m \s PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE dARD. ' PLIEASE U-5 2^,^5i^7_(;p BOOK 149.6. SA37 c. 1 SALTUS 9 ANATOMY OF NEGATION J^i^^^^ 3 T1S3 D0D03252 t, . THE ANATOMY OF NEGATION. FOUR GREAT BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. THE TRUTH ABOUT TRISTREM VARICK. (i2mo., cloth, $i.oo; paper, 50 cts.) This work, which is less a romance than a study of real life, col- ored by the well-known philosophical views of the anthor, places Mr. Saltus easily in the front rank of recent American novelists. The book presents a series of shar]ily cut cameos on a black back- ground of doubt and disbelief in the value of life, and despite the gloom and, perhaps, one may say, repulsivenessof the subject, the in- terest in the cleverly involved mystery and in the gentle, but noble- minded hero never fails, from cover to cover. " Tristrem Varick " is throughly new ; it has no prototype, and has taken its niche among those creations of human genius which are destined to mould the taste and thought of posterity. EDEN. (i2mo., cloth, $1.00 ; paper, 50 cts.) In this work Mr. Saltus departs somewhat from his usual vein, and while conducting liis personages through a cleverly constructed labyrinth of incident which seems, almost to the end, predestined to plunge the personages into an abyss of marital misery, turns aside suddenly, and swiftly leads them to the clear daylight of renewed confidence and felicity. In its sharp satire and merciless portrayal of social shallowness " Eden " has a value which entitles it to more than the ephemeral applause of a successful novel. A TRANSACTION IN HEARTS. (i2mo., cloth, $1.00; paper, sects.) In this (his latest romance) the admirers of Mr. Saltus will find some of his strongest and most characteristic work. " A Transac- tion in Hearts " will press " Tristrem Varick " very closely in th.=: race for enduring popularity. In many ways the former is the greater work. Its merciless moral surgery, its almost savage ex- posure of the beast crouching in the depths of our common nature, and the pitiless finger pointed at the hypocrisy writhing in the cold light of day send a tremor of consciousness to every heart capable of honest self-analysis. Few readers of this terrible book who have passed the innocence of childhood but will involuntarily draw the cloak still closer about them, and in the trepidation of undiscovered shame mutter, "It is not I." PHILOSOPHY OF DISENCHANTMENT. ()2mo., cloth, $1.25.) However we may disagree with that view of life which pro- nounces it an affliction, a tragedy in the language of a farce, no one can deny the force of Saltus' writing and the dark certainty of his deductions. From the first man to the present hour life has pre- sented a problem which neither ho])e, philosophy, nor religion has been able to answer. Sage and poet have pronounced it a vanity and a sham, a dark shifting curtain painted with fantastic shapes, a lane of light with night on either hand. In the " Philosophy of Disenchantment," Saltus has given voice to that dumb cry and ques- tion which has always and must forever rise in every human heart— " I suffer, and is this all ? " THE ANATOMY OF NEGATION BY EDGAR SALTUS REVISED EDITION <* Quoy qu'on nous presche, il fauldroit toujours se souvenir que c'est I'homme qui donne et I'homme qui re9oit. Montaigne. BRENTANO'S, LONDON, 430 STRAND. New York : Paris : 5 Union Sq. Ave del" Opera. Copyright, 1889. by Edgar Saltus, CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE. The Revolt of the Orient i Kapila — The Buddha — Laou-tze. CHAPTER II. The Negations of Antk^uity 32 Theomachy — Scepticism — Epicurism — Atheism. CHAPTER 111. The Convulsions of the Church 65 Galilee — Rome. CHAPTER IV. The Dissent of the Seers 107 Spinoza — The Seven Sages of I'otsdam — llol- bach and his Guests. CHAPTER V. The Protests of Yesterday 152 Akosmism — Pessimism — Materialism — Positivism. CHAPTER VT. A Poet's Verdict , 199 Romantics and Parnassians. , Bibliography 219 NOTE TO THE REVISED EDITION. Since the preceding note was printed it has been re- motely alleged that the absence of an attempt to prove anything argues the absence of a purpose. This it may do, yet the preparation of the present work was none the less premeditated. It was the intention of the writer, not indeed to insist on this or on that, but rather, in dis- playing the views of philosopher and of sage, to suggest that if the laws which govern the universe are invariable, it would seem to follow that everything which happens happens because it must, in which case there can be little that is of much consequence and nothing what- ever that is worthy of dislike, of fear even, or of hope. In brief, it was the writer's endeavor to divest his reader of one or two idle preoccupations, and to leave him serener in spirit, and of better cheer than before. Nnt) York, 25th February, i88q. PREFATORY NOTE. The accompanying pages are intended to convey a tableau of anti-theism from Kapila to Leconte de Lisle. The anti-theistic tendencies of England and America have been treated by other writers; in the present volume, therefore, that branch of the subject is not dis- cussed. To avoid misconception, it may be added that no at- tempt has been made to prove anything. Biarritz, i^th September, 1886. II est un jour, une heure, ou dans le chemin rude, Courbe sous le fardeau des aus multiplies, L' Esprit humain s'arrete, et pris de lassitude, Se retourne pensif vers les jours oublies. La vie a fatigue son attente infeconde; Desabuse du Dieu qui ne doit point venir, II sent renaitre en lui la jeunesse du monde; II ecoute ta voix, 6 sacre souvenir ! Mais si rien ne repond dans I'immense etendue Que le sterile echo de I'eternel desir. Adieu, deserts, ou I'ame ouvre une aile eperdue ! Adieu, songe sublime, impossible a saisir ! Et toi, divine Mort, ou tout rentre et s'efface, Accueille tes enfants dans ton sein etoile ; Affranchis-nous du temps, du nombre et de I'espace, Et rends-nous Ic repos que la vie a trouble ! Leconte de LislEo THE ANATOMY OF NEGATION, CHAPTER I. THE REVOLT OF THE ORIENT. Man, as described by Ouatrefages, is a reli- gious animal. The early naturalists said the same thing of the elephant ; but while this state- ment, which contains all the elements of a libel, has fallen into disrepute, the former, little by little, has assumed the purple among accepted facts. Man's belief in the supernatural antedates chronology. It was unfathered and without a mother. It was spontaneous, natural, and un- assisted by revelation. It sprang into being with the first flight of fancy. The characteristic trait of primitive man seems to have been that of intellectual passivity. He was never astonished : if he noticed anything, it was his own weakness ; the power of the ele- ments he accepted as a matter of course. The phenomena that he witnessed, the sufferings that he endured, were to him living enemies whose 2 The Ajiatomy of Negation. violence could be conjured by prayers and dona- tions. Everything had its spectre ; phantoms were as common as leaves. There was not a corner of the earth unpeopled by vindictive demons. In sleep he was visited by them all, and as his dreams were mainly nightmares, his dominant sensation was that of fright. As his mind developed, frontiers were outlined between the imaginary and the real ; the ani- mate and the inanimate ceased to be identical. Instead of attributing a particular spirit to every object, advancing theology conceived a number of aggrandized forces. The earth, sea and sky were laid under contribution, and the phenom- ena of nature were timidly adored. In the course of time these open-air deities were found smitten by a grave defect — they were visible. The fear of the unseen demanded something more mysterious, a hierarchy of invisible divin- ities of whom much might be suspected and but little known. It was presumably at this point that the high-road to polytheism was discovered ; and when man grew to believe that the phenom- ena which his ancestors had worshipped were but the unconscious agents of higher powers, the gods were born. Consecutive stages of development such as these have evidently been far from universal. There are races whose belief in the supernat- ural is so accidental that any classification is impossible. There are others in whose creeds the transition from animism to broader views is still unmarked. In the equatorial regions of The Revolt of the Orient. j Africa, in Madagascar, Polynesia, and among certain Tartar tribes, animism and its attendant fetishism is reported to be still observable. The distinction between the palpable and the impal- pable, the separation between what is known to be material and that which is conceived to be divine, does not necessarily exist even in coun- tries that have reached a high degree of civiliza- tion. In India, the dance of the bayaderes be- fore the gilded statues, and the top-playing that is to amuse a stone Krishna, are cases in point. But these instances are exceptions to the gen- eral rule. It seems well established that man, in proportion to his intelligence, passed out of animism, loitered in polytheism, and drifted there- from into monotheistic or pantheistic beliefs. The race whose beliefs have held most stead- fast from their incipiency to the present day is the Hindu. In their long journey these beliefs have encountered many vicissitudes ; they have been curtailed, elaborated and degraded, but in the main they are still intact. At the contact with fresher faiths, the primitive religions of other- lands have either disappeared abruptly or grad- ually faded away. It is India alone that has. witnessed an autonomous development of first theories, and it is in India that the first denying voice was raised. To appreciate the denial it is necessary to understand what was affirmed. For this purpose a momentary digression may be permitted. In the beginning of the Vedic period, Nature in her entirety was held divine. To the delicate. 4 The Anatomy of Negation. imagination of the early Aryan, the gods were in all things, and all things were gods. In no other land have myths been more fluid and transparent. Mountains, rivers and landscapes were regarded with veneration ; the skies, the stars, the sun, the dawn and dusk were adored, but particu- larly Agni, the personification of creative heat. Through lapses of time of which there is no chron- ology, this charming naturalism drifted down the currents of thought into the serenest forms of pantheistic belief. The restless and undetermined divinities, om- nipresent and yet impalpable, the wayward and changing phenomena, contributed one and all to suggest the idea of a continuous transformation, and with it, by implication, something that is transformed. Gradually the early conception of Agni expanded into a broader thought. From the spectacle of fire arose the theory of a deva, one who shines ; and to this deva a name was given which signified both a suppliant and a supplica- tion — Brahma. In this metamorphosis all vague- ness was lost, Brahma became not only a sub- stantial reality, but the creator of all that is. Later, the labor of producing and creating was regarded as an imperfection, a blemish on the splendor of the Supreme. It was thought a part of his dignity to be majestically inert, and above him was conceived the existence of a still higher being, a being who was also called Brahma ; yet this time the name was no longer masculine, but neuter and indeclinable — neuter as having no part in life, and indeclinable because unique. The Revolt of the Orient. 5 This conception of a neuter principle, eternal, inactive, and a trifle pale perhaps, was not reach- ed during- the period assigned to the Vedas. It was the work of time and of fancy, but it was un- assisted. The religion of India is strictly its own ; its systems were founded and its problems solved before the thinkers of other lands were old enough to reflect. In Greece, which was then in swaddling clothes, Anaxagoras was the first who thought of a pure Intelligence, and this thought he contented himself with stating ; its development was left to other minds, and even then it remained unadorned until Athens heard the exultant words of Paul. Nor could the Hin- dus have gathered their ideas from other coun- tries. Their brothers, the Persians, were watching the combat between Ahura-Mazda and Ahriman. With the Hebrews there was no chance nor rumor of contact : Elohim had not given way to Jehovah. Chaldea was celebrating the nup- tials of Nature and the Sun; while far beyond was Egypt, and on her heart the Sphinx. It seems, then, not unsafe to say that the Vedas and the theories that were their after-growth have no connection with any foreign civilization. Beyond this particular, Brahmanism enjoys over all other religions the peculiar distinction of being without a founder. Its germ, as has been hinted, was in the Vedas ; but it was a germ merely that the priests planted and tended, and M^atched de- velop into a great tree, which they then disfigured with engraftments. Emerson recommended us to treat people as 6 The Anaio77iy of Negation. though they were real, and added, "Perhaps they are." But the doubt that lingered in the mind of the stately pantheist never entered into that of the Hindu, In its purest manifestation the creed of the latter was a negation of the actuality of the visible world. The forms of matter were held to be illusive, and the semblance of reality possess- ed by them was considered due to Maya. Maya originally signified Brahma's longing for some- thing other than himself; something that might contrast with his eternal quietude ; something that should occupy the voids of space ; something that should lull the languors of his infinite ennui. From this longing sprang whatever is, and it was through Maya, which afterwards became synony- mous with illusion, that a phantom universe surged before the god's delighted eyes, the mirage of his own desire. This ghostly world is the semblance of reality in which man dwells : mountains, rivers, land- scapes, the earth itself, the universe and all humanity, are but the infinite evolutions of his fancy. The ringing lines that occur in Mr. Swinburne's " Hertha " may not improperly be referred to him : ' ' I am that which began ; Out of me the years roll ; Out of me, God and man ; I am equal and whole. God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily. I am the soul." Familiarly, Brahma is the spider drawing from The Revolt of the Orient. 7 his breast the threads of existence : emblematical- ly, a triangle inscribed in a circle; poetically, the self-existing supremacy that is enthroned on a lotus of azure and gold ; and theologically, the one really existing essence, the eternal germ from which all things issue and to which all things at last return. From man to Brahma, a series of higher forms of existence are traceable in an ascending scale till three principal divinities are reached. These, the highest manifestations of the First Cause, Brahml the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Siva the Destroyer, constitute the Tri-murti, the Trinity, typified m the magically mystic syllable Om. To these were added a host of inferior deities and even, local gods similar to those which the Romans recognized in later years. Such was and still is the celestial hierarchy. In the eyes of the Hindu, none of these gods are eternal. At the end of cycles of incommensurable dura- tion, the universe will cease to be, the heavens will' be rolled up like a garment, the Tri-murti dissolved ; while in space shall rest but the great First Cause, through whose instrumentality, after indefinite kalpas, life will be re-beckoned out of chaos and the leash of miseries unloosed. This delicious commingling of the real and the ideal degenerated with the years. Like Olympus, it was "too fair to last. Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, once regarded as various manifestations of the primal essence, became in lapses of time con- crete. Female counterparts were found for them, and the most poetic of the creeds of man was low- 8 The Anatomy of Negation. ered into a sensuous idolatry. To-day there is nothing, however monstrous or grotesque, that is deemed unfit for worship. In Benares there is a shrine to small-pox ; in Gaya there is one to the police ; and it may be that somewhere between Cape Comorin and the Himalayas an altar has been raised to those who dull digestion wuth the after-dinner speech. This, however, is the work of the priest. In earlier days the higher castes of man, the younger brothers of the gods, were thought capable of understanding the perfection that resides in Brahm. It was held that they might ascend to the rank of their elders, and with them at last be absorbed in the universal spirit. The one path- way to this goal was worship, and over it the priests constituted themselves the lawful guides. The laws which they codified were numberless, and an infraction of any one of them was severe- ly visited on the transgressor. For each fault, whether of omission or commission, there was an expiation to be undergone, and it was taught that the unatoned violation of a precept precipi- tated the offender into one of twenty-eight hells which their inflammable imaginations had created. In the face of absurdities such as these, it is permissible to suppose that, like the Roman augurs, the educated Brahmans could not look at each other without laughing ; yet, however this may be, it seems certain that many of the laity laughed at them. Already in the Rig-Veda mention was made of those who jeered at Agni. The Revolt of the Orient. g The question as to whether there is really an- other life seems to have been often raised, and that too in the Brahmanas. Yaska, a venerable sage, found himself obliged to refute the opinions of sages older and more venerable than himself, who had declared the Vedas to be a tissue of nonsense. This scepticism had found many ad- herents. The name given to these early disbe- lievers was Nastikas — They who deny. Like other sects, they had aphorisms and slokas of their own, which with quaint derision they at- tributed to the tutor of the gods. The aphorisms appear to have been markedly anti-theistic, while the slokas were captivating invitations to the pleasures of life. " Vivons, ouvrons nos coeurs aux ivresses nouvelles : Dormir et boire en paix, voila 1' unique bien. Buvons ! Notre sang brule et nos femmes sont belles : Demain n'est pas encore, et le passe n'est rien ! " Among those who laughed the loudest was Kapila. His life is shrouded in the dim magnifi- cence of legends. There let it rest ; yet if little can be said of the man, his work at least is not unfamiliar to students. The Sankhya Karika, which bears his name, is one of the most impor- tant and independent relics of Indian thought. In its broadest sense, Sankhya means rationalism or system of rational philosophy. In India it is known as the philosophy Niriswara, the philoso- phy without a god. Kapila was the first serious thinker who looked into the archaic skies and declared them to be Jto The Anatomy of Negation. void. In this there was none of the moderation of scepticism, and less of the fluctuations of doubt. Kapila saw that the idea of a Supreme Being was posterior to man ; that Nature, anterior to her demiurge, had created him ; and he resolutely- turned his back on the Tri-murti, and denied that a deity existed, or that the existence of one was necessary to the order and management of the world. The motor-power he held to be a blind, unconscious force, and of this force, life was the melancholy development. If he had dis- believed in transmigration, Schopenhauer would not have startled the world with a new theory. Kapila's purpose was to relieve man from suf- fering. There were no rites to be observed. Knowledge and meditation were alone required. He recognized but three things — the soul, matter and pain. Freedom from pain was obtainable, he taught, by the liberation of the soul, from the bondage of matter. According to his teaching, the heavens, the earth and all that in them is, are made up of twenty-five principles, and of these principles matter is the first and the soul the last. Matter is the primordial element of universal life, the element that animates and sus- tains all things. The principles that succeed it are simply its developments. Of these, the soul is the chief. It is for matter to act and for the soul to observe. When its observations are per- fect and complete, when it has obtained a dis- criminative knowledge of the forms of matter, of primeval matter and of itself, then is it prepared to enter into eternal beatitude. The Revolt of the Orient. ii On the subject of eternal beatitude, each one of the systems of Eastern thought has had its say. That which Kapila had in view is not entirely clear. He gave no description of it otherwise than in hinting that it was a state of abstract and unconscious impassibihty, and he appears to have been much more occupied in devising means by which man might be delivered from the evils of life than in mapping charts of a fantastic paradise. The sentiment of the immedicable misery of life is as prominent in the preface of history as on its latest and uncompleted page. The problem of pain agitated the minds of the earliest thinkers as turbulently as it has those of the latest comers. In attempting to solve it, in endeavoring to find some rule for a law of error, the Hindu accepted an unfathered idea that he is expiating the sins of anterior and unremembered existences, and that he will continue to expiate them until all past trans- gressions are absolved and the soul is released from the chain of its migrations. According to the popular theory, the chain of migrations con- sists in tvv^enty-four lakhs of birth, a lakh being one hundred thousand. Apparently such beatitude as lay beyond the tomb consisted to Kapila in relief from transmi- gration, and this relief was obtainable by the ransomed soul, only, as has been hinted, through a knowledge acquired of matter and of itself. Garmented in the flesh of him that constitutes its individuality, the soul was to apply itself to an understanding of Nature, who, with the coquetry 12 The Anatomy of Negation. of a bayadere, at first resists and then unveils her beauties to the eyes of the persistent wooer. This knowledge once obtained, the soul is free. It may yet linger awhile on earth, as the wheel of the spinner turns for a moment after the impulse which puts it in motion has ceased to act ; but from that time the soul has fulfilled all the condi- tions of its deliverance, and is forever affranchised from the successive migrations which the unran- somed soul must still undergo. In his attack on official theology, Kapila paid little attention to its rites and observances. He probably fancied that if the groundwork was un- dermined, the superstructure would soon totter. In this he was partially correct, though the result of his revolt was entirely different from what he had expected. The climax of his philosophy is a metaphysical paradox : " Neither I am, nor is aught mine, nor is there any I " — a climax which must have delighted Hegel, but one which it is difficult to reconcile with the report of the philos- ophy's present popularity. And that it is popular there seems to be no doubt. There is even a common saying in India that no knowledge is equal to the Sankhya, and no power equal to the Yoga, which latter, a combination of mnemonics and gymnastics, is a contrivance for concentrat- ing the mind intently on nothing. But whatever popularity the Sankhya may now enjoy, it is evident that, like other systems of Eastern thought, it was understood only by adepts ; and even had the science which it taught been offered to the people, it was not of a nature The Revolt of the Orient. Tj to appeal to them. The masses to-day are as ignorant as carps, and at that time they were not a whit more intelligent. Besides, it was easier to understand the Tri-murti than twenty-five abstract principles. Brahma was very neighborly, and his attendant gods were known to tread the aisles of night. The languid noons and sudden dawns were sacred with their presence. What could be more reasonable ? If life was an affliction, that very affliction carried the sufferer into realms of enchantment, where Brahma was enthroned on a lotus of azure and gold. It is small wonder then that Kapila's lessons left the established religion practically unharmed. Kant's " Kritik " did not prevent the Konigsber- gians from listening to the Pfarrer with the same faith with which their fathers had listened before them. And Kant, it may be remembered, was not only a popular teacher, he was one that was revered. But aside from any influence that Kapila's philosophy may have exerted, it was evidently smitten by a grave defect. Concerning the soul's ultimate abiding-place it was silent. ■ This silence enveloped the entire system in an obscurity which another and a greater thinker undertook to dissipate. It has been said before, and with such wisdom that the saying will bear repetition, that revolu- tions are created, not by the strength of an idea, but by the intensity of a sentiment. In great crises there is a formula that all await ; so soon as it is pronounced, it is accepted and repeated ; it is the answer to an universal demand. Toward 14 The Anatomy of Negation. the close of the sixth century before the present era, at Kapilavastu, a city and kingdom situated at the foot of the mountains of Nepal, a prince of the blood, after prolonged meditations on the misfortunes of life, pronounced a watchword of this description. The name of this early Muhammad was Sid- dartha. He was the heir of the royal house of Sakya, and in later years, in remembrance of his origin, he was called Sakya-Muni, Sakya the An- chorite, to which was added the title of Buddha, the Sage. The accounts of his life are contained in the Lalita Vistara, a collection of fabulous epi- sodes in which the supernatural joins hands with matter-of-fact. It is said, for instance, that he was born of an immaculate conception, and died of an indigestion of pork. Apart from the myth- ical element, his life does not appear to have been different from that of other religious reformers, save only that he is supposed to have been born in a palace instead of a hovel. To his twenty- ninth year Siddartha is represented as living at court, surrounded by all the barbaric ease and gorgeousness of the Ind. Yet even in his youth his mind appears to have been haunted by great thoughts. He took no part in the sports of his companions, and was accustomed, it is said, to wander away into the solitudes of bamboo, and there to linger, lost in meditation. In the course of time he was married to a beautiful girl, but even in her fair arms his thoughts were occupied with the destinies of the w^orld. During the succeeding festivals and rev- The Revolt of the Orient. i^ els, amid the luxury of the palace and the en- ticements of love, he meditated on the miseries of life. In Brahmanism he found no consolation. At its grotesqueness he too smiled, but his smile was nearer to tears than to laughter. The melan- choly residue of his reflections was with him even in dream, and one night — so runs the legend — he was encouraged in a vision to teach man- kind a law which should save the world and es- tablish the foundation of an eternal and universal rest. A combination of fortuitous circumstances, the play of the merest hazard, appears to have strengthened the effect of this vision. On the high-roads about Kapilavastu he encountered a man bent double with age, another stricken by fever, and lastly a corpse. " A curse," he cried, " on youth that age must overcome ; a curse on health that illness destroys ; a curse on life which death interrupts ! Age, illness, death, could they but be forever enchained ! " Soon after, he dis- appeared, and seeking the jungles, which at that time were peopled with thinkers of ken, he devoted himself to the elaboration of his thoughts. It was there that he seems to have acquired some acquaintance with the philosophy of Kapila. He divined its significance and saw its insufficiency. Thereafter for six years he gave himself up to austerities so severe that, in the naive language of the legend, they startled even the gods. These six years are said to have been passed at Ouru- vilva, a place as famous in Buddhist annals as Kapilavastu. In this retreat he arranged the J 6 The Anatomy of Negation. principles of his system, and perfected the laws and ethics which were to be its accompaniment. Yet still the immutable truth that was to save the world escaped him. A little longer he waited and struggled. The Spirit of Sin, with all his seductive cohorts, appeared before him. The cohorts were routed and the Spirit overcome ; the struggle was ended ; and under a Bodhi-tree which is still shown to the pilgrim, Siddartha caught the immutable truth, and thereupon pre- sented himself as a saviour to his fellows. Such is the popular legend. Its main incidents have been recently and most felicitously conveyed in The Light of Asia. As a literary contribution, Mr. Arnold's poem is simply charming ; as a page of history, it has the value of a zero from which the formative circle has been eliminated. The kingdom of Kapilavastu, or rather Kapila- vatthu, was an insignificant hamlet. The Buddah's father was a petty chieftain, the raja of a handful of ignorant savages. Palaces he had none ; his wealth was his strength ; and could his concubine be recalled to life, she would, had she any sense of humor, which is doubtful, be vastly amused at finding that she had been given a role in the solar myth. There can, however, be no doubt that the Buddha really lived. His existence is as well established as that of the Christ. To precisely what an extent he was a visionary is necessarily difficult of conjecture. Yet unless all belief in him be refused, it seems almost obligatory to assume that after years of reflection he considered The Revolt of the Orient. ly himself in possession of absolute knowledge. The truth which he then began to preach was not a doctrine that he held as personal and peculiar to himself, but rather an eternal and changeless law which had been proclaimed from age to age by other Buddhas, of whom he fancied himself the successor. To speak comparatively, it is only with recent years that the attention of Western students has been attracted to Buddhist literature. To-day, however,. thanks to translations from the Pali and kindred tongues, it is possible for any one to study the doctrine from the sacred books themselves. There are verses in the Vedas which when recited are said to charm the birds and beasts. Com- pared with them, the Buddhist Gospels are often lacking in beauty. To be the better understood, the priests, who addressed themselves not to in- itiates but to the masses, employed a language that was simple and familiar. There are in con- sequence many repetitions and trivial digressions, but there are also parables of such exquisite color, that in them one may feel the influence of a bluer sky than ours, the odor of groves of san- dal, the green abysses of the Himalayas, and the gem-like splendor of white Thibetian stars. The Buddha believed neither in a personal nor an impersonal God. The world he compared to a wheel turning ceaselessly on itself. Of Brah- man tenets he preserved but one, that of the im- medicable misery of life. But the doctrine which he taught may perhaps best be summarized as restmg on three great principles-Karma, Arahat- 2 1 8 The Anatomy of Negation. ship and Nirvana. When these principles are understood, the mysteries of the creed are dis- solved, and the need of esoteric teaching dimin- ished. It may be noted, by way of proem, that the theory of the transmigration of souls is not ad- vanced in the Vedas. It is a part of Brahman teaching, but Brahmanism and Vedaism are not the same. The Vedas are claimed as the out- come of direct revelation, while all that part of post-Vedic literature in which Brahmanism is enveloped is held to be purely traditional. The origin of the theory of the transmigration is in- discoverable, but it is one which has been shared by many apparently unrelated races. It was a part of the creed of the Druids ; the Australian savage, as well as some of the American abori- gines, held to the same idea ; thinkers in Egypt and in Greece advanced identical tenets ; it is alluded to in the Talmud, and hinted at in the Gospel which bears the name of St. John. Pos- sibly it was held by the pre-Aryan inhabitants of India, and in that case it is equally possible that it was through them that the doctrine descended into Brahmanism. But whether or not its en- graftment came about in this way is relatively a matter of small moment. The important point to be observed is that it was not received by the Buddhists. The popular idea to the contrary is erroneous. Spinoza noted that there is in every man a feeling that he has been what he is from all eter- nity, and this feeling has not left the Buddhist un- The Revolt of the Orient. i(p affected. But between such a sentiment and a belief in transmigration the margin is wide. The popular error in which the two are confused has presumably risen from a misunderstanding of the laws of Karma and Vipaka, the laws of cause and affect. The difference therein discov- erable amounts in brief to this : in the theory of transmigration the soul is held to be eternal ; in Buddhism the existence of the soul is denied. In the one, the ego resurrects through cycles of unremembered lives : in the other, nothing sur- vives save the fruit of its actions. In the one, every man is his own heir and his own ancestor ; in the other, the deeds of the ancestor are con- centrated in a new individual. In each there is a chain of existences, but in the one they are material, in the other they are moral. One maintains the migration of an essence, the other the results of causality ; one has no evidence to support it, the other accords with the law of the indistructibility of force. One is metempsy- chosis, the other palingenesis ; one is beautiful, and the other awkward ; but one is a theory, and the other a fact. From this chain the Hindu knew no mode of relief. Prior to the Buddha's advent, there was an unquestioned belief that man and all that en- compasses him rolled through an eternal circle of transformation ; that he passed through all the forms of life, from the most elementary to the most perfect ; that the place which he occupied depended on his merits or demerits ; that the vir- tuous revived in a divine sphere, while the wicked 20 The Aiiatomy of Negation. descended to a yet darker purgatory ; that the recompense of the blessed and the punishment of the damned were of a duration which was limited ; that time effaced the merit of virtue as well as the demerit of sin ; and that the law of transmigration brought back again to earth both the just and the unjust, and threw them anew into a fresh cycle of terrestrial existences, from which they could fight free as best they might. When the Buddha began to teach, he endeav- vored to bring his new theories into harmony with old doctrines. Throughout life, man, he taught, is enmeshed in a web whose woof was woven in preceding ages. The misfortunes that he endured are not the consequences of his im- mediate actions ; they are drafts which have been drawn upon him in earlier days — drafts which he still must honor, and against which he can plead no statute of limitations. Karma pursues him in this life, and unless he learns its relentless code by heart, the fruit of his years is caught up by revolving chains, and tossed back into the life of another. How this occurred, or why it occurred, is explainable only by a cumbersome process from which the reader may well be spared ; and it may for the moment suffice to note that while the Buddha agreed with the Brahmans that life formed a chain of existences, it was the former who brought the hope that the chain might be severed. The means to the accomplishment of this end consist in a victory over the lusts of the flesh, the desire for life and the veils of illusion. When The Revolt of the Orient. 21 these have been vanquished, the Arahat, the victor, attains Nirvana. Nirvana, or Nibbana as it stands in the Pali, is not a paradise, nor yet a state of post-mortem trance. It is the extinction of all desire, the triple victory of the Arahat, which precedes the great goal, eternal death. The fruits of earlier sins remain, but they are impermanent and soon pass away. Nothing is left from which another sentient being can be called into existence. The Arahat no longer lives ; he has reached Para Nirvana, the complete absence of anything, that can be likened only to the flame of a lamp which a gust of wind has extinguished. The Buddha wrote nothing. It was his dis- ciples who, in councils that occurred after his death, collected and arranged the lessons of their master. In these synods the canon of sacred scripture was determined. It consisted of three divisions, called the Tri-pitaka, or Three Baskets, and contained the Suttas, the discourses, of the Buddha — the Dharmas, the duties enjoined on the masses — and lastly the Vinayas, the rules of discipline. The Dharmas contain the four truths whose discovery is credited to the Buddha. The first is that suffering is the concomitant of life. The second, that suffering is the resultant of desire. The third, that relief from suffering is obtained in the suppression of desire. And fourth, that Nirvana, which succeeds the suppression of de- sire, is attainable only through certain paths. These paths are eight in number ; four of which 22 The Anatomy of Negation. — correctness in deed, word, thought and sight — were recommended to all men ; the remainder — the paths of application, memory, meditation and proper life — being reserved for the eremites. For the use of the faithful, the four truths have been condensed in a phrase : " Abstain from sin, practice virtue, dominate the flesh — such is the law of the Buddha." The recognition of the four truths and the observance of the eight virtues are obligatory to all who wish to reach Nirvana. The neophyte renounces the world and lives a mendicant. Yet inasmuch as a society of saints is difficult to perpetuate, members are admitted from whom the usual vows of continence and poverty are not exacted. The charm of primitive Buddhism was in its simplicity. The faithful assembled for meditation and not for parade. The practice of morality needed no forms and fewer ceremonies. But with time it was thought well to make some con- cession to popular superstitions ; and although the Buddha had no idea of representing himself as a divinity, every moral and physical perfection was attributed to him. The rest was easy. Idol- atry had begun. To the right and left of a saint elevated to the rank of God Supreme, a glowing Pantheon was formed of the Buddhas that had preceded him. A meaningless worship was estab- lished ; virtues were subordinated to ceremonies ; and to-day before a gilded statue a wheel of prayers is turned, while through the dim temples, domed like a vase, the initiates murmur, " Life is evil.'- The Revolt of the Orient. 23 In attempting to convert the multitude, the Buddha made no use of vulgarseductions. From him came no flattery to the passions. The rec- ompense that he promised was not of the earth nor material in its nature. To his believers he offered neither wealth nor power. The psychic force, the seemingly supernatural faculties, that knowledge and virtue brought to those who had reached superior degrees of sanctity, were shared by the Brahmans as well ; they were an appa- nage, not a bait. The one reward of untiring ef- forts was an eternal ransom from the successive horrors of Karma, The paradise which he dis- closed was the death of Death, In it all things ceased to be. It was the ultimate annihilation from which life was never to be re-beckoned. It is not surprising that the captivating quiet of a goal such as this should forcibly appeal to the inclinations of the ascetic ; the wonder of it is that it could be regarded for a moment as at- tractive to the coarse appetites of the crowd. Nor does it seem that the Christ of Chaos made this mistake. It was the after-comers who under- took to lift the commonplace out of the humdrum. The Buddha's hope of the salvation of all man- kind was a dream extending into the indefinite future ; the theory of immediate emancipation was never shared by him. For the plain man, he laid down a law which was a law of grace for all, that of universal brotherhood. If its practice was insufficient to lead him to Nirvana, it was still a preparation thereto, a paving of the way for the travellers that were yet to come. 24 The Anatomy of Negation. The method which he employed to convert his hearers seems to have been a tender persuasion, in which there was no trace of the dogmatic. He did not contend against strength, he appealed to weakness, varying the insinuations of his para- bles according to the nature of the listener, and charming even the recalcitrant by the simplicity and flavor of his words. In these, lessons there were no warnings, no detached maledictions ; but there were exhortations to virtue, and pictures of the sweet and sudden silence of eternal rest. His struggle was never with creeds, but with man, with the flesh and its appetites ; and from the memory of his victorious combat with himself there came to him precepts and maxims of in- comparable delicacy and beauty, The§e were his weapons. His teaching was a lesson of infi- nite tenderness and compassion ; it was a lesson of patience and resignation and abnegation of self, and especially of humility, which in its re- nouncement of temporal splendors opens the path to the magnificence of death. In the ears of not a few modern thinkers, this promise of annihilation has sounded like a gigan- tic paradox. It has seemed inconceivable that men could be found who would strive unremit- tingly their whole lives through to reach a goal where nothing was. And yet there were many such, and, what is more to the point, their number is constantly increasing. On the other hand, it has been argued that to those who knew no prospect of supernal happiness and who had never heard of an eternity of bliss, the horror of The Revolt of the Orient. 25 life might be of such intensity that they would be glad of any release whatever. But the value of this argument is slight. The spectacle of a Bud- dhist converted to Christianity is the most infre- quent that has ever gladdened the heart of a missionary. Per contra, the number of those who turn from other creeds to that of Buddhism is notoriously large. The number of its converts, however, is not a proof of its perfections. And Buddhism is far from perfect : its fantastic shackles may be alluring to the mystic, but they are meaningless to the mathematician. It may be charming to hold a faith which has put pes- simism into verse, and raised that verse into some- thing more than literature ; but it is useless. The pleasure of utter extinction is one which we will probably all enjoy, and that too without first be- coming Arahats ; and yet, again, we may not. The veil of Maya is still unraised. The most we can do to lift it is to finger feebly at the edges. Sakya-Muni taught many an admirable lesson, but in his flights of fancy, like many another since, he transcended the limits of experience. Let those who love him follow. Charity is the New Testament told in a word. When it was preached on the Mount of Olives it must have brought with it the freshness and aroma of a new conception. Before that time, the Galileans had heard but of Justice and Jeho- vah ; then at once they knew of Christ and Com- passion ; and ever since the name and the virtue have gone hand-in-hand. And yet five hundred 26 The Anatomy of Negation. years before, a sermon on charity was preached in Nepal. The charity which Sal-ii/y Spray., Ashbury Park. •' A clever story." — Buffalo Ax2}ress. THE LONE GRAVE OP THE SHENANDOAH. By DoNN Piatt. 13mo. Cloth, $1.00. Paper, 50 cents. Donn Piatt never wrote an uninteresting line in his long life. This book contains hie best stories ; ( ach one shows the character of the author— that of a true, loving, and lovable man Any man with such a vast and varied experience as that of Col. 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