The Talmud anticipates in a wonderful degree not only the moral precepts of the Gospel, but to a great extent its phraseology and technical terms. ‘Redemption,’ ‘grace,’ ‘faith,’ ‘salvation,’ ‘Son of man,’ ‘Son of God,’ ‘kingdom of heaven,’ were all, as Deutsch shows, not invented by Christianity, but were household words of contemporary Judaism. In one respect only Christianity shows a higher evolution of morality than Judaism—viz. its universality. Pure Judaism hardly rises above the idea of ‘neighbour,’ or those who were of the same race or common faith; while Christianity, as enlarged by St. Paul, embraces all mankind, and may truly say: ‘Humani nihil a me alienum puto.’
The idea that morality and religion are products of a slowly developing evolution is denounced by many as degrading and materialistic. In many the instinct of the ‘good’ is so strong that it seems to them sacrilege to attempt to explain it. They insist that it is either a universal instinct implanted from the first in all mankind, or else that it has been so implanted by a divine revelation. They forget that, to use the vigorous phraseology of Carlyle, ‘It matters not whether you call a thing pan-theism or pot-theism; what really concerns us is to know whether it is _true_.’ Now it admits of no question that, whether we like it or not, the evolutionist theory of morality is the true one. Take an extreme instance, that of murder. We feel an instinctive horror at the idea, and even a brutal ruffian like Bill Sikes becomes an accursed thing to himself and his companions when he has transgressed the commandment ‘Thou shalt do no murder.’ But is it so everywhere, and was it so always? By no means; the Fiji islander kills and eats a stranger or enemy without scruple; the Red Indian and the Dyak are not accounted men until they have murdered some one and brought home his scalp or his head as a trophy. Even at a late period among ourselves murder was considered to be rather as a civil injury, to be met by compensation, than as a crime; and a regular tariff was established of the amount to be paid according as the victim was a slave or a freeman.
The origin and progress of the idea that murder is a crime can almost be traced step by step. The wife of a rude savage does something which offends him; a violent perception of anger flashes from the visual organ to the perceptive area of the brain, and a reflex action flashes from it along the motor nerve to the muscles of the arm. He strikes and kills her, almost as unconsciously and instinctively as he walks or breathes. But other perceptions follow on the act. He finds next day that he has no one to cook his food; the image of her dying face photographed on his brain is an unpleasant one; and thus by degrees a series of secondary perceptions get attached to the primary one of striking when he feels angry. If he gets another wife who again provokes him, the primary perception calls up the secondary ones, and the nerve-centres of his brain, instead of being solicited only in one direction, are acted on in opposite ways by conflicting impressions. He hesitates, and, as the primary impulse of passion is probably the more evanescent, the restraining impulses prevail, and every time they prevail they acquire more strength. Gradually they extend to a conviction that it is both inconvenient and disagreeable to kill any one with whom he is closely related either by family or tribal ties, and that, in a word, murder does not pay, and is wrong, unless practised on an enemy. This idea accumulates by heredity, and evidently those tribes or races in whom it is strongest will have an advantage in the struggle for life and be most likely to survive.