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«8T XTf BY BHOWK BHOTlfRHS tlNOTYPnit BarKTKP IK THU WKiTitn matk:* nr a vikru'a BY TUB mR(& l‘RlNtlK<. CUUtMX TO DOROTHY ELMHIRST PREFACE The chapters included in this book, which com- prises the Hibbert Lectures delivered in Oxford, at Manchester College, during the month of May 1930, contain also the gleanings of my thoughts on the same subject from the harvest of many lectures and addresses delivered in different countries of the world over a considerable period of my life.
The fact that one theme runs through all only proves to me that the Religion of Man has been growing within my mind as a religious experience and not merely as a philosophical subject. In fact, a very large portion of my writings, beginning from the earlier products of my immature youth down to the present time, carry an almost con- tinuous trace of the history of this growth. To-day I am made conscious of the fact that the works that I have started and the words that I have uttered are deeply linked by a unity of inspiration whose proper definition has often remained un- revealed to me.
In the present volume I offer the evidence of my own personal life brought into a definite focus. To some of my readers this will supply matter of psychological interest; but for others I hope it will carry with it its own ideal value important for such a subject as religion.
7 PREFACE My sincere thanks are due to the Hibbert Trus- tees, and especially to Dr. W. H. Drummond, with whom I have been in constant correspond- ence, for allowing me to postpone the delivery of these Hibbert Lectures from the year 1928, when I was too ill to proceed to Europe, until the sum- mer of 1930. I have also to thank the Trustees for their very kind permission given to me to present the substance of the lectures in this book in an enlarged form by dividing the whole subject into chapters instead of keeping strictly to the lecture form in which they were delivered in 0.vford. May I add that the great kindness of my hostess, Mrs. Drummond, in Oxford, will always remain in my memory along with these lectures as inti- mately associated with them?
In the Appendix I have gathered together from my own writings certain parallel passages which bring the reader to the heart of my main theme. Furthermore, two extracts, which contain histori- cal material of great value, are from the pen of my esteemed colleague and friend, Professor Kshiti Mohan Sen. To him I would c.xprcss my gratitude for the help he has given me in bringing before me the religious ideas of medieval India which- touch the subject of my lectures.
R/\bindmnath Tagore September 1930 8 CONTENTS PACE PREFACE 7 CHAPTER I, MAN^S UNIVERSE XI IX.
THE CREATIVE SPIRIT *3 III.
THE SURPLUS IN MAN 49 IV.
SPIRITUAL UNION 6S V.
THE PROPHET VI.
THE VISION 88 VII.
THE MAN OF MY HEART VIII.
THE MUSIC MAKER IX.
THE ARTIST X.
MAN’S NATURE XL THE MEETING xn.
THE TEACHER XIIL SPIRITUAL FREEDOM XIV.
THE FOUR STAGES OP LIFE XV.
CONCLUSION APPENDIX I.
THE BAOE SINGERS OF BENGAL IL NOTE ON THE NATURE OF REALITY in.
DADU ANI> THE MYSTERY OF FORM IV.
NIGHT AND MORNING INDEX The eternal Dream is borne on the wings of ageless Light that rends the veil of the vague and goes across Time weavitig ceaseless patterns of Being.
The mystery remains dumb, the meaning of this pilgrimage, the endless adventure of existence — whose rush along the sky dames up into innumerable rings of paths, till at last knowledge gleams out from the dusk in the iniinity of human spirit, and in that dim lighted dawn she speechlessly gazes through the break in the mist at the vision of Life and of I^vc rising from the tumult of profound pain and joy.
Santiniketan September j6, J929 (Composed for the Opening Day Celebrations of the Indian College, Montpelier, France.)
THE RELIGION OF MAN CHAPTER I MAN’S UNIVERSE Light, as the radiant energy of creation, started the ring-dance of atoms in a diminutive sky, and also the dance of the stars in the vast, lonely theatre of time and space. The planets came out of their bath of fire and basked in the sun for ages. They were the thrones of the gigantic Inert, dumb and desolate, which knew not the meaning of its own blind destiny and majestically frowned upon a future when its monarchy would be menaced.
Then came a time when life was brought into the arena in the tiniest little monocycle of a cell. With its gift of growth and power of adaptation it faced the ponderous enormity of things, and contradicted the unmeaningness of their bulk. It was made conscious not of the volume but of the value of existence, which it ever tried to enhance and maintain in many-branched paths of creation, overcoming the obstructive inertia of Nature by obeying Nature’s law.
But the miracle of creation did not stop here in this isolated speck of life launched on a lonely voyage to the Unknown- A multitude of cells were bound together into a larger unit, not through II THE RELIGION OF MAN aggregation, but through a marvellous quality of complex inter-relationship maintaining a perfect co-ordination of functions. This is the creative principle of unity, the divine mystery of existence, that baffles all analysis. The larger co-operative units could adequately pay for a greater freedom of self-expression, and they began to form and develop in their bodies new organs of power, new instruments of efficiency. This was the march of evolution ever unfolding the potentialities of life.
But this evolution which continues on the physi- cal plane has its limited range. All exaggeration in that direction becomes a burden that breaks the natural rhythm of life, and those creatures that encouraged their ambitious flesh to grow in dimen- sions have nearly all perished of their cumbrous absurdity.
Before the chapter ended Man appeared and turned the course of this evolution from an indefi- nite march of physical aggrandisement to a free- dom of a more subtle perfection. This has made possible his progress to become unlimited, and has enabled him to realize the boundless in his power.
The fire is lighted, the hammers are working, and for laborious days and nights amid.st dirt and discordance the musical instrument is being made. We may accept this as a detached fact and follow its evolution. But when the music is revealed, we know that the whole thing is a part of the manifes- 12 tation of music in spite of its contradictory charac- ter. The process of evolution, which after ages has reached man, must be realized in its unity with him; though in him it assumes a new value and proceeds to a different path. It is a continuous process that finds its meaning in Man; and we must acknowledge that the evolution which Science talks of is that of Man’s universe. The leather binding and title-page are parts of the book itself; and this world that we perceive through our senses and mind and life’s experience is profoundly one with ourselves.
The divine principle of unity has ever been that of an inner inter-relationship. This is revealed in some of its earliest stages in the evolution of multi- cellular life on this planet. The most perfect in- ward expression has been attained by man in his bwn body. But what is most important of all is the fact that man has also attained its realization in a imore subtle body outside his physical system. He 'misses himself when isolated; he finds his own larger and truer self in his wide human relation- ship. His multicellular body is born and it dies; his multi-personal humanity is immortal. In this ideal of unity he realizes the eternal in his life and the boundless in his love. The unity becomes not a mere subjective idea, but an energizing truth. Whatever name may be given to it, and whatever form it symbolizes, the consciousness of this unity THE RELIGION OF MAN is Spiritual, and our effort to be true to it is our religion. It ever waits to be revealed in our history in a more and more perfect illumination.
We have our eyes, which relate to us the vision of the physical universe. We have also an inner faculty of our own which helps us to find our rela- tionship with the supreme self of man, the universe of personality. This faculty is our luminous imagi- nation, which in its higher stage is special to man. It offers us that vision of wholeness which for the biological necessity of physical survival is super- fluous; its purpose is to arouse in us the sense of perfection which is our true sense of immortality. For perfection dwells ideally in Man the Eternal, inspiring love for this ideal in the individual, urg- ing him more and more to realize it.
The development of intelligence and physical power is equally necessary in animals and men for their purposes of living; but what is unique in man is the development of his consciousness which gradually deepens and widens the realization of his immortal being, the perfect, the eternal. It inspires those creations of his that reveal the divin- ity in him — which is his humanity — in the varied manifestations of truth, goodness and beauty, in the freedom of activity w'hich is not for his use but for his ultimate expression. The individual man must exist for Man the great, and must express him in disinterested works, in science and philosophy, 14 man’s universe 14 man’s universe in literature and arts, in service and worship. This is his religion, which is working in the heart of all his religions in various names and forms. He knows and uses this world where it is endless and thus attains greatness, but he realizes his own truth where it is perfect and thus finds his ful- filment.
The idea of the humanity of our God, or the divinity of Man the Eternal, is the main subject of this book. This thought of God has not grown in my mind through any process of philosophical rea- soning. On the contrary, it has followed the cur- rent of my temperament from early days until it suddenly flashed into my consciousness with a direct vision. The experience which I have de- scribed in one of the chapters which follow con- vinced me that on the surface of our being wc have the ever-changing phases of the individual self, but in the depth there dwells the Eternal Spirit of human unity beyond our direct knowledge. It very often contradicts the trivialities of our daily life, and upsets the arrangements made for securing our personal exclusiveness behind the walls of indi- vidual habits and superficial conventions. It in- spires in us works that are the expressions of a Universal Spirit; it invokes unexpectedly in the midst of a self-centred life a supreme sacrifice. At its call, we hasten to dedicate our lives to the cause 15 THE KELIGION OF MAN of trutJi and beauty, to unrewarded service of others, in spite of our lack of faith in the positive reality of the ideal values.
During the discussion of my own religious experience I have expressed my belief that the first stage of my realization was through my feel- ing of intimacy with Nature — not that Nature which has its channel of information for our mind and physical relationship with our living body, but that which satisfies our personality with mani- festations that make our life rich and stimulate our imagination in their harmony of forms, colours, sounds and movements. It is not that world which vanishes into abstract symbols behind its own testi- mony to Science, but that which lavishly displays its wealth of reality to our personal self having its own perpetual reaction upon our human nature, I have mentioned in connection with my per- sonal experience some songs which I had often heard from wandering village singers, belonging to a popular sect of Bengal, called Baiils,' who have no images, temples, scriptures, or ceremo- nials, who declare in their songs the divinity of Man, and express for him an intense feeling of love. Coming from men who arc unsophisticated, living a simple life in obscurity, it gives us a clue to the inner meaning of all religions. For it sug- gests that these religions are never about a God of man’s universe cosmic force, but rather about the God of human personality.
At the same time it must be admitted that even the impersonal aspect of truth dealt with by Science belongs to the human Universe. But men of Science tell us that truth, unlike beauty and goodness, is independent of our consciousness. They explain to us how the belief that truth is independent of the human mind is a mystical belief, natural to man but at the same time inex- plicable. But may not the explanation be this, that ideal truth does not depend upon the individual mind of man, but on the universal mind which comprehends the individual? For to say that truth, as we sec it, exists apart from humanity is really to contradict Science itself; because Science can only organize into rational concepts those facts which man can know and understand, and logic is a machinery of thinking created by the mechanic man.
The table that I am using with all its varied meanings appears as a table for man through his special organ of senses and his special organ of thoughts. When scientifically analysed the same table offers an enormously different appearance to him from that given by his senses. The evidence of his physical senses and that of his logic and his scientific instruments are both related to his own power of comprehension; both are true and true 17 THE RELIGION OF MAN for him. He makes use of the table with full confi- dence for his physical purposes, and with equal confidence makes intellectual use of it for his scien- tific knowledge. But the knowledge is his who is a man. If a particular man as an individual did not exist, the table would exist all the same, but still as a thing that is related to the human mind. The contradiction that there is between the table of our sense perception and the table of our scientific knowledge has its compaon centre of reconciliation in human personality.
The same thing holds true in the realm of idea. In the scientific idea of the world there is no gap in the universal law of causality. Whatever hap- pens could never have happened otherwise. This is a generalization which has been made possible by a quality of logic which is possessed by the human mind. But this very mind of Man has its immediate consciousness of will within him which is aware of its freedom and ever struggles for it. Every day in most of our behaviour we acknowl- edge its truth; in fact, our conduct finds its best value in its relation to its truth. Thus this has its analogy in our daily behaviour with regard to a table. For whatever may be the conclusion that Science has unquestionably proved about the table, we are amply rewarded when we deal with it as a solid fact and never as a crowd of fluid elements that represent a certain kind of energy. We can i8 i8 also utilize this phenomenon of the measurement. The space represented by a needle when magnified by the microscope may cause us no anxiety as to the number of angels who could be accommo- dated on its point or camels which could walk through its eye. In a cinema-picture our vision of time and space can be expanded or condensed merely according to the different technique of the instrument. A seed carries packed in a minute receptacle a future which is enormous in its con- tents both in time and space. The truth, which is Man, has not emerged out of nothing at a certain point of time, even though seemingly it might have been manifested then. But the manifestation of Man has no end in itself — not even now. Neither did it have its beginning in any particular time we ascribe to it. The truth of Man is in. the heart of eternity, the fact of it being evolved through endless ages. If Man’s manifestation has round it a background of millions of light-years, still it is his own background. He includes in him- self the time, however long, that carries the process of his becoming, and he is related for the very truth of his existence to all things that surround him.
Relationship is the fundamental truth of this world of appearance. Take, for instance, a piece of coal. When we pursue the fact of it to its ulti- mate composition, substance which seemingly is 19 THE RELIGION OF MAN the most stable element in it vanishes in centres of revolving forces. These are the units, called the elements of carbon, which can further be analysed into a certain number of protons and electrons. Yet these electrical facts are what they are, not in their detachment, but in their inter-relationship, and though possibly some day they themselves may be further analysed, nevertheless the pervasive truth of inter-relation which is manifested in them will remain.
We do not know how these elements, as carbon, compose a piece of coal; all that we can say is that they build up that appearance through a unity of inter-relationship, which unites them not merely in an individual piece of coal, but in a comrade- ship of creative co-ordination with the entire physical universe.
Creation has been made possible through the continual self-surrender of the unit to the universe. And the spiritual universe of Man is also ever claiming self-renunciation from the individual units. This spiritual process is not so easy as the physical one in the physical world, for the intelli- gence and will of the units have to be tempered to those of the universal spirit.
It is said in a verse of the Upanishad that this world which is all movement is pervaded by one supreme unity, and therefore true enjoyment can never be had through the satisfaction of greed, but 20 only through the surrender of our individual self to the Universal Self.
There are thinkers who advocate the doctrine of the plurality of worlds, which can only mean that there are worlds that are absolutely unrelated to each other. Even if this were true it could never be proved. For our universe is the sum total of what Man feels, knows, imagines, reasons to be, and of whatever is knowable to him now or in another time. It affects him differently in its dif- ferent aspects, in its beauty, its inevitable sequence of happenings, its potentiality; and the world proves itself to him only in its varied effects upon his senses, imagination and reasoning mind.
I do not imply that the final nature of the world depends upon the comprehension of the individual person. Its reality is associated with the universal human mind which comprehends all time and all possibilities of realization. And this is why for the accurate knowledge of things we depend upon Science that represents the rational mind of the universal Man, and not upon that of the individual who dwells in a limited range of space and time and the immediate needs of life. And this is why there is such a thing as progress in our civiliza- tion; for progress means that there is an ideal per- fection which the individual seeks to reach by extending his limits in knowledge, power, love, enjoyment, thus approaching the universal. The THE RELIGION OF MAN most distant star, whose faint message touches the threshold of the most powerful telescopic vision, has its sympathy with the understanding mind of man, and therefore we can never cease to believe that we shall probe further and further into the mystery of their nature. As we know the truth of the stars we know the great comprehensive mind of man.
We must realize not only the reasoning mind, but also the creative imagination, the love and wis- dom that belong to the Supreme Person, whose Spirit is over us all, love for whom comprehends love for all creatures and exceeds in depth and strength all other loves, leading to difficult en- deavours and martyrdoms that have no other gain than the fulfilment of this love itself.
The Isha of our Upanishad, the Super Soul, which permeates all moving things, is the God of this human universe whose mind we share in all our true knowledge, love and service, and whom to reveal in ourselves through renunciation of self is the highest end of life.
CHAPTER II THE CREATIVE SPIRIT Once, during the improvisation of a story by a young child, I was coaxed to take my part as the hero. The child imagined that I had been shut in a dark room locked from the outside. She asked me, “What will you do for your freedom?” and I answered, “Shout for help”. But, however desir- able that might be if it succeeded immediately, it would be unfortunate for the story. And thus she in her imagination had to clear the neighbourhood of all kinds of help that my cries might reach. I was compelled to think of some violent means of kicking through this passive resistance; but for the sake of the story the door had to be made of steel. I found a key, but it would not fit, and the child was delighted at the development of the story jumping over obstructions.
Life’s story of evolution, the main subject of which is the opening of the doors of the dark dun- geon, seems to develop in the same manner. Diffi- culties were created, and at each offer of an answer the story had to discover further obstacles in order to carry on the adventure. For to come to an abso- lutely satisfactory conclusion is to come to the end of all things, and in that case the great child would 33 33 THE RELIGION OF MAN have nothing else to do but to shut her curtain and go to sleep.
The Spirit of Life began her chapter by intro- ducing a simple living cell against the tremen- dously powerful challenge of the vast Inert. The triumph was thrillingly great which still refuses to yield its secret She did not stop there, but defi- antly courted difficulties, and in the technique of her art exploited an element which still baffles our logic.
This is the harmony of self-adjusting inter-rela- tionship impossible to analyse. She brought close together numerous cell units and, by grouping them into a self-sustaining sphere of co-operation, elaborated a larger unit. It was not a mere agglom- eration. The grouping had its caste system in the division of functions and yet an intimate unity of kinship. The creative life summoned a larger army of cells under her command and imparted into them, let us say, a communal spirit that fought with all its might whenever its integrity was menaced.
This was the tree which has its inner harmony and inner movement of life in its beauty, its strength, its sublime dignity of endurance, its pil- grimage to the Unknown through the tiniest gates of reincarnation. It was a sufficiently marvellous achievement to be a fit termination to the creative venture. But the creative genius cannot stop 24 THE CREATIVE SPIRIT exhausted; more windows have to be opened; and she went out of her accustomed way and brought another factor into her work, that of locomotion. Risks of living were enhanced, offering opportuni- ties to the daring resourcefulness of the Spirit of Life. For she seems to revel in occasions for a fight against the giant Matter, which has rigidly pro- hibitory immigration laws against all new-comers from Life’s shore. So the fish was furnished with appliances for moving in an element which offered its density for an obstacle. The air offered an even more difficult obstacle in its lightness; but the challenge was accepted, and the bird was gifted with a marvellous pair of wings that negotiated with the subtle laws of the air and found in it a better ally than the reliable soil of the stable earth. The Arctic snow set up its frigid sentinel; the tropical desert uttered in its scorching breath a gigantic “No” against all life’s children. But those peremptory prohibitions were defied, and the frontiers, though guarded by a death penalty, were triumphantly crossed.
This process of conquest could be described as progress for the kingdom of life. It journeyed on through one success to another by dealing with the laws of Nature through the help of the invention of new instruments. This field of life’s onward march is a field of ruthless competition. Because the material world is the world of quantity, where 25 THE REXIGION OF MAN resources are limited and victory waits for those who have superior facility in their weapons, there- fore success in the path of progress for one group most often runs parallel to defeat in another.
It appears that such scramble and fight for opportunities of living among numerous small combatants suggested at last an imperialism of big bulky flesh — a huge system of muscles and bones, thick and heavy coats of armour and enormous tails. The idea of such indecorous massiveness must have seemed natural to life’s providence; for the victory in the world of quantity might reason- ably appear to depend upon the bigness of dimen- sion, But such gigantic paraphernalia of defence and attack resulted in an utter defeat, the records of which every day are being dug up from the des- ert sands and ancient mud flats. These represent the fragments that strew the forgotten paths of a great retreat in the battle of existence. For the heavy weight which these creatures carried was mainly composed of bones, hides, shells, teeth and claws that were non-living, and therefore imposed its whole huge pressure upon life that needed free- dom and growth for the perfect expression of its own vital nature. The resources for living which the earth offered for her children were recklessly spent by these megalomaniac monsters of an im- moderate appetite for the sake of maintaining a cumbersome system of dead burdens that thwarted 26 THE CREATIVE SPIRIT THE CREATIVE SPIRIT them in their true progress. Such a losing game has now become obsolete. To the few stragglers of that party, like the rhinoceros or the hippopota- mus, has been allotted a very small space on this earth, absurdly inadequate to their formidable strength and magnitude of proportions, making them look forlornly pathetic in the sublimity of their incongruousness. These and their extinct forerunners have been the biggest failures in life’s experiments. And then, on some obscure dusk of dawn, the experiment entered upon a completely new phase of a disarmament proposal, when little Man made his appearance in the arena, bringing with him expectations and suggestions that are unfathomably great.
We must know that the evolution process of the world has made its progress towards the revelation of its truth — that is to say some inner value which is not in the extension in space and duration in time. When life came out it did not bring with it any new materials into existence. Its elements are the same which are the materials for the rocks and minerals. Only it evolved a value in them which cannot be measured and analysed. The same thing is true with regard to mind and the consciousness of self; they are revelations of a great meaning, the self-expression of a truth. In man this truth has made its positive appearance, and is struggling to make its manifestation more and more clear. That 27 THE RELIGION OF MAN which is eternal is realizing itself in history through the obstructions of limits.
The physiological process in the progress of Life’s evolution seems to have reached its finality in man. We cannot think of any noticeable addi- tion or modification in our vital instruments which we are likely to allow to persist. If any individual is born, by chance, with an extra pair of eyes or ears, or some unexpected limbs like stowaways without passports, we are sure to do our best to eliminate them from our bodily organization. Any new chance of a too obviously physical variation is certain to meet with a determined disapproval from man, the most powerful veto being expected from his aesthetic nature, which peremptorily re- fuses to calculate advantage when its majesty is offended by any sudden license of form. We all know that the back of our body has a wide surface practically unguarded. From the strategic point of view this oversight is unfortunate, causing us annoyances and indignities, if nothing worse, through unwelcome intrusions. And this could reasonably justify in our minds regret for retrench- ment in the matter of an original tail, whose memorial we are still made to carry in secret But the least attempt at the rectification of the policy of economy in this direction is indignantly re- sented. I strongly believe that the idea of ghosts had its best chance with our timid imagination in 28 THE CREATIVE SPIRIT THE CREATIVE SPIRIT our sensitive back — a field of dark ignorance; and yet it is too late for me to hint that one of our eyes could profitably have been spared for our burden- carrier back, so unjustly neglected and haunted by undefined fears.
Thus, while all innovation is stubbornly op- posed, there is every sign of a comparative care- lessness about the physiological efficiency of the human body. Some of our organs are losing their original vigour. The civilized life, within walled enclosures, has naturally caused in man a weaken- ing of his power of sight and hearing along with subtle sense of the distant. Because of our habit of taking cooked food we give less employment to our teeth and a great deal more to the dentist. Spoilt and pampered by clothes, our skin shows lethargy in its function of adjustment to the atmos- pheric temperature and in its power of quick recovery from hurts.
The adventurous Life appears to have paused at a crossing in her road before Man came. It seems as if she became aware of wastefulness in carrying on her experiments and adding to her inventions purely on the physical plane. It was proved in Life’s case that four is not always twice as much as two. In living things it is necessary to keep to the limit of the perfect unit within which the inter-relationship must not be inordinately strained. The ambition that seeks power in the 29 THE RELIGION OF MAN augmentation of dimension is doomed; for that perfection which is in the inner quality of harmony becomes choked when quantity overwhelms it in a fury of extravagance. The combination of an exaggerated nose and arm that an elephant carries hanging down its front has its advantage. This may induce us to imagine that it would double the advantage for the animal if its tail also could grow into an additional trunk. But the progress which greedily allows Life’s field to be crowded with an excessive production of instruments becomes a progress towards death. For Life has its own nat- ural rhythm which a multiplication table has not; and proud progress that rides roughshod over Life’s cadence kills it at the end with encum- brances that are unrhythmic. As I have already mentioned, such disasters did happen in the history of evolution.
The moral of that tragic chapter is that if the tail does not have the decency to know where to stop, the drag of this dependency becomes fatal to the body’s empire.
Moreover, evolutionary progress on the physical plane inevitably tends to train up its subjects into specialists. The camel is a specialist of the desert and is awkward in the swamp. The hippopotamus which specializes in the mudlands of the Nile is helpless in the neighbouring desert Such one- sided emphasis breeds professionalism in Life’s 30 THE CREATIVE SPIRIT domain, confining special efficiencies in narrow compartments. The expert training in the- aerial sphere is left to the bird; that in the marine is par- ticularly monopolized by the fish. The ostrich is an expert in its own region and would look utterly foolish in an eagle’s neighbourhood. They have to remain permanently content with advantages that desperately cling to their limits. Such mutilation of the complete ideal of life for the sake of some exclusive privilege of power is inevitable; for that form of progress deals with materials that are physical and therefore necessarily lim- ited.
To rescue her own career from such a multiply- ing burden of the dead and such constriction of specialization seems to have been the object of the Spirit of Life at one particular stage. For it does not take long to find out that an indefinite pursuit of quantity creates for Life, which is essentially qualitative, coniplexities that lead to a vicious cir- cle. These primeval animals that produced an enormous volume of flesh had to build a gigantic system of bones to carry the burden. This required in its turn a long and substantial array of tails to give it balance. Thus their bodies, being com- pelled to occupy a vast area, exposed a very large surface which had to be protected by a strong, heavy and capacious armour. A progress which represented a congress of dead materials required 31 THE RELIGION OF MAN a parallel organization of teeth and claws, or horns and hooves, which also were dead.
In its own manner one mechanical burden links itself to other burdens of machines, and Life grows to be a carrier of the dead, a mere platform for machinery, until it is crushed to death by its inter- minable paradoxes. We are told that the greater part of a tree is dead matter; the big stem, except for a thin covering, is lifeless. The tree uses it as a prop in its ambition for a high position and the life- less timber is the slave that carries on its back the magnitude of the tree. But such a dependence upon a dead dependant has been achieved by the tree at the cost of its real freedom. It had to seek the stable alliance of the earth for the sharing of its burden, which it did by the help of secret under- ground entanglements making itself permanently stationary.
But the form of life that seeks the great privilege of movement must minimize its load of the dead and must realize that life’s progress should be a perfect progress of the inner life itself and not of materials and machinery; the non-living must not continue outgrowing the living, the armour dead- ening the skin, the armament laming the arms.
At last, when the Spirit of Life found her form in Man, the effort she had begun completed its cycle, and the truth of her mission glimmered into suggestions which dimly pointed to some direction 32 THE CREATIVE SPIRIT of meaning across her own frontier. Before the end of this cycle was reached, all the suggestions had been external. They were concerned with technique, with life’s apparatus, with the efficiency of the organs. This might have exaggerated itself into an endless boredom of physical progress. It can be conceded that the eyes of the bee possessing numerous facets may have some uncommon advan- tage which we cannot even imagine, or the glow- worm that carries an arrangement for producing light in its person may baffle our capacity and com- prehension. Very likely there are creatures having certain organs that give them sensibilities which we cannot have the power to guess.
All such enhanced sensory powers merely add to the mileage in life’s journey on the same road lengthening an indefinite distance. They never take us over the border of physical existence.
The same thing may be said not only about life’s efficiency, but also life’s ornaments. The colouring and decorative patterns on the bodies of some of the deep sea creatures make us silent with amaze- ment. The butterfly’s wings, the beetle’s back, the peacock’s plumes, the shells of the crustaceans, the exuberant outbreak of decoration in plant life, have reached a standard of perfection that seems to be final. And yet if it continues in the same physical direction, then, however much variety of surprising excellence it may produce, it leaves out 33 THE RELIGION OP MAN some great element of unuttercd meaning. These ornaments are like ornaments lavished upon a cap- tive girl, luxuriously complete within a narrow limit, speaking of a homesickness for a far away horizon of emancipation, for an inner depth that is beyond the ken of the senses. The freedom in the physical realm is like the circumscribed free- dom in a cage. It produces a proficiency which is mechanical and a beauty which is of the surface. To whatever degree of improvement bodily strength and skill may be developed they keep life tied to a persistence of habit. It is closed, like a mould, useful though it may be for the sake of safety and precisely standardized productions. For centuries the bee repeats its hive, the weaver-bird its nest, the spider its web; and instincts strongly attach themselves to some invariable tendencies of muscles and nerves never being allowed the privi- lege of making blunders. The physical functions, in order to be strictly reliable, behave like some model schoolboy, obedient, regular, properly re- peating lessons by rote without mischief or mistake in his conduct, but also without spirit and initia- tive. It is the flawless perfection of rigid limits, a cousin — ^possibly a distant cousin — of the inani- mate.
Instead of allowing a full paradise of perfection to continue its tame and timid rule of faultless regularity the Spirit of Life boldly declared for 34 THE CREATIVE SPIRIT a further freedom and decided to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. This time her struggle was not against the Inert, but against the limitation of her own overburdened agents. She fought against the tutelage of her prudent old prime min- ister, the faithful instinct. She adopted a novel method of experiment, promulgated new laws, and tried her hand at moulding Man through a his- tory which was immensely different from that which went before. She took a bold step in throw- ing open her gates to a dangerously explosive fac- tor which she had cautiously introduced into her council — the element of Mind. I should not say that it was ever absent, but only that at a certain stage some curtain was removed and its play was made evident, even like the dark heat which in its glowing intensity reveals itself in a contradiction of radiancy.