M. Moncalm

“ The Vedic hymns give us the many different channels whence the phenomenon of fire proceeds, at one time coming in one way and then in another, to attract man’s attention and to awaken his drowsy faculties. Fire comes from the skies where it shines as the sun, from the waters, since it comes as lightning, from the moist and rain-laden clouds, from the stones, and from wood, in the shape of sparks, from dried leaves and herbs placed on the altar to receive and nourish the sacrificial flame. ”

“ The Hindoo saw nothing in the past but the mystery of the Creation, in the future but the mystery of his destiny; the present offered nothing to him that could awaken physical activity, and apparently had no reality for him; no people ever existed who believed more firmly in a future life, or who occupied themselves less with this one; such as they were in the beginning, such they remained. The only sphere in which the Indian mind moves freely is the sphere of religion and that of philosophy. In no other part of the world have metaphysical ideas taken such deep root as in India ”

“ At the origin of all this mental activity we find an inspiration—a poetical fiat. It was a historical moment—no other similar to it has ever been, before or since—when the first group of human creatures acclaimed with inarticulate cries their first cavern, or the first den dug by themselves. At a much later date when man, looking up at the vault of heaven—his curiosity aroused—wished to know what were the brilliant things he saw moving high above him, was he not impelled by the feeling of the presence of a Being hitherto unknown, and to whom he paid unconscious homage by giving Him a name? ”

“ I am drawn by the word Infinite. Aristotle said truly, “the Infinite attracts.” He was thinking of that other infinite, which is not the one intended by astronomers; but for myself the infinite in nature captivates me so powerfully that I find it difficult to touch earth again. Let us walk in beaten paths; let us endeavour to grasp the meaning of the more simple words learnt mechanically at school, such as those denoting abstraction as well as nouns, and terms both general and particular; and let us see to what phase of thought and speech these grammatical exercises will carry us. ”

“ Man’s capabilities of introducing intermediaries between the intention and the fulfilment of his object witness to his wideness of mind, his experience of the past and prevision of the future; all those things that he owes to his power of imagination and conception even in the case of things having no real existence, or which do not exist as yet; he reproduces at will the outward likeness of what is not at the moment before him. Thus man who names an object, thinks it; but the animal from not possessing language cannot think it and cannot reproduce it when out of its sight. ”

“ Whilst the work of science has been specially directed to causes, religion is content, as in the past, to attribute each act to an agent; the influence of ancient ideas on our present thought is still in force, and our mind has to live as the oyster, under a cover which it has made for itself. But we must submit to evidence, and acknowledge that if we do not yet escape from the power of mythology, it is that we meet its language everywhere, even in our sacred writings. ”

“ We can follow in the Vedic hymns the gradual development which changes the sun from a simple luminary, and the giver of daily light and life, to the preserver and ruler of the world. He who brings life and light to-day, is the same who brought life and light on the first of days; as he drives away the darkness of night, and as “the stars flee before the all-seeing sun, like thieves,” the eye fixed on men—the sun—sees the right and wrong and knows their thoughts.
Almost all peoples have raised their eyes to the sky, the abode of the invisible Powers ”

“ There are few who ask themselves whence comes this breath which inspires them so fully, and since when has its influence extended itself amongst us; to be nourished with its fruits sufficed. Such is the disposition of soul of the majority of those for whom religion is more than a name—whatsoever it be—pronounced in an unknown tongue. Would it not be natural to desire to make its acquaintance more closely? Apparently not; we accept it as something known by intuition, without concerning ourselves with its aspect. ”

“ The only document in our possession on the origin of mankind—the Old Testament—was carefully consulted; there we read that God created man after His image, that He made him of the dust of the earth, that He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, so that man became a living creature. The Bible narrative is one of simple facts, and it was necessary to look upon them as so many facts, for any effort to pierce beneath the surface of these mysterious words was like groping in the dark. ”

“ But all men, without exception, must acquire the religion demanded by all, that is practical religion, which consists in keeping those commandments given us in the sacred books. This obedience serves to weaken passions; in the same proportion as man attains this end, so a light, ever increasing in purity, illumines his intellect, and so much the more does he comprehend that true happiness is the result of virtue. Few men go beyond this, or—without any other guide than their reason—experience that intellectual love of God, inseparable from the true knowledge of God and man ”

“ For a long time man only knew one kind of being, his own; and possessed one language only, that which expressed his own acts and his own states; the primitive men were sufficiently advanced to say: “let us dig,” “grind,” “they weave”; but if, at the beginning, concepts and speech arose from the consciousness of their own activity, how was the advance made when men desired to speak of the external objects of the world which they saw around them, and were conscious of not having made, and which consequently remained outside the sphere of their wills and of their experience? ”

“ Learned writers have sought in physical sciences, history, and metaphysics, an explanation of this phenomenon; but in spite of this vast labour inspired by a love of science, and carried on for more than two thousand years, the secret of the sphinx of mythology remains undisclosed, and we still ask, “what is mythology?” Is it an invention of Homer and Hesiod? Or is it a phase in the development of the human mind, a deviation in the growth of reason?
The school of philology has a solution of its own to offer; will it be as futile as the others? ”

“ To believe that this could be otherwise would be to admit that God made an imperfect nature, and established laws so incomplete that they required to be retouched each time that they failed to realise the divine plan, a strange conception, and for which there is no necessity. Those who seek and find their supreme happiness in the love of God, and in doing the greatest good, have no wish that nature should obey them; they desire to submit to nature, knowing indubitably, that God governs all things in accordance with general laws which are in agreement with universal life. ”

“ All philosophers and all truly philosophical theologians have held that God is impersonal Reason; Bossuet called Him “La Raison-Dieu.” This Light that lighteth every one that cometh into the world is the source of a principle of certitude; Aristotle, St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas thus understood it when they said that mind cannot be mistaken.
If we would make an approximate conception of God we must scrupulously follow the advice of St Thomas Aquinas, “Eliminate, eliminate,” then only shall we understand the meaning of the sages who said that negation is fuller than affirmation. ”

“ As critics we are now in a position to take note of the mental aberrations of the mythological period; we can understand that when the ancient peoples attributed a divine descent to their kings and heroes, it was the highest praise that one man could give to another; we know that the mythology as taught in the schools, was no more the religion of the Greeks and Romans than rust is iron. Yet it is this homage which has perhaps obscured our minds as we imagine absolutely human intercourse taking place between mortals and immortals. ”

“ The evolution of the human race will not become clear to us unless we remember that a time existed when man was without language and without reason.
During this obscure period which we name the dawn of humanity, the material wants and their satisfaction, comprised the whole being of man, as it does that of the animal. With man commenced the line of individuals leading to the higher order of social life. It is possible that the feeling of being one of many was one of the first to awake in man, since it was owing to the support afforded him by his fellows that he obtained what he needed ”

“ Doubtless, and since I am too practical to attempt the impossible, abstaining from every superhuman effort, and submitting my imagination to a strict discipline, I will again consult history, but not history as I know it, nor that history which is written in our days, polished, cautious, honestly critical, that which notes the old traces of humanity when they occur on the route mixed with events, and which treats the eternal truths as though they had no existence, and, truly, they do not belong to its dominion. ”

“ Even if Darwin and Max Müller have not been absolutely the first to strive to go back, the one to the origin of the organic world, the other to the dawn of human speech, no others have yet walked in this darkness so courageously and so perseveringly as these two men. ”

“ In a system where law is everything, how does Spinoza understand the action of Providence?
Men are accustomed to call that knowledge divine which surpasses the human understanding, and that event miraculous when the cause is unknown to them; and nothing better demonstrates to them the existence of God, His power and His providence, than those things which appear to them to change the order of nature. We sometimes show our ignorance by attributing things of which we are ignorant to a special interposition of providence. ”

“ So long as the real identity of thought and language had not been grasped, so long as people imagined that language is one thing and thought another, it was but natural that they should fail to see the real meaning of treating mythology, if not as a disease, at all events as an inevitable affection of language. If the active verb was merely a grammatical, and not at the same time a psychological, nay, an historical fact, it might seem absurd to identify the active meaning of our roots with the active meaning ascribed to the phenomena of nature. ”

“ We stand by the banks of a river and dip our hand in the small volume of water passing away before our eyes; we can also touch the ground on which we are standing, also the trunk of the tree beneath which we are sitting; but it is only an insignificant part of which we assert the reality by touching it, all the other parts remain unknown to us; for the river itself consists of a large mass of waters springing from a source which is not seen and flowing towards a spot which we may never see ”