Chapter XVIII (2)

[340] Eccl. ix. 5; and so ix. 10: “For there is no work, nor desire, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in Sheol, whither thou goeth.”

[341] Is. xxxviii. 18.

[342] See below, pp. 165 f.

[343] Cf. Chapter II.

[344] The oldest form of the Decalogue is found in Ex. xxxiv; cf. Ex. xxxiii.

[345] If we compare the morality of this Hebrew Decalogue with that of the Egyptian Negative Confession, we shall find it to belong to about the same stage of ethical development.

[346] In the Book of Judges are preserved some traditions which are illustrative of the moral state of society at this time; for though all the details of these stories may not be historical, still they doubtless reflect the general condition of things during this period. There is a striking similarity between these traditions of gross and incredible crimes and the traditions of the atrocious immoralities of the Merovingian Age in European history.

[347] The kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrian power 722 B.C.; the kingdom of Judah fell before Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, 586 B.C.

[348] Cf. Kuenen, _The Prophets and Prophecy in Israel_.

[349] _The Prophets and Prophecy in Israel_ (1877), p. 344.

[350] Cf. 1 Kings xxi--the story of Naboth’s vineyard.

[351] “The life-work of Elijah was a turning-point in the history of the religion of Israel, similar in its consequences to those which followed the appearance of Zarathustra in Iran.... It was the ethical idea of God matured in the soul of the prophet by the need of his time which broke through with irresistible power to the demand for a final choice between Jehovah, the holy God, and the unholy nature gods of the heathen.”--PFLEIDERER, _Religions and Historic Faiths_ (1907), pp. 225 f.

[352] _History of the People of Israel_ (1892), vol. ii, p. 275.

[353] Calamities were at this time befalling Israel. “The national distress served to awaken Israel’s conscience. The obligation covenanted at Sinai knocked again at the door of their hearts” (Budde, _Religion of Israel to the Exile_ (1899), p. 93).

[354] Amos iii. 10.

[355] _Ibid._ v. 11, 12.

[356] _Ibid._ viii. 5, 6.

[357] _Ibid._ v. 21.

[358] _Ibid._ v. 22.

[359] _Ibid._ v. 24.

[360] Hosea vi. 6.

[361] To Amos and Hosea, Yahweh is simply the supreme god, the suzerain of all other gods.

[362] Is. ii. 3, 4; cf. Micah iv. 1–3. See Driver, _Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament_ (1897), p. 229, for the opinion of different commentators on the possible exilic or postexilic date of these passages.

[363] Is. i. 11–17.

[364] Micah vi. 6–8.

[365] Wellhausen, _Prolegomena to the History of Israel_ (1885), p. 414.

[366] This festival was probably of Babylonian origin. It was associated with astronomical phenomena--with the seven planets of ancient astronomy and with the phases of the moon.

[367] The feast of Purim is another transformed festival; “Babylonian in origin, it was given a Jewish dress and became incorporated into the system of Jewish observances” (David Philipson, _The Reform Movement in Judaism_ (1907), p. 3).

[368] Thus the festival of Dionysus, which “in its origin was a mere burst of primitive animal spirits, is transmuted into a complex and beautiful work of art” (Dickinson, _The Greek View of Life_, p. 14).

[369] Deut. vi. 14.

[370] Montefiori, _Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion_ (1892), p. 197.

[371] _Prolegomena to the History of Israel_ (1885), p. 402. Renan speaks of Deuteronomy in the same strain: “This Thora was the worst enemy of the universal religion which the prophets of the eighth century had in their dreams” (_History of the People of Israel_ (1891), vol. iii, p. 175).

[372] Cf. Chapter XVI. The persecutions of the medieval Church were largely the outcome of this legislation which made the extermination of God’s enemies, that is, idolators and misbelievers, a pious duty. “The terrible _Directorium Inquisitorum_ of Nicholas Eymeric follows Deuteronomy word for word” (Renan, _History of the people of Israel_ (1891), vol. iii, p. 179).

[373] Deut. xx. 16.

[374] _Ibid._ vii. 2.

[375] _Jewish Religious Life after the Exile_ (1898), p. 45. The teachings of this same intolerant monolatry has, down to the present day, exerted a retarding influence upon the development of international morality, especially upon the war ethics of the Christian nations.

[376] We meet with the same phenomenon in medieval times. The Christian Church, which was so harsh in its dealings with misbelievers, was a tender mother toward the poor and the afflicted of the faith.

[377] The origin of these cities may date from a much earlier time than the reform under King Josiah. The code may simply register changes already effected in the customary law. See Nathaniel Schmidt, _The Prophet of Nazareth_ (1905), p. 61.

[378] Deut. iv. 41, 42; xix. 1–13.

[379] Deut. xv. 7, 8.

[380] _Ibid._ xxiv. 6.

[381] _Ibid._ xxiv. 12, 13.

[382] _Ibid._ xxiv. 17.

[383] _Ibid._ xxiv. 14, 15.

[384] _Ibid._ xxiii. 19, 20. Cf. Maspero, _The Dawn of Civilization_, p. 760. The poor in these early times were, in all the lands advancing in civilization, literally devoured by the money lenders.

[385] Deut. xxiv. 19.

[386] Ruth ii. 4–17.

[387] Deut. v. 14, 15.

[388] _Ibid._ xv. 12.

[389] _Ibid._ xv. 13, 14.

[390] All these regulations respecting slaves, however, lack universalism. It is compassion for the slave not as a man, but as a Hebrew, that moves the legislator. The laws are in general for the benefit of Hebrew slaves alone. Gentiles or foreigners are not included in these humane provisions. See Lev. xxv and Ex. xxi. 2.

[391] See Is. xl-lxvi.

[392] “Deutero-Isaiah was the first to emphasize and make use of this plenary and unconditional monotheism.”--MONTEFIORI, _Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion_ (1892), p. 269.

[393] Is. xliii. 10.

[394] _Ibid._ xliv. 6.

[395] _Ibid._ xliv. 24.

[396] _Ibid._ xlv. 5.

[397] _Ibid._ xlvi. 9.

[398] There is a repetition of this in the _Koran_, where the Prophet of Arabia speaks as one to whom the idea of the unity of deity had come as a new thought.

[399] W. Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_ (1894), p. 81.

[400] See above, pp. 18–20.

[401] “I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.”--Deut. v. 9.

[402] Ezek. xviii. 2.

[403] _Ibid._ xviii. 3.

[404] Ezek. xviii. 20. The entire chapter is devoted to this single subject. This truer view had dawned upon the compilers of the Deuteronomic code. Cf. Deut. xxiv. 16 and Jer. xxxi. 29, 30.

[405] See below, p. 364.

[406] See lii. 13-liii. 12.

[407] Cf. Bennett, _The Religion of the Post-Exilic Prophets_ (1907), pp. 326 ff.

[408] In the year 539 B.C. Cyrus, king of Persia, having captured Babylon, issued a decree giving the Jewish exiles in Babylonia permission to return to their own land and to rebuild the Temple destroyed fifty years before by Nebuchadnezzar. A band returned and set themselves to the task of restoring their houses and rebuilding the Temple. After many interruptions and long delay the building was finished and dedicated anew to the worship of Yahweh (516 B.C.).

[409] “The growth of Judaism and the Judaic veneration for the law, after Ezra’s reformation, shows some marked resemblances to the growth in post-Reformation Protestant theology of the legal conception of salvation, and particularly the tendency to formalize and almost to deify the literal inspiration and authority of the Scriptures.”--NEWMAN SMYTH, _Christian Ethics_ (1892), p. 95.

[410] For life under the law consult Schürer, _History of the Jewish People_, division ii, vol. ii, pp. 90 ff.

[411] Matt. xxiii. 23.

[412] _Ibid._ xv. 11, 20. “The identification of morality with ritual in his [Jesus’] day had confused the issue before human life much as that issue is now confused by the identification of morality with opinion” (Hall, _History of Ethics within Organized Christianity_ (1910), p. 62).

[413] Ps. cxxxvii. 9; see Ps. cix.

[414] On this subject see Toy, _Judaism and Christianity_ (1891), pp. 246 ff.

[415] “The people had learned to draw nigh to God without the aid of sacrifice.”--W. ROBERTSON SMITH, _The Religion of the Semites_ (1894), p. 215.

[416] Cf. Mark i. 21; vi. 2.

[417] Renan, _History of the People of Israel_ (1895), vol. iv, p. 195.

[418] Consult on this subject Charles, _A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life_ (1898–1899).

[419] See above, pp. 139 f.

[420] See Cheyne, _Jewish Religious Life after the Exile_ (1898), p. 229; and Toy, _Judaism and Christianity_ (1891), pp. 378, 386.

[421] Ps. xvi. 10, Rev. Ver.

[422]

“I know without me God cannot a moment live;
If I to death should go, He, too, would death receive.”

Quoted by BLOW, _A Study of Dante_ (1887), p. 102.

[423] Cf. above, p. 44; see also Toy, _Judaism and Christianity_ (1891), p. 387; Hall, _History of Ethics within Organized Christianity_ (1910), p. 216.

[424] The Pharisees; cf. Acts xxiii. 6–8.

[425] We see a repetition of all this in what is going on to-day among the Jews in the great cities of the New World. Liberal Judaism is largely the outcome of just such influences as brought forth Christianity out of the narrow ritual Judaism of the Alexandrian Age. See David Philipson, _The Reform Movement in Judaism_ (1907), chap. xii.

[426] “Those psalms into which a sense of something like the brotherhood of nations begins to penetrate are for various reasons later than 382 B.C.... Not till the coming of the Macedonian reconciler of East and West could there be a presentiment of the truth of the divine education, not only of Israel, but of the human race.”--CHEYNE, _Jewish Religious Life after the Exile_ (1898), pp. 134 f.

[427] To Hillel is credited the maxim, “What thou wouldst not have another do to thee, do not thou to another.”

[428] The teaching of the Orphic sects that there are two elements, one good and another bad, in man’s nature, was an esoteric doctrine which had no influence on the popular mind and conscience. Cf. G. Lowes Dickinson, _The Greek View of Life_, 6th ed., pp. 31 f.

[429] There are, it is true, gods of the lower world unfriendly to man, but there is nothing in the Greek world-view corresponding to the Egyptian conception of the struggle between the good Osiris and the wicked Set, or of the Persian idea of the conflict between the beneficent Ahura Mazda and the evil-working Ahriman. Nor was there anything in this view like the Babylonian or Persian notion of malicious spirits.

[430] The Dionysian cult fostered art, but not directly morality. In so far as the Attic drama was an elevating moral influence, the cult may be said to have indirectly promoted morals. But the foreign orgiastic god had to be thoroughly converted before he could strengthen others.

[431] The pre-Hellenic Oriental cult of Aphrodite had undoubtedly an unfavorable influence on morality. “Some part of this evil character [was] transplanted into Greek legend, but very little into Greek worship.... What we know is that until the declining period of Greek history the cult of Aphrodite, so far as it appears in written or monumental record, was as pure and austere as that of Zeus and Athena” (Farnell, _The Cults of the Greek States_ (1896), vol. ii, pp. 657, 663).

[432] Cf. Schmidt, _Die Ethik der alten Griechen_ (1882), Bd. i, S. 165.

[433] Farnell, _The Cults of the Greek States_ (1896), vol. i, p. 74, quoting Charondas, the Sicilian legislator.

[434] Farnell, _The Cults of the Greek States_ (1896), vol. iv, pp. 177 ff.

[435] Hatch, _The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church_, 2d ed., p. 292.

[436] _History of Greece_ (1900), pp. 320 f.

[437] _Thucyd._ i. 70.

[438] For an illuminating comparison of the Greek virtues of fortitude and temperance with the corresponding Christian virtues, see T. H. Green, _Prolegomena to Ethics_, 5th ed., pp. 304 ff.

[439] _Ethics_, iii. 10.

[440] “But let [each man] know,” says Plato, “how to choose the mean and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as in him lies, not only in this life but in all that which is to come. For this is the way of happiness” (_Republic_, tr. Jowett, x. 619).

[441] Socrates, it is true, taught that it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong, but he was here far in advance of the common Greek conscience.

[442] Quoted by Taylor, _Ancient Ideals_ (1896), vol. i, p. 247.

[443] _Christian Ethics_ (1873), vol. i, p. 63.

[444] _The Greek View of Life_ (1909), p. 205.

[445] If we contrast the Greek conception of man’s nature with that of certain systems of Christian theology, we shall better understand the ethical value of such ideas and beliefs. On the occasion of a college commencement one of the speakers, a stout upholder of the doctrines of the fall of man, original sin, and the utter depravity of the natural man, roundly denounced this injunction of Pindar’s. He said to the young people who had chosen as their class motto, “Be what you are,” that that was just what they ought not to be. He then went on to show them that their nature was wholly corrupt, that all their natural inclinations were toward evil continually, and that if they ever hoped for salvation they must become what they were not.

[446] “Aristotle may be almost said to have made the difference between Greek and barbarian the basis of his moral code.”--LECKY, _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 200.

[447] _Politics_, i. 7, sec. 5; 8, sec. 12; vii. 14, sec. 21.

[448] For the ethics of Greek slavery consult Schmidt, _Die Ethik der alten Griechen_ (1882), Bd. ii, S. 203–219.

[449] Thebes, but not from moral scruples seemingly, prohibited under the penalty of death the destruction of healthy infants.

[450] The reader of Plato will recall how Socrates uses this practice of the exposition of infants to illustrate his art of bringing to birth true and false ideas (“lies and shadows”) in the minds of his pupils, and exposing to die those that are vain shadows. See his _Dialogues_, tr. Jowett, vol. iii, pp. 350 f.

[451] The practice of the exposition of female infants in the Hellenistic Age, when luxury increased and children became a burden, seems to have been more common than in earlier times.

[452] Mahaffy, _Social Life in Greece_ (1888), p. 120.

[453] _Politics_, vi. 4, sec. 12. This contempt for tradesmen and laborers, generally speaking, continued through all periods of Greek history. In some states, however, particularly in Athens, it underwent modification. “The later Athenians began to consider trade an honorable road to riches, and aristocrats like Nicias were known as careful trade masters.” In Rhodes, also, trade became honorable.

[454] Paulsen, _System of Ethics_, tr. Thilly, p. 62 n.

[455] _Laws_, tr. Jowett, xi. 919.

[456] They were charged with adulteration of foods, cheating in measure, etc. Demosthenes declares that a man honest in commercial transactions was a prodigy. Cf. Mahaffy, _Social Life in Greece_ (1888), p. 419.

[457] See above, p. 89.

[458] This ethical feeling is to be reckoned with in dealing with Asiatics--until there is a change in their ideal of manliness. The overlooking of an injury is apt to be regarded by them as an indication of weakness and cowardice.

[459] Schmidt, _Die Ethik der alten Griechen_ (1882), Bd. ii, S. 312.

[460] _Herod._ vi. 24. The Delphian oracle tried to cure this defect in the national character. See the story of Glaucus, _Herod._ vi. 86.

[461] _Die Ethik der alten Griechen_ (1882), Bd. ii, S. 413.

[462] _Ethics_, tr. Welldon, i. 4.

[463] _Ethics: the Facts of the Moral Life_ (1908), p. 95.

[464] _Od._ xix. 396–398.

[465] _Thucyd._ i. 5.

[466] _Il._ xxii. 485–499.

[467] See Xen. _Mem._ ii. 1, 21, for the parable, by the Sophist Prodicus, of the choice of Heracles at the parting of the ways.

[468] _The Republic_, iii. 386–392.

[469] See above, p. 35.

[470] “The blessed islands of the West were indeed even then [in the Homeric Age] a home for the dead, but they had not yet been opened to moral worth, as in the days of Pindar.”--MAHAFFY, _Social Life in Greece_ (1888), p. 26.

[471] See Zeller, _History of Philosophy_ (1881), vol. i, p. 125, and Schmidt, _Die Ethik der alten Griechen_ (1882), Bd. i, S. 99. “Strictly speaking,” says Professor Seymour, “Homer knows of no instance of rewards, and of only one case of punishment after death” (_Life in the Homeric Age_ (1908), p. 469).

[472] For the Greek view of the underworld, and the incoming of the idea of rewards and punishments in the after life, see Schmidt, _Die Ethik der alten Griechen_ (1882), Bd. i, S. 97 ff., and Rhode, _Psyche: Seelencult und Unsterblichkeits Glaube der Griechen_, 4te Auflage, Bd. i, S. 301–319.

[473] This moralization of Hades is carried still further by Vergil. It is instructive to compare his vision of Hades with Homer’s.

[474] _Republic_, x. 614–616; see also _Gorgias_, 523–527.

[475] _Herod._ i. 30–32. But Nemesis appears later in the story, and Crœsus is represented as being punished for the crime of an ancestor.

[476] _Ibid._ vii. 10. The views which the historian here attributes to the Persian Artabanus were of course a reflection of Greek belief. For further instances in Greek literature of the conception of the envy of the gods, consult Schmidt, _Die Ethik der alten Griechen_ (1882), Bd. i, S. 78–84.

[477] _Thucyd._ vii. 77.

[478] _Pericles_ (1890), p. 312.

[479] “The very event [the Persian war] which determined the sudden splendor of the drama gave a sublime and terrific sanction to the already existing morality.”--SYMONDS, _Studies of the Greek Poets_ (1880), vol. ii, p. 17.

[480] Farnell, _The Cults of the Greek States_ (1896), vol. i, p. 129. After the tale had been moralized by Æschylus, Phidias carved the story on the great Zeus throne at Olympia, using it to give emphasis to the conception of the god as the guardian of the moral order of the world.

[481] _Thucyd._ v. 84–116.

[482] The attitude of the later philosophers toward the notion that the gods are envious is fairly represented by Plato’s protest: “He [the Creator] is good, and no goodness can have any jealousy of anything” (_Timæus_, tr. Jowett, 29).

[483] “The dispensation which takes the aspect of divine envy to mortals might, it seems, from a higher point of view, be discerned as the very opposite; human vicissitude is the result of a divine love anxious to share the true blessedness which comes in the form of sorrow.”--WEDGWOOD, _The Moral Ideal_, 3d ed., p. 112.

[484] Taylor, _Ancient Ideals_ (1896), vol. i, p. 227.

[485] Farnell, _The Cults of the Greek States_ (1891), vol. i, p. 129.

[486] _Republic_, tr. Jowett, x. 613.

[487] See James Adam, _The Vitality of Platonism_ (1911), chap. v, “Ancient Greek Views of Suffering and Evil.”

[488] When we contrast with this Sophocles’ treatment of the same theme in _Antigone_ we realize how great an advance during the interval the Greeks had made in humanitarian feeling.

[489] See _Thucyd._ iii. 53–59.

[490] The Spartan admiral Callicratides (the successor of Lysander, 406 B.C.) refused to sell his Greek prisoners of war as slaves, but he stood almost or quite alone in this. See Xen. _Hellen._ i. 6, 14.

[491] Mahaffy, _Social Life in Greece_ (1888), p. 235.

[492] The war brought into fearful exaggeration the salient weakness of Greek morality. The most reprehensible moral faults of the Greeks were the outgrowth of political factions and cabals, of party jealousies and rivalries in the close quarters of city walls. These faults were lifted into the most savage passions by the war. Thucydides in a memorable passage (iii. 82) draws a striking picture of the disastrous moral effects of the prolonged quarrel.

[493] See above, p. 180.

[494] _Republic_, v. 469–471.

[495] Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution_ (1906), vol. i, p. 267; see also A. Ræder, _L’Arbitrage international chez les Hellenes_ (1912).

[496] _Études sur l’histoire de humanité_ (1880), t. ii, p. 105. Because of its long exemption from the ravages of war, Elis was more populous and wealthy than any other district of the Peloponnesus (_Polyb._ iv. 73, 74). The contrast presented by Greece in general constituted an impressive commentary on the fatal consequences for Greek civilization of the war system. Speaking of the depopulation which incessant wars had caused over almost all the world he knew, Plutarch says of Greece, a land once “strong in cities,” that the whole country could raise barely three thousand men, the same number that the single city of Megara sent to Platæa at the time of the Persian war (_Philosophical Essays_, “On the Cessation of Oracles,” sec. viii).

[497] See above, p. 18.

[498] “Really to see the good and to know it as such, yet not to love and pursue it, is impossible; the vision carries with it its own persuasion and authority.”--MARTINEAU, _Types of Ethical Theory_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 74. “Mere school and word knowledge, of course, is powerless, but real knowledge, knowledge that represents real personal conviction, cannot fail to influence life.”--PAULSEN, _System of Ethics_, tr. Thilly (1906), p. 62.

[499] “There are few men whose minds are not more or less in that state of sham knowledge against which Socrates made war; there is no man whose notions have not been first got together by spontaneous, unexamined, unconscious, uncertified association--resting upon forgotten particulars, blending together disparities or inconsistencies, and leaving in his mind old and familiar phrases and oracular propositions, of which he has never rendered to himself account; there is no man, who, if he be destined for vigorous and profitable scientific effort, has not found it a necessary branch of self-education to break up, disentangle, analyse, and reconstruct this ancient mental compound, and who has not been driven to it by his own lame and solitary efforts, since the giant of the colloquial Elenchus no longer stands in the market place to lend him help and stimulus.”--GROTE, _History of Greece_ (1888), vol. vii, pp. 168 f.

[500] Quoted by Schmidt, _Die Ethik der alten Griechen_ (1882), Bd. ii, S. 396.

[501] “His [Socrates’] significancy for moral philosophy lies in his calling attention to _rational_ knowledge as the source of the moral.”--WUTTKE, _Christian Ethics_ (1873), vol. i, p. 69.

[502] _Histoire des théories et des idées morales dans l’antiquité_ (1879), t. i, pp. 125 f.

[503] Cf. _Gorgias_, 478, 479.

[504] _Laws_, tr. Jowett, xi. 913. Plato saw what the socialist-philosopher Lloyd saw when he wrote, “More searching ... than the Golden Rule is that which commands us to inquire if what we desire for ourselves and others is a right desire” (_Man the Social Creator_ (1906), p. 147).

[505] In the _Republic_ Plato reaches the conception of a Greek brotherhood, but beyond this he never advanced.

[506] Xen. _Mem._ ii. 6, 35.

[507] _Politics_, i. 7, sec. 5; 8, sec. 12; vii. 2, sec. 15; 14, sec. 21.

[508] _Histoire des théories et des idées morales dans l’antiquité_ (1879), t. i, p. 228.

[509] “A moral ideal which was not coextensive with the whole spiritual nature of man was taken by the schoolmen from the Aristotelian ethics, and then the so-called religious virtues were more or less cumbrously and precariously built upon it. Supernaturalism in morals was added to the classic naturalism as a divine appendix to ethics.”--NEWMAN SMYTH, _Christian Ethics_ (1892), p. 133.

[510] The downfall of the institutions of the free city state was to Greek morality what the downfall of the papal Church would have been to the morality of the medieval ages.

[511] Philopœman and Aratus.

[512] This ascetic tendency in Stoicism is doubtless to be attributed to the influence of the Orient upon Greek life and thought.

[513] Consistently so, since only through self-control and the avoidance of all excesses of passion, appetite, and desires can one maintain that tranquillity of mind which is the condition precedent of happiness.

[514] Lecky, _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 228.

[515] Mahaffy, _Social Life in Greece_, p. 264. The author contrasts this humaneness of the laws of the Athenian democracy four centuries before Christ with the atrocious cruelty of the criminal laws of Christian Europe down almost to the nineteenth century.

[516] _Social Life in Greece_ (1888), p. 269.

[517] _Ibid._ p. 554.

[518] The Apostle Paul at Athens, seeking common ground with his hearers for the doctrine he preached that God hath made of one blood all nations of men, finds it in the familiar line of the Stoic Cleanthes--“We are the offspring of God.”

[519] Plutarch died about 40 A.D.

[520] “From contact with the Greeks, therefore, Christianity obtained this support, that an ideal long known to the Western world, the Stoic ideal, was found to correspond with it, so that the preaching of the Apostles was in this respect not out of harmony with the wants and aspirations of the higher and better minds of the age.”--MAHAFFY, _Progress of Hellenism in Alexander’s Empire_ (1905), p. 146.

[521] “The essential oneness of human moral experience has shown itself in the ethical results achieved by these various peoples.”--TOY, _Judaism and Christianity_ (1891), p. 337.

[522] Coulanges, _The Ancient City_, ii, 9.

[523] The authority of the father over each and every member of the family was legally absolute, extending to life and death. Not until late in the Empire did the law forbid fathers to kill their grown-up children or to sell them as slaves. Cf. McKenzie, _Studies in Roman Law_, 6th ed., p. 141; and Sohm, _Institutes_ (1901), p. 53.

[524] Inge, _Society in Rome under the Cæsars_ (1888), p. 8.

[525] This Roman virtue of obedience to the state has been just such an enduring force in the moral life of the Christian world as has the Jewish virtue of obedience to a revealed law (see Chapter IX). Historically regarded, the Protestant Church, which makes obedience to a written revealed law a necessary virtue, is the inheritor of the ethical feeling and conviction of ancient Israel; while the Roman Catholic Church, which makes submission to ecclesiastical authority an indispensable virtue, is the inheritor of the ethical tradition and spirit of ancient Rome. See H. M. Gwatkin (co-author), _Early Ideals of Righteousness_ (1910), pp. 71 ff.

[526] Tacitus, _Annals_, iii. 16, 17.

[527] This legal subjection of the son to the father, while it developed and strengthened the virtue of obedience, seemed to deaden filial _affection_. “Of all the forms of virtue,” says Lecky, “filial affection is perhaps that which appears most rarely in Roman history” (_History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 299).

[528] _De Off._ i. 17.

[529] _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, pp. 177 f.

[530] See p. 245, on the ethics of persecution.

[531] _The Moral Ideal_, 3d ed., p. 148.

[532] Cf. Chapter XVIII.

[533] The citizen army, which had been the seed plot of those heroic virtues that cast such a halo around the earlier history of Rome, had been replaced by a mercenary force in which only the coarser military virtues could find sphere for exercise.

[534] “The unchecked power of the master ... produced those cold hearts which gloated over the agony of gallant men in the arena.”--DILL, _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_ (1904), p. 12.

[535] Friedlander, _Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms_ (1888), Bd. i, S. 479–481; English ed., _Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire_, vol. i, pp. 243 f.

[536] “The senator was forbidden down to the last age of the empire, both by law and sentiment, to increase his fortune by commerce.”--DILL, _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_, p. 102.

[537] _De Off._ i. 42.

[538] Lecky, _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 271.

[539] Friedlander, _Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms_ (1889), Bd. ii, S. 414; English ed., _Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire_, vol. ii, p. 77.

[540] “The unusual enthusiasm for the shows is expressed in many a rude sketch which has been traced by boyish hands upon the walls.”--DILL, _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_, p. 238.

[541] In an eloquent passage Lecky thus sums up the demoralizing effects of the spectacles: “Those hateful games, which made the spectacle of human suffering and death the delight of all classes, had spread their brutalising influence wherever the Roman name was known, had rendered millions absolutely indifferent to the sight of human suffering, had produced in many, in the very centre of an advanced civilization, a relish and a passion for torture, a rapture and an exultation in watching the spasms of extreme agony, such as an African or an American savage alone can equal”. (_History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 467).

[542] The period which witnessed the greatest inequality of fortunes was the last century of the Republic and the first of the Empire.

[543] It should be borne in mind that the clients of this period were wholly different from the clients of the earlier times. The relations of the early clients to their patrons were those of clansmen to their chief; the relations of these later clients to their patrons were the degrading relations of idle, needy dependents to newly rich men without family traditions and socially and morally wholly unfit for their elevation.

[544] _The History of Rome_ (1888), vol. ii, p. 524.

[545] “The deepest feeling of Tacitus about the early Empire seems to have been that it was fatal to character both in prince and subject.”--DILL, _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_, p. 29.

[546] _The Moral Ideal_, 3d ed., p. 204.

[547] _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, pp. 332 ff.

[548] _Ibid._ 3d ed., vol. i, p. 227.

[549] “Men ceased to be adventurous, patriotic, just, magnanimous; but in exchange they became chaste, tender-hearted, loyal, religious, and capable of infinite endurance in a good cause.”--SEELEY, _Roman Imperialism_ (1889), p. 33.

[550] _The Moral Ideal_, 3d ed., p. 187.

[551] About 40–120 A.D.

[552] Dill, _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_, p. 64.

[553] Dill, _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_, pp. 231 f.

[554] Cf. _Ibid._ p. 232.

[555] Stoicism is second only to Christianity as a moral force in European civilization. “One of the most important expressions of the moral sense for all time,” affirms Professor Clifford, “is that of the Stoic philosophy, especially after its reception among the Romans” (_Lectures and Essays_ (1901), vol. ii, p. 108). Mahaffy declares that the Stoic philosophy, “above all the human influences we know, purified and ennobled the world” (_The Silver Age_ (1906), p. 103). Denis thinks that it was through Stoicism that Rome did most for civilization (_Histoire des théories et des idées morales dans l’antiquité_ (1879), t. ii, p. 5).

[556] Taken from Menander.

[557] “One of the most emphatic as well as one of the earliest extant assertions of the duty of charity to the human race occurs in the treatise of Cicero upon duties.”--LECKY, _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 240.

[558] _De Off._ iii. 5.

[559] _Ibid._ iii. xi.

[560] _Ibid._ i. 16.

[561] _De Finibus_, v. 23.

[562] _Meditations_, vi. 44. This and the following citations are from Long’s translation, 2d ed.

[563] _Ibid._ iv. 23. The moral element in the conception of the universal city must not be overlooked. There was implied in it the idea of universal brotherhood, of the ethical oneness of mankind. The creation and promulgation of this conception was one of the great services which Stoicism rendered to civilization.

[564] _Ibid._ iii. 4.

[565] _Ibid._ viii. 59.

[566] This subject is dealt with by Lecky, _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, pp. 295 ff.; Bryce, _Studies in History and Jurisprudence_, vol. ii, essay xi, “The Law of Nature.”

[567] Bryce, _Studies in History and Jurisprudence_ (1901), vol. ii, p. 143.

[568] Sophocles, _Antigone_.

[569] Commenting on the consequences of the inspiration of Roman law by this doctrine of Stoicism, Lecky says: “To the Stoics and the Roman lawyers is mainly due the clear recognition of the existence of a law of nature above and beyond all human enactments, which has been the basis of the best moral and of the most influential, though most chimerical, political speculations of later ages, and the renewed study of Roman law was an important element in the revival that preceded the Reformation” (_History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 297).

[570] _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 129. Lecky instances (vol. i, p. 292) three ways in which Stoicism worked for good in the Empire: (1) it raised up good emperors; (2) it led men to engage in the public service; and (3) it rendered the law more catholic and humane.

[571] Dill, _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_ (1904), p. 376.

[572] “In the Stoic emperors ... we find probably the earliest example of great moral principles applied to legislation on a large scale.”--CLIFFORD, _Lectures and Essays_, vol. ii, p. 108.

[573] Public feeling in regard to the exercise of the _patria potestas_ had been slowly changing during the centuries. Seneca relates (_De Clem._ i. 14) how within his memory the people furiously assaulted in the Forum a certain knight because he had whipped his son to death.

[574] “The alleviations of slavery by the imperial law are essentially traceable to the influence of the Greek view.”--MOMMSEN, _Roman Provinces_ (1887), vol. i, p. 296.

[575] “The majority of the free population had probably either themselves been slaves, or were descended from slaves.”--LECKY, _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 237.

[576] Dill, _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_ (1904), p. 3.

[577] Lecky, _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 312.

[578] _De Clem._ i. 18.

[579] Tacitus, _Annals_, xiv. 42–45.

[580] Manumissions were frequent even in Seneca’s time. Pliny the Elder was a kind master, regarded his slaves as “humble friends,” and manumitted many of them.

[581] The client class of the imperial period was made up almost wholly of freedmen.

[582] It is surprising that while in the Stoic and other schools there was, during these centuries, great advance in theoretical ethics in various domains, in that of war there was no essential modification of the views and feelings of the teachers and leaders of moral reforms. In the whole range of Roman literature and philosophy there are to be found scarcely any expressions of disapproval of war. The attitude of the Roman moralists in this matter appears to have been altogether like that of the Greek philosophers. The right to wage war for empire and for glory was taught even by Cicero, only such wars, he insisted, should be waged more gently than wars to recover property, to punish insult, or to avenge a wrong (_De Off._ i. 12).

[583] For the ethics of Christian persecution, see below, p. 324.

[584] See on this subject Fiske, _Excursions of an Evolutionist_ (1883), pp. 238 ff.; Hardy, _Christianity and the Roman Government_ (1894), p. 17; Pollock, _Essays in Jurisprudence and Ethics_ (1882), p. 147.

[585] Besides this main motive of the persecutions there were these minor ones: (1) The teachings and practices of the new sect offended the prevailing spirit of luxury and sensuality; (2) families were divided; (3) the business of many, as that of the silversmiths of Ephesus, was threatened (Acts xix. 24–41); and (4) fear on the part of the government of the danger from the growth of such a strong semi-secret organization as the Church was becoming within the Empire (Hardy, _Christianity and the Roman Government_ (1894), p. 165).

[586] “Upon the approach of Christianity humanity took a consciousness more alert and sensitive, and during the first three centuries of our era all the ideas, all the sentiments which constitute morality developed on parallel lines and with remarkable force in the growing Church and in expiring paganism.”--DENIS, _Histoire des théories et des idées morales dans l’antiquité_ (1879), t. ii, p. 145.

[587] _De Off._ i. 25.

[588] _Meditations_, xi. 18.

[589] _Ibid._ vii. 36.

[590] _Ibid._ ix. 9; cf. vi. 47.

[591] _Ibid._ vi. 6.

[592] _Fragments_, tr. Long, lxviii; cf. lxvii.

[593] _Meditations_, iii. 4.

[594] _De Prov._ i. 1.

[595] _Meditations_, x. 21.

[596] _Ibid._ ii. 11.

[597] _Ibid._ xii. 5.

[598] _Ibid._ ii. 17.

[599] Arrian, _Epict._ ii. 14; quoted by Lecky, _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 246.

[600] _Meditations_, vii. 31.

[601] _Ethical Essays_, v, “On those who are punished by the Deity late.”

[602] _De Off._ ii. 14.

[603] _Ibid._ ii. 5.

[604] _Ibid._ i. 7.

[605] _Ibid._ iii. 6.

[606] _Ibid._ iii. 4. Compare this expression of the ancient Greek and Roman moral consciousness with that of the modern Japanese (see p. 86).

[607] _Ibid._ ii. 12.

[608] _De Clem._ ii. 6. The trouble with this philosophy, as has been said, is that if one does not feel pity for the sufferings of others he will not be likely to help them.

[609] Cicero, however, denied the right of self-destruction, and Vergil mildly censured the act. See _Æneid_, vi. 434.

[610] _Discourses_, i. 9.

[611] _Meditations_, v. 29.

[612] _Ep._ lxx; quoted by Lecky, _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 218.

[613] _De Prov._ i. 2.

[614] Zeno, the founder of the school, and Cato, its exemplifier in active life, both committed suicide.

[615] Compare the views on this subject of the ancient classical peoples with those of the modern Japanese (see p. 85 and p. 86 n. 1.).

[616] Glover, _The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire_, 3d ed. (1909), p. 67.

[617] _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 324.

[618] Paulsen, _A System of Ethics_, tr. Thilly (1906), pp. 111 f.

[619] The cult of Isis when introduced into the Western lands favored illicit love, but by the second century of our era it had, in its new environment, become so far transformed as to be a true moral force in society. “Sacrament and mystery lent their aid to fortify the worshiper [of Isis] in the face of death, but, to derive their full virtue, he must exercise himself in temperance, abjure the pleasures of the senses, and purify himself for the vision of God” (Dill, _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_ (1904), p. 583).

[620] On this subject see Franz Cumont, _Les Mystères de Mithra_ (1892); English ed., _The Mysteries of Mithra_, tr. McCormack.

[621] “It [Mithraism] is perhaps the highest and most striking example of the last efforts of paganism to reconcile itself to the great moral and spiritual movement which was settling steadily, and with growing momentum, toward purer conceptions of God, of man’s relations to Him, and of the life to come.”--DILL, _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_, p. 585.

[622] “On peut dire que, si le christianisme eût été arrêté dans sa croissance par quelque maladie mortelle, le monde eût été Mithriaste.”--RENAN, _Marc-Aurèle_, 5^{me} ed., p. 579.

[623] “Isis and Serapis and Mithra were preparing the Western world for the religion which was to approve the long travail of humanity by a more perfect vision of the divine.”--DILL, _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_ (1904), p. 574.

[624] Acts xvii. 29.

[625] New to the multitude. Some of the Stoic philosophers, as we have seen, held and taught this doctrine.

[626] The Eleusinian Mysteries in Greece, and some Oriental cults, particularly that of Mithra, imported into the Roman Empire, made the participation in a blessed life beyond the grave dependent upon moral purity of life on earth and through this doctrine exercised a favorable influence upon morality (see p. 254).

[627] This thought and conviction of the immortality of the individual was, it is possible, in part the outcome of the decay of the ancient city, whose fancied eternity had satisfied for a time the instinct of immortality. But when some centuries had passed, the “Romans sailed round the Mediterranean and recognized that the cities of the past were not eternal, and with the same waft of conviction came a compensating belief that eternity was the heritage of every son of man. Immortality arose on the horizon of the man, as its last glow faded from the city” (Wedgwood, _The Moral Ideal_, 3d ed., p. 341). It was the same in Judea; as immortality faded from the political horizon of Israel, it arose on that of the individual soul.

[628] Though the account of the fall of man forms the prelude of the Hebrew Scriptures, the conception never influenced to an appreciable degree pre-Christian ethics.

[629] See Schmidt, _The Prophet of Nazareth_ (1905), p. 322.

[630] “L’humanité cherche l’idéal; mais elle veut que l’idéal soit une personne; elle n’aime pas une abstraction.”--RENAN, _Marc-Aurèle_, 5^{me} ed., p. 582.

[631] _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. ii, p. 8.

[632] On this subject consult Hatch, _The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church_ (1888), lect. xii, “The Transformation of the Basis of Christian Union: Doctrine in the Place of Conduct.”

[633] “After the middle of the third century, ... Christianity may be just as truly called a Hellenic religion as an Oriental.”--HARNACK, _The Expansion of Christianity_ (1904), vol. i, pp. 393 f.

[634] The change of emphasis from moral life to correct doctrine took place during the last half of the second and the first half of the third century. “Under the influence of contemporary Greek thought, the word faith came to be transferred from simple trust in God to mean the acceptance of a series of propositions, and these propositions, propositions in abstract metaphysics” (Hatch, _The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church_ (1888), p. 310).

[635] The Athanasian Creed, which by the end of the ninth century was in use in the churches of the West as an authoritative symbol and exposition of the Roman Catholic faith, says, “Whosoever will be saved, before all things, it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith, which faith, except every one who do keep entire and unviolated, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly” (Philip Schaff, _Bibliotheca Symbolica Ecclesiae Universalis_, vol. ii, p. 66).

[636] Lecky, _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. ii, p. 68.

[637] “The virtues of the intellect, freedom and boldness of thought and the power to doubt, the vital principle of scientific research, are, in the eyes of primitive Christianity, worthless and dangerous.”--PAULSEN, _A System of Ethics_, tr. Thilly (1906), p. 68.

[638] Cf. Harnack, _The Expansion of Christianity_ (1904), vol. i, chap. v, “The Religion of Authority and Reason.”

[639] See Paulsen, _System of Ethics_, tr. Thilly (1906), bk. i, chap. iii.

[640] The ascetic movement was a reaction not only against the moral dissoluteness of pagan society, but also against the moral degeneracy which, before the end of the third century, had set in within the Christian community itself. The Church had become to a lamentable degree conformed unto the world, and had lost much of that moral fervor which characterized it during the first two centuries.

[641] Alban Butler, _The Lives of the Saints_ (the Fathers, Martyrs, and other Principal Saints, compiled from monuments and other authentic sources), 12 vols. (1854). Orig. ed. pub. 1754–1760.

[642] “If you do any good beyond what is commanded by God, you will gain for yourself more abundant glory, and will be more honored by God than you would otherwise be,” was the teaching of the Church respecting the meritoriousness of ascetic practices. Cf. Newman Smyth, _Christian Ethics_ (1892), p. 313.

[643] The “Dialogue” is of course a purely literary creation of some monk. Oisin was not a contemporary of St. Patrick.

[644] J. H. Simpson, _Poems of Oisin_ (1857), pp. 42 ff. We have reproduced only a small part of the poem.

[645] _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. ii, p. 34.

[646] Westermarck, _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_ (1908), vol. ii, p. 252.

[647] Cf. Dante, _Inf._ xiii.

[648] See above, pp. 175, 215.

[649] Ireland was foremost in this missionary movement because she was so given over to the monastic spirit. See Montalembert, _The Monks of the West_ (1861), vol. ii, p. 397.

[650] According to Westermarck (_The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_ (1906), vol. i, pp. 565–569) charity took the place of sacrifice in the primitive cults, and for this reason became such a prominent religious duty in all the higher faiths.

[651] Montalembert, _The Monks of the West_ (1861), vol. i, pp. 397 f.

[652] Lecky, _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. ii, pp. 86 ff.

[653] _The Moral Ideal_, 3d ed., p. 369.

[654] See above, p. 245.

[655] “The suppression of all religions but one by Theodosius, the murder of Hypatia by the monks of Cyril, and the closing by Justinian of the schools of Athens, are the three events which mark the decisive overthrow of intellectual freedom.”--LECKY, _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 428.

[656] See above, p. 6.

[657] _Physics and Politics_ (1873), pp. 70 f.

[658] “One may find ... the chief characteristic of the period of the migrations in a complete uprooting of public morality, a universal overturning of inherited conceptions of right and wrong.”--FRANCKE, _Social Forces in German Literature_, 2d ed., p. 12.

[659] _Parliament of Religions_ (1893), vol. i, pp. 574 f.; consult also Bryce, _Studies in History and Jurisprudence_ (1901), vol. ii, p. 237.

[660] _Qur’ân_, tr. Palmer (Sacred Books of the East, vols. vi, ix), suras ii. 184–189, 212–215; iv. 90; viii. 40; ix. 5–14, 29; xlvii. 4, and many others.

[661] _Ibid._ suras ii. 149; iii. 151; ix. 113.

[662] Sura xxiv. 33. The New Testament nowhere inculcates the manumission of slaves, but the spirit of its teachings is opposed to slavery, and the early Fathers of the Church encouraged the emancipation of slaves.

[663] Sura iv. 3.

[664] Suras vi. 138, 141, 152; xvii. 33.

[665] Suras ii. 216; v. 93.

[666] R. Bosworth Smith, _Mohammed and Mohammedanism_ (1875), p. 204.

[667] Ameer Ali, _The Spirit of Islam_, 2d ed., p. 283.

[668] According to the principles of the Koran, though no Moslem captive might be reduced to servitude, all non-Moslem prisoners could, as spoils of war, be enslaved: “We make lawful for ye ... what thy right hand possesses [slaves] out of the booty God has granted thee” (sura xxxiii. 49).

[669] “The recognition of the slave traffic by Mohammedanism has been, and is to this day, a curse to Africa and a source of disturbance to the world’s politics.”--HOBHOUSE, _Morals in Evolution_ (1906), vol. i, p. 307.

[670] In an address. Cf. R. Bosworth Smith, _Mohammed and Mohammedanism_ (1875), pp. 59 ff.

[671] Ameer Ali, _The Spirit of Islam_, 2d ed., p. 328. The author maintains that Mohammed himself did not intend that his rules should be binding for all time.

[672] This teaching is one which does not show itself as a generally recognized principle in the pre-Christian centuries, as does the principle of love, or self-devotion to the common good, or universal benevolence. “Christianity at its inception did not take over this moral principle, ready-made, from any of the older cults or cultures from which the Christian movement was in a position to draw. It is not found, at least in appreciable force, in the received Judaism; nor can it be derived from the classical (Greco-Roman) cultures, which had none of it” (Thorstein B. Veblen, “Christian Morals and the Competitive System,” _The International Journal of Ethics_ for January, 1910).

[673] “Christian mores in the Western Empire were formed by syncretism of Jewish and pagan mores. Christian mores therefore contain war, slavery, concubinage, demonism, and base amusements, together with some abstract ascetic doctrines with which these things are inconsistent.”--SUMNER, _Folkways_ (1907), p. 116.

[674] For opinions of early Christian writers and the attitude of the Church on the soldier’s profession and the rightfulness of war, see Grotius, _Rights of War and Peace_, tr. Whewell, pp. 49 ff.

[675] Harnack, _The Expansion of Christianity_ (1904), vol. ii, p. 205.

[676] See above, p. 277.

[677] Throughout the medieval ages and down almost to our own day these Old Testament records, misread, were used to justify many of the cruelties of war, and other atrocities:

Plunder and pillage were supported by reference to the divinely
approved “spoiling of the Egyptians” by the Israelites. The right
to massacre unresisting enemies was based upon the command of the
Almighty to the Jews in the twentieth chapter of Deuteronomy. The
indiscriminate slaughter of whole populations was justified by a
reference to the divine command to slaughter the nations round
about Israel. Torture and mutilation of enemies was sanctioned
by the conduct of Samuel against Agag, of King David against the
Philistines, of the men of Judah against Adonibezek. Even the
slaughter of babes in arms was supported by a passage from the
Psalms, “Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones
against the stones.” Treachery and assassination were supported
by a reference to the divinely approved Phinehas, Ehud, Judith,
and Jael; and murdering the ministers of unapproved religions, by
Elijah’s slaughter of the priests of Baal.--ANDREW D. WHITE, _Seven
Great Statesmen_ (1910), pp. 85 f.

[678] Lecky believes this to have been the main cause of the transformation in the Church. “The transition,” he says, “from the almost Quaker tenets of the primitive Church to the essentially military Christianity of the Crusades was due chiefly ... to the terror and the example of Mohammedanism” (_History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. ii, p. 252). But, as we have seen, the transition was already nearly complete before the rise of Islam.

[679] In a portrayal of the character of the Scandinavians, the Church historian Schaff observes: “Their only enthusiasm was the feeling of duty; but the direction which had been given to this feeling was so absolutely opposed to that pointed out by the Christian morality, that no reconciliation was possible” (_History of the Christian Church_, vol. iv, p. 110). Yet in the important domain of ethics which we are here examining this is exactly what did happen.

[680] _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. ii, p. 253.

[681] Josiah Royce, _The Philosophy of Loyalty_ (1908).

[682] “So great, it is said, was the knights’ respect for an oath, a promise, or a vow, that when they lay under any of these restrictions, they appeared everywhere with little chains attached to their arms or habits to show all the world they were slaves to their word; nor were these chains taken off till their promise had been performed, which sometimes extended to a term of four or five years. It cannot be expected, of course, that reality should have always come up to the ideal.”--WESTERMARCK, _The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_ (1908), vol. ii, p. 102.

[683] _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. ii, p. 272.

[684] First printed in 1873, from MSS. compiled probably as early as the twelfth or thirteenth century. There is an English translation by Charles Swan (1877).

[685] “There can be little doubt,” says Lecky, “that the Catholic reverence for the Virgin has done much to elevate and purify the ideal of woman and soften the manners of men” (_History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. ii, p. 367). And so Professor Nathaniel Schmidt: “The chivalry of the medieval knight from which our modern treatment of woman so largely is derived cannot be regarded as solely a product of Christianity, for it has a deep root in the dreamy reverence for woman characteristic of our pagan ancestors. Yet it would not have become what it was but for the veneration accorded to the Virgin Mary” (_The Prophet of Nazareth_ (1905), p. 324).

[686] See Curtis M. Geer, _The Beginning of the Peace Movement_ (1912).

[687] Kluckhohn, _Geschichte des Gottesfriedens_ (1857), p. 38.

[688] This part of the week was chosen because these days had been consecrated by Christ’s passion, burial, resurrection, and ascension.

[689] Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution_ (1906), vol. i, p. 314.

[690] The last instance of an arrangement for ransom of prisoners was an agreement between England and France in 1780. See Hall, _International Law_, 5th ed., p. 414, n. 1.

[691] One center of these reform movements was the celebrated French monastery of Cluny. The influences which radiated from the cloisters of this convent had a profound effect for centuries upon the moral life of Christendom.

[692] See Sabatier, _Life of St. Francis of Assisi_.

[693] _History of the Inquisition_ (1887), vol. i, p. 266.

[694] “There was need of the exaggeration of self-sacrifice taught by Francis to recall humanity to a sense of its obligations.... The value of such an ideal on an age hard and cruel can scarce be exaggerated” (Lea, _History of the Inquisition_ (1887), vol. i, pp. 260 f.). See also Nathaniel Schmidt, _The Prophet of Nazareth_ (1905), p. 325.

[695] See above, p. 262.

[696] “Ethics on the basis of authority becomes a mere legal casuistry.”--HALL, _The History of Ethics within Organized Christianity_ (1910), pp. 296, 326.

[697] “But meanwhile by alternations of Hebraism and Hellenism, of a man’s intellectual and moral impulses, of the effort to see things as they really are, and the effort to win peace by self-conquest, the human spirit proceeds; and each of these two forces has its appointed hours of culmination and seasons of rule.”--MATTHEW ARNOLD, _Culture and Anarchy_ (1875), p. 143.