[ p. 245 ]
Eight and wrong are said to be relative terms; there is no absolute right, no absolute wrong. It is not so kicked to steal when one is starving as when one does not require food. What is wrong in peace is right in war, to deceive, rob, slaughter other men. In the view of the Hindus, everyone is relatively good and bad; composed of so much goodness, so much badness, and so much stupidity. According as a man has more of one or the other he is better than bad, or worse than good, or more stupid than good or bad; when perfected, he loses all badness and stupidity and remains all good.
But the theory of relativity, whether applied to man or to his act, fails to indicate that right and wrong are divergent branches of the same root. To kill in war is not wrong suddenly metamorphosed into right (the pacifist is quite logical in saying, “if wrong, then wwong in war”); to kill in war is right for the same reason that it is wrong in peace, because the act subserves the fundamental law of self -protection, a law which fashions ethics, as it exists before ethics, and is recognized even by animals.
Every animal has the sense of possession, of ownership; it does not willingly permit another to take away its prey or to hunt over its ground. Gregarious animals do not attack each other without cause, but the individual defends his own and the pack as a whole destroys its weak members, even its chief. Individual self-preservation and group unity are thus instinctively preserved. Even an odd-looking individual, because it militates against [ p. 246 ] unity, is killed or driven off. Tke lone beast of prey may devour its own young, but it will not allow another to do so; it resents and avenges theft and slaughter. The monogamous animal also resents the presence of a rival; it refuses to permit adultery committed against its own interest.[1] An animal inherits this instinct; it develops a sense of duty; it knows what it ought to do and is ashamed of failure to do its duty. The writer’s dog Dasli was one day lying at ease after a full meal, when a wretched starving pup stole up with his tail between his legs and begged for a left-over bone. Dash growled, but amiably, and did not protest. He felt lazily generous and pretended to look the other way, permitting the theft, when his master suddenly appeared in view. Instantly Dash was on his feet, barking ferociously, working himself into a rage for his owner’s benefit. The coming of his owner roused instantly his dormant sense of what was right for him to do. It was his canine duty to guard his bone; his momentary lapse was, he felt, undoglike, improper, culpable. The voice of all his ancestors spoke to him.
In the case of man, duty is expressed by following ancestral usage. The story told by an old headhunter of Borneo shows how the ancestors, control a descendant. “I was,” he says, “very much attached to my old nurse. The time came when my father told me I must begin to be a man and kill somebody. It was the law that old women no longer useM . should be slain. My father showed me my old nurse; she sat alone. He said I was too young to kili a man, but I should practice on her; he handed me my bow and arrows and told me to shoot her. I did not want to kill her, but he told me I must. I shot one [ p. 247 ] arrow; it did not hit her, but she knew what it meant. She began to weep. I too began to cry. My father was angry; he told me to stop crying and aim straight; he said it was wicked not to kill her. Then I shot and shot and though she screamed I no longer cared; I shot till I had killed her. She had been like a mother to me, but I did not care. My father said, ‘Now you are good; you have acted like a man; you have done right.” This horrid little tragedy shows how the clan forbids the individual to resist usage. Clan-law must prevail. Hence, when the clan is in question, the individual has no voice. The clan-law is self -defensive; it is a compact body; what aids or injures it, is its only care. To injure others is not in itself wrong and may be necessary, therefore right. So savages like pur Indians recognize no wrong committed against an enemy. But within the pack or the clan the individual still has his own sense of what is right and wrong, according to his own individual advantage. "Whien Foster interrogated the Cherokee as to the difference between right and wrong, he replied, “Right is to steal horses from another tribe or from a white man; wrong is to steal from my own tribe.”
Ethics thus begins without any religious sanction whatever. The clansman must do as the clan does, kill with them, to retain the integrity of the group. The first ethical law in respect of taking life is not Thou shalt not kill, but Thou shalt kill, when killing aids the group. That is the reason why it was right to kill an Englishman in 1776 and a German in 1918 till November 11. But synchronous with this group-law of ethics is that of the individual. It is usual to say nowadays that primitive man has no sense of individuality, the group is all. How is it with animals? A wolf that is robbed by his fellow wolf in the same pack acts instantly in defense and retaliation; the [ p. 248 ] man who is attacked by his fellow clansman kills him and is justified of the clan. In the first stirring of religious apperception, when ethics is expressed in taboo, the dimly felt religious awe preventing crime is only a ratification of nature ’s own laAW Theft, murder, and adultery are prevented by taboo; but the red rag which protects property through fear of breaking taboo is only the visible sign of man’s own antagonism against unwarranted intrusion on his property. With morality and sin in the first instance the gods have nothing to do. But the fathers have, although their influence is as yet unsuspected. Instinct is the heritage from them and gives authority.
But presently, as in the headhunter’s ease, men come to recognize this authority, consciously act upon it. They say, “Our fathers did so; it is custom.” This custom, which derives from usage, thus gets an acknowledged basis; it is semireligious, for the fathers are looked upon as spirits, w^ho may be displeased with violation of their procedure. Their usage has become a moral law. So with another matter not yet included in our mention of primitive ethical rules. Words are to express thoughts, not, as the diplomats say, to conceal them. The natural use children make of words is analogous to the natural use they make of their legs. They w’alk straight and talk straight; they do not naturally (uninfluenced) walk crooked or say yes when they mean no; nor do savages. Imaginative children tell stories that are not true, but they are not consciously lying. But, on the other hand, every weak creature is taught by nature to double and twist and deceive, and as a hare doubles, so naturally does a frightened child lie. All frightened children are natural liars; all savages deceive when liable to be caught. Only the civilized or Christianized child is trained to overcome its natural defense at so early an age that by the time it is presentable it is already denaturized. But for the common [ p. 249 ] good it is advantageous that men should he reliable, so that primitive com m unities often reach the point where truth within the clan is regarded as a formal virtue and is added to the stock of approved usage, while lying to a stranger or foe is also a. virtue. Virtuous Ulysses was the more virtuous because of his greater ability in deceiving enemies.
All these ethical results impart in turn a sense of mutual obligation. One feels obliged to conform; failure to do so constitutes a sin. Even the dog that snatches a bone expects retribution. So strong is this feeling that when one receives a blow, one imagines a cause for it in that retribution. As a blow received from a man implies that one has wronged him, so the African savage, when struck accidentally by a bough, does not regard it as an accident; he imagines that the bough resents his intrusion and as a rule he apologizes to the bough, thinking that he has done wrong and the tree is angry. Thus when even a civilized man falls ill, he imagines he is being punished for offending a spiritual power. How long this conception lasts it is needless to point out. In 1897 the plague in India was ascribed to the offended deity Queen Victoria; she was revenging herself on the people because some badmashas had insulted her statue. On the same occasion, Mrs. Besant, with a wider but similar outlopk, stopped long enough in Bombay to assure her followers that the plague had been sent to punish sin, but the righteous need have no fear, and fled the country. A scourge may even be sent upon the potential enemies of the good. The Pilgrim Fathers found few to oppose their settling because, as they said, God in his mercy had sent a plague upon the Eedskins and killed off most of them, so that the chosen people might take possession.
Eetribution for an offense, however, is usually punishment for neglect and sacrilege in the case of spirits; [ p. 250 ] until they have become civilized, one cannot commit grosser crimes against them. Murder and theft (except as sacrilege), and lying and adultery are crimes against men, and it is not till the gods become imbued -with human morals that such sins irritate them. But neglect and intrusion anger them, as they are not angered by violation of the human code. The West Coast Africans have indeed a god whom the missionaries cite as an example hot only of a savage moral god but even of savage monotheism. But this god was unknown till fifty years ago or so, and was really taught the savages by the first missionaries.[2] The most primitive “moral gods” are generally of this sort, though advanced savages sometimes ascribe their ethics to spiritual authority.
Neglect is a sin of omission; sacrilege (intrusion, etc.) is a sin of commission. Intrusion upon the place or prerogatives of spirits is itself an act indicative of presiunption, a violation of private privilege, a sort of theft. So, as a man punishes theft, the gods punish the builders of towers intended to reach heaven and afilict men •jvho try to be too wise or too happy, in other words, to be too godlike, to take to themselves divine prerogatives. Therefore the reacher after immortality, the seeker of forbidden fruit, and in India even the one who tries to be too spiritual, is severely punished. A store of spirituality greater than befits humanity makes a man too godlike and is provocative of divine’ anger. Hence the Hindu gods fear a saint who is unduly saintly and send him temptations, in the shape of beautiful girls, not to test Mm, like a St. Anthony, but to debase him, in order that they may sit unharassed upon their thrones. “Through fear of (losing) their own power the gods do not approve of excessive holiness,” says the Mahabharata; it is a special ease of the more general rule enunciated in the same epic: [ p. 251 ] “Mortals suffer death through doing that which is displeasing to the gods.” The fate of the soul after death or of the body in life is religiously or ethically determined in most religions, even in those of savages.[3]
But these gods have to look out for human advance or they become displaced and may end by being regarded as mere devils. They must grow ethical with man. The conceptions of divinity thus become a series of moving pictures reflecting the moral ideas of men, from Elohim to the tricky Yahweh of the Jews, to Calvin’s awful Jehovah, to God; from the lower Vedic spirits, who steal and commit other sins, to Varuna on high, who “sees and punishes sin,” to the All-god, who is the all-pure. But back of these conceptions lie how many others more primitive ! A tribe in Central India has a moral code consisting of these commandments, “Be brave and kill, and foUow the fathers’ usage in marriage.”
It is clear, however, that the first ethical code makes no distinction between intentional and unintentional sin. If one breaks taboo, one suffers, as does one who touches an infected corpse, willynilly. Manslaughter and murder are not separated in the early codes. The wagon that kills is destroyed, even in the Middle Ages. Uzzah meant well, but that could not save him. A sin is a sin, intentional or not. So if a savage causes the death of a clansman unwittingly, he is nevertheless responsible. A cause celebre in Polynesia illustrates this. A man loved a girl who did not love him. When she refused Mm he became despondent and eventually died of disappointment. The tribe held the girl guilty. She herself admitted her crime, although she protested that he had not informed her that he would die. “I know,” she declared bravely, “that I [ p. 252 ] am guilty, but I did not know I was going to be a murderer.” The tribe deliberated and came to this conclusion: “Ignorance of the act does not undo the act. If a man Mils his brother accidentally the killed remains dead just the same and the murderer is punished just the same. She must die.”
Most duties are the outgrowth of social life. Truth, fidelity, generosity, humanity, patriotism, etc., imply social duties; they arise through contact with others. They become religious first through the sanctity of usage as law imposed by spiritual ancestors and then through divine sanction. It is first of all the clan of the past and present, the body of universal opinion, which constitutes itself a religious body and rules conduct. The incorporeal spiritual power becomes a real spiritual power and is sometimes incorporate in a chief or head, as in Japan, where the Mikado is the incorporate State as divinity.’ But usually, as we have seen, the other spiritual powers, not ancestral, are assimilated to humanity and endowed with its ethical qualities. In order to produce civilization man has been obliged to pass through the stage where the clan could hold together. But to hold together it was absolutely necessary that war and its entailed slaughter should be obligatoiy on the individual as a moral necessity and that in lesser matters also there should be concerted action. The savage code was in effect a means to a higher end and from this point of view it is wrong to say with the supercilious air of civilization, “The ignorant savage acted right as he saw the right; he knew no better.” We should say, “lie was absolutely right in killing and in doing whatever he did to preserve his clan.” We cannot say that he did wrong but did not know it, without the admission that evolution is wicked to begin with, which is absurd. The later ethics can be born only of the advanced civilization which owes its existence to [ p. 253 ] precedent semicivilization, which in turn arises from the homogeneous group that would have disintegrated without strict adherence to its own savage morality. The integrity of the tribe, it may be added, is not affected by an influx of captives, because politically they are of no account and morally or religiously they are approximated to the norm of the tribe.
The ethical code, being the logical outcome of social intercourse, varies very little in the same social and intellectual strata and tends always toward the same standard as the intelligence rises and the circle of society expands. Family affection, respect for seniors, loyalty, bravery, leading to the moral compulsion of accepting any challenge, to fight or gamble, truth and troth, these are virtues embodied in whatever early codes there be, as men approach civilization. Stealing and lying are clan-transgressions. Within the fanuly, fidelity is expected of wives because they belong to men in their entirety; fidelity of husbands is a later virtue based on sentiment, whereas woman’s virtue is older, being based on ownership. But sex morality is not so tmiform as other primitive ethical traits, because it depends largely on varying economic conditions, rape, exogamy, infanticide, matriarchy, etc. In some tribes, women are “common” till married, then taboo (privately owned by husbands); in others, chastity is demanded of girls; in some, women gain a priestly ascendency, as in Patagonia; in others, they have no religious power. A tolerant attitude toward women is not indicative of a generally higher morality. The Chibchas were no better than some other South Americans, yet the CMbcha women had the right to beat their husbands. To kill an Iroquois squaw was more, expensive than to kill a man of the tribe, but that was because the man had no individual owner, only the tribe had to be satisfied, whereas in the case of a woman both tribe and owner had to [ p. 254 ] get compensation. In sexaal matters, many savages enforce restraint on both sexes and as in other cases so in this, nsage becomes moral, both in practice and restraint, further, in restraint’s suggestion, signs of modesty, which are largely conventional. To be noticed, however, is the tendency to relax sexual restraint, on occasions of magical and religious excitement, as a duty (primarily for the purpose of fertility), then as a privilege. The indecency of the Australian trench-rite, a magical ceremony, is in marked contrast wjth habitual daily practice; the Satumaha shows how a duty has become a privilege under religious cover. Savages have innumerable erotic explosions of this sort out of tenor with their daily life and it may be that such excesses revert to a time when they were usage, but most savages have a moral feeling in regard to family integrity. Some rather startling (survivals?) exceptions occur. The Egyptian and Peruvian royal rule was that brother should wed sister, to keep the line pure; Zoroastrianism inculcates incest.
The usage approved by the tribe becomes, as we have seen, religious. Polynesian gods reward bravery and eat cowards. Valor and truth were equally moral to the savages of North America and in the latter regard they even wunt farther than the Spartans; their word was as good as ttieir bond when dealing with non-tribal friends. Perhaps the first extra-tribal virtue to be accepted, as such was hospitality. The Amerinds as a whole had about the same code as Tamtus ’s Germans, even to the point of gambling away their wives and other possessions, for as the Hindu hero says: “As a virtuous warrior I cannot refuse any challenge, either to fight or to gamble.” Both were tests of courage.
A comparison of Hindu, Confucian, Hebrew, and Egyptian ethics shows that while one natiom stresses one point more than another, the general content of all is [ p. 255 ] about the same. The Ten Commandments of the Hebrews do not forbid lying (only false testimony contra proximum), but forbid covetousness. The Hindu code ignores filial affection (as a duty) and includes an injunction against jealousy. Yet further discussion in the law books (ethical as well as legal manuals) and admonitions outside of the formal codes reveal clearly that all these rules imply the same sort of ethics. For example, the foundation of Chinese morality is filial afifection, but reverence and obedience to parents are as much insisted upon in India as in China. The insistence on this or that point expresses the national character in its most obvious characteristic. Thus justice to the Eoman is supremely a moral attribute because the national character was rather hard and judicial, just rather than amiable (melius est virtufe ius), while pity and kindness, even to animals, was supremely moral to the Hindu because he was naturally sensitive and affectionate rather than rigorous. The advancing code as a reflection of social progress is easily traced where literary strata are preserved. Valor in the Rig-Veda is a virtue reflecting a valorous age; it is not mentioned as a virtue in any subsequent period, only preserved as a characteristic trait of warriors. The employment of magic was at first a sin only when directed against a member of the clan; later, all magical practices are condemned. Shows and pantomimes were an early Ihdic form of religious activity, but the puritanism of Buddha forbade them as sinful. To sell a daughter was early Hindu custom; later it was forbiddeii as immoral unless it was “family usage,” which again (so powerful is this authority) made it blameless. The modem moral code forbids many practices which of old were religiously moral, such as drunkenness and eating flesh.
Social advance by mitigating savage ethics as a whole has improved religion, but religion in turn has improved [ p. 256 ] morality through giving superior sanction to law. We have seen (chapter XIV) how religion has built up an artificial prophylactic for ethics through extensive embellishment of the idea of jural retribution united with the well-nigh universal conviction (some savages want this) that man lives hereafter. But the judgment of spiritual powers is not reserved for the next world. One may appeid to it at once, generally in eases of perjury and adultery (in a more advanced cultural stage in cases of suspected witchcraft or other devilry), by demanding an ordeaL This usually implies at first that the water, fire, or poison of the ordeal acts as a sentient power, a power, however, that upholds morality. But later the implication is that these powers, once thought sentient, are passive instruments in the hands of spiritual powers, gods or their inclusive substratum. There are thus three stages in the ordeal; fire, for example, or the ordeal water, acts of its own volition; then the god of fire or the god of water controls flame or flood; then God indicates his will by the sign of fire or water. Such ordeals prove or disprove both statements and states, that is, they confirm a human statement or a human state, whether sworn to or not, as when a witch may admit witchcraft but must be tested by the ordeal before condemnation, or a man may think he has power but can prove his status, as a superior controller of elements, only by walking over a fire-path. The oath taken by one’s head or some other formula is itself an ordeal, inasmuch as the perjurer is injured in the point by which he swears and it is admitted that the injury is a divine reply to his implied appeal.
The higher religions, including those that have substituted vicarious atonement for individual retribution, have had to face the problem whether God could be perfectly just and at the same time merciful. The problem is usually presented under the form. Is He more just or [ p. 257 ] more merciful? Some argue that God must be as merciful as man and then question the necessity for a vicarious atonement. The Buddhist argues that in the ease of Buddha or the Bodhisat, who, having infinite merit, gives therefrom to the repentant sinner and thus increases that sinner’s store of merit so that retribution no longer threatens him, the sacrifice was voluntary, whereas the Christian sacrifice was that of a victim not offering himself voluntarily; “Thy will (not mine) be done.” These problems are today historically interesting as showing to what a degree ethics has impinged upoa religion and controlled the. idea of God. An unetMeal God is condemned by ethical humanity. It is only in the speculations of metaphysicians that one finds the thesis that God, as in later Zoroastrianism, is a synthesis of the Good Mind and the Evil Mind. Hindu theologians, who are all philosophers, assume that good and evil are two eternal principles, appearing in the form of eternal matter[4] and eternal spirit, or that matter is an illusive projection of spirit, which is the only true reality, the All-God, whose essence is (trinitarian) Being, Bitelligence, and Joy; but Being is Pure Being in this definition and as such implies absence of all material taint, thus implying again ethical purity. A third view holds that God is All, but that matter is not an illusion; it is the very body of the supreme spirit, as man consists in soul and body. In this explanation, man’s soul is not identical with God, but when purified it wiU go to God and live with him. In the Zoroastrian view, man and all evil beings wUl eventuaUy become ethicaUy purified and live in bliss, assuming their original bodies. Christian belief holds that matter was created by God and is not evil but the soul is sinful; in eschatology, as has been said above, [ p. 258 ] it varies between immediate and future resurrection and between the resuwection of the original and of a more spiritual body.
In China, one of the philosophical questions debated with great earnestness was whether man was naturally good or bad. That man of himself is incapable of doing right is suggested by Mohammed, but he does not really maintain the imm oral doctrine of total depravity. In the light of history and ethnology, it is apparent that evil began as something harmful, good as something beneficial, either actual or potential. Theft to dog and savage is not bad in itself, only when it harms the robbed individual is- it evil to him. Slaughter is a divine law to savages and is evil only when it unfavorably affects them; when they themselves MU a man it is “good and pleasant,” as the savage said of the theft of another man’s wife. The evil of “sin” lies in all cases in its bearings, not in itself. There is no problem of evil as of something sent into the world or permitted by a good God; there is only the problem how man came to conceive of evil as an objective reality. If it seems to be a mystery why a good God should permit sinners to flourish or a ruthless folk to oppress the virtuous weak, the answer is given by the school of Plotinus: “The weak have no business to be weak and let the strong oppress them; it is their duty to strengthen themselves and not permit sinners to flourish or the ruthless to oppress; it is primarily the weak not the strong who sin.” All sin has been established as sin because it is harmful, first to the individual, then to the clan, then to the nation, then to humanity. It is a duty to the human race to combat what is harmful to it, a duty because due to the preservation and progress of the race; what harms it is sinful.
It comes of course to the same thing in the end. Sin remains the same and sinners are to be condemned, not [ p. 259 ] because they oppose any abstract good or virtue but because they oppose and injure what is essential to us. It is not likely that the consensus of human opinion is mistaken in regarding as really most beneficial what is conventionally called good. Good and evil remain as antithetic as before. And it has the same divine authority, inasmuch as the progress of the human race may be regarded as an expression of the will of the divine power governing the world. This transcends mere utilitarianism and imbues the notion of right and wrong with a supreme sanction, which tends to create the image of an abstract right opposed to an antithetical abstract wrong, the path followed mentally by those who created the personification of this latter abstraction under the form of the Evil Mind, though this mind was thought to be destined finally to be overcome by the Good Mind. But we have seen that this is merely a later survival of the savage belief in evil spirits and that some savages even adumbrated the idea of a principle of evil in creating an original Source-of-evil opposed to another original Source-of-good, though in savage theology there is no intimation that the Good Spirit will eventually overcome the Evil Spirit.
But, given a good supreme spirit, the difficulty is to find out what it wishes ethically and to bring the wish authoritatively before men. In this regard China was perforce content to say that its Supreme Lord, the ruler of order, objected in general to violation of orderly conduct and that correct conduct had been handed down from inspired ancestors close in touch with divine authoiify. A disorderly kmg was dethroned of lost his life because the ancestors or the Supreme Euler disapproved of him. But this was vague. The Hindus-also began by citing ancestors and gods as models (“the gods speak the truth, hence man should speak the truth”); but they perceived that personal authority was better understood when [ p. 260 ] voiced in a code. So they began that series of ipse dixits .which gave to ethics the tremendous weight of voiced authority, “Brahman said,” “thus spoke Zoroaster,” the logia of Buddha and of Christ, with the precedent tablets of Moses inscribed with the words of Yahweh, down to the personal utterances of Mohammed and other revealers of diviue will. It is here that Christianity had so great an advantage over the Mediterranean religions, which could appeal to no such juridical utterances, except, indeed, when special cases were submitted to formal oracles. But there was no divine code, in these religions, such as Manu’s and Moses’s codes in India and Judaea. There could be no such code, because the divinities of the Mediterranean had lagged behind man in ethical progress and were in no position to act as spiritual guides. The philosophic moral code of Greek and Rcunan rested largely on man himself;[5] a mental obligation to be good was assumed by the wise because men would thereby gain happiness, while the morals of the mass were supported by a decaying belief that the gods would punish sinners. Sin itself became rather lack of self-restraint than a violation of divine command, a lack leading to trespass upon the natural rights of others. The conception [ p. 261 ] of morality in jural form was practically a great advance because it established the fundamental principles of simple ethics in a clear and cogent manner. Its Thou shalt and Thou shalt not ousted every other standard in India and in Judaea, as the words of Confucius became ethical law in China. But in the latter case, although Confucius eventually became authoritative, he became so by virtue of hoary tradition and both he and Laotse made their appeal rather to nature than to divine inspiration : “Be humble, because rivers run downward; they do not exalt themselves. Be generous; the tree shades even him who cuts it down. Nature teaches a man to mourn another’s misfortime; no man can see a child killed without sorrow; hence nature is Mnd; therefore Mndhess is part of goodness.” That sort of thing. It does not go so far or so deep as “Thus spoke the Lord God.” In the West, then, there appeared thus a new ethical power, the Church. It became so authoritative as to produce a state within the state, a community vowed to live under higher laws than those of the civil power. This State. Jn turn engendered another code embodying new conceptions of sin. Offenses and the proper penances for venial sins were tabulated by ecclesiastical law, which at the same time regulated the ceremonial, festivals and fasts (for sm) coming equally under its purview, its utterances, through a figment of divine succession, still having supreme authority. Ethical conduct and even daily custom, regulated by law in the monasteries, were no longer based on knowledge or wisdom, the classical guide, but on faith. Even’ conduct opposed to the dictates of reason had to be accepted as religiously obligatory. Through human speech the will of God expressed itself and this expression was decisive. The only question was whether the human authority expounding law was competent to speak for God (a difficult problem when two rival popes anathematized [ p. 262 ] each other), not whether, when the man was accepted as anthority, his ruMng was valid. Faith in this law was only part of that saviag faith which by God’s grace attains a more than human goodness. In establishing this ethics, the belief and conduct of the Founder himself were of course of inestimable value, but its foundation, as an ethics of faith, was already laid on the indisputable basis of the earlier Jewish code. In distinction, however, from its predecessor, the Christian religion renounced ritualistic purity ia favor of moral purity exclusively. This, united with spiritual religion, occasionally took a stand sharply antithetical to ecclesiastical law, and thus aTiew code arose, the more as certain individuals stressed the spiritual life on a mystic note. The same development took place in India. First Brahmanism, with its inspired[6] and strict ethical code, was imposed upon a religion whose ritual was become stereotyped. Thus the idea of sacrificial and ritualistic purity passed into the idea that all sacrifice was vain save that of the self, the religion of the pure heart. Finally, in both communities, by way of fervid mysticism and communion with the divine, this spiritualistic trend sometimes landed its devotees in a morass of antinomianism, such as, despite ethical creeds, has arisen elsewhere, in Persia, for example, as well as in Europe and India. Since, however, the mystics have proved themselves profound thinkers, it is obvious that the rotten bog of erotic mysticism comes from the contamination produced by the senses, which have no business in matters spiritual. Further, it is interesting to note that ethical mysticism, arising as it does from various creeds and philosophies, is not dependent on this or that belief in details (Plotinus was as great a [ p. 263 ] mystic as Eckhard). It is bmlt up wherever man conceives that man may commune with the divine, physically or spiritually; but all advanced mystical systems conceive of union in terms of spirit Even erotic mysticism theoretically holds that the physical is but a symbol of the spiritual.
The new ethics of the Christian religion was based (as had been the Jewish religion) on God’s will, but as manifested not in the Decalogue alone but in the example of Jesus Christ and in his addition to and modification of precedent morality. First it emphasized and enlarged the idea (also Jewish) of the fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man. The world became a commonwealth of those spiritually akin. This idea also was not unique. “There are no castes in the presence of Shiva, for we are all his children,” said the Hindu; he said also, “All the world is my country.” And the Greek said, “He is our Father; we are all his children.” In fact, however, only the Buddhist and the Christian acted upon this broader outlook. Proceeding from a recognition of spiritual fellowship, both maintained that kindness or love was an essential element in ethics. Neither Greek nor Hindu philosophy reckoned with this. At most the Hindu philosopher recommended a benevolence which was in reality little more than was implied by the shibboleth “non-injury,” though it occasionally voiced itself in the command to do to others as one would be done by and not to strike back when one is struck. As between Buddhism and Christianity, a more active, energetic love was preached in the West. Buddha’s “love” for the htunan race, as taught by him, was a kind of tolerant pity or good win, which the higher-minded’ should cultivate in order to reach serenity; it was inculcated formally that such good will should in the higher stages of spiritual progress be laid aside for inditference, absolute unconcern. [ p. 264 ] The close bond of church-fellowship, however, tended both East and West to increase the inaportance of love, especially since, in both religions, love to the Lord (Buddha or Christ) was interpreted as expressed by love to man, and Buddha himself became an exemplar of divine self-sacrifice for love of man. The sentiment thus extolled surpassed that given by the philosopher in that the claims of nature as interpreted by the Stoic “were here resolved into the mutual claims which beneficence granted as a form of divine service; love to man became a religious duty; pity was a form of piety.” Greater regard for the sick and helpless, greater commiseration for the poor, disfavor toward cruelty (objection, for example, to gladiatorial games), the suppression of certain vices previously tolerated or not regarded as vices (such as exposure of infants), and the exaltation of humility, not on Taoist grounds but in imitation of Christ, were some of the ethical fruits of the new religion in the West[7] In the East, a greater gentleness and kindness, the suppression of sacrificial cruelty, an ethical code urging restraint of the senses, family purity and personal abnegation were added to the everyday moral code that, inherited from Brahmanism, had long insisted upon the sinfulness of murder, theft, adultery, covetousness, envy, and such obvious faults. The simple ethics of the Rig-Veda, which was of this type, had been divorced from religion dtming the ritualistic period of the Brahmanas, when the priests were as cynically and brutally immoral as can be imagined. Buddha’s greatest practical service was in making religion ethical. His simple rules for the common member of the order were contained in the promise not to take life, drink intoxicants, lie, steal, or be unchaste; but, as his commands, the§e prohibitions were rigidly enforced and led on the Brahmanic side also to the [ p. 265 ] necessity of establishing an ethical code. Thus we find that the Ten Commandments of the Brahmans and Ten Commandments of the Buddhists are an amplification of these earliest statutes. Those of the Brahmans are embodied in the Tenfold Law, which enjoins : Contentment, patience, self-control, honesty, purity, restraint of passions, devotion, knowledge (of religion), truthfulness, freedom from anger (implying abstinence from overt acts of wrongdoing, as in the Shorter Buie, vis., Non-injury, truth, honesty, purity, restraint of passions, Manu, 6, 92; 10, 63). The Buddhist Ten Commandments are : Not to kill, nor steal, nor be sensual, nor lie, nor speak harshly,[8] nor speak malidously, nor speak idly, nor be covetous, nor hate, nor be heretical. The general Brahmanic law was “Do not to others what is unpleasant to thyself” (Yaj., Dh., 3, 65).
In most manuals of ethics, the Oriental side has been so consistently neglected that the contrast between Christian ethics and pagan ethics has been over-stressed. Thus obedience, patience, humility, purity, benevolence, alienation from the world, and duty to Q-od (including orthodoxy), are contrasted as “novel or striking features of Christian ideal conduct” with the “pagan virtues” of prudence, temperance, courage, and justice.’”[9] Here the contrast with the Greek and Roman ideal is perhaps partly justified (but temperance is not wholly pagan), yet most of these features are found in pre-Christian religions. It may be remarked also that the eight (eventually seven) “deadly sins” of the church law, namely, pride,- avarice, anger, gluttony, unchastity, envy, vain [ p. 266 ] glory (or gloominess) and languid indifference (or state of moral lassitude), are all mentioned in Buddhistic manuals as sins demanding penance.
Finally, even the American Indians have evolved a divinely sent code of morals which shows that paganism in the broad sense is not far behind civilization or Christianity in ethical content. The Eules revealed by the Sungod of the Natchez Indians are: “Do not Mil except in self-defense; do not commit adultery; do not steal; do not get intoxicated; do not lie; do not be avaricious; be generous and hospitable.”
Modem explanations of ethical origins began with Thomas Aquinas, in the assumption that law expresses the eternal reason of God, whether law be natural or human. God implants in man general principles and a consciences^ disposed to obey them; he supplements this with revelation. The question of will versus reason then arose; the divine will, it was said, is arbitrary, not dependent on reason. Again, some subordinated the legal view of morality to an intensive vision of God; sin is nothing but contempt of God shown by conscious assent to vicious behavior; intention to do right is really right though it may seem wrong; outward acts are indifferent (Abelard). Moral behavior to the mystic became with [ p. 267 ] Bonaventura the natural result of the union of the soul with God. With these theological views[10] that of the historian is not necessarily in conflict. Admitting the possible existence of God and soul, one may say that all the historical growth is but the unfolding of a seed divinely planted or that the moral advance of man is itself a divine unfolding and growth. But the historian really has nothing to do with the existence of soul and God, only with the idea man has had of them.
Philosophy began to dispense with the supernatural explanation of ethics when Grotius applied to international duties the principle that natural law is the dictate of right reason, which prohibits mutual injury and gives parental and marital authority. Why one should obey this law was the next question, which Hobbes answered by saying that man is moral to preseirve himself and his own pleasure; a government determines all obligations; morality depends on government, not on the will of God (as Duns Scotus had held); there is no objective reality in the distinction between good and evil, in opposition it was asserted that knowledge of the distinction comes from divine reason, which gives validity to ethical standards. In 1672 was formulated (in Cumberland’s De legibus naturae) the dictum that “the common good of all is the supreme standard,”[11] in subordination to which good all virtues are to be determined; the common good is the supreme law. This fits in with Locke’s [ p. 268 ] view that ethical rules are obligatory on man as a rational being.
Not to traverse the later interpretation of ethics as utilitarian, it may be pointed out that Professor Green[12] gives today as the foundation of rights and of right the capacity of the individual to conceive a good as the same for himself and others; rights are determined by that conception. Ethics thus becomes altogether divorced from religion.
The ordinary view of Karma, which in India is a more cogent instigator of morality than is the code, is that it is a natural law operating through the universe whereby every act has its effect in the next birth; one suffers in the next life or becomes happier in the next life exactly iu accordance with one’s mental and bodily activities in this life; but one suffers logically and inevitably. There is no punishment inflicted by the gods (the hell doctrine was amalgamated with the Karma doctrine and is not part of it essentially). It has been called a blind mechanical law of cause and effect. But it is noteworthy that this law of Karma is not blind to ethics; it acts mechanically, but it is, in effect, a moral law controlling existence, favoring morality, discouraging immorality. Karma is, in short, an all-pervading ethical power governing the universe; the more remarkable in that it is always conceived as an impersonal force. All its operations are in support of ethical advance. It is a “power not ourselves which makes for righteousness”; it upholds moral good at the cost of natural good; it brings out for the first time without appealing to divine authority the distinciion between duty and self-love.
[ p. 269 ]
The tendency of Karma is to improve the world and bring its spiritual elements to perfection. In penalizing wrong and rewarding right it treats virtue as coincident with happiness. Bishop Butler’s phrase, “the happy tendency of virtue in this world,” might be used to illustrate the underlying conception of Karma. On the other hand, one drawback to the ethical effect of the Karma doctrine is that it lessens man’s compassionate interest in his fellows. Practically, the thought that a cripple or any unfortunate human being is wi-etched merely because through his misfortune he is expiating some crime or fault in a previous existence tends to a feeling of indifference and unwillingness to help or comfort the supposititious sinner. Karma is apt to become a foim of fatalism, but the Hindu mind, though admitting fate in theory, has rejected its logical corollary. “What is to be will be, says the lazy coward. Reject this wisdom of the incompetent. Thy fate is in thine own power. A brave man makes his own fate.”
Karma, however, though in Buddhism it is the oxpressien of a pessimistic system, which declares that all worldly activity leads to more unhappiness, ineulcates the same ethics as does optimism. This is true also in respect of modern pessimistic systems of philosophy. Inasmuch as denial of the ego sums up morality, one should practice love and sympathy, because these are in themselves such a denial, says Schopenhauer; who also recommends celibacy for the same reason, as well as for its effect in lessening human life. To thwart Unconscious Will one must practice the virtues enjoined by religious ethics and even conform to the standard set by religion for its more austere followers. The fact that ethics remains theoretically the same, irrespective of religions belief, shows that the formal attachment between them is rather adventitious. Ethics ends as it begins, more a matter [ p. 270 ] of culture aud civilization than of religion, though religion has often been its strongest support (as it may be its greatest foe) and when rightly understood is essentially ethical.
Under the head of ritual it has already been pointed out that form and ritual may be injurious to the religious spirit. But this is equivalent to injuring ethics, which depends largely on religious support. The writer once saw an old woman telling her beads in a Duomo when a wealthy foreigner kneeled beside her. Without ceasing to pray the old woman abstracted the lady’s handkerchief. Apparently the woman -was not there to steal; she seemed quite devout and after her trick she renewed her devotions with greater zeal, perhaps feeling especially thankf-^. It was by chance the handkerchief appeared and she yielded to the opportunity. But obviously her devotion was mere ritual. They say a Sicilian will stab -with one hand while clutching a holy relic with the other; his religion is a form. The Thugs throttle, however, as a religious duty. Beligion has often thus opposed morality. Millions have died in sacrifice. Debauchery has been, and unhappily still is, upheld by religious belief in India. In subtler ways also religion has injured ethics. Its selfappointed allies or ministers have insisted upon outgrown ethical rules; they have roasted men in an auto-dafe (act of faith) in order to conform to the religious law (against shedding blood) and suppressed free thought (an ethical retardation) by bnrning ethical and philosophical books detrimental to religious and political dogmas. At the present moment, free love, the ethical effect of which is not that of free thought, is openly advocated in the name of religion; it “has a deep and spiritual significance; [it symbolizes] the mystic union of finite and infinite.”[11:1]
[ p. 271 ]
More roight be said on this point, but to what good 1 In the first place, m^st of the ethical drawbacks of religion in general are no longer operative in any religion; human sacrifices and crimes seldom find shelter under its aegis.[13] Mysticism has in most advanced cults become spiritual. It is historically necessary to remember that, for example, the Council of Constance tacitly approved of assassination by refusing to condemn it; bnt such accommodation of ecclesiastical law to worldly needs is now a mere record of the past, explicable in part as the expression of an age more indifferent than ours to the individual. At present it is of more importance to note the immense service that religion has rendered in the province of ethics. If it is stiU a conservative force and as such tends to retard the inteUeetual (and hence ethical) advance of orthodox believers, it must be remembered that religious morality is the only morality that has authority with backward minds. They are representative of the mass, which intellectually is usually a generation behindhand. Religion still is an ethical power and with many it is the only authoritative ethical power. Nor does the Church stand against the ethical demands of the age; it does not interfere with political rightness. It was rather wonderful that with a constituency so largely drawn from political opponents of England and with an ecclesiastical head in sympathy with Germany (this is quite natural when one considers the large flock in the German fold) there should have been no church opposition in this country against America’s entry into the war as an ally of those from whom the Church had least to expect. And if again that same Church has acted in the [ p. 272 ] interest of Irish freedom, it has only anticipated what the political opponents of that freedom have themselves admitted to be a righteous cause. In both of these striking recent instances the Church has championed the higher ethical cause, wheter against or in favor of her own immediate advantage. And in a general view of the relations between ethics and religion it is clear that they cooperate much more than they antagonize each other; the union is still, as it has always been, of great benefit. Even in the past, which must be judged as the past and not as if it were the. enlightened present, religion has been of inestimable good, ethically considered; it has spiritualized humanity, furnished a broader conception of duty, helped profoundly to enlarge man’s sympathies; and on the whole given an invaluable support to morality.
In conclusion, it is of interest to notice that as pessimism has the same ethical expression as’optimisni, so the common sense or business view of mankind has come to realize that the religious ideal of a wise altruism is stiU to be commended even apart from religion. The ethical code of the Boy Scouts is without overt religious basis but is in accord with religious teaching, and the business community as represented by the Rotarians has pledged itself to oppose the egoists, whose cry was “everyone for himself,” with what they are pleased to call their slogan of “service, not self,” thus reverting to the advice of the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius: “As thou art thyself a component part of a social system, so let every act of thine be a component part of social life.” This means that ethics, in establishing the good of the individual upon the good of the community, recognizes that principle of God or Nature which sacrificed the individual to the tribe, because without this sacrifice the fate of the individual in general would have been worse. To damage the community is to lower the individual. In [ p. 273 ] the words of one recently speaking for this business organization: “Inadequate treatment of employees, rendering inferior service to customers, or failure to pay bills with due promptness, are anti-social acts of aggression detrimental to the community”; and again: “Those who substitute self-seeking for fair and conscious cooperation are themselves likely to sulfer, probably from the point of view of their material gain and with indubitable certainty from deriving less satisfaction than they might from the work which they do.”[14] The speaker urged as most useful and agreeable a combination of selfinterest and community-interest, since altruism carried to excess would defeat its own object, and self-interest as a sole goal is a form of business myopia. ThU recognition on the part of the business world that solidarity is essential and that one cannot injure others without injuring oneself is an indication that the theory of the brotherhood of man is not merely a religious chimera.
Union with one mate, which answers to monogamy, is usual among the higher animals (elephant, lion, tiger, for example). Promiscuity is the dog’s rule, but his nohler original, the wolf, is monogamous. ↩︎
Ellis, op. cit.. and Miss Kingsley, Travels in West Africa. ↩︎
The negroes of Guinea believe that a spirit will meet the soul after death and ask whether it has duly observed the “rules for food and days.” So liturgical sin in taboo is apt to precede moral sin. ↩︎
In this system, mind is an evolved fonn of matter and is opposed to spirit. ↩︎
But it is necessary to enter here a caveat against the common assumption that Greek morality was devoid of religious basis. There was no revealed ethical code, but from Homer downward morality was more or less linked to religion. Truth, piety (to parents), hospitality, respect for the suppliant, these were Homeric virtues watched over by divine powers. The Fates in Hesiod punish the transgressions of men; idleness is hateful to the gods. Insolence opposes Justice, the daughter of Zeus, who has thirty thousand watchers of men’s morality. “Piety consists in holy thoughts” was an epigram inscribed over the shrine of Asklepios. Truth and mercy were to Pindar and the dramatists attributes of Zeus. Asceticism was to Pythagorean and Orphic a means of mortifying evil (flesh) to purify the soul for union with the divine. But, as faith decayed, the basis of ethics shifted from the divine to the human; there was no traditional moral law expressed by statute or implied by divine example. ↩︎
Inspiration in the Vedic age was by autopsy; the seer “saw” the words he said. Later, the codes were communicated by word of mouth, a supreme spiritual power, or a saint delegated by him, uttered the code. ↩︎
Henry Sidgwick, Outlines of the History of Ethics (London, 1886). ↩︎
In China the Fang Wang Ching substitutes for “speak harshly”) “nor trade in alcoholic liquors” and has “boast” for “speak idly” (foolish talk) and “blaspheme” for “be hereticah” “Self-control” as distinguished from “restraint of passions” is expressed by humility, mental rather than physical restrains. ↩︎
Sidgwick, op, cit, pp. 123, 141. ↩︎
These views are a Christian adaptation of Greek thought, that of Aquinas (thirteenth century) being based on the Kicomachean Ethics and Eoman I’aw, and the mysticism of Bonaventura ( 1221-12 74), whose six stages of the adept remind one also of Yoga-disciple, reflecting Keoplatonie ideas. So (below) Locke’s basis of ethics, in his appeal to reason, was virtually Stoic. See Sidgwick, op. dt. ↩︎
The Hindu epic says of a special case, without generalizing, that conduct should be determined by the “greater happiness of the many.” The Hindu jurist supports his metaphorical “bull of right” on four legs, revelation, tradition, consensus of worthies, and conscience ( satisfaction of the man-within). The first is supreme, but incomplete; its lacunae are filled by tradition (the conduct of those traditionally approved), and by the worthies and conscience, since these also imply divine law more particularly revealed. ↩︎ ↩︎
^14 ↩︎
The Russian Christian Smotherers, however, share the belief of the Nicaraguan that only a bloody death ensures reward hereafter. In accordance with Mt. 11 : 12, “men of violence take it [heaven] by force.” they smother their dying relatives. See Beaulieu, L’empire des Fears, III, p. 367. ↩︎
From an address by Sir William Schooling in Jane, 1921. ↩︎