(1) When travelling in India I found that the Gnanis or Wise Men there quite commonly maintained that Jesus (judging from his teaching) must have been initiated at some time in the esoteric doctrines of the Vedanta.

I have in these two or three pages dealt only—and that very briefly—with the entry of the pagan doctrine of the Savior into the Christian field, showing its transformation there and how Christianity could not well escape having a doctrine of a Savior, or avoid giving a color of its own to that doctrine. To follow out the same course with other doctrines, like those which I have mentioned above, would obviously be an endless task—which must be left to each student or reader to pursue according to his opportunity and capacity. It is clear anyhow, that all these elements of the pagan religions—pouring down into the vast reservoir, or rather whirlpool, of the Roman Empire, and mixing among all these numerous brotherhoods, societies, collegia, mystery-clubs, and groups which were at that time looking out intently for some new revelation or inspiration—did more or less automatically act and react upon each other, and by the general conditions prevailing were modified, till they ultimately combined and took united shape in the movement which we call Christianity, but which only—as I have said—narrowly escaped being called Mithraism—so nearly related and closely allied were these cults with each other.

At this point it will naturally be asked: "And where in this scheme of the Genesis of Christianity is the chief figure and accredited leader of the movement—namely Jesus Christ himself—for to all appearance in the account here given of the matter he is practically non-existent or a negligible quantity?" And the question is a very pertinent one, and very difficult to answer. "Where is the founder of the Religion?"—or to put it in another form: "Is it necessary to suppose a human and visible Founder at all?" A few years ago such a mere question would have been accounted rank blasphemy, and would only—if passed over—have been ignored on account of its supposed absurdity. To-day, however, owing to the enormous amount of work which has been done of late on the subject of Christian origins, the question takes on quite a different complexion. And from Strauss onwards a growingly influential and learned body of critics is inclined to regard the whole story of the Gospels as LEGENDARY. Arthur Drews, for instance, a professor at Karlsruhe, in his celebrated book The Christ-Myth, (1) places David F. Strauss as first in the myth field—though he allows that Dupuis in L'origine de tous les cultes (1795) had given the clue to the whole idea. He then mentions Bruno Bauer (1877) as contending that Jesus was a pure invention of Mark's, and John M. Robertson as having in his Christianity and Mythology (1900) given the first thoroughly reasoned exposition of the legendary theory; also Emilio Bossi in Italy, who wrote Jesu Christo non e mai esistito, and similar authors in Holland, Poland, and other countries, including W. Benjamin Smith, the American author of The Pre-christian Jesus (1906), and P. Jensen in Das Gilgamesch Epos in den Welt-literatur (1906), who makes the Jesus-story a variant of the Babylonian epic, 2000 B.C. A pretty strong list! (2) "But," continues Drews, "ordinary historians still ignore all this." Finally, he dismisses Jesus as "a figure swimming obscurely in the mists of tradition." Nevertheless I need hardly remark that, large and learned as the body of opinion here represented is, a still larger (but less learned) body fights desperately for the actual HISTORICITY of Jesus, and some even still for the old view of him as a quite unique and miraculous revelation of Godhood on earth.

(1) Die Christus-mythe: verbesserte und erweitezte Ausgabe, Jena, 1910.

(2) To which we may also add Schweitzer's Quest of the historical Jesus (1910).

At first, no doubt, the LEGENDARY theory seems a little TOO far-fetched. There is a fashion in all these things, and it MAY be that there is a fashion even here. But when you reflect how rapidly legends grow up even in these days of exact Science and an omniscient Press; how the figure of Shakespeare, dead only 300 years, is almost completely lost in the mist of Time, and even the authenticity of his works has become a subject of controversy; when you find that William Tell, supposed to have lived some 300 years again before Shakespeare, and whose deeds in minutest detail have been recited and honored all over Europe, is almost certainly a pure invention, and never existed; when you remember—as mentioned earlier in this book (1)—that it was more than five hundred years after the supposed birth of Jesus before any serious effort was made to establish the date of that birth—and that then a purely mythical date was chosen: the 25th December, the day of the SUN'S new birth after the winter solstice, and the time of the supposed birth of Apollo, Bacchus, and the other Sungods; when, moreover, you think for a moment what the state of historical criticism must have been, and the general standard of credibility, 1,900 years ago, in a country like Syria, and among an ignorant population, where any story circulating from lip to lip was assured of credence if sufficiently marvelous or imaginative;—why, then the legendary theory does not seem so improbable. There is no doubt that after the destruction of Jerusalem (in A.D. 70), little groups of believers in a redeeming 'Christ' were formed there and in other places, just as there had certainly existed, in the first century B.C., groups of Gnostics, Therapeutae, Essenes and others whose teachings were very SIMILAR to the Christian, and there was now a demand from many of these groups for 'writings' and 'histories' which should hearten and confirm the young and growing Churches. The Gospels and Epistles, of which there are still extant a great abundance, both apocryphal and canonical, met this demand; but how far their records of the person of Jesus of Nazareth are reliable history, or how far they are merely imaginative pictures of the kind of man the Saviour might be expected to be, (2) is a question which, as I have already said, is a difficult one for skilled critics to answer, and one on which I certainly have no intention of giving a positive verdict. Personally I must say I think the 'legendary' solution quite likely, and in some ways more satisfactory than the opposite one—for the simple reason that it seems much more encouraging to suppose that the story of Jesus, (gracious and beautiful as it is) is a myth which gradually formed itself in the conscience of mankind, and thus points the way of humanity's future evolution, than to suppose it to be the mere record of an unique and miraculous interposition of Providence, which depended entirely on the powers above, and could hardly be expected to occur again.

(1) Ch. II.

(2) One of Celsus' accusations against the Christians was that their Gospels had been written "several times over" (see Origen, Contra Celsum, ii. 26, 27).

However, the question is not what we desire, but what we can prove to be the actual fact. And certainly the difficulties in the way of regarding the Gospel story (or stories, for there is not one consistent story) as TRUE are enormous. If anyone will read, for instance, in the four Gospels, the events of the night preceding the crucifixion and reckon the time which they would necessarily have taken to enact—the Last Supper, the agony in the Garden, the betrayal by Judas, the haling before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin, and then before Pilate in the Hall of judgment (though courts for the trial of malefactors do not GENERALLY sit in the middle of the night); then—in Luke—the interposed visit to Herod, and the RETURN to Pilate; Pilate's speeches and washing of hands before the crowd; then the scourging and the mocking and the arraying of Jesus in purple robe as a king; then the preparation of a Cross and the long and painful journey to Golgotha; and finally the Crucifixion at sunrise;—he will see—as has often been pointed out—that the whole story is physically impossible. As a record of actual events the story is impossible; but as a record or series of notes derived from the witnessing of a "mystery-play"—and such plays with VERY SIMILAR incidents were common enough in antiquity in connection with cults of a dying Savior, it very likely IS true (one can see the very dramatic character of the incidents: the washing of hands, the threefold denial by Peter, the purple robe and crown of thorns, and so forth); and as such it is now accepted by many well-qualified authorities. (1)

(1) Dr. Frazer in The Golden Bough (vol. ix, "The Scapegoat," p. 400) speaks of the frequency in antiquity of a Mystery-play relating to a God-man who gives his life and blood for the people; and he puts forward tentatively and by no means dogmatically the following note:—"Such a drama, if we are right, was the original story of Esther and Mordecai, or (to give their older names) Ishtar and Marduk. It was played in Babylonia, and from Babylonia the returning Captives brought it to Judaea, where it was acted, rather as an historical than a mythical piece, by players who, having to die in grim earnest on a cross or gallows, were naturally drawn from the gaol rather than the green-room. A chain of causes, which because we cannot follow them might—in the loose language of common life—be called an accident, determined that the part of the dying god in this annual play should be thrust upon Jesus of Nazareth, whom the enemies he had made in high places by his outspoken strictures were resolved to put out of the way." See also vol. iv, "The Dying God," in the same book.

There are many other difficulties. The raising of Lazarus, already dead three days, the turning of water into wine (a miracle attributed to Bacchus, of old), the feeding of the five thousand, and others of the marvels are, to say the least, not easy of digestion. The "Sermon on the Mount" which, with the "Lord's Prayer" embedded in it, forms the great and accepted repository of 'Christian' teaching and piety, is well known to be a collection of sayings from pre-christian writings, including the Psalms, Isaiah, Ecclesiasticus, the Secrets of Enoch, the Shemonehesreh (a book of Hebrew prayers), and others; and the fact that this collection was really made AFTER the time of Jesus, and could not have originated from him, is clear from the stress which it lays on "persecutions" and "false prophets"—things which were certainly not a source of trouble at the time Jesus is supposed to be speaking, though they were at a later time—as well as from the occurrence of the word "Gentiles," which being here used apparently in contra-distinction to "Christians" could not well be appropriate at a time when no recognized Christian bodies as yet existed.

But the most remarkable point in this connection is the absolute silence of the Gospel of Mark on the subject of the Resurrection and Ascension—that is, of the ORIGINAL Gospel, for it is now allowed on all hands that the twelve verses Mark xvi. 9 to the end, are a later insertion. Considering the nature of this event, astounding indeed, if physically true, and unique in the history of the world, it is strange that this Gospel—the earliest written of the four Gospels, and nearest in time to the actual evidence—makes no mention of it. The next Gospel in point of time—that of Matthew—mentions the matter rather briefly and timidly, and reports the story that the body had been STOLEN from the sepulchre. Luke enlarges considerably and gives a whole long chapter to the resurrection and ascension; while the Fourth Gospel, written fully twenty years later still—say about A. D. 120—gives two chapters and a GREAT VARIETY OF DETAILS!

This increase of detail, however, as one gets farther and farther from the actual event is just what one always finds, as I have said before, in legendary traditions. A very interesting example of this has lately come to light in the case of the traditions concerning the life and death of the Persian Bab. The Bab, as most of my readers will know, was the Founder of a great religious movement which now numbers (or numbered before the Great War) some millions of adherents, chiefly Mahommedans, Christians, Jews and Parsees. The period of his missionary activity was from 1845 to 1850. His Gospel was singularly like that of Jesus—a gospel of love to mankind—only (as might be expected from the difference of date) with an even wider and more deliberate inclusion of all classes, creeds and races, sinners and saints; and the incidents and entourage of his ministry were also singularly similar. He was born at Shiraz in 1820, and growing up a promising boy and youth, fell at the age Of 21 under the influence of a certain Seyyid Kazim, leader of a heterodox sect, and a kind of fore-runner or John the Baptist to the Bab. The result was a period of mental trouble (like the "temptation in the wilderness"), after which the youth returned to Shiraz and at the age of twenty-five began his own mission. His real name was Mirza Ali Muhammad, but he called himself thenceforth The Bab, i.e. the Gate ("I am the Way"); and gradually there gathered round him disciples, drawn by the fascination of his personality and the devotion of his character. But with the rapid increase of his following great jealousy and hatred were excited among the Mullahs, the upholders of a fanatical and narrow-minded Mahommedanism and quite corresponding to the Scribes and Pharisees of the New Testament. By them he was denounced to the Turkish Government. He was arrested on a charge of causing political disturbance, and was condemned to death. Among his disciples was one favorite, (1) who was absolutely devoted to his Master and refused to leave him at the last. So together they were suspended over the city wall (at Tabriz) and simultaneously shot. This was on the 8th July, 1850.

(1) Mirza Muhammad Ali; and one should note the similarity of the two names.

In November 1850—or between that date and October 1851, a book appeared, written by one of the Bab's earliest and most enthusiastic disciples—a merchant of Kashan—and giving in quite simple and unpretending form a record of the above events. There is in it no account of miracles or of great pretensions to godhood and the like. It is just a plain history of the life and death of a beloved teacher. It was cordially received and circulated far and wide; and we have no reason for doubting its essential veracity. And even if proved now to be inaccurate in one or two details, this would not invalidate the moral of the rest of the story—which is as follows:

After the death of the Bab a great persecution took place (in 1852); there were many Babi martyrs, and for some years the general followers were scattered. But in time they gathered themselves together again; successors to the original prophet were appointed—though not without dissensions—and a Babi church, chiefly at Acca or Acre in Syria, began to be formed. It was during this period that a great number of legends grew up—legends of miraculous babyhood and boyhood, legends of miracles performed by the mature Bab, and so forth; and when the newly-forming Church came to look into the matter it concluded (quite naturally!) that such a simple history as I have outlined above would never do for the foundation of its plans, now grown somewhat ambitious. So a new Gospel was framed, called the Tarikh-i-Jadid ("The new History" or "The new Way"), embodying and including a lot of legendary matter, and issued with the authority of "the Church." This was in 1881-2; and comparing this with the original record (called The point of Kaf) we get a luminous view of the growth of fable in those thirty brief years which had elapsed since the Bab's death. Meanwhile it became very necessary of course to withdraw from circulation as far as possible all copies of the original record, lest they should give the lie to the later 'Gospel'; and this apparently was done very effectively—so effectively indeed that Professor Edward Browne (to whom the world owes so much on account of his labors in connection with Babism), after arduous search, came at one time to the conclusion that the original was no longer extant. Most fortunately, however, the well-known Comte de Gobineau had in the course of his studies on Eastern Religions acquired a copy of The point of Kaf; and this, after his death, was found among his literary treasures and identified (as was most fitting) by Professor Browne himself.

Such in brief is the history of the early Babi Church (1)—a Church which has grown up and expanded greatly within the memory of many yet living. Much might be written about it, but the chief point at present is for us to note the well-verified and interesting example it gives of the rapid growth in Syria of a religious legend and the reasons which contributed to this growth—and to be warned how much more rapidly similar legends probably grew up in the same land in the middle of the First Century, A.D. The story of the Bab is also interesting to us because, while this mass of legend was formed around it, there is no possible doubt about the actual existence of a historical nucleus in the person of Mirza Ali Muhammad.

(1) For literature, see Edward G. Browne's Traveller's Narrative on the Episode of the Bab (1891), and his New History of the Bab translated from the Persian of the Tarikh-i-Jadid (Cambridge, 1893). Also Sermons and Essays by Herbert Rix (Williams and Norgate, 1907), pp. 295-325, "The Persian Bab."

On the whole, one is sometimes inclined to doubt whether any great movement ever makes itself felt in the world, without dating first from some powerful personality or group of personalities, ROUND which the idealizing and myth-making genius of mankind tends to crystallize. But one must not even here be too certain. Something of the Apostle Paul we know, and something of 'John' the Evangelist and writer of the Epistle I John; and that the 'Christian' doctrines dated largely from the preaching and teaching of these two we cannot doubt; but Paul never saw Jesus (except "in the Spirit"), nor does he ever mention the man personally, or any incident of his actual life (the "crucified Christ" being always an ideal figure); and 'John' who wrote the Gospel was certainly not the same as the disciple who "lay in Jesus' bosom"—though an intercalated verse, the last but one in the Gospel, asserts the identity. (1)

(1) It is obvious, in fact, that the WHOLE of the last chapter of St. John is a later insertion, and again that the two last verses of that chapter are later than the chapter itself!

There may have been a historic Jesus—and if so, to get a reliable outline of his life would indeed be a treasure; but at present it would seem there is no sign of that. If the historicity of Jesus, in any degree, could be proved, it would give us reason for supposing—what I have personally always been inclined to believe—that there was also a historical nucleus for such personages as Osiris, Mithra, Krishna, Hercules, Apollo and the rest. The question, in fact, narrows itself down to this, Have there been in the course of human evolution certain, so to speak, NODAL points or periods at which the psychologic currents ran together and condensed themselves for a new start; and has each such node or point of condensation been marked by the appearance of an actual and heroic man (or woman) who supplied a necessary impetus for the new departure, and gave his name to the resulting movement? OR is it sufficient to suppose the automatic formation of such nodes or starting-points without the intervention of any special hero or genius, and to imagine that in each case the myth-making tendency of mankind CREATED a legendary and inspiring figure and worshiped the same for a long period afterwards as a god?

As I have said before, this is a question which, interesting as it is, is not really very important. The main thing being that the prophetic and creative spirit of mankind HAS from time to time evolved those figures as idealizations of its "heart's desire" and placed a halo round their heads. The long procession of them becomes a REAL piece of History—the history of the evolution of the human heart, and of human consciousness. But with the psychology of the whole subject I shall deal in the next chapter.

I may here, however, dwell for a moment on two other points which belong properly to this chapter. I have already mentioned the great reliance placed by the advocates of a unique 'revelation' on the high morality taught in the Gospels and the New Testament generally. There is no need of course to challenge that morality or to depreciate it unduly; but the argument assumes that it is so greatly superior to anything of the kind that had been taught before that we are compelled to suppose something like a revelation to explain its appearance—whereas of course anyone familiar with the writings of antiquity, among the Greeks or Romans or Egyptians or Hindus or later Jews, knows perfectly well that the reported sayings of Jesus and the Apostles may be paralleled abundantly from these sources. I have illustrated this already from the Sermon on the Mount. If anyone will glance at the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs—a Jewish book composed about 120 B. C.—he will see that it is full of moral precepts, and especially precepts of love and forgiveness, so ardent and so noble that it hardly suffers in any way when compared with the New Testament teaching, and that consequently no special miracle is required to explain the appearance of the latter.

The twelve Patriarchs in question are the twelve sons of Jacob, and the book consists of their supposed deathbed scenes, in which each patriarch in turn recites his own (more or less imaginary) life and deeds and gives pious counsel to his children and successors. It is composed in a fine and poetic style, and is full of lofty thought, remindful in scores of passages of the Gospels—words and all—the coincidences being too striking to be accidental. It evidently had a deep influence on the authors of the Gospels, as well as on St. Paul. It affirms a belief in the coming of a Messiah, and in salvation for the Gentiles. The following are some quotations from it: (1) Testament of Zebulun (p. 116): "My children, I bid you keep the commands of the Lord, and show mercy to your neighbours, and have compassion towards all, not towards men only, but also towards beasts." Dan (p. 127): "Love the Lord through all your life, and one another with a true heart." Joseph (p. 173): "I was sick, and the Lord visited me; in prison, and my God showed favor unto me." Benjamin (p. 209): "For as the sun is not defiled by shining on dung and mire, but rather drieth up both and driveth away the evil smell, so also the pure mind, encompassed by the defilements of earth, rather cleanseth them and is not itself defiled."

(1) The references being to the Edition by R. H. Charles (1907).

I think these quotations are sufficient to prove the high standard of this book, which was written in the Second Century B. C., and FROM which the New Testament authors copiously borrowed.

The other point has to do with my statement at the beginning of this chapter that two of the main 'characteristics' of Christianity were its insistence on (a) a tendency towards renunciation of the world, and a consequent cultivation of a purely spiritual love, and (b) on a morality whose inspiration was a private sense of duty to God rather than a public sense of duty to one's neighbor and to society generally. I think, however, that the last-mentioned characteristic ought to be viewed in relation to a third, namely, (c) the extraordinarily DEMOCRATIC tendency of the new Religion. (1) Celsus (A.D. 200) jeered at the early Christians for their extreme democracy: "It is only the simpletons, the ignoble, the senseless—slaves and womenfolk and children—whom they wish to persuade (to join their churches) or CAN persuade"—"wool-dressers and cobblers and fullers, the most uneducated and vulgar persons," and "whosoever is a sinner, or unintelligent or a fool, in a word, whoever is god-forsaken ([gr kakodaimwn]), him the Kingdom of God will receive." (2) Thus Celsus, the accomplished, clever, philosophic and withal humorous critic, laughed at the new religionists, and prophesied their speedy extinction. Nevertheless he was mistaken. There is little doubt that just the inclusion of women and weaklings and outcasts did contribute LARGELY to the spread of Christianity (and Mithraism). It brought hope and a sense of human dignity to the despised and rejected of the earth. Of the immense numbers of lesser officials who carried on the vast organization of the Roman Empire, most perhaps, were taken from the ranks of the freedmen and quondam slaves, drawn from a great variety of races and already familiar with pagan cults of all kinds—Egyptian, Syrian, Chaldean, Iranian, and so forth. (3) This fact helped to give to Christianity—under the fine tolerance of the Empire—its democratic character and also its willingness to accept all. The rude and menial masses, who had hitherto been almost beneath the notice of Greek and Roman culture, flocked in; and though this was doubtless, as time went on, a source of weakness to the Church, and a cause of dissension and superstition, yet it was in the inevitable line of human evolution, and had a psychological basis which I must now endeavor to explain.

(1) It is important to note, however, that this same democratic tendency was very marked in Mithraism. "Il est certain," says Cumont, "qu'il a fait ses premieres conquetes dans les classes inferieures de la societe et c'est l'a un fait considerable; le mithracisme est reste longtemps la religion des humbles." Mysteres de Mithra, p. 68.

(2) See Glover's Conflict of Religions in the early Roman Empire, ch. viii.

(3) See Toutain, Cultes paiens, vol. ii, conclusion.



XIV. THE MEANING OF IT ALL

The general drift and meaning of the present book must now, I think, from many hints scattered in the course of it, be growing clear. But it will be well perhaps in this chapter, at the risk of some repetition, to bring the whole argument together. And the argument is that since the dawn of humanity on the earth—many hundreds of thousands or perhaps a million years ago—there has been a slow psychologic evolution, a gradual development or refinement of Consciousness, which at a certain stage has spontaneously given birth in the human race to the phenomena of religious belief and religious ritual—these phenomena (whether in the race at large or in any branch of it) always following, step by step, a certain order depending on the degrees of psychologic evolution concerned; and that it is this general fact which accounts for the strange similarities of belief and ritual which have been observed all over the world and in places far remote from each other, and which have been briefly noted in the preceding chapters.

And the main stages of this psychologic evolution—those at any rate with which we are here concerned—are Three: the stage of Simple Consciousness, the stage of Self-consciousness, and a third Stage which for want of a better word we may term the stage of Universal Consciousness. Of course these three stages may at some future time be analyzed into lesser degrees, with useful result—but at present I only desire to draw attention to them in the rough, so to speak, to show that it is from them and from their passage one into another that there has flowed by a perfectly natural logic and concatenation the strange panorama of humanity's religious evolution—its superstitions and magic and sacrifices and dancings and ritual generally, and later its incantations and prophecies, and services of speech and verse, and paintings and forms of art and figures of the gods. A wonderful Panorama indeed, or poem of the Centuries, or, if you like, World-symphony with three great leading motives!

And first we have the stage of Simple Consciousness. For hundreds of centuries (we cannot doubt) Man possessed a degree of consciousness not radically different from that of the higher Animals, though probably more quick and varied. He saw, he heard, he felt, he noted. He acted or reacted, quickly or slowly, in response to these impressions. But the consciousness of himSELF, as a being separate from his impressions, as separate from his surroundings, had not yet arisen or taken hold on him. He was an instinctive part, of Nature. And in this respect he was very near to the Animals. Self-consciousness in the animals, in a germinal form is there, no doubt, but EMBEDDED, so to speak, in the general world consciousness. It is on this account that the animals have such a marvellously acute perception and instinct, being embedded in Nature. And primitive Man had the same. Also we must, as I have said before, allow that man in that stage must have had the same sort of grace and perfection of form and movement as we admire in the (wild) animals now. It would be quite unreasonable to suppose that he, the crown in the same sense of creation, was from the beginning a lame and ill-made abortion. For a long period the tribes of men, like the tribes of the higher animals, must have been (on the whole, and allowing for occasional privations and sufferings and conflicts) well adapted to their surroundings and harmonious with the earth and with each other. There must have been a period resembling a Golden Age—some condition at any rate which, compared with subsequent miseries, merited the epithet 'golden.'

It was during this period apparently that the system of Totems arose. The tribes felt their relationship to their winged and fourfooted mates (including also other objects of nature) so deeply and intensely that they adopted the latter as their emblems. The pre-civilization Man fairly worshipped, the animals and was proud to be called after them. Of course we moderns find this strange. We, whose conceptions of these beautiful creatures are mostly derived from a broken-down cab-horse, or a melancholy milk-rummaged cow in a sooty field, or a diseased and despondent lion or eagle at the Zoo, have never even seen or loved them and have only wondered with our true commercial instinct what profit we could extract from them. But they, the primitives, loved and admired the animals; they domesticated many of them by the force of a natural friendship, (1) and accorded them a kind of divinity. This was the age of tribal solidarity and of a latent sense of solidarity with Nature. And the point of it all is (with regard to the subject we have in hand) that this was also the age from which by a natural evolution the sense of Religion came to mankind. If Religion in man is the sense of ties binding his inner self to the powers of the universe around him, then it is evident I think that primitive man as I have described him possessed the REALITY of this sense—though so far buried and subconscious that he was hardly aware of it. It was only later, and with the coming of the Second Stage, that this sense began to rise distinctly into consciousness.

(1) See ch. iv. Tylor in his Primitive Culture (vol. i, p. 460, edn. 1903) says: "The sense of an absolute psychical distinction between man and beast, so prevalent in the civilized world, is hardly to be found among the lower races."

Let us pass then to the Second Stage. There is a moment in the evolution of a child—somewhere perhaps about the age of three (1)—when the simple almost animal-like consciousness of the babe is troubled by a new element—SELF-consciousness. The change is so marked, so definite, that (in the depth of the infant's eyes) you can almost SEE it take place. So in the evolution of the human race there has been a period—also marked and definite, though extending intermittent over a vast interval of time—when on men in general there dawned the consciousness of THEMSELVES, of their own thoughts and actions. The old simple acceptance of sensations and experiences gave place to REFLECTION. The question arose: "How do these sensations and experiences affect ME? What can I do to modify them, to encourage the pleasurable, to avoid or inhibit the painful, and so on?" From that moment a new motive was added to life. The mind revolved round a new centre. It began to spin like a little eddy round its own axis. It studied ITSELF first and became deeply concerned about its own pleasures and pains, losing touch the while with the larger life which once dominated it—the life of Nature, the life of the Tribe. The old unity of the spirit, the old solidarity, were broken up.

(1) See Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness (Philadelphia, 1901), pp. 1 and 39; also W. McDougall's Social Psychology (1908), p. 146—where the same age is tentatively suggested.

I have touched on this subject before, but it is so important that the reader must excuse repetition. There came an inevitable severance, an inevitable period of strife. The magic mirror of the soul, reflecting nature as heretofore in calm and simple grace, was suddenly cracked across. The new self-conscious man (not all at once but gradually) became alienated from his tribe. He lapsed into strife with his fellows. Ambition, vanity, greed, the love of domination, the desire for property and possessions, set in. The influences of fellowship and solidarity grew feebler. He became alienated from his great Mother. His instincts were less and less sure—and that in proportion as brain-activity and self-regarding calculation took their place. Love and mutual help were less compelling in proportion as the demands of self-interest grew louder and more insistent. Ultimately the crisis came. Cain murdered his brother and became an outcast. The Garden of Eden and the Golden Age closed their gates behind him. He entered upon a period of suffering—a period of labor and toil and sorrow such as he had never before known, and such as the animals certainly have never known. And in that distressful state, in that doleful valley of his long pilgrimage, he still remains to-day.

Thus has the canker of self-consciousness done its work. It would be foolish and useless to rail against the process, or to blame any one for it. It had to be. Through this dismal vale of self-seeking mankind had to pass—if only in order at last to find the True Self which was (and still remains) its goal. The pilgrimage will not last for ever. Indeed there are signs that the recent Great War and the following Events mark the lowest point of descent and the beginning of the human soul's return to sanity and ascent towards the heavenly Kingdom. No doubt Man will arrive again SOME day at the grace, composure and leisurely beauty of life which the animals realized long ago, though he seems a precious long time about it; and when all this nightmare of Greed and Vanity and Self-conceit and Cruelty and Lust of oppression and domination, which marks the present period, is past—and it WILL pass—then Humanity will come again to its Golden Age and to that Paradise of redemption and peace which has for so long been prophesied.

But we are dealing with the origins of Religion; and what I want the reader to see is that it was just this breaking up of the old psychologic unity and continuity of man with his surroundings which led to the whole panorama of the rituals and creeds. Man, centering round himself, necessarily became an exile from the great Whole. He committed the sin (if it was a sin) of Separation. Anyhow Nemesis was swift. The sense of loneliness and the sense of guilt came on him. The realization of himself as a separate conscious being necessarily led to his attributing a similar consciousness of some kind to the great Life around him. Action and reaction are equal and opposite. Whatever he may have felt before, it became clear to him now that beings more or less like himself—though doubtless vaster and more powerful—moved behind the veil of the visible world. From that moment the belief in Magic and Demons and Gods arose or slowly developed itself; and in the midst of this turmoil of perilous and conflicting powers, he perceived himself an alien and an exile, stricken with Fear, stricken with the sense of Sin. If before, he had experienced fear—in the kind of automatic way of self-preservation in which the animals feel it—he now, with fevered self-regard and excited imagination, experienced it in double or treble degree. And if, before, he had been aware that fortune and chance were not always friendly and propitious to his designs, he now perceived or thought he perceived in every adverse happening the deliberate persecution of the powers, and an accusation of guilt directed against him for some neglect or deficiency in his relation to them. Hence by a perfectly logical and natural sequence there arose the belief in other-world or supernatural powers, whether purely fortuitous and magical or more distinctly rational and personal; there arose the sense of Sin, or of offence against these powers; there arose a complex ritual of Expiation—whether by personal sacrifice and suffering or by the sacrifice of victims. There arose too a whole catalogue of ceremonies—ceremonies of Initiation, by which the novice should learn to keep within the good grace of the Powers, and under the blessing of his Tribe and the protection of its Totem; ceremonies of Eucharistic meals which should restore the lost sanctity of the common life and remove the sense of guilt and isolation; ceremonies of Marriage and rules and rites of sex-connection, fitted to curb the terrific and demonic violence of passions which else indeed might easily rend the community asunder. And so on. It is easy to see that granted an early stage of simple unreflecting nature-consciousness, and granting this broken into and, after a time, shattered by the arrival of SELF-consciousness there would necessarily follow in spontaneous yet logical order a whole series of religious institutions and beliefs, which phantasmal and unreal as they may appear to us, were by no means unreal to our ancestors. It is easy also to see that as the psychological process was necessarily of similar general character in every branch of the human race and all over the world, so the religious evolutions—the creeds and rituals—took on much the same complexion everywhere; and, though they differed in details according to climate and other influences, ran on such remarkably parallel lines as we have noted.

Finally, to make the whole matter clear, let me repeat that this event, the inbreak of Self-consciousness, took place, or BEGAN to take place, an enormous time ago, perhaps in the beginning of the Neolithic Age. I dwell on the word "began" because I think it is probable that in its beginnings, and for a long period after, this newborn consciousness had an infantile and very innocent character, quite different from its later and more aggressive forms—just as we see self-consciousness in a little child has a charm and a grace which it loses later in a boastful or grasping boyhood and manhood. So we may understand that though self-consciousness may have begun to appear in the human race at this very early time (and more or less contemporaneously with the invention of very rude tools and unformed language), there probably did elapse a very long period—perhaps the whole of the Neolithic Age—before the evils of this second stage of human evolution came to a head. Max Muller has pointed out that among the words which are common to the various branches of Aryan language, and which therefore belong to the very early period before the separation of these branches, there are not found the words denoting war and conflict and the weapons and instruments of strife—a fact which suggests a long continuance of peaceful habit among mankind AFTER the first formation and use of language.

That the birth of language and the birth of self-consciousness were APPROXIMATELY simultaneous is a probable theory, and one favored by many thinkers; (1) but the slow beginnings of both must have been so very protracted that it is perhaps useless to attempt any very exact determination. Late researches seem to show that language began in what might be called TRIBAL expressions of mood and feeling (holophrases like "go-hunting-kill-bear") without reference to individual personalities and relationships; and that it was only at a later stage that words like "I" and "Thou" came into use, and the holophrases broke up into "parts of speech" and took on a definite grammatical structure. (2) If true, these facts point clearly to a long foreground of rude communal language, something like though greatly superior to that of the animals, preceding or preparing the evolution of Self-consciousness proper, in the forms of "I" and "Thou" and the grammar of personal actions and relations. "They show that the plural and all other forms of number in grammar arise not by multiplication of an original 'I,' but by selection and gradual EXCLUSION from an original collective 'we.'" (3) According to this view the birth of self-consciousness in the human family, or in any particular race or section of the human family, must have been equally slow and hesitating; and it would be easy to imagine, as just said, that there may have been a very long and 'golden' period at its beginning, before the new consciousness took on its maturer and harsher forms.

(1) Dr. Bucke (Cosmic Consciousness) insists on their simultaneity, but places both events excessively far back, as we should think, i.e. 200,000 or 300,000 years ago. Possibly he does not differentiate sufficiently between the rude language of the holophrase and the much later growth of formed and grammatical speech.

(2) See A. E. Crawley's Idea of the Soul, ch. ii; Jane Harrison's Themis, pp. 473-5; and E. J. Payne's History of the New World called America, vol. ii, pp. 115 sq., where the beginning of self-consciousness is associated with the break-up of the holophrase.

(3) Themis, p. 471.

All estimates of the Time involved in these evolutions of early man are notoriously most divergent and most difficult to be sure of; but if we take 500,000 years ago for the first appearance of veritable Man (homo primigenius), (2) and (following Professor W. J. Sollas) (3) 30,000 or 40,000 years ago for the first tool-using men (homo sapiens) of the Chellean Age (palaeolithic), 15,000 for the rock-paintings and inscriptions of the Aurignacian and Magdalenian peoples, and 5,000 years ago for the first actual historical records that have come down to us, we may perhaps get something like a proportion between the different periods. That is to say, half a million years for the purely animal man in his different forms and grades of evolution. Then somewhere towards the end of palaeolithic or commencement of neolithic times Self-consciousness dimly beginning and, after some 10,000 years of slow germination and pre-historic culture, culminating in the actual historic period and the dawn of civilization 40 or 50 centuries ago, and to-day (we hope), reaching the climax which precedes or foretells its abatement and transformation.

(2) Though Dr. Arthur Keith, Ancient Types of Man (1911), pp. 93 and 102, puts the figure at more like a million.

(3) See Ancient Hunters (1915); also Hastings's Encycl. art. "Ethnology"; and Havelock Ellis, "The Origin of War," in The Philosophy of Conflict and other Essays.

No doubt many geologists and anthropologists would favor periods greatly LONGER than those here mentioned; but possibly there would be some agreement as to the RATIO to each other of the times concerned: that is, the said authorities would probably allow for a VERY long animal-man (1)-period corresponding to the first stage; for a much shorter aggressively 'self conscious' period, corresponding to the Second Stage—perhaps lasting only one thirtieth or fiftieth of the time of the first period; and then—if they looked forward at all to a third stage—would be inclined for obvious reasons to attribute to that again a very extended duration.

(1) I use the phrase 'animal-man' here, not with any flavor of contempt or reprobation, as the dear Victorians would have used it, but with a sense of genuine respect and admiration such as one feels towards the animals themselves.

However, all this is very speculative. To return to the difficulty about Language and the consideration of those early times when words adequate to the expression of religious or magical ideas simply did not exist, it is clear that the only available, or at any rate the CHIEF means of expression, in those times, must have consisted in gestures, in attitudes, in ceremonial ACTIONS—in a more or less elaborate ritual, in fact. (1) Such ideas as Adoration, Thanksgiving, confession of Guilt, placation of Wrath, Expiation, Sacrifice, Celebration of Community, sacramental Atonement, and a score of others could at that time be expressed by appropriate rites—and as a matter of fact are often so expressed even now—MORE readily and directly than by language. 'Dancing'—when that word came to be invented—did not mean a mere flinging about of the limbs in recreation, but any expressive movements of the body which might be used to convey the feelings of the dancer or of the audience whom he represented. And so the 'religious dance' became a most important part of ritual.

(1) See ch. ix and xi.

So much for the second stage of Consciousness. Let us now pass on to the Third Stage. It is evident that the process of disruption and dissolution—disruption both of the human mind, and of society round about it, due to the action of the Second Stage—could not go on indefinitely. There are hundreds of thousands of people at the present moment who are dying of mental or bodily disease—their nervous systems broken down by troubles connected with excessive self-consciousness—selfish fears and worries and restlessness. Society at large is perishing both in industry and in warfare through the domination in its organism of the self-motives of greed and vanity and ambition. This cannot go on for ever. Things must either continue in the same strain, in which case it is evident that we are approaching a crisis of utter dissolution, OR a new element must enter in, a new inspiration of life, and we (as individuals) and the society of which we form a part, must make a fresh start. What is that new and necessary element of regeneration?

It is evident that it must be a new birth—the entry into a further stage of consciousness which must supersede the present one. Through some such crisis as we have spoken of, through the extreme of suffering, the mind of Man, AS AT PRESENT CONSTITUTED, has to die. (1) Self-consciousness has to die, and be buried, and rise again in a new form. Probably nothing but the extreme of suffering can bring this about. (2) And what is this new form in which consciousness has to rearise? Obviously, since the miseries of the world during countless centuries have dated from that fatal attempt to make the little personal SELF the centre of effort and activity, and since that attempt has inevitably led to disunity and discord and death, both within the mind itself and within the body of society, there is nothing left but the return to a Consciousness which shall have Unity as its foundation-principle, and which shall proceed from the direct SENSE AND PERCEPTION of such an unity throughout creation. The simple mind of Early Man and the Animals was of that character—a consciousness, so to speak, continuous through nature, and though running to points of illumination and foci of special activity in individuals, yet at no point essentially broken or imprisoned in separate compartments. (And it is this CONTINUITY of the primitive mind which enables us, as I have already explained, to understand the mysterious workings of instinct and intuition.) To some such unity-consciousness we have to return; but clearly it will be—it is not—of the simple inchoate character of the First Stage, for it has been enriched, deepened, and greatly extended by the experience of the Second Stage. It is in fact, a new order of mentality—the consciousness of the Third Stage.

(1) "The mind must be restrained in the heart till it comes to an end," says the Maitrayana-Brahmana-Upanishad.

(2) One may remember in this connection the tapas of the Hindu yogi, or the ordeals of initiates into the pagan Mysteries generally.

In order to understand the operation and qualities of this Third Consciousness, it may be of assistance just now to consider in what more or less rudimentary way or ways it figured in the pagan rituals and in Christianity. We have seen the rude Siberyaks in North-Eastern Asia or the 'Grizzly' tribes of North American Indians in the neighborhood of Mount Shasta paying their respects and adoration to a captive bear—at once the food-animal, and the divinity of the Tribe. A tribesman had slain a bear—and, be it said, had slain it not in a public hunt with all due ceremonies observed, but privately for his own satisfaction. He had committed, therefore, a sin theoretically unpardonable; for had he not—to gratify his personal desire for food—levelled a blow at the guardian spirit of the Tribe? Had he not alienated himself from his fellows by destroying its very symbol? There was only one way by which he could regain the fellowship of his companions. He must make amends by some public sacrifice, and instead of retaining the flesh of the animal for himself he must share it with the whole tribe (or clan) in a common feast, while at the same time, tensest prayers and thanks are offered to the animal for the gift of his body for food. The Magic formula demanded nothing less than this—else dread disaster would fall upon the man who sinned, and upon the whole brotherhood. Here, and in a hundred similar rites, we see the three phases of tribal psychology—the first, in which the individual member simply remains within the compass of the tribal mind, and only acts in harmony with it; the second, in which the individual steps outside and to gratify his personal SELF performs an action which alienates him from his fellows; and the third, in which, to make amends and to prove his sincerity, he submits to some sacrifice, and by a common feast or some such ceremony is received back again into the unity of the fellowship. The body of the animal-divinity is consumed, and the latter becomes, both in the spirit and in the flesh, the Savior of the tribe.

In course of time, when the Totem or Guardian-spirit is no longer merely an Animal, or animal-headed Genius, but a quite human-formed Divinity, still the same general outline of ideas is preserved—only with gathered intensity owing to the specially human interest of the drama. The Divinity who gives his life for his flock is no longer just an ordinary Bull or Lamb, but Adonis or Osiris or Dionysus or Jesus. He is betrayed by one of his own followers, and suffers death, but rises again redeeming all with himself in the one fellowship; and the corn and the wine and the wild flesh which were his body, and which he gave for the sustenance of mankind, are consumed in a holy supper of reconciliation. It is always the return to unity which is the ritual of Salvation, and of which the symbol is the Eucharist—the second birth, the formation of "a new creature when old things are passed away." For "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God"; and "the first man is of the earth, earthly, but the second man is the Lord from heaven." Like a strange refrain, and from centuries before our era, comes down this belief in a god who is imprisoned in each man, and whose liberation is a new birth and the beginning of a new creature: "Rejoice, ye initiates in the mystery of the liberated god"—rejoice in the thought of the hero who died as a mortal in the coffin, but rises again as Lord of all!

Who then was this "Christos" for whom the world was waiting three centuries before our era (and indeed centuries before that)? Who was this "thrice Savior" whom the Greek Gnostics acclaimed? What was the meaning of that "coming of the Son of Man" whom Daniel beheld in vision among the clouds of heaven? or of the "perfect man" who, Paul declared, should deliver us from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God? What was this salvation which time after time and times again the pagan deities promised to their devotees, and which the Eleusinian and other Mysteries represented in their religious dramas with such convincing enthusiasm that even Pindar could say "Happy is he who has seen them (the Mysteries) before he goes beneath the hollow earth: that man knows the true end of life and its source divine"; and concerning which Sophocles and Aeschylus were equally enthusiastic? (1)

(1) See Farnell's Cults of the Greek States, vol. iii, p. 194; also The Mysteries, Pagan and Christian, by S. Cheetham, D.D. (London, 1897).

Can we doubt, in the light of all that we have already said, what the answer to these questions is? As with the first blossoming of self-consciousness in the human mind came the dawn of an immense cycle of experience—a cycle indeed of exile from Eden, of suffering and toil and blind wanderings in the wilderness, yet a cycle absolutely necessary and unavoidable—so now the redemption, the return, the restoration has to come through another forward step, in the same domain. Abandoning the quest and the glorification of the separate isolated self we have to return to the cosmic universal life. It is the blossoming indeed of this 'new' life in the deeps of our minds which is salvation, and which all the expressions which I have just cited have indicated. It is this presence which all down the ages has been hailed as Savior and Liberator: the daybreak of a consciousness so much vaster, so much more glorious, than all that has gone before that the little candle of the local self is swallowed up in its rays. It is the return home, the return into direct touch with Nature and Man—the liberation from the long exile of separation, from the painful sense of isolation and the odious nightmare of guilt and 'sin.' Can we doubt that this new birth—this third stage of consciousness, if we like to call it so—has to come, that it is indeed not merely a pious hope or a tentative theory, but a FACT testified to already by a cloud of witnesses in the past—witnesses shining in their own easily recognizable and authentic light, yet for the most part isolated from each other among the arid and unfruitful wastes of Civilization, like glow-worms in the dry grass of a summer night?

Since the first dim evolution of human self-consciousness an immense period, as we have said—perhaps 30,000 years, perhaps even more—has elapsed. Now, in the present day this period is reaching its culmination, and though it will not terminate immediately, its end is, so to speak, in sight. Meanwhile, during all the historical age behind us—say for the last 4,000 or 5,000 years—evidence has been coming in (partly in the religious rites recorded, partly in oracles, poems and prophetic literature) of the onset of this further illumination—"the light which never was on sea or land"—and the cloud of witnesses, scattered at first, has in these later centuries become so evident and so notable that we are tempted to believe in or to anticipate a great and general new birth, as now not so very far off. (1) (We should, h that many a time already in the history the Millennium has been prophesied, and yet not arrived punctual to date, and to take to ourselves the words of 'Peter,' who somewhat grievously disappointed at the long-delayed second coming of the Lord Jesus in the clouds of heaven, wrote in his second Epistle: "There shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." (2))

(1) For an amplification of all this theme, see Dr. Bucke's remarkable and epoch-making book, Cosmic Consciousness (first published at Philadelphia, 1901).

(2) 2 Peter iii. 4; written probably about A.D. 150.

I say that all through the historical age behind us there has been evidence—even though scattered—of salvation and the return of the Cosmic life. Man has never been so completely submerged in the bitter sea of self-centredness but what he has occasionally been able to dash the spray from his eyes and glimpse the sun and the glorious light of heaven. From how far back we cannot say, but from an immense antiquity come the beautiful myths which indicate this.

Cinderella, the cinder-maiden, sits unbeknown in her earthly. hutch; Gibed and jeered at she bewails her lonely fate; Nevertheless youngest-born she surpasses her sisters and endues a garment of the sun and stars; From a tiny spark she ascends and irradiates the universe, and is wedded to the prince of heaven.

How lovely this vision of the little maiden sitting unbeknown close to the Hearth-fire of the universe—herself indeed just a little spark from it; despised and rejected; rejected by the world, despised by her two elder sisters (the body and the intellect); yet she, the soul, though latest-born, by far the most beautiful of the three. And of the Prince of Love who redeems and sets her free; and of her wedding garment the glory and beauty of all nature and of the heavens! The parables of Jesus are charming in their way, but they hardly reach this height of inspiration.

Or the world-old myth of Eros and Psyche. How strange that here again there are three sisters (the three stages of human evolution), and the latest-born the most beautiful of the three, and the jealousies and persecutions heaped on the youngest by the others, and especially by Aphrodite the goddess of mere sensual charm. And again the coming of the unknown, the unseen Lover, on whom it is not permitted for mortals to look; and the long, long tests and sufferings and trials which Psyche has to undergo before Eros may really take her to his arms and translate her to the heights of heaven. Can we not imagine how when these things were represented in the Mysteries the world flocked to see them, and the poets indeed said, "Happy are they that see and seeing can understand?" Can we not understand how it was that the Amphictyonic decree of the second century B.C. spoke of these same Mysteries as enforcing the lesson that "the greatest of human blessings is fellowship and mutual trust"?



XV. THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES

Thus we come to a thing which we must not pass over, because it throws great light on the meaning and interpretation of all these rites and ceremonies of the great World-religion. I mean the subject of the Ancient Mysteries. And to this I will give a few pages.

These Mysteries were probably survivals of the oldest religious rites of the Greek races, and in their earlier forms consisted not so much in worship of the gods of Heaven as of the divinities of Earth, and of Nature and Death. Crude, no doubt, at first, they gradually became (especially in their Eleusinian form) more refined and philosophical; the rites were gradually thrown open, on certain conditions, not only to men generally, but also to women, and even to slaves; and in the end they influenced Christianity deeply. (1)

(1) See Edwin Hatch, D.D., The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages on the Christian Church (London, 1890), pp. 283-5.

There were apparently three forms of teaching made use of in these rites: these were [gr legomena], things SAID; [gr deiknumena], things SHOWN; and [gr drwmena], things PERFORMED or ACTED. (1) I have given already some instances of things said-texts whispered for consolation in the neophyte's car, and so forth; of the THIRD group, things enacted, we have a fair amount of evidence. There were ritual dramas or passion-plays, of which an important one dealt with the descent of Kore or Proserpine into the underworld, as in the Eleusinian representations, (2) and her redemption and restoration to the upper world in Spring; another with the sufferings of Psyche and her rescue by Eros, as described by Apuleius (3)—himself an initiate in the cult of Isis. There is a parody by Lucian, which tells of the birth of Apollo, the marriage of Coronis, and the coming of Aesculapius as Savior; there was the dying and rising again of Dionysus (chief divinity of the Orphic cult); and sometimes the mystery of the birth of Dionysus as a holy child. (4) There was, every year at Eleusis, a solemn and lengthy procession or pilgrimage made, symbolic of the long pilgrimage of the human soul, its sufferings and deliverance.

(1) Cheetham, op. cit., pp. 49-61 sq.

(2) See Farnell, op. cit., iii. 158 sq.

(3) See The Golden Ass.

(4) Farnell, ii, 177.

"Almost always," says Dr. Cheetham, "the suffering of a god—suffering followed by triumph—seems to have been the subject of the sacred drama." Then occasionally to the Neophytes, after taking part in the pilgrimage, and when their minds had been prepared by an ordeal of darkness and fatigue and terrors, was accorded a revelation of Paradise, and even a vision of Transfiguration—the form of the Hierophant himself, or teacher of the Mysteries, being seen half-lost in a blaze of light. (1) Finally, there was the eating of food and drinking of barley-drink from the sacred chest (2)—a kind of Communion or Eucharist.

(1) Ibid., 179 sq.

(2) Ibid., 186. Sacred chests, in which holy things were kept, figure frequently in early rites and legends—as in the case of the ark of the Jewish tabernacle, the ark or box carried in celebrations of the mysteries of Bacchus (Theocritus, Idyll xxvi), the legend of Pandora's box which contained the seeds of all good and evil, the ark of Noah which saved all living creatures from the flood, the Argo of the argonauts, the moonshaped boat in which Isis floating over the waters gathered together the severed limbs of Osiris, and so brought about his resurrection, and the many chests or coffins out of which the various gods (Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Jesus), having been laid there in death, rose again for the redemption of the world. They all evidently refer to the mystic womb of Nature and of Woman, and are symbols of salvation and redemption (For a full discussion of this subject, see The Great Law of religious origins, by W. Williamson, ch. iv.)

Apuleius in The Golden Ass gives an interesting account of his induction into the mysteries of Isis: how, bidding farewell one evening to the general congregation outside, and clothed in a new linen garment, he was handed by the priest into the inner recesses of the temple itself; how he "approached the confines of death, and having trod on the threshold of Proserpine (the Underworld), returned therefrom, being borne through all the elements. At midnight I saw the sun shining with its brilliant light: and I approached the presence of the Gods beneath and the Gods above, and stood near and worshipped them." During the night things happened which must not be disclosed; but in the morning he came forth "consecrated by being dressed in twelve stoles painted with the figures of animals." (1) He ascended a pulpit in the midst of the Temple, carrying in his right hand a burning torch, while a chaplet encircled his head, from which palm-leaves projected like rays of light. "Thus arrayed like the Sun, and placed so as to resemble a statue, on a sudden the curtains being drawn aside, I was exposed to the gaze of the multitude. After this I celebrated the most joyful day of my initiation, as my natal day (day of the New Birth) and there was a joyous banquet and mirthful conversation."

(1) An allusion no doubt to the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the pathway of the Sun, as well as to the practice of the ancient priests of wearing the skins of totem-animals in sign of their divinity.

One can hardly refuse to recognize in this account the description of some kind of ceremony which was supposed to seal the illumination of a man and his new birth into divinity—the animal origin, the circling of all experience, the terrors of death, and the resurrection in the form of the Sun, the symbol of all light and life. The very word "illumination" carries the ideas of light and a new birth with it. Reitzenstein in his very interesting book on the Greek Mysteries (1) speaks over and over again of the illumination ([gr fwtismos]) which was held to attend Initiation and Salvation. The doctrine of Salvation indeed ([gr swthria]) was, as we have already seen, rife and widely current in the Second Century B. C. It represented a real experience, and the man who shared this experience became a [gr qeios] [gr anqrwpos] or divine man. (2) In the Orphic Tablets the phrase "I am a child of earth and the starry heaven, but my race is of heaven (alone)" occurs more than once. In one of the longest of them the dead man is instructed "after he has passed the waters (of Lethe) where the white Cypress and the House of Hades are" to address these very words to the guardians of the Lake of Memory while he asks for a drink of cold water from that Lake. In another the dead person himself is thus addressed: "Hail, thou who hast endured the Suffering, such as indeed thou hadst never suffered before; thou hast become god from man!" (3) Ecstacy was the acme of the religious life; and, what is especially interesting to us, Salvation or the divine nature was open to all men—to all, that is, who should go through the necessary stages of preparation for it. (4)

(1) Die hellenistischen Mysterien-Religionen, by R. Reitzenstein, Leipzig, 1910.

(2) Reitzenstein, p. 12.

(3) These Tablets (so-called) are instructions to the dead as to their passage into the other world, and have been found in the tombs, in Italy and elsewhere, inscribed on very thin gold plates and buried with the departed. See Manual of Greek Antiquities by Percy Gardner and F. B. Jerome (1896); also Prolegomena to Greek Religion by Jane E. Harrison (1908).

(4) Reitzenstein, pp. 15 and 18; also S. J. Case, Evolution of Early Christianity, p. 301.

Reitzenstein contends (p. 26) that in the Mysteries, transfiguration ([gr metamorfwsis]), salvation ([gr swthria]), and new birth ([gr paliggenesia]) were often conjoined. He says (p. 31), that in the Egyptian Osiris-cult, the Initiate acquires a nature "equal to God" ([gr isoqeos]), the very same expression as that used of Christ Jesus in Philippians ii. 6; he mentions Apollonius of Tyana and Sergius Paulus as instances of men who by their contemporaries were considered to have attained this nature; and he quotes Akhnaton (Pharaoh of Egypt in 1375 B.C.) as having said, "Thou art in my heart; none other knows Thee, save thy son Akhnaton; Thou hast initiated him into thy wisdom and into thy power." He also quotes the words of Hermes (Trismegistus)—"Come unto Me, even as children to their mother's bosom: Thou art I, and I am Thou; what is thine is mine, and what is mine is thine; for indeed I am thine image ([gr eidwlon])," and refers to the dialogue between Hermes and Tat, in which they speak of the great and mystic New Birth and Union with the All—with all Elements, Plants and Animals, Time and Space.

"The Mysteries," says Dr. Cheetham very candidly, "influenced Christianity considerably and modified it in some important respects"; and Dr. Hatch, as we have seen, not only supports this general view, but follows it out in detail. (1) He points out that the membership of the Mystery-societies was very numerous in the earliest times, A.D.; that their general aims were good, including a sense of true religion, decent life, and brotherhood; that cleanness from crime and confession were demanded from the neophyte; that confession was followed by baptism ([gr kaqarsis]) and THAT by sacrifice; that the term [gr fwtismos] (illumination) was adopted by the Christian Church as the name for the new birth of baptism; that the Christian usage of placing a seal on the forehead came from the same source; that baptism itself after a time was called a mystery ([gr musihriou]); that the sacred cakes and barley-drink of the Mysteries became the milk and honey and bread and wine of the first Christian Eucharists, and that the occasional sacrifice of a lamb on the Christian altar ("whose mention is often suppressed") probably originated in the same way. Indeed, the conception of the communion-table AS an altar and many other points of ritual gradually established themselves from these sources as time went on. (2) It is hardly necessary to say more in proof of the extent to which in these ancient representations "things said" and "scenes enacted" forestalled the doctrines and ceremonials of Christianity.

(1) See Hatch, op. cit., pp. 290 sq.

(2) See Dionysus Areop. (end of fifth century), who describes the Christian rites generally in Mystery language (Hatch, 296).

"But what of the second group above-mentioned, the "things SHOWN"? It is not so easy naturally to get exact information concerning these, but they seem to have been specially holy objects, probably things connected with very ancient rituals in the past—such as sacred stones, old and rude images of the gods, magic nature-symbols, like that half-disclosed ear of corn above-mentioned (Ch. V.). "In the Temple of Isis at Philae," says Dr. Cheetham, "the dead body of Osiris is represented with stalks of corn springing from it, which a priest waters from a vessel. An inscription says: 'This is the form of him whom we may not name, Osiris of the Mysteries who sprang from the returning waters' (the Nile)." Above all, no doubt, there were images of the phallus and the vulva, the great symbols of human fertility. We have seen (Ch. XII) that the lingam and the yoni are, even down to to-day, commonly retained and honored as holy objects in the S. Indian Temples, and anointed with oil (some of them) for a very practical reason. Sir J. G. Frazer, in his lately published volumes on The Folk-lore of the Old Testament, has a chapter (in vol. ii) on the very numerous sacred stones of various shapes and sizes found or spoken of in Palestine and other parts of the world. Though uncertain as to the meaning of these stones he mentions that they are "frequently, though not always, UPRIGHT." Anointing them with oil, he assures us, "is a widespread practice, sometimes by women who wish to obtain children." And he concludes the chapter by saying: "The holy stone at Bethel was probably one of those massive standing stones or rough pillars which the Hebrews called masseboth, and which, as we have seen, were regular adjuncts of Canaanite and early Israelitish sanctuaries." We have already mentioned the pillars Jachin and Boaz which stood before the Temple of Solomon, and which had an acknowledged sexual significance; and so it seems probable that a great number of these holy stones had a similar meaning. (1) Following this clue it would appear likely that the lingam thus anointed and worshipped in the Temples of India and elsewhere IS the original [gr cristos] (2) adored by the human race from the very beginning, and that at a later time, when the Priest and the King, as objects of worship, took the place of the Lingam, THEY also were anointed with the chrism of fertility. That the exhibition of these emblems should be part of the original 'Mystery'-rituals was perfectly natural—especially because, as we have explained already (3) old customs often continued on in a quite naive fashion in the rituals, when they had come to be thought indecent or improper by a later public opinion; and (we may say) was perfectly in order, because there is plenty of evidence to show that in SAVAGE initiations, of which the Mysteries were the linear descendants, all these things WERE explained to the novices, and their use actually taught. (4) No doubt also there were some representations or dramatic incidents of a fairly coarse character, as deriving from these ancient sources. (5) It is, however, quaint to observe how the mere mention of such things has caused an almost hysterical commotion among the critics of the Mysteries—from the day of the early Christians who (in order to belaud their own religion) were never tired of abusing the Pagans, onward to the present day when modern scholars either on the one hand follow the early Christians in representing the Mysteries as sinks of iniquity or on the other (knowing this charge could not be substantiated except in the period of their final decadence) take the line of ignoring the sexual interest attaching to them as non-existent or at any rate unworthy of attention. The good Archdeacon Cheetham, for instance, while writing an interesting book on the Mysteries passes by this side of the subject ALMOST as if it did not exist; while the learned Dr. Farnell, overcome apparently by the weight of his learning, and unable to confront the alarming obstacle presented by these sexual rites and aspects, hides himself behind the rather non-committal remark (speaking of the Eleusinian rites) "we have no right to imagine any part of this solemn ceremony as coarse or obscene." (6) As Nature, however, has been known (quite frequently) to be coarse or obscene, and as the initiators of the Mysteries were probably neither 'good' nor 'learned,' but were simply anxious to interpret Nature as best they could, we cannot find fault with the latter for the way they handled the problem, nor indeed well see how they could have handled it better.

(1) F. Nork, Der Mystagog, mentions that the Roman Penates were commonly anointed with oil. J. Stuart Hay, in his Life of Elagabalus (1911), says that "Elagabal was worshipped under the symbol of a great black stone or meteorite, in the shape of a Phallus, which having fallen from the heavens represented a true portion of the Godhead, much after the style of those black stone images popularly venerated in Norway and other parts of Europe."

(2) J. E. Hewitt, in his Ruling Races of Pre-historic Times (p. 64), gives a long list of pre-historic races who worshipped the lingam.

(3) See Ch. XI.

(4) See Ernest Crawley's Mystic Rose, ch. xiii, pp. 310 and 313: "In certain tribes of Central Africa both boys and girls after initiation must as soon as possible have intercourse." Initiation being not merely preliminary to, but often ACTUALLY marriage. The same among Kaffirs, Congo tribes, Senegalese, etc. Also among the Arunta of Australia.

(5) Professor Diederichs has said that "in much ancient ritual it was thought that mystic communion with the deity could be obtained through the semblance of sex-intercourse—as in the Attis-Cybele worship, and the Isis-ritual." (Farnell.) Reitzenstein says (op. cit., p. 20.) that the Initiates, like some of the Christian Nuns at a later time, believed in union with God through receiving the seed.

(6) Farnell, op. cit., iii. 176. Messrs. Gardner and Jevons, in their Manual of Greek Antiquities, above-quoted, compare the Eleusinian Mysteries favorably with some of the others, like the Arcadian, the Troezenian, the Aeginaean, and the very primitive Samothracian: saying (p. 278) that of the last-mentioned "we know little, but safely conjecture that in them the ideas of sex and procreation dominated EVEN MORE than in those of Eleusis."

After all it is pretty clear that the early peoples saw in Sex the great cohesive force which kept (we will not say Humanity but at any rate) the Tribe together, and sustained the race. In the stage of simple Consciousness this must have been one of the first things that the budding intellect perceived. Sex became one of the earliest divinities, and there is abundant evidence that its organs and processes generally were invested with a religious sense of awe and sanctity. It was in fact the symbol (or rather the actuality) of the permanent undying life of the race, and as such was sacred to the uses of the race. Whatever taboos may have, among different peoples, guarded its operations, it was not essentially a thing to be concealed, or ashamed of. Rather the contrary. For instance the early Christian writer, Hippolytus, Bishop of Pontus (A.D. 200), in his Refutation of all Heresies, Book V, says that the Samothracian Mysteries, just mentioned, celebrate Adam as the primal or archetypal Man eternal in the heavens; and he then continues: "Habitually there stand in the temple of the Samothracians two images of naked men having both hands stretched aloft towards heaven, and their pudenda turned upwards, as is also the case with the statue of Mercury on Mt. Cyllene. And the aforesaid images are figures of the primal man, and of that spiritual one that is born again, in every respect of the same substance with that (first) man."

This extract from Hippolytus occurs in the long discourse in which he 'exposes' the heresy of the so-called Naassene doctrines and mysteries. But the whole discourse should be read by those who wish to understand the Gnostic philosophy of the period contemporary with and anterior to the birth of Christianity. A translation of the discourse, carefully analyzed and annotated, is given in G. R. S. Mead's Thrice-greatest Hermes (1) (vol. i); and Mead himself, speaking of it, says (p. 141): "The claim of these Gnostics was practically that the good news of the Christ (the Christos) was the consummation of the inner doctrine of the Mystery-institutions of all the nations; the end of them all being the revelation of the Mystery of Man." Further, he explains that the Soul, in these doctrines, was regarded as synonymous with the Cause of All; and that its loves were twain—of Aphrodite (or Life), and of Persephone (or Death and the other world). Also that Attis, abandoning his sex in the worship of the Mother-Goddess (Dea Syria), ascends to Heaven—a new man, Male-female, and the origin of all things: the hidden Mystery being the Phallus itself, erected as Hermes in all roads and boundaries and temples, the Conductor and Reconductor of Souls.

(1) Reitzenstein, op. cit., quotes the discourse largely. The Thrice-greatest Hermes may also be consulted for a translation of Plutarch's Isis and Osiris.

All this may sound strange, but one may fairly say that it represented in its degree, and in that first 'unfallen' stage of human thought and psychology, a true conception of the cosmic Life, and indeed a conception quite sensible and admirable, until, of course, the Second Stage brought corruption. No sooner was this great force of the cosmic life diverted from its true uses of Generation and Regeneration (1) and appropriated by the individual to his own private pleasure—no sooner was its religious character as a tribal service (2), (often rendered within the Temple precincts) lost sight of or degraded into a commercial transaction—than every kind of evil fell upon mankind. Corruptio optimi pessima. It must be remembered too that simultaneous with this sexual disruption occurred the disruption of other human relations; and we cease to be surprised that disease and selfish passions, greed, jealousy, slander, cruelty, and wholesale murder, raged—and have raged ever since.

(1) For the special meaning of these two terms, see The Drama of Love and Death, by E. Carpenter, pp. 59-61.

(2) Ernest Crawley in The Mystic Rose challenges this identification of Religion with tribal interests; yet his arguments are not very convincing. On p. 5 he admits that "there is a religious meaning inherent in the primitive conception and practice of ALL human relations"; and a large part of his ch. xii is taken up in showing that even such institutions as the Saturnalia were religious in confirming the sense of social union and leading to 'extended identity.'

But for the human soul—whatever its fate, and whatever the dangers and disasters that threaten it—there is always redemption waiting. As we saw in the last chapter, this corruption of Sex led (quite naturally) to its denial and rejection; and its denial led to the differentiation from it of Love. Humanity gained by the enthronement And deification of Love, pure and undefiled, and (for the time being) exalted beyond this mortal world, and free from all earthly contracts. But again in the end, the divorce thus introduced between the physical and the spiritual led to the crippling of both. Love relegated, so to speak, to heaven as a purely philanthropical, pious and 'spiritual' affair, became exceedingly DULL; and sex, remaining on earth, but deserted by the redeeming presence, fell into mere "carnal curiosity and wretchedness of unclean living." Obviously for the human race there remains nothing, in the final event, but the reconciliation of the physical and the spiritual, and after many sufferings, the reunion of Eros and Psyche.

There is still, however, much to be said about the Third State of Consciousness. Let us examine into it a little more closely. Clearly, since it is a new state, and not merely an extension of a former one, one cannot arrive at it by argument derived from the Second state, for all conscious Thought such as we habitually use simply keeps us IN the Second state. No animal or quite primitive man could possibly understand what we mean by Self-consciousness till he had experienced it. Mere argument would not enlighten him. And so no one in the Second state can quite realize the Third state till he has experienced it. Still, explanations may help us to perceive in what direction to look, and to recognize in some of our experiences an approach to the condition sought.

Evidently it is a mental condition in some respects more similar to the first than to the second stage. The second stage of human psychologic evolution is an aberration, a divorce, a parenthesis. With its culmination and dismissal the mind passes back into the simple state of union with the Whole. (The state of Ekagrata in the Hindu philosophy: one-pointedness, singleness of mind.) And the consciousness of the Whole, and of things past and things to come and things far around—which consciousness had been shut out by the concentration on the local self—begins to return again. This is not to say, of course, that the excursus in the second stage has been a loss and a defect. On the contrary, it means that the Return is a bringing of all that has been gained during the period of exile (all sorts of mental and technical knowledge and skill, emotional developments, finesse and adaptability of mind) BACK into harmony with the Whole. It means ultimately a great gain. The Man, perfected, comes back to a vastly extended harmony. He enters again into a real understanding and confidential relationship with his physical body and with the body of the society in which he dwells—from both of which he has been sadly divorced; and he takes up again the broken thread of the Cosmic Life.

Everyone has noticed the extraordinary consent sometimes observable among the members of an animal community—how a flock of 500 birds (e. g. starlings) will suddenly change its direction of flight—the light on the wings shifting INSTANTANEOUSLY, as if the impulse to veer came to all at the same identical moment; or how bees will swarm or otherwise act with one accord, or migrating creatures (lemmings, deer, gossamer spiders, winged ants) the same. Whatever explanation of these facts we favor—whether the possession of swifter and finer means of external communication than we can perceive, or whether a common and inner sensitivity to the genius of the Tribe (the "Spirit of the Hive") or to the promptings of great Nature around—in any case these facts of animal life appear to throw light on the possibilities of an accord and consent among the members of emaciated humanity, such as we dream of now, and seem to bid us have good hope for the future.

It is here, perhaps, that the ancient worship of the Lingam comes in. The word itself is apparently connected with our word 'link,' and has originally the same meaning. (1) It is the link between the generations. Beginning with the worship of the physical Race-life, the course of psychologic evolution has been first to the worship of the Tribe (or of the Totem which represents the tribe); then to the worship of the human-formed God of the tribe—the God who dies and rises again eternally, as the tribe passes on eternal—though its members perpetually perish; then to the conception of an undying Savior, and the realization and distinct experience of some kind of Super-consciousness which does certainly reside, more or less hidden, in the deeps of the mind, and has been waiting through the ages for its disclosure and recognition. Then again to the recognition that in the sacrifices, the Slayer and the Slain are one—the strange and profoundly mystic perception that the God and the Victim are in essence the same—the dedication of 'Himself to Himself' (2) and simultaneously with this the interpretation of the Eucharist as meaning, even for the individual, the participation in Eternal Life—the continuing life of the Tribe, or ultimately of Humanity. (3) The Tribal order rises to Humanity; love ascends from the lingam to yogam, from physical union alone to the union with the Whole—which of course includes physical and all other kinds of union. No wonder that the good St. Paul, witnessing that extraordinary whirlpool of beliefs and practices, new and old, there in the first century A.D.—the unabashed adoration of sex side by side with the transcendental devotions of the Vedic sages and the Gnostics—became somewhat confused himself and even a little violent, scolding his disciples (I Cor. x. 21) for their undiscriminating acceptance, as it seemed to him, of things utterly alien and antagonistic. "Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table and the table of devils."

(1) See Sanskrit Dictionary.

(2) See Ch. VIII.

(3) There are many indications in literature—in prophetic or poetic form—of this awareness and distinct conviction of an eternal life, reached through love and an inner sense of union with others and with humanity at large; indications which bear the mark of absolute genuineness and sincerity of feeling. See, for instance, Whitman's poem, "To the Garden the World" (Leaves of Grass, complete edition, p. 79). But an eternal life of the third order; not, thank heaven! an eternity of the meddling and muddling self-conscious Intellect!

Every careful reader has noticed the confusedness of Paul's mind and arguments. Even taking only those Epistles (Galatians, Romans and Corinthians) which the critics assign to his pen, the thing is observable—and some learned Germans even speak of TWO Pauls. (1) But also the thing is quite natural. There can be little doubt that Paul of Tarsus, a Jew brought up in the strictest sect of the Pharisees, did at some time fall deeply under the influence of Greek thought, and quite possibly became an initiate in the Mysteries. It would be difficult otherwise to account for his constant use of the Mystery-language. Reitzenstein says (p. 59): "The hellenistic religious literature MUST have been read by him; he uses its terms, and is saturated with its thoughts (see Rom. vi. 1-14." And this conjoined with his Jewish experience gave him creative power. "A great deal in his sentiment and thought may have REMAINED Jewish, but to his Hellenism he was indebted for his love of freedom and his firm belief in his apostleship." He adopts terms (like [gr sarkikos], [gr yucikos] and [gr pneumatikos]) (2) which were in use among the hellenistic sects of the time; and he writes, as in Romans vi. 4, 5, about being "buried" with Christ or "planted" in the likeness of his death, in words which might well have been used (with change of the name) by a follower of Attis or Osiris after witnessing the corresponding 'mysteries'; certainly the allusion to these ancient deities would have been understood by every religionist of that day. These few points are sufficient to acentuate{sic} the two elements in Paul, the Jewish and the Greek, and to explain (so far) the seeming confusion in his utterances. Further it is interesting to note—as showing the pagan influences in the N. T. writings—the degree to which the Epistle to Philemon (ascribed to Paul) is FULL—short as it is—of expressions like PRISONER of the Lord, FELLOW SOLDIER, CAPTIVE or BONDMAN, (3) which were so common at the time as to be almost a cant in Mithraism and the allied cults. In I Peter ii. 2 (4), we have the verse "As newborn babes, desire ye the sincere MILK of the word, that ye may grow thereby." And again we may say that no one in that day could mistake the reference herein contained to old initiation ceremonies and the new birth (as described in Chapter VIII above), for indeed milk was the well-known diet of the novice in the Isis mysteries, as well as On some savage tribes) of the Medicine-man when practising his calling.

(1) "Die Mysterien-anschauungen, die bei Paulus im Hintergrunde stehen, drangen sich in dem sogenarmten Deuteropaulinismus machtig vor" (Reitzenstein).

(2) Remindful of our Three Stages: the Animal, the Self-conscious, and the Cosmic.

(3) [gr desmios, stratiwths, doulos].

(4) See also I Cor. iii. 2.

And here too Democracy comes in—strangely foreboded from the first in all this matter. (1) Not only does the Third Stage bring illumination, intuitive understanding of processes in Nature and Humanity, sympathy with the animals, artistic capacity, and so forth, but it necessarily brings a new Order of Society. A preposterous—one may almost say a hideous—social Age is surely drawing to its end, The debacle we are witnessing to-day all over Europe (including the British Islands), the break-up of old institutions, the generally materialistic outlook on life, the coming to the surface of huge masses of diseased and fatuous populations, the scum and dregs created by the past order, all point to the End of a Dispensation. Protestantism and Commercialism, in the two fields of religion and daily life have, as I have indicated before, been occupied in concentrating the mind of each man solely on his OWN welfare, the salvation of his OWN soul or body. These two forces have therefore been disruptive to the last degree; they mark the culmination of the Self-conscious Age—a culmination in War, Greed, Materialism, and the general principle of Devil-take-the-hindmost—and the clearing of the ground for the new order which is to come. So there is hope for the human race. Its evolution is not all a mere formless craze and jumble. There is an inner necessity by which Humanity unfolds from one degree or plane of consciousness to another. And if there has been a great 'Fall' or Lapse into conflict and disease and 'sin' and misery, occupying the major part of the Historical period hitherto, we see that this period is only brief, so to speak, in comparison with the whole curve of growth and expansion. We see also that, as I have said before, the belief in a state of salvation or deliverance has in the past ages never left itself quite without a witness in the creeds and rituals and poems and prophecies of mankind. Art, in some form or other, as an activity or inspiration dating not from the conscious Intellect, but from deeper regions of sub-conscious feeling and intuition, has continually come to us as a message from and an evidence of the Third stage or state, and as a promise of its more complete realization under other conditions.

Through the long night-time where the Nations wander From Eden past to Paradise to be, Art's sacred flowers, like fair stars shining yonder, Alone illumine Life's obscurity.

O gracious Artists, out of your deep hearts 'Tis some great Sun, I doubt, by men unguessed, Whose rays come struggling thus, in slender darts, To shadow what Is, till Time shall manifest.

(1) See the germs of Democracy in the yoga teaching of the Hindus, and in the Upanishads, the Bhagavat Gita, and other books.

With the Cosmic stage comes also necessarily the rehabilitation of the WHOLE of Society in one fellowship (the true Democracy). Not the rule or domination of one class or caste—as of the Intellectual, the Pious, the Commercial or the Military—but the fusion or at least consentaneous organization of ALL (as in the corresponding functions of the human Body). Class rule has been the mark of that second period of human evolution, and has inevitably given birth during that period to wars and self-agrandizements of classes and sections, and their consequent greeds and tyrannies over other classes and sections. It is not found in the primitive human tribes and societies, and will not be found in the final forms of human association. The liberated and emancipated Man passes unconstrained and unconstraining through all grades and planes of human fellowship, equal and undisturbed, and never leaving his true home and abiding place in the heart of all. Equally necessarily with the rehabilitation of Society as an entirety will follow the rehabilitation of the entire physical body IN each member of Society. We have spoken already of Nakedness: its meaning and likely extent of adoption (Ch. XII). The idea that the head and the hands are the only seemly and presentable members of the organism, and that the other members are unworthy and indecent, is obviously as onesided and lopsided as that which honors certain classes in the commonwealth and despises others. Why should the head brag of its ascendancy and domination, and the heart be smothered up and hidden? It will only be a life far more in the open air than that which we lead at present, which will restore the balance and ultimately bring us back to sanity and health.



XVI. THE EXODUS OF CHRISTIANITY

We have dealt with the Genesis of Christianity; we now come to the Exodus. For that Christianity can CONTINUE to hold the field of Religion in the Western World is neither probable nor desirable. It is true, as I have remarked already, that there is a certain trouble about defining what we mean by "Christianity" similar to that about the word "Civilization." If we select out of the great mass of doctrines and rites favored by the various Christian Churches just those which commend themselves to the most modern and humane and rational human mind and choose to call that resulting (but rather small) body of belief and practice 'Christianity' we are, of course, entitled to do so, and to hope (as we do hope) that this residuum will survive and go forward into the future. But this sort of proceeding is hardly fair and certainly not logical. It enables Christianity to pose as an angel of light while at the same time keeping discreetly out of sight all its own abominations and deeds of darkness. The Church—which began its career by destroying, distorting and denying the pagan sources from which it sprang; whose bishops and other ecclesiastics assassinated each other in their theological rancour "of wild beasts," which encouraged the wicked folly of the Crusades—especially the Children's Crusades—and the shameful murders of the Manicheans, the Albigenses, and the Huguenots; which burned at the stake thousands and thousands of poor 'witches' and 'heretics'; which has hardly ever spoken a generous word in favor or defence of the animals; which in modern times has supported vivisection as against the latter, Capitalism and Commercialism as against the poorer classes of mankind; and whose priests in the forms of its various sects, Greek or Catholic, Lutheran or Protestant, have in these last days rushed forth to urge the nations to slaughter each other with every diabolical device of Science, and to glorify the war-cry of Patriotism in defiance of the principle of universal Brotherhood—such a Church can hardly claim to have established the angelic character of its mission among mankind! And if it be said—as it often IS SAID: "Oh! but you must go back to the genuine article, and the Church's real origin and one foundation in the person and teaching of Jesus Christ," then indeed you come back to the point which this book, as above, enforces: namely, that as to the person of Jesus, there is no CERTAINTY at all that he ever existed; and as to the teaching credited to him, it is certain that that comes down from a period long anterior to 'Christianity' and is part of what may justly be called a very ancient World-religion. So, as in the case of 'Civilization,' we are compelled to see that it is useless to apply the word to some ideal state of affairs or doctrine (an ideal by no means the same in all people's minds, or in all localities and times), but that the only reasonable thing to do is to apply it in each case to a HISTORICAL PERIOD. In the case of Christianity the historical period has lasted nearly 2,000 years, and, as I say, we can hardly expect or wish that it should last much longer.