Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

But truth, reason, right, and History must in the end triumph. It is the duty of the State, and we rigidly exact from it the performance of it, to punish and repress crime: it must, therefore, be its duty, but this we will not allow it to perform, to teach that kind of morality which manifestly has a tendency to prevent the commission of crime. The evil is done when the crime has been committed: à fortiori, then, it is better to prevent than to punish it. It is the duty of the State, and we energetically insist on its being discharged effectually, to protect person and property: à fortiori, then, it must be its duty to teach that morality which shall dispose men to respect the rights of person and of property. It is the duty of the State to do what it can, within its own sphere, to promote the well-being of its members; we may presume, then, that it is its duty to teach that morality which shall have a tendency, above every thing else the State can do, to secure this great object. How can it be argued that the State does rightly and wisely in neglecting the one means which stands first in the order of nature, and which is emphatically the most efficient, for bringing about its great paramount object? To deny that the means for doing this duty are within its sphere, is to deny that it has any duty at all, except that of punishing. Possibly such means may not be within the sphere, as some define it, of the political Economist. But, though a Statesman ought to be a political Economist, he ought to be something besides. And it may be very bad political Economy to allow in these days the mass of the people to be vicious. This may, in the highest degree, be destructive of wealth. But, at all events, what the Statesman has to lay his measures for is the well-being of the community, of which wealth is only one ingredient; and which, too, may be so distributed, and so used, and productive of such effects and influences, looking at the community generally, as on the whole not to promote its well-being. At all events, man, even when regarded in his social capacity exclusively, does not live either by, or for, bread alone.

The present condition of society is never to be lost sight of. And the two most prominent elements of its present condition are the general diffusion, throughout all classes, of political power, which almost means that the decision of political questions has been entrusted to the most ignorant and uninstructed, because they are the most numerous, part of the community; and the fact that every member of the community is now required to think, and to act, and to take charge of, and to provide for himself. Here are two reasons, which have made it as much the duty of the State to teach, as to repress, and to punish; for knowledge, and this means pre-eminently moral knowledge, has become quite as necessary to it for self-preservation. Though, indeed, punishment is a mode of teaching, and the policeman and the magistrate are a kind of teachers; but it is as unreasonable, as suicidal, to have recourse to no other mode of teaching, and to no other kind of teachers.

I think, then, that none but unstatesmanlike Economists will deny that it is the duty of the State to see to the education of the whole people. The Egyptian Priest, and the Hebrew Prophet, never made, nor could have made, a mistake of this kind; to their apprehension the right training of the people was the paramount duty of a Government—the very purpose and object for which it existed. This must, amongst ourselves, be given mainly in schools established everywhere. We have now at last got so far as to attempt their general establishment. The schools, however, are only machinery; and the great question is, what kind of work this machinery is to do? and the State will not discharge properly its duty in this all-important matter, if it does not take care that the schools shall teach the morality indispensably required, under existing conditions, for the well-being of society. This morality means the principles of Justice, Truth, Temperance, Honesty, Manliness, Forbearance, Considerate Kindliness, Industry, Thrift, Foresight, Responsibility. These are political and social, and perhaps also economical, necessities of modern communities. They are now the first great wants of society. Speaking generally, they can be taught to the masses of the people, and to the whole people, best, and, in fact, only by the State. Every one, I think, must be ready to acknowledge, that if the State, during the last fifty years, had seen to their having been taught, so far as schools and early training could have taught them, to the population of this country, we should be in a widely different position—all the difference being on the right side—from that in which we are at this day.

It is just because the State has made, at best, only half-hearted attempts to do any part of this work, and has even at times loudly proclaimed that it saw that it was not its duty to undertake it, that is to say that it was its duty to renounce its most important duty, that that part of the community in which the moral instinct predominates, has turned to Church organizations, and called upon them to undertake it. And this is a reason why many of this class have been attracted to that particular branch of the Church which advances, most loudly, the most unqualified claims to the superintendence of the whole domain of morality, not making any distinction between that which is social, civil, and political, and that which belongs to the higher sphere of the spiritual life. Had the State seen its duty in this great matter, and endeavoured to act up to it, nothing of this kind would, or could, have occurred. On the contrary: the wisest and best part of the community would have supported it in carrying out what it had undertaken, with their whole heart and soul.

Of course it is a mistake to look to the Church for this kind of work. Neither the Church of Rome, nor any other Church, either in this, or in any other, country, has the means necessary for enforcing this kind of teaching, or even for bringing it home, generally, to the bulk of the population, that is to say to the very part of it which most needs it. Nor under any conjuncture of circumstances, which can be imagined as possible, will they have the means for doing it. And even further, if the powers necessary for the purpose could be conferred upon them, it would be putting them in a false position to call upon them to undertake this mundane, political work. Besides that, the false positions into which events and circumstances have already, more or less, brought all Churches, have so damaged their credit with large proportions of the population, in all the foremost nations of the world, as that their teaching of this kind would not, generally, be received, would even be strenuously resisted; and it would still further weaken them, were they to attempt to teach these things for these purposes. It would bring them before the world as mere instruments of national police—a position that is now so utterly and glaringly at discord with the purpose and idea of a Church, that its assumption would go a long way towards obscuring altogether in men’s minds that purpose, and that idea; far too much in that direction having been done already. We know how disastrous an effect the assumption, to some extent, of this position has had, in this and other countries, on some branches of the Church. This is true now, and will continue to be so, till the Church shall have become an organization in which all of us, laity as well as clergy, women as well as men, who shall be animated by the desire for the higher moral and spiritual life, shall find ready for us places and work; and until, in this matter, the first effort amongst us shall not be to secure this-world power, and social and political position, which must always be accompanied by separations and antagonisms, and is demoralizing, and destructive of the very idea of a Church; but to reform and improve, and to lift above the world; an effort which is actively and fruitfully moral, and of the very essence of the work of a Church. This is truly spiritual work.

Taking things, then, as they are, any Church would be but a bad and inefficient teacher of the political, we may even call it the secular, kind of morality we are now thinking about. While every one can see that, as it is an affair of the State, and comes within its sphere, and is useful for its purposes; and as it is the duty, and the interest, of the State to teach it; and as the State has, and alone has, the power of teaching it, it might be well and properly taught by the State. But it may also be remarked that no Church can afford to give to this work of the State the first place in its thoughts and efforts. Every branch of the Church, from the greatest down to the least, must be occupied, primarily, by its own necessities. Self-preservation is the first law of nature, in the case of Churches as well as of every thing else that has life. The first care, therefore, as things now are, of every Church must be to maintain and enforce its own system; and, as part of the same effort, to weaken those whose systems are opposed to its own. This, however disguised, must be a main object with all of them. That it is so, is very disastrous for Churches; still it is a necessity of their present position. And the efforts that arise out of this necessity can, at the best, be only non-moral: in truth, one cannot but think that they must generally be demoralizing, and even immoral: at all events, they can only be made at the expense of the higher morality, which is the true domain of the Church. But, however much this point may be controverted, the other is an obvious fact, and incontrovertible, that no Church has the power of teaching to the community, and this is especially true of the most numerous and least instructed part of the community, that morality which is now necessary for the well-being of political societies. In this matter there is a wide difference between past and present times. Formerly this teaching, however desirable it might have been, was not indispensable under the old restrictive and paternal systems of society. All that has now passed away. We have drifted from those moorings, and out of those harbours. Our population has been agglomerated into large masses; and these masses have been put into a position to exercise the power which resides in numbers. Every one, too, is now called upon, and this is a most important element in the consideration of what ought to be done, to take care of himself. No class is now put in charge of another class. The moral training, therefore, which these conditions require has become the paramount object and first duty of the State; and, one way or another, perhaps the highest personal mundane interest of every member of the community; and all would do well to demand from the State the discharge of this duty.

That the State should awake to a sense of its duty in this matter, and act up to that awakened sense, would be no encroachment on the domain of the Church. In so doing, indeed, it would set free, and strengthen, the Church for its own proper work. The State cannot do the work of the Church, any more than the Church can do the work of the State. Each has now, distinctly, marked out for it its own sphere, its own aims, its own rights, and its own duties. The world is rapidly advancing to a correct understanding of all this. Each should, properly, by attending to and doing its own work, help the other. Each is necessary to the other. The morality the State has charge of is that which, obviously, contributes to the right ordering and prosperity of the commonwealth generally, and of its members individually. It is such as can be expounded, and made intelligible to all and acceptable to many. Much of it too can be enforced on all. Not, of course, in the old Egyptian fashion, but in a fashion which is in accord with the conditions of modern societies.

There can be few things more mistaken and ridiculous than to urge that the Master of a School, because he is a layman, cannot teach such morality as the State requires for its own maintenance, and for the well-being of its members. He is just as capable as the Minister of Religion, or as any body else, of learning his own proper work. The point that really needs to be seen clearly is that the proper work of the State School Master, and of the Minister of Religion, so differ, as that each is incapable of teaching fully and rightly what ought to be taught by the other. The Minister of Religion puts himself quite in a false position, and contradicts the idea of his office, when he undertakes the work of the State; and the School Master goes out of his way, and passes beyond the work of the State, when he enters on the ground of the Minister of Religion. From the time that civil societies existed, or that men had come to act from a sense of duty, all well disposed Fathers of families, not excluding Masters of Schools, have deemed themselves qualified to teach, and have taught, with more or less success, to their children such ethics as they themselves had attained to a knowledge of, and thought desirable. Let any one refer to the duties I just now enumerated, as socially and politically necessary in these days; and, when he has considered what they are, will he be disposed to assert that a man of ordinary intelligence, the business of whose life it is to teach, whose attention has been particularly directed to this subject, and who has studied it with the knowledge that he must teach it, will, after all, be unable to teach it? Or would any teacher, with that list in his hand, say that it never would be in his power to give lessons on each of the heads it contains; and to see that the practice of the pupils corresponded with what he taught? If the Clergy could do this, why not the Masters of Schools? The fact, however, is that the Clergy cannot, and that the Masters of Schools can.

Nothing else that is taught in Schools can be taught so naturally, so easily, and so surely. Almost everything that occurs, or that is done, supplies ground for a lesson on the subject. In nothing else that we have to teach do we find a foundation laid for our teaching already, as it is here, in the instinctive moral sentiments which have, some how or other, come to be, or, if not, which may be made to be, a part of the pupil’s nature. The discipline, too, of life here again aids the teacher in a manner, which is not the case in anything else he has to teach. The Ethics the State requires may be taught, as the occasion in any, and each, case will suggest to the teacher, either practically, or dogmatically, or scientifically; either with a reference at the moment to the principle of utility, or to the voice of conscience, or to experience. Lessons of this kind may also be set forth in Parables, or illustrative stories: a large proportion of the reading lessons now used in Schools have this aim. Nor would there be many who would object to reference being made, in the teaching of the State School-Master, to the Religious ground, that is to say, to the future life: though of course it is manifest that this would belong rather to the teaching of the Church and of the Minister of Religion. Practically, however, that is with respect to the substance and form of the virtues taught, there would be no antagonism between the two: for even with respect to Charity, which Religion elevates above Justice, the layman would still have something to say in the same sense, for he would show that the kindliness, and consideration for others, he taught supplemented and went beyond Justice. Indeed, what antagonism could there be, seeing that our ideas of the several virtues, wherever they differ from what Aristotle or Cicero would have taught, are what our Religion has made them to all of us alike? The chief difference, indeed, I can make out would be a very small one, for it would be the importance the lay-teacher would have to assign to industry and thrift, secondary virtues of which popular Religion does not take much notice: an oversight which, of course, arises out of popular misapprehensions, such, for instance, as those we are all familiar with in respect of the purpose and character of the present life, of the meaning of faith, and of the teaching of Jesus Christ on the subject of Divine interposition in the current affairs of life.

But, however, this little difference, though indeed it happens to be one that must ultimately disappear, for it arises out of a misconception, will help us to understand the difference between the morality the State requires and that which the Church presents to us. The former is limited to what is useful politically and socially, and for mundane purposes; while that of which the Church has charge (there being ultimately no real contradiction between the two) consists of the same principles, only purified, elevated, and rendered more fruitful by the action of higher motives. It is that which is in thought perfect; the morality of the kingdom of God, that is of those who have been brought to understand that they have a citizenship which is not of this world, and whose conversation is above. It is that morality which is cast in the mould of the ideas we endeavour to form of the moral attributes of the Deity; or rather the application of that to our own present condition: its members endeavour to form God within themselves. This cannot be enforced. The idea of constraint contradicts its nature. Its motives are found in men’s spontaneously engendered conceptions of moral perfection; and in the hope of a future life, which alone can supply a stage and conditions suitable for the complete realization of such conceptions. The rights of the Church are those of humanity to complete freedom in its effort to advance and purify its ideal of the moral and spiritual life. This has been its work from the beginning, though in the early stages of society it embraced the State, and has subsequently often, during the struggles of the State to establish its independence, been in conflict with it: sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both having been in the wrong: all this History explains. Its true position is to be in advance of the State. It elaborates and diffuses that interpretation of man’s nature, and position, and of the knowledge man has attained to, those conceptions of virtue and that morality which the State, following in the wake of the Church, adopts in its own degree and fashion, and makes in such degree and fashion the aims and principles of its legislation. Every virtue, however elementary and indispensable, according to our ideas, might once have been beyond the power and the ken of the State. We can imagine such a condition of things, as that, during its continuance the State would have been unable to enforce and inculcate the principles of common honesty, and even of responsibility. It may once have been so here, just as it is still, to this day, in Dahomey. Scientifically, the condition of Dahomey is as much a part of the subject as the condition of England. The question is, what has brought about the difference? The answer is the Church—the Church that was in Egypt, that was in Israel, that was in Greece, that was in Rome, that was in the forests of Germany, that has been, and is, amongst ourselves. The Church has, all along, been going before and shaping, little by little and step by step, higher and clearer conceptions of right, and of duty, and of life; and the State has followed, little by little and step by step, accepting and adopting what the Church had made possible for it. Its position has generally been, and ex rerum naturâ it must be so, behind the Church. This is seen distinctly in the early days of Christianity. The Church was then working out, and diffusing, much that the State afterwards recognized and acted upon. This is their true relation to each other. It is not merely that the nation, organized for its immediate mundane wants, is the State, and that humanity, organized for the needs of its higher life, is the Church; but that, besides this, in the progress of society and of humanity, each is indispensable to the other. Universal History tells us this: and from universal History, in a matter of this kind, there is no appeal. And what universal History tells us the History, as far as it goes, of the two famous buildings before us confirms.