Chapter V: Preface (4)

With regard to the pleasures of possession, seeing that they are often difficult of attainment and always precarious, we must be moderate in their pursuit and make the most of such as fall to our lot. Contentment here is everything, and contentment is the result of an even balance between desire and fulfilment, the former being always in our power and the latter generally beyond our control. To such happiness as possession can bestow, it is immaterial whether our demands are lowered or our prosperity increased, just as in arithmetic it matters not whether we divide the denominator of a fraction or multiply its numerator by the same number. Therefore, "Better look with the eyes than wander with desire."[136] The golden rule is to keep our wishes within the bounds of moderation, and to adjust them to unfavourable circumstances. The rich man who wants nothing and covets a mere trifle which is beyond his grasp, is supremely wretched, while the poor man who needs much but longs for nothing, is cheerful and contented. But even if wealth were as easily obtained as it is difficult, the law of compensation should deter us from seeking it. "Sweet is the sleep of the toiler, but his wealth suffereth not the rich man to slumber."[137] The only enjoyments common to all men are those which consist in the satisfaction of natural wants; the pleasures which wealth can purchase over and above these are trifling, and more than outweighed by the pain of carking care which it brings in its train. He who labours for this is, therefore, cutting a stick for his own back: "all his days are sorrows and his work grief."[138] "There is no good for man," then--for the common run of mankind who, debarred from intellectual enjoyment, yet cling tenaciously to life--"save that he should eat and drink, and make glad his soul in his labour."[139] Health being the condition of all enjoyment, and one of the greatest of earthly boons, care should be taken to preserve it by eating, drinking, labour, and rest, and by moderation in all things. For painlessness, which is positive, is always to be preferred to pleasure, which is negative. It matters little to the strong man that he is otherwise hale and thriving, if he suffer from an excruciating toothache or lumbago. He forgets everything else and thinks only of his misery. The world, then, being a terrestrial hell, they who love it as a dwelling-place cannot do better than try to construct a fireproof abode therein. To hunt for pleasures while exposing oneself to the risk of pain is folly; to escape suffering even at the sacrifice of enjoyments is worldly wisdom. As Aristotle put it, [Greek: _ho phronimos to alupon diokei, ou to haedu_.] But when all has been said and done, the highest worldly wisdom is but a less harmful species of folly. Existence is an evil, and the sole effective remedy renunciation.

Footnotes:

[121] i. 17, 16b.

[122] ii. 17.

[123] ix. 2.

[124] iii. 11.

[125] vii. 24, _cf_. also v. 1.

[126] vii. 24, _cf_. also viii. 16, 17.

[127] "I appraised the dead who died long since, as happier than the
quick who are yet alive; but luckier than both him who is still
unborn, who hath not yet witnessed the evil doings under the
sun," iv. 2, 3.

[128] In truth, time existing only in the intellect as one of the forms
of intuition, there can be neither past nor future, but an
everlasting now.

[129] iii. 15.

[130] iii. 19.

[131] viii. 14.

[132] vii. 15.

[133] v. 7.

[134] _Ibid._

[135] vii. 11, 12.

[136] vi. 9.

[137] v. 12.

[138] ii. 23.

[139] ii. 24.

* * * * *

THE SOURCES OF KOHELETH'S PHILOSOPHY

To what extent are these pessimistic doctrines the fruits of Koheleth's own meditations, and how far may they be supposed to reflect the views of the nation which admitted his treatise into its sacred canon? The latter half of this question is answered by the desperate efforts made from the very beginning to correct or dilute his pessimism, and by the grave suspicion with which Jewish doctors continued to regard it, long after the "poison" had been provided with a suitable antidote. Thus the book known as the Wisdom of Solomon, which is accepted as canonical by the Roman Catholic Church, contains a flat contradiction and emphatic condemnation of certain of the propositions laid down by Koheleth, as, for instance, in ch. ii. 1-9, which is obviously a studied refutation of Koheleth's principal thesis, couched mainly in the identical words used by the Preacher himself:

"For they have said, reasoning with themselves, but not
right: the time of our life is short and tedious, and in the end
of a man there is no remedy, and no man hath been known to
have returned from hell.

"For we are born of nothing, and after this we shall be as
if we had not been: for the breath in our nostrils is smoke;
and speech a spark to move our hearts.

"Which being put out, our body shall be ashes, and our
spirit shall be poured abroad as soft air, and our life shall pass
away as the trace of a cloud, and shall be dispersed as a mist,
which is driven away by the beams of the sun, and overpowered
with the heat thereof.

"And our name in time shall be forgotten, and no man shall
have any remembrance of our works.

"For our time is as the passing of a shadow, and there is
no going back of our end: for it is fast sealed, and no man
returneth.

"Come, therefore, and let us enjoy the good things that are
present, and let us speedily use the creatures as in youth.

"Let us fill ourselves with costly wine, and ointments; and
let not the flower of the time pass by us.

"Let us crown ourselves with roses before they be withered;
let no meadow escape our riot.

"Let none of us go without his part in luxury: let us everywhere
leave tokens of joy: for this is our portion, and this
our lot."

Although the book was accepted as canonical by generations of Hebrew teachers and was quoted as such by men like Gamaliel, there was always a strong orthodox party among the Jews opposed to its teachings and apprehensive of its influence;[140] nor was it until the year 118 A.D. that the protracted dispute on the subject was at last definitely settled at the Synod which admitted Koheleth into the Canon. It was natural enough that Hebrew theologians should have hesitated to stamp with the seal of orthodoxy a book which the poet Heine calls the Canticles of Scepticism and in which every unbiassed reader will recognise a powerful solvent of the bases of theism; and the only surprising thing about their attitude is that they should have ever allowed themselves to be persuaded to abandon it.

For Koheleth's pessimistic theory, which has its roots in Secularism, is utterly incompatible with the spirit of Judaism, whichever of its historical phases we may select for comparison. It is grounded upon the rejection of the Messianic expectations and absolute disbelief in the solemn promises of Jahveh Himself. Koheleth cherishes no hope for the individual, his nation, or the human race. The thing that hath been is the same that shall be, and what befell is the same that shall come to pass, and there is no new thing under the sun....[141] "I surveyed all the works that are wrought under the sun, and behold all was vanity and the grasping of wind."[142] Persians had succeeded Chaldeans; Cyrus, the Anointed of Jahveh, had come and gone; Greeks had wrested the hegemony of the East from Persians, but no change had brought surcease of sorrow to the Jews. They were even worse off now than ever before. Jahveh, like Baal of old, was become deaf to His worshippers, many of whom turned away from Him in despair, exclaiming, "It is vain to serve God, and what profit is it that we have kept His ordinance?"[143] Koheleth, like Job, never once mentions Jahveh's name, but always alludes to the Eternal Will, which alone is real and unknowable, under the colourless name of Elohim. To say that he believed in a personal God in any sense in which a personal God is essential to a revealed religion, is to misunderstand ideas or to play with words.[144] And Koheleth was a type of a class. Literary men of his day having mockingly asked for the name of the Creator,[145] Koheleth answers that He is inaccessible to men, and that prayer to Him is fruitless.[146] The Jewish aristocracy of his day, desirous of embodying these views in a practical form, sought to abolish once for all the national religion, as a body of belief and practices that had been weighed in the balances and found wanting; while the party that still remained faithful to the law was composed mainly of narrow-minded fanatics, whose wild speculations, long-winded prayers and frequent vows, Koheleth considers deserving objects of derision. He himself held aloof from either camp. He took his stand outside the circle of both, surveying life from the angle of vision of the philosophical citizen of the world. But it would be idle to deny that he had far more in common with the "impious" than with the orthodox.

Thus he scornfully rejects the old doctrine of retribution, and he is never tired of affirming premisses from which the obvious and indeed only conclusion is that the popular conception of a deity who spontaneously created the universe and vigilantly watches over the Hebrew nation, is erroneous, incredible, inconceivable. The Jahveh of olden times, with His grand human passions and petty Jewish prejudices, he simply ignores. He naturally rejects the immortality of the soul--a tenet or theory which was then for the first time beginning to gain ground and to be relied upon as the only means of ultimately righting the wrongs of existence. The fact is that he had no belief in a soul as we understand it. Modern theology regards the indestructible part of man as essentially intelligent, while admitting the fact that intellect is indissolubly associated with the brain, partaking of its vicissitudes during life and vanishing with it apparently for ever at death. Job, Koheleth, and many other writers of the Old Testament hold that if anything of the man persists after the death of the individual, it is unconscious. "The living know at least that they shall die, whereas the dead know not anything at all."[147] In a word, no other philosopher, poet, or proverb-writer of the Old Testament is less orthodox in his beliefs or less Jewish in his sentiments--and Agur alone is more aggressive in his scepticism--than Koheleth.

Much has been written about the sources from which this writer may and even must have drawn his peculiar mixture of pessimism and "Epicureanism," and considerable stress has been laid upon the profound influence which Greek culture is supposed to have exerted upon Jewish thinkers towards the second century B.C., when the moral atmosphere was choked with "the baleful dust of systems and of creeds." The "Epicureanism" of the man who said: "Better is sorrow than laughter," "the heart of the wise is in the mourning house,"[148] hardly needs the hypothesis of a Greek origin to explain it. My own view of the matter, which I put forward with all due diffidence, differs considerably from those which have been heretofore expressed on the subject. I cannot divest myself of the notion that Koheleth was acquainted, and to some extent imbued, with the doctrines of Gautama Buddha, which must have been pretty widely diffused in the civilised world towards the year 205 B.C., when the present treatise was most probably composed.[149]

Buddhism, the only one of the world-religions which, springing from an abstruse system of metaphysics, brought forth such practical fruits as truthfulness, honesty, loving-kindness and universal pity, spread with extraordinary rapidity not only throughout the Indian continent but over the entire civilised world. Its apostles[150] visited foreign countries, touching and converting by their example the hearts and minds of those who were incapable of weighing their arguments, or unwilling to listen to their exhortations. They introduced a mild, tolerant, humane spirit whithersoever they went, preaching entire equality, practising perfect toleration, founding houses for meditation, erecting hospitals and dispensaries for sick men and beasts, cultivating useful plants and trees, gently suppressing cruelty to animals under any pretext,[151] and generally sowing seeds of sympathy and brotherly love of which history has noticed and described but the final fruits. From the earliest recorded period Indian culture manifested a natural tendency to expand, which was intensified at various times by the comparatively low ebb of civilisation in the adjoining countries. One can readily conceive, therefore, the effects of the strenuous and persevering efforts of one of the most powerful Indian monarchs, Açoka Piyadassi,[152] king of Magadha, to propagate that aspect of his country's civilisation which is indissolubly bound up with the doctrines of the Buddha.

Açoka, grandson of the great king Tshandragupta, was the first monarch who openly accepted the tenets and conscientiously practised the precepts of the profoundest religious teacher ever born of woman; and no more eloquent testimony could well be offered to the sincerity of the royal convert than the well-nigh miraculous self-restraint with which he forebore to cajole or coerce those of his subjects whom his arguments failed to convince. Satisfied with the progress of the new religion in his native place, he despatched his son, Mahindo, to introduce it into Ceylon; and so successful were the young prince's missionary efforts that that island became and remains the chief seat of Buddhism to this day. Açoka next turned his attention to foreign countries, in which traders, travellers, emigrants and others had already sparsely sown the seeds of the new faith, and making political power and prestige subservient to zeal for truth and pity for suffering humanity, he induced his allies and their vassals to purchase his friendship by seconding his endeavours to inculcate the philosophic doctrines and engraft the humane practices of Buddhism on their respective subjects. The results he obtained are recorded in his famous inscriptions composed in various Indian dialects and engraven upon rocks all over the continent, from Cabul in the West to Orissa in the East; and among the monarchs whom he there enumerates as having co-operated with him in his apostolic labours, are Antiochus,[153] Turamaya,[154] Alexander, Magas[155] and Antigenes;[156] into whose hospitable dominions he despatched zealous Buddhist missionaries, empowered to found monasteries, to open dispensaries and hospitals, at his expense, and to preach the saving word to all who cared to hear.

The following literal translation of one of Açoka's inscriptions[157] will help to convey an idea of the nature of his activity as the royal apostle of Buddhism, the Constantine of India: "All over the realms of the god-favoured king, Priyadarsin, and (the realms of those) who (are) his neighbours, such as the Codas, Pandyas, the Prince of the Sâtiyas,[158] the Prince of the Keralas, Tamraparnî, the King of the Javanas, Antiochus, and (among the) others who (are) vassals of the said King Antiochus, everywhere the god-beloved, king, Priyadarsin, caused two kinds of hospitals to be erected: hospitals for men and likewise hospitals for animals.[159] Wherever there were no herbs beneficial to men or animals, he everywhere gave orders that they should be procured or planted. In like manner, where there were no health-giving roots and fruits, he everywhere commanded that they should be procured or planted. And on the highways he had trees put down and wells dug for the behoof of men and beasts."[160]

History confirms Açoka's testimony and declares him to have been no less successful in sowing the seeds of medicinal plants than those of the "saving doctrine." Buddhism enrolled numerous converts and zealous apostles all over the civilised world, and in Ceylon, Egypt, Bactria, and Persia, the yellow flag floated aloft from the roofs of the monasteries of _Bhikshus_.[161] But its influence, in other ways equally powerful while considerably more subtle, has oftentimes escaped the vigilance of the historian. None of the great religions of ancient or modern times succeeded in escaping its contact, or failed to be improved by its spirit. In the second century B.C. there were flourishing Buddhist communities in inhospitable Bactria, where they maintained a firm footing for nearly a thousand years. A Greek,[162] who wrote about the year 80 B.C., and a Chinese pilgrim,[163] who passed through the land in the beginning of the seventh century A.D., allude to them as important elements of the population of the country in their respective ages, and the Buddhist monastery founded in Balkh, the capital of Bactria, in the second century B.C., was become a famous pilgrimage in the days of Hiuen Thsang. The Zoroastrian priests of Erân hated and feared the followers of the strange creed while silently adopting and unconsciously propagating many of its institutions. Several of the Eranian kings incurred the censure involved in the nickname of "idolaters" in consequence of the favour they extended to the preachers of Nirvana.[164] No religion of antiquity was less favourable to a life of passive contemplation than Zoroastrianism, which defined life as a continuous struggle, and considered virtue as a successful battle with the powers of darkness; and yet little by little Zoroastrian monasteries sprang up by the side of the Fire Temples, and offered a quiet refuge from the turmoil of the world to the pious worshippers of Ahura Mazda.[165]

So saturated were the Eranian populations with the spirit of Buddha--antagonistic though it was to their own--that the two great Eranian sects,[166] one of which bade fair to become a universal religion,[167] were little else than adaptations of the creed of the Buddha to the needs of a different time and people. Mânî, for instance, prohibited marriage, which was one of the principal duties and holiest acts of a true servant of Ahura Mazda; forbade the killing of animals which, in the case of ants, serpents, gnats, &c., was enjoined by the priests of Zoroaster, and discouraged agriculture lest plants should be destroyed in the process. And the two classes of perfect and imperfect disciples in Mânî's community were copied from those of Buddhism, which divides all believers into two categories: those who sincerely and fervently seek to attain to Nirvana and are termed Bhikshus, and the Upasakas or laymen who, while holding on to life, practise such virtues as are compatible with this unholy desire.

The Jewish religion, in certain of its phases, reveals in like manner unmistakable traces of the influence of the religion of the Buddha. To take but one instance, the Essenians in Judaea, near the Dead Sea and the Therapeutes in Egypt, practised continence, eschewed all bloody sacrifices, encouraged celibacy, and extreme abstemiousness in eating and drinking. They formed themselves into communities, and lived, after the manner of Buddhist Bhikshus, in monasteries. During the life of Jesus, the Essenians, who lived mostly in cloistered retirement on the shores of the Dead Sea, played no historic role; but after the destruction of Jerusalem, they embraced Christianity in a body, and originated the ascetic movement of the Ebionites, which did not finally subside until it had deposited the germs of monasticism in the Church of Christ.

Koheleth, who lived either in Jerusalem or in Alexandria--more probably in the latter city--about the year 205 B.C., had exceptional opportunities for becoming acquainted with the tenets and precepts of the religion of Buddha. He was evidently a man of an inquiring mind, with a pronounced taste for philosophical speculation; and the social and political conditions of his day were such that a person even of a very incurious disposition would be likely to be brought face to face with the sensational doctrine which was responsible for such amazing innovations as hospitals for men and for animals. Alexandria, the museum and library of which had already been founded, was one of the principal strongholds of non-Indian Buddhists. It is mentioned in the Milindapanho, a Pali work which deals with events that took place in the second century B.C.;[168] it is expressly included by Açoka in the list of cities into which he introduced a knowledge of the "path of duty," and so devoted were its inhabitants to the creed of Sakhya Mouni,[169] that thirty years after Augustine had died at Hippo, thirty thousand Bhikshus set out from Alasadda[170] to annex new countries to the realm of truth.

Footnotes:

[140] _Cf._ the epilogue (xii. 9-14), for example, which is one of the
most timid and shuffling apologies ever penned.

[141] i. 9.

[142] i. 14.

[143] Malachi iii. 14.

[144] Professor Cheyne remarks: "To me, Koheleth is not a theist in any
vital sense in his philosophic meditations."--"Job and Solomon,"
p. 250.

[145] _Cf._ Proverbs xxx. 4.

[146] iii. 14, v. 2.

[147] Eccles. ix. 5.

[148] vii. 3, 4.

[149] The view of several of the most authoritative scholars--in which I
entirely concur--is that Koheleth was written in Alexandria during
the reign of Ptolemy V. (Epiphanes), who came to the throne as a boy
under the guardianship of tutors and was alluded to in the verse:
"Woe, land, to thee whose king is a child."

[150] Some of them were foreigners resident in India who, after their
conversion, preached the new doctrine to their fellow-countrymen.
Thus, one of the earliest and most successful missionaries was a
Greek, whose Indian name was Dharmarakshita.

[151] Plants, too, were included in their care and profited by their
protection.

[152] Açoka is a Sanskrit word, which means "free from care;" and
Piyadassi a dialectic form of the Sanskrit word Priyadarsin, which
means lovable, amiable. It was applied as an epithet to King Açoka,
who reigned from 259-222 B.C.

[153] Antiochus II., called Theos, who was poisoned by his divorced wife
Laodike in 247 B.C. I am aware that some scholars identify the
Antiochus here mentioned with Antiochus the Great. Although both
views make equally for my contention, I fail to see how Açoka,
who died in all probability in the year 222 B.C., could have
carried on important negotiations with Antiochus the Great, who
came to the throne of Syria two years later.

[154] Ptolemy of Egypt, probably Ptolemy Philadelphos, who founded the
Museum and Library of Alexandria, and his successor Ptolemy
Euergetes (247-221 B.C.).

[155] Magas, king of Cyrene.

[156] The identity of this monarch is uncertain.

[157] The second Edict of Girnar, Khalsi version.

[158] A South Indian people.

[159] Usually a dispensary was opened for the distribution of simples,
and a hospital hard by for those who could not move about. The
Buddhists were almost as anxious to relieve the physical pain and
illness of animals as of human beings.

[160] _Cf._ Bühler, "Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen
Gesellschaft," Band xxxvii. folg. p. 98.

[161] The monks or real disciples of Buddha who endeavour to attain
Nibbana or Nirvana. The bulk of the population contents itself with
almsgiving and the practice of elementary morality, the reward for
which will be a less unhappy existence after death; but not Nirvana,
to which only the perfect can hope to attain.

[162] Alexander Polyhistor, quoted by Cyrillus (_contra Julianum_);
_cf._ also Clemens Alexandrinus, _Stromata I._, p. 339.

[163] Hiuen Thsang.

[164] Their names and deeds are preserved in the Persian epic known as
the Book of Kings (Firdoosi, Shah-Nameh, _cf_. 1033, v. 4, 1160,
v. 2, &c.).

[165] Ormuzd. An instructive instance of the way in which foreign
institutions become nationalised in Bactria is afforded by the
Buddhist monastery in Balkh, which was at first known by its
Indian name, _nava vihâra_, a term that was gradually changed to
_naubehar,_ which in Persian means "new spring."

[166] Mânî and Mazdak.

[167] The religion of Mânî.

[168] Ed. Trenckner, p. 327.

[169] Buddha.

[170] Alexandria.

AGUR, THE AGNOSTIC

* * * * *

AGUR, SON OF YAKEH

Embedded in the collection of the Book of Proverbs[171] is an interesting fragment of the philosophy of a certain "Agur, son of Yakeh, the poet," which for scathing criticism of the theology of his day and sweeping scepticism as to every form of revealed religion, is unmatched by the bitterest irony of Job and the most dogmatic agnosticism of Koheleth. Unfortunately it is no more than a mere fragment, the verses of which are thoughtfully separated from each other by strictures, protests, and refutations of the baldest and most orthodox kind. Indeed, it is in all probability precisely to the presence of the infallible antidote that we owe the preservation of the deadly poison; and if we may found a conjecture as to the character of the whole work on a comparison of the fragments with what we know generally of the sceptical schools of philosophy prevalent among the Jews of post-Exilian days, we shall feel disposed to hold the seven strophes preserved in our Bibles as that portion of the poem which the compiler considered to be the most innocent because the least startling and revolutionary.

To the thinking of the critics of former times the Proverbs displayed unmistakable traces of the unique and highly finished workmanship of the great and wise king Solomon. At the present day no serious student of the Bible, be he Christian or Rationalist, would raise his voice on behalf of this Jewish tradition which, running counter to well-established facts, is devoid even of the doubtful recommendation of moderate antiquity. A more accurate knowledge of history and a more thorough study of philology have long since made it manifest to all who can lay claim to either, that however weighty may have been Solomon's titles to immortality, they included neither depth of philosophic thought nor finish of literary achievement. And an average supply of plain common-sense enables us to see that even had that extraordinary monarch been a profound thinker or a classic writer, he would hardly have treated future events as accomplished facts without being endowed with further gifts and marked by graver defects which would involve a curious combination of prophecy and folly.

The Proverbs themselves, when properly interrogated, tell a good deal of their own story; sacred and profane history supply the rest. In their present form they were collected and edited by the author of the first six verses of the first chapter, who drew his materials from different sources. The first and most important of these was the so-called "Praise of Wisdom" which, until a comparatively recent period, was erroneously held to be a rounded, homogeneous poem. Professor Bickell conclusively showed that it consists of ten different songs composed in the same metre as the Poem of Job, each chapter being coextensive with one song, except the first chapter, which contains two.[172] The fifth collection, containing the proverbs copied "by the men of Hezekiah," is characterised by the strong national spirit of the writers. Most of the others make frequent mention of God, give a prominent place to religion, and adapt themselves for use as texts for sermons; these, on the contrary, never once mention His name, reflect religion as it was--viz., as only one of the many sides of national existence, and deal mainly with the concrete problems of the everyday life of the struggling people. The other sayings may be aptly described as the pious maxims of a sect; these as the thoughts of a nation. The seventh part of the Book of Proverbs contains the remarkable sayings of Agur,[173] which were quite as frequently misunderstood by the Jews of old as by Christians of more recent times, the former heightening the impiety of the author and the latter generously identifying him with the pious and fanatical writer to whose well-meant refutations and protests we owe the preservation of this interesting fragment of ancient Hebrew agnosticism.

Footnotes:

[171] The Book of Proverbs begins with ten songs on wisdom, which
constitute the first part of the work. The second part is made up
of distichs, each one of which, complete in itself, embodies a
proverbial saying (x. i-xxii. 16). The third section is composed of
the "sayings of the wise men," which are enshrined in tetrastichs or
strophes of four lines, among which we find an occasional
interpolation by the editor, recognisable by the paternal tone, the
words "My son," and the substitution of distichs for tetrastichs.
Then comes the appendix containing other proverbial dicta (chap.
xxiv. 23-34. chap. vi. 9-19, chap. xxv. 2-10), followed by the
proverbs "of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah copied out"
(xxv. 11-xxvii. 22), and wound up with a little poem in praise of
rural economy. Chaps. xxviii. and xxix. constitute another collection
of proverbs of a more strictly religious character, and then come the
sayings of Agur, written in strophes of six lines, the rules for a
king and the praise of a good housewife.

[172] Prov. i. 7-19 and i. 20-33.

[173] Chap. xxx.

* * * * *

FORM AND CONTENTS OF THE SAYINGS OF AGUR

It is needless to discuss the condition and the contents of the entire Book of Proverbs, seeing that each one of its component parts has an independent, if somewhat obscure, history of its own. The final compiler and editor, to whom we are indebted for the collection in its present form, undoubtedly found the sweeping scepticism of the poet Agur and the pious protestations of his anonymous adversary, the thesis and the antithesis, inextricably interwoven in the section now known as the thirtieth chapter. He himself apparently identified the two antagonists--the scoffing doubter and the believing Jew; most modern theologians have cheerfully followed his example. The fact would seem to be that the orthodox member of the Jewish community, who thus emphatically objected to aggressive agnosticism, was a man who strictly observed the "Mosaic" Law, and sympathised with the people in their hatred of their heathen masters and their hopes of speedy deliverance by the Messiah; in a word, an individual of the party which later on played an important role in Palestine under the name of the Pharisees. Possessing a copy of Agur's popular philosophical treatise, this zealous champion undertook to refute the theory before he had ascertained the drift of the sayings in which it was enshrined, or grasped their primary meaning. Thus, in one passage[174] he fancies that the taunts which Agur levelled against omniscient theologians who are well up in the history of everything that is done or left undone in heaven, while amazingly ignorant of the ascertainable facts of earthly science, are really aimed at God; and he seeks to parry the attack accordingly. His numerous and amusing errors are such as characterise the fanaticism that would refute a theory before hearing it unfolded, not those which accompany and betray pious imbecility. Hence it would be unfair to tax him with the utter incoherency of the prayer which our Bibles make him offer up, when warding off the supposed attack upon God: (8) "Feed me with food convenient for me, (9) Lest I be full and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of my God _in vain_." The mistake is the result of the erroneous punctuation of the Hebrew words,[175] which may be literally rendered into English as follows:

"Feed me with food suitable for me,
Lest I be sated and deny thee,
And say, Who is the Lord?
Or lest I be poor and yield to seduction,
And sin against the name of my God.'

In the ensuing verse the controversialist, full of his own Pharisaic[176] views of politics, and fancying he detects in certain of Agur's words,[177] an apology for the heathen rulers and contempt for the orthodox people of God, inveighs against the traitor who would denounce his fellow-subjects to their common master,[178] and holds him up to universal odium.

One or two other false constructions put upon Agur's sayings by the champion of the "Law of Jahveh," are likewise worthy of attention. In the second sentence, which can be traced back to the proverbial philosophy of the Hindoos, Agur, enumerating the four things that are never satisfied, lays special stress upon two which are, so to say, the beginning and end of all things, the alpha and omega of human philosophy--viz., the grave and the womb;[179] the latter the bait as well as the portal of life, the former the bugbear and the goal of all things living. The idea, no less than the form, is manifestly Indian. Birth and death constitute the axis of existence; the womb is the symbol of the allurement that tempts men to forget their sorrows, to keep the Juggernaut wheel revolving and to supply it with fresh victims to be mangled and crushed into the grave. The lure and the deterrent--love of sensuous pleasure and fear of dissolution--are as deceitful as all the other causes of pain and pleasure in this world of appearance. Schopenhauer puts it tersely thus: "As we are decoyed into life by the utterly illusory impulse to voluptuousness, even so are we held fast therein by the fear of death, which is certainly illusory in an equal degree. Both have their immediate source in the Will, which in itself is unconscious."[180]

The only reward which life offers to those who crave it, is suffering and death. The desire of life--the Indian _tanha_ or thirst of existence--Agur represents in the form of the beautiful but terrible Ghoul of the desert who has two daughters: birth and death. By means of her fascinating charms she entices the wanderer to her arms, but instead of satiating his soul with the promised joys, she ruthlessly flings him to her two daughters who tear him to pieces and devour him on the spot. Desire is the source of life which in turn is the taproot of all evil and pain; insight into this truth--the knowledge or wisdom lauded by Job and prized by Koheleth--affords the only means of breaking the unholy spell, and escaping from the magic circle.

This ingenious and profound philosophical image was wholly misunderstood by Agur's orthodox adversary, who founds upon the deprecatory allusion to the womb a general accusation of lack of reverence for maternity and a specific charge of disrespect for Agur's own mother.[181]

Agur's third saying has been likewise sadly misconstrued by the ancient Pharisaic controversialist and by his faithful modern successors. He enumerates therein four things which to him seem wholly incomprehensible, the fourth and last being the darkest mystery of all: the flying of an eagle in the air, the movement of a serpent--which is devoid of special organs of locomotion--along a rock, the sailing of a ship on the ocean, and "the way of a man with a maid."[182] It is very hard to believe what is nevertheless an undeniable fact, that the bulk of serious commentators classify these as the trackless things, whereby, strangely enough, they understand the last of the four in a moral instead of a metaphysical sense. The error is an old one: it was on the strength of this arbitrary and vulgar interpretation that Agur was accused by his Jewish antagonist of a criminal lack of filial piety towards his own father,[183] and threatened with condign punishment, to be inflicted by the eagles that fly so wonderfully in the air;[184] while another scribe, unaware that the mystery of generation could be chosen as the text for a treatise on metaphysics, and firmly convinced that the philosopher was condemning unhallowed relations between the sexes, penned a gloss to make things sufficiently clear which was afterwards removed from the margin to the text where it now figures as the twentieth verse.

In truth, Agur gives utterance to a natural sentiment of awe and wonder at the greatest and darkest of all mysteries whose roots lie buried in the depths of the two worlds we conceive of. What could be more awe-inspiring than the instantaneous metamorphosis of pure immaterial will into concrete flesh and blood, throbbing with life hastening to decay, the incarnation in the sphere of appearances of an act of the one being which is not an appearance only, but the denizen of the world of reality? Will is primary, real, enduring; intellect secondary, accidental, fleeting; the one, abiding for ever, is identical in all things; the latter varies in different beings, nay in the same individuals at various times, and perishes with the brain, of which it is a function. Will is devoid of intellect, as intellect is deprived of velleity. We know will through our inner consciousness which has to do exclusively with it and its manifold manifestations; all other things--the world of appearances--we know through what may be termed our outer consciousness.

Now in our self-consciousness we apprehend the fierce, blind, headstrong sexual impulse as the most powerful motion of concentrated will. The act is marked by the spontaneity, impetuosity, and lack of reflection which characterises the agent, will being by nature unenlightened and unconditioned. And yet that which in our inner consciousness is a blind, vehement impulse, appears in our outer consciousness in the form of the most complex living organism we know. Generation, then, is manifestly the point at which the real and the seeming intersect each other.

Birth and death--the inevitable lot of each and every one--would seem to affect the individual only, the race living on without change or decay. This, however, is but the appearance. In reality the individual and the race are one. The blind striving to live, the will that craves existence at all costs, is absolutely the same in both, as complete in the former as in the latter, and the perpetuity of the race is, so to say, but the symbol of the indestructibility of the individual--_i.e._, of will.

Now this all-important fact is exemplified quite as clearly by the phenomenon of generation as by the process of decay and death. In both we behold the opposition between the appearance and the essence of the being, between the world as it exists in our intellect as representation, and the world as it really is, as will. The act of generation is known to us through two different media: that of the inner consciousness which is taken up with our will and all its movements, and that of our outer consciousness which has to do with impressions received through the senses. Seen through the former medium, the act is the most complete and immediate satisfaction of the will--sensual lust; viewed in the light supplied by the outer consciousness, it appears as the woof of the most intricate texture, the basis of the most complex of living organisms. From this angle of vision, the result is a work of amazing skill, designed with the greatest ingenuity and forethought, and carried out with patient industry and scrupulous care; from that point of view it is the direct outcome of an act which is the negation of plan, forethought, skill, and ingenuity, a blind unreasoning impulse. This contrast or rather opposition between the seeming and the real, this new view of birth and death, this sudden flash of light athwart the impenetrable darkness, is what provokes the wonder of this scoffing sceptic.[185]

In the fourth saying, Agur mentions, among the persons whom the earth cannot endure, a low-bred fellow who is set to rule over others, and a fool when he acquires a competency and becomes independent. The anonymous Pharisee, who keeps a vigilant watch for doctrinal slips and political backslidings and frequently finds them where they are not, descries in the first of the four unbearable things a proof that Agur was a Sadducee and an aristocrat who would rather obey a monarch who is "every inch a king"--even though he be a heathen--than a native clodhopper who should climb up to the throne on the backs of a poor deluded people and grind them down in the sacred name of liberty and independence. Agur is therefore duly reprimanded and classed with the shameless oppressors of the multitude and the devourers of the substance of the poor,[186] as the Sadducees generally were by their Pharisaic opponents.

The sentence that follows, enumerating the things "which are little upon the earth,[187] is not from the pen of our philosopher, but a harmless passage inserted subsequently as a _pendant_ to the four things which "are comely in going." The main considerations that point to this conclusion and warrant us in ascribing the verses to a different author are these: all the other "numerical sayings" which are admittedly the work of Agur, contain first of all the number three and in the parallel verse four,[188] whereas this sentence speaks of four only. Again, all Agur's proverbs are in the form of strophes of six lines each; but this passage consists of five distichs. Lastly, it is a manifest digression, leads nowhither, and, what is still more important, has no point, as all Agur's sayings have.[189]

The final sentence of this interesting fragment needs no elaborate explanation: it contains the pith of Agur's practical philosophy in the form of an exhortation to renounce honour, glory, the esteem of men, &c., if we possess legitimate claims to such, and still more if we have none; the acquisition of peace and quiet is cheap at the price of obscurity; freedom from care and worry and from the evils they bring in their train, being of infinitely greater value than the chance and even the certainty of so-called "positive" enjoyments.

Footnotes:

[174] Prov. xxx. 4.

[175] The Hebrew text consists of vowelless words. The correct vowels
must be ascertained before the meaning of a word or sentence can
be definitely established. The vowel points of our Hebrew Bibles
are not older than the seventh century A.D., and are frequently
erroneous. In the present case the word stealing does not occur
in the text, but only the being stolen--viz., seduction, temptation.

[176] I employ the word in its natural, not in its conventional, sense.

[177] Prov. xxx. 21, 22.

[178] _Ibid_ xxx. 10.

[179] The word "barren" added in our Bibles (Hebrew _'oçzer_,
"barrenness") is not only excluded by the metre, but is also
wanting in the Septuagint version--conclusive proofs that it is a
later interpolation.

[180] _Cf_. Schopenhauer, "Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," herausg.
v. E. Grisebach, ii. p. 585. Grisebach's is the only correct edition
of Schopenhauer's works.

[181] Prov. xxx. 11.

[182] _Ib_. xxx. 18, 19.

[183] _Ib_. xxx. 11.

[184] _Ib_. xxx. 17.

[185] _Cf_. Schopenhauer, "Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," vol. ii.
p. 583 fol.; also vol. i. pp. 424-426; and Bickell, "Wiener
Zeitschrift für Kunde des Morgenlandes," 1891.

[186] Prov. xxx. 19.

[187] _Ib_. xxx. 24-28.

[188] For example, Prov. xxx. 15:

"There are three things that are never satisfied,
Yea, four things say not, 'It is enough!'"

[189] _Cf_. Bickell, "Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunde des
Morgenlandes," 1891.

* * * * *

DATE OF COMPOSITION

The sayings of Agur cannot possibly be assigned to a date later than the close of third century B.C. The ground for this statement is contained in the circumstance that Jesus Sirach found the Book of Proverbs in existence, with all its component parts and in its present shape, about the year 200 B.C. He mentions a collection of proverbial sayings when alluding to Solomon and his proverbs. Jesus Sirach's canon--if we can apply this technical term to the series of scriptures in vogue in his day--comprised the books contained in our Bibles from Genesis to Kings, further Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezechiel, the twelve Minor Prophets, Psalms, Proverbs, and Job. Moreover, it is no longer open to doubt that the arrangement of the various parts of the Book of Proverbs which he read was identical with that of ours. For the last part of this Book contains an alphabetical poem in praise of a good housewife,[190] and Jesus Sirach concluded his own work with a similar poem upon wisdom, in which he imitated this alphabetical order. It is obvious, therefore, that Proverbs in their present form could not have been compiled later than the date of Jesus Sirach's work (about 200 B.C.). This conclusion is borne out by the circumstance that the final editor of Proverbs in his introduction,[191] mentions the Words of the Wise, which occur in chapters xxii. 17-xxiv., and "their dark sayings," or riddles, by which he obviously means the sentences of Agur. For Proverbs and for Agur's fragment, therefore, the latest date is the beginning of the second century B.C. Chapter xxx., in which, on the one hand, Agur develops very advanced philosophical views, some of them of Indian origin, and, on the other, his anonymous antagonist breathes the narrow, fanatic spirit so thoroughly characteristic of the later "Mosaic" Law, is among the very latest portions of Proverbs. For it is in the highest degree probable that the sayings of Agur are of a much later date even than the promulgation of the Priests' Code;[192] and the circumstance that the anonymous stickler for strict orthodoxy already begins to accentuate the political and religious opposition between the two great parties known as Pharisees and Sadducees, as well as other grounds of a different order, disposes me to assign the fragment of Agur to the third century B.C. This conclusion would be borne out by the influence upon Agur's scepticism of comparatively recent foreign speculation. Some of his sayings have an unmistakable Indian ring about them. A few are even directly traceable to the philosophical sentences of the Hindoos. The enumeration of the four insatiable things, for instance, is but a slight modification of the Indian proverb in the Hitopadeça which runs: "Fire is not satiated with fuel; nor the sea with streams; nor death with all beings; nor a fair-eyed woman with men."[193] Still more striking and suggestive is the correspondence between the desire of life, personified in Agur's fragment by the beautiful Ghoul, and the thirst of existence denoted by the Buddha and his countrymen as _tanha_--the root of all evil and suffering. "Through thirst for existence (_tanha_)," the Buddha is reported to have said to his disciples, "arises a craving for life; through this, being; through being, birth; through birth are produced age and death, care and misery, suffering, wretchedness and despair. Such is the origin of the world.... By means of the total annihilation of this thirst for existence (_tanha_) the destruction of the craving for life is compassed; through the destruction of the craving for life, the uprooting of being is effected; through the uprooting of being, the annihilation of birth is brought about; by means of the annihilation of birth the abolition of age and death, of care and misery, of suffering, wretchedness and despair is accomplished. In this wise takes place the annihilation of this sum of suffering."[194] The same doctrine is laid down by the last accredited of the Buddha's disciples, Sariputto: "What, brethren, is the source of suffering?" he is reported to have said. "It is that desire (_tanha_) which leads from new birth to new birth, which is accompanied by joy and passion, which delights now here, now there; it is the sexual instinct, the impulse towards existence, the craving for development. That, brethren, is what is termed the source of suffering."[195]

Footnotes:

[190] Prov. xxxi. 10-31.

[191] Prov. i. 6.

[192] 444 B.C.

[193] _Cf_. Hitopadeça, book ii. fable vi.; ed. Max Müller, vol. ii.
p. 38.

[194] Samyuttaka-Nikayo, vol. ii. chap. xliv. p. 12; _cf_. Neumann
"Buddhistiche Anthologie," Leiden, 1892, pp. 161-162.

[195] Majjhima-Nikayo; _cf_. Neumann, _op. sit.,_ p.25.

* * * * *

AGUR'S PHILOSOPHY

Of the three Hebrew thinkers of the Old Testament who ventured to sift and weigh the evidence on which the religious beliefs of their contemporaries were based, Agur was probably the most daring and dangerous. He appealed directly to the people, and set up a simple standard of criticism which could be effectively employed by all. Hence, no doubt, the paucity of the fragments of his writings which have come down to us and the consequent difficulty of constructing therewith a complete and coherent system of philosophy. To what extent he assented to the theories and approved the practices which constitute the positive elements of the Buddha's religion, is open to discussion; but that he was a confirmed sceptic as regards the fundamental doctrines of Jewish theology, and that his speculations received their impulse and direction from Indian philosophy, are facts which can no longer be called in question.

To the theologians of his day he shows no mercy; for their dogmas of retribution, Messianism, &c., he evinces no respect; nay, he denies all divine revelation and strips the deity itself of every vestige of an attribute. Proud of their precise and exhaustive knowledge of the mysteries of God's nature, the doctors of the Jewish community had drawn up comprehensive formulas for all His methods of dealing with mankind, and anathematised those who ventured to cast doubts upon their accuracy.

"Whatever sceptic could inquire for,
For every why they had a wherefore,"

the unanswerable tone of which lay necessarily and exclusively in the implicit and tenacious faith of the hearer. Now, faith may be governed by conditions widely different from those that regulate scientific knowledge, but if its object be something that lies beyond the ken of the human intellect it must be based either upon a supernatural intuition accorded to the individual or upon a divine revelation vouchsafed to all. In the former case it cannot be embodied in a religious dogma; in the latter it cannot--or should not--be accepted without thorough discussion and due verification of the alleged historical fact of the divine message.

This is the gist of Agur's reasoning against the allwise theologians of the Jewish Church.

These sapient specialists, whose intellects were nurtured upon the highest and most abstruse speculations and who could readily account for all the movements of the Deity with a wealth of detail surpassing that of a French police _dossier_, were utterly and notoriously ignorant of the rudimentary laws of science which every inquisitive mind might learn and every educated man could verify. Now, as truth is one, Agur reasoned, how comes it that the persons who thus lay claim to a thorough knowledge of the more difficult, are absolutely ignorant of the more simple? Whence, in a word, did they obtain their perfect acquaintance with the mysteries of the divine nature and the mechanism of the universe, the elementary laws of which are yet unknown to them? Surely not from any source accessible to all; for Agur, possessing equally favourable opportunities for observation and quite as keen an interest in the subject, not only failed to make any similar discoveries, but even to find any confirmation of theirs. For this he sarcastically accounts by admitting that he must be considerably more stupid than the common run of mankind, in fact, that he is wholly devoid of human understanding--a confession which he evidently expects every reasonable man to repeat after him to those who assert that crass ignorance of fundamental facts is an aid to the highest kind of knowledge.

"I have worried myself about God, and succeeded not,
For I am more stupid than other men,
And in me there is no human understanding:
Neither have I learned wisdom,
So that I might comprehend the science of sacred things."

Still he is a very docile disciple, and, having failed to make any discoveries of his own, would gladly accept those of a qualified master--of one who endeavours to know before setting out to teach and who prefaces his account of the wonders of the unseen world by pointing out the bridge over which he passed thither, from this. But does such a genuine teacher exist?

"Who has ascended into heaven and come down again?
Who can gather the wind in his fists?
Who can bind the waters in a garment?
Who can grasp all the ends of the earth?
Such an one would I question about God: 'What is his name?
And what the name of his sons, if thou knowest it?'"

And if even specialists do not fulfil these conditions, are we not forced to conclude that their so-called knowledge is a fraud and its subject-matter unknowable?

Agur's views of right conduct--if we may judge by the general tenour of his fragmentary sayings and by the principle embodied in his sixth and last sentence, in which he rejects as a motive for action "a high hope for a low heaven"--are marked by the essential characteristics of true morality. An action performed for the sake of any recompense, human or divine, transitory or eternal, is egotistic by its nature, and therefore not moral; and the difference between the man who, in his unregenerate days, cut his neighbours' throats in order to enjoy their property, and after his conversion gave all his goods to feed the poor, in order to enjoy eternal happiness in heaven, is more interesting to the legislator than to the moralist. But, were it otherwise, Agur holds that, even from a purely practical point of view, all the honours and rewards which mankind can bestow upon their greatest benefactor would be too dearly purchased by a ruffled temper; in other words, mere freedom from positive pain is a greater boon than the highest pleasure purchased at the price of a little suffering.