Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI.
TAOIST HERMITS.
The tendency of nearly all religions in the direction of asceticism is proved by the existence, in almost every quarter of the globe, of hermits. A desire to flee from the cares and enticements of the world, to shun the face of one's fellow-man, and to devote oneself entirely to the contemplation of the unseen constitutes, in most instances, that frame of mind which impels its subject to abjure the claims of family and friendship and all that makes life sweet. With the growth of enlightenment and the rationalistic spirit, the hermit-race has gradually been dying out. Early in the Middle Ages the anchorite was a recognised institution—a sort of "irregular" in the Church militant, yet one who very often came in for the highest honours of saintship. But it was not the hermit of poetry on whom the approval of the Church was principally bestowed. That variety represented the aesthetic rather than the ascetic type of anchoretics. He wore a very fine, full beard and flowing robes of serge. He lived in a charming grotto, adorned in picturesque fashion with a skull, a crucifix, and an enormous book, and slaked his thirst at the mountain rill which invariably babbled past his door. The hermits of whom saints were made were of a very different cut. They generally went naked, and affected the peculiarities of Nebuchadnezzar during the seven years in which that hapless monarch was afflicted with lycanthropy. They slept in beds of nettles, in marshes reeking with miasmata and swarming with foul reptiles. They lacerated their skins, already covered with sores and smarting with the bites of insects. Cleanliness and comfort were loathed by them as crimes, dirt and misery being regarded as the highest indications of internal holiness. These men were reverenced in bygone days as saints of the purest ray; and the honour in which they were held was perfectly compatible with times when physical phenomena, such as earthquakes and disease, were attributed to the action of demons. We in the nineteenth century, of course, can see where the mischief lay in the case of these unfortunates. They were really raving lunatics, and at the present day would have been consigned to the restraints of an asylum. In China the hermit-race has never reached quite such an abyss of degradation as in Europe. Indeed the old Taoist and Buddhist mystics of whom we read, and specimens of whom we may even see around us now, were rather interesting characters. They generally chose for their retreat some rocky glen shut in by mountains, sheltered from the burning sun by the thick foliage of trees, and surrounded by every natural feature which makes a landscape lovely. There they passed their lives in that state of mental vacuity and freedom from interest in mundane matters which is the nearest approach to the summit of virtue and bliss. That summit in the articles of the Buddhist Church is called Nirvana. The Taoists look forward to very much the same condition. Their idea of happiness is, after all, a very wise and very pure one. Perfect indifference to love and hate—the annihilation of all passions, desires, and even preferences—no striving, or wishing to strive—nothing but absolute apathy and profound insensibility to those things which, painful or pleasurable, tend to wear out the bodies and souls of men; such is the Taoist heaven. It is a return to the pure, original, self-existent nature of men, which has been despoiled and injured by contact with worldly matters. How infinitely higher, this, than the wretched superstitions which debased the self-tormentors of the Middle Ages! And there are a few of these Taoists yet to be found—men who are almost entirely uncontaminated by the follies and impostures of modern popular Taoism, and who may be said to represent the true apostolic succession in the Taoist Church. In certain instances some old worthies, who have been dead and gone for centuries, are believed by the simple mountaineers of China to be still alive. Far away in the mountain-range which stretches from Peking across the provinces of Chihli and Shantung there is one very sacred peak, called the Mount of a Hundred Flowers. It is covered with wild flowers, and its bosky dells are said, and with some truth, to be the lurking-place of wolves and panthers. There, according to the legend, live, partly embedded in the soil, certain ancient Taoist hermits. By a long course of absolute conformity with nature they have attained to immortality, and are now in the enjoyment of unearthly bliss. To use a Taoist phrase, their faces are washed by the rains of heaven, and their hair combed by the wind. Their arms are crossed upon their breasts, and their nails have grown so long that they curl round their necks. Flowers and grass have taken root in their bodies, and flourish luxuriantly; when a man approaches them they turn their eyes upon him, but do not speak. No wild beast ever attacks them, for they are in harmony with all nature. Some of them are over three hundred years old; others are not much over a century; but all have attained to immortality, and some day they will find that their bodies, which have been so long in wearing out, will collapse from sheer withdrawal of vitality, and their spirits be set free. This is all fanciful and fabulous enough; but it is undeniable that that indifference or aversion to vulgar objects of desire which characterises the true Taoist has laid China under many a debt of gratitude. The votary of the Naturalistic philosophy does not always become a hermit any more than the Christian always becomes a priest. He is often in the world, and occupies high offices of state. But circumstances make no difference in him. He is always the same, while living in mean and dirty lane and drinking from a gourd, as he is in the palace itself, the trusted Minister of a monarch. In this position he retains the same incorruptibility, the same indifference to power, that he has when living in obscurity. China has had many such Ministers, and she is rightly proud of them. Emperors and princes are said to have gone in person to solicit the services of some stern recluse whose fame had reached their ears, and to have been unsuccessful in their suit. The delineation of such characters forms a bright page in many a volume of dusty Chinese lore, and they are now held up to the reverence and imitation of the statesmen and scholars of the day.