The code of morality enjoined by the Zoroastrian religion is as pure as its theory is perfect. Dr. Haug enumerates the following sins denounced by its code, and considered as such by the present Parsees: Murder, infanticide, poisoning, adultery on the part of men as well as women, sorcery, sodomy, cheating in weight and measure, breach of promise whether made to a Zoroastrian or non-Zoroastrian, telling lies and deceiving, false covenants, slander and calumny, perjury, dishonest appropriation of wealth, taking bribes, keeping back the wages of labourers, misappropriation of religious property, removal of a boundary stone, turning people out of their property, maladministration and defrauding, apostasy, heresy, rebellion. These are positive injunctions. The following are condemnable from a religious point of view: Abandoning the husband; not acknowledging one’s children on the part of the father; cruelty towards subjects on the part of a ruler; avarice, laziness, illiberality and egotism, envy. In addition there are a number of special precepts adapted to the peculiar rites of the Zoroastrian religion which aim principally at the enforcement of sanitary rules, kindness to animals, hospitality to strangers and travellers, respect to superiors, and help to the poor and needy.
It is evident that this is the most complete and comprehensive code of morals to be found in any system of religion. It comprises all that is best in the codes of Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity, with a much more ample definition of many vices and virtues which, even in the Christian religion, are left to be drawn as inferences rather than inculcated as precepts. Thus, laziness, cheating, selfishness, and envy are distinctly defined as crimes, and their opposites as virtues, and not merely left to be inferred from the general maxims of ‘loving your neighbour as yourself,’ and ‘doing unto others as you would be done by.’ The comprehensiveness and liberal spirit of the code is also remarkable, for we are repeatedly told that these rules of morality apply to non-Zoroastrians as well as to Zoroastrians. The application of religious precepts to practical life is another distinguishing feature. Thus kindness to animals is specially enjoined, and it is considered a sin to ill-treat animals of the good creation, such as cattle, sheep, horses, or dogs, by starving, beating, or unnecessarily killing them. With true practical wisdom, however, the ‘falsehood of extremes’ is avoided, and this precept is not, as in the case of Brahminism and Buddhism, carried so far as to prohibit altogether the taking of animal life, which is expressly sanctioned when necessary. This sober practical wisdom, or what Matthew Arnold calls ‘sweet reasonableness,’ is a very characteristic feature of Zoroaster’s religion, and very remarkable as having been taught at so early a period in the history of civilisation.
Another precept, which might well have been made by an English board of health in the nineteenth century, is not to pollute water by throwing impure matter into it.
The only special Parsee rites which would be unsuited for modern European society, are the worship of the sacred fire and the disposal of the dead. It is true that the former is distinctly understood to be merely a symbol of the Deity, and used exactly as water is in baptism, or as the ascending flame of candles and smoke from swinging incense are in the Catholic ritual, to bring more vividly before the minds of the worshippers the idea of the spirit soaring upwards towards heaven. Still, in modern society fire is too well understood as merely a particular form of chemical combination, and is too familiar as the strong slave and household drudge of man, to acquire a leading place in a religious ritual where it has not been hallowed by the usage of a long line of ancestors and the traditions of a venerable antiquity. All that can be said is, that if religious rites and ceremonies are to be maintained in an age when science has become the prevailing mode of thought, appropriate symbolism, especially that of music, must more and more take the place of appeals to the intellect on metaphysical questions, and of repetitions of traditional formulæ which have lost all living significance.
Another Parsee rite, which is even less adapted for general usage, is that of disposing of the dead on towers of silence, where the body moulders away or is devoured by birds of prey. It originates in a poetical motive of not defiling the pure elements, fire, earth, or water, by corruption; but it is obviously unsuited for the conditions of civilisation and climate which prevail in crowded cities under a humid sky.
There is little prospect therefore of any general conversion to the sect of Zoroastrians; but what seems probable is the gradual transformation of existing modes both of religious and secular thought into something which is, in principle, very closely akin to the ‘excellent religion’ taught by the Bactrian prophet.
The miraculous theory of the universe being virtually dead, the only theory that can reconcile facts with feelings, and the ineradicable emotions and aspirations of the human mind with the incontrovertible conclusions of science, is that of a remote and more or less unknown and incomprehensible First Cause, which has given the original atoms and energies so perfect an impress from the first, that all phenomena are evolved from them by fixed laws, one of the principal of such laws being that of polarity, which develops the ever-increasing complexities and contrasts of the inorganic and organic worlds, of moralities, philosophies, religions, and human societies. True religion consists in a recognition of this truth, a feeling of reverence in presence of the unknown, and, above all, a feeling of love and admiration for the good principle in whatever form it is manifested, in the beauties of nature and of art, in moral and physical purity and perfection, and all else that falls within the domain of the Prince of Light, in whose service, whether we conceive of him as an abstract principle, or accept some personification of him as a living figure, we enlist as loyal soldiers, doing our best to fight in his ranks against the powers of evil.
The application of the all-pervading principle of polarity is exemplified in the realm of art. The glorious Greek drama turned mainly on the conflict between resistless fate and heroic free-will, and is typified in its highest form by Æschylus, when he depicts Prometheus chained to the rock hurling defiance at the tyrant of heaven. Our own Milton, in like manner, gives us the spectacle of the fallen archangel opposing his indomitable will and fertile resources to the extremity of adverse circumstance and to Almighty power.
The greatest of modern dramas, Goethe’s ‘Faust,’ turns so entirely on the opposition between the human soul striving after the infinite, and the spirit der verneint, who combats ideal aspirations with a cynical sneer, that it might well be called a Zoroastrian drama. It is a picture of the conflict between the two opposite principles of good and evil, of affirmation and negation, of the beautiful and the ugly, personified in Faust and Mephistopheles, and it is painted on a background of the great mysterious unknown. ‘Wer darf ihn nennen?’
Who dares to name Him,