Book Title: Indian Antiquary Vol 59
Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications
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SEPTEMBER, 1930 ]
THE MYSTERY AND MENTAL ATMOSPHERE
The answer appears to be that al-Khidr especially, and besides him Ilyas, St. George, and any other hero worshipped as a mysterious patron, represents the Mystery to the popular mind, whether illiterate or being literate is illogical. The Mystery is a term that you will, at once, quite properly say requires definition, and in this connection explanation. An attempt will now be made to give both. From all time and all the world over, mankind in every phase of culture from the savage to the most highly civilised--and we must remember that the savage without culture has not yet been found-has observed the phenomena about him and has been puzzled by them. He observes occurrences and thinks over them to find an explanation of them. It matters nothing who he is or what his mental equipment may be : sooner or later he has always found himself out of his depth. He reaches a point where the most elaborate empirical argument ceases to explain and he is forced to conjecture-he is obliged to assume a condition he cannot prove to himself or to others.
Philosophy starts by arguing on facts within human experience and runs on till it reaches a point which is beyond experience and becomes transcendental, 1.6., it passes beyond understanding. Once the point between the experienced and the transcendental is assumed to have been crossed over, by an accepted explanation of some nature or other, the argument can be continued on a new assumed basis. But the point for the present purpose is that there is left here a gap, which is bridged over, not by argument, but by a form of assumption familiar to us all as revelation--the magic of the unlettered and the illogical : light has been thrown on the subject by supernatural means. This assumption, however--revelation, magic, or whatever it may be called-if accepted, solves the difficulty, and to the popular human mind it is revealed truth, though beyond intelligence. It has solved the mystery through a superhuman agency which is the Mystery itself-a personification which thinkers of all time have endeavoured to understand and explain. The mind of the ordinary human being of the kind that creates folklore accepts that form of the Mystery, which the leaders he follows tell him is right, and we must realise that the people we are considering are not philosophers, not highly trained dialecticians, but the everyday peasant or city worker—the man in the street-the human being apt to follow leaders and teachers.
Once the Mystery is sensed as a personage it becomes the master. It is believed to be and do everything, and is the general bogey, or object of terror, and at the same time the general helper of mankind in any manner or direction required. This accounts for the incompatible views we find to exist as to al-Khidr's nature and capacities, and for that incom. patibility of beliefs relating to any popular saint or holy personage that can be mentioned, whether Eastern or Western, and also for the family likeness of the tales told about the whole general saintly body all the world over. They are all embodied representatives of the Mys. tory. This family likeness in beliefs and tales is due to that limitation of the human mind, which is well expressed in Dr. Gaster's dictum already quoted : "I do not believe in the fecundity of the human imagination."
As mankind in the lump is willing to follow leaders and teachers, such have never any. where been wanting, and they have not by any means been always charlatans : rather have they been firm believers in themselves and in the special theory of the Mystery, which each has more than assiduously taught. In this way have arisen all the infinite varieties of religions and sects or schools of belief, which indeed seem to have come to life in consequence of what may be called an instinctive, though inarticulate, obedience to an apparently natural law of the human mind--the desire to lean on some one else as the authority, to follow blindly a leader who does the thinking for the public.
But be this as it may, the real question for us just now is the investigation of the process by which the results of the teaching of the various leaders have been achieved, and it may
