The World's Greatest Books - Volume 13 Part 34

THE CALL OF ZARATHUSTRA. The afflicted people cry out aloud to thee, O Ahura-Mazda, and also to the Asha, the author of the divine order. Why were we made to be exposed to the attacks of suffering and of sin? The divine one asked Asha "Hast thou appointed a guardian over this people to defend them from evil?" Said Asha: "There is no man in this world that has to bear his lot of suffering and to resist moral adversaries, but the great Creator knows all about his life, and demands from him all that he is capable of. No man can choose anyone who is able to secure justice and happiness in the world." "But I," said Ahura-Mazda, "have chosen one for this great task, it is Zarathustra, the prophet and priest." On hearing of his divine appointment, Zarathustra prayed to his G.o.d, saying, "Do thou, O all-wise one, aid me, directing my thoughts, choosing for me my words, and guiding my steps, for without thee I can do nothing."

28. ZARATHUSTRA'S PRAYER FOR HELP. Teach me, O loftiest one, thy ways, and encourage me by thy promises to observe thy ceremonies. When shall I become acquainted with thine own pure mind, and know what is truly good?

When shall I realise thee in my own soul, and have fellows.h.i.+p with thee without the mediation of man or angels? I do not ask for riches, or booty, or worldly prosperity, but for righteousness.

GRAt.i.tUDE FOR BLESSINGS ALREADY RECEIVED. Thou hast granted my requests, and given me the boon which I asked for. May I never offend thee, nor be ungrateful! Supply my lot with what thou knowest to be best, and not with what I desire. Make thou clear to me the laws which govern thy kingdom, that I may be a safe guide to others.

30. THE CREED WHICH ZARATHUSTRA IS TO PREACH. I announce to all who desire to know, the true doctrine about the Creation. Let all that listen give heed and shape their ways according to this teaching:--There were at the beginning two spirits and nothing more--a better principle and a worse. This pair existed independently each of the other. The good spirit (Ahura-Mazda) made all that he created perfect and just, like himself, but the evil spirit (Ahriman) created things that were evil.

Why have the Daevas-wors.h.i.+ppers perverted the truth and gone astray from the right path? Because the creator of evil has taken possession of them. All such as make their thoughts, words, and deeds conform to the will of the good spirit have an eternal reward, and their salvation has already begun. But such as yield to the evil impulses prompted by Ahriman shall abide eternally in woe and misery.

31. THE TWO PARTIES. Many there are who hiss at this teaching of mine, and will have none of it, but the people of Ahura give heed thereto. O supreme spirit of good, grant me by the sacred fire and the holy ritual some sign that will convince and convert men, so that all may be brought to thee and be made to abandon their Daevas. O ye bountiful immortals, will ye give me prophetic knowledge that I may lead men aside from the error of their ways; what punishment shall be his who strives to set up in our midst a king belonging to the Daeva party?

GATHA 2. 43-46.

[This part of the Avesta gives a fuller and correcter view of the work and teaching of Zarathustra than any other.]

43. The Theophany of Ahura-Mazda to Zarathustra. I saw Ahura-Mazda on high and he made known to me his truth, that I may tell it to men.

44. A PRAYER FOR KNOWLEDGE. Speak thou truly to me, O Ahura-Mazda, and not falsely as the Daevas do to their wors.h.i.+ppers. How came this present world to be, and to be supported, if not through thee? Who made the sun and moon and stars, and the waters and the winds and the trees, who, if not thou? Reveal thou to me, O great one, the inner truth of things.

O ye crowds of men, when will ye call evil, evil, and good, good, instead of the contrary? Have the Daevas ever supplied good rulers?

_II.--VISPEREDS_

[The word Vispered means "all the lords," and this section is so called because it contains invocations to all the lords or G.o.ds. It consists almost entirely of extracts from other parts of the Avesta, especially from the Yasnas. What is not found elsewhere has no special value and need not be summarised.]

_III.--VENDIDADS_ (LIT. "LAWS AGAINST DEMONS")

[This is not strictly a liturgical work, but a priestly code describing the various purifications, penalties and expiations by which faults of various kinds are atoned for, or their consequences annulled. The existing Vendidads agree almost exactly with Nask (19) of the original Avesta, the only part of the Avesta in which one of the Nasks has been completely preserved. The Vendidads are divided into twenty-two Fargads, or sections.]

FARGAD 3. THE SANCt.i.tY OF AGRICULTURE. The earth should be cultivated, 1. that it may bring forth food for man and beast, 2. because it promotes human piety. "How is it, O great creator," asks Zarathustra, "that religion is to be spread?" "By cultivating barley," was the answer, "for he who cultivates barley, cultivates purity. When barley is threshed or ground, and when flour is produced, devils whistle, whine, and waste away, knowing full well that man's idleness is their only opportunity." (Cf. compare Dr. Watts' line "Satan finds some mischief still, for idle hands to do.")

FARGAD 4. CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LAW. Whoever refuses to restore property to one to whom he knows it belongs by right, is a thief. Every day and night that he keeps this property he is guilty of theft. "How many kinds of property are there?" asked Zarathustra. "These six," was the answer.

"1. That made by mere words. 2. That made by striking hands. 3. That made by depositing a sheep as security. 4, 5, 6. Those cases in which the security is respectively an ox, a man's value, and the value of a full field." Then there follow details of penalties for violating these several contracts:--_e.g._, for breaking the first--300 stripes of the rod, and so forth.

FARGADS 5-18, give the laws for the treatment of dead bodies. The two determining principles are--1. That a dead body is impure. 2. The elements earth, fire, and water, are absolutely pure and sacred. Bodies are not, therefore, to be buried, or they would pollute the earth; nor are they to be burnt, or they would pollute fire, nor thrown into water of any kind. They must be carried up to a lofty mountain, placed on stones, or iron plates, and exposed to dogs and vultures. Impurity from contact with a dead body, etc., is removed by pure water (Cf. the water of baptism). Then there follow laws prescribing the counter-charms to be used against evil spirits; the methods by which the sacred fire must be made and used, and so forth.

FARGAD 19, treats of the fate of the soul after death.

The Aprocryphal or Khorda Avesta

[The Yashts resemble closely the prayers of the Yasnas and the Vispereds, differing only in this, that each one of the twenty-four extant is devoted to the traits of a single deity, or at least of one cla.s.s of divine beings (the bountiful immortals, and so forth). The usual word in the Yashts for the superhuman beings at rest is Yazads.]

YASHT I. The names of Ahura-Mazda and their efficacy.

Asked Zarathustra, "What, O Most High, are the most effective counter-charms (mantras) against evil spirits?" He received for answer that the p.r.o.nunciation of the twenty different names of Ahura-Mazda are the best and strongest spells. These are the following:--1. The Revealer. 2. The Herd-giver, etc., etc. The twentieth and last is Mazda, the All-knowing One.

_PHILOSOPHY_

ARISTOTLE

THE ETHICS OF ARISTOTLE

Aristotle was born at Stagira, a Greek colony on the Macedonian frontier, in 384 B.C., when Plato was forty-three, fifteen years after the death of Socrates. Going to Athens, he became one of Plato's pupils in philosophy at the age of twenty. In 342 he became tutor to the future Alexander the Great, and some years later opened, again at Athens, his own school, whose disciples were called the Peripatetics. He died in 322 B.C. His works laid the systematic foundations of every science known in his time. His various treatises on logic were comprised in the "Organon"; he dealt with psychology and metaphysics; with rhetoric and the principles of literary criticism. He also systematised the natural sciences; and the two works here given, "the Ethics" and "Politics," have profoundly influenced ethical and political thought from his own day to ours. In particular, his cla.s.sification of the virtues, and his doctrine that virtue lies in a "mean," have dominated a vast amount of moral speculation. The treatises as we know them are so crabbed and condensed in style as to give the impression that they are to a large extent not the finished works, but notes and summaries.

_I.--THE END OF LIFE AND THE MEANING OF VIRTUE_

Every art and science, every action, has for its end some good, whether this be a form of activity or an actual product. The ends of minor arts are only means to the ends of superior arts. If there is one supreme end, this is The Good, inquiry into which belongs to the supreme Social Science [for which the Greek term is Politics]. The name given to this supreme good, the attainment of which is the object of Politics, is Happiness, good living, or welfare.

But Happiness itself is variously defined; some identify it with Pleasure, others with Honour--the first a degrading, and the second an inadequate view. Platonists find it in an abstract Idea of Good, a Universal which precludes particulars. There is a great deal to be said against this doctrine, even as a question of logic or metaphysic; but apart from that, the theory is out of court, for the all sufficient reason that its practical value is _nil_--knowledge of the great Universal Good in the abstract is of no practical use whatever in everyday life, which is a fundamental point for us.

If, then, there is a supreme dominating Good to be aimed at, what are the essential characteristics it must display? The Good of all Goods, the Best, must be complete in itself, a consummation. Whatsoever is a means to some end beyond fails so far of completeness; when we say that our end must be "complete," it follows that it must always be an end, never a means. It is not merely one amongst others of which it is the best, but the one in which all the others are summed up. It is of itself quite sufficient for the individual, and that not merely in isolation, but as a member of society--which it is his nature to be.

Let us then define Happiness as Man's _Work_--the performance of his function as man. Everything has some specific function, the performance of which is its Good, and man, too, must have a specific function. Now, this cannot be the kind of life which he shares with the vegetable or with the brute creation, therefore it must be the active life of his distinctive--_i.q.,_ his rational--part, exercised in accordance with the virtue or virtues which perfect it, and in his life as a whole, not merely at moments.

Testing our conclusions by the judgments of common experience, we gather support from them. Goods external, and goods of the body, are reckoned inferior to goods of the soul, which is recognised as the seat of activities. The identification of happiness with virtue, however, necessitates the distinction between active virtue and virtuousness. As conducing to active virtue, the other kinds of goods are elements in happiness. We must a.s.sume it to be not something granted to us, outside our own control, but attainable by effort and education.

Virtues are of two kinds: of the intellect, acquired by study; and moral, acquired by practice. The moral virtues are not implanted by nature, but we have the capacity for them by nature, and achieve them by practice, as by practice we acquire excellence in the arts, or control over our pa.s.sions. Education, then, is of the utmost importance, since the state or habit of virtue is the outcome of virtue in act.

The manner, the "how" of action, must be in accord with Right Reason, whereof we shall speak elsewhere. Here we must recognise that we are not laying down universal propositions, but general rules which are modified by circ.u.mstances. Our activities must lie in a mean between the two extremes of excess and defect, and this applies both to the process of generating virtue, and to its manifestation. The virtues are concerned with pleasure and pain, because these act as inducements or opposing influences; Beauty, Advantage, and Pleasure being the three standing inducements, and Pleasure entering into both the others; so that in one aspect Virtue is the Best action in respect to pleasure.

But it does not lie in the mere act; the act must be born of knowledge and of choice done for its own sake, and persistently--the first, knowledge, being the least important; to make it the most important is a speculative error.

Now, there are three modes of mind: feeling or pa.s.sion, faculty, and habit. We do not praise or blame pa.s.sion in itself, or the faculty; therefore virtue can lie in neither, but must be found in habit or condition. The virtuous habit or condition is what enables that whereof it is the virtue to perform its function, which, in the case of man, is the activity of the soul, preserving always a middle course between excess and deficiency, by choice.

In another sense, however, we must remember that there are qualities in themselves wrong, and that virtue may be presented as not something intermediate, but a consummation. But when we name each of these virtues--Courage, Temperance, Liberality, etc.; the social virtues, or good manners; the virtues concerned with the pa.s.sions--we can name the corresponding excess or deficiency. Justice and the intellectual virtues demand a separate a.n.a.lysis.