at the greatest and darkest of all mysteries whose roots lie buried in
the depths of the two worlds we conceive of. What could be more
awe-inspiring than the instantaneous metamorphosis of pure immaterial
will into concrete flesh and blood, throbbing with life hastening to
decay, the incarnation in the sphere of appearances of an act of the one
being which is not an appearance only, but the denizen of the world of
reality? Will is primary, real, enduring; intellect secondary,
accidental, fleeting; the one, abiding for ever, is identical in all
things; the latter varies in different beings, nay in the same
individuals at various times, and perishes with the brain, of which it is
a function. Will is devoid of intellect, as intellect is deprived of
velleity. We know will through our inner consciousness which has to do
exclusively with it and its manifold manifestations; all other
things--the world of appearances--we know through what may be termed our
outer consciousness.
Now in our self-consciousness we apprehend the fierce, blind, headstrong
sexual impulse as the most powerful motion of concentrated will. The act
is marked by the spontaneity, impetuosity, and lack of reflection which
characterises the agent, will being by nature unenlightened and
unconditioned. And yet that which in our inner consciousness is a blind,
vehement impulse, appears in our outer consciousness in the form of the
most complex living organism we know. Generation, then, is manifestly the
point at which the real and the seeming intersect each other.
Birth and death--the inevitable lot of each and every one--would seem to
affect the individual only, the race living on without change or decay.
This, however, is but the appearance. In reality the individual and the
race are one. The blind striving to live, the will that craves existence
at all costs, is absolutely the same in both, as complete in the former
as in the latter, and the perpetuity of the race is, so to say, but the
symbol of the indestructibility of the individual--_i.e._, of will.
Now this all-important fact is exemplified quite as clearly by the
phenomenon of generation as by the process of decay and death. In both we
behold the opposition between the appearance and the essence of the
being, between the world as it exists in our intellect as representation,
and the world as it really is, as will. The act of generation is known to
us through two different media: that of the inner consciousness which is
taken up with our will and all its movements, and that of our outer
consciousness which has to do with impressions received through the
senses. Seen through the former medium, the act is the most complete and
immediate satisfaction of the will--sensual lust; viewed in the light
supplied by the outer consciousness, it appears as the woof of the most
intricate texture, the basis of the most complex of living organisms.
From this angle of vision, the result is a work of amazing skill,
designed with the greatest ingenuity and forethought, and carried out
with patient industry and scrupulous care; from that point of view it is
the direct outcome of an act which is the negation of plan, forethought,
skill, and ingenuity, a blind unreasoning impulse. This contrast or
rather opposition between the seeming and the real, this new view of
birth and death, this sudden flash of light athwart the impenetrable
darkness, is what provokes the wonder of this scoffing sceptic.[185]
In the fourth saying, Agur mentions, among the persons whom the earth
cannot endure, a low-bred fellow who is set to rule over others, and a
fool when he acquires a competency and becomes independent. The anonymous
Pharisee, who keeps a vigilant watch for doctrinal slips and political
backslidings and frequently finds them where they are not, descries in
the first of the four unbearable things a proof that Agur was a Sadducee
and an aristocrat who would rather obey a monarch who is "every inch a
king"--even though he be a heathen--than a native clodhopper who should
climb up to the throne on the backs of a poor deluded people and grind
them down in the sacred name of liberty and independence. Agur is
therefore duly reprimanded and classed with the shameless oppressors of
the multitude and the devourers of the substance of the poor,[186] as the
Sadducees generally were by their Pharisaic opponents.
The sentence that follows, enumerating the things "which are little upon
the earth,[187] is not from the pen of our philosopher, but a harmless
passage inserted subsequently as a _pendant_ to the four things
which "are comely in going." The main considerations that point to this
conclusion and warrant us in ascribing the verses to a different author
are these: all the other "numerical sayings" which are admittedly the
work of Agur, contain first of all the number three and in the parallel
verse four,[188] whereas this sentence speaks of four only. Again, all
Agur's proverbs are in the form of strophes of six lines each; but this
passage consists of five distichs. Lastly, it is a manifest digression,
leads nowhither, and, what is still more important, has no point, as all
Agur's sayings have.[189]
The final sentence of this interesting fragment needs no elaborate
explanation: it contains the pith of Agur's practical philosophy in the
form of an exhortation to renounce honour, glory, the esteem of men, &c.,
if we possess legitimate claims to such, and still more if we have none;
the acquisition of peace and quiet is cheap at the price of obscurity;
freedom from care and worry and from the evils they bring in their train,
being of infinitely greater value than the chance and even the certainty
of so-called "positive" enjoyments.
Footnotes:
[174] Prov. xxx. 4.
[175] The Hebrew text consists of vowelless words. The correct vowels
must be ascertained before the meaning of a word or sentence can
be definitely established. The vowel points of our Hebrew Bibles
are not older than the seventh century A.D., and are frequently
erroneous. In the present case the word stealing does not occur
in the text, but only the being stolen--viz., seduction, temptation.
[176] I employ the word in its natural, not in its conventional, sense.
[177] Prov. xxx. 21, 22.
[178] _Ibid_ xxx. 10.
[179] The word "barren" added in our Bibles (Hebrew _'oçzer_,
"barrenness") is not only excluded by the metre, but is also
wanting in the Septuagint version--conclusive proofs that it is a
later interpolation.
[180] _Cf_. Schopenhauer, "Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," herausg.
v. E. Grisebach, ii. p. 585. Grisebach's is the only correct edition
of Schopenhauer's works.
[181] Prov. xxx. 11.
[182] _Ib_. xxx. 18, 19.
[183] _Ib_. xxx. 11.
[184] _Ib_. xxx. 17.
[185] _Cf_. Schopenhauer, "Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," vol. ii.
p. 583 fol.; also vol. i. pp. 424-426; and Bickell, "Wiener
Zeitschrift für Kunde des Morgenlandes," 1891.
[186] Prov. xxx. 19.
[187] _Ib_. xxx. 24-28.
[188] For example, Prov. xxx. 15:
"There are three things that are never satisfied,
Yea, four things say not, 'It is enough!'"
[189] _Cf_. Bickell, "Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunde des
Morgenlandes," 1891.
* * * * *
DATE OF COMPOSITION
The sayings of Agur cannot possibly be assigned to a date later than the
close of third century B.C. The ground for this statement is contained in
the circumstance that Jesus Sirach found the Book of Proverbs in
existence, with all its component parts and in its present shape, about
the year 200 B.C. He mentions a collection of proverbial sayings when
alluding to Solomon and his proverbs. Jesus Sirach's canon--if we can
apply this technical term to the series of scriptures in vogue in his
day--comprised the books contained in our Bibles from Genesis to Kings,
further Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezechiel, the twelve Minor Prophets, Psalms,
Proverbs, and Job. Moreover, it is no longer open to doubt that the
arrangement of the various parts of the Book of Proverbs which he read
was identical with that of ours. For the last part of this Book contains
an alphabetical poem in praise of a good housewife,[190] and Jesus Sirach
concluded his own work with a similar poem upon wisdom, in which he
imitated this alphabetical order. It is obvious, therefore, that Proverbs
in their present form could not have been compiled later than the date of
Jesus Sirach's work (about 200 B.C.). This conclusion is borne out by the
circumstance that the final editor of Proverbs in his introduction,[191]
mentions the Words of the Wise, which occur in chapters xxii. 17-xxiv.,
and "their dark sayings," or riddles, by which he obviously means the
sentences of Agur. For Proverbs and for Agur's fragment, therefore, the
latest date is the beginning of the second century B.C. Chapter xxx., in
which, on the one hand, Agur develops very advanced philosophical views,
some of them of Indian origin, and, on the other, his anonymous
antagonist breathes the narrow, fanatic spirit so thoroughly
characteristic of the later "Mosaic" Law, is among the very latest
portions of Proverbs. For it is in the highest degree probable that the
sayings of Agur are of a much later date even than the promulgation of
the Priests' Code;[192] and the circumstance that the anonymous stickler
for strict orthodoxy already begins to accentuate the political and
religious opposition between the two great parties known as Pharisees and
Sadducees, as well as other grounds of a different order, disposes me to
assign the fragment of Agur to the third century B.C. This conclusion
would be borne out by the influence upon Agur's scepticism of
comparatively recent foreign speculation. Some of his sayings have an
unmistakable Indian ring about them. A few are even directly traceable to
the philosophical sentences of the Hindoos. The enumeration of the four
insatiable things, for instance, is but a slight modification of the
Indian proverb in the Hitopadeça which runs: "Fire is not satiated with
fuel; nor the sea with streams; nor death with all beings; nor a
fair-eyed woman with men."[193] Still more striking and suggestive is the
correspondence between the desire of life, personified in Agur's fragment
by the beautiful Ghoul, and the thirst of existence denoted by the Buddha
and his countrymen as _tanha_--the root of all evil and suffering.
"Through thirst for existence (_tanha_)," the Buddha is reported to
have said to his disciples, "arises a craving for life; through this,
being; through being, birth; through birth are produced age and death,
care and misery, suffering, wretchedness and despair. Such is the origin
of the world.... By means of the total annihilation of this thirst for
existence (_tanha_) the destruction of the craving for life is
compassed; through the destruction of the craving for life, the uprooting
of being is effected; through the uprooting of being, the annihilation of
birth is brought about; by means of the annihilation of birth the
abolition of age and death, of care and misery, of suffering,
wretchedness and despair is accomplished. In this wise takes place the
annihilation of this sum of suffering."[194] The same doctrine is laid
down by the last accredited of the Buddha's disciples, Sariputto: "What,
brethren, is the source of suffering?" he is reported to have said. "It
is that desire (_tanha_) which leads from new birth to new birth,
which is accompanied by joy and passion, which delights now here, now
there; it is the sexual instinct, the impulse towards existence, the
craving for development. That, brethren, is what is termed the source of
suffering."[195]
Footnotes:
[190] Prov. xxxi. 10-31.
[191] Prov. i. 6.
[192] 444 B.C.
[193] _Cf_. Hitopadeça, book ii. fable vi.; ed. Max Müller, vol. ii.
p. 38.
[194] Samyuttaka-Nikayo, vol. ii. chap. xliv. p. 12; _cf_. Neumann
"Buddhistiche Anthologie," Leiden, 1892, pp. 161-162.
[195] Majjhima-Nikayo; _cf_. Neumann, _op. sit.,_ p.25.
* * * * *
AGUR'S PHILOSOPHY
Of the three Hebrew thinkers of the Old Testament who ventured to sift
and weigh the evidence on which the religious beliefs of their
contemporaries were based, Agur was probably the most daring and
dangerous. He appealed directly to the people, and set up a simple
standard of criticism which could be effectively employed by all. Hence,
no doubt, the paucity of the fragments of his writings which have come
down to us and the consequent difficulty of constructing therewith a
complete and coherent system of philosophy. To what extent he assented to
the theories and approved the practices which constitute the positive
elements of the Buddha's religion, is open to discussion; but that he was
a confirmed sceptic as regards the fundamental doctrines of Jewish
theology, and that his speculations received their impulse and direction
from Indian philosophy, are facts which can no longer be called in
question.
To the theologians of his day he shows no mercy; for their dogmas of
retribution, Messianism, &c., he evinces no respect; nay, he denies all
divine revelation and strips the deity itself of every vestige of an
attribute. Proud of their precise and exhaustive knowledge of the
mysteries of God's nature, the doctors of the Jewish community had drawn
up comprehensive formulas for all His methods of dealing with mankind,
and anathematised those who ventured to cast doubts upon their accuracy.
"Whatever sceptic could inquire for,
For every why they had a wherefore,"
the unanswerable tone of which lay necessarily and exclusively in the
implicit and tenacious faith of the hearer. Now, faith may be governed by
conditions widely different from those that regulate scientific
knowledge, but if its object be something that lies beyond the ken of the
human intellect it must be based either upon a supernatural intuition
accorded to the individual or upon a divine revelation vouchsafed to all.
In the former case it cannot be embodied in a religious dogma; in the
latter it cannot--or should not--be accepted without thorough discussion
and due verification of the alleged historical fact of the divine
message.
This is the gist of Agur's reasoning against the allwise theologians of
the Jewish Church.
These sapient specialists, whose intellects were nurtured upon the
highest and most abstruse speculations and who could readily account for
all the movements of the Deity with a wealth of detail surpassing that of
a French police _dossier_, were utterly and notoriously ignorant of
the rudimentary laws of science which every inquisitive mind might learn
and every educated man could verify. Now, as truth is one, Agur reasoned,
how comes it that the persons who thus lay claim to a thorough knowledge
of the more difficult, are absolutely ignorant of the more simple?
Whence, in a word, did they obtain their perfect acquaintance with the
mysteries of the divine nature and the mechanism of the universe, the
elementary laws of which are yet unknown to them? Surely not from any
source accessible to all; for Agur, possessing equally favourable
opportunities for observation and quite as keen an interest in the
subject, not only failed to make any similar discoveries, but even to
find any confirmation of theirs. For this he sarcastically accounts by
admitting that he must be considerably more stupid than the common run of
mankind, in fact, that he is wholly devoid of human understanding--a
confession which he evidently expects every reasonable man to repeat
after him to those who assert that crass ignorance of fundamental facts
is an aid to the highest kind of knowledge.
"I have worried myself about God, and succeeded not,
For I am more stupid than other men,
And in me there is no human understanding:
Neither have I learned wisdom,
So that I might comprehend the science of sacred things."
Still he is a very docile disciple, and, having failed to make any
discoveries of his own, would gladly accept those of a qualified
master--of one who endeavours to know before setting out to teach and who
prefaces his account of the wonders of the unseen world by pointing out
the bridge over which he passed thither, from this. But does such a
genuine teacher exist?
"Who has ascended into heaven and come down again?
Who can gather the wind in his fists?
Who can bind the waters in a garment?
Who can grasp all the ends of the earth?
Such an one would I question about God: 'What is his name?
And what the name of his sons, if thou knowest it?'"
And if even specialists do not fulfil these conditions, are we not forced
to conclude that their so-called knowledge is a fraud and its
subject-matter unknowable?
Agur's views of right conduct--if we may judge by the general tenour of
his fragmentary sayings and by the principle embodied in his sixth and
last sentence, in which he rejects as a motive for action "a high hope
for a low heaven"--are marked by the essential characteristics of true
morality. An action performed for the sake of any recompense, human or
divine, transitory or eternal, is egotistic by its nature, and therefore
not moral; and the difference between the man who, in his unregenerate
days, cut his neighbours' throats in order to enjoy their property, and
after his conversion gave all his goods to feed the poor, in order to
enjoy eternal happiness in heaven, is more interesting to the legislator
than to the moralist. But, were it otherwise, Agur holds that, even from
a purely practical point of view, all the honours and rewards which
mankind can bestow upon their greatest benefactor would be too dearly
purchased by a ruffled temper; in other words, mere freedom from positive
pain is a greater boon than the highest pleasure purchased at the price
of a little suffering.
Agur's politics gave as much offence to the priests as his theology. Like
most original thinkers, he is a believer in the aristocracy of talent,
and he makes no secret of his preference of a hereditary nobility to
those upstarts from the ranks of the people who possess no intellectual
gifts to recommend them. For the former have at least training and
heredity to guide them, whereas the latter are devoid even of these
recommendations. These views furnished the grounds for the charge of
Sadduceeism preferred against him by his adversary.
To what extent Indian thought, and in particular the metaphysics and
ethics of Buddhism, influenced Agur's religious speculations, it is
impossible to do more than conjecture. Personally I am disposed to think
that he was well acquainted and indeed thoroughly imbued with the
teachings of the Indian reformer. In the third century B.C., as already
pointed out, the spread of the new religion through Bactria, Persia,
Egypt, and Asia Minor was rapid. Moreover, the turn taken by the
speculations of cultured Hebrews of that epoch was precisely such as we
should expect to find, if it stood to Buddhistic preaching in the
relation of effect to cause. The scepticism of the philosophers of the
Old Testament, not excepting that of Agur who may aptly be termed the
Hebrew Voltaire, was not wholly destructive. Its sweeping negations in
the spheres of metaphysics and theology were amply compensated for--if
one can speak of compensation in such a connection--by the positive,
humane, and wise maxims it lays down in the domain of ethics. And the
cornerstone of the morality of all three--Job, Koheleth, and Agur--would
seem to be virtually identical with that formulated in the Indian
aphorism:
"Alone the doer doth the deed; alone he tastes the fruit it brings;
Alone he wanders through life's maze; alone redeems himself from
being."
Buddhistic influence in the case of Agur, therefore, is all the more
probable that it admirably dovetails with all the circumstances of time
and place known to us, even on the supposition, which I am myself
inclined to favour, that Agur lived and wrote in Palestine. This
probability is greatly enhanced by the striking affinity between the
Buddhist conception of revealed religions, of professional priests and of
practical wisdom, and that enshrined in the few verses of Agur which we
possess. It is raised to a degree akin to certainty by the actual
occurrence of Indian images, similes, and even concrete aphorisms in the
short fragment of seven strophes preserved to us in the Book of Proverbs.
* * * * *
THE POEM OF JOB
TRANSLATION OF THE RESTORED TEXT
* * * * *
PROLOGUE
CHAP. I. A.V.]
1 _There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man
was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil._
2 _And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters._
3 _His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand
camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a
very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the men of
the east._
4 _And his sons went and feasted_ in their _houses, every one his
day; and sent and called for their three sisters to eat and to drink with
them._
5 _And it was so, when the days of_ their _feasting were gone
about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the
morning, and offered burnt offerings_ according _to the number of
them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed
God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually._
6¶ _Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves
before the Lord, and Satan came also among them._
7 _And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan
answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth and from
walking up and down in it._
8 _And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job,
that_ there is _none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright
man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?_
9 _Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, Doth Job fear God for
nought?_
10 _Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and
about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his
hands, and his substance is increased in the land._
11 _But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he
will curse thee to thy face._
12 _And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath_ is _in
thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went
forth from the presence of the Lord._
13¶ _And there was a day when his sons and his daughters were eating
and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house:_
14 _And there came a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were
plowing, and the asses were feeding beside them:_
15 _And the Sabeans fell_ upon them_, and took them away; yea,
they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am
escaped alone to tell thee._
16 _While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The
fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the
servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell
thee._
17 _While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The
Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have
carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the
sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee._
18 _While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy
sons and thy daughters_ were _eating and drinking wine in their
eldest brother's house:
19 _And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote
the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they
are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee._
20 _Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell
down upon the ground and worshipped,_
21 _And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I
return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be
the name of the Lord._
22 _In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly._
CHAP. II. A.V.]
1 _Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present
themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them to present
himself before the Lord._
2 _And the Lord said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan
answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from
walking up and down in it._
3 _And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job,
that_ there is _none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright
man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast
his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him
without cause._
4 _And Satan answered the Lord, and said, Skin for skin, yea, all that
a man hath will he give for his life._
5 _But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and
he will curse thee to thy face._
6 _And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold he is in thine hand; but save
his life._
7¶ _So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job
with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown._