The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (mini ebook reader .TXT) π
The Egyptians were islanders, cut off from the rest of the world by sand and sea. They were rooted in their valley; they lived entirely upon its fruits, and happily these fruits sometimes failed. Had they always been able to obtain enough to eat, they would have remained always in the semi-savage state.
It may appear strange that Egypt should have suffered from famine, for there was no country in the ancient world where food was so abundant and so cheap. Not only did the land produce enormous crops of corn; the ditches and hollows which were filled by the overflowing Nile supplied a harvest of wholesome and nourishing aquatic plants, and on the borders of the des
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best of all things find their way, so Rome was the market of
the Mediterranean world; but there was this difference between
the two, that in Rome the articles were not paid for. Money,
indeed, might be given, but it was money which had not been
earned, and which therefore would come to its end at last.
Rome lived upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face.
Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was no
industry in Rome. By day the Ostia road was crowded with carts
and muleteers, carrying to the great city the silks and spices
of the East, the marble of Asia Minor, the timber of the Atlas,
the grain of Africa and Egypt; and the carts brought nothing
out but loads of dung. That was their return cargo. London
turns dirt into gold. Rome turned gold into dirt. And how, it
may be asked, was the money spent? The answer is not difficult
to give. Rome kept open house. It gave a dinner party every
day; the emperor and his favourites dined upon nightingales and
flamingo tongues, on oysters from Britain, and on fishes from
the Black Sea; the guards received their rations; and bacon,
wine, oil, and loaves were served out gratis to the people.
Sometimes entertainments were given in which a collection of
animals as costly as that in Regentβs Park was killed for the
amusement of the people. Constantine transferred the capital to
Constantinople; and now two dinners were given every day. Egypt
found the bread for one, and Africa found it for the other. The
governors became satraps, the peasantry became serfs, the
merchants and land owners were robbed and ruined, the empire
stopped payment, the legions of the frontier marched on the
metropolis, the dikes were deserted, and then came the deluge.
The empire had been already divided. There was an empire of the
West, or the Latin world; there was an empire of the East, or
the Greek world. The first was overrun by the Germans, the
second by the Arabs. But Constantinople remained unconquered
throughout the Dark Ages; and Rome, though taken and sacked,
was never occupied by the barbarians. In these two great cities
the languages and laws of the classical times were preserved;
and from Rome religion was diffused throughout Europe; to Rome
a spiritual empire was restored.
The condition of the Roman world at one time bore a curious
resemblance to that of China. In each of these great empires,
separated by a continent, the principal feature was that of
peace. Vast populations dwelt harmoniously together, and were
governed by admirable laws. The frontiers of each were
threatened by barbarians. The Chinese built a wall along the
outskirts of the steppes; the Romans built a wall along the
Danube and the Rhine. In China, a man dressed in yellow
received divine honours; in Rome, a man dressed in purple
received divine honours; in each country the religion was the
religion of the state, and the emperor was the representative
of God. In each country, also, a religious revolution occurred.
A young Indian prince, named Sakya Muni, afflicted by the
miseries of human life which he beheld, cast aside his wealth
and his royal destiny, became a recluse, and devoted his life
to the study of religion. After long years of reading and
reflection he took the name of Buddha, or βthe Awakened.β He
declared that the soul after death migrates into another form,
according to its deeds and according to its thoughts. This was
the philosophy of the Brahmins. But he also proclaimed that all
existence is passion, misery, and pain, and that by subduing
the evil emotions of the heart the soul will hereafter finally
obtain the calm of non-existence, the peaceful Nirvana, the
unalloyed, the unclouded Not to Be.
A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have
succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of
metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its
beautiful morality. The men who laboured in the fields had
always been taught that the Brahmins were the aristocracy of
heaven, and would be as high above them in a future state as
they were upon the earth. The holy books which God had revealed
were not for them, the poor dark-skinned labourers, to read;
burning oil poured into their ears was the punishment by law
for so impious an act. And now came a man who told them that
those books had not been revealed at all, and that God was no
respecter of persons; that the happiness of men in a future
state depended, not upon their birth, but upon their actions
and their thoughts. Buddhism triumphed for a time in Hindustan,
but its success was greatest among the stranger natives in the
north-west provinces, the Indo-Scythians and the Greeks. Then
came a period of patriotic feeling; the Brahmins preached a war
of independence; the new religion was associated with the
foreigners, and both were driven out together. But Buddhism
became the religion of Ceylon, Burmah, and Siam, and finally
entered the Chinese Empire. It suffered and survived bloody
persecutions. It became a licensed religion, and spread into
the steppes of Tartary among those barbarians by whom China was
destined to be conquered. The religion of the Buddhists was
transformed; its founder was worshipped as a god; there was a
doctrine of the incarnation; they had their own holy books,
which they declared to have been revealed; they established
convents and nunneries, splendid temples, adorned with images,
and served by priests with shaven heads, who repeated prayers
upon rosaries, and who taught that happiness in a future state
could best be obtained by long prayers and by liberal presents
to the Church.
At the period of the importation of Buddhism into China, a
similar event occurred in the Roman world. It was
the pagan theory that each country was governed by its own
gods. The proper religion for each man, said an oracle of
Delphi, is the religion of his fatherland. Yet these gods were
cosmopolitan; they punished or rewarded foreigners. Imilkon,
having offended the Greek gods in the Sicilian wars, made
atonement to them when he returned to Carthage: he offered
sacrifices in the Phoenician temples, but according to the
milder ceremonies of the Greeks. The Philistines sent back the
ark with a propitiatory present to Jehovah. Alexander, in Asia
Minor, offered sacrifices to the gods of the enemy. The Romans,
when they besieged a town, called upon its tutelary god by
name, and offered him bribes to give up the town. Rome waged
war against the world, but not against the gods; she did not
dethrone them in their own countries; she offered them the
freedom of the city. Men of all races came to live in Rome;
they were allowed to worship their own gods; the religions of
the empire were regularly licensed; Egyptian temples and Syrian
chapels sprang up in all directions. But though the Romans
considered it right that Egyptians should worship Isis, and
that Alexandrines should worship Serapis, they justly
considered it a kind of treason for Romans to desert their
tutelary gods. For this reason, foreign religions were
sometimes proscribed. It was also required from the subjects of
the empire that they should offer homage to the gods of Rome,
and to the genius or spirit of the emperor; not to the man, but
to the soul that dwelled within. The Jews alone were exempt
from these regulations. It was believed that they were a
peculiar people, or rather that they had a peculiar god. While
the other potentates of the celestial world lived in harmony
together, Jehovah was a sullen and solitary being, who
separated his people from the rest of mankind, forbade them to
eat or drink with those who were not of their own race, and
threatened to punish them if they worshipped any gods but him.
On this account the Roman government, partly to preserve the
lives of their subjects, and partly out of fear for themselves,
believing that Jehovah like the other gods, had always an
epidemic at his command, treated the Jews with exceptional
indulgence.
These people were scattered over all the world; they had
their Ghetto or Petticoat Lane in every great city of
the empire; their religion, so superior to that of the pagans,
had attracted much attention from the Gentiles. Ovid, in his
βArt of Love,β counsels the dandy who seeks a mistress to
frequent the theatre, or Temple of Isis, or the synagogue on
the Sabbath day. But the Jews in Rome, like the Jews in London,
did not attempt to make proselytes, and received them with
reluctance and distrust. Their sublime faith, divested of its
Asiatic customs, was offered to the Romans some Jewish heretics
called Christians or Nazarenes.
A young man named Joshua or Jesus, a carpenter by trade,
believed that the world belonged to the devil, and that God
would shortly take it from him, and that he the Christ or
Anointed would be appointed by God to judge the souls of men,
and to reign over them on earth. In politics he was a leveller
and communist, in morals he was a monk; he believed that only
the poor and the despised would inherit the kingdom of God. All
men who had riches or reputations would follow their dethroned
master into everlasting pain. He attacked the church-going,
sabbatarian ever-praying Pharisees; he declared that piety was
worthless if it were praised on earth. It was his belief that
earthly happiness was a gift from Satan, and should therefore
be refused. If a man was poor in this world, that was good; he
would be rich in the world to come. If he were miserable and
despised, he had reason to rejoice; he was out of favour with
the ruler of this world, namely Satan, and therefore he would
be favoured by the new dynasty. On the other hand, if a man
were happy, rich, esteemed, and applauded, he was for ever
lost. He might have acquired his riches by industry; he might
have acquired his reputation by benevolence, honesty, and
devotion; but that did not matter; he had received his reward.
So Christ taught that men should sell all that they had and
give to the poor; that they should renounce all family ties;
that they should let to-morrow take care of itself; that they
should not trouble about clothes: did, not God adorn the
flowers of the fields? He would take care of them also if they
would fold their hands together and have faith, and abstain
from the impiety of providing for the future. The principles of
Jesus were not conducive to the welfare of society; he was put
to death by the authorities; his disciples established a
commune; Greek Jews were converted by them, and carried the new
doctrines over all the world. The Christians in Rome were at
first a class of men resembling the Quakers. They called one
another brother and sister; they adopted a peculiar garb, and
peculiar forms of speech; the Church was at first composed of
women, slaves, and illiterate artisans but it soon became the
religion of the people in the towns. All were converted
excepting the rustics (pagani) and the intellectual freethinkers, who formed the aristocracy. Christianity was at first
a republican religion; it proclaimed the equality of souls; the
bishops were the representatives of God, and the bishops were
chosen by the people. But when the emperor adopted Christianity
and made it a religion of the state, it became a part of
imperial government, and the parable of Dives was forgotten.
The religion of the Christians was transformed; its founder was
worshipped as a god; there was a doctrine of the incarnation;
they
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