A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volume 1, 3rd ed. / From the Earliest Times to the Present Day

by James Fergusson

From their having no human gods they avoided all the palatial temples or ceremonial forms of idolatrous worship. Strictly speaking, they have no temples. There was one holy place in the old world, the Hill of Zion at Jerusalem, and one in the new dispensation, the Kaaba at Mecca. Solomon, it is true, adorned the first to an extent but little consonant with the true feeling of his race, but the Kaaba remains in its primitive insignificance; and neither of these temples, either then or now, derive their sanctity from the buildings. They are the spots where God’s prophets stood and communicated His will to man. It is true that in after ages a Roman Tetrarch and a Turkish Sultan surrounded these two Semitic cells with courts and cloisters, which made them wonders of magnificence in the cities where they existed; but this does not affect the conclusion that no Semitic race ever erected a durable building, or even thought of possessing more than one temple at a time, or cared to emulate the splendour of the temple-palaces of the Turanians.

Government.

Although no Semitic race was ever quite republican, which is a purely Aryan characteristic, they never sank under such an unmitigated despotism as is generally found among the Turanians. When in small nuclei, their form of government is what is generally called patriarchal, the chief being neither necessarily hereditary, nor necessarily elective, but attaining his headship partly by the influence due to age and wisdom, or to virtue, partly to the merits of his connexions, and sometimes of his ancestors; but never wholly to the latter without some reference at least to the former.

In larger aggregations the difficulty of selection made the chiefship more generally hereditary; but even then the power of the King was always controlled by the authority of the written law, and never sank into the pure despotism of the Turanians. With the Jews, too, the sacred caste of the Levites always had considerable influence in checking any excesses of kingly power; but more was due in this respect to their peculiar institution of prophets, who, protected by the sacredness of their office, at all times dared to act the part of tribunes of the people, and to rebuke with authority any attempt on the part of the King to step beyond the limits of the constitution.

Morals.

One of the most striking characteristics in the morals of the Semitic races is the improvement in the position of woman, and the attempt to elevate her in the scale of existence. If not absolutely monogamic, there is among the Jews, and among the Arabic races where they are pure, a strong tendency in this direction; and but for the example of those nations among whom they were placed, they might have gone further in this direction, and the dignity of mankind have been proportionately improved.

Their worst faults arise from their segregation from the rest of mankind. With them war against all but those of their own race is an obligation and a pleasure, and it is carried on with a relentless cruelty which knows no pity. To smite root and branch, to murder men, women, and children, is a duty which admits of no hesitation, and has stained the character of the Semites in all ages. Against this must be placed the fact that they are patriotic beyond all other races, and steadfast in their faith as no other people have ever been; and among themselves they have been tempered to kindness and charity by the sufferings they have had to bear because of their uncompromising hatred and repugnance to all their fellow-men.

This isolation has had the further effect of making them singularly apathetic to all that most interests the other nations of the earth. What their God has revealed to them through His prophets suffices for them. “God is great,” is a sufficient explanation with them for all the wonders of science. “God wills it,” solves all the complex problems of the moral government of the world. If not such absolute fatalists as the Turanians, they equally shrink from the responsibility of thinking for themselves, or of applying their independent reason to the great problems of human knowledge. They may escape by this from many aberrations that trouble more active minds, but their virtues at best can be but negative, and their vices unredeemed by the higher aspirations that sometimes half ennoble even crime.

Literature.

In this again we have an immense advance above all the Turanian races. No Semitic people ever used a hieroglyph or mere symbol, or were content to trust to memory only. Everywhere and at all times—so far as we know—they used an alphabet of more or less complicated form. Whether they invented this mode of notation or not is still unknown, but its use by them is certain; and the consequence is that they possess, if not the oldest, at least one of the very oldest literatures of the world. History with them is no longer a mere record of names and titles, but a chronicle of events, and with the moral generally elicited. The story and the rhapsody take their places side by side, the preaching and the parable are used to convey their lessons to the world. If they had not the Epos and the Drama, they had lyric poetry of a beauty and a pathos which has hardly ever been surpassed.