Paganism and Religion

(Principal, The S. D. P. College, Beawar, Rajputana)

Although the moral ideals of all civilised peoples are more or less the same, yet there is a difference in the outlook on life–In the angle of vision, so to say–which clearly marks off one people from another, or one set of peoples from another set. Everybody knows that there is a striking difference between the eastern and western views of life, in spite of the fact that the progress of science and the conditions of modern life are bringing the East and the West very close to each other and perhaps unconsciously creating a new type of man.

This difference of philosophical outlook is too often stated in India as a difference between Spiritualism and Materialism; and in Europe as between Mysticism and Rationalism–the one producing metaphysics and the other science. Neither classification is completely correct, although there is some truth in each. To my mind, the real spiritual difference between the East and the West is the old difference between Hellenism and Hebraism or Judaism writ large. The one is rational, practical, and pragmatic; whereas the other is religious, moral, and speculative. Christianity tried to harmonise the two points of view, but failed. There is no true religion in the average European mind, just as there is no true rationalism in the average Asiatic, except perhaps in modern Japan.

India, for many reasons, may be regarded as the spiritual centre of the East, for all the great religions of the world have at one time or another come together in India. In fact, there are only two types of mind that have produced religion: the Aryan and the Semitic. Christianity and Islam are the products of Judaism; whereas Buddhism, Jainism, and Zoroastrianism are the products of Aryanism. The difference between these two groups of religion may be roughly indicated by saying that the Semitic group is pre-eminently moral, and the Aryan group pre-eminently philosophical, The one is interested in ‘being’ while the other’s interest is in ‘knowing.’ Both are concerned with life, i. e. the moral and intellectual aspects of life. But ‘being’ and ‘knowing’ do not exhaust the functions of life; a great sphere of life is concerned with ‘doing.’ Hellenism and its spiritual descendant Romanism made this great department of activity its own from the earliest times. The Greeks were the first people of the world to understand the value and importance of action. As soon as the Greek philosopher revealed to the people the wonderful power of the mind, they immediately proceeded to translate that power into action, in other words, into result, by producing changes in the material world. They became artisans, architects, sculptors, traders, administrators, soldiers, and State-builders. Speculation was confined to a limited few, and even these could not escape the necessity of doing one or another kind of practical work,–sculpture in the case of Socrates,–for their livelihood.

The Greek religion arose out of the aesthetic and creative imagination of the people in contact with Nature. It owed nothing to speculation; on the contrary, as soon as speculation gained the upper hand, the religion quickly disappeared after the brief spell of Neo-Platonic mysticism. The Roman conception of religion was still more superficial than the Greek. The worship of the Gods and Goddesses was based upon a contractual system of give and take. But the Roman proved to be a greater builder than the Greek; builder with brick and stone, and builder of wealth and empire.

The modern nations of Europe are all spiritual children of Greece and Rome, although many of them never came in contact with either in their palmy days. They are all spiritual inheritors of heathenism, whether of the Hellenic or of the Gothic variety. Asia made a great endeavour to convert these people to Religion, and even made a religious conquest of Europe under the name of Christianity, but the heart of the peoples is still unconquered. Their philosophy of life is still the old philosophy of the Greeks–Action, Result. The all-conquering Alexander the Great is the hero of Europe and not the crucified Christ.

Under the impact of modern science, which is an elaboration and development of the old Greek rationalism, the thin veneer of Christian morality is peeling off, and the whole Christian flock of the West is going to the Greek fold. ‘Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tartar,’ is an old proverb, but ‘Scratch a European and you will find a pagan’ is equally true. The age during which Europe was cut off from the influence and example of the Greek and was completely dominated by Religion, is regarded by the historians as the Dark Age of Europe; and the recovery of the works of the Greek poets and artists is hailed as the Renaissance. It is strange that the student of Religion in Europe does not sufficiently grasp these obvious facts of history and their significance. Ever since the Renaissance, Greece has been winning what she had lost to St. Paul and his fellow preachers. The Reformation represents only one of the streams by which the mind of Europe was seeking to flow to the old bed of Greek rationalism. The Roman Church, which had immensely strengthened herself during the Dark middle ages, had woven a pall of mystic superstition over the mind of the peoples. Some of the men who had caught sight of the great light of Greek rationalism in the field of art, literature, and philosophy became anxious to throw some of its illumination on the mysticism of the Church. Martin Luther was one of them. The Reformers of the Church, in common with the poets, artists and scholars of the Renaissance set their faces wards–the first going to the Bible, round which the monasticism of the middle ages had woven endless cobwebs, while the others went straight to the Greek models and sources.

It is interesting how the Greek rationalist spirit took advantage of the long dispute between Rome and the Reformation not only to win what it had lost, but also to prepare the ground for a terrible vengeance against the spirit of Religion. The new atheists of Europe, I mean the scientific thinkers, have at last taken the field, but the position of Religion had been already undermined by the cultivation for centuries of heathen ‘art and literature.’ The mind of Europe is ready for a revolt against Religion and all that old Religion stands for. In fact the revolt has already begun in one part of it.