348 



SCIENCE. 



The greater part of the head gave a bright continuous 

 spectrum, obliterating the usual cometary bands, but one 

 portion showed three bands, in the green, blue, and vio- 

 let respectively. Measures of the principal band- in the 

 green show that it coincides with the band in the first 

 spectrum of carbon (blue base of flame) at 5165, and not 

 with that of the second spectrum (vacuum-tube) at 5198. 

 The bands in the blue and violet appear to correspond, 

 as nearly as could be estimated, with bands in the first 

 spectrum of carbon. These observations were made with 

 the half-prism spectroscope mounted on the I2j-inch 

 equatorial, a dispersive power of about i8£° from A to H 

 being used, with a magnifying power of 14 on the view- 

 telescope, as in the measures of star-motions in the line of 

 sight. No decided polarisation was detected either in 

 the head or the tail. Cloudy weather has prevented any 

 observation of the comet since June 25. 



THE UNITY OF NATURE. 

 By the Duke of Argyll. 

 IX. 



THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION CONSIDERED IN THE LIGHT 

 OF THE UNITY OF NATURE. 



( Continued. ) 



These conceptions seems to have taken their form 

 from the very violence of the revulsion which they 

 indicate and explain. The peculiar tenet of Buddhism, 

 which is or has been interpreted to be a denial of 

 any Divine Being or of personal or individual immor- 

 tality, seems the strangest of all doctrines on which 

 to recommend a life of virtue, of self-denial, and of 

 religious contemplation. But the explanation is ap- 

 parently to be found in the extreme and ridiculous devel- 

 opments which the doctrines of Divine Personality and 

 of individual immortality had taken under the Brahmin- 

 ical system. These developments do indeed seem almost 

 incredible, if we did not know from many other examples 

 the incalculable wanderings of the human imagination 

 in the domain of religious thought. The doctrine of the 

 transmigration of souls at death into the bodies of beasts 

 was a doctrine pushed to such extravagances of concep- 

 tion, and yet believed in with such intense conviction 

 that pious Brahmins did not dare even to breathe the 

 open air lest by accident they should destroy 

 some invisible animalcula? in which was "embodied the 

 spirits of their ancestors. Such a notion of immortality 

 might well oppress and afflict the spirit with a sense of 

 intolerable fatigue. Nor is it difficult to understand how 

 that desire of complete attainment, which is, after all, 

 the real hope of immortality, should have been driven to 

 look for it rather in reabsorption into some one universal 

 Essence, and so to reach at last some final rest. Free- 

 dom from the burden of the flesh, rendered doubly bur- 

 densome by the repeated cycles of animal existence 

 which lay before the Brahmin, was the end most natur- 

 ally desired. For, indeed, complete annihila'ion might 

 well be the highest aspiration of souls who had before 

 them such conceptions of personal immortality and its 

 gifts. A similar explanation is probably the true one of 

 the denial of any God. A prejudice had arisen against 

 the very idea of a Divine Being from the concomitant 

 ideas which had become associated with personality. 

 The original Buddhist denial of a God was probably in its 

 heart ot hearts merely a denial of the grotesque limita- 

 tions which had been associated with the popular concep- 

 tions of Him. It was a devout and religious aspect of 

 that most unphilosophical negation which in our own 

 days had been called the " Unconditioned." In short, it 

 was only a metaphysical, and not an irreligious, Atheism. 

 But although this was probably the real meaning of the 



Buddhistic Atheism in the mind of its original teachers, 

 and although this meaning has reappeared and has found 

 intelligent expression among many of its subsequent 

 expounders, it was in itself one of those fruitful germs of 

 error which are fatal in any system of Religion. The 

 negation of any Divine Being or Agency, at least under 

 any aspect or condition conceivable by Man, makes a 

 vacuum which nothing else can fill. Orrather.it maybe 

 said to make a vacuum which every conceivable imagina- 

 tion rushes in to occupy. Accordingly, Buddha himself 

 seems to have taken the place of a Divine Being in the 

 worship of his followers. His was a real personality — 

 his was the ideal life. All history proves that no abstract 

 system of doctrine, no mere rule of life, no dreamy aspira- 

 tion however high, can serve as an object of worship for 

 any length of time. But a great and a good man can 

 always be deified. And so it has been with Buddha. 

 Still, this deification was, as it were, an usurpation. The 

 worship of himself was no part ot the Religion he taught, 

 and the vacuum which he had created in speculative be- 

 lief was one which his own image, even with all the 

 swellings of tradition, was inadequate to fill. And so 

 Buddhism appears to have run its course through every 

 stage of mystic madness, of gross idolatry, and of true 

 fetish-wcrship, until, in India at least, it seems likely to 

 be reabsorbed in the Brahminism from which it originally 

 sprang. 



And so we are carried back to the origin of that great 

 Religion, Brahminism, which already in the sixth or 

 seventh century before the Christian era had become so 

 degraded as to give rise to the revolt of Buddha. The 

 course of its development can be traced in an elaborate 

 literature which may extend over a period ot about 2000 

 years. That development is beyond all question one of 

 the greatest interest in the history of Religion, because 

 it concerns a region and a race which have high tradi- 

 tional claims to be identified with one of the most ancient 

 homes, and one of the most ancient families of man. 

 And surely it is a most striking result of modern inquiry 

 that in this, one of the oldest literatures of the world, we 

 find that the most ancient religious appellation is 

 Heaven-Father, and that the words " Dyaus-pitar " in 

 which this idea is expressed are the etymological origin of 

 Jupiter Ztvgnartjp — the name for the supreme Deity in the 

 mythology of the Greeks. 



We must not allow any preconceived ideas to obscure 

 the plain evidence which arises out of this simple fact. 

 We bow to the authority of Sanskrit scholars when 

 they tell us of it. But we shall do well to watch the 

 philosophical explanations with Which they may accom- 

 pany their intimations of its import. Those who ap- 

 proach the subject with the assumption that the idea of 

 a Divine Being or a Superhuman Personality must be a 

 derivative, and cannot be a primary conception, allow all 

 their language to be colored by the theory that vague per- 

 ceptions of "The Invisible" or of "The Infinite," in 

 rivers, or in mountains, or in sun and moon and stars, 

 were the earliest religious conceptions ot the human mind. 

 But this theory cannot be accepted by those who remem- 

 ber that there is nothing in Nature so near to us as 

 our own nature,— nothing so mysterious and yet 

 so intelligible, — nothing so invisible, yet so sugges- 

 tive of energy and of power over things that can 

 be seen. Nothing else in Nature speaks to us so 

 constantly or so directly. Neither the Infinite nor the In- 

 visible contains any religious element at all, unless as 

 conditions of a Being of whom invisibility and infinitude 

 are attributes. There is no probability that any abstract 

 conceptions whatever about the nature or properties of 

 material Force can have been among the earliest con- 

 ceptions of the human mind. Still less is it reasonable 

 to suppose that such conceptions were more natural and 

 more easy conceptions than those founded on our own 

 personality and the personality of parents. Yet it seems 

 as if it were in deference to this theory that Professor 



