The origin and development of the moral ideas

In various religions we meet with the idea that a person appeases or gives pleasure to the deity by subjecting himself to suffering or deprivation. This belief finds expression in all sorts of ascetic practices. We read of Christian ascetics who lived in deserted dens of wild beasts, or in dried-up wells, or in tombs; who disdained all clothes, and crawled abroad like animals covered only by their matted hair; who ate nothing but corn which had become rotten by remaining for a month in water; who spent forty days and nights in the middle of thorn-bushes, and for forty years never lay down.79 Hindu ascetics remain in immovable attitudes with their faces or their arms raised to heaven, until the sinews shrink and the posture assumed stiffens into rigidity; or they expose themselves to the inclemency of the weather in a state of absolute nudity, or tear their bodies with knives, or feed on carrion and excrement.80 Among the Muhammedans of India there are fakirs who have been seen dragging heavy chains or cannon balls, or crawling upon their hands and knees for years; others have been found lying upon iron spikes for a bed; and others, again, have been swinging for months before a slow fire with a tropical sun blazing overhead.81 Among modern Jews some of the more sanctimonious members of the synagogue have been known to undergo the penance of voluntary flagellation before the commencement of the fast of atonement, two persons successively inflicting upon each other thirty-nine stripes or thirteen lashes with a triple scourge.82 According to the Zoroastrian Yasts, thirty

strokes with the Sraoshô-karana is an expiation which purges people from their sins, and makes them fit for offering a sacrifice.83 Herodotus tells us that the ancient Egyptians beat themselves while the things offered by them as sacrifices were being burned, and that the Carian dwellers in Egypt on such occasions cut their faces with knives.84 Among the ancient Mexicans blood-drawing was a favourite and most common mode of expiating sin and showing devotion. “It makes one shudder,” says Clavigero, “to read the austerities which they exercised upon themselves, either in atonement of their transgressions or in preparation for their festivals. They mangled their flesh as if it had been insensible, and let their blood run in such profusion, that it appeared to be a superfluous fluid of the body.”85 Self-mortification also formed part of the religious cult in many uncivilised tribes in North America.86 “The Indian,” Colonel Dodge observes, “believes, with many Christians, that self-torture is an act most acceptable to God, and the extent of pleasure that he can give his god is exactly measured by the amount of suffering that he can bear without flinching.”87

The idea underlying religious asceticism has no doubt been derived from several different sources. It should first be noticed that certain ascetic practices have originally been performed for another purpose, and only afterwards come to be regarded as means of propitiating or pleasing the deity through the suffering involved in them. This, as we have seen, is the case with certain fasts, and also with sexual asceticism.88 When an act is supposed to be connected with supernatural danger, the evil (real or imaginary) resulting from it is readily interpreted as a sign of divine anger and the act itself is regarded as being forbidden by a god. If then the abstinence from it implies suffering, as is in some degree the case with fasting and sexual continence, the conclusion is drawn that the god delights in such suffering. The same inference is, moreover, made from the fact that such abstinences are enjoined in connection with religious worship, though the primary motive for this injunction was fear of pollution. Beating or scourging, again, was in certain cases originally a mode of purification, intended to wipe off and drive away a dangerous contagion either personified as demoniacal or otherwise of a magical character.

And although the pain inflicted on the person beaten was at first not the object of the act but only incidental to it, it became subsequently the chief purpose of the ceremony, which was now regarded as a mortification well pleasing to the god.89 This change of ideas seems likewise to be due both to the tendency of the supernatural contagion to develop into a divine punishment in case it is not removed by the painful rite, and also to the circumstance that purification is held to be a necessary accompaniment of acts of religious worship. The Egyptian sacrifice described by Herodotus was combined with purificatory fasting as well as beating.90 Among the Jews, before the commencement of the fast of atonement, whilst a few very religious persons undergo the penance of flagellation, “some purify themselves by ablutions.”91 And that the original object of the scourging mentioned in the Yasts was to purify the worshipper is suggested by the fact that he on the same occasion had to wash his body three days and three nights.92 But it should also be remembered that religious exaltation, when it has reached its highest stage, may express itself in self-laceration;93 and the deity is naturally supposed to be pleased with the outward expression of such an emotion in his devotees.

An ascetic practice may also be the survival of an earlier sacrifice. We have seen that this is frequently the case with fasting and almsgiving, and the same may hold true of other forms of asceticism.94 The essence of the act then no longer lies in the benefit which the god derives from it, but in the self-denial or self-mortification which it costs the worshipper. In the sacred books of India “austerity” is mentioned as a means of expiation side by side with sacrifice, fasting, and giving gifts.95

When an ascetic practice develops out of a previous custom of a different origin, it may be combined with an idea which by itself has been a frequent source of self-inflicted pain, to wit, the belief that such pain is an expiation for sin, that it may serve as a substitute for a punishment which would otherwise be inflicted by the offended god; and almost inseparably connected with this belief there may be that desire to suffer which is so often, vaguely or distinctly, involved in genuine repentance.96 The idea of expiation very largely underlies the penitential discipline of the Christian Church and the asceticism of its saints. From the days of Tertullian and Cyprian the Latins were familiar with the notion that the Christian has to propitiate God, that cries of pain, sufferings, and deprivations are means of appeasing his anger, that God takes strict account of the quantity of the atonement, and that, where there is no guilt to have blotted out, those very means are regarded as merits.97 According to the doctrine of the Church, penance should in all grave cases be preceded by sorrow for the sin and also by confession, either public or private; repentance, as we have noticed above, is the only ground on which pardon can be given by a scrupulous judge.98 But the notion was only too often adopted that the penitential practice itself was a compensation for sin, that a man was at liberty to do whatever he pleased provided he was prepared to do penance afterwards, and that a person who, conscious of his frailty, had laid in a large stock of vicarious penance in anticipation of

future necessity, had a right “to work it out,” and spend it in sins.99 The idea that sins may be expiated by certain acts of self-mortification is familiar both to Muhammedans100 and Jews.101 According to Zoroastrian beliefs, it is possible to wipe out by peculiarly severe atonements not only the special sin on account of which the atonement is performed, but also other offences committed in former times or unconsciously.102 In the sacred books of the Hindus we meet with a strong conviction that pain suffered in this life will redeem the sufferer from punishment in a future existence. It is said that “men who have committed crimes and have been punished by the king go to heaven, being pure like those who performed meritorious deeds”;103 and the same idea is at the bottom of their penitential system.104 But in Brahmanism, as in Catholicism, the effect of ascetic practices is supposed to go beyond mere expiation. They are regarded as means of accumulating religious merit or attaining superhuman powers. Brahmanical poems tell of marvellous self-mortifications by which sages of the past obtained influence over the gods themselves; nay, even the power wielded by certain archdemons over men and gods is supposed to have been acquired by the practice of religious austerities.105 How largely ascetic practices are due to the idea of expiation is indicated by the fact that they hardly occur among nations who have no vivid sense of sin, like the Chinese before the introduction of Taouism and Buddhism,106 and the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Scandinavians.