Читать книгу An Introduction to the Study of Comparative Religion - F. B. Jevons - Страница 12

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Of the many things that fill a visitor from the old country with admiration, on his first visit to the United States, that which arrests his attention most frequently, is the extent and success with which science is applied to practical purposes. And it is beginning to dawn upon me that in the United States it is not only pure science which is thus practically applied—the pure sciences of mechanics, physics, mathematics—but that the historic sciences also are expected to justify themselves by their practical application; and that amongst the historic sciences not even the science of religion is exempted from the common lot. It also may be useful; and had better be so—if any one is to have any use for it. It must make itself useful to the man who has practical need of its results and wishes to apply them—the missionary. He it is who, for the practical purposes of the work to which he is called, requires an applied science of religion; and Hartford Theological Seminary may, I believe, justly claim to be the first institution in the world which has deliberately and consciously set to work to create by the courses of lectures, of which this series is the very humble beginning, an applied science of religion.

How, then, will the applied science differ from the pure science of religion? In one way it will not differ: an applied science does not sit in judgment upon the pure science on which it is based; it accepts the truths which the pure science presents to all the world, and bases itself upon them. The business of pure science is to discover facts; that of the applied science is to use them. The business of the science of religion is to discover all the facts necessary if we are to understand the growth and history of religion. The business of the applied science is, in our case, to use the discovered facts as a means of showing that Christianity is the highest manifestation of the religious spirit.

In dealing with the applied science, then, we recover a liberty which the pure science does not enjoy. The science of religion is a historic science. Its student looks back upon the past; and looks back upon it with a single purpose, that of discovering what, as a matter of fact, did happen, what was the order in which the events occurred. In so looking back he may, and does, see many things which he could wish had not occurred; but he has no power to alter them; he has no choice but to record them; and his duty, his single duty, is to ascertain the historic facts and to establish the historic truth. With the applied science the case is very different. There the student sets his face to the future, no longer to the past. The truths of pure science are the weapons placed in his hand with which he is to conquer the world. It is in the faith that the armour provided him by science is sure and will not fail him that he addresses himself to his chosen work. The implements are set in his hands. The liberty is his to employ them for what end he will. That liberty is a consequence of the fact that the student's object no longer is to ascertain the past, but to make the future.

The business of the pure science is to ascertain the facts and state the truth. To what use the facts and truth are afterwards put, is a question with which the pure science has nothing to do. The same facts may be put to very different uses: from the same facts very different conclusions may be drawn. The facts which the science of religion establishes may be used and are used for different and for contradictory purposes. The man who is agnostic or atheist uses them to support his atheism or agnosticism; or even, if he is so unwise, to prove it. The man who has religion is equally at liberty to use them in his support; and if he rarely does that, at any rate he still more rarely commits the mistake of imagining that the science of religion proves the truth of his particular views on the subject of religion. Indeed, his tendency is rather in the opposite direction: he is unreasonably uneasy and apt to have a disquieting alarm lest the science of religion may really be a danger to religion. This alarm may very naturally arise when he discovers that to the scientific student one religion is as another, and the question is indifferent whether there is any truth in any form. It is very easy to jump from these facts to the erroneous conclusion that science of religion is wholly incompatible with religious belief. And of course it is quite human and perfectly intelligible that that conclusion should be proclaimed aloud as correct and inevitable by the man who, being an atheist, fights for what he feels to be the truth.

We must, therefore, once more insist upon the simple fact that science of religion abstains necessarily from assuming either that religion is true or is not true. What it does assume is what no one will deny, viz. that religion is a fact. Religious beliefs may be right or they may be wrong: but they exist. Therefore they can be studied, described, classified, placed in order of development, and treated as a branch of sociology and as one department of the evolution of the world. And all this can be done without once asking the question whether religious belief is true and right and good, or not. Whether it is pronounced true or false by you or me, will not in the least shake the fact that it has existed for thousands of years, that it has had a history during that period, and that that history may be written. We may have doubts whether the institution of private property is a good thing, or whether barter and exchange are desirable proceedings. But we shall not doubt that private property exists or that it may be exchanged. And we shall not imagine that the science of political economy, which deals, among other things with the production and exchange of wealth which is private property, makes any pronouncement whatever on the question whether private property is or is not an institution which we ought to support and believe in. The conclusions established by the science of political economy are set forth before the whole world; and men may use them for what purpose they will. They may and do draw very different inferences from them, even contradictory inferences. But if they do, it is because they use them for different ends or contradictory purposes. And the fact that the communist or socialist uses political economy to support his views no more proves that socialism is the logical consequence of political economy than the fact that the atheist uses or misuses, for his own purposes, the conclusions of the science of religion proves his inferences to be the logical outcome of the science.

The science of religion deals essentially with the one fact that religion has existed and does exist. It is from that fact that the missionary will start; and it is with men who do not question the fact that he will have to do. The science of religion seeks to trace the historic growth, the evolution of religion; to establish what actually was, not to judge what ought to have been—science knows no "ought," in that sense or rather in that tense, the past tense. Its work is done, its last word has been said, when it has demonstrated what was. It is the heart which sighs to think what might have been, and which puts on it a higher value than it does on what actually came to pass. There is then another order in which facts may be ranged besides the chronological order in which historically they occurred; and that is the order of their value. It is an order in which we do range facts, whenever we criticise them. It is the order in which we range them, whenever we pass judgment on them. Or, rather, passing judgment on them is placing them in the order of their value. And the chronological order of their occurrence is quite a different thing from the order in which we rank them when we judge them according to their value and importance. It is, or rather it would be, quite absurd to say, in the case of literature, or art, for instance, that the two orders are identical. There it is obvious and universally admitted that one period may reach a higher level than another which in point of time is later. The classical period is followed by a post-classical period; culmination is followed by decline. Now, this difference in point of the literary or artistic value of two periods is as real and as fundamental as the time order or chronological relation of the two periods. It would be patently ridiculous for any ardent maintainer of the importance of distinguishing between good literature and bad, good art and bad art, to say that the one period, being good, must have been chronologically prior to the other, because, from the point of art, it was better than that other. Every one can see that. The chronological order, the historic order, is one thing; the order of literary value or artistic importance is another. But if this is granted, and every one will grant it, then it is also, and thereby, granted that the historic order of events is not the same thing as the order of their value, and is no guide to it. Thus far I have illustrated these remarks by reference to literary and artistic values. But I need hardly say that I have been thinking really all the time of religious values. If the student of literature or of art surveys the history of art and literature with the purpose of judging the value of the works produced, the student of religion may and must survey the history of religion with the same purpose. If the one student is entitled, as he justly is entitled, to say that the difference between the literary or artistic value of two periods is as real and as fundamental as is their difference in the order of time, then the student of religion is claiming no exceptional or suspicious privilege for himself. He is claiming no privilege at all; he is but exercising the common rights of all students like himself, when he points out that differences in religious values are just as real and just as fundamental as the historic or chronological order itself.

The assignment of values, then—be it the assignment of the value of works of art, literature, or religion—is a proceeding which is not only possible (as will be somewhat contemptuously admitted by those who believe that evolution is progress, and that there is no order of value distinct from the order of history and chronological succession); the assignment of value is not only permissible (as may be admitted by those who believe, or for want of thought fancy they believe, that the historic order of events is the only order which can really exist), it is absolutely inevitable. It is the concomitant or rather an integral part of every act of perception. Everything that we perceive is either dismissed from attention because it is judged at the moment to have no value, or, if it has value, attention is concentrated upon it.

From this point of view, then, it should be clear that there is some deficiency in such a science as the science of religion, which, by the very conditions that determine its existence, is precluded from ever raising the question of the value of any of the religions with which it deals. Why does it voluntarily, deliberately, and of its own accord, rigidly exclude the question whether religions have any value—whether religion itself has any value? One answer there is to that question which once would have been accepted as conclusive, viz. that the object of science is truth. That answer delicately implies that whether religion has any value is an enquiry to which no truthful answer can be given. The object of science is truth; therefore science alone, with all modesty be it said, can attain truth. Science will not ask the question—or, when it is merciful, abstains from asking the question—whether religion is true. So the reasonable and truthful man must, on that point, necessarily be agnostic: whether religion is true, he does not know.

This train of inferences follows—so far as it is permitted illogical inferences to follow at all—from the premise that the object of science is truth. Or, rather, it follows from that premise as we should now understand it, viz. that the object of historic science is historic truth. That is the object of the science of religion—to be true to the historic facts, to discover and to state them accurately. On the principle of the division of labour, or on the principle of taking one thing at a time, it is obviously wise that when we are endeavouring to discover the historic sequence of events, we should confine ourselves to that task and not suffer ourselves to be distracted and diverted by other and totally different considerations. The science of religion, therefore, is justified, in the opinion of all who are entitled to express an opinion, in steadfastly declining to consider any other point than the historic order of the facts with which it deals. But in so declining to go beyond its self-appointed task of reconstituting the historic order of events and tracing the evolution of religion, it does not, thereby, imply that it is impossible to place them, or correctly place them, in their order of value. To say that they have no value would be just as absurd as to say that works of literature or art have no literary or artistic value. To say that it is difficult to assign their value may be true, but is no argument against, it is rather a stimulus in favour of, making the attempt. And it is just the order value, the relative value, of forms of religion which is of absorbing interest to missionaries. It is a valuation which is essential to what I have already designated as the applied science of religion. Thus far in speaking of the distinction between the historic order in which the various forms of art, literature, and religion have occurred, and the order of value in which the soul of every man who is sensible either to art or to literature or to religion instinctively attempts to place them, I have necessarily assumed the position of one who looks backward over the past. It was impossible to compare and contrast the order value with the historic order, save by doing so. It was necessary to point out that the very same facts which can be arranged chronologically and in the order of their evolution can also be—and, as a matter of fact, by every man are—arranged more or less roughly, more or less correctly, or incorrectly, in the order of their value. It is now necessary for us to set our faces towards the future. I say "necessary" for the simple reason that the idea of "value" carries with it a reference to the future. If a thing has value, it is because we judge that it may produce some effect and serve some purpose which we foresee, or at least surmise. If, on looking back upon past history, we pronounce that an event had value, we do so because we see that it served, or might have served, some end of which we approve. Its value is relative in our eyes to some end or purpose which was relatively future to it. The objects which we aim at, the ends after which we strive, are in the future. Those things have value which may subserve our ends and help us to attain our purposes. And our purposes, our ends, and objects are in the future. There, there is hope and freedom, room to work, the chance of remedying the errors of the past, the opportunity to make some forward strides and to help others on.

It is the end we aim at, the object we strive for, the ideal we set before us, that gives value to what we do, and to what has been done by us and others. Now our ends, our objects, and our ideals are matters of the will, on which the will is set, and not merely matters of which we have intellectual apprehension. They are not past events but future possibilities. The conviction that we can attain them or attain toward them is not, when stated as a proposition, a proposition that can be proved, as a statement referring to the past may be proved: but it is a conviction which we hold, or a conviction which holds us, just as strongly as any conviction that we have about any past event of history. The whole action of mankind, every action that every man performs, is based upon that conviction. It is the basis of all that we do, of everything that is and has been done by us and others. And it is Faith. In that sign alone can the world be conquered.

When, then, the man of religion proposes by faith to conquer the world, he is simply doing, wittingly and in full consciousness of what he is doing, that which every man does in his every action, even though he may not know it. To make it a sneer or a reproach that religion is a mere matter of faith; to imagine that there is any better, or indeed that there is any other, ground of action—is demonstrably unreasonable. The basis of such notions is, of course, the false idea that the man of sense acts upon knowledge, and that the man who acts on faith is not a sensible man. The error of such notions may be exposed in a sentence. What knowledge have we of the future? We have none. Absolutely none. We expect that nature will prove uniform, that causes will produce their effects. We believe the future will resemble, to some extent, the past. But we have no knowledge of the future; and such belief as we have about it, like all other belief—whether it be belief in religion or in science—is simply faith. When, then, the man of science consults the records of the past or the experiments of the present for guidance as to what will or may be, he is exhibiting his faith not in science, but in some reality, in some real being, in which is no shadow of turning. When the practical man uses the results of pure science for some practical end, he is taking them on faith and uses them in the further faith that the end he aims at can be realised, and shall by him be realised, if not in one way, then in another. The missionary, then, who uses the results of the science of religion, who seeks to benefit by an applied science of religion, is but following in the footsteps of the practical man, and using business methods toward the end he is going to realise.

The end he is going to realise is to convert men to Christianity. The faith in which he acts is that Christianity is the highest form which religion can take, the final form it shall take. As works of art or literature may be classed either according to order of history or order of value, so the works of the religious spirit may be classed, not only in chronological order, but also in order of religious value. I am not aware that any proof can be given to show that any given period of art or literature is better than any other. The merits of Shakespeare or of Homer may be pointed out; and they may, or they may not, when pointed out, be felt. If they are felt, no proof is needed; if they are not, no proof is possible. But they can be pointed out—by one who feels them. And they can be contrasted with the work of other poets in which they are less conspicuous. And the contrast may reveal the truth in a way in which otherwise it could never have been made plain.

I know no other way in which the relative values of different forms of religion can become known or be made known. You may have been tempted to reflect, whilst I have been speaking, that, on the principle I have laid down, there is no reason why there should not be five hundred applied sciences, or applications of the science, of religion, instead of one; for every one of the many forms of religion may claim to apply the science of religion to its own ends. To that I may reply first, that à priori you would expect that every nation would set up its own literature as the highest; but, as a matter of fact, you find Shakespeare generally placed highest amongst dramatists, Homer amongst epic poets. You do not find the conception of literary merit varying from nation to nation in such a way that there are as many standards of value as there are persons to apply them. You find that there tends to be one standard. Next, since the different forms of religion must be compared if their relative values are to be ascertained, the method of the applied science of religion must be the method of comparison. Whatever the outcome that is anticipated from the employment of the applied science, it is by the method of comparison that it must act. And one indication of genuine faith is readiness to employ that method, and assured confidence in the result of its employment. The missionary's life is the best, because the most concrete example of the practical working of the method of comparison; and the outcome of the comparison which is made by those amongst whom and for whom he works makes itself felt in their hearts, their lives, and sometimes in their conversion. It is the best example, because the value of a religion to be known must be felt. But though it is the best because it is the simplest, the most direct, and the most convincing it is not that which addresses itself primarily to the reason, and it is not one which is produced by the applied science of religion. It is not one which can be produced by any science, pure or applied. The object of the applied science of religion is to enable the missionary himself to compare forms of religion, incidentally in order that he may know what by faith he feels, and without faith he could not feel, viz. that Christianity is the highest form; but still more in order that he may teach others, and may have at his command the facts afforded by the science of religion, wherewith to appeal, when necessary, to the reason and intelligence as well as to the hearts and feelings of those for whose salvation he is labouring.

The time has happily gone by when the mere idea of comparing Christianity with any other religion would have been rejected with horror as treasonous and treacherous. The fact that that time has now gone by is in itself evidence of a stronger faith in Christianity. What, if it was not fear, at any rate presented the appearance of fear, has been banished; and we can and do, in the greater faith that has been vouchsafed to us, look with confidence on the proposal to compare Christianity with other religions. The truth cannot but gain thereby, and we rest on Him who is the way and the truth. We recognise fully and freely that comparison implies similarity, points of resemblance, ay! and even features of identity. And of that admission much has been made—and more than can be maintained. It has been pressed to mean that all forms of religion, from the lowest to the highest, are identical; that therefore there is nothing more or other in the highest than in the lowest; and that in the lowest you see how barbarous is religion and how unworthy of civilised man. Now, that course of argument is open to one obvious objection which would be fatal to it, even if it were the only objection, which it is not. That objection is that whether we are using the method of comparison for the purpose of estimating the relative values of different forms of religion; or whether we are using the comparative method of science, with the object of discovering and establishing facts, quite apart from the value they may have for any purpose they may be put to when they have been established; in either case, comparison is only applied, and can only be applied to things which, though they resemble one another, also differ from one another. It is because they differ, at first sight, that the discovery of their resemblance is important. And it is on that aspect of the truth that the comparative method of science dwells. Comparative philology, for instance, devotes itself to establishing resemblances between, say, the Indo-European languages, which for long were not suspected to bear any likeness to one another or to have any connection with each other. Those resemblances are examined more and more closely, are stated with more and more precision, until they are stated as laws of comparative philology, and recognised as laws of science to which there are no exceptions. Yet when the resemblances have been worked out to the furthest detail, no one imagines that Greek and Sanskrit are the same language, or that the differences between them are negligible. It is then surprising that any student of comparative religion should imagine that the discovery or the recognition of points of likeness between the religions compared will ever result in proving that the differences between them are negligible or non-existent. Such an inference is unscientific, and it has only to be stated to show that the student of comparative religion is but exercising a right common to all students of all sciences, when he claims that points of difference cannot be overlooked or thrust aside.

If, then, the student of the science of religion directs his attention primarily to the discovery of resemblances between religions which at first sight bear no more resemblance to one another than Greek did to the Celtic tongues; if the comparative method of science dwells upon the fact that things which differ from one another may also resemble one another, and that their resemblances may be stated in the form of scientific laws—there is still another aspect of the truth, and it is that between things which resemble one another there are also differences. And the jury of the world will ultimately demand to know the truth and the whole truth.

Now, to get not only at the truth, but at the whole of the truth, is precisely the business of the applied science of religion, and is the very object of that which, in order to distinguish it from the comparative method of science, I have called the method of comparison. For the purposes of fair comparison not only must the resemblances, which the comparative method of science dwells on, be taken into account, but the differences, also, must be weighed. And it is the business of the method of comparison, the object of the applied science of religion, to do both things. Neither of the two can be dispensed with; neither is more important than the other; but for the practical purposes of the missionary it is important to begin with the resemblances; and on grounds of logic and of theory, the resemblances must be first established, if the importance, nay! the decisive value, of the differences is to go home to the hearts and minds of the missionary's hearers. The resemblances are there and are to be studied ultimately in order to bring out the differences and make them stand forth so plainly as to make choice between the higher form of religion and the lower easy, simply because the difference is so manifest. Now, the missionary's hearer could not know, much less appreciate, the difference, the superiority of Christianity, as long as Christianity was unknown to him. And it is equally manifest, though it has never been officially recognised until now and by the Hartford Theological Seminary, that neither can the missionary adequately set forth the superiority of Christianity to the lower forms of religion, unless he knows something about them and about the points in which their inferiority consists. Hitherto he has had to learn that for himself, as he went on, and, as it were, by rule of thumb. But, on business principles, economy of labour and efficiency in work will be better secured if he is taught before he goes out, and is taught on scientific methods. What he has to learn is the resemblances between the various forms of religion, the differences between them, and the relative values of those differences.

It may perhaps be asked, Why should those differences exist? And if the question should be put, I am inclined to say that to give the answer is beyond the scope of the applied science of religion. The method of comparison assumes that the differences do exist, and it cannot begin to be employed unless and until they exist. They are and must be taken for granted, at any rate by the applied science of religion, and if the method of comparison is to be set to work. Indeed, if we may take the principle of evolution to be the differentiation of the homogeneous, we may go further and say that the whole theory of evolution, and not merely a particular historic science, such as the science of religion, postulates differentiation and the principle of difference, and does not explain it—evolution cannot start, the homogeneous cannot be other than homogeneous, until the principle of difference and the power of differentiation is assumed.

That the science of religion at the end leaves untouched those differences between religions which it recognised at the beginning, is a point on which I insisted, as against those who unwarrantably proclaim the science to have demonstrated that all religions alike are barbarisms or survivals of barbarism. It is well, therefore, to bear that fact in mind when attempts are made to explain the existence of the differences by postulating a period when they were non-existent. That postulate may take form in the supposition that originally the true religion alone existed, and that the differences arose later. That is a supposition which has been made by more than one people, and in more ages than one. It carries with it the consequence that the history—it would be difficult to call it the evolution and impossible to call it the progress—of religion has been one of degradation generally. Owing, however, to the far-reaching and deep-penetrating influence of the theory of evolution, it has of late grown customary to assume that the movement, the course of religious history, has been in the opposite direction; and that it has moved upwards from the lowest forms of religion known to us, or from some form analogous to the lowest known forms, through the higher to the highest. This second theory, however different in its arrangement of the facts from the Golden Age theory first alluded to, is still fundamentally in agreement with it, inasmuch as it also assumes that the differences exhibited later in the history of religion at first were non-existent. Both theories assume the existence of the originally homogeneous, but they disagree as to the nature of the differences which supervened, and also as to the nature of the originally homogeneous.

I wish therefore to call attention to the simple truth that the facts at the disposal of the science of religion neither enable nor warrant us to decide between these two views. If we were to come to a decision on the point, we should have to travel far beyond the confines of the science of religion, or the widest bounds of the theory of evolution, and enquire why there should be error as well as truth—or, to put the matter very differently, why there should be truth at all. But if we started travelling on that enquiry, we should not get back in time for this course of lectures. Fortunately it is not necessary to take a ticket for that journey—perhaps not possible to secure a return ticket. We have only to recognise that the science of religion confines itself to constating and tracing the differences, and does not attempt to explain why they should exist; while the applied science of religion is concerned with the practical business of bringing home the difference between Christianity and other forms of religion to the hearts of those whose salvation may turn on whether the missionary has been properly equipped for his task.

If, now, I announce that for the student of the applied science it is advisable that he should turn his attention in the first place to the lowest forms of religion, the announcement need not be taken to mean that a man cannot become a student of the science of religion, whether pure or applied, unless he assumes that the lowest is the most primitive form. The science of religion, as it pushes its enquiries, may possibly come across—may even already have come across—the lowest form to which it is possible for man to descend. But whether that form is the most primitive as well as the lowest—still more, whether it is the most primitive because it is the lowest—will be questions which will not admit of being settled offhand. And in the meantime we are not called upon to answer them in the affirmative as a sine qua non of being admitted students of the science.

The reason for beginning with the lowest forms is—as is proper in a practical science—a practical one. As I have already said, if the missionary is to succeed in his work, he must know and teach the difference and the value of the difference between Christianity and other religions. But difference implies similarity: we cannot specify the points of difference between two things without presupposing some similarity between them—at any rate sufficient similarity to make a comparison of them profitable. Now, the similarity between the higher forms of religion is such that there is no need to demonstrate it, in order to justify our proceeding to dwell upon the differences. But the similarity between the higher and the lower forms is far from being thus obvious. Indeed, in some cases, for example in the case of some Australian tribes, there is alleged, by some students of the science of religion, to be such a total absence of similarity that we are entitled or compelled to recognise that however liberally, or loosely, we relax our definition of religion, we must pronounce those tribes to be without religion. The allegation thus made, the question thus raised, evidently is of practical importance for the practical purposes of the missionary. Where some resemblances exist between the higher and the lower forms of religion, those resemblances may be made, and should be made, the ground from which the missionary should proceed to point out by contrast the differences, and so to set forth the higher value of Christianity. But if no such resemblances should exist, they cannot be made a basis for the missionary's work. Without proceeding in this introductory lecture to discuss the question whether there are any tribes whatever that are without religion, I may point out that religion, in all its forms, is, in one of its aspects, a yearning and aspiration after God, a search after Him, peradventure we may find Him. And if it be alleged that in some cases there is no search after Him—that amongst civilised men, amongst our own acquaintances, there is in some cases no search and no aspiration, and that therefore among the more backward peoples of the earth there may also be tribes to whom the very idea of such a search is unknown—then we must bear in mind that a search, after any object whatever, may be dropped, may even be totally abandoned; and yet the heart may yearn after that which it is persuaded—or, it may be, is deluded into thinking—it can never find. Perhaps, however, that way of putting it may be objected to, on the ground that it is a petitio principii and assumes the very fact it is necessary to prove, viz. that the lowest tribes that are or can be known to us have made the search and given it up, whereas the contention is that they have never made the search. That contention, I will remark in passing, is one which never can be proved. But to those who consider that it is probable in itself, and that it is a necessary stage in the evolution of belief, I would point out that every search is made in hope—or, it may be, in fear—that search presupposes hope and fear. Vague, of course, the hope may be; scarce conscious, if conscious at all, of what is hoped. But without hope, until there are some dim stirrings, however vague, search is unconceivable, and it is in and by the process of search that the hope becomes stronger and the object sought more definite to view. Now, inasmuch as it is doubtful whether any tribe of people is without religion, it may reasonably be held that the vast majority, at any rate, of the peoples of the earth have proceeded from hope to aspiration and to search; and if there should be found a tribe which had not yet entered consciously on the search, the reasonable conclusion would be not that it is exempted from the laws which we see exemplified in all other peoples, but that it is tending to obey the same laws and is starting from the same point as they—that hope which is the desire of all nations and has been made manifest in the Son of Man.