History as past ethics; an introduction to the history of morals

by P. V. N. Myers

II. The Ideal

The essence of the moral life

The distinctive character of the Persian moral ideal was determined by the Persian dualistic world philosophy. The essence of the moral life is a struggle against evil. The good man is the strong fighter with Ahura against Ahriman and all his creations. There was no place in the ideal for those ascetic virtues—celibacy, fasting, self-mortification—which conferred sainthood in India.[309]

The married state was regarded as superior to the unmarried: “He who has children,” says the Zend-Avesta, “is far above the childless man.”[310] Fasting was condemned as ungodly, for “no one who does not eat has strength to do heavy work of holiness”;[311] the well-fed man can fight better than the one who lessens his vitality by fasting, can withstand the cold better, “can strive against the wicked tyrant and smite him on the head.”[312] The Zoroastrians regarded Christianity, in the form in which they knew it, with disapproval, because it exalted celibacy and made fasting a virtue.

This moral ideal which made life a strenuous battling for the right was, after the ideal of the Hebrew prophets, the loftiest developed by the ancient world. As we shall see immediately, it tended to make the morality of the ancient Persians “a morality of vigor and manliness.”

Truthfulness the paramount virtue

Among the special virtues making up the moral ideal, the highest place was assigned the virtue of veracity. It is noteworthy how this virtue was, if not created, at least fostered by the Persian conception of the supreme god, Ahura Mazda, whose symbol was the light.[313] As Ahriman was the god of deceit and lies, so was Ahura the god of sincerity and truth. This thought of deity made truthfulness a supreme virtue, for man must in all things take for his model the good spirit on whose side he battles.

Various testimonies bear witness to the high place assigned in the scale of virtues to veracity. There was to be no liar among those persons whom the Persian Noah (Yima) was commanded to bring into the great underground abode, that the earth might be repeopled with a superior race after the deadly cold of the long winter.[314] The punishment provided in the Zend-Avesta for false swearing was terrible. The very first time one knowingly tells a lie unto Mithra (the god adjured in taking an oath), “without waiting until it is done again,” he shall be beaten on earth with twice seven hundred stripes, and below in hell shall receive punishment harder than the pain from the cutting off of limbs, from falling down a precipice, from impalement.[315]

What is especially noteworthy here is that Zoroastrian morals recognize the universality of the law of truthfulness and require that contracts made even with the unfaithful be faithfully kept: “Break not the contract,” says the sacred law; ... “for Mithra stands for both the faithful and the unfaithful.”[316] Even more sacred than the engagements of kinsman with kinsman are the engagements between nations, for while a contract between members of the same group is thirtyfold more binding than one between two strangers, a contract between two nations is a thousandfold more binding.[317] Here is raised a standard of international morality to which modern statesmen and diplomatists have not yet attained.

The duty of industry; the ethics of labor

Industry was another cardinal virtue of the Zoroastrian ideal of character. Labor was enjoined not only as honorable but as a sacred duty. Wedgwood endeavors to show how this virtue was the outgrowth of the Persian conception of the origin of the universe. In Indian thought the world is not a creation, the work of a divine Creator; it is an emanation from an impersonal, unconscious, primal principle. But in the Persian world-view the universe is conceived as the work of a deity who labors to give it form and shape. This conception of God as a worker reacted powerfully upon the ideal of human excellence. Man must imitate this divine virtue of labor. He must become a co-worker with the good Ahura Mazda. Thus was labor idealized, and all work, even the most lowly, made a sacred thing.[318]

There is in this view doubtless an element of truth, but it is probable that this duty of industry and thrift upon which such emphasis is laid in the Zend-Avesta was in the beginning taught and enforced by the limited area of fruitful soil and the necessity of careful irrigation and tillage, and that only later the virtue thus engendered received the sanction and support of religion. We may infer this from the fact that agriculture was the most sacred of occupations. “He who sows corn,” says the Zend-Avesta, “sows righteousness.”[319] To sow corn, grass, and fruit; to water dry ground and to drain ground that is too wet—this is the duty of man.[320]

Animal ethics

The Zoroastrian code, like the Laws of Manu, gives a large place to man’s duties toward the lower animal creation. But the animal ethics of the Iranian lawgiver are much more reasonable than those of the Hindu legislator. The Buddhist, as we have seen, is enjoined to spare every living thing; there is no distinction made between useful animals and dangerous beasts and noxious reptiles. To such an extreme is this regard for all life carried that agriculture, though a permissible because a necessary occupation, still is looked upon with disfavor for the reason that the plow injures the beings living in the earth.[321]

On the other hand, the Zoroastrian code distinguishes between beneficent and baneful creatures, declares the first to have been created by the good Ahura and the latter by the evil Ahriman, and makes it the duty of the good man to protect and treat kindly all useful animals, and to destroy all baneful creatures, including noxious plants, such as weeds and brambles. Hence tilling the soil is praised as an especially holy occupation, since the plow destroys the thistles and weeds sown by the evil-disposed Ahriman.

Duty of protecting the purity of the elements

Another important department of Persian ethics was based on the idea of the holiness of the elements—fire, earth, and water. Any defilement of these was a sin, in some cases an unpardonable sin. For instance, burying the corpse of a man or of an animal in the earth, and not disinterring it within two years—“for that deed there is nothing that can pay; ... it is a trespass for which there is no atonement for ever and ever.”[322] Equally stringent were the prohibitions against the pollution of the holy elements fire and water, through casting into them any unclean matter.[323]

We shall perhaps best understand the moral value of such duties as we have to do with in this division of Persian ethics, if we compare them with those duties of the Christian code—Sabbath observances—which are based on the idea of the holiness of a certain portion of time. The ethical feelings evoked in the one case are akin to those evoked in the other.

The judgment of the dead; the soul the judge of the soul

In the Persian judgment of the soul after death we have the most profound and spiritual conception of the rewards and punishments of the hereafter that has found expression in the ethical teachings of any people. The soul is conceived as being judged by itself. Upon its departure from this life the soul of the faithful is met by a beautiful maiden, “fair as the fairest thing,” who says to him: “I am thy own conscience; I was lovely and thou madest me still lovelier; I was fair and thou madest me still fairer, through thy good thought, thy good speech, and thy good deed.” And then the soul is led into the paradise of endless light. But the soul of the wicked one is met by a hideous old woman, “uglier than the ugliest thing,” who is his own conscience. She says to him: “I am thy bad actions, O youth of evil thoughts, of evil words, of evil deeds, of evil religion. It is on account of thy will and actions that I am hideous and vile.” And then the soul is led down into the hell of endless darkness.[324]

The remarkable thing about all this is that this profound and spiritual conception of “a mental heaven and hell with which we are now familiar as the only future state recognized by intelligent people” should have found expression at the early period when the faith of the Zend-Avesta was formulated. “While mankind were delivered up to the childish terrors of a future replete with horrors visited upon them from without, the early Iranian sage announced the eternal truth that the rewards of Heaven and the punishments of Hell can only be from within. He gave us, we may fairly say, through the systems which he has influenced, that great doctrine of subjective recompense, which must work an essential change in the mental habits of every one who receives it.”[325]