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CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

A SHORT STUDY OF RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL

THOUGHT IN RELATION TO CHARITABLE

METHODS AND INSTITUTIONS

BY

C. S. LOCH

B.A., HON. LI-.D. ST. ANDREWS; HON. D.C.L. OXFORD

Lefl choses ae cbangent gu^re. Seules les id^es qu'on s'en fait peuvent changer beaucoup. C'est sur ces id^es-lk qu'il faut savoir agir.— Gustavk Le Bon.

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1 91 o

OLASeOW : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITr PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEUOSE AKD CO. LTD.

TO

MY FRIENDS IN CHARITY ORGANIZATION

LIVING OR PASSED FROM LIFE

853279

PREFACE

This book does not claim to be more than a study — or notes for a study — of charity in relation to the thoughts with which it is most closely associated, and some of the methods to which it has given force and vitality. As such it may perhaps be of service to fellow students.

To many authors I am indebted — to some a very great deal. The references show how great is my indebtedness.

The book is for the most part a reprint of an article on " Charity and Charities " which was first published in 1902 in the supple- mentary volumes of the Encyclopaedia Bri- tannica : and I have to thank the proprietors of the E7icyclopaedia for their kind permission to publish the article. 1 have added chapters on charity in relation to the growth of religious thought, and I have added a chapter on some of the questions raised by the recent Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress.

viii PREFACE

I have used the word " charity " in the title and frequently in the text. To many it may seem out-worn. It has suffered from constant circulation and hard usage. One would wish that it might be re-minted and re-issued, for there are many supremely noble associations imprinted on it, and it is the verbal abstract of a long history, in which religion, philosophy, social thought, administration, and personal endeavour have their place. It is expressive also of a conjunction of instincts, sentiments, and efforts which is well-nigh indispensable to social progress. For such a word there should still be room in the world of thought.

I have not tried to write a book on recent charitable schemes and proposals. I have desired rather to follow out the growth of the conception of charity, and its expression in social life, and the principles which these suggest with regard to social service and obligation.

CONTENTS

CHAPTKR PAOK

I. Some Definitions 1

II. The Outlines of Study - . - - - - 5

III. Primitive Charity 8

IV. Charity among the Greeks .... 20

V. City Life and its Problems in Greece - - 35

VI. Provision among the Greeks for the Stranger

AND THE Sick 49

VII. The Leaven of Religion 56

VIII. Charity and Slavery 77

IX. Charity in Roman Times 80

X. The Annona Civica 88

XI. The Sportula ; the Collegia and their En- slavement ; THE PUERI AlIMENTABII - - 104

XII. The Leaven of Philosophy - - - - 110

XIII. A Century Later 132

XIV. Prbchristian Religion 156

XV. Changes of Religious Thought and Organiza- tion 168

X CONTExNTS

CHAPTER PAOE

XVI. Jewish and Christian Charity and their

Fusion 183

XVII. Greek Thought on Charity compared

with Jewish and Christian - - 197

XVIII. The Organization of the Parish - - 210

XIX. The Endowed Charity - . . - 218

XX. Early Monasticism and Charity - - 230

XXI. Changes in the Structure of Society - 236

XXII. The Development of the Charitable

Responsibility of the Parish - - 244

XXIII. Mediaeval Revision of the Theory of

Charity 252

XXIV. Mediaeval Charity and Social Condi-

tions IN England 264

The Family— The Manor— The Parish and the Tithe— The Monasteries— The Hospitals— The Mendicant Orders.

XXV. Mediaeval Endowed Charities and Guild

Charities 280

The Church as Legatee — Freedom from Tax- ation and Service — Alienation and Mortmain — Irresponsible Administration — Control — Cy- prus— The Sources of Income — The Mode of Admission — The Decline of the Hospitals — The Guild Charities.

XXVI. The Rise of Statutory and Poor-Law

Serfdom - - 288

XXVII. Charity and the Reformation - - 299

XXVIII. The Organization of Municipal Relief- 304

CONTEiNTS

XI

CHAPTER PAOK

XXIX. The Organization of Statutory Poor

Relief 309

XXX. The Organization of Endowed Charities Definition— The Charity Commissioners — The Poor Law and Endowed Charities.

XXXI. Charity in the Parish after 1601 -

XXXII. Charitable Movements after 1601 -

XXXIII. Progress of Thought in the Eighteenth

AND .Nineteenth Centuries -

XXXIV. The Economics of Charity

XXXV. The Social Sciences and Sociology

Modem Economics and the General Will — Sociology and Social Facts — The Standard of the Good Social Life.

XXXVI. The Organization of Charity -

The Committee or Conference — Inquiry, Aid, and Registration — Training — Co-operation.

XXXVII. Particular Questions of Charitable

Administration

Charity and the Poor-Law — Medical Relief — Endowed Charities —The Relief of School Children — Exceptional Distress — Employ- ment Relief.

XXXVIII. The Report of the Royal Commission on

the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress The Experience of the Past— The Pauperism of London — Treatment and Maintenance — The Critical Periods of Life — The Organiza- tion of Medical Assistance — Unemployment — Prevention — Conditions of Friendly Visit- ing in a Large City — Insurance — The Main Issue.

318

332

335

341 352

370

396

406

430

xii CONTENTS

APPENDICES

PAOK

I. Charity and Voluntary Aid .... 479 The Recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress.

II. The Charitable Expenditure of the Metropolis 486 Index 489

CHAPTER I.

SOME DEFINITIONS.

The word ' charity,' or love, represents the principle of the good life. It stands for a mood or habit of mind and an endeavour. From it, as a habit of mind, springs the social and personal endeavour which in the widest sense we may call charity. The two correspond. Where the habit of mind has not been gained, the endeavour fluctuates and is relatively purposeless. In so far as it has been gained, the endeavour is founded on an intelligent scrutiny of social conditions and guided by a definite purpose. In the one case it is realized that some social theory must be found by us, if our action is to be right and consistent ; in the other case no need of such a theory is felt.

The following chapters are based on the assumption that there are principles in charity or charitable work, and that these can be

A

2 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

ascertained by a study of the development of social conditions and their relation to prevalent social aims and religious or philosophic concep- tions. It is assumed also that the charity of the religious life, if rightly understood, cannot be inconsistent with that of the social life.

Perhaps some closer definition of charity is necessary. The words that signify goodwill towards the community and its members are primarily words expressive of the affections of family life in the relations existing between parents, and between parent and child. As will be seen, the analogies underlying such phrases as * God the Father,' ' Children of God,' ' brethren,' have played a great part in the development of charitable thought in pre- Christian, as well as in Christian days. The germ, if we may say so, of the words philia, agape, amor, love, and amicitia, friendship, is the sexual or the parental relation. With the realization of the larger life in man the meaning of the word expands. Caritas, or charity, strikes another note — high price, and thus dearness. It is charity, indeed, expressed in mercantile metaphor ; and it would seem that it was associated in thought with the word charts, which has also a commercial meaning, but signifies as well favour, gratitude, grace,

SOME DEFINITIONS 3

kindness. Partly thus, perhaps, it assumed and suggested a nobler conception ; and sometimes, as, for instance, in English ecclesiastical docu- ments, it was spelt charitas.

Agape, which in the Authorised Version of the Bible is translated charity, was used by St. Paul as a translation of the Hebrew word chesed, which in the Old Testament is in the same version translated 'mercy' — as in Hosea vi. 6, " I desired mercy, and not sacrifice." This word represents the charity of kindness and goodness, as distinguished from almsgiving. Almsgiving, zedakah, is translated by the word eleemosyna in the Septuagint, and in the Authorised Version by the word 'righteousness.' It represents the deed or the gift which is due — done or made, not spontaneously, but under a sense of religious obligation. In the earlier Christian period the word almsgiving has this meaning, and was in that sense applied to a wide range of actions and contracts, from a gift to a beggar at a church door to a grant and a tenure of land. It also, in the word almoner, represented the fulfilment of the religious obligation with the aid of an agent or delegate. The words charity or love (caritas or agape), on the other hand, without losing the tone with which the thought of parental

4 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

or family love inspires them, assume a higher meaning. In religious thought they imply an ideal life, as represented by such expressions as 'love (agape) of God.' This on the one side; and on the other an ideal social relation, in such words as ' love of man.'

Thus in the word ' charity ' religious and social associations meet ; and thus regarded the word means a disciplined and habitual mood in which the mind is considerate of the welfare of others individually and generally, and devises what is for their real good, and in which the intelligence and the will strive to fulfil the mind's purpose. Charity thus has no necessary relation to relief or alms. To give a lecture, or to nurse a sick man who is not in want or * poor,' may be equally a deed of charity ; though in fact charity concerns itself largely with the classes usually called the ' poor,' and with problems of distress and relief. Relief, however, is not an essential part of charity or charitable work. It is one of many means at its disposal. If the world were so poor that no one could make a gift, or so wealthy that no one needed it, charity — the charity of life and of deeds — would remain.

CHAPTER II.

THE OUTLINES OF STUDY.

The history of charity is a history of many social and religious theories, influences, and endeavours, that have left their mark alike upon the popular and the cultivated thought of the present day. The inconsistencies of charitable effort and argument may thus in part be accounted for. Therefore to understand the problem of charity we have

1. To consider the stages of charitable thought — the primitive, pagan, Greek and Roman, Jewish and Christian elements, that make up the modern consciousness in regard to charity, and also the growth of the habit of ' charity ' as representing a gradually educated social instinct.

2. We have also to consider in their relation to charity the results of recent investigations of the conditions of social life.

3. At each stage we have to note the

6 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

corresponding stage of practical administration in public relief and private effort — for the division between public or * poor-law ' relief and charity which now prevails in England is, com- paratively speaking, a novelty. For the most part the work of charity can hardly be appreciated or understood if it be considered without reference to public relief.

4. As to the present day, we have to consider practical suggestions in regard to such subjects as charity and economic thought, charity organization, friendly visiting and almonership, co-operation with the poor-law, charity and thrift, parochial management, hospitals and medical relief, exceptional distress and the * unemployed,' the utilization of endowments and their supervision, and their adaptation to new needs and emergencies.

5. We have also throughout to consider charitable help in relation to classes of dependents, who appear early in the history of the question — widows and orphans, the sick and the aged, vagrants and wayfarers.

First in the series come the charities of the family and of hospitality ; then the wider charities of religion, the charities of the com- munity, of individual donors and of mutual help. These gradually assume importance in

THE OUTLINES OF STUDY 7

communities which consist originally of self- supporting classes, within which widows and orphans, for instance, would be rather provided for, in accordance with recognized class obliga- tions, than relieved. Then come habitual alms- giving, the charitable endowment, and the modern charitable institution and association. But throughout the test of progress or decadence appears to be the condition of the family. The family is the source, the home and the hearth of charity. It has been created but slowly, and there is naturally a constant tendency to break away from its obligations and to ignore and depreciate its utility. Yet the family, as we now have it, is itself the outcome of infinite thought working through social instinct, and has at each stage of its development indicated a general advance. To it, therefore, constant reference must be made.

CHAPTER III.

PRIMITIVE CHARITY.

The study of early communities has brought to light the history of the development of the family. " Marriage in its lowest phases is by no means a matter of affection or com- panionship " ; and only very slowly has the position of both parents been recognized as implying different but correlative responsibilities towards their child. Only very slowly, also, has the morality necessary to the making of the family been won. Charity at earlier stages is hardly recognized as a virtue, nor infanticide as an evil. Hospitality — the beginning of a larger social life — is non-existent. The self- support of the community is secured by marriage, and when relations fail marriage becomes a provision against poverty. Then by the tribal system is created another safeguard against want. But apart also from these methods of social maintenance, at a very early

PRIMITIVE CHARITY 9

stage there is charitable relief. The festivals of the solstices and equinoxes, and of the seasons, are the occasions for sacrifice and relief; and, as Christmas customs prove, the instinct to give help or alms at such festival periods still remains. Charity is concerned primarily with certain elemental forces of social life : the relation between these primitive instincts and impulses that still influence charity should not, therefore, be overlooked. The basis of social life is also the basis of charitable thought and action.

The savage is the civilized man in the rough. " The lowest races have," Lord Avebury writes, " no institution of marriage." Many have no word for 'dear' or 'beloved,' The child belongs to the tribe rather than to the parent. In these circumstances a problem of charity such as the following may arise : " Am I to starve, while my sister has children whom she can sell ? " a question asked of Burton by a negro. From the point of view of the tribe, an able-bodied man would be more valuable than dependent children, and the relationship of the larger family of brothers and sisters would be a truer claim to help than that of mother and child. Subsequently the child is recognized as related, not to the father, but to the mother, and there is " a kind of bond which lasts for life

10 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

between mother and child, although the father is a stranger to it." Slowly only is the relative position of both parents, with different but correlative responsibilities, acknowledged. The first two steps of charity have then been made : the social value of the bond between the mother, and then between the father, and the child has been recognized. Until this point is reached the morality necessary to the making of the family is wanting, and for a long time after- wards it is hardly won. The virtue of chastity — the condition precedent to the higher family life — is unrecognized. Indeed, the set of such religious thought as there may be is against it. Abstract conceptions, even in the nobler races, are lacking. The religion of life is vaguely struggling with its animality, and that which it at last learns to rule it at first worships. In these circumstances there is little charity for the child and little for the stranger. " There is," Dr. Schweinfurth wrote in his Heart of Afr'ica, " an utter want of wholesome intercourse between race and race. For any member of a tribe that speaks one dialect to cross the borders of a tribe that speaks another is to make a venture at the hazard of his life." The religious obligations that fostered and sanctified family life among the Greeks and

PRIMITIVE CHARITY 11

Romans and Jews are unknown. Much later in development comes charity for the child, with the abhorrence of infanticide — against which the Jewish-Christian charity of 2000 years ago uttered its most vigorous protests. If the child belonged primarily to the tribe or state, its main- tenance or destruction was a common concern. This motive influenced the Greeks, who are historically nearer the earlier forms of social life than ourselves. For the common good they exposed the deformed child ; but also " where there were too many, for in our state population has a limit," as Aristotle says, " the babe or unborn child was destroyed." And so, to lighten their own responsibilities, parents were wont to do in the slow years of the degradation of the Roman Empire, though the interest of the state then required a contrary policy. The transition to our present feeling of responsibility for child-life has been very gradual and uncertain, through the Middle Ages and even till the eighteenth century. Strictly it may be said that all penitentiaries and other similar institu- tions are concrete protests on behalf of a better family life. The movement for the care of children in the eighteenth century naturally and instinctively allied itself with the peni- tentiary movement. The want of regard for

12 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

child-life, when the rearing of children becomes a source of economic pressure, suggests why in earlier stages of civilization all that charitable apparatus which we now think necessary for the assistance of children is wanting, even if the need, so far as it does arise, is not adequately met by the recognized obligations of the clan- family or brotherhood.

In the case of barbarous races charity and self-support may be considered from some other points of view. Self-support is secured in two ways — by marriage and by slavery. " For a man or woman to be unmarried after the age of thirty is unheard of" (T. H. Lewin, Wild Races of South-East India). On the other hand, if any one is without a father, mother, or other relative, and destitute of the necessaries of life, he may sell himself and become a slave. Thus slavery becomes a provision for poverty when relations fail. The clan -family may serve the same purpose. David Livingstone describes the formation of the clan-family among the Bakuena. " Each man, by virtue of paternity, is chief of his own children. They build huts round his. . . . Near the centre of each circle of huts is a spot called a ' kotla,' with a fire- place ; here they work, eat, etc. A poor man attaches himself to the ' kotla ' of a rich one,

PRIMITIVE CHARITY 13

and is considered a child of the latter." Thus the clan-family is also a poor-relief association.

Studies in religion indicate a gradual move- ment towards larger conceptions of the religious life, and of charitable obligation. Studies in folk-lore bring to light many relations between the charity of the old world and that of our own day.

In regard to the charity of the early com- munity, following the main lines of our inquiry, we may take the eighth century B.C. as the point of departure. The vast field of a yet larger inquiry which would include Oriental charity we do not touch. The Odyssey (about 800 B.C.) and Hesiod (about 700 B.C.) are roughly parallel with Amos (816-775), and repre- sent two streams of thought that meet in the early Christian period. The period covered by the Odyssey seems to merge into that of Hesiod. We take the former first, dealing with the clan- family and the phratry, which are together the self-maintaining unit of society, with the general relief of the poor, with hospitality, and with vagrancy. In Hesiod we find the customary law of charity in the earlier community defi- nitely stated, and also indications of the normal methods of neighbourly help which were in force in country districts.

14 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

First of the family and brotherhood, or phratry. The family (Od. viii. 582) included alike the wife's father and the daughter's hus- band. It was thus a clan-like family. Out of this was developed the phratry or brotherhood, in which were included alike noble families, peasants, and craftsmen, united by a common worship and responsibilities and a common customary law (themis). Zeus, the god of social life, was worshipped by the phratry. He was the father of the law (themis). He was god of host and guest. Society was thus based on law, the brotherhood, and the family. The irrespon- sible man, the man worthy of no respect or consideration, was one who belonged to no brotherhood, was subject to no customary law, and had no hearth or family. The phratry was, and became afterwards still more, ' a natural guild.' Outside the self-sustaining phratry was the stranger, including the wayfarer and the vagrant ; and partly merged in these classes was the beggar, the recognized recipient of the alms of the community. To change one's abode and to travel was assumed to be a cause of reproach (U. ix. 648).^ The * land-louper ' was

*The Earliest Homer is now considered to belong to the eleventh century b.c. The Second Homer to the ninth century. (See Bury : History of Greece. 1908.)

PRIMITIVE CHARITY 15

naturally suspected. On the other hand a stranger's first thought in a new country was whether the inhabitants were wild or social (dikaioi), hospitable and God-fearing (Od. xiii. 201). Hospitality thus became the first public charity ; Zeus sent all strangers and beggars, and it was against all law (themis) to slight them. Out of this feeling — a kind of glorified almsgiving- -grew up the system of hospitality in Greek states and also in the Roman world. The host greeted the stranger (or the suppliant). An oath of friendship was taken by the stranger, who was then received with the greeting, Welcome (Chaire), and water was provided for ablution, and food and shelter. In the larger house he w^as a guest at a guests' table. In the hut he shared the peasant's meal. The custom bound alike the rich and the poor. On parting presents were given, usually food for the onward journey, sometimes costly gifts. The obligation was mutual, that the host should give hospi- tality, and that the guest should not abuse it. From early times tallies were exchanged between them as evidence of this formal relationship, which each could claim again of the other by the production of the token. And further, the relationship on either side became hereditary. Thus individuals and families and tribes remained

16 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

linked in friendship and in the interchange of hospitalities.

Under the same patronage of Zeus and the same laws of hospitality were vagrants and beggars. The vagrant and loafer are sketched in the Odyssey — the vagrant who lies glibly that he may get entertainment, and the loafer who prefers begging to w^ork on a farm. These and the winter idlers, whom Hesiod pictures — a group known to modern life — prefer at that season to spend their time in the warmth of the village smithy, or at a house of common resort (lesche) — a common lodging-house, we might say — where they would pass the night. Apparently, as in modern times, the vagrants had organized their own system of entertain- ment, and, supported by the public, were a class for whom it was worth while to cater. The local or public beggars formed a still more definite class. Their begging was a recognized means of maintenance ; it was a part of the method of poor relief. Thus of Penelope it was said that, if Ulysses' tale were true, she would give him better clothes, and then he might beg his bread throughout the country- side. Feasts too and almsgiving were nearly allied, and feasts have always been one resource for the relief of the poor. Thus naturally the

PRIMITIVE CHARITY 17

beggars frequented feasts, and were apparently a recognized and yet inevitable nuisance. They wore, as part of their dress, scrips or wallets in which they carried away the food they received, as later the Roman clients carried away portions of food in baskets (sportulcB) from their patrons' dinners. Ulysses, when he dresses up as a beggar, puts on a wallet as part of his costume. Thus we find a system of voluntary relief in force based on a recognition of the duty of almsgiving as com- plete and peremptory as that which we shall notice later among the Jews and the early Christians. We are concerned here with country districts, and not with towns, and, as social conditions that are similar produce similar methods of administration, so we find here a general plan of relief similar to that which was in vogue in Scotland till the Scottish Poor Law Act of 1845.

In Hesiod the fundamental conceptions of social religion and charity are more clearly expressed. He has, if not his ten, at least his four commandments, for disobedience to which Zeus will punish the offender. They are : Thou shalt do no evil to suppliant or guest ; thou shalt not dishonour any woman of the family ; thou shalt not sin against the

18 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

orphan ; thou shalt not be unkind to aged parents.

The laws of social life are thus duty to one's guest and duty to one's family ; and chastity has its true place in that relation, as the later Greeks, who so often quote Hesiod (cf the so-called Economics oi Aristotle), fully realized. Also the charities of the family which are due to the orphan, whose lot is deplored in the Iliad (xxii. 490), and to the aged are now clearly enunciated. But there is also in Hesiod the duty to one's neighbour, not according to the ' perfection ' of ' Cristes lore,' but according to a law of honourable reciprocity in act and intent. " Love him who loves thee, and cleave to him who cleaveth to thee : to him who would have given, give ; to him who would not have given, give not." The ground- work of Hesiod's charity outside the family is neighbourly help (such as formed no small part of old Scottish charity in the country districts); and he put his argument thus : Competition, which is a kind of strife, " lies in the roots of the world and in men." It is good, and rouses the idle ' handless ' man to work. On one side are social duty (dike) and work, done briskly at the right season of the year, which bring a full barn. On the other side are

PRIMITIVE CHARITY 19

unthrift and hunger, and relief with the dis- grace of begging ; and the relief, when the family can do no more, must come from neighbours, to whose house the beggar has to go with his wife and children to ask for victual. Once they may be helped, or twice, and then they will be refused. Better is it, Hesiod tells his brother, to work and so pay off his debts and avoid hunger (see Erga, 391, etc., and elsewhere). Here indeed is a problem of to-day as it appeared to an early Greek. The alternatives before the idler — so far as his own community is concerned — are labour with neighbourly help to a limited extent, or hunger.

Hesiod was a farmer in Boeotia. Some 530 years afterwards a pupil of Aristotle thus describes the district and its community of farmers. "They are," he says, "well to do, but simple in their way of life. They practise justice, good faith, and hospitality. To needy townsmen and vagabonds they give freely of their substance ; for meanness and covetousness are unknown to them." (Fraser's Pausanias, p. xliii.) The charitable method of Homeric and Hesiodic days still continued.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAEITY AMONG THE GREEKS.

Society in a Greek state was divided into two parts, citizens and slaves. The citizens required leisure for education, war, and govern- ment. The slaves were their ministers, crafts- men, and servants to enable them to secure this leisure. We have therefore to consider, on the one hand, the position of the family and the clan-family, and the maintenance of the citizen from public funds and by public and private charities ; and on the other hand, the condition of the slaves, and the relation between slavery and charity.

The slaves formed the larger part of the population. The census of Attica made between 317 and 307 B.C. gives their numbers at 400,000 out of a population of about 500,000 ; and even if this be considered excessive, the proportion of slaves to citizens must certainly have been very large. The citizens with their wives and children

CHARITY AMONG THE GREEKS 21

formed some 12 per cent, of the eommumty^? Thus, apart from the resident aliens, returned in the census at 10,000, and their wive^ and children, we have two divisions of society.: the citizens, with their own organization of relief and charities ; and the slaves, permaneritly maintained by reason of their dependence on individual members of the . civic class. Thus, the only poverty is that of the poor citizens. Poverty is limited to them. The slaves^that is to say, the bulk of the labouring population— are provided for. ) ,r»;l5:f vdl

' From times relatively near to Hesiod's we may trace the growth and influence of the clan-family as the centre of customary charity within the community, the gradual increase of a class of poor either outside the clan- family or eventually independent of it, and the development of a new organization of relief introduced by the state to meet newer demands. We picture the early state as a group of families, each of which tends to form in time a separate group or clan. At each expansion from the family to the clan the members of the clan retain rights and have to fulfil duties which are the same as, or similar to, those which prevailed in the family. Thus, in Attica the clan-families (gene) and the brotherhoods

22 CHARITY ANI> SOCIAL LIFE

(phratrai) were " the only basis of legal rights and obligations over and above the natural family." The clan-family was ' a natural guild,' consisting of rich and poor members — the well-born or noble and the craftsman alike ; and originally it would seem that the land was divided among the families of the clan by lot and was inalienable. Thus with the family was combined the means of supporting the family. On the other hand, every youth was registered in his phratry, and the phratry remained till the reforms of Cleisthenes (509 B.c.) a political, and even after that time a social, organization of importance.

Again, first, as to the family — the mother and wife, and the father. Already before the age of Plato and Xenophon (450-350 B.C.) we find that the family has suff"ered a slow decline. The wife, according to later Greek usage, was married as a child, hardly educated, and con- fined to the house, except at some festival or funeral. But with the decline came criticism and a nobler conception of family life. " First, then, come laws regarding the wife," writes the author of the Economics, and the law, " thou shalt do no wrong ; for, if we do no wrong, we shall not be wronged." This is the 'common law,' as the Pythagoreans say.

CHARITY AMONG THE GREEKS 23

" and it implies that we must not wrong the wife in the least, but treat her with the reverence due to a suppliant, or one taken from the altar." The sanctity of marriage is thus placed among the ' commandments ' of Hesiod, besides the duty towards the stranger and the orphan. These and other references to the Pythagoreans suggest that they, possibly in common with other mystics, preached the higher religion of marriage and social life, and thus inspired a deeper social feeling, which eventually allied itself with the Christian move- ment.^

Next, as to parents and children : the son was under an obligation to support his father, subject, after Solon's time, to the condition that he had taught him a trade ; and after Solon's time the father had no claim for support from an illegitimate son. " The possession of children," it was said (Arist. Econ.) "is not by nature for the public good only, but also for private advantage. For what the strong may

* " There was no such thing as a marriage in the presence of priests or the representatives of the State " (Tucker : Life in Ancient Athens (440-330 B.c.) p. 105). But later, custom would appear to have changed. In Plutarch's time, 50 a.d. {Conjugal PreceptSy Introd.), it seems to have been usual. " The customary marriage rites," he says, "by which the Priestess of Demeter has united you together."

34 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

gain by their toil for the weak, the weak in their old age receive from the strong. . . . Thus is the nature of each, the man and the woman, prearranged by the Divine Being for a life in common," Honour to parents is " the first and greatest and oldest of all debts " (Plato, Laws, 717). The child has to care for the parent in his old age. "Nemesis, the minister of justice (dike), is appointed to watch over all these things." And "if a man fail to adorn the sepulchre of his dead parents, the magistrates take note of it and inquire" (Xen. Mem. ii. 14). The heightened conception of marriage implies a fuller interpretation of the mutual relations of parent and child as well ; both are and become more sacred.

Then the orphans. Before Solon's time (594 B.C.) the property of any member of the clan- family who died without children went to the clan ; and after his time, when citizens were permitted to leave their property by will, the property of an intestate fell to the clan. This arrangement carried with it corresponding duties. Through the clan-family provision was made for orphans. Any member of the clan had the legal right to claim an orphan member in marriage ; and, if the nearest agnate did not marry her, he had to give her a dowry

CHARITY AMONG THE GREEKS 25

proportionate to the amount of his own pro- perty. Later, there is evidence of a growing sense of responsibility in regard to orphans. Hippodamus (about 443 B.C.), in his scheme of the perfected state (Arist. Pol. 1268), sug- gested that there should be public magistrates to deal with the affairs of orphans (and strangers) ; and Plato, his contemporary, writes of the duty of the state and of the guardian towards them very fully. Orphans, he proposes [Laws, 927), should be placed under the care of public guardians. " Men should have a fear of the loneliness of orphans . . . and of the souls of the departed, who by nature take a special care of their own children. ... A man should love the unfortunate orphan (boy or girl) of whom he is guardian as if he were his own child ; he should be as careful and diligent in the management of the orphan's property as of his own — or even more careful stilL" ^

But, further, to relieve the poverty of citizens and to preserve the citizenhood were objects of public policy and of charity. In Crete and Sparta the citizens were wholly supported out of the public resources. In Attica the system was different. The citizens were aided in various ways, in which, as often happens, legal

26 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

or official and voluntary or private methods worked on parallel lines. The means were (l) legal enactment for release of debts; (2) emigration ; (3) the supply of corn ; (4) poor relief for the infirm, and relief for the children of those fallen in war; (5) emoluments; (6) voluntary public service, separate gifts and liberality ; (7) loan societies.

1. In 594 B.C. the labouring class in Attica were overwhelmed with debts and mortgages, and their persons pledged as security. Only by a sharp reform was it possible to preserve them from slavery. This Solon effected. He annulled their obligations, abolished the pledge of the person, and gave the labourers the franchise. And, in addition to this, besides the laws above mentioned, he gave power to the Areopagus to inquire from what sources each man obtained the necessaries of life, and to punish those who did not work. His action and that of his successor, Peisistratus (560 B.C.), suggests that the class of poor (aporoi) was increasing, and that by the efforts of these two men the social decline of the people was avoided or at least postponed. Peisistratus lent the poor money that they might maintain themselves in husbandry. He wished, it is said (Arist. Ath. Pol. xvi.), to enable them to earn

CHARITY AMONG THE GREEKS 27

a moderate living, that they might be occupied with their own affairs, instead of spending their time in the city or neglecting their work in order to visit it. As rent for their land they paid a tenth of the produce.

2. Akin to this policy was that of emigra- tion. Athenians, selected in some instances from the two lowest political classes, emigrated, though still retaining their rights of citizenship. In 570-565 B.C. Salamis was annexed and divided into lots and settled ; and later Pericles settled more than 2750 citizens in the Cher- sonese and elsewhere — practically a considerable section of the whole body of citizens. *' By this means," says Plutarch, "he relieved the state of numerous idle agitators and assisted the necessitous." In other states this expedient was frequently adopted.

3. A third method was the supply of corn at reduced rates — a method similar to that adopted, as we shall see, at Rome, Constan- tinople, and elsewhere. The maintenance of the mass of the people depended on the corn fleets. There were public granaries, where large stores were laid up at the public expense. A portion of all cargoes of corn was retained at Athens, and in other ways importation was promoted. Exportation was forbidden. Public

28 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

donations and distributions of corn were fre- quent, , and in times of scarcity rich citizens made large contributions with that object. The distributions were made to adult citizens of eighteen years of age and upwards whose names were on the registers.

4. In addition to this there was a systeni of public relief for those who were unable to earn a livelihood on account of bodily defects and infirmities. The qualification was a pro- perty test. The property of the applicant had to be shown to be of a value of not liiore than three minae (say £12). Socrates, it may be noted, adopts the same method of estimating his com- parative poverty (Xen. Econ. ii. 6), saying that his goods would realize about five minae (or about twenty guineas). The senate examined the case, and the ecclesia awarded the bounty, which consisted of one or two obols a day, rather more than l|d. or 3d. — out-door relief, as we might say, amounting at most to about; Is. 9d. a week. There was also a fund for the main- tenance of the children of those who had fallen in war, up to the age of eighteen.

5. But the main source of support was the receipt of emoluments for various public ser- vices. This was not relief, though it produced in the course of time the efi'ect of relief. It

CHARITY AMONG THE GREEKS 29

was rather the Athenian method of supporting a governing class of citizens.

The inner political history of Athens is the history of the extension of the franchise to the lower classes of citizens, with the privileges of holding office and receiving emoluments.

About 650 B.C., at a time when trade was increasing, the citizens were classified on the basis of property. The rich retained the fran- chise and the right of holding office ; the middle classes obtained the franchise ; the fourth or labouring class gained neither. By the reforms of Cleisthenes (509 B.C.) the clan-family and the phratry were set aside for the deme or parish, a geographical division superseding the social. Finally, about 478 B.C., when all had acquired the franchise, the right to hold office also was obtained by the fourth class. These changes coincided with a period of economic progress. The rate of interest was high, usually 12 per cent. ; and in trading and bottomry the returns were much higher. A small capital at this interest soon produced compara- tive wealth ; and simultaneously prices were falling. Then came the reaction. "After the Peloponnesian war" (432 to 404 B.C.), writes Professor Jebb, "the wealth of the country ceased to grow, as population had ceased to

30 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

grow about 50 years sooner. The rich went on accumulating ; the poor, having no means of enriching themselves by enterprise, were for the most part occupied in watching for some chance of snatching a larger share of the stationary total." Thus the poorer classes in a time of prosperity had won the power which they were able to turn to their own account afterwards.

A period of economic pressure followed, coupled with a decline in the population ; no return to the land was feasible, nor was emigration ; the people had become townfolk inadaptable to new uses ; decreasing vitality and energy were marked by a new temper, the 'pauper' temper, unsettled, idle, and grasping, and political power was utilized to obtain relief; and though the relief was forthcoming, it was of no avail to stop the general decline. The state, it might almost be said, in giving scope to the assertion of the spirit of dependence, had ruined the self- regarding energy on which both family and state alike depended.

The emoluments were diverse. The number of citizens was not large ; the functions in which citizens could take part were numerous ; and when payment was forthcoming the poorer citizens pressed in to exercise their rights (cf.

CHARITY AMONG THE GREEKS 31

Arist. Pol. 1293a). All Athenian citizens could attend the public assembly or ecclesia. Pro- bably the attendance at it varied from a few hundred to 5000 persons. In 395 B.c. the payment for attendance was fixed at 3 obols, or little more than 4|d. a day — for the system of payment had probably been introduced a few years before (cf Daremberg, Diet, des Antiq.). A juror or dikast would receive the same sum for attendance, and the courts or juries often consisted of 500 persons. If the estimate (Bockh., Public Economy of Athens, Eng. trans, pp. 109, 117) holds good that in the age of Demosthenes (384-323 B.C.) the member of a poor family of four free persons could live (including rent) on about 3 ■3d. or between 2 and 3 obols a day, the pay of the citizen attending the assembly or the court would at least cover the expenses of subsistence. On the other hand, it would be less than the pay of a day labourer, which was probably about . 4 obols or 6d. a day. In any case many citizens — they numbered in all about 20,000 — in return for their participation in political duties would receive considerable pecuniary assistance. Attending a great public festival also, the citizen would receive 2 obols or 3d. a day during the festival days ; and there were

32 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

besides frequent public sacrifices, with the meal or feast which accompanied them.

But besides this there were confiscations of private property, which produced a surplus revenue divisible among the poorer citizens. (Some hold that there were confiscations in other Greek states, but not in Athens.) In these circumstances it is not to be wondered that men like Isocrates should regret that the influence of the Areopagus, the old court of morals and justice in Athens, had disappeared, for it " maintained a sort of censorial police over the lives and habits of the citizens ; and it professed to enforce a tutelary and paternal discipline, beyond that which the strict letter of the law could mark out, over the indolent, the prodigal, the undutiful, and the deserters of old rite and custom."

6. In addition to public emoluments and relief there was much private liberality and charity. Many expensive public services were undertaken honorarily by the citizens under a kind of civic compulsion. Thus in a trial about 42.5 B.C. (Lysias, Or. 19. 57) a citizen submitted evidence that his father expended more than £2000 during his life in paying the expenses of choruses at festivals, fitting out seven triremes for the navy, and meeting

CHARITY AMONG THE GREEKS 33

levies of income-tax to provide for emergencies. Besides this he had helped poor citizens by por- tioning their daughters and sisters, had ransomed some, and paid the funeral expenses of others (cf. for other instances Plutarch's Cimon, Theo- phrastus' Characteres, and Xenophon's Econ.).

7. There were also mutual help societies (eranoi). Those for relief would appear to have been loan societies (cf. Theoph. Char act.), one of whose members would beat up contri- butions to help a friend, who would afterwards repay the advance.

The criticisms of Aristotle (384-321 B.C.) suggest the direction to which he looked for social reform. He (Pol. 1320a) passes a very unfavourable judgment on the distribution of public money to the poorer citizens. The demagogues (he does not speak of Athens particularly) distributed the surplus revenues to the poor, who received them all at the same time ; and then they were in want again. It was only, he argued, like pouring water through a sieve. It were better to see to it that the greater number were not so entirely destitute, for the depravity of a democratic government was due to this. The problem was to contrive how plenty (euporia, not poverty, aporia) should become permanent.

34 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

His proposals are adequate aid and voluntary charity. Public relief should, he urges, be given in large amounts so as to help people to acquire small farms or start in business, and the well-to-do (euporoi) should in the meantime subscribe to pay the poor for their attendance at the public assemblies. This proves, indeed, how the payments had become poor relief. He mentions also how the Car- thaginian notables divided the destitute amongst them and gave them the means of setting to work, and the Tarentines (koina poiountes) shared their property with the poor. The Rhodians also may be mentioned (Strabo, xiv. c. 652), amongst whom the well-to-do under- took the relief of the poor voluntarily. The later word for charitable distribution was a sharing (koinonia, Ep. Rom. xv. 26). To this we shall return. But the chief service rendered by Aristotle — a service which covered indeed the whole ground of social progress — was to show that unless the purpose of civil and social life was carefully considered and clearly under- stood by those who desired to improve its conditions, no change for the better could result from individual or associated action.

CHAPTER V.

CITY LIFE AND ITS PROBLEMS IN GREECE.

We should, however, consider the question further in its relation to Greek thought.

Aristotle stated the problem of city life to be how plenty rather than poverty should be made permanent. In the time of Plato the supremacy of Athens had passed away. The conditions of social life seemed to call for inquiry, for some reform and revival of effort. He analyses the subject in the Republic and in the Laws, and the analysis bears closely on our modern questions. We would take from these two books some thoughts and suggestions which touch on social development, and make some comments. The city comes into being by reason of the economic wants of its inhabitants : but it cannot flourish by the mere satisfaction of these wants. Social

36 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

decline will set in. Extravagance and eflfemi- nacy will take the place of simplicity. The easy satisfaction of wants will serve no moral end, and have in itself no finality. There is a class of men who are wholly absorbed in the pursuit of wealth, attending to nothing but their daily gains, who care for knowledge only in so far as it will equip them to attain that purpose. There is the factious and un- settled element in society of which account must, be taken. But there is also the large poor population : they are a population within the population ; they form a city within the city.

What is the remedy? There are several to be considered and applied together and not separately. There must be an education of body and soul. The education of the soul is achieved first by its invigoration by a courage that is more than animal courage, that will not melt away in the face of temptation or obloquy any more than in the midst of physical dangers. With this, and akin to it, is Temper- ance, the mood of the balanced, self-restraining mind, the mood in which the measure of things is rightly taken. Then Justice — to do one's duty — to take one's place in life and fulfil its duties. Justice fits the parts together

CITY LIFE IN GREECE 37

in a true whole — makes of the courageous and the temperate man a doer of the word, and makes of the State an ordered unit. For what is the characteristic of the individual members becomes the characteristic of the community. We may apply to this a modern illustration. The lower impulses of the individuals that compose what Fielding calls ' the mob ' dom- inate it. The mob or crowd is more excitable than the individual, more quickly touched by what is trivial and transient, more partisan, if roused, and more cruel. According to the quality of the crowd so is the nature of its excitement. If the crowd be an assembly of brave and temperate men accustomed to the ordered life of justice what they are individually it will reveal in its gathered force. It will respond to the higher appeal, and instead of the laudations of partisanship it will accept with approval the call to fulfil new obligations. Servility will annoy it ; the incitement to a closer fellowship and a harder duty will move it.

And who shall rule? The rule must be in conformity with Wisdom, with the science of guardianship. The guardians are a selection of the competent, tried by the hardest tasks and not found wanting. They have no interest of

38 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

their own to serve. They form a class apart, sharing all things, and possessing no personal property. Their sole interest is the community. These are the characteristics of honourable rulers — moral and intellectual ability, and freedom from regard to personal ends. Somehow the method of government must evolve them, and set them upon its high places.

Then education : Plato would have similar training for boy and girl. In general they should learn beforehand in play the art or accomplishments with which they will after- wards have to be occupied in life. It is the earliest stage of education — when the child is being reared, that counts for most. In his play his soul should be led to love that kind of practical excellence of which he will stand in need as a grown man. The future carpenter should learn to measure and apply the line in play ; and the future warrior should learn riding or some other exercise for amusement. Till the age of six boys and girls should play together. Then " they must begin to learn — the boys going to teachers of horsemanship and the use of the bow, the javelin, and the sling; and if they do not object let women* go too to learn if not to practise ; above all they ought to know the use of arms, for these are matters

CITY LIFE IN GREECE 39

which are almost entirely misunderstood at present" {The Laws, vii. sec. 794 (Jowett's trans.)). The "education has two branches, one of gymnastic, which is concerned with the body, and the other of music, which is designed for the improvement of the soul." Body and soul are each considered. Gymnastic consists of wrestling and dancing. A free habit of body, " health, agility, and beauty in the limbs and parts of the person," these are its objects. Music expresses the feeling that should accom- pany life, the sense of inner harmony, the expression of thought in terms so touching and mysterious that language fails to convey them. It is a language of the soul. Therefore the object of this education is strength, adaptability, and fineness of spirit. It is an education for the elite, some may say. To Plato it was an education that would rear a strong race and make the people good. Such a race and people could both support itself and defend itself. This is the ground work. With it come lessons. " A fair time for a boy of ten years old to spend in letters is three years " ; and other studies follow.

Perhaps in that revision of our elementary and secondary education that is so urgently required, these thoughts of Plato's might be

40 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

re-considered and re-applied with great advantage to our own race.

The question of the human breed he has also in his mind. " We will say to him " — the younger man : " 0 my son, he who is born of good parents ought to make such a marriage as sensible people approve . . . They would advise you neither to avoid a poor marriage, nor specially to desire a rich one ; but if other things are equal to honour persons of an inferior rank, and with them to form connexions. This will lead to the good of the city and of the families that are united." Marriage should be of opposites. So one tendency in excess will counteract another in the race. " Let there be one word about all marriages : Every marriage should be settled according to what is bene- ficial to the city, not according to what is most pleasant to oneself " ; and to this end in the Laws many minute regulations are suggested.

In this comes to light a defect quite modern in its nature ; of the very virtues themselves there seems to be a latent distrust. Neither the individual nor the State can fulfil their purpose unless they be ruled by courage, tem- perance, and justice ; they, and not the minutiae of superintendence, are the necessary condition

CITY LIFE IN GREECE 41

of social life. If they be there, the right is done in the spontaneity of the good will. If they are not there, minute legislation can hardly be effective. The complexity of life must always defeat those who try to control it in its inner- most recesses by a complexity of statutes. To a point they can go, the point at which inspection can be made as complete as the regulation is detailed ; but except perhaps in a very small community such as that of 5040 persons which Plato makes his measure of population, the details of enactment may easily outrun the possibilities of inspection, and so become valueless. A great evil may then result. The supreme morality of self-guidance may be weakened or lost. ' Instructions ' may take the place of intelligence. Initiative may grow less. After all, reliance must be placed not on the minutiae of legislative instructions, but on educa- tion, on the spread of information, and on the effect of the general polity of the State on the development of the people.

The economic aim of the State which Plato explains in the Laws, is a relatively fixed con- dition of resources. A taint of injustice adheres to the rich man. According to Plato's idea he cannot be rich except by dishonourable means. "Very rich and very good at the same time

42 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

the citizen cannot be, not at least in the sense that the many speak of riches. For they describe by the term ' rich ' a few who have the most valuable possessions, although the owner of them be a rogue." " He who spends on noble objects, and acquires wealth by just means only, can hardly be remarkable for riches, any more than he can be very poor." This community accordingly foregoes money-making. It is to trust to the produce of agriculture, " and only so much of this as will not compel us in pursuing it to neglect that for the sake of which riches exist — I mean soul and body, which, without gymnastics and without educa- tion, will never be worth anything ; and there- fore, as we have said, not once, but many times, the care of riches should have a last place in one's thoughts" (sec. 743).

The fixed condition is to be obtained by a registration of all property (sec. 754) and by the restriction of it in the first class of citizens to four minae, or £16 5s. Od. ; in the second class to three minae, or £12 3s. 9d. ; and in the third class to one minae, or £4 Is. 3d. And to the population, in tribal fashion, are assigned lots of land, a lot for each family ; and the lots remain by adjustment ever the same in number, and ever possessed by the same number of

CITY LIFE IN GREECE 43

families. The limit of poverty is the value of the lot, which is inalienable. The population remains the same. Families are limited. There is, if considered necessary, the exposure of infants. There is emigration.

The recognition of the evils of town life, here and elsewhere, suggest reaction, a reversion to an earlier state, to tribal conditions or to those of the yeoman farmer. But the reaction is a sign of sentiment, of an intellectual and possibly physical weakness. The life in the city in general unfits for the life in the country. Practical experience in many cases proves this. Philanthropic ruralism can effect very little. The line of progress is not backwards or out- wards— to the past or to the country life. It is forwards : how to make the citizen more com- petent as a citizen — living in the city with a parsimony that a labourer in the country is bound to practise, and with a greater ingenuity and carefulness in safeguarding his life and the life of his family. If this is not possible, one may almost say nothing is possible. A life of greater or less dependence in the city is the only alternative : and that is only another name for failure.

In the desire for unity and fixity Plato hankers after the fulfilment of the Pythagorean motto :

44 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

•'The goods of friends are common."^ That seems to him to imply a primal unity of thought and feeling which is the perfection of the life of a community. His Guardians in the Republic adopt it. For his citizens in the Colony in the Laws he provides, as we have seen, what is in his judgment the inferior method of the equal and unchanging plots of land. But in spite of this permanent provision against destitution a city may according to his phrase have to be puri- fied. " When best the purification is painful, like similar cures in medicine, involving righteous punishment and inflicting death and exile in the last resort (sec. 735). For in this way we com- monly dispose of great sinners who are incurable and are the greatest injury to the whole State. But the milder purification is as follows : when men who have nothing show a disposition to follow their leaders in an attack on the property of the rich — these, who are the natural plague of the State, are sent away by the legislator in a friendly spirit, as far as he is able, and this dismissal of them is euphemistically termed a Colony. And every legislator should contrive to do this at once."

Then he deals with the question of poverty

^ The complete saying is : " The things of friends are common, and one's friend is another self."

CITY LIFE IN GREECE 45

and mendicancy. " A man," he says (sec. 936) is not to be pitied who suffers hunger or anything of that kind ; but we should pity a temperate man or one who has some goodness or some particle of goodness, if, having this character, he suffers misfortune. It would accordingly be very strange if a man of this kind were entirely uncared for, so that he came to utter beggary, whether he were a slave or a freeman in even a poorly managed city or commonwealth. There- fore the legislator may safely make a law applicable to cases of this kind in such terms as these : in our city-state let there be no beggar, but if any one attempts to beg, and to make a living by endless petitions, let the wardens of the Agora turn him out of the Agora, and the Office of the wardens of the city turn him out of the city, and let the wardens in the country send him on from there to beyond the boundary, so that the place may be clear of such a creature altogether."

This process of clearing away and sending on the beggars is quite in accordance with early English legislation, though, unless it were Scotland, there was no alien land adjacent to our border into which the beggars could be finally driven. They were sent back to their parish. For the rest the argument is of genera]

46 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

interest. No Poor Law is suggested, because in the case of persons who ought to be assisted, private charity will certainly suffice. The dis- orderly person who has no part of goodness in him should be cleared away as if he were a polluted thing from which the city should be cleansed, as in the rites of purification. No argument is pressed, such as illogically affects our modern sentiment, that if we refuse to allow begging we must make a public provision for the beggar, as an alternative to the livelihood he may gain by begging, The thing is wrong and to be punished out of existence, like any other wrong-doing. No substitute for it is to be considered. A reversion to an ordered life is the only alternative that is conceivable as against expulsion. But if there were in truth that possibility, then the beggar would have some goodness left in him or some particle of goodness sufficient for that object. Thus the position is taken ythat there is a condition of life, entirely disordered or wrecked, which admits of no revival. That Plato recognizes, and so must anyone who' has tried to help men of this class with sufficient knowledge and persistence. In effect in modern times when there remains no place to which to expel this class, this is an argument for some colony such as Merxplas in Belgium — a colony

CITY LIFE IN GREECE 47

of the ill-controlled and intemperate, where they are made as useful as may be.

We have thus a community of landholders,, with relatively small and fixed means, closely supervised and almost ascetic, working with the aid of slaves and hirelings, living in friendship and good cheer, educated to think and to enjoy ; by a fixity of possessions avoiding destitution and ensuring security of maintenance ; by the avoidance of strangers, subjected to no disturb- ance from alien thoughts and unsound doctrines ; by good habits and careful marriages enabled to prevent social decline. The picture is that of a community of the good in an island seclusion. In its very security there is a limitation of sympathy. The recalcitrant is evicted, and the slave, though kindly treated, remains outside the body of citizens. Pro- gress reaches finality, and thus progress itself in its isolation becomes impossible. One fears lest joy should vanish in routine, and love in a finely poised superiority, lest economic social life should be hardened into the trammels of caste, on the one side the elect, on the other the sinful and the servile.

But this is hardly a complete judgment. Every society or association has, for the sake of its own preservation, laws for the expulsion

48 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

of those who according to its standard of thought or purpose are disorderly. This is true of churches and the State, of clubs and of societies. Expulsion may be in part punishment. In part it may be considered reformatory. But in effect the ban of a church or the sentence of death are expulsion pure and simple, the one mortal spiritually, the other mortal bodily. We must in some measure, according to the purpose of our social life, accept this principle. Ameliora- tion has its limits : and men and women who are themselves proven and manifest sources of evil to the community it is but just to withdraw from it, at least till their power for evil be neutralized.

On the other hand, the basis of social life and social reform remain as they are here clearly and, one may say, finally enunciated. No society can reform itself unless within its membership courage, temperance and justice with a kind of wisdom predominate. Later on this is the argument of Cicero and Epictetus, and later still it becomes the moral creed of Christianity. The civilization of a people implies its moraliza- tion. Unless it can make itself moral according to a higher standard, it cannot reform itself to a higher standard, let laws and inspection be what they may.

CHAPTER VI.

PKOVISION AMONG THE GREEKS FOR THE STRANGER AND THE SICK.

We return to charity among the Greeks, two forms of which we have still to mention : charity to the stranger and to the sick. It will be convenient to consider both in relation to the whole classical period.

With the growth of towns the administration of hospitality was elaborated.

There was hospitality between members of families bound by the rites of host and guest. The guest received as a right only shelter and fire. Usually he dined with the host the first day, and if afterwards he was fed, provisions were supplied to him. There were large guest chambers (xenona) or small guest houses, com- pletely isolated on the right or left of the principal house ; and here the guest was lodged. There were also, e.g. at Hieropolis (Prof. W. M. Ramsay's Phrygia, ii. 97), brotherhoods of

50 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

hospitality (xenoi tehmoreioi, bearers of the sign), which made hospitality a duty, and had a common chest and Apollo as their tutelary god. There were inns or resting-places (katagogia) for strangers at temples (Thuc. iii. 68 ; Plato, Laws, 953a) and places of resort (leschai) at or near the temples for the entertainment of strangers — as for instance, at a temple of Askle- pios at Epidaurus (Pausanius, iii. 240). The evidence at present is not perhaps sufficiently complete, but, so far as it goes, it tends to the conclusion that in pre-Christian times hospi- tality was provided to passers-by and strangers in the temple buildings, as later it was furnished in the monasteries and churches.

There were also in towns houses for strangers {xenona) provided at the public cost. This was so at Megara ; and in Crete strangers had a place at the public meals and a dormitory. Xenophon suggested that it would be profitable for the Athenian state to establish inns for traders (katagogia demosia) at Athens. Thus, apart from the official hospitality of the proxenus or ' consul,' who had charge of the affairs of foreigners, and the hospitality which was shown to persons of distinction by states or private individuals, there was in Greece a large provision for strangers, wayfarers, and

THE STRANGER AND THE SICK 51

vagrants based on the charitable sentiment of hospitality. Among the Romans similar customs of private and public hospitality prevailed ; and throughout the empire the older system was altered, probably very slowly. In Christian times (cf. Ramsay above) Pagan temples were (about A.D. 408) utilized for special purposes, including that of hospitality to strangers.

Round the temples, at first probably village temples, the organization of medical relief grew up. Primitive medicine is connected with dreams, worship, and liturgical ' pollution,' punishment and penitence, and an experimental practice. Finally, systematic observation and science (with no knowledge of chemistry and little of physiology) assert themselves, and a secular administration is created by the side of the older religious organization.

Sickness among primitive races is conceived to be a material substance to be extracted, or an evil spirit to be driven away by incantation. Religion and medicine are thus at the beginning almost one and the same thing. In Anatolia, in the groups of villages (cf Ramsay as above, i. 10 1) under the theocratic government of a central hierbn or temple, the god. Men Karou, was the physician and saviour (soter and sozbn) of his people. Priests, prophets and physicians

52 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

were his ministers. He punished wrongdoing by diseases which he taught the penitent to cure. So elsewhere pollution, physical or moral, was chastened by disease and loss of property or children, and further ills were avoided by sacrifice and expiation and public warning.

In the temple and out of this phase of thought grew up schools of medicine, in the practice of which dreams and religious ritual retained a place. The newer gods, Asklepios and Apollo, succeeded the older local divinities; and the 'sons' of Asklepios became a profession, and the temple with its adjacent buildings a kind of hospital. There were many temples of Asklepios in Greece and elsewhere, placed generally in high and salubrious positions. After ablution the patient offered sacrifices, repeating himself the words of the hymn that was chanted. Then, when night came on, he slept in the temple. In the early dawn he was to dream ' the heavenly dream ' which would suggest his cure ; but if he did not dream, relations and others — officials at the temple — might dream for him. At dawn the priests or sons of Asklepios came into the temple and visited the sick, so that, in a kind of drama, where reality and appearance seemed to meet, the patients believed that

THE STRANGER AND THE SICK 53

they saw the god himself. The next morning the prescription and treatment were settled. At hand in the inn or guest chambers of the temple the patient could remain, sleeping again in the temple, if necessary, and carrying out the required regimen. In the temple were votive tablets of cases, popular and awe-in- spiring, and records and prescriptions, which later found their way into the medical works of Galen and others. At the temple of Asklepios at Epidaurus was an inn (Jcatagogion) for visitors to the temple and patients, with four courts and colonnades, and in all 160 rooms. (Of. Pausanius, ii. 171 ; and Report, Archaeol. in Greece, R. C. Bosanquet, 1899, 1900.)

At three centres more particularly, Rhodes, Cnidos, and Cos, were the medical schools of the Asklepiads. If one may judge from an inscription at Athens, priests of Asklepios attended the poor gratuitously. And years afterwards, in the 11th century, when there was a revival of medicine, we find (Ch. Daremberg, La Medecine : Histoire et Doctrines) at Salerno the Christian priest as doctor,, a simple and less palatable pharmacy for the poor than for the rich, and gratuitous medical relief.

Besides the temple schools and hospitals there

54 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

was a secular organization of medical aid and relief. States appointed trained medical men as physicians, and provided for them medical establishments {iatreia, " large houses with large doors full of light") for the reception of the sick; and for operations there were provided beds, instruments, medicines, etc. At these places also pupils were taught. A lower degree of medical establishment was to be found at the barbers' shops. Out-patients were seen at the iatreia. They were also visited at home. There were doctors' assistants and slave doctors. The latter, apparently, attended only slaves (Plato, Leg. iv. 720) ; they do " a great service to the master of the house, who in this manner is relieved of the care of his slaves." It was a precept of Hippocrates, that if a physician came to a town where there were sick poor, he should make it his first duty to attend to them ; and the state physician attended gratuitously any one who applied to him. There were also travelling physicians going rounds to heal children and the poor. These methods continued, probably all of them, to Christian times.

It has been argued that medical practice was introduced into Italy by the Greeks. But the evidence seems to show that there was a

THE STRANGER AND THE SICK 55

quite independent Latin tradition and school of medicine (Rene Brian, " M^decine dans le Latium et a Rome," Rev. ArcheoL, 1885). In Rome there were consulting-rooms and dispen- saries, and houses in which the sick were received. Hospitals are mentioned by Roman writers in the first century a.d. There were infirmaries — detached buildings — for sick slaves; and in Rome, as at Athens, there were slaves skilled in medicine. In Rome also for each regio there was a chief physician who attended to the poorer people.

CHAPTER VII.

THE LEAVEN OF RELIGION.

The conditions of thought which prevailed among the people, and under which these charities were practised, are not at once under- stood, nor is the relation of charity to religion appreciated, unless the growth of religious thought be taken into consideration. The old world of religion in Greek and Roman times is like a changing sea. The waves of feeling and imagination are endless. Their colours and forms shift rapidly, as it seems, in constant and inej0fectual movement. Then sometimes in the midst of this wide expanse of indeterminate changefulness there come at intervals great movements of innovating thought that like leap tides sweep the reaches of the sea and recast its coast lines. Some God, for instance, there may be who is but little known. He is accredited with power. His influence spreads. He ousts other and older Gods. He links his

THE LEAVEN OF RELIGION 57

name to theirs and shares or takes their place. The mind of the worshippers is ever ready to find for him new imaginative affinities, and to assume new identifications. There is no un- naturalness in this. The whole God-atmosphere is what to us would seem abnormal. The personalities of the Gods are vague and unfixed, as vague and variable as the aspirations of the worshippers. As there is no consistency in the one, there is no unity or order in the other. Theology is still theogony. A series of mon- strous births of elemental forces, regarded as personal beings, or of immortalized man-like creatures, makes out of earth the heaven of a confused adoration. The growing reason, the growing morality and civility of man are in fact, however, perpetually adapting, and re-adapt- ing the material of the Universe to consistency with the necessities and standards of human thought. What the soul imagines and what it sees with ever clearer eyes in the world outside itself, it turns continually to new account for its own higher purposes, and for its progress. It moulds these sights and imaginations both into its ways of living and into its ways of worship. Thus ritual, oblation, and prayer find their counterpart in religious contentment and social security.

68 CHARITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

At first the mere recognition of what is strange sufiices for an elemental regard or reverence. A hill or stone is strange in shape. Therefore it in some way impresses the mind. A story is made of it ; or it merely remains a thing of power by reason of its oddity, owing to the feeling that the exceptional is the potent. It becomes a fetish. But even this is a step in the religious consciousness. There is a new idea dimly connected with it. It represents something apart from ourselves which stands over against us and our life. It is hill or stone, but it is also something more. If it goes we are uncomfortable. There is a feeling that something is amiss. We associate our prosperity or failure with it. Like the friendly old-world Lares in the Roman house we may treat our stone as the responsible offender if things go amiss ; but yet though we treat it so ignomini- ously as our creature, it remains a recognition of our belief in a power outside us, in a universe with which we would be in harmony or which we would bring into harmony with us. Our recognition of the stone is indeed a recognition of a higher or different standard than ours. It reacts on our social life and on our morality. It creates by degrees new fears and new duties.

At this stage we are far from the coming of

THE LEAVEN OF RELIGION 59

the Olympian Gods, the Gods associated with a life in high or heavenly places. Hesiod's Gods are Olympian. There are earlier spirits or deities, Pelasgian, not Achaean, of the earth and under the earth, not heavenly. Some, the most primitive, are " Keres," unseen and blight- like things that corrupt, and for the expulsion of which there are ceremonies of riddance (Prolegome7ia to the Study of Greek Religion : J. E. Harrison, 33). In the religious imagina- tion these developed into many sister forms : and there were Fates, Erinnyes and Harpies, and others.

In the Anthesteria at Athens, the festival of the re- vocation, as the word is now interpreted, we find an All Souls Day. The Keres are the ghostlike outcome of the burial cists. The first day of the feast -they come : on the last they are ridded away after " ceremonies of placation and purgation." The offering is primitive, like the worship — grain and seeds — not even wine. In the offering the worshipper did not partake. He fasted and he chewed a purgative plant, branches of which were fastened to the door of his house. The body and the home were purified. Then the world was, as it were, purged of the evil, and the spirits were bidden to leave. The cry was raised "Out of the doors,

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ye Keres : it is no longer Anthesteria " : and the gloom of purgation was over. The Luper- calia is the corresponding Roman feast, occurring in the month of purging — februarius — February, the month corresponding to the Anthesterion in the Greek Calendar. The thought and the ceremonial in many forms are world-wide. Of the Olympic worship, Miss Harrison says, the theory is, do ut des : of this primitive service it is do ut abeas — 1 give that thou mayest go away.

In touch with the deep feeling of the need of annual purification is the long-lingering human sacrifice, even " in civilized Athens of the fifth century " (Harrison, 96). The com- munity was cleansed by the expulsion from it of the Pharmakos, the medicine-man or magic- man, man or woman, or both man and woman. These in later days were criminals reserved for the purpose, and were counted as infected members of society. On them by a theory of substitution was concentred on behalf of the community all that fatal contamination of evil and impurity that would otherwise infect the whole body, and bring to it plagues and famines^

A woman's feast, that of the Thesmophoria, is of another type (Harrison, 120). It is an autumn feast of fertility, held in October or

THE LEAVEN OF RELIGION 61

November. What is done by woman's hand is fertile, according to folk-lore ; and women are agriculturists early. It was a three days' feast : one day was that of down-going and uprising, the next of fasting, and the third of fair birth. On the first day the women went down to hollow places in the earth and under- ground caves and brought up from below rotting portions of swine's flesh that had been placed there before. The next day the women sat fasting on the ground. " The strictness of the fast made it proverbial. On this day prisoners were released, the law courts were closed, the Boule could not meet." The last day the women strewed the rotten flesh on the fields.

The festivals are agricultural and correspond to the seasons. They are a solemn recognition of the larger cosmic life on which the lesser life of human beings depends. But the thought goes further. What is so akin to man is imagined into human forms ; for, to take one of the well known and widely spread myths, the world with its season of fruitage and its season of ploughing and sowing, becomes the myth of the mother and the maid, of Demeter and Persephone. There is thus a new union of nature and man. The worship is one of sympathetic magic. What nature does, the

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worshippers do. What the Gods do is what nature is doing. From this springs a large and apprehensive sympathy between the man and nature. Their oneness is realized. Demeter is the mother of the Spelt (Harrison, 272.) She is the yellow-haired lady of the corn. The offering to her is a peasant's dish, a cup of thin porridge of barley-meal and water, made tasty with the penny-royal or mint that one might find by any ditch or swampy corner of the cornfield. If she does not come, there is hunger and want. And when she is cut down and gone, there is blank winter time, for, as the maid, she passes underground, when the ploughings are done, and the seed is sown. Or we may think of her, not as one deity in two persons, but as mother of the corn, with Persephone, the death-bearer, as her daughter. For the sowing is death ; and the mother is disconsolate and wanders the world over (Calli- machus : Hymn to Demeter, 14), out to the West, to the black races of Africa, and " where the golden apples are," then thrice across Achelous and the rivers of Greece, and thrice to the earth's centre. Henna in Sicily. Beside Callichorus, the spring of beautiful dances, near Eleusis, athirst, yet without quenching her thirst, thrice she sat on the ground ; and she neither ate

THE LEAVEN OF RELIGION 63

nor performed ablutions. She is the mother of sorrows and toil and expectation, suffering a long fast. Then her daughter comes up to her again in the springing corn. And she has, as her civil counterpart in the world, a wise hero- king in whom she implants the love of farming — Triptolemus the thrice plougher, who ploughs in winter, spring and summer (p. 275). So at last Demeter after sorrow is made perfect in joy at the festivals of harvest : but her daughter becomes to the imagination the maid of death, the inscrutable death which is not death, but which as a witness of revival at springtime pushes green and tender blades of corn into an upper world. "It is not surprising that a religion like Orphism which concerned itself with the abnegation of this world and the life of the soul hereafter, laid hold rather of the figure of the underworld Kore (maid), and left the prosperous, genial, corn-mother to make her way alone into Olympus" — to become from an earth spirit a deity in the respectable world of blissful Olympus. And at last the sweet heart of the tale becomes lost. It passes away from the common people and becomes formalized.

Two elements then we have that make for the growth of religious thought and for charity — purification and sympathy. The puri-

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fication is ritual purification, but by implication in it lies the moral also ; and in the course of time alms-deeds are regarded as a kind of ritual ofifering which will like an oblation purify the life. There is also the sympathy with sorrow. In the worship of Isis later we find it again. And the sympathy of man increases its circle, as we shall see, prompted step by step by a clearer conception of religious obliga- tion.

The later, the Achaean element, is anthro- pomorphic. The Gods, it is felt, are not forces merely, like darkness and winter and death, and sunlight, and spring, and life. In some way they are like-minded with ourselves — and we imagine them alike in body ; but they transcend us, and are all-powerful. The hero is God-like, and may become a God. The sacrifice to these Gods is that of a common meal. There is an understanding that if the right offerings are made the worshipper will be considered and may share the sacrifice. The offering is of flesh. The oblation of fruits no longer suffices for the God, as it no longer suffices for the man ; and the sacrifices may be accessory to a dinner or a feast or a dis- tribution of food. Public sacrifices are con- stant. The sacrifice — worship — and the meal

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are associated. Wliere there is a feast the beggars come.

Out of this religion — on the Olympian level — comes Zeus, the paramount God, and by a process of logical elucidation ultimately the one and only God : and, as typically Greek, we may take Apollo as the best example of a great but subordinate God. Apollo renders to man the services of which man in social life most stands in need. He is the son of Zeus. He is the light bringer, the Sun. " The beginning of all things and the end he comprehends, and for the shining plectrum of his lyre he has the sun- light" {Plutarch on the Pythian Oracles, 402). He is good and chaste.^ He is the inspirer of good and beautiful thoughts. He leads the Muses. He is a God of healing. He wards off evil. He is the counsellor. His oracles guide states and men in their perplexities. He is a Lord of quick and far-reaching justice. He is brave. He is the slayer of the Python, the snake worshipped in the old earth religion. His wisdom is practical as the wisdom of Ulysses, but he is without guile or intrigue. He is the God of har- mony, of the lyre and the stately dance ; and he is beautiful. He is the good and supremely gifted Greek glorified and made immortal.

* Plutarch on the E at Delphi: 20. E

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So does the Olympian worship serve in the process of growth. It strikes a higher, a more intellectual, note. It brings the Gods into a friendly partnership. It leads ultimately to that great reform in the thought of humanity — the realization that God is one. This came through the philosophers, or in part through them. It was a moralizing of all things. There can be in God no variableness, no shadow of turning. He must be at one with himself. To be God-like is to be perfect. In him are realized the endeavours of morality. A new conception of the son-ship of God appears on the world's horizon like a figure in a dream.

It is hardly too much to say that, till this thought of the oneness of God became dominant, charity in its fullest sense could hardly be. With it there came a standard of judgment now first applicable to social life. With the unity of God came the thought that all men are spiritually of one kith and kin. This is the groundwork of charity.

But the leaven of the older worships still worked among the people at large. They were not philosophers, they felt their way by symbo- lism and by emotion. They found the expression of part of their thought in two religious move- ments that associate themselves with the older

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conceptions — with "a reading of earth" — as George Meredith would have said. There is the worship of Dionysos and the worship of the grape. The grape has come as a new invention. Demeter refuses the cup of the "red, red wine" that her hostess Metaneira first offers her. She is of an earlier date. Her peasants did not offer her wine, any more than they sacrificed to her sheep or oxen. Now the Wine God has come. He has at first no share in the family- state of the Olympian Gods in their serene sky- land above the mountain tops. He is the God of intoxication (Harrison, 447), wild inspirations, excitement, and rhapsody. His worshippers, possessed by him, exult in the beauty and joy of the mere life of woods and mountains and wild animals, or like wild animals are tossed about and lose themselves in brutal frenzy, and tear and rend creatures wild like themselves. As human beings they may become disordered, violent, uncontrolled in their passions, degraded. A brutal sacrificial rite, afterwards explained and so in a manner made reasonable by the story of Zagreus, was the culmination of this worship, the tearing and eating of the raw flesh of a bull. The bull consecrated represents, is identified with, Dionysos or Bacchos. Dionysos takes the form of a bull. Then Orpheus appears to come

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as a reformer (pp. 475, 476, 502, etc.). He is not a being of the imagination, but a man. Symbolism in his hands elevates the ceremonial and cloaks its brutality. The worshippers eating the raw flesh do not share merely in an offered sacrifice, but they partake of the life of the God himself The worshipper himself became Bacchos (p. 433). Thus, by a strange conversion of thought, there is wrought into this savage ceremony the twofold conception of an in- spired life. The physical intoxication was thought to pass away in a spiritual fervour, and the feast of flesh to resolve itself into a participation in the life of the God.

The Orphic element assumes many forms and influences the worship of many deities. At Athens they called Dionysos lacchus. He was the celebrant God of the Eleusinian mysteries, the mysteries of Demeter. He was the Son-God. He was Dionysos as the babe at the breast, the ever-new yearly entrant into life. He repre- sented " just so much of the religion of Dionysos as the imaginative Athenian could face" (p. 544). The mysteries of Demeter at Eleusis retained their old character as a harvest festival. The initiated confessed to having fulfilled a certain harvest ritual. The " fresh ear of grain was reaped," and there was, it would seem, a mimetic

THE LEAVEN OF RELIGION 69

marriage, and a sacred child (pp. 550-552), the ear of corn in the harvesting world of the fruits, the child in the harvesting world of life. Each was holy. It was a confession that the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof. The tale was told in drama or mystery play. lacchus, the mystic child, was the celebrant. Orphic reforms went far, even, it would appear, to an abandon- ment of the animal sacrifice itself.

Orpheus is the sweet singer of a reformed religion. The people were charmed by his hymns. " Nor shall anyone in our City State" — Plato wrote in his Laws — " dare to sing a song which has not been approved by the judgment of the guardians of the laws, not even if his strain be sweeter than the songs of Thamyras and of Orpheus" (Laws, 829). Plato recognizes the sweetness of the song, even while he looks for safeguards against its having an unlicensed run in his Colony. And there is (Laws, 782) this other suggestive comment : " We hear of other human beings who do not even venture to taste the flesh of a cow and have no animal sacrifices, but only cakes and fruit soaked in honey and similar pure offerings, but no flesh or animals ; from these they abstain, under the idea that they ought not to eat them, and may not stain the altars of the Gods with blood. In

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those days men are said to have lived a sort of Orphic life, having the use of all lifeless things, but abstaining from all living things." So the Dionysian worship changes. The intoxi- cation is now of music. The sacrifice of the bull passes away. Its place is taken by the bloodless sacrifice. Quietness or order are to prevail in the mysteries (Harrison, 476). The worshipper is to be temperate, ascetic even. Orpheus' doctrine is monotheist ; it includes a belief in an after-life, in which, except for the * holy,' there have to be cycles of delay and purgation before the creature " becomes God instead of mortal." Orpheus is the cherisher (p. 595) of the young and delicate, of nurslings, of lambs ; and on the vases he is drawn with a lamb on his shoulders. To the Christians he seemed another " Good Shepherd." He met with death, as the story goes, at the hands of the wild followers of Dionysos, the Maenads. They tore him to pieces, the intruding reformer and innovator, and the hearts of his worshippers are moved to grief at the tale of his sorrowful death. This new phase of religion also finds its expression in sympathy with suffering.

With this change the sympathies of man to man are enlarged. There is a finer charity, and religion, instead of being non-moral or licentious,

THE LEAVEN OF RELIGION 71

now schools men in moderation and personal morality. There is what we call a sense of sin. The after-world becomes a place not of imprison- ment but of purgation — during cycles of after- existence. But the ' pure ' soul may pass into the bliss of the ' circle desired ' at once. In part this is a ritual purity, but in part it is moral purity also, purity of soul. The need of a fulfil- ment of duty in all relations of life is recognized. Of a kindred religious mysticism in the worship of Osiris and Isis is the Egyptian Book of the Dead to which we refer later.

But the Orphic worship has yet another signi- ficant feature. Dr. Gomperz {Greek Thinkers, i. 135) points out that " the religious crisis " which it represents " was clearly the reflex of a social crisis. It was the accompaniment of the battle of the classes which filled the seventh century and part of the sixth in the towns throughout the Greek world." Orphicism took its rise among the middle-classes, and not among the nobles. A prominent trait in the creed of its adherents was their horror of bloodshed, and this moral idea points to a class of society which neither yearned for warlike renown nor was famous for its prowess in arms. The reaction from endless civic feuds would be found in a new regard for peace. As in the Aeneid, after more than a

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century of pitiless personal warfare and faction in the Roman world, the misery of bloodshed and destruction was realised afresh, and sadness, it was felt, waited upon the glory of victory ; so here strife and conflict led to a religion of peace. Another feature too there is. Pythagoras (born probably about 582 B.C.) is Orphic. He was a philosopher who found his satis- faction in a religion which became associated with his name. He is not a critic of religion merely, but equally philosopher and worshipper. He appears, like several other sages, as the travel- ling scholar of an inquisitive age. He visited Egypt, and may have came into touch with India and Buddhism. He had for students and friends parable sayings, which he used to test their quickness and insight. There are some sixteen of them left. Two are : " Do not bear the image of a God on a ring," which may perhaps be inter- preted : bear the image within. And " Do not cherish swallows under your roof" : have friends that will not fly from you. These were called his ' symbols.' He had a majestic bearing, like that of a god. He seemed like an Apollo. He was of the large heroic build. He was musician and man of science. He discovered " the depend- ence of the pitch of sound on the length of the vibrating chord." He discovered that the square

THE LEAVEN OF RELIGION 73

of the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle was equal to the squares on the sides containing the right angles ; and he offered up, so it is said, a hecatomb to the Gods in honour of his dis- covery. He mastered man. He was initiated, it was said, in all the sacred mysteries of Greeks and barbarians.

He had a great capacity for friendship. The saying is his : ** The things of friends are common ; and friendship is equality." If he heard of any one who had used one of his symbols, straight- way he made a companion of him and made him a friend. His sayings seem to have had a vogue in his life-time, and to have passed round the world. He founded a social brotherhood on the basis of friendship. His disciples used to "lay up all their property in store and use it in common " (Diogenes, Laertes, viii. 8). They had a five years' course of study during which they listened to addresses and kept silence. Till they were approved they did not see Pythagoras.

The following notes are marks of his teaching, teaching that was evidently interfused with re- ligion. He did not allow prayers for oneself, for one did not know what was good for one (Dio- genes, Laertes, viii. 6, 19). Strong drink, he said, the mind in its flower calls ruin. He disapproved of all excess, for no one should exceed a due

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proportion in toil or in food. He counselled self-restraint and chastity. He counselled the introspective life. When they returned home his disciples were to ask themselves : " In what have I transgressed : what have I done : what that I ought to have done have I not accomplished." These are some of his sayings: "Honour Gods more than daimons, heroes more than men ; and of men honour our parents above all. Associate with one another not in order to make friends into enemies, but to make enemies friends. Count nothing your own. Be the auxiliaries of law : make war against lawlessness. Modesty and dis- cretion is — not to be overwhelmed with laughter nor yet to be of a sad countenance. Flee excess in flesh. In your wayfaring let rest succeed effort. Cultivate the memory. In anger say naught and do naught. Honour all prophecy. Use songs set to the lyre. With a hymn to Gods and good men give your reasonable thanks."

And of offerings he said : " Cease to off'er up victims to the Gods ; worship only at a bloodless altar. Nor swear by the Gods, but be disciplined and show yourself to be worthy of credence (with- out an oath)." "At Delos Pythagoras worshipped only at the altar of Apollo the Father, because wheat and barley and cakes were offered there, and no victim had ever been slain there."

THE LEAVEN OF RELIGION 75

Thus we have seen the springs of friendship and charity. Charity grows as religion develops. We pass from the ritual of the banning and banishing of unclean things to a religion of sympathy with nature and not a mere dread of her. Eeligion makes room for sorrow ; and amongst other forms which the ritual of the wor- shippers takes is that of a kind of nature-acting, in which there is sorrow and joy — made personal in a divine being — the mother and maid. Then the Olympians conquer a place in the old world of spirits and shapeless unpersonified deities ; and from their victory eventually there emerges a single paramount God, who is a God of justice. But the undergrowth of the Earth Gods continues, and religion — the inner religion of the common people — is humanized by degrees. The wildness of Bacchic orgies disappears. Intoxication, is superseded by inspiration. Music orders all things, and the Maenads are succeeded by the Muses. Orpheus rules instead of Dionysos. The claim of duty becomes clearer, and of the good and the initiated a large spirit of charity is expected, and deeds worthy of the spirit. The religion retains what is indeed but a necessary part of it, its tragic story, whether of Demeter, or Dionysos, or Orpheus, or Isis. All objects of religious reverence must pass into our human

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world and bear their sorrows there, and so share our sympathy and give us their aid. Apollo even must work as a farm servant for Admetus. Pythagoras touches religion with philosophy. Orphic becomes Pythagorean. Religion becomes more expressly a kind of life. The bloody sacrifices are superseded by the old earth ofi'er- ings of wheat and barley and cakes ; and in social life the reformer would build society out of friend- ship and turn enemies to friends. From a new quarter come words like " Love thy neighbour as thyself": "Friends, things are in common: to love one's friends is to love oneself."

GHAPTER VIII.

CHARITY AND SLAVERY.

Slavery was so large a factor in pre-Christian and early Christian society that a word should be said on its relation to charity. Indirectly it was a cause of poverty and social degradation. Thus in the case of Athens, with the achieve- ment of maritime supremacy the number of slaves increased greatly. Manual arts were despised as unbecoming to a citizen, and the slaves carried on the larger part of the agri- cultural and industrial work of the community ; and for a time — until after the Peloponnesian war (404 B.C.) — slavery was an economic success. But by degrees the slave, it would seem, dispossessed the citizen and rendered him unfit for competition. The position of the free artisan thus became akin to that of the slave (Arist. Pol. 1260a, etc.), and slavery became the industrial method of the country. Though

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Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Christians spent money in ransoming individual slaves, and also enfranchised many, no general abolition of slavery was possible. By degrees, here earlier, there later, through economic changes slavery or serfdom was superseded in agriculture by the status of the coloni, who were attached to the soil, but paid as rent part of the produce of the land they tilled. Household slavery lasted long. (Cf. Article on Slavery, Brit, Encycl. 1887.)

In Greece the feeling towards the slave became constantly more humane. Real slavery, Aristotle said, was a cast of mind, not a condition of life. The slave was not to be ordered about, but to be commanded and persuaded like a child. The master was under the strongest obligation to promote his welfare. In Rome, on the other hand, slavery continued to the end a massive, brutal, industrial force — a standing danger to the state. But alike in Greece and Rome the influence of slavery on the family was in the main pernicious. The pompous array of domestic slaves, the transfer of motherly duties to slave nurses, the loss of that homely education which for most people comes only from the practical details of life — all this prevented the permanent invigoration

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and reform of family life which iu the later empire Jewish and Christian influences might otherwise have produced.^

^ Cf. Wallon, Hist, de Vesclavage dans VantiquiU ; and Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero : W. Warde Fowler, p. 204.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAEITY IN ROMAN TIMES.

The words that suggest most clearly the Roman attitude towards what we call charity are liberalitas, heneficentia, and pietas. The two former are almost synonymous (Cic. de Offic. i. 7, 14). Liberality lays stress on the mood — that of the liber, the freeborn, and so in a sense the independent and superior; beneficence on the deed and its purpose (Seneca, de Benef. vi. 10). The conditions laid down by Cicero, following Panoetius the Stoic (185- 112 B.C.) are three : not to do harm to him whom one would benefit, not to exceed one's means, and to have regard to merit. The character of the person whom we would benefit should be considered, his feelings towards us, the interest of the community, our social relations in life, and services rendered in the past. The utility of the deed or gift, graded ac- cording to social relationship and estimated

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in some degree from tlie point of view of its advantage to the doer or donor, has its place in the argument of the book, though (cf Arist. Eth. viii. 3) the idea culminates in the completeness of friendship where ' all things are in common.' Pietas has the re- ligious note which the other words lack, loving dutifulness to gods, home, and country. Not ' piety ' only but ' pity ' derive from it : thus it comes near to our ' charity.' This by way of introduction. To the great philosophic and literary movement that aimed at the preservation of the strength and responsibility of Roman social life we refer later.

As from the point of view of charity the well-being of the community depends upon the vigour of the deep-laid elemental life within it, so in passing to Roman times we consider the family first. The Roman family was unique in its completeness. The father alone had independent authority (sui juris), and so long as he lived all who were under his power — his wife, his sons, and their wives and children, and his unmarried daughters — could not acquire any property of their own. Failing father or husband, the unmarried daughters were placed under the guardianship

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of the nearest male members of the family. Thus the family, in the narrower sense in which we commonly use the word, as meaning descendants of a common father or grandfather, was, as it were, a single point of growth in a larger organism, the gens, which consisted of all those who shared a common ancestry.

The wife, though in law the property of her husband, held a position of honour and influence higher than that of the Greek wife, at least in historic times. She seems to come nearer to the ideal of Xenophon : " the good wife should be the mistress of everything within the house." "A house of his own and the blessing of children appeared to the Roman citizen as the end and essence of life" (Mommsen, Hist. Rome). The obligation of the father to the sons was strongly felt. The family, past, present, and future, was conceived as one and indivisible. Each succeeding generation had a right to the care of its predecessor in mind, body, and estate. The training of the sons was distinctively a home and not a school training. Brought up by the father and con- stantly at his side, they learnt spontaneously the habits and traditions of the family. The home was their school. By their father they were introduced into public life, and though

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still remaining under his power during his life- time, they became citizens, and their relation to the state was direct. The nation was a nation of yeomen. Only agriculture and war- fare were considered honourable employments. The father and sons worked outdoors on the farm, employing little or no slave labour ; the wife and daughters indoors at spinning and weaving. The drudgery of the household was done by domestic slaves. The father was the working head of a toiling household. Their chief gods were the same as those of early Greece — Zeus-Diovis and Hestia-Vesta, the goddess of the hearth and home. Out of this solid, compact family Roman society was built, and so long as the family was strong attachment to the service of the state was intense. The res publica, the common weal, the phrase and the thought, meet one at every turn ; and never were citizens more patient and tenacious combatants on their country's behalf. The men were soldiers in an unpaid militia and were constantly engaged in wars with the rivals of Rome, leaving home and family for their campaigns and returning to them in the winter. With a hardness and closeness inconsistent with — indeed, opposed to — the charitable spirit, they combined the

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strength of character and sense of justice without which charity becomes sentimental and unsocial. In the development of the family, and thus, indirectly, in the development of the good life, they stand for settled obligation and unrelenting duty.

Under the protection of the head of the family ' in dependent freedom ' lived the clients. They were in a middle position between the freemen and the slaves. The relation between patron and client lasted for several generations ; and there were many clients. Their number increased as state after state was conquered, and they formed the plehs, in Rome the ^^Zets urhana, the lower orders of the city.

In relation to our subject the important factors are the family, the plehs, and slavery.

Two processes were at work from an early date, before the first agrarian law (486 B.C.) : the impoverishment of the plehs, and the increase of slavery. The former led to the annona civica, or the supply of corn to the citizens, and to the sportula, or the organized food-supply for poor clients, and ultimately to the alimentarii pueri, the maintenance of children of citizens by voluntary and imperial bounty. The latter — slavery — was the standing witness that, as self- support was undermined, the task of relief

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became hopeless, and the impoverished citizen, as the generations passed, became in turn dependent, beggar, pauper, and slave.

The great patrician families — ' an oligarchy of warriors and slaveholders' — did not them- selves engage in trade, but, entering on large speculations, employed as their agents their clients, libertini or freedmen, and, later, their slaves. The constant wars, for which the soldiers of a local militia were eventually retained in permanent service, broke up the yeomanry and very greatly reduced their number. Whole families of citizens became impoverished, and their lands were in consequence sold to the great patrician families, members of which had acquired lucrative posts, or prospered in their speculations, and assumed possession of the larger part of the land, the ager puhlicus, acquired by the state through conquest. The city had always been the centre of the patrician families, the patrons of the trading libertini and other dependents. To it now flocked as well the metoeci, the resident aliens from the conquered states, and the poorer citizens, landless and unable for social reasons to turn to trade. There was thus in Rome a growing multitude of aliens, dispossessed yeomen, and dependent clients. As the population increased the poorer

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classes came to live in large ill-built tenement- houses, and all the conditions of need and struggle in an overcrowded city came into existence, qualified, however, by good drainage, a good supply of water, and baths and good pave- ments. Simultaneously slavery increased very largely after the second Punic war (202 B.a). Every conquest brought slaves into the market, for whom ready purchasers were found. The slaves took the place of the freemen upon many old family estates, and in many large districts the free country people became extinct. Hus- bandry gave place to shepherding. The estates were thrown into large domains {latifundia), managed by bailiffs and worked by slaves, often fettered or bound by chains, lodged in cells in houses of labour (ergastula), and sometimes cared for when ill in infirmaries {valetudinaria). In Crete and Sparta the slaves toiled that the mass of citizens might have means and leisure. In Rome the slave class was organized for private and not for common ends. In Athens the citizens were paid for their services; at Rome there were no paid offices. Thus the citizen at Rome was, one might almost say, forced into a dependence on the public corn, for as the large properties swallowed up the smaller, and the slave dispossessed the citizen, a population

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grew up unfit for rural toil, disinclined to live by methods that pride considered sordid, unstable and pleasure-loving, and yet a serious political factor, as dependent on the rich for their enjoy- ments, as they were on their patrons or the prefect of the corn in the city for their food.

In the year 5 a.d. Augustus distributed a largess to the plehs urbana, who were then, according to the Ancyrean monument, stated to number 320,000 : but who exactly were included in that term, and whether they included only the plehs in the old city or that also in the suburbs, we do not know. (C£ Die Uher- volherung der antiken Grossstddte, Pohlmann, p. 22.) But this at least they represent, the number of persons whom in round numbers the authorities entered under the name oi plehs urbana as recipients of a largess : and in that sense they give us some idea of the number of dependent persons in Rome.

The population of Rome we may picture as consisting of patrician families and wealthy or money -making men of the Equestrian Order ministered to by a very large number of slaves, and a populace of needy citizens, in whose ranks it was profitable for an outsider to find a place in order that he might participate in the advantages of state maintenance.

CHAPTER X.

THE ANNONA CIVICA.

In Rome the clan-family became the dominant political factor. As in England and elsewhere in the Middle Ages, and even in later times, the family in these circumstances assumes an influence which is out of harmony with the common good. The social advantage of the family lies in its self-maintenance, its home charities, and its moral and educational force, but if its separate interests are made supreme, it becomes uncharitable and unsocial. In Rome this was the line of development. The stronger clan-families crushed the weaker, and became the ' oligarchy of warriors and slaveholders.' In the same spirit they possessed themselves of the ager publicus. The land obtained by the Romans by right of conquest was public. It belonged to the state, and to a yeoman state it was the most valuable acquisition. At first part of it was sold and part was distributed

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to citizens without property and destitute (cf. Plutarch, Tib. Gracchus). At a very early date, however (493 B.C.), the patrician families acquired possession of much of it and held it at a low rental, and thus the natural outlet for a con- quering farmer race was monopolized by one class, the richer clan-families. This injustice was in part remedied by the establishment of colonies, in which the emigrant citizens received sufficient portions of land. But these colonies were comparatively few, and after each conquest the rich families made large purchases, while the smaller proprietors, whose services as soldiers were constantly required, were unable to attend to their lands or to retain possession of them. To prevent this (367 B.C.) the Licinian law was passed, by which public occupations of land were limited to 500 jugera, about 312 acres. This law was ignored, however, and more than two centuries later the evil, the double evil of the dispossession of the citizen farmer and of slavery, reached a crisis. The slave war broke out (134 B.C.), and (133 B.c.) Tiberius Gracchus made his attempt to re-endow the Roman citizens with the lands which they had acquired by conquest.

The circumstances were in many ways excep- tional. After the fall of Carthage there was

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apparently a long period of impoverishment and depression. This may have been due in part to the destruction of capital and of human lives in a long and continuous war, and to the stop- page of the demand for war supplies on a large scale. It has been argued that it was due to foreign competition in corn, which the policy of the Gracchi in instituting a regular corn service and selling it to the people at a reduced rate fostered. But, on the other hand, it is stated apparently on good grounds (G. Ferrero, Gran- deur et Decadence de Rome, French ed. i. 45, etc.; ii. 405) that there was little or no spon- taneous economic importation of corn in ancient times (see the arrangements at Athens, ante), and that in the case of all large cities it had to be imported by some kind of special service or under some special regulations. The facilities of modern commerce were unknown. Transit v/as costly, and corn, under normal circumstances, was not, compared with other merchandise, a lucrative import. It is suggested therefore that the impoverishment was due, in part at least, to the rise in the demand for more luxury, and more expensive food, and for more pleasure, out of proportion to the general resources of the country and the resources of individuals. This is a reasonable supposition. A similar change

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in England at the present time affects the pro- blem of poverty very greatly. New wants which seem indispensable may very easily out- strip new resources ; and thus a poverty may arise and be deeply felt which to a previous generation would have appeared factitious.

In circumstances such as these Tiberius Gracchus undertook what was essentially a charitable or philanthropic movement, which was set on foot too late. He had passed through Tuscany, and seen with resentment and pity the deserted country where the foreign slaves and barbarians were now the only shepherds and cultivators. He had been brought up under the influence of Greek Stoical thought, with which, almost in spite of itself, there was always associated an element of pity. The problem which he desired to solve difl'ered from that with which Solon and Peisistratus had dealt successfully. They had to deal with small landowners who were hopelessly encumbered with debt, and to reorganize the conditions of land tenure. He had to bring back to the private use of one class land of which another class had in the course of years constantly deprived it. His was the harder task. The close of the Punic War brought back to Italy large numbers of soldiers who had been accus-

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tomed to years of campaigning. Many of them would naturally pass into the city, and thus a yet larger mass of idle or ill-employed labour would be congested there. Many of them might settle in the country. But apart from this there was also a demand from other citizens for settlement ; and it seemed right that if possible citizens and free men should supersede slaves in the cultivation of the land. But the land, however, had in large part been occupied by the wealthy families, and the available supply of it had become limited. At bottom the issue lay between private property, considered as the ibasis of family life for the great bulk of the community, with personal independence, and pauperism, with the annona, or slavery. In 133 B.C. Tiberius Gracchus became tribune. To expand society on the lines of private property, he proposed the enforcement of ' the Licinian Rogations ' ; the rich were to give up all beyond their rightful 312 acres, and the remainder was to be distributed amongst the poor (penes). The measure was carried by the use of arbitrary powers, and followed by the death of Tiberius at the hands of the patricians, the dominant clan-families. The law was put in operation, and " the number of landowning citizens on the census roll rose rapidly in the next ten

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years " (cf. History of Rome, J. L. Myres, pp. 325, etc.), but it was practically too late. The occupation of the property had become for the most part settled. It had exchanged hands. For the most part it could not be resettled, even at the cost of much contention and of what amounted to a renewal of injustice. For present justice could not remodel the past without measures that were themselves unjust to the intervening generations. In 123 B.C. Caius Gracchus, the brother of Tiberius, was elected a Tribune, and as part of a large scheme of politi- cal and social reform, he proposed measures for emigration and for relief. The scheme in part was carried, but whether to the ultimate advan- tage of the City State may well be considered doubtful. The measures for relief may have had for their object to bring into quietness the unstable and irresponsible plebs of the city. They may have been suggested by the contemporary conditions of great states, where citizens were in part supported from public funds. Perhaps in proposing them there was some element of com- miseration, like that which affected Tiberius Gracchus when he saw " the deserted state of the country, and that the cultivators and shepherds were foreign slaves and barbarians." But, how- ever this may be, the relief measures were

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apparently acceptable to all parties, and they continued in force long after C. Gracchus had been slain (121 B.C.). Already at times there had been sales of corn at cheap prices. Now by the lex frumentaria he gave the citizens — those who had the Roman franchise — the right to purchase corn every month from the public stores at rather more than half-price, 6^ asses, or about 3"3d. , the peck. This fatal measure was accepted, and henceforth for the lower classes, the urban plebs, there was no possibility of a reversion to better social conditions.

The provisioning of Rome was, like that of Athens, a public service. There were public granaries (267 B.C.), and there was a quaestor to supervise the transit of the corn from Sicily and, later, from Spain and Africa, and an elaborate administration for collecting and conveying it. The lex frumentaria of Caius was followed by the lex Octavia, restricting the monthly sale to citizens settled in Rome, and to 5 modii (l\ bushels). According to Poly bins, the amount required for the main- tenance of a slave was 5 modii a month, and of a soldier 4. Hence the allowance, if continued at this rate, was practically a maintenance. The lex Clodia (58 B.C.) made the corn gratuitous to the plebs urbana.

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Julius Caesar (5 B.C.) found the number of recipients to be 320,000, and reduced tbem to 150,000. In Augustus's time they rose to 200,000. There seems, however, to be some confusion as to the numbers. From the Ancyranum Monumentum it appears that the plebs urhana who received Augustus's dole of 60 denarii (37s. 6d.) in his eighth consulship numbered 320,000. And (Suet. Caes. 41) it seems likely that in Caesar's time the lists of the recipients were settled by lot; further, probably only those who were of a lower status than that of the equites, those whose property was worth less than 400,000 seste7'ces (£3540) were placed on the lists. It is probable, therefore, that 320,000 represents a maximum, reduced for purposes of administration to a smaller number (a) by a property test, and (h) by some kind of scrutiny. The names of those certified to receive the corn were exposed on bronze tablets. They were thus called aerarii. They had tickets {tesserae) for purposes of identification, and they received the corn or bread in the time of the republic at the temple of Ceres, and afterwards at steps in the several (14) regions or wards of Rome. Hence the bread was called panis gradilis. In the middle of the second century there were state bakeries, and wheaten

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loaves were baked for the people perhaps two or three times a week. In Aurelian's time (a.d. 270) the flour was of the best, and the weight of the loaf (one uncia) was doubled. To the gifts of bread were added pork, oil, and possibly wine ; clothes also — white tunics with long sleeves — were distributed. In the period after Constantine (d. 337, cf Theod. Code, xiv. 15) three classes received the bread — the palace people {^'palatini), soldiers [militares), and the populace (populares). No distribution was per- mitted except at the steps. Each class had its own steps in the several wards. The bread at one step could not be transferred to another step. Each class had its own supply. There were arrangements for the exchange of stale loaves. Against misappropriation there were (law of Valentinian and Yalens) severe penalties. If a public prosecutor (actor), a collector of the revenue (procurator), or the slave of a senator obtained bread with the cognizance of the clerk, or by bribery, the slave, if his master was not a party to the offence, had to serve in the state bakehouse in chains. If the master were involved, his house was confiscated. If others who had not the right obtained the bread, they and their property were placed at the service of the bakery (pistrini exercitio

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suhjugari). If they were poor (pauperes) they were enslaved, and, if the delinquent was a client, he was to be put to death.

The right to relief was dependent on the right of citizenship. Hence it became hereditary and passed from father to son. It was thus in the nature of a continuous endowed charity, like the well-known family charity of Smith, for instance, in which a large property was left to the testator's descendants, of whom it was said that as a result no Smith of that family could fail to be poor. But the annona civica was an endowed charity, affecting not a single family, but the whole population. Later, when Constantinople was founded, the right to relief was attached to new houses as a premium on building operations. Thus it belonged not to persons only, but also to houses, and became a species of ' immovable ' property, passing to the purchaser of the house or property, as would the adscript slaves. The bread followed the house (aedes sequantur annonae). If, on the transfer of a house, bread claims were lost owing to the absence of claimants, they were transferred to the treasury {Jisci virihus vindicentur). But the savage law of Valentinian, referred to above, shows to what lengths such a system was pushed. Early in

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its history the annona civica attracted many to Rome in the hope of living there without working. For the 400 years since the lex Clodia was enacted constant injury had been done by it, and now (a.d. 364) people had to be kept off the civic bounty as if they were birds of prey, and the very poor man (pau- perrimus) who had no civic title to the food, if he obtained it by fraud, was enslaved. Thus, in spite of the abundant state relief, there had grown up a class of the very poor, the Gentiles of the state, who were outside the sphere of its ministrations. The annona civica was introduced not only into Constantinople, but also into Alexandria, with baleful results, and into Antioch. When Constantinople was founded the corn-ships of Africa sailed there instead of to Rome. On charitable relief, as we shall see, the aymona has had a long- continued and fatal influence.

The method suggests these considerations : 1. If the Government holds itself respon- sible for provisioning the people it must fix the price of necessaries, and to meet distress or popular clamour it will lower the price. It becomes thus a large relief society for the supply of corn. In a time of distress, when the corn laws were a matter of moment in England, a

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similar system was adopted in the well-known Speenhamland scale (1795), by which a larger or lesser allowance was given to a family according to its size and the prevailing price of corn. A maintenance was thus provided for the able-bodied and their families, at least in part, without any equivalent in labour ; though in England labour was demanded of the applicant, and work was done more or less perfunctorily. In amount the Roman dole seems to have been equivalent to the allowance provided for a slave, but the citizen received it without having to do any labour task. He received it as a statutory right. There could hardly be a more effective method for degrading his manhood and denaturalizing his family. He was also a voter, and the alms appealed to his weakness and indolence ; and the fear of displeasing him and losing his vote kept him, socially, master of the situation, to his own ruin. If in England now relief were given to able-bodied persons who retained their votes, this evil would also attach to it.

2. The system obliged the hardworking to maintain the idlers, while it continually increased their number. The needy teacher in Juvenal, instead of a fee, is put off with a tessera, to which, not being a citizen, he has no right.

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"The foreign reapers," it was said, "filled Rome's belly and left Rome free for the stage and the circus." The freeman had become a slave — "stupid and drowsy, to whom days of ease had become habitual, the games, the circus, the theatre, dice, eating-houses, and brothels." Here are all the marks of a degraded pauperism.

3. The system led the way to an ever more extensive slavery. The man who could not live on his dole and other scrapings had the alternative of becoming a slave. " Better have a good master than live so distressfully " ; and "If I were free I should live at my own risk;- now I live at yours," are expressions sugges- tive of the natural temptations of slavery in these conditions. The escaped slaves returned to 'their manger.' The annona did not prevent destitution. It was a half-way house to slavery.

4. Conquest was a way of obtaining food for the people. To open out the granaries of con- quered lands was to ensure the supply of food for the urban populations of the large cities. Still, so far as the home supplies of corn went, or might have been extended, the effect on agricul- ture, and proportionally on commerce generally, must have been very injurious, if not ruinous. The largest corn-market, Rome, was withdrawn

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from the trade — the market to which all the necessaries of life would naturally have gravi- tated ; and the supply of corn was placed in the hands of producers at a few centres where it could be grown most cheaply — Sicily, Spain, and Africa. The Italian farmer had to turn his attention to other produce— the cultivation of the olive and the vine, and cattle and pig rearing. The greater the extension of the system the more impossible was the regeneration of Rome.

5. The method was the outcome of distress and political hopelessness. Yet the rich also adopted it in distributing their private largess. Cicero {de Off. ii. 16) writes as though he recognized its evil ; but though he expresses his disapprobation of the popular shows upon which the aediles spent large sums, he argues that something must be done, " if the people demand it, and if good men, though they do not wish it, assent to it." Thus in a guarded manner he approves a distribution of food— -a free break- fast in the streets of Rome. One bad result of the annona was that it encouraged a special and ruinous form of charitable munificence.

A note of one or two references to occurrences during the rule of the earlier emperors throws light on the difficulties of administration. .

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Suetonius writes of Augustus : *' Once at the time of a great failure of crops, when it was difficult to provide relief, Augustus ordered the expulsion from the city of slaves who were exposed for sale, of schools of fencing masters, and of all foreign residents, except physicians and teachers, and, above all, of domestic slaves, so that at last the supply of corn became cheaper. At that time he wrote that he was inclined to abolish for ever the public distri- bution of corn, for the people had come to rely upon it and ceased to till the fields ; but he had not proceeded further in the matter because he was sure that, from a desire to please the people, it would be revived at one time or another. After that time he managed so that as much consideration was given to farmers and traders as to the multitude" (Suet. Augustus, 42).

Tiberius (14-37 a. c), as the people complained of the cruel dearness of corn, fixed the price for grain to be paid by the purchaser, promising himself to add two sesterces (4d.) on every peck for the traders (Tacitus, Armals, ii. 87, cf. XV. 18 ; Church and Brodribb's trans.).

Caligula (37-41 a.d.) twice distributed to the people 300 sesterces (50s.) a man (Suet. Cali- gula, 17). Claudius (41-54 a.d.) was mobbed

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in the forum during a time of long-continued scarcity, assailed with abuse and pelted with pieces of bread, and could hardly escape by a back-door to his palace. This led to his adopt- ing every contrivance to ensure the importation of supplies even in the winter-time ; and accord- ingly he agreed to indemnify any merchants in the corn trade who suffered owing to storms, and to bear the loss himself ; and he undertook, according to the circumstances of each, to grant important advantages to those who built trading vessels (Suet. Claudius, 18, 21). He often distributed largesses of corn and money. So of Vespasian (69-79 a.d.) it is said that his liberality to all ranks of people was extreme (Suet. Vespasian, 17, 18). Public employment was apparently then (and at other times) in part a means of relief. Vespasian would not adopt a mechanical contrivance for carrying some immense columns into the Capitol at a small expense. He rewarded the inventor but refused his services, explaining that he took it upon himself to maintain the rabble.

Thus in spite of the annona there was per- petual difficulty in providing for the people, and measures of all kinds were adopted to prevent destitution.

CHAPTER XL

THE SPORTULA: THE COLLEGIA AND THEIR ENSLAVEMENT; THE PUERI ALIMENT ARII.

The sportula was a form of charity corre- sponding to the annona civica. Charity and poor relief run on parallel lines, and when the one is administered without discrimination, little discrimination will usually be exercised in the other. It was the charity of the patron — of the chiefs of the clan-families to their clients. Between them it was natural that a relation, partly hospitable, partly charitable, should grow up. The clients who attended the patron at his house were invited to dine at his table. The patron, as Juvenal describes him, dined luxuriously and in solitary grandeur, while the guests put up with what they could get ; or, as was usual under the empire, instead of the dinner (caena recta) a present of food was given at the outer vestibule of the house to clients who brought with them baskets (sportulce) to

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carry off their food, or even charcoal stoves to keep it warm. There was endless trickery. The patron (or the almoner who acted for him) tried to identify the applicant, fearing lest he might get the dole under a false name ; and at each mansion was kept a list of persons, male and female, entitled to receive the allow- ance. " The pilferer grabs the dole " [sportulam furunculus caj^tat) was a proverb. The spor- tula was a charity sufficiently important for state regulation. Nero (a.d. 54) reduced it to a payment in money (100 quadrantes, about Is.). Domitian (a.d. 81) restored the custom of giving food. Subsequently both practices — gifts in money and in food — appear to have been continued.

In these conditions the Roman family steadily decayed. Its ' old discipline ' was neglected ; and Tacitus (a.d. 75), in his dialogue on Oratory, wrote (c. xxviii.) what might be called its epitaph. Of the general decline the laws of Caesar and Augustus to encourage marriage and to reward the parents of large families are sufficient evidence.

The destruction of the working-class family must have been finally achieved by the imperial control of the collegia.

In old Rome there were corporations of

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craftsmen for common worship and for the maintenance of the traditions of the craft. These corporations were ruined by slave labour, and becoming secret societies, in the time of Augustus were suppressed. Subsequently they were reorganized, and gave scope for much friendliness. They often existed in connexion with some great house, whose chief was their patron and whose household gods they wor- shipped. The guilds of the poor, or rather of the lower orders {collegia tenuiorum), consisted of artisans and others, and slaves also, who paid monthly contributions to a common fund to meet the expenses of worship, common meals, and funerals. They were not in Italy, it would seem (J. P. Waltzing, Etudes Histor. sur les Corporations Professionelles chez les Romains i. 145, 300), though they may have been in Asia Minor and elsewhere, societies for mutual help generally. They were chiefly funeral benefit societies. Under Severus (a.d. 1 92) the collegia were extended, and more closely organized as industrial bodies. They were pro- tected and controlled, as in England in the 15th century the municipalities affected the cause of the craft guilds and ended by con- trolling them. Industrial disorder was thus prevented ; the Government were able to pro-

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vide the supplies required in Rome and the large cities with less risk and uncertainty ; and the workmen employed in trade, especially the carrying trade, became almost slaves. They became indeed the industrial staff of an admin- istrative department of the Government. In the second century, and until the invasions, there were three groups of collegia : ( 1 ) those engaged in various state manufactures ; (2) those engaged in the provision trade ; and (3) the free trades, which gradually lapsed into a kind of slavery. If the members of these guilds fled they were brought back by force. Parents had to keep to the trade to which they belonged ; their children had to succeed them in it. A slave caste indeed had been formed of the once free workmen.

As a charitable protest against the destruction of children, in the midst of a broken family life, and increasing dependence and poverty, a special institution was founded (to use the Scottish word) for the ' alimentation ' of the children of citizens, at first by voluntary charity and afterwards by imperial bounty.

Nerva and Trajan adopted the plan. Pliny (Ep. vii. 18) refers to it. There was a desire to give more lasting and certain help than an allotment of food to parents. A list of children,

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whose names were on the relief tables at Rome, was accordingly drawn up, and a special serr vice for their maintenance established. Two instances are recorded in inscriptions — one at Veleia, one at Beneventum. The emperor lent money for the purpose at a low percentage — 2 1 or 5 per cent, as against the usual 10 or 12. At Veleia the loan amounted to 1,044,000 sesterces — about £8156, and 51 of the local landed proprietors mortgaged land, valued at 13 or 14 million sesterces, as security for the debt. The interest on the Emperor's money at 5 per cent, was paid into the municipal treasury, and out of it the children were relieved. The figures seem small ; at Veleia 300 children were assisted, of whom 36 were girls. The annual interest at 5 per cent, amounted to nearly £408, which divided among 300 gives about 27s. a head. The figures sug- gest that the money served as a charitable supplementation of the citizens' relief in direct aid of the children. Apparently the scheme was widely adopted. Curators of high position were the patrons ; procurators acted as inspec- tors over large areas ; and quaestores alimentarii undertook the local management. Antoninus Pius (a.d. 138), and Marcus Aurelius (a.d. 160), and subsequently Severus (a.d. 192) established

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these bursaries for children in the names of their wives. In the third century the system fell into disorder. There were large arrears of pay- ments, and in the military anarchy that ensued it came to an end. It is of special interest, as indicating a new feeling of responsibility towards children akin to the humane Stoicism of the Antonines, and an attempt to found, apart from temples or collegia, what was in the nature of a public endowed charity.

CHAPTER XII.

THE LEAVEN OF PHILOSOPHY.

Before proceeding to consider the next stage in the development of thought in relation to social effort and charity it is well to take count of the forces which strove against decadence. We have referred to the leaven of religion. We have now to refer to the leaven of philosophy and that of religion at the later pre-Christian period.

The conquest of Carthage was the climacteric of Roman greatness. After it the trade of the world was open to Rome with hardly a com- petitor. Riches came and slaves and a new speculative commercialism with luxury and vice ; the temper of the people was changing. The old religion was losing its hold ; and the ' social problem,' as we have seen, was pressing for some solution. The grave import of the question was acknowledged. A new spirit and new tendencies had, if possible, to be controlled and directed. The Roman had to be preserved in character and

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ability true Roman. In this difficulty one sug- gestion was to save Rome by the philosophy of Greece. So would self-restraint be won, and the Roman be made strong enough to withstand the temptations which his victories brought him. To what else could men turn ? Rome had a noble tradition of duty, of great men known and unknown to fame, men who would rather die than let their country suffer. If their own tradi- tion failed them and their strength was wasted in the mere pugnacity of the race, in deadly partisan and personal conflicts, what remained, unless it were some controlling philosophy, religious in tone, that had within it elements consistent with the old tradition and could give to the soul a new discipline and a truer courage ? Stoicism might bring to Romans a substitute for the custom -controlled tfemper of mind which they were losing, and might replace a tradition of njasterdom by a philosophy of masterdom. This was to rally against the endless ambitions and desires of classes and persons a new pro- testant and subjugating force, which could con- quer only if it were supported by the noble self- regard and the administrative talent of the nation. If, in fact, ambition and desire were too strong, and the self of the nation too weak, still the struggle left behind it some great achievements.

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There followed from this rally much propa- ganda, and in due course we find Cicero, when the decadence had grown much greater, trying to guide and reform his country even at the final struggle, when at last the princedom of a disguised monarchy was taking the place of the republic. We may touch on this episode in more detail, and on the philosophy and ideals that were manifest in it.

In 54 B.C. Cicero published his Commonwealth, which had a very wide circulation. The year before Pompey and Crassus had been Consuls. In 54 B.C. Crassus, the millionaire General, waged his disastrous war with the Parthian, and Rome was in a state of anarchy. In the Common- wealth Scipio, the younger Africanus, is intro- duced into the dialogue as the exponent of a new constitution. He, the destroyer of Carthage (148 B.C.), is fitly made the founder of a new Commonwealth, for times are bad. His adoptive nephew, Tiberius Gracchus, is represented as having opened the floodgates of strife. "His death, and even before, his whole conduct of the Tribuneship (133 B.C.) had divided the one people into two parties" {de Repuhlica, i. 19). He had at least wrought popular opposition to the highest pitch, and had tried to give the people a preponderating political position. Of

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his policy and tactics his uncle Scipio had never approved ; and Cicero's great fear is Scipio's fear, only in its most aggravated form — the collapse of all government in the entire lack of unity in the State. Now, as a climax of demagogy, the people had been controlled and ' worked ' by Clodius systematically in the interest of Caesar. Yet still "there should be a united Senate and people. That can be brought about, and grievous it will be, if it is not."

In the Commonwealth it is argued that a mixed government is even then possible, and that Roman precedents confirm this view. There might be a ruler like Numa (ii. 2. 13 Yonge's trans.), a peace-loving statesman, whose supremacy, like the kingship of Numa, might be "the mother of law and religion." "As the steward knows the nature of the field and the scribe knows penmanship," so would he be a master of jurisprudence and legislation, and through them seek as his purpose practical utility. He should employ himself in the actual administration of government and become a kind of steward of it. He would make the science of politics subservient to the actual interests of philanthropy and patriotism. By the force of public opinion, the wise director of a government would strengthen the natural instinct of shame

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with which nature has endowed men, which is nothing else than a fear of deserved censure, and he would perfect this instinct by education and manners. He would be the " royal and pre- eminent chief" (i. 45, ii. 29). "Another portion of the power should be deposited in the hands of the aristocracy, and certain things should be reserved to the judgment and wish of the multi- tude." Thus there would be a combination of forces and stability.

Then (iii. 12, etc.^) the hero of the day, the Sulla or Lucullus, Pompey or Caesar, is sketched. " Whoever has overthrown cities, subdued nations, and by these means filled the treasury with money, taken lands, and enriched his fellow citizens, such a man is extolled to the skies; is believed to be endowed with consummate and perfect virtue ; and into this mistake have fallen not only the populace and the ignorant, but the philosophers, who have even given rules for injustice, lest folly and wickedness should lack the warrant of learning." The philosophers were philosophizing falsely. And Cicero pleads for justice against them. The antithesis which he puts into the mouth of a disputant is the old one, that of justice against the "wisdom," falsely so called, of political ambition and personal

* Cicero's Writings. Ed. Tuebner, Part iv., vol. ii.

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egotism. "Justice," he urges, " commands us to have mercy on all men, to consult the interests of the whole human race, to give to everyone his due, and to injure no sacred, or public, or foreign rights, and to forbear touching what does not belong to us." "But if you obey the dictates of 'wisdom,' riches, public offices, large resources, public honours, the command of provinces, the rule of kingdoms will accrue to all, to individuals and to nations alike." The issue is that of the temptation in the Christ story. The so-called "wisdom" had in it no finality, and was socially destructive. In justice lay the art of government and social progress.

It is with this conception of social life that the " Dream of Scipio " which follows is in harmony. The elder Africanus appears to his adopted son.

Man is endowed with a soul, he says, a soul which is the portion of the eternal fires, which you call stars and constellations. "It is your' duty, and that of all who have any veneration for the Gods, to preserve the wonderful union of soul and body ; nor without the express com- mand of him who gave you a soul, should the least thought be entertained of quitting human life, lest you seem to desert the post assigned you by God himself. But rather follow the

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examples of your grandfather here, and of me, your father, in paying a strict regard to justice and piety, which is due in a great degree to parents and relations, but most of all to our country. Such a life as this is the true way to heaven, and to the company of those, who, after having lived on earth and having escaped from the body, inhabit the place which you now behold. . . . Nothing on earth is more agree- able to God {iii. 13), the supreme governor of the Universe, than the assemblies and societies of men united together by laws, which are called States. It is from heaven their rulers and preservers came, and thither they return. ... It is not your outward form which constitutes your being, but your mind, not that substance which is palpable to the senses, but your spiritual nature. Know then that you are a God — for a God it must be which is full of activity, and feels, and recollects, and foresees, and governs, regulates and moves the body over which it is set, as the supreme Ruler does the world subject to him. For as the Eternal Being moves what- ever is mortal in this world, so the immortal mind of men moves the frail body with which it is connected."

This may be, as is said, a vision compounded out of Cicero's multifarious knowledge and

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not in a sense original. But so to think of it is to conceive it wrongly. It may be drawn from Greek sources, but it bears a Roman stamp. It holds together and completes a consistent series of thoughts, a mixed and established government, a steward kingship, patriotism, the infinite reward of public duty, the new and catholic liberty and humanity of justice, a whole- hearted acceptance of duty towards parents, friends and neighbours, and finally a recognition of the God-like nature of man, towards which in other ways and in other classes, the new popular religions, as we have seen, were working. Clearly in the spirit of charity and in the con- ception of social duty a great advance has been made. They have, for the Roman world, been once more linked to religion, and they have been associated with an after life.

The de Officiis of Cicero,^ his book on moral obligation, states once more the social problem as Cicero finally saw it in the restless anxious days that followed the murder of Caesar. It too may be taken as a compilation from Greek authors ; but, if it be that in part, it must none

^ Cf. Cicero's letters, 792 and 796, and the de Officiis itself, iii. 2, 3, 7. In the tirst two books Cicero based his argument on Panoetius. The third book he compiled, he writes, " with no help, but, as it is said, with my own forces." Throughout he has regard to Koman history and Roman examples.

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the less be read in relation to its time. Cicero as he writes has Rome constantly in his thoughts.

The number of effective competitors for the chief power in the State was dwindling. Pompey was defeated at Pharsalia by Caesar (b.c. 48), and murdered as he stepped on shore in Egypt. Caesar was assassinated (44 B.c.) in the Senate House. Lepidus, Marc Antony and Augustus remained in the field. They placed Cicero's name on the list of the proscribed, and a little later (b.c. 43) Cicero was murdered The book was written in B.c 44, after the death of Caesar and before Cicero's own death the next year. It had a very wide circulation.

Cicero had realized how absolute and invincible for the time was the supremacy of the able, strong, and unscrupulous partisan leaders, who in turn dominated Rome. They ruled in their own interest. They wasted the wealth of the country by war and by a profuse expenditure. Their civil wars were as destructive of life as famine or pestilence. They spoilt the temper of the people and broke its spirit both in the higher ranks and in the lower. And the result was that when Augustus remained the sole survivor and became the single ruler of the empire, he took charge of a country which was disordered by

THE LEAVEN OP PHILOSOPHY 11^

revolutions, unable to manage its representatives in its dependencies, provided with no proper administrative control over its exchequer, short of troops and hampered by want of means, whose citizens had lost their ambition for the duties and responsibilities of office, whose people had become restless and weak and nervous, full of vainglorious hopes and expectations, a people to be treated like spoilt children, pleased and paci- fied, not like citizens worthy of the great tradi- tions of Rome. 1'his climax was reached after Cicero's death. In the feeling that the cause of the republic was virtually lost, and that no efi'ectual combination of political allies was any longer possible, he wrote his book as a consola- tion while he lived in anxious retirement in the country.

The book thus written is distinctive (cf. Grandeur et Decadence de Rome ; Ferrero, p. 135, vol. ii.). It is in part a philosophical treatise, in part a political tractate, in part a manual on manners. It is addressed to his sou, and it is an Epistle to the Romans, especially to the younger Romans. It set before them in outline a very diff'erent society to that in which Cicero himself had lived, a society to be guided by other hopes and by other ideals. It was also in the nature of a religious manifesto, if stoicism

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be considered not merely as a series of philo- sophical dicta, but as it became more completely perhaps, later on, almost a religious rule of life. It was a forerunner of the puritan revival in Rome, which renewed in a younger generation the lustre of old Roman heroes, of old rites, of the old simplicity, and of the old singleness of mind, that would trample underfoot the vice and effeminacy of the towns, their luxury and their vanity, that would bring back the souls of a new generation to a new reality of life, that would find in the very Hades of Virgil how justice was just, and ruled all the world, here above, if we divined the truth, there below, if we knew the end.^ Thus Cicero passes on to younger generations his doctrines which were, in great part, those of stoicism. Stoicism was already an influential force in Rome, and it was widespread. In Pauline thought we probably find the influence of it. It is an important link in the development of thought from what people call * paganism ' to Christianity. Naturally, then, in this epistle to his son, we find a Roman Credo built in part out of Greek thought, and, in relation to charity, some note of the works that come of that faith.

There are some leading conceptions, which we

1 Cf. Professor Glover's Stvdies in Virgil.

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must revive if we are to follow in our imagina- tion the thoughts and illustrations of the writer.

First there is Nature ; and Nature is law working in us and in the world. The appeal to Nature as a guide and justification, is an appeal to Nature as gradually developing to a higher and more complete standard. It is not an appeal to Nature as a mass of mere unregulated impulses ; for these, the stronger instincts, it is felt, are not Nature but elements in Nature. Nature is larger and more complete. It is the whole and sums the whole. Justice is the single word for the ordered social life : the appeal to Nature is an appeal to the justice without the man, in support of the reason and faith of the justice, for which he is striving in his inner life, the justice within him. And society or social life is itself natural, an organic part of the whole, and thus it too is established in justice.

One word, the counterpart of a Greek word, defines the good life, the word honestus, honour- able. It associates itself with the goodness that is akin to responsible care and duty. It repre- sents the state of mind that is to be desired — the thing that we, that every man at arms, would wish to be — the moral goal to which we would aspire. It is the outcome of four qualities in our being, brought into accord and raised into

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a kind of supremacy. The first is the perception and intelligent appreciation of what is true — a power of insight, observation, and reconsidera- tion, in a word the power of thinking well and truly. The second quality is that of safeguard- ing social life — by granting to each his due, and — as Cicero may have been tempted to add in view of his experiences of life — by the observance of contracts. The third quality is the greatness and strength of a high and unconquerable soul. The fourth quality is order and measure in all that is done or said — for in that lies moderation and temperance.

The safeguarding of social life depends on the domination of two thoughts or habits of mind — one of which is called justice, the other benefi- cence. Justice requires that no man injure another ; but if he be stirred to it by suffering wrong, justice steps in to stay his anger and to guide his reason ; and justice protects property, the property of the State, and the property of the private individual — another question of sur- passing importance when the goods of defeated citizens were sold by auction and it was a kind of generosity to give to one the property takei^ from another. It insists that faith be kept. And, says Cicero, with a feeling of commiseration and a hatred for the brutality of war, " I am

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not certain whether it is not sufficient for the person who has injured you to repent of the wrong done, so that he may never be guilty of the like in future, and that others may not be so forward to offend in the same manner." An old Roman law is pressed into his service — that " no war is just unless it is undertaken to reclaim property, or unless it is solemnly denounced and proclaimed beforehand." The spirit is new and pleads for civilizing measures. The spirit which it opposes is that of the restless military chiefs of his own generation ; and he quotes the saying of M. Crassus, that no man who wanted .to have a direction in the govern- ment had money enough, unless on the interest of it he could maintain an army.

For the safeguarding of social life, there is besides justice, beneficence. Beneficence stands for all kinds of good doing outside the sphere of justice — or definite interdependent obligations. "Justice is due even to the lowest of mankind'; and nothing can be lower than the condition and fortune of a slave. And yet those prescribe wisely who enjoin us to put them upon the same footing as hired labourers, obliging them to do their work, but giving them their dues." But beneficence is a service rendered for the sake of the person to whom it is rendered. For it these

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rules are laid down. Our generosity must be really serviceable. It should hurt " neither those whom it is meant to assist, nor others." " It ought not to exceed our abilities ; and it ought to be rendered to each in proportion to his worth, for that is "the foundation of justice, to which all these matters are to be referred." Thus there should be circumspection, a regard to worth. And such elements as the following are taken together : the examination of the character of the person to whom we are generous : the extent to which he may have promoted our interests : his disposition towards us ; and what the general good of society requires. In fact there are gradations of beneficence. " Our country and parents bind us to them by the greatest services, next our children and our whole household, for they look to us alone and can have no other place of refuge ; and next relatives with whom we get on well and with whom generally even our ill fortune is shared."

But beneficence is an art. It requires ex- perience and practice. Precepts do not suffice. In other words, the duty to your neighbour in part consists of justice, in part of active bene- ficence. And in relation to it in thought at least, the people are conceived of as a whole, without any limitation of class. They are the community

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bound together by common rights and mutual benefits (cf. i. 25). The field of neighbourliness is large.

Then as to the high and unconquerable soul. Cicero rejects Epicureanism at the outset as hateful. The question of life is not that of calculating pains and pleasures. It is judged by other standards : it depends not on sensation but on worth. ' ' In truth in no wise can he be brave who thinks pain to be the greatest evil, and declares pleasure to be the greatest good." Setting this aside then he looks for his honourable man among the ranks of civil life. The glories of war and the ruthlessness of public ambition he sets aside. " The honestum," the state of being to which we should attain, and " which is nature's chief aim, consists in realities and not in mere glory, and rather chooses to be than to seem pre-eminent." It is to be sought for in the duties of the civil life. There is oppor- tunity for it in all government, for government is a guardianship, a trusteeship, held on behalf of the whole people. The active life is better than the contemplative or studious life. In it is ample scope for men of high capacity. So he would dissuade man from the disordered life of ambition and he would bring him back to the antique spirit of State- service and patriotism.

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But this hanestum, the flower of the honour- able existence, is also a kind of grace (decorum). There is a seemliness and beauty inherent in it. In relation to others it is justice, but justice refined to something more delicate, to a delicate appreciation of the feelings of others — (verecun- dia). Justice would not injure men. This verecundia or sympathetic modesty would not displease them ; and in that most of all the power of a seemly grace of manner lies.

So we pass to our fourth quality, in which this seemliness is found. It is found in the observation of order and measure in all that is done or said, for in that lies moderation and temperance. It represents a self-control which expresses itself in the fulfilment of one's best nature, that pleads, for instance, for energy as against luxury, straightforwardness against bribery, honesty as against foul play. Thus quoting Chrysippus, Cicero says that the young man should serve his own interest, only so far as this is possible without injustice to another. "He who runs a race should exert himself and strive as much as he can to be the winner, but he must not trip up his adversary or pull him back.'*

This same ' order and measure ' indeed should pass into the whole man. It should give free play to his individual genius. No less should it

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govern his whole manner. " We should follow nature and flee from everything that eyes or ears shrink to approve. Standing or moving, sitting or lying, the regard of our eyes, the movement of our hands, should all keep that seemly grace." Thus justice passes into our very persons and transforms our being, and finds its expression in an individual charm, a kind of characteristic grace. It affects also our choice of time and place. We set things in convenient order ; we do things at the right moment. We choose our profession well. De- sirous of being just, we will not be tax-gatherers and usurers. Their gains are hateful to men. Nor will we be hired labourers, who sell their labour and not their skill ; their hire is the consideration paid them for their enslavement. Nor will we be retail dealers ; to make profit we shall have to tell lies. Nor will we be handicraftsmen. Their gains are sordid. Good breeding scorns the workshop. Nor will we be fishmongers, cooks, and the rest ; these and others are trades that cater to our pleasures. We will be physicians or architects, or the teachers of ' honourable ' things. These arts require more intelligence and have a large utility. They are honourable to those whose station in life they suit. So your merchant

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who has made profits enough may make a har- bour, or take an estate and become farmer. What is better or more delightful or more worthy of men of independent means?

Thus, guided by the dictates of justice, or (we must confess) in some measure moved by prejudice, or led by a recognition of the dif- ferences in capacity which generally follow differences in employment and upbringing, we pass to a classification of occupations. Some of them are honourable and consistent with our standard, with the state of life and thought, that we would wish to reach, and some, as it is judged, inconsistent with it. So Plato had his excluded professions ; and so later the Church. Socially the old professional distinc- tions remain even now. Politically they have disappeared. Religiously they have disappeared in what is, or what should be, a common ecclesia or assembly of the faithful. But such statements hardlv indicate the length and breadth of the change that has taken place in this regard. There is now a recognition of the honourable life, apart from the narrowness of individual occupations and their inferiority as sordid or less attractive. There is a greater unity of social spirit. There is a general care for those who are poor and in distress, apart from all

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distinctions of labour or trade or craftsmanship. There is a general desire to raise the standard of life and independence among the people. We resent the enslavement of the labourer. We are not critical of trades and occupations by which men make an honest living. We do not believe that retail trade is a kind of cheating. We understand the economics of the question, and find the levels of price vary with demand and with district. So in itself not even is retail trade dishonourable in our eyes.

. To turn to another point. The claims of a large generosity in promoting objects of public advantage are pressed home by Cicero (ii. 17, 60). In his second book he deals with the duties of young men ; and by steps he passes to this question, and reverts to beneficence. Beneficence he says, may consist of helping the needy by our own exertions or by money. The former is the better. As for money — our private means — according to the old saying' "bounty has no bottom" (ii. 15, 55), there's no end of giving, and "what limit can there be, when those who have been accustomed to receive it, and others who have not yet become accus- tomed to do so, yearn for it both alike ? " In these circumstances the limitation of one's means is the only limitation of one's bounty. The

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whole method of public largesse is bad whatever form it take. There are occasions, however, when by usage it is considered necessary, but, even then, whatever form it take, it should be kept within limits out of regard both to the extent of our means and to our sense of proportion. Our liberality (benignitas) should rather be directed towards individuals in distress (calamitosi) unless perchance their distress is deserved. Those who ask our help in order that they may improve their position in life must be discreetly selected. " Bona facta male locata male facta arbitror." The benevolence of a man of the highest rank is for all men a kind of refuge. His liberality is of service even to the State — if he redeems captives from slavery or enriches the poor. It used to be the custom that men of senatorial rank should do such things as these. This customary liberality is of far greater value than the provision of public entertainments. It is worthy of serious and high-minded men. The other is to pander to the frivolity of the people. The same spirit of kindness should show itself in the transactions of life, buying and selling, hiring and letting. There must be a certain neighbourliness in these matters. But there is also great scope for a large and splendid munificence in the building of city walls, or dockyards, or

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aqueducts, and in the advancement of many things that are to the advantage of the State. Thus what later (see p. 250) came under the head of " charity " here finds its place under the head of liberal giving {largitio) — coupled with the conclusion that *' the motive for liberal giving is that it is either necessary or useful."

Of expediency Cicero says much, but his discussion of it is uncompromising. No expedi- ency inconsistent with what is ' honourable,' the recognized standard of the good life, is to be tolerated. Thus he would leave behind him a Roman lesson. He would transfer the warfare against flesh and blood to a warfare against princi- palities and powers of darkness in high places : and like Virgil he hopes for the advent of a Roman youth endowed with a purer life, less greedy of power, more devoted to duty, staunch and truthful, and nobly mannered. Among these would spring up the true beneficence, the large charity of life.

St. Augustine, it should be added, used and praised Cicero's de Republica, and made it a stepping-stone to other thoughts in his Civitas Dei. Cicero's de Ojfficus has been of constant service in moulding the thought of the middle ages. Nor in these modern days has its useful- ness passed away.

CHAPTER XIII.

A CENTURY LATER.

We next pass to Seneca (3 B.C. to 65 a.d.), and then to Epictetus.

The main thoughts of Seneca's essay on Benefits should be set down. He is impressed with the obligation of doing good, and not less with the evil of faulty and inconsiderate giving. Among people who live heedlessly and without plan, nothing, he says, is more intolerable than their lack of the knowledge how to give and how to receive benefits. There is no more common fault than ingratitude ; and the reason for it is that we do not choose worthy persons on whom to bestow our bounty. Were we lending money, we should inquire into the means of our debtor and his mode of life ; but our benefits we scatter without any discrimination. True, a benefit is not a debt. We do not give in order to be repaid. It is a loan only in the sense that so much of it may be received by the donor as

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may be voluntarily returned to him. The repay- ment of a benefit is a payment of thanks [reddit enim heneficium qui lihentur debet). Another cause of ingratitude is the manner in which the benefit is conferred. There is ungraciousness or delay. A benefit is received in the mood in which it is given. It should not, therefore, be given carelessly, for a man thanks himself and not the donor for what he accepts from one who does not know the facts. Yet the ingratitude of men should not put us off. The sun shines on the just and on the unjust. It is the distinction of a great and good mind, that, in doing good, it seeks no profit at all, but only to do good deeds. The book-keeping of good deeds is simple : so much is laid out. If anything is paid back it is a profit ; if nothing, there is no loss. Do not stop, do your work thoroughly, fulfil the duties of a good man. Help one man with money, another by your credit, another by your favour ; help one with advice, another with sound injunctions (de Benejiciis, i. 102).

A good deed, a benefit, is not a material thing (i. 5). The act or the gift is the outward sign. The benefit itself one cannot touch : it exists only in the mind. The benefit is the very will of him who bestows it {i'psa tribuentis voluntas). Ignorant people only notice what is material,

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and value only that ; but what we see and touch —that to which our consciousness clings — is transitory. Those who receive a kindness may pass away. The kindness, and those material things, therefore, which assume the name of " benefit " improperly, represent, in fact, services through which the friendly will manifests itself. They are not the kindness, the goodwill, itself.

What then is a good deed {beneficium) ? It is a friendly action which imparts a reasonable gladness, and in imparting it receives it, and what it does, it does with hearty readiness and of its own accord.

Next, what kind of benefits are to be given, and how ? First (i. 11), let us give what is neces- sary; then what is useful; then what is pleasant, provided that it be of lasting service. What is necessary comes first. It represents things without which we cannot live, things without which we ought not to live, things without which we would not care to live. The preserva- tion of life, of honour, of family ; benefits that preserve such things as these provide us with what are necessaries.

Then follow benefits that are useful. They are a wide and varied class. Money, or public office, or advancement in office : these are benefits

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that are useful — for nothing can be of greater service to a man than to enable him to promote his own interest (quam sihi utilem fieri). To do more than this is to do what is superfluous, and it will spoil the recipient.^

As to benefits that are done to cause pleasure, if we have a free choice, let us choose gifts that are lasting and will endure. They should be things that will be always before the eyes of those to whom they are given, and will keep alive their memory of you. So we should give rather a service of plate than a present of money.

The moral of all this is : a benefit bestowed on people just as it pleases you, will give pleasure to no one. What any one may get, no one will treasure. Use your discretion, for what is given casually and heedlessly can touch no one's heart.

The good of the recipient too must be con- sidered (ii. 14). What does harm we may not give to those that ask it. We must think of what is useful to them rather than of what they wish. We ought to consider the outcome of what we do to help them as well as the beginning of it, to give not only what they are glad to receive, but what they will be glad to have received. Never let us bestow what will

^Cf. the argument of St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 261.

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recoil on us to our shame. Since the sum of friendship consists in making our friends equal to ourselves, we must consider the interest of both parties alike, I will give to a man who is in want, yet so that I do not want myself. I will help the perishing, yet so that I do not perish myself, unless by perishing I be the price paid for saving a great man or a great cause.

But of the receivers of benefits, how should they behave ? Every function that is performed by two persons makes equal demands on both. So with father and son, husband and wife. Each gives and takes equally, and each requires a similar rule of life for the fulfilment of which each is answerable. Such a rule is hard to follow. For the giving and receiving of benefits is like a game at ball. If either the thrower or the catcher misses, the ball falls to a certainty. It only keeps up when it passes to and from their hands, deftly thrown and deftly caught. According to your partner's skill you send a long or a short throw. So it is with a benefit. Unless the ball is deftly thrown by each to each, it will neither pass from the one nor reach the other as it ought. To your skilled player you may throw a hard ball ; to your novice you will throw it gently, guiding it into his hands, and running to meet it when he throws. This is

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what we should do in confirming benefits. Let us teach a certain number to do so, and be satisfied if they make the attempt, and if they have the courage and the will (ii. 17, 18). For goodness (honestum) is ever on the steeps of life, and not sheer goodness only, but what is near to goodness — goodness-like. We have not only to do good, but to do good on principle (ratione). All through life this must be our guide. Accord- ing to its dictates we must do all things, the least and the greatest : as it prompts us, we must give.

Two questions follow, and a moral. The first is ; if there is, alike for the least and the greatest, equal responsibility to do good, do not class distinctions from this point of view disappear ? The answer can only be in the affirmative. The member of one class may do a benefit to the member of another ; the slave may help his master, no less than the master his slave. Thus the division between master and slave disappears in this spirit of mutual responsibility.

For "it is a mistake to think that slavery pervades the whole being of a man. His better part is exempt from it. Bodies are subject to masters and enrolled as their property. The mind is independent (sui juris). So free and

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spontaneous is it, that not even by this prison house of the body, in which it is confined, can it be held back ; but on its own impulse it acts, follows vast designs in thought, and passes out into the infinite, companion of the heavenly powers. Thus the body only does misfortune transfer to a master. This he buys and sells. That inner part cannot become another's property. Whatever comes of it is free ; for we are not allowed to order our slaves to do any thing we please, nor are our slaves compelled to do it. What is bidden them contrary to the commonweal they will not do, nor will they put their hand to crime."

And then, what is independence ? " Your pleasure," Seneca says to his opponent (iv. 12), "is to enjoy a kind of torpid sleepy aestheti- cism, to dream and eat and drink in the shade of your gardens. This you call tranquillity. Our pleasure is to bestow benefits, even those that cost much trouble, if only they lighten the hardships of others — even those that expose us to dangers, if only they save others from danger — even those that imperil our interests, if only they lessen the straits and necessities of others. What difference does it make to me if I receive benefits as well as bestow them. Even if I receive them, it is still my duty to bestow

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them." We receive and we bestow, but what do we mean by possession ? There is a pos- session by the act and use of the mind ; and there is a possession that is by ownership. The wise man is a possessor of the former kind. He has rightly appraised the riches of life. " I know the kingdom of wisdom, its greatness and security (vii. 4 : vii. 10). I possess all things, yet so that they still belong to all men." In- dependence lies in that manner of thought. " It makes a great difference whether we estimate what a man owns by the greatness of his mind, or by the public register." Thus two things are brought together : life as a doing of benefits and an acceptance of them ; and life as a form of understanding. To give benefits is not to give a thing only, but a thought. To under- stand the world is to possess the world. Who understands the world best is the greatest bene- factor. What he gives always carries the thought with it. What he possesses, he shares with all, for in the sphere of the understanding friends have all things in common. Independence thus is to be one's own master {sui juris), able to give and receive as for oneself, and to be a great possessor, by right, not of ownership, but of understanding.

The last words of Seneca's book sum up the

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moral. " Suppose a man is not grateful, he does not injure me, but himself. I had the enjoy- ment of doing a kindness. Therefore I will not be more slow to do a kindness again, but more careful. What I have lost by this man I shall receive from others. But this very man I shall assist again, and like a good husbandman, by care and culture, I will overcome the barrenness of the soil. I may lose what my charity has cost me ; but, if I do not succeed, he is lost, lost to all mankind. A man of spirit and intelligence would not spend his kindness and let the good of it be lost. He would admit the loss, but spend again."

It is said that the Stoics talked finely but did not care about the lot of the poor or the distress of the individual. We can hardly think that Seneca and many others who wrote upon this question of " benefits " wrote out of an assump- tion of knowledge, and not out of experience. On the contrary, may we not conclude that, though their lives may have been passed at a lower standard of endeavour than they propose to their readers, they wrote because the problem of giving and helping interested many of their own generation, and because many were actively engaged in the task of trying to assist people in distress.

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The similarity of phrase in Seneca and St. Paul is very marked (see Lightfoot's *S'^. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians, p. 268, etc.). So it is in Epictetus. Why should we not in these authors find a point of fusion between Stoic philosophy and Christian or especially Pauline thought ? After all is said, the arguments on the question seem to leave that as a still remaining solution of the undeniable similarity. It is good to remember that Seneca, the con- temporary of St. Paul, continued to live with him side by side in the thought of the middle ages.

In relation to mediaeval thought one para- graph of Seneca's may be quoted {de Benejtciis, iv. 29). It is significant as a kind of justification of indiscriminate almsgiving.

" A benefit is a useful service, yet all useful service is not a benefit : for some are so trifling as not to claim the title of benefits. To produce a benefit two conditions must concur. First, the importance of the thing given : for some things fall short of the dignity of a benefit. Whoever called a hunch of bread a benefit, or a farthing dole tossed to a beggar, or the means of lighting a fire ? Yet sometimes these are of more value than the most costly benefits : still their cheap- ness detracts from their value, even when, by

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the exigency of time, they are rendered essential. The next condition, which is the most important of all, must necessarily be present, namely, that I should confer the benefit for the sake of him whom I wish to receive it, that I should judge him worthy of it, bestow it of my own free will, and receive pleasure from my gift. None of these conditions are present in the cases of which we have just now spoken. What we give in these cases we do not bestow upon people because they are worthy or deserving, but we give it carelessly as a trifle. We give it, not so much to a man as to humanity " (Seneca, de Beneficiis, iv. 29 : Stewart's trans.).

The argument would apply to much mediaeval and not a little present giving. There are two kinds of gift one might say. One kind is an alms. The recipient is anyone. The gift is impersonal ; it is a casual transaction with one knows not who. It is too trifling to make a knowledge of facts or of the worthiness of the recipient an element in deciding whether and how it should be given. It is given to humanity. / There is another kind of gift which involves . personal considerations. Progress in thought lay in making this kind of gift and method the rule, the other the exception. Unfortunately the reverse has often taken place. The gift

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and help that should be personal have often been made an impersonal alms, and the alms itself has degenerated into a purposeless bounty.

We pass to a contemporary of Seneca's, a much greater man than he, we venture to think. There were many Stoic teachers in Rome. Of the lectures of one, Epictetus, we possess notes, taken down by a pupil. Epictetus had been the ' slave of Epaminondas, a friend of Nero's (54 A.D.), and his lectures are full of references to his times, to slaves, to arbitrary imperial power, to unjust sentences of death and banishment, to the anxieties of the nervous Roman and his way of life, to the philosophical views of the day, to personal ambitions, and common vices. In the midst of all of this, he believes that there is a way of escape and of progress for the individual soul. His discourse is like a torrent of argu- ment— a quick conversation with an imaginary objector, a sharp and absolute summing up, and a conclusion that is almost a scourging of the feeble-hearted and unrepentant. He will drive his hearers to take thought of nobler cares and would leave them no chance for evading the fulfilment of higher endeavour. But sometimes, too, he takes another tone. He most earnestly beseeches them and entreats them. The time

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is critical — the state of things is like that of ** an army placed in battle order " (Epictetus iii. 23 ; Long's trans.), when the cynic, the apostle, the " man sent by God to show you what is possible" should "without distraction be employed only on the ministration of God, able to go about among men, not tied down to the common duties of mankind, not entangled in the ordinary relations of life."

His tenets are simple. In large part they had been formulated by his predecessors in philosophy. Man is the offspring of God. There is in him some part of the divine nature. This is his justification, and suggests his standard of life. Nature lies in God and is ordered to his purposes. So does man, and so should man be ordered. In nature thus conceived man finds a measure for himself. What is the purpose of my life, he asks, considered as a part of this whole? He accepts the obligations of social life, the duty of taking part in its administration, the duty of marriage, the careful nurture of children, the duty of parents to children. There is in each case a pattern — what the mind conceives to be the ordered or natural fulfilment of the par- ticular duty. The answer is ready, if the questions be truly asked. Thus, in the case of a parent, what goes to make a parent? What

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is lie for ? What is his purpose ? What then is his duty ?

And for the method of discernment of duty he urges this. We have, he says, a reasoning spirit (logike psyche) a property of self-leadership or a ' ruling faculty,' as formerly it would have been called. By this means the mind rules : and the mind is free. We have also in regard to all matters that come before the mind certain pre- conceptions (prolepseis), 'preconceived notions,' as people say. When we would do or not do a thing or affirm or reject an opinion, we have to consider what comes before us. What come before us are the appearances of things or impressions (phantasiai). We view them in the light of these preconceptions, and we judge, check, and modify our preconceptions of them by the standard of nature and by the guidance of our master faculty. This process is selection or willing (proairesis).

The condition of the good life thus considered is a power to choose, a kind of judgment or willing; and the choice or judgment is not super- ficial and a matter of words or argument only, it is real, and by its power to produce actions and habits transforms the choice or judgment into a way of acting and living. Philosophy is the training of this judgment into a right will

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by education and discipline. One's life, rightly understood, depends thus on the will. "The being or existence of the good is in a certain will ; the being of the bad is a certain kind of will" (i. 29). Equally it maybe said that, as the will depends on the ruling 'faculty,' and is indeed the expression of it, so the state of this * faculty ' of the mind is no less an indication of moral health and sanity.

To sum up, Epictetus lays stress on three points of training for one who intends to be a good man (iii. 2). " The first concerns desires and avoidances, that he may not fail of his desire nor encounter what he avoids. The second is about desire of good and aversion to bad, and is a word about duty, that his action may be orderly, reasonable, careful. And the third has to do with security against deception, and with discretion, and with a right assent to his per- ceptions."

" Of these the most important and most pressing is the first — desire and avoidance. It affects our emotions : for we suffer from the perturbation of our emotions only when we fail in our desire or when we are upset by our avoidance of what we might have done. It is this that brings distractions, confusions, ill- fortunes, disasters, that produces jealous and

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envious men — all of whicli things prevent us from even hearino- the voice of reason."

"Next comes the second point, that about duty: for my freedom from perturbation must not be like that of a statue, but I must keep in view my states of being, both those which are mine by nature and those which I assume in the several capacities of a religious man, or as a son, as a brother, as a father, as a citizen."

" The third matter is one which begins to be incumbent on those who are in a degree of forwardness in philosophy. It refers to your state of security in these matters — your security against deception, your discretion, and the right- ness of your assent to perceptions — to the end that not even in sleep should any uncriticised fancy pass your guard, nor in drink, nor in any morbid state of mind."

Lastly, some things are in our own power, some are not {Encheiridioii., i.). Our opinion and our own acts — doing and avoiding to do anything — are in our power. Not in our power is the body, the avoidance of sickness or of the physical compulsion which may lead to imprisonment, banishment, or death. Not in our power is the gaining or losing of property by the confiscation of an authority such as the Emperor, or by the chances of life. Nor is the winning or the losing

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of a reputation in our power: nor success nor failure in election or appointment to magisterial offices. Whichever way these things may go, as to them there should be neither fear nor dis- appointment. They are not in our power. With this gospel comes tranquillity. Fear is cast out. Death itself loses its torment. What one does or thinks in the presence of death, that alone is of consequence. Heroes and good men have set us the example of tranquillity. In Socrates w^e find an ideal. He cast out fear. He knew the true purpose of life (iv. l). In prison he wrote a hymn to Apollo. He would not avoid death by escape ; and by his death he served mankind, by the remembrance of what he did and said when he was alive.

Such a succinct system of dogma as this, easily stated and often repeated, gave a Roman firmness to those who accepted it, as Epictetus shows by examples. A kind of martyrdom is borne by them unflinchingly. The man com- pelled to go a mile goes twain (cf iv. 1), the sick man must not murmur ; the loss of wife or children must be taken as in the order of things. There is in his teaching the ascetic sternness of some of the sayings of Christ, and the words and phrases remind the reader of the phrase- ology of the Gospels. The tone is religious.

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The will is enforced, on the side of right assent and action or on the side of right dissent and inaction, by the thought of God. "Your talk of God is to be renewed every day rather than your food " ; and " You are to think of God more frequently than you breathe." So nature — the standard of nature — is within and may be habitually applied. And for the exertion of the will and its victory over desire (ii. 23) reliance is placed on the enforcement of the right decision by the dominance of the whole self on that side. " If a man put in one and the same place his interest, sanctity, goodness, and country, and parents and friends, all these are secured : but if he puts in one place his interest, in another his friends, and his country and his kinsmen and justice itself, all these give way, being borne down by the weight of interest. For where the I and the Mine are placed, to that place of necessity the animal inclines ; if it be in the flesh, there is the ruling power ; if it be in the will, it is there ; and if it be in externals, it is there. If I am there where my will is, then and then only shall I be a friend such as I ought to be, and son, and father ; for this will be my interest, to maintain the character of fidelity, of modesty, of patience, of abstinence, of active co-operation, of observing

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my relations (towards all)." The plea is a plea for the stringency of social claims, for the fundamental conditions of social life and charity, without which no administration can be eflfecjtual and no relief adequate.

Two examples may be given. Of friendship he has the hard saying : "To love is only in the power of the wise." Between men who seem to be closest friends may come many causes of diflference, a Helen and war, the question of an estate or some such ground for alienation. But love is not love till it reaches a higher plane. At the lower plane it is misled by appearances. The Helen or the estate are misvalued. The man who judges wisely will avoid the tortures of jealousy or avarice. He will be to "another who is like himself" "alto- gether and completely a friend." " But he will bear with the man who is unlike himself; he will be kind to him, gentle, ready to pardon on account of ignorance, on account of his being mistaken in things of the greatest im- portance ; but he will be harsh to no man, being well convinced of Plato's doctrine that every mind is deprived of truth unwillingly." Thus we come to the mood of charity.

Then as to " those who fear want " (iii. 26). Slaves run away from their masters. How do

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they fare ? You run away from doing wrong, will you fare worse ? " Do not the slaves, after stealing a little which is enough for the first days, then afterwards move on through land or sea, contriving one method after another for maintaining their lives? And what fugitive slave ever died of hunger ? " Can't you get some situation, take care of children, or be a watchman at another person's door ? There is no shame in that. Don't mind plain fare and a hard bed. The righteous are never forsaken. It is better to have a free mind than heaps of food with cowardice.

There is no practical solution of the social question here, some would say. No : there is none, but there is more. Life is understood. The will that has the force to decide rightly will support a life which is consistent with the decision. The future will justify the past. It is ' in the nature of things ' that it should do so.

For the rest, social life — and it is always from the social life Epictetus argues — demands clean- liness, not finery in dress (iii. 1). Purity is (iv. 9) of the soul. " The purification of the soul is the planting in it of proper opinions." There is no doctrine of an after- world (iii. 13). In death you go to "nothing terrible, but to the place from which you came, to your friends

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and kinsmen, to elements. What there was in you of fire goes to fire ; of earth to earth ; of spirit to air ; of water to water ; no Hades, no Acheron, no Cocytus, no Pyriphlegethon, but all is full of Gods and Demons" — the spiritual existences of an elemental life. The exit is Ariel's. " To the elements be free ; and fare thou well."

Our psychology is different now. A know- ledge of development and evolution has altered our standpoint.^ We recognise the more suffi- cient genesis of ' preconceptions ' by primary instincts and emotions, and the commingling of instincts with instincts «,nd their adaptation, and their modification by sentiments and dis- position (cf. McDougall, Social Psychology). It is enough for us that we recognise the will only. By itself it serves for ' ruling faculty ' or reasoning spirit. But the tussle of will with desire remains, and the explanation of its victory, when it is victorious, is not very differ- ently explained.

But Stoicism failed, it may be said. Hardly so, it served and serves its purpose. It was in religious worship conservative and tolerant,

* Perhaps not so much as is frequently thought. Cf. Pro- fessor Bosanquet's Companioti to Plato's Republic (x. 597), p. 384.

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not inclined to innovation. It did not concern itself with a judgment day and a revision of life according to a yet diviner justice than prevailed upon the earth. It could not there- fore be popular among the worshippers, whose language was largely the language of symbol and ritual, and whose hopes rested in a personal after- life. It quarrelled (ii. 20) with Epicurus, and may be in part misunderstood him. In its eyes he seemed to make enjoyment the end of life and would destroy " the natural fellowship of mankind " by the gratification of individual tastes and desires. But on the other hand it ran a risk of becoming too introspective, and thus unsympa- thetic, and almost fatalist in the abandonment of things "not in our power," or assumed to be " not in our power." It sometimes lacked dis- cernment. All grief is not alike and equally to be disciplined away. We can neither love a wife nor grieve over her loss as we would love or grieve over the loss of an " earthen vessel," as if they could be in the same category [Encheir, iii.). Nature would have it otherwise. The sorrow must be according to the true loss. Yet, after all, we think of Stoicism and of its place in a vast literature, philosophic and poetic, as the source of help to men who were finding their way in a great crisis, when the

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old religions were being transformed and social life had to be rebuilt. Are not, indeed, the thoughts of Stoicism, its staunch self-discipline and its glowing sense of duty part of the gospel according to St. Paul, Epictetus' contemporary ?

CHAPTER XIV.

PRECHRISTIAN RELIGION.

By ' prechristian ' here we mean before the official recognition of Christianity as the religion of the State. Two religions competed with Christianity, the worship of Isis and the worship of Mithra. Plutarch (about 50 to 117 a.d.) tells us of both. He is a kindly, learned, inquisitive, tolerant soul. He does not approve of atheism, a term which he applies to the Christians (Isis, 33), and by which he means " insensibility to what is Divine " (On Super- stition, 2). He would say that many more or less unintelligible rites and customs have a kind of reason in them, though the reason might be obscure and the truth about them forgotten. In religious thought, as his own essays show, there was a confusion of disordered observation and ill- understood introspection. Analogies were applied without any conception of the logical unity that should underlie them. Thoughts were illustrated by numbers and geometrical forms, as

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though the numbers and forms had a spiritual nature or implied some kind of logical sequence. Symbolism and cyphers ran wild. As we have seen, religion, as it has developed, has tended to satisfy several deeply-felt desires or longings of the human heart. It must, we have found, be cosmic : in some way it must explain the Universe to man. It must recognise man's sense of some paramount divine authority. It must bring the individual into relation with the Universe, and with the God that seems to stand over against him. By reason of the nature of this God it must be able to appeal to sympathy with individual suffering and dis- tress. It must be the guardian and promoter of some kind of moral code, though only slowly does the life of ' true marriage ' and of chastity assert itself as an indispensable condition of true religion.^ As the appreciation of justice and morality advances, it must create for itself an after-world, in which its moral standards are reflected and wickedness is punished or purged away.

^Animalism and impurity accompanied the ritual of much pagan religion. (Cf. e.g. St. Augustine, Civitas Dei, ii. 5.) But it would be wrong to judge religion in its earlier stages by that only. The lofty is found in strange proximity to the low. The purging of social life is a long process. Christianity itself is evidence of this.

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The contradictions of thought and of observa- tion are the puzzle of religion ; the antithesis between the individual and the universe, the self and the object ; and the endeavour to find a unity in which these apparent opposites become harmonized in some way. ' Principles ' or tran- scendent formative intelligences, it is felt, must make the world of our thought. These Prin- ciples are conceived as opposite, and yet the opposition,