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vol. title: Vol Four of The Theosophical Society of The Arya Samaj of Arya-wart vol. period: Sept 1878 – Sept 1879 pages in vol.: 350 |
< Religion in India (continued from page 8-215) >
many objections to answer, some of taste, some of philosophical prejudice, some perhaps of religious feeling . . . . . Here in India, at all events, the conditions of truth are plain enough. In the fight which the educated Hindu, with the Christian missionary, wage against error, such success as has been gained, such as will be gained, evidently depends on physical knowledge . . . . . Unchecked by external truth the mind of man has a fatal facility for ensnaring and entrapping, and entangling itself. But happily, happily for the human race, some fragment of physical speculation has been built into every false system. Here is the weak point. Its inevitable destruction leaves a breach in the whole fabric, and through that breach the armies of truth march in.”
So spoke Sir Henry Sumner Maine to the Senate and members of the University of Calcutta when addressing them as Vice-Chancellor on the 11th of March 1865. Bishop Cotton and Archdeacon Pratt, both distinguished scholars and champions of orthodoxy, were present; and the eloquent jurist may have felt restrained. But the meaning that was latent in the words above quoted scarcely requires, now, the developing sentences which follow shortly after. Before sitting down Sir Henry plainly told the company that the fact, “that the methods of physical science are proving to be applicable to fields of thought where they once had no place is in itself an indication that all truth will, at some time be shown to be one and indivisible.” Some, he added, might think of the intellect as of an universal solvent before whose action all that was holy and beautiful would melt away. But for his part he felt sure that no knowledge would endure “that did not ring true when sounded by the intellect.” For him, therefore, this vilipended organ “was all-creating and all-renewing” the only known instruments of all material, moral and religious improvement. Truth is real and certain, but truth is at the same time infinite. “The progress of knowledge leads to the very frame of mind to which some have thought it fatal, not only to certainty, but to reverence.”
In order that such aspirations should be gradually fulfilled, let us summon the concurrent labour of all who are in any way connected with the education of the people of India. Their fulfilment will be a gain to the cause of religion. Worship and reverence are eternal needs of man which objective knowledge can neither satisfy nor destroy. The thoughts of the brain and the emotions of the blood may attract or repel each other with rhythmic force, but the end of all polarity is equilibrium. The poetry of nature will surely crystallise into religion,
Note.—“The argument (from Design) is not one of mere analogy. As mere analogy it has its weight, but it is more than analogy. It surpasses analogy exactly as induction surpasses it. It is an inductive argument . . . . . I think it must be allowed that in the present state of our knowledge the adaptations in nature afford a large balance of probability in favour of creation by intelligence . . . . . Whatever ground there is, revelation apart, to believe in an author of nature is derived from the appearances in the universe . . . . .” (Nature, &c., argument for a first cause 170, ff.)
These words appear to justify the statement in the text. But they are subject to two qualifications:
1. On the one hand Mr. Mill did not write them at a time when the doctrine of Evolution had been so generally accepted as is now the case. The essays in which they occur were composed between 1868 and 1870 as we learn from the preface; and the author expressly reserved that part of the subject which many persons, ten years later, would consider a most undoubted essential.
2. Mr. Mill, in a later part of his own speculations, limited his view of the First Cause as taught by induction. He was led by the difficulties presented in the Kosmos to argue that if God was good he could not be omnipotent.
The present paper does not profess to be a lesson from Mill, and his authority—clarum et venerabile nomen—has only been here invoked to show that logic and something very like positivism were not sufficient to drive the idea of a great unknowable (latent) author of Kosmos from the mind of him who had less of a priori disposition than most modern thinkers.
But it is of course possible to go a good deal further than this. If evolution should prove to be a sufficient explanation of the causation of existing phenomena (as they exist, that is, in our consciousness) it may appear that we cannot judge of God’s goodness or power by human standards at all; and that He is not only the source of all possible power, but also is such a Being that all that he does is good, absolutely if not relatively to us. The difficulty lies in conceiving that phenomena which are relative to man, can give indications of a law that is not so. Yet this is to all seeming, man’s best hope. “If history be true it must teach that which every other science teaches, continuous sequence, inflexible order and eternal law.” (Maine ut sup.) A good deal of this difficulty, however, will disappear if men can only apprehend the fact that they are but transient and infinitesimal organisms in a boundless whole. “When I consider the Heavens the work of thine hands what is man that thou regardest him?” the sons of Shem had this thought so long ago!
* P. S.—The following extract is taken from a manifesto, dated New York, 1878, and shows the way in which the development Vaishnavism by Daya Nand Sarasuti is received by the “Theosophists” in the United States:—
“The agitation of modern thought has already paved the way for a calm and impartial examination of Oriental religious philosophy, and the acceptance of its inherent truths. The time appearing auspicious, the Theosophical Society has affiliated with the great and noble brotherhood of the Arya Samaj, in whose membership are included many of the best minds and the profoundest scholars among the Hindus, and has established a Vedic Section. Its members are already at work founding schools, delivering lectures, holding public assemblages, translating the Vedas, the Saddharshana Chintanika (or six schools of Indian philosophy), &c., publishing newspapers and otherwise carrying on an active crusade against idolatry and superstition in whatever creed or country they may be found. Admitted to fraternal co-operation in this holy work, the Theosophical Society, in behalf of the Arya Samaj, appeals for the zealous support of its fellows, and the good-will of every lover of truth and virtue and enemy of ecclesiastical tyranny.”
A barouche containing two natives, apparently Bombay Brahmans and a lady and gentleman of “forbidding” aspect, have been seen of late driving morning and evening through several of the large stations of upper India. The occupants thereof are closely watched by the Police; in fact a European officer is seen, and it is said to their knowledge and intense disgust, to dodge their steps with persistent accuracy; following them on the high way and the iron way.
The female party appears to take the lead, and at Meerut, the other day, delivered herself in the open air, of an oration. She declared herself from America, but her bad English shewed no trace of Yankee twang. But incidentally she said that although from America she was not of America, but of Russia! The burden of her speech was the insufficiency of all religious systems which had come under her notice to meet the demands of a progressive age; and she now seeks her desideratum in the creeds of Hindostan. She was at Agra with her party on Friday the 9th and it is said that surveillance is so displeasing to the company that they, at once, intend turning their steps to Bombay, whence they set out, but a short time since. It is assuring to know that the police have acted, with readiness—in one case, at least.
May 10>
Chops and Tomato Sauce
Sir,—Recent experience has brought to my mind a story that I heard in America and that is worth repeating. A staid and ordinarily sagacious Newfoundland dog, given to the chase of ‘woodchucks’ and often successful, was observed by his master’s family, one morning, to have important business on hand. Planted before a fallen tree, he was standing motionless and eager. A slight twitching of his cocked ears alone betrayed the intense nervous excitement that had seized him. Great developments must soon be forthcoming, so the whole family gathered quietly about to see the fun. His nose was within six inches of what seemed but a shallow cavity in a knot on the tree-trunk, but his air was so business-like that the witnesses tacitly agreed that he must know better than they what he was about, and so all waited patiently for the denouement. They waited long. No sign of the merest tip of a woodchuck’s tail could be seen, but still the dog pointed and stood guard. It seemed to grow monotonous even to him at last, for he now and again leaped to the other side of the tree, with a short whining bark, and leaped back again as though he feared his game might escape him. Now he thrust his muzzle into the very hole, and bit its edges, and scratched the place with vexatious impatience. An hour or two passed and the game was still uncaught. At last he seemed to realize the situation—he had been hunting an illusion; his fond hopes for woodchuck tiffin were blighted, and with a last glance at the long-guarded spot, his tail, in disgust, went between his legs, and he trotted off to the house with an air that said, as plainly as the dog telegraph could speak, that there was no hole and no woodchuck; if there had ever been, the woodchuck must have passed through to the other side and pulled the hole in after him!
The Government has been hunting after the Theosophical woodchuck. It finds neither animal nor hole. It cast ‘about’ at Bombay, yelped on the scent to Allahabad, Agra, Bhurtpore and Joypur, tried back to Agra, ‘broke into full cry’ at Saharunpore, ran it to earth at Meerut, and followed it back to Bombay, where it lost it finally at the door of the American Consulate. Not a bird, a pug, a mask, or even a bunch of hair rewards its diligence and its heavy pecuniary outlay. It was a false scent; and the gentlemanly officer with the love of a “tawny moustache,” his thick-set companion, and the sinister Mussulman spy, who strengthens without adorning their party, repose after their dusty hunt of 3,000 miles after our committee, which is just back from the N. W. P.
By the bye, we Theosophists are perfectly willing that Government should read all our letters, but really we would like to have them to read ourselves after it has done with them. Instead of our scalps, the police braves can show as trophies copies of the addresses of our letters, and they must needs have also the contents of interrupted correspondence with relatives and friends. … letters from Ceylon and London forwarded from Bombay under one cover to me, to the Allahabad post office, by Miss Bates—our English lady companion—have mysteriously disappeared without leaving a trace behind, and one written by Mr. Mooljee to his sick father never came to hand.
Among the literary relics of the trip an escort must have notes of their barren colloquies with our hosts and guests at various places where mares’ nests were believed to grow; and some precious reports by an uneducated Mussulman detective of lectures and debates upon Prakrit and Purash, Vedantism, molecular divisibility, the esoteric doctrine of the cycles, and the relation between nature and Maya!
Possibly—since, after the usual fashion of political conspirators, I may <never> look up my papers—they may have taken copies of an incendiary circular letter from the American Secretary of State (whose office corresponds to that of your Lord Beaconsfield) introducing me to all of our diplomatic and consular officers, or of this far more seditious one from the President of the United States himself:
“Executive Mansion Washington, Dec. 16, 1878.
To U. S. Ministers and Consuls.
“Gentlemen,—Col. H. S. Olcott, of New York City, has been requested by the Honorable Secretary of State, during his projected trip to the East, to make reports from time to time regarding the condition and prospects of commerce between the United States and India.
“Any facility that you may properly extend to him in the furtherance of this object will be duly accepted as entirely in accord with the general policy of this Government in promoting our trade with foreign countries.
R. B. Hayes.”
The chops and tomato sauce of that fell plotter against female weakness, Mr. Pickwick, were nothing to what the police reports of this trip must be.
Pray do not fancy me a carper. What could the police do? Here was a quartette straight from America, that ambitious country which has so long dreamt of possessing India; that traditional rival of England and foe of constitutional liberty, and with no tie of consanguinity to restrain it; what more likely then that they had come to incite the natives to dacoitism? True, two of the four were English born, British subjects and rabid patriots, but so much the more cause for suspicion. Was not Cromwell an Englishman? One of them was an American Colonel of course he must have come to make sketches of the mud fortifications of Rajputana. Another, though an American citizen, with regular papers proving that since 1873 she had been living at New York, and engaged in literary work, was born in the Caucasus; hence, must be a secret agent of Kauffmann. Nothing could be clearer than that this party of four, while assuming the appearance of crack-brained religious and scientific enthusiasts, were really the emissaries of somebody who dreamed of overthrowing British rule, and of placing Irish Kings on the thrones of Aurungzebe and Tippoo Sultan! The Indian imperial treasury was bursting with the surplus of the famine fund, and the paper notes moulding in piles for lack of something to spend them upon; what better use for them than to send a strong party of analytical observers, in first class carriages, to watch and smell after so malignant an enemy?
So off we go, on Good Friday last, we and our escort; we, bound to see the country and the Swamee, Dya Nana Saraswati, Supreme Chief of our Vedic branch; they, Society, they, bound to find out what we thought of things in general. The Mussulman in the blue turban goes into the third class to pump our servant about what we eat, when we eat, how we like it, what are our means, where we got them, and at what station we will stop next. Ouida’s hero, with the yellow moustache, and the other chap take the compartment adjoining ours, where they can catch through the partition what we may say about Guy Fawkes of glorious memory, and how our darling little Nana Sahib and Tantia Topee are cutting their teeth preparatory to cutting throats, later on. We stop at Allahabad.—“Memo: party stop at one of the most disloyal cities of India: breakfast—coffee, toast, two boiled eggs, each. Happy thought: what connection do the Theosophists see between the hatching of an egg and hatching a conspiracy? Must ask S.. F.. S. . . . about this. Tiffin at 12—curry, bread, chops, tea—(party drink no liquor—suspicious, very—must mean to cheat the Government out of customs revenue); baths; drive out, p.m., to banks of Ganges and pretend to confer with a blind old buffer of a Sannyassi, who has sat there 50 or 150 years, and give him money. Memo: send Mussulman to disembowel him and ascertain whether by “Atma” and “Jivatma” he meant Sepoy Rebellion. 6 o’clock, the Mogul reports that apparently “Atma” means something to eat. Nothing in this, after all; took some pegs, and when the party went to bed watched their shoes all night for letters.”
I give these excerpts (obtained by magical means known to every Theosophist) as specimen bricks; judge what richness you will find in the entire official narrative of our whole trip to Rajputana, back to Agra, and then up to Saharunpore and Meerut, and back home again.
But pardon the levity, Sir, of one who, but for his being a miserable admirer of Eastern literature and on social visiting terms with Eastern people, would know better. I must be dazed, and you will excuse me. An American of a trans-Atlantic ancestral line that stretches back two centuries and a-half, familiar with English history and the provisions of Magna Charta, the President of a religio-scientific (not politico-religious) Society, no fellow of which has or ever had, so far as I know, any active interest in anybody’s politics, I fancied that law-<... continues on page 8-217 >
Editor's notes