Bahá’í World/Volume 4/Professor Auguste Forel and the Bahá’í Teaching
PROFESSOR AUGUSTE FOREL AND THE BAHÁ’Í TEACHING
BY STANWOOD COBB
1.
An appreciation from The Bahá’í Magazine, October, 1931.
I SHALL never forget my pilgrimage in 1922 to “La Fourmiliere” at Yvorne, Switzerland, home of the great scientist, philosopher and humanitarian, Dr. Auguste Forel, recently deceased. He was then in his seventy-fourth year and crippled by paralysis as a result of a stroke. His enunciation was poor, it was difficult for him to formulate his thoughts rapidly in words, his hands were crippled and writing was extremely arduous for him. Yet the thing which impressed me most in my day’s visit and communion with him was the feeling of a great intellect and a great soul expressing itself through the crippled medium. One could see plainly that the spirit of the man was undiminished, his intellect as powerful as ever. It was only the channel through which that intellect could reach the world that was affected. What an argument for the immortality of the soul! His brain had become injured, his mind not at all. His spirit, may we say, had become even greater as a result of his physical disability.
Dr. Forel showed me with interest and indefatigable patience his works ranged about on the numerous shelves of his study, innumerable books on a wide range of subjects. He had literary command of two languages, German and French, in each of which some of his publications had appeared. In addition, copies of his works had been translated into almost every language of Europe. All these he showed me with pride.
Besides his own publications, these book shelves which surrounded the room on every side from floor to ceiling, were piled thick with other publications which he used as research material, all divided into sections according to subject matter. Here no housekeeping diligence was allowed to invade. This room was sacred to Dr. Forel and his literary work. Everything must be left as he himself left it, so that he might know just where to put his hand on anything that he wished. It was not as orderly as a modern office or library. But it was evidence of the strange paradox that a creative mind which is most orderly in its power to organize intellectual material, may be in the organization of the material environment somewhat cluttery. For the mental and physical energy is given in such cases to the organizing of ideas, and no time or energy is left for tidying up.
With the keenest interest Dr. Forel showed my wife and myself five volumes on the life of the ant? which had just been published in French. This work has later been translated and published in this country. He turned to the different parts of the book, and gave us a long discourse in elucidation of the text and of the illustrations, telling us how he came to make his discoveries. At the age of twenty-one, he had published a book on the ant, the observations and discoveries of which he never had reason to modify. By coloring with cobalt the food which he fed the ants, and by keeping food from all but one at a time, he made the discovery of the strange social stomach of the ant which is anterior to its own individual stomach. Food is first turned into liquid form in this social stomach and from there regurgitated and shared in case of need with other hungry ants, only
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1Le Monde social des Formis.
[Page 391]
one-nine-teenth
being kept to go into the individual
stomach.
He showed us an illustration of the valve which leads from the social stomach into the individual stomach. I remember my attempt at that time to picture to myself in how far we must consider the workings of this valve to be automatic, and in how far we may consider this a voluntary ethical effort on the part of the ant.
Dr. Forel gave us many interesting incidents of his life. He said that as a boy he was not very fond of studying. He was poor at Latin and mathematics. What he loved best was to linger on his way to and from school to study insect life by the roadside. From the age of six years he observed the snails, the wasps and the ants. At the age of eleven his grandmother, appreciating his fondness for insect life, gave him a rather costly book on the ant, highly prized by him ever since. This book he said, was a great formative influence in his life; for it led him into making the study of this remarkable insect his major life work.
At the age of twenty-one, as stated above, he brought out his first work on the ant, which made him famous. Others too have become world authorities on the ant, but Forel has the honor of having added more variety of ants to the knowledge of science than any other man, and of having formed the largest collection of ants in existence, which later he donated to the Natural History Museum of Geneva.
Dr. Forel had a many sided mind. Both his interests and education covered many spheres of human thought and study. He received the Doctorate of Medicine, also of Philosophy, and made distinguished contributions to the science of psychiatry, myrmocology and philosophy. He published books which became well known on such subjects as hypnotism, alcoholism, psychiatry and the sex life. The Sexual Question, published late in life, has been widely circulated and has been translated and published in this country.
During his long life of scholarly achievement, Dr. Forel published more than four hundred different works. The mere enumeration of these filled a pamphlet of thirty pages which was published by his friends in Vienna in 1908 on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday.
Dr. Forel’s medical and psychiatric work at the lunatic asylums of Munich and of Zurich (of the latter he became director) turned his attention to the fatal effects of alcoholism. From then on it became one of the chief missions of his life to combat in every way possible this curse. I recall with what fire and indignation he spoke to me of how besotted drunkards get, how filthy they make their homes, and how tragic their inebriation may become for their wives and children. This poison which leads men to foul and evil deeds of which they would otherwise be incapable, seemed to him one of the greatest curses of humanity. He was one of the first in Europe to found a temperance society. When he bought the property at Yvorne he told me that he had the vineyards torn up to make place for vegetable and flower gardens.
“On the first of September 1928” says the Feuille D’Avis de Lausanne, “thousands upon thousands of the people of Europe wrote their recognition of the master of Yvorne as a compassionate physician, a courageous struggler against alcohol and all forms of vice, as a learned psychiatrist, a seeker who revealed the world of the ants, and a thinker who showed the people prophetic vision and the voice of a life free, peaceful, united and happy. All of which he lived as he recommended.”
Shortly after the world war, which was a tragic blow to his humanitarian belief in the ideals of world peace, he came in contact at Karlsruhe—where he was visiting his daughter and son-in-law, Mrs. and Dr. Brauns—with the teachings of the Bahá’í Cause. The principles enumerated by Bahá’u’lláh for the New World Order, those lofty ideals for world peace and world brotherhood, so deeply impressed Dr. Forel that he became himself a Bahá’í.
“I found Bahá’u’lláh had years ago declared the very principles which I had come to believe in, he told me, therefore I wished to be considered a follower of Bahá’u’lláh.”
From that day on “the grand old man”
of Switzerland devoted his life largely to
the promulgation of these principles of
Bahá’u’lláh. “He served Bahá’u’lláh with
[Page 392]
immense
capacity and indefatigable faithfulness
up to the day of his passing,” says of
him Miss Martha Root, Bahá’í teacher and
world traveler, who visited him a few years
before his death. “He was truly a glorious
and loving apostle of Bahá’u’lláh.”
Dr. Auguste Forel,” she declares, “was one of the great Bahá’ís in Europe. Wherever, in lecturing at the leading universities of Europe and the far East, I spoke of Dr. Forel, his great achievements and his Bahá’í acceptance, the students listened with keen interest and acclaimed their approval with tremendous applause. And when I visited the chief cities of Switzerland to lecture about Bahá’u’lláh’s universal principles for world peace, every city and every educator in Switzerland had heard of these teachings from their celebrated patriot and scientist, Dr. Forel.
“I had the privilege of visiting Dr. Forel in 1929,” Miss Root further states, “and I consider him one of the greatest humanitarians I have ever met—one of the most just, most kindly, most intelligent. He was a genius who saw the truth and the power of Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings to usher in a New Era in divine civilization.”
It is of interest in connection with the later life of Dr. Forel to know that one of the most important Tablets given by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to the world was addressed to this great scientist. The Tablet1 dwelt chiefly on the proof of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, Dr. Forel having been, up to the time of becoming a Bahá’í, a positivist; he was an ardent humanitarian devoted to the advancement of humanity but not believing in the existence of God or the soul. This remarkable exposition of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá on the scientific proofs of the existence of a Divine Creator and of the soul was accepted by Dr. Forel. It would be well if this Tablet could be studied in every university in the world, and by every scientist and religionist.
2.
EXCERPT FROM DR. FOREL’S WILL
(Read by His Son, According to the Instructions of the Deceased, While His Body Was Being Cremated in Lausanne, June 29, 1931)
... J’avais écrit les lignes qui précédent en 1912. Que dois-je ajouter aujourd’hui en aout 1921, aprés les horribles guerres qui viennent de mettre l’humanité a feu et a sang, tout en dévoilant plus que jamais la terrible férocité de nos passions haineuses? Rien, sinon que nous devons demeurer d’autant plus fermes, d’autant plus inébranlables dans notre lutte pour le Bien social. Nos enfants ne doivent pas se décourager; ils doivent au contraire profiter du chaos mondial actuel pour aider a la pénible organisation supérieure et supranationale de I’humanité, 4 l’aide d’une fédération universelle des peuples.
En 1920 seulement j’ai appris 4 connaitre, a Karlsruhe, la religion supraconfessionnelle et mondiale des Bahá’ís fondée en Orient par le persan Bahá’u’lláh il y a 70 ans. C’est la vraie religion du Bien social humain, sans dogmes, ni prétres, reliant entre eux tous les hommes sur notre petit globe terreste. Je suis devenu Baha’i. Que cette ligion vive et prospére pour le bien de Phumanité; c’est 1a mon veeu le plus arlent...»
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1See Vol. II, The Bahá’í World, p. 64.
3.
A Contribution towards a Characterization of the well-known Swiss Psychologist, Social Hygienist, and Student of Ant-Life.
BY DR. HERMANN GROSSMANN
AT the imposing age of seventy-two, when other men already tend towards becoming contemplative, Professor Forel, through his son-in-law, Dr. Brauns of Karlsruhe-Ruppurt, known as an excellent nerve-specialist, and all too early killed in a collapsible boat accident, learned to know the Bahá’í Teachings as he himself writes in his Autoergography, published by Felix Meiner, Leipzig, as a reward for his Religion of the Social Good (Geneva, 1917).
The Bahá’í principles of unity and the ennobling of mankind, of the bridging over of all racial, national, religious and social distinctions, attracted him powerfully. He entered into correspondence with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, at that time still the living center of the Bahá’í Movement, and established the fact that even Monists belong to it. (Autoergography, p. 77.)
What he understands under “Monism,” Forel states in his little work which appeared in a German translation a few years ago, Little Philosophy for Everybody (published by Kaden & Co., Dresden, 1928) as:
“The indissoluble unity between the functioning of the brain (neurokymen) of men and animals, and the souls peculiar to each.”
Not at all a Free-Thinker in the sense in which this term is understood by numerous existing groups inimical to religion, he rather comes straight into free-thinking out of genuine inner religious feeling. In the last-named book, he writes as follows:
“Many Free-Thinkers—I mean those self-designated as such—believe themselves obliged to maintain a war against Religion, instead of allowing their fellow-men freedom to believe what they can over and above what can be scientifically proved. . . . There people confuse Religion with Creed. Under Religion in the broadest sense, we must understand . . . All suitable nourishment brought to our good (social) instincts.”
Such a view is naturally found in the Bahá’í teaching, in words like the following of similar import:
“That which we imagine, is not the reality of God. He, the Unknowable, the Unthinkable, is far above the highest conception of men.” (‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Paris Talks, Chap. 5.)
or:
“The principle of faith is to lessen words and to increase deeds. He whose words exceed his acts, know verily that his nonbeing is better than his being, and death better than his life.” (Bahá’u’lláh: Hidden Words.)
Or, the words of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in regard to the misrepresentation of religious teaching by religious leaders and teachers, whereby so many contradictions and enmities have been evoked in people:
“They teach their followers to believe that their form of religion is the only one pleasing to God, and that the followers of other persuasions are condemned by the All-Loving Father and deprived of His Mercy and Grace. Hence arise among the peoples, disapproval, contempt, disputes and hatred. If these religious prejudices could be swept away, the nations would enjoy peace and concord.” (Paris Talks, Chap. 13.)
And Bahá’u’lláh, the founder of the Bahá’í Teaching, says:
“Ye are all leaves of one tree, and the drops of one sea.”
In 1922, Forel published an article on
“The Religion of the Bahá’ís,” and in 1923,
in conjunction with the Persian Iṣfáhání
in Lausanne (Free Thought by A. Lorulot,
Conflans Honorine, April, 1922) he founded
the first Bahá’í group in Switzerland.
Afterwards—a logical development of his
earlier[Page 394]
tendencies:
“for their principles agreed to
such an extent with my scientific religion
of the Social Good that I let the latter slide
and became a Bahá’í.” (The Way to Culture,
Anzengruber Publishing House, Leipzig, 1924.)—he
emphatically pledged himself to the Bahá’í
ideas, which in many of
his later writings as well as in occasional
articles, he recommends as one of the means
toward true humanity.
“A religion,” says Forel, farther on in this same book, “which admits of no dogmas and no leaders, which in addition includes within its ranks Monists as well as Freethinkers—but not fanatics—Islamites, Buddhists, Brahmins, Jews, and all sects of Christians, on the basis of social work toward peace for our fellow-beings on whole earth globe—this was exactly ideal. However, the meaning of God in the flowery oriental language of the Bahá’ís remained for me too metaphysical, and thus not clear. For this reason, I wrote to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá himself. His answer reached me later on, although not until after his death at an advanced age. From this answer, as well as from a later correspondence and partly from personal conversations with his successor, Shoghi [Effendi] in Haifa, Palestine, and with other distinguished adherents of the Bahá’í Cause in the United States, France, Germany, Persia, et al., it became ever clearer that the Bahá’í Religion aims to accomplish its reform exclusively in the spirit of the old primitive prophets, and not in that of the later bigoted, corrupt and dogmatic clergy. Thereby a Monist, an Evolutionist, and a universally-minded Free-Thinker, may become Bahá’ís quite as well as Christians, Islamites, Jews, et al., who believe in a personal God. The metaphysical interpretation of ‘God’—that is, He who is acknowledged by mankind as universally Omnipotent—is conceded to every Bahá’í.”
In an article on the persecution of the Bahá’ís in Persia by fanatically-excited Muḥammadans, which appeared in the Viennese New Free Press of April 26th, 1925, Forel writes:
“I can only assure you that to me all the Bahá’ís I came to know have deeply impressed me with their high ethical qualities, their capacity for sacrifice, and their truly international goodness.” (Translated from the German by L. R.)
4.
EXCERPTS FROM “FEUILLE D’AVIO DE LAUSANNE” JULY 28, 1931
“En 1920-21, chez son beau-fils, le Dr. Brauns, Forel fit la connaissance de la religion Baha’i, qui unit les gens de toutes dénominations qui veulent servir Dieu et leurs fréres. Forel y adhére avec enthousiasme et en a a souvent dans ses écrits sabsieque. . . ”
“Dans un ‘wodiclile daté d’aott 1921, le Dr. Forel, n’ayant rien 4 ajouter aprés les horreurs de la guerre, en appelle 4 la Fédération universelle des peuples, dit son bonheur d’avoir adheré a la religion Bahá’í, fondée il y a 80 ans et qui se passe de dogmes et de prétres. Il s’en va sans regrets, ni amertume ni anxiété, en exprimant l’espoir d’une vie meilleure pour ses successeurs . . .”
