Date Due ll/y, >=!s*w58TiT — ^'"■"^ 1 j I c«J 2 3233 Cornell University Library arV15742 The social results of early Christianity 3 1924 031 386 687 olin.anx cjlTTML^ THE SOCIAL RESULTS OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY BY 0. SCHMIDT Pro/etsor 0/ Theoloji/ in Strosburg TBAirsi.i.TED BT Mss. THOBFE R. W. DALE, LL.D. BlEMiyaHAH LONDON Wm. ISBISTER Limited 56 LUDGATB HILL 1885 ^l^'t T)i t^ Butler & Tanner, The Selwooa Printing Works, Frame, and London, THIS TEANSLATION IS DEDICATED TO SIR ANDEEW CLARK, Babt., IN EESPECTFUL ADMIRATION OF THE SYMPATHY AND SACEIFICB, WHICH, BT THE CONSECBATION OP SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, AND SKILL, GIVE A LITING TBANSCEIPT OF THE EAELY TEACHING OF THE CHUECH, AND FOBM A BEIGHT LINK IN THE * CHAIN OP THE HISTORICAL CONTINUITY OP THE BBSULTS OF CHEISTIANITY. The original of tliis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031386687 CONTENTS. flax Translator's Preface ix Preliminary Essay xi Introductory Letter from the Author xxvii Preface xxix BOOK I.— PAGAN SOCIETY. Introduction 3 Chapteb I. — The Pbinoiple and Aim of Ancient Social Moealiit. § 1. Happiness 5 § 2. The State 10 § 3. Citizens. Foreigners. Eiches . .... 15 § 4. Friendship. Vengeance 19 Chaptbe II. — The Family. § 1. Women. Marriage 26 § 2. Love. Hetserse and Concubines 38 § 3. Adultery and Divorce 44 § 4. Children. Paternal Authority 49 § 5. Education 55 Chapteb III. — The Laboubino Classes. § 1. Work 63 § 2. Poverty. The Poor 67 § 3. Slaves. Slavery in General 75 § 4. Treatment of Slaves 82 § 5. Occupations of Slaves. Actors, Gladiators ... 87 Chapteb IV. — Consequences and Exceptions. § 1. Decline of Ancient Society 107 § 2. Purer Opinions Ill VI CONTENTS. Chapter V.-^Eelatioss of Ancient Morality to Pasanism. § 1. Moral Impotence of Paganism 119 § 2. Weakening of Religious Beliefs 123 Conclusion 130 BOOK II.— CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. Chapter I. — Pcndamentai Principles op Christian Moeamty. § 1. The Kingdom of God, and its Pounder . . . .137 § 2. The Apostles and the Apostolic Church .... 152 Chapter II. — Chrisiiah Societt in General, and its Belations ' WITH THE State. § 1. Equality. Brotherly Love 176 § 2. Belations of Christian Society to the Ancient State . . 181 Chapter III. — The Pamilt. § 1. Women. Marriage 188 § 2. Children ... 203 Chapter PV. — The Labouring Classes. § 1. Work. The Free Workman ... . . 212 § 2. Slaves 215 § 3. Gladiators and Actors 227 Chapter V. — The Poor and Unfortunate. § 1. Eiches and Poverty 237 § 2. Christian Beneficence towards the Poor in General . . 245 § 3. Widows and Orphans 257 § 4. The Oppressed and Captives 259 § 5. The Sick .... 264 Chapter VI.— Enemies. § 1. Personal Enemies. Criminals ... . . 276 § 2. Foreigners. War 280 Conolusion 285 BOOK III.—TEANSFOBMATIONOF CIVIL SOCIETY THROUGH THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT. Chapter I. — Strife between the Christian and Paoan Spirit. § 1. General Character of Christian Influence on Pagan Society 293 § 2. Obstacles to Christian Influence 295 CONTENTS. Vll PAQB Chapibb II. — The Channels of Chbibiian Inplcenob. § 1. Apologies and Sermons 305 § 2. Christian Example 320 § 3. The Charity ol Christians towards Pagans ... . 823 § 4. The Part of Stoicism in the Influence of Charity . . 329 Chapter III. — Inobeasins Humanity ik Pagan Philosophees. § 1. Seneca 387 § 2. Pliny and Plutarch 353 § 3. Epiotetus 362 § 4. Marcus Aureliua 370 Chapieb IV. — iNOEEAsma Hbmanity of Lechslation dueinq the Pasan Pebiod op the Empibb. § 1. Influence of the Christian Spirit on the Emperors and Jurisconsults 380 § 2. Women and Marriage 387 § 3. Children in general. Poor Children 390 § 4. Slaves 397 Chapteb V. — Peooeess of Impeovembnt in the Laws dueing the Chbistian Pebiod of the Empiee. § 1. The Emperors to Theodosius 409 § 2. Women. Marriage 417 § 3. Children 425 § 4. Slaves 428 § 5. The Poor and Unhappy 436 Chapteb VI. — Ebaoiion of the Pagan Spibit on the Customs of Cheistian Sooieit. Conclusion 447 Notes 463 List of Authors Quoted 465 Index . . 469 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. I HAVE to thank M. Schmidt for permission to trans- late his book into English, Dr. Dale for his Preliminary Essay, and J. L. Paton, Esq., for assistance with the classical notes. The completeness with which M. Schmidt gives the authorities upon which his statements rest, adds greatly to the value of his book. Born into a world in which the institutions are at least coloured by Christianity, we can hardly realize either what they have been without it, or to what they may yet rise with a fuller appreciation of its principles and spirit. It is an intelligent knowledge of what Christianity has accomplished for humanity, its realized results lead- ing to a study of its aims and central motives, that is hkely to bring about the vivid belief in its life-giving mysteries ; the intelligent, new application of its prin- ciples, which wiU be the greatest means for the trans- formation of the Social Order to a true ideal. Man, " the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time," should not throw aside his lesson -book of History X TEA¥SLA*rOE's PEEFACE. unread; lengfcliemng ages add to its value, increasing intelligence deepens its meaning. "Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new: That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do." MARY THORPE. Lenton House, Lenton, My, 1885. PRELIMINARY ESSAY. The admirable Essay by M. Scbmidt, of Strasburg, on " La Socidte Civile dans le Monde Eomain et sa Transfor- mation par le Ohristianisme " has long been known and valued by students of Churcb history. By translating it into English, I trust that my friend Mrs. Thorpe will secure for it a still larger number of readers in this country. For it illustrates a subject which is creating a deep and even a painful interest among all classes of the English people — the relations of the Christian Faith to the improvement of the material condition of mankind and the reformation of the Social Order. At a time when many of us are regarding almost with despair the miseries of large masses of mankind, it may renew our courage to recall the brilliant story of what was accomplished by the Christian Gospel for the regeneration of human society in the early Christian centuries. But the evils which now require redress are not pre- cisely the same as those which existed in the Roman world j and the economical and social conditions of modern nations are very unlike those which environed Xii PfiELIMINAEY ESSAY. the Christian Church during the first four or five hun- dred years of its history. The splendid achievements illustrated in this Essay would do us more harm than good if they so mastered our imagination as to prevent us from discovering the new and unfamiliar ways in which the Christian revelation should exert its force in correcting the inequalities of our own Social Order, and redeeming our own countrymen, our contemporaries, our neighbours, from their hereditary poverty and suffering. We may do honour to the courage and administrative power of famous bishops, who organised relief and found employment for cities and provinces sufEering from famine ; we may recall with admiration the times when a great hospital for the aged, the poor, the sick was a part of the organization of every great Church; we may honour the memory of saintly men who were ready to seU the silver and golden vessels used in the celebration of the most sacred service of the Church in order to redeem men from slavery ; and yet regard with indiffer- ence, with distrust, or even with positive hostility those new methods in which Christian Charity is attempting to remedy the new forms of social injustice and the new forms of suffering incident to modern civilization. We may build the tombs of the prophets and yet crucify their successors. It is not only in theological belief that tradition may be too strong for us. Both in practical life and in specu- lation originality is the characteristic of a real and vigorous faith. If we are to do our own work in our own age, we must derive our chief inspiration and guidance — PEELTMINAET ESSAY. XIU not from the services which the Church rendered to countries, to centuries, to populations very unlike our own — but from the Christian revelation itself, which is not a tradition, but a fresh and living word from God, our Father in Heaven, to His children in every age. At the root of all our theories concerning the ideal Social Order lies our conception of the nature of man. Before we can determine what are the obligations of Society to individual men and to classes of men — before we can discover the obligations of individual men and of classes of men to Society — yre have to arrive at some conclusion concerning the powers and capacities, the real contents and possibilities of human life. How does man differ — if he differs at all — from those inferior races which we enslave — which we compel to live for us, not for themselves — which we train to do our work — which we Idll for food? Our whole theory of the political, economical, and social organization of society will de- pend upon the answer which is given to this question. The Christian revelation answers it in a vei-y surprising manner. The answer is not worn out. It is of a kind that must make it full of inspiration to the latest ages of human history. It contains an immense reserve of un- exhausted energy. It has never yet been adequately expressed, either in the institutions of Society or in the organisation of Churches. Indeed it has not received its true place in any of the Confessions, the XIV PEELIMINAET ESSAY. Creeds, the Articles of the great Councils and Synods of Christendom. Theologians have never adequately defined it. About the Christian idea of God there have been prolonged controversies which have left their memorials and monuments in famous creeds ; but the controversies about the Christian idea of man have been much less thorough. They have rarely passed beyond the narrow limits of the questions which were at issue more than fourteen hundred years ago between Augustine and Pelagius. They have approached the subject on only one side, and have left large provinces of truth wholly unexplored. They have issued in no definite conclusion that has been confirmed by the acceptance of the Church through successive generations. Notwith- standing the conflict between the East and the West on the procession of the Spirit, the doctrine of the Nicene Creed has substantially represented for fifteen centuries the belief of the overwhelming majority of those who bear the Christian name in relation to some of the deepest questions concerning the nature and life of God. There has been no such approach to unanimity in relation to the deepest questions concerning the nature and life of man. Even in Western Christendom, where Augustine has always been honoured as the great doctor of the ancient Church, Augustine's theory of human nature has never secured any real control of Christian thought. Its authority has been partial and intermittent. But though the Christian doctrine of man has been so imperfectly elaborated by scientific theology, about the substance of it there can be no doubt ; and it has PBBLIMINABT ESSAY. XV exerted an immense influence on Christian life and con- duct. For the Christian doctrine of man is really a part of the Christian doctrine of God. The two are not only inseparable ; the one is largely included in the other. I suppose that to most men in these days, and perhaps to many orthodox Christians, the controversies which occasioned the convening of the Council of Nicaea and the doctrinal definitions of the creed inaccurately attributed to Athanasius, lie far remote from Christian conduct. The doctrine of the Trinity is regarded as a strain on the resources of faith rather than an inspiration and law of practical righteousness. That there is any real and direct relation between that great mystery and Christian morals or the Christian ideal of the Social Order, never occurs to them. And this is one reason why Christian morality is wanting in originality, vigour, courage, and grace; and why the Christian ideal of society has not become infinitely nobler. But the Christian doctrine of man is implicated in the Christian doctrine of God; or, to speak more exactly, in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity ; and the Christian doctrine of man determines the Christian theory of morals and the Christian theory of society. The faith of Christendom, its theology, its worship, and its ethics rest on the revelation in the Lord Jesus Christ of the eternal Hfe of God. That it should be possible for God to be manifested under the conditions of a human history, implies a kinship between man and God. And this alliance between God and Humanity in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ was not transient. In Him XVI PEELIMINAET ESSAY. the eternal Son of God became man ; in Him the eternal Son of God remains man. The human nature of the Lord Jesus Christ, exalted and transfigured, its powers enlarged beyond the limits of our thought, is the per- manent manifestation and organ of the life of God. The awful personal supremacy over all worlds and all ages which we attribute to God belongs to Christ. We never knew the immeasm^ble possibilities of expansion and development belonging to human nature, its possibilities of power, of wisdom, of moral and spiritual perfection, until we received the revelation of the august greatness of the Son of Man who is also the Son of God, and who is enthroned " far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named^ not only in this world, but also in that which is to come," all things being put " in subjection under His feet." Nor is the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, and His permanent union with our race an isolated and abnormal fact. It is God's witness to the ideal relation of all men to Himself. Man, according to the earliest representa- tion of him in the books which preserve and illustrate in various fornis — in history and in song, in prophecy, pro- verb, prayer, and myth — the successive movements of the revelation of God to the Jewish people and to prophets that heard His voice and saw His glory before He called Abraham to be the head of the elect nation — man, belongs on the one hand to the material universe ; he sprang from the dust ; he shares the physical life of inferior races : but he belongs, on the other hand, to an invisible and eternal order ; he was made in the image of God, and PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XTll received the inspiration of the divine life. According to the fuller and clearer discoveries of a later age, his higher life has its fountains in the eternal life of the Son of God.^ Men were created in Christ, the eternal Son of God, the eternal Word of God, and were created to share His eternal relations to the Father. We are branches of Christ, the eternal Vine ; branches which began to grow out of the eternal roots but yesterday, but destined, if we are loyal to the idea of our life, to remain in Christ for ever. The Vine is necessary to the branches ; the branches are also necessary to the Vine ; and, without ' relying on the precarious argument from analogy, it may be said that the human race and its relations to Christ and to the Father through Him are, in a very true sense, necessary to the fulfilment of the ideal of Christ's own life and of Christ's own relations to the Father. Christian theology finds its ultimate conception of man, the transcendent ideal of the life of man, the prophecy and assurance of his perfection, in the eternal life of God and in the august mystery of the Trinity. In union with the Son of God we share His relations to the Father and His eternal perfection and blessedness. For this every man was created. To those, therefore, who have received the Christian revelation there is in every man — no matter how mean and wretched his exter- nal condition, how feeble and neglected his intellectual ^ A divine word, said some of the ancient Stoics, is at the root of the life of every man — a noble conception carrying the inference that every man's history, according to the law of his being, should be a translation into character and conduct, not of any ideal of perfection arbitrarily con- structed or chosen by himself, but of a divine thought and purpose. XVUl PEELIMINAET ESSAY. powers, how coarse hia habits, how gross his vices — the possibility of realizing this wonderful glory. They dis- cover in every man indications of the greatness to which God has destined him. In his perceptions, however obscure, of the authority of duty, and of the infinite con- trast between right and wrong, they recognise his actual and present relations to Christ, " the Light that hghteth every man "; in his capacity for religions faith and wor- ship, however corrupt may be his creed, and however superstitious the rites by which he attempts to propitiate the unseen powers which he supposes are able to desolate or to defend and augment his happiness, they recognise his actual and present relations, not merely to an invisible and eternal world, but to the invisible and eternal God. The moral freedom which he possesses is necessary to the fulfilment of the Divine idea of his perfection ; but in the power of that same moral freedom the Divine idea may be defeated. The will of God is not always done. It is God's purpose that all men should be tem- perate, industrious, kindly; many men are profligate, indolent, malicious. Man was created for virtue ; he may live in vice. And as God's purpose may be defeated in man's moral relations to his fellow-men, it may also be defeated in man's moral and spiritual relations to God Himself. But it remains true that he was created that he might share the Divine life in Christ, and be eternally one with God in Him. This conception of man lies at the root of Christian morals, and determines the Christian ideal of the Social Order. All our duties to other men — in the family, in PEELIMINAET ESSAY. XIX business, in general society, in public life, as members of the same municipality, as citizena of the same common- wealth — are governed by it j and the only Social Order which, can satisfy the Christian conscience is one that rests on the assumption, that all men were created to be brethren in Christ, and for eternal ui;ion with God in Him. II. It may be objected that the Christian conception of the grandeur of man's relations to God and to eternity, if it were ever to take possession of the faith and the imagination of those who bear the Christian name, would paralyse their hostility to social injustice and their pity for all the miseries of the race. What is there, it may be asked, in the most cruel sufferings of this transient earthly life to touch the compassion of thoge who seriously believe that man was created for eternal righteousness and glory ? (1) The objection, however plausible it may look, and whatever strength it may derive from abnormal and fanatical growths of the Christian life, finds no support in the general history of the Christian Church. The fresh enthusiasm of the first converts to the Christian faith led to what a cool criticism may pronounce to have been a reckless and pernicious provision for the poor. The early Church, the Church of the first few chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, took the form of a philanthropic organization. Those who received the Christian gospel XX PEELIMINAET ESSAY. became suddenly indifferent to wealth ; lands and houses were sold^ and the proceeds of the sale were put into the treasury of the Church, — not to maintain a splendid ritual, or to support missions, but to feed the hungry and to clothe the naked. They ceased to care about comfort and luxury for themselves, but they cared a great deal for the relief of the wants of other men. Throughout the history of the Church, whenever Christian faith in the glories by which we are surrounded has been most vigorous, there has been the most compassionate pity for the temporal miseries of mankind. (2) The objection finds no support in the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing is more characteristic of that teaching than its perfect sanity. He did not, like the Stoics, attempt to convince men that hunger and thirst and nakedness are not real evils. He told them, indeed, to seek first God's kingdom and God's righteous- ness, and not to be anxious about what they should eat and what they should drink, and wherewithal they should be clothed; but He added: "Your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things." God recognises the reality of the physical wants of the race : Christian men — if they wish to recover the image of God — must recognise them too. (3) The objection finds no support in the history and example of the Lord Jesus Christ. He who came to reveal to men that they are akin to God, that they are destined by the Divine purpose to union with God and to immor- tal blessedness in Him, was "moved with compassion'' by every form of physical suffering. His miracles, which to PEELIMINAET ESSAY. XXI the men of His own time were among the signs that He came from Heaven, have perhaps their chief value in our own age as striking, startling, and most im- pressive illustrations of the characteristic aim of the Christian redemption — the recovery of the race from misery as well as from sin. They teach us that it is the permanent duty of those who find the law of, per- fection in the life of Christ, to feed the starving — not merely by acts of charity, but by promoting a national policy which will increase the productive power of in- dustry, and secure a more equitable distribution of the wealth which industry creates j to lessen pain and suppress disease — not merely by care for the sick, but by sanitary legislation which will prevent sickness; to conquer death itself — not by restoring the dead to life, which is beyond our power, but by social and economical reforms which will augment the vigour of human life and prolong its duration. (4) The objection finds no support in the Christian con- ception of human nature. According to that conception, man is not a spiritual being with an accidental and tran- sient connection with a physical organization ; body and soul are equally necessary to the integrity of human life. Manicheeism, which attributes the visible world to the devil, and regards the flesh with hatred and contempt, was one of the heresies which the Church had to fight in early centuries, and which it condemned as fatal tp the revelation of God in Christ, and fatal to Christian morality. The life of man is a unity, though it touches the earth on one side a,nd God on the other. XXU PEELIMINAET ESSAY. To increase the health and yigour of man's physical nature is a work worth doing for its own sake. The discovery of man's relations to the eternal Son of God creates new motives for doing it. The physical condition of large masses of the people, even in the wealthiest and most highly civilised countries, is unfriendly to common morality. When we give them better health by giving them purer air, better water, more wholesome food, we are contributing aids to their moral improvement; and every advance in the moral condition of the race contri- butes to the fulfilment of the Divine idea of human perfection. The intellect of all descriptions of men is worth cultivating for its own sake; and we honour God by cultivating it, for " it is the inspiration of the Almighty that giveth them understanding." But by a wise culti- vation of the intellect we make men capable of surer and more delicate moral judgments; and, other things being equal, of a wider and exaoter knowledge of the contents of the Christian revelation ; for the functions of the intellect are not suspended by the light which falls direct from Heaven on those who are taught of God. There have been times when ecclesiastical authorities have regarded with hostility and with dread the quick- ening of the popular mind, the audacious spirit of a robust and independent scholarship, and the splendid discoveries of science; but these have not been thei times when spiritual faith was most active. And whatever crimes against the human intellect have been committed by the rulers of the Christian Church, it is PEBLIMINAEY ESSAY. XXIU to the Christian Church that Europe owes its popular schools and its universities. If, therefore, the Church has become indifferent to the material and intellectual interests of mankind, it has for- gotten both the teaching and the example of Christ,' it has misapprehended the Christian conception of human nature, it has broken with its own best traditions. III. But the question recurs — and some recent discussions give it exceptional urgency — whether the fires of Chris- tian enthusiasm for the reUef of the present miseries of the race may not, as a matter of fact, be subdued by the supreme interest which has been claimed for the invisible and eternal objects of religious faith, and whether the development of Christian morality may not suffer from the devotion of a large measure of Christian thought and energy to speculation on the nature of God and on His relations to mankind. It is supposed that we should do more for morals i£ we cared less for theology, and that the Nicene Creed has made the Church indifferent to the Sermon on the Mount. It appears incredible that those mysteries of the Divine life which cannot be completely explored by the boldest, hardiest, and most adventurous thought, and which may seem to be inaccessible to the common mind, can have any real relation to the Morals and Social Order of Chris- tian nations. But there is nothing surprising in the assumption that -XXIV PEELIMINAET ESSAY. truths wliicli lie far beyond the reach of the great masses of mankind may have the . most powerful influence on their lives and fortunes. Scientific discoveries, which are intelligible only to experts, change the organization of great industries and impoverish or enrich millions of men to whom the first principles of science are unknown. Philosophical speculations, which in their principles and methods are beyond the comprehension of the undis- ciplined intellect, have been the origin of political and social revolutions. If the Christian revelation concerning the life of God were really above the reach of the intel- lectual commonalty of the race, it might still be true that this revelation has the power to produce the most beneficial changes in the morality of nations and the most stupendous revolutions in their Social Order. But, however intricate, perplexing and difficult may be the speculations of theologians on this great mystery, the substance of the revelation is received by millions of untaught men for whom the commonest technical terms necessary to define it have no meaning. The mystery is verified in their personal experience. They know that their life is a life in the eternal Son of God, and there- fore a life in union with the Father. They know, too, that it was for this life that all men were created. It may be answered that this immediate and spiritual knowledge of the great mysteries of Faith is enough, and that as soon as any attempt is made to define them there is peril that the glory of the vision will be quenched. But the intellect has its rights in every province of human life, and the attempt to suppress them will always be PEELIMINAEY ESSAY. XXV mischievous. These rights will be won by violent revolt if they are not frankly conceded and surrounded with honourable guarantees. If there is a divorce between faith and reasoned thought, faith will become super- stitious and the intellect will become atheistic. It is only by a return to those transcendent facts which have given to the Christian Gospel in past ages its power over the social life of Christendom that its power will be renewed and enlarged in our own times. Here lies the secret of that freshness and originality of moral thought which is necessary to the Christian Church if it is to retain — or recover — the moral leadership of Europe. Here are the fountains of that inspiration and vigour which alone can enable the Church to translate its new and loftier moral ideals into practice. For the elevation of the Social Order we need a deeper reverence for man — for every man ; and it is to be found in the relations of every man to the Eternal Son of God. These give sanctity to the outcast and confer an awful dignity on the meanest and most miserable of the human race. It is no metaphor that Christ uses in His dramatic representation of the judgment of the nations — " I was an hungred, and ye gave Me meat ; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink ; I was a stranger, and ye took Me in ; naked, and ye clothed Me ; I waff sick, and ye visited Me j I was in prison, and ye came unto Me" — for between Christ and the hungry, the starving, the naked, the desolate, the sick, the oppressed, there are relations so close that the service which we render to them is rendered to Him. They were created to share His eternal life and XXVI PEELIMINAET ESSAY. righteousness, to be one with Him as He is one with the Father. " Inasmuch as ye did it to one of these least, ye did it unto Me." " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second like unto it is this. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Like — because the relations between man and God are so vital, that to love God perfectly is impossible without loving man. " He that honoureth the Son," Christ said, *'honoureth the Father"; and in honouring men who were created in the Son, we also honour the Father. Moralists have nothing tb gain from quarrelling with theologians; social reformers may find inspiration and fitrength in the central mysteries of the Christian Faith. E. W. DALE. Birmingham. INTEODUCTOEY LETTEE FEOM THE AUTHOE TO THE TEANSLATOE. Madam, I am pleasantly surprised to learn that this book, first printed thirty years ago, should seem to you suf- ficiently valuable to be translated for the use of your countrymen. Well received on its first appearance, translated into German and Dutch, it nevertheless contains some chapters that need revision, either to complete them by the result of more recent publications, or to strengthen them by new arguments. Various circumstances, of slight interest to the public, prevent me from undertaking that task. This I ought not to conceal whilst thanking you for approving the book as it is. In our day, when the world is so full of sin and misery, and the remedies proposed are often more dangerous than the evils they are intended to cure, I remain convinced that the Christian faith and the love it inspires are the only efficacious means of raising the moral and material condition of the masses of the people. On right-hearted men a pictorial representation of this truth, such as I have attempted to sketch, may perhaps make more im- pression than abstract discussion. XXVUl INTEODtJCTOEY LETTEE. It is for the sake of this practical aim that you have wished to make use of my work. May it serve the cause you hope to help by its trans- lation. T am. Madam, Tours with deep respect, C. SCHMIDT. Steasbtjkg-, November, 1884. PREFACE. In a.d. 1849 the French Academy proposed the following theme for a prize essay: "To trace the influence of Charity on the Eoman World during the first centuries of the Christian eraj to prove how, while showing all respect for law and property, it wrought a change by persuasion, through the power of Religion j and to show in the constitutions which were thus established the new spirit with which it had imbued civil society." After an attentive examination of the scheme, I thought it neces- sary to commence by indicating the character of the ancient spirit, the doctrines and social morality of an- tiquity, in order to show more clearly what was new in the spirit with which Christian charity had imbued civil society. I thought, too, that it was not the intention of the Academy to restrict attention solely to the bearing of charity on the poor. That would give only one side of a subject, which, embracing the whole round of civil society, necessarily includes, besides the relations of rich and poor, those of man and woman, father and children, master and servants. I have therefore divided my work into three parts. In the first I shall give a brief sketch of ancient social morality, which I shall trace to its sources; viz. the egoism of the citizen and the despotism of the State. XXX PEEPACB. In the second I sum up Christian social morality, •which is only an application of charity to the various relations of life; and with thjs I combine a picture of Christian life and institutions during the earlier periods of our era. The. third part is intended to show how the ancient maxims and Roman laws, which affected civil society, were transformed by charity; or, to speak according to the programme, how this society was imbued with a new spirit. It will be apparent, therefore, that I have not taken the word charity in the restricted sense of alms- giving or benevolence. The Gospel, in freeing the soul and proclaiming the equality of all men, restored to their personal dignity, has replaced the despotic and exclusive spirit of the ancient world by a new social principle — that of love. This love, which is inseparable from the respect due to all men, whatever their external status, is charity in its highest sense; it is the fundamental virtue of Christi- anity, the central motive of all the feelings we ought to entertain one towards another. Prom this point of view I have taken for motto a saying of St. Augustine, " Where charity is not, justice cannot he." In a treatise published under trying conditions, one of the mosb distinguished men of our age has said, " Justice is the bridle of humanity, charity is the spur.''^ An- tiquity, which wished to use the bridle only, and which employed it in the sole interest of the few, was compelled to end by relaxing it, after being deceived as to its nature and strength. To Christianity the glory belongs of having applied to souls the spur which impels them to abnegation and sacrifice, and which makes it possible to ' M. Cousin, Justice et CharitS. Paris, 1848. PBEFACB. XXIXl manage the bridle in the interest of all. This is the true condition of social life. Without the free sacrifice of man for man, society is only a violence or a chimera. Justice itself, i,e. respect for individual rights, needs to be enlightened and vivified by charity. When I pictured to myself the present state of society (which is not without resemblance to the early times of the rise and progress of the Gospel), where we have so vast a field for the activity and self-sacrifice inspired by charity in all the relations of life, it seemed to me that the Academy required no erudite work, but one easily understood by all, which would give an historical apology for Christianity, based on its moral efiiects and social influence. This idea of writing a book for the public in general has guided me in the choice and arrangement of materials. Had I written solely for the learned, I would have developed several points more slightly, while various questions of criticism would have been more fully discussed. I can say with truth that I have cited no fact which is not supported by positive and authentic testimony. It would have been easy to add many in- teresting details, but, in dealing with a subject so vast, I have kept strictly to what seemed to me the essential characteristics of the centuries and epoch with which I was occupied. Several points, which belong to the general question, have been treated elsewhere with superior ability and scientific method in special works, such as those of MM. ViUemain, ^Troplong, Naudet, Wallon, Moreau-Ohristo- phe, Martin, etc. To me was left the task of making such a picture of the whole as might draw attention to the social transformations efiected by the influence of Christianity. I have refrained from making applications to the pre- XXXll FBEFACE. sent day, only because I am convinced they are useless to the readers of an historical work, who are quite able to compare for themselves the past with the times in which they live. I attribute the success of my work with the French Academy rather to my desire to do good than to its in- herent merits. This eminent body, after hearing the report — only too kind to me — presented by the illustrious secretary, M. Villemain, awarded an equal prize to the work of my honourable colleague, M. Ohastel, of Geneva, and to mine. I should fail in my duty if I did not take this opportunity of expressing my warm thanks to the Academy for the distinction it has accorded to my book. I do not imagine that this will wholly shield me from criticism j but I hope that the public also will bear in mind my intention to aid in spreading the ideas and sentiments inspired by Christian charity, and with which many of our contemporaries are not yet sufficiently imbued. Mwrch, 1853. BOOK I. PAGAN SOCIETY. INTEODUCTION. At the epoch when Christianity appeared Eome was at the summit of her power and glory. The greatest part of the then known world obeyed her laws ; her civiliza- tion, with its benefits and its vices, was established in Europe, Asia, and Northern Africa; her legions had planted their victorious eagles everywhere ; her institu- tions, her customs, even her language had followed them, and the world had become Roman, not in name only, but in thought and deed. The social and moral state of the Empire was alike -in both Bast and West : it was the result of a fusion of Grecian civilization with that of Eepublican Rome. This fusion was easily accomplished, for notwithstanding the difference between the Roman and the Greek genius, the two civilizations rested on the same fundamental principle. It will not be needful to go back to the heroic tradi- tions of primitive ages in order to recognise this principle, and to characterise generally the spirit of Roman society in the ages with which we are engaged. We need not seek these germs, half hidden in the shadow of the myths, but we must follow their historical development, both in the institutions which gave a legal sanction to the customs, and in the opinions of the philosophers, who justified both law and customs by their theories. Eroin this double source we shall draw the materials 4 SOCIAL EEStTLTS OP CHKISTIANITT. [BOOK I. _ for composing the following picture of the life and spirit of Eoman society. We shall show the generally received ideas about men and their mutual relations in civil life, and thus unite the principal characteristics of ancient social morality. Historical facts will confirm the results of this study : all the internal history of pagan society will be shown to be the inevitable fruit, the fatal consequences, of the spirit and social principles of antiquity. The ethical principles of the ancients do not differ from their practical morals ; or to speak more exactly, we shall find in their ethical principles the expression of their practical morals reduced to a system or formulated in laws. CHAPTER I. THE PRINCIPLE AND AIM OP ANCIENT SOCIAL MOKALITT. § 1. Happiness. In ancient times man souglit, as he does now and always, to make himself happy.* That the end and aim of life is happiness was the moral principle by which individuals guided their whole conduct. The pagan, knowing little of the deep and eternal realm of the soul, generally sought this happiness in external things, in the more material enjoyment of the senses. Material enjoyment is in its own nature egoistical. Everything is referred to personal desire ; the " I " reigns supreme, the centre and spring of all activity ; it has an exclusive reign ; it hates those who resist it, and despises those whom it uses, unless they are sufficiently strong to make themselves feared. We shall soon see that in this is summed up the social morality of antiquity, whose sole principle is egoism. The philosophers Democritus, Aristippus, and the Sophists have unvaryingly declared that the sole aim of human activity is to seek happiness in enjoyment. They were faithful interpreters of those >who had the means of making themselves happy in the sense of pagan antiquity. Other less materialistic philosophers have tried to moderate the principle of ancient morality by less vulgar definitions 6 SOCIAL EESTILTS OP CHEISXIANITT. [BOOK I. of supreme good; but they also have been unable to rise above the demands of egoism. If they speak of the pos- sibility of a less sensuous happiness, they not the less allow external enjoyment to exist by its side; they refer man to virtue, but their virtue is neither deep, nor clear from impure alliance. Their morality, founded on self- love, knows nothing of duty towards all men; it con- secrates contempt for the weak and hatred of enemies, and does not tend to the realization of true justice. It is a morality governed by existing facts and intended to help them by philosophic sanction and support ; it is not a doctrine superior to these facts, intended to correct and transform them. It will not be necessary for us to give here detailed developments of the moral systems of antiquity ; it will be enough to recall their fundamental principles, reserving for the end of this work the ideas of philosophers about social relationship and different classes of men. We content ourselves with saying here that these practical ideas, far from being the results of the purer speculations to which several amongst the ancient sages attained, are only the theoretical justification of the customs and insti- tutions of antiquity. Socrates places happiness in wisdom, in the knowledge of the supreme good, of God. For him this knbwledge of good is inseparable from the practice of good ; wisdom is one with virtue ; but we question him in vain as to what is good and just in life. He leaves his disciples in doubt in this respect, or rather the doubt has not even arisen in their soul, for Socrates did not inquire with them whether the customs and laws were in accordance with virtue and wisdom or not. It is true that Plato combats the opinion that enjoy- ment is the supreme good. He, in his turn, says that CHAP. I.] PEINCIPLE AND AIM OF ANCIENT SOCIAL MORALITY. 7 virtue is the only happiness of the soul, and that God is the supreme good. He has beautiful aspirations towards God, in which he recognises His infinite perfections ; but though he attains a certain elevation in his speculations, he falls back into pagan egoism when he touches prac- tical and social questions. We find him affected by this egoism even in the midst of his Utopia of the ideal society. As to Aristotle, he is no utopian. Taught by experi- ence, he states that men perform all their actions with a view to happiness, and he believes happiness to exist simply in this practical activity. But he wishes our actions to be in accordance with our reasonable nature. The more this rational activity is developed, the happier man will be, and the nearer he will approach to pure virtue. It would seem from this that the practice of virtue must be the source of happiness. But this virtue itself is only external ; its principle resides in the desires and interests of man, in his egoism. This lies beneath the opinion of Aristotle, that utility is the standard of right, and that it is only through the observation and judgment of men that we can find the medium between extremes, and discern between bad and good. Thus, in the last analysis, the moral principle is founded only on personal interest enlightened by experience. Stoicism appealrs to rise above the calculations of an interested prudence. It lays down as a law for the man who aspires to the happiness to be obtained from virtue, that he shall live in conformity with the intelligent nature of the soul. The perfection of this nature is supreme virtue, and in its practice consists supreme happiness ; for the perfection of intelligent nature is to be inacces- sible to all impressions produced by external things and chances. Virtue and happiness reside, consequently, in 8 SOCIAL EESULTS OF CHEISTIANITT. [bOOK: I. ealm of the soul, in imperturbability of spirit, which resists the passions whatever may be their cause or object, and dwells unshaken amidst the affections. To preserve this precious calm, the Stoic will harm no one, in order that no one may have an excuse for troubling him with offences or complaints. It is therefore still personal interest which inspires the Stoic; his system, no less than the others, is founded on egoism. It is the same with the new academy, who, attaching themselves partly to Stoicism and partly to the doctrines of the Peripatetics, sought to reconcile duty and interest, justice and utility. It was the school of men of the world who were anxious to have in everything an irre- proachable external appearance. Cicero is its chief representative. The morality of this philosopher is summed up in the precept to live honourably, that is to say, in conformity with the intelligent nature. Honourable is that which is to be praised in itself, with- out reference to material utility. We know it by con- sulting the common judgment of men. What they, generally agree to blame or despise is bad,. and what they praise or honour is good. Cicero believes that he has proved that the terms good and honourable are synonyms, as well as the terms disgraceful and bad. Returning to utility, whose exigencies could not be conquered by ancient morality, he declares that what is good is useful; the good being what is honourable, he definitely concludes that all that is honourable is also useful. We should have little to say against this principle of the Roman philosopher had he given us any other stan- dard of what is honourable than the judgment of men, which is generally bo misleading and contradictory. If there is no motive superior to love of self, each one is led CHAP. I.] PEINCIPLE AND AIM OF ANCIENT SOCIAL MORALITY. 9 to consider that to be honourable and good which favours his wishes. He therefore limits himself to the avoidance of external conduct which would shock the crowd j he is contented with this decorum, for which Cicero, as a moralist and man of the world, reserves all his enthusiasm. Any one who has the conscience to observe decorum may even set himself above public judgment. It is in this sense that Cicero gives the assurance that, to live happily, it suffices to have the tranquil content given by virtue itself when practised freely ; that is, without seeking it either in external benefits or even in a deeper satisfac- tion.^ We see what becomes of the union of honour and utility, of duty and interest in this system of morality, which is as egoistic as all those of antiquity. It is evident that after this reconciliation duty is infallibly sacrificed to personal interest. Duty only begins when it is not opposed by personal interest, and actions may be unfettered provided that decorum is observed. Thus, according to Cicero, morality is measured by the approval of men, or at least by freedom from their blame. It is principally a rule of conduct for the man of the world, who, occupying a high position in society, is more exposed than others to the view and criticism of the multitude. In the rapid examination we have just made we have recalled only the most eminent representatives of ancient thought. If the moral principle of men so learned and so wise was unable to free itself from egoism, from the desire of enjoying undisturbed happiness, the rule of conduct of those who knew nothing of philosophy was sure to be neither more strict nor more certain. 10 SOCIAL RESULTS OP CHEISTIANIir. [BOOK I. § 2. The State. In considering the character of ancient morality, we might be tempted to believe that it was a morality in- tended only for individuals, which imposed upon them neither social duties nor reciprocal obligation. But there was an egoism greater than that of the individual, the egoisjn of the State. We shall be convinced of this when we have seen the way in which the philosophers, representatives in this respect of the general spirit of antiquity, looked at the means of realizing individual happiness. This means, according to them, was the State. To live in a well-organized State was the highest condition of the well-being of man.^ Tiis idea, wMcTi is true in a certain sense, ceases to be so when it justifies the supremacy of the State at the expense of the rights of individuals. Aristotle is the first who expresses philosophically the political thought which was the basis of Greek social order. The State, he says, exists rationally before the individuals who compose it, as the whole exists before being divided into parts ; it is in its nature superior to its members, who give themselves to it because they only have being through it; it is the condition of their existence, growth, and prosperity.* The whole organi- zation of ancient States rested on this idea : as the part is nothing without the whole, so they believed man to be nothing apart from his relations as citizen, — ^his exist- ence depended entirely on that of the State, The State was anterior and superior to all individual personality, and absorbed it entirely. Plato, in his speculations on the model republic, was unable to free himself from this conception of a State which stifled the individuality of its members. His ideal CHAP. I.] PEINCIPLB AND AIM OP Alf CIENT SOCIAL MOEALIIT. 1 1 is the ideal of public egoism, or more properly speaking, the ideal of the united egoisms of a certain number of privileged men. Such was the ancient State. To Plato, seeking the conditions of a perfecb republic, the State is everything. It is the sole aim of the activities of its members; there is nothing that ought not to be sacrificed to it. Those who cannot serve it have no reason for existence; policy permits them to be despised, if it does not command them to be destroyed. As the State is all, it also joossesses all. It is not a natural right to have private property, it is not even a privilege ; it is a mark of inferiority, for only those who are excluded from the community of the State — those who work, labourers, the industrial classes — can possess anything of their own. The true members of the State do not work ; they have no private property; they have everything in common, even the women. The family is destroyed for them ; their children belong to the State, they are the wealth of all. Supreme happiness consists in directing such a State ; and it is the philosopher who - is the most capable of this direction — of being the perfect king. This perfect king need think of nothing but the prosperity of the State. It matters little to him if the individual is happy, so long as the State prospers, though it should be at the expense of whole classes of its members. The Sbate is composed only of a small number of men, of an aristocracy divided into castes, from which those who belong to them can never separate themselves. Human individuality is thus completely overlooked and sacrificed to a chimerical community, in which the only real thing is the egoism of those who profit by it and the misery of the others. All the errors of the social morality of this great philosopher proceed from this mistake. We shall see proofs of this farther on. We 12 SOCIAL RESULTS OP CHRISTIANITY. [BOOK I. do not know how far Plato desired the realization of his Utopia^ whose whole principle was entirely in accordance with the ancient spirit. What we do know is that he taught that when the progress of things in the State no longer suited the sage, who was unable to alter it, he should withdraw from public life and attend solely to his own affairs, abandoning the State, that could be no longer useful to him, to its ruin.* Plato himself followed this ungenerous advice in respect to his native town.^ By his theories and example he gave political philosophy, and perhaps Greek civilization itself, a tendency which removed it further from ancient and more patriotic habits. This school was suitable only for the aristocracy, who learned there to rise above the growing corruption of the people, through disdain ; and who alone would have benefited could the Platonic Republic have been realized. It was not a school in which a man could learn the energy and devotion necessary to save his fellow-citizens. The ancients themselves asked whether the philosophy of Plato had not inspired more tyrants than enemies of tyranny. Plutarch collected the names of some friends of liberty who came from the Platonic ranks, to which Athenseus opposed a long list of oppressors formed in the same school.* The counsel given to the sage to leave the State to its ruin when he could not save it, was not the general opinion. Plato himself expresses the latter when he says that human activity should have no other aim than the good of the State, and that the highest purpose of life is to serve one's country.' Aristotle gives still more formal expression to this. No one should think that he is anything in himself, that he has an individual value and right j each is something only so far as he is a part of the whole. He ought not therefore to seek what is for CHAP. I.] PEINCIPLE AND AIM OP ANCIENT SOCIAL MOKALITY. 13 his personal benefit, but to consecrate himself wholly to the common good.' This last is the only true standard of justice ; it is this which should rule all social duties and relations. Socrates had already been contented to refer those who wished to know what was practically good and just to the laws of the State.' Cicero re- produces the same ideas. He acknowledges the natural need of sociability, common to all men, as the origin of the State; but like the philosophers of Greece who, when speaking of the State, saw only the Republics of Athens or Sparta, he also confounds the ideal of the State with the Roman Republic, and declares that to serve Rome is the noblest aim for man's activities.^" In antiquity everything appears thus in the State, whhic claims and absorbs the vital forces of its members. The individual himself is nothing ; it is only as a citizen that he is of value. He is a person only in the com- munity of the State; outside that community he is overlooked, despised, trodden under foot by the State as well as by those who have the privilege of making part of it. It follows from this that ancient morality recognises no other social duties than duties towards the State, and no other virtues than political ones. Man being essen- tially a political animal^^ what other duties and virtues can there be that he ought to practise ? Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Cicero, recognise no virtues but those of the citizen. Wisdom, courage, moderation, justice are the only necessary ones for him who wishes to share the direction of public aSairs. The man who possesses these and adds to them decorum, the ornament of life, is the model man, the perfect citizen.^^ The whole history of the golden age of Greece and Rome bears witness that the virtues which were most highly developed were the 14 SOCLA.L RESULTS OP CHEISTIANITT. [BOOK I. politioal ones. The principle of the greatness of the ancient republics was precisely this indissoluble union of the personality of the citizen with the State. The indi- vidual was great only when he accepted this position with all its consequences, and learned to live and die for the State to which he belonged and which alone had the right to dispose of him. Also antiquity only recog- nised as services to the country those which were rendered to the government or in defence of the soil. The tomb of -^schylus called to mind that he fought at Marathon, but ignored his glory as a poet. On the other hand, the ancient State did not permit individual virtue to rise above the common level : it banished Aristides, and condemned Socrates to death. We must not be astonished that we do not find love of country numbered amongst political virtues. The possibility of citizens without patriotism never occurred to Aristotle and Cicero. Man, being absorbed by the State and identified with it, could not help feeling attached to the community to which he owed his ex- istence and whose glory he shared. But at a later time, when these bonds were loosened through the corruption of the citizens and the decay of the State, Tacitus re- minds his age that love of public afiairs, piety towards the country, was the highest of all duties. To reproduce once more the character of ancient Rome, he wished that individual advantage and honour should be unreservedly subordinated to the honour and benefit of the State. Virtue was for him only a free sacrifice of all private interests to the interests of Rome. These were noble efforts of the great historian to re- kindle a patriotism which grew less from day to day ; but his efforts were ineffectual, for if the Romans of the time of Tacitus had no longer the virtues of past CHAP. I.J PRINCIPLE AND AIM OF ANCIENT SOCIAL MORALITY. ] 5 ages, Eome also was no longer ancient Rome. It would have needed a purer and more sublime devotion than ancient patriotism to inspire self-sacrifice for the welfare of degraded men who idly yielded to vile despots. Cicero had already foreseen this insufficiency of political virtue, and wished to strengthen it by the support of religion. He added to motives drawn from the requirements of the State one that was deeper in its nature, the fear of the gods. This should be joined to love of country to lead men to respect social transactions and to refrain from public crimes.^* § 3. Citizens. Foreigners. Riches. We have seen that the happiness of the individual through virtue is linked with the public welfare, which is the result of some social virtues practised by all those who compose the State. But of whom is this State com- posed ? Can it of its own nature gather all men to its bosom ? In other words, are all men capable of virtue, and can they consequently hope to be happy ? Ancient civilization, through the month of its wisest men, answers No. Happiness is only for the Greek or Roman, because the commonwealth of the State^ as egoistic as individuals, is reserved only for the citizen of these countries. Other peoples are barbarians, be- neath the dignity of enemies, below the human race ; the Greek and Roman alone are men. The barbarian, that is the foreigner, is through his own nature in the same rank as the slave ; he is not capable of commanding, he is made to serve. It is perfectly just to rule over foreigners or to sell them for slaves ; those are wrong who refuse to do so, for this is the destiny appointed to them by nature. That is the opinion of Socrates and Aristotle,^* to 16 SOCIAL RESULTS OF CHRISTIANITY. [BOOK I. whicli Plato adds his own. If, according to him, the Greeks ought not to bring one another to slavery because they are all equally men, yet they only act in conformity ■with justice when they turn their arms against the bar- barians to enslave them.^^ The contempt for foreigners, of which Grecian history shows so many examples, was held to the same extent in Rome. It was the cause of all the unjust wars, of all the violations of the right of the people, the remembrance of which tarnishes the Roman name. Cicero approved, as just and natural, the submission of other nations to Rome. Foreigner and enemy are synonyms to him. He does not wish that he who is not a citizen should be treated as such.^* The ancient nations have been often praised for their hospitality. If it was offered, it was only in rare and exceptional cases j for how could he who despised the bar- barian as in an inferior condition, and who saw in him only a natural enemy, feel desirous of doing him good ? When the ancients speak of hospitality, they mean only the duty of giving a splendid reception to illustrious guests, especially rich and powerful citizens, that the honour may be reflected on the Republic.^^ The guest is welcomed, through national ambition, not benevolence; the house is open to him, not because he is a man, but because he is illustrious. Hospitality therefore is not a duty for every one : it is possible only for the rich, and for him it is an accidental duty depending on the rank of the guest. The foreigner is thus excluded from the Greek and Roman State, and consequently from happiness, of which, according to Greek and Roman wisdom, the State was the supreme condition. But at least every Greek, every Roman will have his place in the State, his share of happiness ? CHAP. I.] PEINCIPLE AND AIM OF ANCIENT SOCIAL MOEALITY. 17 We are so accustomed to speak of the liberty of these ancient republics, that we are almost led to believe that every man there was a happy and free citizen. But it never was so. From the time when in society person- ality is ignored, when the State is represented as superior and anterior to the individual, it may be safely said beforehand that there will be no true liberty for all. In antiquity the worth of man was determined by external and accidental circumstances ; it was not respected on account of the dignity of human nature, but only in proportion to the position filled in the State. Man as man was nothing ; he was something only as a citizen, but this qualification did not belong to every one. We must not forget that the aim of the State being the welfare of the citizen, the best State would be that where he would find the most advantage in return for his political virtues. But, according to the ancients, the exercise of these virtues requires leisure. Therefore only he who has leisure can be a citizen j that is to say, he miist have no pre- occupation, no care on the subject of a livelihood. " The title of citizen," said Aristotle, " be- longs only to those who need not work to live." ^* To live without work it is needful to have a fortune. Hence comes the principle that property makes a citizen ; and as man is only respectable according to his position in the State, he who has enough wealth to have no need to work is the only man worthy of esteem. Plato does not conceal this. Although he demands community of wealth in his ideal Eepublic, he declares that in the established order the rich man only can be considered a good citizen. It is he alone whose life has an aim ; that of the man who works has none.''' We find the same principles in Rome also. Personal, con- sideration is given there only to property, riches, and 18 SOCIAL RESULTS OF CHRISTIANITY. [BOOK I. numerous slaves. Fortune takes precedence of virtue and probity, and a man is only esteemed for his posses- sions. ^ Consequently nothing is more natural than the eagerness with which all methods of amassing riches were seized upon in Greece and Eome. According to Cicero, wisdom commands a man to increase his fortune, pro- vided that he can do it without injustice. ^^ The pride of the citizen in the ancient States was the inevitable consequence of this method of measuring a man's civic capacity and worth by his fortune. The citizen alone was truly man, he only could practise virtue. The State guaranteed protection to him alone, and as we said before, the State was only the union of those who had the qualifications of citizens. All the other inhabitants of the country were outside the State, which repelled them in its political egoism, as the citizen in his individual egoism despised them whilst employing them in his service. The citizen, finding him- self placed so high in the State, thought -only of the greatness of his country because that greatness was also his. In, the externals of life he avoided everything low, ■tervile, harharous, in order to seek for what would add to the lustre of his name. This pride was the virtue recommended by philoso- sophers under the name of greatness of soul. Their magnanimity was very different from what we call so in modern languages that have been transformed by Christianity. It was only the contentment of the citizen -proud of serving his country by his aristocratic virtues, carefully observing outward decorum, and regarding with supreme disdain all those who were not rich enough to share the advantages of his title. Humility, that is inferiority of position, was a subject of contempt for the philosbphers of paganism. ^^ Lowliness of mind was CHAP. I.] PKINCIPLE AND AIM OF ANCIENT SOCIAL MOEALITY. 19 with them inseparable from inferiority of condition. From their purely outward point of view, they never dreamt that the name of humility would be given one day to one of the purest virtues. § 4. Friendship. Vengeance. We will indicate the principles by which citizens were guided in their relations between themselves, before we examine the attitude of the proud and egoistic morality of antiquity towards the humble classes ; that is, those who were not citizens, and were considered unworthy to be so. We do not refer to official or business relation- ships, ordered and protected by the laws, and in which men could associate without any abatement of their complete mutual indifference ; we will speak only of the relations founded upon reciprocal sentiments, either of goodwill or hatred. The motive of all the acts of the citizen was egoism. This individual egoism was subject only to the despotic power of the State. Still, notwithstanding its power in all circumstances where the State was not concerned, it could not completely stifle the need of sympathy which draws the hearts of men together, however it repressed this need within narrow limits. The natural sentiment of kindliness showed itself in the form of friendship, but was unable to break the bonds of political pride. Even the wisest of the ancients thought friendship could only be possible between equals.^^ They did not believe that men of different social con- ditions could feel drawn towards each other, or that it was possible for a rich and powerful citizen to feel a close affection for one weaker and poorer than himself. It was well said that virtue and accord of soul were the l20 SOCIAIi E'lStTLTS OF CHRISTIANITY. [BOOK I. conditions of true friendship ; but the beautiful writings of the philosophers about this matter produce just the same effect because they recall the aristocratic character of ancient virtue. Besides, in searching to the roots oE things, we are compelled to acknowledge that even those who speak the most warmly of the happiness of friend- ship reduce it to an egoistic principle,.to utility. Socrates and Aristotle regard it as supremely useful, both in happiness and in misfortune.^* Pythagoras, who has been called the legislator of friendship, though he re- stricted its sphere more than the other ancient sages, desired a community of wealth,^' besides one of sentiment. Zeno defined it as a community of all that is necessary for life.^® The general opinion clearly was, that friends were required rather as helpers in time of need,^' than, for the satisfaction of reciprocal good feeling. Oicero, who often gives us glimpses of a less egoistic spirit, goes one step farther. According to him, friend-, ship is, after wisdom, the greatest good, not on account of any considerations of utility, but for itself, because it responds to the natural need for affection. He says it^ true fruit is love itself.^^ We find in antiquity som^. beautiful instances of such disinterested and nobljt devoted affection.^' The great admiration with which historians mention these examples proves, however, thaij these strong and durable friendships were rare. It waa seldom that they could bear the supreme test of misfortune. The poets call it a gift, almost beyond hoping for, to possess a friend who is the same in bad as in good for- tune; they think a friend who is faithful amidst calamity is a more delightful sight than a sea without a stornj to the navigator.*" This disappearance of friendship before unexpected reverses was in conformity with the principle of common CHAP. I.] PRINCIPLE AND AIM OF ANCIENT SOCIAL MORALITY. 21) life, which reduced the union of friends to one of reciprocal utiUty. What was the good of retaining affection for a friend who could be of no more use ? It was an in- terested traffic: services were exchanged. When one of the parties was no longer in a position to help the other, he felt bound no longer, and remorselessly deserted him in his time of greatest need. Ovid expresses in some verses his sorrow for the universal egoism of antiquity .^'^ It was to avoid these easily broken bonds that philo- sophers insisted so much on prudence in the choice of friends, and the necessity of avoiding flatterers; they recommended only a small number of friends, whose services could be depended upon.^** Some even carried egoism so far as to demand that men should be attached to no one, each being sufficiently occupied with his own affairs, and nothing being more inconvenient than to be mixed up with those of others.^^ This was the principle of Eoman society in the time of the decadence of the Empire. It had become incapable • of all noble sentiments, worn out, debauched, and egoistic to the last degree. "If," says Martial, " thou wishest to spare thyself a reason for regret, do not attach thyself too strongly to any one; thou wilt have less joy," but i a return thou wilt also prepare for thyself less sorrow." ^* According to the testimony of Plutarch, friendship no longer existed, even in families between the children of the same parents ; they believed that brotherly love had been possible in heroic times, but examples of this fabulous union were no longer to be seen, except at the theatre.^^ If friendship, reduced to interested requirements, was neither close nor sure, the same egoism profoundly deepened hatred, and increased the difficulties of sur- mounting its abysses. The general maxim of antiquity, approved by philosophers and sanctioned by legislators. 22 SOCIAL RESULTS OF CHEISTIANITY. [BOOK I- was talion. " We must outrage those who outrage us," said ^schylus.'® The common opinion in the time of Socrates, as iu the time of Qaintilian, was, that to return evil for evil was not to commit injustice.*' The sages proved by the pleasure which naturally accompanies vengeance, that it is in conformity with human nature.** They strove especially to prove that it was demanded by the dignity of the citizen ; to suffer evil without indig- nantly returning it Was a mark of servile lowness/' whilst the anger roused by injury was the sign of a strong soul, a cause of heroic actions.* It was a manly virtue, a duty, to harm the enemy, as it was to render service to the friend.*^ . Cicero thinks he is the truly good man who injures no one so long as he is not provoked by receiving injury.*^ Thus virtue consists in not beginning the strife. A man should refrain from harming others, that he may not be exposed to their anger;*' but when once offended, all consideration ceases, and if interest advises the use of the law of talion, it is perfectly justifiable; provided it be used with prudence, in order not to harm one's self.** Aristotle, whilst praising anger as a stimulant to virtue, will not allow excess in vengeance, in accordance with his principle that virtue resides in the medium between extremes.*^ The Stoics also forbid the mastery of passion, for fear of disturbing the calm of the soul. One must revenge one's self, but without anger. It is then, in their opinion, not vengeance, but a just chastisement. Evil ought necessarily to entail punishment. It is cowardly weakness to tolerate it, and makes one an accomplice of the crime to leave it unpunished. It is in this sense that Cicero addresses the magistrates, saying that they would act contrary to their duty if they allowed themselves to be influenced by the entreaties of CHAP. I.] PRINCIPLE AND AIM OP ANCIENT SOCIAL MORALITY. 23 the accused^ even when they were perhaps more unfor- tunate than guilty ; and that they ought to punish great crimes and slight offences with equal severity.*" In strict law the Roman philosopher might be right, but from the ground of humanity he was wrong. There, as in a thousand other cases, the " summum jus " might become the " summa injuria." It is true that antiquity has left some recommendations to pardon and indulgence, but they were inspired by the same pride which authorized anger and hatred. Nothing was in more complete accordance with the ancient spirit than the direction to the citizen to show his strength to the enemy who injured him, that he might not be dis- honoured and conquered by him ; but he could show his greatness of soul in two ways, either by revenging the offence or despising it. He could suppress all signs of hatred, or have recourse to talion, according to the cir- cumstances and social position of the offender. Men revenged themselves if to refrain would appear cowardly, and remained impassive when it was in the interest of manly dignity to look down on the injury with superb disdain. To take revenge always was considered con- trary to Greek civilization and Roman gravity. It was to act like a barbarian, a foreigner ; *' it was to show a weak and small goul.*^ Nothing was more worthy of a great and illustrious man than clemency and the forget- fulness of injuries.** The higher the place of the citizen in the Republic, the less can he be injured by offence. It is the less able to harm his own opinion of his merit, or weaken the esteem with which his fellow-citizens surround him. It was to these men, who thought themselves stronger the more they were filled with pride, that the counsels of the philosophers were addressed. They were to remain 24 SOCIAL RESULTS OF CHEISTIANITY. [BOOK I. masters of themselves in aager, to return injuries with silence, and to rise above low things unworthy to occupy a sage. They may be satisfied with the repentance of the ofiender,^" or even go so far as to be reconciled with him ; they may perhaps take the first steps, yielding something of right and returning injuries with redoubled benefits, but this must only be when they find it will be useful for themselves." This is not the pardon inspired by love, it is only a new sign of egoism, another way of satisfying personal interest. The ancient authors are full of examples which confirm all we have said in this respect. If in antiquity facts were oftener in accord with the principles of the theory than since the introduction of Christianity, it is because ancient moralists limited themselves to the generalization of the daily phenomena of common "life and thus formu- lated the data of experience into philosophical precepts; whilst Christian morality, which has no earthly origin, is superior to deeds, and rules them from her heavenly height in order to sanctify them. Ancient morality was entirely outward, and instead of combating anger, hatred, and vengeance, approved them . She gave the strength of her syllogisms to the most violent passions; and instead of aiding to unite men, she multiplied and justified the causes of divisions. We are therefore right in repeating that she cannot detach men from earth, and that egoism is her fundamental principle. The end of this work will prove this still further. (1) Acad. Qucest., IV. 46, vol. x. p. 131. Tmc. Quast., V. vol. x. p. 531 ff. (2) Plat., De Rep., VI. p. 342 fl. (3) Polit., I. 1, § 11, p. 6. (4) De Eepub., VI. p. 344. (5) Niebuhr accuses Plato severely of having been a bad citizen. Kleine hist, und pMlolog. Schriften. Bonn, 1828, 8th, vol. i. p. 470 ff. (6) Athen., XI. 119, vol. iv. p. 389. Plu- tarch, Adv. Colotem, o. 32, vol. xiv. p. 194. (7) De Eepub., VI. p. 342 ; Vn. p. 424. (8) Polit. VIII. i. p. 244. ■ (9) Xenoph. Memor., IV. 4, § 12, vol. iv. p. 238. (10) See his works De Legibus and De CHAP. I.J PRINCIPLE AND AIM OF ANCIENT SOCIAL MORALITY. 25 Bepuilica. (11) PoUt. I. 1, § 9, p. 5. (12) Cicero, De Off., I. 6 ff., i. 27, vol. xii. p. 11 ff., p. 42. (13) Cicero, De Legibm, 11. 7, vol. xi. p. 370. (14) Socrates, ap. Xenophon, Mem., II. 2, § 2, vol. iv. p. 83. Arist., Polit., I. 1, § 5, p. 4. (15) De Rep., V. p. 294. (16) De Off., I. 12 ; III. 11. vol. xii. pp. 19, 130. (17) Cicero, De Off., II. 18, vol. xii. p. 99. (18) Polit., HI. 3, § 2, p. 75. (19) De Repub., III. p. 168. (20) Horace, Sat., I, and vv. 61, 62. One of the old poets had already said : " Ubic[ue tanti quisque, quantum habuit " (Seneca, Ep. 115, vol. iv. p. 96). (21) Cicero, De Repub., III. 9, ed. Lemaire, p. 303. (22) For example, Cicero, Tusc. Disp., V. 10, vol. x. p. 543. (23) Arist., Ethic. Nicom., VIII. 13, p. 364. (24) Xenoph. Memor., II. 4-80, vol. iv. p. 96 ff. Arist., FAhic Nicom., VIII., 1, 6, pp. 355, 356. (25) Jamblich., Vita Pythag., c. 16 Franeker, 1598, qto., p. 73 ff. (26) Diog. Laert., VII. 1, no. 64, vol. ii. p. 786. (27) See too Plutarch's Works, vol. vii. pp. 157, 287 ; Maximus of Tjp-e, dissert. 5 and 20, in his Dissert, (ed. Eeiske, 1774, 8°), vol. i. p. 82 ff. and p. 378 ff., and orat. 32 of Themistius in his Orat., p. 322 ff. The general idea was that " friend- ships were desirable not so much from kindly feeling and affection, hut rather for the sake of protection and assistance " (Ap. Cicero, De Amic, c. 13, vol. xii. p. 224). (28) De Amic, a. 9 ; ib., p. 219 ; Epp. ad diver- sos. III. ep. 13, vol. vii. p. 98. (29) Valer. Max., IV. 7, p. 228 fi. (30) Eurip., Blectra, v. 558-560. vol. ii. p. 734 ; Orestes, v. 708, 9, vol. i. p. 87. (31) Tristia, I. eleg. 9, v. 5, 6, vol. iii. p. 206 ; Epp. ex Ponto, II. ep. 3, V. 7 ff., ib., p. 353. (32) See the works quoted p. 18, note 5. (33) " Excessive friendships," said certain philosophers, " should be eschewed, in order that one person may not have to he anxious for several. Each man had enough and more than enough of his own troubles ; it was burdensome to get mixed up too much with those of other people " (Cicero, De Amic.-, c. 13, vol. xii. p. 224). (34) Lib. Xni. epigr. 34, vol. ii. p. 190. (35) Plutarch, De fratemo amore, vol. X. p. 36. (36) Prometh. Vinctus, 1006, ed. Blomfield. Leipz., 1822, p. 66. (37) Socrates, ap. Plai, Crito, vol. viii. p. 178. Quintil., Imtit. orat. VII. 4, vol. ii. p. 37. (38) Aristot., Rhet., II. 2-4, Strasb., 1570, fo. 157 ff. (39) Plato, Gorgias, vol. i. p. 354. Aristot., Eth. Nicom., IV. 5, p. 75. ■ (40) Aristot., ib., IV. 2, p. 67. (41) Isoor., Areopagi- ticus, § 42, vol. ii. p. 166. (42) Cicer., De Offic, III. 19, vol. xii. p. 141. (43) Cicero, De Repub., III. 10, ed. Lemaire, p. 305. (44) Gnomici, p. 230. (45) Ethic. Nicom., IV. 2, p. 67. (46) Pro Mvrena, § 30, vol. V. p. 36. (47) Eurip., Hecuba, v. 1069, vol. i. p. 49. (48) Juvenal, Sat. XIII. v. 189 ff., p. 142. (49) Cicer., De Off., I. 25, vol. xii. p. 40. (50) Z6., L 11, p. 18. (51) 26., IL 18, p. 99. Cf. Valer. Max., IV. 2, p. 198. CHAPTER II. THE FAMILY. § 1. Women. Marriage. We have already found that antiquity, taking no account of individual character, had no true standard for the dignity of man. The individual being absorbed in the State, his worth depended only on accidental externals. To fulfil his mission of citizen, a man needed to be capable of assisting in the government, as well as the defence, of the Republic. Now this demands virtues that require for their exercise complete power over one's person, time, and action, as well as bodily strength. Those who are gifted neither with physical strength nor the riches which give liberty, are without the means of being virtuous. They are incapable of rendering direct service to the State, which consequently excludes them from the prosperity which it ensures for its citizens ; they have no legitimate place in the public community, nor in the systems of philosophers. Ancient morality refuses to recognise them, or acknowledges them only to despise them, and to justify the right of the strong to use them for any selfish personal requirement. Thus the population of the State was divided into two classes : those who were strong and free, and those who were not. The first only are citizens ; in the second class may be placed women, children, men who are obliged to work for their living, the poor and weak, and the slaves. These CHAP. 11.] THE FAMILY. 27 despised' classes included the majority of the population. Notwithstanding this, posterity has too often praised the liberty of the Greeks and Romans, and proposed it as a pattern for modern society. This liberty was only the exclusive privilege of a small number of rich and powerful citizens. The ancient republics were in reality the most oppressive aristocracies. Let us now examine the position given by ancient civilization to the classes whom we have just called the despised classes. We will begin with women. The pagan, who, in his barbarous state, valued nothing but physical strength, and when civilized recognised nothing beyond political life, necessarily considered woman as belonging to a lower rank in the social order.^ Himself strong and free, he threw upon woman the work which he despised as unworthy. He treated her with disdain or indifference; though considering her worthy to serve his own pleasure or perpetuate the duration of the State. In support of this we will ' quote passages from some poets who cannot be accused of exaggeration, and we shall also refer to the testimony of philosophers and legislators. They tell us that if in the time of the Homeric heroes woman was surrounded with the esteem which her ways deserved, it was no longer so in the time of the highest civilization in Greece. On account of her natural weakness she was judged unsuitable for the struggles of political life. In this Christianity agrees with the wisdom of the ancients, but it does not there- fore refuse to acknowledge her dignity of soul, and it assigns to her a more peaceful and hidden domain than to man. The ancients; on the contrary, considered that woman, being unable to fill a place in the State, was on that account naturally inferior to the sex which has the privilege of strength. . .sawnai-sfiBwKsr 28 SOCIAL EESULTS OF CHEISTIANITY. [BOOK I. Aristotle admitted a natural difference between the woman and the slave. He praised many of his country- men for not imitating the Orientals, who reduced woman to the most disgraceful servitude ; but he himself held the opinion that if she has a will, it is a powerless one ; that if she is capable of virtue, it is a virtue which is very little different from that of the slave.** In Athens woman was treated all her life as a minor. If she married, her tutor or master, as the law called him, was her husband j if she remained unmarried, her father or some other relation exercised the rights of guardian over her ; she could only inherit property in default of male heirs, and the number of these was increased to make her succession more unlikely.* In Rome, both in the customs and laws, manly majesty was contrasted with the physical and intellectual weakness of women, who, humble and sub- ordinate, were not allowed to forget to offer due homage to that majesty.* This degrading inferiority necessarily developed vices in woman rather than her higher qualities. It was thought that these vices had their roots in her very nature. She was said to incline to evil more than did man, whose faculties she did not possess. Only her faults were looked at, whilst no one dreamt that the burdens and isolation from which she suffered, both at home and in society, prevented her virtues from showing themselves. This way of regarding woman was not adopted only by the vexed and weary spirits whose verses^ have been preserved by Stobseus, it was also the opinion of Greek philosophers and Koman statesmen.^ " If nature had allowed us to be without women, we should have been relieved of very troublesome com- panions," said the censor Metellus Numidius before the assembled people.'' CHAP. II.] THE FAMILY. 29 When in Eome, through the progress of an artificial civilization, women endeavoured to emancipate them- selves, wasting their fortune by foolish expenses, and claiming some of the honours reserved for men, the public authorities interfered to stop the evil; but not having a higher opinion of the nature of woman, they went beyond their aim. A law was passed, based on contempt for an inferior sex, to exclude daughters, even an only daughter, from the paternal inheritance.^ We should be unfaithful to history if we denied that, even in the most degenerate times of Greece and Eome, we meet with some women who compelled men to respect them ; but this exceptional respect does not weaken our opinion as to the general condition of women in ancient times. This condition remained the same in marriage ; the legal union with a husband, instead of raising woman enslaved her still further. We are not exaggerating, for in the opinion of philosophers and lawgivers, marriage was not a union of soul, but only a union formed in the interest of the State, to perpetuate it. It had no moral importance for the individuals who contracted it, but was only a political institution intended to increase the num- ber of citizens. He who married fulfilled a duty to the State; therefore the advantages, which were purely material, were received by him and not by the woman. According to Plato, it was necessary in marriage to think more of usefulness to the State than of personal taste.' It is true that besides the political aim of marriage, there is the higher one of bringing into the world servants for the gods, and passing on the name of father to a grateful posterity,^" but he never quitted the political standpoint. He wished the first laws in a well constituted State to be intended for the regulation 30 SOCIAL RESULTS OF CHEISTIANITT. [BOOK I. of marriages.^^ He himself proposed a similar law, which shows how much importance can be attached to what he says about the higher aim of the union between man and woman. He desired that in the perfect Republic the warriors should have the women in common. A sort of community of this kind was carried out in Sparta. Girls lived in freer intercourse with men there than else- where. It was intended to give them in this way a manly education, but it only produced a boldness which shocked the ancients themselves. When women married, this freedom ceased, to give way to that of men. Nowhere was human individuality more coldly and completely sacrificed to the interest of the State than in Sparta. Lycurgus, in a famous law, ordered that the old man who had a young and beautiful wife should give her up to younger and stronger men.^* Such laws inevitably produced licentiousness and im- modesty in women. Euripides pointed out this fatal result, and Plato himself blamed it. Aristotle finds in it the cause of the decay of Sparta.^^ This philosopher, with his clear reason, saw how the community of women and wealth proposed by Plato was contrary to the aim of the whole of human society. " Man," he says, " only attaches himself strongly to what is his own. He takes trouble only for those he loves. If, then, all was in common, there would be no longer any family ties.^* That confusion would be established which Aristophanes has wittily pictured in his ' Comedy of the Assembly of Women.' " « Though Aristotle reproved the Platonic community in Sparta, because he gave the family an importance in- compatible with these immoral chimeras, he retained none the less the idea of a purely civil aim in marriage : the family must be organised because it is the base of the CHAP. 11.] THE FAMILY. 31 comoiune, which ,is the base of the Republic. Marriage still remains only a political union, a duty towards the State.^* Ocellus Lucanus, the Pythagorean, taught the same principles j he also holds that marriage was not instituted for individual happiness, but to preserve and perpetuate the society of which husband and wife form a part., They ought to live in peace between themselves, in order to set a useful example to their children, and thus to make them better citizens.^^ These political considerations ought to direct the choice of a wife. It was suited to the aristocratic cha- racter of Greece that each should seek a wife only in rank equal to his own. In Plato's Republic no one desires a wife outside his own class, and the community itself was restricted to the higher classes. ^^ The choice amongst women of equal rank was decided by physical reasons.^' To this was added the consideration of fortune, as the advantages of the union were always for the husband in his position of citizen, and for his family. Most frequently the father chose for the son, from which followed a marriage without inclination or mutual affec- tion. If there was passion, it only arose from sensuality. Philosophers themselves recognised no other love between man and woman than that of the senses ; frequently it was not even the wife to whom it was given. The relations between man and woman in a union contracted after such principles could not be intimate. In the golden age of Greece and Rome there had been marriages founded on true affection and reciprocal esteem. Woman took her natural place, managing the interior of the household. She was not mixed up with the noisy business of men, but presided, calm and re- spected, as matron and mother of the family, over the domestic economy. She superintended the education of 32 SOCIAL RESULTS OP CHEISTIANITT. [BOOK I. her daughters, and often even that of her sons.^" But in proportion as the view of marriage as a political institu- tion prevailed, these marriages became increasingly rare. Woman retained her household domain, but no longer received the veneration of her husband and the respect of her servants. She was bound to Consider herself naturally inferior to her lord and master; she was shut up in a special part of the house, from which she could not honourably escape, and where she lived isolated amid her slaves, occupying herself with work that men considered servile.*^ It is true that Aristotle had said that it was not in accordance with the customs of the Greeks to look upon a wife as on the same level with the slaves ; ^^ but he energetically enforces her submission to the absolute authority of her husband. He is the soul, to which dominion belongs ; the wife is only the body, which must obey.^' In the house the husband reigned supreme ; the advice of the wife was not considered in his resolves. Legally, any action taken on her suggestion counted for nothing and was of no value.^* He sought on all oc- casions to maintain in her sight his dignity as a citizen and freeman, and to impress her with his manly majesty .^^ He hardly condescended to speak to her. " Is there any one," asks Socrates of Critobulus, " with whom thou talkest less than with thy wife ? " " No one," answered the disciple, " or at least very few people." ^® If he was intimate with any woman, it was with his mistress, for the fidelity which with jealous vigilance he exacted from his wife, he did not consider himself bound to observe.^' In Eome we find the same spirit and the same customs. If possible, the pagan ideas about marriage were even harsher than in Greece, and more coldly formulated in civil legislation. There also the supreme interest in CHAP. II.] THE FAMILY. 33 marriage was the interest of the State. There also the liberty of the citizen was bound by the aristocratic constitution of the Republic, which forbade him to marry beneath his rank, or to disgrace a free family by intro- ducing a member of servile origin,^' Augustus permitted free men to marry into a lower , rank, and all but senators might marry those who were enfranchised.^' At a later time this concession was extended to senators, with the restriction th^t the wife was only held legitimate by special favour of the emperor, or after the husband had given up his senatorial dignity.*" The daughters of senators were still forbidden to marry freedmen, and such marriages were held void.^^ The equality of rank between husband and wife required by Roman law did not prevent the same complete subordi- nation of the woman as in the Grecian Republics. In antiquity, particularly in Rome, the child was so far the property of the father that he could dispose of him as he liked. He might kill him ; how much more then might he sell him. In Rome the primitive method of concluding a marriage seems to have been to buy the daughter from the father. In ancient Roman law one of the chief kinds of marriage was that by purchase, per coemptionem, a custom which in later times only existed symbolically. This sale invested the husband with marital authority. Having bought his wife, he became her master and owner, as of any other object so ac- quired. Besides this form of marriage, there was a more solemn one, accompanied with certain religious cere- monies; this was the marriage by confarreation. A third form, simpler and briefer, was when a woman, with the consent of her father, agreed to be married for a year, for the sake of a child : this was marriage per usum. s 34 SOCIAL EESTJLTS OF CHEISTIANITY. [BOOK. I. These different kinds of marriage, particularly the two first, entailed evil results on women, which are only new proofs of what we said of the jealous pride of the citizen of the ancient States. In marriage woman passed from the power of her father to that of her husband ; the law said she passed under his hand. Also this hand weighed on the wife with inflexible harshness. Woman was saluted with the titles of mistress, domma, and mother of the family, but these titles were derisive; the husband alone governed the household, and the wife saw in him her master and judge. When she left her father's house for that of her husband, she passed, so to speak, from one father to another ; she became the adopted daughter of her husband.'^ Eemaining a minor as before, her state continued to be a kind of servitude. Being in a manner the daughter of her husband, she was entirely in his power. He could dispose of her as of his other children, . or anything whatever that belonged to him. The Eoman, like the Spartan, husband might lend his wife to another.^^ At a later time examples of this disgraceful traffic are still found, reflecting more shame on the traders than on the unfortunate sufferers.^* By the mcmus, that is the transmission of authority over the woman, the father gave to the husband the right of possessing the wealth which was her dowry ; and he re- mained in possession of this even after a divorce.^^ There were also cases where the ownership of the woman's wealth remained with the father. This was when she was not emancipated before marriage. In that case she did not pass under the hcmd of her husband, but remained still under her father's power. He retained the right of reclaiming her from his son-in-law.^° It is probable that these marriages, where the wife was, so to speak, lent, were less common than those in which she passed with CHAP. II. THE FAMILY, 35 body and wealth under the husband's authority; for after the consideration of the State, the fortune was most considered in arranging a marriage, and there even came a time when this motive prevailed over political interest. ' The young man who served his country by marrying, ex- pected to profit from it himself by increasing his riches, and the father especially, whose consent was indispensable, considered the dowry the most suitable motive to guide his choice. It was the dowry which made the wife legitimate. Married women without fortune were looked upon almost as concubines.^' The wife, placed under the husband's hand, considered as his daughter, inherited his fortune if he died without children or a wiE. If he had children, she shared equally with them in the inheritance. The death of her husband did not allow her to return to her own family ; she was bound to his by an indissoluble tie. Although a widow, she remained a minor without rights, and was placed under the guardianship of agnates, that is relations on the male side, as she had been under her husband's guardianship during his life. This guardianship was a political measure in the husband's interest, to strengthen his authority over what belonged to him; and in the interest of his family, to retain the fortune in it by ensuring the succession of male relatives. It was far from being a wise and benevolent precaution in the woman's interest, to protect her rights and aid her weakness. These humiliating results of Roman marriage to the woman who submitted to the yoke strongly helped to relax the ties of the conjugal bond, and to take away even the importance of its civil and political character. From the fall of the Republic, the growing indifference to religious rites caused marriage by confarreation to be 36 SOCIAL RESULTS OF CHEISTIANITT. [BOOK I. disused ; ^ and marriage by co-emption became equally rare. Men and women inclined to shake off the legal formalities and practices of worship. The most frequent form of marriage at this time was that in which two people agreed to live together for the sake of a family. This was a simple mutual agreement, without either civil or religious consecration, and by which neither felt seriously bound. Tutelage itself lost its power through this weakening of the conjugal tie. Successive concessions and the increase of corruption took away much of its legal strictness. A law in the time of Claudius released free women from the oversight of the agnatesP They had only guardians chosen by the magistrates, the husband, or the father. Released from the care of the agnates, who were more severe as they were more interested, rich Romans yielded to luxury and debauchery of all kinds. The law gave them a juster liberty than they had before enjoyed, but they only profited by it to give freer scope to their vices. Marriage, regarded simply as a political institution, produced, besides the degradation of woman, laws against celibacy and contempt for widowhood. It appears that amongst the Greeks, except in very early times, a woman rarely remained a widow. It was a melancholy and desolate state, and the woman who was compelled to endure it was more despised than pitied. There were special temples where the women went to beseech Diana to send them second husbands,*" The husband, owner and master of his wife, might preserve her from widow- hood by leaving her by will to a friend who would receive her as a legacy.*' Antiquity took no care of widows who were poor. In the early times of the Roman Republic they were freed from some taxes; but at a later time, when penalties were inflicted for ceHbaoy, this exemption was discontinued. On the one hand they were in the CHAP. II.] THE FAMILY, 37 charge of interested agnates, whilst on the other they were liable to the penalties of celibates if they did not re-marry within a certain time. The penalties against celibacy are amongst the strangest laws of antiquity. In these Eepublics, where personal liberty is said to have been surrounded with so many guarantees, how could this liberty have been so tyran- nously shackled as to compel a man and woman to marry contrary to their wishes ? But there is nothing here to surprise us ; after the individual is absorbed by the State, there can be no true liberty, because there is no respect for personal rights. If the conjugal union has only a civil and political aim, if the family is only formed in the interest of the State, naturally the State will attach the greatest importance to the conclusion of marriages. It favours them by the advantages that it accords to hus- bands, as well as by the penalties which it in£icts on celibates. It enforces these penalties, because to refuse to marry was to omit a duty towards the Eepublic ; it is to put personal taste before the needs of the country, and is thus an act of independence quite contrary to the spirit of antiquity. In several States of Greece, especially Sparta, there were laws against ceUbates. It was the same in Eome, where, after the most ancient times, they expiated by fines the crime of wishing to remain unmarried.*^ But these coercive measures did not stop the evil they were intended to remedy. In Rome, after the time of the He- public, the number of celibates became very considerable. Individual egoism progressed in proportion as political virtues grew weaker. Therefore, as marriage had a purely external aim, with no profound and close union of soul, it follows that no one any longer took a wife through pure patriotism. 38 SOCIAL EESULTS OP CHEISTIANITT. [BOOK 1. The censor Metellus told the people that marriage was the sacrifice of private pleasure to a public duty.** Let us bear this in mind^ for very soon public duty was sacri- ficed to private pleasure, and men preferred celibacy to union with a troublesome companion. Those who married in the higher classes were influenced generally by their wish to gain a fortune or to perpetuate an illustrious race ; whilst the others, witnessing the foolish extrava- gance of Eoman ladies, and seeing no'thing in women beyond the pleasures of the senses, were little inclined to enter the bonds of legal marriage. Things had reached this point after the civil wars which depopulated Italy. Augustus enacted laws which have become celebrated, to encourage the Romans to marry; privileges and exemptions were granted to married men who had children, and penalties imposed on celibates and on those married people who at a certain age had no children, either adopted or real.** These laws, which are contrary to the nature of man, and which slight his liberty, had no power to improve society. Customs were stronger than the laws, more efficacious remedies were needed; but the morality of antiquity could not rise to the restoration of woman, and a pure and spiritual aim in marriage. This is a height inaccessible to the egoism of man. § 2. Love. Hetoerce and Ooncubines. We have been considering the consequences of mar- riage, in its ancient form, upon woman. We must now see how she was regarded in Greece and Eome in respect to her relations with man outside the legal marriage tie. In consequence of the purely political and external character of marriage, the law and the moralists made CHAP. 11.] THE PAMIir. 39 few objections to extra-matrimonial relationships. Man had supreme authority. To him belonged the liberty and strength which woman lacked. He could abuse her unrestrainedly. He regarded her as intended to furnish the State with citizens or minister to his pleasures. The ancients often spoke of love ; it was sung by poets and discussed by philosophers, but they did not mean that spiritual and holy feeling which arises in the depths of our being' and establishes a sweet calm and disinterested sympathy between two souls, which endures through all changes, and survives death itself. Ancient egoism cou!ld know nothing of such love, or at best could but feebly foreshadow it. What they called love was only the pas- sion and desire of the senses. The ancients more fre- quently spoke of its fury than of its sweeter charms. They sang of the transports which bewildered the mind and con- quered the will. They professed it was caused by a god in delirium, who exerted his irresistible power over gods and men, and even over the animals which people both land and water.*' This last characteristic shows, more than all the rest, that sensuality was the only principle of ancient love. It is on this account that the most serious philosophers desire that love shall be avoided. The sage cannot yield to it, because it makes him the slave of his body and troubles the calm of his soul.** It is unworthy of a free man to put himself in the power of a woman ; according to Cicero there is no servitude more miserable.*' Perhaps platonic love, which has been so much praised from the middle ages until our time, may be brought up in contradiction to this statement. This love has been represented as the ideal union of the purest souls. One can hardly say to how much poetic and contemplative mysticism it has given rise. Unfortunately, all this differs from Plato. The invention of platonic love has doubt- 40 SOCIAL KESTJLT8 OF CHEISTIANITY. [BOOK I. less arisen from a tale in " The Symposium " about two halres, who seek each other^ and feel themselves mys- teriously attracted towards one another. But on a close view this tale seems to be rather ironical than senti- mental. The love spoken of in " The Symposium " in language worthy of the poets is a purely philosophical love, which is only attained by parting with earthly love, which is in some respects an inferior degree of it. This last is only the love of the senses. Plato recognised no other between man and woman. The character of Eros is only the desire to reproduce. The whole of Plato's theory of love rests on this idea, which was suited to a civilisation which deified physical forces and was absorbed in external nature. There are, according to Plato, two kinds of love, according to what one desires to produce : sensual love, and the nobler desire of creation in the sphere of the mental powers. This is true love, the love of the beautiful and good j fruitful in sublime creations, it is the possession of the philosopher only, and does not exclude the other love, which is even necessary, as the first degree and point of departure. Ancient authors relate that Plato did not always re- main on the heights of philosophical love, nor disdain the less abstract delights of the inferior degree. If we need further proof how little Plato was under the power of sentiment, we may recall his theory of the community of women in the perfect Eepublic. In the last analysis, he and all antiquity, with one common accord, admit no other than a physical cause for the union of man and woman in marriage. The aim is raised by its political significance, but the feelings of the heart count for nothing. If a man has desires, it is only those of the senses ; if he feels a passion, no moral principle hinders him from gratifying it. In this respect nature reigns in CHAP. II.J THE FAMILY. 41 all her plenitude and power, and philosophy and paganism rather justify and encourage than restrain. There was a class of women who took advantage of these inclinations to withdraw from conjugal servitude, and to gain a power and influence over men not possessed by the rightful wife. It was the emancipation of woman in the sense of pagan antiquity; even in our day there are reformers of society who ask no less. In Greece, after the time when arts and letters were cultivated with an ardour fruitful in immortal works, the most eminent men of the nation, philosophers, poets, magistrates, and statesmen, sought the hetoeroe, and yielded to the danger- ous ascendency of their charms. ¥ree in their behaviour, these women, who were not condemned to the melancholy isolation of the gynceceum, mixed with men, followed the lessons of the philosophers, and formed their taste by interviews with artists and poets, who, in their turn, were inspired by their graces. They thus gave themselves an education which custom prohibited to the pure young girl and the faithful wife. The husband, who could find nothing to say to his wife, who knew so little and held an inferior position, solaced himself for his domestic weari- nesses by the lively and witty conversation of the courtesan. It is true the hetcerce were held in contempt, but that did not prevent austere philosophers and illustrious states- men from passing their time at the feet of a Phryne or an Aspasia.^^ The hetcerce were nowhere more numerous than in Corinth, where they served the temple of Aphrodite, which in the second century still justified the title of Corinth to be the most licentious city of Greece.*' There, the married man, who cared little for his wife, was allowed to take the slaves of his own household as concubines. The only concession which the law made to morality was 42 SOCIAL RESULTS OP CHEISTIANITT. [BOOK. I. to deprive any children who might be born of their civil rights ; but the father was allowed to adopt them, and they often shared even the love of the mother, along with her rightful children. Things were just the same in Rome. After the last century before Christ, ancient severity of manners was relaxed in all ranks of society. It was not the people alone who frequented the lupanar. The rich man, the senator, the patrician, lost themselves in these places, where they found women like the hetoerce of Greece, a little above the lowest rank. There were dancers, mimes, players on the flute or lyre, living sometimes on their own account, and sometimes sharing the orgies of young Homans of high family, whom they ruined by their luxury. These were the Lesbias, Delias, and Oynthias of the liber- tine poets of the Augustan age, who were in turn sung for their wanton caresses or disdainfully deserted, accord- ing to the caprices of these impure and fleeting loves. Grave men, whose dignified position or illustrious name kept them from descending so low, saw no disgrace in living with concubines. Sallust already remarked with regret the decay of the ancient morality of the Re- public."" In the Augustan age these irregularities were so great that concubinage was publicly tolerated, and acknow- ledged and regulated by the laws; instead of being repressed, it was made almost legal. The name of nuces injustce was given to habitual intimacy with a female of inferior rank, with whom marriage was prohibited by law. Concubinage became a legal union ; difiering from lawful marriage in that it assigned no duties to the husband, who was also free from the law ag^iinst adultery.^^ This concession to the license of the age took away all force from the laws of Augustus against celibacy, and from CHAP. II.] THE FAMILY. 48 those which forbade marriage with a woman of inferior rank. Although concubinage was no longer considered a disgrace, those whom the ancients had called concu- bines now took the more decent name of friends. ^^ Tombs were raised to their memory, on which their description was inscribed without any shock to morality; it even happened that the name of the wife and the con- cubine who followed after her death were engraved upon the same marble.^^ The law went no farther than to forbid the Romans to have more than one concubine, or to have one along with a legal wife. Throughout the whole duration of the Empire the greatest men, and the emperors who were the most renowned for their virtues, such as Vespasian and Marcus Aurelius, lived openly in unions of this kind. The public prostitutes were the only persons branded with infamy.^* Domitian, with the hope of diminishing their numbers, degraded them still further ; he deprived them of the right of inheriting or of receiving a legacy.'* But this measure was ineffectual against an evil so firmly rooted. The State, finding itself too weak to stop this disgraceful profession, which was then, as it is still, only the result of pagan ideas about the inferiority of a weak and despised sex, had long tolerated it and even sought to profit by it. Solon had already established houses of public debauchery in Athens, and had levied a tax on the women who inhabited them, the revenue from which had sufficed to build a temple to the vagabond Venus ; *^ after his time the Athenian Government annually let this revenue to private persons.*'' In Eome, after the time of Caligula, a like tax was raised by the fiscal.^' Alexander Severus, one of the most moral of the emperors, unable to suppress this tribute raised from the vilest corruption, at least refused to receive it in the public treasury, but 44 SOCIAL EESULTS OF CHEISXIANITT. [BOOK. I. employed it solely for the support of the circuses and amphitheatres.'^ It is melancholy to be compelled to say that this infamous tax continued to be levied during the Christian period of the empire, and still is in our own times. When will the power of Christianity be strong enough to abolish it, along with the profession at which it is aimed, and which in striking it authorizes ? Besides this tribute, the depth of the corruption of Eoman morality and the contempt of the laws and magis- trates for women are still further proved by the sentences of the judges, who, in the persecutions of the Church, condemned Christians to the lupanar, or gave them up to the savage brutality of the executioners or of the gladia- tors. The " Acts of the Martyrs " give many examples of these decisions, as barbarous as they were cowardly, which compelled Christian maidens to become prostitutes or to renounce Christ.''*' The pagans understood the great respect paid to chastity by the Christians,*^ and there- fore these sentences were the more odious, and showed more completely their contempt both for Christianity and for human dignity in women. " Thou hast been a pros- titute," said the judge to Saint Afra; "go then and sacrifice to the gods; thou art unworthy of the God of the Christians, who knows thee not." *^ Christian virgins would a thousand times rather have given their bodies to wild beasts in the Coliseum, but in sacrificing a treasure more precious than life for their faith their heroism was still more sublime. § 3. Adultery and Divorce. It is easy to foresee, as the result of these ideas about woman and marriage, that adultery committed by a man would not be severely punished by the ancients. The CHAP. II.J THE FAMILY. 45 moral character of marriage was absorbed in its civil and political aspects. Adultery, then, was regarded as an infringement of the rights of the husband ; as an attack on his property, which brought trouble within his threshold, where he alone reigned supreme. In both Greece and Rome immediate revenge was permitted, the husband was allowed to kill his guilty wife as well as the man with whom the crime was committed.^* If he did not wish himself to avenge his outraged honour, he had the power of accusing his wife. This was a mascu- line right, and was not possessed by the woman j she could not make a complaint against her husband if he violated conjugal fidelity.** The pride of the husbands wished the adulterous wife to be severely punished, but it would have been an attack on manly majesty if they had been punished in their turn. " We are men," they said ; " how will the dignity of our sex bear the insult, if we submit to the same penalties as women if we are not satisfied with our wives ? " *' These accepted their humiliating position unmurmuringly. They learned absolute submission ; they persuaded them- selves that the husband's dignity was above attack and authorized all transgressions. If a woman was sorrowful on this account, she was told for her consola,tion that the virtue of woman does not consist in superintending her husband, but in conforming herself to his wishes. This derisive comfort was given by a woman, Theano, the wife of Pythagoras.®* Violation and rape were punished as lightly as adul- tery. It was hardly a disgrace for a young girl to allow herself to be seduced.*'^ Violation was perfectly repaired by marriage, and was only an infringement of the laws protecting her father's property. In Athens, rape was punished as a slight offence, with mild penalties. In 46 SOCUL EESULTS OF CHEISTIANITY. [BOOK I. Eome, where in the times of the decadence, rape, com- mitted even by married men, was very frequent, the young girl might demand the death of the ravisher, or reparation by marriage with him,®^ To leave the decision to her, who was as often an accomplice as a victim, could hardly be to punish the crime. The final result of all these principles and legal dispo- sitions as to the position of women and their relationship to men was the weakening of the moral sense in a sex in whose destiny the welfare of society is more intimately bound up than was ever imagined by pagan society. The vices of men, tolerated by the law, and rather justi- fied than energetically condemned by the morality of philosoph^rs, were made into excuses for the vices of women.®^ After the time in Greece and Eome when ancient austerity was relaxed, and political virtues gave place to individual egoism, married women themselves broke free from the ties to which they submitted in the interest of the Eepublic, and hastened in the path of unruly emancipation, where they followed the hetcerce and courtesans. They acquainted themselves with the art and literature of Greece, which instead of forming their taste only familiarized them with vice. The time had gone by when the Eomans, less corrupted than now, forbade their wives and daughters to read the poets and philosophers of Greece, in the fear that instead of learn- ing wisdom they would find only lessons in libertinism.'" Henceforth they eagerly read the works of the Greeks. Besides the poets, the Eepublic of Plato attracted and charmed them. Whilst the men took advantage of the chimeras of the great philosopher about women, to justify their numerous and changing loves,'^ the women seized this argument in favour of the unbounded licentiousness of their lives.''* They were not attached to their family CHAP. 11.] THE FAMILY, 47 by any Bentiment of duty. Giving up the care of tlie house and children to slaves, who were as depraved as themselves, they occupied themselves with nothing but dress and luxury, lovers and parrots, games in the circus or adventures at the Iwpana/r. There was nothing in which they did not indulge or which they thought a dis- grace.''^ Very few marriages remained pure ; '* a chaste wife was considered as a phenomenon astonishing by its rarity.''^ Free women who belonged to noble families ■ asked to have their names entered amongst the public prostitutes, in order that they might not be punished for adultery. They claimed the privileges of infamy, that they might more safely continue their scandalous life. This was forbidden under Tiberius by a senatusconsul- turn, but only to ladies of the equestrian order.'* Even in the time of Augustus it was difficult to find young girls belonging to free families willing to devote themselves to the vestal priesthood, so eagerly sought be- fore that time ; their number had to be recruited from the ' enfranchised. Tiberius increased their salary and created new honorary distinctions, to attract the required num- ber." They behaved in the same disorderly manner as other women ', neither the character of their office nor the punishments inflicted by Domitian restrained them from the downward paths of vice.'' Augustus had tried to arrest the demoralization of women by some new laws.^' He was obliged to enforce them rigorously against his own daughter Julia, who was addicted to the most scan- dalous excesses.'" But these measures produced no effect on the mass of the people, contradicted as they were by the life of the emperor himself. Licentiousness was so general in Rome that the pro- fessors of rhetoric who instructed the young Romans in judicial eloquence, chose for their special study questions 48 SOCIAL EESULTS OF CHKISTIANITY. [BOOK I. relating to rape or adultery. The young advocates in their declamations endeavoured to strengthen or elude the law according to the position and wishes of the accuser or accused.^^ Justice, debased by despotism, lost its severity, and allowed the immodesty of women to be exhibited with unspeakable boldness in the highest ranks of Eoman society, as completely as in its lowest depths.*^ The facility of divorce increased instead of lessening this corruption. Divorce was in complete accord with the spirit of ancient society. Marriage, deprived of all moral character, was no longer a sacred bond, an alliance of souls, although a Boman jurisconsult had defined it as a community of things human and divine.^^ After the time when political considerations prevailed, it became only a union formed solely through personal interest. It established external relationships which imposed no duty of reciprocal fidelity, and which demanded neither conces- sion nor sacrifice, because they did not lead to union of soul, and consequently might be broken, provided the rupture was made with the accustomed formalities. According to some writers, divorce had been unknown in Eome during several centuries.^* The great simplicity of manners and the preponderance of the influence of the State had guarded the indissoluble duration of marriage. Divorce was introduced as a consequence of the decline of morality, as a convenient method of gaining freedom, to pursue all the caprices of libertinism with a certain regard to the law. Throughout the whole period of the pagan empire, from the later republican times, divorce played an important part in the internal history of Roman society. Sometimes the man asked for it, sometimes the woman ; it was sought without real motive and for the slightest reasons.*^ A Eoman questioned by his friends why he had put away his wife, who was young, CHAP. II.] THE FAMILY. 49 rich, and beautiful, showed them his shoe, saying, " You see this is new and beautiful; no one knows however where it pinches me." ^ Maecenas, the celebrated patron of artists and men of letters, passed his life in elegant and effeminate de- bauchery, and made himself famous by his thousand marriages and daily divorces.*'^ He had so many imita- tors, that Augustus, after availing himself of divorce in a way that was a public scandal, was compelled to limit the ease with which marriage might be dissolved.*^ He enforced some formalities which were not enough to stop the evil.^' Women asked for it as often as men.^" Ter- tuUian says that they only married that they might obtain liberty through divorce.*^ This license, which powerless laws and corrupt morality allowed to women, along with the disuse of the ancient more solemn forms of marriage, ended in complete annihilation of the hus- band's power, which existed only in name under the Empire.^^ Marriage thus lost the last remnant of its importance in public opinion. The depravity of woman and of all society increased at a rate to which no human law could oppose a sufficiently strong barrier. Woman in freeing herself from the tyranny of ancient institutions, had also emancipated herself from the external laws of morality ; she had freed herself only to increase her burden of vice, for which the civilization of the pagan world provided no remedy. § 4. Children. Paternal Authority, The same contempt for individual worth, the same submission of man's dignity to the State's interest, and consequently the same exercise of the right of the strongest, was found in the relation of father to children, before their emancipation. £ 50 SOCIAL EESULTS 01' CHEISTIANITT. [BOOK I. The family, in the opinion of antiquity, was instituted only in the interest of the Eepublic. We shall even see it completely destroyed to allow the State to remain alone in its despotism. The father was the chief of the family, the master of the children. They owed him unlimited respect and obedience; they belonged to him; they were his property, to be disposed of according to his own will. In his relations in regard to them he might not take the counsels of natural affection, he must consult only public interest. Eome and Greece were unanimous in this respect. " The son," said Aristotle, " before at- taining manhood himself belongs entirely to the father. Although superior to a slave, he has only an imperfect reason and will; therefore he is in absolute dependence upon his father, who, it is true, ought to use his power only for his son's good, but we know that his good was swallowed up in that of the State, which was the only condition of gpod fortune." '^ In Eome authority over children was one of the special rights of a citizen.^* Paternity, which was rather strained than strengthened by the institutions of the ancient world, was a true magistracy in the interior of the family, and this magis- tracy was despotic even to cruelty. It gave the father the extravagant right of ridding himself of those children whom he considered unlikely ever to be serviceable to the State. The ancient Republics, where strength ruled and where the virtues of citizens required not only a trained intelligence but a robust body, required vigorous generations for their defence and continuance. Why then should those puny beings be reared who gave no- promise of help for the State? Further, as one could only be a citizen through owning a fortune, and the poor had an aimless existence, why should that man keep his children whom he would be unable to feed, and who CHAP. II.] THE FAMILY. 51 would be of no use to society ? Therefore the right of the exposure of new-born children was given to the father by the most civilized nations of antiquity. This right was modified in Thebes by a law which tended to save the children from death. Parents who were too poor to bring up their children presented them to the magistrates, who sold them to the first citizen who offered a price, however small it might be. The buyer kept them as slaves, and by the services they rendered to him they were expected to testify to their gratitude that he had saved their life.^^ In ancient Italy, Eomulus forbade the custom of killing useless children, which he found already established ; but he allowed the exposure of those who were weak or deformed, on condition that the neighbours verified their miserable condition.'^ The law of the twelve tables returned to the older and more expeditious practice; it ordered that the child born deformed should be killed without delay .''^ Directly after birth the child was presented to the father, who accepted or refused it. In accepting it he engaged to bring it up, otherwise it was exposed.'* This formality of presenta- tion and acceptance remained long in Eome, even to a period when in rich families habits were in this respect improved.^' We should certainly expect to find the philosophers, wholly dependent though they were on the egoistic spirit of antiquity, at least protest against a custom so contrary to the deepest feelings of the human heart ; but, instead of blaming it, they find sophisms in its justification. Plato not only requires that deformed and ailing children shall be exposed in secret places; he also finds that it is not aplvisable to bring up the children of parents belonging to the lower classes of the Eepublic.^"" Aris- totle agreed with him. He desired a law to prohibit the 52 SOCIAL EESDLTS OF CHEISTIANITY. [BOOK I. preservation in life of puny children-^"^ Still further, these geniuses, so great in other respects, but whose natural feelings had been stifled by pagan politics, saw a danger if the population should increase beyond a certain limit. According to them, the egoistic interest of their aristocratic State required that the poor should not have too many children ; especially as the poor themselves did not know what to do with them. They were willing to allow the conjugal union, but with the coldest indifference they counselled abortion. They gave the same advice to all who feared the care of a large family .^"^ These counsels of sages and permissions of legislators were followed only too often. They spread even beyond the limits intended by their authors. The citizen who had no pretext of poverty exposed other than feeble children. Sometimes a father who did not wish to divide his fortune in too many portions, or to give dowries to too many daughters, freed himself thus from the children who embarrassed his plans.^"* This custom of exposure was continiled in the Chris- tian period of the Empire. Even in the fourth century there were parents who, notwithstanding the prohibitions of the emperor, strangled or exposed their new-born children."* The fate of these unhappy exposed ones is easy to divine. Often, doubtless, they served as food for wild beasts. From time to time a married woman rescued one, to please her husband who desired an heir ; "^ but generally those who were saved were destined for slavery or the Iwpancur. Whoever took charge of them possessed them as things deserted on the high road ; he was their master, and could either sell them or abuse them.^"* The child was subject to paternal authority until the day of his emancipation. If he married or obtained CHAP. II.] THE TAMILT. 53 public office before this time, he still remained, as did also his own dhildren, under the absolute authority of his father. The personality of children disappeared, so to speak, in that of the father. In Eome an apparently strange law did not recognise the right of the latter to accuse his son before the tribunals. Natural right was appealed to, to explain this refusal ; as a man cannot bring an action against himself, so neither can he bring one against the child who [is in his own power .^'"' All that the son possessed belonged to the father ; all that he gained before emancipation went to swell the paternal property. The father alone had a will in the family. He decided the marriages of the children. The daughter especially was compelled to take the husband whom her father chose. She was his chattel j he could send her away without her own consent.^"^ The sole master of his fortune, he was under no bonds to his children. The power of disposing of his wealth was without limit or condition; he could leave it to whom he would, and disinherit his children without any cause.^"^ If he died without a will, the succession went to the son who, married or unmarried, was under his power at the time of his death. The emancipated sons who had left the family were excluded, as also were the daughters, whom the Voconian law had deprived of the right of inheritance. The emancipated son suc- ceeded only in default of direct heirs in the Roman sense. If there was no son at all, the agnates were sought in order that the patrimony, which symbolised the race of the father, might never pass to strangers.^^" Paternal authority was not restricted to the enormous rights that we have just mentioned; there were others equally exorbitant and founded on the same principle. In both Athens and Rome the father could sell his 54 SOCIAL EESULTS OF CHKISTIANITY. [BOOK I. children, even adults; ancient Eoman law bestowed upon him the right of life or death, even over those whom he had accepted at the time of their birth.^^^ He filled the office of judge in the family; the right, or rather the natural duty of correction was carried to the barbarous length of bestowing the power to inflict capital punish- ment on the child who disobeyed paternal authority. Armed with the executioner's axe, the father compelled from his family a respect which was only fear inspired by the fiercest tyranny. Famous examples of the enforcement of this right are well known. We will leave others the privilege of admiring the republican virtue of a Cassius or a Manlius Torquatus in condemning his son to death. We see in these facts only a proof of Eoman harshness, which proudly sacrificed rightful affection to the State, if this affection yet existed in the hearts of men. Even in the time of Augustus there were fathers who availed them- selves of this right. The Chevalier Brixon beat two of his sons to death. The people, it is true, rose in tumult and stabbed him.^^^ Custom no longer agreed with the ancient law; but it had not been formally annulled. We know very little of the condition in ancient society of those children who lost their parents before they were old enough to take care of themselves. In Athens the orphans of citizens were under the protection of the archons. Those whose father had died for the State were brought up at the expense of the State, through gratitude, and because they formed part of the community of the State of which the father himself was a member. In Eome there was a legal guardianship for those who had wealth to administer; but neither the State nor the more wealthy citizens cared for those who had none. CHAP. II.] THE FAMILY. 65 Doubtless in most cases they were reduced to seek their means of existence in servitude or infamy. § 5. Education, The need of education was recognised by philosophers and written in the laws. Socrates said nothing was more worthy of the meditations of the sage than the methods of education for himself and those belonging to him.^^^ But the external direction of ancient civilization imprinted a fatal tendency on these meditationSj from which the greatest spirits were unable to free themselves. The highest aim of education was not to develop the individuality whilst correcting its vices, but to form the child for civil life, to teach him political virtues, to excite rather than rebuke the pride of the citizen. If the child ought to be brought up only for the good of the State, it is natural that the State alone should take charge of him. The family must be sacrificed, its influence on education must be nothing, or it must be greatly re- stricted ; for even here, in the stronghold of paternal power, the child belongs first to the Republic. There- fore Plato desired that the children of well-to-do people, that is of the aristocratic classes of society, should be entrusted to public nurses in such a way that no mother should be able to distinguish which was her own child.^" Prom his earliest days the child should learn only to know the State, to which he would be devoted at a later time. Torn from the natural tenderness of the mother whom he must ignore for ever, he must be given to the cold and despotic care of the Eepublic, jealous of all affection of which it was not the sole object. Aristotle, notwithstanding his warmer feeling of the lawful de- mands of nature, also asked that the education of children should not be left entirely to the parents. He 56 SOCIAL BESTTLTS OF CHEISTUNITT. [BOOK I. considered it to be contrary to the public interest to allow each father to educate his children himself; the State ought to take charge of education, which should be the first duty of every legislator. This public education, in which the State was sub- stituted for the family, was only completely realised in Sparta. This Eepublic was a body organized iii its smallest details. Individual liberty did not exist there. Each citizen was a member whose part was decided be- forehand, and who was nothing outside his assigned position. It was necessary to begin early to prepare children to take their place in this mechanism. Their education was then solely an affair of State. They were taken from their earliest years and educated away from the paternal home, in order to cultivate their strength and capabilities with a sole view to political interests. As warriors were specially needed to defend an existence brought about by conquest, the education given con- sisted principally of gymnastic and military exercises. Even the young girls were trained in a manner to de- velop their mental courage and bodily strength.^^' Such a system could only have been carried out by a legisla- tion as contrary to human nature, as was that of Lycurgus. There was a vice inherent in it, which was bound to ruin both itself and Sparta. Everywhere else, both in Greece and Eome, paternal education was not absolutely prohibited, though it was founded on the same definite principles. They never tried to bring up the man, before training the citizen. The man being mixed with the citizen, all their efforts tended to give the child the virtues which would assure his position in the State. The laws were the general rules of education ; parents had only to point out their appli- cation in the different circumstances of life.^^® CHAP. 11.] THE FAMILY. 57 In this education, intended chiefly to promote physical and intellectual development, little care was taken to encourage feeling and affection. It was useless to arouse the depths of conscience, as morality consisted in keep- ing the laws. The mother's mission was consequently reduced to the needful physical cares during the earliest years. We never hear amongst the ancients of maternal rights or duties. Antiquity neglected to place the mother's tenderness by the side of the father's formidable authority. Ancient wisdom ignored the importance of this necessary and natural tenderness in the work of education. They allowed that the mother loved her children, often even more than the father, but a Greek poet could find no better explanation of her love than one utterly discreditable to the spirit of the times.^^' It is true that woman was permitted to watch over and guide her children in their earliest infancy ; but this was not a prerogative but an almost servile charge that the father, engaged in external occupation, left to her care. If she interfered in the education of her sons, she also thought only of the virtues of the citizen. The wife of Pythagoras, writing to a friend, advised her to avoid all gentleness in educating her son, but by harsh treatment to prepare him for the practice of temperance and courage .^^* Cornelia was celebrated for the vigorous and patriotic education which she gave her sons."' We shall be asked perhaps by what principles the education of girls was regulated. We understand why moralists thought so little about how they should be brought up when we remember the inferior position given to them by ancient society. Their chief virtue was sub- mission, which was taught them by the strict authority of the father. The handiwork which helped to charm the long weariness of the wife, shut up in the gynceceum, 58 SOCIAL EESDLTS OF CHEISTIAHITY. [BOOK I. was taught to the young girl either by her mother or by slaves. This imperfect education was bound to have, in the long run, results equally unfortunate for the women, as the purely political education had for the men. Both lacked a basis in the soul itself; directed solely to ex- ternals, they had no root in the moral conscience. The ancient spirit, in neglecting to combat the egoism in a child's heart, in order to develop in him only pride and civic virtues, could not give to these virtues either their true motive or their most solid support. A time was bound to come when political education would become powerless against the force of individual egoism. In the times of the decadence, education for public life disappeared, without being replaced by that for family life, which was foreign to the temper of ancient society. The father, rushing after pleasure or lost in intrigue, no longer occupied himself with his sons ; the mother, wholly given to luxury and adventures, not only wasted h^r children's fortune, but abandoned them to the care of impure nurses or ignorant slaves. Provided that they learned to speak Greek early, she remained perfectly in- different to the pernicious influences to which they were exposed.^^° Others sent their children to one of the public schools, where boys and girls were mixed together, and which, without moral oversight or strict control, were only schools of precocious depravity .^^^ When the chil- dren had reached the age at which their education ought to be completed by literary instruction, they were trusted to lettered slaves ; and these teachers were often chosen from amongst the least capable servants. He who was good for nothing as husbandman, steward, or boatman, was thought good enough to complete the education of the sons of patricians.-'^^ The development of public instruction amongst the CHAP. II.] THE FAMILY. 59 ancients is beyond the subject of our work. It must suffice us to have characterized the spirit of the educa- tion which was given to youth. We have seen it claimed originally by the State as one of its most im- portant duties, yet left at last to fall into the hands of the most incapable slaves. We know that there were always consoling exceptions; but a sdciety must be rapidly nearing its fall when th6 noble mission of training the mind and soul of children can be regarded as a ser- vile occupation unworthy of a freeman. Antiquity had never required any but civic virtues. To these virtues she had owed her greatness. But they could not be taught by slaves ; when they had disappeared, they were judged unnecessary. Pagan civilization had no others with which to replace them ; and henceforth the descend- ants of the proudest republicans were educated by slaves, to be governed by despots. (1) We do not share the opinion of Pr. Jacobs, who, in his " Beitrage zur Geschichte des weiblichen Geschlechts " (Vermisehte Schriften, Lebenund Kwnst der Alien. Leipz., vol. iii. p. 159 ff.), maintains that in ancient times the condition of woman was far better than is commonly supposed. (2) Folit., 1. 1, 5, pp. 4, 25. (3) Cf. Van Stegeren, Be conditione civili feminarumAtheniensium. Zwoll, 1839, p. 139 fl. (4) Majestas virorum, imbecillitas mulierum et levitas animi, etc. ; e.g., Val. Max., II. 1, § 6, p. 84. Caius, I. § 144, p. 74. (5) Stobteus, t. LXXII. Uxorem ducere non esse bonum, and tit. LXXII. Vituperatio mulierum, pp. 277, 307. (6.) Plato, De Leg., VI. p. 386. lacit., Ann. III. 33, vol. i. p. 152. (7) Aul. Gell., I. 6, vol. i. p. 50. (8) The Vooouian Law, Cicer., De Bep., III. 7 ed. Lemaire, p. 301. (9) De Leg., VI. p. 368. (10) lb., IV. p. 254 ; VI. p. 370. (11) lb., IV. p. 254. (12) Xenoph., De Bep. Laced., c. 1, vol.vi. p. 15. (13) Eurip., Androm., 575 ff., vol. i. p. 461. Arist., Polit. U. 8, p. 61. (14) Arist., Polit. II. 2., p. 33. (15) T. n. p. 515. (16) Polit., II. 2 ffi., p. 83 ff. (17) De verum natuia. Leipz. 1801, p. 39 ff. (18) De Rep., V. pp. 272, 276 ; De Leg., V. p. 294. (19) Xenoph., Memorab., II. 2, vol. iv. p. 84. (20) Columella, De Be Bust., XII. prsef. in Script. Bei Bmt., vol. ii. p. 467. (21) Com. Nepos, prsef. p. 4. Menandri Fragm. p. 90. (22) Polit. I. 1. p. 4. (23) lb., c. 5, p. 24. (24) Iskus, De Aristarchi Nceredebros. 610 ; in Oratt. Att., vol. iii. p. 121. (25) e.g., Demosth., in Androtiona, § 53 ; in 0. c, vol. iv. p. 547. (26) Xenoph., (Econ. c. 3, § 12, vol. v. p. 19. (27) e.g., Plautus, Mercator, Act IV. So. 6, v. 1 ff., vol. ii. p. 60 SOCIAE RESULTS OF CHRISTIANITY. [BOOK I. 154. (28) Dig., XXIU. tit. 2, 1. 49. (29) lb., 1. 23. (30) lb., U. 27 and 31. (31) lb., 1. 42. (32) " Uxor quoqne qnse in manu est . . . filiffi loco est." Cains, III. § 3, p. 207. (38) Tacit., AnnaL, I. 10, V. 1 ; vol. i. p. 12, 250. (34) TertuU., Apolog., o. 39, p. 122. (35) Dig., XVni. tit. 3, 11. 1 and 7. (36) Cf. the law "De Uberis ex- hibendis."— Diff., XVII. tit. 30. (37) Plautus, Trinummus, Act II. So. 2, w. 93, 94, vol. ii. p. 161. (38) Tacit., Annal., IV., o. 16, vol. 1, p. 199. (39) Cains, I. § 157, p. 78. (40) Pausan., X. 38, § 6, vol. iii. p. 694. (41) Demosth., Pro Phormione, § 8, in Oratt. Att., vol. v. p. 212. ('42) Valer. Max., II. 9, p. 122. Cf. Osann, De ecelibum a'pud veteres populos conditione, Giessen, 1844, qto. (43) Aul. Gell., I. vol. i. p. 50. (44) The Lex Julia and Fappia Poppsea. Dio Cassins, LIV. 16, vol. ii. p. 63. (45) See, for example, Ovii'B Amores, and the selec- tions from the poets Ap. Stobnus, tit. 68, 64, p. 238 S. The love tales of the first centuries a.d. Appian, Halieut., IV. w. 37, 38, p. 41, in Ojip. Ven., Aid. 1517, 8°. (46) Oicer., Tusc. Disp., IV. 32 ff., vol. x. p. 523 ff. (47) Parad. V. vol. xii. p. 252, (48) Cf . Athenseus, 1. XII. vol. v. Soc- rates to Theodotes, Xenoph., Memorab,, III. 11, vol. iv. p. 187 fE. ; Pseudo Demosth., In Neasram., § 45 fE, Oratt. AU.,yo\. v. p, 556. (49) Dio Chry- sos says to the Corinthians, " Ye inhabit a city more licentious than any city either of the past or present time." — Cr. 37, vol. ii. p. 119. (50) Sallnst., De Bella Catil., c. 13, vol. i. p. 23. Seneca, De Ira, II. 8, vol. i. p. 36. (51) Dig., XXV., tit. 7, 1. 3 ; also XLVIH. Act 5. (52) "... Nunc vero nomine amicam, paulo honestiore, concubinam appellari," Panlns ap. Dig., L. tit. 16, 1. 144. (53) " Concubina mei amantissima." Gruber, vol. i. p. 640, No. 8 ; p. 631, No. 5, etc. (54) Quintil., Imit. Ora«., VI. 3, vol. i. p. 375. ' (55) Sueton., Domii., o. 8, p. 381. Dig., XXn. tit. 5. 1. 3; § 5. (56) Athenseus, XIII. 25, vol. v. p. 56. (57) " HofmiKiv riKos." iEschin., Contra Timarchum, in Oratt. Att. vol. iii. p. 289. (58) Sueton., Caligula, c. 40-41, p. 204. (59) Lamprid., Al. Sev.,c. 24, in Scriptt. Hist. Aug., vol. i. p. 274. (60) Euseb., Hist. Eccl., VI. 5, p. 207 ; De Martyr. Paltest., opp. 5, 8, p. 826, 331. Palladius, Hist. Lam., 0. 3, p. 18. In 304 a.d. St. Irene was condemned : " I direct that the apparitors and public executioner make her to stand naked in the lupanarj that she draw one loaf per day from the palace, the apparitors themselves taking care that she does not get away." — Acta Mart., Buinart, p. 395. See also Acta S. Theodora, lb., p. 397, etc. Frudentius says of St. Agnes : " This maiden to the public brottiel they consi^. Unless she bow before the heathen shrine." {Peristeph. hymn 14, v. 25, 26, p. 256). " They order the maiden either to sacrifice or to be taken to the hipanar." — Ainbros., De Virgin., II. 4, § 23, vol. ii. p. 168. (61) " For recently too, by condemning the Chris- tian maiden to the brothel {ad lenonem) instead of to the lions {ad leonem), you acknowledge that to us the violation of chastity is more dreadful than any other form of punishment or death." — Tertvdl., Apolog., 50, p. 163. Buinart, Acta Mart., p. 455. (62) " Behold our maidens meet death calmly, with their honour intact, not dreadingthe threats and cormptions and lupanars of the coming Antichrist." — Oypr., De Mortal, p. 283. CHAP. II.] THE FAMILY. 61 ness. Only adultery is condemned by the law, whUe in the lupanar with inferior persons there are no restrictions imposed on lust ; as though forsooth 1 the wrongness of the act lay in the rank of the person, not in toe intention."— Hieron., Ep. 77, vol. i. p. 459. " But some one will say. She IB not a prostitute whom I keep ; she is my concubine. Most holy Bishop, thou makest my concubine into an harlot. . . . Thou sayest my handmaiden is my concubine. Do I go in to another man's wife 1 Do I go to the public harlot ? Can I,do what I Uke in my own house?" —August., Sermo 224, § 3, vol. v. p. 674-5. (65) " Sed nos viri sumus ; an yero sexus nostri dignitas banc sustinebit injuriam, ut cum aUis feminis prseter uxores nostras si quid admittimus, in luendis poenis rnulieribus oomparemur?"— Ap. August., De Conjugiis Adult., II. 8, vol. VI. p. 299. (66) " Ta/ter^s y&p iperr) ianv oix v irapariip^ais toO avSiis d\\ r)