The Hearts of Men Part 15

How they came frequently to overlap is easily enough seen.

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

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

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

And with the Architects. There is but one emotion common to a whole people--catholic, so to speak--namely, religion. A town hall, a palace, a secular building would be provincial; a church only is catholic. In palaces only princes live, in munic.i.p.al buildings only officials, in markets only the people, but in churches all are gathered together, and not only occasionally but frequently. Therefore, given a great architect, what could he design that would give him scope, and freedom, and fame like a cathedral? His feelings were immaterial, it was a professional necessity that drove artists then to religious matters.

What was Raphael, the free-liver, thinking of when he drew his Madonnas?

Was it the Jewess of Galilee over a thousand years before or the ripe warm beauty of the Florentine girls he knew?

The Roman Catholic Church desired to attract to itself all that appealed to the emotions, and included art of all kinds in its scope. And all artists, painters, architects, even writers, found in the Church their greatest opportunities and greatest fame. Deep and real feelings in art of all kinds sought the companions.h.i.+p of the other great feelings that are in religion. Shallower art often shrinks from being put beside the greater emotions, and so some of the shams of the Renaissance.

But the deepest religious feeling is always averse to art. No age full of great religious emotion has produced any art at all in any people.

The early Christians, the monks of the Thebaid, hated art, as did the Puritans. They felt, I think, a compet.i.tion. When an emotion is raised to such a height as theirs was, none other can live beside it. Such emotion becomes a flame that burns up all round. It cannot bear any rivalry. It puts aside not only art but love, reverence, fear, every other emotion. Religion is before everything, religion _is_ everything.

There are Christ's words refusing to recognise his mother and brethren.

It has been common to all forms of exalted religious fervour. No emotion can live with it. Only when it has somewhat died away does art get a chance. Then only if an artistic wave arises can it be allied with religion. But deep religious feeling is not always followed by an artistic wave. There has been no such sequence in most countries. This sequence in Italy was an exception. It was perchance. There has never been an art wave connected with Protestantism, and only very slightly with Buddhism. I have shown in "The Soul of a People," that art in Burma is only connected professionally with Buddhism. That is to say that wood-carving, one of Burma's two arts, is not religious in sentiment, and is applied to monasteries because they are the only large buildings needed. There is no other demand. To depict the Buddha in any artistic way except that handed down by tradition would be considered profane.

Would not the early Christians have considered Raphael's Madonna profane, considering who he was, and what probably his models were? I think so. I doubt if the deepest religious emotions would tolerate a crucifix or any picture of Christ at all. Certainly not of the Almighty.

The heat of belief must have cooled down a great deal before such things became possible. So, in fact, it is as history tells us. Religion is a cult of the emotions. Art, as Tolstoi shows, is also a cult of the emotions. Very deep religious feeling leaves no room for any other emotion, it brooks no rival in the hearts of men. A deeply religious age has no art; its religion kills art. What were the feelings of the early Christians towards Greek art? They were those of abhorrence. What those of the Puritans towards any art? They were the same.

But when religious emotions have cooled, and room is left for other feelings, then art may arise. And if it does so, and is a great art, it allies itself with religion, if the religion permits of it. Some forms of faith would never permit it. Which of the emotions of which Puritanism is composed could be expressed in art? Art is almost always the cult of emotions that are beautiful, are happy, are joyous.

Puritanism knew nothing of all these. Grand, stern, rigid, black, never graceful or beautiful. Any art that followed Puritanism could but be grotesque and terrible. There would be no Madonnas, but there might be avenging angels; there would be no heaven, but certainly a h.e.l.l. Indeed, in the literature of the religion we see that this is so.

Religion and art are both cults of the emotions. They may be rivals, they may be allies, in the way that art may depict religious subjects.

But great art, like great faith, brooks no rival. And therefore great artists are not necessarily religious. They may have scant emotion to spare outside their art.

This, I think, is the key to the relation between religion and art. It is impossible to treat such a great subject adequately in a chapter.

Most of my chapters should, indeed, have been volumes. But the key once provided the rest follows.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CATHOLIC RELIGION: PRAYER, MUSIC, BEAUTY, LOVE, MOTHERHOOD, SACRIFICE, HEAVEN, GAIETY, COLLECTIVENESS, DEPENDANCE, LAWLESSNESS, HOPE, CATHOLICITY, MERCY]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PURITANISM: EFFORT, h.e.l.l, JUSTIFICATION, JUSTICE, NARROWNESS, VENGEANCE, LAW, STRENGTH, RIGHTEOUSNESS, FEAR, INDIVIDUALITY]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ART: MUSIC, BEAUTY, LOVE, MOTHERHOOD, GAIETY, Pa.s.sION, LICENSE]

CHAPTER XXVII.

WHAT IS EVIDENCE?

If you go to any believer in any religion--in any of the greater religions, I mean--and ask him why he believes in his religion, he has always one answer: "Because it is true." And if you continue and say to him, "How do you know it is true?" he will reply, "Because there is full evidence to prove it." He imagines that he is guided by his reason, that it is his logical faculty that is satisfied, and his religion can be proved irrefragably. And yet it is strange that if any religion is based on ascertained fact, if any religion is demonstrably true, no one can be brought to see this truth, to accept this proof, except believers who do not require it. The Jew cannot be brought to admit the truth of Christianity, let the Christian argue ever so wisely; nor will the Christian accept Mahommedanism or Buddhism as containing any truth at all, no matter how the adherents of these faiths may argue.

It is not so with most other matters. If a problem in chemistry or physics be true at all it is altogether true for every one. Nationality makes no difference to your acknowledging the law of gravity, the science of the stars, the dynamics of steam, or the secrets of metallurgy. If an Englishman makes a discovery a Frenchman is able to follow the argument. The j.a.panese are not Christians, but that does not in any way prevent them a.s.similating modern knowledge. Twice two are four all over the world, except in matters of religion.

This is a somewhat remarkable phenomenon. What is the reason of it?

I can remember not very long ago walking in a garden with a man and talking intermittently on religious topics. He was a man of great education, of wide knowledge of the world, a man of no narrow sympathies or thoughts. And as we went we came to a bed of roses in full bloom; there were red and white and deep yellow roses in cl.u.s.ters of great beauty, filling the air with their perfume. "To see a sight like that,"

he said, "proves to me that there is a G.o.d."

Proves! There was the _proof_.

I did not ask him how such roses would be proof of a G.o.d. I did not say that if beauty was proof of a G.o.d, ugliness would be proof of a Devil, for I know there is no reasoning in matters like that. The sight and scent awoke in his heart that echo that is called G.o.d. Not only G.o.d, nor was it any G.o.d, nor any G.o.ds that the echo answered to. It was _his_ G.o.d, it was the G.o.d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that came to him. He saw the roses, and their beauty brought to his mind the idea of G.o.d.

That was enough for him. He had, as so many have, an absolute instinctive understanding of G.o.d, as clear to him as if he saw Him at midday--unreasoning because _known_.

"And for others," he said, "is there not ample evidence? How do you account for the world unless G.o.d made it? Have we not in the Scripture a full account of how it was made out of chaos? And has not He manifested Himself in His prophets? The truth is proved over and over again, by the prophecies and fulfilment, by the birth and death of Christ, by the miracles of Christ, by endless matters. It is so clear." And so it is to him and those like him who have in themselves the idea of G.o.d. They _know_. It seems humorous to remember that scientific men have thought they traced this to a savage's speculations on dreams. The speculation of a savage, forsooth, and this certainty of feeling. The Theist says: "How can you answer the questions of who made the world other than by G.o.d?" It is a question that rises spontaneously. Do you remember Napoleon the Great and the idealogues on the voyage to Egypt? They were ridiculing the idea of a Creator. And to them the Emperor, pointing to the stars above him, replied, "It is all very well, gentlemen, but who made all those?" But the Non-Theist replies that it would never occur to him to put such a question. To ask "Who made the world?" is to beg the whole question. That question which is always rising in your mind never does in ours. We would ask how and from what has the world evolved, and under what cause? "Your evidence is good only to you." The Hindu has perhaps the keenest mind in religious matters the world knows; does he accept it? Do the Buddhists accept it? Do keen thinkers in Europe accept any of this evidence? It is not so. If you have the instinct of G.o.d, then is evidence unnecessary; and if you have not, of what use is the evidence brought forward? Was anyone ever converted by reasoning? I am sure no one ever was. Religions are not proved, they are not matters of logic; they are either above logic or beneath it. To a man who _believes_, anything is proof. He will reason about religion in a way he would never do about other matters. He will offer as evidence, as absolute proof, what he who does not believe cannot accept as evidence at all. The religions are always the same. The believers _know_ them to be true, and they cannot understand why others also do not know it.

Their truths seem to them absolutely clear, capable of the clearest proof. And as to this evidence, this proof, there is always plenty of it. Any faith can if pushed bring evidence on some points that not even unbelievers can disprove, that is clearly not intentionally false, that if the matter were a mundane concern would probably be accepted. It is so, I think, in all religions, but here is a case from Buddhism.

In my book upon the religion of the Burmese I have given a chapter to the belief of the people in reincarnation, a belief that is to them not a belief but a knowledge. And I have given there a few of these strange stories of remembrance of previous lives so common among them. For almost all children will tell you that they can remember their former lives.

There is a story there of a child who remembered nothing until one day he saw used as a curtain a man's loin-cloth, that of a man who had died and whose clothes had, as is the custom, been made into screens. And the sight of that pattern awoke in him suddenly the knowledge that he had lived before, and that in that former life he had worn that very cloth.

His former life was "proved" to him, and in consequence the fact that all men had former lives. There was proof.

When I was writing "The Soul of a People" I went a great deal into this subject of the former life, and I collected a great deal of evidence about it. I not only saw a number of people who said they could recollect these lives, but I came across a quant.i.ty of facts difficult of explanation on any other hypothesis. The evidence was honestly given, I know. But did I believe this former life, or has any European ever been convinced by that evidence? I never heard of one. Why? Because we have not the instinct. The Burman has.

They have the idea as an instinct, just as my friend held the idea of G.o.d as an instinct, and there were certain matters that awakened these instincts. They needed no more; the facts were proved to them and to those of like thought to them. But proof. What is proof? Proof, they will tell you, is a matter of evidence, it is a matter of cold logic, it arises from facts.

If that is so, why does not everyone believe in ghosts? Was there ever a subject on which there was more evidence than in the existence of ghosts? We find the belief as far back as we can go--the witch of Endor, for instance. We find the belief to-day. Not a year pa.s.ses but numerous people a.s.sert that they have seen ghosts. Their evidence is honestly given; no one doubts that. The ma.s.s of evidence is overwhelming. The fact that certain people do not see them in no way invalidates the direct evidence. Yet the belief in ghosts is a joke, and a mark, we say, of feeble-minded folk.

I have myself lived in the midst of ghosts. One of my houses in Burma was full of them. Every Burman who came in saw them. Not even my servants dared go upstairs after dark without me. My servants are honest, truth-telling boys, and I would believe them in a matter of theft or murder without hesitation. I would certainly hang a man if the evidence of his being a murderer was as clear as the evidence that my bedroom contained a ghost. No absolutely impartial lawyer, judging the evidence of former life and of the existence of ghosts as a pure matter of law, but would admit that they were conclusively proved. The Burmans firmly believe both, considering them not only proved but beyond proof.

No European believes in the former life, and with regard to ghosts the belief is relegated to those whom we stigmatise as the weak-minded and imaginative.

Is the explanation difficult? It does not seem to me so. For it is simply this. To believe and accept any matter it is not sufficient that there be enough evidence, the subject itself must appeal to you, must ring true, must be good to be believed. But with ghosts to most of us it is the reverse. That our friends and those we love should after death behave as ghosts behave, should be silly, unreasonable, drivelling in their ways, imbecile in their performances, should in fact act as if the next world was a ghostly lunatic asylum, is not attractive but the reverse. For a murdered man's spirit to go fooling about scaring innocent people into fits, and unable to say right out that he wants his body buried, strikes the ordinary man as sheer idiocy. And therefore men laugh and jeer. People who see ghosts may believe them; no one else will do so. Because they are not worthy of belief. If these be indeed ghosts, and they act as ghost-seers say, it is a deplorable, a most deplorable thing. And if it is a choice of imbecilities, we would prefer to believe in the lunacy of ghost-seers rather than in that of the dead, our dead.

But it is not only in matters relating to religion as the idea of G.o.d, or to the supernatural as in ghosts, that we reject evidence. We can do so also in matters that have no connection with each. For why do we refuse to accept the sea serpent? Numbers of absolutely reliable men declare they have seen it. And yet we laugh, or at best we say, "They were mistaken, it was a trail of seaweed."

All men who have lived to a certain age have learnt that there are certain facts, certain experiences not at all connected with the supernatural, which they dare not tell of for fear of being put down as inventors. They are curious coincidences, narrow escapes, shooting adventures, and so on. They have happened to us all. Who has not heard the tale of the general at a dinner party who related some such incident that had occurred to himself, and was surprised to see amus.e.m.e.nt and disbelief depicted on the faces of all around him. "You do not believe me," he said stiffly, "but my friend opposite was with me at the time and saw it too." But the friend refused with a laugh to bear witness, and the conversation changed. "General," explained the friend subsequently to his irate companion, "I know, of course, all you said was true. But what would you have? If fifty men swore to it no one would believe them. They would only have put me down as a liar too."

Just as the old woman was ready to accept her travelled son's yarns of rivers of milk and islands of cheese; but when he deviated into the truth she stopped. "Na, Na!" she said, "that the anchor fetched up one of Pharaoh's chariot wheels out of the Red Sea, I can believe; but that fish fly! Na, Na! dinna come any o' your lies over yer mither."

They are old stories, but they ill.u.s.trate my point. On some matters we are ready to believe at once, on others no amount of evidence will change our opinions.

Indeed, we are too apt to a.s.sume that reason is our great guide in life.

To think before you act may be wise--sometimes. But if in matters of emergency you had to stop and think first, you would not succeed very well. The great men of action are those who act first and think afterwards, and sometimes they even do the latter badly. There is the story of a man who was going abroad to be a Chief Justice, and who was addressed by the Lord Chancellor in this way: "My friend, be careful where you are going. Your judgments will be nearly always right, but beware of giving your reasons, for they will almost invariably be wrong." There are many such men.

What, then, is religious proof? If it is not founded on evidence that all can accept, on what is it founded? Why do men believe their own religion and accept the evidence of it as irrefragable, while scornfully rejecting that in favour of other religions?

The answer, I think, is this.

If you will take two violins and will tune them together, and if while someone plays ever so lightly on one you will bend your ear to the other, you will hear faintly but clearly repeated from its strings the melody of the first. For they are in harmony. But if they are not, then there will be no echo, play you never so loudly.

And so it is in matters of religion. If you are in harmony with any thought there will come the echo in your heart's strings, and you will know that it is true. But if you are not in harmony, then no matter how loudly the evidence be sounded there will be no echo there. All these ideas on which religions are built are instincts. They are of the heart, never of the head. Reason affects them not at all. These instincts are not the same with all. They vary, and so the religions that are based on them vary. They have nothing to do with reason, and therefore those of one religion cannot understand another. And they are not fixed; for the belief in the Unity of G.o.d only evolved, after many thousands of years, quite recently, and the belief in ghosts, universal among earlier people and now among the half-civilized, lingers with us only as a subject for amus.e.m.e.nt. There is no "evidence" in religion; you either believe or you don't.