Paris Before the Deluge Page 4

  They would have been able to rest on their laurels, which were adequate for men of war, but their active and restless spirit could not rest in peace. No longer battling externally they were gripped by the need to argue with one another. They did so with all the vivacity of their enthusiasm, which was sometimes devoted to the sciences, and sometimes to religious philosophy, which is exactly what gives the greatest purchase to acrimony and dissent.

  It must also be admitted that the worship of Uranus and company was already old and that its origin did not date from the times of high civilization—perhaps reasons strong enough to render it suspect to the generous and free thinkers who eventually took it into their heads to weigh everything in the balance of their logic, without listening to the arguments of the believers who thought it good to worship Uranus because he was the god of their ancestors, without wondering whether he was really the god of the world.

  At any rate, the ancient theogony—which is to say, pantheism—was fiercely attacked in those days, and, if it did not crumble away entirely, it could not prevent the triumph of a rival and powerful deity: the divinity of the monotheists, the divinity of progressives and scholars—in sum, the divinity of Brahma.

  Between polytheism and monotheism these was an immense difference. The former was the religion of materialists, the second the religion of spiritualists.

  The old believers were either simple people who made gods of men who were reputed to have done good, or flatterers and sots who raised altars to the powerful individuals who governed them.

  If they placed a god on high, nothing said so.

  It was precisely this God that the new believers wanted to reveal, leaving to human beings that which was only human, and seeking beyond for the Creator of the world.

  Brahma was the name they gave to that Supreme Being, whom they called unique, eternal, omnipotent, perfect, existing by Himself, containing everything within Himself, the Creator and moderator of all things.

  Thus far, everything went well and could be agreed upon by all, but humans never stop in time. If reason and conviction give them a good idea, it is very rare that their innate imperfection—which is to say their prejudice, their pride, their love of the marvelous and the incomprehensible, and their immoderate desire for pedantry—does not push them beyond the good and the true.

  Brahma was not only the God of all, invisible and incomprehensible; they wanted to characterize Him, to give Him attributes, to specialize His being, His constitution, His essence, His various transformations and His mystic trinity; they wanted to reveal how He had created humans, His ministers, His court, how He reigned, how He administered the heavens and the earth. They made Him a father, a master, a king—in sum, they spoiled the idea of God; they created dreams, but those dreams were very scholarly, full of grandiose, sentimental and, above all, incomprehensible hallucinations.

  But a religious system, no more than any other political and social system, cannot be born without subsequently exciting around it an upsurge of different opinions. The minds of all thinkers awaken then, possessing some with the desire to arrive at the truth by discussing the new system seriously and conscientiously, and others with the passion of contradiction, and in yet others with sentiments perhaps narrower still.

  Once the impetus was given to theological discussion among the Atlanteans, it did not stop at the new religion of Brahma. Scarcely was it established than it was obliged to submit to the reproaches of a dogma that claimed to be more perfect and which we would, in fact, regard as such, because it is singularly similar to our own, to the point of sometimes being confused with it.

  The dogma in question was that of Buddhism.

  In that epoch lived a pure young man of high intelligence, a friend of the good and the true, which he sought in peace and meditation in the bosom of a retreat for which he was not made, for he belonged to the military and royal caste, and in that capacity, should have been destined for the agitation of politics and war. His name was Sylax.

  Sylax was, above all, a philosopher and an ascetic. So far as he was concerned, Brahmanism had not yet forgotten enough of the religion of the old believers in Uranus. He even reproached it for worshipping the material that was forbidden to it. But the Buddha Sylax had a faith that he had scrupulously purified in retreat, and with inescapable logic he proved to his adversaries that God was as immaterial as a principle, without a beginning or an end, like a principle, and that although Brahma was all of that, the Brahmins had forgotten the immaterial principle and no longer saw anything but the forms and idols they adored.

  His own dogmas were based uniquely in spiritualism, rejecting any appearance of materialism with the most scrupulous care. As in Brahmanism, unfortunately, there was no shortage of mysticism in it: mysticism pushed as far as dreams of the uncomprehended and doubtless the incomprehensible.

  We shall not charge him with a crime on that basis, because the Buddha, like all men living voluntarily in retreat, given to absorbing meditations on the future life, annihilated in the profound and unfathomable mystery of the generating and moderating principle of the world, thought with his heart, his desires and his illusions, not with his mind and his reason.

  His morality was severe, even more so than the destination of the man that his strength of mind required. Having renounced all the pleasures of the world, he thought it good to make a virtue of absolute silence, the abnegation of society, the celibate monastic life of study and the contemplation of divine perfection.

  That life was hard, but minds were inclined to theological discussion and it began to be fashionable for scholars to live like that.

  [Author’s note: However little is known about the history of present-day Buddhism, it can easily be seen that although it was born later than the man of whom I speak, its dogmas and doctrine are nevertheless those of the Buddha Sylax, the dogmas and doctrine of Christianity, with a few variations. Even its liturgy and hierarchical organization have an extraordinary resemblance to those of Christianity, sometimes so perfect that one cannot doubt that one served as a model for the other.

  That resemblance goes so far as confusion on one very unusual point, which is none other than the narration of the death of Christ. That legend is recounted in its entirety in Obervations sur les Doctrines Samanéenes by Dr. Abel Rémusat,15 a scholarly Orientalist—as everyone knows—who found it in a very old Chinese book.

  Here it is:

  “The nations of the Far East say that 97 lis from China lie the borders of Si-Kiang. In that land there was once a virgin named Ma-li-a. She lived in the reign of Youen-Tchi, of the Han dynasty. A celestial God appeared to her, saying: The Lord of Heaven has chosen you to be his mother. After these words, she conceived and gave birth to a son. Full of joy and veneration, she wrapped him up and placed him in a crib. A company of celestial gods sang and rejoiced in the void. Forty days later, his mother presented him to the holy instructor and named him Ye-sou. He was not yet twelve when he went with his mother, who was going to make her devotions, to the temple, but on the way back they became separated. After searching for her son for three days, Ma-li-a found him again in the temple, sitting on a seat of honor conversing with old men and scholars about the works and doctrines of the Lord of Heaven. He was delighted to see his mother again, returned home with her, and lived with her as a respectful son. At the age of thirty he left his mother and his teacher and traveled the land of Yu-Te-a, instructing people as to what is good. The miracles he worked were very numerous. The principal families and those who occupied employment in the region were proud and excessively wicked, which led them to envy him because of the multitude of people who joined him; they therefore planned to have him killed.

  “Among the twelve disciples of Ye-Sou there was an avaricious man named Yu-Ta-ssé. In return for a sum of money, he guided a troop of men by night who captured Ye-sou, tied him up and dragged him before Ana-ssé in the courtyard of the house of Pi-la-to. There they took off his clothes, attached him to a stake and inflicted f
ive thousand four hundred blows on him, so that his entire body was torn to shreds. Nevertheless, he still maintained silence, and like a lamb, did not murmur. The cruel populace, taking a bonnet made of thorns, forced it down over his temples, threw a wretched red cloak over his shoulders, and prostrated themselves hypocritically before him as if he were a king. His persecutors then constructed a wooden machine, very large and heavy, resembling the character Ten (a cross) and obliged him to carry it himself. It was so heavy that he fell down several times on the way. Finally, his hands and feet were nailed to the wood; then, as he was thirsty, he was given a bitter and acidic beverage.

  “On the day of his death, Ye-sou was thirty-three years old.”

  If the author of the Atlantean religion, the Buddha Sylax, probably the forefather of present-day Buddhism, is little known, no one, by contract, is ignorant of the name of the creator of the Buddhism of our days, Siddhartha.

  Well, Siddhartha was an Indian prince who lived eleven hundred years before Jesus Christ according to come, only seven hundred years according to others.16

  I hasten to say, in order to be completely honest, that few people suppose the legend of Ye-Sou to be found among the primitive dogmas of Siddhartha, but that it was introduced at a later date—no one knows by whom or in what era.

  That supposition is probably true, but it is difficult to believe that a religion admitted by a considerable number of adherents—Buddhism counts about two hundred million—could be corrected and augmented surreptitiously, accepting important beliefs extraneous to the views of its author.]

  III. A Voyage Around the World

  The adepts of Buddhism multiplied in a prodigious manner in a short time in the heart of Atlantis, but Sylax took no pride in that. A zealous servant of conviction, he saw nothing but his God, heard no voice but His, and did his utmost to reveal them to the minds of all.

  That mission was fine and great, but it was also difficult, for the Buddha had to contend with a host of adversaries and the struggle was fierce. He sustained it energetically, and, it must be said, with a benevolence that might have won him more disciples than his arguments. But what does it matter? The success was colossal. Sylax was delighted; he thanked Heaven with all the simplicity of a generous man who has saved his brethren from a shipwreck.

  He could have rested on his triumph, to enjoy in peace the laurels with which his disciples covered him. He did not do that; his task was unfinished. So long as he could see an unbeliever, he did not think he had the right to sleep, and there were still many of them, even among his friends, and even among the admirers of his knowledge of his philanthropy.

  That was precisely where the difficulty lay, for there were men who were strong logicians, as learned as him and as benevolent as him, but deaf to any voice other than their reason, and hence not at all inclined to submit to the dogmatic beliefs of a religion, whether it called itself pantheism, Brahmanism or Buddhism, for they saw nothing therein but human hands, the will and the teaching of their peers, when they only wanted to obey the voice of a superior being, God himself.

  Among those men, the Buddha had an intimate friend, a childhood friend, a friend for whom he would have shed blood with devotion and pleasure, the savant philosopher Me-nu-tche.

  Me-nu-tche’s resistance was neither systematic nor ill-intentioned; it appeared to be based on a profound personal conviction, a conviction formed in childhood under the reasoning of his father.

  Me-nu-tche’s father was a distinguished philosopher in Atlantis. He had nourished his son on the belief in a God, a creative God, but he had informed him simultaneously that God was a father, a good father, and that it was sufficient to the recognition of a son to love and worship him in his own fashion, without worrying about rituals or fanatical beliefs inscribing a more-or-less ridiculous ceremony that diminished the God he wanted to worship.

  To convince such a man was, therefore, a very difficult enterprise. Sylax was learned, profound in all the sciences; he had studied the great book of nature seriously, turned the most arduous metaphysical questions over and over, but Me-nu-tche was also knowledgeable, and, although as young as his friend, he had similarly sounded all the depths of metaphysics.

  The Buddha was, however, not deterred. He was convinced that he had taken the right path, the road to Heaven, but he did not want to walk it alone, without his friend. He swore that he would bring him along it at his side.

  He was wrong to swear, for an event he had not foreseen threatened to take his friend away from him forever.

  The religious question was not the only order of the day in Atlantis at that time. The progressive civilization of that eminently savant people was continually searching the unknown. Politics, social economy, history, geography, astronomy—all the sciences, in sum, destined to add to human well-being or ornament human intelligence—were being seriously studied. Scientists were working ardently therein, and the government actively stimulated the zeal of the scientists.

  All those lofty questions, however, could not be elucidated from the fireside. A few bold scientists therefore formed the project of a voyage around the world. That project seduced the ardent soul of Me-nu-tche, who made his friend Sylax party to his resolution, pressing him enthusiastically to accompany him. Sylax had but one aim, however, which was to convert people to his religion. Nothing else mattered to him.

  The day of the departure arrived. Me-nu-tche said his farewells to his friend, and then embarked. His vessel had only moved a short distanced from the port when he perceived another ship emerge from the harbor. That ship carried numerous passengers, including the Buddha Sylax.

  Sylax had reflected; he could not bear the idea of being separated from his friend, whom he had not yet converted, perhaps forever. Heaven had suggested an idea to him that seduced the Buddha.

  Too ascetic to forget his mission, too good and generous to forget his friend on the road to perdition, Sylax had found a means of reconciling the duties of friendship with those of the apostle.

  He departed in Me-nu-tche’s wake, but he left in order to preach his dogmas and his morality: to preach them everywhere that his friend went, and to found religious establishments everywhere.

  To that effect also, he did not depart on his own; he had zealous disciples with him, of both sexes, in order to provide all the needs of his instruction and the institutions that he wanted to establish.

  There is no need to forewarn suspicious minds regarding the purity of these various missionaries; celibacy and chastity were, among the ancient Buddhists as among the new ones, a fundamental article of their religion. Very meritorious in anyone, those virtues were in addition a sacred bond for those who lived the monastic life, like Sylax and his apostles, and we have no more reason to suspect their vows than the vows of monks who live in the faith of other religions.

  Sylax and Me-nu-tche, although imbued with different opinions that kept them constantly on the terrain of discussion, were glad to be reunited for a voyage that promised to be long, and which was bound to be menaced by many perils.

  The seas of that epoch were doubtless well-known to Atlanteans who had traveled them often—the greater part of them at least—but they were numerous, much more numerous than today, and there were no men who had traveled them all.

  Those seas, moreover, along with lakes and rivers that were then of a breadth and depth of which we have no suspicion, made irruptions inland so frequently that they ate into them everywhere and established themselves everywhere, with a suddenness that drives populations and navigators to despair.

  Ships were very nearly the only means of transport for long-distance journeys, but the dangers that sprang up before them are easily understandable.

  The pilots guiding the vessels that carried Sylax and Me-nu-tche were fortunately among the best, so their voyage began amid the best possible auguries. So long as they were in known waters their skill was not found wanting, and they went through the most dangerous passes with an ease that won the admiration of ever
yone.

  Those mariners were guiding scientists, however, and those scientists had not given themselves the mission of studying what everyone knew. They wanted to launch forth into the unknown, to navigate the least well-known seas, to see people of whom little more was known than their names, and finally to establish certainty with regard to countries whose history and geography were entirely uncertain.

  The danger would commence here, but the anticipation of danger could not frighten the Atlantean scientists. Science has its fanatics just as religious belief does; it also has its martyrs.

  The first five months of the voyage were fortunate for everyone—for the mariners who had directed their vessels very skillfully, and for the scientists who had already been able to correct a few scientific errors and acquire some new truths—but the beginning of the sixth month was exceedingly menacing.

  Having left the little Atlantean port of Tehpuec, which faced the cost of Africa, the scholarly voyagers had headed for that coast. Their initial aim was to visit their various establishments in Libya, those that they had in the confines of Egypt, and from there to head for the more northerly countries of Europe, which were almost unknown to them, passing via their colonies in Greece, perhaps to advance thereafter into the very heart of Europe, where no one had any memory of ever having penetrated.

  The northern regions of Africa did not offer then, as they do today, seas of sand and deserts, but a liquid surface strewn with island and islets of various dimensions. It was that sea that the two Atlantean vessels traversed, traveling everywhere with the security of men accustomed to the crossing, in order finally to arrive in the vicinity of Egypt, which they perceived to their right, but which they saluted from afar like a good friend, because it was not their objective.

  The direction they had taken at first had seemed to indicate an intention not to reach the countries of Europe immediately, by way of which they would return, but to make their voyage longer by continuing beyond Egypt to the lands of the Far East.