towards the Emperor, not merely as the head of the State, but as the Father of his people. We have here the moving principle of Chinese morality. As the Greeks may almost be said to have subjected all actions to the test of a kind of æsthetic sense, and the Romans to that of patriotism, while virtue was with the Egyptians almost synonymous with justice, and among the Hebrews with religious faith, so the Chinese make reverence to be the foundation, if not the sum, of all virtue. In this, indeed, they exhibit great likeness to the Hebrews, with whom also reverence formed the basis of morality, although in their case it was directed towards God rather than towards man. The difference is not so great, however, as at first sight appears; since in the Hebrew theocracy Jehovah occupied the same position as the visible head of the State among the Chinese. The reverence for parents was also strongly developed among the Hebrews. But a distinction is to be found here between the two peoples, seeing that woman never attained among the Hebrews to the position which, under certain conditions, she occupies with the Chinese. The Japanese monarch, Iyeyas, likened the love he entertained for his subjects to that of a mother for her children; while the Chinese are required

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1 According to Huc, the Emperor is styled "Father and Mother of the Empire," and he has a right to "the respect, the veneration, the worship even, of his children," op. cit., vol. i., p. 86.

2 The Emperor is looked upon as the Son and Representative of Heaven, whose Will is Supreme. Huc, op. cit., vol. i., p. 85.

Widowhood and Virginity, see supra, p. 47. Virtuous widows, who have "obeyed, with filial devotion, the parents of their husbands," are entitled to have an honorary tablet or portal erected to their memory. The virtuous girl who commits suicide on the death of her betrothed husband, may bave a tablet erected to her memory i a temple, and it then becomes the official duty of certain Mandarins to offer oblations in her honour twice a year. Doolittle, op. cit., p. 78, seq. Comp. with Jepthah's daughter bewailing her virginity.

to pay especial homage to their mothers. The Emperor himself is not exempt from this duty, and it may be said that in the reverence which he pays to his mother, in the ceremonies of the kotow, is embodied the highest expression, according to Chinese idea, of the whole moral duty of man. M. Huc declares that impiety, which is treated as one of the great crimes, is "nothing but the failure in family duty.'

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1 op. cit., vol. ii., p. 273.

CHAPTER II.

POSITIVE PHASES OF MORALS.

IN summing up the moral characteristics of the predatory races of Asia and Europe, it was stated that they possessed the "manliness" which was so strongly pronounced in the ancient Romans, but that it was reserved for the Romans and Greeks among the peoples of Europe to develope for themselves a positive phase of morals. We have now to treat of the systematic morality thus developed; and, in connection therewith, it will be necessary to consider particularly the ideas entertained by certain other peoples who have exercised great influence over the progress of moral culture throughout the world; or who have, at least, accepted and vitalised ideas, originated by, perhaps, kindred races, which have had such an influence. It has been remarked that "the passive virtues are the first in the history of mankind to become recognised, but they are the last to receive a rational expression." The truth of this is shown by the fact that peoples, such as the Peruvians and Chinese, who are in the empirical stage of human progress, exhibit in their social life the activity of the altruistic sentiment, while it is not until the rational stage is reached that the passive virtues attain to a systematic expression. This is the point we have gained; and what we have now to do is to trace the development of the moral idea under the guidance of the reflective or regulative faculty. Henceforth, the intellectual and the moral progress of

mankind are intimately associated, each exercising a reciprocal influence over the other.

THE HEBREWS.

At a certain stage of culture, it would seem to be recognised by all peoples that the proper course for developing the virtues, the value of which has come to be recognised, is to place the moral law under the sanction of the Gods. The Egyptians constituted their great God, Osiris, the Judge of the Dead, and, as the Hebrews were so long in contact with the Egyptians, it would have been doubly surprising if the leader of the Hebrew Exodus, whether Moses or Oshea (the Saviour), had not Iclaimed the divine sanction for his enactments. So far from such a mistake being made, the Decalogue--the second table of which contains the regulations of social life

was introduced with the words, "I am Jehovah thy Elohim, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage," and the commands profess expressly to emanate from the Deity. Judging from this fact, many persons imagine, or at least, from the superstitious reverence they have for the Decalogue, appear to do so, that, until the time of the Hebrew lawgiver, the most ordinary rules of morality were unknown.1 The mere fact of Egypt being the starting point of the Exodus, ought to be sufficient to disabuse the mind of this idea, without reference to the contents of the code itself. But the moral laws given in the Decalogue are of so

1 Surely Ewald could not be of this opinion, and yet he speaks of the Ten Commandments as " a first attempt to bring the new truths and the essential principles of the community into legal language for practical use in ordinary life," and again, as an attempt to reduce to precepts of the shortest form all the most important new truths." History of Israel to the Death of Moses" (Eng. Trans.), pp. 581,

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primitive a character, that it is absurd to suppose, except on the assumption that the Hebrews were, at that period, in a condition of pure savagery, that God would personally appear to give his immediate sanction to them. The commands, Honour thy futher and thy mother; Thou shalt not kill; Thou shalt not commit adultery; Thou shalt not steal; Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour; Thou shalt not covet, were simply reiterations of laws to which the Hebrews had been subject during their whole sojourn in Egypt, and which must, in fact, have been familiar to them before their ancestors left their traditional Chaldean home.

There is not even any peculiarity in the penalties inflicted for crime, which would lead us to look for a divine hand in the origin of the Mosaic law, any more than in that of the laws of Greece or Rome, which were equally supposed to declare the will of the Gods. The right of blood-revenge was admitted,1 notwithstanding the establishment of cities of refuge for those who killed another by misadventure. But, although the wilful homicide of a Hebrew was punished with death, the beating to death of a slave is to be "punished" only if the slave die under the master's hand;2 a circumstance in which the Hebrew law compares very unfavourably with the Egyptian regulation. The barbarous lex talionis is fully enforced, and the regulations as to compensation for injuries sustained by the " pushing" of oxen remind us more of the ingenuity of a Kafir chief than of a divine lawgiver. The killing of the thief caught in the act is an ordinary regulation of primitive societies, and the making of restitution shows that the immorality of the act was not considered, but only the loss which it occasioned. Death was, as we should expect, inflicted for adultery, but the

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