VII. Another value the work may possess in the eyes of the curious, at least, inasmuch as it is a specimen — certainly a favourable but still a specific specimen — of those scholastic treatises by which the intellect of Europe was exercised and prepared for the paramount achievements of the present age. It happens, singularly enough, that the capture of Constantinople, and the dispersion of learning among the western states, synchronize within a few years with the publication of the “Akhlāk-i-Jalāly.” So that at the very period when the earlier systems of moral philosophy were in course of communication to the confines of Europe, they were being promulgated afresh in Central Asia in the improved form given to them in the present compilation. Smile as we may at the crudity of their notions upon some points, and the extravagance of them upon others, there is an interest that must always attach to the ideal systems which have strongly influenced large portions of mankind, and our own progenitors among the number.
How far utility may combine with curiosity, and the wisdom of past ages be held to contain rules and maxims of conduct by which the wisdom of the present age need not disdain to profit, — is a question which those who glance over the version may answer for themselves. That which has once largely and permanently contributed to the interests of society must always contain something worthy of serious attention even from the most favoured and enlightened communities. Much as it is now the fashion to decry the moralists of the middle ages, there are certain imperishable monuments of their practical insight into the nature and interests of man to which the world is still paying an unconscious homage. The old English drama is the poetry of the Schools, originating just as the nation turned from its dormant to its active condition, and combining the advantages of both in a measure denied to the men of a more settled æra. The learning of the Schools, being inseparably associated with the monastic order and the papal religion, fell gradually into oblivion. But it was the learning of a shrewd and sagacious set of men — raised to influence on the condition of keeping watch over the follies and foibles of others — set apart from the common partnership of social life and social passion, that they might perform the condition with punctuality — and feeling that their position depended on the use they made of these advantages in studying, controlling, and improving their fellow men. Hence, in the writings of those who were early enough to profit by their influence, that unfailing richness of maxim and remark, which, when attributed, as it often erroneously is, to the individual acumen of the writers who repeat them, seems to indicate a more than mortal range of intelligence; — hence that consistent and dignified assertion of the eternal interests of man, which now falls with something akin to the majesty of revelation on the sickly impatience of an ambitious age. At present minds are disciplined by processes more congenial to the active and independent spirit of the times. But of moral expedients it often happens that the use is proportioned to the distastefulness. The wisdom which in Shakspeare we reverence is the immediate offspring of the scholastic morality which we despise; and well would it be in days like these, when passions are stimulated and restraints removed beyond all former precedent in the history of man, if we could be prevailed on to test and temper the knowledge of excitement by a reference to the sincerer knowledge of repose.
VIII. To go into any lengthened enumeration of the valuable but neglected lessons of antiquity that may here be recovered to the benefit of our own age, would be an endless and repulsive undertaking. But the purposes of a preliminary discourse would hardly be answered, if the reader’s attention were not especially directed to the great moral canon on which the practical part of the work is conducted,* — the Aristotelian doctrine of extremes. In many respects the theory is open to objection. As it is only to be expressed and explained by the habitudes of matter, the dignity of the soul’s nature seems compromised when we resort to it. As it propounds a virtual proximity of right to wrong, the first principles of rectitude appear endangered by it. As it falls short of some of the highest forms of scriptural virtue, our hearts and consciences are at first dissatisfied when we examine it. For when we admit that propriety is determined by striking a balance between the claims of others and ourselves, we must first have admitted that there is an opposition between the two: whereas it is the great achievement of the science to establish their ultimate identity. For these reasons it is not surprising if the rule has been gradually dismissed from the minds of men in Christendom, conversant as they are with the laws and models of a superhuman excellence. And yet, when these objections are followed to their source, they terminate merely in this, that souls, being attached to bodies, are likewise restrained by them; and that not being able to do all we would, we make the nearest practicable approach to it. The fault is not in the standard, but in the objects to which it is applied. The modern rule of general consequences, the consistent developement of which constitutes an æra in the science of morals, is liable no less to the same line of invalidation, from which it must be delivered by similar means. Let the great rule of Christian charity be followed rigidly and literally out, and it will lead to a community of property. By reasoning on general consequences we learn that a community of property cannot be maintained; that any persevering attempt to establish it would be fatal to all habits of order and unanimity, charity itself being one of them: and therefore that charity is best pursued by adhering in the first place to the habits and institutions without which it could not be realized even in its present imperfect form.* The contradiction then is only apparent; and we are bound, in some sort, to contravert the final aim, in order to secure the nearest possible approach to it. So in the theory of extremes. The limit that we abandon is one that we cannot attain: and if we attempt to attain it, we destroy the modification we secure by its abandonment. There are higher forms of virtue in which this expression seems to disappear; but on closer examination, it will be found still to possess a latent subsistence, and one that must be admitted to real estimation before any practical results can be obtained.
Thus tempered by the limitations which its nature requires, this formula will be found to present advantages, which, though not co-extensive with those of the modern standard, are, in their own sphere and for their own purposes, unequalled. The law of general consequences comprehends every thing; and, for that very reason, may sometimes comprehend too much. The elements may be too vast, the relations too complicated, to find a ready expression in the minds of young and partially informed inquirers. The law of extremes is liable to no such inconvenience; or at least a far slighter one: its operations are confined to a single line; those of the other extend over innumerable ones: its elements may be found without travelling beyond our own experience; those of the other must be gathered from points with which we have no, or only a fallacious, acquaintance. The law of consequences, in its severe indifference to the circumstances of the particular instance, is likely to dishearten its adherent, and end by losing him altogether. The law of extremes adapts itself to every variety of situation; and, professing only to be a re-statement of private interest, is sure to be applied, even in the lowest fluctuations of the moral sense. The law of consequences, as it dwells more on the interests of others than our own, tends to give false ideas of the insignificance of these latter. It contains no sufficient security against that most treacherous and pernicious form of error, extravagance in right; which the law of extremes, by the very terms of its nature, is certain to prevent.
Let it not be supposed that it is the aim of these observations to detract from the value of the modern standard, the very imperfections of which have themselves a sort of merit; inasmuch as the virtue that escapes uninjured from the difficulties of the ordeal is sure to be elevated and improved by them. The object is only to show, that though the new rule may have many advantages which the old cannot pretend to, the old has likewise some which the new does not possess. The new rule may carry out the science to a perfection unattainable without it; but it leaves vacancies, within which the old may continue, with advantage, to exercise concurrent jurisdiction. That the tests may be reconciled without prejudice to the higher of the two, is best evidenced by the simultaneous use of both in the treatise before us. Though no where expressly expounded, the law of consequences is often introduced as the basis of most important conclusions;* and, perhaps, had the sciences of Asia been allowed to continue their advance, the next treatise on eastern ethics would have exhibited the combined application of the two on principles of mutual adjustment, such as a well sustained inquiry could not fail to establish between them.
IX. The subject of morals inevitably suggests the kindred one of religion. The utility of this and of all eastern translations in familiarizing us with the objects and associations by which the scriptural writers were surrounded and influenced, is too evident to require explanation. The Scriptures may not only thus acquire a significance which is otherwise lost to our perceptions; but that particular significance which would best enable us to introduce them to the knowledge of the eastern people. Those points upon which the persuasions of the Muhammedans are near akin to our own should also be particularly noticed and examined. For offensive as their misuse of sacred terms and symbols may often appear to us, before it can be superseded it must at least be understood. With this view, wherever coincidences of this nature presented themselves, the Translator has considered it one of his essential duties to point them out.
But besides these general bearings on the religious question, the present work possesses a third, peculiar to its own nature. False religions are most aptly and familiarly attacked by showing their rules and tendencies to be at variance with the real interests of man, of which the science of morals professes to be an elucidation. Hence, when we have mastered the morality of a people, we are in possession of the premises, on which, to be convincing, our arguments should be conducted; and where, as generally happens, the morality is sounder than the religion, it is easy to show the inconsistency of one with the other: and then the example of other and more favoured nations may be adduced to prove that the fault does not lie with the morality; that it is the religion which must be given up. A striking opportunity for the application of this line of reasoning we find in the second Section of the third Book; where the highest and purest form of morality is declared to be that resting on love or affection: the morality of interest, or even of equity, (which, unactuated by the first, is only a refinement of interest,) being only good as it represents or approaches to that of sympathy. It will at once be seen how difficult it will be for them, consistently with these premises, to deny that the great moral canon of the Gospel, which directs us to suffer injury rather than inflict it, is the only one that would or could characterize a universal and eternal dispensation. While the rules and practices of their own religion, constantly appealing to compulsion, and established only by the exercise of it, are alone enough to show, that if proceeding at all from heavenly authority, (which is what they will not at first be so ready to give up,) it could only have been with a view to temporary purposes, and in subservience to the final establishment of those universal principles embodied only by the other.
To persons more conversant with the subject many more instances will present themselves, under each of the three divisions, than have been noticed by the compiler. Questions of this nature, involving the honor of the national faith, are perhaps better left to those who are its constituted guardians. In this, indeed, as in every other department, it is not intended to exhaust the subject, but only to introduce it; a function, in the present instance, of no mean or secondary importance. Pages like these, to which few might otherwise care to devote the attention necessary to master their contents, acquire a certain awfulness of interest when we consider that they are calculated to afford material for the country’s last and best triumph over the vices and errors of less favoured nations.*
X. Lastly, the treatise is valuable as containing the opinions of a speculative people, in their most enlightened age, upon the everlasting subjects of human inquiry — the nature, purposes, and results of being. The propriety of mixing questions of every-day occurrence with these stupendous problems — the discretion of resting that which all should recognise on that which must always be open to debate — may well be doubted. And yet the latent connexion which kept the subjects together is of that undeniable kind that perfectly explains, though it may not justify, the arrangement. All that we arrive at by reasoning from the external relations of things is the mere form of that which we agree to call right — the interests of the several parties, the bearing of each upon each, and the adjustments whereby the highest amount of interest may be obtained throughout; and this is all that the science of morals is usually concerned in discussing. Another question remains, the foundation of all the rest. Why the right thus ascertained is obligatory? — why a person who may choose to prefer a given indulgence, with or without its attendant penalty, to all the immunities or gratifications obtainable from self-denial, — why such a person should still be bound to prefer the general will to his own? Here most systems of national morality abut at once upon religion either natural or revealed: he is bound to the general will, because it expresses the will of God.* And it is a singular fact, that fanatic and intolerant as the Muslims are in maintaining the claims of their ritual and so-called revelation at their utmost height, they should yet go farther than any other people in arguing this great question on its abstract ground, and thus in a manner acknowledge philosophic religion, as the basis of their morality, to possess a force and validity concurrent with revealed. Not merely the relations of objects, but, in the last resort, their habitudes and natures also, are the ample grounds of duty on which these enlightened bigots delight to expatiate. They deem it the province of morality not only to affirm the will of God, but also to produce the considerations from which such sanction is to be presumed, and by which its scope and limits are to be determined. Nay, more, by keeping up a constant reference to divine pleasure as the source of life and feeling, no less than of the restraints upon either, and thus in a manner identifying right with existence itself, they seek to place the validity of duty upon higher grounds than the sordid considerations of personal interest can supply. Virtue, in this noble theory, is only a higher species of instinct; — the proper guide to virtue, not advantage, but nature itself. Systems of stricter limitation and lowlier range may perhaps be more tenable and more safe; but the very errors of this one are all of an elevating and redeeming cast.