This doctrine was more or less realised in the monastic life, but was hardly held applicable to laymen. The mediæval baron and knight resembled the Teutonic warrior described by Tacitus, who regarded it as “a dull and stupid thing to accumulate painfully by the sweat of the brow what might be won by a little blood.”119 In England, after the Conquest, the aristocracy in general lived a life of idleness but indulged eagerly in hunting, and its members continually sallied forth in parties to plunder.120 For a long time the lower classes, constituting the mass of society, existed only for the benefit of the upper class. It was considered honourable to live in sloth supported by the exertions of others, it was held degrading to depend on the gains of industry. The degradation really attached to the gains of labour rather than labour itself; for labour ceased to be degrading if not prosecuted for gain. “Louis XVI. may make locks, the ladies of his court may make butter and cheese, provided it is only for amusement. Lord Rosse may build a telescope as an amateur in the interest of science, and still be noble. But if the locks, the butter, or the telescope are sold, the makers are degraded to the level of the tradesman.”121 However, as Mr. Spencer observes, trade, while at first relatively unessential (since essential things were mostly made at home) and consequently lacking the sanction of necessity and of ancestral custom, ceased to be despised when it grew in importance.122 Among ourselves the respect in which a certain occupation is held is largely determined by the degree of mental power implied in it; hence manual labour, and especially unskilled labour, is still in some degree looked down upon. But we do not regard as dishonourable any kind of work which is not opposed to the ordinary rules of morality. We distinguish more clearly than the ancients did between social and moral inferiority. Our moral judgments are less influenced by class antipathies. We recognise that a high standard of duty is compatible even with the humblest station in life. And when we duly reflect upon the matter, we admit that the moral value of industry depends, not on the occupation in which it is displayed, but on the purpose of the labourer.

But though industry is applauded or insisted on, rest is also in certain circumstances regarded as a duty. By doing too much work a person may injure himself and indirectly other persons as well. In early society there is little inducement to overwork, but the case is very different in modern civilisation. This accounts for the persistence and general popularity of an institution which originally sprang from quite different sources, namely, the Sunday rest.

Among various peoples it is the custom to abstain from work, or from some special kind of work, on certain occasions or days which are regarded as defiling or inauspicious. Work is often suspended after a death, partly perhaps because inactivity is a natural accompaniment of sorrow,123 or because a mourner is supposed to be in a delicate state requiring rest,124 but chiefly, I presume, from fear lest the work done should be contaminated by the pollution of death. Among the Arabs of Morocco no work must be performed in the village till the dead is buried. In Greenland everyone who had lived in the same house with the deceased was obliged to be idle for a certain period, according to the directions of the priests or wizards.125 Among the Eskimo of Behring Strait none of the relatives of the dead must do any work during the time in which the shade is believed to remain with the body, that is, for four or five days.126 Among the Seminole Indians of Florida the relatives remained at home and refrained from work during the day of the burial and for three days thereafter, when the dead was supposed to stay in his grave.127 The Kar Nicobarese abstain from work as a sign of mourning.128 In Samoa all labour was suspended in the settlement on the death of a chief.129 So also the Basutos do no work on the day when an influential person dies. They, moreover, refrain from going to their fields, or hasten to leave them, at the approach of clouds which give promise of rain, “in order quietly to await the desired benediction, fearing to disturb Nature in her operations. This idea is carried to such an extent, that most of the natives believe that, if they obstinately persist in their labour at such a moment, the clouds are irritated and retire, or send hail instead of rain. Days of sacrifice, or great purification, are also holidays. Hence it is that the law relative to the repose of the seventh day, so far from finding any objection in the minds of the natives, appears to them very natural, and perhaps even more fundamental, than it seems to certain Christians.”130

Changes in the moon are frequently considered unfavourable for work. Among the Bechuanas, “when the new moon appears, all must cease from work, and keep what is called in England a holiday.”131 The people of Thermia, in the Cyclades, maintain that all work, so far as possible, should be suspended on the days immediately preceding the full moon.132 In the Vishnu Purana it is said that one who attends to secular affairs on the days of the full or new moon goes to the Rudhirándha hell, whose wells are blood.133 In Northern India it is considered bad to undertake any business of importance at the new moon or at an eclipse.134 According to the ‘Laws of Manu,’ a Brâhmana is not allowed to study “on the new-moon day, nor on the fourteenth and the eighth days of each half-month, nor on the full-moon day.” It is said that “the new-moon day destroys the teacher, the fourteenth day the pupil, the eighth and the full-moon days destroy all remembrance of the Veda; let him therefore avoid reading on those days.”135 The Buddhists have their Sabbath, or Uposatha, which occurs four times in the month, namely, on the day of full moon, on the day when there is no moon, and on the two days which are eighth from the full and new moon. On these days selling and buying, work and business, hunting and fishing, are forbidden, and all schools and law-courts are closed.136 In Ashantee and neighbouring districts, where the people reckon time by moons, there is a weekly “fetish-day” or sabbath, which seems to be of native origin. “In all the countries along the coast, the regular fetish-day is Tuesday, the day which is observed by the king of Ashantee. Other days in the week are held sacred in the bush. On this weekly sabbath, or fetish-day, the people generally dress themselves in white garments, and mark their faces, and sometimes their arms, with white clay. They also rest from labour. The fishermen would expect, that were they to go out on that day, the fetish would be angry, and spoil their fishing.”137 The natives of Coomassie, on the Gold Coast, have a law according to which no agricultural work may be done on a Thursday.138 In Hawaii, where each month contained thirty nights and the different days and nights derived their names from the varying aspects of the moon according to her age, there were during every month four periods lasting from two to four nights in which the nights were consecrated or made taboo. So also there were tabooed seasons on certain other occasions, as when a high chief was ill, or preparations were made for war, or on the approach of important religious ceremonies. These taboos were either “common” or “strict.” In the case of the former men were only required to abstain from their common pursuits and to attend prayers morning and evening, whereas when the season of strict taboo was in force a general gloom and silence pervaded the whole district or island. “Not a fire or light was to be seen, or canoe launched; none bathed; the mouths of dogs were tied up, and fowls put under calabashes, or their heads enveloped in cloth; for no noise of man or animal must be heard. No persons, excepting those who officiated at the temple, were allowed to leave the shelter of their roofs. Were but one of these rules broken, the taboo would fail and the gods be displeased.”139

The peoples of Semitic stock or with Semitic culture also have their tabooed days. In Morocco work, or certain kinds of work, are avoided on holy days or in holy periods, as being unsuccessful or, in some cases, even dangerous to him who performs it; there is a saying that “work at a feast are like the stab of a dagger.” Nobody likes to start on a journey on a Friday before the midday prayer has been said, and it is considered bad to commence any work on that day.140 I was also told that clothes will not remain clean if they are washed on a Saturday. Among the modern Egyptians Saturday is held to be the most unfortunate of days, and particularly unfavourable for shaving, cutting the nails, and starting on a journey.141 At Kheybar, in Arabia, again, Sunday is considered an unlucky day for beginning any kind of work.142 There can be little doubt that the Jewish Sabbath originated in the belief that it was inauspicious or dangerous to work on the seventh day, and that the reason for this belief was the mystic connection which in the opinion of the ancient Hebrews, as of so many other peoples, existed between human activity and the changes in the moon.143 It has been sufficiently demonstrated that the Sabbath originally depended upon the new moon, and this carries with it the assumption that the Hebrews must at one time have observed a Sabbath at intervals of seven days corresponding with the moon’s phases.144 In the Old Testament the new moon and Sabbath are repeatedly mentioned side by side;145 thus the oppressors of the poor are represented as saying, “When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat?”146 Among modern Jews, at the feast of the New Moon, which is held every month on the first or on the first and second days of the month, the women are obliged to suspend all servile work, though the men are not required to interrupt their secular employments.147 That the superstitious fear of doing work on the seventh day developed into a religious prohibition, is only another instance of a tendency which we have noticed often before—the tendency of magic forces to be transformed into divine volitions.148 Like the ancient Hebrews, the Assyrians and Babylonians looked upon the seventh day as an “evil day”; and though they do not seem generally to have abstained from work on that day, there were various royal taboos connected with it. The King was not to show himself in his chariot, not to hold court, not to bring sacrifices, not to change his clothes, not to eat a good dinner, and not even to curse his enemies.149

The Jewish Sabbath was abolished by Christ. “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath”;150 “My father worketh [on it] hitherto, and I work.”151 Jewish converts no doubt continued to observe the Sabbath, but this met with disapproval. In one of the Epistles of Ignatius we find the exhortation not to “sabbatise,” which was expanded by the subsequent paraphraser of these compositions into a warning against keeping the Sabbath, after the manner of the Jews, “as if delighting in idleness.”152 And in the fourth century a Council of the Church enacted “that the Christians ought not to judaise, and rest on the Sabbath, but ought to work on that day.”153 On the other hand, it was from early times a recognised custom among the Christians to celebrate the first day of the week in memory of Christ’s resurrection, by holding a form of religious service; but there was no sabbatic regard for it, and it was chiefly looked upon as a day of rejoicing.154 Tertullian is the first writer who speaks of abstinence from secular care and labour on Sunday as a duty incumbent upon Christians, lest they should “give place to the devil.”155 But it is extremely doubtful whether the earliest Sunday law really had a Christian origin. In 321 the Emperor Constantine issued an edict to the effect that all judges and all city people and tradesmen should rest on “the venerable Day of the Sun,” whereas those living in the country should have full liberty to attend to the culture of their fields, “since it frequently happens that no other day is so fit for the sowing of grain or the planting of vines.”156 In this rescript nothing is said of any relation to Christianity, nor do we know that it in any way was due to Christian influence.157 It seems that Constantine, in his capacity of Pontifex Maximus, only added the day of the sun—whose worship was the characteristic of the new paganism—to those inauspicious days, religiosi dies, which the Romans of old regarded as unsuitable for worldly business and especially for judicial proceedings.158 But though the obligatory Sunday rest in no case was a continuance of the Jewish Sabbath, it gradually was confounded with it, owing to the recognition of the decalogue, with its injunction of a weekly day of rest, as the code of divine morality. From the sixth century upwards vexatious restrictions were made by civil rulers, councils, and ecclesiastical writers;159 until in Puritanism the Christian Sunday became a perfect image of the pharisaic Sabbath, or even excelled it in the rigour with which abstinence from every kind of worldly activity was insisted upon. The theory that the keeping holy of one day out of seven is the essence of the Fourth Commandment reconciled people to the fact that the Jewish Sabbath was the seventh day and Sunday the first. In England, in the seventeenth century, persons were punished for carrying coal on Sunday, for hanging out clothes to dry, for travelling on horseback, for rural strolls and walking about.160 And Scotch clergymen taught their congregations that on that day it was sinful to save a vessel in distress, and that it was proof of religion to leave ship and crew to perish.161

CHAPTER XXXVII

RESTRICTIONS IN DIET

TRAVELLERS have often noticed with astonishment the immense quantities of food which uncivilised people are able to consume. Sir George Grey has described the orgies which follow the stranding of a whale in Australia, when the natives remain by the carcase for many days, fairly eating their way into it.1 The Rocky Mountain Indians, though they often subsist for a great length of time on a very little food, will at their feasts “gorge down an incredible quantity.”2 A Mongol “will eat more than ten pounds of meat at one sitting, but some have been known to devour an average-sized sheep in the course of twenty-four hours.”3 The Waganda in Central Africa “sometimes gorge themselves to such an extent that they are unable to move, and appear just as if intoxicated.”4 It has been justly observed that what would among ourselves be condemned as disgusting gluttony is, under the conditions to which certain races of men are exposed, quite normal and in fact necessary. As Mr. Spencer observes, “where the habitat is such as at one time to supply very little food and at another time food in great abundance, survival depends on the ability to consume immense quantities when the opportunities occur.”5 When this is the case gluttony can hardly be stigmatised as a vice; and I find no direct evidence that it is so even among savages who are described as generally moderate in their diet. The lack of foresight, which is a characteristic of uncivilised peoples, must prevent them from attaching much moral value to temperance. On the other hand, gluttony is sometimes said to be regarded with admiration. Mr. Torday informs me that the Bambala in South-Western Congo, when praising a man for his strength, are in the habit of saying, “He eats a whole goat with its skin.”

At higher stages of culture intemperance is often subject to censure—because it is detrimental to health or prosperity, or because it calls forth an instinctive feeling of disgust, or because indulgence in sensual pleasures is considered degrading, or, generally, because it is inconsistent with an ascetic ideal of life. It is said in the Proverbs that “the glutton shall come to poverty.”6 According to the Laws of Manu, “excessive eating is prejudicial to health, to fame, and to bliss in heaven; it prevents the acquisition of spiritual merit, and is odious among men; one ought, for these reasons, to avoid it carefully.”7 Aristotle maintains that the pleasure with which intemperance is concerned is justly held in disgrace, “since it belongs to us in that we are animals, not in that we are men.”8 Cicero observes that, as mere corporeal pleasure is unworthy the excellency of man’s nature, the nourishment of our bodies “should be with a view not to our pleasure, but to our health and our strength.”9 The same opinion is at least nominally shared by many among ourselves; whereas others, though denying that the gratification of appetite is to be sought for its own sake, admit as legitimate ends for it not only the maintenance of health and strength but also “cheerfulness and the cultivation of the social affections.”10 But most of us are undoubtedly less exacting, if not in theory at least in practice, and really find nothing blamable in pleasures of the table which neither impair health, nor involve a perceptible loss of some greater gratification, nor interfere with duties towards neighbours.11