Has, then, a force, or a teaching that is capable of excess, no use?

If you look back at the histories of peoples, at the histories of their great wars, their movements, their enthusiasms, you will find that on one side or another, usually on both, religion has been invoked to their aid. For one side or for both the enthusiasm has been declared to be a religious enthusiasm, the war a religious war, the awakening of thought a religious awakening. The gods fought for the Greeks before Troy as the saints did for the Spaniards against the Huns, as the Boers expected the Almighty to fight in South Africa to-day. The intellectual revolt of the Teuton against the mental leading-strings of the Latins became a conflict of religion, as did the political conflict of the Puritans against the Stuart Kings. It has been religion always, if possible, that has been called on to lend strength and enthusiasm to the fighters to attempt forlorn hopes, to carry out far-reaching reforms, to dare everything for the end.

There is one great exception.

In the conflict that broke out in France at the end of the last century, that storm which swept before it the breakwaters of a world and changed mediÆval Europe into that of to-day, religion was not the motive power. Those six hundred men of Marseilles "who knew how to die" were sustained by no religious belief. Those armies which affronted the world in arms had no celestial champions in their ranks. Those iconoclasts, who broke down the barriers that made the good things of the world a forbidden city to all but a caste, had no religious doctrine to work by.

Indeed, it may be said that it was quite the reverse, that the war of the Revolution was against religion; but I doubt if that is quite the truth. That the war was against the priests is in great measure true, but it was because of their support to the nobles, because of their connection with worldly abuses, because of their irreligion, that they were attacked. Religion, too, suffered, it is true, but only incidentally and for a time. And anyhow, you cannot get force out of a negation. But however this may be, the point as far as I am now concerned is not material; for all I want here to assert is that the enthusiasm which acted as a breath of life to the half-dead millions of France was not a religious enthusiasm. It never even assumed at any time a religious basis. It was not an enthusiasm of God, but of Humanity, and the war cry was "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." It was a revolt of the bond against the gaoler, of the spoiled against the ravishers; it was the assertion of the absolute equality and liberty of man.

Looking back at that turmoil now from the security of a hundred years it is easy to scorn these enthusiasts. We can point to their excesses, to the horrible crimes that were committed, and ask where was Liberty then; to their wars, and ask in vain for the Fraternity; to their proscription of whole classes made in the name of Equality. The excesses are so black, so prominent, that it is even possible sometimes to forget the great vitalising and regenerating effect of that enthusiasm.

It is easy, too, now that all is past, to criticise the very war cry itself. Liberty, we say! Yes, liberty is good—in moderation and according to circumstances. All liberty is not good. Children must be under government, they cannot be quite free. They have to be directed in the right way. And peoples, too, and classes who have fallen behind in the race, who are unable to live up to the higher standards of greater nations, they cannot be free. Then the citizen of a great nation must in many matters resign his liberty for better things. Liberty is good, in moderation, and so are Equality and Fraternity, but they are not absolute truths. To cry them aloud, as did the Revolutionists of France, to insist upon them in season and out of season, is to fall into an error almost as great as their opponents'. We have little doubt now that in every well-ordered state there must be inequality, submission to masters as well as freedom, and that there are many people it is quite undesirable to fraternise with. Truth lies in the mean.

And yet consider, does truth always lie in the mean? There were the peasants of France ground into the very earth, denied any sort of equality with the nobles, any sort of liberty at all, hopelessly unable to fraternise with anyone. To breathe into them the breath of life, to rouse them from their deadly lethargy to a furious enthusiasm, to fill their hearts so full that they would go forward and never cease till they had won, that was the eminent necessity. The difficulties were so immense, the arms of the people so weak, the chains so rivetted into their souls that only from a furious and uncontrollable impulse could any help be obtained. If the philosopher had gone to these dry bones of men, thrashing the ponds all night to prevent the frogs annoying their seigneur by croaking, sowing for others to reap, raising up sons to be slaves, and daughters to be worse than slaves—if he had gone to them and said, "My friends, you are ground down too much; you want a little more freedom—not too much, but some; you require more equality—not complete, for the perfect state requires certain inequalities, but more than you have; you require also a modicum of fraternity," what would he have effected? That level-headed philosopher would be saying the truth doubtless, and Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, as the Revolutionists understood it, were impossibilities, therefore untruths; but what would he have effected? Would his "truth" have freed the slaves, have burst their chains; have restored sunlight to a continent, as the exaggeration did? Never imagine it. It may be that in the mean lies truth, but in exaggeration lies motive power. It was in the glorious dreams, the beautiful imaginings, the surgings of the heart that arose from that war cry LibertÉ, EgalitÉ, FraternitÉ, that the strength lay. There is no strength in the mean. It is the enthusiasts that make the world move. If they have been guilty of half the misery, they have achieved half the joy of the world. And therefore consider again, before you brand beliefs and the teachings and enthusiasms as untruths, because they are exaggerations, because they are unworkable as they stand. What is Truth and Untruth? Is not truth also to be judged by its results? May not what is an untruth now have been a living truth then? Have we reduced truth to measure? If, therefore, this which is an exaggeration now was then a necessary revivifying truth may there not be others like it? Consider the conditions of the world into which the Buddha preached first the teaching of peace, of purity, of calm, of holiness. It was a world of unrest, of fierce striving, of savage passions, expressed to their full. It was a world wherein these were virtues worshipped to exaggeration. It was a world without balance, and to redress this balance there came the Buddha with his teaching of the rejection of all the glories of the world, the teaching of the cult of the soul, the aspiration after peace, and beauty, and rest.

As was the world to whom the Buddha preached so was the world to whom the Christ preached six hundred years later. Their codes of conduct were the same. Against violence they taught resignation, against the search for glory they taught renunciation; they opposed pride with meekness, struggle with calm, success in this world by happiness in the next. They came to redress the balance of the world; they came to make men hope. And therefore it is impossible to take their codes by themselves and consider them, to reject them because they do not express the exact truth. What is to be considered is not that code alone, but the purpose it came to fulfil. The codes of Buddha and of Christ are exaggerations, that is true; they cannot be lived up to in their entirety, that is also true. Taken alone they are impossible; that is true. Are they then untrue, useless, valueless guides to conduct?

Not quite so. For man is so built that he requires an exaggeration. If you would persuade him to go with you a mile you must urge him to come two; if you would have him acquire a reasonable freedom you must create in him an enthusiasm for unreasonable freedom; if you would have him moderate his passions he must be adjured to wholly suppress them.

And therefore, it may be, do these codes of Buddha and Christ live. Not because they are absolutely true, not because they furnish an ideal mode of life, not in order to be fully accepted, but because they are exaggerations that balance exaggerations; and out of the mean has come what is worth having; because they have an effect which the exact truth would not have in the masses of men.

They have been truth, because their results were true.

But the world is growing older, it is learning many things. Never again can we hear that cry of LibertÉ, EgalitÉ, FraternitÉ, the enthusiasms of a nation for its ideals. These ideals were true then, they were true because their work was true. But their work is done; men's eyes are open now, we do not require such exaggerations to move us to our work. They were in themselves but half truths. It required the violent assertions of inequality, of slavery, to make up a whole truth. With one has died the necessity for the other.

And so it may be with the codes of Buddhism and Christianity. They were true in their day, because they had their work to do. To have any effect at all they had to be enormous exaggerations; to earn any respect or attention they had to be proclaimed as perfect, as divine. But now, with the dying of the old brutalities, with the growth of civilisation, of humanity, and culture, the old savage exaggerations are dying out. The world is more refined, more effeminate, more clear-sighted. It says to itself, "These codes, if divine and perfect, must be capable of being implicitly obeyed; but they cannot be obeyed, and therefore they are not divine."

And in the increased civilisation we feel less the need of a teaching of gentleness; our nature is no longer too coarse; it may be it is going the other way, that the softening process is going too far, and that our need is a new savagery. And above all we hate exaggeration. To minds capable of thought, of reason, and of culture, exaggeration on one side is no excuse for exaggeration on the other. We are changing from the older men who required enthusiasms to drive them and violent exaggerations to cause them to move. We like exactitude.

These codes were made for rougher days than ours. They were true then. They are not true now—not true, at least, to the more thoughtful. But that they were true once, that the world owes to them its rescue from the exaggeration of the passions, we must never forget. They were truths while opposed. When opposed no longer they become false and fall. An exaggeration can only be useful as long as it is not perceived to be so. Set up two beams against each other, they are savagery and the purist codes. While one stands so does the other, and they make an equilibrium. But take away one and straightway the other must fall too. One cannot stand alone.