Part 8

The influence of Buddhism is traceable in the modifications of the original legend, which show the sacrifice not accepted as it was in the case of Vishnu, and to some extent in that of Usinára, whose earthly life terminates. With Buddha the principle of remission supersedes that of sacrifice. His argument against the Brahmanic sacrifice of life was strong. When they pointed to these predatory laws of nature in proof of their faith that the gods approved the infliction of pain and death, he asked them why they did not sacrifice their own children; why they did not offer to the gods the most valuable lives. The fact was that they were outgrowing direct human sacrifices--preserving self-mortifications--and animals were slain in commutation of costlier offerings. This moral revolution is traceable in the gradual constitution of Vishnu as a Saviour. There is a later legend that Vishnu approached Sivi in the form of a Brahman in want of food, but would accept none except the flesh of Sivi’s son Vrihad-Garbha. The king killed and cooked his son and placed the food before the Brahman, who then bade him eat it himself. Sivi prepared to do so, when Vishnu stayed his hand, revealed himself, restored the son to life, and vanished. This legend belongs to a transitional period. Its outcome is found in several Hindu folk-tales, one of which has been told by the charming story-teller, Mr. W. R. S. Ralston. The king of a country is dying, and a poor man is informed of the fact by a disguised “fate.” He asks if there is no way to save the king’s life, and is told there is but one way; if a child should be sacrificed, with its own consent, that would save the king. The man returns home and proposes to his wife to slay their beautiful little boy. She consents; the boy having also consented, the knife is about to descend on the child, when the fates appear, announcing that they only wished to try his loyalty to his king, who had already recovered.

We may feel pretty certain that originally that king was a deity, though not so certain that the knife was arrested without killing anything at all. In several popular fables we find the story preserved essentially in the old sacrificial form, to teach the rewards of self-sacrifice, though, in order to escape the scandal of a human sacrifice, the self-devotion is ascribed to animals. Thus, in the _Panchatantra_, a pigeon roasts itself to save a famished bird-catcher, who had just captured his mate; and the bird-catcher presently seeing its radiant form rising to heaven, spends his life consuming his flesh in the fire of devotion, in order that he also may ascend there.

In the Hebrew story corresponding to that of Vishnu and Sivi, the Hindu Abraham, we may see that where a god is concerned the actual sacrifice cannot be omitted. That may do in the case of a dying king or hungry hawk, but not for a deity. In the case of Abraham and Isaac the demand is not remitted but commuted. The ram is accepted instead of Isaac. But even so much concession could hardly be recognized by the Hebrew priesthood as an allowable variation from a direct demand of Jahve, and so the command is said to have been given by Elohim, its modification by Jahve. The cautious transformation is somewhat in the spirit of the disguises of the Aryan deities, who may partially revoke as gods the orders they gave as hawks. It would indicate a more advanced idea if we found Jahve remitting a claim of his own instead of one made by the Elohim.

It is worthy of a remark that in some regions where this change of names in the story of Abraham’s sacrifice is overlooked or unknown by Semitic religionists, there has sprung up a tradition that the sacrifice was completed, and the patriarch’s son miraculously restored to life. Thus, in another branch of the Jewish religion we find Mohammed flinching at the Biblical story. He does not like to admit that Allah altered his word and purpose except for a serious consideration, so he says, “We ransomed him with a noble victim.” The Moslems believe that Isaac was not then born, and that it was Ishmael across whose throat Abraham actually drew the knife, which was miraculously kept from killing the lad, according to some, but others say resulted in a death and resurrection.

In the year 1879 the highly educated State of Massachusetts was thrilled with horror by the tidings that a man named Freeman had offered up his beautiful and only child, Edith Freeman, as a sacrifice to God. It occurred in the historical town of Pocasset. A thousand years ago the Northmen who first discovered America wintered there, and possibly they there offered human sacrifices to their god Odin--that is, if they got hold of one or two red men; for there has been a notable tendency among men in such cases to prefer other victims than themselves for their gods. Since that first landing of white men in America the religion of Odin had yielded to that of Christ; Pocasset and all New England had been converted to Christianity; the Bible had found its way into every home. Yet this well-to-do citizen, Mr. Freeman, and his wife, had learned in Sunday School about Abraham’s touching proof of his faith. They had pondered the lesson until they heard the voice of Abraham’s God summoning them to a similar sacrifice, and they committed a deed which probably would have shocked even those rude Vikings who wintered at Pocasset a thousand years before. So much might the worship of a pitiless primitive deity arrest the civilisation of a household in the land of Channing and Parker. They prayed over the little girl, then the knife was plunged into her heart. Little Edith is now in her grave. The God of Abraham and Isaac got his pound of flesh this time. The devout priest of that horrible altar has just passed from his prison to an asylum. To the many who have visited him he puts questions hard to be answered. “Do you believe the Bible or not?” he says. “If you do, and have read the account of Abraham, why should you deny that God could require a man to sacrifice his child? He so required of me. I _did_ hope and believe that he would stay my hand before the blow fell. When he did not I still believed he would raise my child to life. But that is his own affair. I have given that which I loved most to God because He commanded me.” The American people waited to see whether a Christian community which trains up children to admire the faith of Abraham would hang them when they grow up to imitate that faith so impressed upon them. The embarrassing dilemma was escaped after eight months, by getting Freeman into an asylum for the insane, without trial. A rather mean way of confessing that theocratic piety is republican insanity!

I observed, soon after the occurrence of this tragedy, a picture of it in the _Police News_ exposed in the shop windows of London. The designer had placed a crucifix near the little victim’s head. It is probable that Freeman and his wife never saw a crucifix in their lives; they belong to the hardest, baldest dogmatic Protestantism. The rude artist perhaps placed the crucifix in his picture because the Abrahamic sacrifice was supposed to be typical of a holier one--a sacrifice in which a Son was offered up to satisfy the fatal law of a Father. In the human sacrifice symbolised by that crucifix culminated all these sacrifices of which mention has been made; and there was embodied that principle which has maintained through the ages that though to forgive may be human, to avenge is divine.

Let us return now to Shylock and the Merchant whose life is forfeit. Shylock is a primæval Jew; he represents the law, the letter and rigour of it. He is Indra tearing Vishnu’s breast; Elohim demanding Isaac’s death; the First Person exacting the Second Person’s atoning blood. His bond, his oath registered in heaven, its sanction by Venetian law, are by him identified with eternal justice. It is the irrevocable “thing spoken,” _fatum_, weird, or word. Portia is exact in telling him that he represents that “justice” in whose course, “none of us should see salvation.” The Jew personates his ancient god precisely. Nor is there wanting a certain majesty in his position. There is nothing mean about Shylock now, whatever there may have been at first. He has been called avaricious. But, as we have already seen (XII.), the wealth of the Jews was the main factor in their survival. There is, indeed, an illustration of this in the only version of the Bond legend which makes any pretension to be considered historical. A Jew named Cenéda forfeited a pound of his flesh to a Christian merchant, on a wager; the case was brought before the Pope, Sixtus V., who decided that the Christian must pay two thousand scudi to his treasury for attempting manslaughter, and the Jew pay in an equal sum for having hazarded his life, that being a taxable property belonging to the Pope. Balzac tells us of a mediæval seneschal in France who declared the Jews to be the best taxgatherers in his region. It was his custom to let them gain money as bees collect honey: then he would swoop down on their hive and take it all away. The Jews were driven by oppressive statutes to the dealings in money which brought opprobrium upon them; and in hating Antonio because he lent money without interest, and so lowered the rate of usance in Venice, Shylock was hating him for undermining the existence of his tribe. Shylock scorns thrice his principal. For now he has been summoned by his own woes, the taking away of his daughter and his property, including that ring mourned because given by his lost Leah--artfully contrasted with the surrender by the Christian lovers of the rings they had vowed never to part with--to stand forth as an avenger of the ages of wrong heaped upon his race. That is an Elohistic moment for Shylock, and ducats become dross in its presence. When the full tidings of his woes and wrongs are told him he cries, “The curse never fell upon our nation till now: I never felt it till now.” Thenceforth we may see in Shylock the impersonation of the divine avenger of a divinely chosen people, and the majesty of his law confronting an Edomite world.

On the other hand stands Antonio, representing rather feebly, until he too is summoned from being a mere rich merchant to become a shorn victim, the opposite principle. He stands for the Christ, the Forgiver, the Sufferer. In the course of its travels the legend had combined with one told by Hyginus. The patriot Moros having conspired to rid his country of its tyrant, falls into the hands of that tyrant, Dionysius of Sicily, who orders him to be crucified. But Moros is allowed a respite and absence of three days to visit his sister, his friend Selenuntius having agreed to become his hostage. On his way back, Moros is impeded by a swollen river, and when he reaches the place of execution finds his friend on the point of being nailed to the cross. The two friends now insist each on being crucified for the other, at which sight Dionysius is so affected that he releases both, resolves to be a more humane king, and asks the friends to take him as “the third in their bond of friendship.” It is remarkable that this legend (which suggested to Schiller his ballad _Die Bürgschaft_, the Suretyship) should have been a popular one at the beginning of the Christian era, introducing as it does an exactor of vicarious suffering--that too by a cross--and ending with the tyrant becoming one in a trinity of friendship.

Shakespeare has brought this vicarious feature into a prominence it never had in any version he could ever have seen, and his art, creating as it must in organic consistency, has dramatised the psychological history of mankind.

Antonio, the merchant called on to suffer, is the man who gained nothing at all from the bond. He has incurred the danger and penalty in order that his rather worthless friend Bassanio may get the money necessary to secure a rich marriage which shall free him from his debts. It is the just suffering for the unjust. Antonio is the man who gives, hoping for nothing again; in low simplicity he lends out money gratis; and, when Shylock agrees to lend the three thousand ducats, the merchant says, “This Hebrew will turn Christian; he grows kind.” At the trial, Antonio speaks like the predestined victim:

I am a tainted wether of the flock, Meetest for death.

And, when the trial is over, Antonio is the only man who offers to relax his hold on the Jew’s property. He gives up his own half, and takes the other only to give it away to Shylock’s daughter and her husband.

To be kind Antonio calls Christian; but it was not that spirit which finally brought Shylock into the same fold with his judges. His life is spared on condition of his becoming a Christian. Professor Morley and other critics say that was harsh. But Shylock is no longer a genuine Jew, and Shakespeare properly relieves that race of his connection. The Jews had indeed, in primitive ages, begun with the eye-for-an-eye principle, but fiery trials had long taught them patience under injury. Shylock, reminding Antonio, when he asks help, of his outrages, says:

Still have I borne it with a patient shrug, For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.

So had it been for many ages, and the Jew had relegated the principle of vengeance to his fossil theology, practically becoming the patient victim; while, on the other hand, Christianity, reaching the throne, had antiquated Christ’s principle of mercy, and was dealing out the rigours of the Judaic law which Israel had outgrown by suffering. Shylock had grandly asserted the humanity of the Jew, in the first words of that kind ever heard in Europe; but he had gone on to assert his _Christianized_ nature. “If we are like you in the rest, we will be like you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? revenge; if a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute.” But when Shylock thus repairs back to the old eye-for-an-eye spirit, when he draws from the armoury of the ancient law the old weapon of retaliation, it is only to find that the sacrificial knife grown rusty for a Jew is bright and keen enough in Christian hands. In pressing to practise the blood-atonement and vicarious principle he enters upon Christian ground, and Shakspeare rightly baptizes him a Christian.

We may naturally question whether Shakspeare meant this irony. Did he intend any subtle hit when he made these Christians claim as a co-religionist, ripe for baptism, a man who had just attempted to take a fellow-man’s life? That cannot be affirmed; but it is notable that there should be in the play another passage liable to that construction. Shylock’s enemies have just converted his daughter Jessica into a good Christian; and the first sign of the work of grace in her heart is the facility with which she steals and squanders her father’s money. Shakspeare does not fail to connect with this pious robbery the Christian customs of the time towards Jews. When the robbery and elopement have been planned, the Jew’s Christian servant, Lancelot, says to Jessica:

There will come a Christian by Will be worth a Jewess’ eye.

That seems to be a play upon the then familiar phrase “worth a Jew’s eye”--a Jew having often to pay an enormous sum in order to avoid having his eye put out. With that Christian usage the poet apparently connects the robbery of Shylock’s treasure. So by adopting the Christian usage of the time, by saying to Antonio what King John said to the Jews--“Your money or your flesh”--Shylock had given evidence of a change of heart, and his right place was in the Christian fold.

But among all these representative figures of the Venetian court-room, transformations from the flying doves and pursuing hawks, bound victims and exacting deities of ancient mythology, there is one who possesses a significance yet to be considered. That is Portia. Who is this gentle woman in judicial costume? She is that human heart which in every age, amid hard dogmatic systems and priestly intolerance, has steadily appealed against the whole vindictive system--whether Jewish or Christian--and, even while outwardly conforming, managed to rescue human love and virtue from it. With his wonted yet ever-marvellous felicity, Shakspeare has made the genius of this human sentiment slipping through the technicalities of priest-made law a woman. In the mythology of dooms and spells it is often that by the seed of the woman they are broken: the Prince must remain a Bear till Beauty shall offer to be his bride; the Flying Dutchman shall find repose if a maiden shall voluntarily share his sorrow. It is, indeed the woman-soul which has silently veiled the rude hereditary gods and laws of barbarism--the pitiless ones--with a host of gentle saints and intercessors, until the heartless systems have been left to theologians. Inside the frowning buttresses of dogmatic theology the heart of woman has built up for the home a religion of sympathy and charity.

Portia does not argue against the technique of the law. She agrees to call the old system justice--so much the worse for justice. In the outcome she shows that this so-called justice is no justice at all. And when she has shown that the letter of “justice” kills, and warned Shylock that he can be saved from the fatal principle he has raised only by the spirit that gives life, she is out of the case, save for a last effort to save him from the blind law he has invoked. The Jew now sues before a Christian Shylock. And Portia--like Mary, and all sweet interceding spirits that ever softened stern gods in human hope--turns from the judicial Jahves of the bench to the one forgiving spirit there. “What mercy can you render him, Antonio?” The Christian Gratiano interposes, “A halter gratis: nothing else, for God’s sake.” A natural appeal for the victim-loving God; but the forgiving Christ is heard, however faintly, above the Christian, and Antonio forgives his part of Shylock’s penalty.

“Vengeance is mine,” says the deity derived by fear from the remorseless course of sun and star, ebb and flow, frost and fire. Forgiveness is the attribute of man. We may reverse Portia’s statement, and say that, instead of Mercy dropping as the gentle rain from heaven, it is projected into heaven from compassionate human hearts beneath. And heavenly power doth then show likest man’s when mercy seasons the vengeance of nature. From the wild forces above not only droppeth gentle rain, but thunder and lightning, famine and pestilence; it is man with his lightning-rod, his sympathy, his healing art, who turns them from their path and interposes a shield from their fury. When, as the two walked together in the night, Leigh Hunt looked up to the heaven of stars, and said, “God, the Beautiful,” Carlyle looked, and said, “God, the Terrible.” It was the ancient worshipper of the Laws of Nature beside Abou ben Adhem, who loving not the Lord, yet loved his fellow men, and sees a human sweetness in the stars. All religions, beginning with trembling sacrifices to elemental powers personified--powers that never forgive--end with the worship of an ideal man, the human lover and Saviour. That evolution is invariable. Criticism may find this or that particular deified man limited and imperfect, and may discard him. It may take refuge in pure theism, as it is called. But it amounts to the same thing. What it worships is still a man--an invisible, vast man, but still a man. To worship eternal love, supreme wisdom, ideal moral perfection, is still to worship man, for we know such attributes only in man. Therefore the Shylock-principle is non-human nature, hard natural law moving remorselessly on its path from cause to effect; the Portia-principle, the quality of Mercy, means the purely human religion, which, albeit for a time using the terms of ancient nature-worship and alloyed with its spirit, must be steadily detached from these, and on the ruins of every sacrificial altar and dogma build the temple whose only services shall be man’s service to man.

XIV.

THE WANDERING JEW IN FOLK-LORE.

In the East and South, beneath climes that suggest an ideal paradise of repose or idle felicity, the undying saints were represented as dwelling in enchanted islands far from the toiling world, or slumbering in secret grottoes, while those whose immortality was a doom were compelled to roam restlessly over the earth. But when these myths had migrated into the active regions of Europe they were steadily transformed. It was felt to be hardly a satisfactory distribution of parts for the saintly immortals to be sleeping or enjoying themselves with fairies while the evil ones were so busy careering through earth and air. So, gradually the saintly sleepers awake. The Seven Sleepers sally forth as the Seven Champions of Christendom. Joseph of Arimathea cannot lie down in his sacred sepulchre which he had given for the body of Jesus, and becomes a holy wanderer. St. James emerges from the rock which had closed around his body like soft wax, and leads Spain against the Moors. St. John does not rest in his grotto at Ephesus, but makes pilgrimages, on one of which he asks alms of Edward the Confessor, near Westminster Abbey, who gives to the mendicant a gold ring, afterwards sent him from the East, with the saint’s benediction. St. Peter goes abroad also. When the first Abbot of Westminster is about to be ordained in the Abbey, St. Peter appears in the night, crosses the Thames in a boat, himself ordains the Abbot, and leaves a wondrous fish to convince the Archbishop next day that the consecration has been performed, rendering the future Deans of Westminster responsible to Peter alone, and able to preach what heresies they like, without episcopal interference. Popular superstition is sometimes good-hearted, and liberated even the sorcerer Merlin from his prison of air, as appears in the lines of Southey:

“In his crystal ark Whither sail’d Merlin with his band of bards, Old Merlin, master of the mystic lore; Belike his crystal ark, instinct with life, Obedient to the mighty Master, reached The land of the Departed.”[37]

But while Merlin thus finds freedom again ending in repose, Arthur comes forth from his subterranean palace to lead the hunt, or from his Avalon to wing his way in form of a raven.

Thus the doomed Wandering Jew, under whatever name, finally found himself wandering in good company. This opens the way for human compassion to proffer those little mitigations of divine remorselessness which, as they gradually appear in folk-lore, are such severe, because unconscious, satires upon the deity of theology. The sentence of the deity, or of the sadly deified Jesus, once uttered cannot be revoked; but the human heart is no such victim of its own egotism or passionate impulse. Thus, Kuhn (2, 32) mentions the belief in Westphalia that the Jew may obtain a night’s repose if there be left in a field two harrows with the teeth downward. If one wishes to do the god-like thing he must leave the teeth of his harrow upward; then the Jew must wander on. In some other regions of Germany (Wüttke, 759) the Jew can find rest at any place where two oaks grow together in such a way as to form a cross. In Oldenburg it is said he can rest from the middle of May to the end of July, which is also the time when the Wild Huntsman may find repose. An old Metz picture shows the Jew with Wodan’s flying hair and mantle, but with a kindly countenance. It is only in a recent instance that anything diabolical has been associated with him pictorially, this being in a Lorraine engraving of 1842, where he has the hat and feather of Fra Diavolo.