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Full text of "Oriental religions and their relation to universal religion. With an introd. by O.B. Frothingham. Persia"

ORIENTAL RELIGIONS. 



ORIENTAL RELIGIONS 



AND THEIR 



RELATION TO UNIVERSAL 
RELIGION 

BY SAMUEL JOHNSON 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION 

BY O. B. FROTHINGHAM 



PERSIA 



LONDON 
TRUBNER AND COMPANY 

57 AND 39 LUDGATE HlLL 
1885 



CONTENTS. 



PERSIA. 



PAGE 

INTRODUCTION vii 

TOPICAL ANALYSIS xxv 



I. 

ADVENT OF THE RELIGION OF PERSONAL WILL. 
ITS ELEMENTS. 

I. SYMBOLISM ............... 5 

II. THE MORAL SENSE ............ 37 

II. 

DEVELOPMENT. 



I. AVESTAN DUALISM ............ 53 

II. MORALITY OF THE AVESTA ......... 109 

III. ZARATHUSTRA .............. I2 i 

IV. THE AVESTA LITERATURE .......... I4 3 

V. CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS OF THE ACCADIAN AND THE 

ASSYRIAN .............. I 6 I 

VI. THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN ....... 219 



VI CONTENTS. 

III. 

POLITICAL FORCES. 



PAGl 



I. BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA .......... 28] 

II. ALEXANDER THE GREAT .......... 35 > 

III. THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE . < ......... 39: 

IV. 

PHILOSOPHIES. 



I. MANICH^EISM 
II. GNOSTICISM 



V. 

ISLAM. 

I. MAHOMET ............... c 2C 

II. THE SHAH-NAMEH; OR BOOK OF KINGS ..... 711 



INTRODUCTION. 



HHHIS is the last volume of Mr. Johnson s projected 
-*- work on " Oriental Religions." The first volume, 
India," appeared in 1872. An intimate friend of the 
author of " The Light of Asia," one familiar with his 
thoughts, a fine scholar himself, a student, too, in this 
department, speaks of it thus : " His [Mr. Johnson s] 
sketch of Buddha and Buddhism is one of the profound- 
est, wisest, justest estimates yet given." The second vol 
ume, "China," was published in 1877. George Ripley 
reviewed it at length and heartily in the " Tribune," 
praising the writer s freedom from sectarian temper, and 
his devotion to the interests of truth. His friend, Samuel 
Longfellow, noticed the book in the "Atlantic," rendering 
it no more than justice. Professor E. J. Eitel, of Tubingen 
and Hong-Kong, writing* in the "China Review" of 
April 21, 1882, says of Mr. Johnson, whose death he is 
commemorating: 

" His volume on the Religions of India, which appeared in 1872, 
has been highly praised by Orientalists of European fame ; and I make 
bold to say that his great work on China will commend itself to all 
sinologists as a most exhaustive, lucid, and correct estimate of Chinese 
thought and life. If it is due to Eclkins to say that he has established 
for China her true place in philology, it is due to Samuel Johnson to 
acknowledge that he has fixed China s place in the history of Uni- 



viii INTRODUCTION. 

versal Religion. ... If I add that Samuel Johnson s method of inquiry 
was thoroughly scientific, that his sympathies were absolutely cosmo 
politan, while essentially religious, and that he laid down the results 
of his most painstaking inquiries in a style which carries the reader 
right along, fascinating as it is by its vivacity and sparkling lucidity, 
while intensely suggestive and instructive, I can but wonder that his 
countrymen in the United States did not give him that place among 
the foremost writers, thinkers, and scholars of the present day which 
he so fully deserves." 

The Notes for the " Persia" were begun in 1877. In 
February, 1878, he says in a letter: " This theme is largest 
of all. I should call it Iran rather than Persia, but shall 
not. I am back among the cuneiform tablets and the 
sources, as I find more and more, of the religious history 
of the world, and especially of the great historic faiths. " 
In February, 1880, he writes: " I get on with my Persia 
as well as I could expect, having this winter been wrestling 
with the obscure and impalpable relations of Manichaeism 
and Gnosticism with the early Christian Church. Now I 
am on the pleasanter track of the Shah-Ndmeh, and at the 
doors of Sufism, etc." 

How early Mr. Johnson began his Oriental studies, it is 
difficult to tell with exactness. It could hardly have been 
later than the winter of 1852-53 that he gave in Salem 
the lectures that were the germ of these volumes, and 
nearly all of the time intervening was given to some aspect 
of the subject. He died in February, 1882, leaving the 
" Persia " unfinished, yet so nearly completed that a few 
weeks of diligent work spent in revising, writing out a 
chapter on Persian poetry, adding a paragraph here and 
there, arranging and paging, would have sufficed to per 
fect his labor. The chapters are precisely as he left them. 
Not a line has been added or taken away. So much only 
has been done as the necessities of publication required, and 
that was done with misgiving. The chapters on Zoroaster, 



INTRODUCTION. IX 

Mahomet, Alexander the Great; on Babylon, on Avestan 
Dualism; on Manichaeism and Gnosticism; on the Shdh- 
Nameh; the episodes on Aristotle, Cyrus, the Seleucidae, 
will interest and charm all readers ; for the style is elegant, 
the language glowing, the sentiment lofty, and the insight 
keen. It seems hardly to have been a toil, so much love 
was in it, so absorbing a consecration. This man certainly 
did not labor for money, for he was poorer for all he did ; 
nor for fame, of which he got little or none ; but for truth 
alone, or for humanity, which can live only by truth. 
"The future," he wrote, "must determine whether I was 
justified in undertaking so absorbing a charge. I should 
shudder when I think of its probable doom, did I not re 
member that at least I have had my reward in the pleasure 
of exploring the fields into which it has called me, and in 
watching the flow of universal laws through history. I 
certainly can expect no other reward ; and on the whole 
am glad that I cannot." How far the future will justify 
him remains to be seen. The reward he desired cannot, 
at all events, be taken away. It is, however, to be hoped 
that the reputation he deserved will at last be granted to 
him ; at least, that his unselfish devotion will come to honor 
in the world of scholarship, so that his personal friends will 
not be the only ones to revere his character or admire his 
genius. 

There is an impression that Mr. Johnson s books are of 
little value because he was not an Orientalist, that is, a 
student of Oriental languages, who obtained his knowledge 
at first hand, from original sources. The truth of the 
assertion is frankly admitted. The writer, though he knew 
something of Sanscrit, was quite unacquainted with the 
language of China or of Persia, and had never travelled 
in the East. For himself, he deemed this no disqualifica 
tion for his task. " I mean," he said, " to be prepared for 



X INTRODUCTION. 

the evil fame of attempting so much without knowledge 
of the forty thousand characters of the Chinese script. If 
I knew these, I should know nothing else. In the way of 
psychological interpretation, I should be simply nothing." 
And again : " I am after the law ; give me that, and I will 
use it where I want it. But illustrative details, except in 
the actual world of facts, written details, bore me." If 
the impression mentioned had been made only on the 
mind of the general public, it would be unfortunate ; when 
made on the minds of critics it is deplorable. Yet even so 
fair-minded a scholar as Max Miiller can lend countenance 
to this accusation. Mr. Johnson s sincerity he cordially 
praises, as also his honesty and accuracy. In a letter to 
the " Index," after Mr. Johnson s death, he pays the fol 
lowing tribute to the deceased writer : 

" What I admire most in Samuel Johnson was his not being dis 
couraged by the rubbish with which the religions of the East are over 
whelmed, but his quietly looking for the nuggets. And has he not 
found them ? And has he not found what is better than ever so many 
nuggets, that great, golden dawn of truth, that there is a religion 
behind all religions, and that happy is the man who knows it in these 
days of materialism and atheism ? " 

This warm praise is gravely qualified by the preceding 
passage, which reads thus : 

" Samuel Johnson s knowledge of Oriental religions was at second 
hand ; and the little accidents that must happen to an historian or a 
philosopher who writes on Oriental religions at second-hand are just 
those that most exasperate Oriental scholars. . . . There are few 
things in his volume on the Religion of India for which, at all events, 
he could not give chapter and verse, though chapter and verse may 
not always come from the right book." 

Now nobody who knew Mr. Johnson can doubt that he 
was acquainted with all the books there were, and with their 
relative value. He indeed took the greatest pains to verify 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

his authorities ; he consulted the five or six best Oriental 
ists in the world, who had tried their hand at translating the 
literature of the Avesta, and he still complained that the 
versions were so unsatisfactory ; his note-books show that 
he was familiar with Harlez, Haug, Spiegel, Darmesteter, 
Lenormant, Sayce, Renouf, Legge, Williams, West, the 
" Records of the Past," the " Sacred Books of the East," 
not to mention the comparatively popular volumes of 
Rawlinson and Max Miiller. That he could have added 
anything in their own field to the contributions of students 
like these, is not to be supposed. He was able to compare 
them one with another, and divine the true meaning of 
texts where they were at variance. 

As to the right books, scholars are not agreed. Different 
men will prefer different writings, according to their mental 
bias. Such a question is not to be decided by knowledge 
of a language so much as by intellectual perception, by 
the power to penetrate beneath the letter to the interior 
sense, and so to catch the genius of the people by a species 
of divination which discerns at a glance the real thought. 
This gift of insight, it is claimed, Mr. Johnson had, in ex 
traordinary measure. As he read, and he was an im 
mense reader in English, French, German, he pondered; 
and, in pondering, hit upon analogies that escaped more 
sapient breakers of stones on the road. Irir a letter dated 
May 26, 1878, he writes: "I am well along in Assyrian, 
Babylonian, and the rest of late Iranian discoveries. The 
interest of these cuneiform revelations in their bearing on 
Western religions, which I find nobody, so far, among the 
investigators has any idea of, is surpassing." His chief 
concern was to find the idea, the chain of connection ; and 
he was never satisfied till he had found it, and fairly put his 
mind upon it. He may have been mistaken ; but the mis 
take, if there was one, was intellectual rather than critical. 



xii INTRODUCTION. 

A more serious charge against Mr. Johnson is that of 
writing with a preconceived purpose to establish a certain 
theory about religious development and religious creeds, 
a fixed philosophical view, which must of necessity warp 
to some degree the mental and moral estimates of the sys 
tems he studies. How far the charge is just in any aspect 
cannot be determined. In the opinion of the present writer, 
it is not just to any harmful degree. The investigations 
were not prompted, in the first instance, by the desire to 
establish an opinion, but by an old interest in that class 
of learning. The theory was a result of the investigations ; 
the reason, perhaps, why they were pursued as far as they 
were ; an inspiration towards the making of these books ; 
one explanation of the singular glow of the style that ani 
mates the pages. The theory was a cord on which the 
facts were strung like pearls, a connecting link between 
the thoughts ; but it never dominated the facts themselves, 
or decided on the method of their selection, or put a rule 
on their interpretation. Occasionally the discovery of some 
point of view may have made him unduly enthusiastic, but 
the impression is sure to be corrected some pages further 
along, and a discerning reader can almost always make 
allowance for the incidental exaggeration. 

Mr. Johnson s theory, as it may as well be confessed 
that he had one, at any rate was broad, large, elastic 
in its character. It was not sectarian, even in the widest 
sense of the term. There was no partisanship in it. It 
had the breadth of pure spirituality. The spirit of it was 
generous, not as being apologetic, but as being lofty and 
deep. The expositions are positive, and they are noble ; 
they do not bind, but unbind; they emancipate texts, 
cause obscure passages to leap into light, win forth the 
hidden wisdom of sentences. They do not stumble or 
grope, they use wings and fly. There is a surprising 



INTRODUCTION. xiii 

exhilaration in them; and although the reader may now 
and then demur at the rendering of a phrase, he can never 
accuse the author of distorting evidence, or of leaving 
statements out of sight. 

Moreover, the charge of having a theory must rest on 
Ewald, Baur, Renan, the author of " Ten Great Religions;" 
in short on every writer who rises above the level of the 
commentator, exegetist, or word-monger. The historian 
always has a theory. Gibbon had one ; Macaulay had 
one; Froude has one. An absolutely scientific account 
of anything complex is not to be looked for. Men with 
minds will use mind ; and the use of mind cannot be had 
without some sort of tendency; and where there is tend 
ency there is bias. If the theory is comprehensive enough 
to include all the facts, it answers every sane purpose ; and 
if it is expansive enough to take in the foremost facts, it 
cannot soon be superseded. Mr. Johnson meets both 
conditions. He is both deep and high. To venture any 
estimate of his judgment of systems would be out of place 
here. The volumes are before the public : the critics will 
express their opinion of the contents as they may deem 
wise. But it may be safely said that not one of them will 
get beyond him, or will throw a dart further than he has 
launched his keen arrow. No living writer has reached 
the length of his conception, very few come near it. Even 
advanced thinkers are behind him. " It has cost me labor 
enough, that is certain," he writes to a friend ; " yet it is 
a labor of real love, combined with an intense sense of a 
great demand from the side of spiritual culture and higher 
relations of sentiment and imagination, in the present con 
dition of the races calling themselves Christian/ I hope 
I have done something to stimulate these forces, and help 
toward the grand interpretations of natural religion that 
are yet to come." 



xiv INTRODUCTION. 

This volume, like the others, is saturated through and 
through with the religious spirit. It was written in the 
service of religion; not of religion as commonly appre 
hended, but as the best dream of the soul of Humanity 
of its possible attainment. It is all aglow with faith in 
God and with hope for man. His biographer tells us 
that Mr. Johnson s oration on the Class Day of 1842 "was 
poetic even to rhapsody;" the same language might be 
applied to these chapters. The writer deserves, as well 
as Spinoza, to be called a " god-intoxicated man." When 
he speaks of Law, Order, Harmony, Beauty, he rises to 
ecstasy. The thought enchants him ; his sentences burn. 
This, in fact, constitutes the chief fault that is to be found 
in the book. Some will think the enthusiasm of faith 
excessive. They will quarrel a little perhaps over what 
seems to them an undue extravagance of eulogium in this 
place, and over an undue depreciation in that; over an 
unwarranted admiration of certain symbols, and an equally 
unwarranted criticism of others. But a fault of this kind 
is as noble as it is uncommon. And when the effect of it 
is to inspire one with reverence for high sentiments, it is 
easily pardoned. An error that enlarges the mind is very 
different from an error that enslaves it, even granting that 
an error exists, of which we cannot be sure in this instance. 
Professor Eitel is of opinion that Mr. Johnson s estimate 
of Christianity was experimental and practical, which gave 
him a knowledge of its deficiencies ; while his estimate of 
other religions, being literary, was favorable to their ideal 
side. Mr. Johnson s acquaintance with Eastern faiths was 
acquired certainly from books, but his opinion of Chris 
tianity was rather critical than experimental. At least his 
appreciation of its character and genius was derived quite 
as much from study as from observation. 

Mr. Johnson was a teacher of the gospel of evolution. 



INTRODUCTION. XV 

I call it a gospel ; for, as he received it, it was so. With 
materialism he had no sympathy. Such a doctrine was 
his abhorrence, the mark of his scorn and sarcasm. He 
says : 

" We who insist that there is no supernatural in the nature of 
things, that miracle is an absurdity on its face, are called supernatural- 
ists by men who can digest, without a sign of wonder, such irrational 
or preternatural notions as those of a world of phenomena without 
substance, of things seen and touched without a faculty beyond under 
standing to bridge the way from ideal to real, of a moral philosophy 
based solely on calculations or on observed causes and effects, and on 
developing the whole conception of duty out of a synthesis of conse 
quences. . . . This contempt of reason as above understanding, of 
substance as against phenomena, this denial of direct or intuitive per 
ception of realities even the most universal, is certainly the high road 
to materialism." 

It will be seen that Mr. Johnson was a transcendentalist, 
and that he must have been able to reconcile transcenden 
talism with evolution, two systems which are generally 
supposed to point in exactly opposite directions. He 
speaks in one of his letters of " the over-haste of science, 
physical and mechanical, to annihilate those sacred spaces 
and periods to which the personal virtues are more indebted 
than the times believe, for disciplines of faith, patience, and 
trust." To another friend he writes, in January of 1882: 
" You know I find no inconsistency between evolution and 
the original fundamental necessities of all thought, on which 
the transcendental philosophy is founded. . . . What do 
men mean to do with the foundations that all freedom 
must stand upon, personality, progress, transcendental 
perception and law? These are all forgotten in petty 
crystallizations, or else mentioned only to be abused." 

The religion of Nature meant much more to him than 
it does to other men. " There is a spiritual * Religion of 



xvi INTRODUCTION. 

Nature as well as an unspiritual. . . . There is a vital 
gladness fed by the healthful perception of the glory and 
beauty of God s works, and of those inner motions that 
shape all ways to good." The glory and beauty of these 
works he was never tired of exploring and interpreting. 
He delighted to think that mind itself, divinely as he esti 
mated its endowment, " is evolved, not out of mere inor 
ganic matter, but from the universe as a whole. This 
whole, however, is infinite, and involves inscrutable Sub 
stance, which, as recognizable only by mind, is therefore 
of one nature therewith. The lowest physical beginnings 
are thus, in virtue of the cosmic force by which they exist, 
actual mentalities or mental germs." This conception is 
at the foundation of these chapters on the ancient Iranian 
faith. The design of the volume, in so far as it has a de 
sign apart from the endeavor to represent things as they 
actually were, is to celebrate the dignity and scope of this 
idea, to illustrate the advent of living mind into the uni 
verse, to set forth the potentialities of the cosmos, so far as 
this can be done on the field of history. 

Mr. Johnson s conception of Deity was peculiar, if not 
unique. He was not an agnostic, although he did not pre 
sume to dogmatize about the divine nature. He did not 
remand the thought of God to the region of the " unknow 
able," and then devote himself to the task of investigating 
the appearances of the world. On the contrary, he began 
with Supreme Mind, and saw evidences of its working in all 
visible manifestations. He was rather pantheistic, decidedly 
more pantheistic than theistic ; but his pantheism had a hu 
man cast that brought it close to men s sympathies. The 
adherence to pantheism is frankly avowed. In a passage 
quoted from Edgar Quinet, pantheism is heartily accepted 
as the hope of the intellectual world; as being both vital 
and progressive, at once emancipating the human mind 



INTRODUCTION. xvii 

from mental prejudice, and opening before it a boundless 
prospect of advance. But when charged with identifying 
God with man because he could not separate the two as 
essentially distinct existences, he pronounced the interpre 
tation " preposterous," and maintained that as polarities 
within the divine life, man being the finite and God the 
infinite term, there was eternal, though not essential , dis 
tinction between them. He continues : 

" God going out of man ends man, ends God also. For what 
would infinite love be, so drained of its natural object ? Infinite sel 
fishness is not God. What is left for the bridge to start from, and 
what should it lead over to ? But what if God be here already, in the 
nature itself that hopes, remembers, loves ; that even grows by the 
inevitable lessons of folly, weakness, vices, crimes ? By what mys 
terious, unfathomable energy do we live and move ? The ever-flowing 
tides that sweep through human life, calm or terrible as character shall 
make them, the mysteries of good or evil, what but these are the 
deeps man watches and explores, till he finds within them that trans 
cendent purpose and eternal love which he inwardly means by the 
word God ? " 

And again : 

" The love we feel, the truth we pursue, the honor we cherish, the 
moral beauty we revere, blend in with the eternity of the principles 
they flow from ; and then, glad as in the baptism of a harvest morning, 
expanding towards human need and the universal life of man, our souls 
walk free, breathing immortal air. That is God, not an object, but 
an experience. Words are but symbols ; they do not define. We 
say Him. It were as well, if thereby we mean life, wisdom, love. 
All words are but approximations ; the fact, the experience, remains 
the same. . . . The transcendental law becomes impulse and aspira 
tion. Stirred by its ceaseless presence, men listen to the native affir 
mations of Mind : I am knowledge, and the medium of knowledge ; I 
am inspiration as well as tradition ; the instant fire as well as the in 
herited fuel of thought ; primal as well as resultant ; infinite as well as 
finite." 



xviii INTRODUCTION. 

This language makes Mr. Johnson s meaning clear to 
discerning minds. Deity, in his view, is another name for 
Substance, Unity, Law, Cause. The ordinary intelligence 
may not take in the conception, but with him it was vital, 
and meant a good deal more than the current theism im 
plies. The idea exalted God as well as man ; for it stripped 
away those accessories of personality, or as some will 
say, of individuality, which render so difficult of ideal 
comprehension the thought of the Absolute Being. 

It would be a great mistake to suppose that this faith 
chilled in the smallest degree his human sympathies. On 
the contrary, it quickened them all, making them intense 
as well as spiritual. His zeal, patience, breadth, fortitude, 
hopefulness were in large measure due to it. The fol 
lowing extracts from letters to friends in bereavement 
show how warm it kept his heart: 

" I wish I could tell you how firmly I believe that feelings like 
these, so often treated as illusion, are true, are of God s own tender 
giving; that in them is the very heart of his teaching through the 
mystery that we call death. Our affections are forbidden by their 
Maker to doubt their own immortality. What protest they make 
against the destruction of what is still intensest reality to them, 
when all that the senses could hold by is gone forever ! " 

" This loving care that folds in our little lives, how near it comes 
when we need it most ! I feel as if it held you now in a tenderness 
such as none of us can know, and none know how to ask for ! The 
night will be light about you, calling you to what trust-like sleep, 
bringing out holy eternal stars ! . . . This life that has been with you 
so long, close within your own, must still be yours. . . . Soon may the 
infinite motherly love make the heavens open where they are most 
darkened now, and the angels descend on your saddened home ! " 

" I know how much your sister has been to you. . . . And now it 
will all be spiritualized and made part of your eternal life. And you 
will know how to reap its still, ripe harvests, and to make them cheer 
and refresh a world that needs nothing so much as spiritual faith." 

" I learn that the gentle sufferer who has so long been made happy 



INTRODUCTION. XIX 

by your devoted care has been called into those interior spheres where 
indeed the calmness and sweetness of her spirit have already seemed 
to you to be dwelling as in its constant home. Out of your mortal 
sight, but still in the arms of your unchangeable trust and love. 
There, too, her home." 

And such as these were his meditations : 

" Through all the mysteries of our earthly lot, we would ever feel 
ourselves embosomed in the Infinite Strength and Peace, that with 
fatherly wisdom and motherly tenderness upholds and guides us. like 
stars in the sky, through our changes of night and day, of sunshine 
and storm." 

" We would strive ever to commit ourselves to the serene and 
perfect laws that guide our human destiny, assured that what our 
nature appoints must be better for us than aught else we can desire 
or dream." 

" Whether we walk in the morning light or in the night shadows, 
over, around, and beneath us are spread these Everlasting Arms. . . . 
How real becomes the unseen world, no longer unfamiliar, but warm 
with the treasures and light of home ! How we look through the half- 
opened gates into its glory and its peace, where the innocence and 
beauty of childhood must dwell in the life of which they are the image ; 
and the ties that have been broken must be preserved in the love that 
made them ours ; and the powers we would have trained here must 
be unfolded in the same care that inspired our striving, and will not let 
it be in vain ! " 

Now one can understand how this worshipper of the 
universe could write the hymn beginning, 

" Father, in thy mysterious presence kneeling, 
Fain would our souls feel all thy kindling love." 

There was no distance between belief and feeling, no oppo 
sition of heart and head. This volume has herein a deeply 
spiritual purpose. 

M. Renan, the sceptic, in his " Souvenirs," says : 
" II se trouve que les plus beaux reves transporters dans le 



XX INTRODUCTION. 

domaine des faits, avaient ete funestes, et que les choses 
humaines ne commencerent a mieux aller que quand les 
ideologues cesserent de s en occuper. Je m habituais des 
lors a suivre une regie singuliere, c est de prendre pour 
mes jugements pratiques le contre-pieds exact de mes 
jugements theoriques, de ne regarder comme possible que 
ce que contredisait mes aspirations." A singular rule in 
deed ! Proper for a man without convictions. Samuel 
Johnson pursued exactly the opposite method. Nothing, 
in his judgment, was so practical as what was most ideal. 
He believed in his finest dream, and tried to enact it; 
being persuaded that the shortcomings of conduct were 
due to the absence of loftiness in the idea. The true fact 
was aspiration. All men, as he thought, responded to 
what was highest; and it was only because the highest 
was not presented that they were cruel, mean, and base in 
their lives. It was the aim of his existence to lift them up 
by revealing the divinity that was in them ; and this he felt 
he could do only by proclaiming the best he saw; and this 
he did always, the more persistently the older he grew. 

Of the influence of this faith on his personal character, I 
cannot trust myself to speak. Here is the language of his 
intimate friend Samuel Longfellow, who has written his 
memoir: 

"With us abides as a memory and an aspiration the genuine nobility 
of soul. With us remains, a sacred and secure possession, the pro 
found and elevated thought ; the absolute faith in God ; the clear, 
spiritual sight of things divine, ideal, invisible, as the realities ; the 
keen moral judgment of men and events, untinged with bitterness ; 
the reverent sensibility to all truly sacred things, equalled only by 
the prompt rejection of all that only pretended to be sacred ; the abso 
lute sincerity and sturdy independence in thought, speech, and methods 
of action, which, while respecting the freedom of others, may not always 
have been able to do justice to methods different from his own ; the 
devotion to liberty in all its forms ; the unwearied search for truth, and 



INTRODUCTION. XXI 

the steady- working industry under the burden of bodily infirmity, the 
sensitive love of beauty in Nature and in art ; the kindly sympathies 
and warm attachments ; the too modest estimate of himself and the 
cordial recognition of the good work and worth of others ; the bright 
mirth that lightened out of his habitual seriousness, all these 
things abide with us, now that the voice is stilled and the hand 
lifeless." 

As much as this all his friends will testify. One can only 
wish that the praise had been justified to those who were 
not his friends, by a few personal examples such as Mr. 
Longfellow could have adduced, had his sense of delicacy 
permitted. The story of Charles Lamb s heroism would 
be paralleled by Samuel Johnson s, if all were known. Of 
course, some of these qualities, the basis of them all 
perhaps, were due to constitutional bias and tempera 
ment ; but the superstructure was erected by his faith. Of 
this there can be no question, as they who knew the man 
will bear witness. These things are said here in order that 
the intention and true bearing of these books may not be 
misapprehended. The bearing of the faith on character 
was in this instance very fine. 

The service rendered by such a man in this age of 
purely external literary activity is immense. Had he been 
a disciple of the current Christian philosophy, the moral 
conclusions from his theory might have been taken for 
granted; but as a teacher of the opposite school, it is 
important that the ethical results of his doctrine should 
be exhibited. His interpretation of the cosmic idea is so 
lofty, stimulating, inspiring; so full of encouragement to 
every high spiritual feeling; so elevating and kindling, 
that one is glad to find him on that side. He lifts the 
whole exposition into a sphere of ideal faith. Although 
not technically he is really a believer, and an enthusiastic 
one. The literal transcendentalist who holds that certain 



INTRODUCTION. 

primal truths are planted, fully fashioned, in the nature of 
man, are corrected by this thinker, who declares : - 

"Of course, the transcendentalist cannot mean that at all times 
and by all persons the truths now specified are seen in the same ob 
jective form, nor even that they are always consciously recognized in 
any form. He means that, being involved in the movement of intelli 
gence, they indicate realities, whether well or ill conceived, and are 
apprehended in proportion as ma* becomes aware of his own mental 
processes." 

" It is not easy to see how we can have intuitive certainty of the 
continuance of our present form of consciousness in a future life ; still 
less of what awaits it in a future life. But it is certain that knowledge 
involves not only a sense of union with that which we know, but a real 
participation of the knowing faculty therein." 

" By intuition of God we do not mean a theological dogma or a 
devout sentiment; we do not mean belief in l a God, Christian, or 
other, but that presumption of the infinite as involved in our per 
ception of the finite ; of the whole as implied by the part ; of sub 
stance behind all phenomena; and of thought as of one nature with 
its object, which the laws of mind require, and which can be detected 
in conscious or unconscious forms, through all epochs and stages 
of religious belief." 

In the same essay on "Transcendentalism," Mr. Johnson, 
discussing the intuition of moral law, says : 

" How explain as a greatest happiness principle, or an inherited 
product of observed consequences, that sovereign and eternal law of 
mind whose imperial edict lifts all calculations and measures into 
functions of an infinite meaning ? And how vain to accredit or ascribe 
to revelation, institution, or redemption this necessary allegiance to 
the law of our own being, which is liberty and loyalty in one ! 

" The crude evolutionist who believes in the production of the 
highest by inherent force of the lowest, who thinks of the universe 
as fashioned from below upward, has a formidable opponent in the 
man who is persuaded that the world is fashioned from above down 
ward ; that all facts point heavenward ; that what we can know is but 
the process of creative mind." 



INTRODUCTION. XXlll 

The ordinary rationalist who seems to be of opinion that 
criticism will eventually dethrone religion, is confronted by 
a scholar who is fairly abreast of the foremost students in 
this department, who reads all the books and hails literary 
discoveries with delight, yet who regards the work of criti 
cism as provisional, as removing rubbish in order to reveal 
the walls of the " city that has foundations ; " who pulls 
away incumbrances that the " house not made with hands " 
may be visible. The present volume abounds in conclu 
sions which may startle casual readers, but which have no 
other intention than to bring the ultimate principles to 
light. They are passages, not chambers ; avenues to the 
land of promise, that better country which is seen from 
afar. 

The real value of books like these consists in their idea 
as well as in their knowledge. They are not content to 
vindicate ancient religions from aspersion, that has been 
done already; it has even become the fashion to do it, 
among Orthodox people, too (witness the new volume 
called "The Faiths of the World ") ; nor do they admit the 
excellence of ancient religions in order that they may show 
how much more excellent Christianity is as the culmination 
of all antecedent faiths. The argument of Mr. Johnson is 
that the old religions are steps in the manifestation of mind, 
illustrations of the development of consciousness in man. 
The present volume, the masterpiece of the series, exhibits 
the evolution of the moral sentiment. The extensive affili 
ations of the Persian religion, its influence through Mani- 
cheism and Gnosticism on Christianity, its speculative 
ideas and social institutions, make it peculiarly interesting. 
No merely external study of dogmas and symbols, no criti 
cal knowledge of texts, is adequate to an appreciation of 
this. No partisanship, however generous, can do justice to 
it. The finest genius alone, fortified by competent learn- 



xxiv INTRODUCTION. 

ing, can feel its full significance. In this aspect, Mr. John 
son s account of Oriental Religions is unique in design and 
execution. That it has attracted no more attention is pos 
sibly owing to the circumstance of its entire originality. 
Neither the general public nor scholars are awake to the 
worth of ideas much beyond the line of accepted thinking. 
Mr. Johnson s absolute frankness, perhaps, repels more 
than it attracts ; but the time may come when merit like 
his will be honored as it should be. Should that period 
arrive, these three volumes will be welcomed as not only 
among the best expositions of Oriental systems, but as 
the best and the first attempt at formulating the idea of 
intellectual and moral evolution, by far transcending in 
power any work now submitted to the thinking world. 

O. B. F. 

BOSTON, April i, 1884. 



TOPICAL ANALYSIS. 



PERSIA. 

I. ADVENT OF THE RELIGION OF PERSONAL 
WILL. ITS ELEMENTS. 

I. SYMBOLISM 5-34 

An epoch when we become conscious of ourselves as individuals, 5. 
One worships at this stage a personal Will, 6. A higher stage 
beyond this, in which an ideal in conformity with the eternal order 
of the universe is worshipped, 6. The law of history found in the 
typical qualities of Hindu, Chinese, and Semite, 6. Iranian vener- 
eration for personal forces; the typical religion of Iran; elements 
of the Zarathustrian faith ; the most significant the intenser play of 
symbolic expression, 7. Personality the basis of symbolic represen 
tation, 8. We think in symbols; language is symbolic; art, science, 
politics, trade are thought, dream, purpose symbolized, 9. Our 
nature the ground for conceiving of the world without us, 10. 
Nature represents to man that which he is, II. Man finds images 
of God in Nature because of his own relations with the infinite, n. 
An idol is a symbol, 12. Jahveh and the " Father " of Jesus imper 
fect symbols of the inscrutable substance, 13. Religious symbols 
our human ideals taking external relations to us, 14. We as truly 
" idolaters " as the heathen, 15. The Moral Order of the universe 
and Law symbols of the moral and spiritual in the soul, 15. Sym 
bols the expression of harmonies between the soul and the outward 
world, 16. The Tree a symbol in all mythologies, 16. Christian 
symbolism in Catholic Mariolatry and Protestant Bibliolatry, 17. 
The difference between ancient and modern symbolism, 18. The 
higher meanings of the cosmos in higher ideals in ourselves, 19. 
FIRE-SYMBOL, 20-34. Pyrolatry common to all religions, 20, 21. 
Solar mythology a stage beyond primitive fire-worship, 22. The 



XXVl TOPICAL ANALYSIS. 

moon and star cult older than that of the sun, 23. The sense of 
liberty explains the difference of fire-symbolism among eastern and 
western Iranians, 24. The heroic legends of Yima. Thraetona, and 
Keregagpa, transformations of Aryan symbols of the solar fire, 25, 26. 
The gift of personifying abstract qualities displayed in the Avesta; 
the Amesha-^pentas abstractions turned into gods, 27. Down to 
the present day the fire-altar of the Parsis the hearth of their faith, 
27. Other symbols had little value, 28, 29. Iran the true fire- 
temple of Nature, 30. The Persian the iconoclast of religious 
symbols, 31. The individual the living flame of Ahura, 32. The 
flame-symbol meant a spiritual power warring against evil, 33, 34. 

II. THE MORAL SENSE 37-50 

The beginning of personality the advent of Will as a personal power; 
humanity advances by creating symbols of its own ideal experience; 
fire the ideal bond of man with the universe, 37. This epoch the 
true birth of the Moral Sense also, 37. The war of Ormuzd and 
Ahriman a war of essential principles, 38. Differences between 
the Indian and Iranian regarded as of a very radical nature ; but the 
theory unsatisfactory, 39, 40. Avestan Dualism of light and dark 
ness of the Vedas also, 41. But the dark power not emphasized in 
the Vedas as in the Avesta, 42. The Dualism of the Aryans ger- 
minant; of the Iranians positive principles warring for possession 
of the universe, 43. The sense of this strife the result of external 
conditions, 44. In India the will bent before gods; in Iran bloomed 
into heroes, 45. The plateau of Iran suggestive of the war of ele 
ments, 46 ; a fit arena for the hates of Ormuzd and Ahriman, 47 ; 
a school for the imagination and conscience, 48. Good and evil 
creations, Vendidad, i. 49. Such abstraction and personification not 
of an early stage of culture, 50. 

II. DEVELOPMENT. 

I. AVESTAN DUALISM 53-105 

In the faith of Zoroaster, the old fire-cultus a twofold personality, 
Ahuramazda and Angro-mainyus, 53. These two spirits or prin 
ciples "primeval twins," 54. Powers of good aid Ahura; the hosts 
of falsehood and destruction war in the elements against them, 55. 
Unbelievers children of Ahriman ; Zoroastrians of Ahura s crea 
tion ; also there was a sense of moral reprobation or approval, 56. 
From the oldest Gathas to the latest Yashts a thousand years of 
growth, 57. The qualities at first blended in Ahura became per- 



TOPICAL ANALYSIS. XXVii 

sons, Vohu-mano, Asha-vahista, Khshathra-vairya, Armaiti, Haur- 
vatat, and Ameretat ; against these are drawn up Ahriman and his 
six spirits of evil, 58. To these personal antagonisms correspond 
physical ones, 59. Animals pure or impure, by rigid rule, 60, 61. 
The paradise of the Avesta the transfiguration of labor, 62. A reli 
gion that could make heroes but never a monk, 63. Profoundest of 
antagonisms that of life and death ; life the fire worshipped ; death 
put far away ; no contact with its decay ; the chief weapon of Ahri 
man, 64; but overswept of life, by a divine necessity, 65. The 
parallel with Christian dualism in the creation of an evil humanity 
by Ahriman, 66. Immortality not involved in transmigration ; or in 
absorption in Ahura, 66. Man s worth divides the universe, and 
draws all powers to the one side or the other ; Satan an invisible 
presence ; resisted and overcome by (i) the spirit of Ahura; (2) the 
word or law of Ahura ; and (3) work, 67-69. The whole of this 
spiritual armor summed up in the formula, "tightness of thought, 
word, and deed," 70. The Avesta s theory of evil involved in free 
dom of choice, 71 ; the earliest affirmation of human liberty as the 
substance of a religion, the first genuine escape from Fate, 72. 
Does the Avesta affirm two equal forces ? 73. Orrnuzd and Ahri 
man spring from Zrvan-akarana, 74. The Author does not find pure 
Dualism ; still less one God in the Avesta, 75. Ahura representative 
of Varuna, 75 ; evil from Varuna, not the sign of moral evil in the 
god, but of righteousness, 76. Evil everywhere inferior and second 
ary, 77, 78. Ahriman regarded as a mere purpose of destruction ; 
only one Supreme God, 79, 80. Trust in Ahuramazda ; fear of 
Ahriman, 8r. Fire shall burn away the dross of evil ; hell shall 
disappear, 82. Physical resurrection and judgment at the end of 
the world, 83. Ultimate destruction or conversion of powers of evil, 
84. Both solutions in the modern Parsi church, 85. Old Accadian 
writings contain no working out of problem of evil, 86. Assyrio- 
Babylonian, Hebrew, and Christian eschatology a development of 
Zoroastrian beliefs, 87. The grand thing implied in the Avesta the 
victory of good over evil, proclaimed in the conscience, 88. The 
theory of penal world-destruction held by Hebrews and transmitted 
to Christianity, 89, 90. Zoroastrianism recognizes the strength of 
evil, the tragedy of sin and penalty, the martyrdom of heroism and 
love, 91-93. Then deliverance, both material and spiritual, 94-97. 
ZRVAN-AKARANA similar to Fate, 98. Hindu Destiny, 99. The 
march of the heavenly bodies identified with Boundless Time, 100, 
101. These principles forms of Heaven or the Sky, whence the 
Supreme God of Indo-Europeans, 102, 103. Worship of Nature 



xxviii TOPICAL ANALYSIS. 

the sane and sacred track of humanity, 103. On this track lies the 
solution of Dualism, 103-105. 

II. MORALITY OF THE AVESTA 109-118 

A morality which insists on the criminality of killing an otter as on 

the slaying of a man ; trivial associations prove creatures pure or 
impure ; the dog a centre of superstitious awe, ioS. A confusion 
of physical and moral spheres ; does not forbid a marked degree 
of moral earnestness ; the value of outward acts in purity of thought 
and will, 109, no. Marriage and polygamy, 112. All virtues in 
spreading the law of purity; the Iranians a chosen people to re 
deem the world, 113. The "pure man" a priest; no offering of 
blood to Ahura, 1 14. Caste never established in Iran ; yet an aris 
tocratic tone in worship of Will even among early Iranians, 115. 
The destiny of men and spirits hangs on the majesty of Truth and 
the self-destruction of Falsehood, 116. 

III. ZARATHUSTRA 121-138 

The obscurest figure in the line of Prophets and Messiahs, 120. His 

name cannot stand for any special individual, 121. Age of Zara- 
thustra running all the way from 6000 to 600 B.C., 122. Chief per 
sonage in Avestan religion, 122. Median Magi doubtless deified 
Zoroaster, 123. Nativity of the Prophet is another mystery, 124. 
Zarathustrian idea or faith follows the track of Christ ; in the early 
parts of the Avesta, Zoroaster hears Ahura as a man, 124. Ahura 
commits to him the good of the world ; not easy to separate this 
stage from that of miracle, 125. Later, one of the chiefs over each 
region, probably as priest ; later still, benedictions pronounced in 
his name ; future saviours his descendants, 126, 127. Mythology 
surrounded him with the usual halo of supernatural phenomena, 128. 
Doctrine of Zarathustra traceable back to the fifth century before 
Christ, 130. Zarathustra reformed the old Aryan religion, 131. 
Difference between Vedic and Avestan religions, Vedic worship of 
natural powers superseded by personal interest, 132. A transition 
from child-life in Nature to that of conscious will, 133. Iranian and 
Vedic religions may represent a long period of separation ; the ref 
ormation embodied in the Avesta not the work of one man, 136. 
Earliest Gathas not a full-formed system of faith, 137. Yet contain 
a consciousness of world-purpose, ethical and spiritual, 138. 

IV. THE AVESTA LITERATURE 143-15? 

Twenty-one books or Nosks, treating of all possible subjects, probably 

mythical, 143. What has not been lost, confused and fragmentary, 



TOPICAL ANALYSIS. XXIX 

143. Old Avesta had its origin in eastern Iran, 144. Greek authors 
from the third century B. C. quote Avesta, 145. No other Bible in so 
unsatisfactory a condition, 146. Anquetil-Duperron s pioneer work 
in opening Avestan literature to Europe, 147. Bibles of the world 
deposits of religious history of races, 148. Avesta like the rest, 149. 
Yac,na made up of seventy sections of hymn, praise, and prayer ; 
Vendidad, twenty-two chapters of conversations between Ahura and 
Zarathustra ; Vispered highly ritualized invocations and prayers ; 
Yashts twenty-four pieces, each in celebration of some genie ; 
Khordah-Avesta formulas for occasions and times, 150-152. Liter 
ature of Sassanian revival older than ritualistic portions of Avesta, 
152. Sassanidas restored native religion, 152. It blossomed into 
translations of Avesta, 153. Physical force swept its name almost 
out of being, but its soul passed into Mahometanism, Judaism, and 
Christianity, 154. Pehlevi literature analogous to Old Testament 
compilation after the exile, 155. Shows little spiritualizing tendency 
like school of Philo ; yet Neoplatonic elements are discernible in 
it, 156. 

V. CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS OF THE ACCADIAN 

AND THE ASSYRIAN 161-216 

Physical science involves historical antecedents ; mental evolution in 
volves earlier stages and conditions, 161. We are products of past 
as well as present, 162, 163. Uncomprehended monuments of re 
mote ages closed lips with secrets for the future, 164. At opening 
of present century Babylon and Nineveh still " heaps ; " yet with 
hints to thoughtful travellers ; the inscriptions of Persepolis the 
starting point of discovery, 166. Then Calah rose from the heaps 
of Nimrud ; then Nineveh and Babylon, reconstructing history ; 
in half a century Behistun and the rocks of Susa and Van were 
serving a purpose as important as the Rosetta stone, 167. Ten 
thousand clay tablets of law, grammar, history, science, mythology, 
of fifteen hundred years, preserved for twenty centuries more, 168. 
Original texts confirmatory and contradictory of Biblical records ; 
geography of Palestine, Arabia, and Egypt confirmed from inscrip 
tions, 171. Assyrian chronology in opposition to that of the Bible, 
172. Futile endeavors of harmonists, 174. Genealogy of Genesis 
not indorsed, 175. Chaldeans a tribe of Accadians ; authority of 
Berosus uncertain ; primitive civilization of Mesopotamian basin 
not Semitic, 176. Cuneiform script met requirements of western 
Asiatic civilization ; Chinese of equal competency for the east of 
Asia, 178. The two great systems of writing Turanian achieve- 



XXX TOPICAL ANALYSIS. 

ments; both wonders in early civilization, 179. Cuneiform writing 
carried monumental literature of Turanian, Semite, and Aryan, 180. 
Accadians invented letters in primitive Mesopotamia, 181. Struggle 
of good and evil symbolized by light and darkness, 182. Accadians 
derived good and evil from one source, Mul-ge, 183. Evil spirits 
in the air and desert, and in the mind and body of man as disease, 
184. Jewish reverence for an ineffable Name from Accadians, 184. 
Hebrew and Greek mythology built on old Assyrian; a personal 
mediator in old Chaldean tablets, Silik-mulu-khi, 185. A personal 
guardian attends every one ; the records of a civilization forty cen 
turies old preserved, 187. Records of old Accadian kings ; their 
literature preserved in libraries ; literary capacity of old Turanians ; 
oldest epic called Izdubar, 188. Accadian legends show percep 
tion of cosmical order, 189. Accadian passion for literature, 190. 
Accadian observation began astronomical work of Sargon s library, 
191. Commercial life of Babylon and Nineveh from this older 
civilization, 192. A long advance on patriarchal institutions, 192. 
Assyrians transmitted Turanian wisdom, 193. Antiquity borrowed 
more from valley of the Euphrates than from that of the Nile, 194. 
Cannes and his Annedoti mythic civilizers, 195. Mouth of the 
Euphrates the old centre of law and culture, 196. Turanian in 
dustry corresponded to Assyrian passion for military success, 197. 
Tribal exigencies created II and Bel, Asshur and Jahveh, and Ara 
bian Allah, 198. Symbols of gods, 199. Energy of the Assyrian 
art, 200. Assyrian art differs from Egyptian as a flame of fire from 
a pyramid of stone, 201. Little of domestic architecture or popular 
amusement has come down to us, 202. Kings and people not mere 
voluptuaries ; empires perish from destructive external forces, 203. 
The Semite possessed military prowess ; elements more suited to 
culture, of Turanian origin, 204. Assyrian kings permitted no rec 
ord of their crimes or defeats, 204. Yet not mere scourges of 
mankind, 205. The Semite s passions the voices of gods, 206. 
Nebuchadnezzar sings of Merodach as the Psalmist of his Jahveh, 
207. The king prayed directly to gods, yet had faith in dreams 
of seers, 208. Spiritual part of man in an underworld or raised 
to the heaven of the gods, 209. No law of retribution after death ; 
religious rites at the tomb, but nothing said of the future of the 
departed, 210. The Assyrian, like the Hebrew, interested in des 
tiny on the earth, 211. Accadian poem of the Descent of Ishtar, 
212. Chaldeo-Assyrian civilization a contrast to the Hindu and the 
Chinese ; Iranian nerve, Hindu thought, Chinese work, 213. Sub 
stance of the cuneiform records not realistic and positive ; at once 



TOPICAL ANALYSIS. xxxi 

ideal and actual, 213. The religious form of this mental type the 
worship of personal Will, 214. Our Assyrio-Chaldean study opens 
this phase of world-development, the foretype of modern religions, 
215, 216. 

VI. THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN . . 219-278 
Babylon the " key of universal history ; " moral instinct not tracked 
to its human beginning in any one age ; the whole human cosmos 
implicated in every step of human growth, 219. Inspiration of man 
his natural relation to the Infinite ; Bibles, borrowers from older 
experiences ; prophets taught from the heart of humanity, 220. 
The civilization of which Babylon was the type now added to those 
of India and China, 220. Its ideal the deified personal Will, 221. 
Assyrian conquerors the youth of the impulse to enthrone Will ; 
Babylonian influence upon Jewish civilization, etc., 222. Arabia 
the ancestral land of Semitism ; Babylon its earliest school, 223. 
Myths of Semite, Greek, and Phoenician point to an Assyrio-Chal 
dean origin, 223-226. Babylonian, Phoenician, and Hebrew cos 
mogonies, 226. Hebrew and Chaldean customs like those in 
Accadian inscriptions, 227. Previous to Assyrian relations, much 
in Hebrew tradition of Canaanite origin, 228. Jahveh a sun-god, 

228. El, Baal, and Moloch meant merely lord or king ; the worship 
of Jahveh combined with theirs ; all worshipped on the high-places, 

229. First-born offered to Jahveh, 230. Jahveh or Jahveh-Elohim 
of the Prophets of slow growth ; elevated above all surrounding 
deities 700 B. c. ; as the Assyrians put other gods under the feet of 
Asshur ; a step toward monotheism, 231. The Hebrews half Arab, 
half Canaanite ; their Law a slow evolution ; early aspirations of the 
Hebrews after a tribal god the substance of the Mosaic tradition, 
233. Jahveh the real God ; did not imply positive monotheism or 
exalted purity, 234. Jahveh of Isaiah grew from a beginning like 
Asshur of Assyria, 235. The majesty of righteous law came slowly 
out of spiritual experience, 236. Hebrew prophets under a Divine 
possession ; an outside Will communicating to chosen instruments ; 
the Semitic god a divinized king; monotheism reached through a 
sense of tribal or national unity, 237. Intuition of God does not 
teach any form of deity ; simply the perception of substance higher 
than phenomena, 238. The Hebrews drew from the beliefs of 
Babylon, 240. The Hebrew Sabbath of Accadian origin, 241. The 
Genesis story of creation in the cuneiform tablets, 242. Derived 
from the Chaldees, 243. Phoenician and Hebrew " deep !1 a waste 
abyss ; old civilizations began with amphibious deities, 244. Ima- 



xxxii TOPICAL ANALYSIS. 

gery of the sea, 245-247. Nature full of personal, human mean 
ing; Pothos, Eros, Tiamat, Belus, 248. Intuition of order from 
strife and strength of Will, 249. Older theism of the Avesta influ 
enced Hebrew monotheism, 250. Hebrew story of creation poetic ; 
idea of a creative word common to Hebrew and Persian, 251. 
Second Hebrew story of creation centres in the formation of man, 
252. Hebrew story of creation an example of elaborate construc 
tion ; Eden legend a generalization of history, 253. Legend of the 
Temptation and Fall the Semitic conception of the origin of evil, 
254. Explanation of man s disobedience his arbitrary will ; in the 
Avesta, the falsehood of the tempter ; illustrations, 255. Nothing 
answering to the Genesis fall of man in Chaldean inscriptions or 
traditions, 257. Modern theology has read a dogma into this legend 
of which it is innocent ; purpose of the legend to bring out of Adam 
a twofold race, the slaves of labor and the favorites of freedom, 261. 
Genealogy of nations in the tenth chapter of Genesis ; the ten patri 
archs had their foretype in Chaldean tradition, etc., 262. Floods 
overwhelming disobedient races connected with derivation of all 
things from a watery chaos, 264. Ark- form of the*Deluge-myth, 
266. Scene of Hebrew flood a remote region ; narrative from a 
foreign source, 267. Hebrew legend has a conscious purpose ; 
Chaldean simply an episode in an epic, 268, 269. Noah s sons the 
nations known to the Hebrews of the exile, 270. Legend of the 
Tower of Babel ; a cuneiform tablet speaks of a confusion of coun 
sels and of the destruction of a tower by Anu, 271. Universal Re 
ligion shrinks from ascribing personal motives to the Infinite Being, 
274. The result of these Genesis studies briefly stated, 275-278. 



III. POLITICAL FORCES. 

I. BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA 281-353 

Persian empire a basis for the civilizations of the West ; cuneiform 
records of immense number of tribes swept into subjection to a 
common master, 281. League of Lydia, Media, and Babylonia, 
6ioB. c. Median empire lasted less than a century; function of 
the Mede to introduce the Persian, 282. Left no literature, no 
permanent institutions ; signs of an energetic life, 283. Religious 
motor of modern civilizations worship of personality ; present chap 
ter illustrates* this law of history; Babylon revives at touch of 
Mede, 284. Another master to come, with greater genius for sway, 
385. The Hebrew prophets decry Babylon, 286. Yet Jeremiah 



TOPICAL ANALYSIS. XXxiii 

has nothing but honor for the Chaldean city, 287. Her hospitality, 
religious and intellectual, 288. Not the persecutor of nations and 
faiths, 289. Hebrew exiles protected in life and property ; repre 
sented at court, 290. Returning exiles under Ezra s Law a new 
people, 291. Sorrows of the exile intensified religious nationality; 
a certain democratic quality, germs of Maccabean heroes, 292. 
Rude Hebrews learned at Babylon the arts, traditions, and literature 
of an ancient and great civilization, 294. There in Parsi customs 
began instruction of the people, reshaping of old prophecies and 
histories, etc., 296, 297. A nation s existence and growth deter 
mined by conditions of climate, position, and race, 298. Incred 
ible that Babylon became " heaps ; because of moral and religious 
rottenness, 299. Persian civilization a product of Babylonian ele 
ments, 301. The spirit of Nineveh and Babylon moved in the arm 
of Cyrus, 302. Persia brought her distinctive function, 303. Who 
were the Persians ? 304. Herodotus picture bears every mark of 
truth, 305. The Persians of Cyrus the ideal of Greek historians, 
306. The Persians the typical Iranian race, 310. The Persian 
mind not the pure brain, not the passive muscle, but the flame- 
conductor between the two, 311. The Persian perished in his own 
fires of ambition and enterprise, 312-315. Obeyed the sturdy rules 
of Zoroaster, 316. The Persian instructed his children to ride, to 
shoot, and speak the truth, 317. Worship of Ormuzd ; hatred of 
Ahriman, 318. Persian sculpture falls behind Assyrian ; ideal as 
piration overflows all defects. Force of term nerve, as applied to 
Iranian races, 319. All worshippers of the flame, 320. Pure 
thought of the Hindu, plodding work of the Chinese, now a third 
type, which conducts the cerebral into muscular energy, 321. Self- 
deification of Iranian monarchs a political expression of personal 
Will. The family household the social unit, expanded into clans, 
322. Many tribes free nomads, the most agricultural ; four classes, 
" priests, soldiers, farmers, and artisans," 323. The Persian noble, 
the king s counsellor, yet ready to die for his king ; manners ; moral 
self-respect, 325. The Persians strove for the ideal, yet forgot not 
the practical, 326. Woman subject to the will of man ; in the in 
scriptions and sculptures wholly ignored, 327. Persians could marry 
nearest kin, 328. Chivalrous treatment of women ; in later times 
priestesses. Arbitrary Will the law of Medes and Persians, 329. 
The empire pure product of individual Will, 330, 331. Beginning 
of respect for personality is in aristocratic institutions, 332. Posi 
tive sense of Persian freedom ; Greek consciousness oi manifest 
national destiny ; Persian sense of a great historic function, 333. 



xxxiv TOPICAL ANALYSIS. 

Xenophon paid the highest tribute to Persian institutions ; Plato 
scarcely behind him in praises. Coming of a great man opens the 
gates of imagination ; Cyrus " father of mankind," 335. Infancy 
and growth of Cyrus of messianic type, 336, 337. As hero of philo 
sophical romance, receives in Xenophon s " Cyropaedia" the finest 
personal tribute in all antiquity ; ideal marred by limitations of its 
framer, 338-344. To the Greek, Cyrus was the child of Destiny; 
of Providential purpose to the Hebrew, 345. The ideal as depicted 
by the imagination of the ages, points to actual force in some de 
gree correspondent, 348. From Cyrus s day Iran meant no more 
a vast desert of warring hordes, but the Persia of the Great King ; 
Rome showed in humanities of later legislation the pressure of 
Cyrus s heroic hand, 350. The hand which smote down the old 
gods of Asia, set up the coming God of Europe ; without Cyrus 
"the Europe of to-day never would have existed," 351. 

II. ALEXANDER THE GREAT 357-39 

Persia hailed him as her deliverer from disintegration and decay ; he 
awoke the old Iranian loyalty to personal Will, 357-359. Pupil of 
Aristotle, reader of Homer, etc. Alexander the higher ideal for 
which Nineveh, Babylon, Mede, and Persian had educated the 
races of Iran, 360. Not European ; once leaving Macedon for the 
East, he never returns ; Iranian tradition adopted him into the line 
of native kings, 361. The legend knows nothing of enormities, 362. 
Fitness of Alexander to fill old type of ideal personality, 363. Iran 
fed the imagination with colossal types of heroic Will, 364, 365. 
Later legends, 366. To Mirkhond the ideal philosopher as well 
as king, 367. Difficulty of reconciling outbreaks of fury with gen 
eral conduct, 370, 371. Tragedy of personal character involved in 
human progress, 372. In Alexander an age shapes its instru 
ment, 372-374. Zoroastrian priesthood put him in hell for burn 
ing the Nosks of the Avesta ; ten Persian poets have sung the 
"Alexander-Saga," 375. Some palliation for his violent acts, 376. 
Human master pronouncing himself a god, 377. Alexander proved 
his descent from Jove, 378. No vulgar marauder ; no praise thought 
extravagant, 381-383. Alexander aimed at progress, 384. Built 
institutions that were civilizations ; his name protected the free 
thought of Aristotle at the Lyceum, 386. Cultus of his divinity in 
EgyP^ 3 8 9- Nature, humanity, unity, brotherhood, were syllables 
shaping on the winds ; later Judaism, Christianity, and Islam find 
their way prepared, 390. 



TOPICAL ANALYSIS. XXXV 

III. THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE 393-43S 

Destiny of Persian empire had Alexander lived, 393. Monarchical 
God of Europe could have been evolved from Ahuramazda, as well 
as from Jahveh, Allah, or Abba Father, 394. Revival of Oriental mon 
archy might have foreclosed the Messianic tragedy ; nothing in 
Iranian deity made world-influence impossible, 395. But Alexander s 
purpose died with him ; disappearance of the faith of Iran during 
the reigns of Macedonian and Parthian kings, 396. Macedonian 
strangers had little interest in Avesta, 397. Religion of the Par- 
thians a cultus of the elements ; Magi transformed into revivalists 
of Ahura, 398 Collected and restored the old Avesta, 399. Con 
science of Mazdeans not suppressed ; Parthians tolerant ; Edessa 
a fountain of Christian learning, 400. Parthians by no means un 
civilized ; Mazdeism ; intolerance expected from a religion of 
Divine Will, 401. Interference of Parthian kings with Iranian 
political institutions unimportant, 402. No Macedonian or Parthian 
king a fit centre of hero-worship, 403. Political stability rests on the 
religious nature, 404. Much in Parthians to rouse the hero-worship 
of Iran, 405. In comparison with Roman Caesars, Parthian enor 
mities respectable, 406. Extermination of Parthians by Ardeshir 
Babegan ; old religious organization of empire preserved, 407. The 
clergy, a kind of " State within the State ; " Ardeshir rose to the 
place of Cyrus in hero-worship, 408. United the empire, 410. Old 
Avestan hate of unbelievers ; the Arab came to substitute a god 
and prophet; Vision of Ardai-Viraf, 411. An older Dante, 412. 
Energy of Ardeshir more than rivalled by Shapur I., 413. Heroic 
ideal of Mazdeism fulfilled in Sassanian line ; Shapur II., conqueror 
of Julian and his Roman and Arabian army, 414. Khosru I. and II. 
equally famous in Roman wars, 415. A daughter of Khosru the 
first female sovereign of Iran. This great historic structure went 
down before the blows of Rome and Islam. 417. Typical form of 
Iranian ideal in Khosru I. (Ndshirvdri), 418-425. Khosru s ser 
vices to future ages in collecting the heroic legends of Iran ; native 
Persian literature perished at the Moslem conquest, 426. Age of 
Khosru brings him into comparison with the Roman emperor Jus 
tinian, 428. Persecutions by Justinian ; tool of an intolerant priest 
hood ; attempts to eradicate Pagan and heretical belief, 430. Justin, 
Maurice, Phocas, Heraclius, pursued the policy of unifying beliefs 
by the exercise of despotic will, 431. But a new and stronger will 
appeared in Allah of Islam; Justinian pure and his passions under 
control ; evidences of real humanity, 432. Bearing of Stoicism 
upon Roman law, 433. Degeneracy of Roman civilization, 434. 



XXXVl TOPICAL ANALYSIS. 

Decay of Byzantine empire ; sway of Islam ; a future of intellectual 
and political greatness, 435. History of Mazdak ; seventies in 
religion consistent with social and political freedom, 437. 

IV. PHILOSOPHIES. 

I. MANICJLEISM 441-498 

Mani had attained the largest culture possible in his day ; astronomer, 
physicist, musician, and artist of eminence, 441. He purposed to 
construct a universal system out of the ferment of beliefs in his 
time, 442. Put to death by Varahran, a Sassanian king ; but 
Christian emperors from Constantine to Justinian tried to exter 
minate the sect; Mani claimed to be a Christian, a Gnostic, 444. 
Reason his authority ; personal will that of his opponents, 445. 
Judaism and Mazdeism intolerable to Christianity ; Manichaeism 
more intolerable, 446. Good and Evil in the Manichaean system, 
447, 448. The true Christ crucified throughout Nature, 449. 
Manichaeism a product of Iranian qualities ; Mani stands in need 
of just appreciation ; Beausobre s researches found him superior to 
his opponents, both Pagan and Christian, 450. Dualism a univer 
sal experience, 451. Manichaeism more truly monotheistic than 
Mazdeism, 452. The key to Manichasism in its effort to avoid all 
intermixture of evil with God, as a pure and incorruptible essence, 
453. Meaning of the Manichaean principle of evil, 457. Eternally 
separate from that of good, 458. The origin of moral evil in igno 
rance, 460. The human is shaped from the substance of the Supreme 
Light by the Mother of Life, 461. The Avestan Mithra the Mani 
chaean Christ, 462. Adam s descendants had power to resist the 
ever-repeated first temptation through the light-element, the spiritual 
nature, 463. The Manichaean Christ Docetic, 464. Mani did not 
deny an apparent assumption of the flesh, 465. Truth and good 
tend through all changes to bring us back to themselves, 466. 
Manichaeans accepted the penal woes of the last judgment, but 
denied the resurrection ; paid honors to the sun and moon, 468. 
Sin in the Manichaean mind a result of man s nature rather than of 
his will, 469. Every soul forever prompted to free itself from the 
desires of the flesh, 470. Mani recognized a secular world to be 
necessary, as well as a religious, 471. The pride of modern thought 
to have rehabilitated the material form, 472. Dualism not Atheism, 
474. The charge of immorality against Manichaeans rested upon 
the assumption that denial of orthodoxy inevitably led to immorality, 



TOPICAL ANALYSIS. XXXVli 

475. Vows of Manichaean elect like the old Avestan formula, 
"purity of thought, word, and deed," 476. Manichaean bishop to 
Augustine, 477. Main charges against Manichaeism Magic &&& Gnos 
ticism, 478. Plato crossed the seas to learn Magic ; Persians called 
persons most fitted by nature for truth and religious wisdom Magi, 
479. Christian world persecuted Magic as the work of the Devil ; 
invisible realm of powers hostile to God, however, just as real to 
Christian believers, 480-482. Simon Magus a gigantic nebulosity 
of legend, 483. Magic of Gnostics of the nature of science, or 
rather was incipient science, 486. Supernatural magic of Church 
aimed at destruction of the natural magic of the scientist, 487. 
Under Christianity evil either result of God s will, or of the free 
will which he has bestowed on man, 490. Paul adheres to old 
Jewish idea of Jahveh as the creator of evil in man ; Christian 
doctrine of original sin and its expiation, 491. Man s impotence 
and God s wrath a monstrous deduction slowly evolved, 492. Epi 
curus stated the case fairly, 493. The thinker sees that evil must 
exist as the condition of progress, 494. To believe in the unreality 
of evil requires a mystic elevation of faith ; but the belief has foun 
dation in the facts of experience, 496. Science changes the old 
conception of evil by proving antagonism to be a necessity of 
existence and growth, 497. Inevitable antagonism, pain, and loss 
must be accepted through an absolute trust in the integrity of 
the moral universe, 498. 

II. GNOSTICISM 501-521 

Connection of Manichaeism with Gnostic schools rendered it obnoxious 
to Christian Church ; Gnosticism traced in ancient philosophy and 
literature, 501. Gnosis, or ideal knowledge j our word Agnosti 
cism proves by implication the immortality of the aspiration it de 
clares a fruitless dream, 502. Gnosticism resisted that personal 
absolutism which is the essence of supernaturalistic faith ; ac 
cepted the name of Christian, 503, 504. In Gnosticism, spiritual 
principles and ethical forces figured as persons, in true Iranian 
fashion, 505. The Church held this Gnostic epos to be blasphemy, 

506. Heresy of the Gnostic that he put Christ among the yons in 
a chain of being ; Gnostic powers all in the proem of John s Gospel, 

507. The multitude incapable of receiving the higher Gnosis, 508, 
509. Not a few things laid to the charge of Gnostics highly credit 
able to their freedom and sense, 510. The claim of reason to deter 
mine religious conviction, 512. Christianity concentrated its hopes 
on an incarnation of God as the only refuge for man ; Gnosticism 



XXXviii TOPICAL ANALYSIS. 

clung to the idea of perfection in God, 513. Docetic Christ of Gnos 
tic, and supernatural Christ of Church alike impossible, 514. To the 
Christian, evil was the work of Satan ; to the Gnostic, the cosmic 
energy of the principle of darkness, 515. The characteristic feature 
of Gnosticism, the endeavor to express the idea of God as an 
active process, 518. The germ of a thoroughly free religion; at 
once scientific and intuitive ; no necessity for bridging chasm be 
tween Perfect Light and Utter Darkness, 520, 521. 



V. ISLAM. 

I. MAHOMET 525-708 

Scientific study of religious development reveals continuous progress 
towards recognition of the universe as Infinite and as One ; move 
ment of every race from polytheistic to monotheistic belief ; the 
monarchical idea transient, 525. Impersonal worship of ideas, 
principles, and laws the religion yet to come, 526. Every mo 
narchical religion logically has resorted to the sword, 527. Opening 
of seventh century an epoch of disintegration, 528. Demand for 
assured trust in one supreme Will, 529. No God but God ; Ma 
homet claimed a completer legislation than that of Abraham, Moses, 
or Christ, 530, 531. Islam enforced the logical right of revelation 
to sway every human sphere, 532. Could not escape resort to the 
sword, 533, 534. Arabia fit only to give birth to the prophet ; not 
to establish his law, 535. Rapid growth of Christianity believed 
to be evidence of supernatural origin ; rapid conquest would prove 
Mahomet s claim more valid, 536. His expectation to make the 
world the kingdom of God the push of humanity, 537. His sum 
mons nothing unfamiliar to his countrymen, 538. The unity of God 
embedded in Arabian memory and faith, 539. Mosaism and Chris 
tianity familiar to the Arabs, 540. Mahomet s first relations were 
with Jewish and Christian believefs ; did not derive inspiration 
from the Bible ; knowledge of Old and New Testaments at second 
or third hand ; knowledge of the past incomprehensible, 541-543. 
Preceded by a line of native poets who proclaimed Allah as above 
all gods, 544. Ancient "Rolls" of Mahomet probably the so-called 
"Rolls of Moses," 546. Sought only to recall his people to the 
service of One they already knew ; pretended to no message from 
an unheard-of Power or Name, 547. His morality that of all good 
men in his day, 548. Sentences from Koran, 550. Mahomet s suc 
cess not due to sensual appeals ; reward and penalty of Paradise, 



TOPICAL ANALYSIS. xxxix 

551. Democratic tone of his message, 552. Abolished privilege of 
sex in religious function. The pen, giver of Bibles to men, 553. 
Mahomet declared God spoke to all, to prophet and slave alike, 
554, 555. Hardly a trace of Christian phraseology in Koran ; ideas 
inherited from many preceding faiths, 556. The final result of a 
long evolution of the worship of personal Will, 557. In this terrible 
Will is the same tender care and pity that go with it in the Hebrew 
and Christian God, 558. The Divine origin of the revelation as 
sumed as indubitable, 559. Mahomet refers to the character of his 
book to prove it could come only from God, 560. No appeal to the 
supernatural in himself; yet he became a centre for legend, 561. 
To him the desert spoke without reserve ; the desert the mother of 
the Semitic temperament, 562. Difference of the desert aspects of 
day and night the key to Semitic mythology, 564. Symbols of the 
desert, 565-567. The desert the prophet s cell and throne. Forth 
from its wastes march Moses, Zoroaster, Jesus, Mahomet, 568. 
Its influences account for Mahomet ; shaped the race of which 
he was born, 570. Poetic literature of pre- Islamic Arabia ; Abu 
Temmam s poems ; frank acceptance of the realities of destiny, 
571. Old Arab ideal, 572. Mahomet s quotations doubtful ; Lok- 
man the natural precursor of the Prophet, 573. Poets of Age of 
Ignorance ; their songs bursts of self-abandonment, 574. Imriol- 
Kais, 575. Amru ; verses of Lebid ; the desert fates stern, 577. 
Mahomet s call to religious unity followed up by the summons to 
boundless citizenship and mastery, 578. Declared war against the 
poets ; yet himself the greatest of Arab poets, 579, 580. Gave his 
nation s genius moral energy and obedience to a purpose ; Carlyle 
put this mystery into words ; Mahomet the focus of tendencies, 581. 
Genius and personal mastership; no explanation of, but the universe 
of mind, 582. Mahomet alone of religious founders shaped his 
work to success within his own lifetime, 583. The Koran the foun 
tain of faith to millions of men for fifty generations, 584. The 
norm of books, the veritable Arabic speech of Allah ; a year after 
his death Zeyd gathers up the fragments, 585. Eighteen years 
afterwards, the same hand compiles a more careful text ; it is not 
like the Sermon on the Mount ; nor like the Buddhist Sutras ; nor 
like Plato s conferences ; a prophet s cry, Semitic to the core, 586. 
Mahomet himself the indubitable maker, 587. Incomprehensible 
that down into the present century his name has been synonymous 
with Satan, 588. The first word of justice to him spoken by Sir 
John Mandeville ; then came scholars with clearest proof of a 
prophet in the natural order of historic movement, 589. Mahomet 



xl TOPICAL ANALYSIS. 

had the temperament of genius and a tendency to melancholia, 590. 
In youth a believer in the popular polytheism, slow to fix his faith 
on the unity of God ; at last came the outflaming of his ideal, 592. 
Most who heard him gladly were the poor, ignorant, and despised, 
many of them slaves ; then came the seventy " Helpers," 594. 
United hostile tribes in a common faith and purpose, 595. The 
sword involved in his monarchical creed, not deliberately chosen, 
596. Political rather than religious authority propagated by the 
sword, 597. Can mark the period when the necessity of conquest 
took possession of Mahomet s mind, 598. Confesses his faults ; 
early death of Jesus fortunate for his example, 599. Polygamy the 
demand for male offspring in the East ; low as was Mahomet s esti 
mate of woman, his regulations improved her condition, 600. In 
many senses a Turkish woman has more liberty than an English, 
601. Not to be expected that Mahomet should abolish slavery, 602. 
Tenderness of Mahomet towards brute creation, 603. Mahomet 
and the modern world, 604. Islam connects religions of personal 
Will and worship of Cosmic Order, Unity, and Law, 605. The 
prophet of Divine Will practically inseparable from God, 606. In 
carnations familiar to Asiatic races, 607. In Islam the process began 
in the idealization of Mahomet ; continued in the worship of Ali ; 
later in that of the twelve Imams ; Iran the land of hero-worship ; 
apotheosis of Mahomet began very early, 608, 609. In Arabia, the 
free spirit of the desert refused this homage, 610. No doubt his real 
personality had much to do with his swift exaltation, 61 1. Divinizing 
began immediately after his death, 612. His common replies quoted 
as the words of Allah, 613. The rage of deification naturally acts 
upon one representative, as in the worship of Jesus as God ; yet in 
Islam it took a continuous form, 614. Fatimite dynasty in Africa, 
founded upon the divinity of Ali, 615. Imams supposed to have 
dropped their human natures, and been absorbed into the essence of 
Deity, 616. Ali-worship the endless tale of Persian sects, 617, 618. 
Ali and his Imams do not exhaust Islamic apotheosis, 619-622. 
Nothing more incongruous with the sublime Allah than adoration of 
saints, their tombs and miracles, 623. Swarms of adored Sheikhs, 
etc., 624. All this resisted in every age by rationalistic theists ; 
Wahhabism the revival of old Arab individuality and natural scep 
ticism, 625, 626. Religious monarchism centred in personal claims, 
627, 628. Division upon predestination and free-will, 629. Motaza- 
lites represented free thought ; Kharijites and others opposed sinless- 
ness of the Prophet, 630, 631. Absolutism not unaffected by the 
struggle with liberty, 632. After a hundred and fifty years of strife 



TOPICAL ANALYSIS. xli 

orthodoxy condensed into form what the Koranic logic required, 
633. Ghazzali passed from intellectual scepticism to supernatural- 
istic faith, 634; had some glimmer of transcendental thought, 635. 
His precepts creditable to his mind and heart, 636. In Spain, the 
same logical necessities developed as in the East ; glimpses of uni 
versal religion, 637. Motazelite controversies in Persia explained 
by continuities of religious history, 638. Kalam, after being the 
inspiration of liberalism, turned into the organ of orthodoxy, 640. 
An accession to the resources of free thought, the Aristotelian 
writings, 641. A revolution for Islam, 642. Organon of Aristotle 
taught the ages to think, 644. Instinctive rejection of such a foe 
by supernaturalism ; ethics of Aristotle had even greater fascination, 
645. Aristotle s demand for mental freedom, 647. Influences of 
Aristotelianism summed up in Averroes ; expends his entire strength 
against Ghazzali, 649 ; exerted a profound influence on Persian, 
Jewish, and Christian thought, 651. Scholars like Alfarabi, Al- 
kindi, Avicenna, and Averroes not blind worshippers of Aristotle, 
652. Refused to accept immortality as a postulate, 653. When 
the orthodoxy of Ashari and Ghazzali triumphed, the freer philo 
sophical writings passed over to the Jewish schools, 655. First 
effect of Arabic revival on Jewish thought, 656. Maimonides mas 
ter of Jewish learning and thought, 657. Monotheism imposed 
bounds upon him, 659. In tenth century " Brothers of Purity " 
arose, 660. One of the noblest efforts in Universal Religion or 
Free Science ever made, 661-665. The reaction by Ghazzali and 
Ashari led to persecution of philosophy in all parts of Islam ; yet 
orthodoxy could not escape the influence of science, 666. The sway 
of blind faith produced a mixture of hypocrisy and devotion, 671. 
These Mussulmans more effective forerunners of positive science 
than their Christian contemporaries ; after twelfth century Islam s 
intellectual work seemed to be done, 672. First reason triumph 
of orthodoxy ; second reason despotic politics of Islam, 673. In 
fluence of conquest of Persia on Arab mind, 674. Arabs formed 
military camps in Irak, 676. Persians the leaders and shapers of 
Islamic culture ; Arabs learned of these larger brains, music, 
architecture, sculpture, politics, etc., 679. At the time of the Cru 
sades, Turkish and Mongol and Berber dynasties had risen on 
the Euphrates ; at the touch of the Mongol, the empire of the 
Arab vanished; power of Islam as a faith or a name not weakened 
thereby, 68 1. Intolerance in its very nature, 682. Outbreaks of 
cruelty and fanaticism in its name due in part to a religion of au 
tocratic Will, 683. Not even Christianity has equalled Islam in 



xlii TOPICAL ANALYSIS. 

the push of free-thought from within its name ; intellectual scepti 
cism and spiritual indifference of the Arab, 685. Other influences 
favorable to freedom, 686. The external impulse given to it by 
Zoroastrian traditions, 687. Tendency to intellectual as well as 
practical dishonesty, 688. The Mongol hordes had the qualities 
of beasts, 689. Yet not destitute of religion ; the effect of Islam 
to expand a half-sceptical, half-believing impartiality, 690. The 
same impartiality in the treatment of woman ; of the same nature 
the democratic freedom in the election of the Khan, 691, 692. 
Their raids had no purpose but to supplant ancient States ; de 
struction of books and of literary men, 692. The influences of Iran 
transformed them into men, 693. Their dynasties the great days 
of Iranian poetry and thought ; Togrul Beg, Alp Arslan, Hulagu, 
Ghazan, 694-698. The Iranian population compared with these 
hardy nomads, 699. Genghis; his son Ogotai ; Timur, "the 
Lame," 699-703. The empire of the nomad disappears ; the Uz- 
beg Tartars sweep over the land ; Barber begins the great Mogul 
empire in eastern Iran ; Ismail sets up a native kingdom in Persia, 
and the old traditions emerge once more. 704. " Timur s Life and 
Institutes," 705. A connection between the conquests of the Mon 
gols and the progress of civilization ; poetry and the arts revive ; 
discoveries imported from the East by the Mongol, 707, 708. 

II. THE SHAH-NAMEH; OR, BOOK OF KINGS. 711-782 
A reproduction of the religious and political traditions of Iran, 711. 
A true history, though its personages and events are unknown, 
712. Attempts of ingenious scholars to identify the heroes of 
Iran with Median and Scythian kings ; its psychological history 
a tale of heroes, 713. The ethical and heroic meaning a domi 
nant consciousness ; these antique personalities the inspiration and 
solace of the national heart, 714. The real depositaries of local or 
tribal traditions the proprietary chiefs, 715. Among these Dan- 
ishvar compiled the Basitan-Nameh (A. D. 652); Omar consigned 
the whole mass of national legends to destruction, 716. At the 
end of the tenth century Mahmud of Ghazni resumes the collect 
ing and places the materials in the hands of the king of Oriental 
poets, Fircliisi, 717. His first triumph at a poetic tournament, 
718. Could not escape envy, 719. Suspicions of his orthodoxy, 
720. The great task done, Mahmud pays but a fraction of the 
promised reward ; the outraged poet flings it away, 721. But the 
wound was mortal, 722. Died in the full sense of his wrongs, 723. 
An epic in literature the complete ideal of a nation, 724. The 



TOPICAL ANALYSIS. xliii 

master-key of every epos, the dominant consciousness of the civ 
ilization which produced it, 725. The master-motive of the Shah- 
Nameh the tragedy of human destiny and the irony therein ; never 
in it a failure of life s summons to self-sacrifice and moral loy 
alty, 727, 728. The heroes of the Shah-Nameh thoroughly hu 
man, 729. Society born with Jemshid, 730. The anti-Jemshid 
appears in Zohak, the old Vedic cloud-god, 731. Destiny s decrees 
cannot be stayed, 732. The legend of Selm, Tur, and Iraj, 733. 
The opening scenes of an epic whose movement embraces all 
history, 735. The tragedy of life sought in the play of nearest 
and dearest relations, 737, 738. The line of great Pehlevans of 
Seistan begins in Sam ; the legend of Sam and Zal, 739. Zal and 
Rudabe, 740. Parentage of Rustem, the mightiest among the 
mighty, 741. The tale of Rustem and Sohrab, 742-745. The 
dealing of a tragic Nemesis again in the story of Gushtasp and 
Isfendiyar ; the seven adventures of the young hero, 746. Rus 
tem and Isfendiyar, 747-749. Personal heroism the chief eman 
cipator from patriarchal absolutism, 751. Siavaksh disobeys his 
father and takes refuge with the king of Turan, 752. Kindly re 
ceived ; then treacherously murdered ; at length avenged, 753, 754. 
The higher law of honor, sacrifice, love, and truth asserts itself 
against the authority of throne and priesthood, 755. The responsi 
bility of kings to the heroic ideal runs through the epos, 757. 
Afrasiyab, the incarnation of Turanian hostility and guile ; on the 
other hand Khosru the ideal king, 758. The close of his reign be 
trays the hand of Islam, 761. He is taken up to heaven alive; such 
the reward of ideal royalty, 762. The central figure of the epic em 
bodies the merits and faults of the civilization, 763. In every great 
peril Rustem holds the fate of Iran, 764. This vast responsibility 
gives his life the highest ethical interest, 765, 766. With Rustem and 
Zal ends the heroic race of Iran ; the story of Piran the tragedy of 
a good man in a bad cause, 767. The religion of the Shah-Nameh 
monotheistic ; inspired by the heroic traditions of Iran ; down to 
the reign of Gushtasp no impassable religious line between Iran and 
Turan, 769. Advent of Zerdusht in his reign ; the war with Turan 
becomes a religious war, 770. The story of Rustem and Isfendiyar 
echoed in that of Dara and Iskander, 771, 772. Iskander counselled 
by Aristotle ; his death and obsequies, 773. Ardeshir the restorer 
of the faith ; the Sassanian kings preachers in a high moral strain, 
774. Ardeshir proclaims that his " empire is justice ; " his son 
Shapur; the right of revolution, 775. Bahrain elected king by the 
chiefs ; an ideal reign the result, 776. Noble precepts suggestive 



xliv TOPICAL ANALYSIS. 

of a Persian rather than Mahometan origin; influence of Mazdak 
upon king Kobad, 777. The ethics of heroism not in the interest 
of a priesthood; Buzurjmihr, 778-781. Hormazd succeeds his 
father Nushirvan ; overturned by Bahrain ; close of thft epos, 782. 
Editorial note, 783. 



PERSIA. 



ADVENT OF THE RELIGION OF PERSONAL WILL. 
ITS ELEMENTS. 

I. 

SYMBOLISM. 



ADVENT OF THE RELIGION OF PERSONAL WILL. 
ITS ELEMENTS. 

SYMBOLISM. 

"T^HERE is an epoch in our experience when we become 
-* conscious of ourselves as individuals, distinct from the 
world of forces, natural and human, into which we were 
born. Before this beginning of our proper personality, we 
are more or less passive products, either of contemplation 
and imagination, or of traditional routine ; in other words, 
we are either dreamers or plodders, in the one case, drift 
ing waves of abstract mind ; in the other, atoms of a con 
crete mass. In neither have we become centres of special 
force. In neither have we learned that our estimate of the 
objective world depends upon what we personally know and 
feel and do, and, substantially, upon what we are. That 

" We receive but what we give, 
And in our life alone doth Nature live," 

is as true of the child as of the man, of the poor creature 
as of the hero or the saint But the moral and spiritual 
possibilities involved in this constant law are realized only 
through the consciousness of ourselves as distinct from our 
surroundings, and, as it were, polar to them. This is the 
condition of progress, that we know ourselves to be 
centres of productive force. 

The organ of this conscious personality, the force which 
it brings into play for purposes of power and growth, is 
the Will. Strictly defined, Will is the concentration of 



6 ELEMENTS. 

mind on the selection, from among the infinitude of objec 
tive forms, of that which suits the subjective desire, and 
the transforming of it from a thought to a thing in the 
shape of that desire, from an ideal to a real or actual 
image of it, a transfer from brain to hand. And as one 
really worships that by which he is most deeply moved, so 
the ideal, the truly sovereign power for this stage of self- 
consciousness, is always a personal Will. 

Beyond this stage there is a higher, in which the will, 
recognizing the eternal order of the universe, of which it is 
but a fragment, finds its ideal in conformity, not with per 
sonal ideals, but with this substantial order itself. And 
this step beyond the worship of personal will is foreshad 
owed in all the immature steps of experience, which point 
beyond themselves to its serene and perfect freedom, 
although in individual life it is seldom reached. 

Such is the order of individual growth. But it is not 
less the law of history, the course of humanity : the ages 
are its theatre, and the races are its material. In the old 
est civilizations, even in their highest forms, we have found 
noticeable the absence of personal Will. Men are homo 
geneous. Classes, castes, tribal distinctions, family units, 
do not express essential individual differences, but at most 
only differences between certain masses of similar persons, 
or relations, and other masses equally uniform. The typi 
cal qualities of some races, such as the Hindu and Chinese, 
have kept them, as we have seen, on this imperfect stage, 
even down to the present moment, repressing that self- 
consciousness of which individual will is the exponent. 1 
In their Southern expansion, the Indo-European race were 
subject to this repression,, through climatic and institutional 
forces ; but in their Northern and Western expansion, they 
entered at once on the epoch of self-conscious individu 
ality. The Semites, starting from the other extremity of 

1 See the author s China, p. 946. 



SYMBOLISM. 7 

Iran, did the same, though with significant differences. 
The power of these combined energies to initiate the his 
toric progress of the Western civilizations, has been fully 
shown in the historical survey already presented. 1 The 
central point of the whole movement is seen to be the 
evolution and worship of personal Will. 

The earlier stages of Iranian development have been 
marked, not by any extended expression of individuality, 
but by a common veneration for great personal forces, 
wherever they appeared, and by a strong tendency in such 
appreciation to call them forth. This is itself a form of 
religious idealism. But we are now to enter on what may 
be called the typical religion of Iran. It may be well to 
begin with a review of the special elements which in men 
and nations accompany the advent of that epoch of ex 
perience which we have endeavored to describe, that we 
may see how faithfully these are actually represented in 
the Zarathustrian faith. 

The most significant of these elements for the history of 
Religion is an intenser play of symbolic expression. I use 
the comparative degree, because symbolization is in some 
form a constant fact of mental life. Swedenborg s doctrine 
of " correspondences" was an imperfect adumbration of real 
spiritual dynamics, and rests upon the law that whatever 
a being is, must appear in what it knows or does ; because 
self-manifestation is the inherent necessity of substance. 
" If the invisible things of God are to be understood from 
the things that are made," it is for the reason now stated. 
When the spiritual fact exists, the physical is made also, 
which represents it, just as surely as that one who is build 
ing a pile of stones in the morning light is building the 
shadow of the pile. The fact of " correspondence " is uni 
versal, the difficulty is in reading it; and the fault of the 
class of minds represented by Swedenborg is their over- 

1 See the author s India, and China- 



8 ELEMENTS. 

assumption of final knowledge, and the fixedness of their 
formulas presented as a science of interpretation, a fault 
not confined to any class of believers, but arising from the 
universal fact of personal limitations in the study of phe 
nomena. It is, however, eminently the consequence of all 
positive religion, after its early or prophetic stage has 
passed into that of organization. 

The substance of the universe is inscrutable. We know, 
indeed, that whatever we see must be symbolic of that 
which it manifests ; yet we have no definite knowledge of 
the process of manifestation, save what we derive from the 
productive force of man. Personality is thus the basis of 
symbolic representation ; and the more distinctly and 
energetically conscious we are of personality, as motive- 
power, the more freely do we use the elements of experi 
ence as signs of somewhat beyond themselves. As the 
centre of energy, it is personality that transforms our 
thoughts into things, our being into act, our mind into 
matter, our abstract into concrete ; and every such process 
is the construction of a symbol or sign representative of our 
selves. Here again we may recur to our threefold historical 
illustration. With the Hindu, who lacked power to seize 
and hold the one of these two poles of the process, that 
of the concrete, and the Chinese who failed to grasp the 
other, or abstract pole, all symbolic construction was in the 
main ill-defined and unconscious. On the other hand, 
the self-consciousness of the Aryan is concentrated on this 
very thing, the constructive process itself, by which the one 
force (internal) is transformed into the other (external). 
W T ith the Aryan mind, natural symbolism becomes con 
scious, clear, significant, progressive, full of human relation 
and power. It is the natural activity of a mind that in 
stinctively sees, not ideas alone, nor things alone, but the 
idea as producing the thing. Two conditions are requisite 
for every step in progress: first, to believe firmly that 



SYMBOLISM. 9 

there is an unseen and an unattained ; and next, to believe 
as firmly that the actual materials of life can be made into 
its image. 

This typical symbolism, however, simply brings to ideal 
value and emphasis the necessary processes of mental crea 
tion. We cannot think save in symbols. Language itself 
is a symbolic expression. We can express ourselves only 
in terms taken from the world of the senses, or in some 
way involving that world. So far we are all poets. We 
say " burning thoughts," " bright or dark moods." W T e 
speak of the " growth of character," the " branching out 
of plans," the " withering of hopes." W T e have all the 
seasons in our experience. We " revolve " like planets 
around a centre. We have " ups and downs," " corners 
and spaces " in our hearts ; " heights and depths " in our 
reason ; " hard and pliable characters." We unfold our 
powers, plume ourselves, shut ourselves up, pour ourselves 
out; have upright or downright, winding or backward, 
ways. We sigh and groan in spirit; leap and sing in 
wardly. Our souls bend in prayer; aspire, or breathe, 
after God. We have a great many general terms, which 
suggest no material image, yet are not without recognized 
meanings for the reflective or contemplative mind. But 
the moment we make active use of those meanings, clothe 
them with positive individual form and purpose, turning 
thought into thing, the process and result must both be 
expressed by physical images. Symbolism is mediation 
between inward and outward, person and performance, 
man and his environment. 

Work is the image man makes of himself on the world in 
and through nature. Art, science, politics, trade, are just 
the outward shape of the human will ; incarnation of the 
spirit; thought, dream, purpose, symbolized. The word, 
shaped by the organs of articulation in the air, represents 
the speaker, and somehow impresses the remotest orb with 



IO ELEMENTS. 

his likeness. Am not I myself here on this sheet of paper, 
in my handwriting, every word penned an autograph nay, 
photograph, made by the invisible sun of spiritual reflec 
tion? Do we not fling off impalpable aromas all the time, 
so that, as the hound scents his master, the nerves of finer 
organisms find us out by means of them, even when we 
have ourselves got a thousand miles away? Do not peo 
ple construct our traits and habits and beliefs out of a lock 
of our hair, or a few strokes of a pencil, down to minutest 
shades of character, as Cuvier built up a mastodon out of a 
few bones? Every atom of blood, brain, nerve, that is in 
us every stir of limb or feature represents us. What 
is Phrenology, when the motion of your little finger betrays 
every secret of your inward behavior to the wise? 

It is easy to ignore the symbolism of ourselves, in which 
we have our being, weaving it about us by the unconscious 
organic motions of character. " Alp and torrent shall 
inherit our significance of will." Nature is a convenient 
cooking-stove to one, a private mint to another, an out- 
flaming of ineffable beauty to a third. 

" To some she is the Goddess great ; 

To some the milch cow of the field : 
Their wisdom is to calculate 
What butter she will yield." 

But if we are poorly conscious of what we do with the 
world to which we are related as creators of symbols, still 
less common is it to recognize the law of perception on 
which all doing and creating must rest. We can have no 
cognizance whatever of the world without us, except in so 
far as our nature, its complex of individual and universal 
relations, affords a ground for conceiving it. In other 
words, it represents these personal or spiritual relations. 
Just as it is the participation of our human nature in truth 
that enables us to recognize truth in others, and its par- 



SYMBOLISM. 1 1 

ticipation in love that allows us to delight in their love, so 
it is with our perceptions of the Cosmos itself. I can 
behold space as infinite only because of the relations of 
human thought and feeling as such with infinity; and so 
the star-sown universe is a symbol of these human capaci 
ties, without whose activity within me no telescope could 
ever have suggested to me such an idea as boundlessness 
in numbers or space. Nature must either be void and 
meaningless, or it must represent to man that which he is, 
or does, or tends to do, by natural forces. The endless 
roll of waves upon the beach impresses us only as our 
mood touches it with our own sense of immeasurable task 
or yearning, of personal destiny or conscious power. We 
are the diamond refining in the dark ; we the lightning 
that breaks from tilting clouds. What we see is what the 
brute sees not: it is ourselves. Man s aspirations burn 
before him in the stars : his passions grovel and snarl and 
rend their prey before him in the beasts that perish. He 
reads the character of another, ever so different from his 
own, by some subtile opening of his own qualities into a 
capability for traits which his conscious will or disciplined 
spirit would probably refuse to entertain. And whether 
we read the tornado, the pestilence, or the struggle for 
existence from a pessimistic or optimistic point of view, or 
as reverent hearers of Nature s incitements to duty and 
humanity ; whether we interpret these destructive powers 
as curses upon fallen man, or as conditions of his ascension 
to the best, by natural evolution, it is still the limit or 
the liberty in us that supplies the alphabetic signs, where 
with we read. All symbols represent humanity, either its 
actual or ideal values. 

Ideal as well as actual, for man finds images of God also 
in Nature, only because of his own essential personal rela 
tions with the ideal or infinite ; and being so related, relig 
ious symbolism is natural and necessary mediation between 



12 ELEMENTS. 

himself and his highest conception of being. Resting,- 
then, on this universal law of personality, the choice of 
special symbols with the definite meaning given to the 
object chosen by the symbolizing faculty is not arbitrary. 
It is the product of positive relations, as organic as those 
of language; and though the individual mind becomes 
more and more clearly conscious of them, they are never 
so wholly unrecognized as not to be instinctively pursued. 
In this way we must explain the general uniformity of 
meaning ascribed by different ages and races to the same 
element or phenomenon in Nature. 

In view of this universality in the most important ele 
ment of religious construction, the supposed distinction 
between polytheist and monotheist, Pagan and Christian, 
Catholic and Protestant, which is conveyed by the use of 
the term idolater for the former of these classes, appears 
very superficial. In both classes the method is the same ; 
the result is a symbol, its meaning, as well as its choice, 
being determined by the laws and limits of human experi 
ence. Who, then, is an idolater, and what is an idol? We 
can only arrive at the idea that any people endowed with 
a degree of social consciousness have ever worshipped 
" stocks or stones " by abstracting from the object that 
symbolic significance which was the very ground of its 
selection and the substance of its meaning. It represented 
an ideal in the mind of the worshipper, as is evident enough 
from the fact that it was believed to enshrine and cover 
immeasurably more than it was, or could be, as stock or 
stone. It is not the fetichist only who confesses this when 
he breaks his image in pieces if it does not answer his 
desire, and finds another. The procedure does not differ 
essentially from that of the Christian, who venerates an 
image or picture so long as it represents the vision of his 
faith, or who takes an historical personage, around whom 
certain religious symbols have gathered, as the representa- 



SYMBOLISM. 13 

tive of God, or as God himself; and then, as his scien 
tific, moral, social, spiritual stature enlarges, comes to 
demand larger symbols of his ideal life. Or, if we give to 
religion the broadest meaning, as simply the service one 
pays to his ideal, in whatever form that may stand for his 
thought, must it not necessarily be the worship of some 
object which represents symbolically the sum of his best 
inward desires? Does not money, or fame, or fashion, or 
culture, serve for the time the same purpose as the " idola 
ter s " stock or stone? Religious symbolism does not vary 
in its method : it varies according to the quality of the 
personality of which it constructs the palpable ideal. To 
suppose that in one case it is the work of a perfect organ 
of vision, made to see objective truth, and in another the 
work of an organ which must see false images only, is en 
tirely irrational. However superior as symbols the Jahveh 
of the later Jews and the "Father " of Jesus may have been 
to gods that dwelt in gold and silver statues in temples of 
Babylon, they were none the less products of symboliza- 
tion, not objective realities, imperfect types of the inscru 
table substance, in which all men are contained. Just as 
the sun has been universally the symbol of deity in these 
and in all other forms of worship, just as light has been 
for all men in all ages the undying symbol of ideal good, by 
whatsoever name expressed, and yet both imperfect sym 
bols of the reality to which they point, so with the more 
distinctly anthropomorphic personal ideals in which men 
have centred their faith and hope. Both the Semite and 
the Iranian have found a loftier and purer meaning in 
religious terms, in proportion to the degree in which they 
represent the pure sense of personality. But that the 
really objective truth of deity should be given in any of 
these fragmentary forms, however beautiful, is impossible, 
first, because deity is infinite; and second, because the 
symbolizer can only deal with such external beings or 



14 ELEMENTS. 

phenomena as correspond to his inward ideal, which grows 
as he grows. 

I^n other words, religious symbols are properly our hu 
man ideals taking external relation to us, that we may 
adore them unselfishly, not as our own, nor as ourselves 
at all, but as above ourselves. And men are the more 
able to make such use of symbolism, the more their emo 
tion and their volition are expanded by social and moral 
communion. The history of man is a striving to generalize 
his experiences, to universalize his ideals ; and his will, 
which is the energy that shapes these in its own likeness, 
is also the diviner power that seeks and strives to lose it 
self in that which it adores. Thus, in the first flush of 
self-conscious power, he makes his controlling experiences 
stand for creative and productive gods. Then, dramatizing 
nature and life in their interest, he constructs mythologies, 
which are as free as possible in their origin from selfish 
purpose, and so are in fact poetry and prophecy for all 
time. The believers who saw purity in the fire, might and 
calm in the ocean, imperishable guardianship in the stars, 
divine benignity in Nile and Ganges, feeling in their steady 
alternate rise and fall the pulsation of a mighty heart 
which forever deposited the rich loam of far mountains to 
receive the living sunbeams and seeds ; and out of these 
symbols builded the fair humanities of old religions, so 
similar through remotest spaces, simply did what we are 
doing when we fill heaven and earth with the signs and 
tokens of whatsoever we most sincerely believe in, at the 
same time showing its real counterpart in our human con 
duct. When we repeat after our fathers that God is one 
and omnipresent, and then, like them, proceed to ascribe 
qualities and purposes to His infinity which we know only 
through finite experiences, and worship these as His, what 
we have done is simply to lift these qualities out of man, 
that we may in all honesty adore them as above ourselves. 



SYMBOLISM. 15 

We are as truly symbolaters, or " idolaters," if that is the 
word for the heathen, as the heathen are ; and we cannot 
help it, so long as we demand forms of language as material 
for religious intercourse. Love, Power, the Father, the 
Spirit, the Word, are symbolic expansions of the highest 
human powers and virtues. Races of men most marked 
by self-assertion have always made their religious ideal an 
Infinite Will. Or if, with the mystics of every faith, we 
reverently refrain from ascribing any finite or definable 
mode of existence to the Fulness of Being, we are still 
reaching forth towards that pure Essence, which is known 
to us only as implied in our own consciousness of exist 
ence. Finally, the Moral Order of the universe, which 
religious science substitutes for all forms of external will, 
can be recognized only through the conception of Law; 
and the uniformity, continuity, and fidelity of law are sym 
bols of a moral and spiritual allegiance revealed only in the 
constitution of the soul. Thus the progress of religious 
symbolism, as related to the idea of God, is the reflex of 
the phases of ideal human will. As related to the conduct 
of man, the highest form it assumes is that of constructive 
work. And this, too, depends on the growth of the per 
sonal ideal out of passive conformity into the energies of 
liberty and love. Not more naturally does the inward 
discipline of the Quaker select silence as the symbolic 
medium of worship, or the sensuous dependence of the 
Catholic prefer the arts of pomp, than the broad free 
thought and open sympathies which are not bound to sect 
or form, find their adequate expression in ways of enno 
bling work; bearing its living symbols of universal truth 
and good as the tree its native fruit. 

The universality of the symbolizing process indicates 
that the relations with which it is concerned are real and 
natural. In its great leading lines, therefore, its speech is 
not arbitrary, nor the choice of fancy, but the permanent 



16 ELEMENTS. 

expression of steadfast harmonies between the soul and 
the outward world. The poet speaks to the common heart 
simply because he has immediate sense of these natural 
correspondences, which prove that the mirror in which 
men see themselves is one and the same for all. He has 
no license to alter or violate or ignore these relations. 
The poetry of all times and tribes speaks through these a 
common language, even of emotions; and alphabets are 
but vehicles for transporting a currency everywhere valid. 
Who, for example, could mistake the organic meaning, the 
momentous human interest, which in all mythologies has 
centred in the Tree? In the Babylonian sculptures, in the 
Bible legend of the Fall, in the story of the same in the 
Persian Bundehesh, in the Greek Garden of Hesperides, in 
the old Phoenician vase-paintings, in the beliefs of antiquity 
about the dragon-guarded gold-dust of the Scythian North, 
we find the same image of a Tree of Life, guarded or in 
some way controlled in its relations with the aspirations of 
man by mythical dragons, or serpents, typical of perils of 
the body or the soul. The terrors and splendors of fire 
are associated with it; and the penalty of the Promethean 
theft of fire for the benefit of mankind is but one symbol 
out of many of the awe of man before his momentous 
possession of an element which penetrates all nature and 
all thought with an omnipotent energy : and for this the 
early Aryan mind could find no better type than to call it 
the fruit of an all-containing Cosmic Tree, and no use less 
universal than to transmit the symbol in all the branches 
of the race. From first to last, growth, human and per 
sonal, has found no better symbol than this, 1 nor any that 
can refuse affinity with that old Norse Yggdrasil, whose 
ever-ascending top is in the unmeasured spaces, its roots 

1 This is the sum of meaning involved in the universal use of the tree in Oriental symbol 
ism : the attempt of Lenormant and others to identify the Bible "tree of life" with the Per 
sian haoma, the Indian soma, and all other similar representations, is made in the interest of 
Bible revelation, and has no scientific value. Contemporary Review, September, 1879. 



SYMBOLISM. I/ 

watered by the Fates of Time and the Well of Truth ; 
while the squirrel runs up and down with incessant defi 
ances between the eagle that watches in its boughs and the 
serpent that gnaws at its foot. 

Nor can we admit that the older religions, as contrasted 
with Christianity and Judaism, are specially chargeable 
with worshipping the symbol in place of that which it sig 
nifies ; in other words, with allowing the image to intercept 
and absorb the honor due to the ideal. Religious senti 
ment, of necessity, becomes absorbed in what represents 
its ideal. And is not this as true of the Christian sym 
bolism of Trinity and Incarnation, as it was of the older 
worship of sun and stars? Is it not as true of Hebrew 
Talmudism, and Catholic Papism, or Mariolatry, and Pro 
testant Bibliolatry, as it is of the Hindu s recitation of his 
Gayatri verses? When the symbol is embraced by senti 
ment, thought becomes identified with its object, and what 
represents its God practically becomes its God. In no 
case, however, is the fact disproved that there exists in all 
civilized thought a more or less distinct acknowledgment 
of some divine transcendence of the symbol abiding in the 
deeper experience. And while it is true of the cruder 
forms not of one but of every religion, that the symbol 
does intercept and hold the worshipper s interest, veiling 
the pure truth as more or less abstract and unreal, even 
as the confessional shuts off the essential meanings of 
right and wrong, and as the religious custom or creed 
hides the Infinite Life it would limit and define, yet it is 
equally true of the higher stages in all religions that their 
symbolism embodies the spirit of the Brahman prayer : 
" Open, O world-sustaining Sun, the entrance to truth, 
hidden by thy vase of dazzling light. Soften thy splen 
dors, that I may behold thy true being ! From the unreal, 
lead me to the real ! " 1 



1 Brihad Upanishad, V. xiv. 
2 



1 8 ELEMENTS. 

There is, however, a real difference between ancient and 
modern symbolism. The more self-conscious religion be 
comes, the more strongly its symbolism tends to become 
distinctively personal. From natural phenomena it has 
passed over to purely human. It is, of course, in some 
points of view, in the interest of progress to represent the 
ideal by conscious forces, in place of outward physical 
types. But the integrity of the cosmos requires that 
thought should express itself by things ; that man should 
find, or make, this very world in his own image. The 
health of character is in its stress to outward embodiment ; 
and whatever divorces religious experience from this, 
whatever prevents the natural escape from self-conscious 
ness into living forms of action, represses earnestness and 
narrows thought. The supreme Ideal, which we call God, 
is not limited to personality, to the individualism of con 
scious will. God is cosmical : whatever inscrutable sub 
stance that adjective may typify, is God. The phenomena 
of the universe, inclusive of human activities, interpreted 
by its laws of order, are the true symbolism of the Spirit. 
Materialism, as expressing the direct purpose and instant 
end of mind, is as just a term as it is unsatisfactory when 
used to define the origination of mind. Science restores 
this natural relation of man and the world, which the primal 
instincts of religion affirmed, but which theologies absorbed 
in self-consciousness have broken. To what has heretofore 
been called " matter," with little regard to its essential re 
lations to spiritual substance, science secures its forgotten 
rights. As a consequence, the pure identity of thought 
with thing, of essence with manifestation, of substance with 
symbol, must come to full recognition, bringing withal that 
directness of relation between thought and action which the 
highest conscience commands in the name of integrity, 
and which ennobles human nature by due respect to the 
senses and the world. This directness of real symbolism 



SYMBOLISM. 19 

amounts, in its ideal, to nothing less instant than one s un 
conscious expression of his emotions through the features, 
or of his vitality through the lungs and the heart. And 
if, as yet, we are far from apprehending the nobler fruits 
of these ages of material science ; if we are still inapt to 
find the higher meanings of this our unfathomed cosmos 
of inviolable laws, doubtless it is for lack of those ideals 
in ourselves which would give such symbolic meanings to 
what we see and do. The world is waiting, not for our 
knowledge only, but for our worship and our love. Is it 
in itself the less capable of responding in living parable to 
the noblest aspirations of men, because as yet men do not 
demand such response ; because we have been using it for 
merely mechanical and competitive purposes ; because 
our hot haste to master its treasures has covered with 
whirling dust the meekness of the wind-flower and the 
patient-girded watch of the stars? 

But while we recognize the tendency of the later stages 
and larger development of self-conscious personality to 
check in some ways, for a time, the direct contact of the ideal 
in man with pure nature through symbolic expression, we 
must again emphasize the fact that it was the earlier stages 
of the same self-conscious will that gave to symbolism its 
first powerful impulse ; because in these stages man first 
learns to act as a force distinct from his surroundings, and 
so to use the world with clear knowledge that it does rep 
resent his own ideal. As we have found this personal ele 
ment to be the special characteristic of the Iranian mind, 
we are prepared to find symbolism especially prominent in 
its religion ; and in this we are nowise disappointed. The 
development of this tendency is here upon a scale that can 
be called no less than typical in the history of thought. 



20 ELEMENTS. 

THE FIRE-SYMBOL. 

THE common impression that the religion of Zoroaster 
is distinctively the religion which centres in the Fire-sym 
bol, is erroneous. Pyrolatry is common to all religions. 
No other natural element so perfectly represents supreme 
force as the element of fire. As light, it is the universally 
recognized symbol of truth ; as heat, of love ; as cosmic 
vital energy, of conscious being; as astronomical centre, 
of unity; as all-producing and all-sustaining, of creative 
and providential care. Like personality and will, it mounts 
back to its source, and will not be cut off thence. Pene 
trating, stirring, and shaping all things, it is the image of 
every pure, perfect, irrepressible power. It is the first 
born of creation : germ, seed, and atom, the children of its 
play. The soul itself is said to glance down from heaven 
as a beam of light, and as a beam to return whence it came. 
For all tribes from India to Peru, the fire burning on the 
altar, fed by the purest and most vigilant that it may never 
become extinct, is the type of security, immortality, and 
adequate care. Into this holy hearth-flame (Hestia), 
parent of the city, the homestead, the shrine, awful to gods 
and inviolable by men, no defiled thing shall enter. For 
the Greek, the solemnity of oaths sat there to rule Olym 
pus itself; for the Roman, the guardianship of the State. 
The Vedic Aryan saw Agni rise from his primitive fire- 
churn, to bring down the blessings of the gods, the flame 
his living tongue, his leaping steed, swift as thought to 
make earth and heaven one. The Turanian Magi of Media 
adored the same element. How the Semite s passion 
played all its keys on this element of fire, Assyrian, 
Phoenician, Hebrew, in symbols of creation, preservation, 
destruction, in sexual and ascetic rage, in a self-abandon 
ment which could find no fitter image than passing his 
children through the flame ! His Jahveh seals covenants 



THE FIRE-SYMBOL. 21 

with men by moving in a smoky flame between the parted 
offerings ; 1 burns in Sinai, in the desert pillar, in the face 
of Moses, over the Ark. He is not only a fire that devours 
the sacrifice, but a blaze no man can see and live. To 
Christianity he descends in the shining cloud, the trans 
figured countenance, the judgment-fires, that attend its 
mythological Christ. Nor can Jesus find any symbol of 
the coming of " his kingdom " more suitable than the 
lightning s flash from east to west. With what ease and 
grace this type absorbs all others ! " Allah," says the 
Koran, " is a flame burning like a star, as a lamp set in 
pure glass within a niche." 2 " Ibrahim," says El Masudi, 
" having worshipped the stars and the sun, and grown to 
the higher worship of Allah, was thrown into flames by the 
giant Nimrod, but the flames refused to burn, and not a 
fire could be kindled anywhere on earth that day." 3 
" Father and mother of all gods," says the Aztec hymn, 
" is the fire-god (lightning) ; a bird with gleaming wings in 
the centre of the world." The modern Kirghis Tartars so 
venerate fire that they will not spit into it. 4 The tribes of 
Kafiristan cast their offerings through flames. 5 From the 
simple faith of the Iroquois, that when the tribal fire went 
out the tribe would perish, to the refined myth of Prome 
theus, evolved from the primitive mystery of the generation 
of flame by rubbing two bits of wood, into clear and full 
expression of the pains and penalties under which social 
progress is won for man, through the endless maze of 
tender and yearning superstitions associated with produc 
ing and preserving the element of fire, runs the conscious- 
ness of mankind that this element is the centre of social 
relations, the fountain of home, of art, of culture, of civ 
ilization. And so poetry and religion anticipated the 
crowning recognition by science that life and growth are 

1 Gen. xv. 17. 2 Sura xxiv. 3 Meadows of Gold , etc., p. 83. 

4 Hutton : Central Asia, p. 325. 5 Central Asia, p. 421. 



22 ELEMENTS. 

but the extension of the solar fires. So continuous is 
man s organic rapport with fire, that it is difficult to draw 
the line where his direct, instinctive fear, awe, or love 
passes into conscious use of the symbol to express his 
feelings or thoughts ; still harder to mark where the per 
sonal imagery reaches up into the sphere of pure imagina 
tion, and deals in essential relations and creative laws. But 
that this one visible symbol sweeps the whole compass of 
human experience in its plastic power, that fire is the very 
speech and garment of the spirit of man, is sure. 

It should seem more practicable to distinguish the stage 
of growth in which fire as a mere element is the all- 
absorbing symbol, from that in which the religious sense 
is concentrated on its more distinct and dominant forms, 
especially such as the sun and stars. Solar mythology 
would thus mark a stage beyond the primitive forms of 
pyrolatry, as representing a distincter reference to personal 
meanings and an escape from the vagueness of unconscious 
instinct. The oldest Aryan fire-gods do in fact flow into 
each other, as if their common symbol merely expressed 
those transitions of feeling which in the rude man refuse to 
be held in prescribed or permanent conditions. Neither 
in Bactria, nor in Vedic India, more than in Turan, nor 
even afterwards in the Persia of Herodotus, do they take, 
like individuals, to dwelling in temples. Their simple 
altars rise on mountain-tops, in the open spaces of light, 
where sun and stars are but portions of the all-sufficient 
elemental life of fire. The sun, on the contrary, has always 
his shrine, usually his human image. In the terrible arrows 
of his beams, in the majesty of his rolling orb, and in his 
battle with the clouds and storms, he penetrates man s 
consciousness like a tremendous will : he must be received 
through some softening mediating image, in some walled 
space where his splendors shall be veiled. The moon and 
stars also require temples, images, and human mediators, 



THE FIRE-SYMBOL. 23 

for the opposite reason that they seem so far away, while 
yet exercising a control whose grand, silent mystery man 
ever yearns to penetrate. Hence the mythology of nations 
like the Irano-Persian, Greek, and Hebrew, in whom the 
personal life has been developed, centres in the sun s 
course ; and the adventures of their gods are even trace 
able through all the mazes of Protean names and dramatic 
situations, back to his all-embracing movement, the stages 
and strifes of his diurnal march, the alternation of day with 
night crowned with moon and stars. In this relation be 
tween astrolatry in its largest sense and the progress of 
man to distinct personal consciousness, it is perhaps pos 
sible to find historic vestiges of two distinct stages. Much 
ingenuity has been spent, and not without success, at least 
for the study of Semitic races, on proving that the moon 
and star cult is older than that of the sun, representing 
the nomadic, as that does the more developed life of the 
agriculturist and townsman. To the wanderer of the 
steppes, night brings coolness and relief; to the settled 
laborer, the sun s bounty is more conspicuous ; and it is 
argued in detail that the sun-myths are always myths of 
higher civilization than those of the moon and stars, with 
which they are historically in conflict, as the war of nomad 
and settled laborer is the standing strife of the early world. 1 
That the real and historic order of progress is here caught 
sight of, is probably true. 

But though solar myths may represent a social advance 
in comparison with lunar, especially among the Semitic 
races, we can hardly explain the star-worship of the west 
ern portion of Iran, as compared with the pure pyrolatry 
of the eastern, upon the same theory of advance in per 
sonal self-consciousness. In the valley of the Euphrates, 
where cities and cultures supervened upon the nomadic 
life, astrolatry was a natural tradition, passing on into those 

1 Goldziher : Mythology among the Hebrews, 



24 ELEMENTS. 

astronomical studies in which, as all writers agree, the 
Chaldeans, if not founders, 1 were at least typical represent 
atives in the ancient world. That their civilization was so 
self-conscious and intellectual, may well explain the close 
connection of their celestial symbolism with personal qual 
ities and emotions. But does the less concentrated pyrol- 
atry of eastern Iran, which was developed into the religion 
of Zoroaster, imply a lack of personal self-conscious will? 
Our whole investigation will be found to show the con 
trary. If I am not mistaken, the explanation of the differ 
ence between these two lines of symbolism lies in the more 
vigorous sense of liberty, individual and tribal, which dis 
tinguished the eastern from the western Iranians, and more 
particularly the Iranian Aryans from the Turanians and 
Semites. In the former class of tribes, the will claimed 
ideal rights for itself; while in the latter, its peculiar inten 
sity, in passion and desire, which made self-control and 
self-reliance impossible, drove it to worship such ideal 
rights in some supreme authority, whether in God or man. 
Thus the western Iranians fell under vast imperial or relig 
ious tyrannies. The eastern tribes worshipped a person 
ality in their gods and heroes, reflected from their own ; 
and therefore dependent on their free spirit, rather than 
suppressing it. This fundamental distinction is of the 
highest importance, and will, I think, be made fully evi 
dent in our future studies. It goes back, on the one hand, 
to the earliest free Aryan or Indo-Iranian life; 2 on the 
other, to the material and subservient civilization of the old 
Turanian and Cushite races, and to Semitic self-abandon 
ment to the passions. 

On this difference of character is based the contrast in 
the fire-symbolism of eastern and western Iran, not on 
any such distinction as that of nomadic from settled life. 
The Bactrian Aryans were led by an inherent individual 

1 As Pliny calls them. 2 See the author s India, chapter on " Primitive Aryas." 



THE FIRE-SYMBOL. 25 

energy, which kept them broken up into heroic tribes, 
ever standing for their rights, and made the heroic element 
the all-controlling one in their mythology. Their moral 
nerve found its adequate symbol in the free flash of fire, 
rather than in any permanent or fixed image, like the sun, 
moon, or stars. Fire itself, in its pure universality and 
freedom, was more to them than any such exclusive em 
bodiment, moored, as it were, in space and form. The very 
multitude of forms and names under which they celebrated 
it in their later ritual, indicates the freedom in which the 
symbol moved. It seems as if this powerful personality 
pursued its visible counterpart throughout nature, seizing 
all possible transformations of its substance for its own 
purposes, resolved to use the symbol, not to be used by it. 
The Zoroastrian meant by fire whatever was noblest in 
personal will ; and would not allow that it ever destroyed 
life, even when one was burned to death. 1 It must serve 
life, not destroy it. 

The pure pyrolatry of the East was not therefore a mere 
crude indeterminate fear before the element of fire, but 
rather that intuition of its essential symbolic relations 
which could take up any visible form or phase of it at 
will, and put religious significance into all. Even in the 
Vedas the freedom of choice, now described, begins to 
limit itself; and while the simple fire-churn is still the 
centre of faith and awe, hymns to the sun occupy a very 
large place in the imagination of the poet. There can be 
no question but that in the oldest heroic legends of Persia, 
which the Shah-Nameh has preserved, and whose leading 
figures Yima, Thraetona, Kerega^pa, etc., with the con 
flict against the dragon king Zohak are celebrated in the 
Avesta itself, we have transformations of very old Aryan 
symbols of the solar fire, in its visible powers and relations, 
its strife with the rain-cloud and the night. 2 It is equally 

1 Vendidad, v. 30. 2 See Darmesteter : Ormazd et Ahriman, as referred to further on. 



26 ELEMENTS. 

probable that the manifold labors and sufferings of heroes 
like Rustem and Siavaksh belong in their original forms to 
the same solar cycle, and correspond with those of the 
Greek or Tyrian Heracles (Dionysus). This transforma 
tion of the fire-symbol into heroic, rather than contempla 
tive or quiescent, types of divinity illustrates very forcibly 
that freedom from oppressive limitations which we have 
already ascribed to the energetic personality of the eastern 
Iranians. The sun was their typical hero in the fields of 
heaven. It was Ormuzd casting Ahriman into his native 
darkness. The later Persians swore by the sun. Its crys 
tal image hung in the royal tent, and the king was called by 
its name. " From the sun," says the Avesta, " are all things 
sought that man can desire." Through the whole history 
of Aryan faith runs also the fire-symbolism of Mithra, 
beginning in Vedic vagueness, as the kindled fire, 1 but 
concentrating gradually in itself all noble and spiritual 
meanings, recognized by the psalmists, which could be 
represented by the sun, and especially the sovereignty of 
truth and justice; till, mingling with Chaldean elements, 
it is all gathered up into the wonderful Mithra-Yasht of 
the Avesta, unsurpassed in its symbolic expression of 
duty, love, and power in the life of man. All the Greek 
authors identify Mithra with the sun. Nor do the stars, in 
dividually or as constellations, fail of honor in the Avesta, 
all the conscious functions of stellar service freely mov 
ing around the element of fire as their common and central 
force. 

The Iranian Aryan was specially gifted with the sense of 
immediate relation between ideas and things : his main con 
cern was to bring the body into correlation with the mind. 
This was the sum of Avestan ethics, " pure mind in pure 
body." Not mind here, body there ; not mind above, body 
below ; neither the one nor the other alone living by its own 

1 Rig- Veda, v. 3, 1-3. Muir, pt. iv. p. 68. 



THE FIRE-SYMBOL. 2/ 

force, but the one in the other, representing itself by the 
other. Therefore he thought and lived in symbols of con 
scious will. Every natural form that could possibly reflect 
his motive-energy took a typical personality for his imagi 
nation. No equal gift of personifying abstract qualities and 
ideas in visible images, with that displayed in the Avesta, 
appears in any other Bible of the world. 1 Even the latest 
construction of the religious cycle, the Zrvan-akarana, or 
" Time without Bounds " of the Sassanian Persians, was 
the development of a mere category of existence into the 
supreme personal source of good and evil. The seven 
Amesha-$pentas are mostly abstractions turned into gods. 
Every religious name like Haoma, Vohu-mano, Ako-mano, 
is at once a personal force and the thing which suggests 
or typifies such a force. 2 So with beggary, treachery, 
poverty, winter, sleep, desire, the evil eye, pride, contempt, 
disease, etc. 3 The whole cosmos, in its multiplicity of ac 
tive powers, was subjected to apotheosis in the same way. 
But through all this specialism pyrolatry itself, the love 
of the fire-element itself and for itself, retains its control. 
The Avestan priest is Atlirava, " provided with fire." 
Down to the present day the Parsis, like their fathers, 
regard the fire-altar (Atesh-gd/i), or ever-burning naphtha- 
spring, the hearth of their faith. They discern Ahuramazda 
himself, not in the solar orb exclusively, nor in the starry 
heavens, nor in the lightning, but mfire: this is " his son," 
his " first-born," his " image," his manifested self. 4 To fire, 
the Persian kings addressed their prayer before battle ; on 
their death it was solemnly extinguished. For whatever 
purposes used, even in domestic life, in labor, or in art, it 
must be brought after a certain period to a holy place, as 
belonging to Ahuramazda. 5 

1 See, for illustration, Spiegel s Eranische Alterthitmskunde) ii. i. 

2 See Bleeck s Yatfna, ix. note i. 

3 See Eranische Alter thumskunde, ii. 135; Vendidad, xix. 140; ii. 116. 

4 Vapid) iv. 52. B Vendidad, viii. 



28 ELEMENTS. 

" Offering and praise I vow to thee, O Fire, son of Ahura ! Be 
thou honored in the dwellings of men ! Blessed the man who con 
stantly brings the fuel and the implements of service to thee ! 

" Mayest thou burn evermore in this house, through the long time, 
to the resurrection day ! Give me swift brightness, food, and means 
of life ! Give me wisdom and prosperity, and readiness of speech ! 
Give my soul sense and understanding ever growing; courage, the 
ready foot, and swift to move ! Give vigilance, abundant posterity, 
pure and able to bless my house, my clan, my province, my country ! 
Give me knowledge of the better world, of the shining abode ! May 
I reach good reward, and good name, and my soul s bliss ! wl 

Other symbols had little value, save as partaking of this, 
or of what this signified. What attracted Iranian imagina 
tion was not any fixed form or function, but pure energy 
of life and growth, which, as the substance of personality 
within, sought its own fit outward type in the free element 
of fire. All its splendid symbolism meant this unquench 
able ardor of desire and will. There was the Cypress, life 
irrepressible, flame-like in shape and in persistent upward 
pressure. It shall be type of immortality. Zarathustra 
plants it before the fire-temple, and when it has grown 
majestic, surrounds it with a golden palace like a sheath 
of flame, and is called to ascend from its boughs to Para 
dise. 2 There was the Pirn-cone, flame-like again, and from 
perennial fires of growth. This shall be the Athrava s type 
of life, which he bears to the altar-service. Both these are 
forms of that clearest symbol of life and progress, the Tree; 
from which man and woman are said in Iranian mythology 
to have sprung, the two from one stem. 3 The Haoma, at 
once divine plant and beautiful youth, is type of the living 
and saving Word, bringing strength and joy alike to soul 
and sense, making the poor and rich equal. 4 It grows in 
the sea that flows with life fountains, where birds scatter 
the seeds of life, and the sharp-eyed, swift-winged eagle of 

Yafna, Ixi. 2 See Humboldt s Cosmos (quoting Firdusi), ii. n. 129. 

8 Bundehesh. * Yafna, x. 



THE FIRE-SYMBOL. 2Q 

wisdom (Simurgh) and the watchful fish protect it from 
harm. 1 Was it strange that the morning cock and the 
night-guarding dog should be associated as types with 
these practical energies? Especially was the bull sacred 
to this sense of vital forces ; and his " soul " pours out 
prayers to A hura for protection against the outrages of 
evil powers. 2 Above all, the Ferours (Fravashis), ideal 
types of the souls of men, hovering above their heads, were 
adored for the glory of their light, pure bodies of flame, 
and defenders of man against evil ; and their title signifies 
victory and growth. 3 

Instinctively the Persians transferred to their supreme 
God that Assyrian symbol of deity, the winged circle 
enclosing a human figure in vigorous action. The bull 
with open wings, the eagle with hawk s head, the four- 
winged cherubim and wheels of the prophet s vision, 4 
were all suited to the vital personality of the Iranian mind, 
whether of Aryan or Semitic, western or eastern origin ; 
and while the monuments show how readily these were 
accepted by the Persian " fire-worshipper " from races 
more inclined than himself to fix the symbol in elaborate 
forms of art, they all betray limitations in the expression 
of nerve-energy when contrasted with the unconfined 
ethereal flame with which he had already satisfied his 
demand for freedom. 

Such was the imagery, aesthetic and religious, with which 
the eastern Iranians lifted nature to the height of their own 
intense life of aspiration and will ; such the opening stage 
of those forms of civilization which have followed Iran in 
giving the same symbolic meaning, in a great variety of 

1 Yasht xii. i ; xiv. 29 ; xvi. 7. Spiegel s Avesta, iii. xiv. 

2 It is his seed that makes Nature s fertility. It is probable that the symbol goes back to 
the old Aryan storm-cloud. The seed of the bull is the dew. ( Yasht, vii. 4. ) The cry to 
Ormuzd is the roar of the storm conflict. Darmesteter : Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 151. 

8 See Neriosengh. Schwenck, Die Mythologie der Perser, p. 314. 

4 The angels guarding Paradise, in Genesis, were these Chaldeo-Assyrian creatures. 



30 ELEMENTS. 

directions, to their whole social existence. So that we are 
here met by the spontaneous and child-like poetry of the 
grandly awakening human consciousness of personal Will, 
bearing in its bosom the germs of three thousand years of 
progress. Here are no mere figures of speech selected by 
the understanding, no allegories consciously constructed, 
but natural correspondences intuitively recognized. This 
most responsive symbol, which stirs and waves and flashes 
to heaven with the motion of the flame within the soul, is 
the very tongue of prayer, the very garment of praise. 

We may theorize as we will on the organic relations 
between Iranian nerve-force and its physical environment. 
This at least is certain : Iran was indeed the true fire- 
temple of Nature, bespread with naphtha springs, meteoric 
lights, and burning mountains. The mystery of the flame 
brooded over it and burst from its bosom. To this day 
the hot winds parch the dry grass till they want but a 
spark to fan it into flame ; and the stars shine through the 
clear atmosphere with a splendor that seems articulate with 
spiritual meaning and relation. No religious symbolism 
could seem more natural or imperative on such a region 
than that of fire. Yet, as we have seen, special race-quali 
ties greatly contributed to the result. We have seen that 
the Persians absorbed Assyrian and Babylonian imagery 
without subordinating their passion for the pure fire-sym 
bol to any of these distinctive models. The reason was, 
that they represented the Iranian idealism of Will in a freer 
and more personal form than did the nations farther west. 
These last, directed by Semitic self-abandonment to sen 
suous impulse, came to worship will in the form of great 
religious and political systems of arbitrary power. In the 
eastern tribes, the preponderance of Aryan energy pro 
duced a high degree of individuality. The Aryan held 
fast to the personal pole of the symbolic process, and used 
the external object as representative of his own force. The 



THE FIRE-SYMBOL. 31 

Semite buried himself in the physical side of the same 
process, and suffered its organized power to master him. 
The slavish sensualism of these Semitic cults was illus 
trated by the golden bed of Bel, spread in the temple at 
Babylon by his priesthood, for the sacrifice of virginity 
to their worship of the senses. Assyrian and Babylonian 
chambers of imagery had become the synonym or type of 
sensual idolatry in the East, when the Persian entered them 
from his rude mountains. Upon them, as upon Egyptian 
polytheistic rites and animal worship, he came down in 
fires of judgment. He was the iconoclast of religious sym 
bols. In the name of his "living light" he smote down 
the bull of Egypt and blasted the couch of Bel. He sub 
stituted for the older gods of concrete forms ideal genii and 
immortal powers, unseen hosts warring for principles in 
the awful names of good and evil, right and wrong. He 
suffered no name to stand between him and the Almighty 
Spirit, whose son and messenger was the living universal 
flame. 1 In this claim for the free personality of man in his 
attitude towards forms of the ideal, the eastern Aryan 
stood alone. Even the Hebrew escaped the common 
slavery of the Semite to sensuous symbols through his 
prophets only, and there only partially. When his fetich- 
ism and Moloch worship had been developed into Mono 
theism by an intense nationality, even its intense sorrows, 
and the sharp disciplines of its contact with other races 
and faiths, could not bring Jahvism to recognize the 
rights of the personal Will. Under the absolutism of its 
God, the demand for knowledge, the right of ethnic sym 
pathy and expansion became almost null. In his nobler 
elements, this all-mastering personality represented the 

1 Nothing, I think, can be more erroneous than the statement of Rapp (Zeitschr. d. 
Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch. xix.) that Zoroastrianism never rose beyond the standpoint of 
immediate naturalism, while Buddhism and Christianity became universal religions. If, as 
he says, Zoroastrianism was only fitted for Iran (p. 37), this was true only of its peculiar form, 
not of its essence. 



32 ELEMENTS. 

authority of conscience as well as will ; but it was con 
science raised into a terrible theocracy, in which human 
freedom was systematically sunk to that degree that a 
religious reaction to the purely inward law of individual 
ity, without external symbol of the earlier kinds, became 
a moral necessity: and hence Essenism and Christianity. 
But Christianity, itself Semitic, substituted a body of 
equally dominating personal symbols for the old institu 
tional or legal ones, and the authority of the Christ became 
as exacting a mastership as that of the law. An infinite 
Ruler of the World, a Jahveh conceived as Father no less 
than Judge, commissions a Messiah to save the world that 
should believe in Him, or his Son ; to establish conditions 
of salvation, moral, spiritual, ecclesiastical. And this per 
sonal government of the Christ, this continuation of the 
objective Semitic monarchy, so controlled the later dog 
matics of Christianity that the more or less Aryan element 
fell into its track ; and its exaltation of the man Jesus into 
Godhood was far from lifting the human personality as 
such into similar spiritual relations, and so affirming its 
proper freedom. This exclusiveness of the Christ-symbol 
the real Aryan element, embodied in science and free 
thought, has been nearly two thousand years in over 
coming. 

For the Persian, the individual was the living flame of 
Ahura, in full and pure communion with His purpose, and 
like Him master of the fulness of the fire-symbol and its 
power to consume all the evil in the world. Ahura is 
indeed person, in the fullest sense. He creates the world 
by His word, like Jahveh, and all theories of cosmic self- 
development are wholly foreign to the Persian as to the 
Hebrew or Christian mind. But the human is not so lost 
in Him as in the terrible Jahveh, whom none can see and 
live ; before whom human will is blasphemy, and the sole 
right attitude of man that of prostrate abdication of every 



THE FIRE-SYMBOL. 33 

claim and right of his own. Ahura is no destroyer per se, 
no mixture of good and evil, but the pure essence of good. 
It is true, too, that Zarathustra was regarded as a mediator ; 
but it was without touching his purely human nature : he 
is treated by Ahura simply as one among the children of 
men. 

The Persian, in short, was an influx of human self-asser 
tion ; and the religion in which his energy took shape was 
a flow of spontaneous inward force. When the inevitable 
period of organization came, absorbing much of this free 
spirit, and the Athrava became merged in the Magus (prob 
ably first in Media, then in Babylonia), the original impulse 
revived in the reaction by which the Magi were suppressed 
and the pure worship of Ahura restored by the great 
Darius. But of course the tendency of time, ritual, organ 
ization, and traditional forms, in Western Asia, was to sink 
this freedom of the fire-symbol in positive heliolatry. 
When the sun, as personal symbol, usurped the place of 
the pure flame of Ahura, Iranian genius had degenerated. 
This is evident in the national degradation down to Sas- 
sanian times. Persian edicts of the fourth and fifth cen 
turies commanded that the sun should be held the highest 
deity, while water and fire should have inferior service. 1 
Christians were persecuted for refusing to perform these 
rites In Armenia. 2 In Rome, Julian centred his revival of 
Paganism in the philosophy which permitted him to call 
the sun the living image of God, and even God himself. 3 
But nothing could so fully indicate the disappearance of 
the pure fire-symbol, and its specially Persian type of per 
sonality, as the mad freak of Elagabalus, who worshipped 
the sun under the form of a black, conical stone. 4 The old 
flame-symbol had meant a spiritual power, warring against 

1 Act. Martyr., quoted in Rapp, Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Geselhch. xix. 72. 

2 History of Vartan, by Bishop Elisaeus (translated by Newman), p. 9. 

3 Gibbon, chap, xxiii. 
* Ibid., chap. vi. 

3 



34 ELEMENTS. 

evil spirits in Nature and man. It did not so much seek 
to put God into shape for man, as to put man in the way 
of participating in God, and aiding His will and work. It 
was the poetry of aspiration, not the prostration of self- 
abandonment. Its deity was purpose, will, principle ; too 
free and spiritual to need temples, too personal to want the 
flesh of sacrifice when he could receive the soul of the vic 
tim. 1 Its construction of special rituals and statues grew 
only by contact with Semitic civilizations. 2 Nothing can 
be more free from ceremonialism than the older Gathas of 
the Avesta, the earliest literature of the faith. The Per 
sian turned the gods of the West out of doors to confront 
Nature, and if they could not breathe its fresh air, to die. 

1 Strabo, cnap. xv. 

2 In later times statues were common in Persia. (See Clem. Homil. ix.) It is an ab 
surd theory of Spiegel, that Persian hostility to images came from Semitism ! (Eran. 
Alterth. i. 393.) 



II. 

THE MORAL SENSE. 



THE MORAL SENSE. 
ELEMENTS OF ITS CULTURE. 

THE beginning of personality, in other words, the 
consciousness of self as distinct from its surround 
ings, is, in a special sense, the advent of the Will as a 
positive power. It opens the way for transforming inward 
into outward force, ideas into things. The mental habit 
of combining the two sides of our being, making ideal use 
of actual materials, is the condition of progress. Neither 
an individual, nor a race, nor humanity itself, advances by 
any other method than that of creating symbols of its 
own ideal experience in the world of the senses, through 
the energy of personal will. Of this energy the Iranians 
were the typical race of the early world, heralds of the will 
power which continues to transform Nature into the image 
of humanity. The rare union of sensuousness with ideality, 
of physical susceptibility with personal force and earnest 
ness, which we shall find to have distinguished the Persians 
from the races around them, is the key to their fire-cultus, 
the form of religious symbolism most significant of these 
qualities. Zoroastrianism makes this element the ideal 
bond of man with the universe. 

Our metaphysical analysis, then, explains the symbolism 
which so strongly marks the Iranian religions. But sym 
bolism is not the only force which awakes into energy at 
the advent of the conscious will. Of course, this epoch is 
the true birth of the Moral Sense also : not of conscience 
absolutely, but of moral choice as a self-conscious and 



38 ELEMENTS. 

creative force. Thus we should expect from the personal 
qualities of the eastern Iranians that their ideal would 
centre in moral conflict and discipline. It was in the fer 
ment of their motive-energies that they learned the pro 
found meaning of moral choice, the balance of the soul 
and the world twixt good and evil. The contrast and con 
flict of powers in Nature, which had vaguely impressed the 
desires and fears of mankind, were for them drawn more 
sharply by the battle of moral forces within. The con 
science had awaked with the will, and shared its ardor. 
When we consider the strength of their impulse to put the 
ideal into visible and natural life, we shall not be surprised 
at the part played by moral protest and reaction, even in 
warring against the outward obstacles in its way. The 
polarities of light and dark, on which the order of Na 
ture turns, embodied and reflected this strife between the 
senses and the spirit. This was symbolism in its ideal 
form. The war of Ormuzd and Ahriman was a war, not 
of embodied beings, still less of institutions, but of essen 
tial principles. It was the substance of their brain, and 
made the fires that ran along their nerves, back and forth, 
a battle. They did not build up that terrible Dualism with 
the speculative intellect. We have little to do here, at 
least in the earlier stages of the faith, with theological or 
philosophical systems. It is the articulate voice of the 
moral alternative, passing judgment upon the world as a 
whole, rending the elements asunder in a schism of oppos 
ing wills. If a race deserves honor in human annals, in 
proportion to the emphasis it has given to the radical 
conflict of principles on which moral progress begins, to 
/ the practical energy of its effort to meet and solve the 
antagonisms of experience, a very high place is due to the 
Persians of the Avesta. 

With these Iranian tribes, then, begins the consciousness 
of a shaping power, through moral conflict, upon Nature 



THE MORAL SENSE. 39 

and life, whose epochs are the steps of history through the 
modern ages. For this force of personal Will was not in 
the lower races which preceded them in Africa or Asia. 
It was not in the higher civilizations of India and China, 
where the predominant place was held, as we have seen, 
by brain or muscle, abstract thought or concrete work; 
while in Iran it belonged to the nerve that makes them 
one, to that motive-force of will which quickens the mind 
to progress as an ideal aim. With the Iranians begins a 
poetic ardor for self-discipline, a passion for winning ideal 
virtue by honest payment of the price. The external cir 
cumstances by which these powers were fostered are now 
to be stated. 

These differences between the Indian and Iranian 
branches of the great Aryan family, after their separation, 
the one to the south, the other to the west of their 
common home on the plateaus of Central Asia, have 
been regarded as of a very radical nature. Nothing, it is 
thought, can explain them, especially those of their reli 
gious beliefs, but a bitter schism, resulting in the transfor 
mation of the gods of the one race into the demons of the 
other. But this theory, of which history certainly affords 
no other evidence than that of language, seems quite un 
satisfactory, even on that score. It is sufficient to reply 
to the few instances given of such reversed meaning in the 
names of gods, that corresponding changes went on in 
at least one of these names, and that the most important, 
in India itself, without revolution, simply through the nat 
ural evolution of Vedism into Brahmanism. 1 Words like 
" Asura " and " Deva," both originally meaning sovereign 
power, had of course a terrible as well as a friendly side ; 
and in process of time each name would naturally enough 

1 The word "Asura," which first meant "lord" in the highest sense, in Brahmanic 
times received a bad meaning. 



40 ELEMENTS. 

come to be appropriated to the one side or the other, ex 
clusively, without losing that common attribute of power 
whose elements it had become necessary to distinguish. 
We have only to suppose that the two branches of the 
Aryan family, which were removed from each other in space 
as well as in conditions of growth, assigned the parts thus 
differently to explain the whole difference in the mean 
ings attached to these words "Asura" and "Deva," in the 
Veda and the Avesta, respectively. 1 Besides linguistic 
oppositions, it is true that the two civilizations became 
subsequently so unlike as to form a striking psychologi 
cal contrast But the original resemblances, linguistic and 
religious, are so numerous that they can be referred only 
to the common Aryan stock, whose elements of belief be 
came divergent simply under the stress of different climatic 
and social conditions. Terms expressive of the most im 
portant relations continued common to both systems : such 
as designations of social dignity and national pride (Arya) ; 
the priesthood (Athrava, Hotar) ; the prayer (Mantra) ; 
the personified offering (Soma, Haoma) ; the Supreme 
God (A/ium, the Indo-Iranian Asura, who is certainly the 
ancient Vedic Varuna) ; the light considered as guardian 
of truth (Mithra> Mitra, usually connected respectively 
with Ahum and with Varuna)? Haug is of opinion that 
the thirty-three Vedic deities correspond with the thirty- 
three genii mentioned in the Avesta as surrounding the 
sacrificial rite. 3 And the Vedic ceremonials for the house 
hold (in the Grihya-sutras) are strikingly parallel to those 
in the Avesta of a similar class. 4 The primary personages 

1 The word dasyu, employed in the Vedas to describe conquered enemies, and in the 
Avesta [dttyyu)to designate subjects of the nation, is a similar instance of the natural parti 
tion of a common meaning, which in this case is that of " subject." See Darmesteter s 
Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 270, a work in which the theory of a schism is fully disposed of. 
The Avestan demon, Indra, is probably not the Vedic "lightning god," but a different 
name, Aindra. See also Justi. 

2 See Lassen, i. 319-23. 3 Essays, etc., p. 276. 
* Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch.^ vil. 527. 



THE MORAL SENSE. 41 

of the Avesta legend, Yima, Thraetona, Keregagpa, are 
Vedic in name, have correspondent functions with their 
Vedic analogues, and are fully shown by these relations 
to have originated in the solar mythology of the ancestral 
Aryan race. They were developed types of that conflict 
of the sun with the cloud-serpent, whose continual repeti 
tion made so large a part of the imaginative interest of 
those early tribes. 1 The preservation of the common con 
ception and of the names associated with it in the myths 
of both races, proves a continuity of development without 
break or radical change, from the interpretation of Nature 
as a physical or cosmical strife to the transfiguration of it 
with moral and spiritual meaning. 

Even that dualism of light and darkness which seems so 
peculiarly Avestan, is characteristic also of the Vedas. It 
involves nothing like hostility between the two systems. 
It is, in fact, the response of Nature to the contrarieties in 
human experience, as such, which belong to no special 
race or religion. The oldest faiths rest on the adoration 
of the light and the dread of the dark ; but it was not the 
outward light and dark that brooded over the soul so 
much as the antagonism felt within it, giving signifi 
cance to these symbols for the sense. This the Aryan 
conceived the more intensely by reason of his peculiar 
endowments of clear thought and energetic will, com 
paratively free from those violent emotions which in the 
Semitic races tended to blur moral outlines and drive 
blindly from one extreme of susceptibility to another. 
The exclusively moral interpretation given by the Iranian 
branch of this ethnic family to the great cosmical antago 
nism was in accordance with their special genius. But it 

1 See Darmesteter s fine exposition of this point (Ormazd et Akriman}. He traces all 
the elements of Avestan mythology, certainly with great ingenuity, to the old Aryan myth of 
the storm-cloud (pp. 96-216). Earth (Revue de PHistoire de Religion, i. 116) criticises this 
theory as too narrow, showing the facility with which all expounding theories can be formed 
as universal keys to mythology. So Spencer s Principles of Sociology, vol. i. xxiv. 



42 ELEMENTS. 

was not unrecognized by the Indian branch also. Not 
only in the perpetually recurring myth of Indra s war with 
the cloud-serpent Vritra, in which all moral as well as phy 
sical blessings were expected from the pure sunlight, but 
more especially in Varuna and Mitra, the personified bonds 
of truth and righteousness, typified in the same image, and 
in the sleepless Adityas, immortal children of light, from 
whom came every good and perfect gift, in all these 
symbols the conscience of the Vedic worshipper, his ideal 
of holiness, were the passports to safety, the guard against 
ill. But the dark power was not here emphasized to the 
same extent as it is in the Avesta, and hardly rises to 
the dignity of antagonist. The herdsmen of the Indus 
felt the light and darkness mainly as the life and death of 
their cattle, their wealth and poverty, their success and 
failure in the strifes of rude clans. And as the mighty 
flow of tropical rivers and the languors of a refulgent clime 
drew them to a contemplative life, repressing self-assertion 
and will, not only the light and the dark, but all other 
contrasts in experience floated and melted together for 
the thinker into the one sense of infinite deity, while the 
masses received their gospel from a slowly developing 
priesthood. The heroic element also, which though by 
no means lacking in Hindu life was yet but secondary 
and left the religious interpretation of Nature to a higher 
caste, could hardly be expected to work out an ethical 
symbolism of her grand phenomena through resources 
of its own. 

But the Iranian saw, in the Titanic antithesis on which 
the universe revolves, the life and death of character. Light 
was truth and immortality; darkness was falsehood and 
decay. The Avesta shows us a late stage of this concep 
tion, after the spaces and spheres had become transparent 
to the fires of conscience, prompting to escape the bonds 
of evil service into the liberty of obedience to the ideal. 



THE MORAL SENSE. 43 

How far this had entered the life of the people we may 
not say; but in the oldest Gathas the evidences of an in 
tense moral earnestness are beyond question. The Dual 
ism of the Aryans was germinant. Mazdeism referred all 
good and evil to positive principles warring for the posses 
sion of the universe. Its defiant protest against the lower 
nature wrote itself out in what we should call a mystic 
hieroglyph, were not the feeling too direct and realistic, all 
over the heavens and earth ; so that they could tell but one 
tale, the war of truth against falsehood, rightful sover 
eignty against unrighteous revolt, heaven against hell ; and 
the rolling days and nights were turned into the everlasting 
Yea and Nay of the soul. The very order of the elements, 
by which the contrasts are mutually sustained and com 
pleted, became the constant reflection of a positive rent in 
the moral being of man. Here, in the opening of his con 
scious energies of will, we find the germ of those terrible 
fictions of a gulf separating him from God on which later 
theologies, especially Christian, have been founded, and 
which no mediatorial scheme, in the view of enlightened 
reason, is competent to span. 1 

It is obvious that such consignment as the Avesta makes 
of half the visible universe to malignant powers, and of the 
whole to an internecine personal strife between the spirit 
of good and the spirit of evil, must be of comparatively 
late origin. Not only does its abstraction of principles 
from phenomena imply this. That all these shades and 
degrees of mutual dependence in the phenomena of light 
and darkness which would naturally establish a certain 
amount of cordiality between them for the simpler mind, 
should be effaced in the general battle-array of all- 
pervading and absolute oppositions, can only be the result 
of long stages of struggle with natural obstacles. Severe 

1 See the Author s India, p. 6. 



44 ELEMENTS. 

conditions of social and physical being must have steadily 
resisted the fulfilment of ideal purpose, and kept it con 
scious of inward checks and contradictions, as if some 
opposing principle exerted a power of will equal to its 
own, working through inexorable outward forces. To 
have impregnated all Nature with this personal strife of 
good and evil for the soul of man, testifies to a developed 
moral consciousness, which could only have resulted from 
permanent external conditions of resistance. These con 
ditions are not far to seek. 

While the Indian branch of the Aryan family, from 
causes already given, sank their native energy in over 
mastering social and religious systems that rivalled the 
uniformity of Nature, the Iranians doubtless hovered for 
awhile on the high, cool shelves of the Hindu Koh, whose 
energizing climate is shown in the well-made, industrious, 
and spirited Tajiks and Kafirs of modern time, the true 
representatives, in speech and physique, of the old Iranian 
type. 1 Thence they descended into the Bactrian highlands, 
a rugged region of alternating heat and cold, where climatic 
contrasts combined with Turanian nomadic tribes to make 
their agricultural life a constant struggle with enemies both 
physical and human, in which ceaseless vigilance was the 
price of victory. On one side the mountain heights and 
snows ; on the other the varieties of soil and scenery that 
promised due reward to wise choice and determined will. 
In these cradle-lands of Iranian energy the free Afghan 
tribes of our day, however degenerated by native feuds 
and foreign diplomacy, doubtless retain the marks of these 
old Aryan conditions. Bold, vigorous clans, given to labor, 
and passionately fond of personal freedom, they are ren 
dered contentious, and even inclined to treachery, by the 
hard necessities of their life. 2 The old Iranian tribes had 

1 Hellwald s Russians in Central Asia, pp. 97, 101-2 ; and Hutton: Central Asia, p, 257. 

2 Spiegel : Eranische Alter thumskunde, i. 311. 



THE MORAL SENSE. 45 

to pay their way by steady labor on a rugged soil. The 
seasons made its results uncertain, and malice lurked in 
summer drought and winter storm. The farmer must have 
one hand free to fight off Turanian marauders ; so that the 
soldier had a social respect in Iran which he could never 
reach in India. The Aryan will in India bent before gods ; 
in Iran it bloomed into heroes. The primitive man, or 
king, becomes in Hindu legend Yama, god of the future 
world; in Iran he is Yima, builder of paradise in the 
present world : and this thoroughly human master yields 
at last to the too powerful temptations of success, thereby 
losing his kingdom. The lie by which Yima fell, ever 
afterwards the type of all sin for the Persian conscience, 
was evidently man s infidelity to that implied contract with 
the stern forces of Nature by which he was obliged to pur 
chase all he possessed by steady toil: The hero of Iranian 
legend is ever the truth-teller, and his moral power must 
be as great as his physical. This admiration of truth was 
probably a measure of the difficulties in the way of main 
taining it; perhaps also of its rarity. We are disposed to 
think that whatever of justice there may be in the reputa 
tion of the later Persians for insincerity, in contrast with 
the constant exaltation of truth and reproof of falsehood 
in the religious literature of the nation, may have had its 
origin in the inexorable terms of a strife with Man and 
Nature which was apt to prove too severe even for a never- 
forgotten ideal. The strife of petty clans, the law of the 
stronger, the precariousness of property, the caprice of 
the climate, the seeming tricks and lapses of Nature from 
her promises, were all causes of demoralization ; while the 
free spirit of the mountaineer, the personal energy of the 
race, its habits of industry, and its aim to redeem Nature 
to productive uses, stimulated honor and faith. These 
ideals asserted themselves the more strongly for the peril 
in which they stood, and the constant necessity for their 



46 ELEMENTS. 

warning and rebuke. The purely heroic legends, which 
in Iran take the place occupied in India by dreams of 
spiritual absorption, even among Kshattriya chieftains of 
the solar and lunar races, and by rivalries of saints with 
deities in prayer and penance, are ample evidence of the 
real and practical stress of this struggle with the condi 
tions of life. 

The whole plateau of Iran was as suggestive of the war 
of elements as it was provocative of human struggle to 
master them. It is a world of broken, heaving strata, " a 
Cyclopean workshop," 1 whose violent contrasts of fertility 
and desolation are results of the latest convulsions of the 
planet. Its sharp transitions of temperature and relief 
might well have seemed pronounced hostilities of will, 
bits of fixed or capricious purpose, living mutual contra 
dictions set face to face. Here was indeed a theatre for 
the opening of the historic epos of the human will ! A 
grand natural symbolism of moral conflict, of success and 
failure, of duty and opportunity, girt by rewards and pen 
alties, prodigality and hopeless waste, was the unwritten 
Bible of a strife between hostile principles for the mastery 
of the world : enormous snowy ranges, half-extinct vol 
canoes, amidst zones of cold ; 2 salt deserts that still close 
up around Persian towns, and border paradises of verdure 
and flowers ; the mocking mirage, the moving sand-col 
umn ; hot blasts of summer and sweeping winter storms ; 
luxuriant vales where the rose and nightingale reigned, 
and barren, waterless reaches that defied culture and 
awed the husbandman as with colossal hate ; insects vora 
cious and poisonous that swarmed in the coast-country to 
the south, 3 and the great Turanian wilderness on the north, 
with its predatory tribes, and the eternal march of sun 

1 Gobineau: Les Perses, \. 152. 

2 As old a writer as Justin describes Parthia as possessed by extremes of heat and cold 
Geographical Character of Iran, MSS i. 32. 

3 Braun: Gemdlde der Mohammedanischen Welt, pp. 299-350. 



THE MORAL SENSE. 47 

and stars through the alternations of day and night, over it 
all ! Here was indeed the fit arena for the hates of Ormuzd 
and Ahriman ; for the war of Mithra, fertilizer of deserts, 
against the Daevas of darkness and cold ; for the holy work 
of Avesta-saints, the destruction of noxious creatures from 
the benignant earth ! A land, too, for divine legends, 
where heroism makes the saint. The sand-floods of Gobi 
have covered hundreds of towns. 1 The volcanic rifts of 
Daghestan are still a terror to the traveller. 2 The quick 
sands of Khorassan swallow caravans in a moment 3 The 
prodigious vegetation of Mazanderan, land of demonic and 
magic lore for the Iranian imagination, impenetrable and 
dank, still propagates disease, and drives the people in 
summer to the highlands for safety. 4 One third of Seistan, 
the home of legendary and epic heroes, is moving sand, 
the rest a rich mould ; and the climate oscillates between 
violent extremes. 5 The undulating hills and rich plains 
of Azerbijan tremble with subterranean fires, and the sand 
storm and naphtha-flame were in very truth pillars of cloud 
and fire that moved " along the astonished lands." 6 The 
fertile oasis of Balkh, " mother of cities," is girt with 
waterless desert plains, where the fierce Scythian still 
sweeps over the steppes upon the husbandmen and their 
villages, like the hordes of demons whom Firdusi s heroes 
had to fight. The paradise of Cabul is set amidst the 
terrors of mountains that frown from a height of eleven 
thousand feet, and above that rise for eight thousand 
more, white with eternal frost ; relaxing their awful brows 
as they look down on the " joyousness of silver streams 
and emerald gardens, glowing beneath a sapphire sky," 7 
where the first glance of the sun has startled all seeming 
sterility into instant splendor, like a creative word. In 

1 Hutton: Central Asia, p. 348. z Von Thielmann: Journey in the Caucasus. 

3 Markham s Persia, p. 334. < Markham s Persia, p. 346. 

5 Ferrier: Caravan Journeys in Persia, etc., p. 427. 

6 See Lesley s Report on Coal (1862). 1 Harlan s Agricultural Report, 1854. 



48 ELEMENTS. 

fact, Persia properly has two climates, a warm and a cold, 
the narrow, dry, but palmy strip on the southern coast; 
and the land of passes, to the centre and north, cut by 
deep gorges and rising into rugged heights, 1 wondrously 
colored by the living light, or swept by arctic snows. 
Travellers tell us that no tracks in the world are more 
difficult than those between the great towns of Persia, 
across Alpine passes, which only mules can traverse, even 
after the many ages of civilization that have succeeded 
each other in the land. 2 As you approach Persia from 
the west, you are met by a barrier ten thousand feet 
high; and through this mountain rampart the resolute 
and persistent streams fail not to cut their way to the 
Mesopotamian plains, turning at right angles to their 
natural course between the limestone ridges, and making 
for great rifts in the crystalline mass. 3 In such wondrous 
figure does Nature reflect the majestic opening of the his 
tory of personality, another Avesta writ in mountains 
and floods ; first real consciousness of the freedom to 
choose and to achieve. 

Such was the physical environment of the Iranian tribes ; 
such the school of their imagination and conscience. How 
profound was the effect on both, we may see in that im 
portant chapter of the Vendidad, which gives a list of the 
evils created by Ahriman to infect the different regions of 
Iran. Whether this curious passage enumerates, as has 
been generally supposed, the successive migrations of the 
Aryan tribes, or, as is more probable, the different coun 
tries opened to Zoroastrian faith, it at all events describes 
salient experiences of the people, and shows how closely 
physical and moral elements were associated in their 

1 Kiepert: Lehrbuch der Alien Geographic, p. 63. 
3 A. Arnold, in Contemporary Review, June, 1876. 
8 Loftus: Travels in Chaldea, p. 310. 



THE MORAL SENSE. 49 

minds. Some of the evils specified are obviously marks 
of developed forms of religion, with positive rites. 

" As the first best of regions, I, Ahuramazda, produced Airyana- 
Vaejo, of good capacities. Thereupon, as opposed to it, Angro-main- 
yush, the deadly, formed a mighty serpent (storm-cloud) and frost 
(snow) from the Daevas : ten months of winter and two of summer, 
and dire disasters from the snow. As the second best, I produced Gdu. 
Thereupon Angro-mainyush formed a pestilence fatal to cattle. As 
third, I produced Marv, the righteous ; then Angro-mainyush formed 
war and pillage. As fourth, I produced fortunate BdkhdhL with lofty 
banner ; then Angro-mainyush formed insects and poisonous plants 
["hostile horsemen," Harlez}. As fifth, Nisdi; and Angro-main 
yush formed the curse of unbelief. As sixth, Haroyu (Herat), the 
water-diffusing ; Angro-mainyush produced hail and poverty. As 
seventh, Vaekereta; and Angro-mainyush produced the witch. As 
eighth, Urvd, abounding in pastures ; Angro-mainyush, the curse of 
devastation [" crimes," Harlez\. As ninth, Khnenta; Angro-main 
yush, the inexpiable deeds [of lust] against nature. As tenth, the 
fortunate Haraqaiti ; Angro-mainyush, the wickedness of burying 
the dead. As eleventh, Haetmnat, the brilliant; Angro-mainyush, 
evil sorceries. As twelfth, Ragha, with three races ; Angro-main 
yush, the curse of over-scepticism. As thirteenth, Chakhra, the 
strong ; Angro-mainyush, the evil deed of burning the dead. As 
fourteenth, Varena ; Angro-mainyush, untimely periods of women 
(ill-boding omens), and non-Aryan plagues (invasions ?). As fif 
teenth, Land of the Seven Rivers (India) ; Angro-mainyush, untimely 
menstruations and irregular fevers. As sixteenth, those who dwell 
without ramparts on the sea-coast ; Angro-mainyush, frost from the 
Daevas. " Far gar d, i. 

The Zend commentary adds, " There are other fortunate 
regions, valleys, hills, and plains." 1 

The length of this list of places and evils, its artificial 
construction, the institutional nature of some of the ills 
mentioned, and especially the resolution of all this experi 
ence into the dual action of principles embodied as persons, 
indicate a comparatively late origin of the chapter. But its 

1 This translation is from Haug (abridged): Essays, etc., pp. 227-230. 



50 ELEMENTS. 

testimony to the persistent action of the physical causes 
above-mentioned is all the more impressive. 

Such a process of abstraction and personification could 
not be the product of an early stage of culture. It is more 
intellectual than that monotheistic tendency which, both 
in the Semite and the Aryan, is itself of later origin than 
polytheism. Its rise in the Iranian tribes, under the con 
ditions now stated, must be explained by the intensity of 
their imagination and will. It is highly improbable that 
in the distinct and elaborate form in which we find this 
conception of a world-strife in the Avesta, and especially in 
the earliest Gathas, it was very widely spread among those 
tribes. The seat of its elaboration was probably the Bac- 
trian, or eastern borders of Iran ; and the manner in which 
the worshippers of Daevas, or false gods, are spoken of 
points to a reaction on older and less spiritual beliefs. 
The moral protest that informs it proves a great move 
ment of reformation, to which the name of Zoroaster was 
attached, but whose roots were in powerful tendencies 
fostered by the physical and social causes we have thus 
far traced. 



DEVELOPMENT. 
I. 

AVESTAN DUALISM. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 

OF the long process by which this spiritual and moral 
dualism was wrought out, history gives little record. 
When we first find the faith of Zoroaster, the old fire- 
cultus has found a twofold personality, the substance of 
which is this: Ahuramazda, "the living creator," 1 " all- 
wise Lord," 2 " source of light for the world," 3 " creator of 
the stars by his inborn fire " (or " mingling glory with 
the lights" 4 ), and " by his intellect, of the good crea 
tures, ruled by the inborn good mind ( Voku-manS), Thou, 
heavenly Mazda, makest them grow," 5 " giving with hands 
full of help to the good," " by the warmth of his pure fire 
strengthening the good things," 6 " creator of all good 
through the tongue of the good mind," " father of all 
rectitude" (or "purity" 7 ) in thought, word, and deed, 
" appearing in best thought and rectitude," " giving per 
fection, immortality, wealth, and devotion," 8 is opposed 
at every point by Angro-mainyus, "the hurtful spirit," 9 or 
"the evil mind " (Akem-mano), "spirit of lies " or destruc 
tion, who poisons the mind with his impurity of thought, 
word, and deed. The one, creates all that works for the 
good of man, physical and moral ; the other in pure moral 
opposition, and at the same time, produces all evil thoughts 
and things. Thus all things have their moral and physical 
contraries in one. 

1 Haug: Essays, etc., p. 302. 2 Spiegel: Avesta, Ed. iii., Einleitung, i. 

3 Yafna, xliii. 2 ; Haug. * Yafna, xxxi. 7 ; Spiegel. 

6 Ibid., xxxi. 7 ; Haug. 6 Ibid., xliii. 4 ; Haug. 

7 Ibid., xlvi. 2 ; Spiegel. 8 Ibid., xlvii. i and 2 ; Haug. 

9 Haug : Essays, etc., p. 304. 



54 DEVELOPMENT. 

These two spirits or principles are called primeval twins; 
nor is there any distinction affirmed as to their origin. Good 
and evil, right and wrong, exist before them in the nature 
of things, it would seem ; since they are said to have 
chosen between these, each his own part according to its 
wisdom or its folly, its truth or falsehood. 1 They simply 
are here, stand before the soul, and it must choose between 
them. It takes its part and pays its vows. These two 
united have created the facts of " life, death, and how the 
world shall be." 2 The increaser says to the destroyer, 
" Neither our thoughts, doctrines, wills, vows, words, acts, 
laws, nor our souls agree." 3 The soul of a man cannot 
belong to both : " May we be such as help the renovation 
of the world, and the wise spirits shall help us. This is to 
be united with wisdom." 4 " Ahuramazda hears the help 
ers of good. May he guide me by his perfect wisdom ! " 
" May thy kingdom come ! O Ahura, give good to the 
pure man who lives righteously." 5 " So falls on the pow 
ers of falsehood {Drujo) annihilation. They who enlarge 
the glory of the good pass to the abode of the good mind 
(Vo/m-mano), of the wise {Mazda}, of the righteous 
(As/ia)." 6 " Therefore perform the commandments which 
Mazda has given to men ; for they are the perdition of the 
wicked, but profit to the pure, the fountain of happiness." 7 
" To the good the spirit of the earth tells the everlasting 
laws given by thy intellect, which none can abolish " 8 (or 
"deceive" 9 ). 

Somehow by the very coming of good things come 
their negations, fired with living hate. " Ahriman bored 

1 Yafna, xxx. 5; Spiegel and Harlez. Haug translates "one created reality ; the other, 
non-reality" by which term he cannot mean nothingness, but falsehood. 

2 Yafna, xxx. 3 and 4. 

3 Yafna, xliv. 2 Haug, who does not think the two essentially opposed, translates "do 
not all these things follow us?" Yafna, xlv. 2. 

4 Yafna, xxx. 9 ; Haug, Harlez, Spiegel. B Yafna, Hi. 9. 

6 Yafna, xxx. 10; Spiegel. Haug says, " All perfect things are gathered there." 

7 Yafua, xxx. n. 8 Yafna, xliii. 6 ; Haug. 9 Harlez. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 55 

through the earth," says the Bundehesh, " so that it was 
rent by lies and strife, and at midday was dark as night." x 
Powers of good, spiritual and holy, sometimes represented 
as qualities, sometimes almost personal (on the verge of 
becoming so at least, the idea hovering between these on 
the wings of the imagination and feeling), aid Ahuramazda 
and his good souls. Embattled hosts, forces of fraud, 
falsehood, destruction (Daevd\ war in the elements against 
them, to be resisted by prayer, by vows, by abjurations of 
their service, by praises of the best, and by good thoughts, 
words, and deeds. Indispensable is industry, raising cattle 
for food and wealth and progeny. " In Ahuramazda was 
the earth-spirit (Armaiti), in him the spirit that formed 
the cow when he made her paths that she might go from 
the tiller of the soil to him who does not cultivate it." 2 
" Of these two, she prefers him who cultivates with care 
filled by the good spirit. But he who does not till her, but 
worships the Daevas, has no share in her good tidings." 3 
Ahura protects the settled life of the (shepherd or) tiller. 
" Listen not to the teachings of the wicked [robber tribes, 
doubtless], for he gives to destruction house, village, dis 
trict, province ; but kill them with the sword," or " drive 
them away with strokes." 4 " The wicked," says Zoroas 
ter, " protect those who oppose the holy and forbid the 
cattle to roam through the lands ; whoever drives them 
out [foes of agriculture] follows the ways of wisdom in 
what concerns the herds." 5 

These passages certainly seem to refer to the herdsman s 
life as opposed to that of the wild brigand, or nomad in the 
worst sense. Harlez does not think it means anything like 
settled agricultural industry. 6 So Spiegel. Haug s transla 
tions are free and bold, and cover fixed settlements. But 

1 Bundehesh. Justi, chap. iii. 

2 Yafna, xxxi. 9; Haug : " to call upon him to till the soil." 

3 Yafna, xxxi. 10 ; Haug. 4 Yafna, xxxi. 18. 
B Yafna, xlv. ; Harlez. 6 A vesta, ii. 28. 



56 DEVELOPMENT. 

at all events it is industry that is enforced as against idle 
ness, amidst severe discouragements from foes human or 
demoniac, or both. " Whoso cares for the cattle with 
diligence is in the service of the good mind," x or " shall 
inhabit the fields of the righteous and good " 2 (that is, 
paradise). These wicked interlopers must not be spared. 
" I will remove from thy community disobedience and the 
evil mind, the despising of relationship, the Druj nearest 
the work [that is, idleness], the disdainer of obedience, the 
bad measure of the fodder of the cattle." 3 It is difficult 
to understand who were the Daeva-worshippers who be 
longed to the army of Ahriman. In a confession of faith, 
which is evidently of later origin than what has already 
been quoted as Zoroastrian, they are spoken of as sorcer 
ers and robbers (of the earth, or cattle), and as doing 
damage to the quarters, or clans, of the true worshippers. 4 
The Avesta gives no account of the origin of these unbe 
lieving tribes. They are taken as existing facts, known as 
children of Ahriman by their unbelief in the pure law and 
their corresponding habits, just as the Zoroastrians were 
known as of Ahura s creation by their creed and conduct. 
It should seem that they were Ahriman s offset to the 
humanity produced by the Good Principle. As the Daevas 
are positively said to be propagators of lies and unbelief, 
something of a speculative nature probably entered into 
the grounds of strife. 

But that the sense of moral reprobation had at least as 
much to do with it as a difference of creed is evident from 
the stress laid on personal character, and the root of the 
dualism itself in thoroughly ethical contrasts. This ser 
vice of Ahura, this hate of Ahriman, is a living fire ; the 
symbol has mounted to the heavens of conduct. And if 
the infidel is hateful because he rejects the holy law, the 

1 Yafna, xxxiii. 3 ; Spiegel. 2 Yacna, xxxiii. 3 ; Haug. 

3 Ibid., xxxiii. 4 jiSpiegel. 4 Ibid., xii. ; Haug. Were they Turanian raiders? 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 57 

law itself is holy only because it commands things manly, 
becoming, just, and helpful, which things to hate and 
persecute is infidelity. 

Let it be noted, then, that whatever the original germs 
in natural phenomena out of which this dualistic personi 
fication was evolved, its substance is the moral earnestness 
of personal will. As we go on to those portions of the 
Avesta which represent a later stage of it than Zoroaster s 
Gathas, we find the usual twofold evolution, of extensive 
application on the one hand, and intensive confinement 
on the other. The hosts of spiritual forces, good and 
evil, multiply around the central ideas of righteousness 
and iniquity ; while the saving warfare tends to run down 
into the narrow ruts of petty ritualism. From the oldest 
and simplest Gathas down to the latest Yashts must have 
required nearly a thousand years of growth; 1 and not only 
do the details of religious personification accumulate to 
the last, 2 but the wearisome iteration of names and powers 
in the prayers and praises of the ritual, and of symbolical 
gestures and forms of purification, and the comminutia of 
religious service upon all the various kinds of waters and 
fires, come to surpass all other known rites, till the fire on 
the altar has survived the spirit of the rite, and Zoroas- 
trianism remains a monument of the self-destructiveness 
of personal worship. But for a time this evolution of 
Dualism was a form of living purpose, pressing into uni 
versal meaning, and inflaming all Nature with its fiery 
spirit. The Aryan instinctively passed from the abstract 
to the concrete, and the moral quality was sure to identify 
itself with some material relation. In the Vendidad (or 
law for expelling Daevas), still more in the Yashts (prayers 
and praises with legends), the objects and qualities at first 
blended in the substance of Ahura and his work became 

1 1200-400 B.C. Haug : Essays, etc., 262-65. 

2 Spiegel : Eran, Altertk. ii. and Avesta, Bd. iii., Einleitung, describes them all. 



58 DEVELOPMENT. 

positive persons, " multiplications " of him ; l " benefi 
cent immortals ; " like the Vedic Adityas. These were : 
Vohu-man6 (the good mind) ; Asha-vahista (best purity) ; 2 
Khshathra-vairya, wealth-giver (desired kingdom;) 3 Ar- 
maiti (spirit of earth, or obedience) ; " all of like mind, 
speech, action, like their father and maker; each beholding 
the soul of another, meditating the best life." 4 Add to 
these, Haurvatat and Ameretat (health and immortality), 
and we have, with Ahura himself, the sevenfold personal 
ity of righteousness, against which are drawn up Ahriman 
and his six spirits of evil, will against will. Later, these 
powers that work good become distributed through the 
material world as presiding genii over animals, healing 
plants, remedies, metals, food, all things from which 
benefit was derived. 5 The pure order of worship, em 
bodied in the sacrifice, as Haoma, becomes a beautiful 
youth, who stands by Zoroaster in the flame to protect and 
teach him. 6 And the very sentences of holy writ (A/mna- 
vairya) are no less than a divine being, forever victorious 
(Honovar). Then come hosts of Yazatas and Fravashis, 
genii, and spirits of the just, or the higher selves of good 
men, hovering over their conflict of good and evil, watchers 
and guardians of the right, for these ideal souls are all 
on the side of good, and are invoked individually by the 
names of good men, by the hundred and thousand at a 
time, covering surely a long history, of which we know 
no more ; 7 and against these, innumerable Daevas, Yatus, 
Drujas, personified evil habits, diseases, monstrosities, or 
other horror in the phenomena of Nature or the imagina 
tion of man. 8 And the good spirits gather about the east 
ern mountain Alborz (Hara-berezaiti) , the world-centre, 

1 Darmesteter: Ormazd et Ahriman t p. 43. 2 Haug, 306. 

8 Perfect king, Harlez. 4 Fravardin Yasht, 83, 84. 

6 Darmesteter : Hanrvetat et A meretat. 6 Yafna, ix. 

1 See Boissier: Religion Romaine, ii. 131. Fravardin Yasht. 
8 See Harlez: Avesta. i. 43. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 59 

whence Mithra rises with his horses of the Dawn to give 
light and safety to the world, where there is no night, nor 
cold, nor heat. 1 And the demons gather at Arezi^ra, the 
world of darkness, and the gate of hell. 2 

To these personal antagonisms correspond physical 
ones, happy cultivated lands of believers, loved of the 
earth, and of Ahura, and helped by all useful creatures, 
the cow, the cock, the dog, the ox, on one side; and on 
the other, rude wastes, noxious creatures, dark and deadly 
forces, like storms and droughts, and scourges that can 
and must be expelled from the holy earth. 

" Who rejoices the earth, O Ahura ? He who adorns it with grain 
and grass, and fruit-trees ; who dries the moist lands, and waters the 
dry places." 

" Whoso cultivates barley, cultivates virtue. When the wheat ap 
pears, the demons hiss ; when sprouts come, they whine ; when the 
stalks stand up, they cry ; and when the grain is in ear, they flee in 
rage and despair." 

" The earth must not lie untilled, but be ploughed, that she may 
be no longer childless, but produce bulls for man, and be their beauti 
ful dwelling-place. Whoever tills her with both hands, to him she 
bears fruit, as a lover brings a son to her beloved. Whoever tills her 
not, to him she says, * Thou shalt stand at another s gate begging food 
of those who have much. " 3 

To destroy noxious insects is the penance for sins. 
Plant the wilderness, drain the marsh, turn streams into 
the sands, raise flocks and herds, is the battle-cry of this 
race that goes forth to possess the world and conquer evil 
by force of productive work. The sun in his victorious 
course, dispelling darkness and turning death to life, was 
the eternal monitor to this human war. And the helpers 
were ever at hand. 

"Praise to thee, O holy Bull, who givest increase; praise to thee, 
gift of the Creator for the pure who are yet unborn ! Rise, O Clouds, 

1 Mihr- Yasht. 2 y en dida.d, xix. 140-147. 

3 Vendidad, iii. 11-14; 99-108; 79-95. 



6O DEVELOPMENT. 

come ! let the waters fall and spread abroad, thousand ten thousand 
fold waves, to destroy disease and death ! Rise, O Sun, with swift 
steeds over Alborz, and illumine the creatures, on the path which 
Ahura hath made ! The holy word says, I will consecrate thy birth 
and growth, thy body and strength ; will make thee rich in children, 
in milk and fatness, in the cattle which roam the fields. Rise, O 
Moon, that holdest the germs of the herds ! 1 Rise, O splendid Stars 
[or, hid in depths], ye who hold the seed of the rain." 2 

The stars fight in their courses against Ahriman. The 
battle of the star Tistrya with the demon Apaosha (or the 
drought), as two horses, in the great sea Vouru-kasha, 3 is 
the old storm-myth of the Vedas, expanded and endowed 
with higher meaning. On the other hand, the later my 
thology, probably under Semitic influence, treats the seven 
planets in the old Chaldean fashion, as evil powers warring 
on the orderly constellations, which they seemed to invade 
like roving nomads with their ever-varying aspects and 
moods. 4 The earth itself, as the soul of the primal Bull, 
makes complaint to Ahuramazda that it is torn in pieces ; 
to which Ahura replies that this (which means ploughing) 
is for the sake of harvests for man ; and Zarathustra is 
bidden to teach this gospel. 5 Perhaps the soul of the Bull 
is not the earth, but the cattle themselves, 6 the useful brute 
creation, whose weal and woe are matters of profoundest 
interest for this religion. From the seed of the slain Bull 
(slain by Ahriman) come, in the later myth, the progeni 
tors of all animals and plants. 7 Animals are pure or im 
pure, by rigid rule; but their relation to good and evil 
is determined not so much by their moral as by their phy 
sical qualities ; often by some obscure or incidental asso 
ciation, or by transference from the old Aryan myth of 
the elemental strife, as in the case of the beaver, by the 

1 The dews. 2 Vendidad, xxi. 

3 The atmosphere (Darmesteter). 4 Minokkired, viii. i ; Bundehesh, v. 

Yafna, xxix. ; Haug. The Bundehesh says it was comforted by being shown the 
Ferouer of Zarathustra (chap. iv. ). 

6 This is Roth s view ; the other is Haug s. 1 Bundehesh, chap. x. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 6 1 

resemblance of his color to that of the light in the cloud; 1 
or of the ant, by that of the cloud to an ant-hill, covering 
up a swarming life ; 2 or of serpent-like animals in general, 
which inherit the bad name of the ancient cloud-serpent. 3 
Ardvi-gura, the strong healer, pours her waters for the re 
lief of men and heroes. Saviors from disease and death 
are running streams and growing trees. The Bundehesh 
makes a mighty rain from heaven destroy evil creatures 
and Tistrya take the form of a white horse to remove the 
poisonous smell of their dead bodies. 4 But whatever the 
origin of these notions about certain classes of animals, 
such is the force of religious association that most of these 
impure creations are regarded by the later Parsis as really 
injurious. 5 As in other religions, traditional doctrine had 
to be reconciled with facts by feats of accommodation. 
The Bundehesh, which classes animals by external char 
acters, mostly arbitrary and accidental ones, makes 
Ahura say to the falcon, who, as the lightning, is one of 
his creation : " You do Ahriman s will rather than mine, 
since. you destroy so many smaller birds. But if I had 
not made you, Ahriman would have done so, and made 
you so great that no small bird could have lived." 6 
Ahriman made the peacock a harmless bird ; but it was 
only to show that he could make a good thing. All grow 
ing things were for man s use. The great waters, which 
the star Tistrya had to win from the evil demon by a ter 
rible struggle, held the seeds of all plants, which fall in the 
rain upon the earth ; and ten thousand of them are for the 
healing of as many diseases. 7 Haoma, death-dispelling, 
shall refresh the immortals. Every flower belongs to a 

1 Darmesteter : Onnazd et Ahriman, 281, again the old storm-myth. 

2 See Rig-Veda.^ iv. 19, 9. 

3 Darmesteter ; Ormazd et Ahriman, 282-83. These explanations, however apparently 
fanciful, have undoubtedly very strong foundations in mythological evolution. 

4 Bundehesk,\\\. 5 Darmesteter: Ormazd et Ahriman, 285. 

6 Darmesteter: Ormazd et Ahriman, 286; Bundehesh, xiv. 

7 Bundehesh, IK. 



62 DEVELOPMENT. 

guardian god. 1 Seventeen kinds of water were purified 
by Zoroaster. 2 Into the great sea there run a hundred 
thousand golden conduits from the mountain at the earth s 
centre (Hara-berezaiti], and the earth is fertilized, in aid 
of human toil, by streams and seas. 3 " Slowly through 
ages rises the great mountain to the everlasting Light," 
and two thousand mountains spring from it to hold the 
earth firm. 4 

The paradise of the Avesta is the transfiguration of 
labor. It is a region of nine hundred kingdoms, full of 
cattle, beasts of burden, watch-dogs, and ruddy flames. 
The weapons of Yima are a golden spear, for piercing 
the earth ; also a golden plough (perhaps shovel) : with 
these he brings forth its fruits, expanding it threefold. 5 
Work was the true " purification," live work of men on 
Nature. The facts of the world were not to be dodged ; 
the senses were not to be ignored. The material was not 
put over against the spiritual as essentially evil. The good 
Ahura had made good things, and good laws for expand 
ing their area by complying with their conditions and 
paying their price. There stands the world, visible as the 
fire that animates it, our battle-ground to be redeemed 
from physical evils and from the moral evil which poisons 
and desolates it. This practical dualism was no dream, 
but sober earnest. Even long slumber is a demon to be 
spurned. 6 

" The cock lifts up his voice with every splendid dawn, and cries : 
Arise, ye men! praise the Best! destroy the Daeva that would put 
back the world into sleep! Long sleeping becomes you not. Turn 
not away from the three best things, right thoughts, right words, 
right works ; turn from the opposite of these ! Arise, tis day, says 
one to his bedfellow ; who rises first, comes first to paradise. . . . 
Bring fire, and be blest with herds and offspring." 7 

1 Bundekesh, xxvii. 2 Ibid , xxi. 3 fl,;^ xjjj. 4 ibid., xii. 

5 Vendidad, ii 6 y en didad, xi. 26-36. Vendidad, xviii. 36-60. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 63 

There shall be no asceticism ; no self-torture ; no self- 
contempt; no excessive fasting nor violent grief ; nothing 
that can enervate the soul and body by whose toil the 
world shall be redeemed with the righteousness of man. 

" Tis an offence to the earth when the mourners for good people 
go about covered with dirt and loudly lamenting." " He who does 
not eat, has no strength to live according to right order, nor to 
work." 1 "To be helpless and enervated is the nature of a Druj 
(evil demon)." 2 

Here was a religion that could make heroes, but never a 
monk. It poured out imprecations on all that caused sick 
ness or death. It erected its altars to medicine, and made 
healing the noblest art. 3 Thrita, the hero, is honored 
as the first physician, as in the Vedas also, where he is, 
as might be supposed from the difference of the races, a 
saint, and the Yazata Airyama is invoked to smite sick 
ness and death. 4 " We praise thee, O Earth, our dwelling- 
place ; and thee, the lord thereof, Ahuramazda ! and may 
there be in my dwelling, summer and winter, whatever 
brings health and long life to cattle, to men, and the chil 
dren of the pure." 5 It allowed no deed to be put off till 
the morrow which could be done to-day. It is wholly in 
the spirit of the earlier faith that the later Bundehesh says, 
" Remember, in the resurrection the lost ones will say to 
you, Why did you not teach me to do right, that so I 
might have been saved?" 

The household and the clan (town) must be purified by 
the same holy war. 

1 Vendidad, iii. 36, 37 ; 112-114. Harlez s note on this seems unreasonable. 

2 Vendidad, xviii. 72. 

3 The art of healing is made the subject of curious provisions. The surgeon shall make trial 
of his skill on the Dae va-worshipper first ; and if he fails three times on the true worshipper, he 
shall not try again. His prices are fixed by law for men and beasts. Of the three kinds of 
physicians, users of knives, herbs, and holy spells, they who use the last, the sacred formulas, 
are the best. Vendidad, vii. 94-120. 

* Vendidad, xx. n ; xxii. 6 Vafna, xvii. 53-$$. 



64 DEVELOPMENT. 

" May obstinacy be destroyed by obedience in this dwelling, dis 
cord by peace, avarice by generosity, vanity by wisdom, lies by truth 
fulness, that the Immortals may long bless it with good maintenance 
and friendly help ! Never be the splendor extinguished of prosperity 
or progeny, that we may shine with purity, and see thee, O Ahura, 
attaining unto thee ( without end, Harlez}" " May there be given 
to this clan purity, dominion, profit, majesty, splendor!" 1 

Profoundest of all antagonisms was that of Life and 
Death ; and in that centred the meaning of work. By his 
whole nature the Iranian was a reformer of the actual 
world, by creating whatever belonged to life, and destroy 
ing whatever belonged to death. Life was the fire he 
worshipped ; living growth his ideal good. No sin more 
deadly than suicide. 2 Never should die the flame of his 
enthusiasm for consuming all morbific and fatal things, 
for turning the dead clod into living organism, for sweep 
ing the lines of cultivation farther and farther through drift 
ing sands and wide salt plains and snowy wastes, like 
quickening Mithra, life-giving Haoma, and Ormuzd, source 
of fire. Death he put far from him, his absolute negation : 
no contact with its decay. Let the corpse be carried out, 
away from living earth, from living streams, from the abodes 
of the living, and committed to the open Dakhma, and the 
solvent of the desert air; let him that has touched it be 
impure, and the demon be expelled from member to mem 
ber till she leaves his body as a fly. 3 For letting it remain, 
even though but a dog s, in the ground two years, there is 
no atonement forever. 4 Not for fifty years does the earth 
become pure again. Not till dust be turned to dust, does 
the very Dakhma bear to be approached by the pure. 5 

Death is the chief weapon of Ahriman. In the spirit of 
the whole faith, the later myth tells us that he begins by slay 
ing the primeval creatures of Ahura, the man Gayomard 

1 Ya^na, lix. 2 Haug : Essays, etc., 313. 3 Vendidad, viii. 

* Vendidad, iii. 135. 5 V en didad, vii. 125, 127. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 65 

and the Bull, who have lived in heavenly bliss six thousand 
years, a celestial union. 1 Thus is opened the long world- 
tragedy, by an act typical of the whole. But the seed of 
Gayomard was purified by the sun, and the whole race of 
man was born from it, to wage war against the murderer 
till he should be utterly subdued. 2 Of a divine necessity, 
life oversvvept death just as good conquered evil; for both 
were one conception. " The soul of the righteous desires 
immortality and the strength that overwhelms the wicked," 3 
or " attains to immortality, but that of the wicked has ever 
lasting punishment." 4 According to his choice in this life, 
the other holds him to the master to whom he belongs ; he 
goes to the " house of hymns " (Gard-demdna} or the 
"house of destruction" (Dnljo- demand), across the "bridge 
(Chinvai) of the judge " or " gatherer," where the ques 
tioning of his conscience concerning his life determines 
whether there be width enough for him to pass, and the 
angels or the demons take their own. 5 The wicked spirits 
tremble when they breathe the perfume of the spirit of the 
pure. " Vohu-manc> rises from his golden throne in para 
dise, and asks, How, O pure One, hast thou come hither, 
from the mortal to the immortal life?" 

" Joyously go the pure souls to the golden throne of 
Ahura and his immortal ones." 6 " For he who knows 
purity, knows Ahura; to such he is father, brother, 
friend." 7 " Teach me to know thy laws, O Ahura, that I 
may walk by the help of thy pure spirit, beholding and 
communing with thee." 8 Through one s own soul he is 
justified or condemned. A fragment from one of the latest 
writings of the faith (Minokhired), but fully in the spirit of 
the earlier ones, describes the soul of the pure after death 
as met on its way by a sweet wind from the mid-day, in 

1 Bitndekesk, xv. 2 Bundehesh, xv. 

8 Yafna, xliv. 7 ; Harlez ; Spiegel. * Ya(na, xlv. 7 ; Haug. 

6 Vendidad, xix. 95, 96, 107. 6 Vendidad, xix. 108 ; 103, 104. 

7 Yafna, xliv. ; Haug, xlv. 8 Yafna, xxxiii., xxxiv. 



66 DEVELOPMENT. 

which comes the law of his own character, as a beautiful 
and stately maiden, who declares to him his own good 
words, thoughts, and deeds, and their heavenly rewards, 
and leads him to the divine ford, bestowed at Ahura s own 
command ; and the soul of the wicked, met in like manner 
by his own law, as an evil odor, which brings him to the 
great darkness without beginning, and the poison from 
Ahriman s hands. 1 How Christian dogma is here antici 
pated ! 

It is noticeable also that the parallel with Christian Dual 
ism is carried out in the creation of an evil humanity by 
Ahriman, in opposition to the good ; 2 only the curse is 
not a doom of depravity on the whole race, but the crea 
tion of wicked portions outside of the law. The war of 
elements in the old storm-cloud must transfuse the life oi. 
mankind and of the race. This appears in epos and his 
tory as the strife of Iran with Turan. Such the unceasing 
warfare for possession of the soul of man. 

Immortality, in the Avesta, is not involved in trans 
migration like that of Brahmanism, nor in nirvana, the 
Buddhist s refuge from transmigration ; it does not tend 
to absorption in Ahura; it does not mingle man with the 
brute, nor merge him with the god. It is distinctly and 
completely personal ; the beginning of that relation to the 
future which has given Christianity its hold upon the Aryan 
world. All the tragedy, all the poetry, which has gathered 
around the conception of the individual as a boundless 
possibility of good or evil, not in this life only, but for 
everlasting existence, has its germ in the religion of Iran. 
The Jews did not come out of their gloomy and shadowy 

1 See Spiegel s Khordah-Avesta^-xxKvm. The Bundekesh says that at the judgment 
" every one will see his own works, good or evil, as clear as white from black; each receives 
the reward of his doings; the good weep for the bad, and the bad for themselves." (Chap. 
xxxi ) Justi. 

2 Darmesteter: Ormazd et Ahriman, 287. P>ut the later mythology derives all races, in 
all the seven quarters of the world, as well as all the strange amorphous kinds of men with 
which imagination had peopled the wastes of Central Asia, from the seed of Gayomarcl. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 67 

Shed I till Persia had taught them in the exile this idea of 
the permanence of individual being ; nor did Christianity 
add anything to the positiveness of this older faith in a 
future existence. 

Man s infinite worth divides the universe and draws all 
living powers to the one or the other side. On him, their 
central sum and purpose, the poles of creation turn. And 
it is no mere strife of flesh and blood, but one of spirit 
against spirit waged in the world of moral volition. Here 
is a race that converts its sensualities into ideas that it 
may master them in their essence. It is will and it is pur 
pose that infects or purifies the elements; and nothing 
shall move man s desire or dread in them but their reflex 
of his own spiritual attractions to the light or to the dark. 
He surrounded himself with legions of intensely active 
wills, rank over rank, sphere beyond sphere, penetrating 
and animating Nature, giving significance to its forces and 
forms ; not moving in the play of harmony before the out 
ward eye, like the gods of the aesthetic Greek; not in 
mystical illusion, like the passive Hindu s, but arrayed 
against each other, like the warring hosts of Milton s Chris 
tian epic (which is but a modern Avesta), the rent republic 
of the spiritual universe in arms. The Platonic TO Sai/j,6- 
VLOV, the immeasurable ideal space through which the per 
fection of deity gradually descended into union with the 
human, was here brimming and seething with the deadly 
conflict of opposing wills. The Iranian Satan was no poor 
monster with nostrils fire-breathing, with horns and hoofs 
of beast ; no Lucifer fallen from heaven to play the rebel 
against God, on a throne of desperation and under omni 
potent thunderbolts of doom, but an invisible Presence, 
armed with personal power equal to his hate of good, 
infecting alike the outward and the inward worlds. The 
righteous purpose only could resist and overcome him; 
and its weapons were threefold. 



68 DEVELOPMENT. 

1. The spirit of Ahura: 

" O Father over the herds and over the just through his love of 
justice, over the pure creation through its purity : Thou manifest 
giver of good, whose greatness, goodness, and beauty we desire (to 
augment : ) ! May he protect us, direct us, by [our] purity, activity, 
liberality, and tenderness, with the fire of Ahura." 2 " Inquire of me, 
with a right spirit, of me, the Creator, who is ready to answer ; so 
shall it be well with thee, and thou shalt attain to purity if thou seek- 
est me." 3 

2. The word or law of Ahura (MdtJira-$pentd) . mean 
ing, first, the revelation through Zoroaster, probably the 
five Gathas ; then the three sacred formulas, especially 
Ahuna-vairya embodying the praise of obedience and 
purity, and succor to the poor, as the kingdom of God, 4 
which " was before the heavens or the earth, the righteous 
or the unrighteous powers," - - and of which the recitation 
should, like the Hindu Gayatri, bring salvation; but the 
taking away of any part of it, in utterance, banishment as 
far from heaven as the world is wide: 5 and as the priestly 
ritualism increased, the efficacy of words to save became 
extended to a host of formulas for invocation and service, 
until the Persian Bible, in common with all Bibles, became 
a missal of superstition ; and last, came the sacred author 
ity of spoken truth to punish and destroy lies. A word is 
the first of sanctions which are called mithras ; and of a 
word in this sense Mithra is the guardian and avenger. 
" Break not a promise (inithra), neither with a just man, 
nor an unbeliever," for it is for the good and the bad 
alike. He who lies to Mithra destroys the whole land; 

1 Harlez. 2 Yafnn, Ivii. 10-12 ; Spiegel. 

3 Vendidad, xviii. 18-20. All the powers, symbolical and spiritual, consecrated by the 
traditional faith as belonging to Ahura, were instrumental in his aid. Thus the Yashts say 
(xiii. 77) that Ahriman is driven back by Atar and Vohu-mano. or fire and good thought: as 
in the Vedas by Indra and Prayer ; that Asha^vafiista fire keeps guard over him in hell ; that 
the multitudinous Ferouers watch the wall which Ahura has built around the holy mountain. 

4 Spiegel; Khordak-Avesta, Bd. iii 3. 5 Yafna, xix. 12-15. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 69 

slays as many as a hundred evil doers. 1 "For Mithra can 
not be deceived. Those who deal not false with him, he 
brings out of all their trouble ; from the arms of liars he 
takes away might, from their feet strength, from their eyes 
sight, from their ears hearing. Mithra, who watches with 
ten thousand eyes, all-knowing, may not be deceived." 2 
Haug has well said that " the angel Rashnu-razishta, the 
lightest righteousness," whom the Yasht in his praise de 
scribes as present in all beings, places, and forms, repre 
sents the eternal laws of Nature and morality, like the 
Themis of the Greeks. 3 

3. Work: the sacred efficacy of labor; the praying, 
with the hands fulfilling the prayer, as real three thou 
sand years ago as to us to-day. The sweat of the brow 
was no curse to these builders of their heaven out of the 
conditions of the earth ; no bitter fruit of a Fall, as with 
the Hebrew. Praise and prayer went with it, service 
of God, redemption of man. Yima widened out the world, 
filled his paradise with cattle, beasts of burden, busy, 
happy men ; and the Earth answered his prayer and the 
stroke of his spear, or plough, with her increase ; and 
at command of Ahura, he drove his herds to milder 
climes, and bore the seeds of plants, and with work of 
hands and heel made a golden land, where harvests did 
not fail, where was no wrangling, no beggary, nor false 
hood, poverty, nor sickness, nor ravenous creature of 
Ahriman, all before his bitter fall. 4 So Egypt ascribed 
the plough to Osiris, the Greeks to Ceres, the Chinese to 
mythic kings ; the Vedic Hindus to the A^vins, " sons of 
the sky;" the Scythians thought it fell from heaven. 5 It 
was said that Hesiod, in his sentence, " the idle are ene 
mies of the gods," set a new law in place of the law of 
Oriental society. But Iran disproves the assertion. To 

1 Mihr-Yasht, i, 2 Mikr-Yaskt, 6. 3 Essays, etc., 205. 

4 Vendidad) ii. 5 Herod, iv. 5. 



70 DEVELOPMENT. 

the Mazdean belongs the honor of having clearly and 
practically conceived, through the moral and religious 
earnestness of his grasp on the stern conditions of life, 
that divine work* depends on human, 1 not only on man s 
hand-work, but the praise and prayer which, while fulfilling 
the law, assures its growth. "Grow, O Haoma, through my 
word." 2 

The whole of this spiritual armor against evil is summed 
up in one sentence, the ever-recurring formula, " Right- 
ness of thought, word, and deed; " often called " purity," 3 
and constantly associated with forms and rites of purifi 
cation, which are minutely detailed for priest and people 
in the Vendidad chapters, but by the very terms of the 
formula clearly centring in inward aspiration and moral 
endeavor. Neither thought, word, nor deed, alone suffices; 
but their integrity in the will. " Turn not away from the 
well-considered thought, the well-spoken word, the well- 
done action." 4 " Call him the true fire-priest, who the 
whole night seeks guidance from a righteous understand 
ing, fit for the bridge of judgment, and obtaining the life, 
righteousness, and perfection of paradise [the best life]." 
" Inquire, O Just One, of me, who am the Creator most 
bounteous and wise, and readiest to answer, inquire, and 
it shall be well with thee." 5 For indeed "purity" is no 
less than Ahuramazda himself, who is always called the 
" Pure One," and can be found only by the will that is at 
one with his. A perpetual warfare to redeem to its ori 
ginal goodness as his creation what his moral and physi 
cal opposite had poisoned, involved prescribed methods 
of procedure, based at first, there can be no doubt, on 

1 See Tistrya and Fravardin Yashts ; Spiegel. 2 Yafna, x. n. 

3 Asha. commonly rendered "purity," which was applied at once to gods and men, and 
which expressed at first the cosmic order, the religious norm and truth of things became the 
vague expression of moral order ; and the A sJiavan man became the good man, who fulfilled 
the duties of the law, etc. Darmesteter : Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 18. 

4 Vendidad, xviii. 15-17, Haug; 41-42, Spiegel. 
6 Ibid., xviii. 6, 7, Haug ; 15-20, Spiegel. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 7 1 

obvious relations to the object in view; and even as they 
went on multiplying by mere prescription, they still repre 
sented at least the spirit and purpose of the Being through 
them adored and served. They were very much concerned 
in protecting against the contact of dead bodies. As the 
fire of life was the very body of virtue, so death was ab 
horred and accursed as the symbol of evil. Diseases, and 
all apparently abnormal physical conditions, or those which 
were accompanied with startling or mysterious phenomena, 
were also sources of impurity. It would be unprofitable to 
trace the various kinds or grounds of purification, which 
were multiplied by the immediate relation of religion to 
the bodily condition of the physical world. But all puri 
fication has value only as it helps to purity in thought, 
word, and deed. The very formula betrays the essence 
of virtue to have been truth, earnestness, the hate of lies, 
the love of the real. And this, which marks the whole 
history of Iranian belief, from the oldest Gathas to the 
latest Achaemenian inscription, is the natural expression 
of that peculiar sense of dignity and worth in the person 
which enters the historic field with Iranian Will. 

The Avesta has no theory of the origin of evil other 
than as a fact involved in that freedom of choice which 
belongs to personality. Ahriman chooses falsehood before 
truth. It is only in the latest Parsi books that he is repre 
sented as the result of doubts in the Supreme Mind, a 
notion which shows the persistence of the same theory. 
Yima s fall from paradise is due to his fall from truth, 
under temptation of Ahriman. Mashya and Mashyana, 
the first man and woman, according to the same later 
mythology, mixed with Chaldean and Semitic traditions, 
at first seeing the truth, and aspiring to do like the 
Yazatas, soon freely yield to the temptation of the Parsl 
Satan to believe the lie that he was the creator. They fall 
into delusions about eating and drinking, which deprave 



/2 DEVELOPMENT. 

their bodies; are driven to searching out inventions for 
their support; lose their love, and dwell apart, and then 
sacrifice to Daevas. 1 Seven couples proceeding from them 
give birth to different nations, while this Pirsi Adam and 
Eve become "like unto demons, and their souls will be in 
hell " till the resurrection. 2 Their descendants go back, 
reversing their track, to the pure life which needs no 
food ; and when Sosyosh, the redeemer, comes, all is re 
stored by the ordeal of fire. 3 This very artificial story is 
made up of foreign elements, and has obviously no philo 
sophical value. It is significant only as showing the per 
sistence of the old Iranian instinct to trace all human 
experience to the free personality of man. 

Here, then, is the earliest affirmation of human liberty 
as the substance of a religion, the first genuine escape 
of man from the dominion of Fate, and introduction to the 
law, life, and progress of individual and personal energy. 

In this way the Iranian solved the problem of evil, stern 
and inevitable then as now ; pointing out and entering the 
path of solution which all religions that succeeded him 
have followed. He did not ignore evil ; tried neither to 
think it away by abstraction, nor to hide it under a heap 
of interests and pursuits. He bravely met it in his own 
will and in the world; pursued it through soul and sense, 
to the very bounds of his thought, battling it down with 
Ahuramazda s purity of thought and life, and Yima s 
dagger of work. 

Is it correct to define the Avesta-religion as Dualism? 
That is, does it consciously affirm two equal forces, coeval 
in being, and eternally at war? The language certainly 
implies this, since the Good and the Evil principles are 
even called " primeval twins " 4 in the oldest Gathas, 

1 Bundehesh) chap. xv. ; Justi. 2 Ibid. 

3 Bundehesh, chap, xxxi.; Justi. 4 Yafna, xxx. 3. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 73 

ascribed to Zoroaster himself. Nothing could be more 
strongly stated than the intrinsic antagonism of these 
powers. 1 It is difficult to understand how Haug can 
reconcile with the whole tenor of these writings his theory 
that the older portions at least are purely monotheistic, in 
the sense that the two " minds," good and evil, are both 
included in the conception of Ahuramazda; and still 
further, that the one represents the real, and the other the 
unreal, 2 mere destruction or lie" (Drtij], these two 
being " united in the one God" as his "two spirits." 3 The 
passages which Haug translates in accordance with this 
theory are differently rendered by Harlez, Spiegel, and 
Bleeck, who also agree with each other. 4 Zoroaster s 
theology, in Haug s view, recognizes one Creator of light 
and darkness, good and evil, like the Hebrew Jahveh; 5 
and is to be distinguished from his philosophy of evil, 
which was dualistic. The distinction is a rational one, 
though in the absence of certainty whether the specific 
Gathas on which it is based are rightly ascribed to Zoro 
aster, and in view of the disagreement of translators, it 
is doubtful if we are yet justified in making it. As to 
Jehovah, there is a distinction to be made. Hebrew and 
Iranian conceptions differ in respect of the focal distance 
of deity, as seen by man, a distance so great in the one 
case (Hebrew), that the act of creating evil could not be 
supposed to involve anything analogous to human respon 
sibility, especially responsibility to human reason or con 
science, on a positively unlimited will, which might at its 
pleasure have transformed evil into good, or right into 
wrong; a distance in the other case (Iranian) so imper 
ceptible, that to ascribe evil to God would be, first, to 
make Him directly responsible for that which it was His 



1 See, especially, Vendidad. 2 Essays, etc., p. 303. 

8 Yaftta, xix. 9. * Yaftta, xix. 9 ; xlv. 2 ; Haug. 

6 II. Samuel xii. n ; Isaiah xlv. 7 ; Haug: Essays, etc., p. 302. 



74 DEVELOPMENT. 

very life to break down and destroy, as His essential oppo 
site and innate foe; and next, to contradict that present 
character by which alone He was known to man. For the 
Hebrew, good and evil, moral and physical, could more 
readily be ascribed to one creative source, because crea 
tion was, if not exactly production out of nothing, yet 
approaching to it, since the thing created was somehow 
external to the Creator; but for the Iranian, to whom 
creation was simply a spiritual self-affirmation, distinctly 
significant of its maker, 1 good and evil were expressions 
of positively antagonistic wills, and could hardly as such 
be thrown back upon one and the same person. The 
attempt to do so was made in later, probably Sassanian, 
times (fifth century of Christianity), under Semitic influ 
ence, doubtless Babylonian, 2 and is still adhered to by the 
Parsis. Schemes prevailed deriving the world from Time, 
Fate, Light, Space. Both Ormuzd and Ahriman were made 
to spring from Zrvan-akarana, u Boundless Time," a 
substance sufficiently vague to be but semi-personal, if not 
impersonal, in hopes to reconcile the older Dualism with 
a distincter demand for unity in the religious conception. 
A partial basis for this idea was, according to Haug, in 
the mistranslation of a passage in which it is said that 
the weapons to smite Ahriman were "made in boundless 
time." 3 But the history of the doctrine points to a deeper 
meaning. And although Haug considers Dualism to have 
been merely the philosophy, and monotheism the theology, 
of the older Avesta, he cannot but think that a philosophy 
which reconciles itself with monotheism by making a good 

1 "The idea of creation is expressed in the Avesta by the root da, to institute, poser." 
Darmesteter : Ormazd et Akriman, p. 23. 

2 See Lenormant : Chaldean Magic, English edition, p. 230. So Spieeel : Studien ilber 
das Zendavesta (Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch., v. 221). Rapp (in the same, xix. 
83). Rawlinson,. who identifies Zrvan-akarana with Bel Ziru-banit of the Assyrian inscription 
(Jour. Royal Asiatic Soc. xv. p. 245, note 2). Pictet : Les Origines Indo-Europcennes, ii. 717. 
Carre : L? Ancien Orient, ii. p. 375. 

3 Haug: Essays, etc., p. 24. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 75 

spirit create a bad one, in such way that the latter becomes a 
"twin spirit" with itself, is a speculation on the question of 
origin, which we should hardly expect to find in the early 
stages of a religion, or even in a monotheistic reformer at 
such a stage. It is only an advanced and refined mono 
theism that would abstract the positive quality of evil, espe 
cially moral evil, so completely as to subsume it under the 
plans and methods of a perfect being, for example, upon 
ontological grounds, such as the necessity of imperfection 
in all finite processes. Hebrew monotheism was by no 
means consistent. Yet the Hebrews never ascribed human 
passions and vices to Jahveh, except so far as they could 
justify these to themselves by their nature or effects. 1 

For myself, I do not think Zoroastrianism shows any 
signs whatever of a philosophy of evil, any more than 
Judaism. It is a moral and spiritual protest against evil ; 
and it uses the phraseology of a twofold creation simply 
to concentrate and antagonize the two sides of actual 
experience, behind which it goes not. 

I agree with Haug so far as this, that I do not find pure 
Dualism in the religion of the Avesta; but still less do I 
find one good God dividing himself through creation into 
twin antagonistic principles. The Avesta affirms Ahura as 
superior, and Ahriman as inferior. 

i. There can be little doubt that Ahura is the Iranian 
representative, even genealogically, of the old Aryan 
Varuna, 2 supreme Lord (Asura), and omniscient (vigva- 
vedas) ordainer of the laws of the universe and of the 
moral order, whose eyes behold every deed of man, and 
whose bonds (or nooses) are the inevitable penalties of 



1 In the earlier of the Jehovah passages referred to, the word " evil " is not used posi 
tively, but with reference to its quality as penalty inflicted by Jehovah, and therefore as good; 
and even in the later, as the antithesis to "peace," it signifies trouble, which is here referred 
to Cod, thus changing it into blessing, 

2 In Indo-European period, as Varana (Gr. Ouranos). See the author s India, chapter 
on "The Hymns." 



76 DEVELOPMENT. 

his sin. 1 The same qualities and symbols belong to both ; 
they are both associated with Mithra (the sun) ; both are 
gods of fire, parents of the Atharvan, or personified sacri 
ficial flame ; both " masters of all the gods." Each is 
chief of a band of seven immortal powers, the one Adi- 
tyas, the other Amesha-gpentas. Varuna was the far depth 
of space, the rounding heaven, the limits of thought and 
power; and thus, and thus only, naturally associated with 
the mystery of night, as well as with the orderly movement 
of the heavenly bodies, which night in fact revealed. Now 
it was easy for the Iranians to make this grandest of the 
old Asuras their supreme Ahura; but it was scarcely 
possible that they should have made him the source of 
Ahriman, since it was precisely this absoluteness of his 
moral being that determined them to choose him from 
among all the old deities as their supreme God. He is 
the unity of truth and light; he is light because truth. 
And this is precisely the significance of Ahura. The 
very essence of Ahriman, on the contrary, is the unity of 
falsehood and darkness ; he is the one because the other. 
It is true that Varuna was also associated with the dark 
ness of night ; true also that there were aspects in his laws 
of penalty which fear might have turned into signs of 
hate : the " nooses of Varuna " were doubtless the terror 
of the wicked. His anger is indeed often spoken of. 2 "As 
the night sun," says a commentator, " he is even regarded 
as the god of evil." 3 But evil from Varuna could only 
have been the penal sufferings of the sinner, the sign, not 
of moral evil in the god himself, but of righteousness. He 
is even called merciful to the sinner, and supplicated as 
providential care. 4 There is nothing to hint of Ahrimanic 
quality in Varuna s bonds of moral order, more than in his 
grand paths in the nightly sky. 

1 Rig- Veda, viii. 42, i ; ii. 27, 10 ; vii. 86. See also Darmesteter : Ormazd et Ahriman, 42. 

2 See " Hymns to Varuna," in Langles Bibliothtque Orientale^- 386. Rig-Veda, vii. 86. 
8 Lang .es Bib. Orient., p. 126. 4 Pig-Veda^ vii. 86. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 77 

2. I observe that evil is everywhere conceived as infe 
rior and secondary ; and so far from being commanded to 
worship it as he does good, the believer is to hate, spurn, 
and destroy it. If it were a part of Ahura s own being, that 
could not be. There is no such mysticism in Zoroaster as 
to inculcate the service of one spirit of God by destroying 
another spirit of God. Religion is ever the service of the 
ideal. But it is idle to imagine that which a man hates 
and fights through what he holds higher and nobler than 
it, to be his ideal, in other words, to be his God. He 
may worship many gods, and some in fear of their power, 
as the Vedic Aryans did ; but when he has gathered up 
the forces of the universe into two principles, the one in 
accordance with his sense of duty and right, and his idea 
of constructive good ; and the other utterly and absolutely 
in opposition thereto, and believes himself called to the 
extirpation of the one and the exaltation and triumph of 
the other, it is not easy to see how he can be said to 
believe the two to be equal principles, or to worship the 
one as well as the other, or the one as a modification or 
expression of the other. That only which he holds high 
est and best, to which he gives his service, is his God. 

Now the Avesta is wholly in accordance with this rule. 
Ahura is the first to create. Ahriman creates, not inde 
pendently, but only in opposition to Ahura ; of, if Haug s 
translation be correct, creates " non-reality " only. 1 Ahura 
makes good things, with calm, full consciousness of their 
inherent goodness and of their good issue. Ahriman 
makes evil things, under a delusion about their value, and 
learns their evil destiny only when it comes upon them. 
He is powerless when strongly opposed. His essential 
weakness, disappointment, and despair get the better of 
him on all momentous occasions, as, for instance, the 
birth of Zoroaster, 2 when he flies with all his hosts to bury 

xxx. 3,4. 2 Vgndidad, xix. 147. 



78 DEVELOPMENT. 

himself in hell. He cannot prevent the good genii from 
striking him and driving away his powers. 1 Even in the 
later writings, in which the two powers are so equalized 
that the one is throned in eternal light, the other in pri 
meval darkness, Ahura, by superior knowledge, cheats 
Ahriman into a truce for nine thousand years before their 
war should begin, thereby securing to himself the victory, 
anticipating him by creating the world of matter and man 
between their two realms, as a bulwark, and then, repeat 
ing the formula, Ahuna-vairya, so terrifies him at the 
discovery of what he has conceded that he hides himself 
for three thousand years. 2 Down to the tenth century, 
and the heresy of Anselm of Canterbury, the Christian 
doctrine of the Atonement affirmed a similar stretch of 
cunning practised by Christ upon the Devil to deprive 
him of his legitimate rights to the soul of man. Every 
thing in the Avesta points to nonentity as the end to 
which Zoroastrianism would pursue its evil principle. 3 
Some later Persian sects conceive of its relation to the 
good simply as that of the shadow to the light. 4 Cud- 
worth 5 quotes Plutarch and Theopompus to. prove that 
Ahriman was inferior and transient; and affirms that the 
" Ditheists " (Magi) started with " a firm persuasion of the 
essential goodness of the Deity," but to explain the evil 
in the world had "to suppose another animalish principle, 6 
self-existent, or an evil god." Ahura loves the good, and 
so creates it. But Ahriman exists only by negation, and 
only creates evil because he hates the good, and wishes 

1 Spiegel: Eranische Alterthumskunde, ii. p. 123. Tahmurath binds and rides him in 
form of a horse (Yasht, xv. 12 ; xix. 29). He is powerless when sacrifice is made to the air 
(Yashf, xv. 56). Zoroaster "reaches him against his will" (Yasht < ~x.\\\. 19). 

Bundehesh, chap. i. ; Justi. See also Spiegel : Avesta, iii. 1. Hi. 

Bundehesh, chap. i. 

Hyde : Veferum Persarum . . . Religioiiis Historia, cap. xxii. 

Intellectual System, \. 354, 379. 

Plutarch (Isis and Osiris, xlvi.) distinguishes Zoroaster from those who " make two 
rival gods," as "calling the father God, the other Daemon." So Aristotle: 
xiii. 4. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 79 

to kill it; and this, says the Bundehesh, is his eternal dark 
ness. 1 He is the god of negation. This anticipation of the 
highest sense of civilization, which sees in moral evil, as 
Goethe presents it in Mephistopheles, " the spirit that 
denies," and in physical evil the dark force that waits to 
be mastered by the light, shows how profoundly rooted in 
human intuition is the reality of moral order, and the unity 
of the moral and physical universe. Evil, then, is here not 
God; it is the Adversary. It is not original, but second 
ary. It follows up good with its opposite, and that in the 
minutest details, but in a merely mechanical and imitative 
way; not as representing the essential possibility of misuse 
and disproportion in every power of good, but putting out 
something else as its external antagonist over against it. 
Its logic is futile and helpless, so far as it has any, and 
amounts to mere contradiction, which is not only not dis 
cussion, but the most contemptible form of resistance ; and 
though succeeding so far as to seduce men to their destruc 
tion, is doomed to essential failure, having no root in the 
original purpose of things. Though without known be 
ginning, it. must have an end. 

The Avesta has, I repeat, no philosophy of evil. Ahri- 
man is regarded as a mere purpose of destruction, without 
even so much as the ulterior end of pleasure in destroying 
others ; at least we find no emphasis laid on such motive, 
so little reflective reason is there in this religion of pure 
personal will. How evil originated, how it is related to 
the universal good, how it could have power to resist 
this, do not enter into the question. The moral conflict 
has become all-absorbing, and speculative problems are 
barred out, or postponed for the tremendous realities 
of the conscience ; everything centres in the divided will, 
and all that can be done is to expand the experience 
to cosmical proportions, as a conflict of opposing wills. 

1 Chap. i. 



8O DEVELOPMENT. 

And these forces are dealt with simply as actual beings, 
not as data for theogony or philosophy. But it is no 
more possible that the two should have been regarded 
as equal gods, than that the evil mind in the worshipper 
should have seemed to him to have equal rights with the 
good. There was but one Supreme God ; and the simple 
point for us to consider as between them, is, which did 
this religion honor and trust most, which does the law- 
book pronounce fittest to be trusted, mightiest for good, 
worthiest to be loved and pursued? The answer is: it 
nowhere concedes to Ahriman one attribute of deity, and 
nowhere refuses one to Ahura. Take for instance creative 
power : 

" I ask of Thee, tell me the right, O Ahura ! How arose the best 
(present) life ? The beneficent spirit, O righteous Mazda, is the 
guardian to ward off every evil from man: the friend for all life 
(worlds 1 ). 

" I ask of Thee, etc. Who was the father and creator of righteous 
ness in the beginning ? Who established the sun and the stars in 
their way ? Who causes the moon to wax and wane ? These, with 
what is known else, I desire to know. 

" I ask of Thee, etc. Who upholds the earth and the skies that 
they fall not ? Who made the waters and the trees ? Who is in the 
winds and storms that they so swiftly run? Who, O Mazda, has 
created the good (spiritual 2 ) minded beings ? 

" I ask of Thee, etc. Who created, perfect, the light and the dark ? 
Who the sleep and the activity [watching] ? Who, morning, noon, 
and night, and the laws which tell the priest his duties ? 

" I ask of Thee, etc. Who has created the Bactrian home (devised 
wisdom 3 ) with its properties (the kingdom 4 ) ? Who fashioned, by 
weaving motion, the excellent son out of the father ? (Who has ren 
dered the son dear to the father? 5 ) (Created the love of the father to 
the son ? 6 ) To know these things, I approach thee, O Mazda, bounte 
ous giver of all good, creating all beings ! 7 

" Ahura : who created us, who formed us, who keeps us. 8 

1 Harlez. 2 Ibid. 3 Spiegel. * Ibid. 

6 Harlez. 6 Spiegel. 

7 Yaftia, xliv. ; Haug, xliii. ; Spiegel and Harlez. 8 Yafna, i. 4. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 8 1 

" Ahura : for whose kingdom, power, and mighty works, we praise 
him above all beings worthy to be adored, who dwell with our herds to 
protect them. The Fravashis of the pure, we praise ; the best purity, 
fairest, immortal, glorious, containing all that is good ; the good spirit, 
the good kingdom, the good law, and the pure wisdom. 1 

" The clouds and mountains ; 2 all which the eye beholds through 
the good mind ; sun, stars, and morn which ushers in the day, all 
move to thy praise, O righteous Ahura ! And I with my mouth will 
sing thy praise, in truth, as long as I have breath. Let the creator 
aid with good mind all that increaseth right conduct, by his will." 3 

Zarathustra asked Ahuramazda : " Most munificent spirit, 
which was the word that thou spakest to me, which was 
before the heavens, before the water or earth, or animals, 
or trees, or fire, or before the righteous, before the demons 
and savage men (Daevas and impious men 4 ), before the 
whole material world ? " 5 

Then for absolute and pure trust, take the first of the 
Gathas : for the all-embracing names of Ahuramazda, the 
Ormazd-Yasht. Ahriman has no honor but the fear and 
hate his purpose inspires. And though the earlier books 
have left the issue of this great war to be inferred from this 
spirit of zeal and victory which animates them, yet the 
later writings have worked out the triumph of the good 
principle in a very positive eschatology. The Gathas 
hint this ; they give Ahuramazda the place of law-giver 
and final judge over all men. " Creator of blessing for 
the evil as well as the good, they only who, taught by his 
spirit, increase the purity of men, will come to thy king 
dom," 6 or " shall be taught thy law." 7 " Rewarding words 
and deeds, thou appointest evil to the wicked and blessing 
to the good, through thy holiness, at the last end of the 
creation." 8 The Yashts, of later origin, describe the effect 
of the coming of a prophet (Caos/iyang) at the last day, "to 

1 Yafna, xxxvii. ; Spiegel and Harlez. 2 Luminaries ; Haug. 

8 Yafna. xlix.; Harlez. * Yafna, xix. ; Harlez. 

5 Ibid., Haug. 6 Ibid., xlii. 4, 6; Spiegel. 

^ Ibid., Harlez. 8 Ibid., 5 ; Harlez. 

6 



82 DEVELOPMENT. 

make life everlasting, incorruptible, full of vigor, when the 
dead shall rise again, and imperishable righteousness fill 
the world ; when the evil one (or ones) will disappear, and 
his whole seed perish." 1 Similar testimony to this victory 
of Ahura, the destruction of Ahriman, and the resurrection 
of the dead to immortality, is given by Plutarch 2 and by 
Theopompus 3 (fourth century B.C.). To this end of the 
struggle of three thousand years many prophets bring 
their aid, from Zoroaster to Sosyosh, all of whom have 
clear foreknowledge of the predestined triumph of good. 
According to the Bundehesh, latest of all, fifteen of these 
male saints and heroes, and as many female, will return 
at this glorious day and share its wondrous regenerative 
work. The purification by fire shall .burn away all the 
dross of evil, even in Ahriman and the Serpent; hell shall 
fall to dust and disappear, and its place be filled with 
purity and bliss. The symbolic Bulland the mystic Haoma 
of the old faith will also reappear as the consummation 
of all sacrifice, bringing immortal life and becoming im 
mortal food for all, and Ahura dispense to men imperish 
able garments and eternal bliss. 4 

In all this the doctrine of bodily resurrection is of course 
implied, and it seems quite superfluous to inquire after evi 
dences of its antiquity. The personality consisted of soul 
and body, and their union was implied in all personal ex 
istence. So Jewish Rabbis taught : it is impossible for the 
dead to " rise " out of graves except in bodies. In the 
oldest Gathas the resurrection idea does not seem to have 
been worked out, and the simple, immediate spiritual judg 
ment of the Chinvat bridge precludes the sleep in dust 
which that idea involves after death. 5 The Zamyad-Yasht 

1 Zamyad-Yasht, n, 12. 2 I sis and Osiris. 

3 See Haug: Essays, etc., p. 8, 9. 4 Bundehesh, xxxi.; Justi. 

5 The beautiful description of the spirit after death, led on the third night across the 
Bridge and the Holy Mountain to the world of Ahura, "the pure souls go contented, to 
the golden thrones of Ahura," etc. (Vendidad, xix.), shows that this belief continued on 
to a later period. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 83 

perhaps intimates a visible immortality on this earth. I 
cannot but believe that the primitive Zoroastrian, like the 
Vedic, faith gave the spirits of good men a body of fire, 
while the wicked were invested with symbolical bodies of 
darkness and decay. But so closely was soul related to 
sense, and sense to life, in Iranian conceptions, that these 
vague notions gradually gave way to that of a purely 
physical resurrection; and this involved a delay of judg 
ment till the end of the world, when the dispersed atoms 
could at once be miraculously restored to every personal 
form. 1 The Bundehesh enters into an argument, which , 
is substantially the model of the Christian, to show that 
even this was possible to the omnipotence of Ahura- 
mazda, 2 and declares that each is to rise so unmistakable 
that men will recognize each other s bodies and souls, 
and ask with earnest anxiety concerning their conduct 
since they met in life ; the very period of life in which 
each died shall appear in him ; the child s dust rise as 
youth, the man s as a man ; and in the heavenly state, where 
no more children shall be born, each family shall keep its 
earthly form intact. It is difficult to believe that this final 
resurrection doctrine had much practical influence, even if 
it existed, during the period of the Avestan compositions, 
when there seems to have been a constant sense of the 
immediate presence, at least, of the Fravashis, or spirits of 
the pure, as of those who had already passed the Chinvat 
bridge into their reward. 3 In Christianity the same vague 
inconsistency of sentiment prevails concerning the state of 
souls after death ; on the one hand, they are thought of 
as conscious, if not present, and as already passed to eter 
nal judgment; and on the other, as awaiting the last trump 
to rise from the dead at the end of the world. The con- 



1 Rabbins also same. 2 Bundehesh, .xxx. i. ; Justi. 

3 yafna, xxiv. 14 ; xxvi. 34. But in the Bundehesh, Ahura creates the Fravashis before 
mankind; chap. ii. 



84 DEVELOPMENT. 

fusion of blind instincts concerning a state as yet unknown 
of course explains this inconsistency in both religions ; but 
in both the determination of every man s future throughout 
all time is held to belong to the just and righteous God, 
and resurrection and judgment alike to prove His triumph 
over the powers of evil. 

A conflict like this could end only in the utter destruc 
tion, or the perfect conversion, of the powers of evil. Both 
these issues are asserted in the Zoroastrian writings, the 
latter only in the latest. The earlier are too much absorbed 
in the internecine battle itself to dogmatize as to the way 
in which the triumph should be used, or ,to speculate as to 
the conditions absolutely requisite to the permanent sup 
pression of evil-will. Heaven for the good, hell for the 
wicked ; the corporeal world of Nature and man between 
these two, and the battle raging for the mastery of every 
soul, this was all. Both these spheres are said to be 
without beginning, and immortality is affirmed of heaven ; 
while hell is nowhere said to be without end. 1 Had evil 
been regarded as a principle only, or as simply a fact, there 
would have been room for a philosophy of its origin, func 
tion, and end ; 2 but as it was gathered up into a personal 
will, actuated by personal hate, and antagonized by equal 

1 The only passage in all the oMer Zend-Avesta which seems to assert eternal punishment 
is one where it is said of the idolatrous priests that they are so hardened that they ought to 
avoid the Bridge of Judgment, " to remain forever in the dwelling-place of destruction." 
(Yafna, xlvi. n ; Haug.) This can hardly serve to prove the dogma of eternal punishment 
in the absence of every other proof. Yet Carrd so thinks (L^Ancien Orient, ii- 326). 

2 According to the Bundehesh, the interpretation of which is extremely uncertain, the good 
and evil shall at last be raised with their bodies, to pass for three days (after separation accord 
ing to their characters) through liquid fire of the molten earth, and so be purified ; the end 
whereof, either by the destruction of the very bad, at all events by a sifting process, or rather 
distilling, by which all evil should be worked off, shall be a pure world, without stain of evil 
mind. That this can mean that the worst people, those who have been already in Duzakh 
(hell) for ages, should in three days become perfectly pure, is incredible: the annihilation 
interpretation is more probable. And it is equally improbable that all should come into the 
same bliss, since a new and more perfect heaven is said to be created for the good. (See 
Bundehesh, xxxi. ; Justi.) The Dabistan gives traditions of Zoroaster from the Mobads, one 
of which is that he said, " God has commanded me, Say thou to mankind that they are not 
to abide in hell forever; when their sins are expiated, they are delivered out of it. " 
Dabistan, i. 363. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 85 

hate on the part of another will, the question was simply 
one of victory, and the interest purely personal and 
instant. And so it continued after the religion became 
accepted and instituted, and leisure was afforded for con 
ceiving it as a whole, with all the final consequences it 
involved. 1 

The Avesta asks not, What is the meaning of evil ; what 
ends, spiritual and progressive, it is bound to serve ; what 
its future in human and finite conditions ; what its justifi 
cation as an element of growth? No such questions can 
enter this purely personal system ; but rather, What shall 
finally be done with these wicked wills, and with this pri 
mal wicked will when conquered, to insure their total sup 
pression? Zoroastrianism, then, could not be satisfied with 
eternal punishments ; it would purify the whole universe, 
and such a hell would immortalize impurity. Zoroaster 
would utterly suppress evil, and such a hell would be 
an endless demonstration that the evil-will stood fast, 
even in chains. It was too much in earnest not to wish 
the terrible strife to end. There were only two ways to 
end it: either to annihilate the hostile will, or to convert 
it. The interpreters of the Bundehesh are divided on the 
question, whether Ahriman would be destroyed by the 
purifying fire of judgment, or brought to sing the praises 
of Ahura with all his hosts. 2 

Both these solutions are maintained in the modern Parsi 
church ; and both seem to have been developed naturally 
enough out of the genius of the Zoroastrian faith. They 
certainly were not added to it through contact with the 

1 In the Hindu pantheistic view of evil, it was natural that the early symbols should grad 
ually change their meanings, even passing into opposite ones. They floated in the haze of 
metamorphosis, where deity became all things in turn, and all things deity. Thus the serpent, 
originally the cloud-demon, slain by the god of lightning, became in India the coiled bed of 
the preserving God. But no symbol of evil became in Iran a type of good ; the moral empha 
sis was too strong. So the conflict of the gods unknown to the Veda is a great feature of the 
eschatology of the Avesta, especially the Bundehesh, as also of the Edda. 

2 See Bundehesh, chap, xxxi., translated in Schwenck, Mythologie der Perscs, 324-25. 



86 DEVELOPMENT. 

religions of Media and Babylonia. 1 The old Accadian 
writings contain no working out of the problem of evil 
either by annihilation or conversion. The strife was against 
cosmical demons out of the abyss, who disturbed the 
order of the world, and brought disease, calamity, death, 
and unnatural or insane conduct upon men: 2 and these 
were to be repelled by conjuration and spell ; but their 
relation to the moral being was external, and the need was, 
not of their extirpation, but their defeat. The ethical in 
terest of the Iranian offset his horror of physical death 
by the heaven prepared beyond it for the good, but the 
Accadian sent both good and evil to a sheol of " dark 
ness, where there is no food but dust; " and though there 
were seven (astronomical) zones in this unblcst land of 
shadows, these had no bearing on the final solution of the 
war of evil against good. To a faith so entirely absorbed 
in the present life as the Accadian, a resurrection of the 
dead to judgment, and a consequent purification of the 
spiritual universe, could have no meaning. The epic of 
Izdubar contains only one hint looking this way, a foun 
tain of life in the depths of the world of shades, described 
as affording power to Ishtar to return from these gloomy 
realms to the light of day. 

Neither in a spiritual nor ethical point of view does the 
Accadian religion, nor any of its combinations, compare 
with the Zoroastrian. Good and evil are not distinctly 
separated, and are often represented by the same deity. 3 
The Assyrio-Babylonians merely inherited Accadian gods, 
and the Semitic element brought by Assyria added nothing 
to the development of these questions. Asshur and Bel 
and Nebo and Merodach exercised no such function in 

1 The passages in Anquetil s translations from the Ya$na which teach this doctrine are 
mistranslated. They are quoted in Nicolas : Doctrines Religieuses des Juifs, p. 302. 

2 See Lenormant : Chaldean Magic^ Ene. ed , pp. 29, 30. 

3 See Schrader : Hollenf. der I star; and Records of The Past, vol. i. p. 139; and in 
the Allgemeine Zeitung, Augsburg, June 19, 1872. Also Lenormant, p. 165-66. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. S/ 

regard to evil as Ahuramazda ; represented no moral con 
flict, nor looked to any final dealing with the woes and sins 
of the world. Sensual excess, which Ahura put far from 
him, was in fact involved in the Semitic conception of 
deity itself; and Baal, Moloch, Jahveh, as gods of fire, 
were worshipped by rites, even of human sacrifice, which 
would have been incongruous with the spiritual meaning 
of that element in the Iranian faith, and made it unfit 
to serve as a purification of the world from sin. So 
that neither Accadian nor Semitic beliefs could have sug 
gested a final disposal of evil through purifying fire, which 
should destroy the wicked seeds or convert their malignant 
will. On the other hand, this eschatology was a natural 
development of Zoroastrian beliefs, even as presented in 
the Gathas. And to their historical influence must be 
ascribed its prominence, not only in the Bundehesh of the 
Sassanian epoch, but in Hebrew literature subsequent to 
the exile ; as in the Book of Daniel, the apocalyptic Enoch 
and Ezra, and in the early Christian belief concerning the 
future life, the end of the world, and the last judgment. 1 
Eternity of punishment belongs to a very different class 
of ideas, since it is as far as possible from recognizing the 
final purification of the universe from evil, or the final 
supremacy of good, although of course intended to do this 
in some degree. It is therefore thoroughly anti-Iranian, 
and its promulgation in Christianity and later Judaism must 
be ascribed to the peculiar intensity of those personal feel 
ings in which the great moral reaction of Christianity origi 
nated, and especially to the Messianic apocalyptics of the 
two centuries preceding the birth of Jesus, prominently, 
the Book of Daniel. 2 

1 The doctrine of the resurrection of the body was penetrating Palestine in the time of 
Christ, and that of the immortality of the soul, derived from Platonism, spreading in Alexan 
dria. But these t\\ o excluded each other. Nicolas: Doctrines Religieuses des Juifs, p. 316. 

2 See. for Hebrew ideas of hell-punishment, Sirach, vii. 17; of immortality in post-exilian 
period, Wisdom of Solomon, ii. 23; Josephus, B. J. ii. 8, u: of resurrection, Ecclesiastes 



88 DEVELOPMENT. 

But the whole tenor of the Avesta implies, and this is 
the grand thing about it, the victory of good over evil, 
of right over wrong, the sovereignty of the law proclaimed 
in the conscience. As Ahuramazda was first, so He shall 
be last. Man, his creation, born radiant, with eyes look 
ing upward, shall soar above his evil stars ; and this, not 
by the destruction of his personal will, but by the natural 
and noble exercise of it. The Bundehesh says that " with 
consciousness and the Fravashi [ideal soul] Ahura brought 
love and wisdom unto men." " Which will ye choose, O 
ye souls of men, about to take earthly form, to be made 
for warring against evil, that ye may afterwards become 
immortal, or to be protected against evil from the begin 
ning?" "And by their wisdom they choose to be made 
as creatures, to strive for immortal life." 1 This worship 
per of light could see all things resolving themselves into 
light at last. In the Gathas, his living trust in being on 
the side of Ahura, the just and pure one, is his all-suffic 
ing confidence, while the fate of the evil is simply to be 
conquered at last. In the later Yagnas, Vendidid, Yashts, 
and the Bundehesh, there gradually grew up a historic or 
rattier prophetic construction of the process by which the 
end should be reached. The world-history is divided into 
four periods of three thousand years each, during the 
first two of which Ahura creates freely his good world ; 
during the third the strife begins and deepens ; and during 
the fourth, opening with Zoroaster, three prophets appear 
at intervals of a thousand years, the last of whom, Sosyosh, 
brings the resurrection of bodies, judgment of souls, and 
destruction of evil, according to the Bundehesh, by puri- 



xlvi. 12; xlix. 10; II Maccabees, vii.,xii. 44: of last judgment, Rabbins: of resurrection of 
body, Rabbins. Duschak: Die biblisch-talmud. Glaubenslehre , etc., pp. 181, 182. The ex 
treme resemblance of Persian eschatology with that of Daniel is traced in Nicolas: Doctrines 
Religieiises des Juifs, p. 303. Resurrection, with Daniel and Maccabees, is partial only, how 
ever. See also Duschak : Die biblisch-talmud. Glaubenslehre, etc., p. 175. 
1 Bundehesh, ii. ; Justi. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 89 

fication of all good and evil, through fire, into capacity for 
blessedness. For this end the corporeal world is brought 
into beipg, that the good principle might, by mastering 
the intervening space between his own realm and the op 
posing one, absorb the latter, and make the universe one 
in himself. 1 

Lenormant 2 thinks it was "from rejecting the notion of 
original sin, and substituting the doctrine of emanation for 
that of creation, and fatalism for freedom, that most of 
the peoples of pagan [Aryan] antiquity were led to the 
melancholy theory of the Four Ages, as we find it in the 
sacred books of India and the poems of Hesiod;" whereas 
the Bible, regarding man as free and not subject to fate, 
does not contain the idea of world-decadence. But there 
seems to be as much practical fatalism in the Hebrew con 
ception of a tendency to sin in human nature capable 
of causing man first to be expelled from Paradise, then to 
be almost extirpated by a deluge, and through all ages 
to be scourged by a divine wrath, from which even the 
chosen people are not free, and from which only a divine 
Messiah could deliver him as in that pantheistic evolu 
tionism of the Aryan, which if resulting in a more definite 
idea of a cycle of degeneracy, yet involved also the further 
consequence of a renewal of good beyond the destruction 
of an evil world. Surely, the God who creates man after 
His own pleasure is as truly a power of fate as the law 
that makes his history a decadence, and its end a disso 
lution of the evil it has caused. In fact the Hebrews, as 
well as the Hindus and Persians and Greeks, were led to 
the " melancholy" theory of world-destruction, certainly 
not less melancholy because it was to be the consequence 

1 Spiegel: Eran. Alterth. ii. 142. The Hebrews did not reach this till very late; and 
Paul s description of the triumph of Christianity at the last judgment, resolving all evil into 
obedience to God, is a carrying out of it (i Cor. xv. 24). The doctrine of final restitution of 
the world gradually penetrated Jewish beliefs, and the later Cabalistic writings resemble in 
this the Zoroastrian. Nicolas : Doctrines Religicuses des Juifs, p 306. 

2 Contemporary Review for September, 1879. 



9O DEVELOPMENT. 

of original sin, than if it had been the sequel of gold, silver, 
brass, and iron periods. In fact, the Hebrews believed 
in such penal destruction, and transmitted the idea to 
Christianity, which made it a fundamental motive. As 
for freedom, no race ever abased itself before a personal 
God more than the older Hebrews; who believed that 
their jealous Jahveh punished curiosity by expulsion from 
Eden, and aspiration to social progress with confusion of 
tongues. They were more oppressed by that sense of 
separation from God which came from the emphasis laid 
on their freedom to sin, than the Aryan was by the sense 
of an emanation, even by fatality, which did not break the 
unity of Being. Semite, as well as Aryan, had his myth 
of a Golden Age and of man s fall from it, thus confessing 
the power of historic decadence and that clement of fate 
which cannot be ignored. And of these the Aryan has 
been the prophet of progress : this was the meaning of 
destiny for him, and his doctrine of lost things; and his 
evolution is the philosophy of hope. The Persian was the 
very apostle of earnest ethical endeavor. He also had his 
myth of "original sin," of a Fall (of Yima, king of Para 
dise) through a lie ; and Lenormant himself finds in the 
serpent created by Ahriman to poison his Eden and effect 
his ruin an echo of the same tradition on which the Bible 
story rests. This writer, even while making use of these re 
semblances to aggrandize Bible authority, is candid enough 
to confess that the Zoroastrian scriptures gave moral value 
to the older Chaldeo-Semitic conceptions of the Fall. 1 

Now, we have said that this religion does not deal in the 
metaphysics of evil ; it dwells simply on the practical 
antagonism of right and wrong, and of the things which 
make for the one and for the other. It was not introver- 
sive enough to find the root of evil, as later systems have, 
in human nature. It was too much absorbed, as it seems 

1 Contemporary Review, September, 1879. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 9 1 

to me, in the hatred of it to ascribe it to the perfect God. 
It did not undertake to justify its existence under a wise 
Providence, as discipline, or culture. It does not anywhere 
say positively, "This struggle shall develop moral strength 
and spiritual growth." But did it not practically affirm 
this? Do men make it the life of their religion to war 
against wrong, without discovering that this resistance is 
after all to draw out and educate their wills by the pursuit 
of the ideal? 

There is no failure here to recognize the strength of the 
foe ; the cup of evil is drunk to the dregs. The tragedy 
of sin and penalty, the martyrdom of heroism and love, 
the stern conditions of victory, the inexorable mathematics 
of moral and spiritual cost, are acknowledged in the whole 
structure of the religion, in every detail of the epos and 
dogma of this mighty strife for the possession of the soul 
of man. Never does the power of Ahriman fail to prove 
itself in the bodily life of the righteous. Never does the 
weakness of Ahriman fail to be made manifest in the moral 
gain and growth for the whole creation, that follow on his 
terrible but impotent revenge. The myth is at pains to 
foreshow this issue by infusing into his whole conduct of 
the strife an element of folly and fear. Through this 
earlier " holy war " there runs the Iranian instinct to 
overpoise the past with the .future, experience with pro 
phecy ; to make failure and loss the stepping stones to 
progress. Darmesteter, who with marvellous ingenuity 
has traced the whole Avestan mythology as a process of 
evolution from the strife of the elements, has hinted this 
higher spiritual meaning in a striking summary, which 
deserves to be quoted : 

"Thirty years Ahriman is powerless against the Bull; 1 three 
thousand years he trembles before Gayomard ; 2 thirty years he gnaws 

1 The Bull is Ahura s good creation, slain by Ahriman, from whose seed spring fertility 
and the human race. 2 The first man, slain by Ahriman. 



Q2 DEVELOPMENT. 

the bit under the spur of Tahmurath ; J but at last all these perish. 
The stone and word of Zoroaster plunge him into hell ; but Zoroaster 
himself must perish. According to the legend preserved by Clemen 
tine Homily, he is struck by the demon with lightning ; according to 
Firdusi, he is slain by the Turanians in the sack of Balkh. Accord 
ing as the imagination conceives the thunder-storm in view of the 
light which preceded, or that which follows it, the god of light dies or 
is victorious. But the dead god is succeeded by another ; the slain 
is avenged by some relative, son, or brother in the myth. And the 
final victory is won by all the early heroes returning again; or by a 
descendant of Zoroaster, Caoshyaiig." z 

The impressive fact about this Iranian myth is that it 
affiliates each martyr of Ahura s gospel both to his suc 
cessor and to his predecessor; so that the sacred seed 
proves itself immortal, and death is constantly swallowed 
up in necessary victory. Gayomard comes from the seed 
of the Bull ; from Gayomard comes the line of heroes who 
fight the dragon, or slay the demons, or hold the Devil him 
self in curb ; from their line comes the prophet with his 
word of doom, before which Ahriman trembles ; and when, 
spite of all the saints, heroes, and martyrs, the earth falls 
under the dominion of evil, 3 and the rotten body of hu 
manity dissolves, it is but to reveal the reserved health and 
salvation in the omnipotent virtue of their return in one 
high host to judgment, not one gift or glory lost, the seed 
of Zoroaster at their head, and the souls of all just men, 
the better souls of all men, to evolve and people a purified 
world. The nature of this affiliation will appear from an 
outline of the myth in its relation to ideal progress. 

Yima, most blessed of men, ruler and maker of the 
earthly paradise, began to love lying speech, and fell. 

1 Mythic king of men, who chains Ahriman, and rides him as a horse over the earth ; but 
tempted by his wife to fear, is devoured by the great enemy. 

2 Darmesteter: Ormazd et A hri man, p. 211. 

3 The terrible accounts of the depravity and misery of the world before the coming of the 
last redeemers is believed by Darmesteter to be drawn in a large degree by the Bundehesh 
writers from the Mongol and Arabian wars. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 93 

Three times did his " majesty," or bliss, take the wings of 
a bird and fly away. Thrice was it seized and brought 
back. The first who brought back the bliss of Paradise 
was Mithra, the lord of wide pastures, all-hearing, all-be 
holding, truth-protecting Sun. (For he dispels the dark.) 
The second was Thraetona, 1 born in farthest bounds of 
space, 2 whence come the rude blasts of the storm-cloud. 
He delivered from these, and from the sicknesses, pains, 
and wants that proceed from them. He wars with the 
great serpent of the cloud (Azhi-daMka, the Vritra of the 
Vedas), and is called the victorious. The third was Kere- 
agpa, who delivered from the wild beasts, the robber, and 
the armed wilderness-foe ; and he is called the Strong One. 
He is son of Thrita, whom the Vendidad calls the first 
of physicians, holder-back of sickness and death. 3 But 
Yima s bliss was physical merely. These saviours saved 
only the man of the senses. Yima could not meditate on 
the law, nor bear it to men. 4 His paradise was the reign 
of innocence and physical comfort: no cold nor heat, no 
disease nor death, till falsehood entered ; and with that 
the poison of Ahriman smote the natural order, which 
three physical forces did what they could to restore. But 
they were insufficient. So in fulness of time came Zoro 
aster, the greater deliverer through the law that commands 
purity of thought, word, and deed, the law that forces evil 
powers back into invisible ways, and annihilates them in 
their spiritual being. The Haoma-Yasht ascribes all these 
saving forces to the devotion of men through sacrifice of 
the holy plant ; the Crosh-Yasht, to Craosha, the incarna 
tion of the law (his body the Mathra), 5 who is associated 
with completing the forms of religious service, as well as 
with glorious works of protection and punishment, carry- 

1 Corresponds in main with Vedic Trita (Indra s helper). 

2 Varena, Vedic Varuna. See careful analysis of the myth, as found in Zamy&d-Yaskt, by 
Westergaard (Ind. Studien, iii. 402-440). This Yasht was unknown to Anquetil. 

3 Vendida.d> xx. * Vendidad^ ii. 10. 6 Yafna, Ivi. 



94 DEVELOPMENT. 

ing on the victorious strife of Zoroaster. No words can 
express the absolute trust of the worshipper in this all- 
mastering upholder and regenerator of the physical order, 
through the spirit of Ahura, arising from his dwelling 
on the holy mountain, that shines inwardly with its own 
light, and combining in himself the corporeal and spirit 
ual worlds. 1 

And in the latter day, through fierce wars and por 
tents, the spiritual, prophetic seed of Zoroaster bears 
other saviours {QaoshyaTit6 y profitable ones) ; 2 and the 
shut doors of Yima s paradise are reopened, and men 
and beasts come forth to people the earth swept by the 
latter deluge of penal rain, till Caoshyafig, "the Helper," 
last and greatest, brings a new book of the law, and pro 
claims the long battle won, and the dead are raised to 
judgment, and all evil thought and deed are at an end. 
And all through the conflict, upheld by human prayer 
and praise, and upholding every good aim with incon 
ceivable reserves of power and love, hover the innumer 
able Fravashis, 3 the ideal souls of all living beings, from 
Ahura to his humblest servant and his least work, the 
onward pressure of the multitudinous universe itself, gath 
ered up into one living aspiration to the Best. 

Notice here, first, the progress from material to spiritual 
deliverance, destruction of outward monsters and phy 
sical woes ; then deliverance from all rebellion and hatred 
against the good spirit, through the might of holy prophets 
and the supreme virtue of the holy law. Each step leads 
upward to the next, and the resources of the spirit are ever 
adequate to the need. 4 Notice next, that the earlier deliv- 



, Ivi. 9, 10 ; Ivii. 9, 10 ; Haug. 

2 y<tfna, xxxiv. 13 ; xliv. n ; xlv. 3. Spiegel : Eran. Altertk. ii. 153. 

8 Fravardin-Yasht. 

* The myth of the storm-cloud, the battle of light with the elements, has risen to the 
spiritual warfare of the prophet s word with the powers of falsehood, at the same time that the 
actors ceasing to be gods of the atmosphere, are the sons of men. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 95 

erers, including Yima, belong also to the mythology of the 
Vedas ; but whereas in the Vedas they are immortal gods, 
in the Avesta all, except Mithra, are mortal men. In other 
words, the war which Vedic mythology placed in the su 
perhuman world is brought by the Iranian down to the 
solid ground of human life. It is man, however endowed 
and exalted in his powers, still man, that works out deliv 
erance for himself. Thus the Yama of the Vedas is god 
of the future world. Yima of the Iranians is man blessed 
in the present world. The destroyers of monsters in the 
Vedas are solar powers personified as deities, and their 
work stops with releasing the refreshing showers from 
storm-clouds that hold them back among the mountains. 
Thraetona and Kere9agpa in the Avesta, and Yima also, 
become saviours as men through the piety of their fathers ; l 
and their work is ethical, restoring a world poisoned by 
human falsehood, and preparing the way for a spiritual 
law. The material and mythologic names, originally com 
mon to both races, have been wrought up into two differ 
ing forms of religious power; one of them putting man 
quite out of sight, the other exalting him by works worthy 
of a god. Religion has here become personal; its centre 
is the will ; its energy, nerve-power ; its work, practical 
deliverance from outward evils and inward sins by a 
strife that ends but in their destruction. Notice last, that 
through all the dualism in which evil gets such tremen 
dous recognition, there runs the optimism of faith, that the 
world belongs to righteousness, and all things shall work 
to make good its claim. Or, to put it religiously, God will 
surely be ready with help at need, and appear, to save His 
world. Put these successive saviours of the Avestan faith 
beside that grand word of the Hindu Krishna (speaking 
for Vishnu, the all-preserving), "Whensoever virtue is 
enfeebled, or vice and injustice prevail, then do I become 



96 DEVELOPMENT. 

manifest, from age to age revealed to reassure the falter 
ing steps of right;" 1 or beside the Johannic doctrine of 
the " Word made flesh," to fulfil what the prophets and 
Moses lacked. It is older than either of these. 

Zoroastrianism illustrates the law, that religion ever seeks 
to make good superior to evil, and in some form or other, 
logical or otherwise, insists on its ultimate triumph. Reli 
gion is man s endeavor to assure himself of this very thing; 
it is the promise of his ideal to countervail the ills of life 
and the sense of sin. But religious assurance is in gen 
eral more positive in its assertion of progress and ultimate 
redemption for society as a whole, through its appointed 
means, than in affirming the best issues for the individual. 
And just as Christianity contemplates vast numbers of the 
human race as destined to become devils in eternal pain, 
so the Avesta makes the wicked turn into Daevas, or spirits 
of evil ; 2 and one gate of this terrible dualism leads to a 
populous hell. Even in such dismal failures to reconcile 
man with the conditions of life, we must acknowledge that 
religion aims at justice, that its retributions are imperfect 
efforts for righteous ethical sequence. On the Avestan 
bridge of judgment, the balance hangs poised for all : the 
judges are Mithra, the truth; Rashnu, eternal righteous 
ness ; and Craosha, perfect obedience ; and the questioning 
of the soul by itself is the last appeal. As in Christianity, 
the strict arithmetic of penalty is, clumsily enough, broken 
through by a gleam of at least more kindly spiritual econ 
omy, which applies supererogatory merits of saints to the 
cancelling of other men s sins ; so, if the theory of Spiegel 
is correct, the virtues of good Zoroastrians are believed to 
be laid up in a treasury of succor (Mi^vdna), to turn the 
scale, at the last judgment, in behalf of those whose own 
repentance has not quite outweighed their misdeeds. 3 If, 

1 Bhagavad-gita, iv. 6. 2 Vendidad, viii. 100. 

3 But this view is not confirmed by other writers. See, on one side, Spiegel, Eran. Alterth* 
ii. 17 ; on the other, Harlez, i. 265 n ; Haug, Essays, etc., p. 389 ; or Vendidad, xix. 122. 



AVESTAN DUALISM. 97 

however, this Migvana, or middle world, is rather the in 
termediate space between heaven and hell, where those 
souls are held whose good and evil are equal, it would 
be at all events an attempt to approximate exact justice, 
instead of admitting mercy. 

No more than any other religion of the past which 
bases the future destiny of the soul upon the analogy of 
personal relations in this world, as shown in private emo 
tions, or in the courts of justice between man and man, 
does the religion of Zoroaster reach the assurance which 
reconciles our actual ignorance of the future with an ideal 
trust in the laws of our being, the unknown as well as the 
known. But the statement of its limits is also that of its 
characteristic power and function in human history. First 
of great religions, it revealed the power of the personal cle 
ment in the religious ideal ; evolving out of man s crude 
sense of the strife of material nature a conception of spirit 
ual struggle and moral prophecy through the energy of 
individual will, and incarnating this conception in a per 
sonal Word, around whom the great conflict of good and 
evil gathered so supremely that all coming faiths were 
destined to draw from the fountains it opened in man 
kind. 

And not only did this affirmation of the dignity of the 
will assure the triumph of what the wilier believed to be 
best, but saved him from the demoralizing effects of pure 
Dualism, which would have admitted no solution of the 
strife. A noble aspiration to unity shaped the whole sys 
tem, proceeding from the necessity of the ideal will to 
secure an undivided ground of action, complete concentra 
tion of aim, free and simple self-development. Thus we 
find in the Avesta each class of objects traced to one 
beginning, all waters to one source; all trees to one tree; 
all animals to the primal Bull; all men to one progenitor 
{GaySmard}. Hence, castes are impossible: the king is 

7 



98 DEVELOPMENT. 

parent of all men; the marriage rule is monogamy; the 
ethical law is responsibility to one personal principle of 
right. 

ZRVAN-AKARANA. 

ALL worship of personal Will involves Dualism, in some 
form, however incomplete. The power of choosing be 
tween opposites is indispensable to the freedom of will; 
and so long as pure will, as such, is held to be the supreme 
essence, the law which it is its only real freedom to obey 
is subordinated to its right of choice, that is, to caprice; 
and the worship of will becomes the worship of miracle. 
This is the inevitable logic of all religions of this kind. 
But all religions have germs of growth out of this vicious 
circle. Even in Mazdeism, the typical religion of personal 
Will, there were intimations of this need of somewhat 
greater than such will; and these intimations associated 
themselves with its movement out of Dualism, prompting 
it to solve the antagonism of Ormuzd and Ahriman in a 
common source. This is the significance of the Zervanitic 
doctrine in later Mazdeism. 1 It was one of a series of 
cosmogonic efforts, deriving the world from elements of 
universal order, such as Light, Space, Time, Fate : and a 
direct result of the most important of these conceptions, 
namely, that of Fate. 2 

Every thoughtful person must recognize universal law 
as master of all individual intentions or aims. The mind 
which has not learned that the world is governed by forces 
to which all wills of whatever power must conform, has 
had but slight experience of life. The noblest hope and 
desire are most closely confronted by insuperable limits. 
Before these primal conditions of existence, these inscrut 
able realities of law, call it either cosmical or spiritual, 

1 Spiegel s A vesta, ii. 218, note iii. xxxix. 

2 The Parsis of the present time are not dualists; the old meaning of the Avesta is 
lost for them. 



ZRVAN-AKARANA. 99 

all gods must bend. Their order upholds all self-conscious 
being like a sea. This is the impersonal soul, the incon 
ceivable essence, which comes to us as divine necessity, 
and which we must learn to hold benignant and dear for 
ever. All great personal religions have hints and gleams 
of this light beyond their own, this supremacy over the 
objects of their worship, even when they strive to regard 
the two as one; because men cannot help feeling such 
predominance of substance over will in their own lives. 
The greatest of religions, the universal religion, will be 
characterized by enthroning it, trustingly and deliberately, 
above all conceptions of Divine Purpose or Will. I seek 
instinctive germs of this truth in every positive religion. I 
think I can discern how such an instinct helped Mazdeism 
resolve its Dualism into something like unity. 

The sway of Destiny over all motion, spiritual and phy 
sical, was expressed by the Hindus in the term B/iaga, 
meaning the " allotter or giver." The word BakJit, from 
the same root, is used in the older Avesta in the general 
sense of celestial appointment, without reference to any 
personal source. 1 But in the later writings this idea be 
came more distinctly associated with the movement of the 
stars and planets, and with the strife in which they were 
supposed to be engaged. 2 From these movements destiny 
was supposed to proceed, and in a more strict and positive 
sense than in the ordinary and wide-spread faith in astro 
logical influences. Thus it appears that in the worshipper 
of free-will and choice, the movements of the heavenly 
bodies, even conceived as strife, were capable of awakening 
a reverent sense of supreme order, irreversible law, and 
predetermined result. 3 

1 Darmesteter : Ortnazd et A hriman, p. 319-20. Haug : Essays, etc., p. 273. 

2 Minbkhired, viii. 17. 

3 Both the Chinese and the European languages use the word "heaven" to express the 
sense of all-controlling^destiny, where a personal term seems to be less in accordance with the 
impression of order and law. 



IOO DEVELOPMENT. 

Now, it is easy to see how this divine and resistless 
march of the heavenly powers came to be identified with 
the flow of Time, of Boundless Time, 1 its obvious con 
dition, and its most impressive suggestion. The Greek 
made Cronos the oldest of gods; and it is, in a sense, 
our necessity to conceive of time as the all-determining, 
all-resolving power of Fate. Whatsoever is past recall, 
whatsoever must be but is not yet, the certainties of past 
and future alike, are offspring of Time, whereof none saw 
the beginning, none can foresee the end. Time is the 
Hindu Kali, with the worlds strung about her neck like 
skulls of the dead. Time is the all-engulfing god of the 
Bhagavad-gita, down whose open mouth rush the genera 
tions. Time is the one sure movement, the one inevitable 
path. The heavenly legions on their ordered march through 
boundless time and space, those undying fires man fails 
to reach, yet never fails to behold ; those gods of all ages, 
obedient to a mysterious Order beyond themselves, might 
well seem to bind past, present, and future into one all- 
determining Fate. But if time was the ground of these 
celestial movements for the Mazdean, not less would it 
be the parent and sure promise of all the spiritual and 
material glories which he expected from the triumph of 
his law. Even in the Vendidad it is here and there in 
voked, together with the Word and the self-sustaining 
heavens, equally with the gods themselves. 2 And the 
Minokhired, at the end, sums up the accomplishment of 
destined good through the toils and sufferings of the 
past. 3 

1 Minbkhired, xxvii 10 ; viii. 17. "The things of the world are moved by Destiny, and 
the regular course of that which is self-created Time, the ruler of the long ages." As it is 
appointed to each in every time, so it is accomplished, " so that the good which should come 
through those who have departed, to the creatures of Ahura, has been brought to pass." 

2 Vendidad, xix. 55. For later development of Zrvan-akarana, see Carre: L> Ancien 
Orient., ii. 379. 

3 It is scarcely necessary to say that by this term I but mean that imperfect form of 
dualism which has been already allowed as belonging to Avestan religion. 



ZRVAN-AKARANA. IOI 

Mazdean Dualism, then, contained in itself the germs of 
this principle of reconciliation. No resort could have been 
more natural. Whatever modifications it may have re 
ceived from Babylonian sources, this sovereignty of Time 
without bounds was the demand of personal will for a 
ground of confidence beyond the strife of its own free 
choice, or any idealization of the same. That it came 
through the sense of all-mastering movement in those 
heavenly fires which had always been the symbol of 
deity, simply shows that Nature inevitably brings the 
recognition of unity in the religious conceptions. But it 
was easier to escape the bonds of Dualism than the in 
capacity of worshipping any other than some form of 
personal will. And Zrvan-akarana, though a resort to 
an impersonal element, became no less personal than 
Ormuzd, and no less the centre of anthropomorphic my 
thology. Still the Bundehesh, as late at least as the Sas- 
sanian times, does not represent Zrvan as a person. Its 
first chapter either describes Ahura as " possessing end 
less time," 1 or else the " Time of Ahura" as that which 
"was, and is, and is to be." 2 And Ahriman is said to 
exist for a time which shall have its end. There is no 
cosmogonic expression here, no hint of the origin of 
either from a pre-existent God. 

About the same period, however,Theodore of Mopsuestia 
wrote that Zoroaster made Zarouam, ruler of the whole 
universe, and called him Destiny ; and that this first god 
produced both Ormuzd and Ahriman (or Satan). This 
was the general belief of the Armenian Christian writers 
of that period, and shows that it was largely under the 
influence of Syrian Christianity that the change of Zrvan 
from an abstract to a personal form must have taken 
place. In the later Persian sects, formed under Semitic 

1 Mit unbegranzter Zeit begabt. Windischmann. 

2 Die Zeit des Ahuramazda war, und ist, und wird sein. Justi. 



102 DEVELOPMENT. 

and Christian relations, the Zervanites, or believers in Time 
as a supreme god, were especially noticed by the Mussul 
man writers. 1 But the struggle of good and evil is not to 
be ended by the triumph of one Will, one Person, one Lord, 
whatever his name, over other beings equal or inferior. 
For no service of a person can make free or holy ; only 
the service of righteous principles, of truth as truth, and 
good as good, not as the will of God or man. Zoroastrian- 
ism, and, we must add, Christianity, for want of this 
final step upon impersonal foundations, have been fated, 
with all their modifications, to revolve in the same circle 
of ethical weakness and limited sight. Thus the new Maz- 
dean god, though a resort to natural order, was but an 
imperfect and transient foregleam of what only ages of 
science following on ages of this anthropomorphic worship 
could bring. Nevertheless, as such resort, it was one of 
those landmarks in history that indicate the path of spirit 
ual evolution. And it is such landmarks, discernible to the 
careful student of comparative religion, that makes reli 
gious history of most value to us to-day. 

Zrvan gradually becomes indentified with other deities 
of similar name, but different meaning, and of Semitic or 
Median origin ; and a mixed mythology of shreds and 
patches gathers about the old reconciling Time-idea, till 
it becomes as finite as the gods it was said to have created. 
Ormuzd and Ahriman reappear dressed in the patriarchal 
robes of Esau and Jacob ; and the old Zrvan, tricked by 
the younger and evil-minded son, retains so little of his 
Time-mastery as to be obliged to grant him nine thousand 
years of rule in the world. Hindu legends of creation of 
the world through sacrificial suicide of a god, are infused 
among Mazdean traditions utterly opposed to their ascetic 
and mystical spirit. But through all changes and all syn 
cretism of systems abides the old faith that good shall be 

1 See Haug s Essays, etc., p. 15. 



ZRVAN AKARANA. I 03 

triumphant at last ; and that assurance, which in the begin 
ning helped Avestan Dualism from practical failure to re 
concile man with the conditions of life, maintains the like 
function in the latest phases of Mazdeism. It inspires the 
worship of Zrvan as well as that of Ahura. And there 
fore it is not, in either of these phases, a mere trust in 
personal will, but rests, in part at least, on confidence in 
the natural tendency of things ; on the necessities of the 
world and of man. Nor can I hesitate to accept, as at 
least in accordance with the laws of evolution, the striking 
summary of religious systems by a distinguished Oriental 
scholar, which represents "all their first principles, Time, 
Fate, Light, Space, as forms of One, namely, Heaven, or 
the Sky, considered in its movement, or its brightness, or 
its extent Ormuzd begins by being the luminous infinite 
Heaven. And the same principle has given the Indo- 
European family their Supreme God." 1 

A still broader generalization may be based upon that 
one of these principles with which our Iranian studies 
have thus far been most concerned. If we remember that 
through all the strife of good and evil which man has felt 
within him and beheld without, his imagination has re 
mained loyal to that transcendent symbol the Light, in 
which his conscious religious life found its first inspira 
tion, we shall assuredly be convinced that the worship of 
Nature is not only the natural, but the sane and sacred 
track of humanity. 

On this track lies the real solution of Dualism, which 
Zoroastrianism and all the other religions of the past, 
with all their compensations and foregleams, have failed 
to accomplish. That " the fall of the race through the 
bad use that its earliest progenitors made of their free-will 
is the only solution of the formidable problem " of evil, 2 is 

1 Darmesteter : Ormazd et A hriman, pp. 336-37. 

2 Lenormant : Contemporary Review^ September, 1879. 



IO4 DEVELOPMENT. 

a mere Biblico-historical dogma, which does not touch the 
root of the matter, but simply puts it back in time, and 
involves it in deeper complications. If evil be what the 
Bible represents it, no such misuse of free-will by the first 
men, or the last men, can account for it. It has been said, 
and there is truth in the statement, that the Hebrew es 
caped the association of darkness with evil. His form of 
dualism was absorbed in the conception of a God above 
both light and darkness, of whom they were the products : 
"The darkness and the light are both alike to Thee." But 
this noble plane of Hebrew prophecy, higher than any 
point reached by Chaldean, Persian, or Phoenician, does 
not solve the problem of evil, the deeper dualism which 
no special symbol exhausts. The will of a God alone is 
not sufficient to answer it. Nor can any revelation of 
such will serve better the demand of reason in our age. 
Evil, physical and moral, cannot be instituted by any 
personal will. 

Dualism is in Nature, in man ; good and evil, both in 
the physical and ethical spheres, cannot be ignored. Their 
conflict is the tremendous reality, which no religion can 
possibly put out of sight. It is the glory of Mazdeism to 
have struck root in this central fact: its failure, to have 
ended in solutions which solve nothing. For no triumph 
of one personal will over another, or of one kind of will 
ing over another, no utter extermination of half the will 
power of the universe, can explain or justify the tragic 
hate and strife. Only when it is recognized that, behind 
the conflict of good and evil wills whether human or 
divine, the antagonism of purpose by which character is 
formed and virtue enthroned over sorrow and sin, there 
is in the nature of things a law that evil is the condition of 
good ; that without the lower the higher could not be ; that 
liberty and progress, and love and duty, and heroism and 
devotion, imply the existence of evil, and ripen through its 



ZRVAN AKARANA. I 05 

tasks ; and that this necessity, in the eternal nature of 
things, uses all personality to serve its own uncreated law 
of growth, only when this religion of Nature shall sup 
plant the religions which ultimate in man-made divinities 
of Will, which they themselves must take for granted, can 
the dark riddle of ages be solved. 



II. 

MORALITY OF THE AVESTA. 



MORALITY OF THE AVESTA. 

TT might seem that little could be said for the morality 
* of a system which insists as earnestly on the criminality 
of killing an otter, or dropping one s nail-parings about 
the house, as on the slaying of a man. Very strange re 
sults came in process of time of that complete confusion 
of the physical and moral worlds inherent in Iranian 
dualism. We can readily see that it was only logical that 
all the evil purpose of Ahriman should appear to be incar 
nated in each of his creatures, and to call for its destruc 
tion as the highest duty; and that all the goodness of 
Ahuramazda should be embodied in each good and help 
ful product thereof, and demand its preservation with equal 
energy. We have already seen upon what trivial associa 
tions many creatures were proved pure or impure ; yet 
there can be no doubt that the choice was in a measure 
determined by real gratitude and sympathetic respect on 
the part of these simple tribes, whose chief interests were 
the protection of their settlements and the security of the 
products of their industry. And why should not the watch 
dog be made a centre of superstitious awe and jealous care 
by a people at that stage of progress, as the bread and wine 
of atonement by a more introversive religion? 

" I have made the dog, O Zarathustra, with keen scent and sharp 
teeth, faithful to man, as a protection to the folds, I, who am Ahura 
mazda. When he is sound and in good voice, no thief nor wolf can 
come nigh." " For the dwellings would not stand fast on the earth 
created by Ahuramazda, but for the dogs which pertain to the cattle 
and the village." 1 

1 Vendidad,-x.\\\. 106, in, 163. 



1 10 DEVELOPMENT. 

By slaying a certain kind of dog, the offender reckless 
of Ahura s good purpose, and sinning against his will 
" slays his own soul, and the effects of the act last for nine 
generations. " l He who kills a trained hound excites ab 
horrence ; and at his death no other soul can deliver him, 
nor will the dogs help him at the bridge of judgment. 2 The 
penalty for giving hurtful food to a pup is fifty blows with 
the horse-goad, and fifty with the scourge (^raosho-charand). 
Minute rules for expelling demons from different organs 
of the body, for purifying it from touch of the dead, 3 for 
removing menstrual uncleanness, for the disposal of exuviae 
like the dead hair or nails, are parts of the great struggle 
to cleanse the living world from the decay and death which 
are Ahriman s instruments. They are neither better nor 
worse in themselves than other forms of ritual purification, 
which are in the physical world what processes for sanctifi- 
cation are in the spiritual. This equal insistence on things 
external and internal, this attachment of solemn sanctions 
to doings in themselves thoroughly trivial, illustrates a 
confusion of the physical and moral spheres common to 
all religions, and unavoidable in the absence of physical 
science, which finds itself confronted down to the latest 
moment by a similar class of superstitions, such as pray 
ing for the removal of drought or pestilence, and expect 
ing Providential interference with physical laws. With the 
Iranian, in special degree, an intense propensity to symbol 
ism gave everything in the physical world a corresponding 
meaning for the spiritual. This meaning was not so much 
consciously applied, as immediately actualized or enacted 
by direct will, a nerve-force by which mind and body 
were in such close rapport that they might be called the 
poles of one substance. All the stock phrases of the 
Avesta, " pure mind and body;" " purity of thought, 
word, and deed;" " the beautiful body of Ahuramazda;" 

i Vendidad, xiii. 7. 2 Ibid., xiii. 21-25. 3 Ibid., ix. 6. 



MORALITY OF THE AVESTA. Ill 

" the soul of the Bull," indicate this closeness of relation 
of the physical and spiritual : each is seen in the other, not 
inferred from it. The world is known as ethics ; the will, 
as acts, forms, things done. Physical acts, destroying evil or 
preserving good things, actually enlarge* the world of good. 
This intense concreteness of ethical passion or fire, unre 
strained by prudential wisdom or physical science, explains 
the vast outlays of energy on things acceptable to Ahura, 
in parks, paradises, dogs, irrigation, culture of the land, 
destruction of idols and noxious creatures, rites and pomps. 
Mass had essential spiritual value in these things ; every 
insect killed, told for so much penance or moral service. 
The " Acta Martyrum Persarum " says that to kill flies 
was a sign of conversion from Christ to Zoroaster ! The 
blows with the scourge (qraosho-charana) , which were sup 
posed to have been given to the back of the offender, were 
in fact given by him to the noxious creatures of Ahriman ; 
and even penance was estimated in good works. 1 

This confusion of physical and moral, with its accom 
panying ritualism, does not forbid a marked degree of 
ethical earnestness in the Avesta. The Bible of free-will, 
it insists everywhere on free choice and life-long consecra 
tion to the moral war. Its root-idea is, that falsehood 
(infidelity to thought or faith) is radically destructive; 
that truth is practically creative and holy. Penalties for 
violation of promise or contract (mit/ird-druj), affect not 
only the offender, but descend to his children. 2 In later 
times, tremendous self-imprecations were drawn up as 
guards against falsehood ; 3 and we know from the Greeks 
what importance the Persians attached to truth. Light 
itself is truth. The promise must be kept, even witJi an 
unbeliever. The value of all outward acts was in purity of 
thought and upright will. The Gatha-ahunavaiti says : 
" They whose thoughts are not pure, from them the good 

1 Harlez, ii. 101. - Mihr-Yasht, 2. 3 Avesta, ii. Ivii. ; Spiegel. 



112 DEVELOPMENT. 

spirit flees." 1 The Hadokht-Nask says: " The one recital 
of the Word which is worth all that exists, is that when the 
speaker forsakes evil thoughts, words, and deeds." 2 " Our 
own souls praise we, our own Fravashis praise we;" and 
" may you seek for*what is better than the good." 3 This 
ideal ignores all differences of age, or time, or sex : " The 
Fravashis of all pure men and women in all regions praise 
we." 4 "We praise all the just men and women that are, 
have been, or shall be." 5 Then as for duties to others : 
Yima s paradise of world-innocence was where " no strife 
entered, nor vexation, nor enmity, nor deceit." The Vis- 
pered says: "Have ready feet, hands, wills, to do good 
works and avoid evil ones." " Do good, give help to the 
helpless." 6 The holiest verse (Ahuna-vairya), distilled sub 
stance of the Word, says : "The kingdom to Ahura, whose 
law protects the weak." 7 And this is the vow of the be 
liever : " With purity and good-will, O Ahura, I will pro 
tect the poor who serves Thee." 8 He who does not pay 
a just debt " is a thief of the loan, a robber of what is lent 
to him." 9 In the later Minokhired, it is pronounced meri 
torious to build caravansaries. 10 And see the confidence in 
an " all-beholding, all-renewing, unsleeping Helper of the 
just and good : " " Mithra, grant that we may be well-wish 
ing, of friendly mind, loved and honored, and may slay 
every evil desire," "Mithra, whom the lord of the region, 
the ruler of the clan, and the master of the household ever 
with uplifted hands call to aid ; whom the poor man, de 
voted to th*e law but robbed of his goods, ever with uplifted 
hands calls to aid; the voice of whose weeping ascends to 

yafna, xxxiv. 8. 

" Righteousness is the only true purification." Vendidad, x. 38. 

yafna, Iviii. 5, 8. 4 Fravardln-Yasht, 144. 

Vaftta, xli. 4, 5. 6 Vi s p e red, xviii. 1-5. 

Roth translates the Ahuna-vairya differently. " Ahura has placed in this world, as well 
as in the better, a shepherd for those who need." (Leitsch. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch 
xxv. 20. ) " Craosha has built a firm abode for the poor." Yafna, Ivi. 4. 

e Yafna, xxxiv. 5. Vendidad^ iv. 1,2. A vesta, ii. Iviii. 



MORALITY OF THE AVESTA. 113 

the stars and goes round the earth," " Mithra, whose 
long arms grasp forward with strength ; from far Indies 
to farthest West, and on the Northern stream, and at the 
ends of the world. The unrighteous thinks, Mithra sees 
not these evil deeds ; but I think in my soul no man on 
earth with hundredfold strength thinks, speaks, or does so 
much evil as Mithra with heavenly strength thinks, speaks, 
and does good." l 

Craosha smites the unchaste. 2 The Gathas admonish 
young married couples to " clothe each other with purity, 
after the righteous law, and bring great joy." 3 The Ven- 
didad shows its respect for pure relations between the 
sexes, when it makes the giving of one s sister or daughter 
as a pure virgin to a true believer an atonement for injur 
ing a creature pure to Ahura, or believed to protect the 
husbandman s food. 4 Marriage with unbelievers is for 
bidden. 5 The married are of course honored beyond the 
unmarried; and while there are no signs of polygamy in 
the Avesta, though Greek writers of a later date assert its 
existence, 6 to a limited extent, and also the Shah-Nameh, 
the later Parsi writings define strictly the grounds that 
allow the husband to put aside his wife, and even permit 
him to take another to secure posterity, since increase of 
progeny adds strength to Ahura s hosts. 7 The poor, how 
ever, had but one wife. Marriage with near relatives was 
in high esteem, probably as keeping the clan-blood pure. 8 
The marriage of even the nearest, a result of the primi 
tive veneration for ties of blood, was, according to the 
Bundehesh, 9 one of the three inviolable things with which 
Ahriman could not intermingle, the custom being derived 

1 Mihr-Yaskt, 34, 84, 85, 105, 106. 2 Yafna, Ivi. 7. 

3 Yafna, Iii. 5. 4 Vendidad, xiv. 64-66; xiii. 169. 

e Vendid&d) xviii. 123, 124. 

6 Herodotus says that the Persians of his day have many wives and concubines; and 
Strabo adds, for the purpose of gaining children. 

1 A vesta, ii. xxxi. ; Spiegel. 8 Vispered, iii. 18; Herod., iii. 88 

8 Bundehesh , xxxv. 

8 



1 14 DEVELOPMENT. 

from the Persians of the older time. 1 We do not hesitate 
to set this down as proof, in that age of the world, that 
the awe of religion centred in the family, and made all 
that bound its members, for present and future time, in 
closest union supremely sacred. The Vendidad has laws 
against infanticide, holding man, woman, and child alike 
guilty ; also commanding that the father of an illegitimate 
child shall maintain it. 2 We find no definition either of 
marital powers (except the general command to the wife 
to obey the husband) or of parental rights. The Vispered 
calls "the mistress of the house" to the sacrifice, "the 
woman of pure thoughts, words, acts, irreproachable, and 
submissive to her spiritual teacher." 3 

All virtues centre in the duty of spreading the good 
Mazdayagman law of purity (Asha)^ the profit of the 
world. No sin like the violation of that law; no terms 
of friendship with the unbeliever in it. 5 Mazdean moral 
ity is indeed often brought into contradiction with natural 
humanity, like that of other religions, by its dependence 
on the interests of the faith. Thus physicians, where they 
are uncertain about remedies, are to experiment first, not 
on Mazdeans, but on unbelievers. Nevertheless, not even 
with these shall the true believer deal falsely? The sa- 
credness of the elements made the acts of all other faiths 
intolerable in many ways. Yet the Persian kings for the 
most part were tolerant. The Iranians believed themselves 
a chosen people, sent to redeem the world; and this, as 
with the Hebrews, was but the natural climax of a vehe 
ment self-assertion of the personal will. Ahriman s temp 
tation of Zoroaster consisted in the attempt to induce him 

1 Deog. Laert. and Strabo. 2 ]/ en didad, xv. 

3 Vispered, Hi. 20. 4 Vi s p ere d. viii. n. 

5 The unbelievers, teachers of evil doctrine (Karapans and Kavis),are said (Ya^na, xxxii.) 
to destroy the holy words and the spirit of life ; to spoil Ahura s good intent, and help the 
wicked who make desolate the fields, and destroy the cattle. It does not seem easy to iden 
tify these enemies, who certainly could not have been Aryans. Harlez. 

6 Mihr-Yasht t \. 



MORALITY OF THE AVESTA. 115 

to curse the good Mazdayagnian law, and was defeated by 
his reciting the sacred formula, 1 the Ahuna-vairya. The 
Haomas, Beregmas, and the various priestly names and 
services by which the ritual was conducted, and in which 
the virtue of the law was carried, were called the " victo 
rious remedies;" 2 and these organized forms of propa- 
gandism came more and more to absorb into themselves 
the meaning of " purity." The priests, who are hardly 
emphasized in the oldest Gathas, gradually became con 
spicuous, and priestly purity is celebrated in hymns and 
prayers. They seem to have had no power except that 
of performing rites, and of receiving a portion of the offer 
ing; and the " pure man," as such, appears competent to 
religious functions in the Zoroastrian system. He is in 
fact pure by virtue of rightly fulfilling the religious order. 
The later, more strictly organized priesthood were prob 
ably of Median origin. No offering of blood to Ahura or 
his powers ; creatures were cut in pieces, all but a part of 
the caul, to be carried away by the worshippers and eaten : 
the gods did not want the body, but the soul (the dead 
being impure). So says Strabo ; 3 and this is in accord 
ance with the Avesta. Nothing here justifies the holocaust 
of Persian kings, which could only have been for food ; 
nor the burial of living men, which was in honor of deities 
under the earth (Cht/iojiioi), such as are recorded of 
Queen Amestris and others. 

The service was a prayer and hymn ; Haoma juice 
poured out ; bread and fruits, use of the " holy cup." 
Prayers were offered for others ; for the dead, for the 
pure, for the creatures of Ahura. So the Persians, we 
are told, prayed for all Persians. 

Practical religious earnestness, and the wide sweep of 
Ahura s purpose over all exclusive ambitions, in personal 
discipline or positive labor, made caste impossible. The 

1 Vendidad, xix. z Vispered, viii. 3 Strabo, xv- 



Il6 DEVELOPMENT. 

Gathas divide the Iranians into four classes, priests, 
warriors, agriculturists, and artisans ; l and these, by exer 
cise of the duty of " the pure man," equally bring forth 
the Holy Word of right thought, word, and deed. 2 Caste 
was never established, in any proper sense, in Iran. The 
clan was developed to contain chiefs of the house, village, 
tribe, province, and " Zarathustra as the fifth " in some re 
gions ; as the fourth in others. 3 What is Zoroaster here? 
High priest? It may be. But there is no mistaking in 
the Avesta the aristocratic tone which inheres in the wor 
ship of will, even in the organization of the early Iranians ; 
as we see in the Vispered, where is given the ritual of the 
Gahanbar feasts, in honor of the six days of creation, or six 
seasons, six yearly feasts described in the Bundehesh. It 
opens with an invitation to lords and chiefs of all kinds, 
typical heads of creatures, qualities, forms, every one of 
which is thus represented in the great dualistic war. 
These typical chiefs are called the " givers " of the classes 
in question ; and so there are hierarchical orders of priests, 
just as Ahura has his subordinates, and these their own, in 
celestial descending series. In the (later) Khordad-Yasht, 
Zoroaster is forbidden to teach the law to any other than 
the priestly family (so the sentence is interpreted) ; but this 
could not have been done in the time of the Gathas. A 
striking illustration of the formulizing spirit, and its work 
upon the accumulated material of later ethics and ritual 
ism, is found in the Patets, or confessional formulas, which 
contain anxiously minute enumerations of every conceiv 
able short-coming, and prayers for forgiveness of every 
sin that could be thought of, as if everything depended 
on specifying every iota of desire or conscience in the lit 
urgy, all of which indicates a long period of real ethical 

1 Yatfna, xix. 17; Haug. 

2 Haug s translation, making appointment of a spiritual guide one of these duties, is cer 
tainly doubtful. 3 Yafna, xix. 18. 



MORALITY OF THE AVESTA. 

earnestness before it could have come to this. The seri 
ous business of self-discipline seems to have haunted the 
Iranians of the Avesta ; and the very fables of the race, 
it has been observed, " are free from the wild excesses of 
imagination, and have a severe and moral aspect." l 

It is impossible to deny the moral earnestness of a faith 
whose ceremonial invocations enumerate hosts of good 
men. The preservation of their names alone, in this form, 
is the surest evidence of long ages of pious gratitude and 
honor to the best 2 That hero-worship, which we have af 
firmed to be at the root of Iranian mind, has here its per 
fect illustration. The " Fravashis of the pure " are the 
earliest type of a religion of humanity, foreshadowing 
the modern cultus of genius and character. Here begins 
the religious recognition of human personality. The Bun- 
dehesh gives as the significance of the myth which brings 
forth man from the seed of Gayomard in the form of a tree, 
from whose leaves sprang ten varieties of men and women, 
the sexes inseparable from each other and not to be told 
apart, that the soul being first made, and placed in the 
body as its instrument, lifts this by its invisible power to the 
upright form ; and, like a tree, strives upward, that it may 
come to the Yazatas, or heavenly ones. 3 " To the pro 
genitors of mankind Ahura said, Speak ye good words, 
do good acts, vield not to the evil ones ; be perfect. " 4 
The destiny of men and spirits hangs on the majesty of 
Truth, and on the weakness and self-destruction of False 
hood. Ahriman s fatality is that he chooses a lie, and so 
sees nothing truly, blundering till it is too late to save him 
self; while Ahura, because he is truth, foresees the tenden 
cies of the world, and wins the conflict before it begins. 

1 Harlez, ii. 46. 

2 Fravardtn-Yasht. The Bundehesh gathers up chronological data covering zodiacal 
periods with ethical and moral personages ; xxxiv. 

3 Bundehesh, xv. ; Justi. * ibid., xxxiii. 



Il8 DEVELOPMENT. 

And when he foretells the issue to his great enemy, so 
overwhelming is the presence of Truth that Ahriman at 
the first third of what he hears, bends in fear ; at the sec 
ond, falls on his knees ; at the third, flees and buries him 
self in darkness for three thousand years. So inestimable 
and imperishable is the Law of Truth embodied in its 
great Prophet, that the seed of Zoroaster is held under 
the guardianship of a million Fravashis of the Pure. 1 

1 Bundehesh, xxxiii. 



III. 

ZARATHUSTRA. 



ZARATHUSTRA. 

IT is remarkable that a religion which represents the 
worship of personality in its intensest degree should 
have been destined to lose almost every personal record 
of its origin. Zoroaster is the obscurest figure in the line 
of prophets and messiahs. 1 It is even uncertain, notwith 
standing Spiegel s strong impression of unity in the final 
form of the Avesta, whether the personal references, either 
in the oldest or latest parts of that work of ages, point to 
any one historical founder or systematizer of the faith. 
Such have been the fortunes of the Avesta, that not only 
have the greater portion of its original books (nosks) been 
lost, but the heroic traditions of the Iranian race, which 
might have thrown light upon its religious history, can be 
brought into connection therewith only by the very imper 
fect hints and incidental notices contained in three or four 
chapters. The passages in which Zarathustra is either 
referred to or introduced as speaking in person, which are 
made the most of in Haug s translation, are not of decis 
ive importance. Even the striking passage in the Qrosh- 
Yasht, which ascribes to him the authorship of the five 
Gathas, 2 does not conclusively prove historic personality; 
and the prophet comes before us mainly as an ideal per 
sonage. Whether calling men to repentance and choice 
between good and evil, or conversing with Ahura; whether 
in prayer, in ritual service, or in temptation; whether 

1 See Spiegel (Koniglich bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, January, 1867), who 
shows, by a complete analysis of authorities, how entirr, this uncertainty is. 



122 DEVELOPMENT. 

exalted or persecuted, he is the official and chosen in 
strument of his God. The human element is absorbed in 
the divine function of propagator of the law through the 
miraculous power of the Word. He expresses no sense 
of humility in view of his great mission ; he performs no 
heroic act. No sympathy is sought in his behalf. And 
all the apparent records of his life might easily be the con 
structed tradition of a body of priests. Moses, Buddha, 
Jesus, of whom much the same officialism is true, though 
in different ways, had the advantage of written records. 
And this is also true of Confucius, who enters no other 
than natural claims. But the founder of the Iranian reli 
gion could have had no aid from writing; and the Iranian 
Word, by whomsoever spoken, must have been committed 
solely to the energy of the moral idea, to the antagonism 
of good with evil, to the inspiration of will by a common 
impulse. 

The name Zarathustra, at all events, cannot of itself 
stand for any special individual, since the numerous inter 
pretations of it, as "star of gold," "star of life," "singer 
of praise," " brave camel owner," and " seed of Venus " 
(Ishtar), are becoming superseded (at least so far as 
they are supposed to designate such individuality) by that 
which explains it as the generic name of the Iranian high- 
priesthood, and as simply meaning "spiritual elder" or 
" chief." : Following Parsi traditions, 2 Haug regards Cpi- 
tama, frequently used in connection with Zarathustra, as 
the real or family name of the prophet. We have here 
another illustration of the historic law that those names 
by which traditional founders of religions have come down 
to us, are simply designations of spiritual or ecclesiastical 
function; such as the Buddha, the Messiah (Christ), the 

1 That the word has a superlative (Zarathitstrotemo}, seems decisive of the question. 
Haug has strongly insisted on this meaning (Essays, etc.), p- 296; somewhat similar was the 
suggestion of the learned Anthony Troyer, in his notes to the Dabistan, i. 212. 

2 So Ctesias ; Spiegel: Avesta, iii. Ixxvii. So Franck : Etudes Orientales, p. 222. 



ZARATHUSTRA. 123 

Zarathustra, names perhaps given to individuals but 
little known, perhaps themselves merely personifications, 
as points of historic attachment for the religions in 
those earlier traditions or associations from which they 
sprung. 

This generic quality of the name explains the great 
variety of dates given for the age of Zarathustra, running 
all the way from 6000 to 600 B.C. j 1 which has led scholars 
to suppose that there must have been two or more of the 
name, 2 the fact being that the name is simply messianic, 
and employed to supply a personal centre to all obscure 
and yet important movements in Iranian history. Assum 
ing Qpitama Zarathustra to have been the chief personage 
of the Avestan religion, this question of his age would lead 
into discussions that promise little satisfaction : such as 
where Airyana-vaej6, his favorite region, may have been ; 
where Pourushagpa, his father, may have lived ; where the 
Hystaspes or Vistagpa, whom he is said in the Avesta to 
have converted, may have reigned. 3 Two points may be 
held as settled : First, the author of the oldest parts of the 
Avesta cannot have been far removed in date from the 
Vedic period, with which they are closely connected ; and, 
second, the Greek writers 4 of the fourth and fifth centuries 
before Christ could not possibly have referred him to so 
remote an antiquity as many thousand years before their 
own day, if he had lived in the time of Hystaspes, the 
father of Darius I., only two hundred years previous. 
Only later writers, many centuries after Christ, for 

1 Rapp (Zeitsckr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch., xix. 22); Spiegel: Eran. Alterth. 
\. 673; Shea s Mirkhond, 274; Plutarch s Isis and Osiris; Pliny: Natural History, xxx. 
Anquetil-Duperron and Hyde were the first moderns who adopted the latter date. They are 
followed by Franck : Etudes Orientates, p. 213. 

2 Stanley, Lives of Philosophers, counts six of the name, and of all nations. 

8 See Movers: Die Phonizier, i. 259. Rawlinson (Journal Roy at A static Society, xv. 
245). Roth : Gesch. uns. abend/and. Phil. i. 349. Harlez : Preface to Avesta, i. 15. 

* Xanthus of Lydia, Aristotle, etc. Haug : Lecture on Zoroaster, iS68. Hcrmippus 
(250 B c. ) speaks of two million verses by Zoroaster ; a pure impossibility, even in the 
credulity of tradition, if he lived only four hundred years previously. 



124 DEVELOPMENT. 

example, all the Mahometan historians, 1 place him in 
this Achsemenidan period. 2 The extravagantly early date, 
6000 B.C., on the other hand, is probably constructed out 
of the Babylonian tradition, recorded by Berosus, that 
Zoroaster was the first of a line of Median kings who 
ruled in that city in the third millennium before Christ. 
The number "6000" is a round number in Babylonian 
chronology, and signifies, says Haug, " great antiquity." 
The cosmic system of the Mazdean books places him three 
thousand years after the beginning of the intermixture of 
good and evil in the universe, six thousand years after the 
creation of the earth, that is, in the middle of time ; of 
course, a requirement of the astronomico-religious myth. 3 
The Median magi doubtless deified Zoroaster, and identi 
fied him with Zrvan-akarana (Time without bounds) in 
later times, if they did not originate this personation of 
what in the Avesta is simply a neuter term of relation. 4 
The Avesta, however, gives as little reason for making 
Zarathustra a priest-king, as for supposing him the Time- 
fountain of Ormuzd and Ahriman. The uncertainty of the 
whole question of Cpitama s date is indicated by the dif 
ferences between the almost equally valuable estimates of 
Haug, 5 Rapp, 6 Duncker, 7 and Harlez, 8 which cover a period 
of four hundred years between the eleventh and fifteenth 
centuries before Christ. 9 



1 See Roth: Geschichte ttnserer abendliind. Phil. \. 351. 

2 The confidence with which Roth (Gesch. uns. abend. Phil. vol. i.), speaks of this date 
shows how much has been done since his work appeared. 

3 See Windischmann : Zoroastrische Studien, p. 162. Roth (Gesch. uns. abend. Phil, 
1862, vol. i., 380-390) ingeniously argues that the Vistaspa of the Avestan Yashts was 
Hystaspes, father of Darius, king of Bactria, subdued by Cyrus ; that on Darius s accession 
to the throne of Cambyses, he made Zoroastrianism the religion of the Persian empire. 

Lenormant : Chaldean Magic (English edition), p. 229. 
Haug : Essays, etc., p. 299. 
Zeitschr. Deutsch. MorgenL Gesellsch., xix. 27. 
Geschichte des Alterthums, ii. 317. 
Avesta, i. 14. 

Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien, pp. 260-313, gives the fullest account of the 
testimonies of the ancients concerning the age of Zoroaster. See also Roth, as above. 



ZARATHUSTRA. 125 

The nativity of the prophet is another mystery. Was he 
Chaldean, Median, Bactrian? Here is fine hunting-ground 
for the Bibliolaters, Christian and Perso-Arabian. Was he 
not a servant of Jeremiah, or an associate of Noah or 
Abraham, 1 or even of Adam? 2 Whether Spiegel 3 and 
Duperron 4 have better reasons for placing his birth in 
western Iran, in contact with their favorite Semitic race, 
than have Ctesias in ancient, and Haug, 5 Duncker, 6 Har- 
lez, 7 and Rapp, 8 in modern times, for regarding Bactria as 
his home, certain it is that the Avesta itself, both in lan 
guage and geography, is decidedly an Old Bactrian work, 
and speaks of the more occidental portions of the Iranian 
plateau as infidel or accursed. I can see no good reason 
for dissociating the person or the faith of Zarathustra from 
their Vedic connections, either in place or time. 

On the whole, all speculation concerning f pitama is 
confused by the fact that the Avesta itself was brought 
together long after its earliest portions were composed; 
and with such an intermingling of history and tradition, 
of legend and hymn, and prayer and formula and doc 
trine, that no biographical inference can be drawn from 
any portion of its books. 

The development of the Zarathustrian Idea or Faith 
follows a similar track to that of the New Testament 
Christ. In the earlier parts of the Avesta, Zoroaster hears 
the revelation of Ahura as a man, as it rises upon him out 
of the sacrificial flame. 9 It is industrial and moral; com 
mands agriculture, 10 and the choice between sin and right 
eousness, for life and for death ; denounces the Daevas, 11 
their worshippers and their spells. The chosen messenger 

1 See Harlez : Avesta, \. 18 n. 2 Ernest de Bunsen : Hidden Wisdom, etc. 

3 Eran. Alterth., i. 676, 684. 4 Avesta. Also Roth : Stud. d. abend. Phil. i. 378. 

5 Essays, etc., p. 297. Gesch. d. Alterth. ii. 315. 

1 Avesta, 5. 17. 

8 Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesell. xix. ; also Rawl. A nc. Man. iii. 380. 

9 Yafna, xxx.; Haug. 

10 Honors the Soul of the Earth, the Cow. i. Gathd. Yafna, xxxiii. 



126 DEVELOPMENT. 

of Ahura vows fidelity: "I have believed in thee. I will 
destroy the wicked and comfort the good. Grant Thou me 
goodness. 1 I will proclaim the Best. May perfect Wisdom 
direct me, He whom my prayers pursue, Life of the good 
mind and word and deed." 2 He complains of desertion and 
neglect: " Whither shall I turn? None of the shepherds, 
none of the rulers, respect me r I am helpless. Look down 
on me while I implore thee, Ahura, to grant the comfort 
which one gives his friend. The wicked holds the goods of 
the just. Whoso works with righteousness in my cause, to 
him shall be given both the earthly goods and the spiritual 
life as a reward ; for thou possessest all, who art my assur 
ance." 3 " To Zarathustra Ahura commits the good of the 
world (settlements.)" 4 He is the friend of Ahura, "utter 
ing the sacred hymns (matkra), the laws given by my wis 
dom," says the Earth-Soul. 5 "It is said that to Cpitama 
Ahura granted the best good, by reason of his sincere 
worship, forever ; and he gives the same to all who keep 
the words and do the acts enjoined by the holy law. 6 In 
the most of these earliest Gathas, Zoroaster is not even a 
chosen prophet, but simply a man in earnest to seek the 
truth and proclaim it, amidst hostile bands, at the head of 
a few followers. But it is not easy to separate this stage 
from that of miracle and special messianic sense, which 
seems to have sprung directly from it. The story of his 
temptation by Ahriman 7 is believed by Haug to be an 
ancient lyric. The Evil One recognizes that this new 
comer is destined to enthrone righteousness, and tries in 
vain to seduce him from the work appointed; but he is so 
baffled and dazed by the Divine Word, and Zarathustra s 
vow to fulfil it, that with the whole devil-troop he casts 
himself down into hell ; nor does he ever become visible, 

1 Yafna, xliii.; Haug. 2 Yafna, xlv.; Haug. 

3 Ya^na, xlvi.; Haug. 4 Haug. 

5 Yafna, 1.; Haug. 6 Yafna, liii.; Haug. 

7 Vendidad, ix. 



ZARATHUSTRA. 

either of himself or through them, afterwards, but works in 
darkness and unseen. This last is probably a later feature, 
but the temptation story itself represents a somewhat more 
official function in the reformer than that earliest stage 
which we have pointed out. Here we find little or no 
ritualism, no official glory, no pre-existence, no supernat 
ural power. His relations are human, his interests domestic 
as well as public ; his father s name is given as a Soma- 
saint, and the marriage of his daughter is mentioned. 1 
The Bundehesh doubtless goes back to this early period in 
reciting the names of his progenitors and children, count 
ing three daughters and three sons, one of whom was the 
chief of priests, the ancestor of all later Mobads. 2 

Later, the Haoma-Yasht introduces Zarathustra as con 
versing with the personified Sacrificial Plant; learning 
that by preparing and offering it, the blessing of giving 
birth to great deliverers was received by saints of old, 
and by his own father last; and praying that he may 
obtain from it absolute power to go through the world, 
destroying the evil mind. 3 In the later parts of the Yagna 
he receives the supernal formula or prayer, "which was 
before the worlds," and whose recitation gives eternal life ; 4 
a Word so holy that whoever leaves out any portion of it 
in muttering shall be cast into hell. 5 Here Zarathustra 
is spoken of as one of the five rulers or chiefs who are 
placed over each "region" of Iran, probably as priest, 
and evidently represents the priestly authority as such. 

Later still, in the Yashts, are revealed to him the twenty 
mystic names of Ahura, and the supernatural spells for 
averting evil. 6 He is commanded to keep their mystery a 
secret from all but the priests (Zaota). 1 All the divine 

1 Ya(na. \. 17 ; Hi. 3 ; Harlez. But Haug translates differently. Spiegel is confusing as 
to this matter of the daughter. 

2 Bundehesh, xxx. ir. 3 Ya$na, ix. 

* Yafna, xix. 2, 3. B Ya^na, xix. 12-15. 

Ormazd-Yasht ; Ardibahist-Yasht. 1 Khordad-Yasht. 



128 DEVELOPMENT. 

beings and powers by whose aid men are saved, are laid 
open to his spirit. 1 The Fravardin-Yasht pronounces him 
first of priests, warriors, husbandmen ; first teacher of 
purity, and destroyer of Daevas ; in whom was revealed the 
whole Word, and whom the immortals desired as lord and 
master of the worlds ; by whose birth and growth trees 
and streams had increase, and all creatures were made to 
shout for joy: " Hail, fire-priest (Athrava), Cpitama Zara- 
thustra, born for us, to offer sacrifice for us, and spread 
abroad the holy rite and law ! " In the Hadokt-Nask his 
words are treated as sovereign spells. Later still we have 
benedictions {Afringdns) on kings in his name. 2 The 
Vendidad is mainly made up of revelations to him as 
the mediator of truth to men. It has been truly said, 
that " no heathen religion is so distinctly stamped with 
the idea of doctrinal revelation as this." 3 

In the Vispered, Zarathustra is lord of earthly creatures, 
as Ahura of heavenly. 4 The rites are all formulized, the 
priestly functions set, the Mazdean priest is the disciple 
of Zarathustra, 5 and the services rehearse the means of 
salvation bestowed by Mazda, by Zarathustra, and by the 
chief of Zarathustras {Zaratlmstrdtemo) ?> 

And in the still later mythology, the future saviours are 
his descendants. The last and greatest, Sosyosh, is mirac 
ulously born of a virgin by his inspiration. Still the ven 
eration grew. Greek writers ascribed to him millions of 
verses, 7 covering, according to Arabic writers, a thousand 
ox-skins. An immense quantity of literature actually be 
came current as his. Suidas, Pliny, and others refer to 
him as a great authority on natural science; 8 and the Parsi 
traditions make him the author of the twenty-one nosks 
of the Avesta, of which but a small part remains. Pliny 

1 Mihr and Fravardiii-Yashts- 2 Haug : Essays, etc., p. 223. 

3 Dollinger, p. 381. * Vispered, ii. 6 ; xix. 7, 8. 

5 Vispered, vi. 6. e Vispered, x. 

7 See Pliny, v. 422. 3 Pliny, vi. 447, 448. 



ZARATHUSTRA. 129 

records the story that " his brain pulsated so strongly on 
the day of his birth as to repel the hand laid upon it, 
a presage of his future wisdom." : The Perso-Arabic 
mythologists who have, if possible, less historic sense than 
those of Mediaeval Christendom, have surrounded him 
with the usual halo of supernatural phenomena, which 
are rehearsed with spiritual Sufi interpretations in the 
Dabistan. Torn from the womb by wild beasts, he is res 
cued and restored thereto by a beautiful youth, coming 
forth from a mountain with the Word and the Branch, 
who says to his mother, " Fear not, thy son shall be the 
prophet of the just God." 2 He laughs at the instant of 
birth, in token probably either of triumph or good-will. 3 
The efforts of wicked kings and magicians to destroy him 
are thwarted by the brute creatures, to which he brings 
relief. 4 He is transported like Mahomet to heaven, sub 
jected to supernatural bodily changes, instructed of God, 
without mediation of angels, in all mysteries and powers. 
The Sassanian saints of the Avestan faith repeat his mir 
acles, 5 and the Mahometan mystics rehearse his parables 
with transcendental exegesis. 6 This idealization supplied 
the one form of religious tribute which Iranian will-wor 
ship lacked ; namely, the pantheistic. The Bundehesh 
says the Persian Mobads all trace back their lineage 
through Zoroaster to Manuscithra. 7 All the phases familiar 
to our studies of the messianic idea in its development 
in other religions are found in the Zarathustra legend. 
While the older Avesta, at least, is comparatively sober 
in its tone, the moral interest quite absorbing the theo 
logical and even the imaginative, and the prophet, though 
of surpassing strength and wisdom, does not aim to vio 
late natural laws, but to teach the dignity of labor and the 
holiness of truth, later tradition has carried him through 

1 Pliny, ii. 155. 2 Dabistan, \. 216. 3 Ibid., 218. * Ibid., 220-21. 

e Dabistan, \. 304. r> Ibid , i. 364. 7 Bundehesh, xxxiii. 

9 



130 DEVELOPMENT. 

the whole catena of official signs. He leaves his native 
land, goes into the mountains to prepare for his mission, 
lives seven years in a grotto amidst mystic emblems de 
voted to Mithra (the type of the future cave of Mithraic 
rites), fasts in the desert, is tempted by a personal devil, 
walks on the sea, performs wonderful cures, and overrules 
the elements. He withdraws to a burning mountain for 
thirty years ; comes unharmed out of the flames, exhort 
ing to faith in righteousness. 1 Clement of Alexandria 
reports from Plato, that he returned to life on a funeral 
pile after having lain dead for twelve days. 2 The mysti 
cal oracles, brought together and inscribed with his name 
in the Platonic schools, have no relation to the Zoroaster 
of the Avesta save as indicating his ideal reputation as 
the father of mystery and magic, 3 and showing how wide a 
field of thought and tendency the name of a far-off Mas 
ter of religious traditions may be stretched to cover. As 
for Mahometan and Perso- Arabic fictions about him, 
from Firdusi to Mirkhond and the Dabistan, they have 
no limit nor law. I select this from the Dabistan. When 
Zoroaster was in heaven, he entreated of God, " Close the 
door of death against me ; let that be my miracle." But 
God said, " If I close the gates of death against thee, thou 
wilt not be satisfied ; nay, thou wouldst entreat death of 
me." 4 The mythical history of Zoroaster in the Avesta is 
moulded upon earlier traditions, and fully illustrates the 
continuity of religious ideas and forces. 5 As receiver of 
the law of Ahura, he repeats Yima (first king) and Gayo- 
mard (first man). As Nature hails his advent, and Ahri- 
man is struck with terror, so it was with his prototypes, the 

See Rapp (Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch., xix. 34). 
Clement of Alexandria : B. v. chap. 14 ; Plato: Republic, B. x. chap. 13. 
Pliny, B. xxx., chap. 2. 
Dabistan, i. 263. 

According to Darmesteter, he comes from the old mythology of the storm-cloud. Orm. 
et Ahrim., p. 194 



ZARATHUSTRA. 131 

former messengers of truth. In him the achievements of 
the long line of Fire-saints and heroes are re-enacted, 
of Tistrya, Verethraghna, Apam-napat, Atar, Gayomard ; 
"he is the man of the Light hidden in the Cloud." This is 
Darmesteter s designation of the Iranian messiahs. For in 
all the features of the legend he discerns transformations 
of the primitive Aryan myth of the storm-cloud, the nu 
cleus of Vedic inspiration also. Thus Pourushagpa, his 
father, "man of horses," is the " atmospheric divinity of 
light," victorious in the elemental war. The powers that 
assail him in his infancy are the old spirits of the storm 
under new names. The " temptation " of the prophet by 
Ahriman, with its sharp interchange of words, is again the 
roar of the storm, mingling its strange enigmatic noises ; 
only they are now in form of questions that may be re 
solved on penalty of death, or of replies that meet threat 
with threat, proposal with contempt, and rage with rebuff. 
His conversations with Ahura even, by which the law is 
revealed, are also the direct representatives of the thunder 
that rolled back and forth through the old Aryan heavens. 
By this ingenious appliance of evolution, all the voices of 
this great drama of Dualism, of whatever sort, are absorbed 
into the primal storm-music of the " holy mountain " of 
the atmosphere, 1 as symbolic types and historic germs of 
the Zoroastrian law. 2 

Without accepting this result in all its minute details, we 
at least recognize the law of historic derivation which lies 
at its base. Whatever obscurity covers the personality of 
Zarathustra, the central doctrine of his faith is traceable 
with certainty as far back as the fifth century before 
Christ, at which period Darius wrote the inscription, 3 
" Ormuzd is a great God : he made the earth and the 
heavens ; and he created man" 

1 Vendidad, xxii. 53. 2 Darmesteter : Orm. et Ahrim., p. 207. 

3 Inscription of Mount Elvend. 



132 DEVELOPMENT. 

It has been commonly supposed that the reformation 
effected by Zarathustra in the old Aryan religion, consisted 
in concentrating on the name of Ahuramazda the venera 
tion before distributed among a great number of deities, 
especially those mentioned in the Avesta, whether as good 
or evil powers. The most of these Avesta gods belong 
also to the Veda, and probably, in one form or another, 
were inherited from the older Aryan stock. 1 A like sim 
plification also took place in India, where all earlier dei 
ties were, by priestly authority and intellectual abstraction, 
absorbed into the unity of Brahma. In the latter case, 
however, the tendency was towards impersonality, while in 
Zoroastrianism it was in the direction of an intenser per 
sonal worship. A closer resemblance may be found in 
the change of the old Hebrew Elohim into the distincter 
will of Jahveh. 

But there is evidently more than a mere transfer of wor 
ship from many gods to one God involved in the Zoroas- 
trian reform. The Avesta describes a practical war against 
Daeva-worshippers, men regarded as infidels, destroyers 
of cattle as well as souls. Their offence was, unless the 
Avesta is greatly misinterpreted, choice of leaders (Kavis 
and Karapans], who led their souls to ruin through false 
hood and excessive use of the Soma, not with religious 
awe, but as an intoxicating drink. 2 A Puritan revival, a 
practical protest in the name of conscience against the 
degeneracies of an organized church, if such a church 
can be conceived of as existing among the early Aryans, 
- would thus lie at the root of Zoroaster s dualistic reli 
gion of battle against wrong. But his ethical revolution 
was also, in Haug s view, associated with the change from 
pastoral to agricultural life ; and it cannot be denied that 

1 Duncker : Gesch. d. Alterth., ii. 332; Lassen, Roth, etc. But the elements of Zoro 
aster are, as we have seen, in the oldest Aryan mythology ; so that the special direction given 
to these elements in his name it is a matter of no slight difficulty to determine- 

2 See Haug : Essays, etc. , p. 290. 



ZARATHUSTRA. 133 

this advance in social conditions has been the secret of the 
most important steps of progress in the early history of 
man. We have already seen that Turanian nomadic tribes 
were among the enemies of the Iranian settlements ; and 
their connection with " Drujas " and the worship of " Dae- 
vas " is now and then evident. 1 But in Haug s view these 
enemies of the settlement were Vedic Aryans. 2 When 
once, however, a protest of the kind suggested in this 
theory had taken place, then a new name of deity, a 
reversal in the estimate of the old gods, a reconstruction 
of the traditional names and legends in the new ethical 
interest, a fanatical intensity in the sense of personal de 
pendence and divine favor, religious intolerance, and a 
warfare more or less bitter with the partisans of the older 
belief, in other words, the phenomena which the Avesta 
describes, became natural results. Nevertheless, as we 
have already shown, many of these supposed evidences 
of such a schism from the Vedic Aryan gods and beliefs 
are imaginary, and the theory itself is without sufficient 
grounds. 3 

The main difference between the Vedic and Avestan 
religions is, that in the latter the Vedic worship of natural 
powers and phenomena is superseded by a more distinctly 
ethical and personal interest. Ahuramazda,the Living Wis 
dom, replaces Indra, the lightning god ; whose war against 
the cloud-serpent to release the fertilizing rain is supplanted 
by the war of good-will against evil-will. But we shall err 
if we suppose the new interest to be moral as distinguished 
from physical. Progress is not by leaps, but by continuities. 
The difference is that a more vigorous personal motive is 
transfused through the same physical forces, which are no 
less the objects of desire and fear in the Avestan prayers 
than in the Vedic hymns ; and as the moral element is by 

1 Fravardln-Yasht, 38; Yafna, xi. 21. 

2 Hang: Essays, etc., p. 293 

3 See chapter on The Moral Sense (Elements). 



134 DEVELOPMENT. 

no means wanting in the Veda, its absorbing power in the 
Avesta is but the natural development of the older belief 
that the cosmos represents in its opposing forces the in 
ward strife of the soul. In other words, the transition is 
from a child-life in Nature, fitful, susceptible, uncon 
scious, to the life of conscious will ; the first necessity of 
which step is that the host. of elemental powers should 
come into relation to a Central, Creative, Inspiring Force. 
The earnestness of the experience demands that this Force 
should be Holiness, Justice, and Good-will. These were 
already involved in Vedic conceptions. Varuna, undoubt 
edly the original of Ahura, was the god of moral as well as 
of physical or cosmical limits. Agni must be invoked with 
pure heart; Surya constructs or measures out the worlds, 
from a desire to benefit men. 1 But all these and other 
powers are held in equal honor by the worshippers, while 
in Varuna only is the moral law strongly emphasized. A 
great step was taken when this old Asura was enthroned 
as the one and perfect ideal ; when the name of God meant 
righteousness, and " purity of heart, word, and deed " be 
came the " Gayatri " among texts. The moral impulse is 
more clear and emphatic in the Avesta than is the mono 
theistic conviction ; the reaction against polytheism can 
hardly be called absolute. Ahura himself was not a new 
god, or even a new name ; and his ancient laws, to which 
the Avesta refers its own claims, are Varuna s eternal paths, 
his all-seeing Eye, his inevitable Bond. 

Ahura is the Vedic Asura who stands in the later Indian 
hymns for a power hostile to the gods. The Asuras are 
sometimes the robbers who hide the clouds, 2 whom In- 
dra punishes, taking their castles and cities in the sky, 3 
whose spoils the Agvins bring from far ; 4 sometimes they 



, 1.160-64. 

2 Ibid., i. r ; vi. 5 (Langlois), and throughout Ri 
8 Ibid., passim. So Yajitr-Veda, Muir, ii. 381. 
4 Ibid., v viii. 1.31. (Lang ois). 



ZARATHUSTRA. 1 3 5 

are apparently the same as Dasyus, 1 low-born aborigines, 
whom the Aryas fought as unbelievers and brutes. In this 
sense it is erroneously supposed 2 that the word is formed 
from a privative and sura (god), that is, godless being; 3 
but this is not the original meaning of Asura, which stands 
for the very highest form of deity, in the sense of " life- 
possessing," " life-giving." To Savitri, Indra, Varuna, the 
title of " great Asura " is given. 4 " The children of the great 
Asura" are " the heroes who uphold the heavens." Asura 
it is who "delivers from sins; who props up the sky, meas 
ures the earth, and pervades all worlds." 5 These descrip 
tions of the Vedic Varuna might be applied with all force 
to the Avestan Ahura. " Prajapati [lord of creatures]," 
says the Brahmana, 6 "created A suras [living powers] with 
his breath (asu). Therein is their Asura-nature. Having 
created them, he regarded himself as their father; after 
wards he made the Pitris." Here the Asura holds a sec 
ondary position, but still one of honor. 

Another legend hints the occasion of the fall of the Asu- 
ras from their high estate. The Devas 7 and Asuras, both 
descendants of Prajapati, inherited truth and falsehood in 
speech. Both were alike in speaking truth and falsehood. 
Then the Devas chose truth, rejecting deceit; the Asuras 
chose deceit, rejecting truth. Then came war, till the per 
petually-invading Asuras were worsted and driven away." 8 
This is precisely the Avesta story of good and evil powers, 
with a change of parts. It shows also that the original 
attribute of supreme power, at first belonging to both 
names in common, was divided on the two, according to 
moral distinctions, as already shown. 

Rig- Veda, vii. vii. 4, 8 (Langlois). 2 Langlois : Rig- Veda, p. 55. 

See Weber s Indian Literature, Eng. p. 302. Manu. xi. 20- 
Rig-Veda, i. iii. 7; i. i. v. 14; iii. ii. ix. 4: viii. v. ii. n. 

Ibid., i. i. v. 14. G Taittir iya Brahm. Muir, i. 23. 

"The Indo-Irnnian daiva, god, Sanscrit deva, becomes in Zend daeva, demon. " 
Darmesteter: Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 265. 
8 S atapetha Brahm, Muir, iv. 59, 108. 



136 DEVELOPMENT. 

Even in their defeat the Asuras retained their reputa 
tion as the oldest and greatest of the gods. They were 
said to have possessed the ambrosia {Amrita) lodged in 
the mouth of Souchna (the magician) ; so that whereas 
the dead Deva must remain dead, the dead Asura could 
be restored to life. Indra changed himself into an atom 
of honey, which Souchna ate ; and then into a bird, who 
bore it away in his mouth. 1 If the Amrita be the same as 
the Soma, we may connect this cycle of legends as to the 
precedence of the Asuras to the Devas, with the claim of 
the Avesta faith to trace back its origin to the earliest dis 
pensers of the Soma to mankind. 2 In such passages as this 
of the tenth book of the Rig-Vecla, " the sages behold with 
heart and mind the bird illuminated by the wisdom of the 
Asura," we see that there was a better Vedic foundation 
for the exalted meaning given to the name Ahura by Za- 
rasthustra than the war of the Devas against the Asuras 
afforded. -May it not lead us back to the grand signifi 
cance of the word, before the Deva-worship, representing 
a later form of religious consciousness, had become organ 
ized with its priesthood and rites, so as to set aside the 
earlier and simpler conception of deity as Living Power" 
or "Breath"? Or did Zarathustra recur to this earlier and 
simpler conception when he would protest against forms 
which seemed ill in accord with its ethical contents? Many 
such intimations in the Avesta point to the older Aryan 
beliefs. It retains that which was probably the oldest 
name for fire-priest, Atharvan, since the Rig- Veda de 
scribes Atharvan as " the first who strengthened the gods 
by sacrifice," 3 calls Agni his child, 4 and Manu his friend. 5 
He is even celebrated as the first deliverer of Agni from 

1 Kuhn : Die Herabkunft des Fetters und des Gottertranks , p. 144. See Anal, of Roth 
in Weber s Ind. Stud. iii. 466. 

2 Haoma-Yasht, Ya(na, ix. 

8 Rig - Veda, viii. iv. vii. 10. See also Grihya-Sfltras, Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. 
Gesellsch. vii. 529. 

4 Rig-Veda, vii. vii. iii. 5. 5 Jbid., i. v. xix. 16. 



ZARATHUSTRA. 137 

his cradle in the hollow of the wood (by friction?). 1 Both 
the Atharvans and the Angiras probably the oldest of 
the priestly orders known to the Vedic Aryans are ob 
jects of veneration in the Avesta. The Soma, earliest of 
sacrificial plants and inspiring drinks, is as highly exalted 
in the one faith as in the other. 

It may, then, be that the Iranian and Vedic religions, as 
we now possess them, represent the somewhat differing 
results of a long period of separation dating back to a 
much earlier time than has been supposed. In this case, 
the Zarathustra of the Avesta may, as some have sup 
posed, have been but one in a long line of priests of 
Ahuramazda, many of whom were his predecessors. His 
reformatory work may have been to give radical meaning 
and moral power to some tribal religious schism of earlier 
date, or to some inherited struggle against fetichistic or 
otherwise degrading tendencies, perhaps against the 
raiders of barbarian Turan. 

That the reformation embodied in the Avesta was the 
work of one man is obviously impossible ; there is no such 
claim to be found in it. Zarathustra refers his religion to 
older times 2 and a series of antecedent revelations, though 
none of these are represented as of equal depth and power 
with his own. A long course of traditions and doctrinal 
preparation for his work is implied ; and it is assumed 
that all the divine personages and functions in which it 
centres are familiar to his hearers. Nevertheless, the 
vigorous protest and summons in the earliest Gathas, their 
tone of personal assurance, the detail of private experi 
ences and conversations with deity, are signs of an individ 
ual force that cannot be mistaken. The history of the 
Aryan schism, in which it is now by many scholars of re 
pute believed that the religion of the Avesta was born, is 

1 Langlois on Rig- Veda, iv. v. 15, 73. 

2 The references to Yima, Kerecacpa, and Thraetona, as first propagators of the Soma 
sacrifice and servants of Ahura, claim primitive authority for the law. 



138 DEVELOPMENT. 

not only utterly beyond our vision, but highly improbable. 
The very name Zarathustra which embodies it, is, in part 
at least, a generic title. But the remoteness of the spirit 
and purpose of Ahuramazda from that of the Vedic hymns, 
really indicates that with him we enter on a new phase of 
historic development. A gulf opens which, while it does 
not imply a break in the continuity of experience, yet can 
be likened only to that which seems to occur in a personal 
life, when one becomes conscious of himself, of his char 
acter, of his needs, of a purpose in living, and of a will 
within him capable of fulfilling the ideal which these in 
spire. To explain a movement like this in the life of a 
people, no individual priest or prophet can be held suf 
ficient. This call to choose betv/een two masters who are 
already familiar to the conscience, to whatever it may 
refer, proves that the movement rested on a moral ex 
perience of the most public and social kind. The earliest 
Gathas do not seem to be a full-formed system of faith; 
but they are the outburst of certain recognized and well- 
understood elements of ideal purpose, into commanding 
power. Whatever the immediate cause of this crisis, 
whether a change of social conditions, or a new relation 
with outside tribes or beliefs, the most that Zarathustra 
could do was to energize and direct it as a given tendency. 
At the time when those passages were composed, which 
describe a social organization in which Zarathustra was 
one of four or five chiefs of classes in each region, the 
Iranian Church must have been fully formed. But the 
oldest Gathas have little ecclesiasticism as compared with 
later parts of the Avesta. They have no genii, nor hie 
rarchical series of powers ; they are simply a human 
protest against unseen powers, believed to be evil and 
destructive, in the name of others held to be righteous 
and preservative of body and soul. 1 

1 See Harlez : Avesta., ii. 29. 



ZARATHUSTRA. 139 

One thing is certain. In Iran there grew up what India 
never saw, a consciousness of world-purpose, ethical and 
spiritual ; a reference of the ideal to the future rather than 
to the past; a promise of progress. Yama, the Aryan 
god of the future world, became Yima, a human ideal 
of earthly bliss in this world; and from him downward 
through the earthly ages flows the ever-growing stream of 
revelation, saviour after saviour, to the day when all 
evil is to be swallowed up, and only righteousness endure. 
A motive force of ideal will had entered on its way, whose 
impulse the world was never to lose. And this is it : that 
the human will in its terrible struggle with Evil, its law of 
death, in its twofold possibility and attraction in every sen 
sation and every thought, is yet bound for good ; that the 
law of the universe means its deliverance and eternal tri 
umph ; that throughout its mighty cyclic year every depth 
of moral night heralds the dawn of a redeeming day. 



IV. 

THE AVESTA LITERATURE. 



THE AVESTA LITERATURE. 

HHHE Parsi tradition that the Bible of their fathers was 
*- destroyed by the Macedonian, rests on no historical 
evidence. How much of the Avestan literature has really 
been lost, we shall probably never know. Even when we 
have dismissed Hermippus story that two million verses, 1 
written on a thousand parchments, were contributed by 
Zarathustra to human knowledge, the later claim that there 
were originally twenty-one books or Nosks, treating of all 
possible subjects of thought, savors too much of mythical 
predetermination to fare any better at the hands of his 
torical criticism ; although the later Pehlevi writers describe 
the contents of these Nosks, 2 of which the present Avesta 
is said to contain but one complete, with fragments of two 
or three others, the number twenty-one is probably in 
vented to correspond with the number of words in the 
holiest text of the Avesta. Much of what is lost is un 
doubtedly commentary on older texts. What remains is 
made up of text, the Avesta proper, and Zend commentary. 
It is in an extremely confused and fragmentary condition, 
owing in part to the fact that it was gathered up and ar 
ranged during the storms of the Macedonian period, or 
else after the Parthian conquerors had added their hostile 
interference to that of the Greeks, amidst the revolutionary 
reconstruction of Persian nationality by the first Sassanian 
king. 3 

1 According to an Arab writer. 2 See Haug : Essays, etc., pp. 1241-44. 

8 Third century, A.D. The Avesta was not only gathered up at this time, in all probability, 
but translated also, in a free way, into Pehlevi (Huzvaresh), a language largely Semitic, used 
in the coins and inscriptions of that period, whose script appears much earlier, probably 



144 DEVELOPMENT. 

Nevertheless, it seems improbable that the hands which 
reverently sought out and brought together the precious 
members of this long-lost literary Isis, would have made 
much important change in the ancient form and features. 
Subsequent political rulers of Iran, especially the Mahom 
etan, have probably spared these old records, written in 
a language which they could not comprehend. What 
influence the Semitic races of western Iran may have 
exerted on the formation of these Scriptures, before even 
the few fragments which have come down to us reached 
their present state, it is impossible to say. The language 
of the original, which some scholars have called Old Bac- 
trian, is of great antiquity, differing from the Vedic Sans 
krit only as one Greek dialect differs from another, 1 and 
mainly in consequence of phonetic changes. But the 
alphabet in which it is now written is Semitic, its signs 
mainly coincident with the Pehlevi, of which it seems to 
be an expansion, 2 and belongs to the Sassanian period ; 
whether also to an earlier period is now hardly matter of 
question. 3 But wherever or however first committed to 
writing, the old Avesta had its origin in eastern Iran. It 
regards the western regions as infidel ; it knows nothing 
of the great cities of Persia in the eighth century before 
Christ; and the affinities of the language alone are decisive 
of the question. Moreover, the Zend, the translation and 
commentary in Pehlevi, made either by the Sassanians, or 
found by them as a survival from Achaemenidan and 
even probably from old Assyrian times 4 could not have 

even in the time of Seleucidas (Levy : Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch. xxi. 445). 
Perhaps signs of it appear in the Achaemenidan times. The later Pehlevi writings speak of a 
copy of the translation of Avesta, with the Zend, as destroyed by Alexander in (the fourth cen 
tury B.C.). In the Pehlevi the Semitic words were read as Iranian equivalents. See Haug: 
Essays, etc. Konig. layer. Akad. d. Wissen. February, 1869. 

1 See Haug: Essays, etc., pp. 69, 70. Duncker : Gesch. d. Alterth. ii. 

3 See Bollman: Alphabeta. 

3 Compare Duncker: Gesch. d, Alterth. ii. 381; and Spiegel (Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. 
Morgenl. Gesellsch. ix. 178). 

4 Haug: Essays, etc- p. 140. 



THE AVESTA LITERATURE. 145 

been considered as of equal authority with the original 
Avesta; since we know 1 that for liturgical purposes the 
latter was used without translation, gloss, or comment, arid 
even without separation into books. 2 This is evident from 
the old Parsi manuscripts, from which the studies of Bur- 
nouf, Westergaard, Spiegel, and Haug (to whom we owe 
our real knowledge of the Avestan language) have been 
made. 

These studies have also shown that the oldest part of the 
Avesta, the five Gathas (of which we shall speak hereafter), 
is composed in a language evidently older than even the 
Old Bactrian. But the difference is not so great as to 
prevent the whole book, when separated from its Zend- 
commentary portions, from standing by itself as a piece 
of unquestionable antiquity. To find the joints between 
these parts in each chapter is one of the great problems 
of modern Avestan research, and has already been pur 
sued by Haug, whose exceedingly valuable translations 
have unhappily been brought to an end by his early 
death. 3 

The antiquity of the Avesta is shown by other evidences 
than its language. Greek authors, from the third century 
before Christ, down to the second century after Christ, 
speak of the writings of Zoroaster, the hymns and sacrifices 
of the Avesta, and even cite passages from the work. And 
their references to religious rites and customs coincide 
with its precepts, while the cuneiform inscriptions testify 
to the worship of Ahuramazda; 4 and in all the manu- 

1 From the Parsi MSS. Origen, from Celsus, says the Avestan writings of Zoroaster were 
extant in his time ; also Philo of Byblos. Rapp (Zeitschr. d. Detitsch. Morgenl. GeselZsch.), 
xix. 35. 

2 Harlez: Avesta, \. 25. 

3 The translations consulted by the author are those of Spiegel (German), complete; 
Haug (German and English), covering only a portion, but the most important, more com- 
prehensib .e and lyrical than Spiegel, as well as more biographical and practical, giving a hold 
on actual life; of Harlez, an admirable French translation of nearly all, a man, before 
the others, of great dearnesss, candor, and learning. 

4 For these authorities see Harlez, i. 28-30. 

10 



146 DEVELOPMENT. 

scripts, some of which are four hundred years old, and all 
from eastern Persia, the text is substantially the same. 1 

Probably, as we have said, no Bible in the world is in a 
condition so unsatisfactory to the student of comparative 
religion or historical progress as the Avesta. The very 
name is of uncertain meaning, though the idea of revealed 
law, or the sum of knowledge, is evidently the main ele 
ment in it. That Zend is the name of a language is an 
exploded error, and Zend-Avesta is a misleading word. 
The Avesta is the Law; the Zend is a version and in 
terpretation thereof. 2 According to Masudi, a heretic in 
Persia was called a Zendik, as adhering to a gloss instead 
of the original Scripture. 3 So the Parsi scholars say 
Avesta and Zend ; and doubtless the best title for the Old 
Bactrian compilation of these writings is Avestan, that of 
their commentary, Zend.^ Haug s definition of Zend, as a 
" gnosis," would be better if the old Persian religion, even 
in paraphrase, dealt at all in mystery or metaphysics. 
But after all, the Zend passages, so far as they are yet 
separated in Haug s translations, stand to the Avestan 
chiefly in the nature of added emphasis, or cumulative 
detail arising from the progress of the religion as an 
institution. 

But to the difficulty of separating the elements of the 
text, and referring them to their historical order, is added 
the still greater difficulty of determining their original 
meaning. 5 The translator may lay his emphasis either on 

1 There are portions of the text that exist only in the Pehlevi ; and mixed with these 
"Zend portions are others in a still later tongue (the " Pazend," properly modern Persian 
or Parsi), which serves as their only medium. 

2 See Haug : Essays, etc., p. 68. Harlez : Avesta, \. 27. Whitney : Oriental Studies, p. 171. 

3 Haug. p. 15. 

4 Zend Studies (Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch. ix. 698). 

5 Few copies are still extant. "Here is no elaborate verbal commentary, with gram 
matical and lexicographical resources, as in the study of the Vedas; only a translation which 
scholars describe as equally obscure with the text it professes to explain." Spiegel (Zeitschr. 
d. Deustch. Morgenl. Gesellsch. i. 244). There is also a Sanskrit translation from this by Nen~ 
osengh. See Haug: Essays, etc., 33. 



THE AVESTA LITERATURE. 147 

the traditional sense of the words, as determined by the 
successive phases of Iranian experience, or on their philo 
logical sense, as determined by their relations with the 
Sanskrit, the nearest sister tongue. Roth and Haug pursue 
the latter track. Spiegel, while inclining to the former, 
maintains that he has not neglected the other source of 
information. The appeal of both sides to Burnouf, the 
first great explorer of the original Avestan language, is 
proof of the very high merit of the scholar to whom 
Oriental studies, in every department, are immensely in 
debted for their actual scientific method. 1 The translations 
of Haug and Spiegel differ widely, as may be expected. 
The assumption that the whole of a literature accumulat 
ing through a long series of ages can be taken in sum as 
the best interpreter of its earliest products, gives Spiegel s 
work a somewhat suspicious aspect; yet the native com 
mentators should doubtless receive great attention in cases 
of very doubtful philological decision. The story of 
Anquetil-Duperron s heroic pioneer work (1768-71) in 
opening the Avestan literature to Europe, of its inhospi 
table reception by Sanskrit scholars, and the very great 
imperfections of his French translation of these books, 
arising from his own total ignorance of the original, and 
even of the grammar of the Pehlevi version, which alone 
was used, and from an almost equal ignorance on the 
part of his Hindu-Parsi teachers, are too well known to 
be referred to except by way of contrast with the far more 
trustworthy researches of the last half-century. The real 
help afforded at every stage of this progress by the merits, 
and even by the errors, of preceding scholars, is admirably 

1 The controversy on the subject of the two methods may be consulted in the Jour, of 
the German Arch. Soc, J and a full illustration of the extended confidence reposed by Spiegel 
in the whole testimony of Iranian literature, to the meaning of the oldest monuments of it, 
will be found in his three large volumes entitled Eranische A Iterthumskunde , a work which 
aspires to the thoroughness of Lassen s corresponding work on India, but cannot be said to 
equal it. The want of historical analysis and discrimination between the different epochs of 
literary testimony seems to me to weaken its value. 



148 DEVELOPMENT. 

recognized in Haug s review of the whole history, 1 a 
wonderful record of obstacles conquered, if not yet wholly 
removed. This achievement had hardly reached the end 
of its first great stage, when Roth s elaborate history of 
the relation of Western Philosophy to that of Egypt and 
Persia appeared in 1862, and the very imperfect and un 
certain data of this highly interesting work, built largely 
on Anquetil-Duperron, are a striking illustration of the 
immense value of those original studies of the Avestan 
language which began with Eugene Burnouf. Behind the 
whole lies the main difficulty, that the books themselves 
represent different periods in the progress of the language 
and the faith, and are, in all probability, the work of a long 
series of Mazdean priests and prophets. 

The Bibles of the world are all of one description. They 
are the gradual deposits of the religious history of races, 
reaching from the deeply covered and now scarcely acces 
sible strata of primitive or pre-historic times to their days 
of superficial decay or dissolution under the influences of 
science and ethnic communion ; formations broken up, 
intermingled, and dislocated by the convulsions of ages ; 
resultants of many successive reconstructions under the 
changing moods and phases of popular belief and the 
conscious interests of priestly schools ; products of in 
stincts which are not so intent on giving account of them 
selves to posterity or to art, as on heaping together, and 
adapting to present spiritual interests, all the words and 
deeds available for this end that have outlived generations, 
and borne down the precious legacy of beloved names 
and hopes. Nothing could possibly be conceived more 
unlike the infallibility and unchangeableness insisted on 
by their worshippers after the canons are closed, and 
a Bible becomes the authoritative standard of an insti 
tuted religion. These literary amalgams are for ages in- 

1 Literature of Parsis. 



THE AVESTA LITERATURE. 149 

soluble; serving only to deepen the equal blindness of the 
bibliolater and the iconoclast, till scientific explorers have 
shown the landmarks of historic construction, and referred 
each fragment to the special tendencies of its age and au 
thor, known or unknown. Interpreted by these, a Bible 
becomes at last a datum of universal history, because a 
true picture of the entire religious and social consciousness 
of the people whence it sprung, and whose ideal it repre 
sents. What Ewald and Baur and Hilgenfeld and Kuenen 
have done for the Bible literature of the Hebrews and 
Christians, Haug and Roth and Windischmann have begun 
to accomplish for that of the Iranians. When thus recon 
structed, the sequence of parts is as natural as the growth 
of a flower ; and how complete this metamorphosis at the 
touch of historical science ! What man cannot do with 
scattered stems and leaves and flowers of a plant, restore 
the order of growth and the living connection of the parts, 
he can accomplish for the Bibles which have been the 
flowers of his past ideals after they have ceased to live, 
and so make them capable of enduring functions, philo 
sophical, ethical, spiritual. The Avesta is like the rest: 
it is a confused heap of inspirations, traditions, legends, 
hymns, laws, minute ritual precepts, abstract categories 
and distinctions implying some intellectual refinement, 
mingled with outpourings of genuine religious feeling, but 
covered up with elaborate formulas anxiously repeated, 
and set with sentences that served for spells, every form 
of language by which the Iranian mind could express 
its travail to get into right accord with Nature and the 
conditions of human life. 

The reader familiar with the imaginative riches of Hindu 
literature, with the mystic ardor of the Vedic poets, will 
find the Avesta, for the most part, greatly wanting in these 
poetic elements of style. It moves in a limited order of 
thought and topic, abounds in formulas and ritualistic 



1 50 DEVELOPMENT. 

repetitions, and has so much the appearance of a manual 
prepared for religious instruction and service from ex 
isting materials, that one cannot help wondering if the 
early inspirations of the Mazdean reformation, the Rig- 
Veda of this noble faith, have been lost. Yet hymns are 
not wanting of a high order of poetic zeal and religious 
feeling, and a world of myth and legend is crowded into 
these liturgical fragments, as rich as the Vedic, and as 
thoroughly human as the Greek. 

1. The Yagna (Sanskrit, yajria, offering) is made up of 
seventy sections of hymn, praise, and prayer; the "second 
part" of which, consisting of "the five Gathas," is the oldest 
portion of the A vesta, and is spoken of in the Avesta itself 
as composed by Zarathustra. These are books of metrical 
lyrics, and biographical and doctrinal relations. Here, as 
we have already said, is the clear and simple substance 
of the faith, its natural and human side, the upspringing 
of its prophetic power. They resemble in their relative 
characteristics the Gathas of Buddhism, which, scattered 
metrical sentences through the Sutras, represent primitive 
Buddhism, as it existed previous to its hierarchical day. 1 
The rest of the Yagna is later and more liturgical. 

2. The Vendidad (yi-d&eva-ddta, law for repelling the 
Daevas) contains twenty-two chapters (fargard) of con 
versations between Ahuramazda and Zarathustra, which 
are made up of fragmentary legends of early ages (like 
the Hebrew " Book of Origins" compiled in the captivity), 
the myths of Yima, Thraetona, Zarathustra, etc. ; prescrip 
tions about agriculture, and the treatment of animals, re 
garded as pure or impure, and the recognition of things 
dear to the earth, as distinct from things hateful to her; 
rituals of purification ; efficacious prayers to all powers 
and saints; runes for conjuring away evil powers. The 
moral precepts are few and far between ; all exhortations 

1 See author s India, p. 646. 



THE AVESTA LITERATURE. 151 

are to definite concrete acts, and little stress is laid upon 
the motive; ethics are here absorbed in legal prescrip 
tions. It is the Leviticus of the dualist, for whom Nature 
is portioned off between good and evil powers, and duty 
consists in serving each special object according to its 
kind. It assumes a state of society and faith in which the 
period of moral spontaneity has passed into the period of 
conformity and routine ; in which the prophet is known 
only as a tradition, and the priest has gathered up his 
garments to mingle with rite and form. 

3. The Vispered is a short work, once belonging to 
the Yagna, made up of highly ritualized invocations and 
prayers, and sums up by enumeration the whole array 
of visible and invisible objects for prayer and praise. 

4. The Yashts (much the same in meaning as Yacna) are 
twenty-four pieces, each in celebration of some special 
genie, on whom is poured (as in the Rig-Veda of the Hin 
dus) equal honor with every other in his special Yasht, 
showing in the fulness and utterness of the worship the 
tendency to bring all together into a kind of pantheistic 
unity; at the same time, the legendary history of each is 
rehearsed, making these Yashts the great source of our 
knowledge of Iranian mythology and its connection with 
the heroic ages of Iran. Here, then, we have a collection 
something like the Homeric hymns of Greece, where each 
deity receives highest veneration, in his own way and 
sphere, from all creatures that live. We have Ardin-^ura, 
strongest of helpers, whose aid all powers at one or an 
other time have sought in their need or in their passion; 
the star Tistrya, rain-bringer, and his battle with the 
Drought, white horse with black; Mithra, inspirer of a 
Pindaric eloquence in the poet, who can find no limit to 
the strength, the splendor, the all-seeing, all judging prov 
idence, and all-creating, all-delivering, and rejoicing en 
ergy of this Soul of the Sun; Ormuzd, who chants to 



152 DEVELOPMENT. 

Zoroaster his multitudinous names, " coming for his help 
and joy;" the Ferouers, exhausting every conception of 
existence in detailed invocation of the ideal within and 
above the natural world. 

5. The Khordah-Avesta, little Avesta, containing for 
mulas for occasions and times, a medley of later origin 
than the rest, and showing an advanced institutional stage, 
and at the same time a more elaborate enumeration of 
moral defects and special aspirations than any other por 
tion. Note especially the Patets or confessions, which 
contain, all the moralities of Christianity or of Judaism, 
mingled with the most puerile ceremonial observances, 
as equally binding with the inward virtues. 

6. But older than these ritualistic portions of the Avesta, 
is the literature of the Sassanian revival of the faith. After 
the extinction of the Achsemenidan empire, native Maz- 
deism gave way, in some degree, to Hellenism and the 
traditions of Chaldean civilization. Under the Parthian 
dynasty it was still further depressed, though not extin 
guished : the coins bore Greek legends ; the language 
became more Semitized than before ; the Old Bactrian, in 
which the Avesta was composed, was practically a dead 
language, and the only familiar alphabet into which it 
could be translated was Semitic. The Sassanian revolu 
tion, however, restored the native religion. A proclama 
tion of Khosru Parviz, a Sassanian king of the sixth 
century, reports that efforts had been made to collect the 
old Zoroastrian literature by princes of the Archsemenian 
and Parthian dynasties ; 1 in which case the Sassanian re 
vival must have had considerable resources at hand, and 
the acquaintance of the Persians with the traditions of 
their faith been more or less continuous from very early 
times. The fire-altar reappeared on the coinage ; and 
with the renaissance of the old literature of Mazdeism 

1 Haug: Essay on Pehlevi, p. 145. 



THE AVESTA LITERATURE. 153 

came also numerous sects, born of the complex civiliza 
tion of the empire, the confluence of Semitic, Greek, 
Syrian, Christian, and Persian traditions, though it is cer 
tain that neither Greek nor Christian influences are trace 
able in any important respect in the native literature. 1 
Partly as a result of the renewed energy of Mazdeism, and 
partly as an effort to protect it against foreign religions, 
arose the remarkable literature to which I have alluded, 
only less interesting than that recovery and reproduction 
of the older Avesta which we owe in part to the same 
great epoch. It was composed in Pehlevi, 2 the Semitically 
written language of the period, largely constituted indeed 
of Iranian words and construction, but containing also a 
large Semitic element which was employed ideogram- 
matically, and read in the corresponding Iranian. 3 And 
this linguistic vehicle lasted till the substitution of the 
modern Persian alphabet, when the "Huzvaresh" reading, 
as it was called, disappeared with the words to which it 
had been applied. The oldest specimens of PehlevJ script 
are found on the earliest monuments of the Sassanian 
kings. 4 This rejuvenescence of the faith blossomed into 
translations of the Avesta, and into doctrinal, mythical, 
and ritualistic writings the amount of which cannot be 
estimated. Haug has already given an enumeration and 
brief analysis of fifty works, aggregating no less than five 
hundred and seventeen thousand words, 5 all in the inter 
est of the Zoroastrian revival, and indicating a very com 
plete sense of sufficiency to the demands of national life 
and faith. The energy with which this abundant supply 
of creed, tradition, and institution came to the surface, 

1 Haug : Essays on Pehlevi, p. 130. 

2 The word formerly designated ancient Persian in all its forms, being originally an ethnic 
or geographical rather than linguistic designation, and transferred from the people and coun 
try (probably of the Parthians) to their national tongue, whatever that might be. 

3 It is Haug s belief that the Avesta itself had long existed in this language. Essay on 
Pehlevi, p. 143. 

4 Third century, A. D. E Haug: Essays, etc., p. 113. 



154 DEVELOPMENT. 

after so long a period of political suppression, is evidence 
of great vitality, as well as grasp on the existing ele 
ments of future civilization. In fact, the substance of 
this religion, as already shown, the worship of the 
personal will, as incarnated in the struggle of good with 
evil for the mastery of the universe, was inevitably the 
nucleus of future religious development. It could not 
be escaped ; it was indispensable to all existing forms of 
religious and social aspirations ; and although a flood of 
physical force swept its special name and organization 
almost out of being, its soul passed into Mahometanism, 
Judaism, and Christianity, to mould these new accessions 
to the same essential purpose. 

Whatever signs of borrowing from these systems may 
appear in the Pehlevi literature of Mazdeism are delu 
sive, so far as this modern religion is concerned. In the 
vitality of personal and ethical will-worship, Mazdeism 
was the precursor, the herald, of their glory, and its influ 
ence on their development was of the most decisive and 
enduring character. 

The Pehlevi literature of the Mazdeans was not born in 
a day. It represented a smouldering life under the ashes 
of their desolation, from the days of Alexander to the days 
of Ardeshir Babegan. The origin of most of these writ 
ings is obscure, falling either in the Parthian period, while 
the faith was still under a cloud, or during the Sassanian 
revival, when the whole glorious past reappeared with a 
new inspiration, which was to glow yet again through the 
heroic epos of the Mahometan Firdusi. Their character 
is, to judge from the typical works now accessible to the 
Western scholar, what might be expected from the com 
mingling of Greek, Syrian, Christian, Persian, and we must 
not forget to add Chaldean, civilizations in the current of 
that age ; but all are intensely Mazdean in their spirit. 
A portion is analogous to the historical and prophetic 



THE AVESTA LITERATURE. 155 

Judaism of the restoration under Cyrus, detailing the 
progress and sufferings of the national faith, quarrying 
its old traditions, and predicting its triumph. Some are 
controversial, indicating the large toleration enforced on 
it by the time, by careful confutation of other religious 
systems. Some are manuals in the form of conversation 
or instruction by its sages ; some regulative of its ritual ; 
others explore its visionary world of future reward and 
punishment, like the "Ardai-Viraf-Nameh," which seems 
to stand in close connection with the early Christian "Ascen 
sion of Isaiah." The Minokhired, "Spirit of Wisdom, "sums 
up its whole philosophy, ethics, and mythology, in the 
light of a metaphysical speculation foreign to the orig 
inal religion, and contrasts it with other systems as the 
inventions of Ahriman. 

Of the highest repute is theBundehesh, a cosmogonical 
account of the original creation, providential history, and 
final purification of the world ; combining the mythology 
of the great war of Ormuzd and Ahriman with the 
geography, astronomy, and natural history of the Parsis ; 
marked by signs of compilation from fragments of very 
different ages as well as religions, some of them of con 
siderable antiquity, 1 and some representing or completing 
the old Avestan faith by data, especially astronomical, 
derived from the Arabs, and in some respects correcting 
it, evidently interpolations, later than the Mahometan 
conquest. 2 Especially important has been, according to 
some, the influence of Judaism. 3 But the points of mytho 
logical difference from the old Avesta, such as the story 
of the first human couple, with their temptation and fall, 



1 Haug : Essays, etc., p. 48. 

2 Justi, the latest translator, puts it in or after the time of Firdusi, tenth century, even 
as late as the thirteenth century. Justi relies upon these interpolations to prove very 
late origin. 

8 Carre: L^Ancien Orient., ii. 390. Nicolas: Doct. ReL des Juifs, p. 300; Revue 
Germanique, Sept. 1858, pp. 467, 468, quoted in the same. 



156 DEVELOPMENT. 

and that of the successive periods of creation ; the com 
plicated eschatology of a destruction and regeneration of 
the world through fire ; the doctrine of several messianic 
persons to appear at the latter day, and that of the unity 
of the first principle as Zrvan-akarana, which is still far 
from emphatic, since the dual powers of Ormuzd and 
Ahriman still create the world between them, these 
differences are in fact natural developments of the older 
religion of the Gathas and the Yashts, when brought into 
close relations with the still older civilization of Chaldea, 
to which the analogous Jewish doctrines and legends are 
themselves, as we have seen, largely traceable. The re 
semblances to later Judaism point back to a common stock 
of Babylonian traditions; while those which connect Maz- 
deism with earlier Hebrew religion, such as the division 
of creatures into clean and unclean, rules of purification 
and laws relating to the civil treatment of diseases, much 
more striking than the later analogies just referred to, 
are still further removed from the probability of a He 
brew origin. The Pehlevi literature shows little of the 
spiritualizing tendency of that school of Judaism which had 
most influence in the East, the Alexandrian allegorical 
school of Philo. Although Neoplatonic elements from the 
Greek school of Edessa are believed to be discernible in 
the Minokhired, the strongly pronounced religious dual 
ism of good and evil principles, unknown to Judaism, 
is maintained in Mazdeism to the last. The saviours of 
the Bundehesh have slight analogy with the exclusive mes 
sianic ideas of the Jews. The Mazdean doctrine of the 
resurrection of the body is much older than the Jewish, 
which first appears in the Maccabean persecutions as a 
result of the national sufferings and the messianic hope 
expressed in the Book of Daniel. 1 Plutarch has a quota 
tion which proves its existence in Persia in the time of 

i See M. Nicolas: Doct. Rel. des Juifs, pp. 343-377- 



THE AVESTA LITERATURE. 1 57 

Alexander, two centuries previous. 1 The Jewish bodily 
resurrection, moreover, differed from the Persian in being 
confined to the righteous ; and had probably no other con 
nection with it than that of being suggested, in a general 
form, by its superiority, as a consolation and promise, to 
the traditional Semitic belief in an unsubstantial Shed I as 
the destiny of the soul. Nor had the Jewish doctrine of 
resurrection of that period any resemblance to the Persian 
faith in final salvation or conversion of the wicked, and the 
entire abolition of evil desire. The Mazdean angelology, 
so far from being borrowed from the Jews, furnished the 
basis of their seven princes of the angels, and of their celes 
tial legions of guardian spirits ; while its demonology gave 
them their later or malignant Satan and his diabolic legions 
possessing human bodies and souls. 

1 De Isis et Osiris, 47, from Theopompus. See chapter on " Dualism of the Avesta." 



V. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS OF THE ACCADIAN 
AND THE ASSYRIAN. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS OF THE ACCADIAN 
AND THE ASSYRIAN. 

IT is the excellence of the physical sciences in this age 
of their dominion, that every step of their progress re 
quires the continued acceptance of whatever it involves as 
its historical antecedents. The conditioning laws are there 
and here and everywhere, and not one can be ignored, 
since their constant process alone supplies the materials 
for further investigation and discovery. The materialist 
cannot get far enough, fumbling in his plasms and solu 
tions by primeval details. But in the treatment of mental 
evolution there is still a tendency to repudiate, or at least 
to pass by, many earlier stages and conditions which more 
palpable and current interests are supposed to have made 
obsolete. Thus the convenience of uniformity in spelling 
affords excuses for a phonetic reconstruction which sweeps 
away the anatomy of language as useless, and utterly 
discards linguistic evolution. So in national history, the 
revolutionary passion of the Celt (a periodic access of 
Nihilism), which in a republic is very infectious, overrides 
all historical obligations and their resultant conditions, 
perpetually reconstructing society out of the excitements 
of the hour. So also we have found a Celtic contempt of 
historic forces and necessities in much of what is called 
" free religious thought," as well as in Christianity. In 
fact, it has been in one way or another traditionally fashion 
able to think of the beginnings of ideas and institutions as 
having only quantitative or statistical relations to their 
actual living results ; and to count it labor well-nigh wasted 

ii 



I 62 DEVELOPMENT. 

even to recover the buried witnesses, that " through the 
ages one increasing purpose runs." This is simply to 
construct history without philosophy. 

But Nature has always her penalty for such loose utili 
tarian method. She tolerates no dropping of threads, no 
contempt for the careful steps which have cost her so 
much time and pains. When the phonetic reformer sweeps 
away the apparent grotesqueness of our traditional spell 
ing, he is sacrificing also the graces of patient develop 
ment; he barters away the morale of linguistic art; he 
forsakes the embodied laws of structure to gratify the 
caprices of a perverted pronunciation which has already 
set aside these, one and all. Social reconstructions de 
novo simply disorganize the elements they seek to destroy. 
Contempt for the " dead past," conceit of the creed that 
now is master, deprives living thought of universality, of 
sentiment, of ideal elevation, and makes a science of his 
torical evolution impossible, starving that sense of invi 
sible forces and uncalculated values which is the noblest 
educator of man. 

We are products of the past as well as of the present; 
we are inherited fuel as well as instant fire ; creatures of 
tradition as well as of inspiration. For all inspiration 
springs from resultant conditions, as the plant is rooted 
in soil and climate, in geologic layer, and continental form. 
This must have the largest interpretation in matters of the 
spirit. 

For it is not a fragment of the past to which we are 
indebted ; not a person, a tribe, an epoch, or a religion. 
We mutilate our faculties when we base science, philoso 
phy, or faith upon anything less than the whole process 
of human growth. In mind, as in matter, no forces are 
lost, though names pass and forms are changed. And so 
we may trust Nature to keep us in mind of this, ever to 
stir the flagging interest in the long forgotten, and prove 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 163 

her dynamic atoms inexhaustible and undying. Her silent 
mounds cover whole arsenals of invigoration and noble 
surprise. In her dead bones she hides a prophetic quick 
ening for all coming time. " Let the dead bury their 
dead " covers but half the truth. It is when a forgotten 
thought or deed rises in new and unexpected power that 
the soul of the living is stirred. Then the Universal proves 
its immortality even by what seemed to have had its day ; 
the narrow present becomes transcendental, and expands 
beyond experience itself. Surprise and awe make us po 
etic and creative ; we reconstruct old beliefs, and repair 
old defects. When Birs-Nimrud breaks the silence of 
his centuries, and Egypt speaks from her tombs, then for 
science, for history, for poetry, for theology, for all that 
Nature means, from the East even to the West the light 
shines that rounds the thought of man and completes the 
chain of his faith. Let the scholar magnify his function 
amidst the arrogant competitions and foolishly exclusive 
categories of the moment, as he rolls the stones from 
sepulchres that seemed to have buried forever the earlier 
witnesses of the spirit of man. He also is reformer, 
builder of the hearts and homes of ages. 

Our real knowledge, according to Plato, is " reminis 
cence." And surely our discovery itself is but recogni 
tion. Our enthusiasm and wonder at every new thought 
is in finding it already familiar, of our own race and ex 
perience ; in feeling at home in it, as in glad recovery of 
what had been lost. What is the charm of history but that 
the whispers of one s own genius have come back to him, 
as with oceanic roll, from the deeps of humanity? A 
mystery of multiplied personality ! By these delicious 
surprises of recognition, our own dead past becomes a 
living light to our feet. Is it then strange that the revival 
of a whole buried civilization should recast the whole 
thought of the time? It is the stern reticence of Nature 



1 64 DEVELOPMENT. 

that stimulates scientific ardor to victory. So the un- 
comprehended monuments of remote ages are closed lips 
quivering with secrets whence all living thought awaits the 
solution of its problems. The law that " nothing is lost " 
becomes an inspiration. A nation, a religion, a civiliza 
tion which has run its course and died in its due time, 
because it had no more to do or say but to be the soil 
of new, higher growth, has a nobler second-life of uses 
before unsuspected ; because the time has come for that 
help to universal man which it held in reserve that latest 
generations may learn, to their admonition, what they had 
failed to allow it. The Arab in his tent under the Babel- 
mound muses in awe on the genii and the giants that dwelt 
on earth and raised the heaven-scaling pile. But what 
is his dream to the magnificent piles which science has 
evoked from this rubbish of ages, covered with records 
that correct our religious traditions, their very decipher 
ment a miracle of toil, and an epic triumph of thought ! 

Say what our self-complacent Sum of all ages may, the 
education of the human race does not detach it from its 
infancy. The larger its culture, the surer its track leads 
to the hidden springs of origin, to those first lessons 
which contain guarantees of its best. After dark ages of 
despotism, superstition, suppression are past, comes wider 
diffusion than ever of the thirst to read the buried history 
of man. What universal interest in the runes and hiero 
glyphs, in the languages of forgotten tribes, in survivals of 
earliest life, in the real age and structure of the Bibles 
of races and the origins of beliefs, in the disentombment 
of Troy, of Cyprus, of Mycense ! It is not simply parallel 
to the passionate press of physical science towards primi 
tive forms of life ; that first impression of universal law 
is intensified by this morning in the history of mind ; this 
first mountain-top in the wilderness of man s exodus from 
the dark, inextinguishable torch-bearer even there; this 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 165 

flash of magnesium light on the secrets of human history; 
Aladdin s castle, realm of dwarfs and volcanic laboratory 
illumined at the touch of a culture to whose perfection the 
whole past has wrought as one man. The dust-garments 
unrolled, the figured fragments rise as ideograph and cu 
neiform ; they break their long silence with far-off poetic 
report of man s dealing with fate and freedom, that shall 
live when the lenses and reagents that now construct our 
physical science shall have given place to new; just as 
the pen, itself more potent than the sword of past ages, 
has here given way as revealer of knowledge to the 
mightier spade. 

In these resurrections that attest the conservation of 
historical forces, that human energy which has broken 
the spells of Nature is not so wonderful or startling as 
the apparently human sympathy of Nature s responses to 
its call. The hint is always forthcoming to further them ; 
the witchhazel bends in the explorer s hand above the 
element he needs. Key leads on to key, till the subtlest 
combination-lock yields, and the magic of science proves 
far more at home in the field of interpretation than did the 
old claim of miracle to eminent domain over all secrets 
and all obstacles. The true Sphinx s lips are ever half 
open ; her eyes expect discovery ; for her secret is nothing 
else than the seeker himself. 

The story of a vast civilization, which has since been 
not extravagantly called the key of human history, re 
corded with a careful divination, it might almost seem, of 
its future uses, on the palaces and rocks of Mesopotamia, 
and even on the gigantic-winged creatures that guarded 
them, in a mosaic setting of terra-cotta and alabaster, lay 
buried under the dust of two thousand years. The com 
plicated letters of the record, though combined out of a 
single elementary form, the wedge, as Babylon out of her 
tiers of brick, had so perished from memory that this mere 



1 66 DEVELOPMENT. 

wedge-mark of the chisel in the damp clay was imagined to 
be an arrow-head, holding some subtile meaning, a na 
tional emblem, or even a symbol of the Christian Trinity ! 
At the opening of the present century, Babylon and Nine 
veh were still " heaps ; " here and there a fragment gave 
hints to thoughtful travellers, Niebuhr, De Sacy, and 
others, that these lines must read from left to right ; 
that the single wedge meant division of words ; that the 
series most frequently occurring was probably of the same 
meaning with a haughty formula of self-assertion already 
familiar in the records of Sassanian kings. " King of 
Kings" as a heading was the earliest of conjectures by 
Grotefend. Note, it was the phraseology of personal 
will and worship that first leaped into significance be 
fore the explorers of these monuments raised by the 
same all-mastering element of religion in the beginning 
of its career. 

The royal inscriptions of Persepolis were in fact the 
starting point of discovery ; letter by letter the holy name 
of Ahuramazda was spelled out, and the path of discovery 
opened with the alphabet of Persian cuneiform. When 
Grotefend read, at Gottingen, in 1802, the earliest aca 
demic essay on this form of writing, on the same occasion 
with Heyne s description of the first discovery in hiero 
glyphics, 1 the Zend scholarship of Lassen was opportunely 
at hand to correct those first results. First came the dim 
suspicion of Rich, 1820, that the huge mounds which he 
saw from the shores of Bagdad were the ruins of Nineveh. 
Then Botta struck the spade into Khorsabad hills, and, 
behold ! a palace burst into view, with its royal legend in 
arrow-head type, " Sargon, the mighty King of Assyria s 
land." Then, at the touch of Layard, afterwards of Loftus, 
the ancient Calah rose from the oldest of Assyrian tombs, 
from the giant heaps of Nimrud ; and then Nineveh her- 

1 Mahaffy : Prolegomena to Ancient History, p. 175 et seq. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. l6/ 

self, palace after palace, with the record of her kings Shal- 
maneser, Sennacherib, Asshur-bani-pal, the art and sci 
ence and religion of races, doubling the realm of history 
and reconstructing it by their resurrection. Then came 
the French to fix the site of Babylon, to open up the great 
Bel-Temple of Birs-Nimrud and the matchless glories 
of Nebuchadnezzar s art, and restore in full figure the 
old palaces of the ancient kings. Rawlinson, Lenormant, 
Smith, and the interpreters followed ; and the mightiest 
achievement of modern discovery, the decipherment of 
the cuneiform, was made possible by these inexhaustible 
materials which have been busying the ardent brains of 
thousands of scholars throughout the civilized world for 
the last thirty years. It is no part of my present task to 
follow the track of these preliminary explorations. It is 
the significance of the cuneiform, past and to come, as a 
factor in universal religion, as we have explained that 
term, which confines our present attention. 

In half a century the trilingual Behistun inscription, 
transcribed and translated by Rawlinson, aided by the 
rocks of Susa and Van, was serving a purpose as im 
portant as that rendered in Egyptian studies by the 
Rosetta stone. Grotefend had divined that the second 
and third columns were translations of the first, or Per 
sian : the second, that of the non-Aryan Medes, had 
been referred by Westergaard and Norris, and more fully 
by Oppert, to the Turanian family of languages ; 1 and 
Layard and Botta had given data for showing the third 
to be Assyrian. The phonetics of these two had been 
found, not to be alphabetic like the Persian, but sylla 
bic, and to be mixed in a confusing way with ideographs 
or pure picture-signs ; and the complication was further 
increased by Rawlinson s discovery that the same signs 

1 Altaic, according to Oppert, or Casdo-Scythic, belonging to the non-Aryan portion of the 
population of Media. Oppert : Le Peuple et Langue des Medes (1879), pp. 7, 8. 



I 68 DEVELOPMENT. 

were not only used, now in the one way, and now in the 
other, but that they had ever varying phonetic values. 1 
Then this difficulty was in part removed by the appear 
ance of numerous versions of the same proper names and 
ideas on different tablets ; 2 and still further by the dis 
covery of lists of syllabaries from the wonderful library 
of King Asshur-bani-pal, seventh century before Christ, 
opened up by Layard in the Nineveh palace in 1850. 
George Smith s account of his prodigious labors in gather 
ing into connected form the Chaldean literature on these 
tablets of Nineveh, is wonderfully suggestive of the sym 
pathy of Nature with the aspirations of the human mind. 
Asshur-bani-pal, the old world-conqueror, is moved to 
gather carefully, to arrange and entitle the records of a 
past civilization on library shelves. What cares Nature 
for his pains? Dust gathers over him and his palaces. 
Nineveh is a buried dream. No miracle preserves these 
old bits of clay, or their forgotten characters marked with 
chisels three thousand years ago. Geological and chemi 
cal laws cared no more for them than for the sweepings of 
his stables. They had gone their way well on towards the 
dissolution that awaits all forms, when, lo ! the mind of 
man remembers them, and comes back to claim its own. 
The restorers are not daunted, for the light and liberty 
that prove humanity the sovereign of Nature, the crown 
of her laws and ends, inspire them ; and out of the very 
shreds and patches of ruin, the old race, its genius, its 
functions, its bearing on most religions as their cradle 
and teacher are all revealed, passing into school books 
and common speech. Here were at least ten thousand 
clay tablets, the collated law, grammar, history, science, 
lexicography, mythology of fifteen hundred years, pre 
served for twenty centuries more, to solve these hard 

1 Hincks : The Polyphony of the Assyrio-Babylonian Cuneiform. 

2 Schrader: Keilinschriften und Gesch., p. 41. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 169 

problems of interpretation : fragments broken by fire and 
by falling ruins, and by searchers for treasure, into bits 
innumerable, mutilated, scattered, infiltrated with water, 
choked with crystals; yet waiting their hour, in the 
course of historic evolution, to reconstruct piecemeal a 
buried world of literature and religion, and to serve mod 
ern liberty of thought by bringing the supernaturalist s 
Bible of Christianity into the natural chain of historic 
cause and effect. How those Assyrian world-masters 
worked in their proud self-assertion to ends they did not 
know, when they strove so patiently to preserve their work 
by fixing the tablets into walls with the written side turned 
inward ; by repeating the inscription on an outer coating 
of the tablet; 1 by accumulating copies; by grammatical 
and verbal lists to assist the reading of forms of speech 
even then becoming extinct; by versions of important 
documents in all the principal languages of the empire ; 
by penalties invoked at the close of every record on any 
future destroyer or alterer of their purport, first makers 
of an infallible Bible text; by the permanent nature of 
the wedge marks, still legible, after the wear of ages, by 
the shadows they cast, 2 " Non omnino moriamur" ! That 
vast library was no word of Jahvistic Bible revelation in 
the Hebrew tongue. " Palace of Asshur-bani-pal, king of 
the world, to whom Nebo and Tasmit [god and goddess 
of science] have given ears to hear and eyes to see the 
virtues." No miracle has protected these frail tablets of 
clay, symbols of mortality; every natural law of decay 
has done with them after its kind ; yet enough remains 
when at last the patient restorers of Babel have come to 
her " heaps," to refute the tale of Jahveh s curse, and 
to make the dead dust a living soul. The palpable en 
croachment of desert and flood upon a narrow strip of 

1 Rawlinson : Ancient Monarchies, L p. 68. 

2 Loftus: Chald&a and Susiana, p. 150. 



1 70 DEVELOPMENT. 

cultured plain could easily suggest to Isaiah the way in 
which Babylon might become " heaps ; " but what pro 
phet had predicted this her resurrection? 

Then came the fruitful competitions of interpreters, 
Lassen, Burnouf, Rawlinson, Hincks, 1 and the splendid 
track of verification which has established the substantial 
correctness of their method. 2 The Semitic character of 
the Assyrian records, and the true pronunciation of divine 
names, was apparent from the syllabaries ; the names of 
kings were more or less verified by Hebrew and other 
writings. A far greater amount of resource than had 
sufficed for Egyptological studies came rapidly to hand. 
In 1857 Rawlinson, Hincks, Talbot, and Oppert made 
four independent versions of seven hundred lines ; 3 and 
they were so similar to each other that the validity of the 
general method was beyond dispute. 4 However dubious 

1 Grotef end s discovery of the names of three kings and a Persepolis alphabet in 1802 was 
so far in advance of a time when Tychsen and Miinter and others failed to decipher these 
monuments, that it was thirty-two years before these discoveries " could be resolved or 
tested." Mohl s Vingt-sefit ans d histoire des ettides orientales, i. 547. 

The first researches which threw real light on the cuneiform inscriptions were not those 
of Layard and Rawlinson, but those of Schultz, copies of the Van inscriptions, whose papers 
were saved by Molil, and urged upon the French government in a valuable report, 1840. 
Grotefend had proved that the Persepolis tablets contained a language of vowels and con 
sonants, making names and titles of Darius and Xerxes ; and then, 1836, came Burnouf s and 
Lassen s memoirs on Niebuhr s and Schultz s copies. Rawlinson had but one letter to dis 
cover. (Miiller s Preface to Mohl s Vingt-sept ans d" 1 histoire des etudes orientates, p. xx.). 
Mohl stirred up students and explorers, Botta and others, to study the three cuneiform 
alphabets, and also Colonel Rawlinson, who possessed the one copy of the Behistun trilingual 
(xxiv.)- But Rawlinson held back. Then Flandin and Coste published their inscriptions, 
1844. Botta s immense spoils of Khorsabad were sent to Paris, 1845. Then Layard s 
work, stimulated by Botta s. began, 1846. Rawlinson s translation of the Behistun appeared 
in 1847. When Rawlinson sent the copies to London, Norris, the Secretary of the London 
Society, "could detect the faults of writing in the copies with the same certainty that a 
Latinist could correct the faults of a Latin inscription" (xxviii.). Layard prosecuted his 
magnificent researches at Koyunjik, published 1851 ; then at Babylon. 

"Cuneiform writing had probably been invented at Babylon, transported thence to Nine 
veh, and applied to the Assyrian tongue ; then later carried to Ecbatana, and applied to the 
Median tongue; and finally adapted to the Persian at Persepolis." Mohl s Vingt-sept ans 
d" 1 histoire des etudes orientales, i. p. 178. It gradually became simplified, till at Persepolis 
it was alphabetical. 

3 Menant: Elements d epigraphie assyrienne. 

3 Report of Oriental I nternationa l Congress, 1873, Tom. ii. p. 126. 

* Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, June, 1874. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 

many passages are still confessed to remain, every day 
reveals some new and positive feature of Assyrian and 
Babylonian history; the original texts are translated for 
the common reader in Europe and America, and their 
testimony is transforming the Bible into secular teaching 
even for Sunday-schools. 1 

The early death of George Smith left his translation 
of the Babylonian Genesis-legend and mythical epopee a 
mere collection of fragments, pieced together with unveri 
fied conjectures ; but fresh copies and surer readings are 
fast supplying what was wanting in this and other records ; 
the indefatigable industry of Menant, and the productive 
genius of Francois Lenormant, are seconded by the nu 
merous collaborateurs of the Society of Biblical Archae 
ology. Oppert, Schrader, Menant, and Sayce are bring 
ing Assyrian grammar into the line of exact science ; 
and as the many tracks of a great inquiry are sure to 
converge in some adequate mind, so in the interpretation 
of cuneiform literature, the first creative day has come 
to its fulness in Eberhard Schrader. 2 The confession by 
this eminent Assyriologist of the many sources of error 
to which cuneiform decipherment is still subject, gives 
great value to his positive claims in behalf of its results. 3 
Two extremely important conclusions may be considered 
assured by his careful studies. The first is the presence 
in the Assyrian column of the inscriptions, of a third 
form of Semitic speech besides those already known as 
the Western and Southern forms. The second is the fact 
that the number of passages in these inscriptions in any 
material manner confirmatory of the Biblical records is 
very small indeed, in view of the vast amount of material 

1 The English version, as given in the Records of the Past, is recognized as on the 
whole being the most literal and having least openings for inevitable diversities and readings. 
Delattre : Inscriptions Historiques de Ninive et de Babylone, p. 56. 

2 Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Gcsellsch. xxiii., xxvi. 

3 Schrader : Keilinsch. und GescA., 1878. 



1 72 DEVELOPMENT. 

now opened; while the unreliableness of the Books of 
Kings and Chronicles, especially in matters of chronology, 
is indicated by contradictions almost equal in number to 
the confirmations. This scholar admirably says : " A 
thousand times better that a manifest incongruity be 
tween the Bible and the inscriptions should be admitted, 
than that it should be forcibly concealed either by 
twisting the Bible or breaking down the monumental 
records." l 

That what was previously known from the Bible and 
other sources of the geography of Palestine, as well as that 
of the neighboring countries, even to Arabia and Egypt, 
should receive ample confirmation from the inscriptions, 
is no more than was to have been expected. 2 Other 
matters of conspicuous interest, such as the subjection 
of Israel to Assyria, hardly needed such confirmation. 
On the other hand, the few references in these inscrip 
tions to the relations between Hebrew and Assyrian kings 
contain many probably irreconcilable differences from the 
Bible story. The Assyrian chronology, as contained in 
the " eponymous lists," - of which there are many inde 
pendent and parallel forms, and which are not only in 
agreement with each other, but absolutely confirmed by a 
very credible witness, the so-called Canon of Ptolemy, 
for the space of two hundred and twenty-eight years, is in 
so strong opposition to the Bible that harmonists have 
been driven to the desperate expedients of doubling names 
in the. lists, and imagining breaks extending over nearly 
fifty years, at the very epoch when such a violent proceed 
ing was least permissible. 3 For, unfortunately, the chief 
differences between the Biblical and the cuneiform annals 
come precisely where the latter are most thoroughly for 
tified by the above-mentioned Canon ; namely, in the times 

1 Schrader: Keilinsch. und Gesch , p. 93. 2 Ibid., pp. 87, 90. 

3 Ibid., pp. 300-304. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 1/3 

of Sargon and Sennacherib, where the variance amounts 
to thirteen years. 1 Hebrew kings 2 whom the inscriptions 
show to have belonged to the time of Tiglath-pileser (745- 
727 B.C.), are placed by the Bible previous to his reign, 
and made contemporary with an Assyrian king Phul, whose 
name is not to be found on the monuments, and is irrecon 
cilable with the " eponymous lists," leading to the most 
arbitrary constructions of the history of Nineveh by dis 
tinguished Assyriologists. 3 To complicate the difficulties, 
the Book of Chronicles ascribes to Phul what belongs to 
Tiglath-pileser. 4 There are obstacles in the way of iden 
tifying the cuneiform Ahabbu with the Hebrew Ahab. 5 
Equally illustrative is the attempt to identify the Belshazzar 
of Daniel with the Nabonidus of the cuneiform and of 
history, recorded as the king of Babylon at the time of 
its capture by Cyrus. This has been done by supposing 
that Nabonidus had a son named Belshazzar, who, " as he 
seems to be commander-in-chief of the army[?], probably 
had greater influence than his father, and so was repre 
sented as king." Though no such name as Belshazzar is 
to be found in the tablet, " it is evidently he who is meant 
by the king s son with the army in Accad." 6 Yet the 
allusion to the king s son, and to other officers and soldiers, 
is of the most incidental character. 

Schrader; Keilinsch. und Gesch., p. 344. 

Menahem and Pekah. So Azariah and Ahaz. 

Schrader: Keilinscfi. und Gesch., p. 347. Also Delattre : Inscriptions Historiqncs, 
pp. 64, 69. 

Schrader: Keilinsch. 2ind Gesch., p. 437, 441. 

Ibid., pp. 356-371- 

c The differences in translations are most obvious in the readings of ideogrammes which 
represent proper names, and may have one or another force. Thus the same God is rendered 
by Rawlinson Vul ; by Menant, Bin ; and by Sayce and Schrader, Rimmon. Izdubar is a 
name given by Smith, provisionally, for a Sun-hero whose real name has not yet been learned. 
But there is equal difference about the meaning of the names of metals found in the inscrip 
tions, which is natural enough, since the same is true of the metals and precious stones men 
tioned in the Bible and on the Egyptian monuments. So with wild beasts in the records of 
royal hunts, in which different translators render the same word by buffaloes, elephants, and 
emir, rhinoceros, and wild boars. See various translations of Tiglath-pileser I. Also De 
lattre : Inscriptions Historiques, pp. 38, 60. 



DEVELOPMENT. 

What would be of most importance for the Bible apolo 
gists is some confirmation, direct or indirect, of the mirac 
ulous dealings with which the thread of Old Testament 
history is so thickly hung; but of this there is not a 
shadow. The frantic endeavors of the harmonists to 
make out of the few natural points of connection be 
tween the Old Testament and the Babylonian and Assy 
rian records what they call " confirmations of the Sacred 
Scriptures," consist in forcing the parallelism by wild 
conjectures in order to deduce a wholly unwarranted con 
clusion ; namely, that the record of the Bible, especially 
the Genesis story, is historically true. It is further ne 
cessary to assume, with Rawlinson and Geikie, that the 
Hebrew only has the original revelation, which the Chal- 
dee has perverted. The confusion here is palpable; the 
agreement, were it one and much greater, would only 
prove the antiquity of the myth among Semitic and 
probably other nations, but by no means afford addi 
tional argument in favor of a historic basis, especially 
against the researches of science. Yet this is the current 
logic of the harmonizing apologists. 

A still more perilous crack in the system is the per 
sistent forgetfulness or repudiation of the fact that the 
superiority of the Hebrew Bible over every other Scripture 
of the world, which is the objective point of their studies, 
cannot be proved by the imperfections of the world Scrip 
tures as known to us at present. Thus Geikie, in his ex 
altation of the Bible above the inscriptions of Egypt and 
Babylon, because it was concerned " with the cry of the 
oppressed peoples " and the divine moral law while they 
were busy with the self-glorification of cruel kings, though 
true to a considerable extent, omits to recognize that the 
literature, religious and secular, of the ancient world has 
been mainly destroyed by Christian fanaticism and neg 
lect, except such references and quotations in writers like 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 

Eusebius and Porphyry and others for polemic purposes, 
as serve but to assure us of their vast dimensions and to 
us unsearchable contents. 

The ethnic genealogy of Genesis gets no new indorse 
ment, and the names which have puzzled ethnologists in 
its Noachic lines are as dark as ever. The monuments 
have nothing to say of Cushites or Hamites, whose very 
names were, it would now seem, unknown in the lands of 
Nimrod and of Mizraim, and were obviously chosen for 
geographical convenience, or to convey those temporary 
tribal antipathies upon which Hebrew ethnology was so 
largely erected. Nimrod is unknown to the monuments, 
spite of the theory that he is to be found in the mythic 
Merodach, and of George Rawlinson s insistence, upon 
Biblical authority, on his historical character, and Smith s 
pointless conjecture that he is the same with the Izdubar 
of the Chaldean epic, because he was a " mighty hunter " 
(as were all the Assyrian kings) and is located in Erech, 
one of " Nimrod s cities." l The best authorities have 
drawn from the tablets a mythical solution of the name, 
as that of the Babylonian god Merodach, conceived as an 
epic hero, 2 of whose title Nimrod is the Hebraized form. 

Again, the Chaldeans, that intangible people, whose 
haziness is well illustrated by the fact that they are men 
tioned in the Bible sometimes as colonists, 3 sometimes 
as priests and official soothsayers, 4 and sometimes as a 
conquering tribe from the North, 5 are equally unknown 
to the monuments till the ninth century before Christ. 
Within a century they became masters of Babylon, 
great conquerors, laying the foundation for the over- 



1 Rawlinson : Ancient Monarchies, \. 118. Smith s Assyrian Discoveries, p. 166. 

2 Lenorrnant : Le Deluge, p. 10. Grivel (Trans. Sac. Bib. Arch. Vol. iii., part L 
p. 140). Sayce (Trans. Soc. Bib. Arch. Vol. ii., part i. p. i). 

8 Genesis xi. 3 1 : xv. 7. 

4 Daniel ii. iv. 7 ; v. 7-11. 

6 Jeremiah x. 22. Habukkuk 1-6. 



i;6 DEVELOPMENT. 

throw of Assyria by aid of the Medes. 1 One thinks 
them Egyptians, who brought arts and letters to the 
Babylonian Semites ; another makes them Cushites, who 
retained in their language the science and literature of 
Semitic races, with the specialty of a learned class ; 2 
another believes them Aryans. 3 But the cuneiform tab 
lets seem to settle the question by describing the Chal 
deans as a tribe of Accadians, with which race they were 
probably synonymous from the beginning; in classical 
and Biblical antiquity figuring as a learned and priestly 
class. 4 But who were the Accadians? This leads us to the 
most interesting historical results of cuneiform studies. 

It seems to be from the lack of other definite sources 
of information that most modern scholars accept the very 
uncertain authority of Berosus, the Babylonian historian of 
Alexander s time, as to the succession of dynasties which 
succeeded his monstrous epoch of prehistoric kings, four 
hundred thousand years in duration, his Elamite or 
Median dynasty, beginning twenty- two hundred years 
before Christ, being one of the most recent. The Greek 
legends of Nin and Semiramis have still less interest. 

The primitive civilization of the Mesopotamian basin 
was not Semitic, but Turanian or Ugro-Finnic. This is 
now recognized by the best scholars, by Oppert, Sayce, 
Lenormant, and Schrader. 5 A race, whose language is 
agglutinative, allied to the Finnic, Tartar, Etruscan, it may 
be, at all events to the Mongolian family, brought the 
earliest cuneiform writing to this region, 6 composed its 
earliest annals, developed a system of magic out of which 

Lenormant : Chaldean Magic (Eng. ed.), pp. 339, 3401 

Rawlinson : Ancient Monarchist) vol. i. chap. iii. Smith s Bible Dictionary, Article 
" C laldeans." 

Renan : Semttique Langage , i- 67. 

Lenormant: Essai . . . des Fragments Costnogoniques de Brrose, pp. 52-53. 

Rawlinson: Ancient Monarchies, i. 55; Lenormant: Chaldean Magic (Eng ed.), 
p. 352 ; Schrader (Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. GeselhJi. xxix. 49). 
6 Lenormant : Chaldean Magic, p. 359. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 177 

came the ascendency of the Chaldees, and laid the foun 
dations of its mythology. 1 The Accadians seem to have 
descended from Elam, bringing with them the picture- 
writing from which the cuneiform was developed. Not 
Semitic, as the Genesis table represents them, the Elam- 
ite tribes spoke Turanian dialects, and derived the name 
Elam from the Accadian Numma (Highlands), translated 
into Semitic. They were from earliest times continually 
invading Babylonia, where they established dynasties, 
2280-1270 B.C. Even down to the sixth century there 
were wars between the two nations. From these tribes 
came the astronomy of the Semites, who located the zenith 
over Elam. Assyrian art also came from them. 

On this race, who call themselves mountaineers (Acca- 
dai), arose that largely Semitic-Assyrian civilization, local 
ized more especially in Nineveh, and known to us already 
through its connection with the Hebrews and the more 
or less mythical traditions of the Greeks. Whether the 
Turanian-Accadians were preceded by a "Cephenian" race 
of Hamitic affinities, from Egypt or elsewhere, spread all 
over Eastern Asia, and designated in the Bible as Cushites ; 
and whether, as Lenormant supposes, these Cushites of 
Ethiopia, in its widest extent, placed in Genesis among 
the children of Ham, were really the oldest branch of the 
Semitic family, and thus serve to explain the origin of 
that Semitic influence in Babylonia which speedily sup 
planted the Turanian exotics; or whether a still earlier 
black race was found in the country by these Hamitic 
Semites, by coalescence with which they lost many Sem 
itic traits, but preserved and transmitted Semitic speech, 2 
are questions of conjecture on which the monuments 
as yet throw no adequate light. The admixture of 
Semite and Mongol is, however, distinctly marked in the 

1 Sayce in the Encyclopedia Britannica, " Babylonia." 

2 Lenormant: Chaldean Magic, pp. 343, 345. 

12 



1 78 DEVELOPMENT. 

monumental records, even in the Babylonian sculptures, 
which are believed by Hamy to show these two ethnic 
types. Recent Etruscan researches have revealed a type 
similar to that which is here believed to be Mongolian, 
lending plausibility to Taylor s theory of the Mongolian 
origin of the Etruscans. 

Cuneiform script proved as susceptible of modification 
to meet the requirements of Western Asiatic civilization 
as the Semitic alphabet has to serve the same purpose 
for European. Its ingeniously varied combinations repre 
sented the sounds of the most differing tongues, of 
Turanian languages like the Susian, Median, and Chal 
dean ; of Semitic, like the Assyrian; of Indo-European, 
like the Armenian and the Persian. Like the Chinese, 
which has been of equal competency for the East of 
Asia, it was originally composed of ideographic or pic 
ture signs, as is proved by an inscription of this kind at 
Susa, and by the possibility of tracing the process of de 
velopment, through phases similar to those of Egyptian 
and Chinese systems, from the pure picture-sign to the 
largely phonetic. 1 

Not less remarkable has been the expansive force of this 
Mongoloid family, as represented in the East of Asia by 
the wide extension of the Chinese and of their civiliza 
tion, and in the West by the immense deposit of tribes 
speaking dialects of the Altaic or Turanian type, covering 
ancient Elam, 2 Chaldea, 3 Parthia, 4 and Media; 5 and if the 
"Scythians" of Justin were of the same family, as he be 
lieved and as is probable enough, holding possession of the 
most of Asia for fifteen hundred years. 

These analogies are of very great interest in the study 

1 Lenormant: Manual of Ancient History of the East, i. 434. 

2 This is shown by the Susian inscriptions. 
8 Accad or Sumir. 

4 Ctesias says the Parthians were Scythians. 
c This has been fully shown by Oppert. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 

of a family of nations which has played a much larger part 
in the history of human progress than was even suspected 
till within the last quarter of a century. But this is not all. 
The fact that the two great systems of writing in which 
the chief civilizations of Eastern and Western Asia have 
found their record, the Chinese ideographic and the 
Babylonian cuneiform, were Turanian achievements, is 
of even more striking significance. From that ethnic 
family, which has been regarded as the most materialistic 
and most devoted to transient and trivial matters, has pro 
ceeded a twofold immortality. The ideograph has been 
developed into the enduring literary medium of a vast 
living civilization; the cuneiform has been the equally en 
during monumental record of a departed one. The ideo 
graph has been the ever-changing ideal of a thoroughly 
concrete and seemingly unprogressive family; the cunei 
form speedily crystallized into a changeless expression 
of the most ardent and passionate of races, the herald 
of progress in the Oriental world. One only almost 
reached the alphabetic stage of writing; but both show 
that ethics, science, literature, mythology, and religion 
could seize a comparatively rudimentary form of the art, 
and fill its child-like picture-moulds with their universal 
meanings; that intuition and faith found expression in 
these, long before the slow processes of analytic study out 
of which creeds and alphabets alike proceed. Both are 
wonders of the constructive power of mind in early civ 
ilization ; striking instances of its evolutionary movement, 
which can be traced back in each to the primitive picture- 
sign, the language of creative imagination in its germ. 
They thus bear witness to the continuity of ideal purpose 
down the course of history. All alphabetic signs, the 
perfected organ of human speech, were gradually shaped 
from materials analogous to the picture-sign of these 
Mongoloid races, who, without aid from Aryan or Semitic, 



180 DEVELOPMENT. 

have brought the picture-sign up to a high point of de 
velopment, giving it great capability of expression, as 
well as adaptability to the needs of different races. The 
Chinese found it competent to express more and more of 
their concrete detail-experience by an endless intricacy 
of strokes and figures. The Assyrians and Persians found 
it equally capable of ideal uses, conveyed successfully 
through endless combinations of a single constructive ele 
ment, the graphic wedge. Through the strictness of its 
laws of structure, as positive in their use of the Chinese 
pencil stroke and the Babylonian wedge as the laws of ar 
chitecture in their use of arch and buttress and scroll, came 
the possibility of a change of material from mere images 
into phonetic and syllabic signs, at the demand of sound 
for free representation as script; and the more perfect 
analysis of sound evolves from these the alphabet as the 
prime organ of human culture. From the Chinese signs 
have come several transitory alphabets of Asia, as well as 
the more permanent alphabet of Japan. And it seems 
probable, from recent researches as well as from the 
myth which traces letters to Babylon, that the Phoenician 
letters, whence the archaic Greek, and through them the 
present European, were derived from cuneiform originals. 1 
Deecke, aided by Schrader and others, has traced them to 
modified forms of Assyrian cursive, in the ninth century 
before Christ, and undertakes to show the original names 
of many of the Hebrew letters in the Assyrian language. 2 

Cuneiform writing, then, carried the monumental litera 
ture of three great linguistic families, the Turanian, the 
Semitic, the Aryan; the first represented by the Accadians, 

1 Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. MorgenL Gesellsch. xxxi. 102-116. In the same, xi. 75-97 
Wu ttke, who derives them from simple strokes instead of pre-existing signs, allows that they 
must have come originally from Babylon. Renan also traces them to Babylon, though not 
to the cuneiform (Langues Semitiques, i. p. 113). Lenormant s theory of Egyptian origin 
from hieratic signs does not seem to be well sustained. 

3 The researches of scholars into the Cypriote inscriptions in Greek have suggested the 
derivation of the Greek characters from the cuneiform. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. l8l 

the second by the Assyrians, the third by the Persians. 
It concentrated, on the western rim of the Iranian plateau, 
those diversities of culture by which Iran was distinguished 
from the simpler uniformities of the far East, and which 
form the transition to still richer unities of civilization. 
As these three races, in succession, adopted this form of 
writing, an increasing force of combination was manifested 
in it ; the ideographic outlines became more artistic ; the 
rectilinear strokes were changed to something like curves. 
From the oldest Chaldean type, through Assyrian and 
Median to latest Persian, it reached successively the three 
great stages of writing, ideographic, syllabic, alphabetic. 
It was the inseparable companion of the Iranian mind, and 
the symbol of its comprehensiveness. 

The immense fecundity of the Chinese in secular, and 
of the Mongols of Central Asia in religious literature, 
which has been pointed out in a previous volume of this 
work, 1 prepares us to expect from the kindred race of 
Accadians, who invented letters and recorded thought in 
primitive Mesopotamia, evidences of similar mental activ 
ity. And as the basis of those civilizations was a devel 
oped fetichism, expressed in systems of divination, so we 
shall not be surprised to find that the earliest cuneiform 
reports this kind of product on an extended scale. The 
library of Asshur-bani-pal furnishes fragments of a vast 
Accadian work on Magic, of no less than two hundred 
tablets, which " was for Chaldea what the Atharva-Veda 
was for India." And "here, at the beginning of Iranian 
life, is foreshadowed the grand feature of its maturer 
consciousness, in the inevitable Dualism of the fetichistic 
stage of human progress. The moral problem thus early 
stands as a division of heaven and earth between element 
ary powers of good and evil, surrounded by which man 
maintains his liberty and asserts his personality by runic 

1 The Author s China, part ii. chap. iv. 



I 82 DEVELOPMENT. 

spells, talismans, amulets, imprecations, phylacteries, in 
cantations, and sacred names and formulas repeated ad 
nauseam, boundary which the gods cannot pass," 1 at 
whose bidding diseases and bewitchments come and go, 
while spirits follow the will of each possessor of their 
secret law. As in later Persian belief the struggle of good 
with evil is symbolized by the relations of Light and Dark 
ness, so here, though in a less consciously symbolic and 
ethical form, light and darkness are antagonists ; here also 
the Dualism takes the form of a positive battle. The war 
of the seven rebellious Maskim, cosmic elementary spirits 
from the abyss, against the life of the heavens and the 
earth, against gods and men, whose ravages the spirit of 
Fire by aid of a divine messenger restrains, seems almost 
a prelude to the later wars of Ormuzd and Ahriman. 2 
Accadian hymns to the protecting deity in Fire are, as 
translated in Lenormant and Smith, scarcely inferior to 
those of the Avesta: 

" Fire, supreme chief rising high in the land! Hero, son of ocean, 

rising high ! 
Fire, with thy pure and brilliant flame, Thou bringest light into the 

dwellings of darkness ! 
Thou decidest the fate of everything which has a name. May the 

works of the man, his son, shine in purity ! 
May he be high as heaven, holy and pure as the earth ! 
Thou who chasest the wicked Maskim, who strikest terror into the 

wicked heart, 

Destroyer of enemies, terrible weapon which chasest the plague, fer 
tile, brilliant, 
May the rivers and the countries rest with thee ! Expel evil from my 

body." 

" God of the house, protector of the family! " 3 
" May the sunrise dissipate darkness, and the evil spirit depart into 

the desert ! " 

1 Inscription quoted by Lenormant in Chaldean Magic, p. 44. 

8 Lenormant: Chaldean Magic , p. 18. Smith: Assyrian Discoveries, p. 398. 

3 Ibid., pp. 184-186. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 183 

" Thou who curest my face, direct my hand, Light of the Universe, 
Thou who causest lies to disappear, and dissipatest evil powers, at the 

raising of my hand, come at the calls ! " x 

" Illuminator of darkness, opener of the countenance (of sorrow), 
Setter up of the fallen, supporter of the sick ! 
Unto thy light look the great gods, and the spirits of earth all bow 

before thy face." 2 

I The moral bearings of Accadian Dualism are not less 
striking in so superstitious a fetichism as this. Smith 
thus translates a penitential psalm : 

" O my Lord, my transgression is great : many my sins. 

my goddess, my transgression is great: many my sins. The trans 

gression that I committed I knew not. 

The forbidden thing did I eat. My Lord in his wrath has punished 
me. 

1 lay on the ground, and no man took me by the hand. 

I cried aloud, none would hear me. To my God I referred my dis 
tress, my prayers addressed. 
O my God, seven times seven are my transgressions." 3 

Like the later Zoroastrians, the Accadians derived good 
and evil from one source, Mul-ge, though not by con 
scious abstraction, but rather by inability to analyze the 
moral sense and the cosmic elements. Curiously enough, 
Zrmn, the name given to the later constructed Unity, 
has been found in Berosus as mythic personification of 
the old Turanian race, whose Mul-ge certainly prefig 
ures his function in the later faith. 4 The Fravashi, ideal 
guardian or higher soul assigned to every one in the 
Avesta, has his prototype for the Accadian faith in a 
similar guardian, who, however, shares in the infirmities 
of his follower. 5 

The evil spirits of the Accadians, like the Hebrew, dwelt 
in the air and desert, and took possession of the body and 

1 Lenormant : Chaldean Magic, pp. 179, 183. 

2 Sayce s edition of Smith s Early Babylonia, p. 24. s Ibid., p. 26. 

4 Lenormant : Chaldean Magic, pp. 53, 123, 205. 5 Ibid., p. 182. 



1 84 DEVELOPMENT. 

mind of man in the form of disease. The future world, as 
described in Accadian hymns, was similar to the Hebrew 
Sheol ; its imprisoned shades dwelt in darkness and dust, 
with scarce a sign of feeling, yet somehow survived death 
with a kind of consciousness, and were even sometimes 
taken up into the company of the gods. 

The instinctive anticipation on this lower stage, of prin 
ciples in which more advanced culture has found high 
religious meaning, is not illustrated by the dualism of ele 
mentary powers alone. The Accadians had a mystical scale 
of numbers, and saw a secret virtue in holy names. Thus 
Seven is the number of spirits of evil (Maskitri). But the 
fear and the hope rise, even through the superstitions, to 
trust in the personal will of all-pervading protective being. 
The Supreme Name, "the secret of Hea," which he teaches 
to his son, the mediating god, is called " The Number; " 
and by this hidden law of the world all forces are ordained 
and ruled. Jewish reverence for an ineffable Name in 
Cabala and Talmud goes back, says Lenormant, to the 
magic of the Chaldean Accadians. 1 In the popular songs 
and agricultural maxims everything has its own fortunate 
number. Here are the earliest " teraphim," or little fig 
ures of gods and animals, believed to carry the mystic 
potency involved in their creation, and set up in the 
thresholds and near the bed 2 as protection, foreshad 
owing the idolized types and images of more cultured 
religions. The divining-rod of the Accadian magician 
anticipates the miraculous staff of Moses, which subju 
gates those of the Egyptian conjurers; 3 and his arrows, 
those which the Hebrew prophet casts for similar pur 
poses. 4 We do not here enter into the consideration of 
the amazing fact that the main portion of that remark- 

1 Lenormant : Chaldean Magic, p. 44. 2 Ibid., p. 28. 

3 2 Kings, xiii. 14-19. 

4 Sayce s Lecture on Babylonian Literature before the Royal Institute, in London, 1878. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 185 

able Assyrian literature, gathered into the royal library 
of Nineveh, with its great Bibles of hymns and prayers, 
of magic, of astronomy, agriculture, mythology ; above all, 
with its wonderful epos containing those primeval stories of 
Solar Labors, of Titan Wars, of a Flood, and of the Descent 
of a God to the Dead, on which so much of Hebrew and 
Greek mythology was probably built, was translated by 
the Semites out of this old Accadian tongue. I wish to 
note a more important historical relation in this earliest 
Turanian phase of the development of Iran. 

Even here we find that intense direction of the religious 
nature towards persons, as distinguished from principles 
and laws, which is characteristic of that whole develop 
ment. Its primitive magic is absorbed in personal wills, 
good and evil, to be loved, feared, or propitiated : it is one 
endless conversation with a superhuman world of positive 
aims, purposes, motives. And it has been noticed by 
Lenormant l that Accadian magic differs from Egyptian in 
the absence of that identification of the dead with deity, 
which gave the risen spirit the name of Osiris in Egypt, 
and even raised the animal world into more than a symbol 
of eternal things. Of this pantheistic loss of the person 
in the idea, not a trace exists in Accadian thought. Nor 
do sacred names, formulas, truths, possess the power, as in 
Hindu and Egyptian piety, to constrain the superhuman 
world. The Accadian priest bowed before a superior per 
sonality, appealing to this in prayer, and conquering evil by 
the intercession of other persons, such as Merodach of the 
older hymns. The sovereign Name itself is not so much 
a more or less abstract form of power, like the Egyptian 
names of deity, as a positive living Will. Personal media- 
torship begins in the old Chaldean tablets. Silik-mulu-khi, 2 
who cures diseases, drives out demons, and raises the dead, 

1 Chaldean Magic, chap. vi. 

a Hymns in Lenormant : Chaldean Magic, pp. 64, 190, 192, 207. 



1 86 DEVELOPMENT. 

by knowledge given him as the commissioned son of Hea, 
" giving and saving life," " merciful king of heaven and 
earth," strikingly resembles the mediatorial saviours of 
Zoroastrianism and Christianity. Silik-mulu-khi never 
reached the abstract form of the Christ of the Church, 
was not an idea, a mystic presence, an all-conquering 
Name, a process of history, but remained a person 
only, endowed with beneficent functions, but absorbing 
an analogous veneration : 

" Lord, thou art sublime. What transitory being is equal to thee ? 
Among gods, the rewarder : among gods, the hero. 
To thee are heaven and earth : to thee are death and life." 

He is so evidently regarded as a personage in real life, 
that the bibliolater identifies him with Nimrod, and the 
scholar with Merodach. The idea of a mediator, the nat 
ural result of a worship of deity as personal will, is trace 
able, like other Semitic beliefs, to a Turanian antiquity. In 
its substance, it is precisely what we find it in the relation 
of the Accadian through Silik-mulu-khi to Hea; namely, 
that of one individual to a higher individual, facilitated by 
a third. Transformed, as in Christianity, into a mystic eso 
teric idea of unity, drawing the mind away from concrete 
wills to supreme ideas and principles, it loses its essential 
meaning ; and were the change but consistently and com 
pletely made, would lose its historic and personal basis 
altogether, and cease to claim any, or even to admit 
its possibility. Of this there is no hint in Accadian 
conceptions; nor even of that interchangeableness of 
divine names which we find in the Veda dimly foreshad 
owing the unity of all gods in the impersonal Brahm. 
Here, on the contrary, every god stands in his own dis 
tinct individuality, spirits without number, inhabiting 
natural forms, or using natural powers, but not traced 
back to one principle or grand generalization of the di- 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. l8/ 

vine. A personal guardian invisibly attends every one, and 
personal demons possess body and mind. A supreme 
triad Anu, Hea, Mul-ge respectively rule Heaven, 
Earth, and the Underworld ; from the last of whom both 
good and evil spirits proceed. Even in the dark deeps 
of Sheol there dwells a living helper, Nin-dar, slayer of 
monsters and pests. Finnic magic, as described in the 
Kalevala, shows a similar triad of personal rulers, a simi 
lar dualistic struggle of good and evil powers, with similar 
exorcisms and spells for expulsion of demons, mainly 
through gods of light. The religions of these kindred 
races agree also in placing that kind of metal in which 
each was specially wont to work under a special god. 
Similar affinities have been sought in another race be 
lieved to have been of Turanian type, the Etruscans; and 
the evidence, both as regards personal names and religious 
beliefs, is very striking. 1 The solar origin of the Accadian 
deities and legends becomes more obvious the more they 
are traced to their elements, revolving around the move 
ment of the sun through his visible and invisible paths, of 
the upper and under worlds, of day and night, and through 
the zodiacal signs, of which these Turanian astronomers 
seem to have been the framers. 2 

The records of this primeval civilization, which was 
flourishing in Chaldea at least forty centuries ago, and per 
haps a thousand years earlier than that, have been care 
fully preserved. If the Semitic Assyrians who supplanted 
the " Accad and Sumir " had done nothing else but trans 
late their contents from the older language and cuneiform 
type to which they were committed into their own cur 
rent writing and tongue, not only preserving the originals, 
but providing for their study the appliances of lexicon 



1 Isaac Taylor in Report of Oriental International Congress, 1874 (Triibner). 

2 Hymns as translated in Lenormant : Chaldean Magu; ; and the legends as described by 
Sayce : Lecture on Babylonian Literature before the Royal Institute in London, 1878. 



I 88 DEVELOPMENT. 

and grammar, and all with a scrupulous historic affection 
amounting to a filial piety like that of the Chinese in these 
matters, they would have entitled themselves to the lasting 
gratitude of mankind, and can never be charged with hav 
ing lived to little purpose. , And this they have thoroughly 
done. 

The records of the old Accadian kings, from Lig-Bagas 
of Ur down, are jejune, mere items of temple and tower- 
building, their names now given in Semitic, now in Tura 
nian. 1 But their literature was preserved in libraries, 
located in the numerous cities of Babylonia; 2 and from 
these the Semitic Assyrians not only brought the great 
works of poetry, mythology, science, and magic which 
they translated and studied so carefully, but also probably 
derived their own system of free public libraries, like those 
of Sargon and Asshur-bani-pal, into the inner working of 
which we can look to-day with astonishment that there 
is nothing new under the sun. The literary capacity of 
these old Turanians is perhaps the most remarkable fact 
in history. The oldest of epics, to which the name of 
Izdubar has been provisionally given, is an elaborated 
product of Accadian genius, forty centuries old, and shows 
how early the poetic faculty of man found inspiration in 
the great lights of heaven. 3 This marvellous epic, with 
its twelve great legends based on the twelve zodiacal 
signs, turning their Accadian names into dramatic per 
sonifications, and the process of the Sun through their 
successive mansions into labors of a mythic hero, which 
are curiously paralleled or repeated in the Semitic and 
Aryan forms of the Hercules myth, interweaving also the 
lunar phases in a form which is the prototype of that 
wide-spread cycle of myths wherein a dying god is 

1 Smith: Early History of Babylon. Records of the Past, vol. iii. 

2 Smith : Ancient History of Babylon (Sayce s ed.)> p. 19. 

8 See account of this epic in Sayce s Babylonian Literature ; and the poem in Smith s 
Assyrian Discoveries (Sayce s ed.). 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 189 

mourned by the spirit of love in Nature, and sought by 
her in the Underworld, this marvellous epic is worthy 
to be called the cradle of mythologies, even from what 
we already know of its contents. Another cycle of Ac- 
cadian legends shows the perception of cosmical order 
and law as wrung from chaos by personal Will. The wars 
of gods against Titans in Greek cosmogony are prefigured 
in those of Bel and Aku and Merodach against the de 
structive forces of Nature, and the crude abortions half 
beasts, half men of chaos. How monsters of blind aim 
less types and demons of the dark were conquered by the 
sabre of Merodach (lightning) ; how Tiamat, the abyss- 
mother of this abnormal progeny, was cloven and cast 
with her brood into the Underworld ; how the storm-Titans 
fought in vain against the heavenly constructive lights, 
was a favorite theme of Accadian imagination a thousand 
years before Hesiod wrote or Homer sung. This prog 
ress by the strife of orderly will against blind force is the 
key-note of Western thought, struck so long ago on the 
shores of the Persian Gulf, to attune the soul of man with 
the signs of heaven. This is what the Sun meant to those 
first watchers of his triumphant march through cloud and 
storm and night. So the attempt of the seven storm-spirits 
to destroy the Moon-god was probably the poetic version 
of an eclipse. 1 The waning and waxing Moon is a queen 
of heaven descending through the chambers of the death- 
realm, putting off her garments of glory one by one, and 
then, divinely delivered, resuming them as she rises again 
upon a sorrowing and pining world. 2 But long before the 
epic of Izdubar concentrated the faith of the Accadians, 
they had uttered their penitence, praise, and prayer to the 
gods of the heavenly bodies and the elemental powers 

1 Records of the. Past, vol. v. (Fox Talbot s translation). 

2 Descent of Ishtar; Schrader s translation. Also Records of the Past, vol. i. (Fox 
Talbot s translation). 



190 DEVELOPMENT. 

in hymns and liturgies, the fragments of which surprise 
us by their resemblance, in many respects, to the Hindu 
Veda and the Hebrew Psalms. The objects of worship 
are different; but the ascription of personal feeling and 
will is quite as vivid and real as anything even in the 
latter, and the mastery of Nature by these indwelling 
powers impregnates elements and forms with a sympathy 
as intense as that which they yield to Indra or Jehovah. 
"The will of Silik-mulu-khi rules the heavens and earth 
like a sword." " He commands the flower, and it ripens; 
the sea, and it is calm." The " hero Fire clothes space 
like a garment, presses up the hills and kindles the dark 
ness." " The overwhelming fear of Anu girds his path 
in the sky." " Day is thy servant, O Istar, and heaven 
thy canopy." The transgressor, confessing his sins in the 
dust, and crying without help from man, " addresses his 
prayer to his god." "The sin thy servant has sinned, 
bring back to blessedness: let the wind carry away his 
transgression. May thy heart, like the heart of the mother 
of the setting day, to its place return ! " These hymns 
must have been accumulating for centuries. 

The most characteristic thing about Accadian civilization 
is the passion for literature. In its old deluge myth, as 
reported by the Greeks from Berosus, 1 the Chaldean Noah 
(Xisuthrus) is bidden to bury the sacred writings at Sip- 
para, his native city, before the flood comes ; and there, 
after he has been taken up to heaven, his followers return 
to recover them. Oannes, the fish-god from the sea-coast, 
to whom these primitive Chaldeans ascribe their culture, 
is expressly said to have brought them letters. Like the 
Chinese, they invent a historic system of writing, to the 
West of Asia what that of China was to the East. Peace 
able and industrious, they meditated on the world, and 

1 Abydenus and Alexander Polyhistor; Lenormant: Le deluge et I" 1 epopee Babyloni- 
enne, p. 8. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 19 1 

turned the results of patient observation to legend, sci 
ence, and song of praise. Their science, as yet in the 
elementary stage in many respects, was at least inspired 
by the search for causes, by the sense of continuity and 
development in Nature; and this far more than with the 
Semitic races, who inherited their culture, and used it 
mainly in the interest of supernaturalism and national 
exclusiveness. They not only worshipped the great ele 
mental wholes, the heaven, the earth, the sea, but 
wrought with marvellous energy at the foundations of all 
future astronomy, agriculture, and commerce. It was cer 
tainly Accadian observation which began and continued the 
great astronomical work of Sargon s library in seventy-two 
books, inscribed in the name of Bel-Merodach as god of 
the starry heavens, intermediate between the upper sphere 
and the earth. Largely magical and astrological, it con 
tained notices of comets, conjunctions, eclipses, lunar and 
planetary phases, cyclic returns, and even, as some suppose, 
of spots on the sun. The Accadians were the inventors of 
our twelve zodiacal signs, with their very names, and of our 
great divisions of time into the year of twelve months and 
three hundred and sixty days, and our week of seven days, 
which they named after sun, moon, and planets, and sepa 
rated by sabbaths or rest-days, religiously set apart by 
statute. They named the Milky Way the " long path," 
and it has been affirmed by decipherers that they made 
celestial charts, and drew lines corresponding to equator 
and ecliptic, dividing them into degrees ; and Layard found 
a magnifying lens at Nineveh, on whose historical rela 
tions conjecture may well be rife. 1 Fragments of agri 
cultural works point us to them as the industrious founders 
of the vast system of irrigation and production of which 
the wealth of Babylonia was the result We have their 
Fasti ; their lists of classified animals and plants, their 

1 This is carefully summarized from Sayce s Babylonian Literature- 



I Q2 DEVELOPMENT. 

geographical statistics and lists; their labor songs and 
maxims, their farmer s calendar, their system of ownership 
in lands and harvests, and records of their sales and wills and 
loans. The far-reaching commercial life of Babylon and 
Nineveh, by land and sea, must have sprung from this older 
civilization of industry and culture. They had an archi 
tecture of their own, and wrought in textile fabrics and in 
stone. Their laws guarded the right of inheritance, of 
private " sanctuary," secured married women s property, 
gave the mother the highest place in the family, 1 pun 
ishing rejection of her more severely than the same sin 
against the father, though distinguishing against the fe 
male in cases of infidelity. They fine cruelty towards 
slaves, though very inadequately. 2 They strictly unite 
Church and State ; the statutes of the land are the com 
mandments of Hea, to which the king must conform in 
their traditional rights, or the nation perishes; judges are 
placed under oaths and penalties; brothers exhorted to 
mutual love and generous dealing in the name of the law, 
and in the temples of the gods ; 3 and documents of loans, 
contracts, transfers, and debts are preserved on papyrus 
leaves as well as on stone. Here is a long advance on 
patriarchal institutions. The free world of the West be 
gins to appear, singularly enough, in a Turanian race. 
Well might this historic race dwell on the mastery of 
chaos in their songs to creative gods of cosmic order and 
enlightened will. On their firm foundation the religions 
and cultures of the world were built, and every hour re 
veals some new root of civilization pushing through this 
till recently unimagined soil. The far-famed learning, the 
parent-religion of Babylon, the mysterious gift of the 
Chaldean in all that the ancient world held worthy of awe 



1 E. Thomas (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, xi. p. i, new series). 

2 Records of the Past, vol. in. 

8 Ibid., vols. v. vii. (Sayce and Smith). 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 193 

and wonder, has found at last its historic conditions ; and, 
like all that man most venerates, testifies, with all the Se 
mite s prestige of miracle in its train, to the natural law of 
evolution, to the truth that all seeming beginnings point 
beyond themselves. 

The Assyrians who transmitted this Turanian wisdom 
illustrate the same laws. Their respectful heed to it, and 
their patient care for its preservation by grammatical re 
searches, syllabaries, lists of corresponding words, was a 
recognition of universal relations, an escape from race- 
prejudice, surprising at so early a period. It seems to 
lay the corner-stone of a cosmopolitanism which has since 
conditioned the progress of civilization. In various forms 
we shall continue to find this force of combination the 
special gift of Iran to history. We note it here on the 
outermost edge of that region geographically, and at its 
remotest epoch historically, as transition of the human 
mind to conscious progress. It is here that races suc 
cessively open their sympathy, first the Turanian, then 
the Semitic, and then the Aryan, a movement, it will be 
recognized, of immense interest in the social history of 
mankind. Only the wealth of modern archaeological sci 
ence has revealed what unimagined continuity of social 
evolution through the sympathy of races, inspired this 
remote antiquity, a chaos, it had been believed, of su 
perstition and war. As the heart of Asshur opened to 
receive the gift of Turan, so the Mede and the Persian 
afterwards welcomed that of conquered Nineveh and 
Babylon ; until the aristocratic exclusiveness of the Greek 
in culture and of the Hebrew in religion was confronted 
by that oceanic tide of nations, that ill-compacted but 
swarming empire of a thousand tribes, that movable Baby 
lon, gathered around a Cyrus or a Xerxes, to teach the 
one race a larger synthesis of humanity, and to prepare 
for the other a historic indebtedness which should in 

13 



194 DEVELOPMENT. 

after times sap that claim of special inspiration which 
its intense self-confidence had imposed on the civilized 
world. 1 

Even so conservative a scholar as George Smith was 
at length led, by his Assyrian studies, to accept the 
conclusion that " antiquity borrowed far more from the 
valley of the Euphrates than from that of the Nile," and 
that " Chaldea, rather than Egypt, is the home of Euro 
pean civilization." 2 It is not less true, as we shall see, 
that the Hebrew religion and records were inherited pro 
ducts, in very large degree, of the same soil; and that 
Euphrates, not Jordan, is the deepest source of Jewish and 
Christian tradition, Renan, who has comprehended very 
imperfectly the value of cuneiform studies, while allowing 
that "before the entrance of Indo-European and Semitic 
nations on the field of history, there were very ancient 
civilizations, to which we are indebted for elements of 
industry and a long experience of material life," adds 
that " all this fades before such facts as the mission of 
Moses," etc. ( !) What part has been played by these 
older races in directing the religious life of the Jewish 
and Christian world will be a question for our present 
inquiry. 

It is difficult as yet to determine how large a portion of 
Assyrian culture was derived from Accadian sources. The 
development was certainly continuous, and, even without 
the light thrown on it by cuneiform studies, is clearly trace 
able to the sea-coast at the mouth of the Euphrates. It is 
here that all ancient tradition places the earliest social, 
industrial, intellectual life of Western Asia. Hither, as 



1 The Assyrian kings have left the record of their collecting, copying, and preserving of 
the old tablets from Babylon and its numerous sister seats of learning, of their careful 
arrangement of them in libraries in great Assyrian cities under minute care, and of the 
steady growth of these libraries from the end of the ninth to the middle of the seventh 
century before Christ. (Sayce s Smith: Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. 27.) 

2 Assyrian Discoveries^ p. 451. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 195 

Berosus reports from Babylonian records, came the mythic 
civilizers, Oannes and his Annedoti, half fish, half man, 
at repeated intervals, to teach rude men the arts of life. 
Whether these mystic seven represent so many sacred 
books of an early priesthood, or whether their amphibious 
type points to u Cushite navigators " bringing Egyptian 
culture, or whether they are but mythic expressions for 
the principal Accadian gods, Anu and Hea, out of whose 
names most of their individual titles appear to be formed, 
as well as their general appellation (Annedoti}^ or possibly 
for the Accadian Hea-khan, " Hea, the fish," 2 they are 
at least natural types of social origin for a race dwelling 
in the constant presence of oceanic life. The myth be 
longs to the great cycle, of which Dagon and Derketo, 
Jonah, etc., are forms. The same causes peopled the 
Chaldean chaos with sea-monsters, under the sway of 
Tiamat, " the watery abyss," whence the gods also rise 
and create. In the mythologies of Asia generally, "ocean" 
means the atmospheric deep, space mingling with sea, 
for the mind as it does for the eye. 3 In the Chaldean we 
first hear the roar of the actual ocean, not as mere infinite 
space, but as productive living power. There was a fine 
presentiment of scientific truth in the old cosmogonies 
that made the sea the parent of all things. It is here, 
on the shore of the Persian Gulf, that Bel-Merodach, the 
Semitic god of civilization, had his strife with the sea, as 
primal chaotic element, cleaving her in two, and then 
making the cosmic order from his own divided brain. 
Similar forms of pantheistic evolution, in India and 
Greece, produce Brahma from a dismembered Prajapati, 
and Athene from the split brain of Zeus ; and from the 
disseverment of a primal giant Ymir comes the Norse 

1 Lenormant : Chaldean Magic, pp. 201-203. 

2 Smith: Chaldean Account of Genesis (Sayce s edition), p. 325. 

3 Eckstein on Cosmogony of Sanchoniathon (Journal of the Royal A static Society, xiv. 
xv., fifth series). 



I Q6 DEVELOPMENT. 

universe. So strong was their sense of contrast between 
orderly law and blind caprice, that the bridge from one 
to the other seemed to the worshippers of Nature to re 
quire a tragedy of self-evolution. Its connection in Chal 
dean cosmogony with the sea marks, as we shall see here 
after, a very primitive form of this recognition of necessary 
law. Here too were the earliest sanctuaries and sacerdotal 
colleges, schools of astrology and mathematics. 1 Here 
was Ur, reputed home of the Hebrews, most Turanian of 
Chaldean cities ; here Surippak, place of books ; here 
Erech, seat of priestly culture ; here the ancestral land of 
the Phoenicians, sea-lovers and merchants of the ancient 
world, whose primitive world-plasm was the water, and 
whose gods, like the Chaldean, were fish- men. Here the 
oldest Semites mingled with earlier settlers of that great 
Scythic race (Turanian), of which Justin says that in 
early times they covered all known regions of Asia. 2 
Here Bab-ilu (gate of the god) became the Semitic name 
of an old Accadian city, Ka-Dingira (same meaning), 
while the kings of Chaldea proper had still Turanian 
names. 3 At last "Asshur went forth and builded Nine 
veh," 4 the god of the nation being put for the nation, 
and the name of the nation then used, Hebrewwise, as a 
personal name. And so the two cities, Semite and Semito- 
Turanian, grow side by side for centuries of rivalry, till 
the beginning of the eighth century before Christ saw the 
power of Babylon broken by the great Sargonide dynasty 
of Nineveh, which ruled as one the two greatest empires 
of the East. The closing period of the Assyrian empire, 
from Tiglath-pileser to Asshur-bani-pal, concentrated the 
fruits of a civilization of fifteen centuries ; till, enfeebled 
by luxury, and harassed by Scythian hordes, it yielded 
to the hardy mountaineers of Cyaxares the Mede and his 

1 Lenormant : Fragm. Cosmog. , p. 220. ~ Justin : Historia, ii. 3. 

3 Lenormant : Cha^dtan Magic , p. 326. * Genesis, x. n. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 197 

Babylonian allies. Then Babylon rose again to the 
zenith, and Nebuchadnezzar made her the heir in full of 
all past ages. 

In the light of recent researches, the statement of Op- 
pert that the two elements of Chaldeo- Assyrian civilization 
were too closely interwoven to be distinguished, either in 
respect of language, manners, or worship, appears extreme. 
But in the most important features of what we may call the 
Iranian type of historic influence, there were certainly 
striking: resemblances between these two races. To the 

o 

nerve of Turanian industry corresponded that of Assyrian 
passion for military success. Alike in Babylon and Nineveh 
the records of monarchs are one continued boast of de 
votion to their ideals, whether of overthrowing kingdoms 
or of erecting shrines. In both the ziggnrat shoots up 
ward its seven stages, bearing witness to the superstitions 
of an audacity that must surely have called down the wrath 
of a jealous God. That Turanian thirst for universal do 
minion under a single head, which appears alike in the 
spread of these tribes over Western Asia to build up a vast 
industrial empire on the Persian Gulf, in the ever-advanc 
ing expansion of the Chinese emperor-worshippers to the 
opposite shore of the continent, and in the shorter-lived 
conquests of a Tamerlane or a Genghis-Khan, has its ana 
logue in the boundless ambition of Semite- Assyrian kings. 
In Asshur-bani-pal or Tiglath-pileser, scourger of nations, 
king of kings, lord of the universe, one with heaven s host, 
earthly image of a Semitic Asshur or Jahveh, the personal 
will stands in its pure exclusiveness as absolute human 
godhood, burning with a nervous fire that consumes all 
flesh. It is the worship of such exclusive authority that 
impresses us in the politico-religious life of Assyria, Ju- 
dea, Arabia, and the world-coveting and world-mastering 
faiths that sprang from these Semitic centres ; and it was 
inherited, in less extreme form, by the Persian and his 



198 DEVELOPMENT. 

Shahan-shah. In all these the nations follow, as the 
million ripples their tidal-wave, some omnipotent king or 
messiah, over whom visibly or invisibly hovers his arche 
typal self, the winged man, whether as Ormuzd, Asshur, 
or Jahveh, or the Christian Creator and Judge. Thus ap 
pears, in its instinctive might, the all-productive worship 
of will-power, of which modern religions have been the 
successive waves. The same tribal exigencies in these Se 
mitic empires created II and Bel, and Asshur and Jahveh, 
and Arabian Allah. 

The gods of Assyria are the older gods of Chaldea, with 
the conspicuous exception of Asshur, 1 who, as special su 
preme tribal deity, takes the place before occupied by Bel. 2 
The kings recognize his constant, present will, and rule by 
his dictating word, intensely sympathizing with his passion 
ate and jealous nature, dedicating to him their conquests 
and monuments, palaces and temples and public works, 
in gratitude and joy, and calling themselves, in pride or in 
loving dependence, by his name. 3 No sense of personal 
relation with deity can be more intensely real, and none has 
ever inspired greater enthusiasm in conquest and in work. 
So real and human is Asshur, that Rawlinson thinks he must 
have been a deified man, a positive " son of Shem "( ! ) 4 A 
degree of similar communion is made possible in the case 
of inferior gods by the energy of volition of which they are 
all types of one kind or another. The monumental symbol 
of Belus is the horned cap of Hea, the god of wisdom, the 
serpent ; of Sin, the crescent or new moon ; of Shamas, the 

1 According to Sayce, Asshur means the water-border (of the Tigris). According to Kie- 
pert, athura, in Darius s inscriptions, means "good or just ;" originally " even, smooth." 
Lehrbuch der alien Geogr. , p. 1 50. 

2 Berosus in Dubois Assyria and Chaldea, pp. 56, 57. 

3 Not less than thirty-one of the thirty-nine names of Assyrian kings contain the name or 
designation of a god, thirteen of these contain the element Asshur: as A sshttr-bil-nisi-su, 
"Asshur (is) the lord of his people;" A sshur-bani-pal, "Asshur is protector of the 
child ; " and Buzur-A sshur, " a stronghold (is) Asshur." Rawlinson : Ancient Monarchies, 
ii. 248-249. 

4 Rawlinson : Ancient Monarchies, ii. 3. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 1 99 

four-rayed orb, or creative sun ; of Vul, the thunderbolt ; 
of Ninip, the winged guardian man-bull at the gate, and 
the herculean strangler of lions ; of Nergal, war-king, the 
man-lion; of Nebo, god of learning, the sunrise (?), or 
the wedge, and on his statues was written " The preserver 
of those who hear him and bless his name." 1 Merodach 
is the redeeming god, ever at hand to save and restore, 
the Krishna, the Buddha, the Christ, of the Assyrian. The 
angry gods, especially Anu, stand ready to avenge them 
selves, to break in with flood and fire and pestilence. 2 These 
gods of human will are coupled, human-wise, with god 
desses. The Persian s symbol of Ormuzd, a winged war 
rior, with bow and lifted hand, enclosed in the world-circle, 
was transmitted to him from the Asshur of the Ninevite 
kings. Their symbol of growth also, the Tree with the 
candelabra-branches, or ending upward in the pine-cone 
or vegetable flame, has descended, by the same right of 
human significance, in Persian fir-cone and Hebrew burn 
ing bush and tree of life. How these gods of the will 
battle with monsters on the monumental walls, strange, 
half-human creatures, fit survivals of the Chaldean chaos, 
but all terribly alive and instinct with evil purpose ! The 
kings are all Nimrods, and boast their trophies in hunting. 
They are flames of wrath, besoms of destruction ; deso- 
lators of nations, forever on the raid. When we think of 
Assyrian art, we think of a splendid vitality, animal and 
human, and an intense will ; of comparative contempt for 
mere scenery ; of crude and grudging treatment of lower 
forms of Nature; of every quality that goes with personal 
force, strength, grandeur, motive power, ideal purpose, 
dramatic sympathy with all vigorous life, earnest religious 
abandon. Everywhere these figures spring to incarnate 



1 Menant: Annales des Rois d Assyrie, p. 128. 

z George Smith : Chaldean Account of Genesis, the legend of Dibbara, pp. 125-129 ; the 
sin of Zu, pp. 115-124. 



200 DEVELOPMENT. 

life ; the very cornices are crowned with animals, the 
scroll-patterns are tree-shoots and winged bulls. In the 
treatment of living energy, Nimrud and Koyunjik bear 
away the palm from Greece herself, and show little inferi 
ority in technical science. The horse and his rider thun 
dering to battle with level spear; the resistless king, of one 
body and soul with his rushing steeds, launching arrows 
like thunderbolts on the foes of his god ; the creatures 
with outspread wings and eagle eyes that guard the sacred 
tree ; l the firm advance and lifted hands of lower gods 
adoring Asshur; the dying agony of the wounded lion; 2 
the horses dropping slowly with failing knees ; the terror 
of the wild ass, speared, and torn by hounds ; 3 the oxen 
moving towards each other with human feeling in every 
limb ; 4 the guardian bulls, with open jaws and terrible 
talons, everything in this art is alive with invincible pas 
sion, with triumph or tenderness, aspiration or pain. I 
cannot but think the exquisite lines of Rossetti, on the 
Bull-god from Nineveh, have in them more of beauty than 
of truth : 

"Those heavy wings spread high 
So sure of flight, which do not fly ; 
That set gaze, never on the sky ; 
Those scriptured flanks it cannot see ; 
Its crown, a brow-contracting load ; 
Its planted feet that trust the sod : . . . 
O Nineveh ! was this thy God, 
Thine also, mighty Nineveh?" 

In Assyrian art, derived mainly from Babylon, begins 
the full arch, the column, the arcade, the aqueduct, the 
tunnel, all forms that inaugurate movement and growth; 
immense motive force of transportation by pulley, lever, 
roller, and by human multitudes, working as one man, 

1 Rawlinson : Ancient Monarchies^ i. 366. 2 Ibid., p. 355. 

8 Ibid., pp. 356-357- 4 Ibid-, p. 351. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 2OI 

all delicate forms of working art-designs of metal, as well 
as grand sculpture in stone. It is an art that presses on 
ward and upward, a steady advance ; as the kings grow 
in ability to the last, so their latest palaces are their best, 
their last age the golden. The Assyrian ziggurat spanned 
the whole of being, an observatory and a tomb ; a tower 
ascending to heaven, a monument resting on the dead ; 
it watched the stars above, the graves beneath ; that of 
Babylon held the tomb of Belus, and kings were buried 
there as gods. Egypt has been supposed to be the parent 
of Assyrian art, because many symbols are common to the 
two countries, the crux, the lotus, the goddess on a 
lion, the scarabaeus, the sphinx; 1 but the spirit in the 
two styles differs as a flame of fire from a pyramid of 
stone. So intense is this creative fire, this instant will, 
that it consumes itself in its burning. Longing for the 
immortal, it seizes on the most transient materials. With 
plenty of stone at command, Assyrian architecture fol 
lowed the traditions of Babylon, and used, to a great extent, 
sun-dried brick. Its palaces rapidly decayed. The im 
pulsive rulers incessantly dismantled their own work, 
each sacrificed that of his predecessor to the ambition of 
building more grandly, or else to anticipate the swift fate 
that approached it. 2 As if the mere doing was enough, 
they set their gigantic structures on mounds of earth, 
which gave way under their weight. We have here the 
grandest testimony to that filiation of races, that conti 
nuity of historic growth, which is the inspiration of mod 
ern science, and has dispelled the superstitions of special, 
positive religions. Crete, Cyprus, and Sicily, Mycenae 
and Ilion and Corinth, the isles of the Aegean and the 
shores of Asia Minor every day reveal new evidences that 
the art as well as the mythology of the classic world was 

1 Layard ; Nineveh and its Remains, ii. 170, 174. 

2 Rawlinson : Ancient Monarchies^ \. 336. 



202 DEVELOPMENT. 

to a large degree an evolution of Assyrian ages. The old 
Cabiri of Samothrace, the Sphinx, the horned Venus of 
the recent excavations in Greece, the finely carved cylinders 
and castings of amulets and seals may be traced across the 
Ionian Sea to these cradles of thought and work. 

What a comment it is on the passionate self-will em 
bodied in king-worship that so little has come down to 
us of domestic architecture or popular amusement! The 
people are there on the monuments ; they are bringing 
tributes, drawing colossal bulls to the temples, hurled from 
the battlements of a besieged city, or shot down by royal 
arrows : in various ways they are carrying out the instant 
will of their kings. But hardly more truly so than in the 
long ages of modern civilization that have succeeded the 
monarchies of Asia. We must not suppose them ciphers. 
They do not show the merely conventional uniformity of 
the Egyptian masses ; but more of individual life is rep 
resented, as of those who shared the spirit of achievement 
that leads or drives them on, and this, though the feel 
ings of family affection are not expressed as in Egypt. 
The main themes of the inscriptions are campaigns and 
trophies ; but all the products of the Orient are figured 
there, and prove a stirring world of industry and trade. 
Hammurabi, Tiglath-pileser, and Sennacherib boast great 
works of irrigation, " for the good of the people," helps 
to their agriculture. Assyrian productive labor must have 
followed in the Chaldean track. When Sargon says he 
has cleared forests, opened canals, dug wells, and spread 
fertility, 1 the claim involves labor of the masses for their 
own advantage as well as for his glory. The people of 
Nineveh in the seventh century before Christ traded from 
India in the East to Tartessus in the West. 2 Records are 
extant of private contracts, and even of private banking 

1 Menant: Anuates des Ro;s d Assyrie, p. 100. 

2 See Sayce : Babylonian Literature, p. 50. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 2O3 

houses. 1 The library of Asshur-bani-pal alone contained 
a greater amount of writing than all the monuments of 
Egypt, says Layard. 2 However this may be, it must have 
employed thousands of scribes, whose art of preserving 
records was itself a mark of popular civilization and es 
tablished industrial culture. So were the provisions we 
find made for security of contracts and their registration. 3 
That kings and people were mere voluptuaries is a He 
brew slander, utterly without evidence. A nation that 
maintained for nearly ten centuries a constantly advanc 
ing life of literary, military, and industrial power may be 
said to have burnt itself out in the fire of its own aspira 
tions, but is surely no subject for our commonplaces on 
the fall of empires through luxury or depravity. Empires 
perish when destructive external forces are too strong for 
their inward force of self-preservation. It was the inva 
sion of Assyria by Scythian hordes in the sixth century 
that gave her the decisive blow ; which was only followed 
up by Cyaxares and his Medes, There was somewhat 
beyond the Semite in Assyrian culture, especially indus 
trial culture. No other people of this race, - Hebrew, 
Arab, Canaanite, showed such gifts ; even the Phoeni 
cians and their African colonies were carriers of products, 
rather than creators. In fact, what we see in this civiliza 
tion is the wonderful fusion of an older Turanian mental 
industry and material constructiveness, shown in the build 
ings at Babylon, with Semitic passion and will. Both ideal 
and concrete elements were already provided in Chaldean 
forms ; and to these were now supplied the nerve-con 
ductors that could bring the one to bear on the other in 
a magnificent outburst of personal Will, lasting nearly a 
millennium, and taking tribute from hosts of kings. 

1 George Smith: Babylonian Literature, p. 51. 

2 Discoveries among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, p. 347. 
8 Lenormant : Ancient History of the East, i. 424. 



204 DEVELOPMENT. 

Nor is this national persistence explicable from the 
Semitic side. The Semite is unfitted for success in po 
litical construction. Arbitrary, capricious, impulsive, he 
is incapable of giving substantial existence to the State, 
of instituting law as independent of instant overruling 
wills. Semitic Assyria herself had this imperfection. 
The empire of the Sargonides was a " mere congeries " 
of States, so loosely joined that revolt was incessant, and 
the main business of the kings was punishing their sub 
jects for refusing tribute, conquering rivals, deporting 
multitudes, extirpating rebellious dynasties. Shalmaneser 
made thirty-one expeditions for these and similar objects 
in as many years, Subject States for the most part re 
tained their local institutions and gods. Centralization, 
except such as could be effected by royal governors, with 
ill-derined powers, was beyond these children of passionate 
desire. What military prowess and wild enthusiasm could 
do, Semitism accomplished; but other elements, more 
suited to culture and combination, were required to sup 
plement and counterbalance them, and these were prob 
ably of Turanian origin. Tiglath-pileser boasts that he 
brought forty-two countries, from the rising to the setting 
sun, under one government and one religion. The trade, 
science, art, literature, industry, that drew all interests of 
nations to centre in Nineveh and Babylon, was rooted in 
forces older than the Semitic conqueror, and destined to 
outlast him. 

The Assyrian kings absorbed all personalities, suffered 
no humble emotions or popular expressions on the great 
monuments of their reigns, were gods on earth, whose 
physiognomy changed not from age to age, and whose 
immortality permitted no record of their crimes or defeats. 
Their " reigns were glorified by official scribes in formu 
las of great ambiguity, doubtless largely of mythic con 
struction and accepted fiction ; " but they were not mere 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 205 

scourges of mankind. Sennacherib calls himself " one who 
keeps his oath, guardian of the laws, follower of justice ; " 
glories in opening springs for the people to own, and 
making aqueducts and water-wheels, and streets splen 
did as the sun. 1 Sargon s palace, built in the eighth cen 
tury before Christ, must have been the finest piece of 
architecture then existing. Asshur-nazir-pal, in the pre 
vious century, inscribed upon his, the noblest work of the 
kind by far then achieved, the prayer, " May this my seat 
of power endure forever." 2 They are great, heroic hun 
ters, destroying on a vast scale the wild beasts that in 
their times encroached on the security of the land and 
its labors ; and they boast of this as they do of victories 
over empires Asshur-bani-pal is " strengthener of the 
people," and " wars against oppressors." Esarhaddon 
gathers "the people on lofty seats, and feasts them with 
the gods." 3 Even Tiglath-pileser I. " has mercy on 
those who submit," and boasts of " improving the con 
dition of his subjects, and obtaining for them security 
and plenty." 4 At home there seem to have been few 
or no revolutions ; of popular ones not one is mentioned. 
Sargon not only allows the towns to follow their an-, 
cient ways, 5 but even rectifies the institutions which they 
did not like, and encourages their priests to free dis 
cussion. 6 Asshur-bani-pal engraves his moral obligations 
on tablets, and erects them in his palace for public in 
spection : 

" If the king in his punishments violates the laws and statutes of 
the land, the people perish ; his fate changes, and another takes his 
place. In place of unjust kings and judges, the Judge of heaven and 
earth shall appoint just ones. If the judges take bribes, or officers 

1 Records of the Past (Inscription of Sennach.), i. 31, 32. 

2 Menant : Les Annales des Rois cTAssyrie, p. 93. 

3 Records of the Past, iii. 122-23. 4 Ibid-, v. 15, 17, 18, 22. 
6 Ibid., ix. 15 ; vii. 49, 54. 6 Ibid., vii. 122. 



206 DEVELOPMENT. 

extort tribute, the land shall go to its enemies. Whether Ruler or 
Priest or General (he be), whoever is guardian of the Temple, shall 
revere the shrines of the great gods." l 

It adds to the interest of these remarkable affirmations 
that they were copied by the Assyrians from an old Baby 
lonian text. In their substance they probably belong to 
the early Accadian civilization, 2 and illustrate the high 
point it had reached in the science of government. This 
last of the great Assyrian rulers confesses that none of 
his predecessors had regarded these ancient edicts of the 
Higher Law. 

Here, as elsewhere, the strength of the Semite was in 
his religious earnestness. His passions are the voices 
of gods. Ishtar says to Esarhaddon, " An unsparing 
deity am I." " By her high command " he " plants his 
standards." 3 Insurgents are rebels against the great gods, 
who visit them with the sword of their anger. 4 Hear what 
these world-masters say. " I brought the judgment of 
Asshur my god on evil men." 5 "I did for the gods what 
they willed. ... I prayed them that I might conquer my 
enemies ; they heard and came to my aid. My great bow 
that Asshur gave me I took." " I called upon Asshur 
for life, children, victory, and I put my faith in him. 6 
These kings are ministers of jealous gods, sent to extir 
pate heretics, to restore the true worship." Tiglath-pileser 
enumerates the whole Assyrian Olympus, and ascribes all 
the glory of his conquests to each and every god at the 
beginning of his record. They glory in his victories. 
Sin delays the sunrise to destroy the foes of Asshur- 
bani-pal. 8 In return, the conquerors feast their divine 
masters in palaces, filled with trophies and dedicated to 

Records of the Past, vii. 119-122. 2 Ibid., iii. 104. 

Ibid., p. 105. * Ibid., iii. i23(Inscrip. of Esarhad.) 

Ibid., i. 50 (Inscrip. of Sennach.). 

Ibid., vii. 55 and u, 12 (Inscrip. of Sargon) ; vii. 77 (Inscrip. of Sennach.). 

Ibid-, iii. 41. 8 Ibid., ix. 50. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 2O/ 

their service through all generations to come. 1 The re 
semblance of this Assyrio-Babylonian piety to the Hebrew 
is obvious, Nebuchadnezzar sings of Merodach as the 
Psalmist of his Jahveh : 

" When the Lord Merodach made me, he placed my germ in my 
mother s womb, and being conceived, I was brought forth. I, thy 
worshipper, am the work of thy hand ; and the empire over multitudes 
hast thou assigned me, according to thy favor, accorded unto all. 
May thy majesty be exalted! may it endure in thy worship ! In my 
heart may it continue, and the life which is devoted unto thee ! " 2 

" O God Merodach, says Neriglissar [sixth century before Christ], 
Light of the Gods, Father, even for thy high unchanging glory a house 
have 1 builded ! May its fulness increase ! may it acquire treasures ! 
may its tributes multiply from the kings of all nations from the East 
to the West ! May they come up into it forever ! m 

Nabonidus prays that the fear of his god (the Moon) 
may prolong his life ; and for his son, that " the great 
lord may fix his awe in his heart that he may never fall 
into iniquity, and that his glory may endure." 4 

On the " black obelisk" of Shalmaneser, Bel is "Father 
of the gods and the Creator ; " Ishtar, " the Perfecter of 
Heroism ; " Nebo, the " Father on high." 5 

Schrader has translated several fragments which show 
the depth of this Assyrian piety, in the sense of divine 
help and of retributory law: 

" He who fears not his God, shall like a reed be broken. 
He who honors not Istar, his strength shall wither. 
He fades as the light of a star is withdrawn ; 
Like waters of the night he vanishes." 

" Who will teach me thy high command ? 
Who will do the like with thee ? 
Among the gods thy brothers, thou hast no equal." 

1 Records of the Past, iii. 123, 124. - Ibid.,v. 113-115. 

* Ibii.v. 142. 4 ibid., v, 148. 

5 Ibid., A). 29. 



2O8 DEVELOPMENT. 

" Ilu, my maker, take hold of my arms ! 

Guide the breath of my mouth, guide my hands, 

O Lord of Light ! " 
" O Sun, at thy command, his sins are atoned for, 

His transgressions are abolished. ! 

A prayer for the soul of a dying person is translated by 
Talbot, - 

" Like a bird may it fly to a lofty place ! 
To the holy hands of its God may it ascend ! " 

and another: 

" The man who is departing in glory, may his soul shine radiant as 

brass ! " 
" Bind the sick man to heaven, for from earth he is being torn away. 

Of the brave man who was so strong, his strength is departed. 

May the Sun, greatest of gods, receive his soul into his holy hands." 2 

Asshur-bani-pal prays to Ishtar to aid him against an 
invading king of Elam, addressing her as queen of queens 
and queen of gods, and imploring her presence on the 
field of battle to turn the tide in his favor. She replies, 
"Fear not; according to thy prayer, thy eyes shall see 
judgment." And " in the vision of a seer she speaks to 
him as a mother to a child." 3 

The king prayed directly to his gods, without intermedi 
ation of priest, and consecrated his kingdom to their ser 
vice ; yet had faith in the dreams of seers, at least when 
they predicted him victory over his foes. 4 Asshur-bani-pal 
pays special court to Ishtar, queen of the gods, terrible in 
battle, who appears to his seer after his own invocation 
of her, with halo and bow, and like a mother in travail 
to bring him forth. 5 

1 Schrader: Hollenfahrt der fstar, pp. 88, 96, 97, 105. 

2 Records of the Past, iii. 134, 135. 

v Ibid., vii. 67, 68. 4 Ibid. (Asshur-bani-pal), i. 77; ix. 52, 59 

5 Ibid., ix. 52. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 2OQ 

This religion survives death. The spiritual part of 
man (iitukku} dwells in a dreary underworld, yet is 
sometimes said to be raised to the heaven of the gods, 
as are the heroes of the epic of Izdubar. Certain pas 
sages in a hymn concerning feasts, blessings, and rest 
from care, supposed by Lenormant and others to refer 
to a future life, are believed by Schrader to describe the 
future prosperity of Assyria. 1 But there is no question 
that the conception of death carried with it the meaning 
of utter helplessness and gloom. It is that which we find 
in the Phoenician tombs and the Hebrew scriptures, the 
underworld, or Sheol. The grave leads to darkness, to the 
house men enter, but cannot depart from ; the road men 
go, but cannot return ; abode of famine, where earth is 
their food, where ghosts flutter like birds, and dust lies 
undisturbed on the threshold. 2 There an angry goddess 
punishes the intruder from the realms of day, even though 
a queen of heaven. Even in these abysses there is a 
fountain of life, of which Ishtar drinks and is released. 
For she is the goddess of love, who has descended there 
because " the son of life " has died, and for Nature s 
sake must be recovered that all things perish not. But 
whether all inconspicuous persons passed at death into 
this doleful Hades, and whether, as the epic would imply, 
heaven was the reward only of the great, of rulers, divines, 
or conquerors, is matter of doubt. Heaven is divided into 
spheres, which testifies to personal interest in the here 
after. The ghost can be brought back to earth, to speak 
and teach. 3 There are passages in which the idea of death 
brings even poetic sentiment. It enfolds Heabani " like a 
garment." When the "righteous man" dies, "may he 
rise on high, with garments silver white, ascending to the 

1 Records of the Past, vii. 133, 134. Lenormant : La Divination, p. 153. 

2 Descent of Ishtar. Records of the Past, \. 145. Lenormant: Origines d. ffist.,pp. 
174, 175- 

3 Lenormant : Chaldean Magic, p. 167. 

14 



210 DEVELOPMENT. 

Sun, greatest of gods ! "* But so far as now appears, there 
is no distinction of good and evil, no law of retribution 
taking effect on all men after death ; 2 and there is no hint 
that the common fate of a gloomy sheol was in any sense 
a doom, or even a consequence of sin. Like the lament 
of Job, that he must depart " to the land of darkness and 
death-shade, where no order is, and the light itself is 
night," 3 these Accadian images probably paint the in 
stinctive shrinking of man from the sense of his mortality. 
The vivid picture of the descent of Ishtar through the 
seven gates, of temple, images, and altars, and a judge on 
his golden throne, 4 of her gradual disrobing and reinvest 
ment, is doubtless, as has already been said, explicable 
rather from astronomy than from popular belief. 

The extreme interest of the Mongolian race in the tomb 
as a centre of religious rites and family tributes, causes us 
to feel no surprise at the immense number of these re 
ceptacles on the soil of Chaldea, reminding the traveller 
of ancient Etruria or modern China. Here are collected 
all things believed desirable for the departed, vessels 
of bronze and clay, images, cylinders (for writing), and 
articles of food. It is one of those inconsistencies which 
mark all crude belief about the dead, that these solid 
substances should have been supposed available for such 
mere shadowy ghosts as they were imagined to be. These 
objects correspond to the papyrus and cylinders on which 
the people of Egypt wrote their private sympathies and 
histories, but more obscurely. But while there is so much 
in Chaldea to testify to popular belief in the reality of a 
future life, nothing as yet has come from Assyria to tell 
us what was to befall the souls of the generations as they 
passed away. Their place of the dead was as dim and 

1 Records of tlie Past, iii. 135. 

2 Lenormant : Chaldean Magic, p. 166. Smith (Assyrian Discoveries, 221) says that 
Sheol was destined for the wicked; but on what authority? 

3 Job x. 20-22. 4 Records of tJie Past, i. 151. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 211 

shadowy as the Hebrew Sheol. Was the glory of the 
nation and the immortality of the royal will so absorbing 
that, as with the Hebrew, no ethical sanction or spiritual 
motive was sought in the future life, and the mind of the 
people did not rest in its associations? That instinct, or 
intuition of continuity, on which the belief in immortality 
is based, with the Semitic nations secured expression in a 
profound interest in visible destinies on earth. And this 
is as abundantly shown in the abounding life on the As 
syrian monuments, as the interest of the Chaldean in the 
future life is evidenced in his passion for tombs. The 
one class represents the Mongolian, the other the Semitic, 
mirfd. 

The royal monuments, Assyrian or Accadian, are not 
a mere dull record of wars and* buildings ; this flame of 
conquest rises into poetic feeling, and into the frenzy of 
barbarian passions, which remind us of the wars of the 
Hebrews in the days of the Judges and the Kings, These 
royal conquerors " scale the mountain peaks, the misty 
heights where no bird can pass ; " they " rush like eagles, 
in one day, upon the strongholds of their foes." 1 They 
love rough, dangerous places, leap the cliffs like wild 
goats, and drink the coldest spring-water from the rock. 2 
They " scatter corpses like chaff; thrash the land like an 
ox." 3 Their " faultless horses step, yoked to their chari 
ots, through pools of blood, and the wheels are clogged 
with the slain," while " the heads of soldiers are stuffed 
in baskets," like scalps on the raids of savages. 4 They 
" thunder like the god of the air ; " they " cast down rings 
and bracelets like the fall of rain ; " 5 and the hearts of 
kings grow " feeble as children ; they trample their own 
soldiers under foot, and flee like scared birds." 6 



1 Records of the Past, i. 15. 2 Ibid., i. 42, 43. 

8 Ibid., lii. 88, 94. 4 Ibid., i. 51, 52. 

6 Ibid., i. 51. Ibid., i. 53. 



212 DEVELOPMENT. 

Asshur-bani-pal celebrated " the harvest-feast when the 
gods seated him on the throne of his fathers, when Vul 
poured down his rain, Hea feasted his people, the seed 
bore fivefold, the cattle multiplied, and famine was at an 
end." 1 

In the myth of the seven storm spirits, who, compounded 
of beasts and tempests, and moving in meteors, plot se 
cretly against the Sun and Moon, the vexed gods, after 
watching them vigilantly, resist their assaults, when, rush 
ing like the hurricane, they fall like firebrands on the 
earth. 2 This prototype of the Greek war of gods and 
Titans shows how the passionate genius of these world- 
stormers invested eclipses and lightnings with its -own 
human ideals of battle for dominion over the world. 

So in the Accadian pcyem of the Descent of Ishtar, god 
dess of love and daughter of the Moon, 3 the sympathy of 
Nature with an ideal human purpose is signified by the 
refusal of the earth to bear fruit, or the beasts to bring 
forth young, or the gods to find comfort who preside over 
the change of seasons, till through their interference the 
wandering soul (or son) of life and growth is released 
from the bolts and bonds of the death-world. It is not 
wrath that dooms her to such descent, but her grief for 
life cut off in its prime, which stirs her to the sacrifice ; 
and which we can only interpret by the resurrection of all 
things in Nature at her return, proving that the universe 
was secure, and that life and light were the lords of dark 
ness and death. Her seven royal forms of beauty, stripped 
from her body one by one by the inexorable law of the 
underworld, are one by one restored; and the death of 
the Oriental Adonis, or youth of Nature, is changed by 
love stronger than death or hell into resurrection. 



1 Records cf the Fast, i. 61. 

2 Ibid., v. 164-166, 

8 Schrader in the Allgemeinf Zeitung (Augsburg), June 19, 1874. 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 213 

Our review of Chaldeo-Assyrian civilization has shown 
its remarkable contrast in respect of mental type with 
those of the Hindus and the Chinese. It is not cerebral 
like the one, nor muscular like the other; but is repre 
sented by the nervous force, in that ethnic symbolism in 
which we have found the best expression of Oriental qual 
ities. In other words, it recognizes both ideas and things, 
both inward and outward relations; subject and object; 
bringing the two sides together in mutual dependence, as 
efficient cause and instant result. Hindu thought clings 
to abstractions ; Chinese work plunges through concrete 
details, and is held there. Iranian nerve, which we here 
begin to apprehend, mediates between the two forms of 
activity, the two worlds of thought and things, by a flash 
of living sympathy, by open and direct rapport. This is 
the condition of human progress. The Iranian mind, in 
its general sense, is thus the connecting bond, or transi 
tion, between the Oriental and Occidental worlds ; and is 
traceable as such through all the phases of civilization, 
for the last two thousand years. 

Note the substance of these cuneiform records of Chal 
deo-Assyrian history. It is not contemplative ; nothing 
like meditation or philosophic construction, scarcely any 
form of continuous intellectual development, appears in 
it. Nor is it realistic and positive, in the sense of dwell 
ing on details or elaborating uses of things ; of working 
for the pure love of work. It does not lose sight of the 
principle of causation, and that personal energy which is 
the ideal of causation, for mere interest in sequences and 
trains of palpable phenomena. 

It is at once ideal and actual ; the nerve which is neither 
mind alone, nor matter alone, but the passage of one into 
the other ; the energy of impulse, unconscious of self, 
unconscious of the results of action ; conscious only of pur 
pose, of rushing powers, of the inspiration of creative act, 



214 DEVELOPMENT. 

of the victory of an all-absorbing aim. So earnest is this 
directness of impulse, that it constitutes the base of a reli 
gion, a religion of marvellous historic power, which has 
been essentially the main factor of European faith hitherto. 
For what is the natural religious form of such a mental 
type? Not the worship of principles, not the worship of 
possessions ; but the worship of personal Will. Its ideal 
is the conquering king, the royal god ; the reduction of 
the whole world to the footstool of One, whose represen 
tative is the inspired chief or leader, the Master to whom 
every knee shall bend. What we shall find of most his 
toric value in the study of these religious faiths which 
have been adopted by the West from the wonderful Se 
mitic race, through the modifying influence of the Aryan 
to which properly the West belongs, is their common cen 
tre in the worship of personalities of one form or another. 
And of this religious development the earlier stages are 
palpable in the Chaldeo-Assyrian absorption in will-power. 
It is concrete will that first incarnates the worship of the 
Person. Then it passes on into forms of religious absolu 
tism, into monarchical exclusive gods of infinite power, 
and saviours whose undivided authority is veiled in spirit 
ual conceptions and humanities, but whose churches domi 
nate ages and races with barbarous tyrannies in the name 
of God, as absolute owner of mankind. 

The principle is ever one and the same. It is in a Per 
son that the religious sentiment is centred here, just as 
in India it was in an idea; just as in China it was in an 
organization, secular and political. This also is a single 
phase of evolution ; and future ages must see the personal 
element lose its exclusive sway over the mind of man, 
just as the merely abstract and the merely concrete have 
been already passed, and become merged in a completer 
form of the Ideal. For as mind aspired beyond its mere 
brain, or its mere muscle, so beyond its mere nerve which 



CUNEIFORM MONUMENTS. 215 

binds them it evolves the harmonious form of integral 
man. 

Our Assyrio-Chaldean study opens that intermediate 
Iranian phase of world-development which has now been 
stated. The question may well be asked, Why should it 
begin in Iran? The answer is, That although Iran is a 
geographical rather than an ethnic designation, yet the 
word, as I think, may fairly stand for a function as well, 
to which undoubtedly its geographical relations have 
largely contributed. This function, the reality of which 
must be shown in our proposed study of the races which 
have arisen within its limits, may here be very briefly 
stated, upon the strength of what the reader of these 
volumes may be supposed to know. 

It was inevitable that when the isolation of races began 
to diminish on the open plateau of Iran, and centres of 
civilization were formed at the mouths of its great rivers, 
like the Mesopotamian, the friction of elements, the op 
portunities of commerce, the conflict of interests and 
faiths should awaken the sense of personal power and 
the aspiration to recognize and attain it. The wills of 
men became their master faculty. On the Turanian basis 
of material civilization arose the Semitic passion and ex- 
clusiveness ; and in both, as later in the other races which 
swept in tides over the high plains and down the river 
bottoms, the desire of world-sway became far more in 
tense than was possible either in China or Hindustan. In 
the conflict of strong passions thus stimulated, the power 
of will inevitably becomes the religious and moral ideal. 
The Chaldeo-Assyrian civilization is mainly characterized 
by the demand for some realization of this ideal, by masses 
who could not achieve it freely for themselves. It thus 
represents a very early phase in the growth of the religion 
of personal government. Not the sense of will-force, but 
the demand for it, was what produced those terrible kings 



2l6 DEVELOPMENT. 

and their absolute sway. These great accumulations of 
human elements have no inward sense of unity, nor re 
spect for law, except so far as it is embodied in the royal 
person and will. If the king dies, all are in revolt; the 
unorganized atoms are continually breaking away even 
in his lifetime. Always the sin charged on subject kings 
as casus-belli is that they have dared to refuse tribute, to 
deny allegiance. Here was forming, against all natural re 
luctance, by superior force of constructive will-power, the 
tremendous idea of the divine right of kings. And this 
was the foretype and crude primary condition of the cor 
responding force which created modern religions ; nor can 
their relations to universal religion be understood without 
going back to the special line of human tendency of which 
they are the fulfilment. So we shall devote a chapter to 
the earliest form in which this power was exercised, the 
influence of Babylon on Hebrew religion. 



VI. 

THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 

ABYLON has been called the " key of universal his- 
tory." A claim so exclusive can of course have only 
a limited truth. The science of historical construction in 
our age finds a significance which cannot be measured in 
every human aspiration, and traces every individual cur 
rent into the majestic tide of progress, to which it contri 
butes some needed impulse. Nor can any moral instinct 
or principle of conduct be tracked to its human beginning 
in any one age, or locality, or person. Not only is it im 
possible to explore the origin of fetichism, polytheism, 
monotheism, pantheism, or the belief in incarnation or 
development, but not one of them can be explained or 
interpreted by any special set of influences, personal or 
institutional. Every effect was somehow contained in its 
cause ; and to neglect the foregleams, the prophetic in 
timations, the unconscious or self-conscious tendencies 
which prove natural attractions to" be slowly shaping the 
mind of man, is to forget that the whole human cosmos 
is implicated in every stage and step of human growth. 

Yet it is true that there are crucial epochs, places, move 
ments in history ; nucleating points, nerve-ganglia as it 
were, where the collision and concentration of tendencies 
bring forth vast results for all time, and radiate light 
alike on past and future progress. Wonder and gratitude 
have successively transformed these centres into exclusive 
divine inlets, from whose supernatural gifts the whole world 
has its meaning and value. The progress of universal 
religion consists in finding that these in their turn are 



220 DEVELOPMENT. 

explicable through other similar centres ; that truth does 
not enter man by jets from without, but is slowly evolved 
through ages of growth ; and that the only inspiration 
possible to man is his natural relation to the Infinite, as 
the substance of his own being, the never-ending progress 
of his ideal life. Natural sequence takes the place of 
supernatural interference and external will. A " chosen 
people " becomes simply a race endowed by the laws of 
genius and of inheritance, from its ancestral relations to 
other races, with special powers of moulding human history 
in a certain way. Bibles are found to be borrowers from 
older experiences, literatures rooted in unsuspected secu 
lar soils. The prophets are taught from the heart of hu 
manity, and the " saviours " transmit the ancient torch of 
love. Under these laws of historic wholeness, the functions 
of races and of persons are special functions. And we 
now add the peculiar civilization of which Babylon was 
the type to those of India and China, as presented in 
previous volumes of this work, as another illustration of 
this truth. 

The centre of Chaldeo-Assyrian consciousness was the 
king; and in this fact lies the secret of that special func 
tion which makes it possible to speak of Babylonian civili 
zation as a " key of-history." The Hindu throne was 
subject to religion as an absolute idea, incarnated in the 
absolutism of a priesthood. The Chinese throne was 
subject to organic civil and political law. The Chaldeo- 
Assyrian (first form of Iranian government) owns no 
allegiance but to personal will, which of itself represents 
Asshur or Bel, "/ reward and punish; /chastise here 
tics ; 7 torture and ravage and tear down and massacre 
for my authority s sake. / bring the spoils into my 
palaces, and there I feast my gods; there I record my 
glories ; there I repose and dwell for ever in my works ; 
and whoso comes after me shall respect these and keep 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 221 

them inviolate, or come under my curse." This, it will 
be seen, is but another Lord in the same line with Jahveh, 
Allah, and the Christian God of Judgment. It is the dei 
fied personal Will ; the conscious Ego set in the roots of 
the universe, the monarchical element in religion. Nor is 
there in the whole series any essential difference of qual 
ity : the barbarous features which attend the conquering 
Ego of Nineveh being natural elements of exclusive will, 
and only partially transferred in the progress of civiliza 
tion from material to spiritual spheres of sway. These 
devastating kings who condescend to no other notice of 
the rivals they overthrow than to record the lightning 
marches by which their cities were razed and burned, 
their treasures carried off, their people, men and women, 
enslaved, their fastnesses scaled, their goods heaped like 
corn to be destroyed, the horrible barbarities, which it is 
needless to repeat, inflicted on those that held out against 
the invader, eclipsing the occasional mercy shown those 
that submitted on his approach, are paralleled in the 
history of English Puritanism, in the treatment of Ireland 
by the Church of England in the days of Elizabeth, 1 and 
in the whole history of witchcraft in modern Europe. 
They, too, are inspired by religious earnestness ; they em 
body the exclusive rights of the omnipotent Will they 
worship ; they come home to kneel before the Lady Ishtar, 
to pour out their tributes of spoils before the sun-god, and 
spare men s lives that they may learn the worship of their 
own established shrines. 2 Sayce maintains that they are 
shown by the monuments to have offered human sacrifices 
to Bel, and even to have given the name " the sacrifice 
of Bel " to the first month and zodiacal sign. 3 He also 
interprets expressions in the hymns as implying vicarious 



1 Lecky : England in the Fourteenth Century, vol. ii. 

2 Records of the Past, v. 17. 

3 Biblical A rchceology, vol. iv. pt. i. pp. 25, 31. 



222 DEVELOPMENT. 

sacrifice, though it may be early to accept this as histori 
cally certain. But is not the dogma of the Christian 
Church founded upon forms of both these atonements ; 
and has not every religious war which that Church has 
waged against heretics been for the maintenance of these 
beliefs, and prosecuted with barbarities justified by the 
will of the Deity, as were the corresponding vicarious 
atonements to Jahveh or to Bel? 

The Assyrian conquerors represent the ardent youth of 
this impulse to enthrone omnipotent will. 

As yet there is no scientific sense of truth, no organized 
law of equity, no balance of powers controlling personal 
desire, to check it. And out of this consciousness of indi 
vidual will, and its earliest religious form as allegiance to 
exclusive personalities, grew all the great Semitic faiths, 
mastering similar tendencies in the less intense Aryan, so 
as to have established themselves as recognized lords of 
revelation, creators of the religions of civilization ; until 
the Aryan reaction in modern times has come to supplant 
the worship of all gods in the image divine or human 
of personal will, by immutable laws of the universe, and 
by developed intuitions of humanity. 

And with these come the saving checks to this deeply- 
rooted anthropomorphic ideal, which assure the liberty 
of every individual to think, to doubt, to aspire, and to 
bring his personal will into obedient conformity with 
natural laws. 

How far the Chaldeo-Assyrian, or rather Babylonian, 
world gives the key to universal history can only appear 
after tracing those later phases of its influence which open 
with the conquests of Cyrus, to the Jewish captivity, and 
ripen in the union of Eastern and Western civilizations 
through the conquests of Alexander of Macedon. But 
the period of the cuneiform records, already reviewed, 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 223 

indicates it as the source of much that has long passed 
for isolated and special revelation to the Hebrew, or 
original invention by other races, Semitic or Aryan. 

The ancestral land of Semitism, Northern as well as 
Southern, was probably Arabia. Canaan and Phoenicia 
were its sister provinces of great antiquity, but Babylon 
was its earliest school. Its gods, legends, and traditions, 
especially those of the Northern family, point in this 
direction, at least for their clearest expression. Its plan 
etary worship, its sun-gods and moon-gods, and their close 
association with the sexual instincts, shown in androgy 
nous deities, in goddesses riding on lions or oxen, and in 
the virile productivity of the bull ; its terrible passion-gods 
of fire, the bloody rites of Moab and Ammon, the sacrifice 
of children to the Baals and Molochs, of virginity to the 
Astartes (Ishtars) and Beltises; its self-consuming frenzy 
of undisciplined desires, vibrating between sensual impulse 
and ascetic self-mutilation, found typical developments 
in an Assyrio-Chaldean form as tendencies more or less 
universal in the whole family, but imperfectly organized 
in the West, and by tribes less influenced than the Eastern 
Semites by Turanian industry and culture. They are, 
however, associated with the seven Cabiri, everywhere the 
expressions of agriculture and other toil, with renovation 
through the fires of energy. They were all expressions of 
that absolutism of will, that worship of all-mastering per 
sonal purpose, whose god in Assyria was military omnipo 
tence, whose passion for self-gratification an all-consuming 
flame. Yet another and still older form of the same ideal 
was the thirst to seize new worlds of physical resources 
beyond the sea, embodied in the fish-gods of the Chaldean 
and Phoenician coasts, the adoration of oceanic productiv 
ity, and in the commercial ambition of Babylon and Tyre. 
These gods of Nature s productivity, instinct with life, with 
all vital relations and powers, had in all those cults similar 



224 DEVELOPMENT. 

names and toils. The wanderings of Baal-Melkarth,Tyrian 
god of cities, were the prototype of the Greek Herakles, 
and closely associated with the mythic history of this 
grand embodiment of heroic will, who carries us back 
also not only to the sun-gods of Asia Minor, 1 but beyond 
these to Assyrian customs and beliefs. 2 In all the Greek 
heroic wanderings and labors, east and west, there is 
everywhere a strong Semitic element in the ardor which 
thus followed the victorious march of the Sun through 
the heavens, picturing his hourly struggles with monsters 
harmful to man, till he reaches his martyrdom of fire in 
the glowing west, burning himself in his own flames, to 
rise again on the morrow. The whole conception of the 
myth is Semitic. It is characterized, like those of the 
Lydian Sandon, the Assyrian Sardanapalus, the Hebrew 
Samson, and the Phoenician Dido, by the thoroughly Se 
mitic idea of a tragic death of the god or hero through 
his association with the other sex. The service of Om- 
phale in feminine dress and the fatal tunic of Dejanira, 
which bring the doom of Herakles, the fall of Epimetheus 
through the box of Pandora, are foreshadowed by earlier 
Assyrian, Phoenician, and other myths of divine men who 
fell under the dominion of women, or assumed their garb 
and habits, to their own ruin. 3 In the Assyrian festival of 
the Sakae, a slave was made to play the king, allowed the 
freedom of the harem, dressed in women s garments, and 
finally put to death. The myth of Dionysus, as well as 
that of Herakles, goes back to Chaldeo-Assyrian Semitism, 
where Dian-nisi is the Sun in his whole life, death, and 
resurrection, interpreted by the extremes of human pas- 

1 Especially the Lydian Sandon. 

2 Movers: Die Phonizier, i. 458. Oppert : Etudes Assyriennes, p. 181. Maury : His- 
toire des Religions de la Grece, iii. 152, 240. Hartung : Die Religion und Mythologie 
der Griechen, iv. 202, 203. Schwenck : Mythologie der Semiten, pp. 277-318. Duncker: 
Gesch Alterth, i. 154. 

3 Hartung: Die Religion und Mythologie der Griechen, iv. 202-204. As Ninus and 
Semiramis, Sardanapalus and his harem. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 225 

sion, by orgies of grief and joy. The women whom 
Ezekiel 1 describes as weeping for Tammuz at Jerusalem 
were, in part at least, drawn from his Babylonian 
experience. Tam-zi, " the sun of life," or " morning 
sun," beloved by Ishtar (Ashtoreth), queen of heaven, is 
Dian-nisi in his radiant youth. He passes into night of 
the day or of the year, and the earth pines and fails for 
grief. Ishtar, who is reproached as the wanton cause of 
his death, 2 descends to the underworld, probably to seek 
him, though this reason is not given, and finds there 
the water of immortality. This idea of immortality is 
forever associated with these lessons of the dying year. 3 
But this worship of Tammuz (the Syrian Adonis) in fact 
goes back in Canaan or Syria, as well as in all western Asia, 
to the old Byblos cult, primitive beyond all discovery, 
type of summer bloom, as parched and torn to death by 
the wild boar of drought, as of so many like forms, repre 
senting the religious agonies and ecstasies of ancient wor 
ship. Adonis had been consigned by Aphrodite, his divine 
mistress, who corresponds to Ishtar, to the care of Perse 
phone in the underworld, part of which fate was remitted by 
Zeus, but nothing could forefend the cruel death to come. 
So Demeter, Earth-mother of the Greeks, treats her beau 
tiful Kore (the spring-time) in like manner, and then de 
scends to hades in search of her, while the world mourns. 
This widespread myth of the dying god for whom Nature 
pines, and the Maenad howls and tears her hair, and Love 
descends to death to win him back is, in this special form 
at least, of Semitic origin, a gift of Assyrio-Chaldean Dian- 
nisi, prototype, or rather germ-notion, of redemption 
through death and resurrection of the just man, as a basis 
of theological creeds. Equally Semitic is the tendency of 



1 Ezek. viii. 14. 

2 See Assyrian Texts (Records of the Past, i. 141). 
8 Sayce (Biblical Arctueology. iii. p. 168). 

15 



226 DEVELOPMENT. 

this tragic fatality to take the form of suicide, the natural 
reaction and irony of uncontrollable will. The illustration 
is to be seen in most of the myths already specified, where 
that inevitable fall comes through some fatal mastery in 
what is one s own, which outward forces alone could not 
effect Just as the frenzy of passion is represented as 
driving to self-mutilation the rage of Msenads in their 
Bacchic rites, 1 so these gods and heroes of Semitic my 
thology, whether Assyrian, Hebrew, Phoenician, or Greek, 
build their own funeral pyres, or pull down temples on 
their own heads, or burn themselves under their own 
treasures, or cut off their own heads, like their prototype 
Bel-Merodach of Babylon. Even the best must be sacri 
ficed, because life was the gift and power of God himself 
and man s highest possession, and the greatest must give 
the life of his dearest ones and his own. These are the ter 
rible fires of Semitic faith, the first fountains of its bloody 
atonements, and its sacrifices of the " first-born " and the 
" only-begotten " to omnipotent will ; frenzied dualism of 
the productive and destructive passions, which resulted 
in the Dualism of its more refined and spiritual religions. 
The sun is its symbol, the sun, not as centre and source 
and static lawgiver of the universe, but as active, instant 
mastery; as tremendous energy of determination, intensity 
of desire, and exclusiveness of claim. This is Assyria, this 
is Semitized Babylon. 

The Phoenician cosmogony is also a grand play of im 
agination with successive personalities, male and female. 
In the Babylonian and Phoenician cosmogonies alike, 2 the 
shaping power of the cosmos is desire acting on a pre 
existing subject mass; in the Hebrew, the idea of purpose 
in the brooding " Breath " (r&acli) is equally personal. 
Their chaos, preceding creation, is itself alive with pro- 

1 These are originally Semitic. 

2 Berosus and Sanchoniathon. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 22/ 

digious half-shaped forms struggling for power, and the 
constructive creator must put them under by superior will. 
Not like the Hindu world-maker, by pure thought, nor like 
the Chinese, by pure work, does the Semite bring things 
to being ; but by commandment of will, by the very passion 
of life, the giving forth of it in its wholeness, whether by 
word of Elohim or by suicide of Bel. So did he put his 
soul into the senses, his impulses into unbridled master 
ships, his ideals into the all-consuming cosmic fires. And 
the impetus of this towering and aggressive will, self- 
abandoned to deified passions, has made him a controlling 
factor in the religious history of the last two thousand 
years. And of this historic power Babylon is the opening 
key. Let us note how far Hebrew religion was traceable 
to Chaldeo-Assyrian influences. 

Ur, the traditional home of the Abrahamite family, now 
identified with Mugheir, was an important city of the Chal- 
dees (possibly Siirippak, the centre of Accadian literature), 
and is represented on the tablets as the most Turanian of the 
twenty cities of the Euphrates valley. 1 And still further back, 
the ancestors of Abraham are connected with Arphaxad, 
the "neighborhood of the Chaldeans." 2 This filiation of 
the Hebrews with the Chaldeans is confirmed by the close 
relation of their earliest customs with those recorded in 
Accadian inscriptions, such as divination by clouds, 3 by 
trees, as exemplified in the burning bush ; 4 by dreams of 
seers, by evocation of the dead, the very name of familiar 
spirits (dbdt/i) being Accadian ; 5 by the serpent, a Turanian 
type of wisdom and power. The worship of the heavenly 
host on Hebrew high places allies itself to the ziggurats 
(high towers) of the Chaldean cities ; the planetary number 

1 Sayce s Smith: Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. 318. Lenormant : Chaldean Magic, 
P- 339- 

2 Genesis, x. 

3 Leviticus, xix. 26: Deuteronomy, xviii. 10 ; 2 Kings, xxi. 6; Isaiah, ii. 6; Micah,v. n. 
* Lenormant t Divination^ etc., p. 86. 5 Ibid., p. 162. 



228 DEVELOPMENT. 

seven, made sacred by the Hebrews in their creative week 
before they conceived of connecting it with Jahveh s rest, 1 
is Assyrian. The prophylactic images of gods (teraphini)> 
of which the Urim and Thummin were probably forms, 
had their prototypes in Accadian magic. 2 So witchcraft 
and sorcery; and so demonic possession, exorcisms, the 
Sabbath, and the cherubim, which are simply the winged 
human-headed bull of the Chaldean sculptures. 3 

Previous to these Assyrian relations, however, must be 
recognized the Canaanite origin of much in Hebrew tradi 
tion and life. The name El, for example, as a general 
appellation of God, was a part of their Canaanite heritage. 
Phoenician mythology, as we have it in the fragments of 
Sanchoniathon, has so many points of closest resemblance 
to the Genesis-legend that the common origin of these 
traits in Canaanite tribal association is unmistakable. 
These fragments seem to concern only the older and na 
tive Phoenician traditions, that is the Canaanite. We note 
not only the striking similarity in the story of creation, but 
the common stories of giant-races and their wars, the en 
mity of brothers, and other analogies, among which not the 
least striking is the common name of the " Most High 
God" (El-elydn)* " Jehovah," says Robertson Smith, 
u was never a Canaanite God, and the roots of the popular 
religion were in the acknowledgment of Jehovah as Israel s 
God, and of the duty of national service to Him, which is 
equally the basis of Mosaic orthodoxy." But here it seems 
to me is a confusion between the original germ and the pow 
erful development it received from the national spirit. 5 

There can hardly be a doubt that Jahveh was originally 
one of those sun-gods in whom all Semitic worship was 

1 Kuenen : Religion of Israel, \. pp. 236-264. 

2 Lenormant : Chaldean Magic, p. 45. 
8 Lenormant : Fragin, Cosmog. , p. 78. 

4 Cory: Ancient Fragm. (Hodges), pp. 1-22. 

6 Lectitres on the Old Testament, pp. 231, 423, note. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 229 

wont to centre. Leader of the stars, Jahveh of hosts, 
institutor of the sacred planetary number in rites and tra 
ditions, a " consuming fire," a flame that none could look 
upon and live, he cannot be separated from that very 
numerous class of local deities of whom Melchizedek, 
El, Baal, and Moloch were the general Canaanite repre 
sentatives. 

These names were not distinctively personal, but meant 
merely lord or king, a mighty one. There was found 
nothing incongruous in combining his worship with theirs. 
Elohim, one of their generic names, "the mighty ones," 
was adopted in the early national legends, and retained 
in their later elaborations as the class-name to express 
the personality of Jahveh ; and Jahveh-Elohim was in 
common use. 1 All these gods were worshipped alike on 
the high-places (ldmdt/i)? and a tree, symbol of Asherah, 
was placed beside their altars. The Jahvites worshipped 
before upright stones and columns (inatstsebotJi), and also 
images of the sun (cliammanini)? Solomon s Jahvism built 
tabernacles to Milcom, Chemosh, Astarte. In both king 
doms of Israel and Judah, 4 as well as through the earlier 
periods of the Judges, this intermixture of rites was 
common among the Jahvites ; 5 and in the days of elabo 
rated priestly rule it was strenuously prohibited by law. 6 
Hosea tells us that Ephraim was given over to the Baal 
calf-worship; 7 and especially ascribes this anti-national 
conduct to the influence of Assyria. 8 It all resulted in 
Ezekiel s tremendous indictment of the idolatry of Jeru 
salem, as late as the exile ! It is to Jahveh that Jephthah 
vows to sacrifice his daughter. 9 It is at Jahveh s com 
mand that David hangs up the sons of Saul, 10 and Samuel 

Exodus, iii. 15. 2 i Samuel, ix. x. ; Ezekiel, xx. 28. 

Kuenen, i. 24. 4 : Kings, xi. xv. 14; xvi. 14; xxiii. 43. 

Kuenen : Religion of Israel, \. 302, 303 ; 35-355 5 80, 81. 
Leviticus, xviii. 21. 7 Hosea, viii. 6; xiii. i, 4. 

Hosea, vii. n ; xii. i. 9 Judges, xi. 30. 

10 2 Samuel, xxi. 1-14. 



230 DEVELOPMENT. 

hews Agag in pieces. 1 By Jahveh, as well as by every 
other form of Moloch, the life of a first-born is claimed. 
Abraham s offering of Isaac, in the myth, though pre 
vented by miracle, at least implies and inculcates willing 
ness to serve Jahveh in that way, as acceptable service; 
and this very spirit is blessed by Jahveh with the covenant 
of seed. 2 The dedication of men by Cherem, however, not 
to be redeemed from death, was an offering to Jahveh as 
punishment, not as tribute. 3 

It is evident from these hints how difficult it was for 
Jahvism to throw off its early associations with those con 
suming fire-gods in which Semitism embodied the absolute 
claims of omnipotent Will. And all these traits of sun- 
worship belong to its Assyrian descent. 4 Adrammelech 
(fire-king), adored at Sepharvaim in Mesopotamia, 5 to 
whom men " burned their sons," is a fair type of these 
gods of Western Asia, from Chaldea to the borders of 
Egypt. The sun and fire worship of the Aryan, as we 
shall see, was of another order. 

If, as is charged by the prophet, 6 the Hebrews in the 
desert adored Chiun (the planet Saturn), while Jahveh was 
their guiding God ; if, as is certain, " in the patriarchal 
age they accepted as sacred all the places the Canaanites 
held sacred (trees, mountains, fountains, stones), and 
the intercourse was still closer after the return from 
Egypt," 7 it is reasonable to believe that their worship 
of Jahveh grew out of a similar circle of religious con 
ceptions. 

Whether the name was introduced by Moses, 8 on the 
Elohim s announcing for the first time that they were 
Jahveh, in other words, by substituting a more dis 
tinctly monotheistic term for deity, or was borrowed 

1 i Samuel, xv. 33. 2 Genesis, xxii. 16. 

3 See Kuenen, i. 291 ; Leviticus, xxvii. 28. 

4 See Rawlinson : Ancient Monarchies, ii. 228. 5 2 Kings, xvii. 31. 
8 Amos, v. 26. 7 Renan : Langues Semitiques, p. no. 8 Exodus, vi. 3. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 231 

from some desert tribe with whom the Hebrews came in 
contact ; l whether it already existed in Assyrian mythol 
ogy, and is to be associated with the Phoenician Jao, or 
is a pure creation of the prophets of the eighth century 
before Christ, it is certain that the Jahveh or Jahveh- 
Elohim of the Prophets, in whose interest the whole liter 
ature of the Hebrew books has been worked over, is a 
product of slow growth, and by no means entered full-born 
into the Hebrew consciousness. 

His final elevation to a far higher level than the sur 
rounding deities, and the renunciation of their worship as 
idolatry, in favor of one who had created all nations and 
made the world his footstool, was a prophetic ideal of the 
eighth century before Christ and onwards ; but it was 
made possible only by the partial nationalization of reli 
gion through earlier periods of Hebrew history. This 
lifting of a national god into a universal Creator and 
Ruler had its stages, just as the old aspiration of the 
Assyrian kings to put all other gods under the feet of 
their own Asshur by conquest of the nations, and thor 
oughly to absorb the worship of all other tribes in them 
selves as his representatives, was a long and necessary step 
towards monotheism, and prepared the way for receiving 
its maturer form through the Persian worship of Ormuzd. 2 
It is an indispensable condition to the attainment of unity 
in the religious idea of a people, that they should become 
powerfully organized as a whole, and aim at unlimited 
power as a national ideal. As the child s first idea of 
supreme authority is the law he finds in his parents, so in 
races the authority of the national ruler, considered as a 
universal claim, is the starting point of belief in one defi 
nite personal God above all gods, or exclusive of them. 
Nor can there be any doubt that the positive Jahvistic 
theism of the Hebrews was coincident in time with the 

1 Theile 2 See Ya<;na, \. i; xix. 37; xliii. 3, 7; xliv. i. i. 



232 DEVELOPMENT. 

bloom of Hebrew nationality in the ages following those of 
David and Solomon, 1 just as the struggles of the nation 
for existence, in later times, ripened that Messianic idea 
in which Jahveh came to his most exalted form. 2 In the 
same way, out of the sense of a separate national person 
ality, will, and destiny, grew up the reverence for the one 
national God as holy. This word (kddosk) in later times, 
the highest term for moral and spiritual purity, was con 
stantly applied to Jahveh, in its natural sense of separated, 
exalted, unapproachable, isolated, in correspondence with 
distinct national existence and purpose. The one was the 
matrix and nurse of the other. 3 When we read such 
phrases as " the Holy One of Israel," we must remember 
that the idea of contrast with other national gods, that 
is, of Egypt, Phoenicia, Edom, etc., was always present 
with the writer ; and that the moral allegiance implied in it 
had its foundation and force in this sense of a community 
of relation, origin, purpose, aim, in the nation as a whole. 
From beginning to end, Jahveh was indeed more or less 
God of the Hebrews ; every saint, patriarch, genealogy, 
conquest, law, temple, prophecy, has its authority more 
and more in the service it pays to the national destiny. 
It is because the religious and national ideals thus reached 
form and sustain each other, that we find such tremen 
dous persistency in Hebrew faith, and such absorption of 
this race in itself as the chosen of God. This intense local 
concentration of Will has nourished a commanding self- 
confidence, and the world has naturally, not supernatu- 



1 In the earlier legislation of the Tbrah, as seen in the Book of Exodus, a free worship 
at local shrines, unknown to later times and mixed with Canaanite traditions and rites, made 
such national unity impossible. But what are called the "Middle Books" of the Law, 
dating from the reforming kings, show the vigorous effort to counteract this want of religious 
nationality, by which the great kings fell into Baal-worship, through legislative institutions 
like those of Deuteronomy. But not till the exile, whose results are seen in Leviticus, was 
religion genuinely nationalized. 

2 Goldziher : Mythology among the Hebrews, p. 272. 

3 Kuenen : Religion of Israel, i. 43. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 233 

rally, yielded to its religious sway. It has furnished the 
leading type of monotheism so far for Western nations in 
its ideal of absolute personal Will. It has thus become in 
the religious sphere what the Assyrian kings were in the 
political or military. Christianity, its offspring, held obe 
diently to its literature and prophetic inspiration, even after 
theology had advanced far beyond its national limitations. 
The development of nationality was by no means easy. 
The Hebrews were a mixed people half Arab, half 
Canaanite for centuries, and their special Law (torah) 
was a slow evolution, but by singularly natural stages, 
largely from these elements. There was in fact a remark 
able absence of break in this process where all has been 
imagined to be miraculous; and nothing can so perfectly 
refute the miraculous theory as the manner in which each 
stage in Hebrew legislation interlocks with the preceding, 
from the oldest covenants and simplest free usages on 
through the Deuteronomic and then to the post-exilian 
Levitical institutions. Never till the latest epochs had 
the Hebrews a recognized religious law. The national 
god had no constitutional support or statute. The influ 
ences of the Babylonian exile, as already shown in a pre 
vious chapter, were the culminating force to this result, 
ending in the popular consecration of religion to nation 
ality. In the great meetings called by Nehemiah * and 
Ezra after the return from Babylon, the earlier migration 
covenanted to build a State and establish Jahveh in the 
centre of his people on a throne of historical laws. 

The early aspirations of the Hebrews after a tribal god 
are the substance of the Mosaic tradition as now worked 
over in the Old Testament books. They furnish the key 
to their Abrahamic call and covenant, to their Exodus 
epos, to their exchange of the more generic name Elohim 
for that of Jahveh, as sign of unity, supremacy, holiness. 

1 See Nehemiah, x 29. Kuenen : Religion o/ Israel, ii 229 



234 DEVELOPMENT. 

It was as natural for them as for the other tribes, all of 
whom had their local divinities, and all were mixed in the 
Hebrew mind. It is difficult to describe a process, each 
step of which has been covered by the succeeding one, and 
by the reconstruction of ideas, traditions, and literature in 
a new interest, down to the great reconstruction of the tra 
ditions and laws into the Levitical institutions by Ezra 
and the other priestly scribes, from 538 to 458 B. C., 
under the influence of the Babylonian exile, and brought 
to Judea by him at the latter date. 

But we may specially note the great later, I cannot but 
think recognized significance of the name JakveJi, " He 
that is," with a future as well as present force ; in other 
words, simply the real God, as contrasted with all other 
national gods, who were rejected because held to be false. 
It is obvious that the original selection of this term did not 
imply positive monotheism nor exalted purity; but it was 
well fitted, in the developed use of it, to imply the con 
centration of thoroughly earnest minds on truth. Here 
was a germ of moral allegiance, which promised, in Semi 
tic hands, to press forward into passionate rejection of that 
indifference to contrasts of name and quality which inheres 
in polytheism. In the higher minds at least, it would be 
developed into an intense hatred for the unconscious im 
moralities of old Semitic worship. The moral exaltation 
of Hebrew prophecy, that grandest gift of Semitism to 
the human race, was thus in some measure foreshadowed 
by the Hebrew tribes in their earliest conscious acts of free 
religious choice. It was not, as Robertson Smith would 
argue, a supreme proof " that the Old Testament religion 
is no mere natural variety of Semite monolatry, but a dis 
pensation of the true and eternal religion of the spiritual 
God." * It is a perfectly natural Semitic development. 
They did not stand in the " secret counsel of Jehovah," 

1 Lectures on Old Testament, p. 273. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 235 

there is no such secret counsel. They did what idealists 
do on given conditions. The full ripening and purifica 
tion of that noble germ was very gradual. The Jahveh 
of the later Isaiah was no immediate inspiration of unity 
and holiness. He grew (as we have already shown) from 
a beginning not essentially different from the Asshur of 
Assyria or the Chaldean Adrammelech. His palpable 
associations were with the solar fires, the destroying and 
productive forces of Nature, vitalized with conscious pur 
pose, omnipotent to create or to kill, knowing no impulse 
towards the disobedient but to exterminate them, 1 and 
specially determined in his volition by the peculiar for 
tunes of the Hebrews in Egypt and Canaan, as well as 
by the free traditional worship on the high places prac 
tised by the tribes to a comparatively late period. Made 
thoroughly earnest by tribal sufferings and the extremes 
of desire and defeat, they gradually shook free their ideal 
from these material investments, and made it at once a 
supreme personality and a righteous law. But through 
every subsequent phase it never escapes that first anthro 
pomorphic, arbitrary meaning of Jahveh, a conscious 
Will, dividing right from wrong, determining the true, re 
jecting and destroying the false, with two-edged sword, 
rewarding obedience and punishing disobedience in ways 
of its own choosing. This institution of morality and 
holiness by force of an omnipotent Will is just as true of 
the Christ of the Last Judgment as of the Jahveh of the 
Exodus and the Asshur of the Ninevite kings. 

The phases of this natural evolution were determined by 
the national destinies. The God of Amos, as of the later 
Isaiah, was an outgrowth of secular causes, a product of 
the whole history of Hebrew relations with the human 
race. Whatever cultivated their sense of nationality, 
those Semitic instincts of personal and tribal will, of 

1 Genesis, vi. 7. 



236 DEVELOPMENT. 

exclusiveness in the claim of authority and in the sense 
of devotion, went to the formation of the religious ideal. 
Its roots therefore are in Canaanite as well as Chaldean 
soil, and the parallel strata there show the universality of 
this rule. That seething mixture of humanity and bar 
barism in the old Hebrew laws and life was analogous to 
the combination of military frenzy and industrial ardor 
in the Assyrio-Babylonian world. And that majesty of 
righteous law which bowed the souls of Isaiah, Jeremiah; 
and Jesus, and inspired their immortal protests against the 
vice and formalism of their times, came slowly in the fires 
of spiritual experience out of the primal concentrated aim 
to find a separate tribal god. In this began the sense of 
holiness. For separateness meant inviolability; in other 
words, reverence, awe, authority of conscience, and faith. 
The same word (kddosh) signifies apart, and holy. And 
that aloofness, which was at first the symbol of tribal pride 
and ambition, became a purity, which spurned the pre 
tences of formal piety and the pride of human tyrannies, 
and hastened with impartial thunders to the help of the 
weak and oppressed. 1 Thus the petty passions of undis 
ciplined and roving clans are slowly transformed into 
universalities of immortal principle. Such is spiritual 
evolution. Not mere creation of the greater by the less, 
but the implication of natural intuition, the sacred sense 
of obligation, the cosmic unsearchable beauty and order 
in every step of growth. 

Nor is the transformation at an end. Even the high 
est forms of thought and feeling in Hebrew experience, 
as in that of other early races, were very crude stages of 
this implication. They were conceived as external reve 
lations, words of Jahveh spoken to his prophets or his 
people, and through them to mankind. A divine Will, 

1 So the purity of Ahura in the Avesta is most conspicuous in his abhorrence of sin. 
Yafna, xxxi. 13. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 237 

analogous to their human ideal, a voluntary choice be 
tween two opposites, a distinctly conceived motive and 
purpose, impressing itself on man as an instrument, were 
posited outside man and the world as the ultimate source 
of truth and ground of righteousness. This personal re 
lation was so intensely conceived by the Hebrew prophets, 
that their language assumed them to be under a divine 
possession, and took the form of a religious and moral 
absolutism, imposing enough to bring all civilizations to 
their feet. But, overwhelming as they are to the anthro 
pomorphic instinct, these conceptions have always ignored 
the direct participation of human nature itself in all the 
truth and right it is cognizant of, and the impossibility 
of receiving either the one or the other form of experi 
ence from a Will outside of the nature of things and of 
man. To suppose such a Will, selecting definite methods 
of education for a special people, and communicating these 
to chosen instruments, not through experience or study, 
but by direct influx, was but a Semitic exaggeration or 
extreme form, though primary, of what has always been, 
and still is, the popular idea of religious truth. For the 
notion of personal commandment is here intensified by its 
connection with the passion for national unity, expressed 
by a central theocratic ruler, and his extension to world- 
sway. It was the natural theistic instinct of the Hebrews 
that made them insist on having a king ; an instinct which 
a troop of judges or seers could not satisfy. The Semitic 
God is the divinized king, and when lifted above all earthly 
kings is the king still ; holy because separate, and awful in 
the power to do, not as he ought, but as he wills. This is 
the Hebrew theocracy, so potent in its persistence in the 
Christian church. I have no doubt that monotheism is, 
as a rule, reached through tribal or national consciousness- 
and that Hebrew and Semitic history herein represents a 
decisive phase in the history of mankind. 



238 DEVELOPMENT. 

In thus ascribing monotheism in a large degree to a 
political experience, I do not discredit what is called the 
intuition of God, which in fact merely takes its conditions 
therefrom. This intuition cannot properly be defined as 
teaching any special form of deity ; it is simply the per 
ception of substance as higher than phenomena, and as 
necessary to their existence, and associates itself more 
and more with the intuition of duty, holiness, right, with 
out which no conception of God can exist. Its highest 
form is the result of the deepest religious and philo 
sophical culture. For this reason, no conception of a 
personal voluntary agent, apart from the universe, can 
finally satisfy it. Substance, as inscrutable and indefin 
able, the infinite reality that underlies all order, beauty, 
goodness, and contains all intelligence, all principles and 
laws, is thus, properly speaking, the universal significance 
of the intuition of God. To this highest form Semitism, 
in its great religions, does not consciously attain, however 
it be involved in their logical evolutionary necessities, as 
in those of all other great faiths of mankind. Not more 
in the Old Testament of the Hebrews than in the tablets 
of Asshur, is this pure conception of deity found. The 
New Testament religion is also worship of a personal 
Will ; a pure monotheism. It is anthropomorphic, and 
creates a God in human form outside of and above hu 
manity ; and, although bringing this God into closer rela 
tions with individual feelings and freedom than the older 
faith from which it grew, does not pursue unity or holi 
ness as an ideal with more ardor than did the Hebrew 
nationality, which required the surrender of all private 
desires to an all-embracing sovereign Will, separate in its 
personality from the human soul. 

It is in tracing this passion for national unity in its 
religious expression, that we learn the vast indebtedness 
of the Hebrews for their whole religious development to 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 239 

the stimulus of those foreign nationalities which they re 
garded as its foes. The legends in Genesis, which pur 
port to give the earliest history of mankind, are palpably 
shaped by a purpose to identify the passions of Israel 
with the will of Jahveh as maker and governor of the 
world. In this marvellous series the sovereign claims of 
the chosen people are affirmed, and their destiny fixed 
from the beginning by the Supreme Cause of all things. 
In the oldest portions there linger polytheistic hints and 
traditions, 1 and these are marks of spontaneous poetic 
faith which indicate an early origin. But with the crude 
exclusiveness of the tribe are combined elements of uni 
versality, a conception of history as a whole, a direct 
recognition of other nations, and of a common origin and 
interest for all mankind ; an effort to deal, in a simple half- 
conscious way, indeed, with the problems of social order, 
of human relations, of life and death, with the law of na 
tional retribution and the sense of a secular providence, 
which can only be explained by the action of some great 
force in various ways developing and counteracting the 
primitive instincts and desires. This was Babylon, where 
the old national traditions were worked up, during the 
Captivity, under the stress of national sorrows and reviv 
ing hopes, amidst a vast concourse of nations (TrayuyLu/cro? 
0^X09), their collision of interests, commercial, industrial, 
military, and their cosmopolitan experience. Here the 
earnest theism of Persia and its large toleration not only 
permitted the Hebrew exiles to study their own fortunes 
and those of the human race in quietness of mind, but 
even stimulated their productive faculty to the great task 

1 The latest Biblical studies prove conclusively that the present form, and in large degree 
the substance, of the Genesis stories, the special Levitical legislation and the historical 
books, in short, the body of the Pentateuch, is the result of elaboration and construc 
tion during and after the exile. But these historical studies of portions of the text are not our 
main reliance. The more primal origin of the whole series is equally obvious. Earlier 
borrowing from Babylonian, as well as Canaanite and Phoenician, must explain the basis 
of these legends. Kuenen : Religion of Israel, ii. 159-168. 



240 DEVELOPMENT. 

of literary and religious construction, never before fairly 
undertaken. But besides bearing an important part in the 
final shaping of the Genesis myths, Assyria and Chaldea 
were in large degree the sources of their earlier forms. 

The Hebrews themselves conceded to Babylon an im 
mense antiquity, as the city of Nimrod, 1 in the third gen 
eration after Noah. 2 It is inferred from the cuneiform 
inscriptions that a scientific astronomy centred there two 
thousand years before Christ, 3 resting on the zodiac, the 
division of the great circle into three hundred and sixty 
degrees, and all the large and small divisions of time 
known to us, the planetary week, the gnomon, the solar 
and lunar years. 4 According to Diodorus, the Babylonian 
had conceived of the world as an established divine order, 
and as regulated by guardian powers, each in his station, 
planetary or stellar. 5 It is obvious that no comparatively 
rude race like the Hebrew could have come into close 
relations with a civilization so ancient and so ripe, without 
drawing largely on its fund of traditional beliefs. Here 
indeed we find the cradle of Semitism ; the natural key 
to those imaginative Hebrew myths which have been 
regarded as the gift of an inspired race to the religious 
nature of man. 6 

The Genesis story or creation gives a divine authority 
to the Hebrew Sabbath as the day of rest for the national 
God after six days creative work. 7 This is manifestly the 
motive of the distinctive Hebrew legend, which in many 
respects grew out of the vast elaboration of the Sabbatic 
idea by the priestly legislation after the exile, though of 

Genesis, x. 10. 

Carre : L" Ancien Orient, ii. 445. 

Lenormant : Essai de commentaire des fragments cosmogoniques. 

Lenormant : Manual of Ancient History of the East, ii. 185. 

Carre: L" 1 Ancien Orient, ii. 469,470. 

It is only in accord with its whole history that the Jewish people have concentrated 
their highest traditional respect on the Babylonian Gemara (or Commentary on the Mishnah) 
instead of the Jerusalem. Wiinsche: Der Talmud. 
1 Genesis, i. i ; ii. 3. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 24! 

course the Hebrew Sabbath is not due to this alone, being 
of far earlier origin. 1 But the division of days by sevens 
is far older than the Hebrew Sabbath. It belongs to the 
earliest fund of religious traditions. It is not founded on 
any recurrent period in the order of Nature, yet it is not 
arbitrary, still less mystical. 2 It is a part of that primi 
tive astronomy which was the infantile unity of science 
and faith, and appears on a gigantic scale in all the cos 
mogonies of antiquity. The central figures in this cultus 
of the stars are the five planets, with the sun and moon, 
observable among all the heavenly host by their relative 
change of place and apparent specialty of function. They 
were symbolized by the seven stages of the Babylonian 
and Assyrian ziggurat, or towered temple ; in the seven 
walls of Babylon, and in the seven days of the week, the 
seventh day being consecrated as a day of release from 
labor. An old Accadian calendar, 3 probably of the seven 
teenth century before Christ, gives the special festival for 
every day, the seventh being always designated as a Sab 
bath {Sabattu) ; on which the king himself shall not 
change his garments, nor ride, nor sacrifice, till night, 
nor even administer the government. From this royal 
rest appropriated by the Semitic races of Chaldea, it was 
but a step in the intenser anthropomorphism of the He 
brews to make their own God the example of Sabbatic 
release, and to pronounce it as his command. The sec 
ond Jahvistic account of creation 4 has more signs of 
antiquity and originality than the other, and is referred 
by Kuenen to a possibly earlier period than the exile; 
but on doubtful grounds. In the Chaldean cosmogony, 
as reported by Berosus, 5 in the Phoenician of Sanchoni- 

1 Kuenen; Religion of Israel, ii. 280. 

- See Philo s absurd reasons for a supposed sanctity in the number sevea Vol. i. chap, 
xxx.-xliii. 

8 Records of the Past, vii. 157. 4 Genesis, ii. 4, et seq. 

5 Time of Alexander. Berosus drew his account from ancient sources, and his fragments 
are preserved in Polyhistor, Arbydenus, and Eusebius. 

16 



242 DEVELOPMENT. 

athon, and in the cuneiform inscription, which is now 
believed to be Assyrian and not Accadian, the beginning 
of things is the formless chaos, full of incomplete germs 
and half-made creatures, Tiamat (Tiamtu of the As 
syrians, Tauthe of Damascius, Thalatta of Berosus) mean 
ing the sea in the sense of abyss. The Hebrew expression 
for this first material of the world is Tehom, the same word 
as Tiamat, and characterized as without form and void. 
Compare the first sentence of the Genesis story with the 
cuneiform Creation-tablets : 1 

" When above were not raised the heavens, and below on the 
earth a plant had not grown, and the bounds of the abyss had not 
been opened, the chaos of waters was the producing mother of all 
things. And the waters were gathered into one place. But a tree 
had not grown : a flower had not unfolded, when the gods had not 
yet sprung up, and order did not exist. . . . Then were made the 
great gods. All that was done by the great gods was delightful 
[very good] to them. 2 

" He (Anu) constructed constellations, like figures of animals 
(zodiac) ; by them dividing the year into twelve months : planets 
also for rising and setting ( " signs "). Wandering stars to shine, 
harmless, in their courses. He made the gates strong, right and left. 
He set the moon to rule the night. . . . And the sun arose in glory." 

The lunar phases are perhaps described, yet in a pas 
sage extremely obscure ; 3 while in another connection 
there is recorded the institution of the Sabbath, 4 though 
we know from other sources that the seven-day week and 
Sabbath rest are really Accadian institutions for kings and 
people. 5 The close resemblance between this very ancient 
cosmogony and its Hebrew analogue is broken by the 
single circumstance that it symbolizes the steps of creation 
by successive pairs of male and female powers, and seeks 

1 Records of the Past, ix. 167. 

2 Smith: Chaldean Account of Genesis. In Sayce s edition (1880) a different translation 
is given, p. 57. 

3 Smith : ChaJdean Account of Genesis ( Sayce), pp. 64, 65. 

< Ibid., p. 3 <>8. 6 Ib i dv p . 89 . 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 243 

to express their stability rather than any special order of 
production. The successive steps of creation, of which so 
much has been made by the harmonists, are not very well 
made out, and their enumeration by days I find myself 
unable to recognize at all as yet. 1 The account, so far as 
it is rightly interpreted, may however, as Sayce suggests, 2 
rest on older traditions ; and although of comparatively late 
Assyrian, not Accadian, origin, it is certainly older than 
the present form of the Hebrew story. But a fragment, 
now missing, is believed to have described the emergence 
of light, atmosphere, land, and plants. 

Finally, man appears, created by Hea,and is commanded 
to worship daily in fear of his Maker. 

"That they might obey (?), he has created mankind ; the merciful 
one with whom is life. May he establish and never may his word 
be forgotten in the mouth of the black-headed race whom his hands 
created/ 

" May he also remove mischief ; may he overcome it for the future. 
Because all places he made, he pierced, he strengthened. Lord of 
the world is his name, called even Father Bel. The names of the 
angels he gave to them." 

" With friend and comrade speech thou makest. In the underworld 
speech thou makest to the propitious genii. When thou speakest also 
he will give." 

What we must specially notice is that the Chaldean 
account, as at once combining in one system many 
primitive elements of belief which do not appear in the 
Hebrew, and resting upon ideas which could not possibly 
have been evolved from the Genesis story, is obviously 
more original, while the Hebrew is its adaptation to the 

1 Of the hypothetic number of tablets, only four have been discovered, of which that 
called the seventh is so called only provisionally ; and those conjectured to be the second and 
third are in the highest degree doubtful, to the uninitiated eye certainly, affording no evidence 
whatever of the special-creation works the translators have found in them. (Sayce s Smith : 
Chaldean Account of Genesis, pp. 62, 63.) The first ascribes the generation of heaven and 
earth to " the boundless deep," " the chaos of the sea," conceived as a female, and before the 
existence of the gods themselves. Ibid., pp. 57, 58. 

2 Smith: Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. 22. 3 j^d. (Sayce), p. 73-78. 



244 DEVELOPMENT. 

supremacy of the national God. In Semitic cosmogo 
nies, as given by Berosus and others, the water is the 
first material of creation. The Phoenician and Hebrew 
" deep " was a waste abyss over which wandered the 
wind, or breath. So Chaldean and Phoenician civilization 
began with amphibious deities, having fish heads above 
the man s ; and the probably Semitic-Polynesian myth 
makes the father of gods and men fish up the earth from 
the sea. 1 It is obvious that such beliefs as these point to 
centres of civilization on the seashore. The intimation is 
confirmed by numerous records going to show that the 
shores of the Erythraean Sea were the great point of de 
parture for civilized Semitism. But the cosmogonies 
which begin from ocean as a chaotic abyss, contain 
ing the germs of things, rest on a wider basis than any 
such special geographical location. They are found 
among mountain tribes as well, and at the root of Aryan 
as well as Semitic mythology, and even of the oldest phi 
losophies. Their ocean is the brooding atmosphere of 
space, conceived as preceding the gathering of all floating 
seeds of life into a living world, 2 the appointment of plane 
tary courses, and the orderly voyage of the Sun scattering 
the powers of life and growth around him as he moves. 
Even here water plays an important part. The interest 
is mainly centred in the conflict of the lightning or the 
sunbeam with the piled and rolling raincloud, the storm- 
struggle which opens the mysterious storehouse of waters 
hidden in the black roaring deeps. As Indra slays " the 
enveloping " (Vritra) serpent in the writhing clouds in 
Hindu mythology, as Tistrya fights the demon Apaosha 
and expels him from the great sea Vouru-kasha, and Thrae- 

1 Fornander: The Polynesian Race, p. 63. 

2 Eckstein (Les Sources de la Cosmogonie de Sanchoniathori) has explored this field. 
Berosus Chaldean cosmogony traces all things back to Thalatta or Tiamat, containing 
forms of mixed creatures, a semi-scientific recognition of evolution and progress from 
the crude and confused forms of life to higher beauty. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 245 

tona slays Dahaka, both dragons in Iranian, as Apollo 
pierces the Python in Greek, so Bel divides in two the 
Serpent (Tiamat), queen of the Chaldean Chaotic Sea. 
The association of vast resource and far-reaching expan 
sion with roaring and rolling waters is as natural for pas 
toral as for littoral tribes. Space and sea are equally 
parents of these amazing fertilizers and producers ; and 
similar names and legends would be associated with these 
infinitudes of living power. 1 

Look over a boat-side on a breezy day, following the 
wind out to sea, and you will easily understand the simple 
instincts to which the waters were the primal cosmogonic 
element. What productive energy in this undulating mass, 
vital in every atom ; in these multitudinous waves, so swift 
to break up sunshine into fiery flakes, and fling it off in a 
rain of delight ! How mobile this liquid element, obedient 
to stir of wind, to lead of tide ! To some unseen brooding 
Will it seems to say, " Shape me as you will, I am ready 
for your largest purpose, for your light and your law ! 
And were they not right who said, with foregleam of sci 
ence, that the earth was product of water? Are not the 
green islands its offspring, the continents its heaped sedi 
ments, the record of its secular art? Has it not piled 
the countless layers, its footfalls, its world-architecture? 
And as the living creatures came swarming in their times, 
has it not numbered and fed them and laid them to rest 
under its gentle rain of atoms, the continents crumbled 
as they had been builded by its hand? Well might we 
fancy this rippling laughter, this pulsing rise and fall, this 
long commingling and commotion, to be the very quiver 
of the fecund life swarming beneath, a life that foreshad 
ows all forms elsewhere existing, and has its foretypes of 
all strivings towards the human, gracious and hateful, noble 
and mean. How universal the sea ! The very hordes of 

1 See the BundeAesh story of the sea Vouru-kasha (vii. xiii.). 



246 DEVELOPMENT. 

its tide-water pools mirror all greeds and competitions of 
man, his Tartar raids, his hermits, and his parasites 
of thought. Its fine sands mingle scent of sea-weed and 
stir of minute life, the gleaming dust of shells, and the fric 
tion of abraded stone ; no element of that earth-plasm for 
got, which is to bloom into herb and flower, and beast and 
man. Its shores suggest what an infinitude of moods, 
emotions, aspirations, passions ; what stress of resistance 
and endeavor; what tones and harmonies! The very 
pebbles it rolls and heaves into barriers to its own march 
resound monotonous with the familiar, ever unsolved mys 
tery of life and death, the cry of whence and whither that 
ceases not from man s infancy to his latest maturity; and 
all is folded in a deeper silence and peace, where the 
mightiest waste of unrecorded history lays its hand on 
man s loneliness and fear, with gentle compulsion to trust. 
The Greeks held Ocean to be the father of Nemesis, ir 
reversible moral sequence ; ethical requital. " Retribution," 
says Sophocles, " grows slowly, like the wave that rolls up 
the black sand/ All nations have used it as the symbol not 
only of slow retributory law, but of wisdom hid in fathom 
less depths, Mimir-wells, where the eye even of a god is 
lost in gaining it; of strength from patient discipline, of 
toil that earns the victory, of far ventures for ideal ends, 
man s eternal monitor to courage and progress. 

For the sea is no mere heap of salted waves ; it is an 
idea : nor would it otherwise have been the mighty reser 
voir of mythology and faith. How full is man s speech 
and song of its ideal meaning as lord of wisdom and pro 
vidence ! Glaucus the mythic fisherman, longing for an 
ocean birth, and fascinated by the taste of briny plants, 
became a sea-god, blessing the people of the isles and 
shores with divine forewarnings ; builder too of that mys 
tic Argo which bore the tragic freight of sympathies and 
conquests for the Mediterranean races. All the old sea- 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 247 

gods are prophets and teachers of the arts of life. Out 
of ocean-depths comes up Cannes, Cadmus, Melkarth of 
Tyre. Into them sails away Mexican Quetzalcoatl, fugitive 
from the world he has blessed, to return in better days. 
Out of deluge-waters emerge good men, in arks and with 
sacred words unlost, to re-people and rebuild the earth. 
Out of the welter of a ruined world, the twilight of the 
Scandinavian gods, uprise new isles, in whose springing 
grass are hid the dice of Destiny unharmed. So new 
religions rise from the chaos of outworn beliefs, to prove 
the eternal youth of the soul, whose births are cyclic, like 
the returning tides. Proclus said with reason that " Ocean 
is the cause of all motion, intellectual and natural." To 
the ancients these symbols were the ocean itself; for the 
moderns they must be read between the lines of its visible 
outward movement. 

Thus conceived, the primal deep, whether of sky or sea, 
is not a material waste, but a prolific idea, in the religious 
consciousness of man. Whether personal Will, which in 
the Chaldean, Phoenician, and the Hebrew cosmogony is 
the creative force, 1 is emphasized as the organizer of 
chaos (Bel), or as shaper of it (Elohim) in the beginning, 
whether as a mysterious desire (Pot/ios) inspiring it, or as 
Tauthe, the intelligible creator who brings wisdom into the 
Phoenician world of man, is not matter of essential dif 
ference. The Chaldean Chaos, as well as the Phoenician, is 
itself conceived as a person ; and so is the Hebrew Chaos. 
" Creation out of nothing," that intense monotheism which 
has been ascribed to the Elohistic will, is indeed as con 
trary to primitive intuition as it is to science ; 2 it is a 

1 How much more strongly pronounced is this element of Will here than in Hindu 
mythology, which draws the world out of the One, the unity of Being, "breathing not," 
neither " existence nor non-being," creating the worlds with a thought ! Hesiod, again, like 
the Phoenician, rests creation, not on will, but on desire or love. It is in the Avesta that is 
seen this Aryo-Semitic will-power fully recognized as the creative force. 

2 The Hebrew word bara, rendered " created," properly meant shaped, out of some given 
material, and so brought forth thence. See Fiirst and Gesenius. 



248 DEVELOPMENT. 

modern abstraction unknown to the Hebrew myth, as to 
the other analogous ones, from El to Zeus. In these 
cases the abyss remains behind the personal act, which 
shapes it to orderly heaven and earth. And the imagi 
native aspect in which the abyss presents itself forbids 
us to regard it, so far at least, as a materialistic concep 
tion : Nature was full of personal, human meaning, the 
invincible Pothos or Eros of the Phoenician and Greek. 1 
The difference seems to be that in the Chaldean creation 
this personality is divided into a series, beginning with 
chaos conceived as female ; while in the Hebrew it has 
completer unity through all stages, as Elohim conceived 
as a man. Even this unity is of later origin, and the very 
plurality of Elohim is strong evidence of an original con 
currence of many wills. The stricter monotheism belongs 
to the prophetic and post-exilian theology, and is certainly 
the Jahvistic elaboration of ideas closely resembling the 
Chaldean. 

That half-disguised personal Will in the Chaldean Tia- 
mat, at the beginning, is worthy of notice. Damascius 2 

who derived his Chaldean cosmogony from ancient 
sources gives a series of male and female principles, 
preceding the positively creative work, which coincide 
with the birth of primal gods in the tablet inscriptions, 

all centring in Tiamat, the living abyss. From these 
comes Belus, the demiurge or positive framer of things. 
The imagination of the ancient world always filled up the 
unity or space of religious conceptions with multiplica 
tions of names, either of special functions or successive 
generations or times. So Elohim says, " Let us make 
man in our image, after our likeness. But personality is 
always involved. To suppose that by chaos a material 
origin is intended, is a delusion read into the old texts. 

1 Cory: Ancient Fragments^ p. 92. 

2 Lenormant: Chaldean Magic, pp. 122, 123. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 249 

Early mythology is imaginative, and never conceives of 
creation otherwise than as the evolutionary act of living 
force ; not always of direct personal volition, but of life 
in some form. The cosmos itself swarms with individual 
being, and there is nothing inert or dead. Desire is as 
old as the world, and inherent in its elements. Intelli 
gence lives in the plasmic germ, and does not wait for 
man s upright form to hold it. The waters of Tiamat 
teem with strange monsters, not accounted for save by 
her living sway. Order enters when Bel, the male prin 
ciple, proceeds to divide her substance, destroying the 
crude abortions of the dark, and separates heaven and 
earth, slaying her dragon life, in whose far-stretching 
monstrous folds all elements were involved. A Hebrew 
reminiscence of this myth survives in the seventy-fourth 
Psalm, where God is praised for breaking the heads of the 
sea-monsters, and notably giving the dead leviathan for 
meat to his people ; and again, in the prophecy of Isaiah 1 
concerning Babylon, where judgment is invoked upon her 
as "leviathan, the piercing serpent, and the dragon that is 
in the sea." The pictures of the sea-monster in the one 
hundred and fourth Psalm and in Job 2 may be added in 
proof of this traditional association of the waters with 
monsters of uncontrolled power, quite as likely to be a 
reminiscence of the chaos-myth of Bel and Tiamat as of 
the Egyptian crocodile. The grand intuition, here worth 
all other mythic elements together, is the universal deriva 
tion of order from strife and strength of Will, from oldest 
Ophion and Cronos to Hellenic Zeus, the supreme secret 
of philosophy and conduct, the meaning of Dualism in all 
ages of the world. Not less striking is the human form 
given in both cosmogonies, and the rationality of man as 
partaking of the Divine mind. Elohim creates man in his 
own (physical) image; and in the second account, Jahveh- 

1 Isaiah, xxvii. i. 



250 DEVELOPMENT. 

E16him makes him out of his breath and the dust of the 
earth. In both cases the materials are palpably sensuous, 
and the likeness is doubtless mainly physical. 1 So in the 
Polynesian-creation myth, which follows the Hebrew, even 
in details. 2 Man, whether formed of dust and breath, or 
of earth and brain, can be like his Maker only in the sense 
that the latter is in human form, a colossal omnipotent 
man ; and this is precisely the fact concerning the con 
versing, walking, planning, and punishing powers of the 
Hebrew Jahveh-Elohim. 

But here again the substance is ideal ; and the root and 
type of man is found in the highest known personal life. 
The intenser monotheism of the Hebrew Creator, as com 
pared with the Babylonian, who represents a brotherhood 
of gods, is due in part to a stronger sense of tribalism, 
and partly to the combination of Persian Ormuzd-worship 
with the prophetic spirit fostered in the Hebrews by the 
exile. The Avesta legend of creation, deriving man and 
woman 8 from the blood of the Bull (genius of earth), is 
a comparatively late construction of primitive Aryan 
myths. 4 But the older theism of the Yagnas, in the sec 
ond part, 5 is quite pure enough, as well as sufficiently 
spiritual and practical, to have had a large part in the 
formation of the highest Jahvistic conceptions. Ahura- 
mazda is upholder of the pure creation, and first fash 
ioner of the same ; to him belongs all that is best and 
fairest, the good spirit, the good law, the good wis 
dom, the kingdom and the power. 6 Nothing could have 
helped the Hebrew mind to positive monotheism so 
powerfully as this Persian god. The order of his crea 
tion, however, as described in the nineteenth Yagna and 

1 Von Bohlen : Genesis ; p. 18. 

2 Fornander : The Polynesian Race, p. 61. 

3 Mashya and Mashyana are generic terms for man and woman, like Adam and Eve. 
* Darmesteter: Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 287, et seq. 

6 Yafna, xxviii. et seq. 6 Ibid., xix. ; xliv. i ; xxxvii. ; xliii. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 251 

developed in the much later Bundehesh, has but slight 
resemblance to the Hebrew. It is completed not in six 
days, but in three hundred and sixty-five ; and its order 
is as follows, heaven, water, earth, the Bull (cattle), 
trees, fire, pure man; and it is very doubtful if, in its 
oldest form, this order represented a succession in time. 
Still, there are points of resemblance : Creation is pro 
duced in six periods, Gahanbars taking up a year. 

Seen in the strong light of modern worship of an Infi 
nite Person, this Hebrew story of creation is in the highest 
degree poetic. A will analogous to the human brings all 
things into being by word of mouth. "Let there be light: 
and there was light." " In the beginning God created the 
heaven and the earth." The idea of such creative word is 
common to the Hebrew and the Persian {Debar- Jahveli 
and A } n ma- v airy a are kindred conceptions), and to all 
races which worship pure Will, in distinction from im 
personal ideas or principles, which were represented in 
ancient time, on the other hand, by the Hindu conception 
of the world as creation by pure thought. But we must 
remember that this conception of the cosmos is neither 
intellectually nor scientifically true. To say that the world 
is made by the word of God is no truer than to say that 
it is made by the sword of Bel-Merodach, cutting off his 
own head, or dividing the female principle from the male. 
Days, in any sense, do not exist before the sun; nor light 
earlier than the seeing eye of man ; nor the heavenly 
firmament or the grass of the field before the sun and 
moon. And probably when the truths of evolution, the 
sciences of unfolding laws, are truly conceived, the eter 
nal unity of the world with its substance will require no 
such anthropomorphic images to express its sublimity; 
these will cease to be poetically sublime, because sup 
planted both in the poetic and the philosophic mind by 
forms more adequate to the sense of truth. " The world," 



252 DEVELOPMENT. 

says even Philo, " could not have been created in time, 
because it is itself necessary to relations of time, and the 
heavens themselves mean mind." 

The purely human interest of the Hebrew story appears 
more fully in the second account of creation, in which 
God is called Jahveh-Elohim. 1 It centres in the forma 
tion of man, It would explain, out of the national con 
ception of deity, how man is closely related to this God ; 
how he comes to be gifted with speech, so as to name 
creatures and things, and how woman comes to be inferior 
and dependent. In the first account nothing is said of 
distinction between the sexes; nor is there any hint of 
Adam s intimacy with the Maker, and of the gifts and 
commands that attest it. Other differences have been 
ingeniously noted, 2 not so important nor so certain, that 
the first account appears to belong to a river country (like 
Babylon), where water would naturally be held the first 
condition of things ; and the last to a dry-land, where pro 
duction seems spontaneous or instantaneous, where men 
and trees might seem formed from the dust, and mists 
from the earth, not rain, water the land. More striking 
is the very sensuous conception of Jahveh-E16him, 3 and 
the mystical etymology of the name of woman ( is/id) 
from that of man ( M). 4 

I. In view of the manifest dependence of the Hebrew 
story of creation on Persian influence, as well as on a devel 
oped nationality, we can hardly be mistaken in regarding 
the elements which it has in common with the Chaldean 
legend as borrowed from the latter, rather than as sug 
gesting it. And this judgment is confirmed by the an 
tiquity of the cuneiform record, and by the confession of 
the Hebrews as to their original home, the locality of their 
Eden, and the point of departure for varieties of tribes and 

1 Genesis, ii.-iii. 2 Von Bohlen. 

5 Genesis, ii. 18-21; iii. 8. 4 Ibid.,ii. 23. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 253 

languages at Babylon. The assertion of Rawlinson, 1 that 
" the inspired author of Genesis has preserved the genuine 
account of a primeval tradition of creation common to 
the race, while the Chaldeans disfigured it with evident 
mythology, such as the cleaving of the woman Thalatth 
in twain, and the beheading of Belus," betrays notions of 
the receptivity of primeval man for information as to his 
own origin for which science can have little respect. The 
origin of such assumptions in preconceived ideas of Bib 
lical infallibility is obvious. A purer example of elaborate 
mythological construction than the Hebrew story of Crea 
tion can hardly be imagined. But beyond Chaldean anti 
quity, into the mists of prehistoric time, it is idle and 
impossible to follow this myth of creation. 2 

II. The Eden Legend* testifies to its origin in the vi 
cinity of the Euphrates and Tigris, the names of the 
other two rivers being words that simply mean " flowing 
waters," and used as generic terms for the purpose of 
making up the number four, the conventional sign of 
completeness in all Eastern mythologies. It has been 
noted that the mention of the name Euphrates, without 
comment, as already well known, points to a Babylonian 
origin. The conjecture of Von Bohlen that Eden is Eran, 
with the change of r into d, is less probable. Eden cor 
responds with Persian " parks," but not with the Avesta 
paradise of Yima, which is a form of social relations and 
polity conceived as ideally perfect, free from sin and dis 
ease, the heaven of a few pure Zoroastrian disciples. The 
Genesis myth is in fact a conscious generalization of his 
tory, with the purpose of explaining moral evil and the 
stern necessity of labor as results of disobedience to a 

1 Ancient Monarchies t \. 144. 

2 See Halevy (Rev. Crit. cfffistoire et de Literature, December 13, 1880 ) 

8 Sir H. Rawlinson, in 1869, deduced from the cuneiform inscriptions the full conviction 
that the Genesis paradise was meant to be Gan-Duniyas or Babylonia ; and the belief is not 
now seriously opposed. 



254 DEVELOPMENT. 

personal commandment. Crude as the idea was, it came 
to be combined with the really philosophical notion of 
bringing the living creatures to man to receive their names. 
And this alone would indicate the late origin of the story. 
It has evidently grown out of developed views of the pri 
macy of mind over matter, of a natural harmony of man 
with the universe, and his dependence on conformity with 
its laws. 

When we add that the terms " Eden " and " Garden of 
God " belong especially to the exile-period, 1 it becomes 
very certain that the myth received its distinctive form 
in the midst of the advanced civilization of Babylon. This 
philosophical interest in the problems of life and charac 
ter apparent in the Genesis legends as a whole, could 
hardly have been combined with the childlike qualities 
originally conspicuous in them without a long period of 
incubation in a much wider horizon than the narrow 
nationality of the Hebrew could supply. But behind the 
whole, and determining its animus, is the nomadic temper 
ament, jealous of its license, hating labor, and relucting at 
its slow conditions ; trusting spontaneous Nature, and ab 
sorbed in the imperious will of a tribal chief; making 
protest against inevitable contact with a more complex 
and progressive civilization. Thus far, nothing corre 
sponding to the Genesis paradise has been found in the 
cuneiform records, but it is hardly possible that such a 
feature should be wholly wanting. 

III. These elements come out more forcibly in the 
Legend of the Temptation and Fall. We have here the 
Hebrew, and more distinctly the Semitic, conception of 
the origin of evil, in a rebellious conflict of the will of man 
against the will of God, his Creator. No other or deeper 
ground enters into the theory of this legend ; no reason 
for the command to abstain from the tree of knowledge 

1 Ezekiel, xxviii. 13. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 255 

but the arbitrary will of God ; no explanation of disobe 
dience but the arbitrary will of man. In the Avesta it is 
the falsehood of the tempter s teaching that makes the sin 
of yielding to it. In Genesis, what the tempter teaches 
is true, and the sin is simply in the refusal of the human 
will to be led by the Divine. Ahriman does not rebel 
against the will of Ahura as such ; he chooses the dark 
as Ahura chooses the light, the one the false, the other 
the true. In both cases, the origin of moral evil is in 
disobedience to a personal Will; but in the Avesta the 
rights of this Will rest on the deeper ground of truth and 
light ; in Genesis they have no ground beyond themselves. 
Thus in the Persian the ethical claim dominates and ex 
plains the personal ; in the Hebrew, the personal is abso 
lute and all-controlling. The older Avesta has nothing 
corresponding to the special legend of Adam s fall. In 
the later Bundehesh, the story of Mashya and Mashyana 
has few resemblances to it beyond the facts that in both 
stories a primitive couple, born innocent and taught the 
right way, are tempted by the power of evil, break the 
law of duty, and are punished. In one case the punish 
ment is by expulsion from Eden ; in the other, by demoral 
ization of habits, and by condemnation at last to hell, the 
details of which are given in the Bundehesh. 1 In neither 
case is there the slightest approach to a solution of the 
great problem of evil. 

Again, the ethnic distinction already noticed between 
Iranian and Hebrew conceptions is here well illustrated, 
(i) The cause of Yima s fall is " lying speech," as in itself 
the crime of crimes ; while that of Adam consists in dis 
obedience to the special command of an arbitrary Will to 
refrain from a certain kind of food. Aryan worship of 
personal power is wont to find some foothold in the nature 
of things as foundation of moral allegiance, while the in- 

i Chap. xv. 



256 DEVELOPMENT. 

tense Semitic form of the same worship rests on the pure 
rights of an absolute Will. (2) In the Paradise from which 
Yima falls, labor is the blessed condition of freedom from 
age, disease, and sin ; and Yima s toils fill his dominion 
with seeds and harvests, with cattle and men innumerable. 
In the Adamic Eden, God himself has planted the garden, 
which man has only to dress and keep, being bidden to 
eat freely of every tree of the garden but of the tree of 
the knowledge of good and evil. And labor becomes the 
penalty he incurs in being exiled from it; the cause of 
exile from the nomadic heaven of exemption from man 
ual work, a free roving life in Nature. Here, as in the 
succeeding legends, especially that of the murder of Abel, 
the nomad signifies his dislike of the settled agriculturist 
and industrial races, his reaction against that Babylonian 
civilization, probably, from which he had emigrated in the 
early time. The later experiences of the Captivity fostered 
the inborn instinct. And the subtile myth in its present 
form consciously reproves the curiosity of man for knowl 
edge as sin against an imminent Will, whose prerogative 
it is to govern through jealous monopoly of the wisdom 
that entitles to sway. It has even been said that the hatred 
of the nomad for labor was the source of the story of the 
Fall. This hatred of labor was transmitted to the later 
Jews, who, however, escape the old prejudice in their 
Talmud. 1 

The childish fear of a tribal god has become developed 
by later associations among which subjection to a highly 
enlightened conquering state was not the least impressive 
into the conception that progress in knowledge is marked 
by Divine displeasure as sin ; and the recklessness of the 
nomad for the morrow survives all experiences of a better 
culture, ending as it began in pronouncing labor a curse, 
and warning against that desire to know, that curiosity 

1 Schreiber : Talmud, p. 46. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 257 

to construct and aspire, of which labor is the instrument 
and the crown. At the same time, the Hebrew had been 
obliged to admit that this form of life makes men resemble 
gods, and that the arts and inventions of society have pro 
ceeded from these apparent crimes against the nomad and 
his rights. Cain built a city east of Eden and called it 
Enoch, after his first descendant (compare Assyrian enuk, 
"wise"), an evident reference to Chaldean centres; and 
his subsequent line discover music and metallurgy. 1 All 
this Jahveh .has cursed as the fruit of fratricide, the 
martyrdom of the nomad. Such the connection of the 
Hebrew legend with historical and ethnic relations. 

Nothing, however, answering to the Genesis Fall of 
Man has yet been discovered in Chaldean inscriptions 
or traditions. The Deluge is, perhaps ; it would seem 
so from one passage, " the doer of sin bore his sin, 
the blasphemer bore his blasphemy." 2 But the figures 
supposed by Smith to represent the temptation scene 
the man and woman under the tree eating fruit, with the 
serpent erect behind them turns out not to picture the 
two sexes ; and the Creation-tablet, referred to the same 
idea by Smith, is now shown by Oppert to require a very 
different translation. 3 Nevertheless, Lenormant finds very 
close resemblance to the old naturalistic use of the ser 
pent as the representative of evil and temptation. 4 And 
his zeal for orthodoxy leads him to emphasize the idea 
that the inspired writer of Genesis, in making this use of 
an unhistorical tradition among the old races around him, 
was moved solely by the desire to give it a moral mean 
ing, in explaining the Fall of Man through misuse of evil 



1 Genesis, iv. 16-22. 

2 Smith : The Chaldean Account of Genesis, Izdubar col. v. 15, p. 288 (Sayce). 

3 Ibid., p. 75. 

4 Les origines de I histoire, p. 93. Very similar representations have been found on 
Roman sarcophagi, imitated by early Christian artists, of the Fall, and on a Phoenician vase 
of the sixth century before Christ, discovered by Di Cesnola in Cyprus. 

17 



258 DEVELOPMENT. 

will. And this he thinks has been the " only " solution of 
this redoubtable problem " to be found in history." l 

The various motives combined in the story of the Fall 
show it to be the result of late elaboration. The shame 
at sexual relations alone would mark a late origin. Could 
such ascetic quality be natural to the Hebrews? What 
other infantile people ever coupled the desire of knowl 
edge with shame at discovering their own nakedness? 
But we may now recognize the elements which point to 
a very ancient fund of Semitic beliefs. The attempt to 
justify the dependence of woman upon man, " bone of my 
bone, and flesh of my flesh," by making her from his rib, 
and to hold her responsible for his violation of a command 
which the legend does not pretend that she had heard, 
appears to indicate a dogmatic motive rather than an early 
instinct. But the martyrdom and fall alike of Semitic 
gods and heroes are always mythically associated with 
the female as instrument of the evil fate, as we have 
already shown. Far back in Accadian times, the epic 
hero Izdubar refuses the love of the goddess on account 
of the innumerable woes caused by her enchantments 
and temptations. But in one respect this older dispar 
agement of the female element differs from that of the 
Genesis legend. It refers moral evil back to the lower 
passions in human nature; while the other, in conformity 
with the general spirit of Hebrew thought, makes it a 
positive wilful revolt against higher will. The Persians 
had no such associations with the female sex, as respon 
sible for man s fall. Falsehood, not woman, was the wea 
pon of Ahriman ; by that he corrupted Yima, by that he 
seduced Mashya and Mashyana from their primitive inno 
cence. In this later legend of Creation the sexes were 
so united as to be indistinguishable, and only quarrel 
after Ahriman has deluded both. 2 

1 Lenorrrmnt : Les origines de Phistoire, p. 108. a Bundehesh^ xv. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 259 

The choice of the serpent, in human form, as tempter 
of Eve to become equal with God, might seem a natural 
selection of the great type of intelligence throughout 
antiquity, to represent that forbidden thirst for knowl 
edge which was the Hebrew s peculiar dread. But so 
special a reason is not required. The name ndchdsh (ser 
pent) is Aryan. 1 The serpent belongs to the Ahrimanic 
creation, and is even Ahriman himself, the symbol be 
ing easily traceable to the hostile meaning of the wreathed 
rain-withholding cloud in that incessant atmospheric war 
fare of light with darkness round which Aryan mythology 
revolves. It is extremely probable that the Semitic hate 
of the serpent rests primitively on these same apparently 
universal phenomena. But the direct origin of the latter 
is evidently in Chaldean traditions. The two-edged swords 
of the cherubim are identical with the winged bulls of the 
Assyrian palaces ; 2 and though there is no mention of a 
forbidden Tree of Knowledge, there is at any rate a Tree 
of Life both in the tablet monuments and in the legends. 
The old Babylonian seal represents two figures sitting be 
side a tree and holding out their hands to its fruit, while 
a serpent is in the background. That the date of these 
Chaldean elements must be at least 2000 years B. c. is 
attested by numerous seals and inscriptions. The ser 
pent Ophion, first a god, precipitated into the sea by 
Cronos, holds the position of evil power in the Phoenician 
mythology. In contrast with these traditions, strong proof 
of the comparatively late origin of the Hebrew story is to 
be found in a complexity of structure and purpose, which 
even, the simplicity of its elements and style cannot cover, 
the prostration of the serpent, and its thoroughly dog 
matic explanation; the manifest purpose to justify the 
subjection of woman ; the punishment of man for yielding 

1 It is given by the Buddhists to the primitive tribes of India and Thibet. 

2 Lenormant : Les origines de I" 1 histoire d apres la Bible, p. 129. 



26O DEVELOPMENT. 

his will to the sex which should represent the passive as 
he the active elements; the jealous God, deliberately test 
ing his offspring, and enforcing an obedience which 
touches hidden springs of character; the pains of child- 
bearing, the burden of toil, referred to highly artificial 
causes in human disobedience to arbitrary will. Here is 
obviously the result of an elaborate construction to meet 
a state of mind in which religious preconceptions and 
speculative questions were curiously intermingled. The 
air of simplicity is due to that intense consciousness of 
personal relations with God which the Hebrew inherited 
in his Semitic nationalism. This imminent personal Will 
is distinctly human ; walks in the garden, converses, gives 
way to emotions ; guards his exclusive right to immortal 
life by Chaldean cherubim and waving sword. Of course, 
the cherubim are the winged creatures at the gates of 
Assyrian palaces, and the sword is the weapon of Bel 
which " waved four ways." 1 The autocratic jealousy 
which says, " Behold now ! man is become like one of 
us," differs most decidedly from the aristocratic con 
tempt of Zeus for that " wretched race of men " whom 
Prometheus had exalted. Greek mythology, indeed, ex 
plains the dark side of nature and life by the jealousy 
of its Olympian powers. Pallas and Hera and Poseidon 
are jealous deities ; and from the play of their exclu 
sively human loves and hates come the wars and woes 
of mortals, the tragedy and epos of the world. 2 But 
the balance of powers and tendencies in polytheism 
involved these conflicts of motives and claims : they tes 
tify to an inward protest against exclusiveness in the in 
terest of beauty and freedom. The jealousy of Jahveh is 
immitigable, and cannot relent in face of opposition; 
it is absolute as his unity, as arbitrary as his creative 
will. 

1 Records of the Past, ix. p 136. 2 See Odyssey, v. 119. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 26 1 

Modern theology, dating from Paul of Tarsus, has read 
into this doctrinal myth of the expulsion from Eden a 
more startling dogma, of which it is entirely innocent, 
that of the representative Fall of the first man, and its con 
sequence, inherited sin ; of which the theory of redemption 
through an incarnate God is the necessary correlative. A 
striking instance of the Bibliolatry with which scientific 
studies are still confused and disabled, is in Lenormant s 
elaborate collection of mythologic resemblances in the 
description of the Fall of Man by various races, 1 to 
prove that an original tradition, revealed to men, " of 
the events by which the fate of humanity was decided," 
preserved " in a mysterious symbolic memory," had been 
distorted by the spirit of error among the Gentiles, and 
partially among the Hebrews also, but restored to its true 
significance " by the inspired author of Genesis." It 
should be needless to say that no such events are shown, 
nor is any "symbolic memory" of them proved; and that 
the version of the Fall in Genesis has no monopoly of 
ethical or spiritual meaning. 

The leading purpose of the legend seems to have been 
to bring out of Adam a twofold race, one representing 
the accursed slaves of labor, the other the happy favorites 
of freedom. The grudge of the nomadic against the set 
tled races, which thus betrays itself in the penalty of the 
Fall and in the overthrow of Babel, is more boldly con 
fessed in the story of Cain and Abel, whose very names 
express the antagonism. This prejudice appropriated to 
its uses the old wide-spread myth of the foundation of 
cities by fratricides, whose diffusion equals that of the 
Deluge, yet is not used by Lenormant to prove a primi 
tive revelation, because it would hardly suit his purpose. 
Its real meaning consists, of course, in the social antag 
onism of the settler and the nomad. As we go on, the 

1 Contemporary Review, September, 1879. 



262 DEVELOPMENT. 

proofs multiply of a Hebrew reaction against that splendid 
industrial civilization from which the materials for these 
stones were inevitably drawn. No less striking is the con 
trast with the agricultural tendencies of the Avesta. The 
reaction referred to was in fact a reinsistence, in the inter 
est of national association, on the beliefs and habits of a 
tribe which, wandering from its Chaldean home, made 
the deserts and mountains of northern Mesopotamia its 
halting-place, where it unfolded that antagonism between 
the inhabitants of highlands and those of plains along the 
navigable streams, which belongs to early epochs in Aryan 
and Semitic races alike. This antagonism, too, had much 
to do in producing the famous genealogy of nations in the 
tenth chapter of Genesis, and is clearly traceable in the 
distinct parallelism of the names of the two lists of Adam s 
sons, the Sethites and Cainites, in which each name is 
slightly modified in the one list to produce an opposite 
moral meaning to that which it bears in the other. 1 

In the list of Shem s descendants this is not so evi 
dent. The names of the ten patriarchs had their fore- 
type in Chaldean tradition. The ten antediluvian kings 
of Berosus chronology cover four hundred and thirty-two 
thousand years, evidently an astronomical cycle, 2 the 
great year of the stars, 3 and their names have been inge 
niously derived 4 from the animals of the zodiacal and side 
real signs, first marked and named by the Chaldeans. The 
same number of progenitors appears in most ancient cos 
mogonies, in the Persian Peshdadians, the Hindu great 
gods, the ancestors of Odin, the Chinese mythic kings. 
But whatever their astronomical meaning, the names of 
these Chaldean antediluvian kings are mostly compounds 
of Anu, oldest and chief of Chaldean gods. The number 

1 Lenormant : Les ortgines de Phistoire & aprts la Bible, p. 181. Von Bohlen : Genesis. 

2 Lenormant : Essai des fragments cosmogomques, p. 230. Diod. Sic. ii. p. 36. 

3 Ibid., p. 216. * Ibid., pp. 249, 250. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 263 

ten has a universal mythic value, which has even been 
traced back to the name for the fingers of the hand. 1 The 
only direct point of attachment of the ten Hebrew patri 
archal names with these solar traditions is the lifetime of 
Enoch, which has precisely the length of a solar year. 
Yet not only their undoubted origin, but their elaboration 
at Babylon, must have associated them with physical and 
even solar phenomena. 2 Some of them are found to be 
Babylonian and Phoenician. 3 They were taken from a 
pre-existing fund of materials for mythic construction, 
since they are mainly the same with the previous list 
of Cain s descendants, and have been used to serve very 
different purposes in such construction. The main point 
is that they are now shown to have belonged to the so- 
called " Book of Origins," compiled by a priestly writer 
in the Captivity. The very limited lifetimes ascribed to 
the patriarchs, as compared with the Chaldean kings, 4 
indicate that the purpose of this writer was not like that 
of the latter enumerator, to fill up the vast void of past 
time with human or divine lives, but a very different one; 
probably to show that disobedience has gradually dimin 
ished the actual duration of a lifetime, and to exalt Jahveh 
as ordainer of the law that virtue assured length of years, 
and vice early death. God s spirit would not endure long 
strife with evil-doing ; and so from Adam to Abraham, 
the allotted period shrinks from nine centuries to less than 
two. 

These mythic procedures do not yield us any light on 
the transition from patriarchal to civil forms of govern 
ment, nor should we expect any such historic or political 

1 Eckstein : Les Sources de la Cosmogonie de Sanchoniathon. 

2 Goldziher : Mythology among the Hebrews, pp. 18, 19. 

3 Smith : The Chaldean Account of Genesis (Sayce), p. 316. 

4 Lenormant imagines that he finds one of the exact scales on which these earlier cyclic 
numbers were diminished by the Hebrew mythologer (Les Origines de V histoire, etc., 
p. 276) in the reckoning of each patriarch s life down to the birth of his oldest son. Oppert 
thinks he put a week for every five years of the Babylonian figures (Ibid., p. 277). 



264 DEVELOPMENT. 

sense in the Hebrew tribes. We have here simply a 
genealogical tree of the Hebrew race, constructed on the 
principles already stated, to meet the demand for some 
account of that primeval epoch which the religious 
importance of the Deluge made of high interest. 

IV. In view of the derivation of all things from a watery 
chaos at the divine command, the notion of Floods over 
whelming disobedient races, whose life had proved the 
failure of this creative process, was perfectly natural. 
The fact that many races, especially Semitic and Aryan, 
have the idea embodied in myths, does not prove a com 
mon origin, still less a primeval revelation. It was sim 
ply a recurrence of the mind to the primitive waste and 
disorder, as a state which would give opportunity to the 
good-will of God to evoke a new human order by a repe 
tition of the first process, or by one analogous to the first. 
The large significance given by ancient mythology to the 
term ocean, would make it easy for a people dwelling be 
side great rivers like the Euphrates and Tigris to ascribe 
world-wide destructive effects to their inundations, and to 
make these the basis of moral and social renewal. The 
class of myths to which the Deluge belongs grows out of 
the demand of the human mind for cyclic movement, 
for rhythmic recurrence of conditions, as a sign of con 
tinued purpose, harmonious relation, and providential 
care. The safe return of the circle into itself guarantees 
perfect order. So the soul is set to rhythms of its own, 
and instinctively seeks alternation in the destinies of the 
cosmos as in the details of experience. It keeps con 
stant regard to its past steps, will have familiar nodes, 
recurrent refrains, that make its movement ideal, and turn 
even its limits into liberties. And so cyclic destruction 
and renovation belong to the very framework of positive 
religions, 1 confessions of the mingled faith and fear on 

1 Brinton : Myths of the New World, p. 198. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 265 

which these are strung. The Deluge-myth is moreover 
too widely spread in various forms to be referred to any 
thing less universal than such a demand as is here de 
scribed. 1 But historically the Hebrew story is evidently 
of Chaldean origin, as its extreme resemblance to that of 
Berosus and that of the Izdubar epic is sufficient to show. 2 
The Xisuthrus of this very ancient legend is the Hasisadra 
of the cuneiform epic, as found and translated by George 
Smith, and improved by later interpreters. The Izdubar 
epic is far older than the Hebrew version, and even more 
nearly identical with it than the account in Berosus, 3 since 
it explains the Deluge as a penalty for sin ; as does also 
the Greek legend of Deucalion. The corresponding Hindu 
legend, on the contrary, in which Manu is saved by the 
fish as an incarnation only, has no hint of this. The Chi 
nese " Deluge of Yao " is no deluge at all, but a myth of 
agricultural industry. The originality of the story of Hasi 
sadra is shown by the fact that it makes a part of a great 
epopee, and that its whole setting, as well as spirit, is 
Chaldean. It could never, by any possibility, have been 
borrowed from the Genesis record. The points of resem 
blance are decisive ; those of difference few and trivial, 
relating only to petty details. These differences, such 
as the size and form of the ark, the location of the moun 
tain, the smaller number of persons saved in the Hebrew 
Deluge to re-people the earth, the translation of Hasisadra 
like Enoch to heaven or some remote region, his voice 
heard in the air bidding his companions take up the books 



1 What has been said of Lenormant s effort to show a wide-spread similarity in creation- 
myths to justify his conclusion of a primeval revelation, is still more applicable to his collec 
tion of parallel Deluge-legends. The advocates of such a revelation have little or nothing to 
stand upon, loudly as they have proclaimed the Noachic story. Behind the Babylonian epic 
it is impossible to penetrate. This has been satisfactorily shown by the criticism of Halevy on 
Lenormant s Les origines de civilization in the Revue Critique de I" 1 Hist, et Lit. t Dec. 27, 
1880. See also Revue de V Hist, des Religions, ii. i ; iii. 2. 

2 Cory: Ancient Fragments, p. 54 (extract from Syncellus). 

3 Given in Polyhistor and Arbydenus. 



266 DEVELOPMENT. 

of the law buried at Surippak and give them to the world, 
are part of the local coloring, and do not throw doubt 
on the conclusion above stated. In no case is the indebt 
edness of the Hebrews more evident. The command to 
build the ark, the threat to destroy mankind, the entry of 
the animals, the opening of the windows and sending forth 
of birds, the altar built on leaving the ark, the pleasant 
savor of the offering to the senses of Jahveh, the promise 
that the earth should not again be drowned, the covenant 
and the blessing, all show that the Hebrew copied from 
this original. Not only is the ark coated with bitumen 
in both legends, but precisely such gopher-wood structures 
navigate the Euphrates to this day. 1 

The origin of the ark-form of the Deluge-myth is 
probably in the notion of an enclosed vital energy, which 
breaks forth out of chaos to make or renew. World-egg, 
vessel, chest, basket, various symbols of this envelopment 
are conceived ; and the mythology of Deliverance is trace 
able throughout antiquity by these varied forms of one 
idea. 2 The vital energy of the world or sun, in manifold 
forms of struggle against the powers of darkness, or of 
triumph over chaos or death, is ever represented. 

Osiris, Adonis, Dionysus, Melkarth, are forms of what 
the Egyptian funeral ritual invokes as " the Great One in 
the chest," or ark. The sacred ship that bears gods or 
heroes or divine men to world-mastery or redeeming work, 
sails through every mythologic sea, and is borne in every 
festal train. The egg breaks asunder, and life, order, deity 
emerge by the law of birth out of death, which nought 
escapes. The infant king of Assyria, and the babe who is 
to deliver Israel, alike lie exposed in baskets among the 
rushes of the river, and must be saved themselves before 
they can save others. The arks of Sargon and of Moses 

1 Loftus : Chald(ea and Sustana, p. 69. 

2 See this well put in Brown s Great Dionysiak Myth, \, 196. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 267 

are after all the same symbol as the mystic basket of the 
Persian ritual and the Deluge-arks whence the world is 
renewed. Finally, the old land of exile itself becomes the 
world-egg, or sacred chest for a new Messiah, of whom it 
was written, " out of Egypt have I called my Son." 

The Hebrew relaters of the Flood differ from all others 
in laying the scene of world-renewal in a region remote 
from their own, thereby confessing their indebtedness to a 
foreign source. They have, in addition, set the beginning 
of the rain at the autumnal equinox, which time, in Chal- 
dea, actually opens the rainy season. 1 Undoubtedly the 
Euphrates furnished the materials of the story by its in 
undations, which still cause the whole land to become 
"pools;" 2 and these materials were used in the later 
Hebrew theological revival, as well as in the Chaldean 
epos, to enforce the idea of chastisement by a personal 
God for disobedience to his will. In the early time, all 
the Nature-gods come in to help Hea, the god of waters, 
bring on the storm ; and Bel, as deliverer, takes Hasisa- 
dra by the hand. This fact alone would prove the Hebrew 
version, as strictly monotheistic, to be the later. Never 
theless, Rawlinson as usual assumes that the Hebrews 
have preserved the tradition of the Deluge in its prime 
val truth, while the Chaldean account adds these points 
in which the two stories differ, " because not content with 
the plain truth " ! 

The Hebrew legend, though more monotheistic, is at 
the same time more exclusive, arbitrary, and dogmatic in 



1 Lenormant : Le deluge et V epof>ee Babylonienne. 

2 At this day "the waters which descend every year from the Armenian mountains are 
sufficient to make several such rivers as the Euphrates, which breaks over its banks and cuts 
new channels, and but for incessant canalling would keep the rich lands of Mesopotamia 
under water every year. The peasants told Kadree Pasha that the overflow of the Euphrates 
was in the hands of God. * I am not going to look into that matter, answered the 
unbiblical Moslem official; what concerns me is how you have spent the twelve thousand 
pounds appointed by the government to regulate it- " Geary s Journey through Asiatic 
Turkey, vol. i chap. xi. 1878. 



268 DEVELOPMENT.. 

tone than the Chaldean. It carries the worship of per 
sonal Will to a more extreme form, centring in a jealous 
Individual, whose whole dealing with man is by tests and 
retributions. In no other way could the sovereignty of a 
national God be displayed ; and so the later mythologies 
explain the mysteries and burdens of life as penalties 
of his inflicting. The first man and woman are made to 
sin that the Creator may subject the one to the burden 
of labor and the other to the pangs of childbirth and the 
will of her husband. 1 Next, all mankind sin, that the 
Omnipotent Individual may doom all to death ; He finds 
Noah only worthy to be saved, in order that in this one 
family the whole future of mankind may be concentred. 
He is evidently laying down the (mythic) rule, according 
to which all history should converge to a single people, 
as alone fit to be chosen for his own. And so the whole 
primeval history of man is shaped into a chain to bind 
the human race into the service of the Hebrew and his 
God. 

The Chaldean story of the Deluge, on the other hand, 
was simply an episode in an epic, based on natural phe 
nomena describing the work of Nature-gods, and had no 
special motive beyond transporting a holy man to a remote 
place of blessedness, where the hero of the epos may con 
sult him, far away along the Erythraean shores consecrated 
by traditions of the primal ocean, of the first revelation of 
social wisdom, the earliest schools, libraries, and priest 
hoods. There is no purpose of extolling the gods of As 
syria or Chaldea, nor of expounding the philosophy of 
penalty, nor of accounting by personal inflictions for the 
evils of life. These old materials of a common Semitic 
fund the Hebrew revisers, under the new national impulse, 
elaborated in the conscious interest of a God who from the 
beginning chooses out one man to receive his favor, while 

l Genesis, iii. 16-19. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 269 

all the rest suffer the penalties of disobedience to his 
sovereign will. No indication of the nature of this sin is 
given, beyond the charge that men took wives at their 
will. The assertion ascribed to Elohim, that every imagi 
nation of man s heart was evil continually, and that he 
repented having made him, is evidently a late product 
of dogmatic motive. No early social epoch of civiliza 
tion could be guilty of so pessimistic a view of human 
nature. It is devised for the purpose of setting off the 
righteousness of Elohim, and justifying his choice of a 
special people : his rage at his own work and his resolve 
to destroy it are not less characteristic of autocratic will. 
Noah (renewal) is interpreted to mean comfort : one man 
only, a type of the chosen people, with his family, is saved 
from the deluge of evil in the surrounding world. The 
intense earnestness of this motive gives a simplicity to 
the style, which renders it at once nai ve and sublime. 
All description of Nature is wanting, because the motive 
has no regard either for Nature or beauty as such. It is 
absorbed in the absolutism of Divine Will. It culminates 
in a commandment to be fruitful and multiply, and to avoid 
eating flesh with the blood, or the shedding of blood, tra 
ditional precepts, marking early transitional steps towards 
civilization, and in what is called the Noachic covenant, of 
which the sign is the bow in the cloud. Of this exclusive- 
ness the Chaldean story has not a trace. It lays no empha 
sis on Hasisadra being the only good man : his servants, 
male and female, and " the sons of the people" are saved 
with him. The gods do not act arbitrarily nor autocrati 
cally. Hea tenderly remonstrates with Bel, dissuading 
him from severity towards men ; and the final propitiation, 
answering to the promise to Noah in the rainbow, is in 
duced not as in his case by the sweet savor of a sacrifice, 
but by the reasons, suggested through Hea, that a sweeping 
penalty would be unjust, and by the sympathy of Ishtar, 



2/0 



DEVELOPMENT. 



who with the other gods compassionates mankind with 
covered lips. 1 The only form in which the idea of a 
Deluge appears in the Persian books, is the battle of 
Tistrya to purify the great waters of Ahura from the 
poison of Ahriman. 2 The rain falls for ten days and 
nights, and the earth is covered to the height of a man, 
and all evil creatures are drowned. A great wind sweeps 
the waters into a great sea, which Ahura sends Tistrya to 
free from the poison of Ahriman s dead ; and in the great 
battle he is aided by mighty rains, which afterward serve 
to fertilize the earth. This is evidently wholly discon 
nected from the penal deluge of the Semites, and forms 
but a natural phase of the great War of Deliverance 
which Mazdeism carried through all the elements and 
forms of Nature. The waters are not penal; they are 
healing, the pure gift of Ahura, serving only to bless 
mankind. They are invoked, in the Avesta legend, by 
the serpent Dahaka, for aid in destroying men ; but in the 
form of the spotless Ardvi-^ura they refuse him the boon, 3 
while she grants the prayer of Thraetona for aid to destroy 
the serpent. 4 " Come, O ye clouds, come ! Let the waters 
spread, fall, and spread abroad ! Pour ten thousand waves, 
speak, O holy Zarathustra ! for the destruction of disease 
and death, of the evils sent by evil powers ; for the destruc 
tion of all that injures men. Let the earth, plants, all 
healing things, be renewed." 5 

V. The ethnographical study in the tenth chapter of 
Genesis, purporting to be the descending line of Noah s 
sons, is a carefully prepared record of the nations known 
to the Hebrews of the exile, and of those only, each 
treated as a distinct person, instead of a mixed community. 
It illustrates again how powerful was the Semitic impulse 

1 Sayce s Smith : The Chaldean A ccount of Genesis, p. 287, et seq. 

2 Bimdehesh, vii. s Aban-Yasht, 7. 4 Ibid., 8. 
6 Vendidad, xxi. 3-14; Harlez. See also Ya f na, Ixiv. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 2/1 

to give a personal form to every object of thought. Of 
linguistic relations there is really no more conception 
than would be conveyed by the fact that the nations are 
grouped according to their geographical position, as 
Herder recognized long ago. 1 Such a study was possible 
only in a centre like Babylon. The Hebrews, in their 
early tribal isolation, could not have conceived such a 
synthesis. Ham simply means black tribes of the hot 
south; and Japheth, whether signifying the " brilliant" or 
the " far-spread," is really a term for the nations of the 
West. 2 Canaan is oddly enough placed among the Ham- 
ites, though Canaanite and Hebrew were certainly of the 
same ethnic origin, of which the writers were probably 
unaware. The Philistines are wrongly traced to Egypt. 
Elam was not Semitic, but Accadian. The reference to 
Sidon proves a late origin. 3 

VI. This geographical character of the distribution, 
which explains the ethnological errors, modifies the na 
tional interest of the myth ; 4 but such an interest becomes 
very evident, not only in the treatment of the family of 
Ham, but especially in the legend of the Tower of Babel. 
A cuneiform tablet recently discovered speaks of a confu 
sion of counsels relating to a piece of tower-work, and of 
its destruction by the anger of Anu. 5 Berosus helps con 
firm the probability that this is the original story of the 
Tower of Babel, by his own story that the gods in early 
time, angry at men s efforts to scale the sky, overturned 
their work by great winds, and caused confusion of speech, 
which had before been one and the same. 6 But this, so 

1 Herder : Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit. 

2 Golckiher s solar etymologies on these points are extremely unsatisfactory. 

8 Rawlinson {Origin of Nations) has an elaborate effort to show that nothing in the table 
is disputed by science. But his argument is a palpable failure, full of hypotheses, and after 
all finding a nitre fraction of the designations historically verified. 

* Von Boh!en : Genesis, ii. 202. 

5 Records of the Past (tr. by Boscawen), vii. 129. Smith: The Chaldean Account of 
Genesis, Sayce, pp. 163-165. 

6 Cory; Ancient Fragments (from Alexander Polyhistor), p. 75. 



272 DEVELOPMENT. 

far as it goes on the ethnology of Babel as " confusion," 
must have come from the Hebrews ; no Chaldean would 
ever have supposed Babel to mean anything but the " gate 
of God." Whatever may have been the earliest form of 
the story, the anger of God at the pride of man which 
sought to scale heaven is thoroughly Hebrew. The ha 
tred of the nomad for settled life, which constructed the 
tale of Cain s fratricide, and ascribed to his descendants 
the first cities, sciences, arts, and which perhaps moved 
the ancestors of the Hebrews to go out from " Ur of the 
Chaldees," was stimulated by the great gathering of races 
at Babylon and their diversity of speech. These were an 
offence to the nationality of the exiles. The unfinished 
tower of Belus, the mighty ruin with its haunting legend 
of offended powers, was taken as the sign of a becoming 
jealousy in their own God ; the vitrified bricks around it 
proved a fall by lightning, and so the story reached its 
present shape in the Jahvistic revisal of traditions after 
the exile. Rawlinson again gives the Hebrew the credit 
of preserving the original revelation, and the Chaldean the 
discredit of having tampered with its interest for mankind 
for the sake of enhancing certain " sacred books " of their 
own, a charge really applicable to the Hebrews, whose 
interest in mankind is confined to bringing the whole 
race under the power and wrath of their national deity. 
Later still, the Christian writers Cyril, Eusebius, Syncellus, 
and others, citing Berosus who says the gods overturned 
the tower of Babel, falsified the text to make it correspond 
with the Bible, substituting " God " for " the gods." 1 

In Bible apologetics of the kind we have given, Rawlin 
son simply follows the traditional method of the Christian 
Church. The relation of the Hebrew myths to the ethnic 
ones which they so much resemble, when not positively 
inverted so as to make the latter the borrowers, is mis- 

1 Carrd : L Ancien Orient, ii. 462. 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 273 

represented as being the introduction of a wholly new and 
higher spirit, universal and divine as the others are human 
and special, and as revealing the one true God as distin 
guished from the false gods of the Asiatic races. But the 
Hebrew introduced no such new foundation of authority, 
no such new ground of certitude. What the Abrahamite 
really demanded was that his God should have a more 
human volition and selection, if possible, than other gods ; 
that a covenant should be made with him as between two 
men, promising a special care and the multiplication of 
seed on the one side in return for obedience on the other. 
After the exile had somewhat purified this personal rela 
tion by a consciousness of ethnic connection and depend 
ence ; after maturer thought had applied it to the solution 
of social and moral problems ; after the prophetic spirit 
had breathed upon it, the same monotheistic separatism 
and exclusive interest still remained firm, although obliged 
to concede somewhat to these enlarging influences. The 
national theocratic writer who worked up the old mythol 
ogy in its present form was mainly intent on bringing the 
history of mankind into the line of Jahvistic providence 
and guidance. Now the historic value of this step is sim 
ply that which belongs to the idea of personal Will as the 
substance of God. This idea we have already stated to 
be characteristic of all the religions of Iran. We have 
here its culmination in a series of acts by which Jahveh 
chooses a single people as his typical heirs and representa 
tives for the government of the world. It is this expansion 
of the Iranian type of worship by the Hebrews that makes 
their traditional mythology interesting in our present in 
quiry. As a stage in the progress of man to universal 
religion, the Iranian conception is still predominant; and 
the Hebrew phase of it is of immense historic importance. 
But neither the Iranian conception, nor its Hebrew or 
Semitic expansion, is for us the measure and test of uni- 

18 



274 DEVELOPMENT. 

versal truth. This mode of conceiving the substance of 
the universe can no longer remain unquestioned, even in 
its still more expanded form, as Christian theology. We 
have seen that the Hindu mind tended to worship ab 
stract unity and super-personal being as more satisfactory 
than any definite personal conception. In its pantheism a 
conscious personal choice of human instruments, men, or 
nations would be out of place. The Chinese, on the other 
hand, have not separated deity from the concrete detail of 
the universe ; and here again such a personal choice would 
not be rational. Modern science has still other objections. 
Science abolishes supernatural volitions acting from with 
out, and so tends to reject the idea of a personal Creator, 
in the commonly received sense of the words. Universal 
Religion, reaching to the inscrutableness of Infinite Being 
as the substance of the cosmos itself, shrinks ever more 
and more from ascribing personal motives, intentions, or 
individual volitions to this Substance. The authority of 
principles whose root is in realities behind all personal 
wills, which must be based in them, not they in it, becomes 
the foundation of absolute morality. The Semitic religions, 
Judaism, Christianity, Islam, were enfolding sheaths 
of anthropomorphic mythology, needed for a time to pro 
tect the growing sense of essential cosmic order, until that 
which they instinctively groped after should come, as they 
had come, successively, in their day. That Christianity 
gave noble meaning to the doctrine of a divine Will, by 
emphasizing the element of Fatherhood therein is true, 
and hence its immense historic value ; but that did not and 
could not destroy the essential character of sovereign Will 
as arbitrary, finite, external. With all its tenderer, freer 
materials, Christianity did not alter the Hebrew way of 
conceiving God. Still less did the Jahvism of the post- 
exilian Hebrews, though improving in some ways on the 
old Chaldean mythology, substitute a new method. And 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 2/5 

we can no longer set off the Hebrews from other more 
Oriental branches of the Semitic family, in respect of the- 
istic beliefs, as a supremely chosen people, with gifts to 
humanity of a wholly new and specially providential kind. 
To abandon this error is the grand edict issued to relig 
ious thought from the new-risen tablets of Nineveh and 
Babylon. 

The result of these Genesis-studies may be briefly stated. 
The religious mythology of the Hebrews, rooted primarily 
in an old Chaldean and Semitic fund of legend, and the 
national aspiration for an exclusive deity, were worked 
over, under an influence which intensified the longing 
for national independence by a bitter sense of loss, and 
at the same time expanded their vision and gave it 
philosophical and historic direction. This influence came 
from Babylon, in the exile. Here was a concourse of 
races which could not fail to inspire the idea of human 
ity as a whole. Here was a large historic, traditional, and 
poetic literature, from which the Hebrew annalists and 
psalmists drew much of their tone as well as material. 1 
Here were legends of the origin of things, of divine pur 
poses, of penalties for sin, of physical and moral con 
ditions, and of national destiny. Here, as their whole 
subsequent record shows, the tribes had opportunity to 
learn spiritual discipline and the devoutness of resigna 
tion and trust, and to fit themselves for world-wide ser 
vice in the realm of religious culture. We may even say 
that at Babylon began their literary sense as well as their 
ecclesiastical organization. Here they dropped their He 
brew tongue and assumed the Aramaic, in the sixth cen 
tury before Christ. Here was adopted the astrological and 
demonic imagery of the book of Daniel, so fertile for 
their future apocalyptic writing. Here the spectacle of 
the rise and fall of empires taught them a kind of uni- 

1 Schrader (A Itgemtine Zeitung, Augsburg, June 19, 1874). 



276 DEVELOPMENT. 

versality in theoretic scope, without disturbing that intense 
self-consciousness which made them interpret all history 
as centring in themselves. In the Chaldean exile origi 
nated that strange mixture of opposites which imposed 
itself on the world as the one only true philosophy of 
historic providence, and which has had its day in the 
Christian method of constructing history around a chosen 
people and a personal Messiah. Instead of finding the 
evolution of human nature in history, this providential 
Judaism saw simply an omnipotent personal Will work 
ing on mankind and shaping its destinies in the interest 
of the Hebrew tribes ; while the modern method, still the 
orthodox one, as in Bossuet s day, differs from it only in 
changing the objective point of the same set of events 
and data, and so using them as to make the providential 
Will act, not in their interest as tribes, but in the interest 
of a Hebrew-born human God, whose claims they declined 
to accept. The theories of religious authority and divine 
government which have predominated in Christendom 
down to the present moment, the recognized foundations 
of theology and solutions of life and the world, we repeat, 
began to take shape and direction in the experience of 
the Hebrew exiles by the rivers of Babylon, weeping when 
they remembered Zion, their harps hung on the willows. 
Accursed Babylon was the mother of Christianity. 

These beliefs enter naturally into the history of human 
development; they represent a maturing stage in the evo 
lution of religion considered as the worship of personal 
Will. This is the key to their imperfections, their want 
of universality, their rejection by science. This worship of 
individual Will is the real substance of the exclusive and 
jealous claims of the ancient Hebrews, of their nomadic 
hatred of other races settled in their habits and regulated 
by laws. This explains their substitution of arbitrary 
commandment for rational freedom ; their superstitions 



THE HEBREW AND THE CHALDEAN. 

concerning divine rewards and penalties; their dread of 
knowledge as a religious trespass ; their fear of the Gen 
tile as one under curse, or as ignorant of the conditions 
of safety. 

The Genesis-legends which grew out of these elements 
are found to lack simplicity and spontaneity ; to be a mix 
ture of myth and dogma, and evident elaborations of early 
and largely Chaldean materials for special apologetic pur 
poses, such as justifying the institution of the Sabbath, 
the right of man over woman, the exclusion of foreign 
races from divine favor, the claim of Jahveh to do accord 
ing to his will. Even Lenormant admits in his elaborate 
discussion of their origin, that the writers availed them 
selves of myths already prevalent in the nations around 
them for dogmatic purposes, to represent more strongly 
the violence of the iniquity of the world outside. But we 
shall not explain their origin in human nature by merely 
detecting their errors. Behind these are moral and spirit 
ual facts, which history has here, as elsewhere, been con 
structed to meet and illustrate, the demand of the 
religious nature of man for a solution of the problems 
of his experience, for reconcilement to the conditions of 
existence and the order of the universe; the demand 
of his nature for a philosophy of history, for a concen 
tration of motives on some central truth, for unitary 
movement in human progress ; demands which from age 
to age find new meanings, but always testify to the common 
nature and aim of man. 

More definitely, these antique gropings of imagination 
and faith, with all their dross of hatred, desire, and fear, 
are outgrowths of the conscience, of the eternal dread 
of penalty, natural and personal, when the soul is under 
consciousness of evil doing ; of the ideal in man when he 
reflects on the defect of promised good, conceived as 
somewhat for which he was born, and whose loss is a fall 



2/8 DEVELOPMENT. 

from Paradise ; of the infection of evil in man and Nature, 
giving the aspect of a poetic justice to deluges, fratricides, 
and the shortening of human life ; and of the hardship of 
toil, sole inevitable condition of wisdom and success. 

Realities like these, not mere word-changes nor solar 
phenomena, are what construct myths, make Bibles, found 
religions. In the crudities of their early history and 
the persistent illusions of maturer ages, there is no more 
powerful agent than the fears and hopes involved in the 
worship of personal Will. 



POLITICAL FORCES. 
I. 

BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 

^I^HE foregoing section has given some idea of the 
- complexity of those race-qualities that were to be 
gathered up by the Persian empire into a dynamic basis 
for the civilizations of the West. All the nerve-fibres of 
historic force were in fact converging into one massive 
ganglionic centre, of whose coming energy that spray of 
races dashed by the will of Xerxes over heroic Greece 
gave but a feeble and transient sign. 

The Babylonian Chaldeans called themselves the nation 
of the Four Tongues ; and we have seen that they con 
tained Semitic, Turanian, and Cushite elements, probably 
Aryan also. The " mixed multitude " that thronged the 
streets of Babylon furnished food for the imagination of 
Greek dramatists 1 and Hebrew mythologists and prophets. 
Even Egyptian features are visible through the dusky civi 
lization of the Euphrates valley. The cuneiform records 
of Assyrian conquests astonish us by the immense number 
and variety of tribes that had reached distinct names and 
fames at so early a period, and were swept into subjection 
to a common master. Nineveh was substantially Semitic 
in her religious and sensuous intensity, in her passion for 
the universal sway of her national gods, and in her concen 
trated worship of personal Will. Then came the semi- 
Aryan Mede, not Aryan, for the Medes were largely 
Turanian, the very name of their country being a proof of 
it; and the Aryans were but a dominant class, one of six 
classes, as Herodotus tells us. Oppert even considers the 

1 Aeschylus : Persce. 



282 POLITICAL FORCES. 

great Median kings, whose history he records, beginning 
with Dei oces, the founder of the State, as of the Turanian 
race. A hardy mountain people, for two centuries sub 
ject to Assyria, bursts in on the overgrown giant, spread 
out, inert and loose, and, after hurling aside with barbaric 
treachery hordes of purely destructive Scythian intruders, 
shapes the elements into that first great international bond 
of fellowship in human history, the League of Lydia, 
Media, and Babylonia, 610 B. c. 

This Median empire was but a flash of nerve-lightning. 
It lasted less than a century; but when it had passed by, 
the nations were found possessed, like iron-filings beneath 
a magnet, by a stupendous force of coalescence. The full 
organization of these materials, which Semitic Assyria bent 
on conquest only could not begin to effect, even semi-Aryan 
Media had to transmit to a mightier hand. The function 
of the Mede was, with a Turanic elan, to break up the 
fixed soil, and to open channels for a more creative fire. 
This was not difficult, for the confluence of nations was 
but mechanical, and without organic relations. Herodotus 
tells us that Nineveh fell, not from internal strife nor de 
cay, but by the revolt and desertion of her allies ; and the 
cuneiform tablets record one incessant struggle to hold 
together an empire always crumbling at every point. 
Cyaxares the Mede, we are told, was the first really to 
organize an Asiatic army, combining the confused hordes 
which mere conquest brought together. He was a great 
personality, and Median history centres in him. But the 
main function of the Mede was to introduce the Persian, 
first absorbing the little kingdom of Achsemenes, then in 
turn being absorbed by his descendant, the great Cyrus. 
He must decrease, that the returning Achaemenide might 
increase. He came and went, leaving no trace. The 
wooden pillars of his palaces speedily perished; * his 

1 Rawlinson : Ancient Monarchies, ii. 265-277. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 283 

sculptures disappeared, and but one broken lion remains 
to tell their story ; 1 his towns were few and unwalled ; 
he left no literature, no record of his origin, no permanent 
institutions. His principal record is in a few monumental 
carvings and scattered notices by writers of other countries. 
These indeed retain some shadowy image of the fleeting 
i world-master, like the filmy outlines of primeval sea-rovers, 
which we sometimes find tenderly spared by Nature through 
her metamorphosis of rocks. Recent researches, too, seem 
to indicate that the Magi of Herodotus, whom it is no 
longer possible to identify with the Mazdean fire-priest 
(Athrava), represented the old religion of the Turanian 
Medes, especially its demonology, in many respects an 
tagonistic to the Persian faith, which the conspiracy of 
Gomates, the pseudo-Smerdis, under lead of these Magi, 
succeeded for a time in striking down. 

The Medes, it must also be observed, maintained their 
language, in spite of Aryan dominion, through the reigns 
of the greatest Achaemenidan kings ; and Darius held it in 
such honor as to give it precedence of the Assyrian, in the 
great trilingual inscription in which he recounted his ex 
ploits to his subject States. These are signs of an energetic 
national life, however brief its glory, and make plausible 
enough the features which we may gather from Greek 
history to construct their portrait. Tall, handsome, grace 
ful, merciless, and brave, the compact troop of " horse- 
archers " swept down from their mountains, to pierce the 
Ninevite armor with their long spears, and open ways for 
a more vigorous life. There is a fine ease of movement in 
these irresistible cavaliers, who touch their appointed hand 
work with the free grace of their own fluted caps, or of the 
pillared arcades which they introduced into Oriental art, 
a large genial handling, typified in their taking the colors 
sacred to the five planets and the sun and moon to make 

1 Rawlinson : Ancient Monarchies, ii. 321. 



284 POLITICAL FORCES. 

a rainbow of their city walls ; a firmness of grasp which 
has become proverbial as a synonym for inexorable laws, 
and a consciousness of authority that well fitted them to 
be heralds of the centralizing power of personal Will, 
as appears in what Herodotus and Strabo tell us of their 
haughty kings, who were not to be approached even by 
prostration, and who withdrew at their pleasure into des 
potic seraglios where eunuchs kept guard. 

The religious motor of modern civilizations has been the 
worship of personality. It is natural to find their springs 
in that succession of Asiatic empires, each of which was 
the sudden triumph of some petty tribe, forcing its way to 
power over the mass by its individual compactness and 
unity, and by the inspiration of a definite aim. The course 
of the present chapter will amply illustrate this law ol 
history. 

Even Babylon revives from her subjection to Assyria at 
the touch of the Mede, and for a little while wields a sway 
wider than either over the ferment of nations. Again the 
pregnant atom of personal purpose rules the chaos of ten 
dencies : the smallest of States holds the mass by its 
magnetic force. But, unlike the Mede, the Babylonian 
embodied in himself the whole substance of these eth 
nic elements in their finest forms, as history, tradition, 
institution, accumulated mental resource. 

His rise to supremacy, therefore, as we have already 
said, shows the scope of that prophetic construction which 
was going on in the Iranian world. The Babylonian 
kings, all gathered up at last into one speech, one apparel, 
one record of arrow-head syllables, are of many races. 
Berosus tells of Arabian, Chaldean, Median, Semite dynas 
ties. Many of their names are still linguistic riddles, and 
some (such as Hammurabi) point to races now unknown. 
They had found room in their pantheon for all the older 
gods, every one the ideal of some tribe of men. It is no 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 285 

longer an adventurous troop of warriors taking in hand a 
decaying empire, but a vast historic result, gathering into 
imperial personality the arts and sciences of a thousand 
years of growth, and the product of interfused races and 
religions, temples and priesthoods, on an unexampled scale, 
and in possession of a literature that summed up the wis 
dom of the race, an industrial achievement surpassing all 
that Asia had known ; a passion for national construction far 
beyond the Assyrian, and culminating in Nebuchadnezzar s 
reconstruction of every historical monument, city, or great 
canal in the Babylonian land ; its metropolis with the full 
dimensions of a State, with an area of two hundred square 
miles, condensing the commerce, wealth, and religion of a 
hemisphere. Babylon, " hammer of the nations," forcing 
their tributes before her feet, and their hordes into her 
legions, was infinitely more ; she was mother of arts to the 
teachers of Phidias and Apelles, the builders of Athens 
and Italy. She guaranteed that not one gift or tendency 
in them all should be lost, not one acquisition of humanity 
fail of circulating through coming time. Babylon, " key 
of history," was the prophecy of unity, of culture, of uni 
versal religion. Nebuchadnezzar, in the Hebrew legend 
cast down among the beasts for his pride, was not proud 
enough to boast, or even to know, the grandeur of his 
function among men. 

Observe again what it is that controls the elements to 
ends beyond itself or them. Personal will has here almost 
reached its absolute form, so far as the monarch s power 
is concerned. Another master is yet to come, with 
greater genius for sway, because it is the genius of a 
whole tribe concentrating its forces in one man. Baby 
lonian autocracy rests on religion ; Persian, on self- 
conscious gift and positive culture. Nebuchadnezzar is 
Merodach ; Nabonidus is Bel. Every royal name is here 
a compound of gods and the dealings of gods with men. 



286 POLITICAL FORCES. 

Even the rage that tore and the heel that crushed the 
nations were but conditions of this personal sway, by 
which direction was given to the thought and faith of 
coming ages ; and in the succeeding European civiliza 
tions, whose central force has been always some factor in 
the worship of will-power, have not these Babylonian con 
ditions of such worship, in one or another form, maintained 
their ground? 

In spite of that remorseless indictment by the Hebrew 
prophets, echoed by the Christian seer, which have made 
this queen of Western Asia a hissing on the lips of ages, 
the strongest unconscious testimony to the significance of 
her work comes from these enemies themselves. On the 
one hand, the prophets have nothing to charge against her 
of which they do not confess that their own people were 
guilty to the full extent of their power. The pseudo- 
Jeremiah s 1 picture of Babylon s licentiousness and idolatry 
is surpassed by Ezekiel s description of the abominations 
of Jerusalem of that day, 2 and pales before the mournful 
confessions of the later Isaiah in the name of his rescued 
nation. Nevertheless, the Hebrew asserted the unaltered 
claim of these desperate rebels to be the children of Jah- 
veh s mercies and the future crown of his rejoicing, 3 while 
Babylon had forfeited the right to live. On the other hand, 
Jeremiah, noblest of the prophets, who dared to speak his 
mind in face of princes and priests on the meaning of public 
events, who, undismayed by foul dungeon or patriotic rage, 
denounced the great national crime of re-enslaving free 
men, and launched Jahveh s thunders at the head of a cruel 
and treacherous king, and who outlived the charge of trea 
sonable sympathy with the foreigner, to find his insight 
justified by the course of events, this one statesman 



1 The denunciation of Babylon (chaps. 1., li.) at the close of his prophecies belongs to a 
period after his death, and is manifestly the work of a later hand. 

- Ezekiel, viii. xvi. xxii. 3 Ibid., xx. 33-44. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 287 

among the prophets has nothing but welcome and honor 
for the Chaldean city, as Jahveh s avenger and the ap 
pointed refuge of his people. 

Not till the tread of the Persian marching to Babylon s 
destruction broke on the Hebrew ear, was Jeremiah s name 
used by another to pull down the honorable prestige he 
had built up for her; not till then do we hear of the 
" golden cup" that has made the nations drunk and mad, 
whose end is come, and the measure of whose covetous- 
ness is full, inhabited only by hyenas and owls. It was 
the Hebrew s way to construct events when they had 
passed into fulfilment as inspired predictions of his own 
absolutism. 

But none other than the prophet himself whose lips were 
glowing with the grandest gospel of political and religious 
liberty that stands between the lids of the Bible, " After 
those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward 
parts, and write it in their hearts, and they shall teach no 
more every man his neighbor, saying, Know the Lord, 
for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the 
greatest of them," l none other than he it was who said 
to foolish kings, in the same great Name, Behold, I have 
given all these lands into the hand of the king of Babylon, 
my servant, and the nation that will not serve him will I 
punish with the sword. Hearken not to lying prophets, 
but serve the king of Babylon and live. 2 And to the cap 
tives from Jerusalem, " Seek ye the peace of the city 
whither I have caused you to be carried, . . . and pray 
unto the<Lord for it ; for in the peace thereof shall ye have 
peace." 3 " Jahveh s sword is in his hand," says Ezekiel, 
too, of the Chaldean, " and Pharaoh s arm shall be 
broken." 4 

1 Jeremiah, xxxi. 33, 34. 2 Ibid., xxvii. 3 Ibid., xxix. 

4 Ezekiel, xxx. In the Talmud the Jewish Rabbins ascribe the destruction of Jerusalem to 
the neglect of popular education and the decay of schools (Schaff, 119) ; also to the stern literal 
ism with which the law was executed, to the neglect of its milder spirit. ( B. Meziah, 306.) 



288 POLITICAL FORCES. 

And what, after all, was the special offence of a people 
from whom Jahveh was bringing deliverance to the de 
based tribes, and from whom was to come their full 
fruition? "Because ye rejoiced and exulted, O ye plun 
derers of my inheritance, because ye wantoned like a 
thrashing heifer and neighed like a stallion, your mother 
is utterly confounded ; she that bore you is put to shame." 
" Because she hath exalted herself against Jahveh, . . . 
therefore shall her young men fall in her streets, and 
nothing of her be left; " because also the years of cap 
tivity had gone on, as Jeremiah had predicted they would, 
and still " the oppressor " refused to let " his people " go. 1 
In short, it was because the national God of the Hebrews 
was ignored and set aside, that their religious zeal dared 
to put upon the dead lips of Jeremiah himself those in 
vented directions to his disciple, to cast his " book of 
the woes of Babylon " into the Euphrates, bound to a 
stone, saying, " Even so shall Babylon sink and rise no 
more." 2 

And yet it is from their own admissions that we learn 
to ascribe to this " oppressor " a treatment singularly gen 
erous and kind. The later romance of Daniel gives evi 
dence at least that the Babylonians exercised a hospitality, 
religious and intellectual, unequalled in any other State ; 
that their sovereign was accustomed to seek out unblem 
ished men from foreign lands, skilled in all outside wisdom 
and science, so that the learning of the Chaldeans might 
be sown in choice soil for public service ; 3 and that he 
had the insight to discern in a Hebrew youth abilities be 
yond all his astrologers and magicians, and liberality to 
reward him with the highest official station. 4 If this na 
tive culture is denounced as sorcery, let us not forget that 
Daniel himself was but another among the king s inter- 

i Jeremiah, 1. 2 Ibid., li. 

3 Daniel, i. 4. * Ibid., ii. 48 ; vi. 3. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 289 

preters of dreams. In the same way it accorded with 
later Hebrew associations to represent Nebuchadnezzar 
and Cyrus, the Pharaoh and the Messiah of the national 
exile, as alike converted to the worship of Jahveh, and 
to sound their praises in the language of the national 
psalms. 1 Surely there was more justice in this acknowl 
edgment than in the bitter complaints of oppression that 
broke out from the exiles, when they heard the advancing 
tramp of the Persian host, " Woe to the spoiler, who 
showed no mercy, proud against the Holy One of Israel ! 
She shall be snared and taken, so that none shall escape ; 
she shall be dealt with according to her works." 2 Nor can 
we help accounting for the later Isaiah s tender wail over 
Israel in exile, " as a man of sorrows, acquainted with 
grief," by the long-pent feeling of national thraldom, rather 
than by any special severities on the part of the master. 
But this indignation found freer vent in the later Hebrew 
legend, where Babylon figures, to meet the exigencies of 
an anti-Syrian passion, as a nest of cruelties and idolatries, 
a fiery furnace for the martyrs of Israel s God, a haunt of 
lying priests, who befool king and people till Daniel out 
wits them ; the throne of a dragon-god, till the same 
prophet chokes him with a bolus to prove him mortal ; a 
den of lions for a prophet, who is fed by one brought 
from Judea by the hair of his head, till the tyrant, who 
is no other than Cyrus himself, is forced to confess the 
Hebrew God. 3 

It is easy to understand that religious exclusiveness 
should combine in this way with patriotic wrath, especial 
ly when we remember the despondency of the Jews after 
the exile, at Jahveh s failure to bring the promised Messi 
anic age. But Babylon was not the persecutor of nations 
and faiths ; it was their gathering-place, and the germinal 

1 Ezra, 12-4. 2 Jeremiah, 1. 29. 

3 See Apocryphal Books of the Old Testament. 
19 



290 POLITICAL FORCES. 

point of their unity. As Jeremiah had counselled the 
exiles to pray for the peace of Babylon, so Ezekiel s con 
ferences with their elders show that they were allowed to 
retain their civil and religious institutions, governed by a 
chief of their own, although by his own testimony they 
were altogether unworthy of the privilege. 1 The exiles 
were not only protected in life and property, they were 
represented at court. Nehemiah was royal cup-bearer. 
Jehoiachin, their imprisoned prince, was released and 
treated with distinguished honor. 2 They increased in 
numbers, and while three times as many persons were 
ready to return, upon the permission of Cyrus, as had 
been carried away two generations before, the large and 
influential number of those who stayed in Babylonia, not 
withstanding the exertions of Ezra and his friendly coad 
jutors in literary and legislative activity, is a proof of the 
strong root that had been struck in the peace and pros 
perity of their Chaldean home. Nor could the patriots 
fairly complain of the manner in which the interests of 
their country were looked after by the conquerors. Geda- 
liah was doubtless the best governor who could have been 
appointed for Judea, and his foul murder by his own coun 
trymen was anything but encouraging to royal benefac 
tions. The free choice of Zerubbabel and Jeshua as 
leaders of the return was no better sign of the friend 
ship of Cyrus than of the normal condition of Hebrew 
institutions in the land of exile. How prodigious the con 
trast with their utter degradation and the ruin of the Pales 
tinian remnant and the fugitives in Egypt, a glance at the 
record shows. Never did a people exhibit less political 
capacity under difficult relations with their stronger neigh 
bors than did these children of an exclusive religious zeal 
upon their own soil. Nothing but the crash that flung 
their quivering fragments into the fostering arms of a 

1 Ezekiel, xx. 33-38; xxiii. 2 Jeremiah, lii. 31. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 29 1 

hated foreign civilization like the Persian, highly regulated 
and organized, whose very success stimulated them with 
mingled mortification and hope, saved those germs of 
future influence upon human history that lay hidden in 
their very self-isolation. The secret of their tragic destiny 
is revealed in that seething of undisciplined passions which 
mingled in one volcanic outbreak against Babylon the ten- 
derest pathos of homesick exiles and the merciless rage of 
savages. " By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down ; 
yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. O daughter of 
Babylon ! happy shall he be who dasheth thy little ones 
against the stones." l 

When the returning exiles have come under Ezra s 
Law in their own land they are a new people ; properly 
for the first time a people ; possessed by a conviction of 
national and religious unity, due in no slight measure to 
the stimulus of the exile and return. Jahveh is now the 
centre of the one national ritual. Israel, the servant of 
God, suffers for the popular sins, redeemer of the world. 
How they put away their very wives and children in the 
name of national duty ! A more or less permanent written 
constitution has been accepted, whose main peculiarity is 
a compromise between the two elements until then exist 
ing in sharp antagonism, the prophetic and the priestly. 
Both are in fact transformed ; and while the ecclesiastical 
system becomes far more hierarchical and vicarious in 
form, the prophetic has lost its individual inspiration, is 
recognized as having no more the old fire which had glori 
fied the days of tribal discord, but is diffused more widely 
in the popular mind in a spirit of reaction against the 
exclusiveness and pride of the second Temple, and in an 
increase of religious and national enthusiasm fostered by 
the instructions of the scribes. The Temple of Jerusalem 
is now, as vainly proposed by Josiah, the only place of 

1 Psalm, cxxxvii. 



POLITICAL FORCES. 

Jahveh s presence ; the law is a systematic ritual ; the old 
Levitical rights to priesthood are suppressed as punishment 
for the national sin of free worship on the high places, 
while the sons of Aaron are exalted into an exclusive hie 
rarchy, a high-priest of mediatorial dignity at their head, 1 
splendid in dress as in function, with sacrifices, vows, festi 
vals reorganized in their interest. 2 The sorrows of the 
exile have intensified religious nationality, or, we may say, 
created it in the form of an aristocracy. Yet, on the other 
hand, this very official and aristocratic spirit compelled a 
certain democratic quality, a free many-sidedness, in which 
lay the germs of the Maccabean heroes, of Hillel and Jesus, 
of Essenic sainthood, of the moral and philosophical sub 
limities scattered through the ecclesiasticism of the Apoc 
rypha, of the free doubts and varying dogmatic questioning 
of the " Preacher " and the Son of Sirach, of the lawless 
treatment of historic facts and laws by the Chronicler, of 
the stimulating strife of factions in Asmonean times, of the 
growth of sects and of those Greek sympathies of Hero- 
dian times which did so much to counteract the legalism 
of the church, and, especially, of the efforts to escape an 
thropomorphic views of deity, which appear both in Judea 
and Alexandria. The epoch bore the noblest poetry in 
the psalms of the Temple, full of popular love and longing 
for its holiness ; while the Persian satrap and the remote 
ness of the Temple of Jahveh s presence, aided by the 
synagogues spread over the land, could not but combine 
to foster local independence and protest. 

Moreover the Law itself, in its reformations, brought with 
it a sense of national remorse which made it provide for 
many wants and claims of the masses. Contrast Nehe- 
miah s Sabbatarian bigotry and his rage against mixed 
marriages with his rebukes of rich usurers and his release 
of poor debtors from their hands. Note the limitations 

1 Zechariah, vi. 9-15. 2 Kuenen : Religion of Israel > ii. 259. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 293 

set in the post-exilian law to the blood-avenger s rights 
and powers, 1 and the scheme for a Sabbatical jubilee-year 
of release from debts and alienations of land, with the many 
laws facilitating redemption. 2 These humanities stand in 
relief against the many barbarous injunctions inspired by 
the fear of heathen interference with the separation of "the 
holy nation to Jahveh. 3 When we read the grand humani 
ties of Malachi and the later Isaiah, who wrote upon the 
eve of the great national metamorphosis, we cannot help 
thinking that these last and grandest utterances of the 
prophetic spirit point not only backward to the expand 
ing and softening influences of the exile, but forward to 
those noble landmarks of universality, the books of Jo 
nah and of Ruth. Between these stands the whole distinc 
tive Levitical legislation into which Hebrew tradition and 
life, from the old free tribal usages 4 through the Deuter- 
onomic reformation, crystallized at last, as ecclesiasticism 
does crystallize, traced by the keen analysis of recent 
scholarship to the labors of the Babylonian Jews of the 
exile, beginning with Ezekiel, but mainly after the first 
emigration of Zerubbabel and Jeshua, during the eighty 
years between 538 and 458 B. c., and even later, at Jerusa 
lem itself. Here, as well as previously at Babylon, Ezra and 
his companions were compiling, constructing, collating his 
Book of Laws 5 for the use of the new people of Jahveh, for 
whom these scribes saw in a regulated priestly ritualism 
the nationality required. 6 They did their best to join 
these to the old, forgotten, and the recognized statutes 
and usages of the land ; but they did not scruple to alter 
and add to these very largely, always in the interest of 
ecclesiastical centralization and authority. 7 For them the 

1 Numbers, xxxv. 9-34. 2 Leviticus, xxv. 1-7. 

3 See Numbers, xxxi. 49. * Exodus, xxi.-xxiii. 

5 Levitical Book of Origins (Ewald). 6 See Kuenen, ii. 152, 153, 233. 

7 So the author of Chronicles, who seeks to give Davidic authority to their later ecclesi 
astical laws. 



294 POLITICAL FORCES. 

great age of the prophets was dead and gone. It had 
not united Israel, nor saved her. The age of written law 
must come ; of the hedges of the scribe about it, and the 
right of the priest to administer it. Yet see what lessons 
the rude Hebrews must have learned at Babylon, what 
breadth even in hating and repelling what was too great 
for them to ignore ; and how the Persian universalism 
followed them up in the edict commanding Ezra " to in 
struct all the people in the laws of their God." 1 Of the 
influence of Zoroastrianism itself in the hundred years of 
Persian sway over Judea we shall speak elsewhere ; Baby 
lonia is our present subject. 

These Hebrews have learned the arts, traditions, litera 
ture of an ancient and great civilization. Their priests 
and prophets have been working out, amid these large 
resources, a reconstruction of their nomadic mythology, 
a systematic religious code and ritual which shall recon 
cile the differences of their past and present, of their 
formal and spiritual elements, and bind in one meaning 
the Eldhim of their fathers and the Jahveh of their faith. 
Nothing is more manifest in their post-exilian literature, 
unreliable as it is, than the purpose to give unity to their 
history by making these two names of deity, which rep 
resent distinct stages in the growth of the religious idea, 
completely interchangeable. And this they did so suc 
cessfully, that the words probably conveyed no more 
suggestion of difference than we find in the terms " God " 
and " the Lord," by which they are respectively rendered in 
the English Bible. They were even joined in a single title, 
Jahveh-Elohim, the " Lord God." There can be no surer 
sign of cosmopolitan experience in a people than the 
effort to give unity to their religious history. To gather 
up all its germinal stages into an ideal purpose, is a step 
which involves previous intercourse with larger forms of 

1 Ezra, vii. 25. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 295 

civilization. And this result of the captivity was the 
opening for constructions of universal history, like those 
in Daniel and the Apocryphal books, as well as in the 
ethnic genealogical table of Genesis ; l all of which, how 
ever marred by national and ecclesiastical exclusiveness, at 
least indicates that this was giving way to a supreme inter 
est in human history as a whole. For this pregnant edu 
cation of Judaism, Christianity, its offspring, should credit 
the much-abused banks of " the river of Chebar." We 
may maintain that the age of prophecy was dead ; but 
after all, till the day of the exile the Hebrew prophet was, 
with all his moral ardor and protest, truculent, narrow, and 
extravagant, extremely wild and irrational. There, as the 
exile sat and mused, were opened larger heavens than 
those of Ezekiel s vision or Ezra s priestly ritualizing. 
The whole future of his people shaped itself then among 
the heathen laws and hospitable liberties he held accursed. 
No one could condense the evidences of this stimulating 
influence better than Dean Stanley has done in one sen 
tence in his " History of the Jewish Church," " The cap 
tivity bore the greatest of Hebrew prophets, the chief of 
Hebrew scribes, the founder of Hebrew law, the fathers 
of Hebrew literature." Ezekiel is possessed with the pic 
ture of Israel s history. His lamentations over this, and 
his tracing out through all, of Jahveh s justice, is the earli 
est great construction of national history on moral and 
religious principles, of a Divine administration of affairs, 
and of the supreme authority of a personal Will. The in 
terpretation of the Law by the best collected mind of the 
nation was substituted for the dogmatism of the prophet ; 
the constitution of the theocracy for the arbitrariness of 
kings and priests. 

But a greater social and political renewal than any of 
these must be noted. There in prevailing Parsi customs, 2 

1 Genesis, chap. x. 2 Kuenen : Religion of Israel, iii. 35. 



296 POLITICAL FORCES. 

we may add, began the democratic element in Hebrew 
religious forms, the recognition of the human element 
in the law for the instruction of the people, the Sabbath 
meeting in the synagogue, the expansive legal studies of 
the Scribes and growth of the oral law, the public assem 
blies called to reconstitute nationality, 1 and the reshaping 
of the old prophecies and histqries. So also began there 
the devout listening to the history of Jahveh s dealing 
with their fathers, 2 the public reading of the Law, and the 
freer interpretation of the Scriptures that bore such a 
leading part in the origins of Christianity when the Scribes 
had overcome the priestly power, degenerating indeed into 
the narrowness of the later Palestinian sects, but holding 
its own in that larger survey of principles which distin 
guished Babylonian from Judean Talmudists, and which 
afterward suffered from Judean narrowness as did early 
Christianity. 3 

To Babylon, then, the Hebrews owed their later language, 
calendar, and religious imagery; but, above all, an expansion 
of mind, a historic sense ; germs of universality, hopes of 
national life, an emotional experience of sorrow and faith 
that was no less than a change of heart, and which flow ed 
forth in psalms of resignation and aspiration, of humble trust 
and spiritual yearning, of noble purpose and happy praise. 
Here the nation saw, through its old and now established 
rite of slaughtered rams, even by reaction against this 
ritualism to the nobler meanings of sacrifice, in the heroic 
sainthood that suffered for the sake of all, the pious ser 
vant of God, the true Israel of exile, who was bruised for 
the iniquities of his people, and by whose stripes they 
were healed. Here in the hospitable shadow of a great 
empire they grew into that home-trust which could after- 

1 Nehemiah, viii. 10; Ezra, ix. 6-15. 

2 Nehemiah, ix. 5. 

3 Geiger: Das Judenthum und seine Geschichte, ii. 31, 32. Muhlfelder : Rabh. ein 
Lebensbild zur Gesch. d. Talmud 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 297 

wards say, " He who emigrates from Babylon to Jerusalem 
commits a crime, breaks a command." 1 Here had indeed 
been, and here was again to be, when eight or ten cen 
turies had passed, in the great age of Talmudic teaching, 
and under many of the Persian Sassanidae, through the 
Christian persecutions of Constantine and Justinian, a Har 
bor of Refuge, such as Judaism could not find elsewhere 
in the civilized world. That the Jews themselves were in 
some degree conscious of their debt of gratitude, for a 
time at least, appears from the refusal of the high-priest 
to transfer the national loyalty from Darius to Alexander 
after his great victories over the Persian king. 2 

It has been too long the fashion to see this great his 
toric city in the lurid light of Hebrew denunciations, and 
to regard its destruction as evidence at once of prophetic 
inspiration and of the wrath of the God of the Bible 
against national iniquity. The absorption or passing away 
of States is not a penalty for their sins, any more than their 
expansion is the reward of their virtues. Without dispar 
aging the part played by moral forces in the movement 
of civilization, we must regard historical conditions as 
quite too complicated to be reduced to a mere formula 
of ethical retribution. A Hebrew who ascribed the over 
throw of Jerusalem to the corruption of Jahveh-worship, 
might as well have pretended that the extension of Neb 
uchadnezzar s sway was due to the virtues of his people ; 
and he would then have had, in consistency, to demon 
strate that these same virtuous Babylonians had been 
transformed in half a century into criminals fit only for 
the destroyer ! This logical continuity was wanting to 
the Hebrew mind, which ascribed the success or failure 
of the chosen nation to the terms on which they stood 
with their God, while it failed to accord the same condi- 

1 Jost : Gesch. d. Jndent., iv. 305. Also Milman s History nfthe Jews, chap. xxL 

2 Josephus : Antiquities of the yews,xi. 8. 3- 



298 POLITICAL FORCES. 

tions to the heathenism that lay outside of his law. The 
simple fact was that the petty tribe of Judah could not 
resist the conquerors of the world. Science has taught 
us that the limits of a nation s existence and growth are 
determined by conditions of climate, position, and race; 
by its relative strength and sagacity; by the currents of 
civilization, opening or closing paths to power; and by 
the fortunes of war. Probably no great people was ever 
so utterly demoralized as to owe its destruction to war 
alone. The Roman Empire was enervated by self-indul 
gence. But its conquerors from the northern wildernesses 
were not models of virtue ; and the Rome that could not 
withstand their blows could at least live an after-life in the 
conquest of their brutality by her culture and her law. 
Surely it was not owing to the vices of Rome that horde 
after horde of barbarians pressed like waves on one another 
till they overflowed Europe with a physical force that no 
moral energy could have withstood. The consequences 
of slavery were certainly sapping the unity of the empire ; 
but so overgrown a dominion must have fallen to pieces 
by lack of central authority, and by the restlessness of the 
tribes it sought to hold, even if its provincial administra 
tion had been far better than it was. Like all great cities, 
Babylon doubtless had her share of luxury, covetousness, 
and crime ; perhaps the pictures drawn by Hebrew prophet 
and Latin historian are within the truth ; but to say that 
for this reason her glory was turned to " heaps " is to 
forget all the elements of the situation save one. It is 
to ignore the immeasurable part she has borne in human 
history, both before and after her visible downfall. It must 
be remembered that her vices did not prevent her from 
being, at that very moment, famous throughout Asia for 
the valor and energy of her campaigns ; that a less skilful 
and fortunate foe than Cyrus would probably have failed 
to force her enormous defences, which were only carried 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 299 

by a stratagem played on the effeminacy not of the peo 
ple, but of the court. With all their excesses, the Baby 
lonians had won repute for honesty and self-possession ; l 
and the earnestness of their religious faith and public spirit 
is shown by their prodigious works and by the inscriptions 
of their kings. That a city which held from an unknown 
antiquity down to the last moment of its existence the 
rank of mistress in commerce and culture, a metropolis 
to which all the great roads of Asia converged, and from 
which the wealth of the Euphrates and Tigris flowed down 
through the great Persian Gulf to the ocean highway of 
the ancient world ; " the glory of kingdoms, the beauty 
of the Chaldees excellency;" a city that could build walls 
fifty miles in circumference, and terraced gardens on a 
similar scale, upheld by columns and watered by hydraulic 
engines, and river-walls and piers to match them ; that 
combined every known form of industrial achievement and 
productive craft; the confluence of all races, the home of 
all beliefs, that such a city became "heaps" because 
of its moral and religious rottenness is simply incredible, 
and would, if true, make it absurd to expect anything 
from the highest capacities of mankind. Sodoms and 
Gomorrahs on such a scale are preposterous. The de 
nouncers of Babylon were rebuked in after days by the 
legend of Jahveh s own promise to Abraham, that ten 
righteous men were enough to save a city; 2 and by 
his plea with Jonah, " Thou hast had pity on the gourd 
which came up in a night and perished in a night; and 
should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are 
more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern 
between their right hand and their left hand?" 

Whatever its morals, Babylon would doubtless have con 
tinued for ages to be the centre of Asiatic civilization, had 

1 Rawlinson : Ancient Monarchies, ii. 508. 

2 Genesis, xviii. 32. 



3OO POLITICAL FORCES. 

not Alexander s plans for its restoration been cut short by 
death ; had not the Persians, at a later time, in their fear 
of invasion by sea, broken the connection between the 
Tigris and the Persian Gulf; had not, still later, the dis 
covery erf an ocean passage to India destroyed that land 
traffic of which Babylon was the entrepdt, and which our 
own days are bringing afresh into its ancient track. The 
vices of Belshazzar s semi-mythic court had less to do with 
Babylon s desolation than the removal of the Achaemen- 
idan seat of empire to Susa, and the change from Chaldean 
culture to Persian military ambition in Western Asia, which 
required a new metropolis and a new basis of nationality. 
Still more conclusive against the Bible-theory is the actual 
record of Babylon s influence on universal history, on 
the one hand direct and visible, on the other indirect and 
invisible; of Babylon after the flesh, and Babylon in the 
spirit. What if her undisputed mastery of the Asiatic 
world lasted less than a century? It was long enough 
to gather the scattered lights of past ages into one flame, 
and transmit to the next master of nerve-power in this 
process of historic growth what he would never have had 
the philosophy to concentrate, nor the patience to search 
out; long enough to mingle the physical stamina and 
crude capacity of a hundred heterogeneous tribes with 
the best organic life of wealth and culture that had then 
been attained, and thus to make Greece, Judea, Arabia, 
and through them Europe and America, her unceasing 
debtors. 

Babylon became " heaps ; " but when a thousand years 
have passed over those " heaps," antiquity itself arises out 
of them, and holds forth the lost fragments of history that 
prove humanity an unbroken evolution, a movement to uni 
versal ends. When Ker Porter s troop first approached 
the mound of Birs-Nimrud, they saw its desolate summit 
in possession of three magnificent lions, who moved majes- 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 3OI 

tically away at their approach, as if-to reprove those nurs 
lings of the ages for forgetting that Babylon, though a 
shadow, was still a throne for kings. 1 

It has hardly been imagined to what extent Persian civil 
ization was the product of Babylonian elements. A loose 
congeries of nations, apparently with nothing in common 
but the tendency to rebellion and separation, were trans 
mitted by Nabonidus to Cyrus, whose hands were so full 
of conquests that he did little towards shaping political 
order out of their fruits. But he received more than this 
chaos of tendencies. We have traced through the Iranian 
past an energetic germ of unity, in the pressure of ideal 
motive into immediate act, which I have characterized as 
nerve-power. The main spring of this energy of purpose 
could be found only in personal Will. This was its earliest 
ideal in the East, as it is its latest inspiration in Western 
society and faith. Its advent on an ethnic scale was in 
that Iranian exaltation of royal personages, as actual or 
expectant masters of the world through force of will, of 
which it is a popular error to suppose that Cyrus and his 
successors were the founders. It was Iranian, before it 
was Persian. First noted by the Greeks in the hosts pre 
cipitated on Europe by the nod of the king, it was yet, as 
we have seen, the motive-force of those great empires 
which had preceded his. The leader of a troop of moun 
taineers, Cyrus proved, like the Assyrian, the Mede, the 
Babylonian before him, only with far greater emphasis, 
that personal quality is master of mere human mass. The 
immense power that belonged to this conviction was al 
ready a tradition of these nations, ready to pass from hand 
to hand along the line of conquerors. So the spirit of 

1 Babylon, as the traveller sees it from the Birs-Nimrud to-day, is no desert. The date 
groves, palms, and mulberry trees, the beautiful gardens, magnificent crops, and far-spread 
irrigation, make the scene as lovely as possible, and serve as a benediction of Nature on a 
mighty historic mission long finished and fulfilled. (For description, see Geary s Travels 
in Asiatic Turkey, chap. xii.J 



302 POLITICAL FORCES. 

Nineveh and Babylon moved in the arm of Cyrus when it 
waved the dispersed Hebrews into national life, as when it 
chastised the river Gyndes for drowning a sacred horse ; in 
the rage of Xerxes casting fetters into the Hellespont ; in 
the self-invocation of every Achgemenidan on his stone tab 
lets, as sole "King of kings; king by grace of Ormuzd, 
of this wide earth, afar and near." And at last Alexander 
himself, pupil of Greek liberty, conquers Persian Babylon 
only to assume the adored dress of Darius, to prescribe 
prostration at his own feet, and demand at Susa, even of 
the Greeks, that they should worship him as their god. 

The Persian monotheist did but intensify the personal 
monarchism of the older worship when he substituted one 
sovereign will for the many gods in human form of the 
Semitic and Turanian pantheon, whom he smote into the 
dust. His symbol of Ormuzd, a man flying in a winged 
circle over the king s head, belonged to Asshur, the god 
of Assyria, before him. Here was a fit type of that nerve- 
energy and resistless will by which the Persians carried to 
a higher point the personal ideal of Nineveh and Babylon. 
So the winged human-headed bulls of these cities, of simi 
lar purport, and the monsters that had typified terrible 
powers of evil purpose, did but receive from the new dual 
ism of spiritual forces a more practical and realistic form 
of the same meaning. The old Magian cultus of the ele 
ments, slowly built up by Cushite, Turanian, and Semite 
combined, was also transmitted to the Persians, who ac 
cepted its worship of fire, its divining rods, and perhaps 
its command to destroy noxious animals, and who prac 
tised at times, if we may believe Herodotus, its dreadful 
rite of human sacrifice. Even the Babylonian Venus, 
Anaitis, 1 found admission at a later period into the reli 
gion of these scourgers of idolatry, even among the suc- 

1 According to Haug, who refers to Windischmann (Essays, etc., p. 43), Anaitis is in the 
old Yashts of the A vesta. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 303 

cessors of that Cambyses who had stabbed the Egyptian 
Apis and overturned his shrine. They took their writing 
from the Assyrian cuneiform. Babylon furnished their 
system of coinage ; Egypt and Media, their dress; and into 
their worship of Ormuzd they absorbed without change the 
Semitic gods of their subject States. 1 

Spiegel has traced many of the gods of the Zend-Avesta 
directly to older Semitic originals, 2 and it is but reasonable 
to believe that the civilization of western Iran, which He 
rodotus entitled Persian, was in fact the resultant of the 
manifold traditions and institutions deposited in succession 
on the soil. But Persia brought also her own gift, her 
distinctive function. As to what it was, we can judge 
better after a brief survey of what we know as to the 
origin and history of her people. On this matter the 
Hebrew Scriptures, until recently the principal guide as 
to the races of Western Asia, give very little information. 
The ram and the butting goat of the book of Daniel con 
vey no idea of the difference of the Persian and Macedo 
nian empires ; nor do other Bibles throw much light on 
the origin of the tribe which Cyrus raised to the throne 
of Asia. Cuneiform inscriptions, as early as the ninth 
century before Christ, if we are not deceived by a re 
semblance of names, as Schrader thinks we are, have 
preserved the important fact that the "country of Par sua" 
(Persia) contained a very great number of independent 
chiefs who submitted to the Assyrians. 3 This is about 
all we can learn from the stone-records, and the lively 
Greeks yield nothing but mythic names. The early le 
gends of the Zend-Avesta, like those of the Hebrew Genesis, 
may cover the religious antagonism of nomadic and settled 
tribes, and the primeval warfare of their gods of night and 

1 Spiegel: Studien tiber d. Zend-Avesta (Zeitschr. d. Deiitsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch.^ 
ix. 178). Duncker : Gcschichte des A Iterthums ^ bd. ii. 626, 641. Herodotus, i. 135. 

2 Eran. Alterth., bd. ii. 

3 Black obelisk Inscription of Shalmaneser II., and Inscription of Shamas Rimmon. 



304 POLITICAL FORCES. 

day; but, however ancient, these transformed traditions 
and names throw no light on the special facts of early 
Persian history. On the origin of the monarchy formed 
by union of the cognate tribes we have nothing but the 
name of Achaemenes, who is given in the inscription of 
Darius at Behistun, as the eponymous chief of his dynasty ; 
though Darius speaks of himself as the ninth Achsemenidan 
king, which implies that there were five of the race before 
Achsemenes, the line having probably been interrupted by 
the conquest of Persia by the Medes. 1 Achaemenes there 
fore, if a real person, was not the founder of the monarchy, 
and we find no record as to who was. The Persian was 
more interested in recording how his " spear reached afar, 
seeking war far from his land," than in remembering his 
tribal origin, which was probably humble enough. We 
do not even know whether, previous to Cyrus, his country 
was a satrapy of Media, or a kingdom paying tribute, 
though that it was the former is by far the more prob 
able. Herodotus relates the Median conquest, and brings 
Cyrus, through his mother, into the royal family, not of 
Persia, but of Media. 2 

Who, then, were the Persians? The only reply is, a 
torrent which descended from its mountain home, and 
swept all Western Asia into its current almost at one 
bound, but left no record by which we can trace it to its 
springs. The typical race of Iran, the Persians, have 
given their name to its history at every phase ; yet we 
do not even know whether this name comes from that 
of their principal tribe, or is the Greek form of the 
" Parsu " or " Bartsu " of the inscriptions. Of the Greek 
historians, our earliest informant, Herodotus, lived but a 
century after Cyrus ; yet his account of that historic per 
son is, by his own statement, but one of three ways of 

1 See Oppert s translation of the Behistun Inscription, and his note. Records of the Past, 
vu * ^7 2 Herodotus vs. Xenophon. Herodotus, i. H2. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 305 

telling the story, either of which he was at liberty to se 
lect, and is evidently to a great degree mythical. His 
authorities are Median and Babylonian, and he knows so 
little of the old Persian religion that he does not even men 
tion Ormuzd or the two principles of the Avesta-faith, but 
describes a kind of element-cult instead, which is perhaps 
Magism, a product of Turanian, Semitic, and Median be 
liefs. Nevertheless, he is the best existing authority, now 
that we know how to study his honest work. Ctcsias, who 
wrote a century later, was a physician at the Persian court 
at Susa, and knew the traditions of the monarchy ; but his 
reputation for honesty is very bad, and his credulity is be 
yond example. Xenophon, on the other hand, has given 
in his " Cyropaedia " a splendid philosophical romance. 
Neither of these, nor any other author, can enlighten the 
darkness of Persian origins. Even the old heroic legend 
of Firdusi, while it makes the local chiefs its theme, and 
describes the feudal liberties of the various States of a 
great confederacy, throws no special light on the Per 
sians before Cyrus. 

But Herodotus straightforward picture of the Persians 
of Cyrus time bears every mark of truth. It has never 
been contradicted; and it thoroughly explains their mar 
vellous career. Only this makes us pause, that the Per 
sians whom he must have seen, the actual rulers of 
Western Asia, were obviously very different from the 
Persians of his picture. Did he really see at Babylon 
many of the conquering race? Was his account of them 
a tradition in the memories of the conquered people, not 
yet effaced by time? Or how otherwise could he have 
penetrated through the luxurious and barbarous degene 
racy of the Persians of his day, of which he was fully 
aware, since he refers it to the influence of Media, to 
the ideal he gives us of a hardy mountain tribe, of rare 
modesty, dignity, and self-discipline, a national personality 

20 



306 POLITICAL FORCES. 

so compact and resolute that it wrought on the feebler 
morale of the older races with the power of fate? The 
startling contrast to all this, revealed in Plutarch s Life of 
Artaxerxes Longimanus, the contemporary of Herodotus, 
renders it a puzzle to comprehend how the old ideal Per 
sians could have been discerned except through traditional 
survival in the minds of their subjects. On the other 
hand, such a reputation speaks forcibly for the truth of the 
picture. And there are good grounds in the character of 
the historian why we should separate the psychological 
part of it from the mythological, and accord to the one a 
credence we must refuse to the other. 

That the Persians of Cyrus were the ideal of all the 
Greek historians does not prove that the picture itself was 
purely ideal. Nothing but the force of truth seems likely 
to have extorted such tributes from a people who habitu 
ally regarded other races as barbarians, and who must 
have been specially jealous of the rapid rise to empire of 
a rude mountain tribe, whose arms were reaching down to 
the shores of the ^Egean. The mingled contempt and fear 
felt by the Ionian cities toward this Iranian horde advanc 
ing upon them over the ruins of Nineveh is illustrated by 
the advice given to Croesus by his courtiers, not to waste 
his time and labor in subjugating these poverty-stricken 
and worthless barbarians, who, once in Lydia, might do 
mischief. 1 But a stronger witness to the truth of Hero 
dotus tribute is found in certain vestiges of those hardy 
and heroic manners surviving in the well-known institu 
tions of the later Achsemenide empire. Plutarch tells us 
that the kings of Persia at that period still ate figs and 
drank milk at their coronation, in memory of the ancestral 
customs of their race. 2 Xenophon, who may be trusted 
when he speaks of the Persians of his own day, says they 
still retained the robust educational principles and general 

1 Herodotus, i. 71. 2 Ly e O f Artaxerxes. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 307 

institutions which he describes as those of Cyrus time, but 
carried them out in a very perverted way ; and he notices 
the continuance of many ancient customs, such as bringing 
only small-sized bottles to their feasts and making only 
one meal a day, which were managed so as to defeat their 
original purpose. He evidently follows the general tradi 
tion when he holds the luxury and cruelty of the court of 
Persia as all the worse for the heroic manners from which 
it had fallen away. 1 The rugged tribes devoted to their 
chiefs, led by Cyrus from their herds and hunting-grounds 
to startle the pampered Lydians, with their spare diet and 
clothing of skins, living on what they could get, strangers 
to wine and wassail, schooled in manly exercises, cleanly 
even to superstition, so loyal to age and filial duties that 
parricide was inconceivable to them, hating falsehood as 
something atrocious, may well be needed to explain cer 
tain subsequent traits which Herodotus has recorded of 
the Persians of his own time, 2 their pride of personal in 
dependence, that held the owing of a debt the next worse 
thing to telling a lie, and despised the markets of Greek 
cities as schools of trickery ; 3 their scorn of talking about 
things that ought not to be done ; their care to wean their 
affections from over-dependence upon keeping their chil 
dren under their own sight; the high honors they paid to 
their birthdays, and their esteem for another nation in pro 
portion to its relationship to themselves ; their fondness 
for social grades and regulated manners ; their feudal dig 
nities, the chiefs giving counsel to the king, even while 
thoroughly submissive to his person, just as Cyrus himself 
had been in these conferences but as primus inter pares, 
and laid before the Persian nobles his plan of rebellion 
against the Mede ; the strong instinct of national impor 
tance and destiny, which grew naturally out of this personal 

1 Cyropczdia, viii. 18. 2 Herodotus, i. 138, 139. 

8 Ibid., i. 153. 



308 POLITICAL FORCES. 

pride and force of will, and which made every man a part 
of the public purpose, working and praying for the whole 
nation, and particularly for the king s welfare, esteeming 
prowess even beyond progeny; above all, their stirring 
ambition to lose themselves in the great world-current, 
owing partly to magnetic sympathy and passion for per 
sonal contact, and partly to the sense of guidance by a 
victorious star, so that they were " readiest of all nations 
to accept foreign customs," and became apt pupils of 
Median excess. 1 

It would seem that nothing but the palpable per 
sistence of those qualities to which had been traced the 
victorious career of the early Persians could have caused 
the Greek writers to pay such tributes as they did to the 
later civilization of the empire, in spite of its equally pal 
pable depravity. It was no doubt only in the line of 
Xenophon s fine fiction to represent this people as teach 
ing their children virtues as those of other nations were 
taught letters ; 2 but Herodotus, Plutarch, Strabo, Ctesias, 
Curtius, Ammianus, Josephus, all of whom professed to 
write genuine history, point us likewise to their laws 
against ingratitude, against capital punishment for a first 
offence or without trial, against harsh treatment of house 
holds ; 3 to the custom of setting the services of a slave 
against his offences in deciding on his punishment; to that 
of sometimes substituting the dress of a culprit for his 
person in inflicting the penalty; 4 to that of deliberating 
on public matters over their cups, but deciding only when 
sober; 5 to their signal valor at Plataea and Mycale ; to 
their habitual reward of brave and noble conduct, in both 
sexes alike; to the interpretation of law by appointed 
judges; 6 to their belief that nothing was so servile as lux- 
Herodotus, i. 132-136. 2 Cyropadia, \. 2. 

Herodotus, i. 137. 4 Brisson: De Reg-no Persarum, p. 593. 

6 Herodotus, i. 133. 6 Brisson, pp. 191, 192. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 309 

ury, nothing so royal as toil ; to their religious respect for 
promises, 1 most of which had doubtless such practical 
validity as an absolute monarchy might allow. 2 But these 
writers have not failed to notice how the intense loyalty of 
the elder time had degenerated into servility so absolute 
that the king expected to be thanked by the subject for the 
punishment he inflicted, and injustice itself was scored by 
its victim as a benefit; 3 a servility that amounted to wor 
ship, and accepted death as the penalty for proposing 
anything which should displease the king. 4 They have 
faithfully recorded such atrocities as burying men alive 
in honor of the elements; flaying judges for bribery; 
mutilation and stoning; acts of the cruellest caprice; 
and the shameless crimes of a court life, where monsters 
of the harem, male and female, ruled with shocking facility 
the weakest and the wickedest of tyrants. 

It may help to reconcile these puzzling contrasts of 
Persian character if we regard the later Achaemenidae as 
simply showing what results imperial self-idolatry had 
produced even in the line which had borne a Cyrus and 
a Darius, and which might, but for the fate of war, have 
found in the younger Cyrus a restorer of its ancient glory. 
Nor is it fair to judge the people of Persia by the vices of 
a court possessed by a fury like Parysatis, or a beast like 
Ochus. They retained the energy to hold their immense 
empire till another world-conqueror appeared in Alexan 
der; and they preserved their hold on the imaginative and 
ideal interest of the Greek republics, whose whole political 
history also was swayed by the wonderful resources of 
" the great king." A glance at their psychological quali 
ties will perhaps indicate how an excess of nervous energy, 
unbalanced by contemplation or by associated industry, 

1 Brisson, p. 187. 

- Brisson, p. 488, from Plutarch s A lexander. Brisson, p. 596, from Joseph us and Xenophon. 

3 Brisson, pp. 48, 49, from Stobasus Sermones, xii. 

4 Brisson, p. 49, from Varro, xii. 



3IO POLITICAL FORCES. 

consumed itself in its own fires, till the central bases of 
authority gave way. 

It has already been stated that the Persians, who ulti 
mately mastered and absorbed all the tribes from Bactria 
to Semitic Assyria and Babylonia, may be taken as the 
typical Iranian race. Shown in their early monuments, as 
well as in their living representatives, the Tajiks -and the 
Guebres, to have possessed an athletic and elegant phy 
sique and highly impressible senses, these Persians, the 
Asiatic Greeks, described as having oval faces, raised 
features, well-arched eyebrows, and large dark eyes, now 
soft as the gazelle s, now flashing with quick insight, were 
the antipodes of those stunted, square-faced, heavy and 
short-limbed Mongolian tribes, with which, under the name 
of Turan, they have waged incessant war. They were ex 
tremely receptive of moods, biasses, passions; the aptest 
learners, as they were the boldest adventurers of the East; 
not patient to study, not skilled to invent, but swift to 
seize, appropriate, and distribute; terrible breakers-up of 
old religious spells; Promethean conductors of monopo 
lized fire out into world-wide use ; mediators between the 
sealed thought of the East and the stirring life of the 
West; and, with all their absolutism, the heralds of lib 
erty. They dissolved the stern old material civilizations 
of Cushite and Turanian origin, and made them flow to 
fertilize history, as they had already irrigated the Mesopo- 
tamian plains. What magnetic attractions; what passion 
for vast conquests; what quickness to learn the arts of sen 
suality and display ! Persian magnificence lasts to the very 
end; from Achjaemenidan to Seljuk Turk, from Darius to 
Alp-Arslan, the boundless ambition, the prodigality and 
pomp, the sweep of self-deification went on, with every 
successive dynasty that touched this soil, Parthian, Sas- 
sanide, Mongol, still thrilling with the old nerve-currents 
of this race; for Khosru, for Timur, the star of empire 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 311 

forever beckoned. Herodotus makes Xerxes say to his no 
bles, " The Persians have never been quiet since the con 
quests of Cyrus ; a deity is our guide, and ever assures us 
of triumph." " In olden times," says ^Eschylus, " a divine 
destiny compelled the Persians to demolish cities, and to 
brave with the frail tackling of their host-bearing ships the 
stormy ocean fields." 

Here was a .new fact in the Oriental world, a race that 
believed alike in the actual and the ideal, holding firmly to 
both terms, following infinite longings like children, and 
mastering finite means like gods ; no Hindu mysticism 
ignoring the seen ; no Chinese matter-of-fact slipping 
away from the unseen. Every sculptured rock and every 
formula of prayer attests a religious earnestness not to be 
stiffened into ritual, or hardened into stone. So quick a 
sense of the ideal and so real an aspiration towards it 
could only be satisfied by constantly recognizing the 
higher personality of each individual as a real presence 
(Fravashi) hovering above his actual form, as protector and 
guide. The Highest God has his Fravashi, and commands 
Zoroaster to praise it. 1 Not less has every creature, for 
none can exist without its ideal, the typical form to which 
it aspires, and through which it has life and strength. 2 
These Fravashis were the better life of the universe, the 
blessedness of souls, invisible and serene; and with simple 
devoutness the Persian carved and painted them on his 
public works, and felt their mighty stress in the ardor of 
his practical will. Not less significant is his substitution 
of the ascending line in architecture for the horizontal 
style of Assyrian art. 

This psychological sketch will be seen to illustrate suf 
ficiently our position that the Persian mind was not the 
pure brain, not the passive muscle, but the flame-conductor 
between them, in other words, nerve; and as India and 

1 Spiegel : Vendidad, xix. 46. 2 Ya(na, xvii. 43 ; xxiii. ; liv. i. 



312 POLITICAL FORCES. 

China, in all they did, showed an overplus of these two 
mental elements respectively, so Persia had this third or 
mediative element in excess. 

We must not fail to note that all the Iranian races were 
more or less of the same type. Those splendid empires 
of Babylonia, Assyria, Media, and Persia, each in turn 
gathering these races into a single impulse or a suc 
cession of impulses, to be dissolved as swiftly as the great 
battery could well be discharged, blazing with perpetual 
jets of conquest and revolt, we may well, I think, call 
flashes of nerve-power. Spasmodic, irresistible, the first 
rush of this living lightning that man had felt within him, 
they spent themselves on the passionate effort to turn the 
human world into the play of their magnificent dreams. 
But the genius of the Persians lifted this element to its 
ideal form. Well might they take the sun for their em 
blem, and call their kings by its name. 1 Well might the 
flashing globe be hoisted on the royal tent, and the golden 
eagle on the standards, when their glorious Mithra arose 
above the eastern mountains, giving the sign for the march 
of those vast armies resplendent with all the circumstance 
of courts and cities, sweeping the tribes into their torrent, 
and pouring them on in heat ungovernable till they broke 
in quivering fragments on the balanced solidity of Greek 
genius. " The impetuous lord of many-peopled Asia," 
sings ^Eschylus again, " urges his godlike armament 
against every land." 2 

But the ruin of the Persian was not the Greek phalanx 
only, or even chiefly. 3 Like the Hercules of the solar 
myth, seen on his gorgeous funeral pyre in the western 
sky, the Persian perished in his own fires. Cyrus indeed, 
the great, mild, generous conqueror, father of his people, 

1 Plutarch: Life of Artaxerxes. 2 Per see. 

3 The Greeks really had little or no strategy; still less discipline. The accounts of 
tremendous losses by Persians in battle are probably exaggerations. See Mahaffy : Rambles 
in Greece , p. 194. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 313 

idol of Greek philosophy and romance, of Plato and Xeno- 
phon alike, in his short reign of thirty years (558-529 
B. C.) made the little Persian satrapy or kingdom mas 
ter of Asia from the Jaxartes to the Phoenician coasts ; 
and, victor in all he undertook, he lay down at last, say 
most of his biographers, amid purple and gold, in his 
green paradise, under the truest and loftiest of all royal 
epitaphs, " Here lies Cyrus, king of kings." l Only 
death satirized his ambition. But Cambyses, master of 
nations, must needs master Nature too, and so led his hosts 
against the sands of Egypt and Ethiopia, and the oasis 
of Ammon ; and being discomfited, he came back an epi 
leptic madman, to vent his rage on the priests of Apis and 
their sacred calf, 2 to violate temples and tombs, outrage his 
household, defy the traditions of his ancestral faith, bury 
his subjects alive, and die of fury on the news of a revo 
lution, leaving no trace behind him in the Nile. And 
then Darius, the great organizer, and as humane as he was 
wise and thrifty, so beloved of Egypt for his friendliness 
to her people and her gods that they gave him alone the 
worship given their native kings, yet ventures not only to 
bridge the Bosphorus, but to cast a heterogeneous host of 
near a million men upon the Thracian wilderness to fight 
with famine and fire more than with human foes, escaping 
thence indeed through his wonderful personal resource, 
and effecting something beyond astonishing a zone of un 
explored barbarians, since centuries elapsed before Persia 
suffered again from Scythian hordes. Then Xerxes, 
" yoking the ocean, equalling the gods," 3 hurls a similar 
swarm upon Greece, set on by dreams and visions against 

1 So says the monument, which is apparently genuine. Herodotus has preserved the 
tradition that he died in a campaign against the barbarians of Scythia, and that his body 
was barbarously treated, i. 214. 

2 But see Brugsch Bey about these stories (Egypt iinder the Pharaohs, chap, xix.), 
especially that of Apis. Cambyses was as full of the idea of universal dominion as Cyrus. 
But Wiedemann affirms their truth (Gesch. d. Aegypt., p. 230). 

3 Aeschylus : Persce. 



314 POLITICAL FORCES. 

all good advice ; and after praying to be permitted to sub 
jugate Europe, and answering prayers of Greek refugees 
in the manner of a god, fares worse than the rest. The 
splendid bubble of European and African conquest which 
his father had put to his lips burst on their eager touch. 

Persian failures were mainly due to the vast scale upon 
which enterprises were projected and prepared. Ten 
thousand could have penetrated the deserts better than a 
million. A small army of picked troops might have made 
front in Greece after Salamis, but the huge horde took 
fright at its own unwieldiness, and the " king of kings " 
was the victim of a panic; and though Mardonius had 
still a great host, the prestige was gone, and his army, 
like a swarm of locusts, became dead heaps on the land 
and in the sea. The unity and discipline of Xenophon s 
famous Ten Thousand made them more than a match 
for the unmanageable levies of Artaxerxes Mnemon, and 
their retreat succeeded simply because the Persians had 
no organization, and no plan for cutting it off. Then the 
subject States revolted everywhere, and the throne of the 
Achaemenides crumbled away. 

This empire militant was the overflow of unregulated 
redundant force, hurled forth in gushes of heady drift, and 
as reckless of waste as a strong boy in the heat of play. 
It was a rare combination of magnificence with industry, 
of energy and impressibility. For this thirsty oxygen 
rushed into the world of sense, with keen relish for all its 
savors, and plucked ideal raptures from all. The earth 
was nard and roses, let it come in what pungency it would. 
This royalty must represent the universe. It appropriated 
the best of all things; called its builders out of Phoenicia 
and Egypt, and its physicians from Greece. 1 To the 
splendid court of the Achaemenidae all beings and climes 
must be tributary, all tributes without stint ; their harems 

1 Herodotus, iii. 130; vii. 25, 34. Diodorus, i. 46. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 315 

the rifling of continents, watched by unsexed guards, the 
last refinement of jealousy and the self-irony of lust; their 
tables spread for fifteen thousand daily, though the king 
himself dined alQne, and often frugally; their water brought 
in silver from the Choaspes, their salt from the Libyan 
desert, their wine from Syria, and their wheat from ^Eolia ; 
a thousand pounds of incense came yearly from Arabia ; 
from Armenia tens of thousands of horses and hundreds 
of thousands of sheep; from Assyria five hundred eunuch- 
boys to serve at feasts ; where, too, they had large towns, 
all whose revenues went for breeding dogs, and royal 
stables on an enormous scale ; and the daily tribute to 
the satrap amounted to a bushel of silver. 1 Megacreon 
of Abdera in a sally of wit advised his fellow-citizens to go 
to the temples and thank the gods that Xerxes dined but 
once a day. 

The provincial satraps repeated all this on a smaller 
scale, though with the king s spies beside them, official 
" eyes and ears," to report their wealth and what became 
of it. Then there were the nobles, clothed in purple, with 
painted eyebrows and false hair and stilted heels, covered 
with jewels and perfumes, protected by gloves and parasols 
against cold and heat; so that Herodotus found a reason 
for the special softness of their skulls. 2 The summer and 
winter palaces rose on the heights of Susa, Ecbatana, Per- 
sepolis, story above story, of wondrously jointed, massive 
stones, light and graceful, open like the Greek temple to 
air and sky, on gigantic platforms set with forests of lofty 
fluted pillars, not like the Median, of cypress and cedar, 
but of marble, and soaring through them more than sixty 
feet, with capitals of bulls or griffins resting on the lotos 
leaf, the ideal forms of ancient art. 3 Dreamy and delicious 

1 Heeren : Asiatic Nations, \. 89, 159, 260, et seq. Herodotus, i. 188, 192. Duncker 
from Ctesias, ii. 610. Gibbon, xxiii., xxiv. 

2 Duncker, h. 626. 627, from Herodotus. Herodotus, Hi. 12. 

3 Rawlinson : A ncient Monarchies^ iii. 304. 



316 POLITICAL FORCES. 

with paradises, terraces, and hanging gardens on a colossal 
scale, Persia may well have wielded, even at that early day, 
the magical spells which were in after times to be woven 
about the world by her fountains, nightingales, roses, and 
wine. 1 

Yet it is obvious that results so prodigious were not 
achieved by an enervated race. This luxurious people 
obeyed the sturdy rules of Zoroaster. These world-absorb 
ing kings, who had on their tables the first fruits of every 
land, were themselves under an ancient law not to eat or 
drink anything but native products. 2 They were irrigating 
the plains of Babylonia with all the old energy which had 
enabled their Semitic predecessors to draw three harvests 
a year from the fertile alluvion ; 3 and a third of their 
revenue is said to have come from this satrapy alone. 4 
" No spot on the globe, Egypt perhaps excepted, displays 
such masonry as the walls of Persepolis." 5 The Persians 
rejected the sun-di;ied brick of Babylonian architecture, 
and the thin slab-facings of Assyrian, and built platform 
and pile of solid stone. It was not a frivolous people that 
lifted those graceful pillar-stems which twenty-four cen 
turies have not stirred. Great roads, beset with post-sta 
tions, and traversed by government couriers, " swifter, 
according to some," says Xenophon, " than the crane 
flies," Q carried safely a vast and busy intercourse, reach 
ing from the steppes of Tartary to the shores of Greece. 
Over all these regions the genius of Darius organized 
under a single system, political and financial, the preg 
nant intermixture of races brought about by Assyrian 
wars and deportations. Nor did the innate preference 
of his people for agriculture prevent him from attempt 
ing to open canal communication between the Nile and 

1 See Ebers novel, An Egyptian Princess. * Athensus, bk. xiv. 

3 Xenophon : CEconomicus. * Herodotus, i. 192. 

6 Heeren, i. 151. 8 Herodotus, viii. 98. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 317 

the Red Sea, only failing at last from some discovery as 
to the depth of level between the waters, or some other 
cause; and his travelling court and camp was itself the 
best market in the world. But for these constructive ener 
gies of the Persian kings, Alexander would have found no 
foothold for the lasting marriage of Europe with Asia, 
whose forerunners had crossed the floating bridge flung 
by Darius across the waters of the Bosphorus. The flour 
ishing condition of Egypt when visited by Herodotus is 
ample witness to the excellence of Persian rule, 1 though 
the barbarous rage of Ochus against her gods, after the 
reconquest of Egypt, rivalled the worst excesses of Cam- 
byses in his madness. 

The Persian instructed his children to ride, to shoot, and 
to speak the truth. 2 He rose with the sun, was used to 
bread-and-water diet at home and acorns and wild fruits 
on the hunt. When he was seen on foot, he was at work; 
when not at work, the noble steed was his idol and compan 
ion. He really scorned those who scorned toil. When the 
younger Cyrus led Lysander through his pleasure-grounds 
at Sardis, and told him he had planned and planted them 
with his own hands, the aristocratic Spartan looked incred 
ulously on his golden chains and gorgeous robes. " I 
swear to you as a servant of Mithra," exclaimed the Prince, 
" that I never taste food till on my brows is the sweat of 
toil." 3 Strabo says, from Onomacritus, that the tomb of 
Darius bore the inscription : " Among the hunters I took 
the palm ; what I would do, that I could." 4 Artaxerxes 
wore upon his person the worth of twelve thousand tal 
ents, yet shared the hardships of his army on the march, 
carrying quiver and shield, leading the way up the steepest 
places, and lightening the hearts of his soldiers by footing 
it twenty-five miles a day. The common people had a 

1 Wiedemann : Gesch. d. Aegypt., pp. 242, 259. 2 Herodotus, i. 136. 

3 Xenophon : CEconomicus, p. 6. * Strabo, bk. xv. 



3l8 POLITICAL FORCES. 

religious respect for cultivating the earth and for preserv 
ing its signs of productive power. 1 They were loath to 
cut down ancient trees merely for fuel; but Artaxerxes 
solved their scruples by himself laying the axe to the finest 
one in his paradise, and letting the whole go freely to 
make night fires for his shivering men. 2 Their worship of 
Ormuzd made them watch and work with religious zeal, 
and obey the laws of purity and health as the first of 
duties. Their hatred of Ahriman made them wage life 
long warfare against the barrenness and the noxious crea 
tures that constituted his realm, fexcess of loyalty to 
the idea of personal sway, not baseness, explains their 
amazing endurance under the cruelties of royal caprice. 
Adorers of the Flame, they shared the spirit of their mad 
dest kings, and were as ready to throw away their lives on 
an impossibility as the kings were to command it. In war 
they were, beyond all the races they led forth, the terror 
even of the Greeks. Heraclides of Pontus based on their 
example his theory that luxury exalted men above little 
ness and fear. 3 

What has been said of the old Iranian races is illustrated 
in their sculpture. Of the wonderful vitality and vigor 
of the Assyrian hunting and battle scenes, I have already 
spoken. They are as realistic and practical as the Egyp 
tian paintings of a similar kind, but have a poetic ardor 
of which that meditative race had no conception. The 
details of real life are wrought in a glow of spontaneity, 
by flashes of nerve-energy. The aim is not so much to 
render the exact image of the action as to convey the 

1 The agriculturalist was in honor; he is mentioned in the Avesta. as the third Class, after 
priest and soldier, and before tradesmen. Yafna, xix. 18. In the Hindu system there is a 
trading but no farming caste, unless the Sudra, or lowest, may be so considered. Moreover, 
the order of the Persian classes, which are not castes, is not material, and implies no subordi 
nation. 

2 Plutarch s Lives (Langhorne), viii. 184. 

3 Athenaeus, xii. Also Julian s tribute, in his Ccesars, to the valor and politeness of 
the Persians (Gibbon). 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 319 

significance of it in art. There is no literalism about it; 
and it even contains hints of unconscious symbolism. 

In some respects, Persian sculpture falls behind Assy 
rian. There is equal stiffness of outlines and failure of 
perspective, with certainly less elaboration of detail. But 
the ideal aspiration overflows all defects, and shows itself, 
both by choice of subjects and mode of treatment, to be 
the supreme gift of the Persian. Instead of common and 
domestic life, here are heroic combats of men with beasts, 
triumphant marches or processions bearing tributes, kings 
at worship or upon thrones ; and always the literal fact 
melts into the symbol, the human meaning beyond and 
above it. The fighting bulls and lions are not brutes, but 
massive human strength and energy of will. You do not 
see this or that king fulfilling his functions ; you see roy 
alty, war, worship, in their significance for sense and soul. 1 
There stands Darius, it may be, the "king of kings," with 
plain fillet on his brow, short dress and naked arms, and a 
poise of limb that seems to make living force an attribute 
of repose ; with one hand he grasps the horn of a semi- 
human monster, with the other drives the dagger home. 
There again, with equal majesty, he masters the man-like 
lion or the wild ass. There his human god is hovering 
above him in winged circle, and his right foot rests upon 
a prostrate man. Nine kings stand before him, low of 
stature, with bare heads and bound hands; and this the 
inscription: "When the lands rebelled against me, I fought 
nineteen battles and took captive nine kings : it was through 
the grace of Ormuzd that I did it. Thou who shalt be king 
hereafter, beware of sin, and punish it. So shall thy realm 
be invincible." 2 

We shall better understand what force there is in this 
term nerve, as applied to the Iranian races (Lydians, Baby 
lonians, Assyrians, Medes, Persians), when we have fully 

1 Kugler : Gesch. d. Baukunst^ i. 73-75, 94- 2 Records of the Past, i. 126, 127. 



320 POLITICAL FORCES. 

considered the fact that, whether Semite or Aryan, they 
were all worshippers of the Flame. What indeed but Fire 
could symbolize that ambition which no enterprise was 
vast enough to match, that sensuous susceptibility that 
turned everything into food for passionate desire. Yet 
the nobler elements of the moral ideal, magnanimity, 
ardor, devotion to the best, are also equally natural 
fruits of that " purity in thought, word, and deed," which 
Zoroaster taught his followers was the meaning of the 
creative Fire. A devouring flame is like the lusty youth 
of human aspiration, as these races made manifest: un 
disciplined, capable of ideal good and ideal evil, their 
darkness and their light were two warring powers for the 
conquest of the world. The lassitude and exhaustion of 
their mighty efforts, the despotic license and caprice that 
constructed world-empires, the swift disintegration of ill- 
organized power ; the gigantic sweep of vision and desire, 
the impulse to universality, the sense of movement never to 
pause nor turn back, what word shall express the mean 
ing and function of all this in the development of man? 

Frequent as its analogue may be in the life of individ 
uals, the phenomenon will never again be seen in the his 
tory of nations. Psychologically, as well as geographically, 
Iran was the transition from Oriental to Western civiliza 
tion. Never again can the psychical brain, muscle, nerve 
of the human races be so separated that in each civilization 
one element shall be in overwhelming excess of the others, 
as these studies have shown them to have been in the 
Hindu, the Chinese, and the Persian civilizations previous 
to the maturer fusion of these forces in the development 
of Europe, which has in fact been in this respect the 
flowering of the mediative Iranian type of mind. The 
intercourse of races, the fusion of temperaments and be 
liefs, the scientific knowledge and rjse of universal laws, 
has insured a more balanced activity of the human facul- 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 321 

ites in every civilized people than was possible under the 
older isolating conditions. Yet we have also seen that 
the vital germs of all that we now hold to be best were 
vigorous enough to prove, even in these fragmentary ethnic 
types, that the moral and spiritual nature needed no super 
natural grafting nor change of law. What was needed is 
equally plain. In place of the pure thought of the Hindu 
and the plodding work of the Chinese, we have now a 
third type, which conducts the cerebral into muscular 
energy, and makes both effective. The Iranian mind was 
thus the first mediator on an ethnic scale between thought 
and work, ideal and real, mind and its material, and there 
fore the harbinger of progress. We may say that the 
function of Persia, as its leading representative, was to be 
herald of the claims of the infinite to mould the finite, 
of the ideal to become real ; but herald only because its 
special quality always was in excess. What India and 
China represented is not therefore superseded. Without 
due balance from brain and muscle, the nerve-fire must 
consume itself. And so we who inherit in special the gift 
of Iran are working out those of India and China too, but 
under freest conditions; which must create a fourth type 
of mind, including more than brain, muscle, and nerve, 
because it is these in the proper unity of their relations. 

To arrive at the full meaning of our relation to the Ira 
nians, we must translate the physiological symbol into 
philosophical terms, which represent the self-affirmation 
of the ideal in its cruder stage ; namely, as has been said, 
the exaltation, or worship, of personal Will. Deficient in 
the cerebral and muscular types of mind, this factor con 
joins the two in the form of a concentrated energy of aim. 
Will, the true force of personality, is thus the supreme 
ideal of those races whose life is not in thought as thought, 
nor in work as work, but in the act of converting the one 
into the other ; that is, in action itself as action. The his- 

21 



322 POLITICAL FORCES. 

tory of this ideal is written in the faiths and cultures whose 
cradle is Western Asia, and whose maturity constitutes 
modern civilization. We live amid its closing epochs, 
full of the foregleams of a higher and better worship than 
that of personal Will; and the study of its opening phases, 
in the Iranian empires, so typical of what has succeeded 
them, will greatly help us to understand where we are. 

The self-deification of Iranian monarchs was simply a 
political expression of the faith of their peoples in the 
ideal of personal Will. However rapidly leaving behind 
them the extremes of what is called " personal govern 
ment," Europe and America still embody this ideal in their 
anthropomorphic religious beliefs. They deify not only 
the higher forms of human virtue, but also human qualities 
fully in keeping with Oriental autocracy in its worst forms. 
Assyrian or Persian royal barbarities pale before the sys 
tematic cruelty ascribed to the God of Christian creeds, 
and defended in his name. The worship of the Achaeme- 
nidan king was thus in its evil as well as its good the nat 
ural germ of the worship of a Christ. A personal Divine 
Will is at the root of both forms of incarnation, however 
different in many moral and spiritual respects may be the 
Zoroastrian and the Christian God. These specially reli 
gious bearings of the subject will hereafter come under 
consideration. At present we must show how thoroughly 
the ancient Persians represented the nerve-type, the author 
ity of personal Will. 

The testimony of Greek and native writers makes it 
highly probable that the old Persians inherited the social 
organization which recent researches have shown to lie at 
the base of Indo-European as well as Sclavonic and Mon 
golian society, that of the Village Community, where the 
family household was the social unit, expanded by adop 
tion and other fictions into clans bound together by tra 
ditional usages and more or less hereditary functions. But 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 323 

however this may have been, we find them advanced to a 
higher stage of individualism for which the mere village 
community afforded no place. While many of the tribes 
were free nomads, the most appear to have been agricul 
tural ; and society had developed into a congeries of clans, 
which the Avesta describes as under the " chieftainship of 
heads of families, of villages, of tribes, and of provinces, 
with Zoroaster for the fifth," : and as divided into four 
classes, " priests, soldiers, farmers, and artisans," among 
whom there seems to have been no distinction, at least 
as to choice of spiritual guides, which was " the duty of 
every righteous man." 2 

These chiefs (Pehlev&ndri) had become nobles in a kind 
of feudal constitution, wherein the king was limited by 
the free traditions of certain heroic families, or individ 
uals, who were often closely related to the royal house, 
and had scarcely inferior following; led the armies of 
the kingdom, could act the offended Achilles, if they 
pleased, with great effect, and were, if they chose to be 
so, the real pillars of the throne. They are the heroes of 
the Persian epic, 3 and their allegiance appears to have 
been a traditional loyalty rather than any sense of inferi 
ority. 4 They regard the king, as the Homeric heroes re 
gard Agamemnon, with conditional and provisional respect, 
simply as meeting their necessity for gathering around a 
central Will. This, it will be perceived, is obviously such 
an outgrowth of the tribal patriarchalism which lies at the 
basis of all ancient society, as would naturally become a 
people in whom the worship of will was a growing instinct. 
In nothing does this instinct more strongly appear than in 
their intense feeling of the dignity of their own persons, 
and of their divine function or commission as a people to 

1 Yafna, xix. 17, 18. 

2 See also Spiegel: Eran Alterth., bk. v. chap. i. ; Herodotus, i. 125, 101 ; Spiegel, 
i. 555 ; Haug : Essays, etc., p. 188. 

3 Manoshcihr, Sam, Zal, Rustem. 4 Spiegel: Eran Alterth., i. 555, 556. 



324 POLITICAL FORCES. 

incarnate a kind of personal sovereignty. They were thor 
oughly aristocratic, therefore ; the worship of will is essen 
tially so, because it rests on an inherent right of command, 
and would not be will if it had not subject powers. For 
the Persian noble, his own dignity was a religious charge. 
His education, so full of generous discipline and incentives 
to public service, cut him off from the masses, who, as 
Herodotus distinctly tells us, had not the means nor leisure 
for such culture, free and open as it was. For his king he 
must be ready to die, yet his own self-respect makes him 
the king s counsellor ; and neither Cyrus nor Darius does 
aught of moment without consulting his peers. 1 The 
Greeks with one accord put into their mouths, often 
doubtless with truth, at least to custom, wise maxims and 
brave advice. A conspiracy of seven nobles overturns the 
usurper who pretended to the name of Smerdis, as Cyrus 
and his leagued nobles had revolted against the Mede. 
By their united councils, according to Herodotus, every 
form of government was canvassed, the monarchical de 
liberately selected, and Darius chosen as king by an appeal 
to signs from heaven. They were called KJisJiaeta (S/id/i), 
the same as the king; dressed as he did, coined money, 2 
held courts. He was only pddishdh, chief of the chiefs ; 
or SJidJian-SJiah, king of the kings of Iran, and under 
them were chiefs of lower order. 3 

Observe the dignity to which these high-born Persian 
wills were trained. Their education was not in reading 
and writing, which are democratic, but in manners, how 

1 Gobineau s fascinating picture of the free life of the Iranian feudatories, whom Cyrus 
changed to subjects, contains perhaps a good measure of truth. But its main sources are not 
the Greek writers, but later traditions, Persian and Mussulman; and the Avesta throws but 
little light on the subject. 

" The right of coining money was a right inherent in every community in the Persian 
empire, great or small. Local sovereigns and satraps exercised it during the whole period 
of that empire." (Waddington, quoted in Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch., xxi. 
442.) The Arsacide coins, investigated by Levy in this article, and shown to be the earliest 
Pehievi literature, prove this. 

3 Gobineau : II istoire des Perses, i. 467. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 325 

to bear themselves towards each other. They were so 
clothed that no naked part of the body appeared, to offend 
another s eye ; they kept silence at meals ; they guarded 
their emotions, allowed themselves no outbreak of surprise 
or delight; did not spit or blow the nose before others; 
at meeting they kissed, but spoke not, a Spartan self- 
restraint; a Spanish hauteur and distance. 

But better than this was their theory, at least, of moral 
self-respect. To lie was cowardice ; the secret falsehood 
that made one ashamed to look in his neighbor s eye was 
the unpardonable sin. After lying, the greatest of sins was 
to owe another, and so make oneself his slave. 1 The un 
spoken hint of honor in the pressure of the hand was the 
most binding of pledges. Artaxerxes, according to Ctesias, 
was persuaded by Megabyzus to hold to his promise of 
pardon to a rebel, who was discovered after capture to have 
murdered the king s brother. 2 Laws against ingratitude 
had their basis in the idea of falsehood implied by that 
vice. This respect for truth and this horror of lying as 
contamination are here very largely incidents of pride, and 
associate the beginnings of personal worship with the sense 
of honor and the law of duty. The cultivation of them had 
become in the Persian nobles a tradition of their personal 
dignity. In the history of personality as an ideal principle 
their prevalence in the early civilizations is of great signifi 
cance, and will be more fully considered hereafter. Though 
found at the threshold of all those ethnic faiths and forms 
which conspired to the production of our own, they are 
perhaps nowhere so emphasized as in Persian ethics. 
Thucydides says of this people, that with them it was 
held better to give than to receive. Their schools, ac 
cording to Xenophon, were placed aloof from the noises 
of trade, that the eager passions of those who were hag 
gling with each other might not disturb their culture of 

1 Plutarch: Artaxerxes. z Ctesias, 34-37. 



326 POLITICAL FORCES. 

justice and self-control. 3 He doubtless reports a traditional 
ideal at least, when he says that in his day the young nobles 
were brought up at the court, that they might not see any 
thing immodest. 2 Cyrus spurns the Greek cities on the 
score of their great markets ; 3 and Strabo even says of 
educated Persians, that they will have nothing to do with 
buying and selling. 4 This would be contrary to Zoroas- 
trian precept if it meant indolence, and served to distin 
guish them from the masses, who most certainly did labor, 
and pay respect to whatever trading it involved. The Per 
sian cities did not show any lack either of toil or traffic. 
It was natural enough for the national ideal of personal 
dignity to have its extreme representatives in a class who 
made pursuit of this ideal their exclusive business, and a 
function guarded from all suspicion or suggestion of self- 
seeking. " The Persians," says a careful student of their 
manners, " strove for the ideal, the great, noble, manly, 
true ; yet forgot not the practical world." 5 This is in 
accordance with the views already stated ; contempt for 
traffic is one thing, and contempt for toil is another. The 
Persian noble was a laborer, as his faith enjoined ; but in 
his day the connection of labor with the art of " doing 
business " was not so palpable as it now is, while its reli 
gious meaning lay in its direct association with the earth, in 
the toils of production, not of distribution. The Persians 
were made for soldiers ; their ideal was of the heroic type, 
and the arts they found congenial were those which fitted 
them to master the world and prepare the way for vital civ 
ilizations. Such arts could culminate only in the culture 
of such personal qualities as self-reliance, self-assertion, and 
absolutism of will. In their noblest form, these qualities 
became a lofty magnanimity, which knew how " to spare 

1 Cyropczdia, \. 2. 2 Anabasis, \. 9. 

8 Herodotus, i. 153. 4 Strabo : De Situ Orb. xv. 

5 Rapp (Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch., xx. 128). 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 327 

fallen enemies," to reject the death penalty for a single 
offence, and to forbid even kings to treat their slaves with 
harshness. 1 

This self-respect, in so many ways characteristic of the 
Persians, was to a great degree a form of pride. Here, for 
the first time in human history, we find the sense of a really 
historic function. The confluence and conflict of Asiatic 
races had necessitated the appearance of a select tribe 
capable of commanding these vast materials, whose fer 
ment was now heading towards a definite world-result. 
The force must be in personal Will, not in mass nor even 
in organization, in will, conscious of right to rule, and in 
tensified both by self-indulgence and self-respect. In the 
Persian genius for sway begins that worship of personality 
which has been the shaping force for good and ill of 
European civilization. 

Its absolutism may be illustrated by the treatment of 
woman. In Persia, far more than in India or China, she is 
subject to the will of man. Here the harem reaches its 
full development, and the eunuchs, or keepers of women, 
are installed around it. Here seclusion was but little mod 
ified by custom or by circumstance. In the inscriptions 
and sculptures woman is wholly ignored. One would not 
know there was any sex but the male. What a record 
of slavery is in that deportation by Darius of fifty thou 
sand women to populate Babylon, drawn like tributes of 
food or cattle from the several provinces of the empire ! 2 
or in the custom of taking concubines with the army on 
distant marches, in great numbers, and with luxurious at 
tendance, and leaving wives at home under close super 
vision ! 3 or in that story of the concubine, dressed in 
splendid robes, who came to the Greek victors after Plataea, 

1 Herodotus, i. 137, 138; ix. 109. Gobineau, i. 403. 

2 Herodotus, iii. 159. 

3 See authorities in Rawlinson, Ancient Monarchies, iii- 238. Brisson, p. 549. 



328 POLITICAL FORCES. 

and besought them to deliver her from the Persian lord 
who had carried her off by violence and held her as a 
slave ! : The Persian could marry his nearest kindred, 2 and 
the law imposed on him no such strict commandment of 
chastity as the law of Manu enforced on the Hindu ; still 
less did it resemble the sexual asceticism of the Buddhist. 
The will of the Persian was his law; and the story of the 
seven nobles sent to the king of Macedonia to demand 
earth and water, and who were all assassinated on account 
of their indecent behavior at a banquet towards the wives 
of their hosts, sounds all the more probable for being 
related by Herodotus of the Persians. 3 The demand of 
these ruffians that the Macedonian women, contrary to the 
custom of the land, should be brought out to sit with them 
at table, shows that in their own country even the rule of 
seclusion yielded to arbitrary will. The Biblical romance 
of Esther, to the same effect, tells us of the queen of Aha- 
suerus, that the king commanded her to appear before the 
crowd at a feast, and that she refused to obey. Artaxerxes 
was glad to have his queen Statira ride in an open chariot, 
that the country women might salute her; at the same 
time no male must approach or pass her, upon penalty 
of death. 4 

But, on the other hand, woman must have found her 
account in the national respect for personality itself. A 
son could not sit in his mother s presence without permis 
sion ; and if a king, he occupied at table a place lower than 
hers. A law dating from Cyrus decreed that when the 
king entered a city, every woman in it should receive a 
piece of gold ; and this was done in honor of the women 
who by their reproaches turned back his fleeing army in 
the Median war. 5 Cyrus, always the national ideal, had 
but one wife, and at her death commanded that the whole 

1 Herodotus, ix. 76. 2 Duncker, ii. 419. s Herodotus, v. 18-20. 

4 Plutarch: Artaxerxes. 6 Plutarch on the virtues of women. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 329 

nation should go into mourning. 1 His chivalrous treat 
ment of women is a leading feature of Xenophon s portrait, 
and far surpasses anything of the kind in Greek manners. 
The education of the Persians in childhood belonged to the 
mother ; and the crimes of Parysatis and Amestris prove 
that their customs permitted the queen, as wife and as 
mother, an almost absolute power in public and private 
affairs. In the later times of the empire women were 
made priestesses of Anaitis, or of the sun, and dedicated to 
chastity. The honor paid by Cyrus to women, their names 
given in the army-lists of Xerxes, and the constant refer 
ence to them as important political and social forces 
throughout the histories of the Achaemenide kings, are 
evidences of no slight recognition of female capacities 
and rights. 2 

In political as in domestic life, the ultimate appeal was 
to arbitrary Will. The law of the Medes and Persians, 3 
that could not be changed, was nothing else than the rigor 
of the king s decree for the time being. Personal govern 
ment, as developed in modern times, except in its theolog 
ical form, is either limited by recognized laws and customs, 
as even the autocracy of the Czar ; or checked by inter 
national relations, as that of the Sultan ; or obliged to make 
appeal in some real or pretended way to the popular voice, 
as that of the French emperor. In China it is controlled 
by an immemorial ritual ; in India, by an equally imme 
morial religious tradition. But the later Persian autocrat 
had the personal government of an omnipotent Will. 
There was no precept of the Persian national religion 
which he did not violate whenever he pleased ; no foreign 
custom he did not adopt or reject as he preferred. It is 
entirely impossible to reconcile the Zoroastrian law with 
the history of any Achaemenide king. Cyrus punishes the 

1 Herodotus, ii. i. 

2 Herodotus, vii. 61 ; Ctesias, passim. Plutarch: Artaxerxes. Justin, x. 2. 

3 Daniel, vi 15. 



330 POLITICAL FORCES. 

(sacred) water of the Gyndes for drowning his horse, and 
Cambyses violates tombs and burns bodies. Cyrus is de 
terred from burning Croesus not by religious scruples, but 
by sympathy and respect. Xerxes treats the Hellespont 
with contempt. There is no record of the Avesta ritual 
being performed by these kings, and their Magi were quite 
other than the Avestan Athrava. They gave the Greeks 
the impression which a sublime self-idolatry is wont to 
make on nations, of a divine right to rule ; so that even 
Xenophon wrote his "Institutions of Cyrus" in order to 
show how the difficult problem of personal government 
and popular consent might be solved, and the world be 
ruled by one person whose character should cause all men 
to desire to be governed by his opinions and will. 

Our Greek authorities make the rise (Cyrus), organiza 
tion (Darius), and extension (Xerxes) of the empire pure 
products of individual Will. Only the royal personality 
holds together these loose principalities and tribes, its 
"eyes and ears" being omnipresent; and the satraps, Tis- 
saphernes and Pharnabazus, by merely aping its desires and 
doings in their own spheres, are able to direct the fortunes 
of the free Greek States. It is the king s wisdom that 
conquers nations, as with Cyrus ; the king s folly that loses 
battles, as with Darius at Issus ; his iconoclastic rage that 
tramples old religions under foot, as with Cambyses in 
Egypt ; l his person whom the enemy in battle makes the 
objective point, as when Cyrus the Younger made directly 
for Artaxerxes, and Alexander for the tent of Darius. 
Only one sin is known to the cuneiform records of nations 
subdued and punished, " They rebelled against me, the 
king of kings, and deserved their fate at my hands." No 
sense of presumption in all this, no suspicion of wrong 
doing, more than in the Hebrew Jahveh when he lifts up and 

1 But see Brugsch Bey s Egypt under the Pharaohs, chap, xix., where the stories of 
Cambyses rage against Apis, etc , are denied, from the monuments. 






BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 331 

casts down at his will. " I was not wicked," writes Darius, 
proudly, " nor a tyrant, nor a liar; neither I, nor any of my 
race. I have obeyed the laws ; and the rights and customs 
I have not violated." l 

We must not suppose that any Persian regarded this 
supremacy as an arbitrary Will imposed from without. 
The Hebrews were not the only " chosen nation." Every 
Persian shared the " manifest destiny " of his king. The 
king was the ideal. The fire was extinguished at his death. 
This was a nation of kings, of gods. They alone, of all 
subjects, paid no tribute to the throne. They were not 
ground into powder, like Assyrian or Babylonian multi 
tudes at toil. Their chiefs associated with the king, rea 
soned and joked with him, gave him counsel, heard his 
schemes with approval or doubt. 2 But the rights of his 
will they did not doubt. Even in Herodotus story that 
Cyrus persuaded them to join him in rebellion against the 
Medes by setting them at hard work one day and feasting 
them the next, to show them the difference between sub 
jection and freedom, the prince acts as one who knows that 
he has authority to enforce their consent. Herodotus him 
self seems to have no other conception of him than as one 
divinely made for ruling men. 3 The boys at school elect 
him king. Astyages sees by his manners that he is a king 
in the disguise of a herdsman s child. He revolts against 
Media with no other visible authority to seize the empire 
than a spurious letter appointing him general of the Persian 
levies. His studious regard for feudal rights and personal 
feelings is made by Xenophon to appear, as we have already 
said, as a conscious policy of conceding liberties and lav 
ishing favors that men might feel free in an obedience that 
flowed naturally from gratitude and love. And in after 

1 Behistun, iv. 13. 

2 The old heroic legends of the native Iranian chronicles, preserved in Firdusi and 
Hamza, make the relation of the king to his chiefs the same as we find it in Herodotus. 

3 Herodotus, v. 121. 



332 POLITICAL FORCES. 

days, when the taste of power had become sweet to the 
pampered lords of Persia, the " king of kings " takes care 
to protect his supremacy by putting the provinces under 
governors of native birth. 1 Alexander pursued the same 
policy, and thereby offended Greek and Macedonian pride 
of race and desire of exclusive power. 

Historically, then, the beginning of respect for personal 
ity is in aristocratic institutions ; not in honor to an ideal 
self, in which all may prospectively share, but in a kind of 
worship for powers of will, great enough to distinguish 
some persons above all others. In India, the ideal is in a 
religious law, embodied in a hereditary priesthood. In 
China, it is a labor-power embodied in a homogeneous 
multitude. In Persia, it has become a strictly personal Will 
embodied in an individual, a class, a tribe, who are capable 
of showing its power. The early Persians chose their 
bravest for king, and they never forgot the connection be 
tween authority and personal energy. Darius was himself, 
like Cyrus, the choice of a body of revolting chiefs. 
Although absolute over his satraps, he was satirized by 
his nobles. " Cyrus ruled as a father, Cambyses as a mas 
ter, Darius as a trader." 2 Yet the administrative force of 
this politic ruler was what made Persia an empire ; and 
while his nobles were free to criticise, they failed not to 
recognize the mighty constructive will that was felt alike at 
the centre and circumference of his dominions, restraining, 
balancing, harmonizing powers, and reconciling the intel 
lectual, social, and even religious differences of the tribes. 
The mildest of conquerors, the mediator of nations, ex 
plorer of the continents, opener of the ways from sea to 
sea, 3 Darius stands, perhaps, the strongest justification in 
history for the worship of personal Will. 4 The weakness 

1 Gobineau, ii. 43. 2 Herodotus, iii. 89. 3 Ibid., iii. 135. 

4 It is the report of Diodorus that Darius was the only king who had been deified by the 
Egyptians in his lifetime, and that they rendered him after his death the same honors which 
they were wont to pay to their ancient kings. Diodorus, i. 95. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 333 

of his successors could not stand the ideal test that Per 
sian freedom still knew how to apply; and real power 
passed gradually from their hands into those of overbear 
ing court favorites and satraps of energy and skill, and even 
of Greek generals and refugees. 

There is thus a very positive sense in which we can 
speak of Persian freedom. Not a democratic sense of the 
word, but one that meant rights and powers, and even 
anticipated very important elements in Greek liberty, 
which was always more or less an appeal by the masses 
to personal government by the strongest will, and on the 
part of the more thoughtful minds, such as the Socratic 
school, a protest against crude democracy as usurping the 
political rights of the best and highest wills. Not more 
pronounced was the Greek consciousness of manifest na 
tional destiny than that Persian sense of a great historic 
function which every Persian noble shared with his king. 
It ran in their blood, as in his, to make the world their 
footstool. The proudest autocrat could not disregard this 
community of faith and feeling, nor fail to consult it. 
Xerxes, on the whole, despite a few terrible acts of power, 
the most forgiving of kings, persuading his lords to make 
war on Greece, says : " I only pursue the path appointed 
me. From the beginning we Persians have never been at 
rest: a deity impels us. I need not recount the conquests 
of my predecessors. Sufficient to say, I am resolved to in 
vade Greece and punish Athens. But that I may not seem 
to act arbitrarily, I commit the matter to your reflection, 
allowing every one to speak with freedom." 1 Influenced 
by certain chiefs to give up the plan, he is again brought 
to his first resolution by supernatural visions, which call 
him to fulfil his destiny, and march to universal sway. 2 

We have here the explanation of the remarkable fact 
that the " Great King" was in many ways an ideal, politi- 

1 Herodotus, vii. 8. 2 Ibid., vii. 19. 



334 POLITICAL FORCES. 

cal and ethical as well as religious, to the Greek republics. 
The germs of liberty in Persian life were quite sufficient to 
overcome their reluctance to accept what would seem to 
be directly contrary to the individualism of these warring 
democracies. Not only were the literary representatives 
of a citizenship that refused to prostrate itself before a 
throne so fascinated by the " Great Barbarian " that his 
institutions are the material of their Utopias, but the party 
and personal strifes of Greek States are constantly referred 
to him for settlement, and their exiles compete for his fav 
orable interference. This was not so much a tribute to his 
wisdom or humanity (although the ethical contrast of king 
and politician is usually by no means to the credit of the 
latter) as it was a recognition of the necessity on the part 
of a swarm of bitter partisans to take refuge from political 
chaos in the grandeur of one omnipotent Will. The Greek 
republics were nowhere based on a universal principle; the 
liberty they pursued was the liberty to will and to do ; and 
here was its ideal embodied, not in the personal centre of 
the State alone, but in the prestige and pride of the chiefs 
of families and clans. The majestic proportions of this 
development of personal power; its day of judgment for 
the weak empires of the East; its splendid illustration 
of capacity in Cyrus and Darius, and of magnificence in 
Xerxes ; the colossal growth that pointed back to sturdy 
simplicity and self-control, and the consciousness of im 
mense educational obligations in art and science, com 
bined to produce an effect on Greek imagination it would 
not be going too far to call religious. Xenophon, who had 
led his Ten Thousand on the most perilous march in all 
antiquity, and who had fully learned the superiority of the 
Greeks as soldiers to Persian levies and leaders, was not 
a man to be dazzled or awed by a mere Eastern despot, 
least of all by an Artaxerxes in the last stages of Persian 
decline. Yet it is Xenophon who has paid the highest 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 335 

possible tribute to Persian institutions. And Plato him- 
self is scarcely behind him in the praises of these institu 
tions, and especially of the training of the kings, which he 
puts into the mouth of Socrates, who contrasts them with 
the moral and religious crudeness of Greek disciplines. 1 
No deity could compare with Destiny for Hellenic rever 
ence. A n d the infection of the Persian s confidence in his 
star greatly helped to bring about the extraordinary fact, 
that Cyrus the barbarian became the politico-religious ideal 
of the cultivated Greek. 

This religious prestige, which gathered about Cyrus 
from the first moment of his appearance on the historic 
field, so rapidly covered his name with mythic honors, that 
but few definite facts can be discerned through their haze. 
The coming of a great man seems to dwarf history and 
open the gates of imagination for the common mind. 
Nature melts at his coming into poetry and legend, and 
the world inherits a new meaning from the soul of man 
with which it is slow to part. As late as the second cen 
tury of Christianity, Pausanias interrupts his praise of An 
toninus to say that in his opinion Cyrus was after all the 
" father of mankind." 

Greek testimony leaves us in doubt whether Cyrus was 
Persian or Mede ; while a third theory made him both, 
giving rise to the story that an oracle had warned Asty- 
ages against the coming of a mule to the throne. 2 This 
notion of a mixed origin impressed itself on the Persian 
heroic legend, as appears in the later Shah-Nameh, where 
he is the son of an Iranian father and a Turanian mother; 
and the Mahometan prose historians follow the tradi 
tion. 3 His name has stood for the communion of races 
and religions, the pride of each making him its conquest 
and its crown. Both the Hebrew and the Mussulman 

1 First Alcibiades, 36, 37. 2 Description of Greece, viii. 43. 

3 Mirkhond. 



336 POLITICAL FORCES. 

tradition claim him as their convert. A Mahometan poem 
of the twelfth century, working up earlier beliefs, derives 
him from a female demon (dlv), gives him a hideous coun 
tenance and immense strength, in other words, makes him 
a barbarian ; rescues him from exposure in the forests, and 
educates him in Iran, where he recurs to barbarian faith 
and habits, but recovers himself, conquers Turan, becomes 
the saviour of his people and the master of the world. 1 
Then falling from grace, and exalting himself as God, he 
is punished by rebellion, and converted to the true faith 
and ethics by meeting a hermit in the forest, who humbles 
his pride and teaches him the wisdom and might of Allah. 
This, as the reader will observe, follows the usual dealing 
of Semitic religions with the names of great heathens whom 
they could not but respect. But it is also the ordinary 
type of the old Iranian legend, as in Yima. In the same 
way the older Shah-Nameh transports him and his paladins 
to practise devotions among the holy mountains of Elburz, 
making the old Iranian feudalism end in mystical piety. 
And Mirkhond, who collected the Islamized traditions of 
old Persian kings (fifteenth century), describes Kai-Khosru, 
by that time probably identified with Cyrus, as the bene 
factor of laborers and the saviour of his country, and 
makes him at last a Sufi, who prays for release from self 
and absorption into God, " convinced," after a hundred 
years of success in all his desires, that " this world is but 
a mirage, and we the thirsty travellers " ! 2 

The infancy and growth of Cyrus, as treated by the my- 
thologists, are of messianic type. The similarity of the 
mythic forms by which national religions express the sense 
of gratitude to an appointed deliverer, and of the bitter 
resistance he meets from the evil he comes to overthrow, 
is fully illustrated in the cycle of legends of Herodotus, 

1 Kuschnameh, or History of Cyrus. See Gobineau : Histoire des Perses. 
3 Shea: Kings of Persia, p. 260. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 337 

in the dream of Mandane prefiguring her son s glory, the 
dream of Astyages that his throne was in peril from his 
own grandson ; in his consulting the Magi, and command 
ing the death of the child ; in the escape of Cyrus through 
the power of Destiny; in the king s merciless revenge on 
his counsellors and agents, and his discovery of the boy s 
identity by the innate royalty of his behavior among his 
playfellows and before the great men. These legends, and 
those of his maturer life, of which Xenophon s romance is 
also a variation, must have been very largely of Persian 
rather than Greek origin. Their extension shows how 
widely spread was the recognition of a vast and bene 
ficent change wrought by Cyrus in the west of Asia. 
They are of great value as indicating the far higher civil 
ization introduced by the Persians in place of the Median. 
Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between 
their picture of Median despotism and barbarism, and that 
which Xenophon has ventured to draw of the splendid 
humanity and statesmanly policy of Cyrus. It points 
strongly to a difference of race, and gives color to Oppert s 
recent theory in explanation of the different lists of kings 
in Herodotus and Ctesias, that Median civilization was 
Turanian. 

The same ideal prestige ascribed to Cyrus that choice 
wisdom of apologue, parable, and proverb which Hebrew 
admiration ascribed to Solomon, and Christian to Jesus. 
His symbolical appeal to the Persian nobles already men 
tioned ; animal legends, such as the letter sent to them 
sewed up in a hare s belly, and the suckling of Cyrus by 
a dog (an etymological myth) ; his parable of the piper 
and the foolish fishes, 1 told to the chiefs who had only 
submitted to him when compelled ; and the maxims of 
political and moral wisdom which are ascribed to him by 
the Greeks, that those who would not do good for 

1 Herodotus, i. 141. 
22 



338 POLITICAL FORCES. 

themselves should be obliged to do good for others, that 
no one ought to govern who was not better than those he 
governed, and that the Persians should not change their 
rocky and rude country, because the seeds of plants and 
the lives of men resemble the soil they inhabit ; l above 
all, his relation with Croesus, of which we are about to 
speak more fully, all show the drift of gnomic and 
oracular repute to this favorite of the gods. 

As the hero of philosophical romance, Cyrus receives 
in Xenophon s " Cyropsedia " the finest personal tribute of 
the kind now mentioned in all antiquity. Here he acts 
the part of an ethical and political saviour, coming into 
the world with authority and insight to rectify all wrong. 
He is the incarnation of " sweetness and light." He 
shows this absolute function in rebuking Median luxury 
and intemperance, even as a boy; in conveying reproof 
and instruction to his chiefs by elaborate logic, practical 
illustrations, aphorisms, and even cheerful raillery and 
ready wit, and to soldiers, courtiers, sages, not only in a 
constant didactic tone, like the Socrates of Plato or the 
Jesus of the Gospels, but in a minute pedagogy, as if au 
thorized to create anew in every detail the administration 
of society and law. He is more than teacher ; he is the 
centre of teachers, who lay at his feet all the experience of 
man, that in him it may be lifted to universal ends. All 
that the Socratic Xenophon has imbibed from the best 
society of the ancient world is not too much to be worked 
up into the mere outfit for this inspired guide of mankind, 
not in the theory and practice of the virtues only, but in 
the most difficult functions of political and military life. 
At the feet of his father, Cambyses, he listens respectfully 
to maxims of faith and conduct which have never been 
surpassed, that the gods act according to laws; that we 
should pray only after striving to render ourselves such as 

1 Plutarch: Apophthegms of Kings. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 339 

we ought and hope to be, holding it impious to ask the 
gods for gifts we do not struggle to earn ; that there is no 
way of appearing wise so certain as to be wise; that the 
commander s care of his army should be of a nobler sort 
than merely to keep physicians to cure their diseases, even 
the wisdom to prevent their falling sick ; that by perfect 
sympathy he should win their confidence and love, to 
which ends hosts of practical maxims are supplied. 1 How 
humbly he accepts the paternal admonition never to use 
the Persians for his own interest alone ! How respectfully 
he listens to the Lydian king, till the day of his falling into 
his own power the wisest and greatest of earthly kings, 2 ever 
consulting his prudence and tact, and moved to tenderness 
by his sufferings ; learning from his downfall the instability 
of success ; requiting his noble confession of insufficiency 
to contend against the greater one whom Destiny had pro 
vided by the generous restoration of his family and goods ! 3 
How he caps these lessons of human pride and failure with 
the royal philosophy, that happiest is the man who can 
earn most through justice, and use most with honor ! 4 By 
what choice disciples he is surrounded ! Tigranes thrills 
his soul by describing the sage (a reminiscence of Socrates) 
who forgives his king for condemning him to death " since 
he knows not what he does." 5 Chrysantas delights to dis 
cern in him the proofs that a good prince can be a good 
father of his people, and only adds to his master s ethics of 
rational obedience that reason which his own modesty had 
not emphasized, the right of one to claim it whose fit 
ness to lead men to their own best good was past all 
doubt. 6 Gobryas praises his simple and hardy habits ; and 
having committed a beautiful daughter to his care, is re 
warded by his assurance that to enjoy such confidence is 
a more precious treasure in his sight than all the wealth 

1 Xenophon : Cyropczdia, i. 6. 2 Ibid., viii. 2. 3 Ibid., vii. 2. 

4 Ibid., viii. 2. 5 Ib.d., iii i. 6 Ibid., viii. i. 



340 POLITICAL FORCES. 

of Babylon. 1 Pheraulas, whose courage to withstand the 
temptations of riches, and to exchange their burdens for 
independence with poverty, finds an appreciative king. 2 
And both father and mother warn him to govern, unlike the 
Median kings, by obeying the laws, and never to imagine 
that one man ought to possess more than all others. 3 
He believes that even the worst men will think it a ser 
vice to themselves that the best should have the leading of 
them. 4 He holds everything noble or beautiful possessed 
by his subjects to be an ornament to himself. He rejects 
great presents, even those of gratitude, saying, " You shall 
not make me such a man as will run up and down, barter 
ing my services for money." He " lays up resources by 
means of his conduct." 5 He treats women with noble 
delicacy and deep respect, 6 and his advice to young men 
on matters of love are mingled with genial humor. He 
opens battle with prayer : " They who fear the gods in 
peril, are all the less afraid of men." 7 He creates not 
only a perfect commissariat and perfect discipline, but an 
esprit de corps. He disparages excited appeals to sol 
diers, as compared with the systematic culture of valor 
and virtue. He conducts war with unheard-of mildness, 
dismissing prisoners, forgiving foes, slaying only those in 
arms, leaving the nations free from exactions and service. 
He frees slaves and makes them soldiers. 8 He pities 
heroic men in defeat and fighting hopelessly, and even 
draws off his conquering army to preserve their lives. 9 
He treats his allies with great delicacy, deferring the din 
ner-hour for himself and his army till their arrival, as well 
as all partition of booty, and doing nothing without regard 
to their feelings. He wins all hearts not only by nobility 

Xenophon : Cyropcedta,v. 2, 3. 2 Ibid., viii. 3. 

3 Ibid., i. 3; viii. 5. 4 ibid., ii. 2 . 

r> Ibid., iii. 12. 6 See dying address to his sons. 

7 Xenophon : Cyropcedia, iii. 3. 8 Ibid., iv. 4, 6. 
8 Ibid., vii. i. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 341 

and kindness, but also by tact, overcoming in this way the 
jealousy of Cyaxares the Median king, whom he super 
sedes in the love of the army, and who finds himself re 
duced to a cipher by the man he has made general of his 
troops. 1 He takes up the cause of laboring men, sees that 
the agricultural populations are well cared for, and praises 
the lot of those who live by honest toil. He enforces di 
vision of labor. He lays down wise principles of production- 
and distribution, and living use of capital, and prescribes 
due order in all administration, makes litigants go to ref 
erees, raises the best to power without distinction of rank, 
sends judges through his States to rectify disorders, and 
opens postal roads and stations for swift couriers. He 
honors the fine arts, and spares Sardis on their account. 
For himself, he is better pleased to give than to receive, 
and leads others by force of example to virtue. He is 
husband of one wife, and thoroughly loyal to his vows. 
He excels not so much in military conduct as in love of 
man, and dies grateful for a life of perfect success, ex 
horting his children to love each other, to believe in im 
mortality, and next to the gods to seek the good of all 
mankind. He enjoins that no splendor be seen about his 
remains, which must be as speedily as possible returned to 
earth. 

This noble ideal is marred by the limitations of its framer 
and the conditions of the age. Xenophon s Cyrus, assum 
ing the necessity of willing obedience to a good-willing 
power from those who have been used to servitude or must 
be held to it, attempts to reconcile these conditions by a 
training which presumes them all, and treats the subjects of 
it with the tenderness of a father for his children, while de 
priving them of the right of bearing arms and disqualifying 
them from even desiring the means of freedom. 2 This is 

1 Xenophon : Cyro^eedia, v. 4, 5 ; vii. 4 ; viii. 3. 

2 Ibid., viii. 1-8. 



342 POLITICAL FORCES. 

a piece of Xenophon s Spartan prejudices, quickened to a 
sense of the duties involved in it for one of such humanity 
as Cyrus. It was probably in accordance with the observed 
customs of the Persians of his day, that Xenophon, for the 
same purpose of securing authority to the world-rulers, 
makes Cyrus advise his countrymen to wear high shoes to 
appear taller than they were, and to paint their faces to 
give them beauty and dignity. 1 His statement that the 
" adoration" he reports Cyrus to have received for the first 
time from the Persians on his state-procession from the 
palace in Babylon, as the spontaneous tribute of his peo 
ple, should have been allowed him by the cultured Greeks 
(they certainly refused it to the later Achaemenidan kings), 
is only to be explained by his sense of a special divine 
authority in Cyrus to receive the world s worship as the 
"Star in the East" of a religious faith. How natural it was 
to form this personal theory of the origin .of the Persian 
custom appears in the later deification of Jesus, even in his 
infancy, when Christianity had become a religious power, 
and needed verification of its claims in the history of its 
founder. The personal character of Xenophon s admira 
tion of Persian royalty is shared by Plato, who makes his 
Athenian guest in " The Laws " praise Cyrus and his men 
for moderation in the exercise of power, sharing their free 
dom with others, and leading them to equality; the mag 
nanimous king " granting liberty of speech to all who were 
able to advise," so that " progress was effected through 
freedom, friendship, and communion of intellect." Plato s 
criticism of Cyrus is confined to ascribing the decay of the 
State to the custom introduced by him of intrusting the 
education of princes to women, whose petting made them 
vicious, as in the case of Cyrus own children. 2 

We shall do justice to the significance of these Greek 
tributes when we consider that they are traceable directly 

1 Xenophon : Cyropczdia* viii. 1-3. 2 Laws, bk. iii. 



PABVLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 343 

to the very highest moral and intellectual authority in 
ancient history. The teaching of Socrates produced two 
fruits in philosophical romance, the Atlantis of Plato, 
and the " Cyropsedia" of Xenophon. The description 
of the early inhabitants of the great Atlantic Island, ^r- 
of the rise of their vast empire through their frugality 
and sobriety, their gentleness and wisdom, their piety 
and humanity, and their willing obedience to divine kings ; 
of their gradual corruption through luxury, and of the valor 
with which the Athenians met their immense invading hosts, 
till both nations were destroyed by earthquake and flood 
ten thousand years before, can have been suggested 
only by the history of the rise and fall of the Great 
Empire of the East, and its relations with Athens in 
recent times. 1 It grew confessedly out of the same desire 
to illustrate the ideal Socratic State, with Xenophon s " Cy- 
ropaedia ; " although in this case not Persia, but a primeval 
Athens is the central figure, while the perfection of Atlan 
tis also is, like Persian virtues, concentrated in her earliest 
royalty. Xenophon wrote Jiis " Cyropaedia" to illustrate the 
philosophical principle of free government, as consisting in 
the willing obedience of men to what they recognized as 
just and humane, as he wrote his " Hiero the Despot " to 
show the converse of the same principle, that unwill 
ing obedience is slavery and ruin. In his praise of the 
aristocratic side of Cyrus institutes, we see the Socratic 
dislike of extreme democracy as it existed in Greece. 
Cyrus is himself a pure disciple of Socrates in his con 
stant presumption that all men desired to do right and to 
be rightly governed, in his identification of politics with 
ethics, in his cardinal principles of temperance, justice, 
courage, and love, in respecting the religions of all nations ; 
and while not hesitating to join in their rites, yet dispens 
ing with diviners, and obeying the inward voice, making 

1 Jowett s Translation of Timeeus, 19 ; Critias, 109-120. 



344 POLITICAL FORCES. 

humbleness and noble endeavor his true prayer, because 
the gods could act only by laws, never by caprice. 1 His 
doctrine of forgiveness, and his death, looking forward to a 
future life, are both Socratic. It is true that Socrates would 
not have approved the suicide of Panthea upon the death 
of her husband ; but this event is but an incident of the 
most tender and touching story of mutual love, honor, and 
fidelity between the sexes in all ancient fiction, and is so 
related as to show Cyrus in the noblest light. It is safe to 
say that no tribute so exalted was ever paid to any people, 
when the position and character of those who paid it are 
fully weighed, as those of Plato and Xenophon to the foun 
ders of the Persian State. It becomes the more striking 
when we consider that the tribute of the latter especially 
was almost wholly to personal government, in a high sense of 
the word, as a righteous resort from the excesses of Greek 
democracy or ochlocracy. And here we must note Xeno- 
phon s purpose to present the practical as well as philo 
sophical ideal of sovereignty. He was in most respects one 
of the clearest heads in all antiquity on matters of political 
and military science. And we may well ask what a name 
must Cyrus have left behind him, when we find such a man 
ascribing to him almost every great economical principle 
or measure by which later monarchies have combined their 
own preservation with the prosperity of their subjects ! 
At the same time, the condition of the ancient world was 
thoroughly recognized, from the best Greek experience, as 
needing above all things the remedy of personal govern 
ment righteously applied. From this should issue a sys 
tematic moral training in ideals suitable to free men, 
combined, as in the Spartan discipline, with contempt for 
the mere pursuit of wealth. The king must carry the 
force of personal example into immediate contact with his 
subjects. Hence every one must come to the palace to 

1 Xenophon: Cyrofadia, \. 6. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 345 

prove his loyalty, the rich must not live away from the 
capital, a standing army must take the place of uncertain 
feudal services, 1 the best people must dine at the king s 
table, administration must be watched by secret police, the 
civil and military powers be vested in distinct persons, 2 and 
offices be rightly and gifts generously bestowed. The king 
must be the moral ideal, 3 and rule by incessant toil and 
vigilant foresight, as one personally responsible for the 
welfare of his people, with a " thirst for doing good," and 
for winning obedience through love. 4 

We have thus presented Xenophon s ideal Cyrus in full, 
not because of its historical truth, which is probably much 
inferior to the story of Herodotus, nor as unaware that this 
is the wisdom of Greece rather than of Persia ; but because 
the power of Cyrus name to draw it out from such a 
source, is mark of a position in the ancient world which 
deserves the most profound regard. 

To the Greek mind, to the simplicity of Herodotus no 
less than to the philosophy and ethics of the Socratic 
school, Cyrus was the child of Destiny, as he was of Provi 
dential purpose to the Hebrew, to the one as a grand 
personal force transforming human society and politics; to 
the other as the instrument of Jahveh to restore and exalt 
his chosen race. The story of Croesus is constructed in 
the interest of this belief. In his relations with the king of 
Lydia, this Son of Destiny, raised from the depths of the 
far East, at once recognizes the existing moral and intel 
lectual achievements of mankind^ and proves his own 
superiority to the will of the gods of Asia and of Greece. 
In this view I think I can hardly be mistaken. Croesus 
for the Greeks, especially the lonians, is king of the typical 
tribe in Asiatic civilization, and conqueror of the most ad 
vanced Ionian cities of Asia Minor. The Lydians had the 

1 Xenophon : Cyropcedia, ii. i. 2 Ibid., viii. 6. 

s Ibid., i. 6. * Ibid.,v. i. 



346 POLITICAL FORCES. 

prestige of political wisdom and social resource ; they were 
the first employers of gold and silver coin, the first retailers 
of goods ; they had the wit to invent games, as diversion 
from suffering in a long and grievous famine. 1 Croesus 
resources were fabulous, his conquests vast, his wisdom 
proverbial alike for shrewdness and breadth. His capital 
was the resort of Greek sages, the mother and nurse of 
Greek literature. So great was his interest in Hellenic 
culture, that he sent splendid gifts to the temples, con 
sulted the oracles, testing their knowledge, and followed 
the guidance of Apollo in making war on Persia. He was 
the common ally and honored friend of Babylon, Egypt, 
Greece. Nothing could exceed the contempt of his wise 
men for the rude hosts of Iran. On the funeral pyre he 
calls upon Solon, as the one sage who could comprehend 
his downfall and despair. In the Greek worship of Cyrus, 
Croesus holds a place similar to that of the Magi in the 
Christian legend of the destined Christ. It was this great 
historical figure that naturally expressed the failure of all 
existing wisdom, power, and even faith, before the advent 
of the new Sun rising in the East, an event which might 
well stir the Greek world to serious thought. Conquered 
by Cyrus and cast on the funeral pile (probably, as Hero 
dotus intimates, 2 and as may be inferred from Xenophon, 
without intention to carry out the barbarity, since it was 
wholly contrary to the spirit of Cyrus to do so), he ac 
knowledges this decree of Destiny, reproaching the 
Pythian oracle with urging him on by delusions to war 
against one whom none can withstand. Apollo can send 
rain to put out the fires; but even he cannot turn back 
the destiny of Cyrus to supersede both Lydian and Greek. 
Permitted to send a message to the Delphian god to ask if 
he is not ashamed of his doings, and if the gods of Greece 

1 Herodotus, i. 94. 

2 Ibid., i. 86, 88. See Rawlinson, note A. to Herodotus, bk. i. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 347 

were usually ungrateful, Croesus receives for answer that it 
was not in Apollo to contravene the decrees of Fate. The 
Greek Prometheus is illumined by suffering to foresee the 
coming of Destiny to release him, and overthrow the exist 
ing gods in the interest of man. Here it is not a defiant 
Titan that throws himself on the deliverance to come, but 
a conquered religion, confessing its day to be passed in 
presence of the actual destined deliverer. Is it fanciful to 
find this hinted in the smile with which Cyrus grants to 
Croesus permission to reproach the oracle instead of re 
buking him, as a loyal Greek would have done, for the 
impiety of the thought? 

Moreover, it is in recognizing what is noble in the older 
beliefs and their confessors, that the new becomes noble 
and free. Whether intending or not to burn Croesus, 
Cyrus is moved to tenderness by the self-humiliation of 
the noble victim and his piety in view of death, reflecting 
that he also is a man, and must meet the changes of for 
tune and the retribution of just laws. The man of Destiny 
must respect morality, and learn its sovereignty over all 
human things. The supernatural must be under the same 
rule. The miracle of rain which protects Croesus, helps 
also to convince Cyrus that his captive deserves human as 
well as Divine care. 1 The wisdom of the past fails not to 
serve the noble purposes of the new epoch and the higher 
fate. Cyrus consults Croesus in important matters, listens 
to his maxims practical and prudential, his reflections on 
the instability of things. None the less is it always as 
master of the occasion that he listens and accepts them. 
The central force of the teaching is in his own personal 
character and will. 

The ideal personality of Cyrus, thus depicted by the im 
agination of the ages which followed his career, points, as 
few historical ideals do, to an actual force in some degree 

1 Herodotus, i. 87. 



348 POLITICAL FORCES. 

correspondent to its supposed effect. As founder of the 
great empire which directed Greek history, even when 
wasted on the field, and as restorer of the Jews to their 
native land, carrying with them the faith and culture which 
have made them so large a factor in modern civilization, he 
is in many important respects the most impressive figure 
of ancient times, and a root whence the world s progress 
springs. Mr. Grote says that " while the conquests of 
Cyrus contributed to assimilate the distinct types of civil 
ization in Western Asia, not by elevating the worse, 
but by degrading the better, upon the native Persians 
themselvqs they operated as an extraordinary stimulus, 
provoking alike their pride, ambition, cupidity, and war 
like propensities." l This judgment seems to me to over 
look both the historical conditions and the character of 
the great Persian s work. I must regard it as a very im 
perfect estimate of the influence of that large relation to 
the ancient world to which Cyrus introduced his people ; 
but it is still more unjust to Cyrus himself. He was not a 
reconstructor of nations only, but a reformer of the bar 
barous methods of Asiatic warfare. All traditions picture 
him as of singular humanity in the treatment of conquered 
nations. Most constructions of this kind in later ages pass 
over the other Achaemenides, not only the feeble Darius 
Codomannus, the sensual Artaxerxes II., the cruel Ochus, 
the voluptuous Xerxes, but Darius the great organizer, and 
Cambyses the iconoclast, pass over the immense influence 
on foreign States exercised by the gifts and gold of Arta 
xerxes L, to rest on the person of Cyrus. Down to the 
latest days of Persian nationality, as we have seen, this 
precedence lasts, in the poets and historians of Islam. In 
Cyrus only they find the "father" of nations; he only 
thinks himself adorned in adorning others ; he only strives 
to heal discord, to reward noble conduct, to win the hearts 

1 Grote : History of Greece, iv. 216. 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 349 

of men by generous appreciation of merit, by forgiveness 
of injuries, by tender consideration of the weaknesses and 
wants of others. He is as pure in life as he is powerful in 
arms; has the majesty of human omnipotence with none 
of its caprice ; would fain unite autocracy of power with 
democracy of spirit; is at once ideal ruler and ideal man. 
It is scarcely rational to suppose that all this testimony to 
one so conspicuous in history as the creator of the Persian 
empire, so known to Babylon, Egypt, and Greece, can be 
without historical guarantees ; that a repute which all the 
admitted degeneracy of the Persian kings and people since 
his day could not cover up from the sharpest eyes and 
finest minds of that Athenian people, to whom the name 
of barbarian was an offence, can be a baseless fiction. 

As we have already said, that but for the preparatory 
work of the " great kings " Alexander would not have 
found Asia open to his unifying march; that the con 
sciousness of a common empire, and the demand for a 
common political administration did far more than the 
little troop of fifty thousand with which he penetrated 
Asia, to effect the conquest of the multitudinous tribes, 
so we may now add that the powerful initiation of these 
influences must be ascribed to " Cyrus the Great." As it 
is greater to create than to organize, he eclipses even Da 
rius, without whom the empire would have perished in a 
day. A single sentence will perhaps express the direct 
bearing of his life upon the Alexandrine campaigns. No 
mere helplessness of a disorganized State, no weakness of 
Oriental nerve, no absence of leaders, no over-confidence 
of Darius II., did so much to effect their amazing success 
as the previous preparation of the people of Asia to accept 
the personal government of one who deserved to hold 
sway ; the sense of community in an expectation of world- 
purpose and destiny with which Cyrus and his conquering 
Persians had at once inspired the East. From his day 



35O POLITICAL FORCES. 

Iran meant no more a vast desert of warring hordes, but 
the Persia of the Great King, the chosen Solar Fire of 
the World. The savage warfare of Iran and Turan gave 
place to an empire making firm stand against incursions 
from the Northern wilds. The feudal chiefs of Iran were 
subordinated to the throne, without loss of freedom or 
self-respect; and the conquest of Ionia opened the civiliza 
tion of the East and of the West to each other. From his 
constructive conquests dates not the first but the most 
radical intermixture of races, whence grew the breadth of 
European experience. He raised the barrier to the North 
ern swarms whose mastery of Persia would have swept back 
Aryan civilization, delayed for centuries Aryan immigra 
tion into Europe and the Germanic conquests with their 
vast results to freedom and science, and so altered the 
whole course of history. Rome herself, broadened by her 
Parthian and Sassanide wars, and stirred by Persian passion 
out of her narrow and hard materialism, showed in the 
humanities of her later legislation that she had felt the 
pressure of Cyrus heroic hand. Hebrew psalmody, He 
brew law, the piety of Jahvism, as the mother of Christian 
trust and love, born and nurtured in the exile, reached its 
height in the exaltation of Cyrus, the " Righteous One 
whom Jahveh loveth," the " Messiah," the " Anointed Sa 
viour of the World." No other messiah has the Hebrew 
found but this one, for whom the girdle of the loins of 
kings was loosed, that he might open the prison gates; 
at whose touch the wilderness and the solitary place were 
made glad, a highway was opened for the ransomed of 
Jahveh, and the deserts of Judea rejoiced and blossomed 
as the rose. To be the inspirer of the later Isaiah was to 
hold a place second to none in the sources of Hebrew and 
Christian faith. His capture of Babylon broke the pride 
of Semitic polytheism. His restoration of the Jews effaced 
at a word the hostilities of races and creeds, and gave the 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 351 

first strong impulse to universal religion, to the brother 
hood of nations and of times. The victories of Cyrus 
were indeed the sunrise in the east. The turning of the 
river that rolled through Babylon was the original of that 
wonderful picture of a great Deliverer which Christian 
ity has made Jesus claim as meant for himself, 1 the 
turning-point of ancient history. The same hand which 
smote down the old gods of Asia, set up the coming God 
of Europe. To the feet of this great Master of Nations 
converge the lines of religious movement as we trace them 
backward from their widest expansion in modern times. 
And while studying the manifold bearings of his life on 
succeeding ages, I am scarcely surprised that a brilliant 
French historian, whose ingenious conclusions concerning 
the Persians, however imperfectly sustained in some re 
spects, are highly worthy of consideration, should say 
emphatically that " there is nothing else of so intense an 
interest in all human history; " 2 and that without him 
" the Europe of to-day never would have existed." 

We pause before this magnificent landmark of progress. 
Let us reflect that we see the forerunner and type of that 
principle which, for good and for evil, has controlled the 
great religions of modern times. A man stands in the 
place of God. It is not meant that the man is here held 
to be God, though this is the tendency ; and both in earlier 
and later Iranian phases of monarchy the monarch often 
assumes the name and worship of the god. The Persian 
did not worship his king, certainly not in the days of Cyrus. 
He was forbidden by his religious law even to make images 
of Ormuzd, an invisible god. He made only symbolic 
signs of deity hovering over the king. But these were 
signs of personal Will, the essence of sovereignty alike 
in God and king. Though the king was not God to the 
Persian, then, he was the image of God, an image if not 

1 Isaiah, Ixi. i ; Luke, iv. 16-21. - Gobineau : Histoire des Pcrses, i. 511. 



352 POLITICAL FORCES. 

made with hands, yet representing in human form the au 
thority of that Will of whose human and divine elements 
choice of chiefs, and commandment of God he was 
the combined result Later times and religions show how 
naturally the personal God himself becomes identified 
with the man specially made in his image. Though for 
the Persian the reality of Ormuzd soars over the head of 
the Achaemenide, yet a man stands in the place of God. It 
is the form of a Person that we discern dimly through the 
shadows of the past, and the ancient world is at his feet. 
It is the sovereignty of a will. But this will worships; 
it recognizes moral laws, and obeys the spirit of love ; 
it desires to command a willing obedience, to win the 
hearts of men, to reconcile and succor them ; it knows that 
its rights involve duties ; it treats the tribes of a continent 
as one race, which needs and wishes to be governed, but 
has the right to be governed well. And we thus discern 
the justification in its own day and for those conditions in 
which it was born for the true birthday was in the Persia 
of the great Cyrus of the principle of Personal Govern 
ment ; a principle which more than two thousand years of 
political and religious history were to develop and work 
through, until it now finds its value in having prepared 
the way for a higher stage of progress no longer to be 
delayed. 

Such is the Cyropaedia of real history, holding in its 
bosom an end and purpose beyond the " great kings," an 
cient and modern, beyond the Messiahs, the Prophets of 
Jahveh and of Allah, the authoritative Incarnations, the 
theological types of Personal Government, of whom it is 
made up, and whose sway, both ideal and actual, but fore 
shadows a real unity of man with God above and beneath 
these limitations by exclusive types of personal Will. It is 
in Cyrus that we see its fine foreshadowing in its largest 
prophetic aspect. Not the " bright altars " of a Hebrew 



BABYLON, CYRUS, PERSIA. 353 

Jahveh, but the altarless presence and fane of a human 
potentate standing for justice and mercy, are " thronged 
with prostrate kings." 

" See barbarous nations at thy gates attend, 
Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend ! " 



II. 

ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 



ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 

WHEN Alexander of Macedon destroyed the Achae- 
menidan dynasty at a blow, he not only assumed the 
style and embraced the system of the native rulers, but 
became at once the national ideal. Greece denounced 
him as the destroyer of her liberties, the arrogant restorer 
of her twenty thousand political convicts from exile. 1 
Persia, on the contrary, hailed him as her deliverer from 
national disintegration and dynastic decay. Plutarch re 
lates that Darius himself exchanged his contempt of the 
stripling who sought to snatch his crown, for a recogni 
tion which went so far as to pray that if it went ill with 
himself, the gods would "suffer none but Alexander to pos 
sess the throne of Cyrus ; " and adds : " So true is it, that 
virtue is the victor still." 2 Only an overmastering per 
sonality could hold the numerous principalities of Iran 
under a common sway; and this inflexible requirement of 
their nature and traditions could find nothing but its own 
irony in the later Achoemenidan kings. But when this 
young hero, fresh from the conquest of Greece and Egypt, 
threw himself single-handed, with the assurance of a god 
and as a retributive fate, upon the vast empire of the " king 
of kings," the thunder of his tread, the most rapid and re 
sistless in the history of war, awoke the old Iranian loyalty 
to personal Will, with its glorious traditions ; and the 
prestige of Cyrus and of Rustem, ,of the historical and the 
mythological ideals alike, gathered about his head. A 
million spears were grounded at the lifting of his arm. 
The Gordian knot flies apart at the touch of his sword; 

1 Grote, xii. 306. 2 Fortune or Virtue of Alexander, ii. 6, 7. 



358 POLITICAL FORCES. 

he needs not untie it to prove himself the master for whom 
its mystery waits. From his first defiance of Darius, de 
scribed in the legend 1 as a refusal of the accustomed tribute 
of golden eggs, because " the vital bird of him who sent 
the eggs has deserted the cage of the body," or as the 
return of a bitter herb for the bat and ball sent by that 
monarch to satirize his youth, 2 through the successive cap 
ture of Babylon, Susa, Persepolis, Ecbatana, the subjuga 
tion of eastern Iran, the Bactrian and Southern campaigns, 
to the coronation and apotheosis at Babylon, every step 
in that marvellous march was almost as much an ovation 
as a struggle. The magnificent record of heroic toils and 
pains which his Greek eulogist brings to prove him inde 
pendent of the favors of fortune, 3 has its counterpart in the 
ardor of submission, as to an expected one, which greeted 
his coming as soon as the quality of the man was felt. 4 
The Lydian confederacy welcomed him. Babylon and 
Susa threw open their gates to receive him. Tribe after 
tribe gave in their adhesion. " After the battle of Arbela," 
says Plutarch, " Alexander was acknowledged king of all 
Asia." 5 This expectancy is indeed an element needed to 
explain the unparalleled success of a handful of Macedo 
nian soldiers. No great effects in political or religious 
reconstructions are explicable without such conditions 
precedent. The first resistance was made by Darius with 
vast resources. But after the first blows the empire could 
never be rallied, and there remained only outbreaks of in 
dividual States, jealous of their local liberties. The power 
of Alexander s prestige was made cumulative by events ; 
and the fact is worth emphasizing, that no great rebellion 
of conquered tribes occurred in his campaigns, save that 

1 Shea : Mirkhond, pp. 361, 362. 2 Ibid. 

3 Plutarch: Fortune or Virtue of Alexander, ii. 8-13. 

4 Arrian : Expedition of Alexander , iii. 17, 23, 28; iv. i, 15. Curtius, v. i, 2. Arrian, 
i. 25 ; ii. 13. 

5 Arrian, passim. Plutarch : Life of Alexander. 



ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 359 

of the Bactrians, which was caused by the propagation of 
a false story that Alexander intended to seize and put to 
death all the leading men. 1 

When the Iranian tribes saw the one general who could 
have resisted him, Memnon of Rhodes, die before striking 
a blow; when they saw their king Darius ignobly seeking 
safety in flight from the field of Issus, and the conqueror 
enhancing a noble behavior towards his captive family by 
punishing his assassins ; when they saw the conqueror rush 
like a tempest across Central Asia to destroy the Bactrian 
rival who had thought to rise to empire by the murder of 
his king; when satrap after satrap tried his hand at re 
bellion in vain ; when every hour proved the tremendous 
capabilities of a will which suppressed the conspiracies 
of generals, shamed away the reluctance of soldiers, and 
broke into ungovernable wrath at the very suspicion of 
disloyalty in a friend ; when he dared to offend his own 
followers by committing the satrapies to native chiefs ; 
when he left the States their own institutions and free 
dom of worship ; when he took counsel of the Chaldean 
Magi, rebuilt the fallen shrines of Babylon, restored the 
abandoned tomb of Cyrus, and espoused the daughters of 
native kings, we cannot wonder that the national dislike 
of an invader should be absorbed in admiration for one, 
even though a Greek in speech, and plainly purposing 
to play the part of a god, on whom rested so visibly the 
tokens of the right to rule. No wonder native volunteers 
crowded forward to garrison his conquered towns. No 
wonder that when his army refused to follow him farther, 
he found such a host of native youth rise ready to his hand 
that the legions were roused to new zeal, and his march to 
India showed miscellaneous hordes of Persians trained in 
the disciplines of the Greek. 2 No wonder cities sprang 

1 Williams: Life of Alexander (Family Library^. Arrian, iv. \. 

2 Spiegel : Eran, Alterth.^ ii. 562. 



360 POLITICAL FORCES. 

up as by magic on navigable streams and in the desert, as 
if a new birth had come over the whole land. No wonder 
that the sympathies of races could be fertilized by inter 
marriage on the largest scale, beginning with his own ex 
ample and followed by eighty of his chiefs. No wonder that 
the hordes of the ancient monarchy found free circulation 
to revive enterprise and trade, and that this intercourse of 
races opened with electric speed into the nobler commerce 
of ideas and faiths. But these effects, which seemed su 
pernatural to historians and philosophers for many ages 
after his day, were as largely due to the supreme command 
always exercised over Iranian thought and conduct by 
idealizations of personal Will, as to the actual qualities of 
Alexander s genius. It is plain that these qualities would 
have had but little power to move the world, but for the 
immense leverage afforded by the other. 

The pupil of Aristotle, the reader of Homer by day and 
night, the preserver of Pindar s house from the sacking of 
Thebes; whose camp 1 was a lyceum of philosophy and 
science, a school of historians and poets as well as of gen 
erals ; the enthusiast for a civilization that should embrace 
and unify the world, aspiring to teach humanities to the 
rudest tribes, and Greek order and law to the jealous feudal 
lords of Asia, and " by mixing lives, manners, customs, 
wedlocks, as in a festival goblet, to make every one take the 
whole habitable world for a country, of which his camp 
and army should be the metropolis," this man, without 
looking too closely at the strange mixture of dispositions 
and motives, or at the uncertainty of tradition which besets 
a true estimate of Alexander s life, was indeed the higher 
ideal for which Nineveh, Babylon, Mede, and Persian had 
educated the races of Iran. Again the native genius finds 
its living symbol ; nerve-fire condensed into personality, 

1 Pyrrho the sceptic, Anaxarchus, disciple of Democritus, Callisthenes, Ptolemy, Perdiccas, 
accompanied him. Diogenes Laeruus, ix. Also Zeller s Sioics. 



ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 361 

darting like the lightning east and west, and filling the 
world with its flames. For him the elements are made ; 
his foot plays all the pedals of the world s music ; history 
is but the echo of his march. The continents are dead 
and silent everywhere, save where he moves and sum 
mons them to renovated life. 

Alexander is not European after all. He belongs to 
Iran. Of the thirteen years of his reign, eleven are spent 
on the soil of Asia. Once leaving Macedon for the East, 
he never returns. Greece emigrates in him ; her gods 
follow the star of a master which may have risen in the 
West, but which stays proudly in the Eastern sky, and the 
Magi are not his guests but his hosts. Greek Dionysus 
found a home in Eastern Asia, and men saw in the de 
bauches in which the conqueror stained his hand with the 
blood of friends the god s revenge for his neglected 
worship, or for the woes of his beloved Thebes. A new 
Hercules frees Prometheus on a new Caucasus at the 
opposite boundary of Iran, and his name is Alexander of 
Macedon. 

It was not without more positive grounds than these that 
Iranian tradition adopted the invader into the line of native 
kings. 1 For this was in ethnic truth the Agamemnon of 
the East returning to claim his ancestral domain as well as 
to punish the Achaemenides for invading Greece. He is 
Iranian not only by the scene of his triumphs, but by his 
Aryan descent, and even by the Orientalism of his govern 
ment, manners, and dress, and by the ungovernable pas 
sions which the situation developed in him, over which 
even his Greek panegyrist can only mourn. 2 This per 
sonality has the true Iranian dimensions, is the true type 
of inward Iranian Dualism and moral struggle. The fierce 
war of Ormuzd and Ahriman rages here on a scale which 

1 Firdusi: Shah-Nameh. Hamza of Ispatian ; El Masudi ; Tabari. 

2 Arrian, iv. 8. 



362 POLITICAL FORCES. 

involves the fate of civilization. So the native legend 
adopts him, and he becomes for it, as afterward for the 
Mahometan chroniclers, the legitimate son of Darab (Da 
rius) by a daughter of Philip of Macedon, and the half- 
brother of Darius Ochus, who is Darab s son by another 
wife. 1 He is the Iskander of the Shah-Nameh, 2 brought 
up at his father Philip s court, unconscious, like Cyrus, of 
his royal rights, and succeeds to a tributary throne only to 
throw off allegiance, and by defeat of Dara to reach his 
ancestral crown. The historical groundwork of the con 
quest is worked up into a tale of mutual tenderness and 
trust between the brother kings. Iskander weeps over the 
dying Dara, receives his blessing, promises to avenge his 
murder, to marry his daughter, and to spread the faith of 
Zoroaster. The empire receives him with joy, and there 
follows an epoch of order, prosperity, and glory ; while the 
true successor of Kaianian kings makes Egypt and India 
his tributaries, and attended by prodigies and omens visits 
all the sacred shrines of Iran, and restores the supremacy 
it had once enjoyed. The legend knows nothing of the 
enormities which historians have ascribed to that march 
from Tyre to the heart of India, the massacres in Phoeni 
cian cities, the deportations, the burning of Persepolis, and 
the slaughter on the sacred soil of Bactria. But they had 
not been forgotten; nay, in some of the religious traditions, 
they have been greatly exaggerated. It was this very in 
terfusion of terribly destructive elements with far more con 
spicuous ones that were truly creative and humane, which 
made his history attractive to a race whose very conscious 
ness turned on the struggle of good and evil powers for 



1 The Shah Xdmeh, the heroic epos of Persian legends and traditions covering the whole 
life of Iran down to Alexander, gathered and compiled at the court of Ghuznin, was finally 
wrought up by Firdusi, in the eleventh century. 

2 Even Spiegel, who singularly enough thinks the Iranians did not like Alexander, can 
not find any ground for believing this tradition to have a foreign origin. Eran. Alit-rth., 
ii. 599. 



ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 363 

possession of the heroic will. These traditions endowed 
Iskander with the symbolic gifts of this personal ideal, its 
spells for commanding Nature, its talismans to bind de 
monic powers. They gave him the physical strength to 
slay monsters, to repeat the labors of Hercules and his 
prototype the sun, the intuition to foresee his destiny, the 
piety to recognize the insignificance of kingdoms com 
pared with the service of God and man. 

Nor does it appear that Firdusi, the restorer of the 
Iranian legendary history, added any more of Islamitic 
coloring to the traditional fame of Iskander than he gave 
to those earlier heroes of the national legend, whose type, 
thoroughly the same as Iskander s, has evidently preserved 
its original features even under his Mussulman hands. As 
it was the fitness of Alexander to fill this old type of ideal 
personality that attracted the national genius, so only in 
him could it rise to the height of its historical function. 
To all ordinary personal forces that genius refused to re 
spond. The succession he bequeathed " to the strongest" 
did not command its allegiance. The brief career of the 
Seleucidae, lasting little more than half a century, only 
irritated the people by using the powers he had gained to 
suppress their religious faith and the local self-government 
by which he had won their hearts. Though the dynasty 
was not without energy as a whole, though Seleucus I. 
had great gifts and swayed an empire almost as large as 
that of Alexander himself, and though Antiochus Epipha- 
nes achieved a fame as wide as it was odious (the Ahri- 
man of Jew and Gentile), these heirs (diadochoi) of 
Alexander s empire were a blank for Persian imagination, 
and furnished it no ideal food. The Seleucidae on the 
Tigris and the Orontes, and the Parthian and Graeco- 
Bactrian dynasties which ruled respectively the western 
and eastern provinces that seceded from their empire, were 
dropped from the national chronology. It wholly passed 



364 POLITICAL FORCES. 

over the five and a half centuries between the death of 
Alexander and the advent of the Sassanide Ardeshir, who 
in the very spirit of the old heroic legend restored Iranian 
freedom and faith. 

It was the glory of Iran to feed the imagination of those 
races which were making history with colossal types of 
heroic Will. By no mytho-poetic accident did her great 
Caspian headland front Europe with that eternal symbol 
of Prometheus, unconquerable sufferer for the good of 
man ; while close beside it towers the form of Zohak, 
knage of tyranny and hate, bound in hopeless chains 
by Feridun, the spirit of freedom. Here personality 
first becomes a universal idea, a world-consciousness. As 
Cyrus had been the ideal of the highest Hebrew and Greek 
intelligence, so Alexander became the ideal of far more 
widely-spread intellectual and religious forces at a later 
date. From the fascination of his world-opening career 
no corner of civilization was exempt. For centuries hosts 
of chronicles, itineraries, romances, myths, and legends mul 
tiplied around it, of every race and every quality; but all 
so dominated by his dazzling personality, that the thought 
ful historic annals of Arrian and Diodorus and Strabo, 
and the learned (but not so trustworthy) compilation of 
Plutarch, prove often as puzzling to the historic sense 
as the palpable tissues of fable spun by a pseudo-Callis- 
thenes, or a Quintus Curtius, or by those mythologists of 
Egypt, Armenia, and Rome, from whom their threads were 
borrowed. 

This grasp of the imagination, then first, we may say, set 
free to work upon genuinely historic materials and forces, 
knew no limits in geographical space. All the weird stories 
of supernatural phenomena and monstrous shapes of beasts 
and men, with which the unexplored wilds of Central Asia 
had been peopled, mainly on the authority of Ctesias s 
Persian history, were woven into the marching robes of 



ALEXANDER THE GREAT*. 36$ 

this king of Nature and men. 1 His glory was the honor 
of all nations. Like Persia, Egypt claimed him as in the 
direct line of her kings. 2 The god of the Lybian desert 
predicts his coming, and owns him as his son. Sesostris, 
conqueror of continents, rises from his throne among the 
dead, and visits him in vision, to sink his own fame in the 
greater master who shall found a metropolis of nations, 
and identify Egypt with an all-unifying name. Darius 
Ochus and Serapis pay him similar honors. The Jew makes 
him a worshipper of Jahveh and the savior of his Holy 
Temple. 3 The Alexandrian Greek makes him abolish all 
the old cults, yet not by force, and become the apostle of 
a universal theism, whose prayer to the " Eternal One," 
at the head of his army, brings the Caspian mountains 
together, that he may build gates of brass to bar out 
Scythian Gog and Magog forever from the lands of the 
true faith. 4 

Age after age brought fresh accessions to that Egyptian 
epopee which, under the assumed name of Callisthenes, 
continued down to the time of Firdusi, and even to the 
Middle Ages, to be the main stream of this mythic lore. 5 
It was conspicuous among the resources of Firdusi s muse. 
In this legend an Egyptian Magus substitutes himself for 
the god Ammon, and brings about with the wife of Philip 
the divine birth he has himself predicted to her. Alex 
ander afterwards kills him ; but his statue at Memphis 
speaks out to hail the world-master at his coming, and 
places a globe on his head. Here Alexander instructs 
his master Aristotle even in childhood, reconciles his 
parents, slays his father s murderers, but scorns to harm 

Rapp (Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch., xx. 64). 

Pseudo-Callisthenes. 

Josephus : Antiquities of the Jews, xi. chaps, v. viii. 

Chassang: Histoire du Roman, p. 333. 

Through the Armenian translation, probably in the fifth century. For account of Pseudo- 
Callisthenes, see Spiegel : Eran, Alterth- ii. p 586, et seq. And L^sen : Indische Alterth., 
ii. 734. Also Chassang : Histoire du Roman 



366 POLITICAL FORCES. 

a foe who wounded him in battle ; forgives his enemies, 
makes war only for humanity s sake, and binds the na 
tions in brotherly ties ; and, so testifies the Byzantine 
age, dives to the depths of ocean and mounts to heaven 
upon eagle s wings. 1 

In later legends of the same cycle (plainly Mahometan), 
he follows the setting sun to reach the fountain of im 
mortality ; nay, he hears the admonition of the Angel of 
Judgment, waiting on his mountains for God s command 
to blow the last trumpet. He learns the inherent neces 
sity of evil in the treasures of this world from the heap of 
stones beside the way, from which he who takes and he 
who refrains from taking shall be equally miserable ; be 
cause when they are found to be gems, the one becomes 
wretched because he has not taken more, and the other 
because he has not taken any when he might have had 
what he would. His death is foretold him by a king 
whom he finds throned within a mountain, and by two 
trees of the desert that speak, the one by day, the other 
by night, the warning of Nature, if we may interpret 
the myth, that even her master is also her child, and must 
return to her bosom. When he lays his hand on the cof 
fers of the kings of Iran, she goes out of her way to re 
peat the same omen by a monstrous birth. Greeks and 
Persians contend for the right to bury his body; but the 
oracle gives it to Alexandria, where the wise of all nations 
gather to celebrate his obsequies. 

As the Jew claimed him as a pilgrim to Jerusalem, so 
the Mussulman finds him at his Kaaba, and a Syrian poet 
sings his praise as a follower of Christ. 2 Mahomet him- 

1 The Mahometan legends say that Alexander came to Abraham while he was building 
the temple of Mecca with Ismael, and acknowledged him as the messenger of Allah, and 
walked seven times round the place. They describe him as able to turn day into night and 
night into day, by unfurling one or the other of two magic standards, and so defeating his foes 
at his will ; and even as having found himself so near the sun in a dream that he was able to 
seize him at his two ends. Weil: Biblical Legends, p. 70. 

2 Spiegel : Eran Alterth., ii. 607. 



ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 367 

self celebrates him, it is commonly believed, under the 
name Dhu lkarnain (the Two-horned), as a prophet sent 
to chastise the impious and reward the just with easy 
yoke ; who prefers the service of God to the tributes of the 
nations. 1 Mussulman writers placed him beside Moses, 
Abraham, Jesus, and the rest to whom revelations had 
come. In the Chronicle of Nizami, he is the son of a 
pious Hebrew woman, adopted by Philip, a saint and 
sage, more than a king. 2 By the gift of a stone, which 
outweighs everything save a handful of dust, the angels 
cure him of the desire to gain the whole world. A city 
whence men are summoned away one by one, to vanish in 
a mountain, and cannot be held back from obeying the 
call even by his kingly power, teaches him the inevitable- 
ness of death. How mythology, the world over, holds all 
lords and masters to spiritual realities and ethical laws ! 
What transforming power there is in the wand of imagi 
nation, to bring a world-conqueror from his throne of 
centuries to his knees, before the primal conditions of 
human life and personal success ! a process whose 
operation illustrates the unhistorical character of ideal 
ization of the founders of religions and States, while at 
the same time it teaches that such imaginative construc 
tions are under control of the conscience and aspirations 
of mankind. 

To Mirkhond, the great Persian historian of the fifteenth 
century, Alexander s name signifies " lover of wisdom." 3 
He is the ideal philosopher as well as king. He receives 
from Philip political counsels as fine as those which the 
Cyrus of Xenophon hears from Cambyses ; for the natural 
flow of wisdom from age to youth, from father to son, is 
a premise of our ideal sense of continuity, which asserts 
itself wherever it is permitted to do so. He must make no 

1 Koran, sura xviii. 89, 90. 2 Spiegel : Eran. Alterth., ii. p. 607. 

3 Shea s Translation (Oriental Fund Series), p. 368, 369. 



368 POLITICAL FORCES. 

distinction in his treatment of rich and poor, Persian and 
Turk, remote and near, farmer and soldier, native and 
stranger. He must never be indifferent to the sufferer, 
nor oppress the poor. 1 Before the assembled nobles, after 
his father s death, he disclaims all special rights, consult 
ing their judgment as one of themselves, and accepts the 
throne only at their desire. So for near two thousand years 
endures the repute of Alexander for having identified his 
conquests with local and personal liberties. His victories 
are in Allah s name, and his letters are Moslem sermons. 
Even while, as true Moslem, he must of course have de 
stroyed " the accursed faith of the Magi," it is admitted 
that he had all their science translated into Greek. 2 All 
the wise men in Persia, India, Macedon, shower on him the 
didactics of ancient wisdom ; but not even the Brahmins 
can reprove his destructive trade of war without being 
silenced by his credentials from the Creator to overturn 
unbelief and wrong everywhere, " commands which I 
will faithfully execute till I die." 3 He institutes discus 
sions between rival creeds and schools, and exalts the 
Hindu sage, who can answer all his questions and inter 
pret all symbolic acts and gifts. He answers those who 
ask things impossible, even for his power, with edifying 
self-depreciation and humble recognition of human limits. 
Here is the Mahometan ideal of Nushirvan and Akbar 
referred back to a period eight hundred years before 
Mahomet was born. Into this tribute-heap are thrown 
aphoristic treasures, old and new, till the conversational 
wisdom of Iskander is a catechism of the virtues for any 
age. 

"In what should a king show perseverance?" "In meditating 
on the interests of his people by night, and securing them by day." 
" From what do you gain most pleasure ? " " From rewarding good 
service." " The day passed without redressing some wrong or grant- 

1 bhea s Translation (Oriental Fund Series), p. 377. - Ibid., p. 396. 3 Ibid., p. 405. 



ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 369 

ing some petition, is no part of life." " My instructor deserves more 
of my respect than my father, because my father brought me from 
heaven to earth ; but Aristotle raised me from earth to heaven." - 
" I refuse to make stealthy attacks, by night, on an enemy." "The 
noble mind, even of a poor man, is forever held in honor ; but the 
mean person, of whatever rank, is condemned." " Man wants under 
standing more than wealth." * 

His last message is a tender letter to his mother. Over 
his remains the sages moralize on the contrast of his glory 
with his dust; and then with the tribute that "Fortune has 
hidden him from human gaze, like treasures of silver and 
gold," consign him to his Alexandrian grave, " enveloped 
in the mercy and forgiveness of the Almighty, whose per 
fection endures while all things else decay." 2 

Quite as marvellous as this decree of natural change 
over which the Mussulman sages moralize in awe, is the 
contrast between the Alexander of history and these 
products of religious tradition, weaving ideals of succes 
sive ages around his name. While the pith and point in 
Plutarch s sayings of Alexander befit a master-mind that 
swayed men as it did nations, the commonplaces of the 
Mussulman ideal belong to a traditional moralist or a 
meditative saint. Probably no other character in history 
has afforded scope for a similar variety of construction. 
Such the universality of his function in history ; such the 
significance for the future of the first appearance of per 
sonal supremacy, on a scale that matched the importance 
of that element in the evolution of humanity as a whole. 

Such a Titanic force was not only accorded ideal rights 
by the voice of mankind, but strictly held to correspond 
ing ideals of duty. And this moral criticism of one whose 
reported claim was that of being adored as an incarnate 
god is extremely creditable to the ages immediately suc 
ceeding him. Yet the fact is, that most of the crimes 

1 Shea s Translation (Oriental Fund Series), pp. 421-26. 2 Ibid., pp. 428-29. 

2 4 



3/O POLITICAL FORCES. 

recorded against him are such as grew inevitably out of 
the delirium of his success and the real or imaginary 
perils from friend and foe which the situation involved. 
The difficulty of reconciling his outbreaks of fury with the 
grandeur, or at least the breadth, of his purpose and the 
equity of his general conduct, is increased by the puzzling 
variety of testimony and explanation concerning them. 
And we hardly know whether to ascribe these outbreaks 
to an intense nervous susceptibility which drove him to 
the madness of rage in his grief over the natural death of 
one friend, 1 and made his hasty revenge on another pro 
duce a revulsion of conscience to the insanity of despair, 2 
or to believe that none of these dark tragedies have 
been related in their true connection with events. Per 
haps here, as often elsewhere, the wine-cup is deep and 
red enough to solve much of the mystery. But careful 
study of the biographies of Alexander confirms the old 
belief, that, however superior to vulgar conquerors, he was 
in many respects a slave of unregulated passions, and es 
pecially of an ambition for personal sway, which could 
efface for the moment every consideration of mercy, jus 
tice, or private affection that appeared to stand in its path. 
The splendid star of empire that beckoned him in his early 
youth, when he complained that Philip was leaving him no 
lands to conquer, 3 gathered more and more of earthly ex 
halations about it, which showed that it was not made to 
shine steadily in the heavenly ether. It is painful, as we 
follow his track, to see how his victories multiplied the 
sharp temptations of his lower instincts, necessities of 
cruel wrong, monstrous delusions about the plans and 
motives of others, barbarous sacrifices of life (brutal in 
dulgences), and the slaughter of friend after friend upon 
suspicion, or in the fury of intoxication. These were the 

1 Death of Heph<est:on (Arrian), vii. 14. 2 Death of Clitus (Arrian), iv. 9. 

3 Plutarch: L fe of Alexandr. 






ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 371 

dreadful fatalities of a battle waged not against kingdoms 
so much as against nature, against possibility, against all 
rivalry of gods or men. Even Arrian, a most lenient 
judge, and perhaps the most dispassionate of his biogra 
phers, does not pretend to know what he designed ; but 
" undertakes to say that he would never have been satis 
fied with victories, but would have been roving after places 
more remote from human knowledge. If he could have 
found no other foe to encounter, his own mind would 
have kept him in a constant state of warfare." 1 This is, we 
repeat, the incarnation of that internecine strife of the Two 
Principles, which belonged to the Iranian conception of life 
and the universe. The terrible conditions of that world- 
development were, that for three thousand years Ahriman 
should be master, though the germs of Ormuzd s victory 
are struggling and shaping through the whole ; so that 
the very deliverance of the world must be purchased by 
the costly sacrifice of the noblest part of men s natures 
to the worst. The representative of this process is the 
career of personal Will. Translated into the facts of his 
tory, it has no type so perfect as Alexander s towering 
ambition, and its tragic fates of good and evil. By its 
triumph should man be brought to the consciousness of 
his unity. But the master-will shall not come to its throne 
without the slaughter of the man s own best instincts in the 
terrible struggle with opposing wills that must be trodden 
under his feet. Such the plane on which the conflict moved, 
pointing beyond itself to higher planes ; such the inevi 
table conditions, of which he who should play the role of 
conqueror must be the instrument, subject none the less 
to moral forces, since our responsibility is forever proved 
real by what we are, and by what our condition brings. 
Neither Sophocles nor Shakspeare has fathomed the tra 
gedy of personal character which is involved in every step 

1 Expedition of Alexander, vii. i. 



3/2 POLITICAL FORCES, 

of human progress. Only the grandeur of the end can 
absorb the anguish with which we must contemplate the 
actual implications of every great historic function. And 
our judgment alike of the suffering and the shame is 
obliged to accept that personal equation which interprets 
both these elements by the conditions of the age and its 
work ; its susceptibilities of pain and pleasure, good and 
ill ; its alternatives of choice ; its ideal hopes, which direct 
the currents of individual aim ; and the infinite stress of 
its invisible forces, which must smooth their own most 
destructive track through the natures they have them 
selves prepared to be their instruments. Even contem 
porary history records only the striking facts, the patent 
results, and these inaccurately at best: their causes and 
conditions and their spiritual quality, in the minds of the 
actors, lie mainly beyond its ken. If a past age cannot 
give these elements for judging its own leaders, our later 
times must supply them in part, by discerning the extent 
to which those leaders were, as they largely must have 
been, representatives of the age, as we now comprehend 
it, their characters and conduct the work of its hand. 

In the case of Alexander, we have the most conspicuous 
instance in history of the representation in one man s life 
and destiny of the power of an age to shape its instrument 
to its own historic purpose. In him its constructive as 
well as its destructive energies found play. And in our 
respect for the criticism which he received through all 
the glamour of his success, we cannot forget that the 
very historical conditions which rendered such criticism 
possible were in part results of the stimulus given by 
him to moral forces of which he was no mere passive 
instrument, but to some extent a conscious and earnest 
producer. He who can effect the advance to an ethical 
standard higher than his own conditions allowed, and capa 
ble of bringing his own life into judgment, is even on that 






ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 373 

ground, an ideal factor in the ethical education of mankind. 
And while we willingly hear Juvenal and Lucian satirize 
his claim to divinity, 1 and the sophist Theocritus with keen 
wit tell his friends to " keep up their hearts, so long as 
they see the gods dying sooner than men ; " while we re 
spond to the somewhat rhetorical protest of Seneca, against 
the eternum crimen, the death of Callisthenes, as sufficient 
in his opinion to outweigh everything that could be said 
for "the first of generals and kings," 2 we must interline 
these and similar criticisms with the half-conscious testi 
mony of their authors to the justice of even an Iranian 
hero-worship in his case. The supposed audacity of 
claiming the name and honor of a god is somewhat 
modified by the practical resemblance of most of the 
Greek gods to men ; by the frequency of a supposed title 
to divine descent; and by the traditional habits of Oriental 
allegiance. Arrian says distinctly that the " adoration " 
given was " after the Persian manner." It was the Greek 
custom, as we know, for great families to claim descent 
from the gods; and Alexander had been taught to trace 
his own through three lines of demi-gods to Jupiter him 
self. 3 Lucian s Diogenes in Hades sneers at the " king of 
kings," " So you too are dead like the rest of us ! " but 
his own impartial Minos decides that Alexander is greater 
than Scipio or Hannibal, great as they are. 4 Juvenal and 
Seneca, writing from the abstract ethical standpoint, lose 
some of their force as soon as we reflect on the historical 
relations and conditions which they wholly leave out of 
sight. Arrian, whose version of Callisthenes courageous 
rebuke of Alexander s pretensions to deity gives this phi 
losopher the highest claim on our sympathy, nevertheless 
thinks he was justly odious to the king for his stiff and 

1 Satire, x. Dialogue, xix. 

2 Qncpstiones Naturales, vi. 23. See Arrian, iv. 10, ir, 14. 

8 Arrian, iv. 10. * Dialogue, xviii. xix. 



3/4 POLITICAL FORCES. 

sour ways, and that his own conduct greatly strengthened 
the suspicions to which he fell a victim. 1 Neither this 
nor any other acts of violence of which he allows his 
hero to have been guilty, prevented Arrian from affirm 
ing that in comparison with his great and laudable acts 
his vices were few and trifling; that he cannot but have 
been the special instrument of a divine care ; that no one 
was ever comparable with him ; that he was strictly ob 
servant of his own promises, vigilant to detect the treach 
ery of others, and " as indifferent to the pleasures of the 
body, as he was insatiable in the desires of his mind." 2 
Curtius, who charges Alexander with extreme injustice 
and cruelty towards Callisthenes, " for which he sought 
to make amends by a repentance which came too late," 3 
has, notwithstanding this, put upon his lips the most effec 
tive defences of his policy and conduct, anql praises the 
noble qualities of his heart, his constancy, clemency, 
good faith, and self-restraint in all pleasure, making only 
one exception, " an inexcusable passion for wine." 4 As to 
this affair of Callisthenes, it is to be remembered that Aris 
totle had warned his friend that his sharp tongue would 
probably bring him to an early death, 5 and that he had the 
name of being capable of making Alexander a god in his 
writings, and yet joking at his divinity among his friends. 6 
The horrible cruelties said by some to have been inflicted 
on him are simply incredible and absurd. Lucan, in the 
effort to set off his own divinity, Julius Caesar, calls the 
Macedonian " a conquering brigand ; " 7 yet his Caesar cares 
more for visiting this " brigand s " grave than for anything 
else in Alexandria; and his own Roman pride is mortified 



1 Expedition of Alexander, iv. n, 12. 2 Ibid., vii. 28, 29. 

3 History of Alexander the Great, viii. 8. * Ibid., v. 7. 

5 Diogenes Laertius : Life of Aristotle. 

6 Chassang : Histoire du Roman. Arrian (iv. 8) admits that he was occasionally subject 
to this passion, to which lie ascribes the killing of Clitus. 

7 Lucan : Pharsalia, bk. x. 



ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 375 

by the confession that a single province of the " brigand s " 
empire is great enough to defy the imperial arms. Or 
what credit shall we accord to Curtius, when in the same 
breath with his praises of this hero of his romance for 
self-restraint in all pleasures but wine, he describes him 
as having kept three hundred and sixty concubines, and 
given himself up to debauchery among the courtesans 
of Persepolis? 1 

The Zoroastrian priesthood put Alexander in hell for 
burning the " Nosks " of the Zend-Avesta at Persepolis, 
pretending to account in that way for the supposed dis 
appearance of their sacred volume till the time of the 
Sassanides, and charge the destruction of that splendid 
city, as does Curtius also, upon a drunken debauch, in 
which Alexander was incited to the act by the courtesan 
Thais. 2 But the best authorities agree that only the palace 
with its environs was burned, and this as a foolish act of 
requital for Xerxes pillage of Athens ; 3 and there are am 
ple proofs that Persepolis was a flourishing city from the 
time of Alexander to the age of Julian. 4 Equally unhis- 
torical is the story that the writings of Zoroaster were 
destroyed by Alexander, since the religious books of the 
Persians were used by Hermippus a century afterwards. 
They were in fact destroyed by Mahometan fanaticism nearly 
a thousand years after Alexander s time. It was contrary 
to his fixed policy and his natural instinct to treat native 
literatures and faiths otherwise than with respect. In spite 
of the odium tJieologicum of the Zoroastrians, ten Persian 
poets have sung the " Alexander-Saga." 

It were well for the fame of the conqueror if the sack of 
Tyre and the enslavement of its population, the massacres 
and executions in India and Bactria, and above all the 

1 History of Alexander the Great, v. 7. 2 Ibid. 

3 Diodorus, xvii. 2. Arrian, iii 18. Plutarch: Life of Alexander (Strabo). 

4 Diodorus, xix. 22. 2 Maccabees, ix. n. Anunianus Marcellinus, xxiii. 9. Arrian, 
vi. 30. 



376 POLITICAL FORCES. 

homicide of Clitus, the death-warrants of Philotas and Par- 
menio, could be disposed of as easily as the conflagration 
of the Persian capital. It is no part of our purpose to 
discuss the various and contradictory accounts of many 
of these apparent atrocities ; the testimony is too strong to 
be dismissed, that here were deeds that would shame the 
noblest record. Some of the palliations that have been 
offered for them are not wanting in force, such as the ex 
asperation of obstinate conflict, and the extremity of per 
sonal peril, though by far the strongest is the universal 
testimony that his violent acts were generally the result of 
sudden frenzy, and succeeded by equally violent remorse. 1 
But if we abandon the disgraceful tradition that this son 
of the gods was in the habit of brawling with his friends 
over their cups, we are thrown back on the worse alterna 
tive that his paroxysms of rage had not even the excuse 
of drunkenness. Scandal-mongers, flatterers, false wit 
nesses, ambitious companions, old national grudges (as 
against Persepolis and Tyre), plotters against his life, 2 the 
passions of his followers, the unbridled rage of his soldiery, 
the demands of turbulent Macedonian chiefs to judge and 
sentence suspected persons, the necessity of sharp and 
decisive blows in case of rebellion or treachery, all must 
take their share of responsibility for these acts, and it is 
assuredly not a small one. But these associations were 
simply the natural dramatis persona of the play. How 
could a man in any age of the world command divine 
honors to be paid not only to himself but to his friends, 
boasting that he was not only a god but could make gods, 3 
without bringing such furies of temptation and torment as 
those around him in hosts? Arrian tells us he promised 
Cleomenes that if certain temples to Hephaestion in Egypt 

1 See especially Justin, xii. 6. 

2 Arrian tells us that a plot was really formed to kill Alexander, in which Philotas was 
concerned ; and that it was discovered through Ptolemy. Expedition of Alexander ^ iv. 13. 

3 Lucian. 



ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 377 

were built strictly according to his orders, he would forgive 
all the crimes that officer might afterwards commit. " To 
give such license to a man of cruel disposition," adds the 
historian, " admits of no excuse." J One fact remains, 
after all has been said, -Alexander was the spoiled child 
of success. The confusion of his biographers as to his 
character arises from the fact that his character changed, 
and at every phase made such powerful assertion of itself 
that every phase seemed equally valid. It has been 
allowed by all, that contact with Asiatic taste and colossal 
temptations gradually corrupted the simplicity of his Greek 
nature. 2 The treachery of friends and officials, too, de 
stroyed his faith in others. After such experiences, " he 
became more and more ready to give credit to accusations, 
and inflict severest punishments on slightest offenders, on 
suspicion of plots." 3 

Here on the soil of Iran the worship of personal Will 
rose to its absolute idea by the very nature of men and 
things, and the human master could not stop short of 
pronouncing himself a god. We cannot but think that 
this later consummation of his life has been transferred 
to its beginning, in fastening such precocious egotisms 
upon his youth as the saying that "heaven could not suf 
fer two suns, nor earth two masters;" 4 or the complaint 
that " out of the infinite number of worlds, he could not 
be master of one." 5 This would be preternatural in the 
boy-prince of a petty kingdom; but it can hardly be 
called audacity in one who had actually swept the civil 
ized world with his conquering sword. 

It would seem that the laws of human progress were 
responsible for the Oriental worship of Alexander. Na 
ture had produced a man-child fit for that personal ideal 

1 Expedition of Alexander, vii. 23. 

2 Sainte-Croix : Examen des anciens historiens d^ Alexandre-le-Grand, p. 376. 

3 Arrian, vii. 41. * Diodorus, xvii. 54. 
5 Plutarch: De Tranquillitate A nimi, iv. 



378 POLITICAL FORCES. 

through which alone man could advance to a world-civil 
ization. The tribes must have been less or more than 
human not to have adored Alexander. A century before 
his accession Macedonia was scarcely a State; its petty 
princedoms were in feudal strife ; its few towns were held 
by southern Greeks ; its kings were regarded as barbarous 
chiefs, though claiming to be of Argive descent. At the 
death of Philip it had mastered Greece by policy and war ; 
and Greek culture had penetrated it, in spite of more than 
one threatened return to barbarism. Yet it seemed on the 
point of disintegration. Alexander succeeded to a throne 
whose occupancy was usually determined by assassination. 
He inherited an empty treasury, royal domains mortgaged 
for a heavy debt, and the charge of a mother whose ex 
travagance was only equalled by the evil fame which threw 
suspicion on the legitimacy of her son. His early habits 
of frugality could have had no worse impediment than her 
pampering hands. The mountain tribes were preparing 
to revolt. Subject Greece was discontented, Sparta hos 
tile, Athens intriguing with Persia to seize the moment of 
a change of kings " to check and depress the rising king 
dom." But Alexander proved his descent from Jove. He 
instantly passed every barrier, mastered Pan-Hellenes and 
Amphictyons, received from both councils higher honors 
than his father had; and, aided by a sagacity in choice 
of counsellors as great as his energy in the field, at once 
created an impression of majesty that made his visible 
presence needless, and allowed him to turn with all his 
resources to the punishment of the Persian King. 

And these resources were all original. His Asiatic vic 
tories were not won by veteran Greeks. 1 Scarce one of 
his generals was of the old Greek stock ; they were Mace 
donians, as was the mass of his army. The tactics and the 
battle-order of Alexander were, like everything he effected, 

1 Arrian : Indica, cap. xviii. 



ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 379 

revolutions on the traditional method. He made the old 
phalanx mobile, armed it with the long spear, and, while 
drawing forth its utmost capacities, supplied its defects with 
corps of light infantry and cavalry trained to manoeuvre on 
any ground, and to match the dash of their leader in scour 
ing the deserts and surprising armies and towns. Before 
the masterly combinations of this earlier Napoleon, no 
Asiatic army, however immense, could stand. And every 
resistless line of steel moved, after all, within his single heart 
and brain. It was these that made void every obstacle, 
the jealous chiefs and turbulent soldiery; the Bactrian 
snows and mountain passes ; the terrible heats, droughts, 
and famines of the Gedrosian coast; the numerous satraps, 
watching for chances to start rebellions and set up gov 
ernments for themselves; the vast populations of ancient 
cities and countries. Amidst it all, this band of conquerors 
moved like some volcanic wave, confident as though on 
their own soil. It is impossible to mistake the source of 
their inspiration ; nothing like it has been seen, perhaps, in 
military history. Exposing himself to the extreme of peril, 
wounded again and again, directing every detail of per 
sonal government, and, in spite of all occasional excesses, 
choosing always the short path to victory, and combining 
the elements of every situation with far-sighted policy to 
the accomplishment of a purpose that grew vaster with 
every step, to all human conception, in that day, Alex 
ander verily acted the god. When his life was despaired 
of, the panic of the little army, so audacious in his strength, 
was equalled only by its grief; and when, as if by miracle, 
he was preserved again and again, it seemed to their deli 
rious joy that Earth and Heaven waited on his will. 1 The 
march back to the Phoenician coast-cities, and the slow 
siege of Tyre were not the waste of time and strength 
they seemed ; 2 they gave him that command of the sea 

1 Arrian, vi. 13. 2 Ibid., ii. 17. 



380 POLITICAL FORCES. 

without which he was lost. Striking at once at the great 
cities, as if devoid of prudence, he really gained the fame of 
a deliverer and the greater prestige of centralized power. 

Lavish to his soldiers, often magnanimous to his foes ; 
considerate of differences that called for distinctions in 
treatment of persons ; master of the arts of pleasing and 
rewarding, 1 Alexander knew liow to unite the paternal 
spirit of the great Cyrus with a serene assumption of right 
ful ownership in all Asia, which seemed to make doubt of 
the claim a crime. It is related that he at first forbade 
his soldiers to plunder the conquered nations, because 
these were their own countrymen ; and the story at least 
perfectly illustrates his attitude, which was the most effec 
tive possible, even in a strategic point of view. His man 
agement of the Greek States during the Asiatic campaigns 
was masterly; on the one hand, losing no opportunity of 
winning their gratitude by restoring their exiles, releasing 
their envoys to Darius after Issus, liberating and honoring 
their Ionian cities, sending trophies to their temples, pay 
ing devotion to their traditional gods and heroes every 
where, and specially encouraging the democratic spirit, as 
in his present to Athens of the statues of the patriot tyran 
nicides, Harmodius and Aristogeiton ; while, on the other 
hand, keeping in custody the Spartan agents at the Persian 
Court (the Greeks who had entered Persian service after 
the league between Greece and Macedon) as hostages 
for the fidelity of their countrymen at home. 2 He dis 
cerned that the part of pacificator among nations and 
races was at once the true function of a hero, and the only 
path to universal ernpire. And this double motive explains 
his assumption of Oriental forms and manners ; his amal 
gamation of Greeks and Asiatics ; his training hosts of 
Asiatic youths (Epigoni) in Greek disciplines ; 3 his per- 

1 Arrian, i. 18, 19; iii. 24, 27; iv. 21. 2 Ibid., ii. 15 ; i. 30 ; iii. 24. 

3 Ibid.,vii. 6. 



ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 381 

sistent refusal to gratify his Macedonians to the sacrifice 
of the conquered tribes and chiefs ; and the energy with 
which he suppressed their discontents on this score, es 
pecially at Opis, crowning his success with a grand Feast 
of Reconciliation, celebrated with religious rites and joyful 
games. 1 

Conquest develops a " Scamp Jupiter " out of an 
Apollo ; but we cannot refuse Alexander the credit of 
having recognized something of the function which his 
conquests were to fulfil in human history. He was no 
vulgar marauder. His tastes were for the society of schol 
ars, the books and the men whom all ages revere. He 
had thought and studied, and knew what his own age had 
to teach and to transmit. In the uncertainty resting on 
all individual statements about him, it is of great signifi 
cance that on this point all testimonies agree. " Puer 
acerrimis literarum studiis eruditus," says Justin. Pliny 
makes him the centre of art and artists, and supplies one 
of the finest symbols in the history of literature when he 
pictures him putting the poems of Homer in the costliest 
casket he could find among his Persian spoils. 2 We are 
told that he often cited verses of Euripides, sometimes large 
portions of his dramas at once ; that he enjoyed Pindar s 
lyrics, and chose Achilles among the heroes of the Iliad, 
as was natural enough. " He invaded Persia," says Plu 
tarch, " w r ith greater assistance from Aristotle than from 
Philip." 3 And if we go over the ethical and political 
ideas of the Stagirite, we shall find that the statement is 
not without confirmation in much of Alexander s history. 4 

1 Arrian, vii. n. Dicdorus Siculus. 

2 Pliny : Natural History, vii. 30. 

3 " That Aristotle accompanied Alexander, or that plants and animals were sent to him 
for examination from distant districts, is mere talk. Aristotle confined himself to the knowl 
edge of his own day, and was convinced that this was all that was of real importance to solve 
all the principal problems." Lange : History of Materialism, \. 83. Westminster Review, 
July, 1 88 1. 

4 Politics, v. ii ; vi. 8; iii. 15, 16, 17; i. 2, 4. Ethics, viii- 10, n ; ii. 7 ; iv. i ; x. 7. 



382 POLITICAL FORCES. 

The clear distinctions between a tyrant and a king ; the 
assertion of moral responsibility in king and people alike, 
of limits to monarchical power, of the right of all men to 
be well governed; the wise praises of moderation, and 
warnings against enslavement to passion ; the democratic 
bias, marred though it is by the advocacy of slavery as an 
appointment of Nature ; above all, the praise of intellect 
and of living for the best idea, these elements of the 
Aristotelian doctrine may well have had their influence in 
producing many of the noble purposes and acts recorded 
of Alexander in the earlier part of his career. Intellec 
tually an apt pupil, in instincts of liberty and breadth of 
human interest he probably was far beyond his master. 
Of Alexander no praise seems to have been thought ex 
travagant. To a poet who did not meet appreciation one 
said, " Hadst thou lived when Alexander lived, for every 
verse he would have given thee an island or a territory." 
His person was the despair of artists, till one said, " I will 
compass it; I will shape Mount Athos into Alexander s 
likeness, with feet reaching to the seas, with a fair city in 
his left hand, and his right pouring as constant drink a 
great river into the waves." But Alexander said, " Let 
Athos alone ; it is already a monument of vanquished 
vanity. Our portrait the snowy Caucasus, the towering 
Emodon, the Tanais, and the Caspian shall draw." 1 "He 
was happier than other conquerors," writes Pausanias, " in 
that his felicity was least of all assisted by treachery." 2 
The tribute of the historian of Egypt, that we trace his 
conquering march in that country, " not by ruin, misery, 
and anarchy, but by the building of cities, the adminis 
tration of justice, the growth of leaning," 3 is, notwithstand 
ing the exceptions we have mentioned, in great degree true 
of his whole career. 

1 Plutarch: Fortune or Virtue of Alexander. 

2 Itinerary ; or Description of Greece, vii. 10. 

3 Sharpe : Egypt (English edition, 1846), p. 116. 



ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 383 

And here is the point of reconciliation between the man 
and the instrument; between what he was and what was 
done through him. Such points of contact there must 
always be, or the continuity of historic cause and effect 
would be broken. Sainte-Croix, whose studies of the bio 
graphers of Alexander are more valuable for comparison 
of evidences as to facts than for criticism of motives or 
opinions, makes light of the idea that he was moved by 
any universal ideas or noble purposes whatever : l nothing 
but one man s unscrupulous ambition conquered the world. 
It is impossible to believe that the unquestionably direct 
effects of this all-embracing mastership are traceable to a 
personal cause so ignoble. To refute it, we need not rely 
on his reputation with every biographer for occasional acts 
or constant habits of heroism ; on his sparing the tombs of 
patriot-dead at Thebes, his sending prisoners and exiles to 
their homes, his generosity to the family of Darius, his 
courteous and honorable treatment of noble women com 
mitted to his care, his agony at the death of his friends, 
his remorse for his own excesses. 2 There are stories by 
the best authorities that show him watching all night in 
cold and peril beside his old preceptor, who had fallen 
exhausted in the wilds of Anti-Libanus, and by personal 
attack on a hostile camp securing the means of preserv 
ing his life; pouring away the water sent him by his 
thirsty soldiers in a terrible drought, saying, " If I alone 
drink, these good men will be dispirited ; " 3 drinking a 
potion before the face of the physician who had prepared 
it, after having shown him a letter in which he was charged 
with intent to poison ; 4 telling a queen who had addressed 
his friend Hephaestion as the king, that she was right, " for 
this man also is Alexander;" persisting in disbelief of 

1 Exainen des anciens Jtistoriens d" 1 Alexandre-le-Grand. 

2 Pausanias: Bczotica^yX\. Quintus Curtius, v. 5. 

3 Plutarch: Life of Alexander. 
* Arrian, ii 4. 



384 POLITICAL FORCES. 

treachery in Harpalus till compelled to admit it, with a 
shock that told bitterly on his faith in men. Plutarch 
ventures to report as from him such rare sayings as these : 
" There is something noble in hearing oneself ill-spoken 
of, when one is doing well ; " " God is the common father 
of men, but specially of the good." 

Nothing can deprive Alexander of the glory of having 
aimed with enthusiasm, if not with constancy, at uniting 
mankind in following out the possibilities of progress in 
that wonderful age. In this form of imperial influence he 
instinctively led the way, in his passion for the ideal 
State throwing aside the social distinctions founded by 
Aristotle on slow inductions from the past. We may well 
believe the tradition that in making Greek and Barbarian 
equal before the law, he acted against the philosopher s 
specific counsel. 1 A striking illustration of this policy 
was his permitting his opponents in Greece to abide by 
the decision of the Amphictyons, instead of having them 
sent to Macedon for trial. 2 He won the hearts of the 
Egyptians by granting independent government by native 
rulers, and in accordance with national customs and laws ; 
and charmed their priesthood by offering worship in the 
temple of the national god, as his son, after the manner 
of the ancient kings. 3 He in fact sought to accomplish 
in the political world what Aristotle pursued in the scien 
tific only. How much finer than Napoleon s reconstruction 
of the map of Europe in his own dynastic interests, under 
the name of popular rights, was Alexander s establishment, 
at every commanding point in Egypt and Asia, of cities 
that should be nurseries in Greek culture for States re 
manded to native rulers and under free governments ! 
Here the splendid intellectual and political genius of 
Hellas mingled with Oriental passion and imagination, to 

1 Plutarch : Fortune or Virtue of A lexander, i. 6. 

2 Pausanias, vii. 10. s Sharpe : Egyptian Inscriptions. 



ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 385 

initiate the best elements of modern science and faith, 1 
and especially the all-creative sense of unity and univer 
sality, whose far-brought germs have grown to maturity 
only in our day. The Neoplatonic and Jewish elements, 
combined in Alexandria to give early Christianity its power 
of expansion and adaptability to the demands of thought, 
and to free it from its original narrowness of scope, 
were brought together by this mighty centralizing force. 
Perhaps no point in the history of that transition has 
greater interest than the profound connection of the Al 
exandrian philosophy with Oriental conceptions of mon 
archy, as seen in the imperialism of its First Principle, 
an essence lying behind all human experience, above 
all conceivable processes of life, and uniting Greek science 
with a mediatorial conception of ascending grades and 
orders of function towards the unapproachable One. 2 
This speculative idea the growth of Alexander s empire 
had made the palpable suggestion of experience. On a 
quite different track the influence of these conquests was 
almost equally important. Absorbing all political ambi 
tions in centralized forces, personal and organic, they left 
freer play for private and domestic interests, and led to 
a greater recognition of them in literature. 3 The New 
Comedy, one of the most fruitful sources of the study 
of human nature and social elements in all history, arose 
after Alexander had brought the exciting conflicts of races 
and States into quiet, so far at least as the above sugges 
tion of unity and order in the political sphere could be so 
called ; and this not only without destroying freedom of 
speech and of study, but by greatly encouraging it. 4 

But Alexander did not merely found cities, whose free 
cultures were germs of future civilization ; he personally 
provided such cities with men who proved competent to 

1 See Zeller s Stoics, p. 15 (English edition). 2 Ibid., p. 34. 

3 Ib:d., p. 18. * Chassang : Histoire dti Roman, pp. 389, 434. 

25 



386 POLITICAL FORCES. 

build institutions that were themselves civilizations, the 
Museum of Alexandria and the Lyceum of Athens. The 
weight of his name protected the free thought of Aris 
totle at the Lyceum; for the great teacher was con 
demned for blasphemy immediately after Alexander s 
death. 1 The immense pecuniary aid and the thousands 
of collaborators, which Pliny reports him to have given 
Aristotle for the collection of scientific material, may be 
an exaggeration, especially as his physical works show 
slight acquaintance with Asiatic plants and animals, and 
were probably written, in part at least, before Alexander s 
campaigns ; but the story is true so far as this, that the 
Indian campaign, especially, was the source of a flood of 
writings on physical geography and natural history. 2 At 
his touch, harvests of historians, scholars, naturalists, mor 
alists, and generals sprang up on Iranian soil. Ptolemy 
Soter, the regenerator of Egypt, one of the greatest of 
sovereigns, whose glory consisted in carrying out Alexan 
der s system of freedom, mildness, and equity, and his love 
of philosophy and letters, was his intimate friend, and 
perhaps a near relative. A scholar, as well as statesman, 
he wrote his biography, and was in every sense his best 
successor; not least so in this, that, in conjunction with 
Demetrius Phalereus, he planned and instituted the Mu 
seum of Alexandria, and made it the intellectual centre 
of the age. 

As the opener of the East to free government and scien 
tific study, Alexander might well arouse the enthusiasm of 
his contemporaries ; and not less as the pioneer of letters, 
preparing the way for Homer, /Eschylus, Sophocles, Pindar, 
Plato, and Aristotle. But there is a splendor of prophecy 
not to be described, in the influences that flowed back from 
this Iranian throne upon the Western world. 

1 Gillies, p. 24. 

2 See Blainville: Histoire des Sciences de V Organisation, i. 305. 



ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 387 

Arabia, India, Persia, Egypt, Palestine, Greece, were the 
GEcumenical Council to initiate these influences, centring 
in the purpose of this human Jove and the grander pur 
pose that wrought at once beyond and through his will. 
Asia was not the mere corrupter of Greece, her Oriental 
siren of luxury and slavery. By his radiant march through 
Iran, and by the voyage of his admiral through the Indian 
seas, which he proposed to follow up by opening the 
Euphrates and Persian Gulf, if not by circumnavigating 
Arabia, and exploring the Euxine, what an empire 
of new knowledge, geographical, physical, ethnological, 
stimulated every human faculty, and impelled to induc 
tive generalization as the only way of dealing with the 
materials ! The spaces of Nature were doubled, and her 
borders set forward from the Zagros Mountains to the 
heart of India and the Scythian wilds of the North. 
Science became encyclopedic, a seeker of classes and 
wholes. Diodorus, Eratosthenes, Strabo, Pliny, and Ptol 
emy, became possible. It reached eastward, and the dis 
tant Ceylon was found to be an island only. 1 It began to 
conjecture inhabited lands in the Western sea that might 
complete the circuit of the globe, to strike out universal 
laws, to separate truth from mythology ; and a wondrous 
series of cosmical discoveries ensued. 2 The commerce 
opened between Alexandria and India, and the embassies 
of the Seleucidae, brought Greek astronomy into the Hin 
du schools, themselves already flourishing. 3 Greek terms 
abounded ; obligations to Greek teachers are confessed ; 
and the achievements of those apt scholars became in 
turn the sources of astronomical knowledge to the Arabs 
of Bagdad, by whom ancient science was passed down to 
modern times. Still fertile in errors, as was natural in this 
fresh expansion of its realm, the imagination received 

1 Pliny: Natural History , vi. 24. 2 Humboldt : Cosmos^ ii. 147. 

8 Weber: History of Indian Literature, p. 251. 



388 POLITICAL FORCES. 

from the vast prospect of colossal mountains, varied cli 
mates, products, races, religions, which this man s eagle 
eye traced out, an impulse unexampled in history. At 
the same moment serious and free criticism began in the 
necessity of testing traditional beliefs by comparison with 
the new treasures brought by the higher authority of fact. 
In his striking description of certain aspects of these con 
quests in relation to the study of the physical world, Hum- 
boldt mentions the immense step taken, mainly through 
Aristotle, in "the formation of a scientific language."^ 

Most impressive of all the results of the Macedonian 
conquests, and the spirit in which they were pursued, was 
the inevitable suggestion of a universal citizenship in the 
great republic of Humanity, whose common interests no 
natural barriers could longer hide. The sublime outlook of 
Stoicism ; its city of God ; its brotherhood of nations ; its 
absolute trust in natural order; its regeneration of Roman 
law by humanity and justice; its correction of Christian 
other-worldliness by acceptance of human destiny, flowed 
directly from the bivouacs of this great soldier on the 
Iranian plains. 2 

It does not belong to the plan of our work to enter into 
the development of the historic causes and effects, which are 
here affirmed only as bearing on our more extended theme, 
of which they form but a section. Enough has been said 
to show that the rapidity of these changes was a flash of 
Iranian fire. It demonstrated also that Alexander was the 
swift-moving focus of vast tendencies, of which his age was 
the natural climate and soil. His campaigns were over in 

1 Cosmos, ii. 149-165 (English edition). 

2 No one has more strikingly recognized these tendencies in the very necessities of his 
toric cause and effect than Merivale in his little work, " The Conversion of the Roman 
Empire." Yet he has greatly marred the value of his testimony by depreciating these ten 
dencies of Nature in view of a supposed supernatural transformation of them in the person 
of Jesus Christ. Nor does he, as it seems to me, appreciate Alexander s conscious purpose 
in this unifying work. Lecture iii. 

"Nearly all the most important Stoics before the Christian era belong by birth to Asia 
Minor, to Syria, and to the islands of the Eastern Archipelago." Zeller s Stoics^ p. 37. 



ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 389 

twelve years. And fifty years after his death, the city he 
founded and laid out in the shape of his Macedonian cloak, 
and made the representative of his purposes and his name, 
was the open gate of intellect, commerce, and faith, to a 
new cycle of human growth. 

There is no evidence to confirm the tradition that he died 
by poison ; 1 but much reason to believe that Arrian is right 
in saying that he foresaw that his successors would perform 
his obsequies in blood. 2 The magnificent funeral car moved 
across the continents from Babylon to Egypt, bearing the 
dead form of the master of civilizations to his rest beside 
the sacred Nile ; 3 around it hovered the awe of myriads, 
who believed, so says the tradition, that he still wore the 
hue of life, still sat crowned and on his golden throne, and 
was sure to smite to earth the impious one who should dare 
to touch his Majesty. For nearly a thousand years the 
cultus of his divinity survived in Egypt. Yet no picture 
or statue remains. 4 Other gods came, whose disciples 
could endure no rival names. The pictures of Augustus 
were put by Claudius in place of those of Alexander. 
We shall not see that majestic statue, by Lysippus, which 
was said to have made men tremble. 5 The Christians 
of Alexandria destroyed his tomb. But how slight is 
what men can do to build or destroy a name, compared 
with the work of ideas and principles that have ages for 
their servants and history for their fruits ! 

The ages of exclusiveness, national and religious, were 
passing away. The communion of races made inevitable 
a new historic birth. In Antioch and Alexandria and 
Rome, Jew and Gentile, bond and free, Barbarian and 
Greek, were now to know themselves as children of com 
mon relations, reaching beyond the borders of nations, con 
tinents, oceans, mountains, and deserts that had seemed 

1 See Arrian, vii. 27. 2 Ibid., vii. 26. 

3 Diodorus Siculus. 4 Sainte-Croix, p. 506. 

5 Plutarch. See Sainte-Croix, p. 4.99 



39O POLITICAL FORCES. 

the limits of the world. Nature, humanity, unity, brother 
hood, were syllables shaping on the winds, blow they 
whence they would. Later Judaism, Christianity, and 
Islam were to find their way prepared ; the universal ele 
ments were ready to bear these religious harvests, and law 
and science and philosophy and all secular culture were 
assured. Three hundred years had passed since Cyrus 
turned the waters of the river of Babylon, when Alexan 
der left an empire to his successors, which added to the 
Persian those worlds of intellectual promise, Egypt and 
Greece. 

Now again a mighty force of personal Will gathers and 
directs the currents of progress through the ideal prestige 
it can command. Other like forms of personal worship 
follow ; for this was the condition of progress that opened 
with the mind of Iran. But all were involved in what had 
already been done. The veil that had hid the tribes of 
the earth from each other had already been rent ; and the 
light shone, east and west, over the whole heavens of 
mind. 



m. 

THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 



THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 

TT 7HAT would have been the destiny of the Persian 
* empire had Alexander lived to complete his plans 
for making Babylon the organic centre of a new civilization, 
and transmitting his magnificent prestige in this permanent 
form, may be partially conjectured. His Oriental sympa 
thies, his constructive capacity, and that of the remarkable 
group of thinkers and workers whom he had gathered 
around him ; the vast antiquity of Asiatic traditions, and 
their common allegiance to this focus of cultures ; the com 
mercial advantages of the Euphrates valley, and the long- 
established lines of communication which gave Babylon a 
commanding voice through the ancient world, would 
doubtless have preserved the continuity of the Persian State, 
and concentrated upon that historic region much of the 
intellectual and political significance which after the decline 
of Greece fell to the lot of Alexandria and Rome. Helle 
nic wisdom, forsaking the ruined republics, and gathering 
on its eastward track the splendid relics of Ionian culture, 
would have brought thither its best philosophy and science 
to mingle with the moral ardor and sensuous idealism of 
Mazdean worship. The tribes of the East and the West 
would have gone up to Alexander s Babylon with that 
Iranian passion for heroic personality, common to Persian 
and Greek, which would have united their jealous individu 
alities and sunk their feudal independence in the pride of 
universal empire. Whether the corresponding demand for 
religious unity, which was the all-controlling impulse of the 
centuries succeeding Alexander, resulting in Neoplatonism 



394 



POLITICAL FORCES. 



and Christianity, would not, under these conditions, have 
found its centre in an Aryan rather than a Semitic faith, and 
drawn its symbolism from the associations of Iran rather 
than from those of Palestine and Arabia, is a question 
not to be lightly answered in the negative. So plastic are 
special religions to the forces of evolution, and so inter 
woven and mutually dependent did they become as a 
result of the period to which we now refer, that the nat 
ural selection of one or another of them as a basis for the 
continuities of man s spiritual progress depended very 
much on such external elements as geographical location 
and the set of social and political currents. Science will 
not trace this selection, so far as it existed, to any extreme 
difference in their spiritual quality or even in their doctrinal 
form ; while it overwhelmingly disproves the claim of any 
one race or religion to have been the sovereign factor of 
the highest elements of our civilization. 

The Dualism of Mazdeism, its internecine war of God 
and Satan, its intolerance of infidel and hostile wills in the 
name of purity, its energy of ethical motive and its enthu 
siasm for personal heroism, as well as its devotion to one 
Supreme Person combining the powers of creation, preser 
vation, and destruction, were all directly in the same line 
of religious development. Judaism and Christianity were, 
each in its way, equally dualistic. The good and evil crea 
tions were arrayed against each other in the prophecies of 
Isaiah and the Gospel of John as truly as in the Avesta of 
Zoroaster. The monarchical God of Europe could have 
been evolved from Ahuramazda, or the All-wise and 
All-mighty, as well as from Jahveh, Allah, or the Abba 
Father of Christianity. Doubtless the form in which the 
want of the Iranian world in Alexander s time for such a 
monarchical Will revealed in some visible or human way 
for the world s deliverance would have been met, would 
have differed from that in which Christianity met the same 



THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 395 

demand three centuries later in the little province of the 
Roman State. But we may say, with equal truth, that the 
revival of the great Oriental monarchy by Alexander 
might well have wrought changes in all Asia to the bor 
ders of the Great Sea, and in the relation of those States 
to European history, which would have foreclosed the 
Messianic tragedy preparing in the social, political, and 
religious life of the Jewish people. Imagine the passion 
ate monotheism of those patriotic tribes put under the 
fostering care of a new Cyrus and the spiritual provi 
dence of an idol-hating Ahura, instead of battling for its 
rites, traditions, and holy places against the polytheism of 
Greece and Rome. Imagine the faith of Ahuramazda 
broadened by the confluence of civilizations, and the de 
velopment of Messianic Judaism drawn by his imperial 
sway out of its exclusive nationality, and made impersonal 
by prospects of moral and spiritual renovation for man 
kind, apart from the house of David and from visions of 
the end of this world, and it is easy to see how changed 
would have been the historical relations and associations 
of modern civilization, so that their lines would have run 
back to quite other religious names and symbols of belief. 
There was nothing in the Iranian deity which made such 
world-influence impossible, and much that made it very 
probable, in connection with the wonderful old city where 
Jahveh himself was imbued with the larger life that was to 
come of his loins. All Asia, from the Hindu Koh to the 
river of Babylon, had submitted to the heroic personality 
of Alexander, and might have found in the religious tra 
ditions of the empire a basis for those cosmopolitan 
instincts which had long been working in the common 
relations of the tribes to an earthly " king of kings." A 
monarchical religion was desired that should fully recog 
nize the great ethical conflict of good and evil, and be 
reconcilable with the liberty of States, of chiefs, of tribes, 



POLITICAL FORCES. 

of traditions ; a god commanding by his ideal purity and 
energy the devotion of races that worshipped heroic Will, 
and believed in building a kingdom of heaven out of the 
resources of this world. Behind all dualistic mythology, 
magism, ritualism, spirit of conquest and sway, this was 
the essence of the Mazdean faith, upon which in large 
degree Alexander would have been forced to build his 
empire. What he might have effected in associating it 
with all future development, by union with the culture of 
Greece, and the communion of races and beliefs, in the 
city that had passed from Nebuchadnezzar to Cyrus, from 
Bel to Ahuramazda, and opened her gates to the humani 
ties of Homer and the wisdom of Aristotle, is therefore 
on the whole not to be determined from a merely Semitic 
or even Christian point of view. 

But Alexander s purposes died with his last breath ; and 
the Macedonian princes who divided the yet unorganized 
empire neither cherished those purposes nor were capable 
of fulfilling them. Iranian religion, therefore, lost its dis 
tinguishable hold on the course of history, though not its 
real influence, as will hereafter appear. The river of Maz- 
deism runs mainly underground for five hundred years, and 
is hardly heard of till the day when the Sassanian Arde- 
shir summoned it again to the throne of the East But 
was a revival so wonderful ever known, before or since? 

A more complete disappearance than that of the ancient 
faith of Iran during the reigns of the Macedonian and Par 
thian kings can hardly be imagined. The national legend 
takes no account of this period. Firdusi merely says that 
after Iskander " light, turbulent, and bold princes seized on 
the divided empire, and were called kings of the tribes ; " 
then passes directly to the birth of Ardeshir, whose origin 
he traces to Sasan, a scion of the native royal family, the 
ancestor of a tribe of shepherds, poor and straggling. 
Brought up by Babek, king at Istakhar, this descendant 



THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 397 

of Isfendiyar reopens the heroic and patriotic myth. Of 
the Seleucide period, history has preserved little but a 
wild phantasmagoria of shifting boundaries and fortunes, 
presented by the struggles of half-a-dozen princes 
for the mastery of a dissevered empire. Of the condi 
tion of the Iranian population under Seleucus Nicator, 
the greatest of these princes, whose dominions were al 
most conterminous with the old Persian empire, we know 
nothing. The Persian chroniclers may well ignore this 
whole Seleucide period and that of the Arsacidae which 
succeeded it. The Greek colonists took no interest in Maz- 
deism, though all their native writers testify to the great 
influence which Oriental astrology (or asteroscopy), under 
the name of Magism, was exerting on the Hellenic mind. 
Notices of Persian Dualism in the writings of Theopompus 
and Plutarch, 1 of Pliny 2 and the Alexandrians, and the 
increasing tendency of all the Greeks to refer the begin 
ning of their philosophic culture and the wisdom of their 
thinkers, old and new, to Zoroaster and his Magi, testify 3 
to the profound interest created not only by the com 
panions of Alexander, but by the whole intercourse of the 
East and West after the fall of the Persian empire, in a 
religion which was really of their own brain and blood, 
but more suggestive than their own of vast and subtile 
forces awaiting the touch of the understanding and the 
will. But great as was the world-historical interest of 
this period for the Mazdean faith, it depended, like the 
expansion of every other religion, upon failure and death 
on its own native soil, upon the transmission of its life 
into new forms and symbols, and the reaping of its har 
vests by other hands. The Macedonian strangers in Iran 
had little interest in the ethical earnestness of the Avesta, 



1 Plutarch: I sis and Osiris. z Pliny: Natural History, xxx. 

3 For a full account of these testimonies, see Rapp (Zeits^hr. d. Deutsch. Morgcnl. 
Gesellsch. xix. 1-89). 



398 POLITICAL FORCES. 

and were doubtless of a more easy tolerance towards 
other forms of faith. The religion of the Parthians, who 
soon succeeded them, was a cultus of the elements, of 
the Turano-Scythic sort. Their worship of ancestors, of 
guardian genii, and of the heavenly bodies was some 
what advanced by a mixture of certain Mazdean names 
and associations, but had little regard for others, since 
they raised temples and statues to Mithra, and carried 
images of their gods about as teraphim. 1 It was said of 
them by the Armenian writers, that they let the fire of 
Ormuzd go out; and their priesthood may have been like 
those Median Magi who conspired against Cambyses, and 
sought to supplant the priests (Atkravano) of Ahura. But 
they were certainly far from the intolerance of either party 
in that earlier war. The ease with which Ardeshir accom 
plished the restoration of Mazdeism after four hundred 
years of Parthian rule, his immediate success in gathering 
a host of Mobads (eighty thousand, it is said) from all 
parts of the empire for this purpose, proves the full lib 
erty of the old faith to maintain itself among the peo 
ple through the reign of this foreign dynasty, and that it 
was in fact the popular religion of their dominions. 

These Mobads, or Magi, whose name is never men 
tioned in the old Avesta where the priests are Athravas, 
must have been either the representatives of the old Aves- 
tan priesthood, rising all at once from a state of semi- 
repression under the warlike Parthian tribes, 2 or else the 
Medo-Turanian priesthood must have been so modified by 
contact with Mazdeism as to be readily transformed into 
revivalists of Ahura at the summons of his apostle. The 
power of these Magi over the people, or as a social element, 
must have been maintained at its height during this whole 
period, since the revolution of Ardeshir was evidently 

1 Justin, xli. 3. Josephus : Jewish Antiquities, xviii. 5, 9. 
* Gibbon : Rowan Empire, chap. viii. 



THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 399 

an uprising of the Persian masses in the name of Ahura ; 
and their representatives, the Mobads, were assigned the 
foremost place in the new order of things, and became the 
functionaries of a compulsory State religion. They col 
lected and restored the old Avesta, and translated it from 
their original ancient Bactrian into the Pehlevi, or current 
language of the (Parthian) empire. It is not easy to see 
how the Mazdean faith could have survived in western 
Iran without the aid of its sacred books ; yet if the old 
Bactrian had been comprehended by the people, why was 
it necessary to translate them into Pehlevi? There is no 
way of accounting for the facts, but to suppose that there 
were other methods of transmitting the doctrine and rites 
in the absence of original records, such as oral traditions, 
fragmentary collections of hymns and precepts, embody 
ing the substance of the faith, immemorial forms inter 
woven with social and domestic life, and including all, the 
undying love of a people for beliefs that were the natural 
outcome of their inward life. Here was a force of resist 
ance capable of preventing any foreign influence from 
doing more than to overlay this natural religion with new 
details without altering its spirit, though the language of 
its records had become obsolete. The later portions of 
the Avesta, with their elaborate ritualism, are sufficient 
evidence of such foreign accessions and changes during 
the period preceding Ardeshir, which the presence of the 
old Gathas at least would have foreclosed. The heroic 
national legends, as collected by Firdusi as late as the 
Mahometan period, show how much of the oldest my 
thology of the faith is still traceable in strong outline 
through the whelming vicissitudes of thirteen centuries. 

Such was the hold of the law of Ahuramazda upon 
the people of Iran through these five hundred years of 
foreign dominion. If the " fire " of that deity " had be 
come extinct," it was not because the Parthian had directly 



4<DO POLITICAL FORCES. 

supplanted it by other fires, though he had lost his sacred 
regard for it sufficiently to burn the dead even, 1 but be 
cause the rule of a tribe of Turanian nomads, living on 
horseback, and devoted to aggressive warfare, had discour 
aged those national and personal traditions on whose au 
thority it had come to rest, and by whose exclusiveness it 
had been fed. The revolution proved that the religious 
conscience of the Mazdeans had not been suppressed. 
Had it even been outraged ? To the honor of their 
Scythic origin, 2 the Parthians were tolerant of all fires of 
faith. The Jews grew strong enough in Babylon and 
Nisibis, under their eyes, to rebel against them. 3 Jahveh, 
Ormuzd, Christ, even Bel and Buddha, dwelt side by side 
with the Parthian Mithra, and the worship of teraphim with 
that of the sun and moon. In Osrhoene, Christianity was 
a State religion. Edessa was a fountain of Christian learn 
ing. The Parthian in Persia knew no difference of Greek 
and Jew. His coins bore Greek legends and Greek gods. 
At no other time or place in their history did the Jews live 
in greater authority and luxury than in his shadow. In 
his reign the materials for the Babylonian Talmud were 
gathered in quiet research. Everywhere in the empire 
sects competed and missionaries proselyted without of 
fence. In Harran the Sabeans served many gods, and 
struck a root which held till the tenth century. If, as 
has been thought, 4 the Parthians sought to make every 
householder a priest, and thus to discourage special priest 
hoods, this very liberalism may have offended the Mazde 
ans. But the coins of the empire at that very time bore 
fire-altars, and the priests of Ahura were ready for the 
call of Ardeshir. 5 The very names of these Parthian kings 
were mostly old Persian. 6 

1 Herodian, iv. 30. 2 Strabo, Justin, Arian, Gibbon, Niebuhr. 

3 Josephus : Bell. Jud. i. n, el seq. 4 Gobineau : Histoire des Perses. 

5 Gobineau : Histoire des Perses, ii. 6, 7. 

6 Roth (Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch., xiii. 415, 416). 



THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 40 1 

It is probable that, as the Parthian kings dropped the 
Scythian cap for the tall tiara of the Persians, so they 
accepted the Magism of their subjects as they found it, 
and allowed it considerable influence, since the numbers 
of the priesthood in their time were very great, their 
possessions large, and they exercised a check on the royal 
autocracy. 1 The Parthians, though they had no art of 
any value, were by no means uncivilized, and became apt 
pupils of the Persian and the Greek. Mithridates turned 
upon the Scythic hordes, from whose bosom his line had 
come, and drove them from Iran. The race had large 
sympathies, and, like the Macedonians, sought unity on 
the basis of a religious freedom more liberal than Rome. 
They preserved, in this respect, the traditions of Alex 
ander s policy, as well as foreshadowed the larger unities 
of modern times. It is, then, impossible that they should 
have dreamed of extinguishing the fires of Ahuramazda; 
but it is equally impossible that this very latitudinarianism 
should not have offended the rooted pride of Mazdeism, 
mortified its zeal, and provoked its jealousy; especially 
as its confessors were allowed too much freedom to be 
come disheartened about their future destiny. 

The energy of the revival, and its intense intolerance, 
were precisely what was to be expected from a religion 
absorbed in the worship of a supreme Divine Will. The 
old strength of Agni and Indra was in this flame that 
leaped from its fallen altars, where it had smouldered for 
five hundred years, and soared to its native heaven of abso 
lute sway. What changes the faith had undergone during 
this long period, it is as yet difficult exactly to determine. 
But the Pehlevi literature of the Sassanians shows a large 
intermixture at least of Semitic beliefs, 2 with which, in the 
above respect, it could readily affiliate. 

1 Rawlinson : Sixth Oriental Monarchy. 

2 See Spiegel : EraniscJie Alterttwmskunde, iii. 

26 



4O2 POLITICAL FORCES. 

The interference of the Parthian kings with Iranian po 
litical institutions was equally unimportant The Parthian 
rebellion was the work of nobles, discontented at the loss 
of personal liberties under the Seleucide rule; and their 
success brought personal rights to the front to such a 
degree that royalty itself was but a part of the nobility. 1 
In respect to the powers of local chiefs, the Perso-Parthian 
State might be called Iranian. Originally a free tribe, - 
free from the time of Cyrus down, now allied to Alexan 
der, and now arrayed against him, the Parthians were 
swift to revolt from Hellenic satraps (250 B.C.) in the true 
spirit of old Iran. Their real sway over the empire began 
with Mithridates I. (163 B.C.), a conqueror worthy to be 
compared with Cyrus and Alexander, and was conducted 
on principles familiar to the native tribes. High-spirited 
nobles a part of them Magi, and holding priestly office 
elected the kings (called Seol, and brothers of the Sun and 
Moon), and tempered despotism by their independence. 2 
The provinces were viceroyalties, and the social consti 
tution, like the old Persian, was on a feudal basis, each 
State retaining, in most respects, its local forms of govern 
ment. The numerous cities founded by Alexander s Greek 
colonists preserved their liberties. The local rulers coined 
their own money. Persia itself had its own king and its 
own customs. Coins have been found, representing Or- 
muzd and the Mazdean religion, which good reasons 
have been given for ascribing to rulers of southern Persia 
during this period. 3 In every city there was a king, and 
it was in this sense that the Parthian first called himself, 
with literal truth, " king of kings," a title assumed by 
every master of the Iranian State. These institutions were 
inherent in the soil, learned from Persia and Greece. The 

1 Carre* : L" 1 A ncien. Orient, ii. 364. 

2 Rawlinson : Sixth Oriental Monarchy, p. 419. 

3 See the description of coins in Pehlevi legends, described by Levy (Zeitschr. d. Deutsch* 
Morgenl. Gesellsch., xxi. 440). 






THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 403 

Parthian was himself their product, and he was not the 
first. Bactria had already, led by its Hellenic rulers, 
thrown off allegiance to the Seleucidae, and revived its 
ancient glory. Alexander s death was the signal for local 
revolt. Even northern India hastened to refuse obedi 
ence to his successors. 1 Each of these States had its own 
hero or semi-divinity, a centre of enthusiasm for nobles 
and people, of a local pride and self-reliance, of which 
Firdusi s epic gives the afterglow. It is curious to note 
that, notwithstanding the great variety of races included in 
the Persian empire, the names of most of these men of 
ideal will were Iranian. 

If the Macedonian or Parthian kings could have become 
legitimate centres of the hero-worship so natural to their 
subjects, and made it a national instead of a localized 
instinct, they would have fulfilled the great opportunity 
opened by the conquests of Alexander. Some of them 
had commanding qualities, Seleucus Nicator in the 
Macedonian line, Mithridates I. in the Parthian. But a 
succession of sanguinary conflicts, forever undecided, 
ruined every prestige of personal power; there was no 
towering personality, no natural king of the world, among 
these ambitious rivals. And so the States of Iran fell 
apart into their own natural position as individual atoms 
of Will. But more than that, there was no representative 
of the ancient war of Good against Evil ; no son of Ahura 
to summon the masses of Iran with the old Zoroastrian 
warnings and commands ; no supreme ethical principle 
embodied in royal lives that lived and died for its sake, 
and passed on its immortality, in a line like that of the 
old Avestan saviours of mankind. There were merely so 
many warring wills ; and mere will-force, without the flame 
of ethical law for its divinity, could make no permanent 
impression on the Iranian mind. And if it is the experi- 

1 Justin, xv. 4. 



404 POLITICAL FORCES. 

ence of all subsequent ages of Aryan and Semitic develop 
ment, that personal Will, as ultimate authority, can never 
make a permanent government, this is only because such 
will can never become the permanent basis for philoso 
phical or religious belief. Political stability, though in 
consistent with established creeds, yet rests directly on 
the religious nature ; and the natural religion of Iran 
demanded either a succession of wills great enough to 
represent its living God, or else a system of ethical prin 
ciples and spiritual beliefs embodying his enduring right 
eousness. The Seleucide kings aimed to satisfy the first 
of these alternatives. They aped divinity, and were adored 
with sacrifices, and put their images among the gods. 
They counted time from the dates of their accession to 
the throne. They worked effectively at building cities, 
opening trade, and circulating Greek culture, and made 
many admirable laws. But these claims had small value 
in Iranian eyes in comparison with the consecrated local 
instincts and personal loyalties which the foreigner over 
rode. Alexander had wisely put local opportunities into 
native hands ; but the satraps of the Seleucidse were 
Greek. The subject States saw their tributes squandered 
by luxurious and sensual courts, by men of foreign lan 
guage and belief. Domestic feuds and family tragedies 
were bad arguments to prove the divinity of a line of 
kings ; so were rival ambitions, and the cruelties of jeal 
ousy and fear. The old indigenous feudalism, based on 
a heroic impulse, sought its natural king; and so the old 
experience was repeated in the case of the Greek empire 
in Asia, which we have already described as befalling the 
empires which preceded it on the soil of Iran. Individual 
States, such as Parthia and Bactria, the mother-land of the 
faith, broke away from the central government, leading 
their Greek satraps, where these were competent, first into 
independence, and then, as the substitution of Bactrian for 



THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 405 

Greek legends on the coins clearly shows, into gradual 
adoption of the local traditions and life. 1 And finally 
Parthia, remotest of these States which had grown by such 
local training, and so little known on its Turanian borders 
that no Greek had thought of paying heed to its growth, 
puts forth a natural master of men, seizes the unwieldy 
empire, as the Persian, and before him the Mede, had 
done, and proves again that on this soil new energy was 
always to be supreme. 

There was much in the Parthians to rouse the hero- 
worship of Iran. They were bold riders, and made the 
bow and arrow historic. The crescent and star on their 
standards were significant emblems to the " fire-worship 
pers," and anticipated those of great nations and religions. 
Doubtless the military energy which gave them the mas 
tery of the Persian empire from the Euphrates to the Hindu 
Koh, and which was the only power capable of checking 
the advance of Rome to world-dominion, conquerors of 
Antony and Crassus, and during their whole existence 
the terror of the Roman soldier, to whom a Parthian cam 
paign was the saddest of tidings, was not entirely due to 
inherent qualities in the race. It was encouraged by the 
natural difficulties in the way of invading their country, 
and, aided by the effects of their guerilla warfare on horse 
back, a novelty to their European foes. But they had 
really great valor and endurance ; they were as terrible 
with the long lance as with the distant arrow. Crassus 
was told by fugitives that they could neither be escaped 
when they pursued, nor caught when they fled ; and that 
their strange arrows reached their mark before they 
seemed to have been shot. 2 Theirs was the great historic 
function of preserving the self-respect of Asia, and of 
holding over the traditions of the Persian empire till its 
glorious revival under the Sassanide kings. Without 

1 Lassen: Ind. Alterth. ii. 311. 2 Plutarch: Vit.i Crassi. 



406 POLITICAL FORCES. 

them the strong organizing hand of Rome would have 
crushed the freer feudalism of Iran, and that splendid 
literary and artistic era would probably never have dawned. 
Intolerant in their faith, the native Sassanide dynasty in 
herited an earnest and spirited people, whose idealism had 
been allowed free growth under the Parthian rulers, so that 
the requisite element was provided for counteracting the 
hard, practical, and political realism of Rome. 

It was reported of the Parthian kings that they always 
respected the sacred rights of ambassadors, and never vio 
lated their treaties ; that they were on the whole kind to 
their prisoners of war, gave asylum to fugitives, and ad 
mitted foreigners to offices of trust. 1 Germanicus, one of 
the best of the Romans, was in especial honor among them. 2 
Their dynastic broils, on which the Roman historian Taci 
tus dwells, were at least proofs of remarkable individual 
force. He also says of the people, that they were constantly 
quarrelling with their princes, and regretting the loss of 
them when they had been expelled. These kings have the 
usual tragic record of crimes which belongs to all the dy 
nasties of the time; but, in comparison with that of the Ro 
man Caesars, all Parthian enormities become respectable. 

The condition of the Parthian empire in the early part 
of the third century B. c. prepared the way for the Sas- 
sanian revolution. Persia had lost its imperial name, 
divided into eighteen independent States ; but the prov 
ince of Fars, which had been the mother of that name, 
was most thoroughly alive to its heroic and sacred tra 
ditions, and persuaded that a great future awaited them 
out of the political anarchy and disintegration of the 
Arsacide State. The theory that the native uprising was 
due in large degree to the influence of the Semitic ele 
ment of the population, and in pursuance of Semitic in- 

1 Rawlinson : Sixth Monarchy, pp. 413, 426. 

2 See Tacitus, ii. 58. 



THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 407 

terests, 1 has no other apparent ground than the religious 
intolerance that characterized it ; and this was so decided 
in the Mazdean faith as to need no aid from the narrow 
ness of the Semitic. The disciples of Ahura were not 
likely to be gratified by the easy secularism of the Par 
thian. In their eyes, probably his heaviest oppression 
consisted in his latitudinarian treatment of creeds. They 
could not bear to see other priesthoods put on an equality 
with their own ; for the worship of Ahura was the service 
of an all-commanding exclusive Will. Gobineau s idea, 
that the rebellion was an insurrection of the peasantry 
(jaqtierie} directed against turbulent nobles, may or may 
not be partly true ; but the utter extermination of the 
Parthians by Ardeshir Babegan shows that only religious 
zeal could have been the prime mover of the war. And 
this motive, aided by the free communication between all 
parts of Iran, and brought under the influence of a 
common personal admiration for the great qualities of 
Ardeshir, broadened into a patriotic ardor, which effaced 
local jealousies, and re-created the empire out of the 
very essence of its historic life. The old religious organ 
ization of the empire, in accordance with the Zoroas- 
trian Amesha-^pentas, was not only preserved under the 
Sassanian regime, in "seven great families," clothed with 
exalted and hereditary rights, but constituted a thread 
of political continuity which extends from the early 
Achaemenidse down to the end of the native Persian 
State. 2 So the old lower-landed nobility (Di/ikdndn) were 
still administrators of local functions in the time of the 
Mussulman conquest. 3 The five classes of this native 
aristocracy resisted all processes of centralization, and kept 
alive the local independence so dear to the Iranian mind. 



1 Gobineau : Histoire des Perses, ii. 604. 

2 See Noldeke : Tabari, p. 437. (Uber die inneren Verhdltn. d. Sassanidenreichs. ) 

3 Ibid., 440. Also Masudi : Meadows of Gold, v. 33. 



408 , POLITICAL FORCES. 

Against all these individual elements the Sassanian kings 
had a hard struggle to maintain an authority won only by 
the revolutionary energy of Ardeshir; and their success 
was due not so much to any power they possessed to dis 
turb the traditional organism of the State, as to the influ 
ence of personal character, and the seizure of special 
opportunities to make good their private interests and 
gratify their desires. The clergy grew, under the religious 
earnestness of the dynasty, into a close and highly organ 
ized body, and formed a kind of " State within the State," 
whose power was often leagued with that of the nobles 
against the king, and who knew as well as any other priest 
hood how to persecute and rule. The empire, divided 
into prefectures, was loosely related to the central power; 
the army, a cumbrous feudal mechanism, was under the im 
mediate control of the higher nobility. Nevertheless, the 
kings had the old prestige of Iranian will-worship. They 
called themselves " gods," or rather " the seed of God," 
and took the names of national deities, not exactly as iden 
tified with them, but as claiming to be under their special 
care. 1 The common hope was to restore the old religious 
traditions. It was by representing these that Ardeshir 
rose at once to the place of Cyrus in the hero-worship of 
his people; so that Gibbon thinks he must have been 
himself a Magus. Appealing at once to the popular in 
stincts, he superseded the local chiefs. The revival was 
essentially democratic, so far as this was possible in an 
Oriental State. The popular element, thus revealed in 
Mazdeism, appeared in various ways. The native legends 
make Ardeshir the son of a common shepherd, soldier, 
astrologer, or laborer, though descended from the great 
line of kings that ran back to the mythical Isfendiyar ; 2 
and the impoverishment that had befallen this royal race 

1 Noldeke : Tabari s History of Sassanides^ pp. 451, 452. 

2 Masudi ; also Firdusi. 



THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 409 

was the mythic expression of the long eclipse of the Persian 
State. The last discrowned Sassan had served a wealthy 
person named Babek, 1 whose daughter he married, and 
their son was Ardeshir Babegan. 2 These humble rela 
tions of the new royalty were justified by the popular 
nature of his institutions. " He allowed no intermediate 
power," says Gibbon, " between himself and the people." 
The local chiefs had to yield to his personal sway. He 
deprived the satraps of excessive powers, and brought a 
standing army to hold them in obedience. The chroniclers 
prove at least his fame as a wise and just ruler, when they 
ascribe to him sentences like these : " No power without 
an army; no army without money; no money without 
agriculture; no agriculture without justice." " A king 
should be a father; but without religion he is a tyrant; 
and for a people to be without religion is simply mon 
strous." " The worst of kings is he who is feared by the 
rich and not by the bad." 3 "Four qualities are indispen 
sable to kings : a natural magnanimity ; goodness of heart ; 
firmness to repress social disorder ; and justice enlightened 
enough to give no occasion to any loyal subject to fear for 
his life, his honor, or his estate." 4 

Burning to restore the ancient faith and freedom, Ar 
deshir pushes his way to high office in his native Pars, 
refuses to be superseded, and the whole province backs 
him in his revolt. He defeats and slays Artaban, the 
Parthian king, in the battle of Hormuz ; and, after Oriental 
fashion, strengthens his position by marrying the king s 
daughter. Imperilled by the ambition of his brother and 
his wife, he puts them out of the way; and, apparently 

1 Or Papak. In the inscriptions he is called Sap or "king." Others say he was the son 
of a noble, and revolted. 

2 Noldeke s translation of Tabari s History of Sassanides, p. 34. Tabari gives the legends 
about Ardeshir : his predicted sway, his slaying the petty kings, his motive for avenging the 
murder of Darius. Troyer s note on p. 105. Dabistan, vol. i. Rawlinson : Seventh Ori 
ental Monarchy, pp. 30-32. 

8 Firdusi. 4 Bernard : Chroniques Orientates, p. 99. 



410 POLITICAL FORCES. 

shrinking from no severity necessary to make secure his 
throne, proceeds to lay the foundations of the grandest 
epoch of Persian nationality. 

Ardeshir is regarded by the Persians as entitled to a 
still more enduring glory. Their traditional code, the 
basis of their civil polity for many ages, was his work ; 
their lost and scattered religious books came down re 
covered, reconstructed, given to the people through his 
pious hands. El Masudi, the Moslem writer, says " the 
satrapies were in anarchy, after Alexander s death, till Ar 
deshir united the empire, restored order, established re 
ligion, advanced agriculture, preparing the way for the 
greater prophet sent of God to destroy every infidel 
creed. 1 Firdusi tells us that he organized labor, forbade 
bribery, enforced good administration, enjoined forbear 
ance in war, and mercy to the defeated foe ; that he estab 
lished schools and altars in every street, suffered none to 
remain in want, exhorted his son Hormazd to obey God 
and seek refuge in him alone. His administration, which 
promised equal laws, personal security, and suppression of 
feudal tyrannies, was doubtless a mighty revolution, so far 
as the old aristocratic nobles were concerned, many of 
whom were driven out of Persia proper into Seistan, where 
the Afghan clans still represent the old jealous hate of cen 
tralized government. Though labor was freed from many 
galling exactions, the feudatories were by no means extin 
guished, and the people, brought directly under the strong 
hand of royalty, were subjected to strict sumptuary laws 
and stern religious disciplines. It is charged that, while 
destroying the great nobles who endangered the throne, 
Ardeshir not only retained a noble class distinctly marked 
off from the masses, but held to the necessity of a per 
manently poor class, as a durable basis for the political 



1 Meadows of Gold, chap. xvii. Malcolm : History of Persia. Carre : L^Ancien 
Orient, ii. 365. 






THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 411 

structure. 1 Many cruelties are ascribed to his penal legis 
lation, while he is credited with many mitigations of older 
customs. 

But whatever merits entered into his system, it was cer 
tainly the union of Church and State in the most aggressive 
form. The sentiment, already quoted as ascribed to him, 
that a people without religious institutions is a monstrous 
form of society, meant a great council of priests, in whom 
was vested direct control over the descent of property, over 
police and private affairs, and who had the principal voice, 
through their chief, in determining what were the last in 
structions of the king before his death concerning the 
succession to the throne, which could only be filled by a 
sworn servant of Ahura. 2 In an empire which for cen 
turies had been the home and the debating-ground of 
religions (of Mazdeism, Buddhism, Hellenism, and Christi 
anity), he let loose the hounds of a merciless intolerance, 
the old Avestan hate of the unbeliever in Ahura, the fierce 
exclusiveness that lurks in the worship of a monarchical 
will. He destroyed every graven image, trampled out 
every foreign cult, and put his host of Mobads at the head 
of the State. Till the Arab came to substitute for Mazde 
ism a god and prophet as jealous as its own, the law of 
Ahura was the government of Iran. Here and there a 
Sassanian king was great enough to bring out its human 
ities rather than its fanatic zeal; but most of the line were 
persecutors. The chronicles tell us that Ardeshir com 
manded his Mobads to provide one of their number who 
should " divest himself of the body, and bring intelligence 
of heaven and hell." Hence the Vision of Ardai-Viraf, 
who is selected out of forty thousand, as the one sinless 
saint, to receive the revelation in sleep. The work whereof 

1 Gobineau : Histoire des Persts, ii. p. 626, 627. 

2 Noldeke (Tabari, p. 26) records him as having fulfilled an oath of his ancestor Sassan to 
destroy every Arsacide. Noldeke thinks he is greatly overrated, and was a cruel, ambitious 
despot, p. 8. 



412 POLITICAL FORCES. 

this story is the mythical explanation is in substance pre 
served, and combines the two opposite elements of the 
Avestan faith to which we have referred. Led through all 
the spheres by guardian angels of the Avesta, and with 
performance of its sacred rites, this older Dante beholds 
in types of sense the rewards and punishments of Mazdean 
futurity. Amidst the delights of heaven are the spirits of 
all who have observed the solemn festivals, the priests 
and their attendants, the heroes of the faith, the souls of 
shepherds and husbandmen, and makers of gardens and 
fertilizing streams. In fetid winds and waters of hell, in 
night and cold, tormented by demons, and horrible food, 
are not only shedders of innocent blood, slanderers, ex 
tortioners, sensualists, hypocrites and liars, defrauders of 
labor and oppressors of the poor, betrayers of trusts, 
but breakers of the ritual observances and laws of purifica 
tion, even those who have wept for the dead, or slayers of 
four-footed animals, such as water-dogs, and in general 
all who have befriended those hostile to the faith. 1 A 
more extended version of the book shows it intended 
to announce that all existing religions but the Mazdean 
were inventions of the enemy, and to embody the pur 
pose of the revival, which was to put an end to the long- 
continued ferment of differing creeds in Iran. 2 

But if such was its purpose, the multiplication of beliefs 
which followed it, and the profound influence of the Sassa- 
nian empire on the development both of Christianity and 
Islam, show that the native energy of Mazdeism could not 
be confined to these destructive channels. And we are 
disposed to think that the work of Ardeshir was essen 
tially constructive ; that it supplied the concentration of 
forces, political and religious, needed to counterbalance 

1 See Dabistan, i. 283-304. Arda-i-Viraf is mentioned in the later Yeshts of the Avesta, 
and his work is believed to have been sent by Nushirvan, in the sixth century, as a kind of 
Mazdean Bible, to all the provincial governors of the empire. (Ibid., 285.) 

z Gobineau : Histoire des Perses, ii. 630. 






THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 413 

similar forces, at least equally exclusive and tyrannical, 
by whose rapid organization in the Western world the 
faith and freedom of Asia were alike threatened with 
destruction. 

The military and political energy of Ardeshir was more 
than rivalled by the reign of his successor, Shapur I., in 
whom all the pride of the Assyrian and the world-ambition 
of the Achaemenidan were renewed. Shapur avenges the 
East upon the West. He denes Rome, devastates her 
provinces, defeats her armies on their own soil, drags her 
emperor in triumph to Ctesiphon, his Persian capital, gives 
her legions a new general, and clothes an obscure fugitive 
from Antioch with the imperial name. The inscriptions 
give no support to the story of shocking barbarities in 
flicted on the captive Valerian. 1 An immense irrigating 
system of canals, and a dike twenty feet broad and twelve 
hundred feet long, built to turn the Karun upon the plains 
around a city of his own creation, were monuments of his 
devotion to Ahura s law, another grand type for Iranian 
hero-worship, which did its best to make him immor 
tal in stone. There stands his statue, a colossal image 
twenty feet high, hewn out of the natural rock, of noble 
proportions, the hand resting on the sword. 2 That tower 
ing head-gear, with eagle s wings poising the globe in air, 
speaks the true Shahan-shah, the king aspiring to god- 
hood by right of will. And again the sculptures show 

1 According to Firdusi, Shapur, visiting Roam (Ctesiphon), was taken by the emperor when 
under the influence of wine, sewed in the skin of an ass, and thrown into prison, whence he 
was delivered by a young girl of Iranian descent, who swears to keep his secret by everything 
sacred in all existing religions, and by her love and fear for the Lord of Iran. She softens 
the ass-skin with milk, and they escape together. When the emperor in his turn is defeated 
and taken prisoner, Shapur revenges himself by cutting off his ears, piercing his nose, and cast 
ing him into prison ; while the people of Roum refuse to recognize him, his name :s accursed, 
his altars are cast down, his bishop s crosses and girdles burned. " Roum and Canoudj differ 
no more, for the voice of the Messiah s faith is dead. 7 (Mohl s Firdusi, v. 465.) The un- 
historical character of this legend is clear enough. Taban celebrates his virtues (Noldeke, 
PP- 3!-33)> among them his distribution of treasures to the poor on his accession, and his 
deference to the claims of his nobles. 

2 See Rawlinson : Seventh Oriental Monarchy, p. 605. 



414 POLITICAL FORCES. 

him riding in triumph, holding a conquered Caesau with 
one arm while he guides his steed with the other, the em 
bassies of nations on their knees around him, pleading for 
mercy or for ransom for the royal captive, it would seem, 
in vain. How these Persians seized the historic value of 
his achievement, lavishing upon it such munificence of 
art as that of the great tablet representing his triumph by 
a hundred and fifty figures, animal and human ! Their 
colossal carving delighted in the theme of the royal sons 
of Ahura charging the children of Ahriman on steeds full 
of nervous power, kings dead and still beneath their feet, 
or Ahriman himself grovelling in chains before them. 
Never was the heroic ideal of Mazdeism so fulfilled as 
in this Sassanian line. They more than made good the 
terrible prestige won by Parthian arms ; holding Caesar 
after Caesar at bay, carrying one away captive, annihilating 
the splendid army of a second, and defeating a third, 
alternating defeat with victory, for centuries the only coun 
terpoise to the power that was to rule the world at last. 
Gibbon describes it as the height of the Emperor Julian s 
ambition, " despising the trophies of a Gothic victory, to 
chastise the haughty nation " which, as he had said in his 
satire on the Caesars, had so defied the Roman arms that 
in a war of three hundred years they had not subdued a 
single province of its dominion. 1 But the chastisement 
fell upon his own head, and he died amidst his routed and 
panic-stricken army, retreating from the desperate courage 
of a people who dared to sacrifice all they possessed that 
the invader might be fought with famine and fire, if heroic 
swords should fail. 2 

Shapur II., the conqueror of Julian and his magnificent 
Roman and Arabian army, was as great a general as the 
first of his name. In his youth he delivered Iran from 

1 Gibbon, xxiv. 

2 Gibbon s noble chapter on the expedition of Julian. 



THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 415 

the earliest incursions of Arab hordes ; in his maturity he 
imposed a degrading treaty on Rome. Khosru I. and II. 
were equally famous in the Roman wars ; the latter cap 
tured Jerusalem, and his general failed to take Byzantium 
only from the want of a fleet. In all his campaigns 
against Rome the first Khosru was never defeated but 
once, and his treaty with Justinian, framed upon terms 
of equal advantage to both empires, became historic by 
a provision which enjoined upon that persecutor of Greek 
culture to receive again the seven great heathen teachers 
whom he had banished, and restore their freedom of 
speech. Yezdegerd, 1 the last of the line, though not him 
self a soldier, but inclined to the luxurious habits of the 
old Persian kings, vigorously resisted the Moslem invasion 
in the seventh century for twenty years, and only yielded 
at last to a fanaticism of conquest before which no nation 
on the earth could stand. 

And the spirit of the Sassanian kings was always 
shared by the local chiefs, when it was itself heroic ; and 
when it was tyrannical or weak, they recalled the old liber 
ties of Iran, and either dethroned the monarch or dismem 
bered the State. 2 They set aside Kobad for his adherence 
to the communistic schemes of Mazdak, and after his death 
determined the succession. When Hormazd IV., after 

1 Yezdegerd, called "the Wicked" by Tabari, and by the priestly traditions of Persia 
charged with every kind of oppression and cruelty, seems to have lived in intense strife with 
his nobles and other privileged classes, who took the r revenge on him for his resistance to 
their authority. The Christians on the contrary, who were humanely treated by him, as 
well as the Jews, regarded his memory with affection, and called him "the Blessed." 
(Noldeke s note to p. 75.) 

Similar differences of judgment attach to the memory of Hormazd, the son of Khosru, 
whom Firdusi treats with great severity, while Tabari says he had strife only with the privi 
leged classes, and was a lover and benefactor of the poor. (Noldeke, p. 264.) 

The struggle of the great Sassanians with their nobles was vain. In the later times the 
downfall of the State was foreshadowed by the disintegration caused by this class. 

Varahran V. was a brave, generous, and most popular prince, famous for dealing justly 
with all classes of his people, and forgiving all his nobles who sought to deprive him of his 
birthright (Malcolm, History of Persia, \. 91). His story in the epic of Firdusi is a most 
fascinating picture of the hero, the philosopher, and the saint. 

2 These contentions, as described by Tabari and others, were incessant. 



41 6 POLITICAL FORCES. 

years of beneficent government, became a despot, the tribes 
revolted under leadership of their chiefs, who dethroned 
him and repaid his cruelties by depriving him of sight. 
Then they placed his general at the head of the State ; and 
when forced to receive his son as their king they refused to 
be placated, even though a Roman army was brought to 
his assistance. This son Khosru II., called Parviz, a man 
of capricious and cruel temper, but a great promoter of 
art, order, and social prosperity, when he fled behind the 
walls of Ctesiphon from the Roman army of Heraclius, 
was imprisoned and put to death by his indignant nobles, 1 
who had seen their cities burned, their sacred fires extin 
guished, and their people transported by thousands at a 
time. It was Khosru II. who tore up Mahomet s letter 
demanding submission to Islam, and flung its fragments 
into the Kara-Su, which, says the Mussulman chronicler, 
shrank within its banks with horror, and refused to fertilize 
the land of a blasphemer. He had made Persia glorious 
abroad and prosperous at home. He had plucked out of 
the hands of Rome the holy city of the Jews, which had 
cost her such a terrible price, and made its hated Christians 
with their patriarch march out into captivity behind "the 
true cross," the sign of the godhood of their Christ 
changed into a trophy of Ahura. His palace was the 
ideal of Persian pride and splendor, and his throne was 
girded with the twelve signs of the zodiac. Yet \vhen he 
basely yielded to the advance of the invader, or rather, 
according to Tabari, when he overloaded the people with 
exactions, maltreated the nobles, and committed cruel 
ties on soldiers and prisoners, the patriotic chiefs forgot 
everything but the personal dishonor, and, led by his own 
son, deprived him at once of life and crown. 2 

In several instances the crown was seized by idolized 
generals, who made and unmade kings. 3 It was the army 

1 528 A. D. 2 Noldeke : Tabari, p. 356. 3 Ibid., p. 396.. 



THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 417 

that raised a daughter of Khosru to the place of the first 
female ruler of Iran since the foundation of the empire, 
to be succeeded by her sister. The individual Will that 
had held its own throughout Iran for all these ages, and 
had spent its pride in upholding a throne of national 
glory, yielded its natural result when that throne was 
hastening to its fall. Pretenders to royalty arose every 
where, as in Rome in the latter days of the Caesars ; the 
crumbling crown was seized by hand after hand, and 
wrested from each within a few months. Province after 
province fell apart from the rest, and the empire was the 
prey of anarchy, simply from the absence of a personality 
great enough to stand as the ideal of these worshippers of 
heroic Will. It was this failure of the central ideal, not de 
fect of courage, patriotism, or resource, which caused this 
great historic structure to go down before the blows of 
Rome on the one hand, and Islam on the other. The power 
of electing their king had come back to the nobles of Iran ; 
but there was none to answer to the meaning of kinghood, 
and their selection of a prince of the old Sassanian line 
was a pathetic resort to legitimacy as their only hold upon 
the proud traditions of the State. In truth, the wealth and 
glory of Persia had made the imperial office a hotbed of 
vanity and luxury; and Iranian hero-worship had become 
dazzled by the vain show of earthly godhood with which it 
had clothed its object. The majesty of the Sassanian 
kings was lost, like the throne of Jemshid, before the army 
of Heraclius had trampled on its pride. Yezdegerd had 
worn jewelry instead of armor. Khosru had been se 
duced into luxurious habits by the conquest of Jerusalem. 
Kobad II. had massacred his own family to secure the 
crown. The spoils captured and divided by the Roman 
chiefs in the palace of Ctesiphon, the golden horse covered 
with precious stones, the silver camel, the heaped-up gems, 
and the jewelled carpets of inestimable price, revealed that 

2? 



41 8 POLITICAL FORCES. 

the souls of these later Sassanians had been buried under 
the splendors of the mine. The old ideal of the servant 
of Ahura could not go hand in hand with these Ahrimanic 
seductions; and the national spirit was already broken 
when the united frenzy of the Arab and the Sirocco won 
the decisive battle of Kadisiyeh, and the glorious standard 
of Persian hero-worship, the blacksmith s apron, fell into 
the invader s hands. Every successive battle proved more 
clearly, that, while an ideal loyalty inspired the Mussul 
man, all-conquering mastership had departed from its own 
fatherland of Iran. Her vast armies were routed and ex 
terminated by a handful of desert-born heroes, who had 
been scornfully called a lizard-eating, salt-drinking horde. 
When the elephants on which she had shifted the burden 
of defence that belonged to men, were once despoiled of 
their terrors by being turned upon their masters, the end 
had come ; and the Persians saw their king, not at the 
head of his failing hosts, but in flight on the distant bor 
ders. The last of the Sassanians died miserably outside of 
his kingdom, none knew certainly how or where. His 
predecessors had been puppets of factions, and doomed 
victims of the passions on whose crests they had been 
lifted up to momentary power. Another stream of Iranian 
fire had become extinct, having burned this time more 
than four hundred years. 

The Iranian ideal comes to its typical form for the Sas 
sanians, and we may perhaps say for the Persian race, in 
Khosru L, who received the enviable title of " Soul of 
Sweetness " (Nfishirvdri), to which was added " The Just " 
(Al-Adil). His reputation among his contemporaries was 
unrivalled. Agathias speaks of Romans as well as Persians 
who regarded him as having " reached the summit of phi 
losophical and literary culture," 1 being familiar through 
translators with the highest productions of Greek genius ; 

1 Historiarum libri, ii. 28. 









THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 419 

and although he treats this tribute with evident doubt, he 
does not hesitate to declare him the greatest of Persian 
kings, not excepting Darius, or Cyrus himself. 1 Mahomet 
is said to have held himself fortunate in being born during 
the reign of such a prince. 2 The ideal of an age must 
have shared its spirit ; and this was an age when power 
was everywhere purchased by cruelty, from Christian bish 
ops who proved their piety by massacring Arians and 
Manichaeans, to the Mazdean king opening his reign by 
putting to death his own relatives who conspired to set 
him aside, and exterminating the heresy of Mazdak, which 
was perhaps necessary, by the sword. Heraclius tortured 
Jews and heretics ; and Justinian depopulated whole 
kingdoms, and destroyed more than ten times as many 
Samaritan lives alone in the name of Christ as Khosru 
destroyed Christian ones in the name of Ahura. 8 In a 
period when law had not yet either given security or set 
limits to personal power, the main condition of political or 
military success was to act with resistless energy in what 
soever of good or evil one had to do. It is certain that 
Khosru could show better reason for his appeals to the 
sword than most rulers of his time could for theirs. His 
principal wars with Rome were incited by the appeals of 
oppressed provinces and peoples to his humanity. 4 The 
heresy of Mazdak, which had already carried away the 
court, perhaps from policy through a natural reaction 
against despotism, against property and the family, was 
one of those communistic storms which any civilized gov 
ernment must suppress, or itself perish. 5 The military 
energy of Khosru was marvellous, and had not its equal in 
Eastern history. There was no Oriental enervation in the 

1 H istoriarum libri, iv. 29. 2 Gibbon, xlii. 

3 See Gibbon, chaps, xliii. xlvii (Milman s edition, ii. pp. 87, 99, 183). See also Procopius : 
De Bell. Vand. ii. And Finlay : Greece under the Romans, pp- 284-288. 

4 Gibbon, ii. 77-82. 

See Malcolm : History of Persia, \. 108, 109. 



420 POLITICAL FORCES. 

will of this " king of kings." His wars with the Romans 
were a succession of rapid and overmastering blows, such 
as the capture of Antioch and other Roman cities, with ah 
initiative which reminds us of the victories of Prussia in 
her war with Austria. Khosru had the wealth of these 
great cities in his treasuries before Rome knew of his 
advance, and the foundations were laid in an hour of the 
prodigious riches which have made Persia the synonym 
of splendor ever since his day. He was never personally 
defeated but once. He made treaties in a grander style 
than other kings, no ordinary truce between the stand 
ing hates of Asia and Europe, but peace which was to 
be as endless as their wars might have been ; the eternal 
Ahura in place of an eternal Ahriman, the glorious 
consummation of the universe. And when peace had to be 
broken, he pursued war also equally in the spirit of his 
faith, till he had secured fully equal terms with the con 
querors of all other nations but his own. If the Christian 
dogma, at least as intolerant as his own, should not be 
expelled from Persia, it should not propagate there; and 
if Persia must give up her guardianship of the eastern 
coast of the Euxine, Rome must pay thirty thousand 
pieces of gold annually for an undetermined future. Only 
Belisarius could check his path to the mastership of the 
world ; and from Arabia to the Transoxanian tribes, his 
armies dictated order and dynastic succession. Besides 
inflicting on Justinian the intolerable disgrace of an an 
nual subsidy, he forced him to advance seven years pay 
ment of the same, thereby impoverishing the empire and 
crippling its resources for supplying mercenary troops. 1 
Rome was in no condition to bear this drain. Justin 
ian s administration was the most expensive and wasteful 
that had been known for a long period. At the same time 
the pay of the soldiers was cut down and came irregularly, 

1 Finlay : Greece under ilic Romans^ p. 326. 



THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 421 

mercenaries were put in the place of provincial troops, and 
foreigners placed in command ; the army was in disorder, 
and revolts incessantly weakened its discipline. Justinian 
failed to support his best generals, who alone, by the un 
aided force of military genius, sustained the fortunes of 
his decaying empire against every discouragement from 
within. 

It was the Persia of Khosru that brought to light 
the failing energies of Rome, and in every campaign 
showed far more energy than her mighty rival. There 
can be little doubt that his armies displayed more indi 
vidual valor than their opponents, who relied more on 
traditional Roman discipline, which, as we have just said, 
was already on the decline. Finlay mentions the circum 
stance, strongly illustrative of our view of Iranian char 
acter, that the Roman officers caught from the Persians 
the passion for personal prowess ; 1 and nothing could 
have been more unfavorable to that subordination and 
precision in which the strength of their legions consisted. 
Khosru brought all the States into political unity and in 
spired them with a common loyalty, an unprecedented 
achievement, and of itself sufficient to prove him the 
greatest ruler Persia had known. The old system of gov 
erning them by satraps, so fertile of fraud and dissension, 
was superseded by a fourfold division of the empire, each 
fourth being placed under a prefect, and including several 
provinces. Central supervision was maintained not only by 
the old expedient of official espionage, but by personal in 
spection. In both these ways Khosru appears to have dili 
gently watched over the comfort and security of the poorer 
classes, to whose appeal special courts of inquiry were 
always open. Poor and orphan children were the care 
of the State, and officials were bidden to carry the poor 
in their bosoms. For this kind of virtue the Mahometan 

1 Finlay: Greece under tJte Romans, p. 258. 



422 POLITICAL FORCES. 

writers give him highest credit. Mirkhond relates that he 
executed eighty tax-gatherers at one time for extortion, 
and rendered taxation uniform, systematic, and moderate; 
exempting women, together with the very old and the very 
young. Many hundred years after his time, the people of 
Ctesiphon showed strangers a little house hard by the ruins 
of his palace, as a memorial of the humanity of the just 
king. When about to build a palace, Khosru gave or 
ders that all the buildings on the spot should be bought, 
and the highest price paid to their owners. But one poor 
old woman refused to sell her little homestead, saying that 
she would not give up the king s neighborhood for the 
whole world ; whereat the king was so pleased, that he 
not only allowed the house to stand, but so improved it 
that it lasted longer than his palace itself. 1 " Irregularity 
with justice," added a courtier, " is better than symmetry 
purchased by wrong." The legend grew, of course always 
to the greater honor of the hero. Thus the servants of the 
palace complained to the king that the paintings on its 
walls were suffering from the smoke that came from the 
old woman s fire ; but Khosru commanded that the pic 
tures should be renewed as often as they needed it, and 
that no one should molest the hearth of the poor. 2 It is 
related that being sick, the king was advised by his phy 
sicians to take as a remedy pounded brick from a ruined 
Persian town ; but when the messengers returned from 
searching after it, they reported that not a ruined town 
was to be found in his dominions. When warned against 
going abroad without protection, he wrote : " Justice is the 
protection of kings." " All I give to worthy people is 
saved, not lost." " The happiness of his people is a 
better defence for a king than armies, and justice a bet 
ter fertilizer of his lands than the happiest climate." To 

1 Travels of Yac.ut-el-Rumi (twelfth century), Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch. 
xviii. 406. 2 Caswine, ibid. 



THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 423 

his son Hormazd he left this last injunction : " Remem 
ber the poor; and be not seduced by indolence and self- 
indulgence." And the pious son of Islam, catching this 
broad humanity of an unbeliever, concludes, " Since 
death has not spared this great prince, the wise man 
should not attach himself to the goods of this world." 1 
A true Zoroastrian, Khosru reorganized industry, and 
encouraged agriculture. After the fashion of model Ori 
ental kings, he established a fixed land-tax, and advanced 
seed and implements to the husbandmen. 2 His laws pro 
vided for reclaiming waste lands ; he enforced irrigation, 
punished idleness, and opened good roads through the 
empire. The great dike of Shuster, built of immense 
stones clamped together, is claimed as his work. To 
purify administration, the official "jackals" throughout the 
country were put to death. 3 To increase population, mar 
riage was made compulsory, immigration encouraged, and 
colonists from conquered countries were settled on the 
land. 4 To protect his empire from the northern hordes, 
he completed the long wall commenced by Kobad, famous 
as the barrier of Gog and Magog, of stories seven feet thick 
and twenty feet long, without cement, and which still 
stands stretching three hundred miles along the Georgian 
mountains ; and in every treaty with Rome he jealously 
stipulated that both empires should unite in guarding these 
borders from the common foe. It was a curious instance 
of the intermingling of barbarous with humane impulses 
which characterized this great type of Iranian Will, that he 
built a new city out of the spoils of his terrible Syrian cam 
paign, a march as merciless to life as it was rapacious 
of booty, put his Syrian captives into this new home as 
like as possible to that from which they were exiled, and 



1 Mirkhond : Histoire des Sassanides^ translated by De Sacy. 

2 Malcolm : History of Persia, i. 115. 3 Ibid., i. 117. 
* Rawlinson : Persia. 



424 POLITICAL FORCES. 

made it an asylum for Greek slaves. As he forsook the 
use of wood for that of stone in his public buildings, so he 
seemed to possess the gift in administration of putting 
everything to new and permanent uses. Thus the past and 
future of Persia centred in him. He revived the old code 
(or rather moral and political maxims) of Ardeshir, and 
so ennobled it that its important features passed over into 
the golden age of the Mussulman caliphs. He made the 
priesthood watchers over the interests of the people by 
inspection of the conduct of officials. Above all, his 
services to literature and philosophy conferred immortal 
renown on his country and his race. Even on the Mus 
sulman conquerors his intellectual reputation produced a 
kind of messianic awe, and took the usual mythical form 
of a childhood, before which the aged counsellors of the 
kingdom bent to hear a wisdom higher than their own. 1 

The testimony of Agathias to his encouragement of free 
discussion on theological and cosmical questions is qualified 
by the Byzantine s studied contempt for the sophist Uranius, 
with whom he declares the king to have been infatuated, and 
by his vivid description of the disappointment of the seven 
Greek scholars at the whole character of Persian civiliza 
tion, which they had painted in ideal colors before their 
arrival at the court. According to Agathias, these cul 
tivated men hurried away, persuaded that it would be 
better to suffer immediate martyrdom on reaching their 
native country than to endure the spectacle of such bar 
barous customs and corrupt administration. But the 
Greek historian evidently writes under a strong bias 
against " the barbarian," and contradicts that high repute 
of Persia in enlightened Athens on which the sages had 
based their glowing expectations, and in regard to which 
the Athenians could not have been mistaken. The trans- 

1 Mirkhond. De Sacy s translation of Htstoire desSassanides, p. 359. Noldeke s Tabari, 
p 162. 



THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 425 

cendental nature of the questions discussed at the court 
of Khosru, although put in a ridiculous light by the shal 
low chronicler, prove intellectual tastes and sympathies 
of a high order. Here was a king of Asia who made 
actual what Alexander had dreamed ; who had set trans 
lators at work upon all the great philosophies and poems 
of Greece ; who could read and discuss them ; who took 
pride in furnishing every aid to the Greek-speaking world 
for acquiring a knowledge of his country and its institu 
tions; 1 who founded colleges and schools; 2 who stands out 
as a calm rationalist in relief against the fanaticism of his 
day; who compelled the priesthood of Ahura to meet and 
tolerate the speculative and religious thought of the world ; 
who opened his arms to the representatives of Greek cul 
ture when their schools had been closed and their voices 
silenced by the Christian Church and State ; and who made 
special provision for their liberty of teaching in his treaty 
with Rome. 3 " He began his reign," says Mirkhond, " by 
proclaiming that his power did not extend over the con 
sciences of his subjects, since only the All-seeing could 
judge the heart; that justice, not caprice, should govern 
his judgments, and that administrative reform was his 
first duty. Behold the reward of righteousness ; time has 
not been able to destroy the palace of Khosru." 4 His 
interest in physical studies was a rare thing in that age, 
and could least be expected in an Asiatic monarch ; and 
his medical school at Susa embraced the study of phi 
losophy and poetry. His vizier, Abu-zurd-Mihir, raised 
from the lowest ranks through the penetration of the king, 
is scarcely less famous for wisdom and humanity than 



1 Through his favorite interpreter, Sergius, to whom Agathias was indebted for what he 
has recorded (History, iv. 30, Latin). 

2 So says Malcolm, i. no. 

3 Noldeke ; Tabari, p. 162. 

4 Mirkhond : Sassaman Kings, translated by De Sacy. See also Zeenut-ul-Tuarikh. 
(Malcolm, i. 108), and Firdusi s account of his talks with the Mobads. 



426 POLITICAL FORCES. 

Khosru himself. 1 Firdusi records his magnificent declar 
ation of the rights of conscience. 

But Khosru s greatest services to future ages were per 
formed in collecting and preserving the heroic legends of 
Iran, which were destined to become immortal as the Shah- 
Nameh, or Book of Kings ; and in bringing out of India, 
and transmitting through a Pehlevi version to all languages 
of the civilized world the oldest Bible for Rulers, the 
marvellous Sanskrit Apologues, which are known to us, in 
substance, through two variations, the " Hitopadega " and 
the " Pancha-tantra," as the noblest treasury of practical 
wisdom and humane culture in the Oriental world. In 
what form this old Book of Wisdom was brought into 
Persia we cannot now tell ; for, like the rest of the native 
Persian literature of the Sassanian period, the translation 
made by order of Khosru perished at the Moslem con 
quest. We know it only through an expanded Mahome 
tan-Persian version of the fifteenth century, the " Anvar-i 
Suhaili," or " Lights of Canopus," and from the Arabic 
version of the eighth century of the " Book of Kalilah and 
Damnah, " of which the other was a secondary revision. 2 It 
is reasonable to suppose that the king s Pehlevi translation 
much more closely resembled the Hindu originals we have 
named, than do these later Mahometan ones. While the 
" Pancha-tantra " and the " Hitopadega " themselves ma 
terially differ from each other in their list of fables, and still 
more in the maxims which are thickly strown among them, 
they are alike in their extreme directness and simplicity of 
form, which is in absolute contrast with the verbose and 
hyperbolic language of the later Persian " Anvar-i Suhaili." 
Besides this difference of style, the Persian work contains a 
very large amount of material not to be found in either of 



1 See chap, on Shah-Nameh. 

2 Both have been translated into English, Kalilah and Damtiah, by Knatchbull, 1819 ; 
and the Anvar-i Suhaill, by Eastwick, 1854. 



THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 427 

the others, and is thoroughly Persian in its character. But 
the spirit of all three is one and the same ; and throughout 
all the changes undergone by this venerable Gospel of the 
Duties of Kings, there is no marring of the soul of justice, 
tenderness, nobility, and reverence for humanity which 
pervades these genial tales and aphorisms ; no lowering of 
the tone of serious remonstrance and rebuke, of high ex 
hortation couched in parable and hint and maxim ; no wav 
ering from the standard set before the sovereign, at the 
beginning of the " Anvar-i Suhaili," when he accepts labor 
and trial for " the repose of his oppressed subjects and 
the peace of the poor among his people," 1 and at the end 
when his epitaph reads, 

" Two things life offers, fame, the virtuous deed. 
Save these, All things are subject to decay? 
Injure not others, help men to succeed ; 
Thus shalt thou reap a blessing for to-day 
And the next world, when this hath passed away." 2 

Firdusi tells us the legend, that Barsuyah the physician 
brought word to Khosru of a Hindu book which taught 
how to bring the dead to life, where the wise interpreted 
the teaching to mean resurrection from the death of ignor 
ance ; and being successful in committing it piecemeal to 
memory, he brought it to Persia in great joy, saying, " The 
ocean of wisdom has indeed come to us," and begged of 
the king that the vizier in re-editing it might make the 
opening a memorial of himself. 

This dumb morality, and the reverence for a Providen 
tial destiny, which is equally prominent in the Mahom 
etan version, is in substance identical with the homely, 
practical, uninspired tone of the Hindu books, through 
all the difference of form. We may be sure that Khosru s 
information of the world-famed book, " whose wisdom in 
all that befits a king had been compiled from the speech 

1 Anvar-i Suhaill, p. 70- 2 Ibid., p. 649. 



428 POLITICAL FORCES. 

of animals," and his unspeakable desire to obtain it, were 
associated with these all-pervading qualities that make it 
so impressive to us ; and if, as the Mahometan writer as 
sures us,. " his actions, as they may be traced in his justice 
and beneficence, his conquests of countries and his ways 
of soothing the hearts of his subjects, were based on the 
perusal of this book," we can understand why it is that he 
stands at the zenith of royalty for all Persian and even 
Mahometan faith. 

The age of Khosru brings him into direct contrast and 
comparison with another great monarch of equal fame, but 
of far inferior qualities, the head of Christendom as he was 
of Heathendom, the Roman emperor, Justinian, with 
whose name are associated the compilation of Roman 
law and the general, though by no means final, suppression 
of Paganism in the Christian world. The most striking 
difference is that the glory of Khosru is thoroughly per 
sonal, that of Justinian external and incidental. Justinian 
was a bad administrator of the empire, financial, political, 
civil, religious ; he was a bigot, and an extortioner from the 
poor. " His victories and his losses," says Gibbon, " were 
alike pernicious to mankind." Italy and Africa were 
desolated ; Vandals and Moors were slain by millions ; and 
fifty thousand laborers were starved in a single district of 
Italy alone. " Khosru," says Procopius, 1 "was a bad man, 
but it was Justinian who incessantly stirred up the Persian 
wars." Under his system of taxation, landed proprietors 
were impoverished and reduced to the level of slaves ; his 
civil-service system was far more corrupt than the Persian, 
his treasury filled with the open sale of offices. He cheated 
his troops of their pay, heaped abuse upon his best gen 
erals, and left them unaided in face of overpowering foes. 
The whole empire was discouraged and demoralized at the 
moment when hordes of barbarians threatened its very 

1 Hist or ia Arcana, p. 18. 



THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 429 

existence with incessant raids and terrible devastations. 
He even cut down the army to save expense, while he lav 
ished immense sums on public buildings and churches and 
monasteries. He closed the schools of philosophy, and 
destroyed the municipal institutions of Greece. He abol 
ished the Olympic games, but encouraged the frightfully 
riotous and internecine factions of the circus. He emptied 
the local treasuries of Greece, and gave over her cities to 
ruin. The central authority was broken down for all pur 
poses but that of persecution, and its place filled with the 
anarchical wilfulness of soldiers, monks, usurers, sects, and 
officials. 

And perhaps one main reason, that with all the military 
prestige of the Roman empire it found itself again and 
again beaten back by Persia, lay in this premature dis 
integration by the extortionate, selfish, and intolerant 
policy of Justinian and his successors. Nothing in his 
private character could justify confidence or quicken the 
failing patriotism of the empire. John of Cappadocia, 
notoriously the most villanous ecclesiastic of his day, was 
his special favorite. His early intrigues and crimes, and 
his uxorious submission throughout his long reign to the 
unscrupulous Theodora, whose vices filled all the best his 
torical writers of the age with indignation and contempt, 
gave added impulse to the downward tendencies of the 
State. 1 That dissolution of nationality into multitudes of 
discordant, rebellious wills, which befell the last days of 
Sassanian Persia, began at a much earlier moment in the 
Graeco-Roman empire ; and in both, the compensation was 
a return in some measure to that force of personality 
which always conditions the passing away of old systems, 
and the entrance of new social or religious forces. 

It might be supposed that the new life thus introduced 
into the decaying frame of Justinian s empire was Chris- 

1 Gibbon, xlvii. 



43O POLITICAL FORCES. 

tianity ; but Christianity was itself the religion of the State, 
the narrowing creed, the rule of ecclesiastical councils and 
military edicts, tending to the utter annihilation of per 
sonal freedom and rational inquiry. The new life which 
national disintegration indicated was the birth of heresy 
everywhere, the heroism of martyrs, the building up of a 
rival religion, which absorbed great sections of the Roman 
world. 

It is stated by Procopius, that the persecutions by Jus 
tinian of Christians and Pagans alike not only caused great 
religious revolts in various parts of the empire, which re 
sulted in multitudes of deaths by suicide and war, and 
great accessions to Paganism and Manichaeism, but that 
by reason of them great numbers fled for shelter to nations 
outside of Roman or Christian sway. 1 His superstition 
made him a willing tool of an intolerant priesthood, so that, 
as Gibbon says, "his whole reign was a uniform yet various 
scene of persecution." He gave bishops the right to use 
the military arm to compel conversions. He was so fool 
ish as to believe that all the heresy in his empire could be 
abolished by a three months warning to be converted or 
banished, and Paganism be destroyed by inquisitors ; also 
for the crime of a creed, he stamped out almost the 
whole nation of the Samaritans, from which his Master had 
brought a type of humanity to rebuke the priests and Le- 
vites of his own race. He refused unbelievers in Christian 
ity the right to testify, to teach, or to bequeath, and imposed 
death as a penalty for refusing baptism. But by the irony 
of events, this arch-persecutor of heretics died not without 
the taint of heresy upon his name. 

Every portion of the empire was devastated by these 
systematic attempts to eradicate both Pagan and hereti 
cal belief, 2 and the Byzantine historians even talk of a 

1 Procopius : Historia Arcana, xi. 

2 Gibbon, chap, xlvii. pp. 182-83. Finlay : History of Greece, p. 324. 



THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 431 

depopulation of the world by his religious wars. 1 The 
ecclesiastical writers themselves denounce the imperial 
couple of "Christian" propagandists, whose very differ 
ences and discords added to the general miseries. 2 "They 
seemed not human, but some malignant form of demonic 
existence sent to plague mankind." 3 Yet all their bar 
barity failed to eradicate Paganism, which was destined 
to reappear in a more powerful form than ever, when the 
gigantic empire of Islam arose among the outposts of the 
empire, and drove back the advancing tide of Christianity 
from some of its fairest portions. Nor must we forget that 
this new form of Paganism not only drew under the shelter 
of its wings some of the best elements of Christianity, 4 as 
well as of Mazdeism, but also contained within itself prin 
ciples, spiritual and ethical, at least as elevated as the 
degenerate church of the later Roman empire. 

In truth, the fall of the Byzantine as well as that of the 
Persian State illustrates the destiny of politico-religious 
systems based on the authority of Will. 5 Justinian and his 
successors absorbed all those duties which truly educate 
the citizen, into absolute personal government, directed by 
the absolutism of a monarchical Church, whose sovereign 
will they claimed to represent. Justin, Maurice, Phocas, 
Heraclius, some of them really good and able men, all 
pursued the same policy of unifying the religious beliefs of 
the empire by the often barbarous exercise of despotic 
will ; and so the destruction of all those broad national 
sympathies and institutions by which a people are trained 
to obey good laws and confide in those who administer 
them, went on in spite of every virtuous effort by the ruler 
to reconcile his system with the public good. 6 When the 

1 Procopius : Historia Arcana, xviii. 2 Ibid., iii. 3 Ibid , xii. 

* For example, Nestorian schools of Syria, after their expulsion by Justinian, and then by 
Leo the Isaurian. 

6 Procopius : Historia Arcana, xxx. 

6 See the striking picture of these tendencies in Finlay s Greece under the Romans. 
Zeller : Entretiens sur I histoirt , x. 



432 POLITICAL FORCES. 

Persian empire neared its fall, it had gone through similar 
disintegrating phases, not so much from the absolutism of 
orthodoxy as from the weakness of monarchs who failed 
to justify the popular demand for heroic personal ideals. 
The logic of human nature brought a common result to 
both. But a new and stronger will than royal vicegerent 
of Ormuzd or of Christ appeared in the Allah of Islam, 
whose decrees wrought in his servant s will with the re 
sistless power of Fate. 

There is indeed another side to this picture of Justinian, 
which has doubtless been colored by partisan feeling. His 
private habits seem to have been pure, 1 and his passions 
under control. There are evidences of real humanity in 
his re-enactment of Constantine s law against gladiatorial 
shows ; and his literary and artistic tastes were proved by 
a multitude of public \vorks, as well as by his constant 
intercourse, within the limits of his creed, with men of 
high culture in every department of thought and action. 
In all these respects he is not discredited by comparison 
with his great contemporary. He was a centre of illustrious 
men ; his great architect Anthemius, his great jurist Tri- 
bonian, his great generals Belisarius and Narses, his great 
historian Procopius, were a glory of which any emperor 
might be proud. Above all, the devotion of the great 
legal talent of the age to the codification of Roman law 
out of the confused heap of traditions, decisions, and special 
codes gathered from the writings of forty civilians, and the 
concentration of two thousand treatises into fifty books ; the 
separation of all these data into their historical elements 
and order of growth, and the stamping of the whole with 
the fruits of Roman civilization in the jurisprudence of his 
own time, this marvellous substructure of the legislation 
of the modern civilized world is an achievement which 

1 It will not do to attach too much confidence to the strange revelations of Procopius, in 
his Secret Memoirs, which differ so utterly from his Public History of the Emperor. 



THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 433 

may well immortalize the names of all who had share in 
its accomplishment. For the public spirit, the persevering 
energy, the legal acumen and research required for this 
vast undertaking, the praise belongs to Justinian and the 
great lawyers whom he selected for it, especially to Tri- 
bonian, the master-spirit of the whole. But that which 
constitutes the immortal value of the Pandects and the 
Code does not belong to that age, or to its ruling spirits 
in government or law. Their best was not the work of 
Christian emperors. Their limitations to the " patria po- 
testas; " their steps towards testamentary justice, towards 
the emancipation of women and of slaves ; their broad 
recognition of the jus gentium or laws of universal appli 
cation as distinguished from the privileges of Roman de 
scent or rights of conquest, whatever gives breadth and 
permanent value to this monument of jurisprudence was 
mainly the work of a nobler and freer age, the product of 
the spirit infused into Roman law by the great Stoic school, 
centuries previous, when they brought the equity of their 
philosophical " Law of Nature" to bear upon the accumu 
lating laws of nations and the praetorian edicts by which 
these were administered as nearly as possible upon a com 
mon basis ; and not only upon these, but upon the civil 
law of the Roman State, as developed through successive 
ages and codes. 1 The effect of this grand ethical con 
ception of Stoicism was the rapid adjustment of laws to 
universal principles of justice and the rights and duties 
of humanity. The great age of Roman jurisprudence 
covers the reigns of Hadrian and the Antonines. 2 The 
imperial constitutions which succeeded that period are 
marked by reaction to despotic sway, and by increasing 
servility in the construction and interpretation of laws. 
And the treatment of this nobler legislation by Justinian 

1 See Maine s Ancient Law, p. 65. 

2 Compare Woolsey s Introduction to Roman Law. 

28 



434 POLITICAL FORCES. 

and his supple parliament of jurists was in full keeping with 
these accepted requirements of the interests of the State. 
Besides avoiding the freer and purer spirits of the old re 
public, they corrupted the records of these best days of 
the empire, and blotted out the noblest statutes, which 
they dared not indorse. And so unscrupulously was this 
done, that " the contradictions of the Code and Pandects 
still exercise the patience and subtilty of modern civil 
ians." : How far the same hands are responsible for the 
disappearance of the greater portion of the literature and 
data of Roman jurisprudence is uncertain ; the charge of a 
deliberate purpose to destroy what did not suit the des 
potic aims of Justinian has no other ground than the sup 
pression and corruption already mentioned. But the work 
which was to supersede them came very near to sharing 
their fate; and it is said that all the manuscripts of the 
Pandects are derived from one original, preserved with 
devout care in the palace of the Florentine republic. 2 

The jurisprudence of Justinian was in fact no exception 
to the general spirit of his reign. Whatever the oppor 
tunities, afforded by his grand survey of national experi 
ence, he discovered no means of staying the degeneracy 
of Roman civilization. As compared with Constantinople 
at this period, Persia was a country of order and law. The 
horrible anarchy of the circus, with its incessant blood 
shed and sensuality (so vividly described by Gibbon), 3 
stimulated to its worst excesses by the emperor s own 
eager support and encouragement of the most barbarous 
of the factions, 4 was unparalleled in any heathen land. 
In the ferocious brawl of the Nika sedition, the best part 
of the city was ravaged and burned by the savage factions 
of the Blues and Greens, and thirty thousand persons 
slaughtered, a carnage suppressed only by the vigor 

1 Gibbon, chap. xliv. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., chap. xl. 

4 See Zeller s account of the massacre of the Nika (Entretiens sur T histoire], chap. x. 






THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 435 

of Belisarius. Yet these factions were deliberately en 
couraged by the imperial champions of Christianity and 
law. The long, lingering decay of the Byzantine empire, 
plucked by barbarians and assailed by Turks, torn by 
political and religious factions, by strife with Rome and 
Alexandria, crazed with theological disputes, was one 
wretched commingling of rebellion, assassination, and dis 
traction, dominated only by the insane endeavor to enforce 
uniformity of religious belief. The military and adminis 
trative genius of Heraclius furnished the only check upon 
this headlong descent. And when Persia fell under the 
sway of Islam, a future of intellectual and political great 
ness opened upon her, in striking contrast with the mel 
ancholy spectacle of this servile empire, the bequest of 
Justinian to his Church and his laws. 

The fierce intolerance of Justinian, though in extreme 
contrast with the spirit of his Persian rival, was entirely in 
accordance with that of most Sassanian kings. Mazdeism, 
like Judaism and Christianity, could not tolerate a different 
object of worship from its own, because this object of its 
worship was a single personal Will, ruling its worshippers 
by direct command. The bitter exclusiveness of the Per 
sian Mobads betrayed itself whenever they were intrusted 
by their kings with power, as invariably as did that of the 
Christian priesthood and Moslem orthodox upon a like 
opportunity. The Sassanian line began with an exter 
minating warfare upon all unbelievers in Ahura, whose 
holiness could not endure the presence of these servants 
of Ahriman ; and their successors, for the most part, fol 
lowed in the same track. From this .intolerance the Jews 
were excepted, almost always continuing on good terms 
with the Persians, partly from a common veneration for 
the name of Cyrus, and partly from the very intensity of 
exclusiveness common to Ahura and Jahveh, which, com 
bined with great ethical resemblance, strongly suggested 



436 POLITICAL FORCES. 

that they were one and the same God. The comparative 
weakness of the Jews and their hatred of Rome were also 
points of attraction for the Sassanian monarchs, who found 
Christianity far more dangerous than Judaism, and especi 
ally after its ascension to the throne of the Caesars. Shapur 
I., the great conqueror, was believed, from the inscription 
at Haji-Abad, to have embraced Christianity; but the 
reading has been shown by Haug to be erroneous. That 
he first encouraged Mani and then banished him, is uncer 
tain tradition; that the great heretic returned, to be put to 
death by Varahran II., is not improbable. 1 Shapur II. was 
persecuting the Christians when Constantine came to the 
throne. Yezdegerd I., converted to Christianity, falls into 
deadly strife with the Magi, and is called " the Wicked ; " 
then recurring to Mazdeism, he inflicts barbarous penalty 
on the Christians for five years. Varahran I. puts them 
to torture. Yezdegerd II. imposes Mazdeism by force on 
the Armenian church (450 A.D.), and having quelled the 
revolt of Vartan, makes martyrs of all who would not 
recant. Khosru II., professing Christianity, devout slave 
of the Virgin and of St. Michael, and husband of a Chris 
tian woman, surrendered Jerusalem to the ferocity of Jew 
ish and Persian priests, who massacred or banished the 
whole Christian population, on pretence of punishing them 
for hiding " the true cross." 

That this chronic intolerance proceeded from the nature 
of personal Will as the ideal of worship, is evident from the 
fact that these Sassanian kings, so far from being men of 
cruel disposition were generally, in civil affairs, benevolent 
and just. To Hormazd I. is ascribed the institution of a 
court for trying complaints of the poor against the rich, over 
which he often presided. The chief persecutor of Christian- 

1 Although the savage cruelty of his execution, as described by Tabari (Noldeke, p. 47), 
is probably a fiction, at any rate Manichaeism was fiercely persecuted, though in no wise put 
down. 



THE SASSANIAN EMPIRE. 437 

ity, Varahran V., was held a model king in his treatment 
of his people, and in his regard for arts, sciences, and all the 
functions of the State. 1 Per6z, also intolerant, remitted all 
taxes during a seven years drought, distributed corn and 
money, and used every expedient for the preservation of 
his people. Shapur II., as bitter in his treatment of Chris 
tianity as he was heroic in his wars against Arabia and 
Rome, is credited with such maxims as these : " Words 
may be refreshing as the rain or sharp as a sword." " A 
spear may be drawn out of a wound, but a harsh word 
cannot be plucked out of a wounded heart." Yezdegerd I. 
said that the wisest king is he who never punishes in anger, 
and follows his first impulse to reward the good. 

The obscure history of Mazdak and his school of com 
munists is a striking illustration of our position, that Sassa- 
nian severities in religion were consistent with a consider 
able degree of social and political freedom. This Mazdak 
admitted the national faith, but added a system of com 
munism, abolishing marriage and property, and otherwise 
threatening the destruction of the whole social order. His 
following increased, till it became necessary to suppress 
the whole movement by the uprising of the better classes 
of the community. The king himself, Kobad I., was infatu 
ated with doctrines which would have swept away all royal 
government in an hour, and had to be dethroned. Restored 
by a Tartar army, he resumed his crown, forgiving his 
opponents, and discouraging the subversive school of 
Mazdak. Yet so deep-rooted was the evil, that Khosru 
on his accession is said to have been obliged to suppress 
it by putting to death a hundred thousand persons. How 
much of historical truth is contained in these traditions 
is uncertain. But the fact is unquestionable, that this 
revolutionary system had been suffered to reach wide 
diffusion before it was put down by force ; and such dif- 

1 See especially Firdust s Bahram-goiir. 



438 POLITICAL FORCES. 

fusion implies a free circulation and discussion of social 
theories, and a power of association among the working 
classes, which we should hardly expect to find in that 
period or in an Oriental State. The protests against 
luxury and monopoly ascribed to Mazdak, his puritanism 
in diet and dress, and general preaching of self-restraint, 
hardly comport with the excesses which his followers are 
said to have committed against decency, property, and 
peace. 

On the other hand, the persecution of the Manichaean 
heresy, both in the East and the West, grew directly out 
of the religious motive we have already described. 



PHILOSOPHIES. 



I. 



MANICH^EISM. 









MANICH^ISM. 

r I ""HE invincible exclusiveness of Mazdean will-worship 
J- was conspicuous in its treatment of Mani, who repre 
sented a natural growth of its own dualistic ideas, but 
combined these with a wide eclecticism, the equally natural 
result of the intrusion of numerous races and religions 
upon the soil of Iran. All tradition is agreed that Mani 
had attained the largest culture possible in his day. He 
was an astronomer, a physicist, a musician, and an artist of 
eminence, who could use his gifts with great effect, not 
only to charm the public taste, but to illustrate his own 
written thought. He had mastered the faith, first of the 
Magi, then of the Christians, and had travelled far and 
wide to the cradle-lands of other and older religions. It 
is not improbable that the eastern legend of his having 
sent out three apostles Addas, Thomas, and Hermas 
towards different quarters of the world, and of his per 
sonal relations with Scythianus and Terebinthus or Buddas 
(names that have no historic meaning, except as types of 
the Egyptian and Indian religions), 1 is simply the mythical 
expression of his eclectic method and wide religious sym 
pathies. 2 Some of the early Fathers connect him with 
Brahmanism. 3 His followers identified him with Christ, 
Buddha, Zoroaster, and Mithra, and believed that all these 
religious names meant the one solar Deity. 4 His acquain 
tance with the Jewish Cabala and the Gnostic masters, 
who for a century had been constructing heretical systems 

1 Archelaus: Disputatio cum Manete, c. 51, 52. 

2 Lassen ; Ind. Alterth., iii. 405. Colditz : Die Entsiehung d. Manich. (1837). 
8 Ephrem Syrus, and Epiphanius. 

4 Herbelot: Bibliothtque Orientate Mani. 



442 PHILOSOPHIES. 

out of the combination of Syrian and Greek ideas with 
Christian faith, was complete. In his large survey, he re 
jected no belief by reason of prejudice against the system 
of which it formed a part. The asceticism and metem 
psychosis of the Brahman ; the emanation and emancipa 
tion of the Buddhist; the mystical and prophetic element 
even in that Judaism whose Jahveh was in his belief a 
delusion and snare to man ; the Dualism of the Persians, 
and the Saviour of the Christians, though under forms 
which materially differed from those of their respective 
orthodox creeds, all entered into an elaborate system 
which seemed to be devised for meeting the largest number 
of special wants in an age of many conflicting religions 
and philosophical schools. When we add that he ap 
peared in Persia at a time when two parties had arisen in 
the Mazdean church, the one strongly dualistic, the other 
seeking to place a distinctly supreme unity beyond the 
two ethical contraries, and that his own system took an 
intermediate ground, in some respects differing from both, 
in some agreeing with one or the other, there seems to 
be no sufficient reason for doubting, as the historian of 
Gnosticism has done, 1 that Mani really purposed to con 
struct a universal system out of the ferment of beliefs 
in his time. I cannot agree with Matter that this was 
unnatural in a philosopher of that age and country. On 
the contrary, circumstances seemed to make it the most 
natural thing in the world ; and the probability is height 
ened by the remarkable union of imaginative and rational 
istic elements in the system itself. 

This is the higher significance of Manichaeism, and 
affords the true point of view for explaining the extreme 
intolerance with which it was pursued by the three great 
religions, Mazdeism, Judaism, and Christianity. The war 
waged against it was a war of narrow dogmatism against 

1 Matter Histoire CritiqiM du Gnosticisme, hi- 73 



MANICH^ISM. 443 

universal tendencies, however imperfect their expression, 
however distorted by the false lights of the day. Through 
all historical doubts and conflicting details the one fact 
stands fast, that wherever Mani appeared, or his system 
found foothold, they were persecuted with a ferocity unex 
ampled even in the ancient world. 1 We must ascribe this 
fact to the boldness and breadth of his eclecticism ; to the 
promise of his method to solve all religious problems by a 
Gnostic insight beyond and above all outward revelation 
by church or book ; to its rationalistic criticism of the cur 
rent grounds of belief; and to the seeming claims of the 
new apostle or paraclete to rival the head of the Christian 
Church, and to supersede Zoroaster and Moses, to all 
of whom he seemed to give a recognition by accepting 
just so much of every system as would give him a hear 
ing with its disciples, while subtly undermining it by a 
more stringent logic and a refusal of implicit faith. Fir- 
dusi reports Mani as saying that his painting proved him 
a prophet, and asserts that he was put to death for his 
images or ship. Only these signs of a larger mental scope 
and freedom can account for the peculiar violence which 
marked the Manichaean persecutions down to the Middle 
Ages, when the name was applied to numerous heresies 
as the very strongest term of hatred and reproach. By the 
necessity of their belief, and by the confession of the best 
of their opponents, the Manicli3eans were pure in their 
morals ; and the charges brought against them were pre 
cisely those of which the Christians had reason to know 
the worthlessness from their own experience of the same. 
Libanius the rhetorician, in his appeal to Constantine on 
their behalf, describes them as scattered over many coun 
tries of the earth, injuring none, but suffering injuries from 
many; abstemious, and counting death a gain. 2 Yet not 

1 Spiegel : Eran. Alterth., ii. Neander : Church History, ii. 770. 
8 Neander : Church History, ii, 768. 



4/|4 PHILOSOPHIES. 

only was Mani cruelly put to death by Varahran the Sas- 
sanian king, but the Christian emperors from Constantine 
to Justinian, with but one or two exceptions, tried per 
petually to exterminate the sect. They were burned at 
the stake by Vandals in Africa, and by Catholic Christians 
in Europe for six centuries. 1 Augustine, converted from 
their communion to Christianity, turned upon them with 
all the bitter and arbitrary injustice of which his passion 
ate nature was capable. And later Christian apologists 
have argued a priori the necessity of immorality, as a 
result of the Manichsean belief in the physical unreality 
of the Christ and in the impurity of the senses and sexual 
relations ; unable to see that the very same tendencies were 
important factors in Christian faith, and led not only to the 
exaltation of Jesus above all laws and conditions of matter, 
but to the meritoriousness of celibacy and the monastic 
life. In the same way the division of Manichaean believers 
into the two classes of " hearers " and " elect " has been 
supposed to justify the same charges, in face of precisely 
similar distinctions in the Christian Church from the be 
ginning to the present day ! The Sassanians persecuted a 
Dualism which was the logical issue of their own creed, 
and the Jews a Cabalism which in substance they could 
find in their Talmud. 

Such evil treatment of a system which sought to find 
points of sympathy with every one of the great religions 
of the world, becomes the more remarkable the more fully 
these points are appreciated. It must be remembered that 
Mani claimed to be a Christiah, and that he was thoroughly 
a Gnostic, and in some points even a Judaistic, Christian. 
In his depreciation of the senses, though Mani forsook the 
first principle of Mazdeism, yet he was very far from anti- 
Christian. Even his Dualism, Mazdean in substance, was 
almost equally in accordance with Christianity, in which 

1 Trace this in Jortin s Ecclesiastical History. 






MANICH^EISM. 445 

Satan corresponded to his Evil Principle, dominating man 
till deliverance should come in the Christ. The light 
shining in the darkness, which comprehended it not, was 
the substance of both Alexandrian and Catholic theology, 
the soul of the Gospel of John as well as of the Avesta; 
and the emancipation of the Good Principle was as posi 
tively predicted by Mani as the triumph of Christ in the 
Gospels, or of Ahura in the Avesta. Nor is it easy to see 
how the developed creed of Christianity could have ob 
jected to Manichaean Dualism as a religious dogma, since 
the Christian God was admitted to be unable to eradicate 
evil from the universe, and his unity had slipped into 
trinity, and this had so verged upon tritheism as to fill the 
Church with irreconcilable contradiction and contention. 

But these very points of resemblance did but aggravate 
the intense and peculiar hatred of the three great religions 
to Manichaeism as the most intolerable of heresies. And 
for this there was a reason common to all three. They 
were all religions of personal Will. Jahveh, Ahura, 
Christ, were absolute sovereigns, whose laws, as personal 
commandments, permitted no rival authority, no suspense 
of faith, no balance of reasoning. In each of these reli 
gions an omnipotent Will, consciously engaged on the 
affairs of men, was the centre of all motive, the sum of all 
rights and claims. Creation was simply the act of that 
Will ; sin was violation of its command ; hell was the con 
sequence of its wrath ; heaven was the reward of its ap 
proval. What man was and was to be, what right and 
wrong meant, resulted directly from its determinations; 
and would have been other than they are, had these been 
different. This absorption of all being into the sovereignty 
of Will made each of the three contending religions es 
sentially intolerant. It must deal with all other religions 
as rivals and foes ; and the more bitterly, the closer these 
seemed to be to its own communion. For reasons already 



446 PHILOSOPHIES. 

given, Judaism and Mazdeism carne to an accommodation 
without change of face. Between Judaism and Christian 
ity the hatred was mutual and made irreconcilable by ages 
of Christian persecution, perhaps the blackest page of 
religious bigotry in the whole history of man, all in conse 
quence of supposed crimes against the person of Christ. 
No peace ever dawned on the hates of Christianity and 
Mazdeism, symbolized in the eternal strife of Persia and 
Rome. But a mightier Will swallowed the will of Ahura ; 
and then came for Christianity another and more deadly 
conflict, lasting for ages, till at last Allah and Christ are 
stilled by the new world-forces which command that reli 
gion shall cease to be the worship of wills, and become 
the worship of universal principles and laws. 

More intolerable, however, to Christianity than any out 
side rival personality was a system which arose within its 
own household in rebellion against the authority not of 
Christ only, but of Will itself. The system of Mani substi 
tuted principles for persons. This was the real though 
scarcely recognized secret of the hate and fear. It was the 
handwriting on the wall predicting death to arbitrary will 
in the name of reason, and instinctively the Church sprang 
to efface it. It is admitted that Mani was true to his Iran 
ian origin in his ready spring from abstractions to concrete 
forms; 1 that his conception of world-processes and cosmic 
powers was dramatic, so that light and darkness were not 
only opposite substances; but living powers contending in 
space. But this was only the superficial poetic dress. He 
emphasized principles, and gave them a logical develop 
ment inconsistent with personal caprice. He used Dualism 
not as the conflict of two opposite wills, one of which must 
triumph by the destruction of the other, but as the organic 
structure of the world, whereof all personal life is but the 

1 Spiegel has noticed this, but fails to see the deeper impersonality on which it rests. 
Eran. Alterth., ii. 206. 



MANICtLEISM. 447 

temporary expression. He laid the basis of his creed not 
in intentional and positive commands, but in the logic of 
essential causes. A true Gnostic, he put reason for out 
ward revelation, philosophy for special providence, and 
creation itself was but a single sequence in the evolution 
of the inherent relation of good and evil. This rationalism 
was his unpardonable sin ; and his eclecticism, pressing 
elements of all creeds into his service, not to aggrandize 
a special God, but to work out his principles on the broad 
est human scale, was simply an aggravation of it. We may 
here briefly illustrate our statement, before proceeding to 
that larger demonstration which its novelty may seem to 
require. 

Light and Darkness, or Good and Evil, in the Manichaean 
system, although defined respectively as spirit and matter, 
were not distinguished as spiritual and material in our sense 
of those terms. Light was not separated, as purely con 
scious mind, from Darkness, as dead elemental substance. 
The moral distinction of good and evil controlled that dif 
ference. Although coarser and cruder than light, darkness 
was not confined to bodies ; although more spiritual than 
darkness, light was not confined to spirits. The two 
opposites were Principles, without beginning and without 
end. The will of the Manichaean Christ could not destroy 
the Darkness, which remained after the element of Light 
had been mainly eliminated, and though buried out of 
sight it was kept in place by powers not free from the in 
termixture of evil with good. Its relation to man ceased, 
but not its essential reality as the opposite of good. 

Evil, in Mazdeism infused from without into man to cor 
rupt his native purity, is in Manichaeism an organic part 
of him from the beginning, a principle developing itself 
in conjunction with good, the darkness that ever co-exists 
with the light; not the work of a personal tempter, not 
the product of a fall from obedience. If this antagonism 



448 PHILOSOPHIES. 

exists, reasoned Mani, how should it come but from the 
nature of things? A personal Will cannot have created 
good and evil, since its very life is in being conformed to 
one or the other. Neither can it end the evil which it did 
not create, except so far as to separate the good which is 
imprisoned in evil, and leave the last a barren principle of 
darkness, self-existing but inoperative on man. Behind all 
plans and purposes lies the unchangeable nature of things. 
It is the natural tendency of evil to mingle with good, and 
imprison it ; of good, to escape the evil mingled with it, 
into purity and freedom. Hence a universe whose imper 
fect and struggling condition represents these opposing 
forces. And of these man is the product, an imprisoned 
light-essence, involved in darkness, seeking its native ele 
ment, aided by the whole world of Light, held back by the 
whole world of Darkness, who at length through the per 
vasion of the whole universe by the all-mastering suffering 
of the soul of Humanity, as the Son of Man, is delivered 
from the bondage of the night into the liberty of eternal 
day. And thus, though the strife is dramatically set forth, 
and every stage is crowded with stirring and strenuous Will, 
though every cosmic force centres in a living conscious 
energy, in /Eons and emanations and spiritual powers, 
and the speech of the whole is one mighty symbolism 
of spirit and matter, of the senses and the soul, still every 
step is predetermined, not by any monarchical scheme, but 
by the antagonisms and masteries of Nature. The light 
must free itself from the darkness, because each is what it 
is. No personal favoritism alters the course of Nature. 
According as each man is in relation to this supreme law 
of spiritual progress, so is his fate. This stands in place 
of election and reprobation; this, not the Bible or the 
Gospels, is the revelation ; this, not the personal trinity 
in unity, is the witness of the spirit ; this, not incarnation 
in a body of sense, is the presence of the Christ; this 



MANICH^ISM. 

doctrine, not his life or death, is the power of salvaL_. 
All prophets and gods sink before this. Jahveh is degraded 
into the tempter of Adam, while the serpent becomes a 
saviour because he teaches the rights of knowledge above 
arbitrary commands, leading man into the liberty of the 
light instead of the bondage of the darkness. The visible 
Christ of tradition is a mere shadow; the true Christ was 
not crucified, because the spiritual light cannot, as a prin 
ciple, be so confined and slain in forms of sense. The true 
Christ was sent at the beginning, to save the imprisoned 
light, and is invisibly crucified throughout Nature, so long 
as the light-principle is not set free. As for Ahura, Mani, 
though Mazdean in so many things, does not mention him 
as a sovereign Will, or hesitate to set aside his positive com 
mands, such as marriage, labor, agriculture, and, in gen 
eral, reconcilement with the physical conditions of life. 

It is then evident, that with all its errors Manichoeism was 
a rationalistic criticism, cutting under church, creed, and es 
tablished mediator ; an attempt to substitute ideas (gnosis) 
for blind faith (pistis) and a religious philosophy for the 
worship of personal Will. This was equally true of Gnos 
ticism in general, of which Manichaeism was an offshoot, 
the great heresy of the early Church, the noble witness 
that reason appeared with its radical claims at the very 
earliest steps of Christian absorption in the worship of 
Christ. But the Gnostics were never persecuted so fiercely 
as the disciples of Mani; partly because they affiliated 
more perfectly with existing mystical systems, Oriental 
and Platonic, from which they derived a certain prestige 
of respect; and partly because some of the doctrines of 
Mani, proceeding chiefly from contempt of the senses and 
of matter in general, were urged with a logical as well as 
a practical thoroughness which struck out the whole basis 
of Christian theology, especially the Incarnation and 
Atonement, from physical and social reality. Moreover, 

29 



450 PHILOSOPHIES. 

other doctrines of Mani very conspicuously associated 
themselves with what had passed for heathen idolatry, 
such as that of a spiritual presence and purifying function 
in the sun and moon. 

A detailed study of Manichaeism will show that, notwith 
standing its important differences from Mazdeism as well 
as from Christianity, it was a natural product of those 
Iranian qualities which we have traced through the races 
and religions successively appearing on Iranian soil. Ideal 
aspiration was indeed much more characteristic of Mani 
chaeism than the worship of personal Will. Yet both these 
forms of Iranian nerve-energy had their share in its origin 
and history. Its recognition of ideal principles as the 
substance of belief was enfeebled by anthropomorphic 
elements, shared with both these religions, though by no 
means in equal degree on its part. Its superiority in the 
line of the ideal explains their evil treatment of it, while 
the modicum of personalism inseparable from its dramatic 
and poetic form assisted it to gain influence in an age 
which was drifting towards religious monarchism of a very 
positive kind. Of all heresiarchs, none perhaps stands 
more in need of just appreciation than Mani. His doc 
trine, a by-word in all Christian ages, has come down 
only in fragments and in the writings of his enemies, 
who took care to destroy the originals from which they 
quoted for purposes of confutation alone. Beausobre, the 
one great scholar of modern times who has ventured to 
deal with Manichaeism in detail, was far from sympathiz 
ing with it; yet his minute researches resulted in finding 
Mani in almost every respect superior to his opponents, 
both Pagan and Christian. It is no slight honor to this 
despised and hated creed that it should have given oc 
casion, after a thousand years eclipse, for a work of such 
rare learning and liberality, 1 not only one of the best reha- 

1 Beausobre : Histoire du Manichaisme. 



MANICHMEISM. 45 1 

bilitations of discredited names, but a firm and fearless as 
sertion of the rights of free inquiry. The estimate of Baur, 
though more philosophical, does not give so vivid an im 
pression of the man or the system as this great and per 
manent contribution to the study of those times. To this 
I am indebted for a considerable portion of the data here 
after adduced in support of my own views on aspects 
of the subject into which Beausobre hardly enters, its 
bearing on the progress of religion and the problem of 
evil. 

As a recognition of the strife of contrary forces in the 
physical and moral spheres, Dualism may well be called a 
universal experience. Its symbols are everywhere, God 
and Satan, Osiris and Typhon, Ahura and Ahriman, 
Jove and the Titans, spirit and matter, monad and dryad, 
order and chaos, " love and strife," 1 affirmation and ne 
gation, polar forces, astrological oppositions, freedom and 
force, spiritual and sensual tendency. Diverse as are these 
forms, Dualism is nevertheless the promoter of pure mono 
theism, in proportion as it distinctly emphasizes the radical 
opposition of good and evil. For in the same proportion 
that it does this, it forces man to realize that supreme mean 
ing which he attaches to the word good, which in the last 
analysis means that which is conformable to the truth of his 
being, and commands his love and service. In treating of 
the Dualism of the Avesta, I maintained that it was impos 
sible for men to worship at once two equal and essentially 
hostile gods ; in other words, that strict Dualism belongs 
to the realm of philosophy rather than to that of religion. 
In the religious sense, one cannot serve two opposite mas 
ters ; " For either he will hate the one and love the other, 
or else he will hold to the one and despise the other." 
There are of course incongruities in conduct and in belief 
everywhere ; polytheism in a certain sense belongs to no 

1 Empedocles. 



452 PHILOSOPHIES. 

special creed or age. But in so far as evil is distinctly 
conceived as a power hostile to good, then, however it may 
be feared or detested, it is not worshipped as supreme; 
because as evil it cannot command either affection or re 
spect. So, whatever the form under which good is con 
ceived, whether as truth, progress, righteousness, sacrifice, 
or some kind of happiness, the idea of its right and ulti 
mate destiny to be supreme, is made all the more evident, 
the more clearly the conception of evil is brought home, 
as its radical opposite and negative. When what is held 
to be good is felt to lie in the purpose of one power, and 
what is held to be evil in the purpose of another, then a 
dualistic philosophy necessitates monotheistic faith ; or, in 
other words, the former must be superior and substantially 
supreme, and so God. Ahura was superior to Ahriman, 
though their strife lasted to the end of the present visible 
world. If here monotheism was not complete, it was be 
cause of the strictly personal meaning of deity, dividing 
the conception, so that an inferior person could be called 
a god as well as a supreme one. In a definition by prin 
ciples, only the sovereign good in the universe can be 
called God. 

In this respect Manichaeism was more truly monothe 
istic than Mazdeism. Its supreme good was conceived as 
a principle of immaterial light, whereof all spiritual forces 
of good were emanations. This was " the Father; " Son 
and Spirit were inferior, divine only as partakers of this. 
But so entirely did it subordinate personality to essence, 
that the opposing power of evil, though regarded in the 
same way as a living agent, was defined as Matter; as if 
personification of a principle was, in this dramatic and 
poetic system, symbolical only, as in the case of Matter it 
must be. The dualism here is not a division of deity into 
two persons, but a distinction of principles; only one of 
which is the supreme good, and therefore God. 



MANICH^EISM. 453 

But so absolute is this supremacy of good, that the very 
key to Manichaeism is in its effort to avoid all intermixture 
of matter, or evil, with the nature of God as a pure and 
incorruptible essence, whose unity it was willing to express 
by the Christian name of " the Father." This effort is 
admitted by its enemies. 1 The Platonists, severe critics 
of the Manichaeans, conceded that they had " invented 
their monstrous fables, which degrade deity, out of a re 
ligious reverence for God." 2 As it would have contra 
dicted the absolute purity of good to create evil, therefore 
evil which by a large part of the ancient world, Christian 
as well as Heathen, 3 was identified with matter must be 
an uncreated, self-existent principle. This was Gnostic ; 
Bardesanes, for instance, had said, "God creates the world, 
but evil creates itself." But the Christians, who felt the 
same instinctive sense of impurity in matter, made no 
such effort to save their God from the responsibility of 
having created it. Mani quoted against them on this 
point their own text, " A good tree cannot bring forth 
evil fruit," and Paul s doctrine of the irreconcilableness 
of the flesh with the spirit. He denied their explanation 
of the world as a creation out of nothing by the will of 
God; since "out of nothing, nothing can come." The 
world of light, or good, flows from the nature of God, 
which is light; but the world of darknecs, or evil, can 
only flow from its own nature; hence both are uncre 
ated ; and the good is only good, and makes good only. 

The reality of uncreated, self-existent principles was a 
common tenet in ancient philosophy, as distinguished from 
religion. Upon the same requirement, that nothing could 
come from nothing, the pre-Socratic philosophers of Greece 
held one and another of the four elements to be without 



1 Epiphanius, Jerome, etc. See Beausobre : Hist, du Manichtzisme, ii. 147. 

2 Simplicius in Epictet. cap. xxvii. 

3 Sabellius and probably Arnobius believed this, as well as the Gnostics generally. 



454 PHILOSOPHIES. 

beginning, constituting the essential nature of things. So 
the " matter " of Plato, the " atoms " of Epicurus, the 
"strife and love " of Empedocles, the Hellenic "destiny" 
as well as the Gnostic " matter," were principles inherent 
and primal, beyond the will of the highest gods. And 
the " mind " (nous) of Anaxagoras was a principle rather 
than a definite person. In the same way Mani, urging 
the traditional belief that spiritual freedom consisted in 
emancipation from the bonds of sense, in an intensely 
ethical spirit affirmed the impossibility that matter should 
proceed from the supreme good either by creation or 
emanation, because it was the principle of evil. It was 
therefore out of jealousy for the purity of the religious 
ideal that he pronounced matter to be eternal, or un 
created, as to its substance, and its special forms to have 
been shaped by an inferior maker, or Demiurge, out of pre- 
existent materials. So Plato is at pains to show that evil 
does not come from the gods ; l and is as little the work 
of man, since it was necessitated by a principle of disorder 
which the good Demiurge could not wholly overcome. 
The Platonic Demiurge represents the higher, as the Mani- 
chaean does the lower, creative force. It is not easy to 
see how, upon the recognized Christian as well as Gnostic 
ground that evil was real and positive, and that it was 
made effective through the solicitations of the senses, 
Mani could have so w r ell recognized in any other way the 
logic of reason and the absolute purity of the highest 
good. Certainly not in the method of his great opponent, 
Augustine, the father of Christian theology, who says with 
Plato that nothing can be more detestable than to make 
God the author of evil ; yet who, so far from freeing Him 
from personal responsibility for evil, ascribes it to the 
human will, whereof, as the bitter foe of Pelagianism, he 
declares God himself to be the absolute creator and con- 

1 Republic. 



MANICH^ISM. 455 

troller. Certainly not in the way of Christian theology, 
which made God the Creator and Father of all, yet cast 
the victims of these forces of evil, which are part and 
parcel of human life, into eternal punishment by the 
Father s will. 

In resorting to the more consistent view of evil, con 
sidered as real and essential, that it must be thoroughly 
separated from the nature of God, and from the ultimate 
destiny of spiritual substance, Mani was the most thor 
ough protestant against the irrationalities of the Christian 
creed in that whole line of heresiarchs who founded the 
Gnostic schools of the first three centuries. He followed 
out the same substantial ideas as Basilides, Marcion, Bar- 
desanes, and Valentinus, and had many points of sympathy 
with those minor schools which formed the transition from 
Jewish Christianity to Gnosticism. In respect to the na 
ture of evil and of matter, their errors are obvious. 

As supplying a rationale (gnosis) of philosophy, to meet 
demands which the blind faith (pistis) of the Church 
not only failed to satisfy, but even treated as sinful, 
they occupy a position much higher than belongs to 
their solution of this and of many other problems of life. 
Augustine charges Mani with attempting to reach truth by 
reason without faith ; and this, taking faith in Augustine s 
sense, is his real glory. The character of his criticism 
both of the creed and books of Christianity, of the Old 
Testament and the New, singularly anticipates many of 
the arguments against Biblical and doctrinal authority 
which modern science has carried into details then unat 
tainable, and which modern rationalism has found most 
satisfactory in disproving the genuineness of certain books 
and the claims of internal evidence. His use of texts 
shows what opposite meanings may be read into the 
same words by a system of philosophy, and by a system 
of implicit faith ; but it does not appear that the charge of 



456 PHILOSOPHIES. 

corrupting the language of Scripture has any other basis 
than his choice of those passages only which served his 
purpose of confutation or defence. His claim that reason 
was the emancipating power, that the strength of sin was 
in ignorance, that the power of Christ was in his doctrine, 
not in his life, a purely spiritual reality not at all re 
vealed in the illusory body of flesh and blood which men 
called Jesus, was a complete repudiation of the Christian 
doctrine of the Fall, of original sin, of compulsory belief 
through miracle, of exclusive incarnation, and of the whole 
scheme of salvation based thereon. And the inspiration 
of this whole effort to adjust the religious traditions of 
the East to the requirements of reason, was the desire to 
vindicate the ideal purity and perfection of the Supreme 
Good. 

This is the substantial motive of his idea of a Demiurge, 
or subordinate creator, applied to Jahveh as the God of 
the Old Testament and framer of the material world. 
His objections to this Old Testament religion were based 
on its unworthy anthropomorphisms ; on its bloody sacri 
fices, which he held to be of demonic origin ; on its wholly 
temporal and visible meaning of reward and punishment; 
on its circumcision and ceremonialism ; on the absence of 
all prophecy concerning the real Christ ; on the absurdity of 
using its types as authority for belief in a divine commis 
sion ; on the ground that a maker of visible light could not 
have been the Infinite God, because he would have been in 
darkness previous to making it. Faustus, the Manichaean 
apologist, could not believe that the Son of God should 
have been first and specially sent to the Jews ; nor under 
stand how the heathen should not believe that he had 
shown his grace to their own ancestors as well. 1 These 
objections to the anthropomorphism of the Old Testa 
ment are evidences of an earnest zeal for free spirituality 

1 Beausobre : Hist, du Manichceismc, i. 296. 



MANICH^ISM. 457 

and ethical purity in the conception of God, 1 similar to 
that which Alexandrian Judaism itself had contributed 
more than a hundred years before to the earliest Chris 
tian belief. 

In the same interest of spiritualism Mani denied the 
resurrection of the body, a heresy both to Mazdeism and 
Christianity; and it was for this, not for his Dualism, that 
he was put to death by Varahran. 

Let us now examine more closely the meaning of the 
Manichsean principle of evil. " Matter," it must be noted, 
is not here what the common speech, still less the science, 
of modern times calls by that name. It is simply a term for 
the substance of those forces which men found impossible 
to reconcile with their moral and spiritual ideal. It was 
in great degree identified with the bodily senses and their 
immediate relations to man, not only because of the sen 
sual appetites, but in part certainly because it was recog 
nized that the ideal world is not revealed physically, by 
observations, but transcendentally, from within ; because 
the senses do not really account for the sense of duty 
and the idea of God. The inexplicable ground of physi 
cal and moral imperfection was conceived, with some 
approach to philosophical truth, as elementary disorder, 
blind chaotic darkness in contrast with the light of rea 
son, order, truth, and good; which, according to Plato s 
noble maxim, was only suppressed by blindness, and only 
needed being seen, to be loved. This is substantially 
the " necessity " which Plato in his " Timaeus " opposes to 
the principle of good, and which limits the power of the 
Demiurge to shape out of his pre-existent material an 
orderly world, and souls conformable to the best. It is 
a principle irreducible to permanent form, and necessitates 
evil in man and Nature, whose organisms spring from 

1 So in Alexandrian philosophy and the translation of the Septuagint a hundred years 
previous. 



458 PHILOSOPHIES, 

human degeneracy. This elementary darkness, or blind 
unreasoning capability of evil, was called " matter " by 
ancient thinkers, Chaldean, Egyptian, Greek, and forms 
a distinct factor in all their cosmogony and ethics. On this 
principle as inherent in the cosmos Mani took his stand 
in opposition to the Christian theory, which had made the 
Supreme Good responsible, as a personal Will, for moral 
evil, because defining it as a product of that human will 
which He had created. As a principle evil was eternally 
separate from the principle of good, and could not be 
explained by anything outside of itself, least of all by its 
moral opposite. Now, when modern thought says evil is a 
necessity, as the imperfection which is involved in the very 
nature of finiteness, and which no Will, however exalted, 
could prevent, or was needed to create ; when it says crea 
tion proper, a pure beginning of principles in time, is con 
trary to the law of evolution, and, in truth, inconceivable, 
what is it but to reaffirm that ancient doctrine of the 
"eternity of matter" under a scientific form? 

The Manichaeans criticised the first verse of Genesis by 
asking what God was doing before that " beginning " in 
which he created the heavens and the earth. 1 Some of 
the Fathers had enough of heathen philosophy in them to 
reply, after Heraclitus and the Stoics, the Alexandrians 
and the Cabalists, that the present system, terrestrial and 
celestial, was but one in a succession of systems ; that God 
was eternally producing these ; and they added, with less 
plausibility, that the world previous to this present world 
was a spiritual one, created by instant fiat, and that it 
was to this that Moses referred, as created " in the begin 
ning." But it is obvious that this doctrine of successive 
creations was as far from giving the meaning of the verse 
in question, as it was from meeting the Manichaean objec 
tion to its theory of creation out of nothing. Nor was the 

1 Augustine : Against the Manichceans, i. 2. 



MANICH^ISM. 459 

matter improved by the further attempt of Augustine and 
Clement of Alexandria to read into the poetic phrase of 
Genesis their doctrine of the Trinity, by explaining ev apxti 
(" in the beginning ") to mean " by the principle," that 
is, the " Word," or " Son of God " ! l 

It was natural for the orthodox advocate to ask how it 
was possible, if evil (or matter) was so wholly apart from 
the will of God, that he should exert any influence to 
redeem those under its power. But Mani could at least 
have replied that this was quite as conceivable as it was 
that the Christian God, being infinitely good, should have 
created matter, and its involved evil, by his perfect will. 
Moreover, the mingling of good and evil in the world was 
not an interfusion of principles at all, but a contact and 
external pressure, of the nature of two hostile and in 
compatible substances at war, a mutual imprisonment, 
necessitating final separation and release. 

In the dramatic spirit of their system the Manichseans 
personified their Evil Principle, as we have said. But their 
Prince of Darkness was not a form of rationality, for this 
belonged only to light; nor had he so much freedom and 
intelligence as Ahriman in the Mazdean system, who is 
outwitted by Ahura, and sees no danger till it is too late 
to escape; nor was he so genuinely personal as the Chris 
tian Satan, who prescribes the conditions of life and the 
fate of men by personal presence and direct volition. He 
is simply the poetic personification of that blind chaotic 
substance which needs no will to move it, but is itself 
active, productive, a push and tendency of things. To 
give a soul to this element was quite according to Orien 
tal psychology ; since soul-life was traditionally conceived 
as of three orders, rational, psychical, and animal or ma 
terial, and all the world as animated in every detail of 
element and form. 2 The Talmud also had its Prince of 

1 Beausobre : Hist, du Manichceisme, ii. 284. 2 Ibid., 369. 



460; PHILOSOPHIES. 

Matter, opposed to God. And the early Christians thought 
that in repelling matter they were fighting off the evil de 
mons, who were its effective constituent force. 

But there was a stronger reason for giving to the ma 
terial principle opposed to good a soul, in Manichaean 
jealousy for the purity of the principle of good. If evil 
were wholly dead and impersonal, then, how account for 
its presence as conscious motive in the heart and will 
of man? It must have proceeded either from a spirit- 
capacity in matter, or else, which was impossible, from a 
capacity for evil in that spiritual principle which was held 
to be the Supreme Good. And so the dark world of the 
material principle must in a sense be spiritual, and pro 
ductive of living forces, which people chaos and make 
war on the light. The opposite realms are in contact 
only at the border, and the dark world is at the south, 
as with the Orientals generally. Unlike their being, as 
opposites, which is eternal, their strife, the grand drama 
of which creation and human destiny are incidents, has a 
beginning in time, as it has an end. This tragedy is ex 
pressed by Mani, as by all religious teachers, in a mythic 
form, which must not be too literally interpreted. 

In this mythus he is consistent with his Platonic idea of 
the origin of moral evil, not in inclination, but in ignorance ; 
and vindicates the all-sufficiency of light (or reason) to 
deliver the soul. Like Basilides, and in accord with the 
Avestan Magi, 1 he ascribed the war to the effort of dark 
ness to find light, led by a necessity to mingle with it. 
The darkness is not intentionally hostile to the light as 
light, but simply does not know the light. An internal 
schism, plainly suggesting the deeper Dualism in the 
boGom of evil which portends its destruction, caused it to 
transcend its own limits and overflow into the world of 
light, not from sympathy indeed, but from necessity, as the 

1 Beausobre, ii. 23. Archelaus : Disf-utatio cum ManetC) c. 55. 



MANICH^ISM. 461 

only relief. I shall leave unanswered the natural question, 
How far does this doctrine involve what it certainly hints, 
the psychological truth that evil, through its self-con 
tradiction, comes to know the right, and sees it clearly, 
only after vainly struggling to overcome it? 

Blindly flowing into the light, unable to hide from it, 
evil cannot refuse the conflict, whose sure issue is its 
defeat. Now, the very substance of the human not the 
human body, which comes of dumb demons, according to 
Mani is shaped from the substance of the Supreme Light, 
by what the myth calls the Mother of Life (in other 
words, the principle or power of life proceeding from it), 
purely to repel this flooding of its world by the darkness, 
this raid of chaos upon order, this blind push of lower 
tendency beyond its bounds. So exalted is the human in 
its ideal significance, in its nature and its purpose, pure 
light-essence in finite form ! 

And when, in the unequal conflict, this finite image of 
God is like to fail, the Living Spirit is at hand with the 
boundless resources of the Father to rescue him. The 
demonic forces are subdued, and many of them bound in 
stars or in planets, the evil powers of Oriental cosmogony. 
Or does the choice of stars signify their imprisonment in 
liglit ? the sign of that crippled condition of evil in the 
world which constantly guarantees the final triumph of good. 

All this is in the ideal world, not that of human history. 
The Mother of Life is the Wisdom {Sophia) of the Gnos 
tics ; but who, instead of falling like her from the bosom 
of God, an yEon wandering in the darkness, goes forth to 
resist the darkness, yet does not enter its impure domain. 
And her offspring, the ideal type of man (the Adam- 
Kadmon of the Cabala, Gayomard of the Avesta), who 
contends with evil directly, is saved by the Living Spirit 
to the world of essential light. But now a portion of this 
divine humanity, made captive, is imprisoned in the lower 






462 PHILOSOPHIES. 

world, and pervades it, the perpetual stress of the spirit 
therein towards deliverance into native light. This is the 
Son of Man, the "Jesus passibilis," of Manichaean Chris 
tianity; the free ideal of which, a portion (or child), is 
enthroned serene in the perfect visible light of the sun 
and moon, to draw all purified intelligences out of the 
world of evil into the gates of light. The Avestan Mithra 
becomes the Manichsean Christ. 1 

Now opens the proper history of man, the sequel of a 
strife already substantially decided. Not a blind conflict 
of uncertain issue, not one fore-ordained by an arbitrary 
decree of Divine Will to be half deliverance and half doom, 
but a sublime foregone conclusion, based on the elements 
of being. 

Out of the issues of that first hostile intermixture of 
good and evil, comes the visible actual world, sun and 
moon from the elements purest from darkness; stars from 
those less pure ; plants and inorganic substances from 
those still more corrupted ; then Man, the actual human 
race, not the ideal, male and female, with body of dark 
ness and soul of light, in whose composition centres that 
most pertinent question, Why was permitted such inter 
mixture of evil in all we are and see? and the Mani- 
cheean answer, namely, That something great and good 
should come of the inherent antagonism of good and evil 
in the nature of things. The natural enmity of matter to 
spirit should by their conjunction in man be made to 
work out the triumph of good. The dark powers, fearing 
to lose the captive light, form a body in the image of the 
ideal man, in which they imprison it, ignorant that in the 
very law of its nature it must struggle to escape these 
bonds, until darkness should be penetrated by order, and 
disciplines yield victory over the flesh. This is Adam 
the microcosmic man, evil in body, good in soul. 

1 Neander: Church History, " Mani and the Manicheans." 






MANICH^EISM. 463 

Thus did Manichseism follow out logically the doctrine 
of the impurity of the senses, deeply rooted in the religions 
of the time, not less in the Christian than in the heathen ; 
not less in the call of the one to renounce a doomed world 
for the kingdom of God, than in the old philosophy of 
spirit and matter. Now, the significance of Judaism was, 
that it was the effort of the dark power concerned in crea 
tion to prevent man from escaping these material bonds : 
first, by forbidding him to eat of the tree of knowledge 
(and here he is saved by a good angel in the form of the 
serpent) ; and next by making him, through Eve, the subject 
of sexual concupiscence, that the element of light might by 
generation be divided and so impaired, and the memory of 
his original home in spiritual light be effaced. But this 
effacement was impossible, and the undying affinity forever 
prompts to freedom. This redeeming idea Mani did not, 
it is probable, develop into Platonic " reminiscence ; " but 
the system seems to involve something like that principle 
of the immanent life of the ideal in man. Instead of the 
transmission of the sin of Adam as federal head of the 
human race, placing all under the ban of moral impotence, 
Mani seems to have asserted a power in each of his de 
scendants to resist the ever-repeated first temptation, by 
virtue of the light-element which constitutes his spiritual 
nature. Thus the whole history of mankind before Jesus, 
became lighted up with personal sainthood ; and in a larger 
sense than that of the Christian creed of redemption, the 
light shone from the East unto the West. Mani recog 
nized the continual renewal of the holy flame through 
r prophets in every age and religion, the greatest of whom 
he, as a Christian, of course found in Jesus Christ, but with 
out regarding him at all in the Christian sense. Although 
the very genius of light, coming into the darkness from the 
heaven of the primal ideal Man, to teach men the way to 
the light, his work was not to bring any atoning or vicari- 



464 PHILOSOPHIES. 

ous salvation by his life or death, but simply to revive the 
forgotten light in darkened eyes, and show the science 
(gnosis) of deliverance from the snares of evil. 1 Here is 
a marvellous conjunction, Buddha s " ignorance " as the 
root of misery, with the " light shining in darkness" of the 
Gospel of John. 

This was a total rejection of the function of Christ in 
view of the Christian idea of the nature and consequences 
of sin; but there was even a more fatal heresy in the 
denial of the reality of his incarnation. For the pure 
light to assume a real fleshly body was impossible. The 
Manichaean Christ could neither eat, drink, suffer, nor 
die; the Jesus of the creed was therefore no incarnate 
God, but an illusory phantasm only; the work of the 
Christ was invisible and spiritual; and the " Jesus pas- 
sibilis," or all-pervading light-element imprisoned in Na 
ture, was an effort to escape matter, not an assumption of 
its forms. 

To say the least, the Docetic Christ of Mani was not 
more irrational than the transmutation of the eucharistic ele 
ments into the actual flesh and blood of deity. Although 
he did not escape the absurd notion of a phantasmal organ 
proclaiming real and saving doctrine, and probably had 
no clear idea whether the miracles, sufferings, and other 
phenomena declared to be phantasmal were pure illu 
sion, or whether, being objectively real, they were merely 
unreal as concerning the light-principle which could not 
take bodily form, the meaning of Mani was evidently 
this: that as " flesh and blood could not inherit the king 
dom of God," nor the light-beam of the spirit be cut off 
from its fountain by absorption in matter, so the supposed 
incarnation in the person of Jesus was no exception to this 
law, and that the reality of Christ s coming to save men 

1 "Mani s world history, not Jewish nor Persian, but apparently Babylonian." Spiegel : 
Eran. Alierth., ii. p. 222. 



MANICtLEISM. 465 

was a fact of the invisible, spiritual world alone. This, not 
withstanding all the ascetic extravagance we may find in its 
Christian premises, was at least sounder in its conclusion 
than the opposite extreme of faith, which broke away from 
that premise by an astounding form of miraculous person 
ality, and announced this overwhelming exception to be the 
most supremely real thing in human history. Taking the 
Christian belief that the visible world was under doom of 
speedy destruction, and that the kingdom of its Christ was 
not of it, but of another world, was not Mani right in 
counting it an illusion, and the coming of the Christ into 
subjection to its bonds the greatest illusion of all? The 
protest of Mani was at least timely as against those ten 
dencies in Christianity towards a belief in the corporeality 
of God, of which the natural development led to the Chris 
tian doctrine of the Real Presence. 

But he did not deny an apparent assumption of the 
flesh. He even found a purpose in the illusions, so far 
as he accepted them as historical ; they represented, by 
way of figure, the relations and duties of those who really 
were bound in the flesh, the crucifixion showing that 
man must mortify the body, the resurrection suggesting 
his immortality, and the ascension his return to his native 
light. But the Incarnation being denied, there could 
have been no miraculous birth of the man Jesus, and no 
resurrection of his physical body, an evidence of the 
freedom with which the Christian records were read and 
criticised in the early centuries of the Church. 1 Faustus, 
the Manichaean bishop, deemed it the height of unreason 
that one born of a woman, circumcised as a Jew, baptized 
as a disciple, led into the desert to be tempted of the Devil 
in ordinary human ways, should yet be called the only be- 

1 Faustus, Augustine s opponent, denied the authenticity of many of the New Testament 
books, and referred them to a post-apostolic date. The main ground of the charge brought 
against their contents by this school, that they were corruptions of earlier writings, was their 
anthropomorphic character. 

30 



466 PHILOSOPHIES. 

gotten Son of God, one with the Father, and Life of the 
World. 1 

The Manichaean Jesus was that portion of the light- 
substance of the ideal Man which had remained captive 
in the world of darkness, or matter, when that soul had 
been rescued by the Living Spirit and exalted to the sun. 
This was the " Jesus passibilis," pervading the visible 
world for the mystical imagination, with the presence of 
a divine endeavor to ascend out of the flesh into the spirit. 
" This Jesus," said the Manichsean, " was not crucified on 
Calvary; he hangs on every tree." In what manner he 
pervaded Nature does not seem clear, but doubtless invisi 
bly only; and yet, as captive in matter, very differently 
from the free descent of the Son of Man from his Sun- 
world to bring his doctrine (or gnosis) in a merely appar 
ent form of humanity. But the meaning is plain enough. 
Man s own ideal life, like the Fravashi of the Avesta, suffers 
and strives for and with him in every element of Nature, 
out of which he must wrest his lost liberty and light. 

For emancipation was the recovery of a lost heaven, the 
reunion of the divine light in man with the supreme light, 
of which it came. This belief, common to all the ideal 
schools of antiquity and the mystics of all ages, is an 
expression of that cyclic movement ascribed by man to 
whatever he holds to be inherent and eternal. Principles, 
virtues, truth and good, tend through all changes of human 
experience to bring us back to themselves, and reaffirm for 
us in the end what they affirmed in the beginning, abiding 
as they have always been till the world comes round to 
them again. It is nothing less than a homelike sense of 
essential relation, of inmost affinity, of inalienable right to 
truth and good, which can thus absorb all distinctions of 
time, and make them appear at once as remembrance and 
prophecy, as what we were at the first and what we shall 

1 Beausobre, ii. 509. 



MANICH^EISM. 467 

be at the last. The ideal in man seeks only what belongs 
to it, its home, its nature, which it can never lose but by 
annihilation. The historical cyclic form assumed by this 
feeling, the sense of a lost heaven to be recovered, may be 
only a mythological symbol. But even an age which looks 
not backwards but forwards, and conceives of life purely 
as ascending evolution, will not escape this necessity of 
ideal aspiration to transcend all time-conceptions, this 
sense of unchangeable identity with the principles which 
attract it as its own natural and only home. The dream 
of an ante-natal lapse from spiritual light, and a predes 
tined recovery of the same, which haunted antiquity, was 
the measure of its loyalty to the ideal as inherent and eter 
nal reality. Nothing can be more significant than the find 
ing of this doctrine in dualistic schools like that of Mani, 
which held evil to be an eternal principle ; a doctrine which 
at first sight seems almost pure pessimism. That it was 
as far as possible from this has already become apparent. 
For Mani, as for Plato, and for many of the Christian 
Fathers, immortality implied pre-existence, and pre-exist- 
ence required immortality. The soul should recover the 
use of her wings, now folded and bound, and resume the 
lost power of flight. In ancient thought, the evil of mat 
ter was generally combined with the loss and recovery of 
spiritual wings. On the other hand, the doctrine of evil 
as inherent in the spiritual nature of man, tended to that 
of an entire destruction of these wings implied in the 
notion of eternal punishment, from which no scheme of 
redemption could save. Thus in the Christian dogma 
immortality lost its connection with pre-existence. It is 
remarkable that the two great advocates of pre-existence 
in early Christian history (Origen and Mani), both held 
to be heretics, though in different degrees, should, while 
differing strongly in general belief, both have insisted that 
immortality involved the restoration of every soul. It was 



468 PHILOSOPHIES. 

related of Mani that when his system was charged with 
cruelty in imprisoning souls in matter, he replied that 
all the lost sheep would be restored to their folds. " God 
forbid the soul should be lost. It is the lion that is taken 
in the net by the shepherd who has thrown him a sheep ; 
as for the soul, God will preserve it." 1 

This illustration opens a curious chapter in religious 
history. There were other ways in which the delusion of 
a natural depravity of the senses delivered the Manic haeans 
from irrational Christian dogmas, which are deserving of 
notice. They accepted the outer darkness and penal woes 
of the last judgment by fire, but denied the resurrection of 
the body and the millennial fictions of the Apocalypse and 
the Fathers. Even while clothing spirits in the splendors 
of the sun, they would have denied that these were in any 
sense material, or had any affinity with the flesh and blood 
in which these souls had dwelt while in life ; thus leaving 
the whole question of spiritual form in the vagueness 
which properly belongs to it. They admitted that death 
was separation from the pleasures of sense, but for that 
very reason denied that it was a primal curse, or, in fact, 
anything but a deliverance and second birth. They al 
lowed transmigration into plant and tree, and sun and 
moon, as a purifying process, but had no harrowing pic 
tures of pits or lakes of fire for the wicked. They paid 
honors to the sun and moon, thus happily escaping the 
logical consequences of their hatred of matter, and erect 
ing the noblest strictly material forms in the universe into 
symbols of the divine light. 2 But the idolatry of which 
the orthodox accused them on this account, even if real 
to some extent, was certainly not so pronounced as that 
which was embodied in the worship of the body of Christ, 
as such, or in that of the consecrated bread and wine 

1 Gregi : Act. Disfi. See Beausobre, ii. 338. 

2 For other views of future punishment, see Spiegel, Eran. Alterth., ii. 195-232. 



MANICHyEISM. 469 

as its equivalent, or in that of the relics of saints and 
martyrs, through prayers, offerings, and vows. If idolatry 
it could be called, this solar cult was at least rational 
enough to take for its objects familiar blessings and natu 
ral laws. The Manichaeans, however, repelled the charge. 
Faustus replied to his opponent, " God forbid I should 
blush for the reverence I pay to the divine luminaries. 
We have the same veneration for all elements which you 
have for the elements of the Eucharist." 1 The sun was, 
indeed, no less than the radiant company of purified souls, 
in the glow of their garment of praise, ascending to that 
" Pillar of Splendor " which was to be their eternal home. 
Origen regarded the heavenly bodies as living souls, shining 
in the light of good, and endowed with freedom of will, 
whereby they prayed to God through Christ. 2 But the 
Manichaeans did not prostrate themselves before the sun, 
nor offer it sacrifices as to God. They did not fall into 
that image-worship which carried away the Church in the 
fourth century. They placed an empty seat in their halls 
of meeting in memory of their great teacher, but they did 
not invoke him. In their celebration of the Eucharist they 
used water instead of wine, and were regarded with horror 
by the orthodox for this cause. 

As the union of spirit and matter in the nature of man 
involved a moral bondage of soul by sense, his sin, in the 
Manichaean mind, was a result of his nature rather than 
of his will. The orthodox attempt to reconcile these two 
almost incompatible grounds of sin by definitions which 
made them absolutely incompatible, defining man s natu 
ral sin to be the organic, inevitable love of evil as evil and 
hate of good as good, and his voluntary sin to be the 
exercise of deliberate choice in being and doing what he 
had just been declared as being and doing under irresist 
ible necessity, was rejected by Mani. Human nature was 

1 Augustine : Against Faustus, xx. i, 2. 2 De Principiis. 



4/0 PHILOSOPHIES. 

far from being wholly depraved. Every soul was forever 
prompted to free itself from the desires of the flesh through 
its original participation in the divine light-nature of the 
" primitive Man," or ideal Humanity. This spiritual es 
sence, shrouded in self-ignorance, cannot wholly forget 
itself; and the Manichaean could repeat Augustine s noble 
saying with a clearer right than its author : " Thou hast 
made us, O God, for thyself, and our souls are restless 
till they return to thee." For the great creed-maker of 
Christendom would fain have combined with this endless 
aspiration in the convert a moral and spiritual impotence 
which would have made conversion impossible. He pro 
fessed to find in this morally impotent human nature the 
possibility of a yearning for Christ throughout all religions 
previous to his coming, which no rational logic could de 
duce from the premises. If the Church could hold to the 
existence of a conscience in face of its own theory of total 
depravity, surely Mani might maintain its authority in spite 
of his theory of man s structural relation to an ante-natal 
bondage to the Darkness. 

We must guard against interpreting Mani as holding to 
the unrighteousness of matter in our own broad sense of 
that word. It is a proof of the simplistic notions of moral 
evil in his day, as well as of the predominance of one form 
of vice over others in the ancient world, that this system 
gives such emphasis to the sin of concupiscence, as if it 
were the only or the chief form in which the senses led 
mankind astray. This was the sin of the first parents. 
For Mani interpreted the Fall as of a nature which the 
Mosaic writer himself did not understand, because he 
wrote in the service of the Demiurge, not of the Supreme 
Father. The tree of knowledge was a figure of Christ as 
the true gnosis ; the prohibition to eat of it came from the 
Prince of Darkness, who sought to keep man from the light; 
the serpent was a divine voice which thwarted the scheme. 



MANICH^ISM. 471 

Mani could not have failed to see that physical generation 
was indispensable to the continuance of the race. But 
existence in the body was in comparison with his essential 
ideal life a lapse and loss, since the soul was really super- 
sensuous. And in judging these now exploded theories 
of the ancients concerning the inherent impurity of the 
sensible world, it must be borne in mind that they did 
not imply the repudiation of all physical relations for all 
human beings, but the comparative imperfection of those 
who are involved in these relations. A secular world 
was recognized to be necessary, as well as a religious 
world ; and since religion itself consisted in the struggle 
to throw off these implications, there could really be for 
man no religion without them. Buddhism had its place 
for the busy laity as well as for the absorbed saint ; nay, 
distinguished itself more than any other ancient faith by 
the institution of practical good-will in visible earthly 
forms. Mani was no exception. Celibacy and ascetic re 
straint from property were in his system also only for 
those who had consecrated themselves to purely spiritual 
aims, the advanced believers, who saw and pursued the 
highest gnosis. It is not true that he forbade the social 
conditions to his converts generally, or that he believed 
society to be possible without sexual ties. It would be far 
less unjust to suppose that Jesus, when he called men to 
leave all and follow him, to divide their goods, and shake 
off the dust of a world of flesh and blood that could not 
inherit his kingdom, sought to abolish homes, trades, gov 
ernment, and society itself. For Jesus really seems to have 
regarded the visible world as on the verge of destruction, 
and the judgment day close at hand. Jesus preached a 
practical love quite as hard to reconcile with his condem 
nation of the visible world, as a full acceptance of secular 
and social interests upon lower planes would be with Mani s 
contempt of matter as impure. Even Plato treats the love 



472 PHILOSOPHIES. 

of the sexes as evil; his ideal citizens of a republic, male 
and female, are not allowed voluntary unions, but solely 
under laws executed by public officials for the public 
benefit. 

It is the pride of modern thought to have rehabilitated 
the material form in which all human experience must find 
its expression. The boundless physical and social oppor 
tunity, the breadth and complexity of human relations, 
have immeasurably increased the estimate of what the 
senses are, and can do for man. Not even the authority 
of the New Testament can commend the old negations to 
the lips of modern Christians. But the old religions had 
to take the world as it was in their day. That ideal 
capacity which makes religions did not denounce the 
world which we now see ; it rather asserted one quite con 
trary to the world which it saw, and which could neither 
receive nor contain its own world. Its necessity was to 
overcome this world, either by living above it in ascetic 
separation, or by expecting its supersedure by the higher 
life of the spirit. It struggled against the bonds of the 
organism whence brutal possibilities seemed to flow. It 
was because the sense-world is omnipresent that it seemed 
to stand so obstinately in the way of the perfection that 
the eye never saw nor the ear heard. It was the heart 
of Plato s creed that so long as beauty and truth were 
seen only in their embodied forms, however high these 
might be, the soul of beauty, by and through which they 
were beautiful or true, was not perceived. Not the con 
crete body but the universal principle was divine. Yet 
Plato could see that to one who had perception of eternal 
archetypal ideas, the world would become their divine 
expression. Philo, again, the Platonizing Jew of Alexan 
dria, was looking only at the power of bodily seductions 
to blind the soul to ideas, \vhen he said, " Matter plots 
against the soul, lifeless and dead as it is. For when the 



MANICHyEISM. 473 

mind is busied on sublime contemplation, it judges the body 
to be a hostile and evil thing; for the soul of the athlete 
and the soul of the philosopher differ." l " The body," 
says the Book of Wisdom, " weigheth down the mind that 
museth upon many things." " There is a law in my mem 
bers," said Paul, " that wars against the law of my mind." 
It was certainly natural that the devotee of ideal virtue and 
knowledge, in ancient times, should dwell much upon the 
distractions and perplexities woven about him by the actual 
world, material, social, political, institutional. " Invin 
cibly urged to believe in justice, and cast into a world 
which is injustice itself, needing eternity to vindicate its 
dealings, and sharply arrested by the chasm of death, 
what," says Renan, "would you have him do?" In the 
absence of those practical resources which science has 
developed in every human relation, the noblest emotions 
required something more than a foothold in the super- 
sensual world, even an attraction to the claims and in 
terests of that world amounting to repulsion from all phy 
sical limitations. 

What has most contributed to the ennobling of the 
senses, the rehabilitation of matter in modern times, is the 
scientific discovery that all thought is so closely related 
to the action of the senses and the brain that the old line 
between matter and spirit as distinct worlds is effaced, and 
we are open to the conviction that we cannot honor any 
form of virtue or truth without reverence for those phy 
sical conditions and laws by which alone it can become 
effectual for good. Therefore it is evident that the words 
" body" and " matter" could only have been used in the 
older systems to cover a much narrower ground of cosmic 
meaning than with us. And it will be found, curiously 
enough, that those who were most hostile to matter treated 
the most important material forms with veneration ; as the 

1 Philosophical Allegory of the Sacred Laws, bk. iii. 22. 



474 PHILOSOPHIES. 

Manichaeans did the sun and moon, and as the Christians 
did the reality of Christ s flesh and blood, the resurrection 
of the Body, and the Millennial Kingdom with its visionary 
mixture of physical elements with supernatural and impos 
sible conditions, which involved no less than the destruc 
tion of the world. Even the crown of Christian thought, 
the Gospel of John, did but modify this curious discrep 
ancy; since it resorted to the physical world for its whole 
symbolism of the descent of the Logos as Light into the 
Darkness of the Flesh, wherein even " its own " could not 
comprehend it. And even such men as Clement of Alex 
andria, Origen, Jerome, who were hostile to the materialism 
of the Apocalypse, did not rise above this inconsistent 
delight in sensuous images of ideal truths. With a few 
marvellous exceptions like the poet-prophet of science 
Lucretius, the thinkers of that earnest time believed the 
material world to be at war with the highest aims of man ; 
while yet every one of them employed the material world 
as symbol, allegory, parable, or apologue, to express his 
highest thought. These facts are sufficient to warn us 
against giving too literal or too modern an interpretation 
to the old Dualism of spirit and matter; so that it might 
almost seem reasonable to substitute such other terms for 
these as active and passive, higher and lower, living and 
dead, perfect and imperfect. 

But we should especially err, if we regard Dualism as 
atheism. To assume the reality of an eternal, uncreated 
principle of matter outside of God, while yet finding a 
basis for aspiration and duty in a supreme principle of 
good, was not to deny, so much as to affirm, God. And 
however limited the conception of deity which was not 
inclusive of matter, it could hardly be more so than that 
intense monotheism of Judaism and Christianity which 
surrounded a supreme personal Will with finite condi 
tions and anthropomorphic defects. 



MANICtLEISM. 475 

The charge of immorality brought by Augustine and 
other Church Fathers against the Manichaeans is not 
likely to be admitted by any candid student who is 
familiar with the mode of dealing with heretics adopted 
by the great apologists for Christianity. The confuta 
tion of heresies by Irenaeus and Origen rested upon the 
assumption that the denial of orthodoxy inevitably led to 
immorality. Even the doctrines of opponents were inva 
riably ascribed to the worst motives, and presented as 
unfavorably as possible. It is always natural for religious 
dogmatism to infer immoral results from the rejection 
of opinions which the critic has come to regard as the 
foundation of his own virtue and peace. The accusations 
brought by Cyril and Augustine against the Manichaeans 
were in accordance with this traditional method. They 
were the more improbable from the fact that the hostility 
of this sect to the material world led naturally to the sup 
pression of every sensual tendency. On the other hand, it is 
possible that the Gnostic conceit of being the elect among 
believers might lead in some instances to fanatical perver 
sion of the text, "to the pure all things are pure." But 
the danger was quite as great in the similar conceit of the 
orthodox, whose morals, if we may judge from the admo 
nitions and reproofs of the chief apostles, had also their 
perverted leaven in the abuse of church membership for 
vanity and vice. Augustine, who is the principal witness 
in proof of the practice of horrible and obscene rites in 
the meetings of the Manichaeans, continued to be a hearer 
in the sect for nine years. He admits that they earnestly 
exhorted their disciples to guard against sensuality, and 
that he himself, loving pleasures of this kind, was not 
willing to become anything more than a hearer, through 
fear of binding himself to purity by their vows of member 
ship. Nor does he anywhere pretend that they had secret 
rites, though he brought everything he could against them 



476 PHILOSOPHIES. 

in his letter to induce a friend to leave them for the Chris 
tian communion. Cyril, who makes similar charges, was 
the most unscrupulously intolerant of Christian priests. 
Foolish and incredible maxims were ascribed to Mani ; 
and Augustine s preposterous charge that he imagined 
almsgiving and other acts of humanity to be sacrifices to 
demons, is answered by his letter to Marcellus, which be 
gins with praising this person for his charity. 1 Almsgiving 
seems to have been the duty of the Manichsean laity to 
their ascetic devotees, who, like the Buddhist bonzes, 
lived on pious gifts, after the apostolic ideal, or according 
to the teaching of Jesus, to be without thought for the 
morrow, like the birds of the air or the flowers of the field. 
The vows of the elect were at least ethically creditable. 
They were: (i) Of the mouth, not to eat forbidden food, 
nor utter anything untrue, unkind, or base; (2) Of the 
hands, to be pure from all violence or crime; (3) Of 
the bosom, to keep out all evil thoughts. 2 Was not this 
the old Avestan formula, " purity of thought, word, and 
deed "? According to Clement of Alexandria, who is not 
friendly to them, their principal precept was self-respect. 3 
Libanius commended them to the governor of Pales 
tine, as a people who mortified the flesh and regarded 
death as a release; who harmed none, yet were every 
where harassed and persecuted. They are reported by 
some to have thought war indefensible, and music a gift 
from Heaven. Their hymns, which were called lascivious 
and polytheistic by their opponents, seem to have been 
descriptive of Paradise and of divine y-Eons, of the mysti 
cal union of believers with Christ, and contained such 
imagery of devotion as was familiar to religious feeling in 

1 Archelaus : Disputatio cum Manete, 5. This work is of uncertain historic value, but 
very ancient ; and at least shows what was thought of Mani at a period much earlier than 
Augustine. 

2 Beausobre : Hist, du Manichceisme, ii. 791. 

3 Stromata, ii. 20. 



MANICH^ISM. 477 

their time. 1 In turn they charged the orthodox with hav 
ing reinstated pagan sacrifices in their love-feasts (agapce) y 
idolatry in their service of martyrs, and the heathen cal 
endar in their festival-days; and even with having re 
tained the morals of the heathen unchanged. As for the 
charge of polytheism, they might have retorted that the 
angelology of the Christians was essentially similar to their 
own, quite as complicated a system of guardian spirits to 
be invoked, consecrating every object in Nature or art, 
presiding over nations and cities, a host of saints and mar 
tyrs lifted into thrones, and served with sacrifice and vow. 
In truth, both systems were natural developments of the 
old Persian mythology, the one on Jewish, the other on 
heathen ground. As for demonology, the dualist s belief 
in an essential principle of evil was not more prolific of 
satanic powers than the Christianity of the New Testament 
and the whole Church of the first five centuries, in which 
the doctrine of demons ruled without an exception among 
its greatest names. 

Here is the reply of a Manichsean bishop to Augustine s 
invective : 

" You ask if I receive the gospel. Is that a question to ask a man 
who observes all its commands ? It is I who should ask you if you 
receive the gospel, since you show no signs of receiving it effectually. 
I have left father, mother, children. I have renounced all that the gos 
pel commands me to renounce, and you ask if I receive the gospel. 
I see that you do not know in what the gospel consists. I have re 
nounced gold and silver. I am content each day with the food suffi 
cient for it. I am not anxious about to-morrow s clothing. You see 
in me those beatitudes which comprehend the gospel. You see me 
poor, meek, peaceful, of pure heart. You see me suffering persecu 
tion for righteousness sake. Yet you doubt if I receive the gospel. 

1 The song of St. Thomas, on the marriage of the Church with Christ, has been supposed 
to be of Manichsean origin, substituting divine for earthly nuptials, after the manner of the 
Solomonic Canticles of the Old Testament. Other similar productions mentioned by Augustine 
(Against Fausttis) have been traced to the same source, but without certainty. See Fabricius, 
Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti. 



4/8 PHILOSOPHIES. 

You charge me with pagan idolatry. Pagans worship by temples, 
images, altars, victims, perfumes. I do otherwise: and I have a 
different opinion of the service agreeable to God. I myself, if I am 
worthy of it, am the rational temple of the Divinity ; Jesus Christ is 
the living image of his living majesty. A wise soul is the truth, is his 
altar. And true sacrifice is pure and simple prayer." l 

Here is the Manichee s ethical ideal, comparing favor 
ably enough with the best claims of his opponents. It 
would hardly have found its way down to us through the 
writings of an antagonist, had it not sufficient foundation 
in history to deserve our credence. 

The two main charges against Manichaeism were Magic 
and Gnosticism. The first associated it with Persian ori 
gins, the second with Egyptian and Greek. With the 
growth of orthodoxy, and the conflicts of nascent Chris 
tianity with the other religions of the world, the old sym 
pathy for Persia, naively hinted in the story of the Magi 
bringing their willing gifts to the infant Christ, became 
transformed into dislike, and the name of Magi, standing 
for the Dualism of the East, was chiefly known through 
its derivative, magic, the art of controlling invisible powers 
to forbidden ends. Mani was by origin and training a 
Magus ; but only in this fact was there any color in the 
charge brought against him of magical practices. The 
word magic has in fact a nobler meaning and descent. 
The Greeks ascribed it to Zoroaster and his priests, and 
held it in profound respect. Pliny says the Magus Ostha- 
nes, who accompanied Xerxes, " inspired the Greeks with 
a rage for the art of magic ; and that in the most ancient 
times, and indeed almost invariably, men sought in it the 
highest renown." 2 " What crime," asks Apuleius, " in 
being a Magus (or priest) and knowing ceremonial laws 
and rites?" 3 Pythagoras, Democritus, Empedocles, and 



1 Faustus (apud A ugustinu m, v. ii.) - Natural History, bk. xxx. chap. 2. 

3 Apologia, i. 






MANICH^ISM. 479 

Plato crossed the seas to learn it, and returning home 
expatiated upon it as " one of their grandest mysteries." 1 
Apollonius Tyanaeus called Persia the land of wisdom, and 
sought the Magi as its exponents. 2 Originally the word 
magic seems to have been used to designate religious 
functions, independently of all secret or dangerous arts. 
Persian Magianism meant that or something even higher. 
Suidas says that philosophers and lovers of God are called 
Magi among the Persians. Ammianus calls Magic the 
purest worship of divine things. Diogenes Laertius quotes 
authors who place the Magi as fathers of ancient philoso 
phy, Hindu and Jewish, and ascribes to them exalted at 
tainments. 3 It is curious that he adduces Aristotle in 
proof that they were ignorant of all kinds of divination by 
magic. 4 Dio Chrysostom says those whom the Persians 
call Magi were the persons most fitted by nature for truth 
and for religious wisdom. 5 Philo Judaeus also describes 
their love of investigation ; calls them " a numerous body 
of virtuous and honorable men; " and adds that " whoever 
is virtuous is free." 

It is evident that in the various phases of meaning under 
gone by this word, we have a confession of the great indebt 
edness of the Greek and Roman mind to Asiatic culture, 
and a reflection of complete changes in the sense of re 
lationship to it produced by religious hostilities. When 
we contrast the respect with which the Greek writers speak 
of the wisdom of the Magi, and the willingness of Pliny to 
collect the results of their physical speculations and pre 
scriptions of occult powers in herbs and stones, with the 
discredit ecclesiastically attached to the name of Zoroaster 
through the Middle Ages, as prime teacher of whatever se 
cret mastery over natural powers had been either achieved 



1 Pliny: Natural History, xxx. i. 2 Ibid., xxxiv. 17. 

8 Diogenes Laertius: Lives of Philosophers, Introduction. 4 Ibid. 

5 Or at io Borysthenitica. 



480 PHILOSOPHIES. 

or pretended to, and which was persecuted by the Church 
as the work of the Devil down to the time when the first 
essays of modern free physical inquiry were crushed out, 
so far as possible, under the name of Magic or the " Black 
Art," we obtain some conception of the power of special 
religious interests to pervert the historic relations and obli 
gations of the race. But it is important to observe that this 
narrowness of a special religion does not prevent the laws 
of continuous evolution from pursuing their way across its 
exceptional claims, in spite of every such denial of its share 
in the delusions of the past In this point of view the 
relations of Christianity to what it called the Zoroastrian 
Magic of Manichseism are deserving of study. 

There was certainly ample foundation in the demonic 
world of the Avesta, and the incantations and sorceries to 
which the Mazdean priests were led by their dualistic ex 
perience, for the general belief of the Christian world in 
the Persian origin of magic in this inferior sense. The 
invisible realm of powers inferior or hostile to God was, 
however, just as real to the Christian believer in the mys 
tical powers of the name and cross of One who came to 
conquer Satan and his hosts, and who had driven devils 
out of men into swine, as it was to the Zoroastrian, who 
met the hosts of Ahriman at every turn, and used against 
them the holy Honover cr the staff of power. The pseudo- 
science of controlling demons is but the u_itaught effort to 
resist threatening forces in Nature, conceived under human 
analogies, and requires quite other than religious influences 
to emancipate it into positive knowledge and mastery of 
things. It was as real to Origen as to Jamblichus or to 
Mani, or to the Chaldean diviners of the Roman empire. 
It was real to Jesus and his apostles, and to the whole 
early Church. It was not any special propensity in the 
Persian Magus to the use of occult powers to evil ends 
that moved the hatred of the Christian Church to him; 



MANICH^ISM. 48 1 

not his mere belief in demonic possession or demonic 
function in the government of this world, it believed 
in these as firmly as he, but his interference with the ex 
clusive claim of its own God and Saviour. His rival God 
and creed in whose interest his war against demons was 
waged was a pretension which made his angels and demons 
alike detestable. The only difference between the magic 
practised by the Church and that which it held blasphe 
mous in the pagan or heretic was that the power which 
both sides claimed to have acquired over the elemental 
world, was exercised by the one through talismans, relics, 
holy formulas, and symbols centring in the orthodox 
Christ, and by the other through analogous instrumen 
talities centring in a false or heretical system. As the 
Manichaean inherited from Mazdeism the belief that 
everything in Nature and human life had its guardian 
spirit and its ensnaring demon, so the Christian inherited 
a similar conception from the Judaism which had drunk 
deeply at Persian springs, and in the time of Christ had 
a demonology far more minute and elaborate than the 
Avesta itself. 1 With that control over the spirits good or 
evil in which magic consisted, Monotheism was, in fact, 
far more in accordance than Dualism, since it brought 
the natural and supernatural worlds into closer relation 
through a common origin and dependence. The Sibyl 
line oracles, falsely ascribed to early heathen prophetesses 
inspired to testify in the interest of the Jewish and Chris 
tian religions, but belonging to the centuries immediately 
before and after Christ, abound in evidence of the strength 
of this element in both religions. The Apocalypse of 
John, pervaded by the magic of numbers, of satanic and 
guardian powers, possession and exorcism, ministering 
spirits of all kinds subject to faith, brings Christian Testa 
ment and Jewish Talmud to one plane. Every one of 

1 Supernatural Religion, pt. i. chap. iv. 
31 



482 PHILOSOPHIES. 

the Church Fathers accepted in substance the data of 
magic. Those diabolic powers, which they held to be 
in special collusion with the heathen, they never thought 
of denying as unreal, but lifted them into their mytho 
logical series, associating them with the Fall of man and 
the bad giants of the elder world. The witchcraft de 
lusion of the whole Church down to recent times, the me 
diaeval mania for transactions with Satan about the soul, 
were but the mighty survival of that early Christianity 
which down to the tenth century believed that a grand 
transaction of Christ with Satan, wherein the latter was 
tricked by the former out of his real property in the soul 
of man, constituted the substance of the Atonement. All 
gifts of healing and of tongues, by which sinners and 
heathen were converted, all miraculous deliverances from 
evil, all vows to guardian saints and angels, were so many 
occult powers of good to control the evil ones which 
swarmed everywhere under the direct command of the 
Prince of Darkness, throughout the depraved world of 
matter and mind. It is true that with the Christian or 
Jew, one God had created both good and evil, while with 
the Manichaean, evil was uncreated, and a principle essen 
tially different from good ; but this distinction, which 
might be expected to give to Christian supernaturalism 
a better hope of converting the powers of evil, and so 
inspire its magic with a nobler spirit, produced no such 
effect. The Mazdean looked for the final conversion of 
demons ; the Manichaean, for something very like their an 
nihilation, leaving a barren principle of darkness only; the 
Christian was satisfied only with their eternal misery. 
I It must also be observed that Manichaeism in reality 
rejected from the three religions from which it was in 
large degree derived a considerable amount of material 
for magic. It discarded many of the superstitions of im 
plicit faith. By its comparative freedom from mysticism 



MANICH^EISM. 483 

it avoided the gulf of thaumaturgy, into which Neopla- 
tonism at last fell. Its substitution of reason for revelation, 
its aim at an intellectual elevation above physical miracles, 
its repulsion of all contact with evil, or matter, as a prin 
ciple eternally separate from spirit, were of themselves 
tendencies hostile to the coarse passion for wonder-work 
ing so prevalent in the early Christian ages. It was on 
these very grounds that Mani was persecuted by the great 
religions out of which he had gathered so much for his 
own. He became the victim of Sassanide intolerance be 
cause he denied that typical form of magic on which 
Zoroastrian rites were founded, the resurrection of the 
body; and his followers were everywhere hunted down 
by the Christians, because they would not believe the 
Supreme God to have been born of a virgin and im 
prisoned in a body of real flesh and blood. Yet because 
he could not fully emancipate himself from the Christian 
tradition and creed, he sought to reconcile them with his 
loftier conception of the Infinite by the only possible 
theory, that of Docetism ; and Docetism the theory that 
a spiritual essence could take a purely illusory bodily 
shape, and deceive the eyes of men by phantom images 
of a great life and death was to accept the doctrine of 
magic in one form at least, and that the completest 

Notwithstanding this common ground of Christian and 
Heathen in the conception of angelic and demonic powers, 
the earliest recorded hate of the apostles of Christ was 
directed against the great representative of thaumaturgy 
in their vicinity, Simon of Gitton, otherwise called "Si 
mon Magus." His pretences to exercise magical powers 
over Nature apart from the name and following of Jesus 
so stirred the Christian imagination of the first four cen 
turies that he became a gigantic nebulosity of legend. 
He was a master of magic powers, 1 the favorite of de- 

1 See especially the Clementine Recognitions, ii. 9. 



484 PHILOSOPHIES. 

mons, and instigated by them to proclaim himself a god. 
He succeeded in causing himself to be " worshipped as 
the first god," and " in persuading men that he should 
never die." 1 He caused himself to be buried alive, in ex 
pectation that he would rise on the third day. 2 He was 
the founder and father of all the great heretical schools 
which went under the name of Gnostics. 3 He was the 
teacher of every kind of vice. He was the pest of man 
kind, and his godhood was dethroned by Peter at Rome. 4 
The doctrines of this theological monster, if we may form 
a judgment from the confused exposition of his " gospel " 
by Irenaeus and Hippolytus, neither of whom seems to have 
had either the disposition or the power to unfold its mean 
ing, contained nothing to justify all this denunciation. It 
must have been an evolution of psychological attributes 
from the idea of God conceived as the immutable, eternal, 
yet forever self-projecting reality; 5 and this dramatically 
and allegorically presented as a descending series, ending 
in the latest revelation, through himself, for making the 
universe one in God and emancipating the human soul from 
material bonds. He was eclectic, and held heathen teach 
ing to be sufficient without Christ, if rightly understood. 6 
Of any dualistic theory, or special demonic system, even 
his enemies seem to have brought no charge ; but every 
feature of later Gnosticism, Demiurgism, and Docetism 
especially, was seen reflected in its germs in the Samaritan 
Antichrist, whose chief sins seem to have been, " inter 
preting the books of Moses as he pleased," 7 and usurping 
the place of Jesus as image of God. 8 The sin of Simon is 

1 This charge of claiming to be God is elaborated in the pseudo Clementine Recognitions, 
a romance of the third century, bk. ii. Justin Martyr: Apology, i. 26, 56. Origen : Phi- 
losophv, vi. i. 

2 Hippolytus : Philosophy, vi. r. 

8 Irenaeus: Against Heresies, bk. i. Eusebius : Hist. Eccl., ii- 13. 

4 Eusebius, ii. 13, 14. 5 Hippolytus: Philosophy, vi. i, 17. 

6 Matter : Histoire critique du Gnosticisme, ii. iii. 

7 Hippolytus: Philosophy, vi. v. 19. 8 Irenseus, i. 23. 



MANICH^EISM. 485 

not apparent to critical study. To the eyes of Paul and 
Peter, according to the Book of Acts, it consisted in con 
ceiving the power of Christ as working miracles through 
them for mercenary motives ; and in mistaking their gift of 
healing for a magic secret which he wanted to buy. But 
the story refutes itself. Simon could have seen no miracle 
wrought by the apostles ; and if he saw anything which they 
claimed to be miraculous, it could only have been some 
thing akin to magical illusion, and involves them in the 
very delusion they would fasten upon him. His doctrine 
of a fallen yEon whom his ministry was to restore to the 
Pleroma of God, and in her the world, led to the story of his 
leading about a reformed prostitute, according to some, 
far from reformed, whom he styled " the lost sheep; " 1 
and still further, to charges of licentiousness against his 
whole school. 2 Yet it was conceded that Simon had re 
deemed this Helena from slavery. 3 To take her with him 
as a type of that divine power which he wished to deliver 
in every soul, might be the act of a lunatic in our days, 
but certainly no more implied improper relations than did 
similar typical actions recorded of the Hebrew prophets ; 
and her presence might have served to emphasize his 
doctrine and to illustrate its practical power over conduct. 
If, as the Fathers assert, it was his purpose to counterfeit 
or rival Jesus, he could point to a prototype, beyond all 
suspicion of guilt, in the female friend out of whom the 
Messiah had cast seven devils, and who loved to sit at 
his feet. Nor was any type of sin and recovery more 
frequently employed in those days than the sexual one. 
It was an " adulterous and sinful generation," which the 
Messiah was to redeem. 

Whether Simon s thaumaturgic gifts were exercised, if 
he possessed them, in the interest of his own claims to be 

1 Hippolytus: Philosophy, vi. i, 19. Irenaeus, i. 23. Matthew, xviii. 12. 

3 Hippolytus: Philosophy, vi. i, 19. s Irenasus, i. 23. 



486 PHILOSOPHIES. 

the Paraclete or Advocate, or in some other way the power 
of God, may be difficult to determine. But the evidence 
of his imposture comes entirely from his enemies ; and 
there seems to be no more reason for crediting it than 
for regarding the whole great Gnostic movement of the 
first four centuries as imposture, as the same writers would 
have us believe that it was. Whatever motives his reli 
gious claim may have supplied, they were not necessarily 
selfish ones, any more than those which are represented 
as actuating the apostles of the Book of Acts. Their 
magic was of a character similar to his, it was a means 
of proving supernatural gifts as the prerogative of believers 
in Christ. But the magic of the Gnostics generally, and 
of Mani in particular, was a part of their psychological 
symbolism ; it ascribed to certain elements in Nature con 
stant virtues and vices as inherent in their being, according 
to that essential Dualism which was the law of the universe. 
It was therefore of the nature of science as much as of 
superstition ; or rather it was incipient science in the 
leading-strings of superstition. 

In this point of view it was the precursor of that 
" magic " which enclosed the germs of modern science 
during the Middle Ages, that original study of physical 
Nature which was persecuted by the Church because it 
foreshadowed some other solution of the problems of life, 
some other salvation for the mind of man, than the Chris 
tian Trinity and Atonement. It is true that in common 
with the Church, Manichseism had rejected the material 
world ; not, however, as under the curse of God, but as pro 
ceeding from a principle antagonistic to God. But it had 
at least subordinated arbitrary will to positive principles 
and laws, and sought to test the books and traditions of 
religious belief by them, in the name of reason. And it 
was in a similar though more consistent spirit that the 
fathers of modern science faced the curse that " revealed 



MANICH^ISM. 487 

religion " laid upon Nature, and with earnest faith in free 
dom and in law strove to rehabilitate man s dwelling-place, 
as the Manichaeans had sought to deanthropomorphize 
God. This was the forbidden magic with which they con 
fronted the magic, or miracle, of papal consecrations and 
holy signs and talismans, which for centuries gathered 
about the pious trust and daily life of men. As the Gnos 
tic traced his hierarchy of psychological ^Eons from the 
highest spirit down to the lowest emanation, and made re 
ligion consist in the restoration of their unity in God, so 
these new Gnostics of Nature carried the purpose a step 
farther, and strove to bring about the unity of the physi 
cal and spiritual cosmos, as the Gnostic had done with the 
spiritual alone. Astrology and alchemy the magic, not 
of stars and metals only, but of all elements were inspired 
by the idea that all things are in natural sympathetic rela 
tion, from the atom to the perfect soul ; that lines of 
dynamic influence are traceable through correspondent 
forms, and that the power to bring forth ideal fruits from 
these hitherto unexplored relations was to be secured by 
the right knowledge of their inherent laws and unselfish 
obedience to their commands. Ignorant as children, they 
took fanciful resemblances for real relations ; but they an 
ticipated many scientific truths, and were led by that first 
condition of science, the instinct of the permanent and 
universal. The instant this trust in Nature as the great 
teacher appeared, it was treated by the Church as an alien 
and rival authority ; and for this reason, the Church rested 
upon exclusive Will ; science rested upon positive natural 
law. The supernatural magic of the Church aimed at 
the destruction of the natural magic of the scientist, as it 
had a thousand years before at the natural magic of the 
heretic and heathen, who put their thaumaturgy against 
its miracles ; and so the birthday of our liberty saw the 
martyrdom of its prophets as masters of the " Black 



488 PHILOSOPHIES. 

Art." But persecuted " magic " has evolved modern 
science, and science has in turn exorcised the Church. 
It is noticeable, therefore, that in this hated name of 
magic, preserving the memory of Zoroaster and his priest 
hood, has descended a flame of freedom which the Aryan 
kindled, three thousand years ago, on the heights of Iran, 
for his struggle against the powers of darkness in the name 
of Ahura, the self-created light. The word acquired a 
nobler meaning with time. The darkness which the me 
diaeval Magus had to master was ignorance, ecclesiasti- 
cism, a theology of arbitrary will and slavish fear. The 
Dualism of the Persian is lost in a strife of powers deeper 
than that which divided Ormuzd from Ahriman, or the 
believer in two hostile principles from the believer in one 
All-creating God. 

A modern writer, 1 using the word in its supernatural 
sense, regards magic as a result of Dualism. If he is right, 
it cannot be that the Dualism from which magic results is 
a belief in two gods instead of one ; but rather some such 
recognition of the power of evil in life and the world as be 
longed to Christian monotheism in common with what is 
commonly supposed to have been Dualism proper, the 
religion of the Avesta. Christianity, in its conception of 
evil, simply put God and Lucifer for Ahura and Ahriman. 
But it did not merely inherit that conception from Persia, 
it seized and developed it. The implication of Ahriman 
in creation was more than equalled by the master-stroke 
of Satan in effecting the full surrender of mankind through 
Adam s fall to a metaphysical hatred of good far beyond 
the simple ethical conceptions of the Avesta. This mono 
theistic Dualism extended the sovereignty of evil into eter 
nal relations, making hell a positive permanent fact, which 
the Avesta did not do. The New Testament really gives 
more scope to the Prince of Darkness than the Bundehesh. 

1 Rydberg : Magic of 1\ fiddle Ages. 



MANICH^ISM. 489 

The Church of One God was more dualistic than the 
doctrine of Two Principles. It believed in the existence 
of the " father of lies and the founder of oracles " as ab 
solutely as in that of the Father of Jesus. Early Chris 
tianity regarded the whole heathen world as diabolic. 
Catholics added all heretics to the category, and the fe 
male sex in special, burning millions at the stake for sor 
cery. The Reformers added all past Catholicism to the 
list ; and Luther, who had the sharpest eyes for devils of 
any man in his day, held the Church, as an institution, to 
have been an invention of Satan. So that a monotheistic 
religion has actually made the whole history of man a 
diabolic drama, 1 which the Incarnation alone illumines 
with its Divine interference. Scarcely a voice was raised 
in orthodox Christendom for centuries against those horri 
ble practical deductions from the dogma of depravity and 
the power of Satan over Nature and man which were bath 
ing all Europe in innocent blood. It cannot be pretended 
that Dualism proper, according to the common meaning 
of that term, is more guilty than monotheism of the bar 
barous forms of belief in magic as the instrument of evil. 
Nothing could more clearly show that man s treatment of 
the problem of moral evil is independent of the lines which 
separate positive religions, than to compare the supersti 
tious precepts and customs prevailing in mediaeval Chris 
tianity on this subject, the omens and precautions and 
anathemas relating to witchcraft and sorcery, with those 
of a similar nature in the Avesta. It would be found that 
the former list largely outnumbers the latter, and reaches 
through the details of life with at least equal thorough 
ness. 2 The popular notion that heathenism is responsible 
for Christian magic is therefore an error. 

The Christian sense of the power of evil, like the Chris 
tian doctrine of eternal punishment, was in fact the recoil 

1 Rydberg: Magic of Middle Ages, p. 198. 2 Ibid., 210, 211. 



49O PHILOSOPHIES. 

of man s conscience from nature in himself and the world, 
which in Christianity took the form of self-contempt and 
self-rejection, which turned the back upon the whole past 
of human progress, and laid the whole burden of human 
misery on the constitution of Nature and the soul ; whose 
great interpreter for ages has been that strange compend 
of the savage and the saint, that child of African passion 
and Roman legalism, Augustine. 

The historical development of Dualism under the mono 
theistic system of Christianity deserves closer treatment. 
Under this system, evil is either directly the result of God s 
will, that is, He is alike the creator of good and evil; or 
else indirectly, that is, through the free will which he has 
bestowed on man, with full knowledge of the consequences 
of the gift. The former of these solutions was derived 
from Judaism, which had imbibed from Mazdeism in the 
Captivity the distinct personality of an adversary, Satan, 
as the inciter to wickedness, appearing for the first time in 
the post-exilian Book of Chronicles. 1 The growth of Jew 
ish demonology was extremely rapid ; and its fallen angels, 
its swarming devils, its hierarchy of evil powers, pervading 
the worship of Jahveh, went over bodily into Christianity, 
which was really but a reform in the bosom of Judaism, 
working over its higher and lower elements in the in 
terest of individuality and ethical purity. It ascribed to 
Satan, the roaring lion, the father of lies, all diseases of 
mind and body, all heathen dogmas, rites, and conduct. 
If, as many modern Christians suppose, Jesus did not 
believe in such a personal enemy to God and good, why 
the repeated allusion to him, in the Temptation, and in the 
expulsion of demons, while Jesus is nowhere presented as 
rebuking the almost universal belief of his countrymen in 
such a power? What idea Jesus had of his origin or of 
the extent of his power nowhere appears, except that he 

1 i Chronicles, xxi. Compare 2 Kings, xxiv. 



MANICH/EISM. 491 

believed him subject to the power of God, and through 
God to his own. But Paul distinctly adheres to the old 
Jewish idea that Jahveh is the creator of evil in man, as 
the potter moulds his clay. 1 The Christian Fathers had 
the harder task of reconciling their Christian monotheism 
with the existence of this inconvertible evil Will, whose 
power over man was due to a corresponding tendency in 
the will of man. In Satan and in man evil was traceable, 
not to the will of God, but to disobedience and revolt in 
their own wills; as, however, they were created and endowed 
by the omniscience of God, evil was indirectly his work. 
Lactantius in the fourth century, in fact, speaks of God as 
creating two spirits, one that should hold to good, and 
one that should fall and become evil ; 2 showing that Chris 
tian monotheism moved in the same track with Persian 
Dualism. And this was the primitive doctrine which went 
on demonizing the creed and conduct of the Middle Ages, 
overturning all reason by the internecine conflict of God 
and the Devil. Hermogenes, a Christian Father in the 
second century, who anticipated Mani, making matter 
eternal and the source of evil, Justin Martyr, Clement of 
Alexandria, and Origen, who did the same, still threw evil 
back on God, as creator of matter from eternity. 

Out of that primitive doctrine which connected evil in 
directly with God as conscious creator of the will and its 
results, came the Christian article of original sin and its 
expiation. The attempt to escape the revolting conse 
quences of this belief, the monstrosity of ascribing sin 
deserving infinite wrath to the purest as well as to the 
worst of mankind, led to Origen s kindly semi-Platonic 
theory of antenatal sin, a weak shifting back of the 
tragedy of Adam s fall, without accounting for it. But 
the old logical necessity of throwing the whole responsi- 

1 Romans, ix. 17. 

2 Iiistitutiones Divince, ii. 8. Hauteville : Morale el VEglise, p. 22. 



492 PHILOSOPHIES. 

bility for evil on Him who made man free to choose it, 
was not to be escaped in this way. Equally vain was the 
theory that Adam and Eve were created pure ; for how 
could that be, if they had received a capacity for sin which 
made them able to involve all their posterity in total de 
pravity and eternal wrath, and to curse the world with 
physical death and moral impotence, so that the incarna 
tion of God, the atonement, and redemption through 
Christ became necessary? How could the very first act 
of pure beings involve such immeasurable crime and con 
sequence as Augustine saw in that earliest exercise of free 
will? No such prodigy was wrought out of the first dis 
obedience, in the Bundehesh ; none out of the fall of 
Yima, in the Avesta. This was the terrible triumph of 
Evil in a more intensely monotheistic faith. 

This monstrous deduction was slowly evolved. Neither 
the Gospels nor Paul reached it. 1 The older Fathers gen 
erally admit the counteracting power of free-will to save, 
as it had wounded, man, some, like Mani, laying sin 
at the door of eternal matter as " the flesh." It was in 
the fifth century that the consequences of the theory 
burst into full flower in Augustine, whose protest against 
Pelagius argued logically that the denial of an utter per 
version and ruin of the will through Adam s sin struck at 
the foundations of the Christian system by taking away 
the necessity for atonement and salvation by Christ. 
Nothing could serve the purpose but the conjunction of 
absolute impotence of man for good, and eternal wrath 
against him for doing evil, as results of the free-will which 
God himself had given him. What premise of human 
thought has ever brought such monstrous results from 
the act of an omnipotent Will, bestowing on its children 
the power of free choice involved in its own being? 

Yet this is the natural result of the theory which traces 

1 Romans, v. 12, is mistranslated. Hauteville, p. 33. 



MANICKLEISM. 



493 



evil to a personal will. Such a theory cannot solve the 
problem. Epicurus stated the case fairly when he said : 

" Either God wishes to abolish evil and cannot, and then He is not 

omnipotent ; 
Or He cannot and does not wish to, and then He is both imperfect 

and wicked ; 

Or He can and does not wish to, and then He is wicked ; 
Or He both wishes to and can, and if so, How comes evil to exist 

at all ? 

That which is worshipped as infinite in its perfection 
must also be infinite in its perversion ; and the tracing of 
evil to so pervertible a thing as will in God or man must 
issue in some such exaggerated conclusion as the orthodox 
dogma above stated. In the same way, man s free-will 
being made responsible for evil, the issue will be an abso 
lute denial of all human responsibility whatever. And 
this step is taken in the Augustinian doctrine of divine 
" Decrees from all Eternity." It comes to this, and this 
only : at the beginning, as at the end, God alone is respon 
sible for sin. One infinite personal Will in the universe 
excludes all other responsibility for the results. 

It would have been better to remember Bion s saying, 
" that God s punishing the children for the sin of their 
fathers is like a physician giving medicine to the son or 
grandson of his patient." l It were wiser, surely, not to 
exalt a personal Will to the throne of the universe, if the 
conditions are that it shall behave irrationally in propa 
gating its own freedom. 

Men have reached a solution of evil which is not com 
plicated by theological difficulties like these, by confining 
themselves to the facts of human consciousness; a solu 
tion which rests on natural and necessary relations, the only 
real rest for the spirit of man, not on the contingencies 
of will. The Stoic Chrysippus said, that in the nature of 

1 Plutarch : De Sera Nuntinis Vindicta, xix. 



494 PHILOSOPHIES. 

things evil is necessary to good ; that the knowledge of 
good involves the knowledge of its opposite ; and Euripi 
des has the same idea. That evil is good in the making 
is the foundation of the great consolations of the ancient 
teachers, and stands by virtue of that conduct which of itself 
makes good the law. The thinker sees that evil must exist, 
if only as imperfection, as the condition of progress, as 
the correlative of that finiteness which is the ground of all 
individual being. The war against evil, moral and physical, 
is the education of all greatness and all goodness; and 
power is measured by resistance. Evil is the contrast of 
the actual stage on which we stand, with the ideal ; which 
represents a ceaseless advancing power in man to be 
come at one with the universe and its divine order. Only 
this abiding hope of the ideal as the goal can make en 
durance of the steps possible. The dark side of Nature 
and life cannot be justified as we justify the works or ways 
of personal will. No conscious moral foresight or choice 
can be rationally conceived as devising or intending the 
wrong and suffering which have befallen the innumerable 
millions of mankind. No anthropomorphic deity can stand 
under the burden of such responsibility. The Platonic 
Demiurge, commissioned to organize and shape the neces 
sities of crude substance into a perfect cosmos of souls and 
bodies, working it all out teleologically, a pure system of 
final causes, is a confessed failure, and Plato does- not 
allow his responsibility for the evil of the world. The 
whole theology of a fore-and-after-looking, predetermin 
ing God, a time-conditioned demiurgic will, breaks down 
before the problem of evil which attends every step of 
human and even cosmic growth. The Life of the Uni 
verse, the unity of substance, to which alone belongs the 
highest Name, is wholly incommensurate with the neces 
sary moulds of finite consciousness, the limited phenome 
nal relations of time and space. Whatever mythological 



MANICH^ISM. 495 

forms of speech may be unavoidable in religion, the per 
plexities which beset this fact of evil, especially in its moral 
aspect, will only be multiplied with the advance of knowl 
edge, so long as we attempt to explain it by a divine power 
acting by intention, motive, purpose, after the manner of 
men. No wiser are we, with all our religious systems, than 
that oldest of true philosophers, Xenophanes, who taught 
the Greeks that truth lay beyond their mythic tales of the 
gods, and sought to hint what none can yet express : " God 
is not like to mortals, in body or mind, since with the 
whole of him he sees, with the whole of him he thinks, 
with the whole of him he hears, forever abiding the same." 
Till we can comprehend essential Being, eternal Substance, 
let us not impose upon it the conditions of human will. 
The highest philosophy is to know the laws of our being 
in themselves ; the highest religion is to trust them as the 
best, because they are our nature; the highest morality is 
to work loyally upon the facts of life, transforming them 
into the liberty and humanity of the ideal ; and where we 
cannot do this, to accept our limits without losing our 
faith and hope in the best. There is great help towards 
this achievement in recognizing those limits in ourselves 
which we refrain from ascribing to God as the substance 
of the whole. As seeing growth but in fragments; as 
knowing the world not as it is in itself, but under the con 
ditions of our actual stage of progress ; as making the world 
what it is to us, by ever transforming it anew into the like 
ness of ourselves, we may well apply to evil the deeper 
insight of the optimist, which perceives it to be illusion ; 
not in so far as our duty or our emotions are concerned, 
but in so far as it seems to contradict the promise of the 
ideal, by covering past, present, and future alike in un 
changeable gloom. We have seen that this was the endur 
ing truth in the old Hindu conception of Maya and in the 
Buddhist doctrine of life. Some of the Christian Fathers 



496 PHILOSOPHIES. 

(even Augustine), in the same spirit, spoke of evil as un 
reality, as something imagined by man through his ignor 
ance and immaturity, and passing away in proportion as 
he comes nearer to seeing things as a whole. Combining 
this, as they did, with a theological anthropomorphism 
which as Christians they could not escape, they betrayed 
at least a desire to save the will of God from responsi 
bility for evil ; which they could only do by denying its 
reality. 

To believe in the unreality of evil seems to require a 
certain mystic elevation of faith ; but it is not, as we have 
seen, without foundation in the facts of experience and the 
laws of growth. This is indubitable. Our conception of 
evil changes with our changing mood, our growing insight, 
our mastery of the laws of life. It changes as we look 
back on the things that looked so rigid in ugliness, and 
see what it has brought about, what necessitated it, what 
compensated it. The charitable judgment that grows with 
our experience is found to be not charity so much as truer 
justice; the sympathies, taught by science to enter more 
objectively into the pain of past conditions of the world 
or the race, learn the law that ills are relative ; that, sub 
stantially, the strength is according to the day. How the 
old severities of judgment, the old sense of curse and 
blight, melt away with the better knowledge, the freer 
study of the world, into trust 

" that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill, 
To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
Defects of doubt and taints of blood ; 



" That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 
That not one life shall be destroyed, 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
When God hath made the pile complete." 



MANICKLEISM. 497 

Science helps to change the old rigid conception of 
positive evil by proving the law of antagonism to be a 
necessity of existence and growth. So that evil, seen in 
its broader relations, becomes a part of that polarity which 
runs through all life, organic or inorganic, and results in 
structure, progress, beauty, order, good. Science is uni 
tary; yet here is Dualism as its central law. And while 
the conception of evil is thus removed from the region 
of theological intention into that of constructive law, the 
moral sense is made all the freer to repudiate evil choice 
by escaping the influence of a creed which gives to moral 
and physical evil alike the sanction of a deliberate purpose 
of Divine Will. For the necessity of evil in some form 
to all progress does not make it attractive, though it may 
render the moral judgments of good men more charitable 
to the evil-doer. But the recognition that moral evil in 
itself is the ever-existing opposite pole to good, and that 
progress consists in constant strife to overcome it by the 
force of good, is the very pith of principle, the ground of 
moral conviction and practical consecration to duty. 

It is true that the elements of this polarity, the strife for 
survival, the struggle for existence, the sacrifice of the in 
nocent for the guilty, the impermanence of ties, may be 
interpreted in the interest of pessimism. And especially 
does science tend that way when it is concerned only with 
the understanding of phenomena, and exalts the senses as 
sole origin of knowledge, under the name of experience, 
ignoring the ideal and even the personal factor, without 
which it cannot really take a step in the discovery of uni 
versal order. So limited is the understanding, so essential 
is ideal insight and faith, that science is demoralized by 
such conditions, and becomes a sterner tyrant than the 
ology has ever been, holding man fast to the lower aspects, 
the discouraging concrete details, the power of outward 
circumstances over man s hope and faith. There arises, 

32 



498 PHILOSOPHIES. 

even on these new fields of physical science, an incon 
sistency not unlike that of those early Christian sects, both 
orthodox and heretical, who declared matter impure and 
evil, while raising it to a rank in the universe which con 
ditioned and largely determined the activity of God. But 
the true function of science is altogether different. It 
substitutes universal law for supernatural interference and 
caprice. It fearlessly explores the real conditions of life, 
the facts of human destiny, and reconciles man to his re 
lations in the order of the world ; so educating him to 
accept these inevitable conditions of existence, whether 
seemingly good or evil, as the best for him, because they 
lift him into the higher morality of free obedience and the 
serener life of natural trust. 

It has been well said that the old Greek drama aims at 
depicting the destinies of men, and the modern at evolving 
their characters: such is the difference in the treatment 
of ethical and spiritual problems. The only solution of 
evil must be found in the facts of experience themselves. 
The inevitable laws of antagonism, of contradiction, of 
irony, of wrong conditions, and bad uses of pain and loss, 
must be accepted through an absolute trust in the integrity 
of the moral universe, and solved by disinterested labor, 
not for personal happiness, not for utilitarian successes, 
but to fulfil the inward prompting to serve the ideal, the 
purest, and the best. 



II. 

GNOSTICISM. 









GNOSTICISM. 

IT was the connection of Manichaeism with the great 
Gnostic schools that rendered it so obnoxious to the 
Christian Church. It was built on the foundations laid by 
that line of heretical teachers of the second century, 
Carpocrates, Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion, Bardesanes, 
who had gathered the spiritual and intellectual idealism 
of the older religions into rationalistic systems, destructive 
of implicit faith. The large scope of Gnosticism, in its 
effort to save the traditions of human reason from being 
swept away by an exclusive revelation, may be se.en in the 
fact that its elements have been traced in such reactions 
against the Old Testament law and faith as the Essenic 
rejection of the Temple service, the Septuagint conver 
sion of Jahveh into a more spiritual God, the Apocryphal 
Book of Wisdom, and the Logos of Philo ; in the Platonic 
Ideas and Emanations ; in the Dualism of Zoroaster and 
Empedocles ; in the Buddhist doctrine of Illusion, of the 
soul s imprisonment in the senses, and its release there 
from ; as well as in its non-Christian conception of a re 
deeming Christ. It has been supposed that Marcion, one 
of the more learned Gnostics, synthesized the three great 
religions in the three principal factors of his system ; find 
ing his God in Christianity, his Demiurge in Judaism, his 
Evil Principle in Heathenism. 1 It is entirely true that 
Gnosticism was the product of an effort to combine the 
best elements of all these religious and philosophical be 
liefs under a single principle, of which the appropriate 

1 Baur: Gnosis, p. 277. 



502 PHILOSOPHIES. 

name was Gnosis, or ideal knowledge. It is not meant by 
this explanation that there was nothing original in the 
thought or method of these men who built with the tradi 
tions of the world ; that their work was a conscious syn 
cretism only. In the mighty ferment of that age the whole 
past was seething, and its elementary forces, loosed from 
special combinations, had entered into the unconscious 
circulations of mind. The new systems that were shaped 
out of these materials were the natural products of the 
time, which called forth its own prophets ; and they must 
clothe in these symbols their sense of its demands. These 
efforts of the speculative intellect to solve the mystery of 
moral and physical evil, and bridge the passage from the 
infinite to the finite, from the perfect to the imperfect, from 
the highest to the lowest, without detriment to the truth of 
either term, were therefore not mere scholastic pedantry. 
The reproductions of the old conceptions and methods, 
which we can now trace in so many systems that preceded 
them, were fresh obedience to the eternal laws of thought. 
They serve to show the sincerity and depth of those earlier 
endeavors, and point us to those elements in them which 
could not die with their makers. The very name by 
which they designated their common aspiration for the 
deeper meaning, the ideal solution of life, gnosis, was 
anticipated ages before