The Human Origin of Morals/Chapter VI

It is difficult to see how any man or woman, knowing even the few facts which it is possible to give here, can doubt the modern theory of moral evolution. We are not taking a few bones of prehistoric man and guessing how he lived. It is there, all over the earth, today. Religion and morals, and the combination of the two or ethical religion, are actually in the human workshop, being made. We more advanced workers have finished the job and are watching the apprentices.

Yes, you may say (with a sigh), it was a natural evolution: unguided, wasteful, replete with the folly of childhood, dark with the awful impulses of the real savage. We do not understand that. But the time came. Revelation of a holier law broke gradually upon this turbid world. God made himself known to one or two peoples—why to one or two, or so late, we don't know—and bade them purify the conscience of the world. Stumbling man was taken by the hand and led—at last.

Well, it takes several volumes of this series to show that this is as false as your idea that God created man and watched over him. Five or six volumes show you, from the facts, that nothing new or original appeared in Judea, Monotheism was already known. An ethic higher than that of the Hebrew prophets already existed. You do not know the truth about the ancient world.

You do not realize the truth about Judea. Even while I am writing this, in the heart of London, the papers tell that an English clergyman is in terrible difficulties with his flock, because he declines to read certain Psalms in church. You can guess which Psalms—those about dashing the heads of little children on the stones, and so on; and these Psalms were written quite late in the history of Judea! And the English congregation rises in wrath, and says that, in the year 1926, these things shall be regarded as the Word of God!

Other volumes of this series study Christianity in every conceivable respect; every great phase of its history, every aspect of its doctrines and ethic, every claim of beneficent influence. Nothing is omitted. But it is necessary here to show, as I show in The Origin of Religion (Little Blue Book No. 1008), that nothing miraculous or new or puzzling happened when Christ appeared. The stream of natural moral evolution just flowed on.

I do not say "stood still," remember. It was flowing all the time. In the year 1 A.D. it ought to be much further than in the year 1000 B.C. There would be no great miracle if the world were more enlightened in 500 A.D. than in 500 B.C. It was a thousand years older, and three great civilizations had meantime added to man's heritage. (As a matter of fact, the world was not more enlightened in 500 A.D. than in 500 B.C.)

The only point here is to complete my story by inquiring if the new religion fits naturally into it. And instead of making a number of general statements for which the evidence cannot appear here, let us take two or three of what are commonly said to be the greatest moral innovations of Christ and Christianity.

The first is, of course, the Golden Rule. Let us take it humanly. Nobody is ever going to love his neighbor as he loves himself. It can't be done. The human emotions are not made that way. An ideal ought to be something that can be realized. But we need not worry about this. You are, of course, aware that the Golden Rule of life in this sense—"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself"—is a quotation from the Old Testament. It is not a Christian contribution to the pretty sentiments of moralists. It was centuries old when Christ quoted it.

And as the Old Testament, as we have it, was written only late in the fifth century B.C., its doctrine of brotherly love is more than a century later than that of Buddha. Moreover, Buddha meant universal love. Every man was not the Jew's brother, or his neighbor. I presume you know enough about the ancient Jews to know that. The Jews never even professed to love anybody but Jews; and they hated quite a lot of those. A quarrel between Jews is something to see. But Buddha, as any work on him will tell you, demanded that every man should love his fellows as a mother—these were his words—loves her children.

Let us take the Golden Rule in its proper and more or less practical form: Act toward others as you would have them act toward you. It is a most admirable principle. It puts the Utilitarian theory of morality in a nutshell. It is so obvious a rule of social life that one is not surprised that few ever said it. It is not profound. It is common sense. If you do not want lies told you, don't tell them. If you want just, honorable, kindly, brotherly treatment from Cyrus P. Shorthouse or James F. Longshanks, try to get it by reciprocity.

Rather a good word, is it not, reciprocity? Well the famous and Agnostic Chinese moralist Confucius gave that as the Golden Rule six hundred years before Christ was born, and nearly two hundred years before the Old Testament, as we have it, was written!

You may shake your head, and say that you have heard that Rationalist story before. Confucius, you may say, only taught the Golden Rule in a negative form: Do not unto others what you do not want them to do to you. That statement is found in the whole of Christian literature. Christ went much farther than Confucius.

Well, presuming that you do not read Chinese, and that the translation of the Chinese classics is not available, open that most accessible of books, the Encyclopaedia Britannica at the article "Confucius." It is written by a Christian missionary and fine Chinese scholar, Dr. Legge, and it has been available to every Christian writer for years. Dr. Legge says, quoting the expression Golden Rule: "Several times he [Confucius] gave that rule in express words: What you do not like when done to yourself, do not do to others."

At last a disciple asked him if he could put it in a word. He gave the composite Chinese word "reciprocity." Dr. Legge tells us that it consists of the two characters "as heart": let the impulses of your heart be the same as those you want in your neighbor's. And lest you should still insist that perhaps it was only negative, Dr. Legge goes on: "It has been said [it is said by nearly every other Christian writer] that he only gave the rule in a negative form, but he understood it in its positive and most comprehensive form." No Chinese scholar differs from that; and Professor Westermarck gives other sayings of Confucius to prove it.

Yet, but, you say, there is the counsel to love even one's enemies. Did any moralist in the world ever urge such a refinement of virtue before Christ?

Alas, yes. (Pardon the sigh, but I never love my enemies. I think it would be bad social policy to do so. It rather encourages the mean and unjust.) The Old Testament says: "Thou shalt not hate thy brother." Perhaps that is not conclusive, but it does not matter, as the counsel had been given quite explicitly long before.

The great Chinese sage, Lao-tse, a contemporary of Confucius and nearly as Rationalistic as Confucius, said: "Recompense injury with kindness." That is near enough; and the doctrine seems to have been common in the humanitarian ethic of China. Later, in the fourth century B.C., we find the chief disciple of Confucius, the great moralist Mencius, who seems to have been the first in the world to condemn war, saying: "A benevolent man does not lay up anger' nor cherish resentment against his brother, but only regards him with affection and love."

There in the heart of Agnostic China, three hundred years before the Sermon on the Mount was delivered, you have the complete doctrine of loving your enemies as a commonplace of humanitarian morality.

Buddha in India taught the same doctrine. Love was to be universal, he insisted; and in the Dhammapada we read: "Hatred ceases by love: this is an old rule." It seems, in fact, to have been as common in India centuries before Christ as it was in China. In the "laws of Manu," compiled early in the Christian Era, but consisting of ancient Hindu writings, it is said: "Against an angry man let him not in return show anger: let him bless when he is cursed."

Non-Christian European moralists—Socrates and Plato, Seneca, Pliny, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius—all had the same sentiment. "We ought not to retaliate, or render evil for evil to anyone," said Socrate, quoted approvingly by Plato. Seneca wrote a whole treatise on "Anger"' condemning it in every form. It is therefore not in the least surprising that, when Greek influence began to be felt in Judea, as we see in Ecclesiasticus and Proverbs, the same sentiment is reproduced. "Thou shalt not hate thy brother," was already written in Leviticus; but, as I said before, the Jew's "brother" always meant a Jew. The sentiment, however, was now so common in every school of moralists that the finer Hebrews naturally adopted it, and, through the school of the Rabbi Hillel, it passed on to the Christians.

Here, then, is a sentiment, which thousands of Christian writers have claimed to be entirely original in Christ, actually found to be a commonplace of moralists for hundreds of years before Christ and in the "pagan" world. I trust the Christian reader will see in this a striking illustration of the way in which he is misled; but I will carry the argument just one step farther.

It occurred to no Christian, not even to Christ, that, if this moral sentiment is lofty, it ought pre-eminently to apply to man's conception of God. On what principle must Christ as man love his enemies, and Christ as God devise for them an eternity of fiendish torment? Let your Dr. Rileys answer that. And, since God, the ideal, was held to punish transgressors of his law, human and ecclesiastical society everywhere continued without scruple to do so.

We realize today that this is immoral. We inflict penalties to deter would-be transgressors, not as punishment. Who introduced this idea into the world? Plato and Aristotle. They taught the Greeks that the "punishment" of a criminal was "a moral medicine" and a deterrent. Then came Christianity, and the sentiment was lost. Punishment, as such, was more abominable than ever. At last a group of humanitarians, won the reform. Who were they? Grotius (a liberal Christian or semi-Rationalist, and the least effective), and then Hobbes, Montesquieu, Beecaria, Filangiere, Feuerbach, Schopenhauer, and (above all) Bentham—all Rationalists, most of the Agnostics.

We see this in detail elsewhere; and we also in another book make a full story of the moral sentiments of the Gospels. There is no sentiment put into the mouth of Christ which was not well known amongst the pagan moralists: not even the idea of giving the thief your trousers also (I am not sure of the particular garments) when he has taken your coat. The stream of moral evolution just runs on. The world at that time, from Rome to Alexandria, was full of sentimental moralizers. How their sentiments came to be put forth into the mouth of Christ is a question which. we must answer by an historical study of the times.