iii? •>: sm^m YOGA TRANSFORMATION A COMPARATIVE STATEMENT OF THE VARIOUS RELIGIOUS DOGMAS CONCERNING THE SOUL AND ITS DESTINY, AND OF AKKADIAN, HINDU, TAOIST, EGYP- TIAN, HEBREW, GREEK, CHRISTIAN, MOHAMMEDAN, JAPANESE AND OTHER MAGIC BY William J. Flagg " This has often come upon me through repeating my own name to myself ■ silently till, all at once, as it were, out of the intensity of the consciousness of ' individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into ' boundless being, and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the ' surest of the surest, utterly beyond words, where death was almost a laughable ' impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but ' the only true \iie."—TennysoK. ^ '^i s r. ^ >^< y-- ff 99 Tan f CTNIVERSTTr New York THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY PUBLISHING DEPT. 244 LENOX AVENUE, - NEW YORK 1898 SSGfflTT Copyright, 189S (all rights reserved) Douglas •Caislor il Co. ■flAcw ]]?orl; CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. Modern Spiritualism on the Soul i II. Hindu Souls 8 III. Egyptian Souls i8 IV. Chaldean Souls 27 V. Greek and Roman Souls 32 VI. Neoplatonism on the Soul 36 VII. Christian Souls 49 VIII. Relic Worship 58 IX. Chinese Souls 62 X. Japanese Souls 69 XI. The Possibility of a Spiritual World Considered. 80 XII. The Possibility of a Spiritual World Further Considered 85 XIII. The Possibility of a Spiritual World Further Considered . . . ._ 94 XIV. The Possibility of a Spiritual World Further Considered 107 XV. Religion in General 125 XVI. The Evolution of Social Virtue 138 XVII. Hindu Yoga 161 XVIII. Chinese Yoga 205 XIX. Egyptian Yoga. 217 XX, Akkadian Yoga 226 XXI. Mohammedan Yoga 232 XXII. Hebrew Yoga 239 XXIII. Yoga of the Essenes 254 XXIV. The Roman Stoics as Yogis 256 XXV. Christian Yoga 258 XXVI. Yoga in General 293 XXVII. Results of Practice and Indications of Progress. 310 XXVIII. Earthly Immortality 333 XXIX. Yoga as a Process of Evolution 345 XXX. Conclusion 352 PREFACE I HAVE written this book to help myself think and now publish it to help others do so. It is, at its least, a call to thought and an aid to thinkers. With the materials I have amassed, and now put at their disposal, it would be strange if other students did not go much further than I have. To such I leave many a problem arising on the face of those materials that I have not been able to solve, and many others I have not even attempted to assail. Most of the conclusions reached have followed after the putting on paper of the facts which are their grounds, and the most important theory I have put for- ward is quite opposed to my former preconceptions, quite different from anything I had an idea of in the beginning. More than a half century ago there came to my knowl- edge a series of strange occurrences just like those which a few years afterwards disturbed the quiet of the village of Hydesville, and which are at this time disturbing the quiet of scientific people the world over. From that time to this I have been an observer of such things and all other phenomena of occult origin. Twenty-five years ago, without having been in the meanwhile able to make anything out of them, I entered on a rather thor- ough course of reading in mystical literature, ancient and modern, and have continued it ever since. Fifteen years ago, baffled as much as ever, I undertook to write vi PREFACE. out some results of my observation and study, to see how they looked on paper. But it was only scant three years ago that I saw my way clear to valuable results, and later still that I decided to publish a book about them. If the space devoted to the various religious dogmas concerning the nature and destiny of the soul should seem too large in view of the unsatisfactory outcome, it should be considered that religion having appropriated and enveloped magic — which is the real subject of the book — it had to be dug into and through in order to get at what it hid as overlying rubbish hides a treasure; and such readers as are disposed to patiently assist at the excavation will not, I fancy, waste their time; but those who think otherwise can skip two chapters (else- where indicated) without serious breach in the thread of the main argument. In saying " the unsatisfactory out- come," I do not mean that the soul is not worth seeking for, but only that it is not worth while to seek for it in religion — nor, in fact, anywhere else — that, our knowing apparatus being what it is, one who shall have under- taken the quest, searching for the Egyptian soul, in pyra- mids and caves where mummies lie, in regions of the air where hawks fly, and under the earth where Osiris holds his feasts — for the Greek soul in the stars — for the Semite soul in tombs and graves and the prison of Allat — for the Hindu soul in the land of the fathers and land of the gods, through its series of re-births and in the bosom of Brahman — for the Mohammedan soul in Alla's hell and his prophet's paradise — for the soul of the mod- ern spiritualist in a spiritual body and world — for souls undergoing metempsychosis, in bodies of reptiles and PREFA CE. vii beasts — for the Christian soul in the raised-up and restored cadaver — will in the end be apt to remain con- tentedly where of old the Taoist sage, and in modern times the German one have told him he must perforce abide; namely, on the hither side of the unknowable. But if he do thorough work, in searching through religion he will have come upon magic, in searching for the secret of magic he will have found transformation, and in transformation discovered evolution. CHAPTER I. MODERN SPIRITUALISM ON THE SOUL. An enquiry such as this book attempts, into the nature and destiny of the soul of man, must needs begin with at least a brief review of the theories respecting it which have been offered by the various great religions of the world, of which the oldest of all, so old that it may truly be called the mother of the others, is yet so new also that we now most commonly know it by the name of " modern spiritualism." Belief in a spiritual world contemporaneous with this natural one, and a duplicate or counterpart of it, in which, as a spirit, endowed with a body which is in like manner a duplicate or counterpart of his natural one, man goes after death, to live eternally, is as old as the world and as wide. It has been held by all primitive peoples, as it is by all savages now, whether having much other religion, or little, or none, and despite its vagueness has lived and gone along with all forms of faith, whether accepted as a dogma or not, aiding to sus- tain them, furnishing soil for their growth, so far as they were growths, and foundation for them to rest on, so far as they were built-up structures. It is the earliest in origin, widest in extent, most persistent in continuance, and really the best proved of all the theories ever enter- tained concerning the state of man after death, enter- tained by the learned as well as the ignorant, and what- ever else the priests may have exoterically taught, or esoterically kept to themselves, has mingled with and adulterated all faiths. As believed in by primitive peo- ples of old and savages of modern times, by the disciples 2 MODERN SPIRITUALISM ON THE SOUL. of Emanuel Swedenborg, and by all the modern spirit- ualists except the Kardec sect, the spiritual world is entered into immediately after death, and is man's final and eternal home, but when adopted into systematically constructed religions it has been given a subordinate place and a limited duration. Most of these consider man as having three parts, namely, a natural body that is material and perishable, a soul that is immaterial and imperishable and a shade, or form of thin matter, such as is the Karma Rupa of the Hindus, the spiritual body of the Swedenborgians and Spiritualists, the shades of the Greeks and the ghosts of all times; concerning the disposition made of these it will appear that well invented religions invest with eternal duration the soul, it alone, and never a body of any kind, whether of spirit or matter. Probable Origiti of the Belief in a Spiritual World. 'Y\\& facts upon which the belief in question has arisen are as real as any in nature. Nothing has been better verified by experience or more insisted on in history than the countless phenomena commonly called super- natural for which no law is known even by the wisest, and which, for that reason, modern science and philos- ophy have found it convenient to persistently ignore and deny, in hopes, as it were, of thereby forcing them out of belief and making them as occult as their origin and meaning have ever been. But notwithstanding scientific and philosophic simulated scoi'n and real igno- rance, the facts are good material for the truth-seeker, and their interpretation by the common mind is as plaus- ible, respectable and rational as could be expected, all things considered. Apparitions, sometimes of the living, sometimes of the dead, have always abundantly been seen, and never were more common than they are now. Where they were likenesses of persons dead it was easy to suppose that by the primitive men they should be taken MODERN SPIRITUALISM ON THE SOUL. 3 to be the very originals they represented and as sur- viving after death, and the belief that they were so it is easy to suppose was the nucleus on which the belief in spirit immortality formed itself later. It is the mere spectre we are now considering, which, though a perfect likeness in face, form and movement of a living or dead person, comes without apparent purpose, and shows no meaning in expression or gesture, moving noiselessly, noticing no one, perceivable by no sense but the sight, and when accosted usually vanishing; letting stand aside for the present those others which come with an apparent purpose, as when, for instance, one is dressed in grave clothes, to signify death, or in wet ones to signify drown- ing, or has other accessories that tell a story, and with these others which, as if to prove themselves not merely phantasms but real presences, make themselves heard, and sometimes felt. The mere spectre seems to be without life or intelligence, very much as classic literature describes the mere shade (to which its soul had been after death tem- porarily united) when it was finally abandoned to endure an eternity of non-existence in Hades. In fact, it comes closely down to the natural, and closely down to the artificial too, so much so that M. D'Assier, a comtist and materialist, in his late book on "Posthumous Humanity," insists that it is not only natural but ma- terial as well, while of late other materialists have raised ghosts by artificial means, which they claim to be as good as any, and fondly think in doing so they have exploded supernaturalism forever. That in the minds of primitive men even such stupid shadows could induce a belief in a world of spirits is not hard to think; it would be hard to think otherwise. To such the con- clusion must have been irresistible that forms so clearly shown to the sight must be discernible by the other senses also, and have life, thought and feeling like the once living, thinking and feeling men they stood for; that beings thus supposed, who came and went, and 4 MODERN SPIRITUALISM ON THE SOUL. came and went again, must come from and goto a some- where of which they were habitual residents, and which somewhere might be in the skies that daily and hourly exhibited to those primitive minds even more wonderful things, or in the earth, also full of wonders, now heav- ing and shuddering in earthquakes and now spouting fire in volcanoes, in any case a region out of reach of man's powers of exploration. Such a belief, once induced, no matter how arising — whether in the way supposed or some other does not affect the argument — this most im- portant consequence must have followed: thenceforth all messages to men from the occult powers, supposing such to be, and to send messages, must needs conform to it or go unheeded; especially must conform to it such as related to the loved and mourned for dead. And just as pent-up waters escaping from the dam that held them must follow the course of the first little rill that finds a way over its crest, deepening and widening its channel as they flow, so did ghost and ghost-land belief, however slender its beginning, in time make place for itself in human belief. This but states a principle governing all teaching, namely, that it must be fitted to the recep- tivity of those who are to be taught. Respect must be had to their beliefs and unbeliefs, knowledge and igno- rance, their religion, morality, superstitions and preju- dices, only disturbing these so far as is necessary to convey the intended instruction. Just as molten metal has to submit to whatever limitations the mould it is poured into imposes, revelations, to gain reception have to adapt themselves to receptivities. It is the same even with discoveries men make in material nature prov- able to the senses; if they come out of time they have to bide their time for acceptance into scientific belief. In view of this Moses was right when he gave the Jews a cosmogony which they could, in their intellectual con- dition, understand, and a morality not too good for them to live up to, although as priest of Egypt he must MODERN SPIRITUALISM ON THE SOUL. 5 have been learned in all that was taught to Solon and Pythagoras, and known a morality as high and pure as theirs. Father Abraham, always ready to receive his god Jeho- vah, certainly would never have allowed himself to be dictated to by Osiris or Bel. The apparition in the con- ventional form of Bacchus which gave the warning that saved Alexander's army from being destroyed in a night would have failed of its mission had it personated one of the gods of the enemy. So, too, when the city of Aphutus, being besieged by King Lysander, was saved by a dream sent to him by Jupiter Ammon, as he believed, in obedi- ence to which he raised the siege and rapidly retreated, the King heeded the warning because it came from a deity he was acquainted with. Especially is it requisite that the accepted cosmogony of the times be humored. The scriptures of the Jews humored theirs, a poor one it is true, but the only one they had. To them the earth remained fixed and the heavens moved round it, and Jeho- vah let them have it so, although he must have known better, since the Book of Job, truly rendered, says he him- self " hung the earth in its sockets." Had the fair spirit of the Spring of Lourdes made herself apparent to the little girl with sore eyes as her grandmother, the chapel that has since arisen there, begemmed with gifts from thousands of pilgrims whom the waters have healed, would not be seen to-day, but in its stead an iron fence and a policeman, such as the priests did, in fact, cause to be placed there, from fear that anything miraculous would in modern France only bring ridicule upon them, until its good-for-naught of an Emperor Napoleon III. by decree made them let the thing go on. The Spirit, there- fore, wisely gave as her name, when under direction of her priest the child asked for it, as "the Immaculate Conception," a droll phrase to make a name of, to be sure, but a popular catchword with good Catholics just then when the Church had woke up to the importance of 6 MODERN SPIRITUALISM ON THE SOUL. the question how the maternal grandmother of Jesus came by her baby. The beautiful, if improper, Aspasia, threat- ened with serious disfigurement by a growth upon her face, prayed to Venus to heal it, in response to which the goddess came in person and prescribed an unction to be made by pulverizing a dried rose from a chaplet then hanging on her image in the temple, which being done not only cured, but made her more beautiful then ever. But whether a goddess Venus ever ruled in earth or heaven remained as doubtful afterward as before. In fact, if we view these two last-named spirits as objective realities, it is conceivable that the ancient Goddess of Love and the modern Lady of the Spring were one and the same being. The Hindus make their god Siva say, pray to whatever god you please, I will answer your prayer, which is recog- nizing diversity of receptivities and acknowledging the necessity of recognizing them, and at the same time proving Great Siva to be high above jealousy and an example to some other gods we wot of. And so the idea of a world of spirits peopled by the dead having once got hold on the minds of men, after that the entire body of mystical revelation must neces- sarily ratify and confirm it. We have been considering the effect of the mere spectre on the simple minds of primitive men in causing them to believe in a world of spirits, a result which might not have happened to instructed minds, but when those occult powers which manifest an interest in human affairs by messages of instruction, warning and guidance, adapting their modes of communication to that primitive belief, and, so to say, taking advantage of it, spoke by the mouths of the spectres, put meaning into their eyes and expression into their actions, and through them predicted truly the future, prescribed medicines that cured, and gave comfort to the bereaved, not only the simple, but the instructed must be excused if they believed. Instances to illustrate this are common to- MODERN SPIRITUALISM ON THE SOUL. 7 day. Intelligent men who, like the body of educated people of European race during the last two centuries, have ignored all such manifestations of the occult, not deigning to honor them so far as to disbelieve them, when at length confronted with the facts in a way that compels belief are apt to accept not only the facts them- selves, but the interpretation which believers in them had commonly put upon them, namely, that they prove a spiritual immortality. And such of them as have rejected religion on the ground that its origin was in the super- natural only and the supernatural impossible, as soon as they come to believe in the supernatural at all, will be apt to run and join the nearest church. Three college- bred men, all of them confirmed skeptics, all near sixty years of age, and, as veteran lawyers, experienced in examining proofs, one a brilliant orator and ex-governor, one a brilliant editor, an author and ex-judge, and the other a brilliant conversationalist, attended together, some twelve years ago, a series of seances held by Mrs. Hollis-Billing which had the effect to convince them that the supernatural was possible. Thus far one identical series of observed facts brought three men to one and the same conclusion. And what next? One, who had been bred in the Catholic Church, returned again to her bosom, and ten years later died happy in her communion and faith; one, whose wife happened to be an old-school Presbyterian, incontinently went and entered into that communion, became one of its shining lights, and died in it ; while the other relapsed into his original skepticism and died an unbeliever. CHAPTER II. PIINDU SOULS. In its essential nature Hinduism is beyond question the best, greatest and most admirable religious and philo- sophical system in the world. Its beginning was too early for its age to be computed, and, unlike all the other great religions of antiquity, it has endured down to the present time, and is in full life to-day. Its votaries, because largely restrained by its beneficent teachings from en- gaging in wars, whose attendants are forever pestilence and famine, and of the doctrine, inherited from still more early ancestor worship, that many sons are advan- tageous to the dead father of them, have multiplied by hundreds of millions on the soil of India while its off- shoot. Buddhism, has spread over and now covers with other hundreds of millions, the larger and more enlight- ened parts of Asia, all of them holding steadfast to the faith of their fathers, despite the persuasions of Christian missionaries, however earnest or well backed by ships of war. And there can be no better proof that Hinduism is in full life to-day than the fact that pious Hindus are actually turning the tables on us, by sending hither learned and eloquent teachers to convert their would-be converters, teachers whom many of our learned men listen to with attention and profit, because they have indeed something to tell. Hinduism rests on a body of scriptures of varying de- grees of authority. Of these the Upanishads, a part of the Vedas, are firmly believed to be divine revelations, to which even the highest philosophy must conform, and the best work done in the less authoritative writings of HINDU SOULS. 9 saints and sages has been in efforts to reconcile them with reason and with each other. Of the Upanishads Max Mtiller in his Vedanta Philosophy, p. 23, says: " The impression they leave on the mind is that they are sud- den intuitions or inspirations, which sprang up here and there and were collected afterwards, and yet there is system in all these dreams, there is background to all these visions. There is even an abundance of technical terms used by different speakers so exactly in the same sense that one feels certain that behind all these flashes of religious and philosophical thought there is a distant past, a dark background of which we shall never know the beginning." The same good authority tells us that ety- mologically the word Upanishad means "sitting near a person," which cannot but remind us that the French word stance has been adopted to designate attendance at a modern spiritualistic circle and must favor the belief that these Hindu scriptures were revelations made to circles of ancestor worshippers of old, by automatic writ- ing, trance speaking, etc., just as mediumistic "communi- cations " are made to us now. It is also worthy of note, that like most such communications, the Upanishads are quite undevotional. Says Miiller, page 16 of the same work: " These Upanishads are philosophical treatises, and their fundamental principle might seem with us to be subversive of all religion. In these Upanishads the whole ritual and sacrificial system of the Veda is not only ignored, but directly rejected as useless, nay, mischievous. The ancient gods of the Veda are no longer recognized. And yet these Upanishads are looked upon as perfectly orthodox, nay, as the highest consummation of the Brah- manic religion." On page 113 we read that most of Buddha's doctrines were really those of the Upanishads. There is no esoteric aspect to Hinduism. Excepting the lowest caste, who would hardly care for or be able to appropriate its higher teaching, all are free to draw from the abundant sources of its wisdom supplied by the 10 HINDU SOULS. sacred writings or the oral instructions of living sages, as much as they are mentally and morally fit to receive, and as fast as they become so fit. Symbols, idols and even the gods above are merely aids to thought and con- templation, and devotional worship of them but an intro- ductory discipline for preparing the worshipper to do without them. The more a Hindu knows of his religion the less devout he is; the perfected Yogi does not pray at all, he only meditates on what he wants and it comes to him. But it is a graded religion, wherein each grade of intelligence can find its fitting temple there to remain, content with the comfort it affords him, or going up higher when worship there has developed him beyond its power to satisfy him. A Hindu may attend on temple gods perhaps for ten years, and then having by that means rendered himself so spiritual as not to need them, abandon them forever. " This was brought about," says Miiller, page i6, " by the recognition of a very simple fact which nearly all other religions seem to have ignored. It was recognized in India from very early times that the religion of a man cannot be and ought not to be the same as that of a child ; and again that the religious ideas of an old man must differ from those of an active man of the world." From such a system toleration necessarily flowed. Hinduism punishes no man for his religious faith. In the Bhagavadgita the Supreme Spirit says as gener- ously as Siva, lately quoted, "even those who worship idols, worship me." God Consistent with the foregoing is the instituting of two Brahmans, the one, an impersonal principle, exalted by negation of attributes quite out of sight, an // and not a He; the other, masculine and personal, invested with all divine qualities and actively engaged in ruling the world. The higher god is found in only well elaborated religions; the lower is found in every religion. Zeus, the Egyptian HINDU SOULS. 11 Osiris, the Assyrian Bel, the Phoenician Bacchus and the Jewish Jehovah were of these latter. The Cosmos. The impersonal Brahman creates the Universe by breathing it out, and again destroys it by breathing it in, both the creation and destruction being periodical. This may be called the real Universe, which is Brahman itself, and not merely pervaded by it. The Universe, as man knows it, is the creature of mdin savidya, Nescience, Ignorance; in fact, his knowledge of things consist in his ignorance of them, each one's individual ignorance being helped by the erroneous thought of the race collectively, amounting to something like a cosmic force. Which suggests Berkeley's statement that each one of us per- ceives as really existing what does not exist, not merely by force of his own thinking so, but by the aid also of the concentrated thought of all mankind. The Origin of Man. Every religion has a different account to give of the reasons which moved its creative god to make man, as well as of the way in which he did it. As to the reason that prevailed with the Hindu creator, " we are told that Pragapate (Visva) stood alone in the beginning, that he had no happiness when alone, and that meditating on himself he created many creatures. He looked on them and saw they were like stone, without understanding, and standing about like lifeless posts. He had no hap- piness, and thought that he would enter into them that they might awake." Thus it may be said that man was made that God might be happy. As to the way it was done, in the Upanishad treating of it various details are given, which are, however, included in the following general statement, same page: "O Saint, this body is without intelligence, like a cart. By whom has this body been made intelligent, and who is the driver of it? Then 12 HINDU SOULS. Pragapate answers that it is He who is standing above, passionless amid the objects of the world, endless, im- perishable, unborn and independent; that it is Brahman that made this body intelligent, and is the driver of it." It is the higher Brahman which does this, of which man is, so to speak, the manifoldness. Nature of the Soul. According to Hindu belief, the soul is " neither our body nor our minds, not even our thoughts, of which most philosophers are so proud, but all of these are con- ditions merely to which it has to submit, as fetters by which it is chained, nay, as clouds by which it is dark- ened, so as to lose the sense of its substantial oneness with God." Soul is Brahman and Brahman is soul. Soul has but three qualities — it is, it perceives and it enjoys. But the word " Atman," commonly translated soul, is better ren- dered as Self, whether regarded in its divine or human aspect, by knowing which we are more helped to a com- prehension of what in our terminology must still be called, for want of a better phrase, the union of the soul with God, than we could be by a whole chapter of ex- planation. The importance of this distinction is made to appear by the following passages from the Upanishads : "In the beginning there was Self;" "He, therefore, who knows the Self, after having become quiet, subdued, satisfied, patient and collected, sees self in Self, sees all as Self;" "The Self, smaller than small, greater than great, is hidden in the heart of the creature;" " Verily a husband is not dear that you may love the husband, but that you may love the Self, therefore the husband is dear." Earthly Life an Evil. Like all civilized peoples, except our three Jewish sects of Jews, Christians and Mohammedans, the Hindus believe undoubtingly that the life of man on earth con- HINDU SOULS. 13 sists of a succession of lives of one soul in many bodies, lives which are not blessings but curses, and will con- tinue to succeed each other in a vicious round that must be unending while the world lasts, unless the sufferer, by a resolute renunciation of the will to live, and yoga practice soon to be described, can slip out of it and by a short path get into the bosom of Brahman, The Land of the Fathers. As a place of demure for the Hindu soul between re- incarnations a portion of the old spiritual world of Vedic hymns is appropriated. It is called "the land of the fathers," and is reached by " the pathway of the fathers," which means a life of good works, charitable or devo- tional. There it is that clothed in the "subtle bodies " they wore under their fleshly ones souls enjoy refuge from the ills of earth life until they have exhausted the stock of acquired merit that gave them admission, after which they must return to earth, enter new bodies and undergo renewed tribulation. It is while tarrying in this paradise that they receive the devotional offerings of their surviving descendants, in the form of sacrifices and feasts, and which they repay with guardian counsel and care. The land of the fathers corresponds to the spiritual world of Swedenborg and modern spiritualism, as the "subtle body" temporarily worn as above does to the spiritual body in which, according to these the unreturn- ing soul exists eternally, and as it is presumable it was believed to do by the primitive Hindus while yet ancestor worship was their only religion. The Land of the Gods. This is a higher paradise than the other, which mere good works will not win, appropriated to ascetics who have gone so far on the way to final deliverance from all life as to have become unfitted for earthly life. In the 14 HINDU SOULS. land of the gods, the subtle body is still worn. This is not cast aside until final enfranchisement from all em- bodiment is obtained, which can be done without return to earth, for it seems yoga can be practiced in the land of the gods as well as here below. Karvia. The doctrine of Karma, or the subjection of the soul in a given earth life to conditions having a punitive, dis- ciplinary and compensatory relation to its conditions and actions in a former one is something superadded to the doctrine of re-incarnation and not necessarily connected with it. Hindu teachers present it as resulting by the automatic working of the law of cause and effect, whereby, without calling in the aid of a presiding deity, sin com- mitted in one life necessarily causes a corresponding pun- ishment in another, error in one brings about its own correction in another, and hardship in one induces com- pensating advantage in another. As Plotinus states the same principle in the Enneads, ii. 474: "The divine law is inevitable and has the power to carry its judgment into effect." But by divine law he means, as he writes in the Enneads, ii. 291, the law of nature. No acknowl- edged facts prove this Karma doctrine to be true. It is usually defended by appeal to some law of compensation by which human conditions which are so unequal, when viewed within the range of a single life, are intended to be averaged up, so that conditions of wealth and poverty, health and sickness, grandeur and abasement shall be equalized, and the dealings of God with man justified. But the doctrine is defective and inconsistent with itself; to minds of the common sort this gloss put upon it to make it presentable can hardly bring conviction. It is easier to see in it a convenient and most effective priestly device for keeping the vulgar in order, and to understand how, that being so, it was set up as a religious dogma, than to find for it any scientific basis. HINDU SOULS. 15 Yoga in Hinduism. Like our own word religion, taken in its original sense, yoga means junction, but to the Hindu believer it means more than to any other, signifying nothing less than this, that having always been Brahman, a man, by means of certain practices, comes to know it — that's all. For a soul to become God is more than is compassed by the word in its simple sense, but it is less than a Hindu means when he pronounces it. For it to be absorbed in God is still less. For a soul, by works of grace or other means, to raise itself to the level of God, and be united to Him in whatever way conceivable, is still less. Yoga makes the soul to know that from eternity unto eternity it is God, that, as Sankara states it, "it has beco^ne God by being God." The process by which one attains to the knowledge that makes him consciously Brahman will be given at length later on. For the present, it is enough to say that it consists in renouncing the will to live, and all earthly allurements and interests, and in solitude and quietude holding the mind to meditations such as will best concentrate it, and thereby reduce the flow of thought to the least possible point, so that, in the lan- guage of a Hindu sage, the man " is as it were delivered from his mind." Yoga may be practiced either with or without devotion. The manuals of Yoga are mostly made up from the Upanishads, which are philosophical and magical, rather than religious works. The priest is not called in nor the temple resorted to. Alone in the forest, the seeker after enfranchisement goes through mental and physical exercises that have their beginning and end within his own body and mind. Postures are carefully taken, but kneeling is not one of them. The eyes are turned in this direction and that, but not to heaven, not higher than the forehead or the top of the brain. Word formulas are repeated, but they are not prayers. In his early religious life, perhaps, the recluse 16 HINDU SOULS. has concentrated his mind on God Siva in the sky or his image in the temple, but now he directs it to this and that part of his own body, or on some one point of fact or thought or thing, or on simple vacuity, the best of all. The doctrine is that Yoga operates the perfecting of the body, and such perfecting Plotinus no doubt had in mind when, in the Enneads, ii. 298, he wrote: "If each body were as perfect as the Universe is, it would be completely sufficient unto itself. It would have no danger to fear, and the soul which is present in it, instead of being present there, could communicate life to it without quitting the intelligible world." And being thus an affair of the body, in bodily life alone, either physical or spiritual, must yoga work be done. But the striving and waiting that is to lead the soul out of the darkness that hides it from itself into the light that reveals its eternal godship may not accomplish its end in one life, nor perhaps in more than one. Time is required for all the operations of nature, and yoga is a natural operation. As it goes on certain miraculous powers are developed, but the true yogi seldom exerts them. To him they are like flowers by the wayside to one who hastens on a long journey. They tell him the end is near, but the gathering of them would hinder him in reaching it. The enfranchisement, when at last it is gained, finds the soul still bound to a body, and then there is a being "whose feet," in the words of Plotinus, "touch the earth while his head lifts itself above the sky," and this consciously. Of such beings wonderful stories are told and believed in India, for they are there held to be more than demi- gods. They determine the duration of their own lives as men, and sometimes indefinitely extend them. Some- times they largely influence the affairs of men, sometimes they bodily vanish and sometimes drop the body in death, as unenfranchised souls do. And though thus becoming completely rid of the flesh, some have, after HINDU SOULS. 17 long lapses of time, voluntarily and consciously re- embodied themselves and returned as messiahs to endure humanity for the good of humanity. The points of difference between the great sect of Bud- dhism, with its 400 millions of followers and its parent Hinduism, though in many respects they are important, are still not so for the purposes of this our enquiry, but the following statement of a Buddhist of the Ceylon school, found in the "Buddhist Catechism," of Subhadra Bikshu, S. 150, is well worth quoting: Question : " What is the main difference between the doc- trine af Buddha and other religions ?" Answer: "Buddhism teaches the highest kindliness and wisdom without a personal God; the highest under- standing without revelation; a moral order of the world and just compensation which are of necessity consum- mated on the principle of the laws of nature and of our own being; a continuity of individuality without an im- mortal soul ; an eternal beatitude without a local heaven ; a possibility of redemption without a vicarious redeemer; a salvation at which each one is his own savior, and which can be attained by one's own strength, and already gained in this life and upon this earth without prayer, sacrifice, penance, and outward rites, without conse- crated priests, without the mediation of saints, and without the action of divine grace " — namely, by the practice of Yoga. CHAPTER III. EGYPTIAN SOULS. The Egyptian religion is a dead one, and considering how many thousand years it prevailed it is not strange that accounts given of it should vary and conflict, even those afforded by its own records and monuments. In a book of uncertain age and origin, but for which great antiquity and authority is claimed, entitled " The Virgin of the World," by " Hermes Trismegistus," we read that God formed out of a certain something to which the name of "self-consciousness" is given, "myriads of souls " and "traced the limits of their sojourn on the heights of nature, so that they might turn the wheel according to the laws of order and of their wise discre- tion, for the joy of their father," and commanded them thus: "Quit not the place assigned to you by my will. The abode which awaits you is Heaven, with its galaxy of stars and its thrones of virtue. If you attempt any transgression against my decree, I swear by my sacred breath, by that elixir of which I formed you, and by my creative hands, that I will speedily forge for you chains and cast you into punishment." And then he formed living beings of human shape (living and pro- creating, but without souls). Then he gave the rest of his stuff to the loftiest souls, inhabiting the region of the gods in the neighborhood of the stars, being those just named, saying: "Work, my children, offspring of my nature, take the residue of my task, and let each one of you make beings in his image. I will give you the models." The souls thus commanded set to work and created EGYPTIAN SOULS. 19 the different races of animals below the degree of man; and thereupon became proud of their skill, and in their pride disregarded the command to remain where they were placed and "moved about ceaselessly;" for which offense God punished them by imprisoning them in human organisms, a proceeding so much against their wills, we are told, that when they learned their sentence **they were seized with horror." Some sighed and lamented, as when some wild, free animal is suddenly enchained; some hissed like serpents, or gave vent to piercing cries. " Must we quit," they exclaimed, " these vast effulgent spaces, this sacred sphere, all these splen- dors of the Empyrean and of the Happy Republic of the gods, to be precipitated into those vile and miserable abodes?" Thus Egyptian wisdom made the fall of man to occur before he was born, and sinning souls to come to their punishment at birth instead of going to it at death. Many Christian writers give out that the Egyptians be- lieved in a resurrection of the body, arguing that otherwise they would not have built such costly tombs nor so care- fully embalmed corpses to be held in them. For want of other reason, especially for the embalmment, it is in- sisted that it must have been believed that the mummies were to arise and again receive their souls. But there is nothing in Egyptian learning to prove this; on the contrary, we find there three other distinct reasons for embalming, either of which is good and sufficient to exclude the need of the supposition of any resurrection, if not to show the necessity of the practice itself. The first reason was that it was to save the elements, held to be gods, from pollution. The book just quoted from tells us that when mankind began to die and dead bodies to abound, the four elements appeared before God the Creator, and each in turn protested against being made the receptacle of corpses. Earth objected to burial, fire to cremation, water to having its purity 20 EGYPTIAN SOULS. defiled by decaying matter, and air to being tainted by effluvia from the unburied. In consequence of these embarrassing appeals Osiris and Isis were sent to earth, who taught men the art of mummifying. (So says this book, but Maspero, as we shall see, makes the instruc- tion come from the god Anubis, master of sepulture.) Here was a most proper sanitary measure veiled by fable. The second reason was that the preserved corpses, like the Buddhist and Christian relics, were supposed to be effective in invoking the soul that had left it. The third, probably an afterthought, was that a soul thus at call must be excused from attendance before the high court of the dead, and from undergoing punishment de- creed by it while the mummy lasted. A fourth and less well-considered reason was that unless the soul be held to attendance on the body it would be liable to enter into those of beasts and half-decayed astral "shells." Professor Rawlinson, in his "Religions of the Ancient World," asserts that embalmment was for the purpose of keeping the body in good order to receive back its soul again in a subsequent re-incarnation, of which there was to be a long series ending at last in re-absorption in the supreme being. But he cannot be right. The Egyptians had too much brains to suppose a body with- out any in its cranium could serve as living receptacle of a returning soul, which could always find new-born babes to enter into without needing to rob the tomb. Again, that industrious Egyptologist, Gerald Massey, declares that the mummy once swaddled and coffined never walked again; and Herodotus, who in the days of embalmment went to Egypt, studied the process, and learned of the beliefs then and there prevailing, says simply that the soul of the departed returned to earth and entered the body of a man. But there is yet another supposition. The contradictions in the accounts we have of the religious beliefs of Egypt are no doubt mostly due to EGYPTIAN SOULS, 21 the enormous length of her history, though in the light of recent discoveries many accounts must be now wholly discredited. Then again, she had a migratory capital, each movement of which from the delta of the Nile upward towards its cataracts involved a change of gods and a modification of the worship of them. In the con- fusion thus arising the late work of M. Maspero on "The Ancient History of Oriental Peoples," and which gives the latest news from the explorations, brings welcome light, and by aid of it, in connection with what was before known, the natural history of the Egyptian soul may be clearly enough traced for present purposes. We now at last find the true rationale of the mummy and its pyramid. The key to their mystery and to Egypt's whole religious system is seen to be a dogma, originat- ing in very early and savage times, which, though so arising, like others of equally low origin, has by virtue of that strange principle prevailing in all religions which makes a dogma seem true in proportion as the time is long, which removes its grounds and sanctions from reach of scrutiny, persisted through all stages of subse- quent enlightenment, making even that enlightenment subservient to it, while in return rendering it of small avail for good. The dogma in question made the immor- tality of the soul depend on the preservation of the body, quite the opposite of the Christian fundamental belief that the soul confers immortality on the body, or at least wiH do so when the world comes to an end. Long before mummies were embalmed or pyramids built, the inhabitants of the Nile Delta in some way adopted this notion, first proclaimed, may be, by some naked worker of magic spells, the equal in wisdom of our red-skinned medicine-men, or a black-skinned mumbo-jumbo man, and fortuitously taking root in the minds of a tribe of other naked people even more ignorant than he, after- wards, as centuries rolled on, to be consecrated by the 22 EGYPTIAN SOULS. developed intelligence of a civilized and great nation as infallible truth. As a result the Egyptians very early selected for the interment of their dead rocky or sandy, rather than low and moist soils, because in dry ground bodies would keep longer and souls survive longer; which custom con- tinued even after the god Anubis, master of sepulture, came and taught men the art of embalming as a better method of ensuring eternal life. But before the coming of the undertaker god, and even after considerable prog- ress had been made in civilization, no better home for the soul (or what stood for it) was provided than the grave in dry sands or tomb among the rocks, where it had to lie with its body and live with it as best it could. In the more developed psychology of Egyptian sages the man was composed of a material body, a double of it in thin ghostly stuff, and a soul so far incorporeal that it could only manifest itself by taking the form of a hawk, in which to come and go and visit its body in its dire abode, though without ever entering either it or its double, either in life or death. But in the beginning this, the true soul, played no part. The survivor at death was the mere double. This was supposed, as it has everywhere been by those who have conceived it, including Swedenborg and modern spiritualists also, to be a duplicate of its late incasement, like it needing food, drink and raiment, so that there was danger not- withstanding its quasi immortality and the fact that its man had already died once, the poor thing in its gloomy hole would die of starvation, a fear confirmed by the common belief that famishing ghosts did actually come forth in the night season to prowl and plunder and even, as vampires, suck the blood of those who slept. It was to prevent this night walking that the custom arose (of awful consequence to the human race) of burying with the dead at the first interment, and from time to time afterwards depositing withm their reach supplies of food EGYPTIAN SOULS. 23 and drink and other comforts, which served not only to purchase exemption from such depredations, but secured to the givers the good will and friendly offices of the doubles, whatever that might count for. Thus the universal and long consecrated custom of feeding the dead is seen to have originated in fear, howbeit, since it was their surviving relatives on whom the duty de- volved, it was natural that love would soon or late take the place of fear as motive or at least mingle with it. Concerning the kind of existence the double was supposed to lead so interred with its body, whether in grave or tomb, Maspero says: "It there retained its character and its figure as above ground; double before the funeral, it remained double afterwards, with ability to accomplish in its way all the functions of animal life. It moved, went and came, breathed, spoke, received the homage of devotees, but without joy and like a machine, more by reason of an instinctive horror of annihilation than from any real love of life. Regret for the day- light world it had quitted troubled incessantly its inert and gloomy existence." And he quotes from a tablet as late as the time of the Ptolemies a lament supposed to be pttered by a double in its tomb: " O, my brother, cease not to eat and drink, get drunk and make love. Give yourself up to your desires night and day and while you can live grieve for nothing. .... Here is a land of slumber and darkness, a place where the inhabitants sleep in their mummied forms never more to awake, never more to behold their brothers, fathers, mothers, oblivious of their wives and children O, give me to drink of running water Set my face to the wind from the north and my feet on the river's shore that refreshing breezes may kiss away my grief." On the other hand, the following is the discourse a living man is supposed to have held with his soul, copied from a papyrus now at Berlin: "I say to myself every day: What returning 34 EGYPTIAN SOULS. health is to one who has been ill and rises from his bed of suffering to go out into the open court, such is death. I say to myself every day : Like breathing there the perfumed air, seated in the pleasant shade of an ex- tended curtain, such is death. I say to myself every day: Like sitting on a flower bank in the land of drunk- enness, breathing sweet odors, such is death. I say to myself every day: Like an inundating flood, like a warrior in combat, whom none can withstand, such is death. I say to myself every day: Like a clearing sky, like a hunter who, following his game too far, suddenly finds himself in a country he knows nothing of, such is death." The conflict between the two statements cannot be reconciled by the one being uttered by a double and the other by a living man concerning his soul, for there is no reason for supposing there was ever a belief that the soul could be happy and the double miserable, but must, like innumerable other conflicting statements which the stones and manuscripts of Egypt make, be attributed to their relating to different times and places during the enormously long course of Egypt's history, in which the seat of government was many times changed, and with it the presiding deity, followed by modifications in worship and creed or to their representing beliefs ac- cepted by different grades of mind. There was abundant room in time and space and in the range of intelligence from high to low to admit any conceivable number of diverse beliefs concerning what must ever lie outside of knowledge. A gradual improvement continued to go on, but to the last the soul proper was but a mere visitor to the tomb of its mummy, of which the double was, on the other hand, the constant companion — a thing of bodily needs, that must be fed and comforted, if not always by real food and drink, etc., then by representation of these in sculpture and painting. But if dead men were troublesome to the living, dead EG YP TIAN SO ULS. 35 gods were much more so, to both the living and the dead. In contriving their anthropomorphic deities the Egyptian theologians were logical enough to make them mortal. They could die of disease, or age, though not so early in life as men, and could even be murdered as Osiris was. And since their doubles too derived immor- tality from their bodies, gods had to be as carefully buried or entombed. At first cemeteries were estab- lished for them on mountain slopes, and one of the most ancient titles given the defunct deities was " those who are on the sands," but when embalming was discovered they had the benefit of it. "Every Nome," says Mas- pero, "had the mummy and the tomb of its dead god, mummy and tomb of Anhouri at Thenis, mummy of Osiris at Mendes, mummy of Tourmou at Heliopolis. Many would not admit that their names were changed in changing their mode of existence: Osiris defunct remained Osiris still, Nit or Hathor remained Nit or Hathor at Sais or at Dendera, but Phtah of Memphis became Sokaris when he died, etc." And in the other life their doubles fared no better than men as to hunger, thirst and gloom, though their ennui was somewhat be- guiled by their being allowed to exercise the functions of rulers over them who in life had owed them fealty, the same as before. Nevertheless, their dispositions were sadly altered for the worse. Gods who while they lived were distinguished for goodness, once they found themselves in the tomb, became tyrannical, rapacious and ferocious. A mortal summoned before Osiris even, in his youth so loving and kind, came, as is related, "in fear and trembling, and none among gods or men dare look him (Osiris) in the face, and the great and small are alike to him. He spares none because they love him. He carries off the infant from its mother and the old man who crosses his path; all beings, filled with fear, implore before him, but he turns not his face towards them." "Neither the living nor the dead could escape his fury 26 EGYPTIAN SOULS. except on condition of constantly paying tribute to and feeding him like a simple human double." Gifts intended for the double of one who owed fealty to a dead god must pass through his hands and he was sure to deduct for his own use a round commission before he delivered them. M. Maspero could not be expected to tell his readers about any esoteric religion held in secret by the priests, or imparted to those only who were intelligent enough to reject the exoteric beliefs just reviewed and receive more rational ones, since such secrets were not pro- claimed on the walls of tombs nor put in writing and deposited in coffins. CHAPTER IV. CHALDEAN SOULS. Chaldean gods, like Egyptian, were men and not "abstract personalities, who presided metaphysically- over the forces of Nature." They had, too, all the faults and vices of men, though with few enough of their virtues. And yet they all seem to have begun life as suns. "Each was at first a complete sun, and reunited in himself all the virtues and faults innate in the sun," from the fructifying warmth which gives life to the raging heat which destroys it. All Chaldeans worshipped all the gods of every part of Chaldea, only some put one god above the rest and others another. But there was no divinity of established supremacy everywhere any more than in Egypt. Says Maspero: "The supreme god whom the earlier Assyriologists believed they had found, II, Ilou, Ra, no more existed than the sovereign god the Egyptologists imagined to crown the Egyptian Pantheon." Nor was there even any god of gods; one would be suzerain in one district and vassal in another. They had their trinity also, consisting of Anou, the sky; Bel, the earth, and Ea, the water; but they were not three in one, and there were two triads, one superior and one inferior. And these six were again doubled, for each had a wife, though in the council of twelve thus composed the women seem to have had little or no voice. There were special or guardian gods. "Each man was placed from his birth under the protection of a god and a goddess, of whom he was the servant, or, rather, the son," whose duty was principally to protect 28 CHALDEAN SOULS. him from evil spirits. The Chaldeans also worshipped their dead kings. These gods were opposed by powerful devils, not kept in Hades as in Egypt, but roaming at large like the Christian Devil, "up and down the earth," and like him and his followers were fallen angels with a like history, for they rebelled, scaled the walls of heaven, and were with difficulty flung over the parapets. The fate of the Chaldean dead is given by M. Maspero on page 689 of his book, thus: "The dead man — or rather that which survived him, his ekimmon — inhabits the tomb, and it is to render his sojourn there endura- ble that they deposit in it at the time of interment or cremation (where there was cremation the ashes or charred remains were interred), the food, clothes, orna- ments and arms of which he is supposed to be in need. Thus provided for by his children and heirs, he retains for them the same affection that he had when on the earth, and manifests it by all the means in his power; he watches over them, and dispels from them all evil influences. If they neglect and forget him, he revenges himself by returning to torment them in their homes. He lets loose disease upon and overwhelms them with his malediction; he is no better then than the Egyptian double, and if perchance they deprive him of sepulture, he becomes a peril not only for them, but for the whole city. The dead, incapable of gaining an honest living for themselves, are unpitying toward one another; those who arrive among them without prayers, without liba- tions, without offerings, they do not welcome nor give alms to. The spirit of an unburied body, having neither home nor means of existence, wanders about the towns and fields, subsisting by rapine and crime. It is these who, gliding into houses at night, show themselves to the inmates under horrible aspects, filling them with terror This human survival, represented as so powerful for good or evil, was for all that only a fluid CHALDEAN SOULS. 29 sort of being, without substance, a double analogous to the doubles of the Egyptians. With ability to go and come at will, to move itself freely through space, it could not be permanently held in the little house of brick where its body rotted; it was carried, or carried itself to the tenebrous far-off country of Arlou, situated, some said underground, others said at the eastern or southern limits of the universe." It was in this world the dead were judged and punished, by Allat, ''the lady of the great country where all go after death who have breathed here below." But offenses committed against the gods, rather than those against men, occupied the attention of the court. Souls found guilty were condemned to suffer, during a life made eternal in order to enhance their misery, all manner of diseases. Those who were acquit- ted, however, fared little better. They were described as crying with hunger and thirst, with nothing to eat but dust and clay, shivering with cold. And if, finding this kind of life worse even than what they led in the grave, they should seek to return there, the gates were found closed upon them forever, save when quite excep- tionally they were opened upon an order from the higher gods. " They retained no memory of what they did on earth. Domestic affections, memories of services ren- dered, all was effaced from their misty brains. Nothing floated from the wreck but an immense regret for having been exiled from this world and the poignant desire to reascend to it." But return to earth meant resuscita- tion, and earth spirits were on the watch to prevent that. Re-incarnation seems not to have been conceived of, so far as the tiles reveal. The Chaldean, living and dying without hope for the future, looked for happiness only during his short exist- ence on earth. Of what was to come after it he seemed to have very dim notions, and he really seemed to care for or fear his future very little. There was among the more intelligent, it is supposed, an esoteric belief in a 80 CHALDEAN SOULS. tolerably pleasant spiritual paradise for those who had lived good lives. But the tiles, no more than the papyrii, could be expected to tell very much of any thing beyond the exoteric and vulgar creed of the people at large. M. Maspero recapitulates what these reveal as follows: " The gods permitted no living man to penetrate with impunity their empire: whoever would mount there, no matter how brave, must make his way through the gates of death. The common man did not pretend to do that. His religion gave him the choice between a perpetual sojourn in a tomb and a seclusion in the prisons of Allat; if he sought at any time to escape from this alternative and figure to himself a different fate than either, his ideas of the other world remain vague and did not at all equal the minute precision of the Egyptians. The cares of present life absorbed him too completely to allow him time to speculate on the conditions of future one." Writing at an earlier date than Maspero, Rawlinson affirms that the Chaldeans had no esoteric religion and cared little for the future — that after the soul, embodied in a double for the purpose, had been feasted in paradise with the good, or starved in hell with the bad, it, as pure soul, was sent up to the sun as its final home. In this he cannot be said to disagree with Maspero. From their Chaldean kindred the Jews very naturally took many of their religious beliefs, both orthodox and heterodox. And in some way Christianity has enriched itself with the following fundamental doctrines, which are also found in the Chaldean store, namely: uninten- tional sin; the fall of man; the rebellion of the angels and their fall; the disastrous effect on the soul's welfare of its body not being interred according to Church usage ; an unconquerable devil; an anthropomorphic god; the grave as a proper resting place for both soul and body; the greater importance of sins committed against God as compared with those committed against man, arising CHALDEAN SOULS. 31 perhaps from the fact that God is the judge between himself and man. It is generally admitted that the Jewish religion had nothing to say of an immortal soul. And it would be reasonable to suppose that those intelligent and self- regarding Semites who descended from Chaldean Abra- ham discarded the poorly formulated doctrine of immor- tality conceived by his Chaldean fathers, because, as so formulated, it was alike repugnant to reason, taste and humanity, at once incredible and painful. But then, on the other hand, it was so very indefinite that it might very well have come in with Abraham, and then faded away of itself into what is now supposed to be nothing- ness, and that what little notion of it is sometimes re- vealed in the Old Testament is but rudimentary remains of a virtually extinct belief. However this may be, it is certain that neither Judaism nor Christianity hasany reason to be proud of its Chaldean inheritance. CHAPTER V. GREEK AND ROMAN SOULS. The Greeks and Romans, though they differed in many respects in their religious beliefs, agreed in uniting the soul and what they called its image, idol, or shade during a certain sojourn in paradise, preceded, in the case of the wicked, by more or less of preparation in purgatory ; but after that inflicted a kind of second death, which severed them forever, the soul going to live in a star, or as a star, and the shade to while away its existence, such as it was, in a place of shades, which was by some thought to be in the skies above the moon and by others in the bowels of the earth. It seems to have been thought that the mere soul was incapable of enjoyment or suffering, of such at least as pertained to those half material places known as paradise and purgatory, unless in some way em- bodied; but, after having served these temporary pur- poses the shades, who, perhaps, because of the common belief in their indestructible nature, naturally arising from the fact that they were in imagination modeled on apparitions of ghosts of dead people as well as of living ones, and so could not die, were allowed to be as immor- tal as their nature permitted. But these, unlike what they were when figuring in paradise or purgatory, being without soul or mind, were of course not men, nor fit to people a world of any kind, quite inferior to the hardy hunting ghosts of the savage elysium, or the hard-drink- ing ones of the Scandinavian Valhalla, or the even more realistic spirit men of Swedenborg and modern Spirit- ualism. The Greek system of belief in the time of Plato is of GREEK AND ROMAIV SOULS. 33 course best stated by Plato himself, in reading whose words now to be quoted it must be remembered that then the Universe, the heavenly bodies and the souls of men were all believed to be gods. " Wherefore he also made the world (the God) in the form of a globe, round as from a lathe, in every direc- tion equally distant from the centre to the extremes, the most perfect and the most like itself of all figures; for he considered that the like is infinitely fairer than the unlike. This he finished all round, and made the outside quite smooth for many reasons; in the first place, be- cause eyes would have been of no use to him when there was nothing remaining without him, or which could be seen; and there would have been no use in ears when there was nothing to be heard; nor would there have been any use of implements by the help of which he might receive his food or get rid of what he had already digested ; for there was nothing which went from him or came to him, seeing there was nothing beside him. And he him- self provided his nutriment to himself through his own decay, and all that he did or suffered was done in him- self and by himself, according to art. For the creator conceived that a being which was self-sufficient would be far more excellent than one that lacked anything; and, as he had no need to take anything or defend him- self against any one, he had no need of hands, and the creator did not think necessary to furnish him with them when he did not want them; nor had he any feet, nor of the whole apparatus of walking; but he assigned to him the motion appropriate to the spherical form, being that of all the seven which is the most appropriate to mind and intelligence, and so made him move in the same manner and on the same spot, going round in a circle turning within himself. All the other six motions he took away from him, and made him incapable of being affected by them. And as this circular movement re- 34 GREEK AND ROMAN SOULS. quired no feet, he made the universe without feet or legs." *'Such was the whole scheme of the eternal God about the god that was to be, to whom he for all these reasons gave a body, smooth, even, and in every direction equi- distant from centre, entirely perfect, and formed out of perfect bodies. And in the centre he put the soul which he diffused through the whole, and also spread over all the body around about. And he also made one solitary and only heaven a circle to hold converse with itself, and needing no other friendship or acquaintances. Having these purposes in view he created the world to be a blessed god." The reasons here given for enclosing gods in a per- fect sphere apply just as well to the soul of a man after death and final riddance from both body and shade and well show the needlessness and absurdity of lodging such a soul in a body of human form, with, of course, all the needs pertaining to it. In the Timseus, from which the above is taken, Plato goes on to say: "And when he had framed the Universe he distributed souls equal in number to the stars, and assigned each soul to a star; and having placed them as in a chariot he showed them the nature of the Universe." This re- lates to the souls before earthly birth ; after death it was the same. He said that "he who had lived well during his appointed time would return to the habitation of his star, and there have a blessed and suitable existence." And a like happy fate awaited those who had lived ill, after a course of transmigrations through bodies of all kinds had purged them and made them as good as the best. And this seems to have also been the disposition of Greek souls between re-incarnations. They were sent home to the starry globes they came from. But incor- rigible souls were mercifully annihilated. Concerning re-incarnation Plato tells us in the Timaeus GREEK AND ROMAN SOULS. 35 that belief in it was universal, and in the Phocdrus, goes into details, concerning the manner of re-birth of cer- tain souls in this wise. "There is a law of the goddess Retribution .... the law ordains that this soul shall in the first generation pass, not into that of any other animal, but only of man; and the soul which has seen most of truth shall come to the birth as a philoso- pher or artist, or musician or lover; that which has seen truth in the second degree shall be a righteous king or warrior or lord; the soul which is of the third class shall be a politician or trader or economist; the fourth shall be a lover of gymnastic toils or a physician; the fifth a prophet or hierophant; to the sixth a poet or imitator will be appropriate; to the seventh the life of an artisan or husbandman; to the eighth that of a sophist or dema- gogue; to the ninth that of a tyrant; all of these are states of probation, in which he who lives righteously improves, and he who lives unrighteously deteriorates his lot." Let us now turn from old to new Platonism, six hun- dred years intervening between the two. CHAPTER VI. NEOPLATONISM ON THE SOUL. In the latter part of the second century there arose a school of philosophy known as Neoplatonism, which so commended itself to the instructed classes that it spread rapidly throughout the more enlightened parts of the Roman Empire, and during two centuries threatened to supersede Christianity. Its founders were as brilliant men as ever devoted themselves to such work. Its aim was to unify and at the same time spiritualize, purify and enlighten all religions without attempting to do away with any. It included a complete and perfected phi- losophy, psychology, theosophy and magic, as complete and perfect as great minds by long and laborious thinking and discussion could construct out of all that went before it, aided by as good inspiration and revelation as ever had come to any body of mystics, whether of Europe or •Asia. But it was too fine and good for the times, and its fate goes far to prove that the wisdom of the learned should not be profaned by imparting it to the vulgar, and also that while sages and prophets may beat the bush it is always the priests who catch the bird. A school of philosophy could be no match for an organized Church, yearly growing more compact, efficient and unscrupulous, ever ready to invoke in aid of its polemics the fury of the populace or the strong arm of the government. And Neoplatonism did in fact go down before brute force. The murder of beautiful Hypatia by Bishop Cecil's mob was truly a death blow to the central school at Alexan- dria, and later the one at Athens was easily suppressed by a simple edict of the Emperor Justinian. By this NEOPLATONISM ON THE SOUL. 37 conquest Christianity not only got rid of a dangerous enemy but also acquired that enemy's property, which she did not hesitate promptly to apply to her own use and adornment. And to-day the beautiful morality and spirituality and subtle metaphysics of conquered Neo- platonism are exhibited and vaunted as the peculiar en- dowment of the corporation chartered by Constantine and organized by Augustine, vouchsafed to it by God in reward for its meritorious works. Of course the acquisi- j tion lost much of its value by being combined with suchi dogmas as the creation of the world in time, the incarna- tion, and cadaverous resurrection, with their natural consequences, a combination that has proved as confus- ing to believers as troublesome to their teachers, who nevertheless must find it exceedingly handy to exhibit some of the choice gems of Neoplatonism, to intelligent and refined enquirers, as samples of the truth for the dealing in which the Church is sole and exclusive agent, and then when the enquirer becomes a convert deliver an inferior article of its own make. Thus Neoplatonisra^ furnished Christianity, when sorely needing it, a brand"' new stock of ideas, which served it for intellectual pabu- lum on which to subsist in its thousand years of hiber- nation in the cave of the Dark Ages, and also when the spirit of criticism and doubt began to stir men's long benumbed minds, helped them take their first free steps in science and learning. Doctrines of Neoplatonism. Ammonius Saccas, the founder of the school, left no writings, and our information concerning its teachings is derived from those of his disciples, chiefly of Plotinus, who lived in the third century A. D., which were col- lected by his disciple Porphery and arranged in six parts named the Enneads, of nine books each. 88 NEOPLATONISM ON THE SOUL. Revelation. The Neoplatonists were nothing if not mystics. Each for himself sought to know absolute truth by inspiration coming to him from the highest cosmic principle, while he was in a certain state of ecstasy by some supposed to be actual absorption in that principle, attainable by prac- tices like those usual to saints and prophets. ''This mystical absorption into the Deity, or the One," says Schwegler, in his History of Philosophy, "is that which gives Neoplatonism a character so peculiarly distinct from the genuine Grecian systems of philosophy." And because of that important addition to those Grecian systems, as well as of other changes it introduced, a de- scription of Neoplatonism properly comes in here as in orderly sequence following what has been said of Greek beliefs when Plato wrote. What those beliefs did not include three centuries before Christ they attained to by force of intellectual evolution, aided by the spread of Hindu mysticism and philosophy, three centuries after Christ, were formulated in the teachings of the Alex- andrian school, and present us with the fruits of human thought in the peoples ruled over by Rome at their best and ripest stage of mental development. The Soul. The quotations from the Enneads of Plotinus, which here follow, fully exhibit the doctrines of the Neoplato- nists concerning the nature and destiny of the soul. The excuse for making them so full as they are is that except the volume of selections by Thomas Taylor no English translation of that voluminous work exists, " And we, what are we? Are we the universal Soul, or that which approaches to it and which is engendered in time (that is to say, the body)? No (we are not bodies). Before the generation (of bodies) took place we already ex- isted on high ; we were, some of us, men, others even gods, that is to say we were pure souls, intelligences suspended NEOPLA TONISM ON THE SO UL. 39 in the universal essence; we formed parts of the intelli- gible world, parts which were not circumscribed nor sep- arated, but which appertained wholly to the intelligible world. Even now, in fact, we are not separated from the intelligible world; but to the intelligible man there is joined in us a man who has wished to be other than him- self (that is to say, the man of the senses who has wished to be independent), and finding us (for we are not outside of the universe) he has surrounded us and has added himself to the intelligble man which each of us was." (iii, IZl-) " There are two faults possible to the soul. The first consists in the motive which determines her to descend here below; the second in the evil she commits when she gets here. The first fault is expiated by the very state she finds herself in here. The punishment of the second, when it is light, is to pass through other bodies more or less promptly, after judgment is pronounced against her (we sa.y judgment to show that it is the consequence of the divine law)." (ii, 433.) *' Souls are necessarily the principle of life for all ani- mals. It is the same with souls which are in plants. In fact, all souls issue from one principle (the universal Soul), all have their appropriate life, are essences, indivisible and incorporeal." (ii, 474.) Relation of Individual Souls to the Universal Soul. " It must not be thought that the plurality of souls comes from the plurality of bodies. Individual souls subsist, as the universal soul does, independently of bodies, and without the unity of the universal soul ab- sorbing the multiplicity of the individual ones, nor the multiplicity of these dividing up the unity of that. Indi- vidual souls are distinct without being separated from each other and without dividing the universal soul in a number of parts; they are united to one another without confounding themselves and without making 40 NEOPLATONISM ON THE SOUL. of the universal soul a simple totality of them all : for they are not separated among themselves by limits, and they do not confound themselves with one another. They are distinct from each other as different sciences in one mind. In fine, the individual souls are not in the universal soul as bodies, that is to say, as sub- stances really different ; they are divers acts of the universal soul" . . . "all the souls from the universal soul and at the same time the universal soul exists inde- pendently of all the individual souls." (LXXX. ; of in- troduction to Vol. I of the Enneads, which introduction is made up of arranged fragments of the writings of dis- ciples of Plotinus, chiefly those of Porphyry.) Descent of Soul into Body j Reasons for it. " Thus, though the soul has a divine essence and has her origin in the intelligible world, she enters a body. Being an inferior god, she descends here below by a vol- untary inclination, to the end of developing her power and to embellish that which is below her. If she flies promptly from here below she will not have to regret having taken cognizance of evil and known what is the nature of vice (without having given herself to it), nor having occasion to manifest her faculties and let her acts and works be seen. In fact, the faculties of the soul would be useless if she slumbered forever in the incor- poreal essence without passing into act. The soul would not herself know what she possessed if her faculties were ,not, by procession., manifested, for it is action which V everywhere manifests power. Without that, the soul in question would be completely hidden and obscure, or, rather, she would not truly exist, and not possess reality. It is the variety of sensible effects which makes us admire the grandeur of the intelligible principle, whose nature thus makes itself known by the beauty of its works." " Nevertheless, they (souls descended into bodies) are not separated from their principle, from their intelli- NEOPLATONISM ON THE SOUL. 41 gence; for their principle does not descend with them, so that if their feet touch the earth, their head lifts itself above the sky. They descended more or less low accord- ing as the bodies over which they watch have need of their cares. But Jupiter, their father, taking pity on their troubles, has made their ties mortal; he allows them certain intervals of repose, by relieving them of their bodies, to the end that they may return to inhabit the region where the universal soul always remains, with- out inclining towards things here below." A Natural Law Selects the Bodies. In descending to earth each soul " enters in the body that is prepared to receive it., and which is such as it is according to the nature to which the soul has becotne assimilated by its dis- position J for, according as the soul has become like the natui-e of a man or that of a brute, does it enter a given body. What we call inevitable necessity and Divine Jus- tice consists in the empire of Nature which makes each soul to pass in order into the corporeal image which has become the object of its affection and its ruling disposi- tion. Also the soul becomes in her entire form the object towards which she is carried by her interior dis- positions ; it is thus that she is conducted and introduced where she should go; not that she is forced to descend at such and such a moment into such and such a body, but at a fixed instant, she descends as of herself, and enters where she should. Each soul has her hour and when that hour arrives descends as if a herald called, and penetrates the body prepared to receive her, as if she were controlled and put in motion by the forces and potent attractions of which magic makes use. It is in the same manner that in an animal, nature administers all the organs, moves or engenders every thing in its time, makes the beard to grow, or the horns, and gives to the being particular inclinations and powers, when they become necessary; it is in the same manner in fine 43 NEOPLATONISM ON THE SOUL. that, in the plants, she produces the flowers or the fruits at the suitable moment. The descent of souls into bodies is neither voluntary nor forced; it is not volun- tary because it is not chosen nor consented to by the souls; it is not forced, since they obey merely a natural impulse, just as one is led to get married, or to the accomplishment of certain honest acts, more by instinct than by reason. At the same time there is something of fatality for each soul; this one accomplishes its destiny at this moment, and that one at that other moment. Even the intelligence that is superior to the world has also something of fatality in its existence, since it has its own destiny, which is to remain in the intelligible world and from thence radiate light. It is thus that in- dividuals come below in virtue of the law common to all and to which all must submit. Each one in effect car- ries within himself that common law, a law which derives none of its force from without, but finds it in the nature of those whom it governs, because it is intimate in them. Also, all accomplish, of themselves, its commands at the appointed time, because that law impels them to do so, because deriving its force from within the very ones it commands, it presses them, stimulates and inspires them with the desire to go where they are called by their own interior vocation." Process of Embodiment. "In descending from the intelligible world, souls come first into our sky, there they take bodies by means of which they can pass into terrestrial bodies, according as they advance more or less far (from the intelligible world). There are some who come from the skies into bodies of inferior nature; there are some who pass from one body to another. These last have not strength to remount to the intelligible world because they have for- got. Now souls differ, either by the bodies to which they are united, or by their diverse destinies, or by their NEOPLATONISM ON THE SOUL. 43 kind of life, or finally by their primitive nature." (4th Ennead, 3 book.) Soul and Body — The Composite Man. "It must be then that man has for reason* (for es- sence) something other than the soul. What prevents then that man is something composite? That is to say, a soul subsisting in a certain reason, admitting that reason to be a certain act of the soul, but that such act cannot exist without the principle which produces it. Now, such is the nature of the seminal reasons, f They are not without soul, for generative reasons are not in- animate; and at the same time are not soul, pure and simple. There is nothing astonishing that such essences should be reasons." " These reasons which engender not the man (but) the animalj, of which soul are they then the acts? Is it the vegetative soul? No., they are the acts of the {reasonable^ soul which engenders the animal, which is a more pow- erful soul, and for that reason more living. The soul disposed in a given fashion, present in matter disposed in a like fashion (since the soul is such or such a thing according as she is in such or such a disposition), even without the body is that which constitutes the man. She fashions the body in her own likeness. She thus produces, as much as comports with the nature of the body, an image of the man, as a painter makes an image; she pro- duces, I repeat, an inferior man (the man of sensations) which possesses the form of the man, his ideas, his man- * " The idea (reason) was to Plato the essence of a thing. There was no immediate reference to a mind in which it existed. The idea was external and existed independently of the finite minds which con- templated it." . . . " According to Plato, ideas are the archetypes of the manifold varieties in the universe." — Fleming's Vocabulary of Philosophy, i83. f Or generative or creative ideas. X By animal is here meant a soul joined to a body. 44 NEOPLATONISM ON THE SOUL. ners, his dispositions, his faculties, but in an imperfect manner, because he is not the first man (the man of the intelligible world). He has sensations of another kind, sensations which, though they seem clear, are obscure, if compared with the superior sensations of which they are the images. The superior man (the intelligible man) is better, has a soul more divine and sensations more clear. It is he no doubt that Plato defines (in saying: the man is the soul)\ he adds in his definition: 'who makes use of a body,' because the more divine soul dominates the soul which makes use of the body, and itself uses it only in the second degree." *' I call part {of the soul) separate from the body that which makes use of the body as an instrument, and call part attached to the body that which lowers itself to the rank of the instrument." " In effect, the thing engendered by the soul being capable of feeling, the soul attaches itself to it, giving it a more powerful life; or rather, she does not attach her- self to it, but brings it near to her. She does not leave the intelligible world, but all the while remaining in con- tact with it, she holds suspended in herself the inferior soul (which constitutes the man of senses), she mingles herself with that reason by her reason (she unites herself to that essence by her essence). This is why that man (of senses), who of himself is obscure, is lighted by that illumination.^' . . . " Hence it is that the man of the last degree (the man of senses), being the image of the man who exists on high, has reasons (faculties) which are also images (of faculties) possessed by the superior man. The man who exists in the divine intelligence constitutes the man superior to all the others. He illumines the second (the man of reason), who in his turn illumines the third (the man of senses). The man of the last degree possesses in a manner the two others; he is not produced by them, he is united to them rather. The man who constitutes us NEOPLATONISM ON THE SOUL. 45 has for act the man of the last degree. This one receives something from the second, and the second holds from the first his act."* "Each one of us is what he is according as the man he acts from is (is intellectual, reasonable, sensuous, accord- ingas he exercises intelligence, discursive reason, or sensi- bility). Each one of us possesses the three men in one sense (potentially) and does not possess them in another sense (in act) ; that is to say, does not exercise simulta- neously intelligence, reason and sensibility." "We may then say that sensations here below are ob- scure thoughts, and thoughts up there are clear sensa- tions." Why Bodies Need the Soul's Presence. "Just as a pilot steering his ship among turbulent waves, in his efforts quite forgets the danger of ship- wreck, souls are drawn down (into the gulf of matter) by the attention they give to the bodies they govern; after- wards they are enchained to their destiny, as if fascinated by a magical attraction, but really retained by the power- ful ties of Nature. If each body were as perfect as the universe is, it would be completely sufficient unto itself, it would not have any danger to fear, and the soul which is pres- ent in it, instead of being present there, could communicate life to it without quitting the intelligible world. " Why Souls Descend Into Bodies. "How comes it that the soul descends into a body, since things intelligible are separated from things sensi- ble? — So long as the soul is an intelligence pure, impassi- ble, so long as she enjoys a purely intellectual life like the other intelligible beings, she remains among them; for she has neither appetite nor desire. But the part which is inferior to intelligence and capable of having *This phrase means: The discursive reason, which constitutes the man, properly speaking, engenders the sensibility which constitutes the animal. — Foot-note by Bouillet. 46 NEOPLATONISM ON THE SOUL. desire follows their impulsion, proceeds and removes itself from the intelligible world. Desiring to beautify matter on the model of ideas she has contemplated in the world of intelligence, pressed to display her fecundity and bring to light the germs that she carries in her bosom, the soul applies herself to produce and create, and, in consequence of that application, she is in some sort drawn toward sensible objects. At first she shares with the universal Soul the care of administering the entire world, without, however, entering it; afterwards, wishing to administer alone a part of it only, she separates herself from the universal Soul and passes into a body. But even then, while present in the body, the soul does not give herself entirely to it, part of her remains outside of it; thus, her intelligence remains impassible." Punishment^ Here and Hereafter. " None can escape the punishment which unjust actions merit. The Divine law (/. e., natural law) is inevitable, and has the power to carry its judgments into effect. The man destined to suffer punishment is drawn uncon- sciously toward it, and tossed to and fro with a ceaseless movement until at length, as if tired of striving against what he would resist, he yields himself up at the suitable place, and goes by a voluntary movement to submit to involuntary sufferings. The law prescribes the severity and duration of the punishment. Later, in consequence of the harmony which rules all in the Universe, the end of the chastisement that the soul endures comes, and with it the power to quit the place of her sufferings." " Souls which have bodies feel by means of them the corporeal punishments inflicted on them." "The wrongs that men commit against one another . . . they are punished for by the depravity which wicked actions introduce into their souls, and after their death are sent to an inferior place; for none can exempt him- self from the order established by the law of the Universe. " NEOPLATONISM ON THE SOUL. 47 " The chastisements that justly fall upon the wicked should then be attributed to that order which regulates all things as they should be. As to the misfortunes which seem to afflict the good, contrary to all justice, accidents, misery, disease, we may say that they are the conse- quences of former offences, for such evils are closely linked to the course of things . . . And accidents (like the falling of a house upon its inmates), which seem un- just, are not evils for those who suffer from them, if we consider how they belong to the salutary order of the Universe; perhapseven they constitute just penalties, and are the expiation of former faults." " Plato says that the soul's own demon conducts it to hell; also that it does not remain attached to the same soul unless this chooses (to re-incarnate) in the same condition as before. What does it do before such choice is made? Plato teaches us that the demon conducts the soul to judgment; that the latter takes after generation (re-incarnation) the same form it had before ; afterwards, as if another existence then began, during the time which runs between one generation and another, the demon presides over the chastisement of the soul, and that period is less for it a period of life than a period of expiation." " Where will the soul go when she leaves the body? — She will not go where there is nothing to receive her. She cannot enter into that which is not naturally disposed to receive her . . . Now, as there are divers places, it is necessary that the difference (of the places the soul goes to inhabit) depends on the disposition of each soul, and on the justice which reigns over all beings." Dwelling Place between Re-incarnations of Other Souls than Sinful Ones. "What is the condition of souls which have raised themselves on high? Some are in the world of sense, the others are outside of it." (Havmg never incarnated.) 48 NEOPLATONISM ON THE SOUL. "Souls which are in the world of sense inhabit the sun, or a planet, or the firmament, according as they have more or less developed their reason. It must be known, in fact, that our soul contains in herself not only the intelligible world, but also a disposition conformable to the soul of the world. Now, this last being by her divers powers extended among the movable spheres and the immovable sphere, our soul must possess powers which conform to these (spheres), and each of which exercises its proper function." " Souls which return from here below to the skies go to dwell in the star which is in harmony with their man- ners and with the powers which they have developed, with their god or their demon . . . When the soul re- turns to earth again, she has either the same or another demon, according to the life she is to lead." CHAPTER VII. CHRISTIAN SOULS. It has often been asserted that the Persians held to bodily resurrection, and this because some of them came, in time, to depart from the orthodox custom of exposing bodies to be devoured by birds and beasts of prey (in some earlier races the survivors themselves did the eat- ing, and from the same consideration for the purity of the four elements), so far as to bury them encased and hermetically sealed in a thick coating of wax, to protect not the body, but the earth. But the assertion is not otherwise sustained, and sentimental tenderness for the dead would sufficiently account for this practice of wax burial. The Parsees, the present representatives of the old Persian cult, do not bury in that way, but expose to the birds of prey, as of old. After their captivity among the Persians, a portion of the Jews imitated them in this wax embalmment so far as to wrap the dead in spices and deposit them in caves, where they could soon dry up and cease to offend the senses, a method inferior to the other, but superior to that of the Christians, which lets corruption work its will, trusting to some miracle to bring things into some sort of propriety and salubrity at the instant when Gabriel's trumpet shall sound the call to judgment. But the motive of these Jews was doubt- less the same as prevailed with the Persians, mere senti- mental tenderness, and certainly was not the preservation of Jewish corpses to take part in a Christian resurrec- tion. And so Christianity may claim to be the first and only religion to invent and make an essential article of faith the resurrection of the corpse. The Egyptians as 50 CHRISTIAN SOULS. well as the Hindus considered the embodiment of the soul in a living human form, however fair and whole- some, for even the short season of an earth-life a deplor- able imprisonment and the touching of a dead body a spiritual defilement; but the Church of Christ, which has improved on all punitive methods of ancient invention, substituting for the mild and carefully measured metemp- sychosis the fire-torture, and for temporary discipline with a view to reformation an eternal duration of that torture, has chained the soul a fast prisoner for eternity within a corpse, ordaining for all humanity a graveyard delivery of cadavers in every stage of decay from rotten- ness to dust, and for the vast majority of those cadavers (restored to completeness) eternal roasting. It is true that some of the devils of ancient times — notably that of Persia — though mortal at first, grew longer and longer lived as time wore on, and that the punishments they inflicted became more severe as wickedness increased under their regime^ and it is true that whatever may have been the penal laws of any religion in its origin, a devil practically immortal and a hell practically eternal have finally encrusted themselves upon it; but Christianity from the outset made its hell eternal and its devil immortal, and if, rising up from below, as it were, belief in a spiritual body and world insists on having place in the minds of Christians and to mix and dwell with, in a most confusing way, it must be owned, the Church dogma of resurrection, that does not help the case of the dogma at all, save that by weakening faith in it it tempers its afflictive force. It belongs to Christianity and not to humanity. The other belongs to humanity and not to Christianity. They are two beliefs and not one, and if either be true the other must be false. And bodily resurrection is peculiarly the property of the Christian Church, because having its origin in an inci- dent not known in the history of any other, nor has it been borrowed by any other, as plausible dogmas are apt CHRISTIAN SOULS. 51 to be; and if the Mohammedans hold it in an exoteric way, it was as Christians they first acquired it, for their religion in its beginning was an off-sect of Christianity, acceding to all its properties as of right. It is not forgotten here that Paul asserts distinctly that the resurrection will be of spiritual and not of natural bodies, basing his assertion on an analogy he thinks he found the planting of dead bodies to bear to the planting of living seeds. But nobody seems to have believed him, except a few who, for the very reason they did, were deemed heterodox, for the whole Christian Church went solidly for a resurrection of the very body. Here is the Christian faith as given by a Protestant preacher of high position and to be found in an American school book in common use fifty years ago: " Scattered limbs, and all The various bones, obsequious to the call. Self moved, advance ; the neck perhaps to meet The distant head, the distant legs, the feet. Dreadful to view, see through the dusky sky Fragments of bodies in confusion fly, To distant regions journeying, there to claim Deserted members and complete the frame. The severed head and trunk shall meet once more Though realms should rise between, and oceans roar. The trumpet's sound each vagrant mote shall hear, Or fixed in earth, or high afloat in air, Obey the signal, wafted in the wind And not one sleeping atom lag behind." But a painting by a famous artist in a cathedral some- where in Italy does not represent the miraculous recon- struction at the last day as being near so complete. Here is a description of it: "Then follows the general resurrection, a wonderful compartment or canto. Luca Signorelli has imagined that according to a person's good or bad deeds in this world, would be his perfection or deformity at the last day. Some, therefore, are grinning skulls, and naked 62 CHRIS TIA N SO ULS. cross-bones, hideously feeling about for their remaining members; others are bony skeletons lifting up their skin- less eyeballs on which will never pour the day, and the yawning, hungry jaw which will now never feed upon the long offered, long rejected tree of life. The tongue, if such there be, is parched and dried up in the rootless, moistless palate, and can express fear and horror only, of all the many passions for which it once found utter- ance." If we may suppose the believers who have rejected the theory of Paul and accepted the one so daintily ex- emplified in these two extracts, the first from the Prot- estant and the other from the Catholic side of the Church, to have reasoned on the question at all, several good reasons may be found in their favor and against him. An analogy is hardly an argument; an illustration is certainly none; and yet Paul's seed-planting notion amounts to less than the least of these. "Thou fool," he says, in ist Corinthians, Chapter 15, " that which thou thyself sowest is not quickened except it die; and that which thou sowest thou sowest not the body that shall be, but a bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other kind; but God giveth it a body even as it pleases him, and to each seed a body of its own." But a dead seed will never grow any kind of grain ; that part of it which sprouts is precisely what does not die. Paul may have been thinking of the notion the Pharisees had that in the teeth of a man, because they seemed to be imperishable, lay the germ of life, as a plant germ in its seed, and for which reason they withheld from cremation the bodies of children too young to have teeth that could resist fire. But there again the new life was expected to arise, not from what decayed but from what did not. Again, the learned Jew's method of raising living spirit- ual bodies by planting dead natural ones, leaves out of view the quick, who, at the time he wrote, since that was before the hope of a general resurrection as a daily- CHRISTIAN SOULS. 53 to-be-looked-for event had been given up, and by far the larger number of Christian converts were living people, would have played a rather important part in the scene. And if each of these had to die as he insisted that all seed must, before a spiritual body could sprout, the quick would have to be converted into dead one and all, as a preliminary proceeding. And must they not have had to be buried — planted — as well ? And then would not the delay necessary for their germination have sadly deranged the ceremonies of the great day ? But whether these considerations were found weighty or not by the foolish ones whose simple enquiries Paul was replying to, even they could tell him that it was the natural and un- decayed body of Jesus that was raised from the tomb, and how in that raised-up body he declared he was not a spirit, but tangible flesh and blood, and that his resur- rection was then, as it is now, the essential basis of the Christian faith, and proof of resurrection and immortality for all. Sir Stork, President of the British Royal Society, has lately told us it is the only proof. Moreover, some disposition was to be made of the dead saints who at the crucifixion left their graves and went about the streets, appearing unto many, and if Paul's theory was true such a disposition must have been rather a difficult one. If, as it requires, these saints got out of the ground they were buried in by sprouting, and came forth in his sort of spiritual bodies, they could hardly have been expected to resume their flesh, go back and lie down in their graves again, again become seed, to decay and sprout afresh when judgment day should come; and yet until then they could get no lodging in heaven or on earth, being excluded from the categories alike of the quick and dead. If they rose in their natural bodies the diffi- culties would have been easier got over by returning those to the graves they came from and their souls to whence they came, wherever that may have been. So Paul's argument has gone for naught, and the Christian 64 CHRISTIAN SOULS. world has to-day no other belief concerning the soul's immortality than as united to the very body that was buried. And notwithstanding Paul's theory of a spirit- ual body has place in the Church of England's burial service, the orthodox authoritative Christian belief is, and has been through the centuries that have gone by since the body of Jesus rose from the tomb, that every corpse will rise as really as it did, when at the trumpet's blast earth and sea shall give up their dead, to be re- united to their long absent souls recalled for that pur- pose from some place of waiting, God knows where, and thus reanimated be put on an equality with the quick who never knew the grave, in all subsequent proceed- ings. Accordingly the faithful who were rich enough to afford it have had themselves buried in the cloisters of churches, in the walls, below the pavements of aisles and chancels and even altars, thrusting themselves in the most unsanitary way as close under Gabriel's nose as money could carry them, and Catholics at least deem burial out- side of the church-yard a deplorable calamity, damaging to the prospect of the soul's obtaining pardon for its sins, so closely is it by them thought to be connected with its shell even after death and before resurrection. As late as the year 1890 the Pope has authoritatively declared that cremation of the dead " is a detestable practice, a Pagan custom revived by evil men belonging to the Masonic sect, to obliterate the sentiment of reverence and remove the fear of death, that great ful- crum of religion." As early as the beginning of the eighteenth century Protestants became somewhat sensitive to the ridicule, if not to the terror the dogma of the resurrection began to cause in intelligent minds, and to help the case one Thomas Boston, a learned Presbyterian divine, published in Scotland a work entitled, "The Fourfold States," in which he argued that a single particle of insensible perspiration which had escaped from a man during his CHRISTIAN SOULS. 65 life would be sufificient to serve as a nucleus for the resurrection body to form itself upon, which was going even a little further than many do, who, toiling and sweating to reconcile science with religion, at this very present time are arguing that it is only necessary, in order to have a body ready for the resurrection, that a single material germ or organized particle of the body at death should survive until then. But the latest and freshest authority on this point is to be found in a book called "The Pathway of Life," by the Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage, one of the greatest of American Protestants, on pages 24, 25, 26, of which he says: "The forms that we laid away with our broken hearts must rise again. Father and mother — they must come out. Husband and wife — they must come out. Brother and sister — they must come out. Our darling children — they must come out. The eyes that with trembling fingers we closed must open in the lustre of resurrection morn. The arms that we folded must join in embrace of reunion. The beloved voice that was hushed must be retuned. The beloved form must come up without its infirmities, without its fatigues — it must come up." "Oh! how long it seems for some of you, waiting — waiting for the resurrection. How long! How long! Behold the arch-angel hovering. He takes the trumpet, points it this way, puts its lips to his lips, and then blows one long, loud, terrific, thunderous, reverberating and resurrectionary blast. Look! Look! They arise! The dead! The dead! Some coming forth from the family vault; some from the city cemetery; some from a country grave-yard. Here a spirit is joined to its body, and there another spirit is joined to another body, and millions of departed spirits are assorting their bodies and then reclothing themselves in forms now radiant for ascension." " The earth begins to burn — the bonfire of a great victory. All ready now for the procession of recon- 66 CHRISTIAN SOULS. structed humanity! Upward and away! Christ leads, and all the Christian dead follow — battalion after bat- talion, nation after nation." But a better authority with English readers would be the famous Spurgeon, who in sermon 17, second series, page 275, says: " There is a real fire in hell, as truly as you have now a real body — a fire exactly like that which we have on earth in everything except this, that it will not con- sume, though it will torture you. You have seen as- bestos lying in the fire red hot, but when you take it out is unconsumed. So your body will be prepared by God in such a way that it will burn forever without being consumed; it will lie, not, as you consider, in metaphorical fire, but in actual flame. Did our Saviour mean fictions when he said he would cast body and soul into hell ? What should there be a pit for if there were no bodies ? Why fire, why chains, if there were to be no bodies ? Can fire touch the soul ? Can pits shut in the spirits ? Can chains fetter souls ? No ! Pits and fire and chains are for bodies, and bodies shall be there. Thou wilt sleep in the dust a little while. When thou diest thy soul will be tormented alone — that will be a hell for it — but at the day of judgment thy body will join thy soul, and thou wilt have twin hells, body and soul shall be together, full of pain; thy soul sweating in its inmost pores drops of blood, and thy body from head to foot suffused with agony; conscience, judgment, all tortured; but more, thy head tormented with racking pains; thine eyes starting from their sockets with sights of blood and woe; thine ears tormented with sullen moans and hollow groans and shrieks of tortured ghosts; thine heart heating high with fever, thy pulse rattling at an enormous rate in agony, thy limbs cracking like the martyrs in the fire and yet unburned, thyself put in a vessel of hot oil, pained, yet undestroyed, all thy veins becoming a road for the hot feet of pain to travel on; CHRISTIAN SOULS. 57 every nerve a string on which the devil shall ever play his diabolical tune of Hell's Unutterable Lament; thy soul forever and ever aching, and thy body palpitating in unison with thy soul." A catechism published in Italy, with the sanction of the Church of Rome, almost matches Spurgeon's state- ment, though with some variation in details. CHAPTER VIII. RELIC WORSHIP. Kindred to corpse resurrection is a practice which is common to Buddhism and Christianity — namely, relic worship. It seems to depend on a supposed connection that binds the immortal part of a man who has died to places, persons and things which he was associated with while alive — with his habitation, garments worn and objects used by him, and especially with his grave or tomb and the body he has left in it. Whether well founded or not, the common notion that there is such a connection has been humored by the occult powers, will- ing to communicate with the living under guise of the dead, and the facts thus coming to its support are as numerous and common as they are indisputable. Unlike the Brahmins, to whom the touch of a corpse is a pollu- tion calling for purifying ceremonial; unlike the old Persians, who punished severely the burying, burning, exposing to the air or casting into the water the remains of any animal, besides requiring purification after the act with such drollery of unction and drink as would, to the modern mind and stomach, at least, make matters worse — in which requirement, however, they were no droller than the Hindus; unlike the Egyptians, whose sacred writings tell us that embalming was instituted to protect from pollution the four elements; the Buddhists, and following them the Christians, have shown a saturnine fancy for things cadaverous, and made use of the most revolting object earth can show to allure God down from his throne in heaven and saints from their rest in para- dise. Says Mr. Lillie, who seems to have thoroughly RELIC WORSHIP. 59 studied Buddhism during the nine years he gave atten- tion to it (Buddha and Early Buddhism, by Arthur Lillie, 47): " Buddhism was plainly an elaborate appa- ratus to nullify the action of evil spirits by the aid of good spirits operating at their highest potency through the instrumentality of the corpse, or a portion of the corpse, of the chief aiding spirit. The Buddhist temple, the Buddhist rites, the Buddhist liturgy, all seemed based on this idea, that the whole or portions of a dead body were necessary." {Ibid., 129.) Again, "Early Buddhism was an apparatus to foil the power of evil by the instrumentality of the human remains of some assist- ing dead saint." {Ibid., 132.) Immaterial is it whether the Church of Rome copied the Asiatics six hundred years after the fact, or, as the Pope would say, the Asiatics copied the Church of Rome six hundred years before the fact, Christianity drew its life from the body of death as much as Buddhism did. For a long time the early Christians worked their necro- mancy in the Catacombs by invocations chanted over the corpses of their dead, and so much did they like it down there that when Constantine built churches above ground and provided each with the essential relics, they were loath to make use of them. Of both these great religions Lillie sums up the case thus: "Church and temple and tope have a common origin. It is not a place of worship utilized as a cemetery, but a cemetery utilized as a place of worship." Even Protestant Luther is said to have shown a certain respect towards relics, although little of it has come down to our day as affecting any Protestant Church except that shown in the exhibition of "the elements" in the Lord's Supper, which certainly, when offered by those who believe in the " real presence," amounts out and out to necromancy, though in the others to merely a trace of it. As to the Catholic Church it is hard to detect it in any specific article of faith, but it surely cannot avoid the 60 RELIC WORSHIP. charge of practicing corpse-worship, when its priests even in this age of reason habitually ejaculate invocations to gods and sainted dead men over messes of bread and wine blest, exhibited and sworn to as the very body and blood of Christ, himself really present the while — really and literally so — without figure of speech, equivocation or mental reservation, attending at the call of their the- urgic practice; and while in a receptacle made in the altar on which the feast is spread and actually known and called by the name of " tomb " are always kept by decree of the Church " dead men's bones and all uncleanliness." And it is only within the year of this writing that the Church has decreed that henceforth no healing done, no matter how clearly under her auspices, shall be accounted a miracle unless effected in connection with the relics of some officially recognized saint or martyr; evidently cures wrought by Christian science, mind-cure, faith-cure, spiritual mediums or mesmerizers are getting trouble- somely common and quite too cheap to please Mother Church, and so, late in the day as it is, she resolves to set her mark of genuineness on but a very limited num- ber of such cases, and leaves all others to the credit of her friend, the enemy of man, whose practice meanwhile is increasing at a rate that should make her jealous. The Church of Rome, in her greediness for the spoils of Paganism, seems to have stolen from it more than she could well carry off, or her Pantheon well hold, and so has been forced to crowd one thing upon another in a confused way. Thus the crucifixion of Jesus is made to do duty as (i) a spectacle of torture got up to slake his Father's thirst for vengeance or satisfy his sense of jus- tice, no matter which, the agony being all the same; (2) as a Jewish scapegoat proceeding whereby in the name of justice the just is laden with the sin of the unjust; (3) a " shedding of blood for the remission of sin," as Saint Paul puts it, a notion got from the use of blood in old magic; (4) as a meat and drink offering supposed to be RELIC WORSHIP. 61 pleasing to the taste of Jehovah, as such offerings were to that of all gods in early and brutal ages and is now to gods of savage peoples as well as to some tribes of those people themselves, the Fijis, for instance, with the curious variation from other sacrifices that this is offered, not by those who are to profit by it, namely. Christian sinners, but by their enemies, the Jews, who never dreamed how much good their cruel act was to do to them they hated. The feast of the Holy Communion copies the old Pagan feast of the dead, still kept in China, wherein, after the food has been merely shown to the spirits of the dead, supposed to be assisting, it is eaten up by the living. The bread exhibited on the altar recalls the *' show bread " of the Jews. The wine, transmuted into blood, as blood gives a well-known potent means for helping or compelling both gods and dead men to manifest themselves. Paul seemed to think God could not be induced to remit sins, without "the shedding of blood." The priests of Baal emptied their own veins by gashing themselves with knives, in hopes it would make their god come and light the altar-fires. And in our day it is said the Kurds, by means of it, do raise some most horrid, tangible spectres. The communion ceremonies having produced on the altar the very body and blood of Jesus, his real presence is invoked and obtained by means of words said over it, just as by means of his mummy the Egyptian spirit was compelled to attend. Yet, really the only thing authorized by Jesus at his last supper with his friends on earth, was a festive commemoration of the ordinary kind. In keep- ing with these incongruities is the fact that the viands are spread forth on an altar that is at once a supper table and a tomb, and in its origin was a cooking range as well. So far as the celebration of mass is addressed to the Deity, it is theurgic work; so far as addressed to the saint whose dust it is chanted over or other saints, it is necromancy. CHAPTER IX. CHINESE SOULS, Out of the belief that in spiritual form the departed still live in a spiritual world, yet still retain their interest in this, grew that system of necromantic practices which in India and Egypt, and in fact every country of antiquity, obtained acceptance among the body of the people, without regard to official religion, and which it is thought by the learned preceded all religions, as it has lived with them all, and which in a modern form bids fair to outlive one of them, at least. It is called ancestor worship, though there is little or no worship about it. In China it has attained its most notable development, and as practiced there, is most worthy of attention. Befor,e Confucius came or Buddhism was heard of, pos- sibly before old Taoism appeared, it existed as to-day it exists. Confucius, foe to superstition as he was, did not disturb it. Of the Kweishin, or beings corresponding to the "communicating spirits" at modern seances, he said: "We look for them but we do not see them, listen, but we do not hear them; yet they enter into all things, and there is nothing without them." " Their approaches you cannot surmise, and can you treat them with indif- ference ? " This teacher, who left no affirmation of belief in man's immortality, nevertheless so respected ancestor worship in the form he found in vogue, that he not only did not discourage it, but by clear implication sanctioned it, though coupling his sanction with an injunction that in its practice "no enquiry should be made concerning the nature of the spirits." Of it Tro- fessor Williams says ("The Middle Kingdom," ii, CHINESE SOULS. 63 236), after alluding to the effect on the people of China of their three other so-called religions: " But the heart of the nation reposes more on the rites offered at the family shrine to the 'two living divinities' who preside in the hall of ancestors than on all the rest. Every natural feeling serves indeed to strengthen its simple cultus. In every household a shrine, a tablet, an ora- tory or domestic temple — according to the position of the family — contains the simple legend of the two ances- tral names, written on a slip of paper or carved on a board. Incense is burned before it, daily or on the new and full moons; and in April the people everywhere gather at the family graves to sweep them and worship the departed around a festive sacrifice. Parents and children meet and bow before the tablet, and in their simple cheer contract no associations with temples or idols, monasteries or priests, processions or flags and music. It is of the family, and ' the stranger intermed- dleth not with it. * As the children grow up, the worship of ancestors whom they never saw is exchanged for that of nearer ones who bore and nurtured, clothed, taught and cheered them in helpless childhood and hopeful youth, and the whole is thus rendered more personal, vivid, and endearing. There is nothing revolting or cruel about it, but everything is orderly, kind and simple, calculated to strengthen the family relationship, cement the affection between brothers and sisters, and uphold habits of filial reverence and obedience. Though the strongest motive for the worship arises out of the belief that success in worldly affairs depends on the sup- port given to parental spirits in Hades, just as the strongest motive for worshipping God may, who will resent continued neglect by withholding their blessing, yet, in the course of ages, it has influenced Chinese char- acter in promoting industry and cultivating habits of domestic care and thrift beyond all estimation." The gods are to be feared and their wrath deprecated, but 64 CHINESE SOULS. "the illustrious ones who have completed their proba- tion represent love, care and interest to the worshippers if they do not fail of their duties." The author goes on to say : " The three leading results here noticed, viz., the prevention of a priestly caste, the confimation of parental authority in its own sphere, and the elevation of the woman and wife to a parity with the man and husband, do much to explain the perpetuity of Chinese institutions." After which admissions we may excuse the Professor for remarking that ancestor worship was not sanctioned by the scriptures he believed in, inasmuch as it carried filial piety too far to please Jehovah, the jealous God. But until one knows more than this of the actual con- tent of ancestor worship in China, he will hardly be able to understand how it should have produced the great results above attributed to it. Let us complete the account Professor Williams has given of it, and which in its shortcoming might remind one of a wheel with the hub left out. Johnson, in his work on the religions of China, in the chapter on this Worship and in immediate connection with it, though he tells us that the whole of American spiritualism, planchette and all, have been common there in all times, is equally careful not to give us any idea of what that worship really consists in. Both writers, the one a Christian and the other a skeptic, though highly commending the worship (which by the way the Emperor once assured the Pope in an epistle was wor- ship in no other sense than that of gratitude and respect), fall far short of telling the whole story of it, which is very much like falling short of telling the truth. But it is not unusual for men who go to foreign countries to write books about them to imitate the merchants who go to make money, and bring back only what there is a ready market for at home. At the time these gentlemen wrote American spiritualism was having a hard struggle -y CHINESE SOULS. 65 with the two learned professions whose interests it threatened and was darkly beclouded with the contempt- uous ignorance of men of science already weighted down with knowledge or conceit of knowledge beyond their power easily to carry; and it would not have been expedient to make it known that what was thus opposed and condemned here had its true counterpart on the opposite side of the world in the institution whose effects they had so much praised and which had maintained itself there with beneficent results since pre-historic days. Yet such is the truth. The Chinese worship of ances- tors is, as to ceremonial, a small affair. The true content of it is nothing less than habitual and familiar com- munion with the dead, or what is believed to be such. A learned Chinese gentleman of the lettered class, who came to this country as attache to the Chinese Legation, gave the following account of it: The family, assembled in the ancestral hall, sit for awhile in silent meditation, exerting an earnest desire that the ancestors will com- municate to them the information and guidance needed in relation to the conduct of the fortunes of the family or those of any members of it — whether a son should enter upon competitive study, whether a certain piece of property should be bought, or another sold — a certain field planted with this or that kind of grain — a certain marriage contracted or concerning any other temporal matter. Usually they have prepared themselves by twenty-four hours of fasting, or at least abstinence from fats. The simple ceremonial does not include singing or praying unless a sort of invocation written on paper and then burnt up can be called such. After the quietude and concentration of mind which is the real moving force in necromancy, theurgy, and every other branch of magic, has had the effect of inducing on the part of the "spirits "a readiness to respond, an answer is given either by planchette writing, in the way now to be de- scribed, or by trance speaking, or other modes known also 66 CHINESE SOULS. to modern spiritualism, but most commonly it is by writing. A table having been covered vs^ith a thin and €ven layer of sand, an instrument is laid on it called a "sand pen," usually in form of a cross with a point turn- ing downwards from the end of the longer arm and at right angles with it, for tracing the letters. At the pro- pitious moment a boy under the age of puberty, who is present for the purpose, lifts all of the pen but its point from the table by sustaining with the back of an index finger each of the two shorter arms. This is done with the backs of the fingers as a precaution against uncon- scious muscular motion or conscious deceit on his part. Here we find a true spiritual " seance " such as is now disturbing the quiet of all science, philosophy and re- ligion, in the beneficent ancestor worship of China, whose beginning is traced back thousands of years and then lost in the dim distance of unchronicled time. As said before, it is not a religion, but merely a popular practice of one form of magic, not to save the souls, but to ad- vance the fortunes of the members of the family, console them and promote their comfort. It had been sanc- tioned by both of the intrudiiig "religions,"' so called, of Confucius and Buddha, and came down from antiquity in company with old Taoism. Even the Jesuit mission- aries approved it, by allowing their converts to continue its practice, which is proof enough that it was a good institution and also not a religion. Little more, in fact, are either of the three other so-called religions of China really so in any sense understood by Christians. R. H. Conwell, in his "Travels in China," quoted by Dr. Peebles in his book, "Around the World," says : *' Not only do the Chinese Spiritualists believe in the same agencies and same results which distinguish Spirit- ualists here, but they also practice all the methods adopted in this for spiritual manifestations and a hun- dred others that do not seem to be known here. ..." " During the stay of spirits in that nether world, the CHINESE SOULS. 67 lower spheres, they can rap on furniture, pull the gar- ments of the living, make noises in the air, play on musical instruments, show their footprints in the sand, and, taking possession of human beings, talk through them," Says Peebles himself, in his account of what he learned in China: " These Orientals have their trance mediums, mostly females; their writing mediums, using a pointed, pen-like stick, and a table sprinkled with white sand ; their personating mediums, giving excellent tests; their seers, who professedly reveal the future, and their clairvoyants; who, to express their meaning in English, 'see in the dark.' " And he quotes Gonzolo, a missionary, as say- ing : "There is no driving out of these Chinese the cursed belief that the spirits of their ancestors are about them, availing themselves of every opportunity to give advice and counsel." In confirmation of what had been said of the great antiquity of Spiritualism in China, there is quoted a record of an Imperial decree against it by the Emperor Yao, who reigned 2337 years B. C. This being so, and ancestor worship having kept the priest out of the house and the family out of the temple, it may be truly said that not even the great old Greeks were so little afflicted as these people have been, by temple or priest. With Buddhism to satisfy in full that craving for metaphysic which Schopenhauer doubtingly tenders as a reason for the presence of religion in the world, and ancestral worship to satisfy that more rational craving for guidance and consolation in the hard ways of that world, the vast Chinese nation has managed to get along with no religion, or next to none, very comfort- ably, and to live and let one another live and multiply, although having three very disputable creeds to quarrel about, in a peaceable, unchristian way, until they count four hundred and fifty millions, and this during those very centuries in which European nations were thinning 68 CHINESE SOULS. themselves out by fire and sword, for the love of God and the territory of their neighbors, so effectively that in the great and fertile area of France the survivors as late as only a century or two ago, counted but ten millions. And a scanty population included within the straggling bounds of a few disjointed principalities of two thousand years ago have unified and civilized them- selves and become the mightiest nation of the world, enjoying, all things considered, and as human affairs have gone since the golden age, a security, peace, order and general intelligence that is unparalleled. I say the mightiest nation, for in the resources of might China is so. General Sir Garnet Wolseley asserts that her people have all the military virtues, and could, if they would, sweep Asia clear of their annoyers and disturbers. And this American nation of ours has no adequate guarantee for the safety, of the western part of her at least, from the righteous anger of a near neighbor so endowed with latent warlike energy but the fact that that neighbor has also the virtue of loving peace. Now, this result Williams admits has been mainly obtained by the hab- itual practice in every family in China of what is nothing more, though somewhat less, than "American Spirit- ualism;" which, well considered, must bring up the question: How will so efhcient a cause as this has proved itself to be on the opposite side of the globe affect the country of its latest revival and those others in which it is so rapidly spreading? CHAPTER X. JAPANESE SOULS. Japanese civilization, they now say, is hardly fifteen centuries old, yet in that time Japanese religion, originally simple ancestor worship, underlaid, as of course, by the usual gross superstitions of earlier origin even than it, which all savages are addicted to, has been successively overlaid and the life almost crushed out of it, by Mikado- ism, Buddhism and Confuciatiism. First Mikadoism made it a State Church in the interest of the conquering tribe that first enforced unity upon the islanders, enthroning its chief, as at once emperor of all the earth and god of all the heavens. Later came over from the Continent the finer contrived system of Buddha, and superseded in the State establishment the ancestor-cult element, and, later still, came Confucianism. Nevertheless, to the last that ele- ment has held its own in the belief of the people, and even modified the intruding faiths, or, rather, exchanged modifications with them. Each one of these imported influences has done its work in adding to and taking from the aboriginal worship, and have so deformed, disguised and covered it up, that those learned men who, in the last two centuries, have made researches into the original of it, have had tasks akin to those of the ex- cavators in Egypt and Chaldea. At present, however, in the light of those researches, and of what is known of ancestor worship in other countries, it is not difficult to identify it with that worship, or to see that from its first absorption in Mikadoism until now it has been, despite Mikadoism, Buddhism and Confucianism, the efficient religious power working to mould the civilization of 70 JAPANESE SOULS. Japan, and the character of its people. That originally it was very different from the Shinto that was formed upon it, later is said to have been proved by high an- tiquarian authority, and yet Shinto has always carried in its bowels the original ancestor worship, and, like other systems, been sustained by it, or, rather, both have been kept alive by certain manifestations of the occult side of human nature, whose universality and persistency show them to constitute a scientific basis capable to hold up as superstructure all the religions of the world, which have never been other than interpreta- tions, or misinterpretations of those manifestations. So in Shinto ancestor worship proper must be searched for. And for aid in doing so, here are some of the points of agreement of Japanese ancestor worship and ancestor worship in general. (i.) Gods. Aside from the Mikado, shintoism im- poses on its votaries no divinities other than their own forefathers, to whom they love, as always they have loved, to address unuttered invocations, such as this: "Spirits august of our far-off ancestors, ye forefathers of the gen- erations, and of our families and of our kindred, unto you, the founders of our homes, we this day utter the gladness of our thanks." In pure ancestor worship all the dead are gods, and there is no god above them. And these gods are spirits and inhabit a spiritual world, while at the same time caring for dwellers in this natural one. Hirata, a commentator quoted by Hearn, says: "The spirits of the dead continue to exist in the unseen world which is everywhere about us, and they all become gods, of varying character and degrees of influence. Some reside in temples built in their honor; others hover near their tombs, and they continue to render service to their prince, parents, wives and children as when in the body. . . . Every human action is the work of a god." (2.) The way of the gods. This is the literal meaning of JAPANESE SOULS. 71 the Japanese term Kami no Michi and of the Chinese word Shinto, the last syllable of which means way, as does Tao, the name of the old Chinese religion. The Hindus, too, have their way of the gods, leading, as the Japanese one does, to a "land of the gods." In both cases it applies to ancestor worship and to the early stages of it, before, as happened in Hindustan, it was over-laid by Hinduism proper with its higher development of theism, or, as in other countries, by Buddhism. Thus the abo- riginal faith is found to have given Shinto the very name it bears. (3.) The household element essential to ancestor worship shows plainly, too, in the Shinto. Hearn says: "And there is reason to believe that the early forms of Shinto public worship may have been evolved out of a yet older family worship. . . , Indeed the word ujgami, now used to signify a Shinto parish temple, and also its deity, means /a;/z//y God. . . . And to the student of Japanese life by far the most interesting aspect of Shinto is offered in this home worship." For that worship every dwelling has a room set apart called the spirit chamber, with a shelf or shrine called "the shelf of the August Spirits,'* on which rest tablets each of which bears the name of a departed member of the family, with the sole addition of the word '■^ Mitama" (spirit). This chamber corre- sponds to the Chinese "ancestral hall," (4.) Se'atice, sitting. We have seen that the term Upani- shad, which the Hindus apply to their very old Scrip- tures, means ''sitting near a person," Now the name given to the Japanese medium, called in when the family- desires to consult its spirits, '■'Nakaza^'' means ^^ seat in the midst." No more than the modern Spiritualists in their circles do the worshippers, if such they can be called, ever kneel to the spirits. Their requests, which can hardly be called prayers, are preferred in a sitting posture;, which again is a reminder that Pythagoras said, " You should sit when you pray," This omission of the 72 JAPANESE SOULS. abject devotional attitudes, common in more theistic stages of religion, is quite appropriate to a worship which has little or no ceremonial, in which the sacrifice is merely a present of food, made by children to parent, and the asking of like worldly favors in return, but especially of advice and guidance in the affairs of the family, of which all present, living or dead, are equally members. In fact in Japan, as in China, the sitting in the ancestral chamber is very much of a family council, and very little of a devotional congregation. {5.) Concerning the modes of commufiication between the ancestor and his descendants, we have seen that those adopted in China are just like those we are familiar with in America. It would be safe to presume it is the same in Japan, though the authorities at hand mention only what we know here as personation, tratice-speaking and table-moving, but these are enough to identify the two quasi religions as one and the same, though the latter one is no copy of the earlier, but an original creation springing up in our Western wilds as mysteri- ously, and as naturally too, as in those same wilds the herb " pennyroyal " springs up wherever the primeval forest is cleared off, and pine trees replace felled oaks. But however the communications from the departed come the Japanese like the Chinese believe and obey them, and after an experience begun in pre-historic times and uninterruptedly continued until now, find them good. That they are believed, obeyed and found good of course does not prove that they come from spirits of the dead, which, however, is the firm fixed be- lief of the people, who avoid risk of being disenchanted in that regard by observing the admonitions of Confucius against pushing their enquiries too far. The sage who said: " Do not ask me about the next life when I cannot explain this," also said: "To give one's self to the duties due to man, and while respecting spiritual beings to keep aloof from them, may be called wisdom," and JAPANESE SOULS. 73 again: " Honor the gods and keep them far from you." (6.) The Phallicism found in Shinto belongs unmis- takably to ancestor worship, the phallus being the most obvious symbol of paternity. It also belongs to nature worship as emblematic of fire and of the sun. But it seems that some Christian ladies, going to Japan, looked upon the emblem and were shocked, and to please them the Government in 1872 destroyed or hid away all such representations, whether floating as harbor buoys or throned in temple shrines. It is presumed the shocked ladies were Americans, for in India, where Britain rules, there has been no such interference with the worship in question, and women of the European Continent are even less disposed than those of Britain to get shocked by innocent inevitabilities. That the people peacefully sub- mitted to the insult and degradation of the emblem of their forefather worship and of their beloved sun god- dess, shows that they were very obedient subjects or had a very strong ruler; in any case, such a concession to the nerves of one people by another was unparalleled. Perhaps it would not have been made if the islanders, before making it, had tested their artillery, as they lately have done. Griffis, while rejoicing in the removal, says: " Modern taste has removed from sight what were once the common people's symbols of the god way — that is, of ancestor worship. The extent of the phallus cult and its close and even vital connection with the god way, and the general and innocent use of the now prohibited emblems tax severely the credulity of the Occidental reader," and adds: "In none of the instances in which I have been eye-witness of the cult, of the person officiat- ing or of the emblem, have I had any reason to doubt the sincerity of the worshipper. I have never had reason to look upon the implements or the system as anything else than the endeavor of man to solve the mystery of Being and Power." 74 JAPANESE SOULS. Truth is worth some sacrifice. The veil of modesty is but a thick or thin lie, whatever may be the demerits of the thing it hides. Too much propriety has its incon- veniences. There is a certain comfort in calling things by their right names, and facing bravely nature and truth. This the Japanese do, and ever have done in all the movements of life, and still manage to be a gentle, mild-mannered, pleasant and really refined people. And it would have been more creditable to the good sense of the aforesaid women to have abstained from looking at or going to see what they have been taught it was naughty to look at — in company with men — but the Japanese had not — than to have asked a forty-million nation to change its time-honored customs in respect to things sacred to them. In America, prudery is a nuisance such as it is in no other country, and sometimes amounts, when it takes the form of law, to tyranny outright. To con- sistently complete the work so notably begun in Japan, our good women should carry their crusade over the entire globe, and labor for the abolition of every church- spire, obelisk, pyramid and crucifix that stands ; for all of these, besides being emblems of the sacred fire and sun god of Paganism, have all other phallic significance. Nor would the good work be complete until the round towers of Ireland had been razed to the earth and the columns of Stonehenge broken up to macadamize the roads. Something like a parallel to this interference with Japanese religious sentiment would be a demand upon Austria, for instance, to abolish the numerous effigies that border the roads of that country, represent- ing in life-size and colors the death of Jesus by torture, the sight of which hurts not only the religious precon- ceptions of Protestant travellers, but the human feelings of all sympathetic persons who pass by, and is intended to do so. (7.) No morality. The ancestor worship that lies en- veloped in Shinto had no moral law except what is writ- JAPANESE SOULS. 75 ten on the heart of man, and so Shinto has none. Says Griffis : " There are no codes of morals inculcated in the god way, for even its modern revivalists and exponents consider that morals are the invention of wicked people like the Chinese"; also that, "utterly scouting the idea that formulated ethics were necessary for these pure- minded people, the modern revivalists of Shinto teach that all that is ' of faith ' now is to revere the gods, keep the heart pure, and follow its dictates." Lowell, writing on the same subject, says: " The gods never so much as laid down a moral code, ' Obey the Mikado ' and other- wise 'follow your own heart' is the sum of their com- mands; as parental injunctions as could very well be framed." And a famous expounder of Shinto, Motowori, quoted by Hearn, writes: "All the moral ideas which a man requires are implanted in his bosom by the gods, and are of the same nature with those instincts which impel him to eat when he is hungry or to drink when he is thirsty. . . . To have learned that there is no way (in the sense of moral path) to be learned and practiced is really to have learned the way of the gods." Hirata, before mentioned, says: " If you desire to practice true virtue, learn to stand in awe of the Unseen, and that will prevent you from doing wrong. Make a vow to the gods who rule over the unseen and cultivate the conscience {Magokoro) implanted in you, and then you will never wander from the way." Also, " Devotion to the memory of ancestors is the mainspring of all virtues. No one who discharges his duty to them will ever be disrespectful to the gods or to his living parents. Such a man will be faithful to his prince, loyal to his friends, and kind and gentle with his wife and children." Finally, Mr. Nose Ei, quoted by Sir Edwin Arnold, says of the followers of Shintoism: *' Their ethical diction is not derived from religious writings"; and the instances he cites to show this, in Sir Edwin's opinion, "go far to prove that the Japanese really did invent an elaborate morality for themselves," based on 76 JAPANESE SOULS. " the eternal fitness of things " and "that revelations are not necessary to teach men to love the right and hate the wrong." But the "wicked Chinese," whom the Shintoists think may need the moral regulation which themselves do not, in the the olden time, before Confucius came to elaborate an ethical code for them, and before Buddhism had ap- peared to impair the original faith, held very much the same notions as these Japanese do. Lao Tsee, who lived some six hundred years before Christ, and who wrote the only authoritative statement of that faith which remains, namely, the " Tao-te-king," or the " Book of the way and of virtue," expressed much contempt for the ethical dis- quisitions of his junior contemporary Confucius, and in- sisted on the ancient principle that " the heart of mail is naturally good"" and needs no moral instruction, as much as the Shintoists do, and even now the first lesson the Chinese child receives the first day he goes to school is still that maxim, " the heart of man is naturally good," to which every human heart must give an approving throb, notwithstanding Christianity has solemnly amended it by striking out "good" and inserting "evil." Probably old Robert Owen, who during thirty years educated all the children of a town of three thousand people and said htnever had a bad childin his school, taughtthem the Chinese maxim and not the Scotch. And if Japanese children are, as travellers report, milder, gentler and better than ours, may it not in part be due to their being early imbued with this heathenish and unchristian gospel of goodness? Older, simpler, and if you please lower than intrusive Buddhism and Confucianism though it be, there is no doubt that ancestor worship, enveloped in Shinto, has ever been the working religion of Japan, as it has been of the Hindus, Chinese and other peoples. Its value as tested by results need not be much dwelt on here, for all the world now is giving attention to them with informa- tion in aid of judgment well spread before all, which each JAPANESE SOULS. 77 will scan from his own point of view. A good many have come to the conclusion that, all things considered — our murdering set off against their suicides, our foeticide set off against their infanticide, and our immoral and unlaw- ful unchastity against their lawful moral and customary departures from our standards in that respect — they are better than we, and furthermore, that in regulating sex- ual relations, not merely within the pale of marriage but without it, in the interest of order, health, decency and humanity, instead of disregarding those interests in futile and mischievous endeavors to suppress the irrepressible, and prosecuting nature unto outlawry, they are also wiser than we. Ancestor worship has proved itself to be the most per- sistent of religions, coming earliest, staying longest, and existing in full vigor to-day; and if the Shinto is per- sistent it is more reasonable to attribute its persistence to the old faith that lies underneath it than to either the Mikadoism, Buddhism or Confucianism that lie atop of it. Further concerning Shintoism, Mr. Lowell, in his " Unfamiliar Japan,'' says: "Buddhism, changing form or slowly decaying through the centuries, might seem doomed to pass away at last from this Japan, to which it came as an alien faith; but Shinto, unchanging and vitally unchanged, still remains all-dominant in the land of its birth, and only seems to gain power and dignity with time. Buddhism has a vo- luminous theology, a profound philosophy, a literature vast as the sea. Shinto has no philosophy, no code of ethics, no metaphysics; and yet, by its very immateri- ality, it can resist the invasion of Occidental religious thought as no other Oriental faith can. Shinto extends a welcome to Western science, but remains the irre- sistible opponent of Western religion; and the foreign zealots who would strive against it are astonished to find the power that foils their uttermost efforts indefinable as magnetism and invulnerable as air. Indeed the best of 78 JAPANESE SOULS. our scholars have never been able to tell us what Shinto is. To some it seems to be merely ancestor worship, to others ancestor worship combined with nature worship; to others again it seems to be no religion at all; to the missionary of the more ignorant class it is the worst form of heathenism. Doubtless the difficulty of explaining Shinto has been due simply to the fact that the Sinolo- gists have sought for the source of it in books: in the Kojiki and the Nihofigi, which are its histories; in the Norito, which are its prayers; in the commentaries of Motowori and Hirata, who were its greatest scholars. But the reality of Shinto lives not in books, nor in rites, nor in commandments, but in the national heart, of which it is the highest emotional religious expression, immortal and ever young. Far underlying all the surface cross of quaint superstitions and artless myths and fantastic magic there thrills a mighty spiritual force, the whole soul of a race with all its impulses and powers and intuitions. He who would know what Shinto is must learn to know that mysterious soul in which the sense of beauty and the power of art and the fire of heroism and the magnetism of loyalty and the emotion of faith, have become inherent, immanent, unconscious, instinctive." "Trusting to know something of that Oriental soul in whose joyous love of nature and of life even the unlearned may discern a strange likeness to the soul of the old Greek race, I trust also that I may presume some day to speak of the great living power of that faith now called the Shinto, but more anciently Kami-no-michi, or the way of the gods." Ancestor worship holds men to right conduct not merely through a fixed belief that every thought, feeling and act of the living is known to those of the dead whom when in life they most loved and revered and from whom was received the very maxims of goodness they are ex- pected to keep, but also through an equally fixed belief that the living parents to whom at present they owe love JAPANESE SOULS. 79 and duty are in future to be not merely their parents, but their gods. And here in passing, may it not be supposed that the notion common to all religions, that the powers that are on high punish sin committed here below, had its origin in this belief that the present parent is the future god, since that is just what parents are used to do. Weigh in any just balance against such an influence as this the fear of even the most modified form of the Bible hell which Christian orthodoxy permits of, or which Christian heter- odoxy has of late contrived to meet the popular demand for a reasonable and credible retribution for sin, and which will kick the beam? Shinto, says Lowell: " Signifies character in the higher sense — courage, courtesy, honor, and, above all things, loyalty. The spirit of Shinto is the spirit of filial piety, the zest of duty, the readiness to surrender life for a principle without a thought of wherefore. It is the docility of the child; it is the sweetness of the Japanese woman." CHAPTER XI. THE POSSIBILITY OF A SPIRITUAL WORLD CONSIDERED. Although ghosts may well have induced a belief in a world of spirits, they go little or no ways towards prov- ing it. They are in their nature representations and not entities, nor yet reflections, shadows, mirages of such. The supposed spirit of the modern Spiritualists is a being not only superior to, but more real and substantial than any natural man, and dwells in a habitat equally so as compared with the natural world, and the last per- sons to admit that its inhabitants were common ghosts would be those Spiritualists. The immortality they look for is to be enjoyed by glorified personalities in a radiant environment that is not ghostly at all. Accordingly these, when they would infer the substantial spirit from the thin and vanishing shade, resort to the supposition that the spirit disguises itself in a form, and with the costume and other accessories needed to recall to the beholder the living man of an earlier date. How a real '■'■ rdvenant'' (returner) from a world of spirits, if there be such, would appear no one can tell, since it must be something beyond experience or guess, but common sense says it could not appear as a ghost if it came in proper person. Some few of the opposite school, namely the materialists, whom the overwhelming evidence now within easy reach of all has convinced that apparitions do come, have put forward another suppo- sition, which is that they are inanimate projections, reflections, shadows, mirages of living men or the bodies of dead ones. But this supposition will not bear exam- ination. A sick man lies on his bed, or his corpse in its A SPIRITUAL WORLD CONSIDERED. 81 coffin, or, later on, in its grave, where decomposition is fast distorting it out of all likeness to anything living, while miles away an image that perfectly reproduces the same man, not in night gown or shroud, but clad, shod and coiffed as he was before he fell sick, goes noiselessly along the way. This cannot be a projection, reflection, shadow or mirage of anything whatever, for nothing like it anywhere exists above ground or below. Such appear- ances can only emanate from something exactly the same to the eye that is at the very time in question actually in being. There can be no shadow cast by a non-extant substance. If living or dead bodies can project images of themselves these must be simply their likenesses as they actually are. It is true that nowadays the talking ghost usually claims to be a spirit and to come from a world of spirits; but his word is worth no more than that of the shade of ancient times who proclaimed himself a god. It cannot be doubted by any one who has read much of history that in all times men have objectively and subjectively, mentally in dreams and visions, and actu- ally, separately and in groups and crowds, been visited by apparitions purporting to be of supernatural beings such as they were accustomed to believe in as gods. In fact, it is doubtful if any god would have remained long in popular belief after ceasing to present himself in some way to the inner or outer senses. And if a ghost proves a world of spirits, then is every god and goddess proved whose semblance ever came to earth. Priestly teachings have crowded heaven up to its zenith and earth down to its core with divinities of every degree, with angels and devils, saints and demons, while the imaginations of the people themselves have filled earth, air, fire and water, with sylphs, salamanders, undines and gnomes, all of whom have had the habit of appearing unto men. When Christianity came it found every spring in Greece in the keeping of a lesser deity, and as these insisted on S2 THE POSSIBILITY OF showing themselves as usual notwithstanding the change in the ecclesiastical administration the new Church cun- ningly adopted and made saints of them, while the vulgar, being quite sure of their facts, let them be christened with new names and went on loving and believing in them as before. So the proof afforded by a spectre's resemblance to a dead person as well as that afforded by its declarations must fail because they prove too much. Another supposition which takes the ghosts to be real things and yet not spirits of the dead is put forward by some Hinduists, which is that when a dying mortal casts his body into the grave he also casts upon the air a vapor- ous "astral" corpse, which decays as the other does and in the same measure, and that this "shell" falling into the hands of mischievous beings of one kind or other is exhibited as the ghost. And to account for the clothing it wears the supposition is further made that the coats, vests and trousers, hats, shirts and shoes of the departed have all of them astral counterparts which are used to dress up the phantom in recognizable shape. But now let the thing thus dressed up be supposed to show itself two or three years after the death, and when the thing in the grave is looking its worst, and the astral drifting on the air looking just like it, as it must if, as said above, the two decay together, there would be pre- sented to view something beyond measure more horrible than any ghost story tells of or mortal nerves could bear. Or if perchance one time in a thousand a corpse is shown, to indicate a death, it is a seemly one, and, serving such a purpose, can be accounted for on the theory of telegraphic representation, without need of resorting to any other. Furthermore, if the astral body decays in the same measure as the other does, must not the astral clothes rot and wear out in the same measure as their counterparts do, and if so would not the half- decayed representative of the man two or three years dead have to cover its deficiencies with astral rags ? And A SPIRITUAL WORLD CONSIDERED. 83 has such an object ever been shown, to affright the world ? Gods and ghosts are of the same thin, spectral nature; a bullet goes through the ghost without effect, and the ancients detected a god when he walked the earth by his casting no shadow. Spectres do not tarry long. Having, in a business-like, straightforward way deliv- ered their messages, which are usually important, as for instance, when Lord Lovatt's mounted ghost came galloping along the road to overtake a surviving friend and tell him how a paper could be found that would enable his widow to defeat an unjust claim then in suit against his estate, they quickly depart. Their interviews usually last but a few minutes, sometimes only a few seconds. Often their mission seems to be fulfilled by merely showing themselves. And in general what they communicate when they come of their own motion and not upon invocation, is of intelligible import, relates to the living and the affairs of this life, is true in statement and benevolent in intent. All which characterizes them as messengers, that is, angels, and as coming because some good overruling power sends them. Their fleeting nature of itself marks them as shows, exhibits, signals, and not active beings. Frequent failure to hold them- selves together long enough to do their errands, or to speak out what they seem to have to say, or complete what they begin to tell, all go to indicate that they are produced with effort, and effort that cannot long be kept up. Whatever may be the nature of the intelligences that lie back of such apparitions, the apparitions do not serve to reveal, but to conceal it. However real they may be as entities, we cannot know it. It is still a phantasm that is exhibited, whose nature and origin remain dis- guised as with mask and domino. To prove what they are they must show themselves as they are. By ghosts, only ghosts are proved. Religions and philosophies are not 84 A SPIRITUAL WORLD CONSIDERED. devised by spectres of gods or men. Such have never "gone about doing good." They are not doers in any sense. At their largest, those charged with a meaning, they are but a branch of picture language, that system of symbolic showing that was in use before words were written or spoken, that did not need to wait the coming of a Cadmus to teach it, and without being learned is universally understood. CHAPTER XII. THE POSSIBILITY OF A SPIRITUAL WORLD FURTHER CONSIDERED. Swedenborg' s Statement. Naturally the belief in a spiritual world has taken different forms among different peoples. So far as con- cerns the cosmogony and anthropology of it, that which was formulated about a hundred and fifty years ago by Emanuel Swedenborg, when he constructed his relig- ious system known as the New Church, claiming to be guided in doing so by direct revelation made to him by Jesus in heaven, is the one which modern Spiritualists generally accept, though as respects religion Spiritualists and Swedenborgians cannot be classed together. The work of constructing that world seems to have been neglected by the priests, and by the prophets as well, and down to Swedenborg's time left to the poets. The classic hades y^2L^ a creation of Homer; the Christian heaven, hell and purgatory were imagined by Dante, and the modification of them to suit Puritan tastes by Milton; and these are by no means all who have lent their art and inspiration to that kind of construction. But no such spiritual world as that of Swedenborg seems to have been conceived by any of the poets. To put it into shape presentable to the minds of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries an imagination like his was needed, high-soaring, wide-grasping, multifarious and untiring, united with what those others could not pre- tend to, scientific and logical acumen. In a remnant of one lifetime he completed a system which all who have the energy to read it in its voluminous details must won- der at. Through more than sixty volumes (printed and 86 THE POSSIBILITY OF A unprinted) he labored to buttress its weak points and gloss it with plausibility; and if the theory of a spiritual world such as he has left cannot bear examination none can. No suspicion of imposture, or monomania, can arise in the mind of one who fairly reads his writings. As a wise, honest and sane man it was that he claimed to have talked face to face under the very dome of heaven with the Lord and Ruler of the whole universe even to its remotest star, who was none other than our own Jesus of Nazareth ; and he had as much right to do so as Moses had to say he talked with Jehovah in the burning bush, or Mahomet that Gabriel came to him in the cave. Nor were signs and wonders wanting to attest the authen- ticity of his commission, such as his father, the good Bishop Swedborg, by authority of the whole Christian Church, Catholic and Lutheran, had taught him "im- ported verity." Though he was far from obtrusive of his miraculous gifts, and relied largely on logic and the authority of the Bible to prove his teachings, usually in fact supplementing his revelations with them. The spiritual world of Swedenborg was as natural as our own, in every proper sense, though he distinguished them from each other as natural and spiritual. It was in time and space, and perceivable by senses; therefore phenomenal, not transcendent. He tells us that all go immediately after dying into the "world of spirits," a department of the spiritual world, where "some remain for only several weeks"; " some for several years, but not more than thirty " (Heaven and Hell, S. 426), and that "things have succession and progression in heaven as in this world," though instead of ideas of time such as we have the angels have only ideas of state. " To them all is state and change of state." And it is the same as to ideas of space. The calling it state does not prevent It from being space as we conceive it, however, for after saying that into his heaven come all those fit for it who have lived on any of the myriads of earths that fill the SPIRITUAL WORLD FURTHER CONSIDERED. 87 universe, all of whom are peopled as our own is, he adds, as if the question arose in his mind: how all these could be lodged. " It has been given me to see the extent of the heaven which is inhabited and also of what is not in- habited ; and I saw the extent of heaven not inhabited was so great that it could not be filled to eternity, even if many myriads of earths were given and as great a mul- titude of men in each as there are in ours." {Ibid^ S. 419.) Another question which will occur to the reader seems not to have occurred to him, which is: can any part of space, or the whole of it even, remain unfilled for eter- nity when an infinite universe is during all that eternity breeding emigrants for it and pouring them in? Again, he says of heaven : " Although in heaven there are spaces as in the world, still nothing is there according to spaces, but according to states." (Heaven and Hell, S. 198.) Hell also is a place. We are informed that " in a word the whole heaven and the whole world of spirits are as it were excavated be- neath, and under them is a continual hell." {/btd.,S. 588.) This would seem to make hell no larger than heaven, though it should be vastly more so, since he tells us no one ever comes out of it, and then plainly implies that those who go in there greatly outnumber those who enter heaven, by this text, which in that connection he quotes: " Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to de- struction and many they be who walk through it, narrow the way and straight is the gate which leads to life and few there be who find it," following it by this of his own : " That the way is narrow which leads to life is not be- cause it is difficult, but because there are few who find it." {Ibid.^ 534-) But the case is somewhat helped by letting into heaven all who are lucky enough to die in infancy (blessed be measles, mumps and whooping-cough therefor!), otherwise the disproportion between the popu- lations of the two places would be greater. And the in- 88 THE POSSIBILITY OF A habitants of the spiritual world, whether angels, spirits or devils, have senses just like ours. On this point he says: "From these things it may be evident that the spirit of man is equally in a form, and that it is in the human form, and that it enjoys sensories and senses as well when it is separated from the body as when it was in the body, and that all of the life of the eye, and all of the life of the ear, in a word, all of the life of sense which a man has, is not of his body, but of his spirit in them, and in their minutest particulars. Hence it is that spirits as well as men see, hear, and feel, but after being loosed from the body, not in the natural world, but in the spir- itual; the natural sensation which the spirit had when it was in the body, was by the material which was added to it; but still it then had spiritual sensation at the same time, by thinking and willing." {Ibid., S. 434.) Swedenborg's learned disciple, the Rev. Chauncey Giles, goes even more into details in setting forth the sensuous nature of the spirit. He says, in an address delivered in 1890 before the convention of the " New Church," at which he presided: " The New Church regards the spirit in an entirely new way. According to its doctrines the spirit is the man himself in human form, and the seat of all his power and life. It is organized of spiritual substances, as the material body is organized of material substances, and possesses all the organs, external and internal, in general and particular, that compose the material body. It has a head, trunk and limbs, it has eyes and ears, a brain, and face and vocal organs, heart and lungs, arteries and veins and nerves. Every organ performs the same rela- tive function that the material organs perform. The spiritual lungs breathe a spiritual atmosphere; the heart propels a spiritual blood through arteries and veins; the nerves give sensation and power; the hands grasp spirit- ual objects and the feet walk upon a spiritual earth. The eye opens to the light which flows from the spiritual sun, SPIRITUAL WORLD FURTHER CONSIDERED. 89 and the ear vibrates in harmony with modulations of the spiritual atmosphere. As a whole and in each least part the spirit is in the human form. The common idea had been that the body was first formed and then the spirit was breathed into it, as men make an engine and set it in motion by steam. The new doctrine teaches that the spirit itself molds the body into its form, weaves its fine and delicate texture in its own loom and clothes itself in every least part with it, making it a medium of com- munication with the material world, the home in which it dwells, a complicated and miraculous instrument, ad- justed with infinite precision to all the forms and forces of matter, to gain natural ideas and delights to serve as material for the development of the affections and the intellectual faculties. But it is merely a temporary serv- ice. The material body renders the same service to the spirit that the husk does to the corn, the chaff to the grain." Such a spiritual man, a very duplicate as he is of the natural man of the natural world, must needs have a spir- itual world to live in that is a very duplicate of that nat- ural world. Given the man, the world must follow. But our prophet has not left this to logical inferences ; he tells us expressly that it is so, thus: "What those things are which appear to the angels in the heavens cannot be described in a few words; for the most part they are like the things on the earth, but more perfect as to form, and of greater abundance. " (Heaven and Hell, S. 171.) Only they are not similar in essence, as those are from the sun of heaven and these from that of this world. " When it has been given me to be in com- pany with angels, the things which are there have been seen by me altogether as those which are in the world; and so perceptibly, that I knew no otherwise than that I was in the world, and there in the palace of a King." {Ibid., S. 174.) Again, "In the spiritual world, or in the world where spirits and angels are, similar things 90 THE POSSIBILITY OF A appear as in the natural world, or where men are ; so similar that as to the external aspect there is no differ- ence. There appear there plains, and there appear mountains, hills and rocks, and between them valleys; moreover also waters and many other things which are seen on earth. . . . Such being the similarity between the spiritual world and the natural world, therefore man after death scarcely knows otherwise than that he is in the world where he was born, and from which he has departed; for which reason also death is called only a translation from one world to another like it." {Ibid., S. 582.) Concerning garments, habitations, &c,, we have: "Be- cause angels are men and live with one another as the men of the earth do, therefore they have garments, habi- tations, and other like things, yet with the difference that they have all things more perfect, because in a more per- fect state." (//^zV., S. 177.) "That the garments of the angels do not merely appear as garments, but that they really are garments, is evident from this, that they not only see them, but also feel them; and also that they have more garments than one, and that they put them off and put them on, and those which are not in use they preserve ; and when in use they re-assume them ; that they are clothed in various garments has been seen by me a thousand times." {Ibid., S. 181.) These garments, it seems, are gifts of the Lord, who also gives to the devils in the hells to be clothed, lest they should appear naked, though these can only wear what is ragged, squalid and filthy. As to habitations, he further says: "As I have often spoken with angels, face to face, so often I have been with them in their habitations. Their habitations are altogether like the habitations on earth, which are called houses, but more beautiful; in them are parlors, rooms and bed-chambers in great numbers ; there are also courts, and round about are gardens, shrubberies and fields. SPIRITUAL WORLD FURTHER CONSIDERED. 91 Where they are consociated the habitations are contigu- ous, one near another, disposed in the form of a city, with streets, ways and public squares, altogether in like- ness of cities of our earth." {Ibid., S. 184.) We also learn that all the necessaries of life are given gratuitously to the angels; "they are housed gratuitously, they are clothed gratuitously, and they are fed gratuitously." {Ibid., S. 393.) All the angels and all the devils, thus all the inhab- itants of the spiritual world, are men who have lived and died on the various earths of the universe. Swedenborg was instructed to say: "That in the universal heaven there is not any one angel who was so created from the beginning, nor in hell any devil who was created an angel of light and cast down; but that all, both in heaven and in hell, are from the human race; in heaven those who lived in the world in heavenly love and faith, in hell those who lived in infernal love and faith." {Ibid., S. 89.) He elsewhere calls the earths "the seminaries (breeding places) of the spiritual world." {Ibid., S. 583.) What portion of space is occupied by the vast spirit- ual world, with its heaven, hell and world of spirits, and into which those breeding places of angels and devils will while they last continue to pour inhabitants, we are not told, but learn that in the more elevated places of the spiritual world are the heavens, in the low places there is the world of spirits, and beneath the latter and the former are the hells, also that " heaven in the whole complex resembles one man." {Ibid., S. 59.) Though "the angles indeed do not see heaven in the whole com- plex in such a form, for the whole heaven does not fall into view of any angels." {Ibid., S. 62.) "There are three heavens, and those most distinct from each other; the inmost or third, the middle or second, and the ulti- mate or first. They follow in succession and subsist to- gether as the highest of man, which is the head, his middle, which is his body, and the ultimate, which is the 92 THE POSSIBILITY OF A feet." {Ibid., S. 29.) Which two last passages, and many more that might be quoted, show that Sweden- borg's discovery was not of a globular world like the spheres of our visible heavens, but one in the human form, really and not figuratively so. This must be kept in view while the possibility of such a world is considered. For the same purpose we should remember that accord- ing to our seer "the natural world exists and subsists from the spiritual world, altogether as an effect from its efficient cause." (Jdid.^S. 8g.) Which is also the theory of Professors Balfour Stewart and Taite in their book, "The Unseen Universe." And the most plausible one it is if we assume that the one world is a duplicate, in a different substance (by which term we are to understand "material," or "stuff"), of the other, which is also assumed in every other formulated belief in a spiritual world, by whomsoever held. But, quite aside from any of these, it seems clear that any plausible theory of a spiritual world must assume that one who passes out of this earth life to become a citizen there arises from his cast-off material body a complete man, complete in all parts of him, having head, trunk, limbs, brain, heart, lungs, liver, and all other viscera, organs and members, the assemblage of which and their combined activities, with the resulting desires, passions, thoughts and volitions, make the man. It seems clear, too, that to fit such an inhabitant, as a habitat and en- vironment possible for him to dwell in, the spiritual world must be in all essential respects a duplicate of the one he was born into and lived and died in. Such considerations seem to have been held in mind by all constructors of such worlds, and not forgotten even by the poets. The Scandinavian ghost, drinking ale out of his enemy's skull, must have a complete set of organs, or no joy could come to him from the glutting of his vengeance or the quench- ing of his thirst, and the spirit of the Red Indian of SPIRITUAL WORLD FURTHER CONSIDERED. 93 America must have the same in order to chase, kill and eat his game, as well as to digest it. As said before, the enlightened pagans of antiquity also recognized the necessity of giving the soul some sort of a body to feel in, and hence the shade of which we read so much, and which had no other use. CHAPTER XIII. THE POSSIBILITY OF A SPIRITUAL WORLD FURTHER CONSIDERED. The considerable space given in this chapter and the two following ones to Swedenborgianism and Modern Spiritualism should be excused on the ground that as already suggested they stand for all forms of ancestor worship, the fundamental religion of all mankind, and that in examining them we are inspecting the foundation of all religion. This chapter, however, and the next may be skipped by the impatient reader without serious breach of the book's chain of argument; but if he do so he will be apt to return to them later. Notwithstanding Swedenborg's insistence on the close likeness of his Spiritual World to our natural one, the differences between them are enormous. Ours is but eight thousand miles in diameter, his is large enough to hold all the dead of the whole universe, that have ever lived and died, or that ever will. Ours is a globe, his is in form a man. Ours revolves round a sun and has nights and days, moves on a tilted axis and has its seasons, his has a fixed sun that is always in the east. Ours has a soil, rather an important part of it, since to till that soil, so we may live and not starve to death, keeps us labori- ously busy; his may have one, but there is no account of its being tilled. Ours is a place of temptation and trans- gression, his is a court of justice and a prison in part, and in part a paradise of office-holding angels, who he assures us are wonderfully happy, without telling just how they are so. The state and fate of all adults who go to his are made up here below and can never be changed ; SPIRITUAL WORLD FURTHER CONSIDERED. 95 the good become angels forever and the bad devils for- ever. All is very simple; no appeal, no pardon, no change. Up there we are told the angels are kept busy enough, but it is not in productive avocations. Concerning what their employments are we are told that they are "innu- merable " but mostly administrative, ' ' for there are eccle- siastical affairs, there are civil affairs and there are domestic affairs." {Ibid., 388.) " There are societies whose em- ployments are to take care of infants; there are other societies whose employments are to instruct and educate them as they grow up; there are others who in like man- ner educate and instruct boys and girls." {Ibid., S, 391.) *' There are others who teach the simple good " and "the various Gentile nations." There are others who defend novitiate spirits " from infestations by evil spirits." "There are some also who are present to those who are in the lower earth; and also some who are present to those who are in the hells, and restrain them from tor- menting each other beyond the prescribed limits; there are also some who are present to those who are raised from the dead." Thus the outcome of this universe is a world where the larger part of its population after judicial trial and also " exploration " of the interiors and a judgment based partly on a certain state of the affections and partly on overt acts resulting from it, are imprisoned for eternal life in prisons subterraneously excavated under beautiful and sublime mountains whereon the angels who have been their triers and moral vivisectors and after that their turnkeys as well, dwell in heavenly joy, which the nearness of the damned seems no more to disturb than did the groans of prisoners chained in dungeons beneath castles in olden times disturb the serenity of my lord and his retainers who feasted in the halls above. Classified rudely the occupations of these angels are those of civil and ecclesiastical rulers and administrators, jailors, dry- 96 THE POSSIBILITY OF A nurses, teachers of theology to the various Gentile nations, exorcisers of "evil spirits," guardians of mortals in the flesh, and ushers of newly arriving spirits. For the per- formance of all these duties except those of the civil and ecclesiastical administrations as many angels as would equal in number the product by the earths of the uni- verse during a single generation of time would surely suffice, because the subjects of their care do not exceed in number, we are told, the incomers during not more than thirty years — in which time those needing it will have completed their growth and education and found their way to heaven or hell — while as to those in earth life needing guardianship they would not average in length of years more than about the same time. And the foregoing duties being provided for, the remainder of the enormous population of angels accumulated during infinite ages in the past have for their only occupation the administrative duties of Church and State in the heavens, and the keeping order in the hells. The Church services (where the angels are the worshippers) need not employ more than one in a thousand, and as to the num- ber required down below, it is to be presumed that the details for the disagreeable duty of keeping ragged and ill-smelling prisoners in order must be as small as possible and their watches as short, especially since to help them in their duties, they are allowed the aid of a corps of devils selected for their superior cruelty. "Wherefore the more malignant are set over them as governors, whom they obey from fear." (Heaven and Hell, S. 220.) So that the occupations of the innumerable hosts of angels accumulated during eternity, all the worlds in the universe contributing to their production as " semina- ries," consist in caring for the human product of those worlds yielded during a scant generation of time, and in ruling over one another as civil and ecclesiastical officials during time without end. Why they need so much ruling is not revealed, nor how they manage to be, SPIRITUAL WORLD FURTHER CONSIDERED. 97 as is revealed, both very busy and very happy. Thus much for the constitution of the supposed Spiritual World, now for its content. The world discovered by Swedenborg is essentially a religious one; but his fall of man, original sin, trinity, atonement, faith, justice, mercy, salvation, free-will and their final outcomes, heaven, purgatory and hell, differ from those of all other creeds. In S. 424 of " Heaven and Hell " we learn that "man is born into every evil as to the will"; that he is nevertheless capable of being re- formed by instruction if only his evilly-born will will so will, which instruction is based on a hidden sense in the Jewish and Christian scriptures that was by their authors so long and so well hidden that it was not found out until he came to discover at once it and the world it re- lates to. But no amount of instruction can alter a man's destiny unless he gets it m earthly life, or dies an infant or excusable pagan, &c. The angels have a way of searching his interiors and so finding out just the state of his affections, whether he loves God and his neighbor or himself; if himself he goes to hell forever. And this even if he loves also "his own," who, specially, are his children and his grandchildren, but generally all who make one with him, whom he calls his; for to love these is the same as to love himself. Amongst those whom he calls his own are likewise all who commend, honor and pay their court to him. To the unilluminated it would seem that a man who loved his family, friends and dependents, would make a good citizen enough for all practical purposes, since from the interlacing of families and other civic relations, all the world must thus get loved, if not by everybody yet by somebody, so there would be in a world of such loving friends enough to do for all every needed office of kindness and supply every needed thmg, yet it is not so; one with a love thus limited goes to hell without remedy. The examination of the interiors is done early after the 98 THE POSSIBILITY OF A spirit's arrival in the vast intermediate state and place called " the world of spirits," where are also carried on certain judicial enquiries concerning the man s overt evil acts, which last seems hardly necessary though, since the investigation of the interiors of him have already settled his destiny. These proceedings are by no means sum- mary either. Of one branch of testimony we read, " the manifestations continued sometimes for hours together." Memorandum books were "opened and read before them (the culprits), page by page." Again, "and what was wonderful the letters and papers which passed be- tween them were read in my hearing, and it was said that not a word was wanting." " In a word, all evils, vil- lainies, robberies, artifices, deceits, are manifested to every evil spirit, and brought forth from their memory, and they are convicted; nor is there any room for denial." Considering the time and trouble which these long criminal trials must require, and also that to judge the souls of a whole universe billions of causes must be disposed of daily, it must be admitted that some of the angels at least are able to keep busy. Quite in accord- ance with the self-acting, self-sustaining, co-operative system of criminal discipline that prevails in the spiritual world, the condemned spirits, now become perfect devils, "cast themselves down into hell," and when they get there go to tormenting one another, each performing the double part of devil and sinner. Perhaps they go thus willingly because they have learned, what the reader soon will, that Swedenborg's hell is not wholly without its compensations, nor his heaven quite without its draw- backs. Here are some of the compensations: First. There is little or no law in hell. It is only when its people torment each other beyond a certain reasonable measure that a squad of angels goes down, and with the help of some of the "more malignant among them," called in as a sort of special constables, re-establishes order. SPIRITUAL WORLD FURTHER CONSIDERED. 99 Secondly. Though to the angels the stench of the hells seems vile, yet we are told that to the devils them- selves it is not at all so; and by analogy we may infer that the rags they wear are to them comfortable and decent clothing. Thirdly. The devils are allowed the companionship of their families and friends and all the comfort they can find in stealing one another's wives — or having their own stolen — adultery being their chief delight and occupa- tion. Finally, he reports that the devils themselves, who are really the only parties concerned, feel happy where they are and would not go elsewhere if they could. Certainly, considering the times he lived in our seer deserves credit for the consolations he allows his devils, while as to his angels — yes, as to his angels — let him who thinks he can devise a mode of future existence for disembodied men that shall bear in its detail even slight criticism from the point of view of common sense, take up the pen and write. Like all who have hereto- fore attempted it, he will find his heaven more difficult to contrive than his hell; possibly because man-made worlds, celestial or infernal, from the very limitations of man's nature must always be modeled on this, and in this we know a good deal about torment and a very little about joy. The task of him who would imagine and in detail describe an universe could hardly be less than that of creating one, and it is therefore quite beyond the powers of man or spirit. Here is a specimen of the difficulties of it: Swedenborg having endowed the people of hell with the ability to indulge in sinful love was bound in logic to give the people of heaven the analogous ability to in- dulge in sinless love; and this he does in his " Con- jugial Love," as well as in his "Heaven and Hell," which last, in order to distinctly show what he meant, I quote (S. 402) : " Conjugial delight, which is a purer and 100 THE POSSIBILITY OF A more exquisite At\\^\. of touch, is more excellent than all those (other delights of sense) on account of its use, which is the procreation of the human race, and thence of angels of heaven." Having gone thus far a mighty problem arose, to wit, how to deal with the product of heavenly, letting alone hellish, love-making, which he solved to his own satisfaction at least, by making his angels, though loving, sterile, except that they are able to beget and bear what he calls "goods and truths," from which it maybe inferred that his incontinent devils are only prolific of what he calls "evils and falses"; which, however, still leaves for solution the question, what kind of things those goods and truths, evils and falses are that come of human begetting? Further to show that Swedenborg's theology in its articles of faith is different from every other; he has no original sin, but instead an original sinfulness, from which the victim of it can be saved only through receiv- ing and profiting by a course of instruction in the Bible's arcane meaning as above mentioned. And he allows no justification by faith, but only a reformation by means of such instruction which must be effected during earth- life or never at all. Man goes to heaven or hell, not because they are places of punishment or reward, but because fate ordains it so, perhaps, or as a theological necessity. Punishment just attaches itself to sin as it does in the Hindu system, and will not be shook off, by force of a law which, like the law of "Karma," is very labor-saving, if not so discriminating or so mild as that. There is no theological justice to be vindicated, either by the vicarious sufferings of Jesus or the eternal burn- ing of such as can not or will not believe the story of them. Nor is there any divine wrath to be appeased by any- body's suffering. Neither mercy, justice nor wrath play any part in this prophet's revelations, nor in the Bible as he has interpreted it. SPIRITUAL WORLD FURTHER CONSIDERED. 101 As in all other systems, the Almighty does the best he can. Religious services are continually held in heaven. There is no resurrection of the body, nor any such last day judgment as Christians of other sects believe in. As there are no angels in heaven who were not once men, like ourselves, so except a rather imperfect trinity, there is no hierarchy of celestial birth, no archangels. Neither Lucifer nor Beelzebub, nor Satan nor other pagan god does duty as the one omnipotent devil in Swedenborg's hell, any more than in Mohammed's. Finally, he does not withdraw his theology from the criticism of reason, but rather invites it. His authority for it is that it was revealed to him by Jesus of Nazareth, now the Ruler of the Universe, in thousands of interviews had with him in heaven, which, though as good author- ity as any creed can claim, has obtained as yet but small acceptance, but his report of things seen and heard by him in the spiritual world, its manners and customs, soil and climate, occupations and productions, and the nature and constitution of the spiritual man, has gained great acceptance in their character as formulations of the old vaguely but universally held belief now being considered. They make up the best working hypothesis by far yet put forward for investigators of modern spiritual mani- festations, which is a precious boon to all the millions who are classed as such, and is not without value to other searchers into occult nature now working hard to find out a better. In " The True Christian Religion " (S. 829), where the condition of the Mohammedans in the spiritual world is described, we find the following: "And because Ma- homet is always in their minds in connection with relig- ion, therefore, some Mahomet is always placed in their view; and that they may turn their faces towards the East, over which the Lord is, therefore he is placed beneath the middle, occupied by Christians, It is not 103 THE POSSIBILITY OF A Mahomet himself, who wrote the Koran, but another, who fills his place; nor is it always the same, but he is changed. Once it was one from Saxony, who, being taken by the Algerians, became a Mahometan. He, because he had also been a Christian, was led several times to speak with them of the Lord, that he was not the son of Joseph, but the Son of God himself. That Mahomet was afterwards succeeded by others. In the place where that representative Mahomet has his seat there appears a fire, as of a little torch, that he may be known ; but that fire is conspicuous only to Mahometans. " Elsewhere we are told that this " representative Ma- homet " was set up to prevent the disorders that would otherwise arise among Mahometan spirits on their first arrival, and who, as they came trooping in by tens of thousands, clamored to be shown their beloved prophet, not knowing he was long ago deposed from his seat for misbehavior. It seems there was like trouble with the Jews, who came clamoring for " father Abraham," and that to cheat them also in the interest of order and quiet a " represent- ative Abraham " was set up and shown to them, the orig- inal being, as it happened, like Mohammed, undergoing discipline and deprived of his place. These two examples of systematic deception on a vast scale do not seem at all to have shocked the moral sense of the narrator of them, nor at all to have shaken his faith in the veracity of the angels in other respects. So that when he was presented to one who told him he was Jesus Christ, Lord and Ruler of the Universe, he did not sus- pect he was being fooled as he had seen the Mohammed- ans and Jews fooled, nor that some unimportant spirit was dramatizing before him as a representative Christ, nor that the voluminous disclosures that representative made to him, as well by word of mouth and face to face as by angelic commissioners sent to show him round, concern- ing the newly discovered doctrines of the New Church SPIRITUAL WORLD FURTHER CONSIDERED. 103 and, more than that, the very arcana of Nature, might be mere fables. The which resolves his long, far and frequent journeyings through the world of spirits into phantasmagoria of the subjective kind. Swedenborg's revelations have great value to the stu- dent of such things, as being modern and within reach of investigation. The visions that came to him, and the sights he went to spiritual lands to see, date only a cent- ury and a half back, and were promulgated in broad in- tellectual daylight. Nothing was done in a corner. As a learned, scientific and practical man he was well known to all such throughout Europe. His good and pure char- acter, his abilities and acquirements are testified to in the writings of his contemporaries in a way that leaves no room for doubt that he was as fit to receive truth from supernatural sources, if there be such, and to reveal it to the world as Zoroaster, Mohammed, Pythagoras, or any other mortal who ever dreamed or wrote. He can be got at, seized, handled, weighed, measured and tested better, perhaps, than if he lived now, for a certain interval of time is required for a good view of any historic character. He bears examination well, though his religion does not, and while the one is not doubted the other is to the world at large but rubbish. Or if now and then a reader, struck by the marvellous vigor of his writings, goes far enough into them to get at their meaning, he must stumble over, as he goes, absurdities like those of which some few are pointed out in this and a former chapter that finally make him lay them by, not without wonder and perplexity that a man who could so write should have written so. And at the same time that his teaching is thus contemned, hun- dreds of millions of both the ignorant and wise either actually believe in some form of it, the religion that was set up by St. Paul, or think they do, or else are just now and but slowly finding out that they do not. Yet the sub- ject of Paul's visions and teachings lived so long ago and so obscurely that learned men doubt if he ever lived at 104 THE POSSIBILITY OF A all; while the record of his sayings and acts is known to have been in the hands and keeping of forgers by voca- tion since the time when, by the votes of a very inferior body of men, it was made legal tender as the Word of God. So far as we have any good account of their begin- nings, all religions and all their great embranchments and engraftments have had a like origin, however dif- ferent their contents. None has been by the god of it given directly to mankind, but each has come through an intermediary prophet, having natural or acquired receptivity for so-called supernatural inflow, and also miraculous powers, so called, to exhibit as sanction for his authority to speak for God and control man. Such were Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Moses, Saul of Tarsus, Mo- hammed, Boehme, and such was Swedenborg. No devo- tee of any faith can trace the sources of it further back than to some such intermediary, nor can this last trace further back than to something lying within his own self the revelation he transmits, be it given to him by intel- lectual illumination, symbolic visions or talking ones, clairaudience, clairvoyance, automatic or direct writing, trance-speaking, or whatever other of the now well- known and well known to have been always common methods by which the hidden world speaks to the mani- fest one the medium was adapted to. The mystic, already religious, threading the path of contemplation, in search of the source of his being, already believed to be a god, in hope to attain to union with it, comes upon his own very self (but his inward self) as objectified by itself in form of that god or his messenger, and forth- with bows down before and worships himself; and then whatever revelation is thus vouchsafed to him he com- municates to the world with the zeal that comes with absolute conviction, as the absolute truth all men long for, to meet with more or less acceptance according as time, place and circumstance may suit. In a smaller SPIRITUAL WORLD FURTHER CONSIDERED. 105 way lesser prophets have had their visions, illuminations, &c., in countless number as auxiliary revelations, enur- ing to the benefit of their preconceived ideas, and either really or by force of construction redounding to the glory of their Church. Real prophets have so abounded that there is no need to suppose false ones, and in judging a given revelation the idea of imposture may generally be put aside, as cer- tainly it may be — nay, must be — in Swedenborg's case. None but a member of the little "Church of the New Jerusalem " will believe that its founder went to heaven, and there, person to person, got his instructions from the Lord of the Universe, though many enough will, in the light of our present knowledge, be willing to admit that he thought he did, being made so to think, however, by subjective causes working wholly within him. And imposture not being a necessary supposition, yet error, inconsistency and absurdity being apparent, the inference must be that fallible man is at the bottom of the whole business, and not infallible God. Swedenborgianism, coming in the regular way by which all religions have come, and having a content certainly more rational and credible than any, being nevertheless condemned by the age to which it is submitted for judg- ment, all others must be condemned, and if any newly contrived one is to obtain favor it must arise in a very different way and be a very different thing. A revelation concerning a future state or world, to be worthy of be- lief, or even of attention, should be as full, precise and detailed as accounts from a continent across the ocean are expected to be. And if we are to guide our steps in this world by light coming from another, that light should shed as clear a ray as the one we already have here. Swedenborg seems to have appreciated all this, for he worked hard and voluminously at the details of his plan as if in hopes to make it hold itself together, but with an opposite result, for the more details of it are given the 106 SPIRITUAL WORLD FURTHER CONSIDERED. easier it is to criticise, and while the established faiths it was expected to overturn find a measure of safety by- hiding their heads in the clouds of obscurity and indefi- niteness this newly proposed one has its weakness in being too clearly explained and defined. Swedenborg came too late and did his work too thoroughly for it to prevail either against old beliefs, held to because they are old and therefore deep-rooted in the mental and sentimental habitudes of believers, or against the unbelief of free- minded men. CHAPTER XIV. THE POSSIBILITY OF A SPIRITUAL WORLD FURTHER CON- SIDERED. The Spiritual World of Modern Spiritualisin. Concerning what becomes of the souls of men after death the different religions have each a different story to tell, or if, perchance, any two can by construction be made to agree on this point they must differ on others, else they would be not two, but one. Now, Divine revela- tions cannot be allowed to differ on any point; that is a privilege accorded only to human ones. It is essential to a communication coming from an Omniscient deity that it tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and, therefore, of all the many " other worlds " that have been revealed to dwellers in this, only one at most can be the real one. But as the sacerdotal keepers of the archives of each tell their devotees that their own is that very one, no inconvenience results, and each sect of believers is complacent in the steadfast faith that all the world is lied to but themselves. But he who rummages the records concerning these revelations until he finds out, as he will if he rummages deep, that all are from one and the same occult, and, to the vulgar, miraculous source, in short, that all come in the same way and are proved in the same way, will criticise them all as if coming from one witness, and to him it will be the same as if a single person claim- ing to know all about a given matter in dispute should tell as many different stories about it as there are revealed religions in the world, and be forced by his reason to deny, not merely all save one, but all without exception, also to 108 THE POSSIBILITY OF A deny that any revelation coming from such a source is competent to prove anything whatever, least of all, fitly serve as a rule of human conduct, for the first principles of evidence teach that a witness who tells two different stories about the same thing is not to be believed as to either of them, nor as to anything else, and, even more, teach that a witness found to be false in merely one detail of his statement must be deemed false in all. Accounts of the spiritual world of our modern Spiritualists such as are generally accepted as true by those who seek for and obtain them, come just as religions do by revelation through intermediaries and are attested by miracles; revelations as good as any, and miracles as good as any. But, there being as yet no Church to declare which ac- counts shall be received as authoritative and which re- jected as not, the Spiritualists find themselves encum- bered with thousands of conflicting revelations. To be sure, these ought not to be held to the strict rules that apply where it is something claimed to be the word of God that is to be judged, for they claim to be nothing more than words of deceased men, but it certainly is not unfair to criticise them by the same canons by which human testimony in earth-life is tested, according to which canons circumstantial details, in themselves in- significant, have their importance as criteria by which to judge the knowledge or veracity of a witness. Here are some of the most important contradictions to be found in the revelations in question: There is a God. There is no God. There is one only true devil. There is no devil at all. There is eternal punishment. There is only temporal punishment. There is no punishment at all; only infinite progres- sion in wisdom and goodness. There is no pre-natal existence. SPIRITUAL WORLD FURTHER CONSIDERED. 109 We have passed through many earthly existences and must pass through many more yet, in order to learn on earth how to behave in heaven. These re-incarnations are for the gaining of experi- ences only. They are for experience and also for expiation of sin through suffering, i. z\ *'The first garments worn in spirit life are gifts of love. It is so with infants on earth. In the higher heavens robes and angel vestures are woven by will-power, through skilful hands, and woven almost in the twinkling of an eye." 92 : "I saw a lady not long in the spirit life, en- gaged in needle-work. She had her spirit fabric of deli- cate texture, her spirit thread and needle. On earth she was a seamstress." 132: A Boston tailor is asked the question: "Was your external clothing prepared for you?" and answers: "It was, and brought to me and put on me, when I first escaped from the physical tene- ment." And to the question: " Did this spiritual cloth- ing correspond to the spiritual status of your spiritual life?" he answered: "I afterwards perceived that it did, although I had no consciousness of this correspond- ence at the time." 140: "My spirit-clothing is the outgrowth of my mental states. It forms itself on my body, and is instantaneously in form according as my mind may vary its emotions, or frame of thought." "My clothing is of silk, velvet, lace, cloth of gold (or what would seem so to clairvoyants of earth), gauzy muslins, or simply white materials neither thick nor thin." " In the highest heavens angels are clothed upon with innocence, and are garmentless; but descend- ing to lower spheres on acts of beneficence, appear clothed." "Will is the creator." 164: "Spirits that have just left their bodies appear clothed much as they were in their mortal form, while ancient and holier spirits are clad in celestial attire, shining as the sun. ' 173: "My garments were also prepared, and they cor- responded with my taste, and, as I afterwards learned, with my moral status." 216: " My clothing was drapery ; I was conscious of that. It did not take the stereotyped form of earthly raiment; but I thought little of it, ex- cepting that when a thought of delight pervaded the mind on each new recognition of a spirit friend, there SPIRITUAL WORLD FURTHER CONSIDERED. 117 would be a vibration throughout the whole frame which communicated itself to the drapery and to the atmosphere around me. That our friends are prepared to receive us in spirit life is certain; but spirit clothing, that which they adorn us with, that which is seen by many spirits (clairvoyants) in the form of raiment, is in reality their affections manifesting themselves upon the atmosphere that, like a shining light, surrounds us; and as our rai- ment is woven, not of material fabric, but of the aggre- gation of spiritual substances, so the thought and sym- pathy of our friends adorn us; we wear it as a shining raiment; atmosphere illumines and surrounds us; we are clothed in atmospheres." 260: " Our robes are the prod- uct of our lives, sadly, badly woven sometimes." Thus we see that spirits' clothing is sometimes the gift of love, sometimes woven by will-power, sometimes "prepared," how or by whom not being stated, is sometimes an out- growth of mental states, taking form instantaneously, is sometimes nothing but the affections of the friends who bestow it, sometimes, in some way, the product of our moral deportment in earth-life, and, finally, in the case of angels, there is no clothing at all. Hand-work is hardly hinted at, and the conclusion must be that there is no work done on it of any kind, and the newly-arrived lady seamstress of page 92 was only doing a little repair- ing from force of habit. Except just after death, it is also plainly enough revealed that the clothing of each spirit is the expression of his character, thoughts and feelings, in short of his " states," which shows that Swedenborg's doctrine of correspondences is accepted by the spirits as to clothing as well as dwellings. In fact Swedenborg is often quoted by them, though sometimes with partial dissent, and it is stated in one place that he is installed as a teacher of spiritual analogy in some one of the spiritual spheres. In at least two places his affirmation that the spiritual world is a counterpart of the natural, is concurred in, notwithstanding both his spiritual world 118 THE POSSIBILITY OF A and that of these spirits are as different from the natural one as they are in most important respects from each other. Locomotion. On this pretty important subject we have, page 141 : "A spirit may be conveyed with the rapidity almost of thought through space, according to the eagerness of his desire; or he may leisurely convey himself by walk- ing, by floating, or by sailing on a boat; or, if on land, by a kind of carriage propelled by sails. All these modes of conveyance correspond to some frame of mind. Spirits are also seen upon horses and in chariots. " On page 150 another account mentions "chariots, seem- ingly of fire," and also says: "elegant vehicles, drawn by horsfis and other kinds of graceful animals, here, as on earth, are subservient to the spirit's will." Another, on page 208, says: "There are gondolas, palanquins, carriages and chariots in my sphere of existence. Some would go from this place to London in half an hour; others would go almost like the lightning's flash." On page 72 mention is made of lakes with vessels and ponds with boats on them, also of boats that ply backwards and forwards, on the lakes, and on page 73, that those of the Sixth sphere were " building boats of a singular structure," and that in the same exalted sphere "they arrange their houses in groups, and have a kind of rail- road to go from one group to the other; moreover, that they "traverse the ether spaces in aerial cars." But quite the contrary of all this, the spirit of Mrs. Kiddle (the wife of a distinguished Spiritualist who, because he was a Spiritualist, was expelled from the chief control of the public schools of New York City, to the immense and immediate injury of schools, teachers and pupils), says, on page 260: "We need no vehicles since the Lord has given us almost unlimited motion." This last might account for the absence of steam vessels and excuse the SPIRITUAL WORLD FURTHER CONSIDERED. 119 omission of the locomotive from spiritual locomotion were it not for the sail boats, sail carriages, fiery chari- ots, common chariots, elegant vehicles drawn by horses and other graceful animals, gondolas, palanquins, aerial cars, &c,, that are mentioned. Here, as where clothing and houses are described, the land and water vehicles sometimes used by spirits represent their states and by analogy may be supposed to come as emanations or as representing the moods for the time being of those who go in them, that is, as produced by the same will-power which enables them to go where they please quick as lightning without any conveyance. At any rate we may presume that carriage-making and boat-building are car- ried on in the same easy and expeditious manner as clothes are made and houses erected, so that the pro- duction of them does not amount to an occupation. Nothing is said about transportation of freight or bag- gage, or commerce in any commodities; which suggests the subject of Food. In the upper spheres the sustenance of the spirits is, page 176, " chiefly derived from inhalation, of which the refuse is cast off through the pores of the skin by insen- sible excretion "; also, page 75, in those high places and states food " is compounded out of the elements and from etherealized fluids," and on page 71 we have: "He saw spirits preparing spiritual food composed of spiritual ele- ments and auras." Below those, we are told in numerous places, the food is melons and delicious fruits, heavenly manna and nuts. Nothing is said of any expenditure of labor in cultivating the fruits; they may grow wild, or in orchards and gardens, but the probabilities are in favor of will-power such as produces the dwellings and clothing, since we have thus far seen that spirits, like us in the flesh, will do no more work than they can help, and are told on page 136, that it is possible to produce a 130 THE POSSIBILITY OF A bower of flowers by that same power, and if flowers, then of course fruit. Certainly it is a happy arrange- ment, in the interest of idleness, to make melons, fruits and nuts serve for food, since they need cooking no more than we can suppose heavenly manna does. As to flesh, fish and fowl, they seem to be allowed the American Indians, but no others, nor are grains or vegetables of any kind anywhere mentioned. And what has just been said of food, as well as what went before relating to clothing, would show there is no need in spirit-land to transport either freight or baggage, and so the absence of railroads, steamboats and steamships from the list given of means of locomotion is accounted for. Thus between old ancestor worship and modern Spirit- ualism there is this most important difference, that in the first the dead must be fed by the living, while in the other they feed themselves. Occupations. Swedenborg, as we have seen, makes the general statement that angels and spirits are very busy. Just so Peebles' spirits report that they " are never idle," but carefully avoid giving any details of their employment, as, for instance, when on page i6i the question is directly put, "How do spirits occupy their time, and what are the leading loves in your sphere ?" a Quaker tells how his brother painted pictures to decorate the walls of a house (was not Quaker Benjamin West turned out of the church for painting pictures?), and tells absolutely noth- ing more, neither concerning how spirits occupy their time, nor what are their leading loves, in a long answer that covers two pages octavo. And to this even more searching interrogatory, page 91 : " You deal too much, — pardon me, — in generalities. Be more pointed; tell me of one scene you have observed — one act that you have done to-day as a spirit?" All the reply that came was what has been before substantially quoted concern- SPIRITUAL WORLD FURTHER CONSIDERED. 121 ing the spirit seamstress, and her spiritual needle and thread. A book made up of carefully selected revela- tions and that bears on its cover the title, " Our homes and our employments hereafter," and the first words of whose preface are: " Give us details " — quite omits, save in the two very small ones just quoted, any account of anything that will answer to the term industry. Houses, clothes, vehicles and food come without it. All industrial occupation being absent, what then are " our employments hereafter," of which revelations in detail are promised in the one hundred communications tendered by Dr. Peebles? In his summarizing Chapter 21, headed "The general teachings of the spirits," he himself quite forgets through all its sixteen octavo pages to even name houses, clothes, food, locomotion or any industrial occupations, such as keep men out of mischief in the natural world, or to give any hint of labor per- formed, save what is contained in two brief passages on page 279, which read thus: " They teach that the life of the spirits enter on after death is a sphere of struggle and moral conquest" — " that every moral altitude attained is a victory for the soul, purchased by self-denial, by aspiration, by persistent effort, and holy endeavor." *' They teach that spirit life is an active life, a progress- ive life, with schools and lyceums, and museums and universities." These generalities the reader of the book is allowed to fill in with such details as his imagination may supply, and he is also left to conjecture as he can how far the only occupations the spirits specify, namely, rearing chil- dren, instructing the ignorant, reforming the wicked and guarding mortals on earth, can fill up the time, or rather the eternity, of the vast population. It looks as if those whom Peebles in his preface implored to "give details and not generalities and vain imaginings," had so suc- cessfully befogged the subject and him as to make him quite lose sight of the object of his book, and left him to 122 THE POSSIBILITY OF A wind up with a mere gush of religionism unwarranted by the context. How is it that whatever revelation, bib- lical or other, has been given as coming from another world has been minute enough in respect to things of this one, as to morality, ritual, economics, proprieties, and even as to architecture, vestments and interior dec- oration, but vague unto nothingness as to what is and what is done in that other — voluminous and specific as to what we are familiar with; blank as to what we are not? In effect the spiritual world of our Spiritualists, like that of Swedenborg's, is a world of idlers. In the case of mere bodiless souls there would be no question of tediousness, and the problem how such immortals could kill time need not trouble us. But in these spiritual worlds the inhabitants are complete and entire men, beings contrived for labor, whose life here chiefly con- sists in working for the means to live it. Nature abhors inaction, as she does any other vacuity. Human nature as we know it would render a heaven full of idlers a thing beyond imagining and only dreamable by a tired worker here below while his fatigue is on. It is impos- sible that such should be a happy world. For the manifold errors, omissions, inconsistencies and contradictions in the volume of Dr. Peebles contained he seems to have seen the need of something of excuse or palliation, and at the close of his work, page 277, gives the best he can, which is as follows: "Just imagine sev- eral diverse characters reaching our shores from London, for the purpose of instructing us in the realities — the shame and the glory of London life. These shall embody patricians and plebeians, prince and peasant, judge and criminal, schoolman, tyro, scientist and shop-keeper, and other types of castes and conditions. It is plain enough that these persons, seeing London with different eyes, and while perhaps strictly honest would strangely differ in their descriptions. What would the novice know of the poet's library? And what conception could the poor SPIRITUAL WORLD FURTHER CONSIDERED. 123 day-toiler give us of the international questions often discussed in Parliament, or in the private councils of court life? And yet each of these characters would give substantially the same description of those features of London life accessible to common observation — such as the parks and gardens, the course of the Thames, the dust and the fogs during certain seasons. And so spirits agree in regard to the general verities pertaining to spirit life — agree that there are landscapes and flowers, trees and running streams, houses and gardens, magnificent mountains and dismal lowlands, libraries and pictures, sympathies and antipathies, joys and sufferings, harmony and jarring discords." But the hundred selected spirits by no means substantially agree about anything, but dis- agree as widely as the Londoners would if they described their city as being built by will-power — not by will- power — of spirit substance — not of spirit substance — by vibrations which go forth into the atmosphere from hearts and lives — by will-power of the kind that subdues evil — by people who have gained so complete a victory over matter that they can cause habitations to spring up at will, which afterwards, when no longer needed, cease to exist — by hand-work, but of so expert a kind that a whole story of a large building is run up while a passer- by stops to look on — not by hand, but by pure thoughts and good actions — somehow constructed while its citi- zens were in process of gestation, so as to be ready for them as soon as they were born — local and real, but built by its inhabitants unconsciously to themselves — or of a given house as — not made with hands, but by the owner himself in some way kept to himself — not local at all, but coming at need to any locality — immediately improvised from the elements — not built at all, but given by God — prepared by the spirits — not needed at all, nor having locality, — made out of a sort of atmosphere that emanates from the intended occupants and which takes shape ac- cording to their affections. It is the same selected body 124 SPIRITUAL WORLD FURTHER CONSIDERED. of witnesses who tell us, concerning the clothing of the spirits, that it too comes in all the different ways, and is of all the widely different materials and makes just stated. It is they too who, in telling how spirits accom- plish locomotion in that world the counterpart of this, omit the rail and engine and say nothing of steam-vessels, or of electrical motors. CHAPTER XV. RELIGION IN GENERAL. This word of manifold definition may conveniently be taken as meaning the cultivation of relations with the supernatural, understanding by this last the hidden part of the natural. In early times and while as yet natural phenomena, such as the movements of heavenly bodies and the play of elemental forces, were little understood, these served as a basis for religion as much as those others the how and why of which remain still unknown, and which for convenience may be termed supernatural phe- nomena, until science shall enlarge her borders and take them into her domain, as they have always been in that of nature. They can be classed as objective or such as are perceived as being outside of the perceiver, and sub- jective or such as are perceived as being within him. Objective phenomena are the apparition of the double and like appeals to the outer senses, such as seem to con- firm and support ancestor worship, and are adapted to the lowest order of minds because adapted to all minds. Coming into evidence early they did their work early, with belief of soul and its immortality as result. The like objective phenomena served to support beliefs in the lower order of gods. But to the conception of God that arose in the Chinese, Greelj and Aryan minds in their best estate, neither nat- ural nor supernatural phenomena of the objective sort could have been the support. Such support could have been no other than those subjective intuitions which come to the solitary sage or saint in contemplative quie- 126 RELIGION IN GENERAL. tude impossible in very rude times, and requiring a per- fected language to formulate. Though the god thus coming into belief was in fact merely the first principle in nature, it has been often invested with mundane quali- ties rendering it an object of love and worship, which fitly enough belong to the anthropomorphic ones which preceded it, but hardly to a metaphysical conception, which it is, as instanced by the invocation of Marcus Aurelius to the World, running thus: "O world I love that which thou lovest. Give to me what thou wilt; take from me what thou wilt. Whatever pleases thee pleases me. All comes from thee; all is in thee ; all returns to thee." This may be because, although it is a purely philo- sophical conception, it did not come by the way of phi- losophy, but of revelation, that is of ecstatic intuition, Chinese, Hindu and Neoplatonic sages alike insisting on this, and declaring that such truth cannot be attained to either by books or study ; and thus coming it has the halo of supernatural illumination, forever accepted as guaranty of truth and forever inducing exaltation and fervor. Now such ecstatic intuition is as much a miracle as a spectre is, and thus the latest stage in religious evolution, belief in a philosophical god, like the first stage, belief in an immortal soul, has been attained through supernatural experiences; and these experiences being themselves actualities, whether truly or erroneously interpreted, re- ligion has a basis of fact, therefore a scientific basis, and we need not look for such in any vague longings of the human heart arising none knows how. The supernatural experiences in question having been everywhere the same, the various religions of the world may fairly be considered as having spontaneously arisen each on its own ground, save where the contrary is proved, or is fairly deducible, in the case of a given rite or dogma. The arising of modern Spiritualism in America and other countries where nothing was known of ances- tor worship, is a case of a spontaneously originating, or RELIGION IN GENERAL. 127 reoriginating cult, Spiritualism being, as said before, pre- cisely ancestor worship with sacrifice omitted. Beliefs., Natural atid Institutional. God and soul having thus established themselves in human belief, human ingenuity,stirred by human motives, set to work to build on it. Here is the province of speculation, fabrication, creed and ritual, orthodoxy, authority and priest-craft, in fine, of the Church. An- cestor worship, simple in its origin and by virtue of its simplicity able to do without priest or Church, has through all changes in other things kept its original character. And so, too, when the Hindu sets about find- ing his one only god and by junction with it obtaining release from re - birth, he goes to the woods and not to the temple, and there all by himself and for himself works out his own salvation; and obtains with that release, liberation also from all religious observance whatever, even from caste. And despite the efforts of the priesthood to envelop and absorb saints and sages and appropriate their merit, yoga practice under what- ever name or guise remains essentially the same it always was. Should every religion that to-day exists dis- appear to-morrow and be lost from memory too, yet from elements inherent in the nature of man, he will again evolve a soul and a god, some sort of a god and some mode of immortality, and human nature remaining no better than hitherto, religions of widely varying sorts will arise again from these. Subjective yoga is at this very time re-originating in America, as objective ancestor worship did a half cent- ury ago. Neither of them have needed to be imported; and both are plainly now the same they always were, as to phenomena. The doubles seen in ancient Egypt and the ghosts many times chased and sometimes found by the Society of Psychic Research of modern London are essentially alike. And the method by which the Patri- 128 RELIGION IN GENERAL. arch Isaac " meditating at twilight " got his instructions from Jehovah, that by which the Hindu hermit attains to conscious one-ness with Brahman, and that by which the possible " healer " now seeks development were and are one and the same, namely, mental concentration. The subjective phenomena equally with the objective are obtainable at first hand, and in their presence man stands as near to the supernatural — to the unknown causes of known effects — as is possible to him; all that comes after these is structure of his own fabrication. The evolution of religious ideas has ever been hampered and hoppled by the dogma pervading all religions which accords the highest authority to the oldest revelations, compelling Hindu innovators to make their improved doc- trines conform to the Upanishads and Vedic hymns, and Christian reformers to follow literally the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelations, or else wrest and wrench its meaning to their purpose. The result of thus chaining modern wisdom to ancient ignorance has given theologians a world of trouble, but the way in which those of India contrived to adapt the old ancestor worship which the people would not give up, and which, with its supernat- ural backing, would not let itself be given up, is a speci- men of skill worthy of applause in any ecumenical council. Ancestor worship in its primitive form has no other des- tiny for the soul after death than the world of spirits. This was simple enough, but when the doctrine of re- incarnation came to prevail the sojourn in that world had to be interrupted from time to time to permit of returns to earth; subject to such interruptious, the sojourn was perpetual, and the spiritual world still remained the final home of man. But later, and when it was discovered that that final home was to be in the bosom of Brahman, that re-incarnation was an evil, because all earthly exist- ence was evil, and wise Hindus began to seek release from it through yoga practice, the old and new beliefs were seen to be altogether incompatible. To escape from RELIGION IN GENERAL. 129 these inconsistencies — to reconcile so they could live to- gether the three doctrines of uninterrupted life in a world of spirits, life there interrupted by occasional returns to earth, and reabsorption in the creative principle — the term of sojourn in that world was cut short by definite limitations and the world itself divided into two, the one being, as before has been mentioned, the land of the fathers where the soul of a good man went on a vacation accorded as a reward of merit acquired by religious ob- servances and good deeds to his fellows, for a term of time proportioned to that merit, to end in another re-in- carnation, and the other being the land of the gods, attain- able by yoga practice which had failed to carry the prac- ticer quite up to Brahman, so that when, as was often the case, death overtook him while he was incompletely de- veloped, and yet was too much a god to come back to earth again as a man. To suit such cases the other part of the world of spirits was appropriated to the use of such demi-gods demi-men, where they could tarry and resume and carry on to completion the work of self-deliverance. Thus adroitly was ineradicable ancestor worship not only reconciled with re-incarnation and its attendant Karma and with Yoga, but made to serve the uses of each. This toleration by Hinduism in its perfected state of the primeval ancestor worship in which it had birth is justified by excellent results in moral guidance and spiritual comfort for the body of the people, but even if not by these, by the fact that having a scientific basis in those mystical phenomena so easily obtainable by all, it could not have been suppressed by any such means as Hinduism's tolerant spirit would have allowed it to take. Of course a like justification avails for all other relig- ions, that have tolerated it. Again Hinduism stands acquitted of absurdity in respect to the retention in its celestial pantheon of myriads of gods old and new, and in its earthly temples of the myriads of idols represent- ing them, as well as in respect to the enormous accumu- 130 RELIGION IN GENERAL. lation of rites and teachings regarding them, when it avows that all are but educational means for conducting ignorant but devout believers along a path that may in time bring them to something better — may conduct them by the way of religion out of religion and into a knowl- edge that dispenses with religion. Hell. Every creed, however mild in the beginning, comes at last to have a hell, but it is said by those wise in such things that it is in every case a late comer. At first the threatening of mild and temporary punishments such as poor crops and barren cattle sufficed, but when later it became evident that such punishment by no means fol- lowed promptly nor certainly, upon transgressions, there happened what always happens when the execution of any law is neither summary nor sure; and the law- makers resorted to severity as a remedy for uncertainty. But it is a remedy that must be forever ineffectual, save to make matters worse, and multiplying offences are again followed by increasing severity, for gods, priests nor any tyrants like to be frustrated, until at last offend- ers are no longer let off with sufferings which are merely incidental afflictions of their earthly life intensified, but are gathered together in some place where they can be systematically tormented; and this is hell, moderate and temporary at first, but in most cases getting worse and worse until it is roasting hot and eternally enduring. The steps by which such a result is reached are well shown in the Chinese " Book of Rewards and Punish- ments." It begins with implicitly recognizing the uncer- tainty and consequent inefficacy of the milder modes of discipline, by giving a series of accounts of cases wherein evil-doing had actually been followed by loss of health, wealth, life and especially of official position, in one gen- eration if not in another, all very specific and in detail, with names, places and dates, so that any doubter might RELIGION IN GENERAL. 131 go and verify the statements. But after adding one - earthly affliction to another, until every kind of mortal misery was appropriated as penalty for sin, it seems to have been found necessary to follow the sinful soul beyond the gates of death and punish it there in the way most appropriate to souls, namely, by making it pass through bodies of beasts, and that failing, through those of de- mons. Then, following the failure of even these, came imprisonment in Hell. Then Hell, having exhausted its terrors in vain, the whole series of inflictions that pre- ceded it were added to it in one comprehensive cumulative sentence, and every torment bodies or souls could suffer, or gods or priests contrive, was hurled at sin. Could anything more be done to make men good? Yes; the children of the offender could, in case of earthly punish- ment, be included in the sentence to augment its inten- sity, and it could be inflicted on them alone in case he escaped, to increase its certainty of hitting somewhere. And this was accordingly done, and in China to-day the Divine law in this respect reads the same as that deliv- ered to the Jews, and to which Christianity is indebted for its dogma of original sin. But in the book of rewards and punishments, it is only the worst grade of sinners that such clumsy justice applies to, as it is only the lowest of the populace who believe in and fear it; other grades it visits according to the measure of their oft'ences. So, also, did the Egyptian High Court of Assessors, with its weights and scales, and terms of transmigration of ad- justed length, and a court open night and day, like the Court of Chancery, that there might be no delay of jus- tice. So, also, does the Hindu Karma, which so operates that the exact penalty due every sin comes automatically and affixes itself and stays until full expiation is accom- plished. Neoplatonism had very much the same method. And it is from this method of exactly adapting retribu- tion to transgression that we have the word justice^ and 132 RELIGION IN GENERAL. not from indiscriminate, unmeasured, unweighed ven- geance, as some people seem to think. The mental attitude which most modern students of religion assume consists in turning the back on every supernatural occurrence or thing. Disporting them- selves in the field of religious evolution, they ignore and pass by the most important class of religious facts, without which religion would be an altogether different thing from what it now is. Now, whether wisely or unwisely, the original religion makers believed in the supernatural, or at least adapted their work to the minds of those who did, and their thinking processes can hardly be comprehended by writers, however learned and acute, who not only disbelieve in it with all the energy of their nature, but wholly ignore the effect of belief in it on others. Thus Emile Burnouf attributes the conversion of Saint Paul to the remorse that came over him after assisting at the cruel murder of Saint Stephen, without even hinting at the account Paul himself gave of it when speaking for himself before King Agrippa, namely, a noonday vision, in which, surrounded with a light above the brightness of the sun, that caused him and his com- panions to fall to the earth, a voice spoke to and re- proached him for persecuting Christians, urged him to repent and do works meet for repentance, and concluded by telling him where to go and get initiated in the mys- teries of Christianity. Other theorizers, in tracing out the evolution of the idea of one only god of the uni- verse, write as if they never had heard of his having come to any meditating saint or yogi, in his ecstasy, filling him with light and joy and a conviction of divine reality and presence too absolute to be compassed by the word " revelation," or ever heard of the myriads of such who have in all times spent their lives in seeking God by solitary meditation, and believed they found Him with a faith that had all the force of absolute knowledge. And our theorizers write out their conclusions quite as if RELIGION IN GENERAL. 133 the idea in question could have come in no other way than the ordinary channels of thought and by dint of pure ratiocination. The interpretation of the objective supernatural facts as meaning the immortality of the soul and the interpre- tation of subjective ones as meaning God, that have been heretofore made, may both of them fail, and yet super- naturalism in the end, and by the light of better investi- gation than has yet been given it, maybe found to prove both God and immortality, though of a kind not hitherto conceived of, or it may be found to prove no such thing as either. The world is not yet so old but that its think- ers may be accused of making mistakes. And we of these times are quite at liberty to consider whether either group of supernatural phenomena has delivered its real message to mankind, and its last. Morality and Religion. Morality, like hell, which is sometimes supposed to be its foundation, is also a late-comer into religions, and into more than one of them has never got at all. The gods of old Chaldea expended their wrath freely on offenders against themselves, and had little or none left for offences of man against man, that is to say, against morality. The Shinto, as we have seen, has no moral code. The Chris- tian scheme of salvation in its original conception was a scheme for saving offenders from merited punishment, in itself an immoral proceeding. The sin charged up against all the children of Adam on account of an act of disobedience so transcendently grand as to merit the perpetual roasting with fire of one and all of them belit- tles into nothingness whatever they may commit against each other on their own account, and so belittles morality. It is true that Jesus taught a morality claimed to be as good as any prevailing in his time, and that the Ten Command- ments are good so far as they go, but obedience to them both in every iota would not carry a man one step nearer to 134 RELIGION IN GENERAL. heaven or further from hell than the vilest sinner in the world, however much homilies and catechisms may insist on good works as an ornamental accomplishment. It is also true that after a few centuries of experience had shown the demoralizing effect of such a state of belief, the Church of Rome invented a purgatory, which it has never attempted to describe, much less to furnish plans and specifications of, and which fits so badly into the sys- tem it was added to as to make an incomprehensible muddle of what was before at least simple enough. Luther saved his church from such an incongruity by leaving out of it both purgatory and morality. According to Sweden- borg he omitted good works and introduced justification by faith instead, because he would not imitate the Church of Rome which had lugged in good works late in time, to save a falling cause. Protestantism remains still without a morality, however moral Protestantdom may be. As a religion it lends no sanction of punishment or reward to the enforcement of good conduct on the earth, because the best man that treads it must go to hell unless he ac- cepts Christ's offer of salvation, and the worst will go to heaven if he does. Logically, its concern is with Adam's immorality, and not that of his descendants. Old Taoism never had a morality any more than it had a god. Chuang-Tzu in his exposition of it makes unceas- ing war upon Confucius, the greatest of the world's moralizers, and persistently sneers at his " charity and duty to the neighbor." Taoism declared for the "natural goodness of the heart of man," and for almost nihilistic freedom of human action. It was a high magic, and planed far above all terrestrial manners and customs; even virtue, humanity and justice were left below it. Its aim was goodness, to which all these were but the fallible means, and happiness was contained in that good- ness. Beyond question, the Tao-Te-King sets up as high a standard of human conduct as any sacred book extant. RELIGION IN GENERAL. 135 Finally, the gentle Eskimo, the best man in the world, is as godless and lawless as he is good. Religion and morality ought never to have been asso- ciated. Each has been a disturber of the other. They cannot keep step together. Religion is in principle in- fallible, therefore unchangeable, therefore rigid, fixed, unshrinkable and unexpansive. Morality (manners) and ethics (customs) by their very natures are things of times and modes, of growth, and not of institution, and need room, time and freedom to grow. Religion does change, it is true, but since its principles are against change it hardly ever does so voluntarily, and usually has to be improved in the way despotisms are, by heresy and schism, corresponding to rebellion and revolution. Thus its modifications are painful and late-coming. And they have generally been forced upon it by growing morality that it had enveloped and closed, but could not forever hold hide-bound. During the last half century American Protestantism has been amended by the addition of two new sins, namely, holding slaves and drinking wine, both undoubtedly sanctioned by the Bible as much now as ever, as distinctly as eating meat is, which great efforts are being made to degrade in its turn into the category of sins. But the contest over these questions, in which the defenders of the Bible have been clearly in the right, has so wrenched and shaken its authority in the estima- tion of people that it remains to-day too weak to effect- ively maintain a single point of doctrine after it has gone out of fashion as a point of morality. It would be wrong to say that the sanctions afforded by religion to morality are ineffective, but in making a nursling of anything it is also made a weakling; and Christianity, having in course of time become discredited, the morality of Christendom, bereft of its prop, has, no doubt, suffered in many respects, notably in honesty. But to countervail this, the gain has been so great in humanity and tolerance, kindliness and charity, that a 136 RELIGION IN GENERAL. considerable profit remains from the decadence of faith; while there also remains a fair inference that the natural evolution of society, liberated in part by that decadence, has in all respects done better work than before. That morality should be left free to achieve progress on its own account and go its own way towards its own evolutionary goal is the more evident when it is con- sidered how very remote that goal still is. The time is yet far off when the natural tendency which Spencer has well shown altruism has to run itself out shall bring in a social state wherein every man will be so bent on doing good to others that the only injury others can possibly inflict on him will be to refuse to let him do it. If we are thus remote from the attainment of ideals presently existing, much more so must we be from that which the Tao-Te-King affirms to have existed in ancient China, and beyond which it seems inconceivable that any ideal could go. According to that, the Chinese race at least once actually enjoyed and afterwards fell from a social state that was above virtue, above humanity, above justice, thus above morality — a state wherein each man did virtuous acts without dreaming he had virtue, and humane acts without dreaming he was humane, and only when he had so far back-slidden as to be simply just did he know that he was so. Turning and looking back toward such a golden age, real or supposed, wherein not even a golden rule was needed for man's guidance, nor any thing like religion known,* and setting before the mind the ideal from which one people are said to have fallen as the one to be aimed at by all, those of our day may easily see that in running the race set before her morality will make the better speed the less she is harnessed to religion or anything else. Kant claimed to have found in the moral law, discover- able by conscience, and an inborn sense of obligation to * Legge in " Texts of Taoism." RELIGION IN GENERAL. 137 follow it, the best imaginable guaranty of good conduct. He declared that one who by reference to that law was restrained from committing an evil action which other- wise he would by force of evil impulses within him have committed, was more praiseworthy than one who had no such impulses to restrain. If Kant meant by this that praise and credit should be accorded as an encourage- ment to those who could or would do good only when that law required them to, and need not be bestowed on those who needed no such encouragement, he was right enough. But if he meant to say that these last were not more admiration-worthy and love-worthy, and more creditable to their Creator than the others — or meant to say that the perfect man of Lao-Tsee was not a more desirable citizen of the world than they, he was wrong. There is no man who would not rather travel round the globe with a companion who could feel no impulse, nor respond to any temptation to injure him, than with one whose heart continually prompted him to murder and rob, but who as continually resisted, however effectually, the prompting, because on second thoughts he recalled that there was a moral law within him which prohibited rob- bery and murder, and that to break it would make him feel more uncomfortable than to keep it. The object of Kant's praise must be ranked in the third degree of moral degradation, according to the classification of the Chinese sage, namely, in that of justice, requiring, to keep him in order, constant reference to law, and acting always "with intention "; while those, if such now exist, in the degree next higher, humanity, or the next higher still, virtue, both being yet below the highest moral state, Tao, know nothing of intention, nor require to consult conscience, doing as they will^ and not as they must. CHAPTER XVI. THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. For the established fact that men's good dispositions toward each other are capable of improvement, and do improve by living together under orderly conditions, many causes have been supposed besides religion. First in order comes law, with force at its back, as in the case of governmental enactments, or with only moral sanctions of punishment or reward resting in public opinion and social esteem, or the expectation expressed in the saying of Lao-Tsee that "whatsoever you do unto others, that also will they do unto you." Out of long-continued obe- dience to law grows the habit of doing what it commands and also the notion that it is more the law we have to answer to than the principles it formulates, from which habit and notion has arisen the belief taught by Kant, but controverted by Schopenhauer, of a categorical im- perative, a "must," an " ought," that every man is born with, impelling him to obey a moral law that is also his birthright; and from them too has also arisen the idea that justice, something incidental to and qualifying the application of a general law to particular cases, is the principle of morality. Another and a potent cause is the extension of sym- pathy, love and friendship which close and long-con- tinued relations of men with each other, fostered by peace and social order, tend to bring about. These softening influences originating in the family, thence extending to the tribe, thence to the neighborhood, and thence to the nation, finally reach out to the whole world at least such is their tendency. There was a time THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. 139 when the mating of the sexes brought with it no sexual love, but it came. There was a time when paternal love was a stranger to the human heart, but it came. There was a time too when all outside the tribe were enemies or prey, for whom in their sufferings no pity was felt, and in whose joy there was no rejoicing. If one kind of love can grow in the heart, and improve its dispositions to good, so can another, and another still; and all men may become brothers, and loving ones, if they will only keep the peace long enough. If for instance sexual love is a prin- ciple in man's nature, acting of its own motion, and independent of evolution, though capable of being devel- oped by it, so may be all other love, whether arising between children of the same family, or reaching out to universal brotherhood. Still another cause is by certain mystical philosophers found in sympathy. The knowledge which the uncon- scious part of us is by such supposed to have, that all mankind are one, so that when one strikes another he hits himself, they consider to be the true basis of mo- rality. As such knowledge is only imparted to the con- sciousness through channels properly called intuitive, this doctrine commends itself to the intuitional school of moralists; while, seeing it resolves the motive to moral conduct into pure selfishness, it equally should commend itself to the opposite school of utilitarians, whose teach- ings the first opprobriously denounce as selfish. Much may be said in favor of the moralizing efficacy of this sub-consciousness of a transcendent unity. The fore- going are the most important of the theories advanced by those who labor in thought over the problem of eth- ical evolution. Probably most readers will judge that of all the causes above stated as working out that evo- lution, law and force are the worst, and sympathy and love the best. That these last are also the most efficient is of late coming to be recognized in pulpit-teaching, which yearly relies more on love and less and less on ter- 140 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. ror; though our law-makers, by the multiplicity of their enactments of late years so notable, show that they are far from having learned that all law is essentially evil, and only justifiable by strong necessity. But are there not still other causes at work to induce in men's natures dispositions to good conduct ? The world did not have to wait for modern science to discover and proclaim the power of mind over mind by other and more direct means than logical ones, and the resulting control over the thought, will and actions of one person by the intentions of another. Nor was Plo- tinus telling news when in the second century after Christ he said: " Every being who has relations with another can be bewitched by it; it is bewitched or attracted by the being with which it is in rapport. It is only the being concentrated in itself (by contemplation of the intelligible world) that cannot be bewitched. Magic exerts its influence on all action and on all active life, for active life tends towards things which enchant it." But long before Plotinus wrote Chinese rulers actually applied the principle to the government of their states, calling in from their seclusion sages "concentrated in themselves " to bewitch bad citizens into becoming good ones. All know that cases are common of couples who begin their married life in a state of habitual strife, but who, as years go on, grow more and more peaceable, and finally close it as friends, if not as lovers — a result, to be sure, which may in a measure be due to their learning by experience to avoid causes of contention and contact with each other's rough points, but is sometimes so marked as to bring in the supposition that it may also be due to mutual, long-continued, unconsciously-exerted " suggestion " operating in their natures permanent changes of dispositions, a process as mysterious as that which, in couples who begin as lovers, brings them, at the end of a long and harmonious life, to look and think alike, something often noticed, admired and wondered at. THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. 141 All which looks as if the supernatural sometimes comes into the province of familiar life to play its part as an evolutionary force, or at least something not usually credited with such power. Moved by self-interest, each member of a given community must desire that every other shall be good to him, which is the same as saying that all will desire that all others shall be kind, just and orderly, and so desiring, will in their business or social intercourse be continually influencing each other, by true hypnotic "suggestion," to altruistic acts. The buyer will habitually suggest to the seller to be content with moderate profits and give good measure, and the sick man will mentally implore the physician to nurse him and not the disease. And against the concentric suggestions of all who deal with or employ them, these will have no resisting power beyond the selfish desire and mental action of their respective selves— in each case it will be the auto-suggestion of one against the direct suggestions of many. The result will be more than a succession in each supposed case of altruistic acts which leave the inner nature of him who performs them untouched, a series of good deeds done, by a bad man it may be, under magical compulsion, for a hypnotized person acts from the immediate impulsion of his own subjective mind, which alone is amenable to control by suggestion, and his acts seem to him to come spontaneously from his own will. Therefore, the suggestion that he perform a certain neigh- borly duty is also a suggestion that he is a good neighbor, which by repetition tends to make him such in reality. Contrary to this would be the case of a slave, compelled by fear of the lash to do the same acts that such a neigh- bor would do from a good disposition. He would have his fears strengthened, but hardly his benevolence, by the discipline. Evidently those actions of man towards man which spring from fear of punishment or hope of reward must be in their essence external and leave the inner nature of him untouched ; whereas the ^?/d!^z-hypnotic 142 THE EVOLUTIOX OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. suggestion, by which the concentric selfish wills of a whole community act on the individual impulses of each, enters into the very nature of each and works a per- manent change; and this, as said before, because every suggestion to do a good act is also a suggestion that it is to be done from a spontaneous impulse, and so amounts to a suggestion to be, naturally, and therefore perma- nently, good. Human activities result from human nature acted on by earthly conditions. A superior nature may overcome evil conditions and an inferior nature may fail to react under good ones, but in all cases both elements have to be taken into account in reasoning from the past to the future. Is it possible that at any past epoch there has ex- isted on our earth a race of men so highly favored in their inborn dispositions and outward circumstances that a social state has resulted, justly entitling that epoch to be called a golden age? Lao-Tsee insisted that there had, as indeed others of the ancients did, though none so emphat- ically as he ; and in his striving against the school of moral- ists, whose work was doubtless rendered necessary by the growing wickedness of his people, which he admitted, but would not admit could be cured by moralization, turned his face toward it as to an age himself had dwelt in (if not during his then lifetime of twelve hundred years, at least in some one of his earlier re-incarnations), wherein men could keep order without law, do good to one another without religion, and be happy in their loves without morality, knowing, as he expressed it, their mothers but not their fathers — an age wherein good actions were spontaneous, and performed without refer- ence to any rewards or punishments to follow, or even consciousness that they were virtuous, humane or just. The totality of the orderly conditions which permit the evolution of goodness in the heart of man is summed up in the words security and freedom^ and these again in the word peace. Egypt and Babylonia developed their THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. 143 civilization under the shelter from hostile invasion afforded by bordering deserts and seas. India, Greece and Italy are peninsulas sealed by mountain ranges. Britain and Japan are islands. But the happy society of the golden age to which Lao-Tsee has alluded, in the Tas-Te-King, if it ever existed, needed a far greater measure of tranquillity for its evolution than such civili- zation as we know of did. The people attaining to it, or born into it, must have been so averse to violence as to abstain from going to war, and also disposed and able to keep war from coming to them; moreover, able and disposed to live together in peace without need to invoke that other form of violence called law. But never in any age of the world would a people so constituted have been allowed to occupy any desirable territory, or in fact any part of the habitable globe, properly so called, while there were warlike races who coveted it; and pressed upon by such, the lovers of peace must have been driven from place to place, until a final refuge was found in a region uninhabitable by their pursuers. Such a region is the narrow belt which bounds on its southward limit the great ice-cap of the north, a belt which is now to be looked for in Alaska and Greenland, but which once was found as far southward as central France. This movable Arctic circle, so to call it, the refugees would be forced to follow, as with increasing warmth of climate it slowly moved northward, subsisting as they went on their fellow refugees the reindeer, mastodon and musk ox, or perish- ing by the way. And to subsist and not perish they must have been intelligent, vigorous and heroic. On the American shores of the Arctic Ocean, hemmed in between perilous waters and frozen land, some forty thousand Eskimos yet manage to keep alive. They are of the type that has been termed mongoloid, though of much lighter complexion than the mongols proper, of stature averaging five feet, six inches ; well formed, hardy and strong and with agreeable and smiling faces. They 144 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. are exceedingly intelligent and skillful, remarkably in- genious, with astonishing readiness in emergencies, learn rapidly, have much artistic skill, a taste for music, and a keen sense of humor. " Their invention and dexterity" are, according to Captain Cook, "at least equal to that of any other nation." Though strongly averse to war, yet when assailed by their savage neighbors, they fight fiercely and well, while in their habitual encounters with the turbulent sea and its monsters they show a heroism which proves that courage naturally and of right takes its place among the virtues in a perfect character, nor needs for its development the practice of man-slaying. In the Journal of the Ethnological Society for 1848, the characteristics of the Eskimos are summed up thus: "They are uniformly described as scrupulously honest, careful of the aged, affectionate to their children, devo- tedly attached to each other and fond of their domestic animals. So little are they inclined to quarrel that after two years' acquaintance with the natives of Melbourne Peninsula, Sir Edward Parry has related only one case where it extended to blows." It is further said of them that they share their food as a matter of course with whoever is in need. As a phrenologist would expect, their skulls are described as " largish " and also as high, showing a good development of the moral faculties. They are " morbidly anxious not to give offence," fas- tidiously ceremonious and polite, carrying the latter vir- tue so far that it is said, " They always, in their dealings with the Danes of Greenland, leave it to the buyer to fix the price of what they sell," and "in their intercourse with each other indulge in much hyperbolical compliment and language courteous from the teeth outward. " Father Barnum, a Jesuit missionary lately from among them, adds his testimony to the foregoing by telling us they are gentle, hospitable and good-natured. He also says their language is magnificent and rich, very complicated, and free from harsh sounds. THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. 145 Per contra, though absolutely honest towards each other, it is said that some of them will sometimes steal "unconsidered trifles," like harpoons, fish-hooks, knives, etc., left in their way by strangers; but concerning this, Captain Parry truly observed: "We must make due allowance for the degree of temptation to which they were daily exposed, amidst the boundless stores of wealth which our ships appeared to them to furnish." They can bear grudges too, will secretly injure those who in- jure them, and will even lie in wait and kill an enemy; and "when a murder is committed it appears that the nearest relation or most intimate friend of the slain has a right to kill the murderer;" this is secretly, of course, for they are so averse to violence that they will "not even kill an enemy except by stealth." This bearing grudges and secretly revenging injuries would naturally result from aversion to violence whether of words or deeds and depend on the same principle which causes them, good fighters as they are when pushed to the wall, to avoid war as long as they can; thus it is from a principle of mildness, itself a form of goodness, that they in such cases act. But such retaliations must needs be rare, and only resorted to in cases clearly proved, or they would not be acquiesced in by the community, and would besides bring on counter and cumulative retaliations, necessitating an established government. They are in reality judicial proceedings carried on without cost to the county. Lastly, the Eskimos are accused of sometimes indulging in polygamy and polyandry, and of tolerating without the least pang of jealousy the free-kindness their wives manifest towards strangers. In short, although their family methods are such as are entirely to their own liking, they have not yet adopted ours. Let the most be made of this that can. And making the most of all the foregoing, and even allowing nothing for the prejudice of the missionaries through whom chiefly the accusations have come, nor for the contaminating con- U6 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. tact of the Europeans and Americans, whose worst rep- resentatives have been for a century and more taking advantage of the afore-mentioned free-kindness to adul- terate the Eskimo's blood with their own racial ferocity of character and poison it with syphilitic virus, while their best ones have been trying to make death terrible to them instead of what they have been used to consider it, a welcome relief from a life of peculiar hardships and an entrance into a paradise as good as they can imagine, there still remains a people whose conduct is sufficiently perfect for all practical purposes, a people in fact as much so as they could be and not be quite characterless. They are, literally speaking, too good for this world, since their best virtue, aversion to war, has disabled them to hold their own in any part of it of use to other races. " What an admirable government they must have had," one who holds morality to be a creation of state- craft might exclaim; "what severe laws, what a well- drilled police, what sharp detectives, what strong prisons, what frequent executions! " While one who traces moral evolution to a religious origin will say, " what a severe god, what a cruel devil, and what a hot hell must have been theirs!" But no; these good outcasts are abso- lutely without government, or law, God or religion, morality, or even customs. Like the Chinese of the golden age, they do good not because commanded to do so by any of these, nor because it is right, but because it is their humor to do so. "They have," says one authority, "no chiefs or political or military rulers." One Fabricius described them in his day, as " Sine Dom- ino regunter, aiit, consuetudine." " They live in a state of perfect freedom," says another, "no one apparently claiming authority over or acknowledging the least sub- ordination to another except what is due from children to their parents; an Eskimo is subject to no man's con- trol." It is true that they take counsel of their elders, by some travellers thought to be chiefs, and employ med- THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. 147 icine men, by some mistaken for priests, but the former pretend to no authority and the latter do not undertake to rule the natural world from the spiritual one; *' no kind of religious worship seems to exist among them," says one traveller, and Lubbock's " Pre-historic Times " quotes Crantz as saying: " The Greenland Eskimos have neither religion nor idolatrous worship, nor so much as any ceremonies to be perceived tending towards it." There is an old story of a sick king whom nothing could cure but wearing the shirt of a perfectly happy man; but unfortunately, the only perfectly happy man to be found in his whole realm never had owned a shirt. In like manner, were the modern rulers of a sick state to send commissioners to the good folk of Greenland or Alaska to obtain copies of their bible, statute book or moral code to apply to the healing of their nation, those commissioners would have to return empty-handed and report that the best race on the globe were absolutely without government, none of them ever intentionally obey- ing a law, or a " categorical imperative," keeping a com- mandment or following a custom, but that each did as he pleased because it pleased him to do so. They might also report that though the Eskimos believe themselves to be the happiest race on the earth and have much pity for all others, not one among them ever had a shirt to his back. But they have in a large degree the virtue of being sen- sitive to public opinion. " Nothing so effectually re- strains the Greenlander from vice as the dread of public disgrace, "says one authority. Another tells us: " They decide their quarrels by a match of singing and dancing which they call the Singing Combat. If a Greenlander thinks himself aggrieved by another, he discovers no symptom of revengeful designs, anger or vexation, but he composes a satirical poem, which he recites with sing- ing and dancing in the presence of his domestics and particularly the female part of his family, till they know 148 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. it by rote. He then in the face of the whole country challenges his antagonist to a satirical duel, ... he who has the last word wins the trial." Surely so mild a chastisement as this, and the knowledge that every serious trespass on the neighbor will bring a quietly and secretly inflicted retaliation in kind, the offence being the measure of its own punishment, would have advantages over the rule of brute force., as Godwin calls it, on which civilized society relies to preserve order. Kindred to, one might say identical with, their aver- sion to be governed is the dislike of the Eskimos to con- trol of every kind. It is very difficult to induce them to enter into a contract of service, though when they do it is observed with "slavish" fidelity. They are the truest lovers of freedom that live. Their aversion to war, on which their destiny, and may be that of the whole human race has turned, is important enough to be well considered. Its roots must lie deep in their natures. One root may be their repugnance to the presence of death. The traveller Hall reports that "they have a superstitious objection to use, or even touch, anything that has been in a house containing a dead body." And they remove it for burial not by the door, but by a win- dow, or if there be none, through a hole made for the purpose. From this repugnance, mingled with an ex- treme sensitiveness to the sufferings of others, especially of those they love, it is that in some cases "where a person is evidently dying they place by him everything which can soothe and comfort his last moments, including warm covering, and leave the ingloo or house, which they close up, thus converting it into a tomb." Another root may be their sense of shame, a sense of no mean importance as a regulator of human conduct. (Schopenhauer goes so far as to say that where it arises it is good proof that the act which causes it is evil, pro- creation, for instance.) With the Eskimos war is indecent and murder obscene. Strange as it may seem, and hard THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. 149 as it may be to explain, to them, violence of every kind is something to blush for; and this being admitted, the power of mere shame to restrain from deeds of violence may easily be also admitted. The vestal virgins were withheld from suicide by knowing that if any of them should commit it her body would be publicly exposed. King Candulus had to die because he offended his wife's modesty by showing her naked to his friend. And if every senator and representative of ours who should vote to declare war were compelled to exhibit himself before the first army that marched to battle in like plight with that modest, murderous queen, unquestionably he would be thereby inclined to peaceful counsels. Another root of this hatred of strife so strange in a world of slaughter like ours may be that evenness of temper often wondered at by all who go among the Eski- mos. Just as great billows cannot rise and rage except the surface of the sea be first rippled with wavelets, and in fact depend on them, since when the wavelets are quieted with a little oil the billows subside, so human rage depends for its support on the irritability of men's tem- pers, and cannot arise while they remain unruffled. Now this support singularly fails in the case of the impertur- able Eskimos, of whom Captain Lyon remarks "... that their evenness of temper is not surpassed, if equaled, by any other nation." Another observer goes further still, and Father Barnum relates that on one occasion he was in a boat manned by them when, just as it was being pulled past a most dangerous point, where it required the utmost care and steadiness to avoid being carried by a current upon and dashed against a point of rocks, one of the crew mal-adroitly broke his oar, and that in the season of suspense which followed and while the man was striving to pull forth another from the bottom of the boat and get it into position, he looked first at the rocks that seemed to roar louder for the prey that was nearing their jaws with every anxious instant that passed and then at 150 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. the faces of the crew, but saw no sign nor heard any word of anger or impatience ; instead, only a smile of surprise ; nor was the offender reproached afterwards, A crew of Americans might have kept silence while the peril was upon them, but could they have smiled ? And would they not as soon as safe sworn with many oaths and much em- phasis ? Such a people could not easily be stirred to make mobs of themselves and shout '■'■ Nacht Paris ! " or '"'■ A Berlin! " An imperturbable temper, is it not of like quality with the state of mental and emotional indiffer- ence which after years of tranquil contemplation comes to reward the Hindu yoga or other saint, and which Plotinus describes as so complete that a true sage, one who had "attained," could witness unmoved the sacking of a city; so that the word "philosophical " has in com- mon parlance for one meaning, quietude of temper ? Retaliation in kind could not be practiced by any less philosophical people than the Eskimos, without resulting in a state of anarchy such as would make a government of some kind necessary. That it has not in their case may be attributed to an inertia of temper which only a much greater provocation than would suffice to stir ours can move to violence, and also to an altruism much sur- passing ours. And we must suppose that in Greenland and Alaska the retaliatory punishment is justly propor- tional to the offense, and is therefore submitted to with- out bringing on counter retaliation as it would in so-called civilized countries, where accordingly it could not be allowed to take the place of law, though it often rages despite of law, especially in America, in some parts of which country the counter retaliation brought on by bountiful over-measure of revenge occasionally extends till it involves large family connections in feuds that be- come hereditary, and sometimes only end with the exter- mination of one of the warring clans. In disputes between nations, each party being its own judge, is sure to overestimate its injuries and claims and THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. 151 underestimate those of the other, and in exacting re- dress or inflicting vengeance the one will be as sure to do so in over-measure and the other to refuse submission to it even if under-measured, and to cherish hopes of reprisal and re-revenge. Thus war breeds war, and a state of national anarchy has arisen like what would arise if in courts of justice each plaintiff in a proceeding were, be- sides drafting his complaint, to bring in his own verdict, render his own judgment upon it, and take the execution of that judgment into his own hands. To day Christen- dom on both sides of the ocean seems only pausing from battle to get its breath; and who but knows that the evolution of humane dispositions, which has of late achieved its best result in causing the British people to abandon private warfare in the form of duelling, must, operate a long while yet before that or any other people will allow its government to accept as the Eskimos must, and be content with, less than the full measure of redress it conceives itself entitled to have. Before private war- fare could be brought to an end in the British Isles some one gentleman of high standing and known courage had to take an insult without giving a challenge. What great nation will begin the ending of national warfare by pocketing an insult or forgiving an injury ? A ques- tion out of which arises another: what ministry or party could keep in power after a vote to do either ? The few reflect, the multitude rage, and rage prevails. The peaceful Eskimos, by choosing to run rather than fight, have secured for themselves, we may say, five thou- sand years of tranquillity during which the forces that make for altruism could work. Had they been allowed during those years to dwell in the temperate zone instead of being driven to the snows to live without fire or water, the fruits of their long peace might have been something more than the practice of social virtue among some widely scattered outcasts. There can be little doubt that the remnant of forty 153 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. thousand, which is all they now count, represent a much larger number who once found refuge in the larger belt of polar region accessible to them when the southern boundary of the ice-cap was traced across the central parts of Asia, Europe and America. Possibly the ances- tors of the Eskimos may once have spread over large portions of the temperate zone, and afterwards been driven from it by warlike tribes multiplying upon their borders; a small pack of wolves can chase a large flock of sheep. It seems to be now the opinion of those who investigate such things that the cave-dwellers of Central Europe were of the same race as the present Eskimos. One authority tells us that: "These traces of the most ancient races of men as yet discovered in Europe may with a high degree of probability be referred to the Eskimos. The bone needles and many of the harpoons, as well as the flint spear-heads, arrow-heads and scrapers, are of precisely the same form as those now in use among the Eskimos. The artistic designs from the caves of France, Belgium and Switzerland are identical in plan and workmanship with those of the Eskimos, with this difference only, that the hunting scenes, familiar to the Palaeolithic cave-dwellers, were not the same as those familiar to the shores of the Arctic Ocean. Each repre- sented the animals which he knew, and the whale, walrus and seal were unknown to the inland dwellers of Aqui- taine, just as the mammoth, bison and wild horse are unknown to the Eskimos. The reindeer, which they both knew, is represented in the same way by both. The practice of accumulating large quantities of the bones of animals round their dwelling-places, and the habit of splitting the bones for the sake of the marrow, are the same in both. The hides were prepared with the same sort of instruments, and the needles with which they were sewn together are of the same pattern. In both there was the same disregard of sepulture. All these facts can hardly be mere coincidences caused by both THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. 153 people leading a savage life under similar conditions. The conclusion, therefore, seems inevitable that, so far as we have any evidence of the race to which the cave- dwellers belong, that evidence points only in the direc- tion of the Eskimo." . . . ''The reindeer and musk sheep afford food now to the Eskimos in the Arctic Circle, just as they afforded it to the Palseolithic hunters in Europe; and both these animals have been traced by their remains from the Pyrenees to the northeast, through Europe and Asia as far as the very regions in which they now live. The mammoth and bison, too, have been tracked by their remains in the frozen river gravels through Siberia as far as the American side of the Straits of Behring. Paleolithic man appeared in Europe with the Arctic mammalia, lived in Europe with them, and in all human probability retreated to the northeast with them." It will be noted that the course of the migration here set forth was through regions now included in the Chinese Empire. Could it have been that a portion of the on-mov- ing lovers of peace halted and stood at bay, then turned on and overcame their pursuers, or by the exercise of their superior intelligence got control of the tribes press- ing upon them just as the migrating Hindus mastered the aborigines of Hindustan, and just as the Chinese did, in fact, after the dawn of history, master those of the valley of the Yellow River into which they descended from the North ? Could it have been that ages before this descent they became in some such way masters of their own movements, then fusing more or less with their ferocious neighbors, became warlike enough to hold their own, and ceasing to be nomads, settled down as husband- men, and so became Chinese, while others, moving on, became the Eskimos, as we know them now ? Both the Chinese and Eskimos are Mongolian in type, both are of lighter complexion than others of that type, and both have narrow eyes, such as are supposed to result from snow-glare in frozen regions, and such as even the ani- 154 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. malswho exist there show. Professor Tiele, of Leyden, writing under the heading of " Religion " in the Ency- clopaedia Britannica, says the Eskimos have many of the Mongolian customs. They resemble the Chinese again in being excessively ceremonious and polite, preferring to lie rather than hurt the feelings of others, and in having great artistic ability and handicraft skill. The Eskimos dislike to be governed; the Chinese, though overmuch governed, dislike it, too; have as little as possible to do with courts or officials, and buy their peace of both with bribes, just as they would pay tribute to brigands. And the ability to do without government or law, which the Eskimos actually prove themselves to possess, was matched in the legendary China of Lao-Tsee, wherein men were good without regard to law, and whence seem to have come down to historic times strangely demo- cratic, or rather nihilistic, ideas, which have found ex- pression in sayings of their great sage like these: " He who rules ruins; " " Let him rule the empire who can let things alone ; " " The more regulations the worse off the people; " " The more show of penalties the more rogues, therefore the wise man says, I will be quiet and the peo- ple will have a chance to improve themselves; " " Over- legislation increases crime;" "If the government is meddling there will be constant law-breaking." " The right of rebellion," says one writer, " enters into the very texture of Chinese education. " Another calls them, " the least revolutionary, but the most rebellious of peoples." The Chinese as known in historic times cannot be ex- pected to prove their descent from the cave-dwellers by emulating the lawless goodness of the present Eskimos, seeing their history is that of a warlike people, and they have largely adulterated their blood with that of the fero- cious tribes they have absorbed, both of which causes would have hindered the evolution or the practice of such goodness; yet they were good enough to have be- come a thousand years ago the most civilized people in THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. 155 the world, and seventeen hundred years ago Ptolemy could write of them that they were "civilized, mild, just and frugal," and to-day there can be no doubt in any informed and impartial mind that life and property are as safe among them as in any country on the globe, nor that in the conduct of their relations with other nations they have shown a better morality and humanity than Great Britain or the United States can boast. As in re- spect to the aversion to being governed we have to look for a parallel to Eskimo practice in Chinese precept, so in respect to the spontaneous goodness of the Eskimo we have to look for a parallel mainly to the Chinese ideal, as it has always been held to, and held to, be it noted, as an inheritance from prehistoric times. "At the base of the whole Shu King," says Samuel Johnson, " is the charac- teristic Chinese faith in an inherent moral sense in all men, whose sanctions are not found in fears of hell or hopes of heaven, and whose acknowledged origin in the nature of things leaves no room for arbitrary divine will. " Again he says: " That morality does not depend on such separation of reason and faith (religious sanction) is clearly proved by the fact that no race in the world has attained by the habitual use of it to so pure an ethical consciousness as the Chinese have reached without it, and none, it is probable, on the whole, a practical con- duct more free from the gross vices." And this tradition of the natural goodness of man has even infected the moralization of Confucius, so that his disciple Mencius sententiously expresses it in the saying: "Who knows his own nature knows heaven." That this high ideal of right conduct and of the natural goodness of the heart of man does not rest in idea merely, but is believed to actu- ate mankind at large, and their rulers, too, was well illustrated by the letter which the Imperial Commis- sioner Lin addressed to the Queen of England, in which he appealed directly to her heart and conscience not to force into the ports of China a drug poisonous to soul and lo6 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. body, using language that must have made her sigh with regret that the interests of trade and the limitations of the British Constitution restrained her from making other reply than with bullets and bombs, fire and blood. " How then," said he, " can you bear to seek gain by means of an article so injurious to man, and without compunction of conscience? We have heard that you, the ruler of your honorable Kingdom, have an expanded heart, and you must therefore be unwilling to do to others what you would not desire to have done to yourself." As their impassive faces testify, the Chinese are imper- turbable of temper, and therefore not easily moved to anger, and though their slow-moving government has not yet followed the example set some one or two centuries ago by those of Europe in abolishing judicial torture, they cannot be called a cruel people; on the contrary, the testimony of Friar Carpini, given six hundred years ago, that they were a "kindly folk," is abundantly confirmed by those who go among them now. And kindliness and evenness of temper certainly must dispose a people to peace. That China has been able to so far keep the peace within her borders as to have enabled a population of four hundred millions to come into being and subsist there, is good proof that her people are like the Eskimos, though in a less degree, it is true, averse to war, espe- cially when it is considered that for centuries her borders have been infested with the terribly warlike Tartars, able to ravage Europe at will, yet whom she generally man- aged to keep at bay, often invading and conquering them, annexing their territory and civilizing and assimilating its inhabitants; as she did, too, when herself conquered, with the hordes that poured in under Jenghis Khan and his descendants and also with the Manchus, when, upon the invitation of one party in a civil war, they slipped in and gained possession of the government. Chinese rulers have habitually sought to avoid war by diplomacy and concessions, and by delays which give the blood time to THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. 157 cool. The great wall is a monument to their love of peace, and they have even made terms with pirates and given important offices to their chiefs. Chinese sages in their teachings insist upon peace as a condition essential to the well-being of the people. Lao-Tsee says of the wise ruler that *' if he triumphs (in war) he does not re- joice. To rejoice is to love to kill men. He who loves to kill men cannot succeed in governing the Empire," And again : " He who has killed a multitude of men must weep over them with tears and sobs. He who has been victorious in battle they place according to the funeral rites." This last is explained in a note thus: "In an- tiquity, when a general had gained a victory, he put on mourning. He put himself (in the temple) in the place of those who preside at funeral rites, and, clothed in close vestments, he wept and sobbed." Twenty-five hundred years ago this denunciation of war was uttered, and the custom alluded to as prevailing in what had then become antiquity may have been still older by another like term of time. The aversion to war shown by the foregoing has doubtless grown weaker with the lapse of time. The necessity of repelling invasion by neighboring peoples of ferocious dispositions, and of sometimes absorbing them must needs in some degree have assimilated the Chinese heart to that of the Christian West, which is quite too patriotic to mourn for dead enemies, but prefers to cele- brate victories by hymns of thanks and praise loud and fervent in proportion to the numbers of them killed, wounded and missing. But the fact that twenty-five hun- dred, perhaps five thousand years ago, it was not so is the more vi^orthy to be noted in this connection, for the further back into the past the existence of such peaceable dispositions can be traced the more creditable it is to the original stock whence the Chinese have descended, and the more close the resemblance grows between them and the Eskimos, and the likelihood that that stock was the root race of both. 158 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. Another point of resemblance in the customs of the two people is found in their treatment of persons moribund. On an earlier page the Eskimo custom in this respect has been described; that of the Chinese is singularly like it. An account of the " dead house " in the Chinese quarter of San Francisco says: " The dying receive little or no attention and are generally hustled off to the death houses, where they end their days amid such grim surroundings as the boxed-up bones of Chinamen awaiting shipment home. Often they die unattended. " Let us imagine a portion of the cave-dwellers on their tramp northward to have detached themselves from the rest, and by force of circumstances easily imagined, be- come warlike enough to go where they pleased in search of a desirable habitat. They would naturally turn their steps southward, and as they got into warmer regions than those where the temperature of their dwellings of snow had to be kept below freezing point, lest they should melt away, where clothes of fur were necessary even in summer time, and where scarcity of fuel forced them to eat their food uncooked, they would soon discard their clothing, and, of course, have no need of fire. Now, Chinese history begins with describing the nucleus of the Chinese Nation as "a little horde of wanderers roving among the forests of Shan-se, without houses, without clothing, without fire to dress their victuals, and subsisting on the spoils of the chase, eked out with roots and insects, " who, coming from down the North, established small colonies on the fertile plains of the modern province of that name, and, settling there, ceased to be nomads and became agriculturalists. There, history goes on to say, they were able to repel invasion from the aborigines, for which purpose only defensive ferocity was necessary, and in aid of which, as a means of securing peace, we may readily suppose they brought to bear the same spirit of fair dealing which now prompts the Greenlanders in their commerce with the Danes to leave it for the latter to fix THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. 159 the price of what they purchase, and which prompted Penn, the Quaker, in his dealings with the red men of Pennsylvania, to act justly so that of the treaty he made with them Voltaire could say that it was the only one never sworn to, and the only one never broken. And thus enjoying peace and plenty, only such qualities of mind and heart as those Greenlanders now so notably evince were needed to ensure for the new nation, while yet its blood was uncontaminated with Tartar mixtures, the attainment of a civilization worthily named " hospita- ble and contemplative," rendering the enjoyers of it ^'mild, just and frugal, kindly and polished." If the de- velopment thus favorably begun and for a long period rapidly progressing has been arrested, as it is often re- marked that Chinese civilization seems to have been, it should be charged to the account of war and the Tartars. The oblique eyes of the Chinese, which is considered good proof that they came originally from the far North, again assimilates them to the Eskimos. But do they not still remain as oval-eyed as these last ? If they do the question arises: If six or eight thousand years have not sufficed to efface the supposed effects of the snow- glare in any clearly perceptible degree, how many years of exposure to snow-glare was needed to so impress its stamp in the first place ? A question relating to the antiquity of man. That the Eskimos are as good as a people need be, and at the same time singularly adverse to warfare, will by most men be accepted as proving not only that peaceful conditions favor the evolution of goodness, but that they are essential to it. Unfortu- nately it proves also that a people who will not fight can- not hold their own in this warring world, so as to exem- plify on any large scale the advantages of goodness. Driven out of the habitable world, the cave-dwellers and their descendants have had small chance for converting their goodness into happiness, and soon their seed will be known no more on land or snow, and their pattern 160 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL VIRTUE. lost forever. Certainly, the evolutionary experiment in their case of making a people good in conduct by means of security and peace has been a failure. At best a hint and a hope is all the world has got from the example of the forty thousand who yet crouch in caves or ice tomes, dirty and vermin-bitten, contented though they be. And for aught we know, many a race as good and peaceful as they may before now have been swept out of existence by races ferocious and bad as we. Yet untiring evolu- tion still goes on as if aiming at creating some time or other a world wherein good men can live and peaceful races persist. But how ? The influences which have availed to secure orderly conditions within territorial limits of nations seem never to have come into play beyond such limits. Neither the law of love nor the golden rule, both considered so good in respect to deal- ings of man with man, seems yet to have been thought of as applying to dealings of nation with nation. And yet if man is ever to attain to any ideal state of good- ness it must be while sheltered by long-continued peace- ful conditions. The problem to solve is how a peaceable nation can keep its peace without going to war. Perhaps the superior mechanical skill and greater wealth of Euro- pean nations may yet become joined to peaceful disposi- tions and furnish the solution. CHAPTER XVII. HINDU YOGA. According to the Vedanta philosophy man first be- comes man when he forgets he is god. He is created by nothing but the obscuration of his own consciousness, and he can again become god simply by returning to his original knowledge of himself. Thus he may re-discover himself and know that he has always been god. It is this re-discovery of himself that the Sanskrit word yoga, literally joined, is commonly used to express. But the re-discovery is not made as knowledge is ordinarily obtained ; and the searcher must undergo a sort of trans- formation before he can receive it. It is only in the last stage to which persistent practice can consciously carry the yogi, that of Samadhi, that it comes to him as an ecstatic influx touching at once both intellect and will, filling the one with light and the other with joy, as if in tracing his lineage backward towards its beginning he had come to that link in the chain of causation where love and wisdom are as yet undivergent, and can be conceived only as one. The means or ways of attain- ing yoga, which we will term '■^ yoga practice," all resolve themselves into concentration of mind. And to this concentration Hinduism, which is both philosophy and religion, makes all its vast collection of gods of every degree, all its countless temples, with their idols and symbols, in which those gods are worshipped, all its the- ology and ritual of devotion, but the subservient means. For yoga is above and beyond all these; they merely conduct the devotee up to it, and at its portals vanish as 162 HINDU YOGA. guides and ushers should. To the whole thing, the work and what is worked for, the term yoga is commonly ap- plied, just as in old Chinese literature the word tao is, which can mean way to travel on, but when used in relation to the practice in question means the way in which it is performed, the method, art and mystery of it, as plainly appears on pages 233, 239 and 251 of Mr. Giles' transla- tion of Chaung Tzu^ wherein it is also sometimes made to mean the first principle of Nature, or the one imper- sonal God. But the same Chinese word, when placed as second syllable in "Shinto," which means literally "way of the gods," seems there to signify a way to travel on, leading to a paradise called "The Land of the Gods," and not to a state of being, which Hindu Yoga may be properly termed. Vedantism does not recognize yoga practice as good for any other purpose than getting out of earth-life and getting back to Brahman, and thereby obtaining release from repeated re-births which must otherwise go on in a series without end while the present universe lasts. Accordingly, the supernatural gifts that come of it are disregarded as disturbing allurements merely, not worth being considered by one who treads the path that leads to the god, that himself is. Miiller has truly said that we know very little about yoga. Possibly he thinks it beneath an European's notice. Others, willing to notice it, have ventured the guess that all its incontestable phenomena are due to self-magnetism, but the persever- ing student for whose benefit the following summary of the principal systems of yoga of which we have accounts have been made, will be more likely to dismiss the self- magnetism theory as far too scant to cover the facts, and to find in them the stirring of an inner man quite worthy to be named soul, attended by phenomena which go towards proving experimentally, and not inspirationally, emotionally or metaphysically, that man in his wholeness is a being great enough to be trusted with his own des- HINDU YOGA. 163 tiny. If a study of yoga should result in the conclusion that its whole meaning has never yet been found out; it would not be wonderful, for the world is yet young. And the true student should not be sorry to know that a field of investigation had opened before him of wider ex- tent than any other that has yet been explored, or even known to exist. Hatha Yoga. Quietude being essential to yoga it could not have arisen in very early and therefore rude and turbulent times, as there is proof that ancestor worship did. But it is old enough to be largely treated of in the primitive Hindu scripture. The Vedas contain it, the Upanishads, for instance, being devoted principally to it, and the Vedanta gives name to what is considered its higher branch. The other or lower branch, however, must have come first, because it is the more simple and practical and the less religious and philosophical, and because its phenomena will be seen to have furnished the basis on which Hindu metaphysics was built, or at least to have furnished hints for the hypotheses which formed that basis. Therefore the Hatha has precedence here of the Vedanta or Rajah. An approved presentation of the former is ^'- \.\i^ Hatha Yoga Pradipika " of Swatmaram Swafni, of which an Eng- lish translation was published in 1893. Of its four chap- ters the first contains some introductory matter — a cau- tion to secrecy, a description of a proper habitation for the student or practicer, which must be secluded but pleasant and with agreeable surroundings — prescribes correct habits and good moral conduct and certain re- ligious observances — directs the postures proper to be assumed in performing the various exercises, which post- ures, however, may be here omitted as unsuited to people who do not sit cross-legged, though much stress is laid upon them in the book, which enjoins, in connection with 164 HINDU YOGA. them, certain mental attitude, such as contemplating on Brahman, concentrating on the Nadis, or sounds coming from the yogin's own breast, and fixing the eyes on the tip of the nose with a concentrated mind. The chapter also recommends a moderate diet, defined to mean pleas- ant and sweet food in quantity to leave one-fourth of the stomach empty. The second chapter treats of Franya?tia, or breathing practice. It prescribes various methods for drawing in, retaining and letting out the breath, for ex- haling and holding out, and for arresting the breathing without regard to inhalation or exhalation. Puraka is the term for inhalation, Rechaka the one for exhalation, and Kumbhaka the one for retention. Here is an example of these methods. " The yogi, assuming the Padmasana posture (each breathing has its appropriate posture) should draw in the Prana (breath) through the Ida^ or left nostril, and having retained it as long as he can, exhale it through the Pingala.^ or right nostril. Again inhaling the Prana through the Pingala, he should per- form Kumbhaka (retention) as laid down in the books, and should again slowly exhale it through the Ida. He should perform Puraka (inhalation) through the same nostril by which he performed Rechaka, and having re- strained the breath to the utmost (till he is covered with perspiration or till his body shakes), should exhale it slowly and never fast, as that would diminish the energy of the body." He should perform these breathings four times a day — in the early morning, at mid-day, evening and midnight, slowly increasing the number from three each time to eighty. The effect is to "render the body slender and bright." Although in the translation the Ida is named as being the left nostril and the Pingala as the right one, these words more appropriately designate two supposed conduits which connect with the nostrils and thence conduct throughout the whole body a certain vital air that enters with the atmosphere air, but is quite a different thing from it. The Ida is said to lie on the HINDU YOGA. 165 left and the Pingala on the right of another more impor- tant conduit named the Sushumna. All three are again included in the term nadi, of which there are supposed to be seventy-two thousand, all leading down from the throat to the Kutidali, in the pelvic region, and connect- ing with it. Yogis of phlegmatic temperament are directed to go through a course of preparation before undertaking Pranayama, which course consists in: (i) cleansing the gullet with a strip of cloth swallowed and then withdrawn (the first introduction to be gradual, at the rate of one span's length daily); (2) enemas of water; (3) cleansing the nostrils by putting up a thread and drawing it out by way of the mouth; (4) looking without winking at a minute object with concentrated mind till tears come; (5) with head bent down turning the viscera of the body to right and left; (6) breathing in and out rapidly, like a blacksmith's bellows. Internal concentration causing the stomach to empty itself by vomiting is also recom- mended. When by a proper course of Pranyama the nadis have been purified, the breath easily forces itself into the mouth of the Sushumna and enters it. This gives " steadi- ness to the mind," and various miraculous powers result. The signs of perfection in Hatha Yoga are: "the body becomes lean, the speech eloquent, the inner sounds (to be hereafter mentioned in detail) are distinctly heard, the eyes are clear and bright, the body is freed from all disease, the seminal fluid is concentrated, the digestive fire is increased and the nadis are purified." Next there is a description of three Bandhas : * ' The Uddi- ana Bandha," says the commentary, " seem to be this : By a very strong expiration the lungs are emptied and driven against the upper part of the thorax, carrying the dia- phragm along with them, and the intestines are taken up and fill the vacant space." The stomach is by this made so slender it might be compassed by a span. Mula 166 HINDU YOGA. Bandha is this: Pressing the Yoni with the ankle, con- tract the anus and draw upwards the Apana (or down- ward flowing breath). Again, "Pressing the anus with the ankle, contract the air forcibly and constantly until the breath goes upwards." To perform the Jalandhara Bandha "contract the throat and press the chin firmly against the breast (four inches from the heart)." The Viparitakarani Bandha, which is practiced for the purpose of making the " moon," which is at the root of the palate, change places with the "sun," which is near the navel, is to be learned only from the teacher. The third chapter treats of the ten Mudras which are to be practiced for the purpose of "rousing the great goddess Kundalini who sleeps closing the (lower) mouth of the Sushumna. " These are said to "destroy old age and death," having been given out by the god Siva, and to confer the eight Siddhis, or miraculous powers. They are much sought after by all Siddhas (possessors of such powers) and are difficult to obtain even by the Devas (lesser gods). Concerning them it is added: "This should be carefully kept secret as a box of diamonds and should not be told to anybody — just as the illicit con- nection with a married woman of noble family." Maha Mudra, the first of the ten, is thus performed: " Pressing the anus with the left heel and stretching out the right leg, take hold of the toes with your hand. Then practice the Jalandhara Bandha (lately described), and draw the breath through the Sushumna. Then the Kunda- lini becomes straight, just as a coiled snake does when struck, and the Ida and P' igala become dead, because the breath goes out of them. Then the breath should be let out very slowly, and never quickly." Maha Bandha («V.) comes next, and is thus described: "Having re- strained the breath as long as possible he should then breathe out slowly. He should practice first on the left side and then on the right." This is said to stop the HINDU YOGA. 167 upward course of the breath through the Nadis except Sushumna, and bring about the union of them with the Sushumna, and also to " enable the mind to remain fixed between the two eyebrows." But these two Mudras are said to have no value with- out a third named the Maha Vedha, which is to be thus performed: The yogi . . . " should draw in his breath with a concentrated mind and stop the upward and down- ward course of the breath by the Jalandhara Bandha. Resting at the same time his body on his hands placed on the ground, he should repeatedly but gently seat and raise himself. The body assumes a death-like aspect. Then he should breathe out." The Kechari Mudra re- quires the following preparation : By slight daily repeated cuttings continued during six months, the ligament is severed that holds down the tongue, which then, by repeatedly pulling it out, is made long enough to touch the eyebrows. The Mudra is performed by turning up the tongue and making it enter the hole in the palate where the three Nadis join, at the same time "fixing the eyes firmly between the brows," The Vajroli Mudra which is said to give the five Sid- dhis even to one who lives an ordinary life, with the Ama- roli and Sahajoli, which are kindred to it, occupy twenty Sutras which remain untranslated on account of their peculiar character, and will not be further noticed here for the reasons that the commentary claims that they are not to be understood literally and are besides incomplete in some points, which are left to be filled by verbal instruc- tions of the guru. If any such arcanum as this Vajroli lie in yoga it will be apt to..-disclose itself soon or, late to the practicer who perseveres. The Shakati Chalana, named as the last of the ten mudras, is next described. Having inhaled through the right nostril the yogin should retain the breath in a pecul- iar way to be learned only from a Guru, and " manipulate the Kundalini for about an hour and a half, both at morn- 168 HINDU YOGA. ing and evening twilights. " Some light might be obtained regarding what is thus left obscure by referring to the context, of which here are a few passages : "As one forces open a door with a key, so should the yogi force open the door of J/^/l'^//^ (state of bliss) by the Kundalini." "The Kundalini gives Mukti (deliverance) to the Yogis and bondage to the fools. He who knows her knows Yoga." "He who causes that Shakti (the Kundalini) to move (from the Midadhara in the pelvic region upwards) is freed without doubt." " Between the Ganges (Ida) and Jamuna (Pingala) there sits the young widow inspiring pity. He (the Yogi) should despoil her forcibly, for it leads one to the supreme seat of Vishnu." " You should awake the sleeping serpent (Kundalini) by taking hold of its tail." "Seated in the Vajrasena posture, firmly take hold of the feet near the ankle and slowly beat with them Xh^Kanda " (a something below the navel from which the 72,000 Nadis issue). "By moving the Kundalini fearlessly for about an hour and a half, she is drawn upwards a little through the Sushumna," which process it is said " surely opens the mouth of the Sushumna and the breath natu- rally goes through it." Whether by manipulation of the Kundalini or other means this effect is produced, it seems to be the object primarily aimed at in Hatha Yoga work. The fruits of the practice of Hatha Yoga, taken in the order of their mention, are the following: 1. The eight Siddhis, viz. : am'ma (the power to assimi- late oneself with an atom) ; tnahima (the power to ex- pand oneself into space) ; taghima (the power to be as light as cotton or other similar thing) ; garima (the power to grow as heavy as anything) ; prapti (the power of reach- ing anywhere, even to the moon) ; prakamya (the power of having all wishes of whatever description realized) ; isatva (power to create) ; vasitva (power to command all). 2. Freedom from death and from old age. 3. Rejuvenescence and perpetual youth, 4. Beauty. HINDU YOGA. 169 5. Ability to "do and undo." 6. Exemption from hunger and thirst, also from indo- lence. 7. Floating on water. 8. The attainment of anything in the three worlds. 9. Invulnerability to poisons. 10. Removal of wrinkles and gray hair. 11. Freedom from disease. 12. Exemption from the effects of Karma. 13. Immortality and the eight Siddhis (named above). 14. Power to attract the damsels of the Siddhas (or Mahatmas). Finally, and far beyond the Siddhis, comes the grand result of Mukti or emancipation (from re-birth) and con- scious junction with Brahman. These powers are certainly all could be desired; in fact they stop nowhere short of omnipotence, omnipres- ence and omniscience. But we must allow for Eastern hyperbole. According to the commentary the fourth and last chapter is wholly devoted to Rajah Yoga. But a care- ful study of the book will probably convince the reader that it cannot thus be divided in two parts unless by a wrenching that does violence to its meaning as a whole; and show, moreover, that as a whole the proper title of it is Hatha Yoga. This fourth chapter may be a sort of supplement that in course of time has grown upon the original compilation. It deals a good deal with the re- sults of the methods of practice contained in the others, specifying Rajah Yoga as one of them, and it amplifies some of those methods, but gives no new ones. American Experie?tces. It is in common experience that long and close concen- tration upon any given part of the body will induce in it sensations, and sometimes even movements. Control over unused muscles may in that way be obtained. An expe- 170 HINDU YOGA. rienced physician will tell his patient to keep his mind off his carbuncle, and "Don't think about your disease" is every-day advice given by visiting neighbors. While it is claimed for Hatha Yoga that the breathings can exert control over the mind through their function of supply- ing arterialized blood to the brain, thus controlling men- tal by physical action, it is on the other hand claimed that mere persistent concentration of the mind will set up those very breathings, thus controlling physical action by mental. And a story is related of a student whose teacher made him sit meditating in silence twelve years, and at last commanded him to pronounce the sacred word O. M. (which is often divided into three syllables, thus A U M.). He did so, with the following result: "When the Sanyasi came to the first syllable, Rechaka, or the pro- cess by which the air in the lungs is pumped out, set in naturally. When he finished the second syllable, Puraka, or the process of inhalation, set in. At the end of the third syllable, Kumbhaka, or the process of retention, set in," And then all else immediately followed. "In a short time he had passed the initial stages of Fratyshara, Dhyana and Dharana, and settled into the pure and elevated state of Samadhi." This story, whether true or not, illustrates the largeness of the claim in behalf of mental yoga that it brings physical yoga with it, provided the mental processes take the form of long-continued silent concentration, and also the further claim that what it thus brings is important, since the Pranyamaof the student brought him soon into perfect absorption. But both points are better illustrated by phenomena, which, if not known in India, have been experienced here in America and in these times, as will presently be shown in detail. And the occurrence of these modern phenomena also suggests the thought that like occurrences in remote times may have given rise to the postures, breathings and movements which make up the Hatha practice, whose origin, so bizarre and anomalous are they, might else remain unaccounted for. Some con- HINDU YOGA. ITl templative solitary in the valley of the Indus may, as a consequence of long concentrating on a star, an idea, or on vacancy, have found himself moved to perform invol- untarily all the Kumbhakas and Mudras in their various combinations; and these being found to be associated with magical power others may have, with volition, imi- tated them in hopes to obtain like power. Thus Hatha Yoga may have originated. What has of late years come to my knowledge as occurring in this country after long practice of simple concentration, undertaken without any thought of yoga or knowledge that there was such a thing, is the following: To begin with the Asanas. These, though unsuited to people who sit in chairs, have nevertheless persistently tried to force themselves upon the practicers. A leg has jerked itself upward and pressed the sole of its foot against the other as high up as seemed possible; this has happened hundreds of times. The posture here imitated is sitting on a foot, and its efficacy is supposed to lie in the pressure upon nerve-centres in the foot, leg and region of the perineum. Another asana resembling the "plant balance" of modern gymnastics is described thus: "Plant your hands firmly on the ground and sup- port your body on your elbows, pressing against the sides of your loins. Raise your feet in the air stiff and straight on a level with the head." This position was distinctly attempted while the practicer was seated in an easy chair, and only failed of completeness because the back of it kept the head from falling to the level of the feet. The legs were lifted from the floor and thrust out stiffly, while the weight of the whole body, except the head, was made to rest on the elbows, they resting on the arms of the chair. The attempt was repeated only once, but a great number of times the elbows were pressed against the sides with a force that seemingly could not have been voluntarily exerted, and as often have hammered themselves violently and repeatedly against the sides, 173 HINDU YOGA. giving excellent wa^ja^^ to both liver and spleen — though this could hardly be called an asana. The Shavasana "for removing fatigue and inducing calmness of mind " is described as lying on one's back at full length, like a corpse. Often when lying on his side the practicer has been turned over on his back, not impelled to turn by any influence acting upon his will, but turned as by a power foreign to it, though apparently using his own muscles. A curious sensation often felt seemed intended to reproduce on the feet, ankles, and seat of the body, the compression which is obtainable by sitting on the feet, Eastern fashion. It was just as if a foreign body were pressed against the parts with a force equal to what they would feel in the positions of Hatha Yoga. Sometimes several of the parts in question were thus simultaneously acted on. The Mtidras. Of these, one termed The Maha Vedha, is performed by slightly rising and reseating one's self gently and repeatedly. This was exactly reproduced. One of the six acts recommended for putting in good bodily condition those who would practice yoga is the Nauli, thus described: "With the head bent down one should turn right and left the intestines of the stomach with the slow motion of a small eddy in the river." Something like this interior movement is produced by one process of the Swedish movement-cure. It consists in sitting on a stool, bending forward as far as possible, and making the trunk of the body to rotate like the spoke of a horizontal wheel, the head representing the tire and the seat the hub. Now, it was just this Swedish movement that, in the case of two persons, was set up as often as Kumbhaka was practiced; neither of them hav- ing an idea of such a result. The fiauli mudra is stated to be the most important of all the Hatha practices, and the bodily rotation is certainly one of the most effective of the Swedish ones. "Looking fixedly at the spot between the eyebrows" HINDU YOGA. 173 is in several places named and enjoined. This was re- produced numberless times, extending through many years. Thinking of nothing seemed most readily to have that effect. The eyeballs would as of themselves roll upward as far as they could go, and hold themselves there. The Shambhavi-TCiMC^XTi. consists in fixing the mind on some part of the body, and the eyes rigidly and unwink- ing on some external object. Many times while the practicer was concentrating intently, with his eyes closed, they would open of themselves and fix on some object within their range, always rigidly and without winking, or any impulse to do so, while the concentration, what- ever may have been the objective of it, went on as before. "Direct the pupils of the eyes towards the light by raising the eyebrows a little upwards," says the book. Often the eyebrows raised themselves as if to get out of the way of the eyes. In all the above, as well as in the movements next to be described, an intelligent power beyond reach of the consciousness of the practicer seemed, so to speak, to take him out of his own hands, to assume control of his voluntary as well as involuntary muscles and work them independently of his will, though, it should be noted, never against it. The Bandhas are movements of the internal organs by means of voluntary muscles, outside of and near them. One of these, for instance, requires that certain mus- cular contractions be made which will have the effect of forcing the breath to flow through the Sushumna, "being drawn in through the back part of the navel." This seems ridiculous enough, but the fact that such muscular contractions and many others have spontane- ously resulted from mental concentration, no matter on what, though it cannot make sense of the Hindu three- thousand-year-old theory of anatomy, may make credible the facts it undertakes to interpret. The movements here 174 HINDU YOGA. alluded to were frequent, sudden and violent, extending now throughout the whole trunk, giving each of its organs a salutary "massage," and now involving the legs and arms. One thus handled could not but be reminded by it of the Swedish movement-cure, if he had ever tried it, though the yoga exercises far excelled in force as well as in variety those of the cure. Some- times the muscles of the front of the chest and abdomen would jerk themselves together violently, making a cable of themselves that reached from pelvis to throat, and sometimes the same movement would be directed down- ward, pushing everything as far as it would go. Again the whole contents of the abdomen would be drawn up and against the backbone, and then pushed forward so as to swell them out tensely. Again the abdomen and chest would, by turns, be, the one swelled out and the other simultaneously shrunk in, and this, though repeatedly done, without noticeable movement of the breath. Again the muscles about the navel would, as it were, draw to- gether in a knot all the organs of the region, squeezing them violently while the flanks shrunk as violently in. In short, every conceivable combination of movement by which the muscles of the trunk can act upon the con- tents of it, were at times gone through, and all, be it noted, in a progressive way, step by step, and each step, once attained, held on to. It is furthermore noteworthy that when a given movement, of the sort which has just been described, or one of the breathings yet to be de- scribed, had been led up to by a series of progressive ones culminating in it only after weeks or months of practice, then each subsequent repetition of it would usually be achieved in the same progressive way, seemingly as if, for a time at least, the more difficult had to be preceded by a practice of the less difficult in serial order, as well after the point of perfection had been reached as before, each repetition being a brief rehearsal of the long course of practice by which expertness in it had been acquired. HINDU YOGA. 175 The movements just described reproduce all of the important exercises called mudras, whose office is to rouse up the great goddess (Kundalini), except the Vajroli, and its modifications the Sahajoli and Amaroli, which requires two practicers, the Viparitakarani, the method of which is not disclosed, but left for the teacher to impart, and the Kechari, which requires the ligament holding down the tongue to be first cut; though a rolling backward of the tongue against the palate has been repeatedly attempted, and carried as far as could be without that mutilation; the excepted ones being by their nature not reproducible by a single person un- taught by an Indian Guru, and with an uncut tongue. The distinctive marks by which these recent results of mental concentration can be identified with Hatha Yoga are such as leave no room for supposing mere coincidence of mistake. The Uddiana Bandha that has been before described was reproduced in a manner that in every detail was perfect, and the rapidity with which the lungs would fly upward, expelling thereby all air in them, was startling. The eight Kumbhakas, or breathings, named in the book, were reproduced with equal fidelity except in the following respects: The nostrils were not closed with the fingers, nor the tongue placed between or protruded through the lips, nor any hissing sounds made in drawing in or letting out the breath, though the tongue made efforts to push itself forward, and distinctly, as just said, rolled itself back against the palate as if attempting the Kechari Mudra. The breath seemed to draw itself in, hold itself there and let itself out, and the head would bend downward so as to press the chin against the breast, as directed in the manual, for the purpose of making the retention easy. And when thus retained the air seemed to expand so that the practicer would feel it "pervade the whole of his body from the head to the toe," as the book expresses it. There was no distinction made as to 176 HINDU YOGA. which nostril the breath should enter or depart by, as in the book, but the inhaling, retaining and exhaling, the expelling, excluding and inhaling, and the simple stop- page in mid-breathing and "holding the breath," all came as the book directs, and without conscious volition. As a result, or at least an incident of our American experiments, there came a remarkable series of self- manipulations which might be likened to mesmeric passes or massage movements. The mind of the operator not consciously concurring, they could hardly be classed with the one, and not being known to any system of massage could hardly belong with the other, but they resembled both. Like the reproductions of the Mudras and Kum- bhakas, they arose quite independently of, though never against, the will of the practicer. It would be safe to say there were a hundred of them, of all degrees of emphasis, from the gentle tapping of a finger to the violent kicking out of a leg; all following at the touch of a mere thought, as it were — no, of a mental effort in arrest of thought — and as quickly as any electric effect follows the touching of a button. Though the manipu- lations were mostly made with abnormal force and with- out consciousness of any effort but the mental one, and generally left a sense of well being, it would be inexact to say there was no resulting fatigue, yet there was cer- tainly less that must have followed intentional exercises of a like sort. There were no unmeaning movements, but all seemed to be devised with masterly skill, aiming at curative effects, while to the practicer each one of them was new and original, and on its first occurrence a surprise. Safik/iya Yoga. Quite unlike the hand-book of yoga practice, which Swatmaram's work may be termed, are the Sutras of the Sage Kapila, believed to be no other than god Vishnou, son of Brahman, in the fifth of his twenty-four incarna- tions. These seem to be merely a series of philosoph- HINDU YOGA. 177 ical propositions, yet their propounder claims that the study of them will surely conduct to Samadhi and deliv- erance. Though the Sankhya philosophy admits that the ills of life may be palliated and a temporary release from re-births be obtained, by temporal means discov- erable by reason, and devotional observances revealed by God, yet it declares that complete and final deliver- ance from re-birth can only be attained by what is termed: "A method different from both, consisting in a discriminative knowledge of perceptible principles, and of the imperceptible one, and of the thinking soul " — or, as more fully set forth by the commentary: "The accurate discrimination of those principles into which all that exists is distributed by the Sankhya philosophy; Vyakta, that which is perceived, sensible, discreet; Avyakta, that which is unperceived, indiscreet, and /na, that which knows, or discriminates. The first is matter in its perceptible modifications; the second is crude, unmodified matter, and the third is soul. The object of the Sankhya Yoga is to define and explain these three things, the correct knowledge of which is in itself release from worldly bondage and exemption from exposure to human ills, by the final separation of soul and body." There is nothing said by this sage of any postures, movements or breathings of the body, or of any effort of the mind save what is implied in any philosophical study. In other yogas the knowledge that sets the soul free from re-birth is supposed to come at the end of a long course of practice of one kind or other, and in form of intuition or spiritual impression such as makes the saint to knozc the truth after he has quite lost his reason in ecstatic entrancement. But Kapilas' teaching seems to be addressed to the waking reason alone, unenlightened by any supernatural influx. Yet following on the promulgation of this Sankhya philosophy (so called from its being an enumeration or analysis of the universe), and claiming to be in general 178 HINDU YOGA. accordance with it, came an elaborate system of Sankhya Yoga, first embodied in the Sutras of Patanjali, a work written as early as the seventh century A. D., and of high authority. A sample of his method of intellectu- alizing magic practice is found in the following verses: " I. Now an exposition of yoga is to be made." " 2. Yoga is the suppression of the transformations of the thinking principle." " 3. Then the seer abides in himself." " 4. But otherwise becomes assimilated with trans- formations." " 5. The transformations are five-fold, and are pain- ful or not painful." " 6. Right knowledge, wrong knowledge, fancy, sleep and memory." " 7. Right knowledge is direct cognition, or inference, or testimony." " 8. Wrong knowledge is a false conception of a thing whose real form does not answer to it in reality." " 9. Fancy is the notion called into being having noth- ing to answer to it in reality." " 10. That transformation which has nothingness for its basis is sleep." " II. Memory is not allowing a thing cognized to escape." " 12. Its suppression is secured by application and non-attachment." " 13. Application is the effort towards the state (Stilhi) in which the mind is at a stand-still." " 14. It becomes a position of firmness being prac- ticed for a long time without intermission and with per- fect devotion." " 15. The consciousness of having mastered (every desire) in the case of one who does not thirst for objects perceptible or scriptural, is non-attachment." " 16. That is highest wherein, from being the Purusa HINDU YOGA. 179 (soul) there is entire cessation of any, the least desire for the Gunas (things of sense)." The yoga practice recommended by Patanjali consists in meditation on Kapilas' 25 categories or Tattvas, — the exercise of faith, energy, memory and discriminative judgment, ardent desire to attain to Samadhi, devotion to Iswara^ a god invented to help contemplation, con- stant repetition of and intent meditation on his "word of glory," O M, intense concentration on some one thing, sympathy vi'ith happiness, compassion for misery, complacency towards virtue and indifference to evil, the breathings (Pranyama), concentration on any sensuous enjoyment by those who cannot steady their minds but through some kind of sensual pleasure, which is done, according to the commentary, by "fixing the attention on one of the five senses of smell, taste, color, touch and sound. These are respectively produced by concen- trating on the tip of the nose, the tip of the tongue, the forepart of the palate, the middle of the tongue, and the root of the tongue. The sensation produced in each case is not merely a passing flash of pleasurable feeling; but a kind of complete absorption in the particular enjoyment meditated upon." Then there is concentra- tion on \.\\tjoytis (light), and to help concentration it is to be imagined that in the heart there is a lotus-like form having eight petals and with its face turned downward, which can be raised up by exhaling the breath, and should then be meditated on while pronouncing O M^ the effect of which is that a calm light is seen "like that of the moon or sun, resembling the calm ocean of milk." Or the concentration maybe on the condition of deep sleep — or, finally, "according to one's predilec- tion," that is to say, on any one thing. So much for the objects of concentration. The states induced by it and other results next follow: The test of proper concentration having been acquired is " a mastery extending from the finest atom to infinity." The two kinds 180 HINDU YOGA. of or stages in concentration, the argumentative, or mixed, and the non-argumentative, or pure, are described, and their result indicated, bliss, intuition, revelation, &c. These two stages seem to correspond to the meditation and contemplation of Christian ascetics, as will be seen later. Preliminary Yoga is next considered, which consists of "mortification, study and resignation to Iswara,"and is meant for those who have not been able to accomplish Samadhi by the methods just pointed out. Ignorance, the Sense of being, Desire, Aversion and Attachment, are named as distractions to be avoided, the nature of each is explained, and the way to overcome each by ap- propriate meditation is given. Accessories to this are forbearance, observance, posture, regulation of breath, abstraction, contemplation, absorption and trance, and the needed explanation is given of what these mean in re- spect to yoga. Thus, forbearance means abstinence from killing, falsehood, theft, incontinence and greediness; ob- servance means purity, contentment, mortification, study and resignation to Iswara; '•'•posture is that which is easy and steady"; regulation of the breath means the same as in Hatha Yoga; abstraction means drawing away the senses from their objects in the same way that thoughts are drawn away, abstracted, from theirs, whence "fol- lows the greatest mastery over the senses " ; contemplation means "the fixing of the mind on something"; absorp- tion means so fixing it that the mind and that something become one; trance is when this fixing of the mind is car- ried so far that the thinker, the thinking and the thing thought of are one. These last three together consti- tute Samyama," which is the way to several occult powers and also conducts to conscious Samadhi, the yoga proper, while the five other accessories are called external means, being useful only in obviating distractions. But even this falls short of real or unconscious Samadhi, the final end HINDU YOGA. 181 of yoga, which is, says Patanjati, " that condition of the mind which is transformation into unity." Here follows a list of the Siddhis, or miraculous powers, with the several modes of exercising them through the performance of Samyama. They are: 1. Knowing the past and future. 2. Recollecting previous incarnations. 3. Discerning the state of a person's mind by outward signs, like complexion, tone of voice, &c. 4. Reading the thoughts of another. 5. The power to become invisible. 6. Knowing the time of one's death, by meditating on his Karma, or by portents, such as spectres, dreams, &c. 7. Attracting the good will of others. 8. Acquiring the powers of any animal, as the strength of an elephant, by meditating on it. 9. Knowing " the subtle, the obscure and the remote," by contemplating on the inner light, such as yogis are able to evoke by performing Rechaka. 10. The knowledge of space by contemplating on the sun. 11. Knowledge of the starry regions by contemplating on the moon. 12. Knowledge of the motions of the stars by con- templating on the pole-star. 13. Knowledge of the internal arrangement of the body by contemplating on the important nerve-centre near the navel. The nerve-centres are termed circles, padmas, chakras, and contemplation on them is an impor- tant branch of yoga work, as set forth by Patanjali, as well as in the work on Hatha Yoga lately considered. 14. Destroying hunger and thirst by contemplating on the pit of the throat. 15. Making the body fixed and immovable by contem- plating on the Kumia-nadi, a certain nerve where the vital air is supposed to reside. 182 HINDU YOGA. i6. The power of seeing the beings called Siddhas, otherwise Mahatmas, by contemplating on the light in the head, which is made to appear somewhere near the pineal gland or coronal artery, or over the medulla ob- longata, by concentration on the space between the eye- brows. 17. The power to accomplish all the before named things by pratibha, which is: that degree of intellect which develops itself without any special cause, gen- erally termed "intuition," and can be developed by simply contemplating on the intellect. 18. Knowledge of the mind of another or of one's own, by contemplating on the nerve-centre of the heart. 19. Knowledge on one's soul as distinct from his mind, by contemplating on himself. 20. As resulting from this knowledge intuitional per- ception of all the objects of the senses, no matter how far distant in time or space. (All the foregoing siddhis are here expressly de- nounced both in text and commentary as obstacles in the way. Not so these which follow.) 21. Entering into and possessing another body, whether living or dead, by discovering through con- templation on the nerves the particular one by which mind can pass in and out. 22. Levitation of the body and also the ability to die at will. 23. Effulgence of the body, halos about the head, &c. Also Clairaudience, or power to hear distant sounds, by concentration on Akasa, the either conveying sound. 24. Ability to pass bodily through space, by concen- tration on the relation between the body and akasa, as also by being identified with light substances such as cotton. 25. The condition of Mahavideha, in which "knowl- edge of every description is within easy reach of the ascetic," and obtainable without effort. HINDU YOGA. 183 26. Mastery over the elements by concentrating on their natures respectively. 27. The attainment of anund and the others, as also perfection of the body and the corresponding non- obstruction of its functions. " Anima and the others " are the same " eight Siddhis " before mentioned in what related to Hatha Yoga. 28. Beauty, gracefulness and strength, adamantine hardness of body. 29. Mastery over the organs of sense by concentration on their natures. 30. As a result of this mastery, fleetness of body equal to that of mind, sensation independently of the body or its organs of sense. Ability to command any thing and create any thing at will. 31. Mastery over all things and knowledge of all, by contemplating on the "distinctive relation of soul and mind." 32. Kaivaiya, the highest end, the state of oneness, of being one and alone, obtained by renouncing attachment to even these ten last-named high occult powers. It may very well be conceived that the intense thought needed to produce such a system as that of Kapila would amount to a mental concentration sufficient to induce the state of mind that brings on ecstacy and lets in supernal light, just as intense and persistent devotion will; the same with the hard thinking required for under- standing it by his disciples. But the truth or falsity of his propositions need have had nothing to do with either his or their yoga results. And certainly the Patanjali formulation contains enough of concentrative work to carry the praciicer aXong on the path, though the student should lag behind. The same disposition that was shown by Kapila to rely on intellectual convictions — a reliance condemned by all the magicians of old, I think — is mani- fested at the present day by the many schools of magical healers, each of which claims to cure by simply telling 184 HINDU YOGA. the patient the one only truth, which it alone and none other possesses. Neither truth nor untruth can be shown to have magical power, hnt concentration on any lie or any truth, long kept up, will still the mind and thereby let in Nature to do her work. And if she, adapting her methods to her material, at the same time that she develops them a.s yogis, humors the preconceptions of those she acts on, so as to reveal to each the truth he likes best, now telling the Hindu saint that he is BrdhmSn, and now confirming the good Catholic in his belief in Papal infallibility, her doing so leaves both propositions no truer than they were before, — and such, doubtless, was the opinion of Kapila when he set up reason against revelation; though when, by force of concentration on the construction of his system, he had attained to Samadhi in its ultimate stage where spiritual impressions flow in, and such impressions confirmed him in his previous conclusions and revealed to him that release obtained by his methods was complete and final, and all others incomplete and temporary, some- thing he has not in his aphorisms attempted to prove in any other way, naturally he must have felt that he had both reason and revelation on his side. But reason is no more infallible than its mystical offspring revelation, and the modern yogi will be the wiser the more he practices and the less he theorizes. The Rajah Yoga Philosophy of S'rimat Sankaracharya. In his treatise on direct cognition of the unity of the soul with Brahman, this famous teacher begins by enjoin- ing on the practicer indifference to all life's pleasures, patience under its pains, a fixed theoretical determination that nothing is real but the Self (Atman) — desire to obtain release, and right thinking, which last means acceptance of the author's doctrines. After abundantly and clearly setting forth all these he comes down to practical work in verse loo, which is as follows: "Henceforward (for the instruction of those HINDU YOGA. 185 who require to be taken step by step to the realization of the said truth) we begin to propound the fifteen stages necessary for the acquisition of the knowledge described before. Knowing all these one must use all of them towards acquiring a habit of constant, firm and active meditation." These stages are: (i) Yama, or restraint over the senses; (2) Niya?na^ or constant consciousness of unity with Brahman ; (3) Tyaga, recognition of Brah- man as being everywhere; (4) Mauna, "that inde- scribable Brahman " which, though the mind turns back baffled from it, the learned must ever try to possess; (5) Des'a, of which all said is, "That is the real solitary De's (place) wherein the universe does not exist in the beginning, middle or end; and which is to be found through the whole of this (material) life"; (6) Kida^ or the support and sustenance of all actions and the real and only fountain of joy; (7) Asana, or position assumed when meditating or practicing physical exercises — the one found most easy being the best; (8) Mulabandha, of which all said, is: "That which is the origin of all being, and that on whom depends the original (ignorance) obstruction of the manas {sic)^ is the Mulabandha, to be always practiced, and is the only one to be taken up by students of Rajah or mental Yoga (to the exclusion of the rather phalic bandhas of Hatha Yoga) ; (9) Dehas- amya, a mental method for straightening the body, for which physical movements are sometimes practiced; (10) Drikathitt, which consists in viewing with the mind's eye the whole universe as BrahmSn, or knowing the seer, the sight and the thing seen as one, a mental substitute for looking at the tip of the nose. Pranasamyama, or " the constant and permanent obstruction of all the senses (internal) through the process of viewing all objects such as the mind and its creations as in and of Brahman," a substitute for the breathings of Hatha, Yoga, in which such viewing stands for Rechaka (breathing out), the conviction " I am Brahman " stands for Puraka (breath- 186 HINDU YOGA. ing in), and concentration on that conviction stands for Kumbhaka (holding the breath in); (12) Pratyahara, or the resolving all objects into Atman; (13) Dharna^ or steadying the mind by making it " recognize BrahmSn wherever it travels or goes"; (14) Atmadhyana, or con- dition of highest joy arising from the conviction, " I am Brahman"; (15) Samadhi (of the unconscious sort) or *'the negation of all mental action, by the mind's being reduced to a state beyond all change, and by its being ever merged in Brahman." This course, it is said, is to be studied only so long as is needed for the yogis to "acquire the power of, at the spur of the moment, collecting and concentrating them- selves." The following are the closing verses of the treatise : " 143. This with the parts set forth above is Rajah or mental Yoga mixed with Hatha or physical Yoga, pre- scribed for those who have already lost a portion of their taste for the pleasures of the senses." ** 144. To those whose minds are completely ripe this Rajah Yoga alone (without any Hatha or physical Yoga) is useful ; this yoga again being one easily accessible even to those who are devoted to their teachers, or to their favorite gods, &c." In the Vedant Sara^ composed from a comment written by Sankaracharya on the Vedanta, it is said "to point out that the knowledge of Brahman was the otily certain way of obtaining liberation instead of the severe mortifi- cations of former yogis, which mankind at present are in- capable of performing, and to destroy among men attach- ment to works of merit," it is argued that though the old doctrine had been that both works and wisdom were required to obtain liberation, Sankaracharya had in his comment on the Bhagavat Gita by many proofs shown that works are wholly excluded, and that knowledge alone, realizing every thing as Brahman, procured libera- tion. HINDU YOGA. 187 In the same author's celebrated " Crest Jewell of Wis- dom " we find the same insistence on knowledge being the only way to liberation and Brahman. It is admitted that temporary liberation from re-birth may be obtained by means of good Kartna and religious observances, &c , but it is asserted that permanent salvation can only come by the knowledge of oneness with Deity through right discrimination — by knowledge of one's own soul — which knowledge is only gained "by perception, by investiga- tion, or by instruction, but not by bathing or giving of alms, or by a hundred retentions of the breath, or any amount of Karma." Again: "Liberation cannot be achieved except by the direct perception of the identity of the individual with the universal self, neither by yoga, nor by Sankya (speculative philosophy), nor by the prac- tice of religious ceremonies, nor by 7nere teaching." There seems to be some inconsistency here. ''''The Philosophy and Science of Vedanta a fid Rajah Yoga " by the Mahatma /nana Guru Yogi Sabhapaty Swami^ is a work of our own times, the author having been born in 1840. Early in life there fell upon him that religious unrest which gives its victim no respite until soon or late the continuous and intense concentration which it in- duces carries him a certain ways into the state of Sama- hadi, in which at last he finds peace and rest, a curative crisis such as Nature has often to operate, whether for the benefit of Hindu Yogis, Catholic saints or Methodist converts. In his crisis Sabhapaty had a vision of the Infinite Spirit, by whom he was directed to go to certain holy men and be initiated, much after the manner of Saint Paul and his vision. Obedient as was the saint, and filled with as divine an ecstasy, he abandoned his family at midnight, and wrapped in only a sheet went as directed. Within a short time he attained to such a de- gree of Samadhi, that he could sit several days together without any food and enjoying full absorption. After nine years of yoga work, during which he lived in a cave 188 HINDU YOGA. and fed on roots, he went forth by command of his teacher to make known to the world the truths he had learned, performing as he went many notable miracles. The trea- tise in hand is the substance of two of his lectures, and is important as showing the latest phase of yoga. It begins with declaring the object of it to be "to show the method by which the human soul is sure to gain suc- cess in holding communion with the Universal Infinite Spirit, and thereby become the very Infinite Spirit itself." Passing over the religious, scientific and philosophical part and coming to the practical, we have the following: "Then imagine that you throw, or draw within, the real and actual light of your two eyes internally to kundali, which will appear the acute and keen divine sight; here the Sushumna vessel joins the lingam and ascends up- wards through the backbone. The sight must be thrown in such a way that the keenness of those two sights, or the imaginary knowledge, jnana or consciousness of these two eyes, shall descend through the right and left holes of the sushumana to the lowest point of kundali. By the keenness of sight is meant that indescribable some- thing that seems to proceed from the eyes when you steadily gaze at a distant object with half-shut eyes." "Now imagine the mind to be a straight pole whose top is in the middle of the Brahmarandhra (the centre of the skull) and whose bottom is in the kundali. Moreover, consider the mental vision or consciousness to be lodged in the bottom of the pole." " Now take hold of the mental vision by the keenness of the two eyes and lift it up gradually and slowly, as with tongs, to the Brahmarandhra. The time taken in this pulling up of the mental consciousness must not be less than twenty minutes." " Now stop this imaginary mental consciousness in the Brahmarandhra for twenty minutes more. Then drop and draw it up so fast that within a second it must descend to the kundali and re-ascend to the Brahmarandhra, run- HINDU YOGA. 189 ning straight up and down through the middle vessel of the large Sushumna which we have considered to be the mental pole." (This middle vessel is the lesser Sushumna.) " After practicing this for a few minutes, make your mind to stand upon the pole steady and straight as if it were fixed to a firm rocky pole. There let it stand im- movable and without descending again. Make it to be in dead and calm silence, void and without motion, and free from all thoughts and fickleness." " After succeeding in making the pole of your mind (or eternal divine conscious sight) straight and steady by the foregoing process, join the conscious sight of the two eyes with the top of the mind in the Brahmarandhra. Thus it forms a triangle whose vertex is the mind, and the two keennesses that proceed from the eyes to join the former, the two sides." " Having got success in this practice, imagine strongly that your head is removed, and of course with it eyes, ears, nose, mouth and everything pertaining to the head. Instead of it consider that the whole space is filled up by the universal {/nanakasha) consciousness, which now becomes the holy akash itself." Next the yogin is directed to make "a divine pilgrim- age in the universe of his body," the lines of it lead- ing from the top of the head, through the Sushumna, down to the Kundali, and thence upward through the same, now termed kumbak, to starting point. Along this line are located twelve certain spirits, at each of which the mind stops and addresses to it an argumentative as- sertion and sings with piety an appropriate mantratn, the intent of all which is to produce a realizing knowledge of the nature of body and of spirit. For instance, the mind on its way down is made to pause at the centre of the tongue where the Jivatma (infinite spirit) becomes the finite spirit of consciousness, appearing in three forms, namely, as activity, darkness and goodness, and 190 HINDU YOGA. there to stand and to tell it, "I am not you," by singing with devotion some verses, and then pass on. Finally, Pranyama, the breathings, the same as in Hatha Yoga, are prescribed, though with a protest that it is not really necessary, in which he but agrees with other teachers, who, while disparaging the older and more laborious practice, seem unable to do without it. Not only does this one include Pranyama, but the concentra- tion he directs upon this and that part of the body is merely the Shakti process of Hatha with variations and additions, Tatwic Yoga. ** The Science of Breath " is the title of a little book translated from the Sanscrit a few years ago by the Pan- dit Rama Prasad, and which attracted so much notice that he afterwards embodied it in a larger volume on '■'■Nature's Finer i^^r^r^i, " otherwise made up of explana- tory essays of his own. He says in the preface to the first that it is not a very exact translation, and the same is true of the second. Each contains matter not in the other, and there are signs that something of the original work is omitted from both, so that the reader has to piece out the one from the other in the best way he can. As before explained, the ''■Breath'' treated of is not of the lungs, but "Prana," the "Great Breath," which pervades all nature, the first cause of all things, the life-giving breath of Brahman, whose out-going is creation and whose in-drawing is destruction. Of this "great breath" the five Tatwas are the first differentia- tion. They may be otherwise named the five states of matter, — the five elementary principles of nature, — the five modes of motion, — the five vibratory ethers. On all planes of being, spiritual, mental, psychic and phys- ical, they correspond to the five senses of man, whose organs they create and then act upon. In Akasd, ether par excellence, the first in order and out of which all the HINDU YOGA. 191 Others are produced, which, as it were, contains them all and separates them from each other and penetrates all things, is found the sense of hearing, in Vayii (air) that of touch, in Taijas (fire) that of seeing, in Apas (water) that of taste, and in Prithivi (earth) that of smell. Each of them is produced by the one preceding it in the above stated order, and each has a vibration peculiar to itself. The tatwic philosophers assuming to have obtained knowledge of the laws of the tatwic movement through revelation as well as reason, have elaborated a philoso- phy covering all of nature's doing and being, the study of which as set forth by Mr. Prasad, whether its con- clusions be accepted or not, is a delight to the enquir- ing mind. Of this philosophy the authoritative gospel is the little book in question. It says: "The universe came out of tatwa; it goes on by the instrumentality of the tatwas; it disappears in the tatwas; by the tatwas is known the nature of the universe. The knowers of the tatwas have ascertained them to be the highest root. Unmanifested, formless, the one giver of light is '•The Great Power 'y from that appeared the soniferous ether (akasa)y from that had birth the tangiferous ether (Vayu) ; from the tangiferous ether, the luminiferous ether (taijas), and from this, gustiferous ether (apas) ; from hence was the birth of the odoriferous ether (prith- ivi). These are the five ethers and they have a fivefold extension. Of these the Universe came out; by these it goes on; into these it disappears; even among these it shows itself again. The body is made of the five tatwas; the five tatwas exist therein in the subtle form. They are known by the learned who devote themselves to the tatwas." "On this account I shall speak of the rise of breath in the body; by knowing the nature of inspiration and expiration comes into being the knowledge of the three times (past, present and future) ; omniscience is caused by it if well understood. Whoever knows the analysis of 193 HINDU YOGA. the Nadis and the Prana, the analysis of the tatwas and the analysis of the conjunctive sushumna gets salvation " (release from re-births). The other fruits of such knowledge are: the power to kill enemies; to form friendships; to acquire wealth, comfort and reputation; to control the sex of offspring; to get access to a king; to get a king into one's power; to propititiate gods; the power of locomotion and of the exercise of bodily functions; exemption from being con- trolled by the heavenly bodies; ability to lengthen and shorten the limbs at will; fulfillment of desires; victory; cheating time; great bliss and godlike power; the state- ment closing with: "He who has the knowledge of breath in his head has fortune at his feet. " The method of using the knowledge to obtain the fruits consists largely in com- mencing undertakings at such times as are known to be propitious by the movement of the tatwas in the body. Here the breath of the lungs plays its part, but, for all that is told, only as an indicator of the tatwic move- ments, as conduits of which the Ida, Pingala and Sushumna have their importance. Divination is accomplished by means of a like knowledge of tatwic movement, and rules for practicing it fill a large part of the book. Each of the tatwas is known to the yogi by its color, form, taste and mode of vibration, the power to discern which is in each case to be acquired by an appropriate practice. Except that concentration of the mind is never forgotten and that in the end one of the Kumbhakas is recommended, the yoga methods of the little book are unlike any that have heretofore been cited. The most important of them is given in the following, under the heading of " Meditation of the Tatwas and mastery over them " : " But now we are going to explain the most im- portant and final mode of practicing. This is the secret which the sages of India only were acquainted with, and up to this time was only a legacy to the most promising and perfect adept of yoga. The beginner at first will HINDU YOGA. 193 think it a mere joke and perhaps madness. But a short practice will fully assure him of the important results to be gained by the practice. He will by degrees become powerful enough to have at his will all the visible worlds before his inward eyes and command the secrets of na- ture." " During the day, when the sky is clear, let him once or twice for about an hour or two draw his mind from all external things, and sitting on an easy chair let him fix his eyes on any particular part of the blue sky and go on looking at it without allowing them to twinkle." " At first he will see the waves of the water which sur- rounds the whole world." '' Some days after, as the eye becomes practiced, he will see different sorts of buildings, &c. , in the air, and many other wonderful things, too. When the neophyte reaches this stage of practice he should be sure of gaining suc- cess." ■'After this he will see different sorts of mixed colors of the Tatwas in the sky which will, after a constant and resolute practice, show themselves in their respective colors. To test the truth of which, the neophyte, during the practice, should occasionally close his eyes and com- pare the color floating in the sky with that he sees in- wardly. When both are the same the operation is right. Other wonders resulting from this will present themselves to the yogi. This practice is to be done in the day time." " For the night he must sit with his shin bones to the ground, letting his feet touch his calves; put his hands upon his knees, having the fingers pointed towards his body; then fix his eyes on the tip of his nose, and medi- tate upon his breath going in and coming out." At this stage of perfection the yogi should commence as follows: " Getting up at two or three a.m., let him now fix his mind on the Tatwa then in course (in his body). If the Tatwa in course is then Prithivi (the earth), let him think 194 II I AW U YOGA. of it as something having four corners (the earth in scrip- tural times was always square), having a good yellow color, sweet smelling, small in body, and taking away all diseases. Let him at the same time repeat the word Lam. It is very easy to imagine such a thing," After giving a like sort of formula for each of the other four Tatwas, each closing with a magic word of one syllable, the book goes on to say: "By diligent practice these syllables, uttered by the tongue of a yogi, become inseparable from the Tatwa. Whenever he re- peats any of these the special Tatwa appears with as much force as he may will ; and thus it is that a yogi can cause, whenever he likes, lightning, rain, hurricanes, &c." By the mastery over the Tatwas thus obtained, he can also compel the right one to move in the right time and place, so as to become auspicious to any proposed undertaking (as one would regulate the wind by means of the weathercock). The work of Swatmaram is no doubt very old, but this little book must be much older, if we may judge by its secular, non-devotional character, the absence of meta- physics, its primitive rules for divination and the large space they occupy, its having been of late laid away and nearly lost, as the preface to the translation indicates, and, finally, by the marks it bears of having been expur- gated in the interest of modesty. Karma Yoga, or the Yoga of Work. Although seclusion and leisure are so important in the practice of yoga as almost to be conditions essential to it, yet men have lived who, in spite of the distractions of active life in the world, have attained to some degree of it at least, as, for example, Plotinus; and both Hindu and Chinese writers tell of others, legendary or supposi- titious, to whom the very occupations which would ordi- narily disturb mental concentration have served as objects on which to exercise it. The Swami Vivekananda, who HINDU YOGA. 195 in one of his eight lectures on Karma Yoga goes so far as to say : "Just by work men can get where Buddha got by meditation and Christ by prayer," in another tells of a poor, hard-working woman who, having read the thoughts of a young Sanyasi, or monk, in a way that so astonished him that he fell at her feet and exclaimed: "Mother, how did you know that?" answered him: " Boy, I do not know your yoga or your practices, but all my life I have struggled to do my duty; that is all the yoga I practice, and by doing my duty I have become illumined." She then referred him to a butcher as one whose gifts, acquired in the midst of his heavy labors, were much above her own, and who afterwards, in an interval of those labors, sat down and gave the same monk a lecture, which is now a celebrated book in India. When it was finished the hearer could not but ask : "Why are you in a butcher's body and doing such filthy, ugly work ?" to which the reply was: " I neither know your yoga, nor have I become a Sanyasi; never went out of the world nor into the forest, but all this has come to me through doing my duty in my position." Notwith- standing the prominence given to duty in this narration, it would be wrong to thence infer that the fruits of yoga are bestowed as rewards for the performance of duty; to assume that they are given as prizes to encourage the doing of good acts to others would be to go counter to the whole tenor of yoga teaching, which relates only to one's dealings with one's self as a means of arriving at his very self. What brought illumination to the woman and man just referred to must be presumed to have been doing the work which duty required of them with con- centrated minds. Concentration itself being the opera- tive means and the object concentrated on being of small moment, it might be possible for a strong mind to direct itself so intently on even manual labor as to obtain the Siddhis as immediate, and deliverance as ultimate results. The Chinese sage, Chuang-Tzu, tells a story of which 196 HINDU YOGA. another cutter-up of meat is the hero, thus: "Prince Hui's cook was cutting up a bullock. Every blow of his hand, every heave of his shoulders, every tread of his foot, every thrust of his knee, every whshh of rent flesh, every chhk of the chopper, was in perfect harmony — rythmical like the dance of the mulberry grove, simul- taneous like the chords of ChingShou." "Well done," cried the Prince; " yours is skill indeed." "Sire," re- plied the cook, "I have always devoted myself to Tao (which here means the same as yoga). // is better tha?i skill. When I first began to cut up bullocks I saw before me simply whole bullocks. After three years' practice I saw no more whole animals. And now I work with my mind and not with my eye. When my senses bid me stop, but my mind urges me on, I fall back upon eternal principles. I follow such openings or cavities as there may be, according to the natural constitution of the animal. A good cook changes his chopper once a year, because he cuts. An ordinary cook once a month — because he hacks. But I have had this chopper nineteen years, and although I have cut up many thousand bul- locks, its edge is as if fresh from the whetstone." Another narration of the same sage not only illus- trates the point that common labor may serve the pur- pose of mental concentration, and thereby as above develop something "better than skill," but also ex- plains, so far as it is explicable, the difference between knowledge such as can be taught in words, and one branch at least of such as comes by yoga practice, the one being communicable by a few hours of instruction and the other obtainable only by years of practice, in which hand and head co-operate to give a mastery which is be- yond knowledge. An old wheelwright, who undertakes to explain to his prince the difference in question, is made to say : "Let me take an illustration from my own trade. In making a wheel, if you work too slowly, you can't make HINDU YOGA. 197 it firm; if you work too fast the spokes won't fit in. You must neither go too slowly nor too fast. There itiust be co-ordination of mind and hand. Words cannot explain what it is, but there is some mysterious art therein. I cannot teach it to my son ; nor can he learn it from me. Consequently, though seventy years old, I am still making wheels in my old age." May not that something slowly acquired by co-ordination of mind and hand, in which the ability of the artisan and artist lies, be indeed a kind of yoga ? May not artistic inspiration be as much the product of artistic labor as the yogis' enlightenment is of the yoga practice ? It was to be expected that the practical Chinese would put yoga to mundane uses, and accordingly the writings of Chuang-Tzu are illustrated with many more instances of like bearing with the above; of these one more will be quoted: "The man who forged swords for the Minister of War was eighty years of age, yet he never made the slightest slip in his work." The Minister of War said to him, "Is it your skill. Sir, or have you any method?" " It is concentration, " replied the man, ' ' When twenty years old I took to forging swords. If a thing was not a sword, I did not notice it. I availed myself of whatever energy I did not use in other directions in order to secure greater efficiency in the direction required. Still more of that which is never without use — Tao (yoga). So that there was nothing which did not lend its aid." The Japanese armorers, too, it is said, when they un- dertake to forge a blade of superior quality, call in the aid of yoga concentration, but in a more ceremonious man- ner, hammering away in a state of true spiritual exalta- tion. And the methods of these craftsmen are none the less true yoga practice for the object concentrated on being the work presently in hand and the fruit of it merely earthly profit and advantage. Of course it is not here in- tended to include in the same category with this handi- 198 HINDU YOGA. craft inspiration the higher kinds of knowledge that come in Samadhi. We have seen in what has been thus far disclosed of Hindu yoga practice that the concentration of the mind required by it may be upon any one thing or thought, point, place, word, act, or nothing at all— absolute void, the last the best of all. Also that yoga may be efficiently practiced in the household or the forest, in soltude, or crowds, though, doubtless, seclusion and solitude, and exemption from physical labor, furnish by far the better conditions. But the range of concentration may be still further extended; it may include bodily sensations and mental emotions. Intense pain or intense pleasure of mind or body have power to command the attention. One office of pain in the scheme of Nature may be to con- centrate the mental powers on the injury or disorder, of which it is the effect and the outcry, with curative force, and the common fainting fit may be but a form of trance, Samadhi, brought on by intensity of the agony, alarm or grief. The "witches' sleep," which so often came to the sufferers on the rack or at the stake, and which is said by some to have saved Servetus at the last from feeling the full measure of Calvin's hate, may have been brought on by concentration on this or that subject or thing, but more likely was induced by a powerful focussing of the mental faculties on the bodily agony then and there being undergone or impending, for if the witches were really witches they were "sensitive" and easily put into a trance, just as Boehme was, who went into one at the sight of a point of light on a newly scoured pewter plat- ter, or John of the Cross, in whose presence, in his latter days, it would not do to sing a verse lest he should im- mediately lose consciousness and rise and float in the air. Faintings connected with joyful sensations of any kind can hardly be attributed to concentration on anything else than the joy presently felt. There is a yoga practice HINDU YOGA. 199 in India based on sexual love, and it has two branches, termed of the right and left hand. Some Concluding Remarks on Hindu Yoga. Of the 275 sections composing that part of Swatma- ram's manual that treats of Hatha Yoga, there are only three that mention release or deliverance, and these being out of joint with all the 272 others must be consid- ered as having got into the compilation — which is all the book claims to be — without right. The little work on " The Science of Breath " is entirely bare of any promise of, or allusion to, any other than worldly benefits to be enjoyed in this life as the reward of the neophyte's prac- tice, while that reward is distinctly stated to be the quali- fying him as a magician with the powers usually accorded to such, besides others usually attributed only to gods, together with the enjoyment of "immeasurable bliss." Both works relate evidently to the primitive, unsophisti- cated yoga of the times when the Rig Vedas, quite as exclusively mundane in the benefits they promise, were composed by the earliest yogis, and when the Brahmans were not as yet a caste, but merely a body of household priests and practical magicians working for hire. But when the great and wonderful secret doctrine, born of the brains of the Kshatrya class, of other and superior blood to these, and elaborated to perfection while years by centuries rolled on, was at length made known and a new philosophy given to the world, the old magic was put to a new use, and as indicating its new end and aim, which was that of escaping from re-birth through junc- tion with the first principle of all things, took the name of Yoga; and because it was the gift of the warrior class, from which the rulers of the people were chosen, became distinctively known as Rajah, or Royal Yoga, while the other kept that which expresses its method and not its object, namely, Ha Tha, or Breath Yoga. Yet there are 200 HINDU YOGA. some who think Rajah Yoga means only royal road, i. e., easy road. The way in which the long-kept secret got out is nar- rated in the Upanishads, thus: A priest said to his son, " Shvetaketu, go dwell as a Brahman student, for none of our family was ever unlearned, a mere hanger-on of Brahmanhood." Then Shvetaketu, going when he was twelve years old, returned when he was twenty-four, after studying all the Vedas, conceited, vain of his learning, and proud. His father then sent him to the Court of King Prava- hanna, who, addressing him, said: "Youth, has thy father instructed thee? " "Yes, sire," replied the young Brahman. Then the King asked him: " Knowest thou whither go those who die out of this world? " " No," he replied. " Knowest thou how they return again? " " No," he replied. "Knowest thou the turning apart of the two ways?" (the way of the gods and the way of the fathers). " No," he replied. " Knowest thou why that world is not overfilled? " " No," he replied. "Knowest thou how, at the fifth offering, the waters take human voice? " " No," he replied. "Then how saidst thou that thou hast received the teaching? For how is he taught who knows not these things? " The youth thereupon goes and reports his discomfiture to his father, but refuses to go again to the King to be taught, so the old man goes alone and begs for instruc- tion. The King, after telling him: " Never before thee did this teaching reach the Brahmans, but among all peoples it was the hereditary instruction of the Kshatryas alone," granted his request. HINDU YOGA. 201 Be this story itself true or not, it well enough conveys the truth that subsequently to the giving out of the Vedic Revelations there had grown up in secret quite another doctrine of life, death and immortality from what they convey, that was, after a very long period, in some way given to the world, or to the priesthood rather, who had lent no hand in its making up, and who, though ostensibly accepting, paid little regard to it. The unanswered questions of the King imply that it contained : (i), A modified world of spirits, consisting of a land of the fathers and a land of the gods, with a special way to each, but only a temporary sojourn in either; (2), Re- birth; (3), Release from it, and final absorption in Brahman. As to the peculiar Hindu belief in absorption, it may be conceived of as arising from the acquisition of magical powers, always esteemed to be god-like, in connection with the subjective experiences that come with them, among which are certain blissful sensations, that might well suggest to the practicer's mind that he was losing his every-day self in something. We have seen that yoga literature claims for practicers who attain to yoga power to work as good miracles as any god. This being so, it would be natural for the attainer, as one by one miraculous powers came to him, to think himself on the way to become God, and when Samadhi, with its bliss, illumination and sinking of the outer conscious in the inner one was finally reached, that he should exclaim, "I am Brahman !" Thus the idea of absorption may very well have arisen from the wonderful experiences of yoga practice. But it is more than probable that before this idea was reached that of absorption in inferior deities had its place, for those came first in order of time, but naturally, also, this lower conception would give place to the higher one now become the core of the Vedanta philosophy and leave no trace in Hindu litera- ture. So much for the belief in absorption. But how 203 HINDU YOGA. came we by the doctrine of re-births ? Mr. Charles John- ston, in the "Metaphysical Magazine" for May, 1896, refers it to an intuition. He says: " The early Kshatrya teaching was an intuition of the potency of the moral and spiritual forces as the determining powers in life and a belief in re-birth as the natural outcome of the reality and continuance of those energies." Thus a scholar, apparently well read in Hindu learning, has found there no more solid reason for this very solidly fixed belief than an inference drawn from an intuition. When King Pravahanna gave out the long-hidden Rajah Philosophy, there came with it no special Rajah Yoga, but in the course of time difference in purpose brought difference in method, and the old system of training for the development of magicians through in- tent, persistent, not thinking, aided by certain bodily acts efficient to arrest thought, gradually grew into the seemingly more intellectual and spiritual one now most in vogue, of scorning physical means and magical ends and agonizing in the hardest kind of metaphysical think- ing for the purpose of getting to God. Sankaracharya says : " One who desires knowledge for final absolution must set himself seriously to think." "Knowledge is not produced by any means other than right thinking; just as the objects in the universe are never perceived but by the help of light." "Who am I? How is this evolved? Who is its creator ? What is the material of which it is made ? This is the form of rational thought." And then the young philosopher goes on rather dog- matically to tell the disciple what to think. If more were known of the yogas other than Hindu more resemblance might be found between them and it than appears when the above condensation which the rich- ness of the literature relating to it has rendered possible is compared with the more meagre accounts concerning the others with which we shall have to be content. But HINDU YOGA. 203 as it is certain important features of the one will be found to be wanting in all others. The positions, breathings, movements and listenings, in short, all of importance in Swatmaram's book, save simple mental concentration, is peculiar to the Hindu practice. In other words, all that distinguishes Hatha from other Hindu yogas also dis- tinguishes Hindu Yoga as a whole from all others. Again, though in some of those others union with God in some mode is held up as the object to be attained by the prac- tice, such union never amounts to absorption, nor effects release from re-births. Whatever other reward may at- tend any other than the Hindu practicer's labors, it is not the getting out of life — the shaking off of this trouble- some universe. It is true that Hindu Yoga calls itself a religion, and that it utilizes religious belief and emotion as means of concentration, but otherwise it is peculiar among religions in denying that either of them is essen- tial to yoga practice, or even an aid to it, save for people whose minds are able to hold such beliefs and are of temperaments too emotional to do without them. The Christian yogi must remain a devotee till he dies; the Hindu, if he ever were one, is rid of all the burthens of religion as soon as he has "attained " ; an atheist will do just as well as any other to make a yogi of. If of philo- sophical tastes he may concentrate on logical proposi- tions, and this is Gnana Yoga. If of mystical tendencies he may study the stirring within him of the faculties of his own soul aroused to movement by the stilling of his mind, and this is Rajah Yoga. Or if he be a man of work, he may put his attention fixedly on what he has to do, and this is Karma Yoga. But whatever the method be called, it is well worth notice that the expositors of it are careful to stir in with the concentration more or less of Pranyama, breathing. Thus mental concentration and physical breathing are inseparable companions in every form of Hindu Yoga. Concentration is in all others, but breathing is absent. Now, there are facts which seem to 204 HINDU YOGA. show that this difference is of the greatest importance; among which are these: that the breathing is proved to have power to still the mind, as, indeed, every one may test for himself, and that the late American experiments prove that concentration undertaken solely for the pur- pose of so stilling the mind can also set up the breathings in an involuntary manner, as well as the Madras and other bodily movements, internal and external, which the manuals of Hatha Yoga direct to be voluntarily done. CHAPTER XVIII. CHINESE YOGA. When, three centuries before Christ, Buddhism carried with it into China Hindu Yoga, it found there something much older than itself called Tao^ whose scriptures, em- bodied in the ''Tao-Te-King,'" or " The Book of the Way and of Virtue," attributed to the sage Lao-Tsee, who lived three centuries earlier still, though supposed by scholars to be spurious in part and in large part incom- plete, is nevertheless the authoritative exposition of the old Taoism which Confucius came to disturb and the recognized authority of the new and corrupted cult of that name. Old Taoism never had a personal god; the persons of its mythology were not gods, and the gods of its philos- ophy were not persons. The "supreme magistrate" whom the book in question in one place mentions, was merely a spirit who, acting upon information brought to him by other spirits who went up and down in the earth doing duty as detectives, rewarded and punished accord- ing to desert both the living and the dead. In another place a "supreme master of heaven" is alluded to as "coming subsequent to Tao," and in other literature an "emperor of heaven" and again a "king of heaven" are named; but these bore rule in heaven only and their jurisdiction did not interfere with that of the one heaven- ordained ruler of all the earth, namely, the Emperor of China. Of philosophical gods, there were three, but they were like the Brahman of the Hindu philosophy, primordial principles only, high above worship, obedi- ence and love, and nothing like the trinity, made up of 206 CHINESE YOGA. Brahman endowed with personality and sex and his associates personal Vichnu and Siva, nor that of the Egyptians, which was simply a holy family made up of Osiris, the father, Isis, the mother, and Horus, their son ; nor yet that of the Christians, which was modeled on this last, except that in deference to the contempt felt gen- erally throughout early Christendom for her sex, the Virgin Mary was left out, and the Holy Spirit, till then unknown as a god, put in her place. Which was a sad mistake, for the amended god-head was so inartificially put together that long and horrible wars resulting from efforts to understand it have left it still incomprehensi- ble to the mortal mind, while, so far as history relates, no bloodshed at all had to be invoked in explanation of its prototype, the simple family circle of Egypt. The construction of the Christian trinity, according to Saint Augustine, is as follows: "We say, we do, that the father is the father of the son, and that the son is the son of the father, and that the holy spirit is the spirit of the father and the son, without being either the father or the son." Thus the Holy Ghost, who as everybody knows begat the son, is declared to have done so before he himself had existence, since as the spirit of his child he could not have had being in advance of that child. Much prettier word-work are the expositions of the only two impersonal trinities of which there is record, namely that of Old Taoism, made by Lao-Tsee and that of the Neoplatonists, made by Plotinus, the parallelism of which is the more remarkable when it is considered that however much the Greeks may have learned from India, the literature of China must have been quite be- yond their reach. Here is a statement of each, mem- ber by member, that of Plotinus being from the hand of M. Bouillet, his translator and editor: *' The foundation of the whole system of Plotinus is the theory of the three hypostatic principles, that is to say, of the three Divine principles which from all eter- CHINESE YOGA. 207 nity have emanated the one from the other." The first is called " the First,'" " the Good^" because all depends on it, all aspires to it, all hold of it existence, life and thought. It is also called ^'' the One,'' ^^ the Simple," ^^ the Absolute," which has manifested its power in producing all intelligible beings. (But what he thus indicates Plotinus expressly says cannot be named.) Now turning to the Tao-Te-King we read: ''Tao pro- duced One," " One produced Two," " Two produced Three" " 7'^r^^ have produced all beings." Also: "The being without a name is the origin of heaven and earth; with a name it is the mother of all things." " Tao is vague, confused." *'Tao is void but exhaustless, pro- found, the patriarch of all beings; pure, subsisting eter- nally." *' Tao is beyond sense, eternal, nameless, form- less, rooted in non-being, obscure, without color or sound, cannot be touched, is incorporeal, form without form, image without image." The second member of the Neoplatonic trinity is thus described: "The second principle \s Intelligence, wh'xch. embraces in its universality all the individual intelli- gences. In thinking itself, Intelligence possesses all things; it is all things, because in it the thinking subject, the object thought of and the thought itself are iden- tical." "Its ideas are th& pure forms, types of all that exists here below in the world of sense, the essences, the real beings, the intelligibles ; they compose the ifitelligible world." In the Tao-Te-King we read: "The visible forms of the great Virtue (7>) emanate from Tao solely." "Within it are images." "Within it are beings." "Within it is a spiritual essence, and that essence is profoundly true." The third member of the Neoplatonic trinity is thus described: "The third Y>^inc\p\e \s the universal soul, or the soul of the world, from which proceed all the indi- vidual souls." " There are two parts to it, the principal power of the soul, or \he celestial soul, which contemplates 208 CHINESE YOGA. Intelligence and thence receives its forms, and the in- ferior power of the soul, called natural and generative power, total Reason of the Universe, because it transmits to mat- ter the seminal reasons which fashion and form the ani- mals." The Tao-Te-King says: " It, Tao, can be regarded as the mother of the Universe." " It is spread throughout the Universe " (note 8), " There is not a creature that does not possess it. " " Tao flows everywhere." "All beings rely on it to give them birth, and it repels none." " It loves and sustains all beings." " It is able to give aid to them and conduct them to perfection." "Tao produces beings. Virtue (7>) sustains them. They mani- fest them under a material form, and perfect them by a forcible secret impulsion." " Tao produces beings, sus- tains and causes them to grow, perfects them, feeds them, protects them." " That which is void, non-beifig, immaterial, is called Tao, or the way; that which trans- forms and sustains all creatures is Te, or Virtue." " An immaterial breath forms Harmony." Readers who will carefully compare these Chinese and Greek triads will find their parallelism so close that they must wonder that lines so far apart in time and space, the one pro- jected from the Chinese and the other from the Greek intellect, could run so nearly, if not exactly, equi-distant at every point as these do. Like Plotinus, who declares the first principle of his trinity to be too great for a name, and uses the terms "the One," "the First" "the Good," "the Simple," " the Absolute," to point at what he may not name. Lao- Tse uses the vague word Tao to indicate his first and in- effable principle, " the being without a name." To his life-giving, life-sustaining principle, corresponding to the universal soul of Plotinus, and which must be ranked as third in order, he applies the name Virtue (Te), but has none for that intermediate one corresponding to the Neoplatonist's " Intelligence "; for it " Tao " has again CHINESE YOGA. 209 to serve, as it does for numberless other things and no- things — in short, for whatever is beyond reach of normal consciousness, and all within its reach that relates to what is so beyond it. Not only has this old Taoism a superior godhead, if so it may be called, but it has a moral ideal that tran- scends all others, and which even Neoplatonism cannot match, an ideal that is above justice, above humanity, above virtue. The eighteenth chapter of the Tao-Te- King reads : "When the Great Way had decayed, humanity and justice made their appearance." "When the family ceased to line in good harmony, acts of filial piety and paternal affection became known." "When states fell into disorder, faithful and devoted subjects came into notice." The thirty-eighth chapter reads: " Men of superior virtue ignore their virtue; and that is why they have virtue." " Men of inferior virtue never forget their virtue ; that is why they have no virtue." " Men of superior virtue practice it without dreaming of it." " Men of inferior virtue practice it with intention." " Men of superior humanity practice it without dream- ing of it." " Men of superior equity practice it with intention." " Men of superior urbanity practice it and nobody re- sponds to it; then they use violence to obtain return payment of it." " This is why one can have virtue after having lost Tao; humanity after having lost virtue; equity after having lost humanity ; urbanity after having lost equity. " " Urbanity is but the husk of rectitude and of sincerity ; it is the source of disorder." Jesus of Nazareth when he taught that men should re- turn good for evil went no further in his altruism than 210 CHINESE YOGA. Lao-Tsee had already gone when he declared that they should "avenge injuries with benefits"; which latter saying when reported to Confucius he criticised by the question: "With what then would you return good ? " We of these days so remote from the supposed Golden Age to which the old Taoists looked back as to a para- dise lost but yet possible to be regained, will be disposed to accept the criticism, but in the times when it was uttered it may have seemed harsh and unwise to many. The Tao-Te-King anticipates Plato in asserting the meta- physical principle that contraries mutually produce each other. It contains many prudential maxims for ruling every-day life and political maxims for ruling the state, the latter conveying doctrine sadly needed in these our days of over-governing, and which are intensified in these two sententious aphorisms: "Who rules ruins," "To rule men and serve heaven nothing is comparable to moderation." Capital punishment is declared to be not only wrong, but ineffectual. No personal God is mentioned, no devotional observance enjoined save that ancestor worship is alluded to as any other existing cus- tom might be. In like way spiritual beings are men- tioned, but they are mostly terrestrial demons. Further than this there is nothing said of creed or rite, temple, shrine or priest, future rewards or punishments, or in fact of any "future state " at all. Old Taoism was not pessimistic any more than old Hinduism was in the times when length of life and not release from it was the thing most desired, and good crops, full udders and fat calves were prayed for rather than spiritual gifts. Tao was practiced for what Hindu yogis scorn and spurn as obstructions in their path, namely, the siddhis, or miraculous powers, the siddhi chiefly prized, so far as the Tao-Te-King reveals, being the ability to rule a state, which ability seems to have lain as much in a certain magic power to influence the conduct of men as in the political wisdom that was sup- CHINESE YOGA. 211 posed to be also a gift of Tao. Rulers of Ancient China have carried their belief in these gifts so far that it was as common for them to call to their aid to serve as min- isters of state, governors of provinces and officials of other kinds, hermits from the woods and caves, as it has been for British sovereigns to call to their aid members of the landed aristocracy. And, more than that, in com- paratively recent times two of the Chinese emperors have actually made experiments in governing their sub- jects without any resort to force. An experiment of the opposite sort was that of state communism tried during some twenty years, but with such poor success that no repetition of it has been attempted. The fol- lowing is a synopsis of what the Tao-Te-King affirms Tao to be, to make which complete there has had to be a few repetitions of what went before: " Tao is a being; the first principle; being that is be- tween heaven and earth; void, but exhaustless; the patriarch of all beings, veils its subtlety and tempers its splendor and assimilates itself to dust; seems to subsist eternally; its parentage unknown; seems to have pre- ceded the ' master of heaven ' ; is beyond sense ; eternal ; nameless; formless; re-entering into non-being; vague; indetermined; confused; contains images; contains be- ings; is profound; is obscure; has a spiritual essence which is profoundly true; contains an infallible witness (of itself) ; has a name that never fails; gives birth to all beings ; existed before the heavens and the earth ; is calm, is immaterial; circulates everywhere without danger; can be regarded as the mother of the universe; has no name, but may be called Tao (Way) ; is grand, fugacious, re- mote; returning; is little, but the whole world cannot conquer it ; gives power over all things to those who have it;^s soon as it was divided it took a name; it is spread throughout the universe; all beings return to it as rivers to seas ; it extends in all directions ; there is not a creature, animal or plant that does not possess it; all beings rely 213 CHINESE YOGA. on it to give them birth, and it repels none; it loves and nourishes all beings, and regards not itself as their master ; is without desires; all beings submit themselves to it; its movement is produced by return to non-being ; to be weak is the function of Tao ; it conducts beings to perfection ; is a great square of which the angles are not seen ; a great vase which seems far from being finished; a great voice of which the sound is imperceptible; a great image of whom the form is not seen; produces beings which Te (virtue) nourishes; and to which the two give bodies, which they perfect by a secret forcible impulsion; Tao nourishes beings; makes them to grow; feeds them, pro- tects them; produces without appropriating them, nor takes glory to itself; reigns over but leaves them free; behold a profound goodness! Tao was the principle of the world and has become its mother; it should be cultivated by all; evil spirits, however powerful, do no harm in a kingdom governed by Tao ; it is the asylum of all beings ; the treasure of the virtuous man and the support of the wicked one; is found naturally, without searching all day for it; by it the guilty obtain liberty and life." Let the reader now, bearing in mind what has been be- fore particularized concerning the Hindu yogis, compare it with the followingdetailsquoted from the Tao-Te-King: "The saint makes it his business to do nothing, and his instructions to consist in silence ; the saint withdraws himself from his body, and his body preserves itself; has no private interests ; keeps down his desires ; casts off all desires; practices non-action ; occupies himself with non- occupation ; does not fail, because he does not act ; makes his desires consist in the absence of all desire, and his studies to consist in the absence of all study; fears glory as he would shame; his body weighs on him as a great calamity; without leaving his house he knows the Uni- verse; gets where he wants to be without taking a step; can name objects without seeing them; without acting accomplishes great things; he is careful of his body, and CHINESE YOGA. 213 economizes his vital forces; he who knows Tao is not learned; he who is learned knows not Tao; the sage is best pleased in a lowly dwelling, remote from the crowd; in ancient times those who excelled in practicing Tao were shrewd, subtle, abstracted, penetrating, profound beyond fathoming; were timid, irresolute, shunning observation, grave, of rude exterior, empty as a valley, stupid in appearance; the sage by a profound calm gradually grows in spirituality; is in no danger from man or beast; is exempt from death; he shuts his mouth, closes his ears and eyes, represses his activity, releases himself of all ties, tempers his interior light, assimilates himself to the vulgar; he attaches himself to nothing, and therefore loses nothing; goes poorly clad; only he who is constantly exempt from passions can see his own spiritual essence; there is no greater crime than to de- liver yourself over to your desires, no greater misfortune than not to know how to be sufficient unto yourself, no greater calamity than the desire of gain; if the man pre- serves unity his soul and body may remain indissoluble." Chuang- Tzic. An examination into old Taoism that should neglect the writings of Chuang-Tzu, the great disciple of Lao- Tsee, who lived three hundred years later than his master, would be incomplete. He was more than a disciple, for besides amplifying his teacher's work, he covered much new ground, being as bold an originator as he was a clear expositor. He made an impression on the minds of his countrymen that has endured till this day, although one of his commentators says that none exists capable of understanding him, and he himself said he would never be understood. Here are a few passages from writings attributed to him, Giles' translation: " At the beginning of the beginning even nothing did not exist. Then came the period of the nameless." 214 CHINESE YOGA. " Let knowledge stop at the unknowable." " There is nothing on earth that does not rise and fall, but nothing ever perishes altogether." "To put yourself in subjective relations with exter- nals, without consciousness of their objectivity, recogniz- ing that all things are One — that is Tao." Subjective Results of Tao Attainment. "But man can attain to formlessness and vanquish death. Man may abide in the everlasting. He may bring nature to a condition of One." "One who extends his sway over heaven and earth and influences all things, and who, lodging within the confines of a body with its channels of sight and sound, brings his knowledge to know that all things are One, and that his soul endures forever." " He who knows what God is and knows what man is has attained. Knowing what God is, he knows that he himself proceeded from thence." * "Cherish that which is within you, and shut off that which is without, for much learning is a curse. Then I will place you upon that abode of great light which is the source of the positive power, and escort you through the gate of profound mystery, which is the source of the neg- ative power. These powers are the controllers of heaven and earth, and each contains the other." The Lesser Siddhis. The Taoist sages had power to transform themselves to the eyes of others. Thus Hu Tzu, when a famous ma- gician came to see him, showed himself first as decrepit and near to death, next as having still some recuperative power left, next as in full health, and lastly "as Tao appeared before time was," whereupon the visitor ran * Mr. Legge, in "Texts of Taoism," pronounces the frequent intro- duction of the word "God," by Giles, a blot on the translation, painful to the eyes, and which only obscures the meaning of the Taoist writers. CHINESE YOGA. 215 away in terror. Of this magician it is said that "He knew all about birth and death, loss and gain, misfortune and happiness, long life and short life — predicting events to a day with supernatural accuracy." Now, gifts like these last were also possessed by the sages, but were for some reason contemned by Lao- Tsee, who calls them "false knowledge, which is but the flower of Tao and the principle of ignorance," reminding us of the yogis contempt for all the siddhis, including what the Taoist saints accepted as well as what they re- jected. And yet the very book in which he wrote this was saved from the general burning (ordered by a certain emperor, in order to start history afresh with his reign) only because it was a book of divination. Tao Practice. Though ancient Taoism has left no manual of practice such as ancient Yoga has, the following from Chuang- Tzu seem to recognize that a system of practice existed and that time was an important element of it. He says: * ' Preserve your form complete and your vitality secure. Let no anxious thoughts intrude. And then in three years you may attain to this." " One year after receiving your instructions I became naturally simple. After two years I could adapt myself as required. After three years I understood. After four years my intelligence developed. After five years it was complete. After six years the spirit entered into me. After seven I knew God. After eight life and death existed for me no more. After nine, perfection." The following, however, seems to imply that for "the right sort of man " there is a short cut to attainment, and by methods which, if disclosed, would suggest the most mysterious of the Yoga madras, the Vajroli. Nan Po Tzu Kuel said to Nii Yii, by one authority said to be a woman : " You are old, but your countenance is like that of a child. How is this ? " 216 CHINESE YOGA. Nii Yii replied, "I have learned Tao." ♦' Could I get it by studying ? " asked the other. *' I fear not," said Nii Yii. " You are not the sort of a man. There was Pu Laing I. He had all the qualifi- cations of a sage, but not Tao. Now I had Tao, though none of the qualifications. But do you imagine that much as I wished it I was able to teach Tao to him so that he could be a perfect sage ? Had it been so, then' to teach Tao to one who has the qualifications of a sage would be an easy matter. No, sir. I imparted it to him as though withholding; and in three days for him this sublunary state had ceased to exist. When he had attained to this, I withheld again; and in seven days more the external world had ceased to be. And so again for another nine days, when he became unconscious of his own existence. He became etherealized, next pos- sessed of perfect wisdom, then without past or present, and finally able to enter there where life and death are no more — where killing does not take away life, nor does prolongation of life add to the duration of exist- ence. In that state he is ever in accord with the exi- gencies of his environment; and this is to be battered but not bruised. And he who can be thus battered but not bruised is on his way to perfection." " And how did you manage to get hold of all this ? " asked the other. "I got it from books," replied Nii Yii; "and the books got it from learning, and learning from investiga- tion, and investigation from co-ordination, and co-ordi- nation from application, and application from desire to know, and desire to know from the unknown, and the unknown from the great void, and the great void from infinity! " CHAPTER XIX. EGYPTIAN YOGA. The earliest records of the religion of Egypt tell of a very philosophically conceived god, without beginning or end. The sole progenitor in heaven and earth, un- created and self-begotten. " But," says Mr. Lenorment, "this sublime notion, if it was retained in the esoteric doctrine, soon became obscured and disfigured by the conceptions of the priests and the ignorance of the peo- ple." The exoteric notions, which prevailed over it, had to do with secondary and personal deities only, and Egyptian magic occupied itself merely with the hosts of these. They were ruled over by a god in chief, it is true, but he was one of their own sort, being like Jehovah, a promoted tutelary divinity. At each of the many removals of the capital city from the lower valley of the Nile in the direction of its source, from time to time made necessary by the shifting that way of the centre of population, a new god in chief had to be installed, since the custom of the country made the local deity of the district ex-officio Lord of the Universe. Here there was no Brahman into which souls could be absorbed. Nor did the Egyptian religion, though in- cluding belief in re-births, allow any means of escape from them by absorption in any god, high or low, or in fact in any mode whatever. Yet Egypt had a yoga, and one which, like all others, was only attainable through rigorous self-discipline, which, acting on the very nature of the practicer, trans- formed him into a magician. It amounted to a junction, and a junction with a god. All magical work was 218 EGYPTIAN YOGA. esteemed to be no more nor no less than god-work. What a god could do a magician could, and what a magician could do a god could. Thus, just as in the case of the Hindu idea of absorption in Brahman, that of assimilation with a secondary divinity would naturally arise in the Egyptian magician's conceit, as one by one he acquired, by his efforts and patience, god-like powers, while the blissful experiences underwent, together with the bewildering sensations of the trance, always incident to yoga practice, would aid the illusion. Mr. Lenorment says: "There was, indeed, a formal be- lief in ancient Egypt, which was attested by numerous passages from the religious texts, that the knowledge of divine things elevated a man to the heights of the gods, identified him with them, and ended by blending his sub- stance with that of the divine. The primary idea of all the magic formula which were designed to repel the tor- ments of life and the attacks of venomous animals was always assimilation to the gods. The virtue of the formula lay not in an invocation of the divine power, but in the fact of a man's proclaiming himself such or such a god, and when he, in pronouncing the incantation, called to his aid any one of the various members of the Egyp- tian Pantheon, it was as one of themselves that he had a right to the assistance of his companions." And he quotes an incantation in which the magician is made to say: *' Do not be against me ! I am Amen. "I am Anhur, the good guardian. *' I am the great master of the sword. *' Do not erect thyself ! I am Mouth, *' Do not try to surprise me ! I am Set. " Do not raise thy two arms against me ! lam Sothis. *'Do not seize me ! I am Sethu." Such was Egyptian yoga, or theurgry, as the Neopla- tonists named it. Concerning the methods of practice, Mr. Lenorment, EGYPTIAN YOGA. 219 as just seen, leaves it to be inferred that it consisted in "the knowledge of divine things," but in a quotation he gives from the ritual of the dead there is more than a hint that in Egypt, as elsewhere, steadfast concentra- tion was the key to that knowledge, with austerities for aids and trance for incident. It is this: " This chapter was found at Seaenou, written in blue, upon a cube of bloodstone under the feet of a great god; it was found in the days of King Mycerinus, the veracious, by the royal son Hartatef, when he was travelling to inspect the accounts of the temples. He repeated a hymn to himself, after which he went into ecstasies. He took it away in the King's chariots as soon as he saw what was written upon it. It is a great mystery. One sees and hears nothing else while reciting this pure and holy chap- ter. Never again approach a woman ; eat neither meat or fish." A very full exposition of Egyptian magic is found in the celebrated reply of Jamblichus, the neoplatonist, to a letter written by Porphery as if to a priest of Egypt, making enquiries about the religion of that country, in which reply it is strenuously argued that magical works are performed by divine and not by human power, and that to attain to that state of union with the gods by means of which their abilities may be appropriated for the benefit of men, philosophical thought is of no value, but only theurgic work. He says, concerning this last: "For a conception of the mind does not conjoin theur- gists with the gods; since if this were the case what would hinder those who philosophize theoretically from having a theurgic union with the gods ? Now, however, in reality this is not the case. For the perfect efficacy of ineffable works, which are divinely performed in a way surpassing all intelligence, and the power of inexplicable symbols, which are known only to the gods, impart theurgic union. Hence we do not perform these things through intellectual perception. Nevertheless, effica- 220 EGYPTIAN YOGA. cious union is not effected without knowledge; yet knowledge does not possess a sameness with this union." This is quite opposite to the teaching of the later Hindu writers on Yoga, who make Yoga to consist in knowledge, and also contradicts the implication of what has just been quoted from Lenorment that the efficient means of attaining assimilation with Egyptian divinities was "the knowledge of divine things," unless it mean knowing ,^i7Z£/ to practice Yoga. This efficacious union once attained, the adept may be supposed to perform magical works in the same way as gods do, whatever that may be. But the mode of union is not always the same. Jamblichus says concerning it: "For either divinity possesses us, or we give ourselves wholly to divinity, or we have a common energy with him. And sometimes, indeed, we participate of the last power of divinity, sometimes of his middle, and sometimes of his first power. Some- times, also, there is participation only, at other times communion likewise, and sometimes a union of these. Again, either the soul alone enjoys the inspiration, or the soul receives it in conjunction with the body, or it is also participated by the common animal " (formed by union of soul and body). The presence of the invoked deity " is indicated by the motions of the body, and of certain parts of it, by the perfect rest of the body, by harmonious orders and dances, and by elegant sounds, or the contraries of these. Either the body likewise is seen to be elevated, or increased in bulk, or to be borne along sublimely in the air, or the contraries of these are seen to take place about it. An equability, also of voice, according to magnitude, or a great variety of voice after intervals of silence, may be observed. And, again, sometimes the sounds have a musical intension and remission, and sometimes they are strained and relaxed after a different manner." He who drew down a god saw a spirit descend and EGYPTIAN YCGA. 221 enter into some person, and that person was controlled by it. And a species of fire was seen by the recipient, and sometimes by the spectators also, either when the divinity was descended, or when he was departing, from scientifical observation of which what were the powers of the God could be known, and also what he knew and could truly tell. Another indication of the presence of a god was the stupefaction of the person possessed by him, " his own proper consciousness and motion being entirely exterminated," as expressed by Jamblichus, who thence derives an argument for the exclusive agency of the gods, which his queerist had doubted. First in order among the fruits of Egyptian Yoga was the power of invocation, whereby the gods might be called down and compelled to put themselves in evidence before the multitude, so that none should doubt, and to do and reveal what should be required of them; but this only in a phantasmal way, the gods themselves remaining in heaven the while. Not only gods, but all beings of " more excellent natures " than men, were thus amenable to theurgic science. Jamblichus devotes ten pages to describing the different orders of these and the signs by which each might be known. Answering the question of Porphery: *' By what indication the presence of a god, or an angel, or an archangel, or a daemon, or a certain archon, or a soul, may be known ? " he begins his reply by saying that " their appearance accords with their essences, powers and energies. For such as they are, such also do they appear to those that invoke them, and they ex- hibit energies and ideas consentaneous to themselves and proper indications of themselves. But that we may descend to particulars, the phantasma or luminous ap- pearances of the gods are uniform; those of dsemons are various; those of angels are more simple than those of daemons, but are subordinate to those of the gods; those of archangels approximate in a greater degree to divine; 222 EGYPTIAN YOGA. but those of archons (spirits of the planets) will be vari- ous," and those of souls will appear to be all-various. And the phantasmata, indeed, of the gods will be seen shining with a salutary light; those of archangels will be terrible and at the same time mild; those of daemons will be dreadful; those of heroes are milder than those of daemons; but those of archons, if their dominion pertains to the world, produce astonishment, but if they are material they are obnoxious and painful to the spec- tators; and those of souls are similar to the heroic phan- tasma, except that they are inferior to them." Else- where images of souls are said to appear to be "of a shadowy form." The souls thus named as holding the lowest place in the chain of intermediaries were "unde- filed souls," who had never incarnated, but had left their companions in heaven to descend among men as ministers of good. In like manner Jamblichus then goes on to describe each order of intermediaries with respect to essence, energy, movement, attendant retinue, array, accompany- ing lights and fires, modes of self-purifications, effects produced on men by its presence, tenuity and subtlety of emitted light, and, lastly, influence of the dispositions of the souls of those who evoke them. Other fruits of Egyptian Yoga were: divination of the divine sort, by which the gods are induced to impart such knowledge as they alone possess, which they do by means of dreams, trance-speaking oracles, seeing in water, "eduction of light,'' meaning the observation of the mutations of light and shadow, and in other ways, thus revealing past and future events and all the secrets of nature; ability to go to inaccessible places ; to float on water ; to move through the air; insensibility to pain; invulnerability to all violence, whether from the hand of man or the physical powers of nature; superiority over those powers; immunity from evil spirits and malefic magic; power to EGYPTIAN YOGA. 223 make evil and impure souls pure and virtuous; to call down fire from heaven and make statues laugh. Egyptian sacerdotal magic was practiced as well for the purpose of indirectly controlling the people through the wonders it exhibited and the benefits it conferred, as for obtaining a direct control of their wills of the mes- meric sort, whereby they would be made to do the bid- ding of their priestly rulers without regard to fear or gratitude, but as of necessity; just as in old Taoism. But no more than the yoga practicers of ancient China did those of ancient Egypt expect deliverance from re- birth to come in the shape of absorption in any god. If Jamblichus speaks of the ascent of the soul after becom- ing liberated from the bonds of necessity and fate, it is to reinhabit its original home wherein from eternity it had enjoyed its individuality of being; and when he mentions union with a god, he does not mean the god, but such one of the secondary divinities as is specially adapted to do the business in hand, and the union is but for a temporary purpose. And the power thus obtained was not omnipotence nor the knowledge omniscience, the assertions of Jamblichus, which look the other way, to the contrary notwithstanding. But it is easy to see how the lower idea of theurgic union, which certainly prevailed in Egypt to the exclusion of any other, might give birth to the higher one of the Neoplatonists and the still higher one of the Hindus, Besides sacerdotal theurgy, always considered a branch of magic, magic of a secular sort was largely practiced in Egypt. Practicers of this are probably meant by Jamb- lichus when he says: " There are a certain few who, by employing a certain supernatural power of intellect, become superior to physical powers." It is probable that this secular magic is the kind referred to in the " Meta- morphosis " of Apuleius, that could turn rapid rivers to flow back to their fountains, congeal the sea, take away 224 EGYPTIAN YOGA. the Strength of the winds, hold back the sun from his courses, force the moon to scatter her foam, tear the stars from their orbits, take away the day and detain the night. Allusions are also made to magic of much darker hue, in which evil spirits are concerned, which class of beings seem to have performed for Egyptian ecclesiasti- cism the same kindly office which the Christian devil does for the Christian Church, that of taking the blame for all that goes wrong, and especially for whatever miracle does not testify in that Church's favor. Concerning the yoga practice of the Egyptian priest- hood, whereby its members became prophets, Jamblichus gives hardly a hint. But yoga attainment presupposes quietude and concentration, and that these were Egyptian methods other authorities reveal. He dwells, however, on the magical work by means of which the theurgist once qualified brought himself for the time being into a state of union with a god, or, as it seemed to him, brought the god down to him; these means consisted in temple ritual, and that may be summed up in sacrifice incanta- tion and prayer. Jamblichus defends the sacrificing of animals with a finesse of argument that makes it hard to recognize in the practice our old acquaintance ghost- feeding. Prayer was of three kinds, one of which pro- cured illumination, one communion of operation with the gods, and the third "a perfect plenitude of divine fire." The continual exercise of prayer was supposed to strengthen the intellect, and render the soul receptive to the communications of the gods. Sometimes it was effective without sacrifice, though sacrifice was never effective without it, which allows a suspicion to arise that it was prayer alone — or the concentration of mind involved in it — that did the work, and that the roasted meats really served no other purpose than to replenish the larders of the priests. In their invocations these often used violent language, threatening to raze the temples to the ground, burst the dome of heaven and make EGYPTIAN YOGA. 225 known to the world the secrets of Great Isis. Which Jamblichus excuses on the ground that it was in his ca- pacity as temporary god that the priest thus threatened his fellow divinities; and he undertakes also to justify the erection of Phalli and the use of obscene lan- guage. CHAPTER XX. AKKADIAN YOGA. In very early times a portion of the Tauranian race inhabited the mountainous region about the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates, named from their habitat Akkadians, or mountainers, while another portion of the same race dwelt in the neighboring valleys and were known as Sumirians, or lowlanders. In still very early times both moved southward into the lower basin of those rivers, afterwards to be known as Babylonia and Assyria, of which country they were in full possession when the Semites came there, as also of Media, when the Persians conquered it. These Akkadians were a master- ful people. Their civilization was certainly as ancient as any we know of. Their system of magic was older than that of Egypt. They invented the cuneiform writing which, inscribed on tiles now being exhumed by tens of thousands, is conveying to the modern world their long- buried history. They, and not Chaldean shepherds, dis- covered astrology — that is to say, astronomy. A tribe of them, the Kaldu or Kaldi, gave name to all Chaldea, besides dictating to it their magic and religion, while another tribe, the Magii, constituted itself an hereditary priesthood, which at one time became civil rulers also of the Persian Empire. Their criminal laws were mild, and it is most noteworthy that their civil laws accorded to woman large rights, both of person and property, and over her children power above that of the father. Mas- pero says that the graves and tombs of Chaldea show that a portion of its population burnt the bodies of the dead, and infers that they were the Sumirians, that is, AKKADIAN YOGA. 227 Akkadians, who are by other authorities alleged to have corrupted the religion of the Persians by introducing cremation among them, and to have been the originators of it, in fact. In the refined and spiritual dispositions thus evinced, those of us who do not take our ideas of mortuary decencies from the grave-dwellers of Egypt and Chaldea will find another proof of racial superiority. It is also recorded of them that they were able courtiers, which means that they were accomplished gentlemen. Of the branch of them that settled in Finland we learn that their worship was all done in the family, with only the parents for ministers, and that, though they had magicians, they had no priests. Self-reliance that can dispense with priestly aid, though it may imperil souls, must be admitted to be evidence of strong minds and robust wills even in these days, but in times when the aspects and activities of nature were but little under- stood, and in a region where these were so wonderful and terrible as in Finland, it was surely as heroic a quality as a people could possess. Then as to their literature, the Kalevala is well worthy of a place among the great epic poems of the world. But the Akkadians, like the Hindus cradled in a robust climate, and, like them, tempted southward into a luxuri- ous but enervating one, found in their new home even a surer, if not more rapid, deterioration than they. Merged in the inferior race they had instructed and civilized, they long ago lost place in history; their language ceased to be spoken three thousand years ago even in countries where it remained a classic and sacred tongue a thousand years longer. And what was the Yoga of this people, so intelligent, receptive and con- structive, and of origin so early that their interpretation of the "mystical phenomena of human nature" had the advantage of being first impressions, and their elabora- tion of them that of untramelled mental freedom? It was neither absorption in a primary god, like that of the 228 AKKADIAN YOGA. Hindus, nor yet assimilation with a secondary one, like that of the Egyptians, but consisted in union of the outer man with an inward entity which yet could not be desig- nated as soul. The Persians names such Fravishis^ and their descendants, the Parsees, now call them Fervors. Lenorment says, concerning them: "They were the simple essence of all things, the celestial creatures cor- responding to the terrestrial, of which they were the immortal types. Every created being had his Fravishi, who was invoked in prayers and sacrifices (the Japanese of to-day prays directly to his * Lord Soul '), and was the invisible protector, who watched untiringly over the being to whom he was attached." These Fravishis, the same author says, were obviously the Chaldean personal spirits of each being and each object in nature, and that the Chaldeans got the belief in them from the Akkadians, the Finnic branch of which race had the same. He goes on to say: *'In the same way that every man had his Fravishi, according to the most recent books of the Avesta, so, also, according to the Akkadian magical tablets — and this doctrine was continually brought out in them — had every man from the hour of his birth a special god attached to him, who lived with him as his protector and as his spiritual type, or, as they expressed the same idea, a divine couple, a god and a goddess, pure spirits. " But this god, called so by courtesy, was " of a peculiar character, partaking of human nature its imper- fections and foibles. " Nor was he as good and powerful as a real god should be. In fact, both the Akkadian cylinders and the Mazdean books make him a part of the soul of his man, though the books spiritualize and make him more perfect than the cylinders do. But from the well-preserved literature of the Finns, who held on to their old religion and magic until some- time during the middle ages, much more satisfactory in- formation bearing on this subject can be obtained. Says M. Lenorment: "According to the Finnish creed, each AKKADIAN YOGA. 229 man bore within him from his birth a divine spirit who was his inseparable companion for life. The spirit be- came more closely united to its subject in proportion as the latter tore himself away from earthly things to enter into the sanctuary of his soul. This was an important source of the magician's supernatural power; he aspired to a transcendental ecstasy, tulla-intoon, to a great state of excitement of the soul, tulla haltiorhirt, in which he became like the spirit dwelling in him, and entirely iden- tified with it. He used artificial means, intoxicating drugs for instance, in order to attain to this state of excitement, for it was only then, so to speak, that he succeeded i-n deifying himself. This doctrine, which M. Rien has ex- plained very clearly, and which held a chief place in the Finnish religious ideas, as also in their magic, is just that of the special god attached to each man and dwelling in his body, which prevailed also in the Akkadian magical books. This furnishes an affinity of conceptions and beliefs which is of great importance, since it is not one of those natural ideas which arise independently among widely different nations. To find elsewhere a similar notion, we must go to Persia for the doctrines of the Fravishis. " But if it is not " one of those natural ideas which arise independently among different nations, "the natural phe- nomena upon which it rests are precisely what do so arise, for they depend on what is inherent in human nature; and these being given, the ideas will come of themselves, with such general similarity and special variation as may be expected of the workings of the same human mind in varying conditions of time, place and circumstance. From the above we see that Akkadian Yoga consisted in an union; was accompanied by an ecstasy, a trance; was best attainable through renunciation of earthly things and seclusion ; was aided by intoxicating drugs, like the soma of the Hindus, and invested the successful practicer with magical powers. Concentration of mind, though 230 AKKADIAN YOGA. implied in the foregoing, is not directly named in the authorities consulted; but whoso will look through the tens of thousands of tiles now being exhumed, will hardly fail to find the word concentration there. The Akkadian magicians performed their work as such, as also did their gods, almost wholly by incantation. Their Finnic rep- resentatives according to the Kalevala did the same. Wainamoinen, "ancient bard and famous singer " : " Sang aloft a famous pine-tree, " Till it pierced the clouds in growing " With its golden top and branches, " Till it touched the very heavens. ' ' Now he sings again enchanting, " Sings the moon to shine forever " In the fir-tree's emerald branches, " In the top he sings the Great Bear." Another singer, Lemminkainen: " Quick began his incantations, " Straightway sang the songs of witchcraft: " From his fur robe darts the lightning. " Flames outshooting from his eye-balls, " From the magic of his singing, " From his wonderful enchantment, " Sang the very best of singers " To (be) the very worst of minstrels, " Filled their mouths with dust and ashes, " Piled the rocks upon their shoulders, " Stilled the best of Lapland witches, " Stilled the sorcerers and witches." Nor did he stop until he had either bewitched or ban- ished all save one within the sound of his voice. And just as the human magicians did, Ukko, the creative divinity of the Finns, worked chiefly by incantation. He could " Sing the origin of matter, " Sing the legends of omniscience, " Sing his songs in full perfection. " God could sing the floods to honey, " Sing the sands to ruddy berries, " Sing the pebbles into barley, AKKADIAN YOGA. 231 " Sing to beer the running waters, " Sing to salt the rocks of ocean, " Into cornfields sing the forests, " Into gold the forest fruitage, " He could touch the springs of magic," etc., *' He could turn the keys of nature," etc. And even Finnic small birds sang into existence the trees whose branches they perched on. CHAPTER XXI. MOHAMMEDAN YOGA. Like every other revealed religion, Mohammedanism had magic for its root; but it was poor in quality and scant in quantity. Its founder was, like every other founder, a practicer of yoga, but he was a very partially developed one, notwithstanding his frequent retreats within the grotto of Mount Hera, where, during twenty years of his life, he was accustomed to receive communi- cations by the mouth of Gabriel. As a man, so ignorant that it is doubted if he could read or write, as a saint he never attained to that stage in the path where intuition comes in to supply the want of learning. He had reached the stage of " meditation," but not that of "spiritual contemplation," as John of the Cross called the one which lies next beyond ; nor had he gone very far in medi- tation either, which is the state wherein, as the same saint tells us, voices are heard and visions seen and by other exterior methods the mind is addressed through the senses, for he could not boast of having seen the angel in his real form more than twice, whereas Swedenborg claimed to have seen and conversed with Jesus Christ himself "thousands of times." He had not even at- tained to the power of working miracles wherewith to set the seal to his revelations, unless the pure style of Arabic in which they were clothed may be considered such, as, in fact, he claimed it to be. The Koran is by reason of its diffuseness and repetitions made to cover some five hundred pages, though its solid contents could easily have been compressed into ten. Its language is often rugged and commonplace, as befits a discourse by an MOHAMMEDAN YOGA. 233 ignorant man to ignorant men, like that of Joe Smitli, the Mormon prophet or, an untaught Methodist exhorter; and though one versed in Arabic might find its double- rhymed lines agreeable to the ear, he not so versed, who attempts to read it in English, is apt to lay it down be- fore the end is reached as the most tiresome book he ever took up. It is made up mostly of threats of eternal punishment violently and with much ranting denounced against whoever will not take Mohammed's word for it that Allah is the one only God and he his latest prophet. Now, in this Allah, though at the time acting as chief of all other Arabian gods, and therefore often styled, like the Jehovah of the Jews, Most High, we recognize our former acquaintance who jointly with his wife the terri- ble Allat ruled over the Chaldean hell; so it is not won- derful that threats are more to his mind than persuasion, or that instead of employing a rival deity to do the pun- ishing, as is usual, he attends to it personally. For every page of the Koran there is a threat that he will "tor- ment" disbelieving or disobeying sinners, and through- out it such expressions abound as — "I will broil you in hell fire" — " I will pour boiling water over you" — "I will make you to drink boiling water." But with all these are mingled oft-repeated assurances that his pity and mercy are unbounded, for every sin but unbelief, that is to say he will pardon all offenders against others than himself; which must needs greatly weaken the effect of his fulminations, since they threaten, in effect to send to hell only those who don't believe he can do it. Ac- cordingly, his prophet had in the end to adopt the method of cutting off heads after the manner of King Clovis in evangelizing the Saxons, and with like good results. Thus, except that Mohammed's few first conversions, mostly of relatives and friends who may be presumed to have believed him when he related his experiences in the grotto, Mohammedanism owes little or nothing to magic. Favoring circumstances, burning zeal and good politics 234 MOHAMMEDAN YOGA. acting in aid of the sword must have their share of credit. Then the simplicity of the new religion is to be consid- ered. No priest, no authority, Allah, Mohammed and the last day for creed. Circumcision for the only sacrament, five easy ablutions and as many short prayers daily for ritual, and the golden rule for moral law, are not hard to understand nor very hard to conform to. Equally sim- ple are the methods of punishment and reward ; roasting forever in hell or living forever in a paradise where crystal fountains are eternal in play and bowers of roses eternal in bloom, whereon loll and languish beautiful virgins eternal in bud. Such was the simple cult that raised to whatever ele- vation they have attained a race of low-minded, drunken, licentious and cruel robbers and murderers. Though at the start without any such magical, that is, miraculous, support as Christianity had in the works of Jesus and his disciples, Mohammedanism after it had taken form and got upon its legs could not have lacked such attestations, for no religion has. Among a body of earnest devotees, such as newly made converts ever are, there will always be found some of mediumistic natures to whom, through devotional concentration, devotional ecstasy will come, either as the " inner witness " of in- tuition or the outer one of visions and voices, always testifying according to the preconceptions of receivers, to keep alive the lamp of faith and fire of zeal in them- selves and kindle them in others. But when the move- ment spread to more enlightened countries, such as Chaldea and Persia, where the old magic of Akkadia had for thousands of years prevailed, it could not have been long in drawing to its support yoga adepts of superior sort, able to exhibit the usual signs and wonders which are supposed to infallibly attest religious truth. Such are the Sufis and others, systematic practicers of yoga under true yoga conditions, self-renouncing ascetics, as- sociated in communities each of which, so independent MOHAMMEDAN YOGA. 235 are they of all authority in respect to belief or discipline, constitutes a sect by itself, while most of them must be considered as quite apart from the Mohammedanism the Prophet taught. These, notwithstanding their heretical character, hold Islam together in a solidarity such as neither the Koran nor the Sonna could be deemed ade- quate to effect, supplying a soul to the body which the creed, ritual and law constitute. In their teachings are included heresies like these: There is one truth for the wise which is absolute, and another for the ignorant which is relative — absolute pantheism — direct commun- ion with heaven obtainable by austerities — there is no free-will, God being the All-doer as well as the All- mighty — the stories of heaven and hell are mere alle- gories — reason only leads to error; intuition alone is infallible. To reconcile such doctrines as these with the Koran its obvious sense is either flatly contradicted or cruelly wrenched; and it is not to be wondered at that the "officiants and savants" of Islamism, as a French writer says, accuse the teachers of them of hete- rodoxy. Nevertheless, the religious orders, by their pure and disinterested lives, have won and largely enjoy the respect and attachment of the people. Of the Sufis M. Lemairesse says: "The mystic Sufi becomes absorbed in his contemplation and love. Four degrees conduct him to assimilation with God." " The first is humanity, or the ordinary life of man- kind, in which he is given up wholly to his passions." " The second degree, or the path, is properly the doc- trinal initiation ; the initiate who comprehends God is released from devotional observances." " The third degree is knowledge." *' The trials which have to be endured in attaining to this degree are so severe that often the subject succumbs; if he succeeds in overcoming them, he becomes the equal of the angels, his spirit comes into possession of the faculty which forms its essence, intuition of the true 336 MOHAMMEDAN YOGA. nature of beings, perception of all things from the throne of God down to the rain-drop." " The fourth degree is beatitude, and is obtained by a fast nearly absolute of forty days; after it the disciple goes into the desert where he abstains from all manual occupation and has no communication with any one but his director. The ordeal accomplished, the ascetic par- ticipates in the divine nature and has the power to work miracles." But the order of the Kheloutya make the progress to- wards perfection consist of seven degrees instead of four, which are as follows: " In the first degree, that of humanity, he perceives ten thousand lights, dull and intermixed, and he can see genii." " In the second, that of passionate ecstasy, he per- ceives, besides, ten thousand blue lights." " The third degree is the ecstasy of the heart. He sees hell and its attributes, also the genii and all theirs." " The fourth degree is the ecstasy of the immaterial soul. He sees ten thousand new lights of bright yellow; also souls of prophets and saints." " The fifth degree is the mysterious ecstasy. Here he sees the angels and ten thousand lights more, of brill- iant white." " In the sixth degree, that of the ecstasy of obsession, he sees ten thousand other lights, as of a limpid mirror, feels a delicious spiritual ravishment, and beholds the prophets." "At length he arrives at the seventh degree, that of beatitude; then appear ten thousand more lights, green and white, but which undergo successive transformations until they light up to view the attributes of God and cer- tain words of the Lord recorded in the Sonna are heard. He seems no longer to belong to this world, all terres- trial things disappear." After these two prominent examples of Mohammedan MOHAMMEDAN YOGA. 237 Yoga in which are found: contemplation; absorption in God ; release from devotional observances ; intuitive knowledge of the nature of all beings; bliss; power to work miracles; the joytis or lights in connection with the five tatwic colors (assuming to be red the one mis- taken for hell-fire) ; there is hardly needed to completely prove the kinship of this with other systems, the follow- ing incidents and requirements gleaned from the " con- clusion " written at the end of his translation of "the Rauzat — us — Safa,"" by M. Lemairesse concerning the religious orders of Islam: seclusion; solitude; silence; abstinence ; fasts ; vigils ; non-attachment ; renuncia- tion ; poverty ; much repetition of formulas, especially of the sacred word Allah. Yoga relates to the entire man, therefore its literature cannot ignore his love. Thus, having passed in review the Hindu mudras and the Chinese story of Nii Yii, we now come to what the great Thaumaturge Mahmed ben Aissa has to say in his instructions to the order he founded concerning one kind of love: "Mysterious or secret love consists in absorbing one's self completely in God. When he has arrived at communication with the interior love of God, duality becomes unity. Luminous spirits are seen. One loses the sense of self and of mod- esty; one is wholly filled with the breath of divinity." To which words of mystery the remark of the translator, that "probably there are special and, above all, eccen- tric details reserved for adepts further advanced in initia- tion," seem quite appropriate. Thus, after the proselyt- ing sword of Islam had swept over the territory where Akkadian magic aud the religion allied to it had so long flourished, leveling in its course both religion and magic, there sprouted from the stubble a new form of magic, to seize upon and modify the new religion as the old had the old ones; a new form, but of an old thing. For Mohammedan Yoga is yoga still. Just how far associa- tion with Mohammedanism has altered its appearance, 238 MOHAMMEDAN YOGA. how far a more modern philosophy has re-formulated it, how far experience has improved its methods, how far it is unitary and how far fragmentary, we are hindered from knowing by the circumstances that the religious orders, for their protection against the criticism of orthodoxy, are become secret orders as well. But this much is known, that, profiting by the large freedom within the fold allowed to his flock by the Prophet, the members of them indulge in a variety of doctrine and practice both of yoga and religion such as no Christian church has ever tolerated within its pale — though had all Christian churches done so they might have saved themselves a deal of trouble and the world a deal of misery. And the better support afforded to Mohammedanism by its contemplative com- munities as compared with that which Christianity gets from those which it permits but severely regulates, testi- fies that if the Church had allowed more freedom it would have got in return more strength. CHAPTER XXII. HEBREW YOGA. According to the history of the Jews, as written by themselves, they were truly a peculiar people, and their Jehovah a peculiar god. They seem to have never tired of sinning in his sight nor he of punishing them for it. Within the three hundredyears from Joshua to Saul he had to discipline them by delivering them into the hands of their mutual enemies, to endure terms of slavery varying from eight to eighteen years, no less than six several times; nor in all these centuries is any one good action recorded of him. His terrible judgments were almost exclusively visited on offenders against himself, or if he did now and then undertake to render justice between man and man, it was the wrong man that got punished. A brutal race prone to carnage and destruction he was continually commanding to kill and burn, or punishing for slackness in doing so. And the wonder is equal that of all the nations of the earth any god should have chosen such a people for his own, and that of all the hosts of heaven any people should have chosen such a god. To understand why he so often and severely punished them for "sinning in his sight," it must be considered that the sinning in question consisted in worshiping other gods, which in turn consisted in roasting on their altars the rams and bullocks he coveted for his own, and that inasmuch as in those days gods needed food and drink as well as other people, service of god meant table- service, and the worship of Baal by the Jews meant the starvation of Jehovah. The cause of this incorrigible disposition to backslide evidently was that the worship 240 HEBREW YOGA. of the gods of the surrounding nations was more attract- ive to the Jews than their own. All those nations were the disciples of the Egyptians and Akkadians, especially of the latter, and had a splendid ritual and potent theurgy that irresistibly allured to their temples the ignorant, un&table flock whom Moses had tried to indoctrinate in his newly formulated faith. High adept as he was, he could not control them, though he proved his ability to prophesy when, just before he died, he foretold that no one else would ever be able to do so. "And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face." His successors, the judges, enjoyed no such advantage as he had while a student of magic under the learned Egyp- tian priests. The judges were not celibates, nor given to contemplation. What mystical faculty they had must have come, as modern mediumship does, suddenly, with- out discipline, only occasionally amounting to " open vision." In Samuel's time there was none at all; "and the word of the Lord was precious (rare) in those days; there was no open vision. " Down to the time of Elijah and Elisha the "signs" they exhibited as warrant for their claims to authority were few and insignificant. Samuel relied on his prediction of a thunder shower to attest his. *' So Samuel called unto the Lord and the Lord sent thun- der and rain that day: and all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel." A prophet was not educated, he was " raised up," or, "The Spirit of the Lord came upon him." Like a nervous disease, the faculty of foresight was infectious : " And when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing as appointed over them, the Spirit of God was on the messengers of Saul, and they too prophesied. " Others sent were seized by the same spirit, and again others, and finally when the King went himself, he was attacked by it so strongly that he stripped off his clothes (as insane people sometimes do) and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, "and HEBREW YOGA. 241 lay down naked all that day and all that night." But though the suddenness of their developmentand their lim- ited powers indicate that the sages raised up to rule and judge Israel during the centuries of theocratic govern- ment were not advanced beyond a very rudimentary stage, yet, when later, with the establishment of monarchical government, the social state of the tribes became so far ameliorated as to permit of ascetic seclusion to can- didates for adeptship, which was about two centuries after Samuel, prophets of a very high order appeared. The first was Elijah the Thisbite, " a hairy man, wearing a girdle of leather about his loins." Confident in his power, even to arrogance, he declared to King Ahab : "As the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word," Then, going into hiding, probably to avoid punishment for his arrogance, he was fed by ravens. Afterwards to repay a widow for her hospitality he made her scant store of food inexhaustible, and later restored her dead son to life. Next, he challenged all the prophets, of Baal to a contest of magical skill, the test being the calling down of fire from heaven to consume the offer- ing on the altar, and, having triumphed, killed them one and all. King Ahaziah sent a captain of fifty with his fifty to summon him into his presence, but he promptly- killed them with fire from heaven ; likewise a second cap- tain with his fifty sent on the same errand ; and a third de- tachment only escaped by humble supplication for mercy ; then he went to the King and boldly condemned him to death for having sent messengers to Baal-ze-bub, the God of Ekron, to enquire if he should recover his health. For his latest miracle Elijah smote with his mantle the waters of Jordan, so that he and his pupil Elisha crossed over on dry land. Finally, and after imparting to Elisha a double portion of his spirit, he stepped into a chariot of fire with horses of fire, and was carried up by a whirlwmd into Heaven. 243 HEBREW YOGA. Elisha, taking up the mantle that fell from his master as he ascended, begun the exercise of magical power now first developed in him after some ten years of teaching, by performing with it a like miraculous parting of waters. After which his miracles were the following: — He puri- fied poisonous waters — called out of the woods two bears to kill forty-two children for jeering at his tonsure — after refreshing his power by listening to music, made a valley-full of water issue from the earth — from a single pot of oil filled an indefinite number of others — gave a son to a woman having an aged husband — restored that son to life when completely dead — made healthy food of a pottage of poisonous herbs — with twenty loaves of bar- ley and full ears of corn fed an hundred men — healed one leper and made another — caused an axe of iron to float in water — informed his King that his enemy the King of Syria was plotting against him in the privacy of his far- distant chamber — called to his aid against a host sent to capture him a mountainful of chariots and horses of fire — smote the same host with blindness — And even after his death his bones restored to life another dead man who was touched by them. Here were adepts indeed ! and such as are not made in a day. Assuming to be true the accounts given of them by historians who stood in the same relation to them and their works that the four evangelists did to Jesus and his, both Elijah and Elisha, though bad enough to be fit intermediaries between the Jews of those days and their God, were as great prophets as any that are named in Jewish or Christian records, not excepting even Jesus of Nazareth. Both of them healed the sick, raised the dead, caused scanty portions of food to fill many mouths and made the waters obey them; while either one or the other of them (or both) could call down from heaven fire or water at discretion, or blight the earth with drought terminable only at his will — could render poisoned pottage safe to eat and poisoned springs HEBREW YOGA. 243 safe to drink from, fill with water dry ditches, compel wild birds to bring him food or wild beasts to execute his vengeance, confer offspring upon senile impotence, or hear words privately spoken in a distant city. What their methods were for attaining to such power no record tells, but Akkadian magic was practiced in all the coun- tries around them, and we may be sure that the Jews received and practiced it as early as they became civilized enough to do so. As no prophets came after the above two that could be said to excel them, none others need be noticed until we come to Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth. The historical portions of the Old Testament, allowance being made for a patriotic disposition on the part of the writers of it to magnify the exploits of the Jewish armies, especially in relation to the numbers of their enemies killed in battle or slaughtered afterwards, may be taken to be reasonably well founded in fact. The narrative of the earlier books was written by men too ignorant to plagiarize and too unimaginative to invent, and in a simple truth-like style. Down to the time of the Kings the state- ments of so-called supernatural occurrences are so mod- erate as to be matched and more than matched by the accounts now current and largely credited of like occur- rences in our own day. This being so in the earlier parts, where error and falsity would be most apt to get in, the presumption in favor of the later ones is thereby strength- ened. Except that Moses was believed to have spoken with Jehovah face to face, and that Elijah claimed to "stand before" him, the modes of revelation by which the Jews supposed the word of God was conveyed to them were of no higher order than our modern spiritual communications. They consisted in dreams, visions, trance speaking, speaking by impression, automatic writ- ing, direct writing, clairvoyance, clairaudience, draw- ing lots, and the temple oracle, supposed to have been 244 HEBREW YOGA. chrystal-seeing. The Hebrew bible does not claim to be the word of God in any other sense than as recording these. It should be judged by its own claim rather than those set up for it by a Christian council, and thus judged must be decided to be a reasonably credible history, as sacred histories go. But for many reasons no such credit can be accorded to the New Testament, which is obviously so distorted and encumbered by priestly and controversial tampering, to say nothing of the honest errors of ignorance, that in general it would not be worth one's while to attempt to straighten out or disencumber it ; certainly not worth the while of one able to see that it may be admitted to be true in every part without at all proving any one of the hundreds of creeds, heretical or orthodox, that men have attempted to build upon it — because able to see nothing more in it than the story of a great yogi who some nine- teen hundred years ago in Palestine "went about doing good." Yet it is well at the outset of our enquiry to get rid of the objection often made, that since the silence of contemporaneous history concerning Herod's massacre of the innocents and the prodigies connected with the birth and death of Jesus, all claimed to have happened in times when every important event was carefully verified, re- ported and put on record by the Roman officials, dis- proves the accounts of them contained in the gospels, that silence, therefore, disproves the gospels themselves, with their whole content. But there is no vital connec- tion between the statements in question and the rest of the story, from which they may easily be detached. The fable of the massacre may be dismissed as an old one, told once against Nimrod and again against Pharaoh, be- sides others; while as to the prodigies, is it not known that down to the times in question it was usual to put them in as preface and appendix to biographies of great religious leaders, to give to one of whom a celestial phe- nomenon for a harbinger and an earthquake for a funeral HEBREW YOGA. 245 was nothing more than historical courtesy required ? Even distinguished civil rulers were often complimented in the same way — Julius Ccesar, for instance, and the Emperors Augustus, Claudius, Nero and Vespasian. But there are in the gospels two statements, specific- ally affirmed and insisted on, relating to the advent and departure of their subject, that, if true, make him a god and not a yogi. And these are not to be summarily dis- posed of, for both have a plausible groundwork in mag- ical and, therefore, natural phenomena. The one relates to the divine paternity, and the other to the resurrec- tion, neither of which, I think, has a counterpart in any other religion, for though pagan gods habitually become fathers of men, they never incarnated in their sons, and though they habitually dwelt in heaven, none of them had to die on earth in order to get there. But the phe- nomena in question will account for both the older and simpler interpretation and the newer and more complex one, while their true meaning will be found, at the least, as momentous as either. A resurrection of the body is something capable of proof or disproof; not so a divine paternity or incarnation of god or man. But there are facts in nature which account for the beliefs which have obtained in all of these, and so deprive them of any power to prove themselves true by the mere fact of their having got into men's minds. In his "Philosophy of Mysticism," Baron Du Prel treats of a "curative instinct of nature," which continu- ally acts by the various modes of communication possible between the occult and the manifest self of man, to influ- ence the latter for its own preservation, which modes are many and various, ranging from vague impressions of im- pending evil and the cravings of pregnancy up to objecti- fied visions of celestial messengers, warning against dis- aster, and are adapted to the receptivities of those sought to be influenced by them. Now, the sexual faculty lies quite within the sphere of this curative instinct; in fact, 246 HEBREW YOGA. according to Hindu science, the organs of that faculty are the seat of all occult power, the power that operates the signals. When an ascetic devotee in his cave or cell has by those very pious concentrations practiced to keep down desire, roused it up, and the vision of a beautiful woman arises, whom he takes for the devil and commands to avaunt, maybe it is not the devil at all that is tempt- ing him, but his own soul, that he is wearing out his miserable body in efforts to save, that is trying to tell him what would be good to take to preserve that body, A relieving orgasm is commonly brought on by a dream, as is well known, but it is claimed that sometimes, dreams failing, Nature, who, as Schopenhauer says, will not be frustrated if she can help it, goes so far as to call up, or project rather, an apparition that is present to the waking eye, or to both sight and touch, or to touch with- out sight, or to all the senses. Here are suggested the old persistent tales of incubi and succubi, of Count Galbas and his sub-mundanes, and stories whispered of experi- ences now going on in this country, some of which it is even asserted have tested and proved the possibility of bodily touch projected from a distant body, of a kind that suggests Jupiter's visits to Psyche. According to Swami Swatmaram, a man who has become proficient in the difficult Vagroli Mudra has power to attract to him- self "the damsels of the Siddhas;" and a woman prop- erly developed by intercourse with him becomes a yogini, and among other miraculous gifts has that of being able to "go through the air" to somebody, just as at the call of Krishna from the woods those of his 12,000 milkmaid wives, whose earthly husbands held them back, sent their souls, and got to the god before those others could who went on foot. We have seen that one of the Mohamme- dan religious orders has a book of instructions in which "mysterious or secret love" is mentioned as belonging to a very advanced state of ecstasy wherein " spirits of light appear," and one loses the feeling of self and of HEBREW YOGA. 247 modesty;" '* one is filled with the breath of God." Saint John of the Cross, the Christian ascetic, has left behind him some verses describing the loves of the soul and its bridegroom Jesus, of which a few here quoted will show the tendency of one kind of love to run into another, under certain conditions: " In the dark night, " With anxious love inflamed, " O, happy lot! " Forth, unobserved I went, " My house being now at rest. " In darkness and in safety, " By the secret ladder, disguised, " O, happy lot! " In darkness and concealment, " My house being now at rest. ***** ' ' There he gave me his breasts, "There he taught me the science full of sweetness, "And there I gave to him, " Myself without reserve, " There I promised to be his bride." But inasmuch as a truly virtuous woman would never, dreaming or awake, receive another than her husband, to obtain access to such an one a god must come, or seem to come, and thus a belief that the visitor is a divine one arises from the nature of the case; how from a mere ob- jectified illusion so substantial a thing as a male child could result is another question. We know that by manual operation the human germ has been deposited in the matrix and there fecundated. Many careful observers of our spiritual phenomena believe that far more bulky and ponderable objects than that germ can be by some occult means moved from place to place, passing through material obstructions on the way, or materialize on the spot. Perhaps the most reasonable hypothesis yet sug- gested to account for such phenomena is that the sub- conscious self of some living person present is the agent. 248 HEBREW YOGA. If SO, then in every such case of love-making by an objectified illusion, there being neither a real man nor a real god present, the agent is presumably the sub-conscious woman, and the phenomenon may properly be termed self-visitation, to which the next step could only be self- impregnation. Such are the suppositions which, if well founded, reduce an immaculate conception to the rank of an orderly creative process. Moreover, there were afloat in those times traditional beliefs of magical impreg- nation. The divine infant of which the Finnic virgin Mariatta was the mother and a wild strawberry the pu- tative father was, according to the Kalevala, at first re- fused baptism on the ground that it was a child of witch- craft. The same scripture also records another miraculous conception and birth in these words: " Time had gone but little distance " Ere a boy was born in magic "Of the virgin, Untamala." ***** " Then they laid the child of wonder, " Fatherless, the magic infant, " In the cradle of attention." And as late as the time of Jacob Boehme that visionary in his treatise on "The Way to Christ," wrote that God's first intent when he created Adam was that he should be self-impregnating, and therefore he was made bi-sexual, but that even before he was tested by temptation, hap- pening to foresee that he never could stand it, he gave him a wife, " For God saw that Adam could not then generate magically." Certainly something must have been going on in the world to give rise to the many stories we have both of magical begettings and of matrons and virgins giving birth to sons of gods. Such are to be found in probably every book of scripture of whatever religion has owned one. Self-visitation and impregnation, if they can be supposed to be possible, would account for them all. HEBREW YOGA. 249 The woman, for reasons just given, would in each case feel sure it was none other than a god that came to her, while others, if satisfied there was no access of any man could hardly help agreeing with her. But it is not vital to any thesis of this writing that the above theory should be established, and it is only advanced to show that cer- tain beliefs are not without supporting facts, and as a help to thinkers disposed to inquire into the meaning of the facts. The story of the Resurrection of Jesus, so much relied on by believers as proving their religion and by disbe- lievers as, by its absurdity, disproving it, had it been told in India would have caused little astonishment and no skepticism, so used to such things are they there. Says Swatmaram: "Siva, Matsyendra, Sabara, Ananda, Bhairava, Chourangi, Meena, Goraksha, Virupaksha, Bilesa, Manthana, Bhairava, Siddhi, Buddha, Kanthadi, Korantaka, Surananda Siddhapada, Charpati, Kaneri, Pujyapada, Nityanatha, Niranjana, Kapalika, Bindu- natha, Kaka,Chandeeswara, Allabha, Prabhudeva,Ghoda, Chodi, Sentmi, Bhanuki, Naradeva, Khanda, Kapalki, and many other great Siddhas, having conquered time, move about the world." They had by pushing yoga prac- tice to the end made themselves perfect yogis, and thus identified with Brahman, but had not as yet departed this life. In Hindu belief such beings can postpone their de- parture as long as they will, and sometimes do so for thousands of years, meanwhile " moving about the world." Such, too, was the belief of the Taoists of ancient China. Chuang-Tzu declared that when he wrote he was twelve hundred years old, nothing was known of Lao-Tsee's dying at all ; on the contrary, it is recorded that when last seen he was traveling westward just as Finnic Wainamoi- nen and Schlatter, the wonderful American healer, did when they too disappeared. The Finnic Christ disap- peared when he was but an infant. Pythagoras was by some of his disciples believed to have not perished in the 250 HEBREW YOGA. burning house, but to have merely passed out of sight. Romulus also was by the Romans thought to have disap- peared without dying. Longfellow's "Hiawatha" re- cords a belief held by the North American Indians that their great prophets did so too. The epic " Kalevala " contains the following description of sailing away of the great magician Wainamoinen from his Finland home: " Sang his farewell song to Northland, " To the people of Wainola, *' Sang himself a boat of copper, " Beautiful his bark of Magic ; " At the helm sat the magician, " Sat the ancient wisdom-singer. " "Westward, westward sailed the hero. " Thus the ancient Wainamoinen, *' In his copper-banded vessel, " Left his tribe in Kalevala, " Sailing o'er the rolling billows, *' Sailing through the azure vapors, " Sailing through the dusk of evening, "Sailing to the fiery sunset, " To the higher landed regions, " To the lower verge of heaven, " Quickly gained the far horizon, "Gained the purple colored harbor, " There his bark he firmly anchored, " Rested in his bark of copper; " But he left his harp of magic, " Left his songs and wisdom-sayings, " To the lasting joy of Suomi." The poem also hints at the possibility of the subse- quent return of the departing sage: " That I may bring back the Sampo, " Bring anew the harp of joyance, " Bring again, the golden moonlight, " Bring again the silver sunshine, " Peace and plenty to the Northland." Concerning the anomalous state of being of such de- partants Chuang-Tzu gives a hint of the old Chinese doc- HEBREW YOGA. 251 trine, when he says that one who has attained to Tao is "fit for translation." The Hebrew Bible says: " And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah: and Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters; and all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years; and Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him." Which seems plainly enough to mean that he was a yogi who after attaining to junction with God lived in the world for three hundred years more and then disappeared. The Mohammedan Rauzat-Us-Safa describes Enoch as being constantly engaged in meditation and prayer, and states that when he was eighty-two years old he managed to get into Paradise and once there refused to leave it. It is noteworthy in this connection that although every other antediluvian from Adam to Noah (except Lamech, who lived to seven hundred and seventy) was allowed more than nine hundred years of life, this companion of God and the only perfected saint of them all was given only three hundred and sixty-five. Why was his stay on earth thus cut short unless that he might be advanced to a better state? It is also noteworthy that during the last three hundred years of his earthly activity he was in two states of being at once, walking with God in the one and raising a family in the other. These years of earthly activity may be considered as a continuing return. The Mohammedans also say that Enoch returned to earth as Elijah and the Christians say that Elijah re- turned to be present at the Transfiguration, where he and Moses were seen talking with Jesus. Was Moses then still alive, having disappeared, not died? It is true that in Deuteronomy it is said that he died, but that was the only account of his disappearance that in those times the ignorant Jews could understand; and some account must be given them. But the next two verses read thus : "And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, 252 HEBREW YOGA. over against Bethlehem, but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day. And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated." Now that a man should bury his own dead body is inconceivable; so it is that one in the prime of life should go and hide himself away, to die in some place that would serve as a tomb. But that a perfected yogi, one "fit for translation" as we are quite at liberty to believe Moses was, healthy and strong, as such are able by their art always to keep themselves, and by the same art able at will to disappear from view or " move about the world ;" also able to fore- know the dismal life before him if he continued his hitherto unavailing efforts to make a decent people out of the brutal tribes he had so long " carried in his bosom," as shown by the prophecy of their future ill-doings which he delivered to them as a farewell address— that such an one should have at last got tired and disgusted and se- cretly and quietly abandoned them to their wretched fate, is quite conceivable. Supposing it to have been so, there were present at that Transfiguration the only two persons mentioned in Jewish scripture as having, without under- going death, disappeared from life and subsequently returned, not as re-incarnated souls of the dead, but as the original men. Was yet a third one there present? What is the mode of being of such after disappear- ance, what their place, state and activity, has been much speculated upon but never determined, yet this much is certain and could be proved by many other citations than the above, a belief has always existed that the per- fected magical adept has the power to take his own time for dying, and meanwhile can come and go in the earth at will. The different and conflicting accounts we have of the crucifixion qf Jesus leave it quite open to belief that he was not dead when taken down from the cross. The time required to kill a man by crucifixion was, according HEBREW YOGA. 253 to M. Paul de Regla, often as much as three days, rarely- less than two. But owing to the nearness of the Sab- bath Jesus was allowed to hang only three hours, and that without receiving any mortal hurt. The same writer says that in practice the feet were not nailed, that they sometimes touched the ground, being merely tied to the tree by the ankles, and that a projecting block of wood served as a sort of saddle on which the most of the sufferer's weight might rest. Jesus escaped the coup de grace, which consisted in breaking the limbs, by appearing to be dead, though the lance-thrust proved the contrary, for it drew blood, and blood cannot flow from a corpse. The appearance of death may perfectly well have been from a trance, induced by the very in- tensity of the pain suffered, such as has often happened to those habituated to trance, as all yogis are. Thus it was by some power so ordered that the crucifixion should not kill Jesus of Nazareth — might it not have been his own magical power ? He was certainly magician enough for that, and also to close the eyes of the keepers, walk forth from the sepulchre at the proper time, and give the women the vision of the angels. All this would have been quite consistent with his going voluntarily to his trial and execution. If, on the above grounds, the gospel story can be con- sidered as rid of hindrances to belief that have been considered valid because not understood, there remains a story that, whether true or false, carries no falsity on its face — of a great magician and good man, exhibiting only fallible wisdom, and no powers higher than Elijah and Elisha manifested when they went about doing evil. I think the foregoing shows that the story of the resur- rection is not absurd enough to prove the four gospels untrue, nor yet wonderful enough to prove them true. CHAPTER XXIII. YOGA OF THE ESSENES. Some two or more centuries B. C. a fanatical order of ascetic Jews established themselves near the western borders of the Dead Sea. They were communists, celi- bates, diligent in work and devotion, cultivated quietude of body and mind and an humble deportment, wearing their garments to rags, though practicing frequent ablu- tions, dressed in white and wore long hair, recruited their numbers by adopting young children and also ad- mitting adults tired of the world, and wandering much from city to city, but never begging. A few of the more intelligent among them, by retreat and contemplation, became adepts, and ruled the others with great rigor, giving forth to them teachings of an exoteric kind, while reserving to themselves an esoteric freedom of thought and inspiration. These devoted themselves largely to science and philosophy, and many of them became healers as well as prophets. Whatever the magical attainments of the Essenes were, they gave proof, when subjected to martyrdom, of having acquired the philo- sophical equanimity in its highest degree, their insen- sibility to, or disregard of pain being such that they could smile while undergoing the most terrible torture, chat pleasantly with their executioners, and die joyfully. The Therapeuts of Egypt were very much like the Es- senes, and the two sects are often confounded with one another in the scant historical accounts we have of them. Some of the Essenes were severely ascetic, and took the name of Nazarenes. Robert Taylor, in his Diegesis, as well as many other YOGA OF THE ESSENES. 255 writers, have held the theory that Jesus was an Essene, but against this several objections arise. He always talked and acted as a free man, owing accountability to no authority, whereas the Essenes were strictly disci- plined and held under slavish control by their superiors. When arrested and tried, not one friend appeared in his behalf, whereas the Essenes were a large and powerful sect and corporation, more numerous, says M, De Regla, than the Sadducees, and would hardly have let an im- portant confrere be the victim of a farcical trial, wanton ignominy and cruel death. They were not mendicants, but diligent producers and owners of property, and in each city one of their number was ready to supply the wants of travelling members; but no mention is made of the wandering Nazarene having had any such recourse. The Essenes were bigoted Sabbath-keepers; he was a daring Sabbath-breaker, Finally, no mention of the Es- senes is made in any of the gospels in which accounts of the Pharisees and Sadducees so abound. CHAPTER XXIV. THE ROMAN STOICS AS YOGIS. When the Roman people had reached that stage of de- velopment in which a craving for philosophy is felt and religion loses its hold on instructed men, there arose the sect of Stoics, which, reacting to the rude and stir- ring conditions that still prevailed, became in many- respects different from any other, both as to doctrine and conduct. The Stoics were not true, contemplative yogis; they were too busy with the active affairs of life for that, yet in their lives and teachings they showed that Akkadian magic and its accompanying philosophy had not in its westward extension stopped at the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. They believed in an universal soul, of which all individual ones are but manifestations, and into which they are destined to be finally absorbed. They believed in the persistence of life after death, and that death only restores man to the state he held before birth, though on both these points their opinions varied and altered, as needs must be when the mind reaches out towards the unknowable. They held the things and affairs of human life in contempt, and if using or enjoying them disregarded them, which is no other than the renuncia- tion and non-attachment of the Hindus. They had no personal god, no future rewards or punishments, hence no fear of death. " Where we are," said they, " death is not; where death is, we are not. It is the last best boon of nature, for it frees man from all his cares. It is at worst the close of a banquet we have enjoyed." Like the Chinese sages, they confided in the natural goodness of the heart of man, and like the Hindu sages, in the un- THE ROMAN STOICS AS YOGIS. 257 tarnishable nature of his soul. They declared that man was perfectible, and that the perfected man was a divine man and the equal of God. They called themselves sages, and as such claimed to have attained to an im- passive tranquillity, or fixed state of philosophical indif- ference, such as all systems of yoga require and the Eskimos constitutionally possess, and pervaded by which Antoninus Pius, who was one of them, on the last night of his life gave from his deathbed for password of the sentries "equanimity." Roman Stoicism was the salt that savored the Roman Republic, and under the empire resisted and tempered the tyranny of the rulers and vices of the people until it was overshadowed, or, rather, outshone, by mystical Neoplatonism and early Christian mysticism, and in them sunk and lost to historic view. CHAPTER XXV. CHRISTIAN YOGA. The Fathers of the Desert. During the first two centuries of Christianity monasti- clsm was unknown; the conditions were much too turbu- lent, and, besides, the second coming of Jesus was daily looked for during a good part of that time. But in the third century accident introduced an element of mysti- cism into the Church that its founders had not thought of, and made sure of its success thenceforth. A refugee from the Decian persecution, known afterwards as Paul the Hermit, fled to the Egyptian desert and hid himself away in one of the tombs dug out of rock which are so numerous there. He was followed by many others, Saint Anthony among them, all of whom became hermits ; soon there was quite a nation of such, and by the close of the next century in a great part of Egypt the monastic popu- lation was nearly equal to that of the cities. Away from the churches and priestly control, solitary and in pov- erty, given to prayer and penance, the refugees found themselves in true yoga conditions, and early began, much to their own surprise and disquiet, no doubt, to have yoga experiences. Dalgairns, a Catholic writer, in his introduction to the authorized account of " The Fa- thers of the Desert," says of them that the Church " had such confidence in its own strength and in the loyalty of her children that she allowed them to go out into the wilds and lead a solitary life — allowed them to stray into the desert and plunge into the dangerous depths of con- templation — left them to win their own spiritual experi- ence." Troubled by the stirring within them of those CHRISTIAN YOGA. J59 mystical forces common to all men however variously in- terpreted, the hermits were accustomed to come together and exchange experiences and counsel, until in time some among them became by that means sufficiently instructed to act as teachers of the rest — gurus. The yoga prac- tice thus resulting, in the absence of other mould to re- ceive it, took Christian form, and thus came into being Christian magic, a magic that will be seen to have been a fit adjunct and support to a faith whose chief article is salvation by torture. Mr. Lecky says, in speaking of this movement : " There is, perhaps, no phase in the moral history of mankind of a deeper or more painful interest than this ascetic epidemic. A hideous, sordid and emaciated maniac, without knowledge, without patriotism, without natural affection, passing his life in a long routine of endless self-torture, and quailing before the ghastly phantoms of his delirious brain become the ideal of the nations which had known the writings of Plato and Cicero and the lives of Socrates and Cato." Again: " Some of the hermits lived in deserted dens of wild beasts, others in dried-up wells, while others found a congenial resting place among the tombs. Some disdained all clothes and crawled abroad like wild beasts, covered only by their matted hair. In Mesopotamia, and part of Syria, there existed a sect known by the name of 'Grazers,' who never lived under a roof, who ate neither flesh nor bread, but spent their time forever on the mountain side, and ate grass like cattle. The cleanliness of the body was regarded as a pollution of the soul, and the saints who were most ad- mired had become one hideous mass of clotted filth." The women were no neater than the men, as witness famous Saint Sylvia, who was such a devoted slut that when her own uncleanliness had made her ill, she refused to take the bath prescribed for her cure; witness also Saint Mary of Egypt, once a great beauty, as, naked and blackened with the dirt of forty-seven years' accre- 260 CHRISTIAN YOGA. tion, her tangled hair floating in the wind, she treads along the valley of Moab, and as she passes by a medi- tating anchorite frightens him into believing her an image of the devil conjured up to mock him. Ignor- ance seemed to be in as much favor with them as un- cleanliness. "The great majority of the early monks appear to have been men who were not only absolutely ignorant themselves, but who also looked on learning with positive disfavor." "The duty of a monk," said Saint Jerome, "is not to teach, but to weep," In weeping, by the way, they were proficient; one of them wept his eye- lashes off their lids and wore a cloth on his breast to catch his tears. Many of them kept themselves continu- ally under the pangs of hunger, some taking but one meal every two days, and others but one in a week. For two centuries the craziness lasted, and then the free and wild yoga of the desert, having developed a new element for ecclesiasticism to work upon, and having also become dangerously turbulent, passed under priestly control, and in time became the regulated monasticism that now exists. The same Dalgairns truly asserts that to the fathers of the desert the Church owes its mystical the- ology, and praises their methods of mortification and prayer, as being still obligatory on good Catholics. His words are these: "There is no possible Christian life but in the old path of mortification and prayer." He makes, too, the singular admission that the yoga methods of the desert were essentially the same as those of the Neoplatonists; he says: " Neoplatonism was a doctrine of which the end and object was union with God; and though their god was impersonal, yet their system was a real mysticism of which the climax was ecstasy. Proclus also, in his books on the Theology of Plato, and Plotinus himself, in many places, speak much of ecstasy and of abstraction from the things of sense, in a way not con- trary to the maxims of Christian wisdom." Again, the author of "The Heavenly Wisdom according to the CHRISTIAN YOGA. 261 E^ptians," thus writes of himself: "I often, when engaged in mental contemplation, seem to leave my body and to enjoy the possession of the highest good with marvellous delight." "Wherein," says Dalgairns, "did this system of union with God differ from that of St. Anthony ? " But it did differ, and widely. As regards methods, the Neoplatonist was not bound to any religious observ- ance, afifiliation or declaration of faith, nor need he re- nounce the world, live in poverty or as a celibate, torment his flesh or go dirty, while as to the state of absorption he aimed at, it was, if less complete than that of a Hindu Yoga, far more so than that the Christian ascetic could hope for, and with a God as different from Jehovah as a principle is from a person. Dalgairns gives as a reason why the methods of the desert were better than those of the Neoplatonists that the latter had to be both learned men and philosophers. But if the fact that without being either, the anchorites attained to ecstasy and union with their god proves that neither learning nor philoso- phy could have been essential, the other fact that the philosophers got to theirs without being Christians, hermits, ascetics celibates or paupers, without self-tor- ment, vermin or dirt, proves that no more were any of these essential. Clearly, then, neither was the only way. The Christian Church has long since discovered that dirt and vermin are not nice nor necessary means of grace, though penance remains still in vogue. All three of them are offences against the human body; and the human body it is that yoga practice most manifestly works upon, the earliest results being its improved health and beauty, and into it flow and along its nerves play the vibrations so often mentioned in the Church writings as "bliss, sweetness, the sweetness of the flesh," etc. An ascetic absorbed in devotion may easily fall into slovenly ways, but the saints of the desert were slovenly on re- ligious principle. The Essenes wore their garments to 262 CHRISTIAN YOGA. rags, but kept clean skins. So do Hindu Yogis now, unless perchance they be of the sect of Jains, who, be- lieving all life to be divine and therefore sacred, will not wash or scratch themselves lest they should kill vermin or animalculae. These, too, are dirty on a religious prin- ciple, but a different one from that of the Christians, who believed divine favor could be got by bodily discom- fort and cutaneous disease /^r se. These were to them modes of penance, and penance being a sacrament of their church, sacramental too were fleas and the itch. But uncleanness cannot possess any magical value, since it cannot be supposed to aid concentration. It is other- wise with pain, and such bloody self-flagellations as Saint John of the Cross and Saint Theresa were addicted to, had doubtless a certain value in helping them on their way, for pain compels concentration even to the extent of inducing the trance state which in turn kills it, as in the cases of martyrs hereinbefore alluded to. Admit- ting this, we may also admit that for such devotees as are too indolent or stupid to acquire the requisite con- centration in any pleasanter way painful inflictions may have their use, and though futile as a means of pleasing God, may be effective in fixing the mind. But this could be the case only in the earlier of the two stages into which, as will be seen. Christian mystics divide the saint's progress, namely meditation; in the later one, that of contemplation, it could hardly prove other than a dis- traction. St. John of the Cross. How Christian mysticism, thus strangely originating in the wilderness, afterwards in the keeping of the church took shape and development is well shown in the lately republished life and writings of Saint John of the Cross, already mentioned, a work of high authority. He was indeed an able man, who in the midst of his maniacal austerities could dissect and analyze his own abnormal CHRISTIAN YOGA. 265 sensations, visions and ideas witli a strong hand and clear head, and note down and classify them in a way that makes his book of great service to the modern stu- dent of things occult. By his time monasticism had lost much of the severity of its earlier centuries, and prob- ably all of the untidiness the fathers of the desert carried into it. Nothing in the account of his life which the book contains tells of his being unclean, however much maturated. On the contrary, it affirms with detail that the rags from his sores were regularly washed, and hj ladies of rank who disputed with one another for privi- lege to do so, in a rivalry made the more eager by the fact that the linen had a true odor of sanctity. But the mitigation of the original austerities of the order of Carmelites to which he belonged, which mitigation had obtained general acceptance, did not at all please one who could wear about his waist a barbed iron chain plus a sackcloth shirt and do with but two hours of sleep in a night, and John of the Cross went all lengths with his co- adjutor the nun Theresa, in making the practice conform to the old rule, in getting back to the usages of the times when the brethren of Saint Mary first left the world "to live in caves and hollows of the rocks intent on the service of God and their own salvation." Of the nun it is told that she would flog her white back till the red blood sprinkled the walls of her cell, and of the monk that "through the silence of the night the sound of his lash would reach the ears of the friars, who trembled when they heard it, for they knew how merciless he was to himself." What is strange is that both of them seemed to like it, seemed to have in some way got so hungry for it that it must have lost all virtue as a penance and become a sinful indulgence. In fact John of the Cross, in denouncing certain innovations in the direction of increased severity, seems himself to have thought as much. He gave as a reason against them that the young friars "would be carried away by the sweetness of exces- 264 CHRISTIAN YOGA. sive penance and miss the road to solid devotion. " Again he says of such "gluttons ' as he terms them, "Allured by the sweetness they find therein, some of them kill themselves with penance." Being at one time a prisoner in the keeping of his opposers, the Friars of the Mitiga- tion, he was each evening at supper time brought into the refectory, and scourged on his bare shoulders in a way that marked him for life. But he took the scourging with such evident satisfaction that his tormentors got tired of it and desisted. "This was to him another grief; he complained to his gaoler, and asked him why he was forgotten and deprived of his only consolation." All which is hard to understand unless we can suppose that practice thoroughly and long persisted in, has power, along with other bodily modifications it effects, such as adamantine hardness, control of breath, levitation, Her- culean strength, &c., to actually reverse the normal action of the sensory nerves and convert pain into pleasure, or else so completely overcome pain by pleasure that none is felt, which last, by the way, would hardly be more strange than that a condemned witch could tranquilly slumber on a pile of burning fagots, a thing that has often happened. The miraculous experiences of John of the Cross be- gun early in his boyhood. He fell into a deep pool, but floated on the surface, and was rescued without needing to accept the extended hand of a suddenly appearing beautiful visionary lady. He fell into a well, but was re- ceived in the arms of a like apparition, so that he took no hurt. The voice of the Lord was heard by him, both inwardly and by his outer ear. Called to confess a nun, and finding her dead, he prayed her back to life, and kept her so long enough to be shrived: and then she died a second time. He and Theresa, while conversing in the convent parlor, were both raised in the air, the monk on one side of the bars and the nun on the other; and at all times he was liable to be entranced and lifted CHRISTIAN YOGA. 265 up on the slightest provocation, such as the singing of a verse of a hymn. A nun tempted by a spirit of blas- phemy, uncleanness and doubt was relieved by his minis- trations, but as soon as he left her the Devil assumed his form and went and re-confessed her on his own account. When the friar discovered this he made sure it should not again occur by writing out and signing his instruc- tions. But soon came a letter, as from him, that again reversed them, and which was so well forged that when shown it he declared it was his own handwriting and sig- nature. The Devil then was taken in hand and regularly exorcised. But he played the same prank with another penitent, from whom he had obtained a written contract that she would be his bride as his recompense for having conferred on her the gift of tongues. Again exorcised, he confessed and gave up the contract. Here was no vic- tory for John of the Cross, for the Devil prevailed until the power of the Church was called in, but Saint Theresa wrote that he had put to flight three legions of devils, whom, in the name of God, he commanded to tell their number, and was obeyed on the instant. Just before he escaped from prison his cell was brightly and supernatu- rally illuminated, and the Lord's voice was heard promis- ing he should be set free, which was soon done, the Virgin Mary herself showing him the way out. Again, while praying before a picture of Jesus a voice came from it saying: " John, what shall I give thee for all thou hast done and suffered for me?" He was able to read the secret thoughts of his penitents, reminding them of sins they had forgotten or fraudulently omitted to confess. Finally, he calmed a tempest, extinguished a conflagra- tion, and obtained a supply of food, all by his prayers. With all these gifts he died in disgrace, stripped of all his offices, but that was what he liked, and had prayed for. Humility is an important condition to yoga prac- tice, for the reason that it is the opposite to self-conceit, which is a sad hindrance to concentration, as is well 366 CHRISTIAN YOGA. recognized by both Chinese and Hindu authorities. John of the Cross, to be sure, knew nothing of Chinese or Hindu Yoga, but as a Christian he held to the promise of Jesus, that " he who humbleth himself shall be exalted," and humbled himself accordingly. The reward he received must have exceeded his highest expectations, for his de- parture was honored with prodigies such as any saint might be proud of. Just before he died there appeared a great orb of light encircling him, " which was so brill- iant as to dim the other lights in the room and the can- dles on the altar," and on the Monday night following the funeral, his brethren being assembled as usual for discipline in the darkened church, "were suddenly sur- prised by a great light which filled the whole church. Some thought that all the lights had not been put out, and the prior gave orders in that sense, but those who were near the grave were seized with a holy fear, for they saw that it had come from the tomb of the saint, whose sepulchre it had pleased our Lord to make thus glorious before their eyes. In a few minutes the light disappeared." Nine months after interment, upon his grave being opened, the body was found incorrupt, per- fectly fresh and supple, giving out a most fragrant per- fume. When one devotee, to obtain a relic, cut off a finger, the hand bled freely, and when another attempted to do the same it was jerked out of his grasp. A piece of the flesh kept in a glass jar took on a good likeness of the saint, and conjured up to the eyes of many persons, at many different times visions of the Virgin and Child, of Christ on the cross, of John himself, Peter and other saints, besides Elijah the Prophet and many angels. And so died John of the Cross, after making as many people as he could as uncomfortable as he could, died glorying in his humility and in an odor of sanctity pecul- iar, penetrating and persistent. CHRISTIAN YOGA. 267 The Writings of St. John of the Cross. The voluminous work that he left behind him was written, as he tells us, at the request and for the benefit of "only certain persons of our holy order of Mount Car- mel of the primitive observance." It was, therefore, like the Upanishads of the Hindus, written by a yogi and for the instruction of yogis. It is nothing less than a manual of Christian yoga, by which devotees may be led along the path to what he terms "the high state of perfection, called here union of the soul with God;" again, "the perfect union of the love of God;" again, "being trans- formed in God; because he communicates his own super- natural being in such a way that the soul seems to be God himself and to possess the things of God. The soul seems to be God rather than itself, and indeed is God by participation, though in reality preserving its own nat- ural substance as distinct from God as it did before." But to show how little the approachment here indicated is from the identification, absorption or assimilation of other systems, we have: "But remember that among all creatures, the highest and the lowest, there is not one that comes near unto God. For, though it be true, as theologians tell us, that all creatures bear a certain rela- tion to God, and are tokens of his being, some more, some less, according to the greater or less perfection of their nature, yet there is no essential likeness or com- munion between them and him; yea, rather the distance between His divine nature and their nature is infinite." No stronger words than these are needed to distinguish the end and aim of Christian yoga from the end and aim of every other. Connected with the state, whatever it may be, that is here termed union with God, much is said about ecstatic " touches " of knowledge and sweet- ness given by Him, that are so strong and profound as to penetrate into the innermost substance of the soul, ' ' For there are some acts of knowledge and touches of God 268 CHRISTIAN YOGA. wrought by Him in the substance of the soul which so en- rich it that one of them is sufficient, not only to purge away at once certain imperfections which had hitherto resisted the efforts of a whole life, but also to fill the soul with virtues and divine gifts. Such is the sweetness and deep delight of these touches of God, that one of them is more than a recompense for all the sufferings of this life, however great their number. " Sometimes the touches are surprises, coming when the soul is occupied with something else, at times coming gently and at times so as to make "not only the soul, but the body also, to tremble." They are, it is furthermore stated, "a part of the union " — are " touches of union. " The external conditions proper to the practice of Christian Yoga are poverty, seclusion and solitude, and the internal ones detachment, devotion and humility, while the practical methods are religious observance, prayer, fasting, penance, meditation and spiritual con- templation. All of these are found in Hindu Yoga. Poverty, seclusion and solitude are easily seen to be important aids, if not essential ones, to concentration; so is devotion, itself a mode of concentration; so is humility, as neutralizing self-conceit and giving recep- tivity, while detachment, which means the not setting the heart on things of this life, whether possessing them or not, is a mental state of evident importance. Com- plete detachment is an absolute cut-off from temptations and disturbances of every sort. Prayer, fasting and other religious observance serve as helps to, or even as substitutes for, concentration; but while the Hindu who has by means of them "attained" is thereby released from them all, the Christian ascetic never is done with any of them, his religion never letting go her grip on his magic ; and since the time of St. Benedict the Church no longer allows "the yells of the wild Egyptian monks to disturb the propriety of her councils," but holds her ascetics securely controlled in monasteries and nun- CHRISTIAN YOGA. 269 neries. Other methods of yoga practice include among their austerities self-inflicted penance of the kind calling for passive endurance and intended to induce and also test the virtue of equanimity, the flower of stoical philos- ophy; but in Christian Yoga penance plays a much larger part, because, as said before, Christian religion adds another motive to it, namely, the desire to please God by displeasing ourselves. In early Christian times, when Adam's fall, hell's fire and redemption by cruci- fixion were about the sum and substance of the new religion, there must have been ever present in believers' minds the idea of torment, tending to breed there a morbid taste for it and a disposition to supplement Christ's sufferings with their own, so that the measure of his Father's wrath might not merely be kept full but made to run over, and a desire in each of them to have a cross and passion of his own. Thus when the refugees from persecution took to the desert, their relig- ious exercise consisted of prayer and penance only. " They anticipated no contemplation," says Dalgairns. So that as their prayers were brief and few their devo- tions must have been chiefly made up of hurting them- selves in diverse ways, until the favoring conditions of enforced solitude and idleness let in meditation and con- templation and made involuntary yogis of them. John of the Cross distinguishes meditation from the succeed- ing stage of contemplation as follows: " The difference between these two conditions of the soul is like the dif- ference between working and enjoyment of the fruit of our work; between receiving a gift and profiting by it; between the toil of travelling and the rest at our jour- ney's end; between the preparation of our food and the eating or enjoyment of it. If the soul be not occupied either with its bodily faculties in meditation and reflec- tion, or with its spiritual faculties in contemplation or pure knowledge, it is impossible to say that it is occu- pied at all." He then tells the signs by which it may be 270 CHRISTIAN YOGA. known that the time has come to pass from meditation to contemplation ; they are present when it becomes irksome to meditate, or when there is disinclination to fix the imagination or the senses on particular objects, but more distinctly when the soul delights to be alone, waiting lovingly on God, without any particular con- siderations, in interior peace, quiet and repose, where the acts and exercises of the understanding, memory and wmII, at least discursively — which is the going from one subject to another — have ceased; nothing remains ex- cept that knowledge and attention, general and loving, of which I have spoken, without the particular percep- tion of aught else." Till these signs appear it is better to continue practicing meditation, and even after quit- ting it, it is sometimes well to return to it. Of the nature of contemplation it is trance. A state of trance in which the soul receives divine knowledge is thus de- scribed: " The soul seems unconscious of all it knows, and is therefore lost, as it were, in forgetfulness, know- ing not where it is, nor what has happened to it, unaware of the lapse of time. It may and does occur that many hours pass while it is in this state of forgetfulness; all seems to last but a moment when it again returns to itself. The cause of this forgetfulness is the pureness and simplicity of this knowledge, which, being itself pure and clear, cleanses the soul while it fills it, and purifies it of all the apprehensions and forms of sense and memory through which it once acted and thus brings it to a state of forgetfulness and unconsciousness of the flight of time. The prayer of the soul, though in reality long, lasts but for a moment, because it is an act of pure intelligence." John of the Cross was often in such trances, and wrote from his own experiences. Concerning the revelations which come by way of such deep contemplation, he says: "Some supernatural knowledge is corporeal, and some spiritual. The former is of two kinds: one of them enters the understanding CHRISTIAN YOGA. 271 through the exterior bodily senses ; and the other through the interior bodily senses, comprehending all that the imagination may grasp, form and conceive. The spirit- ual supernatural knowledge is also of two kinds: one distinct and special; the other confused, obscure and general. The first kind comprises four particular appre- hensions, communicated to the mind without the inter- vention of any one of the bodily senses. These are visions, revelations, locutions and spiritual impressions. The second kind, which is obscure and general, has but one form, that of contemplation, which is the work of faith. The soul is to be led into this by directing it thereto through all the rest, beginning with the first, and detaching it from them " (one by one). Of the super- natural "apprehensions" just named, the following are instances: "They (spiritual men) sometimes see the forms and figures of those of another life, saints, or angels, good and evil, or certain extraordinary lights and brightness. They hear strange words, sometimes seeing those who utter them, and sometimes not. They have a sensible perception at times of most sweet odors, without knowing whence they proceed. Their sense of taste is also deliciously affected; and that of the touch so sweetly caressed at times that the bones and the mar- row exult and rejoice, bathed as it were in joy." But all these, for many reasons, which he elaborates, one of which is that the devil can produce them as well as God, we must reject and disregard. "The soul must close its eyes on and reject them, come they whence they may — unless in certain rare instances, after examination by a learned spiritual and experienced director." But John of the Cross speaks only for himself. A church that cackles with triumph as often as a miraculous Q.gg is laid within her fold is not the institution to sanction the flinging overboard of a cargo of evidences of Christianity having virtue sufficient to establish an hundred religions and an hundred heresies, as such things go. 272 CHRISTIAN YOGA. Next in order in the devotee's spiritual experience are locutions, or words supernaturally produced, without the instrumentality of the bodily senses, and designated as successive, formal and substantial. Successive words come to the mind when it is absorbed in a given subject, and then it " puts words and reasonings together so much to the purpose, and with such facility and clearness dis- covers by reflection things it knew not before, that it seems to itself as if it were not itself which did so, but some third person which addressed it interiorly, reason- ing, answering and informing ; the mind then reasons with itself as one man with another." "He who is in this state cannot believe that the words do not proceed from some third person." The disposition prevailing in his day even among those who had hardly begun to medi- tate, to accept such words as coming from God filled our saint with terror. "But," says he, "it is not true ; such an one has only been speaking to himself." The words may come from the Holy Spirit, the devil, or the natural light of the understanding, and it is hard to tell which, but there should be no account made of any of them " from whatever source they may come." Formal words are such as the mind " formally perceives to be spoken by a third person independently of its own opera- tions, without any effort on its part, sometimes even when the mind is not recollected, and is far from think- ing what is uttered within it, which is not the case with successive words, which always relate to a matter which then occupies the mind." These, too, may come either from God or the devil. Before acting upon them the confessor must be consulted and " no soul who does not deal with them as with an enemy " is safe from delusions. Substantial words execute themselves — are acts of God and not merely commands or instructions. Thus when he spoke these to Abraham, " Walk before me and be per- fect," Abraham was by the very fact of their utterance made perfect; it was not his to accept or reject them. CHRISTIAN YOGA. 273 The saint informs us that neither the understanding of man nor the arts of the devil can simulate substantial words. Next in order come " spiritual impressions," which are of two degrees of excellence, both acting directly on the will. ' ' Neither the soul that receives them, nor its direc- tor can ever know their sources, or why God effects them ; they do not depend in any way on good works or medita- tion." They are caused by "touches of union " with God, are "most intense, high, profound, and secret, and seem not to touch the will, but to have been wrought in the very substance of the soul," and from them "there flows frequently into the understanding the apprehension of knowledge or intelligence which is usually a most pro- found and secret sense of God, to which, as well as to the impression from which it flows, no name can be given." Yet even here, he says, there is danger of delusion and need of caution ; " the understanding ought not to meddle with them, but remain passive, inclining the will to con- sent freely and gratefully, and not interfering itself." Stupidity. The saint has much to say in relation to " the purga- tion and active night of the memory and the will," and of the annihilation of both powers, in the matter of their operation, in respect to all knowledge whether of natural or supernatural objects. Beginning with natural knowl- edge, he says: "The memory must be stripped and emp- tied of it all; it must labor to destroy all sense of it, so that no impression whatever shall be left behind." And again : " The more the memory is united to God the more it loses all distinct knowledge, and at last all such fades utterly away when the state of perfection is reached. In the beginning, when this is going on, great forgetfulness ensues; men neglect themselves in outward things, for- getting to eat and drink. But he who has attained to the habit of union is able to attend to the duties of life by 274 CHRISTIAN YOGA. means of knowledge supplied in a special way by God, the operation of the memory and of the other powers being in that state, as it were, divine. God has entered into possession." To illustrate the methods by which one so possessed is directed the following is offered: "A per- fect man has at a certain time a certain indispensable business to transact. He has no recollection whatever of it, but in some way he knows not, it will present itself to his mind, through that stirring of his memory of which I speak, at the time and in the way it ought, and that without fail." Supernatural knowledge is equally with natural a danger and a hindrance, and "visions and revelations, locutions and impressions " must all be rig- orously emptied out and carefully kept out of memory. " It is therefore necessary for the soul to forget and de- tach itself from all distinct forms and knowledge of super- natural things, that it may not hinder in the memory the divine union in perfect hope. " Having shown how to pu- rify the memory, the saint next considers the will, which, he says, must be purged of all its affections or passions, namely, of joy, hope, grief and fear. "Man must feel no joy except for that which is simply for the honor and glory of our Lord God, nor hope except in him, nor grief except in what concerns him, nor fear but of him only," and he quotes from one Boethius: "Wilt thou contem- plate truth in a clear light? Drive away joy and hope and grief and fear." All which shows that no system of yoga practice can go further than the Christian in the thoroughness of its detachment and renunciation. The Horrors. The next step on the way to sainthood brings the prac- ticer to the stage which our teacher names "the dark night." This night — it is contemplation — produces two sorts of darkness or purgation, the first of which, the night of sense, in which the soul is purified or detached from things of sense, is the lot of many; the second, in CHRISTIAN YOGA. 275 which it is purified and detached in the spirit and pre- pared for union with God, is the lot of very few and is little spoken or written about, or even known by ex- perience. In this night are the well-known religious "horrors" common to Protestants and Catholics alike. The night of sense is bitter and terrible to the senses, but the night of spirit is incomparably more awful to the spirit. Souls begin to enter the dark night when God is drawing them out of the state of beginners, or those who meditate, and is leading them into that of proficients, or those who contemplate, in order that, having passed through this, they may arrive at the state of union with God, which is that of the perfect. In the dark night the practicer finds himself unable to advance a single step in meditation as before, the inward sense being overwhelmed and abandoned to dryness so great that he has no longer joy or sweetness in his spiritual exercises, finding nothing in their place but insipidity and bitterness. All his own efforts are now in vain, for he is being led by another and different road, that of contemplation. But, with all this, there will in due course come a consciousness of strength and energy; and this is the commencement of contemplation, which in this stage is generally secret and goes on unknown to him who is being acted on, and by the dryness and emptiness it produces in the senses makes him long for solitude and quiet, without the power of reflecting on anything distinctly, or even desiring to do so. In this state he should know how to be quiet, to dis- regard every exterior or interior work, to be without solicitude for anything, and resign himself into the hands of God, keeping his soul tranquil, for were he now to exert his interior faculties they would only hinder and ruin the good which God is working to his soul. Among the spiritual "imperfections" of beginners are pride, avarice, anger, envy, gluttony and luxury. In treating of this last the saint discloses experiences of a peculiar nature, and which must be noted here, that later they 276 CHRISTIAN YOGA. may be considered and compared with like experiences in other yogas. He says that practicers very often, in the midst of their spiritual exercises, and when they cannot help themselves, feel the impure movements of sensuality, and sometimes even when their minds are absorbed in prayer, or when they are receiving the sacrament of penance and the eucharist. And, to the great disgust of the soul, even when it has made some progress, with the spiritual delight that flows into it the sensual part occa- sionally mingles its own delight. Sometimes it is Satan who sets up the rebellious movements in order to disgust the soul during prayer, causing some to relax in prayer, and some to abandon it altogether, being more liable to these assaults during prayer than at other times. This is not all, for he represents before them then most vividly the most foul and filthy images. " Some are so grievously assailed that they dare not dwell upon anything, lest it become at once a stumbling-block to them." A third source of these depraved movements is the very fear of them. But, when the sensual part is renewed in the purgation of the dark night, such afflictions disappear, and as the love of God grows in the soul the human love cools and is forgotten. The Night of the Spirit. Having undergone the purgations of the night of sense the soul attains to the state of proficients where it finds itself able to rise at will to the most tranquil and loving contemplation, and have joy and spiritual sweetness with- out the fatigue of meditation. But it does not at once enter into union with God; it must spend some time, perhaps years, in the exercises of that state. And then there is yet a further purgation to undergo, that of the night of the spirit, without which the intercourse of the proficient with God is still most mean. In that night the faculties, affections and feelings, spiritual and sensual, interior and exterior, must be denuded, leaving the CHRISTIAN YOGA. 277 understanding in darkness, the will dry, the memory empty, the affections of the soul in the deepest affliction, bitterness and distress; all which is effected in the soul by means of contemplation pure and dark. And this contemplation is not a night, a darkness merely, but pain and torment as well. It is called infused contemplation, or mystical theology, and in it the practicer is, accord- ing to the saint, taught by God the truths of the Catholic religion, without effort on his part, and in a secret, hidden way in which the natural operations of the understanding have no share. Many reasons are given why the process is called dark and why it is painful, but the reasons, as well as the facts they relate to, are purely religious, and applicable only to Christian ascetics. The valley of hor- rors trod by the Christian pilgrim on his way to his God would, of course, be different from that trod by a Hindu one on his way to his. But, besides religious horrors, practicers of all faiths must needs go through many "sloughs of despond " in their long and hard journey; and, moreover, yoga being an affair of the body, physical pangs must be expected as well by all. The first effect of yoga practice is to put the body in good condition, which, if disease be present, often involves an aggrava- tion of its symptoms, they being merely nature's cura- tive efforts. In this last stage of the saint's progress all effects are operated through love, and knowledge and belief only come in by w^ay of the heart. In his "Spiritual Canticle of the Soul and the Bridegroom Christ " and "Living Flame of Love," and his voluminous commen- taries on them which cover 350 octavo pages, John of the Cross, inadvertently perhaps, emulates Solomon in say- ing one thing and meaning another, in treating of divine love in terms of human love. Of his writings it may be said that they not only identify Christian sanctity with Hindu and other yoga, but embody a large number of experiences of great scientific value. 278 CHRISTIAN YOGA. Postel. Contemporary with John of the Cross was Guillaume Postel, a French monk and physician, one of the most learned men of the time. Crowds of students attended his teaching at the College of Lombards in Paris, and it was said of him that there came out of his mouth as many oracles as words. But though in high favor with the great, he was accused by theologians of deism and atheism because he claimed to be able to prove the Chris- tian religion to be true by reason alone and asserted that by means of reason, without aid of faith, he would him- self convert the whole world. He claimed, moreover, that all the truths of nature were written in Hebrew char- acters on the sky formed by the arrangement of the stars, and that he had read them there ; and also that the Kabala had revealed to him that the world would last but six thou- sand years longer, and that before the end man would recover his primitive state of innocence and happiness. His conduct was correct, his life pure above reproach, and his benevolence wide. During several years he was confessor to a Venetian nun named Mother Jeanne, of great repute for sanctity, and abounding in spiritual gifts, of the order John of the Cross held to be untrustworthy, such as visions, revelations, transfiguration, etc. Already possessed by the idea of woman's supremacy, he easily fell under her control, and in his newly devised religious system made her the chief character as the incarnation of the spirit of Jesus Christ and the mother regenerator of all mankind; reserving to himself the spiritual head- ship of the new church to be made up of the Jews and all Christian sects, including the Mohammedans, united in one fold, and which all others were to be invited to enter on pain of death, and according to the King of France the temporal empire of all the nations of the earth united in peace. Pursuant to a promise the nun made to him she came CHRISTIAN YOGA. 279 to him after she died ; as he expressed it: " She kept her word. She came to me in Paris, she illumined me with her light, she reconciled my reason with my faith. Her substance and spiritual body two years after her ascen- sion to heaven descended into me, and extended them- selves throughout my sensible body, so that it is she and not I that lives in me." Concerning her appearance as he knew her in life he says that, though more than fifty years old, she would pass for fifteen, especially when taking the communion; and of his own, after she took possession of him as above, it is related that his pale, old wrinkled visage became smooth and rosy and his white locks became black. To obtain spirituality Postel prescribed, besides very fervent prayer, very devout meditation and very vehe- ment contemplation, and in distinguishing the one from the other, says: "Meditation is when one holds his thought a long time on a word, a proposition, or a fact, or a beneficence of our Lord, in considering his infinite mercy, power, wisdom, pity, justice, virtue, glory and other perfect qualities, or, on the other hand, on man's infinite wickedness, felony, weakness, ignorance, avarice, vice, injustice," etc. — or, best of all, the suffering of Jesus, dwelling on which, one hour, or even one minute, is worth more than a thousand years' time bestowed on any other subject. "And what," he asks, "is contemplation?" "It is known to but few and is very difficult to make under- stood, but by similitudes it may be explained. Just as the doctrine of metaphysics treats of natural things with- out considering the words, bodies or images of them which are in the mind, but by considering them by their essences, abstract and wholly separate from body, so also should contemplation do. Meditation must pass into contemplation when the soul would force itself to know and feel God in all nature, so that only the sovereign cause of all things is perceived there, which is essence, 280 CHRISTIAN YOGA. unity, truth and divine goodness," and "seeing in all things the spirit of God." In fine, contemplation is nothing else than reducing all objects into divine beauty, and the passion of God into the infinite love whence it proceeds, as much that love which is intellectual and high as into that which is low, animal and sensual. Postel closed his life in enforced seclusion, and after signing as many recantations as were laid before him. Quietism. In the following century rose the sect known as Quiet- ists, of which Miguel Molinos, another Spanish priest, was the head and Madame Guyon the most famous disciple. Possibly Quietism was the most seductive heresy that ever troubled Rome, whither Molinos early in his career went for the purpose of preaching it, and whence it rap- idly spread throughout all Catholic countries, gaining adherents among the highest church dignitaries, includ- ing the Pope himself. In Naples alone there were 20,000 who followed the " new method," as it was called. In it religious observances had so small a part, and its good fruits were so evident, that the Jesuits became alarmed and resolved to suppress it. They tried polemics at first. A book written by one of them took the ground that though Quietism in itself was good, its practice led to evil. The Quietist was too good for this rude, brawl- ing world, and this new method, however useful to very pious souls, was not fitted for the every-day life of the ordinary Christian. But so strong had Quietism already become that the writer of the polemic was condemned by the Inquisition and his book put in the Index. The Jesuits, however, became all the more eager to put down the rising heresy, and brought influences to bear which finally caused the Inquisition to arrest Molinos, try and condemn him, despite his powerfnl supporters. He escaped being burnt by making public abjuration, and so was allowed to live out his life in prison. Equally ener- CHRISTIAN YOGA. 281 getic action elsewhere suppressed the movement com- pletely. Viewed as merely a religious modification, Quiet- ism is briefly but well described by Bishop Burnet, thus: " The substance of the whole is reduced to this, that, in our prayers and other devotions, the best methods are to retire the mind from all gross images, and so to form an act of faith, and thereby to present ourselves before God, and then to sink into silence and cessation of new acts, and to let God act upon us, and so to follow His con- duct. This way Molinos preferred to the multiplication of new acts and other forms of devotion, and he makes small account of corporeal austerities and reduces all the exercises of religion to this simplicity of mind. He thinks this is not only to be proposed to religious houses, but even to secular persons." Just here was the offence of Molinos. He undertook to popularize the methods of sanctification discovered by the fathers of the desert and well known to the Church, but in practice confined to cloistered persons only, and to that end had mitigated and simplified them so that all could practice them. Confined to monasteries and nunneries, the eccentrici- ties and "enthusiasms" of the yogis and yoginis could be controlled or hidden, and even made to do service to the Church, which had, however, too good a recollection of the disturbances made in earlier times by those same fathers to let yoga again get loose in the Catholic world. Secular persons might well enough be fed by their spirit- ual directors with such moderate portions of that mag- ical ecstasy which goes by the name of religious comfort and consolation as a daily round of religious observances, fastings, repetitions and other lulling monotonies, and occasional "retreats" might procure them, and yet be kept in order. But to allow them to help themselves, to allow God to act as confessor and spiritual director, to open a postern door free to all in Saint Peter's own gate, would be quite another thing. The Quietists lived ex- emplary lives and were happy in their religion, but they 282 CHRISTIAN YOGA. were indifferent as to religious observance. They seldom went to mass or confession, or made pilgrimages, did but scanty penance, cared little for images or relics, and spent little money for praying out of purgatory their dead relations. Such a movement as theirs must needs be dangerous to any church, because dangerous to re- ligion itself. Had it been allowed to go on the religious appendages to contemplation would one after another have been found to be non-essential and dropped, until finally there would have remained only Quietism pure and simple, that is to say yoga pure and simple. Assur- edly,then,the Jesuits were wise in their generation. How far their wisdom would avail them in this generation is another question. The Holy Inquisition is no more! Although greatly mitigated in severity, the instructions of Molinos to his penitents were essentially the same as those of John of the Cross to his. The practicer must be "quiet from fears, void of affections, desires and thoughts, must work, pray, obey and suffer without being the least moved." For penance the ordinary miseries of human life would serve, but he must expect to go through seasons of darkness and dryness, and, when " God intends to guide him in an extraordinary manner, " as in the case of Madame Guyon, be prepared to endure extraordinary suffering. In her detail of experiences she says: "The soul thus in corruption is so full of horror at itself that it cannot endure itself. The pain of suffering its own stench is so great that it is no longer concerned at anything that can be done to it outwardly. Nothing any longer affects it. It sees itself worthy of all scorn. Others see it only with horror. " " It plunges into putrefaction as into the place appropriate to it." " Well, perhaps this corruption will last but a little while. Alas! quite otherwise. It will last several years." " At length, by slow degrees, the soul gets used to its cor- ruption, and it becomes natural to it, except at certain times, when it exhales a stench enough to cause its death, CHRISTIAN YOGA. 283 were it not immortal." And even to the ordinary peni- tent Molinos says: " Know, however, that thou art to be plunged in a bitter sea of sorrow, and of internal and external pains, which torments will pierce into the most inward part of thy soul and body." Certainly in all hereinbefore summarized of pagan yoga there has been no mention made of any such horrors as these. The worst that can happen to a Hindu practicer, for example, if he fail to make connection with his Brahman, is to go on with his re-incarnations, and in some future one try again ; but the Christian, hanging by the slender thread of faith between heaven's dome and hell's pit, a cruel devil below and an angry God above, when he does get discouraged must needs get horridly so. In connection with his mitigation of the severity of the old cloistered yoga devised to adapt it to the world at large, Molinos relied on a peculiar method of so starting the penitent on his way that the growth of his soul in sanctity should go on of itself, despite disturbing cares and avocations, " if he will walk in continual and virtual praying and strive to acquire a habit of internal recol- lection, defined to mean ' faith and silence in the pres- ence of God.'" The mode of starting was as follows: " Thou oughtest to go to prayer that thou mayest deliver thyself wholly up into the hands of God, with perfect resignation, exerting an act of faith, believing thou art in the divine presence, afterwards settling in that holy repose with quietness, silence, tranquillity; and endeav- oring for a whole day, a whole year, and thy whole life to continue that first act of contemplation by faith and love. " Then if his thoughts should wander, he is encouraged by these words: "So long as thou retractest not that faith and intention of being resigned to God, thou walkest in faith and resignation and consequently in prayer and in virtual and acquired contemplation, although thou per- ceive it not." Virtual prayer and contemplation seem but feeble means for raising the soul up to union with 284 CHRISTIAN YOGA. God, however they may have appeared to produce the expected results, because followed by them. But the reader who bears in mind what has been said concerning Hindu and Chinese Yoga will be apt to find the cause of such results in that measure of actual contemplation which is compatible with a busy life, and is even found in doing the duties of such a life, as in the cases of the Chinese cook and armorer and the Indian butcher and overworked woman of all work, who did their work with concentrated minds, and thereby became more or less of yogis. Molinos describes the progress of the penitent as being along a path wherein, step by step, he is led by God, to whose guidance he must absolutely yield himself, happen what may. Concerning the passing from medi- tation into contemplation, he says: "The soul then that is entered into internal recollection hath no need to enter by the first door of meditation on the mysteries, being always taken up in meditating on them, because that is not to be done without great fatigue to the intellect, nor does it stand in need of such ratiocinations, since these serve only as a means to attaining to believ- ing that which it hath already got possession of." Martin Luther. Every great religious movement may be presumed to have been made by a mystic, that is to say, by a yogi of some degree of attainment, until the contrary is shown. Such an one was Martin Luther, It was as a Catholic monk, shut within his cell, agonized with persistent re- ligious horrors, inventing continually new forms of pen- ance, tormenting himself to death, as he expressed it, to make his peace with God, that he developed the ability to hear a voice that told him to found his church on jus- tification by faith, and to have clear visions of the devil. But this ceased when he became an avowed Protestant and had to go out into the world and strive with his CHRISTIAN YOGA. 285 opposers, so that he hardly got further on the path than Mohammed did. And he discarded monasticism, fasts, vigils and penances and other practices promotive of mental concentration, while as to the visions, voices and other mystical phenomena which concentration is apt to produce, the spiritual impressions, trances, etc., he dis- posed of them all by roundly announcing to the world that the age of miracles was past. Thus he severed re- ligion from magic, its mother, and made Protestantism an orphan from its birth. Had he instead of this sup- planted monasticism by Quietism, Protestantism might have become something more than a mode of disintegra- tion and decay. Paracelsus. There are some who discover in the alchemists only secret practicers of yoga, who under terms of chemistry hid their teachings from all but their own kind, and not only never made a grain of gold, but never attempted it, nor were chemists at all. Others strenuously contend that they did actually produce real gold in quantities so large that one of them furnished a king of England with the means of carrying on a foreign war and another instituted and maintained in the city of Paris many charitable houses. Should it ever be demonstrated that the occult powers invoked by our Spiritualists have performed the wonder called materialization even to the extent of producing a spray of geranium, the contention may resolve itself into a compromise which, admitting the gold, but denying the chemistry, shall attribute the result to materialization. And then the alchemists will appear as well advanced yogis, who, not caring to be detected in working unauthor- ized miracles in times when burning at the stake was yet in vogue, pretended to be smelting and distilling in the seclusion of their laboratories, while in fact they were only meditating and contemplating for the purpose of 286 CHRISTIAN YOGA. acquiring magical powers. In any case their writings, which disclose nothing save an intent to disclose nothing, are of small value in the present research. But there has lived one alchemist who was not of these. Paracelsus was born in 1483, and was therefore a contemporary of Luther, to whom and to whose reform he was friendly, though not taking any part in the latter, for he was above all sects, because above all religions, unless magic, which was to him all in all, be religion. None of the sects, he said, possessed intellectually the true religion, which was yet to appear in the world. This gives great value to his teachings, delivered as they were from a free and inde- pendent mind, for which public opinion had no terrors. Though well educated, he had little esteem for books, and sought knowledge of men and things by associating with all manner of men and handling all sorts of things, and going about on foot in out-of-the-way places, doing good wherever he went, for he was a good man withal — no man could be hungry for knowledge as he was with- out a sympathetic and unselfish nature. Thus constituted, he stands forth as the first great magician of Europe who held his knowledge in trust, as it were, for the good of all, and kept nothing secret that it was safe to promul- gate. Paracelsus was an avowed magician. As such he claimed to have discovered important secrets of nature and obtained healing power. He says: "Magic is a teacher of medicine far preferable to all written books. Magic alone (that can neither be conferred by the uni- versities nor created by the awarding of diplomas, but which comes from God) is the true teacher, preceptor and pedagogue, to teach the art of curing the sick. As the physical forms and colors of objects, or as the letters of a book can be seen by the physical eye, likewise the essence and character of all things may be recognized and become known by the inner sense of the soul. I have reflected a great deal upon the magical powers of CHRISTIAN YOGA. 287 the soul of man, and I have discovered a great many secrets in nature, and I will tell you that he only could be a true physician who has acquired this power." The means of doing which he says are prayer, or strong de- sire or aspiration, and exalted imagination and absolute faith in the omnipotence of the power within ourselves. " The great world is only the product of the universal mind, and man is a little world of its own that imagines and creates by the power of imagination. If man's im- agination is strong enough to penetrate into every corner of his interior world, it will be able to create things in those corners, and whatever man thinks will take form in his soul. ... He who wants to know how a man can unite his power of imagination with the power of the im- agination of heaven must know by what process this may be done. A man may come into possession of creative power by identifying his own mind with the Universal Mind, and he who succeeds in doing so will be in posses- sion of the highest possible wisdom; the lower realm of nature will be subject to him, and the powers of heaven will aid him, because heaven is the servant of wisdom." ..." The exercise of true magic does not require any ceremonies or conjurations, or the making of circles or signs; it requires neither benedictions or maledictions, ceremonies or conjurations, neither verbal blessings nor curses; it only requires a strong faith in the omnipotent power of all good, that can accomplish everything if it acts through a human mind who is in harmony with it, and without which nothing useful can be accomplished." . . . "Man is created with great powers; he is greater than heaven and greater than the earth." ... "By faith, imagination and will we may accomplish whatever we desire." Yet, unlike the disciples of schools and systems of medicine, and even his far-away-off followers, the heal- ers of various denominations of our day, Paracelsus in his practice employed whatever mode of cure promised 288 CHRISTIAN YOGA. the best results, whether it were a drug or the power of the Holy Ghost. "Ills of the body," he said, "may be cured by physical remedies, or by the power of the Spirit (Holy Ghost) acting through the soul." ... He who possesses the power to cure diseases and to drive out evil influences by the power of the Spirit is ordained of God." Yet, while believing himself to be so ordained, he was at the same time indefatigable in the use of his gift of sensing the presence of medicinal virtues to dis- cover new remedies in whatever substance nature had hid them, and making his discoveries known. If strict yoga practice was necessary to qualify for all this, a born yogi like him, the opportunity to both learn and pursue it, was afforded by his sojourn of many years in Asiatic countries, and he was not the man to neglect such an opportunity. Many of his ideas are plainly Hindu, and it is highly probable that he traveled and studied in Hindustan. But he was a yogi of his own sort; unlike the Hindu sages, who disregard all magical gifts that come in their way on the yoga path, he appro- priated and used them, while, unlike European magicians, he made no secret of them or of the way of acquiring them, save in special cases. Concerning heaven he says: " If we speak of heaven, we then speak of our home, of our own country." Of the nature of man we have this: "The essential man is not limited by the visible physical form of his ma- terial body; his spiritual substance extends as far as the stars. His true self is the spirit of God." "Before his fall man could rule over the sun and the stars. Everything was in his power. Fire, air, water and earth could not tame him; no fire burned him, no water drowned, no air suffocated him." " No heat, no cold, no sickness, no accident, nor any fear could touch or terrify him. His body could pass through earth and rocks without breaking anything in them; for a man who could be overpowered by the terrestrial nature, or who CHRISTIAN YOGA. 289 could be broken to pieces would not be eternal." Here seem to be all the requisites for the terrestrial immortal man which some think will yet enjoy his eternity in physical form on this same material planet. Finally we have : "The soul in the power of God penetrates through all things and is as powerful as God himself," which re- calls the "lam Brahman," of the Hindu perfected saint. Where the philosophy of Paracelsus agrees with that of the Hindus he must be presumed to have obtained it from them, and so when we find Boehme, who came long after Paracelsus, giving out as his own the ideas of the latter, he must be considered as his disciple rather than his rival, even when they came to him while in his ecstatic state, and, as he believed, from the Holy Spirit, for it is the well-known habit of inspirations to embody and adapt themselves to the preconceived notions of the mediums through which they come. By the time Boehme appeared the teachings of the other must have got well abroad and ready to be imbibed, even by those who did not read his books. The points of agreement in the doctrines of the two were : The unity of God ; the omnip- otence of man; the union, if not identity, of both; the disregard of the personal Jehovah and the historical Jesus, and the resolving of all deity into an impersonal principle; magic as the creative and operative force in Nature. All which was old Hinduism, newly taught, but the new teaching had most important effects on the European minds. It was a protest at once against Prot- estantism and Romanism, so far as it related to relig- ious notions, and as regards science was a revival of the long-neglected methods of the earlier students of Nature as she is, and not as philosophers think she should be. Boehme. Notwithstanding Luther's effort to stamp out mysti- cism, there arose in Germany a century after him Jacob Boehme, a believer in miracles, a worker of miracles and 290 CHRISTIAN YOGA. a miracle himself. He, too, was, in Hindu parlance, a born yogi. The measure of solitude and leisure possible to him while serving as a herdboy and afterwards while working at the very quiet and lonely trade of shoemaker, sufficed to develop him while as yet a youth into what John of the Cross would have termed a proficient and the Hindus a well advanced candidate. A brief sketch of his mystical experiences and a statement of a few of the leading philosophical ideas which resulted from them will give some idea of the quality of this greatest yogi of Protestant times. At the age of nineteen Boehme got married, and it was as the head of a family and while working for its support that he did his meditation and contemplation, and got his ecstasies and illuminations, thereby proving that for some natures at least renunciation of the duties of life is not essential to progress in sanctification. But incidents related of him show that he knew the value of solitude, and kept much by himself, and in his " Dialogue between a Scholar or Disciple and His Master," he says: "When thou art ' quiet or silent, then thou art that which God was,*" etc. His methods of concentration were those usual with devotees. An access of the horrors gave rise to devotional concentration, which took form as an intense longing to find the heart of Jesus Christ wherein he might hide himself and find protection from the fearful wrath of God. The result he thus describes; "While engaged in such an earnest seeking and desiring the door was opened to me, so that in one quarter of an hour I saw and learned more than if I had studied many years in the universities." But a late experience taught him that it mattered not what he concentrated on, for a glittering point in a newly brightened pewter platter that caught his eye and held it for a while sent him into as good an ecstasy as could be wished. After declaring that he wrote " only for those who desire to be sanctified and united with the Supreme Power CHRISTIAN YOGA. 291 from which they have originated," he gives the following instructions: "Thine own hearing, willing and seeing prevents thee from seeing God. But if you keep quiet and desist from thinking and feeling within your per- sonal self-hood, then will the eternal hearing, seeing and speaking become revealed to you." "We should be blind and deaf and mute, and know nothing, and know of no life of our own. The practicer "should leave money and goods, father and mother, brother and sister, wife and child, body and life, and his own self should become as nothing to him. He must surrender every- thing, and become poorer than a bird of the air that has no nest." But this was only a sub modo renunciation. Having surrendered all his possessions to God, the surrenderer might still hold them of Him as a kind of fief; and thus renunciation be made easy. Boehme wrote his books, as he affirms, under inspirational im- pression. " I, in my human self, do not know," he said, "what I shall have to write; but whatever I am writing the Spirit dictates to me what to write, and shows me all in such a wonderful clearness that I do not know whether or not I am with my consciousness in this world." . . . "I might sometimes perhaps write more elegantly and in better style, but the fire burning in me is driving me on. My hand and my pen must then seek to follow the thoughts as well as they can. The inspiration comes like a shower of rain. That which I catch I have. If it were possible to grasp all that I perceive, then would my writings be more explicit." And certainly a reader can readily believe him when he says that it was only while the Holy Ghost was present with him that he him- self could understand them. His idea of God is that, " in his primitive aspect he is not to be conceived of as a being, but merely as the power or the intelligence con- stituting the potentiality for being — as an unfathomable eternal will, wherein everything is contained, and which, although itself everything, is, nevertheless, only one, 292 CHRISTIAN YOGA. but desirous of revealing itself and to enter into a state of spiritual being. " . . . " God is eternal unity, the unmeasurable one good, having nothing before or after it that could possibly endow it with something or move it. It is without any inclinations or qualities, without any beginning in time, within itself only One." This God creates by the exercise of "the divine magic power," which is "the spirit desirous for being. It is essentially nothing but will, but it enters into existence. It is the greatest mystery; it is above nature, and forces nature to assume forms according to the form of its will. It introduces the foundation into the abyss of the groundlessness and changes nothing into something." CHAPTER XXVI. YOGA IN GENERAL. Methods of Practice. The materials for a comparative study of yoga, so far as I have been able to collect them, are now before the reader. Those which relate to Hindu Yoga are seen to be the most complete of all, and by their sufficiency to make up for the scantiness of the others. It will be observed that the postures, breathings and movements are peculiar to that yoga, and that of these the move- ments are peculiar to Hatha Yoga, while the postures and breathings, though more or less borrowed from it by the others, have nowhere the prominence accorded to them by the Hatha, being by some prescribed as a preparative practice good for beginners only, and by others merely tolerated as fortifying the health, whereas the Hatha, as set forth by Swatmaram, seems to insist on the importance, if not the necessity, of all its methods. But if the postures, breathings and movements were essen- tial to success, they would be found in all yogas. And this consideration would move us to dismiss them as of inferior importance, were it not that the American ex- periences, that have before been stated, seem to prove a necessary and wonderful connection to exist between the bodily manifestations on the one part and mental con- centration on the other. Those experiences, it will be remembered, showed that mere concentration, unalloyed by any philosophical, ethical or religious admixture, will suffice, if long enough persisted in, to set up, inde- pendently of the will of the practicer, all the bodily 294 YOGA IN GENERAL. processes of Swatmaram's book, save only a few that, from their nature, require the concurrence of the con- scious will, and that, except the hundred or more move- ments that were of the nature of mesmeric passes or massage manipulations, those experiences did not go beyond that book. Thus there were brought into play intelligence, force and will — and why not providence also? — from a source beyond the consciousness of the practicer, yet all operating within his body. It is not strange that mankind have generally believed that such manifestations indicate bodily possession by some de- parted soul or other supernatural being, but those of the present time who study the experiences in question will probably discard that supposition along with the Hindu one of a deva descending from heaven to act as guru, and the Christian one of direct guidance by God's own hand, in favor of the more rational one, as it seems to me, that when a practicer has by his own efforts made a certain progress along the path, nature comes to his aid and conducts him the rest of the way. Whether all practicers may expect to be thus favored, that is to say, whether all men are so constituted as to be thus acted on is another question. Probably all of us have, in some degree, magical capabilities, whether for developing or operative magic, by which I mean that all are possible prophets. Probably all, whether in any measure or in no measure at all developed as such, may do prophet's work by prophet's methods, /.