master of Gamaliel, Hillel Hababli or the Babylonian. This celebrated
Pharisee lived a little before Jesus and taught, they say, the same
things which Jesus afterwards taught. He was a liberal Judean, a
rational Pharisee, an intelligent rabbi; but was he therefore a
Christian? It is true that he said these words, “Do not do unto others
what is displeasing to you; this is the whole Law, the rest is only
explanation of it.” These are fine words for a master of the old law,
but how far away they are from those of the overturner of the ancient
law! This is a negative command, “Do not do.” He does not say, “Do good
to those who wrong you,” but “Do not do to others (and these others are
certainly companions, fellow-citizens, members of the family and
friends) what you feel to be evil.” He mildly forbids harmfulness; he
gives no absolute command to love. As a matter of fact, the descendants
of Hillel were those Talmudists who mired the law in the great swamp of
casuistry. The descendants of Jesus were the martyrs who blessed their
torturers.
And Philo, the Alexandrian Jew, the Platonizing metaphysician, some
twenty years older than Jesus, left a treatise on the love of men; but
Philo, with all his talents and with all his mystical and Messianic
speculations, is, like Hillel, a theorist, a man of pens and ink-pots,
of learning, of books, of systems, of abstractions, of classifications.
His dialectic strategy brings into the field thousands of words in
parade formation, but he is never inspired to pronounce the one word
that burns up in an instant all the past, the one word which brings
hearts together. He has talked of love more than Christ, but he could
never have said, and he would not have been able to understand, what
Christ said to his ignorant friends on the Mount.
ACHILLES AND PRIAM
Is it possible that in Greece, that well-spring from whence all have
drunk, there was no love for enemies? Would-be modern pagans, enemies of
the “Palestine superstition,” claim that Greek thought has everything in
it. In the spiritual life of the Occident, Greece is like China to the
East, mother of all invention.
In the Ajax of Sophocles, famous Odysseus is moved to pity at the sight
of a fallen enemy reduced to misery. In vain Athena herself, Hellenic
wisdom personified in the sacred owl, reminds him that “the most
delightful mirth is to laugh at one’s enemies.” Ulysses is not
convinced. “I pity him, although he is my enemy, because I see him so
unfortunate, bound to an evil destiny; and looking at him, I think of
myself. Because I see we are not other than ghosts, and unsubstantial
shadows, all we who live.... It is not right to do evil to a dying man
even if you hate him.” It seems to me that we are here still very far
away from love. Wily Ulysses is not wily enough to conceal the motive of
his unnatural softening. He pities his enemy because he thinks of
himself, remembers that evil could happen also to him, and he pardons
his enemy only because he sees him dying and unfortunate.
A wiser man than Ulysses, the son of Sophroniscus, the stone cutter,
asked himself, among many other questions, how the righteous man ought
to treat his enemies. But reading the texts, we discover with
astonishment two Socrates, of different opinions. The Socrates of the
Memorabilia frankly accepts the common feeling. Friends are to be
treated well and enemies ill, and thus it is better to anticipate one’s
enemies in doing ill: “The man most greatly to be praised,” he says to
Cherocrate, “is he who anticipates his enemies in hurtfulness and his
friends in helpfulness.” But Plato’s Socrates does not accept the common
opinion. He says to Crito, “Injustice should be rendered to no one in
return for injustice; nor evil for evil whatever has been the injury
that thou hast received.” And he affirms the same principle in the
Republic, adding in support that the bad are not bettered by revenge.
But the ruling idea in Socrates’ head is the thought of justice, not the
feeling of love. In no case should the righteous man do evil, out of
self-respect (notice this), not out of affection towards his enemy. The
bad man must punish himself, otherwise the judges in the lower world
will punish him after death. Aristotle, the disciple of Plato, turns
tranquilly back to the old idea: “Not to resent offenses,” he says in
the Ethics to Nicomachus, “is the mark of a base and slavish man.”
In Greece, therefore, there is little to the purpose for those who are
looking for precedents for Christianity.
But in order to make us believe that Christianity existed before Christ,
those who deny Jesus, have found a rival to Jesus even in Rome, in the
very palace of the Cæsars. Seneca, the director of conscience to young
gentlemen, leader of the fashionable cult of reformed stoicism; the
abstract aristocrat never moved by the troubles of the poor; the
proprietor who despises riches, and clutches them tightly, who affirms
the equality between free and slave, and owns slaves; the talented
anatomist of scruples, of evils, of active vices, and complacent
virtues; he who canalized the old doctrine of Chrisippus, dull but
clear, towards the estuary of preciosity; moral Seneca they claim was a
Christian without knowing it during Christ’s very lifetime. Thumbing
over his works (many were written after the death of Christ, for Seneca
waited till he was sixty-five years old before committing suicide), they
have found that “the wise man does not avenge but forgets affronts,” and
that “to imitate the Gods we should do good also to the ungrateful
because the sun shines equally on the wicked and the seas bear up the
pirate ship,” and finally that “We must succor our enemies with a
friendly hand.” But the “forgetting” of the philosopher is not
“forgiveness”; and “succor” can be philanthropy but is not love. The
imperious, the stoic, the Pharisee; the philosopher proud of his
philosophy, the righteous man complacent over his righteousness, can
despise the affronts of the small, the pricks of enemies, and through
pride of magnanimity and to win admiration can deign to give a loaf to a
hungry enemy in order to humiliate him more harshly from the heights of
perfection. But that bread was prepared with the leaven of vanity and
that would-be friendly hand could never have dried a tear or dressed a
wound.
The world of antiquity did not know love. It knew passion for a woman,
friendship for a friend, justice for the citizen, hospitality for the
foreigner; but it did not know love. Zeus protected pilgrims and
strangers; he who knocked at the Grecian door was not denied meat, a cup
of wine, and a bed. The poor were to be covered, the weak helped, the
mourning consoled with fair words; but the men of antiquity did not know
love, love that suffers, that shares another’s sorrow, love for all who
suffer and are neglected, love for the poor, the lowly, the outlawed,
the maligned, the downtrodden, the abandoned; love for all, love which
knows no difference between fellow-citizens and strangers, between fair
and foul, between criminal and philosopher, between brother and enemy.
In the last canto of the Iliad we see an old man, a mourner, a father
who kisses the hand of his most terrible enemy, of the man who has
killed his sons, who has just killed his most loved son. Priam, the old
king, head of the rich, ruined city, father of fifty sons, kneels at the
feet of Achilles, the greatest hero, and the most unhappy among the
Greeks, son of the Sea-Goddess, avenger of Patroclus, slayer of Hector.
The white head of the kneeling old man is bowed before the proud youth
of the victor, and Priam mourns for the slain, strongest, fairest, most
loved of all his fifty sons, and kisses the hand of the slayer! “Thou
also,” he says, “hast a grey-haired, failing, defenseless, far-distant
father. In the name of thy father’s love, give me back at least the dead
body of my son.”
Achilles, the fierce, the wild, the slaughterer, puts the suppliant
gently on one side and begins to weep; and both of them, the two
enemies, the conqueror and the conquered, the father bereft of his son
and the son who will never see his father again, the white-haired old
man and the golden-haired youth both weep, drawn together for the first
time by sorrow. The others round about gaze at them silent and
astounded: we ourselves after thirty centuries are shaken by their
grief.
But in the kiss of Priam there is no pardon, there is no love. This king
humbles himself to obtain a difficult and unusual favor. If a God had
not inspired him he would not have stirred from Ilium; and Achilles does
not weep for dead Hector, for weeping Priam, for the powerful man who is
brought to humble himself, for the enemy who is brought to kiss the hand
of the slayer. He weeps over his lost friend; over Patrocles, dearer to
him than all other men; over Peleus, left at Phthia; over his father,
whom he will never more embrace, for he knows that his young days are
numbered. And he gives back to the father the dead body of his son—that
body which he has dragged for so many days in the dust—because it is the
will of Zeus, not because his hunger of vengeance is stilled. Both of
them weep for themselves; the kiss of Priam is a harsh necessity, the
restitution of Achilles is obedience to the Gods. In the noblest heroic
world of antiquity there is no place for that love which destroys hate
and takes the place of hate, for love stronger than the strength of
hate, more ardent, more implacable, more faithful, for love which is not
forgetfulness of wrong, but love of wrong, because wrong is a misfortune
for him who commits it rather than for him who suffers. There is no
place for love for enemies in the world of antiquity.
Jesus was the first to speak of such love, to conceive of such love.
This love was not known till the Sermon on the Mount. This is the
greatest and the most original of Jesus’ conceptions. Of all His
teachings this was the newest to men, this is still His greatest
innovation. It is new even to us, new because it is not understood, not
imitated, not obeyed; infinitely eternal like truth.
THOU SHALT LOVE
“Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and
hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that
curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which
despitefully use you and persecute you; That ye may be the children of
your Father which is in Heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the
evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the
publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more
than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even
as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect.” A few bare, plain words!
But they are the Magna Charta of the new race, of the third race, of men
not yet born. The first race was that of the animal without law, and its
name was War; the second were barbarians tamed by the Law, whose highest
perfection was justice. This is the race living now, and justice has not
yet conquered War, and the Law has not yet supplanted animality. The
third is to be the race of real men, not only upright but holy, not like
beasts but like God.
Jesus had just one aim: to transform men from beasts to saints by means
of love. Circe, the enchantress, the Satanic consort of the old
mythologies, converted heroes into beasts by means of animal pleasures.
Jesus is the anti-Satan, the anti-Circe, He who saves from animality by
a force more powerful than pleasure. This undertaking, which seems
hopeless to all animals barely risen above animality and to beings just
entering upon real humanity, must be based on the imitation of God. To
approximate sanctity one must look toward divinity: “Be holy because God
is holy. Be perfect because God is perfect.”
This is not the first time that this appeal has been made to the heart
of man. Satan said in the Garden: “You will be as gods.” Jehovah said to
His judges: “Be gods, be just as God is just.” But now there is no
question of being wise like God, nor is it even enough to be just, like
God. God is now more than wisdom and justice. With Jesus, He becomes our
Father, becomes love. His earth gives bread and flowers even to the
homicide; he who takes His name in vain sees the glorious sun every
morning, the same sun which warms the clasped hands of the laborer
praying in the field. A true father loves the son who turns from him as
he loves the son who seeks him out; a father cherishes the child who
obeys him in his house, or who vomits him out with his wine. A father
can be saddened, can suffer, can mourn, but no sinning man is capable of
making a father become like to himself. No one can induce a father to
take revenge.
And we who are so much lower than God, poor finite creatures, who are
scarcely capable of remembering yesterday, who do not know to-morrow, we
unfortunate, inferior creatures, have we not many more motives to feel
for our brothers in wretchedness what God feels for us? God is the
supreme substance of our ideal. To draw away from Him, not to be as we
pray that He may be with us, is this not to draw away from our unique
destination, to keep perpetually and despairingly out of our reach that
happiness for which we are created, which we believe to be the aim of
our lives, imagined by us, dreamed of by us, longed-for, invoked and
followed in vain through all the false felicities which are not of God?
“Let us be Gods,” cries Bossuet. “Let us be Gods. He permits it, that we
may imitate His holiness.”
Who will refuse to be like God? Dii estis. Divinity is in us; animality
hampers and constricts it, stunting our growth. Who would not wish to be
God? Oh, men, are you in very truth content to be only men? Men as you
are to-day, half-men, half-beasts? Centaurs without robustness, sirens
without sweetness, demons with fauns’ muzzles and goats’ feet? Are you
so satisfied with your bastard and imperfect humanity, with your
animality scarcely held in leash, taking no step to win holiness save to
desire it? Does it seem to you that the life of men as it has been in
the past, as it is to-day, is so dear, so happy, so contented that there
should be no effort to make it otherwise, entirely different, the
opposite of what it is, more like that which for thousands of years we
have imagined in the future and in Heaven? Is it not possible to make
another life out of this life, to change this world to a world more
divine, at last to bring down Heaven and the laws of Heaven upon earth?
This new life, this earthly but celestial world is the Kingdom of
Heaven, and to bring about the Kingdom we must transfigure and deify
ourselves; become like God, imitate God. The secret of the imitation of
God is love, the certain way of the transfiguration is love, love of man
for man, love for friend and enemy. If this love is impossible, our
salvation is impossible. If it is repugnant, it is a sign that happiness
is repugnant to us. If it is absurd, our hopes of redemption are only
absurdity. Common sense tells us that to love our enemies is insanity,
and to count such love as a prerequisite of our salvation seems simple
madness. Love for enemies is like hatred for ourselves; hence it follows
that we can only earn beatitude by hating ourselves.
This conclusion should alarm no one, for it has been proved; all the
experiments have been tried. It is not true that there has been no time
to test it. For thousands of years we have been proving and proving it,
over and over. We have tried the experiment of fierceness; and blood
answered blood. We have tried the experiment of lust; and lust has left
in the mouth the odor of corruption and a fiercer fever. We have forced
the body into the most refined and perverse pleasures and found
ourselves worn out and heavy-hearted, lying upon filth. We have tried
the experiment of the Law, and we have not obeyed the Law; we have
changed it and disobeyed it again, and Justice has not satisfied our
hearts. We have tried the experiment of intellectualism, we have taken
the census of creation, numbered the stars, described the plants, the
dead things and the living things, we have bound them together with the
thin threads of abstract ideas, we have transfigured them in the magic
clouds of metaphysics; and at the end of all this, things have remained
the same, eternally the same; they were not enough for us, they could
not be renewed; their names and their numbers did not quiet our hunger,
and the most learned men ended with weary confessions of ignorance. We
have tried the experiment of art and our feebleness has brought the
strongest to despair, because the Absolute cannot be fixed in any form;
the Many overflow from the One; the carefully wrought work of art cannot
arrest the ephemeral. We have tried the experiment of wealth and have
found ourselves poorer; the experiment of force and have come to
ourselves, weaker. In no thing has our soul found quiet. We have found
no welcoming shade, where our bodies can lie down and be at rest; and
our hearts, always seeking, always disappointed, are older, weaker, and
emptier because in nothing have they found peace, because no pleasure
has brought them joy, no conquest, happiness.
THE LAST EXPERIMENT
Jesus proposes His experiment, the only remaining possibility, the
experiment of love, that experiment which no one has made, which few
have even attempted (and that for only a few moments of their lives),
the most arduous, the most contrary to our instincts but the only one
which can give what it promises.
As he comes from the hand of Nature, Man thinks only of himself, loves
nothing but himself. Little by little, with tremendous but slow efforts,
he succeeds in loving for a while his woman, and his children, in
tolerating his accomplices in the hunt, in assassination and in war.
Very rarely is he able to love a friend; more easily he hates the man
who loves him. He does not dream of loving the man who hates him.
All this explains why Jesus commands us to love our enemies. To make
over the entire man, to create a new man, the most tenacious center of
the old man must be destroyed. From self-love come all the misfortunes,
massacres and miseries of the world. To tame the old Adam self-love must
be torn out of him, and in its place must be put the love most opposed
to his present nature, love for his enemies. The total transformation of
man is such a sublime paradox that it can be reached only by fantastic
means. It is an extraordinary undertaking, wild and unnatural, to be
accomplished only with an extraordinary exaltation, opposed to Nature.
Until now man has loved himself and hated those who hate him; the man of
the future, the inhabitant of the Kingdom, must hate himself and love
those who hate him. To love one’s neighbor as one’s self is an
insufficient formula, a concession to universal egotism. For he who
loves himself cannot perfectly love others, and finds himself perforce
in conflict with others. Only hatred for ourselves is sufficient. If we
love ourselves, we admire ourselves, we flatter ourselves too much. To
overcome this blind love, we need to see our nothingness, our baseness,
our infamy. Hatred of ourselves is humility, is the beginning of
improvement, of perfection. And only the humble shall enter into the
Kingdom of Heaven because they alone feel how far they are from it. We
are angered at others because our dear ego feels undeservedly offended,
not sufficiently served by others; we kill our brother because he seems
an obstacle to _our_ good; we steal for the love of _our_ body, we
fornicate to give pleasure to our body; envy, mother of rivalry and of
wars, is merely sorrow because another has more than we, or has what we
have not; pride is the expression of our certainty of being of more
account than others, of possessing more than others, of knowing more
than others. All the things which religions, morals, and laws call sins,
vices, and crimes begin in self-love, in the hatred for others which
springs out of that one solitary, disordered love.
What right have we to hate our enemies, when we ourselves have been
guilty of the same fault for which we think we have the right to hate
them; when we ourselves have been guilty of hatred? What right have we
to hate them, even if they have done wrong, even if we believe them
wicked, when we ourselves nearly always have done the same wrong
actions, have been defiled with the same pitch? What right have we to
hate them if nearly always we are responsible for their hate? We, who
with the endless errors of our monstrous self-love, have forced them to
hate us? And he who hates is unhappy, is the first to suffer. We ought
to respond with love to that hatred, with gentleness to that harshness
as reparation for the suffering of which we are often the real cause,
immediate or distant.
Our enemy is also our savior. We ought every day to be grateful to our
enemies; they alone see clearly and state openly what is ignoble in us;
they make us conscious of our moral poverty, the realization of which is
the only beginning for the second birth. For this service we owe them
love. For our enemy needs love, and needs our love. He who loves us
already has his joy and reward in himself. He needs no reward from us.
But he who hates is unhappy; hates because he is unhappy. His hatred is
the bitter outlet for his sufferings. We are partly guilty for this
suffering, and even if, over-confident in our innocence, we do not feel
that we are responsible, we ought nevertheless to comfort with love the
unhappiness of the man who hates, to calm him, make him better, convert
him also to the beatitudes of loving. We will know him better if we love
him, and knowing him better, we will love him more. We only love
heartily what we know well. If we love our enemy, his soul will be
transparent to us, and as we penetrate further into it, we will discover
much more to call forth our pity and our love; because every enemy is an
unrecognized brother; we often hate in him what resembles our own
natures. Something of ourselves, unknown perhaps to us, is in our enemy
and is often the cause of our hostility. When we love our enemies we
purify our spirit by understanding and lift his spirit upward. Hatred,
instead of driving men apart, may thus engender a light that liberates
men’s souls. The worst of evil may bring about the highest good.
This is the reason why Jesus commands us to reverse the ordinary and
customary relations of men. When man loves what he now hates, and hates
what he now loves, he will be the opposite of what he is to-day. And if
life now is made up of evils and despair, the new, changed life being
the opposite of what we now have, will be all goodness and consolation.
For the first time we shall know happiness; the Kingdom of Heaven will
begin on earth. We will find that eternal Paradise, lost because the
first men wished to learn the difference between good and evil. But for
absolute love like the love of God the Father, there is neither good nor
evil. Evil is overwhelmed by the good. Paradise was love, love between
man and God, between man and woman. The new earthly paradise, the
paradise regained, will be the love of every man for all men. Christ is
He who leads Adam back to the gates of the garden, teaches him how he
can enter and live there always.
The descendants of Adam have not believed Christ; they have repeated His
words but have not obeyed them, and because their hearts are stubborn,
men are still groaning in an earthly Hell, which century by century goes
on becoming more infernal. When the torments finally become unendurable,
then the damned themselves will suddenly learn to hate hatred, the dying
rebels in the extremity of their despair will learn to love their
executioners. Then, at last, from the depths of sorrowful gloom will
shine out the pure splendor of a miraculous spring.
OUR FATHER