 |
PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN CREEDS Their Origin and Meaning |
| The Edward Carpenter Archive by Simon Dawson |
Chapter 17 - CONCLUSION
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Forward to Appendix - The Teaching of the Upanishads
|
PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN CREEDS Their Origin and Meaning |
| The Edward Carpenter Archive by Simon Dawson |
simondawson.com | Comment and Feedback
In conclusion there does not seem much to say, except to accentuate certain points which may still appear doubtful or capable of being understood.
The fact that the main argument of this volume is along
the lines of psychological evolution will no doubt commend
it to some, while on the other hand it will discredit
the book to others whose eyes, being fixed on purely material
causes, can see no impetus in History except through these.
But it must be remembered that there is not the least reason
for separating the two factors. The fact that psychologically
man has evolved from simple consciousness to
self-consciousness, and is now in process of evolution
towards another and more extended kind of consciousness,
does not in the least bar the simultaneous appearance
and influence of material evolution. It is clear indeed
that the two must largely go together, acting and reacting
on each other. Whatever the physical conditions of the animal
brain may be which connect themselves with simple (unreflected
and unreflecting) consciousness, it is evident that
these conditions - in animals and primitive man - lasted
for an enormous period, before the distinct consciousness
of the individual and separate self arose. This second
order of consciousness seems to have germinated at
or about the same period as the discovery of the use
of Tools (tools of stone, copper, bronze, &c.), the adoption
of picture-writing and the use of reflective words (like "I"
and "Thou"); and it led on to the appreciation of gold and
of iron with their ornamental and practical values, the
accumulation of Property, the establishment of slavery
of various kinds, the subjection of Women, the encouragement
of luxury and self-indulgence, the growth of crowded
cities and the endless conflicts and wars so resulting. We
can see plainly that the incoming of the self-motive exercised
a direct stimulus on the pursuit of these material objects
and adaptations; and that the material adaptations in their
turn did largely accentuate the self-motive; but to insist
that the real explanation of the whole process is only to
be found along one channel - the material The same remarks apply to the Third Stage. We can see
that in modern times the huge and unlimited powers of
production by machinery, united with a growing tendency
towards intelligent Birth-control, are preparing the way
for an age of Communism and communal Plenty which
will inevitably be associated (partly as cause and partly as
effect) with a new general phase of consciousness, involving
the mitigation of the struggle for existence, the growth
of intuitional and psychical perception, the spread of amity
and solidarity, the disappearance of War, and the realization
(in degree) of the Cosmic life.
Perhaps the greatest difficulty or stumbling-block to
the general acceptance of the belief in a third (or 'Golden-
Age') phase of human evolution is the obstinate and obdurate
pre-judgment that the passing of Humanity out of the Second
stage can only mean the entire abandonment of self-consciousness;
and this people say - and quite rightly - is both impossible and
undesirable. Throughout the preceding chapters I have striven,
wherever feasible, to counter this misunderstanding - but I have
little hope of success. The determination of the world to
misunderstand or misinterpret anything a little new or unfamiliar
is a thing which perhaps only an author can duly appreciate.
But while it is clear that self-consciousness originally came
into being through a process of alienation and exile and fear
which marked it with the Cain-like brand of loneliness
and apartness, it is equally clear that to think of that
apartness as an absolute and permanent separation is an
illusion, since no being can really continue to live divorced
from the source of its life. For a period in evolution the
self took on this illusive form in consciousness, as of an
ignis fatuus - the form of a being sundered from all other
beings, atomic, lonely, without refuge, surrounded by dangers
and struggling, for itself alone and for its own salvation
in the midst of a hostile environment. Perhaps some
such terrible imagination was necessary at first, as it
were to start Humanity on its new path. But it had
its compensation, for the sufferings and tortures, mental and
bodily, the privations, persecutions, accusations, hatreds,
the wars and conflicts - so endured by millions of
individuals and whole races - have at length stamped upon
the human mind a sense of individual responsibility which
otherwise perhaps would never have emerged, and whose
mark can now be effaced; ultimately, too, these things
have searched our inner nature to its very depths and exposed
its bed-rock foundation. They have convinced us
that this idea of ultimate separation is an illusion, and
that in truth we are all indefeasible and indestructible
parts of one great Unity in which "we live and move and
have our being." That being so, it is clear that there remains
in the end a self-consciousness which need by no means be
abandoned, which indeed only comes to its true fruition and
understanding when it recognizes its affiliation with the
Whole, and glories in an individuality which is an
expression both of itself and of the whole. The human
child at its mother's knee probably comes first to know it
has a 'self' on some fateful day when having wandered
afar it goes lost among alien houses and streets or in the
trackless fields. That appalling experience - the sense of
danger, of fear, of loneliness - is never forgotten; it stamps
some new sense of Being upon the childish mind, but that
sense, instead of being destroyed, becomes all the prouder
and more radiant in the hour of return to the mother's arms.
The return, the salvation, for which humanity looks, is
the return of the little individual self to harmony and union
with the great Self of the universe, but by no means its
extinction or abandonment - rather the finding of its own true
nature as never before.
There is another thing which may be said here: namely,
that the disentanglement, as above, of three main stages of
psychological evolution as great formative influences in the
history of mankind, does not by any means preclude
the establishment of lesser stages within the boundaries
of these. In all probability subdivisions of all the three
will come in time to be recognized and allowed for. To take
the Second stage only, it may appear that Self-consciousness
in its first development is characterized by an accentuation
of Timidity; in its second development by a more deliberate
pursuit of sensual Pleasure (lust, food, drink, &c.); in its
third by the pursuit of mental gratifications (vanities,
ambitions, enslavement of others); in its fourth by the pursuit
of Property, as a means of attaining these objects;
in its fifth by the access of enmities, jealousies, wars and so
forth, consequent on all these things; and so on. I have no
intention at present of following out this line of thought,
but only wish to suggest its feasibility and the degree to
which it may throw light on the social evolutions of the Past. (Footnote 1)
As a kind of rude general philosophy we may say that
there are only two main factors in life, namely, Love and
Ignorance. And of these we may also say that the two are
not in the same plane: one is positive and substantial,
the other is negative and merely illusory. It may be thought
at first that Fear and Hatred and Cruelty, and the like, are
very positive things, but in the end we see that they
are due merely to absence of perception, to dulness
of understanding. Or we may put the statement in a rather
less crude form, and say that there are only two factors
in life: (1) the sense of Unity with others (and with Nature) - which covers Love, Faith, Courage, Truth, and so forth,
and (2) Non-perception of the same - which covers Enmity,
Fear, Hatred, Self-pity, Cruelty, Jealousy, Meanness and an
endless similar list. The present world which we see
around us, with its idiotic wars, its senseless jealousies of
nations and classes, its fears and greeds and vanities and
its futile endeavors - as of people struggling in a swamp - to find one's own salvation by treading others underfoot,
is a negative phenomenon. Ignorance, non-perception, are
at the root of it. But it is the blessed virtue of Ignorance
and of non-perception that they inevitably-if only slowly
and painfully - destroy themselves. All experience serves
to dissipate them. The world, as it is, carries' the doom
of its own transformation in its bosom; and in proportion as
that which is negative disappears the positive element must
establish itself more and more.
So we come back to that with which we began, (Footnote 2) to Fear
bred by Ignorance. From that source has sprung the long
catalogue of follies, cruelties and sufferings which mark
the records of the human race since the dawn of history;
and to the overcoming of this Fear we perforce must look
for our future deliverance, and for the discovery, even in
the midst of this world, of our true Home. The time is
coming when the positive constructive element must dominate.
It is inevitable that Man must ever build a state of
society around him after the pattern and image of his own
interior state. The whole futile and idiotic structure of
commerce and industry in which we are now imprisoned
springs from that falsehood of individualistic self-seeking
which marks the second stage of human evolution. That
stage is already tottering to its fall, destroyed by the very
flood of egotistic passions and interests, of vanities, greeds,
and cruelties, all warring with each other, which are the sure
outcome and culmination of its operation. With the restoration
of the sentiment of the Common Life, and the gradual
growth of a mental attitude corresponding, there will emerge
from the flood something like a solid earth - something on
which it will be possible to build with good hope for
the future. Schemes of reconstruction are well enough
in their way, but if there is no ground of real human solidarity beneath, of what avail are they?
An industrial system which is no real industrial order, but
only (on the part of the employers) a devil's device for
securing private profit under the guise of public utility,
and (on the part of the employed) a dismal and poor-spirited
renunciation - for the sake of a bare living - of all real
interest in life and work: such a 'system' must infallibly
pass away. It cannot in the nature of things be permanent.
The first condition of social happiness and prosperity must
be the sense of the Common Life. This sense, which
instinctively underlay the whole Tribal order of the far past -
which first came to consciousness in the worship of a thousand
pagan divinities, and in the rituals of countless sacrifices,
initiations, redemptions, love-feasts and communions, which
inspired the dreams of the Golden Age, and flashed out for
a time in the Communism of the early Christians and in
their adorations of the risen Savior - must in the end be
the creative condition of a new order: it must provide
the material of which the Golden City waits to be built.
The long travail of the World-religion will not have been
in vain, which assures this consummation. What the signs
and conditions of any general advance into this new order
of life and consciousness will be, we know not. It may be
that as to individuals the revelation of a new vision
often comes quite suddenly, and generally perhaps after a
period of great suffering, so to society at large a similar
revelation will arrive - like "the lightning which cometh out
of the East and shineth even unto the West" - with unexpected
swiftness. On the other hand it would perhaps
be wise not to count too much on any such sudden transformation.
When we look abroad (and at home) in this
year of grace and hoped-for peace, 1919, and see the spirits
of rancour and revenge, the fears, the selfish blindness and
the ignorance, which still hold in their paralyzing grasp huge
classes and coteries in every country in the world, we
see that the second stage of human development is
by no means yet at its full term, and that, as in some vast
chrysalis, for the liberation of the creature within still more
and more terrible struggles May be necessary. We
can only pray that such may not be the case. Anyhow, if
we have followed the argument of this book we can hardly
doubt that the destruction (which is going on everywhere)
of the outer form of the present society marks the first
stage of man's final liberation; and that, sooner or later, and
in its own good time, that further 'divine event' will surely
be realized.
Nor need we fear that Humanity, when it has once entered
into the great Deliverance, will be again overpowered
by evil. From Knowledge back to Ignorance there
is no complete return. The nations that have come
to enlightenment need entertain no dread of those others
(however hostile they appear) who are still plunging darkly
in the troubled waters of self-greed. The dastardly Fears
which inspire all brutishness and cruelty of warfare - whether
of White against White or it may be of White against
Yellow or Black - may be dismissed for good and
all by that blest race which once shall have gained the shore - since from the very nature of the case those who are on
dry land can fear nothing and need fear nothing from the
unfortunates who are yet tossing in the welter and turmoil
of the waves.
Dr. Frazer, in the conclusion of his great work The Golden
Bough, (Footnote 3) bids farewell to his readers with the following
words:
I imagine Dr. Frazer is right in thinking that "a way of looking
at phenomena" different from the way of Science, may some
day prevail. But I think this change will come, not so
much by the growth of Science itself or the extension
of its 'hypotheses,' as by a growth and expansion of the
human heart and a change in its psychology and powers of
perception. Perhaps some of the preceding chapters
will help to show how much the outlook of humanity on
the world has been guided through the centuries by the
slow evolution of its inner consciousness. Gradually, out
of an infinite mass of folly and delusion, the human soul
has in this way disentangled itself, and will in the future
disentangle itself, to emerge at length in the light of true
freedom. All the taboos, the insane terrors, the fatuous
forbiddals of this and that (with their consequent heart-
searchings and distress) may perhaps have been in their
way necessary, in order to rivet and define the meaning
and the understanding of that word. To-day these taboos
and terrors still linger, many of them, in the form of
conventions of morality, uneasy strivings of conscience, doubts
and desperations of religion; but ultimately Man will emerge
from all these things, free - familiar, that is, with them all,
making use of all, allowing generously for the values of
all, but hampered and bound by none. He will realize the
inner meaning of the creeds and rituals of the ancient religions,
and will hail with joy the fulfilment of their far
prophecy down the ages - finding after all the long-expected
Saviour of the world within his own breast, and Paradise
in the disclosure there of the everlasting peace of the soul."The laws of Nature are merely hypotheses
devised to explain that ever-shifting phantasmagoria of
thought which we dignify with the high-sounding names of
the World and the Universe. In the last analysis magic,
religion and science are nothing but theories [of thought];
and as Science has supplanted its predecessors so it may
hereafter itself be superseded by some more perfect hypothesis,
perhaps by some perfectly different way of looking at
phenomena - of registering the shadows on the screen - of
which we in this generation can form no idea."
Footnotes