Chapter III: Progress Under Ancient Religions (2)

The Mazdean system, as we first trace it in history, was the religion of the Medes, a people joined with the Persians proper under Cyrus; and the Magi or priests were one of the seven tribes of the Medes, [214] as the Levites were one of the tribes of Israel. It may then be conjectured that the Magi were the priests of a people who previously conquered or were conquered by the Medes, who had then adopted their religion, as did the Persians after their conquest by or union with the Medes. Cyrus, a semi-Persian, may well have regarded the Medes with some racial distrust, and, while using them as the national priests, would naturally not be devout in his adherence at a time when the two peoples were still mutually jealous. When, later, after the assassination of his son Smerdis (Bardes or Bardija) by the elder son, King Cambyses, and the death of the latter, the Median and Magian interest set up the "false Smerdis," Persian conspirators overthrew the pretender and crowned the Persian Dareios Hystaspis, marking their sense of hostility to the Median and Magian element by a general massacre of Magi. [215] Those Magi who survived would naturally cultivate the more their priestly influence, the political being thus for the time destroyed; though they seem to have stirred up a Median insurrection in the next century against Dareios II. [216] However that may be, Dareios I became a zealous devotee of their creed, [217] doubtless finding that a useful means of conciliating the Medes in general, who at the outset of his reign seem to have given him much trouble. [218] The richest part of his dominions [219] was East-Iran, which appears to have been the original home of the worship of Ahura-Mazda. [220]

Such is the view of the case derivable from Herodotos, who
remains the main authority; but recent critics have raised some
difficulties. That the Magians were originally a non-Median tribe
seems clear; Dr. Tiele (Outlines, pp. 163, 165) even decides that
they were certainly non-Aryan. Compare Ed. Meyer (Gesch. des Alt.,
i, 530, note, 531, §§ 439, 440), who holds that the Mazdean system
was in its nature not national but abstract, and could therefore
take in any race. Several modern writers, however (Canon Rawlinson,
ed. of Herodotos, i, 426-31; Five Great Monarchies, 2nd ed. ii,
345-55, iii, 402-404; Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, Eng. tr. pp. 197,
218-39; Sayce, Anc. Emp. of the East, p. 248), represent the
Magians as not only anti-Aryan (= anti-Persian), but opposed to the
very worship of Ormazd, which is specially associated with their
name. It seems difficult to reconcile this view with the facts; at
least it involves the assumption of two opposed sets of Magi. The
main basis for the theory seems to be the allusion in the Behistun
inscription of Dareios to some acts of temple-destruction by the
usurping Magian Gomates, brother and controller of the pretender
Smerdis. (See the inscription translated in Records of the Past,
i, 111-15.) This Meyer sets aside as an unsettled problem, without
inferring that the Magians were anti-Mazdean (cp. § 449 and §
511, note). As to the massacre, however, Meyer decides (i, 613)
that Herodotos blundered, magnifying the killing of "the Magus"
into a slaughter of "the Magi." But this is one of the few points
at which Herodotos is corroborated by Ktesias (cp. Grote, iii, 440,
note). A clue to a solution may perhaps be found in the facts that,
while the priestly system remained opposed to all image-worship,
Dareios made emblematic images of the Supreme God (Meyer, i,
213, 617) and of Mithra; and that Artaxerxes Mnemon later put an
image of Mithra in the royal temple of Susa, besides erecting many
images to Anaitis. (Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, iii, 320-21,
360-61.) There may have been opposing tendencies; the conquest of
Babylon being likely to have introduced new elements. The Persian
art now arising shows the most marked Assyrian influences.

The religion thus imposed on the Persians seems to have been imageless by reason of the simple defect of art among its cultivators; [221] and to have been monotheistic only in the sense that its chief deity was supreme over all others, including even the great Evil Power, Ahriman (Angra Mainyu). Its God-group included Mithra, once the equal of Ahura-Mazda, [222] and later more prominent than he; [223] as well as a Goddess, Anahita, apparently of Akkadian origin. Before the period of Cyrus, the eastern part of Persia seems to have been but little civilized; [224] and it was probably there that its original lack of images became an essential element in the doctrine of its priests. As we find it in history, and still more in its sacred book, the Zendavesta, which as we have it represents a late liturgical compilation, [225] Mazdeism is a priest-made religion rather than the work of one Zarathustra or any one reformer; and its rejection of images, however originated, is to be counted to the credit of its priests, like the pantheism or nominal monotheism of the Mesopotamian, Brahmanic, and Egyptian religions. The original popular faith had clearly been a normal polytheism. [226] For the rest, the Mazdean ethic has the usual priestly character as regards the virtue it assigns to sacrifice; [227] but otherwise compares favourably with Brahmanism.

As to this cult being priest-made, see Meyer, i, 523, 540,
541. Tiele (Outlines, pp. 167, 178) assumes a special reformation
such as is traditionally associated with Zarathustra, holding
that either a remarkable man or a sect must have established
the monotheistic idea. Meyer (i, 537) holds with M. Darmesteter
that Zarathustra is a purely mythical personage, made out of a
Storm-God. Dr. Menzies (Hist. of Relig. p. 384) holds strongly
by his historic actuality. The problem is analogous to those
concerning Moses and Buddha; but though the historic case of
Mohammed bars a confident decision in the negative, the balance
of presumption is strongly against the traditional view. See the
author's Pagan Christs, pp. 286-88.

There is no reason to believe, however, that among the Persian peoples the higher view of things fared any better than elsewhere. [228] The priesthood, however enlightened it may have been in its inner culture, never slackened the practice of sacrifice and ceremonial; and the worship of subordinate spirits and the propitiation of demons figured as largely in their beliefs as in any other. In time the cult of the Saviour-God Mithra came to the front very much as did that of Jesus later; and in the one case as in the other, despite ethical elements, superstition was furthered. When, still later, the recognition of Ahriman was found to endanger the monotheistic principle, an attempt seems to have been made under the Sassanian dynasty, in our own era, to save it by positing a deity who was father of both Ahura-Mazda and Angra-mainyu; [229] but this last slight effort of freethinking speculation came to nothing. Social and political obstacles determined the fate of Magian as of other ancient rationalism.

According to Rawlinson, Zoroastrianism under the Parthian
(Arsacide) empire was gradually converted into a complex system
of idolatry, involving a worship of ancestors and dead kings
(Sixth Orient. Mon. p. 399; Seventh Mon. pp. 8-9, 56). Gutschmid,
however, following Justin (xli, 3, 5-6), pronounces the Parthians
zealous followers of Zoroastrianism, dutifully obeying it in
the treatment of their dead (Geschichte Irans von Alexander bis
zum Untergang der Arsakiden, 1888, pp. 57-58)--a law not fully
obeyed even by Dareios and his dynasty (Heeren, Asiatic Nations,
Eng. tr. i, 127). Rawlinson, on the contrary, says the Parthians
burned their dead--an abomination to Zoroastrians. Certainly
the name of the Parthian King Mithradates implies acceptance of
Mazdeism. At the same time Rawlinson admits that in Persia itself,
under the Parthian dynasty, Zoroastrianism remained pure (Seventh
Mon. pp. 9-10), and that, even when ultimately it became mixed
up with normal polytheism, the dualistic faith and the supremacy
of Ormazd were maintained (Five Monarchies, 2nd ed. iii, 362-63;
cp. Darmesteter, Zendavesta, i, lxvi, 2nd ed.).

§ 5. EGYPT

The relatively rich store of memorials left by the Egyptian religions yields us hardly any more direct light on the growth of religious rationalism than do those of Mesopotamia, though it supplies much fuller proof that such a growth took place. All that is clear is that the comparison and competition of henotheistic cults there as elsewhere led to a measure of relative skepticism, which took doctrinal shape in a loose monism or pantheism. The language is often monotheistic, but never, in the early period, is polytheism excluded; on the contrary, it is affirmed in the same breath. [230] The alternate ascendancy of different dynasties, with different Gods, forced on the process, which included, as in Babylon, a priestly grouping of deities in families and triads [231]--the latter arrangement, indeed, being only a return to a primitive African conception. [232] It involved further a syncretism or a combining of various Gods into one, [233] and also an esoteric explanation of the God-myths as symbolical of natural processes, or else of mystical ideas. [234] There are even evidences of quasi-atheism in the shape of materialistic hymns on Lucretian lines. [235] At the beginning of the New Kingdom (1500 B.C.) it had been fully established for all the priesthoods that the Sun-God was the one real God, and that it was he who was worshipped in all the others. [236] He in turn was conceived as a pervading spiritual force, of anthropomorphic character and strong moral bias. [237] This seems to have been by way of a purification of one pre-eminent compound deity, Amen-Ra, to begin with, whose model was followed in other cults. [238] "Theocracies of this kind could not have been formed unconsciously. Men knew perfectly well that they were taking a great step in advance of their fathers." [239] There had occurred, in short, among the educated and priestly class a considerable development, going on through many centuries, alike in philosophical and in ethical thought; the ethics of the Egyptian "Book of the Dead" being quite as altruistic as those of any portion of the much later Christian Gospels. [240] Such a development could arise only in long periods of peace and law-abiding life; though it is found to be accelerated after the Persian conquest, which would force upon the Egyptian priesthood new comparisons and accommodations. [241] And yet all this was done "without ever sacrificing the least particle of the beliefs of the past." [242] The popular polytheism, resting on absolute ignorance, was indestructible; and the most philosophic priests seem never to have dreamt of unsettling it, though, as we shall see, a masterful king did.

An eminent Egyptologist has written that, "whatever literary treasures may be brought to light in the future as the result of excavations in Egypt, it is most improbable that we shall ever receive from that country any ancient Egyptian work which can properly be classed among the literature of atheism or freethought; the Egyptian might be more or less religious according to his nature and temperament, but, judging from the writings of his priests and teachers which are now in our hands, the man who was without religion and God in some form or other was most rare, if not unknown." [243] It is not clear what significance the writer attaches to this statement. Unquestionably the mass of the Egyptians were always naïf believers in all that was given them as religion; and among the common people even the minds which, as elsewhere, varied from the norm of credulity would be too much cowed by the universal parade of religion to impugn it; while their ignorance and general crudity of life would preclude coherent critical thought on the subject. But to conclude that among the priesthood and the upper classes there was never any "freethinking" in the sense of disbelief in the popular and official religion, even up to the point of pantheism or atheism, is to ignore the general lesson of culture history elsewhere. Necessarily there was no "literature of atheism or freethought." Such literature could have no public, and, as a menace to the wealth and status of the priesthood, would have brought death on the writer. But in such a multitudinous priesthood there must have been, at some stages, many who realized the mummery of the routine religion, and some who transcended the commonplaces of theistic thought. From the former, if not from the latter, would come esoteric explanations for the benefit of the more intelligent of the laity of the official class, who could read; and it is idle to decide that deeper unbelief was privately "unknown."

It is contended, as against the notion of an esoteric and an exoteric doctrine, that the scribes "did not, as is generally supposed, keep their new ideas carefully concealed, so as to leave to the multitude nothing but coarse superstitions. The contrary is evident from a number of inscriptions which can be read by anybody, and from books which anyone can buy." [244] But the assumption that "anyone" could read or buy books in ancient Egypt is a serious misconception. Even in our own civilization, where "anyone" can presumably buy freethought journals or works on anthropology and the history of religions, the mass of the people are so placed that only by chance does such knowledge reach them; and multitudes are so little cultured that they would pass it by with uncomprehending indifference were it put before them. In ancient Egypt, however, the great mass of the people could not even read; and no man thought of teaching them.

This fact alone goes far to harmonize the ancient Greek testimonies
as to the existence of an esoteric teaching in Egypt with Tiele's
contention to the contrary. See the pros and cons set forth and
confusedly pronounced upon by Professor Chantepie de la Saussaye,
Manual of the Science of Religion, Eng. tr. pp. 400-401. We
know from Diodorus (i, 81), what we could deduce from our other
knowledge of Egyptian conditions, that, apart from the priests
and the official class, no one received any literary culture save
in some degree the higher grades of artificers, who needed some
little knowledge of letters for their work in connection with
monuments, sepulchres, mummy-cases, and so forth. Cp. Maspero,
Hist. anc. des peuples de l'orient, p. 285. Even the images of
the higher Gods were shown to the people only on festival-days
(Meyer Gesch. des Alterthums, i, 82).

The Egyptian civilization was thus, through all its stages, obviously conditioned by its material basis, which in turn ultimately determined its polity, there being no higher contemporary civilization to lead it otherwise. An abundant, cheap, and regular food supply maintained in perpetuity a dense and easily-exploited population, whose lot through thousands of years was toil, ignorance, political subjection, and a primitive mental life. [245] For such a population general ideas had no light and no comfort; for them was the simple human worship of the local natural Gods or the presiding Gods of the kingdom, alike confusedly conceived as great powers, figured often as some animal, which for the primeval mind signified indefinite capacity and unknown possibility of power and knowledge. [246] Myths and not theories, magic and not ethics, were their spiritual food, albeit their peaceful animal lives conformed sufficiently to their code. And the life-conditions of the mass determined the policy of priest and king. The enormous priestly revenue came from the people, and the king's power rested on both orders.

As to this revenue see Diodorus Siculus, i, 73; and Erman, Handbook
of Egyptian Religion, Eng. tr. 1907, p. 71. According to Diodorus,
a third of the whole land of the kingdom was allotted to the
priesthoods. About a sixth of the whole land seems to have been
given to the Gods by Ramessu III alone, besides 113,000 slaves,
490,000 cattle, and immense wealth of other kinds (Flinders
Petrie, Hist. of Egypt, iii (1905), 154-55). The bulk of the
possessions here enumerated seems to have gone to the temple
of Amen at Thebes and that of the Sun-God at Heliopolis (Erman,
as cited). It is to be noted, however, that the priestly order
included all the physicians, lawyers, clerks, schoolmasters,
sculptors, painters, land measurers, drug sellers, conjurers,
diviners, and undertakers. Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians,
ed. Birch, 1878, i, 157-58; Sharpe, Egypt. Mythol. p. 26;
Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. i, § 68. "The sacred domains included
herds of cattle, birds, fishermen, serfs, and temple servants"
(Flinders Petrie, as cited, iii, 42). When the revenues assigned
for a temple of Seti I were found to be misappropriated, and the
building stopped, his son, Ramessu II, assigned a double revenue
for the completion of the work and the worship (id.). Like the
later priesthood of Christendom, that of Egypt forged documents
to establish claims to revenue (id. p. 69). Captured cattle in
great quantities were bestowed on temples of Amen (id. p. 149),
whose priests were especially grasping (id. p. 153). Thus in the
one reign of Ramessu III they received fifty-six towns of Egypt
and nine of Syria and 62,000 serfs (id. p. 155).

This was fully seen when King Akhunaton (otherwise Echnaton, or Icheniton, or Akhunaton, or Akhunaten, or Chuenaten, or Khu-en-aten, or Kku-n-aten, or Khouniatonou, or Khounaton!) = Amen-hetep or Amun-hotep (or Amenophis) IV, moved by monotheistic zeal, departed so far from the customary royal policy as to put under the ban all deities save that he had chosen for himself, repudiating the God-name Amen in his own name, and making one from that of his chosen Sun-God, Aten ("the sun's disk") or Aton or Atonou [247] or Iton [248] (latterly held to be = the Syrian Adon, "the Lord," symbolized by the sun's disk). There is reason to think that his was not a mere Sun-worship, but the cult of a deity, "Lord of the Disk," who looked through the sun's disk as through a window. [249] In any interpretation, however, the doctrine was wholly inacceptable to a priesthood whose multitudinous shrines its success would have emptied. Of all the host of God-names, by one account only that of the old Sun-God Ra-Harmachis was spared, [250] as being held identical with that of Aten; and by one account [251] the disaffection of priests and people rose to the point of open rebellion. At length Akhunaton, "Glory of the Disk," as he elected to name himself, built for himself and his God a new capital city in Middle Egypt, Akhet-Aten (or Khut-Aten), the modern Tell-el-Amarna, where he assembled around him a society after his own heart, and carried on his Aten-worship, while his foreign empire was crumbling. The "Tell-el-Amarna tablets" were found in the ruins of his city, which was deserted a generation after his death. Though the king enforced his will while he lived, his movement "bore no fruit whatever," his policy being reversed after his family had died out, and his own monuments and capital city razed to the ground by orthodox successors. [252] In the same way the earlier attempt of the alien Hyksos to suppress the native polytheism and image-worship had come to nothing. [253]

The history of Akhunaton is established by the later
Egyptology. Sharpe makes no mention of it, though the point had
been discussed from 1839 onwards. Cp. Lepsius, Letters from Egypt,
etc., Bohn trans. 1853, p. 27; and Nott and Gliddon's Types
of Mankind, 1854, p. 147, and Indigenous Races of the Earth,
1857, pp. 116-17, in both of which places will be found the
king's portrait. See last reference for the idle theory that he
had been emasculated, as to which the confutation by Wiedemann
(Aegyptische Geschichte, p. 397, cited by Budge, Hist. of Egypt,
1902, iv, 128) is sufficient. In point of fact, he figures in
the monuments as father of three or seven children (Wiedemann,
Rel. of Anc. Eg. p. 37; Erman, p. 69; Budge, iv, 123, 127).

Dispute still reigns as to the origin of the cult to which
he devoted himself. A theory of its nature and derivation,
based on that of Mr. J. H. Breasted (History of Egypt, 1906,
p. 396), is set forth in an article by Mr. A. E. P. Weigall
on "Religion and Empire in Ancient Egypt" in the Quarterly
Review, Jan. 1909. On this view Aten or Aton is simply Adon =
"the Lord"--a name ultimately identified with Adonis, the Syrian
Sun-God and Vegetation-God. The king's grandfather was apparently
a Syrian, presumably of royal lineage; and Queen Tii or Thiy, the
king's mother, who with her following had wrought a revolution
against the priesthood of Amen, brought him up as a devotee of
her own faith. On her death he became more and more fanatical,
getting out of touch with people and priesthood, so that "his
empire fell to pieces rapidly." Letters still exist (among the
Tell-el-Amarna tablets) which were sent by his generals in Asia,
vainly imploring help. He died at the age of twenty-eight; and
if the body lately found, and supposed to be his, is really so,
his malady was water on the brain.

Mr. Breasted, finding that Akhunaton's God is described by him in
inscriptions as "the father and the mother of all that he made,"
ranks the cult very high in the scale of theism. Mr. Weigall
(art. cited, p. 60; so also Budge, Hist. iv, 125) compares a hymn
of the king's with Ps. civ, 24 sq., and praises it accordingly. The
parallel is certainly close, but the document is not thereby
certificated as philosophic. On the strength of the fact that
Akhunaton "had dreamed that the Aton religion would bind the
nations together," Mr. Weigall credits him with harbouring "an
illusive ideal towards which, thirty-two centuries later, mankind
is still struggling in vain" (p. 66). The ideal of subjugating
the nations to one God, cherished later by Jews, and still later
by Moslems, is hardly to be thus identified with the modern ideal
of international peace. Brugsch, in turn, credits the king with
having "willingly received the teaching about the one God of
Light," while admitting that Aten simply meant the sun's disk
(Hist. of Egypt, 1-vol. ed. p. 216).

Maspero, again, declares Tii to have been an Egyptian of old
stock, and the God "Atonou" to have been the deity of her
tribe (Hist. anc., as cited, p. 249); and he pronounces the
cult probably the most ancient variant of the religions of Ra
(p. 250). Messrs. King and Hall, who also do not accept the theory
of a Syrian derivation, coincide with Messrs. Breasted and Weigall
in extolling Akhunaton's creed. In a somewhat summary fashion
they pronounce (work cited, p. 383) that, "given an ignorance of
the true astronomical character of the sun, we see how eminently
rational a religion" was this. The conception of a moving window
in the heavens, which appears to be the core of it, seems rather
a darkening than a development of the "philosophical speculations
of the priests of the Sun at Heliopolis," from which it is held by
Messrs. King and Hall to have been derived. Similarly ill-warranted
is the decision (id. p. 384) that in Akhunaton's heresy "we see
... the highest attitude [? altitude] to which religious ideas had
attained before the days of the Hebrew prophets." Alike in India
and in Egypt, pantheistic ideas of a larger scope than his or those
of the Hebrew prophets had been attained before Akhunaton's time.

Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge, on the other hand, points out that the cult
of the Aten is really an ancient one in Egypt, and was carried
on by Thothmes III, father of Amen-hetep II, a century before
Akhunaton (Amen-hetep IV), its "original home" being Heliopolis
(History of Egypt, 1902, iv, 48, 119). So also von Bissing,
Gesch. Aeg. in Umriss, p. 52 (reading "Iton"). Rejecting the view
that "Aten" is only a form of "Adon," Dr. Budge pronounces that
"as far as can be seen now the worship of Aten was something
like a glorified materialism"--whatever that may be--"which had
to be expounded by priests who performed ceremonies similar
to those which belonged to the old Heliopolitan sun-worship,
without any connection whatsoever with the worship of Yahweh;
and a being of the character of the Semitic God Adôn had no place
in it anywhere." Further, he considers that it "contained no
doctrines on the unity or oneness of Aten similar to those which
are found in the hymns to Ra, and none of the beautiful ideas
on the future life with which we are familiar from the hymns and
other compositions in the Book of the Dead" (Ib. pp. 120-21).

By Prof. Flinders Petrie Queen Tii or Thiy is surmised to have
been of Armenian origin (see Budge, iv, 96-98, as to her being
"Mesopotamian"); and Prof. Petrie, like Mr. Breasted, has
inferred that she brought with her the cult of which her son
became the devotee. (So also Brugsch, p. 214.) Messrs. King and
Hall recognize that the cult had made some headway before Akhunaton
took it up; but deny that there is any reason for supposing Queen
Tii to have been of foreign origin; adding: "It seems undoubted
that the Aten cult was a development of pure Egyptian religious
thought." Certainty on such an issue seems hardly possible; but
it may be said, as against the theory of a foreign importation,
that there is no evidence whatever of any high theistic cult of
Adonis in Syria at the period in question. Adonis was primarily
a Vegetation-God; and the older view that Aten simply means
"the sun's disk" is hardly disposed of. It is noteworthy that
under Akhunaton's patronage Egyptian sculpture enjoyed a term
of freedom from the paralyzing convention which reigned before
and after (King and Hall, as cited, pp. 383-84). This seems to
have been the result of the innovating taste of the king (Budge,
Hist. iv, 124-26).

As the centuries lapsed the course of popular religion was rather downward than upward, if it can be measured by the multiplication of superstitions. [254] When under the Ramesside dynasty the high-priests of Amen became by marriage with the royal family the virtual rulers, sacerdotalism went from bad to worse. [255] The priests, who held the allegorical key to mythology, seem to have been the main multipliers of magic and fable, mummery, ceremonial, and symbol; and they jealously guarded their specialty against lay competition. [256] Esoteric and exoteric doctrine flourished in their degrees side by side, [257] the instructed few apparently often accepting or acting upon both; and primitive rites all the while flourished on the level of the lowest savagery, [258] though the higher ethical teaching even improves, as in India.

Conflicts, conquests, and changes of dynasties seem to have made little difference in the life of the common people. [259] Religion was the thread by which any ruler could lead them; and after the brief destructive outbreak of Cambyses, [260] himself at first tolerant, the Persian conquerors allowed the old faiths to subsist, caring only, like their predecessors, to prevent strife between the cults which would not tolerate each other. [261] The Ptolemies are found adopting and using the native cults as the native kings had done ages before them; [262] and in the learned Greek-speaking society created by their dynasty at Alexandria there can have been at least as little concrete belief as prevailed in the priesthood of the older civilization. It developed a pantheistic philosophy which ultimately, in the hands of Plotinus, compares very well with that of the Upanishads and of later European systems. But this was a hot-house flower; and in the open world outside, where Roman rule had broken the power of the ancient priesthood and Greek immigration had overlaid the native element, Christianity found an easy entrance, and in a declining society flourished at its lowest level. [263] The ancient ferment, indeed, produced many stirrings of relative freethought in the form of Christian heresies to be noted hereafter; one of the most notable being that of Arius, who, like his antagonist Athanasius, was an Alexandrian. But the cast of mind which elaborated the dogma of the Trinity is as directly an outcome of Egyptian culture-history as that which sought to rationalize the dogma by making the popular deity a created person; [264] and the long and manifold internecine struggles of the sects were the due duplication of the older strifes between the worshippers of the various sacred animals in the several cities. [265] In the end the entire population was but so much clay to take the impress of the Arab conquerors, with their new fanatic monotheism standing for the minimum of rational thought.

For the rest, the higher forms of the ancient religion had been able to hold their own till they were absolutely suppressed, with the philosophic schools, by the Byzantine government, which at the same time marked the end of the ancient civilization by destroying or scattering the vast collection of books in the Serapeion, annihilating at once the last pagan cult and the stored treasure of pagan culture. With that culture too, however, there had been associated to the last the boundless credulity which had so long kept it company. In the second century of our era, under the Antonines, we have Apuleius telling of Isis worshipped as "Nature, parent of things, mistress of all elements, the primordial birth of the ages, highest of divinities, queen of departed spirits, first of the heavenly ones, the single manifestation of all Gods and Goddesses," who rules all things in earth and heaven, and who stands for the sole deity worshipped throughout the world under many names; [266] the while her worshipper cherishes all manner of the wildest superstitions, which even the subtle philosophy of the Alexandrian Neo-Platonic school did not discard. All alike, with the machinery of exorcism, were passed on to the worship of the Christian Queen of Heaven, leaving out only the pantheism; and when that worship in turn was overthrown, the One God of Islam enrolled in his train the same host of ancient hallucinations. [267] The fatality of circumstance was supreme.

§ 6. PHOENICIA

Of the inner workings of thought in the Phoenician religion we know even less, directly, than can be gathered as to any other ancient system of similar notoriety, [268] so completely did the Roman conquest of Carthage, and the Macedonian conquest of Tyre and Sidon, blot out the literary remains of their peoples. Yet there are some indirect clues of a remarkable sort.

It is hardly to be doubted, in the first place, that Punic speculation took the same main lines as the early thought of Egypt and Mesopotamia, whose cultures, mixing in Syria as early as the fifteenth century B.C., had laid the basis of the later Phoenician civilization. [269] The simple fact that among the Syro-Phoenicians was elaborated the alphabet adopted by all the later civilizations of the West almost implies a special measure of intellectual progress. We can indeed trace the normal movement of syncretism in the cults, and the normal tendency to improve their ethics. The theory of an original pure monotheism [270] is no more tenable here than anywhere else; we can see that the general designation of the chief God of any city, usually recognizable as a Sun-God, by a title rather than a name, [271] though it pointed to a general worship of a pre-eminent power, in no sense excluded a belief in minor powers, ranking even as deities. It did not do so in the admittedly polytheistic period; and it cannot therefore be supposed to have done so previously.

The chief Phoenician Gods, it is admitted, were everywhere called
by one or several of the titles Baal (Lord), Ram or Rimmon
(High), Melech or Molech (King), Melkarth (King of the City),
Eliun (Supreme), Adonai (Lord), Bel-Samin (Lord of Heaven),
etc. (Cp. Rawlinson, History of Phoenicia, p. 231; Tiele,
Hist. comp. des anc. relig., etc., Fr. tr. 1882, ch. iii,
pp. 281-87; Outlines, p. 82; Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. i, 246,
and art. "Phoenicia" in Encyc. Biblica, iii, 3742-5; Sayce,
Ancient Empires, p. 200.) The just inference is that the Sun-God
was generally worshipped, the sun being for the Semitic peoples
the pre-eminent Nature-power. "He alone of all the Gods is by
Philo explained not as a deified man, but as the sun, who had
been invoked from the earliest times" (Meyer, last cit.). (All
Gods were not Baals: the division between them and lesser powers
corresponded somewhat, as Tiele notes, to that between Theoi
and Daimones with the Greeks, and Ases and Vanes with the old
Scandinavians. So in Babylonia and India the Bels and Asuras
were marked off from lesser deities.) The fact that the Western
Semites thus carried with them the worship of their chief deities
in all their colonies would seem to make an end of the assumption
(Gomme, Ethnology of Folklore, p. 68; Menzies, History of Religion,
pp. 284, 250) that there is something specially "Aryan" in the
"conception of Gods who could and did accompany the tribes
wheresoever they travelled." Cp. Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. iii, 169.

The worship of the Baal, however, being that of a special
Nature-power, cannot in early any more than in later times have
been monotheistic. What happened was a preponderance of the
double cult of the God and Goddess, Baal and Ashtoreth, as in
the unquestionably polytheistic period (Rawlinson, p. 323; Tiele,
Hist. Comp., as cited, p. 319).

Apart from this normal tendency to identify Gods called by the same title (a state of things which, however, in ancient as in modern Catholic countries, tended at the same time to set up special adoration of a given image), there is seen in the later religion of Phoenicia a spirit of syncretism which operated in a manner the reverse of that seen in later Jewry. In the latter case the national God was ultimately conceived, however fanatically, as universal, all others being negated: in commercial Phoenicia, many foreign Gods were adopted, [272] the tendency being finally to conceive them as all manifestations of one Power. [273] And there is reason to suppose that in the cosmopolitan world of the Phoenician cities the higher intelligence reached a yet more subversive, though still fallacious, theory of religion. The pretended ancient Phoenician cosmogony of Sanchoniathon, preserved by Eusebius, [274] while worthless as a record of the most ancient beliefs, [275] may be taken as representing views current not only in the time and society of Philo of Byblos (100 C.E.), who had pretended to translate it, but in a period considerably earlier. This cosmogony is, as Eusebius complains, deliberately atheistic; and it further systematically explains away all God stories as being originally true of remarkable men.

Where this primitive form of atheistic rationalism originated we cannot now tell. But it was in some form current before the time of the Greek Evêmeros, who systematically developed it about 300 B.C.; for in a monotheistic application it more or less clearly underlies the redaction of much of the Hebrew Bible, where both patriarchal and regal names of the early period are found to be old God-names; and where the Sun-God Samson is made a "judge" [276]--having originally been the Judge-God. In the Byblian writer, however, the purpose is not monotheistic, but atheistic; and the problem is whether this or that was the earlier development of the method. The natural presumption seems to be that the Hebrew adaptors of the old mythology used an already applied method, as the Christian Fathers later used the work of Evêmeros; and the citation from Thallos by Lactantius [277] suggests that the method had been applied in Chaldea, as it was spontaneously applied by the Greek epic poets who made memorable mortals out of the ancient deities Odysseus and Æneas, [278] Helen, Castor and Pollux, Achilles, and many more. [279] It is in any case credible enough that among the much-travelling Phoenicians, with their open pantheon, an atheistic Evêmerism was thought out by the skeptical types before Evêmeros; and that the latter really drew his principles from Phoenicia. [280] At any rate, they were there received, doubtless by a select few, as a means of answering the customary demand for "something in place of" the rejected Gods. Concerning the tradition that an ancient Phoenician, Moschus, had sketched an atomic theory, we may again say that, though there is no valid evidence for the statement, it counts for something as proof that the Phoenicians had an old repute for rationalism.

The Byblian cosmogony may be conceived as an atheistic refinement
on those of Babylon, adopted by the Jews. It connects with
the theogony ascribed to Hesiod (which has Asiatic aspects),
in that both begin with Chaos, and the Gods of Hesiod are born
later. But whereas in Hesiod Chaos brings forth Erebos and
Night (Eros being causal force), and Night bears Æther and Day
to Erebos, while Earth virginally brings forth Heaven (Uranos)
and the Sea, and then bears the first Gods in union with Heaven,
the Phoenician fragment proceeds from black chaos and wind, after
long ages, through Eros or Desire, to a kind of primeval slime,
from which arise first animals without intelligence, who in
turn produce some with intelligence. The effort to expel Deity
must have been considerable, for sun and moon and stars seem
to arise uncreated, and the sun's action spontaneously produces
further developments. The first man and his wife are created by
male and female principles of wind, and their offspring proceed
to worship the Sun, calling him Beel Samin. The other Gods are
explained as eminent mortals deified after their death. See the
details in Cory's Ancient Fragments, Hodges' ed. pp. 1-22. As to
Moschus, cp. Renouvier, Manuel de philos. ancienne, 1844, i, 238;
and Mosheim's ed. of Cudworth's Intellectual System, Harrison's
tr. i, 20; also Cudworth's Eternal and Immutable Morality, same
ed. iii, 548. On the general question of Phoenician rationalism,
compare Pausanias's account (vii, 23) of his discussion with a
Sidonian, who explained that Apollo was simply the sun, and his
son Æsculapius simply the healing art.

At the same time there are signs even in Phoenician worship of an effort after an ethical as well as an intellectual purification of the common religion. To call "the" Phoenician religion "impure and cruel" [281] is to obscure the fact that in all civilizations certain types and cults vary from the norm. In Phoenicia as in Israel there were humane anti-sensualists who either avoided or impugned the sensual and the cruel cults around them; as well as ascetics who stood by human sacrifice while resisting sexual licence. That the better types remained the minority is to be understood in terms of the balance of the social and cultural forces of their civilization, not of any racial bias or defect, intellectual or moral.

The remark of E. Meyer (Gesch. des Alt. i, 211, § 175), that
an ethical or mystical conception of the God was "entirely
alien" to "the Semite," reproduces the old fallacy of definite
race-characters; and Mr. Sayce, in remarking that "the immorality
performed in the name of religion was the invention of the Semitic
race itself" (Anc. Emp. p. 203; contrast Tiele, Outlines, p. 83),
after crediting the Semitic race with an ethical faculty alien to
the Akkadian (above, p. 66), suggests another phase of the same
error. There is nothing special to the Semites in the case save
degree of development, similar phenomena being found in many savage
religions, in Mexico, and in India. (Meyer in later passages and
in his article on Ba'al in Boscher's Lexikon modifies his position
as to Semitic versus other religions.) On the other hand, there
was a chaste as well as an unchaste worship of the Phoenician
Ashtoreth. Ashtoreth Karnaim, or Tanit, the Virgin, as opposed to
Atergates and Annit, the Mother-Goddesses, had the characteristics
of Artemis. Cp. Tiele, Religion comparée, as cited, pp. 318-19;
Menzies, History of Religion, pp. 159, 168-71; Kuenen, Religion of
Israel, i, 91; Smith, Religion of the Semites, pp. 292, 458. [In
Rome, Venus Cloacina, sometimes ignorantly described as a Goddess
of Vice, was anciently "the Goddess of chaste and holy matrimony"
(Ettore Pais, Ancient Legends of Roman History, Eng. tr. 1906,
p. 199)]. For the rest, the cruelty of the Phoenician cults,
in the matter of human sacrifice, was fully paralleled among
the early Teutons. See Tiele, Outlines, p. 199; and the author's
Pagan Christs, Pt. ii, ch. i, § 4.

§ 7. ANCIENT CHINA

Of all the ancient Asiatic systems that of China yields us the first clear biographical trace of a practical rationalist, albeit a rationalist stamped somewhat by Chinese conservatism. Confucius (Kung-fu-tse = Kung the Master) is a tangible person, despite some mythic accretions, whereas Zarathustra and Buddha are at best but doubtful possibilities, and even Lao-Tsze (said to have been born 604 B.C.) is somewhat elusive.

Before Confucius (551-478 B.C.), it is evident, there had been a slackening in religious belief among the governing classes. It is claimed for the Chinese, as for so many other races, that they had anciently a "pure" monotheism; [282] but the ascription, as usual, is misleading. They saw in the expanse of heaven the "Supreme" Power, not as a result of reflection on the claims of other deities among other races, but simply as expressing their primordial tribal recognition of that special God, before contact with the God-ideas of other peoples. Monotheistic in the modern sense they could not be. Concerning them as concerning the Semites we may say that the claim of a primary monotheism for them "is also true of all primitive totemistic or clannish communities. A man is born into a community with such a divine head, and the worship of that God is the only one possible to him." [283] Beside the belief in the Heaven-God, there stood beliefs in heavenly and earthly spirits, and in ancestors, who were worshipped with altars. [284]

The remark of Professor Legge (Religions of China, p. 11), that
the relation of the names Shang-Ti = Supreme Ruler, and T'ien =
the sky, "has kept the monotheistic element prominent in the
religion proper of China down to the present time," may serve
to avert disputation. It may be agreed that the Chinese were
anciently "monotheists" in the way in which they are at present,
when they worship spirits innumerable. When, however, Professor
Legge further says (p. 16) that the ancient monotheism five
thousand years ago was "in danger of being corrupted" by nature
worship and divination, he puts in doubt the meaning of the other
expression above cited. He states several times (pp. 46, 51, 52)
that the old monotheism remains; but speaks (p. 84) of the mass of
the people as "cut off from the worship of God for themselves." And
see p. 91 as to ancestor-worship by the Emperor. Tiele (Outlines,
p. 27) in comparison somewhat overstresses the polytheistic aspect
of the Chinese religion in his opening definition; but he adds the
essential facts. Dr. Legge's remark that "the idea of revelation
did not shock" the ancient Chinese (p. 13) is obscure. He is
dealing with the ordinary Akkado-Babylonian astrology. Pauthier,
on the contrary (Chine Moderne, 1853, p. 250), asserts that in
China "no doctrine has ever been put forth as revealed."

As regards ancestral worship, we have record of a display of disregard for it by the lords of Lû in Confucius's time; [285] and the general attitude of Confucius himself, religious only in his adherence to old ceremonies, is incompatible with a devout environment. It has been disputed whether he makes a "skeptic denial of any relation between man and a living God"; [286] but an authority who disputes this complains that his "avoiding the personal name of Tî, or God, and only using the more indefinite term Heaven," suggests "a coldness of temperament and intellect in the matter of religion." [287] He was, indeed, above all things a moralist; and concerning the spirits in general he taught that "To give one's self to the duties due to men, and, while respecting spiritual beings, to keep aloof from them, may be called wisdom." [288] He would never express an opinion concerning the fate of souls, [289] or encourage prayer; [290] and in his redaction of the old records he seems deliberately to have eliminated mythological expressions. [291] "I would say," writes Dr. Legge (who never forgets to be a missionary), "that he was unreligious rather than irreligious; yet, by the coldness of his temperament and intellect in this matter, his influence is unfavourable to the development of true religious feeling among the Chinese people generally, and he prepared the way for the speculations of the literati of medieval and modern times, which have exposed them to the charge of atheism." [292]

The view that there was a very early "arrest of growth" in
the Chinese religion (Menzies, History of Religion, p. 108),
"before the ordinary developments of mythology and doctrine,
priesthood," etc., had "time to take place," is untenable as to
the mythology. The same writer had previously spoken (p. 107) of
the Chinese system before Confucius as having "already parted with
all savage and irrational elements." That Confucius would seek
to eliminate these seems likely enough, though the documentary
fact is disputed.

In the elder contemporary of Confucius, Lao-Tsze ("Old Philosopher"), the founder of Taouism, may be recognized another and more remarkable early freethinker of a different stamp, in some essential respects much less conservative, and in intellectual cast markedly more original. Where Confucius was an admirer and student of antiquity, Lao-Tsze expressly put such concern aside, [293] seeking a law of life within himself, in a manner suggestive of much Indian and other Oriental thought. So far as our records go, he is the first known philosopher who denied that men could form an idea of deity, that being the infinite; and he avowedly evolved, by way of makeshift, the idea of a primordial and governing Reason (Tau), closely analogous to the Logos of later Platonism. Since the same idea is traceable in more primitive forms alike in the Babylonian and Brahmanic systems, [294] it is arguable that he may have derived it from one of these sources; but the problem is very obscure. In any case, his system is one of rationalistic pantheism. [295]

His personal relation to Confucius was that of a self-poised sage, impatient of the other's formalism and regard to prescription and precedent. Where they compare is in their avoidance of supernaturalism, and in the sometimes singular rationality of their views of social science; in which latter respect, however, they were the recipients and transmitters of an already classic tradition. [296] Thus both had a strong bias to conservatism; and in Lao-Tsze it went the length of prescribing that the people should not be instructed. [297] Despite this, it is not going too far to say that no ancient people appears to have produced sane thinkers and scientific moralists earlier than the Chinese. The Golden Rule, repeatedly formulated by Confucius, seems to be but a condensation on his part of doctrine he found in the older classics; [298] and as against Lao-Tsze he is seen maintaining the practical form of the principle of reciprocity. The older man, like some later teachers, preached the rule of returning kindness for evil, [299] without leaving any biographical trace of such practice on his own part. Confucius, dealing with human nature as it actually is, argued that evil should be met by justice, and kindness with kindness, else the evil were as much fostered as the good. [300]

It is to be regretted that Christian writers should keep up the
form of condemning Confucius (so Legge, Religions of China,
p. 144; Life and Teachings of Confucius, 4th ed. p. 111 sq.;
Douglas, p. 144) for a teaching the practice of which is normally
possible, and is never transcended in their own Church, where the
profession of returning good for evil merely constitutes one of
the great hypocrisies of civilization. Dr. Legge does not scruple
to resort to a bad sophism in this connection. "If," he says,
"we only do good to them that do good to us, what reward have
we?" He thus insinuates that Confucius vetoed any spontaneous act
of benevolence. The question is not of such acts, but of kind acts
to those who seek to injure us. On the other hand, Mr. Chalmers,
who dedicates his translation of Lao-Tsze to Dr. Legge,
actually taunts Lao-Tsze (p. 38) with absurdity in respect of
his doctrine. Such is the sincerity of orthodox polemic. How
little effect the self-abnegating teaching of Lao-Tsze, in turn,
has had on his followers may be gathered from their very legends
concerning him (Douglas, p. 182). There is a fallacy, further,
in the Christian claim that Confucius (Analects, v, 11; xv, 23)
put the Golden Rule in a lower form than that of the Gospels, in
that he gave it the negative form, "Do not that which ye would not
have done unto you." This is really the rational and valid form of
the Rule. The positive form, unless construed in the restrictive
sense, would merely prescribe a non-moral doing of favours in
the hope of receiving favours in return. It appears, further,
from the passage in the Analects, v, 11, that the doctrine in
this form was familiar before Confucius.

Lao-Tsze, on his part, had reduced religion to a minimum. "There is not a word in the Tâo Têh King [by Lao-Tsze] of the sixth century B.C. that savours either of superstition or religion." [301] But the quietist and mystical philosophy of Lao-Tsze and the practicality of Confucius alike failed to check the growth of superstition among the ever-increasing ignorant Chinese population. Says our Christian authority: "In the works of Lieh-Tsze and Chwang-Tsze, followers of Lao-Tsze, two or three centuries later, we find abundance of grotesque superstition, though we are never sure how far those writers really believed the things they relate." In point of fact, Lieh-Tsze is now commonly held by scholars to be an imaginary personage, whose name is given to a miscellaneous collection of teachings and moral tales, much interpolated and added to long after the date assigned to him--circa 400 B.C. [302] It contains a purely pantheistic statement of the cosmic problem, [303] and among the apologues is one in which a boy of twelve years is made tersely and cogently to rebut the teleological view of things. [304] The writers of such sections are not likely to have held the superstitions set forth in others. But that superstition should supervene upon light where the means of light were dwindling was a matter of course. It was but the old fatality, seen in Brahmanism, in Buddhism, in Egypt, in Islam, and in Christianity.

Confucius himself was soon worshipped. [305] A reaction against him set in after a century or two, doctrines of pessimism on the one hand, and of universal love on the other, finding a hearing; [306] but the influence of the great Confucian teacher Mencius (Meng-Tse) carried his school through the struggle. "In his teaching, the religious element retires still further into the background" [307] than in that of Confucius; and he is memorable for his insistence on the remarkable principle of Confucius, that "the people are born good"; that they are the main part of the State; and that it is the ruler's fault if they go astray. [308] Some rulers seem to have fully risen to this view of things, for we have an account of a rationalistic duke, who lived earlier than 250 B.C., refusing to permit the sacrifice of a man as a scapegoat on his behalf; and in the year 166 B.C. such sacrifices were permanently abolished by the Han Emperor Wen. [309] But Mencius, who, as a sociologist, excels not only Lao-Tsze but Confucius, put his finger on the central force in Chinese history when he taught that "it is only men of education who, without a certain livelihood, are able to maintain a fixed heart. As to the people, if they have not a certain livelihood, it follows that they will not have a fixed heart." [310] So clearly was the truth seen in China over two thousand years ago. But whether under feudalism or under imperialism, under anarchy or under peace--and the teachings of Lao-Tsze and Mencius combined to discredit militarism [311]--the Chinese mass always pullulated on cheap food, at a low standard of comfort, and in a state of utter ignorance. Hence the cult of Confucius was maintained among them only by recognizing their normal superstition; but on that basis it has remained secure, despite competition, and even a term of early persecution. One iconoclastic emperor, the founder of the Ch'in or Ts'in dynasty (221 or 212 B.C.), sought to extirpate Confucianism as a means to a revolution in the government; but the effort came to nothing. [312]