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[Illustration: coverpage]




THOUGHTS ON

LIFE AND RELIGION




  THOUGHTS ON
  LIFE AND RELIGION

  An Aftermath from the Writings of

  THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

  PROFESSOR MAX MUeLLER

  BY HIS WIFE

  THIRD IMPRESSION

  London

  ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND
  COMPANY LTD.

  1907

Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty




PREFACE


This book has been prepared in accordance with a wish expressed by
many known and unknown admirers of my husband's writings, who desire
to possess in a portable form the passages that have specially
appealed to them in his different works, and in the _Life and
Letters_.

I have taken this opportunity of adding extracts from private
letters, and from the writings he left unfinished, which would not
otherwise have become known to any but his own family or a few
intimate friends.

Those who have read the _Life and Letters_, do not need to be told
that Max Mueller lived from his earliest years in the firm conviction
that all is wisely ordered in this life, and 'all for our real good,
though we do not always see it, and though we cannot venture to
fathom the wisdom guiding our steps through life.'

To others his unswerving trust and faith as shown in these extracts
may be a revelation, for he seldom talked on such subjects. This
trust and faith gave him strength through the bitter struggles of
his early life, taught him resignation during the years when the
dearest wish of his heart seemed unattainable, supported him later
when those he tenderly loved were snatched from him by death, and
upheld him in his last long and depressing illness.

My earnest desire is that this little book may prove a help and
comfort to many exposed to like trials, and strengthen those whose
path now stretches before them as a sunny avenue, to meet the
sorrows that almost surely await them as life advances.

  GEORGINA MAX MUeLLER.

  _June 11, 1905_.




CONTENTS


                             PAGE

  The Art of Life,              1

  The Beautiful,                4

  The Bible,                    6

  Children,                    12

  Christ, the Logos,           13

  Christianity,                21

  Death,                       34

  The Deity,                   44

  The Divine,                  57

  Doubts,                      60

  Evolution of Religion,       66

  Faith,                       70

  The Fatherhood of God,       73

  Future Life,                 74

  The Infinite,                87

  Knowledge,                   96

  Language,                    99

  Life,                       103

  Love,                       121

  Mankind,                    129

  Mind or Thought,            132

  Miracles,                   135

  Music,                      138

  Nature,                     139

  Obscurity,                  142

  Old Age,                    143

  Religion and Religions,     145

  Revelation,                 184

  The Rig-Veda,               189

  Science,                    190

  The Self,                   192

  Sorrow and Suffering,       198

  The Soul,                   208

  Theosophy,                  215

  Truth,                      217

  The Will of God,            222

  Wonder,                     226

  Words,                      228

  Work,                       230

  The World,                  233




THE ART OF LIFE


To learn to understand one another is the great art of life, and to
'agree to differ' is the best lesson of the comparative science of
religion.

  _Silesian Horseherd._


There is a higher kind of music which we all have to learn, if our
life is to be harmonious, beautiful, and useful. There are certain
intervals between the young and the old which must be there, which
are meant to be there, without which life would be monotonous; but
out of these intervals and varieties the true art of life knows
how to build up perfect harmonies.... Even great sorrow may be a
blessing, by drawing some of our affections away from this life to
a better life... of which, it is true, we know nothing, but from
which, when we see the wisdom and love that underlie this life, we
may hope everything. We are meant to hope and to trust, and that is
often much harder than to see and to know.... The greatest of all
arts is the art of life, and the best of all music the harmony of
spirits. There are many little rules to be learnt for giving harmony
and melody to our life, but the thorough bass must be--love.

  _Life._


One thing is necessary above all things in order to live
peaceably with people, that is, in Latin, _Humanitas_, German,
_Menschlichkeit_. It is difficult to describe, but it is to claim
as little as possible from others, neither an obliging temper
nor gratitude, and yet to do all one can to please others, yet
without expecting them always to find it out. As men are made up
of contradictions they are the more grateful and friendly the less
they see that we expect gratitude and friendliness. Even the least
cultivated people have their good points, and it is not only far
better but far more interesting if one takes trouble to find out
the best side and motives of people, rather than the worst and most
selfish.... Life is an art, and more difficult than Sanscrit or
anything else.

  _Life._


We become chiefly what we are more through others than through
ourselves, and happy is the man whose path in life leads him only by
good men and brings him together with good men. How often we forget
in judging others the influences under which they have grown up. How
can one expect a child to be truthful when he sees how servants, yes
often parents, practise deceit. How many children hear from those
to whom they look up, expressions, principles, and prudent rules
of life, which consciously or unconsciously exercise an influence
on the young life of the child. Yet with how little of loving
introspection we pass our judgments.

  _MS._


If you want to be at peace with yourself, do not mind being at war
with the world.

  _MS._




THE BEAUTIFUL


Is the Beautiful without us, or is it not rather within us? What we
call sweet and bitter is our own sweetness, our own bitterness, for
nothing can be sweet or bitter without us. Is it not the same with
the Beautiful? The world is like a rich mine, full of precious ore,
but each man has to assay the ore for himself, before he knows what
is gold and what is not. What, then, is the touchstone by which we
assay the Beautiful? We have a touchstone for discovering the good.
Whatever is unselfish is good. But--though nothing can be beautiful,
except what is in some sense or other good, not everything that is
good is also beautiful. What, then, is that something which, added
to the good, makes it beautiful? It is a great mystery. It is so to
us as it was to Plato. We must have gazed on the Beautiful in the
dreams of childhood, or, it may be, in a former life, and now we
look for it everywhere, but we can never find it,--never at least in
all its brightness and fulness again, never as we remember it once
as the vision of a half-forgotten dream. Nor do we all remember the
same ideal--some poor creatures remember none at all.... The ideal,
therefore, of what is beautiful is within us, that is all we know;
how it came there we shall never know. It is certainly not of this
life, else we could define it; but it underlies this life, else we
could not feel it. Sometimes it meets us like a smile of Nature,
sometimes like a glance of God; and if anything proves that there is
a great past, and a great future, a Beyond, a higher world, a hidden
life, it is our faith in the Beautiful.

  _Chips._




THE BIBLE


The fault is ours, not theirs, if we wilfully misinterpret the
language of ancient prophets, if we persist in understanding their
words in their outward and material aspect only, and forget that
before language had sanctioned a distinction between the concrete
and the abstract, between the purely spiritual as opposed to the
coarsely material, the intention of the speakers comprehended both
the concrete and the abstract, both the material and the spiritual,
in a manner which has become quite strange to us, though it lives on
in the language of every true poet.

  _Science of Religion._


Canonical books give the reflected image only of the real doctrines
of the founder of a new religion; an image always blurred and
distorted by the medium through which it had to pass.

  _Science of Religion._


The Old Testament stands on a higher ethical stage than other sacred
books,--it certainly does not lose by a comparison with them. I
always said so, but people would not believe it. Still, anything to
show the truly historical and human character of the Old Testament
would be extremely useful in any sense, and would in nowise injure
the high character which it possesses.

  _Life._


If we have once learnt to be charitable and reasonable in the
interpretation of the sacred books of other religions, we shall more
easily learn to be charitable and reasonable in the interpretation
of our own. We shall no longer try to force a literal sense on words
which, if interpreted literally, must lose their true and original
purport; we shall no longer interpret the Law and the Prophets as if
they had been written in the English of our own century, but read
them in a truly historical spirit, prepared for many difficulties,
undiscouraged by many contradictions, which, so far from disproving
the authenticity, become to the historian of ancient language and
ancient thought the strongest confirmatory evidence of the age, the
genuineness, and the real truth of ancient sacred books. Let us but
treat our own sacred books with neither more nor less mercy than
the sacred books of any other nations, and they will soon regain
that position and influence which they once possessed, but which the
artificial and unhistorical theories of the last three centuries
have wellnigh destroyed.

  _Science of Religion._


By the students of the science of religion the Old Testament can
only be looked upon as a strictly historical book by the side
of other historical books. It can claim no privilege before the
tribunal of history, nay, to claim such a privilege would be to
really deprive it of the high position which it justly holds
among the most valuable monuments of the distant past. But the
authorship of the single books which form the Old Testament, and
more particularly the dates at which they were reduced to writing,
form the subject of keen controversy, not among critics hostile to
religion, but among theologians who treat these questions in the
most independent, but at the same time the most candid and judicial,
spirit. By this treatment many difficulties, which in former times
disturbed the minds of thoughtful theologians, have been removed,
and the Old Testament has resumed its rightful place among the most
valuable monuments of antiquity.... But this was possible on one
condition only, namely, that the Old Testament should be treated
simply as an historical book, willing to submit to all the tests of
historical criticism to which other historical books have submitted.

  _Gifford Lectures, II._


What the student of the history of the continuous growth of religion
looks for in vain in the books of the Old Testament, are the
successive stages in the development of religious concepts. He does
not know which books he may consider as more ancient or more modern
than other books. He asks in vain how much of the religious ideas
reflected in certain of these books may be due to ancient tradition,
how much to the mind of the latest writer. In Exodus iii. God is
revealed to Moses, not only as the supreme, but as the only God.
But we are now told by competent scholars that Exodus