when he is cursed."1 It is said in the Buddhistic Dhammapada :- “Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule Among men who hate us we dwell free from hatred. . . . Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil by good; let him overcome the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth."2 According to one of the Pahlavi texts, we ought not to indulge in wrathfulness; wrath is one of the fiends besetting man, and "goodness is little in the mind of a man of wrath." 3 In Leviticus hatred is condemned :- "Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart. . . . Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people."4 Sirach, whom I have already quoted, says in another passage, "Forgive thy neighbour the hurt that he has done unto thee, so shall thy sins also be forgiven when thou prayest." 5 According to the Talmud, "whosoever does not persecute them that persecute him, whosoever takes an offence in silence, he who does good because of love, he who is cheerful under his sufferings they are the friends of God, and of them the Scripture says, And they shall shine forth as does the sun at noonday."6 "6 The Koran, whilst repeating the old rule, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, at the same time teaches that Paradise is "for those who repress their rage, and those who pardon men; God loves the kind." 8 Muhammedan 7 Pro tradition puts the following words in the mouth of the Prophet: "Say not, if people do good to us, we will do good to them, and if people oppress us, we will oppress them but resolve that if people do good to you, you will do good to them, and if they oppress you, oppress them not again." " fessor Goldziher emphasises Muhammed's opposition to the traditional rule of the Arabs that an enemy is a proper object of hatred;10 and Syed Ameer Ali has collected various passages from the writings of Muhammedan scholars, which prove that, 1 Laws of Manu, vi. 48. Cf. ibid. viii. 313; Monier-Williams, Indian Wisdom, pp. 444, 446 ; Muir, Additional Moral and Religious Passages, rendered from the Sanskrit, p. 30. 2 Dhammapada, i. 5; xv. 197; xvii. 223. Cf. Jataka Tales, i. 22 ; Oldenberg, Buddha, p. 298. 3 Dînâ-î-Maînôg-î Khirad, ii. 16; xli. II; xxxix. 26. 4 Leviticus, xix. 17 sq. xxiii. 4. 5 Ecclesiasticus, xxviii. 2. x. 6; Proverbs, xxv. 21. Cf. Exodus, Cf. ibid. in spite of what has often been said to the contrary, forgiveness of injuries is by no means foreign to the spirit of Islam.1 Thus the author of the Kashshâf prescribes, "Seek again him who drives you away; give to him who takes away from you; pardon him who injures you for God loveth that you should cast into the depth of your souls the roots of His perfections." 2 That "the sandal-tree perfumes the axe that fells it," is a saying in everyday use among the Muhammedans of India.3 And Lane often heard Egyptians forgivingly say, on receiving a blow from an equal, "God bless thee," "God requite thee good," "Beat me again." The principles of forgiveness had also advocates in Greece and Rome. In one of the Platonic dialogues, Socrates says, "We ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to any one, whatever evil we may have suffered from him"; though he wisely adds that "this opinion has never been held, and never will be held, by any considerable number of persons.5 The Stoics strongly condemned anger as unnatural and unreasonable. "Mankind is born for mutual assistance, anger for mutual ruin."6 cc Anger is a crime of the mind; ... it often is even more criminal than the faults with which it is angry.' 997 He is the best and purest "who pardons others as if he sinned himself daily, but avoids sinning as if he never pardoned." "If any one is angry with you, meet his anger by returning benefits for it." 9 "The cynic loves those who beat him.” 10 8 Forgiveness of enemies is thus by no means an exclusively Christian tenet, although it has never before or after been inculcated with the same emphasis as it was by Jesus. "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." 11 When St. Peter asked, "Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?" Jesus replied, "I say not unto thee, Until seven times but, Until seventy times seven,' "12—that is, as often as he repeats the offence. It would seem that Jesus by these sentences expressly forbade men to avenge themselves, or even 1 Ameer Ali, Ethics of Islam, p. 26 sq Ibid. p. 7. Idem, Life and Teach ings of Mohammed, p. 280. 3 Poole, Studies in Mohammedanism, p. 226. 4 Lane, Modern Egyptians, p. 314 5 Plato, Crito, p. 49. 7 Ibid. i. 16; ii. 6. 8 Pliny, Epistolæ, ix. 22 (viii. 22). 9 Seneca, op. cit. ii. 34. 10 Epictetus, Dissertationes, iii. 22, 54: 11 St. Matthew, v. 44. Cf. ibid. v. 39 sq.; vi. 14 sq.; St. Luke, vi. 27 sqq.; xvii. 3 sq.; St. Mark, xi. 25 sq. 12 St. Matthew, xviii. 21 sq. to feel resentment on their own behalf; and so also he was understood by St. Paul.1 3 2 The rule of retaliation and the rule of forgiveness, however, are not so radically opposed to each other as they appear to be. What the latter condemns is, in reality, not every kind of resentment, but non-moral resentment; not impartial indignation, but personal hatred. It prohibits revenge, but not punishment. According to the Laws of Manu, crime was so indispensably to be followed by punishment, that if the king pardoned a thief or a perpetrator of violence, instead of slaying or striking him, the guilt fell on the king; and if Lao-tsze was an enemy to the infliction of any kind of suffering, it was because he held that in a well-governed State the necessity for punishment could not arise, as crime would cease to exist. The Chinese book, Merits and Errors Scrutinised, which regards it as a merit to refrain from avenging an injury, adds that, "if a man should omit to avenge the injuries of his parents, it would become an error."4 Jesus was certainly not free from righteous indignation. It does not appear that he ever forgave the legalists who sinned against the kingdom of God, and he told his disciples that, if a brother who had trespassed against his brother neglected to hear the church, he should be looked upon as a heathen and a publican. 5 Christian writers have laid much stress upon the circumstance that Jesus enjoined men to forgive their own enemies, but not to abstain from resenting injuries done to others. According to Thomas Aquinas, "the good bear with the wicked to this extent, that, so far as it is proper to do so, they patiently endure at their hands the injuries done to themselves; but they do not bear with them to the extent of enduring the injuries done to God and their neighbours. For Chrysostom says, 'It 1 Romans, xii. 19 sqq.; 1 Thessalonians, v. 14 sq.; Colossians, iii. 12 sq. 2 Laws of Manu, viii. 316, 346 sq. Cf. Gautama, xii. 45; Âpastamba, i. 9. 25. 5. 3 Douglas, Confucianism and Taouism, p. 204. 4 Merits and Errors Scrutinised,' in Indo-Chinese Gleaner, iii. 153. 5 St. Matthew, xviii. 15 sqq. 2 is praiseworthy to be patient under one's own wrongs, but the height of impiety to dissemble injuries done to God.""1 Practically, at least, Christianity has not altered the validity of the Aristotelian rule that anger admits not only of an excess, but of a defect, and that we ought to feel angry at certain things. As Plutarch says, we even think those worthy of hatred who are not vexed at hateful individuals; and we can sympathise with the man who, hearing somebody praise Charillus, king of Sparta, for his gentleness, replied, "How can Charillus be good, who is not harsh even to the bad?" 3 Moreover, the belief in a transcendental retributive justice, in an ultimate punishment of badness, which we meet with in Taouism,* Brahmanism, Buddhism, Christianity," side by side with the doctrine of forgiveness, is based upon the demand that wrong should be resented. 5 It is easy to see why enlightened and sympathetic minds disapprove of resentment and retaliation springing from personal motives. Such resentment is apt to be partial. It is too often directed against persons whom impartial reflection finds to be no proper objects of indignation, and still more frequently it is unduly excessive. As Butler says, "we are in such a peculiar situation, with respect to injuries done to ourselves, that we can scarce any more see them as they really are, than our eye can see itself."7 "As bodies seem greater in a mist, so do little matters in a rage"; hence the old rule that we ought not to punish whilst angry. The more the moral consciousness is influenced by sympathy, the more severely it condemns any retributive infliction of pain which it regards as undeserved; and it seems to be in the first place with a 8 1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, ii.-ii. 108. 1. 2. Cf. Lactantius, De ira Dei, 17. 2 Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, ii. 7. IO; iii. I. 24; iv. 5. 3 sqq. 3 Plutarch, De invidia et odio, 5. 4 Douglas, op. cit. p. 257. 5 Dhammapada, i. 15, 17; x. 137 6 Cf. Romans, xii. 19: "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." 7 Butler, 'Sermon IX.-Upon Forgiveness of Injuries,' in Analogy of Religion, &c. p. 469. 8 Plutarch, De cohibenda ira, II. Montaigne, Essais, ii. 31 (Oeuvres, p. 396). sqq. view to preventing such injustice that teachers of morality have enjoined upon men to love their enemies. It would, indeed, be absurd to blame a person for expressing moral indignation at an act simply because he himself happens to be the offended party; practically we allow him to be even more indignant than the impartial spectator would be, whereas excessive placability often meets with censure. Like Aristotle, we maintain that "to submit to insult, or to overlook an insult offered to our friends, shows a slavish spirit"; and we agree with the Confucian maxims, that injuries should be recompensed, not with kindness, but with justice, and that nobody but he who deserves it should be an object of hatred.2 At the same time, the injunctions of moralists that unjust resentment should be suppressed, are far from introducing any absolutely new element into the estimation of conduct. They only represent a higher stage of a process of moral development the early phases of which are found already in primitive societies. Even the savage who enjoins revenge as a duty, regards revenge under certain circumstances as wrong. 3 The restraining rule of like for like, as we shall see, is an instance of this. The aggressive character of moral disapproval has become more disguised, not only by the more scrutinising attitude towards resentment and retaliation which distinguishes the moral consciousness of a higher type, but by the different way in which the aggressiveness displays itself. The infliction of suffering merely for the sake of retribution is condemned, and the rule is laid down that we should hate, not the sinner, but only the sin. Punishment, which expresses more or less faithfully the moral indignation of the society which inflicts it, is externally similar to an act of revenge; it causes, or is intended 1 Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, iv. 5. 6. 2 Lun Yü, xiv. 36. 3; xvii.9. I, 5; xvii. 24. I. Douglas, Confucianism and Taouism, p. 91. Cf. Chung Yung, x. 3; xxxi. I; xxxiii. 4. 3 Concerning the Dacotahs, Prescott observes, "There are cases where the Indians say retaliation is wrong, and they try to prevent it" (Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, ii. 197). |