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Title: History of European Morals From Augustus to Charlemagne
(Vol. 1 of 2)

Author: William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Release date: March 25, 2012 [eBook #39273]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39273

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF
EUROPEAN MORALS FROM AUGUSTUS TO CHARLEMAGNE
(VOL. 1 OF 2) ***

History of

European Morals

From Augustus to Charlemagne

By

William Edward Hartpole Lecky, M.A.

Ninth Edition

In Two Volumes

Vol. 1.

London

Longmans, Green, And Co.

1890

Contents

Advertisement To The Third Edition.
Preface.
Chapter I. The Natural History Of Morals.
Chapter II. The Pagan Empire.
Chapter III. The Conversion Of Rome.
Footnotes

[pg v]

Advertisement To The Third Edition.

I have availed myself of the interval since the last edition, to subject this
book to a minute and careful revision, removing such inaccuracies as I have
been able myself to discover, as well as those which have been brought
under my notice by reviewers or correspondents. I must especially
acknowledge the great assistance I have derived in this task from my
German translator, Dr. H. Jolowicz—now, unhappily, no more—one of the
most conscientious and accurate scholars with whom I have ever been in
communication. In the controversial part of the first chapter, which has
given rise to a good deal of angry discussion, four or five lines which stood
in the former editions have been omitted, and three or four short passages
have been inserted, elucidating or supporting positions which had been
misunderstood or contested.

January 1877.

[pg vii]

Preface.

The questions with which an historian of Morals is chiefly concerned are
the changes that have taken place in the moral standard and in the moral
type. By the first, I understand the degrees in which, in different ages,
recognised virtues have been enjoined and practised. By the second, I
understand the relative importance that in different ages has been attached
to different virtues. Thus, for example, a Roman of the age of Pliny, an
Englishman of the age of Henry VIII., and an Englishman of our own day,
would all agree in regarding humanity as a virtue, and its opposite as a vice;
but their judgments of the acts which are compatible with a humane
disposition would be widely different. A humane man of the first period
might derive a keen enjoyment from those gladiatorial games, which an
Englishman, even in the days of the Tudors, would regard as atrociously
barbarous; and this last would, in his turn, acquiesce in many sport [pg viii]
which would now be emphatically condemned. And in addition to this
change of standard, there is a continual change in the order of precedence
which is given to virtues. Patriotism, chastity, charity, and humility are
examples of virtues, each of which has in some ages been brought forward
as of the most supreme and transcendent importance, and the very basis of a
virtuous character, and in other ages been thrown into the background, and
reckoned among the minor graces of a noble life. The heroic virtues, the
amiable virtues, and what are called more especially the religious virtues,
form distinct groups, to which, in different periods, different degrees of
prominence have been assigned; and the nature, causes, and consequences

of these changes in the moral type are among the most important branches
of history.

In estimating, however, the moral condition of an age, it is not sufficient to
examine the ideal of moralists. It is necessary also to enquire how far that
ideal has been realised among the people. The corruption of a nation is
often reflected in the indulgent and selfish ethics of its teachers; but it
sometimes produces a reaction, and impels the moralist to an asceticism
which is the extreme opposite of the prevailing spirit of society. The means
which moral teachers possess of acting upon their fellows, vary greatly in
their nature and efficacy, and the age of the highest moral teaching is often
not that of the highest general [pg ix] level of practice. Sometimes we find a
kind of aristocracy of virtue, exhibiting the most refined excellence in their
teaching and in their actions, but exercising scarcely any appreciable
influence upon the mass of the community. Sometimes we find moralists of
a much less heroic order, whose influence has permeated every section of
society. In addition, therefore, to the type and standard of morals inculcated
by the teachers, an historian must investigate the realised morals of the
people.

The three questions I have now briefly indicated are those which I have
especially regarded in examining the moral history of Europe between
Augustus and Charlemagne. As a preliminary to this enquiry, I have
discussed at some length the rival theories concerning the nature and
obligations of morals, and have also endeavoured to show what virtues are
especially appropriate to each successive stage of civilisation, in order that
we may afterwards ascertain to what extent the natural evolution has been
affected by special agencies. I have then followed the moral history of the
Pagan Empire, reviewing the Stoical, the Eclectic, and the Egyptian
philosophies, that in turn flourished, showing in what respects they were the
products or expressions of the general condition of society, tracing their
influence in many departments of legislation and literature, and
investigating the causes of the deep-seated corruption which baffled all the
efforts of [pg x] emperors and philosophers. The triumph of the Christian
religion in Europe next demands our attention. In treating this subject, I
have endeavoured, for the most part, to exclude all considerations of a
purely theological or controversial character, all discussions concerning the

origin of the faith in Palestine, and concerning the first type of its doctrine,
and to regard the Church simply as a moral agent, exercising its influence in
Europe. Confining myself within these limits, I have examined the manner
in which the circumstances of the Pagan Empire impeded or assisted its
growth, the nature of the opposition it had to encounter, the transformations
it underwent under the influence of prosperity, of the ascetic enthusiasm,
and of the barbarian invasions, and the many ways in which it determined
the moral condition of society. The growing sense of the sanctity of human
life, the history of charity, the formation of the legends of the hagiology, the
effects of asceticism upon civic and domestic virtues, the moral influence of
monasteries, the ethics of the intellect, the virtues and vices of the decaying
Christian Empire and of the barbarian kingdoms that replaced it, the gradual
apotheosis of secular rank, and the first stages of that military Christianity
which attained its climax at the Crusades, have been all discussed with
more or less detail; and I have concluded my work by reviewing the
changes that have taken place in the position of women, and in [pg xi] the
moral questions connected with the relations of the sexes.

In investigating these numerous subjects, it has occasionally, though rarely,
happened that my path has intersected that which I had pursued in a former
work, and in two or three instances I have not hesitated to repeat facts to
which I had there briefly referred. I have thought that such a course was
preferable to presenting the subject shorn of some material incident, or to
falling into what has always the appearance of an unpleasing egotism, by
appealing unnecessarily to my own writings. Although the history of the
period I have traced has never, so far as I am aware, been written from
exactly the point of view which I have adopted, I have, of course, been for
the most part moving over familiar ground, which has been often and ably
investigated; and any originality that may be found in this work must lie,
not so much in the facts which have been exhumed, as in the manner in
which they have been grouped, and in the significance that has been
ascribed to them. I have endeavoured to acknowledge the more important
works from which I have derived assistance; and if I have not always done
so, I trust the reader will ascribe it to the great multitude of the special
histories relating to the subjects I have treated, to my unwillingness to
overload my pages with too numerous references, and perhaps, in some
cases, to the difficulty that all who [pg xii] have been much occupied with a

single department of history must sometimes have, in distinguishing the
ideas which have sprung from their own reflections, from those which have
been derived from books.

There is one writer, however, whom I must especially mention, for his name
occurs continually in the following pages, and his memory has been more
frequently, and in these latter months more sadly, present to my mind than
any other. Brilliant and numerous as are the works of the late Dean Milman,
it was those only who had the great privilege of his friendship, who could
fully realise the amazing extent and variety of his knowledge; the calm,
luminous, and delicate judgment which he carried into so many spheres; the
inimitable grace and tact of his conversation, coruscating with the happiest
anecdotes, and the brightest and yet the gentlest humour; and, what was
perhaps more remarkable than any single faculty, the admirable harmony
and symmetry of his mind and character, so free from all the disproportion,
and eccentricity, and exaggeration that sometimes make even genius assume
the form of a splendid disease. They can never forget those yet higher
attributes, which rendered him so unspeakably reverend to all who knew
him well—his fervent love of truth, his wide tolerance, his large, generous,
and masculine judgments [pg xiii] of men and things; his almost instinctive
perception of the good that is latent in each opposing party, his disdain for
the noisy triumphs and the fleeting popularity of mere sectarian strife, the
fond and touching affection with which he dwelt upon the images of the
past, combining, even in extreme old age, with the keenest and most
hopeful insight into the progressive movements of his time, and with a rare
power of winning the confidence and reading the thoughts of the youngest
about him. That such a writer should have devoted himself to the
department of history, which more than any other has been distorted by
ignorance, puerility, and dishonesty, I conceive to be one of the happiest
facts in English literature, and (though sometimes diverging from his views)
in many parts of the following work I have largely availed myself of his
researches.

I cannot conceal from myself that this book is likely to encounter much, and
probably angry, contradiction from different quarters and on different
grounds. It is strongly opposed to a school of moral philosophy which is at
present extremely influential in England; and, in addition to the many faults

that may be found in its execution, its very plan must make it displeasing to
many. Its subject necessarily includes questions on which it is exceedingly
difficult for an English writer to touch, and the portion of [pg xiv] history
with which it is concerned has been obscured by no common measure of
misrepresentation and passion. I have endeavoured to carry into it a judicial
impartiality, and I trust that the attempt, however imperfect, may not be
wholly useless to my readers.

London: March 1869.

[pg 001]

Chapter I. The Natural History Of Morals.

A brief enquiry into the nature and foundations of morals appears an
obvious, and, indeed, almost an indispensable preliminary, to any
examination of the moral progress of Europe. Unfortunately, however, such
an enquiry is beset with serious difficulties, arising in part from the extreme
multiplicity of detail which systems of moral philosophy present, and in
part from a fundamental antagonism of principles, dividing them into two
opposing groups. The great controversy, springing from the rival claims of
intuition and utility to be regarded as the supreme regulator of moral
distinctions, may be dimly traced in the division between Plato and
Aristotle; it appeared more clearly in the division between the Stoics and
the Epicureans; but it has only acquired its full distinctness of definition,
and the importance of the questions depending on it has only been fully
appreciated, in modern times, under the influence of such writers as
Cudworth, Clarke, and Butler upon the one side, and Hobbes, Helvétius,
and Bentham on the other.

[pg 002]
Independently of the broad intellectual difficulties which must be
encountered in treating this question, there is a difficulty of a personal kind,
which it may be advisable at once to meet. There is a disposition in some
moralists to resent, as an imputation against their own characters, any
charge of immoral consequences that may be brought against the principles
they advocate. Now it is a peculiarity of this controversy that every moralist
is compelled, by the very nature of the case, to bring such charges against
the opinions of his opponents. The business of a moral philosophy is to
account for and to justify our moral sentiments, or in other words, to show
how we come to have our notions of duty, and to supply us with a reason

for acting upon them. If it does this adequately, it is impregnable, and
therefore a moralist who repudiates one system is called upon to show that,
according to its principles, the notion of duty, or the motives for performing
it, could never have been generated. The Utilitarian accuses his opponent of
basing the entire system of morals on a faculty that has no existence, of
adopting a principle that would make moral duty vary with the latitude and
the epoch, of resolving all ethics into an idle sentiment. The intuitive
moralist, for reasons I shall hereafter explain, believes that the Utilitarian
theory is profoundly immoral. But to suppose that either of these charges
extends to the character of the moralist is altogether to misconceive the
position which moral theories actually hold in life. Our moral sentiments do
not flow from, but long precede our ethical systems; and it is usually only
after our characters have been fully formed that we begin to reason about
them. It is both possible and very common for the reasoning to be very
defective, without any corresponding imperfection in the disposition of the
man.

The two rival theories of morals are known by many names, and are
subdivided into many groups. One of them is generally described as the
stoical, the intuitive, the independent [pg 003] or the sentimental; the other
as the epicurean, the inductive, the utilitarian, or the selfish. The moralists
of the former school, to state their opinions in the broadest form, believe
that we have a natural power of perceiving that some qualities, such as
benevolence, chastity, or veracity, are better than others, and that we ought
to cultivate them, and to repress their opposites. In other words, they
contend, that by the constitution of our nature, the notion of right carries
with it a feeling of obligation; that to say a course of conduct is our duty, is
in itself, and apart from all consequences, an intelligible and sufficient
reason for practising it; and that we derive the first principles of our duties
from intuition. The moralist of the opposite school denies that we have any
such natural perception. He maintains that we have by nature absolutely no
knowledge of merit and demerit, of the comparative excellence of our
feelings and actions, and that we derive these notions solely from an
observation of the course of life which is conducive to human happiness.
That which makes actions good is, that they increase the happiness or
diminish the pains of mankind. That which constitutes their demerit is their
opposite tendency. To procure “the greatest happiness for the greatest

number,” is therefore the highest aim of the moralist, the supreme type and
expression of virtue.

It is manifest, however, that this last school, if it proceeded no further than I
have stated, would have failed to accomplish the task which every moralist
must undertake. It is easy to understand that experience may show that
certain actions are conducive to the happiness of mankind, and that these
actions may in consequence be regarded as supremely excellent. The
question still remains, why we are bound to perform them. If men, who
believe that virtuous actions are those which experience shows to be useful
to society, believe also that they are under a natural obligation to seek the
happiness of others, rather than their [pg 004] own, when the two interests
conflict, they have certainly no claim to the title of inductive moralists.
They recognise a moral faculty, or natural sense of moral obligation or duty
as truly as Butler or as Cudworth. And, indeed, a position very similar to
this has been adopted by several intuitive moralists. Thus Hutcheson, who
is the very founder in modern times of the doctrine of “a moral sense,” and
who has defended the disinterested character of virtue more powerfully than
perhaps any other moralist, resolved all virtue into benevolence, or the
pursuit of the happiness of others; but he maintained that the excellence and
obligation of benevolence are revealed to us by a “moral sense.” Hume, in
like manner, pronounced utility to be the criterion and essential element of
all virtue, and is so far undoubtedly a Utilitarian; but he asserted also that
our pursuit of virtue is unselfish, and that it springs from a natural feeling of
approbation or disapprobation distinct from reason, and produced by a
peculiar sense, or taste, which rises up within us at the contemplation of
virtue or of vice.1 A similar doctrine has more recently been advocated by
Mackintosh. [pg 005] It is supposed by many that it is a complete
description of the Utilitarian system of morals, that it judges all actions and
dispositions by their consequences, pronouncing them moral in proportion
to their tendency to promote, immoral in proportion to their tendency to
diminish, the happiness of man. But such a summary is clearly inadequate,
for it deals only with one of the two questions which every moralist must
answer. A theory of morals must explain not only what constitutes a duty,
but also how we obtain the notion of there being such a thing as duty. It
must tell us not merely what is the course of conduct we ought to pursue,

but also what is the meaning of this word “ought,” and from what source we
derive the idea it expresses.

Those who have undertaken to prove that all our morality is a product of
experience, have not shrunk from this task, and have boldly entered upon
the one path that was open to them. The notion of there being any such
feeling as an original sense of obligation distinct from the anticipation of
pleasure or pain, they treat as a mere illusion of the imagination. All that is
meant by saying we ought to do an action is, that if we do not do it, we shall
suffer. A desire to obtain happiness and to avoid pain is the only possible
motive to action. The reason, and the only reason, why we should perform
virtuous actions, or in other words, seek the good of others, is that on the
whole such a course will bring us the greatest amount of happiness.

We have here then a general statement of the doctrine which bases morals
upon experience. If we ask what constitutes virtuous, and what vicious
actions, we are told that the first are those which increase the happiness or
diminish the [pg 006] pains of mankind; and the second are those which
have the opposite effect. If we ask what is the motive to virtue, we are told
that it is an enlightened self-interest. The words happiness, utility, and
interest include, however, many different kinds of enjoyment, and have
given rise to many different modifications of the theory.

Perhaps the lowest and most repulsive form of this theory is that which was
propounded by Mandeville, in his “Enquiry into the Origin of Moral
Virtue.”2 According to this writer, virtue sprang in the first instance from the
cunning of rulers. These, in order to govern men, found it necessary to
persuade them that it was a noble thing to restrain, instead of indulging their
passions, and to devote themselves entirely to the good of the community.
The manner in which they attained this end was by acting upon the feeling
of vanity. They persuaded men that human nature was something nobler
than the nature of animals, and that devotion to the community rendered a
man pre-eminently great. By statues, and titles, and honours; by continually
extolling such men as Regulus or Decius; by representing those who were
addicted to useless enjoyments as a low and despicable class, they at last so
inflamed the vanity of men as to kindle an intense emulation, and inspire
[pg 007] the most heroic actions. And soon new influences came into play.

Men who began by restraining their passions, in order to acquire the
pleasure of the esteem of others, found that this restraint saved them from
many painful consequences that would have naturally ensued from over-
indulgence, and this discovery became a new motive to virtue. Each
member of the community moreover found that he himself derived benefit
from the self-sacrifice of others, and also that when he was seeking his own
interest, without regard to others, no persons stood so much in his way as
those who were similarly employed, and he had thus a double reason for
diffusing abroad the notion of the excellence of self-sacrifice. The result of
all this was that men agreed to stigmatise under the term “vice” whatever
was injurious, and to eulogise as “virtue” whatever was beneficial to
society.

The opinions of Mandeville attracted, when they were published, an
attention greatly beyond their intrinsic merit, but they are now sinking
rapidly into deserved oblivion. The author, in a poem called the “Fable of
the Bees,” and in comments attached to it, himself advocated a thesis
altogether inconsistent with that I have described, maintaining that “private
vices were public benefits,” and endeavouring, in a long series of very
feeble and sometimes very grotesque arguments, to prove that vice was in
the highest degree beneficial to mankind. A far greater writer had however
already framed a scheme of morals which, if somewhat less repulsive, was
in no degree less selfish than that of Mandeville; and the opinions of
Hobbes concerning the essence and origin of virtue, have, with no very
great variations, been adopted by what may be termed the narrower school
of Utilitarians.

According to these writers we are governed exclusively by our own
interest.3 Pleasure, they assure us, is the only [pg 008] good,4 and moral
good and moral evil mean nothing more than our voluntary conformity to a
law that will bring it to us.5 To love good simply as good, is impossible.6
When we speak of the goodness of God, we mean only His goodness to [pg
009] us.7 Reverence is nothing more than our conviction, that one who has
power to do us both good and harm, will only do us good.8 The pleasures of
piety arise from the belief that we are about to receive pleasure, and the
pains of piety from the belief that we are about to suffer pain from the
Deity.9 Our very affections, according to some of these writers, are all forms

of self-love. Thus charity springs partly from our desire to obtain the esteem
of others, partly from the expectation that the favours we have bestowed
will be reciprocated, and partly, too, from the gratification of the sense of
power, by the proof that we can satisfy not only our own desires but also the
desires of others.10 Pity is an emotion arising from a vivid realisation of
sorrow that may befall ourselves, suggested by the sight of the sorrows of
others. We pity especially those who have not [pg 010] deserved calamity,
because we consider ourselves to belong to that category; and the spectacle
of suffering against which no forethought could provide, reminds us most
forcibly of what may happen to ourselves.11 Friendship is the sense of the
need of the person befriended.12

From such a conception of human nature it is easy to divine what system of
morals must flow. No character, feeling, or action is naturally better than
others, and as long as men are in a savage condition, morality has no
existence. Fortunately, however, we are all dependent for many of our
pleasures upon others. Co-operation and organisation are essential to our
happiness, and these are impossible without [pg 011] some restraint being
placed upon our appetites. Laws are enacted to secure this restraint, and
being sustained by rewards and punishments, they make it the interest of the
individual to regard that of the community. According to Hobbes, the
disposition of man is so anarchical, and the importance of restraining it so
transcendent, that absolute government alone is good; the commands of the
sovereign are supreme, and must therefore constitute the law of morals. The
other moralists of the school, though repudiating this notion, have given a
very great and distinguished place to legislation in their schemes of ethics;
for all our conduct being determined by our interests, virtue being simply
the conformity of our own interests with those of the community, and a
judicious legislation being the chief way of securing this conformity, the
functions of the moralist and of the legislator are almost identical.13 But in
addition to the rewards and punishments of the penal code, those arising
from public opinion—fame or infamy, the friendship or hostility of those
about us—are enlisted on the side of virtue. The educating influence of
laws, and the growing perception of the identity of interests of the different
members of the community, create a public opinion favourable to all the
qualities which are “the means of peaceable, sociable, and comfortable
living.”14 Such are justice, gratitude, modesty, [pg 012] equity, and mercy;

and such, too, are purity and chastity, which, considered in themselves
alone, are in no degree more excellent than the coarsest and most
indiscriminate lust, but which can be shown to be conducive to the
happiness of society, and become in consequence virtues.15 This education
of public opinion grows continually stronger with civilisation, and
gradually moulds the characters of men, making them more and more
disinterested, heroic, and unselfish. A disinterested, unselfish, and heroic
man, it is explained, is one who is strictly engrossed in the pursuit of his
own pleasure, but who pursues it in such a manner as to include in its
gratification the happiness of others.16

It is a very old assertion, that a man who prudently sought his own interest
would live a life of perfect virtue. This opinion is adopted by most of those
Utilitarians who are least inclined to lay great stress upon religious motives;
and as they maintain that every man necessarily pursues exclusively his
own happiness, we return by another path to the old Platonic doctrine, that
all vice is ignorance. Virtue is a judicious, and vice an injudicious, pursuit
of pleasure. Virtue is a branch of prudence, vice is nothing more than [pg
013] imprudence or miscalculation.17 He who seeks to improve the moral
condition of mankind has two, and only two, ways of accomplishing his
end. The first is, to make it more and more the interest of each to conform
to that of the others; the second is, to dispel the ignorance which prevents
men from seeing their true interest.18 If chastity or truth, or any other of
what we regard as virtues, could be shown to produce on the whole more
pain than they destroy, or to deprive men of more pleasure than they afford,
they would not be virtues, but vices.19 If it could be shown that [pg 014] it is
not for our own interest to practise any of what are admitted to be virtues,
all obligation to practise them would immediately cease.20 The whole
scheme of ethics may be evolved from the four canons of Epicurus. The
pleasure which produces no pain is to be embraced. The pain which
produces no pleasure is to be avoided. The pleasure is to be avoided which
prevents a greater pleasure, or produces a greater pain. The pain is to be
endured which averts a greater pain, or secures a greater pleasure.21

So far I have barely alluded to any but terrestrial motives. These, in the
opinion of many of the most illustrious of the school, are sufficient, but
others—as we shall see, I think, with great reason—are of a different

opinion. Their obvious resource is in the rewards and punishments of
another world, and these they accordingly present as the motive to virtue.
Of all the modifications of the selfish theory, this alone can be said to
furnish interested motives for virtue which are invariably and incontestably
adequate. If men introduce the notion of infinite punishments and infinite
rewards distributed by an omniscient Judge, they can undoubtedly supply
stronger reasons for practising virtue than can ever be found for practising
vice. While admitting therefore in emphatic terms, that any sacrifice of our
pleasure, without the prospect of an equivalent reward, is a simple act of
madness, and unworthy of a rational being,22 these [pg 015] writers
maintain that we may reasonably sacrifice the enjoyments of this life,
because we shall be rewarded by far greater enjoyment in the next. To gain
heaven and avoid hell should be the spring of all our actions,23 and virtue is
simply prudence extending its calculations beyond the grave.24 [pg 016]
This calculation is what we mean by the “religious motive.”25 The belief
that the nobility and excellence of virtue could incite us, was a mere
delusion of the Pagans.26

Considered simply in the light of a prudential scheme, there are only two
possible objections that could be brought against this theory. It might be
said that the amount of virtue required for entering heaven was not defined,
and that therefore it would be possible to enjoy some vices on earth with
impunity. To this, however, it is answered that the very indefiniteness of the
requirement renders zealous piety a matter of prudence, and also that there
is probably a graduated scale of rewards and punishments adapted to every
variety of merit and demerit.27 It might be said too that present pleasures are
at least certain, and that those of another world are not equally so. It is
answered that the rewards and punishments offered in another world are so
transcendently great, that according to the rules of ordinary [pg 017]
prudence, if there were only a probability, or even a bare possibility, of their
being real, a wise man should regulate his course with a view to them.28

Among these writers, however, some have diverged to a certain degree from
the broad stream of utilitarianism, declaring that the foundation of the moral
law is not utility, but the will or arbitrary decree of God. This opinion,
which was propounded by the schoolman Ockham, and by several other
writers of his age,29 has in modern times found many adherents,30 and been

defended through a variety of motives. Some have upheld it on the
philosophical ground that a law can be nothing but the sentence of a
lawgiver; others from a desire to place morals in permanent subordination
to theology; others in order to answer objections to Christianity derived
from apparently immoral acts said to have been sanctioned by the Divinity;
and others because having adopted strong Calvinistic sentiments, they were
at once profoundly opposed to utilitarian morals, and at the [pg 018] same
time too firmly convinced of the total depravity of human nature to admit
the existence of any trustworthy moral sense.31

In the majority of cases, however, these writers have proved substantially
utilitarians. When asked how we can know the will of God, they answer
that in as far as it is not included in express revelation, it must be
discovered by the rule of utility; for nature proves that the Deity is
supremely benevolent, and desires the welfare of men, and therefore any
conduct that leads to that end is in conformity with His will.32 To the
question why the Divine will should be obeyed, there are but two answers.
The first, which is that of the intuitive moralist, is that we are under a
natural obligation of gratitude to our Creator. The second, which is that of
the selfish moralist, is that the Creator has infinite rewards and punishments
at His disposal. The latter answer appears usually to have been adopted, and
the most eminent member has summed up with great succinctness the
opinion of his school. “The good of mankind,” he says, “is the subject, the
will of God the rule, and everlasting happiness the motive and end of all
virtue.”33

[pg 019]
We have seen that the distinctive characteristic of the inductive school of
moralists is an absolute denial of the existence of any natural or innate
moral sense or faculty enabling us to distinguish between the higher and
lower parts of our nature, revealing to us either the existence of a law of
duty or the conduct that it prescribes. We have seen that the only postulate
of these writers is that happiness being universally desired is a desirable
thing, that the only merit they recognise in actions or feelings is their
tendency to promote human happiness, and that the only motive to a
virtuous act they conceive possible is the real or supposed happiness of the
agent. The sanctions of morality thus constitute its obligation, and apart

from them the word “ought” is absolutely unmeaning. Those sanctions, as
we have considered them, are of different kinds and degrees of magnitude.
Paley, though elsewhere acknowledging the others, regarded the religious
one as so immeasurably the first, that he represented it as the one motive of
virtue.34 Locke divided them into Divine rewards and punishments, legal
penalties and social penalties;35 Bentham into physical, political, moral or
popular, and religious—the first being the bodily evils that result from vice,
the second the enactments of legislators, the third the pleasures and pains
arising from social intercourse, the fourth the rewards and punishments of
another world.36

[pg 020]
During the greater part of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the
controversy in England between those who derived the moral code from
experience, and those who derived it from intuitions of the reason, or from a
special faculty, or from a moral sense, or from the power of sympathy,
turned mainly upon the existence of an unselfish element in our nature. The
reality of this existence having been maintained by Shaftesbury, was
established with an unprecedented, and I believe an irresistible force, by
Hutcheson, and the same question occupies a considerable place in the
writings of Butler, Hume, and Adam Smith. The selfishness of the school of
Hobbes, though in some degree mitigated, may be traced in every page of
the writings of Bentham; but some of his disciples have in this respect
deviated very widely from their master, and in their hands the whole tone
and complexion of utilitarianism have been changed.37 The two means by
which this transformation [pg 021] has been effected are the recognition of
our unselfish or sympathetic feelings, and the doctrine of the association of
ideas.

That human nature is so constituted that we naturally take a pleasure in the
sight of the joy of others is one of those facts which to an ordinary observer
might well appear among the most patent that can be conceived. We have
seen, however, that it was emphatically denied by Hobbes, and during the
greater part of the last century it was fashionable among writers of the
school of Helvétius to endeavour to prove that all domestic or social
affections were dictated simply by a need of the person who was beloved.
The reality of the pleasures and pains of sympathy was admitted by

Bentham;38 but in accordance with the whole spirit of his philosophy, he
threw them as much as possible into the background, and, as I have already
noticed, gave them no place in his summary of the sanctions of virtue. The
tendency, however, of the later members of the school has been to recognise
them fully,39 though they [pg 022] differ as to the source from which they
spring. According to one section our benevolent affections are derived from
our selfish feelings by an association of ideas in a manner which I shall
presently describe. According to the other they are an original part of the
constitution of our nature. However they be generated, their existence is
admitted, their cultivation is a main object of morals, and the pleasure
derived from their exercise a leading motive to virtue. The differences
between the intuitive moralists and their rivals on this point are of two
kinds. Both acknowledge the existence in human nature of both benevolent
and malevolent feelings, and that we have a natural power of distinguishing
one from the other; but the first maintain and the second deny that we have
a natural power of perceiving that one is better than the other. Both admit
that we enjoy a pleasure in acts of benevolence to others, but most writers
of the first school maintain that that pleasure follows unsought for, while
writers of the other school contend that the desire of obtaining it is the
motive of the action.

But by far the most ingenious and at the same time most influential system
of utilitarian morals is that which owes its distinctive feature to the doctrine
of association of Hartley. This doctrine, which among the modern
achievements of ethics occupies on the utilitarian side a position
corresponding in importance to the doctrine of innate moral faculties as
distinguished from innate moral ideas on the intuitive side, was not
absolutely unknown to the ancients, though they never perceived either the
extent to which it may be carried or the important consequences that might
be deduced from it. Some traces of it may be found in [pg 023] Aristotle,40
and some of the Epicureans applied it to friendship, maintaining that,
although we first of all love our friend on account of the pleasure he can
give us, we come soon to love him for his own sake, and apart from all
considerations of utility.41 Among moderns Locke has the merit of having
devised the phrase, “association of ideas;”42 but he applied it only to some
cases of apparently eccentric sympathies or antipathies. Hutcheson,
however, closely anticipated both the doctrine of Hartley and the favourite

illustration of the school; observing that we desire some things as
themselves pleasurable and others only as means to obtain pleasurable
things, and that these latter, which he terms “secondary desires,” may
become as powerful as the former. “Thus, as soon as we come to apprehend
the use of wealth or power to gratify any of our original desires we must
also desire them. Hence arises the universality of these desires of wealth
and power, since they are the means of gratifying all our desires.”43 The
same principles were carried much farther by a clergyman named Gay in a
short dissertation which is now almost forgotten, but to which Hartley
ascribed the first suggestion of his theory,44 and in which indeed the most
valuable part of it is clearly laid down. Differing altogether from Hutcheson
as to the existence of any innate moral sense or principle [pg 024] of
benevolence in man, Gay admitted that the arguments of Hutcheson to
prove that the adult man possesses a moral sense were irresistible, and he
attempted to reconcile this fact with the teaching of Locke by the doctrine
of “secondary desires.” He remarks that in our reasonings we do not always
fall back upon first principles or axioms, but sometimes start from
propositions which though not self-evident we know to be capable of proof.
In the same way in justifying our actions we do not always appeal to the
tendency to produce happiness which is their one ultimate justification, but
content ourselves by showing that they produce some of the known “means
to happiness.” These “means to happiness” being continually appealed to as
justifying motives come insensibly to be regarded as ends, possessing an
intrinsic value irrespective of their tendency; and in this manner it is that we
love and admire virtue even when unconnected with our interests.45

The great work of Hartley expanding and elaborating these views was
published in 1747. It was encumbered by much physiological speculation
into which it is needless for us now to enter, about the manner in which
emotions act upon the nerves, and although accepted enthusiastically by
Priestley and Belsham, and in some degree by Tucker, I do not think that its
purely ethical speculations had much influence until they were adopted by
some leading utilitarians in the [pg 025] present century.46 Whatever may be
thought of the truth, it is impossible to withhold some admiration from the
intellectual grandeur of a system which starting from a conception of
human nature as low and as base as that of Mandeville or Hobbes professes
without the introduction of a single new or nobler element, by a strange

process of philosophic alchemy, to evolve out of this original selfishness the
most heroic and most sensitive virtue. The manner in which this
achievement is effected is commonly illustrated by the passion of avarice.
Money in itself possesses absolutely nothing that is admirable or
pleasurable, but being the means of procuring us many of the objects of our
desire, it becomes associated in our minds with the idea of pleasure; it is
therefore itself loved; and it is possible for the love of money so completely
to eclipse or supersede the love of all those things which money procures,
that the miser will forego them all, rather than part with a fraction of his
gold.47

[pg 026]
The same phenomenon may be traced, it is said, in a multitude of other
forms.48 Thus we seek power, because it gives us the means of gratifying
many desires. It becomes associated with those desires, and is, at last, itself
passionately loved. Praise indicates the affection of the eulogist, and marks
us out for the affection of others. Valued at first as a means, it is soon
desired as an end, and to such a pitch can our enthusiasm rise, that we may
sacrifice all earthly things for posthumous praise which can never reach our
ear. And the force of association may extend even farther. We love praise,
because it procures us certain advantages. We then love it more than these
advantages. We proceed by the same process to transfer our affections to
those things which naturally or generally procure praise. We at last love
what is praiseworthy more than praise, and will endure perpetual obloquy
rather than abandon it.49 To this process, it is said, all our moral sentiments
must be ascribed. Man has no natural benevolent feelings. He is at first
governed solely by his interest, but the infant learns to associate its
pleasures with the idea of its mother, the boy with the idea of his family, the
man with those of his class, his church, his country, and at last of all
mankind, and in each case an independent affection is at length formed.50
The sight of suffering in others awakens in the child a painful recollection
of his own sufferings, which parents, by appealing to the infant imagination,
still further strengthen, and besides, “when several children are educated
together, the pains, the [pg 027] denials of pleasure, and the sorrows which
affect one gradually extend in some degree to all;” and thus the suffering of
others becomes associated with the idea of our own, and the feeling of
compassion is engendered.51 Benevolence and justice are associated in our

minds with the esteem of our fellow-men, with reciprocity of favours, and
with the hope of future reward. They are loved at first for these, and finally
for themselves, while opposite trains of association produce opposite
feelings towards malevolence and injustice.52 And thus virtue, considered as
a whole, becomes the supreme object of our affections. Of all our pleasures,
more are derived from those acts which are called virtuous, than from any
other source. The virtuous acts of others procure us countless advantages.
Our own virtue obtains for us the esteem of men and return of favours. All
the epithets of praise are appropriated to virtue, and all the epithets of blame
to vice. Religion teaches us to connect hopes of infinite joy with the one,
and fears of infinite suffering with the other. Virtue becomes therefore
peculiarly associated with the idea of pleasurable things. It is soon loved,
independently of and [pg 028] more than these; we feel a glow of pleasure
in practising it, and an intense pain in violating it. Conscience, which is thus
generated, becomes the ruling principle of our lives,53 and having learnt to
sacrifice all earthly things rather than disobey it, we rise, by an association
of ideas, into the loftiest region of heroism.54

The influence of this ingenious, though I think in some respect fanciful,
theory depends less upon the number than upon the ability of its adherents.
Though little known, I believe, beyond England, it has in England exercised
a great fascination over exceedingly dissimilar minds,55 and it does
undoubtedly evade some of the objections to the other forms of the
inductive theory. Thus, when intuitive moralists contend that our moral
judgments, being instantaneous and effected under the manifest impulse of
an emotion of sympathy or repulsion, are as far as possible removed from
that cold calculation of interests to which the utilitarian reduces them, it is
answered, that the association of ideas is [pg 029] sufficient to engender a
feeling which is the proximate cause of our decision.56 Alone, of all the
moralists of this school, the disciple of Hartley recognises conscience as a
real and important element of our nature,57 and maintains that it is possible
to love virtue for itself as a form of happiness without any thought of
ulterior consequences.58 The immense value this theory ascribes to
education, gives it an unusual practical importance. When we are balancing
between a crime and a virtue, our wills, it is said, are necessarily
determined by the greater pleasure. If we find more pleasure in the vice
than in the virtue, we inevitably gravitate to evil. If we find more pleasure

in the virtue than in the vice, we are as irresistibly attracted towards good.
But the strength of such motives may be immeasurably enhanced by an
early association of ideas. If we have been accustomed from childhood to
associate our ideas of praise and pleasure with [pg 030] virtue, we shall
readily yield to virtuous motives; if with vice, to vicious ones. This
readiness to yield to one or other set of motives, constitutes disposition,
which is thus, according to these moralists, altogether an artificial thing, the
product of education, and effected by association of ideas.59

It will be observed, however, that this theory, refined and imposing as it
may appear, is still essentially a selfish one. Even when sacrificing all
earthly objects through love of virtue, the good man is simply seeking his
greatest enjoyment, indulging a kind of mental luxury which gives him
more pleasure than what he foregoes, just as the miser finds more pleasure
in accumulation than in any form of expenditure.60 There has been, indeed,
one attempt to emancipate the [pg 031] theory from this condition, but it
appears to me altogether futile. It has been said that men in the first instance
indulge in baneful excesses, on account of the pleasure they afford, but the
habit being contracted, continue to practise them after they have ceased to
afford pleasure, and that a similar law may operate in the case of the habit
of virtue.61 But the reason why men who have contracted a habit continue to
practise it after it has ceased to give them positive enjoyment, is because to
desist, creates a restlessness and uneasiness which amounts to acute mental
pain. To avoid that pain is the motive of the action.

The reader who has perused the passages I have accumulated in the notes,
will be able to judge with what degree of justice utilitarian writers denounce
with indignation the imputation of selfishness, as a calumny against their
system. It is not, I think, a strained or unnatural use of language to describe
as selfish or interested, all actions which a man performs, in order himself
to avoid suffering or acquire the [pg 032] greatest possible enjoyment. If
this be so, the term selfish is strictly applicable to all the branches of this
system.62 At the same time it must be acknowledged that there is a broad
difference between the refined hedonism of the utilitarians we have last
noticed, and the writings of Hobbes, of Mandeville, or of Paley. It must be
acknowledged, also, that not a few intuitive or stoical moralists have spoken
of the pleasure to be derived from virtue in language little if at all different

from these writers.63 The main object of the earlier members of the
inductive school, was to depress human nature to their standard, by
resolving all the noblest actions into coarse and selfish elements. The main
object of some of the more influential of the later members of this school,
[pg 033] has been to sublimate their conceptions of happiness and interest
in such a manner, as to include the highest displays of heroism. As we have
seen, they fully admit that conscience is a real thing, and should be the
supreme guide of our lives, though they contend that it springs originally
from selfishness, transformed under the influence of the association of
ideas. They acknowledge the reality of the sympathetic feelings, though
they usually trace them to the same source. They cannot, it is true,
consistently with their principles, recognise the possibility of conduct which
is in the strictest sense of the word unselfish, but they contend that it is
quite possible for a man to find his highest pleasure in sacrificing himself
for the good of others, that the association of virtue and pleasure is only
perfect when it leads habitually to spontaneous and uncalculating action,
and that no man is in a healthy moral condition who does not find more
pain in committing a crime than he could derive pleasure from any of its
consequences. The theory in its principle remains unchanged, but in the
hands of some of these writers the spirit has wholly altered.

Having thus given a brief, but, I trust, clear and faithful account of the
different modifications of the inductive theory, I shall proceed to state some
of the principal objections that have been and may be brought against it. I
shall then endeavour to define and defend the opinions of those who believe
that our moral feelings are an essential part of our constitution, developed
by, but not derived from education, and I shall conclude this chapter by an
enquiry into the order of their evolution; so that having obtained some
notion of the natural history of morals, we may be able, in the ensuing
chapters, to judge, how far their normal progress has been accelerated or
retarded by religious or political agencies.

“Psychology,” it has been truly said, “is but developed [pg 034]
consciousness.”64 When moralists assert, that what we call virtue derives its
reputation solely from its utility, and that the interest or pleasure of the
agent is the one motive to practise it, our first question is naturally how far
this theory agrees with the feelings and with the language of mankind. But

if tested by this criterion, there never was a doctrine more emphatically
condemned than utilitarianism. In all its stages, and in all its assertions, it is
in direct opposition to common language and to common sentiments. In all
nations and in all ages, the ideas of interest and utility on the one hand and
of virtue on the other, have been regarded by the multitude as perfectly
distinct, and all languages recognise the distinction. The terms honour,
justice, rectitude or virtue, and their equivalents in every language, present
to the mind ideas essentially and broadly differing from the terms prudence,
sagacity, or interest. The two lines of conduct may coincide, but they are
never confused, and we have not the slightest difficulty in imagining them
antagonistic. When we say a man is governed by a high sense of honour, or
by strong moral feeling, we do not mean that he is prudently pursuing either
his own interests or the interests of society. The universal sentiment of
mankind represents self-sacrifice as an essential element of a meritorious
act, and means by self-sacrifice the deliberate adoption of the least
pleasurable course without the prospect of any pleasure in return. A selfish
act may be innocent, but cannot be virtuous, and to ascribe all good deeds
to selfish motives, is not the distortion but the negation of virtue. No
Epicurean could avow before a popular audience that the one end of his life
was the pursuit of his own happiness without an outburst of indignation and
contempt.65 No man could consciously make this—which according to the
selfish theory is the only rational and indeed possible motive of action—the
deliberate [pg 035] object of all his undertakings, without his character
becoming despicable and degraded. Whether we look within ourselves or
examine the conduct either of our enemies or of our friends, or adjudicate
upon the characters in history or in fiction, our feelings on these matters are
the same. In exact proportion as we believe a desire for personal enjoyment
to be the motive of a good act is the merit of the agent diminished. If we
believe the motive to be wholly selfish the merit is altogether destroyed. If
we believe it to be wholly disinterested the merit is altogether unalloyed.
Hence, the admiration bestowed upon Prometheus, or suffering virtue
constant beneath the blows of Almighty malice, or on the atheist who with
no prospect of future reward suffered a fearful death, rather than abjure an
opinion which could be of no benefit to society, because he believed it to be
the truth. Selfish moralists deny the possibility of that which all ages, all
nations, all popular judgments pronounce to have been the characteristic of
every noble act that has ever been performed. Now, when a philosophy

which seeks by the light of consciousness to decipher the laws of our moral
being proves so diametrically opposed to the conclusions arrived at by the
great mass of mankind, who merely follow their consciousness without
endeavouring to frame systems of philosophy, that it makes most of the
distinctions of common ethical language absolutely unmeaning, this is, to
say the least, a strong presumption against its truth. If Molière's hero had
been speaking prose all his life without knowing it, this was simply because
he did not understand what prose was. In the present case we are asked to
believe that men have been under a total delusion about the leading
principles of their lives which they had distinguished by a whole vocabulary
of terms.

It is said that the case becomes different when the pleasure sought is not a
gross or material enjoyment, but the satisfaction of performed virtue. I
suspect that if men [pg 036] could persuade themselves that the one motive
of a virtuous man was the certainty that the act he accomplished would be
followed by a glow of satisfaction so intense as more than to compensate
for any sacrifice he might have made, the difference would not be as great
as is supposed. In fact, however—and the consciousness of this lies, I
conceive, at the root of the opinions of men upon the subject—the pleasure
of virtue is one which can only be obtained on the express condition of its
not being the object sought. Phenomena of this kind are familiar to us all.
Thus, for example, it has often been observed that prayer, by a law of our
nature and apart from all supernatural intervention, exercises a reflex
influence of a very beneficial character upon the minds of the worshippers.
The man who offers up his petitions with passionate earnestness, with
unfaltering faith, and with a vivid realisation of the presence of an Unseen
Being has risen to a condition of mind which is itself eminently favourable
both to his own happiness and to the expansion of his moral qualities. But
he who expects nothing more will never attain this. To him who neither
believes nor hopes that his petitions will receive a response such a mental
state is impossible. No Protestant before an image of the Virgin, no
Christian before a pagan idol, could possibly attain it. If prayers were
offered up solely with a view to this benefit, they would be absolutely
sterile and would speedily cease. Thus again, certain political economists
have contended that to give money in charity is worse than useless, that it is
positively noxious to society, but they have added that the gratification of

our benevolent affections is pleasing to ourselves, and that the pleasure we
derive from this source may be so much greater than the evil resulting from
our gift, that we may justly, according to the “greatest happiness principle,”
purchase this large amount of gratification to ourselves by a slight injury to
our neighbours. The political economy involved in this very characteristic
[pg 037] specimen of utilitarian ethics I shall hereafter examine. At present
it is sufficient to observe that no one who consciously practised
benevolence solely from this motive could obtain the pleasure in question.
We receive enjoyment from the thought that we have done good. We never
could receive that enjoyment if we believed and realised that we were doing
harm. The same thing is pre-eminently true of the satisfaction of
conscience. A feeling of satisfaction follows the accomplishment of duty for
itself, but if the duty be performed solely through the expectation of a
mental pleasure conscience refuses to ratify the bargain.

There is no fact more conspicuous in human nature than the broad
distinction, both in kind and degree, drawn between the moral and the other
parts of our nature. But this on utilitarian principles is altogether
unaccountable. If the excellence of virtue consists solely in its utility or
tendency to promote the happiness of men, we should be compelled to
canonise a crowd of acts which are utterly remote from all our ordinary
notions of morality. The whole tendency of political economy and
philosophical history which reveal the physiology of societies, is to show
that the happiness and welfare of mankind are evolved much more from our
selfish than from what are termed our virtuous acts. The prosperity of
nations and the progress of civilisation are mainly due to the exertions of
men who while pursuing strictly their own interests, were unconsciously
promoting the interests of the community. The selfish instinct that leads
men to accumulate, confers ultimately more advantage upon the world than
the generous instinct that leads men to give. A great historian has contended
with some force that intellectual development is more important to societies
than moral development. Yet who ever seriously questioned the reality of
the distinction that separates these things? The reader will probably exclaim
that the key to that distinction is to be found in the motive; but it is one of
the paradoxes of the [pg 038] utilitarian school that the motive of the agent
has absolutely no influence on the morality of the act. According to
Bentham, there is but one motive possible, the pursuit of our own

enjoyment. The most virtuous, the most vicious, and the most indifferent of
actions, if measured by this test, would be exactly the same, and an
investigation of motives should therefore be altogether excluded from our
moral judgments.66 Whatever test we adopt, the difficulty of accounting for
the unique and pre-eminent position mankind have assigned to virtue will
remain. If we judge by tendencies, a crowd of objects and of acts to which
no mortal ever dreamed of ascribing virtue, contribute largely to the
happiness of man. If we judge by motives, the moralists we are reviewing
have denied all generic difference between prudential and virtuous [pg 039]
motives. If we judge by intentions, it is certain that however much truth or
chastity may contribute to the happiness of mankind, it is not with
philanthropic intentions that those virtues are cultivated.

It is often said that intuitive moralists in their reasonings are guilty of
continually abandoning their principles by themselves appealing to the
tendency of certain acts to promote human happiness as a justification, and
the charge is usually accompanied by a challenge to show any confessed
virtue that has not that tendency. To the first objection it may be shortly
answered that no intuitive moralist ever dreamed of doubting that
benevolence or charity, or in other words, the promotion of the happiness of
man, is a duty. He maintains that it not only is so, but that we arrive at this
fact by direct intuition, and not by the discovery that such a course is
conducive to our own interest. But while he cordially recognises this branch
of virtue, and while he has therefore a perfect right to allege the beneficial
effects of a virtue in its defence, he refuses to admit that all virtue can be
reduced to this single principle. With the general sentiment of mankind he
regards charity as a good thing only because it is of use to the world. With
the same general sentiment of mankind he believes that chastity and truth
have an independent value, distinct from their influence upon happiness. To
the question whether every confessed virtue is conducive to human
happiness, it is less easy to reply, for it is usually extremely difficult to
calculate the remote tendencies of acts, and in cases where, in the common
apprehension of mankind, the morality is very clear, the consequences are
often very obscure. Notwithstanding the claim of great precision which
utilitarian writers so boastfully make, the standard by which they profess to
measure morals is itself absolutely incapable of definition or accurate
explanation. Happiness is one of the most indeterminate and undefinable

words in the language, and what are the conditions of “the greatest possible
happiness” [pg 040] no one can precisely say. No two nations, perhaps no
two individuals, would find them the same.67 And even if every virtuous act
were incontestably useful, it by no means follows that its virtue is derived
from its utility.

It may be readily granted, that as a general rule those acts which we call
virtuous, are unquestionably productive of happiness, if not to the agent, at
least to mankind in general, but we have already seen that they have by no
means that monopoly or pre-eminence of utility which on utilitarian
principles, the unique position assigned to them would appear to imply. It
may be added, that if we were to proceed in detail to estimate acts by their
consequences, we should soon be led to very startling conclusions. In the
first place, it is obvious that if virtues are only good because they promote,
and vices only evil because they impair the happiness of mankind, the
degrees of excellence or criminality must be strictly proportioned to the
degrees of utility or the reverse.68 Every action, every disposition, every
class, every condition of society must take its place on the moral scale
precisely in accordance with the degree in which it promotes or diminishes
human happiness. Now it is extremely questionable, whether some of the
most monstrous forms of sensuality which it is scarcely possible to name,
cause as much unhappiness as some infirmities of temper, or procrastination
or hastiness of judgment. It is scarcely doubtful that a modest, diffident, and
retiring nature, distrustful of its own abilities, and shrinking with humility
from conflict, produces on the whole less benefit to the world than the self-
assertion of an audacious and arrogant nature, which is impelled to every
struggle, and developes [pg 041] every capacity. Gratitude has no doubt
done much to soften and sweeten the intercourse of life, but the
corresponding feeling of revenge was for centuries the one bulwark against
social anarchy, and is even now one of the chief restraints to crime.69 On the
great theatre of public life, especially in periods of great convulsions when
passions are fiercely roused, it is neither the man of delicate scrupulosity
and sincere impartiality, nor yet the single-minded religious enthusiast,
incapable of dissimulation or procrastination, who confers most benefit
upon the world. It is much rather the astute statesman earnest about his ends
but unscrupulous about his means, equally free from the trammels of
conscience and from the blindness of zeal, who governs because he partly

yields to the passions and the prejudices of his time. But however much
some modern writers may idolize the heroes of success, however much they
may despise and ridicule those far nobler men, whose wide tolerance and
scrupulous honour [pg 042] rendered them unfit leaders in the fray, it has
scarcely yet been contended that the delicate conscientiousness which in
these cases impairs utility constitutes vice. If utility is the sole measure of
virtue, it is difficult to understand how we could look with moral
disapprobation on any class who prevent greater evils than they cause. But
with such a principle we might find strange priestesses at the utilitarian
shrine. “Aufer meretrices de rebus humanis,” said St. Augustine, “turbaveris
omnia libidinibus.”70

Let us suppose an enquirer who intended to regulate his life consistently by
the utilitarian principle; let us suppose him to have overcome the first great
difficulty of his school, arising from the apparent divergence of his own
interests from his duty, to have convinced himself that that divergence does
not exist, and to have accordingly made the pursuit of duty his single object,
it remains to consider what kind of course he would pursue. He is informed
that it is a pure illusion to suppose that human actions have any other end or
rule than happiness, that nothing is intrinsically good or intrinsically bad
apart from its consequences, that no act which is useful can possibly be
vicious, and that the utility of an act constitutes and measures its value. One
of his first observations will be that in very many special cases acts such as
murder, theft, or falsehood, which the world calls criminal, and which in the
majority of instances would undoubtedly be hurtful, appear eminently
productive of good. Why then, he may ask, should they not in these cases
be performed? The answer he receives is that they would not really be
useful, because we must consider the remote as well as the immediate
consequences of actions, and although in particular instances a falsehood or
even a murder might appear beneficial, it is one of the most important
interests of mankind [pg 043] that the sanctity of life and property should be
preserved, and that a high standard of veracity should be maintained. But
this answer is obviously insufficient. It is necessary to show that the extent
to which a single act of what the world calls crime would weaken these
great bulwarks of society is such as to counterbalance the immediate good
which it produces. If it does not, the balance will be on the side of
happiness, the murder or theft or falsehood will be useful, and therefore, on

utilitarian principles, will be virtuous. Now even in the case of public acts,
the effect of the example of an obscure individual is usually small, but if the
act be accomplished in perfect secrecy, the evil effects resulting from the
example will be entirely absent. It has been said that it would be dangerous
to give men permission to perpetrate what men call crimes in secret. This
may be a very good reason why the utilitarian should not proclaim such a
principle, but it is no reason why he should not act upon it. If a man be
convinced that no act which is useful can possibly be criminal, if it be in his
power by perpetrating what is called a crime to obtain an end of great
immediate utility, and if he is able to secure such absolute secrecy as to
render it perfectly certain that his act cannot become an example, and
cannot in consequence exercise any influence on the general standard of
morals, it appears demonstrably certain that on utilitarian principles he
would be justified in performing it. If what we call virtue be only virtuous
because it is useful, it can only be virtuous when it is useful. The question
of the morality of a large number of acts must therefore depend upon the
probability of their detection,71 [pg 044] and a little adroit hypocrisy must
often, not merely in appearance but in reality, convert a vice into a virtue.
The only way by which it has been attempted with any plausibility to evade
this conclusion has been by asserting that the act would impair the
disposition of the agent, or in other words predispose him on other
occasions to perform acts which are generally hurtful to society. But in the
first place a single act has no such effect upon disposition as to counteract a
great immediate good, especially when, as we have supposed, that act is not
a revolt against what is believed to be right, but is performed under the full
belief that it is in accordance with the one rational rule of morals, and in the
next place, as far as the act would form a habit it would appear to be the
habit of in all cases regulating actions by a precise and minute calculation
of their utility, which is the very ideal of utilitarian virtue.

If our enquirer happens to be a man of strong imagination and of solitary
habits, it is very probable that he will be accustomed to live much in a
world of imagination, a world peopled with beings that are to him as real as
those of [pg 045] flesh, with its joys and sorrows, its temptations and its
sins. In obedience to the common feelings of our nature he may have
struggled long and painfully against sins of the imagination, which he was
never seriously tempted to convert into sins of action. But his new

philosophy will be admirably fitted to console his mind. If remorse be
absent the indulgence of the most vicious imagination is a pleasure, and if
this indulgence does not lead to action it is a clear gain, and therefore to be
applauded. That a course may be continually pursued in imagination
without leading to corresponding actions he will speedily discover, and
indeed it has always been one of the chief objections brought against fiction
that the constant exercise of the sympathies in favour of imaginary beings is
found positively to indispose men to practical benevolence.72

Proceeding farther in his course, our moralist will soon find reason to
qualify the doctrine of remote consequences, which plays so large a part in
the calculations of utilitarianism. It is said that it is criminal to destroy
human beings, even when the crime would appear productive of great
utility, for every instance of murder weakens the sanctity of life. But
experience shows that it is possible for men to be perfectly indifferent to
one particular section of human life, without this indifference extending to
others. Thus among the ancient Greeks, the murder or exposition of the
children of poor parents was continually practised with the most absolute
callousness, without exercising any appreciable influence upon the respect
for adult life. In the same manner what may be termed religious unveracity,
or the habit of propagating what are deemed useful superstitions, with the
consciousness of their being false, or at least suppressing or misrepresenting
the facts that might invalidate [pg 046] them, does not in any degree imply
industrial unveracity. Nothing is more common than to find extreme
dishonesty in speculation coexisting with scrupulous veracity in business. If
any vice might be expected to conform strictly to the utilitarian theory, it
would be cruelty; but cruelty to animals may exist without leading to
cruelty to men, and even where spectacles in which animal suffering forms
a leading element exercise an injurious influence on character, it is more
than doubtful whether the measure of human unhappiness they may
ultimately produce is at all equivalent to the passionate enjoyment they
immediately afford.

This last consideration, however, makes it necessary to notice a new, and as
it appears to me, almost grotesque development of the utilitarian theory.
The duty of humanity to animals, though for a long period too much
neglected, may, on the principles of the intuitive moralist, be easily

explained and justified. Our circumstances and characters produce in us
many and various affections towards all with whom we come in contact,
and our consciences pronounce these affections to be good or bad. We feel
that humanity or benevolence is a good affection, and also that it is due in
different degrees to different classes. Thus it is not only natural but right
that a man should care for his own family more than for the world at large,
and this obligation applies not only to parents who are responsible for
having brought their children into existence, and to children who owe a debt
of gratitude to their parents, but also to brothers who have no such special
tie. So too we feel it to be both unnatural and wrong to feel no stronger
interest in our fellow-countrymen than in other men. In the same way we
feel that there is a wide interval between the humanity it is both natural and
right to exhibit towards animals, and that which is due to our own species.
Strong philanthropy could hardly coexist with cannibalism, and a man who
had no hesitation in destroying human life for the sake of obtaining the
skins [pg 047] of the victims, or of freeing himself from some trifling
inconvenience, would scarcely be eulogised for his benevolence. Yet a man
may be regarded as very humane to animals who has no scruple in
sacrificing their lives for his food, his pleasures, or his convenience.

Towards the close of the last century an energetic agitation in favour of
humanity to animals arose in England, and the utilitarian moralists, who
were then rising into influence, caught the spirit of their time and made very
creditable efforts to extend it.73 It is manifest, however, that a theory which
recognised no other end in virtue than the promotion of human happiness,
could supply no adequate basis for the movement. Some of the recent
members of the school have accordingly enlarged their theory, maintaining
that acts are virtuous when they produce a net result of happiness, and
vicious when they produce a net result of suffering, altogether irrespective
of the question whether this enjoyment or suffering is of men or animals. In
other words, they place the duty of man to animals on exactly the same
basis as the duty of man to his fellow-men, maintaining that no suffering
can be rightly inflicted on brutes, which does not produce a larger amount
of happiness to man.74

The first reflection suggested by this theory is, that it [pg 048] appears
difficult to understand how, on the principles of the inductive school, it

could be arrived at. Benevolence, as we have seen, according to these
writers begins in interest. We first of all do good to men, because it is for
our advantage, though the force of the habit may at last act irrespective of
interest. But in the case of animals which cannot resent barbarity, this
foundation of self-interest does not for the most part75 exist. Probably,
however, an association of ideas might help to solve the difficulty, and the
habit of benevolence generated originally from the social relations of men
might at last be extended to the animal world; but that it should be so to the
extent of placing the duty to animals on the same basis as the duty to men, I
do not anticipate, or (at the risk of being accused of great inhumanity), I
must add, desire. I cannot look forward to a time when no one will wear any
article of dress formed out of the skin of an animal, or feed upon animal
flesh, till he has ascertained that the pleasure he derives from doing so,
exceeds the pain inflicted upon the animal, as well as the pleasure of which
by abridging its life he has deprived it.76 And supposing that [pg 049] with
such a calculation before him, the utilitarian should continue to feed on the
flesh of animals, his principle might carry him to further conclusions, from
which I confess I should recoil. If, when Swift was writing his famous essay
in favour of employing for food the redundant babies of a half-starving
population, he had been informed that, according to the more advanced
moralists, to eat a child, and to eat a sheep, rest upon exactly the same
ground; that in the one case as in the other, the single question for the
moralist is, whether the repast on the whole produces more pleasure than
pain, it must be owned that the discovery would have greatly facilitated his
task.

The considerations I have adduced will, I think, be sufficient to show that
the utilitarian principle if pushed to its full logical consequences would be
by no means as accordant with ordinary moral notions as is sometimes
alleged; that it would, on the contrary, lead to conclusions utterly and
outrageously repugnant to the moral feelings it is intended to explain. I will
conclude this part of my argument by very briefly adverting to two great
fields in which, as I believe, it would prove especially revolutionary.

The first of these is the field of chastity. It will be necessary for me in the
course of the present work to dwell at greater length than I should desire
upon questions connected with this virtue. At present, I will merely ask the

reader to conceive a mind from which all notion of the intrinsic excellence
or nobility of purity was banished, and to suppose such a mind comparing,
by a utilitarian standard, a period in which sensuality was almost unbridled,
such as the age of Athenian glory or the English restoration, with a period
of austere virtue. The question which of these societies was morally the best
would thus resolve itself solely into the question in which there was
produced the greatest amount of enjoyment and the smallest amount of
suffering. The pleasures of domestic life, the pleasures resulting from a [pg
050] freer social intercourse,77 the different degrees of suffering inflicted on
those who violated the law of chastity, the ulterior consequences of each
mode of life upon well-being and upon population, would be the chief
elements of the comparison. Can any one believe that the balance of
enjoyment would be so unquestionably and so largely on the side of the
more austere society as to justify the degree of superiority which is assigned
to it?78

The second sphere is that of speculative truth. No class of men have more
highly valued an unflinching hostility to superstition than utilitarians. Yet it
is more than doubtful whether upon their principles it can be justified.
Many superstitions do undoubtedly answer to the Greek conception [pg
051] of slavish “fear of the gods,” and have been productive of unspeakable
misery to mankind, but there are very many others of a different tendency.
Superstitions appeal to our hopes as well as to our fears. They often meet
and gratify the inmost longings of the heart. They offer certainties when
reason can only afford possibilities or probabilities. They supply
conceptions on which the imagination loves to dwell. They sometimes even
impart a new sanction to moral truths. Creating wants which they alone can
satisfy, and fears which they alone can quell, they often become essential
elements of happiness, and their consoling efficacy is most felt in the
languid or troubled hours when it is most needed. We owe more to our
illusions than to our knowledge. The imagination, which is altogether
constructive, probably contributes more to our happiness than the reason,
which in the sphere of speculation is mainly critical and destructive. The
rude charm which in the hour of danger or distress the savage clasps so
confidently to his breast, the sacred picture which is believed to shed a
hallowing and protecting influence over the poor man's cottage, can bestow
a more real consolation in the darkest hour of human suffering than can be

afforded by the grandest theories of philosophy. The first desire of the heart
is to find something on which to lean. Happiness is a condition of feeling,
not a condition of circumstances, and to common minds one of its first
essentials is the exclusion of painful and harassing doubt. A system of belief
may be false, superstitious, and reactionary, and may yet be conducive to
human happiness if it furnishes great multitudes of men with what they
believe to be a key to the universe, if it consoles them in those seasons of
agonizing bereavement when the consolations of enlightened reason are but
empty words, if it supports their feeble and tottering minds in the gloomy
hours of sickness and of approaching death. A credulous and superstitious
nature may be degraded, but in the many cases where superstition [pg 052]
does not assume a persecuting or appalling form it is not unhappy, and
degradation, apart from unhappiness, can have no place in utilitarian ethics.
No error can be more grave than to imagine that when a critical spirit is
abroad the pleasant beliefs will all remain, and the painful ones alone will
perish. To introduce into the mind the consciousness of ignorance and the
pangs of doubt is to inflict or endure much suffering, which may even
survive the period of transition. “Why is it,” said Luther's wife, looking
sadly back upon the sensuous creed which she had left, “that in our old faith
we prayed so often and so warmly, and that our prayers are now so few and
so cold?”79 It is related of an old monk named Serapion, who had embraced
the heresy of the anthropomorphites, that he was convinced by a brother
monk of the folly of attributing to the Almighty a human form. He bowed
his reason humbly to the Catholic creed; but when he knelt down to pray,
the image which his imagination had conceived, and on which for so many
years his affections had been concentrated, had disappeared, and the old
man burst into tears, exclaiming, “You have deprived me of my God.”80

These are indeed facts which must be deeply painful to all who are
concerned with the history of opinion. The possibility of often adding to the
happiness of men by diffusing abroad, or at least sustaining pleasing
falsehoods, and the suffering that must commonly result from their
dissolution, can hardly reasonably be denied. There is one, and but one,
adequate reason that can always justify men in critically reviewing what
they have been taught. It is, the conviction that opinions should not be
regarded as mere mental luxuries, that truth should be deemed an end
distinct from and superior to utility, and that it is a moral duty to [pg 053]

pursue it, whether it leads to pleasure or whether it leads to pain. Among the
many wise sayings which antiquity ascribed to Pythagoras, few are more
remarkable than his division of virtue into two distinct branches—to be
truthful and to do good.81

Of the sanctions which, according to the utilitarians, constitute the sole
motives to virtue, there is one, as I have said, unexceptionably adequate.
Those who adopt the religious sanction, can always appeal to a balance of
interest in favour of virtue; but as the great majority of modern utilitarians
confidently sever their theory from all theological considerations, I will
dismiss this sanction with two or three remarks.

In the first place, it is obvious that those who regard the arbitrary will of the
Deity as the sole rule of morals, render it perfectly idle to represent the
Divine attributes as deserving of our admiration. To speak of the goodness
of God, either implies that there is such a quality as goodness, to which the
Divine acts conform, or it is an unmeaning tautology. Why should we extol,
or how can we admire, the perfect goodness of a Being whose will and acts
constitute the sole standard or definition of perfection?82 The theory which
teaches that the arbitrary will of the Deity is the one rule of morals, and the
anticipation of future rewards and punishments the one reason for
conforming to it, consists of two parts. The first annihilates the goodness of
God; the second, the virtue of man.

[pg 054]
Another and equally obvious remark is, that while these theologians
represent the hope of future rewards, and the fear of future punishments, as
the only reason for doing right, one of our strongest reasons for believing in
the existence of these rewards and punishments, is our deep-seated feeling
of merit and demerit. That the present disposition of affairs is in many
respects unjust, that suffering often attends a course which deserves reward,
and happiness a course which deserves punishment, leads men to infer a
future state of retribution. Take away the consciousness of desert, and the
inference would no longer be made.

A third remark, which I believe to be equally true, but which may not be
acquiesced in with equal readiness, is that without the concurrence of a
moral faculty, it is wholly impossible to prove from nature that supreme

goodness of the Creator, which utilitarian theologians assume. We speak of
the benevolence shown in the joy of the insect glittering in the sunbeam, in
the protecting instincts so liberally bestowed among the animal world, in
the kindness of the parent to its young, in the happiness of little children, in
the beauty and the bounty of nature, but is there not another side to the
picture? The hideous disease, the countless forms of rapine and of suffering,
the entozoa that live within the bodies, and feed upon the anguish of
sentient beings, the ferocious instinct of the cat, that prolongs with delight
the agonies of its victim, all the multitudinous forms of misery that are
manifested among the innocent portion of creation, are not these also the
works of nature? We speak of the Divine veracity. What is the whole history
of the intellectual progress of the world but one long struggle of the intellect
of man to emancipate itself from the deceptions of nature? Every object that
meets the eye of the savage awakens his curiosity only to lure him into
some deadly error. The sun that seems a diminutive light revolving around
his world; the moon and the stars that appear formed only to light his path;
the strange [pg 055] fantastic diseases that suggest irresistibly the notion of
present dæmons; the terrific phenomena of nature which appear the results,
not of blind forces, but of isolated spiritual agencies—all these things
fatally, inevitably, invincibly impel him into superstition. Through long
centuries the superstitions thus generated have deluged the world with
blood. Millions of prayers have been vainly breathed to what we now know
were inexorable laws of nature. Only after ages of toil did the mind of man
emancipate itself from those deadly errors to which by the deceptive
appearances of nature the long infancy of humanity is universally doomed.

And in the laws of wealth how different are the appearances from the
realities of things! Who can estimate the wars that have been kindled, the
bitterness and the wretchedness that have been caused, by errors relating to
the apparent antagonism of the interests of nations which were so natural
that for centuries they entangled the very strongest intellects, and it was
scarcely till our own day that a tardy science came to dispel them?

What shall we say to these things? If induction alone were our guide, if we
possessed absolutely no knowledge of some things being in their own
nature good, and others in their own nature evil, how could we rise from
this spectacle of nature to the conception of an all-perfect Author? Even if

we could discover a predominance of benevolence in the creation, we
should still regard the mingled attributes of nature as a reflex of the mingled
attributes of its Contriver. Our knowledge of the Supreme Excellence, our
best evidence even of the existence of the Creator, is derived not from the
material universe but from our own moral nature.83 It is [pg 056] not of
reason but of faith. In other words it springs from that instinctive or moral
nature which is as truly a part of our being as is our reason, which teaches
us what reason could never teach, the supreme and transcendent excellence
of moral good, which rising dissatisfied above this world of sense, proves
itself by the very intensity of its aspiration to be adapted for another sphere,
and which constitutes at once the evidence of a Divine element within us,
and the augury of the future that is before us.84

These things belong rather to the sphere of feeling than of reasoning. Those
who are most deeply persuaded of their truth, will probably feel that they
are unable by argument to express adequately the intensity of their
conviction, but they may point to the recorded experience of the best and
greatest men in all ages, to the incapacity of terrestrial things to satisfy our
nature, to the manifest tendency, both in individuals and nations, of a pure
and heroic life to kindle, and of a selfish and corrupt life to cloud, these
aspirations, to the historical fact that no philosophy and no scepticism have
been able permanently to repress them. The lines of our moral nature tend
upwards. In it we have the common root of religion and of ethics, for the
same consciousness that tells us that, even when it is in fact the weakest
element of our constitution, it is by right supreme, commanding and
authoritative, teaches us also that it is Divine. All the nobler religions that
have governed mankind, have done so by virtue of the affinity of their
teaching with this nature, by speaking, as common religious language
correctly describes it, “to the heart,” by appealing not to self-interest, but to
that Divine element of self-sacrifice which is latent in every soul.85 The
reality of this moral nature is the one great [pg 057] question of natural
theology, for it involves that connection between our own and a higher
nature, without which the existence of a First Cause were a mere question
of archæology, and religion but an exercise of the imagination.

I return gladly to the secular sanctions of utilitarianism. The majority of its
disciples assure us that these are sufficient to establish their theory, or in

other words, that our duty coincides so strictly with our interest when
rightly understood, that a perfectly prudent would necessarily become a
perfectly virtuous man.86 Bodily vice they tell us ultimately brings bodily
weakness and suffering. Extravagance is followed by ruin; unbridled
passions by the loss of domestic peace; disregard for the interests of others
by social or legal penalties; while on the other hand, the most moral is also
the most tranquil disposition; benevolence is one of the truest of our
pleasures, and virtue may become by habit, an essential of enjoyment. As
the shopkeeper who has made his fortune, still sometimes continues at the
counter, because the daily routine has become necessary to his happiness, so
the “moral hero” may continue to practise that virtue which was at first the
mere instrument of his pleasures, as being in itself more precious than all
besides.87

[pg 058]
This theory of the perfect coincidence of virtue and interest rightly
understood, which has always been a commonplace of moralists, and has
been advocated by many who were far from wishing to resolve virtue into
prudence, contains no doubt a certain amount of truth, but only of the most
general kind. It does not apply to nations as wholes, for although luxurious
and effeminate vices do undoubtedly corrode and enervate national
character, the histories of ancient Rome and of not a few modern
monarchies abundantly prove that a career of consistent rapacity, ambition,
selfishness, and fraud may be eminently conducive to national prosperity.88
It does not apply to imperfectly organised societies, where the restraints of
public opinion are unfelt and where force is the one measure of right. It
does not apply except in a very partial degree even to the most civilised of
mankind. It is, indeed, easy to show that in a polished community a certain
low standard of virtue is essential to prosperity, to paint the evils of
unrestrained passions, and to prove that it is better to obey than to violate
the laws of society. But if turning from the criminal or the drunkard we
were to compare the man who simply falls in with or slightly surpasses the
average morals of those about [pg 059] him, and indulges in a little vice
which is neither injurious to his own health nor to his reputation, with the
man who earnestly and painfully adopts a much higher standard than that of
his time or of his class, we should be driven to another conclusion. Honesty
it is said is the best policy—a fact, however, which depends very much

upon the condition of the police force—but heroic virtue must rest upon a
different basis. If happiness in any of its forms be the supreme object of life,
moderation is the most emphatic counsel of our being, but moderation is as
opposed to heroism as to vice. There is no form of intellectual or moral
excellence which has not a general tendency to produce happiness if
cultivated in moderation. There are very few which if cultivated to great
perfection have not a tendency directly the reverse. Thus a mind that is
sufficiently enlarged to range abroad amid the pleasures of intellect has no
doubt secured a fund of inexhaustible enjoyment; but he who inferred from
this that the highest intellectual eminence was the condition most
favourable to happiness would be lamentably deceived. The diseased
nervous sensibility that accompanies intense mental exertion, the weary,
wasting sense of ignorance and vanity, the disenchantment and
disintegration that commonly follow a profound research, have filled
literature with mournful echoes of the words of the royal sage, “In much
wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”
The lives of men of genius have been for the most part a conscious and
deliberate realisation of the ancient myth—the tree of knowledge and the
tree of life stood side by side, and they chose the tree of knowledge rather
than the tree of life.

Nor is it otherwise in the realm of morals.89 The virtue which is most
conducive to happiness is plainly that which [pg 060] can be realised
without much suffering, and sustained without much effort. Legal and
physical penalties apply only to the grosser and more extreme forms of
vice. Social penalties may strike the very highest forms of virtue.90 That
very sentiment of unity with mankind which utilitarians assure us is one day
to become so strong as to overpower all unsocial feelings, would make it
more and more impossible for men consistently with their happiness to
adopt any course, whether very virtuous or very vicious, that would place
them out of harmony with the general sentiment of society. It may be said
that the tranquillity of a perfectly virtuous mind is the highest form of
happiness, and may be reasonably preferred not only to material
advantages, but also to the approbation of society; but no man can fully
attain, and few can even approximate, to such a condition. When vicious
passions and impulses are very strong, it is idle to tell the sufferer that he
would be more happy if his nature were radically different from what it is.

If happiness be his object, he must regulate his course with a view to the
actual condition of his being, and there can be little doubt that his peace
would be most promoted by a compromise with vice. The selfish theory of
morals applies only to the virtues of temperament, and not to that much
higher form of virtue which is sustained in defiance of temperament.91 We
have no doubt a certain pleasure in cultivating our good tendencies, but we
have by no means the same pleasure in repressing our bad ones. There are
men whose whole lives are spent in willing one thing, and desiring the
opposite. In such cases as these [pg 061] virtue clearly involves a sacrifice
of happiness; for the suffering caused by resisting natural tendencies is
much greater than would ensue from their moderate gratification.

The plain truth is that no proposition can be more palpably and egregiously
false than the assertion that as far as this world is concerned, it is invariably
conducive to the happiness of a man to pursue the most virtuous career.
Circumstances and disposition will make one man find his highest
happiness in the happiness, and another man in the misery, of his kind; and
if the second man acts according to his interest, the utilitarian, however
much he may deplore the result, has no right to blame or condemn the
agent. For that agent is following his greatest happiness, and this, in the
eyes of utilitarians, in one form or another, is the highest, or to speak more
accurately, the only motive by which human nature can be actuated.

We may remark too that the disturbance or pain which does undoubtedly
usually accompany what is evil, bears no kind of proportion to the enormity
of the guilt. An irritability of temper, which is chiefly due to a derangement
of the nervous system, or a habit of procrastination or indecision, will often
cause more suffering than some of the worst vices that can corrupt the
heart.92

But it may be said this calculation of pains and pleasures is defective
through the omission of one element. Although a man who had a very
strong natural impulse towards some vice would appear more likely to
promote the tranquillity of his nature by a moderate and circumspect
gratification of that [pg 062] vice, than by endeavouring painfully to repress
his natural tendencies, yet he possesses a conscience which adjudicates
upon his conduct, and its sting or its approval constitutes a pain or pleasure

so intense, as more than to redress the balance. Now of course, no intuitive
moralist will deny, what for a long time his school may be almost said to
have been alone in asserting, the reality of conscience, or the pleasures and
pains it may afford. He simply denies, and he appeals to consciousness in
attestation of his position, that those pains and pleasures are so powerful or
so proportioned to our acts as to become an adequate basis for virtue.
Conscience, whether we regard it as an original faculty, or as a product of
the association of ideas, exercises two distinct functions. It points out a
difference between right and wrong, and when its commands are violated, it
inflicts a certain measure of suffering and disturbance. The first function it
exercises persistently through life. The second it only exercises under
certain special circumstances. It is scarcely conceivable that a man in the
possession of his faculties should pass a life of gross depravity and crime
without being conscious that he was doing wrong; but it is extremely
possible for him to do so without this consciousness having any appreciable
influence upon his tranquillity. The condition of their consciences, as Mr.
Carlyle observes, has less influence on the happiness of men than the
condition of their livers. Considered as a source of pain, conscience bears a
striking resemblance to the feeling of disgust. Notwithstanding the assertion
of Dr. Johnson, I venture to maintain that there are multitudes to whom the
necessity of discharging the duties of a butcher would be so inexpressibly
painful and revolting, that if they could obtain flesh diet on no other
condition, they would relinquish it for ever. But to those who are inured to
the trade, this repugnance has simply ceased. It has no place in their
emotions or calculations. Nor can it be reasonably questioned that most
men by an assiduous [pg 063] attendance at the slaughter-house could
acquire a similar indifference. In like manner, the reproaches of conscience
are doubtless a very real and important form of suffering to a sensitive,
scrupulous, and virtuous girl who has committed some trivial act of levity
or disobedience; but to an old and hardened criminal they are a matter of
the most absolute indifference.

Now it is undoubtedly conceivable, that by an association of ideas men
might acquire a feeling that would cause that which would naturally be
painful to them to be pleasurable, and that which would naturally be
pleasurable to be painful.93 But the question will immediately arise, why
should they respect this feeling? We have seen that, according to the

inductive theory, there is no such thing as natural duty. Men enter into life
solely desirous of seeking their own happiness. The whole edifice of virtue
arises from the observed fact, that owing to the constitution of our nature,
and the intimacy of our social relations, it is necessary for our happiness to
abstain from some courses that would be immediately pleasurable and to
pursue others that are immediately the reverse. Self-interest is the one
ultimate reason for virtue, however much [pg 064] the moral chemistry of
Hartley may disguise and transform it. Ought or ought not, means nothing
more than the prospect of acquiring or of losing pleasure. The fact that one
line of conduct promotes, and another impairs the happiness of others is,
according to these moralists, in the last analysis, no reason whatever for
pursuing the former or avoiding the latter, unless such a course is that which
brings us the greatest happiness. The happiness may arise from the action of
society upon ourselves, or from our own naturally benevolent disposition,
or, again, from an association of ideas, which means the force of a habit we
have formed, but in any case our own happiness is the one possible or
conceivable motive of action. If this be a true picture of human nature, the
reasonable course for every man is to modify his disposition in such a
manner that he may attain the greatest possible amount of enjoyment. If he
has formed an association of ideas, or contracted a habit which inflicts more
pain than it prevents, or prevents more pleasure than it affords, his
reasonable course is to dissolve that association, to destroy that habit. This
is what he “ought” to do according to the only meaning that word can
possess in the utilitarian vocabulary. If he does not, he will justly incur the
charge of imprudence, which is the only charge utilitarianism can
consistently bring against vice.

That it would be for the happiness as it would certainly be in the power of a
man of a temperament such as I have lately described, to quench that
conscientious feeling, which by its painful reproaches prevents him from
pursuing the course that would be most conducive to his tranquillity, I
conceive to be self-evident. And, indeed, on the whole, it is more than
doubtful whether conscience, considered apart from the course of action it
prescribes, is not the cause of more pain than pleasure. Its reproaches are
more felt than its approval. The self-complacency of a virtuous man
reflecting with delight upon his own exceeding merit, is frequently [pg 065]
spoken of in the writings of moral philosophers,94 but is rarely found in

actual life where the most tranquil is seldom the most perfect nature, where
the sensitiveness of conscience increases at least in proportion to moral
growth, and where in the best men a feeling of modesty and humility is
always present to check the exuberance of self-gratulation.

In every sound system of morals and religion the motives of virtue become
more powerful the more the mind is concentrated upon them. It is when
they are lost sight of, when they are obscured by passion, unrealised or
forgotten, that [pg 066] they cease to operate. But it is a peculiarity of the
utilitarian conception of virtue that it is wholly unable to resist the solvent
of analysis, and that the more the mind realises its origin and its nature, the
more its influence on character must decline. The pleasures of the senses
will always defy the force of analysis, for they have a real foundation in our
being. They have their basis in the eternal nature of things. But the pleasure
we derive from the practice of virtue rests, according to this school, on a
wholly different basis. It is the result of casual and artificial association, of
habit, of a confusion by the imagination of means with ends, of a certain
dignity with which society invests qualities or actions that are useful to
itself. Just in proportion as this is felt, just in proportion as the mind
separates the idea of virtue from that of natural excellence and obligation,
and realises the purely artificial character of the connection, just in that
proportion will the coercive power of the moral motive be destroyed. The
utilitarian rule of judging actions and dispositions by their tendency to
promote or diminish happiness, or the maxim of Kant that man should
always act so that the rule of his conduct might be adopted as a law by all
rational beings, may be very useful as a guide in life; but in order that they
should acquire moral weight, it is necessary to presuppose the sense of
moral obligation, the consciousness that duty, when discovered, has a
legitimate claim to be the guiding principle of our lives. And it is this
element which, in the eye of reason, the mere artificial association of ideas
can never furnish.

If the patience of the reader has enabled him to accompany me through this
long train of tedious arguments, he will, I think, have concluded that the
utilitarian theory, though undoubtedly held by many men of the purest, and
by some men of almost heroic virtue, would if carried to its logical
conclusions prove subversive of morality, and especially, and in the very

highest degree, unfavourable to [pg 067] self-denial and to heroism. Even if
it explains these, it fails to justify them, and conscience being traced to a
mere confusion of the means of happiness with its end, would be wholly
unable to resist the solvent of criticism. That this theory of conscience gives
a true or adequate description of the phenomenon it seeks to explain, no
intuitive moralist will admit. It is a complete though common mistake to
suppose that the business of the moralist is merely to explain the genesis of
certain feelings we possess. At the root of all morals lies an intellectual
judgment which is clearly distinct from liking or disliking, from pleasure or
from pain. A man who has injured his position by some foolish but perfectly
innocent act, or who has inadvertently violated some social rule, may
experience an emotion of self-reproach or of shame quite as acute as if he
had committed a crime. But he is at the same time clearly conscious that his
conduct is not a fit subject for moral reprobation, that the grounds on which
it may be condemned are of a different and of a lower kind. The sense of
obligation and of legitimate supremacy, which is the essential and
characteristic feature of conscience, and which distinguishes it from all the
other parts of our nature, is wholly unaccounted for by the association of
ideas. To say that a certain course of conduct is pleasing, and that a certain
amount of pain results from the weakening of feelings that impel men
towards it, is plainly different from what men mean when they say we ought
to pursue it. The virtue of Hartley is, in its last analysis, but a disease of the
imagination. It may be more advantageous to society than avarice; but it is
formed in the same manner, and has exactly the same degree of binding
force.95

[pg 068]
These considerations will help to supply an answer to the common
utilitarian objection that to speak of duty as distinct from self-interest is
unmeaning, because it is absurd to say that we are under an obligation to do
any thing when no evil consequences would result to us from not doing it.
Rewards and punishments it may be answered are undoubtedly necessary to
enforce, but they are not necessary to constitute, duty. This distinction,
whether it be real or not, has at all events the advantage of appearing self-
evident to all who are not philosophers. Thus when a party of colonists
occupy a new territory they divide the unoccupied land among themselves,
and they murder, or employ for the gratification of their lusts, the savage

inhabitants. Both acts are done with perfect impunity, but one is felt to be
innocent and the other wrong. A lawful government appropriates the land
and protects the aboriginals, supporting its enactments by penalties. In the
one case the law both creates and enforces a duty, in the other it only
enforces it. The intuitive moralist simply asserts that we have the power of
perceiving that certain courses of action are higher, nobler, [pg 069] and
better than others, and that by the constitution of our being, this fact, which
is generically distinct from the prospect of pleasure or the reverse, may and
ought to be and continually is a motive of action. It is no doubt possible for
a man to prefer the lower course, and in this case we say he is deserving of
punishment, and if he remains unpunished we say that it is unjust. But if
there were no power to reward or punish him, his acts would not be
indifferent. They would still be intelligibly described as essentially base or
noble, shameful though there were none to censure, admirable though there
were none to admire.

That men have the power of preferring other objects than happiness is a
proposition which must ultimately be left to the attestation of
consciousness. That the pursuit of virtue, however much happiness may
eventually follow in its train, is in the first instance an example of this
preference, must be established by that common voice of mankind which
has invariably regarded a virtuous motive as generically different from an
interested one. And indeed even when the conflict between strong passions
and a strong sense of duty does not exist it is impossible to measure the
degrees of virtue by the scale of enjoyment. The highest nature is rarely the
happiest. Petronius Arbiter was, very probably, a happier man than Marcus
Aurelius. For eighteen centuries the religious instinct of Christendom has
recognised its ideal in the form of a “Man of Sorrows.”

Considerations such as I have now urged lead the intuitive moralists to
reject the principles of the utilitarian. They acknowledge indeed that the
effect of actions upon the happiness of mankind forms a most important
element in determining their moral quality, but they maintain that without
natural moral perceptions we never should have known that it was our duty
to seek the happiness of mankind when it diverged from our own, and they
deny that virtue was either originally evolved from or is necessarily [pg
070] proportioned to utility. They acknowledge that in the existing

condition of society there is at least a general coincidence between the paths
of virtue and of prosperity, but they contend that the obligation of virtue is
of such a nature that no conceivable convulsion of affairs could destroy it,
and that it would continue even if the government of the world belonged to
supreme malice instead of supreme benevolence. Virtue, they believe, is
something more than a calculation or a habit. It is impossible to conceive its
fundamental principles reversed. Notwithstanding the strong tendency to
confuse cognate feelings, the sense of duty and the sense of utility remain
perfectly distinct in the apprehension of mankind, and we are quite capable
of recognising each separate ingredient in the same act. Our respect for a
gallant but dangerous enemy, our contempt for a useful traitor, our care in
the last moments of life for the interests of those who survive us, our clear
distinction between intentional and unintentional injuries, and between the
consciousness of imprudence and the consciousness of guilt, our conviction
that the pursuit of interest should always be checked by a sense of duty, and
that selfish and moral motives are so essentially opposed, that the presence
of the former necessarily weakens the latter, our indignation at those who
when honour or gratitude call them to sacrifice their interests pause to
calculate remote consequences, the feeling of remorse which differs from
every other emotion of our nature—in a word, the universal, unstudied
sentiments of mankind all concur in leading us to separate widely our
virtuous affections from our selfish ones. Just as pleasure and pain are
ultimate grounds of action, and no reason can be given why we should seek
the former and avoid the latter, except that it is the constitution of our nature
that we should do so, so we are conscious that the words right and wrong
express ultimate intelligible motives, that these motives are generically
different from the others, that they are [pg 071] of a higher order, and that
they carry with them a sense of obligation. Any scheme of morals that omits
these facts fails to give an accurate and adequate description of the states of
feeling which consciousness reveals. The consciences of men in every age
would have echoed the assertion of Cicero that to sacrifice pleasure with a
view of obtaining any form or modification of pleasure in return, no more
answers to our idea of virtue, than to lend money at interest to our idea of
charity. The conception of pure disinterestedness is presupposed in our
estimates of virtue. It is the root of all the emotions with which we
contemplate acts of heroism. We feel that man is capable of pursuing what
he believes to be right although pain and disaster and mental suffering and

an early death be the consequence, and although no prospect of future
reward lighten upon his tomb. This is the highest prerogative of our being,
the point of contact between the human nature and the divine.

In addition to the direct arguments in its support, the utilitarian school owes
much of its influence to some very powerful moral and intellectual
predispositions in its favour—the first, which we shall hereafter examine,
consisting of the tendency manifested in certain conditions of society
towards the qualities it is most calculated to produce, and the second of the
almost irresistible attraction which unity and precision exercise on many
minds. It was this desire to simplify human nature, by reducing its various
faculties and complex operations to a single principle or process, that gave
its great popularity to the sensational school of the last century. It led most
metaphysicians of that school to deny the duality of human nature. It led
Bonnet and Condillac to propose an animated statue, endowed with the five
senses as channels of ideas, and with faculties exclusively employed in
transforming the products of sensation, as a perfect representative of
humanity. It led Helvétius to assert that the original faculties of all men
were precisely the same, all the difference [pg 072] between what we call
genius and what we call stupidity arising from differences of circumstances,
and all the difference between men and animals arising mainly from the
structure of the human hand. In morals, theories of unification are
peculiarly plausible, and I think peculiarly dangerous, because, owing to the
interaction of our moral sentiments, and the many transformations that each
can undergo, there are few affections that might not under some
conceivable circumstances become the parents of every other. When
Hobbes, in the name of the philosophy of self-interest, contended that “Pity
is but the imagination of future calamity to ourselves, produced by the sense
of another man's calamity;”96 when Hutcheson, in the name of the
philosophy of benevolence, argued that the vice of intemperance is that it
impels us to violence towards others, and weakens our capacity for doing
them good;97 when other moralists defending the excellence of our nature
maintained that compassion is so emphatically the highest of our pleasures
that a desire of gratifying it is the cause of our acts of barbarity;98 each of
these theories, [pg 073] extravagant as it is, contains a germ of undoubted
psychological truth. It is true that a mind intensely apprehensive of future
calamities would on that account receive a shock at the sight of the

calamities of others. It is true that a very keen and absorbing sentiment of
benevolence would be in itself sufficient to divert men from any habit that
impaired their power of gratifying it. It is true that compassion involves a
certain amount of pleasure, and conceivable that that pleasure might be so
intensified that we might seek it by a crime. The error in these theories is
not that they exaggerate the possible efficacy of the motives, but that they
exaggerate their actual intensity in human nature and describe falsely the
process by which the results they seek to explain have been arrived at. The
function of observation in moral philosophy is not simply to attest the moral
sentiments we possess, leaving it to the reason to determine deductively
how they may have been formed; it is rather to follow them through all the
stages of their formation.

And here I may observe that the term inductive, like most others that are
employed in moral philosophy, may give [pg 074] rise to serious
misconception. It is properly applied to those moralists who, disbelieving
the existence of any moral sense or faculty revealing to us what is right and
wrong, maintain that the origin of those ideas is simply our experience of
the tendency of different lines of conduct to promote or impair true
happiness. It appears, however, to be sometimes imagined that inductive
moralists alone think that it is by induction or experience that we ought to
ascertain what is the origin of our moral ideas. But this I conceive to be a
complete mistake. The basis of morals is a distinct question from the basis
of theories of morals. Those who maintain the existence of a moral faculty
do not, as is sometimes said, assume this proposition as a first principle of
their arguments, but they arrive at it by a process of induction quite as
severe as any that can be employed by their opponents.99 They examine,
analyse, and classify their existing moral feelings, ascertain in what respects
those feelings agree with or differ from others, trace them through their
various phases, and only assign them to a special faculty when they think
they have shown them to be incapable of resolution, and generically
different from all others.100

[pg 075]
This separation is all that is meant by a moral faculty. We are apt to regard
the term as implying a distinct and well defined organ, bearing to the mind
the same kind of relation as a limb to the body. But of the existence of such

organs, and of the propriety of such material imagery, we know nothing.
Perceiving in ourselves a will, and a crowd of intellectual and emotional
phenomena that seem wholly different from the properties of matter, we
infer the existence of an immaterial substance which wills, thinks, and feels,
and can classify its own operations with considerable precision. The term
faculty is simply an expression of classification. If we say that the moral
faculty differs from the æsthetic faculty, we can only mean that the mind
forms certain judgments of moral excellence, and also certain judgments of
beauty, and that these two mental processes are clearly distinct. To ask to
what part of our nature moral perceptions should be attributed, is only to
ask to what train of mental phenomena they bear the closest resemblance.

If this simple, but often neglected, consideration be borne [pg 076] in mind,
the apparent discordance of intuitive moralists will appear less profound
than might at first sight be supposed, for each section merely elucidates
some one characteristic of moral judgments. Thus Butler insists upon the
sense of obligation that is involved in them, contends that this separates
them from all other sentiments, and assigns them in consequence to a
special faculty of supreme authority called conscience. Adam Smith and
many other writers were especially struck by their sympathetic character.
We are naturally attracted by humanity, and repelled by cruelty, and this
instinctive, unreasoning sentiment constitutes, according to these moralists,
the difference between right and wrong. Cudworth, however, the English
precursor of Kant, had already anticipated, and later metaphysicians have
more fully exhibited, the inadequacy of such an analysis. Justice, humanity,
veracity, and kindred virtues not merely have the power of attracting us, we
have also an intellectual perception that they are essentially and immutably
good, that their nature does not depend upon, and is not relative to, our
constitutions; that it is impossible and inconceivable they should ever be
vices, and their opposites, virtues. They are, therefore, it is said, intuitions
of the reason. Clarke, developing the same rational school, and following in
the steps of those moralists who regard our nature as a hierarchy of powers
or faculties, with different degrees of dignity, and an appropriate order of
supremacy and subordination, maintained that virtue consisted in harmony
with the nature of things. Wollaston endeavoured to reduce it to truth, and
Hutcheson to benevolence, which he maintained is recognised and
approved by what his respect for the philosophy of Locke induced him to

call “a moral sense,” but what Shaftesbury had regarded as a moral “taste.”
The pleasure attending the gratification of this taste, according to
Shaftesbury and Henry More, is the motive to virtue. The doctrine of a
moral sense or faculty was the basis of the ethics of Reid. Hume maintained
that [pg 077] the peculiar quality of virtue is its utility, but that our
affections are purely disinterested, and that we arrive at our knowledge of
what is virtuous by a moral sense implanted in our nature, which leads us
instinctively to approve of all acts that are beneficial to others. Expanding a
pregnant hint which had been thrown out by Butler, he laid the foundation
for a union of the schools of Clarke and Shaftesbury, by urging that our
moral decisions are not simple, but complex, containing both a judgment of
the reason, and an emotion of the heart. This fact has been elucidated still
further by later writers, who have observed that these two elements apply in
varying degrees to different kinds of virtue. According to Lord Kames, our
intellectual perception of right and wrong applies most strictly to virtues
like justice or veracity, which are of what is called “perfect obligation,” or,
in other words, are of such a nature, that their violation is a distinct crime,
while the emotion of attraction or affection is shown most strongly towards
virtues of imperfect obligation, like benevolence or charity. Like Hutcheson
and Shaftesbury, Lord Kames notices the analogies between our moral and
æsthetical judgments.

These last analogies open out a region of thought widely different from that
we have been traversing. The close connection between the good and the
beautiful has been always felt, so much so, that both were in Greek
expressed by the same word, and in the philosophy of Plato, moral beauty
was regarded as the archetype of which all visible beauty is only the
shadow or the image. We all feel that there is a strict propriety in the term
moral beauty. We feel that there are different forms of beauty which have a
natural correspondence to different moral qualities, and much of the charm
of poetry and eloquence rests upon this harmony. We feel that we have a
direct, immediate, intuitive perception that some objects, such as the sky
above us, are beautiful, that this perception of beauty is totally different,
and [pg 078] could not possibly be derived, from a perception of their
utility, and that it bears a very striking resemblance to the instantaneous and
unreasoning admiration elicited by a generous or heroic action. We perceive
too, if we examine with care the operations of our own mind, that an

æsthetical judgment includes an intuition or intellectual perception, and an
emotion of attraction or admiration, very similar to those which compose a
moral judgment. The very idea of beauty again implies that it should be
admired, as the idea of happiness implies that it should be desired, and the
idea of duty that it should be performed. There is also a striking
correspondence between the degree and kind of uniformity we can in each
case discover. That there is a difference between right and wrong, and
between beauty and ugliness, are both propositions which are universally
felt. That right is better than wrong, and beauty than ugliness, are equally
unquestioned. When we go further, and attempt to define the nature of these
qualities, we are met indeed by great diversities of detail, but by a far larger
amount of substantial unity. Poems like the Iliad or the Psalms, springing in
the most dissimilar quarters, have commanded the admiration of men,
through all the changes of some 3,000 years. The charm of music, the
harmony of the female countenance, the majesty of the starry sky, of the
ocean or of the mountain, the gentler beauties of the murmuring stream or
of the twilight shades, were felt, as they are felt now, when the imagination
of the infant world first embodied itself in written words. And in the same
way types of heroism, and of virtue, descending from the remotest ages,
command the admiration of mankind. We can sympathise with the emotions
of praise or blame revealed in the earliest historians, and the most ancient
moralists strike a responsive chord in every heart. The broad lines remain
unchanged. No one ever contended that justice was a vice or injustice a
virtue; or that a summer sunset was a repulsive object, or that the sores
upon a human [pg 079] body were beautiful. Always, too, the objects of
æsthetical admiration were divided into two great classes, the sublime and
the beautiful, which in ethics have their manifest counterparts in the heroic
and the amiable.

If, again, we examine the undoubted diversities that exist in judgments of
virtue and of beauty, we soon discover that in each case a large proportion
of them are to be ascribed to the different degrees of civilisation. The moral
standard changes within certain limits, and according to a regular process
with the evolutions of society. There are virtues very highly estimated in a
rude civilisation which sink into comparative insignificance in an organised
society, while conversely, virtues that were deemed secondary in the first
become primary in the other. There are even virtues that it is impossible for

any but highly cultivated minds to recognise. Questions of virtue and vice,
such as the difference between humanity and barbarity, or between
temperance and intemperance, are sometimes merely questions of degree,
and the standard at one stage of civilisation may be much higher than at
another. Just in the same way a steady modification of tastes, while a
recognition of the broad features of beauty remains unchanged,
accompanies advancing civilisation. The preference of gaudy to subdued
tints, of colour to form, of a florid to a chaste style, of convulsive attitudes,
gigantic figures, and strong emotions, may be looked for with considerable
confidence in an uninstructed people. The refining influence of cultivation
is in no sphere more remarkable than in the canons of taste it produces, and
there are few better measures of the civilisation of a people than the
conceptions of beauty it forms, the type or ideal it endeavours to realise.

Many diversities, however, both of moral and æsthetical judgments, may be
traced to accidental causes. Some one who is greatly admired, or who
possesses great influence, is distinguished by some peculiarity of
appearance, or introduces some peculiarity of dress. He will soon find
countless [pg 080] imitators. Gradually the natural sense of beauty will
become vitiated; the eye and the taste will adjust themselves to a false and
artificial standard, and men will at last judge according to it with the most
absolute spontaneity. In the same way, if any accidental circumstance has
elevated an indifferent action to peculiar honour, if a religious system
enforces it as a virtue or brands it as a vice, the consciences of men will
after a time accommodate themselves to the sentence, and an appeal to a
wider than a local tribunal is necessary to correct the error. Every nation,
again, from its peculiar circumstances and position, tends to some particular
type, both of beauty and of virtue, and it naturally extols its national type
beyond all others. The virtues of a small poor nation, living among barren
mountains, surrounded by powerful enemies, and maintaining its
independence only by the most inflexible discipline, watchfulness, and
courage, will be in some degree different from those of a rich people
removed from all fear of invasion and placed in the centre of commerce.
The former will look with a very lenient eye on acts of barbarity or
treachery, which to the latter would appear unspeakably horrible, and will
value very highly certain virtues of discipline which the other will
comparatively neglect. So, too, the conceptions of beauty formed by a

nation of negroes will be different from those formed by a nation of
whites;101 the splendour of a tropical sky or the savage grandeur of a
northern ocean, the aspect of great mountains or of wide plains, will not
only supply nations with present images of sublimity or beauty, but will
also contribute to form their standard and affect their judgments. Local
customs or observances become so interwoven with our earliest
recollections, that we at last regard them as essentially [pg 081] venerable,
and even in the most trivial matters it requires a certain effort to dissolve the
association. There was much wisdom as well as much wit in the picture of
the novelist who described the English footman's contempt for the uniforms
of the French, “blue being altogether ridiculous for regimentals, except in
the blue guards and artillery;” and I suppose there are few Englishmen into
whose first confused impression of France there does not enter a half-
instinctive feeling of repugnance caused by the ferocious appearance of a
peasantry who are all dressed like butchers.102

It has been said103 that “the feelings of beauty, grandeur, and whatever else
is comprehended under the name of taste, do not lead to action, but
terminate in delightful contemplation, which constitutes the essential
distinction between them and the moral sentiments to which in some points
of view they may doubtless be likened.” This position I conceive to be
altogether untenable. Our æsthetical judgment is of the nature of a
preference. It leads us to prefer one class of objects to another, and
whenever other things are equal, becomes a ground for action. In choosing
the persons with whom we live, the neighbourhood we inhabit, the objects
that surround us, we prefer that which is beautiful to that which is the
reverse, and in every case in which a choice between beauty and deformity
is in question, and no counteracting motive intervenes, we choose the
former, and avoid the latter. There are no doubt innumerable events in life
in which this question does not arise, but there are also very many in which
we are not called upon to make a moral judgment. We say a man is actuated
by strong moral principle who chooses according to its dictates in every
case involving a moral judgment that comes naturally before him, [pg 082]
and who in obedience to its impulse pursues special courses of action.
Corresponding propositions may be maintained with perfect truth
concerning our sense of beauty. In proportion to its strength does it guide
our course in ordinary life, and determine our peculiar pursuits. We may

indeed sacrifice our sense of material beauty to considerations of utility
with much more alacrity than our sense of moral beauty; we may consent to
build a shapeless house sooner than to commit a dishonourable action, but
we cannot voluntarily choose that which is simply deformed, rather than
that which is beautiful, without a certain feeling of pain, and a pain of this
kind, according to the school of Hartley, is the precise definition of
conscience. Nor is it at all difficult to conceive men with a sense of beauty
so strong that they would die rather than outrage it.

Considering all these things, it is not surprising that many moralists should
have regarded moral excellence as simply the highest form of beauty, and
moral cultivation as the supreme refinement of taste. But although this
manner of regarding it is, as I think, far more plausible than the theory
which resolves virtue into utility, although the Greek moralists and the
school of Shaftesbury have abundantly proved that there is an extremely
close connection between these orders of ideas, there are two considerations
which appear to show the inadequacy of this theory. We are clearly
conscious of the propriety of applying the epithet “beautiful” to virtues such
as charity, reverence, or devotion, but we cannot apply it with the same
propriety to duties of perfect obligation, such as veracity or integrity. The
sense of beauty and the affection that follows it attach themselves rather to
modes of enthusiasm and feeling than to the course of simple duty which
constitutes a merely truthful and upright man.104 Besides this, as the Stoics
and Butler have shown, the position [pg 083] of conscience in our nature is
wholly unique, and clearly separates morals from a study of the beautiful.
While each of our senses or appetites has a restricted sphere of operation, it
is the function of conscience to survey the whole constitution of our being,
and assign limits to the gratification of all our various passions and desires.
Differing not in degree, but in kind from the other principles of our nature,
we feel that a course of conduct which is opposed to it may be intelligibly
described as unnatural, even when in accordance with our most natural
appetites, for to conscience is assigned the prerogative of both judging and
restraining them all. Its power may be insignificant, but its title is
undisputed, and “if it had might as it has right, it would govern the
world.”105 It is this faculty, distinct from, and superior to, all appetites,
passions, and tastes, that makes virtue the supreme law of life, and adds an
imperative character to the feeling of attraction it inspires. It is this which

was described by Cicero as the God ruling within us; by the Stoics as the
sovereignty of reason; by St. Paul as the law of nature; by Butler as the
supremacy of conscience.

The distinction of different parts of our nature, as higher or lower, which
appears in the foregoing reasoning, and which occupies so important a
place in the intuitive system of morals, is one that can only be defended by
the way of illustrations. A writer can only select cases in which such
distinctions seem most apparent, and leave them to the feelings of his
reader. A few examples will, I hope, be sufficient to show that even in our
pleasures, we are not simply determined by the amount of enjoyment, but
that there is a difference of kind, which may be reasonably described by the
epithets, higher or lower.

If we suppose a being from another sphere, who derived his conceptions
from a purely rational process, without the [pg 084] intervention of the
senses, to descend to our world, and to enquire into the principles of human
nature, I imagine there are few points that would strike him as more
anomalous, or which he would be more absolutely unable to realise, than
the different estimates in which men hold the pleasures derived from the
two senses of tasting and hearing. Under the first is comprised the
enjoyment resulting from the action of certain kinds of food upon the
palate. Under the second the charm of music. Each of these forms of
pleasure is natural, each can be greatly heightened by cultivation, in each
case the pleasure may be vivid, but is very transient, and in neither case do
evil consequences necessarily ensue. Yet with so many undoubted points of
resemblance, when we turn to the actual world, we find the difference
between these two orders of pleasure of such a nature, that a comparison
seems absolutely ludicrous. In what then does this difference consist? Not,
surely, in the greater intensity of the enjoyment derived from music, for in
many cases this superiority does not exist.106 We are all conscious that in
our comparison of these pleasures, there is an element distinct from any
consideration of their intensity, duration, or consequences. We naturally
attach a faint notion of shame to the one, while we as naturally glory in the
other. A very keen sense of the pleasures of the palate is looked upon as in a
certain degree discreditable. A man will hardly boast that he is very fond of
eating, but he has no hesitation in acknowledging that he is very fond of

music. The first [pg 085] taste lowers, and the second elevates him in his
own eyes, and in those of his neighbours.

Again, let a man of cheerful disposition, and of a cultivated but not very
fastidious taste, observe his own emotions and the countenances of those
around him during the representation of a clever tragedy and of a clever
farce, and it is probable that he will come to the conclusion that his
enjoyment in the latter case has been both more unmingled and more
intense than in the former. He has felt no lassitude, he has not endured the
amount of pain that necessarily accompanies the pleasure of pathos, he has
experienced a vivid, absorbing pleasure, and he has traced similar emotions
in the violent demonstrations of his neighbours. Yet he will readily admit
that the pleasure derived from the tragedy is of a higher order than that
derived from the farce. Sometimes he will find himself hesitating which of
the two he will choose. The love of mere enjoyment leads him to the one. A
sense of its nobler character inclines him to the other.

A similar distinction may be observed in other departments. Except in the
relation of the sexes, it is probable that a more intense pleasure is usually
obtained from the grotesque and the eccentric, than from the perfections of
beauty. The pleasure derived from beauty is not violent in its nature, and it
is in most cases peculiarly mixed with melancholy. The feelings of a man
who is deeply moved by a lovely landscape are rarely those of extreme
elation. A shade of melancholy steals over his mind. His eyes fill with tears.
A vague and unsatisfied longing fills his soul. Yet, troubled and broken as is
this form of enjoyment, few persons would hesitate to pronounce it of a
higher kind than any that can be derived from the exhibitions of oddity.

If pleasures were the sole objects of our pursuit, and if their excellence were
measured only by the quantity of enjoyment they afford, nothing could
appear more obvious than that the man would be esteemed most wise who
attained [pg 086] his object at least cost. Yet the whole course of civilisation
is in a precisely opposite direction. A child derives the keenest and most
exquisite enjoyment from the simplest objects. A flower, a doll, a rude
game, the least artistic tale, is sufficient to enchant it. An uneducated
peasant is enraptured with the wildest story and the coarsest wit. Increased
cultivation almost always produces a fastidiousness which renders

necessary the increased elaboration of our pleasures. We attach a certain
discredit to a man who has retained those of childhood. The very fact of our
deriving pleasure from certain amusements creates a kind of humiliation,
for we feel that they are not in harmony with the nobility of our nature.107

Our judgments of societies resemble in this respect our judgments of
individuals. Few persons, I think, who have compared the modes of popular
life in stagnant and undeveloped countries like Spain with those in the great
centres of industrial civilisation, will venture to pronounce with any
confidence that the quantum or average of actual realised enjoyment is
greater in the civilised than in the semi-civilised society. An undeveloped
nature is by no means necessarily an unhappy nature, and although we
possess no accurate gauge of happiness, we may, at least, be certain that its
degrees do not coincide with the degrees of prosperity. The tastes and habits
of men in a backward society accommodate themselves to the narrow circle
of a few pleasures, and probably [pg 087] find in these as complete
satisfaction as more civilised men in a wider range; and if there is in the
first condition somewhat more of the weariness of monotony, there is in the
second much more of the anxiety of discontent. The superiority of a highly
civilised man lies chiefly in the fact that he belongs to a higher order of
being, for he has approached more nearly to the end of his existence, and
has called into action a larger number of his capacities. And this is in itself
an end. Even if, as is not improbable, the lower animals are happier than
man,108 and semi-barbarians than civilised men, still it is better to be a man
than a brute, better to be born amid the fierce struggles of civilisation than
in some stranded nation apart from all the flow of enterprise and
knowledge. Even in that material civilisation which utilitarianism delights
to glorify, there is an element which the philosophy of mere enjoyment
cannot explain.

Again, if we ask the reason of the vast and indisputable superiority which
the general voice of mankind gives to mental pleasures, considered as
pleasures, over physical ones, we shall find, I think, no adequate or
satisfactory answer on the supposition that pleasures owe all their value to
the quantity of enjoyment they afford. The former, it is truly said, are more
varied and more prolonged than the latter but on the other hand, they are
attained with more effort, and they are diffused over a far narrower circle.

No one who compares the class of men who derive their pleasure chiefly
from field sports or other forms of physical enjoyment with those who
derive their pleasure from the highest intellectual sources; no one who
compares the period of boyhood when enjoyments are chiefly animal with
early [pg 088] manhood when they are chiefly intellectual, will be able to
discover in the different levels of happiness any justification of the great
interval the world places between these pleasures. No painter or novelist,
who wished to depict an ideal of perfect happiness, would seek it in a
profound student. Without entering into any doubtful questions concerning
the relations of the body to all mental states, it may be maintained that
bodily conditions have in general more influence upon our enjoyment than
mental ones. The happiness of the great majority of men is far more
affected by health and by temperament,109 resulting from physical
conditions, which again physical enjoyments are often calculated to
produce, than by any mental or moral causes, and acute physical sufferings
paralyse all the energies of our nature to a greater extent than any mental
distress. It is probable that the American inventor of the first anæsthetic has
done more for the real happiness of mankind than all the moral
philosophers from Socrates to Mill. Moral causes may teach men patience,
and the endurance of felt suffering, or may even alleviate its pangs, but
there are temperaments due to physical [pg 089] causes from which most
sufferings glance almost unfelt. It is said that when an ancient was asked
“what use is philosophy?” he answered, “it teaches men how to die,” and he
verified his words by a noble death; but it has been proved on a thousand
battle-fields, it has been proved on a thousand scaffolds, it is proved
through all the wide regions of China and India, that the dull and animal
nature which feels little and realises faintly, can meet death with a calm that
philosophy can barely rival.110 The truth is, that the mental part of our nature
is not regarded as superior to the physical part, because it contributes most
to our happiness. The superiority is of a different kind, and may be
intelligibly expressed by the epithets higher and lower.

And, once more, there is a class of pleasures resulting from the gratification
of our moral feelings which we naturally place in the foremost rank. To the
great majority of mankind it will probably appear, in spite of the doctrine of
Paley, that no multiple of the pleasure of eating pastry can be an equivalent

to the pleasure derived from a generous action. It is not that the latter is so
inconceivably intense. It is that it is of a higher order.

This distinction of kind has been neglected or denied by most utilitarian
writers;111 and although an attempt has recently [pg 090] been made to
introduce it into the system, it appears manifestly incompatible with its
principle. If the reality of the distinction be admitted, it shows that our wills
are so far from tending necessarily to that which produces most enjoyment
that we have the power even in our pleasures of recognising a higher and a
wholly different quality, and of making that quality rather than enjoyment
the object of our choice. If it be possible for a man in choosing between two
pleasures deliberately to select as preferable, apart from all consideration of
consequences, that which he is conscious gives least enjoyment [pg 091]
because he recognises in it a greater worthiness, or elevation, it is certain
that his conduct is either wholly irrational, or that he is acting on a principle
of judgment for which 'the greatest happiness' philosophy is unable to
account. Consistently with that philosophy, the terms higher and lower as
applied to different parts of our nature, to different regions of thought or
feeling, can have no other meaning than that of productive of more or less
enjoyment. But if once we admit a distinction of quality as well as a
distinction of quantity in our estimate of pleasure, all is changed. It then
appears evident that the different parts of our nature to which these
pleasures refer, bear to each other a relation of another kind, which may be
clearly and justly described by the terms higher and lower; and the assertion
that our reason reveals to us intuitively and directly this hierarchy of our
being, is a fundamental position of the greatest schools of intuitive
moralists. According to these writers, when we say that our moral and
intellectual is superior to our animal nature, that the benevolent affections
are superior to the selfish ones, that conscience has a legitimate supremacy
over the other parts of our being; this language is not arbitrary, or fantastic,
or capricious, because it is intelligible. When such a subordination is
announced, it corresponds with feelings we all possess, falls in with the
natural course of our judgments, with our habitual and unstudied language.

The arguments that have been directed against the theory of natural moral
perceptions are of two kinds, the first, which I have already noticed, being
designed to show that all our moral judgments may be resolved into

considerations of utility; the second resting upon the diversity of these
judgments in different nations and stages of civilisation, which, it is said, is
altogether inexplicable upon the supposition of a moral faculty. As these
variations form the great stumbling-block in the way of the doctrine I am
maintaining, and as they [pg 092] constitute a very important part of the
history of morals, I shall make no apology for noticing them in some detail.

In the first place, there are many cases in which diversities of moral
judgment arise from causes that are not moral, but purely intellectual. Thus,
for example, when theologians pronounced loans at interest contrary to the
law of nature and plainly extortionate, this error obviously arose from a
false notion of the uses of money. They believed that it was a sterile thing,
and that he who has restored what he borrowed, has cancelled all the benefit
he received from the transaction. At the time when the first Christian
moralists treated the subject, special circumstances had rendered the rate of
interest extremely high, and consequently extremely oppressive to the poor,
and this fact, no doubt, strengthened the prejudice; but the root of the
condemnation of usury was simply an error in political economy. When
men came to understand that money is a productive thing, and that the sum
lent enables the borrower to create sources of wealth that will continue
when the loan has been returned, they perceived that there was no natural
injustice in exacting payment for this advantage, and usury either ceased to
be assailed, or was assailed only upon the ground of positive commands.

Thus again the question of the criminality of abortion has been considerably
affected by physiological speculations as to the time when the fœtus in the
womb acquires the nature, and therefore the rights, of a separate being. The
general opinion among the ancients seems to have been that it was but a
part of the mother, and that she had the same right to destroy it as to
cauterise a tumour upon her body. Plato and Aristotle both admitted the
practice. The Roman law contained no enactment against voluntary abortion
till the time of Ulpian. The Stoics thought that the infant received its soul
when respiration began. The Justinian code fixed its animation at forty days
after conception. In modern [pg 093] legislations it is treated as a distinct
being from the moment of conception.112 It is obvious that the solution of
such questions, though affecting our moral judgments, must be sought
entirely outside the range of moral feelings.

In the next place, there is a broad distinction to be drawn between duties
which rest immediately on the dictates of conscience, and those which are
based upon positive commands. The iniquity of theft, murder, falsehood, or
adultery rests upon grounds generically distinct from those on which men
pronounce it to be sinful to eat meat on Friday, or to work on Sunday, or to
abstain from religious assemblies. The reproaches conscience directs
against those who are guilty of these last acts are purely hypothetical,
conscience enjoining obedience to the Divine commands, but leaving it to
reason to determine what those commands may be. The distinction between
these two classes of duties becomes apparent on the slightest reflection, and
the variations in their relative prominence form one of the most important
branches of religious history.

Closely connected with the preceding are the diversities which result from
an ancient custom becoming at last, through its very antiquity, or through
the confusion of means with ends, an object of religious reverence. Among
the many safeguards of female purity in the Roman republic was an
enactment forbidding women even to taste wine, and this very intelligible
law being enforced with the earliest education, became at last, by habit and
traditionary reverence, so incorporated with the moral feelings of the
people, that its violation was spoken of as a monstrous crime. Aulus Gellius
has preserved a passage in which Cato observes, “that the husband has an
absolute authority over his wife; it is for him to condemn and punish her, if
she has been [pg 094] guilty of any shameful act, such as drinking wine or
committing adultery.”113 As soon as the reverence for tradition was
diminished, and men ventured to judge old customs upon their own merits,
they were able, by steadily reflecting upon this belief, to reduce it to its
primitive elements, to separate the act from the ideas with which it had been
associated, and thus to perceive that it was not necessarily opposed to any
of those great moral laws or feelings which their consciences revealed, and
which were the basis of all their reasonings on morals.

A confused association of ideas, which is easily exposed by a patient
analysis, lies at the root of more serious anomalies. Thus to those who
reflect deeply upon moral history, few things, I suppose, are more
humiliating than to contrast the admiration and profoundly reverential
attachment excited by a conqueror, who through the promptings of simple

vanity, through love of fame, or through greed of territory, has wantonly
caused the deaths, the sufferings, or the bereavements [pg 095] of
thousands, with the abhorrence produced by a single act of murder or
robbery committed by a poor and ignorant man, perhaps under the pressure
of extreme want or intolerable wrong. The attraction of genius and power,
which the vulgar usually measure by their material fruits, the advantages
acquired by the nation to which he belongs, the belief that battles are
decided by providential interference, and that military success is therefore a
proof of Divine favour, and the sanctity ascribed to the regal office, have all
no doubt conspired to veil the atrocity of the conqueror's career; but there is
probably another and a deeper influence behind. That which invests war, in
spite of all the evils that attend it, with a certain moral grandeur, is the
heroic self-sacrifice it elicits. With perhaps the single exception of the
Church, it is the sphere in which mercenary motives have least sway, in
which performance is least weighed and measured by strict obligation, in
which a disinterested enthusiasm has most scope. A battle-field is the scene
of deeds of self-sacrifice so transcendent, and at the same time so dramatic,
that in spite of all its horrors and crimes, it awakens the most passionate
moral enthusiasm. But this feeling produced by the thought of so many who
have sacrificed their life-blood for their flag or for their chief, needs some
definite object on which to rest. The multitude of nameless combatants do
not strike the imagination. They do not stand out, and are not realised, as
distinct and living figures conspicuous to the view. Hence it is that the
chief, as the most prominent, becomes the representative warrior; the
martyr's aureole descends upon his brow, and thus by a confusion that
seems the very irony of fate, the enthusiasm evoked by the self-sacrifice of
thousands sheds a sacred glow around the very man whose prodigious
egotism had rendered that sacrifice necessary.

Another form of moral paradox is derived from the fact that positive
religions may override our moral perceptions in [pg 096] such a manner,
that we may consciously admit a moral contradiction. In this respect there is
a strict parallelism between our intellectual and our moral faculties. It is at
present the professed belief of at least three-fourths of the Christian Church,
and was for some centuries the firm belief of the entire Church, that on a
certain night the Founder of the Christian faith, being seated at a supper
table, held His own body in His own hand, broke that body, distributed it to

His disciples, who proceeded to eat it, the same body remaining at the same
moment seated intact at the table, and soon afterwards proceeding to the
garden of Gethsemane. The fact of such a doctrine being believed, does not
imply that the faculties of those who hold it are of such a nature that they
perceive no contradiction or natural absurdity in these statements. The well-
known argument derived from the obscurity of the metaphysical notion of
substance is intended only in some slight degree to soften the difficulty. The
contradiction is clearly perceived, but it is accepted by faith as part of the
teaching of the Church.

What transubstantiation is in the order of reason the Augustinian doctrine of
the damnation of unbaptised infants, and the Calvinistic doctrine of
reprobation, are in the order of morals. Of these doctrines it is not too much
to say, that in the form in which they have often been stated, they surpass in
atrocity any tenets that have ever been admitted into any pagan creed, and
would, if they formed an essential part of Christianity, amply justify the
term “pernicious superstition,” which Tacitus applied to the faith. That a
little child who lives but a few moments after birth and dies before it has
been sprinkled with the sacred water is in such a sense responsible for its
ancestors having 6,000 years before eaten some forbidden fruit that it may
with perfect justice be resuscitated and cast into an abyss of eternal fire in
expiation of this ancestral crime, that an all-righteous and all-merciful
Creator in the full exercise of those attributes deliberately [pg 097] calls
into existence sentient beings whom He has from eternity irrevocably
destined to endless, unspeakable, unmitigated torture, are propositions
which are at once so extravagantly absurd and so ineffably atrocious that
their adoption might well lead men to doubt the universality of moral
perceptions. Such teaching is in fact simply dæmonism, and dæmonism in
its most extreme form. It attributes to the Creator acts of injustice and of
barbarity, which it would be absolutely impossible for the imagination to
surpass, acts before which the most monstrous excesses of human cruelty
dwindle into insignificance, acts which are in fact considerably worse than
any that theologians have attributed to the devil. If there were men who
while vividly realising the nature of these acts naturally turned to them as
the exhibitions of perfect goodness, all systems of ethics founded upon
innate moral perceptions would be false. But happily this is not so. Those
who embrace these doctrines do so only because they believe that some

inspired Church or writer has taught them, and because they are still in that
stage in which men consider it more irreligious to question the infallibility
of an apostle than to disfigure by any conceivable imputation the character
of the Deity. They accordingly esteem it a matter of duty, and a
commendable exercise of humility, to stifle the moral feelings of their
nature, and they at last succeed in persuading themselves that their Divinity
would be extremely offended if they hesitated to ascribe to him the
attributes of a fiend. But their moral feelings, though not unimpaired by
such conceptions, are not on ordinary subjects generically different from
those of their neighbours. With an amiable inconsistency they can even find
something to revolt them in the lives of a Caligula or a Nero. Their
theological estimate of justice and mercy is isolated. Their doctrine is
accepted as a kind of moral miracle, and as is customary with a certain
school of theologians, when they [pg 098] enunciate a proposition which is
palpably self-contradictory they call it a mystery and an occasion for faith.

In this instance a distinct moral contradiction is consciously admitted. In the
case of persecution, a strictly moral and logical inference is drawn from a
very immoral proposition which is accepted as part of a system of dogmatic
theology. The two elements that should be considered in punishing a
criminal are the heinousness of his guilt and the injury he inflicts. When the
greatest guilt and the greatest injury are combined, the greatest punishment
naturally follows. No one would argue against the existence of a moral
faculty, on the ground that men put murderers to death. When therefore
theologians believed that a man was intensely guilty who held certain
opinions, and that he was causing the damnation of his fellows if he
propagated them, there was no moral difficulty in concluding that the
heretic should be put to death. Selfish considerations may have directed
persecution against heresy rather than against vice, but the Catholic
doctrines of the guilt of error, and of the infallibility of the Church, were
amply sufficient to justify it.

It appears then that a dogmatic system which is accepted on rational or
other grounds, and supported by prospects of rewards and punishments,
may teach a code of ethics differing from that of conscience; and that in this
case the voice of conscience may be either disregarded or stifled. It is
however also true, that it may be perverted. When, for example, theologians

during a long period have inculcated habits of credulity, rather than habits
of enquiry; when they have persuaded men that it is better to cherish
prejudice than to analyse it; better to stifle every doubt of what they have
been taught than honestly to investigate its value, they will at last succeed
in forming habits of mind that will instinctively and habitually recoil from
all impartiality and intellectual honesty. If men continually violate a duty
they may at last cease to feel its obligation. But this, though it [pg 099]
forms a great difficulty in ethical enquiries, is no argument against the
reality of moral perceptions, for it is simply a law to which all our powers
are subject. A bad intellectual education will produce not only erroneous or
imperfect information but also a false ply or habit of judgment. A bad
æsthetical education will produce false canons of taste. Systematic abuse
will pervert and vitiate even some of our physical perceptions. In each case
the experience of many minds under many conditions must be appealed to,
to determine the standard of right and wrong, and long and difficult
discipline is required to restore the diseased organ to sanity. We may decide
particular moral questions by reasoning, but our reasoning is an appeal to
certain moral principles which are revealed to us by intuition.

The principal difficulty I imagine which most men have in admitting that
we possess certain natural moral perceptions arises from the supposition
that it implies the existence of some mysterious agent like the dæmon of
Socrates, which gives us specific and infallible information in particular
cases. But this I conceive to be a complete mistake. All that is necessarily
meant by the adherents of this school is comprised in two propositions. The
first is that our will is not governed exclusively by the law of pleasure and
pain, but also by the law of duty, which we feel to be distinct from the
former, and to carry with it the sense of obligation. The second is that the
basis of our conception of duty is an intuitive perception that among the
various feelings, tendencies, and impulses that constitute our emotional
being, there are some which are essentially good, and ought to be
encouraged, and some which are essentially bad, and ought to be repressed.
They contend that it is a psychological fact that we are intuitively conscious
that our benevolent affections are superior to our malevolent ones, truth to
falsehood, justice to injustice, gratitude to ingratitude, chastity to sensuality,
and that in all ages and countries the path of virtue has been towards [pg
100] the higher and not towards the lower feelings. It may be that the sense

of duty is so weak as to be scarcely perceptible, and then the lower part of
our nature will be supreme. It may happen that certain conditions of society
lead men to direct their anxiety for moral improvement altogether in one or
two channels, as was the case in ancient Greece, where civic and
intellectual virtues were very highly cultivated, and the virtue of chastity
was almost neglected. It may happen that different parts of our higher
nature in a measure conflict, as when a very strong sense of justice checks
our benevolent feelings. Dogmatic systems may enjoin men to propitiate
certain unseen beings by acts which are not in accordance with the moral
law. Special circumstances may influence, and the intermingling of many
different motives may obscure and complicate, the moral evolution; but
above all these one great truth appears. No one who desires to become
holier and better imagines that he does so by becoming more malevolent, or
more untruthful, or more unchaste. Every one who desires to attain
perfection in these departments of feeling is impelled towards benevolence,
towards veracity, towards chastity.114

Now it is manifest that according to this theory the moral unity to be
expected in different ages is not a unity of standard, or of acts, but a unity of
tendency. Men come into the world with their benevolent affections very
inferior in power to their selfish ones, and the function of morals is to invert
this order. The extinction of all selfish feeling is impossible for an
individual, and if it were general, it would result in the dissolution of
society. The question of morals must always be a question of proportion or
of degree. At [pg 101] one time the benevolent affections embrace merely
the family, soon the circle expanding includes first a class, then a nation,
then a coalition of nations, then all humanity, and finally, its influence is felt
in the dealings of man with the animal world. In each of these stages a
standard is formed, different from that of the preceding stage, but in each
case the same tendency is recognised as virtue.

We have in this fact a simple, and as it appears to me a conclusive, answer
to the overwhelming majority of the objections that are continually and
confidently urged against the intuitive school. That some savages kill their
old parents, that infanticide has been practised without compunction by
even civilised nations, that the best Romans saw nothing wrong in the
gladiatorial shows, that political or revengeful assassinations have been for

centuries admitted, that slavery has been sometimes honoured and
sometimes condemned, are unquestionable proofs that the same act may be
regarded in one age as innocent, and in another as criminal. Now it is
undoubtedly true that in many cases an historical examination will reveal
special circumstances, explaining or palliating the apparent anomaly. It has
been often shown that the gladiatorial shows were originally a form of
human sacrifice adopted through religious motives; that the rude nomadic
life of savages rendering impossible the preservation of aged and helpless
members of the tribe, the murder of parents was regarded as an act of mercy
both by the murderer and the victim; that before an effective administration
of justice was organised, private vengeance was the sole preservative
against crime,115 and political assassination against usurpation; that the
insensibility of some savages to the criminality of theft arises from the fact
that they were accustomed to [pg 102] have all things in common; that the
Spartan law, legalising theft, arose partly from a desire to foster military
dexterity among the people, but chiefly from a desire to discourage wealth;
that slavery was introduced through motives of mercy, to prevent
conquerors from killing their prisoners.116 All this is true, but there is
another and a more general answer. It is not to be expected, and it is not
maintained, that men in all ages should have agreed about the application of
their moral principles. All that is contended for is that these principles are
themselves the same. Some of what appear to us monstrous acts of cruelty,
were dictated by that very feeling of humanity, the universal perception of
the merit of which they are cited to disprove,117 and even when this is not
the case, all that can be inferred is, that the standard of humanity was very
low. But still humanity was recognised as a virtue, and cruelty as a vice.

At this point, I may observe how completely fallacious is the assertion that
a progressive morality is impossible upon the supposition of an original
moral faculty.118 To such [pg 103] statements there are two very simple
answers. In the first place, although the intuitive moralist asserts that certain
qualities are necessarily virtuous, he fully admits that the degree in which
they are acted upon, or in other words, the standard of duty, may become
progressively higher. In the next place, although he refuses to resolve all
virtue into utility, he admits as fully as his opponents, that benevolence, or
the promotion of the happiness of man, is a virtue, and that therefore

discoveries which exhibit more clearly the true interests of our kind, may
throw new light upon the nature of our duty.

The considerations I have urged with reference to humanity, apply with
equal force to the various relations of the sexes. When the passions of men
are altogether unrestrained, community of wives and all eccentric forms of
sensuality will be admitted. When men seek to improve their nature in this
respect, their object will be to abridge and confine the empire of sensuality.
But to this process of improvement there are obvious limits. In the first
place the continuance of the species is only possible by a sensual act. In the
next place the strength of this passion and the weakness of humanity are so
great, that the moralist must take into account the fact that in all societies,
and especially in those in which free scope had long been given to the
passions, a large amount of indulgence will arise which is not due to a
simple desire of propagating the species. If then incest is prohibited, and
community of wives replaced by ordinary polygamy, a moral improvement
will have been effected, and a standard of virtue formed. But this standard
soon becomes the starting-point of new progress. If we examine the Jewish
law, we find the legislator prohibiting adultery, regulating the degrees [pg
104] of marriage, but at the same time authorising polygamy, though with a
caution against the excessive multiplication of wives. In Greece monogamy,
though not without exceptions, had been enforced, but a concurrence of
unfavourable influences prevented any high standard being attained among
the men, and in their case almost every form of indulgence beyond the
limits of marriage was permitted. In Rome the standard was far higher.
Monogamy was firmly established. The ideal of female morality was placed
as high as among Christian nations. Among men, however, while unnatural
love and adultery were regarded as wrong, simple unchastity before
marriage was scarcely considered a fault. In Catholicism marriage is
regarded in a twofold light, as a means for the propagation of the species,
and as a concession to the weakness of humanity, and all other sensual
enjoyment is stringently prohibited.

In these cases there is a great difference between the degrees of earnestness
with which men exert themselves in the repression of their passions, and in
the amount of indulgence which is conceded to their lower nature;119 but
there is no difference in the direction of the virtuous impulse. While, too, in

the case of adultery, and in the production of children, questions of interest
and utility do undoubtedly intervene, we are conscious that the general
progress turns upon a totally different order of ideas. The feeling of all men
and the language of all nations, the sentiment which though often weakened
is never wholly effaced, that this appetite, even in its most legitimate
gratification, is a thing to be veiled and withdrawn from sight, all that is
known under the names of decency and indecency, concur in proving that
we have an innate, intuitive, instinctive perception that there is something
degrading in the sensual part of our nature, something [pg 105] to which a
feeling of shame is naturally attached, something that jars with our
conception of perfect purity, something we could not with any propriety
ascribe to an all-holy being. It may be questioned whether anyone was ever
altogether destitute of this perception, and nothing but the most inveterate
passion for system could induce men to resolve it into a mere calculation of
interests. It is this feeling or instinct which lies at the root of the whole
movement I have described, and it is this too that produced that sense of the
sanctity of perfect continence which the Catholic church has so warmly
encouraged, but which may be traced through the most distant ages, and the
most various creeds. We find it among the Nazarenes and Essenes of Judæa,
among the priests of Egypt and India, in the monasteries of Tartary, in the
histories of miraculous virgins that are so numerous in the mythologies of
Asia. Such, for example, was the Chinese legend that tells how when there
was but one man with one woman upon earth, the woman refused to
sacrifice her virginity even in order to people the globe, and the gods
honouring her purity granted that she should conceive beneath the gaze of
her lover's eyes, and a virgin-mother became the parent of humanity.120 In
the midst of the sensuality of ancient Greece, chastity was the pre-eminent
attribute of sanctity ascribed to Athene and Artemis. “Chaste daughter of
Zeus,” prayed the suppliants in Æschylus, “thou whose calm eye is never
troubled, look down upon us! Virgin, defend the virgins.” The Parthenon, or
virgin's temple, was the noblest religious edifice of Athens. Celibacy was an
essential condition in a few of the orders of priests, and in several orders of
priestesses. Plato based his moral system upon the distinction between the
bodily or sensual, and the spiritual or rational part of our nature, the first
being the sign of our degradation, and the second of our dignity. The [pg
106] whole school of Pythagoras made chastity one of its leading virtues,
and even laboured for the creation of a monastic system. The conception of

the celestial Aphrodite, the uniter of souls, unsullied by the taint of matter,
lingered side by side with that of the earthly Aphrodite or patroness of lust,
and if there was a time when the sculptors sought to pander to the excesses
of passion there was another in which all their art was displayed in refining
and idealising it. Strabo mentions the existence in Thrace of societies of
men aspiring to perfection by celibacy and austere lives. Plutarch applauds
certain philosophers who vowed to abstain for a year from wine and women
in order “to honour God by their continence.”121 In Rome the religious
reverence was concentrated more especially upon married life. The great
prominence accorded to the Penates was the religious sanction of
domesticity. So too, at first, was the worship so popular among the Roman
women of the Bona Dea—the ideal wife who according to the legend had,
when on earth, never looked in the face or known the name of any man but
her husband.122 “For altar and hearth” was the rallying cry of the Roman
soldier. But above all this we find the traces of a higher ideal. We find it in
the intense sanctity attributed to the vestal virgins whose continence was
guarded by such fearful penalties, and supposed to be so closely linked with
the prosperity of the state, whose prayer was believed to possess a
miraculous power, and who were permitted to drive through the streets of
Rome at a time when that privilege was refused even to the Empress.123 We
find it in the legend of Claudia, who, [pg 107] when the ship bearing the
image of the mother of the gods had been stranded in the Tiber, attached her
girdle to its prow, and vindicated her challenged chastity by drawing with
her virgin hand, the ponderous mass which strong men had sought in vain to
move. We find it in the prophetic gift so often attributed to virgins,124 in the
law which sheltered them from the degradation of an execution,125 in the
language of Statius, who described marriage itself as a fault.126 In
Christianity one great source of the attraction of the faith has been the
ascription of virginity to its female ideal. The Catholic monastic system has
been so constructed as to draw many thousands from the sphere of active
duty; its irrevocable vows have doubtless led to much suffering and not a
little crime; its opposition to the normal development of our mingled nature
has often resulted in grave aberrations of the imagination, and it has placed
its ban upon domestic affections and sympathies which have a very high
moral value; but in its central conception that the purely animal side [pg
108] of our being is a low and a degraded side, it reflects, I believe, with
perfect fidelity the feelings of our nature.127

To these considerations some others of a different nature may be added. It is
not true that some ancient nations regarded polygamy as good in the same
sense as others regarded chastity. There is a great difference between
deeming a state permissible and proposing it as a condition of sanctity. If
Mohammedans people paradise with images of sensuality, it is not because
these form their ideal of holiness. It is because they regard earth as the
sphere of virtue, heaven as that of simple enjoyment. If some pagan nations
deified sensuality, this was simply because the deification of the forces of
nature, of which the prolific energy is one of the most conspicuous, is
among the earliest forms of religion, and long precedes the identification of
the Deity with a moral ideal.128 If there have [pg 109] been nations who
attached a certain stigma to virginity, this has not been because they
esteemed sensuality intrinsically holier than chastity; but because a scanty,
warlike people whose position in the world depends chiefly on the number
of its warriors, will naturally make it its main object to encourage
population. This was especially the case with the ancient Jews, who always
regarded extreme populousness as indissolubly connected with national
prosperity, whose religion was essentially patriotic, and among whom the
possibility of becoming an ancestor of the Messiah had imparted a peculiar
dignity to childbirth. Yet even among the Jews the Essenes regarded
virginity as the ideal of sanctity.

The reader will now be in a position to perceive the utter futility of the
objections which from the time of Locke have been continually brought
against the theory of natural moral perceptions, upon the ground that some
actions which were admitted as lawful in one age, have been regarded as
immoral in another. All these become absolutely worthless when it is
perceived that in every age virtue has consisted in the cultivation of the
same feelings, though the standards of excellence attained have been
different. The terms higher and lower, nobler or less noble, purer or less
pure, represent moral facts with much greater fidelity than the terms right or
wrong, or virtue or vice. There is a certain sense in which moral distinctions
are absolute and immutable. There is another sense in which they are
altogether relative and transient. There are some acts which are so
manifestly and grossly opposed to our moral feelings, that they are regarded
as wrong in the very earliest stages of the cultivation of these feelings.
There are distinctions, such as that between truth and falsehood, which from

their nature assume at once a sharpness of definition that separates them
from mere [pg 110] virtues of degree, though even in these cases there are
wide variations in the amount of scrupulosity that is in different periods
required. But apart from positive commands, the sole external rule enabling
men to designate acts, not simply as better or worse, but as positively right
or wrong, is, I conceive, the standard of society; not an arbitrary standard
like that which Mandeville imagined, but the level which society has
attained in the cultivation of what our moral faculty tells us is the higher or
virtuous part of our nature. He who falls below this is obstructing the
tendency which is the essence of virtue. He who merely attains this, may
not be justified in his own conscience, or in other words, by the standard of
his own moral development, but as far as any external rule is concerned, he
has done his duty. He who rises above this has entered into the region of
things which it is virtuous to do, but not vicious to neglect—a region known
among Catholic theologians by the name of “counsels of perfection.” No
discussions, I conceive, can be more idle than whether slavery, or the
slaughter of prisoners in war, or gladiatorial shows, or polygamy, are
essentially wrong. They may be wrong now—they were not so once—and
when an ancient countenanced by his example one or other of these, he was
not committing a crime. The unchangeable proposition for which we
contend is this—that benevolence is always a virtuous disposition—that the
sensual part of our nature is always the lower part.

At this point, however, a very difficult problem naturally arises. Admitting
that our moral nature is superior to our intellectual or physical nature,
admitting, too, that by the constitution of our being we perceive ourselves
to be under an obligation to develope our nature to its perfection,
establishing the supreme ascendency of moral motives, the question still
remains whether the disparity between the different parts of our being is
such that no material or intellectual advantage, however great, may be
rightly purchased [pg 111] by any sacrifice of our moral nature, however
small. This is the great question of casuistry, the question which divines
express by asking whether the end ever justifies the means; and on this
subject there exists among theologians a doctrine which is absolutely
unrealised, which no one ever dreams of applying to actual life, but of
which it may be truly said that though propounded with the best intentions,
it would, if acted upon, be utterly incompatible with the very rudiments of

civilisation. It is said that an undoubted sin, even the most trivial, is a thing
in its essence and in its consequences so unspeakably dreadful, that no
conceivable material or intellectual advantage can counterbalance it; that
rather than it should be committed, it would be better that any amount of
calamity which did not bring with it sin should be endured, even that the
whole human race should perish in agonies.129 If this be the case, it is
manifest that the supreme object of humanity should be sinlessness, and it is
equally manifest that the means to this end is the absolute suppression of
the desires. To expand the circle of wants is necessarily to multiply
temptations, and therefore to increase the number of sins. It may indeed
elevate the moral standard, for a torpid sinlessness is not a high moral
condition; but if every sin be what these theologians assert, if it be a thing
deserving eternal agony, and so inconceivably frightful that the ruin of a
world is a less evil than its commission, even moral advantages are utterly
incommensurate with it. No heightening of the moral tone, no depth or
ecstasy of devotion, can for a moment be placed in the balance. The
consequences of this doctrine, if applied to actual life, would be [pg 112] so
extravagant, that their simple statement is a refutation. A sovereign, when
calculating the consequences of a war, should reflect that a single sin
occasioned by that war, a single blasphemy of a wounded soldier, the
robbery of a single hencoop, the violation of the purity of a single woman,
is a greater calamity than the ruin of the entire commerce of his nation, the
loss of her most precious provinces, the destruction of all her power. He
must believe that the evil of the increase of unchastity, which invariably
results from the formation of an army, is an immeasurably greater calamity
than any material or political disasters that army can possibly avert. He
must believe that the most fearful plague or famine that desolates his land
should be regarded as a matter of rejoicing, if it has but the feeblest and
most transient influence in repressing vice. He must believe that if the
agglomeration of his people in great cities adds but one to the number of
their sins, no possible intellectual or material advantages can prevent the
construction of cities being a fearful calamity. According to this principle,
every elaboration of life, every amusement that brings multitudes together,
almost every art, every accession of wealth that awakens or stimulates
desires, is an evil, for all these become the sources of some sins, and their
advantages are for the most part purely terrestrial. The entire structure of
civilisation is founded upon the belief that it is a good thing to cultivate

intellectual and material capacities, even at the cost of certain moral evils
which we are often able accurately to foresee.130 The time may come when
the man who lays the foundation-stone of a manufacture will be able to
predict with assurance in what proportion the drunkenness and the
unchastity of his city will be increased by his enterprise. [pg 113] Yet he
will still pursue that enterprise, and mankind will pronounce it to be good.

The theological doctrine on the subject, considered in its full stringency,
though professed by many, is, as I have said, realised and consistently acted
on by no one; but the practical judgments of mankind concerning the extent
of the superiority of moral over all other interests vary greatly, and this
variation supplies one of the most serious objections to intuitive moralists.
The nearest practical approach to the theological estimate of a sin may be
found in the ranks of the ascetics. Their whole system rests upon the belief
that it is a thing so transcendently dreadful as to bear no proportion or
appreciable relation to any earthly interests. Starting from this belief, the
ascetic makes it the exclusive object of his life to avoid sinning. He
accordingly abstains from all the active business of society, relinquishes all
worldly aims and ambitions, dulls by continued discipline his natural
desires, and endeavours to pass a life of complete absorption in religious
exercises. And in all this his conduct is reasonable and consistent. The
natural course of every man who adopts this estimate of the enormity of sin
is at every cost to avoid all external influences that can prove temptations,
and to attenuate as far as possible his own appetites and emotions. It is in
this respect that the exaggerations of theologians paralyse our moral being.
For the diminution of sins, however important, is but one part of moral
progress. Whenever it is forced into a disproportionate prominence, we find
tame, languid, and mutilated natures, destitute of all fire and energy, and
this tendency has been still further aggravated by the extreme prominence
usually given to the virtue of gentleness, which may indeed be attained by
men of strong natures and vehement emotions, but is evidently more
congenial to a somewhat feeble and passionless character.

Ascetic practices are manifestly and rapidly disappearing, and their decline
is a striking proof of the evanescence of [pg 114] the moral notions of
which they were the expression, but in many existing questions relating to
the same matter, we find perplexing diversity of judgment. We find it in the
contrast between the system of education usually adopted by the Catholic
priesthood, which has for its pre-eminent object to prevent sins, and for its

means a constant and minute supervision, and the English system of public
schools, which is certainly not the most fitted to guard against the
possibility of sin, or to foster any very delicate scrupulosity of feeling; but
is intended, and popularly supposed, to secure the healthy expansion of
every variety of capacity. We find it in the widely different attitudes which
good men in different periods have adopted towards religious opinions they
believe to be false; some, like the reformers, refusing to participate in any
superstitious service, or to withhold on any occasion, or at any cost, their
protest against what they regarded as a lie; others, like most ancient, and
some modern philosophers and politicians, combining the most absolute
personal incredulity with an assiduous observance of superstitious rites, and
strongly censuring those who disturbed delusions which are useful or
consolatory to the people; while a third class silently, but without protest,
withdraw themselves from the observances, and desire that their opinions
should have a free expression in literature, but at the same time discourage
all proselytising efforts to force them rudely on unprepared minds. We find
it in the frequent conflicts between the political economist and the Catholic
priest on the subject of early marriages, the former opposing them on the
ground that it is an essential condition of material well-being that the
standard of comfort should not be depressed, the latter advocating them on
the ground that the postponement of marriages, through prudential motives,
by any large body of men, is the fertile mother of sin. We find it most
conspicuously in the marked diversities of tolerance manifested in different
communities towards amusements which may in themselves be perfectly
innocent, [pg 115] but which prove the sources or the occasions of vice. The
Scotch Puritans probably represent one extreme, the Parisian society of the
empire the other, while the position of average Englishmen is perhaps
equidistant between them. Yet this difference, great as it is, is a difference
not of principle, but of degree. No Puritan seriously desires to suppress
every clan-gathering, every highland game which may have occasioned an
isolated fit of drunkenness, though he may be unable to show that it has
prevented any sin that would otherwise have been committed. No
Frenchman will question that there is a certain amount of demoralisation
which should not be tolerated, however great the enjoyment that
accompanies it. Yet the one dwells almost exclusively upon the moral, the
other upon the attractive, nature of a spectacle. Between these there are
numerous gradations, which are shown in frequent disputes about the merits

and demerits of the racecourse, the ball, the theatre, and the concert. Where
then, it may be asked, is the line to be drawn? By what rule can the point be
determined at which an amusement becomes vitiated by the evil of its
consequences?

To these questions the intuitive moralist is obliged to answer, that such a
line cannot be drawn, that such a rule does not exist. The colours of our
moral nature are rarely separated by the sharp lines of our vocabulary. They
fade and blend into one another so imperceptibly, that it is impossible to
mark a precise point of transition. The end of man is the full development
of his being in that symmetry and proportion which nature has assigned it,
and such a development implies that the supreme, the predominant motive
of his life, should be moral. If in any society or individual this ascendency
does not exist, that society or that individual is in a diseased and abnormal
condition. But the superiority of the moral part of our nature, though
unquestionable, is indefinite not infinite, and the prevailing standard is not
at all times the same. The moralist can only lay down general [pg 116]
principles. Individual feeling or the general sentiment of society must draw
the application.

The vagueness that on such questions confessedly hangs over the intuitive
theory, has always been insisted upon by members of the opposite school,
who 'in the greatest happiness principle' claim to possess a definite
formulary, enabling them to draw boldly the frontier line between the
lawful and the illicit, and to remove moral disputes from the domain of
feeling to that of demonstration. But this claim, which forms the great
attraction of the utilitarian school, is, if I mistake not, one of the grossest of
impostures. We compare with accuracy and confidence the value of the
most various material commodities, for we mean by this term,
exchangeable value, and we have a common measure of exchange. But we
seek in vain for such a measure enabling us to compare different kinds of
utility or happiness. Thus, to take a very familiar example, the question may
be proposed, whether excursion trains from a country district to a seaport
town produce more good than evil, whether a man governed by moral
principles should encourage or oppose them. They give innocent and
healthy enjoyment to many thousands, they enlarge in some degree the
range of their ideas, they can hardly be said to prevent any sin that would

otherwise have been committed, they give rise to many cases of
drunkenness, each of which, according to the theological doctrine we have
reviewed, should be deemed a more dreadful calamity than the earthquake
of Lisbon, or a visitation of the cholera, but which have not usually any
lasting terrestrial effects; they also often produce a measure, and sometimes
no small measure, of more serious vice, and it is probable that hundreds of
women may trace their first fall to the excursion train. We have here a
number of advantages and disadvantages, the first being intellectual and
physical, and the second moral. Nearly all moralists would acknowledge
that a few instances of immorality would not prevent the excursion train
being, on the whole, a good thing. All would acknowledge that [pg 117]
very numerous instances would more than counterbalance its advantages.
The intuitive moralist confesses that he is unable to draw a precise line,
showing where the moral evils outweigh the physical benefits. In what
possible respect the introduction of Benthamite formularies improves the
matter, I am unable to understand. No utilitarian would reduce the question
to one of simple majority, or would have the cynicism to balance the ruin of
one woman by the day's enjoyment of another. The impossibility of
drawing, in such cases, a distinct line of division, is no argument against the
intuitive moralist, for that impossibility is shared to the full extent by his
rival.

There are, as we have seen, two kinds of interest with which utilitarian
moralists are concerned—the private interest which they believe to be the
ultimate motive, and the public interest which they believe to be the end, of
all virtue. With reference to the first, the intuitive moralist denies that a
selfish act can be a virtuous or meritorious one. If a man when about to
commit a theft, became suddenly conscious of the presence of a policeman,
and through fear of arrest and punishment were to abstain from the act he
would otherwise have committed, this abstinence would not appear in the
eyes of mankind to possess any moral value; and if he were determined
partly by conscientious motives, and partly by fear, the presence of the
latter element would, in proportion to its strength, detract from his merit.
But although selfish considerations are distinctly opposed to virtuous ones,
it would be a mistake to imagine they can never ultimately have a purely
moral influence. In the first place, a well-ordered system of threats and
punishments marks out the path of virtue with a distinctness of definition it

could scarcely have otherwise attained. In the next place, it often happens
that when the mind is swayed by a conflict of motives, the expectation of
reward or punishment will so reinforce or support [pg 118] the virtuous
motives, as to secure their victory; and, as every triumph of these motives
increases their strength and weakens the opposing principles, a step will
thus have been made towards moral perfection, which will render more
probable the future triumph of unassisted virtue.

With reference to the interests of society, there are two distinct assertions to
be made. The first is, that although the pursuit of the welfare of others is
undoubtedly one form of virtue, it does not include all virtue, or, in other
words, that there are forms of virtue which, even if beneficial to mankind,
do not become virtuous on that account, but have an intrinsic excellence
which is not proportioned to or dependent on their utility. The second is,
that there may occasionally arise considerations of extreme and
overwhelming utility that may justify a sacrifice of these virtues. This
sacrifice may be made in various ways—as, when a man undertakes an
enterprise which is in itself perfectly innocent, but which in addition to its
great material advantages will, as he well knows, produce a certain measure
of crime; or when, abstaining from a protest, he tacitly countenances beliefs
which he considers untrue, because he regards them as transcendently
useful; or again, when, for the benefit of others, and under circumstances of
great urgency, he utters a direct falsehood, as, for example, when by such
means alone he can save the life of an innocent man.131 But the fact, that in
these cases considerations of extreme utility are suffered to override [pg
119] considerations of morality, is in no degree inconsistent with the facts,
that the latter differ in kind from the former, that they are of a higher nature,
and that they may supply adequate and legitimate motives of action not
only distinct from, but even in opposition to utility. Gold and silver are
different metals. Gold is more valuable than silver; yet a very small quantity
of gold may be advantageously exchanged for a very large quantity of
silver.

The last class of objections to the theory of natural moral perceptions which
it is necessary for me to notice, arises from a very mischievous
equivocation in the word natural.132 The term natural man is sometimes
regarded as synonymous with man in his primitive or barbarous condition,

and sometimes as expressing all in a civilised man that is due to nature as
distinguished from artificial habits or acquirements. This equivocation is
especially dangerous, because it implies one of the most extravagant
excesses to which the sensational philosophy could be pushed—the notion
that the difference between a savage and a civilised man is simply a
difference of acquisition, and not at all a difference of development. In
accordance with this notion, those who deny original moral distinctions
have ransacked the accounts of travellers for examples of savages who
appeared destitute of moral sentiments, and have adduced them as
conclusive evidence of their position. Now it is, I think, abundantly evident
that these narratives are usually exceedingly untrustworthy.133 They [pg
120] have been in most cases collected by uncritical and unphilosophical
travellers, who knew little of the language and still less of the inner life of
the people they described, whose means of information were acquired in
simply traversing the country, who were more struck by moral paradox,
than by unostentatious virtue, who were proverbially addicted to
embellishing and exaggerating the singularities they witnessed, and who
very rarely investigated their origin. It should not be forgotten that the
French moralists of the last century, who insisted most strongly on this
species of evidence, were also the dupes of one of the most curious
delusions in the whole compass of literary history. Those unflinching
sceptics who claimed to be the true disciples of the apostle who believed
nothing that he had not touched, and whose relentless criticism played with
withering effect on all the holiest feelings of our nature, and on all the
tenets of traditional creeds, had discovered one happy land where the ideal
had ceased to be a dream. They could point to one people whose pure and
rational morality, purged from all the clouds of bigotry and enthusiasm,
shone with an almost dazzling splendour above the ignorance and
superstition of Europe. Voltaire forgot to gibe, and Helvétius kindled into
enthusiasm, when China and the Chinese rose before their minds, and to
this semi-barbarous nation they habitually attributed maxims of conduct
that neither Roman nor Christian virtue had ever realised.

But putting aside these considerations, and assuming the fidelity of the
pictures of savage life upon which these writers rely, they fail to prove the
point for which they are adduced. The moralists I am defending, assert that
we possess a natural power of distinguishing between the higher and lower

parts of our nature. But the eye of the mind, like [pg 121] the eye of the
body, may be closed. Moral and rational facilities may be alike dormant,
and they will certainly be so if men are wholly immersed in the gratification
of their senses. Man is like a plant, which requires a favourable soil for the
full expansion of its natural or innate powers.134 Yet those powers both
rational and moral are there, and when quickened into action, each will
discharge its appointed functions. If it could be proved that there are
savages who are absolutely destitute of the progressive energy which
distinguishes reason from instinct and of the moral aspiration which
constitutes virtue, this would not prove that rational or moral faculties form
no part of their nature. If it could be shown that there is a stage of barbarism
in which man knows, feels and does nothing that might not be known, felt
and done by an ape, this would not be sufficient to reduce him to the level
of the brute. There would still be this broad distinction between them—the
one possesses a capacity for development which the other does not possess.
Under favourable circumstances the savage will become a reasoning, [pg
122] progressive, and moral man: under no circumstances can a similar
transformation be effected in the ape. It may be as difficult to detect the
oakleaf in the acorn as in the stone; yet the acorn may be converted into an
oak: the stone will always continue to be a stone.135

The foregoing pages will, I trust, have exhibited with sufficient clearness
the nature of the two great divisions of moral philosophy—the school which
proceeds from the primitive truth that all men desire happiness, and
endeavours out of this fact to evolve all ethical doctrines, and the school
which traces our moral systems to an intuitive perception that certain parts
of our nature are higher or better than others. It is obvious that this
difference concerning the origin of our moral conceptions forms part of the
very much wider metaphysical question, whether our ideas are derived
exclusively from sensation or whether they spring in part from the mind
itself. The latter theory in antiquity was chiefly represented by the Platonic
doctrine of pre-existence, which rested on the conviction that the mind has
the power of drawing from its own depths certain conceptions or ideas
which cannot be explained by any post-natal experience, and must
therefore, it was said, have been acquired in a previous [pg 123] existence.
In the seventeenth century it took the form of a doctrine of innate ideas. But
though this theory in the form in which it was professed by Lord Herbert of

Cherbury and assailed by Locke has almost disappeared, the doctrine that
we possess certain faculties which by their own expansion, and not by the
reception of notions from without, are not only capable of, but must
necessarily attain, certain ideas, as the bud must necessarily expand into its
own specific flower, still occupies a distinguished place in the world of
speculation, and its probability has been greatly strengthened by recent
observations of the range and potency of instinct in animals. From some
passages in his Essay, it appears that Locke himself had a confused
perception of this distinction,136 which was by no means unknown to
previous writers; and after the publication of the philosophy of Locke it was
clearly exhibited by Shaftesbury and Leibnitz, and incidentally noticed by
Berkeley long before Kant established his distinction between the form and
the matter of our knowledge, between ideas which are received a priori and
ideas which are received a posteriori. The existence or non-existence of this
source of ideas forms the basis of the opposition between the inductive
philosophy of England and the French philosophy of the eighteenth century
on the one hand, and the German and [pg 124] Scotch philosophies, as well
as the French eclecticism of the nineteenth century upon the other. The
tendency of the first school is to restrict as far as possible the active powers
of the human mind, and to aggrandise as far as possible the empire of
external circumstances. The other school dwells especially on the
instinctive side of our nature, and maintains the existence of certain
intuitions of the reason, certain categories or original conceptions, which
are presupposed in all our reasonings and cannot be resolved into
sensations. The boast of the first school is that its searching analysis leaves
no mental phenomenon unresolved, and its attraction is the extreme
simplicity it can attain. The second school multiplies faculties or original
principles, concentrates its attention mainly upon the nature of our
understanding, and asserts very strongly the initiative force both of our will
and of our intellect.

We find this connection between a philosophy based upon the senses, and a
morality founded upon utility from the earliest times. Aristotle was
distinguished among the ancients for the emphasis with which he dwelt
upon the utility of virtue, and it was from the writings of Aristotle that the
schoolmen derived the famous formulary which has become the motto of
the school of Locke. Locke himself devoted especial research to the

refutation of the doctrine of a natural moral sense, which he endeavoured to
overthrow by a catalogue of immoral practices that exist among savages,
and the hesitation he occasionally exhibited in his moral doctrine
corresponds not unfaithfully to the obscurity thrown over his metaphysics
by the admission of reflection as a source of ideas. If his opponent Leibnitz
made pleasure the object of moral action, it was only that refined pleasure
which is produced by the contemplation of the happiness of others. When,
however, Condillac and his followers, removing reflection from the position
Locke had assigned it, reduced the philosophy of sensation to its simplest
expression, and when the Scotch and German writers elaborated the
principles of [pg 125] the opposite school, the moral tendencies of both
were indisputably manifested. Everywhere the philosophy of sensation was
accompanied by the morals of interest, and the ideal philosophy, by an
assertion of the existence of a moral faculty, and every influence that has
affected the prevailing theory concerning the origin of our ideas, has
exercised a corresponding influence upon the theories of ethics.

The great movement of modern thought, of which Bacon was at once the
highest representative and one of the chief agents, has been truly said to
exhibit a striking resemblance, and at the same time a striking contrast, to
the movement of ancient thought, which was effected chiefly by the genius
of Socrates. In the name of utility, Socrates diverted the intellect of
antiquity from the fantastic cosmogonies with which it had long been
occupied, to the study of the moral nature of man. In the name of the same
utility Bacon laboured to divert the modern intellect from the idle
metaphysical speculations of the schoolmen to natural science, to which
newly discovered instruments of research, his own sounder method, and a
cluster of splendid intellects, soon gave an unprecedented impulse. To the
indirect influence of this movement, perhaps, even more than to the direct
teaching of Gassendi and Locke, may be ascribed the great ascendency of
sensational philosophy among modern nations, and it is also connected with
some of the most important differences between ancient and modern
history. Among the ancients the human mind was chiefly directed to
philosophical speculations, in which the law seems to be perpetual
oscillation, while among the moderns it has rather tended towards physical
science, and towards inventions, in which the law is perpetual progress.
National power, and in most cases even national independence, implied

among the ancients the constant energy of high intellectual or moral
qualities. When the heroism or the genius of the people had relaxed, when
an enervating philosophy or the lassitude that often accompanies
civilisation [pg 126] arrived, the whole edifice speedily tottered, the sceptre
was transferred to another state, and the same history was elsewhere
reproduced. A great nation bequeathed indeed to its successors works of
transcendent beauty in art and literature, philosophies that could avail only
when the mind had risen to their level, examples that might stimulate the
heroism of an aspiring people, warnings that might sometimes arrest it on
the path to ruin. But all these acted only through the mind. In modern times,
on the other hand, if we put aside religious influences, the principal causes
of the superiority of civilised men are to be found in inventions which when
once discovered can never pass away, and the effects of which are in
consequence in a great measure removed from the fluctuations of moral
life. The causes which most disturbed or accelerated the normal progress of
society in antiquity were the appearance of great men, in modern times they
have been the appearance of great inventions. Printing has secured the
intellectual achievements of the past, and furnished a sure guarantee of
future progress. Gunpowder and military machinery have rendered the
triumph of barbarians impossible. Steam has united nations in the closest
bonds. Innumerable mechanical contrivances have given a decisive
preponderance to that industrial element which has coloured all the
developments of our civilisation. The leading characteristics of modern
societies are in consequence marked out much more by the triumphs of
inventive skill than by the sustained energy of moral causes.

Now it will appear evident, I think, to those who reflect carefully upon their
own minds, and upon the course of history, that these three things, the study
of physical science, inventive skill, and industrial enterprise, are connected
in such a manner, that when in any nation there is a long-sustained tendency
towards one, the others will naturally follow. This connection is partly that
of cause and effect, for success in either of these branches facilitates
success in the others, a [pg 127] knowledge of natural laws being the basis
of many of the most important inventions, and being itself acquired by the
aid of instruments of research, while industry is manifestly indebted to both.
But besides this connection, there is a connection of congruity. The same
cast or habit of thought developes itself in these three forms. They all

represent the natural tendencies of what is commonly called the practical as
opposed to the theoretical mind, of the inductive or experimental as
opposed to the deductive or ideal, of the cautious and the plodding as
opposed to the imaginative and the ambitious, of the mind that tends
naturally to matter as opposed to that which dwells naturally on ideas.
Among the ancients, the distaste for physical science, which the belief in
the capricious divine government of all natural phenomena, and the distaste
for industrial enterprise which slavery produced, conspired to favour the
philosophical tendency, while among the moderns physical science and the
habits of industrial life continually react upon one another.

There can be no question that the intellectual tendencies of modern times
are far superior to those of antiquity, both in respect to the material
prosperity they effect, and to the uninterrupted progress they secure. Upon
the other hand, it is, I think, equally unquestionable that this superiority is
purchased by the sacrifice of something of dignity and elevation of
character. It is when the cultivation of mental and moral qualities is deemed
the primary object, when the mind and its interests are most removed from
the things of sense, that great characters are most frequent, and the standard
of heroism is most high. In this, as in other cases, the law of congruity is
supreme. The mind that is concentrated most on the properties of matter, is
predisposed to derive all ideas from the senses, while that which dwells
naturally upon its own operations inclines to an ideal philosophy, and the
prevailing system of morals depends largely upon the distinction.

In the next place, we may observe that the practical [pg 128] consequences,
so far as ethics are concerned,137 of the opposition between the two great
schools of morals, are less than might be inferred from the intellectual
chasm that separates them. Moralists grow up in the atmosphere of society,
and experience all the common feelings of other men. Whatever theory of
the genesis of morals they may form, they commonly recognise as right the
broad moral principles of the world, and they endeavour—though I have
attempted to show not always successfully—to prove that these principles
may be accounted for and justified by their system. The great practical
difference between the schools lies, not in the difference of the virtues they
inculcate, but in the different degrees of prominence they assign to each, in
the different casts of mind they represent and promote. As Adam Smith

observed, a system like that of the Stoics, which makes self-control the
ideal of excellence, is especially favourable to the heroic qualities, a system
like that of Hutcheson, which resolves virtue into benevolence, to the
amiable qualities, and utilitarian systems to the industrial virtues. A society
in which any one of these three forms of moral excellence is especially
prominent, has a natural tendency towards the corresponding theory of
ethics; but, on the other hand, this theory, when formed, reacts upon and
strengthens the moral tendency that elicited it. The Epicureans and the
Stoics can each claim a great historical fact in their favour. When every
other Greek school modified or abandoned the teaching of its founder, the
disciples of Epicurus at Athens preserved their hereditary faith unsullied
and unchanged.138 On the other hand, in the [pg 129] Roman empire, almost
every great character, almost every effort in the cause of liberty, emanated
from the ranks of Stoicism, while Epicureanism was continually identified
with corruption and with tyranny. The intuitive school, not having a clear
and simple external standard, has often proved somewhat liable to
assimilate with superstition and mysticism, to become fantastic,
unreasoning, and unpractical, while the prominence accorded to interest,
and the constant intervention of calculation in utilitarian systems, have a
tendency to depress the ideal, and give a sordid and unheroic ply to the
character. The first, dwelling on the moral initiative, elevates the tone and
standard of life. The second, revealing the influence of surrounding
circumstances upon character, leads to the most important practical
reforms.139 Each school has thus proved in some sense at once the corrective
and the complement of the other. Each when pushed to its extreme results,
produces evils which lead to the reappearance of its rival.

Having now considered at some length the nature and [pg 130] tendencies
of the theories according to which men test and classify their moral
feelings, we may pass to an examination of the process according to which
these feelings are developed, or, in other words, of the causes that lead
societies to elevate their moral standard and determine their preference of
some particular kinds of virtue. The observations I have to offer on this
subject will be of a somewhat miscellaneous character, but they will all, I
trust, tend to show the nature of the changes that constitute moral history,
and to furnish us with some general principles which may be applied in
detail in the succeeding chapters.

It is sufficiently evident, that, in proportion to the high organisation of
society, the amiable and the social virtues will be cultivated at the expense
of the heroic and the ascetic. A courageous endurance of suffering is
probably the first form of human virtue, the one conspicuous instance in
savage life of a course of conduct opposed to natural impulses, and pursued
through a belief that it is higher or nobler than the opposite. In a disturbed,
disorganised, and warlike society, acts of great courage and great endurance
are very frequent, and determine to a very large extent the course of events;
but in proportion to the organisation of communities the occasions for their
display, and their influence when displayed, are alike restricted. Besides this
the tastes and habits of civilisation, the innumerable inventions designed to
promote comfort and diminish pain, set the current of society in a direction
altogether different from heroism, and somewhat emasculate, though they
refine and soften, the character. Asceticism again—including under this
term, not merely the monastic system, but also all efforts to withdraw from
the world in order to cultivate a high degree of sanctity—belongs naturally
to a society which is somewhat rude, and in which isolation is frequent and
easy. When men become united in very close bonds of co-operation, when
industrial enterprise becomes very ardent, and the prevailing impulse is
strongly [pg 131] towards material wealth and luxurious enjoyments, virtue
is regarded chiefly or solely in the light of the interests of society, and this
tendency is still further strengthened by the educational influence of
legislation, which imprints moral distinctions very deeply on the mind, but
at the same time accustoms men to measure them solely by an external and
utilitarian standard.140 The first table of the law gives way to the second.
Good is not loved for itself, but as the means to an end. All that virtue
which is required to form upright and benevolent men is in the highest
degree useful to society, but the qualities which constitute a saintly or
spiritual character as distinguished from one that is simply moral and
amiable, have not the same direct, uniform and manifest tendency to the
promotion of happiness, and they are accordingly little valued.141 In savage
life the animal [pg 132] nature being supreme, these higher qualities are
unknown. In a very elaborate material civilisation the prevailing
atmosphere is not favourable either to their production or their appreciation.
Their place has usually been in an intermediate stage.

On the other hand, there are certain virtues that are the natural product of a
cultivated society. Independently of all local and special circumstances, the
transition of men from a barbarous or semi-civilised to a highly organised
state necessarily brings with it the destruction or abridgment of the
legitimate sphere of revenge, by transferring the office of punishment from
the wronged person to a passionless tribunal appointed by society;142 a
growing substitution of pacific for warlike occupations, the introduction of
refined and intellectual tastes which gradually displace amusements that
derive their zest from their barbarity, the rapid multiplication of ties of
connection between all classes and nations, and also the strengthening of
the imagination by intellectual culture. This last faculty, considered as the
power of realisation, forms the chief tie between our moral and intellectual
natures. In order to pity suffering we must realise it, and the intensity of our
compassion is usually proportioned to the vividness of our realisation.143
The most frightful catastrophe in South America, an earthquake, a
shipwreck, or a battle, will elicit less compassion than the death of a single
individual who has been brought prominently before our eyes. To this cause
must be chiefly ascribed the extraordinary measure of compassion usually
bestowed upon a conspicuous [pg 133] condemned criminal, the affection
and enthusiasm that centre upon sovereigns, and many of the glaring
inconsistencies of our historical judgments. The recollection of some
isolated act of magnanimity displayed by Alexander or Cæsar moves us
more than the thought of the 30,000 Thebans whom the Macedonian sold as
slaves, of the 2,000 prisoners he crucified at Tyre, of the 1,100,000 men on
whose corpses the Roman rose to fame. Wrapt in the pale winding-sheet of
general terms the greatest tragedies of history evoke no vivid images in our
minds, and it is only by a great effort of genius that an historian can
galvanise them into life. The irritation displayed by the captive of St.
Helena in his bickerings with his gaoler affects most men more than the
thought of the nameless thousands whom his insatiable egotism had hurried
to the grave. Such is the frailty of our nature that we are more moved by the
tears of some captive princess, by some trifling biographical incident that
has floated down the stream of history, than by the sorrows of all the
countless multitudes who perished beneath the sword of a Tamerlane, a
Bajazet, or a Zenghis Khan.

If our benevolent feelings are thus the slaves of our imaginations, if an act
of realisation is a necessary antecedent and condition of compassion, it is
obvious that any influence that augments the range and power of this
realising faculty is favourable to the amiable virtues, and it is equally
evident that education has in the highest degree this effect. To an
uneducated man all classes, nations, modes of thought and existence foreign
to his own are unrealised, while every increase of knowledge brings with it
an increase of insight, and therefore of sympathy. But the addition to his
knowledge is the smallest part of this change. The realising faculty is itself
intensified. Every book he reads, every intellectual exercise in which he
engages, accustoms him to rise above the objects immediately present to his
senses, to extend his realisations into new spheres, and reproduce in his
imagination [pg 134] the thoughts, feelings, and characters of others, with a
vividness inconceivable to the savage. Hence, in a great degree, the tact
with which a refined mind learns to discriminate and adapt itself to the most
delicate shades of feeling, and hence too the sensitive humanity with which,
in proportion to their civilisation, men realise and recoil from cruelty.

We have here, however, an important distinction to draw. Under the name
of cruelty are comprised two kinds of vice, altogether different in their
causes and in most of their consequences. There is the cruelty which springs
from callousness and brutality, and there is the cruelty of vindictiveness.
The first belongs chiefly to hard, dull, and somewhat lethargic characters, it
appears most frequently in strong and conquering nations and in temperate
climates, and it is due in a very great degree to defective realisation. The
second is rather a feminine attribute, it is usually displayed in oppressed and
suffering communities, in passionate natures, and in hot climates. Great
vindictiveness is often united with great tenderness, and great callousness
with great magnanimity, but a vindictive nature is rarely magnanimous, and
a brutal nature is still more rarely tender. The ancient Romans exhibited a
remarkable combination of great callousness and great magnanimity, while
by a curious contrast the modern Italian character verges manifestly towards
the opposite combination. Both forms of cruelty are, if I mistake not,
diminished with advancing civilisation, but by different causes and in
different degrees. Callous cruelty disappears before the sensitiveness of a
cultivated imagination. Vindictive cruelty is diminished by the substitution
of a penal system for private revenge.

The same intellectual culture that facilitates the realisation of suffering, and
therefore produces compassion, facilitates also the realisation of character
and opinions, and therefore produces charity. The great majority of
uncharitable judgments in the world may be traced to a deficiency of [pg
135] imagination. The chief cause of sectarian animosity, is the incapacity
of most men to conceive hostile systems in the light in which they appear to
their adherents, and to enter into the enthusiasm they inspire. The
acquisition of this power of intellectual sympathy is a common
accompaniment of a large and cultivated mind, and wherever it exists, it
assuages the rancour of controversy. The severity of our judgment of
criminals is also often excessive, because the imagination finds it more easy
to realise an action than a state of mind. Any one can conceive a fit of
drunkenness or a deed of violence, but few persons who are by nature very
sober or very calm can conceive the natural disposition that predisposes to
it. A good man brought up among all the associations of virtue reads of
some horrible crime, his imagination exhausts itself in depicting its
circumstances, and he then estimates the guilt of the criminal, by asking
himself, “How guilty should I be, were I to perpetrate such an act?” To
realise with any adequacy the force of a passion we have never experienced,
to conceive a type of character radically different from our own, above all,
to form any just appreciation of the lawlessness and obtuseness of moral
temperament, inevitably generated by a vicious education, requires a power
of imagination which is among the rarest of human endowments. Even in
judging our own conduct, this feebleness of imagination is sometimes
shown, and an old man recalling the foolish actions, but having lost the
power of realising the feelings, of his youth, may be very unjust to his own
past. That which makes it so difficult for a man of strong vicious passions
to unbosom himself to a naturally virtuous man, is not so much the virtue as
the ignorance of the latter. It is the conviction that he cannot possibly
understand the force of a passion he has never felt. That which alone
renders tolerable to the mind the thought of judgment by an all-pure Being,
is the union of the attribute of omniscience with that of purity, for perfect
[pg 136] knowledge implies a perfect power of realisation. The further our
analysis extends, and the more our realising faculties are cultivated, the
more sensible we become of the influence of circumstances both upon
character and upon opinions, and of the exaggerations of our first estimates

of moral inequalities. Strong antipathies are thus gradually softened down.
Men gain much in charity, but they lose something in zeal.

We may push, I think, this vein of thought one step farther. Our
imagination, which governs our affections, has in its earlier and feebler
stages little power of grasping ideas, except in a personified and concrete
form, and the power of rising to abstractions is one of the best measures of
intellectual progress. The beginning of writing is the hieroglyphic or
symbolical picture; the beginning of worship is fetishism or idolatry; the
beginning of eloquence is pictorial, sensuous, and metaphorical; the
beginning of philosophy is the myth. The imagination in its first stages
concentrates itself on individuals; gradually by an effort of abstraction it
rises to an institution or well-defined organisation; it is only at a very
advanced stage that it can grasp a moral and intellectual principle. Loyalty,
patriotism, and attachment to a cosmopolitan cause are therefore three
forms of moral enthusiasm respectively appropriate to three successive
stages of mental progress, and they have, I think, a certain analogy to
idolatrous worship, church feeling, and moral culture, which are the central
ideas of three stages of religious history.

The reader will readily understand that generalisations of this kind can
pretend to nothing more than an approximate truth. Our knowledge of the
laws of moral progress is like that of the laws of climate. We lay down
general rules about the temperature to be expected as we approach or recede
from the equator, and experience shows that they are substantially correct;
but yet an elevated plain, or a chain of mountains, or the neighbourhood of
the sea, will often in [pg 137] some degree derange our calculations. So,
too, in the history of moral changes, innumerable special agencies, such as
religious or political institutions, geographical conditions, traditions,
antipathies, and affinities, exercise a certain retarding, accelerating, or
deflecting influence, and somewhat modify the normal progress. The
proposition for which I am contending is simply that there is such a thing as
a natural history of morals, a defined and regular order, in which our moral
feelings are unfolded; or, in other words, that there are certain groups of
virtues which spring spontaneously out of the circumstances and mental
conditions of an uncivilised people, and that there are others which are the
normal and appropriate products of civilisation. The virtues of uncivilised

men are recognised as virtues by civilised men, but they are neither
exhibited in the same perfection, nor given the same position in the scale of
duties. Of these moral changes none are more obvious than the gradual
decadence of heroism both active and passive, the increase of compassion
and of charity, and the transition from the enthusiasm of loyalty to those of
patriotism and liberty.

Another form of virtue which usually increases with civilisation is veracity,
a term which must be regarded as including something more than the
simple avoidance of direct falsehood. In the ordinary intercourse of life it is
readily understood that a man is offending against truth, not only when he
utters a deliberate falsehood, but also when in his statement of a case he
suppresses or endeavours to conceal essential facts, or makes positive
assertions without having conscientiously verified their grounds. The
earliest form in which the duty of veracity is enforced is probably the
observance of vows, which occupy a position of much prominence in
youthful religions. With the subsequent progress of civilisation, we find the
successive inculcation of three forms of veracity, which may be termed
respectively industrial, political, and philosophical. By the first I understand
that [pg 138] accuracy of statement or fidelity to engagements which is
commonly meant when we speak of a truthful man. Though in some cases
sustained by the strong sense of honour which accompanies a military
spirit, this form of veracity is usually the special virtue of an industrial
nation, for although industrial enterprise affords great temptations to
deception, mutual confidence, and therefore strict truthfulness, are in these
occupations so transcendently important that they acquire in the minds of
men a value they had never before possessed. Veracity becomes the first
virtue in the moral type, and no character is regarded with any kind of
approbation in which it is wanting. It is made more than any other the test
distinguishing a good from a bad man. We accordingly find that even where
the impositions of trade are very numerous, the supreme excellence of
veracity is cordially admitted in theory, and it is one of the first virtues that
every man aspiring to moral excellence endeavours to cultivate. This
constitutes probably the chief moral superiority of nations pervaded by a
strong industrial spirit over nations like the Italians, the Spaniards, or the
Irish, among whom that spirit is wanting. The usual characteristic of the
latter nations is a certain laxity or instability of character, a proneness to

exaggeration, a want of truthfulness in little things, an infidelity to
engagements from which an Englishman, educated in the habits of
industrial life, readily infers a complete absence of moral principle. But a
larger philosophy and a deeper experience dispel his error. He finds that
where the industrial spirit has not penetrated, truthfulness rarely occupies in
the popular mind the same prominent position in the catalogue of virtues. It
is not reckoned among the fundamentals of morality, and it is possible and
even common to find in those nations—what would be scarcely possible in
an industrial society—men who are habitually dishonest and untruthful in
small things, and whose lives are nevertheless influenced by a deep
religious feeling, and adorned by the consistent practice [pg 139] of some of
the most difficult and most painful virtues. Trust in Providence, content and
resignation in extreme poverty and suffering, the most genuine amiability
and the most sincere readiness to assist their brethren, an adherence to their
religious opinions which no persecutions and no bribes can shake, a
capacity for heroic, transcendent, and prolonged self-sacrifice, may be
found in some nations in men who are habitual liars and habitual cheats.

The promotion of industrial veracity is probably the single form in which
the growth of manufactures exercises a favourable influence upon morals. It
is possible, however, for this virtue to exist in great perfection without any
corresponding growth of political veracity, or in other words, of that spirit
of impartiality which in matters of controversy desires that all opinions,
arguments, and facts should be fully and fairly stated. This habit of what is
commonly termed “fair play” is especially the characteristic of free
communities, and it is pre-eminently fostered by political life. The practice
of debate creates a sense of the injustice of suppressing one side of a case,
which gradually extends through all forms of intellectual life, and becomes
an essential element in the national character. But beyond all this there is a
still higher form of intellectual virtue. By enlarged intellectual culture,
especially by philosophic studies, men come at last to pursue truth for its
own sake, to esteem it a duty to emancipate themselves from party spirit,
prejudices, and passion, and through love of truth to cultivate a judicial
spirit in controversy. They aspire to the intellect not of a sectarian but of a
philosopher, to the intellect not of a partisan but of a statesman.

Of these three forms of a truthful spirit the two last may be said to belong
exclusively to a highly civilised society. The last especially can hardly be
attained by any but a cultivated mind, and is one of the latest flowers of
virtue that bloom in the human heart. The growth, however, both of [pg
140] political and philosophical veracity has been unnaturally retarded by
the opposition of theologians, who made it during many centuries a main
object of their policy to suppress all writings that were opposed to their
views, and who, when this power had escaped their grasp, proceeded to
discourage in every way impartiality of mind and judgment, and to
associate it with the notion of sin.

To the observations I have already made concerning the moral effects of
industrial life, I shall at present add but two. The first is that an industrial
spirit creates two wholly different types of character—a thrifty character
and a speculating character. Both types grow out of a strong sense of the
value and a strong desire for the attainment of material comforts, but they
are profoundly different both in their virtues and their vices. The chief
characteristic of the one type is caution, that of the other enterprise.
Thriftiness is one of the best regulators of life. It produces order, sobriety,
moderation, self-restraint, patient industry, and all that cast of virtues which
is designated by the term respectability; but it has also a tendency to form
contracted and ungenerous natures, incapable of enthusiasm or lively
sympathy. The speculating character, on the other hand, is restless, fiery,
and uncertain, very liable to fall into great and conspicuous vices, impatient
of routine, but by no means unfavourable to strong feelings, to great
generosity or resolution. Which of these two forms the industrial spirit
assumes depends upon local circumstances. Thriftiness flourishes chiefly
among men placed outside the great stream of commerce, and in positions
where wealth is only to be acquired by slow and steady industry, while the
speculating character is most common in the great centres of enterprise and
of wealth.

In the next place, it may be remarked that industrial habits bring
forethought into a new position in the moral type. In early stages of
theological belief, men regarding [pg 141] every incident that happens to
them as the result of a special divine decree, sometimes esteem it a test of
faith and a form of duty to take no precautions for the future, but to leave

questions of food and clothing to Providential interposition. On the other
hand, in an industrial civilisation, prudent forethought is regarded not
simply as lawful, but as a duty, and a duty of the very highest order. A good
man of the industrial type deems it a duty not to marry till he has ensured
the maintenance of a possible family; if he possesses children, he regulates
his expenses not simply by the relation of his income to his immediate
wants, but with a constant view to the education of his sons, to the
portioning of his daughters, to the future necessities and careers of each
member of his family. Constant forethought is the guiding principle of his
whole life. No single circumstance is regarded as a better test of the
civilisation of a people than the extent to which it is diffused among them.
The old doctrine virtually disappears, and is interpreted to mean nothing
more than that we should accept with resignation what no efforts and no
forethought could avert.

This change is but one of several influences which, as civilisation advances,
diminish the spirit of reverence among mankind. Reverence is one of those
feelings which, in utilitarian systems, would occupy at best a very
ambiguous position; for it is extremely questionable whether the great evils
that have grown out of it in the form of religious superstition and political
servitude have not made it a source of more unhappiness than happiness.
Yet, however doubtful may be its position if estimated by its bearing on
happiness and on progress, there are few persons who are not conscious that
no character can attain a supreme degree of excellence in which a
reverential spirit is wanting. Of all the forms of moral goodness it is that to
which the epithet beautiful may be most emphatically applied. Yet the
habits of advancing [pg 142] civilisation are, if I mistake not, on the whole
inimical to its growth. For reverence grows out of a sense of constant
dependence. It is fostered by that condition of religions thought in which
men believe that each incident that befalls them is directly and specially
ordained, and when every event is therefore fraught with a moral import. It
is fostered by that condition of scientific knowledge in which every
portentous natural phenomenon is supposed to be the result of a direct
divine interposition, and awakens in consequence emotions of humility and
awe. It is fostered in that stage of political life when loyalty or reverence for
the sovereign is the dominating passion, when an aristocracy, branching
forth from the throne, spreads habits of deference and subordination

through every village, when a revolutionary, a democratic, and a sceptical
spirit are alike unknown. Every great change, either of belief or of
circumstances, brings with it a change of emotions. The self-assertion of
liberty, the levelling of democracy, the dissecting-knife of criticism, the
economical revolutions that reduce the relations of classes to simple
contracts, the agglomeration of population, and the facilities of locomotion
that sever so many ancient ties, are all incompatible with the type of virtue
which existed before the power of tradition was broken, and when the
chastity of faith was yet unstained. Benevolence, uprightness, enterprise,
intellectual honesty, a love of freedom, and a hatred of superstition are
growing around us, but we look in vain for that most beautiful character of
the past, so distrustful of self, and so trustful of others, so simple, so
modest, and so devout, which even when, Ixion-like, it bestowed its
affections upon a cloud, made its very illusions the source of some of the
purest virtues of our nature. In a few minds, the contemplation of the
sublime order of nature produces a reverential feeling, but to the great
majority of mankind it is an incontestable though mournful fact, that the
discovery of controlling and unchanging law deprives phenomena of their
moral significance, [pg 143] and nearly all the social and political spheres
in which reverence was fostered have passed away. Its most beautiful
displays are not in nations like the Americans or the modern French, who
have thrown themselves most fully into the tendencies of the age, but rather
in secluded regions like Styria or the Tyrol. Its artistic expression is found
in no work of modern genius, but in the mediæval cathedral, which,
mellowed but not impaired by time, still gazes on us in its deathless beauty
through the centuries of the past. A superstitious age, like every other phase
of human history, has its distinctive virtues, which must necessarily decline
before a new stage of progress can be attained.

The virtues and vices growing out of the relation between the sexes are
difficult to treat in general terms, both on account of the obvious delicacy of
the subject, and also because their natural history is extremely obscured by
special causes. In the moral evolutions we have as yet examined, the normal
influences are most powerful, and the importance of deranging and
modifying circumstances is altogether subsidiary. The expansion of the
amiable virtues, the decline of heroism and loyalty, and the growth of
industrial habits spring out of changes which necessarily take place under

almost all forms of civilisation,144 and the broad features of the movement
are therefore in almost all nations substantially the same. But in the history
of sensuality, special causes, such as slavery, religious doctrines, or laws
affecting marriage, have been the most powerful agents. The immense
changes effected in this field by the Christian religion I shall hereafter
examine. In the present chapter I shall content myself with two or three
very general remarks relating to the nature of the vice, and to the effect of
different stages of civilisation upon its progress.

[pg 144]
There are, I conceive, few greater fallacies than are involved in the method
so popular among modern writers of judging the immorality of a nation by
its statistics of illegitimate births. Independently of the obvious defect of
this method in excluding simple prostitution from our comparison, it
altogether neglects the fact that a large number of illegitimate births arise
from causes totally different from the great violence of the passions. Such,
for example, is the notion prevailing in many country districts of England,
that the marriage ceremony has a retrospective virtue, cancelling previous
immorality; and such too is the custom so general among some classes on
the Continent of forming permanent connections without the sanction either
of a legal or a religious ceremony. However deeply such facts may be
reprehended and deplored, it would be obviously absurd to infer from them
that the nations in which they are most prominent are most conspicuous for
the uncontrolled violence of their sensual passions. In Sweden, which long
ranked among the lowest in the moral scale, if measured by the number of
illegitimate births, the chief cause appears to have been the difficulties with
which legislators surrounded marriage.145 Even in displays of actual and
violent passion, there are distinctions to be drawn which statistics are
wholly unable to reach. The coarse, cynical, and ostentatious sensuality
which forms the most repulsive feature of the French character, the dreamy,
languid, and æsthetical sensuality of the Spaniard or the Italian, the furtive
and retiring sensuality of some northern nations, though all forms of the
same vice, are widely different feelings, and exercise widely different
effects upon the prevailing disposition.

In addition to the very important influence upon public morals which
climate, I think, undoubtedly exercises in [pg 145] stimulating or allaying

the passions, it has a powerful indirect action upon the position, character,
and tastes of women, by determining the prevalence of indoor or out-of-
door life, and also the classes among whom the gift of beauty is diffused. In
northern countries the prevailing cast of beauty depends rather on colour
than on form. It consists chiefly of a freshness and delicacy of complexion
which severe labour and constant exposure necessarily destroy, and which
is therefore rarely found in the highest perfection among the very poor. But
the southern type is essentially democratic. The fierce rays of the sun only
mellow and mature its charms. Its most perfect examples may be found in
the hovel as in the palace, and the effects of this diffusion of beauty may be
traced both in the manners and the morals of the people.

It is probable that the observance of this form of virtue is naturally most
strict in a rude and semi-civilised but not barbarous people, and that a very
refined civilisation is not often favourable to its growth. Sensuality is the
vice of young men and of old nations. A languid epicureanism is the normal
condition of nations which have attained a high intellectual or social
civilisation, but which, through political causes, have no adequate sphere
for the exertion of their energies. The temptation arising from the great
wealth of some, and from the feverish longing for luxury and exciting
pleasures in others, which exists in all large towns, has been peculiarly fatal
to female virtue, and the whole tendency of the public amusements of
civilisation is in the same direction. The rude combats which form the chief
enjoyments of barbarians produce cruelty. The dramatic and artistic tastes
and the social habits of refined men produce sensuality. Education raises
many poor women to a stage of refinement that makes them suitable
companions for men of a higher rank, and not suitable for those of their
own. Industrial pursuits have, indeed, a favourable influence in promoting
habits of self-restraint, and especially in checking the licence [pg 146] of
military life; but on the other hand, they greatly increase temptation by
encouraging postponement of marriage, and in communities, even more
than in individuals, moral inequalities are much more due to differences of
temptation than to differences of self-restraint. In large bodies of men a
considerable increase of temptation always brings with it an increase,
though not necessarily a proportionate increase, of vice. Among the checks
on excessive multiplication, the historical influence of voluntary continence
has been, it must be feared, very small. Physical and moral evils have alone

been decisive, and as these form the two opposite weights, we unhappily
very frequently find that the diminution of the one has been followed by the
increase of the other. The nearly universal custom of early marriages among
the Irish peasantry has alone rendered possible that high standard of female
chastity, that intense and jealous sensitiveness respecting female honour, for
which, among many failings and some vices, the Irish poor have long been
pre-eminent in Europe; but these very marriages are the most conspicuous
proofs of the national improvidence, and one of the most fatal obstacles to
industrial prosperity. Had the Irish peasants been less chaste, they would
have been more prosperous. Had that fearful famine, which in the present
century desolated the land, fallen upon a people who thought more of
accumulating subsistence than of avoiding sin, multitudes might now be
living who perished by literal starvation on the dreary hills of Limerick or
Skibbereen.

The example of Ireland furnishes us, however, with a remarkable instance
of the manner in which the influence of a moral feeling may act beyond the
circumstances that gave it birth. There is no fact in Irish history more
singular than the complete, and, I believe, unparalleled absence among the
Irish priesthood of those moral scandals which in every continental country
occasionally prove the danger of vows of celibacy. The unsuspected purity
of the Irish priests in this [pg 147] respect is the more remarkable, because,
the government of the country being Protestant, there is no special
inquisitorial legislation to ensure it, because of the almost unbounded
influence of the clergy over their parishioners, and also because if any just
cause of suspicion existed, in the fierce sectarianism of Irish public opinion,
it would assuredly be magnified. Considerations of climate are quite
inadequate to explain this fact; but the chief cause is, I think, sufficiently
obvious. The habit of marrying at the first development of the passions has
produced among the Irish peasantry, from whom the priests for the most
part spring, an extremely strong feeling of the iniquity of irregular sexual
indulgence, which retains its power even over those who are bound to
perpetual celibacy.

It will appear evident from the foregoing considerations that, while the
essential nature of virtue and vice is unaltered, there is a perpetual, and in
some branches an orderly and necessary change, as society advances, both

in the proportionate value attached to different virtues in theory, and in the
perfection in which they are realised in practice. It will appear too that,
while there may be in societies such a thing as moral improvement, there is
rarely or never, on a large scale, such a thing as unmixed improvement. We
may gain more than we lose, but we always lose something. There are
virtues which are continually dying away with advancing civilisation, and
even the lowest stage possesses its distinctive excellence. There is no
spectacle more piteous or more horrible to a good man than that of an
oppressed nationality writhing in anguish beneath a tyrant's yoke; but there
is no condition in which passionate, unquestioning self-sacrifice and heroic
courage, and the true sentiment of fraternity are more grandly elicited, and
it is probable that the triumph of liberty will in these forms not only lessen
the moral performances, but even weaken the moral capacities of mankind.
War is, no doubt, a fearful evil, but it is the seed-plot of magnanimous
virtues, which in a pacific age must [pg 148] wither and decay. Even the
gambling-table fosters among its more skilful votaries a kind of moral
nerve, a capacity for bearing losses with calmness, and controlling the force
of the desires, which is scarcely exhibited in equal perfection in any other
sphere.

There is still so great a diversity of civilisation in existing nations that
traversing tracts of space is almost like traversing tracts of time, for it
brings us in contact with living representatives of nearly every phase of past
civilisation. But these differences are rapidly disappearing before the
unparalleled diffusion and simplification of knowledge, the still more
amazing progress in means of locomotion, and the political and military
causes that are manifestly converting Europe into a federation of vast
centralised and democratic States. Even to those who believe that the
leading changes are on the whole beneficial, there is much that is
melancholy in this revolution. Those small States which will soon have
disappeared from the map of Europe, besides their vast superiority to most
great empires in financial prosperity, in the material well-being of the
inhabitants, and in many cases in political liberty, pacific tastes, and
intellectual progress, form one of the chief refuges of that spirit of content,
repose, and retrospective reverence which is pre-eminently wanting in
modern civilisation, and their security is in every age one of the least
equivocal measures of international morality. The monastic system,

however pernicious when enlarged to excess, has undoubtedly contributed
to the happiness of the world, by supplying an asylum especially suited to a
certain type of character; and that vindictive and short-sighted revolution
which is extirpating it from Europe is destroying one of the best correctives
of the excessive industrialism of our age. It is for the advantage of a nation
that it should attain the most advanced existing type of progress, but it is
extremely questionable whether it is for the advantage of the community at
large that all nations [pg 149] should attain the same type, even when it is
the most advanced. The influence of very various circumstances is
absolutely necessary to perfect moral development. Hence, one of the great
political advantages of class representation, which brings within the range
of politics a far greater variety both of capacities and moral qualities than
can be exhibited when one class has an exclusive or overwhelmingly
preponderating influence, and also of heterogeneous empires, in which
different degrees of civilisation produce different kinds of excellence which
react upon and complete one another. In the rude work of India and
Australia a type of character is formed which England could ill afford to
lose.

The remarks I have now made will be sufficient, I hope, to throw some light
upon those great questions concerning the relations of intellectual and
moral progress which have of late years attracted so large an amount of
attention. It has been contended that the historian of human progress should
concentrate his attention exclusively on the intellectual elements; for there
is no such thing as moral history, morals being essentially stationary, and
the rudest barbarians being in this respect as far advanced as ourselves. In
opposition to this view, I have maintained that while what may be termed
the primal elements of morals are unaltered, there is a perpetual change in
the standard which is exacted, and also in the relative value attached to
particular virtues, and that these changes constitute one of the most
important branches of general history. It has been contended by other
writers that, although such changes do take place, and although they play an
extremely great part in the world, they must be looked upon as the result of
intellectual causes, changes in knowledge producing changes in morals. In
this view, as we have seen, there is some truth, but it can only, I think, be
accepted with great qualification. It is one of the plainest of facts that
neither the individuals nor the ages most distinguished for intellectual

achievements have been [pg 150] most distinguished for moral excellence,
and that a high intellectual and material civilisation has often coexisted with
much depravity. In some respects the conditions of intellectual growth are
not favourable to moral growth. The agglomeration of men in great cities—
which are always the centres of progress and enlightenment—is one of the
most important causes of material and intellectual advance: but great towns
are the peculiar seed-plots of vice, and it is extremely questionable whether
they produce any special and equivalent efflorescence of virtue, for even the
social virtues are probably more cultivated in small populations, where men
live in more intimate relations. Many of the most splendid outbursts of
moral enthusiasm may be traced to an overwhelming force of conviction
rarely found in very cultivated minds, which are keenly sensible to
possibilities of error, conflicting arguments, and qualifying circumstances.
Civilisation has on the whole been more successful in repressing crime than
in repressing vice. It is very favourable to the gentler, charitable, and social
virtues, and, where slavery does not exist, to the industrial virtues, and it is
the especial nurse of the intellectual virtues; but it is in general not equally
favourable to the production of self-sacrifice, enthusiasm, reverence, or
chastity.

The moral changes, however, which are effected by civilisation may
ultimately be ascribed chiefly to intellectual causes, for these lie at the root
of the whole structure of civilised life. Sometimes, as we have seen,
intellectual causes act directly, but more frequently they have only an
indirect influence, producing habits of life which in their turn produce new
conceptions of duty. The morals of men are more governed by their pursuits
than by their opinions. A type of virtue is first formed by circumstances, and
men afterwards make it the model upon which their theories are framed.
Thus geographical or other circumstances, that make one nation military
and another industrial, will produce in each [pg 151] a realised type of
excellence, and corresponding conceptions about the relative importance of
different virtues widely different from those which are produced in the
other, and this may be the case although the amount of knowledge in the
two communities is substantially equal.

Having discussed these questions as fully as the nature of my subject
requires, I will conclude this chapter by noticing a few very prevalent errors

in the moral judgments of history, and will also endeavour to elucidate
some important consequences that may be deduced from the nature of
moral types.

It is probable that the moral standard of most men is much lower in political
judgments than in private matters in which their own interests are
concerned. There is nothing more common than for men who in private life
are models of the most scrupulous integrity to justify or excuse the most
flagrant acts of political dishonesty and violence; and we should be
altogether mistaken if we argued rigidly from such approvals to the general
moral sentiments of those who utter them. Not unfrequently too, by a
curious moral paradox, political crimes are closely connected with national
virtues. A people who are submissive, gentle, and loyal, fall by reason of
these very qualities under a despotic government; but this uncontrolled
power has never failed to exercise a most pernicious influence on rulers,
and their numerous acts of rapacity and aggression being attributed in
history to the nation they represent, the national character is wholly
misinterpreted.146 There are also particular kinds both of virtue and of vice
which appear prominently before the world, while others of at least equal
influence almost escape the notice of history. Thus, for example, the
sectarian animosities, the horrible persecutions, the blind hatred of progress,
the ungenerous support of every galling disqualification and restraint, the
intense class selfishness, the obstinately protracted defence of intellectual
[pg 152] and political superstition, the childish but whimsically ferocious
quarrels about minute dogmatic distinctions, or dresses, or candlesticks,
which constitute together the main features of ecclesiastical history, might
naturally, though very unjustly, lead men to place the ecclesiastical type in
almost the lowest rank, both intellectually and morally. These are, in fact,
the displays of ecclesiastical influence which stand in bold relief in the
pages of history. The civilising and moralising influence of the clergyman
in his parish, the simple, unostentatious, unselfish zeal with which he
educates the ignorant, guides the erring, comforts the sorrowing, braves the
horrors of pestilence, and sheds a hallowing influence over the dying hour,
the countless ways in which, in his little sphere, he allays evil passions, and
softens manners, and elevates and purifies those around him—all these
things, though very evident to the detailed observer, do not stand out in the
same vivid prominence in historical records, and are continually forgotten

by historians. It is always hazardous to argue from the character of a
corporation to the character of the members who compose it, but in no other
case is this method of judgment so fallacious as in the history of
ecclesiastics, for there is no other class whose distinctive excellences are
less apparent, and whose mental and moral defects are more glaringly
conspicuous in corporate action. In different nations, again, the motives of
virtue are widely different, and serious misconceptions arise from the
application to one nation of the measure of another. Thus the chief national
virtues of the French people result from an intense power of sympathy,
which is also the foundation of some of their most beautiful intellectual
qualities, of their social habits, and of their unrivalled influence in Europe.
No other nation has so habitual and vivid a sympathy with great struggles
for freedom beyond its border. No other literature exhibits so expansive and
œcumenical a genius, or expounds so skilfully, or appreciates so generously,
foreign ideas. In hardly any other land [pg 153] would a disinterested war
for the support of a suffering nationality find so large an amount of support.
The national crimes of France are many and grievous, but much will be
forgiven her because she loved much. The Anglo-Saxon nations, on the
other hand, though sometimes roused to strong but transient enthusiasm, are
habitually singularly narrow, unappreciative, and unsympathetic. The great
source of their national virtue is the sense of duty, the power of pursuing a
course which they believe to be right, independently of all considerations of
sympathy or favour, of enthusiasm or success. Other nations have far
surpassed them in many qualities that are beautiful, and in some qualities
that are great. It is the merit of the Anglo-Saxon race that beyond all others
it has produced men of the stamp of a Washington or a Hampden; men
careless, indeed, for glory, but very careful of honour; who made the
supreme majesty of moral rectitude the guiding principle of their lives, who
proved in the most trying circumstances that no allurements of ambition,
and no storms of passion, could cause them to deviate one hair's breadth
from the course they believed to be their duty. This was also a Roman
characteristic—especially that of Marcus Aurelius. The unweary,
unostentatious, and inglorious crusade of England against slavery may
probably be regarded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous pages
comprised in the history of nations.

Although it cannot be said that any virtue is the negation of another, it is
undoubtedly true that virtues are naturally grouped according to principles
of affinity or congruity, which are essential to the unity of the type. The
heroical, the amiable, the industrial, the intellectual virtues form in this
manner distinct groups; and in some cases the development of one group is
incompatible, not indeed with the existence, but with the prominence of
others. Content cannot be the leading virtue in a society animated by an
intense industrial spirit, nor submission nor tolerance of injuries in a society
[pg 154] formed upon a military type, nor intellectual virtues in a society
where a believing spirit is made the essential of goodness, yet each of these
conditions is the special sphere of some particular class of virtues. The
distinctive beauty of a moral type depends not so much on the elements of
which it is composed, as on the proportions in which those elements are
combined. The characters of Socrates, of Cato, of Bayard, of Fénelon, and
of St. Francis are all beautiful, but they differ generically, and not simply in
degrees of excellence. To endeavour to impart to Cato the distinctive charm
of St. Francis, or to St. Francis that of Cato, would be as absurd as to
endeavour to unite in a single statue the beauties of the Apollo and the
Laocoon, or in a single landscape the beauties of the twilight and of the
meridian sun. Take away pride from the ancient Stoic or the modern
Englishman, and you would have destroyed the basis of many of his noblest
virtues, but humility was the very principle and root of the moral qualities
of the monk. There is no quality virtuous in a woman that is not also
virtuous in a man, yet that disposition or hierarchy of virtues which
constitutes a perfect woman would be wholly unsuited for a perfect man.
The moral is in this respect like the physical type. The beauty of man is not
the beauty of woman, nor the beauty of the child as the beauty of the adult,
nor the beauty of an Italian as the beauty of an Englishwoman. All types of
character are not good, as all types of countenance are not beautiful; but
there are many distinct casts of goodness, as there are many distinct casts of
beauty.

This most important truth may be stated in a somewhat different form.
Whenever a man is eminently deficient in any virtue, it, of course, follows
that his character is imperfect, but it does not necessarily follow that he is
not in other respects moral and virtuous. There is, however, usually some
one virtue, which I may term rudimentary, which is brought forward so

prominently before the world, as the first condition [pg 155] of moral
excellence, that it may be safely inferred that a man who has absolutely
neglected it is entirely indifferent to moral culture. Rudimentary virtues
vary in different ages, nations, and classes. Thus, in the great republics of
antiquity patriotism was rudimentary, for it was so assiduously cultivated,
that it appeared at once the most obvious and the most essential of duties.
Among ourselves much private virtue may co-exist with complete
indifference to national interests. In the monastic period, and in a somewhat
different form in the age of chivalry, a spirit of reverential obedience was
rudimentary, and the basis of all moral progress; but we may now
frequently find a good man without it, his moral energies having been
cultivated in other directions. Common truthfulness and honesty, as I have
already said, are rudimentary virtues in industrial societies, but not in
others. Chastity, in England at least, is a rudimentary female virtue, but
scarcely a rudimentary virtue among men, and it has not been in all ages,
and is not now in all countries, rudimentary among women. There is no
more important task devolving upon a moral historian, than to discover in
each period the rudimentary virtue, for it regulates in a great degree the
position assigned to all others.

From the considerations I have urged, it will appear that there is
considerable danger in proposing too absolutely a single character, however
admirable, as the model to which all men must necessarily conform. A
character may be perfect in its own kind, but no character can possibly
embrace all types of perfection; for, as we have seen, the perfection of a
type depends not only upon the virtues that constitute it, but also upon the
order and prominence assigned to them. All that can be expected in an ideal
is, that it should be perfect of its own kind, and should exhibit the type most
needed in its age, and most widely useful to mankind. The Christian type is
the glorification of the amiable, as the Stoic type was that of the heroic
qualities, and this is [pg 156] one of the reasons why Christianity is so
much more fitted than Stoicism to preside over civilisation, for the more
society is organised and civilised, the greater is the scope for the amiable,
and the less for the heroic qualities.

The history of that moral intolerance which endeavours to reduce all
characters to a single type has never, I think, been examined as it deserves,

and I shall frequently have occasion to advert to it in the following pages.
No one can have failed to observe how common it is for men to make their
own tastes or excellences the measure of all goodness, pronouncing all that
is broadly different from them to be imperfect or low, or of a secondary
value. And this, which is usually attributed to vanity, is probably in most
cases much more due to feebleness of imagination, to the difficulty most
men have in conceiving in their minds an order of character fundamentally
different from their own. A good man can usually sympathise much more
with a very imperfect character of his own type than with a far more perfect
one of a different type. To this cause, quite as much as to historical causes
or occasional divergences of interest, may be traced the extreme difficulty
of effecting cordial international friendships, especially in those cases when
a difference of race coincides with the difference of nationality. Each nation
has a distinct type of excellence, each esteems the virtues in which it excels,
and in which its neighbours are often most deficient, incomparably the
greatest. Each regards with especial antipathy the vices from which it is
most free, and to which its neighbours maybe most addicted. Hence arises a
mingled feeling of contempt and dislike, from which the more enlightened
minds are, indeed, soon emancipated, but which constitutes the popular
sentiment.

The type of character of every individual depends partly upon innate
temperament and partly upon external circumstances. A warlike, a refined,
an industrial society each evokes and requires its specific qualities, and
produces its [pg 157] appropriate type. If a man of a different type arise—if,
for example, a man formed by nature to exhibit to the highest perfection the
virtues of gentleness or meekness, be born in the midst of a fierce military
society—he will find no suitable scope for action, he will jar with his age,
and his type will be regarded with disfavour. And the effect of this
opposition is not simply that he will not be appreciated as he deserves, he
will also never succeed in developing his own distinctive virtues as they
would have been developed under other circumstances. Everything will be
against him—the force of education, the habits of society, the opinions of
mankind, even his own sense of duty. All the highest models of excellence
about him being formed on a different type, his very efforts to improve his
being will dull the qualities in which nature intended him to excel. If, on the
other hand, a man with naturally heroic qualities be born in a society which

pre-eminently values heroism, he will not only be more appreciated, he will
also, under the concurrence of favourable circumstances, carry his heroism
to a far higher point than would otherwise have been possible. Hence
changing circumstances produce changing types, and hence, too, the
possibility of moral history and the necessity of uniting it with general
history. Religions, considered as moral teachers, are realised and effective
only when their moral teaching is in conformity with the tendency of their
age. If any part of it is not so, that part will be either openly abandoned, or
refined away, or tacitly neglected. Among the ancients, the co-existence of
the Epicurean and Stoical schools, which offered to the world two entirely
different archetypes of virtue, secured in a very remarkable manner the
recognition of different kinds of excellence; for although each of these
schools often attained a pre-eminence, neither ever succeeded in wholly
destroying or discrediting the other.

Of the two elements that compose the moral condition of mankind, our
generalised knowledge is almost restricted to [pg 158] one. We know much
of the ways in which political, social, or intellectual causes act upon
character, but scarcely anything of the laws that govern innate disposition,
of the reasons and extent of the natural moral diversities of individuals or
races. I think, however, that most persons who reflect upon the subject will
conclude that the progress of medicine, revealing the physical causes of
different moral predispositions, is likely to place a very large measure of
knowledge on this point within our reach. Of all the great branches of
human knowledge, medicine is that in which the accomplished results are
most obviously imperfect and provisional, in which the field of unrealised
possibilities is most extensive, and from which, if the human mind were
directed to it, as it has been during the past century to locomotive and other
industrial inventions, the most splendid results might be expected. Our
almost absolute ignorance of the causes of some of the most fatal diseases,
and the empirical nature of nearly all our best medical treatment, have been
often recognised. The medicine of inhalation is still in its infancy, and yet it
is by inhalation that Nature produces most of her diseases, and effects most
of her cures. The medical power of electricity, which of all known agencies
bears most resemblance to life, is almost unexplored. The discovery of
anæsthetics has in our own day opened out a field of inestimable
importance, and the proved possibility, under certain physical conditions, of

governing by external suggestions the whole current of the feelings and
emotions, may possibly contribute yet further to the alleviation of suffering,
and perhaps to that euthanasia which Bacon proposed to physicians as an
end of their art. But in the eyes both of the philanthropist and of the
philosopher, the greatest of all results to be expected in this, or perhaps any
other field, are, I conceive, to be looked for in the study of the relations
between our physical and our moral natures. He who raises moral pathology
to a science, expanding, systematising, [pg 159] and applying many
fragmentary observations that have been already made, will probably take a
place among the master intellects of mankind. The fastings and bleedings of
the mediæval monk, the medicines for allaying or stimulating the sensual
passions, the treatment of nervous diseases, the moral influences of insanity
and of castration, the researches of phrenology, the moral changes that
accompany the successive stages of physical developments, the instances of
diseases which have altered, sometimes permanently, the whole complexion
of the character, and have acted through the character upon all the
intellectual judgments,147 are examples of the kind of facts with which such
a science would deal. Mind and body are so closely connected that even
those who most earnestly protest against materialism readily admit that
each acts continually upon the other. The sudden emotion that quickens the
pulse, and blanches or flushes the cheek, and the effect of fear in
predisposing to an epidemic, are familiar instances of the action of the mind
upon the body, and the more powerful and permanent influence of the body
upon the disposition is attested by countless observations. It is probable that
this action extends to all parts of our moral constitution, that every passion
or characteristic tendency has a physical predisposing cause, and that if we
were acquainted with these, we might treat by medicine the many varieties
of moral disease as systematically as we now treat physical disease. In
addition to its incalculable practical importance, such knowledge would
have a great philosophical value, throwing a new light upon the filiation of
our moral qualities, enabling us to treat exhaustively the moral influence of
climate, and withdrawing the great question of the influence of race from
the impressions of isolated observers to place it on the firm basis of
experiment. It [pg 160] would thus form the complement to the labours of
the historian.

Such discoveries are, however, perhaps far from attainment, and their
discussion does not fall within the compass of this work. My present object
is simply to trace the action of external circumstances upon morals, to
examine what have been the moral types proposed as ideal in different ages,
in what degree they have been realised in practice, and by what causes they
have been modified, impaired, or destroyed.

[pg 161]

Chapter II. The Pagan Empire.

One of the first facts that must strike a student who examines the ethical
teaching of the ancient civilisations is how imperfectly that teaching was
represented, and how feebly it was influenced by the popular creed. The
moral ideas had at no time been sought in the actions of the gods, and long
before the triumph of Christianity, polytheism had ceased to have any great
influence upon the more cultivated intellects of mankind.

In Greece we may trace from the earliest time the footsteps of a religion of
nature, wholly different from the legends of the mythology. The language in
which the first Greek dramatists asserted the supreme authority and
universal providence of Zeus was so emphatic, that the Christian Fathers
commonly attributed it either to direct inspiration or to a knowledge of the
Jewish writings, while later theologians of the school of Cudworth have
argued from it in favour of the original monotheism of our race. The
philosophers were always either contemptuous or hostile to the prevailing
legends. Pythagoras is said to have declared that he had seen Hesiod tied to
a brazen pillar in hell, and Homer hung upon a tree surrounded by serpents,
on account of the fables they had invented about the gods.148 Plato, for the
same reason, banished the poets from his republic. Stilpo turned to [pg 162]
ridicule the whole system of sacrifices,149 and was exiled from Athens for
denying that the Athene of Phidias was a goddess.150 Xenophanes remarked
that each nation attributed to the gods its distinctive national type, the gods
of the Æthiopians being black, the gods of the Thracians fair and blue-
eyed.151 Diagoras and Theodorus are said to have denied, and Protagoras to
have questioned the existence of the gods,152 while the Epicureans deemed
them wholly indifferent to human affairs, and the Pyrrhonists pronounced
our faculties absolutely incapable of attaining any sure knowledge, either

human or divine. The Cynic Antisthenes said that there were many popular
gods, but there was only one god of nature.153 The Stoics, reproducing an
opinion which was supported by Aristotle and attributed to Pythagoras,154
believed in an all-pervading soul of nature, but unlike some modern schools
which have adopted this view, they asserted in emphatic language the
doctrine of Providence, and the self-consciousness of the Deity.

In the Roman republic and empire, a general scepticism had likewise arisen
among the philosophers as the first fruit of intellectual development, and
the educated classes were speedily divided between avowed or virtual
atheists, like the Epicureans,155 and pure theists, like the Stoics and the
Platonists. The first, represented by such writers as Lucretius and Petronius,
regarded the gods simply as the creations of fear, denied every form of
Providence, attributed the world [pg 163] to a concurrence of atoms, and
life to spontaneous generation, and regarded it as the chief end of
philosophy to banish as illusions of the imagination every form of religious
belief. The others formed a more or less pantheistic conception of the Deity,
asserted the existence of a Providence,156 but treated with great contempt the
prevailing legends which they endeavoured in various ways to explain. The
first systematic theory of explanation appears to have been that of the
Sicilian Euhemerus, whose work was translated by Ennius. He pretended
that the gods were originally kings, whose history and genealogies he
professed to trace, and who after death had been deified by mankind.157
Another attempt, which in the first period of Roman scepticism was more
generally popular, was that of some of the Stoics, who regarded the gods as
personifications of the different attributes of the Deity, or of different forces
of nature. Thus Neptune was the sea, Pluto was fire, Hercules represented
the strength of God, Minerva His wisdom, Ceres His fertilising energy.158
More than a hundred years before the Empire, Varro had declared that “the
soul of the world is God, and that its parts are true divinities.”159 Virgil and
Manilius described, in lines of singular beauty, that universal spirit, the
principle of all life, the efficient cause of all motion, which [pg 164]
permeates and animates the globe. Pliny said that “the world and sky, in
whose embrace all things are enclosed, must be deemed a god, eternal,
immense, never begotten, and never to perish. To seek things beyond this is
of no profit to man, and they transcend the limits of his faculties.”160 Cicero
had adopted the higher Platonic conception of the Deity as mind freed from

all taint of matter,161 while Seneca celebrated in magnificent language
“Jupiter the guardian and ruler of the universe, the soul and spirit, the lord
and master of this mundane sphere, ... the cause of causes, upon whom all
things hang.... Whose wisdom oversees the world that it may move
uncontrolled in its course, ... from whom all things proceed, by whose spirit
we live, ... who comprises all we see.”162 Lucan, the great poet of stoicism,
rose to a still higher strain, and to one which still more accurately expressed
the sentiments of his school, when he described Jupiter as that majestic, all-
pervasive spirit, whose throne is virtue and the universe.163 Quintilian
defended the subjugation of the world beneath the sceptre of a single man,
on the ground that it was an image of the government of God. Other
philosophers contented themselves with asserting the supreme authority of
Jupiter Maximus, and reducing the other divinities to mere administrative
and angelic functions, or, as the Platonists expressed it, to the position of
dæmons. According to some of the Stoics, a final catastrophe would
consume the universe, the resuscitated spirits of men and all these minor
gods, and the whole creation being absorbed into the great parent spirit,
God [pg 165] would be all in all. The very children and old women
ridiculed Cerberus and the Furies164 or treated them as mere metaphors of
conscience.165 In the deism of Cicero the popular divinities were discarded,
the oracles refuted and ridiculed, the whole system of divination
pronounced a political imposture, and the genesis of the miraculous traced
to the exuberance of the imagination, and to certain diseases of the
judgment.166 Before the time of Constantine, numerous books had been
written against the oracles.167 The greater number of these had actually
ceased, and the ablest writers justly saw in this cessation an evidence of the
declining credulity of the people, and a proof that the oracles had been a
fruit of that credulity.168 The Stoics, holding, as was their custom, aloof
from direct religious discussion, dissuaded their disciples from consulting
them, on the ground that the gifts of fortune were of no account, and that a
good man should be content with his conscience, making duty and not
success the object of his life.169 Cato wondered that two augurs could [pg
166] meet with gravity.170 The Roman general Sertorius made the forgery of
auspicious omens a continual resource in warfare.171 The Roman wits made
divination the favourite subject of their ridicule.172 The denunciation which
the early Greek moralists launched against the popular ascription of
immoral deeds to the gods was echoed by a long series of later

philosophers,173 while Ovid made these fables the theme of his mocking
Metamorphoses, and in his most immoral poem proposed Jupiter as a model
of vice. With an irony not unlike that of Isaiah, Horace described the
carpenter deliberating whether he should convert a shapeless log into a
bench or into a god.174 Cicero, Plutarch, Maximus of Tyre, and Dion
Chrysostom either denounced idolatry or defended the use of images simply
on the ground that they were signs and symbols of the Deity,175 well suited
to aid the devotions [pg 167] of the ignorant. Seneca176 and the whole
school of Pythagoras objected to the sacrifices.

These examples will be sufficient to show how widely the philosophic
classes in Rome were removed from the professed religion of the State, and
how necessary it is to seek elsewhere the sources of their moral life. But the
opinions of learned men never reflect faithfully those of the vulgar, and the
chasm between the two classes was even wider than at present before the
dawn of Christianity and the invention of printing. The atheistic enthusiasm
of Lucretius and the sceptical enthusiasm of some of the disciples of
Carneades were isolated phenomena, and the great majority of the ancient
philosophers, while speculating with the utmost freedom in private, or in
writings that were read by the few, countenanced, practised, and even
defended the religious rites that they despised. It was believed that many
different paths adapted to different nations and grades of knowledge
converge to the same Divinity, and that the most erroneous religion is good
if it forms good dispositions and inspires virtuous actions. The oracle of
Delphi had said that the best religion is that of a man's own city. Polybius
and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who regarded all religions simply as
political agencies, dilated in rapturous terms upon the devotion of the
Romans and the comparative purity of their creed.177 Varro openly professed
the belief that there are religious truths which it is expedient that the people
should not know, and falsehoods which they should believe to be true.178
The Academic Cicero and the Epicurean Cæsar were both high officers of
religion. The Stoics taught that every man should duly perform the religious
ceremonies of his country.179

But the Roman religion, even in its best days, though an [pg 168] admirable
system of moral discipline, was never an independent source of moral
enthusiasm. It was the creature of the State, and derived its inspiration from

political feeling. The Roman gods were not, like those of the Greeks, the
creations of an unbridled and irreverent fancy, nor, like those of the
Egyptians, representations of the forces of nature; they were for the most
part simple allegories, frigid personifications of different virtues, or
presiding spirits imagined for the protection of different departments of
industry. The religion established the sanctity of an oath, it gave a kind of
official consecration to certain virtues, and commemorated special instances
in which they had been displayed; its local character strengthened patriotic
feeling, its worship of the dead fostered a vague belief in the immortality of
the soul,180 it sustained the supremacy of the father in the family, surrounded
marriage with many imposing solemnities, and created simple and reverent
characters profoundly submissive to an over-ruling Providence and
scrupulously observant of sacred rites. But with all this it was purely
selfish. It was simply a method of obtaining prosperity, averting calamity,
and reading the future. Ancient Rome produced many heroes, but no saint.
Its self-sacrifice was patriotic, not religious. Its religion was neither an
independent teacher nor a source of inspiration, although its rites mingled
with and strengthened some of the best habits of the people.

But these habits, and the religious reverence with which they were
connected, soon disappeared amid the immorality and decomposition that
marked the closing years of the Republic and the dawn of the Empire. The
stern simplicity of life, which the censors had so zealously and often so
tyrannically [pg 169] enforced,181 was exchanged for a luxury which first
appeared after the return of the army of Manlius from Asia,182 increased to
immense proportions after the almost simultaneous conquests of Carthage,
Corinth, and Macedonia,183 received an additional stimulus from the
example of Antony,184 and at last, under the Empire, rose to excesses which
the wildest Oriental orgies have never surpassed.185 The complete
subversion of the social and political system of the Republic, the anarchy of
civil war, the ever-increasing concourse of strangers, bringing with them
new philosophies, customs, and gods, had dissolved or effaced all the old
bonds of virtue. The simple juxtaposition of many forms of worship
effected what could not have been effected by the most sceptical literature
or the most audacious philosophy. The moral influence of religion was
almost annihilated. The feeling of reverence was almost extinct. Augustus
solemnly degraded the statue of Neptune because his fleet had been

wrecked.186 When Germanicus died, the populace stoned or overthrew the
altars of the gods.187 The idea of sanctity was so far removed from the
popular divinities that it became a continual complaint that prayers were
offered which the most depraved would blush to pronounce aloud.188 Amid
the corruption of the Empire, we meet with many noble efforts of reform
made by philosophers or by emperors, but we find [pg 170] scarcely a trace
of the moral influence of the old religion. The apotheosis of the emperors
consummated its degradation. The foreign gods were identified with those
of Rome, and all their immoral legends associated with the national
creed.189 The theatre greatly extended the area of scepticism. Cicero
mentions the assenting plaudits with which the people heard the lines of
Ennius, declaring that the gods, though real beings, take no care for the
things of man.190 Plutarch tells of a spectator at a theatre rising up with
indignation after a recital of the crimes of Diana, and exclaiming to the
actor, “May you have a daughter like her whom you have described!”191 St.
Augustine and other of the Fathers long after ridiculed the pagans who
satirised in the theatres the very gods they worshipped in the temples.192
Men were still profoundly superstitious, but they resorted to each new
religion as to a charm or talisman of especial power, or a system of magic
revealing the future. There existed, too, to a very large extent, a kind of
superstitious scepticism which occupies a very prominent place in religious
history. There were multitudes who, declaring that there were no gods, or
that the gods never interfered with human affairs, professed with the same
breath an absolute faith in all portents, auguries, dreams, and miracles.
Innumerable natural objects, such as comets, meteors, earthquakes, or
monstrous births, were supposed to possess a kind of occult or magical
virtue, by which they foreshadowed, and in some cases influenced, [pg 171]
the destinies of men. Astrology, which is the special representative of this
mode of thought, rose to great prominence. The elder Pliny notices that in
his time a belief was rapidly gaining ground, both among the learned and
among the vulgar, that the whole destiny of man is determined by the star
that presides over his nativity; that God, having ordained this, never
interferes with human affairs, and that the reality of the portents is due to
this pre-ordainment.193 One of the later historians of the Empire remarks
that numbers who denied the existence of any divinity believed nevertheless
that they could not safely appear in public, or eat or bathe, unless they had
first carefully consulted the almanac to ascertain the position of the planet

Mercury, or how far the moon was from the Crab.194 Except, perhaps,
among the peasants in the country districts, the Roman religion, in the last
years of the Republic, and in the first century of the Empire, scarcely
existed, except in the state of a superstition, and he who would examine the
true moral influence of the time must turn to the great schools of philosophy
which had been imported from Greece.

The vast place which the rival systems of Zeno and Epicurus occupy in the
moral history of mankind, and especially in the closing years of the empire
of paganism, may [pg 172] easily lead us to exaggerate the creative genius
of their founders, who, in fact, did little more than give definitions or
intellectual expression to types of excellence that had at all times existed in
the world. There have ever been stern, upright, self-controlled, and
courageous men, actuated by a pure sense of duty, capable of high efforts of
self-sacrifice, somewhat intolerant of the frailties of others, somewhat hard
and unsympathising in the ordinary intercourse of society, but rising to
heroic grandeur as the storm lowered upon their path, and more ready to
relinquish life than the cause they believed to be true. There have also
always been men of easy tempers and of amiable disposition, gentle,
benevolent, and pliant, cordial friends and forgiving enemies, selfish at
heart, yet ever ready, when it is possible, to unite their gratifications with
those of others, averse to all enthusiasm, mysticism, utopias, and
superstition, with little depth of character or capacity for self-sacrifice, but
admirably fitted to impart and to receive enjoyment, and to render the
course of life easy and harmonious. The first are by nature Stoics, and the
second Epicureans, and if they proceed to reason about the summum bonum
or the affections, it is more than probable that in each case their characters
will determine their theories. The first will estimate self-control above all
other qualities, will disparage the affections, and will endeavour to separate
widely the ideas of duty and of interest, while the second will
systematically prefer the amiable to the heroic, and the utilitarian to the
mystical.

But while it is undoubtedly true that in these matters character usually
determines opinion, it is not less true that character is itself in a great
measure governed by national circumstances. The refined, artistic, sensual
civilisations of Greece and Asia Minor might easily produce fine examples

of the Epicurean type, but Rome was from the earliest times pre-eminently
the home of stoicism. Long before the Romans had begun to reason about
philosophy, they had exhibited it in [pg 173] action, and in their speculative
days it was to this doctrine that the noblest minds naturally tended. A great
nation engaged in perpetual wars in an age when success in warfare
depended neither upon wealth nor upon mechanical genius, but upon the
constant energy of patriotic enthusiasm, and upon the unflinching
maintenance of military discipline, the whole force of the national character
tended to the production of a single definite type. In the absolute authority
accorded to the father over the children, to the husband over the wife, to the
master over the slave, we may trace the same habits of discipline that
proved so formidable in the field. Patriotism and military honour were
indissolubly connected in the Roman mind. They were the two sources of
national enthusiasm, the chief ingredients of the national conception of
greatness. They determined irresistibly the moral theory which was to prove
supreme.

Now war, which brings with it so many demoralising influences, has, at
least, always been the great school of heroism. It teaches men how to die. It
familiarises the mind with the idea of noble actions performed under the
influence, not of personal interest, but of honour and of enthusiasm. It
elicits in the highest degree strength of character, accustoms men to the
abnegation needed for simultaneous action, compels them to repress their
fears, and establish a firm control over their affections. Patriotism, too,
leads them to subordinate their personal wishes to the interests of the
society in which they live. It extends the horizon of life, teaching men to
dwell among the great men of the past, to derive their moral strength from
the study of heroic lives, to look forward continually, through the vistas of a
distant future, to the welfare of an organisation which will continue when
they have passed away. All these influences were developed in Roman life
to a degree which can now never be reproduced. War, for the reasons I have
stated, was far more than at present the school of heroic virtues. Patriotism,
[pg 174] in the absence of any strong theological passion, had assumed a
transcendent power. The citizen, passing continually from political to
military life, exhibited to perfection the moral effects of both. The habits of
command formed by a long period of almost universal empire, and by the

aristocratic organisation of the city, contributed to the elevation, and also to
the pride, of the national character.

It will appear, I think, sufficiently evident, from these considerations, that
the circumstances of the Roman people tended inevitably to the production
of a certain type of character, which, in its essential characteristics, was the
type of stoicism. In addition to the predisposition which leads men in their
estimate of the comparative excellence of different qualities to select for the
highest eulogy those which are most congruous to their own characters, this
fact derives a great importance from the large place which the biographical
element occupied in ancient ethical teaching. Among Christians the ideals
have commonly been either supernatural beings or men who were in
constant connection with supernatural beings, and these men have usually
been either Jews or saints, whose lives were of such a nature as to isolate
them from most human sympathies, and to efface as far as possible the
national type. Among the Greeks and Romans the examples of virtue were
usually their own fellow-countrymen; men who had lived in the same moral
atmosphere, struggled for the same ends, acquired their reputation in the
same spheres, exhibited in all their intensity the same national
characteristics as their admirers. History had assumed a didactic character it
has now almost wholly lost. One of the first tasks of every moralist was to
collect traits of character illustrating the precepts he enforced. Valerius
Maximus represented faithfully the method of the teachers of antiquity
when he wrote his book giving a catalogue of different moral qualities, and
illustrating each by a profusion of examples derived from the history of his
own or of foreign nations.

[pg 175]
“Whenever,” said Plutarch, “we begin an enterprise, or take possession of a
charge, or experience a calamity, we place before our eyes the example of
the greatest men of our own or of bygone ages, and we ask ourselves how
Plato or Epaminondas, Lycurgus or Agesilaus, would have acted. Looking
into these personages as into a faithful mirror, we can remedy our defects in
word or deed.... Whenever any perplexity arrives, or any passion disturbs
the mind, the student of philosophy pictures to himself some of those who
have been celebrated for their virtue, and the recollection sustains his
tottering steps and prevents his fall.”195

Passages of this kind continually occur in the ancient moralists,196 and they
show how naturally the highest type of national excellence determined the
prevailing school of moral philosophy, and also how the influence of the
heroic period of national history would act upon the best minds in the
subsequent and wholly different phases of development. It was therefore
not surprising that during the Empire, though the conditions of national life
were profoundly altered, Stoicism should still be the philosophical religion,
the great source and regulator of moral enthusiasm. Epicureanism had,
indeed, spread widely in the Empire,197 but it proved little more than a
principle of disintegration or an apology for vice, or at best the religion of
tranquil and indifferent natures animated by no strong moral enthusiasm. It
is indeed true that Epicurus had himself been a man of the most blameless
character, that his doctrines were at first carefully distinguished from the
coarse sensuality of the Cyrenaic school which had preceded them, that
they admitted in theory almost every form of virtue, and that the school had
produced [pg 176] many disciples who, if they had not attained the highest
grades of excellence, had at least been men of harmless lives, intensely
devoted to their master, and especially noted for the warmth and constancy
of their friendships.198 But a school which placed so high a value on ease
and pleasure was eminently unfit to struggle against the fearful difficulties
that beset the teachers of virtue amid the anarchy of a military despotism,
and the virtues and the vices of the Romans were alike fatal to its success.
All the great ideals of Roman excellence belonged to a different type. Such
men as a Decius or a Regulus would have been impossible in an Epicurean
society, for even if their actuating emotion were no nobler than a desire for
posthumous fame, such a desire could never grow powerful in a moral
atmosphere charged with the shrewd, placid, unsentimental utilitarianism of
Epicurus. On the other hand, the distinctions the Epicureans had drawn
between more or less refined pleasures and their elevated conceptions of
what constitutes the true happiness of men, were unintelligible to the
Romans, who knew how to sacrifice [pg 177] enjoyment, but who, when
pursuing it, gravitated naturally to the coarsest forms. The mission of
Epicureanism was therefore chiefly negative. The anti-patriotic tendency of
its teaching contributed to that destruction of national feeling which was
necessary to the rise of cosmopolitanism, while its strong opposition to
theological beliefs, supported by the genius and enthusiasm of Lucretius,
told powerfully upon the decaying faith.

Such being the functions of Epicureanism, the constructive or positive side
of ethical teaching devolved almost exclusively upon Stoicism; for although
there were a few philosophers who expressed themselves in strong
opposition to some portions of the Stoical system, their efforts usually
tended to no more than a modification of its extreme and harshest features.
The Stoics asserted two cardinal principles—that virtue was the sole
legitimate object to be aspired to, and that it involved so complete an
ascendancy of the reason as altogether to extinguish the affections. The
Peripatetics and many other philosophers, who derived their opinions
chiefly from Plato, endeavoured to soften down the exaggeration of these
principles. They admitted that virtue was an object wholly distinct from
interest, and that it should be the leading motive of life; but they maintained
that happiness was also a good, and a certain regard for it legitimate. They
admitted that virtue consisted in the supremacy of the reason over the
affections, but they allowed the exercise of the latter within restricted limits.
The main distinguishing features, however, of Stoicism, the unselfish ideal
and the controlling reason, were acquiesced in, and each represents an
important side of the ancient conception of excellence which we must now
proceed to examine.

In the first we may easily trace the intellectual expression of the high spirit
of self-sacrifice which the patriotic enthusiasm had elicited. The spirit of
patriotism has this peculiar characteristic, that, while it has evoked acts of
heroism [pg 178] which are both very numerous and very sublime, it has
done so without presenting any prospect of personal immortality as a
reward. Of all the forms of human heroism, it is probably the most
unselfish. The Spartan and the Roman died for his country because he loved
it. The martyr's ecstasy of hope had no place in his dying hour. He gave up
all he had, he closed his eyes, as he believed, for ever, and he asked for no
reward in this world or in the next. Even the hope of posthumous fame—the
most refined and supersensual of all that can be called reward—could exist
only for the most conspicuous leaders. It was examples of this nature that
formed the culminations or ideals of ancient systems of virtue, and they
naturally led men to draw a very clear and deep distinction between the
notions of interest and of duty. It may, indeed, be truly said, that while the
conception of what constituted duty was often very imperfect in antiquity,
the conviction that duty, as distinguished from every modification of

selfishness, should be the supreme motive of life was more clearly enforced
among the Stoics than in any later society.

The reader will probably have gathered from the last chapter that there are
four distinct motives which moral teachers may propose for the purpose of
leading men to virtue. They may argue that the disposition of events is such
that prosperity will attend a virtuous life, and adversity a vicious one—a
proposition they may prove by pointing to the normal course of affairs, and
by asserting the existence of a special Providence in behalf of the good in
the present world, and of rewards and punishments in the future. As far as
these latter arguments are concerned, the efficacy of such teaching rests
upon the firmness with which certain theological tenets are held, while the
force of the first considerations will depend upon the degree and manner in
which society is organised, for there are undoubtedly some conditions of
society in which a perfectly upright life has [pg 179] not even a general
tendency to prosperity. The peculiar circumstances and dispositions of
individuals will also influence largely the way in which they receive such
teaching, and, as Cicero observed, “what one utility has created, another
will often destroy.”

They may argue, again, that vice is to the mind what disease is to the body,
and that a state of virtue is in consequence a state of health. Just as bodily
health is desired for its own sake, as being the absence of a painful, or at
least displeasing state, so a well-ordered and virtuous mind may be valued
for its own sake, and independently of all the external good to which it may
lead, as being a condition of happiness; and a mind distracted by passion
and vice may be avoided, not so much because it is an obstacle in the
pursuit of prosperity, as because it is in itself essentially painful and
disturbing. This conception of virtue and vice as states of health or sickness,
the one being in itself a good and the other in itself an evil, was a
fundamental proposition in the ethics of Plato.199 It was admitted, but only
to a subsidiary place, by the Stoics,200 and has passed more or less [pg 180]
into all the succeeding systems. It is especially favourable to large and
elevating conceptions of self-culture, for it leads men to dwell much less
upon isolated acts of virtue or vice than upon the habitual condition of mind
from which they spring.

It is possible, in the third place, to argue in favour of virtue by offering as a
motive that sense of pleasure which follows the deliberate performance of a
virtuous act. This emotion is a distinct and isolated gratification following a
distinct action, and may therefore be easily separated from that habitual
placidity of temper which results from the extinction of vicious and
perturbing impulses. It is this theory which is implied in the common
exhortations to enjoy 'the luxury of doing good,' and though especially
strong in acts of benevolence, in which case sympathy with the happiness
created intensifies the feeling, this pleasure attends every kind of virtue.

These three motives of action have all this common characteristic, that they
point as their ultimate end to the happiness of the agent. The first seeks that
happiness in external circumstances; the second and third in psychological
conditions. There is, however, a fourth kind of motive which may be urged,
and which is the peculiar characteristic of the intuitive school of moralists
and the stumbling-block of its opponents. It is asserted that we are so
constituted that the notion of duty furnishes in itself a natural motive of
action of the highest order, wholly distinct from all the refinements and
modifications of self-interest. The coactive force of this motive is altogether
independent of surrounding circumstances, and of all forms of belief. It is
equally true for the man who believes and for the man who rejects the
Christian faith, for the believer in a future world and for the believer in the
mortality of the soul. It is not a question of happiness or unhappiness, of
reward or punishment, but of a generically different nature. Men feel that a
certain course [pg 181] of life is the natural end of their being, and they feel
bound, even at the expense of happiness, to pursue it. They feel that certain
acts are essentially good and noble, and others essentially base and vile, and
this perception leads them to pursue the one and to avoid the other,
irrespective of all considerations of enjoyment.

I have recurred to these distinctions, which were more fully discussed in the
last chapter, because the school of philosophy we are reviewing furnishes
the most perfect of all historical examples of the power which the higher of
these motives can exercise over the mind. The coarser forms of self-interest
were in stoicism absolutely condemned. It was one of the first principles of
these philosophers that all things that are not in our power should be
esteemed indifferent; that the object of all mental discipline should be to

withdraw the mind from all the gifts of fortune, and that prudence must in
consequence be altogether excluded from the motives of virtue. To enforce
these principles they continually dilated upon the vanity of human things,
and upon the majesty of the independent mind, and they indulged, though
scarcely more than other sects, in many exaggerations about the impassive
tranquillity of the sage.201 In the Roman empire stoicism flourished at a
period which, beyond almost any other, seemed unfavourable to such
teaching. There were reigns when, in the emphatic words of Tacitus, “virtue
was a sentence of death.” In no period had brute force more completely
triumphed, in none was the thirst for material advantages more intense, in
very few was vice more ostentatiously glorified. Yet in the midst of all these
circumstances the Stoics taught a philosophy which was not a compromise,
or an attempt to moderate the popular excesses, but which [pg 182] was
rather in its austere sanctity the extreme antithesis of all that the prevailing
examples and their own interests could dictate. And these men were no
impassioned fanatics, fired with the prospect of coming glory. They were
men from whose motives of action the belief in the immortality of the soul
was resolutely excluded. In the scepticism that accompanied the first
introduction of philosophy into Rome, in the dissolution of the old fables
about Tartarus and the Styx, and the dissemination of Epicureanism among
the people, this doctrine had sunk very low, notwithstanding the beautiful
reasonings of Cicero and the religious faith of a few who clung like
Plutarch to the mysteries in which it was perpetuated. An interlocutor in
Cicero expressed what was probably a common feeling when he
acknowledged that, with the writings of Plato before him, he could believe
and realise it; but when he closed the book, the reasonings seemed to lose
their power, and the world of spirits grew pale and unreal.202 If Ennius could
elicit the plaudits of a theatre when he proclaimed that the gods took no part
in human affairs, Cæsar could assert in the senate, without scandal and
almost without dissent, that death was the end of all things.203 Pliny, perhaps
the greatest of Roman scholars, adopting the sentiment of all the school of
Epicurus, describes the belief in a future life as a form of madness, a puerile
and a pernicious illusion.204 The opinions of the Stoics were wavering and
uncertain. Their first doctrine was that the soul of man has a future and
independent, but not [pg 183] an eternal existence, that it survives until the
last conflagration which was to destroy the world, and absorb all finite
things into the all-pervading soul of nature. Chrysippus, however, restricted

to the best and noblest souls this future existence, which Cleanthes had
awarded to all,205 and among the Roman Stoics even this was greatly
doubted. The belief that the human soul is a detached fragment of the Deity
naturally led to the belief that after death it would be reabsorbed into the
parent Spirit. The doctrine that there is no real good but virtue deprived the
Stoics of the argument for a future world derived from unrequited merit and
unpunished crime, and the earnestness with which they contended that a
good man should act irrespectively of reward inclined them, as it is said to
have inclined some Jewish thinkers,206 to the denial of the existence of the
reward.207 Panætius, the founder of Roman stoicism, maintained that the
soul perished with the body,208 and his opinion was followed by Epictetus,209
and Cornutus.210 Seneca contradicted himself on the subject.211 [pg 184]
Marcus Aurelius never rose beyond a vague and mournful aspiration. Those
who believed in a future world believed in it faintly and uncertainly, and
even when they accepted it as a fact, they shrank from proposing it as a
motive. The whole system of Stoical ethics, which carried self-sacrifice to a
point that has scarcely been equalled, and exercised an influence which has
rarely been surpassed, was evolved without any assistance from the doctrine
of a future life.212 Pagan antiquity has bequeathed us few nobler treatises of
morals than the “De Officiis” of Cicero, which was avowedly an expansion
of a work of Panætius.213 It has left us no grander example than that of
Epictetus, the sickly, deformed slave of a master who was notorious for his
barbarity, enfranchised late in life, but soon driven into exile by Domitian;
who, while sounding the very abyss of human misery, and looking forward
to death as to simple decomposition, was yet so filled with the sense of the
Divine presence that his life was one continued hymn to Providence, and
his writings and his example, which appeared to his contemporaries almost
the ideal of human goodness, have not lost their consoling power through
all the ages and the vicissitudes they have survived.214

[pg 185]
There was, however, another form of immortality which exercised a much
greater influence among the Roman moralists. The desire for reputation,
and especially for posthumous reputation—that “last infirmity of noble
minds”215—assumed an extraordinary prominence among the springs of
Roman heroism, and was also the origin of that theatrical and overstrained
phraseology which the greatest of ancient moralists rarely escaped.216 But

we should be altogether in error if we inferred, as some have done, that
paganism never rose to the conception of virtue concealing itself from the
world, and consenting voluntarily to degradation. No characters were more
highly appreciated in antiquity than those of men who, through a sense of
duty, opposed the strong current of popular favour; of men like Fabius, who
consented for the sake of their country to incur the reputation that is most
fatal to a soldier;217 of men like Cato, who remained unmoved among the
scoffs, the insults, and the ridicule of an angry crowd.218 Cicero, expounding
the principles of Stoicism, declared that no one has attained to true
philosophy who has not learnt that all vice should be avoided, “though it
were concealed from the eyes of gods and men,”219 and that no deeds are
more laudable than those which are done without ostentation, and far from
the sight of men.220 [pg 186] The writings of the Stoics are crowded with
sentences to the same effect. “Nothing for opinion, all for conscience.”221
“He who wishes his virtue to be blazed abroad is not labouring for virtue
but for fame.”222 “No one is more virtuous than the man who sacrifices the
reputation of a good man rather than sacrifice his conscience.”223 “I do not
shrink from praise, but I refuse to make it the end and term of right.”224 “If
you do anything to please men, you have fallen from your estate.”225 “Even
a bad reputation nobly earned is pleasing.”226 “A great man is not the less
great when he lies vanquished and prostrate in the dust.”227 “Never forget
that it is possible to be at once a divine man, yet a man unknown to all the
world.”228 “That which is beautiful is beautiful in itself; the praise of man
adds nothing to its quality.”229 Marcus Aurelius, following an example that
is ascribed to Pythagoras, made it a special object of mental discipline, by
continually meditating on death, and evoking, by an effort of the
imagination, whole societies that had passed away, to acquire a realised
sense of the vanity of posthumous fame. The younger Pliny painted
faithfully the ideal of Stoicism when he described one of his friends as a
man “who did nothing for ostentation, but all for conscience; who sought
the reward of virtue in itself, and not in the praise of man.”230 Nor were the
Stoics less emphatic in distinguishing the obligation from the attraction of
virtue. It was on this point that they separated from the more refined
Epicureans, who were often willing to sublimate to the highest degree the
kind of pleasure they proposed as an object, provided only it were admitted
that pleasure is necessarily the ultimate end of our actions. But this the
Stoics firmly denied. “Pleasure,” they [pg 187] argued, “is the companion,

not the guide, of our course.”231 “We do not love virtue because it gives us
pleasure, but it gives us pleasure because we love it.”232 “The wise man will
not sin, though both gods and men should overlook the deed, for it is not
through the fear of punishment or of shame that he abstains from sin. It is
from the desire and obligation of what is just and good.”233 “To ask to be
paid for virtue is as if the eye demanded a recompense for seeing, or the
feet for walking.”234 In doing good, man “should be like the vine which has
produced grapes, and asks for nothing more after it has produced its proper
fruit.”235 His end, according to these teachers, is not to find peace either in
life or in death. It is to do his duty, and to tell the truth.

The second distinguishing feature of Stoicism I have noticed was the
complete suppression of the affections to make way for the absolute
ascendancy 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 class 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 passions and tendencies, or from the circumstances that surround
him. A good man of the second class is one who is so happily constituted
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 it is also the only one which is capable of rising to high efforts
of [pg 188] 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 principal 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 associating 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 circumstances 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 [pg 189] nature of a disease236—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 superstition 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 [pg 190] thought
to its cause. Clemency, in the midst of its noblest efforts, is perfectly

passionless; 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 shipwrecked, 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 this
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 assist his fellows, to
labour for the welfare of mankind, and to offer to 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 gods, 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.”237

Cicero, in a sentence which might be adopted as the motto of Stoicism, said
that Homer “attributed human qualities to the gods; it would have been
better to have imparted divine qualities to men.” The remarkable passage 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. Friendship rather than love, hospitality rather than charity,
magnanimity rather than tenderness, [pg 191] clemency rather than
sympathy, are the characteristics of ancient goodness. The Stoics, who
carried the suppression of the emotions farther than any other school,
laboured with great zeal to compensate the injury thus done to the
benevolent side of our nature, by greatly enlarging the sphere of reasoned
and passionless philanthropy. They taught, in the most emphatic language,
the fraternity of all men, and the consequent duty of each man consecrating
his life to the welfare of others. They developed this general doctrine in a
series of detailed precepts, which, for the range, depth, and beauty of their
charity, have never been surpassed. They even extended their compassion to
crime, and adopting the paradox of Plato, that all guilt is ignorance,238

treated it as an involuntary disease, and declared that the only legitimate
ground of punishment is prevention.239 But, however fully they might
reconcile 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
Anaxagoras, who, when told that his son had died, simply observed, “I
never supposed that I had begotten an immortal;”240 or 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 circumstances. The framework or theory of
[pg 192] 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,241 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 constitution of many
parts differing in kind and dignity, a hierarchy in which many powers are
intended to co-exist, but in different positions of ascendancy 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 passion 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,242 though [pg 193] 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
superstition, endeavoured to correct that 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.243 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.244
Brutus was one of the most extortionate usurers of his time, and several
citizens [pg 194] of Salamis died of starvation, imprisoned because they
could not pay the sum he demanded.245 No one eulogised more eloquently
the austere simplicity of life which Stoicism advocated than Sallust, who in
a corrupt age was notorious for his rapacity. Seneca himself was
constitutionally a nervous and timid man, endeavouring, not always with
success, to support himself by a sublime philosophy. He guided, under
circumstances of extreme difficulty, the cause of virtue, and his death is one
of the noblest 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 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 [pg 195] 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 multitude.

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 even 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
circumstances. 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 character. And while the reality of moral disease was fully
recognised, while a lofty and indeed unattainable ideal 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. In this last respect there was a wide difference between the
teaching of the Roman moralists [pg 196] and of the Greek poets.246 Homer

continually represents courage, anger, and the like, as the direct inspiration
of Heaven. Æschylus, the great poet of fatalism, regards every human
passion as but a single link in the great chain of causes forged by the
inexorable will of Zeus. There are, indeed, few grander things in poetry
than his picture of the many and various motives that urged Clytemnestra to
the slaughter of Agamemnon—revenge for her murdered daughter, love for
Ægisthus, resentment at past breaches of conjugal duty, jealousy of
Cassandra, all blending in that fierce hatred that nerved her arm against her
husband's life; while above all this tumult of passion the solemn song of
Cassandra proclaimed that the deed was but the decree of Heaven, the
harvest of blood springing from the seed of crime, the accomplishment of
the ancient curse that was destined to cling for ever to the hapless race of
Atreus. Before the body of the murdered king, and in presence of the
wildest paroxysms of human passion, the bystanders bowed their heads,
exclaiming, “Zeus has willed it—Zeus the supreme Ruler, the God who
does all; for what can happen in the world without the will of Zeus?”

But conceptions of this kind had little or no place in the philosophy of
Rome. The issue of human enterprises and the disposition of the gifts of
fortune were recognised as under the control of Providence; but man was
master of his own feelings, and was capable of attaining such excellence
that he might even challenge comparison with the gods. Audacious as such
sentiments may now appear, they were common to most schools of Roman
moralists. “We boast justly of our own virtue,” said the eclectic Cicero,
“which we could not do if we derived it from the Deity and not from
ourselves.”

[pg 197]
“All mortals judge that fortune is to be received from the gods and wisdom
from ourselves.”247 The Epicurean Horace, in his noblest ode, described the
just man, confident in his virtue, undaunted amid the crash of worlds, and
he tells us to pray only for those things which Jupiter gives and takes away.
“He gives life, he gives wealth; an untroubled mind I secure for myself.”248
“The calm of a mind blest in the consciousness of its virtue,” was the
expression of supreme felicity the Epicureans had derived from their
master.249 Lucretius, in a magnificent passage, designates Epicurus as a god,
and boasts that the popular divinities dwindle into insignificance before

him. Ceres, he says, gave men corn, and Bacchus wine, but Epicurus the
principles of virtue. Hercules conquered monsters, Epicurus conquered
vice.250 “Pray,” said Juvenal, “for a healthy mind in a healthy body. Ask for
a brave soul unscared by death.... But there are things you can give
yourself.”251 “Misfortune, and losses, and calumny,” said Seneca,
“disappear before virtue as the taper before the sun.”252 “In one point the
sage is superior to God. God owes it to His nature not to fear, but the sage
owes it to himself. Sublime condition! he joins the frailty of a man to the
security of a god.”253 “Except for immortality,” he elsewhere writes, “the
sage is like to God.”254 “It is the characteristic of a wise man,” [pg 198]
added Epictetus, “that he looks for all his good and evil from himself.”255
“As far as his rational nature is concerned, he is in no degree inferior to the
gods.”256

There were, however, other veins of thought exhibited in stoicism which
greatly modified and sometimes positively contradicted this view of the
relations of man to the Deity. The theology of the Stoics was an ill-defined,
uncertain, and somewhat inconsistent Pantheism; the Divinity was
especially worshipped under the two aspects of Providence and moral
goodness, and the soul of man was regarded as “a detached fragment of the
Deity,”257 or as at least pervaded and accompanied by a divine energy.
“There never,” said Cicero, “was a great man, without an inspiration from
on high.”258 “Nothing,” said Seneca, “is closed to God. He is present in our
conscience. He intervenes in our thoughts.”259 “I tell thee, Lucilius,” he
elsewhere writes, “a sacred spirit dwells within us, the observer and the
guardian of our good and evil deeds.... No man is good without God. Who,
save by His assistance, can rise above fortune? He gives noble and lofty
counsels. A God (what God I know not) dwells in every good man.”260
“Offer to the God that is in thee,” said Marcus Aurelius, “a manly being, a
citizen, a soldier at his post ready to depart from life as soon as the trumpet
sounds.”261 “It is sufficient to believe in the Genius who is within us, and to
honour him by a pure worship.”262

Passages of this kind are not unfrequent in Stoical writings. More
commonly, however, virtue is represented as a human act imitating God.
This was the meaning of [pg 199] the Platonic maxim, “follow God,” which
the Stoics continually repeated, which they developed in many passages of

the most touching and beautiful piety, and to which they added the duty of
the most absolute and unquestioning submission to the decrees of
Providence. Their doctrine on this latter point harmonised well with their
antipathy to the emotional side of our being. “To weep, to complain, to
groan, is to rebel;”263 “to fear, to grieve, to be angry, is to be a deserter.”264
“Remember that you are but an actor, acting whatever part the Master has
ordained. It may be short, or it may be long. If He wishes you to represent a
poor man, do so heartily; if a cripple, or a magistrate, or a private man, in
each case act your part with honour.”265 “Never say of anything that you
have lost it, but that you have restored it; your wife and child die—you have
restored them; your farm is taken from you—that also is restored. It is
seized by an impious man. What is it to you by whose instrumentality He
who gave it reclaims it?”266 “God does not keep a good man in prosperity;
He tries, He strengthens him, He prepares him for Himself.”267 “Those
whom God approves, whom He loves, He hardens, He proves, He
exercises; but those whom He seems to indulge and spare, He preserves for
future ills.”268 With a beautiful outburst of submissive gratitude, Marcus
Aurelius exclaims, “Some have said, Oh, dear city of Cecrops!—but thou,
canst thou say, Oh, dear city of Jupiter?... All that is suitable to thee, oh
world, is suitable to me.”269

These passages, which might be indefinitely multiplied, serve to show how
successfully the Stoics laboured, by dilating upon the conception of
Providence, to mitigate the arrogance which one aspect of their teaching
unquestionably displayed. But in this very attempt another danger was
incurred, upon [pg 200] which a very large proportion of the moral systems
of all ages have been wrecked. A doctrine which thus enjoins absolute
submission to the decrees of Providence,270 which proscribes the affections,
and which represents its disciples as altogether independent of surrounding
circumstances, would in most conditions of society have led necessarily to
quietism, and proved absolutely incompatible with active virtue.
Fortunately, however, in the ancient civilisations the idea of virtue had from
the earliest times been so indissolubly connected with that of political
activity that the danger was for a long period altogether avoided. The State
occupied in antiquity a prominence in the thoughts of men which it never
has attained in modern times. The influence of patriotism thrilled through
every fibre of moral and intellectual life. The most profound philosophers,

the purest moralists, the most sublime poets, had been soldiers or statesmen.
Hence arose the excessive predominance occasionally accorded to civic
virtues in ancient systems of ethics, and also not a few of their most
revolting paradoxes. Plato advocated community of wives mainly on the
ground that the children produced would be attached more exclusively to
their country.271 Aristotle may be almost said to have made the difference
between Greek and barbarian the basis of his moral code. [pg 201] The
Spartan legislation was continually extolled as an ideal, as the Venetian
constitution by the writers of the seventeenth century. On the other hand,
the contact of the spheres of speculation and of political activity exercised
in one respect a very beneficial influence upon ancient philosophies.
Patriotism almost always occupied a prominence in the scale of duties,
which forms a striking contrast to the neglect or discredit into which it has
fallen among modern teachers. We do, indeed, read of an Anaxagoras
pointing to heaven as to his true country, and pronouncing exile to be no
evil, as the descent to the infernal regions is the same from every land;272
but such sentiments, though not unknown among the Epicureans and the
Cynics, were diametrically opposed to the prevailing tone. Patriotism was
represented as a moral duty, and a duty of the highest order. Cicero only
echoed the common opinion of antiquity in that noble passage, in which he
asserts that the love we owe our country is even holier and more profound
than that we owe our nearest kinsman, and that he can have no claim to the
title of a good man who even hesitates to die in its behalf.273

A necessary consequence of this prominence of patriotism was the practical
character of most ancient ethics. We find, indeed, moralists often exhorting
men to moderate their ambition, consoling them under political adversity,
and urging that there are some circumstances under which an upright man
should for a time withdraw from public affairs;274 but the general duty of
taking part in political life was emphatically asserted, and the vanity of the
quietist theory of life not only maintained, but even somewhat exaggerated.
Thus [pg 202] Cicero declared that “all virtue is in action.”275 The younger
Pliny mentions that he once lamented to the Stoic Euphrates the small place
which his official duties left for philosophical pursuits; but Euphrates
answered that the discharge of public affairs and the administration of
justice formed a part, and the most important part, of philosophy, for he
who is so engaged is but practising the precepts of the schools.276 It was a

fundamental maxim of the Stoics that humanity is a body in which each
limb should act solely and continually with a view to the interests of the
whole. Marcus Aurelius, the purest mind of the sect, was for nineteen years
the active ruler of the civilised globe. Thrasea, Helvidius, Cornutus, and a
crowd of others who had adopted Stoicism as a religion, lived, and in many
cases died, in obedience to its precepts, struggling for the liberties of their
country in the darkest hours of tyranny.

Men who had formed such high conceptions of duty, who had bridled so
completely the tumult of passion, and whose lives were spent in a calm
sense of virtue and of dignity, were little likely to be assailed by the
superstitious fears that are the nightmare of weaker men. The preparation
for death was deemed one of the chief ends of philosophy.277 The thought of
a coming change assisted the mind in detaching itself from the gifts of
fortune, and the extinction of all superstitious terrors completed the type of
self-reliant majesty which Stoicism had chosen for its ideal. But while it is
certain that no philosophers expatiated upon death with a grander
eloquence, or met it with a more placid courage, it can hardly be denied that
their constant disquisitions forced it into an unhealthy prominence, and
somewhat discoloured their whole view of life. “The Stoics,” as Bacon has
said, “bestowed too much cost on death, and by their preparations [pg 203]
made it more fearful.”278 There is a profound wisdom in the maxims of
Spinoza, that “the proper study of a wise man is not how to die, but how to
live,” and that “there is no subject on which the sage will think less than
death.”279 A life of active duty is the best preparation for the end, and so
large a part of the evil of death lies in its anticipation, that an attempt to
deprive it of its terrors by constant meditation almost necessarily defeats its
object, while at the same time it forms an unnaturally tense, feverish, and
tragical character, annihilates the ambition and enthusiasm that are essential
to human progress, and not unfrequently casts a chill and a deadness over
the affections.

Among the many half-pagan legends that were connected with Ireland
during the middle ages, one of the most beautiful is that of the islands of
life and of death. In a certain lake in Munster it is said there were two
islands; into the first death could never enter, but age and sickness, and the
weariness of life, and the paroxysms of fearful suffering were all known

there, and they did their work till the inhabitants, tired of their immortality,
learned to look upon the opposite island as upon a haven of repose: they
launched their barks upon the gloomy waters; they touched its shore and
they were at rest.280

This legend, which is far more akin to the spirit of paganism than to that of
Christianity, and is in fact only another form of the myth of Tithonus,
represents with great fidelity the aspect in which death was regarded by the
exponents of Stoicism. There was much difference of opinion and of
certitude in the judgments of the ancient philosophers [pg 204] concerning
the future destinies of the soul, but they were unanimous in regarding death
simply as a natural rest, and in attributing the terrors that were connected
with it to a diseased imagination. Death, they said, is the only evil that does
not afflict us when present. While we are, death is not, when death has
come we are not. It is a false belief that it only follows, it also precedes,
life. It is to be as we were before we were born. The candle which has been
extinguished is in the same condition as before it was lit, and the dead man
as the man unborn. Death is the end of all sorrow. It either secures
happiness or ends suffering. It frees the slave from his cruel master, opens
the prison door, calms the qualms of pain, closes the struggles of poverty. It
is the last and best boon of nature, for it frees man from all his cares. It is at
worst but the close of a banquet we have enjoyed. Whether it be desired or
whether it be shunned, it is no curse and no evil, but simply the resolution
of our being into its primitive elements, the law of our nature to which it is
our duty cheerfully to conform.

Such were the leading topics that were employed in that beautiful literature
of “Consolations,” which the academic Crantor is said to have originated,
and which occupies so large a place in the writings of Cicero, Plutarch, and
the Stoics. Cicero, like all the school of Plato, added to these motives a very
firm and constant reference to the immortality of the soul. Plutarch held the
same doctrine with equal assurance, but he gave it a much less conspicuous
position in his “Consolations,” and he based it not upon philosophical
grounds, but upon the testimonies of the oracles, and upon the mysteries of
Bacchus.281 Among the Stoics the doctrine shone with a faint and uncertain
light, and was seldom or never adopted as a motive. But that which is most
impressive to a student who turns from the religious literature of [pg 205]

Christianity to the pagan philosophies, is the complete absence in the latter
of all notion concerning the penal character of death. Death, according to
Socrates,282 either extinguishes life or emancipates it from the thraldom of
the body. Even in the first case it is a blessing, in the last it is the greatest of
boons. “Accustom yourself,” said Epicurus, “to the thought that death is
indifferent; for all good and all evil consist in feeling, and what is death but
the privation of feeling?”283 “Souls either remain after death,” said Cicero,
“or they perish in death. If they remain they are happy; if they perish they
are not wretched.”284 Seneca, consoling Polybius concerning the death of his
brother, exhorts his friend to think, “if the dead have any sensations, then
my brother, let loose as it were from a lifelong prison, and at last enjoying
his liberty, looks down from a loftier height on the wonders of nature and
on all the deeds of men, and sees more clearly those divine things which he
had so long sought in vain to understand. But why should I be afflicted for
one who is either happy or is nothing? To lament the fate of one who is
happy is envy; to lament the fate of a nonentity is madness.”285

But while the Greek and Roman philosophers were on this point
unanimous, there was a strong opposing current in the popular mind. The
Greek word for superstition signifies literally, fear of gods or dæmons, and
the philosophers sometimes represent the vulgar as shuddering at the
thought of death, through dread of certain endless sufferings to which it
would lead them. The Greek mythology contains many fables on the
subject. The early Greek vases occasionally [pg 206] represent scenes of
infernal torments, not unlike those of the mediæval frescoes.286 The rapture
with which Epicureanism was received, as liberating the human mind from
the thraldom of superstitious terrors, shows how galling must have been the
yoke. In the poem of Lucretius, in occasional passages of Cicero and other
Latin moralists, above all, in the treatise of Plutarch “On Superstition,” we
may trace the deep impression these terrors had made upon the populace,
even during the later period of the Republic, and during the Empire. To
destroy them was represented as the highest function of philosophy.
Plutarch denounced them as the worst calumny against the Deity, as more
pernicious than atheism, as the evil consequences of immoral fables, and he
gladly turned to other legends which taught a different lesson. Thus it was
related that when, during a certain festival at Argos, the horses that were to
draw the statue of Juno to the temple were detained, the sons of the

priestess yoked themselves to the car, and their mother, admiring their piety,
prayed the goddess to reward them with whatever boon was the best for
man. Her prayer was answered—they sank asleep and died.287 In like
manner the architects of the great temple of Apollo at Delphi, prayed the
god to select that reward which was best. The oracle told them in reply to
spend seven days in rejoicing, and on the following night their reward
would come. They too died in sleep.288 The swan was consecrated to Apollo
because its dying song was believed to spring from a prophetic impulse.289
The Spanish Celts raised temples, and sang hymns of praise to death.290 No
[pg 207] philosopher of antiquity ever questioned that a good man,
reviewing his life, might look upon it without shame and even with positive
complacency, or that the reverence with which men regard heroic deaths is
a foretaste of the sentence of the Creator. To this confidence may be traced
the tranquil courage, the complete absence of all remorse, so conspicuous in
the closing hours of Socrates, and of many other of the sages of antiquity.
There is no fact in religious history more startling than the radical change
that has in this respect passed over the character of devotion. It is said of
Chilon, one of the seven sages of Greece, that at the close of his career he
gathered his disciples around him, and congratulated himself that in a long
life he could recall but a single act that saddened his dying hour. It was that,
in a perplexing dilemma, he had allowed his love of a friend in some slight
degree to obscure his sense of justice.291 The writings of Cicero in his old
age are full of passionate aspirations to a future world, unclouded by one
regret or by one fear. Seneca died tranquilly, bequeathing to his friends “the
most precious of his possessions, the image of his life.”292 Titus on his
deathbed declared that he could remember only a single act with which to
reproach himself.293 On the last night in which Antoninus Pius lived, the
tribune came to ask for the pass-word of the night. The dying emperor gave
him “æquanimitas.”294 Julian, the last great representative of his expiring
creed, caught up the same majestic strain. Amid [pg 208] the curses of
angry priests, and the impending ruin of the cause he loved, he calmly died
in the consciousness of his virtue; and his death, which is among the most
fearless that antiquity records, was the last protest of philosophic paganism
against the new doctrine that had arisen.295

It is customary with some writers, when exhibiting the many points in
which the ancient philosophers anticipated Christian ethics, to represent

Christianity as if it were merely a development or authoritative
confirmation of the highest teaching of paganism, or as if the additions were
at least of such a nature that there is but little doubt that the best and purest
spirits of the pagan world, had they known them, would have gladly
welcomed them. But this conception, which contains a large amount of
truth if applied to the teaching of many Protestants, is either grossly
exaggerated or absolutely false if applied to that of the patristic period or of
mediæval Catholicism. On the very subject which the philosophers deemed
the most important their unanimous conclusion was the extreme antithesis
of the teaching of Catholicism. The philosophers taught that death is “a law
and not a punishment;”296 the fathers taught that it is a penal infliction
introduced into the world on account of the sin of Adam, which was also the
cause of the appearance of all noxious plants, of all convulsions in the
material globe, and, as was sometimes asserted, even of a diminution of the
light of the sun. The first taught that death was the end of suffering; they
ridiculed as the extreme of folly the notion that [pg 209] physical evils
could await those whose bodies had been reduced to ashes, and they dwelt
with emphatic eloquence upon the approaching, and, as they believed, final
extinction of superstitious terrors. The second taught that death to the vast
majority of the human race is but the beginning of endless and excruciating
tortures—tortures before which the most ghastly of terrestrial sufferings
dwindle into insignificance—tortures which no courage could defy—which
none but an immortal being could endure. The first represented man as pure
and innocent until his will had sinned; the second represented him as under
a sentence of condemnation at the very moment of his birth. “No funeral
sacrifices” said a great writer of the first school, “are offered for children
who die at an early age, and none of the ceremonies practised at the funerals
of adults are performed at their tombs, for it is believed that infants have no
hold upon earth or upon terrestrial affections.... The law forbids us to
honour them because it is irreligious to lament for those pure souls who
have passed into a better life and a happier dwelling-place.”297 “Whosoever
shall tell us,” said a distinguished exponent of the patristic theology, “that
infants shall be quickened in Christ who die without partaking in His
Sacrament, does both contradict the Apostle's teaching and condemn the
whole Church.... And he that is not quickened in Christ must remain in that
condemnation of which the Apostle speaks, ‘by one man's offence
condemnation came upon all men to condemnation.’ To which

condemnation infants are born liable as all the Church believes.”298 The one
school endeavoured to plant its foundations in the moral nature of mankind,
by proclaiming that man can become acceptable to the Deity by his own
virtue, and by this alone, that all sacrifices, rites, and forms are indifferent,
and that the true worship of God is the recognition and imitation of His [pg
210] goodness. According to the other school, the most heroic efforts of
human virtue are insufficient to avert a sentence of eternal condemnation,
unless united with an implicit belief in the teachings of the Church, and a
due observance of the rites it enjoins. By the philosophers the ascription of
anger and vengeance to the Deity, and the apprehension of future torture at
His hands, were unanimously repudiated;299 by the priests the opposite
opinion was deemed equally censurable.300

These are fundamental points of difference, for they relate to the
fundamental principles of the ancient philosophy. The main object of the
pagan philosophers was to dispel the terrors the imagination had cast
around death, and by destroying this last cause of fear to secure the liberty
of man. The main object of the Catholic priests has been to make death in
itself as revolting and appalling as possible, and by representing escape
from its terrors as hopeless, except by complete subjection to their rule, to
convert it into an instrument of government. By multiplying the dancing or
warning skeletons, and other sepulchral images representing the
loathsomeness of death without its repose; by substituting inhumation for
incremation, and concentrating the imagination on the ghastliness of decay;
above all, by peopling the unseen world with demon phantoms and with
excruciating tortures, the Catholic Church succeeded in making death in
itself unspeakably terrible, and in thus preparing men for the consolations it
could offer. Its legends, its ceremonies, its art,301 its dogmatic [pg 211]
teaching, all conspired to this end, and the history of its miracles is a
striking evidence of its success. The great majority of superstitions have
ever clustered around two centres—the fear of death and the belief that
every phenomenon of life is the result of a special spiritual interposition.
Among the ancients they were usually of the latter kind. Auguries,
prophecies, interventions in war, prodigies avenging the neglect of some
rite or marking some epoch in the fortunes of a nation or of a ruler, are the
forms they usually assumed. In the middle ages, although these were very
common, the most conspicuous superstitions took the form of visions of

purgatory or hell, conflicts with visible demons, or Satanic miracles. Like
those mothers who govern their children by persuading them that the dark is
crowded with spectres that will seize the disobedient, and who often
succeed in creating an association of ideas which the adult man is unable
altogether to dissolve, the Catholic priests resolved to base their power
upon the nerves; and as they long exercised an absolute control over
education, literature, and art, they succeeded in completely reversing the
teaching of ancient philosophy, and in making the terrors of death for
centuries the nightmare of the imagination.

There is, indeed, another side to the picture. The vague uncertainty with
which the best pagans regarded death passed away before the teaching of
the Church, and it was often replaced by a rapture of hope, which, however,
the doctrine of purgatory contributed at a later period largely to quell. But,
whatever may be thought of the justice of the Catholic conception of death
or of its influence upon human happiness, it is plain that it is radically
different from that of the pagan philosophers. That man is not only an
imperfect but a fallen being, and that death is the penal consequence of his
sin, [pg 212] was a doctrine profoundly new to mankind, and it has
exercised an influence of the most serious character upon the moral history
of the world.

The wide divergence of the classical from the Catholic conception of death
appears very plainly in the attitude which each system adopted towards
suicide. This is, perhaps, the most striking of all the points of contrast
between the teaching of antiquity, and especially of the Roman Stoics, on
the one hand, and that of almost all modern moralists on the other. It is
indeed true that the ancients were by no means unanimous in their approval
of the act. Pythagoras, to whom so many of the wisest sayings of antiquity
are ascribed, is said to have forbidden men “to depart from their guard or
station in life without the order of their commander, that is, of God.”302
Plato adopted similar language, though he permitted suicide when the law
required it, and also when men had been struck down by intolerable
calamity, or had sunk to the lowest depths of poverty.303 Aristotle
condemned it on civic grounds, as being an injury to the State.304 The roll of
Greek suicides is not long, though it contains some illustrious names,
among others those of Zeno and Cleanthes.305 In Rome, too, where suicide

acquired a greater prominence, its lawfulness was by no means accepted as
an axiom, and the story of Regulus, [pg 213] whether it be a history or a
legend, shows that the patient endurance of suffering was once the supreme
ideal.306 Virgil painted in gloomy colours the condition of suicides in the
future world.307 Cicero strongly asserted the doctrine of Pythagoras, though
he praised the suicide of Cato.308 Apuleius, expounding the philosophy of
Plato, taught that “the wise man never throws off his body except by the
will of God.”309 Cæsar, Ovid, and others urged that in extreme distress it is
easy to despise life, and that true courage is shown in enduring it.310 Among
the Stoics themselves, the belief that no man may shrink from a duty co-
existed with the belief that every man has a right to dispose of his own life.
Seneca, who emphatically advocated suicide, admits that there were some
who deemed it wrong, and he himself attempted to moderate what he
termed “the passion for suicide”, that had arisen among his disciples.311
Marcus Aurelius wavers a little on the subject, sometimes asserting the right
of every man to leave life when [pg 214] he pleases, sometimes inclining to
the Platonic doctrine that man is a soldier of God, occupying a post which it
is criminal to abandon.312 Plotinus and Porphyry argued strongly against all
suicide.313

But, notwithstanding these passages, there can be no question that the
ancient view of suicide was broadly and strongly opposed to our own. A
general approval of it floated down through most of the schools of
philosophy, and even to those who condemned it, it never seems to have
assumed its present aspect of extreme enormity. This was in the first
instance due to the ancient notion of death; and we have also to remember
that when a society once learns to tolerate suicide, the deed, in ceasing to be
disgraceful, loses much of its actual criminality, for those who are most
firmly convinced that the stigma and suffering it now brings upon the
family of the deceased do not constitute its entire guilt, will readily
acknowledge that they greatly aggravate it. In the conditions of ancient
thought, this aggravation did not exist. Epicurus exhorted men “to weigh
carefully, whether they would prefer death to come to them, or would
themselves [pg 215] go to death;”314 and among his disciples, Lucretius, the
illustrious poet of the sect, died by his own hand,315 as did also Cassius the
tyrannicide, Atticus the friend of Cicero,316 the voluptuary Petronius,317 and
the philosopher Diodorus.318 Pliny described the lot of man as in this respect

at least superior to that of God, that man has the power of flying to the
tomb,319 and he represented it as one of the greatest proofs of the bounty of
Providence, that it has filled the world with herbs, by which the weary may
find a rapid and a painless death.320 One of the most striking figures that a
passing notice of Cicero brings before us, is that of Hegesias, who [pg 216]
was surnamed by the ancients “the orator of death.” A conspicuous member
of that Cyrenaic school which esteemed the pursuit of pleasure the sole end
of a rational being, he taught that life was so full of cares, and its pleasure
so fleeting and so alloyed, that the happiest lot for man was death; and such
was the power of his eloquence, so intense was the fascination he cast
around the tomb, that his disciples embraced with rapture the consequence
of his doctrine, multitudes freed themselves by suicide from the troubles of
the world, and the contagion was so great, that Ptolemy, it is said, was
compelled to banish the philosopher from Alexandria.321

But it was in the Roman Empire and among the Roman Stoics that suicide
assumed its greatest prominence, and its philosophy was most fully
elaborated. From an early period self-immolation, like that of Curtius or
Decius, had been esteemed in some circumstances a religious rite, being, as
has been well suggested, probably a lingering remnant of the custom of
human sacrifices,322 and towards the closing days of paganism many
influences conspired in the same direction. The example of Cato, who had
become the ideal of the Stoics, and whose dramatic suicide was the
favourite subject of their eloquence,323 the indifference to death produced by
the great multiplication of gladiatorial shows, the many instances of
barbarian captives, who, sooner than slay their fellow-countrymen, or
minister to the pleasures of their conquerors, plunged their lances into their
own necks, or found [pg 217] other and still more horrible roads to
freedom,324 the custom of compelling political prisoners to execute their
own sentence, and, more than all, the capricious and atrocious tyranny of
the Cæsars,325 had raised suicide into an extraordinary prominence. Few
things are more touching than the passionate joy with which, in the reign of
Nero, Seneca clung to it as the one refuge for the oppressed, the last
bulwark of the tottering mind. “To death alone it is due that life is not a
punishment, that, erect beneath the frowns of fortune, I can preserve my
mind unshaken and master of itself. I have one to whom I can appeal. I see
before me the crosses of many forms.... I see the rack and the scourge, and

the instruments of torture adapted to every limb and to every nerve; but I
also see Death. She stands beyond my savage enemies, beyond my haughty
fellow-countrymen. Slavery loses its bitterness when by a step I can pass to
liberty. Against all the injuries of life, I have the refuge of death.”326
“Wherever you look, there is the end of evils. You see that yawning
precipice—there you may descend to liberty. You see that sea, that river,
that well—liberty sits at the bottom.... Do you seek the way to freedom?—
you may find it in every vein of your body.”327 “If I can choose between a
death of torture and one that is simple and easy, why should I not select the
latter? As I choose the ship in which I will sail, and the house I will inhabit,
so I will choose the death by which I will leave life.... In no matter more
than in death should we act according to our desire. Depart from life as your
impulse leads you, whether it be by the sword, or the rope, or the poison
creeping through the veins; go your way, and break the chains of slavery.
Man should seek the approbation of others in his life; his death [pg 218]
concerns himself alone. That is the best which pleases him most.... The
eternal law has decreed nothing better than this, that life should have but
one entrance and many exits. Why should I endure the agonies of disease,
and the cruelties of human tyranny, when I can emancipate myself from all
my torments, and shake off every bond? For this reason, but for this alone,
life is not an evil—that no one is obliged to live. The lot of man is happy,
because no one continues wretched but by his fault. If life pleases you, live.
If not, you have a right to return whence you came.”328

These passages, which are but a few selected out of very many, will
sufficiently show the passion with which the most influential teacher of
Roman Stoicism advocated suicide. As a general proposition, the law
recognised it as a right, but two slight restrictions were after a time
imposed.329 It had [pg 219] become customary with many men who were
accused of political offences to commit suicide before trial, in order to
prevent the ignominious exposure of their bodies and the confiscation of
their goods; but Domitian closed this resource by ordaining that the suicide
of an accused person should entail the same consequences as his
condemnation. Hadrian afterwards assimilated the suicide of a Roman
soldier to desertion.330 With these exceptions, the liberty appears to have
been absolute, and the act was committed under the most various motives.
The suicide of Otho, who is said to have killed himself to avoid being a

second time a cause of civil war, was extolled as equal in grandeur to that of
Cato.331 In the Dacian war, the enemy, having captured a distinguished
Roman general named Longinus, endeavoured to extort terms from Trajan
as a condition of his surrender, but Longinus, by taking poison, freed the
emperor from his embarrassment.332 On the death of Otho, some of his
soldiers, filled with grief and admiration, killed themselves before his
corpse,333 as did also a freedman of Agrippina, at the funeral of the
empress.334 Before the close of the Republic, an enthusiastic partisan of one
of the factions in the chariot races flung himself upon the pile on which the
body of a favourite coachman was consumed, and perished in the flames.335
A Roman, unmenaced in his [pg 220] fortune, and standing high in the
favour of his sovereign, killed himself under Tiberius, because he could not
endure to witness the crimes of the empire.336 Another, being afflicted by an
incurable malady, postponed his suicide till the death of Domitian, that at
least he might die free, and on the assassination of the tyrant, hastened
cheerfully to the tomb.337 The Cynic Peregrinus announced that, being
weary of life, he would on a certain day depart, and, in presence of a large
concourse, he mounted the funeral pile.338 Most frequently, however, death
was regarded as “the last physician of disease,”339 and suicide as the
legitimate relief from intolerable suffering. “Above all things,” said
Epictetus, “remember that the door is open. Be not more timid than boys at
play. As they, when they cease to take pleasure in their games, declare they
will no longer play, so do you, when, all things begin to pall upon you,
retire; but if you stay, do not complain.”340 Seneca declared that he who
waits the extremity of old age is not “far removed from a coward,” “as he is
justly regarded as too much addicted to wine who drains the flask to the
very dregs.” “I will not relinquish old age,” he added, “if it leaves my better
part intact. But if it begins to shake my mind, if it destroys its faculties one
by one, if it leaves me not life but breath, I will depart from the putrid or
tottering edifice. I will not escape by death from disease so long as it may
be healed, and leaves my mind unimpaired. I will not raise my hand against
myself on account of pain, for so to die is to be conquered. But if I know
that I must suffer without hope of relief, I will depart, not through fear of
the pain itself, but because it prevents all for which I would live.”341 “Just as
a landlord,” said Musonius, “who has not received his rent, pulls [pg 221]
down the doors, removes the rafters, and fills up the well, so I seem to be
driven out of this little body, when nature, which has let it to me, takes

away, one by one, eyes and ears, hands and feet. I will not, therefore, delay
longer, but will cheerfully depart as from a banquet.”342

This conception of suicide as an euthanasia, an abridgment of the pangs of
disease, and a guarantee against the dotage of age, was not confined to
philosophical treatises. We have considerable evidence of its being
frequently put in practice. Among those who thus abridged their lives was
Silius Italicus, one of the last of the Latin poets.343 The younger Pliny
describes in terms of the most glowing admiration the conduct of one of his
friends, who, struck down by disease, resolved calmly and deliberately
upon the path he should pursue. He determined, if the disease was only
dangerous and long, to yield to the wishes of his friends and await the
struggle; but if the issue was hopeless, to die by his own hand. Having
reasoned on the propriety of this course with all the tranquil courage of a
Roman, he summoned a council of physicians, and, with a mind indifferent
to either fate, he calmly awaited their sentence.344 The same writer mentions
the case of a man who was afflicted with a horrible disease, which reduced
his body to a mass of sores. His wife, being convinced that it was incurable,
exhorted her husband to shorten his sufferings; she nerved and encouraged
him to the effort, and she claimed it as her privilege to accompany him to
the grave. Husband and wife, bound [pg 222] together, plunged into a
lake.345 Seneca, in one of his letters, has left us a detailed description of the
death-bed of one of the Roman suicides. Tullius Marcellinus, a young man
of remarkable abilities and very earnest character, who had long ridiculed
the teachings of philosophy, but had ended by embracing it with all the
passion of a convert, being afflicted with a grave and lingering though not
incurable disease, resolved at length upon suicide. He gathered his friends
around him, and many of them entreated him to continue in life. Among
them, however, was one Stoical philosopher, who addressed him in what
Seneca terms the very noblest of discourses. He exhorted him not to lay too
much stress upon the question he was deciding, as if existence was a matter
of great importance. He urged that life is a thing we possess in common
with slaves and animals, but that a noble death should indeed be prized, and
he concluded by recommending suicide. Marcellinus gladly embraced the
counsel which his own wishes had anticipated. According to the advice of
his friend, he distributed gifts among his faithful slaves, consoled them on
their approaching bereavement, abstained dining three days from all food,

and at last, when his strength had been wholly exhausted, passed into a
warm bath and calmly died, describing with his last breath the pleasing
sensations that accompanied receding life.346

The doctrine of suicide was indeed 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. [pg 223] 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 noblest ends, were
here displayed. All those which accompany humility and self-abasement
were absent.

I desire at this stage of our enquiry to pause for a moment, in order to
retrace briefly the leading steps of the foregoing argument, and thus to bring
into the clearest light the connection which many details and quotations
may have occasionally obscured. Such a review will show at a single glance
in what respects Stoicism was a result of the pre-existent state of society,
and in what respects it was an active agent, how far its influence was
preparing the way for Christian ethics, and how far it was opposed to them.

We have seen, then, that among the Romans, as among other people, a very
clear and definite type of moral excellence was created before men had
formed any clear intellectual notions of the nature and sanctions of virtue.
The characters of men are chiefly governed by their occupations, and the
republic being organised altogether with a view to military success, it had

attained all the virtues and vices of a military society. We have seen, too,
that at all times, but most especially under the conditions of ancient
warfare, military life is very unfavourable to the amiable, and very
favourable to the heroic virtues. The Roman had learnt to value force [pg
224] very highly. Being continually engaged in inflicting pain, his natural or
instinctive humanity was very low. His moral feelings were almost bounded
by political limits, acting only, and with different degrees of intensity,
towards his class, his country, and its allies. Indomitable pride was the most
prominent element of his character. A victorious army which is humble or
diffident, or tolerant of insult, or anxious to take the second place, is,
indeed, almost a contradiction of terms. The spirit of patriotism, in its
relation to foreigners, like that of political liberty in its relation to
governors, is a spirit of constant and jealous self-assertion; and although
both are very consonant with high morality and great self-devotion, we
rarely find that the grace of genuine humility can flourish in a society that is
intensely pervaded by their influence. The kind of excellence that found
most favour in Roman eyes was simple, forcible, massive, but coarse-
grained. Subtilty of motives, refinements of feelings, delicacies of
susceptibility, were rarely appreciated.

This was the darker side of the picture. On the other hand, the national
character, being formed by a profession in which mercenary considerations
are less powerful, and splendid examples of self-devotion more frequent,
than in any other, had early risen to a heroic level. Death being continually
confronted, to meet it with courage was the chief test of virtue. The habits
of men were unaffected, frugal, honourable, and laborious. A stern
discipline pervading all ages and classes of society, the will was trained, to
an almost unexampled degree, to repress the passions, to endure suffering
and opposition, to tend steadily and fearlessly towards an unpopular end. A
sense of duty was very widely diffused, and a deep attachment to the
interests of the city became the parent of many virtues.

Such was the type of excellence the Roman people had attained at a time
when its intellectual cultivation produced philosophical discussions, and
when numerous Greek professors, [pg 225] attracted partly by political
events, and partly by the patronage of Scipio Æmilianus, arrived at Rome,
bringing with them the tenets of the great schools of Zeno and Epicurus,

and of the many minor sects that clustered around them. Epicureanism
being essentially opposed to the pre-existing type of virtue, though it spread
greatly, never attained the position of a school of virtue. Stoicism, taught by
Panætius of Rhodes, and soon after by the Syrian Posidonius, became the
true religion of the educated classes. It furnished the principles of virtue,
coloured the noblest literature of the time, and guided all the developments
of moral enthusiasm.

The Stoical system of ethics was in the highest sense a system of
independent morals. It taught that our reason reveals to us a certain law of
nature, and that a desire to conform to this law, irrespectively of all
considerations of reward or punishment, of happiness or the reverse, is a
possible and a sufficient motive of virtue. It was also in the highest sense a
system of discipline. It taught that the will, acting under the complete
control of the reason, is the sole principle of virtue, and that all the
emotional part of our being is of the nature of a disease. Its whole tendency
was therefore to dignify and strengthen the will, and to degrade and
suppress the desires. It taught, moreover, that man is capable of attaining an
extremely high degree of moral excellence, that he has nothing to fear
beyond the present life, that it is essential to the dignity and consistence of
his character that he should regard death without dismay, and that he has a
right to hasten it if he desires.

It is easy to see that this system of ethics was strictly consonant with the
type of character the circumstances of the Roman people had formed. It is
also manifest that while the force of circumstances had in the first instance
secured its ascendancy, the energy of will which it produced would enable it
to offer a powerful resistance to the tendencies of an altered condition of
society. This was pre-eminently [pg 226] shown in the history of Roman
Stoicism. The austere purity of the writings of Seneca and his school is a
fact probably unique in history, when we consider, on the one hand, the
intense and undisguised depravity of the Empire, and on the other, the
prominent position of most of the leading Stoics in the very centre of the
stream. More than once in later periods did great intellectual brilliancy
coincide with general depravity, but on none of these occasions was this
moral phenomenon reproduced. In the age of Leo X., in the age of the
French Regency, or of Lewis XV., we look in vain for high moral teaching

in the centre of Italian or of Parisian civilisation. The true teachers of those
ages were the reformers, who arose in obscure towns of Germany or
Switzerland, or that diseased recluse who, from his solitude near Geneva,
fascinated Europe by the gleams of a dazzling and almost peerless
eloquence, and by a moral teaching which, though often feverish,
paradoxical, and unpractical, abounded in passages of transcendent majesty
and of the most entrancing purity and beauty. But even the best moral
teachers who rose in the centres of the depraved society felt the contagion
of the surrounding vice. Their ideal was depressed, their austerity was
relaxed, they appealed to sordid and worldly motives, their judgments of
character were wavering and uncertain, their whole teaching was of the
nature of a compromise. But in ancient Rome, if the teachers of virtue acted
but feebly upon the surrounding corruption, their own tenets were at least
unstained. The splendour of the genius of Cæsar never eclipsed the moral
grandeur of the vanquished Cato, and amid all the dramatic vicissitudes of
civil war and of political convulsion, the supreme authority of moral
distinctions was never forgotten. The eloquence of Livy was chiefly
employed in painting virtue, the eloquence of Tacitus in branding vice. The
Stoics never lowered their standard because of the depravity around them,
and if we trace in their teaching any reflection [pg 227] of the prevailing
worship of enjoyment, it is only in the passionate intensity with which they
dwelt upon the tranquillity of the tomb.

But it is not sufficient for a moral system to form a bulwark against vice, it
must also be capable of admitting those extensions and refinements of
moral sympathies which advancing civilisation produces, and the
inflexibility of its antagonism to evil by no means implies its capacity of
enlarging its conceptions of good. During the period which elapsed between
the importation of Stoical tenets into Rome and the ascendancy of
Christianity, an extremely important transformation of moral ideas had been
effected by political changes, and it became a question how far the new
elements could coalesce with the Stoical ideal, and how far they tended to
replace it by an essentially different type. These changes were twofold, but
were very closely connected. They consisted of the increasing prominence
of the benevolent or amiable, as distinguished from the heroic qualities, and
of the enlargement of moral sympathies, which having at first comprised
only a class or a nation, came at last, by the destruction of many artificial

barriers, to include all classes and all nations. The causes of these changes
—which were the most important antecedents of the triumph of Christianity
—are very complicated and numerous, but it will, I think, be possible to
give in a few pages a sufficiently clear outline of the movement.

It originated in the Roman Empire at the time when the union of the Greek
and Latin civilisations was effected by the conquest of Greece. The general
humanity of the Greeks had always been incomparably greater than that of
the Romans. The refining influence of their art and literature, their
ignorance of gladiatorial games, and their comparative freedom from the
spirit of conquest, had separated them widely from their semi-barbarous
conquerors, and had given a peculiar softness and tenderness to their ideal
[pg 228] characters. Pericles, who, when the friends who had gathered
round his death-bed, imagining him to be insensible, were recounting his
splendid deeds, told them that they had forgotten his best title to fame—that
“no Athenian had ever worn mourning on his account;” Aristides, praying
the gods that those who had banished him might never be compelled by
danger or suffering to recall him; Phocion, when unjustly condemned,
exhorting his son never to avenge his death, all represent a type of character
of a milder kind than that which Roman influences produced. The plays of
Euripides had been to the ancient world the first great revelation of the
supreme beauty of the gentler virtues. Among the many forms of worship
that flourished at Athens, there was an altar which stood alone, conspicuous
and honoured beyond all others. The suppliants thronged around it, but no
image of a god, no symbol of dogma was there. It was dedicated to Pity,
and was venerated through all the ancient world as the first great assertion
among mankind of the supremo sanctity of Mercy.347

But while the Greek spirit was from a very early period [pg 229]
distinguished for its humanity, it was at first as far removed from
cosmopolitanism as that of Rome. It is well known that Phrynichus was
fined because in his “Conquest of Miletus” he had represented the triumph
of barbarians over Greeks.348 His successor, Æschylus, deemed it necessary
to violate all dramatic probabilities by making the Persian king and
courtiers continually speak of themselves as barbarians. Socrates, indeed,
had proclaimed himself a citizen of the world,349 but Aristotle taught that
Greeks had no more duties to barbarians than to wild beasts, and another

philosopher was believed to have evinced an almost excessive range of
sympathy when he declared that his affections extended beyond his own
State, and included the whole people of Greece. But the dissolving and
disintegrating philosophical discussions that soon followed the death of
Socrates, strengthened by political events, tended powerfully to destroy this
feeling. The traditions that attached Greek philosophy to Egypt, the
subsequent admiration for the schools of India to which Pyrrho and
Anaxarchus are said to have resorted,350 the prevalence of Cynicism and
Epicureanism, which agreed in inculcating indifference to political life, the
complete decomposition of the popular national religions, and the
incompatibility of a narrow local feeling with great knowledge and matured
civilisation, were the intellectual causes of the change, and the movement of
expansion received a great political stimulus when Alexander eclipsed the
glories of Spartan and Athenian history by the vision of universal empire,
accorded to the conquered nations the privileges of the conquerors, and [pg
230] created in Alexandria a great centre both of commercial intercourse
and of philosophical eclecticism.351

It is evident, therefore, that the prevalence of Greek ideas in Rome would
be in a two-fold way destructive of narrow national feelings. It was the
ascendancy of a people who were not Romans, and of a people who had
already become in a great degree emancipated from local sentiments. It is
also evident that the Greeks having had for several centuries a splendid
literature, at a time when the Romans had none, and when the Latin
language was still too rude for literary purposes, the period in which the
Romans first emerged from a purely military condition into an intelligent
civilisation would bring with it an ascendancy of Greek ideas. Fabius Pictor
and Cincius Alimentus, the earliest native Roman historians, both wrote in
Greek,352 and although the poems of Ennius, and the “Origines” of Marcus
Cato, contributed largely to improve and fix the Latin language, the
precedent was not at once discontinued.353 After the conquest of Greece, the
political ascendancy of the Romans and the intellectual ascendancy of
Greece were alike universal.354 The conquered [pg 231] people, whose
patriotic feelings had been greatly enfeebled by the influences I have
noticed, acquiesced readily in their new condition, and notwithstanding the
vehement exertions of the conservative party, Greek manners, sentiments,
and ideas soon penetrated into all classes, and moulded all the forms of

Roman life. The elder Cato, as an acute observer has noticed, desired all
Greek philosophers to be expelled from Rome. The younger Cato made
Greek philosophers his most intimate friends.355 Roman virtue found its
highest expression in Stoicism. Roman vice sheltered itself under the name
of Epicurus. Diodorus of Sicily and Polybius first sketched in Greek the
outlines of universal history. Dionysius of Halicarnassus explored Roman
antiquities. Greek artists and Greek architects thronged the city; but the
first, under Roman influence, abandoned the ideal for the portrait, and the
second degraded the noble Corinthian pillar into the bastard composite.356
The theatre, which now started into sudden life, was borrowed altogether
from the Greeks. Ennius and Pacuvius imitated Euripides; Cæcilius,
Plautus, Terence, and Nævius devoted themselves chiefly to Menander.
Even the lover in the days of Lucretius painted his lady's charms in
Greek.357 Immense sums were given for Greek literary slaves, and the
attractions of the capital drew to Rome nearly all that was brilliant in
Athenian society.

While the complete ascendancy of the intellect and manners of Greece was
destroying the simplicity of the old Roman type, and at the same time
enlarging the range of [pg 232] Roman sympathies, an equally powerful
influence was breaking down the aristocratic and class feeling which had so
long raised an insurmountable barrier between the nobles and the plebeians.
Their long contentions had issued in the civil wars, the dictatorship of Julius
Cæsar, and the Empire, and these changes in a great measure obliterated the
old lines of demarcation. Foreign wars, which develop with great intensity
distinctive national types, and divert the public mind from internal changes,
are usually favourable to the conservative spirit; but civil wars are
essentially revolutionary, for they overwhelm all class barriers and throw
open the highest prizes to energy and genius. Two very remarkable and
altogether unprecedented illustrations of this truth occurred at Rome.
Ventidius Bassus, by his military skill, and by the friendship of Julius
Cæsar, and afterwards of Antony, rose from the position of mule-driver to
the command of a Roman army, and at last to the consulate,358 which was
also attained, about 40 b.c., by the Spaniard Cornelius Balbus.359 Augustus,
though the most aristocratic of emperors, in order to discourage celibacy,
permitted all citizens who were not senators to intermarry with
freedwomen. The empire was in several distinct ways unfavourable to class

distinctions. It was for the most part essentially democratic, winning its
popularity from the masses of the people, and crushing the senate, which
had been the common centre of aristocracy and of freedom. A new despotic
power, bearing alike on all classes, reduced them to an equality of servitude.
The emperors were themselves in many cases the mere creatures of revolt,
and their policy was governed by their origin. Their jealousy struck [pg
233] down many of the nobles, while others were ruined by the public
games, which it became customary to give, or by the luxury to which, in the
absence of political occupations, they were impelled, and the relative
importance of all was diminished by the new creations. The ascendancy of
wealth began to pass into new quarters. Delators, or political informers,
encouraged by the emperors, and enriched by the confiscated properties of
those whose condemnation they had procured, rose to great influence. From
the time of Caligula, for several reigns, the most influential citizens were
freedmen, who occupied the principal offices in the palace, and usually
obtained complete ascendancy over the emperors. Through them alone
petitions were presented. By their instrumentality the Imperial favours were
distributed. They sometimes dethroned the emperors. They retained their
power unshaken through a succession of revolutions. In wealth, in power, in
the crowd of their courtiers, in the splendour of their palaces in life, and of
their tombs in death, they eclipsed all others, and men whom the early
Roman patricians would have almost disdained to notice, saw the proudest
struggling for their favour.360

Together with these influences many others of a kindred nature may be
detected. The colonial policy which the Gracchi had advocated was carried
out at Narbonne, and during the latter days of Julius Cæsar, to the
amazement and scandal of the Romans, Gauls of this province obtained
seats in the senate.361 The immense extent of the empire made it necessary
for numerous troops to remain during long periods of time in distant
provinces, and the foreign habits that were thus acquired began the
destruction of the exclusive feelings of the Roman army, which the
subsequent enrolment of [pg 234] barbarians completed. The public games,
the immense luxury, the concentration of power, wealth, and genius, made
Rome the centre of a vast and ceaseless concourse of strangers, the focus of
all the various philosophies and religions of the empire, and its population
soon became an amorphous, heterogeneous mass, in which all nations,

customs, languages, and creeds, all degrees of virtue and vice, of refinement
and barbarism, of scepticism and credulity, intermingled and interacted.
Travelling had become more easy and perhaps more frequent than it has
been at any other period before the nineteenth century. The subjection of the
whole civilised world to a single rule removed the chief obstacles to
locomotion. Magnificent roads, which modern nations have rarely rivalled
and never surpassed, intersected the entire empire, and relays of post-horses
enabled the voyager to proceed with an astonishing rapidity. The sea,
which, after the destruction of the fleets of Carthage, had fallen almost
completely under the dominion of pirates, had been cleared by Pompey. The
European shores of the Mediterranean and the port of Alexandria were
thronged with vessels. Romans traversed the whole extent of the empire on
political, military, or commercial errands, or in search of health, or
knowledge, or pleasure.362 The entrancing beauties of Como and of Tempe,
the luxurious manners of Baiæ and Corinth, the schools, commerce,
climate, and temples of Alexandria, the soft winters of Sicily, the artistic
wonders and historic recollections of Athens and the Nile, the great colonial
interests of Gaul, attracted their thousands, while Roman luxury needed the
products of the remotest lands, and the demand for animals for the
amphitheatre spread Roman enterprise into the wildest deserts. In the
capital, the toleration accorded to different creeds was such that the city
soon became a miniature of the [pg 235] world. Almost every variety of
charlatanism and of belief displayed itself unchecked, and boasted its train
of proselytes. Foreign ideas were in every form in the ascendant. Greece,
which had presided over the intellectual development of Rome, acquired a
new influence under the favouring policy of Hadrian, and Greek became the
language of some of the later as it had been of the earliest writers. Egyptian
religions and philosophies excited the wildest enthusiasm. As early as the
reign of Augustus there were many thousands of Jewish residents at
Rome,363 and their manners and creed spread widely among the people.364
The Carthaginian Apuleius,365 the Gauls Floras and Favorinus, the
Spaniards Lucan, Columella, Martial, Seneca, and Quintilian, had all in
their different departments a high place in Roman literature or philosophy.

In the slave world a corresponding revolution was taking place. The large
proportion of physicians and sculptors who were slaves, the appearance of
three or four distinguished authors in the slave class, the numerous literary

slaves imported from Greece, and the splendid examples of courage,
endurance, and devotion to their masters furnished by slaves during the
civil wars, and during some of the worst periods of the Empire, were
bridging the chasm between the servile and the free classes, and the same
tendency was more powerfully stimulated by the vast numbers and
overwhelming influence of the freedmen. The enormous scale and frequent
[pg 236] fluctuations of the great Roman establishments, and the
innumerable captives reduced to slavery after every war, rendered
manumission both frequent and easy, and it was soon regarded as a normal
result of faithful service. Many slaves bought their freedom out of the
savings which their masters always permitted them to make. Others paid for
it by their labour after their emancipation. Some masters emancipated their
slaves in order to obtain their part in the distribution of corn, others to
prevent the discovery of their own crimes by the torture of their slaves,
others through vanity, being desirous of having their funerals attended by a
long train of freedmen, very many simply as a reward for long service.366
The freedman was still under what was termed the patronage of his former
master; he was bound to him by what in a later age would have been called
a feudal tie, and the political and social importance of a noble depended in a
very great degree upon the multitude of his clients. The children of the
emancipated slave were in the same relation to the patron, and it was only
in the third generation that all disqualifications and restraints were
abrogated. In consequence of this system, manumission was often the
interest of the master. In the course of his life he enfranchised individual
slaves. On his death-bed or by his will he constantly emancipated
multitudes. Emancipation by testament acquired such dimensions, that
Augustus found it necessary to restrict the power; and he made several
limitations, of which the most important was that no one should emancipate
by his will more than one hundred of his slaves.367 It was once proposed that
the slaves should be distinguished by a special dress, but the proposition
was abandoned because their number was so great that to [pg 237] reveal to
them their strength would be to place the city at their mercy.368 Even among
those who were not slaves, the element that was derived from slavery soon
preponderated. The majority of the free population had probably either
themselves been slaves, or were descended from slaves, and men with this
tainted lineage penetrated to all the offices of the State.369 “There was,” as

has been well said, “a circulation of men from all the universe. Rome
received them slaves, and sent them back Romans.”370

It is manifest how profound a change had taken place since the Republican
days, when the highest dignities were long monopolised by a single class,
when the censors repressed with a stringent severity every form or
exhibition of luxury, when the rhetoricians were banished from the city, lest
the faintest tinge of foreign manners should impair the stern simplicity of
the people, and when the proposal to transfer the capital to Veii, after a great
disaster, was rejected on the ground that it would be impious to worship the
Roman deities anywhere but on the Capitol, or for the Flamens and the
Vestals to emigrate beyond the walls.371

The greater number of these tendencies to universal fusion or equality were
blind forces resulting from the stress of circumstances, and not from any
human forethought, or were agencies that were put in motion for a different
object. It must, however, be acknowledged that a definite theory of policy
had a considerable part in accelerating the movement. The policy of the
Republic may be broadly described as a policy of conquest, and that of the
Empire as a policy of preservation. The Romans having acquired a vast
dominion, were met by the great problem which every first-class power is
called upon to solve—by what means many communities, [pg 238] with
different languages, customs, characters, and traditions, can be retained
peaceably under a single ruler. In modern times, this difficulty has been
most successfully met by local legislatures, which, if they supply a “line of
cleavage,” a nucleus around which the spirit of opposition may form, have
on the other hand the priceless advantage of giving the annexed people a
large measure of self-government, a centre and safety-valve of local public
opinion, a sphere for local ambitions, and a hierarchy of institutions adapted
to the distinctive national type. Under no other conditions can a complex
empire be carried on with so little strain, or effort, or humiliation, or its
inevitable final dissolution be effected with so little danger or convulsion.
But local legislatures, which are the especial glory of English
statesmanship, belong exclusively to modern civilisation. The Roman
method of conciliation was, first of all, the most ample toleration of the
customs, religion, and municipal freedom of the conquered, and then their
gradual admission to the privileges of the conqueror. By confiding to them

in a great measure the defence of the empire, by throwing open to them the
offices of State, and especially by according to them the right of Roman
citizenship, which had been for centuries jealously restricted to the
inhabitants of Rome, and was afterwards only conceded to Italy and
Cisalpine Gaul, the emperors sought to attach them to their throne. The
process was very gradual, but the whole movement of political
emancipation attained its completion when the Imperial throne was
occupied by the Spaniard Trajan, and by Pertinax, the son of a freedman,
and when an edict of Caracalla extended the rights of Roman citizenship to
all the provinces of the empire.

It will appear evident, from the foregoing sketch, that the period which
elapsed between Panætius and Constantine exhibited an irresistible
tendency to cosmopolitanism. The convergence, when we consider the
number, force, and harmony of the influences that composed it, is indeed
unexampled [pg 239] in history. The movement extended through all the
fields of religious, philosophical, political, industrial, military, and domestic
life. The character of the people was completely transformed, the landmarks
of all its institutions were removed, the whole principle of its organisation
was reversed. It would be impossible to find a more striking example of the
manner in which events govern character, destroying old habits and
associations, and thus altering that national type of excellence which is, for
the most part, the expression or net moral result of the national institutions
and circumstances. The effect of the movement was, no doubt, in many
respects evil, and some of the best men, such as the elder Cato and Tacitus,
opposed it, as leading to the demoralisation of the empire; but if it increased
vice, it also gave a peculiar character to virtue. It was impossible that the
conception of excellence, formed in a society where everything conspired to
deepen class divisions and national jealousies and antipathies, should be
retained unaltered in a period of universal intercourse and amalgamation.
The moral expression of the first period is obviously to be found in the
narrower military and patriotic virtues; that of the second period in enlarged
philanthropy and sympathy.

The Stoical philosophy was admirably fitted to preside over this extension
of sympathies. Although it proved itself in every age the chief school of
patriots, it recognised also, from the very first, and in the most unequivocal

manner, the fraternity of mankind. The Stoic taught that virtue alone is a
good, and that all other things are indifferent; and from this position he
inferred that birth, rank, country, or wealth are the mere accidents of life,
and that virtue alone makes one man superior to another. He taught also that
the Deity is an all-pervading Spirit, animating the universe, and revealed
with especial clearness in the soul of man; and he concluded that all men
are fellow-members of a single body, united by participation in the same
Divine Spirit. These two doctrines [pg 240] formed part of the very first
teaching of the Stoics, but it was the special glory of the Roman teachers,
and an obvious result of the condition of affairs I have described, to have
brought them into full relief. One of the most emphatic as well as one of the
earliest extant assertions of the duty of “charity to the human race,”372
occurs in the treatise of Cicero upon duties, which was avowedly based
upon Stoicism. Writing at a period when the movement of amalgamation
had for a generation been rapidly proceeding,373 and adopting almost
without restriction the ethics of the Stoics, Cicero maintained the doctrine
of universal brotherhood as distinctly as it was afterwards maintained by the
Christian Church. “This whole world,” he tells us, “is to be regarded as the
common city of gods and men.”374 “Men were born for the sake of men, that
each should assist the others.”375 “Nature ordains that a man should wish the
good of every man, whoever he may be, for this very reason, that he is a
man.”376 “To reduce man to the duties of his own city and to disengage him
from duties to the members of other cities, is to break the universal society
of the human race.”377 “Nature has inclined us to love men, and this is the
foundation of the law.”378 The same principles were reiterated with
increasing emphasis by the later Stoics. Adopting the well-known line
which Terence had translated from Menander, they maintained that man
should deem nothing human foreign to his interest. Lucan expatiated with
all the fervour of a Christian poet upon the time when “the human race will
cast aside its weapons, and when all nations will learn to love.”379 “The
whole universe,” said [pg 241] Seneca, “which you see around you,
comprising all things, both divine and human, is one. We are members of
one great body. Nature has made us relatives when it begat us from the
same materials and for the same destinies. She planted in us a mutual love,
and fitted us for a social life.”380 “What is a Roman knight, or freedman, or
slave? These are but names springing from ambition or from injury.”381 “I
know that my country is the world, and my guardians are the gods.”382 “You

are a citizen,” said Epictetus, “and a part of the world.... The duty of a
citizen is in nothing to consider his own interest distinct from that of others,
as the hand or foot, if they possessed reason and understood the law of
nature, would do and wish nothing that had not some relation to the rest of
the body.”383 “An Antonine,” said Marcus Aurelius, “my country is Rome;
as a man, it is the world.”384

So far Stoicism appears fully equal to the moral requirements of the age. It
would be impossible to recognise more cordially or to enforce more
beautifully that doctrine of universal brotherhood for which the
circumstances of the Roman Empire had made men ripe. Plato had said that
no one is born for himself alone, but that he owes himself in part to his
country, in part to his parents, and in part to his friends. The Roman Stoics,
taking a wider survey, declared that man is born not for himself but for the
whole world.385 And their doctrine was perfectly consistent with the original
principles of their school.

But while Stoicism was quite capable of representing the widening
movement, it was not equally capable of representing the softening
movement of civilisation. Its condemnation [pg 242] of the affections, and
its stern, tense ideal, admirably fitted for the struggles of a simple military
age, were unsuited for the mild manners and luxurious tastes of the age of
the Antonines. A class of writers began to arise who, like the Stoics,
believed virtue, rather than enjoyment, to be the supreme good, and who
acknowledged that virtue consisted solely of the control which the
enlightened will exercises over the desires, but who at the same time gave
free scope to the benevolent affections and a more religious and mystical
tone to the whole scheme of morals. Professing various speculative
doctrines, and calling themselves by many names—eclectics, peripatetics,
or Platonists—they agreed in forming or representing a moral character, less
strong, less sublime, less capable of endurance and heroism, less
conspicuous for energy of will, than that of the Stoics, but far more tender
and attractive. The virtues of force began to recede, and the gentler virtues
to advance, in the moral type. Insensibility to suffering was no longer
professed; indomitable strength was no longer idolised, and it was felt that
weakness and sorrow have their own appropriate virtues.386 The works of
these writers are full of delicate touches which nothing but strong and lively

feelings could have suggested. We find this in the well-known letter of
Pliny on the death of his slaves,387 in the frequent protests against the
ostentation of indifference with which the Stoics regarded the loss of their
friends, in many instances of simple, artless pathos, which strike the finest
chords of our nature. When Plutarch, after the death of his daughter, was
writing a letter of consolation to his wife, [pg 243] we find him turning
away from all the commonplaces of the Stoics as the recollection of one
simple trait of his little child rushed upon his mind:—“She desired her
nurse to press even her dolls to the breast. She was so loving that she
wished everything that gave her pleasure to share in the best of what she
had.”

Plutarch, whose fame as a biographer has, I think, unduly eclipsed his
reputation as a moralist, may be justly regarded as the leader of this
movement, and his moral writings may be profitably compared with those
of Seneca, the most ample exponent of the sterner school. Seneca is not
unfrequently self-conscious, theatrical, and overstrained. His precepts have
something of the affected ring of a popular preacher. The imperfect fusion
of his short sentences gives his style a disjointed and, so to speak,
granulated character, which the Emperor Caligula happily expressed when
he compared it to sand without cement; yet he often rises to a majesty of
eloquence, a grandeur both of thought and of expression, that few moralists
have ever rivalled. Plutarch, though far less sublime, is more sustained,
equable, and uniformly pleasing. The Montaigne of antiquity, his genius
coruscates playfully and gracefully around his subject; he delights in
illustrations which are often singularly vivid and original, but which, by
their excessive multiplication, appear sometimes rather the texture than the
ornament of his discourse. A gentle, tender spirit, and a judgment equally
free from paradox, exaggeration, and excessive subtilty, are the
characteristics of all he wrote. Plutarch excels most in collecting motives of
consolation; Seneca in forming characters that need no consolation. There is
something of the woman in Plutarch; Seneca is all a man. The writings of
the first resemble the strains of the flute, to which the ancients attributed the
power of calming the passions and charming away the clouds of sorrow,
and drawing men by a gentle suasion into the paths of virtue; the writings of
the other are like the trumpet-blast, [pg 244] which kindles the soul with an
heroic courage. The first is most fitted to console a mother sorrowing over

her dead child, the second to nerve a brave man, without flinching and
without illusion, to grapple with an inevitable fate.

The elaborate letters which Seneca has left us on distinctive tenets of the
Stoical school, such as the equality of vices or the evil of the affections,
have now little more than an historic interest; but the general tone of his
writings gives them a permanent importance, for they reflect and foster a
certain type of excellence which, since the extinction of Stoicism, has had
no adequate expression in literature. The prevailing moral tone of Plutarch,
on the other hand, being formed mainly on the prominence of the amiable
virtues, has been eclipsed or transcended by the Christian writers, but his
definite contributions to philosophy and morals are more important than
those of Seneca. He has left us one of the best works on superstition, and
one of the most ingenious works on Providence, we possess. He was
probably the first writer who advocated very strongly humanity to animals
on the broad ground of universal benevolence, as distinguished from the
Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration, and he was also remarkable,
beyond all his contemporaries, for his high sense of female excellence and
of the sanctity of female love.

The Romans had at all times cared more for the practical tendency of a
system of philosophy than for its logical or speculative consistency. One of
the chief attractions of Stoicism, in their eyes, had been that its main object
was not to build a system of opinion, but to propose a pattern of life,388 and
Stoicism itself was only adapted to the Roman character after it had been
simplified by Panætius.389 Although the system could never free itself
altogether from that hardness which rendered it so unsuited for an advanced
civilisation, it [pg 245] was profoundly modified by the later Stoics, who
rarely scrupled to temper it by the admixture of new doctrines. Seneca
himself was by no means an unmixed Stoic. If Epictetus was more nearly
so, this was probably because the extreme hardship he underwent made him
dwell more than his contemporaries upon the importance of fortitude and
endurance. Marcus Aurelius was surrounded by the disciples of the most
various schools, and his Stoicism was much tinctured by the milder and
more religious spirit of Platonism. The Stoics, like all other men, felt the
moral current of the time, though they yielded to it less readily than some
others. In Thrasea, who occupied in his age a position analogous to that of

Cato in an earlier period, we find little or nothing of the asperity and
hardness of his great prototype. In the writings of the later Stoics, if we find
the same elements as in those of their predecessors, these elements are at
least combined in different proportions.

In the first place, Stoicism became more essentially religious. The Stoical
character, like all others of a high order, had always been reverential; but its
reverence differed widely from that of Christians. It was concentrated much
less upon the Deity than upon virtue, and especially upon virtue as
exhibited in great men. When Lucan, extolling his hero, boasted that “the
gods favoured the conquering cause, but Cato the conquered,” or when
Seneca described “the fortune of Sulla” as “the crime of the gods,” these
sentences, which sound to modern ears grossly blasphemous, appear to
have excited no murmur. We have already seen the audacious language with
which the sage claimed an equality with the Divinity. On the other hand, the
reverence for virtue apart from all conditions of success, and especially for
men of the stamp of Cato, who through a strong moral conviction struggled
bravely, though unsuccessfully, against force, genius, or circumstances, was
perhaps more steady and more passionate than in any later age. The duty of
absolute [pg 246] submission to Providence, as I have already shown, was
continually inculcated, and the pantheistic notion of all virtue being a part
or emanation of the Deity was often asserted, but man was still the centre of
the Stoic's scheme, the ideal to which his reverence and devotion aspired. In
later Stoicism this point of view was gradually changed. Without any
formal abandonment of their pantheistic conceptions, the language of
philosophers recognised with much greater clearness a distinct and personal
Divinity. Every page of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius is impregnated with
the deepest religious feeling. “The first thing to learn,” said the former, “is
that there is a God, that His knowledge pervades the whole universe, and
that it extends not only to our acts but to our thoughts and feelings.... He
who seeks to please the gods must labour as far as lies in him to resemble
them. He must be faithful as God is faithful, free as He is free, beneficent as
He is beneficent, magnanimous as He is magnanimous.”390 “To have God
for our maker and father and guardian, should not that emancipate us from
all sadness and from all fear?”391 “When you have shut your door and
darkened your room, say not to yourself you are alone. God is in your room,
and your attendant genius likewise. Think not that they need the light to see

what you do.392 What can I, an old man and a cripple, do but praise God? If
I were a nightingale, I would discharge the office of a nightingale; if a
swan, that of a swan. But I am a reasonable being; my mission is to praise
God, and I fulfil it; nor shall I ever, as far as lies in me, shrink from my
task, and I exhort you to join in the same song of praise.”393

The same religious character is exhibited, if possible, in a still greater
degree in the “Meditations” of Marcus Aurelius; but in one respect the
ethics of the emperor differ [pg 247] widely from those of the slave. In
Epictetus we invariably find the strongest sense of the majesty of man. As
the child of the Deity, as a being capable of attaining the most exalted
virtue, he magnified him to the highest point, and never more so than in the
very passage in which he exhorted his disciples to beware of haughtiness.
The Jupiter Olympus of Phidias, he reminds them, exhibits no arrogance,
but the unclouded serenity of perfect confidence and strength.394 Marcus
Aurelius, on the other hand, dwelt rather on the weakness than on the force
of man, and his meditations breathe a spirit, if not of Christian humility, at
least of the gentlest and most touching modesty. He was not, it is true, like
some later saints, who habitually apply to themselves language of
reprobation which would be exaggerated if applied to the murderer or the
adulterer. He did not shrink from recognising human virtue as a reality, and
thanking Providence for the degree in which he had attained it, but he
continually reviewed with an unsparing severity the weaknesses of his
character, he accepted and even solicited reproofs from every teacher of
virtue, he made it his aim, in a position of supreme power, to check every
emotion of arrogance and pride, and he set before him an ideal of
excellence which awed and subdued his mind.

Another very remarkable feature of later Stoicism was its increasingly
introspective character. In the philosophy of Cato and Cicero, virtue was
displayed almost exclusively in action. In the later Stoics, self-examination
and purity of thought were continually inculcated. There are some writers
who, with an obstinacy which it is more easy to explain than to excuse,
persist, in defiance of the very clearest evidence to the contrary, in
representing these virtues as exclusively Christian, and in maintaining,
without a shadow of proof, that the place they undeniably occupy in the
later [pg 248] Roman moralists was due to the direct or indirect influence of

the new faith. The plain fact is that they were fully known to the Greeks,
and both Plato and Zeno even exhorted men to study their dreams, on the
ground that these often reveal the latent tendencies of the disposition.395
Pythagoras urged his disciples daily to examine themselves when they
retired to rest,396 and this practice soon became a recognised part of the
Pythagorean discipline.397 It was introduced into Rome with the school
before the close of the Republic. It was known in the time of Cicero398 and
Horace.399 Sextius, one of the masters of Seneca, a philosopher of the school
of Pythagoras, who flourished chiefly before the Christian era, was
accustomed daily to devote a portion of time to self-examination; and
Seneca, who at first inclined much to the tenets of Pythagoras,400 expressly
tells us that it was from Sextius he learnt the practice.401 The increasing
prominence of the Pythagorean philosophy which accompanied the
invasion of Oriental creeds, the natural tendency of the empire, by closing
the avenues of political life, to divert the attention from action to emotion,
and also the increased latitude allowed to the play of the sympathies or
affections by the later Stoics, brought this emotional part of virtue into great
prominence. The letters of Seneca are a kind of moral medicine applied for
the most part to the cure of different [pg 249] infirmities of character.
Plutarch, in a beautiful treatise on “The Signs of Moral Progress,” treated
the culture of the feelings with delicate skill. The duty of serving the
Divinity with a pure mind rather than by formal rites became a
commonplace of literature, and self-examination one of the most recognised
of duties. Epictetus urged men so to purify their imaginations, that at the
sight of a beautiful woman they should not even mentally exclaim, “Happy
her husband!”402 The meditations of Marcus Aurelius, above all, are
throughout an exercise of self-examination, and the duty of watching over
the thoughts is continually inculcated.

It was a saying of Plutarch that Stoicism, which sometimes exercised a
prejudicial and hardening influence upon characters that were by nature
stern and unbending, proved peculiarly useful as a cordial to those which
were naturally gentle and yielding. Of this truth we can have no better
illustration than is furnished by the life and writings of Marcus Aurelius, the
last and most perfect representative of Roman Stoicism. A simple, childlike,
and eminently affectionate disposition, with little strength of intellect or
perhaps originally of will, much more inclined to meditation, speculation,
solitude, or friendship, than to active and public life, with a profound
aversion to the pomp of royalty and with a rather strong natural leaning to
pedantry, he had embraced the fortifying philosophy of Zeno in its best
form, and that philosophy made him perhaps as nearly a perfectly virtuous
man as has ever appeared upon our world. Tried by the chequered events of
a reign of nineteen years, presiding over a society that was profoundly
corrupt, and over a city that was notorious for its license, the perfection of
his character awed even calumny to silence, and the spontaneous sentiment
of his people proclaimed him rather a god than a man.403 Very few men have
ever lived concerning whose [pg 250] inner life we can speak so
confidently. His “Meditations,” which form one of the most impressive,
form also one of the truest books in the whole range of religious literature.
They consist of rude fragmentary notes without literary skill or
arrangement, written for the most part in hasty, broken, and sometimes
almost unintelligible sentences amid the turmoil of a camp,404 and
recording, in accents of the most penetrating sincerity, the struggles, doubts,
and aims of a soul of which, to employ one of his own images, it may be
truly said that it possessed the purity of a star, which needs no veil to hide
its nakedness. The undisputed master of the whole civilised world, he set
before him as models such men as Thrasea and Helvidius, as Cato and
Brutus, and he made it his aim to realise the conception of a free State in
which all citizens are equal, and of a royalty which makes it its first duty to
respect the liberty of the citizens.405 His life was passed in unremitting
activity. For nearly twelve years he was absent with armies in the distant

provinces of the empire; and although his political capacity has been much
and perhaps justly questioned, it is impossible to deny the unwearied zeal
with which he discharged the duties of his great position. Yet few men have
ever carried farther the virtue of little things, the delicate moral tact and the
minute scruples which, though often exhibited by women and by secluded
religionists, very rarely survive much contact with active life. The solicitude
with which he endeavoured to persuade two jealous rhetoricians to abstain
during their debates from retorts that might destroy their friendship,406 the
careful gratitude with which, in a camp in Hungary, he recalled every moral
obligation he [pg 251] could trace, even to the most obscure of his tutors,407
his anxiety to avoid all pedantry and mannerism in his conduct,408 and to
repel every voluptuous imagination from his mind,409 his deep sense of the
obligation of purity,410 his laborious efforts to correct a habit of drowsiness
into which he had fallen, and his self-reproval when he had yielded to it,411
become all, I think, inexpressibly touching when we remember that they
were exhibited by one who was the supreme ruler of the civilised globe, and
who was continually engaged in the direction of the most gigantic interests.
But that which is especially remarkable in Marcus Aurelius is the complete
absence of fanaticism in his philanthropy. Despotic monarchs sincerely
anxious to improve mankind are naturally led to endeavour, by acts of
legislation, to force society into the paths which they believe to be good,
and such men, acting under such motives, have sometimes been the
scourges of mankind. Philip II. and Isabella the Catholic inflicted more
suffering in obedience to their consciences than Nero and Domitian in
obedience to their lusts. But Marcus Aurelius steadily resisted the
temptation. “Never hope,” he once wrote, “to realise Plato's Republic. Let it
be sufficient that you have in some slight degree ameliorated mankind, and
do not think that amelioration a matter of small importance. Who can
change the opinions of men? and without a change of sentiments what can
you make but reluctant slaves and hypocrites?”412 He promulgated many
laws inspired by a spirit of the purest benevolence. He [pg 252] mitigated
the gladiatorial shows. He treated with invariable deference the senate,
which was the last bulwark of political freedom. He endowed many chairs
of philosophy which were intended to diffuse knowledge and moral
teaching through the people. He endeavoured by the example of his Court
to correct the extravagances of luxury that were prevalent, and he exhibited
in his own career a perfect model of an active and conscientious

administrator; but he made no rash efforts to force the people by stringent
laws out of the natural channel of their lives. Of the corruption of his
subjects he was keenly sensible, and he bore it with a mournful but gentle
patience. We may trace in this respect the milder spirit of those Greek
teachers who had diverged from Stoicism, but it was especially from the
Stoical doctrine that all vice springs from ignorance that he derived his rule
of life, and this doctrine, to which he repeatedly recurred, imparted to all his
judgments a sad but tender charity. “Men were made for men; correct them,
then, or support them.”413 “If they do ill, it is evidently in spite of
themselves and through ignorance.”414 “Correct them if you can; if not,
remember that patience was given you to exercise it in their behalf.”415 “It
would be shameful for a physician to deem it strange that a man was
suffering from fever.”416 “The immortal gods consent for countless ages to
endure without anger, and even to surround with blessings, so many and
such wicked men; but thou who hast so short a time to live, art thou already
weary, and that when thou art thyself wicked?”417 “It is involuntarily that
the soul is deprived of justice, and temperance, and goodness, and all other
virtues. Continually remember this; the thought will make you more gentle
to all mankind.”418 “It is right that man should love those who have
offended him. He will do so when he remembers that all men are his [pg
253] relations, and that it is through ignorance and involuntarily that they
sin—and then we all die so soon.”419

The character of the virtue of Marcus Aurelius, though exhibiting the
softening influence of the Greek spirit which in his time pervaded the
empire, was in its essentials strictly Roman.420 Though full of reverential
gratitude to Providence, we do not find in him that intense humility and that
deep and subtle religious feeling which were the principles of Hebrew
virtue, and which have given the Jewish writers so great an ascendancy over
the hearts of men. Though borne naturally and instinctively to goodness, his
“Meditations” do not display the keen æsthetical sense of the beauty of
virtue which was the leading motive of Greek morals, and which the writing
of Plotinus afterwards made very familiar to the Roman world. Like most of
the best Romans, the principle of his virtue was the sense of duty, the
conviction of the existence of a law of nature to which it is the aim and
purpose of our being to conform. Of secondary motives he appears to have
been little sensible. The belief in a superintending Providence was the

strongest of his religious convictions, but even that was occasionally
overcast. On the subject of a future world his mind floated in a desponding
doubt. The desire for posthumous fame he deemed it his duty systematically
to mortify. While most writers of his school regarded death chiefly as the
end of sorrows, and dwelt upon it in order to dispel its terrors, in Marcus
Aurelius it is chiefly represented as the last great demonstration of the
vanity of earthly things. Seldom, indeed, has such active and unrelaxing
virtue been united with so little enthusiasm, [pg 254] and been cheered by
so little illusion of success. “There is but one thing,” he wrote, “of real
value—to cultivate truth and justice, and to live without anger in the midst
of lying and unjust men.”421

The command he had acquired over his feelings was so great that it was
said of him that his countenance was never known to betray either elation or
despondency.422 We, however, who have before us the records of his inner
life, can have no difficulty in detecting the deep melancholy that
overshadowed his mind, and his closing years were darkened by many and
various sorrows. His wife, whom he dearly loved and deeply honoured, and
who, if we may believe the Court scandals that are reported by historians,
was not worthy of his affection,423 had preceded him to the tomb. His only
surviving son had already displayed the vicious tendencies that afterwards
made him one of the worst of rulers. The philosophers, who had instructed
him in his youth, and to whom he had clung with an affectionate friendship,
had one by one disappeared, and no new race had arisen to supply their
place. After a long reign of self-denying virtue, he saw the decadence of the
empire continually more apparent. The Stoical school was rapidly fading
before the passion for Oriental superstitions. The barbarians, repelled for a
time, were again menacing the frontiers, and it was not difficult to foresee
their future triumph. The mass of the people had [pg 255] become too inert
and too corrupt for any efforts to regenerate them. A fearful pestilence,
followed by many minor calamities, had fallen upon the land and spread
misery and panic through many provinces. In the midst of these calamities,
the emperor was struck down with a mortal illness, which he bore with the
placid courage he had always displayed, exhibiting in almost the last words
he uttered his forgetfulness of self and his constant anxiety for the condition
of his people.424 Shortly before his death he dismissed his attendants, and,
after one last interview, his son, and he died as he long had lived, alone.425

Thus sank to rest in clouds and darkness the purest and gentlest spirit of all
the pagan world, the most perfect model of the later Stoics. In him the
hardness, asperity, and arrogance of the sect had altogether disappeared,
while the affectation its paradoxes tended to produce was greatly mitigated.
Without fanaticism, superstition, or illusion, his whole life was regulated by
a simple and unwavering sense of duty. The contemplative and emotional
virtues which Stoicism had long depressed, had regained their place, but the
active virtues had not yet declined. The virtues of the hero were still deeply
honoured, but gentleness and tenderness had acquired a new prominence in
the ideal type.

But while the force of circumstances was thus developing the ethical
conceptions of antiquity in new directions, the mass of the Roman people
were plunged in a condition of depravity which no mere ethical teaching
could adequately correct. The moral condition of the empire is, indeed, in
some respects one of the most appalling pictures on record, and writers
have much more frequently undertaken to paint or even to exaggerate its
enormity than to investigate the circumstances by which it may be
explained. Such circumstances, [pg 256] however, must unquestionably
exist. There is no reason to believe that the innate propensities of the people
were worse during the Empire than during the best days of the Republic.
The depravity of a nation is a phenomenon which, like all others, may be
traced to definite causes, and in the instance before us they are not difficult
to discover.

I have already said that the virtue of the Romans was a military and
patriotic virtue, formed by the national institutions, and to which religious
teaching was merely accessory. The domestic, military, and censorial
discipline, concurring with the general poverty and also with the
agricultural pursuits of the people, had created the simplest and most
austere habits, while the institutions of civic liberty provided ample spheres
for honourable ambition. The nobles, being the highest body in a free State,
and being at the same time continually confronted by a formidable
opposition under the guidance of the tribunes, were ardently devoted to
public life. The dangerous rivalry of the surrounding Italian States, and
afterwards of Carthage, demanded and secured a constant vigilance. Roman
education was skilfully designed to elicit heroic patriotism, and the great

men of the past became the ideal figures of the imagination. Religion
hallowed the local feeling by rites and legends, instituted many useful and
domestic habits, taught men the sanctity of oaths, and, by fostering a
continual sense of a superintending Providence, gave a depth and solemnity
to the whole character.

Such were the chief influences by which the national type of virtue had
been formed, but nearly all of these were corroded or perverted by
advancing civilisation. The domestic and local religion lost its ascendancy
amid the increase of scepticism and the invasion of a crowd of foreign
superstitions. The simplicity of manners, which sumptuary laws and the
institution of the censorship had long maintained, was replaced by the
extravagances of a Babylonian luxury. The aristocratic [pg 257] dignity
perished with the privileges on which it reposed. The patriotic energy and
enthusiasm died away in a universal empire which embraced all varieties of
language, custom, and nationality.

But although the virtues of a poor and struggling community necessarily
disappear before increasing luxury, they are in a normal condition of society
replaced by virtues of a different stamp. Gentler manners and enlarged
benevolence follow in the train of civilisation, greater intellectual activity
and more extended industrial enterprise give a new importance to the moral
qualities which each of these require, the circle of political interests
expands, and if the virtues that spring from privilege diminish, the virtues
that spring from equality increase.

In Rome, however, there were three great causes which impeded the normal
development—the Imperial system, the institution of slavery, and the
gladiatorial shows. Each of these exercised an influence of the widest and
most pernicious character on the morals of the people. To trace those
influences in all their ramifications would lead me far beyond the limits I
have assigned to the present work, but I shall endeavour to give a concise
view of their nature and general character.

The theory of the Roman Empire was that of a representative despotism.
The various offices of the Republic were not annihilated, but they were
gradually concentrated in a single man. The senate was still ostensibly the
depository of supreme power, but it was made in fact the mere creature of

the Emperor, whose power was virtually uncontrolled. Political spies and
private accusers, who in the latter days of the Republic had been
encouraged to denounce plots against the State, began under Augustus to
denounce plots against the Emperor; and the class being enormously
increased under Tiberius, and stimulated by the promise of part of the
confiscated property, they menaced every leading politician and [pg 258]
even every wealthy man. The nobles were gradually depressed, ruined, or
driven by the dangers of public life into orgies of private luxury. The poor
were conciliated, not by any increase of liberty or even of permanent
prosperity, but by gratuitous distributions of corn and by public games,
while, in order to invest themselves with a sacred character, the emperors
adopted the religious device of an apotheosis.

This last superstition, of which some traces may still be found in the titles
appropriated to royalty, was not wholly a suggestion of politicians. Deified
men had long occupied a prominent place in ancient belief, and the
founders of cities had been very frequently worshipped by the
inhabitants.426 Although to more educated minds the ascription of divinity to
a sovereign was simply an unmeaning flattery, although it in no degree
prevented either innumerable plots against his life, or an unsparing criticism
of his memory, yet the popular reverence not unfrequently anticipated
politicians in representing the emperor as in some special way under the
protection of Providence. Around Augustus a whole constellation of
miraculous stories soon clustered. An oracle, it was said, had declared his
native city destined to produce a ruler of the world. When a child, he had
been borne by invisible hands from his cradle, and placed on a lofty tower,
where he was found with his face turned to the rising sun. He rebuked the
frogs that croaked around his grandfather's home, and they became silent
for ever. An eagle snatched a piece of bread from his hand, soared into the
air, and then, descending, presented it to him again. Another eagle dropped
at his feet a chicken, bearing a laurel-branch in its beak. When his body was
burnt, his image was seen rising to heaven above the flames. When another
man tried to sleep in the bed in which the Emperor had been born, the
profane intruder was [pg 259] dragged forth by an unseen hand. A patrician
named Lætorius, having been condemned for adultery, pleaded in
mitigation of the sentence that he was the happy possessor of the spot of
ground on which Augustus was born.427 An Asiatic town, named Cyzicus,

was deprived of its freedom by Tiberius, chiefly because it had neglected
the worship of Augustus.428 Partly, no doubt, by policy, but partly also by
that spontaneous process by which in a superstitious age conspicuous
characters so often become the nuclei of legends,429 each emperor was
surrounded by a supernatural aureole. Every usurpation, every break in the
ordinary line of succession, was adumbrated by a series of miracles; and
signs, both in heaven and earth, were manifested whenever an emperor was
about to die.

Of the emperors themselves, a great majority, no doubt, accepted their
divine honours as an empty pageant, and more than one exhibited beneath
the purple a simplicity of tastes and character which the boasted heroes of
the Republic had never surpassed. It is related of Vespasian that, when
dying, he jested mournfully on his approaching dignity, observing, as he felt
his strength ebbing away, “I think I am becoming a god.”430 Alexander
Severus and Julian refused to accept the ordinary language of adulation, and
of those who did not reject it we know that many looked upon it as a
modern sovereign looks upon the phraseology of petitions or the
ceremonies of the Court. Even Nero was so far from being intoxicated with
his Imperial dignity that he continually sought triumphs as a singer or an
actor, and it was his artistic skill, not his divine prerogatives, that excited
his vanity.431 Caligula, however, who appears to have been literally
deranged,432 [pg 260] is said to have accepted his divinity as a serious fact,
to have substituted his own head for that of Jupiter on many of the
statues,433 and to have once started furiously from his seat during a
thunderstorm that had interrupted a gladiatorial show, shouting with frantic
gestures his imprecations against Heaven, and declaring that the divided
empire was indeed intolerable, that either Jupiter or himself must speedily
succumb.434 Heliogabalus, if we may give any credence to his biographer,
confounded all things, human and divine, in hideous and blasphemous
orgies, and designed to unite all forms of religion in the worship of
himself.435

A curious consequence of this apotheosis was that the images of the
emperors were invested with a sacred character like those of the gods. They
were the recognised refuge of the slave or the oppressed,436 and the smallest
disrespect to them was resented as a heinous crime. Under Tiberius, slaves

and criminals were accustomed to hold in their hands an image of the
emperor, and, being thus protected, to pour with impunity a torrent of
defiant insolence upon their masters or judges.437 Under the same emperor, a
man having, when drunk, accidentally touched a nameless domestic utensil
with a ring on which the head of the emperor was carved, he was
immediately denounced by a spy.438 A man in this reign was accused of high
treason for having sold an image of the emperor with a garden.439 It was
made a capital offence to beat a slave, or to undress, near a statue of
Augustus, or to enter a brothel with a piece of money on which his head
was engraved,440 and at a later period a woman, it is said, was actually [pg
261] executed for undressing before the statue of Domitian.441

It may easily be conceived that men who had been raised to this pinnacle of
arrogance and power, men who exercised uncontrolled authority in the
midst of a society in a state of profound corruption, were often guilty of the
most atrocious extravagances. In the first period of the Empire more
especially, when traditions were not yet formed, and when experience had
not yet shown the dangers of the throne, the brains of some of its occupants
reeled at their elevation, and a kind of moral insanity ensued. The pages of
Suetonius remain as an eternal witness of the abysses of depravity, the
hideous, intolerable cruelty, the hitherto unimagined extravagances of
nameless lust that were then manifested on the Palatine, and while they cast
a fearful light upon the moral chaos into which pagan society had sunk,
they furnish ample evidence of the demoralising influences of the empire.
The throne was, it is true, occupied by some of the best as well as by some
of the worst men who have ever lived; but the evil, though checked and
mitigated, was never abolished. The corruption of a Court, the formation of
a profession of spies, the encouragement given to luxury, the distributions
of corn, and the multiplication of games, were evils which varied greatly in
their degrees of intensity, but the very existence of the empire prevented the
creation of those habits of political life which formed the moral type of the
great republics of antiquity. Liberty, which is often very unfavourable to
theological systems, is almost always in the end favourable to morals; for
the most effectual method that has been devised for diverting men from vice
is to give free scope to a higher ambition. This scope was absolutely
wanting in the Roman Empire, and the moral condition, in the absence of

lasting political habits, fluctuated greatly with the character of the
Emperors.

[pg 262]
The results of the institution of slavery were probably even more serious. In
addition to its manifest effect in encouraging a tyrannical and ferocious
spirit in the masters, it cast a stigma upon all labour, and at once degraded
and impoverished the free poor. In modern societies the formation of an
influential and numerous middle class, trained in the sober and regular
habits of industrial life, is the chief guarantee of national morality, and
where such a class exists, the disorders of the upper ranks, though
undoubtedly injurious, are never fatal to society. The influence of great
outbursts of fashionable depravity, such as that which followed the
Restoration in England, is rarely more than superficial. The aristocracy may
revel in every excess of ostentatious vice, but the great mass of the people,
at the loom, the counter, or the plough, continue unaffected by their
example, and the habits of life into which they are forced by the condition
of their trades preserve them from gross depravity. It was the most frightful
feature of the corruption of ancient Rome that it extended through every
class of the community. In the absence of all but the simplest machinery,
manufactures, with the vast industrial life they beget, were unknown. The
poor citizen found almost all the spheres in which an honourable livelihood
might be obtained wholly or at least in a very great degree preoccupied by
slaves, while he had learnt to regard trade with an invincible repugnance.
Hence followed the immense increase of corrupt and corrupting
professions, as actors, pantomimes, hired gladiators, political spies,
ministers to passion, astrologers, religious charlatans, pseudo-philosophers,
which gave the free classes a precarious and occasional subsistence, and
hence, too, the gigantic dimensions of the system of clientage. Every rich
man was surrounded by a train of dependants, who lived in a great measure
at his expense, and spent their lives in ministering to his passions and
flattering his vanity. And, above all, the public distribution of corn, and
occasionally of money, was carried on to [pg 263] such an extent, that, so
far as the first necessaries of life were concerned, the whole poor free
population of Rome was supported gratuitously by the Government. To
effect this distribution promptly and lavishly was the main object of the
Imperial policy, and its consequences were worse than could have resulted

from the most extravagant poor-laws or the most excessive charity. The
mass of the people were supported in absolute idleness by corn, which was
given without any reference to desert, and was received, not as a favour, but
as a right, while gratuitous public amusements still further diverted them
from labour.

Under these influences the population rapidly dwindled away. Productive
enterprise was almost extinct in Italy, and an unexampled concurrence of
causes made a vicious celibacy the habitual condition. Already in the days
of Augustus the evil was apparent, and the dangers which in later reigns
drove the patricians still more generally from public life, drove them more
and more into every extravagance of sensuality. Greece, since the
destruction of her liberty, and also the leading cities of Asia Minor and of
Egypt, had become centres of the wildest corruption, and Greek and
Oriental captives were innumerable in Rome. Ionian slaves of a surpassing
beauty, Alexandrian slaves, famous for their subtle skill in stimulating the
jaded senses of the confirmed and sated libertine, became the ornaments of
every patrician house, the companions and the instructors of the young. The
disinclination to marriage was so general, that men who spent their lives in
endeavouring by flatteries to secure the inheritance of wealthy bachelors
became a numerous and a notorious class. The slave population was itself a
hotbed of vice, and it contaminated all with which it came in contact; while
the attractions of the games, and especially of the public baths, which
became the habitual resort of the idle, combined with the charms of the
Italian climate, and with the miserable domestic architecture that was
general, to draw the poor [pg 264] citizens from indoor life. Idleness,
amusements, and a bare subsistence were alone desired, and the general
practice of abortion among the rich, and of infanticide and exposition in all
classes, still further checked the population.

The destruction of all public spirit in a population so situated was complete
and inevitable. In the days of the Republic a consul had once advocated the
admission of a brave Italian people to the right of Roman citizenship, on the
ground that “those who thought only of liberty deserved to be Romans.”442
In the Empire all liberty was cheerfully bartered for games and corn, and
the worst tyrant could by these means be secure of popularity. In the
Republic, when Marius threw open the houses of those he had proscribed,

to be plundered, the people, by a noble abstinence, rebuked the act, for no
Roman could be found to avail himself of the permission.443 In the Empire,
when the armies of Vitellius and Vespasian were disputing the possession of
the city, the degenerate Romans gathered with delight to the spectacle as to
a gladiatorial show, plundered the deserted houses, encouraged either army
by their reckless plaudits, dragged out the fugitives to be slain, and
converted into a festival the calamity of their country.444 The degradation of
the national character was permanent. Neither the teaching of the Stoics,
nor the government of the Antonines, nor the triumph of Christianity could
restore it. Indifferent to liberty, the Roman now, as then, asks only for an
idle subsistence and for public spectacles, and countless monasteries and
ecclesiastical pageants occupy in modern Rome the same place as did the
distributions of corn and the games of the amphitheatre in the Rome of the
Cæsars.

It must be remembered, too, that while public spirit had [pg 265] thus
decayed in the capital of the empire, there existed no independent or rival
power to reanimate by its example the smouldering flame. The existence in
modern Europe of many distinct nations on the same level of civilisation,
but with different forms of government and conditions of national life,
secures the permanence of some measure of patriotism and liberty. If these
perish in one nation, they survive in another, and each people affects those
about it by its rivalry or example. But an empire which comprised all the
civilised globe could know nothing of this political interaction. In religious,
social, intellectual, and moral life, foreign ideas were very discernible, but
the enslaved provinces could have no influence in rekindling political life in
the centre, and those which rivalled Italy in their civilisation, even
surpassed it in their corruption and their servility.

In reviewing, however, the conditions upon which the moral state of the
empire depended, there are still two very important centres or seed-plots of
virtue to which it is necessary to advert. I mean the pursuit of agriculture
and the discipline of the army. A very early tradition, which was attributed
to Romulus, had declared that warfare and agriculture were the only
honourable occupations for a citizen,445 and it would be difficult to overrate
the influence of the last in forming temperate and virtuous habits among the
people. It is the subject of the only extant work of the elder Cato. Virgil had

adorned it with the lustre of his poetry. A very large part of the Roman
religion was intended to symbolise its stages or consecrate its operations.
Varro expressed an eminently Roman sentiment in that beautiful sentence
which Cowper has introduced into English poetry, “Divine Providence
made the country, but human art the town.”446 The reforms of Vespasian
consisted chiefly [pg 266] of the elevation to high positions of the
agriculturists of the provinces. Antoninus, who was probably the most
perfect of all the Roman emperors, was through his whole reign a zealous
farmer.

As far as the distant provinces were concerned, it is probable that the
Imperial system was on the whole a good. The scandalous rapacity of the
provincial governors, which disgraced the closing years of the Republic,
and which is immortalised by the indignant eloquence of Cicero, appears to
have ceased, or at least greatly diminished, under the supervision of the
emperors. Ample municipal freedom, good roads, and for the most part
wise and temperate rulers, secured for the distant sections of the empire a
large measure of prosperity. But in Italy itself, agriculture, with the habits of
life that attended it, speedily and fatally decayed. The peasant proprietor
soon glided hopelessly into debt. The immense advantages which slavery
gave the rich gradually threw nearly all the Italian soil into their hands. The
peasant who ceased to be proprietor found himself excluded by slave labour
from the position of a hired cultivator, while the gratuitous distributions of
corn drew him readily to the metropolis. The gigantic scale of these
distributions induced the rulers to obtain their corn in the form of a tribute
from distant countries, chiefly from Africa and Sicily, and it almost ceased
to be cultivated in Italy. The land fell to waste, or was cultivated by slaves
or converted into pasture, and over vast tracts the race of free peasants
entirely disappeared.

This great revolution, which profoundly affected the moral condition of
Italy, had long been impending. The debts of the poor peasants, and the
tendency of the patricians to monopolise the conquered territory, had
occasioned some of the fiercest contests of the Republic, and in the earliest
days of the Empire the blight that seemed to have fallen on the Italian soil
was continually and pathetically lamented. Livy, Varro, Columella, and
Pliny have noticed it in the [pg 267] most emphatic terms,447 and Tacitus

observed that as early as the reign of Claudius, Italy, which had once
supplied the distant provinces with corn, had become dependent for the
very necessaries of life upon the winds and the waves.448 The evil was
indeed of an almost hopeless kind. Adverse winds, or any other accidental
interruption of the convoys of corn, occasioned severe distress in the
capital; but the prospect of the calamities that would ensue if any
misfortune detached the great corn-growing countries from the empire,
might well have appalled the politician. Yet the combined influence of
slavery, and of the gratuitous distributions of corn, acting in the manner I
have described, rendered every effort to revive Italian agriculture abortive,
and slavery had taken such deep root that it would have been impossible to
abolish it, while no emperor dared to encounter the calamities and rebellion
that would follow a suspension or even a restriction of the distributions.449
Many serious efforts were made to remedy the evil.450 Alexander Severus
advanced money to the poor to buy portions of land, and accepted a gradual
payment without interest from the produce of the soil. Pertinax settled poor
men as proprietors on deserted land, on the sole condition that they should
cultivate it. Marcus Aurelius began, and Aurelian and Valentinian
continued, the system of settling great numbers of barbarian captives upon
the Italian soil, and compelling them as slaves to till it. The introduction [pg
268] of this large foreign element into the heart of Italy was eventually one
of the causes of the downfall of the empire, and it is also about this time
that we first dimly trace the condition of serfdom or servitude to the soil
into which slavery afterwards faded, and which was for some centuries the
general condition of the European poor. But the economical and moral
causes that were destroying agriculture in Italy were too strong to be
resisted, and the simple habits of life which agricultural pursuits promote
had little or no place in the later empire.

A somewhat less rapid but in the end not less complete decadence had taken
place in military life. The Roman army was at first recruited exclusively
from the upper classes, and the service, which lasted only during actual
warfare, was gratuitous. Before the close of the Republic, however, these
conditions had disappeared. Military pay is said to have been instituted at
the time of the siege of Veii.451 Some Spaniards who were enrolled during
the rivalry of Rome and Carthage were the first example of the employment
of foreign mercenaries by the former.452 Marius abolished the property

qualification of the recruits.453 In long residences in Spain and in the Asiatic
provinces discipline gradually relaxed, and the historian who traced the
progress of Oriental luxury in Rome dwelt with a just emphasis upon the
ominous fact that it had first been introduced into the city by soldiers.454 The
civil wars contributed to the destruction of the old military traditions, but
being conducted by able generals it is probable that they had more effect
upon the patriotism than upon the discipline of the army. Augustus
reorganised the whole military system, establishing a body of soldiers
known as the Prætorian guard, and dignified with some special privileges,
permanently in Rome, while the [pg 269] other legions were chiefly
mustered upon the frontiers. During his long reign, and during that of
Tiberius, both sections were quiescent, but the murder of Caligula by his
soldiers opened a considerable period of insubordination. Claudius, it was
observed, first set the fatal example of purchasing his safety from his
soldiers by bribes.455 The armies of the provinces soon discovered that it
was possible to elect an emperor outside Rome, and Galba, Otho, Vitellius,
and Vespasian were all the creatures of revolt. The evil was, however, not
yet past recovery. Vespasian and Trajan enforced discipline with great
stringency and success. The emperors began more frequently to visit the
camps. The number of the soldiers was small, and for some time the
turbulence subsided. The history of the worst period of the Empire, it has
been truly observed, is full of instances of brave soldiers trying, under
circumstances of extreme difficulty, simply to do their duty. But the
historian had soon occasion to notice again the profound influence of the
voluptuous Asiatic cities upon the legions.456 Removed for many years from
Italy, they lost all national pride, their allegiance was transferred from the
sovereign to the general, and when the Imperial sceptre fell into the hands
of a succession of incompetent rulers, they habitually urged their
commanders to revolt, and at last reduced the empire to a condition of
military anarchy. A remedy was found for this evil, though not for the
luxurious habits that had been acquired, in the division of the empire, which
placed each army under the direct supervision of an emperor, and it is
probable that at a later period Christianity diminished the insubordination,
though it may have also diminished the military fire, of the soldiers.457 But
other and still more powerful causes were in [pg 270] operation preparing
the military downfall of Rome. The habits of inactivity which the Imperial
policy had produced, and which, through a desire for popularity, most

emperors laboured to encourage, led to a profound disinclination for the
hardships of military life. Even the Prætorian guard, which was long
exclusively Italian, was selected after Septimus Severus from the legions on
the frontiers,458 while, Italy being relieved from the regular conscription,
these were recruited solely in the provinces, and innumerable barbarians
were subsidised. The political and military consequences of this change are
sufficiently obvious. In an age when, artillery being unknown, the military
superiority of civilised nations over barbarians was far less than at present,
the Italians had become absolutely unaccustomed to real war, and had
acquired habits that were beyond all others incompatible with military
discipline, while many of the barbarians who menaced and at last subverted
the empire had been actually trained by Roman generals. The moral
consequence is equally plain—military discipline, like agricultural labour,
ceased to have any part among the moral influences of Italy.

To those who have duly estimated the considerations I have enumerated, the
downfall and moral debasement of the empire can cause no surprise, though
they may justly wonder that its agony should have been so protracted, that it
should have produced a multitude of good and great men, both [pg 271]
pagan and Christian, and that these should have exercised so wide an
influence as they unquestionably did. Almost every institution or pursuit by
which virtuous habits would naturally have been formed had been tainted or
destroyed, while agencies of terrific power were impelling the people to
vice. The rich, excluded from most honourable paths of ambition, and
surrounded by countless parasites who inflamed their every passion, found
themselves absolute masters of innumerable slaves who were their willing
ministers, and often their teachers, in vice. The poor, hating industry and
destitute of all intellectual resources, lived in habitual idleness, and looked
upon abject servility as the normal road to fortune. But the picture becomes
truly appalling when we remember that the main amusement of both classes
was the spectacle of bloodshed, of the death, and sometimes of the torture,
of men.

The gladiatorial games form, indeed, the one feature of Roman society
which to a modern mind is almost inconceivable in its atrocity. That not
only men, but women, in an advanced period of civilisation—men and
women who not only professed but very frequently acted upon a high code

of morals—should have made the carnage of men their habitual amusement,
that all this should have continued for centuries, with scarcely a protest, is
one of the most startling facts in moral history. It is, however, perfectly
normal, and in no degree inconsistent with the doctrine of natural moral
perceptions, while it opens out fields of ethical enquiry of a very deep
though painful interest.

These games, which long eclipsed, both in interest and in influence, every
other form of public amusement at Rome,459 [pg 272] were originally
religious ceremonies celebrated at the tombs of the great, and intended as
human sacrifices to appease the Manes of the dead.460 They were afterwards
defended as a means of sustaining the military spirit by the constant
spectacle of courageous death,461 and with this object it was customary to
give a gladiatorial show to soldiers before their departure to a war.462 In
addition to these functions they had a considerable political importance, for
at a time when all the regular organs of liberty were paralysed or abolished,
the ruler was accustomed in the arena to meet tens of thousands of his
subjects, who availed themselves of the opportunity to present their
petitions, to declare their grievances, and to censure freely the sovereign or
his ministers.463 The games [pg 273] are said to have been of Etruscan
origin; they were first introduced into Rome, b.c. 264, when the two sons of
a man named Brutus compelled three pair of gladiators to fight at the
funeral of their father,464 and before the close of the Republic they were
common on great public occasions, and, what appears even more horrible,
at the banquets of the nobles.465 The rivalry of Cæsar and Pompey greatly
multiplied them, for each sought by this means to ingratiate himself with
the people. Pompey introduced a new form of combat between men and
animals.466 Cæsar abolished the old custom of restricting the mortuary
games to the funerals of men, and his daughter was the first Roman lady
whose tomb was desecrated by human blood.467 Besides this innovation,
Cæsar replaced the temporary edifices in which the games had hitherto been
held by a permanent wooden amphitheatre, shaded the spectators by an
awning of precious silk, compelled the condemned persons on one occasion
to fight with silver lances,468 and drew so many gladiators into the city that
the Senate was obliged to issue an enactment restricting their number.469 In
the earliest years of the Empire, Statilius Taurus erected the first
amphitheatre of stone.470 Augustus [pg 274] ordered that not more than 120

men should fight on a single occasion, and that no prætor should give more
than two spectacles in a single year,471 and Tiberius again fixed the
maximum of combatants,472 but notwithstanding these attempts to limit
them the games soon acquired the most gigantic proportions. They were
celebrated habitually by great men in honour of their dead relatives, by
officials on coming into office, by conquerors to secure popularity, and on
every occasion of public rejoicing, and by rich tradesmen who were
desirous of acquiring a social position.473 They were also among the
attractions of the public baths. Schools of gladiators—often the private
property of rich citizens—existed in every leading city of Italy, and, besides
slaves and criminals, they were thronged with freemen, who voluntarily
hired themselves for a term of years. In the eyes of multitudes, the large
sums that were paid to the victor, the patronage of nobles and often of
emperors, and still more the delirium of popular enthusiasm that centred
upon the successful gladiator, outweighed all the dangers of the profession.
A complete recklessness of life was soon engendered both in the spectators
and the combatants. The “lanistæ,” or purveyors of gladiators, became an
important profession. Wandering bands of gladiators traversed Italy, hiring
themselves for the provincial amphitheatres. The influence of the games
gradually pervaded the whole texture of Roman life. They became the
common-place of conversation.474 The children imitated them in their
play.475 The philosophers drew from [pg 275] them their metaphors and
illustrations. The artists pourtrayed them in every variety of ornament.476
The vestal virgins had a seat of honour in the arena.477 The Colosseum,
which is said to have been capable of containing more than 80,000
spectators, eclipsed every other monument of Imperial splendour, and is
even now at once the most imposing and the most characteristic relic of
pagan Rome.

In the provinces the same passion was displayed. From Gaul to Syria,
wherever the Roman influence extended, the spectacles of blood were
introduced, and the gigantic remains of amphitheatres in many lands still
attest by their ruined grandeur the scale on which they were pursued. In the
reign of Tiberius, more than 20,000 persons are said to have perished by the
fall of the amphitheatre at the suburban town of Fidenæ.478 Under Nero, the
Syracusans obtained, as a special favour, an exemption from the law which
limited the number of gladiators.479 Of the vast train of prisoners brought by

Titus from Judea, a large proportion were destined by the conqueror for the
provincial games.480 In Syria, where they were introduced by Antiochus
Epiphanes, they at first produced rather terror than pleasure; but the
effeminate Syrians soon learned to contemplate them with a passionate
enjoyment,481 and on a single occasion Agrippa caused 1,400 men to fight in
the amphitheatre at Berytus.482 Greece alone was in [pg 276] some degree
an exception. When an attempt was made to introduce the spectacle into
Athens, the cynic philosopher Demonax appealed successfully to the better
feelings of the people by exclaiming, “You must first overthrow the altar of
Pity.”483 The games are said to have afterwards penetrated to Athens, and to
have been suppressed by Apollonius of Tyana;484 but with the exception of
Corinth, where a very large foreign population existed, Greece never
appears to have shared the general enthusiasm.485

One of the first consequences of this taste was to render the people
absolutely unfit for those tranquil and refined amusements which usually
accompany civilisation. To men who were accustomed to witness the fierce
vicissitudes of deadly combat, any spectacle that did not elicit the strongest
excitement was insipid. The only amusements that at all rivalled the
spectacles of the amphitheatre and the circus were those which appealed
strongly to the sensual passions, such as the games of Flora, the postures of
the pantomimes, and the ballet.486 Roman comedy, indeed, flourished for a
short period, but only by throwing itself into the same career. The pander
and the courtesan are the leading characters of Plautus, and the more
modest Terence never attained an equal popularity. The different forms of
vice have a continual tendency to act and react upon one another, and the
intense craving after excitement which the amphitheatre must necessarily
have produced, had probably no [pg 277] small influence in stimulating the
orgies of sensuality which Tacitus and Suetonius describe.

But if comedy could to a certain extent flourish with the gladiatorial games,
it was not so with tragedy. It is, indeed, true that the tragic actor can exhibit
displays of more intense agony and of a grander heroism than were ever
witnessed in the arena. His mission is not to paint nature as it exists in the
light of day, but nature as it exists in the heart of man. His gestures, his
tones, his looks, are such as would never have been exhibited by the person
he represents, but they display to the audience the full intensity of the

emotions which that person would have felt, but which he would have been
unable adequately to reveal. But to those who were habituated to the intense
realism of the amphitheatre, the idealised suffering of the stage was
unimpressive. All the genius of a Siddons or a Ristori would fail to move an
audience who had continually seen living men fall bleeding and mangled at
their feet. One of the first functions of the stage is to raise to the highest
point the susceptibility to disgust. When Horace said that Medea should not
kill her children upon the stage, he enunciated not a mere arbitrary rule, but
one which grows necessarily out of the development of the drama. It is an
essential characteristic of a refined and cultivated taste to be shocked and
offended at the spectacle of bloodshed; and the theatre, which somewhat
dangerously dissociates sentiment from action, and causes men to waste
their compassion on ideal sufferings, is at least a barrier against the extreme
forms of cruelty by developing this susceptibility to the highest degree. The
gladiatorial games, on the other hand, destroyed all sense of disgust, and
therefore all refinement of taste, and they rendered the permanent triumph
of the drama impossible.487

[pg 278]
It is abundantly evident, both from history and from present experience, that
the instinctive shock, or natural feeling of disgust, caused by the sight of the
sufferings of men is not generically different from that which is caused by
the sight of the sufferings of animals. The latter, to those who are not
accustomed to it, is intensely painful. The former continually becomes by
use a matter of absolute indifference. If the repugnance which is felt in the
one case appears greater than in the other, it is not on account of any innate
sentiment which commands us to reverence our species, but simply because
our imagination finds less difficulty in realising human than animal
suffering, and also because education has strengthened our feelings in the
one case much more than in the other. There is, however, no fact more
clearly established than that when men have regarded it as not a crime to
kill some class of their fellow-men, they have soon learnt to do so with no
more natural compunction or hesitation than they would exhibit in killing a
wild animal. This is the normal condition of savage men. Colonists and Red
Indians even now often shoot each other with precisely the same
indifference as they shoot beasts of prey, and the whole history of warfare
—especially when warfare was conducted on more savage principles than

at present—is an illustration of the fact. Startling, therefore, as it may now
appear, it is in no degree unnatural that Roman spectators should have
contemplated with perfect equanimity the slaughter of men. The Spaniard,
who is brought in infancy to the bull-ring, soon learns to gaze with
indifference or with pleasure upon sights before which the unpractised eye
of the stranger quails with horror, and the same process would be equally
efficacious had the spectacle been the sufferings of men.

We now look back with indignation upon this indifference; [pg 279] but yet,
although it may be hard to realise, it is probably true that there is scarcely a
human being who might not by custom be so indurated as to share it. Had
the most benevolent person lived in a country in which the innocence of
these games was deemed axiomatic, had he been taken to them in his very
childhood, and accustomed to associate them with his earliest dreams of
romance, and had he then been left simply to the play of the emotions, the
first paroxysm of horror would have soon subsided, the shrinking
repugnance that followed would have grown weaker and weaker, the feeling
of interest would have been aroused, and the time would probably come in
which it would reign alone. But even this absolute indifference to the sight
of human suffering does not represent the full evil resulting from the
gladiatorial games. That some men are so constituted as to be capable of
taking a real and lively pleasure in the simple contemplation of suffering as
suffering, and without any reference to their own interests, is a proposition
which has been strenuously denied by those in whose eyes vice is nothing
more than a displacement, or exaggeration, of lawful self-regarding
feelings, and others, who have admitted the reality of the phenomenon,
have treated it as a very rare and exceptional disease.488 That it is so—at
least in its extreme forms—in the present condition of society, may
reasonably be hoped, though I imagine that few persons who have watched
the habits of boys would question that to take pleasure in giving at least
some degree of pain is sufficiently common, and though it is not quite
certain that all the sports of adult men would be entered into with exactly
the same zest if their victims were not sentient beings. But in every society
in which atrocious punishments have been common, this side of human
nature [pg 280] has acquired an undoubted prominence. It is related of
Claudius that his special delight at the gladiatorial shows was in watching
the countenances of the dying, for he had learnt to take an artistic pleasure

in observing the variations of their agony.489 When the gladiator lay
prostrate it was customary for the spectators to give the sign with their
thumbs, indicating whether they desired him to be spared or slain, and the
giver of the show reaped most popularity when, in the latter case, he
permitted no consideration of economy to make him hesitate to sanction the
popular award.490

Besides this, the mere desire for novelty impelled the people to every
excess or refinement of barbarity.491 The simple combat became at last
insipid, and every variety of atrocity was devised to stimulate the flagging
interest. At one time a bear and a bull, chained together, rolled in fierce
contest along the sand; at another, criminals dressed in the skins of wild
beasts were thrown to bulls, which were maddened by red-hot irons, or by
darts tipped with burning pitch. Four hundred bears were killed on a single
day under Caligula; three hundred on another day under Claudius. Under
Nero, four hundred tigers fought with bulls and elephants; four hundred
bears and three hundred lions were slaughtered by his soldiers. In a single
day, at the dedication of the Colosseum by Titus, five thousand animals
perished. Under Trajan, the games continued for one hundred and twenty-
three successive days.492 Lions, tigers, elephants, rhinoceroses, [pg 281]
hippopotami, giraffes, bulls, stags, even crocodiles and serpents, were
employed to give novelty to the spectacle. Nor was any form of human
suffering wanting. The first Gordian, when edile, gave twelve spectacles, in
each of which from one hundred and fifty to five hundred pair of gladiators
appeared.493 Eight hundred pair fought at the triumph of Aurelian.494 Ten
thousand men fought during the games of Trajan.495 Nero illumined his
gardens during the night by Christians burning in their pitchy shirts.496
Under Domitian, an army of feeble dwarfs was compelled to fight,497 and,
more than once, female gladiators descended to perish in the arena.498 A
criminal personating a fictitious character was nailed to a cross, and there
torn by a bear.499 Another, representing Scævola, was compelled to hold his
hand in a real flame.500 A third, as Hercules, was burnt alive upon the pile.501
So intense [pg 282] was the craving for blood, that a prince was less
unpopular if he neglected the distribution of corn than if he neglected the
games; and Nero himself, on account of his munificence in this respect, was
probably the sovereign who was most beloved by the Roman multitude.
Heliogabalus and Galerius are reported, when dining, to have regaled

themselves with the sight of criminals torn by wild beasts. It was said of the
latter that “he never supped without human blood.”502

It is well for us to look steadily on such facts as these. They display more
vividly than any mere philosophical disquisition the abyss of depravity into
which it is possible for human nature to sink. They furnish us with striking
proofs of the reality of the moral progress we have attained, and they enable
us in some degree to estimate the regenerating influence that Christianity
has exercised in the world. For the destruction of the gladiatorial games is
all its work. Philosophers, indeed, might deplore them, gentle natures might
shrink from their contagion, but to the multitude they possessed a
fascination which nothing but the new religion could overcome.

Nor was this fascination surprising, for no pageant has ever combined more
powerful elements of attraction. The magnificent circus, the gorgeous
dresses of the assembled Court, the contagion of a passionate enthusiasm
thrilling almost visibly through the mighty throng, the breathless silence of
expectation, the wild cheers bursting simultaneously from eighty thousand
tongues, and echoing to the farthest outskirts of the city, the rapid
alternations of the fray, the [pg 283] deeds of splendid courage that were
manifested, were all well fitted to entrance the imagination. The crimes and
servitude of the gladiator were for a time forgotten in the blaze of glory that
surrounded him. Representing to the highest degree that courage which the
Romans deemed the first of virtues, the cynosure of countless eyes, the
chief object of conversation in the metropolis of the universe, destined, if
victorious, to be immortalised in the mosaic and the sculpture,503 he not
unfrequently rose to heroic grandeur. The gladiator Spartacus for three
years defied the bravest armies of Rome. The greatest of Roman generals
had chosen gladiators for his body-guard.504 A band of gladiators, faithful
even to death, followed the fortunes of the fallen Antony, when all besides
had deserted him.505 Beautiful eyes, trembling with passion, looked down
upon the fight, and the noblest ladies in Rome, even the empress herself,
had been known to crave the victor's love.506 We read of gladiators
lamenting that the games occurred so seldom,507 complaining bitterly if they
were not permitted to descend into the arena,508 scorning to fight except
with the most powerful antagonists,509 laughing aloud as their wounds were
dressed,510 and at last, when prostrate in the dust, calmly turning their

throats to the sword of the conqueror.511 The enthusiasm that gathered round
them was so intense that special laws were found necessary, and were
sometimes insufficient to prevent patricians from enlisting in their ranks,512
while the tranquil [pg 284] courage with which they never failed to die
supplied the philosopher with his most striking examples.513 The severe
continence that was required before the combat, contrasting vividly with the
licentiousness of Roman life, had even invested them with something of a
moral dignity; and it is a singularly suggestive fact that of all pagan
characters the gladiator was selected by the Fathers as the closest
approximation to a Christian model.514 St. Augustine tells us how one of his
friends, being drawn to the spectacle, endeavoured by closing his eyes to
guard against a fascination he knew to be sinful. A sudden cry caused him
to break his resolution, and he never could withdraw his gaze again.515

And while the influences of the amphitheatre gained a complete ascendancy
over the populace, the Roman was not without excuses that could lull his
moral feelings to repose. The games, as I have said, were originally human
sacrifices—religious rites sacred to the dead—and it was argued that the
death of the gladiator was both more honourable and more [pg 285]
merciful than that of the passive victim, who, in the Homeric age, was
sacrificed at the tomb. The combatants were either professional gladiators,
slaves, criminals, or military captives. The lot of the first was voluntary.
The second had for a long time been regarded as almost beneath or beyond
a freeman's care; but when the enlarging circle of sympathy had made the
Romans regard their slaves as “a kind of second human nature,”516 they
perceived the atrocity of exposing them in the games, and an edict of the
emperor forbade it.517 The third had been condemned to death, and as the
victorious gladiator was at least sometimes pardoned,518 a permission to
fight was regarded as an act of mercy. The fate of the fourth could not strike
the early Roman with the horror it would now inspire, for the right of the
conquerors to massacre their prisoners was almost universally admitted.519
But, beyond the point of desiring the games to be in some degree restricted,
extremely few of the moralists of the Roman Empire ever advanced. That it
was a horrible and demoralising thing to make the spectacle of the deaths,
even of guilty men, a form of popular amusement, was a position which no
Roman school had attained, and which was only reached by a very few
individuals. Cicero observes, “that the gladiatorial spectacles appear to

some cruel and inhuman,” and, he adds, “I know not whether as they are
now conducted it is not so, but when guilty men are compelled to fight, no
better discipline against suffering and death can be [pg 286] presented to the
eye.”520 Seneca, it is true, adopts a far nobler language. He denounced the
games with a passionate eloquence. He refuted indignantly the argument
derived from the guilt of the combatants, and declared that under every
form and modification these amusements were brutalising, savage, and
detestable.521 Plutarch went even farther, and condemned the combats of
wild beasts on the ground that we should have a bond of sympathy with all
sentient beings, and that the sight of blood and of suffering is necessarily
and essentially depraving.522 To these instances we may add Petronius, who
condemned the shows in his poem on the civil war; Junius Mauricus, who
refused to permit the inhabitants of Vienne to celebrate them, and replied to
the remonstrances of the emperor, “Would to Heaven it were possible to
abolish such spectacles, even at Rome!”523 and, above all, Marcus Aurelius,
who, by compelling the gladiators to fight with blunted swords, rendered
them for a time comparatively harmless.524 But these, with the Athenian
remonstrances I have already noticed, are almost the only instances now
remaining of pagan protests against the most conspicuous as well as the
most atrocious feature of the age. Juvenal, whose unsparing satire has
traversed the whole field of Roman manners, and who denounces fiercely
all cruelty to slaves, has repeatedly noticed the gladiatorial shows, but on no
single occasion does he intimate that they were inconsistent with humanity.
Of all the great historians who recorded them, not one seems to have been
conscious that he was recording a barbarity, not one appears to have seen in
them [pg 287] any greater evils than an increasing tendency to pleasure and
the excessive multiplication of a dangerous class. The Roman sought to
make men brave and fearless, rather than gentle and humane, and in his
eyes that spectacle was to be applauded which steeled the heart against the
fear of death, even at the sacrifice of the affections. Titus and Trajan, in
whose reigns, probably, the greatest number of shows were compressed into
a short time, were both men of conspicuous clemency, and no Roman seems
to have imagined that the fact of 3,000 men having been compelled to fight
under the one, and 10,000 under the other, cast the faintest shadow upon
their characters. Suetonius mentions, as an instance of the amiability of
Titus, that he was accustomed to jest with the people during the combats of
the gladiators,525 and Pliny especially eulogised Trajan because he did not

patronise spectacles that enervate the character, but rather those which
impel men “to noble wounds and to the contempt of death.”526 The same
writer, who was himself in many ways conspicuous for his gentleness and
charity, having warmly commended a friend for acceding to a petition of the
people of Verona, who desired a spectacle, adds this startling sentence:
“After so general a request, to have refused would not have been firmness
—it would have been cruelty.”527 Even in the closing years of the fourth
century, the præfect Symmachus, who was regarded as one of the most
estimable pagans of his age, collected some Saxon prisoners to fight in
honour of his son. They strangled themselves in prison, and Symmachus
lamented the misfortune that had befallen him from their “impious hands,”
but endeavoured to calm his feelings by recalling the patience of Socrates
and the precepts of philosophy.528

[pg 288]
While, however, I have no desire to disguise or palliate the extreme atrocity
of this aspect of Roman life, there are certain very natural exaggerations,
against which it is necessary for us to guard. There are in human nature, and
more especially in the exercise of the benevolent affections, inequalities,
inconsistencies, and anomalies, of which theorists do not always take
account. We should be altogether in error if we supposed that a man who
took pleasure in a gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome was necessarily as
inhuman as a modern would be who took pleasure in a similar spectacle. A
man who falls but a little below the standard of his own merciful age is
often in reality far worse than a man who had conformed to the standard of
a much more barbarous age, even though the latter will do some things with
perfect equanimity from which the other would recoil with horror. We have
a much greater power than is sometimes supposed of localising both our
benevolent and malevolent feelings. If a man is very kind, or very harsh to
some particular class, this is usually, and on the whole justly, regarded as an
index of his general disposition, but the inference is not infallible, and it
may easily be pushed too far. There are some who appear to expend all their
kindly feelings on a single class, and to treat with perfect indifference all
outside it. There are others who regard a certain class as quite outside the
pale of their sympathies, while in other spheres their affections prove lively
and constant. There are many who would accede without the faintest
reluctance to a barbarous custom, but would be quite incapable of an

equally barbarous act which custom had not consecrated. Our affections are
so capricious in their nature that it is continually necessary to correct by
detailed experience the most plausible deductions. Thus, for example, it is a
very unquestionable and a very important truth that cruelty to animals
naturally indicates and promotes a habit of mind which leads to cruelty to
men; and that, on the other hand, [pg 289] an affectionate and merciful
disposition to animals commonly implies a gentle and amiable nature. But,
if we adopted this principle as an infallible criterion of humanity, we should
soon find ourselves at fault. To the somewhat too hackneyed anecdote of
Domitian gratifying his savage propensities by killing flies,529 we might
oppose Spinoza, one of the purest, most gentle, most benevolent of
mankind, of whom it is related that almost the only amusement of his life
was putting flies into spiders' webs, and watching their struggles and their
deaths.530 It has been observed that a very large proportion of the men who
during the French Revolution proved themselves most absolutely indifferent
to human suffering were deeply attached to animals. Fournier was devoted
to a squirrel, Couthon to a spaniel, Panis to two gold pheasants, Chaumette
to an aviary, Marat kept doves.531 Bacon has noticed that the Turks, who are
a cruel people, are nevertheless conspicuous for their kindness to animals,
and he mentions the instance of a Christian boy who was nearly stoned to
death for gagging a long-billed fowl.532 In Egypt there are hospitals for
superannuated cats, and the most loathsome insects are regarded with
tenderness; but human life is treated as if it were of no account, and human
suffering scarcely elicits a care.533 The same contrast appears more or [pg
290] less in all Eastern nations. On the other hand, travellers are unanimous
in declaring that in Spain an intense passion for the bull-fight is quite
compatible with the most active benevolence and the most amiable
disposition. Again, to pass to another sphere, it is not uncommon to find
conquerors, who will sacrifice with perfect callousness great masses of men
to their ambition, but who, in their dealings with isolated individuals, are
distinguished by an invariable clemency. Anomalies of this kind continually
appear in the Roman population. The very men who looked down with
delight when the sand of the arena was reddened with human blood, made
the theatre ring with applause when Terence, in his famous line, proclaimed
the universal brotherhood of man. When the senate, being unable to
discover the murderer of a patrician, resolved to put his four hundred slaves
to death, the people rose in open rebellion against the sentence.534 A knight

named Erixo, who in the days of Augustus had so scourged his son that he
died of the effects, was nearly torn to pieces by the indignant population.535
The elder Cato deprived a senator of his rank, because he had fixed an
execution at such an hour that his mistress could enjoy the spectacle.536
Even in the amphitheatre there were certain traces of a milder spirit.
Drusus, the people complained, took too visible a pleasure at the sight of
blood;537 Caligula was too curious in watching death;538 Caracalla, when a
boy, won enthusiastic plaudits by shedding tears at the execution of
criminals.539 Among the most popular spectacles at Rome was rope-dancing,
and then, as now, the cord being stretched at a great height above the
ground, the apparent, and indeed [pg 291] real, danger added an evil zest to
the performances. In the reign of Marcus Aurelius an accident had occurred,
and the emperor, with his usual sensitive humanity, ordered that no rope-
dancer should perform without a net or a mattress being spread out below. It
is a singularly curious fact that this precaution, which no Christian nation
has adopted, continued in force during more than a century of the worst
period of the Roman Empire, when the blood of captives was poured out
like water in the Colosseum.540 The standard of humanity was very low, but
the sentiment was still manifest, though its displays were capricious and
inconsistent.

The sketch I have now drawn will, I think, be sufficient to display the broad
chasm that existed between the Roman moralists and the Roman people. On
the one hand we find a system of ethics, of which when we consider the
range and beauty of its precepts, the sublimity of the motives to which it
appealed, and its perfect freedom from superstitious elements, it is not too
much to say that though it may have been equalled, it has never been
surpassed. On the other hand, we find a society almost absolutely destitute
of moralising institutions, occupations, or beliefs, existing under an
economical and political system which inevitably led to general depravity,
and passionately addicted to the most brutalising amusements. The moral
code, while it expanded in theoretical catholicity, had contracted in practical
application. The early Romans had a very narrow and imperfect standard of
duty, but their patriotism, their military system, and their enforced
simplicity of life had made that standard essentially popular. The later
Romans had attained a very high and spiritual conception of duty, but the
philosopher [pg 292] with his group of disciples, or the writer with his few

readers, had scarcely any point of contact with the people. The great
practical problem of the ancient philosophers was how they could act upon
the masses. Simply to tell men what is virtue, and to extol its beauty, is
insufficient. Something more must be done if the characters of nations are
to be moulded and inveterate vices eradicated.

This problem the Roman Stoics were incapable of meeting, but they did
what lay in their power, and their efforts, though altogether inadequate to
the disease, were by no means contemptible. In the first place they raised up
many great and good rulers who exerted all the influence of their position in
the cause of virtue. In most cases these reforms were abolished on the
accession of the first bad emperor, but there were at least some that
remained. It has been observed that the luxury of the table, which had
acquired the most extravagant proportions during the period that elapsed
between the battle of Actium and the reign of Galba, began from this period
to decline, and the change is chiefly attributed to Vespasian, who had in a
measure reformed the Roman aristocracy by the introduction of many
provincials, and who made his court an example of the strictest frugality.541
The period from the accession of Nerva to the death of Marcus Aurelius,
comprising no less than eighty-four years, exhibits a uniformity of good
government which no other despotic monarchy has equalled. Each of the
five emperors who then reigned deserves to be placed among the best rulers
who have ever lived. Trajan and Hadrian, whose personal characters were
most defective, were men of great and conspicuous genius. Antoninus and
Marcus Aurelius, though less distinguished as politicians, were among the
most perfectly virtuous men who have ever sat on a throne. During forty
years of this period, perfect, unbroken peace reigned [pg 293] over the
entire civilised globe. The barbarian encroachments had not yet begun. The
distinct nationalities that composed the Empire, gratified by perfect
municipal and by perfect intellectual freedom, had lost all care for political
liberty, and little more than three hundred thousand soldiers guarded a
territory which is now protected by much more than three millions.542

In creating this condition of affairs, Stoicism, as the chief moral agent of the
Empire, had a considerable though not a preponderating influence. In other
ways its influence was more evident and exclusive. It was a fundamental
maxim of the sect, “that the sage should take part in public life,”543 and it

was therefore impossible that Stoicism should flourish without producing a
resuscitation of patriotism. The same moral impulse which transformed the
Neoplatonist into a dreaming mystic and the Catholic into a useless hermit,
impelled the Stoic to the foremost post of danger in the service of his
country. While landmark after landmark of Roman virtue was submerged,
while luxury and scepticism and foreign habits and foreign creeds were
corroding the whole framework of the national life, amid the last paroxysms
of expiring liberty, amid the hideous carnival of vice that soon followed
upon its fall, the Stoic remained unchanged, the representative and the
sustainer of the past. A party which had acquired the noble title of the Party
of Virtue, guided by such men as Cato or Thrasea or Helvidius or Burrhus,
upheld the banner of Roman virtue and Roman liberty in the darkest hours
of despotism and of apostasy. Like all men who carry an intense religious
fervour into politics, they were often narrow-minded and intolerant, blind to
the inevitable changes of society, incapable of compromise, turbulent and
inopportune in their demands,544 but they more [pg 294] than redeemed their
errors by their noble constancy and courage. The austere purity of their
lives, and the heroic grandeur of their deaths, kept alive the tradition of
Roman liberty even under a Nero or a Domitian. While such men existed it
was felt that all was not lost. There was still a rallying point of freedom, a
seed of virtue that might germinate anew, a living protest against the
despotism and the corruption of the Empire.

A third and still more important service which Stoicism rendered to popular
morals was in the formation of Roman jurisprudence.545 Of all the many
forms of intellectual exertion in which Greece and Rome struggled for the
mastery this is perhaps the only one in which the superiority of the latter is
indisputable. “To rule the nations” was justly pronounced by the Roman
poet the supreme glory of his countrymen, and their administrative genius is
even now unrivalled in history. A deep reverence for law was long one of
their chief moral characteristics, and in order that it might be inculcated
from the earliest years it was a part of the Roman system of education to
oblige the children to [pg 295] repeat by rote the code of the decemvirs.546
The laws of the Republic, however, being an expression of the contracted,
local, military, and sacerdotal spirit that dominated among the people, were
necessarily unfit for the political and intellectual expansion of the Empire,
and the process of renovation which was begun under Augustus by the Stoic

Labeo,547 was continued with great zeal under Hadrian and Alexander
Severus, and issued in the famous compilations of Theodosius and
Justinian. In this movement we have to observe two parts. There were
certain general rules of guidance laid down by the great Roman lawyers
which constituted what may be called the ideal of the jurisconsults—the
ends to which their special enactments tended—the principles of equity to
guide the judge when the law was silent or ambiguous. There were also
definite enactments to meet specific cases. The first part was simply
borrowed from the Stoics, whose doctrines and method thus passed from
the narrow circle of a philosophical academy and became the avowed moral
beacons of the civilised globe. The fundamental difference between
Stoicism and early Roman thought was that the former maintained the
existence of a bond of unity among mankind which transcended or
annihilated all class or national limitations. The essential characteristic of
the Stoical method was the assertion of the existence of a certain law of
nature to which it was the end of philosophy to conform. These tenets were
laid down in the most unqualified language by the Roman lawyers. “As far
as natural law is concerned,” said Ulpian, “all men are equal.”548 “Nature,”
said Paul, “has established among us a certain relationship.”549 “By natural
law,” Ulpian declared, “all men are born free.”550 [pg 296] “Slavery” was
defined by Florentinus as “a custom of the law of nations, by which one
man, contrary to the law of nature, is subjected to the dominion of
another.”551 In accordance with these principles it became a maxim among
the Roman lawyers that in every doubtful case where the alternative of
slavery or freedom was at issue, the decision of the judge should be towards
the latter.552

The Roman legislation was in a twofold manner the child of philosophy. It
was in the first place itself formed upon the philosophical model, for,
instead of being a mere empirical system adjusted to the existing
requirements of society, it laid down abstract principles of right to which it
endeavoured to conform;553 and, in the next place, these principles were
borrowed directly from Stoicism. The prominence the sect had acquired
among Roman moralists, its active intervention in public affairs, and also
the precision and brevity of its phraseology, had recommended it to the
lawyers,554 and the [pg 297] union then effected between the legal and
philosophical spirit is felt to the present day. To the Stoics and the Roman

lawyers is mainly due the clear recognition of the existence of a law of
nature above and beyond all human enactments which has been the basis of
the best moral and of the most influential though most chimerical political
speculation of later ages, and the renewed study of Roman law was an
important element in the revival that preceded the Reformation.

It is not necessary for my present purpose to follow into very minute detail
the application of these principles to practical legislation. It is sufficient to
say, that there were few departments into which the catholic and humane
principles of Stoicism were not in some degree carried. In the political
world, as we have already seen, the right of Roman citizenship, with the
protection and the legal privileges attached to it, from being the monopoly
of a small class, was gradually but very widely diffused. In the domestic
sphere, the power which the old laws had given to the father of the family,
though not destroyed, was greatly abridged, and an important innovation,
which is well worthy of a brief notice, was thus introduced into the social
system of the Empire.

It is probable that in the chronology of morals, domestic virtue takes the
precedence of all others; but in its earliest phase it consists of a single
article—the duty of absolute submission to the head of the household. It is
only at a later period, and when the affections have been in some degree
evoked, that the reciprocity of duty is felt, and the whole tendency of
civilisation is to diminish the disparity between the different members of
the family. The process by which the wife from a simple slave becomes the
companion and [pg 298] equal of her husband, I shall endeavour to trace in
a future chapter. The relations of the father to his children are profoundly
modified by the new position the affections assume in education, which in a
rude nation rests chiefly upon authority, but in a civilised community upon
sympathy. In Rome the absolute authority of the head of the family was the
centre and archetype of that whole system of discipline and subordination
which it was the object of the legislator to sustain. Filial reverence was
enforced as the first of duties. It is the one virtue which Virgil attributed in
any remarkable degree to the founder of the race. The marks of external
respect paid to old men were scarcely less than in Sparta.555 It was the boast
of the lawyers that in no other nation had the parent so great an authority
over his children.556 The child was indeed the absolute slave of his father,

who had a right at any time to take away his life and dispose of his entire
property. He could look to no time during the life of his father in which he
would be freed from the thraldom. The man of fifty, the consul, the general,
or the tribune, was in this respect in the same position as the infant, and
might at any moment be deprived of all the earnings of his labour, driven to
the most menial employments, or even put to death, by the paternal
command.557

There can, I think, be little question that this law, at least in the latter period
of its existence, defeated its own [pg 299] object. There are few errors of
education to which more unhappy homes may be traced than this—that
parents have sought to command the obedience, before they have sought to
win the confidence, of their children. This was the path which the Roman
legislator indicated to the parent, and its natural consequence was to chill
the sympathies and arouse the resentment of the young. Of all the forms of
virtue filial affection is perhaps that which appears most rarely in Roman
history. In the plays of Plautus it is treated much as conjugal fidelity was
treated in England by the playwriters of the Restoration. An historian of the
reign of Tiberius has remarked that the civil wars were equally remarkable
for the many examples they supplied of the devotion of wives to their
husbands, of the devotion of slaves to their masters, and of the treachery or
indifference of sons to their fathers.558

The reforms that were effected during the pagan empire did not reconstruct
the family, but they at least greatly mitigated its despotism. The profound
change of feeling that had taken place on the subject is shown by the
contrast between the respectful, though somewhat shrinking, acquiescence,
with which the ancient Romans regarded parents who had put their children
to death,559 and the indignation excited under Augustus by the act of Erixo.
Hadrian, apparently by a stretch of despotic power, banished a man who
had assassinated his son.560 Infanticide was forbidden, though [pg 300] not
seriously repressed, but the right of putting to death an adult child had long
been obsolete, when Alexander Severus formally withdrew it from the
father. The property of children was also in some slight degree protected. A
few instances are recorded of wills that were annulled because they had
disinherited legitimate sons,561 and Hadrian, following a policy that had
been feebly initiated by his two predecessors, gave the son an absolute

possession of whatever he might gain in the military service. Diocletian
rendered the sale of children by the fathers, in all cases, illegal.562

In the field of slavery the legislative reforms were more important. This
institution, indeed, is one that meets us at every turn of the moral history of
Rome, and on two separate occasions in the present chapter I have already
had occasion to notice it. I have shown that the great prominence of the
slave element in Roman life was one of the causes of the enlargement of
sympathies that characterises the philosophy of the Empire, and also that
slavery was in a very high degree, and in several distinct ways, a cause of
the corruption of the free classes. In considering the condition of the slaves
themselves, we may distinguish, I think, three periods. In the earlier and
simpler days of the Republic, the head of the family was absolute master of
his slaves, but circumstances in a great measure mitigated the evil of the
despotism. The slaves were very few in number. Each Roman proprietor
had commonly one or two who assisted him in cultivating the soil, and
superintended his property when he was absent in the army. In the frugal
habits of the time, the master was brought into the most intimate connection
with his [pg 301] slaves. He shared their labours and their food, and the
control he exercised over them, in most cases probably differed little from
that which he exercised over his sons. Under such circumstances, great
barbarity to slaves, though always possible, was not likely to be common,
and the protection of religion was added to the force of habit. Hercules, the
god of labour, was the special patron of slaves. There was a legend that
Sparta had once been nearly destroyed by an earthquake sent by Neptune to
avenge the treacherous murder of some Helots.563 In Rome, it was said,
Jupiter had once in a dream commissioned a man to express to the senate
the divine anger at the cruel treatment of a slave during the public games.564
By the pontifical law, slaves were exempted from field labours on the
religious festivals.565 The Saturnalia and Matronalia, which were especially
intended for their benefit, were the most popular holidays in Rome, and on
these occasions the slaves were accustomed to sit at the same table with
their masters.566

Even at this time, however, it is probable that great atrocities were
occasionally committed. Everything was permitted by law, although it is
probable that the censor in cases of extreme abuse might interfere, and the

aristocratic feelings of the early Roman, though corrected in a measure by
the associations of daily labour, sometimes broke out in a fierce scorn for
all classes but his own. The elder Cato, who may be regarded as a type of
the Romans of the earlier period, speaks of slaves simply as instruments for
obtaining wealth, and he encouraged masters, both by his precept and his
example, to sell them as useless when aged and infirm.567

[pg 302]
In the second period, the condition of slaves had greatly deteriorated. The
victories of Rome, especially in the East, had introduced into the city
innumerable slaves568 and the wildest luxury, and the despotism of the
master remained unqualified by law, while the habits of life that had
originally mitigated it had disappeared. The religious sentiments of the
people were at the same time fatally impaired, and many new causes
conspired to aggravate the evil. The passion for gladiatorial shows had
begun, and it continually produced a savage indifference to the infliction of
pain. The servile wars of Sicily, and the still more formidable revolt of
Spartacus, had shaken Italy to the centre, and the shock was felt in every
household. “As many enemies as slaves,” had become a Roman proverb.
The fierce struggles of barbarian captives were repaid by fearful
punishments, and many thousands of revolted slaves perished on the cross.
An atrocious law, intended to secure the safety of the citizens, provided that
if a master were murdered, all the slaves in his house, who were not in
chains or absolutely helpless through illness, should be put to death.569

Numerous acts of the most odious barbarity were committed. The well-
known anecdotes of Flaminius ordering a slave to be killed to gratify, by the
spectacle, the curiosity of [pg 303] a guest; of Vedius Pollio feeding his fish
on the flesh of slaves; and of Augustus sentencing a slave, who had killed
and eaten a favourite quail, to crucifixion, are the extreme examples that are
recorded; for we need not regard as an historical fact the famous picture in
Juvenal of a Roman lady, in a moment of caprice, ordering her unoffending
servant to be crucified. We have, however, many other very horrible
glimpses of slave life at the close of the Republic and in the early days of
the Empire. The marriage of slaves was entirely unrecognised by law, and
in their case the words adultery, incest, or polygamy had no legal meaning.
Their testimony was in general only received in the law-courts when they

were under torture. When executed for a crime, their deaths were of a most
hideous kind. The ergastula, or private prisons, of the masters were
frequently their only sleeping-places. Old and infirm slaves were constantly
exposed to perish on an island of the Tiber. We read of slaves chained as
porters to the doors, and cultivating the fields in chains. Ovid and Juvenal
describe the fierce Roman ladies tearing their servants' faces, and thrusting
the long pins of their brooches into their flesh. The master, at the close of
the Republic, had full power to sell his slave as a gladiator, or as a
combatant with wild beasts.570

All this is very horrible, but it must not be forgotten that there was another
side to the picture. It is the custom of many ecclesiastical writers to paint
the pagan society of the Empire as a kind of pandemonium, and with this
object they collect the facts I have cited, which are for the most part
narrated by Roman satirists or historians, as examples of the most extreme
and revolting cruelty; they represent them as fair specimens of the ordinary
treatment of the servile class, and they simply exclude from their
consideration [pg 304] the many qualifying facts that might be alleged.
Although the marriage of a slave was not legally recognised, it was
sanctioned by custom, and it does not appear to have been common to
separate his family.571 Two customs to which I have already referred
distinguish ancient slavery broadly from that of modern times. The
peculium, or private property of slaves, was freely recognised by masters,
to whom, however, after the death of the slave, part or all of it usually
reverted,572 though some masters permitted their slaves to dispose of it by
will.573 The enfranchisement of slaves was also carried on to such an extent
as seriously to affect the population of the city. It appears from a passage in
Cicero that an industrious and well-conducted captive might commonly
look forward to his freedom in six years.574 Isolated acts of great cruelty
undoubtedly occurred; but public opinion strongly reprehended them, and
Seneca assures us that masters who ill-treated their slaves were pointed at
and insulted in the streets.575 The slave was not necessarily the degraded
being he has since appeared. The physician who tended the Roman in his
sickness, the tutor to whom he confided the education of his son, the artists
whose works commanded the admiration of the city, were usually slaves.
Slaves sometimes mixed with their masters in the family, ate habitually
with them at the same table,576 and were regarded by them with the warmest

affection. Tiro, the slave and afterwards the freedman of Cicero, compiled
his master's letters, and has preserved some in which Cicero addressed [pg
305] him in terms of the most sincere and delicate friendship. I have already
referred to the letter in which the younger Pliny poured out his deep sorrow
for the death of some of his slaves, and endeavoured to console himself
with the thought that as he had emancipated them before their death, at least
they had died free.577 Epictetus passed at once from slavery to the friendship
of an emperor.578 The great multiplication of slaves, though it removed them
from the sympathy of their masters, must at least have in most cases
alleviated their burdens. The application of torture to slave witnesses,
horrible as it was, was a matter of rare occurrence, and was carefully
restricted by law.579 Much vice was undoubtedly fostered, but yet the annals
of the civil wars and of the Empire are crowded with the most splendid
instances of the fidelity of slaves. In many cases they refused the boon of
liberty and defied the most horrible tortures rather than betray their masters,
accompanied them in their flight when all others had abandoned them,
displayed undaunted courage and untiring ingenuity in rescuing them from
danger, and in some cases saved the lives of their owners by the deliberate
sacrifice of their own.580 This was, indeed, for some time the pre-eminent
virtue of Rome, and it proves conclusively that the masters were not so
tyrannical, and that the slaves were not so degraded, as is sometimes
alleged.

The duty of humanity to slaves had been at all times one [pg 306] of those
which the philosophers had most ardently inculcated. Plato and Aristotle,
Zeno and Epicurus, were, on this point, substantially agreed.581 The Roman
Stoics gave the duty a similar prominence in their teaching, and Seneca
especially has filled pages with exhortations to masters to remember that
the accident of position in no degree affects the real dignity of men, that the
slave may be free by virtue while the master may be a slave by vice, and
that it is the duty of a good man to abstain not only from all cruelty, but
even from all feeling of contempt towards his slaves.582 But these
exhortations, in which some have imagined that they have discovered the
influence of Christianity, were, in fact, simply an echo of the teaching of
ancient Greece, and especially of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, who had
laid down, long before the dawn of Christianity, the broad principles that
'all men are by nature equal, and that virtue alone establishes a difference

between them.'583 The softening influence of the peace of the Antonines
assisted this movement of humanity, and the slaves derived a certain
incidental benefit from one of the worst features of the despotism of the
Cæsars. The emperors, who continually apprehended plots against their
lives or power, encouraged numerous spies around the more important of
their subjects, and the facility with which slaves could discover the
proceedings of their masters inclined the Government in their favour.

Under all these influences many laws were promulgated [pg 307] which
profoundly altered the legal position of the slaves, and opened what may be
termed the third period of Roman slavery. The Petronian law, which was
issued by Augustus, or, more probably, by Nero, forbade the master to
condemn his slave to combat with wild beasts without a sentence from a
judge.584 Under Claudius, some citizens exposed their sick slaves on the
island of Æsculapius in the Tiber, to avoid the trouble of tending them, and
the emperor decreed that if the slave so exposed recovered from his
sickness he should become free, and also, that masters who killed their
slaves instead of exposing them should be punished as murderers.585 It is
possible that succour was afforded to the abandoned slave in the temple of
Æsculapius,586 and it would appear from these laws that the wanton
slaughter of a slave was already illegal. About this time the statue of the
emperor had become an asylum for slaves.587 Under Nero, a judge was
appointed to hear their complaints, and was instructed to punish masters
who treated them with barbarity, made them the instruments of lust, or
withheld from them a sufficient quantity of the necessaries of life.588 A
considerable pause appears to have ensued; but Domitian made a law,
which was afterwards reiterated, forbidding the Oriental custom of
mutilating slaves for sensual purposes, and the reforms were renewed with
great energy in the period of the Antonines. Hadrian and his two successors
formally deprived masters of the right of killing their slaves; forbade them
to sell slaves to the lanistæ, or speculators in gladiators; destroyed the
ergastula, or private prisons; ordered that, when a master was murdered,
those slaves only should be [pg 308] tortured who were within hearing;589
appointed officers through all the provinces to hear the complaints of
slaves; enjoined that no master should treat his slaves with excessive
severity; and commanded that, when such severity was proved, the master
should be compelled to sell the slave he had ill-treated.590 When we add to

these laws the broad maxims of equity asserting the essential equality of the
human race, which the jurists had borrowed from the Stoics, and which
supplied the principles to guide the judges in their decisions, it must be
admitted that the slave code of Imperial Rome compares not unfavourably
with those of some Christian nations.

While a considerable portion of the principles, and even much of the
phraseology, of Stoicism passed into the system of public law, the Roman
philosophers had other more direct means of acting on the people. On
occasions of family bereavement, when the mind is most susceptible of
impressions, they were habitually called in to console the survivors. Dying
men asked their comfort and support in the last hours of their life. They
became the directors of conscience to numbers who resorted to them for a
solution of perplexing cases of practical morals, or under the influence of
despondency or remorse.591 They had their special exhortations [pg 309] for
every vice, and their remedies adapted to every variety of character. Many
cases were cited of the conversion of the vicious or the careless, who had
been sought out and fascinated by the philosopher,592 and who, under his
guidance, had passed through a long course of moral discipline, and had at
last attained a high degree of virtue. Education fell in a great degree into
their hands. Many great families kept a philosopher among them in what in
modern language might be termed the capacity of a domestic chaplain,593
while a system of popular preaching was created and widely diffused.

Of these preachers there were two classes who differed greatly in their
characters and their methods. The first, who have been very happily termed
the “monks of Stoicism,”594 were the Cynics, who appear to have assumed
among the later moralists of the Pagan empire a position somewhat
resembling that of the mendicant orders in Catholicism. In a singularly
curious dissertation of Epictetus,595 we have a picture of the ideal at which a
Cynic should aim, and it is impossible in reading it not to be struck by the
resemblance it bears to the missionary friar. The Cynic should be a man
devoting his entire life to the instruction of mankind. He must be
unmarried, for he must have no family affections to divert or to dilute his
energies. He must wear the meanest dress, sleep upon the bare ground, feed
upon the simplest food, abstain from all earthly pleasures, and yet exhibit to
the world the example of uniform cheerfulness and content. No one, under

pain of provoking the Divine anger, should embrace such a career, unless he
believes himself to be called [pg 310] and assisted by Jupiter. It is his
mission to go among men as the ambassador of God, rebuking, in season
and out of season, their frivolity, their cowardice, and their vice. He must
stop the rich man in the market-place. He must preach to the populace in the
highway. He must know no respect and no fear. He must look upon all men
as his sons, and upon all women as his daughters. In the midst of a jeering
crowd, he must exhibit such a placid calm that men may imagine him to be
of stone. Ill-treatment, and exile, and death must have no terror in his eyes,
for the discipline of his life should emancipate him from every earthly tie;
and, when he is beaten, “he should love those who beat him, for he is at
once the father and the brother of all men.”

A curious contrast to the Cynic was the philosophic rhetorician, who
gathered around his chair all that was most brilliant in Roman or Athenian
society. The passion for oratory which the free institutions of Greece had
formed, had survived the causes that produced it, and given rise to a very
singular but a very influential profession; which, though excluded from the
Roman Republic, acquired a great development after the destruction of
political liberty. The rhetoricians were a kind of itinerant lecturers, who
went about from city to city, delivering harangues that were often received
with the keenest interest. For the most part, neither their characters nor their
talents appear to have deserved much respect. Numerous anecdotes are
recorded of their vanity and rapacity, and their success was a striking proof
of the decadence of public taste.596 They had cultivated the histrionic [pg
311] part of oratory with the most minute attention. The arrangement of
their hair, the folds of their dresses, all their postures and gestures were
studied with artistic care. They had determined the different kinds of action
that are appropriate for each branch of a discourse and for each form of
eloquence. Sometimes they personated characters in Homer or in ancient
Greek history, and delivered speeches which those characters might have
delivered in certain conjunctures of their lives. Sometimes they awakened
the admiration of their audience by making a fly, a cockroach, dust, smoke,
a mouse, or a parrot the subject of their eloquent eulogy.597 Others, again,
exercised their ingenuity in defending some glaring paradox or sophism, or
in debating some intricate case of law or morals, or they delivered literary
lectures remarkable for a minute but captious and fastidious criticism. Some

of the rhetoricians recited only harangues prepared with the most elaborate
care, others were ready debaters, and they travelled from city to city,
challenging opponents to discuss some subtle and usually frivolous
question. The poet Juvenal and the satirist Lucian had both for a time
followed this profession. Many of the most eminent acquired immense
wealth, travelled with a splendid retinue, and excited transports of
enthusiasm in the cities they visited. They were often charged by cities to
appear before the emperor to plead for a remission of taxes, or of the
punishment due for some offence. They became in a great measure the
educators of the people, and contributed very largely to form and direct
their taste.

[pg 312]
It had been from the first the custom of some philosophers to adopt this
profession, and to expound in the form of rhetorical lectures the principles
of their school. In the Flavian period and in the age of the Antonines, this
alliance of philosophy, and especially of Stoical philosophy, with rhetoric
became more marked, and the foundation of liberally endowed chairs of
rhetoric and philosophy by Vespasian, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius
contributed to sustain it. Discourses of the Platonist Maximus of Tyre, and
of the Stoic Dion Chrysostom, have come down to us, and they are both of
a high order of intrinsic merit. The first turn chiefly on such subjects as the
comparative excellence of active and contemplative life, the pure and noble
conceptions of the Divine nature which underlie the fables or allegories of
Homer, the dæmon of Socrates, the Platonic notions of the Divinity, the
duty of prayer, the end of philosophy, and the ethics of love.598 Dion
Chrysostom, in his orations, expounded the noblest and purest theism,
examined the place which images should occupy in worship, advocated
humanity to slaves, and was, perhaps, the earliest writer in the Roman
Empire who denounced hereditary slavery as illegitimate.599 His life was
very eventful and very noble. He had become famous as a sophist and
rhetorician, skilled in the laborious frivolities of the profession. Calamity,
however, and the writings of Plato induced him to abandon them and devote
himself exclusively to the improvement of mankind. Having defended with
a generous rashness a man who had been proscribed by the tyranny of
Domitian, he was compelled to fly from Rome in the garb of a beggar; and,
carrying with him only a work of Plato and a speech of Demosthenes, he