CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 BL 1445.B9F45 1917 
 
 The inward light / 
 
 3 1924 022 929 925 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022929925 
 
THE INWARD LIGHT 
 
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON - BOMBAY • CALCUTTA ■ MADRAS 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK - BOSTON • CHICAGO 
 DALLAS - SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
THE 
 
 INWARD LIGHT 
 
 BY 
 
 H. FIELDING HALL 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE,' ETC. 
 
 ' What is Self? ' 
 
 ' It is the Man-Soul made of Understanding between the Breaths ; 
 the Inward Light within the Heart. He becometh an Understanding 
 Dream and fareth beyond this World. ' 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1917 
 
 I 
 
COPYRIGHT 
 
 First Edition, &vo, January 1908. 
 
 Reprinted March 1908, May 1908. 
 
 Reprinted^ Extra Crown Svo, 1912, 1917. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The words which form the title of this book, 
 the quotation on the title-page, and the fuller 
 quotation in Chapter XXI. are to be found in 
 Some Sayings from the Upanishads, translated 
 by Dr. L. D. Barnett. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 ARGUMENT . 
 
 1. THE SECRET OF THE EAST 
 
 2. THE GOLDEN HOURS . 
 
 3. THE TRUTH AND THE IMAGE 
 
 4. THE INCREASING PURPOSE . 
 
 5. EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL . 
 
 6. THE WIND . 
 
 7. ROOTED IN EARTH . 
 
 8. RAYS OF THE INFINITE LIGHT 
 
 9. A WINDOW ON ETERNITY . 
 
 10. ONE TIME, ONE TRUTH 
 
 11. LIFE THAT GROWS EVER WIDER 
 
 12. DAVID 
 
 13. FATE AND FREEWILL 
 
 14. THERE IS NO NIGHT 
 
 15. 'DOKA, ANEITSA, ANATTA ' . 
 
 16. 'THE WAY' 
 
 vii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ix 
 I 
 
 13 
 
 22 
 
 31 
 
 41 
 51 
 60 
 
 71 
 
 79 
 S 
 
 89 
 ioo 
 no 
 
 119 
 130 
 
 137 
 148 
 
Vlll 
 
 THE INWARD LIGHT 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 17. THAT GREAT GIFT OF CHARITY 
 
 18. MAN'S FAITH AND WOMAN'S 
 
 19. THE PERFECT FELLOWSHIP 
 
 20. HELL AND HEAVEN 
 
 21. THE UNDERSTANDING DREAM 
 
 22. ALL TRUTH IS ONE 
 L'ENVOI 
 
 PAGE 
 157 
 
 168 
 179 
 I89 
 198 
 211 
 221 
 
ARGUMENT 
 
 The argument of this book is : — 
 
 That religion is not a matter of revelation nor vision, but is 
 the sum of that knowledge of the world which is given 
 us by the use of all our faculties, including insight ; 
 
 That its beginning is the recognition that life is not a product 
 nor property of matter, but that the whole world, includ- 
 ing man, is the product of a Triune Power which builds 
 up matter and which manifests itself therein as electricity 
 manifests its light within a lamp ; 
 
 That religion grows with man's growth in consciousness and 
 is built up from below ; 
 
 That the steps are (i) the recognition of the oneness of the 
 elemental forces with part of man's nature; (2) the 
 oneness of individuals in the family ; (3) the oneness of 
 families in the community; (4) of communities in 
 nations ; (5) of nations in humanity ; 
 
 That each broadening of consciousness is accompanied by 
 a new morality and a new immortality, not to replace 
 but in addition to the old ; 
 
 That the process is infinite ; 
 
 That every religion is the expression of one or more of those 
 forms of wider consciousness to which we have attained 
 
 so far; 
 
 ix 
 
x THE INWARD LIGHT 
 
 That there is a definite object to which this evolution tends, 
 an ever completer Knowledge of Right, and the Will and 
 Power to do it. 
 
 This book is concerned mainly with the evolution 
 of religion in the East, but the truths of religion and 
 their evolution are the same everywhere, only the 
 names and forms of expression differ. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE SECRET OF THE EAST 
 
 WHAT is that great and vital principle that underlies 
 all Eastern faiths ? What is that truth that finds so 
 varied and so different an expression in Hinduism, 
 Shintoism, Buddhism, and many another religion, in 
 the philosophies of Laotze and Confucius ? What is 
 the understanding of the world that is acceptable alike 
 to prince and peasant, to philosopher and labourer, to 
 soldier and recluse ; that is the basis of all truth ? The 
 West has sought it always. It has recognised that 
 from the East came light, that in the East there rose 
 a fountain of the spirit that dried up never. The West 
 has sought, but has not found. 
 
 It has never looked deep enough. It has mistaken 
 things, taking the non-essential for the essential, the 
 form for that which it encloses, the temporary for the 
 eternal. It has borrowed and then has found that 
 what it took away was but a dead thing, and that the 
 life was left behind. 
 
 The East has ever been and is religious, not in part 
 
 of its life but in the whole of it. It has held that 
 
 religion is not of one day but of all time, not of time 
 
 only but of eternity, not of eternity only but of every 
 
 IE B 
 
2 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 moment. To its mind religion embraces everything, 
 not man's soul only but his body, all of him ; and not 
 man alone but the whole universe ; not some virtue 
 but all virtues, all that is good and all that is evil. 
 It is not therefore a theory, a teaching, a method, nor 
 an ideal, a dogma, a thought ; for these, however great, 
 however true, must always be narrow, cannot hold but 
 a little part of truth. They are finite, whereas religion 
 is infinite. It is none of these. Religion is a way of 
 looking at life and at the universe, it is a way to see 
 and understand. 
 
 But to the West it is not so, and when it has gone 
 to the East and asked for truth, it meant by truth a 
 moral, or a virtue, or an ideal, or a dogma. It has 
 sought the clothes in which truth shows itself and not 
 the truth. Therefore, despite all the books written of 
 Eastern forms of faith, none have been understood. 
 The writers have explained nothing because they saw 
 nothing, felt nothing, knew nothing. More especially 
 is this true of Buddhism, that latest expression of an 
 all-world view. 
 
 When I have read the Western books on Buddhism, 
 when I have heard Western people talk about it and 
 explain this faith, it has always seemed as if they were 
 as travellers who describe a landscape dimly seen 
 through fog and mist. To these wayfarers nothing 
 is clear, there are no outlines. The mist wreaths open 
 now and then and show long vistas — leading some- 
 times nowhere, sometimes ending in a cliff or chasm. 
 At times they see the bases of .the hills that have 
 no summits, they are mist -hidden ; or they catch 
 momentary glimpses of far mountain peaks that hang 
 all unsubstantial in the heavens. The mists move to 
 and fro full of suggestions of unseen, undreamt of 
 
i THE SECRET OF THE EAST 3 
 
 things, of ghosts and spirits wandering homeless in 
 
 the void. Nothing is fixed, or real, there is no 
 
 sunshine ; all is unhappy, sad, and formless. You 
 
 are afraid of it, you would not care to go forward 
 
 and affront what it may hold. For there is no clear 
 
 light to show what is before, nothing but lightning 
 
 gleams and meteors shot across the clouds, and a cold 
 
 phosphorescence in the atmosphere that comes and 
 
 goes. No one could see by that. It is a phantom 
 
 land, a place of visions, like to the Western faiths. 
 
 But to the Eastern it is otherwise. To him life seen 
 
 through his religion is a landscape under clearest 
 
 sunshine, gay and happy. His seas are all alive 
 
 with waves and sparkle, and the purple hills stand 
 
 up beneath a clear blue sky. Where there are rifts, 
 
 morasses, dangers for the traveller in this land, the 
 
 light displays them. He can see and stop in time 
 
 and find another way. He sees not very far ahead, 
 
 the horizons bar him as they must every mortal eye. 
 
 He does not seem to see so far as those who look 
 
 through mists and shadows that give delusion of great 
 
 distance, yet he sees farther, and what he sees is clear. 
 
 He does not take a shifting cloud for solid certainty, 
 
 or rainbow shadows in the heavens for gates of 
 
 paradise. He knows his view has bounds. This 
 
 does not trouble him. He knows he cannot see the 
 
 far sides of the hills, the bases of the world, infinity 
 
 of space. He knows his brain and eye are limited. 
 
 But he sees far enough for daily use. He sees the 
 
 path before him, the turns and angles, the diversions 
 
 of the ways. He knows whither he would go. The 
 
 horizon is not walled with shadow, there are no wraiths 
 
 nor ghosts that live there, no fear that has its kingdom 
 
 there beyond. 
 1 
 
4 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 And he is sure that the line that bounds his sight 
 is not the limit of the world, of light and life. Beyond 
 it there are other countries not less fair, where the sun 
 is not less bright He is not afraid to journey on, and 
 he is sure that he will be always able to see enough to 
 guide his steps. Distance will stretch to an infinity, 
 there is a future soft with pearly lustre in a world 
 beyond his ken. 
 
 That is the way he sees it. 
 
 For Buddhism is a very simple faith. It is not 
 made of dreams nor revelations, nor founded upon the 
 supernatural. It is the science of the evolution of the 
 soul within the body. It is what men have seen and 
 feel and know. It has ideals, beautiful ideals. They 
 are not sunset clouds hung far in space remote from 
 us : their base is on the earth, the spires ascend from 
 the strong and sure foundations of the things that are. 
 It has a theory of this world that agrees with all that 
 science has discovered. It has a promise of Immortality, 
 the only beautiful and reasonable Immortality the world 
 has known. It is a study of man, not as he impossibly 
 ' ought ' to be but as he is, and of what he may be 
 judged from what he has been. It recognises the 
 soul because it sees it, and it knows it comes from 
 some great Power because it feels that this is so. 
 There is no cast-iron dogma. Whatever statements 
 or deductions it makes are liable to correction if 
 wrong. Never does it consider it has found the 
 absolute. Its thoughts and its ideas are but a step. 
 It seeks always new truths to add, new steps to climb 
 towards an infinite. 
 
 The reasons of the errors of Western writers explain- 
 ing Buddhism arise, I think, mainly from two causes. 
 The first is this : it is assumed that the only part of 
 
i THE SECRET OF THE EAST 5 
 
 Buddhism which they know — the written teachings of 
 Buddha and his followers — forms a system offered as 
 being complete in itself; that it embraces all truth, 
 all that a man need know and follow. It rests on 
 nothing, rose from nothing, has no base, but drifts 
 indefinite in space. They begin with the life of 
 Buddha, they take his message and they end with 
 the additions made by the disciples. Nothing is said 
 of what the world was when Buddha was born into it, 
 of the truths that then were widely known and followed. 
 It is assumed Buddha ignored them. He only found 
 them insufficient. It is assumed he made new dis- 
 coveries of new truths, but he only pushed the old 
 a further step. What he taught was the complement 
 of all that went before. 
 
 The teachings of the Buddha are no complete 
 scheme of conduct, of faith, of immortality. They 
 rest on Hinduism — not the corrupt Hinduism of to-day 
 with its caste and ceremonies, but the Hinduism of 
 twenty-five centuries ago. For Buddha did not come 
 to destroy but to build, not to deny but to affirm. 
 The world he lived in was one that in all the earlier 
 virtues was as advanced as any is to-day. It was 
 brave, and free, and learned. It was a happy world, 
 of family love, of patriotism and honesty. Yet it was 
 a world that made its only happiness in the current 
 hour, that had a righteousness only of this world ; 
 which knew of nothing beyond. It drifted towards 
 the grave and passed, fearful, into the unknown. 
 
 With the happiness of the day, with the righteous- 
 ness that was necessary and true for this world the 
 Buddha had no quarrel. He saw it and experienced 
 it, and he knew that it was good and true. 
 
 But he knew, too, that it soon passed Life is but 
 
6 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 short, its pleasures are but evanescent, we are drifted 
 down the great river to the sea of death, and in that 
 sea the righteousness of this world saveth not. That 
 is what he said. And his message was of another life, 
 of another righteousness, another happiness beyond the 
 grave. He did not come tb denounce this world or to 
 rob it of happiness, but to add another world, to add a 
 higher, more enduring happiness to that which passes 
 so quickly from us. He came not to displace one 
 truth with another, but to perfect truth with truth, joy 
 with joy ; to round our fleeting time with an eternity. 
 And therefore Buddhism is nothing by itself. It is 
 not, it never pretended to be a complete truth, to be 
 a temple in itself. It was but another story added to 
 that great building whose feet are in the earth, whose 
 summit rises up towards heaven. 
 
 Therefore to understand the theory and practice of 
 the Buddha it is necessary to know on what they stood 
 and stand. If you would understand the pinnacle you 
 must know also of the base. You cannot have one 
 without the other. The higher the spire rises towards 
 heaven the broader and deeper must be its base upon 
 this earth. That is what makes it firm and strong, 
 what makes it real. They are only unrealities and 
 dreams that float unsupported. 
 
 If to the West Buddhism as it has been explained 
 has seemed entirely vague and unsubstantial, theory 
 and mystification, this is one reason, because its base 
 was never perceived and understood. 
 
 When I wrote The Soul of a People I included in 
 that ' soul ' not only the Buddhism of the people but 
 their other beliefs as well. I was sure then that these 
 were as essential as the Buddhist teachings ; that they 
 were even essential to the Buddhist teaching, which 
 
i THE SECRET OF THE EAST 7 
 
 could not stand without them. Yet at that time I did 
 not clearly see that they were one whole. I did not 
 understand how they completed one the other ; some- 
 times these even seemed in contradiction. I thought 
 that the creed said one thing and the people believed 
 another. But I know now that this is never so. All 
 the beliefs of a people — any people — are a whole. 
 They are not a patchwork, not a medley taken here 
 and there. There is in every man and every people, 
 allowed to develop naturally, an instinctive conscious- 
 ness of Truth, and everything in which they really 
 believe is an expression of it. Their traditions, their 
 legends, their moralities, their faith and creeds, are all 
 but ways of setting forth this truth, this view of life. 
 Whatever they believe they do so because it rings to 
 them true. It has truth therein, hidden in imagery and 
 phrase but still felt by them. Therefore they believe. 
 
 But what this truth which underlay all their beliefs 
 might be I did not know, I could not guess. I was 
 unable to get behind the words, because the words 
 seemed clear and definite. Yet words are but a 
 vehicle to express something that is inexpressible, they 
 are the body in which the truth is able to manifest 
 itself. The words are never the truth, any more than 
 the body is the life of man. You may dissect the 
 creed, the legend, tradition, custom, formula as much 
 as you like, and you will understand no more of the 
 truth it is meant to express than by dissecting a dead 
 body will you find the life. The essential thing to 
 know about any belief is not the form that belief is 
 expressed in, not the words that actually are said ; 
 you want to know what the teller wanted to say, what 
 the hearer heard. 
 
 Words are but images as stone or wood are. The 
 
8 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 savage roughly hews a god of stone to express a fea"r, 
 a hope, a force, an emotion. To him and to those like 
 him the image does express, does incarnate it. When 
 he sees it he feels that fear or hope ; the image is 
 alive. To the stranger it expresses nothing, it is 
 dead. He may analyse the material and the workman- 
 ship for ever and he will find nothing. It is exactly 
 the same with any form of words in which a belief is 
 contained. To the believer it is alive, to the non- 
 believer dead. Because, like beauty, which is the 
 beholder's echo to the beauty that is without; the spirit 
 of the image, of the legend, of the creed is not really 
 in the thing itself but in him who sees or hears and 
 feels. Therefore to understand what is meant you 
 must attune yourself to feel as do those who.believe in 
 these things. When you have done that, all else is 
 easy. You understand, you feel, and doing this you 
 can form for yourself other images, other phrases, other 
 explanations more in accord with your own mode of 
 expression whereby to show these beliefs to yourself 
 and those who think as you do. 
 
 That is my first point, that Buddhism cannot be 
 taken as a part but as a whole. We must never 
 divorce it from its base? And although the Burmese 
 were not Hindus before they became Buddhists, they 
 had in their beliefs and traditions all the essentials of 
 early Hinduism, and these survive to-day. Did they dis- 
 appear, Buddhism would topple into ruin. You cannot 
 have a pinnacle without a base. That is the point 
 essential for trying to realise what Buddhism really is. 
 
 But again — this faith of daily life must rest on 
 something. There must be some conception of this 
 world, of man, of his relation to the universe, on which 
 this earlier faith must rest. And what is that ? It 
 
i THE SECRET OF THE EAST 9 
 
 is usually assumed it is what ours is. What do we 
 think of the earth and all the world without us ? 
 That it is not connected with us in any way. We 
 stand apart, a separate creation. That is our theology, 
 the theory of our souls, though our science tells us 
 differently, as far as our bodies are concerned. What 
 do we think of birth ? That our soul was then made 
 anew from nothing. What of life ? That between the 
 cradle and the grave our destiny for all eternity is 
 decided. What of death ? That our soul then goes to 
 judgment, or to await judgment Our personality 
 remains unchanged for ever, and the endless cycles 
 of eternity are spent either in hell or heaven. 
 
 These are our fundamental thoughts, they are our 
 axioms now. Perhaps they were not always so, and 
 we have only arrived at them by clinging to the letter 
 which kills, because we have not the spirit which lives. 
 But anyhow these are our beliefs, and we think that 
 all the world must hold them, not perhaps exactly as 
 we do, details may vary, but certainly in essentials. 
 In fact it never occurs to us that there can be any 
 other conception, so we use these axioms to work out 
 and explain Eastern beliefs. And what do we make 
 thereby ? To take an illustration : the East believes 
 in the transmigration of the soul. We think this 
 means that the unchanged, unchangeable entity of 
 the soul of man is incarnated now in a beast, now 
 in one man, now in another, as a lighted candle might 
 glow moved through a series of lamps. We cannot 
 understand such an idea, for it seems to us absurd. 
 Indeed it is so, but the absurdity is not in what the 
 East believes, but the way the West understands it. 
 Transmigration means a very different thing from this, 
 because the soul is not to them what it is to us. 
 
io THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 Then take Nirvana. 
 
 This is the Buddhist heaven, and we explain it that 
 after centuries of effort in this world, in many different 
 incarnations the weary soul acquiring sufficient righteous- 
 ness is absorbed into the infinite. If loses its identity. 
 ' The dewdrop falls into the shining sea.' 
 
 It seems to us only another way of expressing 
 annihilation and death. It has no attraction but fills 
 us rather with fear and distrust. Because we misunder- 
 stand its meaning ; we read it in terms of our own 
 premises. 
 
 But when you have abandoned these ideas, when 
 you have learnt what to Eastern eyes the soul of man 
 is now, and may be, you are then enabled to understand 
 the strength and beauty of the conception, surely the 
 most wonderful the world has known. Then alone 
 can you understand them when they say that this 
 Nirvana of which they speak is not annihilation, it 
 is not death. 
 
 It is the opposite of all these things. It is the 
 realisation of self in a greater, grander self than ever 
 we have dreamed of ; it means a fuller, more glorious life 
 than this world gives us now. That is what Nirvana 
 means to those who understand it rightly. 
 
 It is to explain and illustrate really what Buddhism 
 is that I have written this book. It may be objected 
 that in doing so I go to some extent over the same 
 ground as in my former book, but it is not so. In my 
 former book I wrote : ' My object is not to explain 
 what the Buddha taught but what the- people believe.' 
 My object now is different. I want to explain as 
 clearly as may be that conception of the world, man's 
 life, the past, the present and the future, which finds its 
 latest, not its last, expression in Buddhism. I use the 
 
i THE SECRET OF THE EAST n 
 
 Burmese as my illustrations because they alone of 
 modern people retain the spirit of Buddhism as it 
 was understood. They are a simple people, and very 
 often they do not see very clearly all that their faith 
 means, and even when they understand they are not 
 strong enough to follow. They are my illustrations as 
 much by their failures as successes ; for when they 
 have succeeded it is because they have understood and 
 been able to follow their faith, and when they have failed 
 it is because they could do neither. If it be objected 
 that we of the West are far wiser, stronger, cleverer in 
 a thousand ways than this little people in their eastern 
 valley and can have nothing to learn from them, I 
 make this answer : It is true we are stronger, far, we 
 are more civilised, far, we have many qualities, many 
 virtues they have not. We have very much to teach 
 them. We have in fact cultivated a side of Buddhism 
 they have neglected. 
 
 But, after all, life contains more things than these, 
 great as they are — than strength, organisation, civilisa- 
 tion, energy, and learning. There is happiness. Is 
 that worth nothing ? There is a serenity of courage in 
 all the troubles of life. Is not that something ? There 
 is a conception of the world which rings always true. 
 And at the end, to be able to see in Death, not fear, 
 not horror, not the end of things, to find him not the 
 King of Terrors but the Great Romance, is that for 
 nothing ? 
 
 To have a religion that makes for happiness and 
 hope, never for fear, that is based on truth we see, 
 that has its future high above, is it not worth con- 
 sidering how it may be achieved ? We who are 
 always saying that we are decadent, that life is not 
 worth living, that faith is dead ? 
 
12 THE INWARD LIGHT ch.i 
 
 One word as to the form of this book. 
 
 Every one who writes or speaks does so in that 
 way in which he thinks he can best express what he 
 has to say. 
 
 This is my way. 
 
 Whether the man here spoken of really existed or 
 not, whether each scene occurred exactly as described 
 or not, what does it matter ? This is not the history 
 of a man, but of a discovery : it is the explanation of 
 a vision of the world from its foundation upwards. But 
 the history of the way one man saw, or might see it is 
 the simplest way to make it plain to others. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE GOLDEN HOURS 
 
 It was deep noon. Right overhead the sun hung in 
 a sky of blue so pure, so strong as almost to seem 
 dark," and his golden light flooded the world. It fell 
 in a tide of life upon the fields filling them with glory, 
 it touched with fire the tops of the pagodas, — it made 
 a magnificence even on the bare hillsides. Beneath 
 the trees the shadows were as clear as crystal water, 
 as full of lustre and of life. 
 
 There was a silence and a peace. The ploughmen 
 who had worked from early dawn now slept beneath 
 the palms, the cattle all were hidden, nothing moved. 
 Even the crickets in the trees were still. 
 
 A man came riding down a lane that led across the 
 uplands to the river. His European dress showed like 
 a blot upon the landscape. The sun beat on him as 
 on an enemy. He seemed a swimmer fighting against 
 a flood that knew him not, this son of the misty North. 
 The pulses throbbed in his ear-drums and his eyes were 
 clouded. 
 
 Of a sudden the pony gave a start, a swerve, for he 
 had nearly trodden on a snake, and the rider lost his 
 balance. The pony was frightened, and a moment 
 later the man had fallen and was alone. 
 
 13 
 
14 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 The sun beat on him pitilessly, he must find shelter 
 from its cruelty. So he crawled on, dragging a broken 
 leg, and came at length to the shadow of a palm grove 
 near at hand. There was a well there, fresh with the 
 coolness of the water spilt about it and the greenness 
 of moss and fern. With a last effort he reached the 
 curb, and then his senses failed. The world became 
 dark and void. A squirrel came and looked at him 
 and fled, and a chameleon hid behind a tree. 
 
 When he again regained his consciousness he found 
 himself within a little wooden chamber in a monastery. 
 His leg was set and bandaged with rude efficient 
 village surgery. Upon his head were leaves damp 
 with fresh water. The night had fallen and' a breeze 
 sweet with the scent of flowers blew in from opened 
 jalousies. He felt a peace come on him and he fell 
 asleep. 
 
 But in the village there was trouble. The villagers 
 were gathered under the big tree beside the gate and 
 grumbled. They did not want a stranger in their 
 village, a foreigner, one of those strong and restless 
 men who went about and pushed every one and every- 
 thing aside. They were a quiet people, and they loved 
 their distance from the strife and noise of money- 
 making. They were a timid people, and they feared 
 intruders. Why should this white man stay within 
 their monastery, let him go to his own kind. It was 
 not so very far down to the river station where the 
 steamer came each day. They would take him there 
 by cart, now in the dark and coolness of the night ; 
 they would put him on board a steamer, and be rid 
 of him. So they determined. They yoked the oxen 
 and they went up to the monastery. The monks 
 were at their prayers, the children chanted, the night 
 
ii THE GOLDEN HOURS 15 
 
 was full of prayer sung by their earnest voices. The 
 villagers sat and waited. 
 
 When the prayer was finished the old monk came 
 forth and standing on the steps between the carved 
 balustrades under the stars he asked them what they 
 wanted. They told him, ' Bring out the foreigner. 
 He cannot stay. We will send him to his own 
 people.' 
 
 The monk shook his head. ' He cannot go. He 
 is too ill.' 
 
 ' It is not far,' they urged ; ' three hours in the cart 
 will take us to the river ; there we will put him in a 
 steamer and send him to the city where the white 
 government is. We will give him to his own people.' 
 
 ' He will die if he be moved. He has fever.' 
 
 ' He will die if he stay. If die he must, let it be 
 amongst his own, and our hands will be clean.' 
 
 The monk refused. 
 
 ' Consider,' said the headman, ' how can he stay ? 
 Who is he ? no one knows him here. He has dropped 
 upon us as it were from the clouds. It is not good 
 to have anything to do with these strange foreigners 
 if you can help it. He had no one with him, no 
 horse, nothing. He is some wanderer it were as well 
 to be suspicious of. A deserting soldier, a sailor who 
 has run away, as we had before. If he stay, he must 
 be fed, must be looked after. If he die, he must be 
 buried. It is not our business to do either except for 
 our own folk. Let us take him at once now when 
 the night is cool, that the way may be easier.' 
 
 But the monk would not. 
 
 ' Charity,' he answered ; ' did harm ever come to 
 any one from charity? Let him be. When he is 
 better we will see. And for the rest, what will he 
 
1 6 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 want? — a little rice, a little fruit, a little water. Have 
 you not charity to that amount ? ' 
 
 They murmured they were afraid. A wolf within a 
 sheepfold, that is what they thought him, and wolves 
 are wolves even if sick. They were not unkind, they 
 did not lack a charity and open -handedness. But 
 until now they had lived in peace in their little village 
 far from the roads of change and bustle. They feared 
 the introduction of a ferment. ' No, no,' they said ; but 
 there was no conviction in their voices. 
 
 And the monk knew that he had won. ' Now go,' 
 he said, ' and be sure that charity has always its reward. 
 To give to your own where is the virtue ? Charity is 
 to the stranger. Be glad that there has been sent you 
 a chance to earn merit that will be eternal. He must 
 stay here. But send word to the city that they 
 may know.' 
 
 He stood there upon the steps looking down at 
 them and his confidence removed their fears. With 
 the ready acquiescence of young children in what they 
 feel is right, they turned away cheerfully. Going down 
 the village road back to their home's they laughed and 
 sang. ' Yes, the monk is right,' they said, and their 
 hearts were lightened. 
 
 And the old monk went slowly to the chamber 
 where the man lay. In the darkness he could hardly 
 be made out, only his face made a slight pallor in the 
 gloom. The monk listened and stooped down and 
 touched him. ' Yes, he will live,' he said. ' He is not 
 ill, but only very tired. He wants rest, long rest and 
 peace — our peace — and that is all.' So in the shelter 
 of a great compassion the sick man lay and slept. 
 
 They came to see him when they heard the news, 
 Gallio and the doctor. They would have removed 
 
ii THE GOLDEN HOURS 17 
 
 him, had he been willing, carrying him in a litter to 
 the river, but he would not. 
 
 ' No, no,' he murmured, ' I am better here. I love 
 this place. I like to sit and look out at the fields 
 across the river to the hills. I like the air, for it is 
 fresh and pure. I like the monks, they are so silent. 
 I like to hear the children singing in the dawn. I am 
 quite happy.' 
 
 So they did not press him, and the doctor said to 
 Gallio : ' Leave him alone for a time. His broken 
 limb will mend quickly, but it is more than that. His 
 blood is full of fever. He is weak and tired. He has 
 been doing too much, going up and down regardless 
 of sun and rain, working without a pause in this hot 
 climate. He will do well here, better than anywhere, 
 till we can send him home.' 
 
 They went away and left him as he asked them. 
 
 So he stayed there in the monastery. His chamber 
 had windows on three sides that looked out upon 
 the land. From high up where he was upon a water- 
 shed he could see the whole great valley from mountain 
 range to range with the broad river winding through 
 it. By day it glowed and trembled under the sun, at 
 night the moon threw silver dreams upon it. The life 
 was full of quiet and of rest. The only sounds that 
 broke them were the village voices far away, the 
 lowing of the cattle coming home, drowsy sounds that 
 drifted up half heard, and the chanting of the prayers. 
 Three hours after sunset and just before the dawn they 
 sang. The slow Gregorian music was like a song out 
 of the night, full of unknown things of this world and 
 every other. It was a farewell to the day that passed, 
 a welcome to the dawn. The night was deeper and 
 the day more glorious because of it. He lay, and 
 
 C 
 
1 8 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 thoughts came to him out of the silence — new thoughts 
 from a new silence. 
 
 He had been as other men are, he had moved 
 through life and never looked about him. He had 
 never seen a sunrise, the noon and sunset marked but 
 times of day when to do something or cease doing it. 
 The moon he had seen by chance, and had learnt from 
 books as to its changes. On no particular day had he 
 any idea whether it was new or full save from an 
 almanac. He did not know one star from another. 
 The earth was simply a place to be travelled over, 
 where countries and cities are, described in geographies. 
 Fields were to grow crops in, mountains were good 
 maybe to climb or for mountain sheep. The seas 
 were ways for ships and to provide fish. They were 
 all dead mechanical things ruled by unconscious forces 
 which he thought he knew all about. 
 
 The trees and plants, the animals and birds were 
 little better. They were for food, for sport, for clothing. 
 These also mechanical forces ruled, force and chance. 
 His religion told him the world was evil and soulless, 
 his science told him it was a rude, imperfect mechanism. 
 As for himself, he had found it a place to work and 
 play in, that was all. It had no other connection with 
 him. He had a soul, as he supposed ; it had not. And 
 this soul of his was on this earth but for a fleeting 
 moment and went thereafter otherwhere. Of what use 
 to interest oneself in a world that was so dull in itself 
 and so brief an habitation ? It might be pretty some- 
 times in its mechanical way, but really all that he had 
 to do with it was to make use of it. There was no tie 
 between him and it. So it had seemed to him. But 
 now, lying quietly there with leisure to feel instead of 
 always doing, with time to think, Nature began to call 
 
n THE GOLDEN HOURS 19 
 
 to him. He shared her moods. He felt her sadness 
 when the sun was dying in the west and bathed the 
 world in glory ; the serenity of the night was as a peace 
 that held his spirit, and when the dawn silvered all the 
 east, when the earth awoke again and laughed with utter 
 happiness, his heart leapt with the gladness of all things. 
 
 He felt his pulses rise and fall answering to the 
 pulse of all the world. The life about him was his life 
 also, and he was part of it. The spirit called to him ; 
 he answered. 
 
 The birds and beasts no longer seemed automata, to 
 use, to drive, to kill just at his pleasure. From out the 
 oxen's dreamy eyes something looked forth to his. 
 The birds without his windows singing in the trees 
 their love and gladness, had they no souls ? The dogs 
 obedient to the call, who died to save the flock entrusted 
 to them, had they no righteousness ? Had indeed the 
 soul of man no kinship with them ? Were they ' the 
 beasts that perish ' ? 
 
 And of a sudden it came to him that life was 
 beautiful. Not effort only, not work nor play, success, 
 achievement, wealth or fame or honour, but life itself. 
 To live was good. The hours, the golden hours, were 
 not just empty spaces between two clock-beats, to fill 
 with acts. They were themselves a glory. To sit and 
 let the crystal flood of time pass over him was purest 
 pleasure. Not his life only but all life was good. To 
 feel the great and glorious stream of the world's life pass 
 on, to be one with Nature and to hear her sing. For 
 she goes forward to a music. It is not always a battle 
 chant she moves to. In her song there are all things. 
 The shout of triumph and the cry of those who fall are 
 there ; but there are also other notes, the ripple of the 
 river on its stones, the murmur of the trees, the rhythm 
 
2o THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 of the sap that rises in them, the thunder in the hills. 
 It is a song of infinite harmonies. 
 
 Now for the first time he heard it. 
 
 Then he began to think. 
 
 His life had all been occupied by work, with play 
 between. From boyhood up he had always worked, 
 always pressed forward. There had been a fever in 
 his blood, a restlessness that would not leave him. He 
 had gone forward from one thing to another, and 
 everything he gained he threw aside for something 
 more. He was as a man who started forth at dawn to 
 march. He went quickly, surmounting ridge after ridge, 
 ever finding new rises on before him. He had been 
 proud he went so fast and surely, delighting in the 
 difficulties he met only to overcome, in the pleasures by 
 the way. Then at noon he sat him down to rest. He 
 looked back on the way he came, and on all sides, and 
 wondered. He had travelled far, but where was he 
 arrived ? Certainly at no goal. Whither did he go in 
 future? He had no map. He knew not what lay 
 before. And more, he did not know whither he wished 
 to arrive, if there was any place that he would care to 
 get to. What use was there in ever climbing up a 
 ridge to find another and another, and at the end 
 nothing ; to find he had gone round and round and had 
 arrived nowhere, was at last where he started ? ' After 
 all,' he thought, ' though work is good, and play is 
 good, it would be as well to know whither it leads. 
 Does it lead anywhere ? Living is being, and dying is 
 but a part of that. Existence includes the past, the 
 present, and the future. And effort, incessant, intense 
 and unreflective, is pursued only because an anodyne 
 is necessary to prevent the recognition that we know 
 nothing of what we have been, are, and will be. We 
 
ii THE GOLDEN HOURS 21 
 
 dare not lift our eyes from the earth before us lest we 
 should see at once that we are lost and arrive nowhere 
 except at death. 
 
 ' And then ? What then ? ' 
 
 He had heard many explanations — one had been 
 taught to him from his childhood — he had paid little 
 heed to any of them. They had seemed to him unreal, 
 apart from life, not concerned with the affairs of every 
 day. They were indeed inconsistent with the work of 
 life and might safely be neglected. They were sad, and 
 he disliked sadness as a form of weakness to be faced 
 and defeated. The troubles of life brought sadness 
 enough without cultivating it. They were mainly 
 concerned with death while he was concerned with life ; 
 they denounced this world and all it held. They held 
 out to him a code, which, containing much that he 
 admired, was imperfect, and they offered him a reward 
 he cared not for. 
 
 For to him it seemed, little as he had realised of it, 
 that the world was mainly a pleasant, not a dreary 
 place at all, though the devil might have some hand in 
 it here and there. Life should be made the best of, 
 not the worst. His ideals were gaiety, happiness, 
 courage, not tears, sorrow, fear. He recoiled from 
 these. He did not believe a gate of tears would lead 
 anywhere worth going to. 
 
 If there was truth in this world, it must be strong, 
 not weak, it must be like wine and make a man glad 
 and firm. It must support and not enfeeble. And if 
 in reality this that he had been taught was the only 
 truth there was, then why have truth at all ? Falsehood 
 could do no more than make men miserable and lead 
 them through unrestful lives to a place that they had no 
 desire to reach. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE TRUTH AND THE IMAGE 
 
 Therefore when again a month later Gallio returned 
 and urged him to come back, he shook his head. 
 ' Come back ? ' he said ; ' why should I come back ? I 
 am quite happy here.' 
 
 And Gallio answered : ' It is not " why should 
 you come back," but " why should you stay ? " How 
 can you be happy here ? What is there to do ? ' 
 
 He laughed. ' To do ? There is nothing, nothing I 
 must do, nothing I could do. That is the beauty of it. 
 Therefore I do just what I like, and that is — nothing.' 
 
 ' How do you kill the time ? ' 
 
 ' I do not kill it, I do not want to kill it. The 
 hours are my friends. I love them and they linger 
 with me unafraid. They give me time to see things 
 and to understand.' 
 
 ' What things ? ' asked Gallio. 
 
 He answered, looking through the window to the 
 sun-steeped land that lay before it. ' Everything : the 
 sun, the light, the fields, the rivers and the winds ; the 
 people wfto live in these little villages beneath the 
 trees, who have their thoughts and dreams about the 
 world ; the monks who sit above here and strive 
 through all the hours — and in the end perhaps, myself.' 
 
in THE TRUTH AND THE IMAGE 23 
 
 Gallio laughed. * The sun,' he said ; ' you will not 
 learn much about it here except that it is hot. You 
 have no books on science that I see with you, though 
 I can lend you some. As to the stars, the monks here 
 know little of astronomy and of that little most is 
 wrong. The fields are cultivated well, but in a rough, 
 unscientific manner ; you will learn more from the 
 Agricultural Ledger in my office than from the culti- 
 vator in the fields. As to their thoughts and dreams 
 and their religion, what value have they? Animism 
 thinly overlaid with Buddhist teachings ; that is all.' 
 
 ' Oh,' was the answer, ' I do not mean the things 
 you say. I mean quite other matters. Is there any 
 book that tells you what life is, all life? and is there 
 nothing in a beast or bird or plant but just how best 
 to bring it to material use? And do you think that 
 sticking little labels of " Animist " and " Buddhist " on 
 beliefs and on traditions brings you any nearer knowing 
 what they mean and whence they came ? They are 
 not pots of jam, " raspberry and currant mixed," or 
 " apple flavoured with lemon.' ; Is there anything more 
 shallow than to attribute names to things you cannot 
 understand, and thereupon try and persuade yourself, 
 and others, that you know anything about them ? ' 
 
 ' Do you think that there is anything worth learning 
 in them ? ' 
 
 ' It is the beginning of knowledge, of understanding. 
 Do you suppose that beliefs and superstitions are things 
 that exist separately, that can be classified, and that a 
 people takes a patch here and a patch there and makes 
 itself a many -coloured garment therewith to clothe 
 its spiritual nakedness ? I know that men who do not 
 want to think satisfy themselves with such a theory, 
 but ' 
 
24 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 ' But ? You are about to ask if I am one of them. 
 Well, no. But the fact is this, that though I have 
 learned many of the people's traditions, I never saw 
 anything in them but a childishness natural to an 
 uncivilised people. We had similar ones and have 
 grown out of them. Some are poetic truly, but of 
 what possible significance save as nursery stories? 
 You think differently?' 
 
 The man was silent ; then after a long pause he 
 said : ' Yes, I think differently. I think that the 
 beliefs of a people, any people, are not a patchwork but 
 a whole. I think that they are not ideas merely but 
 the varied expressions of some innate and infinite 
 truth ; of one truth ; that is of one concept of the 
 world. Legends and tales, the spirits of hills and 
 rivers, of the trees and flowers, of the birds and beasts 
 are but expressions, dimly, almost dumbly, tojd of some 
 1 great concept of their nature and their relationships to 
 each other and to man. For man is of this world, he 
 is not apart from it but of it, not his body only, but the 
 life and soul that has built and animates that body. 
 We are in the world and of the world, and that is what 
 the East knows and feels now, and has always done. 
 It is an impossible thing to imagine that you can by 
 considering man alone arrive at any truth worth 
 having. , Life is a great whole. There are not different 
 lives but one life, manifested in different ways but 
 always one. That is what the East has been sure of, 
 what the West has never known. The West has 
 studied man, the East has studied the soul that is the 
 world. The Eastern peoples' conception of man is 
 bound up with their conception of all life. Religion 
 means to them not a little bit of the soul of man, but 
 it embraces all the whole universe as far as they can 
 
in THE TRUTH AND THE IMAGE 25 
 
 see it and the whole of man. It is Catholic as the 
 word is never known in the West. Religion is every- 
 thing to them. Therefore to understand that part of 
 it which is concerned with man you must begin at the 
 beginning, for man is but the end, the present climax.' 
 
 ' You think,' said Gallio musingly, ' that they think 
 otherwise than we do ? and that you can learn what it 
 is they think ? ' 
 
 ' Of the answer to the first question I am sure,' he 
 answered. ' All their conduct, all their legends and 
 traditions show that they have some concept of nature 
 differing from ours. All the East has it. Whether I 
 can learn it is not so certain. I can but try. And I 
 think — I think that I may learn it.' 
 
 ' Suppose you do,' said Gallio. ' What then ? Is 
 it that you think that their concept is true ? ' 
 
 ' It will be surely true because it comes to them 
 from nature. It is given to them. It will be a facet 
 of the truth and it will be a key to many things, it is 
 the secret of the East. Why does the East believe, 
 why has the West never done so ? You know it never 
 has. All history shows the West as unbelievers. 
 There have been Churches who have dragooned the 
 people, who have driven them to prayers, forced them 
 into the faith, killed them for heresy and unbelief. 
 Yet they have never believed. They have but hidden 
 their scepticism, and once the pressure past have broken 
 into unbelief again. The history of all Churches is of 
 perpetual struggle to enforce a creed, never successful. 
 There have been religious men, there have been 
 waves of faith that came, and ebbed and disappeared. 
 At its best never has it received more than a tithe of 
 life or conduct. But in the East all men have their 
 religion, all men believe truly and earnestly. They 
 
26 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 have not to be driven, to be forced to a pretence. 
 Only the Semitic Faith of Islam has persecuted and 
 conquered and converted. The Great East has held 
 its faiths because they were in accordance with the 
 whole of life. No man is ashamed because of his 
 religion, no man scoffs at it secretly. It is a nature 
 with them. Why?' 
 
 ' But tell me, how can you learn their view of life ? 
 Truly the East has been studied enough, Buddhism 
 has been written of and explained till one is weary of 
 it. There is little new in it, and what is new is not 
 intelligible, is vague and dim and misty. What new 
 theory can you discover ? ' 
 
 ' I will begin at the beginning. No one has done 
 that. They have studied but the top. They have 
 done as the West has always done, convinced that 
 religion concerns man's soul alone, not the world about 
 him, not his body even. I will begin at the beginning.' 
 
 ' What is that beginning ? ' 
 
 ' Their beliefs of nature, their legends, those that 
 they believe with heart and soul as they do many.' 
 
 ' Idle allegories of the sunset or the dawn, or old- 
 world tales.' 
 
 ' Not so. They are a way of saying something, 
 a something that is true to them and therefore true 
 for all the world, a side of truth, a glimpse of the 
 great Light. Why do they all believe in transmigra- 
 tion ? What is transmigration ? What do they mean 
 by it ? ' 
 
 ' A foolish fancy.' 
 
 ' To us yes, to them no. To us yes, because we 
 do not understand what they wish to say. To them 
 no, because it expresses something true. We mistake 
 the form for the truth and cannot see below, they are 
 
in THE TRUTH AND THE IMAGE 27 
 
 careless of their creeds and images because every one 
 of them is conscious of the truth that lies beneath. 
 Each Oriental understands the other because each has 
 the key. We have not. So we mistake. We laugh, 
 and when we laugh the folly is ours. We think we 
 laugh at them, but what indeed we jeer at is our own 
 misconceptions. We laugh the laugh of ignorance.' 
 
 ' Why then,' asked Gallio, ' trouble about the East ? 
 Are there none in Europe that may serve your 
 purpose ? ' 
 
 ' There used to be. All peoples emerging from 
 their childhood bring with them in their superstitions 
 expressions of primaeval truths. These are the bases 
 on which all other truths are formed. But in Europe 
 they have all been killed. They are dead, and their 
 casings but survive in books as you may find a fossil 
 in a rock. Yet they are not really dead but only 
 sleep, and would awaken if allowed. For truth never 
 dies completely or changes, though the form in which 
 it is made manifest may and must change. But it has 
 never time now to grow and to develop and to express 
 itself anew. It is stifled in its birth. From their earliest 
 childhood now the people are brought up in and taught 
 the grimmest, saddest materialism. They are never 
 allowed to feel, never allowed to think. They have a 
 science that knows only the body, not the spirit ; they 
 have a faith that tells them that nature is an evil, 
 soulless thing. The truths that are within the hearts 
 of all are never allowed to grow. There is no 
 ignorance so deep as that of the schooled European. 
 I feel it, for I shared it. Now it is leaving me, and I 
 know that the secret beginnings of all truth lie not in 
 the heaven above, not in men's hearts or souls, but in 
 the world about us. All Nature has a message to us if 
 
28 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 we would but listen to her voice. These people listen, 
 they have heard it and they hear it. I will learn it 
 from them ; or I will learn from them how I may 
 hear it too.' 
 
 Then Gallio went away and wondered, for he cared 
 nothing for all these things. Legends, he thought, 
 traditions, belief in fairies, stories of naiads and of 
 wood gods were all imagination, tales from the nursery 
 days of men. What could one find in them any more 
 than one could find in nursery rhymes, in ' Little Jack 
 Horner,' or ' Baa Baa Black Sheep ' ? They were 
 amusements of a people's childhood or, at best, natural 
 phenomena seen vaguely and mistakenly. Such tales 
 as did not take their origin in this way, were inventions 
 of priests to stupefy the vulgar, as indeed were, all 
 religions. He went away and left his friend to what 
 he considered very foolish waste of time. 
 
 But the days that came and went in golden glory, 
 the nights with diamond-studded darkness, brought to 
 him very other counsel. 
 
 ' Imagination ! can men imagine what has never 
 existed ? Is it any explanation to say a thing has 
 been imagined ? What is imagination ? It is that 
 which reflects the image of things that are. No one 
 has ever imagined that which was not. It is a magic 
 mirror held to nature. If the mirror be distorted, the 
 likenesses of things are all awry, they may be misty, 
 dim, and faint. But beautiful or not, imagination only 
 reflects what is. And when the mirror is a true one, 
 then it reflects also that which lies beneath the face of 
 things. To say that any belief is the product of 
 imagination is to say that it is a reflection of something. 
 What does it reflect ? What real thing was before the 
 mental glass that cast this image ? 
 
in THE TRUTH AND THE IMAGE 29 
 
 ' Therefore their meaning is something true and 
 something that exists. 
 
 ' As to the words, the form in which the tales are 
 told, all words which tell of immaterial things are only 
 symbols taken from the concrete. We " understand," 
 that is to say, that mentally " we stand under." All 
 our emotions, thoughts, ideas, all the inner life must 
 be expressed in symbols that are taken from the 
 outer. We cannot express any spiritual idea except 
 by material figures. It' is so with single words, and 
 with the tracery into which the words are wrought. 
 We speak in parables, every one does, must do. We 
 speak in finite terms, for all we know is finite. If we 
 want to speak of what we call the infinite, we have 
 only a negative, " that which is not finite," therefore 
 inexpressible. We know a spiritual truth, a love, a 
 hate, an insight into life, but we have only earthly 
 words to express our knowledge. 
 
 ' All legends and beliefs that people have, that they 
 believe, that they are sure are true, are parables of some 
 spiritual truth. The parables may be clear or less clear. 
 When they were new, when they were spoken they were 
 clear. He who spoke them, they who heard them 
 knew the truth beneath, they felt the life beneath the 
 outer garment. The words awoke in them the music, 
 the thrill, the sense of truth. They heard and under- 
 stood, because they were in harmony, because they 
 held the truth. A speaker is he who plays upon his 
 hearers' heartstrings ; they who hear and understand 
 are they whose heartstrings are in one accord. As 
 violin answers unto violin so does heart to heart. And 
 they who made these legends heard the music of the 
 spheres, and brought it closer to earth and gave it unto 
 men. 
 
30 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. hi 
 
 ' But words and images grow old. They may become 
 but cases where no life lingers, like the empty shells a 
 life once built that now lie derelict and dead. 
 
 'You will never learn of the lifefrom looking at the shell 
 alone. Life learns from life, catching its waves and its 
 emotions. Brain learns from brain, and heart from heart. 
 
 ' Therefore,' he said, ' to sit and study the forms 
 that these beliefs are wrapped in were a foolish thing. 
 Many men have done it and learned nothing, how 
 should they learn of life from death ? 
 
 ' The life and truth of these beliefs lies not in their 
 words, but in that meaning the believer feels in them. 
 It is he who makes the dead forms live with life from 
 out himself. Melody lies not in the notes upon the 
 paper, not in the instrument, not in the player's fingers, 
 but in his heart and in the hearts of those who thrill to 
 hear. It is an echo. If you are deaf no echo comes, 
 aye, though you should read the notes and watch the 
 player's fingers move. I have been deaf and am. Now 
 I will learn to hear the music. I will attune myself so 
 that I may hear that which they hear. Then shall I 
 know what these things mean. And once I have the 
 key, that key, once I can hear, then shall I be able to 
 explain perhaps in other words and other images which 
 may be understood.' 
 
 He waited listening in this silence, letting his heart 
 go out to the glory and beauty of the world. And 
 behold the music came. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 One impulse from a vernal wood 
 May teach you more of man, 
 Of moral evil and of good, 
 Than all the sages can. 
 
 The rains were over ; the warm, wet wind that 
 blew from the seas of the south was stilled, the 
 thunderstorms that had stalked forth from the 
 mountains like great purple giants, full of sound and 
 fury, came no more. The days were still, but at even- 
 ing came a whisper from the north, a wind that told 
 of different things. It was fresh with the breath of 
 mountains that rose into the roof of the world, it was 
 cool from the touch of snows that had lain untainted 
 through the centuries. It crisped the river into ripples 
 of gay laughter, it laid its fingers on the skin sodden 
 with months of heat and stung it into vigour, it chased 
 the languid currents of the blood into a swifter life. 
 For it brought with it the gladness and the eagerness 
 of youth, the beauty of new things new made for those 
 who love them. His strength increased and he began 
 to go abroad. 
 
 When he first went down among the village people 
 they regarded him with fear and with suspicion. 
 What did he want with them, this stranger from so far 
 away? Was he one of their rulers trying to learn 
 
 3« 
 
32 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 things, how to increase the taxes maybe ; or had he 
 some scheme for making money presently out of them ? 
 They feared him, that he might laugh at them or 
 sneer, or, worse than all, lecture and try to improve 
 them. They kept away from him, and in his presence 
 a silence fell upon them. 
 
 But as day after day passed and they found in him 
 only a smile or a word the suspicion passed. He came 
 and went so quietly, he listened to them when they 
 talked to him, he spoke so little that they forgot. 
 And after a while they ceased to take especial notice 
 of him, he had become familiar to them, part of their 
 daily life, and they were friends. 
 
 So evening by evening as the long shadows passed 
 across the land he went down from his monastery 
 dwelling to the village. Sometimes he would sit by 
 the well curb where the women drew their water. He 
 saw them coming down in twos and threes running, 
 lingering, laughing by the way, dipping the water into 
 their earthen jars, casting sidelong looks at the 
 lads who watched from far. They tossed him little 
 greetings and told him the village gossip. He joined 
 the elders by the great tree near the gate and listened 
 to their talk of crops and seasons. And as he grew 
 stronger he went further abroad, going with the reapers 
 in the dark before the dawn to their fields beside the forest 
 edge, passing the hot hours in the shadow of the trees, 
 and coming back with them at nightfall when the 
 home-going cattle filled the lanes. And so the life of 
 the people, of the earth, the woods and the streams, 
 the forest creatures passed into his blood. He grew 
 in harmony with them and understood them. 
 
 It seemed to him sometimes that he had stepped 
 back into the ages when the world was young. Here 
 
iv THE INCREASING PURPOSE 33 
 
 was the world the Greeks had lived in, here was what 
 the poets sang. Glory and loveliness had never passed 
 away but still existed. All the gods yet lived to those 
 who still had ears to hear their voices in the forest 
 sounds, eyes to see them flitting through the darkened 
 woods or bathing in the mountain pools. The people 
 knew them, and they talked of them and told him 
 stories. Were the trees alive? Surely they were. 
 They had their life, they were not dead unlovely 
 things, but living. Every grass and bush and tree 
 had its own life that came straight from the fount 
 of life. There was not a little separate life hid in 
 each plant, but there was a flood of life coming from 
 who knows where, that poured upon the world and 
 passed into its veins. It made the sap move, the 
 blood flow, it was life, and where it was not there was 
 death. 
 
 The life came from that which is unknown, all 
 present, what shall we call it ? God ? It were better 
 without a name this nameless source of life, for the 
 word God is mixed up with ideas of personality and 
 limitation very foreign to their thoughts. Yet it is not 
 a blind force, it comes not undirected, nor by chance, 
 dumbly, without consciousness or knowledge. No ! 
 All forms of life are under the care and the direction 
 of a Consciousness, a Righteousness, a Knowledge, are 
 subject to it, are one with it. It is never a dull, blind 
 stream of energy ruled by a hapless chance, but a life 
 ruled by a Right. 
 
 That was the first thing that he learned, not because 
 the people told him but because he felt that it was so. 
 He felt the presence of the great throbbing life that 
 filled all things, which answered to the life within him- 
 self. Nature grew very near to him. He listened to 
 
 D 
 
34 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 the voices of the dawn. He watched it arise, the 
 immeasurable miracle of day ; he saw the couriers of 
 the sun beat crimson light along the mountain's brow. 
 He saw the king arise in all his majesty and look in 
 strength and glory over all the world. He listened in 
 the woods and heard the branches whisper secrets to 
 each other. The breezes rustled in the palm fronds 
 overhead and talked and laughed and moaned. 
 
 At eve the jungle fowl came out to feed in open 
 places. The cocks, proudest and gayest of brave birds, 
 strutted and stamped and called defiance, — the meek 
 ' brown hens ran to and fro. The partridges laughed 
 out ha-ha, ha-ha, the brown quails crept and whistled 
 in the grass. The day died in scarlet agony, and across 
 the throbbing skies the wild geese passed in long 
 processions. 
 
 Then the night came in majesty with robes of 
 softest velvet. In the deep gloom the whole world 
 changed. You could not see things, only divine what 
 they might be ; the darkness hid them in a veil of 
 mystery. The deer came down to drink, the leopard 
 padded stealthily towards his prey. Birds of ill omen 
 cried, the owl, the night-jar. And there were sounds 
 that came he knew not whence, voices of the night. 
 
 Then again the dawn. 
 
 Dead Nature ? Dead souls they are who have not 
 felt the fellowship of all the life that lives. 
 
 Not such were these he lived among. They knew 
 and felt that all life was one, came from one source. 
 The reapers told him of the grasses and the crops and 
 trees, how in order to get your daily food you must 
 have knowledge of the laws, the righteousness that 
 govern their increase. How you must be acceptable 
 to the god of harvest. The hunters told him of the 
 
iv THE INCREASING PURPOSE 35 
 
 animals. They have their laws, their god who cares 
 for them. He tells them what to do and what 
 they must not. Do you think the deer, the leopard, 
 the little partridge that runs amid the corn, have never 
 any laws ? Is man the only living thing that has a 
 right and wrong? Every living thing has right and 
 wrong. There are things that are right and wrong for 
 them to do, things that are right and wrong for others 
 to do to them. 
 
 The deer when in herds have laws that no one may 
 transgress ; the wild dogs have a code of discipline 
 harder than any army. He who transgresses it is 
 killed. The leopards have their beats each for himself. 
 All wild nature has its ethics differing for each kind. 
 And the hunter has his ethics too, that nature made. 
 
 ' There is that hill,' the hunter said, ' that lies above 
 the stream where the wood is thick, that is the sanctuary. 
 No one may hunt there. And why ? Because the 
 forest god forbids it. There are such places every- 
 where. And if there were not, if the forest god had 
 never made such sanctuaries, the game would disappear. 
 That is the law the god has given us, so that we kill 
 not all the jungle beasts. He lets us kill at time and 
 place, but there are other times and places when 
 they must have rest. That is a law. Those who 
 break it suffer.' 
 
 And the man laughed because he had often heard 
 it called a stupid superstition of the people, these 
 sanctuaries for game. And he knew how in places 
 where these had been broken by those who had no 
 belief in the gods of Nature, the game had dis- 
 appeared. 
 
 They told him all they knew of the souls of trees 
 and beasts, and he listened and he understood, because 
 
36 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 the truth was coming to him. He told them all that 
 Western science has discovered of the body, how it 
 had evolved from lower forms, and they listened 
 and they understood, because the truth was in 
 them. He showed them sometimes how the beasts 
 and birds were coloured for protection to enable them 
 to hide, sometimes their colours were conspicuous for' 
 other purposes. He told them how in the long history 
 of the world the forms had changed under the stress of 
 necessity. They heard him and they understood. It 
 was not a new idea, but one they had always held 
 though dimly, and not worked out as Western science 
 has worked it. They had known always that the 
 bodies of men and animals had risen. This truth 
 was in harmony with other truths they had within 
 them. 
 
 ' True, true,' they said. 'It is true. We have 
 seen, and though we could not explain as you do, we 
 know that it is so.' 
 
 Yet sometimes they dissented, not from his principles 
 but from his facts. 
 
 ' No, no,' they said about the leopard. ' How could 
 his colour, his yellow and his spots, be given him to 
 hide him ? Why should he hide ? Who does he fear ? 
 No one. And he is nocturnal, he seeks his food by 
 night and not by day, not in the sunshine. His gold 
 and mottled skin cannot be for this reason. He would 
 be coloured grey for use, if use were all.' 
 
 ' What then do you think ? ' 
 
 ' Because it is beautiful.' 
 
 For to their eyes everything that Nature does, 
 everything she makes is beautiful. It is the strongest, 
 most abiding feeling that comes to every one who 
 knows, that in all her acts Nature seeks beauty. Not 
 
iv THE INCREASING PURPOSE 37 
 
 perhaps as the first necessity, not perhaps as an end, 
 but because it is her way. The tiny pencillings upon 
 the partridge are as wonderfully done as the gay 
 colours of the parrakeet. The bronze gloss upon the 
 snipe is as glorious as the pheasant's magnificence. 
 The hidden things are no less beautiful, no less carefully 
 finished than those that show. She works for no eye 
 but for her own, she cares not if what she makes be 
 visible or hidden. She sees, she knows. The rootlet 
 in the earth is perfect as the grass blade above. She 
 has her conscience and her consciousness. 
 
 The wild world is beautiful and happy. There is a 
 sense of peace and gladness and of order in the woods 
 and those who live there. All are happy. There are 
 men who live away from nature in cities or shut up 
 within their own imaginings, who think and say that 
 nature is unhappy. ' Bird preys on insect and on 
 lesser birds, beast upon beast, and death is very near. 
 It hides beneath the leaf, it lurks behind the tree. 
 All live in terror.' 
 
 Not so. Truly death is near, but the world fears 
 not death. It does not go in daily, hourly terror. 
 Death is a sudden fear, pang, a medicine to cure all 
 ills. The snipe you fired at a few minutes since and 
 missed is now as happy as it was before. They live in 
 glorious happy health, and when they are sick they die. 
 Nature cannot tolerate disease, pain, ugliness, unhappi- 
 ness, despair among her children. She ends it suddenly, 
 and in abandoning life lives on. 
 
 Is this world evil ? No a thousand times, seen 
 with true eyes it is a wonder of magnificence. Did it 
 grow by chance, by blind forces acting on dead matter ? 
 How came the beauty and the order and the happiness ? 
 Animals have consciousness and a sense of right and 
 
38 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 wrong, and men have higher consciousness. Is 
 consciousness a product of unconscious forces working 
 in unconscious matter? 
 
 Men are intelligent, at least some are, and is 
 intelligence a spark that unintelligence brings forth? 
 Is it a science that tells us this? Is it not rather 
 blindness ? Could ever any one believe such things ? 
 No one who leaving his laboratory stood face to face 
 with Nature and listened to her voice. Our bodies 
 have risen slowly, developed from the beginning, built 
 up from earth's elements. But the life that working 
 in them built them, the life that makes our higher 
 forms to manifest itself more fully in, that life is 
 divine. The East has seen this always, and the West 
 sometimes in glimpses. The world about us, the 
 grasses, trees, the birds and beasts and man, are, as 
 one Western said, ' the living garment of God.' It 
 changes, drawing ever nearer to perfection. 
 
 But the East knows it always. It has built upon 
 this knowledge, on a sure foundation. If there are 
 naiads in the streams, spirits of the hills, and fairies in 
 every flower that blows, that is their way of saying 
 what they know. It is a childish way, maybe, but 
 what it says is true. 
 
 'It is a greater thing to believe in one Great God 
 than in a myriad gods. The first is true, the latter is 
 a superstition.' 
 
 So says the West. Let us consider. 
 
 ' God's in His heaven,' says the poet of the West. 
 In His heaven far away from us, waiting to judge us 
 maybe. ' God is on earth,' the East declares, for God 
 is everywhere, is everything. All life is God, straight 
 from His Power House, a thrill of the eternal life. 
 And because to our finite minds to postulate the One, 
 
iv THE INCREASING PURPOSE 39 
 
 is to place Him in one place, with one set of attributes, 
 the East prefers to think of many gods. The Eastern 
 God is infinite, and it is truer sometimes to express 
 infinity by very many than by one. That is what the 
 East means, that is what it says. And it understands 
 its own words though we have failed to do so. Yet to 
 the East all gods are God. 
 
 Without the village, near a ruined shrine, beside a 
 well that filled itself with ferns, there grew a giant 
 tree. It was a fig, the sacred peepul, under whose 
 branches understanding comes to him who listens. 
 The great branches gave a shade, and some pious soul 
 had placed a drinking vessel full of clear water for the 
 traveller. On the branches hung a tiny house of wood, 
 and in front were placed the offerings of the people — 
 fruit and rice and flowers. ' Tell me,' he asked, ' what 
 is that tiny box, and why these offerings ? For whom 
 are they ? ' 
 
 They answered that in the' tree there lived a spirit. 
 The house was for him, and the fruit, the flowers. ' He 
 lives there, he is the tree's life, the life of all the trees 
 that grow. Trees are all beautiful, we love them, 
 what would be the world without these temples ? A 
 life is in them, for a life has built them up, and that 
 life is a god. They are all temples that a divinity 
 has made and given us. 
 
 ' So because we wish to remember this, because we 
 do not desire our children should forget it, this the 
 foundation of all truth, we put the symbol of the little 
 house, and we bring flowers and fruit. The flowers 
 fade, the birds eat the fruit. No matter. We are 
 realising something we know is true.' 
 
40 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. iv 
 
 Child's words, child's deeds. Maybe. Have not 
 men grown up from childhood ? Would you destroy 
 the child because he is not a man ? Would you 
 destroy a truth because in its expression it is young? 
 Great truths grow up from small ones. • 
 
 The world was not built by chance, the life is not 
 a dead unconscious force. The world has grown up 
 from the beginning as the expression of an ' increasing 
 purpose.' That is the way the East has always 
 seen it. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL 
 
 SOMETIMES he would leave his monastery chamber 
 where he lived so quietly and go with a party of 
 woodcutters or of hunters into the hills that lay towards 
 the north. There they made camps in the ravines 
 near, water, building little huts of branches, a shelter 
 more from the heat of day than the cold of night. Yet 
 it was cold, too, when the north wind blew at night, and 
 then they made great fires of logs and brushwood and 
 sat about them. The tawny light flickered upon their 
 faces and gave to them, wearied by the day's work, a 
 new energy. They laughed and talked and they told 
 stories. Sometimes they told him of the gossip of the 
 country side, how there was a child who remembered 
 dimly of a former life and spoke of it. Many such 
 tales there were, and the men who told them laughed. 
 Why did they tell them, why did they laugh ? Was it 
 because they thought such tales arose from a truth but 
 were perhaps not a truth ? Life is eternal, a previous 
 life there is for every one from the beginning. Just as 
 the body has risen in one unbroken chain through 
 various lower forms hidden in the backward centuries, 
 so has the soul. Yet though the body is one body* 
 with that which has seen so many changes, though it 
 
 41 
 
42 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 bears in it the result, it has no conscious memory. 
 And the life — can it bring a conscious memory of 
 bygone days ? They thought not. 
 
 They told him birth stories of the Buddha brought 
 from India hundreds of years ago and changed in 
 bringing ; they told him legends of their own country. 
 And these were always the best, these were what the 
 hearer wanted, for they came out of their simple hearts — 
 an image of the truths that lay therein. They had a 
 beauty and reality, told as they were. 
 
 About them stood the trees in circle, far off upon 
 the hills a long fire burnt, a scarlet circlet that climbed 
 slowly upwards. Out of the dark came sounds — a 
 sambur belled, an owl cried harshly, and sometimes a 
 jackal howled in long-drawn melancholy notes. A 
 falling star would shoot athwart the sky and disappear. 
 
 This was one of their favourite tales. 
 
 Far in the north there are great mountains growing 
 ever higher towards the unknown land. Dense forests 
 are there, trees such as we never see here, so high and 
 thick, tied to each other by long creepers. And the 
 undergrowth is thick ; the sunlight hardly penetrates, 
 and men can scarcely move forward and backward. 
 There are deep ravines, as black almost as night, where 
 silent rivers flow, and there are rocks and precipices 
 and many unknown things. 
 
 In these forests there are many deer and there are 
 elephants who crush their way careless of what oppose 
 them. There are wild cattle, bison and bears, and 
 there are many tigers. Jf you go even a little way 
 into these hills you feel afraid and as if you were lost, 
 for there are no paths. 
 
 A wild hill people live there. They are small in 
 stature, dark and timid. They are rarely seen except 
 
v EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL 43 
 
 when sometimes they will move into the plain and 
 change some skins for cloth and salt. They speak a 
 tongue we cannot understand. They have no villages, 
 but camp now in one place, now in another. 
 
 The people of the plains are much afraid of them. 
 They think them half devils, hardly men, and they have 
 stories of them. They say that they can use enchant- 
 ments and that they speak the language of the beasts. 
 They hear and understand the deer talking to each 
 other and the tigers' growls. They even say that 
 sometimes they change themselves into animals for a 
 time, and then again become men. So frightened are 
 the plain people of these mountains they never go far 
 into them. On the outskirts they cut timber and gather 
 forest produce, but they do not penetrate. They think 
 that once caught among the hills they never could return. 
 
 But once there was a man who did go in. He 
 was young and rash and restless, as young men are, 
 and the quiet life of the villages in the plain wearied 
 him. He was tired of ploughing, sowing, reaping, 
 going to little festivals. He wanted adventure and to 
 see new things.- So one day he disappeared from his 
 home, and for two years he was not seen. They 
 thought that he was dead, lost in the hills, and they 
 wrote his name from off the village list. Yet one day 
 he returned walking out of the forest changed from a 
 youth into a man, tall and strong, with the keen eye of 
 the hunter and the step of a mountaineer. He had 
 seen and done many things in these two years and 
 they had left their mark on him. 
 
 He was not alone. Walking behind him as he 
 came out of the forest was a girl. She was young and 
 her limbs were slender but strong like those of the 
 deer. And her eyes were like the deer's eyes, large 
 
44 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 and soft, and timid except when she looked at him she 
 followed, when they grew full of confidence and laughter. 
 He brought her to the village and they settled there. 
 
 But the village women did not like her. She was 
 strange, spoke a strange tongue, and her ways were 
 not as theirs were. She did not understand them. She 
 could not enter into their life. She was an outsider, 
 a savage from the hills, and they would none of her. 
 
 So the two left the village and built them a hut 
 near to the forest edge beside a stream. And here they 
 lived more happily and in peace. The man hunted 
 and worked and the woman stayed at home, and 
 presently a little girl was born. Then for a time there 
 was complete content. 
 
 But the man got weary of this lonely life. He 
 wanted to talk with other men, he wearied for the 
 wider intercourse of his own people. The loneliness 
 fatigued him. Therefore he took to going to the village, 
 sometimes in the day, sometimes in the evening, to 
 hear the news and take a share in village matters. 
 Often he would return quite late. And he would go 
 to the further villages lower down the plain, staying 
 away a day, two days, or three. 
 
 The woman was much alone. She would spin and 
 weave and prepare the rice, and in the evenings when 
 her husband did not come she would take her baby 
 and go and sit beside the stream looking across. There 
 were the forests and beyond them rose the hills where 
 she was born, where her people roamed. A great 
 desire came upon her to return. The mountain spirits 
 called her, the trees waved to her, the stream went 
 murmuring of the heights whence it had come, of the 
 coolness of the deep ravines. The bonds of a life all 
 in one place, the heat, the solitude oppressed her. The 
 
v EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL 45 
 
 tears would come into her eyes for all that she had 
 lost. But yet she had her daughter, and when she 
 looked at her, the trouble vanished, laughter came back 
 again and she was content. But the man never noticed. 
 He was employed, he had friends, the plains were his 
 home. He thought his wife grown stupid, that was all. 
 
 Then the child died ; a fever came out of the 
 swamps and killed it. Husband and wife sorrowed 
 together. For a time they grew nearer. Then they 
 were parted more than ever ; the man went oftener to 
 the village and the girl was left alone. She had no 
 one then to talk to, only she called aloud her troubles 
 to the hills that they might hear her. 
 
 One night the man returned home late. The door 
 was open and the hut was desolate ; he called aloud 
 but no one came. He searched but he found nothing. 
 His wife was gone. But of the cause or reason he 
 could find no sign, until at last searching in the dawn 
 beside the river he came upon a tiger's tracks. He 
 stared at them and he remembered the tales he had 
 often heard. Yes. His wife had changed into a tigress 
 and had gone back to her mountains. She was lost 
 to him for ever. Suddenly the old love he had borne 
 her returned. He remembered how he had found her 
 as a young girl among her people, how he had called 
 and she had followed him. He felt his life was emptied 
 of all happiness. He fell upon the ground, and there 
 they found him lying nearly dead. They took him 
 to the village and cared for him, but when he spoke 
 of his wife they shook their heads. ' It is wiser to 
 forget. Such women are best back among their hills.' 
 
 But the man would not listen, and at last he heard 
 news he hoped would help him. In the great City 
 down the far river lived a man reputed of deep wisdom. 
 
46 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 He might tell the husband what to do, how to get his 
 wife again, for he knew everything. The husband 
 started for the Golden City. 
 
 A week he travelled floating on a raft down the 
 great water, passing hamlets, forts, and cities, and on 
 the eighth day he saw the morning sun strike into fire 
 upon a clustered throng of minarets and spires. He 
 knew that he was arrived, and before long he came to 
 where the wise man lived. The wise man saw him 
 and told him certain things, and he, without waiting 
 to see the wonders of the city, turned on the homeward 
 road again. Day and night he marched, quickly with 
 little rest, for hope was in his heart, and at last he came 
 again to his hut beside the stream. Here he made a 
 load of what he wanted, and taking in his hand a spear 
 he went straight into the forest. The way was difficult, 
 there was no path, the trees grew thickly, creepers 
 caught his feet, ravines and precipices barred his way. 
 But he kept on, guiding himself by what he had 
 been told. 
 
 At last he came to the place he sought. It was 
 a valley shut between high walls that made it dark. 
 Great rocks dripped water from their sides and there 
 were caves where night lived always. Just before 
 sunset the husband came there and found a cavern 
 underneath a precipice about which creepers hung as 
 in a curtain. Before the cave were strewed white 
 bones and skulls, and there was a sense of horror and 
 of fear. 
 
 Opposite the cave mouth he chose a tree and 
 climbed it and waited for the night, for he knew that 
 in that cave there lay a tigress and that she would 
 come forth at dusk. The tigress was his wife. 
 
 He watched and waited, and as the dusk fell she 
 
v EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL 47 
 
 came out, grim and horrible with burning eyes. For 
 a time she stood at the mouth of the cave looking 
 forth. Then suddenly with a bound she leapt into 
 the forest. The man waited still, waited till the full 
 night was come, and descending from the tree set 
 ready those things he had brought with him. Then 
 he sat down by the cave and waited. 
 
 In the early dawn the tigress returned from her night 
 ravaging. Faint pearly light was dropping from above 
 making all things clear. Far overhead upon the 
 hill-tops was a red sunrise. 
 
 She came up to the cave, sated with her prey, her 
 lips stained with blood — she stopped, she stared. For 
 there before her was a spinning-wheel with cotton in it, 
 there was a loom with a half-woven cloth upon it — 
 her own. She stared and of sudden she remembered. 
 She was a woman and no tigress. The woman's heart 
 moved in her, the tawny hide dropped off, her form 
 changed, and she fell upon the ground in tears, for she 
 remembered all — herself, her husband, her baby who 
 had been, whose half-wove garment hung upon the loom. 
 Her husband came to her and put his arms about her, 
 and as the sun dropped scarlet arrows through the forest 
 aisles they turned and went away — together. The 
 future was before them and the past forgotten as a 
 dream before the day. 
 
 For the most part the stories had a moral. When 
 a soul rose from being a beast's soul inhabiting a 
 beast's body, to a man's soul in the body of a man, it 
 was the result of righteousness upon the soul. When 
 it fell it was the result of bad actions, of retrogression. 
 1 He saw that this theory of transmigration of the soul 
 was the exact counterpart of the evolution of the body. 
 
48 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 The latter has arisen, little by little, by acquiring new 
 characteristics, a higher form, a more varied complexity. 
 So' it is with the soul. Each individual is not a body 
 only but a soul within a body, acting through it, 
 expressed through it. Where an individual rises it is 
 because his whole personality has risen, because he is 
 the expression of a higher soul within a more adapted 
 body. Our bodies have developed from beasts' bodies, 
 and as they have acquired merit, so have risen. We 
 acknowledge that in the West because science has 
 shown it to us. But science has stopped half way. It 
 has ignored the other partner. Man is a life and soul 
 made manifest in body. The body has evolved says 
 the West, and the East answers that evolution is true 
 of both body and soul. As our bodies have grown so 
 have our souls. As our souls have grown higher so 
 have they evolved higher bodies to inhabit. Each has 
 developed according to the ' merit ' it acquired in 
 partnership. That is what transmigration means to say. 
 
 And more, men have not always developed upwards. 
 Nations have come and gone, been young and old, and 
 died and disappeared, while new ones took their places. 
 There is a constant ebb and flow, but the flow is 
 greater. Life as a whole advances. There is the 
 increasing purpose doubly manifested. So much was 
 easy. It was evolution. But yet there was a difficulty 
 still, one that lay underneath. 
 
 We are the products of an evolution of a body and 
 a soul. The body in some way we understand, we 
 know of what we speak. It is not an abiding entity, 
 and yet the chain is never broken, never has been. All 
 living forms are in unbroken sequence from the 
 beginning. But they are subject to continued change. 
 Each child comes from two parents, inherits from both, 
 
v EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL 49 
 
 can it be that the soul preserves for ever one unbroken 
 entity ? Is it a little nut within a changing kernel ? 
 
 That is what the West conceives it as. But the 
 East does not. It cannot do so. The East has some 
 conception of our life different to that we have. Life, 
 man's soul is not a separated atom incarnated in a 
 body. How can a force, an energy, a life be separated ? 
 Even the lower forces, can they be separated ? Can 
 you take a piece of sunlight and place it in any lamp ? 
 Life is a stream and not a substance, it is a spirit, not 
 a material thing. 
 
 Even material things that live are never permanent. 
 Our bodies are but streams of matter ever changing, 
 ever dying, ever renewed. But dead things are 
 constant, stones and metals. Can life be as a stone 
 is ? What are our souls ? Until we know how the 
 East understands that much, how shall we understand 
 that which they tell of it ? 
 
 He asked the people to explain to him, but they 
 would not answer. Why ? 
 
 What are the things that have a ready answer? 
 Those things that we have learnt, that have been 
 taught to us. 
 
 Those that have no answer are the things we know. 
 We see, we hear ; can any one define, explain what 
 sight and hearing are ? Does any one except the deaf 
 and blind desire to do so ? We hear and see, that is 
 enough. 
 
 We love, we hate. Did ever the boy who loved 
 sit down to analyse his feelings? Never. It is 
 when we doubt if we are really feeling it that we 
 inquire. It is when love has passed we try to bring 
 remembrance of it back by definition and by attribute. 
 What is sunlight? Do you feel it less because you 
 
 E 
 
50 THE INWARD LIGHT ch.v 
 
 cannot define it ? What is a sense of beauty ? Who 
 cares who has it clearly ? We all have life ; and what 
 is life ? When you have a conception of what life is 
 that fits into your consciousness as true, that is in 
 harmony with the facts of life, why should you bother ? 
 Why should you seek the imagery of words to express 
 to yourself what you have but what you can never 
 fully define? It is when the definition of what life 
 really is, of what our souls are made of, has grown 
 old and untrue, as all dogmas and definitions of the 
 undefinable must do, that finding we are holding a 
 falsehood we look round for truth , 
 
 -The East has a true conception of what life is. It 
 does not define it There is no dogma of the soul. The 
 truth is never found within an iron bond. Life is life. 
 
 ' And yet,' he thought, ' I must have words. When 
 you have a wrong expression the only thing that will 
 correct it is an expression that is nearer truth. Life 
 is not what we conceive it. Life is not an entity. It 
 does not come merely into us at birth and disappear 
 at death. We do not win our futures in the few years 
 between one cradle and one grave. Life is eternal and 
 is subject to the change of evolution always. Then 
 what is life? Where are the words that will come 
 near what I desire to say, that will enable this to be 
 understood ? I want a new symbol of what our souls are.' 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Where is he who knows ? 
 From the great deep to the great deep he goes. 
 
 They sat and watched the night veiling the world in 
 sleep. The darkness stretched into eternity and the 
 stars wheeled upwards in a grand procession. Orion 
 blazed above them and the Pleiad cluster hung like a 
 pearl upon the bosom of the night. There was a deep 
 stillness, for the winds were hushed, a stillness not of 
 death but of a great life that slept and dreamed. 
 
 Suddenly from the village down below there came a 
 sound, a cry that pierced the stillness like a pain, and 
 on the cry there came a music. It rose and fell upon 
 the night ; now keen with the shrilling of a flute, and 
 brazen with the clang of cymbals, now sad and slow 
 with the sound of strings. Then it failed into the 
 throb of drum's that beat — that beat — that beat a 
 measured sadness of monotonous refrain ; and the 
 flutes cried again. 
 
 The peacefulness of the night was broken, the dark 
 that had been so clear became opaque, the distances 
 closed in. The finiteness of things became more 
 manifest. For in the music was a harshness and a 
 discord that drove the thoughts back into the heart. 
 They would not go abroad in such companionship. 
 The sounds occupied the shrunken night alone. 
 
 5i 
 
52 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 A man was dead. 
 
 He knew that this was the music of the dead. Some 
 one had died down there. His body lay, a cold and 
 empty shell within the house, amid the mourners. The 
 soul had died, had passed. He whom they had known 
 was gone. But whither ? What was it that was gone ? 
 
 Had it passed through the darkness leaving earth 
 to go to some place very far away, beyond the stars, 
 unknown, to hear its sentence? Had it within a few 
 short years by a little observance of certain maxims, a 
 few good deeds, earned a happiness for ever? Or was 
 it sent to limbo for eternity? 
 
 Hell must be very large by now ; full of tortured 
 souls without a hope. And Heaven, was not that a 
 word for some place whither no one desired to go? 
 The air seemed full of fears, of strange, unseen, unhappy 
 things that passed. 
 
 The music ceased and the night grew wide again. 
 The stars looked down with clear, bright eyes upon the 
 world, an immense beauty and a peace filled the 
 heavens, and a whisper came from out the space which 
 said, ' No, no. It is never so. These are but dreams 
 of evil made within the brain. Look upward into the 
 spaces of the sky. No Hell is there.' 
 
 Life, what is life ? 
 
 ' Tell me,' he asked the! monk, ' what is it you 
 think of life ? ' 
 
 The monk sat silent and did not answer. 
 
 ' What is man's soul, whence did it come, and 
 whither does it go ? A man is dead below there. 
 Men pass upon the wings of every moment that fleets 
 by us. Men are born and die. I am here, whence 
 did I come and what am I ? That man is dead. 
 Where is his soul ? ' 
 
vi THE WIND 53 
 
 The monk shook his head and answered : ' What 
 is life ? How shall I tell you ? Could I measure to 
 you the sea in cupfuls? Yes, more easily than one 
 may measure out infinity in finite words. For life is 
 infinite, it holds the two for-evers.' 
 
 ' Tell at least one aspect of it. Give me a cupful 
 from that sea.' 
 
 And the monk answered : ' So be it. A cupful I will 
 give. Only remember it is but a little cup, words are 
 such tiny vessels for the truth.' 
 
 He held his hand aloft. 
 
 A light wind came from the sleeping earth and 
 breathed across the garden. It murmured in the palm 
 leaves overhead and shook the bushes. The long 
 grasses near at hand bent down before it, shook their 
 feathered heads and swayed like dancing girls. 
 
 ' Tell me whence comes the wind and whither does 
 it go? Life is a wind that blows upon the world. 
 Whence does it come and whither does it pass? It 
 blows and moves the grasses, and they live. Is then 
 the life within them that they move ? ' 
 
 The wind increased, it brought a scent of meadows 
 far below, of frangipanni odours from the bushes. 
 Some dead leaves fell and the grasses bowed more 
 deeply. ' It comes and goes,' he said ; ' no one knows 
 why, nor whence, nor whither.' 
 
 He bent and caught a long grass stem and broke 
 it. The slender reed lay lifeless on the ground. Its 
 sisters rustled, swayed and bowed while it lay dead. 
 
 * Why does it lie still ? Where is its life that made 
 it move ? Did a spirit live in it and move it ; and has 
 that spirit fled ? or is the spirit dead ? 
 
 ' Life is a breath that comes from the eternal here 
 to us. It is not a thing, a substance that lies within 
 
54 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 us, but a tide that pouring on this world builds up our 
 bodies and is itself our souls. It builds our bodies to 
 manifest itself in. Consider. Suppose we sat not in 
 gardens but on a barren rock, and we could only see, 
 not feel. The wind might blow but we should know 
 nothing. It could not stir the rock. The air might 
 move but could not manifest its presence. Life must 
 have proper form to manifest itself in. It has built 
 up our bodies little by little through the ages that it 
 may show itself, that life may live. It raises them 
 ever to manifest itself more fully. Life is from without. 
 It is not a prisoner held in bondage in an earthy cage, 
 from which when the bar breaks it flees.' 
 
 ' And the man's soul ? ' 
 
 ' Life lives for ever.' 
 
 ' The body goes back to earth. Can it not rise again ? ' 
 
 ' My friend,' the monk answered, ' think. What are 
 you ? Are you the body or the life that built it up 
 and made it live ? The frame returns to earth, the 
 wind moves other grasses. Life is not a thing bound 
 to one body, it is not a product of the body. Is the 
 wind a product of the grass ? This stem is dead and 
 will return to earth, a man dies and his flesh and bones 
 go back to dust. A body is a finite thing, life is 
 infinite. Would you have the life that moved the 
 leper, for he was a leper whom they mourn below, com- 
 pelled for all the ages to manifest itself only in that poor 
 body, or in any body however good ? Life is a progress 
 and a change. The stream of. spirit ever widens and 
 requires greater power to work in, to live in. Each body 
 passes, and from its dust are built our new bodies 
 greater and stronger, better able to perform the behests 
 of the greater spirit.' 
 
 " Is there then no immortality of body ? Must we 
 
vi THE WIND 55 
 
 go always into forgetfulness ? The spirit has an immor- 
 tality, the body none?' The monk leant closer and 
 took the broken grass and held it up. The wind had 
 ceased and it stood motionless. ' The wind is gone 
 the grass is dead. The wind has gone to move the 
 leaves and grasses far away. This grass is a dead 
 body. Has it no immortality?' The monk sat long 
 in silence and the stars climbed upward. The night 
 was deeper, it held a personality and a presence. 
 
 ' It is so hard,' he said, ' to speak of, to put in words, 
 that which one sees and knows to be beyond all words. 
 I thought that all men felt the consciousness of what 
 life is. And yet I remember two thousand five hundred 
 years ago, that was the difficulty. And those who saw 
 and taught were called Mystics, splitters of words, 
 dealers in cloud and fog because they tried to say 
 what never can be fully said. Yet as you ask, I will 
 try. Every living thing we see is twofold, it is spirit 
 expressed in matter. Matter is built up by brute forces 
 which act according to fixed laws. The spirit which 
 takes this matter and makes it into living forces is also 
 twofold, unconscious and conscious. 
 
 ' Take myself or you. Our bodies are built and 
 kept by forces that are unconscious ; we breathe, our 
 pulses move, our food is turned to blood by no 
 conscious effort of our own. They will work when 
 our conscious life is asleep or absent. By them is 
 our body formed. It comes from our parents and 
 inherits from them its qualities, its strength and weak- 
 ness. The rewards that they have earned it reaps, the 
 punishments they have incurred it suffers from. 
 
 ' But conscious life is different. That comes not 
 from inheritance, not from our parents. It manifests 
 itself within the body, but is not of it. It affects it. 
 
56 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 The greater our consciousness, the greater the master, 
 the more obedient is the servant. It is affected by 
 the body, which is its instrument through which it 
 manifests its life and consciousness. They are bound 
 together ; yet each is different, and each gives to other 
 immortality. Each has its laws which it obeys or 
 disobeys. Again there is this difference. 
 
 ' The soul is immortal always, but the body, that 
 stream of bodies which began so far back we cannot 
 see it, and came through our parents to ourselves, may 
 suddenly be stopped.' 
 
 He took the grass and held it up. The ears were 
 full of seeds. ' There is its immortality,' and he shook 
 them to the ground. 'The grass that is well -grown 
 and healthy, that is strong and can maintain itself, 
 that is capable of change as the surroundings change, 
 it lives. 
 
 ' And so on with personalities that we call " I." We 
 are a conscious spirit in a living but unconscious body. 
 When the body deserves to live, when the future needs 
 it, then it lives in children, but if not, then is the race 
 cut off. The stream of bodies ends. The force goes 
 to other streams, to other children. That is our 
 immortality, and before consciousness came that was 
 the only immortality, of personality, of type. 
 
 ' But our conscious life is different, a man's body is 
 continued in his children, but not his soul, his conscious 
 life. That is the wind that passes.' 
 
 ' The wind passes,' said the man, ' and has no 
 personality. And when man dies is that so too with 
 him, his consciousness, his soul? Does that too 
 merge into a formless wind ? ' 
 
 The monk shook his head. 
 
 ' That personality continues also. It goes on with 
 
vi THE WIND 
 
 57 
 
 all the merit and demerit it has acquired. It goes on 
 for ever, until — until ' 
 
 ' Until ? ' 
 
 ' What is beyond the stars, beyond the utmost star ? 
 What is infinity ? ' 
 
 ' No one can tell.' 
 
 ' That is the answer. No one can tell. Why 
 should we wish to know ? Is it not enough to see a 
 little space before you, a day's march on in front ? One 
 idea is this, that as there was a time when unconscious 
 life existed alone without consciousness, so in time we 
 may grow to that perfection that Consciousness and 
 Will and Righteousness may exist without the confining 
 bounds of matter and unconscious life. But the truer 
 thought is that the conscious life, the Soul, will be 
 blended with all the forces into one great whole, infinite, 
 universal.' 
 
 There was a long silence, and the man sent his soul 
 into the night to seek from its peace, its dignity, its 
 space a little of its truth. 
 
 Then the monk rose and said : — 
 
 ' The night is late. I go. My friend remember 
 this. Knowledge and wisdom are not plucked down 
 from heaven. They grow on earth. They are built 
 up from lower things, from right and understanding.' 
 
 He passed away into the shadow of the monastery. 
 
 But the man sat there and thought. ' Truly,' he 
 said, ' no one can define life, and any definition, any 
 attributes must be but temporary and even in its 
 time but partly true. It were better there were no 
 need to try and make any definitions ; yet there is 
 need. Because if you do not consciously give a 
 meaning to the word " life " you will do so uncon- 
 sciously. And the unconsciously given meaning will 
 
58 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 arise from the letter and form of mere imagery, 
 and so be quite untrue. No one in the West ever 
 began by formulating to himself the soul as a little 
 material nut, a piece of matter. Yet there is no doubt 
 that is how the West has come now to regard it. Some 
 even say they have seen the soul escape — a filmy gas ; 
 others say they have weighed it, an ounce or so. The 
 West now unconsciously uses the words " soul " and 
 " life " with meanings which when consciously faced are 
 absurd. 
 
 ' Therefore we must have a conception, some defini- 
 tion, some attributes, even if they are negative attributes 
 like those of the geometric point. Remembering always 
 that at best they can be but a glimpse at truth. 
 Therefore what is life? Where is the image, where 
 the words ? ' 
 
 The long reaches of the river showed a faint 
 reflection far below, and suddenly in the distance came 
 a light. It was a long and ghastly greenish ray that 
 pierced the darkness like a spear. And brandished by 
 an unseen giant hand it touched now one bank, now 
 the other. Wherever it was laid it called, like a magic 
 wand, visions out of the night. Things before invisible 
 suddenly became seen, trees and rocks and stretches of 
 bare sand started into a sudden vividness, and dis- 
 appeared again. 
 
 And through the silence came the faint throbbing of 
 the steamer's heart as she beat her way up against the 
 current. 
 
 Then she came into sight, a cluster of bright lights, 
 a myriad-jewelled water creature breasting the stream, 
 and ever before her she held her arc light feeling her 
 way with it round curve and island. She passed 
 beyond the bluff and out of sight. 
 
vi THE WIND 59 
 
 Then he remembered how many years before the 
 first steamer came with incandescent lights in place of 
 the old lamps. She was a wonder on the river. The 
 people crowded down at night to look at these bright 
 globes that shone on nothing. They came on board 
 and looked and touched but did not understand. What 
 was the light within the little glasses ? How was it 
 lit and how fed ? How was it killed ? 
 
 When some told them that the light did not live 
 within the globes but came every moment to them 
 along a hidden wire, they laughed ; surely he joked 
 with them. The wires did not glow, in fact they saw 
 no wires. How could light come unseen and shine? 
 how come from without? That was not the way of 
 lights. No ! No ! Some one put the light in and 
 took it out again. 
 
 That was twenty years ago, and now it seems to 
 any one the simplest thing. There need not even be 
 a wire. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 Life comes for ever from the Power House of God. 
 Where is that House ? No one can tell. What does 
 it matter to the light ? And when the lamp is broken 
 and the light suddenly goes out, what is become of the 
 energy that made it glow ? Does it wander homeless 
 in the void ? Is it gone to judgment because the light 
 was dim ? 
 
 That is a parable of life. 
 
 The night grew later. Down below the music had 
 long ceased, only the drums throbbed softly now and 
 then. The cries were stilled, but there was the sobbing 
 of a woman half unheard. 
 
 Tout lasse, tout casse, tout passe. Et tout renait. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 The tree whose roots were in the earth, whose branches stretched to 
 heaven. 
 
 ' If you are interested in those superstitions, I have a 
 story to tell you,' said Gallio. ' Do you believe in ghosts?' 
 
 They were in his camp pitched near the river 
 where he had come to shoot. 
 
 ' Do you believe in ghosts ? ' he asked again. ' The 
 people do, and so if you care for their beliefs and 
 think that they sometimes contain truth, you should 
 accept their ghosts.' 
 
 The hearer laughed. ' Tell me your story first,' he 
 answered. ' I have heard many tales of ghosts. I 
 have looked often to see a ghost but never successfully. 
 Tell me your story.' 
 
 ' It began with a mystery and a probable crime,' 
 said Gallio. ' Have you heard of the disappearance of 
 a broker down the river?' 
 
 ' I hear little,' was the answer, ' of the gossip of 
 the countryside or of the crime. What was the dis- 
 appearance ? ' 
 
 ' He lived in a village on the other side the river, 
 forty miles or more below here. He was a broker 
 who dealt in grain and seeds and was reputed rich. 
 He used to advance money to farmers against their 
 crops and be repaid in produce. It is a lucrative 
 
 60 
 
ch.vii ROOTED IN EARTH 61 
 
 trade enough except when bad years come and the 
 farmers cannot pay. Last year was such a season, and 
 he had many debtors who could not pay him, as their 
 crops had failed. 
 
 ' One afternoon about two months ago his clerk, 
 whom he had sent to try and collect some debts, 
 returned. The times were bad, he reported ; the 
 debtors could not repay either in cash or produce, and 
 asked for more delay. This made the broker angry, 
 and he declared that no delay would be given. They 
 must pay at once, and as the clerk had not been 
 successful, he would go himself. He had his pony 
 saddled and went off at once alone. There was 
 nothing unusual in this. He was a man of hasty 
 decision and who acted on the spur of the moment. 
 
 ' That night he slept at a village some eight miles 
 up the river, and next morning early he went into 
 another village where two of his heaviest debtors lived. 
 He had a stormy interview with them. They said 
 they could not pay, and in the afternoon he rode on 
 again declaring he would go to the police post, some 
 twelve miles higher up, and lodge a complaint that 
 they had cheated him. 
 
 ' The way for some distance lies across the open 
 fields, where tracks cross and recross. There is a 
 well there, near a little rest-house, and two women 
 who were at the well saw him come over the fields. 
 He inquired the way of them, saying he had never 
 been that road before. Then he rode on. That is 
 the last that we could hear for certain of his move- 
 ments. He disappeared. Next morning his pony 
 was found wandering loose in the scrub jungle near 
 the river and caught. That first raised inquiry. The 
 matter was reported and the police went down. 
 
62 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 ' But little more could be elicited. Two herd boys 
 said they saw a man on a black pony with his face 
 muffled in a cloth, riding through the bushes near the 
 river bank at dusk. There is no road there, and it 
 was quite out of the broker's way if going to the 
 village where the police station is. Still it might have 
 been he, gone in some way astray. 
 
 ' A search through all the country near had no 
 result. Nothing was found, no body, no traces of any 
 kind. The broker had disappeared utterly. 
 
 ' There were of course several theories. He had 
 fallen over the river bank and been drowned ; but 
 though the banks there are high and steep, there was 
 at that time no water under^them. The river was at 
 its lowest and left a broad belt of sand on either side. 
 If he had fallen it would have been on sand. 
 
 ' That he had been murdered was another theory. 
 His creditors, knowing where he was going, had slipped 
 ahead of him, and waylaid him in the dark. There 
 was a belt of jungle further on. But if so, where was 
 the body? And, as it happened, there was a festival 
 that night at an intermediate village, and the road, 
 usually lonely, was traversed by numerous people. 
 None of these had seen the broker. No one had 
 heard anything. Variations of these theories supposed 
 him to have been run away with by his pony, which 
 was a spirited little beast, thrown and killed ; or 
 carried off a prisoner by his enemies. The only 
 objection to each and every theory was that it had 
 not the least scrap of evidence to support it. The 
 man had disappeared, that was all we knew. The 
 whole countryside was turned upside down but nothing 
 was discovered.' 
 
 ' And the ghost ? * 
 
vii ROOTED IN EARTH 63 
 
 ' We are coming to it. The broker had a daughter, 
 a girl about sixteen. A few days after her father's 
 departure, in the afternoon, she was sitting in the house 
 and thought she heard her father call her. She thought 
 he had returned, and saying to her mother, who was in 
 an inner room, " Here is father back," she ran out and 
 down the steps. Her father was standing by the 
 entrance gate, but she noticed at once that something 
 was the matter. His head was dropped on one 
 shoulder, there was blood upon his face, and in a 
 moment he disappeared. The girl gave a cry and 
 fainted, and the neighbours running in found her sense- 
 less on the ground. 
 
 ' That was the first appearance of the ghost. The 
 second happened a week or so later. Two fellow- 
 villagers of his were returning from a journey to the 
 north, riding in a bullock cart, and travelling at night, 
 as is the custom in the hot weather. On their way 
 they passed the place where the broker was last seen. 
 The remembrance of him came to them and they 
 wondered what had happened. For sure, they thought, 
 he must be dead, and his ghost lost in these distant 
 fields must be weary and sad so far from home. They 
 were full of compassion for the ghost so lonely, far 
 away, and standing up in the cart one called — " Brother 
 villager, if your ghost is here, come home with us." 
 His voice echoed over the empty fields and had no 
 answer. But, so they tell the story, a sudden fear 
 came over them, a silence and the sensation that they 
 were not alone. Some one had joined them.' And so 
 driving through the night they came to their village 
 with the ghost in company. That very morning early, 
 fishermen returning from their night fishing, found a 
 corpse on a sandbank just opposite the village. They 
 
64 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 towed it in, and though much disfigured, it was identified 
 by the wife and buried. So ghost . and body came 
 home the same day to their old village. What think 
 you of that for a ghost story ? ' 
 
 ' It is a strange tale and yet ' 
 
 ' Do you believe in ghosts ? I have told you my 
 story, answer now my question ? Do you think ghosts 
 exist ? ' 
 
 The man pondered. ' Yes,' he said, * and No. ' If 
 you mean that man's soul does not become extinct at 
 his death, then Yes. If that it exists as a filmy shadow, 
 half- lunatic, helpless and ghastly; that it lingers in 
 graveyards and old places to frighten people, unable 
 to speak or communicate with us except by signs or 
 knocks, then No. If you mean, do I believe the broker's 
 daughter and the cartmen saw his disembodied spirit, I 
 answer that I do not believe anything of the sort' 
 
 Gallio laughed. ' Then I will end my story. The 
 broker had no ghost, his spirit was never disembodied, 
 he never died. He ran away to cheat his creditors, 
 and hid for three months up the river. He has now 
 returned.' 
 
 ' And the body ? ' 
 
 ' Was that of a boatman drowned a hundred miles 
 above, a week before.' 
 
 ' And the ghost ? Was it an invention ? ' 
 
 ' For that, No. I am sure the girl was honest and 
 thought she saw something. So too were the cartmen. 
 I have ascertained that they did not know that the 
 broker was not dead. And even if, in that case, there 
 could be any doubt, I know many others. Only two 
 days ago when riding here my orderly thought he saw 
 a ghost. We were riding through the low hills and 
 lost our way. The country was barren, and wastes 
 
vir ROOTED IN EARTH 65 
 
 of rock and sand, with here and there a thorn bush. 
 There were faint tracks which led here and there and 
 ended. We were far from any village or any cultiva- 
 tion, and I stopped to look about and consult my 
 orderly as to the way. While we were talking he 
 suddenly said, " There is a woman over there, I will ask 
 her." He galloped off and I followed. I saw no ■ 
 woman, and presently the orderly stopped too,' be- 
 wildered, looking round. " I saw a woman pass," he 
 said ; " she came from behind that rock, and went 
 behind this bush ; she is not there.'' 
 
 ' There was no woman, could never have been any, 
 we must have found her had there been. There was 
 no place to hide in. Except for that one rock and a 
 dozen widely divided bushes there was nothing within 
 half a mile that would have hidden a dog. We searched 
 the place thoroughly : I, certain that there must be a 
 woman somewhere ; the orderly pale as a ghost himself, 
 sure he had seen one. At last we gave it up and rode 
 on. But for that matter you may find as many stories 
 of ghosts, as many people who are sure they have seen 
 them, as you desire. And whatever they are, they are 
 not conscious frauds.' 
 
 ' I will tell you,' he answered, ' what Buddhism says 
 of these things. Beliefs like this are never based 
 entirely on conscious frauds. But this idea of ghosts, 
 of visions, of revelations, stands on a different footing 
 from legends and tales. For they are declared to be 
 discovered facts. If they were but legends, it would be 
 easy to say that they were merely one way of expressing 
 our instinctive belief in the immortality of the soul and 
 the survival of personality. Indeed, it is no doubt 
 only because the belief in ghosts is in accordance with 
 this firm and strong conviction, that the majority of 
 
 F 
 
66 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 people will accept ghosts at all. That the soul persists 
 they are quite sure, and when it is declared to them 
 that this soul has been seen, they are not prepared to 
 deny that it might be seen. They are in fact glad, 
 because they welcome any evidence at all that tends to 
 confirm their hope and belief of a survival after death. 
 This sufficiently explains the wide acceptance of the 
 idea by those who have never seen and never wished to 
 see anything supernatural. The childishness of the 
 ghosts when they appear, the absurdity of the circum- 
 stances under which they are seen weighs as nothing 
 compared to this fact. It is expressive of a vital truth, 
 and as such is cherished. There is no difficulty in 
 perceiving this, in understanding why all the absurdities 
 have not killed the idea. To each believer the 
 absurdities are extrinsic, the truth intrinsic. 
 
 ' The question of those who declare they see ghosts, 
 hear prophecies, and receive revelations is another matter. 
 No one can prove or can disprove them. A man 
 declares he saw a spirit ; he is sincere, but he cannot 
 prove to you he saw anything but a phantom of his 
 brain. You cannot prove to him he did not see a 
 " something " which might be the spirit of some one dead. 
 
 ' A man comes to you with a revelation or a vision ; 
 it is the same. For he is sure he heard and saw, but 
 the certainty remains with him alone. He cannot pass 
 it on to you. Such things remain, as far as direct 
 proof or disproof can go, for ever in the misty region of 
 uncertainty. 
 
 ' There are only two things that can ever entirely 
 destroy the belief: one is a disbelief in any immortality 
 at all, a decadence, a materialism which denies aught 
 but the body. The second is a clearer, wider, saner 
 concept of our immortality. Whoever holds this 
 
vii ROOTED IN EARTH 67 
 
 disbelief or this conception laughs at ghosts, and in the 
 stoaies sees the childishness. Both these are rare. Yet 
 those who have understood the Buddhist view of life 
 and death and immortality believe in none of these 
 things. They reject ghosts because in their conception 
 the after life is so much saner, more beautiful, more 
 wide than any theory of ghosts can give. They reject 
 dreams and visions and revelations because they are 
 sure that all we need to know, all we can conceivably 
 understand about our souls, about our righteousness, 
 about the everlasting verities, is near enough and clear 
 enough to be seen without any supernatural aid. True 
 religion is the real science, and like all knowledge that 
 is sure is built up from below. There are those who 
 say that all religions are built on ghosts and dreams and 
 visions, but that is not so. Only Semitic faiths are so 
 built even in theory — every Eastern faith is a science ; 
 expressed, no doubt, in hyperbole, extravagance, with 
 many accretions of the marvellous added to the religion, 
 nevertheless a science. Remember what the Buddha 
 said, that whoever should claim to have seen visions or 
 revelations, to have heard voices or dreamed dreams, 
 should be expelled from out his monasteries. 
 
 ' And who can doubt which is the way to build a 
 faith that is true, that will last, that will expand to 
 suit man's rising needs ? How far did science go 
 when it held to the Mosaic account of the Creation ? 
 Yet that account may be in essence true. 
 
 ' Suppose you think that truth can only come by 
 revelation, by dream and vision, prophecy and other 
 supernatural means, how can you stand on firm ground ? 
 Most dreams, most visions, most prophecies are loath- 
 some things. What do the generality of ghosts do? 
 They behave like lunatics aimlessly. They haunt 
 
68 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 graveyards and ruins, they give us a high ideal surely 
 of what we will be after ' death. Most dreams are 
 horrors, formless nightmares from which we wake with 
 gladness to reality and light. Most prophecies are 
 but denunciations of your enemy. You cannot injure 
 him, for he is too strong for you, so you attempt to 
 frighten him with tales of revenge to come. It is the 
 refuge of those who have neither strength nor reason. 
 These are the antipodes of truth. 
 
 ' Ghosts and all that pertain to them are the very 
 cult of fear — they are a horror ; truth is the cult of 
 hope. 
 
 ' Who in all stories is the King of ghosts ; whom do 
 you invoke to bring them ? It is the Devil, the Spirit 
 of wickedness and evil, of death and of damnation. 
 Have you seen any one gain happiness thereby ? If 
 they be untrue, only hallucination, then are they 
 disease. If there be really ghosts, then are they to be 
 avoided more than any death. For they are the 
 denial of all that men hope and live for, they are a 
 warning and a terror, a devil's brood. 
 
 ' But say that there are true visions, true spirits who 
 arise, that there- are those who really hear celestial 
 voices, are you any better off? How do you know 
 this truth ? How can you tell the true from the false ; 
 what test will separate the true revelation from the 
 hallucination ? Most of them must be hallucination, 
 they are too stupid to be anything but that. All that 
 man can do under these circumstances is to put his 
 trust in some self-appointed authority, in some man or 
 body of men. He must surrender his will and sense 
 to them. And they, how can they determine ? They 
 cannot in fact have any criterion but their own theories 
 of right and wrong. They must trust themselves and 
 
vii ROOTED IN EARTH 69 
 
 declare themselves the mouthpiece of God, the sifters 
 of the true and false. There must be a Church, and 
 all men must be in spiritual bondage to that Church 
 or be outcasts. It claims authority, and yet it can 
 never prove it has any right to any authority at all, 
 has in it any truth. This Church must ally itself 
 with worldly power, with Kings and Governments, to 
 enforce an authority that would otherwise be rejected, 
 that always is rejected when the secular authority 
 ceases. 
 
 ' But the difficulty does not end there. A revelation 
 must be given in words, and what are words but 
 symbols ? They can at best when new express but a 
 little facet of the truth ; the other facets are ignored. 
 They are given for a time and place and people, but 
 these all change. The newer times and peoples need 
 another aspect of the truth. How can they get it? 
 Is truth to be petrified in little morsels ? Words are 
 but signs and their sense varies with each person 
 always, even at the time, while every year makes 
 greater divergence. How can you be sure that you 
 understand what the voice tried to say? The in- 
 terpreter may be in fault. Who is to declare the real 
 meaning? Are you to have new revelations or to be 
 content with dead truths ? Truth is a living thing 
 and grows. If it be founded on revelation, how can 
 it grow except by new revelation ? And if there be 
 no new revelation, you are confined within the narrow 
 limits of an ancient saying. 
 
 ' Religion must stagnate and die, stifled by word and 
 letter, or it must live by often repeated revelations, all 
 incapable of proof. No living knowledge could progress 
 like that. Science is not like that, it could not live 
 in such a condition. It was attacked by dogma, 
 
yo THE INWARD LIGHT ch. vii 
 
 stifled, declared contrary to truth, science that is the 
 only true way of finding truth. And true religion is 
 the science of the soul. It is built up from little 
 things, it is susceptible of proof or disproof. It grows, 
 and it is ready always to discard the false and narrow, 
 to welcome the wider view. Science is so, despite the 
 scientific men perhaps, who try to make themselves 
 high priests ; but they pass, and truth progresses 
 because it is true. 
 
 ' That is the principle that Buddhism has always 
 worked upon. It never says, " You must believe 
 because I say so." It says, " This is truth as far as we 
 can see, and those who doubt let them test and try if 
 it is truth or not." 
 
 ' Build upward from below. 
 
 ' The great teachers of Buddhism in the past did so. 
 They said, " We see things, and see thou too." They 
 said, " We think that we see parts of truth, but truth is 
 infinite, and as the world grows it will see more ; we 
 lay the foundations only. All truth is welcome to us, 
 truth that is proved and sure. Truth is the tree of 
 life. Its roots are in the earth, and in the hearts of 
 men, its branches rise towards heaven ; and that they 
 may grow ever higher, greener, more full of fruit, 
 remember to keep the roots always watered with 
 reality." ' 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 RAYS OF THE INFINITE LIGHT 
 
 The year grew older and the power of the sun increased. 
 That golden King looked down upon an uncontested 
 realm and filled it with his glory. In the air was a 
 flood of light and heat that fell upon the earth ; and 
 the children of the sun, the brown-eyed, brown-skinned 
 people loved it. They went out in it at all hours, they 
 rejoiced and laughed in it, they let it bathe them, filling 
 them with its happiness and strength. But the son of 
 the pale North sat through all the midday hours sheltered 
 within his room. He feared the sun's touch, yet he 
 loved to see its light. Without his window stood a 
 tree with feathery leaves and scarlet blossoms, and the 
 light came filtering through it in tiny golden shafts of 
 light. In the afternoon the light came right into his 
 chamber and made a sunny diaper of light and shade 
 upon the matted floor. 
 
 He lay and watched it spread further and further, 
 and he wondered to see the beauty it brought into 
 the bareness of the chamber. 
 
 The sun is the source of light and heat, and without 
 it we should have no life. It draws the waters of the 
 seas into the heavens and gives them to the land. All 
 power comes, or has come, from it. The wood we burn 
 
 7i 
 
72 THE INWARP LIGHT ch. 
 
 has gained its heat from heaven and keeps it for a 
 while. The protoplasm in the plant vibrates to the 
 same energy. Life is not in it but in the sun that 
 gives it. Sun worshippers have recognised this, and 
 they have used him as the symbol of the science of all 
 the life that is. It comes always from without as does 
 the sunlight. 
 
 The sunlight comes upon us in a flood, but that 
 great tide is made of tiny beams, and in each beam 
 lies all the properties of the whole; visible and invisible 
 rays they all are there. Each little beam that filters 
 through the leaves is a completeness in itself, an entity, 
 a personality. Yet when incarnated in a leaf its ex- 
 pression differs from all the rest. 
 
 We are such beams from the eternal sun. We 
 come straight from the source of life and consciousness, 
 a beam bound up with others but distinct, manifest in 
 flesh. 
 
 The sunshine fell upon the lamp hung low beside 
 the window. The cut glass crystals underneath it 
 broke the golden stream into many colours. They 
 passed a shining band across the shadow and fell upon 
 the wall. He traced it with his finger, and he said : 
 ' This is the symbol of life as the East has always seen 
 it ; not as a substance, shadowy, filmy, still a substance 
 placed within our bodies, but as a beam and a force, 
 made up of many forces. 
 
 ' This is the symbol that I sought. The heavens 
 have given me what I could not find. This light that 
 comes down from the sun is the allegory of the life 
 that comes from God. It comes upon us from above, 
 and in it are many forms, as in the light are many 
 rays.' 
 
 He laid his finger on the red ray. ' Here,' he sa/d, 
 
vin RAYS OF INFINITE LIGHT 73 
 
 ' is the first we see, but there are rays beyond, dark 
 rays. These are, as it were, the blind forces that 
 built up the earth, that made the crystals in the rocks, 
 that hold the water-drops together, that make the winds 
 move to and fro. There is no light in them, no intelli- 
 gence, only force and power. So God built the world 
 with the dark rays before the higher life could come. 
 
 ' And when the world was builded, when the seas 
 were made, the mountains lifted up, the earth divided 
 from the water, He added just another tiny ray, not 
 dark this time, but with the faintest light of life. And 
 it made protoplasm from the materials gathered for it. 
 So rose the humbler forms of vegetable life. Little 
 by little the ray grew brighter and the life increased. 
 This ray it is that is the life. That is what makes the 
 sap to rise and fall, the leaf to spread, the bud to open. 
 Yet not this ray alone, but this added to all that went 
 before. For alone it could do nothing. The dark 
 rays made and keep the world, and to them light and 
 life is added. And so life broadens. So the invisible 
 merges into the visible, the brute forces into the uncon- 
 scious life. As the forms in which life is manifested 
 are made more and more perfect, so the life to be 
 shown therein is increased. 
 
 ' Then came the further rays that lie beyond the 
 visible. There came upon the world the first faint ray 
 of consciousness, of conscious life, of will, of power to 
 move and act, to do right and wrong. These put into 
 the protoplasm the life that grew up into animals. 
 The rays increased, and the increasing unconscious and 
 conscious life built up little and by little the animal 
 form to manifest itself in. Out of animals came man, 
 and man rises ever. His consciousness, his conscience 
 which is his knowledge of right and wrong, his will to 
 
74 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 do that which he sees. That is the evolution of the 
 entity of man, which is the compound of all the forces 
 from the beginning — the brute forces, the unconscious 
 life, the conscious life. He is a compound of them all, 
 and they are all in the beam that is his life. They 
 are all one, and yet they fall into three parts, with 
 three moralities, three laws, three forms of righteousness. 
 
 ' First, the blind forces, gravity and heat, expansion 
 and contraction, electricity and many another. They 
 have their laws, which laws are their morality, their 
 righteousness. They cannot disobey them. They 
 never act but in one way, the way directed. Gravity 
 cannot draw faster or slower, light cannot pass whither it 
 would, the crystal forms ever in one fixed way. They 
 have no life and they endure, but do not grow or change. 
 
 ' Then came the unconscious life of plants who have 
 a right and wrong, for they may live and spread or 
 else disappear. They may grow and become a fuller 
 manifestation or they may cease to be. As they adapt 
 themselves to the world about them, as they fortify 
 themselves by strength and beauty and usefulness, so 
 they have immortality. Yet it would seem they have 
 no conscious life, only unconscious. 
 
 ' With the conscious life there came a conscience, 
 a steady growing knowledge of right and wroqg, a 
 steady growing will to do that which is right, a steady 
 growing control over the lower forces. That is our 
 soul. From the first beginnings in the earliest years 
 our souls have grown as our bodies have developed in 
 one stream, and the life in them ; and the soul that 
 is added to the life has increased. 
 
 ' The knowledge of right and wrong which we recog- 
 nise in animals has become ever more clear, the will 
 to do that which we see proportionate to our knowledge 
 
vni RAYS OF INFINITE LIGHT 7S 
 
 grows with it, our power to enforce our will grows also. 
 The lesser rays have found little by little their master. 
 The soul rules. As yet his control is slight because 
 his knowledge still is slight. Knowledge comes first, 
 control later. So is man now a beam of life manifested 
 in a body it has built. 
 
 ' And that is how the East sees the world. 
 
 ' How easy now is the belief in transmigration. The 
 increasing life and soul has built itself up by slow 
 degrees a form to show itself in. The imperfect beam 
 showed in the animal, the higher in the man, still the 
 same beam only with additions. It is an evolution 
 of the soul manifested in an evolution of the body. And 
 evolution acts both ways. < 
 
 ' As the life of man has arisen from that of animals 
 by the addition of a moral consciousness, so if in 
 successive lives that consciousness, that soul be not 
 cultivated and followed, we may fall back again. The 
 higher ray may fade and the beam become again the 
 same as that the beasts have. So the life of man has 
 been in animals and may be so again. 
 
 ' That is the underlying faith of all the East, that 
 is their view of life. Man's soul, his life is not a kernel 
 made fresh at birth and which in death is liberated 
 and banished from the world. It has existed always 
 and has won its way upwards. It is not an inherent 
 quality of certain forms of matter as science would 
 seem to tell us, it is a force that comes from God and 
 manifests itself in matter. 
 
 ' We are the products of an evolution. Yes. Not 
 our bodies only but our souls. As our bodies grew 
 fitter to incarnate the greater life, so the life was added 
 from above. And our powers have grown, governed 
 not by blind forces but by life direct from an Intelli- 
 
y6 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 gence who gave them their work to do, told them how 
 to progress. And such intelligence as we may have 
 is not the product of unintelligence acting in unintelli- 
 gent matter, but a ray from the Divine. 
 
 ' That is what the East believes and always has 
 believed. It expressed it in its own dim way, but it 
 understood always what it meant The evolution of 
 the scientific man which staggered the Churches of the 
 West means only to the East that by great work and 
 great research, through infinite weariness and trouble, 
 the wise men of the West have learnt a little of what 
 the East has always known. It is what the East 
 believes, not only the Buddhistic East but all religions. 
 It is the conception^ on which all are founded. It 
 comes out clearly in them all whenever you go below 
 the image to that which is within. 
 
 ' Surely,' the man said to himself, ' I have the key. 
 I see as they do. I see at last the world as the East 
 has always done as the incarnation of God, not of all 
 God but of some rays from His infinite glory.' 
 
 He turned and through his window gazed upon the 
 world without. He saw the fields clothed with green 
 garments ; he saw the palms in stately columns stand. 
 He saw the flowing river, and the hills a dream in the 
 far distance ; he saw the living light that flooded all 
 this world. 
 
 And looking thus it took a new meaning to him. 
 It had been always beautiful, he had always felt his 
 heart come to his lips in looking on it. Now it was 
 different ; not less beautiful but more, not less happy 
 but happier. For it had a soul. He felt in it the life 
 of all the world, of all that has been, all that is and 
 will be. It was the expression of the Will of God. 
 
vm RAYS OF INFINITE LIGHT 77 
 
 For a long while he stayed so. Then he turned 
 and threw the spectrum on the mat again. 
 
 ' Still,' he said, ' I have my symbol and it has 
 meaning yet. I will follow it to the end. 
 
 ' So far have we come, what of the rest ? What of 
 the future ? This beam is finite. We pass into the 
 last bright colour, and there are invisible rays and then 
 an end. But the beam of life is infinite. Yet, as we 
 progress, as we add ray to ray, so we come nearer to 
 the whole. As Knowledge increases so does Will to 
 will it, so does Power to do it. Until in the infinite 
 future Knowledge and Will and Power are one. 
 
 ' And again, we must not forget that we rise, not by 
 rejecting the lower forces but by keeping them and 
 adding to them. The Higher cannot exist alone. 
 For the great white light consists of all the rays. Not 
 of the brightest only, but of all, visible and invisible. 
 
 ' The highest life is not a part but a whole, it does 
 not ignore the world but includes it. The Truth is 
 made up of all the truths. 
 
 ' How came the East to this conception ? Did men 
 work it out long ago, arguing back from effects to 
 causes ? They might do so. In no way can many 
 phenomena of the life be explained except by some 
 such theory of what life is. Perhaps the great thinkers, 
 the simple-minded of the simple East worked back in 
 some such manner. This must be partly true, because 
 only the clever-minded see it quite so. Or was there 
 in all of them instinctively a recognition that life is 
 from without ? This also must be true, because not 
 only to the thinker but to the peasant the faiths built 
 on this conception appear true. It may be that there 
 is in all the same instinctive understanding that comes 
 
78 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. viii 
 
 with the life itself, but only the thinkers fully recog- 
 nise it. 
 
 ' Both are true. Instinct has been tested against 
 fact, to see if one contradicts the other. If the only 
 way to explain facts is by the key of their instinct, 
 then is the instinct true. But if the instinct be true, 
 it must explain the facts of life. Does it do so? 
 They say it does. Well, I will try as best I can. I 
 will take it into the life about me and see if it gives 
 an explanation. In all essentials life here is the same 
 as elsewhere in the world, East or West. Men are 
 born and grow up, work and play, suffer and are happy, 
 and at last die, just as do all men. All life is one, and 
 whatever helps to explain life here, will help to explain 
 it everywhere. 
 
 ' But I must remember this. It is but a symbol 
 this of the light. It is a simile and must not be pushed 
 too far. It may have truth, but at best can have but 
 a side of truth. If it contains a little, that will be all 
 it can. 
 
 ' Western science to explain phenomena of forces 
 uses a symbol it has invented, that of the ether. It 
 does not know that there is ether, it does not under- 
 stand how there could possibly be an ether, or how 
 it could have properties. And yet it uses it as a 
 symbol till it can see more clearly. Such is the symbol 
 of the ray.' 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 A WINDOW ON ETERNITY 
 
 It was the evening and he sat beside the river. Down 
 the long reach the sunset made a glory. Gold faded 
 into red, red into pink that throbbed with the last life 
 of the dying day. Light clouds swam into sudden 
 gorgeousness and glowed like fairy islands on an 
 emerald sea. The flush spread across the sky till even 
 the eastern mountains veiled themselves in colour. 
 
 And ever into the sunset's heart the river flowed. 
 The cattle came down to the drinking-places and stood 
 knee-deep gazing far away. The dust they had raised 
 hung like a crimson pall upon the bank ; for the winds 
 were dead, stilled in day's agony. 
 
 Some children played and bathed and laughed. 
 Their brown, wet bodies caught the glow and turned 
 from bronze to gold. Their laughter thrilled in the 
 still air. 
 
 Girls came and drew their household water. Like 
 the cattle they waded into the stream, which made 
 curved ripples round them, their shadows stretched 
 far up. 
 
 They passed away ; the sunset faded, the light was 
 gone, and only a tender glow suffused the world. The 
 river turned to steel. 
 
 79 
 
80 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 A boy came out of the village gate and passed 
 along the bank. He moved slowly, loiteringly, looking 
 out into the night. Sometimes he broke into a snatch 
 of song suddenly stilled again. He sat down on a 
 rock beside the river, but his back was turned to it. 
 He looked back at the path on which he had come 
 with bright, expectant eyes. Presently the watcher 
 became aware that some one else was coming down the 
 path. He heard a leaf rustle, a branch was put aside. 
 The boy heard it too, and his attitude became tenser. 
 He stretched forth his arms with a little unconscious 
 gesture and withdrew them. The newcomer came 
 along uncertainly. Somewhere the footsteps ceased, 
 and in the strained stillness a soft breathing could be 
 heard ; then she moved on. And the boy rising 
 listened, called a name and stepped forward. 
 
 A girl came out of the oleander bushes and 
 they met. 
 
 He put his arm about her and drew her forward. 
 For a moment they stood side by side and looked to 
 where far off the last flames of the sunset burned ; and 
 then he took her hand. They moved along the river. 
 They passed as in a dream, faces downturned ; their 
 .fingers lightly held. 
 
 Yet they were not alone. With them there passed 
 the two eternities, all the years that have ever been 
 and all the years to come. 
 
 ' I made her for thee,' said the Past, whispering into 
 his ear. ' I made her for thee, shaping her through all 
 my years that thou mtghtest love her. Have I done 
 well ? Is her cheek soft ? Her eyes, are not they 
 bright ? ' 
 
 The boy laughed and looked. 
 
 ' Go to him/ said the Future in her ear. * Go to 
 
ix A WINDOW ON ETERNITY 81 
 
 thy husband. All my years that are to come are 
 empty of delight. It is for thee and thine to help to 
 fill them. They need his strength, thy beauty.' 
 
 She listened and she drew nearer to his side. 
 
 The boy stopped and turned his face to hers, and 
 in his eyes were thoughts he could not utter, those 
 thoughts that have no words. 
 
 He leant against her and heart beat to heart. 
 
 The night bent down and listened, the moving 
 branches stayed, a wandering wind caught on a palm 
 and held its wings in stillness. The river spirit pressed 
 his finger to his lips. They listened to the song of all 
 the world. Love touched the heartstrings, and they 
 trembled. From their trembling came the music to 
 which all life is lived, the song of immortality. 
 
 He drew her and they passed slowly along the 
 river brink and out of sight. 
 
 Love ? What is love ? Let us consider it. 
 
 What was the boy before it came to him ? He 
 lived a narrow life within a very narrow world. He 
 had his duties to himself, to find food and clothing and 
 material things to keep himself alive and happy. He 
 worked that he might gain, he sowed that he himself 
 might reap. The rays of life that were in him brought 
 him no other righteousness but this : ' Care for thyself; 
 make thyself happy, strong, and free. The world is 
 thine as far as thou canst make it so, to take, to use, to 
 throw away. Remember thy future rests upon thyself 
 alone. If thou art weak thou failest, if thou art brave 
 and clever, success will come to thee. But remember 
 there is a limit. To be too brave and die, what use 
 were there in that? Death is the end. Keep it far 
 from thee. It is a fear, a barrier beyond which thou 
 
 G 
 
82 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 canst not see. Make the best of life, for it is very short 
 and no one knows what is beyond. Thou art thyself a 
 God unto thyself, to worship and to serve. There is 
 one unfailing test to apply to all things. Will it 
 advantage thee ? then it is good ; if not, then it is evil.' 
 • Such was he, was she, an hour ago before the 
 village gate had closed behind them. True, they had 
 heard of other duties then, heard but had not under- 
 stood. The words had passed them, idle- words that 
 woke no response. Duty to wife and child, to village, 
 to country, what were such things ? They had not 
 felt them. They were as strange as stories of light 
 and colour to those who are born blind ; and for the 
 future, surely next week was far enough to look. 
 
 And now what has come to them ? To their stream 
 of life has been added the rose-red ray of love, and it 
 has changed the whole world for them. Their lives 
 are broader, deeper, stronger, their pulses move in other 
 fashion. They have ' a mystery in their heads, and in 
 their hearts a flame.' The old life is not altered, it is 
 still there, the old righteousness still persists, is true. 
 But there is an added life, and with it a righteousness 
 that sometimes confirms, sometimes denies the one 
 which went before. Each has still the duty to himself 
 to keep alive, to be strong and happy, and well-doing, 
 a duty felt all the more keenly because any failure 
 would fall on two. The result of his own errors, his 
 idleness, or foolishness he can bear easily ; that now 
 another should also suffer makes them more bitter, 
 more to be avoided. For the sake of the wider self 
 into which he is now drawn he must be now more 
 careful of the narrower self. He must work harder, 
 suffer more, obtain more, exercise an even narrower 
 selfishness than he did before. The present intensifies 
 
ix A WINDOW ON ETERNITY 83 
 
 the past — and then denies it. He must remember self 
 and also must forget. His pleasure was sweet to him, 
 he may be called upon to give it up. He must affront 
 suffering that before he would avoid. He may not run, 
 because others cannot run with him. It may be that 
 he must die that his family, his wife and child may live. 
 To justify this righteousness which he must obey is 
 given to him an immortality. If he should ask, ' Why 
 should I sow ? I cannot reap ' ; to him is answered, 
 ' Yourself persisting in your sons will reap.' If he should 
 ask, ' Why should I die ? Why should I give myself to 
 forgetfulness and death ? ' is answered, ' That your 
 greater self may live.' Love has come down and 
 drawn two units into one, and made that unit but a 
 link in the long chain that reaches from the beginning 
 to the end. 
 
 The life they had before stopped at their indi- 
 viduality. The greater life they have now is that of all 
 the ages. ' Thy children shall endure, and as thou 
 now and they after thee observe the righteousness that 
 is given to thee and them, so shall they prosper. The 
 children reap that which the parents sow. 
 
 The life that was before, this life which is added to 
 it comes from without. They are the unconscious life. 
 We live because life is put into us, not because we wish 
 to, or because we will to do so ; our emotions that are 
 our life come to us unconsciously, unbidden, and with 
 them the righteousness proper to them. With life 
 comes the desire to live, to protect the life that is in 
 it, to cultivate it, to give it all it needs ; when love is 
 added it brings with it the instinctive desire to protect 
 the other members of the family, the knowledge that 
 individual self must be subordinate to them. The wolf, 
 the deer, the human parent suffer and die willingly, 
 
84 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 gladly for their young, that these latter may endure. 
 They do not think it out, the righteousness comes 
 unbidden. It is the law to which love is subordinate, 
 within whose limits it moves. 
 
 The immortality that love gives is the continuance 
 of the unconscious life, on which alone conscious life 
 can be built. Our children inherit from us their bodies 
 with all that they mean of good or evil. Their weakness 
 or their strength, their beauty or their ugliness, their 
 quick or languid passions are an inheritance. As we 
 have done well to our bodies so will our children 
 benefit, as we have done evil so will they suffer. As 
 we have made our names of good or evil savour to the 
 world so will our children's be. Wealth or poverty, 
 honour or contumely, health or sickness, all the products 
 and the results of our bodily life we have inherited ; and 
 modified by our actions we again transmit. But the 
 Soul, the Will, the Conscience, which is the accumulated 
 knowledge of good and evil, that is our Personality, 
 that is ours always. The soul that is in our children is 
 not our soul — as their body is — their life is — has not 
 come from us. It is their own enduring possession. 
 The expression of their Souls is limited by the capacity 
 of the bodies we hand down : they may be good lamps 
 that give clear light, they may be dull, imperfect 
 ones. But the Soul that is in them is not ours. The 
 Personality of the Soul is constant from the first faint 
 ray of it. It grows or fades. It inherits from incarna- 
 tion to incarnation the result of its previous existence : 
 the Will, the Consciousness, the Conscience, increase or 
 fade again. 
 
 It is dependent on life for its manifestations ; when 
 later the rays of conscious life and will are added, when 
 the Soul begins to grow, the conscious life attempts to 
 
ix A WINDOW ON ETERNITY 85 
 
 understand the unconscious. It observes and notes 
 the laws to which it is subordinate. It attempts to 
 understand those laws, to co-ordinate them with other 
 laws that knowledge may decide what restraint or help 
 to give the unconscious desire. The Soul is Knowledge 
 and Will. But power is of the unconscious life. The 
 Soul could never exist alone ; it has no power, it could 
 do nothing ; it is as a helmsman added to a full- 
 powered ship to direct its course. The force which 
 drives the ship is in the unconscious steam or winds. 
 As life grows and becomes more complex, containing 
 more forces, they act in different ways. The helmsman 
 has to decide which in each case is the course to follow. 
 But alone he could do nothing. 
 
 The perfect Beam of Light contains absolute Know- 
 edge, absolute Will, absolute Power to do what will 
 dictates. But the Power belongs to the unconscious 
 forces. 
 
 This life which lives through love, though unconscious, 
 is divine. It has formed the basis on which religions 
 have all been built. This Divinity of love is the first 
 God, its laws are the first morality, children are the 
 first Immortality. 
 
 To the Greeks and Romans, who were the earliest 
 gods, Zeus, Saturn, Aphrodite, Jupiter, Venus, Mars ? 
 Not so. The gods of hearth and home, of family, the 
 Lares and Penates. They were the foundation, their 
 recognition and their service were the base of all the 
 Grecian glory, all the Roman grandeur. What does 
 it matter what you think about the heaven or earth 
 compared with what you know of yourself and your 
 life and that which proceeds from you ? 
 
 Hinduism, Judaism, Shintoism are great faiths 
 built on the same foundation. What immortality 
 
86 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 knew Abraham or Isaac, save of children? What 
 morality save that which love brings ? The Hindu 
 who dies without a son goes to limbq, to that hell 
 which is oblivion and forgetfulness. And Shintoism, 
 greatest of all the family cults, whose expression is 
 Bushido, whose justification lies upon Manchurian 
 battlefields. But expressed or unexpressed, it is the 
 beginning on which all faith is built. The life comes 
 first, the soul later ; so far as we may see, the soul's rays 
 come always after those of life, are superposed upon 
 them. Therefore must the religion of life come before 
 that of soul. It is its base, its safety and its sanity. 
 One love springs from another. 
 
 This is the Hinduism that Buddhism was built 
 upon twenty-five centuries ago. It existed then a pure 
 and simple faith, a recognition of the divinity of life 
 and love, of the morality that is their law, of the 
 desirableness of children. 
 
 Now think of it another way. How are our bodies 
 built but by attraction of particle to particle making 
 one whole? The little corpuscles of the blood have 
 life of their own, they live, they move, they act, but 
 they are one with the greater life of the whole. So 
 is it in continuing sequence, in an increasing purpose. 
 There comes from heaven a greater and a greater 
 force that draws particles into greater wholes. The 
 individual man and woman have a narrow present and 
 a swift-coming end. But love comes like an electric 
 force making them magnets each to each, drawing 
 them into one whole, giving them all the future. 
 Units are sand, love makes of them a never-ending 
 strand. So also with the later loves. A later force 
 draws families into communities, communities into 
 nations, and nations into humanity. Peoples and 
 
ix A WINDOW ON ETERNITY 87 
 
 nations are not built from individuals but from families. 
 Can you make ropes of sand ? Well, some have tried, 
 but where have they succeeded ? 
 
 It is an old saying through all the world that Love 
 is what makes the world, what gives it Immortality, 
 that God is love. Now with this symbol of the beam 
 we can see how in reality this must be so. Life and 
 soul are increasing rays that attract and bind the 
 lower entities into ever greater forms. If they should 
 cease, then should we fall apart and become as the 
 formless ooze again. We grow by being increasing 
 aggregates. We rise as pyramids rise from below ; and 
 the higher the pinnacle the firmer and deeper must be 
 the base. 
 
 Whatever more the Soul may have to give us, it 
 cannot deny the life, the love that builds the body. 
 Those who would do so are like the man who climbed 
 a tree and then in order to climb higher, vexed at the 
 branch that seemed to stop his upward flight, cut it 
 away to render himself free to soar into the heavens. 
 He fell, and learned too late that the tree held him up, 
 not down. 
 
 What a wonderful thing is love. It is the base not 
 only of all religions, but of all happiness, all beauty. 
 
 Take love from out the world and search to find 
 what has become of Literature and Art and Music ? 
 They may contain other things as well, but at the base 
 is love. All higher emotions of our life rise from it, 
 the love that gathers man and woman into one organism, 
 that weaves the threads of families into the ropes of 
 nations. In it are all the glories and truth of sacrifice 
 and duty, of honour and of courage. Even the soul 
 finds alone in love an image to express its meaning. 
 
88 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. ix 
 
 We live and love because our parents did so. The 
 world exists because it loved. And love it is that 
 holds the secret of immortality. It was love's hand that 
 opened first a window on eternity. 
 
 The night was fully come. The heavens were dark 
 yet full of stars, and from them fell a lustre that filled 
 all space. Along the banks were lit fires that glowed 
 and sent red trails across the water. The earth was 
 not dead but sleeping, and breathed lightly in her sleep. 
 
 There was a movement down below. The lovers 
 came slowly passing home. They moved in unison, 
 their hands hung idly but their shoulders touched. 
 Love held them in a dream. They were in a new 
 world full of new thoughts, new hopes, new strength, 
 new weakness. They knew not why. Suddenly it 
 had come, unheralded, unearned, a free gift of heaven. 
 
 They love, and because they love the centuries yet 
 unborn shall know them. They will inherit. 
 
 They disappeared, and a minute later the gateway 
 clanged. 
 
 Adown the river came a boat soft sliding on the 
 flood. A light burned in her bows and burned again 
 within the ebon water ; and a voice gave forth a love- 
 song to the night 
 
 The music rose and fell, passionate, sweet and true. 
 It thrilled from the heart. The unseen singer sang 
 the song of all the worlds, the Song of Songs. It 
 filled the night with music. 
 
 The stream flowed on and bore the boat and singer 
 out of sight. 
 
 Again a silence. 
 
 And far away a monastery gong rang silver sweet 
 across the night. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 ONE TIME, ONE TRUTH 
 
 It was the middle of the hot weather. 
 
 The crops were reaped, the fields lay bare and brown 
 and desolate. A hot wind blew that burnt the life 
 from blade and leaf, that stripped the trees and drove 
 the dead, brown leaves in whirlwinds to and fro. The 
 streams were all dried up, and even the great river 
 shrank between broad banks of sand. A grey haze 
 filled the air and hid the distance. Day after day, the 
 sun rose up a rayless crimson ball, climbed higher and 
 became a blazing, pitiless tyrant in the cloudless heavens, 
 and sunk again into the haze. All nature gasped and 
 fainted and had rest. Then was the time of leisure 
 and of festival. There was no field work, waiting till 
 the showers came. So the people gathered to the 
 great pagodas and made fairs and feasts. They slept 
 by day, but were awake through the long hot nights. 
 
 Then was the Burmese New Year. It and the 
 Christians' Easter come at nearly the same time, and 
 in the Burmese tradition of the festival there is a 
 strange likeness to that of the Western story. For 
 there the Great Spirit leaves his Heaven and comes 
 down to the earth for three days and three nights, and 
 then ascends again. It were an interesting matter to 
 
 89 
 
90 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 compare the two stories. But this is a book of 
 Buddhism, and the Burmese New Year is local and not 
 concerned with Buddhist teaching. It is no doubt 
 connected with the change of the seasons, the spring of 
 the new agricultural year. For then may the earliest 
 showers be looked for. And it was a custom in the 
 Burmese times for girls to come and throw water on 
 the bachelors, and make them pay a fine — for remaining 
 bachelors, no doubt. It was a girls' festival as in Europe 
 when the maids kept May Day. Now it has died 
 away, the innocent fun and merriment. They say that 
 we have killed it by our rule. 
 
 But the pagoda festivals remain more popular than 
 ever, and there are many marriages, for there is leisure 
 now, and the reaped crops have brought in money, and 
 in the future comes the Buddhist Lent when no one 
 may wed. 
 
 The little village down below the monastery was gay 
 and happy ; for messengers had gone abroad to all the 
 neighbourhood and told how the headman's daughter 
 was to be married, and had brought the tiny parcels of 
 green tea wrapped in a leaf which are the invitations. 
 There was rumour of great preparations, of actors 
 brought from Mandalay, of well-known singers, of 
 jugglers famed through all the country-side. Festival 
 sheds of mats and palm leaves had been built, and rice 
 was boiling in great pots, and fruit stood in fragrant 
 pyramids. In the cool early morning all the lanes 
 were full of folk who came to laugh and to make merry 
 at the wedding, and the village folk went out to meet 
 the visitors and welcome them. They told them tales, 
 how the bridegroom had been caught the night before 
 and held to ransom. It is an old custom for the 
 village boys to band themselves together in a company. 
 
x ONE TIME, ONE TRUTH 91 
 
 They have a captain and they have rules. They must 
 be faithful to their company and help their companions 
 in all ways. But when one of them marries he ceases 
 to belong to the company ; for he is about to enter 
 into another and a wider life. He is to marry, to lose 
 his individuality in the organism of the family. He is 
 to enter into the village life, to be a ' household.' His 
 time of freedom and of carelessness is past, of responsi- 
 bility and work is come. He is absorbed into a greater 
 whole. He is a deserter and a traitor to his fellows. 
 
 Therefore they lay in wait for him and caught him 
 as he went home at night, and taking him without the 
 village gate, they tried him and found him guilty. 
 With mock ceremony was he condemned to be expelled 
 from out their ranks and pay a fine wherewith his 
 comrades might drown their sorrow at his desertion. 
 Then with laugh and song, to the light of torches, they 
 took him home in long procession. It is a jest maybe, 
 and yet it has its meaning. For marriage is a real 
 change. And it is not without good that this change 
 should be impressed on him who is about to make it ; 
 that he should know and realise that he has entered 
 into a new phase of life. 
 
 With the girl there is no such ceremony. She 
 belongs always to her family, and the change for her 
 though not less real, is not so much from individualism 
 to community as from one family to another. All day 
 the festival went on, and in the late afternoon the young 
 folk were married. 
 
 There was a signal and the music ceased, and from 
 out of an inner room the boy came forth and sat upon 
 a mat prepared for him. The girl was brought and 
 placed beside him, and together, shy, and yet glad, they 
 faced the company. And now, how were they to be 
 
92 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 married ? Who was to tie the knot that fastened the 
 strands of their lives into one cord ? What was to 
 mark the change ? In law nothing more is necessary 
 than that they should eat together before witnesses and 
 declare themselves as man and wife. A word, a gesture 
 would suffice in law. And yet, can it be good to pass 
 thus from one state to another without solemnity and 
 thought? Can it be that marriage, which is the 
 foundation stone on which is built all life, should be as 
 unregarded as the buying of a farm ? Religion, all is 
 built on it, and has religion then no part in it ? Within 
 the monastery are many monks, will none come down 
 to sanctify this union ? It seemed as if their duty 
 called to them. That very morning had they not come 
 in long procession to receive the presents that the 
 parents gave, thanksgiving offerings for the happiness 
 that was come to the children ? Gave they no return ? 
 
 But no. Upon their hill they sat apart and thought 
 far other thoughts. Marriage was no affair of theirs, 
 they could not come. Sometimes a village elder joins 
 the hands, sometimes the bride's father, and sometimes 
 another. 
 
 Silently one came from out the press and stood before 
 the people, then he turned and sat him down before 
 the boy and girl. There could not be a greater contrast 
 than he made to all surrounding him. His face was 
 long and lean and very dark amidst a throng of round, 
 brown, merry faces. His was the face of those peoples 
 whose memories are very long, who are very old, full 
 of retrospection, of thought, of finesse, of dream. Theirs 
 were simple as a child's. His garb was white, but 
 bride and bridegroom, parents and guests were clad 
 in gayest colours. This was a Burmese marriage in 
 a Burmese village and the priest was Indian. A 
 
x ONE TIME, ONE TRUTH 93 
 
 marriage among Buddhists firmly holding to their faith 
 — and he who married them a Brahmin. 
 
 It was the strangest contrast, one more strange 
 could hardly be imagined. For what had they in 
 common, the Hindu with the Burman, the Brahmin 
 with the Buddhist? Were they not contradictions of 
 each other in race, in custom, aspiration and in 
 faiths ? 
 
 Such the West thinks, the East knows better. 
 
 He sat before the boy and girl and took their hands 
 in his and joined them. He took a cup and poured 
 therefrom water over the joined hands. He took a 
 thread and bound the two together ; then loosening 
 their hands he bid them eat out of the same dish. 
 
 They were made one, and in few words he told 
 them what it all meant. 
 
 They were made one, no longer man stnd woman 
 but one entity. They complemented each the other, 
 strength fitted into weakness, the one succeeded where 
 the other failed. They had been parts imperfect, they 
 were now one whole. And from that unit there would 
 draw out an immortality. The years would know not 
 one, nor other, but the two together. They shared 
 this world's life henceforth and forever. 
 
 There was a deep silence. Perhaps by him and her 
 the words were hardly heard, came dimly through the 
 mist of their emotions to their consciousness. But 
 they would remember later, and in the troubles that 
 would arise, — must arise, a truth would grow from them. 
 
 But through the elder folk who listened ran a thrill 
 of recognition. They knew, they knew. A woman 
 sobbed, and so there came an end. 
 
 The sun set, a red globe behind the palms, and 
 
94 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 with the dusk there came a peace. The strain of day 
 was over, the heat, the light, the fever passed away. 
 A golden moon rose up behind the mountains. It 
 made a magic on the world, a charm of silence, and the 
 tired earth lay in waking dreams of rest. 
 
 ' My friend,' the old monk answered, ' let us recall 
 the world that was, the world to which came the Great 
 Teacher ; let us remember the life he lived and what 
 he taught. There — in these lie the answers to your 
 questions. 
 
 ' He was a prince, he was learned in all the science 
 of those days, he was a good soldier, a good ruler ; he 
 tried in all things to do as well as possible. He was 
 married and he had children. In all these matters he 
 followed the knowledge and understanding of those 
 days, he accepted the religion which was based on the 
 family and civic virtues and had its justification in 
 children and in nation. They were great and happy 
 peoples in those days in Upper India. It was there 
 that arose the beginnings of all knowledge and of all 
 religion. They were simple peoples and saw things 
 clearly. Did the Great Teacher in his after years 
 when he had found the Light ever condemn all that 
 he had learnt, all that he had done? Did he say men 
 should not be princes, rulers, soldiers, that they should 
 not make money, or seek learning? Did he speak 
 against marriage or the reward of children ? 
 
 ' He denied none of these things, for he knew that 
 in them was truth. What he sought for and he found 
 was a further truth, something added to those early 
 truths, a later truth. That was what he sought and 
 found and taught. The early truths are true, but 
 they alone are insufficient. 'As man grows in soul, 
 that soul requires its truths as his unconscious life has 
 
x ONE TIME, ONE TRUTH 95 
 
 required theirs. And the soul's truth must be sought. 
 It does not come instinctively as do the earlier truths. 
 
 ' It is this later truth that is called the faith of 
 Buddha. It is that we teach, we practise ; for we are 
 his monks, his followers from afar. 
 
 ' But not he nor we deny the earlier truths. Can a 
 pagoda spire deny its base? We know our truth is 
 true because it rests on the broad base of other lower 
 truths. We never forget that this is so. The states- 
 man, merchant, soldier, farmer, are as necessary to the 
 world as we are. The truths that come in family and 
 in national life are true as ours are. Love's Immortality, 
 that broad stream of life that passes from forever to 
 forever, is the stream on which our Immortality floats 
 down. Never believe that we think that because we 
 have a truth we think we have all truth. Never 
 believe that we think that one truth is higher or more 
 essential than another. To the pagoda every brick is 
 equally a necessity. Truth is made up of all the 
 myriad truths of life. 
 
 ' Why should we mind because the people go to 
 Hindu priests to marry them ? In the Buddha's time 
 was Hinduism. Did he oppose it, did he wish himself 
 to have the marrying of people? The Hinduism of 
 to-day is not perhaps that of two thousand five hundred 
 years ago, still it is founded on the same truths, it 
 teaches the same Immortality. It is the science of 
 the unconscious life, of the body and its virtues. 
 Marriage belongs to it, is its sacrament. In olden 
 days maybe, before you English came, marriages were 
 made by elders in the villages. That was enough 
 then. The feeling of the people recognised it as more 
 than a mere contract, an agreement, and enforced it. 
 But now the new leaven you have brought has disturbed 
 
96 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 all things. The sacredness of custom has been injured. 
 Because there was no sanction of religion our boys and 
 girls began to think marriage was but a partnership as 
 between two men, and had no other law or consequence 
 but that. Could anything be more terrible? Can 
 you wonder the older people feared for the future, 
 sought some way to impress upon their children what 
 marriage was, the forging of a link in an eternity, the 
 foundation on which rest's all righteousness, the begin- 
 ning of knowledge. 
 
 ' That truth is in their keeping not in ours. For we 
 think this. Truth is infinite, man is very finite. No 
 man can show more than one facet of the truth. He 
 will do well if he can keep that facet clear. No man 
 can do more. No man can blow both hot and cold. 
 We have one truth and no man will deny but that 
 we keep it. The other truths let others keep. 
 
 'There is a faith that is based on love and children. 
 With that faith we have no quarrel, we are sure that 
 it has truth. 
 
 ' Why should we care if the people go to the priests 
 of that ancient faith to marry them ? 
 
 ' A man can do but one thing well. Does the 
 soldier grieve, does he think less of his truths, his 
 bravery, self-denial, self-restraint, obedience, love of his 
 country, because all men are not soldiers, because 
 there are also physicians ? Does the physician interfere 
 when war has come ? Does the merchant say : " In the 
 wisdom of buying and selling lies all truth " ? When the 
 enemy threatens we go to the soldier, when we are sick 
 to the physician, when we want food to the farmer and 
 the fisherman, when we want justice to the judge. 
 
 ' Our truths are not concerned with marriage and 
 with children. We stand aloof. 
 
x ONE TIME, ONE TRUTH 97 
 
 ' But think you that we do not know ? ' 
 
 He paused, in his dim eyes there came a light. 
 
 ' I too was young. I too have loved. I felt the 
 blood run hot within my veins. I had a wife and 
 children. Do you think I do not know these things 
 are true ? 
 
 ' My wife is dead, my children are grown up. The 
 light of love is turned from me and I see other lights. 
 My earthly eyes are very dim. But I know the sun 
 still shines, that men are young, that love is true. If 
 it were not, then nothing could be true. Were that not 
 light there could be no light at all. Did that sun fade, 
 then were all the world dark and dead. All light is 
 from the sun.' 
 
 He ceased, and through the silence of the night 
 came softly floating up the music of the players. They 
 talked, they sang, and every now and then murmurs of 
 laughter and of pleasure rose from the crowded listeners. 
 Life was good, and love was true, and Truth is of all the 
 truths. There is a time to laugh, a time to weep, a time 
 to kill, a time to save alive. To each man one truth 
 at one time, truth upon truth, and in eternity the 
 Truth. 
 
 One question more he asked. 
 
 ' Do you not fear that if your people take to Brahmin 
 priests to marry them they may in time go to them for 
 other matters and forget you ? ' 
 
 The old monk shook his head. ' Is the physician's 
 truth less true and less acknowledged because men do 
 not go to him to help them till their fields or weave 
 their cloth or defend their homes ? Would it make his 
 truth greater if he were to attempt to meddle with 
 everything? It would but bring derision on him and 
 scorn. For now two thousand and five hundred years 
 
 H 
 
98 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 have we kept our truth. Are we less honoured because 
 we have not tried to make ourselves rulers and arbiters 
 in all affairs of men ? 
 
 ' Where Buddhism has fallen into disrepute what has 
 been the reason ? Always the same, because its monks 
 tried to be all things to all men, and so became nothing 
 to any one, even to themselves. 
 
 ' But where they have kept their truth they have 
 reaped honour and their truth has lived.' 
 
 The man knew that this was true. Nothing could 
 be more true than this. To acknowledge all truths, to 
 keep one ; no man can do more, and it is given to very 
 few to do as much. 
 
 The monk rose, yet ere he went he raised his hand 
 and pointed. ' We do not forget,' he said. ' We have 
 remembrance of that first immortality on which ours 
 lives.' 
 
 He passed away and the man looked silently 
 remembering. A giant post rose long, slender, and 
 straight, and on its summit raised above the palms a 
 great bird glittered. The moonlight trembled on the 
 gold and silver of his feathers till he seemed almost a 
 living creature poised against the night. 
 
 All night along the river banks the feeding shel- 
 drakes cry, mate unto mate, across the dark. ' Chakwi 
 where art thou ? ' and her answer ' Chakwa I come.' 
 All day they sit together side by side, or fly in pairs 
 along the river's edge. Life never parts them, and to 
 death they go together. When one dies then the other 
 follows. If you kill one, then must you shoot the other 
 too from very pity, for it will not leave its partner. 
 
 Through all the East they are the emblem and the 
 symbol of married love. 
 
 And so by every monastery you see the post, the 
 
x ONE TIME, ONE TRUTH 99 
 
 bird upon its summit and the streamers that the winds 
 blow to and fro. 
 
 One love rests on another, one immortality upon 
 another. Though man can follow but one at one time, 
 he should remember all. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 LIFE THAT GROWS EVER WIDER 
 
 So they were married and in a little house beside the 
 palms they began their new life, they began to learn 
 the first lesson of their personality. In that organism 
 which is the family they found that each had duties, 
 virtues, rights, and weaknesses. They were as eye 
 and ear, they were as head and body. But which in 
 each case directed and which acted depended on the 
 circumstance. Were it a village matter wherein his 
 nature and his work gave him aptitude and strength, 
 he acted — for them both. Were it a household matter, 
 she acted, or she bade him act for both. Sometimes 
 he was the brain, and sometimes she. Sometimes he 
 was the hand, and sometimes she. They were not 
 enemies, competitors, rivals striving for supremacy. 
 Does the eye despise the hand because it cannot see ? 
 Does the hand contemn the eye because it cannot 
 strike? Each had its duty, and if to the outer world 
 of village and government he represented both, to that 
 inner world of the household god it was she who spoke 
 for both. She was the priestess there. Upon the 
 niches he placed the flowers and leaves that the god 
 of love, of home, of children might never forget them. 
 That was her cult, her knowledge, her religion, for both 
 
ch. xi EVER WIDER 101 
 
 of them. For the relationship of man and woman in 
 marriage differs nowhere and at no time. They are 
 one unit. The circumstances of life may call for 
 varied activities in that unit, may to the careless 
 observer sometimes make the husband sometimes the 
 wife the more important, but in fact it is never so. 
 The relationship is constant, never varied in essentials ; 
 savage or decadent it is always the same. It is the 
 relationship of heart and brain. Whether a man earns 
 his living by digging in the earth or by writing at a 
 desk the relationship of heart and brain do not vary. 
 And whether the family be savage or civilised, the 
 essential relationship of man and woman do not 
 change. They are not a mechanical mixture but a 
 chemical fusion. 
 
 And what they learn is this. No matter how 
 strong the man be, how able, how active, he alone can 
 never be complete. However beautiful the woman, full 
 of all womanly graces and virtues, she too can never 
 be complete. The better, stronger each may be, the 
 more completely does each realise that a personality 
 is but a part This ' I ' we are so proud of, this ' I ' 
 which seems to us so essential, so full of potentialities, 
 has in fact alone no ' potentiality at all. It can but 
 show a few of the infinite possibilities, it can but 
 manifest one ray of an infinite spectrum. And this 
 ' I ' which we think has endured and will endure, nay 
 must endure for ever, can of itself remain but a very 
 short time. It is dependent on its fusion with another 
 ' I ' for its continuance. It is not man that lives, it is 
 not woman that persists in children, it is the organism 
 which is made up of both. This is the beginning of 
 that essential truth that lies below the Buddhist view 
 of the universe that the unit is not a man, a woman, 
 
io2 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 a family, a nation, a world ; not matter, life, or soul ; it 
 is the Universe, it is Infinity. All the innumerable 
 ' I's ' of every form of life are but fractions of that Unit 
 and must be joined to make One. 
 
 So begins the lesson that we can read in life. Man 
 the individual, woman the individual, what can they 
 effect? At best so little it can hardly be perceived. 
 How long their life? A few years in infinity. But 
 joined and their potentiality is not merely doubled, 
 far more than that ; and their seed endures. The ' I ' 
 can only be continued by being merged in ' we.' 
 
 So it continues. The household, man and wife, 
 how slight, how frail, an accident may end them and 
 their children. But with their marriage they are drawn 
 into the wider current of the village life. 
 
 It was not always so with men. At first in the far 
 days when men emerged slowly from the lower forms 
 the family alone obtained. But as men grew there 
 came from heaven another force, another love. As 
 the first love drew man and woman into one and made 
 the family, so the second love drew families together 
 into communities. It comes from heaven, it is another 
 ray. Think you that it is from within, that men 
 reason themselves together? No more does a man 
 reason himself into love of a woman, than the family 
 reasons itself into that feeling of community with its 
 neighbours, of identity with them that makes the village. 
 It is a force that comes when men are fit to manifest it; it 
 makes magnets of the lesser parts and draws them into a 
 greater. It is the analogy of the love of men and women. 
 It is as great, as true, as independent of all thought. 
 
 And like the earlier love it brings with it a righteous- 
 ness that is its law, and as its justification it offers an 
 extended vision towards eternity. 
 
xi EVER WIDER 103 
 
 What are its laws ? What are men's duties to their 
 village ? As a man feels towards his family, so does 
 the family to the community? A father or mother 
 will suffer and will die to save their children willingly, 
 gladly, if necessity arise ; the family will suffer and will 
 die to save the village. Because they think it right? 
 Not so ; because the love that has come to them makes 
 • them do so, whispers in their ear, ' You must, you must ; 
 it is my law, my righteousness.' 
 
 And for justification of this law, this righteousness, 
 there is another stronger, wider Immortality. What 
 a man does for his children is repaid not to him but 
 them, what is done for a community is paid to the 
 community. Not to the little ' I ' but the greater ' I.' 
 A man may not see or understand, but that is what 
 love does and says. And if we cannot see or under- 
 stand how a man profit should he and his family perish 
 for his community, it is because we do not understand 
 what life is. We think of it as an unit — ' I ' am ' I,' 
 and ' I ' exist alone for ever. But all the loves, all these 
 forces that come to us direct from the immensity, say 
 No ! Life is a stream. The unit is Infinity. And 
 the ' I ' can persist only by merging itself ever into 
 greater ' I's.' 
 
 Men believe it, because they obey what love tells 
 them ; they are sure its laws are right, although they 
 know not why and cannot understand the justification. 
 
 ' We wonder,' they told him, ' often at two things 
 in you. It seems to us that you have so little of that 
 family affection that is so strong in us. You come out 
 here so far from your own people, from your parents 
 and all your kinsfolk, from your village, your town. 
 You leave them all behind, you do not care ; even you 
 
io4 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 are glad. We could not do that. Our hearts are one 
 with our people, our kin ; we would do anything to 
 help them. And our bodies are one with the trees, 
 the streams, the fields whose fruits have nourished us 
 and made our limbs. We love our village, and its 
 customs, its ways, for they are ourselves. When we 
 go away, as we have to go often to the lower country 
 to the rich fields there, we are never happy till we 
 return. A man hopes always that he will come back 
 soon, dreams of it ; he feels as if there were a cord 
 that drew him. He thinks that nowhere in the world 
 does the sun shine as it does in his home, nowhere are 
 the palms so high, the flowers so sweet ; nowhere are 
 there men and girls like those who live within its 
 boundaries. If he inherit but a patch of land too small 
 to live on, too small even to let sometimes, he will not 
 sell it. The field is his, is part of him. We do not 
 live alone as you do, our life is part of that life that is 
 in all things in our homes. And if in a far country 
 we meet a fellow-villager, he is our brother, though no 
 kindred blood be in his veins. 
 
 ' But you, how different is it ! You leave all that is 
 yours and go away to a far country, and you live alone 
 where everything is strange to you. You live within 
 yourselves. Your family is all forgotten. You have 
 no home, no village, no community. You marry 
 sometimes and after a time your wife goes home. 
 Your children grow from childhood and you do not 
 know them. It seems to us terrible. You are like 
 fish, like stones. You do not understand so many 
 things. Our family life, our village life is as strange to 
 you as if you had been made, not born. You talk and 
 say that they are good and should be preserved, and 
 then you do your best to destroy both. You move 
 
xi EVER WIDER 105 
 
 every one of us that enters your service far away from 
 all he knows, for fear, you say, that he may show 
 favour to his kin ; you break up our villages and try 
 to alter all the organism that keeps them alive. We 
 are sure that you do not know and do not feel as we 
 do. You lack much that we have. 
 
 ' Yet you have one thing that we have not got. We 
 have been drawn into families and into small com- 
 munities, but the force that makes communities into a 
 nation has not yet come to us except in very slight 
 degree. We had our own Kings, our own Government, 
 but they were weak. The people never stood about 
 them solidly, never had much pride in them, never took 
 much notice of them. We never felt that we were all 
 one. And as the energy to draw us together was 
 almost wanting, so the righteousness it brings with it 
 never entered into us. That strong and fervent love, 
 which is patriotism, which makes a man a great King, 
 a wise minister, a brave soldier, an upright judge, never 
 came into our hearts. So our officials were weak, they 
 had not that steadfastness that comes of love of country. 
 Each man was for himself, his family, his village. He 
 thought of them and worked for them, but had no wider 
 thought. For nation he cared little, for Government 
 even less. True, it might punish or dismiss him, but 
 as long as he avoided that, he felt himself free. If he 
 received an order, he obeyed it or not just as he thought 
 most convenient and safe. He would sacrifice himself 
 even to the death for family or village, but not for 
 Government. They were master and servant, that was 
 all. With your people it is different. It is not only 
 that when you get an order you obey it, though it come 
 from so very far away — that is wonderful enough to 
 us — but you obey it willingly. You act as if it was 
 
106 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 something you wanted to do yourself, something you 
 thought of in yourself for your own advantage. You 
 understand not only what the order says but what it 
 means, almost as if you yourself had said it. You are 
 not servants who obey orders, you are as the hand or 
 foot that acts as the brain designs. You live here 
 widely separated, many thousand miles from your small 
 island, but yet you are not divided from it. You are 
 all held together by nerves in the invisible air that 
 make you one. Therefore your Government is you, 
 not your master, your teacher, your commander, but 
 yourself. You feel as we do about our family and our 
 village, that it is ourselves. That is what we notice 
 and wonder at in you. When we see two or three 
 Englishmen alone governing a great district, you appear 
 to us not individuals but tiny finger-tips of a great 
 living thing whose heart and brain are far away. Yet 
 if the finger-tip be touched the whole responds. And 
 what one of you does', that is the act of, the whole. 
 Therefore you are strong, and we are weak. You will 
 suffer and die for your Government gladly because it is 
 yourself, but our officials ran away. You will not do 
 what will bring dishonour to your Government because 
 it brings dishonour to yourself. You must surely feel 
 that one life runs in all of you. And when you die 
 your soul will live still in that great current which is 
 the nation's life.' 
 
 ' Can you not learn to do what we do ; can you not 
 cultivate that sense of duty to the nation and the 
 Government you say we have ? ' he asked. 
 
 An old official laughed. 
 
 ' Does one learn such things ? Does the boy learn 
 to love the girl who is to be his wife ? Love comes to 
 him from heaven and draws the two together. Does 
 
xi EVER WIDER 107 
 
 he learn from books or teachers to love his village, his 
 fields, his neighbours? are such things of the brain or 
 memory? No, it is a vibration in his blood. It is 
 another love that comes to him and draws him to them, 
 makes his heart beat to theirs. We have two loves ; we 
 have them stronger than you have, they come to us in 
 fuller measure. But the third has not yet come. We 
 know and feel the deficiency. We see what difference 
 it makes : how you are strong because you are one, and 
 we are weak because we are many ; how you have a 
 righteousness we have not got because the energy of 
 which it is the law has not yet fallen on us. You think 
 we do not know and feel it, but we do. Some day it 
 will come to us too.' 
 
 And the man thinking over what he saw and heard 
 tried to put it clearly to himself like this : 
 
 ' It is the symbol of the rainbow still. 
 
 ' As the life of the plant was built by the addition 
 of another ray of energy to those which built the 
 crystal, as the animal life was formed by addition of 
 consciousness and volition to the forces which were in 
 the plant, as man the individual was given a brighter ray 
 of consciousness and freewill ; so he is compounded 
 into families, communities, and states by the addition of 
 still further forces which bind the component parts 
 together. 
 
 ' It is an evolution ever into higher forms, ever into 
 a higher, wider life, a broader consciousness, a more 
 extended necessity for freewill and choice. The crystal 
 and the drop of water have no consciousness and no 
 freewill. The forces that form them have laws which 
 cannot be broken, which have no exceptions. They 
 cannot disobey, their righteousness is fixed for them. 
 
 ' The trees and plants and grasses have life, they 
 
108 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 have perhaps a consciousness and a volition, though of 
 the very slightest kind. They may within very narrow 
 limits obey or disobey. Therefore they are not 
 unchangeable as is the crystal or the water. They 
 live and die, they flower or they fade ; they have 
 descendants or they have none according as they obey 
 within the very narrow limits allowed them. 
 
 ' The animals and birds have a little more life, a 
 little more of choice of evil and of good, and so man 
 has slowly evolved rising from the beast, every" new ray 
 of power bringing with it laws to be obeyed, or to be 
 disobeyed, the limits within which disobedience is 
 possible ever widening, his possibility of rise or fall 
 ever increasing. And so it is when he is gathered into 
 the higher organisms. Every new ray that is added 
 to his sum of life draws him into more and more 
 complex forms, till he becomes a State. Sometimes 
 perhaps it will draw States into a great whole called 
 humanity. 
 
 ' Thus his life-history is of the increase of the rays 
 that form it, the rays that come from heaven ; his 
 physical history is of a rise to ever more complicated 
 forms wherein to manifest the higher life ; his ethical 
 history is of the new forms of righteousness that come 
 to him, of his power of choice, of his ability to choose 
 rightly, of his will to do that which he chooses. He 
 becomes more and more the master of his destiny as 
 he is drawn into higher organisms and realises that 
 families, communities, nations are not aggregates of 
 individuals, but complete organisms with their own 
 laws of life, of growth, of righteousness. Men are the 
 blood-corpuscles in the nation's blood. 
 
 ' The love that draws men into nations is a new 
 love, a new ray that comes and makes the communities 
 
xi EVER WIDER 109 
 
 magnets to each other, that makes them into one 
 flesh. It has a righteousness like the other loves. It 
 makes a man as ashamed to fail his country as to 
 fail his family, because it is himself, his wider self. 
 Instinctively he feels it, and he dies willingly and 
 gladly to help his country. This righteousness like 
 every other has its Immortality. The nation lives, 
 endures, is strong and glorious. He dies, but it lives 
 on and he in it. This bodily manifestation disappears 
 but the life continues in other manifestations. His 
 identity goes not to a heaven or hell afar, but lives and 
 reaps what it has sown. The wind that vas his life, 
 blows and shakes the world. 
 
 ' It fades and disappears, and nations fall back into 
 that chaos of men which we call individuals. No 
 nation has endured. They have their lives and live 
 and die like men. They fail from the roots up ; they 
 fail because their bases crumble. Their history is 
 always the same. The family dies, then the com- 
 munity, last of all the nation. The pyramid becomes 
 top-heavy, the individual bricks of which it is built 
 crumble. Nations are made of communities and they 
 of families ; these last are based upon the soil. 
 
 ' If it be true that our family instinct is departing 
 from us, that we are learning to consider ourselves as 
 individuals bound into a state, then is the end not far. 
 So fell Rome, so has fallen every state. 
 
 ' But the force endures. It builds again, beginning 
 at the beginning, taking the units, the individuals, and 
 crystallising them again into new forms. Nations live 
 and die as men do, but always the stream comes from 
 the Power House to manifest itself anew. And every 
 new manifestation is a greater than the last.' 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 DAVID 
 
 It was the festival of the end of Buddhist Lent. 
 
 For three months thefe had been the time of 
 fasting, of prayer and thoughtfulness. In these- months 
 there had been no festivals, no songs, nor music in the 
 villages, no making of love, no giving nor taking in 
 marriage. For three months the heavy, enervating 
 wind from the south had blown, and the skies had 
 lowered, and the lights had faded. But now was 
 come the change. Blue skies, so blue, so blue and 
 deep and full of glory that the eyes ached to look, 
 and there were lucent shadows alive with the shimmer 
 of reflected lights, and at night a moon of gold, set in 
 a velvet firmament. It was the festival of joy, and all 
 the world made merry. In the fronts of the houses 
 were myriads of tiny lamps arranged in all manner of 
 designs, lines and circles, loops and roses, ships and 
 monasteries. From the trees hung paper lanterns, 
 like big glowing fruits, and on the hill -tops all the 
 pagodas were ringed with glittering lights. The air 
 was still and soft, and full of scents. The streets were 
 alive with people. Every one was out, dressed in gay 
 silks, moving to and fro, laughing and talking. They 
 stopped at little wayside stalls to buy their fairings, 
 
ch. xii DAVID 1 1 1 
 
 they joined their friends till from twos and threes they 
 were grown into little parties. There were men and 
 women, boys and girls, and little children, and then 
 they moved away slowly to the north towards the 
 bluff whereon the great pagoda stood. 
 
 There was the gayest sight of all. The hill-top 
 had been levelled and paved with stone, and on it was 
 built a tall pagoda. Everywhere there were lights : 
 upon the winding stairways of the hill that led to it, 
 around the platform and on the pile itself, ring after 
 ring of lights. And the crowd moved to and fro. 
 They stopped sometimes, a woman lit a candle or 
 made a little prayer — of happiness, no doubt, for all 
 were happy. Then they moved on again. A singer 
 out of sight among the trees sang to the' night. 
 
 ' Surely,' the observer thought, ' they are a happy 
 people, and surely their faith must be a happy one. 
 It does not make them weak, but makes them strong ; 
 it does not make them fear, but makes them hope. 
 This is their holy place, and all about are statues of 
 their Teacher. They do not fear to look at him 
 and smile ; he does not make them think of sin but 
 righteousness, not of the dark but of the light ; of life, 
 not suffering and death. They come to show that 
 they are glad.' 
 
 He sat and watched them from the shadow. The 
 colour and the movement and the joy made his pulses 
 move. The great moon made silver glories on the hills. 
 
 They came and went before him as he sat unseen 
 beside the giant lions, the people gay in silks and 
 muslins, and the monks in sober garb. The latter 
 passed silently with steps of dignity. Yet they were 
 happy too. 
 
 Then suddenly it seemed to him that a note jarred, 
 
U2 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 the colour seemed dimmer, there was a discord in the 
 harmony, something was strange, untrue, unreal. He 
 wondered what, and looking up he saw a man pause 
 near him. It was a monk. His robe was the same 
 the monks all wear — the yellow garment thrown across 
 leaving one shoulder bare, the shaven head was bare, 
 the feet unsandalled. Nothing in dress or manner 
 showed a difference from the many monks who paced 
 the platform. Yet he was not as they were. There 
 Was a subtle difference. 
 
 And of a sudden he perceived the monk was not 
 a Burman. He was of Europe. His bared arm and 
 shoulder, though sunburnt, showed the whiter hue of 
 colder climates, his face the sharp profile of an older 
 race. 
 
 What did he here amid an alien people ? Can a 
 man change his race, his nation ? He was the jarring 
 note. And he looked sad, was sad. The gaiety and 
 happiness and truth that lay upon the Burmese people 
 passed him by. What did he there ? 
 
 The observer turned and went away. 
 
 Towards the east the bluff fell steeply to the river. 
 There were loose stones and jutting rocks and little 
 bushes clinging to the crevices. But a path went 
 down there, winding to and fro, narrow and laborious. 
 Half way there was a resting-place, a broad slab of 
 rock some few yards square, and here he sat to rest. 
 
 Above, the lights shone and the sound of the voices 
 came like a subdued murmur ; underneath the river ran. 
 The land dreamed beneath the moon, and here and 
 there dotted across its wide expanse were tiny pyramids 
 of fire, other pagodas, other festivals. He sat and 
 gazed at it. Suddenly he was aware he was not 
 alone. Some one came climbing down, some one in 
 
xn DAVID 113 
 
 boots which rattled on the stones. No Burman surely, 
 no one wears even shoes upon the sacred hill ; none 
 would leave the festival there to come down here to 
 solitude. 
 
 The stranger emerged from behind the bushes and 
 came into the moonlight. He was dressed in European 
 dress and wore a bowler hat. He paused upon the 
 rock and the man recognised him. 
 
 ' David,' he asked, ' and is that you ? ' 
 
 The newcomer stared, then recognised the speaker. 
 
 ' Yes,' he said, ' it is I.' 
 
 ' And what do you down here away from all the 
 people, all your friends, and all the gaiety ? ' 
 
 He looked confused. Then sitting on a stone he 
 said, ' It is not my festival.' 
 
 ' No, of course not. I had forgotten. Still you are 
 here, and have been there, at the festival.' 
 
 ' I brought my sisters.' 
 
 ' Ah, and what does your father think of that — of 
 coming to this Buddhist festival ? ' 
 
 The boy, for he was little more, shrugged his 
 shoulders. 
 
 ' All their friends are there. They wanted to 
 come. They did not want to stop at home when 
 every one else amused themselves.' 
 
 ' Certainly it would be hard. And does not the 
 festival amuse you too ? ' 
 
 The boy kicked sulkily at a pebble that fell and 
 rattling down the rocks dropped into the river. 
 
 ' Yes,' he admitted, ' only ' 
 
 ' Only ? ' 
 
 ' They did not like my feet being covered,' and he 
 looked down at his European boots. ' And yet,' he 
 added, ' one cannot go without boots in English dress.' 
 
 I 
 
ii4 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 ' Do they mind ? They don't notice mine.' 
 
 ' They mind because I am a Burman. You are 
 not. I am a Burman but not a Buddhist. That 
 makes them angry. They turned me off.' 
 
 ' Your sisters are in Burmese dress ? ' 
 
 'Yes, they like it. But I could not do it. I have 
 risen above the people's dress. I am European.' 
 
 ' Well then, why come at all ? ' 
 
 The boy kicked angrily against the stones. 'Can 
 one live alone ? Can one have no friends, and see 
 everything going on and stand aside ? I would join 
 but they won't let me.' 
 
 ' Suppose you too wore Burmese dress ? ' 
 
 ' I mayn't. And if I did it would be all the same. 
 They say I am not one of them. They look at me 
 so,' and he scowled. ' If the other young men make 
 friends with me, their fathers stop them. \t does not 
 so much matter to my sisters, for they are women, 
 and besides ' 
 
 ' But what besides ? ' 
 
 ' They also light their candles at the pagoda. And 
 why not ? ' raising his voice, as if replying to some 
 inner question. ' Are they to have no husbands ? 
 Are they to live their lives alone ? ' 
 
 ' You cannot light a candle ? ' 
 
 ' They would not let me if I could. I want to go 
 to England and forget these people. But my father 
 says he cannot afford it.' 
 
 ' Do you think you would be happier there ?' 
 
 ' I should be one of them there, would I not ? ' 
 he asked wistfully. 
 
 To which was answered : — 
 
 ' Perhaps it would not be so. After all, David, one 
 belongs to one's own people. It is the first thing of 
 
xii DAVID 115 
 
 all, to be part of one's own community, to live the 
 wider life that is in our own nation. Nothing can 
 make that loss good.' 
 
 The boy did not answer. He was angry, hurt, and 
 lonely. He wanted friends, companions, the sense of 
 being part of a greater whole. Suddenly he rose and 
 went away, his footsteps echoed along the path that 
 led away from the bluff towards the turn. Fainter 
 they grew until they ceased, but up above the music 
 and the pleasant murmur sounded still. 
 
 To him, sitting there in the moonlit solitude, there 
 came thoughts of the two men — of their unlikeness in 
 all but this, that each had left his people, to find some- 
 thing outside. They seemed to him as men who 
 thinking to climb up have kicked away the ladder 
 underneath them, and wondered that they fell. How 
 can men so misread the facts of life ? 
 
 Lafcadio Hearn becoming Buddhist in Japan 
 wondered that as they grew the Japanese children 
 drifted further from him. He did not understand. 
 • He too supposed as the West have always done that 
 Buddhism is a faith apart from the facts of life. It is 
 built on the facts of life. The Japanese children 
 growing older were crystallised in the nation's whole, 
 he as a foreign body was left without. He thought 
 himself a Buddhist, and he did not know that its whole 
 strength is that it stands on other truths. How can 
 a child of Europe come into an Eastern nation's life ? 
 And if he could not, how could he be a Buddhist ? 
 For Buddhism is the wider nationality. 
 
 And this Oriental who thought because he professed 
 a Western faith that he would attain to Western virtues 
 and ideals, how could they so mislead him ? Can a 
 truth be based upon a vacancy — or on a ruin ? Hold 
 
n6 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 fast to that you have and build upon it as best you 
 can. How can you become a Buddhist by making 
 yourself a bad Englishman ? How can you be a good 
 Christian by becoming a bad Burman ? Is it a good 
 start in righteousness to be a renegade ? > 
 
 The world knows better, and the world is wise. 
 
 The unit is not a man. His soul does not, cannot 
 continue to exist alone in all its littleness and poverty. 
 To live it must be drawn into ever-widening streams of 
 life. And the true religion is not of one virtue, but 
 of all ; it includes all life. 
 
 So it has always been in all the world with every 
 faith, in fact, though not maybe in theory. Truth 
 has been stronger than a phrase, a creed, a dogma. 
 Religion includes the whole of life, it includes the 
 whole of men. Are the Buddhist monks the only men 
 who cultivate religious truth ? Is the soldier's honour 
 less religious than the monk's self-denial ? Is the tiller 
 of the fields, the graver of the silver cup employed less 
 in religious acts than those who meditate and pray ? 
 
 Not so to those who understand. / 
 
 And in this country they do understand that fact. 
 
 Their faith of Buddhism stands not apart, but is of 
 the nation's life. It is but another and a later ray of 
 light. * 
 
 Above, the music and the ring of cheerful voices 
 sounded yet. It came and went in little waves of 
 sound. The people were very happy and they were 
 one. 
 
 A sense of solitude came over him. It comes to 
 all who go to a far land, sometimes. It grows with 
 time, till it may become a sickness. It is longing for 
 one's own, that country and that people far beyond the 
 
xii DAVID 117 
 
 seas. True, across land and sea the fibres held, the 
 impulses came still. Yet he was far away and very- 
 much alone amid a strange people in a foreign land. 
 His own called to him and he could not go — not yet. 
 Sometime — not yet. An immense desire for, the cool 
 winds, the rainy skies, the misty meadows, the sounds 
 and ways and faces of his land came into his heart as 
 they sometime or another come to every one. 
 
 He moved down closer to the river and leaned and 
 listened. The waters swirled and moved, they lapped 
 against the bank. There was a stir as of a woman 
 wandering through a dream, it was the river passing 
 on drawing her silken skirts behind her. And as she 
 went she sang : — 
 
 ' Life is not many things but one ; all life is one. 
 
 ' I draw for ever from the mountains to the sea, I rise 
 for ever from the sea to fall and make new rivers. I 
 am part of the world and the spirit of all life is in me. 
 
 ' My waters have been sap within the trees, they have 
 been blood within men's veins ; they will be so again. 
 And the life that moves me, it is from the same source 
 as that which thrills the tree, that makes men's hearts 
 beat. 
 
 ' All life is one life, straight from one source. There 
 is not such a thing as solitude. No one is quite alone, 
 no one is for ever apart, there cannot be any strangers 
 in our world. Each is a portion of the whole ; we 
 come out of the same past into the same future. No 
 one can be alone.' 
 
 So sang the river, passing — passing always to the 
 sea. 
 
 Later in the night he came into the town again. 
 The people were returning home, the lights were 
 
n8 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. xii 
 
 flickering out. And from a drinking -shop where 
 gathered the refuse of the town, outcaste Hindus and 
 Mussulmans, there. came a disturbance and a noise. It 
 was a quarrel. , 
 
 Two policemen came and seized a man and led 
 him out. He was quite drunk, and swayed and 
 shouted, and as he passed the glimmer of the lamp fell 
 on a red and stupid face — the face of David. For, 
 after all, ' a man must have friends, must have 
 companions ; he cannot be alone.' 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 FATE AND FREEWILL 
 
 In these days there was a famine. 
 
 Very long ago the rolling downs that lie along the 
 further side the river had been fertile land. There had 
 been rain in plenty. The streams had flowed with 
 water that filled the tanks and fertilised the rice-fields. 
 The upper fields had waved with cotton and with pulses. 
 There had been many trees that made thick groves and 
 avenues, that yielded fruit in plenty. There had been 
 large towns and one great city, the oldest and most 
 famous seat of kings. 
 
 Then for some reason that we know nothing of, the 
 rains grew less ; not all at once but very gradually. 
 The rice-fields dwindled bit by bit until there were but 
 tiny strips here and there where it could get moisture 
 enough to grow. The streams dried up. The trees 
 began to wither, and the new-planted saplings would 
 not grow. The crops were changed. Because rice 
 would not flourish, millets were introduced that want 
 but little rain. New tanks were made to catch the 
 scanty rainfall. But despite all effort the land grew 
 more and more barren. For hundreds of square miles 
 on what were fields the thorn bush lived alone. So 
 the people became hard-pressed, and this land which 
 
 119 
 
120 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 had been the centre of population could not support 
 its villages. The people emigrated. That which had 
 been the greatest city of the whole great valley became 
 a solitude. Still there were many people left scattered 
 in little hamlets, and by diligence and thrift in ordinary 
 years they made a living. 
 
 But sometimes bad times came. One year the 
 rains were barely half even the usual small total. Next 
 year there was no rain at all. 
 
 Instead there came a hurrying wind that blew ever 
 from the south. It never stopped ; all day and night 
 it swept over the thirsty land ; it roared among the 
 palms like breakers on a coast. 
 
 The sky was blue, not the deep strong colour of the 
 winter months, but as if the wind had stretched a veil 
 between the earth and sky making the latter dull and 
 hard and dry. And there were streaks of cloud that 
 hung upon it motionless ; for the furious wind beat 
 only along the surface of the ground. In the higher 
 heavens was peace, and to the hill-tops on either side 
 the valley vapours clung and long white wreaths of 
 cloud that hardly moved. 
 
 The river rose, for on the mountains of the far north 
 the snow was melting. Steadily it swelled, covering 
 the banks of sand with tossing turbid water, overflowing 
 the lower lands and making lakes. In places the river 
 was several miles across, flowing swiftly, and the wind 
 lashed it into anger. To south and north, to east and 
 west was rain, coolness and shadow and refreshment, 
 but here was desolation mocked by an unclouded sun. 
 
 Nigh half a million people starved. 
 
 All those who could go and earn a living elsewhere 
 went away. The young men left in crowds for the 
 lower country, where they might hope to get some 
 
xin FATE AND FREEWILL 121 
 
 work ; to live and send the wherewithal to live to those 
 who stayed behind. 
 
 Those who had money left went by rail or steamer, 
 but they were few. The roads were thronged by 
 bullock-carts wherein whole families started on three 
 hundred miles of travel. Their oxen starved and died 
 and then the people walked. Those who had boats 
 put out on the great river. And some who had not a 
 penny left pulled down their huts, and from the posts 
 and planks built little rafts to which they trusted all 
 their family. Sometimes the long reaches far as eye 
 could see were dotted with these tiny rafts. The 
 current took them, but round the rocky bluffs, where 
 the wind beat back the water into waves, many fell 
 apart and drowned those who had trusted to them. 
 
 Then famine camps were provided by Government. 
 For the land cannot be left utterly destitute of 
 people. Many there are who cannot emigrate, the old, 
 infirm, women with children. There is no work to be 
 found abroad for such. And the villages must be kept 
 intact. A nucleus must remain to keep them together, 
 to herd the starving cattle, reap the scanty crops that 
 have struggled into a half life, be ready on the spot, if 
 rain come, to plough and sow once more. Roads must 
 remain open, law and order be kept, and for all this 
 some of the population must stay at home. 
 
 So there were famine camps where for a small day's 
 work, such as the weakly could perform, enough was 
 paid to live on — just enough to live on from day to day, 
 no more. And many thousands came into these camps. 
 
 It was a desolate time, a desolate land, a wilderness 
 of dust tormented by the wind. The lean cattle stood 
 about the barren fields, too weary now even to search 
 for that they could not find. There was an agony in 
 
122 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 their eyes. The half-abandoned villages held a strange 
 silence in their streets, and in the camps there was a 
 stillness. 
 
 The children played no more, life ran so poorly in 
 their veins it had no margin left. Through the warm 
 nights there was no song ; for no man wooed, and no 
 girl lay awake to listen. 
 
 Yet was it indeed a famine land ; were these a 
 people who had lost their all but life? Where was 
 the loud reproach, the fist uplifted against a heaven 
 that held no hope ? Where was the fear, the anger of 
 revulsion from a present suffering, the languor of an 
 imminent despair ? 
 
 Where were the beggars, where the lawless folk ? 
 Surely such suffering must bring forgetfulness of law, 
 of self-respect ; courage must fail sometimes ? 
 
 But no ! and though the people suffered and many 
 died, they suffered and they died in silence. And in 
 their sufferings and their death they found a victory. 
 
 And to the man who watched, it seemed the East 
 and West held colloquy. 
 
 ' You are punished,' cried the West, ' because you 
 have not energy and knowledge. You are punished 
 because you are poor, because you have not striven 
 after riches, have not piled up wealth. You suffer and 
 you die because of your own fault. You do not reap 
 because you have not sown.' 
 
 And the East made answer : ' Can we bind the 
 winds or bring the clouds upon the earth ; are we 
 rulers of the rain ? ' 
 
 The West answered : ' No. But you might save, 
 so as to prepare against that which may come. You 
 ought to pile up wealth on wealth, and then you would 
 not fear.' 
 
xin FATE AND FREEWILL 123 
 
 ' We do not fear,' the East replied. ' It is you 
 who fear. You always live in fear. You dare not 
 live from day to day. You must make piles of wealth, 
 for fear, for fear. You always look forward at a fear 
 that lives on' your horizon. We do not fear.' 
 
 ' Therefore you suffer and you die.' 
 
 ' Maybe. Are these such evils ? Every one must 
 suffer and must die sometime. Death is not the end 
 of life. And as to suffering, he only really suffers who 
 has fear. We have no fear, neither of' life nor death. 
 Our fates are written, and whatever trouble there may 
 be written, it will come. Can you rule Fate ? ' 
 
 The West cried : ' Yes. Man has freewill.' 
 
 But the East answered : ' No.' 
 
 'Come and consider,' replied the West. 'We have 
 control of Fate. We can make ourselves strong and 
 wise and so defy it. We amass wealth, so poverty 
 and hunger cannot touch us ; we learn the secrets of 
 our bodies, so that we cure their ills. These famine 
 camps, are they not organised by us ; these hospitals, 
 are they not ours ? These steamers that bring you 
 food are ours. You are so weak that without our 
 help you would die in thousands.' 
 
 ' True,' says the East, ' we owe you something ; and 
 we are not ungrateful. Yet still we think that of the 
 two maybe we have the stronger truth. You fight 
 with poverty and pain, and to a slight extent you win. 
 A famine such as this is where your truth shows 
 clearest. But life is not all famine, and even out of 
 this trouble we find gain. We learn to conquer trouble, 
 pain, and death. You run from them. You fear them, 
 so that all your lives you work and struggle that they 
 may not come to you. What is your gain? We 
 wonder if with all knowledge and all wealth you are 
 
i2 4 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 much healthier, richer than we are. For what is 
 wealth ? To have all that you want. We have that 
 always, save in a great exception like this famine, 
 because we teach ourselves that happiness lies not in 
 wealth. You never have enough, always want more. 
 You feel always poor and we feel always rich. 
 
 ' Think you that with all your science you are 
 healthier than we are ? Our sickly ones die quickly 
 and' their souls are freed. You keep yours chained. 
 You answer that you save from death. No one can save 
 from death, all you can do is to postpone it. But if 
 you do not fear it why all this trouble ? Life is eternal. 
 The body dies, the soul lives on. With all your skill 
 do you think that you are masters of your fate ? ' 
 
 ' So with your fatalism,' said the West ; ' you suffer 
 many ills you might escape, you remain weak and we 
 are strong. We rule.' 
 
 'You are unhappy, we are happy,' said the East. 
 ' You are always struggling. You think you master 
 Fate, you cannot. Only in certain things can man 
 control his destiny. But no one ever knows what 
 these things are. You pile up wealth, you never can 
 be sure it will not disappear ; you cannot tell that with 
 all your skill you will not die to-morrow. Sometimes 
 you succeed, more often you must fail. You seem to 
 us to be always trying to do things that you cannot. 
 One effort that succeeds is balanced by ten that fail. 
 And when you fail you suffer. So then all your lives 
 you are discontented, you suffer, you are afraid. 
 
 ' But we are not We think Fear is the only 
 enemy. Health and wealth and power and authority 
 they die with you. You leave them. But courage or 
 fear go with you. They are part of your soul. You 
 call us Fatalists because we are not always so anxious 
 
xm FATE AND FREEWILL 125 
 
 about our future as you are, because we have hope and 
 courage that look beyond the moment. Your view 
 ends at death but ours goes on. You want to be 
 certain of earthly matters. Yet in such things there 
 is no certainty. That which endures is Will. You 
 wish to control your bodies, we try to control our souls. 
 You cultivate fear, we hope. 
 
 ' Famines come and go, and so does pestilence and 
 war and conquerors. Only the soul lasts on. Your 
 souls grow weaker the more you shield them. You 
 become more and more afraid. Your vision grows 
 narrower and shorter day by day. You want to be 
 certain, and unless you think that you are so you will 
 not venture. Unless you think that you can see the 
 future very far ahead, that it is safe, you fear. You 
 will not have children now, because you fear for them 
 arid for yourselves. You say : " The world is hard 
 and they may sink. Our wealth is small and they 
 will want of it. We dare not face a lesser comfort." 
 You wish to be master of your fate, and unless you 
 think you are you dare not face it. You must be 
 ensured against all evil. For you feel you are not 
 strong enough to face misfortune if it come. You are 
 afraid, we are not. You do not think that to do right 
 will bring reward. We do. You are the real fatalists, 
 not we. You think that man is the sport of outward 
 things, of wealth, prosperity, and strength. But we 
 think that men rise above such things.' 
 
 The voices stopped, but the listener's thoughts went 
 on ; they seemed to say : — 
 
 ' Each of them has a truth, but one truth by itself is 
 false. Let us consider, how far have we come ? What 
 is the rule of right ? To understand we must begin 
 at the beginning. 
 
126 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 ' What is man's first duty ? It is to himself. He 
 must preserve the life that is within him, he must have 
 care of the body through which it works. He must 
 make the best of both of them by work, by pleasure, 
 to keep himself free and happy. 
 
 ' Then when love comes to him, there is a further 
 righteousness. He is not an individual only, but part 
 of a larger organism. His duty is to it also; to preserve 
 it, to make it happy, strong, prosperous, and enduring. 
 
 'The family is gathered into the web of the com- 
 munity and that into the State. With each increase 
 there comes a new righteousness. 
 
 ' Yet if each new righteousness were simply added 
 to the former ones, life would not widen and man would 
 not progress. He would have but to listen to what 
 they told him, and do their behests with firm closed 
 eyes. He would have never any doubt. Life would 
 be so simple that no one could make an error. Man 
 would remain no more than a machine obeying 
 unconscious forces. But it is not so. Every new 
 righteousness not only supplements the former ones 
 but contradicts them. Man may be called on by his 
 duty to the State to sacrifice his duties to his com- 
 munity, his family, himself. Or his duty to his family 
 may-oblige him to disobey his duty to the State. He 
 must exercise his judgment and his will. His conscious- 
 ness of what is right, his conscience, must develop. He 
 must learn to know what in each case is the right path 
 to take. > 
 
 ' Thus a man's progress higher is a series of sub- 
 ordinations of a smaller self to a higher, wider self; each 
 step is a lesson in self-denial and self-effacement. 
 Each means a progress too in the power of choice, for 
 as he rises the paths along which he may travel 
 
xin FATE AND FREEWILL 127 
 
 increase, and along each points a finger-post of duty. 
 When duties clash; which is the right one ? There is 
 no fixed answer. For he cannot say " the less must 
 give way always to the greater." That is not a truth 
 for always. States are formed of communities and 
 families, and for the State to be healthy so must be 
 the component parts. A duty to the State which 
 caused injury to the parts of which it is built would 
 ruin the State also. 
 
 ' Each case has to be judged alone, and to judge 
 aright is hard. For to this end experience and 
 teaching of the past may avail to some extent but not 
 entirely. Try how you may you cannot find always 
 precedents. For life progresses and changes ever, and 
 never is to-day what it was yesterday. Therefore 
 what was true then is not so now. And each man 
 changes also ; he differs not only from all other men 
 but from what he was himself but yesterday. There- 
 fore what might have been true for another man may 
 not be so for him, and what was true yesterday may 
 not be so to-day. 
 
 ' Man's progress therefore is in instinctive conscious- 
 ness of right, a conscience above both argument and 
 reason ; not that it contradicts them but precedes 
 them. It must be prophetic seeing into the future. 
 This conscience is developed by use, by uses ever 
 greater ; and therefore the difficulties and the truths of 
 life must always grow. As life grows wider, truth 
 grows more complex, and knowledge to choose amidst 
 conflicting truth must grow. This is the knowledge of 
 Truth amid the truths. We never see Truth whole. 
 We cannot do so. It is Infinite and we finite. But 
 as we grow into wider life we see more truths. The 
 Truth is all the truths. 
 
128 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 'So is it with Freewill and Fate. Our lives are 
 guided by Infinite Knowledge. When we have be- 
 come one with it then alone shall we be masters of 
 ourselves. But now we cannot know, we cannot tell 
 how far Freewill will carry us ; how much we have 
 control. Were Fate all powerful then should we be as 
 stones acted upon by forces that are invariable. Can 
 we have Freewill until our knowledge is perfected ? 
 Have we that knowledge ? 
 
 ' Both East and West are right and both are wrong. 
 The East has forgotten that the soul lives and must 
 live within a body. They are one. A perfect soul 
 is built within a perfect body. The West is wrong 
 because it thinks the body is all in all ; that life is short. 
 It forgets its Immortalities. 
 
 ' Such is the evolution of the soul of man. It is a 
 rising to a wider life, a higher consciousness of Truth, 
 greater Freewill, more perfect Immortality.' 
 
 So morning after morning dawned upon the weary 
 land ; the hot sun shone upon the wind-swept slopes, 
 the withered grass, the faded palms. For thirteen 
 months there was no rain. And in the famine camps 
 the long, silent streams of workers came from out their 
 huts to dig and carry and to live. They were become 
 a ragged folk ; their tattered garments fluttered in the 
 wind. They earned enough to eat and that was all. 
 And every morning down the workers' lines there came 
 the monks in slow procession. They made but a 
 small company — two old and haggard monks preceded 
 by one boy — for some were dead and some were gone. 
 They did not wish to be a burden on a starving land. 
 But the people would not let them all depart. ' Stay 
 with us or we shall forget. And while we live, you shall 
 not die. And if we die, shall we not die together?' 
 
xin FATE AND FREEWILL 129 
 
 They stayed. And every morning going down the 
 lines they gathered in their bowls enough to live. 
 
 The hungry workers kept a little back from their 
 own hunger — a pinch of rice, a fruit. 
 
 Surely a famine even is not all bad. It makes for 
 charity, for kinship, and for courage. 
 
 The rich West gave from out its plenty to the 
 starving Eastern folk — a charity magnificent. 
 
 And the starving people gave from out their 
 poverty to keep their monks alive. 
 
 ' For after all,' they said, ' the monks are to us a 
 soul, and we were better dead than soulless.' 
 
 K 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THERE IS NO NIGHT 
 
 The weeks and months passed on and he learned 
 gradually to see into the people's minds and hearts ; to 
 understand what they thought and what they wished 
 to say. 
 
 They were a very simple people, living often in a 
 rude enough way, with little of the polish of the higher 
 civilisation. Their houses were small huts of plank 
 and mats. They had none of the resources of the 
 West, neither the requirements of knowledge nor the 
 strength of a great nationality. They lived near to 
 nature, with the drawbacks that are incident to such a 
 life, and the advantages. They neglected the attributes 
 of life and tried to cultivate the life itself. 
 
 They had the good manners and the dignity which 
 come of self-respect. 
 
 We speak sometimes of ' the dignity of the savage.' 
 Why should the savage have a dignity that civilised 
 man forgets? We call the East less civilised than we 
 are, and yet we know it has a courtesy and self-restraint 
 which we have not. Yet neither are they savages. It 
 would seem perhaps as if our definition of what is 
 civilised and what is not, required amendment. We 
 say that we are civilised, because we are rich and strong 
 
 130 
 
ch. xiv THERE IS NO NIGHT 131 
 
 and have acquired more knowledge. But to the East 
 civilisation is self-culture, and it calls us uncivilised 
 because we cultivate everything except ourselves. We 
 surround ourselves with comfort and with beauty, and 
 remain unlovely masters of it all. We live in a hurry, 
 out of breath — always struggling, fighting, hot and 
 angry. They are more leisured. Indeed the more he 
 watched them, learned to understand them, the more 
 clearly he was able to see life apart from its externals, 
 the more firmly he was assured that they lived happier 
 lives than we do. They wanted many things we have ; 
 they had something we have never possessed. They 
 failed where we are strong, but they were strong where 
 we are weak. They saw life more clearly and more 
 whole. They had to learn from us, but that lesson was 
 an obvious one and could be seen and could be followed. 
 For it was a lesson of externals — those things which 
 pass. What we had to learn from them was of the 
 inner life ; the hidden, real, valuable things of life, that 
 which endures — ourselves. 
 
 There was a spaciousness in their lives ; there was 
 no hurry ; time was long and opportunity will come for 
 everything. Why rush to make it? Why fret and 
 worry? Take what comes, they seemed to say, and 
 make the best of it, for it is good. Life is good and 
 sunshine and gaiety. It is good to be young, good to 
 be in the strength of prime ; even old age has pleasant 
 places. There are many evil things in life, but there is 
 no use in keeping your eyes fixed on them. Take them 
 when they come, and have done with them quickly. 
 After all, do not they add to the zest of life ? What 
 would it be if it was all good ? Would it not be dull 
 as an eternal day that had no night? Is not what we 
 call ' evil ' an essential of life ? 
 
132 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 Whether you are rich or poor, learned or foolish, 
 prince or peasant, is not such a very great matter. 
 Each has his pleasures, his qualities. If you are rich 
 or wise or happy, remember ^hat it is because you have 
 worked to be so. It is no chance but a reward, and unless 
 you make good use of each you may again become poor 
 and foolish, for they are transitory things. If you are 
 poor or are unhappy, remember that the future is in 
 your hand. You are low now because you have not 
 desired to be high. You will acquire hereafter exactly 
 what you now begin to prepare yourself for. You are 
 what you are because you hatfe so made yourself. It 
 is no use to repine at your lot, to say ' Why was not I 
 born this or that?' Heaven does not fix men's status 
 capriciously. The gifts of this world are not shaken 
 out haphazard. Life is not a lottery or a chance ; it is 
 not by favour or good luck that you are what you are 
 now. You are so because you have made yourself so. 
 And in the future you reap what you are now sowing. . 
 
 This is the Buddhist belief as regards all things. As 
 you desire, so you get ; as you increase in consciousness 
 of right, in subordination of the smaller to the larger 
 self, in the power not only to see what is right, but to 
 do it, so you will rise. 
 
 Here in the West we have no such belief. Why a 
 man is born rich or poor, clever or stupid, well-looking 
 or ugly, healthy or diseased, we have no idea. Our 
 religion does not deal with such matters at all, the 
 explanation of which is the very essential of our daily 
 life. Therefore it seems to us just luck, or the favour 
 of a Great Power. If it is luck, those who draw the 
 bad numbers murmur naturally. Why should bad luck 
 be theirs? If it' be favour, they may sometimes in 
 despair shake their fists at a heaven which so deals 
 
xiv THERE IS NO NIGHT 133 
 
 with them. We take the unequal world as it is with 
 no theory of why it is so, and we think that in the few 
 short years of our life we settle our futures in eternity. 
 We die, and then we are judged, punished, and 
 rewarded. 
 
 But in this Eastern faith, justice, reward, and punish- 
 ment do not begin at death ; they have been always with 
 us. From the beginning they have ruled the world, 
 working to some great end. If now you are born 
 weak, poor, unhappy, be sure you have deserved it. 
 You will not remember why. Memory is of the body, 
 the substance through which your life is manifested. 
 When the body dies it dies. Why should any record 
 be kept of all the tiny events of a million million lives ? 
 No ! The memory disappears but the result continues. 
 You are what you have made yourselves, and you are 
 conscious of that fact. You failed to rise in the 
 consciousness of right and the will to follow it. Others 
 did better. Therefore you are what you are and they 
 what they are. 
 
 Be therefore of good courage. Nothing is irrepar- 
 able ; everything passes, evil as well as good. Take 
 whatever punishment is given you like a man and bear 
 it with a laugh. 
 
 That is their creed. There is one certain medicine 
 for ills, and that is laughter. Do not let the trouble 
 of the body eat into the mind. Keep your mind free. 
 Sometimes this courage and this happiness will cure 
 the ill. The body is not always master of the mind ; 
 it should be the servant. The mind should be the 
 master. The will should dominate. It can control in 
 many things the body ; it can make cures of illness. 
 The West has suddenly discovered this as a new thing, 
 the East knew it always. It can by sheer will some- 
 
134 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 times restore the health. Not always. That time 
 when Will shall be the Lord of All is very far from us 
 as yet. We must have science as well as will. But 
 if it cannot cure it can bring forgetfulness, an anodyne. 
 The child who falls and hurts itself, is caught within 
 its mother's arms and told ' now laugh.' It laughs ; 
 the pain-drawn lips relax, and then the pain is gone — 
 forgotten. 
 
 Laugh ! Time will make all things right. Time 
 and eternity are not two . things but one. To-day is 
 time, but time is in eternity. Do not suppose that 
 when you die you leap out of one dimension into 
 another. This finite world is part of an infinite space ; 
 this passing hour is part of an eternity. That is how 
 the Eastern world regards it. 
 
 There is never such a thing as luck. Everything 
 that happens has its antecedent and its consequence. 
 Whatever is, comes from something that has been. If 
 any good or evil fortune happens to you, the people 
 say ' You have deserved it, otherwise it could not come.' 
 In this life or some other you have dane something 
 that has led to this.' 
 
 ' In this life or some previous life,' that is the 
 difference. For in one life alone there is often no 
 explanation, cannot be. And as in this we have no 
 idea of any previous life,, we call it ' luck.' We are 
 very fond of that same Goddess Fortune. Be a man 
 born rich or poor, good or bad, we have no explanation 
 but that Fortune made him so. Even when we are 
 scientific we continue in the same vein. We have 
 evolved through the good or evil luck of our environ- 
 ment. To our thoughts luck made this world, though 
 righteousness may make the next. Yet if we can give 
 no explanation of what is, are we likely to know clearly 
 
xiv THERE IS NO NIGHT 135 
 
 what is about to be ? With them righteousness made 
 all the worlds and rises always to a higher plane. 
 
 That is the Eastern theory of the world. 
 
 The world is full of good and full of evil, and the 
 evil is as necessary as the good. 
 
 For consider, what do they think to be the object, 
 of the world? It is man's growth in the knowledge 
 of what is right, and the power to will that right. 
 Therefore must man be tempted, he must be led astray. 
 There must be false lights and true lights, so that he 
 may develop his strength. If there was no evil, only 
 good, how could he progress ; how could his will be 
 strengthened ? 
 
 If his way was always clear before him, he would 
 degenerate to a machine that runs on rails, or a philo- 
 sopher who lives on maxims. Evil is necessary, and the 
 same power that made the good made the evil also, 
 for its own righteous purpose. Therefore this world 
 is not the devil's world but God's. It is full of beauti- 
 ful things made for our happiness ; it is' full of evil 
 things to make us strong. Good and evil are both from 
 God, and there is no Devil — only another face of God. 
 
 Therefore the fear of what is to come, that fear of 
 things which to the West is partly instinctive, partly a 
 deliberate cult, is absent in the East. They do not 
 fret against the present, they do not fear the future. 
 That class hatred of poor to rich, of rich to poor, which 
 in the history of the West is always present, and has 
 broken out so often into terrible excesses on both 
 sides, is unknown in the East. Where are the Eastern 
 equivalents for the Jacqueries which every Western 
 land has known, which every Western land fears 
 more and more every day ? The rich do not oppress 
 the poor nor the poor the rich as with us ; there is 
 
136 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. xiv 
 
 not that difference that we make. The West grows 
 ever nearer an abyss which fills it with a terror. 
 There are no anarchists, no socialists in the East. 
 Anarchy is the revulsion against a too stringent 
 centralisation, against the collection of a nation's 
 power and wealth in a few hands. Socialism is the 
 revulsion against the excess of individualism whereby 
 the few reap and the many suffer. The East has 
 suffered from many things but never from these. 
 Wealth and power have never had the attraction they 
 have had in the West, have never been the sole aim 
 of life. There is a mutual understanding and respect 
 between the classes which we have never learned. It 
 is not degrading to be poor, nor glorious to be rich. 
 Money is but one of many things that may be good, 
 not to have but to use. At best it is but a trapping 
 for a personality. Life in itself is good. The day is 
 good ; night too is good. The West fears the night 
 because it cannot work then, and it knows nothing but 
 work. The East loves the night because it can rest, 
 and rest and dreams and thoughts are pleasant things. 
 
 And death is not a terror, not an end. You close 
 a chapter and you begin a new one. You are old 
 and tired — tired of yourself, your limitations and your 
 weakness — but in the next chapter yon will be young 
 again and new. You will not drag the sameness to 
 an eternity. You will be young again, and in a world 
 full of ' beautiful things made new for the sky children.' 
 
 Religion is a way of looking at the world. This is 
 the Eastern way. And it must be remembered that 
 all this comes before Buddhism. It is the foundation 
 on which Buddhism was built. What Buddhism 
 added to it was a later and a further truth. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 'DOKA, ANEITSA, ANATTA ' 
 
 So far or nearly so far had the Eastern world got in 
 its philosophy of life before the time of Buddha. It 
 recognised that life was eternal, that each man's soul 
 was a ray of the eternal light, and that the light 
 grew brighter and fuller as he travelled onward. It 
 recognised that all law and morality are progressive. 
 First there was man's duty to himself; then with love 
 comes his duty to that larger self of family, his 
 recognition of his absorption in it. Families were 
 drawn into communities and communities into nations 
 by new additions to the ray of life, and man's duty to 
 each was shown to him when he was conscious of his 
 oneness with the larger self. 
 
 In these various duties were included all the earlier 
 virtues, courage, honesty, truthfulness, love of his own, 
 hatred to all that threatened it, readiness to sacrifice 
 self if need be to the needs of the larger life, and it 
 recognised always that man did not progress by showing 
 one set of maxims, but by his power of choice amid 
 conflicting virtues. Such a belief, such a religion had 
 sufficed till then ; had made happy, prosperous com- 
 munities, had raised learning to a high pitch, had 
 exalted morality and uprightness. 
 
 i37 
 
138 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 In this belief he who afterwards became the Buddha 
 was born and educated. It sufficed him too, for a 
 time ; he made a brave soldier, he became a husband 
 and a father. And then the change came. 
 
 The life of Siddartha has been written many times ; 
 there is no necessity to repeat it. It is full of imagery 
 and pathos. It has been smothered under glosses and 
 misunderstanding, but what it meant was this. Man, 
 for the most part, when he is young and strong and 
 healthy wants but this early faith. It is enough for 
 him. It lightens the early steps of his career. It 
 shows him where to go and how to go. Its virtues 
 are true and great, and it is the basis on which all 
 further knowledge must rest. But not all the world 
 is, even when young, healthy or strong, and all the 
 world grows old. It is a mockery to talk to the 
 leper or the cripple of the joys of life, of the heat of 
 battle, of the happiness of marriage ; to the childless 
 of an immortality through children. What can such 
 teaching bring to them but bitterness of heart ? We 
 all grow old and die. Our pleasures leave us and go 
 into the limbo of forgotten things. Tout lasse, tout 
 casse, tout passe. Not all of us have children, and, 
 even when we have, children are not all of ourselves. 
 They are a part ; they take our bodies, our uncon- 
 scious life into futurity, but what of our souls, our 
 consciousness ? 
 
 Not even to remember that the life that is in the 
 individual is part of a stream suffices us, that our 
 community lives in our nation and we in it ; for, after 
 all, at best life as we know it is a narrow thing. We 
 have our limits, in the body and the soul — such very 
 narrow limits. Are they to remain for ever ? Are 
 we to pass from one existence to another for ever and 
 
xv ' DOKA, ANEITSA, ANATTA ' 139 
 
 for ever ? Life is good, but we are sure it might be 
 better. We can make happiness but we cannot avoid 
 sorrow. Are we never to grow so that our happiness 
 is great and greater and our trouble less and less ? 
 Are we to always live alone, be a tiny ray cut off 
 from the great stream of life ? There are times when 
 it comes home to us that even at his best man is such 
 a tiny, worthless thing in this vast universe of life. 
 His impotence, his narrowness, his finiteness oppress 
 us, weary us, and at the last may terrify us. Is there 
 no escape? Must our existence always be so bound 
 up with this body ; be obliged always to submit to such 
 restraint as we have now? Can our stream of life not 
 flow continuously, have no beginning and no end ? 
 New birth and death, new birth and death, is that 
 our lot for ever? Is it to be an alternation of joy 
 and sorrow, the same things repeating themselves to 
 an eternity ? He has risen far, can he rise no further ? 
 Has he then come to the limit ? There is the weariness 
 of it ; ever the same thing over and over and over again. 
 No progress to a higher life ? Surely that were a horror. 
 
 That is what came to him. It was not disgust of 
 what is good in the life that is ; it was no denial of the 
 world, no renunciation of its righteousness ; but it was 
 an eager longing to be higher ; not for less life but 
 more, not for a different righteousness but an addition 
 to the old. We are far from perfect happiness. Can 
 we get no nearer ? 
 
 It was a new force coming into man, it was the 
 soul developing ; the widening of the beam into the 
 invisible rays. 
 
 Lower man feels it not. The savage lives his life, 
 and takes his pleasure and his truth as it comes. He 
 takes his death too when it reaches him. The immor- 
 
Ho- THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 tality of children is sufficient for him, as it sufficed the 
 world for many thousand years. His soul is yet so 
 faint that its voice is not heard. And life has still 
 great possibilities. He does not see their end. They 
 stretch before him and he thinks that they are infinite. 
 
 So he makes more of life and more, and as his life 
 rises and is more complex when he has realised the 
 wider life of community and nation, so he begins to 
 see their finiteness. His soul rays widen, built upon 
 that wider life. And there comes to him a discontent 
 and a desire for yet wider life, a wider consciousness 
 than any he can see before him. Unconscious Immor- 
 tality does not suffice. 
 
 This feeling comes to nations, but it comes in 
 greatest force to individuals amongst them. Not 
 generally to the poorer, not to those whose life is 
 narrowest and lowest, for they have still far prospects 
 in their life ; it comes in most force to those who have 
 tasted most of life and understood it ; not to the fool 
 but to the wise. 
 
 In all the world's history there have been two men 
 who felt it most, who gave it most expression, whose 
 record has come down to us. Each was a King, a 
 great and glorious Prince ; each was accounted wisest 
 of his day. 
 
 One of them said : ' What profit hath a man of all 
 his labour which he taketh under the sun ? One 
 generation passeth away, and another generation 
 cometh : but the earth abideth for ever. 
 
 ' The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth 
 about unto the north : it whirleth about continually ; 
 and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. 
 
 ' The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be ; 
 
xv ' DOKA, ANEITSA, ANATTA ' 141 
 
 and that which is done, is that which shall be done : 
 and there is no new thing under the sun. 
 
 ' There is no remembrance of the wise more than of 
 the fool for ever ; seeing that which now is, in the days 
 to come shall all be forgotten : and how dieth the wise 
 man ? as the fool. 
 
 ' Therefore I went about to cause my heart to 
 despair of all the labour which I took under the sun. 
 
 ' Sorrow is better than laughter, for by the sadness 
 of the countenance the heart is made better. 
 
 ' The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning : 
 but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. 
 
 ' The dead know not anything, neither have they 
 any more a reward ; for the memory of them is for- 
 gotten. . . . Neither have they any more a portion for 
 ever in anything that is done under the sun.' 
 
 So said Solomon, King of Israel. That was all 
 that revelation taught him, an utter and unspeakable 
 despair. 
 
 And there he stopped. He felt the question but 
 he never found the answer, never set forth to seek it. 
 
 The other knew the same desire, the imperious 
 need. The question is of the soul ; it comes with it 
 and is its law, that of the ray. 
 
 The lesser rays of life bring with them their own 
 answers ; the unconscious life has its instinctive answer. 
 The love that makes the family, that makes the 
 community and nation, has each in it the answer how 
 best to preserve and ensure that love and make it 
 
142 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 wider. Man has but to listen to what his heart 
 dictates. 
 
 But with the Conscious Soul it is not so. It tells 
 him not instinctively what he should do, its laws, its 
 righteousness. It only gives to him a great desire. 
 It drives men forth to seek. It brings not knowledge,/ 
 but it says ' Go forth and learn.' For conscious life 
 must have conscious righteousness and not instinctive 
 Seek and you will find. 
 
 This other Prince did not sit idly with clasped 
 hands waiting for revelation ; he set forth to seek. 
 
 And how ? Where did he begin ? 
 
 Did he imagine as an axiom a Great First Cause, 
 illimitable, infinite, and inexpressible, and from it argue 
 down to finiteness ? Did he begin at the unknowable 
 and argue to the known, or send out his soul to search 
 through space, despising that which lay about him ? 
 Did he suppose that pyramids or knowledge are built 
 from the top down ? 
 
 Not so. He was assured that what man needs to 
 know is placed where he can reach it. What man 
 needs to see or can see is not infinite space beyond the 
 stars, but that which lies within his vision if he but 
 look. Therefore he went forth and he searched, within 
 men's souls. He wanted to build up a science of the 
 Soul, built as all science is upon experiment and 
 insight, to lay foundations deep and strong, not only 
 for himself to build on, but for all ages that come after. 
 For knowledge increases, and he did not suppose that 
 he had learnt all things. He made but a beginning. 
 He laid the first course of knowledge of the soul 
 which is infinite. What was it that he learned ? 
 
 The floods were at their highest ; the great river, 
 
xv 'DOKA, ANEITSA, ANATTA' 143 
 
 brown and broad and strong, tossed like a turbulent 
 sea. It swept beneath the rocky bluffs in mighty 
 curves, it ate into the banks that fell in foam into its 
 waters. The south wind lashed it ceaselessly and the 
 crested waves struck against the boat, the swells and 
 eddies swung it here and there, but it kept on. 
 
 The wind that angered the river gave life and 
 motion to the boat. The swelled sail held the hurrying 
 air and the boat leapt forward. Even in the main 
 midstream it held its way, and when it left the river and 
 turned into a quiet lake it seemed to fly. 
 
 At the far end of the lake in rising ground stood a 
 pagoda. It was very high, so high that you could see 
 it from all the country round. For thirty miles it was 
 always within sight, the golden top aglow in bright 
 sunlight ; while round it in soft billows surged the 
 leafy greenness of the tamarinds and palms. The boat 
 came to the shore beneath it ; the people landed. Up 
 from the shore they climbed across the turf, and at an 
 avenue's end they came through the tall archway into 
 the broad courtyard. It was like entering another 
 world. There was a serenity and peace that brooded 
 there as if the fret of life without were halted by its 
 gates. You could see nothing of the outer world but 
 trees and lake and sky lit with the living light. Even 
 the hastening wind was still, and in the midst, like the 
 still ringer of an impassioned listener, the great spire 
 pointed ever to the sky. 
 
 On one side were three monks sitting looking at the 
 shrine. A man leaning on a stone seemed filled with 
 thought ; and beneath a tree a woman told her beads. 
 Doka, aneitsa, anatta. She looked old and worn and 
 very tired. 
 
 Here and there were other women. On the far side 
 
144 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 an aged couple knelt near the pagoda's base and lit 
 two candles which they placed upon the base. A 
 cripple sat by a stone lantern staring at the sky, and 
 ever and anon the pigeons moaned. Doka, aneitsa, 
 anatta ; doka, aneitsa, anatta ; nothing is true and 
 nothing stays with us ; all goes and passes like a vision, 
 only we are left behind. Naught stays with us but 
 memories and tears. Doka, aneitsa, anatta. It was 
 the undertone of the world's sorrow. Here where the 
 noise and tumult of life's battle could not come, you 
 heard the cry. 
 
 The old woman amid her prayers thought of what 
 she had* lost. Husband and children, all had gone 
 before her. She lived alone, and every weary morn 
 brought to her but remembrance of the joys that had 
 been hers. Her days were vacant, and her dull, bleared 
 eyes saw naught but faint reflections from the long ago. 
 
 The girl who prayed and sobbed and laid her face 
 upon the stone to cool its fever, thought upon her lover 
 dead. Can the days bring pleasure more ? ' Light of 
 my life, if only I could follow. Why am I left alone to 
 face the recurring years ? ' 
 
 The cripple gazing on his twisted limbs remembered 
 their once strength and comeliness. ' I who once 
 leapt and ran, now crawl through life in poverty and 
 dreariness ' ; and looking on their trouble the daylight 
 seemed to die out of the sky. The air was full of 
 greyness, and only one truth was left : ' Illusion, vanity, 
 despair ; there is no true word but this.' 
 
 It seemed the cry of uttermost despair. 
 
 And yet ? He sat to listen. 
 
 Was it indeed despair that echoed in their voices ; 
 was it fear ? Were they as those who have abandoned 
 hope ? They had no tears ; they raised no hands in 
 
xv « DOKA, ANEITSA, AN ATT A ' 145 
 
 threats against the sky ; their voices were soft, not hard. 
 Like the murmur of the pigeons on the flags it seemed 
 fraught with peace, and though they stayed there long, 
 yet when they passed he saw that calm had come to 
 them. 
 
 The agony was passed, the darkness gone. Upon 
 their faces was wonder and a glory such as comes upon 
 the sky what time the dawn is near — a radiance from 
 that which is not seen. Doka, aneitsa, anatta. Tout 
 lasse, tout casse, tout passe. Yes ; sorrow, pain and 
 weariness, trouble and despair, and change, they pass. 
 
 Unhappiness and misery are but for a time. They 
 too have no reality. They go, they pass, and we remain. 
 
 The old man and his wife came slowly past. They 
 leant upon each other and they smiled. ' Doka, aneitsa, 
 anatta,' she murmured and passed on. 
 
 ' Tell me,' he asked himself, ' what is the comfort in 
 such words? They seem like the last word of a self- 
 abandonment. What do they mean ? ' 
 
 This is the answer. 
 
 Man is as one who floats down a broad river. 
 When he is young he laughs, he looks ahead ; he 
 stands right in the bows to welcome each new vision. 
 All is fresh and bright and very happy. The stream 
 flows slowly, pouring a crystal flood over a sand of 
 gold. The banks are lined with trees and flowers, all 
 manner of beautiful things, and the birds sing. He 
 wishes the stream flowed faster, so that he could come 
 more quickly to the strange new lands he sees ahead. 
 There are many others floating with him ; they make 
 a merry company and sing. 
 
 As he goes on the prospect widens, he can see very 
 far before him and on either side ; the stream is deeper, 
 stronger, darker. Sometimes there are rocks and 
 
 L 
 
146 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 eddies, whirlpools and hidden dangers, but he laughs 
 at them. They but add fresh incident and ra'ise his 
 courage, though there are some who shipwreck on 
 them. The sky is blue still, and the storms that sweep 
 across it pass rapidly away. 
 
 Broad noon is come. 
 
 In the pleasant anchorages he would stop and rest. 
 He looks not so much to the future as on either hand. 
 He finds the present good, and he would know it better, 
 stay with it longer. But he cannot. The river bears 
 him on. 
 
 The afternoon draws on. And now sometimes he 
 leaves the bows and looks astern. He is sorry to go 
 so quickly, to leave these pleasant fields and sunny 
 waters ; for he sees ahead of him deserts bare and 
 gaunt, mountains that close the view. Upon their 
 crests are clouds that never lift, lightning and threaten- 
 ing of fear ; he turns away to look behind. He wishes 
 the river did not flow so fast. 
 
 And now the banks are changed, the flowers are 
 gone. The meadows harden into rocks, and rise so 
 that the river flows within a gorge that ever deepens. 
 From the thick darkness forward comes a summons 
 that grows more imperative. Surely there is a precipice ; 
 he will be lost. Yet to that end the river hastens. Why 
 does it hurry now? He is afraid and sad and very 
 much alone as from the stern he watches with increasing 
 sadness the sunny landscape disappear. For there are 
 mists behind him, and though they gleam with colour 
 of long-past days, they hide the distance. He lives 
 now in his memories of what has been. His eyes 
 are on the past. The cataract grows nearer and he 
 is alone. 
 
 Then cries a voice to him : ' Have courage. What 
 
xv * DOKA, ANEITSA, ANATTA ' 147 
 
 is the use of watching what is gone ? For it is gone. 
 You never really held it. The happiness is past, and 
 things once past are to the watcher but a vain regret. 
 They will not return. The river flows not back but 
 onward, and if it could return you would not like it. 
 You are tired and must have rest. And then new 
 things : not always the old again, but greater happiness 
 and clearer sunshine, and in the end a country where 
 you may stay and live for ever. Doka, aneitsa, anatta. 
 Sunshine has gone, it was but for the moment, but so 
 is sorrow and darkness. Neither are real for you 
 because neither abide with you. They are illusions, 
 and will pass and be forgotten. Nothing is real, only 
 yourself. And you, when you have passed the rapids, 
 will arise stronger and freer — if you have courage — if 
 you have courage. Go back then to the bows, and 
 steer your course so that you make not shipwreck. 
 Look ever to the future Doka, aneitsa, anatta. 
 
 ' That is what the words mean, and consider if they 
 are not true. 
 
 ' Doka, aneitsa, anatta. It is to realise this first 
 that is the necessity. Nothing remains : all things are 
 real only while you hold them ; once gone they leave 
 but their effect on you behind. And why remember 
 the past unless to help you through the future ? Doka, 
 aneitsa, anatta. This is not despair, but hope. We 
 are weary of all that is ; we want new things — new life, 
 new youth, hew hope — and they will come. There is 
 no stagnation and no death, only a ceaseless progress 
 forward — for those who understand. 
 
 ' Go back into the bows and watch. 
 
 ' Death is the Great Romance.' 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 ' THE WAY ' 
 
 He must look forward — -but to what ? He must learn 
 to steer and not to drift — but to what end ? Where 
 is the compass ; which are the stars by which to steer ? 
 What does happiness and unhappiness consist of? To 
 understand the conclusions the Indian Prince arrived at 
 twenty-five centuries ago it is necessary first to realise 
 how far his world had got already. 
 
 In the essential laws that govern the family, com- 
 munity, and the State, they had nothing more to learn. 
 All that the greatest people have known since they 
 knew ; differences have appeared only in the way these 
 laws have been followed or disregarded. In family 
 relationship, the encouragement of science, commerce 
 and industry, in State organisation for war and peace, 
 they achieved all that was then possible. They 
 recognised fully that man had risen from lower forms ; 
 that his progress was always towards larger units, 
 wider righteousness. This they realised up to the 
 State and even to humanity. But it seemed that there 
 the limit came. You could not have a progress 
 beyond humanity as an unit, and humanity is made 
 of individuals, of men, and therefore the end was 
 nearly reached. To make the individual, the State, 
 
 148 
 
ch. xvi 'THE WAY' 149 
 
 humanity somewhat more of one, was all that could 
 be done. Man was the highest form of life, we could 
 imagine no other, therefore apparently the soul of man 
 was bound, to eternal narrowness within the limits of 
 personality. There was no escape. 
 
 It is true that in some vague way it was seen that 
 further advance was not so much in bodily life, as in 
 the soul life which was then making itself felt. The 
 soul, that is Knowledge and Will, must grow wider, 
 greater, stronger, and have completed empire over the 
 body, which cramped the Will by its limitation. This 
 led to the idea that the body was an enemy to be 
 fought against, conquered and destroyed. India then as 
 now was full of mystics, ascetics, saints whose fight was 
 against the body. To this end they brought themselves 
 to endure all sorts of pain and abstinence and degrada- 
 tion without a murmur ; they tried to kill sensation. 
 They sat naked to deaden modesty ; they exposed 
 themselves to heat and cold to deaden sensation ; they 
 starved themselves ; they lived in dirt and shamelessness. 
 Its object was to exalt the human Will, and in this 
 they to some extent succeeded and succeed. They 
 demonstrate daily what an immense empire the Will 
 has over the flesh. But it led to nothing. Common- 
 sense was disgusted at their mystics, and saw no future 
 that such teaching pointed to. 
 
 Again, as to the virtues. All those that pertain to 
 family, village, national life they fully recognised. 
 Bravery, industry, the search for knowledge, the sub- 
 ordination of self to the wider necessities of wider 
 units they saw clearly. 
 
 And there were some who began to see more — that 
 there were other virtues, of the increasing soul. 
 
 These virtues are complementary to the others, are 
 
iSo THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 in a way a contradiction to them. To courage is 
 opposed meekness ; to irftlustry, poverty ; to knowledge, 
 trust and faith ; to pride in oneself, one's family and 
 nation, was set up humility ; to assertion of one's own 
 view of life was set up charity. The wise men who felt 
 these virtues preached them. They said : ' It is good to 
 be meek and pure and humble ; these are virtues whose 
 rank is with the highest. It is good to follow them.' 
 
 But their hearers asked them : ' Why is it good ? 
 To what end are these virtues ; whither do they tend ? 
 They appear to us a dangerous doctrine and untrue. 
 Consider and explain. For instance courage, that is 
 necessary to every form of individual and corporate 
 life. We see that meekness is dangerous to them. 
 Would you ruin what we have built up ; would you 
 destroy family and corporate life ? 
 
 ' Again, where is their Immortality ? Every new 
 righteousness that comes to man has with it an 
 Immortality to justify it. If men ask, Why should I 
 obey the impulse to die for my country ? the answer is, 
 Because your country benefits and your life continues 
 in it. 
 
 ' That we can see, dimly perhaps, but still we see. 
 
 ' But in what Immortality is this new righteousness 
 justified ? ' 
 
 The wise men had no answer. 
 
 They never answered as in the West some might, 
 that you should do 'right for right's sake, truth for 
 the sake of truth,' indifferent to what the result may 
 be — whether indeed there ever is any result. They did 
 not answer so, for the East would have mocked at any 
 such reply. 
 
 For the East believes that righteousness is justified 
 in its results : that if you do what is right you will 
 
xvi 'THE WAY' 151 
 
 certainly benefit by it, and if you do wrong you will 
 suffer. There is a sequence and a consequence. The 
 West would say that it is a higher and more attractive 
 ideal to do what is right because it is right, than 
 because we benefit ; that the latter is purely selfish- 
 ness. To which the East would answer, So be it, if 
 in such windy generalities you find anything that 
 pleases you. Only answer two things — How can you 
 tell what is right and what is wrong except from 
 observation of their results? Do you deny that 
 doing evil has evil consequences, doing good has 
 good consequences ? Do you think it immaterial to 
 your future what you do ; that conduct and righteous- 
 ness have no connection ? For if you do, we must part 
 company. To believe such a thing, the East declares, 
 would lead to this, that a man would say to himself, 
 ' As long as I have high ideals it does not really 
 matter what I do. The ideal is the important thing, 
 and as to what is right or wrong, why, any impulse 
 may be right. Who is to say? You can gather fruit 
 if you sow weeds, and weeds if you sow fruit.' 
 
 That is indeed what the West is always saying to 
 itself: that if a man say he believe in God, Right, 
 Wrong, Hell, Heaven — things which no one can define 
 or express — it does not matter what his acts are. So 
 you get Popes and Bishops who murdered, warred, and 
 committed every wickedness ; so you get men now who 
 go to teach the ' Heathen ' of another world, and spend 
 their time trading and governing in this. 
 
 No ; for ever No. Religion to the East is a matter 
 of realities, of conduct, of righteousness ; not of mere 
 profession, of ideals that are ex hypothesi impossible to 
 conceive. If you do your right, your righteousness 
 shall be justified. 
 
152 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 And this besides. The West thinks that ' I ' is ' I ' 
 for ever ; but the East, ' You are part of a great whole, 
 and in cultivating yourself you add to that whole ; in 
 neglecting yourself you make it weaker. It is a duty 
 you owe to the World's Soul to care for that tiny bit 
 that is in you.' 
 
 Neither did they answer that the Immortality where 
 such virtue would meet its reward would be beyond 
 the stars, far out of sight ; for the people would have 
 asked how they knew of such a heaven and such an 
 Immortality. By revelation ? The East is sceptical 
 of revelations and of dreams. How then ? So the 
 wise men were silent. They were sure that there was 
 virtue in the new righteousness ; they felt that it had 
 beauty and had truth. But how, or where, or when, 
 they could not say. Therefore the people would not 
 listen. 
 
 It was to put order into this disorder that the 
 Indian Prince went forth. He tried, as all teachers 
 try, by experiment. He went to each school in turn 
 and learned what they had to teach, and then at last 
 he came to his conclusion. What this conclusion was 
 is this. 
 
 Man's progress has been always from smaller to 
 greater units. In that has he found his happiness. 
 What he has always felt and suffered from was the 
 finiteness and the smallness of his personality, that it 
 has been divided from the great flood of life. His 
 urgent need has been a wider, greater life ; a larger 
 self to enable him to know more, to do more, to have 
 more power over himself and the world, to be no longer 
 the toy of the brute force of the world. Every step 
 forward has been made by the recognition of a new 
 righteousness, and each new righteousness has been a 
 
xvi 'THE WAY' 153 
 
 contradiction and a complement to those before. As 
 the righteousness of the family is to that of the 
 individual, as the righteousness of the State is to 
 those of the community and family, so is the new 
 righteousness to them. It does not deny them, it 
 supplements them. If it should lead to destruction 
 of those before, it would not be a righteousness, for 
 all righteousness is built upward from below. The 
 duty to the State though on occasion it may seem to 
 contradict the duty to the family, yet does not do so 
 on the whole, for the State is made up of families, and 
 in the end the families gain, they do not lose by being 
 in the State. They do not lose their life or their 
 identity, but these are widened. 
 
 In such manner must these new truths be under- 
 stood, not as supplanting the old but supplementing 
 them ; therefore never to be feared if properly under- 
 stood. They but fulfil all that went before. They 
 are an addition to knowledge. 
 
 But what is the object of Knowledge? It is to 
 know what is right and to have the Will to do it ; Will 
 governs Power. Every new aggregation gives a 
 greater Will, a greater Power. A community can do 
 what any number of individuals cannot ; a State can 
 do what a thousand communities would fail in. But 
 aggregations are made of individuals. Therefore must 
 Will be cultivated in each entity, so that the total may 
 be increased. The mystics and ascetics searched the 
 dominion of Will. But their mistake was that they made 
 the bodily life an enemy. It is no enemy, but should 
 be an ally and a servant. Conscious life is built upon 
 unconscious life. You cannot degrade the temple and 
 exalt him that lives there. If you destroy the life, the 
 soul goes with it. Progress lies not in that way. 
 
154 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 The full life is the sum of all the rays, the Power of 
 the unconscious forces ruled by the Knowledge and the 
 Will of conscious life. Again it is the same symbol — 
 you must build up, not down. 
 
 Now as to the results ; for good has good results 
 and evil has evil results. 
 
 Try it and you will know ; let each man prove it for 
 himself. When the cry comes, the urgent cry that life 
 is but a shadow and an unreality, then try and see if 
 following the Way does not give Peace. All men who 
 try it say it does. They say it gives serenity and 
 happiness and courage. It makes life beautiful again ; 
 it gives you back in sunset splendour the glories of the 
 dawn. 
 
 All the troubles that we suffer from come from the 
 fact that ourselves, our consciousness, that which exists, 
 is subjected to the perpetual changes of our body, over 
 which we have little control. It is adrift upon life's 
 tide, ( that ebbs and flows continually. Evil is of the 
 body ; happiness is of the spirit, of the Soul. To 
 enlarge happiness we must cultivate the soul and make 
 it broader, greater, stronger. The beam must contain 
 .all the rays. 
 
 And always we must remember that the individual 
 is not the unit. It is because he is now an unit that 
 we are so weak. If our separateness endure, so must 
 our weakness. As the man gains by becoming one with 
 others in a nation, so the Soul's beam must be reunited 
 to the great flood of life which is the world. There is 
 its Immortality. 
 
 You say you cannot see it, cannot realise it. No ! 
 But can one ever realise an Immortality ? When the 
 man dies for his country, does he do it because he is 
 sure he himself will benefit thereby? He does it 
 
xvi 'THE WAY' 155 
 
 because he has the impulse, because it is a law of his 
 life. 
 
 So with the Soul. This later righteousness is the 
 law. As the Soul grows, so does the desire to observe 
 these virtues. And with that desire, that instinct, 
 comes the certainty that they will have their justification, 
 if not at once, then later. They bring with them the 
 certainty of the wider, stronger, greater life of which 
 they are the law. You will not recognise it while you 
 stand aloof. It cannot be explained in words. If you 
 were to try to explain in words to those to whom the 
 wider life of nationality has not come, that men obey 
 its laws and sacrifice the present because they are 
 sure that the future will reward them, they would not 
 understand. How can a soldier dead upon a battlefield 
 live on in his country's life ? No one can say. But 
 he is sure he will. 
 
 Self-renunciation, self-denial, the merging of the 
 lesser in the greater life, that is The Way the Indian 
 Prince made out. He lived it and he found it true. 
 His disciples and his followers have found it true — a 
 facet of the truth. Always where understood, men 
 have believed it ; but men must have been in a position 
 to understand it. When it was first taught and men 
 accepted it in millions they were wise and free and 
 strong. Their ability to understand was based upon 
 high civilisation, upon knowledge, upon freedom. 
 Never in the history of the world have there been 
 communities who in relation to their time have done so 
 well with life ; who .had such broad and sound under- 
 standing, who were so varied in their abilities. Nature 
 they understood, though not in detail, yet in principle. 
 They had a subtle sympathy with it. They knew of 
 evolution. In all the main things of life, two thousand 
 
156 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. xvi 
 
 five hundred years have added nothing except in detail. 
 Therefore when Buddha taught they understood. His 
 teaching came as but a continuation of what they knew. 
 He was to them no prophet, but a Darwin of the Soul, 
 and they could follow what he said and still more what 
 he meant. They were in harmony with him and 
 knew. 
 
 When Buddhism fell from India the lesser truths had 
 vanished first, the people rotted from below as peoples 
 have always done. They lost their knowledge and 
 their grip of life, no one knows why. They lost the 
 early righteousness of family, community, and State. 
 Therefore the higher righteousness fell too at length, 
 for it had become unintelligible. The truths upon 
 which it stood, of which it was but the continuation, 
 had gone. Its imagery therefore had no light to 
 illumine it, and lost its meaning and its truth. It is 
 a religion of free men, of free will, of wise men not 
 of fools. Its ideal is all knowledge, all strength, all 
 righteousness. 
 
 This simple faith which is founded upon a view of 
 the whole of life was supposed to be apart from life, 
 was supposed to contradict life and deny it. When 
 it was said that evil was the result of the present 
 conditions of life, its narrowness, its gripping to a tiny 
 personality, it was supposed to declare that life was 
 itself an evil. It was thought its ideal was the end of 
 life — annihilation. When you take up the scattered 
 spectrum and blend it again into the white light do you 
 annihilate the individual rays ? The ideal of the Indian 
 Prince was not less life but more ; the greater, fuller, 
 grander light. 
 
 A truth that stands alone becomes more false than 
 any falsehood. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THAT GREAT GIFT OF CHARITY 
 
 That was what the Indian Prince discovered, and to 
 cultivate those truths and keep them pure, to discover 
 maybe future truths, a brotherhood was founded. For 
 he did not think that his truth was the only truth in 
 life, and that all men should follow it. A truth it was 
 amongst many others, the last discovered but not the 
 final truth. All truths have guilds to keep and teach 
 them : soldiers and merchants, artisans and grammarians, 
 every form of truth has its own school. Associations 
 can best maintain and cultivate a side of life, and they 
 best can spread abroad its influence, so that it leavens 
 all the rest of life. That was the genesis of the monks 
 of Buddhism. Founded two thousand five hundred 
 years ago, it yet endures in Burma as strong, as pure, 
 as when first it was instituted. In every town and 
 village are the monasteries, built apart if possible, for 
 peace and quietness. Some are tiny huts of bamboo 
 roofed with thatch, and some are great and spacious 
 buildings, beautiful without with gold and carvings. 
 Within, all are of the plainest and simplest. In the 
 ' Gold City ' are many, shrunken now in size maybe 
 from what they used to be in the King's time, but with 
 monks no less preserving the purity of their lives. To 
 
 iS7 
 
158 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 one of these the man came to talk. For the monk 
 was of those the most revered and honoured through- 
 out all the country, and one who was not afraid to talk 
 of that he knew to those who tried to understand. 
 
 The sun had set behind the hills and darkness was 
 growing on the city. A glow was in the sky and on 
 the river, and a cool wind from off the waters blew into 
 the fevered streets. The sound of people passing to 
 and fro, the hum of voices, the creak of carts, came like 
 a far off murmur within the monastery walls. In the 
 dusk two gilded leogriffs before the stairs seemed to 
 hold yet some of the sunshine that had been. 
 
 The Abbot continued speaking slowly and with . 
 thought. ' A brotherhood was founded to preserve 
 these truths, two thousand and five hundred years ago. 
 We are of that brotherhood to-day. We keep, as we 
 were told to do, the truths that were given to us for 
 our benefit and that of all the world. We are their 
 guardians. It is our duty to preserve them pure.' 
 
 ' What are these truths ? ' 
 
 ' That life is passing ; that happiness we cannot 
 hold — like sand it slips between our fingers. Nothing 
 of the flesh remains, only the spirit is eternal. That 
 our unhappiness comes from our loneliness, from being 
 a ray apart, divided from the eternal ; that full, enduring 
 happiness can only be when we are reunited.' 
 
 ' These are not all the truths of life ? ' 
 
 ' The world is full of truths : the soldier has his, the 
 king' has his, the peasant his ; to every set of men is 
 entrusted some truth by which alone he lives. It takes 
 all kinds to make a world ; it takes all worlds to make 
 an universe, a Truth. There are no truths that are 
 higher, none that are lower ; all truths are true, and 
 they do not conflict ; each is necessary to the other. 
 
xvn GREAT GIFT OF CHARITY 159 
 
 ' Yet every truth must have its keepers or it dies. 
 Courage and honour and steadfastness and obedience 
 are the soldier's truths ; authority and understanding 
 are the king's ; honesty and intelligence and progress 
 are the merchant's. There are many truths, and the 
 world needs them all. Every father, every mother, 
 every child has his own truth to keep — an ideal and a 
 practice, of which the ideal is easy, but the practice very 
 hard both to see or do. 
 
 ' What our ideals are I have already told you ; of the 
 way that we think best whereby they may be kept, 
 not only for ourselves but for the world, is more 
 difficult. 
 
 ' How may we cultivate the spirit ? 
 
 ' The first thing is health, sanity of mind and body. 
 That is a truth common to all people, because on that 
 alone can other virtues rest. 
 
 ' But as the labourer has his toil in the fields, the 
 fisherman his struggle with the waters, the student his 
 mental efforts which call for bodily vigour and replace 
 of waste, whereas our cultivation of the spirit brings 
 calm and peace, so do we not require what they do. 
 One meal a day is enough to give us health, more 
 would induce an energy that would have to be 
 expended in some way. Starvation leads to dreams 
 and visions, weakness and ill-health. One good meal 
 a day, life in secluded, quiet places ; not away from the 
 world because we are still of the world, an essential 
 part. We hold our truths not for ourselves only but 
 for the world, for all, as the soldier his, the ploughman 
 his. Far enough away not to be drawn into the whirl 
 of other life, but near enough not to be forgotten or 
 forget. 
 
 ' Not to be forgotten, not to forget ! 
 
160 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 ' We must not be forgotten ; we must be seen, be 
 known for our sakes and the world's. For our own 
 sakes because the watchfulness of others helps us to 
 keep our truth. It is a strength to us, a help, that 
 when we go wrong we should be seen and censured ; 
 that when we go right the truth in us should have its 
 honour. 
 
 ' We must not be forgotten, for our truth is not ours 
 alone ; we keep it not for ourselves, but for all men. It 
 is like the treasure of a King that is for all the people. 
 
 ' We must not forget. We must not let ourselves 
 imagine that we are apart from the world, that we 
 alone are righteous and the world wicked. We must 
 remember always that all truths are true and ours is 
 only one. We must be sane, have balance ; the truths 
 of others, though not ours, must influence our lives. 
 
 ' We must live in poverty, we must be poor, we must 
 own nothing of our own, must wear poor clothes, and 
 we must seek our bread from day to day. Not for us 
 is the pomp of wealth, the luxury of power, the pride 
 of independence. We must show that there is a virtue 
 and a pleasure also in the counterpart of prosperity — in 
 having nothing, earning nothing. It leaves us free for 
 the pleasures and duties of the spirit. These are our 
 treasures ; if we did not keep them, who would keep 
 them ? And are they not worthy of a keeper ? If the 
 world did not have them always before its face, it would 
 forget them. 
 
 ' These are our own. We do not say to all the world, 
 Your truths are false. They are not false. But we 
 say, There are other truths. It is not given to every 
 man to be successful, rich, energetic, even independent. 
 Many must be dependent even as we are, poor nearly 
 as we are, with no more worldly success than we have. 
 
xvii GREAT GIFT OF CHARITY 161 
 
 ' We show to such that steadfastness, dignity, and 
 respect of self and of the world are not the attributes 
 only of worldly success, of wisdom or of strength. They 
 may be cultivated also by the poor, the simple, the 
 dependent. We are dependent day by day for our 
 very bread ; we are weak, we are not learned ; are we 
 less honoured for that ? Does it make us servile or 
 fearful ; do we lose in dignity ? If we do not, then why 
 should any man ? Servility is loss of courage and of 
 respect ; it comes from fear of loss of worldly things. If 
 you have nothing and are still happy and content, who 
 can take from you your happiness ? We show that calm- 
 ness and dignity come not from without but from 
 within. They are attributes not of what you have but 
 what you are. 
 
 ' But the greatest of our treasures is that of charity. 
 There are two charities — charity of hand, and charity 
 of mind. The giving of money, food, and property 
 we cannot ourselves practise because we are vowed 
 to poverty, a vow that we keep. Therefore we have 
 nothing of any kind to give. We only can receive, and 
 that but little ; only enough for our daily, scanty wants. 
 But we can teach it. The people learn what a beautiful 
 thing it is to give even the little that we take from them 
 — the cup of rice, the fruit, the flower. They learn 
 thereby that the best pleasure of being able to get, is 
 being able to give. So they not only build monasteries 
 and feed the monks, but they overflow with charity of 
 all kinds. Is not that so? Tell me, have you not 
 seen the charity of the people? What have you 
 seen ? ' 
 
 Truly the man thought it was so. He had never 
 seen elsewhere such true charity, such gifts, not of the 
 surplus of wealth but of the savings from very small 
 
 M 
 
1 62 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 means ; given without, ostentation and for its own sake 
 alone. The rest-house on the road, built by the labourer 
 with his little savings ; the pots of drinking water for 
 the traveller, filled by the widow who had naught to 
 give except the labour of her hands ; the famine workers 
 with their grains of rice. 
 
 They give. Well, many people give, for charity is 
 world-wide. They give but little for they are poor. 
 
 But in their giving is a grace that makes the gift 
 thrice welcome. For they are glad to give. They 
 make a pleasure of it. They try to make him who 
 receives, feel that he has conferred a benefit and not 
 received one. They do not say, Take this, and in 
 return surrender somewhat of your self-respect. To 
 give is good, to ask is evil ; but to take that which is 
 offered, and which your need requires, with courtesy, 
 with recognition, and without injury to yourself, that 
 too is good. Truly it is a science in itself to give and 
 take ; the gift of pride, of ostentation, may convey a 
 poison. 
 
 To know when and how to give and take. That is 
 what the monks have taught them. 
 
 The Abbot asked, 'Tell me what is in your thoughts ? 
 You laugh.' 
 
 He told him, and the Abbot laughed. 
 
 ' My friend, if we practised all the virtues as our 
 people do that of charity, we should do well.' 
 
 ' That is one charity ; tell me of the other.' 
 
 ' The other is more hard. It is more difficult because 
 sometimes it seems as if its opposite should be the 
 virtue. It is harder, just as things of the mind are 
 harder than things of the hand. We have our truths 
 that we keep and honour ; some I have told you of, 
 others are yet to come. They are great virtues ; we 
 
xvn GREAT GIFT OF CHARITY 163 
 
 hold them for ourselves to be the truest, nay the only- 
 true. Yet charity is this, that we remember there are 
 other truths in other keeping. 
 
 ' We have truth but not all truth ; our truths are 
 great and glorious, but so is every truth. Charity is 
 this, that we remember that if we have a jewel, so have 
 others ; if we keep it well, so do the other keepers. 
 Our truths are in themselves no truer than the soldier's 
 truth, the merchant's truth, the peasant's truth ; no 
 greater and no less. All truths are equally necessary 
 to the world, of the same worth. You will never reach 
 the Truth if even the tiniest truth be omitted. There- 
 fore we must never think that we are better than others 
 of mankind who keep their truths. Every one who 
 keeps his truth in honesty and courage is of equal 
 worth.' 
 
 ' That is a hard thing.' 
 
 ' Truly,' said the Abbot, ' it is hard. For to every 
 one who keeps a truth it is the one thing needful. 
 Sometimes it may seem as if he could not keep it 
 rightly unless he thought so, unless he was sure of it. 
 Indeed to him it must be so. But he must also re- 
 member and honour the others. 
 
 ' In the white light no ray predominates.' 
 
 And looking down upon the city he remembered 
 many things that happened twenty years ago. There 
 was the march of our columns up the river, the weak 
 resistance, the want of organisation, of courage, and of 
 leading among the Burmese troops. There was the 
 surrender at the Palace door below there ; the vacillation 
 and weakness of the King ; the want of patriotism, of 
 intelligence, of honesty amongst the Ministers. There 
 was the broken, scattered resistance afterwards, which 
 had never any chance of success. And now all the 
 
1 64 • THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 institutions that had grown up within their nation, of 
 the crown, the government, the soldiers, the Courts of 
 Justice, and everything that pertained to them were 
 gone. They had disappeared. Of all that had been, 
 there remained only the people and the monkhood. 
 One institution and one truth alone remained, because 
 in that alone had its truth been kept strong and pure 
 and clear ; because there alone were men honest and 
 sincere and heart-whole in cherishing their truth. And 
 he thought how changed it all had been had they had 
 Kings as devoted to Kingcraft, soldiers to the art of 
 war, judges and magistrates to law, merchants and 
 engineers and inventors to the business of peace, artists 
 to their arts, with as sincere self-denying absorption as 
 these monks have to their truths. 
 
 Nothing remains but ' truth. Nothing remains in 
 Burma but the peasant in his family and the monk, 
 because of all classes of men these alone kept their 
 truths. The peasant cultivates the soil with labour, 
 honesty, intelligence, and courage ; both men and 
 women love their family and keep it. The monks 
 within their monasteries cultivate their ideals with 
 single-hearted devotion. Therefore they remain But 
 the rest are gone, swept into oblivion because they 
 neither saw their truth nor kept it. 
 
 It is the history of the world. Falsehood and 
 insincerity and lassitude and cowardice are swept 
 away. They do not die — war kills them ; it sweeps 
 away the weeds and leaves an open field again. It 
 is the cleanser of the world. It cannot injure truth ; it 
 but makes it stronger in the end ; but shams it kills. 
 Who are they who would abolish war? There are 
 men and peoples and institutions who may justly fear 
 what war will do them. But true men, true things, 
 
xvn GREAT GIFT OF CHARITY 165 
 
 have never any fear. Nothing can harm them. They 
 live on and they grow stronger. Danger is always 
 from within and not without. 
 
 The Burmese Kings have fallen, the Burmese armies 
 were scattered, the Burmese merchants drop beneath 
 competition. But the monkhood lives. 
 
 ' We do not urge men to come into our brotherhood. 
 We would not have a monk unless he wished to come. 
 Truth is progressive, and to each man . at the proper 
 time the proper truth is shown. For most people, when 
 they are young, the proper truths are to be husbands 
 and wives, good citizens, good workers. These are 
 true lights for those who see them ; let them follow. 
 A few there are who from childhood even have a desire 
 to learn the Way, and these are welcomed. 
 
 ' Yet must every one go through a period of proba- 
 tion that he may be sure. And even then we think it 
 best that he should take the vows only for a time. 
 
 ' For remember that the essence of our truth, the 
 end to which we aim, is not to follow this set of rules 
 or that, this righteousness or that. The end is know- 
 ledge of all right, and Will to do it. Will, the 
 cultivation of the Will. 
 
 ' What therefore would it profit to observe our rules 
 unwillingly, because you must? ' Our aim is freedom, 
 self-restraint, and not restraint of laws or persons. He 
 who cannot restrain himself should never come to us. 
 Let him learn the rudiments elsewhere. Let him be 
 a soldier and be made to obey, if he cannot observe 
 what is right without compulsion. Obedience is not 
 an end, and as a means it must be used elsewhere. 
 We are free men, not slaves ; we hold our souls in our 
 own hands. No one can save them for us. What 
 knowledge and what power do men obtain by doing 
 
166 THE INWARD LIGHT en. 
 
 that they are commanded? You must see right 
 yourself, not others for you. 
 
 ' No one may come to us unless he will to do so ; 
 no one may stay with us unless he will to do that 
 which the Teacher said ; to do it because he greatly 
 desires to do so. We welcome children to our 
 monasteries and we teach them of the Way ; for all 
 should know of it. But we do not ask them to be 
 monks. 
 
 'Why should we ? What would it profit us, or them, 
 or any one ? Learn to know right, and acquire the will 
 to do it. Self-knowledge, self-control are what we follow.' 
 
 That is why in Buddhist teaching Government is 
 called an evil, because whatever a man does on 
 compulsion, does not add to his moral stature. The 
 knowledge and the will are others' ; he is but a passive 
 instrument. He gains no more by it than the sword 
 gains by being wielded by the soldier. Yet of course, 
 as the world stands now, sometimes compulsion is 
 necessary. No good monk would say that the villagers, 
 the public opinion which helped monks to keep their 
 vows and chased away any who broke them, could be 
 dispensed with. Until men can all will to do right, 
 compulsion may be necessary, a necessary evil. So is 
 Government a necessary evil, and the more it interferes 
 when not absolutely necessary, the greater the evil. 
 It is an assertion that the aim of all men and institutions 
 should be not to cause certain things to be done, but 
 to come and help men to want to do them. 
 
 Therefore in the Buddhist monkhood is no authority, 
 no organisation, no compulsion like that in Western 
 Churches. Obedience is in itself no virtue. Men 
 become monks, and sincere monks, because they desire 
 the right. 
 
xvn GREAT GIFT OF CHARITY 167 
 
 And if we ask for justification, could there be any 
 like the Burmese Buddhist monkhood? It is by far 
 the oldest religious community in the world ; it is the 
 purest ; it has more honour from the people amongst 
 whom it is placed than any other ever had. Let him 
 who doubts this go and see. And if he cannot, let 
 him read that wonderful tribute from the Catholic 
 Bishop, Bigaudet — that ungrudging, though unwilling 
 tribute given by a great soul to truth, though not his 
 truth, for which his book was put upon the Index. 
 
 And in the end what is the great and vital principle 
 of truth that lies beneath, that animates this monkhood ? 
 What is it that enables them to live as they live, to 
 preserve their truths bright, to endure as they have ? 
 It is not alone that they have virtues of their own, it 
 is not even that they keep them. It is that they 
 recognise that man the individual does not last, is not 
 the unit. All life is one Life ; all truths make one 
 truth ; all the rays make the White Light. That is 
 what they mean by ' Charity.' 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 MAN'S FAITH AND WOMAN'S 
 
 BEYOND the village near the river there was a garden 
 full of plantain trees and custard apples, plums and 
 mangoes, and in the middle of the garden was a house. 
 The man who lived there had a history. He had been, 
 under the Burmese Kings, a soldier and the governor 
 of a district. In the war he fought against us and 
 became a noted leader of guerilla bands. There were 
 many tales about his doings in these days — of his 
 personal courage and the discipline he tried to bring 
 his followers under, of his fights and his escapes. For 
 three years he had defied our troops, and then his band 
 dispersed or died ; the country settling down about him, 
 he saw the uselessness of further effort. He surrendered 
 and was deported. But after five years he was allowed 
 to return, and here he settled down beside his old 
 village and did a trade in timber. 
 
 It seemed that he had in him some blood that 
 differed from the people round him, some of the iron 
 of the colder north. His blood ran slowly ; he was 
 taciturn and grave, not gay as were his neighbours. 
 Yet he was one of them ; a leader still, though not in 
 war ; a head of the community. The Englishman had 
 often seen him, often spoken to him, and yet he felt 
 
 1 68 
 
ch. xvm WOMEN AND MEN 169 
 
 he knew but little of him. Beneath his courtesy there 
 was a reticence that left but little opening, and he kept 
 himself so much apart, living within his garden, that 
 acquaintance came not quickly. But on one morning 
 early, walking in the hills beyond the village, he came 
 upon the Burman seated gazing on the view before him. 
 The Englishman drew back, unwilling to disturb a 
 solitude that evidently had been sought, but the soldier 
 rose and smiled. ' You seek a view ? ' he asked. ' I do 
 not think that you will find a better one than this.' 
 He waved his hand towards the sunlit fields that sloped 
 to the broad river, and that stretched mile after mile till 
 purple mountains on the further bank closed the scene. 
 They sat together on the hillside and they looked. 
 ' You seek a site to build another house ? ' he asked. 
 ' You could not have one more beautiful than this.' 
 
 The soldier shook his head. ' No house. Yet I 
 will build here ; not for the living, but the dead.' 
 * A tomb ? ' 
 
 ' My wife is dead,' he answered quietly 
 ' And you would make her grave here on this hill ? ' 
 ' She loved the woods,' the soldier answered ; ' the 
 trees, the fields, the sun, the river. Now she is dead, 
 her soul has left me, and in my house there lies only 
 the empty shell wherein her soul inhabited. The soul 
 that lived there, that spoke through her lips, saw through 
 her eyes, is gone. Yet because when she was with me 
 she loved all beautiful things, I seek to lay that broken 
 lamp from which the light has fled here where the 
 things she loved are stretched before her. Is it not 
 well ? ' 
 
 ' Surely it is well.' 
 
 ' I will build a pagoda over the grave, and beside it 
 a little rest-house where those who climb up here may 
 
170 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 sit and find some water. And on. that further rise 
 will I build a monastery where some monks may live.' 
 
 ' Tell me,' asked the Englishman, ' why should you 
 build the monastery. Are you about to become a 
 monk ? ' He had known many men be so under such 
 circumstances. 
 
 The soldier shook his head. ' Not for me,' he 
 answered. ' What should I do within a monastery ? I 
 am not such as monks are made of. But she who is 
 dead loved and honoured that they teach. She gave 
 every day some food, went every week to hear the law 
 read out, and all day in every moment of her life she 
 tried to understand and keep, as far as may be, the 
 teacher's words. It is a beautiful thing to be a woman 
 and be able to do as she did.' 
 
 ' And men, cannot they do so ? ' 
 
 The soldier shook his head. ' The world has many 
 truths and men's are different. Mine at least is different. 
 It was given to me to be a soldier and to fight, and I 
 followed my truth as best I could. Not very well, I 
 fear ; you always beat us.' 
 
 ' And you would fight again ? ' 
 
 ' Again and again if ever I saw a chance of winning. 
 But there is none. Why get men killed for nothing ? 
 No. I shall not fight again, but still that is my truth 
 and shall be till I die. Oh, that again I saw the light 
 and felt the joy of battle ! ' His eyes grew bright. 
 
 ' Tell me,' the Englishman answered, ' how you 
 can feel like that and yet be Buddhist? Does one 
 contradict the other? You build pagodas and you 
 help and honour monks. How do you reconcile these 
 things ? ' 
 
 The man reflected. Then he said : ' It is like 
 this. Look on the scene before us. The earth is 
 
xvm WOMEN AND MEN 171 
 
 wide : we see for many miles, and yet beyond 
 these hills and that horizon the world goes on. And 
 there are other worlds. What we see even from 
 this hill is but a little. Yet in that little there 
 are many things. There are hills and valleys and 
 plains, high land and low, good land and bad, wet 
 land and dry. There are rivers ; there are trees and 
 bushes, grasses, plants of a hundred kinds. There are 
 birds and beasts and fishes. There are ploughmen and 
 palm-climbers, and hunters and fishermen, and weavers 
 and traders, and many more. There are men and 
 women. To make that scenery how much is neces- 
 sary ? Take one part away and all would fail. Each 
 has its truth and each is necessary to the other. I 
 would not have the world all plain, all hill, all water. 
 So is it with man. I do not cultivate the fields, but 
 there must be cultivators. I do not fish, yet there 
 must be fishermen. I have my own work to do 
 according to my nature. Each part is necessary to 
 the whole. No fisherman if he is wise would want 
 all the world to be a lake, no peasant would make 
 it one great rice -field. Each knows the other is 
 necessary. And so is it with other matters. The 
 virtues of the monks are not for me. I have my own. 
 But they are necessary, and I see that they are beautiful 
 and true. The world would seem to me terrible if 
 they were not there.' 
 
 ' For whom then are they ? ' 
 
 ' Primarily for women. We have our virtues, and 
 the women have theirs different from men. And in 
 what the monks teach and preach is much of the truth 
 of woman.' * 
 
 The man reflected. ' Truly,' he answered, ' it comes 
 more near them than to men.' 
 
172 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 ' It is they themselves — their soul.' 
 
 ' But not for men ? ' 
 
 The Burman smiled. ' Consider,' he said, ' the 
 women. They are not as we are. We are hard and 
 they are soft ; we are strong and they are weak. They 
 love to dress themselves, to make themselves beautiful, 
 and we love that they should do so. They have their 
 ways of doing hair, of dress, of wearing jewels, of 
 walking, of standing, of talking, of laughing. They 
 are different from men, and we admire them because 
 they are different. A woman resembling a man, no 
 man cares for. But because we love women and their 
 ways we do not want to imitate them. We do not 
 desire to be weak or soft-hearted ; we should be 
 ashamed to wear their dress or ornaments. The 
 more a man loves a woman the more he would hate 
 to be like a woman himself. That which we love is 
 not ourselves but our complement — that which has 
 what we have not.' 
 
 ' Yes, yes, of course.' 
 
 ' So it is with that part of our faith that is taught 
 by the monks. It is for the most part the woman's 
 half of truth. And men love it as they do women ; 
 honour it and keep it and preserve it. What would 
 the world be without it to counterbalance and prevent 
 our virtues becoming our vices ? ' 
 
 ' But yet you think that they do not concern you 
 to keep yourselves.' 
 
 The Burman looked surprise. ' Not so ; they do 
 concern me. It is the remembrance and the knowledge 
 of them that makes our men's qualities virtues. Just 
 as it is the influence of men on women that prevents 
 them becoming frivolous, foolish, vain. A world of 
 men alone would be a brute's world ; a world of monks 
 
xvin WOMEN AND MEN 173 
 
 and women would be ' he laughed and stopped. 'I 
 
 don't know why you make me talk,' he said ; ' for I do 
 not tell you anything you do not know, or that any one 
 does not know.' 
 
 ' One may forget. There are many who think and 
 say that whatever you admire you should follow. That 
 truth is truth, and what is truth for one is truth for all.' 
 
 The Burman stopped. ' When you can find that,' 
 he said, ' which is the sea, the sky, the air, the earth 
 and all things, in which is King and soldier and monk, 
 which is both man and woman, which is the universal, 
 then will it contain all truth and do all things. 
 
 ' But we are very small ; all we can do is to keep one 
 truth, acknowledging all truths.' 
 
 ' And yours is to fight ? ' 
 
 ' It was. To-day it is to find a place where that 
 which held all that in my life was best may lie — a place 
 where the morning light comes earliest, and the evening 
 glow stays latest.' 
 
 He rose and the Englishman rose also. ' I am 
 sorry,' he said. 
 
 ' No,' and the soldier smiled. ' For sometime soon 
 I too shall go, and if I have kept my truth as she kept 
 hers, then we shall again be one. And one not with 
 each other only, but with all that is true.' 
 
 He went away slowly down the hill, walking as 
 though he were very weary. Yet he left an echo in 
 the hills that murmured as he passed. ' If I have kept 
 my truth. My truth.' 
 
 He disappeared, and after him the deep and living 
 stillness closed again. 
 
 Within the brain of him who stayed there came 
 thoughts of other days. How in the far West, fifteen 
 centuries ago, knights had gone forth with sword and 
 
174 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 lance to carry at their point the knowledge of a similar 
 morality. How they had killed in name of mercy, 
 destroyed in the name of hope, fought under the banner 
 of forgiveness of injuries. And they too had felt in 
 some way, some silent way, that though their acts 
 contradicted their words they were not altogether wrong. 
 They bore on their shields a cross, and on their helms 
 a glove, and they conquered in the name of their faith 
 and lady. They professed allegiance to both, they 
 honoured and worshipped both, would give their lives 
 if need be for the one and other. But they did not 
 think it fit for themselves either to follow the Sermon 
 on the Mount or wear a petticoat. They had their 
 truths which they kept, but they were not those they 
 injured by professing in words and denying in 
 conduct. 
 
 So it has been both East and West, men have 
 looked at these virtues and loved and honoured them, 
 and said within their hearts, ' They are for women and 
 for monks, who in the main are women. They are for 
 the passive half of human kind. We are the acting 
 half." We are those who do — the good and evil ; they 
 are those who suffer — good and evil. We give and 
 they receive. And it would be no more good for the 
 world for us to place these virtues above our own, than 
 for us to become all women.' 
 
 It is true that in the East no armies have gone 
 forth to kill and conquer in the name of Buddha, as 
 they have in the name of Christ. That is because 
 Buddhism is a religion of conduct mainly, whereas in 
 the West Christianity has been of ideals mainly. 
 
 But in both East and West the world is a world of 
 men and women. In the beginning it was men who 
 were more prominent perhaps, because the main thing 
 
xvni WOMEN AND MEN 175 
 
 to do was fighting, and because women then were much 
 more like men than they are now. The woman of 
 civilisation now is very far from man, in physical 
 qualities, in ideals. But far, far back in the dawn of 
 time, women were much like men. What we call the 
 womanly virtues had not come. No, the first religions 
 were those of men ; they honoured fighting, courage, all 
 the manly virtues. Their immortality was children. 
 Why it should be that though women bear the children 
 and love them, and are ready to suffer all for them, the 
 immortality of children should appeal far more to 
 men than women, is hard to see. But it is so, and 
 Judaism and Hinduism are man's religions — the found- 
 ing of families, of names, of power, all men's ideals — 
 and undeveloped woman had to do her best with them. 
 But there came a time when her ideals grew with her 
 development away from man and they required a faith, 
 so in both East and West it came. Buddhism and 
 Christianity both enshrine in their virtues the ideals of 
 woman, though again that is more noticeable West than 
 East ; it governs all its imagery. 
 
 The Church is the ' Bride of Christ,' but no man 
 likes to form part of that which is a bride. 
 
 Still, in the East it is clear and unmistakable. 
 
 From India Buddhism was driven out by Brahmins, 
 by a caste who wished to corner knowledge, and the 
 women now are shut within the houses ; they have no 
 share in the common life, have no part in religion 
 which is the theory of daily life. In Burma women 
 have reached an equality with men in many matters, 
 and Buddhism, the faith of women's virtues, lives and 
 flourishes. Perhaps it has sometimes been forgotten 
 that it rests on men's virtues as women rest on men. 
 It is in the main women who feed the monks, who 
 
176 THE INWARD LIGHT cp. 
 
 build pagodas and rest-houses, and when men do so 
 it is because they honour and love that which in the 
 spirit corresponds to the milder virtues, as in the flesh 
 woman does to man. It is in the main women who 
 find in daily life the opportunity and the need to keep 
 their teachings. And why should it not be so ? This 
 is a world of men and women ; of men's bodies and 
 strong passions, of women's bodies and weaker passions ; 
 and the souls expressed in them must correspond to 
 their differences. For bodies are built up by the 
 energy, which is the spirit, to manifest itself in. You 
 cannot have all the contradictory complementary virtues 
 necessary to humanity in one set of bodies, not bodies 
 as we know them. They have their limit of expression. 
 There must be men and women — many kinds of men 
 and many kinds of women. And the complexity of 
 the whole increases while the capacity of the individual 
 decreases. For early man contained within himself a 
 far larger proportion of the capacities known to him 
 than does any one man now. He could do nearly 
 anything he knew of. He was a fighter, hunter, 
 carpenter, farmer, artist, musician all in one. His 
 wife would fight too and march with him, and was 
 much nearer her husband ; she could plant and sow 
 and weave and build and cook. But as life has 
 become more and more complex, men and women 
 have differentiated, sex from sex, man from man, and 
 woman from woman. The greater and more manifold 
 the soul of the world, the more various forms it makes 
 to manifest itself within. 
 
 And therefore the more and more necessary it is 
 for each man and woman to realise that their spirits 
 are not little definite unchangeable atoms, always alone, 
 but are part of the great and wonderful life of all the 
 
xvin WOMEN AND MEN 177 
 
 world. Individuals are in the relation to the world about 
 them narrower, smaller, but the life is greater, wider. 
 
 The converse also is true, it must be true, just as 
 true as that by merging his individuality in the family, 
 community, nation, the individual grows himself, greater 
 and not less. So civilised man is greater than the savage. 
 Not of far greater possibility only but of far wider reality. 
 
 So he sat there thinking, looking on the far-off 
 hills. What he looked for was a new symbol to 
 express that in his mind. And in the silence a bird 
 sang. Out of the hidden hollow of the wood the music 
 rang, note after note, full of the little singer's rapture. 
 From the bird's song came to him a symbol. 
 
 Life is a melody the Great Musician wrings from out 
 the hearts of men. At first but a few notes ; more 
 notes and then more strings sounding in unison. But 
 as the great Composer seeks for greater music, he 
 finds that he must have more instruments. Each 
 heart cannot sound the whole, the scale becomes too 
 great. There must be many different instruments. 
 There must be violins and harps and flutes and 
 trumpets, drums and cymbals ; there must be voices, 
 men's and women's : soprano, alto, tenor, bass. So 
 only can you have full harmony. And each must 
 sing and play his part alone, and yet in each must 
 be the music of the whole. 
 
 For each must feel, must know, that he is but a 
 part in a great whole. To him is given his duty, and 
 unless he do it with all his strength, his heart, his soul, 
 the harmony of all will fail. So he must keep his 
 truth, and he must feel within him echoes of all Truth. 
 
 So will the orchestra grow greater and the music 
 fuller. For in that music is the voice of every thing 
 
 N 
 
178 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. xviii 
 
 that lives, that moves, that is. The sunrise and the 
 sunset and the dark ; the hills, the streams, the birds, 
 the beasts ; all things that have the breath of life, all 
 men, all women, the voices of all that has been, is 
 and will be, join in that song. It grows for ever 
 stronger, fuller, sweeter ; the discords die ; all pain 
 and trouble, tears and sorrow, fall from it till it 
 becomes the great triumphal March of all the world. 
 
 Yet because the later truths of Buddhism are made 
 principally of women's truths, it must not be supposed 
 that true Buddhism places them any higher than men's 
 moralities. There is no hierarchy of righteousness. 
 Each is equally true, equally necessary to the whole. 
 
 Women are not better than men nor are they worse, 
 but they are different. As the pagoda's golden spire 
 stands upon its base, so women stand upon men's 
 shoulders. They may be the summit and the glory 
 of the nation's life,, seen from afar. But the topmost 
 golden tip is no more worthy than the hidden stone 
 within the base. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE PERFECT FELLOWSHIP 
 
 The shadows lengthened tending towards the night : 
 the low sun had no longer strength and brilliance, 
 there was in its light a^tenderness and glory. With 
 its touch it called to greater beauty the hills that ringed 
 the valley, the long grassy glades, the winding roads, 
 and shone reflected from the faces of the people. Even 
 the row of square ramshackle hackney carriages that 
 stood waiting for fares lost something of their ugliness. 
 The ponies raised their heads and sniffed the coming 
 coolness of the night, the ragged drivers laughed and 
 talked in quick-flung words from box to box. The 
 golden light took from their wretchedness and poverty, 
 and gave them of its happiness. 
 
 The sun sank lower still ; it touched the trees upon 
 the western hill, and the long rays uplifted from the 
 earth, spread like a fan between the world and heaven, 
 and with the dusk there came a silence. The chatter 
 of the voices stilled, and one by one the drivers climbed 
 down to the road, and knelt in line, their faces to the 
 sunset. 
 
 ' There is no God but God,' they said ; ' Mahomed 
 was His Prophet.' 
 
 They knelt and prayed, while up and down the 
 179 
 
180 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 road the people passed. The carriages raised dust 
 that drifted on them ; ponies galloped past them in 
 the grass. Hindus and Buddhists, Europeans, Jews, 
 Parsees went by and looked, and then went on. 
 They took no notice. ' God is God ; His Prophet 
 was Mahomed.' 
 
 Then the prayer said, they rose and went back to 
 their shabby carriages — and the sun had set. 
 
 What God is that they called upon, what meaning 
 had their prayer ? To the far East ' God ' means the 
 God of all things, all men, all life, all worlds. Was 
 this the Allah of their prayers ? 
 
 l^ot so. Their Allah was the Semite idea of God, 
 the Jews' idea of God, a different thing. For that God 
 is not the God of all the world, but only a part of it, 
 only of men, only of a part of man. 
 
 The Jews' God was a Jewish God who knew not 
 Gentiles. The Allah of the Muslim is a Muslim God 
 who cares for only Muslim people. All other things 
 and men are outcast, Gentile, infidel and damned. 
 They believe the Unity of God ! True, but what 
 means the Unity of God ? It is a phrase that means 
 so many things — a different thing in different mouths. 
 To Jew and Muslim it means this : that of God, the 
 Infinite, only their tiny finite definition is true ; all 
 others are delusions. To their idea the All-Powerful 
 helps but a section of mankind ; the All-Merciful has 
 mercy only to few ; He who made the world has left 
 the most of His creation to damnation. That is the 
 Semites' God ; that is the idea of God that those who 
 follow Semite faiths have borrowed. He is a God of 
 class, of race, of creed — a very narrow Potentate. 
 
 That is their prayer, their declaration. ' My God 
 is God ; you have no God.' 
 
xix THE PERFECT FELLOWSHIP 181 
 
 And yet consider. No one can look upon these 
 men, these poor and ragged rascals praying in the road, 
 and not see that there is something true and beautiful 
 in what they mean. There is something true to them, 
 that has a meaning more than this. It makes them 
 happier, gives them comfort in their poor lives. God 
 is God. Yes, true. And to half- realise it is better 
 than not to know at all. They have seen a little ; they 
 but need to open wider eyes to see more fully. For 
 they are not blind, they see. And they are sure that 
 what they see, so far as they see, is true ; that it is 
 good to know that God is God. Neither are they 
 ashamed of it. They would all men should know that 
 they are sure that God cares for the Muslim, and will 
 protect them from the infidel. They are the chosen, 
 and the passers-by are outcasts bound to hell. 
 
 Some say Mahomedanism is dead. No one who has 
 seen and understood such sights as this believes that it 
 is so. When men are proud to declare to all the world 
 their faith, that faith is not yet dead. It lives within 
 their hearts ; lives by its truth, not by its falsehood. 
 
 What is the truth by which this prayer lives ? That 
 God has chosen people whom He helps against all 
 others ? 
 
 That they are bound for heaven, and all the rest 
 for hell ? 
 
 That there is but one form of truth within the 
 world ? None of these things. 
 
 And yet there is some truth, some greater and 
 living truth that makes him happier who has said 
 these words. There is some meaning. 
 
 God is God, what then ? 
 
 On the pagoda platform night was falling fast. 
 
1 82 THE INWARD LIGHT ca 
 
 The golden spire glowed yet with fire caught from the 
 dying sun, but down below the shrines were wrapped 
 in shadow. About the platform figures moved slowly, 
 sometimes they stopped and knelt and sometimes lit a 
 taper. The tiny flame burned fearlessly in the still air. 
 
 They knelt and prayed. They sent their hearts 
 out into space to ask for that they needed sorely. 
 They asked for others, that they might have all that 
 they desire. They asked for self, for peace, for happi- 
 ness, for love. For they were women. 
 
 No sound was heard, but in the stillness sometimes 
 a sigh. Yet all were not sad. Sometimes it was 
 sheer joy and happiness that brought them there. 
 They shared their troubles, brought their burdens ; shall 
 they not share their gladness? For life sometimes is 
 good and beautiful. Goodness and glory and happiness 
 come from — who knows from where. They are free 
 gifts. Shall they not give back of their happiness ? 
 
 Whom do they pray to ? ' Buddhism knows no 
 God,' some tell us. No God ? Buddhism no God ! 
 
 Truly it has no God, such as the Semite God who 
 sits apart in heaven ; no God who judges men, no God 
 who is a Personality and therefore has His limits. 
 They have no God like this. To them God is in the 
 world, and all our life and soul are rays that come from 
 His refulgence. Shall not the ray that fails call to the 
 sun to strengthen it ; shall not the tiny light that dies 
 call to the source of light for help ? 
 
 No God in Buddhism ! There is not anywhere so 
 great a realisation of Infinite God as here. 
 
 ' Still, man must help himself. He must develop 
 Will ; he must alone conquer. How can he cry for 
 help ? Is that not weakness ? ' 
 
 Let us consider. 
 
xix THE PERFECT FELLOWSHIP 183 
 
 Who are they who pray, who ask for help and gifts ? 
 Not men, but women mostly ; and for women how 
 different is the world — with what far other eyes they 
 see it. 
 
 The world is an oyster and man opens it. It lies 
 before him. With his strength, his knowledge, his 
 roughness, he may do many things. He may win his 
 way to honour, wealth, and happiness ; they lie within 
 his possibility. 
 
 But women— women ; in this hard world what can 
 they reach with their own efforts ? Can they go forth 
 and fight ? Can they pull down with their own tender 
 hands from off the thorny tree of life its fruits ? Can 
 they make wealth, can they make honours ; are they 
 the mistresses of their unhappiness ? Is even love 
 within their power to seize ? 
 
 With women all things come to them. Men give 
 them love, men give them happiness ; they share their 
 husband's wealth and honour. Women are so helpless 
 in themselves, God gives to them the love of men, and 
 men give them most other worldly things. Man thinks 
 that he achieves what he receives, and it seems that 
 woman gets all things free. She may deserve them 
 but does not achieve them. She cannot pluck her 
 fruit. For though neither are men the arbiters of their 
 destiny, nor more really perhaps than women are, they 
 seem to themselves to be so. They seem to earn, 
 whereas it may be that it is only that men receive 
 direct and women through men. Perhaps the truth is, 
 that neither man nor woman can do more at most 
 than to deserve things. They have no real power to 
 reach, and if they deserve then it is given to them. 
 However it be, a woman feels her weakness more than 
 man. 
 
1 84 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 Should not she pray? And are her prayers not 
 answered? If you cannot achieve something you 
 greatly desire, if it is quite outside your power, why 
 should not you ask for it, if it be worthy ? 
 
 No one can say if prayer is answered or is not. 
 The Power from which the soul proceeds can do all 
 things, grant every prayer, or give to none. No one 
 can tell if prayers are answered. 
 
 It may be that they are sometimes. 
 
 But whether they are or not, the request is not the 
 universal truth of prayer. Maybe there is in it a truth, 
 but not the truth. It cannot be so, or we and all of us 
 would spend our time begging for that which we should 
 work for. Will and Knowledge would die, and men 
 become the weakling hangers-on of Providence, con- 
 temptible before the world and God. And the worth 
 of prayer would depend on the chance of requests being 
 granted or refused. But this is never so. That woman 
 prays for health for her sick child and she is comforted, 
 aye though the child die. 
 
 What then is the truth of prayer ? 
 
 Beneath the oleander trees the monks and pupils 
 pray. Along the hills there comes the silver light, 
 foreboder of the dawn. A hush is on the world, and 
 through the silence rise their orisons. 
 
 They say that life is transitory, full of pain and 
 trouble. They sing the praise of him who saw the 
 Light. They tell the jewels of their faith. The chanted 
 music rises like a welcome to the day. And they are 
 happy ; upon their faces comes a light as on the eastern 
 sky. What is the secret of their prayer? Is it any 
 help to say that life is troubled ; does it give surcease to 
 pain ? The Teacher died so many centuries ago, what 
 
xix THE PERFECT FELLOWSHIP 185 
 
 can his praises do? Is there in holy maxims any 
 shield to save us ? 
 
 What is the spirit that lives alike in all these prayers, 
 so different in their form ? It is the same in all. You 
 see it in their faces, a courage and a strength. Let us 
 go back to the beginning, to what life is, and what its 
 trouble, then we shall understand. 
 
 The root of all our difficulty, of our every pain, is 
 that we are alone. We are so weak, so small, so finite, 
 that the world oppresses us. We stand alone, and about 
 us is an overwhelming power. It passes over us and 
 crushes us without remorse. We cannot help ourselves, 
 and there is no one else to help. And we are pent 
 within ourselves, in such a narrow bound ; we stretch 
 our hands to find a fellowship, but meet nothing. We 
 feel that as the world rolls on it may destroy us, not in 
 malice, but in sheer indifference. We may be crushed — 
 and it will make no difference. The world will still go 
 on without us just as well as with us. We do not 
 matter. 
 
 We know so little. In our little brains we have 
 such tiny space. The knowledge of the wisest man is 
 but a drop beside the illimitable sea. We do not 
 understand ; we walk amid a mystery that holds we 
 know not what of the terrible unknown. We cannot 
 fathom it. We are alone. 
 
 We want to love and be loved. We want to feel 
 that we are part of other lives — of greater, wider life ; 
 that we are not as drops of water on a thirsty road, 
 that disappear, no one knows where, but one of a great 
 tide of life that flows, that lives. We feel the utter need 
 of love ; we feel the love, we know not where it draws 
 us, nor to what. 
 
1 86 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 Our separateness is the cause of all our trouble, the 
 appalling loneliness, smallness, and weakness of our 
 lives. It terrifies us when we realise it. 
 
 Man is drawn into wider organisms, to family, 
 community, and nation, and as the tie is strong, so does 
 his power increase. The many little drops become the 
 mountain rill, and many rills the river. It gives men 
 strength and confidence and courage* as they are drawn 
 together. In their cohesion, in their fellowship, there is 
 a solace and a power. A thousand men, what are they 
 worth? A thousand grains of sand. They can do 
 nothing till they feel that they are one, animated by 
 one soul, a regiment and not just so many individuals. 
 The strong man is much stronger, the weak is strong, 
 because each feels that he no longer is alone ; he has 
 support. If he succeeds, then all succeed, and if he die, 
 he does not die alone. What one man cannot do, a 
 hundred can working together, and where a hundred 
 fail a nation stands. 
 
 Strength, knowledge, courage, all increase as men 
 grow into wider organisms. And more. F.or what is 
 duty? Our duty to our family, our community, our 
 class, our nation, is the expression of the feeling that 
 we are one. It then becomes clear to us. Duty is 
 not a set of maxims or of rules. It is a sense of 
 oneness ; and with that larger ' oneness ' comes the 
 knowledge of what is right and wrong as regards it. 
 We are not units separate for ever, but parts of wider 
 organisms. We are not shifting grains of sand, but 
 particles in stones built into spires that rise ever 
 towards heaven. 
 
 Thus from the buffets of the world we find a firm 
 support ; we have a refuge and a consolation. We 
 feel the strength of fellowship. If all our troubles 
 
xix THE PERFECT FELLOWSHIP 187 
 
 were but worldly ones it were enough. But we need 
 more. What can our people, no matter how near, 
 how true, help us in many losses ? Our nearest pass 
 from us, we drift when we are old from out the nation's 
 tide ; and we have enemies within ourselves against 
 which we need an inner help. At last we die, and 
 pass from all that we have known. They cannot help 
 us whatever they do. We need a nearer, closer friend — 
 closer than wife or husband, a friend who goes on for 
 ever, who is ourselves. We want that inward light 
 that never dies. We want a greater unity than nature 
 or humanity ; to feel at one with that which never 
 dies or changes. So only can we be sure that we 
 shall never be forgotten, never be cast aside and left 
 beside the way. 
 
 That is the soul of prayer. 
 
 No matter what the form, that is the spirit that 
 makes it live. That is the truth that lies in every 
 prayer : the Muslim beggar crying ' Allah, Allah ' ; the 
 woman asking for a boon ; the monks, the boys repeat- 
 ing aspirations. When a prayer is true that is its 
 truth. To feel that we are part of the Eternal Sun; that 
 all we are comes from it, is a ray of its celestial glory. 
 
 We cannot be forgotten. In the great white light 
 is every ray. We must be there, or it will not be 
 perfect. Without our tiny, tiny light the Light would 
 be imperfect ; without our little soul, the Soul would 
 not be infinite. It is the Perfect Fellowship with all 
 the Universe. Not ourselves only, but all others. 
 The mother prays beside her dying child. The child 
 will leave her going forth all lonely to the dark. A 
 fear is in her for it and a terrible compassion. It is 
 so weak, and there is no one, no one in that dark to 
 which it goes. 
 
1 88 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. xix 
 
 Not so. There is no dark. The little soul is safe, 
 for it is part of God ; do you think He cares not for 
 His own ? In the great white light all souls shall 
 meet, be one — be One. 
 
 See how the Eastern understanding of what life is 
 explains so many things. If you take men's souls as 
 little separate entities for ever how will you get the 
 explanation ? If you take God as a Great Personality 
 outside this world, how will you understand ? A 
 Personality is a limitation, it has. bounds, it is a 
 definition. Therefore the West has said that Buddhism 
 knows no God because it will not speak of persons. 
 
 The simple village folk speak of the Great Spirit 
 that lives in heaven, of the little gods who are in 
 every living thing, because they cannot rise to higher 
 conception, and it is better so to personify than to 
 have no idea at all. But the Teacher never spoke 
 thus, because though it would embrace a truth, it 
 would embrace also a misconception. And it may 
 happen that the misconception in time destroys the 
 truth, that men see only the limitation of the symbol. 
 
 ' He is unknown to whoso think they know, but 
 known to whoso know Him not' 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 HELL AND HEAVEN 
 
 Then what is heaven and what is hell ? or is there 
 any heaven and any hell ? That there is, without this 
 world, some place apart where souls are set to suffer 
 cannot be, nor can there be a golden place beyond 
 the stars where we shall sit in glory and in idleness. 
 Because such ideas come from thinking the soul is a 
 separate substance, so to remain for ever, and the 
 central thought of Buddhism is that all life is one. 
 Yet men must suffer for their sins, and they must reap 
 reward when they do well. 
 
 Among the simple village folk there is a hell in 
 all respects the same as that the West believes in. 
 They speak about it, they make pictures of it. In a 
 pagoda chapel near the river is such a set of pictures. 
 It was a little place of brick and mortar, square with 
 four large doorways. 
 
 There was a wealth of plaster scroll-work round the 
 doors and in the crevices, and from the scrolls there 
 looked forth masks of men and devils quaintly done. 
 
 Within were frescoes on the walls, the central pier 
 and on the ceiling — pictures of hell. 
 
 Men were shown there under all forms of suffering, 
 burnt with fires by demons, who piled up the coals ; 
 
 189 
 
190 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 and some were flayed alive and torn asunder. Dead 
 corpses drifted in a river with carrion birds perched 
 on them ; there were giant worms that ate their 
 entrails. 
 
 And in every picture there were monks who looked 
 with piteous faces. But they were powerless to save. 
 Each man must bear his punishment and dree his 
 weird. They reaped but as they sowed. 
 
 And as he looked there came remembrance of 
 pictures otherwhere, of tales, of poems in other lands, 
 all of this same ideal. There was the danse macabre 
 upon a bridge, and many a picture of mediaeval Italy 
 and Germany. There were engravings of old books. 
 There was the ' Hell ' of Dante, and there were sermons 
 old and new, threatening the sinner with unheard-of 
 pains. 
 
 Some people say the East and West are different 
 fundamentally. That is not so. The truths both 
 East and West see are the same, and very often they 
 see them from the same standpoint and use the same 
 expressions. This was the Christian hell, the Pagan 
 hell, and it was painted in a Buddhist shrine. 
 
 What did it mean? Why was it there? What 
 Buddhist truth could it convey? That there was a 
 hell where men were sent to suffer, somewhere beyond 
 this world? That cannot be. The meaning is very 
 different. It was this : 
 
 We are made up of souls within our bodies, of spirit 
 manifested in flesh. Our bodies have passions, many 
 passions, contradictory. The soul is made up of 
 Knowledge and of Will, and it controls the passions, 
 can control them, should control them, if it did its duty, 
 if Will and Knowledge both were cultivated as they 
 should be. But they are not. Man remains ignorant 
 
xx HELL AND HEAVEN 191 
 
 and weak, and lets his passion or his want of passion — 
 his weakness — control him instead of his controlling 
 them and using them right. He is a slave who should 
 be master ; he obeys others who should obey himself ; 
 he follows meteors instead of cultivating the clear light 
 within. 
 
 Therefore he suffers, and must suffer, now and here- 
 after. But he must suffer in the flesh, because it is in 
 the flesh he sinned ; because in the flesh, in the lower 
 life alone, sensation lies. He must be paid in the same 
 coin he paid withal. In his children or in some future 
 flesh he must learn better. We are now what we 
 made ourselves ; we will be what we make ourselves. 
 
 When men die everything passes but the effect of 
 that which they have done. That is a Buddhist saying. 
 It does not mean, as it is misunderstood to mean, that 
 when men die they disappear utterly, and that all that 
 is left is the effect of their deeds upon the outer world. 
 We are not concerned here with the outer world but 
 with the inner life. 
 
 When a man dies his life may, survive, his soul 
 persists. In children may his life continue ; and they 
 in their bodies inherit the effect of some of their parents' 
 deeds. 
 
 The soul survives, and that in itself is greater or less 
 as it has been cultivated in this life. But the soul in 
 its further journeys does not carry with it attributes of 
 the bodily life. It has no memory — why should it 
 treasure up remembrance of the past? It has within 
 itself the effects, and that is more than any memory. 
 It leaves behind the loves and hates and hopes and fears 
 of life. In any future phase allied again to life and 
 body it will assume with them these attributes. But 
 they will be new ones, not brought with the soul. At 
 
192 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 death the duality of that body and that soul is divorced 
 for ever. Each takes his burden forward, but with new 
 companions. Each will reap what it "has sown. But 
 in soul apart from life there is no bodily attribute. 
 
 Pain and sorrow and trouble are of the flesh, not of 
 the spirit. Therefore do their hells seem true. Their 
 suffering is corporeal, and that what all suffering is. 
 But it is not endured in some far-distant hell — their hell 
 is here. We can make earth a hell, and do so. 
 
 So men by drawing punishment and hell in bodily 
 terms of suffering are doing what is recognised in all 
 time by all mankind. Pictures of hell and tales of hell 
 seem true ; we are afraid of them, they strike a chord 
 that echoes. And man has many object lessons from 
 which to draw ; no imagined hell is half so hellish as 
 man has made this world sometimes. The artist of 
 hell can be a realist and draw from nature. He did 
 so. We used to hang and quarter, torture, burn, 
 enslave ; we do not do these things now. Yet he who 
 would draw a hell to-day would not have to look far 
 for models. Some men like hell, to make and think 
 of — hell for others. As for ourselves we all want heaven, 
 and think that we deserve it, though we do not know 
 what it consists in. Hell we know, for pain is of the 
 body, of this earth ; it comes from feebleness of soul, 
 that is of knowledge and of will. The world is not 
 an evil thing, nor is the body which is made of earth. 
 They may be beautiful. The passions are noble and 
 great when they are directed by knowledge, ruled by 
 will. But sin is hideous, and sin is the chaos of the 
 passions, the perversion of good things, truths allowed 
 to run to falsehood. 
 
 Hell is upon earth and heaven may be. Hell is of 
 the body and of now. It is not kept till we are dead 
 
xx HELL AND HEAVEN 193 
 
 to make us suffer uselessly elsewhere. Fear made that 
 hell, not God. 
 
 Therefore the Buddhist monks allow these pictures, 
 because they teach that which they think a truth. 
 
 But what of heaven ? 
 
 Here are no pictures of a heaven. Where are there 
 any, either in paint or words, that bring conviction, 
 that cause other than revulsion ? Not East nor 
 West. 
 
 Dante's Inferno, Milton's Paradise Lost, and many 
 a tale of hell we read and feel and fear. But Dante's 
 Paradiso, Milton's Paradise Regained, and many tales 
 of heaven we leave unread. They are not real ; they 
 do not please ; they have no echo. Or would we make 
 our heavens by picturing the pleasures of this world, 
 eating and drinking, the love of exercise, of work, 
 of beauty or of women ? Would we make our paradise 
 that of the Muslims where there are houris waiting for 
 the happy warrior? Women would have celestial 
 lovers also without doubt. 
 
 Yet bodily pleasures are good things in their place ; 
 they are pleasant things, never to be despised. But 
 heaven ! 
 
 Does not the inward light declare to us that heaven 
 is very different? There are no material images in 
 which to picture our hopes of heaven. 
 
 How could we picture heaven, for heaven is of the 
 soul, and can we make a drawing or confine within 
 a phrase the spirit? Take the very simplest forces 
 that we know, gravity or heat, can we picture them ? 
 We can only draw or speak or even think of the 
 material manifestation in which they show themselves. 
 
 And if not simple forces, can we draw knowledge 
 or will? Can we ever draw happiness or gladness? 
 
 O 
 
i 9 4 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 Have we any words in which to make them clear. 
 The greatest writers can call up before us tragedy, 
 sorrow and suffering, but the glory of happiness escapes 
 them. We have a word which shows we recognise 
 that it is of the spirit — we speak of ' ecstasy,' a standing 
 without ourselves. 
 
 Happiness is not a thing apart. It is a quality 
 of Knowledge and of Will ; it is the light that shines 
 from them. Happiness is to know and to be able to 
 do that which is right. As they grow wider it grows 
 deeper, stronger. 
 
 Heaven is the broader life. It is the gathering of 
 the rays of our souls, ourselves, that which is good in 
 us, that which endures. Evil is temporary, of the 
 body. Hell is but for time, but heaven is eternal. 
 
 Hell is of the little personality in changing form, 
 heaven is of the spirit that is in all the worlds. It is 
 the meeting of our little souls with others, with all that 
 is best, most true, most beautiful in them. To be one 
 with them as we can never be where shells of earth 
 divide us. It is to be one with all the beauty of the 
 world, with the sunshine on the hills, the majesty of 
 the night, the laughter of the waters ; with the nobility 
 of noble deeds ; the souls of all whom we have loved ; 
 with the great Power which is all life. 
 
 Such is Nirvana. 
 
 That is what you get when you see life as a spirit, 
 not a substance separate for ever. 
 
 About the platforms and the shrines there stood the 
 little alabaster images of Him who saw the light. 
 Quaint little figures were they. Carved in the three 
 traditional attitudes alone — standing, sitting, reclining — 
 they seemed always at peace in the dignity of infinite 
 
xx HELL AND HEAVEN 195 
 
 understanding. He died twenty-five centuries ago, and 
 was buried in Upper India, and the other day they 
 found his bones. 
 
 Think of it — after two thousand and five hundred 
 years they found untouched the mortal remains of him 
 who first in the world's history taught the crowning 
 virtues, discerning them, as Newton did the laws of 
 gravity, by sight and thought. These relics are now 
 safe and treasured as men might treasure the bones of 
 Darwin, who showed to the world the way the body 
 grew. They work no miracles, they have no virtues, 
 only they recall the knowledge that he found. And 
 stranger yet it is to think that if there had been no 
 grave, no relics, even if it could be shown that Buddha 
 the Indian Prince never existed, was but a myth, a 
 story, it would make no real difference. For it is 
 not to be supposed that because Buddhists reverence 
 the memory of the Teacher, give his name to their 
 religion, and place his statues on their pagodas, that 
 they consider in all matters his life to be an example 
 to mankind. He was a prince — few men are that ; he 
 left his power and the duties of his position to seek for 
 knowledge — it would not become all men so to act. 
 For most it probably is better to do that which comes 
 to hand. He finally became a Teacher, going to and 
 fro to explain what he had found. But the world 
 cannot be made of Teachers. Every man has his own 
 light to keep burning. The world is various ; all men 
 are different one from another. To take an example of 
 the life of even the wisest, greatest man, and hold it up as 
 universal, would be to attempt the old mistake, to imagine 
 that there is one fixed thing which is best. It would 
 be a sorry world that held men all of one kind, even if 
 that kind appear the highest we have seen. It would 
 
196 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 be to deny the essential of the teaching. To admire, 
 to understand, to reverence is not to imitate. Men 
 admire and love their women ; he is a poor man 
 who takes them for his standard. Women love men, 
 but do not imitate them. Most men and women 
 love children, but do not wish to adopt childish 
 natures. 
 
 Each man is given his own truth to keep, and that 
 will differ always in some greater or lesser manner from 
 all else. The Buddha had his truth — to find some of the 
 laws of life. This truth he followed to the end. It is 
 for others to follow their own truths with like simplicity 
 and steadfastness. In that way only does the example 
 always hold. 
 
 Therefore the reverence is for the teaching, not for 
 the teacher. If Buddha were all forgotten, such of his 
 teachings as are true would last ;, they would not suffer. 
 
 If in years to come men forget Galileo, Newton, 
 Darwin, and their names be buried in oblivion, how 
 would it alter truth ? The knowledge of things would 
 still remain. All men would know that the earth goes 
 round the sun, that gravity and light have certain laws, 
 that man's body has grown up from the simplest monad, 
 because they can see, and in case of doubt they can test 
 these theories and see their truth. We do not believe 
 the earth goes round the sun because Galileo said so, 
 we know it is so. Even if it were shown for certain 
 that there was never Siddartha an Indian prince, though 
 many beautiful things would disappear from Buddhism, 
 the essentials would remain. Because it is the science 
 of the evolution of man's life and soul, which men can 
 test for themselves and see the truth. And if as the 
 years go on new truths come into sight, they can be 
 added to the old. For it is progressive and not fixed 
 
xx HELL AND HEAVEN 197 
 
 and finite. It is a ladder reaching always upwards. 
 It is a science men may work at always, striving after 
 new truths as the world grows wider. For it must be 
 remembered that it has at present progressed little 
 beyond where it was after the death of the immediate 
 disciples of the Buddha. At the best it has stopped 
 very much where they left it ; at the worst it has 
 become so degraded as hardly to be recognised. 
 And this people who now hold and keep it, find the 
 old images and manner fit them because they are in 
 much the same stage of development as the people of 
 Siddartha's days. But what is true is not bound by 
 any mode of expression. The truest expression is not 
 the oldest nor the nearest to that far-off Indian 
 Teacher, but it is that which will to each civilisation 
 and each race best express the truths of life which 
 he first indicated, best give them utterance, and best 
 help their further development. Evolution, the rising 
 from lower to higher planes, is as true of truth as of 
 matter or of life. 
 
 There is nothing in this faith stereotyped for ever, 
 nothing to be accepted, because some one has said it or 
 dreamed it or prophesied it. If there be anything 
 untrue it were better out of it, and all new truths must 
 be added to it. Yet it must be remembered that the 
 new stands always on the old, and when old is true 
 and new is true the edifice lasts for ever. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE UNDERSTANDING DREAM 
 
 On one hot-weather night they gave a play. There 
 was a piece of open ground that lay not far beyond 
 the village. One side lay on the river, and on the 
 other stood great tamarind trees. The moon was high 
 and made the open ground as white as if snow lay 
 upon it, while the shadows round were black as ebony. 
 This was their theatre ; upon one side they made a 
 stage by spreading mats upon the ground and standing 
 in the centre of them a tall plantain tree. Behind it 
 was the orchestra of two-stringed violins and flutes and 
 gongs and drums ; oil cressets hung on poles made 
 light, and could any prima donna wish a quieter, 
 sweeter green-room wherein to beautify herself than 
 that which lay within the shelter of the trees ? 
 
 The people came in numbers, all the folk who lived 
 near by, and many from far away. The creaking ox- 
 carts brought them along the sandy lanes, and across 
 the river came beats like black arrows shooting over 
 the shining water. 
 
 The audience made a great horse-shoe about the 
 stage. In front were children of all ages, from tiny 
 creatures of two or three years upwards, next were 
 
 198 
 
ch. xxi UNDERSTANDING 199 
 
 girls and women, and behind them standing against 
 the tree-trunks were the men. 
 
 The players were all children — sons and daughters 
 of the village, taught through many weeks for this great 
 event. So they played well, because they had learnt 
 well and because they were not afraid. For were not 
 the audience all their friends : their fathers, mothers, 
 neighbours, and their lovers ? All were there to see and 
 hear them act. And the play was one well known : 
 a miracle play from long ago, that all had learnt as 
 children, that no one grew tired of even when he grew 
 old. This was the play : — 
 
 There lived in that far-off golden time, in his 
 kingdom near the northern hills, a Prince Wethandaya. 
 He had a Princess Madee and two children, boy and 
 girl. His country was rich and prosperous and all 
 things there went well, for the people were industrious 
 and brave, the Prince wise and pious, and they had 
 that sacred animal a white elephant, whose possession 
 ensured good seasons. But on the neighbouring state 
 a famine fell. The rains came not, the crops all failed, 
 and the starving people came before the King. ' Help 
 us,' they cried, ' or we shall die. The rains come not, 
 the earth is bare. You are our King to whom we 
 look ! ' 
 
 He sought his Council, and they told that there was 
 but one way to bring the rain. Nothing had any 
 power but a white elephant — one must be brought 
 within the city. Then the rain would fall and all be 
 well. ' To say is easy,' said the King, ' but words 
 are only words. Where are white elephants to be 
 obtained? The country where they live is very 
 distant. It would take years to send there, and the 
 people would be dead.' 
 
200 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 The Council answered that was so. But still there 
 was hope ; for the neighbouring Prince Wethandaya 
 had a white elephant, and if the Prince would give it 
 all would be well. The Prince too would be sure to 
 give it, for he was famed for his charity, and denied 
 nothing to those who asked : his eyes, his heart, he 
 would give anything. 
 
 So eight Brahmins were sent to ask for the white 
 elephant. They travelled fast, and came at length to 
 the Prince and asked him for the gift. 
 
 The Prince was willing, but the Council and the 
 people murmured. ' Why should we give what makes 
 our peace and happiness? What is it to us that 
 another people suffer ? If we give away this elephant, 
 shall we not surfer in our turn ? Will not the famine 
 come to us ? ' 
 
 Even the Princess shook her head and said it was 
 a pity. But the Prince was firm. ' Shall we not 
 give,' he said, ' when we are asked ? Shall we not save 
 when it is in our power? Stay till to-morrow and 
 then take the elephant.' 
 
 And to his Queen he said : 
 
 ' Madee, you have great treasure. You have your 
 dower, and I have given you many things besides. 
 Bethink you, were it not good to make a treasure-house 
 to keep it in for ever ? ' 
 
 1 For why ? ' asked the astonished Queen. ' We 
 shall not live for ever to enjoy it, and how and where 
 can such a treasure-house be built ? ' 
 
 ' The treasure-chamber,' said the Prince, ' that will 
 endure is shrined within ourselves. It moves for ever 
 with us as a shadow followeth a man. It came from 
 all the past and goes to all the future. It is ourselves, 
 and in that chamber there is no treasure like to charity. 
 
xxi UNDERSTANDING 201 
 
 Would you reject that treasure when it comes to seek 
 you ?' 
 
 The Princess said no more, and next day after a 
 great feast the Brahmins led away the sacred beast. 
 
 But unlike the Princess, the Ministers and the 
 people were not convinced. They murmured, and at 
 last they rose and 'drove the Prince forth to banish- 
 ment. They gave him a chariot and horses, and as 
 much gold and jewels as he wished, and taking him to 
 the frontier bade him never return again. So they 
 drove out along the unpeopled ways — the Prince, his 
 wife and children. But a travelling Brahmin begged 
 from him his horses, and when four deer came and 
 drew it he gave away the chariot to another. His 
 gold and jewels all were given, and then destitute of 
 all possessions the four continued on foot. 
 
 They travelled on and on ; they passed the hill of 
 flowers, the valley of cool shade, the pleasant waters, 
 till at last they came to the high mountains far from 
 all the world. They found a cave and made therein 
 their habitation, and every day Madee went forth and 
 gathered fruits and roots for all to live on. So time 
 passed happily and quietly, and then came the final 
 consummation. 
 
 A Brahmin came and asked for the two children. 
 He found the Prince sitting alone within his cave, and 
 because the Prince could refuse nothing he gave the 
 children. But the mountain spirits kept back Madee 
 in the woods, setting a leopard and a tiger in her 
 path. For though the Prince might give, the Princess 
 never would have done so. But she returned too late ; 
 boy and girl were gone. 
 
 The audience burst into tears of sympathy and grief. 
 Then, finally, the gods sent another Brahmin to 
 
202 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 demand of the Prince his wife, Madee the beautiful 
 and faithful, and he gave her. The sacrifice was 
 consummated, and he remained alone and destitute. 
 He had followed Charity to her end, he had conquered 
 self, and because he had so conquered, the gods 
 returned to him all that he had lost. The Princess, 
 children, kingdom, all were given back. 
 
 So the play ended happily. 
 
 With a great sigh the crowd broke up. The people 
 went slowly towards their homes, the boats put forth 
 again upon the river, and in a little while the place 
 was empty and alone. But in the heavens the moon 
 shone high, filling the world with mystery and peace, 
 and down below, beside the passing waters, three men 
 talked. 
 
 ' It is a play,' said one, ' to make one think. What 
 is its meaning ? What did those who wrote it wish to 
 say ; what was it that they said ? ' 
 
 To which another answered : ' They meant to say 
 that charity was a great thing, especially to Brahmins ; 
 that it brought its own reward to those who gave — to 
 Brahmins.' 
 
 ' True, that is so ; this is a Hindu legend from 
 before the time of Buddha. It is a Brahmin tale, and that 
 is what they meant to say. But is it what they said ? ' 
 
 ' I think,' said one who sat low down and listened 
 to the ripples going past, ' that what it says is other- 
 wise. What did the audience to-night think when the 
 Brahmin took the children ? Was it reverence for the 
 Brahmin or the Prince that they felt, or was it not 
 contempt ? They hissed. A virtue narrowed to 
 become a virtue to a class, a caste, a church, becomes 
 a vice. Charity is to all mankind.' 
 
 ' But I suppose,' the other answered, ' that they 
 
xxi UNDERSTANDING 203 
 
 would argue that charity is good or not according to 
 the object, and that no object can be so good as a 
 caste which cultivates knowledge, or a church which 
 cultivates holiness.' 
 
 ' It is of course true that the value of charity 
 depends also upon the object, but it was to escape the 
 result of such a teaching driven to an extreme that 
 Buddhism came to protest. It protested not in theory 
 but in practice. The Buddhist monks are not allowed 
 to beg, and they are allowed to receive only the 
 necessaries of life. Thus they can never become a 
 temporal power, a tyranny, a standing denial of their 
 own tenets, as have become the Brahmins in India and 
 the Churches of the West. That is one unconscious 
 lesson of the story, a lesson that they who hear it 
 note. It was written to extol the giving of all things 
 to the Brahmins, and it unconsciously condemns them.' 
 
 ' Neither was the sympathy of the people with the 
 Prince. No ; for he gave that which he had no right 
 to give — the prosperity of the people, his children, which 
 were the mother's as well as his. He owed them a 
 duty to bring them up well and wisely, not to give 
 them away to a beggar who maltreated them. That is 
 what the people like in the play, the human interest' 
 
 The man beside the river dipped his fingers in the 
 water. ' It is for that, because it touches their heart, 
 but more, I think, because it has in it a lesson, an 
 unconscious lesson, that is indeed the heart of their 
 religion.' 
 
 The others listened. ' And that ? ' asked one. 
 
 ' It is that we never see truth whole. It is that we 
 can never find a virtue we can follow with our eyes 
 tight shut ; it is that there is never any rule or rules 
 that lead to righteousness. Yet that is always what 
 
204 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 man seeks. "Show me the truth," he cries, "that I 
 may follow it" The castes and churches and philo- 
 sophers lay down the virtues and say, " Follow these ; 
 here only is the Truth, the way to heaven, to rest, to 
 peace." But the people clearly see that it is never so. c 
 These rules and virtues are sometimes a truth and 
 sometimes not. Sometimes the living light of truth 
 is in them, and sometimes they are dead. Pilate asked 
 What is truth, as many more have done, and got no 
 answer. There is no answer, not in the way he meant : 
 a maxim, or a set of teachings, a code, a moral guide. 
 For every virtue has its other side and may become 
 a vice. As see this Prince. Charity is a virtue, no 
 one doubts it, one of the most beautiful,— when truth 
 is in it. But when it is not? 
 
 ' That is what Buddhism came to show. That we 
 never see truth whole ; that if what we see were always 
 true then we should be no better than machines. Could 
 we find out a code that held invariably true we should 
 have but to learn it, then to shut our eyes and follow it. 
 Our minds, free will, consciences would die. We 
 should be as engines running on rails we may not leave. 
 But the end and object of our lives is not to make 
 ourselves cold, dead, and soulless things, automata that 
 jerk always in given fashion. It is to learn knowledge ; 
 it is to recognise amid all the varying, and to all 
 seeming, contradictory forms of what may be truth, 
 that which in the time and place is True. It is to 
 cultivate our consciences, our minds, our common sense. 
 It is to cultivate our will to do that which is right 
 when we see it. We are not slaves of other men, 
 of castes, of churches, nor of words, of rules, of maxims 
 or philosophies. We are free men — to grow ever freer, 
 ever wiser, ever into greater self-control. That is what 
 
xxi UNDERSTANDING 205 
 
 Buddha meant, and because the people know that, 
 because in this story they see how quickly any virtue 
 may become a vice when used without knowledge and 
 self-restraint, that it appeals to them.' 
 
 The listeners understood. For in the majesty of 
 the night, in the watching stars, in the ever-flowing 
 river there was an echo to the words, ' Self-reverence, self- 
 knowledge, self-control ' ; and in self is the whole world. 
 
 There was a long silence and the summer night 
 passed on. 
 
 ' So what seems wrong may sometimes be right,' 
 said one at last. ' Our object is self-knowledge and 
 control ; that only which he does of his own free will 
 raises him or degrades him. It is better for him to do 
 wrong and find out his mistake than to do right on 
 compulsion, is not that so ? and yet could the world 
 progress with that always as a truth? There must be 
 government. What would the world be like with 
 anarchy ? ' 
 
 To which was answered : ' It is a question of ideals. 
 What they mean is that the fact that government is 
 necessary is a sign of our weakness, that compulsion 
 is a lesser evil to avoid a greater. It is not in itself 
 an end to aim at ; complete knowledge and complete 
 freewill are the ideals, and whatever impedes the 
 progress thither does harm. Government has two 
 meanings. In so far as it is the expression of the 
 larger life, the freewill of a people combining to effect 
 what is beyond the power of individuals, it is all good. 
 Government meaning compulsion is an evil, though in 
 times and places a necessary evil. It is like leading- 
 strings to a child : they help him to walk, but they are 
 not good things in themselves. They are not an ideal 
 to aim at, but an evil to be endured to avoid a greater, 
 
206 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 and to be done away with as soon as possible. A child 
 if he is ever to be a man must learn to walk alone. 
 Man must learn to choose the good without being 
 forced. It is the same with war ; it is an evil. But 
 as the world is now, it is the sole escape from greater 
 evils. It is war alone which from time to time proves 
 men and nations. It is the fire from which the gold 
 comes out the purer. This world grows many weeds ; 
 there are gangrenes that eat into the living flesh. The 
 surgeon's knife is evil, maybe, but it saves the life. 
 The healthy man fears not the surgeon's knife. When 
 men are grown so that they need not war, then will 
 it cease. When men can walk alone then will the 
 leading-strings of government, of law, of justice all fall 
 off. Till then we choose the lesser evil lest the greater 
 kill us. But we must remember they are means, 
 not ends.' 
 
 ' If,' said the first man sadly, ' life were always a 
 choice between a good and an evil, how simple it would 
 be. But it is not so. Life is seldom a choice between 
 a good and an evil, still less often between two good 
 things, but usually between two evils. A man may 
 be so placed that he must do evil — often is so placed. 
 It is an evil to have to use outside support ; it may 
 be a greater evil never to learn to walk, to become 
 discouraged by many falls and so remain prone. It is 
 always a choice, and daily the choice is harder.' 
 
 ' But as man chooses the lesser evil, or the greater 
 good so does he rise.' 
 
 ' What then is truth ? ' 
 
 The man beside the water raised a pebble in his 
 hand. ' This is a little thing,' he said ; ' a very finite 
 stone. Yet of this stone no one can see more than one 
 side at once. The rest is turned away. It faces north 
 
xxi UNDERSTANDING 207 
 
 and south, to earth and heaven, to sunrise and to sunset, 
 but only one face is true to me now.' He laid it down 
 upon the river beach between them. ' I see one face 
 and you another ; each is a contradiction of the other. 
 Yet had not each side its opposite there could be no 
 stone. So is it even with the tiniest truth. It has its 
 opposite. And truth is infinite. How could we see it 
 whole? In some world of a fourth dimension — Yes, 
 but here — No.' 
 
 ' Yet,' said the other man, ' that is only half a truth, 
 because within our finite lives it may be that we never 
 have occasion to see but one side of a certain truth. 
 The other may never be turned to us. It is an evil 
 thing to tell a lie, and yet it may be, yet it is sometimes, 
 to some men the only escape from some far greater 
 evil. Those are the two facets. But to most it may 
 happen that the latter contingency may never come, 
 and therefore to them one face becomes almost the 
 absolute. 
 
 ' If in the things of every day we had to stop each 
 moment to consider what is right and wrong, no day 
 would be long enough to do our work in. We must 
 have general rules, but we must remember that they 
 are not the Truth, and there may come a time when we 
 shall have to face the difficulty.' 
 
 ' There is " the golden mean," ' one asked again, ' the 
 proverb that we go most safely in the middle ? ' 
 
 ' A coward's maxim,' cried the man below, ' to halve 
 each virtue and each evil. That is not a truth except 
 for him who fears, and he who desires to progress must 
 not fear. There are times when the extreme is true, 
 when a man must go to any limit for that he thinks 
 right.' 
 
 And again he questioned, ' Does it not happen that 
 
208 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 sometimes a man will endure even to the end for a 
 thing which is not true, which he thinks is true only 
 because his eyes are blind ? And yet to him it may be 
 counted as a righteousness.' 
 
 ' It must be true to him, and that is all that 
 matters.' 
 
 ' Yet again we come to the question that is never 
 answered : " What is truth, and how can we ever 
 know a thing is true ? " ' 
 
 The night was very still. Orion hung his jewels 
 high above them in the sky. A light mist lay along 
 the river, and beneath its veil the polished waters 
 moved. It seemed the night was listening. ' How 
 shall we know the truth ? ' 
 
 * Listen,' he answered. ' Here is an answer that was 
 given nearly three thousand years ago, many centuries 
 before the Buddha was, to one who asked that question, 
 and we have not bettered it. 
 
 ' " What light hath this Man-Soul ? " the King asked. 
 
 ' " Sun's light, O King," said he ; " 'tis with the sun 
 for light that he sitteth, goeth about, doeth his work, 
 cometh back." 
 
 ' " Verily it is so. When the sun hath gone down 
 what light hath this Man-Soul ? " 
 
 ' " Moon's light, O King," said he ; " 'tis with the moon 
 for light that he sitteth, goeth about, doeth his work, 
 cometh back." 
 
 ' " Verily it is so. When the sun hath gone down, 
 and the moon hath gone down, what light hath this 
 Man-Soul ? " 
 
 ' " Fire's light, O King," said he ; " 'tis with fire for 
 light he sitteth, goeth about, doeth his work, and 
 cometh back." 
 
 ' " Verily it is so. When the sun hath gone down, 
 
xxi UNDERSTANDING 209 
 
 when the moon hath gone down, when the fire is dead, 
 what light hath this Man-Soul ? " 
 
 ' "Voice light, O King," said he; " 'tis with the Voice 
 for light that he sitteth, goeth about, doeth his work, 
 cometh back. Therefore where a voice is uplifted 
 thither he goeth, albeit he cannot behold there his 
 own hand." 
 
 ' "Verily it is so. When the sun hath gone down, when 
 the moon hath gone down, when the fire is dead, when 
 the voice is hushed, what light hath this Man- Soul ? " 
 
 ' " The light of Self, O King," said he ; " 'tis with Self 
 for light that he sitteth, goeth about, doeth his work, 
 cometh back." 
 
 '"What is Self?" 
 
 '"It is the Man-Soul made of understanding between 
 the Breaths ; the Inward Light within the heart • that 
 walketh abroad ever the same through both worlds. 
 . . . He becometh an Understanding Dream and fareth 
 beyond this world." ' 
 
 While the teacher lives, he who comes into the 
 world from time to time and sees the light, men 
 walk by him. 
 
 When he is dead they walk in the reflected light 
 his disciples give. 
 
 When they are gone men fall again to the light 
 of daily experience. 
 
 And when that dies, choked in its ashes, they listen 
 hither and thither to this advice and that. 
 
 Until at last they learn that the only true light is 
 that ray of the infinite in themselves. 
 
 For if men look within themselves they will find 
 always light enough to guide their steps forward, and 
 that light never dies but grows for ever. 
 
 P 
 
210 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. xxi 
 
 That was the ideal of wise men of the East : to be 
 the ' Understanding Dream,' the perfection of all know- 
 ledge ; to increase the ray of conscious understanding 
 that is within all men. To it alone is given to know 
 where Truth is. For Truth is not a thing. It is like 
 Life — a force, an energy, a ray of the eternal light. And 
 it is manifested in all forms : it comes into a phrase, 
 a saying, a teaching, a rule, an act, a life, and while 
 the Truth is in it then it lives, and when the Truth 
 departs it falls an empty shell, a form devoid of soul. 
 
 But Soul knows Soul and Truth has answer unto 
 Truth, and it is by that Truth within ourselves that 
 we shall know the Truth in all things. 
 
 The night was nearly past, and in the east there 
 came the light of dawn. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 ALL TRUTH IS ONE 
 
 It was his last day in the monastery, and he sat 
 thinking over all that he had seen and thought. He 
 looked on the bare walls, the matted floor, the simple 
 surroundings where he had been so happy, where 
 strength and health and understanding had come to 
 him. He looked out on the broad view, the hills, the 
 fields, the river that had spoken to him so often, on 
 the sunlight that litothe world. Then he took down 
 the prism of glass that had given him his symbol, that 
 had helped him to understand. I will keep it, he 
 thought, in memory of this Eastern faith. And yet 
 what is there Eastern in it ? There are Western people 
 who pretend that Eastern people differ from them, that 
 they have Oriental modes of thought, of life. They 
 think that Eastern faiths have something in them 
 strange, unnatural to Western faith ; that Eastern 
 thought is a thing no Western can understand, that 
 it is mystical and subtle — incomprehensible. But that 
 is not so. Eastern thought and Western thought are 
 just the same, and Eastern truth and Western truth is 
 but one truth. Life is all one though it manifests 
 itself in many forms, and so it is with thought. The 
 difference is in the form, the symbol only. If you can 
 
212 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 get below that ; if you have not shut the portals of 
 your mind and said, ' I do not understand and therefore 
 cannot ' ; if you have not shut your eyes deliberately 
 because you do not want to see, but keep them open, 
 then you will see below the form to what it is that 
 makes it live, and the life is a common life to all the 
 world. What is there in this Eastern faith that all 
 mankind has not seen at one time or another? That 
 all the world is God's, that it is beautiful, that the life in 
 it is one wfth our life, — is that not known to the West ? 
 All people have known, all people know it naturally, 
 until the knowledge is murdered in their hearts by 
 dogma and authority for their own ends. 
 
 The earth is beautiful ; it is for us to keep it and 
 to make it more so. Did not the Greeks know it ; has 
 not every people been sure of it ? Has not the truth 
 of this surged upward, bursting through dogma? 
 Even in the deadly years of mediaevalism, even in 
 monks, this truth could never be repressed. Was it 
 an 1 Oriental who wrote ' The earth is the living garment 
 of God ' ? Was Wordsworth some subtle Oriental when 
 he wrote the verse placed as a heading to Chapter IV ? 
 That is an universal thought that comes to every one 
 who lives near nature. 
 
 So with the life before this life, what is there 
 Eastern in that? All the world naturally knows it, 
 that we did not begin at birth. 
 
 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 
 The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 
 Hath had- elsewhere its setting, 
 And cometh from afar. 
 
 Men have always known it till it was crushed in 
 
xxii ALL TRUTH IS ONE 213 
 
 them. They know it even still, the truth does not 
 die. It will rise again, must rise and burst the tomb- 
 stones placed on it to keep it down. 
 
 That God is Love ? All the world is always 
 saying it, but only in the similes of this Eastern faith 
 can it be understood how it may be. Because man 
 grows by attraction of particle to particle, of man 
 to man, of soul to soul, to wider life, and that is 
 love. 
 
 That we can never see right or wrong whole, but 
 only facets, and the facets alter, and show differently 
 to different men ? 
 
 For this is truth to me and that to thee. 
 
 Tennyson was no Oriental. 
 
 It would be easy to fill a library with such quotations 
 on this and other points. Men have recognised always 
 when allowed to think for themselves that no fixed 
 maxims are always true or could be always true. 
 We have to choose, to cultivate knowledge and 
 freewill. 
 
 And of the Inward Light has not the West been 
 told, does it not know when the Churches let it, that ' the 
 kingdom of heaven is within you ' ? That is the 
 only light which lives and grows, because it is a ray 
 of the infinite. 
 
 An Eastern faith ? An universal faith made up 
 of truths common to all mankind. Yet though it is 
 known to all, and seen by all men at all times in parts 
 and glimpses, only Two have seen it whole. They 
 saw it and they told it, but men did not understand. 
 What is the history ? 
 
 Twenty -five centuries ago the light was seen in 
 India. It shone for a time and died. Men understood 
 
2i 4 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 it not. They were filled with admiration of the further 
 truths that Buddha saw, and they forgot the earlier 
 truths on which these rested. The personality of the 
 Teacher dominated them. They thought that what he 
 taught was the whole truth. When he said that what 
 troubled us was life, they thought he meant the fact 
 of being alive, whereas he only meant the present 
 limited conditions in which we live. They thought 
 his ideal was Death, yet it was Life. They thought 
 that because he taught renunciation of many things, 
 that renunciation was a complete truth for always, 
 whereas it is but a later truth. That because he did 
 not teach worldly wisdom, that therefore worldly wisdom 
 was a worthless thing and ignorance a good. Human 
 society rests on certain laws, certain ideals ; they 
 thought he came to deny them ; he came to build upon 
 them. 
 
 He gave utterance to certain maxims, and they 
 thought that by following these alone you could come 
 to happiness. It is much easier to do so, to follow a 
 certain rule blindly instead of cultivating knowledge, to 
 make oneself a slave instead of being free. They 
 took a half-truth and made a falsehood of it. They 
 built the spire while the foundations crumbled. 
 
 And again there was a class of men, a caste, a 
 race who hated what he taught. Wisdom had been 
 theirs, they had made a monopoly of it. They 
 claimed the reverence of all other men because of 
 their knowledge and understanding. They denied to 
 other men all possibility of righteousness. They made 
 a corner. 
 
 The Buddha taught that in each man, if he but 
 look, there is a light whereby he may see, a ray of the 
 eternal light, and that it is within each man's power 
 
xxii ALL TRUTH IS ONE 215 
 
 to increase that light — within his power alone. None 
 else can save him but himself, Man may be helped 
 to find himself, but others cannot do it for him. This 
 race of Brahmins arrogated to themselves the salvation 
 not only of themselves but others. They were the 
 elect. They had the monopoly : no one could find 
 salvation but in them, buy it except from them- 
 They wanted power, authority, and reverence. They 
 desired to rule the hearts of men. They wanted not 
 to teach, but order ; not to raise, but crush. Free trade 
 in righteousness was an abomination to them. They 
 held the keys of heaven and hell. 
 
 So because Buddhism ceased to be truth, it fell. 
 The Brahmins drove it out, and made in India a great 
 ' trust ' of righteousness which lasts there still. Yet 
 because they kept free of the desire for worldly power, 
 apart from spiritual, the people did not rise against 
 them. Their yoke was not so hard, and they had a 
 truth — the earlier truths of love and marriage, and 
 immortality, of wider knowledge. In spiritual matters 
 men like to be ruled, to be commanded, to be forced, 
 to surrender all their will. It is so much easier, so 
 much simpler ; nothing is so hard as an attempt 
 to think. 
 
 Only in Burma did the faith survive in somewhat 
 of its early form. Because the sheltering mountains 
 and the sea saved them from Brahmin overlordship, 
 and because they were in all essentials a free people, 
 equal and happy. 
 
 Yet here too the pinnacle was seen more than the 
 base. The lesser truths were neglected and the summit 
 sometimes shook. They did not see life whole. 
 
 Such is the history of the East, and does the West 
 differ? Six hundred years later came another who 
 
2i6 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. 
 
 saw the light, saw it much as the earlier teacher did. 
 There is not in the Christianity of Christ very real 
 difference from the teachings of Buddhism. The 
 similes, the colour, the local circumstances differ, but 
 the essentials are the same. 
 
 And the West did not understand it. They did 
 much as the East had done. They did not realise that 
 He came not to destroy, but to fulfil the law, the 
 prophets ; not to destroy the earlier/ truths, but add 
 to them. They hung about that figure trappings of 
 miracle and mystery. Then like the East they formed 
 a ' trust' It was not a caste or race this time so much 
 as a hierarchy, and yet there was a race in it too, 
 a holy city and a race from whom the higher priests 
 all came. 
 
 They made a church and out of that church a trust. 
 That which was free to all men was cornered. Salvation 
 was of the Church alone, and it might give or it might 
 deny. It might send men to heaven or hell. ' The 
 kingdom of heaven is within you,' said the Teacher. 
 ' Not so,' said the Church. ' It is in the priest. We have 
 the keys of heaven and will let you in, or will deny 
 you.' They claimed all authority, spiritual, temporal, all. 
 Men were to be their slaves. They tried to establish 
 an absolute tyranny in everything, and they killed 
 truth. They wanted to extinguish' in every heart the 
 Light which God put there for men to see by, so that 
 the world might be lit by their light alone. They 
 who should have shown the way by going in front to 
 lead all men into freedom, became the drivers into a 
 slavery. Every strengthening truth they killed, and 
 they left but soothing opiates to dull their slaves and 
 make them blind. They made them dream dreams, 
 see visions, anything but reality. 
 
xxn ALL TRUTH IS ONE 217 
 
 There came a revolution against the race, the Church. 
 The other races would no longer be domineered over 
 and ruled. They made their churches for themselves. 
 What did they found them on ? 
 
 A book. 
 
 They took a book and set it up and worshipped it. 
 The book is very old. There was truth in it, there is 
 still when it is understood, but the imagery is that of 
 other lands and other times. Sometimes the truth 
 remains clear, oftener the words remain a lifeless shell, 
 and we do not know what the truth was that illumined 
 them. 
 
 ' The letter killeth.' Therefore they took the letter 
 and worshipped it. They made themselves a tyranny 
 worse even than the tyranny of other men. They 
 made, too, a tyranny of men who gave interpreta- 
 tions to the book. They bound themselves hand 
 and foot, they who should be free men. Of a book 
 they made their teacher, and they put out the inward 
 light. 
 
 Truth is progressive, and they stopped it where it 
 had reached nineteen hundred years ago. But when 
 you stop a life it dies. The spirit goes out of it. 
 Saying they wished to preserve truth, they killed it and 
 preserved but the petrified form. 
 
 Two thousand and five hundred years ago was laid 
 and made clear the foundation of all truth. Did men 
 build on the foundations given to them, increase the 
 structure*make more beautiful ? Not so. They set to 
 work to deface and pull it down. And so now we have 
 got to clear away all the rubbish, and bare the old 
 truths again before we can continue our own building. 
 For we have gone far since then. We have progressed 
 in many ways, and we want wider truth now than that 
 
2i 8 THE INWARD LIGHT ch, 
 
 which then was shown. We want to see life more 
 clearly still than it was then seen ; to bring new truths 
 we dimly guess into the whole ; to understand their 
 place in reference to the others. 
 
 And we want old truths new stated ; we want new 
 similes. For much of the difficulty lies in the simile. 
 In those far-off days men knew only substance. They 
 could not realise energy apart from that in which it 
 existed, or rather, perhaps, they realised but could not 
 express it. This is very evident when you read, say, 
 the Upanishads. The writers knew and felt that there 
 was something in matter that was not matter, but they 
 could only express it in terms of matter. Take this 
 saying : — 
 
 ' Bring me yonder a fig.' 
 
 ' Lo, my lord.' 
 
 ' Break it.' 
 
 ' It is broken, my lord.' 
 
 ' What seest thou in it ? ' 
 
 ' Lo, little seeds, as one may say, my lord. 
 
 ' Now break one of them.' 
 
 ' It is broken, my lord.' 
 
 ' What seest thou in it ? ' 
 
 ' Naught whatsoever, my lord.' 
 
 Then he said : ' Of that thinness which thou be- 
 holdest not, beloved, ariseth this fig tree which is so 
 great. Have faith, beloved ; in this thinness hath this 
 all its essence. It is the Tree, it is the leaf. Thou 
 art it.' * 
 
 The old poet is trying to say that the fig tree ariseth 
 from life which is not a substance, which cannot be seen 
 or touched, or apprehended. The fig tree is a mani- 
 festation of an invisible force, which is in all things ; 
 which is all things including man. The substance is 
 
xxii ALL TRUTH IS ONE 219 
 
 but the envelope. It is so with much of the writing. 
 It seems obscure, simply because knowledge had 
 supplied no more applicable symbols. They knew 
 that life, soul, and spirit were not substances, but they 
 had none but words signifying substance. The thought 
 below their writing becomes quite clear and simple 
 when this is understood. 
 
 But now science has given better methods. It is 
 true we know no more of life than was then known, no 
 more of man's soul. But we know a little of energy 
 apart from matter. 
 
 When the old writers were trying to say that man's 
 soul was not within him, but came from without, they 
 had to tangle themselves in words. They had no 
 simile to show what they wanted to say. Now we can 
 refer to the electric lamp : the light is there; but is not 
 a product of the lamp. It comes from afar. It is not a 
 separate thing, but part of an universal force manifested 
 in a separate entity. And so with our ideals which we 
 think so fixed. The thought was always quite a simple 
 one, but the explanation was impossible till science 
 showed the way. Therefore is science part of religion ; 
 science is part of knowledge, and religion is know- 
 ledge. 
 
 To science men must look for further help. Elec- 
 tricity is not life, nor is life consciousness, and Will 
 again is different. We have a very long way yet to 
 go till we can get a simile that will actually fit life, and 
 farther yet before it will fit the soul. But we progress. 
 We can in some way now understand how an energy 
 can exist apart from its manifestation, or rather not 
 how it can, but that it does. We do not know what 
 electricity is, but we know something of how it acts. 
 So we can go on, not daunted because knowledge is 
 
220 THE INWARD LIGHT ch. xxii 
 
 infinite, nay, rather pleased that there will be for ever 
 new things for us to learn. 
 
 There will be for ever ' beautiful things made new 
 for the sky children.' 
 
 These were his last thoughts in the monastery. He 
 turned and went away. 
 
L'ENVOI 
 
 He went on board at noon and the boat put out on to 
 the broad river. They had hardly need to row : the 
 swift current bore them on its bosom, and they sat and 
 watched the banks go by. They drifted hour by hour 
 past tamarind groves and palms and villages whose 
 feet were in the water. The hot hours passed, and 
 slowly the day waned into evening. The sun sank 
 low, his splendour dying. The tired earth drew across 
 her face a veil of languorous light that stretched to all 
 horizons. Deep silence fell, and an immense, over- 
 whelming sadness dimmed with tears. The day was 
 in its agony and all things mourned. 
 
 The sun set in a gold and crimson pageant drawn 
 across the west. It throbbed with living light. A 
 glory caught the clouds that lay, bright islets on an 
 emerald sky. The day was ending, its magnificence 
 was thrown upon all things. The far-off mountains 
 robed themselves in funeral purple, and the river 
 burned. 
 
 Then the light died, and suddenly all became grey. 
 Earth drew her mists still closer to her. She was 
 wrapped in fear and mystery and grief. Death's shadow 
 came upon her. She said within her heart : — 
 
 ' My King, my life is gone, he will return no more. 
 The night comes fast. I die, I die. You that have 
 
222 THE INWARD LIGHT 
 
 still the light, make use of it, for the day returns no 
 more, and the darkness takes all things. Live while 
 the day is with you. But my light has gone.' She 
 hid her face in silence of despair. 
 
 The last flush lingered for a while and faded. 
 Darkness took all the world, the tense hush became a 
 perfect stillness. A great peace fell from heaven ; it 
 seemed the peace of death. Then the fear passed, the 
 silence lifted. The night awoke in all her majesty. 
 
 Her diamond eyes were full of pity, yet there was a 
 laugh hid in them as she looked. The earth moved 
 in her sleep. She feared that she was dead, but only 
 slept In sleep she found oblivion for her troubles, 
 and on her face a smile arose as of one who knows she 
 is not dead, but lives and dreams, and will awake, 
 sometime. 
 
 The perfumed breath of night moved in the palms 
 and whispered in her ear : ' There is no death' but 
 sleep. Where is the fear? This is but sleep and 
 rest ; art thou not tired ? Look up into my stars, 
 my eyes. 
 
 ' There is no death.' 
 
 Behind the eastern hills a radiance shone; their 
 outlines stood in darkness on a silver heaven. The 
 stars grew wan. The silver turned to gold, and all the 
 east throbbed with the ecstasy of dawn. The pink 
 that edged the mountain crests burned into fire. The 
 whole heaven flushed with glory that the day was come 
 again ; the glory grew. 
 
 The long gold fingers of the dawn reached down, 
 and down. They crowned each spire and hill with 
 living flame ; and fell still lower. They caught the 
 sheeted mists that lay upon earth's face and with a 
 
L'ENVOI 223 
 
 touch dissolved them. The earth still slept. Quick 
 from the glowing thresholds of the east the sun leapt 
 down and kissed her. 
 
 She moved, and with a laugh held up her arms. 
 A rapture ran across the meadows and the river ; there 
 was a magic in the air, the land, a ripple on the water. 
 
 And the strong sun cried : 
 
 ' Awake, for I am come again. Life never dies, and 
 after every night there is the dawn ! ' 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clakk, Limited, Edinburgh. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 Extra Crown Bvo. 8 s. 6d. net. 
 
 THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE 
 
 SOME PRESS OPINIONS 
 
 ACADEMY.— "An exceedingly interesting book. ... We wish we 
 had space to quote the abundant, instructive, and fascinating information 
 contained in this charming book." 
 
 MORNING POST.— "The book sets one thinking; every chapter is 
 instructive, and Mr. Fielding Hall has assumed the right attitude in 
 endeavouring to see things from within rather than from without, and has 
 entered as far, perhaps, as it is possible for an outsider to enter into the 
 soul of the people." 
 
 GUARDIAN. — " A very fascinating book. . . . Without a dull page 
 from start to finish." 
 
 STANDARD. — "One of the most striking books which we have 
 encountered." 
 
 PALL MALL GAZETTE.— "\i is a prose poem, and a fine one 
 too ; because it is the picture of a world that must stir all the poetic 
 feeling and sympathy of a man. . . The book is full of striking 
 matter." 
 
 LITERARY WORLD.— "la this book there is something fresh and 
 new. It is a study of Burmese national character, illustrated by stories 
 which throw light on it. It is written from first-hand knowledge by one 
 who has been a part of the scenes he describes ; and the author, by his 
 true sympathy with the Burmese people, and by the perfectly simple and 
 unaffected style of his narration, always carries conviction and not seldom 
 touches the heart." 
 
 MANCHESTER GUARDIAN— " Every chapter is full of interest, 
 and the author not infrequently reaches a true dignity and elevation of 
 style. A book of this kind should go far to break down the barrier of 
 almost invincible ignorance which separates most English people from the 
 life and thought of the East." 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 Extra/ Crown Svo. Ss. 6d. net. 
 
 A PEOPLE AT SCHOOL 
 
 SOME PRESS OPINIONS 
 
 ACADEMY.— "How intimate is Mr. Fielding Hall's knowledge of 
 Burmese customs and how actual is his sympathy with Burmese thought, 
 every one knows well who has read that very fascinating book The Soul of 
 u. People. The present volume has the same wisdom and charm ; but the 
 matter is treated from another point of view." 
 
 STANDARD. — " Mr. Hall has drawn a graphic picture of Burma and 
 the Burmese before, during, and after the war ; of the days of their past 
 childhood, and in those, like the present, when they are living in a world 
 where so much is strange, where they want a direction and a purpose. 
 Now they grow fast, and they have growing pains, and think they are the 
 pangs of an approaching dissolution. " 
 
 PALL MALL GAZETTE.— ■" A great deal is expected of the author 
 of The Soul of a People, but those who read this volume will not be dis- 
 appointed. . . . This admirable work should be read not only by those 
 who would know Burma, but those who would learn something of the 
 spirit of the Bast. " 
 
 TRIBUNE. — " There is so much that is stimulating and suggestive in 
 this illuminating book that one is tempted to quote indefinitely. This is a 
 book that statesmen and economists should study, and it is one which 
 should be placed in the hands of all young men taking posts in the Civil 
 Service 'out East.'" 
 
 DAILY CHRONICLE.— "The whole narrative is enlivened with the 
 individual touches and the humorous anecdotes of a born descriptive writer ; 
 so that a man who had never heard of Burma before might rise from reading 
 this book feeling that he had known the country and the people for years, 
 while he would be amused and interested the whole of the time. " 
 
 DAILY TELEGRAPH.— "The courts and civil law, the position of 
 women, the movements of the population, questions of custom, traits of 
 native character, are all dealt with in a simple, but thoroughly interesting 
 fashion in this really delightful book — a notable addition to the many 
 excellent records kept by Empire-builders in far portions of the King's 
 dominions." 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 
 
 2 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. net. 
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 SOME PRESS OPINIONS 
 
 DAILY TELEGRAPH.— "Full of real interest and marked through- 
 out by true beauty. . . . One Immortality strikes something of a fresh 
 note in fiction, one that we scarcely dare to hope will be widely popular, 
 yet one that will delight all who like a novel the better for being at once 
 literature and life. A quiet, serious, thought-stimulating, and beautifully- 
 written book." 
 
 WORLD. — " There is a charm and a freshness about this book that is 
 scarcely to be described. ... A veritable poem in prose, wherein, one 
 feels, each word is fitted like the fragments that make up a mosaic. Whoso 
 skips One Immortality loses something of the mysterious fragrance of this 
 most uncommon book." 
 
 \ 
 
 DAILY EXPRESS. — "A quiet story, introspective, unusual, wise, 
 very beautiful. ... A fine achievement. " 
 
 DAIL Y NEWS.—" One thing that impresses us in every page of this 
 book is the complete sincerity, the depth of feeling, that has prompted it. 
 . . . What Mr. Hall has written has been expressed with fervour and 
 conviction, with insight and poetic power. " 
 
 SUNDA Y TIMES.—" We have had many charming books from Mr. 
 Fielding Hall — books about Burma and its people and their religion ; now 
 he has chosen to write a novel, just a story of western folk and of love, and 
 it contains perhaps the most charming writing to which he has put his 
 name." 
 
 MORNING POST.— "The delicacy and sincerity with which the story 
 is treated, the beauty of the language, the difficulty of the metaphysical 
 problems set forth, leave the reviewer with much to think about and with 
 much more inclination to keep silent than to criticise fully." 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 
 
 3 
 
BUDDHIST ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 PAUL DAHLKE 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN 
 
 BV 
 
 BHIKKHU SILACARA 
 Svo. 1 2j. 6d. net. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 I. The Life of the Buddha. 
 II. A Brief Surrey of the Leading Doctrines of Buddhism. 
 
 III. Some Characteristics of Buddhism. 
 
 IV. Pessimism and Sorrow. 
 V. Nibbana. 
 
 VI. God. 
 
 VII. Kamma, the Judge of the World. 
 VIII. Morality in Buddhism. 
 IX. Charity. 
 X. Knowledge. 
 XI. After Death. 
 XII. The Specific in Buddhism. 
 
 XIII. The Law of the Middle Path. 
 
 XIV. Asceticism. 
 XV. Women. 
 
 XVI. Beginning and End— The Two Riddles of the World. 
 XVII. Miracle. 
 XVIII. The Elements. 
 XIX. A Brief Survey of the Historical Development of Buddhism. 
 XX. The World-Mission of Buddhism. 
 
 BUDDHISM AND SCIENCE 
 
 BY 
 
 PAUL DAHLKE 
 TRANSLATED 
 
 BY 
 
 BHIKKHU SILACARA 
 Svo. ios. net. 
 
 LONDON : MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 
 
 4 
 
II