Studies in Literature and History
supported by the religious enthusiasm of a great number of its
subjects. I take the separation of the State from religion to be a
principle that is quite modern in Europe; and outside our Indian
empire it is unknown in Asia. Everywhere else the ruler is the head of
some dominant church or creed. On the other hand our neutral attitude
enables us to arbitrate and keep the peace between the two formidable
rivals, Islam and Hinduism, which in a large measure balance and
restrain each other. And it is easier to govern a great empire full of
diverse castes and creeds when you only demand from them obedience to
the civil law, than when the Government takes one side on religious
questions. Nevertheless, though in India we proclaim and practise
religious neutrality, we must always remember that India is, of all
great countries in the world, that in which religious beliefs and
antagonisms affect the administration most profoundly, and subdivide
the population with the greatest complexity. For the empire contains a
wonderful variety of races and tribes, especially on its frontiers; it
has the fierce Afghan tribes under our protectorate on the north-west,
a cluster of utterly barbarous tribes in the north-east, and in the
Far East beyond Burmah we have undertaken the control of a border
tract, full of petty rival chiefships, where the language, manners and
origins are related to the neighbouring population of China.
In China we have the true type of Asiatic empire, by far the oldest in
the world, a sovereignty that, with various changes of dynasty, has
governed the Far East of Asia from time almost immemorial; an immense
conglomeration of different races under the rulership of a dynasty
that is foreign to the great majority of its subjects. Here again I
must remark on the absence of territorial or national designations.
The word China, as designating this empire, is not used by the people
themselves; the official name means, I believe, the Great Pure
Kingdom; and the emperor himself is known by various titles signifying
august, lofty, or sacred. I suppose that almost the whole population
belongs to the great Mongolian or Tartar family of mankind; but the
subdivisions of different tribes, races, and languages must be
numerous, as might be expected in such a vastly extended empire, and
the tribesmen are all known by their tribal names. In regard to
Religion the situation is peculiar, it is without parallel elsewhere
in Asia; for three great systems exist in China separately and
independently, each of them working in peace side by side with the
others: the religion founded by Confucius, which is a great system of
morals; Buddhism, which is a Church with a splendid ritual,
priesthood, and monastic orders; and Taoism, which is a kind of
naturalistic religion, the worship of stars, natural forces, spirits,
deified heroes and local gods. It is said to be a common thing for one
person to belong to all three religions, and the State superintends
them all impartially. One very remarkable and peculiar fact, which I
give on excellent authority, is that in China religious denominations
are never used to denote sections of the people, except by the
Mohammedans, who are not numerous and form a class apart. But any
attempt to describe the religion of China would lead me far beyond the
scope of this address. My present point is only to lay stress on the
enormous political importance, in China as elsewhere in Asia, of the
religious idea. For whereas powerful religious movements, affecting
the destinies of kingdoms and causing great wars, have ceased in
Western and Central Europe, in Asia all governments have constantly to
apprehend some fresh outburst of religious enthusiasm, the appearance
of some prophet or new spiritual teacher, who gathers a following,
like the Mahdi in the Soudan, and attacks the ruling power. The
Taeping rebellion, which devastated China some forty years ago, is a
case in point; it was begun by a fanatic leader who denounced the
established religions, and it soon became a dangerous revolt against
the Imperial dynasty. And the outbreak against the foreigners in China
last year is understood to have originated in religious fanaticism.
These events go to illustrate the enormous influence on politics which
Religion, whether you call it enthusiasm or superstition, exercises
everywhere in Asia.
But of all empires in Asia, the Russian empire is the greatest and the
most powerful. I have only space to say here that it is of the same
type with the others; it is a vast dominion over an infinite variety
of races, tribes, and creeds; it is a government which has come in by
foreign conquest; a Christian Power which has among its subjects a
great number of Mohammedans. It differs from our Indian empire in this
respect, that the Russian conquests were made gradually by land,
across Central Asia, or by slow immigration and extension, as in
Siberia, whereas the English reached India by a long sea-journey. So
that in the Asiatic empire of Russia the separation of race between
the rulers and their subjects is not so sharply defined as between
England and India. Nevertheless the problems that confront Russia in
Asia are similar in kind to those which face us in India; she has to
reconcile to her permanent dominion a miscellany of alien peoples,
whom it is almost impossible to fuse and consolidate into anything
like a nationality.
I have now endeavoured, very imperfectly, to show how Race and
Religion still powerfully affect society, and trouble politics,
throughout a great part of the world. How far they influence and
interact upon each other is a difficult problem; but one may say that
some religions seem to accord with the peculiar temperament and
intellectual disposition of certain races; that, for instance, the
active propagating spirit of Islam flourishes in Western Asia, while
in Eastern Asia a quiet and contemplative faith, with little
missionary impulse, no strong desire to make converts, has always
prevailed. But in the East everywhere Race and Religion still unite
and isolate the populations in groups--they are the great dividing and
disturbing forces that prevent or delay the consolidation of settled
nationalities; and so far as our experience goes, a fixed nationality
of the Western type is the most solid and permanent form of political
government and social aggregation. An empire is a different and looser
mode of binding people together, yet at certain stages of civilisation
and the world's progress it is a necessity; and an empire well
administered is the best available instrument for promoting
civilisation and good order among backward races. So managed it may
last long; and its dominion may be practically permanent, for commerce
and industry, literature and science, rapid and easy communication by
land and sea, spread far more quickly, and connect distant countries
far more closely, in modern times than in the ancient world. Yet there
is always an element of unrest and insecurity underlying the position
of imperial rulership over different and often discordant groups of
subjects; and this has been one main cause of the immemorial weakness
of Asiatic empires, and of the indifference of the people to a change
of masters, because no single dynasty represented the whole people. It
is just this weakness of the native rulers that has enabled the
European to make his conquests in Asia; and we have carefully to
remember that although our governments are superior in skill and
strength, we have inherited the old difficulties. For it is my belief
that in many parts of the world, particularly in Asia, the strength of
the racial and religious sentiments is rather increasing than
diminishing. This is indeed the view--the fact, if I am right--that I
especially desire to press home, because it is of the highest
importance at the present time, when all the European nations, and
England among the foremost, are extending their dominion over peoples
of races and creeds different from their own. Our governments are now
no longer confined to the continent which we inhabit; we are acquiring
immense possessions in Asia and Africa; we can survey the whole earth
with its confusion of tongues; its multitude of beliefs and customs,
its infinitely miscellaneous populations. We must recognise the
variety of the human species; we must acknowledge that we cannot
impose a uniform type of civilisation, just as we admit that a uniform
faith is beyond mere human efforts to impose, and that to attempt it
would be politically disastrous. This is the conclusion upon which I
venture to lay stress, because some such warning seems to me neither
untimely nor unimportant.
For there is still a dangerous tendency among the enterprising
commercial nations of the West to assume that the importation into
Asia of economical improvements, public instruction, regular
administration, and religious neutrality will conquer antipathies,
overcome irrational prejudices, and reconcile old-world folk to an
alien civilisation. Undoubtedly a foreign government that rules
wisely, justly, and very cautiously, acquires a strong hold on its
subjects, and may stand, like the Roman empire, for centuries. But
this can only be achieved by recognising, instead of ignoring, certain
ineffaceable characteristics in the origins and history of the people,
for whom the tradition and sentiment of race is often their bond of
union and the base of their society, as their religion is the
embodiment of their spiritual instincts and imaginations.
FOOTNOTES:
[56] Address delivered as President of the Social and Political
Education League, May 5, 1902.--_Fortnightly Review_, December 1902.
[57] _Studies in History and Jurisprudence_, vol. I., chap. i.
THE STATE IN ITS RELATION TO EASTERN AND WESTERN RELIGIONS
In considering the subject of my address,[58] I have been confronted
by this difficulty--that in the sections which regulate the order of
our proceedings, we have a list of papers that range over all the
principal religions, ancient and modern, that have existed and still
exist in the world. They are to be treated and discussed by experts
whose scholarship, particular studies, and close research entitle them
all to address you authoritatively. I have no such special
qualifications; and in any case it would be most presumptuous in me to
trespass upon their ground. All that I can venture to do, therefore,
in the remarks which I propose to address to you to-day, is to attempt
a brief general survey of the history of religions from a standpoint
which may possibly not fall within the scope of these separate papers.
The four great religions now prevailing in the world, which are
historical in the sense that they have been long known to history, I
take to be--Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Having regard
to their origin and derivation, to their history and character, I may
be permitted, for my present purpose only, to class the two former as
the Religions of the West, and the two latter as the Religions of the
East. These are the faiths which still maintain a mighty influence
over the minds of mankind. And my object is to compare the political
relations, the attitude, maintained toward them, from time to time, by
the States and rulers of the people over which these religions have
established their spiritual dominion. The religion of the Jews is not
included, though its influence has been incalculable, because it has
been caught up, so to speak, into Christianity and Islam, and cannot
therefore be counted among those which have made a partition of the
religious world. For this reason, perhaps, it has retained to this day
its ancient denomination, derived from the tribe or country of its
origin; whereas the others are named from a Faith or a Founder. The