Читать книгу Ethics - Джон Дьюи - Страница 47

The interaction between the religious and the moral education of the Hebrews was so intimate that it is difficult to distinguish the two, but we may abstract certain conceptions or motives in Israel's religion which were especially significant. The general conception was that of the close personal relation between god and people. Israel should have no other god; Jehovah—at least this was the earlier thought—would have no other people. He had loved and chosen Israel; Israel in gratitude, as well as in hope and fear, must love and obey Jehovah. Priests maintained his cultus; prophets brought new commands according to the requirements of the hour; the king represented his sovereignty and justice; the course of events exhibited his purpose. Each of these elements served to provoke or elicit moral reflection or moral conduct.

1. The "Covenant" Relation was a Moral Conception.—The usual religious conception is that of some blood or kin relation between people and deity. This has the same potential meaning and value as that of the other relations of group life outlined in Chapter II. But it is rather a natural than a "moral"—i.e., conscious and voluntary—tie. To conceive of the relation between god and people as due to voluntary choice, is to introduce a powerful agency toward making morality conscious. Whatever the origin of the idea, the significant fact is that the religious and moral leaders present the relation of Israel to Jehovah as based on a covenant. On the one hand, Jehovah protects, preserves, and prospers; on the other, Israel is to obey his laws and serve no other gods. This conception of mutual obligation is presented at the opening of the "Ten Commandments," and to this covenant relation the prophets again and again make appeal. The obligation to obey the law is not "This is the custom," or "Our fathers did so"; it is placed on the ground that the people has voluntarily accepted Jehovah as its god and lawgiver.

The meaning of this covenant and the symbols by which it was conceived, changed with the advance of the social relationships of the people. At first Jehovah was "Lord of Hosts," protector in war, and giver of prosperity, and the early conceptions of the duty of the people seemed to include human sacrifice, at least in extreme cases. But with later prophets we find the social and family relationship of husband and father brought increasingly into use. Whether by personal experience or by more general reflection, we find Hosea interpreting the relationship between God and his people in both of these family conceptions. The disloyalty of the people takes on the more intimate taint of a wife's unfaithfulness, and, conversely, in contrast to the concepts of other religions, the people may call Jehovah "my husband" and no longer "my master" (Baal). The change from status to contract is thus, in Israel's religion, fruitful with many moral results.

2. The Conception of a Personal Lawgiver.—The conception of a personal lawgiver raises conduct from the level of custom to the level of conscious morality. So long as a child follows certain ways by imitation or suggestion, he does not necessarily attach any moral meaning to them. But if the parent expressly commands or prohibits, it becomes a matter of obedience or disobedience. Choice becomes necessary. Character takes the place of innocence. So Jehovah's law compelled obedience or rebellion. Customs were either forbidden or enjoined. In either case they ceased to be merely customs. In the law of Israel the whole body of observances in private life, in ceremonial, and in legal forms, is introduced with a "Thus saith the Lord." We know that other Semitic people observed the Sabbath, practiced circumcision, distinguished clean from unclean beasts, and respected the taboos of birth and death. Whether in Israel all these observances were old customs given new authority by statute, or were customs taken from other peoples under the authority of the laws of Jehovah, is immaterial. The ethical significance of the law is that these various observances, instead of being treated merely as customs, are regarded as personal commands of a personal deity.

This makes a vital difference in the view taken of the violation of these observances. When a man violates a custom he fails to do the correct thing. He misses the mark.[49] But when the observance is a personal command, its violation is a personal disobedience; it is rebellion; it is an act of will. The evil which follows is no longer bad luck; it is punishment. Now punishment must be either right or wrong, moral or immoral. It can never be merely non-moral. Hence the very conception of sin as a personal offense, and of ill as a personal punishment, forces a moral standard. In its crudest form this may take the god's commands as right simply because he utters them, and assume that the sufferer is guilty merely because he suffers. We find this in the penitential psalms of the Babylonians. These express the deepest conviction of sin and the utmost desire to please the god, but when we try to discover what the penitent has done that wakens such remorse within him, we find that he seems merely to feel that in some way he has failed to please God, no matter how. He experiences misfortune, whether of disease, or ill-luck, or defeat, and is sure that this must be due to some offense. He does not know what this may be. It may have been that he has failed to repeat a formula in the right manner; it is all one. He feels guilty and even exaggerates his own guilt in view of the punishment which has befallen him. Job's three friends apply the same logic to his case.[50]

But side by side with the conception that the laws of Jehovah must be obeyed because they were his commands, there was another doctrine which was but an extension of the theory that the people had freely accepted their ruler. This was that Jehovah's commands were not arbitrary. They were right; they could be placed before the people for their approval; they were "life"; "the judge of all the earth" would "do right." We have here a striking illustration of the principle that moral standards, at first embodied in persons, slowly work free, so that persons are judged by them.

3. The Cultus as Morally Symbolical.—The elaborate cultus carried on by the priests, symbolized, however imperfectly, certain moral ideas. The solicitous care for ceremonial "purity" might have no direct moral value; the contamination from contact with birth or death or certain animals might be a very external sort of "uncleanness." Nevertheless, they emphasized in the most forcible manner a constant control over conduct by a standard which was set by a divine law. The "holiness" of the priests, as set apart to special service of Jehovah, emphasized the seriousness of their work; and further, it contributed to that distinction between spiritual and material, between higher and lower, which is a part of moral life. Moreover, while part of this value inheres in all ritual, the contrast between Jehovah's worship and that of other deities challenged moral attention. The gods of the land, the various Baals, were worshipped "upon every high hill and under every green tree." As gods of fertility, they were symbolized by the emblems of sex, and great freedom prevailed at their festivals. At certain shrines men and women gave themselves for the service of the god. The first born children were not infrequently sacrificed.[51] These festivals and shrines seem to have been adopted more or less fully by Israel from the Canaanites, but the prophets have an utterly different idea of Jehovah's worship. The god of Sinai rejects utterly such practices. License and drunkenness are not, as the cultus of Baal and Astarte implied, the proper symbols of life and deity. The sensual cannot fitly symbolize the spiritual.

Moreover, one part of the cultus, the "sin offering," directly implied transgression and the need of forgiveness. The "sins" might themselves be ceremonial rather than moral, and the method of removing them might be external—especially the process of putting the sins upon a scapegoat which should "bear upon him all their iniquities into a solitary land,"—nevertheless, the solemn confession, and the shedding of the blood which was the "life," could not but remind of responsibility and deepen reflection. The need of atonement and reconciliation, thus impressed, symbolized the moral process of reconstructing, of putting away a lower past, and readjusting life to meet an ideal.

4. The Prophets as a Moral Force.—The prophets were by far the most significant moral agency in Israel's religion. In the first place, they came to the people bearing a message from a living source of authority, intended for the immediate situation. They brought a present command for a present duty. "Thou art the man," of Nathan to David, "Hast thou killed, and also taken possession?" of Elijah to Ahab, had personal occasions. But the great sermons of Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, were no less for the hour. A licentious festival, an Assyrian invasion, an Egyptian embassy, a plague of locusts, an impending captivity—these inspire demand for repentance, warnings of destruction, promises of salvation. The prophet was thus the "living fountain." The divine will as coming through him "was still, so to speak, fluid, and not congealed into institutions."

In the second place, the prophets seized upon the inward purpose and social conduct of man as the all-important issues; cultus, sacrifice, are unimportant. "I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will take no delight in your solemn assemblies," cries Amos in Jehovah's name, "But let justice roll down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream." "I have had enough of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts," proclaims Isaiah, "new moons, and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies—I cannot away with iniquity and the solemn meeting." You need not ceremonial, but moral, purity. "Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings;—seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." Micah's "Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" seized upon the difference once for all between the physical and the moral; a completely ethical standpoint is gained in his summary of religious duty: "What doth God require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" And the New Testament analogue marks the true ethical valuation of all the external religious manifestations, even of the cruder forms of prophecy itself. Gifts, mysteries, knowledge, or the "body to be burned"—there is a more excellent way than these. For all these are "in part." Their value is but temporary and relative. The values that abide, that stand criticism, are that staking of oneself upon the truth and worth of one's ideal which is faith; that aspiration and forward look which is hope; that sum of all social charity, sympathy, justice, and active helpfulness, which is love. "But the greatest of these is love."

5. The Religious View of the Kingdom Gave the Setting for a Social Ideal.—Jehovah was the king of his people. The human ruler in Jerusalem was his representative. The kingdom of Israel was under divine care and had on the other hand a serious purpose. The expansion and glory of the kingdom under Solomon showed the divine favor. Division and calamity were not mere misfortunes, or the victory of greater armies; they were divine rebukes. Only in righteousness and justice could the nation survive. On the other hand, the confidence in Jehovah's love for Israel guaranteed that he would never forsake his people. He would purify them and redeem them even from the grave. He would establish a kingdom of law and peace, "an everlasting kingdom that should not be destroyed." Politics in Israel had a moral goal.

6. Religion Gave the Problem of Evil a Moral Significance.—The Greek treatment of the problem of evil is found in the great tragedies. An ancestral curse follows down successive generations, dealing woe to all the unhappy house. For the victims there seems to be nothing but to suffer. The necessity of destiny makes the catastrophe sublime, but also hopeless. Ibsen's Ghosts is conceived in a similar spirit. There is a tremendous moral lesson in it for the fathers, but for the children only horror. The Greek and the Scandinavian are doubtless interpreting one phase of human life—its continuity and dependence upon cosmical nature. But the Hebrew was not content with this. His confidence in a divine government of the world forced him to seek some moral value, some purpose in the event. The search led along one path to a readjustment of values; it led by another path to a new view of social interdependence.

The book of Job gives the deepest study of the first of these problems. The old view had been that virtue and happiness always went together. Prosperity meant divine favor, and therefore it must be the good. Adversity meant divine punishment; it showed wrongdoing and was itself an evil. When calamity comes upon Job, his friends assume it to be a sure proof of his wickedness. He had himself held the same view, and since he refuses to admit his wickedness and "holds fast to his integrity," it confounds all his philosophy of life and of God. It compels a "reversal and revaluation of all values." If he could only meet God face to face and have it out with him he believes there would be some solution. But come what may, he will not sell his soul for happiness. To "repent," as his friends urge, in order that he may be again on good terms with God, would mean for him to call sin what he believes to be righteousness. And he will not lie in this way. God is doubtless stronger, and if he pursues his victim relentlessly, may convict him. But be this as it may, Job will not let go his fundamental consciousness of right and wrong. His "moral self" is the one anchor that holds, is the supreme value of life.

"As God liveth, who hath taken away my right,

And the Almighty who hath vexed my soul;

Surely my lips shall not speak unrighteousness.

Till I die, I will not put away my integrity from me,

My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go."[52]

Another suggestion of the book is that evil comes to prove man's sincerity: "Does Job serve God for naught?" and from that standpoint the answer is, Yes; he does. "There is a disinterested love of God."[53] In this setting, also, the experience of suffering produces a shifting of values from the extrinsic to the internal.

The other treatment of the problem of suffering is found in the latter half of Isaiah. It finds an interpretation of the problem by a deeper view of social interdependence, in which the old tribal solidarity is given, as it were, a transfigured meaning. The individualistic interpretation of suffering was that it meant personal guilt. "We did esteem him stricken of God." This breaks down. The suffering servant is not wicked. He is suffering for others—in some sense. "He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." The conception here reached of an interrelation which involves that the suffering of the good may be due to the sin or the suffering of others, and that the assumption of this burden marks the higher type of ethical relation, is one of the finest products of Israel's religion. As made central in the Christian conception of the Cross, it has furnished one of the great elements in the modern social consciousness.