1867 - Thomson, J. T. Rambles with a Philosopher - CHAPTER XXXIV.

[Image of page 218]

CHAPTER XXXIV.

"AH, Squire, the mind--the mind --the most difficult of speculations--when one does not know one's own mind, how can we know other people's? Is mind an existence?-- is there anything tangible in it--anything we can lay hold of, or look through, or can we be blinded by it? Is it more ethereal than the comet's tail, or as solid as platinum? Where does it go to? --where does it dive into? How far does it reach? Does it move one man?--and does it move millions of men? Did mind rear the Pyramids? --did it build the Crystal Palace?--did it move the French legions on as far as Moscow? Mind did all these things, and so must have existence, as other objects and influences. Mind must have its length and breadth, its height and depth, its right side and left side, its top and its bottom. Being an existence, so must it have its status of comparison and have its opposites--small and great, mean and magnificent--avariciousness and bountifulness, cowardliness

[Image of page 219]

and bravery. Mind, to have existence, must live in opposition--in a state of counterpoise between two contrary tendencies. Yes, mind reaches into firmament as far as the Moon and Sirius-- it speculates on the living system? of other bodies than this earth: its aspirations are mighty. It perceives, also, the mote in a brother's eye--so small is the mote as to be almost microscopic--yet it mistakes the mote for something worse: so miserably little is man's mind. Man's mind, then, like all other influences, material and spiritual, is developed between infinite expansiveness and its opposite, infinite diminutiveness. The gradations are as infinite as the animal and vegetable creation--the variety as innumerable, the changes as continuous, as the fleeting motamenta. Such is mind. We think we know it, and when we are sure, we are disappointed to find we do not know it in ourselves nor in any other person. The reason is this, that mind is the soul--infinite in its sphere, infinite in its action: action is life--therefore, the life of the soul is everlasting.

"The mind may be considered under three aspects, and as many more aspects as you like; but I, for one, think that three aspects will suffice--viz., as regards the man, the nation, and the world. Man's mind is governed on the same principle as the nation's; the nation's on the same principle as the world's--just in the same manner as I have shewn to be the case with a drop of water, a pool of water, and the whole ocean; the states may be infinite, the varieties innumerable, the relative sizes incalculable. The principles, however, are the same--for the ways of the great Author of Nature, the Inconceivable, are immutable.

"Thus, as to man's mind, from the embryo in the womb, it expands as the germs of creation; one process is added to another--one faculty is developed after another. The

[Image of page 220]

mind of a child is as the graptolite of geology. Many ages were consumed in developing it into the mind of a full man; but, once developed, then a single life's time now completes the process; once created, a single life's time does the work of ages, and the graptolitic child's mind in a single life time developes into a Newton, a Faraday, or a Brougham--just on the same principle as the development of any other existence--let us say a cotton mill. Ages were spent before the thumb plait developed itself into a complete spinning-jenny of Arkwright, out of which rose all the mills of Manchester. This process of development took ages--now the most extensive diversified and ingenious cotton mills are developed daily. The building up of the mind of man has no other process.

"Then, as a child's mind is ignorant, and a full man's is informed, so it is with a nation: one section is unskilled, and another skilled. Also it is with the world: there are zones of destitution of knowledge--zones of repletion; and between these opposites circulation is generated, and the soul of the world quickened. Thus a child's ignorance seeks food for its intellect from the stored-up experience of the parent, and the parent finds relief in the imparting of the stores for which otherwise he had no use--no practical object. The giving-off of properties one to the other is mutually beneficial, mutually elevating, mutually humanizing. This sympathy between opposites is the most simple and healthful of all nature's processes. Let us extend the principle to a nation, and to the whole world, and we find it the same. The unskilled do their part for the common good: unskilled and contemptible you may call the poor man's labour, yet his work flows with beneficence to his opposite--the skilled and the learned; thus the contemptible work of the many props all creation. The skilled and

[Image of page 221]

the learned, on the contrary, also do their work: which is to regulate with their experienced and trained judgment; and so turn the minds of mankind to useful channels for the support and existence of all. No other manner is it with the world. The benighted mind of the African is made subservient to the enlightened mind of the European, that circulation may take place betwixt opposites, and the population of the world live by this interchange of properties. The impoverished mind of the African, or of the South Asian, or of the tropical American, also has as much attraction for the replenished mind of the modern Teuton, the Anglo-Saxon, or the Castilian, as the opposite poles of a loadstone. Mind is guided by the same principle as material. As the tick of your watch is heard at the further end of an Oregon pine-tree, so do the pulsations of mental activity vibrate to all corners of the earth. The mind at work is life: life has no limits of time or space. Mind, to be alive, is the universe in opposition. Mind is the foundation of all usages, customs, traits, and peculiarities in a people, or in sects or nations of people. So early as the days of Herodotus, this principle was most conspicuously obvious to that great observer of nature. Of the Egyptians he remarks that that people had adopted customs and usages different in almost every respect from the rest of mankind. Amongst the peculiarities he enumerates those of the women marketing and the men weaving; the men carrying burdens on their heads, the women carrying the same on their shoulders; the women * * * *, and the men * * * *; sons deserting their parents by lawful practice--daughters, on the contrary, being compelled to support them; the men kneading dough with their feet, and mixing clay and dung with their hands. In all other countries, priests wearing long hair, while in Egypt they were closely shaved. In all

[Image of page 222]

other countries, while people shaved themselves in mourning for the dead, in Egypt they allowed the hair to grow long. In all other countries, while men lived apart from beasts, the Egyptians lived with them. While other nations were uncircumcised, the Egyptians were circumcised: and while the Grecians wrote from left to right, the Egyptians, by way of contrast, wrote from right to left; &c &c

"The more extended observations of modern travel enable us to enumerate customs more opponent, usages more anomalous. Solicitous enquiries after the health of a friend's wife are most agreeable and complimentary to the Englishman--the same most obnoxiously insulting to the Persian. To point with admiration to a child wins the heart of a Christian mother--the same act creates consternation in the heart of the Mohammedan dame. The life-loving, restless European hates the sight of a coffin, so never sees his own if he can help it; the Chinese sets his at his at his front door and sits on it enjoying his otium cum dignitate till he finds it necessary for him to get into it."

"What callousness! what inhuman feeling!" exclaimed the Squire, with energy.

"Again," continued our companion, without heeding the interruption, "the British nobleman hoards his wealth for his posterity, that his memory may live in them. The ancient Pharoahs, as well as more modern Sultans, squandered all on their own tombs, for in themselves alone had they faith--in posterity they had none."

"What a beastly set!" cried the Squire.

"The sons and daughters," continued our companion, unmovedly, "of the people of Europe tend their dying fathers laid on beds of down; the sons and daughters of the people on the shores of the Ganges carry their respected

[Image of page 223]

parents to the chilly strand and plaster their mouths and nostrils with mud, that they may the sooner cease their troubles."

"What horrible barbarity!" roared the Squire.

"Some doating children," placidly continued our companion, "of temperate regions, kill their friends with kindness; the Battas of Sumatra eat their old mothers from the same motive."

"Stop, oh stop!" cried the excited Squire, "your narrations are altogether too disgusting."

"Too true, I fear, however," persevered our companion. "I wish it were a myth, but the attestations of Sir Stamford Raffles are difficult to overturn."

"What does he attest to?" asked the Squire.

"This," said our companion: "that when the aged Batta is ready to die, his children hang him by the hands to a tree in presence of their collected tribe, who, furnished with knives, chillies and lemons, call vociferously: 'When the fruit is ripe let it drop that we may eat!' The venerable papa or mamma, of course, drops ere long and-----."

"Stay!" said the Squire, emphatically, "I will hear no more--the thoughts make me faint."

"A beautiful allegory of human nature," said our companion, smiling. "You think nothing of your sisters and brothers killing their friends with kindness, but that other people should eat them from the same motive is, I see, intensely repugnant to you. What a fine example you are, oh Squire, of my great theme--the power of the law of contraries. Oh how wonderful are the incongruities of the human mind; it truly exists in the opposite principles, contraries between contraries. Now, Squire, look at me in the face and do not wince. Are my discourses lively or dull?"

[Image of page 224]

"Well," said the Squire, "I'll be honest with you, and may tell you that, when I understand them, they are lively enough; when I don't, they are as dull as Devilling's old mare!"

"Most appropriate illustration, oh Squire. Then, to put your criticism into other words, there is life when your mind is receiving new information--i. e., when it is feeding from the contrary of my imparting; but there is deadness, when that circulation of mental property ceases."

"That's it! You have hit it on the head," said the Squire.

"Now," continued our companion, "it is admitted that mind, to have life, must circulate from one to the other. This is the peaceful process, the most beneficent in nature; but there is another mode. Supposing I knew horse-flesh as well as you, for instance, and that we could talk of nothing else; also, that our minds were at the same time so alike that we never differed--would this state of things tend to lively discourse, or what?"

"I am afraid you would be a very dull fellow, as you would know as much as I did; and, my word, there are few I would knuckle under to in that line--so I would not be bothered with you."

"Then," said our companion, "supposing I differed-- how would it be?"

"Why," said the Squire, "I would soon show you the difference!"

"In that case," said our companion, "you would get hot on it; our arguments would grow high; our blood warm; and our minds excited. Excitement is fast living--our conversation would be lively. This process is the war of mind, as necessary to human nature as any other process. Life is opposition.

[Image of page 225]

"Thus, to pass from gay things to grave, we see in the subject most universally interesting to mankind, viz., Religion, how men's minds stand in opposition towards each other, as evidenced by the clamour of controversialists. How much the early Christians were subject to the above law, may be gathered from the writings of the mighty apostle, whose doctrines were all-pervading--true to the God of nature. Cried he, 'There are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit; and there are different administrations but the same Lord, and there are diversities of operations but it is the same God that worketh all in all.' Humanity is weak, the power of opposites strong, so we see the holy fathers, three centuries afterwards, dividing the church in furious contests. And what was the cause of this?--The difference of a single diphthong in two notorious words, viz., the Homoousians and the Homoiousians--both words scarcely even pronounceable, and both so similar that the educated, sensitive ear can, in them, alone detect a difference--each term representing to each contending party the most opposite ideas, yet both terms being reducible to one and the same interpretation by the pious and faithful. And have we not abundant examples in modern times in those Churches claiming to take rank, by precept and example, with the purity of those of the primitive ages? How lately have we not seen the mother church of this province rent in twain--for why- All people in Scotland were agreed that Christ should reign, at the same time all admitted that he was not there in person; so, by the rule of opposites, neither could agree who should be his viceregent on earth--the people or the patron. This knotty point had no solution, and the structure almost crumbled in pieces with the shock of bitter contention. The educated mind of the modern Christian analyses as the microscope, and

[Image of page 226]

stumbles at straws; a wafer chokes one, and bread chokes another; a drop of water drowns one, a tankful does not drown another. These are the infusoria of religion, and as the first act of creation was to put nature into a state of opposition, by dividing the light from the darkness; so did the Divine Head of the Christian enunciate that he brought not peace but a sword. A faith to be lively must have opposition, otherwise it could not throw its mantle over humanity. As Abraham's faith was confirmed by the knife to his only son's breast--a saving grace at the expense of a loss irreparable--so was the piety of David linked to many transgressions, and the great wisdom of Solomon to much foolishness. A high tower must have deep foundations, so a high faith is only eminent by contrast with surrounding debasement; in no other manner than yonder elevated snowy peak is remarkable by comparison with the low plains at its base.

"Then, as religion is of the highest importance to man, so is it the subject on which he is most divided--whether it be in himself, his nation, or this world of his. His mind is the victim of doubts; his faith, when confirmed, how liable to backsliding! A religion is no sooner established than the faith is circulated by the counterpoise of opposites; and the smaller the differences, the greater the dissensions; the more abstruse the points of controversy, the more bitter the altercations; the less intelligible the bone of contention, the mightier the convulsions in faith and doc-trine. Is it over-refinement that generates these troubles? --for does not the rude Bedouin make his ablutions with the waters of the Nile before he says his fifth prayer at even? and yet the sands of the desert of Lybia, when used instead, neither shock his robust faith nor interfere with his constant practice.

[Image of page 227]

"And have no other creeds than the Christian their divisions--their animosities and strifes? There are none that have not: and with progress comes contention. The Mohammedans, at an early date, divided themselves into two great sects--the Shiahs and the Soonis; and these again are separated into subdivisions. Where the minds of the people are little developed by instruction, so we find, them subservient to the leaders: where instructed, then the refinements of criticism react against unity. Ignorance, in one sense, is the soul of devotion. With the creation of the world entered the establishment of opposite principles; and so with all things existing. The Hindoo faith has comminutions so innumerable--sects so widely and irreconcilably opposed--that it would be tedious to recapitulate even a portion: their pantheon is as elaborate as that of ancient Rome or Egypt.

"Now, let us give a glance at the mind of the world as developed in their creeds. We will find the great law established in counterpoise as naturally and as equally as in the numbers of man and woman. Humanity, then, is divided into those who approach the Deity direct, and those who don't attempt this; those who pray to the Almighty, and those who propitiate the evil influences; those who worship the great Original, and those who bow to his creations, be they stocks and stones.

"The opposite classes are as follows: --

	Millions.		Millions.
Christians	301	Bhuddists	245
Mohammedans	110	Hindoos	133
Jews	5	Fetichists and other pagans	72
Minor creeds	34
	450		450

The total population of the world being nine hundred millions. Thus are the minds of mankind under similar

[Image of page 228]

laws as the other elements of nature. The mind of the world is held in a balance, as it were, and it finds its level wherever it may permeate. It lives by opposition--rolling in here and giving way yonder. Thus, we see Christianity, rising from a small germ at the east end of the Mediterranean, gradually transfusing the Eastern and Western Empires--demolishing the classic and elegant paganism of the Greeks and Romans; then, in the fifth century, sending out its feelers to Cathay in the extremity of Asia--propagating itself in India, and the tenantable portions of Africa; then, again, in the dark ages of the eighth and ninth centuries, to be chastened, trodden down, and eliminated by the Islamite over full half of its area; then bursting forth with brightened illumination in the revival of the learning and enterprise of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, at which period the new and old worlds were opened to the missionary by the discoveries of Vasco de Gama and Columbus."

"That table of yours is strange, if true," said the Squire.

"I will admit," replied our companion, "that the demarcation is necessarily somewhat arbitrary; but I believe it to be correct in the main--and this leads me to the remark that while the world is divided into the religious and the superstitious, so are nations and individuals. I have met the followers of Zoroaster and Bhudda, whose exalted principles I was bound to admire; who, casting the material grossness of their common faith aside, culled and nourished what was true--who gathered the flowers and cast aside the weeds. And so, in an equal manner, may you, oh Squire, have observed in Christianity that all have not the same gifts, either of morality or devotion. Also, some are sunk in depths of squalor disgraceful even to heathens. I take the Christians of the Teutonic race to rank highest amongst

[Image of page 229]

the religionists of the world--so I take the Fetichists of the torrid zone to be the lowest; and, between these contraries, there is a gradual approximation till they meet. In animated nature, man and the zoophite is not more distinct. These extremes are found in all nations; but the worldly boundaries are marked in zones--the torrid zone is one extreme, the temperate zone the other. Climate is the inexorable influence that maintains these opposites.

"Regarding the mind as a wordly influence, Fetichism has its habitat in the torrid zone--it is governed by charms, witchcraft, or magic. The influence of evil only is dreaded, and this may reside in a stone, a bird, or a piece of wood. The Muras of the Amazon, the regions of equatorial Africa, and the Sakai of the Asian Archipelago all dread these influences. Again, as we depart from this zone, so do we see beliefs graduate into the opposite--viz., God worship; and it is not till we search out the educated of the Teutonic race and their descendants, that this system takes a pure form; for, on the tropic of Cancer--the centre zone of Mahomedanism and Bhuddism--we find, in the former, the worship of that book called the Koran, and in the latter, the worship of the Menes. Then, proceeding to the forty-third degree, the centre of Romanism, we find the Deity yet approached by the intercession of the Virgin. That highest development of man--that model of the world, the Teuton alone, whose centre zone is in the fifty-fifth degree--dare approach his Maker direct; dare vindicate the rights and the privileges of His image."

"But," said the Squire, "one would think that all men had a knowledge of the Deity implanted in them."

"Only relatively," said our companion: "weakest in the most ignorant--most powerful in the most intellectual. There is a tribe of aborigines in the south of Asia that

[Image of page 230]

believe in the existence of one god called Pirman, but they have no religious worship. To avert evil they have recourse to sorcery. Their ideas of natural phenomena are grotesque and curious, so I will mention one or two instances. They believe the sky to be a great pot, suspended over the earth by a string. The earth round the edge is constantly sending up sprouts to join the sky and close it over, and this would take place if an old man did not cut and eat them. The sun is a woman, who is tied by a string, which her lord is always pulling. The moon is also a woman, married to Moyang Birtang, the maker of nooses for men. The stars are their children, which, being too bright and hot for mankind, the sun wishes to devour; but the moon hides them to prevent this. The sun, angry at being thwarted, now runs constantly after the moon, and bites her: the act of biting is an eclipse."

"What will become of these misguided people?" cried the Squire, fervently.

"Leaving this region of puerility and ignorance," continued our companion, unmoved, "we come to the Bhuddist of Burmah, a sect of northern origin, and of higher mental development. A Talapoin, on becoming a member of the holy society, aims at weakening within himself all the evil propensities, by the practice and observance of the sublimest precepts, so as to entitle himself to the state of Neiban, or rest. He hopes to imitate Gaudama by renouncing the pleasures and vanities of the world--by curbing his passions and instituting self-denial--so as to arrive at a state of complete indifference. They adore Bhudda, who gloriously emerged from the bottomless whirlpool of endless existences--who extinguished the passions, and illuminated the fathomless abyss of dark ignorance. They adore the law of the most excellent Bhudda--incom-

[Image of page 231]

parably profound, wiping off the stains of concupiscence. They adore the assembly of the perfect, who overcome all passions that torment other mortals, by eradicating the very root of concupiscence.

"Here, then, oh Squire, is the rule of contraries again at work, for in this country nowhere is immorality more general and rife, yet out of it emanates a religion whose aim is to conquer the besetting sins--the overwhelming weakness. 'Then,' continues the learned Bigandit--a Roman Catholic missionary, in his translation, originally derived from the ancient Pali--'about four Thingees and a hundred thousand worlds ago, the most excellent Bhudda, who is infinitely wise and far superior to the three orders of beings--the Brahmas, the Nats, and men--received at the feet of the Phra Deinpakara the assurance that he would afterwards become himself a Phra. Having become a great prince under the name of Wethandra, he reached the acme of self abnegation and renouncement to all things of this world. After his death he migrated to Joocita, the fourth abode of the Nats. During his sojourn in that happy place, enjoying the fulness of pleasure allotted to the fortunate inhabitants of those blissful places, a sudden and uncommon rumour, accompanied with an extraordinary commotion, proclaimed the gladdening tidings that a Phra was soon to make his appearance in this world. On hearing that a Phra was soon to make his appearance amongst men, all the Nats, peaceful inhabitants of the fortunate abode of Joocita, assembled in all haste, and crowded around the Phraloang eagerly inquiring from him who was to be the fortunate Nat to whom was reserved the signal honour of obtaining the incomparable dignity of Phra of Kapilawat. 'Thither,' said he, 'shall I resort and become a Bhudda.' Having determined the place he was to select for his

[Image of page 232]

terrestrial seat, Phraloang examined the race or caste from which he was to be born. He therefore fixed his choice upon the caste of princes, as the most becoming his high calling. As to the Princess,' said he 'who is to become my mother, she must be distinguished by a modest deportment and chaste manner. During the period of 100,000 worlds she must have lived in the practice of virtue. The great and glorious Princess MAIA is the only person in whom all these conditions are to be found. After a short sojourn in the delightful garden of Naudawon, he left the abode of Nats, descended into the seat of men, and incarnated in the womb of the glorious MAIA. Then it was predicted that after growing up he would become a mighty ruler, whose sway all the human race will acknowledge. A dream of MAIA received this interpretation. At the moment Phraloang entered into MAIA'S womb, a great commotion was felt throughout the four elements, and thirty-two wonders simultaneously appeared. A Light of incomparable brightness illuminated, suddenly, ten thousand worlds; the blind, desirous, as it were, to contemplate the glorious dignity of Phraloang, recovered their sight; the deaf perceived distinctly every sound, the dumb spoke with fluency, those whose bodies were bent stood up in an erect position, the lame walked with ease and swiftness, prisoners saw their fetters unloosed and found themselves restored to liberty, the fires of hell were extinguished, the ravenous cravings of the Preithas were satiated.' 1

"The early Jesuit missionaries, of the sixteenth century, found this religion established over the larger quarter of the world--a religion with its monastries, nunneries, its

[Image of page 233]

priests under the vow of celibacy, its incense, formularies, and dogmas, so complete a reproduction or assimilation of their own system, that comparisons being the more close, so, by the rule of contraries, were the more odious. Thus it happened that they betook themselves the more energetically to wipe out the parody of their holy mysteries from off the face of creation."

"The more like, the greater the dislike," said the Squire but how do you account for these anomalous parallels?"

"A question most difficult, and of which there may be many theories. The profound Hutcheson, a Presbyterian doctor of divinity, has ventured a solution--viz., in the universality of Christianity, bright in one region, dim in another, of various forms and diverse grades. If this be accepted, then may we look to the zones of the earth for elucidation, where we will find the original seats of Bhuddism and Christianity to be in the same parallel of latitude--the one in Thibet, the other in Judea."

"A curious phenomenon of the human mind!" exclaimed the Squire, with surprise depicted in his countenance.

"Most difficult of digestion by the contracted understanding; most easy to the mind opened to the conviction of the ever beneficent attributes of the Inconceivable--the Almighty Author of all nature, the Creator of man, the upholder of minds in all processes of growth, from the dim dawn of ideas to the refulgent meridian of matured understanding."

"You are fertile in reasons; but I was taught in a different school," said the Squire, pettishly.

"No school like the world," said our companion, "let only your frame of mind be equitable, and your spirit a Christian one. Consider that the great opponents of Christianity of the last century, such as Gibbon, Voltaire,

[Image of page 234]

and Hume, based their convictions on only the dim and imperfect materials afforded by human history; to them had not yet been opened the discoveries of modern science; the illimitable phases and wonders of creation, as elucidated in chemistry, geology, and natural philosophy. On these subjects their minds were unmatured and puerile. Indeed, it may be taken as an axiom that the narrower the mind the more gross the convictions; the more enlightened the mind the more humane. Thus, it will be seen, that small, incipient, or oppressed religious sects cling to the doctrines of general condemnation of his creatures by an all-wise Providence!!! 2 These, when in the extreme, lead to the narrow antidote of the doctrine of pre-election --which saves the selfish, solitary sinner, and destroys the many virtuous.

"But," said our companion, suddenly, "I was nearly trespassing beyond my domain, and forgetting that I am only a philosopher--so insensibly does one subject graduate into another. Where does philosophy end, religion begin?"