I will therefore begin my paper on Hebrew and Hindu Skepticism. I. Hebrew Skepticism. 1 Skepticism being a method or, as some would call it, a degree or stage of speculation, it is obvious that it must be limited by the horizon of the ideas and mental characteristics of those who pursue it. Now the general idiosyncrasy or genius of the Hebrews, in common with the other branches of the Semitic race, is (as we have seen) religious, devout, and uninquiring. We might therefore determine the nature of their Skepticism beforehand, and predict its limitation to theology. Accordingly we find that the unbelief of the Hebrews is only partial or occasional; that it is entirely unconnected with general knowledge, with philosophy, or science in the ordinary meaning of the words, and is applied exclusively to theological and kindred subjects. We with our Aryan tendencies find it difficult to conceive the mental condition which generally characterizes the Hebrews in the earlier stages of their development. The careless passivity which accepts theories and dogmas without an attempt to ascertain their value appears to savour of mental indolence. The serene incuriosity which takes little heed of secular knowledge as a subject of independent investigation seems akin to intellectual vacuity. The Greek loved to explore the wondrous material world in which he was placed, to evolve existing phenomena from physical or partially physical antecedents. The Hebrew, with a childlike sense of impotence and dependence, was content to ascribe to Jahve or Elohim the whole sum and order of the universe, and to ask no further. While the Greek investigated the laws of language, and by his inquiries contributed to the wondrous fulness and plasticity of the Hellenic tongue, the Hebrew indicated by his vocabulary the few diversities of speech of which in his limited scope he had need, and confined himself to terms required by his religion or his ordinary wants. While the Greek loved to trace in the methods of Dialectic or systems of philosophy the processes of his reason, the Hebrew contented himself with intuitional affirmations of truth. While the Hellene manifested an insatiable curiosity as to the manners and beliefs of foreign peoples, the thought of the Hebrew, like his country, was bounded by Dan and Beersheba. While the Greek Comp. on this point Renan's Langues Sémitiques, 2nd ed. p. 3, and passim. pushed his daring Skepticism to an excess which occasionally refuted its own extravagance, the Hebrew betrayed only an occasional doubt or mistrust of a portion of his creed, his general reliance on the evidence of his senses or the operation of his intellect being as complete and undoubting as that of a child. What in the Greek, therefore, was a subjective consciousness, the source of his mental independence, the criterion of all truth, was in the Hebrew a purely religious faculty, a conscience that confined its verdicts to the devotional or ethical aspects of his faith. In short, with the Greek man's reason was in immediate contact with the problems of the universe, and the chief point at issue was his own knowledge. With the Jew, on the other hand, man was in direct connection with God, and the main question related to his spiritual welfare. Thus Hebrew thought as an instrument of culture suffered, as was indeed inevitable, from its excellence as a guide to religion. For whatever other attributes it possesses, it lacks the spirit of curiosity and inquiry which are the primary impulses to knowledge, and as a collateral defect it is also devoid of the largeness of view which results from the broadening of the field of intelligence. How far this apathy on philosophical subjects may be attributed, as M. Renan thinks,' to Jewish monotheism, may well be a matter of doubt, inasmuch as the exclusive devotion of the Jews to monotheisin during their earlier history has itself become questionable. I should rather ascribe it to the general characteristics of their creed, education, and religious history, and in a minor degree perhaps to inherent mental tendencies peculiar to Semitic races. But whatever the cause, the effect is indubitable. The old Jews cherished a sublime indifference to human knowledge and inquiry of every kind, so that if ignorance and incuriosity be, as some Skeptical writers affirm, the highest mental excellence, they may be found in their pristine purity in the earlier records of the Old Testament. There are perhaps four stages or phases into which Hebrew Skepticism may be divided. I. The first is marked by the occasional expressions of discontent and inquiry which we find in the Psalms and historical books of the Old Testament. These we may collectively denominate the tentative stage of Hebrew Skepticism. It occupies the greater portion of Jewish history, and prepares the way for the formal dissent from national beliefs which we find in the books of Job and Ecclesiastes. The incidental marks of unbelief and dissatisfaction which pertain to this stage take their rise from ruling ideas of the Jewish theocracy. They refer (1) to the relation of Jahve with › Les Langues Sémitiques, p. 5. Comp. Lassen, Ind. Alterthums, I. p. 494. the gods of neighbouring nations, (2) to the doctrines of providence and retribution, (3) to the non-existence of a future state. (1) The relation in which the national Jahve of the Jews was conceived to stand to the universe as its sole Maker and Ruler, of itself imported difficulties into their theology, for there immediately arose the question as to His dealings with other than the chosen people. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?' was a conviction necessarily springing from this conception of the universal sway of Jahve, and the moral rectitude and purity ascribed to Him, but was not easily reconciled with the favouritism which was the real basis of the national theocracy. The attempts made to harmonize what are in truth incompatible ideas constitute the first stage in Jewish Skeptical thought. No amount of astute reasoning could bring the limits of the universe within the boundaries of Palestine, nor make the position of so many populous nations and countries outside the pale of their common Creator's beneficence reconcilable with ordinary notions of justice. The common mode of harmonizing these divergent ideas was this: the ground of the Divine favour was transferred from national to moral qualities, but even then the assumption remained that the pure worship of Jahve and the complete observance of His laws were confined to the true Israel. Indeed the employment of some such conception on the part of Jewish legislators and prophets was necessitated by the various forms of idol-worship practised by surrounding nations, and with which the Jews themselves evinced no small sympathy. The attempts of Moses and the succession of prophets from Samuel onwards to confine their fealty to their own unseen Jahve were not always attended by success. After the settlement in Canaan, large portions of the nation, especially the northern tribes, were in a chronic state of hesitation as to the object of their worship. It is noteworthy that the only examples furnished by the Hebrew records of actual suspense and of something like national doubt is the halting between rival deities with which Joshua and Elijah reproach them. The motives for this easy transference of their allegiance from one deity to another are not to be sought in any intellectual research into the being and attributes of the different gods, and a comparative estimate of the superiority of one above the rest. As a nation the Jews were largely influenced in their worship by the material consideration of good and evil, of profit and loss, which lay at the basis of all their ethics and religion. The deity who conferred upon them the greatest amount of temporal and national blessings they regarded as having the highest claim on their worship, and it 1 Joshua xxiv. 15; 1 Kings xviii. 21. is observable that every state of adversity or privation immediately incited them to idolatry. The national Skepticism or suspense which thus vacillated between Jahve on the one side and Baal on the other, was therefore a kind of commercial feeling determined primarily by temporal advantage, though doubtless the prophets and spiritual leaders of the nation were dominated by far other motives and aspirations. (2) But besides this wholesale distrust of their national religion and Deity which occupies such a large portion of Jewish history, we find traces of another kind of Skepticism more insidious and profound as well as more dependent on the exercise of their intellectual powers-I mean the reasoned uncertainty of some of their thinkers as to current theories of providence and retribution. The theocratic notion of Providence implied a peculiar guardianship over the interests of His own chosen people, accompanied by a corresponding disregard of the concerns of all other nations and races. In the ethical universalizing of this idea it became tantamount to a conviction that God would reward the righteous and punish the wicked. Hence the usual marks of prosperity were accepted as evidence of the goodwill and pleasure of God, while on the contrary adversity in every form was an unequivocal sign of His displeasure. Now to the reflective Jew the reconciliation of such a theory with the general laws of the universe, or with the workings of Providence within the narrower sphere of his personal experience, must have been a task of considerable difficulty; nor can we be surprised at occasional admissions of inability to accomplish it. He could not shut his eyes to the fact that his ideal Providence, who made a distinction between Jew and Gentile, who theoretically awarded blessings to the just and adversity to the unjust, was sometimes guilty of painful and embarrassing impartiality. He might have employed Clough's words Seeing He visits still With equalest apportionment of ill Both good and bad alike, and brings to one same dust Certainly there was not that distinction in the physical conditions of existence nor in the ordinary elements of human happiness between Jews and Gentiles which would have warranted a belief in the theory that each was governed by a different code of providential dealing. Nor among Jews themselves was the happiness of the righteous and the misery of the wicked a rule without exception. But if these eccentricities in the Divine dealings were admitted, what became of the primary idea of the theocracy? Not only Judaism but morality itself seemed imperilled by the assumption of a Deity who 'made His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sent rain on the just and the unjust.' This is the stage of Jewish Skepticism which meets us in the thirty-seventh and seventy-third Psalms, and still more fully in the Book of Job. The intellect of the nation, its extended observation and enlarged experience, come in conflict with its devotional spirit and its religious acquiescence. The Jew begins, in short, to think for himself. True, the effort is at first not very persistent, nor its outcome very great. Still it is an undoubted attempt to compare the facts of the universe with his own traditional orthodoxy, and every such effort has in it the germs of mental progress. As a result of this investigation, he finds many an instance of that anomaly— the prosperous wicked man. It appears to him that so far from being under the ban of Providence, as his creed and his own moral instincts would suggest, these ungodly men enjoy an exceptional immunity from the troubles of life. Notwithstanding their practical Atheism, they prosper in the world and increase in riches. The Psalmist is even tempted to ask what is the use of his purer life: 'Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain and washed my hands in innocency.' We may observe that the form which this Skepticism takes is irritation or spleen, partly against the ungodly who falsifies the fundamental conception of Judaism, partly against the Providence which permits such a flagrant violation of His general law. But the sentiment is emotional, not intellectual. Where a Greek, e.g. would have distrusted a theory so irreconcilable with patent facts, the Hebrew distrusts the correctness in that particular instance of his own impressions. The final solution of the difficulty is also intensely Hebraic. There is no dallying, as an Hellenic thinker might have attempted, with the opposing horns of a dilemma, no endeavour, as by a modern philosopher, to find an indifference-point in which the antagonisms might be merged. The Hebrew goes into the sanctuary of God, and then he understands-in other words, by religious exercises, by an imperious demand on that profound faith which forms the distinguishing mark of his race, he overcomes and tramples down his doubts. As a result, he acquires the pious conviction that the prosperity of the wicked is only a temporary phenomenon. God does not forsake His own. Notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary, virtue is finally triumphant, and vice punished. The Psalmist has been young and now is old, yet never did he see the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging |