WHY I AM A PHILISTINE. — II.
I have received a long and carefully written
letter from an unknown gentleman who signs
himself “Retired Clergyman.”
The Great Obscure favor me quite often with
anonymous epistles, but life being short and the
waste basket wide, I seldom reply. Yet now an
exception must be made and I answer “Retired
Clergyman” for the sole and simple reason that he
has “retired,” and in retiring he has made the world
his debtor. Probably no one act of this man’s entire
life was so potent for good as this. He has set all
clergymen without humor a most precious precedent.
In gratitude, hoping that his example will bear
fruit, I reply.
Did space permit I would be glad to print my
correspondent’s letter entire, but the gist of his
scholarly argument is that The Society of the Philistines
is endeavoring to make free-thought universal
and paganism popular. He stoutly avers that the
ancient Philistines were the enemies of Jehovah,
that they worshipped strange gods and that they
were the sworn foes of the Chosen People.
Now this is the sad part: he proves his case.
The gentleman explains that he would not have
seen the Philistine Magazine had not his daughter,
“an unmarried lady of thirty-two,” purchased several
copies; but from this on, with his permission,
no more numbers of this “infidelic infernal machine”
shall enter his house.
My heart goes out to all unmarried ladies of thirty-two.
Especially so when they have fathers who are
irascible; only one worse fate can befall a woman
of thirty-two than to have an irascible father, and
that is to have a lover who is irate. Still I doubt
not but that the daughter of “Retired Clergyman”
will find a way to read the Philistine—booklets
laugh at locksmiths!
Yet, ignorance prevails, for is not “Retired Clergyman”
living proof? And so I will say: There
lived in the Far East about three thousand years ago
a tribe of people known as Philistines. It is a hotly
mooted question among the theologians whether they
were so-called because they lived in Philistia or
whether Philistia took its name on account of being
peopled by Philistines. I will not take sides in this
issue, but hedge closely and simply stand firm on
the fact that a tribe called the Philistines existed.
Near them lived the Hivites, the Moabites, the
Canaanites, the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Perizzites,
the Ammonites and the Gothamites.
Now among these tribes none were so strong, none
so intelligent, none so virtuous as the Philistines.
And it came to pass that the superior quality of
moral fibre in the Philistines caused the entire
country to be known as Philistia; it was the general
name given to the whole valley of the Jordan.
And the name endures even unto this day.
Palestine means the Land of the Philistines.
And it seems that among them there was a rude
sense of right and wrong. For if a man owned a
piece of ground and planted a vine on it, and then
watered and tended the vine, the grapes that grew
on this vine were his, and all of the people agreed
to this, and the man and his neighbors knew all this
without a Dispensation.
These people planted vineyards, and had gardens,
and fields of wheat and of barley. They had barns
with threshing floors, and they had carts, plows and
other implements. They builded houses and owned
their homes; and the men loved their wives and
their children; and the women were the comrades
of the men—all taking part in the sports as well as
in the work, for they were a merry, happy people.
Now about thirteen centuries before Christ, while
they were living in peace and prosperity, there
swooped down upon them a horde of escaped slaves,
called Israelites. These slaves had broken away
from their masters in Egypt. The country to which
they travelled was only about three hundred miles
from Egypt, but as their average speed was less than
a mile a week it took them forty years to make the
journey.
The man who led these slaves in their flight was
one Moses, who had killed a man in Egypt and fled.
After many years of exile, during which time he had
been in Philistia and liked it, he returned and led
the exodus. When the Israelites left they took all
the gold and silver ornaments and utensils they
could “borrow,” and melted them up. And they
were not ashamed of this act, for they have written
it down in the third chapter of a book called Exodus.
The ancient Israelites never had any clear
ideas as to the rights of property. When they found
grapes growing on a vine they helped themselves
and swore that the fruit was theirs by Divine right.
In order to impress this ignorant, barbaric horde
with the sense of authority, Moses told the people
that God directed him, and that Deity told him what
to do and say.
Moses used to go up on a mountain, clear above
the clouds, beyond where the mists hover, and when
he came down the people asked him what he had
been up there for, and he told them he went up to
see God. In no other way could Moses control
this restless mob except by saying God says so and so.
And the fact that their leader was on such good
terms with Elohim or Yoveh, inflated these people
so that they always spoke of themselves as “the
Chosen People of God.” The Jebusites, the Hittites
and the Moabites never referred to the Israelites
as the Chosen People of God. No one called
them the Chosen People of God—only they themselves.
And I wish to say right here that the individual
who does a great and magnificent work is on close
and friendly terms with God. He is the Son of
God, and it is necessary that he should feel this kinship
in order to do his work. From Moses, the
called of God, on up to Socrates, who listened to
the Dæmon, to George Fox, who hearkened to the
Voice, to the Prophets of our own time, all lie low
in the Lord’s hand and listen closely ere they act.
A man is strong only when he feels that he is
backed by a Power, not his own, that makes for
Righteousness.
When I think of these brave souls, the Saviours of
the World, who have sought to lead men out of the
captivity of evil—feeling and knowing that they
were the Sons of God—I stand uncovered. But a
mass of people—a crowd, a mob—that claims to be
a “Chosen People” is a sight to make angels weep.
“You cannot indict a class” said Macaulay; corporations
have no souls, and a horde that claims to
be inspired is only a howling cowardly Thing. Great
men are ever lonely and live apart, but birds of a
feather flock together because they fear to flock
alone. They want warmth and protection—they are
afraid. A mob is the quintessence of cowardice—a
dirty, mad, hydra-headed monster, that one good
valiant St. George can thrust to the heart. When a
mob speaks I say: Vox populi vox Devil!
At the time the Israelites tumbled in pell-mell onto
the Philistines Moses had long been dead. The mob
was without a leader and quarrel was rife amid its
broken ranks. In a mad rush they stampeded the
herds of the Philistines, scattered their flocks, destroyed
their gardens, and as excuse they shouted:
We are the Chosen People of God!! And one of
their Poets sang a song, two lines of which runs thus:
Moab is my wash-pot,
Over Philistia will I cast my shoe.
This only made the Philistines laugh, and although
the Israelites outnumbered them, they went at it and
scattered them. Finally after long years of warfare,
the fight was called a draw, and the Jews settled
down and following the good example of the Philistines
made themselves homes.
Of course, as sane men and women, we of today
do not suppose that the great Universal Intelligence
that holds the worlds in the hollow of His hand had
much interest in the fight. If this Intelligence were
a Being, I can imagine Him looking over the battlement
of Heaven and turning with a weary smile to
Gabriel, saying, “Let ’em fight—what boots it!
they will all be dead tomorrow, anyway.”
It is a noteworthy fact that in the first chapter of
the Gospel of St. Matthew the Inspired Writer traces
the genealogy of Jesus direct to the Philistines. In
the sixth verse we find “David begat Solomon of
her who had been the wife of Urias.” Back of this
is Ruth the Moabitess, who was the grandmother of
David. There is no such thing as tracing a pure
Jewish lineage back to the time of Moses. The Jews
went a courting as soon as they arrived on the borders
of Canaan; and the heathen quite fancied the
Israelitish women from the first. In the book of
Ruth, first chapter and fourth verse I see, “And
they took them wives out of the country of Moab.”
The houses of Capulet and Montague have ever intermarried—it
seems a quiet way Nature has of playing
a little joke.
And after a painstaking study of the matter I am
fully convinced that the sterling qualities in the Jew
are derived from his Philistine ancestry. No one
doubts that Solomon was the wisest man that ever
was. His mother was a Philistine. Now no man is
ever greater than his mother, and it is very plain that
the great wisdom of Solomon was derived from this
pagan woman whose body nourished him; in whose
loving arms he was cradled; and whose intellect
first fired his aspiration. This is all made plainer yet
when we remember that David had many sons by
Jewish women, and that all of these sons were positively
no good—and some of them very, very bad.
The facts are found in the Second Book of Samuel—a
book, by the way, which no respectable girl should
allow her mother to read.
But if any captious critic arises and denies the Law
of Heredity, for argument’s sake, I’ll waive this matter
of maternal transmission of excellence and rest
my case as to Solomon’s wisdom on the fact that he
married over four hundred Philistine women. And
as stated by Sir Walter Besant in a recent story, “a
newly married woman always tells her husband
everything she knows,” I will feel safe in saying
that Solomon’s transcendent wisdom was derived
from Philistinic sources.
Only one incident in the history of this people
do I wish to set straight before the world at this
writing—that is the story of Goliath. According to
recently discovered cuneiform inscriptions it is found
that the giant lived long enough to attend the funeral
of David, so it is hardly likely that David slew
him. David probably threw pebbles at the warrior,
but the giant of course paid no attention to the boys
that followed him—going along about his business
just as any other dignified giant would have done.
But David went home and told that he had killed
the man—and the Israelites wishing to leave a proud
record wrote the tale down as history. This story
was interpolated into the Bible during the fore part
of the Third Century.
In David’s case summer and autumn quite fulfilled
the promise of spring. That eleventh chapter of
Second Samuel, showing how he stole Bath-Sheba
and then killed Uriah, her husband, reveals the quality
of the man. But it was left for his dying act to
crown a craven career. With his last lingering
breath—with the rattle of death in his throat—he
gasped to his son, referring to a man who had never
wronged him, “His hoar head bring thou down to
the grave in blood!” With the utterance of these
frightful words his soul passed out into the Unknown.
In all that David wrote not a word can I find that
hints at his belief in a future life—he simply never
thought of it! and dying as a dog dies, he gnashed
at Shimei, whose offense was that thirty-five years
before he had told David a little wholesome truth.
Shimei was a brave fellow and David dare not fight
him, so he made a truce with him and swore an
oath that he would never molest him, but dying he
charged Solomon to search him out with a sword.
This is recorded by the Inspired Writer in the ninth
verse of the second chapter of First Kings.
With forty-one distinct crimes to David’s charge,
the killing of nine hundred thousand men and two
hundred thousand women and children, the houghing
of thousands of horses, all of which is set down
in infallible Holy Writ, his record is very bluggy.
In fact, his whole life’s pathway is streaked with
infamy.
David being a literary man of acknowledged
merit, I have given him more attention than I
would a plain, every-day king. And I now brand
him as an all ’round rogue. I do this calmly,
holding myself personally responsible, and fully prepared
to plead justification and prove my case
should the heirs or next-of-kin consider my language
libellous.
So far as I can ascertain, Dagon was eminently
respectable. I cannot find a single stain on his
record; while as for Jehovah, goodness me! If half
that His Chosen People tell about him is true, he
surely wasn’t very nice.
And while I do not know anything about it for
certain, it is my opinion that at the Last Great Day
the folks who stayed around home and pruned their
vines and tended their flocks and loved their wives
and babies will fare a deal better than those other
men who made war on innocent people and tried to
render them homeless. Of course I may be wrong
about this, but I cannot help having an opinion.
Altogether, my sympathies are with the Philistines—who
were so strong in personality that they
gave their name to the Holy Land—Pelishton, Pelesheth,
Philistia, Palestina, PALESTINE.
Long years ago Professor Jowett called attention
to the fact that the word Philistia literally meant
Land of Friendship: the term having the same
root as the Greek word Philos—Love. Max Muller
has recently said: “The dwellers in the Valley
of the Jordan, in the fifteenth century before Christ,
recognizing the idea of Oneness or Fraternity, gave a
name that signified Love-Land to their country: thus
embodying the modern thought of the Brotherhood
of Man.”
In view of these things it was rather a strange
move—a man so scholarly as Matthew Arnold applying
the word “Philistine” as a term of reproach
toward those who did not think as he did! I can
see though that he shaped his language to fit the ears
of his clientele. He sought to make clever copy—and
he did. The opinion being abroad that the Philistines
were the enemies of Light—how very funny
to throw the word like a mud ball at any and all who
chanced to smile at his theories! Having small wit
of their own, the scribbling rabble took it up.
On reading certain books by a Late Critic, who
now wears prison garb and is doing the first honest
work that ever his hands found to do, I see that he
is very fond of calling people who are outside of his
particular cult, “Philistines.”
But look you! Brave Taurus at the bull-fight is a
deal more worthy of respect than the picadores who
for a price harry him without ruth to his death. And
as his virtue surpasses that of any in the silken, belaced
and perfumed throng who sit safe and with lily
fingers applaud, so do we accept your banderilla,
recognizing from whence it comes, and wear it jauntily
as a badge of honor.
As the Cross for eighteen hundred years has been
a sacred emblem, and the gallows since John Brown
glorious; and as the word Quaker, flung in impudent
and impotent wrath, now stands for gentleness,
peace and truth, so has the word Philistine become
a synonym for manly independence.
In Literature he is a Philistine who seeks to express
his personality in his own way. A true Philistine
is one who brooks no let nor hindrance from the
tipstaffs of letters, who creating nothing themselves
yet are willing for a consideration to show others
how. These men strive hard to reduce all life to a
geometrical theorem and its manifestations to an algebraic
formula. But life is greater than a college
professor, and so far its mysteries, having given the
slip to all the creeds, are still at large. My individual
hazard at truth is as legitimate as yours. The
self appointed beadles of letters demand that we
shall neither smile nor sleep while their Presiding
Elders drone, but we plead in the World’s Assize
for the privilege of doing both.
In Art we ask for the widest, freest and fullest liberty
for Individuality—that’s all!
Elbert Hubbard.
This book is printed in the “Golden” type, with
a specially designed title-page and border, and
in special binding. “Hand and Soul” first
appeared in “The Germ,” the short-lived magazine
of the Pre-Raphælite Brotherhood. A few
copies also on Vellum.
