Quoted from Source: 1889
” DO you think it is possible to lecture on religion, even on natural religion, without giving offence either on the right or on the left? And do you think that a lean would be worth his salt who, in lecturing on religion, even on natural religion, were to look either right or left, instead of looking all facts, as they meet him, straight in the face, to see whether they are facts or not; and, if they are facts, to find out, if possible, what they mean, and what they are meant to teach us?”
“Religion, I know full well, differs from all other subjects. It appeals not only to our head, but to our heart. And as we do not like to hear those who are very near to our heart, those whom we love and revere, criticised, or even compared, it is but natural, that many people should object to a criticism of that religion which they love and revere, nay, even to a comparison of it with other religions.”
“We condemn an examination of our own religion, even though it arises from an honest desire to see with our own eyes the truth which we mean to hold fast; and yet we do not hesitate to send missionaries into all the world, asking the faithful to re-examine their own time-honoured religions. We attack their most sacred convictions, we wound their tenderest feelings, we undermine the belief in which they have been brought up, and we break up the peace and happiness of their homes.”
“We have to choose once for all between freedom and slavery of judgment, and though I do not wish to argue with those who prefer slavery, yet one may remind them that even they, in deliberately choosing slavery, follow their own private judgment, quite as much as others do in choosing freedom. In claiming infallibility for Bible, Popes, or Councils, they claim in reality far greater infallibility for themselves in declaring by their own authority Bible, Popes, or Councils to be infallible.”
“Religion, they say, is common property. It belongs by its very nature to the young and to the old, to the wise and to the unwise, to men, women, and children. Unless it fulfils that condition, unless it is open to little children, as well as to the wisest of the wise, it may be philosophy, it may be absolute truth, but it ceases to be religion.”
“But while every other subject is thus by its very nature restricted to a professional class, we are reminded that a study of religion, or, at all events, an interest in religion, appeals to every human heart, and that a treatment of religion that may be quite harmless, nay, quite legitimate with advanced students and hard-headed thinkers, may prove very hurtful to younger minds, not prepared as yet for such strong diet.”
“Artificial protection of any kind is out of date in the century in which we live, and in which we must learn to act and to do as much good as we can. To expect that religion could ever be placed again beyond the reach of scientific treatment or honest criticism, shows an utter misapprehension of the signs of the times, and would, after all, be no more than to set up private judgment against private judgment. I believe, on the contrary, that if the inalienable rights of private judgment, that is, of honesty and truth, were more generally recognised, the character of religious controversy would at once be changed. It is restriction that provokes resentment, and thus embitters all discussions on religious topics.”
“‘There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.’”
“I have known theologians, occupying now the highest positions in the Church, who frankly admitted among their own intimate friends, that physical miracles, in the ordinary sense of the word, were once for all impossible, but who would not have considered it right to say so from the pulpit. I do not question their motives nor do I doubt their moral courage, I only question the soundness of their judgment.”
“A comparative study of religions has taught us that miracles, instead of being impossible, are really inevitable, that they exist in almost every religion, that they are the natural outcome of what Mr. Gladstone has well called ‘imperfect comprehension and imperfect expression.’”
“Every creed is sacred to those who hold it.”
“Plutarch said, that it was better not to believe in Gods at all, than to believe in Gods, such as the superstitious believe them to be. ‘I, for my own part,’ he continues, ‘would much rather have men say of me that there never was a Plutarch at all, nor is now, than to say that Plutarch is a man inconstant, fickle, easily moved to anger, revengeful for trifling provocations, vexed at small things.’ ”
‘reverent men, true thinkers, sincere lovers, and earnest enquirers after truth.’
“The religion of the young can never be quite the same as that of the old, nor the religion of the educated the same as that of the ignorant. We all know it.”
“Toleration in Ancient India.”
“I tried to explain on a former occasion how this problem has been solved in ancient India. The Indian Law recognised four stages in the life of every man. The first stage was that of the pupil, which lasted till a man had reached the age of manhood. A pupil had to show implicit obedience to his superiors, and to learn without questioning the religion of his forefathers.”
“The second stage was that of the householder, which lasted till a man had grown-up children. A householder had to marry, to earn his living, to bring up a family, to perform daily sacrifices, and all this again without questioning the teaching of his religious guides.”
“Then followed the third stage, that of the dweller in the forest, the Vânaprastha, the ascetic. In that stage a man was not only released from his household duties, but his sacrificial observances also were much reduced, and he was allowed to indulge in the freest philosophical speculations, speculations which often ran counter to the theological system of the Brâhmans, and ended by replacing religion altogether by philosophy.”
“The last stage was that of the hermit, who withdrew himself from all human society, and willingly went to meet his death, wherever it would meet him.”
“To us it seems difficult to understand how a religion, not only so full of different shades of thought, but containing elements of the most decidedly antagonistic character, could have lasted; how neither the father should have contemptuously looked down on his son who performed sacrifices which he himself had surrendered as useless, nay as mischievous, nor the son should have abhorred his father who had thrown off his belief in the gods or devas, and adopted a philosophy that taught the existence of something higher and better than all these gods. And yet this system seems to have answered for a long time. Recognising the fact that the mind of man changes from childhood to old age, it allowed the greatest freedom to old age, provided always that old age had been preceded by the fulfilment of all the duties of a pater familias, and by an unquestioning submission to the discipline of youth”
“It is on these questions that we must claim the same freedom which even the most orthodox of Brâhmans allowed to their fellow-creatures. Only, we must claim it, not only for the aged who retire into the forest, but for all whose mind has been awakened, and who mean to do their duty in this life.”
“The online Gifford Lectures database presents a comprehensive collection of books derived from the Gifford Lectures. In addition to the books, the Web site contains a biography of each lecturer and a summary of the lecture or book.” http://www.giffordlectures.org/
Material Below Quoted from Source : Preface to Sacred Books of the East.. (1879)
- (It is in contrast to the lecture above…
- The reasonableness of the tone of his lecture above (1889) contrasts with the nastiness when representing the Upanishads below (1879)…
- why?
- because he left Germany for British citizenship?
- Pressure from East India Company/Church/Society?
- Did he really change his mind and tone?)
“Readers who have been led to believe that the Vedas of the ancient Brahmans, the Avesta of the Zoroastrians, the Tripitaka of the Buddhists, the Kings of Confucius, or the Koran of Mohammed are books full of primeval wisdom and religious enthusiasm, or at least of sound and simple moral teaching, will be disappointed on consulting these volumes”
“Looking at many of the books that have lately been published on the religions of the ancient world, I do not wonder that such a belief should have been raised; but I have long felt that it was high time to dispel such illusions, and to place the study of the ancient religions of the world on a more real and sound, on a more truly historical basis.”
“What we want here, as everywhere else, is the truth, and the whole truth; and if the whole truth must be told, it is that, however radiant the dawn of religious thought, it is not without its dark clouds, its chilling colds, its noxious vapours. Whoever does not know these, or would hide them from his own sight and from the sight of others, does not know and can never understand the real toil and travail of the human heart in its first religious aspirations; and not knowing its toil and travail, can never know the intensity of its triumphs and its joys.”
“We must try to imagine what the Old Testament would have been, if it had not been kept distinct from the Talmud; or the New Testament, if it had been mixed up not only with the spurious gospels, but with the records of the wranglings of the early Councils, if we wish to understand, to some extent at least, the wild confusion of sublime truth with vulgar stupidity that meets us in the pages of the Veda, the Avesta, and the Tripitaka.”
“In using, what may seem to some of my fellow-workers, this very strong and almost irreverent language with regard to the ancient Sacred Books of the East, I have not neglected to make full allowance for that very important intellectual parallax which, no doubt, renders it most difficult for a Western observer to see things and thoughts under exactly the same angle and in the same light as they would appear to an Eastern eye.”
“My real love for Sanskrit literature was first kindled by the Upanishads.”
“In returning, after more than thirty years, to these favourite studies, I find that my interest in them, though it has changed in character, has by no means diminished.”
“but the first germs of Upanishad doctrines go back at least as far as the Mantra period”
Quoted from : India: What can it teach us? by F. Max Müller December, 1882.
Muller : “We want men who will work hard, even at the risk of seeing their labors unrequited;we want strong and bold men who are not afraid of storms and shipwrecks. The worst sailors are not those who suffer shipwreck, but those who only dabble in puddles and are afraid of wetting their feet.”
“It is easy now to criticise the labors of Sir William Jones, Thomas Colebrooke, and Horace Hayman Wilson,but what would have become of Sanskrit scholarship if they had not rushed in where even now so many fear to tread? and what will become of Sanskrit scholarship if their conquests are forever to mark the limits of our knowledge?“
“To enable young men to pass their examinations seems now to have become the chief, if not the only object of the universities; and to no class of students is it of greater importance to pass their examinations, and to pass them well, than to the candidates for the Indian Civil Service.”
- “If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power, and beauty that nature can bestow—in some parts a very paradise on earth
- —I should point to India.
- If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most full developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant
- —I should point to India.
- And if I were to ask myself from what literature we, here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life, not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life
- —again I should point to India.”
- “Why do we want to know history? Why does history form a recognized part of our liberal education? Simply because all of us, and every one of us, ought to know how we have come to be what we are, so that each generation need not start again from the same point and toil over the same ground, but, profiting by the experience of those who came before, may advance toward higher points and nobler aims.”
- “India for the future belongs to Europe, it has its place in the Indo-European world, it has its place in our own history, and in what is the very life of history, the history of the human mind.”
- “What have we inherited from the dark dwellers on the Indus and the Ganges, that we should have to add
- their royal names and dates and deeds to the archives of our already overburdened memory?”
- “We all come from the East—all that we value most has come to us from the East, and in going to the East, not only those who have received a special Oriental training, but everybody who has enjoyed the advantages of a liberal, that is, of a truly historical education, ought to feel that he is going to his “old home,” full of memories, if only he can read them.”
“It was from a simple sense of justice that I felt bound to quote this testimony of Colonel Sleeman as to the truthful character of the natives of India, when left to themselves. My interest lies altogether with the people of India, when left to themselves, and historically I should like to draw a line after the year one thousand after Christ. When you read the atrocities committed by the Mohammedan conquerors of India from that time to the time when England stepped in and, whatever may be said by her envious critics, made, at all events, the broad principles of our common humanity respected once more in India, the wonder, to my mind, is how any nation could have survived such an Inferno without being turned into devils themselves.”Muller quoting Sleeman,“In their puncháyets, Sleeman tells us, men adhere habitually and religiously to the truth, and “I have had before me hundreds of cases,” he says, “in which a man’s property, liberty, and life has depended upon his telling a lie, and he has refused to tell it.”"Muller quoting Professor Wilson, Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford,“”I lived, both from necessity and choice, very much among the Hindus, and had opportunities of becoming acquainted with them in a greater variety of situations than those in which they usually come under the observation of Europeans. In the Calcutta mint, for instance, I was in daily personal communication with a numerous body of artificers, mechanics, and laborers, and always found among them cheerful and unwearied industry, good-humored compliance with the will of their superiors, and a readiness to make whatever exertions were demanded from them; there was among them no drunkenness, no disorderly conduct, no insubordination. It would not be true to say that there was nodishonesty, but it was comparatively rare, invariably petty, and much less formidable than, I believe, it is necessary to guard against in other mints in other countries. There was considerable skill and ready docility. So far from there being any servility, there was extreme frankness, and I should say that where there is confidence without fear, frankness is one of the most universal features in the Indian character. Let the people feel sure of the temper and good-will of their superiors, and there is an end of reserve and timidity, without the slightest departure from respect….”"Megasthanes : “thefts were extremely rare, and that they honored truth and virtue“Arrian : “but indeed no Indian is accused of lying.”Su-we : “It is a kingdom in which the religion of Buddha flourishes. The inhabitants are straightforward and honest, and the soil is very fertile”Hiouen-thsang, : “”Though the Indians,” he writes, “are of a light temperament, they are distinguished by the straightforwardness and honesty of their character. With regard to riches, they never take anything unjustly; with regard to justice, they make even excessive concessions…. Straightforwardness is the distinguishing feature of their administration.”"Idrisi, in his Geography (written in the eleventh century), ”The Indians are naturally inclined to justice, and never depart from it in their actions. Their good faith, honesty, and fidelity to their engagements are well known, and they are so famous for these qualities that people flock to their country from every side.”
Shems-ed-din Abu Abdallah quotes the following judgment of Bedi ezr Zenân: “The Indians are innumerable, like grains of sand, free from all deceit and violence. They fear neither death nor life.”
In the thirteenth century we have the testimony of Marco Polo, who thus speaks of the Abraiaman, a name by which he seems to mean the Brahmans who, though, not traders by profession, might well have been employed for great commercial transactions by the king. This was particularly the case during times which the Brahmans would call times of distress, when many things were allowed which at other times were forbidden by the laws. “You must know,” Marco Polo says, “that these Abraiaman are the best merchants in the world, and the most truthful, for they would not tell a lie for anything on earth.”
“So I could go on quoting from book after book, and again and again we should see how it was love of truth that struck all the people who came in contact with India, as the prominent feature in the national character of its inhabitants. No one ever accused them of falsehood. There must surely be some ground for this, for it is not a remark that is frequently made by travellers in foreign countries, even in our time, that their inhabitants invariably speak the truth. Read the accounts of English travellers in France, and you will find very little said about French”
“But if all this is true, how is it, you may well ask, that public opinion in England is so decidedly unfriendly to the people of India; at the utmost tolerates and patronizes them, but will never trust them, never treat them on terms of equality?”
“Public opinion with regard to India is made up in England chiefly by those who have spent their lives in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, or some other of the principal towns in India. The native element in such towns contains mostly the most unfavorable specimens of the Indian population.”
Muller quoting Mountstuart Elphinstone, ICS :
“”Missionaries of a different religion, judges, police-magistrates, officers of revenue or customs, and even diplomatists, do not see the most virtuous portion of a nation, nor any portion, unless when influenced by passion, or occupied by some personal interest. What we do see we judge by our own standard. We conclude that a man who cries like a child on slight occasions must always be incapable of acting or suffering with dignity; and that one who allows himself to be called a liar would not be ashamed of any baseness. Our writers also confound the distinctions of time and place; they combine in one character the Maratta and the Bengalese, and tax the present generation with the crimes of the heroes of the Mahâbhârata.”
Muller Quoting Warren Hastings
“They are gentle and benevolent, more susceptible of gratitude for kindness shown them, and less prompted to vengeance for wrongs inflicted than any people on the face of the earth; faithful, affectionate, submissive to legal authority.”
Muller Quoting Bishop Heber :
“The Hindus are brave, courteous, intelligent, most eager for knowledge and improvement; sober, industrious, dutiful to parents, affectionate to their children, uniformly gentle and patient, and more easily affected by kindness and attention to their wants and feelings than any people I ever met with.”[55]
Muller Quoting Elphinstone :
“No set of people among the Hindus are so depraved as the dregs of our own great towns. The villagers are everywhere amiable, affectionate to their families, kind to their neighbors, and toward all but the government honest and sincere. Including the Thugs and Dacoits, the mass of crime is less in India than in England. The Thugs are almost a separate nation, and the Dacoits are desperate ruffians in gangs. The Hindus are mild and gentle people, more merciful to prisoners than any other Asiatics. Their freedom from gross debauchery is the point in which they appear to most advantage; and their superiority in purity of manners is not flattering to our self-esteem.”
“Let me add that I have been repeatedly told by English merchants that commercial honor stands higher in India than in any other country, and that a dishonored bill is hardly known there.”Muller quoting Burnell, ICS“ no trouble is thrown away which saves trouble to others”Muller quoting the Brahmanas“Whosoever speaks the truth, makes the fire on his own altar blaze up, as if he poured butter into the lighted fire. His own light grows larger, and from to-morrow to to-morrow he becomes better. But whosoever speaks untruth, he quenches the fire on his altar, as if he poured water into the lighted fire; his own light grows smaller and smaller, and from to-morrow to to-morrow he becomes more wicked. Let man therefore speak truth only.”
Quoted from Friedrich Max Müller :
“Müller’s scholarly works, published as an 18-volume Collected Works, include
- A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature So Far As It Illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans(1859),
- Lectures on the Science of Language (1864, 2 vols.),
- Chips from a German Workshop(1867-75, 4 vols.),
- Introduction to the Science of Religion (1873),
- India, What can it Teach Us? (1883),
- Biographical Essays (1884),
- The Science of Thought (1887),
- Six Systems of Hindu Philosophy (1899),
- and his four volumes of Gifford Lectures (Collected Works, vols. 1-4):
- Natural Religion (1889),
- Physical Religion (1891),
- Anthropological Religion (1892), and
- Theosophy, or Psychological Religion (1893).
Also of note are his two volumes of biographical reflections, entitled
- Auld Lang Syne (1898),
- My Autobiography: A Fragment (1901) and
- The Life and Letters of the Right Honourable Friedrich Max Müller (1902, 2 vols.), which was edited by his wife.”
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