Zoroastrianism and Judaism/Zarathustra and the Zeit-Geist

OUR war-consciousness, which has brought to the surface of the soul many a contradiction which time had seemed to submerge, brings Persia down to the present. Indeed, the ancient descent of Persia upon the Greek states, in accordance with the time-honored custom of warfare back and forth from east and west, is not without its analogies to the German attempt to subjugate the states which have allied themselves against the modern Xerxes. Because of the war, the contemplation of world-maps, the study of humanity's history, and the analysis of all human occupations have become objects of intensive study. The whole planet has been shaken, and the dead have risen in arms. For this reason, the study of Iranian religion and the career of Zarathustra became timely topics; the Zend-Avesta has become a war-document.

The intensity of the war has had the effect of obliterating those old lines of separation which have sought to make east east and west west; the geographical, social, and spiritual diremption of two hemispheres has been overcome; Orient and Occident blend in one supreme militarism. In the past, ​Asia and Europe merely touched at the Dardanelles; in the present, there is at least a pontoon-connection between east and west. Lines of fire link London and Bagdad, military dispatches come from both Venice and Jerusalem, and the drab of khaki obscures the old-time color-contrasts of Asiatic and European modes. The Turk is in league with the Teuton, and Tokio may come to the aid of Paris. Those who come to an understanding with the times must not remain unacquainted with the biographies of Kaiser Wilhelm and Spitama Zarathustra.

The fitness of Iranian intuitions for shedding light upon the religious and political conditions of present-day Europe cannot be questioned by those who know old Persia and modern Prussia. When one consults Confucianism, he is confronted by the stolidity of Chinese ideals and the retroactive character of Mongolian motives; hence his study of the ultimate orient can amount to no more than an objective and scientific consideration of a useless and inapproachable faith. In the case of Brahmanism, there is similar defeat for him who would make practical use of remote ideals in religion. Doubtless there is much spiritual nourishment and intellectual enlightenment in Vedic beliefs, but the Hindu habit of indulging in aloofness and the tenuous nature of India’s convictions conspire to make the contemplation of Vedic idealism a remote one. Their sky we cannot touch or their ideals analyze, China’s ​impenetrable earth and India’s impalpable heaven are both beyond the religious reach of the western believer. In the instance of Persia, however, there is less of this Oriental silence, even when Iranian religion is no less authentic; we ourselves are somewhat Persian in our methods of believing and doubting.

The violent wrenching of the Iranian from the Indian has in it somewhat of that separatist spirit in which the west rejoices, while the inner contradiction of good and bad, which the Persian observed in the sky and felt in the heart, is the most essential thing in European religion. Long before Greek tragedy had seen man divided against himself and ere the inner contradictions of Christian ethics had entered the heart of man, Zarathustra had felt the dismay of a soul as a house divided against itself. For this reason, Persia, which lacks the extensive majesty of Mongolian faith and the intensive dignity of Indian idealism, becomes an ally of western belief; Zarathustra reveals the Zeit-Geist.

Since the war is supposed to have sprung from the excessive egoism of the Teuton, the personality of Zarathustra becomes of special interest in the ever-intensifying days of conflict. If it is true that German giantism has developed by reason of the inflammation of the moral gland in the German brain, it is worth while inquiring to what extent Persian ideals are responsible for the painful phenomenon, especially when so many point to Nietzsche, whose ​chief work of super-ethics is entitled, Thus Spake Zarathustra. It is a question whether the egregious egoism of Prussia has been displayed with consistency, or that the phenomena peculiar to its rough manifestation have been analyzed by its moral and military opponents; but the fact remains that the name of Zarathustra has been linked with that of the Kaiser, so that both Persia and Prussia are to be studied. Lifted from his original setting, Zarathustra would feel as ill at ease in Germany as the ‘Moses’ of Alfred da Vigny would have felt in the France of the 30's; but these great ones must work for their immortal living, so that Persia’s spiritual leader must submit to resurrection in war-time. Religion is supposed to be altruistic and pacific, but leaders of religion are often themselves noble egoistic; such was the case with Moses and Zarathustra, with Christ and Mahomet, whose personalities present more than egoistic edge. Indeed, the whole range of individualism in its form of the superman is marked by the outlines of religion rather than by politics of warfare.

Zarathustra as superman, and we have Nietzsche’s word for it, tends to lend balance to an uncertain moral situation. Those who indulge but moderately in analysis are wont to believe that the intrigues of diplomacy, the far-reaching plans of politics, and the violences of war are the meat on which the superman feeds: but those who have followed the career of this new person cannot hide ​from their eyes the fact that it is usually religion which supplies the superman with his daily allowance of heavenly manna. The superman is spiritual, rejoices in aesthetic ideals, and has a strength which lies within him. As already listed, Israel’s law-giver and Irania’s guide, Galilee’s seer and Arabia’s prophet are typical of the character which become such a puzzle for contemporary ethics. Those who have reduced the ethics of the superman to a kind of cult have ever made use of a quasi-religious mode of reasoning; Milton and Blake, Stirner and Dostoievsky, Wagner and Ibsen found it necessary to pass by the Church when they went in search of the arch-ego. Such seers of the soul observe the superman as a sort of heaven-storming person, who either is Promethean in his fire-snatching or Zarathustrian in the noble impudence with which he buttonholes the Almighty and interrogates the skies. Thus Zarathustra questioned the supreme God, Ahura Mazda.

In the rôle of ethical educator, Zarathustra assumes an aristocratic position when he with boldness delivers to his followers the ideals which he has secured from some superior source. This at once arouses the question concerning the source and sanction of morals, and puts a sharper edge on contemporary ethical calculations. According to orthodox utilitarianism, the virtues grew up gradually and unconsciously in connection with manifest utilities and in response to democratic demands. Originally loose in the form of interests merely felt, they tightened ​into so many virtues of moral import. The self-styled virtue which is its own reason could have no place in the practical system of the nineteenth century, whose moral reasoning was only abetted by the evolutionary idea of progress through limitless patience and development in almost endless time. Virtue as a moral meteor which lands so mysteriously in our human field could have no place in a practical system which watched virtue grow by slow accretion and advance pari passu with so many felt wants of mankind. In some ways, Zarathustra tolerates such utilitarianism, and seems to contribute to the contention that virtues arise practically when there is demand for them. In this half-utilitarian manner, he speaks of ‘holy wood’ and ‘holy meat,’ while he urges that ‘holiness goes on thriving’ where ‘the cattle go on thriving.’ Such picturesque utilitarianism seeks to lay down certain general principles to the effect that ‘he who sows corn sows holiness,’ which special maxim seems to spring from the natural synthesis of holiness and husbandry.

But the morals of Zarathustra never abandoned their essential aristocracy, for the weight of authority which he laid upon the earth came from on high, and the pursuit of husbandry, far from being practical and self-contained, was but a special form of holiness. On the aristocratic side of the strife between sanctions, Zarathustra unconsciously offers himself as proof that ethical excellence is from above; he himself was more the child of heaven than of earth. ​Morals do not spring up of themselves in the hearts of those who have interest in the virtues, but are framed above to be thrust down upon the stiff-necked and slow-of-heart. Relief from slavery among African people arises as an idea in the heart of a white man, and the slowly progressing ideals of communism among the masses was once the isolated dream of some individual. Zarathustra’s Persian populace know nothing of their chief good, since contact with earth has taught them nothing; their ideals of welfare, mundane though they be, are of heavenly origin. Having observed the Good in its totality, Zarathustra finds it expedient to indulge in certain practical applications of the ideal, and thus prepares for the Persians what in a less-plausible form Nietzsche has called ‘master-morality.’ Zarathustra could not forego the desire to indulge in dictation, even when he points out to his people that which they might have thought out for themselves. As Moses sought the moral law at the summit of the Mount to apply it to the affairs of the desert, Zarathustra sees the Good in idea before he applies it in fact, and concludes his moral reasoning by asserting that ‘holiness is the best of all good.’

In the position of revealer, Zarathustra offers practically the only rival which the seers of the Old Testament were to encounter. Passing over the extravagant claims put forth so sumptuously by Mahomet, and which came at such a late date as to suggest some imitation, the conversations between ​Zarathustra and Ahura Mazda cannot fail to suggest somewhat of that spiritual burden which the seers of Israel shared with Jahveh. Irania and Israel seem thus to have provided pockets for the treasures of the Most High. If the word of the Lord came to the high seers of Israel, it did not fail to pass by and swoop down over the head of Irania’s chosen one, who like Cyrus seems to have been a step-son of the Almighty. But the ‘revelation’ which came to Zarathustra is strangely wanting in the kind of consciousness which tends to make an alleged communication authentic. Zarathustra was too confident in his humanism, and stood too erect to be a genuine prophet. In contrast with Irania’s sage, who receives revelation only after he has sought it by questions, Israel never took the initiative, but on the contrary presented deaf ears and dumb lips to the enforced revelation. Moses was reluctantly recipient when the word of the Lord came to his ears, and pleaded ignorance and incapacity, voiced in the questions, ‘Who am I?’ and ‘by what name art thou called?’ The prophet could receive the word only as he beat his brow upon the earth and suffered his lips to be seared by the seraph’s live coals; and when, in his almost epileptic anguish he did speak, his words sought refuge in tortuous imagery, and his spirit, lifted up, tasted the bitterness and felt the burning of truth too strong for human conception and communication. Dignity there is in the message of Zarathustra, but no divinity of distance, for the ​Iranian seer spoke with confidence of such truth as he seemed to experience with Ahura Mazda. One may thus account for and accept the message of the Persian prophet by heeding it as the highest pitch in human register, but not the lower tones of revelation as such, even when Zarathustra may have had ears for just such music.

Dr. Carter’s monograph on Iranian religion is an exceedingly painstaking attempt to square accounts with a vision whose excellence is often neglected in the midst of more perfect spiritual enlightenment. Israel will be more highly prized and better understood after Irania has been duly apprised, while Moses will mean more after the strivings of a brother sage in another land have been evaluated. Dr. Carter's method is a sure-footed one; it advances cautiously from stone to stone of textual reference. Like a Persian rug, the Zend-Avesta is made up of many a bright strand, whose patient unweaving has been the work of Dr. Carter’s study. In this, there is nothing that is semi-official, since Dr. Carter has dealt authoritatively with verified reports. It is to be hoped that his book will find a place not far from our ever-growing war-library.