Chapter 6

The line of evolution thus followed by the belief in reincarnation results in the total separation of the belief from morality and from religion, and results in rendering it infertile alike for morality, religion, and progress in civilisation generally. Where the belief in reincarnation takes the form of belief in the transmigration of the soul into some animal form, it may be utilised for moral purposes, provided that the people amongst whom the belief obtains have otherwise advanced so far as to see that the punishments and rewards which are essential to the development of morality are by no means always realised in this life. When that conviction has established itself, the reincarnation theory will provide machinery by which the belief in future punishments and rewards can be conceived as operative: rebirth in animal form, if the belief in it already exists, may be held out as a deterrent to wrongdoing. That is, as a matter of fact, the use to which the belief has been put by Buddhism. The form and station in which the deceased will be {62} reborn is no longer, as amongst the peoples just mentioned, conceived to be determined automatically, so to speak, but is supposed to depend on the moral qualities exhibited during life. If this view of the future life has struck deeper root and has spread over a greater surface than the doctrine taught in the Greek mysteries ever did, the reason may probably be found in the fact that the Greek mysteries had no higher morality to teach than was already recognised, whilst the moral teaching of the Buddha was far more exalted and far more profoundly true than anything that had been preached in India before. If a moral system by itself, on its own merits, were capable of affording a sure foundation for religion, Buddhism would be built upon a rock. To the spiritual community by which man may be united to his fellow-man and to his God, morality is essential and indispensable. But the moral life derives its value solely from the fact that on it depends, and by means of it is realised, that communion of man with God after which man has from the beginning striven. If then that communion and the very possibility of that communion is denied, the denial must prove fatal alike to religion and to morality. Now, that is the denial which Buddhism {63} makes. But the fact of the denial is obscured to those who believe, and to those who would like to believe, in Buddhism, by the way in which it is made. It is made in such a way that it appears and is believed to be an affirmation instead of a denial. Communion with God is declared to be the final end to which the transmigration of souls conducts. But the communion to which it leads is so intimate that the human soul, the individual, ceases to be. Obviously, therefore, if it ceases to be, the communion also must cease; there is no real communion subsisting between two spirits, the human and the divine, for two spirits do not exist, but only one. If this way of stating the case be looked upon with suspicion as possibly not doing justice to the teaching of Buddhism, or as pressing unduly far the union between the human and the divine which is the ultimate goal of the transmigration of souls, the reply is that in truth the case against Buddhism is stronger than appears from this mode of stating it. To say that from the Buddhist point of view the human soul, the individual, eventually ceases to be, is indeed an incorrect way of putting the matter. It implies that the human soul, the individual, now is; and hereafter ceases to be. But so far from {64} admitting that the individual now is, the Buddhist doctrine is that the existence of the soul, now, is mere illusion, _mâyâ_. It is therefore logical enough, and at any rate self-consistent, to say that hereafter, when the series of transmigrations is complete, the individual will not indeed cease to be, for he never was, but the illusion that he existed will be dissipated. Logically again, it follows from this that if the existence of the individual soul is an illusion from the beginning, then there can strictly speaking be no transmigration of souls, for there is no soul to transmigrate. But with perfect self-consistency Buddhism accepts this position: what is transmitted from one being to the next in the chain of existences is not the individuality or the soul, but the character. Professor Rhys Davids says (_Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 91, 92): "I have no hesitation in maintaining that Gotama did not teach the transmigration of souls. What he did teach would be better summarized, if we wish to retain the word transmigration, as the transmigration of character. But it would be more accurate to drop the word transmigration altogether when speaking of Buddhism, and to call its doctrine the doctrine of karma. Gotama held that after the death of any being, {65} whether human or not, there survived nothing at all but that being's 'karma,' the result, that is, of its mental and bodily actions." "He discarded the theory of the presence, within each human body, of a soul which could have a separate and eternal existence. He therefore established a new identity between the individuals in the chain of existence, which he, like his forerunners, acknowledged, by the new assertion that that which made two beings to be the same being was--not soul, but--karma" (_ib._, pp. 93, 94). Thus once more it appears that there can be no eventual communion between the human soul, at the end of its chain of existence, and the divine, for the reason, not that the human soul ultimately ceases to be, but that it never is or was, and therefore neither transmigrates from one body to another, nor is eventually absorbed in the _âtmân_.

Logically consistent though this train of argument be, it leaves unanswered the simple question, How can the result of my actions have any interest for me--not hereafter, but at the present moment--if I not only shall not exist hereafter but do not exist at the present moment? It is not impossible for a man who believes that his existence will absolutely {66} cease at death to take some interest in and labour for the good of others who will come after him; but it is impossible for a man who does not exist now to believe in anything whatever. And it is on that fundamental absurdity that Buddhism is built: it is directed to the conversion of those who do not exist to be converted, and it is directed to the object of relieving from existence those who have no existence from which to be relieved.

Where then lies the strength of Buddhism, if as a logical structure it is rent from top to bottom by glaring inconsistency? It lies in its appeal to the spirit of self-sacrifice. What it denounces, from beginning to end, is the will to live. The reason why it denounces the will to live is that that will manifests itself exclusively in the desires of the individual; and it is to the desires of man that all the misery in the world are directly due. Destroy those desires by annihilating the will to live--and in no other way can they be destroyed--and the misery of the world will cease. The only termination to the misery of the world which Buddhism can imagine is the voluntary cessation of life which will ultimately ensue on the cessation of the will to live. And the means by which that is to be brought about is {67} the uprooting and destruction of the self-regarding desires by means of the higher morality of self-sacrifice. What the Buddhist overlooks is that the uprooting and destruction of the self-regarding desires results, not in the annihilation, but in the purification and enhanced vitality, of the self that uproots them. The outcome of the unselfish and self-sacrificing life is not the destruction of individuality, but its highest realisation. Now, it is only in society and by living for others that this unselfishness and self-sacrifice can be carried out; man can only exist and unselfishness can only operate in society, and society means the communion of man with his fellows. It is true that only in society can selfishness exist; but it is recognized from the beginning as that which is destructive of society, and it is therefore condemned alike by the morality and the religion of the society. The communion of man with his fellows and his God is hindered, impeded, and blocked wholly and solely by his self-regarding desires; it is furthered and realised solely by his unselfish desires. But his unselfish desires involve and imply his existence--I was going to say, just as much, I mean--far more than his selfish desires, for they imply, and are only possible on, the assumption of {68} the existence of his fellow-man, and of his communion with him. Nay! more, by the testimony of Buddhism itself as well as of the religious experience of mankind at large, the unselfish desires, the spirit of self-sacrifice, require both for their logical and their emotional justification, still more for their practical operation, the faith that by means of them the will of God is carried out, and that in them man shows likest God. It is in them and by them that the communion of man with his fellow-man and with his God is realised. It is the faith that such communion, though it may be interrupted, can never be entirely broken which manifests itself in the belief in immortality. That belief may take shape in the idea that the souls of the departed revisit this earth temporarily in ghostly form, or more permanently as reincarnated in the new-born members of the tribe; it may body forth another world of bliss or woe, and if it is to subserve the purposes of morality, it must so do; nay! more, if it is to subserve the purposes of morality, it is into the presence of the Lord that the soul must go. But in any and whatever shape the belief takes, the soul is conceived or implied to be in communion with other spirits. There is no other way in which it is {69} possible to conceive the existence of a soul; just as any particle of matter, to be comprehended in its full reality, implies not only every other particle of matter but the universe which comprehends them, so the existence of any spirit logically implies not only the existence of every other but also of Him without whom no one of them could be.

It is in this belief in the communion of spirits wherever he may find it--and where will he not?--that the missionary may obtain a leverage for his work. It is a sure basis for his operations because the desire for communion is universal; and Christianity alone, of the religions of the world, teaches that self-sacrifice is the way to life eternal.

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MAGIC

Of all the topics which present themselves to the student of the science of religion for investigation and explanation there is none which has caused more diversity of opinion, none which has produced more confusion of thought, than magic. The fact is that the belief in magic is condemned alike by science and religion,--by the one as essentially irrational, and by the other as essentially irreligious. But though it is thus condemned, it flourishes, where it does flourish, as being science, though of a more secret kind than that usually recognised, or as being a more potent application of the rites and ceremonies of religion. It is indeed neither science nor religion; it lives by mimicking one or other or both. In the natural history of belief it owes its survival, so long as it does survive, to its "protective colouring" and its power of mimicry. It is, always and everywhere, an error,--whether tried by the canons of science or religion; {71} but it lives, as error can only live, by posing and passing itself off as truth.

If now the only persons deceived by it were the persons who believed in it, students of the science of religion would have been saved from much fruitless controversy. But so subtly protective is its colouring that some scientific enquirers have confidently and unhesitatingly identified it with religion, and have declared that magic is religion, and religion is magic. The tyranny of that error, however, is now well-nigh overpast. It is erroneous, and we may suppose is seen to be erroneous, in exactly the same way as it would be to say that science is magic, and magic science. The truth is that magic in one aspect is a colourable imitation of science: "in short," as Dr. Frazer says (_Early History of the Kingship_, p. 38), "magic is a spurious system of natural law." That is, we must note, it is a system which is spurious in our eyes, but which, to those who believed in it, was "a statement of the rules which determine the sequence of events throughout the world--a set of precepts which human beings observe in order to compare their ends" (_ib._, p. 39).

The point, then, from which I wish to start is that {72} magic, as it is now viewed by students of the science of religion, on the one hand is a spurious system of natural law or science, and on the other a spurious system of religion.

Our next point is that magic could not be spurious for those who believed in it: they held that they knew some things and could do things which ordinary people did not know and could not do; and, whether their knowledge was of the secrets of nature or of the spirit world, it was not in their eyes spurious.

Our third point is more difficult to explain, though it will appear not merely obvious, but self-evident, if I succeed in explaining it. It will facilitate the work of explanation, if you will for the moment suppose--without considering whether the supposition is true or not--that there was a time when no one had heard that there was such a thing as magic. Let us further suppose that at that time man had observed such facts as that heat produces warmth, that the young of animals and man resemble their parents: in a word, that he had attained more or less consciously to the idea, as a matter of observation, that like produces like, and as a matter of practice that like may be produced by like. Having attained to that practical idea, he will of {73} course work it not only for all that it is worth, but for more. That is indeed the only way he has of finding out how much it is good for; and it is only repeated failure which will convince him that here at length he has reached the limit, that in this particular point things do not realise his expectations, that in this instance his anticipation of nature has been "too previous." Until that fact has been hammered into him, he will go on expecting and believing that in this instance also like will produce like, when he sets it to work; and he will be perfectly convinced that he is employing the natural and reasonable means for attaining his end. As a matter of fact, however, as we with our superior knowledge can see, in the first place those means never can produce the desired effect; and next, the idea that they can, as it withers and before it finally falls to the ground, will change its colour and assume the hue of magic. Thus the idea that by whistling you can produce a wind is at first as natural and as purely rational as the idea that you can produce warmth by means of fire. There is nothing magical in either. Both are matter-of-fact applications of the practical maxim that like produces like.

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That, then, is the point which I have been wishing to make, the third of the three points from which I wish to start. There are three ways of looking at identically the same thing, _e.g._ whistling to produce a wind. First, we may regard it, and I suggest that it was in the beginning regarded, as an application, having nothing to distinguish it from any other application, of the general maxim that like produces like. The idea that eating the flesh of deer makes a man timid, or that if you wish to be strong and bold you should eat tiger, is, in this stage of thought, no more magical than is the idea of drinking water because you are dry.

Next, the idea of whistling to produce a wind, or of sticking splinters of bone into a man's footprints in order to injure his feet, may be an idea not generally known, a thing not commonly done, a proceeding not generally approved of. It is thus marked off from the commonplace actions of drinking water to moisten your parched throat or sitting by a fire to get warm. When it is thus marked off, it is regarded as magic: not every one knows how to do it, or not every one has the power to do it, or not every one cares to do it. That is the second stage, the heyday of magic.

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The third and final stage is that in which no educated person believes in it, when, if a man thinks to get a wind by whistling he may whistle for it. These three ways of looking at identically the same thing may and do coexist. The idea of whistling for a wind is for you and me simply a mistaken idea; but possibly at this moment there are sailors acting upon the idea and to some of them it appears a perfectly natural thing to do, while to others there is a flavour of the magical about it. But though the three ways may and do coexist, it is obvious that our way of looking at it is and must be the latest of the three, for the simple reason that an error must exist before it can be exploded. I say that our way of looking at it must be the latest, but in saying so I do not mean to imply that this way of looking at it originates only at a late stage in the history of mankind. On the contrary, it is present in a rudimentary form from very early times; and the proof is the fact generally recognised that magicians amongst the lowest races, though they may believe to a certain extent in their own magical powers, do practise a good deal of magic which they themselves know to be fraudulent. Progress takes place when other people also, and a {76} steadily increasing number of people, come to see that it is fraudulent.

In the next place, just as amongst very primitive peoples we see that some magic is known by some people, viz. the magicians themselves, to be fraudulent, though other people believe in it; so, amongst very primitive peoples, we find beliefs and practices existing which have not yet come to be regarded as magical, though they are such as might come, and do elsewhere come, to be considered pure magic. Thus, for instance, when Cherokee Indians who suffer from rheumatism abstain from eating the flesh of the common grey squirrel "because the squirrel eats in a cramped position, which would clearly aggravate the pangs of the rheumatic patient" (Frazer, _History of the Kingship_, p. 70), or when "they will not wear the feathers of the bald-headed buzzard for fear of themselves becoming bald" (_ib._), they are simply following the best medical advice of their day,--they certainly do not imagine they are practising magic, any more than you or I do when we are following the prescriptions of our medical adviser. On the contrary, it is quite as obvious, then, that the feathers of the bald-headed buzzard are infectious as it is now that the clothes {77} of a fever patient are infectious. Neither proposition, to be accepted as true, requires us to believe in magic: either might spring up where magic had never been heard of. And, if that is the case, it simply complicates things unnecessarily to talk of magic in such cases. The tendency to believe that like produces like is not a consequence of or a deduction from a belief in magic: on the contrary, magic has its root or one of its roots in that tendency of the human mind. But though that tendency helps to produce magic amongst other things, magic is not the only thing which it produces: it produces beliefs such as those of the Cherokees just quoted, which are no more magical than the belief that fire produces warmth, or that _causa aequat effectum_, that an effect is, when analysed, indistinguishable from the conditions which constitute it.