Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/695

Rh naturally bloodthirsty people, religion, which in other minds has led to the extreme of charity and self-sacrifice, might be combined with the worst exhibitions of cruelty.

This same overpowering sense of reverence, directed toward their earthly rulers, became an excessive servility, which made the Aryans incapable of freedom. On this important point the exact expressions of the historian deserve to be cited. "The feeling of the Persian toward his king," he tells us, "is one of which moderns can with difficulty form a conception. In Persia the monarch was so much the state that patriotism itself was, as it were, swallowed up in loyalty; and an absolute, unquestioning submission, not only to the deliberate will but to the merest caprice of the sovereign, was, by habit and education, so ingrained into the nature of the people that a contrary spirit scarcely ever manifested itself. In war the safety of the sovereign was the first thought and the principal care of all. . . . Uncomplaining acquiescence in all the decisions of the monarch—cheerful submission to his will, whatever it might chance to be—characterized the conduct of the Persians in time of peace. . . . The father, whose innocent son was shot before his eyes by the king in pure wantonness, instead of raising an indignant protest against the crime, felicitated him on the excellence of his archery. Unfortunates, bastinadoed by the royal order, declared themselves delighted because his majesty had condescended to recollect them. A tone of sycophancy and servility was thus engendered, which, sapping self-respect, tended fatally to lower and corrupt the entire character of the people."

He who is servile to his rulers is usually tyrannical toward his inferiors. We learn from the Greek historians what the government of the Persian monarch and his satraps was in their day, and modern travelers find that the lapse of twenty-five centuries has made no change in this respect, and little in any other. So far as history gives us information, no self-governing community has ever been found among any purely Aryan people.

One fine trait, however, which the ancient authors ascribe to the Persians should be recorded to their honor—their truthfulness. According to Herodotus, every young Persian was taught by his preceptors three main things—"to ride, to draw the bow, and to speak the truth. . . . In the Zend-Avesta, and more especially in its earliest and purest portions," continues Prof. Rawlinson, "truth is strenuously inculcated. Ahura-Mazda himself is 'true,' 'the father of all truth,' and his worshipers are bound to conform themselves to his image." This quality of truthfulness is not commonly deemed to be consistent with servility; but we must remember that the servility of the Aryans was the fruit, not of the timidity of conquered serfs, but of the reverence of