                  7 page printout, page 53 - 59
                           CHAPTER III

              A Few of the World's Great Religions

   The Religions of Egypt and Babylon -- The Chinese Religions
       and Confucius -- Buddha and the Religions of India

               THE RELIGIONS OF EGYPT AND BABYLON

     WHAT chiefly surprises the man who wanders through the
Egyptian gallery of a museum or opens an illustrated book on Egypt,
is the great number of divinities, especially animal-headed
divinities. How could so great a nation retain such monstrous
deities? But we must remember that in historic Egypt it was only
the ignorant majority who took these old deities seriously; just as
in the modern Christian world the deity of the cultivated is not
the deity of the people. We must remember, too, that each of these
old cow-headed goddesses or jackal-headed gods had a powerful
priesthood. It was the priests who fought for the gods.

     In the beginning it is quite intelligible, if we bear in mind
that material and political conditions have as much influence on
religion as on anything else. Egypt is a unique country. It is a
very long and very narrow valley. The result of this was that each
section of the valley had its own tribe, and it took ages for one
kingdom to spread over the whole. These tribes had come into Egypt
from different quarters, and each had its own god or gods. We saw
that religion began with a belief in spirits everywhere in nature,
but especially in curious or powerful objects in nature. So
different tribes saw divinity in the sun, the moon, the hawk, the
cow, the bull, the crocodile, the ape, the ram, and so on. When
they settled down, wars with their neighbors occurred, and the
greatest bitterness arose from the rivalry of their gods. The cult
of each was hardened and grew powerful.

     But even before the historic period there were great nature-
gods which were represented only in human form. Osiris (probably a
sun-god originally), Ra (another sun-god), Isis (possibly at first
a fertility-goddess), Horus (later a Savior-god), Neith (probably
the fertility-goddess of another tribe), and so on. When Egypt was
organized, the priests arranged these deities as man and wife,
mother and son, and so on, and thus more or less organized
religion. But the priests constantly intrigued, and at times one or
another deity became the supreme god. And fourteen hundred years
before Christ, King Amen-hotep IV instituted a pure spiritual
Monotheism as the one religion of Egypt. But we have a special
chapter on Egyptian religion and morals, with full details. Here we
need only indicate their place in the general evolution of
religion.

     In the case of Babylon also, where our discoveries about the
morals and religion of the people have been very remarkable, we
shall require a special chapter to give even a summary of the
facts. A few words about the religious development will suffice
here to make this general sketch complete.

     The kingdom of Babylon was founded about four thousand years
ago, and it had been preceded by a thousand years of city-states,
very largely ruled by priests, in different parts of the
Mesopotamian plain. How all this came about we shall have more 

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               THE STORY OF RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY

space to tell later, and I will merely say here that two different
races, the Sumerians (possibly akin to the early Chinese) and the
Semites (a race like the Hebrews) mingled in the cities and more or
less adjusted their gods to each other.

     There were no animal-gods, such as the material conditions had
developed in Egypt. The spirits in the minor departments of nature
(common to all religions at first) remained mere spirits, and, as
priesthoods of the greater gods developed, they turned these into
"devils." The Babylonian believed as firmly as the less educated
modern Christian does that the world is full of legions of devils.

     But long before the historic period began the gods in the
greater elements of nature were the only objects of worship. As I
said, two entirely different peoples cooperated in making the
civilization of Babylonia, and this meant a double series of
nature-gods. The Sumerians had Snu (sky-god), Ea (earth-god), Sin
(moon-god), Nusku (fire-god), and so on. Then there were Shamash
(another sun-god), Marduk (a third sun-god), Ishtar (of love and
war), Tammuz (ancient fertility-god), and others.

     The story of Babylonian religion, after all the city-states
were welded together in the kingdom of Babylon, is a story of
rivalries and ambitions of priesthoods, resulting in the temporary
supremacy of one or other god. When the city of Babylon rose to
supremacy, its particular god Marduk also rose to supremacy. Later
Shamash became "the one true god." There were several spells of
Monotheism.

               THE CHINESE RELIGIONS AND CONFUCIUS

     There are some reasons for thinking that the early culture of
the Chinese was imported from the west of Asia. The founders show
some points of contact with the founders of Babylonian
civilization. However that may be, we find civilization appearing
there, not twenty thousand years ago, as the Chinese annals claim,
but about 2700 B.C.

     The earlier religion is, no doubt, illustrated in the beliefs
and practices of some of the simpler Mongolian tribes which linger
at a low stage of culture round or within the frontiers of China.
In my work ("The Growth of Religion"), to which I may refer any
reader for further details about religions, I have carefully
examined the religious beliefs of the Chukchi, the Yukaghirs, the
Karyaks, and the Ainu, and from a comparison of their views we may
gather the early religious ideas of Mongolians generally.

     It is a very interesting phase of the evolution of religion,
exactly on the lines we suggested in Chapter ii. Nature is full of
spirits. Every tree, forest, river, lake, etc., has what the
Chukchi call its "master," or indwelling spirit. Every animal has
a spirit. Of the disembodied spirits of men there are whole legions
of sour and malevolent shades haunting the villages and living in
the deserts, so that we have a very large belief in "devils" (so
prominent in the Chinese religion). They work terrible havoc among
men, and there is quite an army of shamans (devil-fighters, magic-
practicers) to keep them at bay.


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               THE STORY OF RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY

     But already amongst these Mongolian tribes we find that some
spirits, especially those in the greater elements of nature, rise
high above the common level, and, in fact, one or other of them
reaches a level not far removed from Monotheism. The Chukchi have
a supreme spirit, a sky-god, whom they regard as a "life-giving
being" or even "creator," though they do not pray to or worship
him. The chief spirit of the Yukaghirs and the Karyaks is also a
sky-god, and there is a naive belief that if the animal-sacrifices
to him are neglected, he goes to sleep and the course of nature is
disordered. Other Mongolian tribes have no particularly outstanding
spirit, but there is a general vague respect for "heaven" (the sky-
spirit) and the "will of heaven."

     In the sixth century before Christ, when the Chinese kingdom
had fallen into decay and confusion, two sages arose. These were
Lao-tse and Kong-fu-tse (commonly called Confucius). They were both
what we call Agnostics, and the immense influence they had shows
that educated China reached the proper stage for Agnosticism
twenty-five hundred years ago.

     I have in another book quoted the two greatest authorities,
Sir R.K. Douglas and the Rev. Dr. Legge, showing that even Lao-tse
"knew nothing of a personal god," though the moral system he
founded, Taoism (Tao is the Chinese for "way" of life), was later
mixed with ritualistic Buddhism, and is now a tissue of
superstitions.

     About the Agnosticism of Kong-fu-tse there has never been any
question. Dr. Legge says that his moral system is "hardly more than
a pure secularism." It is no more. No one in the world disputes
that, when Kong was pressed to declare his opinion on a religion,
which he never mentioned, he said: "To give oneself earnestly to
the duties due to men, and, while respecting spiritual beings, to
keep aloof from them -- that may be called wisdom." Two thousand
five hundred years ago this great sage founded an Agnostic code of
morality as high as any in the world, and it has had a finer
influence than any. For two thousand years it has been the standard
of Chinese gentlemen, and it has never taken a religious form.

     The culture of Japan is so largely borrowed from China that
little need be said about it here. The popular religion, Shintoism,
corresponds to the Chinese Taoism, and, like China, the country has
a ritualistic Buddhism. Shintoism is said by the people to have
eight million gods. In other words, it is the old Mongolian nature-
and spirit-worship.

     Confucianism was, like Buddhism, brought over from China, and
it has been for ages the sole moral standard of every educated
Japanese. As in China, it has remained purely Agnostic, and,
whatever may be thought about Japanese character since European and
American influence began, every writer on the Japanese before that
time gives them an exceptionally high level of character. It is
sometimes said that they have a sacred book called "Bushido," but
this is merely a collection of moral sentiments culled from any
source whatever, even the Bible. In 1871 the Japanese officials and
middle class, themselves indifferent to or contemptuous of all
religion, sent a deputation to Europe to study Christianity and see


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               THE STORY OF RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY

if it was a suitable religion for the ignorant masses. Never was
there a more impartial judgment on Europe's religion, and the
emphatic verdict was that popular Buddhism was more desirable than
Christianity.

                BUDDHA AND THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA

     There are said to be as many religions as tongues amongst the
vast swarms of peoples of different races and cultures, which we
call India. They range from the simple cult of pastoral hill tribes
like the Todas to the fanatical worship of Siva, the advanced ideas
of the more learned of the Hindus, and the elaborate creed and
ritual of the Mohammedans. Every stage in the evolution of
religions is found somewhere on the teeming plains or the isolated
hills. Every error into which a mythical heaven ever led the steps
of man lives in India today, and in Ceylon, to the south of it,
there are, as we saw, men without any religion.

     The country is probably the oldest inhabited part of the
globe, since it is somewhere in its neighborhood that the human
race was born or cradled. But our interest in it begins when the
ancestors of the Hindus of today descended the slopes of the
northwestern mountains and settled amongst the more primitive
inhabitants.

     The ancient literature of the Hindus, written in Sanskrit,
enabled scholars to learn long ago that they were related to the
peoples of Europe, and more closely related to the Persians. We
have in recent times found proof of this. We have the terms of a
treaty, drawn up more than thirty-three hundred years ago, in which
the names of Hindu and Persian divinities occur as those of a still
united people. Soon after that time the Hindu branch separated from
the Persian, and there must have been a great trek across the
deserts and hills of Asia until at last the warriors gazed upon the
sunny and fertile plains of Hindustan.

     We know their religion from their sacred books, the Vedas. But
these were written ages afterwards and, like the Hebrew and other
sacred books, they falsify the real development and adorn the
primitive life and thought of the rude pastoral invaders with the
more advanced ideas of a later age. Still, our scholars have
succeeded in obtaining a satisfactory picture of the early
religion, which was a local variation of the general religion of
the "Aryans," or the common fathers of the Hindus, Persians,
Greeks, Romans, Slavs, Teutons and Celts.

     There survive, however, in India today a large number of
tribes who belong to the population ("Dravidian," scholars call it)
of India before the "Aryans" arrived. Nearly ten million of these
still cling to Animism, or nature-worship, in the shelter of the
hills and valleys. The Todas, for instance, believe vaguely in
wandering spirits of the hill, the river, and the pool, and in a
small number of greater spirits which can hardly be dignified with
the name of gods. The Khasis are substantially at the same level.
In brief, these relics of the early population show us the phase of
belief in universal spirits and the beginning of the creation of
major spirits and gods.


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               THE STORY OF RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY

     The invaders brought with them a nature-religion (as opposed
to the more primitive belief in universal small spirits), of a kind
with which we are now familiar. The Hindu early sacred books, the
Vedas, did not begin to appear in writing until about 1000 B.C.,
and the later religious ideas are confused with the earlier, but
the original religion is fairly clear. It is the worship of great
spirits or gods who control and dwell in the more important
elements of nature. They fall into three main groups: gods of the
sky, gods of the air, and gods of the earth.

     Some scholars have, as in the case of China, claimed that the
early religion was Monotheism. This indicates a very curious change
of attitude on the part of religious writers. A generation ago
Monotheism was supposed to be beyond the range of the unaided human
mind: it had to be revealed to the Hebrews. Now that we know that
it arose frequently before the Hebrews were civilized, there is a
tendency to look for it, and distort the evidence in favor of it,
in many quarters.

     And the particular Hindu god chosen by the Christian
authority, Sir M. Monier-Williams, as "the one god" is interesting
for another reason. It is Dyaus ("the sky") or Dyaus-Pitar ("Sky-
Father," like Zeus and Jupiter). It is clear that this was, as in
Mongolia generally, the great god at a very early date in nature-
worship. From Europe to the coast of China the "Heavenly Father" is
the outstanding god, but "heaven" is the physical heavens, or the
sky, and we thus have nearly half the race testifying to the "solar
myth" theory of religion.

     From the start, however, Dyaus is in Vedic religion
accompanied by a legion of gods and goddesses. The sun-god, under
many names (Swrya, Deva, Vishnu, etc.) early displaces the sky-god
in importance. His mother is Ushas (the Dawn), later represented as
a maid. There is a sky-rain god, later the god of water (Varuna).
There are, in the air, Vata (wind-god), Inara (or rain and
lightning), and others, and on the earth are Agni (of fire),
Prithivi (mother-earth), and many others. We need not give the
whole list. The early Hindus, a branch of one of the higher races
of three thousand years ago, had risen above the primitive level to
the deification of the great elements of nature.

     Seven centuries before Christ the priests of the Hindu
religion, which was now elaborately organized, and had great
temples and ritual, entered upon a phase of speculation or
metaphysics, of a crude nature (though ladies pay five or ten
dollars to hear it rehashed in Chicago and Los Angeles today). The
supreme principle now became a deified abstraction of a quite
unintelligible nature all description of it is mere verbiage called
by them Brahma, while the priests called themselves Brahmans. The
modern development of this Brahmanism, one of the weirdest word-
weaving systems of the world, is the religion of the educated
Hindus today (when they are not Agnostics or Mohammedans), and it
is the commodity sold at a high profit in American markets as "the
wisdom of the east."



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     The mass of the people of India were incapable of
understanding, and had not the slightest wish to understand, this 
new development. Their religion was, as it is today, a mixture of
the primitive belief in minor spirits with a worship of the very
congenial and amorous Hindu gods. But the crudities of the popular
religion and the empty wordiness of the Brahmans had a remarkable
reaction amongst the educated. India was, like China in the days of
Kong-fu-tse, in a state of decay and confusion, and a number of
reformers arose.

     Jainism, which still has a million followers, was one of the
new sects or "reforms" started at this period. It is now a
fanatical superstitious sect, priding itself that it is a
refinement of Hinduism, but its founder, who still lived in the
time of Buddha (sixth century B.C.) rejected all gods and all
speculations about them. He retained, however, the doctrine of
reincarnation, the germ of many superstitions. Sikhism is in turn
a reform of Jainism.

     Another group which arose in India about the same time as
Jainism and Buddhism seems to have had no mystic features whatever.
Like Epicureanism in Greece and Rome at a later date, it was rather
a frame of mind than a system. It rejected gods and religious
speculations, and concentrated upon happiness in this life. One
might call it ordinary common-sense Agnosticism.

     And this, in a far different way, was the simple aim of one
who is almost always described as one of the "religious geniuses"
of the race and the founder of one of the greatest religions.
Buddha ("the Enlightened") or Gautama (his real name) was the son
of a chief or small prince, born about 560 B.C. His life does not
concern us. Briefly, be renounced his position, became a wandering
teacher of the proper way to live, and gathered disciples about
him. But, instead of founding a religion, he precisely aimed at
diverting men from everything that was then called, and most men
still call, religion.

     Like Kong-fu-tse, Buddha distrusted and rejected all
speculation about gods. His complete silence about gods -- was
there ever a great religious teacher who never mentioned God, yet
believed in him? -- and his advice to his disciples to avoid all
such speculation, are universally admitted. But many writers
naturally shrink from admitting that one of the greatest
"religious" founders was an Atheist or Agnostic: that one of the
most lofty ethical systems was purely humanitarian. Yet the
significance of his silence in such an age is plain enough.

     Buddha was, like Kong-fu-tse, a purely humanitarian and
Agnostic moralist. Professor Macdonell (professor of Sanskrit at
Oxford University), one of the latest and highest authorities, says
that Buddha "denied the existence both of a world-soul and an
individual soul" (Hastings' "Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics,"
article "Indian Buddhism"). Professor Rhys Davids, perhaps the
highest authority, agrees, and draws the conclusion that Buddha was
an Atheist. Some writers say that Buddha continued to believe in
reincarnation, one of the mischievous superstitions which the
Brahmans had put into circulation. It is disputed by others, and 


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               THE STORY OF RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY

for the life of me I cannot understand how Professor Macdonell
makes Buddha deny the existence of a soul yet believe in
reincarnation! A vast amount of nonsense has been written about
Buddhism in the interest of religion.

     Buddha's doctrine was purely humanitarian. Professor Macdonell
says that its essence is "that all earthly existence is suffering,
the only means of release from which is renunciation and eternal
death." But he gives us another and more attractive side of the
ascetic teaching of Buddha when he says that it was "rather a
religion of humanity" (if one can admit such a thing), and "a
system of practical morality, the key-note of which is universal
charity, kindness to all beings, animals as well as men." The
asceticism and pessimism of Buddha are explained by the terrible
confusion and disorder of his age, the immaturity of the mind of
the race. But his doctrine of universal human love, five centuries
before Christ, is the highest note of ethics, and his rejection of
all religion now explains to the reader what may have startled him
at first -- my statement that all educated Asia reached the final
goal of religious evolution, Agnosticism, two thousand years before
Europe. Buddhism unfortunately degenerated, and it now has few
followers in India proper.

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               THE STORY OF RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY
                               by
                          Joseph McCabe







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