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Page 8
Buddhism gives a peculiar explanation of the disappearance of inferior
races. Since the object of the incarnation of the human soul is its
progress toward the perfect and divine man; since every human soul must
dwell on earth as a member of each one of the sub-races, the time must
come when all shall have passed through a given stage. Then there can be
no more births into that race. There is, at this moment, a finite number
of human souls whose existence is limited to this planet, and no other
planet in our chain is at present the abode of humanity. For the larger
part of all these souls--at least nine hundred and ninety-nine in a
thousand--are, at anyone instant, existing in "the world of effects," in
Devachan. All will remain linked by their destiny to this planet, until
the moment when all--a few rare, unfortunate, negligent laggards
excepted--shall have passed through their last mortal probation, in the
seventh root-race. Then will the tide of humanity overflow to the planet
Mercury, and this earth, abandoned by conscious men, will for a million
years fall back into desolation, gradually deprived of all life, even of
all development. In that condition it will remain, sleeping, as it were,
for ages--"not dead, but sleeping"; for the germs of mineral, vegetable,
and animal life will await, quiescent, until the tide of human soul
shall have passed around the chain, and is again approaching our globe.
Then will earth awake from its sleep. In successive eons, the germs of
life, mineral, vegetable, and animal, in their due order, will awake;
the old miracle of creation will begin again, but on a higher plan than
before, until, at last, the first human being--something vastly higher
in body, mind, and spirituality than the former man--will make his
appearance on the new earth. From this explanation of the doctrine that
life moves not by a steady flow, but by what Sinnett calls gushes, it
follows, of course, that there must come a time when each race, and each
sub-race, must have finished its course, completed its destiny. There
are no more human souls in Devachan to pass through that stage of
progress. For a long time the number has been diminishing, and that race
has been losing ground. Now it has come to its end. So, within a hundred
years, has passed away the Tasmanian. So, to-day, are passing many
races. The disappearance of a lower race is therefore no calamity; it
is evidence of progress. It means that that long line of undeveloped
humanity must go up higher. "That which thou sowest, is not quickened
except it die." If there be "joy among the angels of God, over one
sinner that repenteth," why not when the whole human race, to the last
man, has passed successfully up into a higher class in the great school?
I am constantly turning back to a thought that I have passed by. Let me
now return to the consideration of Buddhism as a religion. It is evident
that, viewed on this side, Buddhism is one thing to the initiated,
another to the masses. So was the religion of the Romans, so is
Christianity. It is necessarily so. No two persons receive the formal
creed of the same church in the same way. The man of higher grade, and
the man of lower, cannot understand things in the same sense because
they have not the same faculties for understanding. Hence the polytheism
among those called Buddhists. There could be no such thing among the
initiated. Religion, then, like everything else, is subject to growth.
Such must be the Buddhist doctrine. If, then, Buddhism, or the
philosophy which bears that name, originated with the fourth root-race
of men, does it not occur to the initiated that the fifth race ought, by
this same theory, to develop a higher form of truth? Looking at the
matter merely on its intellectual side, ought not the higher development
of the power of thought to bring truer conceptions of the highest
things? Again, a query: Is the rise of the Brahmo-Somaj a step toward
the practical extension of Christianity into the domain of Buddhism?
This brings to discussion the whole question of the work done by
missionary effort among the lower races. I do not mean the question
whether we should try to Christianize them, but what result is it
reasonable to expect. And here I imagine that there is a strict limit,
beyond which it is impossible for the members of a given race to be
developed. On the Buddhist principle, given a certain human being, and
we have a human soul passing through a definite stage of its progress.
While it occupies its present body it is, except, our author always
says, in very peculiar cases, incapable of more than a certain
advance,--as incapable as a given species of animal, or tree, or even as
the body of the man itself is incapable of more than a certain growth. I
think that any one who has studied or observed the processes of ordinary
school training, must have been sometimes convinced that he has in hand
a boy whose ability to be further advanced has come to an end. Sometimes
we find a boy who will come forward with the greatest promise; but,
at a certain point, although goodwill is not lacking, the growth seems
to be arrested. The biologist will explain this as due to the physical
character of the brain. The Buddhist affirms, that when that human soul
last came from the oblivion which closes the Devachanic state, it chose
unconsciously, but by natural affinity, out of all the possible
conditions and circumstances of mortal life, that embryonic human body,
for which its spiritual condition rendered it fit.
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