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Education. James J. Walsh
Читать онлайн.Название Education
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781515441519
Автор произведения James J. Walsh
Жанр Учебная литература
Издательство Ingram
There are certain things, however, that a man should not follow; they are unworthy of his nature as a man. “As to the man whose heart obeyeth his belly, he causeth disgust in place of love. His heart is wretched, his body is gross. He is insolent toward those endowed by God. He that obeyeth his belly hath an enemy.” While the old man warns his son against gluttony and against sloth, he has much to say with regard to covetousness: “If thou desire that thine actions may be good, save thyself from all malice, and beware of the quality of covetousness, which is a grievous inner malady.” This expression is rendered still more striking by what is added to it; for the father insists that it is particularly relatives-in-law who quarrel over money. “Covetousness setteth at variance fathers-in-law and the kinsmen of the daughter-in-law. It sundereth the wife and the husband; it gathereth unto itself all evils. It is the girdle of all wickedness.” It needed only the next sentence to make these expressions supremely modern: “Be not covetous as touching shares, in seizing that which is not thine own property.”
The God of this earliest book that we have from the hand of man has nearly all the interesting and important qualities that we refer to the Deity. He is looked up to as the giver of all good things. He loves his creation, and above all loves man, and observes men’s actions very carefully, and rewards or punishes them according to their deserts. He desires men to be fruitful, and to multiply upon the earth for their own good and for his glory. Nothing unworthy of the Deity, as he is known by the most educated people, is attributed to this God, who transcends a personal name. There is an utter disregard of all trivial mythology and of all mysterious riddles, though these trimmings of truth are to be found constantly in other Egyptian works of later date. Indeed, the picture of God is as striking a presentation of the fatherliness and the providence of the Almighty and of most of the lovable characteristics of the Deity as there is to be found anywhere in literature until the coming of the Saviour.
One might think that after having warned his son about most of the Seven Deadly Sins as we know them—pride, covetousness, gluttony, envy, sloth and anger,—at least we should not find lust touched on in the modern way. There is, however, in this matter an extremely chaste bit of advice that sums up the whole situation as well as a father can tell his son. The writer says: “No place prospereth wherein lust is allowed to work its way. A thousand men have been ruined for the pleasure of a little time short as a dream. Even death is reached thereby. It is a wretched thing. As for the lustful liver, every one leaveth him for what he doeth; he is avoided. If his desires be not gratified, he regardeth no laws.”
The father tells his son, straightforwardly and emphatically, that indulgence in this vice inevitably leads to loss of friends, of health, of everything that the world holds good; and that once a man has started down this path he has no regard for law or order or decency or self-respect. This eighteenth paragraph on a thorny subject is probably one of the most wonderful passages in this advice of a father to his son. Fathers of the modern time ask what shall they say to their boys. Here is something to tell them that does not excite pruriency, that does set the full state of the case before them and represents probably all that can be said with assurance and safety.
In recent years we have heard much of moral and social prophylaxis and the necessity for giving precious information with regard to this subject that may prove helpful to young people. Most people are sure to think that this is the first time in the history of the race that there has been an awakening to the necessity for this. Of course there is no doubt that owing to delayed marriages and unfortunate social conditions in our large cities we have more need of it than past generations, yet here in this old schoolbook from Egypt we have very definite and very wise teaching in the matter. A physician is prone to wonder what did the old man mean by “a thousand men have been ruined for the pleasure of a little time short as a dream. Even death is reached thereby.” Is it possible that he knew something of the physical, or let us rather say, the pathological dangers of the vice? In the discussion of the pictures of old-time surgery in The Journal of the American Medical Association I suggested that these generations seem to have known more about this phase of pathology than we are inclined to admit.
On the other hand, the father emphatically warns his son that his happiness will depend on loving his wife and caring for her to the best of his ability; though some of the details of that advice are so naively modern in their expression that it seems almost impossible to believe that they should have been spoken nearly six thousand years ago. He says: “If thou would be wise, provide for thine house, and love thy wife. Give her what she wants to eat, get her what she wants to wear [literally, fill her stomach, clothe her back]. Gladden her heart during thy lifetime, for she is an estate profitable unto its lord. Be not harsh, for gentleness mastereth her more than strength.”
There is a variant translation of this passage quoted in Maspero’s “The Dawn of Civilization,” which brings out even more clearly the ideas that seem most modern, and which makes it very sure that it is not the translator who has found in vague old expressions thoughts that, when put into modern words, have modernized old ideas. Maspero reads: “If thou art wise, thou wilt go up into thine house and love thy wife at home; thou wilt give her abundance of food; thou wilt clothe her back with garments; all that covers her limbs, her perfumes, are the joy of her life. As long as thou lookest to this, she is as a profitable field to her lord [master].”
The old gentleman’s idea evidently was that, looked at merely from a material standpoint, it was worth a man’s while to spend as much time caring for his wife as for his estate. She meant just as much for his happiness in the end and might mean probably more for his unhappiness. It is a very practical way of looking at the subject and perhaps the romancists might think it sordid. It must not be forgotten, however, that this is only the secondary motive suggested. At the beginning he commands him to love his wife for her own sake, and then, after suggesting the material benefit that comes from caring for her, he says that “gentleness mastereth her more than strength.”
Immediately after this valuable advice with regard to the care of the principal member of his household the old man turns to the question of the care of his servants. We are surely prone to think that the servant problem at least is a new development in this little world of ours. Many literary works serve to foster the impression that in the old days servants were easy to obtain, that they were always respectful, that they could readily be managed and life with them was, if not one sweet song, at least a very smooth course. Men, however, have always been men, and women and even servants have always had minds of their own, and strange as it may seem to us there has always been a servant problem and there was one in Egypt 5,500 years ago.
Ptah Hotep said: “Satisfy thine hired servants out of such things as thou hast; it is the duty of one that hath been favored of God. In sooth, it is hard to satisfy hired servants. For one saith, ‘he is a lavish person; one knoweth not that which may come from him.’ But on the morrow he thinketh, ‘he is a person of exactitude (parsimony), content therein.’ And when favors have been shown unto servants, they say ‘we go.’ (Italics mine.) Peace dwelleth not in that town wherein dwell servants that are wretched.”
A difficult problem; presents will not solve it but only complicate it, exact justice is necessary, but the peace that follows is worth the trouble it entails. The principle would be valuable in many a squabble of corporate employer and hosts of servants in the modern time.
For domestic happiness, it needed only the advice given a little later in this instruction: “Let thy face be bright what time thou livest. Bread is to be shared. He that is grasping in entertainment himself shall have an empty belly. He that causeth strife cometh himself to sorrow. Take not such a one for thy companion. It is a man’s kindly acts that are remembered of him in the years after his life.”
There is one phase of life in which Ptah Hotep differs entirely from the present generation,—at least if we are to judge the present generation from its results in this matter. Of course there are many of us who consider that, in spite of six thousand years of distance in time, the old Egyptian prime minister is far ahead of our contemporaries in this important subject. He thought that obedience was the most important thing in life. For him independence of spirit, in a