The Chief End of Man Part 5

"Be willing at length to be approved by yourself, be willing to appear beautiful to G.o.d, desire to be in purity with your own pure self and with G.o.d. Then, when any such appearance visits you, Plato says, Have recourse to expiations, go a suppliant to the temples of the averting Deities. It is even sufficient if you resort to the society of n.o.ble and just men, and compare yourself with them, whether you find one who is living or dead."

"This is the true athlete, the man who exercises himself against such appearances. Stay, wretch, do not be carried away. Great is the combat, divine is the work; it is for kings.h.i.+p, for freedom, for happiness, for freedom from perturbation. Remember G.o.d, call on him as a helper and protector, as men at sea call on the Dioscuri in a storm. For what is a greater storm than that which comes from appearances which are violent and drive away the reason?"

Epictetus, compared with Plato, is the warrior philosopher beside the seeing philosopher. He is in closest grip with the foe, and his calm is the calm of the victor holding down his enemy.

His apparent unconcern as to the hereafter is in keeping with his whole att.i.tude, which is that of cheerful acquiescence in the divine order, whatever it be. "To be free, not hindered, not compelled, conforming yourself to the administration of Zeus, obeying it, well satisfied with this, blaming no one, charging no one with fault, able from your whole soul to utter these verses:--

"Lead me, O Zeus, and thou, too, Destiny."

He vindicates Providence against injustice. "The unjust man has the advantage,--in what? In money. But the just man has the advantage in that he is faithful and modest."

"We ought to have these two principles in readiness, that except the will nothing is good nor bad; and that we ought not to lead events, but to follow them. My brother ought not to have behaved thus to me. No, but he will see to that; and, however he may behave, I will conduct myself toward him as I ought."

"As a mark is not set up for the purpose of missing the aim, so neither does the nature of evil exist in the world."

That is, it is inconceivable that the universe is a blunder. This is one of the fundamental ideas of Epictetus. The inference is, that man has only to define his true end and pursue it, which is the right action of the will, or as we should say, right character. Pursuing this, he never finds himself thwarted or unfriended, never rebels or mistrusts the G.o.ds.

The substance of his message is: "On the occasion of every accident (event) that befalls you, remember to turn to yourself and inquire what power you have for turning it to use."

"G.o.d has delivered yourself to your own care, and says, 'I had no fitter one to intrust him to than yourself; keep him for me such as he is by nature, modest, faithful, erect, unterrified, free from pa.s.sion and perturbation.'"

G.o.d, says Epictetus, has made me his witness to men. "For this purpose he leads me at one time hither, at another time sends me thither; shows me to men as poor, without authority and sick; sends me to Gyara, leads me into prison, not because he hates me,--far from him be such a meaning, for who hates the best of his servants? nor yet because he cares not for me, for he does not neglect any, even of the smallest things; but he does this for the purpose of exercising me and making use of me as a witness to others. Being appointed to such a service, do I still care about the place in which I am, or with whom I am, or what men say about me? and do I not entirely direct my thoughts to G.o.d, and to his instructions and commands?"

Thus he falls back on the life of the spirit,--simple, sure, victorious.

To place all good in character is the secret. From virtue grows piety.

It is desire set on externals, and so disappointed, that brings discontent, repining, impiety.

Yet Epictetus has distinct and serious limitations. He a.s.sumes that to avoid all perturbation is the aim of the wise man. This can be accomplished only by the sacrifice of all objects of desire which lie outside of the control of the will, and he advises this sacrifice. "If you love an earthen vessel, say it is an earthen vessel which you love; for when it has been broken you will not be disturbed. If you are kissing your child or wife, say that it is a human being whom you are kissing, for when the wife or child dies you will not be disturbed."

All joys but the purely moral are to be despised. In going to the theatre one should be indifferent to who gains the prize. This attempted indifference to all the great and little pleasures of life which have no distinct moral character, if successful, makes an ascetic, and of most men is liable to make prigs. It is the vice of Puritanism.

The modern world is riper and richer than the Roman world. We say now, the ideal man is not "unperturbed." Perturbations are inevitable to the man normally and highly developed, with sensibilities and sympathies keenly alive. The true aim is to include composure, but not as sole and supreme. This is a more complex development than the Stoic, less capable perhaps of symmetrical completeness, but grander, as a Gothic church is grander than a Greek temple.

Again, the a.s.sumption of Epictetus and of all the Stoics that the will is wholly free, that man has only to choose and seek goodness and he can perfectly achieve it, misses the familiar and bitter experience of humanity, that too often man carries his prison and fetters within himself. A Roman poet voiced it: _Meliora video proboque, deteriora sequor_. Paul spoke it: "The good that I would, I do not; and the evil I would not, that I do."

But Epictetus himself is one of the great souls who are not to be described by the label of any creed. He has in himself the secret of spiritual victory, and he has a peculiar power to impart it. The limitations of Stoicism as a creed are more plainly seen in Marcus Aurelius. His character, revealed in the "fierce light that beats upon a throne," is of rare n.o.bility and beauty. To a man's strength he unites a woman's tenderness. Just because of that tenderness, and the deep heart of which it is the flower, the philosophy he so bravely practices gives him but a bleak and chill abiding-place. Through his Meditations--manly, wise, and gracious--there runs a deep note of sadness. For this man's nature cried out for love, and not even faithfulest duty can take the place of love.

Stoicism was the most distinct embodiment of the virtues of the cla.s.sic world. Those virtues shone in many who did not profess themselves to be of the Stoic school. Plutarch's gallery of portraits is a part of the world's best possession. His heroes belong not to their own time alone.

They may be distinguished in some broad respects from the saints and sages of other lands and times; some advance of type may be traced in the highest products of the successive ages; but while one turns the pages of Plutarch, he scarcely asks for better company.

Why, then, did Stoic philosophy fail of more wide or lasting success among mankind? Because--we may perhaps answer--its chief weapon was the reasoning intellect, in which only a few could be proficient. Because, fixing its ideal in imperturbability, it denied sensibilities of affection, joy, and hope, which are a large part of normal humanity.

Because, in its lack of natural science, and its revulsion from the mythologic deities, it isolated man in the universe, claiming for the individual will a sovereignty which ignored the ensphering play of natural forces, and denying to the heart any outreach beyond the earthly and finite. If we may venture to summarize the defects of ancient philosophy in two words--it lacked womanliness and it lacked knowledge.

We are now to study the building up of another side of the ideal man.

Philosophy had essayed a religion of the intellect and the will; now from Judaism sprang Christianity, a religion of the imagination and the heart.

The highest outcome of the cla.s.sic civilization was the clear conception and strenuous practice of right for its own sake. The outcome of Judaism in Christianity was essentially the belief and feeling of an intimate union between man and a higher power, with love and obedience on the one side, love and providence on the other.

In the vast tract of Greek-Roman history, we have looked at only a few of the highest mountain peaks--the n.o.blest contributions. But since the Christian church still treats the Old Testament as one of its charter doc.u.ments, we need to enlarge a little upon the general outline and color of Jewish history, and we must recognize the shadows as well as the lights.

The traditional interpretation of the Old Testament which is still current is based on successive misconceptions, overlaying and blending with each other like close-piled geologic strata. Pious intent of the original writers, shaping their facts to suit their theories--later a.s.sumptions of inspiration and infallibility in the records--theologic systems quarried and built out of these materials--the supposed dependence of the most precious faiths of mankind upon these misreadings of history,--all these influences, with the lapse of time, have buried so deeply the original facts, that the exhuming and revivifying of the true story, or at least a tolerable similitude of its main lines, has imposed a gigantic task upon modern scholars.h.i.+p. Of the results of this scholars.h.i.+p, we may give here only a kind of shorthand memorandum.

The Old Testament as a whole, with precious exceptions, can only by a great stretch of imagination be claimed as an integral part of "_the_ book of religion"--the t.i.tle which Matthew Arnold a.s.serts for the entire Bible. The phrase can scarcely be applied to the Old Testament, unless it be read through a medium surcharged with a.s.sociation and prepossession. Much of its morality has been outgrown; many of its early stories are revolting to us: much, of which the inner meaning is at one with our deepest life, is disguised under phraseology wholly alien to our modern thought and speech. As a manual of devotion, or as a textbook for the young, the Old Testament can never again fill such a place as it filled to our fathers. But we can still trace in it many of the upward steps of the race, and there are portions which still hold a deep place in the affections of the truly religious.

The mind at certain stages personifies the Deity with the greatest ease and naturalness. The primitive man interprets the whole world about him by the a.n.a.logy of his own activity. He sees in all the phenomena of nature the presence of personal beings,--beings who act and suffer and enjoy and love and hate as he does himself. The sky, the sun, the wind, the ocean, represent each a separate deity. Next, each clan, or city, or nation, comes to regard itself as under the patronage of one of these deities. The national G.o.d of the Israelites, at the earliest time we know them, bore the name of Yahveh,--a name more familiar to us under the form Jehovah. Originally he was probably the G.o.d of the sun and fire.

His acts were seen everywhere, his motives guessed. The heat and light of the sun--now illumining, now fructifying, now blasting--were his immediate manifestations.

Later, he was conceived to favor certain kinds of human action. He was at first appeased under the influences of a.n.a.logies from the lower side of human nature,--Give him a present, something to eat, or to smell, or to see. Then came the idea that he was the friend and favorer of the righteous,--of the merciful and just. The turning-point in the history of Judaism--the birth-hour of religion as it has come down to us--is marked by that great dimly-seen personality, Moses, who taught that the wors.h.i.+p of Yahveh forbade murder, adultery, theft, false witness, covetousness.

The Jews had neither science nor logic; they had no intelligent induction as to nature,--hence they never got beyond the idea of supernatural intervention.[3] Apparently they never challenged and sifted their fundamental ideas,--never raised the question as to the actual existence of Yahveh. They saw and felt the incongruities of the world as a moral administration, and sometimes pressed the inquiry, as in Job, _Why_ does Yahveh thus? But the denial of any ruling personal Will, as by Lucretius, was impossible to them. They were imaginative, intense, and their imagination got the saving ethical impress especially from the prophets.

Judaism as a religion grew from "the Law and the Prophets." From almost the earliest historic time there existed some brief code of precepts,--probably an abbreviated form of what we know as the Ten Commandments. Later came the impa.s.sioned preaching of the prophets.

Still later, there was formulated that elaborate statute-book for which by a pious fiction was claimed the authority of Moses.

The prophets spoke out of an exaltation of which no other account was given than it was the inspiration of Yahveh,--"Thus saith the Lord!"

They did not argue, they a.s.serted--with a pa.s.sion that bred conviction, or at least fear and respect.

It is here that the distinction between the Greek and the Hebrew method is most marked. Socrates, for example, called himself the midwife of men's thoughts. His maxim was, "Know thyself." His cross-examination was designed to make men see for themselves. That is, he taught by reason. But the prophet's claim was, "Thus saith the Lord!" He spoke out of his personal and pa.s.sionate conviction, for which he believed he had the highest supernatural sanction.

The heart of the typical prophetic message was that the Ruler of the world is a righteous ruler, and that the service he desires is righteousness. The early prophets--such as Micah, Hosea, Amos--speak with scorn of the wors.h.i.+p by sacrifices,--whether the fruits of the earth, or slaughtered beasts, or the ghastly offering of human life.

Hosea cries: "I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of G.o.d more than burnt offerings." So Micah speaks: "Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with yearling calves? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy G.o.d?"

Further, the prophets a.s.sumed to know and declare Yahveh's will on public affairs, especially on the government of the nation. They tried to dictate the att.i.tude of Judea toward other kingdoms--an att.i.tude generally of proud defiance. Often their counsel ignored the actualities, and helped to precipitate Judah and Israel into hopeless conflicts with their mighty neighbors. When in these conflicts they were worsted, the prophets laid the disaster to the idolatry or other wickedness of the people. Finally came utter defeat and dispersal, and an exile for generations in a foreign land. Then the prophets rose to an intenser faith,--purer, tenderer, more spiritual. Some time and somehow the Lord would surely be gracious to his people!

But when the captives, or a part of them, were restored to their own land,--with lowered fortunes and humbled pride, half dependent still on a foreign master,--the prophetic enthusiasm no longer availed to give a fresh message from the Lord. Instead, the leaders and founders of the restoration--Ezra, Nehemiah, and their a.s.sociates and followers--built up a well-organized, well-enforced system of discipline. They reshaped the old traditions, enlarged and codified them; they shaped the Pentateuch and book of Joshua, as we know them now; they purified and beautified the Temple service; they inst.i.tuted synagogues in every town, where religious teaching should be regular and constant; they developed a cla.s.s of "Scribes," or expositors of the Law; they multiplied ceremonial observances; they rewrote the national history, and invested their laws with the sacredness of divine oracles, under the august name of Moses; they imposed deadly penalties and bitter hatred on all who deviated from the established religion. All this was the work of centuries, and its important result was that by a manifold and perpetual drill certain religious ideas were stamped upon the minds of the people, until beliefs and usages and sentiments ran in their very blood and were transmitted from father to son.

As types of the Hebrew religion in its advancing stages we may note: first, Jacob, winning his way by craft and subtlety, gaining the favor of his G.o.d by a fidelity which expresses itself by vows and sacrifices and scarcely at all by morality; and hardly attractive except in the tenderness of his family relations. A mythical figure, he is a marvelous embodiment of the persistent race-traits of the Jew--tenacity, craft, devoutness--in the early phase. It is a very earthly phase, but with the germs of a marvelous development. Later, we have David, the warrior king. Still later comes Elijah, the prophet of a Deity who now stands for chast.i.ty and justice against G.o.ds of sensuality and cruelty, and defying wicked kings in the name of that G.o.d. Then in the line of prophets we may pa.s.s to their greatest, Isaiah,--both first and second of the name,--each of whom in the deepest adversity of the people is inspired by a hope, vague in its expectation, but so deep, so fervid, so sweet, that to this day it lends its language to hearts which in darkness look for the morning. Next we may take Ezra, rebuilding the shattered nationality, not on a political basis, but by a law of personal conduct in which a genuine morality is mixed with a ceremonial code. And here really belongs the legislation ascribed to Moses and given in the Pentateuch; the law-giver having an original in some great, dim, historic figure, long treasured in the popular imagination, but rehabilitated by priestly art as the author of a great volume of minute legislation, to which dignity is lent by the legends of a personality sublime yet meek.

We have then the flowering of the inner life, in the book of Psalms,--the single name of the Psalmist covering the products of many minds and successive generations. In the course of affairs, the hero's place belongs next to Judas Maccabaeus, the patriot leader against the heathen Greek; and we may take the books of the Maccabees and the book of Daniel as giving the ideal thought of the period,--the matrix of belief and hope from which was to spring the crowning flower of Judaism.

It will suffice for our purpose if from this series we touch upon David, the Psalms, the book of Job, Isaiah, and the literature of the Maccabean time.

The real place of David is that of the warrior-king who gave independence, unity, and victory to the people of Israel. It was he who broke the yoke of the Philistines which Saul had weakened, and slew in fight their gigantic champion. He conquered and subjected the neighboring tribes; he put down the rebellions headed by his own sons; he made and kept Israel for a brief term a proud and victorious military monarchy. Within a single generation after his death it was divided into two hostile fragments, and both of these gradually fell under foreign conquerors. Very short was the period of Israel's warlike glory, and for a thousand years afterward the national heart turned in love and reverence to the hero of that time. As the Saxons remembered Alfred, as Americans remember Was.h.i.+ngton, so the Israelites remembered David. It was in his image and under his name that they pictured a future which should outs.h.i.+ne their past. Israel throughout the period when she is most distinctly before us was a subject people. It was largely the presence of a foreign oppressor which gave to the national voice that tone of intense entreaty toward a divine friend and deliverer which runs its pathos through psalm and history and prophecy. There had been a better day for Israel, before a.s.syrian and Egyptian trampled her. There had been a day when Philistia and Edom quailed and fell before her, and the Lord wrought victory by the hand of David. So it is David's history that stands out fullest and clearest in the whole record, from Abraham onward. How much is true history and how much is imaginative addition must be largely guesswork. But we see in David the ideal hero and type of that period of Jewish history as we see in Achilles and Odysseus the ideal types of primitive Greece.

And the story of David is as deeply colored with the primal pa.s.sions of humanity as are the songs of Homer. There is the picture of the shepherd-boy, to which must be added the exquisite psalm which later traditions put in his mouth; the victory over the giant; the most pathetic story of the moody and wayward Saul--the power of music over his melancholy, the alternations of jealous rage and compunction; the friends.h.i.+p with Jonathan, more tender and pure than the friends.h.i.+ps Plato pictures; the dramatic fortunes of the outlaw; the family tragedies full of crime and horror; the dark story of Amnon, Tamar, and Absalom; the pa.s.sion of fatherhood in fullest intensity, with the agonized prayers for the sick child and the heartbroken lament over Absalom; the group of valiant captains and their chivalrous exploits; the risk of life to bring to their homesick chief a drink from the well of Bethlehem; the story of Bathsheba and Uriah--l.u.s.t, treachery, and murder; the prophet's rebuke; the years declining under heavy shadows. How full of lifeblood it all is! Every chapter is an idyl, an epic, or a tragedy.

It is largely this picturesque dramatic quality which made the English Bible in its early days the favorite book of the English people, and has kept for it always so high a place. But the attempt to reduce a story like David's to terms of spiritual edification has been difficult above measure, ever since mankind advanced beyond the half-barbaric age in which the story was told. Judged by our standards, the ethics of the story are often low, and its religion is largely a superst.i.tion. What brings the Almighty on the scene is most frequently some great calamity, which priest or soothsayer interprets as a divine judgment. Often there is attributed to him the quality of a jealous Oriental despot. The justice he enforces is often injustice and savagery. Take the story of the Gibeonites. A three years' famine in Israel was explained by Yahveh's oracle as a retribution for the breach of faith by Saul, many years before, with the Gibeonites, whom he had persecuted in defiance of ancient compact. David thereupon invited the Gibeonites to name the requital which would appease them, and they asked for the death of seven sons of Saul. So David delivered the seven innocent men into their hands, "and they hanged them before the Lord."

The Zeus of Homer is offensive to religious feeling because he fully shares the sensuality which we account one of the great defects of humanity. From that blemish the Hebrew idea of G.o.d is always free. The hostility between Yahveh and the heathen G.o.ds has its deep ethical significance in the struggle of chast.i.ty against licentiousness, to which the religious sanction brings reinforcement. But the Hebrew G.o.d has a savage and vindictive quality, which only slowly and partially disappears. Originally, it is probable, the G.o.d of the sun and fire, beneficent to illumine, malevolent to burn, he remains always in some degree a G.o.d of wrath.

It was by one of the strange growths of the advancing popular thought that David, the valiant, pa.s.sionate soldier-king, came to be conceived of as the writer of the book of Psalms. Historically a misconception, it yet lent a continuity and ideal unity to the nation's self-interpretation.

The book of Psalms, says Dean Stanley, is the selected hymns of the Jewish people, for a period as long as from Chaucer to Tennyson. The service-book of the Second Temple is Kuenen's description. Beyond any other single book, it shows us the heart of Judaism in its ripest, most characteristic development. Its language has become saturated with the a.s.sociations of many centuries. In these intense, direct, and fervid utterances we can see the form and lineaments of a faith which was the ancestor of our own, yet is not the same.

The religion of the Psalms has different phases. We have here the experiences of many souls, with a certain kins.h.i.+p, yet with wide differences. In many of these hymns one recognizes the religion in which Jesus was cradled. Imagination and feeling have full scope. The constant idea is of Yahveh, ruler of the world and its inhabitants, the judge of the wicked and friend of the good. "Mark the perfect man and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace." "How excellent is thy loving-kindness, O G.o.d! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings." "Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments as a great deep." "The Lord redeemeth the soul of his servants, and none of them that trust in him shall be desolate."

"Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man that trusteth in him."