting things take their 
 course. He who is always doing is unfit to 
 obtain the empire." A very true saying, when 
 properly considered ; and how much above 
 the grasp of a man like Herbert Spencer, with 
 his " Life is activity " ! " It is not," says Lao- 
 Tze, " practise inaction, occupy yourself with 
 doing nothing. Leave all things to take their 
 natural course and do not interfere. Tao is 
 entirely inactive, and yet it leaves nothing 
 undone." 
 
 Truly Nietzschian is one of his last dicta : 
 
222 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 " They who know me are very few, and on 
 that account my honour is the greater." 
 Those who look forward to the extinction of 
 evil will hardly be comforted by the 
 apophthegm : " Among mankind the recogni- 
 tion of beauty, as such, implies the idea of 
 ugliness, and the recognition of good implies 
 the idea of evil." What would a hard-headed 
 Liberal say to this : " In ancient times those 
 who knew how to practise Tao did not use it 
 to enlighten the people, but rather to keep 
 them in ignorance. The difficulty of governing 
 the people arises from their having too much 
 knowledge. Fishes must not be taken from 
 the water : the methods of government may 
 not be exhibited to the people. If the people 
 do not fear the majesty of government a reign 
 of terror will ensue." But the Tory squire 
 and the grasping capitalist employer should 
 equally lay to heart the statement : " Do not 
 confine the people within too narrow bounds ; 
 do not make their lives too weary. For if you 
 do not weary them of life, then they will not 
 grow weary of you." Another commentary 
 on democracy and socialism, and the 
 consequent fussiness and interfering which 
 they inevitably bring about, may be found in 
 the dictum : " As restrictions and prohibitions 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 223 
 
 multiply in an empire the people become 
 poorer and poorer. When the people are 
 subjected to overmuch government, the land 
 is thrown into confusion. The greater the 
 number of laws and enactments the more 
 thieves and robbers there will be. Therefore 
 the sage says : ' So long as I do nothing, the 
 people will work out their own reformation. 
 So long as I love calm, the people will right 
 themselves. If only I can keep from meddling, 
 the people will grow rich. ' 
 
 Only one other Chinese philosopher calls for 
 special mention, viz., Meng-Tse, better known 
 in his Latinised form of Mencius. He appears 
 to have been born in the province of Shan- 
 tung about 372 B.C., which would make him 
 a contemporary of Plato and Aristotle. His 
 mother, we are told, brought him up so well that 
 she has ever since been held up as a model for 
 Chinese women. From the little that is known 
 about the life of Mencius, we gather that 
 he studied Confucius and originated a very 
 practical, almost Socratian, philosophy for the 
 regulation of human conduct. When about 
 forty years of age he led his followers from 
 place to place in the endeavour to find a ruler 
 who would put into practice his theoretic 
 system of government. Not finding one, 
 
224 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 however, he withdrew into retirement and 
 died about 289 B.C. His conversations and 
 sayings were collected by his disciples and cir- 
 culated extensively after his death, and it must 
 be acknowledged that in the last two or three 
 centuries his doctrines have exercised much 
 influence on Chinese ethics, though they are 
 not very closely adhered to where the govern- 
 ment of the country is concerned. His system 
 is based on an almost ludicrously touching 
 belief in the innate goodness of man. 
 According to this teaching, man should collect 
 and utilise the virtues of benevolence, wisdom, 
 and propriety, which come out of his goodness ; 
 for if this were done both individually and 
 collectively the result would be a liberal and 
 enlightened political system. There is one 
 characteristic at least which Mencius shared 
 with modern socialists and democrats his 
 intense desire for the education of the people, 
 without considering the ultimate purpose of 
 such a training, or how far it might be utilised 
 for the benefit of the truly cultured and intel- 
 lectual men, who must always be necessarily 
 few in number. 
 
 It has often been asked why China has given 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 225 
 
 us no fine poetry or inspiring literature, but 
 merely systems of morals based on more or 
 less shrewd observations. The proper answer 
 is doubtless that supplied by Gobineau, viz., 
 that the Chinese have always been very 
 materialistic in their requirements. With a 
 few cotton rags as clothing, and a dish of rice 
 as food, most of their physical and intellectual 
 wants are satisfied. They have always been 
 too lukewarm to design a high morality or 
 creed, with the necessary accompaniment of 
 a deity who punishes those who fail to live 
 up to the noble ideal and rewards those who 
 do, such as the Babylonian Bel, the Hebrew 
 Jehovah, or the Mohammedan Allah. Their 
 system of morals has never been tinctured by 
 anything resembling a deep faith. Its human 
 origin was but too well known, and the maxims 
 of Confucius or Lao-Tze might be taken or 
 left at the will of those who heard or read 
 them. There was no question in either case 
 of reward or punishment from a supernatural 
 source, and thus no great inducement either 
 to heed or to show indifference. A superficial 
 and lukewarm morality of this nature being 
 purely atheistic, the conception of a deity was 
 not necessary to enforce it upon the people. 
 As a consequence, in all the long history of 
 
226 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 China, we do not find a trace of religious wars, 
 such as the Crusades, or of religious persecu- 
 tions such as those which disgraced both 
 Protestants and Catholics about the time of 
 the Reformation and long afterwards, merely 
 because in China there was no definitely-held 
 faith, and therefore nothing to fight for. But 
 the conception of a deity, or more than one, 
 together with the high morality or moralities 
 accompanying such a conception, is absolutely 
 necessary for inspiring men with those deep 
 feelings which find their expression in noble 
 verse. 
 
 While also to some extent applicable to 
 Japan, these remarks are not so entirely, for 
 in the younger country the introduction of 
 the Samurai caste, surrounded as it was by 
 its almost mystic halo of nobility, may be 
 said to have partly taken the place of a 
 supernatural power, though of course on a 
 very much lower plane, a plane which was not 
 even high enough to produce a Japanese Calvin 
 or a Melanchthon, much less a Mohammed or 
 a Moses. 
 
 Japan is probably the youngest of the great 
 Oriental nations, and, in view of the rather 
 mechanical nature of the minds of the in- 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 227 
 
 habitants, one or two Continental thinkers 
 have somewhat unkindly dubbed it " the 
 England of the Far East/' The earliest 
 documents in Japanese pertaining to the 
 history of the country date from the eighth 
 century of our era ; so that many Popes had 
 filled the See of Rome long before a single 
 historical Japanese document was in existence. 
 It has virtually been established that the 
 dominant Japanese tribe came from the 
 Western Peninsula. Yamate (Island) was 
 the district which gave birth to the tribe which 
 by its skill and daring produced the Mikado 
 system, and it was through this tribe that 
 Japanese history assumed its present form. 
 Like the Romans in Europe, the Yamate 
 men advanced and conquered, actuated, as 
 they believed, by a divine command. Their 
 feudal system of organisation, and their well- 
 planned campaigning arrangements, gave 
 them an enormous advantage over the untrained 
 hunters and fishermen whom they met, and 
 they completed their conquest by imposing 
 their superior religious system on the conquered 
 nations. Their chief, or Mikado, was, they 
 said, born of the gods, while their enemies 
 were merely sprung from the earth. All 
 worship was therefore concentrated upon the 
 
228 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 Mikado, who was regarded as the earthly 
 representative of the sun in heaven. 
 
 The religious system of this conquering 
 tribe has always been somewhat loosely referred 
 to as Shintoism. Shinto is the Chinese character 
 representing the Japanese phrase Kami-no- 
 Michi, meaning the " Way of the Gods," i.e., 
 theology. Shintoism in its pure form had no 
 trace of an ethical code, idol worship, priest- 
 craft, or any conception of a future state. Its 
 principal divinity was the sun-goddess, Amate- 
 rasu, from whom the Mikado is supposed to 
 have descended. The creed has no sacred 
 books, and its temples are practically destitute 
 of any adornment, although there is a certain 
 amount of ritual. Trees, rivers, rocks, moun- 
 tains, fire, and other natural objects are " wor- 
 shipped," but the main feature ot the creed is 
 ancestor worship if, indeed, we can use the 
 words "creed" and " worship" in connection 
 with what many critics deny to be a religious 
 system at all. It has been pointed out, with 
 some justice, that Shintoism is a means of 
 government rather than a religion ; and its 
 chief purpose is the upholding of the Mikado 
 dynasty. As one of its main features is the 
 worship of the Mikado and his acknowledg- 
 ment as the descendant of the gods, the faith 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 229 
 
 is naturally confined to Japan, or rather to 
 Japanese subjects. This primitive belief held 
 its ground in a pure form until about 550 A.D., 
 when Buddhism was introduced into Japan 
 from China. Shintoism almost at once came 
 under the influence of the Indian religion, and 
 is at present hardly distinguishable from it, more 
 especially as there are no fewer than thirty-five 
 sects of Japanese Buddhists. 
 
 Apparently it was not until the introduction 
 of Buddhism in the middle of the sixth century 
 of our era that an attempt was made to formu- 
 larise the doctrines of Shinto, and to set them 
 down in written form ; but these ancient docu- 
 ments concerning the creed can now only be 
 read by special scholars, even among the Japanese 
 themselves. They are : 
 
 1. The Kojiki, or notices of ancient things, 
 setting forth the doctrines in the style of the 
 Bible. These documents may indeed be called 
 a sort of Shinto Bible. 
 
 2. The Manyoshu, or Myriad Poems, ex- 
 pressing the thoughts and feelings of the ancient 
 Japanese, and giving us a certain amount of 
 information concerning their manners and 
 customs, and describing a few important events 
 depicted by poets and artists. 
 
330 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 3. The Norito, which describes the active 
 side of the religion. 
 
 While Shintoism is to some extent supported 
 by the Japanese Government, the masses of the 
 people are Buddhists. Indeed, the popular 
 classes draw so slight a distinction between the 
 two faiths that both Buddhist and Shinto 
 temples are attended without discrimination. 
 The higher classes are, generally speaking, 
 atheistic, and endeavour to model their lives 
 on the precepts of Chinese philosophers such 
 as Confucius, Lao-Tze, and Mencius. One of 
 the main reasons why Shintoism has retained 
 its hold on Japan for so long is to be found in 
 the love shown by the Japanese for the works 
 of nature and for their own country. When 
 the people, through Shintoism, are worshipping 
 a rock or a stream or a tree, they are worship- 
 ping at the same time nature, their fatherland, 
 and their emperor. The simplicity of the 
 ceremonial may be seen in the only instrument 
 of worship in a Shinto temple, viz., a mirror. 
 It typifies the heart which, if calm and peace- 
 ful, is the image of the deity although, 
 indeed, it is thought that even this was an 
 innovation introduced by Buddhists shortly 
 after the arrival of the monks from China. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 231 
 
 Critics, however, are not unanimous on this 
 point. 
 
 What Europeans usually associate with Japan 
 is not Shintoism, Buddhism, or Taoism, which 
 is also one of the minor Japan religions, but 
 Bushido. Bu-shi-do means literally Military 
 Ways, that is, the manners which the fighting 
 nobility are called upon to observe in their daily 
 life. In other words, the regulations of Bushido 
 are simply the precepts of knighthood, the 
 noblesse oblige of the Japanese warrior caste. 
 It may, perhaps, be best compared to the chi- 
 valry existing in Europe in the Middle Ages. 
 When Bushido was definitely inaugurated in 
 Japan, about the twelfth century, a class of pro- 
 fessional warriors naturally came into promin- 
 ence, as was also the case in Europe with the 
 introduction of feudalism. In Japan these 
 warriors were known as Samurai, i.e., guards or 
 attendants. As the result of numerous and 
 severe campaigns of fighting, the weak and 
 degenerate succumbed^ thus leaving only the 
 strong and healthy warriors to carry on the 
 Samurai caste, so that the way was paved for 
 a certain Samurai philosophy, viz., Bushido. 
 There is no written code, but there is on the 
 other hand a long oral tradition. Much of 
 this warrior philosophy has been traced to the 
 
232 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 sayings of the three Chinese philosophers 
 already referred to in this chapter. Continual 
 stress is laid upon justice, courage, the ability 
 to bear pain and misfortune. Bushido was 
 never sought by the Samurai as an end in itself, 
 but as a means to the attainment of wisdom. 
 This was conceived of as identical with its practi- 
 cal application to life, summarised in the maxim : 
 " To know and to act are one and the same 
 thing." The training tended to inculcate 
 politeness and truthfulness, so much so that 
 the mere word of a Samurai was assumed to be 
 a sufficient guarantee for the truth of an asser- 
 tion. It also encouraged mercy, especially 
 among equals ; but there was no weakness or 
 humanitarianism. It was among the Samurai 
 that the legalised mode of suicide, Hari-Kari, 
 first came into prominence, though this, since 
 the abolition of feudalism in 1868, has become 
 practically obsolete. While commonly looked 
 upon as merely suicide, accomplished by dis- 
 embowelling, Hari-Kari was really more than 
 this, as it was a kind of religious and legal 
 ceremony. The practice hardly calls for dis- 
 cussion here, being merely an offshoot from a 
 system of philosophy for which there is now no 
 further need, but the student who is interested 
 in customs of this nature may find it worth 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 233 
 
 while to compare the views on suicide held 
 by the ancient Greeks, and also Nietzsche's 
 chapter in " Thus spake Zarathustra " regarding 
 voluntary death. 
 
 As for the remarkable influence of Bushido 
 on the national life of the Japanese, an observa- 
 tion by Nitobe in his work on Bushido is worthy 
 of note in these democratic days : " As England 
 owes all her liberty, law, art, and literature to 
 the upper classes, so does Japan owe everything 
 to the Samurai. They were not only the flower 
 of the nation, but its right hand as well. All 
 the gracious gifts of Heaven flowed through 
 them. Though they kept themselves socially 
 aloof from the populace, they set a moral 
 standard for them and guided them by their 
 example." 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Minor Asiatic Religions The Babylonians 
 Zoroaster Parsees Hittites Mithraism 
 
 So far as diversity of population is concerned, 
 Babylonia, the Shinar, Babel, and "land of 
 the Chaldees," of the Bible, and now the 
 modern Arabian province of Irak-Arabi, may 
 be described as the U.S.A. of ancient Asia, and 
 evidence to this effect is forthcoming from both 
 sacred and classical writers. From the earliest 
 of the inscriptions hitherto discovered, which 
 date back to about 7000 B.C., it would appear 
 that the most primitive inhabitants of the 
 country belonged to the Ugro-Finnic branch 
 of the Turanians, and, in addition to the lingu- 
 istic evidence, statues which have recently been 
 unearthed show that the early inhabitants had 
 the true Tartar type of features. It would 
 seem, too, that a Semitic element was soon 
 introduced into the population. According to 
 the Biblical narrative, Noah begat Shem about 
 2448 B.C., but the Semites date from a much 
 earlier period than this ; for the race emigrated 
 from Arabia into Mesopotamia about 4500 B.C. 
 
 234 
 
RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES 235 
 
 But numerous wars and extended commercial 
 development introduced many other elements, 
 and certainly about 4000 B.C., Babylon itself 
 was a famous, highly-civilised, and prosperous 
 city. How far this civilisation dates back 
 before the period mentioned can now only be 
 conjectured, though the patient researches of 
 antiquaries are bringing forward fresh evidence 
 year by year. The expedition sent to Baby- 
 lonia in 1888, under the auspices of the Uni- 
 versity of Pennsylvania, unearthed a temple 
 which was shown to have been erected not later 
 than 7000 B.C. But a temple presupposes a 
 highly-developed religion. The stone whorl 
 in the British Museum, inscribed with the 
 name of Sargon I., King of Akkad, is gener- 
 ally assigned to a much later date, 3800 B.C. 
 Other tablets testify to a well-thought-out 
 form of government about 6000 B.C., and, 
 apart from the evidence afforded by Herodotus 
 whose veracity is more and more sustained 
 by every fresh discovery which has been made 
 sufficient stones and tablets remain to give 
 us a very fair conception of the essentials of 
 the life of the people who inhabited this part 
 of Asia fifty centuries ago. 
 
 Apart from Babylon, other celebrated towns 
 and cities had come into existence in Babylonia 
 
236 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 at a very early stage. One of the most ancient 
 is Eridu or Eri-dugga ( " holy city " ), which 
 in early times was a part of the Persian Gulf, 
 though alluvial deposits have in the course of 
 centuries filled up much of the northern part of 
 the Gulf. Probably Eridu came into promin- 
 ence even earlier than Babylon, for it was 
 doubtless here that some wandering tribe 
 entered Chaldea from the East. The most 
 primitive indications of the spiritual side of 
 the people show us that fetishism was the sole 
 nature of their worship, but, with the arrival 
 of the invaders from the East, water-gods came 
 into notice. We find deities referred to in 
 inscriptions as " Lord of the waves/' " King of 
 the ocean/' " God of rivers/' and later on these 
 titles vary to " Lord of wisdom," (< the All- 
 knower," and " God of Laws." The supreme 
 divinity of the sea was the God Ea, a legend 
 concerning whom is recorded by Berosus, a 
 Babylonian priest, who flourished about 200 
 B.C., and wrote in Greek a history of his 
 country, several fragments of which have 
 come down to us. Ea, the legend runs, arose 
 from the sea, to teach man the elements of 
 civilisation. He appeared regularly every 
 morning, his bright halo dispelling the mists 
 and driving away the darkness, and every 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 237 
 
 evening, when his task was done, he returned 
 to his throne far away on the horizon, giving 
 place once more to obscurity and gloom. The 
 god held no direct communication with the 
 people, but they heard his voice in the waves 
 as they dashed upon the beach, and they felt 
 his breath in the breezes. A remarkable ana- 
 logy is suggested to us by an inscription saying 
 that people sitting in their gardens at even- 
 tide heard the god talking to them in the 
 wind ; for it at once suggests Gen. iii. 8 : 
 " And they heard the voice of the Lord God 
 walking in the garden in the cool of the 
 day," In the old hymns we find traces of 
 Ea communicating with mankind through his 
 son, Mardugga ( " holy son"), a name after- 
 wards corrupted into Merodach or Marduk. 
 Ea, too, had a consort, Dav-Kina, who personi- 
 fied the earth as her lord personified the sea ; 
 and water and earth were the elements out of 
 which the entire cosmos arose. The couple 
 had a son Tammuz ( " the soul begotten"), 
 who is identical with the Merodach just 
 referred to. Tammuz also had a consort, 
 Istar, and the worship of these four deities 
 continued throughout many generations. The 
 serpent is mentioned in the hymns of the early 
 Babylonians as he is in Genesis. There is 
 
238 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 perpetual conflict between the day and the 
 night. The serpent holds the earth in his 
 coils. Then the bright god rises in the east 
 and darts a ray of light like an arrow the arrow 
 of Apollo being an analogy which will readily 
 occur to the student. The serpent is struck 
 and a golden-red blood begins to flow. The 
 coils which have held the world in darkness 
 slowly unfold, admitting the bright sun-god. 
 " The victor/' says the old chronicle, <s crushes 
 in the head of the serpent. " Hours elapse and 
 the victor makes his way towards the west, 
 while the serpent again appears. It is his turn 
 this time, and the horizon is once more stained 
 with blood as the setting sun sinks slowly out 
 of sight. "It shall bruise thy head/' says the 
 writer of Genesis, centuries later, " and thou 
 shalt bruise his heel." 
 
 As civilisation advanced throughout the 
 country other and more local gods arose. We 
 find, for instance, a certain Mul-lil, the older 
 Bel of the Semites, sacred to the city of Nipur 
 (the modern Niffer). One of his descendants 
 is the moon-god, whose sacred city was Ur, 
 and his worship spread even to Syria and 
 Arabia. It is in Ur ("light") that we find 
 the first traces of the Semites in Babylonia, 
 and the city will always be held sacred as the 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 239 
 
 home of Terah, the father of Abram, the father 
 of the Jews. 
 
 We find the moon-god worshipped under 
 various names, the most important being 
 "Aku," the disc, "Nannar" or " Nannak," 
 the bright one, and " Sin," the bright this 
 root being also found in Sinai and the wilder- 
 ness of Sin. The worship of the moon, as 
 is generally the case among wandering tribes, 
 preceded the worship of the sun, so in early 
 Semitic mythology we find the moon repre- 
 sented as the father of the sun. Recently- 
 discovered fragments have enabled us to 
 decipher the hymns sung and the liturgy 
 employed in some renowned temple which 
 was probably used as a place of worship even 
 by the ancestors of Terah. Many phrases 
 occur in them which were repeated twenty 
 centuries later by the Hebrew psalmists. The 
 sun, for example, " comes out of his chamber" 
 in old Babylonia " like a wife pleased and 
 giving pleasure," as he does in almost similar 
 words in Psalm xix. 5. He spreads bright 
 light, "his name is in all mouths," he is a 
 " banner," and his strength, like Samson's, lies 
 in his bright locks and beard. 
 
 Many of these local deities disappeared in 
 3800 B.C. when Sargon I. became king and 
 
240 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 endeavoured to unite the different cities into 
 one compact empire. This consolidation was 
 triumphantly carried out by one of his suc- 
 cessors, Cammurabi, who proclaimed himself 
 King of North and South Babylonia and made 
 Babylon his capital about 2200 B.C. From 
 this time Babylon flourished more than ever : 
 schools, libraries, and observatories were built, 
 and scholars, priests, and jurists made the city 
 their headquarters. But more important still, 
 from a religious point of view, was the fact 
 that the local god of Babylon was elevated 
 into the position of a national deity, as King 
 Asoka was destined to elevate Buddhism two 
 thousand years later. The local god was 
 Merodach ; but he now assumed the attributes 
 of Ea and of Bel, " the Lord of the world," being 
 henceforth known as Bel-Merodach. We shall 
 find him referred to as Belus in our Herodotus, 
 while Strabo and Diodorus also make mention 
 of him. But from now on we have more 
 information about the history of Babylon than 
 about its religion. Despite many revolts and 
 successive captures, we know that until about 
 560 B.C. Merodach was worshipped and revered 
 by the Babylonians, but about this time the 
 people seemed to become careless in their 
 religious beliefs. Inscription after inscription 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 241 
 
 bears the phrase " Bel came not forth," tending 
 to show that the images of the gods were no 
 longer brought out for the annual procession. 
 
 Nabonidus, the father of Belshazzar, and 
 the last of the native Babylonian kings, was 
 of a vacillating and easy-going disposition, and, 
 like the Ahasuerus mentioned in the book 
 of Esther, cared more for voluptuousness 
 and antiquarian research than for attending 
 to his nominal duties as a ruler. In his zeal 
 for forming large collections of antiquities, 
 he secured for the great temple of Bel in 
 Babylon various statues from the smaller 
 cities representing local deities. From the 
 point of view of the modern historical and 
 philological student, this was an admirable 
 practice ; but at the time it had two very 
 bad effects. In the first place, the local 
 priests were indignant at the loss of their 
 idols, accompanied, as it naturally was, with 
 a diminution of their local prestige, while the 
 priests of Bel-Merodach in Babylon were 
 incensed at the introduction into the temple 
 of a number of strange idols and gods their 
 anger extending in course of time to Bel- 
 Merodach himself, who, when forced into 
 competition with other deities, withdrew his 
 
 protection from the city. The immediate 
 Q 
 

 242 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 result of this was a spirit of revolt whic 
 gradually spread through the country and 
 caused the Babylonians to look for some one 
 to free them from their unpopular king. 
 The anger of the god extended to his son, 
 Belshazzar, who was also marked out for 
 destruction, and was in fact assassinated in 
 538 B.C., when Babylon fell into the hands 
 of the great Persian, Cyrus. Nabonidus him- 
 self died a week afterwards, and the conqueror 
 was hailed as the restorer of the old religion, to 
 which it appears Cyrus was tactful enough to 
 lend his countenance. 
 
 In connection with this revolt and the entry 
 of Cyrus into Babylon, the student will be 
 struck with a curious fact, one of those 
 numerous incidents where we see history 
 repeating itself. The Persian king wanted 
 money for the expedition, and before the 
 war could be undertaken a great Babylonian 
 banking house was appealed to for funds. 
 This is, of course, the modern procedure also ; 
 but the remarkable analogy is the fact that 
 twenty-five centuries ago, as at the present 
 day, the bankers thus appealed to were Jews, 
 just as the modern conqueror might find it 
 necessary to consult the Rothschilds. The 
 Babylonian firm concerned was that of Ikibi 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 243 
 
 Bros., which name is the exact equivalent of 
 Yakob, i.e., Jacob. Among the numerous 
 bonds connecting the East and West, I have 
 thought it worthy to put on record this 
 curious historical fragment of such human 
 interest. 
 
 While the influence of the Babylonians on 
 the Jews is dealt with more particularly in the 
 chapter on Judaism, one analogy between the 
 peoples may be mentioned here. Merodach, 
 as will have been observed from the withdrawal 
 of his protection from Babylon when other 
 deities were brought into the city, was a 
 jealous god like Jehovah. The Babylonian 
 temples corresponded in a great measure to 
 the synagogue, and even the Babylonian feast- 
 days bore a great resemblance to the Jewish 
 feast-days. Indeed, even the arrangement and 
 decoration of the temples corresponded ; and 
 the Jewish rite of circumcision was long a 
 Chaldean custom. Lenormant and Sayce, 
 in their various works dealing with the 
 monuments of antiquity, have thrown much 
 light on another item connecting the Baby- 
 lonians with the Jews, viz., the Tower of 
 Babel. Babel is the Assyrian Bab-ili, " the 
 gate of God/' the Semitic rendering of the 
 name of the Accadian town Ca-Dimira, " Ca," 
 
244 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 meaning (< gate,"and"Dimira," "God". 1 While 
 Berosus makes no mention of the story, George 
 Smith, the well-known Assyriologist, found 
 a cuneiform inscription which, when deciphered, 
 appeared to be almost identical with the 
 narrative in Genesis xi. The " Father of the 
 Gods/' whose anger is aroused against the 
 builders, is Bel in this inscription ; and it 
 is conjectured, with much plausibility, that 
 the story of the Giants and Titans of Greek 
 mythology has been derived from this Assyrian 
 story of the Tower of Babel, the essential 
 facts of the legend being doubtless conveyed 
 to Greece by the Phoenicians. It is at all 
 events practically certain that the site of the 
 tower was somewhere in or near Babylon. 
 Most critics regard it as being identical with 
 the ruins of Birs Nimroud in Borsippa, a 
 suburb of Babylon, which was dedicated to 
 the God Nebo, mentioned in Isaiah. This 
 temple or tower had remained unfinished for 
 many generations until Nebuchadnezzar at 
 one time proposed to complete it. A legend 
 would naturally grow up around the half-built 
 tower, and the number of languages spoken 
 in the Mesopotamia!! plain would be easily 
 
 1 Before philology began to be properly studied, the explanation of 
 Babel was that it came from the Hebrew babbel, meaning to confound ; 
 but no scholar would now put forward this derivation. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 245 
 
 accounted for by saying that the god had 
 confounded the original tongue spoken by 
 the people to punish them for attempting to 
 scale the lofty path leading to his throne. 
 
 When we come to sum up the religion of 
 Babylonia, we are somewhat at a disadvantage. 
 We have, from the records of classical writers 
 and recently discovered inscriptions, a fairly 
 large mass of material dealing with the history 
 of the people ; but we cannot answer the 
 question which Nietzsche would have asked : 
 What were their standards of moral values ? 
 The few particulars we have about their local 
 deities and their supreme god tell us very 
 little. We can judge from their having so 
 much in common with the Jews that they 
 were originally a strong and noble race, but 
 they undoubtedly declined, and Gobineau, 
 who has probably studied the question of 
 races more thoroughly than any man before 
 him or since, has given us the reason in one 
 word : intermixture. It is useless for theo- 
 logically-minded critics to point to long years 
 of prosperity and immorality as the reason 
 why a race should begin to degenerate : 
 Gobineau insists, and rightly, that sexual 
 
246 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 immorality may be a sign of strength as much 
 as of weakness, and that prosperity will not 
 spoil a nation so long as the blood remains 
 pure ; but once let the castes become mixed, 
 or lower races become allied to the higher 
 through marriage, and the end is in sight. 
 
 Among the minor religions and philosophies 
 of Asia, Zoroastrianism, the religion of the 
 Parsees, claims a prominent place. Its teach- 
 ing is contained in the Avesta, which, like 
 the Rig- Veda, is a collection of documents 
 of uncertain age, such as the Gathas, the 
 Yendidad, the Yashts, etc. Of these the 
 Gathas seem to be the oldest, but, as in them 
 the Creator of Nature is worshipped as well 
 as Nature herself, it would seem that they were 
 not written down until the ancient Parsees, 
 whose religion they represent, had reached a 
 high degree of culture. Zoroaster 1 himself 
 appears as an historical personage in the 
 books of the Avesta, and he is said to have 
 " flourished" about 2500 B.C. At first the 
 teaching seems to have been monotheistic, 
 and only one deity is mentioned, the Ahura- 
 Mazda (Ormuzd), but the principle of the 
 philosophy arising out of this teaching was 
 dualism. There were said to be two 
 
 'The Greek form of the Persian name Zarathustra. 
 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 247 
 
 primordial causes of the real and spiritual 
 world, the Vohu Mano, i.e., Good Mind or 
 Reality (Gaya), and the Akem Mano, or 
 Non-Reality (Ajyaiti.) The teaching of 
 Zoroaster flourished throughout Upper 
 Thibet, Persia, and the north-western 
 provinces of India until the time of Alexander 
 the Great, when it declined rapidly, and is 
 now confined principally to a few classes of 
 Hindoos. The followers of this creed are 
 " enjoined to be liberal in thoughts and 
 deeds, pious and religious in ceremonial 
 rites, truthful and honest in their dealings, 
 active in destroying evil, industrious in 
 cultivating land, persevering in the education 
 of themselves and others/' x The Par see must 
 not eat anything which is cooked by a person 
 of another religion, and marriages must be 
 contracted within the limits of their own castes. 
 As Ahura-Mazda is the origin of light, his 
 symbol is the sun, or, in default of the sun, 
 the moon and the stars, or, if all these are 
 wanting, fire of any kind. All Europeans 
 who have had any dealings with Parsees in 
 India or Persia pay the highest testimony to 
 their character for honesty, industry, and 
 peacefulness ; while they are well known in 
 
 1 The Teachings of Zoroaster, by S.A. Kapaclia. 
 
248 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 the East for their benevolence and charitable 
 works. One of their characteristic features is 
 the strikingly handsome appearance of both 
 men and women, indicating a long period of 
 evolution. 
 
 Another faith of some importance in the 
 history of the East is that of the Hittites, but 
 unfortunately we possess as yet few definite 
 particulars of them beyond what can be 
 gleaned from the Old Testament, and the 
 few fragmentary Hittite inscriptions which 
 the researches of archaeologists have so far 
 brought to light. We know, at all events, 
 that the Hittites waged war against the 
 Egyptians and the Assyrians for more than 
 a thousand years ; and they seem to have 
 moved with the Israelites from the time of 
 Abraham to the period of the Babylonian 
 captivity. By putting together the results 
 of the various inscriptions discovered, it 
 would seem that the Hittites ruled over what 
 was, for that epoch, a mighty empire, as early 
 as 3500 B.C. an empire which did not come 
 to an end until 717 B.C., when Sargon IL, 
 the Babylonian king, captured their city of 
 Samaria. While there is something to be 
 said about the Hittites from the point of view 
 of the historian, there is, unfortunately, little 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 249 
 
 to be learned for the information of the 
 theological student, although Prof. Sayce, 
 Mr Thomas Tyler, the Revd. W. Wright and 
 others give good reasons for thinking that 
 the name of the Hebrew God Jehovah came 
 originally from a Hittite source. It would 
 appear, however, that the sun was worshipped, 
 and also, but not to so great an extent, the 
 moon. A strange feature of this religious 
 creed, however, is the worship of the eagle, 
 for that there was a cult of the eagle among 
 the Hittites has been virtually established 
 from the most recently discovered inscriptions 
 and coins. Another strange emblem observed 
 on Hittite stone tablets is a triangle, which, 
 a few critics have conjectured, not without 
 some plausibility, represented the conception 
 of a Trinity, each corner standing for some 
 particular deity. Until further inscriptions 
 are discovered, however, and what is even 
 more to the point, accurately deciphered, it 
 would be very unwise to push conjecture 
 further. 
 
 A third faith which deserves a paragraph 
 or two is Mithraism. It is particularly 
 interesting to the classical student in that it 
 appears to have been introduced into Rome 
 in 68 B.C. by some prisoners whom Pompey 
 
250 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 had taken in battle. It rapidly spread through 
 the whole empire, as is amply proved by the 
 large number of Mithraic statues, inscriptions, 
 and bas-reliefs discovered at various times. 
 Mithra, who appears in many Persian in- 
 scriptions as Mithras, and in the Rig-Veda 
 as Mitra, is generally taken to represent 
 the sun-god or god of light, and is usually 
 looked upon as invariably fighting on the side 
 of what is right, against certain other gods 
 who struggle on behalf of evil. Take, for 
 example, the following quotation from the 
 Rig-Veda. 
 
 It is the voice of Mitra that leads us men, Mitra 
 sustains earth and heaven ; Mitra, with eyes that close not, 
 watches over our tribes, to Mitra pour the fat oblation. 
 
 That man is blessed, O Mitra, who duly serves thee : 
 none can slay him, none can overcome him ; whom thou 
 dost guard, evil shall not reach him from far or near. 
 
 Approach with reverence the great Aditya, the leader 
 of men, who is so kind to the sinner ; to him, Mitra the 
 Wonderful, pour into the fire the loved oblation. 
 
 To Mitra our five tribes go for help, and he sustains 
 the gods, Rig-Veda, iii. 59. 
 
 We usually find Mithra represented on 
 statues as a handsome youth, generally sitting 
 on a bull, into whose neck he is plunging a 
 dagger. A scorpion, a serpent, a raven and 
 a dog are also represented in these scenes, all 
 with their allegorical meaning, which un- 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 251 
 
 fortunately, owing to the destruction of all 
 the documents connected with the creed by 
 the followers of Mohammed, we cannot now 
 decipher. Indeed, traces of Mithraism have 
 been discovered in England, where it was 
 doubtless introduced by the Roman soldiery. 
 The followers of this faith were undoubtedly 
 a serious menace to the propagation of 
 Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, 
 as is evident from the writings of the early 
 Fathers. At length, in the year 378, it was 
 ordered to be suppressed, and, although Saint 
 Jerome, writing several years later, speaks of 
 it as still being practised, it was not long 
 before the last trace of it had been swept away 
 from both the eastern and western divisions 
 of the later Roman Empire. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 Summary and conclusion East and West The 
 influence of Asia on Europe. 
 
 THE connection between religion and govern- 
 ment may be well observed in one of our great 
 Eastern possessions. England holds and 
 administers India ; but, all politics apart, a 
 great mistake has been made in endeavouring 
 to rule an Eastern possession in accordance 
 with Western and so-called " Liberal " prin- 
 ciples. The Asiatic differs from the European 
 in almost everything ; but there are few more 
 striking differences than the respective views 
 of the two continents on government. Japan 
 has to some extent Europeanised herself ; but 
 it must not be inferred from this that the 
 Japanese are satisfied with European methods 
 of government, or that Indians would likewise 
 be satisfied with them. 
 
 It will not be denied that English thinkers 
 have influenced European forms of government 
 to a very great extent. It is to Locke, for 
 instance, rather than to Voltaire and Rousseau 
 
 that we must really ascribe the French Revolu- 
 
 252 
 
RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES 253 
 
 tion ; for the two French writers were pro- 
 foundly influenced by the English one. But 
 the democratic principles advocated by English 
 thinkers, while admirably adapted to the slow, 
 careful English temperament, resulted in scenes 
 of extraordinary horror and butchery when 
 carried out to their logical conclusions by 
 the more ardent and impetuous Frenchmen. 
 Similarly, the modern Englishman, having 
 been brought up under a constitutional govern- 
 ment, and being accustomed to elect members to 
 represent his interests in a House of Commons, 
 thoughtlessly believes that this is the ideal 
 system, and cannot conceive that millions of 
 people would prefer to be ruled by an auto- 
 crat if they had their own way in certain other 
 directions. " Gouverner," says a witty French 
 writer, Henri Maret, " c'est embeter le 
 monde " (to govern is simply to annoy every- 
 body). In other words, Western methods 
 of government inevitably tend to interference 
 in the domestic concerns of the governed ; the 
 government becomes a system of petty annoy- 
 ance. The Curfew edict can be more than 
 matched in the England of our own day 
 with the laws which prohibit children from 
 entering a public-house, which forbid the 
 selling of tobacco to boys under sixteen, which 
 
254 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 call upon parents to send their children to 
 school, which examine our houses to make 
 sure that they are sanitary, and which, amidst 
 hundreds of other items, call for the registra- 
 tion of births, marriages and deaths. 
 
 Now, to an Indian, all this sort of fussy 
 legislation is anathema. The Oriental cares 
 nothing for his neighbour, and it is simply 
 impossible to explain to him the Christian law 
 that he shall love his neighbour as himself. 
 He cannot understand why this should be 
 so, and with some reason. In the case of a 
 common enemy, such as a tiger impelled by 
 hunger to approach the nearest village, he will 
 willingly agree to join his neighbours for the 
 purpose of defence. He will likewise join them 
 for purposes of attack, if it be to his advantage 
 to do so. Here, however, his relationship 
 with his neighbour comes to an end. Every 
 man is master in his own house. If he thinks 
 it necessary to send his children to school he 
 will do so ; if not, he will keep them at home. 
 But he cannot understand that, in Western 
 countries, thousands of men whom he would 
 never see should, by the simple process of 
 voting, which also puzzles him, send men to a 
 place called a House of Commons, there to 
 decide on matters intimately connected with 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 255 
 
 his own family, such as the schooling of his 
 children and his own hours of labour. In all 
 matters of this sort, indeed, the Oriental is 
 actuated by the most aristocratic individualism 
 it is possible to conceive. He is willing to 
 tolerate any form of government but an inter- 
 fering one, i.e., a " reforming " government. 
 How is this seen in his religion ? 
 
 After all, the view set forth by Nietzsche 
 must never be lost sight of: religions are 
 invented for the purpose of protecting and 
 perpetuating a certain type of man. Moham- 
 medanism was obviouslyjnvented for the benefit 
 of the virile ; Christianity for the benefit of 
 the weak. But it may be just possible that, as 
 the Greeks were forced to restrain their exuber- 
 ance by the most tragic drama in all literature, 
 so may the Indians have been compelled to 
 curb their military ardour by the invention of 
 a nihilistic religion. Obviously the primitive 
 Aryans must have been one of the greatest 
 races of conquerors the world has ever known, 
 else how could they have travelled thousands of 
 miles and subjected every nation they met 
 with, finally establishing on a firm foundation 
 a system of government and religion which has 
 endured for thousands of years ? 
 
 The difference between the two great nihi- 
 
256 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 listic religions, Buddhism and Christianity, has 
 already been touched upon, but it deserves to 
 be reiterated. The European critic may say 
 that Christianity has succeeded in brightening 
 the lives of millions of men and women and 
 helping them in their struggle through the 
 world, i.e., the doctrines of the Christian faith 
 have secured the preservation of a certain type 
 of man. The modern biologist, however, who 
 considers the matter from a philosophical point 
 of view, will be inclined to ask, Was this type 
 worth preserving, more especially at the cost 
 of the restrictive penalties imposed on higher 
 minds by the logical outcome of Christianity? 
 What is there to compensate for the rise of a 
 slave caste in Europe, with the resultant eleva- 
 tion of all the lower elements above the higher, 
 or for the sentimental frame of mind engendered 
 to such an appalling extent, especially in 
 the northern countries, by "love," which is 
 purely a Christian invention ? The rise of 
 the slaves under Christianity, to which was 
 due, even more than to the influx of the 
 barbarians, the fall of the Roman Empire, is 
 surely hardly atoned for by the production of 
 democratic upstarts, temperance societies, and 
 foreign missionaries. Still, this religion of 
 ours came from the East and is one of the 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 257 
 
 influences exercised upon Europe by Asia. 
 Christianity springs from two Jewish sects, 
 the Essenes and the Ebionites, and, as the 
 latter name comes from a Hebrew word 
 meaning "poor," it may easily be guessed 
 where all the sneering sayings at rich men in 
 the New Testament originated. Few teachers, 
 indeed, have suffered more from their disciples 
 and followers than Christ, for whose real 
 opinions some of which are very unlike those 
 in the authorised books of the New Testament 
 we must go to the writers of the Apocrypha. 
 But this religion, derived from late Jewish 
 sources, has been counteracted even in Europe 
 by a Hellenic influence, to which we owe the 
 preservation of men like Dryden, Voltaire, 
 Shakespeare, Goethe and Schopenhauer, to 
 pick out only a few names at random ; and it 
 may seem strange to suggest that the people 
 who fought unweariedly to keep Hellenism 
 alive in Europe were the Jews ; but such is 
 nevertheless the fact. We know that thousands 
 of Jews were forced to settle in Alexandria 
 three centuries before the beginning of the 
 Christian era. There they came under the 
 influence of Greek culture, and when in later 
 times Alexandria became the seat of Greek 
 learning, the Jews were destined to make this 
 
258 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 culture their own, and to uphold the noble 
 traditions of Greece against the nihilistic 
 doctrines of the Christian Church. 
 
 From the aristocratic standpoint, as opposed 
 to the democratic outlook and the equality of 
 man laid down by Christianity, what we owe 
 to the Jews must never be forgotten. While 
 Christian teachers were mistaking the nature 
 of philosophy and making it a mere appendage 
 to theology, 1 the Jewish thinkers were deep in 
 the study of Aristotle and the pre-Platonists. 
 It was from Maimonides, for example, that 
 Thomas Aquinas, who might almost be called 
 the re-creator of the aristocratic Roman Catho- 
 lic Church, obtained the main principles of 
 his famous Summa, although in this borrowing 
 the aristocratic nature of the Jewish ecclesi- 
 astical polity was necessarily transformed into 
 a more democratic one. The beneficent 
 influence of Judaism is still further shown by 
 Spinoza, the direct philosophical descendant 
 of Maimonides, to whom men like Disraeli 
 and Heine owe much, and of whom Goethe 
 and Nietzsche have both spoken in warm terms 
 of gratitude. 
 
 Another great teacher who exercised an 
 
 1 On this point see more particularly Anti-Pragmathmt t by Albert 
 Schinz, Paris, 1909 ; and Aspects of the Hebrew Genius, Art, Aristotle 
 and Jewish Thought, by Dr A. Wolf. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 259 
 
 enormous influence on the Christian Church 
 was the Mohammedan, Averrhoes (Ibn Roshd), 
 born in Spain in 1126. He translated and 
 annotated Aristotle, and his doctrine of the 
 Universal Reason certainly shows the influence 
 of Alexandrian and neo-Platonic teaching. 
 His pantheistic doctrine of the unity of the 
 active principle in the universe caused quite 
 a controversy in the fourteenth century, and 
 astrology, which seems to have been much 
 associated with his name, has added to our 
 language the word Averrhoism. When on the 
 subject of Arabian influence in Europe, it may 
 also be worth while reminding the reader that 
 it is to the Arabs that we are indirectly 
 indebted for our numerals, though these 
 undoubtedly came to us from India. 
 
 Apart from the Mohammedans and Jews, 
 however, India has undoubtedly exercised 
 an enormous though indirect influence on 
 European thought. The works of several 
 Greek philosophers who lived five or six 
 centuries before the Christian era such as 
 Thales, Pythagoras and Heraclitus show us 
 that problems connected with the origin of the 
 universe and the development of man were 
 discussed with much critical acumen on the 
 shores of the Mediterranean even before the 
 
260 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 birth of Buddha or Confucius. One remark- 
 able doctrine which is worthy of especial notice 
 is that laid down by Thales about 600 B.C., 
 viz., that water is the original principle of all 
 things, from which everything proceeds, and 
 into which everything is again dissolved. A 
 pupil of Thales, Anaximander, whom we can 
 trace as having "flourished" about 570 B.C., 
 said that all living things had developed out of 
 non-living slime, and that there was a time 
 when man was a fish. Again, Empedocles 
 definitely stated so early as 450 B.C., that in- 
 numerable forms were engendered by the 
 crystallisation of the primitive elements, and 
 that of these a large number perished because 
 they were unfitted to survive an old anticipa- 
 tion of the doctrine, which seems so modern 
 to us, of the struggle for existence. Not long 
 afterwards we find Leucippus putting forward 
 the atomic theory, viz., that the universe is 
 built up of tiny particles. The origin of all 
 these theories, however, does not seem to have 
 been Greek, but Indian ; for we certainly find 
 traces of them in old Indian and Persian litera- 
 ture ; so that even Darwin has been anticipated 
 by some nameless and unknown Brahmanic 
 thinker who may have lived thirty or forty 
 centuries ago. In this connection it must not 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 261 
 
 be overlooked that Pythagoras certainly wrote 
 about the doctrine of the transmigration of 
 souls about 560 or 550 B.C., and this is a 
 theory which is certainly not Greek, but 
 Indian, in its origin. 
 
 Those of us who have read through the 
 fragments of the early Greek historians will 
 have observed numerous references to the 
 curious race known as the Scythians, upon 
 whom the researches of modern investigators 
 have thrown comparatively little light. It was 
 long believed by ethnologists that they were of 
 Mongolian origin, but the latest investigations 
 certainly tend to show that they were Aryans. 
 They evidently wandered from the north of 
 Persia to the shores of the Black Sea and 
 thence into Greece, while about 700 B.C. we 
 find traces of them in Egypt. There seems to 
 have been also an Asiatic branch of the huge 
 tribe, which, it is significant to note, was a firm 
 supporter of Buddhism in the early stages of 
 the faith, from which many critics have sought 
 to prove that Buddha himself was of Scythian 
 descent. On this point, however, no definite 
 statement can be made, but there seems to be 
 no doubt that the Scythians brought with them 
 into Europe a great deal of the Brahmanical 
 learning, which probably exercised no little 
 
262 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 influence on the minds of those Greek thinkers 
 who came into contact with them. 
 
 The influence of Egyptian culture on Europe 
 has never yet been fully appreciated. 1 There 
 is no doubt that the Jews of Alexandria were 
 strongly influenced by all branches of Egyptian 
 learning, which itself, in its later stages, was 
 likewise considerably influenced from Eastern 
 sources. While, unfortunately, Egypt has left 
 us no literature which can be compared with 
 that of Greece or Rome, there is no doubt that 
 the sculpture and art developed on the banks 
 of the Nile were much superior to those arts as 
 developed in Greece. In view of the fact that 
 Englishmen have for generations been brought 
 up to look upon Greek sculpture as the highest 
 of all types, such a statement will no doubt 
 sound heretical, but it has already been strongly 
 advocated by competent critics in Germany 
 and Italy, and an Egyptian Renaissance, if 
 Englishmen can ever be induced to take an 
 interest in it, will undoubtedly upset many of 
 our pet theories regarding sculpture and art. 
 
 It is difficult to say with certainty what influ- 
 ence the idea of a Messiah had in buoying up the 
 Jews in the course of their long struggle, but no 
 doubt it was very great. So profound is their 
 
 1 "Egypt : the Alma Mater of civilisation," says Lafont. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 263 
 
 belief that a Deliverer will one day be sent by 
 Jehovah to restore their country to the power 
 and splendour which it exhibited during the 
 reign of David and Solomon, and to compel 
 the Gentiles to acknowledge the superiority of 
 the Chosen People, that not all the discoveries 
 of modern science or all the mass of learning 
 which goes by the name of the Higher Criticism 
 can eradicate this fixed belief from their souls. 
 This Deliverer is to be sent to the Chosen 
 People, and to them only, which tends in a 
 great measure to explain why the Jews refrain 
 from making converts among other races. No 
 people has ever striven so hard to keep its 
 type pure, and this is one great lesson which 
 modern European nations fail to learn. It is 
 clear that even the downfall or what practi- 
 cally amounted to the downfall of the Brahmans 
 at the time of Buddha was due to their 
 neglecting this precaution. Probably the most 
 illuminating sentence in the Brahmanic writings, 
 and one upon which many a moral text could 
 be hung, is this : " The castes became mixed." 
 In other words, the higher classes intermarried 
 with the lower, the Aryans with the aborigines, 
 and the result was a degradation of the race. 
 Though this had not gone very far, however, 
 is shown by the fact that Brahmanism was able 
 
264 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 to reassert its superiority and finally to drive 
 Buddhism out of India. But the priests were 
 now allied for purposes of defence and not 
 attack. No ethnologist can read through the 
 Laws of Manu and fail to be impressed by the 
 penalties imposed for the crime of marriage 
 between the higher and lower castes. Com- 
 paratively gentle at first, the punishment 
 increases in severity ; and we can see that 
 through long centuries every effort was made 
 to check what, even in those early times, was 
 clearly recognised as race degeneracy. There 
 is a modern assumption, particularly prevalent 
 in the United States of America, that by inter- 
 marriage among different nationalities a new 
 and strong nation will eventually arise. The 
 wish in this case is certainly father to the 
 theory ; for a more noxious combination of 
 races, or rather tribes, than those in the United 
 States of America it would be difficult to find. 
 This theory, however, is merely an echo of the 
 exploded assumptions underlying the views of 
 the English evolutionists of the nineteenth 
 century, all of which amounted to saying that 
 if people were left to develop themselves, no 
 matter in how chaotic a manner, the best would 
 nevertheless come to the surface, and were, in 
 fact, already there ; a view which set at rest 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 265 
 
 for ever the consciences of grasping landlords 
 and sweating capitalists. The more scientific 
 investigations of Continental thinkers, how- 
 ever, have shown that evolution must be 
 directed towards some clearly-defined end 
 though this is hardly a matter which calls for 
 discussion in this work. 
 
 To sum up our investigations, it will have 
 been observed that religion is largely a matter 
 of temperament and environment, and that, 
 as temperaments change in a race, owing to 
 degeneracy or other causes, the religion of the 
 race will also undergo certain modifications. It 
 is impossible to hold up one form of religion 
 and to say that it suits all men equally well. 
 All the struggles between the Catholics and 
 Protestants in the north and south of Europe 
 have simply been due to the fact that the 
 Southern temperament cannot and will not 
 put up with the asceticism, anti-sexuality, and 
 so on, which are so well suited to the cloudy 
 and muddier spirits to be found in the 
 Northern countries. It has also happened 
 many thousands of times that individuals are 
 born in Christian countries who, when the 
 effects of their own particular heredity make 
 themselves felt, develop temperaments which 
 are diametrically opposed to the average of the 
 
266 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 temperaments by which they are surrounded, 
 although they may belong to families which 
 are nominally Christian. All rarely gifted 
 spirits are possessed of these exceptional 
 temperaments, and they are naturally acutely 
 disliked under the intolerant regime of 
 Christianity. Such men were Napoleon, who 
 has long been a victim to misrepresentation 
 and slander on account of his very natural 
 amorous propensities, and also Shakespeare, 
 who suffered the terrible fate of being mutilated 
 by Dr Bowdler. Another victim was Byron, 
 to whom burial in Westminster Abbey was 
 refused (although it was granted to Darwin, 
 who had led the English upper classes of 
 his time to believe that everything was for 
 the best in this best of all possible worlds) ; 
 Shelley, who was expelled from Oxford merely 
 because his opinions were three-quarters of 
 a century in advance of those held by the 
 authorities of the University ; Gibbon, who 
 has been severely censured for venturing to 
 hint that Mohammed was more worthy of 
 admiration than Christ, and but the list 
 might be extended indefinitely. 
 
 What, then, is our final word ? Shall we 
 strain the vocabulary a little and say, with 
 Pythagoras, our 'avrlxOwv ? Merely this : that 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 267 
 
 the religion of men of inferior intellects must 
 be prescribed for them by the higher order 
 of men, and not, as is usually the case at 
 present, vice versa. The Roman Catholic 
 priest, who thinks for his flock, is a much 
 more noble figure than the Methodist preacher 
 whose congregation " think for themselves." 
 It is gratifying to observe that the Church of 
 England is every year approaching more and 
 more closely to the Church of Rome in this 
 particular respect. But Christianity itself must 
 not be imposed on higher spirits who do not 
 want it. If only the Brahmanical caste system 
 could be introduced into Europe and maintained 
 in a pure form for three or four thousand years, 
 as was the case in India, then indeed would it 
 be time for us Europeans to apply to ourselves 
 the words written in a spirit of irony, perhaps 
 of a famous English poet : 
 
 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting, 
 The soul that rises with us our life's star, 
 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 
 And cometh from afar, 
 Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 And not in utter nakedness, 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 
 From God, who is our home. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 THE following is not by any means a complete 
 list of all the authorities I have consulted, but 
 is merely intended to bring to the notice of 
 the reader a few of the comparatively recent 
 books dealing with the religions under dis- 
 cussion : 
 
 RACES, PRIMITIVE MAN, ETC. 
 
 Bossert, A., Schopenhauer. Paris, 1904. 
 
 Gobineau, J. A. de, Sur PInegalite des races humaines. 
 
 Paris, 1853-55. 
 Goldstein, Dr F., Urchristentum und Sozialdemokratie. 
 
 Zurich, 1899. 
 
 Jedlicska, J., Die Entstehung der Welt. Vienna, 1903. 
 Lafont, G. de, Les Aryas de Galilee. Paris, 1902. 
 Lampert, K., Die Volker der Erde. Leipzig, 1902-3. 
 Mortillet, G. de, Le Pre'historique. Paris, 1900. 
 Much, M., Die Heimat der Indorgermanen. Leipzig, 
 
 1904. 
 Muller, J., Uber Ursprung und Heimat des Urmenschen. 
 
 Leipzig, 1 8 . 
 
 Oliviera-Martins, J. P., As Ra$as humanas. Lisbon, 1881. 
 Reclus, E., Les Primitifs. Paris, 1903. 
 Rosny, J. H. de, Les Origines de THomme. Paris, 1895. 
 Sabatier, L. A., Esquisse d'une Philosophic de la Religion. 
 
 Paris, 1897. 
 
 269 
 
270 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 Sanson, A., L'Espece et la Race en biologic. Paris, 1900. 
 Tille, A., Von Darwin bis Nietzsche. Leipzig, 1895. 
 Townsend, M., Asia and Europe. London, 1905. 
 
 BRAHMANISM 
 
 Davis, J., The Bhagavad-Gita. London, 1882. 
 Dhirendranatha, Pala, Religion of the Hindoos. Madras, 
 
 1903. 
 
 Haigh, H., Leading Ideas of Hinduism. London, 1903. 
 Havell, E. E., Benares. London, 1905. 
 Jones, Sir W., Laws of Manu. London, 1880, etc. 
 Kreyher, J., Die Weisheit der Brahmanen. Leipzig, 1901. 
 Milloud, L. de, Le Brahminisme. Paris, 1905. 
 Muir, J., Translations from the Vedas. Edinburgh, 1870 
 
 (privately printed). 
 
 M filler, Max (and others),The Rig- Veda. Oxford, 1 849-74. 
 Muralidhara, Raya, Sree Krishna. Madras, 1901. 
 Petersen and Bhandarkar, Hymns from the Rig-Veda. 
 
 Bombay, 1905. 
 Phillips, Maurice, The Teaching of the Vedas. London, 
 
 1895. 
 
 Phillips, Maurice, Evolution of Hinduism. Madras, 1903. 
 Phillips, Maurice, The Bhagavad-Gita. Madras, 1893. 
 Sankara-Acharya, Compendium of the Raja Yoga Philo- 
 sophy. Calcutta, 1901. 
 Whitney, W. D. and Lanman, C. R., Atharva-Veda. 
 
 London, 1905. 
 Venkataratnam, Lammadi, Hebrew Origin of the 
 
 Brahmans. Madras, 1901. 
 
 BUDDHISM 
 
 Beal, S., Dhammapada (Texts from). London, 1902. 
 Falke, R., Buddha, Mohammed, Christus. Leipzig, 
 1896-7. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 271 
 
 Feer, ., Etudes Bouddhiques. Paris, 1873. 
 
 Fraser, A. T., The Drift of Buddhism from India. 
 
 London, 1905. 
 
 Lafont, G. de, Le Buddhisme. Paris, 1895. 
 Lorenzo, G. de, India e Buddhismo antico. Milan, 1904. 
 Schreiber, M., Buddha und die Frauen. Leipzig, 1903. 
 Smith, Vincent A., The Edicts of Asoka. Oxford, 1909. 
 Smith, Vincent A., Asoka, the Buddhist Emperor. 
 
 Oxford, 1909. 
 Wurm, H., Der Buddha. Leipzig, 1880. 
 
 JUDAISM 
 
 Baudissin, Wolf Wilhelm F. von, Studien zur Semitischen 
 Religionsgeschichte. Leipzig, 1876-8. 
 
 Cornill, Prof. Carl H., Der Israelitische Prophetismus. 
 Strassburg, 1905. 
 
 Funk, S., Die Juden in Babylonien. Berlin, 1902. 
 
 Geiger, Ludwig. Judenthum und seine Geschichte. 
 Breslau, 1865. 
 
 Geiger, Ludwig, Quid de Judaeorum moribus scrip. 
 Romanis persuasum fuerit. Berlin, 1872. 
 
 Graez, Dr Heinrich, Geschichte der Juden. Leipzig, 
 1850, foil. 
 
 Jeremias A., Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten 
 Orients. Leipzig, 1904. 
 
 Marti, C., Geschichte der Israelitischen Religion. Strass- 
 burg, 1903. 
 
 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 Amir, Ali, Spirit of Islam. Calcutta, 1902. 
 Caetani, L., Annali dell' Islam. Milan, 1905, foil. 
 Carra de Vaux, Baron, Islamisme en face de la civilisation 
 moderne. Paris, 1905. 
 
272 RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES 
 
 Contenson, L. de, Chretiens et Musulmans. Paris, 1901. 
 Dods, Dr Marcus, Mohammed, Buddha and Christ. 
 
 London, 1877. 
 Gregory (Bar Hebraeus), Specimen Historiae Arabum 
 
 (edited by Pocock). London, 1806. 
 Mariano, R., Buddismo e Cristianesimo. Milan, 1890. 
 Muir, Sir W., Life of Mahomet. London, 1877. 
 Muir, Sir W., Mahomet and Islam. London, 1887. 
 Muir, Sir W., Some of the Sources of the Koran. 
 
 London, 1901. 
 
 Muir, Sir W., The Caliphate. London, 1899. 
 Pizzi, L'Islamismo. Milan, 1903. 
 Tisdall, W. St C., Original Sources of the Quran. 
 
 London 1905. 
 
 BABYLON, CHINA, ETC. 
 
 Chamberlain, B. H., Ko-ji-ki (Asiatic Society, Yokohama 
 
 Academy). Tokio, 1874, foil. 
 Fossey, C., Manuel d'Assyriologie. Paris, 1904. 
 Giles, Lionel, Sayings of Confucius, The. London, 1909. 
 Griffis, W. E., Religions of Japan. London, 1895. 
 Hammurabi, King of Babylon (edited by C. Edwards), 
 
 The Hammurabi Code. London, 1904. 
 Legge, Dr James, Confucius' Life and Teaching. 
 
 London, 1887. 
 
 Nitobe, J., Bushido. New York, 1905. 
 Plath, H. von, Confucius und seine Schiller. Leipzig, 
 
 1867. 
 University of Pennsylvania, Expedition to Babylonia. 
 
 1888-1890. (Pubd., 2 vols., Philadelphia, 1898.) 
 
INDEX 
 
 AKU, the moon-god, 239. 
 
 Alexandria, 257. 
 
 Allah, see Mohammedanism. 
 
 Anaximander, 260. 
 
 Apocrypha, the, 257. 
 
 Arabs, their early religious system, 
 98 ; their purity of race, 149 ; 
 what Europe owes to, 259. 
 
 Aryans, rise of, 12 ; antiquity of 
 their language, 2 ; their wan- 
 derings, 12 ; development of the 
 tribe, 14. 
 
 Asiatics, their recognition of higher 
 minds, 214. 
 
 Asoka, King, his protection of 
 Buddhism, 86 j his Buddhistic 
 Council, 87 ; the Edicts of, 
 88 ; his propagation of Budd- 
 hism, 91. 
 
 Averrhoes, his influence, 259. 
 
 BABEL, the Tower of, 244. 
 
 Babism, rise of, 172 ; the Bab's 
 early years, 170; his prophecies 
 and works, 176 ; Babism com- 
 pared with Christianity, 171 ; 
 its motley following, 172 ; arrest 
 of the Bab, 176 ; Babism and 
 women, 175 ; doctrines of the 
 sect, 176 ; execution of the Bab, 
 177 ; attempted assassination of 
 the Shah by Babis, 178 ; perse- 
 cution of the Babis, 174; emi- 
 gration of the Babis to Bagdad, 
 179 ; codification of the Bab's 
 doctrines, 179 ; separation from 
 the Behais, 180. 
 
 Babylon, commercial development 
 of, 235 ; early deities of, 236; 
 captured by Cyrus, 242 ; finan- 
 cial influence of the Jews in, 
 242 , influence of, on the Jews, 
 201, 243. 
 
 Babylonia, primitive inhabitants 
 of, 234 ; consolidation of, by 
 Sargon I. and Cammurabi, 240. 
 
 Bacchanalia, early Indian, tee 
 Soma. 
 
 Belshazzar, assassination of, 242. 
 
 Behaism, its tenets, 183 ; its uni- 
 versality, 184; removal of the 
 sect to Saint Jean d'Acre, 181 ; 
 the industry and progress of the 
 sect, 182. 
 
 Berosus, 236. 
 
 Bhagavad-Gita,the basis of popular 
 Hinduism, 43 ; meaning of, 
 43 ; comparison with the New 
 Testament, 44 ; main theme 
 of, 45 ; its conception of the 
 cosmos outlined, 48 ; its con- 
 ception of man, 49 ; its views 
 of the caste system, 50 ; com- 
 parison with the Koran, 53. 
 
 Brahma, mythological account of, 
 15 ; as supreme Hindoo deity, 
 
 3- 
 Brahmanism, the confusion of its 
 
 theological system, 33; its 
 
 principal deities, 34 ; threatened 
 
 by Buddhism, 57. 
 Brahmans, rise of the sect, 20 ; 
 
 source of their supreme power, 
 
 21. 
 
 s 
 
 273 
 
274 
 
 THE RELIGIONS AND 
 
 Buddha, his parentage, 57 ; birth 
 of, 58 ; characteristics of his 
 childhood, 60 ; anecdotes of 
 his youth, 61 ,- flies from the 
 palace, 62; tempted by Mara, 
 62 ; Brahmanical training, 
 63; his great ^temptation, 64; 
 training of disciples, 68 ; visit 
 to his father, 69 ; religious pro- 
 paganda, 70 ; his death, 72 ; 
 learning, 72 ; salient character- 
 istics, 74 5 relics of, 80. 
 
 Buddhism, 54 5 metaphysics of, 
 77 ; its conception of the 
 cosmos, 78 ; its rejection of 
 the caste system, 82 ; spread 
 of the faith, 75 ; compared 
 with Christianity, 83 ; Nietz- 
 sche's explanation of, 84 ; 
 changes in the doctrines of, 86 ; 
 not derived from supernatural 
 sources, 93 ; Buddhistic writ- 
 ings, the, 93; in Europe and 
 Asia, 76 ; materialism of, 77 ; 
 the four great truths of, 78 ; 
 welcomed in China and Japan, 
 
 93 ; sets virtue above wisdom, 
 
 94 ; its pessimism, 94 ; posi- 
 tion of women under, 94 ; anti- 
 sexualism, 97. 
 
 Burnouf, E., quoted, 30. 
 Bushido, 231. 
 
 CALIFS, 140. 
 
 Cammurabi, consolidation of Baby- 
 lonia by, 240. 
 
 Caste system, development of, 19 ; 
 Chandal caste, 52, note. 
 
 Castes, the four divisions of, 195 
 mixture of, 23. 
 
 Chaldea, 235, 236. 
 
 Chandal, caste, the, 52, note. 
 
 China, early history of, 21 1 j lack 
 of god-idea in, 27 ; character- 
 istics of the people, 214; lack 
 of poetry in, 225. 
 
 Christianity, invented for the bene- 
 fit of the weak, 255 ; Nietzsche's 
 
 view of, 85 ; its spread among 
 the lower classes, 185 its 
 origin, 257. 
 
 Confucius, birth of, 211 ; his 
 marriage and early youth, 212 ; 
 meets Lao-Tze, 212 ; appointed 
 Governor of Chung-tu ,212; sets 
 out on his travels, 213 ; his 
 numerous disciples, 213 ; his re- 
 turn to Lu, 213 ; his death, 
 213 ; quoted, 215, 216, 217, 
 218 ; lack of arrangement in 
 his writings, 217; influence on 
 modern China, 218. 
 
 DAV-KINA, 237. 
 
 Democracy and its dangers, 18, 
 3*- 
 
 EA, 236. 
 
 Egypt, emigration of Jews into, 
 
 185; early culture of, 186 ; 
 
 polytheism in, 186. 
 Empedocles, 260. 
 England, Church of, aristocratic 
 
 nature of, 18. 
 English thinkers, their influence 
 
 on European government, 253. 
 Eridu, 236. 
 Eri-dugga, 236. 
 Euripides, quoted, 40. 
 
 GAUTAMA, see Buddha. 
 
 Gods, worship of, 28 ; early 
 
 Indian, 29. 
 Government, forms of, preferred 
 
 by the Hindoo, 254, 
 Greeks, the, the exuberance and 
 
 tragic drama of, 255; culture 
 
 of, compared with the Egyptian 
 
 culture, 262. 
 
 HANIFS, their influence on 
 Mohammedanism, 102-3. 
 
 Hari-Kari, 232. 
 
 Herodotus, his researches con- 
 firmed, 235. 
 
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST 275 
 
 Hindoos (see also India), their 
 
 military ardour, 255. 
 Hittites, 248. 
 
 INDIA, English administration of, 
 252 : individuality of the people 
 of, 255 ; invasion of, by Aryans, 
 II ; early law codes, 21 ; early 
 inhabitants of, 27. 
 
 Individualism, Eastern, 255. 
 
 Intolerance, Christian, examples 
 of, 266. 
 
 Islam, see Mohammedanism. 
 
 Istar, 237. 
 
 JAPAN, Europeanisation of, 252; 
 influence of the Samurai on, 
 233 j earliest documents of, 
 227 ; dominant tribes in, 227 ; 
 Shintoism in, 228 ; Buddhism 
 in, 229. 
 
 Jerusalem captured by Solomon, 
 200 ; by the Babylonians, 200 ; 
 by the Egyptians, 201 ; by the 
 Romans, 202. 
 
 Jews, the, emigration into Egypt, 
 185 ; the progress of, under 
 Egyptian civilisation, 1 86 ; their 
 slavery and harsh treatment, 
 187 ; deliverance by Moses, 
 192; early characteristics, 192; 
 their long struggle for existence, 
 196; their aristocratic morality, 
 197 ; their influence, 198 ; in 
 the "Promised Land," 199; 
 Mosaic law, 195 ; and its neg- 
 lect after death of Joshua, 199 ; 
 the kings, 200 ; Babylonian 
 Captivity, 201 ; influence of 
 Alexandrian culture upon, 202 ; 
 and Hellenism, 202, 257. 
 
 Joshua, 199. 
 
 KORAN, the, influence of, 142 ; 
 most widely-read book, 142; 
 how composed, 144 j Jewish in- 
 fluence on, 146 ; meaning of the 
 word, 147 ; arrangement of, 
 
 147 ; themes dealt with in, 1 52 ; 
 legal decisions in, 152; com- 
 parison with the Old Testament, 
 156; chronological divisions of, 
 158; first editing of, 16 1 ; com- 
 mentaries on, 163. 
 Krishna, 43/o//. 
 
 LAO-TZK, birth of, 220 ; his philo- 
 sophy, aristocratic nature of, 
 
 221. 
 
 Leprosy, frequent outbreaks of, 
 among the Jews, 191. 
 
 Locke, and the French Revolu- 
 tion, 252. 
 
 MAIMONIDES, influence of, 258. 
 
 Mantras, the, see Vedas. 
 
 Manu, Laws of, 21, 22. 
 
 Maret, Henri, quoted, 253. 
 
 Mencius, 223. 
 
 Merodach, 237. 
 
 Messiah, the, 262. 
 
 Mithras 250. 
 
 Mohammed, his physical charac- 
 teristics, 1 02 ; birth of, 101 ; 
 travels in Palestine, 101 ; mar- 
 ries Khadija, 101 ; early interest 
 in religion, 102 ; his epilepsy, 
 102 ; revelations to, on Mount 
 Hira, 103 ; his first converts, 
 106 ; his religious mission, 
 107 ; quarrels with the Mec- 
 cans, 109 ; visits to the Taif, 
 113; his second wife, 113; 
 negotiations with the men of 
 Medina, 114; flight to Medina, 
 116 ; supreme magistrate of 
 Medina, 119; quarrels with the 
 Jews at Medina, 123 ; attacks 
 the Meccan caravans, 127; 
 makes war on the Koraish, 
 128 ; attacks the Jews in Me- 
 dina, 130; conquers Mecca, 
 135; expedition against the 
 Greeks, 137; pilgrimage to 
 Mecca, 138 ; final address, 139; 
 his last illness and death, 140. 
 
276 RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES 
 
 Mohammedanism, invented for the 
 benefit of the strong, 255 ; its 
 ethics, 155 ; the five precepts of, 
 124; fatalism, 164; progress of, 
 after the Prophet's death, 140. 
 
 Morality of the Old Testament, 
 
 143- 
 
 Moses, his high descent, 188; 
 early studies, 189 ; kills an un- 
 just Egyptian, 189; his pro- 
 phetic insight, 190; joined by 
 Aaron, 190 ; receives the Ten j 
 Commandments, 195. 
 
 Mythology, connection between 
 Greek and Aryan, 13-15. 
 
 NABONIDUS, last native Babylonian 
 king, 242. 
 
 Nietzsche, his views of religion, 
 7 ; aphorism on religious ecstasy, 
 148 ; study of, in England, ix. 
 
 Nirvana, see Buddhism. 
 
 Nitobe, quoted, 233. 
 
 OM, sacred syllable, 41. 
 Oriental, the, and Christianity, 
 254. 
 
 PARIAHS, the, 53 note. 
 Persians, in Arabia, 98. 
 Polytheism, in India, 30; in 
 
 Egypt, 186; in Arabia, 99. 
 Purgatory, compared with Brah- 
 
 manical tenets, 57. 
 Pythagoras, 259, 261. 
 
 RACES, necessity for the purity of, 
 245-6. 
 
 Religion, its theory and practice, 
 86-87 ; meaning, 8. 
 
 Rig- Veda, tee Vedas. 
 
 Rousseau and the French Revolu- 
 tion, 252. 
 
 SAMURAI, the, see Japan. 
 
 Sargon 1., see Babylon. 
 
 Sargon II. , see Hittites. 
 
 Scythians, the, 261. 
 
 Semites, emigration into Meso- 
 potamia, 234. 
 
 Sera, Dr, quoted, 20-21. 
 
 Serf, the, in modern times, 17, 32. 
 
 Serpent, the, mentioned in Baby- 
 lonian hymns, 237. 
 
 Shiites, 141. 
 
 Shinar, see Babylon. 
 
 Shintoism, its meaning and 
 features, 228. 
 
 Siddhartha, see Buddha. 
 
 Sin, 239. 
 
 Sinai, 193. 
 
 Siva, 41. 
 
 Socialism, early initance of, 92. 
 
 Soma, 34. 
 
 Sunnites, 141. 
 
 Sura, see the Koran. 
 
 TAMMUZ, 237. 
 Taoism, see Lao-Tze. 
 Thales, 259. 
 Toleration, its origin, 203. 
 
 UPANISHADS, see Vedas. 
 Ur, 238. 
 
 VEDAS, the, their origin and de- 
 velopment, 2$ foil. 
 
 Vedism, the primitive Aryan 
 worship, 30 ; development into 
 Brahmanism, 31. 
 
 Voltaire and the French Revolu- 
 tion, 252. 
 
 WORDSWORTH, quoted 267. 
 ZOROASTIR, his teaching, 246-7. 
 
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