RELIGION AND MORALITY
The expression of religion in action produces the offering and the
prayer: by sacrifice and devotion, with thanksgiving and requests, do
men approach their gods. But there is another way of entering into
fruitful obedience to them. Certain kinds of conduct may be acceptable
to them, and others not. Are these concerned only with ceremonial
acts, or do they include the behaviour of men to each other? How far
does religion promote or regulate what we call morality? What are
their relations, and how do they affect one another? This question has
been discussed in innumerable treatises; attention can only be invited
to it here from the point of view of the historical comparison of
religions, without reference to philosophical definitions. Every one
admits a connection of some sort, for good or for evil, at some period
in their respective development. They may not have started hand in
hand. Their alliance may be disbanded, and morality may claim total
independence. But at some time on the journey they have marched
together.
{196}
The difficulty of the inquiry arises in part from the variety of views
as to the scope and essence of both morality and religion. Where do
they begin, and in what do they consist? The philosopher may demand a
complete recognition of the freedom of the will, and the independent
activity of the conscience, and savages who have no such words are set
down as destitute of morality, just as those who have no Heavenly
Father and no devil, no heaven and no hell, are described as without
religion. It is obviously impossible to expect to find everywhere our
categories of right and wrong; yet even Lord Avebury lent his high
authority to the statement that there are many savages almost entirely
without moral feeling largely on the ground of the absence of ideas of
sin, remorse, and repentance. Mr. Huxley in the same way declared it
obvious that the lower religions are entirely unethical.
On the other hand, the idealist strenuously affirms the intimacy of the
connection. We are assured that the historical beginning of all
morality is to be found in religion; or that in the earliest period of
human history, religion and morality were necessary correlates of each
other; or that all moral commandments have originally the character of
religious commandments. And the student of comparative religion like
the late Prof. Robertson Smith cautiously affirms that "in ancient
society all morality, _as morality was then understood_, was
consecrated and enforced by religious {197} motives and sanctions." The
words which we have italicised contain exactly the limitation which is
ignored by the philosopher who requires that the gods shall be patterns
of conduct, and administrators of an ethical world-order. Plainly the
question is settled in different ways according to different standards
of what religion and morality mean. If we are content to begin low
enough down, we may see reason to believe that in that stage of thought
in which religion, magic, and custom are so strangely intertwined,
morality is also not wanting. Even the Fijian, who called some of his
gods by hideous names, such as "the Rioter," "the Brain-eater," "the
Murderer," regarded theft, adultery, and such offences, as serious.
The difficulty of broad general statements lies in the imperfection of
our knowledge. Again and again closer observation has revealed quite
unexpected secrets. Whole ranges of belief, feeling, action, formerly
concealed from observation, have been brought to light. Thus about
twenty years ago Major Ellis, writing of the Ewe, Tshi, and Yoruba
peoples on the Gold Coast, laid it down that "religion at the stage of
growth at which we find it among these three groups of tribes, has no
connection with morals, or the relations of men to one another." But
the German missionary, Jakob Spieth, now tells us (1911) that among the
Ewe-speaking folk not only does Mother Earth punish with death those
who have sworn {198} falsely, but Mawu, God, who knows the thoughts and
hearts of men, who is the giver of everything good upon the earth--very
patient and never angry--will not allow one brother to deceive another,
or suffer the king to judge unrighteously, or permit one to burn
another's house down. Morality here is more than rudimentary; the
justice of man is put under the guardianship of God, who requires
"truth in the inward parts." Another West African observer, Major
Leonard, on the Lower Niger, describes religion as intermingled with
the whole social system of the tribes under his view. It supplies the
principle on which their law is dispensed and morality adjudicated.
The entire organisation of their common life is so interwoven with it
that they cannot get away from it. Like the Hindus, "they eat
religiously, drink religiously, bathe religiously, dress religiously,
and sin religiously."
The beginnings of morality can no more be discovered historically than
the beginnings of religion. Language, in various nations, implies that
it springs out of custom. The foundation of practical ethics, whatever
may be the ultimate interpretation of such terms as duty and conscience
in more advanced cultures, lies in social usage. When any custom is
established with sufficient strength to serve as a rule demanding
observance, so that its breach evokes some feeling, the seed of morals
is already germinating. No group however small, no society however
crude, can cohere {199} without some such customs. They may be formed
in various ways; they are strengthened by habitual repetition; they
acquire the sanction of the past, they are usually referred, when men
have begun to ask how they came into being--just as they ask about
their own origin--to some great First Man, or some superhuman
personality in the realm above (p. 171). But always there are some
things allowable, and others forbidden: some things may (or even must)
be done, others may not.
When custom has gained this power, it carries with it an element of
control. Impulse must not be inconsiderately indulged, it must be
governed. Private interests must be subordinated to a rule, and
conduct conformed to a standard of behaviour. In the ruder culture,
where the supply of food is of urgent importance, such rules gather
around the produce of the chase or of the ground. Among the Australian
Kurnai, for example, all game caught by the men, all roots or fruits
collected by the women, must be shared with others according to
definite arrangements. Methodic distribution is obligatory, and
self-denial in sharing and eating is thus impressed upon the young.
Moreover certain varieties of food are strictly forbidden to women,
children, and boys before initiation.
Prohibitions of this kind, extending over many branches of conduct, are
found all over the world. They are often designated by a {200} term in
use in Polynesia, taboo (_tabu_ or _tapu_). Their origin has been much
disputed, owing to the extraordinary complexity of the circumstances
with which they are concerned. Taboo contains emphatically an element
of mystery. It comes out of a vague dim background, and implies that
some strange power will be set in perilous operation if a certain thing
is done. Such a power, obscure, indefinite, not personalised, but
mightier than men, has been recognised at the base of religion under
another term, the Melanesian _mana_ (p. 80). Taboo has been
accordingly described as a negative _mana_. It is a prohibition
against calling the weird uncanny force into the open, where it may do
unexpected hurt.
The objects and actions placed under such taboos are various; and it is
for the anthropologist and the psychologist, if they can, to discover
their origin and application in each particular case. They involve
ideas of purity and defilement, the holy and the common, the clean and
the unclean. They gather in particular round blood, which rouses in
some animals as in many human beings an instinctive aversion and
disgust, and yet is at the same time sacred as a seat of life. They
enter at the great crises of existence, birth and death; the mother,
and perhaps also the new-born child, are unclean, and must be purified;
the corpse defiles whoever touches it. They attend the sexual
processes, which are the occasion of releasing dangerous {201}
energies. So they affect people as well as things. The king is
charged with this mysterious force, and is hedged round with taboos
lest it should suddenly burst forth against the intruder on his
sanctity. The chief, the priest, possess it in less degree. And it is
transmitted to what belongs to them. Their weapons, their food and,
above all, their persons, are sacred. The oft-quoted story of the
Maori may still be repeated here: it is not the only case of the kind.
Strong and stalwart, he found some food beside the path, and ate it.
He learned shortly afterwards that it was the remains of the king's
meal. He had violated a royal taboo. The secret power had him in its
grasp: he was speedily seized with cramp in the stomach, and in a few
hours died.
Ritual religions are full of survivals of such taboos. "O Maker of the
material world," inquires Zarathustra of Ahura Mazda, "can he be clean
again who has eaten of the carcass of a dog, or the corpse of a man?"
In ancient Israel various foods were forbidden by religious law; the
priest might not touch a dead body; when a murder had been committed
and the murderer could not be found, the elders of the city must
solemnly purify the ground which unpunished bloodshed had defiled.
Early Roman religion contained many such prohibitions; from certain
sacrifices women and strangers and fettered criminals must withdraw;
there are traces of taboo on {202} iron and shoe-leather, on burial
grounds and spots where thunder-bolts were supposed to have fallen, and
on certain days, especially those connected with the cult of the dead.
Such taboos still play a great part in savage society, and exert no
little moral force in preserving honesty and order. In Samoa, observed
Turner, objects placed under taboo are perfectly safe; they are in no
danger of theft. Primitive morality is thus brought under the sanction
of religion.
All over the world, as we have seen (p. 161), the young receive a very
severe training in preparation for their entry into the full privileges
and duties of the tribe. They are then instructed in the traditional
rules of conduct, the proper abstinences, the right behaviour of the
sexes. Such ceremonies are recognised as of great importance in
communities of the simplest form without political control, for it is
through them that the social ties of tribal kinship gain coherence and
strength. Various observers have testified to the consideration
displayed in Australia, for instance, towards the aged, the sick, and
the infirm. The blind are often carefully tended, and the best fed.
"As a matter of fact," says Mr. Marett, "the earlier and more
democratic types of primitive society, uncontaminated by our
civilisation, do not present many features to which the modern
conscience can take exception; but display rather the edifying
spectacle of religious {203} brotherhoods encouraging themselves by
mystical communion to common effort."
In West Africa Miss Kingsley noted the close connection in negro
communities between religion and life. To get through day or night a
man must be right in the religious point of view; he must be on working
terms with the great world of spirits round him. In spite of much
make-believe the secret societies in which the men are enlisted under
solemn oaths, are recognised as important moral agencies. The Ukuku,
recently described by Dr. Nassau, could settle tribal quarrels, and
proclaim or enforce peace, when no individual chief or king could end
the strife. Such organisations regulate marriage laws, the duties of
parents and children, the privileges of eldership, the recognition of
age and worth. The entry into them lies through the rites of religion.
"I have studied these societies," wrote Miss Kingsley; "I am in
possession of fairly complete knowledge of three of them. I know men
acquainted with ten other societies, and their information is
practically the same as my own, viz. that those rites consist in a
series of oath-takings as you pass from grade to grade ... Each grade
gives him a certain amount of instruction in the native law. Each
grade gives him a certain function in carrying out the law. And
finally, when he has passed through all the grades, which few men do,
when he has sworn the greatest oath {204} of all, when he knows all the
society's heart's secret, that secret is 'I am I,' the one Word. The
teaching of that Word is law, order, justice, morality. Why the one
Word teaches it, the man does not know. But he knows two things: one
that there is a law-god, and the other that, so says the wisdom of our
ancestors, his will must be worked or evil will come. So in his
generation he works to keep the young people straight."
Taboos may be violated unconsciously, and tribal laws may be
transgressed sometimes intentionally, sometimes by accident. The
resulting guilt must be removed, if the offender or the community is
not to incur the wrath of the affronted Powers. Sin, like holiness,
has this peculiar property that it can be communicated by contact.
Savage morality does not always rise above the confusion between the
physical and the mental. Evil qualities such as uncleanness can be
transferred from persons to things, just as from things to persons.
Pains and diseases can be extracted from the sufferer, and magically
sent into animals or objects which can be driven away or destroyed; and
moral evil can be similarly removed. When an Atkhan of the Aleutian
Islands had committed a serious offence and desired to unburden
himself, he chose a time when the sun was clear, picked up certain
weeds, and carried them about his person. After they were thus
sufficiently impregnated by contact {205} with him, he laid them down,
called the sun to witness, cast his sins upon them, and threw them into
the fire. The consuming flame burned away his guilt.
The Peruvian made his confession to the sun, and then bathed in an
adjoining river. There he rid himself of his iniquity, saying "O thou
river, receive the sins I have this day confessed to the sun, carry
them down to the sea, and let them never more appear." The oldest and
the most recent rituals repeat the same idea in various forms. In one
of the Vedic ceremonials of sacrifice, the sacrificer and his wife
towards the close bathed and washed each other's backs. Then having
wrapped themselves in fresh garments, they stepped forth, and we read:
"Even as a snake casts its skin, so does he cast away all his sin.
There is in him not so much sin as there is in a toothless child."
Water was likewise employed in Babylonia, where the incantation ran, "I
have washed my hands, I have cleansed my body with pure spring water
which is in the town of Eridu. All evil, all that is not good, in my
body, my flesh, my limbs, begone!" Or, "By the wisdom of thy holy name
let the sin and the ban which were created for man's misery be removed,
destroyed, and driven away."
Like physical evil such as disease, so moral evil might be attributed
to the action of spirits, and periodic ceremonies might be performed
for purging the community by driving them {206} out. Sometimes the
sins were buried in the ground; sometimes they were thrown into the
river; sometimes they were concentrated on a person or an animal; or
were magically expelled under the sanction of religion into some object
which could be destroyed. In the annual celebration of the Thargelia
at Athens, in the month of May, under the solemn sanction of Apollo,
two "purifying men" were led through the streets to be whipped with
rods, and then driven over the border of the state, bearing the
people's sins. The Levitical ritual (Lev. xvi) incorporated at a late
date a solemn ceremony on the tenth day of the first month of the
ancient religious year (in September), when an act of atonement was
performed for the whole nation. Two goats were brought into the
sanctuary, and lots were cast upon them. One was dedicated to Yahweh,
over the other the high priest confessed the iniquities of the children
of Israel; and by the laying on of hands he transferred them to the
head of the doomed animal, which was then led forth into the wilderness
for a mysterious power of evil, Azazel. As the temporary adjuncts of
so much guilt, the high priest and the goat-leader were required to
purify themselves afterwards by bathing; the high priest must change
his robes, and the goat-leader wash his clothes.
So in modern times in Nigeria the town sins are annually laid on some
unhappy slave-girl, perhaps selected some time before. As she {207} is
led through the street the householders come forth and discharge the
year's accumulated evil on her; then she is dragged to the river,
bound, and left to drown. Japan is satisfied without a life. The
ancient ritual of purification shows that in the early centuries of the
national history a public ceremony was occasionally performed. In the
revival of Shinto usage which marked the late reign, it was re-enacted
by imperial decree in 1872 for half-yearly celebration on June 30 and
December 31, at all Shinto shrines. Four or five days before these
dates the believer was enjoined to procure from his priest a piece of
white paper cut in the shape of a garment. On this he was to write his
name and sex, with the year and month of his birth; then he must rub it
over his body, and finally breathe on it. His sins would thus be
transferred to the paper robe, which was to be taken back to the
priest. Offerings of food and purifying ceremonies would complete the
believer's release. The paper garments with their load of guilt were
then to be packed in cases which were to be put in boats, rowed out to
sea, and committed to the deep. There they would be carried to the
great Sea Plain by the Maiden of Descent-into-the-Current, who would
convey them to the Maiden of the Swift Opening, dwelling in the Eight
Hundred Meetings of the Brine of the Eight Brine Currents. She would
swallow them down with a gurgling sound, and the {208} Lord of the
Breath-blowing Place would finally blow them away into the
Root-Country, the bottom apparently of the under-world!
The relation of morality to religion tends to become more definite
along different lines of thought, which are constantly intertwined, and
of which three are only isolated here for the purpose of the briefest
possible illustration of the forms in which they have appeared
historically. In the first place, the world may be regarded as a scene
in which rival powers of help and hurt are engaged in constant
conflict; and the physical dualism thus exhibited may be reproduced in
the sphere of morals as a contest between powers of good and evil.
Secondly, the course of nature may be viewed as a world-order, where
seasonal uniformities are the manifestation of a permanent principle of
harmony which is the guide of human conduct, and the vicissitudes of
daily or annual experience are interpreted as the judgments of heaven
on man's doings, national or personal. And thirdly, the development of
the individual conscience may surmount the confusion which ranks ritual
offences along with moral transgressions, and the ethical life may be
set wholly free from ceremonial bondage, and carried up into the realm
of spirit.
The lower culture all over the world ascribes disease or accident,
madness, calamity, and death, to the agency of hostile powers lying
{209} in wait for man, and breaking in on his security. The violences
of the elements, the hurricane, the flood, the earthquake, the volcanic
eruption, are in the same way the work of giants towering in might
above the common herd of the demons of air, water, or earth. The
spirits of the evil dead, especially of powerful magic-men, Shamans,
and the like, of malicious character, are potent for sickness and
disaster. But in their unorganised ranks there is no controlling or
directing force. Here and there some figure or group emerges into
prominence. At the head of the demonic hosts of Babylonian mythology
is a band of seven ruling spirits, perhaps the windy counterparts of
the sun and moon and the five planets. In Egyptian story Set (or by
his Greek name Typhon) is the evil opposite of the good Osiris whom he
does to death; or it is the sun himself who is attacked in his nightly
journey by the serpent Apap with his monstrous crew. Scandinavian
mythology was full of these conflicts. The oppositions of light and
darkness, storm and calm, warmth and cold, were felt with unusual
vehemence. Over the motley multitude of powers infesting forest and
field, the wind and the water, rose the giants of mountain and
cataract, the furious blast, the curdling frost. The giants of the
frost were evil powers, like the wolf Fenris, and the serpent Nidhogg,
who lay beneath one of the roots of the mighty cosmic tree (in
Niflheim, {210} a second being among the frost-giants, and a third
among the gods), for ever gnawing till the great world's end. Above
them rose the dread goddess Hel, the "hollow," once, apparently, the
name of the grave, and then of the power that ruled the gloomy
underworld, the abode of those who had not fallen upon the
battle-field. She, in her turn, was subordinated to Loki, once
reckoned among the gods, capricious and tricky, who becomes the father
of Hel, the wolf Fenris, and the Midgard snake, and leads the forces of
evil for the destruction of the world. He compasses the death of
Balder the fair, Odin perishes by the wolf, and Thor by the serpent;
though god and wolf and serpent in their turn sink in common ruin. But
the powers engaged in the strife are all superhuman; man has no share
in the warfare, save when the warriors pass at death into the abode of
the gods, and take their place beside them in the final conflict. Loki
is no Devil, he does not tempt, or interfere with the children of
earth; he does not affect their present conduct or future destiny.
The oppositions of light and darkness belong to every zone all round
the world, and were perhaps most strongly felt among the Indo-Iranian
branches of the great Aryan family. The name _deva_ in ancient Indian
mythology denotes the shining powers of the upper world, the radiant
dwellers in the sky. In contrast with it stands another, the {211}
_asura_, once a title of high honour, for it clung even to Varuna, but
later degraded to the designation of demonic beings, who appear again
and again in contest with the devas for the precious drink of
immortality. So the realm of darkness is the realm of evil. Into the
pit of darkness are the wicked thrust: and when right and wrong are
presented under the forms of truth and falsehood, and untruth is
identified with gloom, the poet reached the natural symbolism--"Light
is heaven, they say, and darkness hell."
It was, however, among the cognate Iranian people that this antithesis
acquired the greatest force, under the influence of the prophet
Zarathustra. By a curious historic-religious process which cannot here
be traced, the terms of the opposing forces were reversed. _Ahura_ (=
_asura_) remained the name of the Supreme Power, with the addition of
the term _Mazda_, "all-knowing," and the _daevas_ (= _devas_) became
the evil multitude. In the oldest part of the Zend Avesta Ahura
appears as the sole Creator, the God of light and purity and truth, who
dwells on high in the Abode of Song. Beside him is his Good Mind, and
the Holy (or beneficent, gracious) Spirit. But opposed to him in the
realm of darkness beneath is "the Lie" (_drug_), with its correlates
the Bad Mind and the Evil Spirit (_Añra Mainyu_, not yet a proper
name). The world between is the scene of continuous struggle, and in
this conflict man is called to take his {212} part. Ritual purity,
appropriate sacrifice, and personal righteousness in thought, word, and
deed, are his weapons in the fight. By these he helps to establish the
sovereignty of Ahura, and to curtail the power of "the Lie." The
earliest representations offer no account of the origin of the Drug any
more than of Ahura himself. But later speculation, impressed with the
contrasting elements of human life, began to ascribe to him, too, under
the name of Ahriman (Añra Mainyu), creative power; all noxious animals
and plants were due to him; plague and disease came from his hands; all
agencies of cold, darkness, and destruction were his work; he was the
_daeva_ of _daevas_, Lord of death, and author of temptation. And
finally, in the long process of thought the two powers of good and evil
had both issued from a still higher unity, Zervan Akarana, Time without
bound. But long ere this the Persian character had responded to
Zarathustra's teaching of warfare against "the Lie"; and Herodotus
bears testimony to their repute for loyalty to truth. For from the
earliest days the dualism of Zarathustra bound together morality and
religion in the closest alliance. How the great demand for the
ultimate victory of good was to be justified will be seen hereafter (p.
247).
A second group of figures embodying the same idea of the connection of
morality with religion is found in the various impersonations {213} of
the Order of Nature and its correlate in Law in the world without and
the heart within. The speculations of the early Greek philosophers in
their attempts to reach an ultimate Unity behind all the diversities of
appearance familiarised the higher minds with the idea of the harmony
of the cosmos. "Law," sang Pindar, "is king of all, both mortals and
immortals." And this sovereign order is represented mythologically by
Themis, whom Hesiod exalts to be the daughter of Heaven and Earth, and
bride of Zeus. Pindar pictured her as borne in a golden car from the
primeval Ocean, the source of all, up to the sacred height of Olympus,
to be the consort of Zeus the Preserver. But though she is thus the
spouse of the sovereign of the sky, she is in another aspect identified
with Earth, scene of fixed rules both in nature and social life, for
with the cultus of the earth were associated not only the operations of
agriculture, but the rites and duties of marriage, and the maintenance
of the family. So Themis is the mother of the seasons in the annual
round, and the sequences of blossom and fruit are her work; but among
her daughters are also Fair Order, Justice, and Peace, and the world
and the State thus reflect obedience to a universal Law.
Behind Greece lay Egypt, where tradition said that Thales, first of
Greeks to philosophise, had studied. When the soul of the dead man was
brought to the test of the balance (p. 8), {214} he was supported by
the goddesses of Maāt or Truth. Derived from the root _mā_, "to
stretch out," this name covered the ideas of rectitude or right, and
Maāt was the splendid impersonation of order, law, justice, truth,
in both the physical and moral spheres. She is the daughter--or even
the eye--of the Sun-god Rê. But she is conceived in still more exalted
fashion as the sovereign of all realms, and is elevated above all
relationships. She is Lady of heaven, and Queen of earth, and even
Lady of the Land of the West, the mysterious dwellings of the dead. In
one aspect she serves each of the great gods as her lord and master; in
another she knows no lord or master. So it is by her that the gods
live; she is, as it were, the law of their being; alike for sun and
moon, for days and hours, in the visible world, and for the divine king
at the head of his people. She is solemnly offered by the sovereign to
his god, and the deity responds by laying her in the heart of his
worshipper, to manifest her everlastingly before the gods. Through the
court-phrases gleams the solemn idea that sovereignty on earth is no
law to itself; it must follow the ordinances of heaven.
Chinese insight early reached a similar thought. Before the days of
Confucius or his elder contemporary Lao-Tsze, the wiser observers had
noted the uniformity of Nature's ways. Were not Heaven and Earth the
nourishers of all things? Did not Heaven pour {215} down all kinds of
influences upon the docile and receptive Earth? Heaven was
all-observing, steadfast, impartial; and its "sincerity," seen in the
regular movements of the sun and moon, or the succession of the
seasons, becomes for the moralist the groundwork of the social order.
This daily course is called Heaven's way or path, the _Tao_ (the
highway as distinguished from by-tracks), which with unvarying energy
maintains the scene of our existence, and provides the norm or pattern
for our conduct. In the hands of Lao-Tsze this became the symbol of a
great philosophical conception. Behind the visible path which all
could see lay the hidden Tao, untrodden and enduring. Here was the
eternal source of all things, for ever streaming forth in orderly
succession, but never vaunting itself or inviting attention by
outbursts of display. It was the type for man to follow; the sage,
like Heaven, must have no personal ends; he must act, like the great
exemplar, without meddling interference, leaving his nature to fulfil
itself; let him renounce ambition and cultivate humility; only one who
has "forgotten himself" can become identified with Heaven. "Can
you"--so Lao-Tsze was said to have asked an inquirer six hundred years
before Jesus taught in Galilee--"Can you become a little child?"
The Vedic seers were hardly less impressed with the sense of an orderly
control in contemplating the energies around them. Four {216} words
are used to denote the institutes or ordinances, the fixed norms or
standards, the solemn laws, and the steadfast path, according to which
the rivers flow, the dawn comes forth after the night, the sun
traverses the sky, and even the storm winds begin to blow. Of these
the last named, the _Rita_ (with its Zend equivalent _Asha_), the
ordered course along which all things move, presents the least
abstract, the most mythical form. For here is that which exists before
heaven and earth; they are born of it, or even in it, and its domain is
the wide space. From it, likewise, the gods proceed, and the lofty
pair, Mitra and Varuna, with Aditi and her train, are its protectors.
But through the mystical identity of the order of nature and the order
of sacrifice (p. 143), the cultus--whether on earth or in heaven--is
also its sphere. Agni, the sacrificial fire, the dear house-priest, is
Rita-born, and by its aid carries the offerings to heaven. Such, also,
is the sacred drink, the Soma, which is borne in the Rita's car, and
follows its ways. And the heavenly sacrificers, the Fathers in the
radiant world above, have grown according to the Rita, for they know
and faithfully obey the law. Thus it becomes the supreme expression of
morality, and is practically equivalent with _satya_, true (literally,
that which is), or good. Heaven and Earth are _satya_, veracious, they
can be trusted; they are _ritāvan_, faithful to the Path, steadfast
in the Order. Not less so is the {217} godly man; he, too, is
_ritāvan_ (Zend _ashavan_), the same word being used to denote
divine holiness and human piety. And thus the life of gods and men,
the order of nature, the ritual of worship, and daily duty, were all
bound together in one principle.
Rita, however, did not establish itself as a permanent conception in
Indian theology. Its place was taken by another idea, which still
sways the thought and rules the lives of hundreds of millions of
believers in India and the Far East, _Karma_, or the doctrine of the
Deed. It is well known that this doctrine does not appear in the Vedic
hymns. It is first discussed as a great mystery in the forest-sessions
where teachers and students met together, where kings could still
instruct Brahmans, and women might speak in debate. In the Brahmana of
a Hundred Paths it is summed up in a maxim which was first formulated
in connection with ceremonial obligation, but came to have a much wider
application: "A man is born into the world that he has made"; to which
the Law-books added the warning: "The Deed does not perish."
Man is for ever making his own world. Each act, each word, even each
thought, adds something to the spiritual fabric which he is perpetually
producing. He cannot escape the results of his own conduct. The
values for good or evil mount up from hour to hour, and their issues
must be fulfilled. When this {218} conception was carried through the
universe, the whole sphere of animated existence was placed under its
sway. The life of any single person upon earth was only an incident in
a chain of lives, stretching into the distant past as well as into the
immeasurable future. His condition hereafter would be determined by
what he had done before he entered the state that would match his deed.
Then his condition here was also determined by what he had wrought in a
previous lot. His personal qualities, his health and sickness, his
caste and rank, his wealth or poverty, all precisely matched some
elements in the moral product of his past. These were, of course,
never all precisely of one kind. They were of mingled good and evil,
and each of these would in course of time have its appropriate
consequence of joy and pain. For every shade of guilt there was a
fitting punishment, exactly adjusted in severity and duration, either
in degradation and suffering upon earth, or in some one of numerous
hells below. And similarly all good was sure of its reward, as
happiness and prosperity awaited it here, or were allotted in still
richer measure for their due periods in the heavens that rose tier
above tier beyond the sky.
The doctrine of Transmigration has appeared in various forms, in very
different cultures. But nowhere has it swayed whole civilisations as
it has done in the East. It has expressed for innumerable multitudes
the {219} essential bond of morals and religion. There were not
wanting, indeed, teachers who criticised and rejected it when Gotama
the Buddha passed to and fro five hundred years before our era. But
while he repudiated the authority of the Vedas, the ceremonies of
sacrifice, the claims of the Brahmans, and the immortality of the gods,
he retained the doctrine of Karma at the very core of the system of
ethical culture which he offered as the way out of the weary circle of
re-birth. The whole meaning of the universe, its cosmic periods of
dissolution and evolution, was still moral; and the scene of our
existence came once more into being that the unexhausted potencies of
countless products of the Deed from the lowest hell to the topmost
heaven might realise their suspended energy. And when Buddhism became
a religion through the interpretation of the person of its founder in
terms of the Absolute and Eternal, this law of the phenomenal world of
space and time remained beyond even his power to set aside or change.
The ethical element necessarily varies in richness of content and
intensity of feeling in different religions. In the classifications
which have been from time to time proposed, attention has often been
fixed upon its presence as the marked characteristic of a group. Thus
Prof. Tiele, of Leiden, proposed to treat the higher religions of
Revelation under two heads: (1) religions embodying a sacred {220} law,
and forming national communities, including Taoism, Confucianism,
Brahmanism, Jainism, Mazdaism, Mosaism, Judaism, and (2) universalistic
communions, Buddhism, Christianity, and to some extent Islam. Another
writer forms a class of Morality-Religions above the savage
Nature-Religions, and reckons in it the religions of Mexico and Peru,
the earliest Babylonian (often called Akkadian), Egyptian, Chinese,
Hindu, Persian, German, Roman, Greek. All such classifications are
exposed to many difficulties, but they at least bear witness to the
significance of the place which is occupied by morality in modern
estimates of the worth of great historic faiths. The aspects of any
particular development are so manifold, that any attempt to establish a
scale of rank at once lays itself open to criticism. Where, for
example, is Greece in Prof. Tiele's scheme? It is thrown back into the
group of "half-ethical anthropomorphic polytheisms." But in the hands
of poets and philosophers, the really shaping powers of Hellenic
culture, polytheism was left far behind, and on the third of the
questions suggested above in considering the relations of morality and
religion (p. 208)--their attitude to ritual obligation--Greek official
teaching sometimes reached the loftiest heights.
For not only did philosophical and religious communities like the
Pythagoreans enunciate such maxims as these: "Purity of soul is the
{221} only divine service," or "God has no place on earth more akin to
his nature than the pure soul," but the oracle of Delphi itself was
supposed to have affirmed the worthlessness of ceremonial cleansing
without corresponding holiness of heart. Dr. Farnell translates two
utterances ascribed to the Pythia as follows: "O stranger, if holy of
soul, enter the shrine of the holy God, having but touched the lustral
water: lustration is an easy matter for the good; but all ocean with
its streams cannot cleanse the evil man"; and again: "The temples of
the gods are open to all good men, nor is there any need of
purification; no stain can ever cleave to virtue. But depart,
whosoever is baneful at heart; for thy soul will never be washed by the
cleansing of the body." Over the sanctuary of Æsculapius at Epidaurus,
where so many sufferers thronged for cure (p. 180), ran the inscription
quoted by Porphyry--
"Into an odorous temple he who goes
Should pure and holy be; but to be wise
In what makes holiness is to be pure."
The religion of Zarathustra, on the other hand, did not maintain its
primitive elevation. The prophet's Gāthās (p. 191) summoned the
believer to live in the fellowship of the Good Mind and in obedience to
the Most Excellent Order (_Asha vahista_), and the later Avesta seems
sometimes to repeat their high demand: {222} "Purity is for man, next
to life, the greatest good; that purity that is procured by the law of
Mazda to him who cleanses his own self with good thoughts, words, and
deeds." It is the utterance of Ahura himself. But purity may be
interpreted in very different ways: the lad who walks about over
fifteen years of age without the sacred girdle and sacred shirt, has no
forgiveness, for he has "power to destroy the world of the holy
spirit"; while, on the other hand, to pull down the scaffold on which
corpses had been deposited (the Persians employed neither burial nor
cremation) was to destroy a centre of impure contagion, and secure
pardon for all sins.
When Moses established the administration of justice at the sanctuary
of Yahweh, he planted a powerful ethical influence in the heart of the
religion of Israel. No reader of the Old Testament needs to be
reminded of the prophetic rebukes of a monarch's crimes. Nathan and
David, Elijah and Ahab, have become universal types. The history of
Hebrew ethics shows how the conception of morality gradually passed
from the regulation of external conduct into the inner sphere of
thought; and the offender was no longer regarded merely as a member of
a tribe or nation on which punishment might alight collectively; he
stood in an immediate relation to his God. Primitive imagination could
rest content with supposing that sin had first entered the world
through the {223} subtlety of a talking snake. Later thought found
such a solution inadequate to enlarged moral experience. In the figure
of the Adversary or the Opposer, the Sâtân, first traceable in Israel's
literature after the Captivity, Judaism admitted a moral dualism
analogous to the opposition between Ahura Mazda and Añra Mainyu. The
Sâtân had, indeed, no creative power, though hordes of demons were
under his sway in the abyss, and were sent forth to do the desolating
work of madness and disease. But he was the head of a realm of evil
over against the sovereignty of God; and the intensity of the moral
consciousness of sin was reflected in the mythologic form of his
warfare against the hosts of heaven.
Along a quite different line of thought, which may possibly have been
stimulated from the Greek side, the humanists of later Israel
endeavoured to bring nature and social life under one common conception
of divine Wisdom. The earlier prophecy had regarded the physical world
as plastic in Yahweh's hands, so that its events--such as drought or
flood, the locust and the blight, could be made the immediate
instruments of Israel's discipline. A wider culture brought new ideas.
There were statutes and ordinances for the cosmic powers just as there
were for communities of man. The universe was the product of the
divine thought, and the same agency was seen in the structure and {224}
organisation of human societies. The order of the visible scene was
due to the presence and control of Wisdom, which from the first had sat
as a kind of assessor by Yahweh's side. The moral order was no less
her work; she gave the sanction to all authority and rule; "By me kings
reign," cries the poet in her name, "and princes decree justice"; and
the men of humble heart know that their piety, "the fear of the Lord,"
is her gift, and links them in joyous fellowship with the stars on high.
That Mosaism started with a vigorous moral conception of the divine
demands, however limited might be its early scope, is generally
recognised. The gradual settlement of the immigrant tribes in the land
of Canaan, the appropriation of Canaanite sanctuaries, and the adoption
of their festivals and ritual, brought new influences which threatened
the ancient simplicity. The voices of Hebrew prophecy rang out at
Jerusalem ere Greek thought had begun to move. It was a singular
result in Israel's history that the great truths of the unity and
spirituality and holiness of God, which prophecy had won out of
impassioned experience, were confided for their preservation to a code
of Priestly Law which raised the elements of ritual and sacerdotal
caste to their highest significance in the nation's life. But the law
which declared sacrifice to be legitimate only on one altar, made room
for a new development of Israel's religion. If {225} the ancient faith
was to be maintained by a race that spread from Babylon to Rome, it
must adapt its worship to new conditions. There could be but one
temple; but a meeting-house could be built anywhere; and the Synagogue
thus became the birthplace of the congregations of the Christian Church.
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