LECKY'S HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS:
FROM AUGUSTUS TO CHARLEMAGNE.
S U P P L E M E N T TO “ T J f E L I T E R A R Y G U ID E,” JU L Y , 1896.
I n the long preamble to his celebrated work, Mr. Eecky brings forward a mass of facts and arguments to prove the existence of an innate and universal moral sense. It does not strike ,him that this process would be unnecessary if his theory were true. I f we all possessed reliable moral intuitions, it would surely be superfluous to adduce mountains of argument to prove a fact which nobody could deny.
Among the cultivated classes of the ancient world a widespread scepticism existed concerning religious rites and doctrines. The finest intellects had attained a grasp of natural religion not greatly different from the higher conceptions of our own time. It may be doubted whether, even now, the majority of Christians are sufficiently enlightened and tolerant to believe that “ many different paths adapted to different nations and grades of knowledge converge to the same Divinity, and that the most erroneous religion is good if it forms good dispositions and inspires virtuous actions.” With the decadence of the Roman Empire, religion lost what little moral influence it had ever possessed, and a foolish belief in astrology and other superstitions took the place of the simpler faith of earlier times.
possible only to highly-strung natures, and which recognised no gradations of either virtue or vice, was not likely to take any strong hold on the majority of mankind. These deficiencies were, to some extent, corrected by Epicureanism; but that, too, mainly owing to its lack of sympathy with the patriotic impulses of the Romans, failed to secure a permanent footing in the ancient world.
The ancients held that man’s nature found its proper scope in the public life of the country, a complete contrast to the Christian injunction to have as little as possible to do with the world. They had no fear of death, because to them death was simply a return to a state of nothingness. The Stoic philosophers planted their teachings “ in the moral nature of mankind by proclaiming that man can become acceptable to the Deity by his own virtue, and by this alone ; that all sacrifices, rites, and forms are indifferent, and that the true worship of God is the recognition and imitation of his goodness.” According to the Christian fathers, “ the most heroic efforts of human virtue are insufficient to avert a sentence of eternal condemnation, unless united with an implicit belief in the teachings of the Church, and a due observance of the rites it enjoins.”
M ORALITY OF TH E STOICS.
The predominant influence in the morality of the later Roman Empire was supplied by the rival systems of Zeno and Epicurus. The Stoical system was the basis of Roman civilisation. Its virtues were of the severe, legal, and military type, while the sunny freedom and largeness of the Greek nature found in the Epicurean system their most congenial sphere. That the Stoical theory was able to produce some of the noblest forms of human virtue seems undoubted. It merged the individual life in the national life, and so evoked the spirit of patriotism which, “ of all forms of human heroism, is probably the most unselfish. The Spartan and the Roman died for his country because he loved it. The martyr’s ecstasy of hope had no place in his dying hour. He gave up all he had, he closed his eyes, as he believed, for ever, and he asked for no reward in this world or in the next.” The conception of duty taught by this school had to struggle against the unfriendly atmosphere of periods when, in the words of Tacitus, “ virtue was a sentence of death.” That men, from whose motives the belief in the immortality of the soul was rigidly excluded, should continue to hold ideas which were not merely unpopular, but which it was dangerous to themselves to advocate, affords a striking instance of the capacity for virtue of that human nature which is sometimes said to be utterly depraved. Comparing Pagan with Christian virtues, “ we invariably find that the prevailing type of excellence among the former is that in which the will and judgment, and among the latter that in which the emotions, are most prominent. Friendship rather than love, hospitality rather than charity, magnanimity rather than tenderness, clemency rather than sympathy, are the characteristics of ancient goodness. The Stoics, who carried the suppression of the emotions farther than any other school, laboured with great zeal to compensate the injury thus done to the benevolent side of our nature by greatly enlarging the sphere of reasoned and passionless philanthropy. They taught, in the most emphatic language, the fraternity of all men, and the consequent duty of each man consecrating his life to the welfare of others. They developed this general doctrine in a series of detailed precepts which, for the range, depth, and beauty of their charity, have never been surpassed. They even extended their compassion to crime, and, adopting the paradox of Plato that all guilt is ignorance, treated it as an involuntary disease, and declared that the only legitimate ground of punishment is prevention.”
A system which inculcated a height of moral heroism
STOIC F E E L IN G OF BROTHERHOOD. The extension of the Roman Empire, the granting of the privileges of citizenship to conquered races, the easy terms on which freedom was obtainable by slaves, tended to the growth of cosmopolitan sympathies—a movement which the Stoical philosophy was admirably adapted to facilitate. It taught that virtue alone is a good, and that all other things are indifferent; and from this position it was inferred that birth, rank, country, and wealth “ are the mere accidents of life, and that virtue alone makes one man superior to another.” Some of the most emphatic assertions of human brotherhood are found in the writings of Cicero. “ Nature ordains that a man should wish the good of every man, whoever he may be, for this very reason, that he is a man.” “ Nature has inclined us to love men, and this is the foundation of the law”—a statement practically identical with a passage in the Gospels which it is thought divine wisdom alone can have originated. Marcus Aurelius may be taken as the most perfect type of ancient virtue. His peculiarly beautiful character combined the qualities usually considered distinctive of Christianity, and that in a degree which few Christians have ever equalled.
D E F E CT S OF ROMAN SOCIAL L I F E .
There is ample evidence of the growth of a mild and tender spirit among the Romans apart from the influence of Christianity ; but the normal development of civilisation in the direction of enlarged benevolence and greater intellectual activity was impeded by three great causes—the imperial system, the institution of slavery, and the gladiatorial shows. The ascription of divinity to the emperors led to absurd excesses of superstitious folly on the part of the subjects, and hideous depravity on the part of the rulers. Slavery produced still more serious evils. “ The poor citizen found almost all the spheres in which an honourable livelihood might be obtained wholly, or at least in a very great degree, pre-occupied by slaves, while he had learnt to regard trade with an invincible repugnance. Hence followed the immense increase of corrupt and corrupting professions, as actors, pantomimes, hired gladiators, political spies, ministers to passion, astrologers, religious charlatans, pseudo-philosophers, which gave the free classes a precarious and occasional subsistence; and hence, too, the gigantic dimensions of the system of clientages. “ Every rich man was surrounded by a train of dependents who lived in a great measure at his expense, and spent their lives in ministering to his passions and flattering his vanity. And,
