Chapter XVIII (1)

[54] On this subject see Westermarck, _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_ (1906), vol. i, chap. xxiv, “Hospitality.”

[55] Speaking of the duty of hospitality among the early Greeks, Farnell says, “The sanctity of the stranger guest ... was almost as great as the sanctity of the kinsman’s life” (_The Cults of the Greek States_ (1896), vol. i, p. 73).

[56] Without doubt other feelings and conceptions than purely ethical ones are sometimes operative in the case of the guest right. The stranger may be kindly treated because of superstitious fears. Thus the primitive man’s notions of magic and sorcery may cause him to be hospitable to the stranger through fear of the consequences of a refusal, since untutored people are apt to attribute magical powers to the stranger. See Westermarck, _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_ (1906), vol. i, chap. xxiv.

[57] Among some uncivilized peoples, however, where the population is thin and there is little competition wars are unknown. “To the Greenlander ... war is incomprehensible and repulsive, a thing for which their language has no word” (Westermarck, _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_ (1906), vol. i, p. 334).

[58] Cannibalism springs from several roots. Sometimes savages eat the body of the enemy slain in battle because they believe that thereby they destroy the soul or double and thus secure themselves against its vengeance. Again the custom grows out of the belief that the virtues of the victim pass into him who eats the flesh. But the most common motive is the subsistence motive. Indeed, many of the incessant wars waged by primitive tribes are nothing more nor less than man-hunting expeditions for securing food. Later these expeditions became raids for securing slaves.

[59] Quoted by Letourneau, _La guerre dans les diverses races humaines_ (1895), p. vi.

[60] Often we find vestiges of the abandoned practice in what may be called celestial cannibalism (see W. Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_ (1894), p. 224). Thus the god of war of the Mexican Aztecs and the gods of many Polynesian tribes were cannibals, for human sacrifices must be regarded as a sort of celestial cannibalism, when the offering is made in the belief that the god actually repasts on the blood and the finer essences of the sacrificial victim. Where men have thus made their gods like unto themselves, and the practice of cannibalism has been consecrated by religion, the gods, because religion is always conservative, are certain to remain anthropophagi much longer than their worshipers. Consequently we find human sacrifices still lingering on as a kind of survival among peoples, as, for instance, the Mexicans, who have themselves left far behind the practice of eating human flesh.

[61] Letourneau, _La guerre dans les diverses races humaines_ (1895), p. 185.

[62] _Od._ i. 260.

[63] Spencer, _Principles of Ethics_ (1892), vol. i, p. 350.

[64] _Ibid._ vol. i, pp. 355 f.

[65] _Ibid._ vol. i, pp. 368, 398, 401.

[66] Spencer, _Principles of Ethics_ (1892), vol. i, pp. 359 f.

[67] _Ibid._ vol. i, p. 349.

[68] For the influence of the war ethics of the modern nations upon their peace ethics, see VI, International Ethics: the New International Conscience, in Chapter XVIII.

[69] Breasted, _A History of Egypt_ (1905), p. 65.

[70] _Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt_ (1912), p. 176.

[71] Breasted, _Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt_ (1912), p. 250.

[72] Maspero, _The Dawn of Civilization_, p. 172.

[73] This moralization of pure physical myths marks the advance of all races in culture and morality. As we shall see, Greek and Hebrew mythologies underwent just such an ethicalizing process.

[74] Renouf, _The Religion of Ancient Egypt_ (1884), p. 73.

[75] “It has long been recognized that the Egyptians had a much more highly organized conscience than that of most other nations of early times.”--PETRIE, _Religion and Conscience in Ancient Egypt_ (1898), p. 86.

[76] Maspero, _The Dawn of Civilization_, pp. 193 f.

[77] Wiedemann, _The Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul_ (1895), pp. 62 f.

[78] Wiedemann, _The Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul_ (1895), p. 64.

[79] The same evolution is to be traced in China. “Imitations made of wood, clay, straw, paper, and of other material have been substituted for the real things.... Slaves and servants, wives and concubines are also burned, i.e., in paper imitations. They point back to the time when actual human sacrifices were the custom” (De Groot, _The Religion of the Chinese_ (1910), p. 71).

[80] _Primitive Culture_ (1874), vol. ii, p. 85.

[81] Maspero, _The Dawn of Civilization_, pp. 187 ff.

[82] Truthfulness was one of the cardinal virtues of the Egyptian ideal. The requirements here were very exact: “I have not altered a story in the telling of it; I have repeated what I have heard just as it was told to me,” are the words of one in the judgment hall of Osiris. Cf. Renouf, _The Religion of Ancient Egypt_ (1884), pp. 76 f.

[83] _The Egyptian Book of the Dead_, tr. Davis, chap. cxxv.

[84] _The Egyptian Book of the Dead_, tr. Davis, chap. cxxv.

[85] Annihilation appears to have been the lot of the very wicked; but the texts are not perfectly clear on this point. Consult Wiedemann, _The Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul_ (1895), p. 55.

[86] Here are six declarations of the confession which correspond almost exactly with six of the Ten Commandments: (1) I have not blasphemed; (2) I have not stolen; (3) I have not slain any one treacherously; (4) I have not slandered any one, or made false accusations; (5) I have not reviled the face of my father; (6) I have not eaten my heart through with envy. See Rawlinson, _History of Ancient Egypt_, 2d ed., vol. i, p. 142.

[87] Petrie, _Religion and Conscience in Ancient Egypt_ (1898), p. 135.

[88] _Ibid._ p. 162.

[89] “In this judgment the Egyptian introduced for the first time in the history of man the fully developed idea that the future destiny of the dead must be dependent entirely upon the ethical quality of the earthly life, the idea of future responsibility,--of which we found the first traces in the Old Kingdom” (Breasted, _A History of Egypt_ (1905), p. 173). Professor Breasted suggests a connection between the growth of the ideal of an ethical ordeal in the hereafter with the discontinuance of the building of immense pyramids. He says: “It is impossible to contemplate the colossal tombs of the Fourth Dynasty, so well known as the pyramids of Gizeh, and to contrast them with the comparatively diminutive royal tombs which follow in the next two dynasties, without ... discerning more than exclusively political causes behind this sudden and startling change.... The recognition of a judgment and the requirement of moral worthiness in the hereafter ... marked a transition from reliance on agencies external to the personality of the dead to dependence on inner values. Immortality began to make its appeal as a thing achieved in a man’s own soul” (_Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt_ (1912), pp. 178 f.).

[90] _Records of the Past_, New Series, vol. iii. For extended comments on the maxims of Ptah-hotep, see Amélineau, _Essai sur l’évolution historique et philosophique des idées morales dans l’Egypt ancienne_ (1895), pp. 93 ff.

[91] Budge, _Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life_ (1899), p. ii.

[92] For other documents of this age which embody the same spirit of social justice as the precepts of Ptah-hotep, see Breasted, _Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt_ (1912), lect. vii.

[93] Amélineau, _Essai_, pp. 140 f.

[94] Alongside slavery proper there existed the system of serfdom, the nature of which is revealed by the history of the Children of Israel in Lower Egypt. The status of the Egyptian serf appears to have been somewhat like that of the Helots of Laconia in Greece. If we rightly interpret the Biblical account of the servitude of the Children of Israel, the number of serfs, if their increase seemed dangerous, was kept down by enforced infanticide (Ex. i. 7–22).

[95] Laurent, _Études sur l’histoire de l’humanité_, t. i, p. 321.

[96] Amélineau, _Essai_, p. 344. The monotheist Ikhnaton (Amenhotep IV), the reform Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, it is true, pursued throughout his reign a peace policy, but this policy manifestly was dictated by temperament, or the king’s preoccupation with religious affairs, and not by moral scruples. His reform was essentially a religious and not a social or moral one. Not one of the historical documents of the age contains a word in condemnation of war as inherently wrong (see Breasted, _Ancient Records of Egypt_ (1906), vol. ii, pp. 382–419), though in these “the customary glorying in war has almost disappeared” (Petrie, _A History of Egypt_ (1896), vol. ii, p. 218).

[97] This, however, must not be regarded as wholly an act of wanton savagery. The killing of his prisoners by the king was probably a sort of sacrifice in honor of the god who had given him victory over his enemies. See Amélineau, _Essai_, p. 12.

[98] _Essai_, p. ix; see also p. 252, n. 1.

[99] For the influence of the moral ideas of Egypt on Greece, see Amélineau, _Essai_, chap. xii, pp. 359–399; Wiedemann, _The Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul_ (1895), p. x; and Toy, _Judaism and Christianity_ (1891), p. 387.

[100] Petrie, _Egypt and Israel_ (1911), p. 133.

[101] Demonism here was not, as it was and is in China (p. 55), a moral educator of the people, for the reason that the spirits were not conceived as the avengers of wrongdoing, but were thought to molest indifferently the good and the bad.

[102] It is not possible, however, to draw a definite chronological line between the nonethical and the ethical texts. Cf. Jastrow, _The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_ (1898), p. 297.

[103] King, _Babylonian Religion and Mythology_ (1899), p. 220.

[104] The nature myths constituting the epic literature of the Babylonians, which consisted largely of elaborate tales of the struggle between the gods of light and the powers of darkness, were never moralized like the Egyptian myth of Osiris and Set, or the Iranian myth of Ahura Mazda and Ahriman.

[105] Here are a few lines of a penitential prayer or psalm:

O my god who art angry with me, accept my prayer;

* * * * *

May my sins be forgiven, my transgressions be wiped out.
May the ban be loosened, the chain broken,
May the seven winds carry off my sighs.
Let me tear away my iniquity, let the birds carry it to heaven;

* * * * *

May the beasts of the field take it away from me,
The flowing waters of the stream wash me clean.
Let me be pure like the sheen of gold.

JASTROW, _The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_ (1898), p. 323.

[106] Cf. above, p. 35.

[107] The stele which bore this code of laws was discovered at Susa in 1901–1902. The reign of Hammurabi is placed at about the end of the third millennium B.C. There are translations of the code by C. H. W. Johns (1903) and Robert Francis Harper (1904).

[108] “If a man owe a debt and Adad [god of storms] inundate his field and carry away the produce, or, through lack of water, grain have not grown in the field, in that year he shall not make any return of grain to the creditor, he shall alter his contract-tablet and he shall not pay the interest for that year.”--_Code_, sec. 48. [We have used throughout Harper’s translation.]

[109] _Code_, secs. 196, 197, 200. Cf. similar provisions of the Mosaic code: Ex. xxi. 23–25; Deut. xix. 21.

[110] _Ibid._ secs. 209, 210.

[111] _Ibid._ secs. 229, 230.

[112] The provisions read: “If a man aid a male or female slave of the palace, or a male or female slave of a freeman to escape from the city gate, he shall be put to death.”

“If a man harbor in his home a male or female slave who has fled from the palace or from a freeman, and do not bring him [the slave] forth at the call of the commandant, the owner of that house shall be put to death” (_Code_, secs. 15, 16).

[113] Maspero, _The Dawn of Civilization_, p. 744.

[114] Taylor, _Ancient Ideals_ (1896), vol. i, p. 41.

[115] _Records of the Past_, New Series, vol. ii, pp. 143 ff.

[116] “The white man has no doubt committed great barbarities upon the savage, but he does not like to speak of them, and when necessity compels a reference he has always something to say of manifest destiny, the advance of civilization and the duty of shouldering the white man’s burden in which he pays tribute to a higher ethical conscience” (Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution_ (1906), vol. i, p. 27). King Leopold may have been responsible for barbarities committed against the natives of the Kongo as atrocious as those of the Assyrians, but he paid tribute to the modern conscience by refraining from portraying them in imperishable marble at The Hague.

[117] Cf. Martin, _The Lore of Cathay_ (1901), p. 226.

[118] Though the people are shut out from participation in the state worship, they have set up for themselves a multitude of local shrines where they worship the spirits of almost every earthly thing, such as mountains, rivers, trees, and rocks. “Men debarred from communion with the Great Spirit resorted more eagerly to inferior spirits, to spirits of the fathers, and to spirits generally.... The accredited worship of ancestors, with that of the departed great added to it, was not enough to satisfy the cravings of men’s minds.” (Legge, _The Religions of China_ (1881), p. 176).

[119] _The Lore of Cathay_ (1901), p. 274.

[120] Williams, _The Middle Kingdom_ (1883), vol. ii, p. 239.

[121] We do not mention Buddhism in this connection for the reason that it is not possible to trace any decisive influence, save in the promotion of toleration, that this system has exercised upon Chinese morality. Buddhism enjoins celibacy, and this, like Christian asceticism, is in radical opposition to the genius of Confucianism. For this reason, in conjunction with others,--among these its early degeneracy,--Buddhism has remained practically inert as an ethical force in Chinese society. What little influence it has exerted has been confined almost wholly to the monasteries.

[122] “The dread of spirits is the nightmare of the Chinaman’s life.”--LEGGE, _The Religions of China_ (1881), p. 197.

[123] _The Religion of the Chinese_ (1910), p. 34.

[124] The Taoist doctrines are contained in the _Tao-teh-king_, supposed to have been written by Lao-tsze, a sage who lived in the fifth century B.C. The religion which grew out of his philosophy became in time degenerate, absorbed the worst elements of Buddhism, and is to-day a system of gross superstitions, magic, and sorcery, which has undeniably a blighting effect upon morality.

[125] De Groot, _The Religion of the Chinese_ (1910), pp. 139 ff.

[126] _Ibid._ 138.

[127] Legge, _The Religions of China_ (1881), p. 229.

[128] De Groot, _The Religion of the Chinese_ (1910), p. 143.

[129] Nietzscheism is in essence at one with Taoism. Nietzsche insists that man should behave as Nature behaves; for instance, that the strong should prey upon the weak. The difference between Lao-tsze and Nietzsche lies in their different readings of the essential qualities of the universe. See below, p. 355.

[130] Taoism is too lofty a doctrine for the multitude. They are enjoined to imitate the ancient sages, and as these imitated the way of heaven and earth, in imitating them they are really imitating the universe.

[131] De Groot, _The Religion of the Chinese_ (1910), p. 143.

[132] The imitation of the qualities of nature “have given existence to important state institutions, considered to be for the nation and rulers matters of life and death.” (De Groot, _The Religion of the Chinese_ (1910), p. 139).

[133] _The Works of Mencius_ (The Chinese Classics, 2d ed., vol. ii), bk. vi, pt. i, chap. ii, 2.

[134] “This inference [that man is naturally good] comes into prominence in the classics as a dogma, and therefore has been the principal basis of all Taoistic and Confucian ethics to this day” (De Groot, _The Religion of the Chinese_ (1910), p. 137). Every schoolboy is taught this doctrine: “Man commences life with a virtuous nature” (Martin, _The Lore of Cathay_ (1901), p. 217).

[135] _The Works of Mencius_, bk. vii, pt. i, chap. ii, 2. And so Confucius: “An accordance with this nature [man’s] is called the Path of Duty” (_The Doctrine of the Mean_, chap. i; The Chinese Classics, 2d ed., vol. i).

[136] _The Works of Mencius_, bk. vi, pt. i, chap. vii, 2, 3.

[137] _Confucian Analects_ (The Chinese Classics, 2d ed., vol. i), bk. xvii, chap. ii. The student of biology will see in this view an anticipation of the latest teaching of modern science in respect to the relative importance of heredity and education in the determining of character.

[138] “There is nothing in this world so dangerous for the national safety, public health and welfare as heterodoxy, which means acts, institutions, doctrines not based upon the classics.”--DE GROOT, _The Religion of the Chinese_ (1910), p. 48.

[139] Confucius thus describes himself: “A transmitter and not a maker, believing in and loving the ancients” (_Confucian Analects_, bk. vii, chap. i).

[140] _The Religions of China_ (1881), p. 255.

[141] Chinese literature bears unique testimony to the high consideration in which the virtue of filial devotion and reverence is held. It abounds in anecdotes exalting this virtue, holding up great exemplars of it for imitation by the Chinese youth. See Doolittle, _Social Life of the Chinese_.

[142] _The Hsiao King_ (Sacred Books of the East, vol. iii), chap. xviii.

[143] _Ibid._ chap. xi.

[144] Doolittle, _Social Life of the Chinese_ (1868), p. 103.

[145] _Ibid._ p. 103.

[146] _China in Law and Commerce_ (1905), p. 34.

[147] “The chief characteristic of Chinese society and the essence of Chinese morality is reverence for the past.”--REINSCH, _World Politics_ (1900), p. 90.

[148] _The Great Learning_ (The Chinese Classics, 2d ed., vol. i), chap. iii, 5.

[149] _Confucian Analects_, bk. xi, chap. xv, 3.

[150] It is interesting to compare the portraiture of The Princely Man, as depicted by the pagan Chinese moralist, with that of The Prince, as portrayed by Machiavelli.

[151] “The standard of excellence [in The Princely Man] is placed so high as to be absolutely unattainable by unaided human nature; and though [the author] probably intended to elevate the character of his grandfather [Confucius] to this height, and thus hand him down to future ages as a _shing jin_, or ‘perfect and holy man,’ he has in the providence of God done his countrymen great service in setting before them such a character as is here given in the _Chung Yung_. By being made a text-book in the schools it has been constantly studied and memorized by generations of students to their great benefit.”--WILLIAMS, _The Middle Kingdom_ (1883), vol. i, pp. 655 f.

[152] _Confucian Analects_, bk. viii, chap. xii.

[153] _The Great Learning_ (text), par. 5.

[154] Quoted by Pfleiderer, _Religions and Historic Faiths_, p. 96.

[155] _The Great Learning_, chap. x, 22.

[156] _The Works of Mencius_, bk. vi, pt. ii, chap. xiii, 6.

[157] _The Great Learning_, chap. ix, 8.

[158] _Confucian Analects_, bk. xii, chap. xix.

[159] _The Great Learning_, chap. x, 21.

[160] _Confucian Analects_, bk. xiii, chap. xi.

[161] Okakura-Kakuzo, _The Ideals of the East_ (1905), p. 239.

[162] Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution_ (1906), vol. i, p. 265.

[163] _The Works of Mencius_, bk. vi, pt. ii, chap. viii, 8.

[164] _Ibid._ bk. vii, pt. ii, chap. iv, 1.

[165] _Ibid._ bk. vii, pt. ii, chap. ii, 1. While denouncing the essential wickedness of war, Mencius sanctioned rebellion against a tyrannical and wicked ruler.

[166] _The Great Learning_, chap. vi, 2.

[167] _The Works of Mencius_, bk. iv, pt. i, chap. xx.

[168] _Confucian Analects_, bk. iii, chap. iv, 3.

[169] _Ibid._ bk. iv, chap. xv, 2.

[170] _Ibid._ bk. vi, chap. xvii.

[171] _Ibid._ bk. ix, chap. xvii.

[172] _Ibid._ bk. xv, chap. xxiii. The same precept is found in bk. xii, chap. ii, of the _Analects_, and also in _The Doctrine of the Mean_, chap. xiii, 3.

[173] _The Works of Mencius_, bk. vii, pt. i, chap. xvii.

[174] _Ibid._ bk. iv, pt. ii, chap. xii.

[175] _Ibid._ bk. vi, pt. i, chap. x, 1.

[176] _Confucian Analects_, bk. vii, chap. xv.

[177] _The Works of Mencius_, bk. vi, pt. ii, chap. xv, 2.

[178] _Ibid._ bk. vi, pt. ii, chap. xv, 5.

[179] _Ibid._ bk. vii, pt. i, chap. xviii, 1.

[180] The Chinese pay worship, it is true, to the multitude of inferior gods of Buddhism, but there is little in these cults calculated to awaken and discipline the moral feelings.

[181] _The Religions of China_ (1881), p. 256.

[182] See Colquhuon, _China in Transformation_ (1898), p. 189.

[183] Reinsch, _World Politics_ (1900), p. 98. In their relations with foreigners the Chinese bankers have won an enviable reputation for integrity and the scrupulous observance of engagements. The word of a Chinaman in financial matters is his bond.

[184] _The Lore of Cathay_ (1901), p. 214.

[185] Froebel has an illuminating comment on the danger to true morality that lurks here: “A life whose ideal value has been perfectly established in experience never aims to serve as a model in its form, but only in its essence, in its spirit. It is the greatest mistake to suppose that spiritual, human perfection can serve as a model in its form. This accounts for the common experience that the taking of such external manifestations of perfection as examples, instead of elevating mankind, checks, nay, represses, its development” (_The Education of Man_, pt. i, sec. 10).

[186] Etiquette has been well defined as “the formal expression of courtesy,” and courtesy as “morality in trifles.” In Japan, as Kikuchi informs us, etiquette forms a part of the moral instruction in the schools. See Sadler, _Moral Instruction and Training in Schools_, vol. ii, p. 342.

[187] Edward A. Ross (_The Changing Chinese_ (1911), p. 193) says native authorities admit that from one tenth to one twentieth of the girl infants are abandoned or made away with.

[188] “Female infanticide in some parts is openly confessed and divested of all disgrace and penalties everywhere” (Williams, _The Middle Kingdom_ (1883), vol. i, p. 836). Jernigan, however, says, “When carried to the extreme there is a public sentiment in China which condemns it, and there are official proclamations against infanticide” (_China in Law and Commerce_ (1905), p. 123).

[189] The primitive kinship group is a characteristic feature of Chinese society. “Thousands of Chinese villages comprise exclusively persons having the same surname and the same ancestors” (A. H. Smith, _Chinese Characteristics_ (1894), p. 226). “I have seen a town of 25,000 people, all belonging to the same clan and bearing the same family name” (Martin, _The Lore of Cathay_ (1901), p. 272). Along with this clan constitution of society goes the principle of collective responsibility. The group is to a great degree held responsible for the conduct of each of its members. In case of serious crime, as, for instance, treason, all the male adult members of the criminal’s family are punished along with the offender (Westermarck, _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_ (1906), vol. i, p. 45). Recently the punishment of relatives of the offender has been abolished in certain cases.

[190] The efforts of the Chinese government to put an end to the use of opium among its subjects--the anti-opium decree was issued in 1906--is the most noteworthy matter in the recent moral history of China. This movement is motived by moral feeling as truly as is the movement among ourselves for the suppression of the liquor traffic. It is, in the words of Professor Edward A. Ross, “the most extensive warfare on a vicious private habit that the world has ever known” (_The Changing Chinese_ (1911), p. 146).

[191] “The Emperor is sacred and inviolable.”--_Japanese Constitution_, art. iii.

[192] The state in Japan occupies the place of the Church with us. “To look up to the state as a sacred institution has always been characteristic of the people, and from the great work of the recent reformation onward there has not been a single event of national consequence which has not originated in this peculiar turn of mind” (Count Okuma, _Fifty Years of New Japan_ (1909), vol. ii, p. 559).

[193] Corresponding to the knights in European feudalism were the samurai, above them the daimios, and at the head of the system the Shogun.

[194] Japanese boys and men, Dr. William Elliot Griffis affirms, are “more tender and careful with all living creatures than are those of Christendom” (_The Religions of Japan_ (1895), p. 294). Buddhism caused in large measure the disuse of flesh for food.

[195] This word means “the way of the warrior,” or “the rule of knighthood.”

[196] Nitobé, _Bushido: the Soul of Japan_, p. 98. The edition cited throughout this chapter is that of G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1905. The Introduction is by William Elliot Griffis.

[197] Nitobé, _Bushido_, p. 32.

[198] _Ibid._ p. 30.

[199] For the subject of the downfall of feudalism and the Restoration, see Count Okuma, _Fifty Years of New Japan_ (1909), vol. i, chap. ii.

[200] Nitobé, _Bushido_, p. 189.

[201] Baron Kikuchi, in Sadler, _Moral Instruction and Training in Schools_ (1908), vol. ii, p. 323.

[202] Scherer, _What is Japanese Morality?_ (1906), p. 10.

[203] Nitobé, _Bushido_, p. vi.

[204] The works of Molière, it is said, have been put under the ban of the censor in Japan and their circulation forbidden, for the reason that Molière ridicules old age, and constantly, like the comic supplement of the newspapers, “makes some father the butt of jokes and gross wit by his child or children.”

[205] “Any social system of which filial piety is not the moral cement; any social system in which children leave their parents in order to establish families of their own; any social system in which it is considered not only natural but right to love wife and child more than the author of one’s being; any social system in which marriage can be decided independently of the will of parents, by the mutual inclination of the young people themselves; any social system in which the mother-in-law is not entitled to the obedient service of the daughter-in-law, appears to him [the Japanese] of necessity a state of life scarcely better than that of the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, or at best a sort of moral chaos.”--LAFCADIO HEARN, _Out of the East_ (1895), p. 89.

[206] Okakura-Kakuzo, _The Awakening of Japan_ (1904), p. 179. Romantic love is almost unknown in Japan. B. H. Chamberlain affirms that in a residence of twenty-eight years he heard of only one love match, and then the young people had been brought up in America.

[207] _Out of the East_ (1985), p. 80.

[208] Five per cent of the men have concubines.

[209] “The central idea in Japanese life is obedience to parents and reverence for ancestors. Should a Japanese father have misfortunes, his daughter would think it her filial duty to sell her body. She would not be regarded as fallen and disgraced, but as having done a right and noble deed, and might afterwards be restored to her place in society. But, though it is hard to explain, the Japanese woman is as chaste and pure and exalted in her ideas of womanhood as any woman on the globe.”--SIR EDWIN ARNOLD (in an interview).

[210] Bacon, _Japanese Girls and Women_ (1891), p. 121.

[211] Chamberlain, _Things Japanese_, 4th ed., p. 220. By “the ancient way” is meant _hara-kiri_, or disemboweling. The death by his own hand of General Nogi, the hero of Port Arthur, during the funeral of his departed sovereign Mutsuhito (September 13, 1912), reveals another motive for suicide which is wholly foreign to our modes of thought and feeling. “In very early, almost prehistoric, times the custom of _jun-shi_, or dying with the master, led to the interment of living Japanese retainers with their dead lord. The custom gradually died out, but voluntary suicide as a means of showing personal devotion or attachment to a master or superior persisted for many centuries” (George Kennan, “The Death of General Nogi,” New York _Outlook_ for October 5, 1912). It was this ancient custom that Count Nogi followed. “When all was over”--such is Mr. Kennan’s interpretation of his act--“he ended his own life as an expression of his boundless devotion to the man whom he had loved. It was in the spirit of Old Japan, but Nogi was a man of that era, and lived in the mental and moral atmosphere of that time.”

[212] Japanese feudalism began about the eleventh century. The year 1868 saw its final downfall.

[213] Nitobé, _Bushido_, p. 99.

[214] Okakura-Kakuzo, _The Awakening of Japan_ (1904), p. 175. Count Okuma makes a similar assertion: “The humanitarian efforts which in the course of the recent war were so much in evidence, and which so much surprised Western nations, were not, as might have been thought, the products of the new civilization, but survivals of our ancient feudal chivalry” (_Fifty Years of New Japan_ (1909), vol. i, p. 124). By no people has the Red Cross movement been taken up with greater enthusiasm than by the Japanese.

[215] Consult Count Okuma, _Fifty Years of New Japan_ (1909), vol. ii, pp. 566 f.

[216] “The obloquy attached to the calling brought within its pale such as cared little for social repute” (Nitobé, _Bushido_, p. 66). “The trades-people,” writes Chamberlain, “stood at the very bottom of the scale. The hucksters or traders were a degraded class in old Japan, and degraded their business morals remain, which is the principal cause of the difficulties experienced by European merchants in dealing with them” (_Things Japanese_, 4th ed., p. 93).

[217] Nitobé, _Bushido_, p. 67.

[218] The statement has obtained wide currency that all the banks in Japan employ only Chinese as cashiers because they cannot find honest Japanese for these positions of trust. Chinese are sometimes employed in Japanese banks, but the true reason for their employment is not the one here assigned. One well qualified to speak authoritatively on this subject says:

Chinese bankers and cashiers are largely Shansi men, that is,
men from the province of Shansi, where the profession of banking
has become hereditary in a large number of families. They are
all, or nearly all, members of the powerful organization known
as the Bankers’ Guild, which has branches in every part of the
Empire. The Bankers’ Guild has discovered that it is practically
impossible to conduct large financial operations without honesty;
and it therefore enforces honesty by means of a discipline that
is as rigorous ... as that of the New York Stock Exchange.... If
a Chinese banker breaks faith, violates a contract, or betrays a
trust, he is expelled from his guild and the doors of banks are
closed against him for all time. In the first place, therefore, the
Chinese cashier is honest because honesty is a condition of his
business existence. He may not be honest in other respects,--often
he is not,--but he is absolutely honest in the handling of money.
In the second place, he is probably the most expert man living in
the rapid calculation of exchanges. The monetary system of his
country is the most confused, chaotic, and complicated system in
the world. There are fifteen or twenty different kinds of taels,
no one of which bears a fixed relation to any other, or to any
established monetary standard.... The necessity of dealing in some
way with this great mass of unstable and fluctuating currency and
of earning a subsistence from it has made the Chinese cashier one
of the most expert of living accountants. He will solve difficult
monetary problems by short cuts of mental arithmetic, and he
calculates exchanges to eight points of decimals. In the third
place, the Chinese cashier counts and manipulates bank bills and
coins with extraordinary skill and accuracy. I have had dealings
with him in many parts of the Far East, but I cannot remember ever
to have seen him count a sum of money twice, and I have never
caught him in an error....

Now, when you get a man whose honesty is guaranteed by his guild,
whose manipulation of money is phenomenally dexterous, and who can
calculate exchanges to eight points of decimals, you have an ideal
cashier; and if Japanese bankers employ him, it shows their good
business sense rather than their distrust of their own people. But
all Japanese bankers do not employ him. In some of the largest
banks in Tokyo, Kioto, and Osaka there are no Chinese at all--or
at least I have never seen any. This explanation would not be
worth, perhaps, the space that I have given to it, if the story of
the Chinese cashier had not been so widely circulated, and if it
were not typical of a whole class of cases in which the Japanese
are misjudged on the basis of a single incident or a solitary
fact.--GEORGE KENNAN, “Are the Japanese Honest?” the New York
_Outlook_ for August 31, 1912.

[219] “If the descendants of the samurai can erect a standard of commercial integrity at all comparable to their fine record for courage and loyalty, we shall be their debtors, not they ours.”--The New York _Nation_ for July 30, 1908, p. 90.

[220] Baron Kikuchi, in Sadler, _Moral Instruction and Training in Schools_ (1908), vol. ii, p. 343.

[221] Baron Kikuchi, in Sadler, _Moral Instruction and Training in Schools_ (1908), vol. ii, p. 331.

[222] _Ibid._ vol. ii, p. 319.

[223] _Ibid._ vol. ii, p. 230.

[224] “I certainly consider that the courage and devotion of the Japanese soldiers during the late war was to a great extent the result of this systematic moral instruction and training in schools.”--BARON KIKUCHI, in Sadler, _Moral Instruction and Training in Schools_ (1908), vol. ii, p. 344.

[225] Wedgwood (_The Moral Ideal_, 3d ed., p. 22) suggestively likens the reduction to unity of the various gods of polytheism to the correlation of the physical forces--light, heat, electricity, and magnetism. Just as all these are found to be merely different manifestations of a single force or energy, so are all the deified phenomena of nature at last discovered to be but different manifestations of a single primal power--the One, the Supreme, the Eternal. This correlation of the gods, this reduction of polytheism to monotheism, holds the same place in the records of the religious and moral evolution of the race that the correlation of the physical forces holds in the records of the progress of science.

[226] There may be some philosophers and scientists who profess materialism, and who make an infinite and eternal unconscious energy the primal cause of all things. But this is a philosophy of the universe which has never secured a wide acceptance in the West.

[227] Oldenberg, _Buddha_ (1882), p. 59.

[228] Hopkins, _The Religions of India_ (1895), p. 356.

[229] This was the work of the Brahmans, who, to secure the ascendancy of their own class, falsified and misinterpreted the sacred books.

[230] _Laws of Manu_ (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxv), i. 31, 87.

[231] Cf. Hearn, _Kokora_, chap. xii.

[232] _Laws of Manu_, vi. 63.

[233] _Ibid._ xii. 9, 53–58. The germs out of which this system was developed by the Brahmans formed a part of the animistic conception of the world held by the conquered natives. By the sixth century B.C. the system had been fully elaborated. See Rhys Davids, _Hibbert Lectures_ (1881), pp. 16 f.

[234] The theory was also undoubtedly in part the creation of the same ethical necessity that called into existence the purgatory of the medieval Church. The reincarnations have for aim and purpose not merely retribution, but expiation and purification.

[235] The reader of Edward Beecher’s _The Conflict of Ages_, wherein the author attempts to explain the inequalities of earthly life by the theory of preëxistence, will be able to appreciate this effort of Indian philosophers to solve the same problem.

[236] Indian pessimism is doubtless to be attributed in part to the hot, depressing climate, but more largely to the burdensome caste system and an oppressive government, which made free and joyous life impossible to the masses, shutting them up, without hope, to an existence of ache and pain and wretchedness. “Politics and society, in our opinion,” says Dr. Hopkins, “had more to do with altering the religion of India than had a higher temperature and miasma” (_The Religions of India_ (1895), p. 199). But cf. Bloomfield, _The Religion of the Veda_ (1908), pp. 263 ff.

[237] Hopkins, _The Religions of India_ (1895), p. 149.

[238] _Ibid._ p. 187.

[239] This Brahmanic notion of sacrifice, that the gods need food, is the underlying notion in all religions of which sacrifices form a part. “That the purpose of sacrifice was simply to feed the gods was admitted on all sides in the controversy which accompanied the diffusion of Christianity in the ancient world.... The altar, in the words of Dean Spenser, was merely the table on which food and drink were set before the languishing deity” (Payne, _History of the New World called America_ (1892), vol. i, pp. xi f.). “It is on precisely the same principle that the Mexicans kept their great war-gods ... alive and vigorous by the blood of young human victims selected from their tributaries, and the Peruvians maintained the Creator, Sun, Moon, and Thunder, on whose favor their crops depended, in youth and vigor by the continual smoke of burnt llamas” (_Ibid._ vol. i, p. 484). Consult also Frazer, _Adonis, Attis, and Osiris_. All these were divinities of vegetation, which were believed to die and to come to life again, as with the revolution of the seasons vegetation died and was renewed. Along with this belief went the notion that by magical ceremonies the worshipers of the gods could aid them in recovering their wasted energies.

[240] _Laws of Manu_, i. 88–91.

[241] _Ibid._ i. 93.

[242] _Ibid._ ii. 32, 35.

[243] _The Gentoo Code_ (1776), xvi. 1.

[244] _Laws of Manu_, iv. 80, 81.

[245] _Ibid._ viii. 379.

[246] _Ibid._ viii. 380.

[247] _Ibid._ viii. 381.

[248] _Ibid._ iv. 147.

[249] _Laws of Manu_, xi. 247.

[250] _Ibid._ iv. 148.

[251] Even the sudra is not shut out from this hope. If he be pure, the faithful servant of his betters, gentle in his speech and free from pride, he will at death be reborn into a higher caste (_Laws of Manu_, ix. 335).

[252] _Laws of Manu_, xi. 60, 69, 71, 72, 132–138, 140–142, 144. Especially severe is the penance imposed for killing a cow. See _Ibid._ xi. 109–117.

[253] _Ibid._ vi. 68.

[254] _Ibid._ vi. 69.

[255] It is better, however, to abstain wholly from the use of meat, since this can be obtained only through pain to sentient beings (_Laws of Manu_, v. 48). There is no sin in eating meat, “but abstention brings great rewards” (_Ibid._ v. 56).

[256] _Laws of Manu_, v. 40.

[257] _Ibid._ v. 45.

[258] _Ibid._ vii. 101.

[259] _Ibid._ vii. 103.

[260] _Laws of Manu_, vii. 90–93, 104.

[261] _Ibid._ viii. 84.

[262] _Ibid._ v. 106.

[263] _Ibid._ xi. 231.

[264] _Ibid._ vi. 48.

[265] _Ibid._ viii. 312.

[266] _Laws of Manu_, viii. 313.

[267] Gautama or Buddha, “The Enlightened,” the founder of Buddhism, died about B.C. 480. Long before he began his teachings moral reform was in the air in India. Many reforming sects came into existence. The most important of these was the sect of the Jains. The central teaching of Jainism is the sacredness of all life, and its first and chief commandment, Do no harm to any living thing. Its spirit of universal benevolence left a deep impress not only upon Buddhism but also upon later Hinduism.

[268] _Dhammapada_ (Sacred Books of the East, 2d ed., vol. x), xiv. 190, 191. Cf. Oldenberg, _Buddha_ (1882), p. 209.

[269] Oldenberg, _Buddha_, p. 286.

[270] Cf. Rhys Davids, _Hibbert Lectures_ (1881), p. 21; Hopkins, _The Religions of India_ (1895), pp. 316 f.

[271] Oldenberg, _Buddha_ (1882), p. 220.

[272] _Dhammapada_, xx. 283. This doctrine that peace and contentment of mind come through suppression of desire was also the teaching of the Greek Cynics.

[273] “No sentient being can tell in what state the karma that he possesses will appoint his next birth, though he may be now, and continue to be until death, one of the most meritorious of men. In that karma may be the crime of murder, committed many ages ago, but not yet expiated; and in the next existence its punishment may have to be endured. There will ultimately be a reward for that which is good, but it may be long delayed. It acts like an hereditary disease.”--HARDY, _Manual of Buddhism_ (1880), p. 411.

[274] “The difficulties attendant upon this peculiar dogma [karma] may be seen in the fact that it is almost universally repudiated.... In historical composition, in narrative, and in conversation, the common idea of transmigration is continually presented” (Hardy, _Manual of Buddhism_ (1880), p. 412). By 250 B.C. “in the North and also in the South the old heresy of the soul-theory had crept back by side issue into the doctrine from which it had been categorically and explicitly excluded by Gautama and his earlier followers” (Rhys Davids, _Buddhism_ (1896), p. 198).

[275] _Hibbert Lectures_ (1881), pp. 31, 206. Cf. Hopkins, _The Religions of India_ (1895), p. 321.

[276] But this, as we have just seen, is not the Buddhism of the Buddhist world in general. The masses in Buddhist lands have never accepted the doctrine of Nirvana in the sense of extinction of existence. The following conversation between Moncure Conway and a Singhalese priest discloses the meaning of the term to an orthodox Buddhist of Ceylon: “I asked, ‘Have those who are in Nirvana any consciousness?’ I was then informed that there is no Singhalese word for consciousness. Sumangala said, ‘To reach Nirvana is to be no more.’ I pointed to a stone step and said, ‘One is there only as that stone is here?’ ‘Not so much,’ answered the priest; ‘for the stone is actually here, but in Nirvana there is no existence at all’” (_My Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East_ (1906), p. 134).

[277] These eight requirements are often condensed into four, and then the formula is called the fourfold path to deliverance.

[278] Cf. Oldenberg, _Buddha_ (1882), p. 211; Hopkins, _The Religions of India_ (1895), p. 305.

[279] There is in this teaching respecting desirelessness an apparent inconsistency, for with all other desires suppressed, there remains the desire for Nirvana. But the difficulty here is only apparent. A Buddhist priest, questioned respecting this, replied as follows: “The desire for Nirvana escapes from the mesh that entangles all other desires, because it is not desire for any object at all” (Conway, _My Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East_ (1906), p. 134). But all other desires aside from this desire for Nirvana are in a sense sins of covetousness. And this is the cardinal sin in the view of the true Buddhist, for covetousness “is a strong desire for something, and all desire is a hindrance in one’s way to Nirvana.”

[280] This teaching that mental illumination comes through contemplation is the doctrine in general of the religious and moral teachers of the East, and of all mystics. It differs fundamentally from the scientific view, which makes observation and study the means of enlightenment.

[281] Buddhism limits transmigration to the animal creation; Brahmanism, it will be recalled, supposes the soul to transmigrate into vegetable as well as into animal forms.

[282] “To be a true Buddhist, one must renounce, as lust, all desire of evil, which brings evil; and must live without other hope than that of extinguishing all desire and passion, believing that in so doing he will at death be annihilated.”--HOPKINS, _The Religions of India_ (1895), p. 564.

[283] _Dhammapada_, vii. 90–99.

[284] But--and differing in this from Dr. Hopkins--Professor Rhys Davids makes this perfection which results in annihilation to consist not in the extinction of every desire, but only of craving desire and evil passions.

[285] _The Religions of India_ (1895), p. 322.

[286] Hopkins, _The Religions of India_ (1895), p. 317. Stoicism indeed approaches Buddhism in this respect; but its attitude toward the doctrine of a future life was in general merely agnostic--it made no positive denial of immortality.

[287] Cf. Rhys Davids, _Hibbert Lectures_ (1881), p. 123.

[288] Zeller represents Pythagoreanism as springing from an effort to give an ethical content to life. “We may consider it proved,” he says, “that the school of Pythagoras, believing in the almighty favor of the gods, and in future retribution, enforced purity of life, moderation and justice, minute self-examination and discretion in all actions, and especially discouraged self-conceit” (_History of Philosophy_ (1881), vol. i, p. 496). Oldenberg (_Ancient India_ (1896), p. 87) conceives Pythagoreanism--together with the Orphic worship--as “a bit of Buddhism in the midst of Greek civilization.”

[289] Gautama’s attitude toward ascetic practices is shown by the following: “Not nakedness, not platted hair, not dirt, not fasting, or lying on the earth, not rubbing with dust, not sitting motionless, can purify a mortal who has not overcome desires” (_Dhammapada_, x. 141).

[290] Oldenberg, _Buddha_ (1882), p. 366.

[291] This is well illustrated in the following incident related by Moncure Conway. In the island of Ceylon he was visited by an aged Buddhist priest, who came in a sedan borne by men. Asked why he did not use a carriage drawn by horses, the priest replied that “he was afraid a horse might be vitally injured by carrying him.” “But,” said Mr. Conway, “might it not be the same with one of those men while he is carrying you?” After a moment’s silence the priest answered, “But a man can tell me if he is suffering” (_My Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East_ (1906), pp. 116 f.).

[292] Thousands of rats were formerly kept at public expense in a hospital at the Indian town of Kutel.

[293] Toleration is not even recognized as a virtue in the moral codes of ancient Judaism, dogmatic Christianity, and Islam.

[294] _Hibbert Lectures_ (1881), p. 231.

[295] Under Asoka, it is true, Buddhism, like Christianity under Constantine the Great, became militant. But Asoka was a gentle warrior and made war gently. He neither killed his prisoners nor tortured them, a common practice with Oriental conquerors, nor did he sell them as slaves.

[296] “Les paisibles sujets du Grand-Lama thibetain ont cessé d’aimer la guerre et presque de la faire” (Letourneau, _La guerre dans les diverses races humaines_ (1895), p. 213).

[297] Edward A. Ross, _The Changing Chinese_ (1911), p. 29.

[298] See above, p. 79.

[299] Mozoomdar, a leader of the Brahmo-Somaj.

[300] Buddhism, like Christianity, teaches that hatred must be overcome by love: “Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil by good” (_Dhammapada_, xvii. 223). “For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule” (_Ibid._ i. 5).

[301] For the influence of Buddhism on the Japanese character, see Count Okuma, _Fifty Years of New Japan_ (1909), vol. ii, chap. iv, “Japanese Religious Beliefs: Buddhism.”

[302] _Laws_, tr. Jowett, x. 896. And the thought is near even in the latest philosophy: “But it feels like a real fight,” says Professor William James, “as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulness, are needed to reform.”

[303] Is. xlv. 7.

[304] This dualistic world philosophy is regarded by some students of the Zend-Avesta as being in the nature of a protest against “the inert asceticism of Buddhism and the ethical indifference of Brahmanism” (Darmesteter, “Introduction,” Sacred Books of the East, 2d ed., vol. iv, p. lxviii). Ranke views it as the product of environment: “If we keep well in view the contrasts between the various districts and nations included within the limits of Persia and her provinces, the incessant struggle between the settled populations and the inhabitants of the steppes, between the cultivated regions and the desolation of the desert, thrust back, indeed, yet ever resuming its encroachments, the ideas of the Zend-Avesta will appear to us natural and, as we may term it, autochthonic” (_Universal History_, vol. i (1885), p. 105).

[305] The way in which such a conception acts upon the moral life is well illustrated in the history of English Puritanism. The ethical strenuousness of the Puritan was the outcome of his deeply felt consciousness of the ineradicable antagonism between good and evil. It is all brought vividly before us in Bunyan’s _Holy War_, in the struggle between Immanuel and Diabolus--of which the myth of Ahura and Ahriman was the prototype.

[306] _Mihir Yasht_ (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxiii), vii. 26.

[307] See Jackson, _Zoroaster, the Prophet of Ancient Iran_.

[308] See above, p. 115.

[309] Zoroastrian ethics, as Wedgwood says, is best understood when viewed as a protest against the Hindu conception of the universe and life. “The injunction to industry, the elaborate provisions for agriculture, the constant stimulus to exertion of every kind, are most intelligible when we see in them a recoil from the faith which appeared to this active race [the Iranian] a confusion of good and evil” (_The Moral Ideal_, 3d ed., p. 59).

[310] _Vendîdâd_ (Sacred Books of the East, 2d ed., vol. iv), Farg. iv. 47.

[311] _Ibid._ Farg. iii. 33.

[312] _Ibid._ Farg. iv. 49.

[313] “Aryan morality came down from the heavens in a ray of light” (_Selected Essays of James Darmesteter_, ed. Morris Jastrow, p. 304).

[314] _Vendîdâd_, Farg. ii. 29.

[315] _Ibid._ Farg. iv. 49 (bis)-55.

[316] _Mihir Yasht_, i. 2.

[317] _Ibid._ xxix. 116, 117.

[318] _The Moral Ideal_, 3d ed., pp. 71 ff. It is significant that the sacred standard of the early Persians was the apron of a blacksmith.

[319] _Vendîdâd_, Farg. iii. 31.

[320] _Ibid._ Farg. iii. 4.

[321] _Laws of Manu_, x. 84.

[322] _Vendîdâd_, Farg. iii. 38, 39.

[323] The king who reigned in Persia at the time of Nero, going from Asia to Italy, traveled by land along the shore instead of going by ship, “because the Magi are forbidden to defile the sea” (James Darmesteter, Sacred Books of the East, vol. iv, p. xl). But the anxious observance by the Persians of the requirements of the code is best disclosed in the disposition which they made of their dead. Since corpses could neither be burned nor buried nor thrown into the water without defiling a sacred element, they were exposed on the summits of mountains or on the top of low towers (dakhmas), the so-called “Towers of Silence,” that the flesh might be eaten by birds of prey.

[324] _Zend-Avesta_, pt. ii, Yasht xxii (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxiii, pp. 314 ff.).

[325] Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxxi, “Introduction,” p. xx.

[326] “Their [the servitors of Mithra] dualistic system was particularly adapted to fostering individual effort and to developing human energy.”--CUMONT, _The Mysteries of Mithra_ (1903), p. 141.

[327] _Herod._ i. 139. We quote Rawlinson’s version.

[328] _Herod._ i. 136.

[329] Rawlinson’s _Herodotus_, vol. i, p. 214, n. 10. We omit the references.

[330] Cf. _Herod._ ix. 109.

[331] Rawlinson, _The Five Great Monarchies_ (1871), vol. iii, p. 170. The exception was the case of the Barcæans. Cf. _Herod._ iv. 201.

[332] The modern Persians, who have exchanged the truth-impelling creed of Zoroaster for that of Mohammed, seem to have lost this ancestral virtue. It is noteworthy, however, that the Indian Parsees, the inheritors and preservers of the faith of ancient Persia, are noted for their uprightness and veracity.

[333] “They [the Parsees] form one of the most esteemed, wealthy, and philanthropic communities on the west coast of India, notably in the city of Bombay.”--BLOOMFIELD, _The Religion of the Veda_ (1908), p. 15.

[334] “The whole history of the religion of Israel is a history of the development of the moral consciousness, and consequently of the deepening and widening of the opposition between that _which ought to be_ and that _which is_.”--EDWARD CAIRD, _The Evolution of Religion_ (1894), vol. ii, p. 92.

[335] It may be urged that the moral character given to Yahweh was the creation of the moral consciousness of his worshipers; but even so, this conception of deity once formed would inevitably react upon the moral sense to deepen and purify the feelings that gave it birth.

[336] _Geschichte des Volkes Israel_ (1889), Bd. i, S. 429.

[337] Budde, _Religion of Israel to the Exile_ (1899), pp. 35 ff.; Toy, _Judaism and Christianity_ (1891), p. 307; W. Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_ (1894), pp. 75 ff.

[338] W. Robertson Smith urges that sacrifice among the Hebrews had its origin in the sacramental communal idea. According to this belief the clansmen and their god are of the same stock, and the bond of kinship is renewed and strengthened through the human and the divine members of the community partaking together of the flesh and blood of an animal slain.

[339] Job iii. 19.