Transcriber’s Note: Italics are enclosed in _underscores_. Superscripts
are indicated by carets and braces: 5^{me}. Additional notes will be
found near the end of this ebook.
HISTORY AS PAST ETHICS
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE
HISTORY OF MORALS
BY
PHILIP VAN NESS MYERS
FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI. AUTHOR OF “ANCIENT HISTORY,”
“MEDIÆVAL AND MODERN HISTORY,” AND
“A GENERAL HISTORY”
GINN AND COMPANY
BOSTON · NEW YORK · CHICAGO · LONDON
ATLANTA · DALLAS · COLUMBUS · SAN FRANCISCO
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY
PHILIP VAN NESS MYERS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
526.2
The Athenæum Press
GINN AND COMPANY · PROPRIETORS
· BOSTON · U.S.A.
TO
I. C. M.
My conviction gains infinitely
the moment another soul will
believe in it.--NOVALIS
PREFACE
This work completes the series of historical textbooks which I
began more than thirty years ago. It is an expansion of a course of
lectures given for several years to my advanced classes in history,
and is designed as a brief introduction to the history of morals. In
treating the science of morals as a branch of history my thought is,
without trenching in the least upon the domain of the philosophy of
morals, to make the work of the department of history more helpfully
introductory than it has hitherto been to that of the department of
moral philosophy. The book is the outgrowth of a conviction that the
philosophy of ethics, if it shall become a stimulus and guide to
social service and humanitarian effort,--especially if it shall bring
reënforcement to that ethical idealism which so largely motives the
present-day movement for world peace,--must be based on a knowledge of
the facts of the moral life of the race in all the various stages of
the historic evolution, and that to gather and systematize these facts
is a part of the task of the historian, indeed the most important part
of his task. It is my hope that teachers of both history and ethics may
find the book helpful, whether made the basis of classroom discussion
or of lecture comment.
P. V. N. M.
COLLEGE HILL
CINCINNATI, OHIO
Ethics gives to History its rational goal; and all morality has the
perfect shaping of universal history as its ultimate end. A real
understanding of history is not possible without ethics; universal
history is the realization of the moral ... within humanity.--ADOLF
WUTTKE.
The real advance made by Thucydides consists, perhaps, in this,
that he perceived the motive forces of human history to be in the
moral constitution of human nature.--LEOPOLD VON RANKE.
Ethics, if it is to become truly a science, must shun the path of
speculation and follow closely the historical method.... Range in
fancy over the whole circle of the sciences, and you will find
there no place for ethics save as a branch of human history....
Given the earliest morality of which we have any written record, to
trace from it through progressive stages the morality of to-day;
that is the problem, and the only problem which can fall to a
truly scientific ethics.... Ethics as the comparative history
of universal morality is the vestibule to the temple of moral
philosophy.--JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. THE DAWN OF MORALITY: CONSCIENCE IN THE KINSHIP GROUP 12
I. INSTITUTIONS, IDEAS, AND CONDITIONS OF LIFE
DETERMINING THE RULES OF CONDUCT 12
II. ESSENTIAL FACTS OF KINSHIP OR INTRATRIBAL MORALITY 15
III. THE BEGINNINGS OF INTERTRIBAL MORALITY 22
III. THE MORAL LIFE IN ANCIENT EGYPT: AN IDEAL OF SOCIAL
JUSTICE 30
I. CIRCUMSTANCES AND IDEAS WHICH MOLDED AND MOTIVED
MORALITY 30
II. THE IDEAL 33
IV. THE BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN CONSCIENCE 45
V. CHINESE MORALS: AN IDEAL OF FILIAL PIETY 53
I. IDEAS, INSTITUTIONS, AND HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTANCES
DETERMINING THE CAST OF THE MORAL IDEAL 53
II. THE IDEAL 60
III. EFFECTS OF THE IDEAL UPON CHINESE LIFE AND HISTORY 69
VI. JAPANESE MORALS: AN IDEAL OF LOYALTY 77
I. FORMATIVE AND MODIFYING INFLUENCES 77
II. THE IDEAL 80
III. SOME SIGNIFICANT FACTS IN THE MORAL HISTORY OF JAPAN 87
VII. THE ETHICAL IDEALS OF INDIA 95
PART I. THE ETHICS OF BRAHMANISM--A CLASS MORALITY 95
I. HISTORICAL AND SPECULATIVE BASIS OF THE SYSTEM 95
II. THE VARIOUS MORAL STANDARDS 101
PART II. THE ETHICS OF BUDDHISM: AN IDEAL OF SELF-CONQUEST
AND UNIVERSAL BENEVOLENCE 106
I. THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THE SYSTEM 106
II. THE IDEAL 110
III. SOME EXPRESSIONS OF THE ETHICAL SPIRIT OF BUDDHISM 115
VIII. THE ETHICS OF ZOROASTRIANISM: AN IDEAL OF COMBAT 123
I. PHILOSOPHICAL AND RELIGIOUS IDEAS WHICH CREATED THE
ETHICAL TYPE 123
II. THE IDEAL 126
III. THE PRACTICE 131
IX. THE MORAL EVOLUTION IN ISRAEL: AN IDEAL OF OBEDIENCE TO A
REVEALED LAW 135
I. THE RELIGIOUS BASIS OF HEBREW MORALITY 135
II. THE EVOLUTION OF THE MORAL IDEAL 140
1. The Development up to the Exile 140
2. The Morality of the Prophets of the Exile 157
3. The Moral Life in the Postexilic Age 162
X. THE MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF HELLAS: AN IDEAL OF
SELF-REALIZATION 169
I. INSTITUTIONS AND IDEAS DETERMINING THE MORAL TYPE 169
II. THE IDEAL 174
III. LIMITATIONS AND DEFECTS OF THE IDEAL 179
IV. THE MORAL EVOLUTION 185
XI. ROMAN MORALS: AN IDEAL OF CIVIC DUTY 212
I. INSTITUTIONS AND CONDITIONS OF LIFE DETERMINING THE
EARLY MORAL TYPE 212
II. THE PRIMITIVE MORAL TYPE 214
III. THE MORAL EVOLUTION UNDER THE REPUBLIC 218
IV. THE MORAL EVOLUTION UNDER THE PAGAN EMPIRE 231
XII. THE ETHICS OF DOCTRINAL CHRISTIANITY: AN IDEAL OF RIGHT
BELIEF 255
I. RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND THEOLOGICAL DOGMAS MOLDING THE
IDEAL 256
II. THE MORAL IDEAL 261
XIII. MORAL HISTORY OF THE AGE OF CHRISTIAN ASCETICISM 267
I. CONCEPTIONS OF LIFE AND HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTANCES THAT
PRODUCED THE ASCETIC IDEAL 267
II. THE IDEAL AND ITS CHIEF TYPES 270
III. THE CHIEF MORAL FACTS OF THE PERIOD 272
XIV. THE ETHICS OF ISLAM: A MARTIAL IDEAL 288
I. RELIGIOUS BASIS OF THE MORAL SYSTEM 288
II. THE MORAL CODE 289
III. THE MORAL LIFE 293
XV. THE MORAL LIFE OF EUROPE DURING THE AGE OF CHIVALRY 300
I. THE CHURCH CONSECRATES THE MARTIAL IDEAL OF
KNIGHTHOOD 300
II. THE COMPOSITE IDEAL OF KNIGHTHOOD 306
III. THE CHIEF MORAL PHENOMENA OF THE PERIOD 309
XVI. RENAISSANCE ETHICS: REVIVAL OF NATURALISM IN MORALS 320
I. DETERMINING INFLUENCES 320
II. SOME ESSENTIAL FACTS IN THE MORAL HISTORY OF THE AGE 322
XVII. ETHICS OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 333
I. PRINCIPLES OF THE REFORMATION OF ETHICAL IMPORT 333
II. SOME IMPORTANT MORAL OUTCOMES OF THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY
RELIGIOUS REFORM 334
XVIII. THE MORAL EVOLUTION SINCE THE INCOMING OF DEMOCRACY: THE
NEW SOCIAL AND INTERNATIONAL CONSCIENCE 340
I. FORCES DETERMINING THE TREND OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 340
II. EXPRESSIONS OF THE NEW MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN
DIFFERENT DOMAINS OF LIFE AND THOUGHT 344
1. The Ethics of Democracy 344
2. The Ethics of Industrialism 347
3. The Ethics of Modern Science 353
4. The Ethics of Theology 360
5. Social Ethics: the New Social Conscience 364
6. International Ethics: the New International
Conscience 371
INDEX 383
HISTORY AS PAST ETHICS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
[Sidenote: The ethical
interpretation of history]
Professor Freeman defined history as “past politics.” Mr. Buckle argued
that the essence of the historical evolution consists in intellectual
progress.[1] Many present-day economists hold that the dominant forces
in the historical development are economic.[2] Churchmen consistently
make the chief factor in history to be religion.
Whether the upholders of these several interpretations of history
would have us understand them as speaking of the ultimate goal of the
historic evolution, or merely of the dominant motive under which men
and society act, none of these interpretations can be accepted by the
student of the facts of the moral life of the race as a true reading
of history. To him not only does moral progress constitute the very
essence of the historic movement, but the ethical motive presents
itself as the most constant and regulative force in the evolution of
humanity. His chief interest in all the other factors of the historical
evolution is in noting in what way and in what measure they have
contributed to the growth and enrichment of the moral life of mankind.
Thus the historian of morals is deeply interested in the growth of
political institutions among men, but chiefly in observing in what way
these institutions have affected for good or for evil the moral life of
the nation. Particularly is the progress of the world toward political
unity a matter of profound concern to him, not because he regards the
establishment of the world state as an end in itself, but because the
universal state alone can furnish those conditions under which the
moral life of humanity can most freely expatiate and find its noblest
and truest expression.
It is the same with intellectual progress. The student of morals
recognizes the fact that the progress of the race in morality is
normally dependent upon its progress in knowledge--that conscience
waits upon the intellect. But in opposition to Buckle and those of
his school, he maintains that, so far from an advance in knowledge
constituting the essence of a progressive civilization, this
mental advance constitutes merely the condition precedent of real
civilization, the distinctive characteristic of which must be a true
morality. A civilization or culture which does not include this is
doomed to quick retrogression and decay. As Benjamin Kidd truly
observes, “When the intellectual development of any section of the
race, for the time being, outruns the ethical development, natural
selection has apparently weeded it out like any other unsuitable
product.”[3]
As with the political and intellectual elements of civilization so is
it with the economic. The outward forms of the moral life are, it is
true, largely determined by the industry of a people; but the informing
spirit of morality is the expression of an implanted faculty. It is
elicited but not created by environment. No industrial order from
which it is lacking can long endure. Natural selection condemns it
as unfit. And this we are beginning to recognize--that economics and
ethics cannot be divorced, that every great industrial problem is at
bottom a moral problem. To the student of the ethical phase of history
all social reformers from the old Hebrew prophets down to Karl Marx
and Henry George are primarily moralists pleading for social justice,
equity, and righteousness.
And preëminently the same is it with religion. Religion has been a
great part of the life of man, and the historian of morals must be a
diligent student of the religious systems of the world, but mainly
because religion has been in general such a potent agency in the moral
education of mankind. For it is the ethical factor in the great world
religions which constitutes their universal and permanent element.
“It is the function of religion to kindle moral enthusiasm in society
at large.”[4] “Christianity has no other function or value than as an
aid to morality.”[5] All the great religions of the world--Buddhism,
Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism (reckoning historic Judaism as
beginning with the great prophets of the ninth and eighth centuries
B.C.), Christianity, and Islam--began as moral reforms.[6]
In short, in the words of Wellhausen, “Morality is that for the sake of
which all other things exist; it is the alone essential thing in the
world.”[7] The really constructive and regulative forces in history are
in truth moral ideas and convictions. And there is vast significance
in this--that the ethical motive, never absent and always active, is
constantly becoming more and more dominant in the processes of the
historical evolution. As the ages pass there enters into history--we
shall see this to be so later--an ever larger ethical element.
Conscience becomes ever more and more involved in the personal,
national, and international affairs of the world.
[Sidenote: The history of morals
in the main a record of the
expansion of the circle covered by
the moral feelings]
Moral progress consists not so much in changes in the quality or
intensity of the moral emotions, although these gain in diversity,
purity, and refinement as time passes, as in the successive
enlargements of the circle of persons embraced by the moral
feelings.[8] “It is not the sense of duty to a neighbor, but the
practical answer to the question, Who is my neighbor? that has
varied.”[9] As we shall see when we come to examine the morality of
primitive man, the moral feelings embrace at first only kinsmen, that
is, the members of one’s own family, clan, or social group. All others
are outside the moral pale. But gradually this circle grows larger and
embraces in successive expansions the tribe, the city, the nation, and
lastly humanity.
This expansion of the area covered by the moral feelings is the
dominant fact in the moral history of mankind. It is the overlooking
of this fact that has caused writers like Buckle to make their strange
misreading of history and to maintain that though man during historic
times has made immense progress on material and intellectual lines, he
has made little or no progress in morality. The truth is, as we shall
learn, that in no domain has progress been greater, the gains larger or
more precious, than in the moral. From clan morality, based on physical
kinship, mankind has advanced or is advancing to world morality, based
on the ethical kinship of men. This is the one increasing purpose
running through all history--the creation of a moral order embracing
the whole human race.
[Sidenote: Sources for the history
of morals]
The facts for a history of morals must be sought chiefly outside the
literature of ethical theory and speculation. They must be looked
for in the customs, laws, institutions, mythologies, literatures,
maxims, and religions of the different races, peoples, and ages of
history.[10] In all these there is always an ethical element; often
this forms their very essence. “In every sentence of the penal code,”
as the moralist Wilhelm Wundt remarks, “there speaks the voice of an
objective moral conscience.” In truth all law codes, whether civil or
criminal, are essentially nothing more nor less than the embodiment of
man’s conceptions of what is just and unjust. Mythologies, literatures,
and philosophies are charged with moral sentiment. In religion there
struggle for utterance the deepest moral feelings and convictions of
the human soul.
[Sidenote: The moral ideal]
The moral life fulfills itself in many ways. Every age and every race
has its own moral type or ideal.[11] This, as we shall use the term,
may be defined as a group of virtues held in esteem by a given people
or a given age. It is the accepted standard of conduct, of excellence,
of character. This ideal may be a very simple thing, embracing only a
few rudimentary virtues, as in the case of peoples on the lower levels
of culture; or it may be a very complex thing, embracing many and
refined virtues, as in the case of civilized societies in which the
mutual relationships of the members are many and various.
The history of morals is in the main an account of moral ideals or
types.[12] Indeed so large is the part that these have played in the
growth and decay of races and civilizations that universal history may
be defined quite accurately as “the paleontology of moral ideals.”[13]
There is one thing about a moral ideal which sets it apart from all
other ideals. It possesses a unique dynamic force. All ideals, it is
true, have in them the impulsion to their embodiment in reality. But in
a moral ideal there is the added imperative of conscience. There speaks
from it the majestic voice of duty, demanding that the ideal be made
actual in the life of the individual and of society. It is this that
has made moral ideals such molding and constructive forces in history.
[Sidenote: Composite moral ideals
or types]
There is a striking analogy between the different types of moral
character and the different types of human beauty. Thus corresponding
to the great types of masculine and feminine beauty there are masculine
and feminine types of moral excellence. And then, just as the elements
of the two chief types of feminine beauty, the blond and the brunette,
combine to form a great variety of mixed or composite types, so do the
elements of the chief types of goodness blend into many composite types
of character.[14]
There is no more instructive chapter in the history of morals than that
which has to do with the formation of these composite ethical types,
since these are often the most significant results of those great race
collisions and comminglings which make up so much of the history of
the past; for when races meet and mingle they blend not only their
blood but also their consciences. There appears not only a new physical
man but also a new moral man.
Thus the fusion of races in Europe has resulted in a great fusion
of moralities. The conscience of Europe is a very composite one,
including Greek, Roman, Hebraic, Celtic, Gothic, and Slavonic elements.
This heterogeneous conscience, so different, for instance, from the
comparatively homogeneous conscience of ancient Egypt and of China,
has been the most important factor in the life and civilization of
the European people. It is largely because Europe has been constantly
getting a new conscience that its history has been so disturbed and
so progressive, just as it is largely because China has had the same
Confucian conscience for two thousand years and more, that her history
has been so uneventful and unchanging.
[Sidenote: Causes which determine
and which modify the moral type]
Though every race and every age, since man is by nature a moral
being, must have some type or standard of moral goodness, still the
cast and content of this type is determined by a great variety of
circumstances, such as the stage of intellectual development, the
physical environment, social and political institutions, occupation,
and speculative and religious ideas.[15]
The stage of intellectual development of a given society determines
in general whether the moral standard shall be high or low. Peoples
still on the level of savagery must necessarily have a very simple
moral code, embracing only a few rudimentary virtues. As a people or
race progresses in intelligence and the mental horizon widens, the
moral sense becomes clarified and the moral standard comes to embrace
new and refined virtues, corresponding to the larger and truer mental
life; for, speaking broadly, there is a general coincidence between
intellectual and moral growth. To create a new intellectual life is to
create a new moral life.[16]
Physical environment is also a potent agency in determining the cast of
the moral type. Thus the hot depressing climate and the prodigality of
nature in the tropics foster the passive, quietistic virtues; while the
harsher and more grudging nature of the temperate regions favors the
development of the active, industrial virtues. The strongly contrasted
moral types of the peoples of the tropic regions of the earth and
those of the temperate lands may without reasonable doubt be ascribed,
in part at least, to differences in the climatic and other physical
influences to which these peoples have been subjected through long
periods of time.
More positively influential in the formation of moral ideas and
feelings are social institutions. Thus the place which a whole group of
moral qualities that we designate as domestic virtues are assigned in
the ethical standard is determined by the place which circumstances may
have given the family in the social organism. In ancient Sparta, for
example, where certain influences subordinated the family in an unusual
degree to the state, the family virtues held a very low place, indeed
scarcely any place at all, in the moral ideal; while in China, where
certain notions of the relation of the spirits of the dead members of
the family to its living members created a remarkable solidarity of
the family group, the domestic virtues, and among them preëminently
the virtue of filial piety, came to determine the entire cast of the
general ideal of goodness.
Government is another potent agency in molding the moral type.
Patriarchal monarchy and popular government tend each to nourish a
distinct morality, so that we speak of the ethics of monarchy and the
ethics of democracy. As time passes, governments, speaking broadly,
become constantly more and more ethical in aim and purpose, and hence
act more and more dynamically upon the moral evolution. The greatest
force making for a truer and higher morality in the world to-day is
political democracy.[17]
More effective than any of the agencies thus far mentioned in
determining the moral code of a people is occupation. “Man’s
character,” as the economist Alfred Marshall truly affirms, “has been
molded by his everyday work ... more than by any other influence
unless it be that of his religious ideals.”[18] Every occupation
develops a characteristic group of virtues. This is especially true of
agriculture. “The cultivation of the soil,” says Wedgwood, “cultivates
much besides--it molds ideals, implants aspirations, creates permanent
tendencies. It gives, where it is the predominant industry, to the
character of a people its moral stamp.”[19]
Finally we mention religion as the most potent of all agencies in the
molding of the moral type.[20] Religion has been the great schoolmaster
in the moral education of the race. It is true that religion has to go
to school itself in morals before it can become a schoolmaster. That
is to say, religion in its beginnings is in the main unethical. In its
lower manifestations it is hardly more than a system of incantations
and sorcery. One of the most important facts of the moral history
of the race is the gradual moralization of man’s at first unethical
conception of the gods, and the rise out of the unethical religions of
primitive times of the great ethical world religions.
[Sidenote: In what virtue or moral
goodness consists]
Having defined ethical ideals and noted the agencies determining their
cast and content, we may now seek an answer, in terms of the ethical
ideal, to the question, In what does moral goodness consist? All the
truly great seers and moral teachers of the race have here the same
word for us, and it is this: Do the thing thou seest to be good;
realize thy ideal. In the words of Sabatier, “The essential thing
in the world is not to serve this ideal or that, but with all one’s
soul to serve the ideal which one has chosen.” Such loyalty to one’s
ideal is moral goodness.[21] This imperative of conscience that one be
true and loyal to the best one knows is the only thing absolute and
categorical in the utterance of the moral faculty.
[Sidenote: Every age must be
judged by its own moral standard]
“A man must learn a great deal,” says Marcus Aurelius, “to enable him
to pass a correct judgment on another man’s acts.”[22] And among the
things which he must first learn is this--that the men of every age
have their own standard of excellence and that they can be judged
fairly only by their own code of morals.[23] It is largely because of
the general ignorance of the history of moral ideals that there is
so much uncharitableness in the world, so much intolerance, so much
race prejudice and hatred. As one’s intellectual outlook broadens, as
he becomes acquainted with the various types of goodness of different
peoples and different ages, he becomes more liberal and charitable in
his moral judgments, since he comes to understand that moral character
is determined not by the ideal of conduct but by the way in which this
ideal is lived up to. “There may be as genuine self-devotion,” declares
the moralist Professor Green, “in the act of the barbarian warrior
who gives his life that his tribe may win a piece of land from its
neighbors, as in that of the missionary who dies in carrying the gospel
to the heathen.”[24]
Studying the ideals of races and epochs in the spirit of these words,
we shall make some fruitful discoveries. We shall learn for one thing
that since the beginning of the truly ethical age there has ever been
about the same degree of conscientiousness in the world; that the
different ages, viewed in respect to their moral life, have differed
chiefly in the degree of light they have enjoyed, and consequently in
their conceptions of what is noblest in conduct, of what constitutes
duty, not in their fealty or lack of fealty to their chosen standard
of excellence. That is to say, speaking broadly, the majority of men
in every age and in every land have ever followed loyally the right
as they have been given to see the right.[25] “If men and times were
really understood,” the historian Von Holst truly observes, “the moral
fault of their follies and crimes will almost always appear diminished
by one half.”
CHAPTER II
THE DAWN OF MORALITY: CONSCIENCE IN THE KINSHIP GROUP
I. INSTITUTIONS, IDEAS, AND CONDITIONS OF LIFE DETERMINING THE RULES OF
CONDUCT
[Sidenote: The kinship group]
The most important social product of the human evolution on the lower
levels of civilization was the patriarchal family or clan. This
community of kinsfolk is the great history-making group. It was the
seed plot and nursery not only of almost every social and political
institution of the historic peoples, but of their morality as well.
In the bosom of this group were born and nurtured the chief of those
affections and sentiments into which enters an ethical element and
which form the basis of the moral life.[26]
The fundamental bond uniting this group was the bond of blood. The
members of the group were, or believed themselves to be, the actual
descendants of a common ancestor. It was this tie of blood, this
physical relationship real or assumed, that rendered the clan such a
closely knit body and created its feeling of corporate oneness. “The
members of one kindred,” says W. Robertson Smith in describing this
characteristic of the Semitic clan, “looked on themselves as one living
whole, a single animated mass of blood, flesh, and bones, of which no
member could be touched without all the members suffering.... If one of
the clan has been murdered, they say ‘Our blood has been shed.’”[27]
Compared with this sense of solidarity as it is found among certain
of the negro clans in Africa, the feeling of solidarity of the family
among European peoples “is thin and feeble.”[28]
It was this corporate consciousness of the primitive clan that created
its moral solidarity. It naturally called into existence those
altruistic sentiments that formed the ground out of which grew man’s
earliest feelings of moral obligation.
[Sidenote: The religious
bond--ancestor worship]
There was a second bond uniting the members of the kinship group.
They were united not only by the ties of physical kinship but also
by the bonds of a common cult. This was the worship of ancestors. To
realize the ethical educative value of this worship we must recall
the remarkable constitution of the clan. This group of kinsmen has a
visible and an invisible side. There are the earthly members of the
group and the spirit members--the souls of the dead. These spirit
members are the protectors of the little group, the punishers of
wrongdoing, the conservators of morals. Among the most sacred duties of
the earthly members are the duties they owe to these spirit members;
for these spirits have need of many things, especially of meat and
drink at the grave, and it is the duty of their earthly kinsmen to
supply all these wants. The earth group is thus enveloped in a sort of
sacred atmosphere, and in this atmosphere are nurtured those ethical
sentiments which form the most precious product of history.
As an agency in the moralizing of the life of the race it would be
difficult to exaggerate the importance of ancestor worship. To no other
form of religion, save ethical monotheism, does morality owe so large
a debt. In this cult religion and morality are at one almost at the
outset,[29] whereas in nature cults, or the cults of nature gods, it
is generally only at a late period that these elements are united. It
was this cult of ancestors which formed the basis of an essential part
of the morality of the Greeks and Romans, particularly the latter, at
the first appearance of these peoples in history, and which to-day, as
the chief religion of the Chinese, Japanese, and other peoples of the
Far East, fosters the best virtues of a third of the human race.
[Sidenote: Conceptions of the god
world]
Another influence determining the moral code of primitive man is his
ideas of the god world. It is true that the conceptions formed of the
gods by the untutored mind are for the most part crude and unethical.
But man ever makes and remakes his gods in his own image; therefore
as soon as an ethical element begins to enter into his own life he
begins to moralize the character of his gods. At this stage the god
world begins to react favorably upon the moral life of man. The gods
are now conceived as taking notice of the conduct of men and as
approving certain acts as right and disapproving certain other acts as
wrong. Especially are they believed to punish atrocious crimes, such
as the slaying of a kinsman and the breaking of the word sworn by the
oath-god. In this way primitive man’s ideas of deity react favorably
upon his morality.
The gods further advance morality by being invoked as the witnesses and
guardians of treaties between clans and tribes. By thus giving an added
sanctity to solemn engagements mutually entered into by communities
they widen the moral domain and become the promoters of intertribal
morality.[30]
[Sidenote: The fact that
competition is between communities
and not between individuals]
In nothing perhaps does primitive society differ more widely from
modern than in the fact that the competition or struggle for existence
is between communities and not between individuals. Within the
kinship group life is almost wholly communistic. There is practically
no competition between the individuals of the community such as
characterizes societies advanced in civilization. The only real
competition is that between communities. And here the struggle for
existence or for superiority is generally habitual and ruthless, often
being carried to the point of the complete destruction of one of the
competing communities.
These conditions of existence have vast significance for morality. Just
as the individual competition in cultured societies molds an essential
part of their moral code, so does the group competition of races still
in the clan or tribal stage of civilization determine what qualities of
character shall be developed among them. As we shall see in a moment,
it makes them strong in the clan virtues.
II. ESSENTIAL FACTS OF KINSHIP OR INTRATRIBAL MORALITY
[Sidenote: The life of primitive
peoples largely unmoral]
As students of morals our chief interest in primeval man as he emerges
from the obscurity of prehistoric times is not concerning the degree
of skill he has developed in making his weapons or in constructing
for himself a shelter, nor concerning what advance he has made in the
arts of weaving and pottery, nor yet concerning what kind of social
arrangements he has worked out; our main interest in this primeval man
as he appears on the threshold of the historic day is not concerning
these or any like things, but rather respecting what kind of a
conscience has grown up within him during those long prehistoric ages
of struggle, privation, watch and ward.
The first fact that compels our notice here is that the life of the
savage is largely _un_moral.[31] His activities to secure food,
shelter, and clothing arise from purely animal impulses, such as hunger
and cold. Into all of these activities, however, there enters as time
passes an ethical element.[32] The economic life, in a word, comes
more and more under the dominance of moral feelings and motives.[33]
Conscience becomes more and more involved in all these matters. This
gradual moralization of these at first nonmoral activities of primitive
man constitutes one of the most important phases of the moral evolution
of the race.
[Sidenote: The “goodness” of
uncivilized races largely a
negative goodness]
A second fact in the moral life of savages that claims our attention
is that much that is counted unto them for “goodness” is a purely
negative goodness. Failure in discrimination here often results in a
wrong estimate of their morality as compared with that of advanced
communities. Thus in portraying the manners and customs of primitive
peoples, some writers, like Tacitus in his account of the early German
folk, laud their morals as superior to those of civilized men. This
opinion is based rather on the absence among such peoples of the usual
vices and crimes of civilized societies than on the practice by them
of the higher positive virtues.[34] But the absence of the vices which
characterize civilization is to be explained, of course, by the simpler
organization of society and the fewer temptations to wrongdoing. Thus
the single circumstance that the institution of individual property has
not yet come into existence, or at least has not as yet received any
great extension, accounts for the comparative absence of crimes against
property, which constitute probably the greater number of criminal acts
in civilized society.
[Sidenote: The true starting
point of the historic ethical
development]
But notwithstanding that so much of the life of primitive man is
lived on the nonmoral plane, and that much which is reckoned unto
him for goodness is merely negative goodness, still in certain of
his activities growing out of his clan relationships we discover the
beginnings of all human morality. For as we have already said, the true
starting point of the moral evolution of mankind is to be sought in the
altruistic sentiments nourished in the atmosphere of the kinship group.
There is scarcely an ethical sentiment which does not appear here
at least in a rudimentary form. Out of the most sacred and intimate
relationships of the group we find springing up the maternal virtues
of patience, tenderness, and self-denial,[35] and the filial virtues
of love, obedience, and reverence; out of the fellowship of the men in
hunting and in war[36] we see developing the manly virtues of courage,
fortitude, self-control, and, above all, self-devotion to the common
good; out of the hearth worship of ancestors[37] we observe springing
up many of those religious-ethical feelings and sentiments which form
one of the chief moral forces in civilization; out of the sacrificial
meal shared with the gods and the spirits of the dead through
offerings of portions of the food and drink, we see forming customs
of incalculable moral value in the ethical training of the race.[38]
A great part of the history of morals consists in the record of how
these earliest forms of social virtues, first nourished by the customs,
habits, and practices of the kinship group, have been gradually refined
and developed into wider and richer forms of ethical sentiment and
feeling.
[Sidenote: Custom as the maker of
group morality]
There is one special feature of this germinal morality to which our
attention must now be directed. It is what is often called customary
morality. That is to say, the standard of right and wrong in the
kinship community is custom. Custom is the lawgiver, and morality
consists in following custom. The individual, in a word, follows
the tribal or group conscience rather than the dictates of his own
conscience. Indeed there is practically no such thing here as a private
conscience. Individualism has not yet arisen. No one ordinarily has
private notions of right and wrong which he feels impelled to set up
against the immemorial customs and usages of the community.[39]
But there is really nothing in this fact which sets this nascent
morality apart from our own. It differs from ours not in kind but
only in degree. The morality of the masses is still largely customary
morality. Most persons in their social relations, in business, and
in religion, follow unthinkingly the tribal conscience, that is,
the conventional morality of the society of which they are members,
rather than their own individual sense of right and wrong. “Reflective
morality” is still the morality of the few. The ever-renewed moral task
of man is to change the customary tribal conscience into a reflective
individual conscience.
[Sidenote: Collective
responsibility]
There is still another phase of the incipient morality of the kinship
group which claims our attention because of its significance for the
history of the evolution of morals. It is a group morality, that is, a
morality based on the idea of collective responsibility.
This conception presents one of the most striking phenomena in the
history of the moral evolution of mankind. Among peoples in the earlier
stages of moral development the family or clan group rather than the
individual is regarded as the ethical unit, and the act of any member
of this group, when such act concerns a member or members of another
social group, is looked upon as the act of the whole body to which he
belongs.[40] For the wrongdoing of one all are held responsible.[41]
This group morality, with which the true history of the unfolding
moral consciousness of the race begins, we shall meet with as a sort
of survival in every stage of the moral progress of humanity from
the lowest to the highest level of culture. “It is,” in the words of
Hobhouse, “one of the dominant facts, if not _the_ dominant fact,
ethically considered, in the evolution of human society.”[42] The
account of that slow change in the moral consciousness of man which has
gradually caused group morality, in most spheres of life and thought,
to give place to individual morality, that is, to that conception of
moral responsibility which holds every man responsible for his own act,
and only for his own act, makes up one of the most instructive chapters
in the moral history of the world.[43] We shall find significant
survivals of this idea of collective responsibility, particularly in
the religious domain. In truth, a large part of religious history is
nothing more nor less than an account of the influence and outworkings
of this notion. Men making their gods like unto themselves have
imagined them as acting on this principle of communal responsibility,
and as bringing upon a whole people pestilence, famine, war, or other
calamity in revenge or punishment for some neglect in worship or act of
sacrilege on the part of perhaps a single member of the tribe or nation.
By the early Fathers of the Church this idea of collective
responsibility, embodied in the doctrine of the imputation of the guilt
of the transgression of the first man Adam to all his descendants to
the end of the world, was given a prominent place in Christian theology
and has been a great force in molding the morality of the Western world.
Again, we find this idea of group morality embodied in the war ethics
of the modern nations, which, regarded from one point of view, is
largely group ethics, that is to say, the survival in the domain of
international relations of ethical ideas that had their birth on the
low intellectual and moral levels of barbarism.
As we follow the upward trend of the lines of the moral evolution of
the race we shall hear louder and louder protests against this notion
of communal responsibility, especially when this form of human morality
has been transferred to the heavens and made a fundamental principle of
the divine government.
[Sidenote: The duty of revenge;
the blood feud]
In primitive society if a man slay a kinsman, he is punished by
outlawry, that is, by expulsion from the family or clan.[44] The
story of Cain, the first murderer of a kinsman in Hebrew legend, is
typical.[45] If, however, a member of a clan is slain by an outsider,
it is the duty of the nearest kinsman of the person killed, or of the
collective body of his kinsfolk, to kill in revenge the slayer or some
relative of his.[46] To ignore this obligation or to forgive the slayer
of one’s kinsman is regarded as base and cowardly.
As, through the advance of society, the ties of the clan become relaxed
and this group becomes more and more perfectly merged with the larger
group of the tribe or state of which it has become a part, and justice
comes to be administered by the tribal head or by regular tribunals,
then blood revenge on the part of the kinsmen of the slain gradually
ceases to be a duty and private vengeance becomes a crime. But this is
a slow evolution, and within societies far advanced in civilization
we often find belated groups still following with good conscience the
ancient custom of blood revenge. The vendetta in Italy and the feud in
some sections of our Southern states[47] are survivals or degenerate
forms of this primitive virtue.
[Sidenote: The _Lex talionis_]
Closely related to the punishment of homicide in primitive society is
punishment of lesser offenses, especially the infliction of bodily
injury, within the social group. Here, too, private vengeance rules.
The person wronged or injured inflicts such punishment upon the
offender as passion or resentment may dictate. As time passes, however,
and the sense of justice grows more discriminating, there are limits
set to this private vengeance. There is established what is called
the rule of equivalence. The avenger is not allowed to wreak upon the
offender indiscriminate and unmeasured punishment, but is restricted
to the infliction upon him of exactly such injury and pain as he has
inflicted upon his victim. Hence arose the _Lex talionis_, limb for
limb, eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.[48] This regulation thus
registers an advance in moral feeling, and may be regarded as probably
the first rule of the criminal code of the nations.
[Sidenote: The virtue of courage;
its altruistic element]
In early society those virtues are most highly esteemed which are of
service to the clan or tribe. Thus courage comes to hold a first place
among the virtues. What is especially important to be noted here is
that under courage is hidden the virtue of self-sacrifice, which we
give the highest place in our ideal of character. It is this altruistic
element in courage which lends to it its real ethical quality. In
primitive society this virtue finds expression chiefly in the ready
self-devotion of the individual in battle for the common good.
Throughout pagan antiquity this virtue held a central place in
practically every ideal of excellence. In the words of Robertson
Smith, “This devotion to the common weal was, as every one knows, the
mainspring of ancient morality and the source of all the heroic virtues
of which ancient history presents so many illustrious examples.”[49]
III. THE BEGINNINGS OF INTERTRIBAL MORALITY
[Sidenote: Primitive man’s double
standard of morality]
The accounts given by travelers and observers of the morals of savages
often present a perplexing contrariety of opinion. Some writers
represent such people as absolutely without a moral sense, while
others, as has already been remarked, hold them up as models for
imitation by ourselves.
This contrariety in view results in part from an overlooking of the
fact, just pointed out, that the moral goodness of the savage is
largely a negative goodness, but chiefly from a failure to observe
that the shield has two sides, that is to say, that savages have a
double standard of morality--one standard regulating conduct within
the social group, and another regulating conduct toward outsiders.
Thus the command, “Thou shalt not kill,” means to the savage merely
that he shall not kill a kinsman. It has in his mind no application to
strangers, just as in our minds it has no application to animals.
It is the same in regard to lying. Savages in general have a high
regard for truthfulness, as they understand this virtue. The plighted
word among them is probably as sacredly kept as by the average of
civilized men.[50] The repute of many savage folk for untruthfulness
comes about from the fact that they do not think that a stranger has
any right to the truth. “Among themselves,” writes Professor Starr of
certain Congo tribes, “lying is not commended and truth is appreciated;
but to deceive a stranger or a white man is commendable.”[51]
And so it is with stealing. Many uncivilized peoples are charged, and
in a certain sense rightly, with making of theft a virtue. But it must
be borne in mind that to the savage all persons not members of his own
group are strangers and enemies. To steal from such is looked upon as a
most praiseworthy exploit, while to steal from the members of one’s own
group is regarded as a crime.[52]
[Sidenote: This dual morality a
survival in civilization]
Now the important thing to note here is that this double morality is
not something peculiar to the ethics of savages. This dualism runs
through the whole moral history of the race, from the beginning to the
present day, and constitutes one of the most important facts in the
moral evolution of humanity. We too, like the savage, have our double
standard of morality. The chief difference between us and the savage
is this: he puts his double standard in practice all the time, we only
occasionally. On occasion we fling aside our ordinary standard of
morality, lift the savage’s war standard, and then like the savage lie
and steal and kill--outside the tribe. To deceive the stranger now is
commendable; to steal from him proper and right; to kill him a glorious
exploit.
The great task of this century is to put an end to this scandal of
civilization, to teach men the oneness and universality of the moral
law, to get them to understand that right and wrong are right and wrong
everywhere--outside the tribe as well as within.
The history of intertribal or international morality, then, is the
record of its gradual assimilation to intratribal morality.[53] It is a
record of how the stranger, the outsider, has come, or is coming, to be
regarded as a kinsman, as a neighbor.
[Sidenote: Hospitality, or the
guest right; the first step beyond
kinship morality[54]]
The duty of hospitality, to which a high place is assigned in the code
of primitive peoples, shows morality taking a step, the first step,
beyond the narrow circle of the original group of kinsmen. As we have
seen, in the beginning the feeling of duty and obligation is restricted
to the little group of fellow clansmen or tribesmen. Every one outside
this social circle is an enemy, and is without rights. But necessity
forces men to go beyond the limits of their own clan or tribe, and
in time there grows up a rule that the defenseless stranger shall be
kindly received, entertained for a certain period, and then allowed to
depart unharmed. It is easy to see how among clans scattered thinly
over a wide territory, and where the earlier isolation is beginning to
be broken by trade relations, this duty of hospitality should come to
be regarded as a very sacred one, and the person of the stranger guest
as inviolable.[55]
Thus in the development of the guest right we see morality broadening,
the circle of moral obligation enlarged, and the stranger, ordinarily
counted as an enemy and as rightless, brought for a moment within the
sacred pale of ethical sentiment and duty.[56] A new ground of moral
obligation other than that of kinship has been established. Morality
is now something more than clan morality. We witness the rise of
intertribal morality. The first step in the moral unification of the
human race has been taken.
[Sidenote: Beginnings of the
ethics of war]
Even in the domain of war we discover traces of the awakening of an
intertribal conscience in races that are still in what we may regard as
the kinship stage of culture. Speaking broadly, primitive man, whose
chief occupations are hunting and fighting,[57] makes no distinction
between war and the hunt. All persons not belonging to his own group
are regarded by him just as he regards wild game. In his efforts to
kill or capture them, all means are right. Once in his power, he may
do with them as he likes; he may make slaves of them, he may torture
them, or he may eat their flesh as he would that of animals taken in
the chase. Conscience lays upon him not the least restraint. Only
slowly do the moral feelings make conquests in this province.
One of the earliest mitigations of the barbarities of primitive warfare
is probably to be found in the discontinuance of the practice of
eating the bodies of the slain.[58] It is this practice of cannibalism
as a concomitant of war by peoples in the earlier stages of their
development that perhaps more than any other circumstance gives such a
repellent aspect to human life on the lower levels of culture. But as
Montaigne observes, the wrong consists in killing men, not in eating
them after they are dead[59]--a very just observation, and one which
should awaken reflection in us who, while piously abstaining from
eating our enemies, still persist in killing them.
The discontinuance of the practice of cannibalism--the practice seems
invariably to be left behind by all peoples as soon as they have
made any considerable advance in civilization[60]--may with little
hesitation be attributed in part at least to the growth and refinement
of the moral feelings. In one case at least we have historical evidence
that among a wide reach of savage tribes the custom was abolished by
the action of a more civilized people, who did just what the more
advanced European nations, under the impulsion of moral feeling, are
doing in regard to the slave trade and cannibalism in Africa to-day.
The Incas of Peru, before granting to conquered tribes terms of peace,
forced them to abandon the practice of cannibalism.[61]
The disuse of poisoned arrows marks another significant mitigation of a
common barbarity of early warfare. We know that in the Greek world by
the opening of the historic period there were communities that had come
to look on the use of poisoned weapons with abhorrence, and to regard
the practice as a crime that aroused the anger of the gods. Thus Homer
represents Ilus of Ephyra, when asked by Odysseus for the fatal poison
wherewith to smear the tips of his arrows, as refusing his request
because he feared the immortal gods.[62]
In these mitigations and prohibitions of the barbarities of war on
the lower levels of savagery we have probably the earliest articles
of the war code of the nations. They mark the first steps taken in
the humanization of war. They indicate the birth of those sympathetic
and moral feelings which, though of painfully slow growth and of
intermittent action, have during the course of the historic ages
effected great ameliorations of the cruelties of primitive warfare, and
foreshadow a time when war between civilized nations shall have become
an inconceivable thing.
[Sidenote: The reaction of
intertribal upon intratribal
morality]
There is a heart of good in things evil. Even the habitual intertribal
wars of primitive communities contain a germ of good. The pressure
exerted by these life-and-death struggles upon the clan or tribe has
a good effect upon the inner relationships of the group. Many of the
social virtues, such as loyalty to comrades and self-devotion to the
common weal, are called into constant and keen activity. For this
reason we usually find these social virtues well developed among
peoples in the clan or tribal stage of civilization. Such peoples may
even be stronger in these special virtues than civilized peoples.
But there is another side to this. Intertribal wars, though they may
in the very earliest stages of human culture be positively promotive
of some of the social virtues, in later and more advanced stages exert
a decidedly unfavorable influence upon the moral development. The low
backward standard of intertribal ethics, reacting upon the higher and
more advanced intratribal standard, tends to make it like unto itself.
As Spencer expresses it, the life of internal amity is assimilated to
the life of external enmity. “Taken in the mass the evidence shows,”
he says, “as we might expect, that in proportion as intertribal and
international antagonisms are great and constant, the ideas and
feelings belonging to the ethics of enmity predominate; and conflicting
as they do with the ideas and feelings belonging to the ethics of amity
proper to the internal life of a society, they in greater or less
degree suppress these, or fill with aggressions the conduct of man
to man.”[63] Thus tribes engaged habitually in war are characterized
by the frequency of homicide within the group. Tribes that regard
the robbery of strangers as honorable come to regard stealing within
the tribe as irreproachable.[64] Revengefulness, inhumanity, and
untruthfulness within each tribe characterize warlike communities.[65]
On the other hand, peaceful tribes are characterized by their superior
intratribal morality. Tribes among whom war is infrequent or unknown
are scrupulously honest.[66] Among such people crimes of violence are
rare.[67]
Thus war, a heritage (as a phase of the “struggle for existence”) of
the human from the lower animal world, becomes early in the human stage
of the cosmic evolution a drag upon the moral progress of the race.[68]
CHAPTER III
THE MORAL LIFE IN ANCIENT EGYPT: AN IDEAL OF SOCIAL JUSTICE
I. CIRCUMSTANCES AND IDEAS WHICH MOLDED AND MOTIVED MORALITY
[Sidenote: A homogeneous
population and a comparatively
static civilization]
Egypt was the China of the ancient Mediterranean world. Like the
Chinese, the Egyptians were a comparatively unmixed people. During the
historic period no new elements of importance were incorporated with
the native population. Again, like the civilization of China, that
of Egypt throughout a great part of the historic age was singularly
static. After having made wonderful advance in early times the
Egyptians ceased to make further noteworthy progress.
Both these fundamental facts of Egyptian history had great significance
for Egyptian morals; for since when races mingle their blood they
mingle also their moralities, it is a matter of supreme importance
to the moral life of a people whether on the one hand it has, as the
centuries have passed, undergone a change in physical type through
the incorporation of new racial elements, or on the other hand has
preserved unchanged its racial type and physical characteristics.
Equally important for the moral ideal is it whether the civilization
of which it forms one element is progressive or unprogressive; for
changes in the moral standard are largely dependent on changes in the
other elements of civilization. Where the intellectual life and the
religious ideas remain unmodified, and where all political, social,
and industrial institutions remain essentially unchanged, we need not
look for fundamental changes in ethical ideas and convictions. How
the history of conscience in ancient Egypt illustrates these truths we
shall see a little further on.
[Sidenote: The teaching that
immortality is conditioned on
righteousness]
We have seen how potent an influence the notion of a life beyond the
tomb exercised upon the conduct of the members of the primitive kinship
group, giving birth to some of the noblest virtues of their simple code
of morals. Now this idea of continued existence after death dominated
the life of no other civilized people of antiquity so completely as it
dominated the life of the Egyptians; and probably in the case of no
other people ancient or modern has the belief exerted so profound an
influence upon conduct. This was so for the reason that the conception
was here early moralized and represented the blessed life in the
hereafter as dependent upon rightdoing in the present life. No soul
that had done evil was admitted to the bark of the ferryman at the
Egyptian Styx. In this discrimination we find “the earliest traces in
the history of man of an ethical test at the close of life.”[69]
[Sidenote: The ethical qualities
of the sun-god Ra]
It is the sun-god Ra who in the remotest times is most intimately
associated with these moral requirements for participation in the
felicities of the celestial hereafter. The latest reading and analysis
of the texts of the Pyramid Age has thrown new light upon the relations
of the rival divinities Ra and Osiris to the development of the moral
consciousness in ancient Egypt. In his latest work Professor Breasted
says: “The later rapid growth of ethical teaching in the Osiris
faith and the assumption of the rôle of judge by Osiris is not yet
discernible in the Pyramid Age, and the development which made these
elements so prominent in the Middle Kingdom took place in the obscure
period after the development of the Pyramid Age. Contrary to the
conclusions generally accepted at present, it was the sun-god ... who
was the earliest champion of moral worthiness and the great judge in
the hereafter.”[70]
The conception of Ra as the righteous judge, as the father and
protector of the reigning Pharaoh, and as the guardian divinity of
the Egyptian state, influenced profoundly the moral development in
prefeudal Egypt, and was seemingly the inspiration of the great social
reform movement which marked the history of the Eleventh and Twelfth
Dynasties. In the words of Professor Breasted, “The moral obligations
emerging in the Solar theology thus wrought the earliest social
regeneration and won the earliest battle for social justice of which we
know anything in history.”[71]
[Sidenote: Religious dualism]
In our introductory chapter we spoke of the influence of physical
environment upon the moral life of a people. The history of the
formation of the ethical type of ancient Egypt affords an excellent
illustration of this; for it was probably out of the striking physical
dualism of the Egyptian lands--the antagonism between the life-giving
Nile and the ever-encroaching desert--that grew Egyptian religious
dualism, embodied in the myth of the struggle between Osiris and
Set.[72] At first the tale was a pure nature myth reflecting simply the
conflict between two physical elements; but as the moral consciousness
of the people who recited the story deepened, there was gradually read
into it an ethical meaning. The conflict was now conceived as a mighty
struggle between the powers of good and evil, between the beneficent
Osiris (and his son and avenger, Horus) and the malignant Set.[73]
This world philosophy reacted powerfully upon Egyptian morality,
keeping as it did in the foreground of the moral consciousness the
truth that the moral life is a battle against evil. “The triumph of
right over wrong ... is the burden of nine tenths of the Egyptian texts
which have come down to us.”[74]
[Sidenote: The Osirian myth in its
special development]
Acted upon by the moral feelings, the Osirian myth underwent a special
development. It came to represent not simply the eternal opposition
between good and evil, but the whole moral order of the present and
the future world. It told of the beneficent life of Osiris as king of
Egypt, his death and resurrection, and of his office as king and judge
in the realms of the dead.
After having been given this rich moral content, the myth reacted
powerfully upon the moral consciousness and became a chief agency in
the formation of the moral character of the Egyptian race. Osiris, as
reflected in the Osirian myth, became the incarnation of the ethical
ideal. It is a great advantage to morality when the ideal of goodness
is thus embodied in a divine exemplar. Osiris held some such relation
to the moral life of ancient Egypt as Christ holds to the moral life of
the Christian world.
II. THE IDEAL
[Sidenote: A homogeneous and
unchanging conscience]
By the dawn of history there had been developed in ancient Egypt
an enlightened and discriminating conscience.[75] There are two
aspects of this conscience which we need to note. First, it was a
comparatively homogeneous conscience; that is, the morality of the
ancient Egyptians was not a mixture of moralities like that of the
modern European nations whose morality is a blend of the moralities
of different races--Greek, Roman, Celtic, and Teutonic; of different
religions--pagan and Christian; and of different civilizations--Greek,
Latin, Celtic, and German.
Second, it was a comparatively unchanging conscience. The moral
consciousness which we find in pre-Christian Roman Egypt is
fundamentally the same as that which emerged in the Pyramid Age more
than three thousand years before. During this long period the Egyptian
conscience, although it gained in depth and sensitiveness as the
millenniums passed, underwent less change in its essential qualities
than the moral consciousness underwent in less than ten centuries in
all the other great nations, save China, of the ancient world.
[Sidenote: Evidences of moral
progress during early times]
But though the moral development, like the development of all other
phases of Egyptian civilization, was early checked and thereafter made
but slow progress, the essential refinement and clarification of the
moral sense during prehistoric times, or in the obscure period of the
earliest dynasties, is shown by various testimonies, as, for instance,
in the moralization of the Osirian myth, to which we have already
referred, in the abandonment of the practice of human sacrifices at
the tomb, and in the transition, concerning the conception of the life
after death, from the continuance to the retribution theory.
[Sidenote: Substitution of
ka-statues for human sacrifices]
The early Egyptians, after the manner of savages, killed and buried
with the dead master a number of his slaves, that their souls
might attend him in the spirit land. But after a time the growing
humanitarian and ethical feelings of the Egyptians forbade human
sacrifices, and then merely the portrait-statues of the slaves were
placed in the tomb.[76] These, it was thought,--in consonance with the
belief which led to the substitution of pictures or of clay and wood
models for the real articles at first buried with the dead,--would take
the place of the actual bodies of the servants.
But as time passed, the deepening moral feelings of the Egyptians would
not permit them to do even this thing. It did not now seem right to
them that because a man was a slave in the earthly Egypt he should be
a slave forever in the Osirian fields.[77] So they ceased to place in
the tomb of the master these portrait-statues of his servants, and in
their stead put in statuettes of nobody in particular. The doubles of
these, it was conceived, would appear as newly created souls in the
underworld, and, being indebted for life itself to the master of the
tomb, would, it was naïvely assumed, gratefully labor for him through
all eternity.[78]
The history of the ka-statues, as these substitutes are called, thus
bears testimony similar to that of the Osirian myth as to the upward
trend of ethical thought and humanitarian feeling in prehistoric
Egypt.[79]
[Sidenote: Transition from the
continuance to the retribution
theory]
Still further evidence of the advance on moral lines in early Egypt is
afforded by the character of the belief held by the Egyptians at the
beginning of the second millennium B.C. and perhaps earlier respecting
the fate of souls in the world beyond the tomb. To understand this we
need to cast our glance a little aside and observe how the world of
shades, in its social and ethical classifications, has ever been a
register of the changing moral feelings of men. As Oscar Peschel finely
says, “The other world has ever answered to this as spectrum to the
source of light.”
Edward B. Tylor happily names the two chief theories which have
been held in regard to the state of souls in the hereafter as the
continuance and the retribution theory. The first theory is that of
primitive man while his moral sense is yet undeveloped. According to
this theory the same fate is allotted to all who go down to death.
There is no such thing as rewards and punishments. This is the
conception of the after-life which is held by all races on the lower
levels of culture, and it is a view which often lingers on as a
survival among peoples far advanced in civilization. But as the moral
judgment becomes more discriminating, then this view of the other
world is very certain to undergo a change. The quickened sense of
justice demands that the allotments after death shall be in accordance
with merit and demerit. This ethical feeling gradually transforms
the topography of the underworld and organizes the as yet undivided
community of shades. The hitherto common abode of the dead is usually
divided into two distinct compartments or regions, heaven and hell,
and souls are separated, according to their deeds on earth, into two
classes, the good and the bad, those to be welcomed to the abode of
the blessed and these consigned to the place of torment. Sometimes,
however, the lot conceived for the wicked is simply annihilation.
The incoming of this theory of rewards and punishments after death
constitutes a great landmark in the moral evolution of mankind. In the
words of Tylor, this transition from the continuance to the retribution
theory “for deep import to human life has scarcely its rival in the
history of religion.”[80] The sanctions of morality are doubled.
Now in ancient Egypt by the beginning of the second millennium B.C. the
transition from the continuance to the retribution theory had already
been effected, as will appear in the following account of the Egyptian
Judgment of the Dead. Thus here, as in the change of practices at the
tomb, we have indisputable evidence of the progress of moral ideas in
early Egypt.
[Sidenote: The Judgment of the
Dead]
The Judgment of the Dead was the trial which every soul had to undergo
before Osiris and his forty-two assessors in the great tribunal hall of
the underworld. The astonishing thing about this tribunal, as we have
just intimated, is that at a time when the oldest monuments raised in
Egypt were yet recent this whole conception of the moral order in all
its details was already fully matured.[81] Osiris had been raised to
the judgment seat in the other world, and the moral standard in some
departments of life, particularly in the relations of man to man in the
everyday social and business spheres, was as high and true as is the
standard in many of the civilized nations of to-day. This admirable
code of social morals points unmistakably to long periods of organized
society and moral training in prefeudal Egypt.
[Sidenote: The Negative Confession]
This early standard of goodness is embodied in the so-called Negative
Confession, in which the soul before the Osirian tribunal pleaded his
innocence of the forty-two sins condemned by the Egyptian code of
morality. This confession, previous to the discovery of the Babylonian
code of Hammurabi, constituted the oldest known code of morality of the
ancient world. These are some of the declarations of the soul: “I did
not steal”; “I did not get any man treacherously killed”; “I did not
utter any lie”;[82] “I did not make any one weep”; “I did not kill any
sacred animals”; “I did not damage any cultivated land”; “I was angry
only when there was reason [for being angry]”; “I did not turn a deaf
ear to the words of truth”; “I did not commit any act of rebellion”;
“I did not do any witchcraft”; “I did not blaspheme a god”; “I did not
make the slave to be misused by his master”; “I was not imperious”; “I
did not strip the mummies of their stuff.”[83]
After this confession to the forty-two assessors in the hall of
judgment, the soul made the following affirmative declaration, which
makes a singularly close approach to Christian morality: “I gave bread
to the hungry, water to the thirsty, garments to the naked, a bark to
the one who was without one [that is, a boat to the detained traveler],
offerings to the gods, and funeral conservations to the shades.”[84]
After this confession and declaration the heart of the man was placed
in one scale of a balance and the image of Truth in the other. If
the heart was not found wanting, but weighed just equal to the
image, Osiris pronounced the soul justified, and it was welcomed to
the company of the blessed. The punishment meted out to the soul
found lacking seems to have been of a negative nature--a denial of
immortality.[85]
[Sidenote: Comparison of the
morality of the Negative
Confession with that of the Hebrew
Decalogue and other codes]
It is instructive to compare this ancient code, both in its contents
and in its omissions, with the moral codes of other peoples and other
ages. The similarity of the morality of the Negative Confession to that
of the Hebrew Decalogue forces itself at once upon the attention.[86]
The Egyptian code, however, lays less emphasis than the Hebrew upon
religious duties. In the forty-two duties named only seven are duties
toward the gods, while of the Ten Commandments five concern religious
duties. As we have already observed, the duties of the Egyptian code
are those due from man to man; that is, they are social as opposed to
religious duties.
In striking contrast to the Confucian code of the Chinese, the
Egyptian code gives very little place to the duties of children to
their parents. These duties are noticed, it is true, by the Egyptian
moralists, but no emphasis is laid upon them. They are mentioned only
once in the Negative Confession before Osiris. As the stress laid
by Chinese moralists upon filial piety came about largely through
the supposed need of the spirits of the dead for regular offerings
at the grave, so it may be that the neglect of this virtue by the
Egyptian teachers is to be explained, as Flinders Petrie suggests,
by the circumstance that “the provision of offerings in semblance by
the Egyptians in the tomb left little place for the urgency of filial
duties in maintaining continual supplies for the deceased.”[87]
Another defect of Egyptian morality is its lack of depth and
seriousness. There is no hungering and thirsting after righteousness,
no passionate yearning for holiness. There is no call to lofty
self-sacrifice. It is a calm, prudent, worldly-wise, practical
morality. Its spirit and temper are well set forth by Petrie when, in
speaking of its virtues and vices, he says that “these belong far more
to the tone of Chesterfield and Gibbon than to that of Kingsley and
Carlyle.”[88]
But in spite of the limitations and defects of the code, it was one
of the purest and loftiest framed by the moral consciousness of the
races of antiquity. The Negative Confession shows that Egypt had early
learned the lesson that blessedness in the hereafter is conditioned on
the practice of justice, truth, and righteousness in the present life
on earth.[89]
[Sidenote: The moral precepts of
Ptah-hotep; an ethical conception
of kinship]
After the Negative Confession the most valuable memorial of the
character of the Egyptian conscience is found in the precepts of the
moralist Ptah-hotep,[90] who lived probably in the time of the Twelfth
Dynasty. This moralist laid particular emphasis upon the duties of
rulers and of the rich and great. His maxims are intended as a sort
of “Manual of the Perfect Official.” “If, having been of no account,
thou hast become great, and if, having been poor, thou hast become
rich, and if thou hast become governor of the city, be not hard-hearted
on account of thy advancement, because thou hast become merely the
guardian of the things which God has provided.”[91] In like words
emphasis is laid upon the duties of gentleness and considerateness on
the part of the administrator and the judge. In truth the doctrine
of trusteeship of wealth and of office has never been more zealously
taught than in these precepts of the early Egyptian moralist.[92]
The teachings of Ptah-hotep respecting the duties of rulers would seem
to have made effective appeal to the heart and conscience of even
the holders of the royal office. In any event we find these lofty
conceptions of the duties of kingship incarnated in the lives and
deeds of several of the Pharaohs of the Old Kingdom. The view held by
these monarchs respecting the nature of the royal office was almost
exactly like that entertained by the so-called benevolent despots of
the eighteenth century of our era. The inscriptions on the royal
tomb boast not alone of exploits and triumphs in war, but the prince
vaunts himself for having put no ward in mourning, for having made
no distinction between the great and the humble, for having been the
protector of the widow and the asylum of the orphan, and for having
laid no unjust taxes.[93]
[Sidenote: Slavery approved by the
Egyptian conscience]
The Egyptian conscience, like the conscience of the ancient world in
general, did not condemn the institution of slavery. The relation of
master and slave was looked upon by the Egyptians as perfectly natural
and legitimate.
The slave class, which included both whites and blacks, was recruited
not only from the prisoners of war brought back by the Pharaohs from
their numerous foreign conquests, but also from captives secured on
regular man-hunting expeditions into the negro regions of the Upper
Nile.
The treatment of the slave was usually mild, and the development of
the moral feelings had already in early times placed him under the
protection of the gods. Thus in the judgment hall of Osiris the soul
repudiates the sin of oppression by affirming, “I did not cause the
slave to be misused by his master.”[94]
Respecting the moral side, in general, of the slave system of
antiquity, which we encounter now for the first time here among the
Egyptians, the following observation may be made. If we except the
Hebrews, we shall not find among the peoples of the ancient world
whose ethical standards we shall pass in review any fundamental change
throughout their history in the common conscience regarding the
rightfulness of slavery. Indeed any radical and permanent change in
the moral feelings of men on this subject was hardly possible till
after the incoming of Christianity with its teachings of a common
Father-God and the brotherhood of man.
[Sidenote: The ethics of war]
One of the most striking phenomena of the moral evolution of mankind is
the unequal rate of movement on different lines. Thus while morality
has made great progress in some departments of life, in the domain of
war it has remained comparatively stationary from the dawn of history
down almost to the present day. The war code of the modern nations,
notwithstanding improvements and ameliorations to which our attention
will be drawn later in our study, is still in large part an unchanged
heritage from the ages of primitive savagery.
Bearing this in mind, it will not be a matter of surprise to us that
the laws of war of the Egyptians showed little advance the practices of
the negro savages of Africa; indeed it seems probable that this part of
the moral code of Egypt was actually of African origin.[95] There is
not a word in Egyptian literature in reprobation of war.[96]
While in their relations to their own people the Pharaohs observed a
comparatively enlightened code of ethics, being in general humane,
considerate, and clement, still in their treatment of the vanquished
they seem to have been wholly insensible to all humanitarian feelings.
Like the Assyrian kings they “immortalized their cruelty in their art.”
Numerous scenes upon the monuments celebrate the Pharaoh’s inhumanity;
not one celebrates his compassion or mercy. He is constantly
represented in the act of slaying in heaps with his own hands his bound
and suppliant captives.[97]
[Sidenote: Influence of the moral
ideal upon Egyptian life and
history]
Taken altogether, the moral standard of ancient Egypt, as disclosed in
the foregoing brief account of what the Egyptian conscience condemned
and what it approved, was not a high one, but it was, in so far as
it concerned the everyday life of the people, wholly practical, and
probably was as well lived up to by the masses as our higher ideal of
character is lived up to by ourselves. We have a right to infer this
from the persistence of Egyptian institutions through two thirds of
the historic millenniums; for no nation or society can long endure
where the relations of man to man and of subject to ruler are not in
substantial agreement with the real convictions of the age as to what
constitutes essential justice and righteousness.
The moral standard of the Egyptians has been compared to that of the
Romans after it had felt the influence of Stoicism and Christianity.
Like the Roman ideal of excellence at its best, the Egyptian ideal
tended to develop a strong and manly type of character, particularly
in the ruling class. We think it not an illusion which causes us to
see the influence of the ideal in the face of Rameses the Great. This
face bears the stamp of strength, resolution, indomitable energy. We
may believe that it was the moral ideal which had something to do in
creating such a type of character as we see here, just as it was the
primitive Roman ideal which helped to create that admirable type of
character which lives in the legends of early Rome.
Further, the moral ideal tended to ameliorate the autocratic government
of the Pharaohs by holding constantly before the ruler the example of
the righteous and beneficent king-gods Ra and Osiris. The influence of
the ideal in this relation may be likened to the influence of the moral
ideal of Christianity upon the government of the later Cæsars.
Again, the practical moral ideal of Egypt, laying its emphasis upon the
fundamental social virtues, helped to establish and maintain relations
of justice and equity between man and man, and thus contributed to the
general well-being of Egyptian society and to the stability of Egyptian
institutions.
Nor was the influence of the moral ideal of Egypt confined to the
Egyptian land. For, as Amélineau truly says, the wonderful edifice of
morality is the collective work of all peoples and all ages.[98] In the
uprearing of this edifice Egypt played a great rôle. Her contributions
to the morality of the first nations were as helpful, we may believe,
as were those she made to the other domains--material, artistic, and
intellectual--of the civilization of the early world.
Later she made a rich bequest to European morality, a bequest only less
important perhaps than that made by Judea. Her ideas of the future
life, her meditations on death and the final judgment, reënforced the
teachings of Christianity and thus contributed to create that deep
conviction of a life hereafter and a coming retribution which for
eighteen hundred years and more has furnished sanction and stimulus
to the moral life of Christendom.[99] It is not without significance
that Christian monasticism, with all its otherworldliness, had its
beginnings in Egypt. “The first Christian monk [Pachomius] had been a
pagan monk of Serapis.”[100]
CHAPTER IV
THE BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN CONSCIENCE
[Sidenote: The importance of
Babylonian-Assyrian morality for
the history of comparative morals]
The information which the cuneiform texts have yielded concerning the
moral life of the Babylonian and Assyrian peoples, though scanty, is
of the greatest value to the student of comparative morals, not only
because it casts light upon a moral development in some important
respects like the moral evolution of the kindred Semitic people of
Israel, but also because that later evolution was probably deeply
influenced by it. Therefore, though nothing like a connected account of
the moral evolution in the Euphratean lands can be attempted till the
thousands of cuneiform tablets recovered from the ancient libraries of
the Babylonian-Assyrian cities have been deciphered, and the ethical
character and value of their contents determined, we shall devote a
few pages to the portrayal of such manifestations of conscience as are
disclosed in the religious, literary, historical, and law tablets whose
contents are already known to us.
[Sidenote: The general
nonethical character of the
Babylonian-Assyrian religion]
Religion filled a large place in the life of the ancient Babylonians
and Assyrians, especially in that of the former; but religion with
them had at first little or nothing to do with morality. Like the
religion of savage and barbarian folk, it lacked wholly or almost
wholly the ethical spirit. Throughout the early period it was in the
main simply a system of incantations and magical rites. Scarcely any
moral element entered into the system until the later centuries of
Babylonian-Assyrian history.
This religion was in truth simply a survival from primitive savage
times when religion was merely a belief in the existence of evil
spirits, and in their disposition and power to do harm to men.[101] In
this stage of the religious evolution sickness, death, misadventure
of every kind are believed to be caused by some malignant demon or by
some offended and revengeful god. The evil spirits are supposed to
act from pure malignancy, while the great gods are conceived to be
angered especially by the nonobservance of some religious rite, by the
violation of some taboo forbidding the use of certain kinds of food, or
by some other like act.
To ward off the attacks of the evil demons, or to appease the offended
gods, recourse was had to the recital of magical formulas and
incantations. This was Shamanism in its lowest and crudest form, in
which there was at work as a motive on the part of the suppliant only
cringing fear or a desire to get rid of some present pain, without the
least trace of moral emotions, such as remorse and repentance.
[Sidenote: Ethical tendencies in
the religion]
But as time passed, this earlier nonethical religion, as is evidenced
by the texts recovered from the long-buried temple libraries,[102]
became in a measure moralized. A moral character was given to the great
gods, and they became the inspirers and guardians of a true morality.
This ethicalizing process was the same in character as that which
went on in the religion of the ancient Hebrews, gradually moralizing
the primitive conceptions and cult of Yahweh until among that people
religion and morality became wholly at one. The ethical development,
however, never went as far as this in Babylonia and Assyria, but the
movement was such as to lift these peoples far above the low moral
plane of primitive society. “In the seventh century before Christ,
if not earlier, the Babylonians and Assyrians possessed a system of
morality which in many respects resembled that of the descendants of
Abraham.”[103]
[Sidenote: Evidence afforded by
the penitential psalms of the
growth in moral feeling]
The ethical movement found its truest expression in the so-called
penitential hymns,[104] which are in spirit altogether like the
penitential psalms of the Hebrew Scriptures.[105] They exhibit the same
intense yearning of the penitent soul for reconciliation and union with
a god conceived as just and holy and piteous.
In one hymn is found the new moral conception that disease is the work
of a good spirit. This is a very lofty ethical idea, and approaches
the Hebrew conception of afflictions as the visitation in disguise of
love. But this idea seems never to have become a permanent part of the
Babylonian moral consciousness.
In these psalms and prayers we have evidence that at times the
worshipers of Marduk and Ashur attained to almost as lofty a conception
of deity as that reached by the teachers and prophets of Israel. The
great gods were conceived as the creators, the sustainers of man; as
loving, compassionate, merciful, and forgiving. The religious-moral
ideal was here verging toward the highest that man has ever been able
to form, and could this standard have been steadily upheld and the
lower abandoned, then Babylonia and Assyria like Judea might have made
precious contributions to the moral life of humanity. But this was not
done. The tablets holding magical formulas and incantations, wholly
devoid of all ethical character, outnumber a thousand to one those
exhaling the spiritual perfume of genuine moral feeling and aspiration.
[Sidenote: Ethical significance of
the conception of the after life]
Respecting the lot of the dead, the Babylonians held views like those
of the early Hebrews. This was the continuance as opposed to the
retribution theory.[106] Arallu, “the land of no return,” was a vast
underground region where were gathered all, without distinction, who
went down to the grave. It was a sad, dolorous life that the drowsing
shades lived in this dark underworld, where the bats flitted in
the twilight and the dust gathered on the lintels of the doors. An
undiscriminating fate allotted the same destiny to all. In so far as
the moral consciousness of the Babylonians demanded that a distinction
be made between the good and the bad, this demand was met by the
assumption--which was also that of the Hebrews so long as they held the
Babylonian view of the life after death--that the evil man is punished
in this life, and the good man rewarded here on earth with numerous
flocks, reputation, many children, and long life.
For four thousand years the masses in Babylonia seem to have remained
satisfied with this view of the moral government of the world. In the
later periods of Babylonian history, however, we find in the literature
traces of a protest against this nonethical conception of life in
the afterworld--a protest which shows that, in the case of the more
spiritually minded at least, the moral consciousness was deepening and
the ethical judgment becoming clearer and truer.
[Sidenote: The ethical spirit of
the laws; the code of Hammurabi]
Since the law code of a people embraces all those duties the
performance of which the state or public authority attempts to
enforce, the ethical spirit of an age or people finds one of its
truest embodiments in its laws. It is this fact which renders of such
extraordinary interest to the student of the history of morals the
recent discovery of the code of the Babylonian king Hammurabi,[107]
the oldest known code of public and private morality. This law system
exhibits in some departments of life an enlightened and advanced
morality, yet one with serious limitations and defects, a morality
in many respects like that of the Mosaic code of the kindred Semitic
nation of Israel.
The code informs us that the Babylonian feeling as to what is right
and wrong, just and unjust, in the ordinary business relations of life
was much like the average conscience of to-day. In some matters the
Babylonian law held ground morally in advance of that held by modern
codes, as, for instance, in providing that in case of misfortune
the debtor should have both his rent and the interest on his debt
remitted.[108]
But in its provisions touching the family relations the code reveals
ethical conceptions very different from our own. As in other Oriental
law systems, ancient and modern, polygamy was regarded as a moral
institution. A man in debt could bind his wife and children out to
service or sell them as slaves, but not for a longer period than three
years.
The punishments meted out to offenders were harsh and cruel, yet not
much more atrociously cruel than those provided by the English laws of
three hundred years ago. Impaling, burning, cutting out the tongue,
gouging out the eyes, cutting off the fingers, breaking the bones of
the hands were common penalties.
Sometimes the punishment was measured by the primitive principle of
the _Lex talionis_; it was eye for eye, bone for bone, tooth for
tooth.[109] This law of retaliation was carried out so rigorously as
to result in the punishment of the innocent for the guilty. Thus if a
man caused the death of another man’s daughter, the law required that
his own daughter should be put to death.[110] If a builder, through
the faulty construction of a house, caused the death of the son of the
owner through the falling of the house, the son of the builder was
to be put to death.[111] It is in these provisions of the code that
we find the greatest divergence between the Babylonian feeling and
our own as to what is right and just. Yet this Babylonian conscience
which sanctioned the visiting of the iniquity of the father upon the
children is a conscience which we shall meet with in societies much
more advanced than that for which the Hammurabi code was formulated.
The Babylonian conscience in regard to slavery as embodied in the
code was about like our own conscience respecting negro slavery of a
generation or two ago. The slave was viewed as a mere chattel, and the
master possessed over him the power of life and death. Kind treatment,
however, was enjoined by the law. There was a fugitive-slave law which
reads curiously like our negro-slave laws of two generations ago, in
which the aiding and harboring of a fugitive slave is made a crime
punishable with death.[112]
The slave class was recruited, as in other lands of the ancient world,
from prisoners of war, foundlings, debtors, criminals, and through the
sale by fathers and husbands of their children and wives. The system
seems to have undergone no essential changes or ameliorations, such
as we shall see effected in the Hebrew system, by growth in ethical
feeling during the four thousand years of Babylonian history. It is
true that enfranchisement of slaves was not uncommon, the freed man
becoming the dependent of his old master, but it does not appear that
moral sentiment afforded the motive for manumission.[113]
[Sidenote: International morality;
war ethics]
The international ethics of the Babylonians and Assyrians was in every
essential respect the international ethics of their age in the Semitic
world. It was the character of the religion of these peoples which
determined in large measure international relations in the Mesopotamian
lands throughout the period of Semitic ascendancy. “The conception
of religion as an alliance between God and man against other peoples
and their gods never ceased in Mesopotamia.”[114] This conception was
essentially the same as that held by the Hebrews down to the time of
the great prophets. “Let us go up against them, for our god is greater
than their god,” is the war cry of four thousand years of history of
the Semitic world.
The Assyrians far surpassed the Babylonians in their ferocious cruelty
in the treatment of war captives. Notwithstanding their advanced
morality in some departments of life, in this domain they stood, if
we except the practice of cannibalism, on practically the same level
as savages. Witness the following inscription of Assur-natsir-pal,
in which he tells of his treatment of certain prisoners of war: “The
nobles, as many as had revolted, I flayed; with their skins I covered
the pyramid. Some [of these] I immured in the midst of the pyramid;
others above the pyramid I impaled on stakes.... Three thousand of
their captives I burned with fire. I left not one alive among them to
become a hostage.... I cut off the hands [and] feet of some; I cut
off the noses, the ears [and] the fingers of others; the eyes of the
numerous soldiers I put out. In the middle [of them] I suspended their
heads on vine stems in the neighborhood of their city. Their young men
[and] their maidens I burned as a holocaust.”[115]
The significant thing here is not so much the fact that these things
were done, as the fact that the king exults in having done them and
thinks to immortalize himself by portraying them upon imperishable
stone. The careful way in which to-day all reference to atrocities of
this character, when in the fury of battle they are inflicted upon a
savage enemy, are suppressed by those responsible for them, and the
indignant condemnation of them by the public opinion of the civilized
world, measures the moral progress humanity has made even along those
lines on which progress has been so painfully slow and halting.[116]
CHAPTER V
CHINESE MORALS: AN IDEAL OF FILIAL PIETY
I. IDEAS, INSTITUTIONS, AND HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTANCES DETERMINING THE
CAST OF THE MORAL IDEAL
[Sidenote: Introductory]
With the exception of the teachers of the ancient Hebrews, the leaders
of thought of no people have so insistently interpreted life and
history in terms of ethics as have the sages of the Chinese race. And,
excepting the Hebrew teachers, no moralists have so emphasized duties
while leaving rights--upon which the Western world in modern times has
laid such stress--to take care of themselves.[117]
It cannot fail to enhance our interest in a study of the ideal
upheld by these teachers of morality, if we recall that this ideal
of character has for upwards of three thousand years exercised an
incalculable influence upon the moral life of probably a fourth of the
human race and is the cement of a social structure that has outlasted
all others of the ancient world.
The cast of this moral ideal affords a good illustration of the
way in which the moral type of a people is molded by religious and
philosophical ideas, social institutions, race experiences, and
physical environment. Following our usual method of exposition we shall
begin our examination of Chinese morality by first casting a glance
at some of the agencies which have been especially influential in the
creation of the ethical standard.
[Sidenote: Confucianism: the state
worship of Heaven and the popular
worship of ancestors]
There are two religious elements in Confucianism which have special
significance for Chinese morality. These are, first, the state worship
of Heaven and of the lesser gods of the sky and earth; and second, the
popular cult of ancestral spirits.
The worship of Heaven, the supreme deity, is a state function; that
is, it is a matter which is left entirely to the Emperor and the
magistrates. Consequently those duties to God, that is, to a being
looked upon as Creator and Father,--duties of reverence, love, and
worship, which fill so large a place in the moral ideals of Judaism and
Christianity,--find scarcely any place among the duties enjoined upon
the multitude by Confucianism.[118]
The worship of ancestors is the essential and popular element of
Confucianism. Commenting on the ethical value of this cult, Dr.
Martin affirms that “in respect to moral efficiency, it would appear
to be only second to that of faith in the presence of an all-seeing
Deity.”[119] The constant and reverent dwelling upon the virtues of
their ancestors has exalted the virtue of filial piety among the
Chinese to the highest place in their ideal of character and has helped
to make respect for what is old, for what has been handed down from
ancestral ages, a highly prized virtue and a distinguishing trait of
the race character.
In an indirect way also ancestor worship has exerted a great influence
upon the moral life of the Chinese people, for this worship is
necessarily a family cult and must be cared for by the head of the
family. This has prevented the growth of a priestly caste in Confucian
China. The absence of a powerful national priesthood has been a great
boon to Chinese morality. The place thus left vacant has been filled
by the _literati_, or learned class,[120] whose influence upon the
ethical life of the people has, without question, been more beneficent
than that of a priestly class would have been.[121]
[Sidenote: Demonism: evil spirits
the ministers of retributive
justice]
Besides peopling the invisible world with beneficent ancestral spirits,
the Chinese have filled heaven and earth with innumerable demons or
evil spirits. Even the souls of dead men, if they have been wronged on
earth or if their wants since death have been undutifully neglected,
may become malignant, revengeful spirits. These demons are believed to
be the cause of all kinds of diseases, of blight and famine, and of
every misfortune befalling men.[122]
The thing about this Chinese demonism which is of interest to the
student of morals is that, unlike the demonism of Babylonia (p. 46),
or that of the Middle Ages in Europe, it contains a distinct ethical
element. There was little or nothing ethical in the Babylonian or the
medieval belief in the existence of evil spirits because the good
man and the bad were indifferently the victims of their malignant
activity. But the Chinese have moralized their demonism and conceive
these spirits as under the control of Heaven and without power to
do harm without Heaven’s commission or consent. They thus represent
retributive justice and become the ministers of the Supreme Power to
punish evildoers, like Nemesis and the Erinyes of the Greeks. It is
this ethical side of the Chinese belief in evil spirits which causes De
Groot, in emphasizing the import of this demonism for Chinese morality,
to say that “it occupies the rank of moral educator of the people, and
has fulfilled a great mission to many thousands of millions who have
lived and died on Asiatic soil. Demonism, the lowest form of religion,
in China a source of ethics and moral education--this certainly may be
called a singular phenomenon, perhaps the only one of its kind to be
found on this terrestrial globe.” [123]
[Sidenote: Taoism: nature the
exemplar]
Next to Confucianism and demonism, Taoism has been the most important
moral force in the life of the Chinese people. Taoism was originally a
lofty philosophical ethical system out of which was developed later a
religion.[124] The philosophy, however, has always remained something
quite distinct from the religious system.
The essence of Taoism is the pantheistic doctrine that the universe,
or nature, is God. The ethical character of the universe is revealed
in its way or method, which is _Tao_. Now the characteristics of
nature as disclosed in its method of operation are constancy--“heaven
never diverges from its course”; unselfishness--“the earth nourishes
all things”; impartiality--“the earth brings forth its fruits for all
alike”; placidity--“heaven is calm, serene, passionless”; humility--the
sun which “after shining sets,” the moon which “after fullness, wanes,”
the warmth of summer which “when it has finished its work retires,”
water which “seeks the lowest place,” all these are symbols of
“nature’s humility.”[125]
What gives these interpretations of the ethical qualities of nature
their importance for human morality is that man’s highest duty is to
imitate the universe, to behave as nature behaves.[126] “Taoism is the
exhibition of a way or method of living which men should cultivate as
the brightest and purest development of their nature.”[127] “The true
Taoist then is the man who unites in himself [the] virtues or qualities
of the universe, including the constant virtues.”[128] Man’s way must
be nature’s way (Tao). The perfect man must cultivate constancy,
unselfishness, impartiality, benevolence, impassibility, serenity,
humility, and quietness, for these are the characteristics of the
universe.[129]
This Taoist code is designed especially for rulers.[130] He who has
assimilated all his virtues to the virtues of nature is qualified
to administer government.[131] It is in the qualities of character
cultivated by the highest-minded ministers and mandarins, and in the
state worship and official customs that we are to look for the main
ethical influence of the doctrines of Taoism.[132]
[Sidenote: The conception of human
nature as good]
“The tendency of man’s nature to good,” says Mencius, “is like the
tendency of water to flow downwards.”[133] Just as the theological
dogma that man’s nature is hereditarily corrupt, with a proneness to
evil, has shaped and colored a large part of Christian ethics, so has
this opposing conception of human nature as good exercised a tremendous
influence upon the ethical ideal of the Chinese race.[134] For if
man’s nature is good, then for him to live conformably to his nature
is to live rationally, that is, morally. “To nourish one’s nature,”
declared Mencius, “is the way to secure heaven.”[135]
Objections to this view of human nature, based on the fact that men are
actually very different in moral character, are met by saying that this
difference is the effect of environment, just as the inequalities in
the yield of barley seed are due not to a difference in the nature of
the grain but to the different qualities of the soil.[136] In a word,
it is the social environment--instruction and example--which determines
the character of men. “By nature,” says Confucius, “men are nearly
alike; by practice they get to be far apart.”[137]
As we shall see, it makes a vast difference in a man’s conception as to
what he ought to do,--as to how he should regulate his life,--whether
he believes his nature to be inclined to virtue and all his instincts,
impulses, and appetites to be good, or believes his nature to be
corrupt and all his instincts and appetencies to be evil.
[Sidenote: Conception of the past
as perfect]
Another conception that has had a molding influence upon the moral
ideal of China is the conception of the past as perfect without any
historic lapse from this perfection. To understand the import of
this in the ethical history of China we must compare it with the
theological conception of the fall of man. This conception determined
what should be the saving virtues of the historic ethical ideal of the
Western world, making them to be theological in character and having to
do with man’s restoration from an hereditary fallen state.
Now the Chinese, instead of believing in the lapse of man from a
state of original innocence, conceive the past as perfect. This
interpretation of history has had the effect of making reverence for
the past, for the customs, institutions, and teachings of the fathers,
a chief virtue of the moral ideal.[138] The far-reaching consequences
for Chinese life and history which the emphasis laid upon this virtue
has had will be the subject of remark a little further on.
[Sidenote: Geographical and
intellectual isolation]
Again, the moral development of the Chinese people has been profoundly
influenced by the geographical isolation of China. From the earliest
times down almost to the present day China was shut out from
intercourse with the civilized and progressive nations of the West,
and was surrounded by neighbors greatly her inferior in intellectual,
social, and moral culture. The effect of this isolation upon the
Chinese was to foster in them an exaggerated self-esteem and a feeling
of contempt for foreigners. In this respect the masses are still
ethically in that stage of development that the Greeks were in when
they looked contemptuously upon all non-Greeks as “barbarians.”
In still another way has the physical and intellectual isolation of
the Chinese people reacted upon their ethical life. This isolation
has prevented progress beyond a certain stage, and where there is no
progress or very slow progress there is likely to grow up an undue
attachment to ways and customs that are old. This is what has happened
in China, and this has worked together with the worship of ancestors
to create one of the main requirements of the ideal of character,
namely, reverence for the past.
[Sidenote: The appearance of great
men: Confucius and Mencius]
Besides the various agencies already passed under review, the teachings
of two great moralists, Confucius and Mencius, have been a vital force
in the shaping of the moral ideal of China. The greater of these sages
was Confucius (551–478 B.C.) He was unimaginative and practical.
He was not an original thinker. His mission was not to found a new
religion or hold up a new ideal of character, but to give new force
and effectiveness to the already existing moral code of his time and
people.[139] His teachings were especially effective in giving filial
piety the fixed place it holds in the moral ideal of his countrymen.
The influence of Mencius (371–288 B.C.), whose teachings are
characterized by an emphatic denunciation of the wickedness of war, is
to be traced particularly in the low place which is assigned in the
Chinese standard of character to the martial virtues, and the general
disesteem in which the military life is held.
II. THE IDEAL
[Sidenote: The four cardinal
virtues]
Chiefly under the molding influence of the agencies noticed in the
preceding sections, there was shaped in early times in China one of
the most remarkable moral ideals of history, an ideal which has been a
guiding and controlling force in the moral life of probably more of the
human race than any other of the ethical ideals of mankind.
The duties given the highest place in this standard of character are
filial obedience, reverence for superiors, a conforming to ancient
custom, and the maintenance of the just medium. The man who is
carefully observant of these duties is looked upon in China as a man
of superior excellence. In the following pages we shall speak with some
detail of each of these requirements of the ethical ideal.
[Sidenote: Filial obedience or
piety]
In an analysis of the symbols used in the Chinese system of writing
Dr. Legge points out the significant fact that one of the oldest of
these characters, the one standing for filial piety, was originally the
picture of a youth upholding on his shoulders an old man.[140] In this
worn-down symbol is embodied the fundamental fact in the moral life
of the Chinese people. It tells us that the first of family virtues,
filial piety, the virtue that formed the basis of the strength and
greatness of early Rome, constituted also the firm foundation upon
which the enduring fabric of Chinese society was raised. The whole
framework of the social structure is modeled on the family, and all
relations and duties are assimilated, in so far as possible, to those
of the domestic circle.
In no other of the moral ideals of history do we find a more prominent
place given the duties of children toward their parents. It was
ancestor worship, doubtless, as we have already said, which gave these
duties this foremost place in the moral code, and which through all
the millenniums of Chinese history has maintained for them the highest
place in the Chinese standard of moral excellence.[141] The Classic of
Filial Piety declares: “The services of love and reverence to parents
when alive, and those of grief and sorrow to them when dead--these
completely discharge the fundamental duty of living men.”[142] “The
Master said: ‘There are three thousand offenses against which the five
punishments are directed, and there is not one of them greater than
being unfilial.’”[143]
The punishments which the Chinese laws enjoin for unfilial conduct
bear witness to the high estimation in which the Chinese moralists and
rulers hold the virtue of filial obedience and reverence. Thus a parent
may, with the consent of the maternal uncle, require a magistrate to
whip to death an unfilial son.[144] A parricide is beheaded, his body
cut in pieces, his house torn down, his neighbors are punished, his
chief teacher is put to death, and the magistrates of the district in
which he lived are degraded or deposed.[145]
[Sidenote: Reverence toward
superiors]
Filial piety is regarded by Chinese moralists as the root out of
which grow all other virtues. Immediately out of this root springs
the duty of obedience and reverence toward all superiors. This is the
corner stone of the Chinese system of political ethics. “In the family
life,” in the words of Jernigan, “may be seen the larger life of the
empire.”[146]
[Sidenote: A conforming to ancient
custom]
We have here the third of the cardinal duties, the duty which in
practice constitutes the heart and core of Chinese morality.[147]
The commandment is, Follow the ancients; walk in the trodden paths;
let to-day be like yesterday. This duty, as we have already noticed,
springs from the Chinese conception of the past as perfect. If that
past be perfect, then of course it becomes the duty of living men
to make the present like unto it, and in no case to depart from the
customs and practices of the fathers.
We can easily make the Chinese view in this matter intelligible to
ourselves by recalling how we have been wont to regard the religious
past of that Hebrew world of which we are the heirs. Sanctity in our
minds has attached to it all, and we regard any departure from the
teachings and commandments of that past to be a fault, even a species
of wickedness deserving eternal punishment.
Now in China this idea of sanctity, which among ourselves attaches
only to the religious side of life, has attached to all phases of
life, to government, to society, to art, to science, to trade and
commerce--to all of the ideas, ways, and customs of antiquity. As their
fathers did, so must the children do. They must deem worthy what their
fathers deemed worthy and love what their fathers loved.[148] He who
departs from the beliefs and practices of the ancients is regarded as
irreverent and immoral, just as he who with us departs from the beliefs
and customs of the fathers in religion is looked upon as presumptuous
and irreligious.
[Sidenote: The maintenance of the
just medium]
The virtue with which we here have to do is akin to the Greek virtue of
moderation. It consists in never going to extremes, in avoiding excess
in everything, in being always well balanced, standing in the middle,
and leaning not to either side; “to go beyond is as wrong as to fall
short.”[149] One of the sacred books of the Chinese, called _Chung
Yung_, which is ascribed to a grandson of Confucius, and in which is
portrayed an ideally perfect character, The Princely Man, celebrates
this virtue of the just medium.[150] This portraiture of the perfect
man, held up as a pattern for imitation to the successive generations
of Chinese youth, has been a molding force in the moral life of the
Chinese race.[151]
[Sidenote: The duty of
intellectual self-culture]
Having now spoken of the four cardinal virtues of the Chinese standard
of excellence, we shall next proceed to speak more briefly of several
other virtues, which, though not given the most prominent place in
the ideal, are nevertheless assigned a high place among the virtues
exemplified by the perfect man.
First among these we note that of intellectual self-culture. Concerning
this virtue and duty the Chinese sages have thoughts like those of the
Greek teachers. Confucius taught that true morality is practically
dependent upon learning. “It is not easy,” he says, “to find a man who
has learned for three years without coming to be good.”[152] Here we
have, as in the teachings of the Greek philosophers, knowledge made
almost identical with goodness. Intellectual culture and good morals
run together. Again the Master, speaking of the ancients, says: “Their
knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere; their thoughts
being sincere, their hearts were then rectified.”[153] “How would it
be possible,” asks Lao-tsze, “to go forward in one’s knowledge and go
backward in one’s morals?”[154]
This commendation of learning by the sages, as we shall see further on,
gave a great impulse to the educational system of China.
[Sidenote: The duties of rulers]
The teachings of Chinese moralists are especially marked by the
emphasis laid upon the duties of rulers. In the times of Confucius
there was lack of union between the different provinces, and China was
in a state bordering on political anarchy. A chief aim of the teachings
of the Master was to correct this condition of things by laying stress
upon the duties of those in authority. Never have the duties of rulers
been more insistently inculcated.
In the first place Confucius set a high aim for the state, an aim
altogether like that set by Plato for the ideal Greek city. He makes
the end of government to be virtue and not wealth. Its aim should be
to promote goodness and not merely material prosperity: “In a state,
pecuniary gain is not to be considered to be prosperity, but prosperity
will be found in righteousness.”[155]
The indispensable qualification in the ruler is goodness. “The love
of what is good,” declares Mencius, “is more than a sufficient
qualification for the government of the empire.”[156] The ruler should
be a father to his people, kind and benevolent, should instruct them,
should follow the laws of the ancient kings, should be a model for his
subjects, should leave a good example to future ages.
Much is said by the Master respecting the influence of the example
set by the ruler: “When the ruler as a father, a son, a brother, is
a model, then the people imitate him.”[157] The relation between
superior and inferior is like that between the wind and the grass:
“The grass must bend when the wind blows across it.”[158] “Never has
there been a case of the sovereign loving benevolence and the people
not loving righteousness.”[159] “If good men were to govern a country
in succession for a hundred years, they would be able to transform the
violently bad and dispense with capital punishment.”[160]
But there has never been such a succession of good rulers in China.
Respecting the influences and circumstances which have brought about
a great discrepancy between the ideal and practice we shall have
something to say in the last division of this chapter.
[Sidenote: Disesteem of the heroic
or martial virtues]
The Chinese ideal of goodness and nobility allows no place among its
virtues to the qualities of the warrior, which have in general been
given such a prominent place in the moral ideals of almost all other
peoples throughout all periods of history. Soldiers hold a very low
place in the social scale; they are looked upon as a “pariah class,”
and their life is regarded as degrading. The Emperor of China, “alone
among the great secular rulers of the world, never wears a sword.”[161]
This spirit of opposition to militarism is embodied in the teachings
of the great moralist Mencius. “The warlike Western world has scarcely
known a more vigorous and sweeping protest against warfare and
everything connected with it and every principle upon which it is
based.”[162] To gain territory by the slaughter of men Mencius declared
to be contrary to the principles of benevolence and righteousness.[163]
He speaks as follows of the military profession: “There are men who
say, I am skillful at marshaling troops. I am skillful in conducting
a battle. They are great criminals.”[164] In _Spring and Autumn_,
a chronicle of early Chinese history, he declares, “There are no
righteous wars,” though he admits that one might be better than
another.[165]
Confucius also, though he did not lay the stress upon the inherent
wickedness of war that was placed upon it by Mencius, maintained that
the same rules of morality apply in the relations of nations as in
those of individuals, and taught that differences between nations
should be settled by arbitration and by considerations of equity and
justice, not by brute force.
[Sidenote: Principles and inner
disposition]
It is often affirmed that the teachings of Chinese moralists are
defective in that they consist in moral precepts rather than in moral
principles, that they lay stress upon the observance of minute rules
of conduct rather than upon the inner disposition. There is, however,
in the body of ethical teachings of the sages no lack of insistence
upon principles of conduct and upon states and dispositions of mind and
heart. All must be right within the heart, says Confucius, for “what
truly is within will be manifested without.”[166] “Let the prince be
benevolent,” says Mencius, “and all his acts will be benevolent; let
the prince be righteous and all his acts will be righteous.”[167] Have
no depraved thoughts, sums up the contents of the three hundred pieces
in the Book of Poetry. “In the ceremony of mourning,” says Confucius
again, “it is better that there be deep sorrow than a minute attention
to observances.”[168]
And it is the same teaching as to what constitutes true morality
which we find in such sayings as these: “The doctrine of our Master
is to be true to the principles of our nature.”[169] “Man is born for
uprightness,”[170] and he should love virtue as he loves beauty,[171]
for its own sake.
In reciprocity Confucius found that same comprehensive rule of conduct
which is rightly regarded as one of the noblest principles of Christian
morality. Being asked if there was one word which may serve as a rule
of practice for all one’s life, the Master said: “Is not reciprocity
such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to
others.”[172]
And surely nothing could be farther from mere preceptorial teaching
than these words of Mencius: “Let a man not do what his own sense of
righteousness tells him not to do;... To act thus is all he has to
do.”[173] And in the following utterances the sages of China speak with
an accent strangely like that of the Great Prophet of Israel: “The
great man is he who does not lose his child heart.”[174] Again, “I like
life; I also like righteousness. If I cannot keep the two together, I
will let life go and choose righteousness.”[175] Still again: “With
coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a
pillow--I have still joy in the midst of these things.”[176]
In the following Mencius shows that he understood the moral use of
dark things: “When Heaven is about to confer a great office on any
man, it first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and
bones with toil. It exposes his body to hunger and subjects him
to extreme poverty. It confounds his undertakings. By all these
methods it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, and supplies
his incompetencies.”[177] And again: “Life springs from sorrow and
calamity, and death from ease and pleasure.”[178] “Men who are
possessed of intelligent virtue and prudence in affairs will generally
be found to have been in sickness and trouble.”[179]
[Sidenote: Defects of the ideal:
no duties to God, and the duties
of parents to children not
emphasized]
Regarded from our point of view the Confucian ideal of moral character
has serious limitations and defects. First, it omits practically all
duties to God. In the words of Dr. Legge, “man’s duty to God is left to
take care of itself.” God or Heaven was a subject of which Confucius
seldom spoke, and the Chinese have in this matter followed the example
of the Master. Heaven is not in all their thoughts.
If we recall what an influence the conception of a supreme being as
Creator and Father has exerted upon the morality of all the races that
have accepted as their creed the ethical monotheism of the Hebrew
teachers, we shall realize how fundamentally the Chinese ideal of
excellence has been modified by the omission of all those duties which
have entered into our own moral code as duties owed to God.[180]
Second, while laying such stress upon the duties of children to their
parents, Confucianism is almost silent regarding the duty of parents
to their children. At this point there is a wide divergence between
the Christian and the Chinese conception of duty. Commenting upon
this matter, Dr. Legge says: “I never quoted in a circle of Chinese
friends the words of Paul in Corinthians--‘The children ought not to
lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children’--without
their encountering a storm of opposition. When I tried to show that the
sentiment was favorable to the progress of society, and would enable
each generation to start from a higher standpoint, I found it difficult
to obtain a hearing.”[181]
The effects of the family ethics of Confucianism upon the moral
practice of the Chinese in the domestic sphere will be noted in the
following division of this chapter.
III. EFFECTS OF THE IDEAL UPON CHINESE LIFE AND HISTORY
[Sidenote: Degree of accordance
between theory and practice;
mandarin morality]
No people have ever lived up to their ideal of moral excellence. The
Chinese like others have obviously fallen far short of embodying in
actual practice the high standard of their sages. But it is certainly
a gross misjudgment of Chinese morality to say, as some writers on
things Chinese have said, that the ideal and the standard maintained
are wholly disconnected.[182] This depreciatory opinion, however,
admits of little dispute if its application be confined to the mandarin
class. In public or official morality there is a deplorable divergence
between theory and practice. Probably the Chinese official class, in
spite of the stress which is laid by moralists upon the duties of
magistrates and rulers, is the most corrupt in the world. Peculation
in office is universal. Bribery is as rife as it was in Rome under the
later Republic. Justice is almost universally bought and sold. This
very general lack of integrity in office is attributable in part at
least to the inadequate salaries. This inevitably calls into existence
a system of fees and presents, which as inevitably grows into a system
of extortion, oppression, and corruption. But, as a well-informed
writer affirms, “Whatever laxity Chinese morality may permit in
official relations, from the workingman, the tradesman, and the servant
it exacts most scrupulous honesty.”[183] The average man in China, it
may be confidently affirmed, is as moral--defining morality as loyalty
to an ideal--as the average man in any other country of the world.
[Sidenote: Favorable effects of
the ideal]
But this general loyalty to the ideal, since this has serious defects,
has brought it about that the ideal has been an efficient force for
evil as well as for good. In some respects it has promoted a true
morality, while in others it has marred and cramped the moral life of
the Chinese people.
Prominent among the favorable effects of the ideal is its exaltation
of the family life. Through the emphasis laid upon special domestic
virtues, particularly that of filial piety, the ideal has given the
family such a place in the fabric of Chinese society as has probably
been given it in no other society ancient or modern, except in that
of early Rome. As the family is the connecting link between the
generations, and consequently as a true family life must characterize
every society that shall live long on the earth, we may without
reserve accept that interpretation of Chinese history which finds in
the exaltation of filial virtue by the sages of China one secret of
that longevity of the Chinese nation which makes it the sole survivor
among the nations from the ancient world of culture.
Like the maxim of filial piety, the Confucian teaching which makes
virtue and not material prosperity the aim and end of government has
been a conservative force in Chinese life and society. “It would be
hard to overestimate,” says Dr. Martin, “the influence which has been
exerted by this little schedule of political ethics [the Great Study],
occupying, as it has, so prominent a place in the Chinese mind for
four and twenty centuries, teaching the people to regard the Empire as
a vast family, and the Emperor to rule by moral influence, making the
goal of his ambition not the wealth but the virtue of his subjects.
It is certain that the doctrines which it embodies have been largely
efficient in rendering China what she is, the most ancient and the most
populous of existing nations.”[184]
In still another way has the moral ideal reacted favorably upon
Chinese civilization. We have noted the high place in the standard of
excellence assigned by the Chinese sages to the duty of intellectual
self-culture. It is scarcely to be doubted that this emphasis laid upon
learning as an important factor in the formation of moral character has
greatly fostered learning and has been a chief agency in the creation
of the Chinese educational system with its competitive literary
examinations, which from the earliest times down almost to the present
day formed the sole gateway to public office.
[Sidenote: Unfavorable effects of
the ideal]
But Confucius, while inculcating the duty of seeking wisdom, taught his
people to look for it in the past. He enjoined them to seek the moral
ideal in the life and deeds of the ancients.
Never in the moral history of the world has the inculcation of a
specific duty had a profounder influence upon the destinies of a
people than this requirement of conformity to the ways of the fathers
has had upon the destinies of the Chinese race. It has been one of
the chief causes of the unchanging, stereotyped character of Chinese
civilization. In obedience to the requirements of this ideal of
goodness the Chinese for two millenniums and more have made to-day like
yesterday. Hence the cycling, goalless movement of Chinese history.
Just as the undue emphasis laid by the Chinese moralists upon the duty
of conforming to the ways of the ancients has reacted in some respects
unfavorably upon Chinese life, so has the exaggerated stress laid by
them upon the doctrine of the just medium exerted a similar unfavorable
influence. This has tended to produce a dull uniformity in Chinese life
and thought. The lack of lofty ideal aims has caused Chinese history to
be singularly barren in chivalric and heroic elements. The everlasting
round of routine makes life a treadmill. It is “the prose of existence.”
Again, the Confucian system tends to produce a formal morality. While
it is not true, as we have seen, that Confucianism neglects to deal
with general principles, right feelings, and motives of action, still
it is true that instead of relying upon these there is an immense
multitude of precepts and minute rules covering the smallest details
of conduct. There are three thousand rules of deportment. This has
resulted, and naturally, in the substitution of the letter for the
spirit. Even the Master has come to serve as a pattern rather in the
outer form of his life than in its informing spirit.[185]
Never was there a better illustration of how the letter killeth;
for a reliance on exact rules and instructions as to conduct in
all conceivable relations and situations has made much of Chinese
morality a formal and lifeless thing. The Chinese are governed by a
sense of propriety rather than by a sense of duty. Their morality is
largely etiquette.[186] It has justly been likened to the morality of
the ancient Romans in that it makes manners and morals to be almost
interchangeable terms. Especially have the hundreds of rules prescribed
for the expression of reverence for superiors tended to empty this
part of Chinese morality of reality and sincerity, and to make Chinese
official ceremonialism one of the most curious phases of Chinese life.
It would seem, further, that the very great emphasis laid by the
Chinese moralists upon the duties of children toward their parents has
prevented the normal development among the Chinese of that ethical
sentiment which among ourselves assigns the duties of parents to infant
children an important place in the code of domestic morality. This lack
among the Chinese of any deep feeling of parental obligation results in
a widespread practice condemned by the conscience of Christian nations.
The exposure or destruction of infants prevails in almost every
province of the Republic. It is the girl babies that are the victims of
this practice.[187] They are often drowned or buried alive.
In this practice the subsistence motive of course is active. It is in
general the extreme poverty of the people which causes them thus to
destroy their offspring. But what renders this practice significant
for the student of morality is the fact that these things are done with
little or no scruple of conscience,[188] showing that acts respecting
which the conscience of Christian nations has become very sensitive
have not yet among the Chinese been brought generally within the circle
covered by the moral feelings.
[Sidenote: Impending changes in
the moral ideal]
We have seen how the moral ideal of a people is modified by all the
changing circumstances of their life and history. The moral ideal
of the Chinese has undergone little modification for upward of two
millenniums, such, for instance, as the ideal of the European peoples
has undergone in a like period, because throughout this long term
the influences acting upon the national life have been practically
unchanged. There have been in Chinese history no such interminglings of
races, revivals in learning, religious reformations, and political and
industrial revolutions as mark the history of the Western nations, and
responding to which the moral evolution of these peoples has gone on
apace.
But now that the long-continued isolation of China has been broken,
and she is being subjected to all the potent influences of the
civilization of the West, it is certain that her social and mental life
will be remolded and cast in new forms. Sooner or later constitutional
government must supersede, has already superseded, the patriarchal
government of the past; the whole social fabric must necessarily be
reconstructed and the individual instead of the family or clan be made
the social and ethical unit;[189] the science of the Western nations
will displace, is already displacing, the obsolete learning of the
Four Classics; Christianity will quicken the atrophied religious
consciousness of the race; and in place of the isolation of the
past there will be established those international relations and
intellectual exchanges which perhaps more than all other agencies
combined have been the motive force of European civilization and
progress.
This new environment, these new influences molding afresh Chinese
social, intellectual, and religious life and institutions, cannot fail
to react powerfully upon the moral ideal of the nation. It too must
inevitably undergo a great change. There will be a shifting in the
standard of character of the different virtues, for the moral ideal
of a simple patriarchal community cannot serve as the model for a
complex modern society, and doubtless some of those virtues--as, for
instance, reverence for the past--which now hold the highest rank in
the code will exchange places with others at present held in little
esteem. Changes in the feelings and beliefs of the people in regard to
ancestor worship, which changes are inevitable, will effect important
modifications in family ethics. The substitution of Western science for
the lore of the classics will introduce evolutionary ethics and the
philosophical virtues of the Western world; while the substitution of
popular government for the patriarchal autocracy will necessarily bring
in the ethics of democracy.
These certain changes in the form and content of the ancestral ideal of
goodness will not only assimilate it to the ethical standard of the
Western world, but, correcting some of its obvious shortcomings, will
render it a still more effective force in the guidance and control of
the moral life of a great and ancient people, whose day apparently is
still in the future.[190]
CHAPTER VI
JAPANESE MORALS: AN IDEAL OF LOYALTY
I. FORMATIVE AND MODIFYING INFLUENCES
[Sidenote: Introductory: a
practically independent evolution
in morals]
In their moral evolution the Japanese people have developed a system
of morals which, notwithstanding certain defects and limitations, is
one of the noblest created by any of the great races. A study of this
system is especially interesting and instructive for the reason that it
shows how a very admirable moral ideal may be created by a people in
comparative isolation and under influences wholly different from those
which have shaped and molded our own ideal of moral goodness. This
compels a recognition of the fact that the historian of morals can no
longer overlook or ignore the moral phenomena of the Far East.
A second reason that a study of the Japanese code of morals is
important and interesting is because this ideal of worthiness and duty
has been indubitably a main factor in lifting the Japanese nation to
the high place it holds to-day among the great nations of the earth.
In our examination of this system of morality we must first note the
nature of the agencies which lent to the moral ideal its characteristic
cast. Among the various forces molding and modifying the ethical type
we shall find the most important to have been the family and clan
system, ancestor worship, the monarchy of supposed divine origin,
feudalism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Western civilization.
[Sidenote: The family and clan
system]
As in China, so in Old Japan the family rather than the individual
was the social unit. Through the expansion of the family arose the
clan, which in the sentiments and feelings which governed its members
was simply a large patriarchal household. This organization of early
Japanese society, with the family and its outgrowth, the clan, forming
the basis of the fabric, was, as we shall learn, a potent force in the
creation of the moral type of the nation. The relationships of the
kinship group determined the duties and virtues of its members and
constituted the chief sphere of their moral activity. Here was the
nursery of Japanese morality.
[Sidenote: Shinto, or ancestor
worship]
The influence of religion has mingled with that of the family
sentiment. Throughout all the past the vital religious element in the
life of the Japanese peoples has been the Shinto cult, and this is now
the established religion of the state. The system in its essence is
ancestor and hero worship, the spirits of the dead being revered as
guardian divinities. This cult has created moral feelings and family
duties like those called into existence by the same cult in China.
Out of these rudimentary family virtues, as from a central root, have
sprung many of those virtues of wider relationships which have helped
to give to the Japanese type of moral excellence its essential features.
[Sidenote: The monarchy of divine
origin]
The central teaching of Shinto is that the Emperor is of divine descent
and that his person is sacred and inviolate.[191] This doctrine of the
divine nature of the monarchy[192] has exerted a profound influence
upon the moral ideal of Japan and has had consequences of great moment.
It has made unquestioning obedience and absolute loyalty to the Emperor
the religious duties and preëminent virtues of the subject.
[Sidenote: Feudalism]
In times preceding the twelfth century there grew up in Japan a feudal
system which in many respects was remarkably like the feudal system of
medieval Europe. The unit of the system was the clan, the members of
which, forming a close brotherhood, were bound to their lord by ties of
affection and fidelity like those which in Europe theoretically bound
the retainer to his lord.[193] This system exerted a great influence
upon the moral type. It developed a martial ideal of character known
as Bushido, many of the virtues of which are almost identical with
corresponding virtues in the European ideal of chivalry. Probably this
system has had more to do with creating in Japan a moral consciousness
in many respects like our own than has any other single agency. To the
lack in the Chinese social system of any institution like Japanese
feudalism may be ascribed in part at least the wide difference which
exists between the moral ideals of the two peoples, especially in
regard to the rank assigned the military virtues.
[Sidenote: Confucianism]
Along with the Chinese classics Confucianism was introduced into Japan
about the middle of the sixth century of our era, and being in perfect
accord with the native system of Shinto and with the Japanese ways of
thinking, this cult of ancestors tended to reënforce native ethical
tendencies and thus contributed essentially to make the virtues of
filial obedience and reverence for superiors prominent in the growing
type of character.
[Sidenote: Buddhism]
Buddhism was introduced into Japan in the sixth century of our era. Its
incoming had deep import for the moral life of the Japanese people.
It inculcated the gentler virtues, exerting here in this respect, as
elsewhere in the Far East,--save in China, where it too quickly became
shockingly degenerate,--an influence like that exerted by Christianity
in the Western world. It helped to make gentleness, courtesy, and
tenderness distinctive traits of the Japanese character. Through the
regard which it instilled for dumb animals it placed the whole lower
world of animal life under the protection of the moral sentiment.[194]
[Sidenote: Western civilization]
A little more than a generation ago the civilization of Japan came into
vital contact with the civilization of the West. Almost every element
of the old Japanese culture has felt the modifying effect of this
contact. The political, the economic, the social, the domestic, and the
religious institutions have undergone or are undergoing great changes.
These changes in these departments of life and thought have caused, as
such changes always do, important modifications in ethical sentiments
and convictions. Of all the influences which for more than two thousand
years have been at work shaping and molding the moral ideal of the
Japanese nation, those now entering from the Occidental world will
doubtless leave the deepest impress upon the ethical type.
In a still more direct way is this contact of Japan with Western
civilization resulting in important consequences for Japanese morality.
Christian ethics, like Buddhist ethics, is making a strong appeal to
certain classes of Japanese society. The result is what in an earlier
chapter was designated as a “mingling of moralities” and the creation
of a new composite conscience.
II. THE IDEAL
[Sidenote: Bushido]
The heart of Japanese morality is to be sought in Bushido,[195] the
ethics of the samurai. We shall best understand this moral code by
thinking of it as the Japanese ideal of chivalry or, perhaps better,
as a blending of the Western chivalric, Spartan, and Stoic ideals of
goodness and nobility, since in the list of virtues making up the
Bushido ideal we find several of the cardinal virtues entering into
each of these three distinct types of character.
As we have already intimated, Bushido is an ideal of excellence
which grew up out of the root of Japanese feudalism, just as the
Western ideal of chivalry developed out of European feudalism. It was
essentially an ideal of knighthood, the prime virtue of which was
personal loyalty to one’s superior. Fealty to one’s chief was made
so dominant a virtue that it overshadowed all other virtues. In the
defense or in the service of his lord a samurai might commit, without
offense to his sense of moral right, practically any crime, such as
blackmailing, lying, treachery, or even murder.
Grouped about this cardinal virtue of loyalty were the other knightly
virtues of courage, fidelity to the plighted word, liberality,
self-sacrifice, gratitude, courtesy, and benevolence. Liberality, or
free-handedness, was carried to such an extreme as to become a defect
of character. The true samurai must have no thought of economy and
money-making. “Ignorance of the value of different coins was a token of
good breeding.”[196] To handle money was thought degrading.
In one respect the code of honor of the Japanese knight was wholly
unlike that of the Western knight. It did not include any special duty
to woman. “Neither God nor the ladies inspired any enthusiasm in the
samurai’s breast.”
The Spartan element in the samurai code appears particularly in the
training of the youth. The boy was taught always to act from motives
of duty. He was denied every comfort. His clothing and his diet were
coarse. He was allowed no fire in the winter. “If his feet were numbed
by frost, he would be told to run about in the snow to make them
warm.” To accustom him to the sight of blood, he was taken to see the
execution of criminals; and to banish foolish fear from his mind, he
was forced to visit alone at night the place of execution.[197]
The Stoic element in the ideal appears in the high place assigned to
the virtue of self-control. The samurai, like the Stoic, must suppress
all signs of his emotions. Like the Stoic, too, he must have courage
to live or courage to die, as enjoined by duty. And his code of honor
taught him what true courage is: “It is true courage to live when it is
right to live, and to die only when it is right to die.”[198]
This samurai ideal of character constitutes, as we shall see, a molding
force in the moral life of Japan. Bushido, it is true, died with the
passing of feudalism,[199] but the spirit of Bushido lived on. The
samurai’s sense of honor and of duty became the inheritance of the
Japanese people. This great bequest of honor and valor and of all
samurai virtues is, in the words of the author of the _Soul of Japan_,
but “a trust to the nation, and the summons of the present is to guard
this heritage, nor to bate one jot of the ancient spirit; the summons
of the future will be so to widen its scope as to apply it in all walks
and relations of life.”[200]
[Sidenote: The virtue of loyalty
to the Emperor, or patriotism]
The belief in the divine origin of the imperial house of Japan makes
loyalty to the Emperor the supreme duty.[201] During the ascendancy
of feudalism this duty, in so far as the samurai class was concerned,
was, it is true, overshadowed by the duty of loyalty to one’s immediate
feudal superior. The sentiment due the Emperor was intercepted by the
daimyos. But in theory loyalty to the imperial house has ever been
the paramount virtue of the Japanese. The Emperor’s command is to his
subjects as the command of God to us, and obedience must be perfect and
unquestioning. So dominant is the place assigned this virtue of loyalty
to the head of the nation that the Japanese moralist seems almost to
make morality consist in this single virtue, as if “to fear the Emperor
and to keep his commandments” were the full duty of man.[202]
This sentiment of the people toward the imperial family renders the
government a sort of theocracy. Hence patriotism with the Japanese
is in large measure a religious feeling. Indeed, patriotism has been
called the religion of the Japanese. It is this virtue, exalted to a
degree which the world has never seen surpassed, which has contributed
more than any other quality of the Japanese character to make Japan a
great nation and to give her the victory over a powerful foe in one of
the most gigantic wars of modern times.
[Sidenote: Family ethics]
If the first duty of the Japanese is to his Emperor, his second is to
his parents. In Japanese phrase, the two virtues of loyalty and filial
piety are “the two wheels of the chariot of Japanese ethics.”[203]
Shinto and Confucianism, as we have seen, have both contributed to
the fostering in children of the moral sentiments of grateful love,
reverence, and obedience toward parents and all ancestors living and
dead. The Japanese regard the high place assigned to these filial
duties in the standard of character as a mark of the vast superiority
of their morality to ours.[204] The sentiments of filial affection and
reverence, coloring as they do the whole moral life, lend to Japanese
society an ethical cast which places it in many respects in strong
contrast to the social order of the Western nations, and makes it
difficult for the Japanese to understand us and for us to understand
them.[205]
[Sidenote: Woman as wife and as
mother]
As respects the position of woman the family ethics of Japan are
the family ethics of the East. In a work from every page of which
breathes the spirit of the Orient, a Japanese writer, dwelling
upon the difference between the ethical sentiments respecting
family relationships which have been evoked by the different social
environments of the East and the West, says: “In the East woman has
always been worshiped as the mother, and all those honors which the
Christian knight brought in homage to his ladylove, the samurai laid at
his mother’s feet.”[206]
Lafcadio Hearn, touching upon this same feature of the family ethics
of the Japanese, declares that the Bible text, “For this cause shall a
man leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife,” is, to
their way of thinking and feeling, “one of the most immoral sentences
ever written.”[207]
In another important respect does the domestic morality of the Japanese
differ essentially from that of the Christian West. The family is not
strictly monogamous, as with us. The moral sense of the Japanese
discerns nothing wrong in polygamy or concubinage.[208] As respects the
whole relation of marriage, the Japanese appear to be in about the same
stage of evolution as had been reached by the Hebrews at the time of
Abraham.
A chief virtue of the Japanese women in all their relations is
obedience to the one--whether father, or husband, or son--to whom
obedience is due. It is the setting of this duty before all other
duties that causes the Japanese women sometimes to do what appears
to us immoral, but which seems to them truest piety and noblest
self-sacrifice.[209] In loyalty to duty, as they interpret duty, they
maintain a standard rarely surpassed by the women of any land.[210]
[Sidenote: Suicide regarded as a
virtuous act]
Suicide is infrequent among savage and barbarian races, but is common
among all peoples in an advanced stage of civilization. It is not so
much the fact itself of self-destruction that claims the attention of
the historian of morals, as the light in which the act is viewed; that
is, whether it is considered a virtuous or a reprehensible deed.
Now the Japanese regard suicide, if prompted by a good motive, as a
justifiable and noble act. The motives with them for the deed are
various, as in the case of other peoples, but among these motives is
one which discloses the existence among the Japanese of a sentiment
unknown or almost unknown among ourselves. The deed is often committed
in the way of making a solemn protest against something disapproved of
in the conduct or acts of others. Thus when the Japanese government
after war with China in 1898 acceded to the demands of Russia, France,
and Germany respecting the recession to China of certain territories
on the Continent, forty men in the Japanese army, by way of protest,
committed suicide “in the ancient way.”[211]
Tyrannicide is also looked upon by the Japanese as an heroic and
praiseworthy deed, provided the person committing the act makes clear
the self-sacrificing and patriotic character of his motives by at once
taking his own life.
[Sidenote: Low estimation of the
virtue of truthfulness]
A marked defect of the moral standard of the Japanese is the low place
assigned to the virtue of truthfulness. Among the Japanese, to call a
person a liar is not to apply to him a term of reproach, but rather to
pay him a pleasant compliment as a person of tact and shrewdness.
This lack of reverence for truth probably springs in part from the
virtue of politeness as a root. The extreme emphasis laid upon courtesy
as the sign and expression of reverence and loyalty toward superiors
fosters the general habit of saying things which are pleasant and
agreeable whether they are true or not. This complacent disregard of
truth in social intercourse would seem to have dulled the sense of
obligation of truth-speaking in other relations.
III. SOME SIGNIFICANT FACTS IN THE MORAL HISTORY OF JAPAN
[Sidenote: General influence of
the ideal of Bushido]
The Japanese knightly ideal, which, as we have said, constitutes the
heart and core of theoretical Japanese morality, has a history somewhat
like that of the ideal of European knighthood. It was a lofty ideal
very imperfectly realized, yet realized to such a degree as to make
it a chief motive force in the political and social life of Japan for
several centuries.[212] It left a permanent impress upon the moral
consciousness of the Japanese nation, an impress certainly deeper and
more enduring than that left by the ideal of European chivalry upon
the moral consciousness of the peoples of Western Europe. New Japan is
directly or indirectly the creation of Japanese knighthood.
We have seen that loyalty to his chief was the preëminent virtue of the
samurai. Upon the downfall of feudalism this loyalty was transferred
to the Emperor. The spirit of the samurai came to inspire the Japanese
nation. Since the time when the loyalty of Scottish clansmen to their
chief was transferred to Scottish royalty, there has not been seen a
more remarkable example of the absolute devotion of a people to their
sovereign than that exhibited to-day by the people of Japan.
The samurai were taught to despise the love of gain, and thus these
knights of Japan were strangers to those vices which spring from the
love of money. To this circumstance may be ascribed the fact that the
statesmen of Japan, who almost invariably are of the samurai class,
have been so notably free from venality and corruption.[213]
Finally, Bushido held aloft a high standard of truthfulness. The true
samurai regarded an oath as a derogation of his honor. It cannot be
affirmed that this Bushido virtue of veracity has yet become the
inheritance of the mercantile and peasant classes of Japan, but it has
at least been retained by the samurai as a class, and is working to-day
like leaven in the mass of Japanese society.
[Sidenote: The Bushido code in
action]
There are two remarkable passages in recent Japanese history which
well illustrate in what way and to what degree the spirit of the
samurai, “the spirit of not living unto one’s self,” has become an
inspiration to the whole Japanese nation. The first passage has to do
with the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, which on the part of Japan
was a struggle for national existence. It was the samurai morality, a
morality of loyalty, of valor, of selflessness, of fidelity to duty,
that formed a chief element of the strength of Japan in that critical
juncture of the nation’s life. The Bushido code of honor showed itself
equal to the Spartan code in creating a race of invincible warriors.
Since the Spartan Leonidas and his companions died for Greece in the
pass of Thermopylæ there has been no sublimer exhibition of fortitude
and self-devotion in a great cause than that shown by Japanese soldiers
in the trenches before Port Arthur and on the battlefields of Manchuria.
This war for national independence also afforded proof of how the
gentle virtue of Japanese knighthood, courteous generosity to the
vanquished, has passed as a noble legacy to the nation at large; for
as an eminent Japanese statesman affirms, “In the tender care bestowed
upon our stricken adversary of the battlefield will be found the
ancient courtesy of the samurai.”[214]
[Sidenote: The moral standard of
the samurai in competition with
that of the plebeian trader]
The second passage shows the morality of the samurai in competition
with the morality of the common Japanese shopman. Now the morality
of the plebeian Japanese trader is about on a level with that of the
ancient Greek shopkeeper.[215] And a chief cause of his low moral
standard is the same, namely, the general disesteem in which the
trader’s business has been held. This social stigma has resulted in
the mercantile business being left in the hands of the lowest class
socially, intellectually, and morally.[216] The great mass of the
people have from time immemorial been engaged in the honorable business
of agriculture; while the samurai class, as we have seen, regarded
it as degrading to engage in trade or even to handle money. In these
circumstances it was inevitable that the mercantile class should evolve
a very low code of business ethics; for, as the author of _Bushido_
very justly observes, “put a stigma on a calling and its followers
adjust their morals to it.”
The strictly class character of this loose commercial morality is shown
by the experience of the samurai after the abolition of feudalism in
1868. Upon that event many of them engaged in mercantile business,
carrying with them their high moral standard, with results pathetically
depicted by Nitobé in these words: “Those who had eyes to see could
not weep enough, those who had hearts to feel could not sympathize
enough, with the fate of many a noble and honest samurai who signally
and irrevocably failed in his new and unfamiliar field of trade and
industry, through sheer lack of shrewdness in coping with his artful
plebeian rival.... It will be long before it will be recognized how
many fortunes were wrecked in the attempt to apply Bushido ethics to
business methods, but it was soon apparent to every observing mind that
the ways of wealth were not the ways of honor.”[217] About ninety-nine
out of every hundred samurai who ventured into business are said to
have failed.
This passage out of the history of New Japan carries with it various
lessons, but particularly does it teach how unjust it is to judge the
morality of a people by the morality of a class.[218]
Notwithstanding the disastrous outcome of their first venture into the
mercantile field, the samurai still remain in business, so that there
is going on to-day in Japan in the commercial domain a competition
between two moral standards. The triumph of the standard of the samurai
over that of the plebeian trader would mean the development in Japan
of a matchless business morality, which, in the increasing closeness
of commercial relations between the East and the West, might well act
cleansingly on our own business ethics.[219]
[Sidenote: Moral education in the
schools; the Imperial Rescript]
The rapid transformation in the institutions and ideas of Old Japan
after the revolution of 1868 created a crisis in the moral life of
the Japanese people. The old basis of the national morality was
destroyed. Reverence for the Confucian teachings was lost. Respect
for ancestral customs was seriously impaired. Moral anarchy impended.
In this critical juncture some proposed that Buddhism, others that
Christianity, should be made the basis of the moral code.
Especially in the schools was the urgency of the need of some new
sanction for morality felt, because moral instruction and training
have always formed an essential part of the education of the youth of
Japan. The Japanese have ever believed that it is possible to mold
the character of the nation by education. “With us,” says a native
writer, “education has meant moral education more than anything else
for centuries.”[220] “The object of teaching,” says the official
regulations for teaching in elementary schools, “is to cultivate
the moral nature of children and to guide them in the practice of
virtues.”[221] Because of this central place assigned moral education
in the work of the schools, the necessity for removing all uncertainty
as to what should be inculcated was all the more exigent.
To meet the crisis the following imperial rescript was
issued--certainly one of the most remarkable state papers ever
promulgated:
“Know ye, our subjects:
“Our imperial ancestors have founded our Empire on a basis broad
and everlasting and have deeply and firmly implanted virtue; our
subjects, ever united in loyalty and filial piety, have from
generation to generation illustrated the beauty thereof. This is
the glory and the fundamental character of our Empire, and herein
also lies the source of our education. Ye, our subjects, be filial
to your parents, affectionate to your brothers and sisters; as
husbands and wives be harmonious; as friends true; bear yourselves
in modesty and moderation; extend your benevolence to all; pursue
learning and cultivate arts, and thereby develop intellectual
faculties and perfect moral powers; furthermore, advance public
good and promote common interests; always respect the Constitution
and observe the laws; should emergency arise, offer yourselves
courageously to the state; and thus guard and maintain the
prosperity of our imperial throne coeval with heaven and earth. So
shall ye not only be our good and faithful subjects, but render
illustrious the best traditions of your forefathers.
“The way here set forth is indeed the teaching bequeathed by our
imperial ancestors, to be observed alike by their descendants and
the subjects, infallible for all ages and true in all places. It is
our wish to lay it to heart in all reverence, in common with you,
our subjects, that we may all thus attain to the same virtue.
“The 30th day of the 10th month of the 23d year of Meiji”
[1890].[222]
It would be almost impossible to exaggerate the influence of this
imperial edict. “Our whole moral education,” affirms Baron Kikuchi,
“consists in instilling into the minds of our children the proper
appreciation of the spirit of this rescript.”[223] The children learn
it by heart just as the Roman children committed to memory the Twelve
Tables of the laws.
Japanese believe that the effect of this instruction upon the national
character, reënforcing the ancestral virtues of loyalty and devotion to
duty, was exhibited in the recent war with Russia.[224]
A noteworthy feature of the rescript is that it is simply a
reaffirmation of the teachings of the ancient moralists and the ethical
traditions of the fathers--an inculcation of those virtues of loyalty
and filial piety which the Japanese people have held in esteem and
practiced from generation to generation.
A second feature of the edict which arrests attention is the
universalistic and secular character of the morality inculcated. The
virtues enjoined are universal benevolence, loyalty to duty, and
self-devotion to the common good--a morality of the universal human
heart and conscience, a morality, as the edict declares, good for all
ages and for all places.
[Sidenote: Japanese morals and
Western civilization]
The foregoing anticipates and gives answer to the questions: What will
be the effect upon Japanese morality of those changes now going on in
the life and thought of Japan through contact with the civilization of
the West? What will be the effect upon Japanese public morality when
the common belief in the divine descent of the Emperor, which is the
root from which springs the primal duty of loyalty, is undermined, as
modern science is certain to undermine it? What will be the effect upon
Japanese domestic morality when Occidental conceptions of the family
and of woman’s place in it come to modify, as they seem likely to do,
those ideas and sentiments which from time immemorial have formed the
basis of the family ethics of the East? What will be the ethical
consequences when Western science renders obsolete the Shinto learning
and the Confucian classics, which have hitherto formed the basis of
so large a part of Japanese morality? What will be the effect upon
the ancient ideal of character of the adoption of Christian ideas and
teachings in place of those which have so long nourished the ethical
feelings and sentiments of the Japanese people?
That the intrusion into the ancient culture of Japan of these various
elements of Western civilization has deep import for Japanese morality
cannot be made a matter of doubt. In the new environment, so different
from that in the midst of which the ancient ideal of goodness was
developed, this ideal must inevitably undergo important changes. Some
of those qualities of character which have so long held high places in
the ideal of excellence will cease to evoke the old-time homage, while
other qualities at present assigned low places in the standard will
be exalted. Virtues now practically unrecognized by the Japanese as
virtues, but which among us are highly esteemed moral qualities, will
certainly be incorporated in the modified ideal, giving it a new cast,
yet probably without changing fundamentally the type; for the moral
life of the Japanese people is too virile and too essentially sound to
permit us to think that the new influences now coming in will produce
such radical changes in the ethical feelings and convictions of the
race as to result in a repetition of what happened upon the entrance
of Christianity into the morally decadent Greco-Roman world--the
displacement of the old ideal of character by a new and essentially
different ideal.
CHAPTER VII
THE ETHICAL IDEALS OF INDIA
PART I. THE ETHICS OF BRAHMANISM--A CLASS MORALITY
I. HISTORICAL AND SPECULATIVE BASIS OF THE SYSTEM
[Sidenote: The conception of the
First Cause--Brahma]
As in Judea so in India the conception formed of the Supreme Being
reacted potently upon morality. Hence in naming the influences under
which the moral ideal of Brahmanism was molded we must speak first of
the Indian conception of the First Cause.
The Aryan conquerors of India originally held notions of the gods in
general like those held by their kinsmen, the early Greeks and Romans.
When they entered India they were ancestor worshipers and polytheists.
They had earth gods and sky gods. The gods of the celestial phenomena
gradually acquired ascendancy. Then, as in Egypt, there came a tendency
toward unity. The various gods came to be looked upon by the loftier
minds as merely different manifestations of one primal being.[225]
It is right at this point that we find the great antithesis between
Indian modes of thought and those of all or almost all other peoples.
When the thinkers of Egypt, of the Semitic lands, of Persia, of Greece
and Rome, had at last through reflection evolved the lofty conception
of a single great First Cause, they endowed this cause with conscious
personal life. This mode of thought is our heritage from the past. It
is to us almost or quite impossible to conceive of conscious personal
life as springing from an unconscious impersonal cause. Hence we place
behind the manifold phenomena of the universe a conscious personal
being as the origin and source of all things and all life.[226]
It is wholly different with the thinkers of India. They seem to be able
to postulate as the beginning of things an impersonal cause, a cause
without perception, thought, or consciousness. They affirm that out of
unconsciousness consciousness arises. They teach that out of Brahma,
the unconscious, impersonal, passionless One, emanate all material
worlds and sentient beings, gods as well as men.
How profoundly this conception of the First Cause has reacted on the
ethical speculations of the Hindu sages and on the moral life of India
will appear a little further on.
[Sidenote: The god Brahma
(Brahman)]
But this incomprehensible, unconscious, passionless Brahma is not the
Brahma of the popular faith. The masses and even the philosophers
themselves must have something more concrete. So this impersonal,
neuter Brahma is conceived as giving existence to the personal,
masculine God Brahma (Brahman), “the progenitor of all worlds, the
first-born among beings.”[227]
It is very necessary for the student of Brahmanic ethics to keep in
mind the distinction between the uncreated, unconditioned, impersonal
Brahma and the created, conditioned, personal Brahma, since there
is here laid the foundation of a double goal for rational moral
striving: the goal of the ascetic whose ultimate aim is deliverance
from individual existence and absorption into the absolute,
unchangeable, impersonal Brahma, which means a state of eternal
unconsciousness--dreamless sleep; and the goal of the multitude, whose
hope and aim is blissful, though temporary, union with the personal
Brahma in the heaven of the mortal, conditioned gods.[228]
[Sidenote: The system of castes]
The ethical evolution in India was also profoundly influenced by a
prehistoric event, namely, the subjection of the original non-Aryan
population of the land by an intruding Aryan people. As a result of
the long and bitter struggle the two races became separated by a sharp
line of race prejudice and hatred. The dark-skinned natives were
reduced to a state of servitude or dependence upon their conquerors.
Intermarriages between the two races were strictly prohibited, and
thus the population of the conquered districts of the peninsula became
divided into two sharply defined classes. These constituted a model
upon which Indian society was framed. Other classes were formed, and
these gradually hardened into castes, that is, into classes between
which marriages were prohibited. Four great castes arose: namely,
priests or Brahmans, warriors and rulers, peasants and merchants, and
sudras. Below these castes were the pariahs, or outcasts, made up of
the most degraded of the natives. As time passed, still other divisions
were formed, every occupation coming to constitute the basis of a new
caste, till society was stratified like a geologic deposit.
Religion came in to consecrate this division of the people into
privileged and nonprivileged classes.[229] The sacred scriptures
declare that the Brahmans sprang from the mouth of Brahma, the
warriors from his arms, the peasants and traders from his thighs, and
the sudras from his feet.[230]
No institution known among men ever exercised a more fateful and
sinister influence upon morality than this caste system has exercised
upon the morality of the peoples of India. The rooted belief and dogma
of the natural inequality of men has made Brahmanic ethics a thing of
grades and classes, and has thus rendered impossible the evolution of
a true morality, which requires for its basis genuine sentiments of
equality and brotherhood.
[Sidenote: The doctrine of
transmigration]
We easily realize the importance for morality of a belief in a
life after death. But a belief in preëxistence may exert an even
greater influence upon the moral code of a people than a belief in
post-existence.[231] Now the morality of the Hindus has been molded
by both these doctrines, for according to the teachings of Brahmanism
a man has lived through many lives before his “birth,” and may wander
through “ten thousand millions of existences” after death has freed
him from his present body.[232] The class and the condition into which
he is born here on earth is believed to be determined by the sum total
of his merits or demerits earned in preceding existences. As a result
of sin he may in his next birth be reborn in a lower caste, or may be
imprisoned in some animal or vegetable form. He may pass a thousand
times through the bodies of spiders, snakes, and lizards, and hundreds
of times through the forms of grasses, shrubs, and creepers. And all
this experience may come after the soul has passed through dreadful and
innumerable hells for vast cycles of years.[233]
This transmigration theory was framed by the thinkers of India to
explain among other things the seemingly unjust inequalities of human
life.[234] It afforded an explanation why one man should be born a
Brahman and another a sudra, one born in a hovel and another in a
palace, by conceiving the place of every person born into the world as
being determined by the manner of his life in former existences.[235]
It is unnecessary to dwell upon the profound influence which this
doctrine of transmigration, or round of births, has exerted upon
the moral life of India. The tendency of this theory, as soon as
elaborated, was to render still more intolerable the position of the
lower castes, particularly that of the sudras, since it made their low
place and hard lot to be the merited punishment of crimes and misdoings
in previous lives; while at the same time it fed the pride and enhanced
the arrogance of the Brahmans, since their superior lot was, according
to the theory, attributable to merit acquired in other existences. Thus
did the theory tend to give a more sinister aspect to the baneful caste
system, to make it appear a part of the unchangeable order of things,
and to render impossible the growth of any other than a class morality.
[Sidenote: Indian pessimism]
Hardly less important than the doctrine of transmigration for Hindu
morality is the Indian conception of life--of all individual, conscious
existence whether here on earth or in other worlds--as inseparable from
misery, pain, decay, and death.
The Aryan immigrants into India seem to have been, like their kinsmen
the Greeks, a light-hearted folk, filled with a strong joy in life.
But as in their journeyings they pressed southward into the valleys
of the Indus and the Ganges and came under the influences of the
hot, depressing climate, and of an oppressive social and political
system,[236] they appeared to have lost their buoyant spirits. The
skies seemed less bright and life less worth living, and, weary of it
all, they at last came to regard eternal death, annihilation, as the
greatest of boons.
This pessimistic view of the world and of life, as we shall see a
little further on, forms the basis of large sections of Indian ethics,
since it makes the ultimate goal of rational or moral effort to be the
getting rid of conscious existence.
[Sidenote: The conception of
sacrifice]
Another conception which has exerted a profound influence upon the
religious ethics of Brahmanism is that respecting sacrifice. This
conception is that the gods need sustenance, and can only exist through
the gifts and offerings made to them by men.[237] “The gods live by
sacrifice” say the sacred scriptures; “the sun would not rise if the
priests did not make sacrifice.”
To understand this teaching we must connect it with the belief of
primitive man that the spirits of the dead have absolute need of meat
and drink offerings at the hands of the living, and remember that in
India there is no sharp distinction drawn between the gods and the
souls of men. The gods, like the spirits of the dead, are dependent
for life and strength upon the offerings laid on their altars. Without
these gifts they would die or pine away, and all the movements of the
universe controlled by them would cease.[238]
From this conception of the gods came the emphasis laid by Brahmanism
upon sacrifice, and the prominence given the religious duty of bringing
rich gifts to the priests and keeping the altars of the gods heaped
with food.[239]
II. THE VARIOUS MORAL STANDARDS
[Sidenote: A class morality]
The fundamental fact of Brahmanic morality is that as a result of the
caste system it is a class morality; that is, there is a different
moral standard or code for each of the different castes.
In the account given in the _Laws of Manu_ of the origin of the
four chief castes, the occupation and the duties of each class are
carefully prescribed. To the Brahman was assigned teaching and offering
sacrifice; to the warriors and rulers the protection of the people;
to the peasants and merchants the tilling of the ground and trading;
and to the sudras--“One occupation only,” reads the sacred law, “is
prescribed to the sudra, to serve meekly the other three castes.”[240]
The Brahman is by right the lord of the whole creation.[241] His name
must express something auspicious, but the first part of the sudra’s
name must express something contemptible, and the second part must be a
word denoting service.[242]
For a man of a lower caste to affect equality with a person of a higher
caste is a crime: “If a man of an inferior caste, proudly affecting an
equality with a man of superior caste, should travel by his side on the
road, or sit or sleep upon the same carpet with him, the magistrate
shall take a fine from the man of inferior caste to the extent of his
ability.”[243]
For a Brahman to explain to a sudra the sacred Vedas is a sin: “Let him
[the Brahman] not give to a sudra advice nor the remnants of his meal
...; nor let him explain the sacred law to such a man; ... for he who
explains the sacred law to such ... will sink together with that man
into hell.”[244]
In the matter of punishments for crimes the laws are grossly unequal,
the punishment of a person of inferior caste being always more severe
than that of a person of a superior caste for the same offense.
Thus for a crime punishable with death if committed by a person
of an inferior caste, tonsure only is ordained if committed by a
Brahman;[245] for a Brahman must never be slain, “though he have
committed all horrible crimes.”[246] There is no crime in all the world
as great as that of slaying a Brahman.[247]
A knowledge of the inequality of these sacred laws of the Brahmans and
the burdensomeness of this caste morality as it pressed upon the lower
classes is necessary to an understanding of the rise and rapid spread
of Buddhism, and the fervor with which its teachings of equality and
brotherhood were embraced by the masses of Brahmanic India.
[Sidenote: The highest moral
excellence attainable in general
only by Brahmans]
Of the different standards of morality of the several castes that of
the Brahman is of course the highest. The study of the sacred books is
for him the chief duty. “Let him,” says the sacred law, “without tiring
daily mutter the Veda at the proper time; for that is one’s highest
duty; all other observances are secondary duties.”[248] Knowledge
of the Veda destroys guilt as fire consumes fuel.[249] Among the
secondary duties are observance of the rules of purification, the
practice of austerities, and doing no injury to created beings.[250]
By austerities, that is, by ascetic practices, by hideous self-torture,
the Brahman may atone for all sins of whatsoever kind and may become
so holy that at death, having conquered all desires, save only the
desire for union with the Universal One, he may hope to fall away
into unawakening unconsciousness and be absorbed into the absolute,
impersonal Brahma, and thus escape forever from the weary round of
births. This way of full salvation, and it is the only one, is open
only to Brahmans and to the chosen few from other castes who, having
gone forth “from home into homelessness,” as mendicants or forest
hermits, follow this life of complete renunciation of all that is
earthly.
[Sidenote: The moral code for
inferior castes]
The duties, the faithful performance of which avail most for persons of
inferior castes, are those that have to do with religion, and chiefly
with sacrifice. These duties are the bringing of gifts and offerings
for the sacrifices and the giving of generous fees to the priests.
Through the faithful performance of his assigned duties the man of
inferior caste can make sure of salvation--not the full and perfect
salvation attained by the Brahman through his austerities, but a
qualified salvation. He may hope for rebirth in some higher caste or in
some better state either on earth or in some other world.[251]
[Sidenote: Animal ethics]
Duty to animals seems to have formed no part of the moral code of the
early Indian Aryans. But chiefly through the influence of the doctrine
of transmigration respect for every living thing became a high moral
requirement. To take life wantonly became a crime. To kill a kine, a
horse, a camel, a deer, an elephant, a goat, a sheep, a fish, a snake,
a buffalo, insects, or birds is an offense which must be expiated by
penances.[252]
In order that he may not harm any living creature, the ascetic is
enjoined “always by day and by night, even with pain to his body, to
walk carefully, scanning the ground.”[253] Should he unintentionally
injure any creature he must expiate its death by penitent
austerities.[254]
Animals may, however, be slain for food[255] and for sacrifices,
since they were created for these special purposes. And then there is
compensation for the victims of the altars: “Herbs, trees, cattle,
birds, and all animals that have been destroyed for sacrifices receive,
being reborn, higher existences.”[256]
The killing of animals for sport is an inexpiable sin: “He who injures
innoxious beings from a wish to (give) himself pleasure never finds
happiness, neither living nor dead.”[257]
Under the influence of Buddhism we shall see this consideration for
animal life deepening into a genuine tenderness for every living
creature, and duties toward the inferior animals becoming one of the
most beautiful and characteristic features of the ethical ideal.
[Sidenote: War ethics]
In Brahmanic as in Confucian ethics the military virtues are assigned
a low place. Brahmanism, however, concedes the legitimacy of war
and permits the employment of force by the king in augmenting his
possessions,[258] even enjoining upon him to be ever ready to strike;
for “of him who is always ready to strike, the whole world stands in
awe.”[259]
But the genuine spirit of Brahmanism is opposed to the fierce war
spirit of the Aryan conquerors of India, and the sacred law attempts
to ameliorate the cruelties and atrocities of primeval warfare,
instilling in the warrior a spirit of magnanimity and chivalry. Thus
the “blameless law for the warrior” forbids to him the use of barbed or
poisoned weapons; he must spare the suppliant for mercy; he must not
strike an enemy who has lost his armor or whose weapons are broken,
or who has received a wound, or who has turned in flight. He must do
no harm to the onlooker. The king must conduct war without guile or
treachery.[260]
[Sidenote: Natural morality versus
ritualism]
At the heart of Brahmanism, as at the heart of every other great
religion of the world, there is a core of lofty spiritual teachings and
true morality. The sacred scriptures of the Brahmans declare, “The soul
itself is the witness of the soul, and the soul is the refuge of the
soul; despise not thy own soul, the supreme witness of men.”[261]
The sacred law teaches that he is pure who is pure in thought and in
deed: “Among all modes of purification, purity in (the acquisition of)
wealth is declared to be the best; for he is pure who gains wealth with
clean hands, not he who purifies himself with earth and water.”[262]
Repentance and resolutions of amendment free the soul from its
transgressions: “He who has committed a sin and has repented, is freed
from that sin, but he is purified only by the resolution of ceasing to
sin and thinking I will do so no more.”[263]
Brahmanism teaches the duty of forgiving injuries and of returning
blessings for curses: “Against an angry man let him [the ascetic] not
in return show anger; let him bless when he is cursed.”[264] “A king
must always forgive litigants, infants, aged and sick men, who inveigh
against him.”[265] “He who, being abused by men in pain, pardons them,
will in reward of that act be exalted in heaven.”[266]
Here is a morality as pure and lofty as any taught by Hebrew prophets.
But as in Judaism, so in Brahmanism, such was the stress laid by the
priests upon sacrifice, upon the observance of the rites and ceremonies
of the temple, and upon the performance of a thousand and one morally
indifferent acts, that as time passed there resulted an almost complete
overshadowing of natural by ritual morality. It was such a triumph of
ritualism as marked the postexilic period in the history of Israel. As
there came a protest and reaction in Judea issuing in Christianity, so
did there come a protest and reaction in Brahmanic India issuing in
Buddhism.