English Prose Part 19

The second distinguis.h.i.+ng feature of stoicism I have noticed was the complete suppression of the affections to make way for the absolute ascendency of reason. There are two great divisions of character corresponding very nearly to the stoical and epicurean temperaments I have described--that in which the will predominates, and that in which the desires are supreme. A good man of the first cla.s.s is one whose will, directed by a sense of duty, pursues the course he believes to be right, in spite of strong temptations to pursue an opposite course, arising either from his own pa.s.sions and tendencies, or from the circ.u.mstances that surround him. A good man of the second cla.s.s is one who is so happily const.i.tuted that his sympathies and desires instinctively tend to virtuous ends. The first character is the only one to which we can, strictly speaking, attach the idea of merit, and is also the only one which is capable of rising to high efforts of continuous and heroic self-sacrifice; but on the other hand, there is a charm in the spontaneous action of the unforced desires which disciplined virtue can perhaps never attain. The man who is consistently generous through a sense of duty, when his natural temperament impels him to avarice, and when every exercise of benevolence causes him a pang, deserves in the very highest degree our admiration; but he whose generosity costs him no effort, but is the natural gratification of his affections, attracts a far larger measure of our love. Corresponding to these two casts of character, we find two distinct theories of education, the aim of the one being chiefly to strengthen the will, and that of the other to guide the desires. The princ.i.p.al examples of the first are the Spartan and stoical systems of antiquity, and, with some modifications, the asceticism of the Middle Ages. The object of these systems was to enable men to endure pain, to repress manifest and acknowledged desires, to relinquish enjoyments, to establish an absolute empire over their emotions. On the other hand, there is a method of education which was never more prevalent than in the present day, which exhausts its efforts in making virtue attractive, in a.s.sociating it with all the charms of imagination and of prosperity, and in thus insensibly drawing the desires in the wished for direction. As the first system is especially suited to a disturbed and military society, which requires and elicits strong efforts of the will, and is therefore the special sphere of heroic virtues, so the latter belongs naturally to a tranquil and highly organised civilisation, which is therefore very favourable to the amiable qualities, and it is probable that as civilisation advances, the heroic type will, in consequence, become more and more rare, and a kind of self-indulgent goodness more common. The circ.u.mstances of the ancient societies led them to the former type, of which the Stoics furnished the extreme expression in their doctrine that the affections are of the nature of a disease--a doctrine which they justified by the same kind of arguments as those which are now often employed by metaphysicians to prove that love, anger and the like, can only be ascribed by a figure of speech to the Deity. Perturbation, they contended, is necessarily imperfection, and none of its forms can in consequence be ascribed to a perfect being. We have a clear intuitive perception that reason is the highest, and should be the directing power of an intelligent being; but every act which is performed at the instigation of the emotions is withdrawn from the empire of reason.

Hence it was inferred that while the will should be educated to act habitually in the direction of virtue, even the emotions that seem most fitted to second it should be absolutely proscribed. Thus Seneca has elaborated at length the distinction between clemency and pity, the first being one of the highest virtues, and the latter a positive vice.

Clemency, he says, is an habitual disposition to gentleness in the application of punishments. It is that moderation which remits something of an incurred penalty; it is the opposite of cruelty, which is an habitual disposition to rigour. Pity, on the other hand, bears to clemency the same kind of relation as superst.i.tion to religion. It is the weakness of a feeble mind that flinches at the sight of suffering.

Clemency is an act of judgment, but pity disturbs the judgment. Clemency adjudicates upon the proportion between suffering and guilt. Pity contemplates only suffering, and gives no thoughts to its cause.

Clemency, in the midst of its n.o.blest efforts, is perfectly pa.s.sionless; pity is unreasoning emotion. Clemency is an essential characteristic of the sage; pity is only suited for weak women and for diseased minds.

"The sage will console those who weep, but without weeping with them; he will succour the s.h.i.+pwrecked, give hospitality to the proscribed, and alms to the poor, ... restore the son to the mother's tears, save the captive from the arena, and even bury the criminal; but in all, his mind and his countenance will be alike untroubled. He will feel no pity. He will succour, he will do good, for he is born to a.s.sist his fellows, to labour for the welfare of mankind, and to offer each one his part. His countenance and his soul will betray no emotion as he looks upon the withered legs, the tattered rags, the bent and emaciated frame of the beggar. But he will help those who are worthy, and, like the G.o.ds, his leaning will be towards the wretched.... It is only diseased eyes that grow moist in beholding tears in other eyes, as it is no true sympathy, but only weakness of nerves, that leads some to laugh always when others laugh, or to yawn when others yawn."

Cicero, in a sentence which might be adopted as the motto of stoicism, said that Homer "attributed human qualities to the G.o.ds; it would have been better to have imparted divine qualities to men." The remarkable pa.s.sage I have just cited serves to show the extremes to which the Stoics pushed this imitation. And indeed, if we compare the different virtues that have flourished among Pagans and Christians, we invariably find that the prevailing type of excellence among the former is that in which the will and judgment, and among the latter, that in which the emotions are most prominent. Friends.h.i.+p rather than love, hospitality rather than charity, magnanimity rather than tenderness, clemency rather than sympathy, are the characteristics of ancient goodness. The Stoics, who carried the suppression of the emotions farther than any other school, laboured with great zeal to compensate the injury thus done to the benevolent side of our nature, by greatly enlarging the sphere of reasoned and pa.s.sionless philanthropy. They taught, in the most emphatic language, the fraternity of all men, and the consequent duty of each man consecrating his life to the welfare of others. They developed this general doctrine in a series of detailed precepts, which, for the range, depth, and beauty of their charity, have never been surpa.s.sed. They even extended their compa.s.sion to crime, and adopting the paradox of Plato, that all guilt is ignorance, treated it as an involuntary disease, and declared that the only legitimate ground of punishment is prevention.

But however fully they might recognise in theory their principles with the widest and most active benevolence, they could not wholly counteract the practical evil of a system which declared war against the whole emotional side of our being, and reduced human virtue to a kind of majestic egotism; proposing as examples such men as Anaxagoras, who when told that his son had died, simply observed, "I never supposed that I had begotten an immortal," or as Stilpo, who when his country had been ruined, his native city captured, and his daughters carried away as slaves or as concubines, boasted that he had lost nothing, for the sage is independent of circ.u.mstances. The framework or theory of benevolence might be there, but the animating spirit was absent. Men who taught that the husband or the father should look with perfect indifference on the death of his wife or his child, and that the philosopher, though he may shed tears of pretended sympathy in order to console his suffering friend, must suffer no real emotion to penetrate his breast, could never found a true or lasting religion of benevolence. Men who refused to recognise pain and sickness as evils were scarcely likely to be very eager to relieve them in others.

In truth, the Stoics, who taught that all virtue was conformity to nature, were, in this respect, eminently false to their own principle.

Human nature, as revealed to us by reason, is a composite thing, a const.i.tution of many parts differing in kind and dignity, a hierarchy in which many powers are intended to co-exist, but in different positions of ascendency or subordination. To make the higher part of our nature our whole nature is not to restore but to mutilate humanity, and this mutilation has never been attempted without producing grave evils. As philanthropists, the Stoics, through their pa.s.sion for unity, were led to the extirpation of those emotions which nature intended as the chief springs of benevolence. As speculative philosophers, they were entangled by the same desire in a long train of pitiable paradoxes. Their famous doctrines that all virtues are equal, or, more correctly, are the same, that all vices are equal, that nothing is an evil which does not affect our will, and that pain and bereavement are, in consequence, no ills, though partially explained away and frequently disregarded by the Roman Stoics, were yet sufficiently prominent to give their teaching something of an unnatural and affected appearance. Prizing only a single object, and developing only a single side of their nature, their minds became narrow and their views contracted. Thus, while the Epicureans, urging men to study nature in order to banish superst.i.tion, endeavoured to correct the ignorance of physical science which was one of the chief impediments to the progress of the ancient mind, the Stoics for the most part disdained a study which was other than the pursuit of virtue. While the Epicurean poet painted in magnificent language the perpetual progress of mankind, the Stoic was essentially retrospective, and exhausted his strength in vain efforts to restore the simplicity of a by-gone age. While, too, the school of Zeno produced many of the best and greatest men who have ever lived, it must be acknowledged that its records exhibit a rather unusual number of examples of high professions falsified in action, and of men who, displaying in some forms the most undoubted and transcendent virtue, fell in others far below the average of mankind. The elder Cato, who, though not a philosopher, was a model of philosophers, was conspicuous for his inhumanity to his slaves.

Brutus was one of the most extortionate usurers of his time, and several citizens of Salamis died of starvation, imprisoned because they could not pay the sum he demanded. No one eulogised more eloquently the austere simplicity of life which stoicism advocated than Sall.u.s.t, who in a corrupt age was notorious for his rapacity. Seneca himself was const.i.tutionally a nervous and timid man, endeavouring, not always with success, to support himself by a sublime philosophy. He guided, under circ.u.mstances of extreme difficulty, the cause of virtue, and his death is one of the n.o.blest antiquity records; but his life was deeply marked by the taint of flattery, and not free from the taint of avarice, and it is unhappily certain that, after its accomplishment, he lent his pen to conceal or varnish one of the worst crimes of Nero. The courage of Lucan failed signally under torture, and the flattery which he bestowed upon Nero, in his "Pharsalia," ranks with the Epigrams of Martial as probably the extreme limit of sycophancy to which Roman literature descended.

While, too, the main object of the Stoics was to popularise philosophy, the high standard of self-control they exacted rendered their system exceedingly unfit for the great majority of mankind, and for the ordinary condition of affairs. Life is history, not poetry. It consists mainly of little things, rarely illumined by flashes of great heroism, rarely broken by great dangers, or demanding great exertions. A moral system, to govern society, must accommodate itself to common characters and mingled motives. It must be capable of influencing natures that can never rise to an heroic level. It must tincture, modify, and mitigate where it cannot eradicate or transform. In Christianity there are always a few persons seeking by continual and painful efforts to reverse or extinguish the ordinary feelings of humanity, but in the great majority of cases the influence of the religious principle upon the mind, though very real, is not of a nature to cause any serious strain or struggle.

It is displayed in a certain acquired spontaneity of impulse. It softens the character, purifies and directs the imagination, blends insensibly with the habitual modes of thought, and, without revolutionising, gives a tone and bias to all the forms of action. But stoicism was simply a school of heroes. It recognised no gradations of virtue or vice. It condemned all emotions, all spontaneity, all mingled motives, all the principles, feelings, and impulses upon which the virtue of common men mainly depends. It was capable of acting only on moral natures that were strung to the highest tension, and it was therefore naturally rejected by the mult.i.tude.

The central conception of this philosophy of self-control was the dignity of man. Pride, which looks within, making man seek his own approbation, as distinguished from vanity, which looks without, and shapes its conduct according to the opinions of others, was not only permitted in stoicism, it was its leading moral agent. The sense of virtue, as I have elsewhere observed, occupies in this system much the same place as the sense of sin in Christianity. Sin, in the conception of the ancients, was simply disease, and they deemed it the part of a wise man to correct it, but not to dwell upon its circ.u.mstances. In the many disquisitions which Epictetus and others have left us concerning the proper frame of mind in which man should approach death, repentance for past sin has absolutely no place, nor do the ancients appear to have ever realised the purifying and spiritualising influence it exercises upon the character. And while the reality of moral disease was fully recognised, while an ideal of lofty and indeed unattainable excellence was continually proposed, no one doubted the essential excellence of human nature, and very few doubted the possibility of man acquiring by his own will a high degree of virtue.

The doctrine of suicide was the culminating point of Roman stoicism. The proud, self-reliant, unbending character of the philosopher, could only be sustained when he felt that he had a sure refuge against the extreme forms of suffering or of despair. Although virtue is not a mere creature of interest, no great system has ever yet flourished which did not present an ideal of happiness as well as an ideal of duty. Stoicism taught men to hope little, but to fear nothing. It did not array death in brilliant colours, as the path to positive felicity, but it endeavoured to divest it, as the end of suffering, of every terror. Life lost much of its bitterness when men had found a refuge from the storms of fate, a speedy deliverance from dotage and pain. Death ceased to be terrible when it was regarded rather as a remedy than as a sentence.

Life and death in the stoical system were attuned to the same key. The deification of human virtue, the total absence of all sense of sin, the proud stubborn will that deemed humiliation the worst of stains, appeared alike in each. The type of its own kind was perfect. All the virtues and all the majesty that accompany human pride, when developed to the highest point, and directed to the n.o.blest ends, were here displayed. All those which accompany humility and self-abas.e.m.e.nt were absent.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 74: From Chapter II, Vol. I, of "History of European Morals,"

1869. The author's foot-notes have been omitted.]

THE ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY[75]

JOHN ROBERT SEELEY

The first method of training this pa.s.sion which Christ employed was the direct one of making it a point of duty to feel it. To love one's neighbour as oneself was, he said, the first and greatest _law_. And in the Sermon on the Mount he requires the pa.s.sion to be felt in such strength as to include those whom we have most reason to hate--our enemies and those who maliciously injure us--and delivers an imperative precept, "Love your enemies."

It has been shown that to do this is not, as might at first appear, in the nature of things impossible, but the further question suggests itself, Can it be done to order? Has the verb to love really an imperative mood? Certainly, to say that we can love at pleasure, and by a mere effort of will summon up a pa.s.sion which does not arise of itself, is to take up a paradoxical and novel position. Yet if this position be really untenable, how is it possible to obey Christ's commands?

The difficulty seems to admit of only one solution. We are not commanded to create by an effort of will a feeling of love in ourselves which otherwise would have had no existence; the feeling must arise naturally or it cannot arise at all. But a number of causes which are removable may interfere to prevent the feeling from arising or to stifle it as it arises, and we are commanded to remove these hindrances. It is natural to man to love his kind, and Christ commands us only to give nature play. He does not expect us to procure for ourselves hearts of some new supernatural texture, but merely the heart of flesh for the heart of stone.

What, then, are the causes of this paralysis of the heart? The experience of human life furnishes us readily with the answer. It constantly happens that one whose affections were originally not less lively than those of most men is thrown into the society of persons dest.i.tute of sympathy or tenderness. In this society each person is either totally indifferent to his neighbour or secretly endeavouring to injure or overreach him. The new-comer is at first open-hearted and cordial; he presumes every one he meets to be a friend, and is disposed to serve and expects to be served by all alike. But his advances are met by some with cautious reserve, by others with icy coldness, by others with hypocritical warmth followed by treacherous injury, by others with open hostility. The heart which naturally grew warm at the mere sight of a human being, under the operation of this new experience slowly becomes paralysed. There seats itself gradually in the man's mind a presumption concerning every new face that it is the face of an enemy, and a habit of gathering himself into an att.i.tude of self-defence whenever he deals with a fellow-creature. If when this new disposition has grown confirmed and habitual, he be introduced into a society of an opposite kind and meet with people as friendly and kind as he himself was originally, he will not at first be able to believe in their sincerity, and the old kindly affections from long disuse will be slow to rouse themselves within him. Now to such a person the imperative mood of the verb to love may fairly be used. He may properly be told to make an effort, to shake off the distrust that oppresses him,--not to suffer unproved suspicions, causeless jealousies, to stifle by the mere force of prejudice and mistaken opinion the warmth of feeling natural to him.

But we shall have a closer ill.u.s.tration if we suppose the cold-hearted society itself to be addressed by a preacher who wishes to bring them to a better mind. He too may fairly use the imperative mood of the verb to love. For he may say, "Your mutual coldness does not spring from an original want of the power of sympathy. If it did, admonitions would indeed be useless. But it springs from a habit of thought which you have formed, a maxim which has been received among you, that all men are devoted to self-interest, that kindness is but feebleness and invites injury. If you will at once and by a common act throw off this false opinion of human nature, and adopt a new plan of life for yourselves and new expectations of each other, you will find the old affections natural to all of you, weakened indeed and chilled, but existing and capable of being revived by an effort."

Such a preacher might go further and say, "If but a small minority are convinced by my words, yet let that minority for itself abandon the selfish theory, let it renounce the safety which that theory affords in dealing with selfish men, let it treat the enemy as if he were indeed the friend he ought to be, let it dare to forego retaliation and even self-defence. By this means it will shame many into kindness; by despising self-interest for itself it will sometimes make it seem despicable to others; by sincerity and persistency it will gradually convert the majority to a higher law of intercourse."

The world has been always more or less like this cold-hearted society; the natural kindness and fellow-feeling of men have always been more or less repressed by low-minded maxims and cynicism. But in the time of Christ, and in the last decrepitude of ethnic morality, the selfishness of human intercourse was much greater than the present age can easily understand. That system of morality, even in the times when it was powerful and in many respects beneficial, had made it almost as much a duty to hate foreigners as to love fellow-citizens. Plato congratulates the, Athenians on having shown in their relations to Persia, beyond all the other Greeks, "a pure and heartfelt hatred of the foreign nature."[76] Instead of opposing, it had sanctioned and consecrated the savage instinct which leads us to hate whatever is strange or unintelligible, to distrust those who live on the further side of a river, to suppose that those whom we hear talking together in a foreign tongue must be plotting some mischief against ourselves. The lapse of time and the fusion of races doubtless diminished this antipathy considerably, but at the utmost it could but be transformed into an icy indifference, for no cause was in operation to convert it into kindness.

On the other hand, the closeness of the bond which united fellow-citizens was considerably relaxed. Common interests and common dangers had drawn it close; these in the wide security of the Roman Empire had no longer a place. It had depended upon an imagined blood-relations.h.i.+p; fellow-citizens could now no longer feel themselves to be united by the tie of blood. Every town was full of resident aliens and emanc.i.p.ated slaves, persons between whom and the citizens nature had established no connection, and whose presence in the city had originally been barely tolerated from motives of expediency. The selfishness of modern times exists in defiance of morality, in ancient times it was approved, sheltered, and even in part enjoined by morality. We are therefore to consider the ancient world as a society of men in whom natural humanity existed but had been, as it were, crusted or frosted over. Inveterate feuds and narrow-minded local jealousies, arising out of an isolated position or differences of language and inst.i.tutions, had created endless divisions between man and man. And as the special virtues of antiquity, patriotism and all that it implies, had been in a manner caused and fostered by these very divisions, they were not regarded as evils but rather cherished as essential to morality.

Selfishness, therefore, was not a mere abuse or corruption arising out of the infirmity of human nature, but a theory and almost a part of moral philosophy. Humanity was cramped by a mistaken prejudice, by a perverse presumption of the intellect. In a case like this it was necessary and proper to prescribe humanity by direct authoritative precept. Such a precept would have been powerless to create the feeling, nor would it have done much to protect it from being overpowered by the opposite pa.s.sion, but the opposite pa.s.sion of selfishness was at this period justified by authority and claimed to be on the side of reason and law. Precept is fairly matched against precept, and what the law of love and the golden rule did for mankind was to place for the first time the love of man as man distinctly in the list of virtues, to dissipate the exclusive prejudices of ethnic morality, and to give selfishness the character of sin.

When a theory of selfishness is rife in a whole community, it is a bold and hazardous step for a part of the community to abandon it. For in the society of selfish people selfishness is simply self-defence; to renounce it is to evacuate one's entrenched position, to surrender at discretion to the enemy. If society is to disarm, it should do so by common consent. Christ, however, though he confidently expected ultimately to gather all mankind into his society, did not expect to do so soon. Accordingly he commands his followers not to wait for this consummation but, in spite of the hazardous nature of the step, to disarm at once. They are sent forth "as sheep in the midst of wolves."

Injuries they are to expect, but they are neither to shun nor to retaliate them. Harmless they are to be as _doves_. The discipline of suffering will wean them more and more from self, and make the channels of humanity freer within them; and sometimes their patience may shame the spoiler; he may grow weary of rapacity which meets with no resistance, and be induced to envy those who can forego without reluctance that which he devotes every thought to acquire.

But we shall soon be convinced that Christ could not design by a mere edict, however authoritative, to give this pa.s.sion of humanity strength enough to make it a living and infallible principle of morality in every man, when we consider, first, what an ardent enthusiasm he demanded from his followers, and secondly, how frail and tender a germ this pa.s.sion naturally is in human nature. Widely diffused indeed it is, and seldom entirely eradicated; but for the most part, at least in the ancient world, it was crushed under a weight of predominant pa.s.sions and interests; it had seldom power enough to dictate any action, but made itself felt in faint misgivings and relentings, which sometimes restrained men from extremes of cruelty. Like Enceladus under Aetna, it lay fettered at the bottom of human nature, now and then making the ma.s.s above it quake by an uneasy change of posture. To make this outraged and enslaved pa.s.sion predominant, to give it, instead of a veto rarely used, the whole power of government, to train it from a dim misgiving into a clear and strong pa.s.sion, required much more than a precept. The precept had its use; it could make men feel it right to be humane and desire to be so, but it could never inspire them with an enthusiasm of humanity.

From what source was this inspiration to be derived?

Humanity, we have already observed, is neither a love for the whole human race, nor a love for each individual of it, but a love for the race, or for the ideal of man, in each individual. In other and less pedantic words, he who is truly humane considers every human being as such interesting and important, and without waiting to criticise each individual specimen, pays in advance to all alike the tribute of good wishes and sympathy. Now this favourable presumption with regard to human beings is not a causeless prepossession, it is no idle superst.i.tion of the mind, nor is it a natural instinct. It is a feeling founded on the actual observation and discovery of interesting and n.o.ble qualities in particular human beings, and it is strong or weak in proportion as the person who has the feeling has known many or few n.o.ble and amiable human beings. There are men who have, been so unfortunate as to live in the perpetual society of the mean and the base; they have never, except in a few faint glimpses, seen anything glorious or good in human nature. With these the feeling of humanity has a perpetual struggle for existence, their minds tend by a fatal gravitation to the belief that the happiness or misery of such a paltry race is wholly unimportant; they may arrive finally at a fixed condition, in which it may be said of them without qualification, that "man delights not them, nor woman neither." In this final stage they are men who, beyond the routine of life, should not be trusted, being "fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils." On the other hand, there are those whose lot it has been from earliest childhood to see the fair side of humanity, who have been surrounded with clear and candid countenances, in the changes of which might be traced the working of pa.s.sions strong and simple, the impress of a firm and tender nature, wearing when it looked abroad the glow of sympathy, and when it looked within the bloom of modesty. They have seen, and not once or twice, a man forget himself; they have witnessed devotion, unselfish sorrow, unaffected delicacy, spontaneous charity, ingenuous self-reproach; and it may be that on seeing a human being surrender for another's good not something but his uttermost all, they have dimly suspected in human nature a glory connecting it with the divine. In these the pa.s.sion of humanity is warm and ready to become on occasion a burning flame; their whole minds are elevated, because they are possessed with the dignity of that nature they share, and of the society in the midst of which they move.

But it is not absolutely necessary to humanity that a man shall have seen _many_ men whom he can respect. The most lost cynic will get a new heart by learning thoroughly to believe in the virtue of _one_ man. Our estimate of human nature is in proportion to the best specimen of it we have witnessed. This then it is which is wanted to raise the feeling of humanity into an enthusiasm; when the precept of love has been given, an image must be set before the eyes of those who are called upon to obey it, an ideal or type of man which may be n.o.ble and amiable enough to raise the whole race and make the meanest member of it sacred with reflected glory.

Did not Christ do this? Did the command to love go forth to those who had never seen a human being they could revere? Could his followers turn upon him and say, How can we love a creature so degraded, full of vile wants and contemptible pa.s.sions, whose little life is most harmlessly spent when it is an empty round of eating and sleeping; a creature destined for the grave and for oblivion when his allotted term of fretfulness and folly has expired? Of this race Christ himself was a member, and to this day is it not the best answer to all blasphemers of the species, the best consolation when our sense of its degradation is keenest, that a human brain was behind his forehead and a human heart beating in his breast, and that within the whole creation of G.o.d nothing more elevated or more attractive has yet been found than he? And if it be answered that there was in his nature something exceptional and peculiar, that humanity must not be measured by the stature of Christ, let us remember that it was precisely thus that he wished it to be measured, delighting to call himself the Son of Man, delighting to call the meanest of mankind his brothers. If some human beings are abject and contemptible, if it be incredible to us that they can have any high dignity or destiny, do we regard them from so great a height as Christ?

Are we likely to be more pained by their faults and deficiencies than he was? Is our standard higher than his? And yet he a.s.sociated by preference with these meanest of the race; no contempt for them did he ever express, no suspicion that they might be less dear than the best and wisest to the common Father, no doubt that they were naturally capable of rising to a moral elevation like his own. There is nothing of which a man may be prouder than of this; it is the most hopeful and redeeming fact in history; it is precisely what was wanting to raise the love of man as man to enthusiasm. An eternal glory has been shed upon the human race by the love Christ bore to it. And it was because the Edict of Universal Love went forth to men whose hearts were in no cynical mood but possessed with a spirit of devotion to a man, that words which at any other time, however grandly they might sound, would have been but words, penetrated so deeply, and along with the law of love the power of Jove was given. Therefore also the first Christians were enabled to dispense with philosophical phrases, and instead of saying that they loved the ideal of man in man could simply say and feel that they loved Christ in every man.

We have here the very kernel of the Christian moral scheme. We have distinctly before us the end Christ proposed to himself, and the means he considered adequate to the attainment of it. His object was, instead of drawing up, after the example of previous legislators, a list of actions prescribed, allowed, and prohibited, to give his disciples a universal test by which they might discover what it was right and what it was wrong to do. Now as the difficulty of discovering what is right arises commonly from the prevalence of self-interest in our minds, and as we commonly behave rightly to anyone for whom we feel affection or sympathy, Christ considered that he who could feel sympathy for all would behave rightly to all. But how to give to the meagre and narrow hearts of men such enlargement? How to make them capable of a universal sympathy? Christ believed it possible to bind men to their kind, but on one condition--that they were first bound fast to himself. He stood forth as the representative of men, he identified himself with the cause and with the interests of all human beings, he was destined, as he began before long obscurely to intimate, to lay down his life for them. Few of us sympathise originally and directly with this devotion; few of us can perceive in human nature itself any merit sufficient to evoke it. But it is not so hard to love and venerate him who felt it. So vast a pa.s.sion of love, a devotion so comprehensive, elevated, deliberate and profound, has not elsewhere been in any degree approached save by some of his imitators. And as love provokes love, many have found it possible to conceive for Christ an attachment the closeness of which no words can describe, a veneration so possessing and absorbing the man within them, that they have said, "I live no more, but Christ lives in me." Now such a feeling carries with it of necessity the feeling of love for all human beings. It matters no longer what quality men may exhibit; amiable or unamiable, as the brothers of Christ, as belonging to his sacred and consecrated kind, as the objects of his love in life and death, they must be dear to all to whom he is dear. And those who would for a moment know his heart and understand his life must begin by thinking of the whole race of man, and of each member of the race, with awful reverence and hope.

Love, wheresoever it appears, is in its measure a law-making power.

"Love is _dutiful_ in thought and deed." And as the lover of his country is free from the temptation to treason, so is he who loves Christ secure from the temptation to injure any human being, whether it be himself or another. He is indeed much more than this. He is bound and he is eager to benefit and bless to the utmost of his power all that bear his Master's nature, and that not merely with the good gifts of the earth, but with whatever cherishes and trains best the Christ within them. But for the present we are concerned merely with the power of this pa.s.sion to lift the man out of sin. The injuries he committed lightly when he regarded his fellow-creatures simply as animals who added to the fierceness of the brute an ingenuity and forethought that made them doubly noxious, become horrible sacrilege when he sees in them no longer the animal but the Christ. And that other cla.s.s of crimes which belongs more especially to ages of civilisation, and arises out of a cynical contempt for the species, is rendered equally impossible to the man who hears with reverence the announcement, "The good deeds you did to the least of these my brethren you did to me."

There are two objections which may suggest themselves at this point, the one to intellectual, the other to practical men. The intellectual man may say, "To discover what it is right to do in any given case is not the province of any feeling or pa.s.sion however sublime, but requires the application of the same intellectual power which solves mathematical problems. The common acts of life may no doubt be performed correctly by unintellectual people, but this is because these constantly recurring problems have been solved long ago by clever people, and the vulgar are now in possession of the results. Whenever a new combination occurs it is a matter for casuists; the best intentions will avail little; there is doubtless a great difference between a good man and a bad one; the one will do what is right when he knows it, and the other will not; but in respect for the power of ascertaining what it is right to do, supposing their knowledge of casuistry to be equal, they are on a par.

Goodness or the pa.s.sion of humanity, or Christian love, may be a motive inducing men to keep the law, but it has no right to be called the law-making power. And what has Christianity added to our theoretic knowledge of morality? It may have made men practically more moral, but has it added anything to Aristotle's Ethics?"

Certainly Christianity has no ambition to invade the provinces of the moralist or the casuist. But the difficulties which beset the discovery of the right moral course are of two kinds. There are the difficulties which arise, from the blinding and confusing effect of selfish pa.s.sions, and which obscure from the view the end which should be aimed at in action; when these have been overcome there arises a new set of difficulties concerning the means by which the end should be attained.

In dealing with your neighbour the first thing to be understood is that his interest is to be considered as well as your own; but when this has been settled, it remains to be considered what his interest is. The latter cla.s.s of difficulties requires to be dealt with by the intellectual or calculating faculty. The former cla.s.s can only be dealt with by the moral force of sympathy. Now it is true that the right action will not be performed without the operation of both these agencies. But the moral agency is the dominant one throughout; it is that without which the very conception of law is impossible; it overcomes those difficulties which in the vast majority of practical cases are the most serious. The calculating casuistical faculty is, as it were, in its employ, and it is no more improper to call it the law-making power, although it does not ultimately decide what action is to be performed, than to say that a house was built by one who did not with his own hands lay the bricks and spread the mortar.

The objection which practical men take is a very important one, as the criticisms of such men always are, being founded commonly upon large observation and not perverted by theory. They say that the love of Christ does not in practice produce the n.o.bleness and largeness of character which has been represented as its proper and natural result; that instead of inspiring those who feel it with reverence and hope for their kind, it makes them exceedingly narrow in their sympathies, disposed to deny and explain away even the most manifest virtues displayed by men, and to despair of the future destiny of the great majority of their fellow-creatures; that instead of binding them to their kind, it divides them from it by a gulf which they themselves proclaim to be impa.s.sable and eternal, and unites them only in a gloomy conspiracy of misanthropy with each other; that it is indeed a law-making power, but that the laws it makes are little-minded and vexatious prohibitions of things innocent, demoralising restraints upon the freedom of joy and the healthy instincts of nature; that it favours hypocrisy, moroseness, and sometimes lunacy; that the only vice it has power to check is thoughtlessness, and its only beneficial effect is that of forcing into activity, though not always into healthy activity, the faculty of serious reflection.

This may be a just picture of a large cla.s.s of religious men, but it is impossible in the nature of things that such effects should be produced by a pure personal devotion to Christ. We are to remember that nothing has been subjected to such multiform and grotesque perversion as Christianity. Certainly the direct love of Christ, as it was felt by its first followers, is a rare thing among modern Christians. His character has been so much obscured by scholasticism, as to have lost in a great measure its attractive power. The prevalent feeling towards him now among religious men is an awful fear of his supernatural greatness, and a disposition to obey his commands arising partly from dread of future punishment and hope of reward, and partly from a n.o.bler feeling of loyalty, which, however, is inspired rather by his office than his person. Beyond this we may discern in them an uneasy conviction that he requires a more personal devotion, which leads to spasmodic efforts to kindle the feeling by means of violent raptures of panegyric and by repeating over and getting by rote the ardent expressions of those who really had it. That is wanting for the most part which Christ held to be all in all, spontaneous warmth, free and generous devotion. That the fruits of a Christianity so hollow should be poor and sickly is not surprising.

But that Christ's method, when rightly applied, is really of mighty force may be shown by an argument which the severest censor of Christians will hardly refuse to admit. Compare the ancient with the modern world: "Look on this picture and on that." One broad distinction in the characters of men forces itself into prominence. Among all the men of the ancient heathen world there were scarcely one or two to whom we might venture to apply the epithet "holy." In other words, there were not more than one or two, if any, who besides being virtuous in their actions were possessed with an unaffected enthusiasm of goodness, and besides abstaining from vice regarded even a vicious thought with horror. Probably no one will deny that in Christian countries this higher-toned goodness, which we call holiness, has existed. Few will maintain that it has been exceedingly rare. Perhaps the truth is, that there has scarcely been a town in any Christian country since the time of Christ where a century has pa.s.sed without exhibiting a character of such elevation that his mere presence has shamed the bad and made the good better, and has been felt at times like the presence of G.o.d Himself. And if this be so, has Christ failed? or can Christianity die?

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 75: Chapter XIV of "Ecce h.o.m.o, a Survey of the Life and work of Jesus Christ," 1865.]

[Footnote 76: Plato, Menexenus.--Author's note.]

LOYALTY AND INSIGHT[77]

JOSIAH ROYCE

Upon an occasion like this, when the children, the servants, and the friends of this inst.i.tution meet for their annual festival, there is one word that best expresses the spirit of the occasion. It is the word "loyalty,"--loyalty to your College, to its ideals, to its life, and to the unity and effectiveness of this life. And amongst the ideals that inspire the life of your College, and make that life effective and united, there is one which is prominent in all your minds, whatever your special studies, your practical aims, or your hopes. It is the ideal of furthering, in all your minds, what we may call insight,--the ideal of learning to see life as it is, to know the world as we men need to know it, and to guide our purposes as we ought to guide them. It is also the ideal of teaching to others the art of just such insight.

These two words, then, "loyalty" and "insight," name, one of them, the spirit in which, upon such occasions as this, we all meet; the other, the ideal that determines the studies and the researches of any modern inst.i.tution of learning. Upon each day of its year of work your College says to its children and to its servants and to its community: "Let us know, let us see, let us comprehend, let us guide life by wisdom, and in turn let us discover new wisdom for the sake of winning new life." But upon a day like the present one, the work of the year being laid aside, your College asks and receives your united expression of loyalty to its cause. Perhaps some of you may feel that for just this moment you have left behind, at least temporarily, the task of winning insight. You enjoy, for the hour, the fruits of toil. Study and research cease, you may say, for to-day, while the spirit of loyalty finds its own free expression and takes content in its holiday.