In view of the mixed good and evil in the world, thinkers of antiquity, outside of Israel and before the rise of the Stoic philosophy in Greece, could not conceive the universe as being set in motion and directed by one God infinite at once in power and goodness. Even the most penetrating intellect of Greece faltered in his search for unity: “We cannot suppose,” says Plato, “that the universe is ordered by one soul; there must be more than one, probably not less than two—one the author of good, and the other of evil.”302 The seers of Israel alone reached with perfect conviction the height of the great argument, and announced confidently that He who is the author of the good in the world is the author likewise of the evil: “I form the light and create the darkness; I make peace and create evil,” are the words which the prophet Isaiah puts in the mouth of Yahweh.303
The religious thinkers of Persia never reached this lofty viewpoint. It seemed to them, as it seemed to the Greek philosopher, that at least two deities must have been concerned in the creation and ordering of the universe. They believed in the existence of two great powers: a good being, Ahura Mazda, the creator of light and of all beneficent things; and an evil being, Ahriman, the author of darkness and of all baneful creatures. Between these two powers they conceived to be going on a fierce struggle for the mastery, in which ultimate victory was assured to the good Ahura.304
This Persian world philosophy reacted favorably upon the moral character, and, as we shall see further on, contributed to create in ancient Persia a deep consciousness of the eternal distinction between good and evil, a profound sentiment of duty, and an active, strenuous morality.305 It is when contrasted with the world philosophy of Brahmanism and Buddhism that the ethical value of this dualistic philosophy of the old Persian thinkers is best disclosed.
While it is true that the moral qualities attributed by a people to their gods are nothing more nor less than the moral qualities possessed or revered by this people themselves, still it is also true that the moral nature thus given to the gods reacts powerfully upon the ethical life of their worshipers and tends to mold their moral character after the heavenly type. In a word, celestial morality is at once effect and cause.
In the case of no other people of antiquity, except the people of Israel, did the conception of deity exercise a greater influence upon morality than in that of the ancient Persians. The supreme being, Ahura Mazda, was conceived, as we have already noted, as the creator of the light and of all good things, as the god of righteous order and benevolence. He was the lover of truth. Truth was the innermost essence of his being, as love is the innermost essence of the God of Christianity. Farther on we shall see how this conception of deity formed the mold in which was cast the Persian ideal of moral excellence.
Ahura Mazda was the god of the sky. As time passed, Mithra, the god of the sun, gradually came into greater prominence and finally quite eclipsed the at first supreme deity, Ahura. As the solar god he appropriated the ethical attributes of the sky god and became preëeminently the god of light, the champion of truth, and the avenger of lies. He it is who, when not deceived, establisheth nations in victory and strength.306
It was from this solar deity that Zoroastrianism in the later pre-Christian centuries was called Mithraism, under which name, as we shall see, it entered the Greco-Roman world and there became a chief competitor with Christianity for the control and guidance of the moral life of the European nations.
The principle of Persian world philosophy which, next after that of the divided government of the universe, had probably the greatest consequences, and those not wholly favorable, for Persian morality, was the principle of the purity and sacredness of the elements—fire, earth, and water. From this principle or belief were deduced endless ritual requirements whose aim was to preserve these elements from pollution, or to restore their purity after defilement, and thus one large division of the moral code embraced mainly artificial duties, duties which had no vital relation to natural morality, that is, to conduct deriving its sanction from the natural feelings of moral right and wrong.
As the great moral systems of Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism bear each the impress of the moral consciousness of some great teacher, so is it with Zoroastrianism. For the moral ideal of Persia, while doubtless largely the creation of the ethical feelings and convictions of the Iranian race, developed through many centuries of race experiences, nevertheless bears the unmistakable imprint of a unique personality. That the Zarathustra of tradition represents a real historical personage, there can hardly be longer a reasonable doubt.307
The time of Zarathustra’s mission probably falls in the first half of the sixth century B.C. He thus belongs to that era in the history of antiquity when, at various centers of culture, reform movements announced the opening of a new epoch in the moral evolution of the human race.308 The sum of what we may believe to have been his moral teachings was that man’s full duty is purity and sincerity in thought, word, and deed, and an untiring warfare against evil.
The distinctive character of the Persian moral ideal was determined by the Persian dualistic world philosophy. The essence of the moral life is a struggle against evil. The good man is the strong fighter with Ahura against Ahriman and all his creations. There was no place in the ideal for those ascetic virtues—celibacy, fasting, self-mortification—which conferred sainthood in India.309
The married state was regarded as superior to the unmarried: “He who has children,” says the Zend-Avesta, “is far above the childless man.”310 Fasting was condemned as ungodly, for “no one who does not eat has strength to do heavy work of holiness”;311 the well-fed man can fight better than the one who lessens his vitality by fasting, can withstand the cold better, “can strive against the wicked tyrant and smite him on the head.”312 The Zoroastrians regarded Christianity, in the form in which they knew it, with disapproval, because it exalted celibacy and made fasting a virtue.
This moral ideal which made life a strenuous battling for the right was, after the ideal of the Hebrew prophets, the loftiest developed by the ancient world. As we shall see immediately, it tended to make the morality of the ancient Persians “a morality of vigor and manliness.”
Among the special virtues making up the moral ideal, the highest place was assigned the virtue of veracity. It is noteworthy how this virtue was, if not created, at least fostered by the Persian conception of the supreme god, Ahura Mazda, whose symbol was the light.313 As Ahriman was the god of deceit and lies, so was Ahura the god of sincerity and truth. This thought of deity made truthfulness a supreme virtue, for man must in all things take for his model the good spirit on whose side he battles.
Various testimonies bear witness to the high place assigned in the scale of virtues to veracity. There was to be no liar among those persons whom the Persian Noah (Yima) was commanded to bring into the great underground abode, that the earth might be repeopled with a superior race after the deadly cold of the long winter.314 The punishment provided in the Zend-Avesta for false swearing was terrible. The very first time one knowingly tells a lie unto Mithra (the god adjured in taking an oath), “without waiting until it is done again,” he shall be beaten on earth with twice seven hundred stripes, and below in hell shall receive punishment harder than the pain from the cutting off of limbs, from falling down a precipice, from impalement.315
What is especially noteworthy here is that Zoroastrian morals recognize the universality of the law of truthfulness and require that contracts made even with the unfaithful be faithfully kept: “Break not the contract,” says the sacred law; ... “for Mithra stands for both the faithful and the unfaithful.”316 Even more sacred than the engagements of kinsman with kinsman are the engagements between nations, for while a contract between members of the same group is thirtyfold more binding than one between two strangers, a contract between two nations is a thousandfold more binding.317 Here is raised a standard of international morality to which modern statesmen and diplomatists have not yet attained.
Industry was another cardinal virtue of the Zoroastrian ideal of character. Labor was enjoined not only as honorable but as a sacred duty. Wedgwood endeavors to show how this virtue was the outgrowth of the Persian conception of the origin of the universe. In Indian thought the world is not a creation, the work of a divine Creator; it is an emanation from an impersonal, unconscious, primal principle. But in the Persian world-view the universe is conceived as the work of a deity who labors to give it form and shape. This conception of God as a worker reacted powerfully upon the ideal of human excellence. Man must imitate this divine virtue of labor. He must become a co-worker with the good Ahura Mazda. Thus was labor idealized, and all work, even the most lowly, made a sacred thing.318
There is in this view doubtless an element of truth, but it is probable that this duty of industry and thrift upon which such emphasis is laid in the Zend-Avesta was in the beginning taught and enforced by the limited area of fruitful soil and the necessity of careful irrigation and tillage, and that only later the virtue thus engendered received the sanction and support of religion. We may infer this from the fact that agriculture was the most sacred of occupations. “He who sows corn,” says the Zend-Avesta, “sows righteousness.”319 To sow corn, grass, and fruit; to water dry ground and to drain ground that is too wet—this is the duty of man.320
The Zoroastrian code, like the Laws of Manu, gives a large place to man’s duties toward the lower animal creation. But the animal ethics of the Iranian lawgiver are much more reasonable than those of the Hindu legislator. The Buddhist, as we have seen, is enjoined to spare every living thing; there is no distinction made between useful animals and dangerous beasts and noxious reptiles. To such an extreme is this regard for all life carried that agriculture, though a permissible because a necessary occupation, still is looked upon with disfavor for the reason that the plow injures the beings living in the earth.321
On the other hand, the Zoroastrian code distinguishes between beneficent and baneful creatures, declares the first to have been created by the good Ahura and the latter by the evil Ahriman, and makes it the duty of the good man to protect and treat kindly all useful animals, and to destroy all baneful creatures, including noxious plants, such as weeds and brambles. Hence tilling the soil is praised as an especially holy occupation, since the plow destroys the thistles and weeds sown by the evil-disposed Ahriman.
Another important department of Persian ethics was based on the idea of the holiness of the elements—fire, earth, and water. Any defilement of these was a sin, in some cases an unpardonable sin. For instance, burying the corpse of a man or of an animal in the earth, and not disinterring it within two years—“for that deed there is nothing that can pay; ... it is a trespass for which there is no atonement for ever and ever.”322 Equally stringent were the prohibitions against the pollution of the holy elements fire and water, through casting into them any unclean matter.323
We shall perhaps best understand the moral value of such duties as we have to do with in this division of Persian ethics, if we compare them with those duties of the Christian code—Sabbath observances—which are based on the idea of the holiness of a certain portion of time. The ethical feelings evoked in the one case are akin to those evoked in the other.
In the Persian judgment of the soul after death we have the most profound and spiritual conception of the rewards and punishments of the hereafter that has found expression in the ethical teachings of any people. The soul is conceived as being judged by itself. Upon its departure from this life the soul of the faithful is met by a beautiful maiden, “fair as the fairest thing,” who says to him: “I am thy own conscience; I was lovely and thou madest me still lovelier; I was fair and thou madest me still fairer, through thy good thought, thy good speech, and thy good deed.” And then the soul is led into the paradise of endless light. But the soul of the wicked one is met by a hideous old woman, “uglier than the ugliest thing,” who is his own conscience. She says to him: “I am thy bad actions, O youth of evil thoughts, of evil words, of evil deeds, of evil religion. It is on account of thy will and actions that I am hideous and vile.” And then the soul is led down into the hell of endless darkness.324
The remarkable thing about all this is that this profound and spiritual conception of “a mental heaven and hell with which we are now familiar as the only future state recognized by intelligent people” should have found expression at the early period when the faith of the Zend-Avesta was formulated. “While mankind were delivered up to the childish terrors of a future replete with horrors visited upon them from without, the early Iranian sage announced the eternal truth that the rewards of Heaven and the punishments of Hell can only be from within. He gave us, we may fairly say, through the systems which he has influenced, that great doctrine of subjective recompense, which must work an essential change in the mental habits of every one who receives it.”325
In setting for man as his chief moral task a courageous warfare against evil, the Zoroastrian ethics produced a certain exaltation of character, and inspired strenuous activity motived by a deep sense of duty. It created, or concurred with other causes in creating, “a race of zealous Puritans,” a strong, self-reliant people, who disdained all asceticism and indolence.326 Fasting, as we have seen, was regarded as a crime because it weakens the body and unfits one for active exertion.
It is instructive to place the masculine ideal of Persia alongside the feminine ideal of Buddhist India and note the different effects of these strongly contrasted standards of goodness upon the races accepting them as the measure and rule of rational conduct and duty. The Buddhist ideal, as we have seen, is made up largely of the gentler, contemplative, passive virtues, the virtues of the recluse and the ascetic. Its issue in character is quietism. In opposition to this, the Zoroastrian ideal inspires sturdy, virile, active virtues, the moral qualities of the reformer, of the toiler and the fighter. The natural effect of the ideal was to confirm in the Persians all the seemingly original strong ethical qualities of the Iranic race.
We have seen that one of the chief requirements of the Zoroastrian code was truthfulness; man must be veracious even as Ahura Mazda is veracious. Various testimonies assure us that in respect to this virtue there was in ancient Persia a commendable conformity of practice to theory. The feeling for the beauty and nobility of truthfulness was much more fully developed among the Persians than among any other people of ancient or modern times. They were a truth-revering and a truth-speaking people. Lying was the great crime. To lie, to deceive, was to be a follower of Ahriman, the god of lies and deceit. Hence lying was regarded as a species of treason against Ahura Mazda. “The most disgraceful thing in the world,” affirms Herodotus, in his account of the Persians, “they think, is to tell a lie; the next worse is to owe a debt, because, among other reasons, the debtor is obliged to tell lies.”327 In his report of the Persian system of education he says, “The boys are taught to ride, to draw the bow, and to speak the truth.”328 I was not wicked, nor a liar, is the substance and purport of many a record of the ancient kings. Rawlinson adduces this as evidence of their veneration for truthfulness. “The special estimation in which truth was held among the Persians,” he says, “is evidenced in a remarkable manner by the inscriptions of Darius, where lying is taken as the representative of all evil. It is the great calamity of the usurpation of the pseudo-Smerdis, that ‘then the lie became abounding in the land.’ ‘The Evil One (?) invented lies that they should deceive the state.’ Darius is favored by Ormazd, ‘because he was not a heretic, nor a liar, nor a tyrant.’ His successors are exhorted not to cherish, but to cast into utter perdition, ‘the man who may be a liar, or who may be an evildoer.’ His great fear is lest it may be thought that any part of the record which he has set up has been ‘falsely related,’ and he even abstains from relating certain events of his reign ‘lest to him who may hereafter peruse the tablet, the many deeds that have been done by him may seem to be ‘falsely recorded.’”329
The Persian kings, shaming in this all other nations ancient and modern, kept sacredly their pledged word;330 only once were they ever even charged with having broken a treaty with a foreign power.331
That truthfulness was a national virtue of the Persians is further attested by the fact that Herodotus represents them as always relying implicitly upon every tale told them by the lying Greeks whom they had taken captive. It never seemed to occur to them that even an enemy could be guilty of so awful a blasphemy as lying. It was this trait which led to their undoing at Salamis by the unscrupulous and mendacious Themistocles.332
That exaltation of character which we have remarked as springing naturally from the moral dignity with which man was invested by being made an associate of the good Ahura in his struggle with the wicked Ahriman may be noticed especially in the aims and undertakings of the Persian monarchs in the period before the moral decadence of the Iranian civilization set in, and while the strength of the ethical appeal of the Zoroastrian ideal was yet unimpaired. This appears in all their records, which make the aim of their conquests to be the overthrow of the powers of evil and disorder and the setting up of a kingdom of righteousness in the world. The inscriptions of Darius I read like the letters of the Puritan Cromwell. Indeed, just as it was the masculine moral ideal of English Puritanism which helped to make England great, and strong to play her part in the transactions of modern times, so we may believe it was the strenuous moral ideal of Zoroastrianism that helped to make Persia great, and strong to play her great rôle in the affairs of the ancient world. In truth, the ideal is still an unexpended force in history. It seems to have given immortality to the people that it inspired; for it can hardly be doubted that it is largely owing to their active practical morality that the Parsees in India, the representatives to-day of the old Zoroastrian faith, constitute such a dominant element in the Indian communities of which they form a part.333