CHAPTER XI Summary and conclusion-East and West-The THE Connection between religion and government may be well observed in one of our great Eastern possessions. England holds and administers India; but, all politics apart, a great mistake has been made in endeavouring to rule an Eastern possession in accordance with Western and so-called "Liberal " principles. The Asiatic differs from the European in almost everything; but there are few more striking differences than the respective views of the two continents on government. Japan has to some extent Europeanised herself; but it must not be inferred from this that the Japanese are satisfied with European methods of government, or that Indians would likewise be satisfied with them. It will not be denied that English thinkers have influenced European forms of government to a very great extent. It is to Locke, for instance, rather than to Voltaire and Rousseau that we must really ascribe the French Revolu But tion; for the two French writers were profoundly influenced by the English one. the democratic principles advocated by English thinkers, while admirably adapted to the slow, careful English temperament, resulted in scenes of extraordinary horror and butchery when carried out to their logical conclusions by the more ardent and impetuous Frenchmen. Similarly, the modern Englishman, having been brought up under a constitutional government, and being accustomed to elect members to represent his interests in a House of Commons, thoughtlessly believes that this is the ideal system, and cannot conceive that millions of people would prefer to be ruled by an autocrat if they had their own way in certain other directions. "Gouverner," says a witty French writer, Henri Maret, "c'est embêter le monde" (to govern is simply to annoy everybody). In other words, Western methods of government inevitably tend to interference in the domestic concerns of the governed; the government becomes a system of petty annoyance. The Curfew edict can be more than matched in the England of our own day with the laws which prohibit children from entering a public-house, which forbid the selling of tobacco to boys under sixteen, which call upon parents to send their children to school, which examine our houses to make sure that they are sanitary, and which, amidst hundreds of other items, call for the registration of births, marriages and deaths. Now, to an Indian, all this sort of fussy legislation is anathema. The Oriental cares nothing for his neighbour, and it is simply impossible to explain to him the Christian law that he shall love his neighbour as himself. He cannot understand why this should be so, and with some reason. In the case of a common enemy, such as a tiger impelled by hunger to approach the nearest village, he will willingly agree to join his neighbours for the purpose of defence. He will likewise join them for purposes of attack, if it be to his advantage to do so. Here, however, his relationship with his neighbour comes to an end. Every man is master in his own house. If he thinks it necessary to send his children to school he will do so; if not, he will keep them at home. But he cannot understand that, in Western countries, thousands of men whom he would never see should, by the simple process of voting, which also puzzles him, send men to a place called a House of Commons, there to decide on matters intimately connected with his own family, such as the schooling of his children and his own hours of labour. In all matters of this sort, indeed, the Oriental is actuated by the most aristocratic individualism it is possible to conceive. He is willing to tolerate any form of government but an interfering one, i.e., a "reforming" government. How is this seen in his religion? After all, the view set forth by Nietzsche must never be lost sight of religions are invented for the purpose of protecting and perpetuating a certain type of man. Mohammedanism was obviously invented for the benefit of the virile; Christianity for the benefit of the weak. But it may be just possible that, as the Greeks were forced to restrain their exuberance by the most tragic drama in all literature, so may the Indians have been compelled to curb their military ardour by the invention of a nihilistic religion. Obviously the primitive Aryans must have been one of the greatest races of conquerors the world has ever known, else how could they have travelled thousands of miles and subjected every nation they met with, finally establishing on a firm foundation a system of government and religion which has endured for thousands of years? The difference between the two great nihi listic religions, Buddhism and Christianity, has already been touched upon, but it deserves to be reiterated. The European critic may say that Christianity has succeeded in brightening the lives of millions of men and women and helping them in their struggle through the world, i.e., the doctrines of the Christian faith have secured the preservation of a certain type of man. The modern biologist, however, who considers the matter from a philosophical point of view, will be inclined to ask, Was this type worth preserving, more especially at the cost of the restrictive penalties imposed on higher minds by the logical outcome of Christianity? What is there to compensate for the rise of a slave caste in Europe, with the resultant elevation of all the lower elements above the higher, or for the sentimental frame of mind engendered to such an appalling extent, especially in the northern countries, by "love," which is purely a Christian invention? The rise of the slaves under Christianity, to which was due, even more than to the influx of the barbarians, the fall of the Roman Empire, is surely hardly atoned for by the production of democratic upstarts, temperance societies, and foreign missionaries. Still, this religion of ours came from the East and is one of the |