VII

There is one point in the trite parallel between the circumstances of the execution of Socrates and that of Jesus, which I am not aware has ever been noticed before. Long previous to the preaching of an introspective ethic by Socrates in Europe, the Hebrew prophets had preached an ethic and religion having the same tendency. After the exile a compromise was effected between their doctrine and the older national cultus, which took the form of Judaism, the poliadic or state divinity Yahveh being erected into the supernatural god of the universe, demanding a “religion of the heart,” but his national character being preserved in the “chosen people” theory.

Like all compromises, this illogical position was eventually assailed. The creed of the prophets culminated in Jesus. The orthodox Jew sought to combine the spiritualistic individualism of the prophets with the old civic ideal of life, of the decay of which this individualism was the sign. Hence in the Palestine of the Christian era there were two streams of tendency, one drawing from the tradition of the prophets, and the other from that of the older priesthood. The founder of Christianity by taking his stand on inwardness, personal holiness, purity of heart, etc., and by his open contempt for the surviving symbols of the old political cultus, roused the not unnatural resentment of the citizens of Jerusalem, with whom the old sentiment was naturally strongest, and for whom the ancient city and temple were still “holy,” and the sanctuary of the fathers; many of them, indeed, like the Sadducees, caring little for the later tendencies. The result was as at Athens, a conspiracy to be rid of the blasphemous radical. Thus alike in the crucifixion of Jesus, as in the death of Socrates we may see illustrated the conflict between the ancient communist ideal of devotion to the race, and the new individualist ideal of devotion to the soul, and to its non-natural source. In the “know thyself” of Socrates and “seek ye first his kingdom and his righteousness” of Jesus we have an expression of the same movement, mirrored on the one hand in the logical clearness of the Attic thinker, in the other in the dreamy, introspection of the Syrian mystic.

I may take this opportunity of remarking concerning the “community of goods” supposed to have been practised by some of the early Christian bodies, that this cannot be taken by any but the most superficial observer as implying any socialistic tendency as inherent in early Christianity. Like that of the later monkery it is perfectly obvious that the communistic mode of life was a mere accident. It was simply a means to another end that end being individual salvation. To avoid the distractions incident to ordinary life and affairs they were abandoned; the individual being hereby better able to concentrate his attention on his soul and “heavenly things.” The ascetic motive of course came in as well; the mere self-sacrifice was in itself to certain extent an end.