The Origin of Thought and Speech

“No one sufficiently recognises the power of reason.”
—St Thomas Aquinas.

“De nos jours, nous mouquons encore plus de raison que de religion.”
—Fenelon.

This question: “What is atheism?” has aroused me with a start. Led aside as I had been by many beautiful, true, and striking thoughts, which I noted as they presented themselves to me; being also very preoccupied by depressing observations that I had made on my chronic inability to turn them to account, I lost sight of the fact that it is not sufficient to write and think at will merely, without definite plan, not keeping the goal in sight. This is my eleventh chapter, and I see with dismay that it is likely to exceed the two which precede it in length, and that it follows one concerned more with the repetition of words often spoken and seldom understood. I fear that I lack method.

During our own time we have seen a school arise, the Historical School; it was heralded in Germany by such men as Niebuhr, the two Humboldts, Bopp—the author of the first Comparative Grammar—Grimm, and many others. This School shows that an uninterrupted continuity connects what has been thought of old with what is being thought at present; that there is no break between the present and the past; and that the difficulties which are presented to us by the study of the present philosophical problems, would in a great measure disappear, if we knew under what form these same problems presented themselves to man for the first time.

The Historical School advances step by step with the study of comparative philology; this latter has shown that at the beginning the number of words was very small; they lay, as it were, side by side, before man’s eyes, as evenly and as regularly as the threads on a weaver’s loom. But gradually, on account of our neglect, and our many misunderstandings, the idea contained in these words became entangled, and we have ceased to follow the course of the thread; the words have remained in our memory, but the meaning has changed; they may even have several meanings which contradict each other; the result is that we are ignorant of many things it would be well for us to know with certainty.

All problems whether of philosophy or of philology, are best solved by the historical method; let us bravely face each obscure question to which we have no key; each doubtful term the meaning of which is lost, and bid all retrace their steps in the path by which they arrived at us; avoiding the peril of the idle worker who has a theory, and a remedy ready for everything; and the walks in the country of dreams which have no chart to direct travellers.

For us who are not learned linguists there is more than one method of gaining information concerning words; the easiest is to note the use made of them at various times in the past; another way which is more important and more certain is to study their biographies, we should find them in ancient documents; a third method that exacts neither a knowledge of their history, nor their genealogy, consists simply in reflection; this process, which should be within the reach of all, is seldom used.

As I am constrained to follow the development of the Vedic religion at the commencement of what was neither polytheism nor monotheism; I recur to the last word of the preceding chapter in order to find its historical antecedents.

History tells us that much in the same way as a wild beast pursues its prey, this epithet of atheist is hurled at men who in truth have little in common. “In the eyes of his Athenian judges Socrates was an atheist; yet he did not even deny the gods of Greece, but he reserved to himself the right to believe in something higher and more truly divine than Hephaistos and Aphrodite.”[109] Spinoza was called an atheist by the Jews, his co-religionists, because his conception of Jahveh or Jehovah was wider than theirs. The early Christians were called átheoi by the Jews and Greeks because they believed not as the Jews and Christians believed. Were the Hindoos atheists when they said, “What is Indra? it is the sun, the rain only.” Were they atheists when they ceased to believe in their Devas, the brilliant objects, the stars, the fields, the rivers, the eyes of man? If the history of the word atheist had only taught us one thing, e.g. that those who think differently from ourselves do not deserve the reproach of atheism, it would have extinguished the fires of many an auto da fé.

But are there real atheists? Do those persons exist who are convinced that the word God represents nothing? There may be; if you have succeeded in convincing human reason that there can be an act without a cause, a boundary without a beyond, a finite without an infinite; then you will have proved without doubt that there is no God. “God is a great word,” said a German theologian, lately deceased, whose honesty and piety have never been questioned, “he who feels and understands that, will judge more mildly and more justly of those who confess that they dare not say that they believe in God.”[110]

We ought never to call a man an atheist till we know what kind of God it is that he has been brought up to believe in, and what kind of God it is that he rejects, it may be, from the best and highest motives. If we can respect the childlike faith of a charcoal-burner, let us also respect philosophical doubt; it may well indicate a turning-point in the life of a man, in which he is perhaps abandoning a belief of which he has seen the error, or is perhaps seeking to replace the less worthy faith, however dear it may be to him, by one more perfect, however its novelty may distress him; without such “atheism” as this our religion would long ago have only been a congealed hypocrisy.

In the life of an individual, as in the life of a nation, there comes a moment when opinion becomes modified; the old theory of the world being fashioned by a workman as a potter moulds his vessels of clay, has gradually disappeared. These ideas were so repugnant to the enlightened mind of Sakya-muni, the Hindoo Prince—universally known as Buddha—that he considered it irreverent to enquire how the world was made, and still more audacious to attempt to answer the enquiry.

That which took the place of henotheism amongst the Hindoos might aptly be termed adivism, a denial of the old Devas. Such a denial, however, of what was once believed, but could be honestly believed no longer, so far from being the end of religion, is in reality its vital principle.

Whilst about to deal with ideas which I know are true, it is gratifying to expose at the same time certain false opinions which have been put forth on the subject; it is curious to note how to start with a false opinion brings one to a wrong conclusion. Herodotus, Cæsar, and Quintus Curtius, who have all written on popular religious beliefs, relate that men adored the sun, the earth, the sky, fire, and water; that they worshipped certain rivers, and certain trees, and considered as gods all things that were useful to them. This was the opinion of the ancient writers who knew no better, and modern theorists repeated also: “Primitive men deified the grand natural phenomena of nature, especially the stars, taking them for gods.”

It is not a matter for surprise that primitive man should have formed the opinion that either in the world or out of it there should be a sovereign power which they considered as their gods.

In the eighteenth century the theory of fetishism was held to explain all the intuitions of primitive man; although not pertinent to the subject, this was not perceived until afterwards, and the theory was considered reasonable.

Whilst the Theorists take the predicate of God, when applied even to a fetish, as requiring no explanation, the Historical School sees in it the result of a long continued evolution of thought. It was evident that the human soul was so constituted that it must tend naturally and inevitably towards the Unknown; it was also necessary that man should learn that he possessed a soul.

We recognise that we have one; but are we equally clear as to what it is?

We answer perhaps: “Yes, it is that part of us which is not the body which perishes—the soul is immortal.” It is well to be able to make such a reply, since it is true; our catechisms have sown the seed of which this is the result.

But since all human knowledge, whether abstract or practical, has the same beginning, through the senses, and that neither eye, ear, nor hand has to do with the soul, what can we know of it? Above all, what can we learn of its existence after death, the time when immortality has passed beyond the sphere of the experience of the senses? As man we recognise the spirit inhabiting the body, but with no form, such as it might receive after death; we can hardly clothe these ideas in words.

This belief in a soul, exactly like the belief in gods, and at last in One God, can only be understood as the outcome of constantly renewed observations and long meditations; the annals of language furnish material for this study, those ancient words, which, meaning originally something quite tangible and visible, came in time to mean that which is invisible and infinite.

The last breath of a dying person gave the first conception of the presence in man of a non-corporeal principle; it was recognised that this perceptible breath, at the moment of death, was an accident and transient. Language marks clearly the difference between the act of breathing or breath, and that which breathed, the invisible agent of this act—the living soul, the spirit. This agent received different names, in the different languages; the Greeks named it Psyche, saying that it was the breath which, at the hour of death, passed out through the bars of the teeth; amongst the Hindoos it was called Atman, and Anima amongst the Latins, two words which originally were understood by those using them as meaning something breathing. Cicero spoke of Anima, but he refrained from defining it, and frankly avowed that he did not know whether to call it breath or fire.

The word breath has been used figuratively to express the Power governing the world.[111] A poet in the Veda when speaking of the Supreme Being says, “It breathed without air.”

Although the word breath was most frequently used to denote the principle of life, another expression was employed at a much earlier period; in countries the most remote from each other, the words, the shadow of the dead, were used, in order to express the idea of something intangible yet closely related to the body. The influence of language on thought is so real and so much more powerful than the testimony of our senses, that those who named the soul a shadow, came at last to believe that corpses threw no shadow because it had left them.

It was then considered that the soul was not a homogeneous whole, but composed of parts of which some are ephemeral, destined to disappear with the body; these parts form what the Greek and Latin writers call the Ego, and the Hindoos Aham, what in French would be termed the moi—three words for one thing—an object of contingency, since it depends on circumstances—on the body, on age, and on sex.

All men have endeavoured to solve the riddle of human life; but the Hindoos, who especially excelled in researches dealing with the formation of words, that is to say, with the birth or development of ideas, whilst penetrating deeply into the mysteries of their soul, their Atman, arrived at an abstraction of this Atman, entirely freed from all earthly or physical particles, and this “vehicle of an abstraction” they considered to be incapable of perishing, since it had no connection with breath, it was the pure self, “freed from the fetters and conditions of the human Ego,” hidden in the Aham; not contingent on circumstances—the self-existent One.

This new conception demanded a new name; the word Atman, which at first signified all the concomitant elements of the soul—those which pass, equally with those that remain—the Hindoos retained in their language, and it was used to define the essence itself, the being with no attributes, identical with the Being who vivified nature, the Infinite that supported man’s own being, the Highest Self. Socrates knew this same Self, but he called it Daimonion, the indwelling God, whom the early Christians called the Holy Ghost.

From the Hindoo point of view this idea holds in itself the solution of the world’s great enigma. The commandment indicating the kernel of all philosophy, “Know thyself,” was the Hindoo doctrine. Know thyself as the self, or if we translate it into religious language, “Know that we live and move and have our being in God” (Acts xvii. 28).[112]

In recognising the soul as that which is the self, we see that this fact of existing is more wonderful than the acts of breathing, feeling, thinking, living, since none of these manifestations are possible but on the sole condition of having proceeded from the Being—who is.

After having analysed the human soul, the Hindoos followed it from phase to phase from the moment when the breath which makes man a living being received its first names. They thus traced its history through time, and believed that they could follow it through eternity.

Years were employed in the elaboration of this history, and we only find its completion in a work which is posterior to the Vedic hymns, the Upanishads. The study of the human soul is the central point in Hindoo philosophy, and the Upanishads are the first psychological work which has ever been made.

There are persons who doubt the existence of things, of which others feel certain; but no one ever doubted the existence of his own soul. Why did the theologians who arranged the creeds not include the article, “I believe in my soul.” It would not have found men incredulous.

Reflection enables us to admit that the soul without God could possess no history, since neither the soul without God, nor God without the soul, could constitute religion. For this which is called religion, if under the form only of a soaring towards an unknown but longed-for Being, has always existed since there have been men on the earth.

We often meet the recurring questions “Whence?” “Why?” and the frequent “Because”; and now we are told by a small number of thinkers that all the explanations of speculative philosophy on the first impulses of the human soul towards religion, are only worthless suppositions, unless philosophers—as historians have done—have recognised that there was a revelation at the beginning of time in the true sense of the word; but opinions differ as to “the true sense of the word.”

We are so accustomed to apply the expression “the Word of God” to the sacred canon of Scripture, that we are inapt at seeking for God’s Word elsewhere. But our first fathers read and studied it before the Bible existed.

To reflective minds, primitive man presents a moving spectacle, drawn towards the Unknown—the Unseen—they abandoned themselves unresistingly to the current leading them in certain directions.

I imagine that our Aryan ancestors would not have fixed their attention with such tenacity on the objects in nature which environed them, had the stars and heavenly bodies been immovable. But the sun appearing on the one side, traversing the sky and then disappearing on the opposite side, made the remark of the Incas prince very natural: “There is some power behind the sun causing it to ascend and descend.” It did not occur to him that the sun travelled in accordance with natural laws. Other princes and poets, with their eyes fixed on the moving objects of the firmament, would have made the same reflection and sought the invisible cause.

If the world had been propelled by a moving power within itself, creatures possessing reason would have been vaguely conscious of it from the first. They would have been like the plants which turn regularly and infallibly in one direction, since they are not free to do otherwise.

“You premise a revelation,” may be said to me, “and yet you direct us towards Evolution; choose one of the two since the one contradicts the other.”

That remains to be proved. Apply the theory of the evolutionist to the mollusc; we see it directing itself, and extending its tentacles, towards a crumb of bread that floats on the water. If they touch it the contact calls forth in the mollusc the act of seizing its prey. This is only a movement of semi-consciousness, or perhaps rather it is not entirely involuntary. Under the aspect of immediate cause and effect, we see a principle anterior to the phenomenon; certain perceptions which appear in the sight of many psychologists to be innate, that is to say, impressions received on our mind before we became conscious of ourself, may well be the result of the receptability of our Ego, which enables us, when it is affected in a certain fashion, to represent these affections to ourselves under certain forms.

The presentiment that unknown powers were to be found behind the visible world only showed itself when the Aryans first named them sky, sun, moon, storm, day, night, all terms previously used for various parts of nature.

With the perception of a Beyond, with the desire to know what it contained, a gap made itself felt which separated it from the known world. It must be crossed—a bridge was necessary. This thought spread from one end of the globe to the other, but our ancestors were the first bridge-makers. Scandinavian mythology mentions a bridge built by the gods which was of three colours; it was clearly intended originally for the rainbow. The Milky Way provided the Hindoos with a bridge; and in the Upanishads mention is made of a path having five colours. Here we have the rainbow again probably. The source of these legends is the ineradicable belief in the heart of man, that the here and hereafter, the immortal and the mortal, the divine and the human, cannot remain apart for ever.

Here I will comment on a striking feature of the Rig-Veda. The rishis give accounts of the manner in which the hymns are composed. They say that they worked at them as other workmen do, such as carpenters, weavers, and potters. Sometimes they speak of the verses as coming direct from the heart; another says his hymn moves as a skiff on the river. Sometimes they speak of their hymns as god-given, and that the gods themselves are seers and poets. In no part of the Rig-Veda are there traces of the theories of the verbal inspiration with the meaning which the Greeks attached to the word as a theophany or manifestation of divinity, nor as it was understood afterwards in all religions, beginning with Brahmanism.

It would be useless to seek for a complete exposition of Vedic thought in the Rig-Veda; all the hymns found in it are not ancient; the collection was made by the priests, and if they retained much that was useless for our purpose in their worship, yet we should be very grateful to them, as in this manner much has been preserved to us of the ancient poetry of India, and it is they who recount the pilgrimage undertaken by the Aryans in search of the invisible lodestone which attracted them beyond what they could see and hear. As they advanced they rejoiced, seeming to attain their desire; but cast down under the weight of their sadness, as at times they found themselves misled.

It is said in the Bible, that for God a thousand years is as one day, and as I read the sacred books of India, not as a learned critic, but as a man who is rejoiced to discover his own thoughts in the writings of the Hindoo poets, the three or four thousand years appear to me as one day during which these poets have not ceased to pour themselves out in their hymns, and it would be possible to condense in one page the sentiments expressed in the first hymns and the last Upanishads.

“Simple minded, not comprehending in my mind, I ask for the hidden places of the gods.”[113] “My ears vanish, my eyes vanish, and the light also which dwells in my heart; my mind with its far-off longings leaves me; what shall I say, and what shall I think?”[114]

“There is no likeness of Him whose name is Great Glory. He is not apprehended of the eye, nor by the other senses, nor by speech; not by penance, or good works. We do not know, we do not understand, how anyone can teach it. It is different from the known, it is also above the unknown, thus we have heard from those of old who taught us this.”

“You will not find Him who has created these things; something else stands between you and Him.”[115]

These detached sentences acquire a very special value, when it is remembered that they are not quotations drawn from some modern works, which imitate the writings of another epoch; these exist nowhere but in the Veda, a literary work composed in the silence and shade, by writers who themselves were ignorant of the object of their desire.

One point at last becomes clear in the mist; a thousand years probably before the coming of Christ in Palestine, this verse was pronounced in the north of India, “He who is above the gods alone is God.”[116]

The Grecian, Roman, and German divinities disappeared before other beliefs; but the Hindoos who knew that their gods were nothing more than mere names, had no dawning religion within their reach that they could adopt; therefore they did not abandon their traditions, and they continued to grope, as one of their own poets says, “Enveloped in mist and with faltering voices.”

All the religious thought of the Vedic period can be found in the Upanishads (the literal meaning of this name is, sessions or assemblies of pupils round their master). There is not what could be called a philosophical system in these Upanishads; they are fragments, and are in the true sense of the word, guesses at truth; the spirit of the work is liberal, all shades of opinion are represented in it, the most divers, and sometimes contradictory. Conjectures abound with regard to the creation, all start from the theory that the world we see is not the true world, and that before it appeared there was the true Self—the Self-existent—the One which underlies the whole world, from which has come all that seems to exist and does actually exist. This was the final solution of the search after the Unknown, the Invisible, which had been foretold through a long chain of centuries; an intuition more convincing than all the arguments which were used at a later period to prove the existence of the Causa Causæ.

The difficulties of the Brahmans in making a complete collection of these vague presentiments, confused thoughts, and true intuitions, were increased a hundredfold by the fact that they had to accept every word and every sentence of the Upanishads as supernaturally revealed. However contradictory at first sight, all that was said in the Upanishads had to be accepted and explained. It would seem difficult to construct a well-arranged literary monument out of such heterogeneous materials; but it was harmonised and welded into a system of philosophy that for solidity and unity will bear comparison with any other system of philosophy in the world.[117]

This gigantic work, which commenced with the Vedic hymns and ended in the book called the Vedanta, or End, and was the end or supreme object of the Veda, is also known under the name of Mîmâmsâ-sutras. Mîmâmsâ is a desiderative form of the root man, to think, and a very appropriate name for a philosophical work of this kind; and sûtra means literally a string; but it is here used as the name of short and abstract aphorisms, rendered still more enigmatical by the conciseness of the language. There are several hundreds of these sayings or headings, forming tables of contents, a magic chaplet of immeasurable length, each word containing condensed thought. This work must have required a concentration of mind which it is difficult for us to realise.

The meaning and form of these aphorisms are characteristic—here is one.

“I will declare in a line, that which has required millions of volumes.

“Brahma is true, the world is false; the soul is Brahma and nothing else.”

Those who consider the Supreme Being as the Infinite in nature, and the individual soul as the Infinite in man, must consider God and the soul as one, not two, seeing there cannot be two Infinites; such is the belief of the Hindoos; but this belief does not belong to them exclusively, it existed amongst the Greeks, and it is encountered in other places in our day besides India.

As works of art these sûtras are of course nothing, but for giving a complete and accurate outline of a whole system of philosophy they are admirable. Under these fragmentary forms can be found treatises of grammar, etymology, exegesis, phonetics, ceremonial, and jurisprudence.

The aphorism which I have quoted is the pure quintessence of the Vedanta.

And of Pantheism also, it may be said. This word Pantheism is one of the most difficult to define, and I shall not attempt to explain it. I have a horror of epithets, and I am sorry that it is not always possible to avoid them. I do not examine philosophical systems too minutely, lest I should be drawn into hurling at them such words as pantheism, mysticism, positivism, materialism, naturalism, without being quite clear when it is no longer lawful to express myself in these terms; epithets and labels are very apt to return home to roost. I will therefore confine myself to this remark, with regard to the belief of the Hindoos; if each definite colour can be broken up into a number of tints too numerous to name, may it not be the same with certain shades and meanings in words and thoughts?

The Greeks hardly suspected the existence of the Veda; in more modern times Europe caught glimpses of it; and now, although completely discovered and studied, it is thoroughly known only to a few erudite scholars, which explains the fact that this ancient creation of the Hindoo mind has exercised so small an influence on our philosophy.

The Sacred Writings of the Hebrews

Whilst the hymns of the Rig-Veda, with their simple meditations, invocations and interrogations—sent out by chance, as it were, into space—accurately trace the march of thought which accompanies the search for indications of the Unknown—the Infinite; we look in vain in the Old Testament for the first dawnings, the first impressions made on the human soul by the existence of things divine. From the time when, in the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve entered into communion with the Eternal, the sacred narrative of facts, evidently historical, continues in such a manner as to have led some to regard it as merely allegorical.

To verify in the light of scientific knowledge the titles which the Bible can truly present to the veneration of the Christian world appears to some more and more advisable.[118] Few persons amongst the critical students of the Old Testament doubt that the books said to be by Moses are a collection of ancient documents, a compilation made by different individuals living at different periods, with long intervals between them, each with his own point of view. The conscientious examination to which these portions of the sacred writings have been subjected was directed at first to isolated points, and in order to exercise freely the critical faculties so much in evidence now, it was necessary to modify the generally accepted view that the religion of the Jews was cast in one piece, and perfect at the first. It was necessary to separate the ancient documents from those of a more recent date, but the attempt to make an exact chronological table of the earlier history of the Hebrews was abandoned. Until the death of Solomon only round numbers could be used, even the date of the oldest fact in history, the exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt, cannot definitely be fixed. Amongst the Egyptologists, whose testimony is of the greatest value, there is great hesitation in assigning a date, though the greater number hold to the fifteenth century B.C. Their representations with regard to Moses are so devoid of definite historical data as to envelop his personality in great mystery.

The idea of a revelation expressly delivered to the Jewish people acquired a more definite form in the Middle Ages; and from the Reformation the theory was promulgated, amongst those to whom the idea was not repugnant, that to a small portion of humanity only—the elect—had been consigned the task of disseminating the knowledge of religious truth in the world. The study of the Scriptures spread to all classes where it was not forbidden to the laity, and from that time millions of human beings knew no other literature.

Assured that the Old Testament contained the inspired words, Jews and Christians alike read it with feelings of reverence which naturally excluded all idea of captious criticism. But the spirit of biblical criticism which animated the reformers was never afterwards extinguished, and attentive readers discovered variations in the construction of the Pentateuch which at that time were inexplicable. The fact that the Bible contained many narratives which could not always be reconciled the one with the other was known long before the period of which we are speaking. St Jerome, when feeling the want of more accurate Greek and Latin translations than those in use in his time, undertook to make one, and wrote thus to a friend of his, a priest: “Re-read the books of the Old and New Testaments, and you will find so many contradictions in the numbers referring to the years, and to the kings of Judah and Israel, that it would require a man of leisure rather than a student to enter thoroughly into the matter.”[119]

Side by side with this historical reconstruction which is now carried on, there is a work of examination being pursued. It is asked by what means did the Jewish people become so strong, so compact, whilst in the midst of strange nations, and in spite of all vicissitudes. It is also asked what was the earliest history of the Hebrews, and whether it is due to the supernatural element that the tribes assembled at the base of Mount Sinai were enabled to become an united people; and, finally, these keen questioners desire to know the stages by which the conception of the Deity entered the Semitic mind.

The scholars who give themselves to these enquiries, generally eliminate the question of popular orthodoxy from the subject, since they consider that when theoretical theology finds its way amongst such workers it does not assist research; it confuses their point of view; they look upon the whole race as becoming prophets, and the prophets become apostles, and thus, out of proportion. The work advances slowly; each critic puts forth his own special lucubrations concerning the biblical settings which all are naturally anxious to retain; contentions are rife on the subject of the Hebrew writers; their lack of Christianity, and their philosophy are both made matters for discussion, and disputes between the commentators did not cease.

Amongst those who are passive witnesses of the scientific investigations, there are many who, without closely following this modern exegesis, are sufficiently enlightened to recognise its aim and its use, and they exclaim with a satisfaction mixed with astonishment, “Whatever may be said one fact remains certain, our holy Scriptures speak of God as God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, as He most truly is, therefore the Old Testament, the product of the Semitic mind, is free from the taint which is perceptible in ancient Aryan literature, that of mythology.”

Let us seek the reason of this immunity accorded to the sacred books of the Hebrews, let us seek it in the language, not apart from it, as some do when looking for the origin of thought.

The Various Names of God

According to the historians who have made a study of the ancient religions, each name given to or descriptive of a deity corresponded to a special conception formed by the people. This has been a generally received principle, and it serves as a clue to guide us in our study of primitive creeds.

The Semitic languages, like the Aryan, possessed a number of names of the Deity in common, all expressive of certain general qualities of the Deity, but all raised by one or other of the Semitic tribes to be the names of God, or of that idea which the first breath, the first sight of the world, the feeling of absolute dependence on a power beyond ourselves, had for ever impressed and implanted in the human mind. These names were all either honorific titles, or represented some moral qualities. El and El-Schadai—Strong, Powerful; Bel or Baal—Lord; Adon or Adonai—my Lord, Master; Melk or Moloch—King; Eliun—the Highest God. Such names as these, so clear and easily understood, did not readily lend themselves to mythological contagion, and they were adopted by Christian phraseology because they contained nothing but what might be rightly ascribed to God.

I could have wished to pass over the name Eloha, which eventually became Elohim, in silence, as its history is a long one, but I shall say a few words about it, as it is one of the most primitive names, and indicates to us what the Semites understood by divine. The name Elohim, applied to an unknown, invisible power, one not grasped by the senses, was the expression of all that was superior and beyond what was seen and known on the earth. At the same time the name was used not exclusively for the Deity, but for others whose attributes, whether physical or moral, demanded a superlative appellative ... there were thus several Elohims of varying natures, the Semitic termination in im turning Eloha into a plural, still always took a singular verb after it, and Elohim or the Elohim (pl.) were both used.

If a comparison be made between the Semitic and Aryan methods of treating the same subjects, the assertion seems amply justified that mythology has not ventured to effect an entrance into the thoughts of the Hebrew writers. If the subject Dawn be taken, it would remain with the Semitic authors a natural daily occurrence, but the Aryan writers would transform it into a personal agent taking the form of gracious, kindly mythical personages. An example presents itself in the book of Job.

Jehovah, the Creator of the universe, “answered Job out of the whirlwind,” who had sought to learn the secrets of nature. Jehovah said to him:—

This is dawn in biblical language and in nature; but who would recognise it under the figure of Daphne, Eos, or Ahana? All of whom have so exercised the brains of our mythologists.

But Jehovah drives still more deeply the point of His discourse into the conscience of Job.

The Aryans had also described the rain, and their thoughts on the subject coincided with those of the Semitic race, but they were clothed in the grotesque language generally associated with myths.

“The rain is represented in all the primitive mythologies of the Aryan race as the fruit of the embraces of Heaven and Earth.”[120] This is an advance towards the poetical metaphor which Æschylus at a later date thus expressed: “The bright sky loves to fructify the earth; the earth on her part aspires to the heavenly marriage. Rain falling from the loving sky impregnates the earth, and she produces for mortals her fruit.”

It is necessary to possess a somewhat profound knowledge of the morphological characteristics of the Semitic and Aryan languages in order to note accurately the particulars to which I have drawn attention, and to understand the amount of influence they exercise on religious phraseology.

The Genius of Languages

Each linguistic family has special features, just as each race has its own physiognomy; the distinctive feature of the Semitic languages is that the significative elements destined to form appellatives, when once incorporated as roots in the body of a word, suffered no modification, and the original meaning could never be ignored. Thus all Semitic names for the dawn, the sun, the vault of heaven, the rain, and other natural phenomena, preserving their appellative character, could not be used for any other object; thus they could never express an abstract idea, such as that of the Deity. The method followed with regard to the arrangement of words in the greater number of Semitic dictionaries, which are generally arranged according to their roots, attest the truth of this fact. When we wish to find the meaning of a word in Hebrew or Arabic, we first seek for its root, and then look in the dictionary for that root and its derivatives. In similar languages no ambiguity is possible; nothing lends itself to myths.

In the Aryan languages, on the contrary, such an arrangement would have been extremely inconvenient; here the roots were apt to become so completely absorbed by the derivative elements, whether prefixes or suffixes, that often substantives ceased almost immediately to be appellative, and were changed into mere names or proper names; this peculiarity of the language enabled the Hindoos to form such words as Dyaus, Aditi, Varuna, Indra, which at first designate various aspects of nature, and afterwards were applied to different aspects of divinities. The preceding pages have afforded us many examples, and I hope that the comparison I have drawn between the two representations of the same object will suffice to explain why it is that we possess a Grecian and Hindoo mythology, but that there was no Hebrew mythology.

Metaphor

But, on the other hand, the Old Testament is full of metaphor—these pearls of discourse; these expressions so light and effective in the mouths of poets as they skim over the surface of the subject in hand, but which we make so ponderous and ungraceful with our literal interpretations. When David speaks of God as a rock, a fortress, a buckler, we have no difficulty in understanding his meaning, although we might express ourselves differently, and probably speak of the ever-present help of God. Where we allude to a temptation from within or from without, it was more natural for the ancients to speak of a tempter, whether in a human or animal form. What with us is a heavenly message or a godsend was to them a winged messenger.

What is really meant is perhaps the same, and the fault is ours, not theirs, if we persist in understanding their words in their outward and material aspect only; and forget that before language had sanctioned a distinction between the concrete and the abstract, the intention of the speakers comprehended both the concrete and the abstract, both the material and the spiritual, in a manner which has become quite strange to us.[121] I believe it can be proved that more than half the difficulties in the history of religion owe their origin to this constant misinterpretation of ancient language by modern language, of ancient thought by modern thought, particularly whenever the word has become more sacred than the spirit.

The Later Name for God amongst the Hebrews

Each divine name mentioned hitherto represented a quality or an attribute; we now come to one of comparatively more recent date, which contains neither attribute nor similitude; it is mentioned for the first time in a conversation between God and Moses. God speaks from the burning bush, and tells Moses to bring the children of Israel out of Egypt. “And Moses said unto God: Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel and shall say unto them: ‘The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you’; and they shall say to me: ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses: ‘I Am that I Am.’ And he said: ‘Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you’” (Exod. iii. 14, 15).

God in speaking of Himself said: “I Am that I Am,” or, “I Am”; but man in designating God used the word Jehovah. The etymology of this word was sought, and it was regarded by many, rightly or wrongly, as a derivative of the verb to be. Jehovah was thus—absolute existence, or the Being.

“And God spake unto Moses and said unto him: ‘I am Jehovah; and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob as El Shaddai, but by my name Jehovah I was not known to them’” (Exodus vi. 2, 3).

Writers are now generally agreed that Jehovah should be pronounced Jahveh. Renan notices this striking fact. “The name of God which has conquered the world,” he says, “is unknown to all who are not Hebraists, and even they do not know how to pronounce it.”

By a superstition which some writers trace back to a very remote period, the Israelites considered the name which God had used of Himself to be too sacred to be uttered by human lips; gradually its use was discontinued; and the name Lord was used in its place.

Although the names of God all indicated the one true God, they did not preserve the children of Israel from polytheism, since there was hardly a tribe that did not forget the original meaning of the titles used. If the Jews had remembered the meaning of the word El, they could not have worshipped Baal as distinct from El; but in the same way as the Greeks connected the worship of Apollos and Uranus with that of Zeus, so the Jews were ready at times to invoke the gods of their neighbours.

It is not that the earlier names of the Deity contained no second meaning as qualificative adjective; Force, for instance, could be symbolised, but the idea of absolute existence expressed by the words, “I Am,” excluded all symbol and all likenesses.

The Jews did not profit by this preservative from error; on the contrary, with the advent in Israel of this new conception of the Deity, the partial eclipse which so often obscured their reason seems at times to have given place to one more complete. As soon as Moses had constituted them a nation, they appear to have looked upon God as a national God, ignoring His relationship with other peoples.

The salient point in the Old Testament is the relation of God with His people, an alliance or covenant between Jehovah and Israel of which the rainbow became the first type. Threatenings and promises enforced the keeping of the moral law, the good and evil things of this life; if Israel obeyed the Lord and kept His commandments, the fields would yield their crops, the trees their fruits, and peace would reign in the land; if they were disobedient, the heaven would become brass, and famine and pestilence would decimate the people, and the rest would be led captive by foreign kings.

Although no definite assertion concerning the immortality of the soul may be found in the Old Testament, a belief in personal immortality is taken for granted in several passages, and mention is frequently made of an abode in which the spirits remain after their separation from the body, that is Sheol, in which joy and suffering are equally unknown. The picture drawn by David in some of the Psalms, of the abode of the departed is sad and desolate. Though the word is not meant for an individual grave, this idea may have been borrowed from it; the meaning is that of a vast space in the interior of the earth; the dead lie down and are together and at rest, but separated not only from man but also from God.

The Hebrews naturally mourned and compassionated their dead most sincerely. “Alas my father, alas my mother, my poor children.” But why should we Aryans, whose language is not allied philologically with the Semitic, copy their phrases? Why should we Christians, who are not linked to them by dogma, allow ourselves to use the same hopeless expressions, instead of words instinct with life and hope?

On the Prophets (Nābhī)

The phenomenon of prophecy, one of the earlier developments of the human mind, has been found amongst all peoples, at one time or other of their history. Certain spontaneous psychical movements dominated men. The important rôle played by the oracles in the history of Greece, is well known; the Greeks classed both the priests who interpreted the auguries, and those persons who considered themselves inspired by the gods and claimed a knowledge of hidden things, under the name of prophets, indifferently. In the third century B.C. the Jews of Alexandria, when writing the Septuagint, translated the Hebrew word Nābhī by prophet. As amongst Hebraists the word Nābhī does not necessarily imply the power of foretelling the future, whilst the word prophet conveys that meaning, it might have been well to employ both terms.

The original meaning of the word Nābhī seems to have been “agitated outbursts.” These men seem to have passed through a phase of nervous exaltation before beginning their exhortations; when once they had started their outpourings they no longer had control over their spirit’s impulse; and were often physically prostrated, showing signs of an overpowering compelling physical force, divinely irresistible.

These Nābhīs, who appeared on the occasion of any crisis, when the welfare of the public was at stake, were at the head of popular movements, giving them a right direction; they were the first to rise against the oppression of the ruling powers, and thousands of them perished in misery. Isaiah likens them to sentinels, or watchmen always on the alert, watching with eyes fixed on the horizon, charged with the duty of sounding the alarm on the approach of danger. “One calleth unto me out of Seir; Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?” This same Isaiah compares the negligent prophets to “dumb dogs, that cannot bark, lying down, loving to slumber.”

Their preaching must have been very powerful; Luther, in speaking of the prophecies of Isaiah, says, “Every word is a furnace.”

Until now Jehovah had by the mouth of the Nābhīs addressed the people as a nation; the individual was not singled out. But imperceptibly a change took place; new indications presented themselves. Instead of the order, “Slay, slay,” milder accents were heard; it was as though heart spoke to heart: “Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings; with calves of a year old? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy” (Micah vi.).

The individual becomes more evident; like the rishis, Elijah sought the Lord; and he came to Mount Horeb: “And a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice,” I imagine that Elijah said to himself: “That still small voice is for me.”

There were in certain places assemblies of Nābhīs, and schools in which the young prophets were trained in rhetoric and in composing discourses; for though some improvised, others—amongst them probably Isaiah—previously wrote their messages. All used a rhythmical language akin to poetry; the teaching of music no doubt formed a part of their education, since we know that the sound of music helped to produce the ecstasy which resulted in prophesy.[122] The gift seems to have been to some extent contagious. Prophets were found in bands, prophesying, and followed by musicians.

During the eight centuries preceding our era, a succession of terrible calamities took place. The Nābhīs upheld the courage of the people by their immovable conviction that the Lord would send a leader, and deliverer of the people from their enemies. Through the whole of this time Israel, though often despairing and sometimes in revolt, resisted doubt; an unknown phenomenon amongst the heathens of antiquity. That which strikes us as so inexplicable is that Judaism showed itself capable of such prodigies of devotion and self-sacrifice, though so little sustained by the bright glimpses of the future life.

The Elohim with whom the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were permitted to hold intercourse, appeared more accessible to the Israelites than the mighty Jehovah of whom they were forbidden to make an image. The more we contemplate the infinite grandeur of the majesty of God, of whom there is no similitude, whose name is “I Am,” to whom, according to Fenelon, even the word spirit is inapplicable, and of whom, according to Descartes and Bossuet, nothing may be said but this, “The Being,” the more it seems possible to fear, to reverence Him; but to love in those days seemed difficult—love was rarely seen.

I desired to know what the best and most profound thinkers could say on the ties uniting them with their Creator, those who had experienced the action of the Divine love in themselves. At the same time I determined to emphasise as little as possible the various forms these thoughts might wear, whether in philosophical systems or in religions which had been founded or organised in the visible Church.

Amongst the thinkers who have occupied themselves with these matters, I will mention one who, about two hundred years ago, was looked upon as a dangerous heretic. Since that time Baruch Spinoza has been anathematised as an atheist, and venerated as a saint; afterwards he was declared by certain philosophers to be no atheist, but was counted as a Pantheist. In our day he is known to be less of a Pantheist than was thought.

Shrinking from such epithets, which disturb my judgment, I will not enter into the question as to which approaches more nearly to the truth.

I spoke once after this manner to some friends of mine, in the presence of one whom I had not seen before.

“You are too diffident,” he said to me, “I will give you a safeguard against obscurity of judgment. Read any system of philosophy you like, you will doubtless discover that error predominates in it; put it aside for the time being and read another, make the round of several systems. With each your first impression will probably be renewed. After that go over each in your mind, not in detail, but taking each in its entirety. You will find that you can point out a certain truth, one truth which will have occurred in all. Let this gradually expand in your mind without unduly forcing it; you will have forgotten the epithets used, and will find one dominant note which will enlighten your judgment.”

The manner in which Spinoza interpreted the sacred writings of his race has perhaps not attracted sufficient attention. His most important work from this point of view has the somewhat repellant title of Tractatus theologico-politicus. It is diffuse and heavy, and its translators have not succeeded in rendering it more agreeable. It is very difficult to grasp in detail, as omissions and reservations abound.

The Views of Spinoza

When reading Spinoza it is necessary to bear in mind—which is not easy—that he is neither a heathen philosopher nor a Father of the Church nor a modern critic, but a learned Jew, living in the middle of the seventeenth century. I will try to reproduce his opinions in his own words, and endeavour to keep them uncontaminated, as far as possible, with the views of the end of the nineteenth century.

Spinoza asserts plainly that he receives the Bible as an inspired book; in this he perhaps differs from some of our more recent exegetes who examine the Bible as any other literary work of history and morality.

Christians grow up in the truth that the Bible contains the Word of God, and they claim that their teaching has its basis in the Old Testament. But others have argued thus: What do these know of the history of the Hebrews? They do not understand the language of their writings, and they cannot say what caused those sublime teachers of the people, the prophets, to speak on such and such an occasion, in such and such a manner. Being ignorant on all these points it is possible that interpretations of the Old Testament may have led us into error.

The existence of what are now called the laws of nature being unknown in those far-off days, the Hebrews were unable to recognise secondary or mediate causes; the book of Job is an example of this. God intervenes personally on each occasion. Our attention is directed solely to two points: man who suffers, that is, who consents or is in revolt, and God who wills or wills not.

As everything without exception is placed in direct relationship with God in the Old Testament, all is said to emanate from God; the cedars of Lebanon are the cedars of God;[123] men of great stature, the giants, are called in Genesis sons of God; the knowledge of nature and of natural things which Solomon possessed is called the wisdom of God; the discretion of a judge and the gains of a merchant are the gifts of God; Assyria is the scourge of God, and the lightning His arrows. And Spinoza asks: why are the children of Israel called God’s chosen people? Because the Lord, having delivered them out of Pharaoh’s hands, led them into the land of Canaan, where they lived under the laws revealed to Moses, to which the surrounding nations were not subject. “I will be your God, and ye shall be My people,” Jehovah had said by the mouth of Moses. This was the covenant concluded on Mount Sinai between the Lord God and the Jewish nation. These laws, which were at the same time civil and religious, were included under the general term, the Law of the Lord, and the Book containing these precepts was called the Word of God.

According to an ancient tradition, God revealed to Noah seven precepts which corresponded to commandments given generally to all mankind without distinction of race; there was thus perhaps a revelation given at the beginning of time, even before the first and greatest of the prophets, Moses; and this revelation the patriarchs knew. The light which lightens every man born into the world impressed these first precepts on the human heart; to the Jewish race it seemed perhaps improbable that a divine law not promulgated by a human mouth nor delivered in the name of the God of Israel, could be imposed on man; as Moses was permitted to hear God’s voice amongst the lightnings and thunders, the Israelites considered themselves on a higher level than the rest of humanity, and held in less esteem eternal verities which were the possession of all mankind. Moses told them that after his death God would raise up a prophet amongst them on condition that they should keep His Covenant and His Commandments to do them, and he warned them of the consequences of breaking these: “I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish.”

We find the second revelation in the books ascribed to Moses; written in our memory as distinctly as in the Bible; it has so entirely eclipsed the first that the greater number of us do not remember ever to have heard of the seven precepts of Noah.

After the death of Moses, prophets succeeded each other in Israel; all from the first to the last acknowledged that they received the revelation either by symbols or illustrations, or by the word; their eyes saw certain objects and their ears heard the explanation of what they saw. Ezekiel, like Moses, saw God under the appearance of a flaming fire; Daniel saw Him as the “Ancient of Days, whose garment was white as snow”; the disciples of Christ saw the Spirit of God under the form of a dove; the Apostles as tongues of fire; and Saul, at the moment of his conversion, recognised it in a bright light, and these visions were always accompanied by words.

The prophets rise above the level of other men by the intensity of their faith, and by their vivid imagination; but imagination is mobile, and their ecstatic conditions were not permanent; how could they feel assured of being in direct communication with the Lord Himself? They were so lacking in assurance that they often required some palpable sign, thus did Abraham, Moses, Gideon and many others. Each time the sign was granted to them; a fire descending from heaven to consume the offering; a rod changed into a serpent; a healthy hand instantly covered with leprosy; a fleece of wool remaining dry on ground that was wet with dew, and other miraculous signs.

According to Spinoza the gift of prophecy is on a lower level than that of ordinary intellectual knowledge which requires no outward sign of confirmation.

The nature of the revelation depended also upon the temperament of each prophet, on his education and his own personal opinions; the Magi who studied astronomy and astrology, seeing a star in the east, at once went in search of the expected child. But on one point all were agreed, they all said with Moses: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might, and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” And they said with Isaiah: “Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings, cease to do evil, learn to do well, relieve the oppressed.”

Obedience

A striking feature of Spinoza’s philosophical system was the basis of obedience upon which the whole edifice of a religious life rested; now obedience presupposes the existence of a law.

As the Israelites seemed incapable of appreciating the intrinsic excellence of the precepts delivered to them, Moses enforced their fulfilment, and spoke of God to them as a just and righteous law-giver who would reward those who kept the commandments and punish those who transgressed them. And when this law was given out, amongst thunders and lightnings, the children of Israel acknowledged it with acclaim—though not always fulfilling it—because they were the only people possessing it.

At last the time came when it was possible to say: “The appointed hour has come.” The Jewish nation, for whose sake the Mosaic law had been revealed, was on the point of crumbling to pieces, when Christ appeared proclaiming the universal and divine law. Christ was no prophet in the ordinary acceptation of the word, since neither word nor vision revealed God’s Will to Him, the truth was in Him in all its plenitude, His mind was identical with that of the Father, and Eternal Wisdom took the form of humanity.

Jewish as well as Christian theologians have equally contributed at times to obscure the sense of the Holy Scriptures; they have taught that man’s reason is unsound and can with difficulty penetrate the mysteries of religion; and that the only way, therefore, was to accept the Bible as infallible in all its details. The faithful extended this doctrine of infallibility to every verbal peculiarity and failed to distinguish the eternal principles, always clearly and simply expressed by the prophets, from those vivid illustrations which enabled them to speak, without hindrance, in terms most adapted for arousing the wonder and belief of the ordinary hearer, of matters per se inexpressible, as for instance of the Divine Nature. Spinoza especially blames the theologians for having introduced in their commentaries notions borrowed from Grecian philosophers, which they adapted to the Old and New Testament, clothing them in biblical language; this mixture of divine inspiration and subtle argument more and more disturbed pious souls who went to their Bibles for edification only.

To those capable of understanding them Christ revealed the secrets of the Kingdom of God; they were the higher truths of eternal life, the counsels of perfection; to the multitude He spoke in parables and gave them commandments which were to be obeyed that they might enter the kingdom of heaven. The Apostles spread abroad the teachings of Christ; they preached the love of God with that of our neighbour, not as sufficing in itself, but as a commandment spoken in the name of the Life and Passion of our Saviour. And then each one added to these great truths minor teachings, varying the subjects according as they addressed Jews or Gentiles; many different teachings were thus promulgated, giving rise in the early Church to misunderstandings, gradually leading to disputes and schisms; and after nineteen centuries of study of the subject we still have not arrived at perfect mutual understanding. Spinoza quotes in this connection a Dutch proverb: “Geen ketter; sonder letter.” Without a text, no heresy.

When shall we learn that the revelation of God is not confined to a certain number of books, to a certain number of words? It must of necessity be inscribed elsewhere also, since words are patient of more than one interpretation, books go astray and are lost, paper becomes mildewed and is torn, stones are smashed even in the hands of a prophet.

Spinoza tells us that he read and re-read the Holy Scriptures with the greatest care before commenting on them, and he undertakes to demonstrate to the Christian governments the necessity of reforming the constitutions of the established churches by replacing a phantom Bible by the Bible understood in spirit and in truth.

The scientific portion of the task would not be complicated, since the commandments of God are few in number, in fact they may be reduced to one. “He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him”; and as a proof that they seek Him they must practise justice and charity; these are the foundations of the faith, and they are so clear and so simple, that no commentary thereon is needed, nor are they affected by any of the verbal differences or inaccuracies.

The ecclesiastical authorities thus act sometimes contrary to the divine will when they declare those who are leading a good and virtuous life to be the enemies of God, simply because their opinions are not in exact conformity with the theological definitions put forth by the churches. The civil power ought to be able to judge of the belief of its citizens by the fruits they produce, if their works are good, it may be thought that in the eyes of God their belief is also correct, but personal theological opinions, though in conformity with the decrees permitted by the Church, would not prevail in God’s sight over wrong doing. When governments act in accordance with these views, all is well—individuals, the nation, and the governments.

In order to believe that God’s Word may be found elsewhere, it is necessary to believe that He exists. His existence cannot be known;[124] we can, however, obtain some knowledge of it by certain means of which we can know the reality; they are so real that we cannot imagine any force that can invalidate them; these means or notions are the fundamental axioms inherent in the human mind, and are the bases of all knowledge; it is to these that we owe the power of being able to distinguish good from evil, and this faculty we may regard as the forerunner of the divine revelation. If we once admit the possibility of these first principles—these axioms—becoming obliterated, we should then admit a doubt of their intrinsic truth, which would attack and weaken their immediate conclusion, which is the existence of God; from that time we should possess no element of certainty. This is why it has been said that attacks against reason are more dangerous than attacks against the faith, because they destroy with one blow the sacred edifice and the foundation which bears it.