(i) That the relationship between Jews and the Arabs (Bedouin) was historically, extremely close, and that the Jews had become separated away from the Arabs over time:
"It is now quite clear to me that the Jews’ so-called Holy Writ is nothing
more than a
record of ancient Arab religious and tribal traditions, modified by
the Jews’ early separation from their tribally
related but nomadic neighbours. The circumstance of
Palestine’s being surrounded on the Arabian side by nothing but desert,
i.e. the land of the Bedouins, explains its separate development. But the
ancient Arabian inscriptions and traditions and the Koran, as well as the
ease with which all genealogies, etc., can now be unravelled, show that
the main content was Arab, or rather, generally Semitic, as in our case
the Edda and the German heroic saga."
Engels To Marx In London Source: Collected Works Volume 39, p. 325.
(see below for full text).
These texts also cover the ground of Oriental Despotism
Dear Marx,
So the bomb is at long last about to go off, as
you will see from the enclosed scrappy proof
and Weydemeyer’s letter. Willich’s manner of extricating himself is strange,
at any rate; you will undoubtedly be much
amused by these lame circumlocutions and the
awkward and embarrassed style. The fellow’s been hard hit. But papa Schramm
[i.e. Conrad Schramm-original notes
by publisher] would seem to have gravely insulted him in
Cincinnati; all grist to the mill. One thing we may be sure of is that
the only effect of this statement will be to compromise the chivalrous
one even more.
So just because the New-Yorker-Criminal
Zeitung!!!!! has published attacks upon him, the gallant Willich feels
compelled to break his heroic silence.
‘Putting the case at its highest!,’ In Willich’s
case bodies do not fall downwards but upwards!
Good-bye to gravity! The fellow’s quite mad. The same old tale of
assassination too! We shall now see the aforesaid Schramm leap promptly
into the lists, statement in hand [Willich
slanderously represented his duel with Schramm in Spetember 1850, as an
attempt by Marx and Engels to get rid of him by having him killed].
To put your mind at rest, I can inform
you that the Neu-England-Ztg. today advised
me of the dispatch of 420 copies of Revelations [Concerning
the Communist Trial in Cologne by Marx] to my address, so
they may be here tomorrow or, if the parcel didn’t go off by the last steamer,
in a week at the most. The fellows have the effrontery to send me a letter
signed semi-anonymously ‘Office of the N.-E.-Z.’ inviting me to contribute.
That’s the last straw!
At all events, it’s a good thing that
we now possess in the Reform [Die
reform was the organ of the American WOrkers Association consisting mostly
of German emigrant workers. Though officially its editor was the petty-bourgeois
democrat Kellner, the newspaper's tendency was determined ot a great extent
by Wedemeyer, who became the editor's actual editor inn the summer of 1853.
Under his influence the paper retained its commitment ot the working class
for some time. Ti often reprinted Marx's and Engel's articles form the
Nw York Daily Tribune. Marx persuaded his associated (Eccarious, Piper
and Dronke) to cooperate with Die Reform, which regularly published articles
and reports by Cluss and Wedermeyer, some based on materials from Marx's
letters. Towards the end of its existence, the petty-bourgeois influence
of its editor-in-chief, Kellner, became dominant]. an organ
in which, if the worst comes to the worst, we can still make ourselves
heard in the polemic against Willich and Co. As a result of the rumpus,
Kellner is becoming more and more embroiled.
Weydemeyer’s misprint shouldn’t surprise you. After
all, you must know that when Weydemeyer
does something, it is always ‘similar’ rather than ‘glorious’.
The little fellow is coming here next Sunday. I
am curious to see how he is shaping as a
clerk in Bradford. At all events the good Buckup seems to be working him
very hard.
Yesterday I read the book on Arabian inscriptions which
I told you about. The thing is not without interest, repulsive though it
is to find the parson and biblical apologist forever peeping through.
His greatest triumph is to show that Gibbon made some mistakes in
the field of ancient geography, from which he also concludes that Gibbon’s
theology was deplorable. The thing is called The Historical Geography
of Arabia, by the Reverend Charles Forster. The best things to emerge
from it are:
1. The supposed genealogy of Noah, Abraham, etc., to be found in Genesis
is a fairly accurate enumeration of the Bedouin
tribes of the time, according to the degree of their
dialectal relationships, etc. As we all know, Bedouin tribes continue to
this day to call themselves Beni Saled, Beni
Yusuf, etc., i.e. sons of so and so. This nomenclature, which owes its
origins to the early patriarchal mode of existence, ultimately leads up
to this type of genealogy. The enumeration in Genesis is plus ou moins
[more or less] confirmed
by ancient geographers, while more recent travellers have shown that most
of the old names still exist, though in dialectally altered form. But from
this it emerges that the Jews themselves were no more than a small Bedouin
tribe like the others, which was brought into conflict with the other Bedouins
by local conditions, agriculture, etc.
2. As for the great Arab invasion, you will remember our discussion
when we concluded that, like the Mongols, the Bedouins carried out periodic
invasions and that the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires were founded by
Bedouin tribes on the very same spot as, later, the Caliphate of Baghdad.
The founders of the Babylonian Empire, the Chaldeans, still exist under
the same name, Beni Chaled, and in the same locality. The rapid construction
of large cities, such as Nineveh and Babylon, happened in just the same
way as the creation in India only 300 years ago of similar giant cities,
Agra, Delhi, Lahore, Muttan, by the Afghan and/or Tartar invasions. In
this way the Mohammedan invasion loses much of its distinctive character.
3. In the South-West, where the Arabs settled, they appear to have
been a civilised people like the Egyptians, Assyrians, etc., as is evident
from their buildings. This also explains many things about the Mohammedan
invasion. So far as the religious fraud is concerned, the ancient inscriptions
in the South, in which the ancient Arab national tradition of monotheism
(as with the American Indians) still predominates, a tradition of which
the Hebrew is only a small part would seem to indicate that Mohammed’s
religious revolution, like every religious movement, was formally
a reaction, a would-be return to what was old and simple.
It is now quite clear to me that the Jews’ so-called
Holy Writ is nothing more than a record of
ancient Arab religious and tribal traditions, modified by the Jews’ early
separation from their tribally related but nomadic neighbours. The circumstance
of Palestine’s being surrounded on the Arabian
side by nothing but desert, i.e. the land of the Bedouins, explains its
separate development. But the ancient Arabian inscriptions and traditions
and the Koran, as well as the ease with which all genealogies, etc., can
now be unravelled, show that the main content was Arab, or rather, generally
Semitic, as in our case the Edda [A
collection of Scandinavian mythological and heroic saga and lay: two versions
dating back to the 13th Cnetury are still extant] and the
German heroic saga.
Your
F. E.
Dear Frederic,
The first half of the £20 note has turned
up. I am writing this before going to the
Museum, i.e. at a very early hour.
I would have sent you long ago the enclosed
great Willich’s statement to the Neu-England-Zeitung
had I not assumed that you'd had the thing from Weydemeyer. In conception
this second statement is pure, genuine Willich. Others write ‘essays’,
he writes ‘facts’, and only if one has been on a ‘personal footing’ with
him does the calumny lose its sting. It is the manoeuvre of your petty
partisan. He does not answer for his own Hirsch. Rather, he explains to
the public Marx’s ‘motives’ for not refuting his Hirsch. And now
he has discovered a terrain where he can operate with a measure of virtuosity.
And it is with ‘reluctance’ that the noble man reveals the facts to the
‘public’. Needless to say, he has preferred to whisper them to the philistines
in the privacy of the beer-parlour
p.331
and, for the past three years, to peddle them ‘contraband-wise’ throughout
two hemispheres, juvante Kinkelio. Then his manoeuvring to keep
the public on tenterhooks. They forget the facts among which he twists
and turns and eagerly await the facts which are to demolish the ‘critical
authors’. And the noble man is ‘distinguished’ withal, as befits a ‘public
figure’. When he does reply, it will not be to Marx’s uncouth ‘agents’
but to the ‘ingenious’ quill-pushers themselves. Finally, he gives the
public to understand that what makes his opponents so cocksure is
their belief in his ‘decision’ to retire and, with a roll of drums, this
important personage proceeds to announce that he has ‘changed’ his mind.
Tout ça nest pas trop mal pour un
vieux sous-lieutenant. [Not too
bad for an old second lieutenant] But as for the style of
statement No. 2 — bad as it is, it is nevertheless apocryphal. Other hands
have been at work on it, probably those of Madame Anneke. At all events,
the necessary supplement to Tellering’s pamphlet will now be published
by Mr Willich and, the dirty business having been once placed before the
public, il faut aller jusqu'au bout [It
must be taken to its conclusion]. If Weydemeyer, Cluss and
Co. operate with skill, they should now be able to put a spoke in Willich’s
wheel and ruin the impact and novelty of the surprises he is holding in
store for the public. Nous verrons [we
shall see].
The praise you accord to my ‘budding’ English, I find
most encouraging. What I chiefly lack is first, assurance as to grammar
and secondly, skill in using various secondary idioms which alone enable
one to write with any pungency. Mr Tribune has given special prominence
to a note about my 2nd article on Gladstone’s Budget, drawing the attention
of readers to my ‘masterly exposition’ and going on to say that nowhere
have they seen ‘a more able criticism’, and do ‘not expect to see one’.
Well, that is all right. But in the following article it proceeds to make
an ass of me by printing under my name a heading of mine which is quite
trifling and intentionally so, whereas it appropriates your ‘Swiss’ thing.
I shall write and tell Dana that, ‘flattering’ though it may be if they
occasionally use my things for a LEADER, they
would oblige me
p.332.
by not putting my name to trifles. I have now sent the jackasses, amongst
other things.
2 articles on ‘China’ with reference to England. If you have the time
and happen to feel like writing about something — Switzerland, the East,
France, England or COTTON, or Denmark, say
— you should do so on occasion, for I am now slogging away with an eye
to the fellow’s money-bags in order to make good
the 3 weeks I have lost. If you send me something
from time to time — de omnibus rebus [anything
under the sun]— I shall always be able to place it, for as
you know, I am the fellows’ ‘maid of all work’, and it’s always easy to
relate one thing to another and to every day. All in all.
As regards the Hebrews and Arabs, I found your letter most interesting.
It can, by the by, be shown that 1. in the case of all eastern tribes there
has been, since the dawn of history, a general relationship between
the SETTLEMENT of one section and the continued
nomadism of the others. 2. In Mohammed’s time the trade route from Europe
to Asia underwent considerable modification, and the cities of Arabia,
which had had a large share of the trade with India, etc., suffered a commercial
decline — a fact which at all events contributed to the process. 3. So
far as religion is concerned, the question may be reduced to a general
and hence easily answerable one: Why does the history of the East appear
as a history of religions?
On the subject of the growth of eastern cities one could
hardly find anything more brilliant, comprehensive
or striking than Voyages contenant la description des
états du Grand Mogol, etc. by
old Franoçois Bernier (for 9 years Aurangzeb’s physician). He
provides in addition a very nice account of military organisation and the
manner in which these large armies
fed themselves, etc. Concerning both these, he remarks inter alia:
[Original is in French- translated by publishers]:
‘The main body consists of cavalry, the infantry
not being so numerous as is
commonly supposed unless all those serving-people and bazaar or market
folk who follow the
army are taken for true warriors; for, if such were the case, there would,
I think, be good reason
to put at 2 to 300,000 men the strength of that army alone that is
with the king, and sometimes even more, as, for example, when it is known
that he will be long
absent from the capital city; which would not, indeed, seem so very surprising
to anyone familiar with all the strange impedimenta of tents, kitchen,
clothing, furniture, and even women quite often, and, consequently, elephants,
camels, oxen, horses, porters, foragers, sutlers, merchants of all kinds
and servants who follow in the wake of these armies, nor to anyone familiar
with the conditions and government peculiar to the country, namely that
the king is the sole and unique proprietor of all the lands in the
kingdom, whence it necessarily follows that every capital city,
such as Delhi or Agra, fixes almost wholly on the militia and is therefore
obliged to follow the king whenever he goes campaigning for a time, these
cities neither being, nor indeed able to be, in any respect a Paris, but
being really nothing but an army encampment rather better and more
commodiously situated than if it were in the open country.’ [in
French, with Marx’s italics]".
In reference to the Grand
Mogul’s march on Kashmir, with an army 400,000 strong, he writes:
"How and upon what so great an army can subsist in the field, or so
large a concourse
of men and animals, is difficult to conceive. To that end one can only
surmise, and such is indeed the case, that the Indians are very sober and
very simple in what they eat and that, of this great number of horsemen,
not one tenth, nay, not even one twentieth, eats meat during the march;
provided they have their khichri, or mess of rice and other vegetables,
whereon they pour brown butter when cooked, they are content. It should
also be known that camels are extremely resistant to work, hunger and thirst,
live on very little and eat anything and that, as soon as the army reaches
camp, the camel-drivers lead them out to graze in the countryside, where
they eat everything that comes their way; further, that the same merchants
that keep the bazaars in Delhi are obliged to keep them in the field also,
likewise the lesser erchants, etc. ... finally, concerning forage, all
these poor people go roving in every
direction to the villages to buy the same and to earn something there,
and that their chief and habitual recourse is to scratch up whole stretches
of country with a kind of trowel, pounding and washing the little
herbs thus scratched up, and taking them to the army for sale... "
Bernier rightly sees all the manifestations of the
East — he mentions Turkey, Persia and Hindustan — as having a common basis,
namely the absence of private landed property. This is the real
clef [key], even
to the eastern heaven.
It would seem to be no go with Borchardt; nevertheless
I think the fellow might be prepared to try
and obtain recommendations for Lupus from Steinthal, etc., to London
merchants. So much, at least, you could compel him to do, and it would
mean a great deal to Lupus.
What do you think about the failure of the hudibrastic
Rodolpho [An allusion to Ralpho - a
charactar in Samuel Butler's satirical peom Hudibras] Gladstone’s
‘FINANCIAL SCHEME FOR REDUCING THE NATIONAL DEBT'?
The day before yesterday the Journal des Débats
revealed the true secret of Russia’s impudence. The Continent, it says,
must either expose its independence to danger from Russia, or it must expose
itself to war, and that is ‘la revolution sociale’. What the wretched
Débats forgets, however, is that Russia is no less afraid
of revolution than Mr Bertin, and that the whole question now is who can
most convincingly simulate ‘non-fear’. But England and France — the official
ones — are so abject that Nicholas, if he sticks to his guns, will be able
to do what he likes.
Vale faveque [Good-bye
& farewell].
C. M.
Have written to Lassalle, who will probably
be ready to take receipt of a few 100 copies
of the pamphlet and distribute them in Germany. The question now is how
are we to get them across? When I was in
Manchester Charles suggested it might be done by
including them in a consignment of merchandise. You might ask him about
this again.
P.S. There’s been a delay over the posting of this letter and so I
can include an acknowledgment of the parcel
of books and the other half of the note.
p.335
Engels to Marx.
Collected Works; Moscow 1983;Volume 39, p. 335-342; Written 6 June
1853; Manchester.
Dear Marx,
I had intended to write to you by the first post today, but was detained
at the office until 8 o'clock. You will have received both Weydemeyer’s
and Cluss’ anti-Willich statements in the Criminal Zeitung, i.e.
direct from America. If not, write to me at once. As usual, papa Weydemeyer
is too long-winded, very seldom makes a point, then promptly blunts it
with his style, and unfolds his well-known lack of verve with rare composure.
Nevertheless, the man has done his best, the story about Hentze, the ‘comrade-in-arms’,
and the influence of others on Hirsch’s pen is nicely fashioned; his incredible
style and his composure, regarded over there as impassibility, will appeal
to the philistines, and his performance can, on the whole, be regarded
as satisfactory. Cluss’ statement, on the other hand, pleases me enormously.
In every line we hear the chuckle of l'homme supérieur who,
through ‘personal contact’ with Willich, has, as it were, become physically
p.336
conscious of his superiority. For lightness of style, this surpasses
everything that Cluss has ever written. Never a clumsy turn of phrase,
not a trace of gêne [constraint]
or embarrassment. How well it becomes him thus to ape the worthy citizen
of benevolent mien who nevertheless betrays the cloven hoof at every turn.
How splendid, the sentence about ‘revolutionary agencies’ being ‘a swindle’
off which, according to Willich, he lives. The chivalrous one will have
been surprised to find among the uncouth agents, a fellow who is so dashing,
so adroit, so aggressive by nature and yet so unassumingly noble
in his bearing, and who returns thrust for thrust a tempo. So subtly
— far more subtly and deftly than himself. If only Willich had the discernment
to discover this! But irritation and due reflection will, I trust, give
him a little more insight.
It is obvious that we shall have to see this
dirty business through to the bitter end. The more
resolutely we tackle it the better. You'll find, by the way, that it won’t
be so bad after all. The chivalrous one has promised vastly more than he
can fulfil. We shall hear of assassination attempts, etc.,
the Schramm affair will be glamorously tricked out, and such
chimeras will be evoked as will cause us to stare at one another in amazement,
not having the faintest idea what the man is actually talking about; at
worst he will tell the story about Marx and Engels arriving drunk one evening
at Great Windmill Street (vide Kinkel in Cincinnati, coram
Huzelio)[In Huzels presence].
If he goes as far as that, I shall tell the scandal-loving American public
what the Besançon Company used to talk about when Willich and the
formosus [comely] pastor
Corydon Rauf [Office Rau is comapred
to shepherd Corydon, a character in pastoral poems who suffers from unrequited
love] were not present. Au bout du compte, [come,
to that] what can a brute of this kind find to tax us with?
Mark my word, it will be just as pauvre [poor]
as Tellering’s smear.
I shall be seeing Borchardt within the next
few days. If any recommendations are to be had, you can trust me to get
them. But I hardly imagine that Steinthal, etc., have connections of the
sort in London. It’s almost wholly outside their line of business. Besides,
if only for fear of making a fool of himself, the fellow will attempt to
put off doing anything about it up here. If it were not for Lupus, I'd
consign the chap, etc. I can’t abide him, with his
p.339
smooth, self-important, vainglorious, deceitful charlatan’s physiognomy.
If Lassalle has given you a good, neutral
address in Düsseldorf, you can send me 100
copies. We shall arrange for them to be packed in bales of twist by firms
up here; but they should not be addressed to Lassalle himself, since the
packages will go to Gladbach, Elberfeld and so on, where they will have
to be stamped and sent by post to Düsseldorf. However,
we cannot entrust a package for Lassalle or the Hatzfeldt woman to any
local firm, because, 1. they all employ at least one Rhinelander
who knows all the gossip, or 2. if that goes off all right, the recipients
of the bales will get to know about it, or 3. at the very best the postal
authorities will take a look at the things before delivering them. We have
a good address in Cologne, but are not, alas, very well acquainted with
the people who are the principal buyers here for the firm in Cologne, and
hence cannot expect them to do any smuggling. Indeed, what we shall tell
the people here is that the packages contain presents for the fair
sex.
From all this you will gather that I am once
again on passable terms with Charles. The
affair was settled with great dispatch at the first suitable opportunity.
Nevertheless you will realise that the fool derives a certain pleasure
from having been given preference over myself in one rotten respect at
least, because of Mr Gottfried Ermen’s envy of my old man. Habeat sibi
[Let him have it]. He
at any rate realises that, if I so choose, I can become maître de
la situation [master of the situation]
within 48 hours, and that’s sufficient.
The absence of landed property is indeed
the key to the whole of the East. Therein lies its political and religious
history. But how to explain the fact that orientals never reached the stage
of landed property, not even the feudal kind? This is, I think, largely
due to the climate, combined with the nature of the land, more especially
the great stretches of desert extending from the Sahara right across Arabia,
Persia, India and Tartary [Turkestan]
to the highest of the Asiatic uplands. Here artificial irrigation is the
first prerequisite for agriculture, and this is the responsibility either
of the communes, the provinces or the central government. In the East,
the government has always consisted of 3 departments only: Finance (pillage
at home), War (pillage at home and abroad), and travaux publics [public
works], provision for reproduction. The British government
p.340
in India has put a somewhat narrower interpretation on nos. 1 and 2
while completely neglecting no. 3, so that Indian agriculture is going
to wrack and ruin. Free competition is proving an absolute fiasco there.
The fact that the land was made fertile by artificial means and immediately
ceased to be so when the conduits fell into disrepair, explains the otherwise
curious circumstance that vast expanses are now and wastes which once were
magnificently cultivated (Palmyra, Petra, the ruins in the
Yemen, any number of localities in Egypt, Persia, Hindustan); it explains
the fact that one single war of devastation could depopulate and entirely
strip a country of its civilisation for centuries to come. This, I believe,
also accounts for the destruction of southern Arabian trade before Mohammed’s
time, a circumstance very rightly regarded by you as one of the mainsprings
of the Mohammedan revolution. I am not sufficiently well acquainted with
the history of trade during the first six centuries A.D. to be able to
judge to what extent general material conditions in the world made the
trade route via Persia to the Black Sea and to Syria and Asia Minor via
the Persian Gulf preferable to the Red Sea route. But one significant factor,
at any rate, must have been the relative safety of the caravans in the
well-ordered Persian Empire under the Sassanids, whereas between 200 and
600 A.D. the Yemen was almost continuously being subjugated, overrun and
pillaged by the Abyssinians. By the seventh century the cities of
southern Arabia, still flourishing in Roman times, had become a veritable
wilderness of ruins; in the course of 500 years what were purely mythical,
legendary traditions regarding their origin had been appropriated by the
neighbouring Bedouins, (cf. the Koran and the Arab historian Novaïri),
and the alphabet in which the local inscriptions had been written was almost
wholly unknown although there was no other, so that de facto
writing had fallen into oblivion. Things of this kind presuppose,
not only a SUPERSEDING, probably due to general trading
conditions, but outright violent destruction such as could only be explained
by the Ethiopian invasion. The expulsion of the Abyssinians did not take
place until about 40 years before Mohammed, and was plainly the first act
of the Arabs’ awakening national consciousness, which was further aroused
by Persian invasions from the North penetrating almost as far as Mecca.
I shall not be tackling the history of Mohammed himself for a few days
yet; so far it seems to me to have the character of a Bedouin reaction
against the settled, albeit decadent urban fellaheen whose religion by
then was
p.341
also much debased, combining as it did a degenerate form of nature
worship with a degenerate form of Judaism and Christianity.
Old Bernier’s stuff is really very fine. It’s a real pleasure
to get back to something written by a sensible, lucid old Frenchman who
constantly hits the nail on the head sans avoir l'air de s'en apercevoir
[without appearing to be aware of it].
Since I am in any case tied up with
the eastern mummery for some weeks, I have made use of the opportunity
to learn Persian. I am put off Arabic, partly by my inborn hatred of Semitic
languages, partly by the impossibility of getting anywhere, without considerable
expenditure of time, in so extensive a language — one which has 4,000 roots
and goes back over 2,000-3,000 years. By comparison, Persian is absolute
child’s play. Were it not for that damned Arabic alphabet in which every
half dozen letters looks like every other half dozen and the vowels are
not written, I would undertake to learn the entire grammar within 48 hours.
This for the better encouragement of Pieper should he feel the urge to
imitate me in this poor joke. I have set myself a maximum of three weeks
for Persian, so if he stakes two months on it he'll best me anyway. What
a pity Weitling can’t speak Persian; he would then have his langue universelle
toute trouvie [universal language
ready-made] since it is, to my knowledge,
the only language where ‘me’ and ‘to me’ are never at odds, the dative
and accusative always being the same.
It is, by the way, rather pleasing to
read dissolute old Hafiz in the original language,
which sounds quite passable and, in his grammar, old Sir William Jones
likes to cite as examples dubious Persian
jokes, subsequently translated into Greek verse in his
Commentariis poeseos asiaticae, because even in Latin they seem
to him too obscene. These commentaries, Jones’
Works, Vol. II, De Poesi erotica, will amuse you. Persian
prose, on the other hand, is deadly dull. e.g. the Rauzat-us-safa by
the noble Mirkhond, who recounts the Persian
epic in very flowery but vacuous language. Of Alexander the
Great, he says that the name Iskander, in the Ionian language, is Akshid
Rus (like Iskander, a corrupt version of
Alexandros); it means much the same as filusuf, which
derives from fila, love, and sufa, wisdom, ‘Iskander’ thus being
synonymous with ‘friend of wisdom’.
p. 342.
Of a retired king he says: ‘He beat
the drum of abdication with the drumsticks of
retirement’, as will père Willich, should he involve himself
any more deeply in the literary fray. Willich
will also suffer the same fate as King Afrasiab of Turan when deserted
by his troops and of whom Mirkhond says: ‘He gnawed the nails of horror
with the teeth of desperation until the blood of vanquished
consciousness welled forth from the finger-tips of shame.'
More tomorrow.
"On April 13, in Berlin a man died who once played a role as a philosopher
and a theologian, but was hardly heard of
for years, only attracting the attention of the public
from time to time as a "literary eccentric". Official theologians, including
Renan, plagiarised him and therefore, maintained a silence of death about
him. And yet he was worth more than them all and did more than all of them
on a question which interests us socialists, too: on the question of the
historical origin of Christianity.
Let us take his death as an occasion to give a brief
account of the present position on this question,
and Bauer's contribution to its solution.
The view that dominated from the free-thinkers
of the Middle Ages to the Enlighteners of the 18th century, the latter
included, that all religions, and therefore Christianity too, were the
work of deceivers was no longer sufficient after Hegel had set philosophy
the task of showing a rational evolution in world history.
It is clear that if spontaneously arising
religions — like the fetish worship of the Negroes or the common primitive
religion of the Aryans — come into being without deception playing any
part, deception by the priests soon becomes inevitable in their further
development. But, in spite of all sincere fanaticism, artificial religions
cannot even, at their foundation, do without deception and falsification
of history. Christianity, too, has pretty achievements to boast of in this
respect from the very beginning,
p.428
as Bauer shows in his criticism of the New Testament. But that only
confirms a general phenomenon and does not explain the particular case
in question.
A religion that brought the Roman world empire into
subjection, and dominated by far the larger part of civilized humanity
for 1,800 years, cannot be disposed of merely by declaring it to be nonsense
gleaned together by frauds. One cannot dispose of it before one succeeds
in explaining its origin and its development from the historical conditions
under which it arose and reached its dominating position. This applies
especially to Christianity. The question to be solved, then, is how it
came about that the masses in the Roman Empire so far preferred this nonsense
— which was preached, into the bargain, by slaves and oppressed — to all
other religions, that the ambitious Constantine finally saw in the adoption
of this religion of nonsense the best means of exalting himself to the
position of autocrat of the Roman world. [Under
the Christian tradition, the name of the Roman Emperor Flavius Valerius
Constaninus Magnus, who in 330 transferred the capital of the empire from
Rome to Constantinople, is associated with the radical turn form persecution
of Christianity to the protection of the new religion, although this proecess
had begun under his predecessors]
Bruno Bauer has contributed far more to the
solution of this question than anybody else. No matter how much the half-believing
theologians of the period of reaction have resisted it
since 1849, he irrefutably proved the chronological order of the Gospels
and their mutual interdependence, shown by Wilke from the purely linguistic
standpoint, by the very contents of the Gospels themselves. He exposed
the utter lack of scientific spirit of Strauss' vague myth theory according
to which anybody can consider historical as much as he likes in the Gospel
narrations. And, if almost nothing from the whole content of the Gospels
turns out to be historically provable — so that even the historical existence
of a Jesus Christ can be questioned — Bauer has, thereby, only cleared
the ground for the solution of the question: what is the origin of the
ideas and thoughts that have been woven together into a sort of
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system in Christianity, and how did they come they to dominate the
world?
Bauer studied this question until his death. His
research reached its culminating point in the conclusion that the Alexandrian
Jew Philo, who was still living about A.D. 40 but was already very old,
was the real father of Christianity, and that the Roman stoic Seneca was,
so to speak, its uncle. The numerous writings attributed to Philo which
have been passed down to us indeed originate in a fusion of allegorically
and rationalistically conceived Jewish traditions with Greek, particularly
stoic, philosophy. This conciliation of Occidental and Oriental outlooks
already contains all the essentially Christian ideas: the innate sinfulness
of man, the Logos, the Word, which is with God and is God and which
becomes the mediator between God and man: atonement, not by sacrifices
of animals, but by bringing one's own heart of God, and finally the essential
feature that the new religious philosophy reverses the previous world order,
seeks its disciples among the poor, the miserable, the slaves, and the
rejected, and despises the rich, the powerful, and the privileged, whence
the precept to despise all worldly pleasure and to mortify the flesh.
One the other hand, Augustus himself
saw to it that not only the God-man, but also the so-called immaculate
conception became formulae imposed by the state. He not only had Caesar
and himself worshipped as gods, he also had it spread hat he, Augustus
Caesar Divus, the Divine, was not the son of a human father but that his
mother had conceived him of the god Apollo. But was not that Apollo perhaps
a relation of the one sung by Heinrich Heine? [Engels
is referring to a charactar in Heine's satirical poem 'Der Apollgott' (from
Romanzero), a young blade, a cantor at the Amsterdam synagogue, who imitated
Apollo].
As we see, we need only the keystone and we have the whole
of Christianity in its basic features: the incarnation of the Logos
become man in a definite person and his sacrifice on the cross for the
redemption of sinful mankind.
Truly reliable sources leave us uncertain
as to how this keystone was historically introduced into the Stoic-Philonic
doctrines. But this much is sure: it was not introduced by philosophers,
either Philo's disciples or stoics. Religions are founded by people who
feel a need for religion themselves and have a feeling for the religious
needs of the masses, and a As a rule, this is not the case with philosophical
schools. On the contrary we find that in times of general decay - now,
for instance - philosophy and religious
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dogmatism are shallowly and universally spread in a vulgarised form.
While classical Greek philosophy in its last forms — particularly in the
Epicurean school [the Epicurean school
of materialist philosophy was founded by Epicurius in the late 4th Century
BC and existed until the mid-4th Century AD. In thier philosophical struggle
against the Stoics, its members refused to recognise the gods' interference
into mundane matters and proceeded from the assumption that matter, which
has an inner source of motion, is eternal] — led to atheistic
materialism, Greek vulgar philosophy led to the doctrine of a one and only
God and of the immortality of the human soul. Likewise, rationally vulgarised
Judaism in mixture and intercourse with aliens and half-Jews, came to neglect
the ritual and transform the formerly exclusively Jewish national god,
Jahveh [Note by Engels: As Ewald has
already proved, the Jews used dotting script (containing vowels and reading
signs) to write under the consonants in the name of Javeh, which
it was forbidden to pronounce, the vowels of the word Adonai, which
they read it its place. This was subsequently read as Jehovah. The
word is therefore not the name of a god but only a vugar mistake in grammar:
in Hebrew it is simply impossible], into the one true God,
the creator of heaven and earth, and adopt the idea of the immortality
of the soul which was alien to early Judaism. Thus, monotheistic vulgar
philosophy came into contact with vulgar religion, which presented it with
the ready-made one and only God. And so the ground was prepared on which
the elaboration among the Jews of the likewise vulgarised Philonic notions
could produce Christianity, which once produced, could find acceptance
among hte Greeks and Romans. The fact that it was popularised Philonic
notions and not Philo's own works that gave birth to Christianity is proved
by the New Testament's almost complete disregard of most of these works,
particularly the allegorical and philosophical interpretation of the narrations
of the Old Testament. This is an aspect to which Bauer did not devote enough
attention.
One can get an idea of what Christianity
looked like in its early form by reading the
so-called Book of Revelation of John. Wild, confused fanaticism, only the
beginnings of dogmas, of the so-called Christian
morals, only the mortification of the flesh, but on the
other hand a multitude of visions and prophesies. The emergence of the
dogmas and moral doctrine belongs to a later period, in which the Gospels
and the so-called Epistles of the Apostles were written. In this — at least
as regards morality — unceremonious use was made of the philosophy of the
stoics, of Seneca in particular. Bauer proved that the Epistles often copy
the latter word: for word; in fact, even the faithful noticed this, but
they maintained that Seneca had copied from the New Testament, though it
had not yet been written
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in his time. Dogma developed, on the one hand in connection with the
legend of Jesus which was then taking shape, and, on the other hand, in
the struggle between Jewish Christians and those of pagan origin.
Bauer also gives very valuable data
on the causes which helped Christianity to triumph and attain world domination.
But here the German philosopher is prevented by his idealism from seeing
clearly and formulating precisely. Phrases often replace substance in decisive
points. Instead, therefore, of going into details of Bauer's views, we
shall better give our own conception of this point, based on Bauer's works,
and also on our personal study.
The Roman conquest first directly dissolved
in all subjugated countries, the previous
political systems, and then, indirectly also the social conditions of life.
Firstly by substituting the simple distinction between Roman citizens and
non-citizens or subjects of the state for the former organisation according
to social estates (slavery apart). Secondly, and mainly, by exacting tribute
in the name of the Roman state. If, under the empire, a limit was set as
far as possible in the interest of the state to the governors' thirst for
wealth, that thirst was replaced by ever more effective and oppressive
taxation for the benefit of the state treasury, the effect of which was
terribly destructive. Thirdly, and finally, Roman law was administered
everywhere by Roman judges while the native social systems were declared
invalid insofar as they did nto tally with the provisions of Roman law.
These three levers were bound to develop a tremendous levelling power,
particularly when they were applied for a century or two to populations
the most vigorous part of which had been either suppressed or taken away
into slavery in the battles preceding, accompanying, and often even following
the conquest. Social relations in the provinces came nearer and nearer
to those obtaining in the capital and in Italy. The population became more
and more sharply divided into three classes, thrown together
out of the most varying elements and nationalities: rich people, including
not a few emancipated slaves (cf. Petronius)
[Engels is referring to Petronius'
Satyricon, where he describes a feast in the house of an emancipated
slave, Trimalchionis, who became rich], big landowners or
usurers or both at once, like Seneca, the uncle of Christianity; propertyless
free people, who in Rome were fed and amused by the state — in the provinces
they got on as they could by themselves — and finally the great mass, the
slaves. In relation to the state, i.e., the emperor, the first two classes
had almost as few rights as the slaves in
p.432.
relation to their masters. From the time of Tiberius to that of Nero,
in particular, it was a practice to sentence rich Roman citizens to death
in order to confiscate their property. The support of the government was,
materially, the army, which was more like an army of hired foreign soldiers
than the old Roman peasant army, and morally, the general view that there
was no way out of this situation; that not, indeed, this or that emperor,
but an empire based on military domination was an inevitable necessity.
Here is not the place to examine what eminently material facts this view
was based on.
General slackening and demoralisation
were consonant with general lawlessness and desapir as to the possiblity
of beter conditions. The few surviving old Romans of the patrician type
and views were either removed or died out; Tacitus was the last of them.
The others were glad when they were able to keep away from public life;
all they existed for was to collect and enjoy riches, and to indulge in
private gossip and private intrigue. The propertyless free citizens were
state pensioners in Rome, but in the provinces their condition was an unhappy
one. They had to work, and to compete with slave-labor into the bargain.
But they were confined to the towns. Besides them, there was in the provinces
peasants, free landowners (here and there probably still in communal-ownership)
and, as in Gaul, bondsmen for debts to the big landowners. This class was
the least affected by the social upheaval; it was also the one to resist
the religious upheaval longest. [Engels
note: According to Fallmerayer, the peasants in Maina, Peloponnesus, still
offered sacrifices to Zeus in the 9th century.] Finally,
there were the slaves, deprived of rights and of their own will and the
possibility to free themselves, as the defeat of Spartacus [Engels
efers to the slave uprising of 73-71 BC in Rome led by Spartacus]
had already proved; most of them, however, were former free citizens, or
sons of free-born citizens. It must, therefore, have been among them that
hatred of their condition of life was still generally vigorous, though
externally powerless.
We shall find that the type of ideologists
at the time corresponded to this state of affairs.
The philosophers were either mere money-earning schoolmasters or buffoons
in the pay of wealthy revellers. Some were even slaves. An example of what
became of them if they were fortunate is shown by Mr. Seneca. This stoic
and preacher of virtue and abstinence was Nero's first court intriguer,
which would not have been possible without servility; he secured
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from Nero presents in money, estates, gardens, and palaces, and while
he preached the poor man Lazarus of the Gospel, he was, in reality, the
rich man in the same parable. Not until Nero wanted to get at him did he
request the Emperor to take back all his presents, his philosophy being
enough for him. Only completely isolated philosophers, like Persius, had
the courage to brandish the lash of satire over their degenerated contemporaries.
But, as for the second type of ideologists, the jurists, they enthused
at the new system because the abolition of all differences between social
estates allowed them broad scope in elaborating their
favorite private law, in return for which they prepared for the emperors
the vilest system of state law that ever existed.
With the political and social peculiarities
of the various peoples, the Roman Empire
also doomed to ruin their particular religions. All religions of antiquity
were naturally arising tribal, and later national
religions which sprang from and grew together with the social and
political conditions of the respective peoples. Once these, their foundations,
were destroyed, and their traditional forms of society, their
inherited political institutions and their national
independence shattered, the religion corresponding to these naturally also
collapsed. The national gods could suffer
other national gods beside them, in other nations besides them, as was
the general rule of antiquity, but not above them. The transplantion of
Oriental divinities to Rome was harmful only to the Roman religion, but
could not check the decay of the Oriental religions. As soon as the national
gods are unable to protect the independence of their nation, they engineer
their own destruction. This was the case everywhere (except with peasants,
especially in the mountains). What vulgar philosophical enlightenment —
I almost said Voltairianism — did in Rome and Greece, was done in
the provinces by Roman subjugation and the replacment of men proud of their
freedom by desperate subjects and self-seeking
ragamuffins.
Such was the material and moral situation.
The present was unbearable, the future perhaps still more menacing. There
was no way out. Only despair or refuge in the commonest
sensuous pleasure, for those at least who could afford it, and they
were a tiny minority. Otherwise, nothing but languid surrender to the inevitable.
But, in all classes there were necessarily
a number of people who, despairing of material
salvation, sought in its stead a spiritual salvation, a consolation in
their consciousness to save them from utter despair.
This consolation could not be provided by
the stoics,
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any more than by the Epicurean school, for the very reason that they
are philosophies and therefor not intended for the common consciousness
and, secondly, because the conduct of their disciples brought the doctrines
of the schools nito disrepute. The consolation was to be a substitute,
not for the lost philosophy, but for the lost religion; it had to take
on a religious form, just as anything which was to grip the masses then
and even as late as the 17th century.
We hardly need to note that of those
who were pining for such consolation of their consciousness, for this flight
from the external world into the internal, the majority were among
the slaves.
It was in the midst of this general
economic, political, intellectual, and moral decay that Christianity appeared.
It was decisively at odds with all previous religions.
In all previous religions, ritual had been
the main thing. Only by taking part in the sacrifices and processions,
and in the Orient by observing the most cumbersome diet and cleanliness
regulations, could one show to what religion one belonged. While Rome and
Greece were tolerant in the latter respect, there was in the Orient an
obsession for religious prohibitions that contributed no little to the
final collapse. People of two different religions (Egyptians, Persians,
Jews, Chaldeans) could not eat or drink together, perform any everyday
act together, or hardly speak to each other. It was largely due to this
segregation of man from man that the Orient met its demise. Christianity
knows no distinctive rituals, not even the sacrifices and processions of
the classic world. By thus rejecting all national religions and their common
ritual and addressing itself to all peoples without distinction, it becomes
the first potential world religion. Judaism, too, with its new universal
god, had made a start towards becoming a world religion; but the children
of Israel always remained an aristocracy among the believers and the circumcised,
and Christianity itself had to get rid of the notion of the superiority
of the Jewish Christians (still dominant in the so-called Book of Revelation
of John) before it could really become a universal religion. Islam itself,
on the other hand, by preserving its specifically Oriental ritual, limited
the area of its propagation to the Orient and North Africa, conquered and
populated anew by Arab Bedouins; here it could become the dominating religion,
but not in the West.
Secondly, Christianity struck a chord
that was bound to echo in countless hearts. To
all complaints about the wickedness of the times and the general material
and moral misery, Christian consciousness
of sin answered: It is so and it cannot be otherwise;
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thou art in blame, ye are all to blame for the corruption of the world,
thine and your own internal corruption! And
where was the man who could deny it? Mea culpa! [my
fault] The admission of each
one's share in the responsibility for the general unhappiness was
irrefutable and was made now the precondition for the spiritual salvation
which Christianity at the same time announced. And this spiritual
salvation was so instituted that it could be
easily understood by members of every old religious community. The idea
of atonement to lacate the offended deity was current in all the old religions;
how could the idea of self-sacrifice of the mediator
atoning once for all for the sins of humanity not easily find
ground there? Christianity, therefore, clearly expressed the universal
feeling that men themselves are guilty of
the general corruption as the consciousness of sin of each one; at
the same time, it provided, in the sacrificial death of its founder, a
form easily understood everywhere of the universally longed-for internal
salvation from the decadent world, the consolation of consciousness; it
thus again proved its capacity to become a world religion and, indeed,
a religion which suited the world as it then was.
So it happened that, among the thousands
of prophets and preachers in the desert that filled that period of countless
religious novations, the founders of Christianity alone met with success.
Not only Palestine, but the entire Orient swarmed with such founders of
religions, and between them there raged what can be called a Darwinist
struggle for ideological existence. Thanks mainly to the elements mentioned
above, Christianity won the day. How it gradually developed its character
of world religion by natural selection in the struggle of sects against
one another and against the pagan world is taught in detail by the history
of the Church in the first three centuries.