Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/41

Rh For it was not done out of obedience to observance. What is observance? A higher authority, which is obeyed, not because it prescribes what is useful to us, but simply because it prescribes. By what does this feeling we have towards observance differ from the general sentiment of fear? It is the awe inspired by a superior intellect which lays down prescriptions, by an inconceivable, undefined power, by something more than personal--there is superstition in this fear. Originally, the fields of education and hygienics, matrimony, the healing art, agriculture, war, speech and silence, the intercourse of mortals both among themselves and with the gods, formed so many (departments of morality, which demanded that we should obey, irrespective of our individuality. At the outset everything was custom, and lie who wanted to rise above it hail to make him- self a legislator and medicine-man, a kind of semi-god, that is to say, he had to set up customs-a fearful and most hazardous thing to do. Who is the most moral man? On the one hand, he who lost frequently fulfils the law: who, like the Brahmin, carries the conscious-ness of it with him everywhere and into each minute particle of time, being ever ingenious in finding opportunities of fulfilling the law. On the other land, he who fulfils it even in the most trying cases. The most moral man is he who brings the greatest sacrifices to morality. But which are the greatest sacrifices ? According to the answer which may be given to this question,