Pagan and Christian creeds Part 18

All the same there would be left, in any case, a large residuum of taboos which could only be judged as senseless, and the mere rubbish of the savage mind.

So much for the first origins of the World-religion; and I think enough has been said in the various chapters of this book to show that the same general process has obtained throughout. Man, like the animals, began with this deep, subconscious sense of unity with surrounding Nature.

When this became (in Man) fairly conscious, it led to Magic and Totemism. More conscious, and it branched, on the one hand, into figures of G.o.ds and definite forms of Creeds, on the other into elaborate Scientific Theories--the latter based on a strong INTELLECTUAL belief in Unity, but fervently denying any 'anthropomorphic' or 'animistic'

SENSE of that unity. Finally, it seems that we are now on the edge of a further stage when the theories and the creeds, scientific and religious, are on the verge of collapsing, but in such a way as to leave the sense and the perception of Unity--the real content of the whole process--not only undestroyed, but immensely heightened and illuminated.

Meanwhile the taboos--of which there remain some still, both religious and scientific--have been gradually breaking up and merging themselves into a reasonable and humane order of life and philosophy.

I have said that out of this World-religion Christianity really sprang.

It is evident that the time has arrived when it must either acknowledge its source and frankly endeavor to affiliate itself to the same, or failing that must perish. In the first case it will probably have to change its name; in the second the question of its name 'will interest it no more.'

With regard to the first of these alternatives, I might venture--though with indifference--to make a few suggestions. Why should we not have--instead of a Holy Roman Church--a Holy HUMAN Church, rehabilitating the ancient symbols and rituals, a Christianity (if you still desire to call it so) frankly and gladly acknowledging its own sources? This seems a reasonable and even feasible proposition. If such a church wished to celebrate a Ma.s.s or Communion or Eucharist it would have a great variety of rites and customs of that kind to select from; those that were not appropriate for use in our times or were connected with the wors.h.i.+p of strange G.o.ds need not be rejected or condemned, but could still be commented on and explained as approaches to the same idea--the idea of dedication to the Common Life, and of reinvigoration in the partaking of it. If the Church wished to celebrate the Crucifixion or betrayal of its Founder, a hundred instances of such celebrations would be to hand, and still the thought that has underlain such celebrations since the beginning of the world could easily be disentangled and presented in concrete form anew. In the light of such teaching expressions like "I know that my Redeemer liveth" would be traced to their origin, and men would understand that notwithstanding the ma.s.s of rubbish, cant and humbug which has collected round them they really do mean something and represent the age-long instinct of Humanity feeling its way towards a more extended revelation, a new order of being, a third stage of consciousness and illumination. In such a Church or religious organization EVERY quality of human nature would have to be represented, every practice and custom allowed for and its place accorded--the magical and astronomical meanings, the rites connected with sun-wors.h.i.+p, or with s.e.x, or with the wors.h.i.+p of animals; the consecration of corn and wine and other products of the ground, initiations, sacrifices, and so forth--all (if indeed it claimed to be a World-religion) would have to be represented and recognized. For they all have their long human origin and descent in and through the pagan creeds, and they all have penetrated into and become embodied to some degree in Christianity. Christianity therefore, as I say, must either now come frankly forward and, acknowledging its parentage from the great Order of the past, seek to rehabilitate THAT and carry mankind one step forward in the path of evolution--or else it must perish. There is no other alternative. (1)

(1) Comte in founding his philosophy of Positivism seems to have had in view some such Holy Human Church, but he succeeded in making it all so profoundly dull that it never flourished, The seed of Life was not in it.

Let me give an instance of how a fragment of ancient ritual which has survived from the far Past and is still celebrated, but with little intelligence or understanding, in the Catholic Church of to-day, might be adopted in such a Church as I have spoken of, interpreted, and made eloquent of meaning to modern humanity. When I was in Ceylon nearly 30 years ago I was fortunate enough to witness a night-festival in a Hindu Temple--the great festival of Taipusam, which takes place every year in January. Of course, it was full moon, and great was the blowing up of trumpets in the huge courtyard of the Temple. The moon shone down above from among the fronds of tall coco-palms, on a dense crowd of native wors.h.i.+pers--men and a few women--the men for the most part clad in little more than a loin-cloth, the women picturesque in their colored saris and jewelled ear and nose rings. The images of Siva and two other G.o.ds were carried in procession round and round the temple--three or four times; nautch girls danced before the images, musicians, blowing horns and huge sh.e.l.ls, or piping on flageolets or beating tom-toms, accompanied them. The crowd carrying torches or high crates with flaming coco-nuts, walked or rather danced along on each side, elated and excited with the sense of the present divinity, yet pleasantly free from any abject awe. The whole thing indeed reminded one of some bas-relief of a Baccha.n.a.lian procession carved on a Greek sarcophagus--and especially so in its hilarity and suggestion of friendly intimacy with the G.o.d. There were singing of hymns and the floating of the chief actors on a raft round a sacred lake. And then came the final Act. Siva, or his image, very weighty and borne on the shoulders of strong men, was carried into the first chamber or hall of the Temple and placed on an altar with a curtain hanging in front. The crowd followed with a rush; and then there was more music, recital of hymns, and reading from sacred books. From where we stood we could see the rite which was performed behind the curtain. Two five-branched candlesticks were lighted; and the manner of their lighting was as follows. Each branch ended in a little cup, and in the cups five pieces of camphor were placed, all approximately equal in size. After offerings had been made, of fruit, flowers and sandalwood, the five camphors in each candlestick were lighted. As the camphor flames burned out the music became more wild and exciting, and then at the moment of their extinction the curtains were drawn aside and the congregation outside suddenly beheld the G.o.d revealed and in a blaze of light. This burning of camphor was, like other things in the service, emblematic. The five lights represent the five senses. Just as camphor consumes itself and leaves no residue behind, so should the five senses, being offered to the G.o.d, consume themselves and disappear. When this is done, that happens in the soul which was now figured in the ritual--the G.o.d is revealed in the inner light. (1)

(1) For a more detailed account of this Temple-festival, see Adam's Peak to Elephanta by E. Carpenter, ch. vii.

We are familiar with this parting or rending of the veil. We hear of it in the Jewish Temple, and in the Greek and Egyptian Mysteries. It had a mystically religious, and also obviously s.e.xual, signification. It occurs here and there in the Roman Catholic ritual. In Spain, some ancient Catholic ceremonials are kept up with a brilliance and splendor hardly found elsewhere in Europe. In the Cathedral, at Seville the service of the Pa.s.sion, carried out on Good Friday with great solemnity and accompanied with fine music, culminates on the Sat.u.r.day morning--i.e. in the interval between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection--in a spectacle similar to that described in Ceylon. A rich velvet-black curtain hangs before the High Altar. At the appropriate moment and as the very emotional strains of voices and instruments reach their climax in the "Gloria in Excelsis," the curtain with a sudden burst of sound (thunder and the ringing of all the bells) is rent asunder, and the crucified Jesus is seen hanging there revealed in a halo of glory.

There is also held at Seville Cathedral and before the High Altar every year, the very curious Dance of the Seises (sixes), performed now by 16 instead of (as of old) by 12 boys, quaintly dressed. It seems to be a survival of some very ancient ritual, probably astronomical, in which the two sets of six represent the signs of the Zodiac, and is celebrated during the festivals of Corpus Christi, the Immaculate Conception, and the Carnival.

Numerous instances might of course be adduced of how a Church aspiring to be a real Church of Humanity might adopt and re-create the rituals of the past in the light of a modern inspiration. Indeed the difficulty would be to limit the process, for EVERY ancient ritual, we can now see, has had a meaning and a message, and it would be a real joy to disentangle these and to expose the profound solidarity of humanity and aspiration from the very dawn of civilization down to the present day.

Nor would it be necessary to imagine any Act of Uniformity or dead level of ceremonial in the matter. Different groups might concentrate on different phases of religious thought and practice. The only necessity would be that they should approach the subject with a real love of Humanity in their hearts and a real desire to come into touch with the deep inner life and mystic growing-pains of the souls of men and women in all ages. In this direction M. Loisy has done n.o.ble and excellent work; but the dead weight and selfish blinkerdom of the Catholic organization has hampered him to that degree that he has been unable to get justice done to his liberalizing designs--or, perhaps, even to reveal the full extent of them. And the same difficulty will remain. On the one hand no spiritual movement which does not take up the att.i.tude of a World-religion has now in this age, any chance of success; on the other, all the existing Churches--whether Roman Catholic, or Greek, or Protestant or Secularist--whether Christian or Jewish or Persian or Hindu--will in all probability adopt the same blind and blinkered and selfish att.i.tude as that described above, and so disqualify themselves for the great role of world-wide emanc.i.p.ation, which some religion at some time will certainly have to play. It is the same difficulty which is looming large in modern World-politics, where the local selfishness and vainglorious "patriotisms" of the Nations are sadly impeding and obstructing the development of that sense of Internationalism and Brotherhood which is the clearly indicated form of the future, and which alone can give each nation deliverance from fear, and a promise of growth, and the confident a.s.surance of power.

I say that Christianity must either frankly adopt this generous att.i.tude and confess itself a branch of the great World-religion, anxious only to do honor to its source--or else it must perish and pa.s.s away. There is no other alternative. The hour of its Exodus has come. It may be, of course, that neither the Christian Church nor any branch of it, nor any other religious organization, will step into the gap. It may be--but I do not think this is likely--that the time of rites and ceremonies and formal creeds is PAST, and churches of any kind will be no more needed in the world: not likely, I say, because of the still far backwardness of the human ma.s.ses, and their considerable dependence yet on laws and forms and rituals. Still, if it should prove that that age of dependence IS really approaching its end, that would surely be a matter for congratulation. It would mean that mankind was moving into a knowledge of the REALITY which has underlain these outer shows--that it was coming into the Third stage of its Consciousness. Having found this there would be no need for it to dwell any longer in the land of superst.i.tions and formulae. It would have come to the place of which these latter are only the outlying indications.

It may, therefore, happen--and this quite independently of the growth of a World-cult such as I have described, though by no means in antagonism to it--that a religious philosophy or Theosophy might develop and spread, similar to the Gnonam of the Hindus or the Gnomsis of the pre-Christian sects, which would become, first among individuals and afterwards among large bodies over the world, the religion of--or perhaps one should say the religious approach to the Third State. Books like the Upanishads of the Vedic seers, and the Bhagavat Gita, though garbled and obscured by priestly interferences and mystifications, do undoubtedly represent and give expression to the highest utterance of religious experience to be found anywhere in the world. They are indeed the manuals of human entrance into the cosmic state. But as I say, and as has happened in the case of other sacred books, a vast deal of rubbish has accreted round their essential teachings, and has to be cleared away. To go into a serious explication of the meaning of these books would be far too large an affair, and would be foreign to the purpose of the present volume; but I have in the Appendix below inserted two papers, (on "Rest" and "The Nature of the Self") containing the substance of lectures given on the above books. These papers or lectures are couched in the very simplest language, free from Sanskrit terms and the usual 'jargon of the Schools,' and may, I hope, even on that account be of use in familiarizing readers who are not specially STUDENTS with the ideas and mental att.i.tudes of the cosmic state. Non-differentiation (Advaita (1)) is the root att.i.tude of the mind inculcated.

(1) The word means "not-two-ness." Here we see a great subtlety of definition. It is not to be "one" with others that is urged, but to be "not two."

We have seen that there has been an age of non-differentiation in the Past-non-differentiation from other members of the Tribe, from the Animals, from Nature and the Spirit or Spirits of nature; why should there not arise a similar sense of non-differentiation in the FUTURE--similar but more extended more intelligent? Certainly this WILL arrive, in its own appointed time. There will be a surpa.s.sing of the bounds of separation and division. There will be a surpa.s.sing of all Taboos. We have seen the use and function of Taboos in the early stages of Evolution and how progress and growth have been very much a matter of their gradual extinction and a.s.similation into the general body of rational thought and feeling. Unreasoning and idiotic taboos still linger, but they grow weaker. A new Morality will come which will shake itself free from them. The sense of kins.h.i.+p with the animals (as in the old rituals) (1) will be restored; the sense of kins.h.i.+p with all the races of mankind will grow and become consolidated; the sense of the defilement and impurity of the human body will (with the adoption of a generally clean and wholesome life) pa.s.s away; and the body itself will come to be regarded more as a collection of shrines in which the G.o.ds may be wors.h.i.+ped and less as a mere organ of trivial self-gratifications; (2) there will be no form of Nature, or of human life or of the lesser creatures, which will be barred from the approach of Man or from the intimate and penetrating invasion of his spirit; and as in certain ceremonies and after honorable toils and labors a citizen is sometimes received into the community of his own city, so the emanc.i.p.ated human being on the completion of his long long pilgrimage on Earth will be presented with the Freedom of the Universe.

(1) The record of the Roman Catholic Church has been sadly Callous and inhuman in this matter of the animals.

(2) See The Art of Creation, by E. Carpenter.

XVII. CONCLUSION

In conclusion there does not seem much to say, except to accentuate certain points which may still appear doubtful or capable of being understood.

The fact that the main argument of this volume is along the lines of psychological evolution will no doubt commend it to some, while on the other hand it will discredit the book to others whose eyes, being fixed on purely MATERIAL causes, can see no impetus in History except through these. But it must be remembered that there is not the least reason for SEPARATING the two factors. The fact that psychologically man has evolved from simple consciousness to self-consciousness, and is now in process of evolution towards another and more extended kind of consciousness, does not in the least bar the simultaneous appearance and influence of material evolution. It is clear indeed that the two must largely go together, acting and reacting on each other. Whatever the physical conditions of the animal brain may be which connect themselves with simple (unreflected and unreflecting) consciousness, it is evident that these conditions--in animals and primitive man--lasted for an enormous period, before the distinct consciousness of the individual and separate SELF arose. This second order of consciousness seems to have germinated at or about the same period as the discovery of the use of Tools (tools of stone, copper, bronze, &c.), the adoption of picture-writing and the use of reflective words (like "I" and "Thou"); and it led on to the appreciation of gold and of iron with their ornamental and practical values, the acc.u.mulation of Property, the establishment of slavery of various kinds, the subjection of Women, the encouragement of luxury and self-indulgence, the growth of crowded cities and the endless conflicts and wars so resulting. We can see plainly that the incoming of the self-motive exercised a direct stimulus on the pursuit of these material objects and adaptations; and that the material adaptations in their turn did largely accentuate the self-motive; but to insist that the real explanation of the whole process is only to be found along one channel--the material OR the psychical--is clearly quite unnecessary. Those who understand that all matter is conscious in some degree, and that all consciousness has a material form of some kind, will be the first to admit this.

The same remarks apply to the Third Stage. We can see that in modern times the huge and unlimited powers of production by machinery, united with a growing tendency towards intelligent Birth-control, are preparing the way for an age of Communism and communal Plenty which will inevitably be a.s.sociated (partly as cause and partly as effect) with a new general phase of consciousness, involving the mitigation of the struggle for existence, the growth of intuitional and psychical perception, the spread of amity and solidarity, the disappearance of War, and the realization (in degree) of the Cosmic life.

Perhaps the greatest difficulty or stumbling-block to the general acceptance of the belief in a third (or 'Golden-Age') phase of human evolution is the obstinate and obdurate pre-judgment that the pa.s.sing of Humanity out of the Second stage can only mean the entire ABANDONMENT OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS; and this people say--and quite rightly--is both impossible and undesirable. Throughout the preceding chapters I have striven, wherever feasible, to counter this misunderstanding--but I have little hope of success. The DETERMINATION of the world to misunderstand or misinterpret anything a little new or unfamiliar is a thing which perhaps only an author can duly appreciate. But while it is clear that self-consciousness originally came into being through a process of alienation and exile and fear which marked it with the Cain-like brand of loneliness and apartness, it is equally clear that to think of that apartness as an absolute and permanent separation is an illusion, since no being can really continue to live divorced from the source of its life. For a period in evolution the SELF took on this illusive form in consciousness, as of an ignis fatuus--the form of a being sundered from all other beings, atomic, lonely, without refuge, surrounded by dangers and struggling, for itself alone and for its own salvation in the midst of a hostile environment. Perhaps some such terrible imagination was necessary at first, as it were to start Humanity on its new path. But it had its compensation, for the sufferings and tortures, mental and bodily, the privations, persecutions, accusations, hatreds, the wars and conflicts--so endured by millions of individuals and whole races--have at length stamped upon the human mind a sense of individual responsibility which otherwise perhaps would never have emerged, and whose mark can now be effaced; ultimately, too, these things have searched our inner nature to its very depths and exposed its bed-rock foundation. They have convinced us that this idea of ultimate separation is an illusion, and that in truth we are all indefeasible and indestructible parts of one great Unity in which "we live and move and have our being." That being so, it is clear that there remains in the end a self-consciousness which need by no means be abandoned, which indeed only comes to its true fruition and understanding when it recognizes its affiliation with the Whole, and glories in an individuality which is an expression both of itself AND of the whole.

The human child at its mother's knee probably comes first to know it HAS a 'self' on some fateful day when having wandered afar it goes lost among alien houses and streets or in the trackless fields. That appalling experience--the sense of danger, of fear, of loneliness--is never forgotten; it stamps some new sense of Being upon the childish mind, but that sense, instead of being destroyed, becomes all the prouder and more radiant in the hour of return to the mother's arms. The return, the salvation, for which humanity looks, is the return of the little individual self to harmony and union with the great Self of the universe, but by no means its extinction or abandonment--rather the finding of its own true nature as never before.

There is another thing which may be said here: namely, that the disentanglement, as above, of three main stages of psychological evolution as great formative influences in the history of mankind, does not by any means preclude the establishment of lesser stages within the boundaries of these. In all probability subdivisions of all the three will come in time to be recognized and allowed for. To take the Second stage only, it MAY appear that Self-consciousness in its first development is characterized by an accentuation of Timidity; in its second development by a more deliberate pursuit of sensual Pleasure (l.u.s.t, food, drink, &c.); in its third by the pursuit of mental gratifications (vanities, ambitions, enslavement of others); in its fourth by the pursuit of Property, as a means of attaining these objects; in its fifth by the access of enmities, jealousies, wars and so forth, consequent on all these things; and so on. I have no intention at present of following out this line of thought, but only wish to suggest its feasibility and the degree to which it may throw light on the social evolutions of the Past. (1)

(1) For an a.n.a.lysis of the nature of Self-consciousness see vol.

iii, p. 375 sq. of the three ponderous tomes by Wilhelm Wundt--Grund-zuge der Physiologischen Psychologie--in which amid an enormous ma.s.s of verbiage occasional gleams of useful suggestion are to be found.

As a kind of rude general philosophy we may say that there are only two main factors in life, namely, Love and Ignorance. And of these we may also say that the two are not in the same plane: one is positive and substantial, the other is negative and merely illusory. It may be thought at first that Fear and Hatred and Cruelty, and the like, are very positive things, but in the end we see that they are due merely to ABSENCE of perception, to dulness of understanding. Or we may put the statement in a rather less crude form, and say that there are only two factors in life: (1) the sense of Unity with others (and with Nature)--which covers Love, Faith, Courage, Truth, and so forth, and (2) Non-perception of the same--which covers Enmity, Fear, Hatred, Self-pity, Cruelty, Jealousy, Meanness and an endless similar list.

The present world which we see around us, with its idiotic wars, its senseless jealousies of nations and cla.s.ses, its fears and greeds and vanities and its futile endeavors--as of people struggling in a swamp--to find one's own salvation by treading others underfoot, is a negative phenomenon. Ignorance, non-perception, are at the root of it.

But it is the blessed virtue of Ignorance and of non-perception that they inevitably-if only slowly and painfully--DESTROY THEMSELVES. All experience serves to dissipate them. The world, as it is, carries' the doom of its own transformation in its bosom; and in proportion as that which is negative disappears the positive element must establish itself more and more.

So we come back to that with which we began, (1) to Fear bred by Ignorance. From that source has sprung the long catalogue of follies, cruelties and sufferings which mark the records of the human race since the dawn of history; and to the overcoming of this Fear we perforce must look for our future deliverance, and for the discovery, even in the midst of this world, of our true Home. The time is coming when the positive constructive element must dominate. It is inevitable that Man must ever build a state of society around him after the pattern and image of his own interior state. The whole futile and idiotic structure of commerce and industry in which we are now imprisoned springs from that falsehood of individualistic self-seeking which marks the second stage of human evolution. That stage is already tottering to its fall, destroyed by the very flood of egotistic pa.s.sions and interests, of vanities, greeds, and cruelties, all warring with each other, which are the sure outcome and culmination of its operation. With the restoration of the sentiment of the Common Life, and the gradual growth of a mental att.i.tude corresponding, there will emerge from the flood something like a solid earth--something on which it will be possible to build with good hope for the future. Schemes of reconstruction are well enough in their way, but if there is no ground of REAL HUMAN SOLIDARITY beneath, of what avail are they?

(1) See Introduction, Ch. I.

An industrial system which is no real industrial order, but only (on the part of the employers) a devil's device for securing private profit under the guise of public utility, and (on the part of the employed) a dismal and poor-spirited renunciation--for the sake of a bare living--of all real interest in life and work: such a 'system' must infallibly pa.s.s away. It cannot in the nature of things be permanent. The first condition of social happiness and prosperity must be the sense of the Common Life. This sense, which instinctively underlay the whole Tribal order of the far past--which first came to consciousness in the wors.h.i.+p of a thousand pagan divinities, and in the rituals of countless sacrifices, initiations, redemptions, love-feasts and communions, which inspired the dreams of the Golden Age, and flashed out for a time in the Communism of the early Christians and in their adorations of the risen Savior--must in the end be the creative condition of a new order: it must provide the material of which the Golden City waits to be built.

The long travail of the World-religion will not have been in vain, which a.s.sures this consummation. What the signs and conditions of any general advance into this new order of life and consciousness will be, we know not. It may be that as to individuals the revelation of a new vision often comes quite suddenly, and GENERALLY perhaps after a period of great suffering, so to society at large a similar revelation will arrive--like "the lightning which cometh out of the East and s.h.i.+neth even unto the West"--with unexpected swiftness. On the other hand it would perhaps be wise not to count too much on any such sudden transformation. When we look abroad (and at home) in this year of grace and hoped-for peace, 1919, and see the spirits of rancour and revenge, the fears, the selfish blindness and the ignorance, which still hold in their paralyzing grasp huge cla.s.ses and coteries in every country in the world, we see that the second stage of human development is by no means yet at its full term, and that, as in some vast chrysalis, for the liberation of the creature within still more and more terrible struggles MAY be necessary. We can only pray that such may not be the case.

Anyhow, if we have followed the argument of this book we can hardly doubt that the destruction (which is going on everywhere) of the outer form of the present society marks the first stage of man's final liberation; and that, sooner or later, and in its own good time, that further 'divine event' will surely be realized.

Nor need we fear that Humanity, when it has once entered into the great Deliverance, will be again overpowered by evil. From Knowledge back to Ignorance there is no complete return. The nations that have come to enlightenment need entertain no dread of those others (however hostile they appear) who are still plunging darkly in the troubled waters of self-greed. The dastardly Fears which inspire all brutishness and cruelty of warfare--whether of White against White or it may be of White against Yellow or Black--may be dismissed for good and all by that blest race which once shall have gained the sh.o.r.e--since from the very nature of the case those who are on dry land can fear nothing and need fear nothing from the unfortunates who are yet tossing in the welter and turmoil of the waves.

Dr. Frazer, in the conclusion of his great work The Golden Bough, (1) bids farewell to his readers with the following words: "The laws of Nature are merely hypotheses devised to explain that ever-s.h.i.+fting phantasmagoria of thought which we dignify with the high-sounding names of the World and the Universe. In the last a.n.a.lysis magic, religion and science are nothing but theories (of thought); and as Science has supplanted its predecessors so it may hereafter itself be superseded by some more perfect hypothesis, perhaps by some perfectly different way of looking at phenomena--of registering the shadows on the screen--of which we in this generation can form no idea." I imagine Dr. Frazer is right in thinking that "a way of looking at phenomena" different from the way of Science, may some day prevail. But I think this change will come, not so much by the growth of Science itself or the extension of its 'hypotheses,' as by a growth and expansion of the human HEART and a change in its psychology and powers of perception. Perhaps some of the preceding chapters will help to show how much the outlook of humanity on the world has been guided through the centuries by the slow evolution of its inner consciousness. Gradually, out of an infinite ma.s.s of folly and delusion, the human soul has in this way disentangled itself, and will in the future disentangle itself, to emerge at length in the light of true FREEDOM. All the taboos, the insane terrors, the fatuous forbiddals of this and that (with their consequent heart-searchings and distress) may perhaps have been in their way necessary, in order to rivet and define the meaning and the understanding of that word. To-day these taboos and terrors still linger, many of them, in the form of conventions of morality, uneasy strivings of conscience, doubts and desperations of religion; but ultimately Man will emerge from all these things, FREE--familiar, that is, with them all, making use of all, allowing generously for the values of all, but hampered and bound by NONE. He will realize the inner meaning of the creeds and rituals of the ancient religions, and will hail with joy the fulfilment of their far prophecy down the ages--finding after all the long-expected Saviour of the world within his own breast, and Paradise in the disclosure there of the everlasting peace of the soul.

(1) See "Balder," vol. ii, pp. 306, 307. ("Farewell to Nemi.")

APPENDIX

THE TEACHING OF THE UPANISHADS

BEING THE SUBSTANCE OF TWO LECTURES TO POPULAR AUDIENCES

I. REST

II. THE NATURE OF THE SELF

I. REST

To some, in the present whirlpool of life and affairs it may seem almost an absurdity to talk about Rest. For long enough now rest has seemed a thing far off and unattainable. With the posts knocking at our doors ten or twelve times a day, with telegrams arriving every hour, and the telephone bell constantly ringing; with motors rus.h.i.+ng wildly about the streets, and aeroplanes whizzing overhead, with work speeded up in every direction, and the drive in the workshops becoming more intolerable every day; with the pace of the walkers and the pace of the talkers from hour to hour insanely increasing--what room, it may well be asked, is there for Rest? And now the issues of war, redoubling the urgency of all questions, are on us.