The Negative Form of the Golden Rule

When I last occupied this pulpit I spoke on the text, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” I tried to indicate some of the stages by which this maxim became the Golden Rule of conduct, until it acquired the widest influence in social morality by its adoption in the Gospels under a form which may be summarised as: Do as you would be done by. Now Hillel’s death coincided almost exactly with the birth of Jesus, and I ask your attention to-day to the terms in which the Jewish Rabbi enunciated the fundamental sentiment which has become associated with the name of Jesus—a sentiment, the acceptance of which renders the life of men possible in society with one another. Hillel, on a famous occasion, said: “What is hateful to thyself, do not to another” [b. Sabbath 31a].

This version of the Golden Rule is, you will note, stated in negative terms. It does not bid men to do what they love; it bids them not to do to others what they would hate if done to themselves. Curiously enough, the negative form occurs again in an early Jewish work, viz., in the Book of Tobit, where the words of Hillel are almost identically repeated. Philo, too, the noble Jewish Alexandrian, spread the same doctrine in the same negative terms among his Hellenistic friends. But here is, I think, an interesting fact. The negative form of the Golden Rule not only preceded Christianity, it also survived it. The negative form is quoted by certain early Christian authorities as identical in force and meaning with the positive maxim. So St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, explaining that the Decalogue, forbidding various unsocial acts, might be summed up in the Old Testament saying, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”—St. Paul, I say, justifies this attempted summarisation by the remark, “Love worketh no ill to his neighbour, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” [Romans 8:10], clearly giving the love its negative application, making it signify the complete avoidance of what is harmful rather than the performance of what is helpful.

I do not know when it began to be urged that the negative form of the Golden Rule was lacking in completeness; I think it must have been when it became tolerably certain that Hillel’s saying anticipated the Gospel by about half a century. To reproach Hillel, however, for an incomplete sense of social duties is peculiarly inapt. For the same Hillel, who used the words of our text, also said, in an even more famous utterance: “Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace; loving thy fellow-creatures, and bringing them nigh to the Torah” [m. Avot 1:12]. Thus Hillel taught in positive terms the duty of loving all men; but I fancy he had some sufficient motive for formulating the Golden Rule in negative terms. The negative form is, in fact, more fundamental, whether from the point of view of human reason or of human nature.

To see the matter in its true light, one must carefully consider the circumstances under which Hillel spoke. You remember how a heathen went to Shammai, and asked him to teach him the Law while he stood on one foot. Shammai did what most people would have done under similar provocation. He showed his questioner the door, and, being ungifted with Hillel’s gentle tolerance, perhaps he stood on one foot while he did it. But when Hillel was accosted by the same impatient inquirer he did not get angry. A man once bet another four hundred coins that he would make Hillel lose his temper. He tried, but Hillel kept his temper, and the man lost his money. So, when the would-be proselyte asked Hillel to teach him the Law while he stood on one foot, Hillel calmly answered: “What to thyself is hateful, do not to another. This is the whole Law, the rest is but commentary.” In the seventeenth century, Rabbi Samuel Edels, the renowned Talmudist, asked, “Why did not Hillel say to him, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’?” Because Hillel had to go straight to the root of the whole matter; he had to tell his questioner a truth on which the law of love is itself a commentary. He was not offering the perfected Law, but was giving the heathen, with his one-legged philosophy, another leg to stand on; he was offering to him the principle without which there would be no sure foundation for social intercourse. If Hillel had said, “Love thy neighbour,” or “Do to him as you would have him do to you,” the heathen might have replied, “That is all very well, but I do not want anything from my neighbour; I want neither his love nor his favours. Why, then, should I love him or do him service?” And I think the objection would have needed more argument for its refutation than a man on one foot would have listened to with patience. Besides, Hillel would have been compelled to fall back on: “What is hateful to yourself, do not to another,” as the justification of the law of love. Hence he stated at the outset the axiom itself, and the proselyte saw at a glance that here was the fundamental basis of social and religious virtue. I may not need my neighbour’s love, but I cannot live with him if he hate me. The negative form seems to me to go deeper to the heart of the problem.