[130] Gilmour, Among the Mongols, p. 239.
[131] Montefiore, op. cit. pp. 483, 533. 1 Chronicles, xxii. 19; xxviii. 9; xxix. 18 sq. 2 Chronicles, xi. 16; xv. 12; xvi. 9.
[132] Montefiore, op. cit. p. 484.
[133] Ibid. p. 174.
[134] Nazir, fol. 23 B, quoted by Hershon, Treasures of the Talmud, p. 74.
[135] Succah, fol. 49 B, ibid. p. 11.
[136] Quoted by Ameer Ali, Ethics of Islâm, p. 38 sq.
CHAPTER XII
FORBEARANCES AND CARELESSNESS—CHARACTER
THE observation has often been made that in early moral codes the so-called negative commandments, which tell people what they ought not to do, are much more prominent than the positive commandments, which tell them what they ought to do. The main reason for this is that negative commandments spring from the disapproval or acts, whereas positive commandments spring from the disapproval of forbearances or omissions, and that the indignation of men is much more easily aroused by action than by the absence of it. A person who commits a harmful deed is a more obvious cause of pain than a person who causes harm by doing nothing, and this naturally affects the question of guilt in the eyes of the multitude. A scrutinising judge of course carefully distinguishes between willfulness and negligence, whereas, to his mind, a forbearance is morally equivalent to an act. The unreflecting judge, on the other hand, is much less concerned with the question of wilfulness than with the distinction between acting and not-acting. Even the criminal laws of civilised nations take little cognisance of forbearances and omissions;[1] and one reason for this is that they evoke little public indignation. Even if it be admitted that the rules of beneficence, so far as details are concerned, must be left in a great measure to the jurisdiction of private ethics, the limits of the law on this head, as Bentham remarks, seem “to be capable of being extended a good deal farther than they seem ever to have been extended hitherto.” And he appropriately asks, “In cases where the person is in danger, why should it not be made the duty of every man to save another from mischief, when it can be done without prejudicing himself, as well as to abstain from bringing it on him?”[2]