V N ^ * ^* . ^.. ^ \ \ \ \ , . ^45- ni3 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY „^.^^ _Cornell University Library BD421 .F45 1913 ^ *°'iiliiiiMlliiriiilfiii'ili '^'^■'''"a-^^^i . „ 3 1924 028 931 348 olin The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028931348 BT THE SAME AUTHOR THIRD EDITION REVISED THE HEARTS OF MEN In large croivn 8fo, cloth gUt^ 6s. net HURST & BLACKETT, LTD. THE WORLD SOUL THE WORLD SOUL A** BY H. FIELDING-HALL AUTHOR OF "THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE ' " THE HEARTS OF MEN," ETC. " Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." SECOND EDITION LONDON HURST & BLACKETT, Ltd. PATERNOSTER HOUSE, E.C. " Pilate saith to him, What is truth? Jesus said, Truth is from heaven. Pilate said, Therefore truth is not on earth. " Jesus said to Pilate, Believe that truth is on earth among those, who, when they have the power of judgment, are governed by truth and form right judgment." CONTENTS PAGE Preface . . . , . ix CHAPTEI I. What Thought Is . 3 II. The World Life 23 III. Fetters on Life 41 IV. Fatality 61 V. Body and Soul 77 VI. Secrecy 95 VII. The Kingdom of Heaven 119 VIII. The Trinity 127 IX. Jesus 149 X. Glad Tidings 171 XI. The Threefold Intention 189 XIL The Spirit of Truth 209 XIII. Faith 237 XIV. Crucifixion . 253 XV. The End Appendix I . Appendix II Glossary . 277 297 • 302 • 307 PREFACE A LL knowledge is built up from below. It / % is made up of facts, and facts only. It -X. .m. cannot be pulled down from above. You cannot formulate an hypothesis, say of God, with attributes and qualities, frame a theory on that, and fit facts to your theory. You only destroy your facts. But you cannot confine yourself to facts alone. By doing that you only accumulate a formless mass which is of little use. You must arrange your facts, and to do this when you have a large quantity of facts all verified and correct you must frame a theory based on an hypothesis to connect them. If it does so, then even if the hypothesis be unverifiable in itself and inconceivable as all hypotheses must be, it is of great value. It is, in fact, a necessity and a truth. But it is true only in so far as it does explain and co-ordinate phenomena, and no further. Should new phenomena appear, which the theory will not connect, then you must modify it till it does, or abandon it if it will not. You must never hold to a theory or an hypothesis that is denied by facts. Science, when confronted with the phenomena of a 2 ix THE WORLD SOUL ^eat and light and gravity and other energies, framed for itself the hypothesis of an imponderable, invisible, incompressible aether filling all space, which is the medium of all energy. That hypothesis seems now to have been abandoned, as new phenomena appeared which were inconsistent with it, and science is looking for a new hypothesis to connect the phenomena of energy. The phenomena of life likewise require a theory and an hypothesis to co-ordinate and explain them. Religions do not do so, and have been abandoned. At first Darwin and his school were content with collecting facts alone, and indeed that was the first necessity. For the old mistaken teleologies had caused facts to be overlooked or misinterpreted. It was necessary to investigate them afresh with an absolutely unprejudiced mind, intent on truth and truth alone. But there now arises the need for a theory to explain these many verified phenomena of life, and as you can no more have a theory without an hypothesis than a curve without a focus, science is beginning to frame one. It denied any purpose or any teleological principle proceeding from an out- side power creating the world. It still denies this, but it feels the absolute necessity for such a teleology within the world, working towards a desired end. Karl von Baer,^ in his criticism of Darwin's hypo- 1 Prince Kropotkin, in The Nineteenth Century, March, 1 9 1 z, p. 5 1 6. PREFACE thesis of Natural Selection, had made the remark that the followers of the hypothesis being brought more and more to deny all purpose in evolution, scientific recognition could be granted to the hypothesis only if it recognised an universal tendency towards reach- ing a certain purpose. To which Weismann after having quoted these words with approval, as also those of Hartsmann, who considered Darwinian evolutions as " a mad chaos of stupid and capricious forces," added that it was necessary indeed " to com- bine in a theory of evolution the teleological principle with a mechanical conception (5/c execution ?)." Formerly it was thought impossible. Now he was going to prove that it was unavoidable. *' Baer," he wrote, " is right, for the phenomena of organic and inorganic nature cannot possibly be con- ceived as a work of accident. They can be conceived only as a process directed in accordance with a certain great plan. And he came to this conclusion : we must not hesitate to recognise the existence of a force acting with a purpose, only we must not represent it as directly intierfering in the mechanism of the universe ; we must conceive it rather behind the mechanism as a final cause. . . . " Why should we not return to the idea of matter endowed with soul ? " It is exactly this World Soul and its plan which science is seeking that I explain in this book, only xi THE WORLD SOUL that I find it in the world and in matter, not behind. Now an hypothesis must be fairly considered. No hypothesis can be verified in itself. It cannot be proved, or disproved directly. An hypothesis is that which is necessary to any theory which co-ordinates and explains phenomena, and its proof or disproof lies not in its being conceivable or verifiable in itself, but in whether it does or does not fulfil its purpose. This hypothesis of the World Soul does co- ordinate and explain phenomena. It is a complete explanation of all phenomena of life, of thought, of all the religions, of the life of Jesus, and of his teaching. It is not dualism, for it is quite impossible to separate soul and matter. The World Soul per- meates matter and expresses itself through matter. Neither is it Monism, for you can separate soul from the organism in which it is expressed. To take the simile of the electric lamp, the light is not generated within the globe. Turn off the current, and though the globe is unhurt, the light ceases. On the other hand, the lamp may be broken or worn out, the light will disappear, yet the current continues, and, given another lamp, will shine as brightly as ever, or more so, if the lamp be a better one. The reader will judge for himself whether the hypothesis fulfils the purpose. If so, it is true. xii PREFACE The phenomena are given, then the inevitability of the hypothesis, and finally a demonstration of how the use of this hypothesis does unlock secrets supposed to be for ever hidden. So much for the purpose of the book. But care must be taken to understand the language. However general and abstract thought may be it cannot be clearly expressed in abstract terms. Energy is universal, but can only be manifested and under- stood when embodied in individual forms of matter It is the same with thought. It must have a local habitation and a name. Trope and figure are in- evitable and necessary. Therefore I must express my thought in figures. But I beg the reader not to go beyond the record and read into my terminology things I do not mean. The World Soul is that which pervades all living matter and is the cause and explanation of all phenomena of life. God, if there be one, is that which lies be- hind the World. I attribute to neither God nor the World Soul qualities other than those which are inevitable in them as the causes of these phenomena. I am not concerned to prove either. I am agnostic in these matters, as in all others. What I am con- cerned to do is to find the exact truth of things, and to connect them into a coherent whole. It seems to me that the hypothesis of the World Soul does this. If so, it must be true. If not, let us find the truth. xiii THE WORLD SOUL I have to use figurative language, concrete expres- sions for what are really unknown causes of observed phenomena ; to speak of body, soul and spirit as distinct, whereas ultimately they are all expressions of one emotion in one matter, though the emotion may not be generated in the body wherein it appears ; to talk of the forgiveness of sins, when I mean that the consequences of certain sins do not persist — a flicker of the light caused by a flaw in the glass of an electric lamp does not persist in the electricity after the lamp is broken — it is a sin of the vehicle, not the energy ; to speak of the eternal life of the soul com.ing from the World Soul and returning as a drop of water coming from and going to the sea, though we can but dimly comprehend how one indi- vidual soul can remain distinct and yet be blended with all other souls. I cannot help this. Thought itself and the termin- ology of thought are not yet sufficiently advanced to permit figures to be abandoned. The attempt only leads to confusion. Thought can no more be ex- pressed without imagery than soul without flesh. But the reader must not take the flesh for the soul. He can, if he likes, prevent himself from being misled, not by me, but by himself. It was not the legend-writers who misled the Churches into be- lieving in a real ark ; it was the Churches who misled themselves. ^ xiv PREFACE In the meanings assigned to words there lies a very potent but often unsuspected cause of difference of opinion. Words have in themselves clear and definite meanings, but in current use these meanings are often widened into a vagueness that deprives the word of all accuracy, or narrowed, or a totally wrong one is given. To understand a writer's ideas, it is of the first necessity to comprehend his language, and as I have endeavoured always to use a word in its right meaning, I would ask the reader to be sure he is doing the same. For instance, I would refer to what I say about sympathy in several places. To the uncritical thinker sympathy is just feeling sorry for people, and as such an emotion has frequently little value, they condemn sympathy. It is indeed often only sentimentalism. But sympathy really means feeling not for people but with them. It means the capacity to put yourself with your power of thought, your knowledge of the other side, your freedom from their personal bias, into a similar position to theirs and analysing it, seeing what they see, feeling what they feel, and understanding it as they cannot. It is being glad with them as well as sorry. That is sympathy, and no quality in the world is so rare. No quality is so urgently needed to correct the abuses of the world. Half our unnecessary misery is due to not being sorry when we ought ; the XV THE WORLD SOUL other half to well-meaning stupid " being sorry for others " without understanding them, and so doing more harm than good. It is what makes friends often more dangerous than enemies. Therefore I would ask the reader in case of differ- ence of opinion to be quite sure he understands what I mean and the way in which I use words. I have appended a glossary of the principal words, and in cases of doubt I would suggest a reference to it. For dictionaries are not much use. They give the current meanings of words, and if a word have drifted from a clear and definite meaning to an indefinite one, they make matters worse by recording the popular interpretation. I have a personal affection for words. I sympathise with them in the hardships they have to undergo and the misapprehensions they have to put up with. They are very willing to help us if we are good to them, but they take their revenge on the unsympathetic. They are not dead but very living things, and they know their friends and enemies. Accuracy in the expression of thought is an essential to right thinking in ourselves and under- standing the thought of others. So much for the imagery and language. I have now a word to say of the form of the whole book. An architect when he builds a house that he thinks people will live in has to consider first the general xvi PREFACE impression it will make upon those who come to see it. The essential is that the design be clear and in proportion. Many things are necessary that the house be attractive and comfortable ; each detail must have been carefully thought out, but no detail should obtrude itself nor be out of proportion. On some details he may have spent more time and trouble than on far more conspicuous parts, but that time and effort must not be evident. All must blend into one whole. Later, he who inspects may want, should want, to verify each detail, but no detail should be conspicuous at first. That has been my difficulty with this book. In working out such a new line of thought in- numerable details have had to be thought out from the beginning afresh. Many of them are most im- portant. In working them out I have spent, not only time and thought, but ink and paper and typo- script. I have written them out at length very many times. They have been problems worked out, pen in hand. When solved the difficulty was to assign them their due proportion in the whole, to sub- ordinate them to the general design. They had cost me so much work they seemed worthy of a con- spicuous place. In former drafts of this book, of which I have written several, I have given pages to what is now condensed into a few lines. I have written chapters xvii THE WORLD SOUL on what are now only a few pages. I have had to modify, to prune, to content myself often with stating subordinate facts, not proving them. I say this that the reader may not think that because, for instance, I condense what I have to say about philosophy into a page or two ; because when I say angels are only a figure of speech for thought, I simply state the fact ; because I do not fully explain the origin of the degrading practice of circumcision and its eflFect in deranging the nervous system ; because in the account of the crucifixion I do not in the text enter into a full account of the innumer- able known cases of insensibility simulating death, therefore I have not worked out these matters, and even very often written them out in complete detail. I have done so. I have taken nothing for granted, nor scamped anything. When necessary I have added appendices, but even this I have done as rarely as possible. That the reader may comprehend the central thought, I have had to reduce all minor matters to the smallest compass. The trees must not obstruct the sight of the wood. That must first be understood. Later perhaps I will elaborate all these details in another book. Again, I might have quoted indefinitely in defence of my various propositions from innumerable writers. For instance, for what I say about thought being not reason but sight, I might have referred to Locke ; PREFACE for the fatality of act, to the wisdom of the East, which declared that " every man's fate I have written on his forehead," and to Goethe ; for crime to Lombroso, Holmes, Devon, and the publications of the Penalogical Society ; for the necessity of recog- nising that the evil of life — not our stupidity or self- righteousness — is here for our good, to make us face life as it is and conquer it, and that being ashamed of evil is being ashamed of Him who made it, to Isaiahr — " I form the light and create the darkness : I make peace and create evil : I the Lord do all these things " ; and so on indefinitely. I am indeed conscious that until I come to the life and teaching of Jesus I have nowhere said anything new. And as regards him, what I say is the in- evitable result of the previous facts. Seeing one has enabled me to see the other. All I have done is to co-ordinate what has been already seen. I have almost entirely refrained from quotation, because you cannot prove such matters by authority. I have had to take all my facts from life, to think them out for myself, and take my conclusions back to life for confirmation or denial. If the reader wants to get any use from them he will have to do the same. For the object of life is to understand life as we live it, not to know what people have said about it. No two people see life in all its details exactly the xix THE WORLD SOUL same, because no two people look from exactly the same standpoint. To see life clearly you must learn to see for yourself. The value of books is not to give you ready-made opinions, but to help you to think for yourself, by showing you how to think and opening up new aspects. Thought is life, and as no one else can live for you, no one else can think for you. XX I WHAT THOUGHT IS " Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at mid- night, and say unto him. Friend, lend me three loaves ; for a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him ? " And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not : the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed ; I cannot rise and give thee. " I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth. " And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. " For every one that asketh receiveth ; and he that seeketh findeth ; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." You seek in life for truths, you ask in thought for their explana- tion, you knock with sincerity and courage. THE WORLD SOUL CHAPTER I IF you awoke one morning in an unknown country and were told you had to walk through , it, you would before you started ask, " Which is the way ? " You would know it was no good walking at random this way and that, with no fixed purpose. You would want to know whither you, were to go and where you would arrive. It would have to be to some pleasant place, or you would not care to walk at all. If you had to go to some end you did not care for, you would take no interest in your walk. You might refuse to move. You must learn where you have to arrive and the direction. At birth we all come into an unknown country, which is life. There are a great many other people also there, and all are travelling along through life. There are also animals, and other living creatures, in the same case. We are all together in some way. What is the object to be attained in life ; where 3 THE WORLD SOUL ought we to be going ; what is the right direction, so that we can walk straight, and not lose our way, nor waste time, nor fall over precipices ? Whither is the stream of life inevitably flowing, that we may go with the current and not against it ? Is not that knowledge the first necessity ? Every one who takes the trouble to think the matter out will see this for himself. Every one who has really thought has seen that until this question is solved satisfactorily, no conclusion can be come to on any subject. All knowledge must be empirical and all action can be right only by chance. Unless you know to what the world has tended and tends you cannot begin to understand anything of the world ; unless you know what your objective is you cannot know whether any course of action is rightly designed to assist towards that end. Without a true solution to this eternal " Whence .'' " and " Whither ? " all thought and action are and must be blindfold groping, touching the truth only by chance. Life has no meaning. Now there is in every child that is born into the world an instinctive knowledge of the answer. In early man this instinctive wisdom was allowed to grow, and it found expression. It was not very full, nor detailed, but it was simple and it was true. It seems to have been almost universal — perhaps it was universal. You will find it in the legends at the 4 WHAT THOUGHT IS beginning of Genesis, in the sacred books of all peoples, the Eddas, Upanishads, in China, Japan, Britain, and Mexico, to give only a few instances. It was expressed in varying forms, looked at from different standpoints, but it was always the same truth. It was the possession of this truth which gave rise to the subsequent conception of the Golden Age of man, and his fall. For this truth was killed. What this truth was, how it was killed, and who killed it will come later, but it utterly disappeared everywhere. The legends in which it was enshrined remained, but no one could interpret them ; they were misinterpreted, made nonsense of, and dis- appeared from popular understanding entirely. So for thousands of years men lived in almost darkness ; the recurring truth in children being always suppressed as opposed to religion, and then again came light. Jesus the World Thinker was in the world to think for it, and tell it whence it came and whither it was bound ; how so to live as to accelerate that purpose which is in the world and for the world ; but with one exception — the writer of the fourth Gospel — no one, even partially, understood. The life of, Jesus and his thought were misinterpreted. From out of his teachings a few simple truths were taken ; all the rest were misinterpreted, and thought 5 THE WORLD SOUL was once more fossilised and dead. All research was persecuted and destroyed. The very little that was partially understood of what Jesus was and said was hidden in a mass of superstition, and called Christianity. This was the faith that I was taught when young. Briefly, it is this : A God all-powerful, all-wise, all-loving, made the world, no one knows for why. It is a failure, full of misery, sin, and suffering. So He sent His Son to save it by his blood, because God had to be pro- pitiated for the sin of His own creation. Jesus was born of miracle, lived in miracle, died in miracle, a denial of God's own rule of law. He taught that the world is evil, and we must escape from it. We must be innocent and pure, abjure the world, and when we die those who succeed will go to heaven to live for ever uselessly because they are unfit for any work, and there is no work to do. The majority will burn in hell. Their symbol is that of death, a crucifix or cross. I did not believe a word of it. Even as a boy I saw instinctively and very dimly a great many things. No God would sacrifice His Son to Himself. He might send His Son to war knowing he would be killed. That is a different matter. But in that case how could He be all mighty ? 6 WHAT THOUGHT IS I saw that the world was beautiful, and that if it was not entirely happy it was because of defects which existed to be overcome, for the whole value of life lay in overcoming them and going on. Trouble was to be faced, not to be run away from. Purity and innocence were at best negative virtues, and were hindrances in battle or in life, A soldier's sword had to be stained with blood, not kept within its sheath in idle innocence, which is only an euphemism for ignorance. All the world is one, now and for ever, never separated into heaven nor hell here or hereafter. I didn't want to go to either heaven or hell. I wanted life, and so did all others I knew. A man's acts are not a fair criterion of his worth. Nearly all his acts are bond, by birth, physique, by circumstances, by authority. No two men are born alike ; therefore no two men can be judged alike. The theory and the ethics of the Churches are inconsistent, wanting, and harmful often to the world. They are exceedingly depressing, whereas truth must give joy and courage. They had degrading ideas of God. What Jesus meant I didn't know, but neither did the Churches, Their interpretation of him was absurd. They didn't want to know what he meant. They wanted to wash in his blood, and not in the least to understand or follow what he said ; their object was to benefit by his death, not by his life. 7 THE WORLD SOUL And I saw that all the world which took the trouble to think agreed, and always had agreed, with me. Yet the progressive world is nominally Christiart. Why ? For these reasons : A love to Jesus. It is an unreasoning love. It does not understand him ; it does not try. It dis- agrees with nearly all the things it thinks he said. It is afraid of him. And yet it loves him ; it feels in him instinctively the greatest personality, the world has known ; and it thinks that any Church which puts the name of Christ upon its banner must be true. That is the main reason. Then there are some truths in Christianity, disconnected and em- pirical truths — yet true. Any answer to the whence ? the why } the whither } is better than no answer. Drowning men catch at straws. Moreover, most men have been from their birth brought up to such spiritual cowardice, to such denial of the Inward Light, that they dare not think, dare not confess even to them- selves the need for thought, the terrible void to be filled. They disbelieve, yet wrap their disbelief in secrecy, from fear. They call Peace, Peace, where there is no Peace. They hope against all hope, and the Powers that be are interested in retaining men in mental slavery and obedience. 8 WHAT THOUGHT IS I disbelieved quite frankly and openly, and asked questions. No one answered them, because no one had an answer. They said there wasn't any. 1 did not believe that. There is an answer to every ques- tion. Questions are put there to be answered. I was told that it was impious to question, that God will not pardon curiosity. I know that if God made the world He was not ashamed of what He had done, nor would He want to hide it. It was there for us to know. I wanted to know, and would know if I could, the world, its Why, its Whither ; what Jesus really was, and did, and said, for I was quite sure the Churches didn't know. This has been my driving purpose all through life. I learned, I tried, I saw, I thought. So have 1 done all my life. Never have I stopped, seeking new truths, new experiences, new facts, to extract their essence, and to add to those before. I wanted that door opened that was shut. I knocked and knocked. Every book of mine has been an assault upon that door within which lay the answer to these questions. I never forced it open ; but for my very importunity it has opened from within at last. But before I tell what is inside there is a long way to go. It is simple, inevitable, true ; it is most beautiful ; yet it is so strange, so unexpected, so contradictory to all that has been held, that it must be reached by degrees. To take the reader there he THE WORLD SOUL must go with me the way I travelled. Therefore I ask his patience. It is worth his while. The first essential for arriving anywhere is wanting to arrive, the dissatisfaction with things as they are, the determination to find out what they should be and may be if we make them so. The first essential for knowing is the wish to know. All children are born into the world with this desire, this instinctive emotional necessity for knowing. You that are fond of children, you that have children of your own, have you never noticed this ? You have all been children once, what do you re- member of yourselves then ? Was it not the desire to find out the truth of things .'' The first quality of a child's mind is desire for knowledge. It sees a great number of things happening and it wants to know why. It is always asking questions. The world seems to it a very beautiful and strange place, and it wants to know all about it. It thinks it was sent into the world to find out about it, and it is right. Moreover, it has some instinctive knowledge whether the answers it gets are true or not. It has some criterion within it of what is true. It has no prejudices. It does not have any beliefs. Its eyes are quite clear, and it wants to know the truth about everything. If you want to make a child love you, explain the meaning of things to it as 10 WHAT THOUGHT IS much as you can. When you come to difficulties say, " You are too little now to understand. When you get bigger if you try you will learn everything." The frame of mind of a child which wants all truth is what you must acquire before you can learn anything. Try to understand everything ; never give up learning ; never suppose you have learnt everything. Always try to see things clearly. Give up all prejudices and try all things you have been told ; they may be wrong. Learn things for your- self. Wisdom is what you J^ow, not what you have been told ; it is what you understand, not what you believe. Every child is conscious of this. It resents rules and formulas and creeds and beliefs, as it knows they are not knowledge, but bonds on knowledge. It hates to be told, " You must believe because I tell you." It wants to exercise its thought capacity, not to have it enervated. It wants to do what is right, and it knows instinctively that the only way to do what is right is to understand what is true. This I say is instinctive in all children. The second quality in a child's mind is sympathy with all the good things of life. It likes and wants all that is good ; it hates all that is bad. It has no prejudices. Those limitations which are called nation- ality, tribalism, class exclusiveness are taught. They are not natural ; they are bonds on understanding. All children, too, love animals, birds, in fact all II THE WORLD SOUL nature, and sympathise with it. The contemptuous attitude of man to other men and to animals is from acquired intellectual pride which is just narrowness and ignorance. Children love work, if it be real, even more than play- Throughout my lif^ I have had no friends like children. I love them all. I have been the best of friends with hundreds of children of many nations. And they love me because I listen to them, I feel with them, I learn, I do not want to teach. Almost all that other people teach them 1 have seen to be wrong, and as I did not myself know what truth was till now, 1 never tried to preach to them. It has been always a great grief to me to meet again those whom I have known as children, their clear and candid minds clouded with maxims, their wide outlook narrowed and confined with rules and " Don'ts " instead of enlarged with " Do's," their splendid spiritual courage broken, their abounding hope often become dull resignation before the man-created sins and enigmas of life, their sympathies narrowed to a small circle and almost atrophied. They are past all power of learning. The infinite Sum/jLis of their childhood has been reduced to a petty " is." It is never the facts of life that do this, the hardships, or the troubles, or the suffering. They can all be borne, whatever they be, if you have hope and courage. It 12 WHAT THOUGHT IS is wrong ideals, wrong teaching, the putting out of the " Inward Light " which lightens every man that is born into the world, that does the mischief. Therefore the first necessity is to face life as a child does, as you yourself did once, to be afraid of noth- ing, to have good courage, to have the absolute intention to arrive coiite que coute. The attitude given, what are the conditions of true thought ? Life is divided into thought and act, into flesh and spirit, and they have different conditions. Almost all act is bond, completely or partly. We have no control over how we are born, with what physique, of what temperament, into what circum- stances. Neither have we any choice as to our parents, nor teachers, nor masters, nor Government. Yet all of them we must obey in reason, for nothing can be accomplished without the united effort of some, of many, or of all. If we are all pulling separate ways, we shall stand still. When we have all learnt to see truly, we shall know the end, and co-operate to that end naturally. We shall know what to do, and do it without authority. But until then, authority is necessary to secure unity of effort. When we are perfect we shall be all an-archist, because we shall need no " arche," having grown out of tutelage ; but we have not yet reached that stage. Therefore authority, law, and 13 THE WORLD SOUL convention are necessary to us, as are leading strings to a child. They should be used as are leading strings to a child. They should be used as little as possible, it being always remember^ that they are essentially evil, only tolerated because necessary evils. Eventually they are to go to limbo, but that time is not yet come. Therefore is act still in great part under authority and bond. Thought is the opposite to act, it must be free. There must be no authority nor convention in thought, for they mean death. Thought is your real self, the one thing you have complete control over. Never surrender that control. If a thing is true, it is true. If it isn't true, it isn't true. That is all. And you must find out whether it is true yourself. Don't take what other people say. How will you improve your mind by doing that ? How will knowledge increase if you are only allowed to think what other people tell you to believe ? Wisdom is not given. We have the power to find it. If we won't, we go without. It must never be sold into slavery for any price what- ever. A man's thought is his soul, and what will it profit you though you gain the whole world if you lose your own soul ? No thought is of any value unless it is sincere ; it must not be affected by others, must not want to H WHAT THOUGHT IS follow nor obey. It must be free as air. No man can be a thinker at all, unless he is a free-thinker, owing no allegiance save to sincerity and truth. Thought, like God from whom it comes and whom it reveals, is no respecter of persons. " The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth : so is every one that is born of the Spirit." The spirit is true thought. It must have neither reverence nor irreverence. It must not accept a statement for any reason but that it knows it to be true. Who said it matters not ? Truth is not honoured by the speaker ; it is the speaker who is honoured in that he has spoken truth. You must understand it. A truth is no truth for you unless you make it your truth. Your thought, your soul, is what you understand, not what some one else understands for you. There is no vicariousness in thought. You will not be judged by what others thought and you blindly accepted, but by that thought and wisdom that is in yourself. Every man sees some view of life no one else sees. He must learn it, for such knowledge is required by the World Soul. " Wisdom is justified of all her children." There must be no irreverence. Do not attack an idea or fact because it is unpleasant, or makes you afraid, or because you don't share it. Face it, and' if it is false, realise its falsity ; if it is true, its un- 15 THE WORLD SOUL pleasantness will go. Understand it, and you will not be afraid. Make yourself share it if it be true. That must be your intention. Never run away from facts, or try to kill them. Further, you must be sure that behind all pheno- mena lies a cause ; never miracle, nor accident, nor coincidence, nor law, but a living cause acting by law. As to the process of thought, it is like this. The first aim is to provide food for thought. That is brought to the brain by the perceptions and emotions. You see, or hear, or read a fact, and put it in your thought. You do, or suffer, and you take the result to your thought. You see others act or suffer, and by sympathy you understand and take it to your thought. Therefore by the extent to which you see and hear and act and feel, or by the sympathy you have with others' acts and feelings, and this is the greatest power of all, you accumulate your material. It has been my good fortune to live a life of extraordinary variety. There are few things I have not felt or seen, few occupations I have not tried or been connected with, few things I have not done, few countries I have not visited, few classes of people I have not known, few notable books I have not read. Therefore I have had great opportunity for gathering material for thought. And when it is gathered it is like this : i6 WHAT THOUGHT IS We say «1 think," but that hardly describes it correctly, any more than saying " I live " expresses the truth about our lives. Life is manifested in us ; not from our will. So thinking goes on in our brains, and we watch it, and are interested in it, and have to stand it, though it often hurts, but we are not ourselves consciously doing the thinking. We have very little control over it. We cannot stop it when we want, nor entirely direct it. We can supply it with facts and observations, and the thinking develops them. Our thoughts are born of us as a child is of a mother. She does not create her baby, nor do we our thought. Yet her baby is hers, and our thought is us. It calls out continually "Give, give," and those who think spend their lives seeing, doing and feeling ip order to supply it with facts. What becomes of these facts ? Are they put to- gether by reason as logicians say ? No. That is not thought. Logic leads at best to proof ; thought leads to sight, and sight to knowledge. A logician, even if his premises be fixed, which in human affairs they rarely are, is like a blind man groping in the dark from one point to another by touch. Thought gives the seeing eye, the hearing ear. And reason is to confirm and prove thought, it cannot take its place. The word " thought " means " sight," and the word " idea " means " thing seen " by the mind. The process of thought is like this. You see, or c 17 THE WORLD SOUL hear, or feel a thing, actually or by sympathy, and it gets into your mind, and stays there as an apparently dead thing. You turn it over, look at it from all sides, and put it back. It is still lifeless. You leave it and imagine you forget it, though you never do. Every now and then you turn it over again. All of a sudden one day you find that the lifeless fact was an egg, and from it is born a living idea. The meaning has come out. It has been hatched by the warmth of your own heart and by the warmth of other living ideas there, from which, at length, it gains its vitality. You cry Eureka, as did Archi- medes. So did Darwin discover Natural Selection, so have all great thoughts arisen. My real thought has taken me all my life to hatch, during the whole of which time it seemed dead. It couldn't live until innumerable others had come out to help it. Thought is therefore in a sense a revelation, and it is the only revelation there has ever been. So all true thought is of the World Soul. Thoughts are the angels, as you will see later, and are the only true prayers. If you wish to be visited by angels, or to have revelations, or eventually to see and be one with the World Soul, you must learn to think truly, sin- cerely, and earnestly. There is no other way. And thought is emotion. *' Nihil est in intelkctu quod non fuerit in sensu" and senses do not mean i8 WHAT THOUGHT IS merely sight, hearing, taste, and smell, but love and hate, and hope and fear. These latter are our deepest thoughts ; they are there when we are born, and all others are subsidiary to them, for by them we lead our lives, by them is the world ruled. When you have obtained your thoughts, reason proves what you have seen. For a thought alone is like a glimpse seen of some mountain-peak whose base is hidden. You must verify that peak, it may be only cloud deceiving you. You must climb that peak before you can get a view from it. Truths thought-seen alone have no validity. They must be proved to be facts, they must be co-ordinated with other facts. And if they can be disproved, then they must be disproved. No peak of truth has any value unless it stand upon a broad base of ascertained fact. Evolution was a thought-seen peak six thousand years ago. It had no validity, and the records in which it was written were subject to absurd mis- interpretation until Darwin verified it as a true mountain, and climbed up a little way. Thought and reason are necessary to each other, but they have different functions. Thought sees and reason achieves. 19 II THE WORLD LIFE " But as touching the resurrection from the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, " I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living " ? CHAPTER II THE first clear thought, which has been the mother-thought of all my thoughts, I ob- tained from Darwin's Origin of Species and Descent of Man. It was the unity and interdependence of all life, the continuity of life, and its eternal evolution. I am not sure that these were consciously in Darwin when he wrote, but they start out from his books. All life is one ; no part of it could exist without all the others. Insects exist to fertilise flowers, and flowers to provide food for insects ; birds and beasts of prey exist for the benefit of the races on which they live ; the animals or birds they prey on exist for them. Man lives by and on plants and animals, and they by and for him. Everything is inextricably connected with all other life. Nothing exists or could exist alone. That is the first and dominant thought. The second is the continuity of life. All life comes from life, and has so come. There has been never any break ; there is no beginning nor no end. Each individual is but a link in an unbroken chain. Types may recede or disappear ; the sum progresses and increases always. That is its evolution. It is 23 THE WORLD SOUL an evolution not of a type, of animal, nor man, nor nation, nor even of mankind, but of Life, an increasing life in better and more varied forms. That man may rise, plants' must rise, birds must rise, animals must rise. All go together. As man rises, so he lifts the others. And every individual life is but a temporary, finite item in an infinite and eternal whole. That explains all the apparent injustices of nature ; they are not eternal but temporary, and as each item is of the whole for the benefit of which the apparent injustices exist, it eventually reaps the advantage. Nothing struck me so much as these ideas inherent in his books. Of the argument that natural and sexual selection account for all these changes, I took but little heed. I think I knew even then that the great stream of life had other banks than those. For laws are but banks to confine a force ; they do not explain it any more than a river's banks explain a river. They don't cause it to flow ; they but bound it. I saw too that science did not concern itself with the Whither nor the Why, but only with the Whence and How. Yet I do not see why science should restrict itself so much. If you can determine several points in a curve, you may approximately determine the continuation of that curve. You may also find the focus. Yet science did not try to do so. How- ever, this was the thought which I took away from Darwin's books, that Life is one eternal river, the 24 THE WORLD LIFE manifestation in flesh of one increasing Purpose within fixed unchangeable laws. That was my first glimpse of the truth of the " World Soul," the evolution of which truth has led me at last to the complete understanding of the problems with which I started. I do not say I saw this conception of the World Soul then as clearly, or could have expressed it as concretely as I do now. It had not come to life then. Yet it was there in my mind, and it obtained its early truth mainly from Darwin. It may seem strange that the key to Jesus, which no Church nor saint has ever had, should be in Darwin. Yet it is not strange really. For all truth, like all life, is One. Every truth leads to others, but misconceptions lead you nowhere. Science and Jesus are true, are living truths, but organized faiths are dead mistakes. So I took on this conception of the world, and tried to develop it and learn more. I turned to philosophy to see if I could find in it anything about this world life, especially to the philo- sophy of Greece. I found in it some truths. To Socrates, the greatest of all, there was no absolute right and wrong. Like the author of Ecclesiastes, he knew that there was a time and place for all things. He knew that present knowledge is but empirical knowledge, and that the first step to real wisdom is to recognise that what passes for it now, 25 THE WORLD SOUL conventions, maxims, rules, are not wisdom. He said he was the most ignorant man in Greece, and consciousness of ignorance is the first step to wisdom. But he never found wisdom, so that his philosophy- was mainly destructive. The Stoics saw the world clearly, that soul and matter were not divisible but one. Soul dwelt in matter and was manifest in matter ; it worked to- wards an end on earth. They saw the Logos, the purpose, but they could not say what the end was to which it went. Neither did they see that life being one and being eternal we all share in that end. Therefore the result of their philosophy was resigna- tion to a blind fate. The Epicureans saw that the end of life was happi- ness, but their definition of life was one lifetime, and of happiness freedom from discomfort and fear. Such a philosophy is only negative and has no driving purpose. Later I have seen more in Greek philosophy than this, but not very much. Their truths were isolated and they lacked all purpose. They were mainly negative. So have I found all philosophies. What- ever truths there be are isolated, and there are many fallacies. Philosophers have exalted reason, thinking to arrive by that alone. No greater fallacy could exist. Reason is not apart from life but of it. They have striven to suppress emotion, but to do that is to 26 THE WORLD LIFE kill thought, for thought is perception by the emo- tions. If you kill emotions you kill thought. You know life by living only. And in life you cannot draw fixed deductions from premises, for life is change ; your premises are not fixed, they vary ever with time, place, and person, and from ever-changing premises conclusions cannot be drawn. Logic is not part of life save as a negative. lUogic is not true, but logic does not give the truth, for truth is sight. Therefore I, like the rest of the world, got little from philosophy. There is in it a vagueness, a cold- ness and untruth. The beauty of the Greek thought is its maintenance of euphrosyne or balance, its free- dom from hysteria. The Greeks " sought wisdom," they hated the absurdity of miracles and " signs," and that is to them for righteousness. Yet they failed. And philosophy is so often inhuman. When a human soul is in trouble, when he cannot see any light because of the man-made mysteries that shroud him, does it help him if you say, " Hitch your wag- gon to a star " ? He wants to know which star, for there are stars above, below, and round us ; he does not know how the hitching should be done, nor whither that star will drag him and his waggon when it is accomplished. Read him how Kant within one page proves and disproves God with words, and will it cheer him ? 27 THE WORLD SOUL Or will you tell him, "Worship the Beautiful, follow the True, achieve the Good," and when he asks what these things mean in any particular case, admit you do not know ? Phrases like these are bubbles blown upon the air ; they float and shine, but when you grasp at them to raise you higher, they burst and you are left with nothing. Much of philosophy is little more. Therefore from philosophy as from religion I got little. There remained those ever children of the world, the poet thinkers, who have come into the world from time to time from the beginning to lighten its darkness and to give it truth and consolation. In them, too, are many truths, but no Truth. Not one of them had any knowledge of the Purpose in the world. Their truths were isolated, disconnected, sad. I loved them, but I got little help even from Shakespeare. " We are such stuff as dreams are made of and our little life is rounded by a sleep " does not help much, nor does " God's in his Heaven, all's right with the world." The world is far from right, and God wants to come down on earth, not stay in heaven, whatever heaven may be. Jesus said it was within you. There only remained the Book of Life, ever fresh, and nothing is written in it but the truth. Therefore I turned to it. If there be a God, He wrote this book, or allowed 28 THE WORLD LIFE its being written, and He is ashamed of none of it. He would insist that we should read His book that we may know ourselves and Him. 1 wanted to be written in that Book of Life myself, and no one will be written there who has not read it, who has despised it. Therefore I have lived my life, all of it, to the utmost, and Fate has so arranged that I should have a great deal of it to live, good and bad — love, hate, fear, hope ; failures, successes, victories, defeats ; what does it matter if from each you gain some un- derstanding.? For all things pass but that, and it endures. It is the one thing that endures, for under- standing is the life everlasting. As I went along and accumulated thought there came periods when it was necessary to sort out, to examine and arrange my thought. Then I wrote books. For I have written all my books in the first place for myself to clear and formulate my thought. That they have been published is incidental. They are written for and to myself. I should write them just the same if they never saw print. They are exercises in the solution of a problem, primarily for myself. I take from them far more than ever I put into them. I reap in thought a greater harvest than I sow for others. That I cannot help ; it is my defect of expression. My first book was The Soul of a People. What my idea was in writing this book I explain in Chapter L 29 THE WORLD SOUL It was not an expression of the theory of Buddhism, but of Burmese humanity : " When I have read or heard of a teaching of Buddhism, I have always taken it to the test of the daily hfe of the people to see whether it was a living belief or no. I have accepted just so much as I could find the people have accepted, such as they have taken into their hearts to be with them for ever. A teaching that has been but a teaching or theory, a vain breath of mental assent, has seemed to me of no value at all. The guiding principles of their lives, whether in accordance with the teaching of Buddhism or not, these only have seemed to me worthy of inquiry or understanding. What I have desired to know is not their minds, but their souls. And as this test of mine has obliged me to omit much that will be found among the dogmas of Buddhism, so it has led me to accept many things that have no place there at all. For I have thought that what stirs the heart of man is his religion, whether he calls it religion or not. That which makes the heart beat and the breath come quicker, love and hate, and joy and sorrow — that has been to me as worthy of record as his thoughts of a future life. The thoughts that come into the mind of the ploughman while he leads his team afield in the golden glory of the dawn : the dreams that swell and move in the heart of the woman when she knows the great mys- tery of a new life — these have seemed to me the religion of the people as well as doctrines of the unknown. For are not these, too, of the very soul of the people ? " I wanted to read that page of the book of humanity which is in the Burmese people, and I read it. I 30 THE WORLD LIFE discovered therein many truths. I found that, like all faiths, Buddhism remained in the hearts of the people by virtue of one great truth round which minor truths were gathered. This great truth is the unity and eternity of the evolution of life in this world. It is expressed in the theory of the trans- migration of souls, an incomplete and childish expression, but of a world truth. It is the same truth I found first in Darwin enlarged and vivified. It is not Buddhist. It is an universal truth. In the East it still remains, but it was known to all people in one form or another until suppressed by organised error. I have found it in all early people. It was known in Britain. It is in the early legends of all nations. And more, it is in every child that is born. In The Soul of a People, I told true stories of how I had found in a great many Burmese children a recollec- tion of previous lives. Now the supposed detailed memory is, of course, only the vehicle, it is of the flesh. Detailed memory of previous events does not, I think, come into the world with us nor go away with us. What would be the use of it ? And evolu- tion retains nothing useless. Knowledge is built of memory, but wisdom does not require memory ; it is knowledge become instinctive. There is no memory of a previous life, but there is instinctive knowledge. In these children there was the certainty that their life was of the eternal life of the world, and they said so 31 THE WORLD SOUL in their childish way. The expression was " of the flesh," but the spirit was true. This instinctive knowledge is in all children wher- ever born. Plato saw it. Wordsworth saw it : " Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; The soul that rises in us, our life's star. Hath had elsewhere its setting And Cometh from afar." Every one has seen who has cared to look. It is quite easy to prove it. Tell a child a tale expressing this truth of the World Life either as to the past or future in such imagery as best fits its comprehension, and the child will be glad. It will love the story and treasure it as true. The story makes it happy. But tell it a tale founded on the idea that we were newly created at birth, that the world is evil and that on death we go to heaven or hell, and the child will sigh and shuffle and try to get away from it because it knows it isn't true. The story makes it miserable ; truth never does that. I have spent a good deal of my life telling stories to children and I know what they like — what it is that appeals to them and what does not. I found out by experience. Any one who likes can verify this experience for himself. Therefore, this conception which I had to find in Darwin, is in all the world — it is that true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world — till it is killed. 32 THE WORLD LIFE The World Life is a world instinct. I also found in Burma the essential emotion of the World Life. For all life is emotion. It is love and sympathy which is the World Soul. What these words mean will be found in the Glossary. It arises from an instinctive knowledge of the unity of all life ; the absolute necessity of each to all. I have found in Burma more of this true sympathy than anywhere else. It extends to all life as 1 have told. It is not perfect, of course, but it is there, and it is the presence of this true sympathy and spirit of camaraderie with all life that makes the Burmese, notwithstanding the elementary state of their civilisa- tion, the pleasantest and happiest people in the world. Love is that addition to sympathy which gives it motive power. Therefore I framed to myself an hypothesis of the World Life and World Soul which is like this : All phenomena of life are manifestations in flesh of one Life and one Soul. It is within the world developing it in all ways. All life comes from it and returns to it. Our lives are but corpuscles of a World Life, our souls of a World Soul. This Life has been in the world from the beginning, and its purpose is to perfect its manifestation in flesh, to subdue all matter to itself, to conquer disease and death, to attain perfect power, perfect freedom here D 33 THE WORLD SOUL on earth. "Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven." That is to say, in act as it is in thought and hope. All the value and beauty and courage of life comes from realising this truth ; without it life is a religious or materialist despair. And as the basis of all life is an emotion, the World Life has as its Soul the emotion of sympathy with all the world which requires the fullest love, the fullest wisdom to realise. All life is under law, and there are never any breaches of it. This World Life is here to work out its own future, subject to laws which ensure its attain- ing that future if it acquire wisdom to do it. God may lie behind all this ; must be so, I think, but with Him directly we none of us have anything to do. " No man hath seen God at any time." If we are to grow up a strong, courageous, self- reliant, wise world we must not be under tutelage. W^e must do it ourselves. Whatever God there be knows this better than we do. So having framed the conditions He leaves us alone. But we must all pull together. We must realise our essential unity for ever. A house divided against itself is bound to fall. I also learned further about some negatives, one great negative and other lesser negatives. The great negative is that the Buddhist theory of the evil of life, like the similar Christian theory, is wrong. Life 34 THE WORLD LIFE is beautiful. Neither Buddhist nor Christian, except a few ascetics, believes that it is evil, notwithstanding their creeds. They know it is good. This is in- stinctive in mankind. Neither Buddhist nor Chris- tian would live and work did they really believe in that universal evil. The world would stop. No children would be born, nay, every one who could would promptly commit suicide. Such a theory in either Church is a Counsel of Despair, a frank admis- sion of ignorance and inability to feel, to think, to understand. If either creed maintains an existence at all it is because its main thesis is utterly rejected. What makes the life of both of these faiths therefore is not its theory of the world, which is just despair, but certain other ideas which are true. Then as to crime. I had been a judge, a magis- trate, governor of a great gaol, and so had experience. I wrote a chapter on Crime and Punishment, but I did not see much except that there was something very wrong. And if human justice and punishment was wrong, then the theories of divine justice and punishment, which are exaggerated repetitions of the same ideas, must be even more wrong. Now there is no subject connected with the understanding of the World Soul and of Jesus more important than the question of crime and punishment. What does really constitute crime, and what punishment is right and inevitable here and hereafter, are world truths it is 35 THE WORLD SOUL essential to discover. No subject has caused me more labour than this. Jesus was full of threats against sin, and those threats are true and will be carried out for the happiness of all. But he loved the sinner. I returned to the subject in two subsequent books before I finally solved it. Now that I have done so — and I give it in Chapters IV and VI — the solution appears simple and obvious, even elementary, but it must come in its place. All I knew then was there was something wrong, a most valuable discovery. For the complacency that accepts wrong as inevitable and therefore right, arrives nowhere. There was also the subject of prayer. Now to Buddhist theories prayer is unknown, for all things are under law which is never broken. And the theory of law is true. God lies behind the world and the World Soul. When He acts, if ever He do so, it is through law. He is no law-breaker, for His laws are good. This is more true than the Christian theory of a God breaking His own laws to make wonders and astonish people. For if law be ever^ even once, broken, then the pursuit of wisdorri becomes impossible. If the world is subject to the caprices of an irresponsible Creator all progress stops dead. Therefore the world is subject absolutely in all things to law. The Burmese know this. Still they pray. Why .' What does prayer mean, what does it effect ? This made the first beginnings of my 36 THE WORLD LIFE thought on prayer, the solution of which only came with the solution of the whole : what the Trinity is, what the World Soul, and what Jesus. So I took a great deal away from The Soul of a People. The mental conception I had found in Darwin I had developed and proved, and above all had discovered its central emotion, its Soul. As for Buddhism, I would have nothing of it, any more than of Christianity. I was sure of World Life, not World Death, and both religions postulate the latter. 37 Ill FETTERS ON LIFE " And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you." " For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many." CHAPTER III MY next book was The Hearts of Men. This book was written in Italy ; it was not well written, because my ideas had not cleared. I had to write it, for only so could I arrange my mind, and I got more from writing this book than any other, but the reader, I think, got less. Yet of all my books none has brought me such interesting letters and friends, especially in the freer air of the Continent, than this. I took the truths I had acquired of the World Life, inspired by the World Soul, and tried to see if Christianity in any way recognised them. It did not. Then I tried to find out what Christianity was. I saw, I always had seen, that it did not come from the teachings of Jesus. It put a dead Christ upon its cross and used the name, but that was all there was of him. Its own description of itself did not tally with the facts. What Jesus was and said I had to leave for the present, but Christianity could be analysed, I mean Christianity after it had become a creed. Before that in the days of its growth it was just the true living ideas of One God and of Immortality 41 THE WORLD SOUL which caught converts. Christianity as a creed is very diiFerent. It consists of a mass of ideas heaped together, and one by one these ideas could be separated and verified. Yet I found the most extraordinary difficulties in such a simple task. To no one did it seem to have occurred that underneath every item in a religion lies an idea, that ideas are based on emotions, and that you don't get the base emotion by simply tracing the history of the expression of the idea. Of histories of outside forms there is no end ; of histories of ideas there is hardly a beginning. I wanted to get at the ideas underlying the Greek religions because I knew that much in Christianity came from the same sources, but although I read many books about them, I could not get on the trace of an idea at all. All cults, all thoughts, all religions, all philosophies, are the outcome of emotions, just as all life is. They don't arise from barren mentality. Each arises, con- tinues, waxes, wanes, or changes, as the emotions of which it is the expression do. If one dies the other dies. You can know nothing of a cult till you have found its emotion. I have solved the Greek Mythology. I have found the emotions and ideas which it called gods. The theory of a solar myth is nonsense. The elements were the Titans, the gods were the emotions. I cannot give it here. 42 FETTERS ON LIFE I also read many books on the origin of Religion, but in them again I failed to find what I wanted for the same reasons. So 1 had to set to myself to work the subject out. In The Hearts of Men was my first attempt. I did not get very far. But I have since then worked the matter out more completely, and I will give here the gist of it. I think it applies to all religions. It does to all I have tried. Religions originate in the pursuit of some living ideal, in the revolt against things as they are. They are at first fluid and creedless. They are ideas that live and grow and change. People profess them vaguely because they commit themselves to nothing. Then arise priests who petrify the ideal into creeds which no one would or could believe. But the children are taught them when they are too young to defend themselves, and so religions persist. For there is no religion in the world, no creed, no faith that the adult reason even of the savage does not instinctively reject as untrue. There are never any sincere adult conversions anywhere to any faith, nor have been. A creed once framed is an untruth petrified. It is a shackle on freedom, it is a means of enforcing slavery. Therefore have governments seized on faiths and imposed them by law on their subjects for their own purposes ; they are monopolies or corners in knowledge. They are made up of truths. This must never be 43 THE WORLD SOUL forgotten, for religions have lived, and nothing lives except it have some truth in it. But all these truths are subordinated to the interests of the Church, Pagan or otherwise. They are so treated as to benefit the priests ; every truth is dis- torted. And all Churches are, or were, branches of Govern- ment. They have been and are often still essentially Government departments. That they have sometimes fought and controlled Governments does not deny this : parliaments have done this, and parliaments are parts of Government. All prevalent religions are creatures of State. This was true in all the Greek States, in Egypt, in Rome ; it is true of Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Catholicism, Lutheranism, Greek Christianity, the Church of England, and if the English dissenting bodies are not connected with the State, they are with a party in the State, which is the same thing. To be opposed to the State is to be part of it. Because religion, by binding men's thoughts into slavery, has been the most powerful instrument in reducing men's lives to servitude. Governments have always established religion. And the first step towards freedom of Government has always been freedom of thought, destruction of the State Re- ligion. Religion means Bond. It is from Religo — I bind. But these bonds are made up of truths, 44 FETTERS ON LIFE or they could not bind. Religions are built of ideas, and ideas proceed from emotions, or more correctly, an idea is the purpose to which an emotion tends. A man loves a woman ; he idealises Venus ; he loves his country, and creates Athene or Diana of Ephesus. All emotions have an idea ; the idea is embodied in a cult. In the Greek religions the gods were not the forces of Nature but the emotions of man, life and courage, love, patriotism, and so on. Behind these gods, binding them, there lay Necessity, or Law. The priests constitute themselves as special mediums between men and their ideas — as if you could have a medium between yourself and love or truth — and invent rites and ceremonies conducted by them- selves to establish theii* monopoly, and awe ' the multitude. They have sometimes a cult of chastity which arises always from despair of the life of the body ; sometimes a cult of the reverse, which is despair of the life of the soul. No religions have any working theory of the world. Their central emotion is despair of the world and fear of life, and this is cultivated to the utmost in order to terrify people into obedience. For hope and truth and courage make you free. Roman Christianity was simply Roman Paganism, modified mainly in name and with some new additions in order to embrace the new and powerful sect of 45 THE WORLD SOUL Christians. They could not be left out of the State without danger to the State religion, the principal ruling department of the State, so a compromise was arrived at. A new State religion was formed, and was called Christianity. Now what was this religion ? Of Jesus, all that it had was the name, his repre- sentation as dead upon the cross, or as a baby in his Mother's arms. Of his truth and teaching it knew nothing at all. The central idea was despair of the world God made, and so denial of God. Its principal tenets were the old emotional ideas of Paganism, with some added from Judaism. Jehovah was placed over the Pagan deities reduced to saints or devils, a dead Christ was added, and a Holy Ghost, who was absolutely hypothetical, made up the Trinity. The Queen of Heaven was renamed the Madonna. The ceremony was purely Pagan, priests, vestal virgins, processions and all complete. The holy days were old festivals renamed. It was simply an old machinery for reducing man to spiritual slavery, with all the new additions up to date. Except a few recluses, no one completely believed the central theory of the Church, that life was bad. Had the world believed so it would have rapidly come to an end. There has been danger of that in Europe in the eleventh century, and in Paraguay in the eighteenth, when people took re- 46 FETTERS ON LIFE ligion too seriously. But for the most part the world has scoiFed at this theory of its badness. And so more or less it has done to all the other ideas. So the Christian Church was just the old Pagan Church renamed, refurbished to date. The Gospels were not allowed to be read. The strength of the Churches lay in their organisation, their authority over mankind in the name of God, their use of the powers of Govern- ments, and the truths they possessed. These truths they declared to be special revelations, but they are not that. In The Hearts of Men I analysed some of them. Take, for instance, the worship of the Madonna and Child. What is that } It is simply the idea in the emotion of maternity. If to the Latin nations of Europe the worship of the Madonna and Child has become an integral and large part of religion, it is because in those nations there is an instinctive worship of motherhood, which is absent in the north. I had already seen this in their life and literature. Frenchmen and Italians adore their mothers in a way the colder northern peoples never do. It is one of the most notable traits of character in those of them I have met, and in their literature it is the same. The way a Frenchman writes of maternity is totally different from that in which any English or German or Norwegian writer does. He finds in it a poetry and grace and significance that no northern writer has 47 THE WORLD SOUL ever discovered. There is no Teutonic nor Slavic book equivalent to Monsieur, Madame et Bebi. There is a tenderness to children that we never have. I have in my mind many examples of these, both in personal fact and in fiction, but I cannot now quote any of them. Those who have taken the trouble to investi- gate the question will know that what I say is true. Therefore in their religion, Catholicism, which is, like all religions, a collection of the emotions and ideas of the people who founded it, with others added, this finds a principal place, but in Protes- tantism it is absent. It is not the theological theory which causes the worship, for the story of the Virgin Mary is the same in both Catholicism and Protestantism ; it is the presence of an emotion in one country which is lack- ing in another. The worship of the Madonna is not a " religious " fact at all, but a physiological fact, which has been taken into a religious theory. It is as utterly im- possible to one " religious " person as necessary to another not any more " religious." It is no outcome of the theory. So, too, with the seventh day of rest. Theologians call it a special divine communication to one people. I found it arose from an universal human necessity for a periodical rest, and the revolution of the moon made it the seventh day. In Burma, now, it is the 48 FETTERS ON LIFE, new moon, the half, the full, and the half again. No doubt it was the same everywhere. Man is what he is, and his religions arise from himself. " The Sabbath is made for man and not man for the Sabbath." They are not orders from outside ; they are inward necessities. Take again confession. When one has made a mistake of any kind the first emotional necessity is to realise the mistake and impart it to some one, usually the sufferers, so that it may be repaired and not occur again. If we remain self-righteous and stubborn we can never improve. We must confess our sins. We must also repent. We must feel our ignor- ance ; we must get wisdom. That is another emo- tional necessity. It would be easy to go through all the ideas in the Churches and trace them to their emotions, showing whence they arise, but these must suffice. All these are truths. But in their true form what use would they be to priesthood or Church ? Truth makes you free, not bond. These truths must be perverted. Man must be told he is made for the Sabbath the Church directs ; he must come to church ; the Sabbath is not for him to rest in. He can't realise the love of woman in his own wife and child ; he E 49 THE WORLD SOUL must again go to church to adore the Virgin ; he must confess to the Church, not to his inner self as Jesus told him ; he must get absolution from priests, not from his own resolve to be wiser and from the forgiveness of the offended ; he must pray through priests and expect wisdom from them. Every truth is perverted so as to be worse than no truth, because it conduces to slavery, not freedom. It is no different in Protestantism. It was a revolt from the authority of Rome, secular and religious. The north wanted to divide from the south, so long its ruler in civilisation and thought. It wanted to set up house for itself. Its secular revolt must be pre- ceded by its spiritual revolt. But the Protestant Churches differ only in details from Rome. They don't worship the Madonna, because they have not that emotion of maternity ; they have a cross instead of a crucifix because that emotional pleasure in seeing death and torture is not so developed in the north, and so on. But the theory is the same. The world is bad, life is bad, there is a revengeful God on the look-out for you, only priests can save you by lustral waters and other ceremonies, as P^re Lacordaire says. Therefore you must sacrifice to Him and obey them. A central idea in every religion is unnecessary sacrifice, not sacrifice of yourself or others or any material thing to further the common purpose of SO FETTERS ON LIFE mankind, which is true, but unnecessary, wilful turn- ing away from good things to propitiate an angry deity. You will find this in every religion. There were human sacrifices to Jehovah, Moloch, Baal, in Mexico, in Greece, among the Druids, in Rome, in Polynesia, India, everywhere. Abraham intended to sacrifice Isaac, but revolted at the last moment and substituted a goat. Animals were sacrificed by Judaism to Jehovah, in Rome, Greece, and almost universally. How many people has Christianity not burnt in offerings to its God .'' And in other cases offering was made of all or many of the good things of life, love, or comfort, or learning, or happiness, as in Buddhism and Hinduism. Did not Jephthah sacrifice his daughter's life by vowing her to virginity ? Every religion has said, " You must propitiate God." In Christianity it is His only Son who must be sacrificed to be "a propitiation for our sins." Religions have prided themSelves on keeping alive the idea of God. But what a God has theirs been ! There are truths in Protestantism, but they are perverted just as in Catholicism and to the same purpose, the slavery of the world. One great asset they all had, and that was the name of Jesus. They claimed to be his Churches. Now Jesus is the greatest personality that ever lived. No one has ever read his words and not per- ceived this. There are a glamour and a truth in his 51 THE WORLD SOUL very phrases even if you don't understand them, as the world never has, which are found nowhere else. They have the ring of the eternal gold. Whatever he may think of Churches, no sincere man has ever failed to recognise that there was in Jesus a divinity of truth found nowhere else. Therefore Churches that claimed him had a power difficult to resist. It is true they could not explain him. Their theories of his life, their interpretation of his sayings, no one hardly believed. They knew little or nothing of him evidently. But no one else knew more, and if they claimed him, who should resist their claim ? Therein lay their only strength. This I saw, and that it was a real strength. But I was convinced the Churches had no right to it. They were but robbers and deceivers marching under false colours. Therefore 1 turned again to see if I could now make out anything of what Jesus said. For until what Jesus really did and said was known, the Churches would continue to keep him captive and enslave the world. I must understand what Jesus said. I found I could — a little. Certain things I could see, that he never said the object of life was to go off to some spirit world at death, but the realisation here on earth in the flesh of complete life and truth, freedom and power, " Thy kingdom come on earth." Disease and death were to 52 FETTERS ON LIFE be banished from the earth, and life here was to be eternal. Jesus was to reign here, we were not to go to him there. I saw that the Son of Man meant the Soul of Man, the World Soul, that is, the unity of all life through sympathy, and that the Kingdom of Heaven which is within us meant love and wisdom. Therefore the teaching of Jesus was about this World Life, this World Soul, and no other. There was in him no contradiction to what I had found. When I had fully discovered the World Soul I should fully discover Jesus ; I felt sure of this. He was there and not in the Churches. He must be found. But I could get no further. A great many things still were dark to me both in his life and teachings. I had to go back to life again and study that. Now that I have completely seen the life and truth of Jesus I find them absolutely simple. I am astonished that there has ever been any difficulty about them either for me or the world. There is no mystery in them at all any more than in the world. All the mysteries of both are Church-made. Faiths have so warped the intelligence of men that they can- not see what is before their eyes. The truths of life and of Jesus are clear, simple truths, and both are one. All life is one, all truth is one, and truth finds an explanation of all life in life, where alone it can be found. But in The Hearts of Men I had, not got to Si THE WORLD SOUL that. I began that book by asking for a definition of religion. I quoted many, but could not find that they had any truth in them. I have, however, since found a perfectly true and clear definition of religion. It is by Pere Lacordaire, the famous Catholic preacher in Notre Dame at Paris. He wrote in his Life of Jesus : " Sacrifices, lustra! waters, expiations, initiations, bloody or joyous rites, this has formed the life of all liturgies and the functions of all priesthoods." This is what religions are. I cannot improve on that quotation. If you will consider baptisms, con- firmations, church services, sacraments, and other activities of priests, what else are they } Sweep these away and what is left of any Church } Whatever good appears to be in them is stolen. Even their good works of charity and assistance they make con- ditional on accepting their yoke, even their education is under the same conditions. As the Eddas say, religion is a parasite upon humanity and a " calumny of God." There are inherent in humanity certain beautiful truths necessary to it ; religious people have often appropriated these truths and claimed them as due to religion, notwithstanding that their dogmas contra- dict them. Such are eternal hope, eternal life for all, compassion, sympathy, and truth. Religions have claimed them, and the world, knowing no better, has 54 FETTERS ON LIFE allowed .the claim. They are real jewels stolen from humanity. And religious men have lived beautiful lives which have been attributed to their religion, but are contradictions of it. For fortunately, except a few, men do not live by theij- dogmas where they can escape. There is in the human soul a truth, un- recognised, unrealised, from which men cannot escape and which rules their lives, an Inward Light which will never be put out. " The soul has subconscious knowledge of truths deeper than any that can present themselves to con- sciousness. The true life is a buried life and the true self a hidden self. Far down in the abysmal deeps of the soul dwells a thing which for each of us is of eternal and transcendent significance — the genuine faith of the man ; the faith which is the inward counterpart of the character, the invisible side of the personality, the hidden source of spiritual energy ; the real attitude of the man towards the world in which he finds himself; the actual living, ever-changing response made by his soul to the reali- ties that environ it, that underlie it, that overshadow it, that stream through all the deeper channels of its life." Those truths are not religion. It is to them we owe whatever progress we have made. I ended The Hearts of Men by trying to find a definition of what truth will be when it is found. I said that religion would be the music of the Infinite 55 THE WORLD SOUL echoed in the Hearts of Men. That was right, and I will now explain that expression. Have you ever watched people dancing .'' You will see how ordered their movements are, how they follow and are ruled by the rhythm and intention of the music, how they express and manifest the sound movement. Close your ears and the dancing loses all sense. You see people jumping and running about aimlessly, stupidly, senselessly. It strikes you as the most foolish performance. You wonder how you admired it. How can sensible people act like that ? Open your ears and the meaning is instantly recalled ; every movement is co-ordinated. I elaborated this simile in The Inward Light : " Life is a melody the Great Musician wrings from out the hearts of men. At first but a few 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. 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. Each must sing and his part alone, and yet in each heart must be the music of the whole." That is what the truth was once and will be. That is the relation of truth and life. Without the rhythm and intention of the music, life is a meaningless folly, a labour to no end, an exercise in stupidity, ending FETTERS ON LIFE in death. Open your ears and all life falls into the perfectly ordered rhythm of a music that has no end. It is what keeps us all together in time and purpose. No man yet has ever heard that full music, but one, the Son of Man. But all the world has got to hear it, to live to it, to march to it, from victory unto victory, for all time. 57 \ IV FATALITY " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me ; because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor ; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind ; to set at liberty them that are bruised." " Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. Ye give tithes of mint and cummin and anise, but neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment and mercy and understanding. These ye should have done and not left the others undone." CHAPTER IV IN A People at School I returned once more to Burma to work at the World Soul from another point of view, that of government. I had been for many years a member of the greatest organ- isation that the world has known, and it had been my good fortune to have experience of almost all its various activities. I had therefore ample matter for thought. The particular point that occupied my thought most was the working of Courts, Civil and Criminal, and the analysis of crime. I did not quite work it out in that book ; not till I wrote Sons of Time did I quite solve the problem, but it will be convenient to put all the conclusions here. The more I saw, the more the unity of life became apparent ; nothing stands alone ; all things are in- extricably mixed ; the causes of even the simplest event in an individual's life are world-wide. Take, for instance, the perjury in the Courts. The judges and government attribute it to the fact of the people being inherent liars. This I knew was not the case. Truth is inherent in every one. Liars are made, not born, and I worked out the matter carefully, as it is a most important one. The per- 6i THE WORLD SOUL jury so common in all Courts throughout the world is due to the wrong procedure of the Courts. A trial is a fight between parties before a judge as umpire, who is often quite helpless to get at the real facts, even of the isolated event which is the offence, and always helpless to get at the causes. Society is fighting for vengeance, the accused to escape a punishment for his acts, which punishment will, he knows, make him worse, not better able to direct his life in future. The fighting instinct is aroused on both sides. In war all is fair, as Lord Wolseley says. And this applies to war in Courts as well as in the field. The great thing is to win — a right and necessary instinct in itself which should never have been roused. Facts are concealed, perverted, ex- aggerated, invented ; witnesses are confused, brow- beaten, bullied, driven into lies in self-defence ; barristers pervert and contort the truth. Real causes are never arrived at. When a man is con- victed he is vindictively and uselessly punished. If he is guilty but escapes, it is as bad as letting an infectious fever case loose to infect others. Yet in popular opinion it is often the least evil of the two, and rightly so. No wonder that perjury is common everywhere in the world and is condoned in popular estimation. It is the fault of the Courts. That it is more common in our Eastern dominion is due to no fault of the people, but to further causes given in 62 FATALITY that book. I need not repeat them here. They are obvious. They can and must be corrected, and then perjury will cease. Now it is the despair of magis- trates and judges who want to know the truth. Many, however, do not. They are content to know the law, and that it is all that is required of them. It must be remembered that what a famous English judge said is true. " I do not sit here to administer justice, but law." Courts will have to be entirely reorganised before they can administer justice. All the perjury that occurs is debitable to the system they administer, not to defects in the parties or witnesses. A criminal trial should be a discovery of the truth and a diagnosis of the cause, so as to prevent its recurrence an4 cure him in whom it has occurred. An offence is the result of an illness. What is the illness and what the cure .'' In such an enquiry no one would be more glad to help than the accused. No one hates crime as he does who suffers from it. Let this always be remembered, for it is of the very essence of the truth. He has felt himself powerless in some grip of Fate which terrifies him. He knows the defect is a great deal in society, only partly in himself, and that it is never in his " will." He resents his crime, he does not " repent " it. He bitterly resents being punished for it, because he knows it will only make him worse. He wants to 63 THE WORLD SOUL be helped, not destroyed. And there is no one to help him. God and man are, he is told, angry with him, and must have vengeance. The Courts tell him so and religion tells him so. Yet the Christian sacred book says : " Vengeance is mine ; I will repay, saith the Lord." It also says : " I will have mercy and not sacrifice." I demand from men not sacrifice, either of themselves or others, but that sympathy with Me and other men which leads to mercy to both. For " tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner." You must comprehend God and know He made the evil as well as the good ; you must comprehend men to know why they sin. That is why power is given to you. But the world has not been able to do either. 1 was for a time Governor of the biggest gaol in the world, filled with " dacoits " from upper Burma. Many of these men were purely patriots, had com- mitted no real crime save their " crime " in fighting against an invading government, which was essentially a virtue. They should never have been treated as criminals. Other convicts had really committed offences, such as being a member of a gang which under the guise of patriotism committed rob- bery and murder. But even here the personal responsibility of the convict seemed small. It was not his fault that a foreigner had invaded his country, upset all law and government, aroused evil passions 64 FATALITY in a young and passionate people, and rendered robbery popular and patriotic. Yet the individual paid, very heavily too, and was ruined for life for causes beyond his control. Again, a famine caused by failure of rain, by the economic weakness of society, by the inability of Government to cope with it, filled the gaols with cattle thieves, men perfectly honest in ordinary circumstances who gave way under stress of circum- stances. The fault lay really with the nation at large for being economically impotent, and with our government rather than with the criminal, yet he paid. Crime, I began to see, was a national, nay, a world disease exhibited in individuals. Neither was it ever the fault of the " will." Therefore for many years I used wherever possible to investigate and analyse cases, those I tried and others, to try to arrive at the root of things. I have so analysed hundreds of cases. They are all very similar, and as human nature is the same all over the world investigations elsewhere would prove the same. The current theories of governments and religions that crime arises from a wilful desire for crime in the offender, which he could control and won't, and which justified his punishment, is wrong. There is no such tendency originally in any one's mind. All men naturally desire to live honest and good lives. Men sin in despite of themselves. If ever a desire F 65 THE WORLD SOUL for or pleasure in crime arises, it has been put there, usually by gaols. It is only the recidivist who desires vengeance on society. He has reason. Society has first declared war on him. I will give two sample cases. In the first case two lads were prosecuted for cattle theft. The ascertained facts were something like this : One was a clever lad with bad health inherited from parents. He would work and do well for a time ; then he would fall ill and lose his employment. He was a good son and helped his parents when he could. The other was also naturally of a good disposition ; but he was stupid, and therefore idle, not through in- herited defect of brain, but from want of education. In ordinary times both managed to get along. Then came a scarcity and both became hard put to it for food. After resisting temptation for a time, circumstances became too strong for them. They were out together one day in the woods, looking for roots and other things to eat, and they found a stray bullock. They took it away, sold it in a distant village for thirty shillings, were discovered, arrested, and shut up. The second case was that of an English soldier in the Rangoon gaol, sentenced for life. Like all men he wanted to live an honest life, and did his best, but he, like most offenders, had been born with strong passions and an unstable control over them — the fault of past generations of parents, governments, 66 FATALITY doctors, and religions. He had received no educa- tion ; he had never from a boy been exercised in con- trolling himself, by which exercise alone self-control can be obtained — the fault of his Government again. He became a soldier, and was a good, brave soldier when under control. A time came wTien, owing to circumstances of the war, control was lost ; there was a sudden excitement of elemental passions and a terrible crime. Now what was done in these cases ? It was as- sumed that these men sinned because they wanted to sin, because they were evil-minded, and that they must be punished in order to reform them and deter others. The truth is that they were evil-bodied, and those evil bodies were not their fault. They were so from want of proper education, the fault of pre- vious governments and society. The two cattle thieves were sentenced to two years' rigorous imprisonment, a punishment pre- scribed by the High Court. They were thus ruined for life. One of them was married and his wife was ruined, his children ruined. They would come out of gaol worse than they went in, embittered, vin- dictive, with an evil intention now, and if they com- mitted no more crime it would be only because the circumstances did not recur. The English soldier was sentenced for life. He was in despair. Living in his solitary cell he tried 6y THE WORLD SOUL to commit suicide by starvation, and was forcibly fed. Driven to , rebellion by despair he was flogged and flogged till all his fine courage was driven out of him, and he was reduced to the level of a desperate beast. Authorities and religions had nothing to offer him now or hereafter. They comforted themselves, if they ever thought about it, by the thought that it was none of their business, he must suffer till he died for his own crime, and then they would be rid of him in hell while they were in heaven. Let us take fact and ordinary justice and common sense first. What is crime .'' It is mainly a disease of humanity manifested, as all diseases are, in indi- viduals ; it is a disease of the body, not of the inten- tion, and the ignorance which accompanies it is not a wilful ignorance, but due to defects of teaching, therefore again not individual. Crime should there- fore be treated as other diseases are. Its various forms should be studied, their causes found and prevented. Cases that occur should, when necessary, be isolated and cured. Crime must be stopped. Society has not merely the right, but it is bound to stop crime. No mercy must be shown to crime. It must be banished from those in whom it appears. Offenders are sufferers to be pitied and cured, not "criminals," to be lashed into greater criminality. Only in this way will crime cease. It is admitted now that gaols destroy men, and do not save them. 68 FATALITY It is admitted also that punishment of convicts has very little deterrent effect on others. For crime is mainly "fatalistic," owing to physical defects. You cannot be prevented by fear from catching a fever, nor from theft, if you acquire a predisposition to it, and circumstance gives the opportunity. If crime has decreased, gaols have had no hand in it. Gaols make crime worse. Every one hates crime, and no one hates it like the criminal. Let that be under- stood. Tell him you don't intend to punish him, but you intend to cure his crime, and yon want him to co-operate with you, and he will. It is the simplest of the simple. Why no one has ever been able to understand crime I can't think. No one ever has — but one. He said the words pre- faced to this chapter. Try to realise the World Soul and see how it regards this. Its object is the com- plete subjugation of matter, so that it can manifest itself fully in this flesh. It sends down from itself corpuscles we call souls to be incarnated. All souls have in them when born some of the wisdom of the World Soul. They have the capacity to perform good work and go back with new knowledge to the World Soul. If they don't it is usually the fault of mankind. What will the soldier's soul say when it goes back .' He will say : " Owing to the careless- ness and ignorance of parents, professions, and govern- ments, I had a body given me very difficult to get 69 THE WORLD SOUL along with. I had hardly any education, and there- fore remained ignorant. What I was told was mainly wrong. That again was not my fault. I did my best ; I became a soldier. I was sent to a war. I did my duty, and then under sudden stress the body I was put into betrayed me. I was locked up for life, my soul and body still further destroyed and ruined through the vindictiveness and stupidity of mankind ; and therefore I return, my work undone, and my soul worse than it was. It is not my fault." What will the World Soul, made up of all the souls of men who have been and who will be, say ? Whom will it condemn ? The soldier ? Not so. A man's soul, himself, what he brings from the World Soul, is, besides consciousness, Intention and instinctive knowledge, which is Wisdom. His physical qualities belong, debit and credit, to man- kind at large. They are given to him in greater or lesser degree. For physical sins which he is unable to help, and many, if not most sins, criminal and social, are such, he is not personally responsible, for he did not make his body. Mankind is responsible in that it did not care for him and teach him and help him. What he is responsible for are sins of bad intention and wilful ignorance or obscurantism. The latter is the worst, it being the one isin that can never be forgiven, but must be retrieved. How much understanding have the law-makers ever 70 FATALITY given to those lost children who fall into crime ? For how many thousand years have law-makers come and gone, and they have not been able to ascertain the simple facts of the subject on which they were legislating ? They have spoken and thought of offences against law, but all offences occur in accord- ance with natural law, and before framing human laws to deal with them, they should have ascertained the natural laws under which they occurred. No one did this. They talk of outlaws, but all life is within law, one and inseparable for ever. They wanted to protect society, but the offender is just as much of society as they are, for ever. They have meant well, no one doubts that, but they have taken for granted a view of human nature which is untrue, and so done evil. It is nineteen hundred years since Jesus spoke, and what Church since then has really understood what he said ? They, too, have taken for granted ideas of this world and of what Jesus said which are entire mistakes, and Churches have by their teaching of children so closed their minds that those who became law-makers and rulers could not think. Yet it is of the very first importance that govefh- ments should see right. For crime must disappear from earth, and it will never do so till the causes are removed. And Jesus said : " There is more joy in heaven," that is the World Soul, "over one sinner that 71 THE WORLD SOUL repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance." Why ? Because we are all one now and for ever, and as long as there is one disease germ in our system the whole will suffer. That is simple enough. You don't bother over the comparatively healthy parts, but over the unhealthy. You feel the pain in a diseased toe all over your system, but don't notice the healthy toes. That is one reason. " Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to give forth a stinking savour." So do criminals on earth and undeveloped souls in the World Soul. "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." That applies to evil as well as good leaven. Therefore, for all our sakes for ever we must get rid of this evil leaven. You won't do it by punishing the offender ; you make him worse, and eventually when he dies, or you execute him, his soul will still keep the World Soul back. He won't go off to hell as you hope. Like the poor he will be always with us. He has got to be brought into line, and he will have to come back to earth for that to be done. For only on earth and in the flesh does the development go on. We can only " work while we have the light " of life in the flesh. Evil leaven of the flesh which is in offenders must be prevented by sanitation, good food, good work, and most of all by real education of body and mind. 72 FATALITY When crime occurs it must be treated by segregation and similar measures. The evil leaven of want of understanding, which is not in offenders but in peoples and societies, must be prevented by real and true edu- cation of the soul, instead of by killing thought with rules and maxims and laws and religions and wrong presumptions as is done now. Everything is now wrong, because founded on wrong ideas of the universe. When these arc corrected all else will follow. It is not necessary to say what should be done ; it will become obvious. 73 V BODY AND SOUL " Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Excepf a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. " Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old ? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born ? " Jesus answered. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the spirit is spirit. " Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. " The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth ; so is every one that is born of the spirit. " Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? "Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master in Israel, and knowest not these things ? " Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen ; and ye receive not our witness. " If I have told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things ? " And no man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven. " The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." CHAPTER V IN The Inward Light I tried to put together all my facts about the World Soul, and I did reach certain conclusions which are true. I found and expressed the difference between the body and the soul, that the soul comes from and returns to the World Soul. I followed the evolution of individual souls in an increasing sense of unity and sympathy with other life, all of which is a manifestation of the World Soul, therefore of its greater self I found a reason for the necessity that all life be included in the " white light," which is our ob- jective. I was sure that instead of the world being evil, and we better out of it, the truth is that the world is beautiful and must be made more and more so that the whole World Soul can come and live here. Our objective is here, not elsewhere ; there is no death, only an increasing life. 1 can best express the ideas I had worked out by quotations wherein I have altered only a few words to bring them up to my present thought ; the central emotional idea of the book is the beauty of this 77 THE WORLD SOUL world, its everlasting youth and increasing life for ever. It is summed up in L'Envoi. " 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 overwhelming 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 in an emerald sea. The day was ending ; its magnificence was thrown on all things. The far-off mountains robed themselves in funeral purple and the river burned. " Then the light died, and suddenly all things be- came 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 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 «ilence of despair. 78 BODY AND SOUL " 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 as of one who knows she is not dead, but lives and dreams and will awake some- time. " 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 hills a radiance shone ; the mountains stood in darkness on a silver heaven. The stars grew wan. The silver turned to gold and all the world throbbed with the miracle 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 79 THE WORLD SOUL 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 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." Do you think that he who said, " Consider the lilies of the field ; they toil not, neither do they spin, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these," did not feel this too .'' " God so loved the world." Would He so have loved it were it but a " passing show " where we come for a few years to pass away for ever ; were it so evil ? Not so. Would Jesus want to come again and reign if that were so .'' Would it be beautiful like it is with glory of new life, renewed for ever, growing ever, if there were no purpose in the world, if the purpose lay elsewhere ? I never saw a river but I thought on what the author of Ecclesiastes says : " All rivers run into the sea, yet is not the sea filled ; to the place whence the rivers 80 BODY AND SOUL come they all return again." All nature is one ex- pression of this truth, that within // lies the Eternal. 1 never read a book of modern science but 1 saw this truth, the increasing Purpose in this world. And now I never read either the beginning of Genesis or the sayings of Jesus but I see it too, more wonderfully expressed than anywhere in words. The world is ours for ever. There is no death but only change. All living things are manifestations of one life and soul which has lived and will live for ever. This soul lives in the flesh ; they are in partner- ship, yet are distinct, and so I tried to separate the two. What is the Soul, the World Soul ? What are its attributes, its negatives ? It is in matter yet not of matter. This is what 1 wrote of the Soul : " They sat and watched the night veiling the world in sleep. There was a deep silence, 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 faded into G 8i THE WORLD SOUL the throb of drums 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 companion- ship. The sounds occupied the shrunken night alone. " 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 mourn was gone. But whither ? What was it that was gone .'' Had it passed through dark- ness, leaving the 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 happi- ness 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 name for a place whither no one desired to go ? The air seemed full of fears, of strange, unseen, unhappy things had passed. 82 BODY AND SOUL " The music ceased, and the night grew wide again. The stars looked down with clear bright eyes upon the world, 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 up into the spaces of the sky. No hell is there.' " Life — what is life ? " ' Tell me,' he asked, ' 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 1 .'' ' " ' Life is a breath that comes from the eternal here to us. It is not a thing, a substance that lies within 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 a garden but on a barren rock and we could see, not feel. The wind might blow, but we could see 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 an earthly cage from which when the bar breaks it flees.' " ' And the man's soul ? ' 83 THE WORLD SOUL *' * It 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 it moves .'' (He broke the grass stem.) The grass 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, compelled for all ages to manifest itself only in that poor body which fate put him into once ? Life is a progress and a change , . . ' " The monk leant closer and took the broken grass and held it up. The wind had ceased and it stood motionless. 'The wind has gone, the grass is dead. The wind has gone to move the leaves and grasses far away.' " The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it came nor whither it goeth ; so is every one that is born of the Spirit." The man sees a steamer pass with its electric lights and likens Man to a lamp. " Life comes for ever 84 BODY AND SOUL 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 alone ? Is it gone to judgment because the light was dim ? Was it the fault of the energy if the lamp in which it was manifested was made with a flaw?" Again I might quote the words of Jesus : " That which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the spirit is spirit." The Power House is in the world. In the begin- ning its World Soul moved upon the face of the waters, and moves still in all life. It contains within it the potentiality of all love and wisdom, but it can only manifest them in flesh. You cannot separate soul from matter. And again from the chapter headed " Rays of the Infinite Light " when the man was looking on a spectrum, " This is the symbol of life ; it is not a substance, a shadowy film but still a substance placed within our bodies, but a beam and a force made up of many forces." The sunlight comes upon us in a flood, but that great tide is made up of tiny beams, and in each beam lie the properties of the whole ; visible and invisible rays are all there. Each little beam that filters 85 THE WORLD SOUL through the leaves is a completeness in itself, a personality. Yet when incarnated in a leaf its expres- sion differs from all the rest. We are such beams from the eternal sun. And I said, " It takes all the rays of the spectrum to make white light. We are all rays, some red, some blue, some violet, and some almost invisible, but in the Great White Light none will be missing, or the Light would not be White." That is another reason why He left the ninety and nine in the wilderness to search after the one. Now of what does this Life, this Soul, this Spirit consist .? The life, the soul is emotion, the emotion of love, that great love whose real meaning I explain elsewhere. The spirit is wisdom which controls and directs the Soul. The whole is emotion expressed in understanding, sympathy combined with wisdom. If the reader will refer to the foreword and to pages 236-237 of The Inward Light, he will see a quotation from the Upanishads. I do not like to quote too fully, but I must reproduce some of it. " ' What is self? It is the Man Soul.' The World Soul, not your miserable little atom soul, nor mine, but the Man-Soul of which we are part, ' made of understanding,' ' acquired between the breaths,' that is to say during successive lives, divided by rests or 'breaths.' It is the 'Inward Light within the 86 BODY AND SOUL heart,' not my heart nor yours alone, but the world- heart. It is that which becometh * the Understanding Dream and fareth beyond this world.' " Vixere fortes ante Agamemnon. How long ago the Upanishads were written I do not know, nor who wrote them, but even the Supreme Thinker of the World, Jesus, never said this truth more clearly. I beg that the reader will try to grasp the idea, will try to see, not how it is, for that we cannot see yet, but that it is and must be so. Every thinker that ever came into the world has seen it and known it. It is the beginning of the Old Testament, it is the whole of the life and teaching of Jesus, it is in Norwegian legends, in the Upanishads, in all science, in every living thing. You cannot look into any true thing with- out finding it ; but it is not in religions because they are dead, nor in philosophies for they never had life. This instinctive love and wisdom is in every child which is born ; it is its soul, and its further develop- ment depends on the flesh in which it is incarnated. It is subject to the fatality of the flesh. The Evolu- tion of the soul follows the development of love and sympathy, not barren intellect, as is shown in Chapter V. And I show the utter righteousness and necessity of earthly love to enable life to continue and grow, as opposed to the chastity of faiths which is the outcome of despair of this world. 87 THE WORLD SOUL Look at the long story of evolution as told in modern science and try to reconcile it with the religious theories that we are separate individuals for ever, and that we were newly created at birth to disappear into some different spirit world at death. It is irhpossible, incredible. There is no break in the world life. It has gone on continuously as far back as we can see. It is one life struggling with the natural world to subdue it into obedience by know- ledge. All evolution is ultimately an evolution of wisdom. The wisdom rises in a regular scale from the beginning. Even the instincts of plants and trees are wisdom, that is to say, inherited and acquired knowledge, unconscious memory very slowly acquired through aeons of time. Forms are evolved, and when they have fulfilled their mission they pass ; the Life goes on. It is one and it is here. Our future is in this world. We return to the World Soul which is continually sending down new souls to be incarnated and learn. Our flesh continues in our children. Both immortalities are necessary to life. The World Soul must have flesh to manifest itself in. " 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 down-turned ; their fingers lightly held. 88 BODY AND SOUL " Tet 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 mightest love her. Have I done well ? Is her cheek soft ? Her eyes, are they not bright ? ' " The boy laughed and looked. " ' Go to him,' said the Future in her ear. ' Go to 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 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 which 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. All wisdom comes from love." " But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. " For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh." 89 THE WORLD SOUL For this cause. For why ? Because soul must have flesh to be manifested in, and only through earthly love can it become. All souls return to the World Soul and are remanifested. How can they be that without flesh ? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. All of our bodies, all our emotions were given us for use and pleasure and delight. What would be the use of love were this not so ? Any theory of the evil of life is responsible for most of those very evils. Life is not evil, it is good. If life were evil, the more life we had the worse it would be, but the fact is the very reverse. It is the want of life, of energy, of capability, of opportunity, of courage, of wisdom, that makes the evil. We suffer from too little life, from too much death, from Death. I said in this same book : " He turned and through the window gazed upon the world without. He saw the fields clothed with green garments ; he saw the palms in stately column stand. He saw the flowing river and the hills a dream in the far distance, and he saw the living light that flooded all the 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 90 BODY AND SOUL diiFerent ; 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." No New Jerusalem will be that. Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, in flesh as it is in love and thought. If the world be beautiful now, what will it be when we understand it and have mastered it in love and wisdom ? 9? VI SECRECY " Wherefore I say unto you. All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men ; but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. " And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him ; but whosoever shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come. " Either make the tree good and his fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt and his fruit corrupt ; for the tree is known by his fruit. " O generation of vipers, how can ye being evil speak good things ? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. " A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. " But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account thereof in the day of judgment, " For by thy words thou shalt be justified and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. "^And he said unto them. Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel or under a bed ? aifd not to be set on a candlestick ? " For there is nothing hid that shall not be manifested, neither was anything kept secret but that it should come abroad. " If any man have ears to hear let him hear. "Whatsoever therefore ye ask in prayer, believing, ye shall CHAPTER VI IN The Inward Light I felt I had gone a long way. I had determined a number of questions, and I knew the answers were true, but I had not yet reached the end I wanted. In many ways I began to dimly understand what Jesus meant, but not entirely. A great deal of his life and teaching still remained obscure. I had not yet opened that door, though it seemed sometimes to be ajar and I saw light coming out. Then it would shut again. I knew the defini- tion of the Trinity at the beginning of The Inward Light was wrong, though not completely so, and I had not quite separated God from the World Soul. Therefore I must go on. The next book I wrote was One Immortality. The thought that underlay that book was the legend of the Garden of Eden. It did not come out in the book at all. It could not. But it grew in me as I wrote. I discovered what it all meant. What I then learnt will be seen when I come to the legends of Genesis. The last book I wrote was Sons of Time, and in it I tried to work out three subjects. They were fatality, secrecy, prayer. I did work them out. I have already in Chapter IV shown that crime is 95 THE WORLD SOUL mostly the result of fatality, is beyond a man's control and therefore not his fault, and this truth I followed through all life. In his birth, education, occupation, marriage, children, and death, a man has little free will. He cannot fall in love to order nor die to order. Suicide, for instance, is supposed to be a defect of the personal will or courage. But read the statistics of suicide ; how invariable they are from year to year in all countries ; and you will see that it proceeds from no individual private causes, but from world causes. It is a world disease, and claims its regular quota of deaths. It is the same with all matters, marriages and births, and deaths from accident or natural causes. They follow fixed laws, which are not laws of the individual, but of humanity as a whole. "A man's marriage, age at marriage, number of children, divorce or not, depends not on any power of his own, but on general causes which affect the world." 1 A man has no control over the sort of body he is given ; he has to find out its aflinities, he cannot control them, fall in love or hate to order ; fate ordains what women he meets and which of them likes him, his financial circumstances, social conven- tions, marriage laws, their mutual consonance and fertility, or the reverse, her physique, the trend of 1 From Marriage, in the Contemporary Science Series. 96 SECRECY events, the divorce laws. Within these he may have free will, but how much is left to him or her indi- vidually ? Almost nothing. We are not either body or soul separate entities. We are all cells in a world body animated by a World Soul, and our physical virtues and defects are not in- dividual but general. Their cause being general their cure lies not in treating the individual in which they occur, but in a reformation of the whole. There can be no advance either in Ethics, Govern- ment, Literature or Art until this is fully understood and accepted. All life is one Life from one eternity to another. The world, as the Eddas say, is ruled by three Fates, the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Present rests upon the Past and proceeds from it, the Future from the Present. But it is the Future that holds the ideal to which the world moves, and there- fore it is she who conditions both the Present and the Past. The Three are inextricably One. Each person has a little individual fate allotted, we know not how, but these pass. The Great Fates are good, for they are an inevitable progress to a good end, and we share in the Great Fates, for our little fates are but temporary and pass. Fatalism has been denounced as a despair. If you imagine a God outside the world who has foreseen and decreed all that happens and will happen, then it H 97 THE WORLD SOUL is in truth a despair. But if by Fatalism you mean the truth that though the Present is a product of the Past and we have little control over our lives, yet the world is bound to an Increasing Purpose in the future and we with it, then it is an optimism. It is a belief in the inevitable progress of the world, that all the world is one, and therefore that we share for ever in that inevitable progress ; and however stupid we may be, however we may retard that progress, we cannot alter it. The world is bound to a good end and we with it ; nothing can alter that. But meanwhile we have to make the best of things as they happen to be ; we must take life as it is at present, and we can only do that by seeing things clearly. What we can influence by our acts and thoughts is not our own lives — we reap that we did not sow — but those of succeeding generations. We now are sowing the seed which they will reap. " I visit the sins of the father upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and show mercy unto the thousandth of them that love me and keep my commandments." Nothing could be more true than this saying of Moses, but though it is repeated every day in churches, no Church seems to have seen its significance. It i^ a declaration of the eternal truth that each individual life has been greatly determined for him before he was born, that he is 98 SECRECY but a tiny cell in a great organism which is in a state of evolution, and that his influence over his own acts or fate is very small. This fatality of life is con- tinually referred to by Jesus. See what he says about the Tower of Siloam and, " needs be that offences must come, but woe unto them by whom they come." We suffer for the sins of our fathers, " we reap that we did not sow." " Every man's fate have I written on his forehead, saith the Lord " is what the East says. A thinker once wrote : " No man looking back on his life, however much he may regret certain incidents in it, will say conscientiously to himself that were he to live it over again he would be able to act very differently." And the more you consider your own life and others', the more you see that our acts are very rarely individual ; they are universal, that is to say, due to world causes which no individual can con- trol. Therefore to alter and improve the individual's acts, the whole fabric of government and civilisation has to be affected and changed. But if this be so, and indubitably it is so, how can it be true that we are judged by our individual acts .'' It is impossible. Tolstoy, too, had worked this out for himself. It is in Resurrection. The act is bond. But for bond acts the individual is not responsible. What a man will be judged by are his ideas and intentrons and thoughts which are free, and by such acts or modifications as are due not 99 THE WORLD SOUL to fatality, but to good or bad intention, to knowledge or wilful stupidity. Finally he will be judged not by what he has done, but by what he is, what his soul is, for he won't take his body with him. His soul is his sympathy and wisdom. I worked this out quite clearly for myself as the only possible ground for a true judgment, and when I turned to what Jesus said I found that he had said exactly that, and nowhere does he say that a man is judged by his acts. He is judged by his " fruits," by his " words." Read again the passage prefixed to this chapter. The Son of Man is Good Intention, that is, com- passion, love ; the Holy Ghost is wisdom. The unpardonable sin is wilful ignorance. All sins of the flesh shall be forgiven, but by thy words, thy ideas and thy knowledge, thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. And again, take that passage about the unwashen hands : " Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man, but that which cometh out of the mouth, that defileth a man. "Do you not understand that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly and is cast out in the draught ? " But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. 100 SECRECY "For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. "These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man." What could be more clear ? It is your thoughts and your ignorance that defile you, not mere act, unless that act come from your heart and be the re- sult of bad intention or wilful ignorance. Nothing that you do defiles you, provided it do not hurt your soul thereby. If you mean well, if you have acquired knowledge all you can, if you have tried to the best of your ability, it doesn't matter what you may have actually been obliged to do, either by defects of your physique or by circumstances. There is no teaching of Jesus more clear. And is it not common sense ? The World Soul has to provide souls for all bodies, and does so. The soul when it arrives is all right. But owing to the ignorance of Man, bodies are often diseased and poor. Each individual is to a great extent an auto- maton of Fate. But his acts are finite and disappear. The soul returns to the World Soul, and it is of the first necessity that the soul be improved, for it is an indissoluble part of the World Soul, and if diminished it reduces the rest. Try to see matters as the World Soul does. It wants to grow in wisdom so as to be better able to attain its ends. It incarnates souls to lOI THE WORLD SOUL grow in emotion and wisdom. When the man dies his soul goes back. Is it bigger or smaller ? If smaller, why so ? Is it not of the most obvious that what Jesus said is true ? A man is affected by his acts only in so far as they disclose good or bad intention, wilful knowledge or ignorance. It is the intention and the wisdom which matter to you, for they are that which you take away. No one takes his body or any bodily attribute away. Jesus did not. What happened in his case is perfectly clear and simple, and there is no resurrection of the indi- vidual body. Each takes away what he brought down, enlarged or decreased. That will come in its place. What I want the reader to do is to cast away all preconceptions, to open sincere eyes of thought and look this matter in the face, see what the facts of the world are and how utterly true to them, how absolutely common-sense this view is. To judge a man by his acts alone would be cruel, foolish, most unjust, and it would block all progress. What soul would endure incarnation if that were so ? Men so judge, but the laws of evolution in the World Soul do not. The World Soul Court ta which we go is not in the least like the courts of justice I have had experience of and have described. " He knows about it all. He knows. He knows," not only what we are, but what He wants us to be and how we are 102 SECRECY to get there. And remember this, too, that this forgiveness depends on no caprice of personality. It is simply that the law of the evolution of soul is as I have described. When you realise that self is soul, which is sympathy and wisdom, and that as you bring nothing else so you will take nothing else away, you will understand. Therefore never be afraid of consequences. Be sure you mean well ; be sure you have done your best to acquire knowledge and will keep on acquiring it in order to do well, and go ahead. Whatever may happen here you are safe hereafter. Stains of body are nothing ; stains of soul are everything. "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye are like unto whited sepulchres full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness." Their virtues are virtues of the healthy body and circumstances they were by great good luck born into. They will not take those virtues away. There is no resurrection of the body. What they will take away are their souls, sepulchres full of dead men's bones, of their ignorance and self-righteousness, the worn-out maxims and lifeless creeds they die by, and the World Soul does not want such. 103 THE WORLD SOUL The second thought I worked out was the hate- fulness of secrecy in the individual, in organisations, and in governments. There is a woman in that book who marries a man, loving him and ready to be a good wife to him in all ways except the one essential. She will not share herself with him. She keeps her whole self as a garden enclosed, a private place where none may enter. So she can never understand him, nor can he understand her, and disaster follows, as inevitably it must. Only when despair breaks down the barriers of her soul does happiness come. This is, of course, just as true for men as women, and it was only because the story demanded it that it happened to be a woman who exhibited this failure. It is a very common sin, and is like most sins con- sidered as a virtue by those who practise it. Reserve, secrecy, silence, are supposed to indicate strong character. They do not do so. It is an infallible sign of weakness that a man or woman is afraid to share his intentions, his thoughts, his ideas, with the world. He is afraid of showing the vacuity or in- decisiveness of his mind. He is afraid of criticism. He trusts to his acts to justify him, and as has been already seen, no one is justified by his acts, because these are often automatic, but by his " words," his ideas. He knows that by some good luck he has been put into a body that may be trusted to act fairly well automatically, without thought, and as he has no 104 SECRECY thoughts, he thinks it better to have none, but not to showthe vacuity. If you keep your mind secret you can never let light into it, for light comes by the criticism and suggestions of others very often. If you are thinking wrong, and hide your thought, how will you ever put it right .'' It remains dark. If you have any light of your own, you have no right to keep it secret. It belongs to the World Soul, and is not your private property. But, in fact, when people have light they generally do manifest it. There are exceptions, for there are cowards in this world. Secrecy is nearly always a sign of something want- ing. It is fear that leads to secrecy, fear of being found out. Children are never secret until they are driven by bad counsels and punishment into silence, preten- sion to wisdom, and to mistake ignorance for a virtue. Their souls come from the World Soul, and have the instinct of frankness and of courage — till it is killed. As the world stands there are a few subjects that have still to be discussed with caution, but they are very few, and even there the caution must not be ex- aggerated. Our aim is perfect frankness in all things. Half the mistakes and ignorances of life come from keeping secret what ought to be told. Pharisees love to go past on the other side and keep to themselves. Secrecy is either to cover ignorance or is hypocrisy. 105 THE WORLD SOUL If it cover ignorance it only confirms that ignorance ; if it be hypocrisy, then it is soon found out. We as individuals and as a nation are noted in the world for our reserve and what is called our " hypoc- risy." Any one will tell you so if you will allow them — French, Germans, Indians, Burmese. Our many good qualities are nullified by our refusal to share ourselves with the world, by our silence pre- tending to a virtue we have not got. No one has put the matter more clearly than Gorki, when he says that a man willing to share himself with the world draws all men to him, but a reserved man repels. We are, fortunately, no more righteous, that is to say inhuman, than other people, and our pretence to it deceives no one but ourselves. The great danger is that it does deceive ourselves and makes us worse. We are not less emotional than other people. English men and women are capable of as deep and true and strong emotion as any people can be. When we were sincere and cultivated these beautiful feel- ings, England was Merrie England, and our life, our literature, our art flourished. Then came the pose of secrecy and shame and suppression inculcated by Puritanism and " education," and it became fashion- able to hide and to suppress emotion. Yet of what value is love, liking, or admiration if it is hidden ? To hide hate is right sometimes, for hate 1 06 SECRECY may be an ugly thing, but to hide love, sorrow, com- passion, admiration, what could be more terrible ? For to hide an emotion is to kill it eventually ; the cold reserved man and woman smothers his soul and becomes eventually an automaton. Emotion alone is life. It is this pose which makes our social life the least social in the world, and our modern literature of hardly any world value, notwithstanding the genius of some who have written. It is a blight on all truth, this want of frankness, this secrecy, this shame of emotion which is life. It is an insult to God and to the World Soul, who are emotion. We are all of the World Soul and we must realise that in every possible way, not by mere charity of money, but by charity of thought ; giving and sharing our thought, based on our emotion, which is our- selves ; thereby we gain more than we lose. It is the only way to learn sympathy which is under- standing. With governments the secrecy is more, the neces- sity for publicity even more urgent. For publicity is the only safeguard for governments. In indi- viduals there is self-respect, there is fear of con- sequences, there is fear of being found out. These hardly exist in governments. No individual is responsible. The public never know whom to blame. All governments are composed, of honourable men ; but men honourable in private life will as Government 107 THE WORLD SOUL officials do things that in private life they would not do. The fact that it is the Government that profits and not he who gives the order seems to excuse the order. The secrecy in which Government departments shield themselves is from an idea that secrecy gives strength and dignity, from disinclination to waste time answering criticism, and from fear of unfair and ignorant criticism. It is an evil. It is not fair to a people that the Government it appoints and pays should refuse to expose its acts or to share its thoughts and intentions about the nation's busi- ness. It is a confession of inability and of fear. Nature hides nothing, for she is ashamed of nothing, men are ashamed of being found out. In nations the effect of secrecy is still more marked. Why have the Jews been always hated ? This is what Gibbon says : " The sullen obstinacy with which they maintained their peculiar rites and un- social manners seemed to mark them out as a dis- tinct species of men who boldly professed, or who faintly disguised their implacable hatred to the rest of humankind." They indicated this difFerentia,tion by the horrible rite of circumcision, which took its rise in phallic worship, and the consequences of the mutilation still further accentuated their hatred to mankind, for it causes an irritation of the brain resulting in moodiness and fanaticism. Therein lies the bad favour they have earned, because they would io8 SECRECY not share themselves with the world, because they arrogated to themselves a peculiar position apart from all. They are by nature a gifted people, and a lovable people, but instead of being the helpers and brothers of mankind they have by their creed made themselves its enemies. Foreign bodies that will not blend with the organ- ism about them are destructive to it. Therefore the organism never ceases trying to amalgamate or destroy. It must do one or the other or it suffers. Secrecy, separateness, is one of the most deadly sins. My third thought was that of prayer. As 1 have said, my attention had been attracted to prayer in the Burmese, though they professed a religion which ignored it. This came from the instinctive recogni- tion that within law there was an Intelligence which is the World Soul, and perhaps that behind law, a greater Intelligence which is God. In life all acts are by law, but human beings are accessible to requests. Therefore why should there not be One behind who will give ? Will He give, and if so what .'' What is prayer and what, if any, virtue is there in it ? That was not difficult to discover. Prayer means begging for things, that is to say, asking for things to be given you which you have neither earned nor deserved. That is the only 109 THE WORLD SOUL correct meaning of the word prayer, and it has no truth in it whatever. Nothing has ever been obtained by such a process of supplication, it is degrading both to him who prays and Him who is prayed to. It is inculcated by all religions except Buddhism, because priests wish to constitute themselves as mediums for the safe forwarding of these prayers to their destina- tion. It produces a humiliation, a despair of life, a fear that makes men slaves to faiths, and for this purpose was and is encouraged by them. In the beginning prayer had no other meaning. But subsequently a wider meaning was given to prayer. It was made to include self-concentration, aspiration, and thought. That is the way words are misused and people are misled. Prayer does not mean any of these emotions ; they have names of their own, which should have been preserved, for they are good things, and should never have been grouped with begging, which is bad. Whatever good there is in prayer is when it is not prayer, but thought. For thought is the only soul truth ; it alone enables you to realise the oneness of Life in the World Soul. Now if you will turn to that prayer of Jesus called the Lord's Prayer, you will see that this is so. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Spirit of love and wisdom, which is the World no SECRECY Soul and of which our own souls are part, thou only art worth honour and increase. Is that for the World Soul to remember, or for ourselves ? The World Soul knows it without our telling him. He is not likely to forget, we may. It is necessary for us to remember continually that we have to increase the Soul within us, for it is part of the Father who gave it, and wants it back en- larged and increased. That is what we are born for. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. IVIay the reign of love and wisdom come on earth as it is in the World Soul, in flesh as it is in thought. It is for us to remember that it is in our power to forward, it is our duty to realise that " will." Unless we further it, that kingdom cannot come. We have the power, for in us is the World Soul. Give us this day our daily bread. If thou wilt not work, neither shalt thou eat. We have to work, and if we work and search for wisdom bread will come. " Take no thought for the morrow, let the morrow take thought for the things of itself." The laws of the universe are so adjusted that for most of us daily bread comes if deserved, and they will not be altered. It is no use begging for things ; you must realise how they are obtained. Bread is not merely material, there is the spiritual bread that came down from heaven, which is wisdom. That, III THE WORLD SOUL too, is required daily, and must be earned and achieved just like material bread. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us. Were a prayer really a petition addressed to a higher Power and which we want granted, should we say this ? Should we not say simply, " Forgive us our trespasses," without giving ourselves away by the proviso ? What could be more certain than that ? If ever there was a proof that the true prayer is a thought, a recalling of a true law, and not a petition for a breach of law, it is here. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Do you really suppose that Jesus meant by this that the World Father leads us into temptation in order to cause our ruin, and must be petitioned not to do so ? We have a part of the Father in our- selves, and it is our duty to increase that so as to guide our steps. Remember that we are guided not by a star, or a kindly light without, but by the Inward Light within the heart, which is that light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. That sentence is for ourselves. We are to so increase our wisdom that we do not fall into temptation, but are able to deliver ourselves from evil. What, then, is the Lord's Prayer } A petition to some outside power for help ? Not so. It is directed to that portion of the World Soul within us. It is 112 SECRECY a Thought which comprises within it some of the principal thoughts necessary to be borne in mind by each person. A prayer, if true, is addressed to your better self and to no one else. Churches have tried to persuade their members that they had some special claim on God and could get benefits by begging for them, not deserving them ; but history does not support that theory, nor would it be complimentary either to God or man to place them in such a relative position, A God who has self-respect would not lower the self-respect of man that is Himself by making him into a suppliant and a beggar. Remember, too, the prayers of the Pharisee and the publican in the temple : " And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others : " Two men went up into the temple to pray ; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. " The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself : God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. " I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. " And the publican standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but he smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I 113 THE WORLD SOUL "I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased ; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." Was either of them asking for things from God ? No. The Pharisee was telling himself how good he was, and had nothing to learn, he was confirming himself in his ignorance, and the Publican was realising that he was a sinner and had much to learn. That is the teaching of Jesus as to prayer. Nothing could be more clear. And nowhere is the uselessness of prayer as begging more clearly shown than in his life. When in his agony and distress in the garden he prayed to God to alter the inevitable course of events and save him, his prayer was not granted. No requests have ever any effect. Our life is fatal- istic, inevitable to a great extent and in any case never aifected by God. If a thing is to happen, prayer will not affect it. We may pray for a thing and get it, we should have got it in any case. Nothing is so weakening or destructive to character as the culti- vation of dependence, fear, distrust that leads to supplication. Perfect love casteth out fear. The only real emotion is thought, which is the knocking at the gate of knowledge, and if we knock it shall be opened. It is the same with confession. There is nothing 114 SECRECY so absolutely necessary as that a man should recognise where he is wrong. It is the only possible way to get right. But to whom should this confession be made ? To God ? What has God to do with it ? He has told you how to retrieve it ; if you won't do so He won't do anything. If you have done wrong the only possible escape is to acknowledge that wrong, so that in future you shall do right. To a Church ? What have other mortals like yourself to do with it ? How can they absolve you ? No ! Only one person can absolve you, and that is yourself. You have soiled yourself ; you must wash and be clean. No one else will wash you, no lustral waters, nor no blood. You must face your mistakes, recognise wherein you erred, rectify the errors as far as possible and resolve to be wiser in future. That is the only confession, and it is to that portion of the World Soul of Common Sense which is within you. But, of course, if you have killed that common sense, put out that Inward Light, you are helpless. You will get nothing unless you sincerely strive after it. The universe is so arranged, its laws are such, that if you will not work neither shall you eat, not bread nor knowledge. You will get nothing by simply saying. Give, give. You must ask in the right way the right person. You must not ask God "5 THE WORLD SOUL without but God within, you must demand it of the power of experience and of thought that is in you. You must seek not in some spirit world, but here in this world for truth. You must knock at the door that is all round you, and it will be opened. ii6 VII THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN " The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. " And five of them were wise, and five foolish. "They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them : " But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. " While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. " And at midnight there was a cry made. Behold, the bridegroom Cometh ; go ye out to meet him. " Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. "And the foolish said unto the wise. Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out. " But the wise answered, saying. Not so ; lest there be not enough for us and you : but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for your- selves. "And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage, and the door was shut. "Afterwards came also the other virgins, saying. Lord, Lord, open to us. " But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not. " Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour when the Son of Man cometh." CHAPTER VII SO far I had come. By working diligently all my life, by asking, by seeking, by knocking, I had discovered a great many things, and I knew that all I had discovered was true. Yet what was the value of these truths .'' They were isolated, without coherence, and therefore useless. They tended to no end. And my purpose throughout life remained unfulfilled. I had not discovered the meaning of the world nor Jesus. Yet I could do no more. I was weary of it all. I doubted if there was any answer. I did not believe there was a door. I thought the words of Jesus had no meaning. I sat down entirely in despair. " Why was I more wise ? Therefore I hated life." It was never worth the living. It was a foolish groping in the dark without a light to nowhere. Then the door opened of itself, the light poured forth and I went in. v It was the very night after I had written "The End" to Sons of Time, that the central thought that had been in my mind all my life came to its fruition. If you take a glass of water and drop a grain of 119 THE WORLD SOUL salt earth into it, the water is discoloured. You let it stand and presently the water clears again, the earth has fallen to the bottom. The salt is dissolved in the water, but shows no sign. You then drop in another grain and the effect is the same. Still you go on grain after grain and at last the water becomes saturated. Still there is no sign of anything but water with mud below, and it seems as if the salt had gone for ever, the mud remains. Then comes the wonder. A touch and a life has come into the water. There is a movement and a stir, all the water is in agitation, crystals of pure salt are forming. The disappeared salt is reappearing in new organic forms, pure, white and clear, under the influence of hidden forces. The earth is all left behind. My mind is such a glass. Into it from my child- hood I had been dropping facts, ideas, thoughts of every kind. I had been made to go through many things, to do many things, to be, to suffer, that I might learn these facts. I had been given a heart that could dissolve them, rejecting all the vehicle that fell to the bottom, keeping only the salt within me. Yet it seemed to me I had learned nothing. The water was just what it was, except that it was very bitter to the taste, and there was mud below. I had come to no complete conclusion. Then suddenly a thought touched my heart, it 1 20 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN shook, and all things flashed into being. Every vague wandering thought that had gone from sight came back in new organic form. I saw all that I had wanted to see for so many years ; not all there is to know, for knowledge has no end, but I held the key to all. I did not think ; I knew ; I saw. No sight that the world has seen is like that sight. There is no country like that land into which I came at last after such a long life journey. I have on purpose brought the reader with me on my way, because I want to show him the road. He must travel it by himself. It lies through a moun- tainous country, and in places a very barren country. I have found it a very lonely road. All the way I have been by myself. I have seen everybody else going off to various much-advertised destinations on easy roads, travelling by train in big companies, on personally conducted tours of the Churches, by eastern caravans, by aeroplanes like the philosophers, by tubes deep down in earth, like the materialists, and I, alone, walked. They seemed quite cheerful and knew all about it ; I alone was not cheerful at all because I was sure I knew nothing. But I, also, alone saw that they knew nothing, that their cheerful- ness was assumed, that their tours were all circular ones and that presently they would be back again where they started, if they did not have an accident. They could never get anywhere, whereas though I 121 THE WORLD SOUL went slowly I did keep moving into new country. I was progressing always onward, though I hardly realised it. For the road is a dusty, weary, dangerous road, " beset with pitfall and with gin," and you have got to tramp every inch of it. Strait is the gate and narrow is the way. There is no railway nor will ever be. There are no trains de luxe nor no sleeping cars. The way of Jesus is the thought road to wisdom, but each must travel for himself. Do not for a moment believe that even Jesus will carry you or save you. He won't. He has told you how to go, and if you won't go it is your own fault. It is no good saying. Lord, Lord. You must do what he said. You must take up your cross and walk. And you must have within you the light to walk by. No one else can light you ; the foolish virgins could not borrow from the wise nor walk by the light of their lanterns. You must have your own light and the oil of wisdom to feed it. No other light will avail you. It is the travelling along the road that makes you worthy to enter that kingdom. Never mind the dust, the travel stains you may accumulate, showing how you have fallen by the way. Never mind grow- ing old or weary on the road. Within the door there is the stream called Lethe that washes all who enter, making them clean and young in soul for ever. 122 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN Then shall you get your wedding garment from the porter at the gate who opens and pass in to the marriage. You must not wait until you die. The Kingdom of Heaven is within you now if you will but find it, and if you won't find it now when you have the chance, you will have to wait till you get another chance in another life. " Work while ye have light, for the night cometh when no man can work." The Kingdom of God has to come here, not elsewhere. Therefore every one will get there, must get there. Only money will not take you, nor work, nor talent, no, nor genius. There is one essential you must have, something in yourself which you must make. " I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one cometh unto the Father but by me." But you can't see that way with your eyes shut. What good is a dawn to you if you can't see it because your eye is full of darkness? You must learn to think, to see. What then is there in that thought-land which makes it worth so hard a journey ? It is the Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus declared. What is there new then in that kingdom ? There is nothing new. The land is the same old beautiful earth we know, with mountains, rivers,, forests, animals and birds, cities and people. Nothing is changed. It is the light there that differs 123 THE WORI.J SOUL from the common light. There is new dawn come up against that sky. The sun of Truth is rising and all things are growing clear, clearer and clearer hour by hour and day by day. Evermore they will grow brighter, for that sun will never set, nor clouds come between the dwellers there and it. This is the only land where you see clearly. It is a happy land, for there is an eternal marriage taking place, the marriage of true thought with act, of spirit with the flesh. It is the wedding of the Son of Man. We all are of the Bridegroom and the Bride, it is our wedding too. The land is full of music. It echoes in the hills and fills the valleys ; all life replies to it ; all join in the great chorus of the Triumphal Wedding March to which all life is lived. 124 VIII THE TRINITY " Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old." CHAPTER VIII IT came about in this way. I was thinking about an act, what it was that went to any right act. I saw that it was the outcome of the intention, or idea, the ability, the knowledge. If you have not the ability, you may have the other two qualities and do nothing ; if your intention is bad your act is bad ; if you don't know how to accomplish your intention you will fail. Thus all act is the result of a trinity in man. The ability is the body, the intention is the soul, the knowledge is the spirit. In a baby the in- tention is complete, but the first and third exist in potential only, and have to be developed ; they must exist or could not be developed. Take a single act. You are by a riverside and see a man drowning ; to perform the good act of saving him you must have : The Ability. You must be able to swim. That ability only existed in potential when you were born ; it is to be developed slowly. The Intention. You must not only intend now to save the man, but you must have always intended to save a man if you had the chance, otherwise you 127 THE WORLD SOUL would not have learnt that special art of swimming which is necessary to saving a man. The intention must have been there in actuality from the first, and regulated your life consciously or unconsciously to that end. It is in all children that are born. Now intention or idea is emotion. A mere in- tellectual conception is nothing. The only living idea is that vitalised by emotion, and the emotion is love. The Knowledge. That, like the ability, grows slowly by experience. To mean well is no use unless you have the knowledge how to do well. It is no use wanting to save the man if you have not acquired the knowledge of how to do it. From experience we acquire knowledge ; by practice knowledge be- comes wisdom. For instance, when you first learn swimming you are taught and find by experience how to move your legs and arms, but you have to recall this result of experience each time till it is complete. That is knowledge. Later you move them rightly by instinct. That is wisdom. Knowledge implies an effort of conscious detailed memory, but wisdom does not. You do not have to remember how you learnt to swim, your mistakes, your lessons. You have acquired the art, and detailed memory of ante- cedents is useless. You get rid of it. All instinct with which we are born was once acquired as know- ledge through experience. 128 THE TRINITY This is the trinity of the individual, and goes to every act. But life is made up of acts, and Life of lives. The world is the Act of innumerable forces through many forms of matter actuated by many intelligences. But ultimately all matter is one, all forces are one force, all Life moves to one end, therefore the Inten- tion or Soul is one, and as all wisdom is but detail in one Wisdom, the world is one Trinity and Life is its Act. Whatever God who exists beyond may be, this World is a Trinity of World Soul and World Wisdom acting in the World Body. We ourselves are items in it. Whether there is behind all a First Cause, we do not know. We may assume it or not, it makes little difference. But we must never confuse that First Cause with the Trinity that is in the world, forming and developing it. Much of the confusion of thought that has arisen is due to not separating God and this Trinity of the World. Religion has postulated a God of all Perfections who made this world, whereas any one can see that this world is not perfect at all, and that if it is to be made so we must do it. Almost all that has been thought and said about God does not refer to God. It refers to this Trinity of the World of which we are part. The world has been worshipping what it will become. For it is not K 129 THE WORLD SOUL perfect yet, but it has in it the potential of perfection, and it is our duty, our pleasure, our life for ever to perfect it. The first person of this Trinity is matter and energy. The Greeks knew that behind them as behind the emotions whom they deified was avdyKij, Necessity or Law. These existed in potential from the first, but are developed slowly by the action of the World Soul and Spirit. The Idea also existed from the first, as every student of evolution knows. It is in the World Soul which is its emotion and gradually develops its pur- pose. That purpose is the absolute mastery of soul and spirit over matter, the perfect incarnation of all the World Soul in perfect matter, which instinct with perfect wisdom will be free and happy, and never die. This intention existed from the first. " My kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven," was the intention of the World Soul from the beginning. All its acts tended to this end. The wisdom, however, existed only in potential. It is acquired by experience which brings knowledge, and knowledge matures into Wis- dom. It grows for ever. These are the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost of Christianity. In the teaching of Jesus are explained the last two. Jesus came to express the emotion and idea which is love and the ideals towards which it strives ; the Holy Ghost to come was wisdom to 130 THE TRINITY attain these ideals. God, if there be such, never interferes, the essential idea being that we are to grow strong and wise and sympathetic by realising that only so can we be happy. If God were always helping the world, it would become dependent, cowardly, and weak. Each can see that for himself. That is the key thought. There is no difficulty about it at all. Every one can see it for himself if he will cast off all the bandages of misconception tied over his eyes by faiths and philosophies. The life and teaching of Jesus become now quite simple, for the key to all his parables and sayings is obtained. The mystery of his life too rapidly ceases to be a mystery and becomes perfectly human, and in its perfect humanity divine, with no breach of law nor mystery anywhere from the beginning to the end. However, before coming to the New Testament and Jesus, it is necessary to go back to the Old Testa- ment. For the beginning of truth is there and Jesus came to fulfil it, therefore it must be known first. It is the old treasure spoken of in this chapter heading. I have said that in early man there was a knowledge of the idea for which the world existed, that there was a true theory of life, of the Trinity of the world, common to perhaps all the world, and that one ex- pression of this is in Genesis. It is in the legends of the Creation, the Garden of Eden, the Flood and the 131 THE WORLD SOUL Tower of Babel, These are quite simple if looked at truly. A legend is a fable. Now consider what a fable is. Take that of the ant and the grasshopper in La Fontaine. Is it an account of an occurrence ? Did an ant and a grasshopper ever meet and converse ? That is nonsense. La Fontaine wanted to express an idea and used actual forms to clothe it and give it substance. That is the way with the origin of all legends. Real facts may be used, real occurrences annexed, even real people perhaps, but they are so used and changed as to express the idea. The truth lies in the idea, not in the form. The teller had something to say about the world of fact ; he said it in a concrete form because in early days the expression of abstract ideas was difficult. There were no abstract words and few concrete words. What did he want to say ; what did he really say ? The letter is bond ; let us free the spirit. In the legend of the Creation he says that in the beginning the earth was without form and void, and darkness brooded upon the face of the deep waters. " And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." That is to say, that within this chaos there lay already a soul with the intention of the eventual perfection of life, and that its evolution had already 132 THE TRINITY begun. A perfectly true and lucid account, omitting details, of the progress of evolution is then given, and how eventually man was evolved. Then was finality of form apparently reached, for man had only to completely and fully develop himself to realise the idea, the intention, the logos, that was in the world from the beginning. Therefore said the legend- maker : " God made man in His own image," because " in the flesh shall I see God," that is to say that in perfected humanity the perfected World Soul will attain its highest expression. And God saw that it was good, all of it. The next legends in Genesis are the creation of Eve and the Garden of Eden, but in thought sequence they come after the Flood. I will take the Flood first. Without doubt the imagery of the Flood is taken from some occurrence ; without doubt the idea had nothing to do with that occurrence. The Flood is death which comes on all life owing to its sin, that is its ignorance of how to defeat death. Noah is Man, the summit of life and intelligence through whose foresight and wisdom all life is to be saved. He is to take all life into his ark of sympathy and wisdom and save it all. That ark will have three stories, the Trinity of World Body, Soul and Spirit. This is, perhaps, the first glimpse of the Trinity in thought. But it is universal ; Odin and Vile and 133 THE WORLD SOUL Ve ; Osiris, Isis, Horus ; Brahma, Vishnu, Siva. All the world has known the Trinity in the world, till religions put it outside and made nonsense of it. There is but one window, for truth is single. " If thine eye be single thy whole body will be full of light." All evil will be drowned in the Flood of Death, but all life will survive in the ark. The carrion bird of death will depart to return no more. The dove will return with the olive leaf of peace and plenty in her bill, for from the olive comes oil which gives quietness and ease. All this is to come about through man by his own exertion. God did not build the ark ; Noah did so. The idea is inherent in the World Soul. It is for us who are in the flesh to carry them out. The idea of the absolute reign of law and absence of miracle is expressed in the rainbow. The legend- makers looked for intelligence in their hearers to know that it was the form of the legend that demanded that the institution of the rainbow be new, but that it, in reality, with the reign of law, existed always, and God's covenant with mankind has been a covenant from the beginning. Only under law can we achieve the purpose we must reach ; therefore is law never broken. "He maketh his rain to fall upon the just and the unjust." 134 THE TRINITY Then comes the idea of sacrifice, for Noah sacri- ficed of every clean beast and of every clean fowl unto the Lord. Here again is a true idea sub- sequently misread, for Nature does demand sacri- fice. All knowledge is acquired at the cost of life, even by animals, birds, and vegetables. The lower creation also pays its tribute to man, who will eventu- ally perfect it. Men have to die to acquire know- ledge. How many have steam and the aeroplane claimed .'' They are not sacrificed to God, but they are the price the world pays to acquire knowledge, which is Life. How terribly this truth has been misunderstood the records of religion show. The World Soul demands no sacrifice. " I will have mercy and not sacrifice." But Nature does demand it as the price of her subjection to us. The legend of Noah and the vineyard is to express early thought as to why the negro races do not pro- gress like the Caucasian, because they are, as yet, more animal. That the differentiation of language is an apparent difficulty in the way of man realising his essential unity, and thereby acting as one to build up that tower of wisdom which alone will raise us above the Flood of death, is shown in the tower of Babel. They knew that the only way to conquer the evils of life was by building a tower of wisdom which would raise them above death. But to accomplish 135 THE WORLD SOUL the tower the combined eiForts of all mankind are necessary, and the differentiation of speech divided men. Of course, the differentiation of speech is not a hindrance, but a help eventually. For the development of language is one of the greatest necessities for the development of thought and its expression, and each language has a special quality and special words not found elsewhere. Look how in English we have borrowed and borrow. Yet our language is still very deficient. I know exceedingly useful words and phrases in Burmese wanting in English. One of the greatest necessities for .the progress of thought is the progress of language. In language is the medium through which thought is expressed. No one can think without putting his thoughts into words, which he understands, nor make it of use to others without language they understand. I have already in the Preface shown the supreme importance of language, and the very undeveloped state in which it still is. Before we can think com- pletely we must have a language which is complete, which is absolutely accurate, and which' every one understands. There is at present no such language. Only through the evolution of the genius inherent in each language shall we come near our end. The legend of Eve being taken out of Adam's side is the legend-maker's way of saying that origin- 136 THE TRINITY ally in the monad there was no sex, but that its evolution was necessary to life, in fact is life as distinguished from existence. In the monad succeeding generations were pro- duced by division without emotion, and there could therefore be no increase of emotion. All emotion, which is life, had its beginning in that change which required the union of two individuals to produce offspring. But of course woman does not come from man, nor the reverse. Within the monad were the possi- bilities of both, and man and woman are diiferentia- tions from the mean. The man developed certain qualities, while the female developed others ; those not required, almost, but never quite, disappearing. You can trace the progress of life and civilisation by this differentiation. In early man the difference between men and women is slight, and with its increase life and emotion have increased. All pro- gress in life is accompanied by a specialising of function. But the more function is specialised in either sex, the less able either is to stand alone. The unit was the monad, and the unit now is still the monad, that is to say a man or woman who together form a whole, one flesh. Eve was taken from Adam's side, above his heart, to show that the union is of emotion and of heart. She was taken from his heart, and to that she must 137 THE WORLD SOUL return, for in that return is life. This subject is more fully worked out in the legend of the Garden of Eden : " Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman. Yea, hath God said, ' Ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden ' ? " And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, " But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, ' Ye shall not eat" of it, neither shall ye touch it lest ye die.' " And the serpent said unto the woman, ' Ye shall not surely die : " ' For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.' " Consider Adam and Eve together in the imaginary garden before the Fall. What had they of life ? They did not work, they ate but wild fruit, they had no clothes, no house. They had no fear, for there was nothing to be afraid of. They had no love, for they did not know what love was, nor hate. They had no work to do, no interest in the days that passed, and they would pass so for ever. It was a living d^ath, a most terrible monotony of paradise. Life came with the eating of the apple, love and work, and fear, and hope, and death, and immortality, and an increasing purpose. That is life. The tree 138 THE TRINITY of the knowledge of good and evil is love, physical and spiritual, which is life. It was the Serpent gave it. God made the Serpent. In all the old mythologies, the snake is a symbol both of love and wisdom, and of eternity. It was the Midgard snake Jormiingand of Norse legend with his tail in his mouth that held the world to- gether. Physical love, the communion of flesh, is the cause of children who are immortality. With- out it life on earth would disappear and the World Soul could not manifest itself. Moreover, spiritual love and unity follow on physical love and unity ; they are one. And from love comes wisdom. Love lies in telling secrets, and only so does wisdom come. It has been known to all peoples that this is so. There is the Egyptian snake Apap. The idea occurs again in Numbers : " The Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery ser- pent and set it upon a pole, and it shall come to pass that any one that is bitten when he looketh upon it he shall live." You must look straight in the face on love, because only so will you acquire understanding, and only by understanding can sin, which is the want of love or the misuse of love, be conquered. Love is not sin, neither love physical nor love spiritual ; love is truth and immortality and wisdom. Only through physical 139 THE WORLD SOUL love shall you learn to comprehend physical things, only from spiritual love shall you learn spiritual things. And as spirit must be manifested in flesh you cannot divide one from another. Love is never sin except where misused, and the Church idea of virgin purity being a form of righteousness and wisdom is utterly denied by all thought. Wisdom and immortality come through love. See how it all fits in with the previous truths I have ex- plained about crime, fatality, and secrecy. All truth is one. Thus there was in early man a true theory of the world, of man's place, of the Why, the Whence, the Whither. I might have shown the same from other legends than those of Genesis, for it is found every- where. I have quoted from the Upanishads else- where in this book, I quote directly from the Eddas. But the legends are universal. All the world once knew how to think. Then it was killed, and who killed it is best given in the Norwegian saga of Balder, put into words by Longfellow in the first part of Tegner's Drapa. " I heard a voice, that cried, ' Balder the Beautiful Is dead, is dead I ' And through the misty air Passed like the mournful cry Of sunward-sailing cranes. 140 THE TRINITY " I saw the pallid corpse Of the dead sun Borne through the Northern sky. Blasts from Niffelheim Lifted the sheeted mists Around him as he passed. " And the. voice for ever cried, ' Balder the Beautiful Is dead, is dead ! ' And died away Through the dreary night, In accents of despair, " Balder the Beautiful, God of the summer sun. Fairest of all the Gods ! Light from his forehead beamed. Runes were upon his tongue. As on the warrior's sword. " All things in earth and air Bound were by magic spell Never to do him harm ; Even the plants and stones ; All save the mistletoe, The sacred mistletoe ! « Hoeder, the blind old God, Whose feet are shod with silence. Pierced through that gentle breast With his sharp spear, by fraud Made of the mistletoe. The accursed mistletoe ! " They laid him in his ship. With horse and harness, As on a funeral pyre. Odin placed A ring upon his finger. And whispered in his ear. 141 THE WORLD SOUL " They launched the burning ship ! It floated far away Over the misty sea, Till like the sun it seemed, Sinking beneath the waves. Balder returned no more ! " Balder is truth, bright as the sun, the " Inward Light within the Heart," fairest of all the Gods, and he was destroyed by the mistletoe, that is by religious rites and ideas in the hands of the blind multitude. It was Loki who gave Hoeder the mistletoe, and Loki means "locked," just as "religion" means "bound." They are the same thing, always have been and will be. For organised religion took a little truth, petri- fied it into a creed, made it the private property of priests and killed thought. That is the history oi all religions. In the Old Testament with Abraham religion began and thought ceased. The reign of law, of the rainbow, disappeared and miracle became constant. The nervous irritability caused by circum- cision cared nothing for wisdom, but demanded a sign. The Trinity in mankind and the world was no longer recognised. God was the pocket deity first of a family, then of a tribe and a sect, then of a faith. Read the account of the plagues of Egypt, and see what sort of God religion had invented, first making Pharaoh refuse to let the people go, and then killing indiscriminately all the firstborn to avenge — His own act. 142 THE TRINITY And so monstrous was this religion, so terrified that the light of truth would dissolve it, that it declared that any one who touched its ark would be killed. Because there was nothing in the ark, or at best a fetish stone. That is what religions have always been and have done. In the fear that thought would injure the little truth they have, they destroyed all research, all freedom. It was Churches who killed Balder, who poisoned Socrates, who crucified Jesus, who destroyed the library of Alexandria, who have burnt and perse- cuted followers of science. East and West there is little difference. They meant well, no doubt ; all men mean well, and they may have done a little good — they had to do so or they could not have lived at all — but they have done unlimited evil. Between these early truths and Jesus we see in the Bible only the evolution of religion, not of truth. All knowledge of the Why and Whither had dis- appeared. There were great thinkers, Moses, Ezekiel, and others, but they were misunderstood. The reign of law in the universe had disappeared. Nature was mistaken for God. He was capricious, had favourites, demanded sacrifice and did miracles. Isolated truths appear by accident, and life was hardly worth the living. It is not, once the truth and charm of youth are past, unless you know the Whither. 143 THE WORLD SOUL Read what the author of Ecclesiastes says : "I said in my heart, Go to now. I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure : and behold, the end is vanity. " I said of laughter, It is mad, and of mirth, What doeth it ? " I sought in my heart to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom : and to lay hold on folly till I might see what was that good for the sons of men which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life. " I made me great works, I builded me houses, I planted me vineyards. " I made me gardens and orchards and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruits. " I made me pools of water to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees. . . . " So I was great and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem : also my wisdom re- mained with me. . . . " Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought and on the labour that I had laboured to do ; and behold all was vanity and vexation of spirit and there was no profit under the sun. And I turned myself to behold wisdom and madness and folly ; for what can the man do that cometh after the king ? Save that which hath been already done. Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly as far as light excelleth darkness. " Then said I in my heart. As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even unto me ; and why was I then more wise ? Then I said in my heart. This also is vanity." 144 THE TRINITY " Why was I then more wise ? " " This also is vanity." « Therefore I hated life." So have all men said at one time or another. But no one should ever have said so, because the truth was there if only he cared to look for it. And the writer of Ecclesiastes came very near it sometimes. I wonder if he knew that when he wrote : " All rivers run into the sea, yet is not the sea filled ; to the place whence the rivers come, thither they all return," he had put into words a key truth of the universe. Perhaps he did, but could not find the others. HS IX JESUS " The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a merchant man seeking goodly pearls, " Who when he had found one of great value sold all that he had and purchased it." CHAPTER IX IT is part of the Churches' belief that the birth of Jesus was signified by prophecy among the Jews many hundreds of years before, is expressed in Daniel and elsewhere, and that Jesus was the true answer to these prophecies. It is impossible in this book to go into this question, but there seems to be no truth in it. The prophecies are wrenched out of all true meaning in order to apply to him, and even so they do not apply. What is true is that people of all times and all countries when in distress have looked and hoped for some one to arise to help them, some one to return, or some one new to come. The people of the Eddas looked for Balder, that is Truth, the Mexicans looked for Quetzalcoate, the North American Indians have a similar hope. The Mohammedans look for a Madhi, and the same yearning is expressed undoubtedly in all times and all places. It seems to be an outcome of some human want, some heart's desire. As with so many other matters I can only touch on it here and express my belief that not only was Jesus not born in response to prophecy, but that he himself knew he was not and had no belief in a Messiah. 149 THE WORLD SOUL In my Life of Jesus to come I can explain this, but not here. I must adhere to simple facts which are essential. Now to be able to correctly discriminate fact from imaginative expression ; truth from the vehicle in which it is preserved, it is necessary to carefully con- sider the accounts of the life of Jesus which have come to us. For only by estimating them truly can you see what is within. There are two accounts, very different in form and view, and two only. One is contained in the synop- tical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and one in the fourth Gospel, which has been called that of John. The first three are essentially one, though by different writers. They are compilations of the traditions of Jesus current in the circle that sur- rounded Simon Peter and his fellow-disciples, made up probably forty years after the death of Jesus. The events narrated differ slightly, but the way these events are regarded, the medium through which they are seen, is essentially the same. The mental attitude of the narrators and of those from whom they got their substance is one that every one who has been a judge in Eastern countries and has studied the mental attitude of the people amongst whom he lived is familiar with. Indeed, it is a mental attitude not peculiar to the East, but common 150 JESUS to all people in a certain state of evolution. It must be thoroughly understood. Let us first take that of the eye-witnesses. Its first characteristic is its simplicity, its directness and its truthfulness in certain directions. It has a splendid memory for spoken words which it will recall with great accuracy. This form of memory is especially cultivated in people at that stage of evolution, because their memory does for them what books do for us. They keep all their account-books, for instance, in their heads. Their library of novels, too, is a brain library from which they can select a volume for perusal. Almost all knowledge is transferred viva voce. There- fore they remember. When I have heard a witness relate a conversation he has overheard I have known it would be true. Therefore what they recorded of the sayings of Jesus may be taken as accurate records, they are intrinsically true ; there may be interpolations. On the other hand, they are bad observers of fact, worse even than the ordinary man. How bad most people, even educated people, in Europe are at ob-- serving facts correctly only a judge can know. Partly this is due to the fact that no two persons do see exactly the same, because some notice one detail, others another. It is almost impossible to get at the exact truth of even the simplest occurrence. The faculty of dbservation and correct memory of what is observed are very rare indeed. Children are never 151 THE WORLD SOUL taught it as they should be. Therefore the details of the life of Jesus cannot be verified. They are full of discrepancies and inaccuracies. The different accounts do not agree, and there is a general want of any clearness. A still deeper source of error to the uncritical listener to such records is the picturesque and figura- tive method of expression, the materialisation of the abstract into the concrete. The narrators have no means of expressing such abstractions as thought, idea, temptation, and so on. The words do not exist in their language. In the time of the Roman Empire Latin had no words for any abstraction, and if the Romans wanted to philosophise they had to borrow Greek words. If this was the case with the language of the world's capital, what could have been the lan- guage of these peasants of Galilee and Judasa, who made the traditions out of which the three synoptical Gospels are composed .'' Aramaic is a very poor language and has hardly any abstract words at all. Therefore in speaking of any difficult subject they had to use the language of figure. This is the tongue in which all the sacred books of the world are written, a very forcible and living tongue, and absolutely clear to those who knew it. Therefore they call a true thought an angel of God; Gabriel, for instance, the archangel mentioned in the Bible, and who dictated the Koran to Mohammed, is simply Truth, Again, 152 JESUS where in Matthew the Spirit of God descended on Jesus in the form of a dove, the chronicler is only saying that the thought of Jesus enlarged and he became conscious of his wisdom. The supernatural occurrences narrated of the crucifixion are purely figurative. The rending of the veil of the temple is the supersession of Judaism by the religion called after him it crucified. An idea is a revelation, and temptation of thought or emotion is shown by voices and appearances. A disease is a devil who possesses you, and so on. Also they knew nothing of natural law, and miracle is no miracle to them, because every- thing is miracle. The sun rises and sets by miracle. Why should not greater miracles attend great men ? Miracles are not exceptions ; they are the rule. And remember that the Jews always looked for " a sign." Their idea of religion was miracle and nothing else. See what Paul says about this. The world is directly run by good and evil forces perpetually at war. They conceive evil as a positive, it is only a negative, an inertia of matter, emotion, or understanding. That accounts for the form of their narration. But remember this, they themselves are not deceived by their own words and images. They know that when they speak of a man having a devil, it is their way of saying that the man is ill in some, to them, in- explicable way. It is their idiom. All the theory of 153 THE WORLD SOUL real devils and the subsequent confusion comes from the effort of half-thinkers exercised on picturesque and figurative language they don't understand. Just as no one would have been more surprised than the makers of the legends of the Flood and Creation at their fables being taken for literal history, so these describers of angels and devils would be astonished at the simplicity of any who took them literally. For they can think, but not express, whereas those who take them literally cannot begin to think. So much for the way in which true traditions arose and were rendered difficult of interpretation. But in these Gospels there is much beside true tradition of facts that occurred or words that were said. There is a great deal of pure invention. Of such are the accounts of the miraculous occurrences at the birth of Jesus. That Jesus was not born of miracle we know from his own words, and when taunted with illegitimacy he did not deny it. In his eyes and those of his Father it would carry no disgrace to him. But in the eyes of his disciples it was different. Jesus was the Messiah, the Prince of the Royal line, and illegitimacy would utterly discredit him. They loved him, and therefore they must repudiate such an accusation. Hence the legends of the miraculous birth adapted from legends of the birth of Krishna and Horus. Again, there is the burning desire for miracle. The compilers took these as well as the 154 JESUS true traditions and mixed them all together. They did not understand the truth of Jesus ; to them the only truth was miracle, therefore they attributed miracle where they could. How far they were pre- pared to go is seen in the Apocryphal Gospels, especially that of the childhood of Jesus, which is simply a tissue of miracles and does not hesitate to attribute to Jesus cruelty, ill temper, and to make of him even a murderer in order to satisfy their taste for miracle. In the Canonical Gospels it is not so bad, but still it is bad enough. There is the further determination to drag in prophecy regardless of its appropriateness. That, for instance, about Rachel weeping for her children is not a prophecy at all, but simply an account of Judaea during its captivity, and so on. Therefore, except the actual words of Jesus, there is nothing that can actually be relied on, and even in these there are occasionally obvious and glaring inter- polations. Still, they are in the main true, and give a perfectly clear account of the teaching of Jesus. Then there remains the fourth Gospel, written by an eye-witness, the disciple whom Jesus loved. This it is certain was not John the son of Zebedee, to whom it has been attributed. It was almost cer- tainly Philip.^ It is quite different from the three synoptics inasmuch as it is written by a thinker, the 1 See Appendix I. THE WORLD SOUL one man who had ever been in near touch with Jesus. No wonder Jesus loved him, for what Jesus loved was fellowship in thought, not adoration merely, nor obedience. " Whoever doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my mother, and my brother." It is the Father's will that we acquire wisdom. This disciple alone desired to see the inward light within the outer covering ; he alone was able to see it. Perhaps sometimes Jesus himself told him, knowing he would understand, that there was no cast- ing pearls before swine in telling him ; often he understood without explanation. His heart held echoes to the voice of Jesus. Yet his narrative, too, required thought and sifting to understand. Some- times I think he, like the others, was apt to state as fact what never existed but figuratively, the prayer of Jesus to God when he was on the way to raise Lazarus from his trance, for instance ; he wanted to explain his view of Jesus, and did so in this way. He is also very fond of narrating trivial events in order to fulfil prophecy. For he, too, was a Jew and could not get away from the root idea that miracle, not wisdom, constituted truth. It was written too when the author was an old man and his memory treacherous. Still, the beginning of his Gospel remains the clearest and most perfect expression of the profound essential truth of Jesus and of the world that has ever been 156 JESUS written. At the end he records the deepest and most significant prophecy. For his truth, indeed, will " tarry till I come," while that of Peter will not. It will be understood that in this book I cannot give more than certain essentials of the life and wisdom of Jesus. It is impossible to fully enter into it. That would require a big book of its own, many books perhaps. It has never yet been done. Many writers of books have written " Lord, Lord " upon their covers, but their hearts were far from him. The books of Churchmen were coloured by the creeds and their spiritual fear before God ; the other books are no more enlightening. Renan, for instance, states " that in estimating a picture of Raphael the idea is nothing, the picture alone counts." But how you are to esti- mate a picture unless you do absolutely comprehend the idea, he doesn't say. In writing his Vie de Jesus, he never truly saw one idea in the life or teaching of Jesus. The simple truth of them all escaped him. Jesus was born of Mary in the usual way. Who was his father we do not know. But we do know this, that in his physical origin, his life and death, he never departed from the laws that govern all flesh. He" would not have been " man " had he done so. There was nothing unusual or significant in his physi- cal birth, or he would have told us. There was something unusual and very significant in his cruci- fixion and subsequent events, though it in no way 157 THE WORLD SOUL departed from the laws of humanity, and he did tell us that. The idea that there is some virtue in chastity is a Pagan one. It is founded on a despair of life, a refusal to accept its benefits or continue the race. It has no place at all in the wisdom of Jesus. " For this cause — for the purpose of being one flesh — God created them male and female from the beginning," is what Jesus said. The intercourse of man and woman is the means by which life on earth is continued, and only by its continuance can His " kingdom come on earth." There is no sin in it. The preposterous and shameful idea that it is a sin not to be virgin, an idea elaborated in that mad fantasy called Revelation, is utterly opposed to all the teaching of Jesus, Who were the women he liked best ? Virgins ? Not so, but Mary Magdalene and that other. For they had souls. In wilful virginity, the refusal to share your- self with others, there is no soul, nothing but vacancy, prudery, and ignorance. There are, of course, men and women, as Jesus said, whom nature has designed never to marry ; to carry out that design may lead to the acquisition of other qualities, otherwise to them impossible, but there is no merit in virginity as such. If a man or woman to fulfil his end in life find virginity a means, that is another matter. It is not an end, and only for exceptional people is it a means. The means God has established for the creation of all 158 JESUS life and beauty and emotion and love is not a sin. There is no prurience, no impurity like calling it sin and being ashamed of it. That Mary or Jesus would gain if Jesus had been conceived in a supernatural way is a Pagan idea. It may have been strengthened by that supposed prophecy in Isaiah, for the evangelists are very anxious to fulfil prophecy, but it is not Jewish at all. Virginity was a reproach to them. The cult of chastity is a cult of nihilism and of fear. Who was the father of Jesus we do not know, but to that father he must have owed much of his physical nature. For Mary had several children later by Joseph, and they were not remarkable in any way. They did not resemble their elder brother, the greatest thinker who ever lived. They were very commonplace. Jesus was the swan in the duck's nest. Therefore, it is clear that for much of that peculiarity of physique which enabled thought to be so truly manifested in Jesus he was indebted to that unknown father. It is no use speculating as to who he might have been. The dreadful myths of the virginity of the birth of Jesus have effectually blocked any informa- tion on that point reaching us. That is the worst of untruth, it stifles truth in the beginning so that it can never be resuscitated. Of all the secrets of history I can think of none the discovery of which would be so absorbing as this. But we shall never 159 THE WORLD SOUL know. Jesus was born of an unknown father, possibly a Greek, for there is a passage in one of the Gospels that may point to this, and of Mary in the usual way, and that is as far as we can go. But if his flesh followed the laws of flesh his soul was unique, for it was wisdom, and it was to express this fact that" the legend of Mary being with child by the Holy Ghost arose. That there was in Mary a premonition that her son would be great is also true, and is an instance of a world law of the influence of a mother's thought on her unborn child and the con- verse. For Jesus to be born as he was it was neces- sary for Mary to have the thoughts she did, that her son would be great, and she did have them. The " angel " who came to her was that thought, that intuition, rising from the new life within her to her heart that here was something that the world would be glad of. All mothers have it ; she had it most. She communicated this idea to others, as is natural ; a nature such as hers would impress its thought on those about her, especially as the idea was already in the world. That is the truth that underlies the stories in Matthew. Jesus was neurotic, as all great thinkers have been. He was physically timid, as is shown in the agony in the garden, though his spirit knew no fear ; he was physically weak : he had to ride on an ass into Jerusalem ; he could not carry his cross. Thought 1 60 JESUS makes such demands upon the physique that our present bodies cannot stand it. That is the explanation of the connection between physical disorder and genius Lom- broso has collected so many instances of. Thinkers are over-engined for their frame, and the frame suffers. For thought is not like physical labour ; it never ceases. The labourer does his task, goes home, and rests and sleeps ; the thinker's task begins directly he awakes, it never ceases the whole day, and even in his sleep it troubles him in dreams. His thought engines run at full speed nearly all the time, and nothing he sees or hears or does or suffers but furnishes food for thought ; and there is nothing exhausts the frame like thought, for it is emotion. Read the life of Darwin and how he suffered. Jesus was the world thinker and he suffered in his flesh. To have a world of thinkers, as we must have, the first necessity is to build up the physical ability of the world, for thought is based on that, and if thinkers are always to suffer for it, men will be afraid of thought, and will not encourage it within them- selves. Like all men born to greatness, he was conscious unconsciously that he was destined for some great work. At twelve years of age he went with his parents to Jerusalem, and when they were returning he was missing. They sought after him, returning to Jerusalem, and found him in the Temple among M i6i THE WORLD SOUL the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions. And his mother said to him, " Son, why- hast thou thus dealt with us ? Thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing." And he said to them, "How is it that ye sought me .'' Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business ? " This oneness and certainty of purpose was in him all his life. He felt within him a quality, a truth, a thought that was himself and that was necessary to the world, and all his whole strength and time and ability went to the cultivation and expression of that thought — that truth. The obedience to parents, family love, all that the world has held most sacred came second to that sense of need of wisdom which was within him. He loved not personalities but qualities. He loved above all things community of thought and under- standing. Only from one person did he ever receive that, the disciple whom Jesus loved, from Philip. They understood each other, and that is everything. From his own relations he got little sympathy or understanding, and his affection to them was not great. None of his brothers or sisters followed him. " And he said, Verily I say unto you, no prophet is accepted in his own country. " While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. 162 JESUS " Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. " But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother ? and who are my brethren ? " And he stretched forth his hand towards his disciples, and said. Behold my mother and my brethren ! " For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." If Mary had been what the Churches claim would Jesus have said this of her ? Jesus loved all love and wisdom, hated all hate and stupidity, and as no person is in all perfect, he could not perfectly love all a personality. He was incapable of personal devotion, though able to raise it largely in others who more or less understood him. And this is true of all men born into the world, not for their own temporary happiness, but for the world's sake. No man can serve two masters. He cannot love and Love. For personal love may be a blind- ness and a limitation ; it is of the flesh, finite. Love is of the spirit, impersonal, infinite. If this was true of the love of Jesu?, it was also true of his hate, and no one has ever felt hate and scorn as did he. See what he says of the Pharisees. It also was im- personal ; to qualities, not individuals. There is in every individual good and evil. Jesus loved the 163 THE WORLD SOUL good because it was an echo of the life and light that was in him ; he hated the evil because it means death. Now, as I have said, all thought is based upon emotion, and all the thought of Jesus is based on these two true and intense emotions of love and hate, and shared their qualities. None of his thought was personal, none of his promises nor condemnations are personal. It is our bad qualities that go to hell, not we ourselves. They may constitute a large pro- portion of ourselves. It is this quality of the personality of Jesus that you must acquire to understand him and his thought, for it runs through the whole. You must have love as he had. You must have wisdom. He spoke in parables and proverbs because until you acquire sense enough to understand and see through the imagery of his sayings you could not understand the truth beneath. The ability to feel as he did, to see beneath the imagery, is the test that qualifies you for understanding his truth. It is no use casting pearls before swine, nor holy things to the dogs. That which is of the flesh is flesh, that which is of the spirit is spirit. You must realise the spirit in yourself to be able to see the spirit in the flesh, the truth in the form. You must be one in spirit with him whom you would understand. Yet was he very human. He yearned for love, especially the love of women, he liked attention and 164 JESUS devotion, to be kissed and cared for. He loved love, no matter in whom he found it. When Pharisees in their ignorance and self-righteousness wondered at this, see how he reproves them : " And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house, and sat down to meat. "And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, " And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. "Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake within himself, saying. This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him : for she is a sinner. " And Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. And he saith. Master, say on. " There was a certain creditor which had two debtors; the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. " And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most ? "Simon answered and said, I suppose that he to whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged. i6s THE WORLD SOUL " And he turned to the woman, and said unto. Simon, Seest thou this woman ? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet ; but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. " Thou gavest me no kiss ; but this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to liiss my feet. "My head with oil thou didst not anoint : but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment." " Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, " There came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head as he sat at meat. " But when his disciples saw it, they had indigna- tion, saying, To what purpose is this waste .'' " For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor. " When Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman ? For she hath wrought a good work on me. " For the poor ye have always with you, but me ye have not always." And again : " Now it came to pass as they went that he entered into a certain village ; and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. " And she had a sister called Mary which also sat at Jesus' feet and heard his words. i66 JESUS " But Martha was cumbered about much serving and came to him and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. " And Jesus was vexed, and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her." Think of the humanity of this : Service is good, but who would not give all of it for a little love and sympathy and understanding ? " I will have mercy and not sacrifice." No such lonely man as Jesus can have ever lived. No one there was to give him that community of thought which is the one thing in this world worth having. No one could think like he did nor under- stand him. Few even showed they loved him. Some are afraid of love, and shut it up within themselves. What is the use of that ? Let your light which is love shine before men. Perhaps Martha loved him as much as Mary, but she did not show it, and what use is dumb love ? Mary did show hers. She chose the better part, which will never be taken from her. Such was the personality of Jesus, a strongly emotional man, unto whom came the thought from God. 167 X GLAD TIDINGS "And as Mooes lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up : " That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." CHAPTER X WHAT Jesus called himself by preference was not Christ, but the " Son of Man." That was his own description of himself. He meant the " Soul of Man," for that is what the idiom expresses. The soul of a man consists of his wishes and thoughts, his emotions and wisdom. The Soul of Man is the wishes and thoughts of all man- kind. Jesus had stronger emotions of love and hate than any one who ever lived ; he was the greatest thinker that ever lived, and he expressed himself in the simplest language. He is quite easy to under- stand, as you will see, only that the first essential is you must know how to think and understand. Jesus himself said how this was to be done quite clearly. " And they brought young children to him, that he should teach them : and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. " But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them. Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God. " Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. 171 THE WORLD SOUL " And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them." And again : " Verily I say unto you that except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heavep. " "Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." " Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." If you will refer back to Chapter I, you will under- stand what Jesus meant by these sayings. It is just what I discovered for myself many years ago. You must see clearly and with the single purpose of discovering truth. " The light of the body is the eye. If therefore thine eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light ; but if thine eye be evil thy whole body shall be full of darkness. " If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness." Your thought must be free and brave. It must never submit to authority. " And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authority doest thou these things ? And who gave thee this authority ? 172 GLAD TIDINGS " And Jesus answered and said unto them, I also will ask you one thing, which if ye tell me, I in like wise will tell you by what authority I do these things. " The baptism of John, whence was it ? From heaven, or of men ? And they reasoned with them- selves, saying. If we shall say, From heaven ; he will say unto us, Why did ye not then believe him ? " But if we shall say, Of men : we fear the people ; for all hold John as a prophet. " And they answered Jesus, and said, We cannot tell. And he said unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things." Jesus meant that in thought and wisdom there is no authority. You must search for wisdom. " Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods } " If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken ; " Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest ; because I said, I am the Son of God ? " And " Ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil." True wisdom of thought makes all who have it gods, and as Jesus was the greatest thinker the world has seen, he was the only Son of God. God is wisdom, and all who acquire wisdom acquire something of God. It is within us. Not a Person- ality outside somewhere, but an inward essence, part 173 THE WORLD SOUL of an universal essence. And if you want to know how to recognise what is wisdom, read : " If any man will do his will he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." There is within you a criterion of truth if you have not killed it. That is the only thing worth acquiring, for it endures. And no one can hurt wisdom. It is your very own. Nothing can disturb it. Every item of wisdom stored up in the mind is indestructible for ever ; it may pass under clouds caused by physical disability, or by death ; it never goes out, it lasts into eternity. " Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal : " But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. " For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." You must search for wisdom in every way you can. "The kingdom of heaven is like a net that was cast into the sea and gathered of every kind ; "Which when it was full they drew to shore and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away." You must cast your net into the sea of life and draw in experience of every kind to make into knowledge 174 GLAD TIDINGS and wisdom. Don't be afraid if you catch bad fish, if you fall into difficulties, or even into sin. It is not the bad fish you catch that matter ; you can reject them ; it is the good fish that signify. You will never catch good fish if you are afraid of the bad, and if you have no fish at all of what use are you ? " Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field : " But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way, " But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. " So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field .? From whence then hath it tares ? "He said unto them. An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up ? " But he said, Nay ; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. " Let both grow together until the harvest : and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers. Gather ye first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them : but gather the wheat into my barn." The field is the world, that is the heart of each man. The good seed is truth, sowed by true thought which is God ; the tares are folly, stupidity, weakness, 175 THE WORLD SOUL spiritual cowardice. The harvest is when you die. The wisdom in you remains with you, is you, the tares disappear to unquenchable fire. All that is left of you are your good qualities. If you have few or none there won't be much left to go into the barn. The parable is clear and simple, but the disciples could' not understand it. Yet they said they did. That is the gist of the teaching of Jesus, " Get wisdom." Nothing else matters, because if you get that all other things will be added to you. It alone endures. "The kingdom of heaven is within you." And the acquisition of wisdom alone brings happi- ness and brings it to all. " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor ; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. " To preach the acceptable year of the Lord." " Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. " Take my yoke upon you and learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest unto your souls. " For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." It was to teach the world how to think that Jesus was here, but the world has always been afraid of thinking 176 GLAD TIDINGS for itself. He wanted to make them free ; they have preferred to be bond. It used to be entirely bond to priests and suffered at their hands. At last it partly threw off priests and shouted freedom. But old habit was too much for the world. It hugs its chains, and as the priests were partly gone, it took unto itself lawyers and doctors for its masters. Its cowardice is too great for freedom. It prefers spiritual death to life. It never did believe in Jesus. It is too coward. Yet what is unfit for life and freedom is eliminated — for ever. There is no truth like that. Now let us turn to his actual life. Until he was about thirty we have no further record of him. He lived with his parents as a carpenter and thought. Before he began his life work came the temptation. Think of what this must have been to him. He felt himself, he knew himself to be a wiser, greater thinker than any of those around him, than any in the world. He understood the world. He had within him the genius for any- thing. Many men of humbler birth, of meaner capacity than he, had risen to great authority and power. He was no ascetic ; he liked the comforts of the world, they were necessary to his frail physique ; he felt its beauty and charm. He was the world poet. If we had some of those many unrecorded sayings of his mentioned in the fourth Gospel, we N 177 THE WORLD SOUL should have acquired the most perfect appreciation of the beauty of nature ever written. The Gospels do not record them, because the hearers were intent only on spiritual personal truths and did not know that love of the world was one of the greatest of these. They seem to have despised the world. Yet God so loved the world He made in love that He sent His Son, His Wisdom, to tell it truth. Did not that Son love it too, all of it ? You can feel it in the form of his parables, in his recognition that Solomon in all his glory was not so beautiful as the lilies. Therefore he desired that world intensely, to be one with it, to rule it and in ruling it to serve it, to enjoy it. He wants to come here and reign for ever. Like all great men he felt intuitively his greatness. He could measure himself with those about him and see the immeasurable difference. He could hear men talk and plumb their brains, measure their thought in cupfuls compared to the infinite sea that filled his brain. He had that insight into men which only the greatest have. See how he sums up the centurion from a phrase of his. He had personality, that utterly indefinable quality which rules the world. See how this personality of his affected Pilate, the Roman official and others. He had that utter contempt for smallness of mind that great thinkers always have, and yet that feeling of helplessness before them. You can't make them see or hear or understand. What is 178 GLAD TIDINGS the use of trying ? They have the physical strength and a certain plausibility of foolishness. They can be driven or crushed, but nothing else. If he chose to acquire the temporal power, he would so drive them. But if not, then it was inevitable but that he must give way before them, that in life he could achieve nothing but failure. This must have been always present to his mind. They never understood in the least what he meant. Even his disciples, except one, had no idea what he was saying. The Jews were always trying to murder him. He lived with his life in his hand. Contin- ually throughout his time of teaching he was having narrow escapes of a horrible death. And it must be remembered that he was physically weak and had bad nerves. Fear affected him like a chill, and hate even worse. " Why do you hate me ? " he cries over and over again. " Haven't I always done you good ? Healed you of your diseases and told you the happy tidings of truth ? " He wanted love, but got hardly any of it ; he wanted understanding and got none. He wanted love and to love, and "ye would not." He came to bring you life ; you gave him death. He lived his life as far as he could within the limits of his duty. He liked good food, good wine, good company. No doubt he ate a great deal ; all thinkers must, and his feeble physique required wine, so they called him a gluttonous man and a wine- 179 THE WORLD SOUL bibber. He was reproached with consorting with publicans and sinners. He knew they were the best company. Who that has tried but knows that ? For they have sympathy. They know sin. It is the starchiness of the Pharisee that chills camaraderie. The world is held together by understanding, not by "righteousness." He was broad-minded, world- minded. He saw the good and use of everything in its place. He used no platitudes, there was nothing " pious " about Jesus. Anything more different than his frame of mind from that of most of those who have called themselves his followers could hardly be imagined. He was meek and lowly spiritually, inasmuch as that is the only possible mental attitude compatible with the acquirement of wisdom, but he was not " 'umble " like Uriah Heep. He was no respecter of persons. All he respected was his own sense of truth and any such echo of it as he found elsewhere. See his attitude before the High Priest. " The High Priest then asked Jesus of his disciples, and of his doctrine. "Jesus answered him, I spake openly to the world ; I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort ; and in secret have I said nothing. "Why askest thou me? Ask them which heard me what I said unto them : behold, they know what I said. 1 80 GLAD TIDINGS " And when he had thus spoken, one of the officers which stood by struck Jesus with the palm of his hand, saying, Answerest thou the high priest so ? "Jesus answered him, If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil : but if well, why smitest thou me ? " That is a man's attitude and is respected by men. It was recognised by Pilate, who was a man. But these priests and their followers were not men. They did not know what manliness consisted in. Jesus was, above all, a man. Was he not the Soul of Man 1 He was very different in reality from those portraits of him we are accustomed to see, mild effeminate pre- sentments, with no spirit in them. What was the colour of his eyes or hair we do not know, whether he was tall or short, but what we do know is this : he was strongly emotional, full of passion, not controlling it nor hiding it as if he were ashamed, but showing his joy and sorrow, admiration, love and hate, sharing his emotions with the world. He was capable of being hasty, as when he cursed the fig tree, no interpolation this. He was human. His face was index to his heart, not mild nor timid, but glowing like a flame. If no humour is recorded of him it is not that humour lacked. It could not in so much emotion. He had strong sarcasm, and sarcasm is the first ingredient of humour. The second is sympathy. Jesus had both, and therefore he must have had humour too in the highest. His mien was i8i THE WORLD SOUL independent, free, fearing no man nor wishing any to be afraid of him, equal of all, and wishing all to be his equal. See what he told his disciples when he washed their feet. He was no condemner of war. Nowhere does he say a soldier's profession is wrong. On the contrary he recognised that soldiering gives sometimes a quality other professions do not. It is a sincerity, a clearness, an earnestness, as opposed to cleverness. " The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof ; but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. " For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me : and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth ; and to another, Come, and he cometh ; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. " When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. " And I say unto you, that many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. " But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into utter darkness : there shall be weeping and gnash- ing of teeth." There is no condemnation here of the soldier, and all who know soldiers will have recognised that in sincerity and truth of purpose they often stand alone. 182 GLAD TIDINGS And when soldiers asked him what they should doj did he tell them to cease to be soldiers ? " And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, say- ing, And what shall we do ? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely ; and be content with your wages." " I come to bring not peace but a sword," and those who understand his truth will see that it is so. He came to bring war, incessant ruthless war, against inefficiency, sin, and above all stupidity. No Hague Palaces of Peace shall stop that. War shall end when war is no longer necessary to preserve efficiency, courage, solidarity, and no sooner. He was patriotic ; see how he mourns over Jerusalem : " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children to- gether, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not ! " Again and again " ye would not." He never despised the value of money, nor power, nor the good things of earth. All he said was that wisdom came first, and that when you had acquired that, all other things shall be added unto you. If you do well in that which is least you shall be made ruler over many things. He said against riches that the possession of them 183 THE WORLD SOUL was apt to make the possessor blind to the first necessity of being wise. " And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him. Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life ? " And Jesus said unto him, " Why callest thou me good ? There is none good but one, that is, God. " Thou knowest the commandments. Do not commit adultery. Do not kill. Do 'not steal, Do not bear false witness. Defraud not. Honour thy father and mother. " And he answered and said unto him, Master, all these things have I observed from my youth. "Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him. One thing thou lackest ; go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven ; and come, take up the cross, and follow me. '•And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved, for he had great possessions. " And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples. How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God ! " And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them. Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God ! " It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. 184 GLAD TIDINGS " And they were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved ? " And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God ; for with God all things are possible." Herein is no condemnation of riches in them- selves ; but only in one effect they may have, a fatal effect, for he who allows himself to be blinded by them once will not have the chance again till he is wise. All things in the world are good if well used ; to use them well you must have wisdom. Therefore wisdom should come first. The object at which we aim is that we shall all be rich and that there shall be no poor. We shall never, of course, actually attain this objective. Life would no longer be worth living if we did, because there would be no more purpose in life, and an aimless life is not life at all. The poor we shall always have, but they must be fewer in number and less poor relatively continually. Scribes and Pharisees also will remain. " Verily, verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass away till all thinigs be fulfilled." That is the generation of the self-righteous. But the world can cease to listen to them. Wealth is good and all other things if you have wisdom to rightly use them. If not it merely blocks your soul's way, and as the wealth is temporal, whereas the soul is eternal you do 185 THE WORLD SOUL not gain but lose. But you must learn, for your eternal life is here, and nowhere else. Jesus was very human because he was divine. God made the world, all of it, and no Son of His would despise any of it. He knew that it was good. And was his humanity that so sorely desired and needed them, that had such a love for all the good things of life, that could have used them so perfectly, to resign them all to live in poverty, proscribed, in fear, to suffer ignominiously ? He was a man in body and had all man's temptations, stronger for the neurotic than for those less dowered with strong emotion. He fought temptation and he conquered it, as is told in the fine imagery of Saint Luke. No temporary triumph was his then ; it is to come. Soon after this he began his work to tell the world about itself and God, so that it might be happy. 1 86 XI THE THREEFOLD INTENTION " The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy ; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. " Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods I " If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken ; " Say ye of him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world. Thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the Son of God ? " CHAPTER XI In the beginning ivas the Word and the Word ivas with God and the Word was God. The same -was in the beginning luith God. All things were made by him, and without Urn was not anything made that was made. WORD " means intention or purpose. Now emotion, which is life, differs from energy in that it has a purpose or intention. With energy, action and reaction are equal, so that it can never achieve anything. There is no purpose in energy. But with emotion or life it is the opposite. All acts are towards the realisation of a purpose, and as life is made up of acts and Life of lives, whether plant, animal, or man, there is a Purpose in Life. In fact. Life is motion, or emotion towards an end. That is why the World Soul is called the « Word," Now within the chaos of the material world at the beginning there was this emotion, and its purpose was to reduce the chaos to order. It did this by incarnating itself in matter, as is shown in the story of evolution. 189 THE WORLD SOUL All life is one, a manifestation of one Soul in myriads of different forms, all tending to the achieve- ment of its increasing purpose. It had in it from the beginning the infinite possibility ; but this possi- bility can only be realised in matter. In him was life and the life was the light of men. It was the life of men, for our life, like all life, is a manifestation of that World Soul achieving its purpose. It is the light of men. The knowledge that our souls are part of the World Soul, and that the World Soul will achieve its infinite possibility, in which we shall share, is the light of men. It is the " Inward Light within the heart," and it will have its way despite our folly, our ignorance, our conven- tions, our religions. And the light shineth in darkness, but the darkness com- prehendeth it not. The light shone in the darkness of early man, but the darkness comprehended it not ; it shone again in the darkness of nineteen hundred years ago, but again the darkness comprehended it not. That was the true light which lighteth every man which Cometh into the world. All children who are born have in their souls the instinctive knowledge of this idea, the innate love and confidence in the future and in God, and that is what makes the child happy and careless. Only children and the poet-thinkers, of whom Jesus was 190 THE THREEFOLD INTENTION the first, are like this ; who take no thought of the morrow, but live the day to its utmost, and let the morrow — especially the morrow after death — take thought for the things of itself. It is in every man that Cometh into the world ; you may see it in every child. It is not true that children are born in sin. That is an idea of the Church in order to obtain dominion over them. Whatever the defects of their body they inherit from their parents, their souls are true and wise. Sin, which is spiritual cowardice and ignorance, is put into them afterwards by wrong teaching. The true light is there in the beginning. He was in the world and the world knew him not. He was that true love in and for which the world exists, but the world knew him not. He told them the ideals which would eventually be realised, and they understood not. He came unto his own and his own received him not. That idea, that love of which Jesus was the ex- pression, made the world ; it was his own, and his own received him not. No one has ever expressed this truth like Jesus ; none ever felt it as he did, and therefore none could say it. But no one listened nor understood it. The Jewish Church crucified him who came to tell the world its meaning. They had killed that emotion in themselves, and so could not understand it when Jesus told them. Therefore they crucified him. 191 THE WORLD SOUL That is the explanation of the beginning of the fourth Gospel. It is simple and true, perfectly in accordance with all science. It illuminates science, and the science of evolution declares it. All truth supports it and illustrates it. This truth has been in the world for nigh two thousand years. Libraries have been written about it, yet it remained barren because misunderstood. No one had any common sense. Nothing can better illustrate the uselessness of truth, the unavailingness of even the highest wisdom, without thought on the part of the hearer to comprehend it. Thought is the one thing that avails. Here is a truth which has been for nineteen centuries declared to be true, backed up by all authority " spiritual " and temporal, enforced upon an unwilling world with sword and torture chamber, burnings alive, and who knows what horrors, yet remaining useless or worse because uncomprehended. The Jewish Church were willing enough to crucify Jesus, the Christian Churches have been willing enough to put up crucifixes and crosses, but no one has looked on Jesus. Armies have marched in his name, cities and countries have been won and lost ; cathedrals in tens, churches in hundreds have been built ; priests have preached, poets have written, and what of all of it ? Just nothing at all. No one would look up to the Son of Man who 192 THE THREEFOLD INTENTION was lifted up, and his reign is just as far away to-day as it was nineteen centuries ago. And all for want of just a little common sense, a little courage. A blind acceptation, love, or worship is worth nothing. You can love a truth only by being one with it. Yet this idea being in all the world it is bound to be fulfilled. It is a purpose that all things must obey eventually. The end must be, and will be attained. But the success and glory will lie with those who see it and who help to forward it ; who do not obstruct it, but who in obedience to that music lead the movement of thought which is manifested eventu- ally in act. Therefore before you can do anything really well you must accept and feel yourself that strong intention, that strong impulse in the world and in yourself. You must fight against that inertia, which is the Devil. You must realise the unity of life, the sympathy which is life, because all life is ours, is ourselves. You must know the Trinity of the Intention — Your duty to yourself. Your duty to your neighbour. Your duty to the World Soul. And the last two are based upon the first, they must be. For consider ; What of all things is nearest you ? Is it not yourself.? What have you most control over ? Yourself. What is it that is always with o 193 THE WORLD SOUL you but yourself? Whom do you know best ? Your- self. You are yourself the pivot upon which all the world — for you — depends. Your duty to your- self comes before every other duty. You must love yourself. Because you must "love your neighbour as you love yourself." If, however, you hate your- self, how will you love your neighbour .'' And if you don't love your neighbour whom you do know, how will you love the Father whom you don't ? Therefore you must love yourself first, but in the right way. You must have a sense of proportion. You want everything good for yourself, that is right. But you can't have everything, not yet, therefore you must choose wisely. Don't snatch after tem- porary things and let go eternal ones. Don't sell your freedom of thought for a mess of pottage, for instance. Don't mistake sacrifice for love. Above all, realise that life is given you to live, not to deny. Under the laws that govern the World Soul every one has his chance to do well, an equal chance. When you are born your chance is given you. " For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. " And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one ; to every man according to his several ability ; and straightway took his journey. 194 THE THREEFOLD INTENTION " Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents. " And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two. "But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord's money. " After a long time the lord of those servants Cometh, and reckoneth with them. " And so he that had received the five talents came and brought other five talents, saying. Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents ; behold, I have gained beside them five talents more. " His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant : thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things : enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. " He also that had received two talents came and said. Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents ; behold, I have gained two other talents beside them. " His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant ; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things : enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. " Then he which had received the one talent came and said. Lord, I knew thee that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed : " And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth : lo, there thou hast that is thine. THE WORLD SOUL " His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed. " Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. " Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. " For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance : but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." That talent may be of the mind or the body, but the effects of its exercise are on your soul, that is it increases your knowledge. You must find out your talent. Perhaps it is music, or being a faithful servant, or being a punctual honest labourer, a lawyer, or doctor, athlete, anything. It doesn't much matter what it is, as long as you find it out and improve it. The World Soul wants all the talents, and it wants a perfect body too. "Wisdom is justified of all her children." Don't believe that the World Soul wants purity and innocence. They are negative qualities, and make for death, not life. The World Soul wants passion and emotion, love to good things, hate to evil things, courage and honesty and control, and all sorts of gifts of every kind. For the World Soul has to subdue all nature, and it can only do that with wisdom. It wants the souls of engineers, builders, 196 THE THREEFOLD INTENTION architects, farmers, every kind of knowledge, of men and of women. It wants the souls of doers and seers. It doesn't mind your having made mistakes ; every one does that, and very likely you couldn't help them. What the World Soul won't stand are souls that have refused to live, that have rejected the wine of life offered to them, that have cultivated a fear and a distaste of God as seen in His great work the World. If you despise God, how can you expect him to do other than despise you ? This earth is the vineyard, and here is the parable about it : " The kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morn- ing to hire labourers into his vineyard. " And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. " And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the market-place, " And said unto them, Go ye also into the vine- yard, and whatsoever is right will give you. And they went their way. " Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. " And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saiih unto them. Why stand ye here all the day idle ? " They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them. Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive. 197 THE WORLD SOUL " So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward. Call the labourers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first. " And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour they received every man a penny. " But when the first came they supposed that they should have received more ; and they likewise received every man a penny. "And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house, " Saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us which have borne the burden and heat of the day. "But he answered one of them and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong ; didst thou not agree with me for one penny ? Take that thine is, and go thy way ; I will give unto this last even as unto thee. "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own ? Is thine eye evil because I am good ? " So the last shall be first, and the first last, for many be called, but few chosen." Our talents are not our own. We did not make them. We did not make our bodies, nor our brains, nor choose how and when and where we should be born. The talents, like the defects, are all of the World Soul and World Body. They are given to us to use, some more, some less, all for the world's benefit. It is the way we use them, the intention, 198 THE THREEFOLD INTENTION the idea, the knowledge to make the most of what we are, that counts. That is common sense if you consider it, and every employer acts like that. The World Soul is our employer. He reaps the benefit of our work, he pays us our wages, and we all eventually share in the benefit. For we are of the World Soul ourselves. We are our own house- holder. The story of the widow's mite is to the same effect : " And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing. " And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast more in than all they which have cast into the treasury : "For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living." It is said, it has been said by Churches, philosophers, all people, that the teaching of Jesus is difficult to understand, that it is other-worldly, not common sense. It appears to me the very essence of common sense, and purely worldly in the true sense, for we are of the world for ever and want worldly sense. No other sense is any use to us. There is no other world, there can be no other sense but nonsense. The scheme of the world is said to be unjust ; is there not here a key to its perfect justice ? It is our 199 THE WORLD SOUL duty to ourselves to realise this ; and we must have the frame of mind. " Blessed are the poor in spirit : for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. " Blessed are they that mourn : for they shall be comforted. " Blessed are the meek : for they shall inherit the earth." Spiritual pride, which is Pharisaism, is the worst sin because it prevents your learning. The pride that cannot and will not learn is useless, or worse. Meekness and poorness of spirit is recognising your ignorance as Socrates did. Again, pride in your qualities or circumstances, which are not you, but were given you, is to mistake an attribute for an essential. As most of your sins are not yours and you will not have to pay for them, so most of your good qualities are not yours, but are lent to you. Those who mourn are anxious to learn and to improve the world. They are not satisfied with things as they are, nor with themselves. They want wisdom, the happy don't. They know how much the world wants improving ; those born lucky don't, but are willing to take their luck and let things slide. Again, Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see God. Who are the pure in heart ? No word that Jesus used has been more perverted than this word " pure." It has been read to mean 200 THE THREEFOLD INTENTION chastity, ignorance, nihilism. Yet Jesus said, "Verily, verily, the publicans and harlots shall enter into the kingdom of heaven before you " ; and the Kingdom of Heaven which is within you is * purity.' " To the pure all things are pure," all things that are, for tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner ; and when you see facts as they are impurity disappears. Real impurity is that prurience of thought which declares the love that made the world to be " sin," which acts as we read in Gibbon that the early Christians acted. All emotion in its right place is true and necessary and pure. As " dirt is matter out of place," so im- morality is emotion out of place ; and as the height of folly would be to wish matter annihilated because it is sometimes dirt, so it is the height of impurity to condemn passion because the world has not yet learnt how to train it. It is for us to study the emotions and so frame our laws and conventions as to assist them to attain their ideal, while realising that as yet we are far from it. Purity is a soul attribute, not a bodily one. The purest woman in all fiction is Sonia. Let him who doubts read. Your real self is your thought. As all roads lead to Rome, so everything leads back to that one centre. You must learn how to think. That is your first duty towards yourself. Next to yourself there comes your neighbour. You must love him just as you do yourself, try your 20 1 THE WORLD SOUL very best to understand him and be in sympathy with him, so that you can do for him what he requires. And who is your neighbour ? Everybody is your neighbour, inasmuch as all souls are of the World Soul, but some are nearer than others. " And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. " And by chance there came down a certain priest that way : and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. " And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. " But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was : and when he saw him, he had com- passion on him. " And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. " And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him ; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee. " Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves ? " And he said. He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise." 202 THE THREEFOLD INTENTION There are inward thieves as well as outward thieves, and they are the worst. They are the im- perfections of the body we were born into, defects, diseases, poverty, unruly passions, ignorances, mis- fortunes, and it is especially to those who have fallen by birth among such thieves that all the world should be neighbour, to prevent, to help, to cleanse. That is what Jesus said. Yet the Christian world does just the opposite. It is Pharisaic, even worse than the Pharisees whom Jesus hated. Like Paul it does not touch pitch lest it be defiled. It goes by on the other side, and says, " If he will be so wicked as to fall among thieves, let him take the punishment. If he won't be virtuous, damn him." They themselves are healthy, as they consider, because of some special virtue in themselves. And they think those defects of others and those virtues of their own eternal. It is the Samaritans, the sinners, who do the work of the world, and the Churches who hinder it. That is the teaching of Jesus as to our duty to our neighbour. There remains our intention to the World Soul. What should that be .-' He is our Father. We came from him and to him return. We are parts of him. He is ourself. We are incarnated in flesh and temporarily separated, but we must always remember that the apparent separation is an im- 203 THE WORLD SOUL perfection of the flesh to be cured "on earth as it is in heaven." We seem to be separate entities, alone, we never are. Our bodies are of universal matter ; our souls are of the universal soul. We are necessary to the World Soul because we are of it. Therefore we must realise this oneness, and to realise oneness is to love. " Therefore thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength." But that again is not easy. No one can realise such a difficult truth as his oneness with the World Soul simply by stating it ; no one can love just because he is told it is necessary to love. These things do not come by talking about them or praying for them, or thinking about them. They must be achieved like everything else that is of any value. How then can you achieve this sense of unity, this emotion of love ? Only in one way. Realise what the object of life is ; what a beautiful, great and glorious thing the world is, that it is ours for ever to enjoy to the utmost, that the intention of the World Soul who is in the world is that we should and must do so. See for yourself how true it is ; look facts in the face, and love will come. It must. Love will come and fear will go, for perfect love casteth out fear. Love is life, fear is death, 204 THE THREEFOLD INTENTION Then live your life so as to be worthy of more life and fuller. You must understand the intention of God in making the world and putting the World Soul here. " But go ye and learn what that meaneth : I will have mercy and not sacrifice, for I am not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." What is the use of sacrifice ? Who cares for sacrifice ? Would your king care for your depriving yourself of something he doesn't want with the idea of honouring him thereby ? Would he care for you to litter up his palace yards with useless offerings, wasted effort ? For that is what sacrifice comes to unless you understand the object. Would he care to see you kneeling about praising him or beseeching him or denying yourself comforts with an idea of pleasing him .'' If a king would not, why should the King ? " I will have mercy." I demand from you mercy which is understanding and sympathy. The best way to please me is to understand what I want you to be and be it. That is the only real love. You must make your desire one with my Desire, your hope with my Hope, your love with my Love. If you demand from me consideration and sympathy which is mercy, you must show the same to Me. Give, and it shall be given you. " Not every one 205 THE WORLD SOUL that saith Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." And his will is to come down and live on earth in perfect flesh and wisdom. He must have a healthy body, a strong body, with all emotions raised to the limit, yet all under control, with old age, disease, and death put ever further away. Now, if we consider what a perfect idea this is, and how certain to be carried out, through ourselves for ever, if we work always to help it forward, love is bound to come. lOappitit vient en mangeant. Live, and you will want to live. The more you enjoy life the more you will want of it, and the more thankful you will feel that you are going to have literally " no end " of it. What you hate is disease, old age, weakness, and ignorance, and you are going to conquer them. That is the Intention of the World Soul. It must be yours to help him in all ways. 206 XII THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH " But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." CHAPTER XII THE most serious question is how to carry out all these intentions, of the World Soul, of man, of yourself. It is no use meaning well only. You must learn how to carry out that intention, you must acquire the knowledge and experience necessary to do well. You must keep your mind open to all truth so that whenever you get a chance you may add to your store. It is all very well to want wisdom ; how are you going to get it ? Jesus never said how to get it ; he only said you must get it. He said this.: " Nevertheless I tell you the truth ; It is expedient for you that I go away : for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you ; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. " And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment. " Of sin, because they believe not on me ; " Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more ; " Of judgment, because the Prince of this world is judged. " I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. P 209 THE WORLD SOUL " Howbeit when he, the spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth : for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak ; and he will shew you things to come. " He shall glorify me : for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. "All things that the Father hath are mine; there- fore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you." That Spirit of Truth is knowledge which comes from experience and thought over what has been experienced. It is the sum of all knowledge, not what you have, but all the knowledge the world has acquired, every kind of knowledge, for one kind illumines and helps and fulfils the other. It is thought which must be sincere. It comes only from the power to think correctly over matters as they occur. Very few people have ever been able to do this. Consider how the Pharisees think. Here are two instances : " And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed to- gether, and could in no wise lift up herself. " And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her. Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. " And he laid his hands on her : and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. 210 THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH " And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath day, and said unto the people. There are six days in which men ought to work : in them there- fore come and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day. "The Lord then answered him, and said. Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering ? " And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?" " And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said. He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casteth he out devils. " And he called them unto him, and said unto them in parables. How can Satan cast out Satan .'' "And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. "And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. "And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end. " No man can enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man ; and then he will spoil his house. " Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme : 211 THE WORLD SOUL "But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation." To be void of sense ; to think like they did and do is to commit the only unpardonable sin, because folly cannot be forgiven. When you are born you bring with you a soul which has common sense, but if you kill it by learning to reason like this, of what use will your soul be to the World Soul when it returns ? The World Soul hates folly and will not have it. When you die all that survives of you in the World Soul is your wisdom. All your folly is eliminated, or in the picturesque language of Jesus, it goes to everlasting death and torment. You your- self will be only whatever good there is worth preserving. It lies with you to make that much or little. " And he said unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. " And he called him, and said unto him. How is it that I hear this of thee ? Give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward. " Then the steward said within himself, "What shall I do ? for my lord taketh away from me the steward- ship : I cannot dig ; to beg I am ashamed. "I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. 212 THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH "So he called every one of his lord's debtors unto him, and said unto the first. How much owest thou unto my lord ? "And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him. Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. "Then said he to another. And how much owest thou ? And he said. An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him. Take thy bill, and write four- score. " j^nd the lord commended the unjust steivard, because he had done wisely ; for the children of this -world are in their generation -wiser than the children of light." In matters that concern temporalities that come and go and come again, men are wiser than in matters that concern light, which is wisdom that endures. If they showed as much good sense in reaching after true thought coiite que coute as that steward did in arranging for his immediate future, the world would get along much faster than it does. If a man cannot look after his own welfare he will not look after that of others. The first law is self-preservation. You must not throw away the life given to you. Charity begins at home, and so does wisdom ; but neither end there. When that steward's soul returned, the World Soul would say : " You made a mistake, and you have been dis- honest, but only for self-preservation ; you have com- mon sense and ingenuity and we can make a great 213 THE WORLD SOUL deal out of you with proper supervision. You know how to think, you know something of human nature, you are prompt and courageous in act ; these are good qualities we don't want to lose. They are not too common. You at least have not committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, and therefore we are not intending to be too severe on you." That is what the World Soul will think. That is the in- violable law the World Soul will follow, for the World Soul is sense. All the common sense of humanity has thought in this way too. When a man has qualities good and useful to the common weal, it does not look too closely into other less important details. Only the Pharisees of the world do that and block its progress. They think they act by the authority of Jesus, but the very reverse is true. It is they who will never be for- given, not the unjust stewards. To mean well is something, not very much, for all the world means well. It is innate in nature. No one, I think, ever harms another wilfully, unless out of revenge for some injury, or to gain something necessary to him. No one hurts for the sake of hurting. On the contrary, the world means very well all round, in- dividuals and governments. But there is still a great deal of pavement made for hell, and that is caused by want of knowledge. All the great crimes of humanity have been com- 214 THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH mitted with a good intention. When the Jewish Chufch crucified Jesus they meant well, because it thought he was endangering the little truth it had, and destroying the Church. The priests thought they were saving the people. " It is expedient that one man die for the people." That was quite true, only it was the Pharisees and elders who endangered the world, not Jesus. When the Roman emperors burnt and persecuted the early Christians, they did so because the un- worldliness preached by those Christians, which they believed to be of Jesus, endangered the state. When the Roman Church burnt Bruno and made Galileo recant, they meant well. They had a tiny grain of truth in their Church and feared that it might be killed. When Catholics massacred Protestants and Protestants massacred Catholics they both meant well. So it is and will be always. A self-righteous well-meaning fool is far more dangerous to humanity than any rogue. All the rogues in the world have not done one hundredth part the damage that the Pharisees have done. All the murderers in the world have not shed one millionth part so much innocent blood as well-meaning Churches and govern- ments have done. The Pharisees impose upon the foolishness of the world ; therein is their danger, and its ; but the rogue does not. The world loves rogues and sinners. All poets have seen that. Who 215 THE WORLD SOUL are the heroes of literature? Not Pharisees, nor philosophers, but just human beings, who are sinners. Pharisees and philosophers are neither. Who would not give a wilderness of Pharisees for one FalstafF ? The good intention in a man's own estimation con- dones everything. If you doubt that a man's inten- tions are good, he becomes furious ; but if you say, " I am sure you meant well, but you did not know," he beams with pleasure, thinking he is fully justified. Jesus, however, does not share that optimism. He says that the sin against the Son of Man, that is, want of good intention, can be forgiven. You may act hastily from loss of temper, for instance, and it carries small consequence, but the sin against the Holy Ghost, that is, want of sense, can never be forgiven ; and if you think it over, you will see how absolutely true that is. Say a man has injured you. If he has done it out of some grudge he bears you, you can remove his grudge or you can be on guard. In any. case, there is no more danger to be apprehended from him. He is not likely to hurt you twice. But if a person has injured .you through meaning well to you and being stupid, the danger remains ; for unless he admits his stupidity, which he never will, it is incurable. It even increases, because he hugs his foolishness to himself and tries to justify it, being unable to ever admit that he is wrong. It is only strong natures that do that. 2l6 THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH In Scandinavian legend, Loki, the Evil One, is stupidity ; for the word comes from " locked," and is the same as " religion." He has locked up his mind. " You may bray a fool in the mortar, yet will his folly not depart from him." "Against stupidity the Gods themselves fight in vain," as Euripides says. For stupidity is very cunning, very determined, and very self-righteous. " There is no absolutely fatal person but the dunce," as Carlyle said. The evolution of the World Soul is towards greater wisdom ; the intention is already almost perfect, for that has been in the world from the beginning ; naturally all mean well ; not till religion or law gets hold of you do you mean ill. There is very little more to be done in this direction. But wisdom grows slowly and has many drawbacks. It has hardly advanced for two thousand years except in material matters. It seems to me that hardly any of the teaching or Jesus is difficult. It is in the main just perfect common sense. It is what I have heard from the wisest men I have met, who did not, however, know that Jesus agreed with them, and said the same thing better. The world is not such a fool as it seems. For, remember, the Pharisees have never converted the world to their ideas. They have only imposed themselves on the world. Their Pharisaism hangs 217 THE WORLD SOUL like a blight upon humanity. Because of them truth has remained obscure for nineteen hundred years through sheer downright stupidity. Churches and individuals have sincerely loved Jesus, and have sincerely wished to understand him, but they have failed. Love such as they have felt is a blindness ; it is not at all what Jesus meant when he used the word. Love is not adoration, obedience, willingness to serve and suffer for the adored object. Love is a much greater thing than these. It is understanding ; it is being one with him. There is a great deal of talk about love in the world to-day, but very little of it in the best sense. In the Acts you will read of how the Holy Ghost is supposed to have come to the Apostles, but you will not see much sign of it in their acts or words. Of all the hearers of Jesus, only one, the writer of the fourth Gospel, seems to have had any of the Holy Spirit in him. Therefore, in his Gospel there is more record of what Jesus said about the Holy Spirit than in the other three. Simon Peter and his followers had great personal attachment to Jesus ; they were ready afterwards to suffer for him, but they understood hardly anything. Theirs was blind adoration, and in the Churches they founded there is little else of Jesus -but that. That is not of much value, and though Jesus knew that Peter would found a Church in his name he had little 218 THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH respect for him. Did not Peter deny him ? And all stupidity has as its base that cowardice of the spirit, that fear of freedom in thought which must frame rules of life and stick to them through thick and thin. Its ideal is the machine-made man who acts by formulas, by creeds, by maxims, who does right by law, because he can't help it. But wisdom is free. There are no absolute rules of life. There cannot be. It is an inherent law of life that it is not bound by ethical laws ; were it so it would be a mechanical force running on fixed lines for ever. Soul has one object, to master all matter, to imbue and infect all matter through wisdom. It can never do so if it fetter itself by law, by rule, by maxims. No maxim, nor no rule, however good, but is sometimes false ; no act, however bad, but is sometimes good. Law driven to its extreme is the summit of injustice by its own admission ; it is very often that long before it reaches the extreme. All rules of life are good in so much as all have some truth in them. All rules are bad in so much that none are always true. 1 worked this out in The Inward Light. The writer of Ecclesiastes says : " To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven : " A time to be born, and a time to die ; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted ; 219 THE WORLD SOUL " A time to kill, and a time to heal ; a time to break down, and a time to build up ; " A time to weep, and a time to laugh ; a time to mourn, and a time to danfie ; " A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together ; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing ; " A time to get, and a time to lose ; a time to keep, and a time to cast away ; " A time to rend, and a time to sew ; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak ; " A time to love, and a time to hate ; a time to war, and a time of peace." He might have continued the list. There is no act that is always right, no act that is always wrong. It is of the very essence of the spirit that this should be so. It is of the very essence of nature that it is bound by law ; were it not so, we could not conquer it. We do so by playing off one force against another, by recognising the way forces act and getting out of their way when necessary, by using their own laws to bind them still more firmly. But were we also bound in spirit we should never acquire any mastery at all. That is the essential difference between Soul and all energy. Energy is, or appears to be, a property of matter bound by law. Soul is a property in matter, acting through matter but not of matter, and 220 THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH bound by no law. It cannot be a property of matter or it would be bound by law. But it is a property in matter, for we cannot conceive of it apart from matter, and it would not so intensely desire the subjection of matter if it could manifest itself apart from matter. The distinction is vital. Energy has no object. Action and reaction are equal. That is its third law. Therefore it can attain no end. The Soul is bound by no law, but it has an object to which it unceasingly strives by every means in its power. That object is the subjection of all matter to Soul. Now you can see why the Spirit is free, why it bloweth where it listeth. Every act that tends to its appointed end is good, every act which obstructs that end is bad. There is no other criterion. Jesus never laid down rules. If you turn over his sayings you will see how he escaped. Take the instance in Chapter XIX of St. Matthew, where they wanted to get a rule of Jesus about whether a man should marry or not, and he simply said, it depends entirely on whether marriage or the opposite would tend to a man's increase in wisdom. To some men marriage brings an increase in wisdom, to others it may be an obstacle. The only criterion is whether the object to be attained, which is Life, which is Freedom, is forwarded or not. The end justifies the means. That is true, but the end is not as the Jesuits who adopted the motto 221 THE WORLD SOUL fancied, the supremacy of a sect, but the eternal life of all mankind ; and to know how to attain this requires the deepest and supremest wisdom. Now turn to this saying of the Sermon on the Mount, which has occasioned so much heart search- ing : " Ye have heard that it hath been said. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth : "But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. " And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. " And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. " Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away." This is the exposition of an objective, not of a rule of life. It is something to be attained, not a means of attaining it. To observe it as a rule of life would defeat it as an object of life, the means would defeat the end. We must all strive towards a state of life where there will be no injuries done and therefore none to forgive, but meanwhile a blind adherence to such a morality would spell ruin to the world. We must not be vindictive, we must not want injuries avenged, but we must have wrongs righted. 222 THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH Crime must not be overlooked and condoned, it must be searched out and probed, prevented and cured. And if a man suffer any injury he must not tamely submit to it. To do so would mean not only that he himself might again be the sufferer, but that if others followed his example, the bad system, or convention, or ideal from which they had suffered would be perpetuated. By so doing the world is confirmed in ignorance and stupidity. We must remember the end and never mistake the object for the means. The end is absolute, but the means varies always, otherwise what would be the use of thought ? Si vis pacem, para helium, if you wish peace, get ready for war. Jesus was the Prince of Peace, he came to bring not peace, but a sword, in order to destroy all things that militated against Peace, He came to declare the objects to be attained ; but the means to attain them could only be found by the Holy Spirit, that is experience and wisdom. Again, take what he said about divorce and adultery : " And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to piit away his wife ? tempting him. " And he answered and said unto them. What did Moses command you .'' " And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement and to put her away. 22^ THE WORLD SOUL " And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept, " But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. " For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife ; " And they twain shall be one flesh ; so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. " What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. " And in the house his disciples asked him again of the same matter. " And he saith unto them,' Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. "And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery." On the strength of this Churches have refused divorce. It would be as reasonable for them to refuse to allow a thief or murderer to be arrested, or a man to seek redress at civil law for a tort because Jesus told men to forgive their enemies. All these teachings are ideals, objectives to be aimed at, not rules to be followed. To turn them into rules is absurd. Remember always that Jesus was the perfect common sense, and when Churches make nonsense of the words of Jesus, visit it on the Churches, not on him. 224 THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH "Where husband and wife do not live together in peace, how are they joined by God ? For God is love and sympathy, and if they have not these they are not joined. Ceremonies are nothing. The Church is not God, nor is the Registrar's office. The mar- riage of God is a condition of mutual understanding and oneness of thought and desire. ' When that has never been attained there has been no marriage. When that has ceased the couple are already spiritu- ally divorced. You only make matters worse by keeping them physically together. Whom God hath ceased to join let not man keep together. When we are perfect we shall have attained the perfect objective of Jesus. We are still very far from that, and therefore because of the hardness of our hearts divorce is necessary to us, as are doctors, because we are unhealthy. Would you abolish doctors under the idea that if we aren't healthy we ought to pretend to be so ? When we cease to have enemies we shall be able to forgive them ; when no one takes our cloak we shall not trouble about our coat ; when all marriages begin and continue and end in perfect love and unity we shall have no divorce. These are objectives to aim at, and we must aim at them, for they are good. They are the ideals to which we are destined to attain, and we must attain them. Q 225 THE WORLD SOUL By all means in our power we must try that every marriage should be perfect, that each man and woman who marries should know the essentials to love. They should be fully provided with that wisdom which can alone lead to happiness. There is no relationship of life so difficult as that of marriage. What does the world do to help ? It does all it can to harm and ruin. It as far as it can keeps boys and girls in utter ignorance of both sides of marriage. Of the physical side that conduces to mutual pleasure and confidence, to an increase of emotion which is the source of all understanding, and to healthy children, they are ashamed. Yet Jesus said that God created them for this cause. Of the spiritual side that teaches that love can only be founded on under- standing, sympathy, frankness, and wisdom, they know nothing. Of the antagonism yet attraction and mutual necessity of sex to sex, nothing is ever taught. Men in life do learn something physically, not much spiritually ; but the girls come into marriage not merely ignorant in both ways, but full of wrong, untrue ideas, supposing that their ignorance is a virtue and their falsehoods truths. They imagine that chastity is a virtue, that it is the same as the purity Jesus meant when he said, " The pure in heart shall see God." But Jesus meant quite another thing, and into his purity the publicans and harlots shall enter before the foolish virgins. They resent know- 226 THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH ledge being forced upon them, and visit their resent- ment on him who does it. The wonder is not that many marriages prove failures, but that any prove successful. It is only when innate good sense over- comes the folly of what they have been taught that happiness ensues. Where it does not, life is a failure, yet religion and society based on it will not allow divorce. It must still cry. Peace, peace, where there is no peace ; Marriage, marriage, where there is no marriage. We must pretend we have attained to the ideal even if we know we have not. In nothing has religion been so harmful to the world as in its interference with marriage. It is so in Hinduism, and Mohammedanism, in Christianity. I know only one country where there is a sensible marriage law, and it is so because religion has left it alone. In Europe the Church at first hated and denounced marriage. Until the sixteenth cen- tury it refused to recognise it at all, teaching always that any relation of the sexes was an evil, not to be acknowledged by the Church. Then, in its desire to still further control life, it made a law confirming all the worst points of the old laws, and taking away all their advantages. Wives were the property of the husband, and the husband was the slave of a law which bound him to one woman for life, no matter — with one exception — how she 227 THE WORLD SOUL behaved. The Church ignored, as usual, all the facts of life. They took a pretension of the ideal to be attained as a means for obtaining it, and thereby put it further off than ever. They called themselves God, and said that whomsoever they joined, God joined, and those whom they had not joined, lived in sin. But God is love. Their laws have created an hypocrisy without an equal, they fill the streets with ruined women, they fill the homes with ignorant women, they drive men into organised pretence and licence ; they deter from marriage because they render true marriage almost impossible. Because society will not look upon the serpent and have life. " Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye make clean the outside of the cup and platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess." Unhappy marriages are rarely the fault of the individual. They are the fault of the hardness of the heart of society, which, based on religion, by false teaching, and by withholding all truth and common sense, draws down disaster on so many heads, and then will not allow it to be re- paired. Keep the objective in view, unity of thought following on unity of flesh. Without that there is no marriage. Another instance is in his reply about the tribute : 228 THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH "Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk. "And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man, for thou regardest not the person of men. " Tell us, therefore, what thinkest thou ? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not ? " But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said. Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites ? " Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny. " And he saith unto them. Whose is this image and superscription ? " They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them. Render therefore unto Csesar the things which are Caesar's ; and unto God the things which are God's. " When they had heard these words, they marvelled, and left him, and went their way." What could be clearer than this ? You are to pay respect to government as long as wisdom requires it, and no longer. If the government is as good as it can be you must accept it ; if not, you must try to mend it ; if it become intolerable, to end it. There is no rule. It depends on circumstances. Only wisdom can decide. Of course, the objective we aim at is the abolition of all government, because we 229 THE WORLD SOUL shall need none. Government is an evil, but it is one necessary to our present imperfection. Think of the extraordinary wisdom of that reply. Well may men have marvelled. When you get the key to the sayings of Jesus, the marvel grows. No wonder men have always called him divine when they hardly understood him. What will they call him when they do understand him ? The whole of the teaching of Jesus, therefore, is the teaching of the objective, the intention that is in all life, the Purpose that must and will be attained by Life. There his teaching ended ; he could not give rules of life because the essential of life is that eventually it is to be perfectly free. In the very imperfect state we are now, rules are of use only as generalisations true in some cases, never true in all. The sole safe- guard is that " Inward Light within the Heart " which is called conscience. It is born in us, for it is of the World Soul ; it must be made to grow and increase for ever. Conscience is understanding, wisdom. Therefore the Holy Spirit which is to come, which will condemn all present institutions, is the realisation of the object of life and the means to attain it. That Holy Spirit will condemn all present institutions because they are not directed to that end. Their objective is the reign of law. The true objective 230 THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH Is the reign of freedom, because we shall never want to do anything wrong, all things will be right, and we shall be able to realise our intention. The conventional wrongs and rights of life are not the true ones. And the objective of life Is not to do right or to avoid doing wrong, but to be able to do exactly as we like, to have complete freedom of thought and action, because we shall be absolutely sincere, absolutely wise, absolutely able. There is only one rule of life. "Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment ? " Behold the fowls of the air : for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns ; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they ? " Live your life and make the most of it. "Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature ? " Your body was given to you ; it Is not you and you can do very little to alter It. Do your best, and then do not bother. Defects of the body you cannot control are not your sins. " And why take ye thought for raiment ? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin : 231 THE WORLD SOUL " And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. " Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith ? "Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat ? or, What shall we drink ? or. Wherewithal shall we be clothed ? " For after all these things do the Gentiles seek : for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. " But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness ; and all these things shall be added unto you. " Take therefore no thought for the morrow ; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Live your life. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might, work, pleasure, everything. Drink the cup dry, there are no lees, the bottom is best. The only sin is not to know the objective of life and to deny life which is God. In Nature there is no rule of right, everything is subordinated to the realisation of the object of evolution. Nature is "red in tooth and claw," because only by so being can she progress to her appointed end. Righteousness is all that tends to that end, sin is all that obstructs it. 232 THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH When other thinkers, the Epicureans and Omar KhayyAm, told us to live our lives, the world condemned them as sinners and fools. It was the Christian world, the despairing, the world-denying, religious world did that. But Jesus, the only Son of God, who is Wisdom, said the same as they did. And do you think the world was made for you and that you were put into the world to despise it or refuse to make the best of it ? How shall you appear before the Maker of the World and declare that what He called ' good ' you call evil ? You are not likely to get a good reception. " The truth shall make you free." 233 XIII FAITH "And the Pharisees came forth, and began to question with him, seeking of him a sign from heaven, tempting him. "And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith. Why doth this generation seek after a sign ? verily 1 say unto you, There shall no sign be given unto this generation." " An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given it but the sign of the prophet Jonas." "I have not seen such great faith, no, not in Israel." " Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us." CHAPTER XIII OF most of the life of Jesus as apart from his teaching it is not necessary for me to speak here, but there is one subject I must refer to, that of miracle. Now the recorded miracles may be divided into three classes. One is simply figurative for ideas ; such are the temptation, the tearing of the veil of the temple, and the rising of dead men from their graves after the crucifixion, also the appearance of angels. There is, of course, no basis of fact for these, nor did the original tellers intend to express anything but ideas. I have already explained their meaning. The second are certainly true, such as the healing of the sick, and I will return to them later. There remain a few of which I am doubtful. In- stances of these are turning the water into wine at Cana, and Jesus walking on the sea. I have already said that in the minds of those who handed down these traditions there is no such thing as miracle, diflfering by nature from ordinary facts. All facts are to them miracles inasmuch as their causation is unknown, and what are called miracles 237 THE WORLD SOUL only differ from ordinary events in being more unusual. Jesus was a great personality and should be sur- rounded by unusual events. There would be in his disciples and their followers in tradition a strong tendency to unconsciously exaggerate imperfectly known or heard incidents into miracles. They were always looking for a sign. They were a wicked and adulterous generation, as Jesus said, who were blind to truth and only wanted miracles. I have come across a great many instances of this tendency in actual life, and in mediaeval Europe it was almost a rule. But that is as far as I can go on the record. Whatever occurred there was no breach of natural law. If water was turned into wine, then there is in man such a power, and it must be discovered and developed. If Jesus walked on the sea, then we can all do so when we learn how. There are unsuspected capabilities in our body, as the fire ceremonies in India and New Zealand demonstrate. It is not of great im- portance to know what did occur in these cases. We shall find out what we can do by experience in time. But the healing of the sick and the raising of the " dead " are assured facts. That there is in certain men — possibly in all men more or less — a thaumatur- gic power has always been known. In Jesus it seems to have reached its highest expression, but at no period of the world has it been uncommon. It is 238 FAITH an expression of personality in some way we do not understand. It is " personal magnetism," that power which made Napoleon on a battle-field worth thirty thousand men ; which in Gladstone caused waves of enthusiasm to follow him. No people are more in- debted to this power of personality than successful medical men. Within their own pr;ofession it is a commonplace to attribute a specialist's success not to any greater knowledge — there may be less — but simply to personality. It is personality which causes love and hate and success in life. No power is more real than that of personality. As to its power for healing, the evidence for it is conclusive. I myself know of cases, and all history is full of it. It is genuine. What is not genuine is the explanation usually given. This power is attri- buted to spirits, ghosts, who shall say what imaginary powers without, who cause these miracles. Therefore doctors will not investigate them. Here are pheno- mena that have occurred in all time and occur now, but the medical profession shut their eyes and will not investigate them. Consequently they are left to others who assign unscientific causes. The assign- ment of these causes furnishes the medical profession with a further excuse for neglecting their investiga- tion. Yet in these disturbances of the emotions, not the reason, which are called lunacy cases the medical pro- 239 THE WORLD SOUL fession are admittedly powerless. They know nothing about them, and their only cure is to shut the sufferer up. If he gets well — then, well — if not, " it can't be helped." Now it was these cases, the " possessed with devils," in the picturesque language of that time, that Jesus cured. And if you will think over it you will see that it is just to such cases that the power of personality would appeal. For personality appeals to and controls the emotions, not the reason. If a born leader of men can, by his mere personality, so disturb the emotions of his men as to make them go to certain death, could not this same power of personality calm disturbed emotions and reduce them to peace ? Fact says it does so, reason says it certainly seems that it ought to do so ; the world calls aloud for some method of cure, but doctors shut their ears. Now the essential value of the cures that Jesus made lies in the fact that they were not miracles at all. For had they been miracles attributable to some special divine power of Jesus, wherein should we benefit ? Jesus died nineteen centuries ago. He won't come down now and cure us. If they were special miracles of his no one else can do them. What, then, is the use of them ? They don't make his teaching any the truer. His teaching lives by its intrinsic truth, not any extrinsic value given by 240 FAITH " miracle." It is only a " wicked and adulterous generation," unable to see truth when it is before them, who wants signs. Jesus himself said there was nothing in the exercise of this power that others could not learn how to do. Listen : " And when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a certain man, kneeling down to him, and saying, " Lord, have mercy on my son : for he is lunatick, and sore vexed; for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water. " And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him. " Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you ? how long shall I suffer you ? bring him hither to me. " And Jesus rebuked the devil ; and he departed out of him : and the child was cured from that very hour. " Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said. Why could not we cast him out ? " And Jesus said unto them, Because of your un- belief : for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this moun- tain. Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove ; and nothing shall be impossible unto you." He repeats this elsewhere. What we require is faith. And what is faith ? Nothing that Jesus said has been so much misunderstood as this word. It has been construed as meaning blind confidence ; it R 241 THE WORLD SOUL does mean exactly the opposite. The word occurs only sixteen times in the teaching of Jesus, though the Epistles are crowded with it, and if you look at the occasions on which Jesus used it you will see at once what he meant by it. " O ye of little faith," he said to those who take much thought for the morrow, who will not live their lives because of fear. It is courage. The centurion had faith that Jesus could heal his servant from a distance. He knew instinctively that it was possible, ahd uses admirable imagery to express this knowledge. Jesus told the scribes and Pharisees that they omitted the weightier matters of the law — judgment and mercy and faith. No judge uses blind faith ; he uses whatever insight he has. During the storm Jesus rebuked them for having no courage, no faith. He said that those who brought the man sick of a palsy, and the woman of Canaan, had faith. The woman who insisted on touching his garment, and was healed, had faith. " Thy faith shall make thee whole." Faith there is determination to succeed. He asked whether when the Soul of Man shall reach its idea it shall find faith on earth. He prayed that Simon's faith should not fail. How little understanding Simon had after events proved. 242 FAITH And finally he defined what faith is : " If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed." Now what does a seed have that makes it grow into a tree ? For one thing, it has courage. It does not bother about what will happen when it is a tree. It does its best to be a tree and becomes one. Courage is the first essential. But it must be rightly directed courage. If a mustard seed had blind confidence it would be an oak ; if it wanted, and started off to become an oak, it would become nothing. It knows its own capa- bilities and limitations. It has knowledge of how to become a tree. It has not got that knowledge all at once, but in the seed is stored the potentiality of being a tree, acquired through millenniums of effort. Its prede- cessors have worked and experimented in all direc- tions till they found out their ability, and they stored that. Their mistakes and failures they forgot. Evolution eliminated them. What Jesus meai^t by his saying is now clear. In man is the unlimited possibility. He has, as the Greeks said, the complete SvvaiJ.is for everything, but it is only potential, and he must learn how to develop it, as the seed has done. Then with confidence in his proved power he will move mountains. That is common sense. 243 THE WORLD SOUL It must not, however, be supposed that every man has every power. The potentiality is not in a man, but in Man. Every man is different, has different powers and a different potentiality. That is clear from the parable of the talents. You can see it in life — individuals, races, nations have each their own potentiality. They increase and prosper as they realise it and develop it for mankind. It is a quality of the World Soul and belongs to it. Therefore as there is in Man the complete potenti- ality, and as Jesus was the epitome of man, the Son of Man, the Man-Soul, he had the potentiality of all things within law, and, in accordance with his pur- pose, it is quite possible he did turn water into wine, as an instance of a power latent in us ; it is certain he healed the sick. The "dead" he raised were never dead. They were in one of those trances not uncommon in people who belong to a race in a certain stage of physical development and medical ignorance. Jesus himself declared that Lazarus was not dead, and the facts prove it. Had he been dead his body would have decomposed. No dead man has ever risen. I see myself no difficulty in these " miracles " nor in faith, but I do see the enormous difficulties that ignorant interpretations have piled above them. That is the fault of the interpreters, not of anything that Jesus did or said. 244 FAITH Faith, therefore, is the power to see and understand and the confidence that comes from such knowledge and experience. You know you can, you have proved you can, either in your ancestors or yourself, as the ancestors of the mustard seed did ; this knowledge is inherent in you. You know how, therefore you have courage. You are like a strong swimmer, you don't mind falling into the water because you have faith that you can swim out. Faith is confidence in one's proved ability. That is the means by which the World Soul ap- proaches its ideal. That is what will be found when the World Soul comes near it. Shall he not find " faith " .'' How shall the World Soul possess the earth otherwise than by this faith ? But it will not be by blind confidence in what other people tell you. There remains only the teaching of Jesus as to the forgiveness of sins. I have already said much on this subject, but there is still more : " Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives. " And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him ; and he sat down, and taught them. " And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery ; and when they had set her in the midst, " They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. 245 THE WORLD SOUL " Now Moses ip the law commanded us, that such should be stoned : but what sayest thou ? "This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. " So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them. He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. " And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. " And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last, and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. "When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her. Woman, where are those thine accusers ? Hath no man condemned thee ? " She said. No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee ; go, and sin no more." They, convicted by their consciences that sin is so frequently the result of the fatality of the flesh and not a fault of the intention, or of thought, passed out and left her. And Jesus told her that neither did he condemn her, for he J^ew. " Verily I say unto you it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city " where dwell the Pharisees and the refusers of know- ledge. 246 FAITH " And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city. " And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed ; and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy. Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee. " And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth. " And Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said. Where- fore think ye evil in your hearts ? " For whether is easier to say. Thy sins be forgiven thee ; or to say. Arise, and walk ? " But that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins (then saith he to the sick of the palsy). Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house. " And he arose, and departed to his house." For he could tell that the man's soul was good what- ever his body might have done. But how difFerent it will be for the scribes and Pharisees. There can be no forgiveness there. " That seeing they may see, and not perceive ; and hearing they may hear, and not understand ; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them." Their souls would be worth little, even if they did repent, that is to say, become aware of their defi- ciencies. The deficiencies would remain. What a 247 THE WORLD SOUL rearrangement of moral values there will be when the truth of Jesus is understood. The last shall be first, and the first last indeed. It now takes place at death. When his kingdom comes, it will take place here. Again, take the passage already quoted in another connection : "And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house, and sat down to meat. " And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, " And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. "Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake within himself, saying. This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him : for she is a sinner. " And Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. And he saith. Master, say on. " There was a certain creditor which had two debtors : the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. " And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most ? 248 FAITH " Simon answered and said, I suppose that he to whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged. " And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman ? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet : but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. " Thou gavest me no kiss : but this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet. " My head with oil thou didst not anoint : but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment. "Wherefore I say unto thee. Her sins, which are many, are forgiven ; for she loved much : but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. " And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven. " And they that sat at meat with him began to say within themselves. Who is this that forgiveth sins also ? " And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee ; go in peace." This is the most significant of all. He who sins most may, if he choose, learn most from sin, because he can recognise its nature. Therefore, although his sins be many, his knowledge, his understanding, his sympathy should be the greater, and his soul the more valuable to the World Soul. It is the soul of the Pharisee who has never sinned, and who there- fore does not know anything about sin, but con- 249 THE WORLD SOUL demns it as coming from some fault of the intention of the will, who says " a man who worCt behave properly must be punished," that is worthless to the World Soul. It is the souls of those who, having been bitten, have looked upon the fiery serpent and found life who are of value, not of those who have passed by on the other side. The woman who had sinned much was forgiven because she loved much, because she knew what Jesus wanted, and gave it to him. She understood and shall be understood. And because she is for- given, because she is understood, she will love all the more. Sympathy goes out to sympathy. Therefore there is more joy over one sinner that repenteth — that is to say, sees clearly — than over ninety and nine just persons made perfect. The sinner's soul is of value, but the perfectness of the other's is but a per- fection of almost nothing. " Splendidly perfect, icily nil." The ninety and nine do not equal the one. Forgiveness follows a law, as I have said, and it is easy to see how it acts, how it must act, to forward the realisation of the increasing purpose of the World Soul. 250 XIV CRUCIFIXION " Verily, verily, I say unto you. That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice ; and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. " A woman when she is in trarail hath sorrow, because her hour is come ; but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world." CHAPTER XIV IT can be imagined that the teachings of Jesus though imperfectly understood were not appre- ciated by the Pharisees and elders of the Jewish Church. Whatever was not clear, at least it was quite clear that he denounced the scribes and Pharisees. It does not seem from the Gospels that he attended the temple or synagogue services. He went to preach, not listen. He was in bad repute with the priests and he was popular with the people. The priests hated and feared him. Already they had several times tried to kill him. Then when Jesus went into Jerusalem for the Passover, the time was come. And Jesus knew, as he had always known, what was about to happen. Long before when they had asked him for a sign he had answered : " A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, but there shall no sign be given it save the sign of the prophet Jonas. " For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the belly of the earth." That was what Jesus declared was to be the only sign given, that what happened to Jonah would 253 THE WORLD SOUL happen to him. And it must be remembered that Jesus never used metaphors or words at random. No such perfect master of words has ever lived. All he said was true, perfectly true in every way. Therefore it is necessary to see exactly what hap- pened to Jonah, for it was to happen, and did happen, to Jesus. " But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. " Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship ; and he lay, and was fast asleep. " So the shipmaster came to him and said unto him. What meanest thou, O sleeper ? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not. ^ " And they said every one to his fellow. Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. " Then said they unto him. Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us. "What is thine occupation .'' and whence comest thou ? what is thy country ? and of what people art thou ? " And he said unto them, I am an Hebrew ; and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land. 254 CRUCIFIXION "Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto him, Why hast thou done this ? For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. " Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us ? for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous. " And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you; for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you. "Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the land ; but they could not : for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous against them. "Wherefore they cried unto the Lord, and said. We beseech thee, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood : for thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee. " So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea; and the sea ceased from her raging." Thus Jonah was delivered to death to save the ship. But he did not die. "The Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights." Then the fish vomited him up. What exactly is meant by the imagery of the fish I do not know. It means insensibility of some kind. Perhaps he was thrown on a rock, probably he was nearly drowned and picked up or washed ashore in that state. It does not much matter. The gist of the matter is that Jonah, though devoted to death for 255 THE WORLD SOUL some supposed offence against God, did not die ; he disappeared from view for three days and was then returned to life as before. That was what Jesus said would happen to him, and it did. He never said that he would die, nor did he die. He went up to keep the Passover in Jerusalem, and it was then arranged by the High Priest and Pharisees that Jesus should be betrayed by Judas and brought before the Roman authority on a charge of sedition. They justified their own personal hate and fear of Jesus by supposing that there was danger of an insurrection with the object of making Jesus King of Israel, and that it was expedient one man should die for the people. The real fact was that they felt a danger to themselves and their Church in this new leaven which Jesus was preaching, and to save their ship of faith and themselves Jesus had to be thrown out. The parallel with Jonah is exact so far. As will be seen, it remained so to the end. Coming to Jerusalem Jesus held the last supper with his disciples, to which I will return later. They went out to the Mount of Olives. "Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night : for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. " But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee." 256 CRUCIFIXION But again no one understood. The writer of the fourth Gospel later admits this. Then they went to the garden of Gethsemane, and there the frail physique of Jesus betrayed him. " Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples. Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. " And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. " Then saith he unto them. My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death ; tarry ye here, and watch with me. " And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me : nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. "And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour ? "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into tempta- tion: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. " He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done. " And he came and found them asleep again : for their eyes were heavy. "And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words. s 257 THE WORLD SOUL "Then cometh he to his disciples, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest : behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. " Rise, let us be going : behold, he is at hand that doth betray me." Truly the spirit is willing, but it cannot command such feeble flesh as that of Jesus. Physical courage or the reverse, no man can help ; it is part of the fatality of life. It depends on the circulation. If you have it, well ; if not, it is your misfortune, not your fault. It has been part of the blindness of the world to exalt physical courage as a personal merit, whereas it is not so. It is your exceeding good luck, it is your ten talents to have it. Spiritual courage, on the other hand, every one is born with, and every one can increase. It is a personal quality which endures. And the world has decried it, exalting obedience and reverence, forms of spiritual cowardice, as virtues. The only obedience and reverence due are to truth, within yourself, in others, or in institutions. Jesus had the full spiritual courage, no man had greater. But he did not make his flesh, and could not change it. He had to bear it, bad as it was. Yet there are people who believe he lives for ever in that weak flesh. And his prayer was not granted. It could not be. Life is fatalistic, 258 CRUCIFIXION as Jesus knew. That he prayed this prayer only shows again how his flesh betrayed him. So Judas sold him, and he was accused by the priests before Pilate the Roman governor. " And the whole multitude of them arose, and led him unto Pilate. " And they began to accuse him, saying, We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding it to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ a King. " And Pilate asked him, saying, Art thou the King of the Jews ? And he answered him and said, Thou sayest it. " Then said Pilate to the chief priests and to the people, I find no fault in this man, "And they were the more fierce, saying, He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place. " When Pilate heard of Galilee, he asked whether the man were a Galilaean. " And as soon as he knew that he belonged to Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who him- self also was at Jerusalem at that time. " And when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad : for he was desirous to see him of a long season, because he had heard many things done of him; and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by him. " Then he questioned with him in many words ; but he answered him nothing. 259 THE WORLD SOUL " And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused him. " And Herod with his men of war set him at nought, and mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe, and sent him again to Pilate, " And the same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together : for before they were at enmity between themselves. " And Pilate, when he had called together the chief priests and the rulers and the people, "Said unto them. Ye have brought this man unto me, as one that perverteth the people : and, behold, I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man touching those things whereof ye accuse him. " No, nor yet Herod : for I sent you to him ; and lo, nothing worthy of death is done unto him. " I will therefore chastise him, and release him. " (For of necessity he must release one unto them at the feast.) " And they cried out all at once, saying. Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas : " (Who for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison.) "Pilate therefore, willing to release Jesus, spake again to them. " But they cried, saying. Crucify him, crucify him. " And he said unto them the third time, Why, what evil hath he done ? I have found no cause of death in him : I will therefore chastise him and let him go. 260 CRUCIFIXION " And they were instant with loud voices, requiring that he might be crucified. And the voices of them and of the chief priests prevailed. " And Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required. " And he released unto them him that for sedition and murder was cast into prison, whom they had desired ; but he delivered Jesus to their will. " When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person : see ye to it. " Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children." How nobly stands out this Roman against the Jews who clamoured for the death of Jesus. He would have saved him had he been able. He too had tried to learn what truth was. "Pilate therefore said unto him. Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. " Pilate saith unto him, What is truth ? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all." He knew the difficulty, the necessity. "What is truth ? " He asked, not jestingly but longingly. 261 THE WORLD SOUL The truth stood there before him, and he dimly recognised that fact. In the Gospels there are only two Romans men- tioned, Pilate and the centurion whom Jesus marvelled at. They were both men. But the Jews, the priests, the scribes, the people, and even the disciples, except one, what were they .? " Before the cock crow twice thou shalt deny me thrice." He did, and that was the founder of the Churches. So Jesus was mocked and led out to be crucified. He was too feeble to carry his cross, so it was given to Simon of Cyrene to carry, and they went down to Golgotha. And now especially I beg the reader to dismiss from his mind all preconceptions. Forget what the Churches have said, forget all you have been told, cleanse your eyes from visions of the crucifix. Let us go direct to the narratives we have of what occurred, let us find what other facts we can to illuminate them and all will go well. But if your eye be not single towards truth and only truth no- thing can be perceived. To begin with you can see for yourself that the cross on which Jesus was crucified was not the enormous erection pictures and crucifixes have deceived the world with. One man could not carry such a weight. Yet Simon of Cyrene carried it. Neither was a cross shaped like it is represented 262 CRUCIFIXION to be. A cross was a T. It was no heavier than necessary. It was not very high, the feet of the victim being perhaps two feet above the ground. They were either bound or rested on a pedestal. The body did not hang by the pierced hands alone, you can see for yourself the impossibility. They would tear away. There was a cross-piece on the stem of the cross which passed between the legs and on which the body rested. There was hardly any strain on the hands. His feet were not probably nailed, for the one eye-witness, he of the fourth Gospel, does not say so. Even if they were, it would make little difference. The idea of the punishment of crucifixion was slow torture from thirst, starvation and confined position till death ensued. It lasted several days before men died. There was every desire to make it as long as possible. Jesus was crucified at noon between two thieves. "And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying. If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. " But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation .'' " And we indeed justly ; for we receive the due re- ward of our deeds; but this man hath done nothing amiss. " And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. " And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." 263 THE WORLD SOUL What did Jesus mean by paradise ? Certainly not the after-death. The Churches declare that Jesus descended into hell, but neither did he say this. He was going to Paradise, or to the belly of the earth, for three days. It is necessary to remember this. For nowhere does he say he was about to die, or go to the Father, his term for his death. He always knew exactly what he meant and said it. He never used two terms for one thing. He was always absolutely accurate. Nowhere else does he use the word Paradise. It was not his term for death. It seems clear that with one exception none of his disciples were present at the crucifixion. As Jesus had said would be the case they were offended because of him, Peter had denied him out of fear. No doubt they were in hiding. But he was not utterly abandoned. Afar off were some women and near by were three women and a man. " Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. "When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother. Woman, behold thy son ! " Then saith he to the disciple. Behold thy mother ! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home." This is most significant and must be remembered. 264 CRUCIFIXION And then came what he had said would come. Wearied and suffering with the torture, he cried that God had forsaken him. " After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be ful- filled, saith, I thirst. " Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar : and they filled a spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. "When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said. It is finished : and he bowed his head and gave up the ghost." He gave up the ghost ; he went to paradise. He did not die. How could he die ? What had been done to kill him ? Men do not die like this. It takes a great deal to kill a man. The nails through the hands and feet would be painful, the position was cramped, but these things do not kill a man. Three or four days of them with starvation and thirst hardly kill a man, let alone three hours. But what must happen to men of strong neurotic natures under stress of pain and misery is that they pass into insensibility. Strongly neurotic natures do not die easily. They often live long, and are tenacious of life. There is no weakness of the organism, nor organic defect. But their nerves are excessively sensitive. They cannot bear pain, and that which to an ordinarily 265 THE WORLD SOUL healthy man is easily borne is to them unbearable. And when pain becomes unbearable nature gives relief. Insensibility supervenes. It is nature's mercy and her law that this should be so. That was what happened to Jesus. The paradise he spoke of was insensibility to pain. That is para- dise, as every sufferer knows. " Oh, that I were insensible," he cries, " to this agony. Who will give me relief that I must have ? " And nature has her anodyne. Jesus cried out that his pain was un- endurable, and nature gave him that he must have, relief from misery and torment. " The Jews therefore, because it was the prepara- tion, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath day (for that Sabbath day was an high day), besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. " Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with him. " But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs. "But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. " And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true : and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe." Nothing could prove more conclusively that Jesus was not dead than the fact that blood came out of 266 CRUCIFIXION the spear wound. There is no blood from a corpse, however you wound it, because the circulation has ceased. The recorder, urgent as he always was to verify prophecy, saw the blood coagulate into clot and serum, which latter was the water. That the wound could not have been serious, anyone who has used a spear knows. A lance with the impetus of a galloping horse and his rider behind it, will go through a man easily. A bayonet fixed to a heavy rifle held low, with the whole weight and thrust of a man behind it, will make a dangerous wound. But you may stand still and thrust at a man above you with an iron-pointed spear and you will find it difficult to make even a flesh wound. A man's skin is very tough and elastic. I have myself carried a spear in a war ; I have seen hand-to-hand fights with spears, and I know. Moreover, if you danger- ously wound a man in a state of insensibility, he recovers life and consciousness before he dies. Yet Jesus showed no sign. There is no possible doubt but that the wound was trivial, and is only recorded in the fourth Gospel to fulfil prophecy. This spear wound is not even alluded to in the other accounts. So that Jesus came to no great bodily harm by his crucifixion. He had wounds in his hands, and per- haps on his feet, and the skin on his side was pierced to the rib, and that was all. Then in the evening, say about five o'clock, Jesus was taken down. 267 THE WORLD SOUL " And now when the even was come, because it was the preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, "Joseph of Arimathaea, an honourable counsellor, which also waited for the kingdom of God, came, and went in boldly unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus. " And Pilate marvelled if he were already dead : and calling unto him the centurion, he asked him whether he had been any while dead. " And when he knew it of the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph." Pilate marvelled, and no wonder. He knew how long men took to die upon the cross. That Jesus had died in three hours seemed to him incredible. He would not believe it till he had asked the cen- turion. No doubt the centurion replied that Jesus was dead. No one knew anything then of medical science. Jesus seemed dead, therefore he was dead. It has been a marvel to every writer on Jesus how he died so easily. No one could account for it. To no one has it occurred that he never died at all. They knew his death was impossible ; they never took the next step of knowing it did not happen. Yet impossible things never happen. Jesus couldn't have died, and didn't die. He passed into a state of insensibility imitating death to the unskilled. Such states are well known and common. Innumerable cases of men apparently dead having been buried in vaults, placed in coffins or dead-houses, or carried to 268 CRUCIFIXION dissecting rooms, and recovering life, are on record. In graveyards and vaults that have been reopened for the removal of the dead elsewhere, it has been evident that some of the buried were not dead when put in their coffins. Corpses have been found with their fingers gnawed off in the agony of hunger when they did recover consciousness in their coffins. Such cases are, perhaps, more rare now when medical science is so far advanced, but a hundred or more years ago, and before that, they were common enough.^ It is neurotic temperaments that are affected in this way, and Jesus was neurotic. No miracle occurred, only what might have been expected to occur, what was bound to occur under the circumstances. That was on the Friday morning. On the first day of the week he recovered consciousness. Then the eye-witness continues : " The first day of the week cometh Mary Magda- lene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. "Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them. They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him. " Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came to the sepulchre. " So they ran both together ; and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. 1 See Appendix II. 269 THE WORLD SOUL " And he stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying, yet went he not in. " Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie. " And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. " Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed. " For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead. " Then the disciples went away again unto their own home." How Jesus came to his consciousness and came out of the tomb we do not know. As Joseph of Ari- mathaea himself rolled the stone to the door there would probably be no difficulty in Jesus removing it. The earthquakes in the other Gospel seem to be figura- tive. The eye-witness mentions none. Then when the two disciples had gone, Mary, who remained, saw Jesus. He came to her out of the garden. " Jesus saith unto her. Woman, why weepest thou ? whom seekest thou ? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him. Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. " Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni, which is to say. Master. 270 CRUCIFIXION " Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not ; for I am not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father ; and to my God, and your God." What could be more clear than his words ? "/ am not ascended to my Father" I am not dead. " But I ascend unto my Father." I am ill and about to die soon. No doubt he felt that after what he had gone through he could not live long. Neither did he desire it. His work was done. Now as to the narrative of what happened after- wards certain things must be remembered. The Jews intended to kill Jesus, and thought they had killed him. Did they learn he was alive they would have again arrested him and made sure this time of their work. The Roman government, too, had sentenced Jesus to death, unwillingly, but still it had done so. What it had done it had done. Did Pilate learn Jesus was alive he would have felt bound to carry out his sentence. Moreover, all followers of Jesus would have been in great danger. And this danger would not pass. As long as the Roman power endured, hundreds of years still, there would have been danger to his followers. Therefore the narrative had to be most carefully written, and all tradition most cautiously worded. Nothing untrue, of course, must be handed on, but the truth must still be hidden in parable and 271 THE WORLD SOUL proverb, for only the seeing eye and the hearing ear. There is a still further point. All his disciples had proved untrustworthy except him whom Jesus loved, Philip the Beloved, who was now the adopted son of Mary the Mother of Jesus, One had be- trayed him ; Peter had denied him ; the others had abandoned him in the garden and on the cross. Could they again be trusted with such a vital secret as the place where Jesus still lived .'' It seems to me an inevitable inference, both from these facts and the further narrative, that they were not. Jesus was taken away and hidden in or near Jerusalem by his mother and Philip till he could be taken into safety in Galilee, where there were few Jews, where he was known, and where Philip lived. And the news was given to the disciples in a guarded manner. " Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord. " Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you : as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you." " And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them. Peace be unto you. 272 CRUCIFIXION " But they were terrified and affrighted, and sup- posed that they had seen a spirit. " And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled ? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts ? " Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see ; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. " And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet. " And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them. Have ye here any meat ? " And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. " And he took it and did eat before them." What could be more clear and certain than this ? It was Jesus himself, not dead, for he was never dead, though laid in a tomb and therefore among the dead. They took him for a spirit with their usual inability to perceive the truth. " But a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have." He rebuked them, as he afterwards rebuked Thomas, for their inability to see with their eyes and recognise facts. Indeed, it seems doubtful if even after they did recognise he was flesh and blood they fully understood. There is a passage in the Acts which leads me to think that Peter at least did not realise the facts. Paul certainly had no idea of them. Nothing could be more opposed to the facts and truth of Jesus than Paul's specula- T 273 THE WORLD SOUL tlons about " bodies terrestrial and bodies celestial " which the Church puts in its burial service. That a man's body once dead is always dead they could not conceive ; that the soul which has once left the body never returns to that body, but is absorbed into the World Soul and returns to the Father, as Jesus said, they could not understand. " Verily, verily, I say unto you, this generation shall not pass till all things be fulfilled." The generation capable of such stupidity is still with us. No doubt it will be " till all things be fulfilled." They will have to be born again of water and of the spirit, to learn to think in ideas, not flesh, before they can understand. 274 XV THE END " I came forth from the Father and am come into the world again I leave the world and go to the Father." " Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world." CHAPTER XV IT seems clear that Jesus remained near Jerusalem, possibly Emmaus, seven miles away, where there were few Jews, for some days to recover strength for the journey; again he visited the dis- ciples in Jerusalem, and then he left in secret to go to Galilee, where his loved disciple lived, to be safe. It is probable some of his followers went with him as far as Bethany, though that is not the direct road to Galilee, where he parted from them. But he ap- pointed a meeting-place on a mountain in Galilee where he could see them without fear of the Jews. That he went with Philip and his Mother Mary is clear. Those two lived together now as mother and son, and Philip alone knew about Jesus. He was a man of education and standing, probably well off. Jesus lived with them. For read : " After these things Jesus shewed himself again to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias ; and on this wise shewed he himself. " There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two other of his disciples. 277 THE WORLD SOUL " Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a-fishing. They say unto him, "We also go with thee. They went forth, and entered into a ship immediately ; and that night they caught nothing. "But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore : but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. " Then Jesus saith unto them. Children, have ye any meat .'' They answered him. No. " And he said unto them. Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast there- fore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. " Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is the Lord. Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his fisher's coat unto him (for he was naked) and did cast himself into the sea. " And the other disciples came in a little ship (for they were not far from land, but as it were two hun- dred cubits), dragging the net with fishes. " As soon then as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread. " Jesus saith unto them. Bring of the fish which ye have now caught. " Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three : and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken. " Jesus saith unto them. Come and dine. And none of the disciples durst ask him. Who art thou ? know- ing that it was the Lord. 278 THE END " Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish likewise. "This is now the third time that Jesus shewed himself to his disciples, after that he was risen from the dead." The disciples did not recognise Jesus, did not know probably that he was anywhere in the neigh- bourhood. Simon Peter and the others had no idea of what had become of him. They never expected to see him there, and did not recognise him. But Philip knew. Most likely he knew that Jesus would come down to meet them there, and he told Peter that it was Jesus. How afraid they all were of him is evident. They knew he had been condemned to death and crucified ; they saw him alive yet ; they did not know the explanation nor how natural it all was, and they were afraid. Then follow the most significant words that Jesus ever said : "So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these ? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord ; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him. Feed my lambs. " He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto him. Yea, Lord ; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him. Feed my sheep. " He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me .'' Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? 279 THE WORLD SOUL And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things ; thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him. Feed my sheep. " Verily, verily, I say unto thee. When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest : but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. " This spake he, signifying by what death he should glorify God. And when he had spoken this, he saith unto him. Follow me. " Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following ; which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, who is he that betrayeth thee ? "Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do .'' " Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee .'' follow thou me. " Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that the disciple should not die : yet Jesus said not unto him. He shall not die ; but. If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee ? "This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true." Philip gives his own explanation of part of it, but there is a greater, wider explanation which takes in the whole. For the Christian Churches trace their origin to Simon Peter, and it was of this Church that Jesus 280 THE END spoke. It includes the simplicity, the ignorance, the doubt, the spiritual cowardice of Peter. In its youth it was strong, and did what it liked, but what of it now .'' " Another shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou wouldest not." But the inner truth of the fourth Gospel shall indeed " tarry till he come." "We shall never, however much we learn, get away from that. Then Jesus died. He "ascended into Heaven," he " returned to the Father." How and where and when he died and where he was buried could never be told. It was known to Philip and to Mary and to the Magdalene, no doubt. Somewhere in that Holy Land which he made holy, rest his bones. But like the grave of Moses, no man knows that sepulchre. What does it matter ? There rests only the mortal part of Jesus. His spirit is with the Father, in the World Soul, in the World here, unseen — yet here. " Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." Churches have been called by the name of Christ. They have a sacrament to celebrate his death and the resurrection of his body. Let us consider it. They say they found it on the words of Jesus. Let us take these words : " And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said. Take, eat ; this is my body. 281 THE WORLD SOUL "And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them : and they all drank of it. " And he said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many." Let us also take some other words : "Jesus answered them and said. Verily, verily, I say unto you. Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled. " Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of Man shall give unto you : for him hath God the Father sealed. " Then said they unto him. What shall we do, that we might work the works of God ? "Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent. " They said therefore unto him, What sign shewest thou then, that we may see, and believe thee ? what dost thou work .■' " Our fathers did eat manna in the desert ; as it is written. He gave them bread from heaven to eat. " Then Jesus said unto them. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven ; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. " For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. " Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. 282 THE END " And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life ; he that cometh to me shall never hunger ; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. " But I said unto you. That ye also have seen me, and believe not. " All that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. " For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. " And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. " And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life : and I will raise him up at the last day. " The Jews then murmured at him, because he said, I am the bread which came down from heaven. " And they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven ? "Jesus therefore answered and said unto them, Murmur not among yourselves. " No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him : and I will raise him up at the last day. " It is written in the prophets. And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me. " Not that any man hat}i seen the Father, save he which is of God, he hath seen the Father. 283 THE WORLD SOUL " Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. " I am that bread of life. " Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. " This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. " I am the living bread which came down from heaven : if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever : and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. " The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying. How can this man give us his flesh to eat .'' " Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you. Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. " Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life ; and I will raise him up at the last day. " For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. " He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. " As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father ; so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. "This is that bread which came down from heaven; not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead; he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever. " These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum. 284 THE END "Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it ? "When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them. Doth this offend you ? "What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was before ? " It is the spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh pro- fiteth nothing : the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. " But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him. " And he said/ Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father." What do these mean ? That the bread of life which is the flesh of Jesus which giveth life came down from heaven. But I do not know that any one maintains that the body of Jesus came down from heaven. His truth did, his wisdom, but hardly his body. Nothing ascends unto heaven but that which came down from heaven. Therefore the body does not ascend ; how can it ? The spirit quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth nothing. Yet the Churches called of Christ have rejected the spirit and held on to the flesh of the body. It seems to me quite wonderful, a miracle of miracles, that a life, a teaching so simple, 285 THE WORLD SOUL so utterly obvious to any one who cares to think about it should have been so absolutely covered over and concealed by ignorance, by misconception, by misinterpretation. The sacrament of the Churches is not of Jesus at all. It is a Pagan ceremony well known to history into which it has been sought to introduce a teaching and a truth of Jesus. How much truth there is in the celebration of the resurrection of the body of Jesus you can see for yourself. Jesus never said he would die on the cross ; he said he did not ; he scorned those who thought he did. He said that his " flesh " was that bread which came down from heaven, namely his teaching, his truth, his spirit. He said the real flesh profiteth nothing, but that the only thing that profits is the spirit, and you must eat that, make it one with your spirit. There is nowhere any difficulty or ambiguity about the life and teaching of Jesus, even with the poor records we have. Nothing could be more simple or straightforward. The reason he has never been understood is this. The Churches called Christian are not so, and never were so except in name. The Roman Church was and is the Pagan religion ot Rome with its priests, augurs, vestal virgins, and all other ceremonies complete, and Protestantisms are only modifications. The truth of Jesus has no place in them. 286 THE END Will it remain so ? What will happen ? The world will look on Jesus and will live. For think how beautiful his truth is when you see it, how true to all the facts of life, how far, far better than anything we have dreamt of. The world is ours for ever, given to us, to live in and perfect. Our birth is but a coming into flesh, our death but a return to our great Father in the World Soul from whom we came. We come, we learn, we pass again unto our Father, we come again. There is no distant heaven, we do not want one. He who has looked upon this earth to understand, loves it, loves all of it, and desires no more. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive anything more beautiful than this world as it is now. What will it be when we have acquired more truth within our- selves, more mastery over the flesh ? There is no New Jerusalem. There is this world. That is enough. And the hell the world has feared so much. What, then, is hell ? That is the best of all, for down to hell, that is into forgetfulness, annihilation, pass all our evil qualities, all that we hate in others and our- selves, means to an end, needless as we near the end. The fires of hell are never quenched. They shall return no more, those weaknesses, those lies, those miseries, those limitations that oppress us. They 287 THE WORLD SOUL shall burn In hell for ever. But all that is good in us shall live. That is what Jesus said, and it is true. " "When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory. " And before him shall be gathered all nations : and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats. " And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. "Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world : " For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat : I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink : I was a stranger, and ye took me in : " Naked, and ye clothed me : I was in prison, and ye came unto me. "Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee .'' or thirsty, and gave thee drink .'' " When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in ? or naked, and clothed thee ? " Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee .'' "And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. 288 THE END " Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, pre- pared for the devil and his angels : " For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat : I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink : " I was a stranger, and ye took me not in ; naked, and ye clothed me not : sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. " Then shall they also answer him, saying. Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee ? " Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily, I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. " And these shall go away into everlasting punish- ment, but the righteous into life eternal." The Son of Man is love ; the holy angels are all true thought and wisdom, the sheep are all true and brave things and the goats are spiritual cowardice and folly. The least of his brethren is the smallest truth or brave and honest thought. All that is worthy in the world will rejoice as that day approaches. But were Jesus the Christ of the Churches who would be glad ? " And he spake also a parable unto them ; No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old ; if other- wise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old. u 289 THE WORLD SOUL " And no man putteth new wine into old bottles ; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. " But new wine must be put into new bottles ; and both are preserved. "No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new : for he saith. The old is better." I think that the Churches and the faiths will pass. They would not learn. I cannot see any need for Church nor Faith. Never again must truth be fossil- ised and killed. I cannot find that Jesus wanted any Church. Thought is free. I cannot find that he wanted any organisation for prayer nor service. " And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are : for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you. They have their reward. " But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret ; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." I cannot find that he wanted any buildings nor sacred places. " The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. " Our fathers worshipped in this mountain ; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. 290 THE END " Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour Cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. " Ye worship ye know not what : we know what we worship : for salvation is of the Jews. " But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth : for the Father seeketh such to worship him. " God is a spirit : and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." He also said : " Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. " Again I say unto you that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. " For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." This has been interpreted as authorising a Church which absolves or does not absolve from sin, and that whatever two or three " Christians " shall ask shall immediately be done. I think history sufficiently refutes the latter inter- pretation, and no one ever believed the former except the priests. The simple sense is that as the disciples of Jesus were the only people who had heard the truth, they 291 THE WORLD SOUL were able to loosen or bind men's minds by expounding that truth or perverting it. Which have they done ? And as to the last two verses it simply means what Jesus said often enough before, that if you knock it shall be opened to you, if you earnestly desire truth you shall acquire it. And it is easier for two or three to knock together than for one alone. Throughout the sayings of Jesus there is not one word about the necessity of priests or a church. But Priests crucified him. The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. If you can't find it for yourself, will a priest do so ? " My truth shall make you free." Churches make you bond to them. "The wind bloweth where it listeth," not where creeds tell it to blow. Therefore I end as I began : " Ask, and it shall be given you : seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto you : " For every one that asketh receiveth ; and he that seeketh findeth ; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. " Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone ? " Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent ? " If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him ? " 292 THE END There is never any end of knowledge ; the more we know, the more we see there is to know. We realise that we must live to know, because only in wider knowledge can we attain that ever wider life that must be ours. And we shall succeed. "Be of good cheer ; I have overcome the world." END 293 APPENDICES APPENDIX I THE fourth Gospel was attributed to John, one of the sons of Zebedee, but it has always been recognised that this attribu- tion was more than doubtful. There is in fact no evidence for it whatever, and there is much evidence against it. As it seems unnecessary to disprove what has already been acknowledged to have no truth, I leave out the son of Zebedee altogether. It was not written by him — Who was the author ? He calls himself " that disciple whom Jesus loved," giving himself no name except in that expression. How can we discover of the twelve which of the dis- ciples it was ? I do not think there is any difficulty if you consider what we know about this writer. He was one of the twelve. He was unlike any of the others in that he was an educated man. His whole Gospel shows this. He was a thinker, the only disciple whose thought approached that of Jesus. He was acquainted with Greek philosophy. He was a man of standing acquainted with the High Priest, evidently of substance also, or Jesus would not have committed Mary to his care. He had been with Jesus from the beginning. 297 THE WORLD SOUL Who is there amongst the disciples that answers to this description ? There is only one. If 70U read the first chapter of the fourth Gospel you will see that after the exposition of the Purpose of the world the writer begins his account of Jesus with John the Baptist. Evidently then he was ac- quainted with John the Baptist, for remember this Gospel is not like the others a collection of sayings, but the account of an eye-witness. He declares that John the Baptist recognised Jesus as a greater thinker than himself. " Again the next day after John stood, and two ot his disciples ; " And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith. Behold the Lamb of God ! " And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. " Then Jesus turned and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye .'' They said unto him, Rabbi (which is to say, being interpreted, Master), where dwellest thou ? " He saith unto them, Come and see. They came and saw where he dwelt, and abode with him that day : for it was about the tenth hour. " One of the two which heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. " He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ. 298 APPENDIX I " And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona : thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpreta- tion, A stone." One was Andrew, but the other — the writer — gave himself then no name. It is not till the next verse he has a name : "The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip, and saith unto him. Follow me. " Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. " Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. " And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth .' Philip said unto him. Come and see." No other Gospel records this, and the writer of the fourth Gospel must have been one of these two. What is this name Philip ? It is a Greek name, and it means Beloved. He was, however, a Hebrew, and it could not have been his real name. The inference seems to me inevitable that Jesus gave him this name as he had given Simon the name of Peter just before, and as he had surnamed the sons of Zebedee. The writer of the fourth Gospel con- 299 THE WORLD SOUL sistentljr uses the term " the disciple whom Jesus loved " as his description, and that is merely Philip written long. The author of the fourth Gospel was acquainted with Greek philosophy, and so was Philip. " And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to -worship at the feast : " The same came therefore to Philip, which was ot Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying. Sir, we would see Jesus. " Philip Cometh and telleth Andrew : and again Andrew and Philip tell Jesus." The Greeks came to him as a fellow-philosopher who would understand their further search for truth, and he went to Andrew, his old friend, who had been with him a disciple of John, and introduced the Greeks to Jesus. He wanted to get behind things, to know the essential heart of things. "Philip saith unto him. Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. "Jesus saith unto him. Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip ?. he that hath seen me hath seen the Father ; and how sayest thou then. Shew us the Father ? " He was a man of much higher social standing than any of the other disciples. 300 APPENDIX I " And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple : that disciple was known unto the high priest, and went in with Jesus into the palace of the high priest. " But Peter stood at the door without. Then went out that other disciple, which was known unto the high priest, and spake unto her that kept the door, and brought in Peter. " Then saith the damsel that kept the door unto Peter, Art thou not also one of this man's disciples .-' He saith, I am not. "And the servants and officers stood there, who had made a fire of coals ; for it was cold : and they warmed themselves : and Peter stood with them, and warmed himself." He was the only disciple who stood by Jesus on the cross ; he is the only disciple who gives us any clear account of what happened after the crucifixion. In the Acts we hear nothing of him, though perhaps for a while he remained with the twelve. He had nothing in common with Peter, whom he despised, and who was jealous of him, and he must soon have separated. He seems to have made a Church of his own among educated men, and to have left his Gospel to them. It does not seem to have been published till long after the synoptics, 200 years a.d. or thereabouts, having been kept as an inner doctrine of an esoteric brotherhood. The time was not ripe for it to be understood. 301 APPENDIX II CASES of apparent death when the body has been laid out for burial, or actually burled, were exceedingly common. The following is an extract from Chamherss Encyclopedia on the subject. It occurs under the head " Death." " The discrimination of true from apparent death is obviously not a matter of mere physiological interest. The case of Vesalius, the eminent anatomist, who opened an apparently dead body in which the exposed heart was seen to be still beating, is well known ; as also that of the Abbe Prevost, who, having been struck down by apoplexy, was regarded as dead, but re- covered his consciousness under the scalpel, and died immediately afterwards ; and a French author, Bruhier, in a work on The Danger of Premature Interment (1742-45) collected fifty-four cases of persons buried alive, four of persons dissected while still living, fifty- three of persons who recovered without assistance after they were laid in their coffins, and seventy-two falsely considered dead." For a full consideration of the question as it appears later, I refer the reader to Premature Burial by William Tebb, f.r.g.s., and Colonel Edward Perry VoUum, M.D., late Medical Inspector U.S. Army, 302 APPENDIX II edited by W, R. Hadwen, m.d., and published by Swan Sonnenschein and Co., 1905. The following is a quotation. It is a letter from the eminent specialist Dr. Forbes Winslow, in September, 1903. " All the appearances of death may be so strikingly displayed in a person in a cataleptic condition that it is quite possible for burial to take place while life is not extinct. Cases of persons being buried alive occur in England much more frequently, I dare say, than is generally supposed. I do not consider that the ordinary tests employed to ascertain that life is extinct are sufficient. I maintain that the only satisfactory proof of death is putrefaction. Trance sleep is a morbid form of sleep and has often been mistaken for death. In trance sleep there appears to be the same suspension of all animal and organic functions which takes place in hybernation, but the hemispherical ganglia continue in active operation." Then Dr. Forbes Winslow gives a case in his own experience of simulation of death where he saved the lady from being buried alive. Innumerable cases of apparent death are given in this book, not old cases, but those occurring during the nineteenth century up to the end, completely certified and proved ; this shows that even now with fully qualified and up-to-date doctors such mistakes are still possible. Where there are no doctors they are naturally still more common. It is one of the reasons for Cremation Societies that their process 303 THE WORLD SOUL obviates the danger of premature burial, because corpses for cremation are not burnt till putrefaction has set in, showing they are really dead. The import- ance of the subject, the frequency of simulation of death, is shown by the large literature that has grown up about it. To Premature Burial is appended a bibliography of thirty pages of books in all languages on this imitation of death. That nineteen centuries ago there was no means of distinguishing death from apparent death, and that many people were considered dead when they were not so, is certain. Therefore there is in history no fact so capable of absolute proof as this — that Jesus did not die on the cross at all. It is the one fact in his life there can be no doubt about whatever. 304 GLOSSARY A GLOSSARY EMOTION is the reaching after a definite idea or purpose, the controlling of energy towards an end. All emotions are forms of one Emotion, love or its negative hate. The idea or intention in love is preservation of and oneness with what is loved, the idea of hate is division from and destruc- tion of what is hated. Emotion is not subject to law, but has an objective. It acts only in one direction, towards the realisation of its purpose. Any emotion is rightly directed or not as it tends to the realisation of the Increasing Pur- pose of Life, the oneness and perfection of Soul in flesh. ENERGY is a movement in matter. It is bound by laws. It acts equally in all directions and has no object nor idea It is blind. All energies are forms of one Energy. FAITH. I have fully explained how Jesus uses this word in Chapter XIII. It means wisdom and courage. FATALITY. This does not mean that events are pre- ordained or predetermined. That is not so. But as each individual is but a cell in a "World Body animated by a World Life his freedom of action is small. The life of the world is one, proceeding from events in the past, directed towards an objective in the future. What has happened in the illimitable past, what is happening about us in the present, and the objective in the future so con- trol our individual lives as to render them " fatalistic." FORGIVENESS. Non-persistence. What persists is not forgiven ; what by the law of evolution of the soul does not persist is " forgiven." THE WORLD SOUL GOD. If, behind the phenomena of the universe, there lies one First Cause, then He is God. But with one possible exception no phenomena are directly due to God. We know nothing about Him but negatives. Having created the Universe under law and placed in it a World Soul to develop it, He leaves it alone. All phenomena of life are due to the efforts of the World Soul to reduce matter and natural forces to obedience. No miracles ever occur and no breaches of natural law are possible. God does not interfere in any way. He listens to no supplications nor creates any special providences. There is a way to success if Man likes to take it, if not he won't get it. HEAVEN is soul and spirit ; the World Soul and Spirit and each individual's soul and spirit. Jesus uses the term both of the whole and of each individual item, for each part is of the whole. It is the only enduring part of the individual. Each soul and spirit comes from the Sum to return to the Sum taking with it what it has acquired of sympathy and wisdom. All other individual qualities, including memory, disappear at death. It is the immortal part of us, and is an atom of the World Soul, a drop in that ocean of Life which permeates the world and develops it. The Kingdom of Heaven is not a distant Spirit World but a quality that resides in matter and can only be so ' manifested. It is within you. Its aim is complete manifestation in flesh. Man, his every emotion cultivated to the utmost, all under the control of perfect wisdom, with disease, stupidity, incapacity, death, eliminated, in command of a world in the same state is the Purpose of Life. It will never be completely realised, but we shall always get nearer. 308 A GLOSSARY HELL. The place to which all bad qualities go when they are eliminated — that is, to nowhere, or annihilation. No . persons go there, only their bad qualities. It means that bad qualities are eliminated for ever. HYPOTHESIS. The focus which i^ necessary in order to determine the equation of the curve. It must be assumed, because it lies beyond the plane of experiment and can- not be verified. Without a focus, however, the curve of facts can- not be planned even approximately, and it cannot be prolonged. An hypothesis is necessary to every theory. But the hypothesis is subordinate to the facts, not vice versi. If with a given focus you find your curve de- parting from fact, you must alter the focus. KNOWLEDGE is what is learnt by experience, retaining the remembrance of how it was acquired. LIFE is emotion controlled by wisdom acting through energy on matter. MERCY. " I will have mercy and not sacrifice." The World Soul does not demand from each of us sacrifice, but mercy. How can we show mercy to the World Soul? It means sympathy, understanding of its aims and objects, of the difficulties in the way, and there- fore a confidence and love which does not misjudge. We all of us suffer a great deal of pain, we must under- stand why that is inevitable yet and not blame the World Soul. It does its best and all will come right in the end. " Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner." Comprehension means mercy, and therefore " mercy " means comprehension or sympathy. THE WORLD SOUL PRAYER means obtaining by begging; that is the only meaning it has. It is allied to " precarious." But although in religion this was its original meaning, in later times an extended meaning has been given. It has been obvious that by begging, humiliating your- self, or flattery, you only degrade yourself for nothing, and therefore to justify prayer, the qualities of aspiration, self-concentration, and thought have been included. To prayer have thus been given a lustre and a value that do not belong to it. It means obtaining by begging, and that only. To the other mental emotions their correct name should be given, and they should not be con- founded with prayer. RIGHTEOUSNESS. The realisation of the object of life and the unceasing effort to its fulfilment. All is right that tends to the right end. It is wisdom. SIN. Ignorance of the object of Life, and the resulting difficulties put in the way of its accomplishment. The chief sin is stupidity. All is sin that obstructs the right end, that tends towards less life, less emotion, less truth, less freedom, less courage. Unintentional and unavoid- able sin is forgiven, but intentional sin, of which there is hardly any, and stupidity, of which there is a great deal, are never forgiven. They must be retrieved by acquiring common sense. SOUL. The soul of a man is his Emotion. The more emotion you have the more soul you have. SPIRIT is knowledge and wisdom. SYMPATHY is the capacity to put yourself in another's position and to feel glad, or sorry, angry, or proud with them, to analyse their situation, and detect its causes and consequences. There is hardly any sympathy in the world. It understands neither the word nor the emotion. 310 A GLOSSARY THEORY. A theory is the curve into which observed phenomena are arranged. TRINITY is the World. The first person is Nature and all the forces working therein. Within Nature is infinite capacity for all things when controlled and developed by the World Soul. It is the World Body. The second person is the Soul which existed in the world from the beginning and to which all the phenomena of life are due. It is emotion. This is the World Soul. It found its highest expression in Jesus and his teach- ing. Hence he called himself the Soul of Man. All phenomena of Life are due to the workings of the World Soul in the World Body, trying to perfect it and to master it. The third person is Wisdom. This has been developed slowly from the first by experience. All living things are the result of wisdom slowly acquired through aeons of time. This wisdom is not in matter but in the Soul which pervades matter. The knowledge of how to become an oak is not in the acorn but in the World Soul. The arrangement of matter in the acorn is, however, the necessary preliminary to an oak being developed. It is so with all things. This Wisdom will grow for ever. It is the World Spirit. This Trinity is the World of which we are part ; it exists in each of us. It has to be developed for ever. We ourselves are to be the Perfect Trinity. UNDERSTANDING of people is the same as sympathy; of events is knowing their emotional causes and relation to other events ; of books or legends is knowing what the writer wanted to say, what thoughts were in his 3" THE WORLD SOUL mind ; of a word, it is a clear comprehension of the idea it should convey, and its difference from the ideas in similar words. WILL. There is no word that is so abused in philosophy, government, and common thought as this word. Will does rightly mean intensified desire or wish, to the ac- complishment of which all effort is directed. It does not include ability. You may be ill and desire to be well ; you may "will" to be well, but if your disease is incurable that won't cure you. A prisoner may "will" to be free ; his prison bars remain. There is a proverb that " where there is a will there is a way," which is absurd, though of course intensified wish, accompanied by effort, can sometimes succeed in minor matters. To wish does not give ability, or there would be no sick, no cripples, no poor, no criminals. But in general use Will is supposed to include ability, and men do not then recognise that there are two in- gredients both of which must be present or Will does not exist. Hence the fallacies that have arisen. Men are supposed to commit crimes and to " sin " from want of wish, and therefore it is right to punish them here and hereafter. They do sin from want of ability, which is quite another matter. Jesus used the word in its true value when he said, " The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak." Will means wish wrote big, and nothing else. Ability is a totally different matter. WISDOM is knowledge become instinctive. It has no memory of antecedents. It knows because it knows. WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLVMOUTH Vv \ \ i-<^