followed the British victories, which were announced publicly. Big boys were
going to Sandhurst or Woolwich; there were parties; and the school code never
turned the other cheek. Wars were God's storms, stirring stagnant natures to new
life; wealth was worshiped; certain lies were an honor; knowledge was an
extremely desirable thing—all this was at first new and delightful, but extremely
wicked. Sunday was the only other Old Testament rule, but was then forgotten.
Slowly a repugnance of religion in all its forms arose. He felt his teachers
hypocrites; he raised no alarm, "for he was hardly conscious that his anchor had
dragged or that he had lost hold" of it forever. At eighteen, he read Darwin and
found that if he were right, Genesis was wrong; man had risen, not fallen; if a
part was wrong, the whole was. If God made the world, the devil seemed to rule
it; prayer can not influence him; the seven days of creation were periods, Heaven
knows how long. Why did all profess and no one believe religion? Why is God
so stern and yet so partial, and how about the Trinity? Then explanations were
given. Heaven grew repulsive, as a place for the poor, the maimed, the stupid,
the childish, and those unfit for earth generally.
Faiths came from the East. "The North has originated only Thor, Odin, Balder,
Valkyres." The gloom and cold drive man into himself; do not open him. In the
East one can live in quiet solitude, with no effort, close to nature. The
representatives of all faiths wear ostentatiously their badges, pray in public, and
no one sneers at all religions. Oriental faiths have no organization; there is no
head of Hinduism, Buddhism, or hardly of Mohammedanism. There are no
missions, but religion grows rankly from a rich soil, so the boy wrote three
demands: a reasonable theory of the universe, a workable and working code of
conduct, and a promise of something desirable hereafter. So he read books and
tried to make a system.
On a hill, in a thunder-storm in the East, he realized how Thor was born. Man
fears thunder; it seems the voice of a greater man. Deny eyes, legs, and body of
the Deity, and nothing is left. God as an abstract spirit is unthinkable, but
Buddhism offers us no God, only law. Necessity, blind force, law, or a free
personal will—that is the alternative. Freedom limits omnipotence; the two can
never mix. "The German Emperor's God, clanking round the heavenly mansions
wearing a German Pickelhaube and swearing German oaths," is not satisfactory.
Man's God is what he admires most in himself; he can be propitiated, hence
atonement; you can not break a law, but you can study it. Inquiry, not
submission, is the attitude. Perhaps both destiny and freedom are true, but truth
is for the sake of light.