SCIENCE 



NEW YOEK, AUGUST 25, 1893. 



AN EXHIBIT OP RELIGIONS. 



BY MERWIN-MARIE SNELL, 593 LA. SALLE AVE., CHICAGO, ILL. 



In the month of September there is to take place in 

 Chicago an event vrhich promises to be epoch-making in 

 the history of religions, and perhaps, by its ultimate con- 

 sequences, in the general history of mankind. I refer to 

 the World's Parliament of Religions, at which the repre- 

 sentatives of the Catholic, Oriental and Protestant forms 

 of Christianity, with their various sub-divisions, will meet 

 on equal terms with those of the different sects of Juda- 

 ism, Mohammedanism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, 

 Parseeism, Confucianism, Taoism, Shintoism, and other 

 aon-christian systems. 



These religious bodies will present to the Parliament, 

 through their accredited representatives, a statement of 

 their teachings, practices and claims, and many of them 

 will also have special congresses of their own, in which 

 their doctrines, histories and practical methods will be 

 still more fully exhibited. 



It is believed by many of the friends and participants 

 of the parliament that it cannot fail to give rise to a 

 mutual understanding and appreciation between the 

 world's religions, altogether unprecedented in the past, 

 and that it will result in a vast increase in the spirit of 

 human brotherhood, the lack of which has been the cause 

 of many of the darkest chapters of history, and has con- 

 stituted the greatest of all obstacles to the progress of 

 the race. 



But it is to its scientific, rather than to its religious or 

 social value, that I wish to call attention. Although 

 many of the foremost European and American specialists 

 in comparative religion have prepared jjapers for the con- 

 gress, or promised their personal attendance, the atten- 

 tion of the scientific world at large has not yet been suffi- 

 ciently drawn to the extraordinary ojjportunities which it 

 will iJresent to serious and disinterested students. 



It is trvie that it is in no sense a scientific congress, al- 

 though several of its sessions will be devoted to the scien- 

 tific view of religions, and these will be participated in by 

 men of world-wide fame as the very foremost representa- 

 tives of hierological science — men like Miiller, Tiele, 

 d'Alviella, Harding and the Reviiles. It is true that the 

 religious bodies iJarticipating have at heart, in most cases, 

 the interests of their own propaganda; they hope to make 

 so favorable a representation of their own special systems 

 as to break down any prejvidices of which they may be 

 the objects, and to attract at least the respectful interest, 

 if not the adhesion, of many of those who hear them. 



But these facts, so far from decreasing the scientific 

 value of the parliament, are really its essential conditions. 

 It is a truism to say that the collection of materials is the 

 most important part of any inductive science, since the 

 science can be genuine and its results definitive only so 

 far as its basis of observed facts is broad and adequate. 

 Now there is no existing science in which nlore still re- 

 mains to be done in the collection of materials than in 

 comparative religion. 



Many hurried inductions have been made on the basis 

 of a few ill-observed and ill-assorted facts recorded by 

 missionaries and travellers, whose opportunities, training, 

 or habits of mind, have not fitted them for collecting thor- 



oughly authentic data. Only a small proportion of the 

 sacred books of the world have thus far been translated 

 by European scholars and placed within the reach of the 

 student; and these books can have but a partial and pre- 

 liminary value so long as the complicated systems which 

 have produced them, or grown out of them, have not been 

 studied in the details of their historical development, sub- 

 division, reproduction, inter-action and fusion. 



What does EuroiJean scholarshij^ know, for example, 

 about the religious development of India, in spite of the 

 vast amount of good work which has been done in that 

 field by Vedic scholars, general philologists, and other 

 classes of students ? There exists to this day but one 

 professedly original resume (and that very imperfect, and 

 based to a large extent upon a native work) of the exist- 

 ing sects of Hinduism, and from this all other descriptions 

 have been, for the most part, copied or abstracted. 



Who is there, even among professional Indianists, who 

 is thoroughly acquainted with the various ramifications of 

 either Vaishnava, 'Saiva or 'Sakti Hinduism, the dates and 

 circumstances of origin of the sects into which they are 

 divided, the minutife and sources of their doctrinal and 

 jDractical differences, and their relative de23endence upon 

 ancient Vedic or non- Vedic Aryan religion, the p)re- Aryan 

 cults of Bactria and India, Mohammedan and Christian 

 influences, the old and new i^hilosophical schools, and in- 

 ternal 23rocesses of corrui^tion and decay or of constructive 

 or agglutinative development? 



Again, every competent student of religions knows how 

 difficult it is to catch the exact flavor or si^irit of Oriental, 

 or even of savage thought, and how, almost inevitably, it 

 receives a certain foreign coloring whenever it is trans- 

 mitted through a cultivated Occidental brain. Thus far 

 very few descriptions of the non-christian reUgious sects 

 of the East, written by native adherents of those religions, 

 have been obtainable. 



It is to be further noted that those students of hierol- 

 ogy who approach the subject from the philological 

 standpoint, are apt to p>ay too much attention to the ter- 

 minology of religions and to their archaic literary monu- 

 ments (which sometimes represent ideal systems that have 

 never been actually carried out to any great extent) 

 rather than to the successive transformations of their 

 popular and pragmatic forms, the study of which is 

 really as much more important as it is more diflticult. 



On the other hand, those whose primary interest is eth- 

 nological, are equally jjrone to consider, even in the more 

 advanced religions, the 2Mraphernalia of the cult and the 

 media of doctrine, to the detrim-ent of the theories and 

 Weltanschauungcn themselves, which form, in every case, 

 the soul of the system. 



The science of religions can never rise above the level 

 of an emijty emj^iricism, and no definitive results can be 

 attained in it, until every class of religious facts shall be 

 recorded with absolute impartiality, and religions studied 

 as a whole — their doctrines, philosophies, sj)U'itual and 

 moral discijjlines, biblical and liturgical constructions, 

 saci'amental and ceremonial systems, organization and 

 functional specialization, methods of instruction and 

 propaganda, and fortuitous non-religious ingredients, 

 Avith due distinctions between the official and j)opular 

 elements, and, whenever they have an ascertainable his- 

 tory, in an exact chronological order. A dogma is as ac- 

 ceptable a datum for the science of religions as a myth, 



