For the Christian ideal was from the first emphatically a social, as well as an individual, ideal; it was a gospel for human society as well as for the individual man, and from the first the Christian Church was not contented to remain the Church invisible. As Christianity gradually took visible form in a new human society, the ecclesiastical polity came to resemble the civil, and the Civitas Dei became also an earthly State. Throughout the Middle Ages Church and State are one, 'a doublefaced unity,' like soul and body. The Holy Roman Empire is the realisation of the ideal of the ecclesiastical State. The political genius of the Romans was engaged in the service of the new religion, and the individual member of the Christian Church was subordinated to the ecclesiastical State as absolutely as the individual citizen had ever been subordinated to a merely political society. Such a reabsorption of the individual in the social good was inevitable. The theory which prevailed throughout the Middle Ages was that the universal is alone the real, and that its existence is independent of the individual. The ideal essences -the Church and the State—were therefore hypostatised, and made ends in themselves. Perhaps it required such a perfect confidence in the ecclesiastical State and such a complete devotion to its service, to make possible that new start in civilisation which was implied in the organisation of the hosts of northern barbarians into a stable political society.

This subordination of the individual to the ecclesiastical State meant, however, at the same time, the subordination of morality to theology, of ethics to politics. The Church became the keeper of the individual conscience, the priesthood controlled the conduct of the laity. Moreover what the Church through its councils and its priests primarily insisted upon was not the secular part of conduct, not the 'moral' phase of life, but its sacred and religious part, the performance of certain

ceremonies, the doing of certain outward acts, rather than the inward conformity of the spirit to the rule of Christianity. So far as the inward life was taken into account, it was rather the intellectual than the moral attitude which was considered, it was rather the obedience of the mind than of the will that was demanded. Faith was inculcated at the expense of works, and the power of absolution which the Church claimed for itself was exercised and magnified in a way which was very detrimental to the interests of morality.1 The moral corruption of the Church itself the poisoning of the fountains of the moral life-is familiar to the student of medieval history. The withdrawal of the best spirits of the age from the service of their fellows into the monasteries, the substitution of the ideal of 'saintly' self-culture for that of social service, of ascetic selfdenial for positive self-realisation, of 'other-worldliness' for this-worldliness,'-all this meant the failure of Christianity in its mission of the moral regeneration of mankind. Instead of quickening and deepening the conscience of the individual, the Church deadened it, and made it more superficial than ever.

The awakening from this moral torpor was the rebirth of the individual. The break-down of Medievalism is contemporaneous with, and causally related to, the break-down of Realism, or the belief in the universal. The Reformation is one phase of the triumph of Nominalism, or the belief in the individual. The metaphysical doctrine of the exclusive or primary reality of the individual finds practical expression, moral and religious, in the assertion by the individual of his right to be his own judge in matters of conduct and of thought, in the new sense of the importance of conduct and character, in the revival of interest in the secular life and the affairs of this world. The Protestant version of Christianity, indeed, so emphasised the individual as

1 Cf. James Cotter Morrison, The Service of Man, ch. vi.

It

almost to lose sight of the social significance of the Christian religion as it was originally taught and understood, and to make it the servant of self-interest. has only been very slowly, too, that the medieval view of the insignificance of the earthly life, and the medieval tendency to an ascetic ideal, have been exchanged for the modern interest in the present world and in the total life of man as a member of this world. The turningpoint in this direction was the Renaissance, the re-birth of the pagan spirit. The new Socialism and Secularism of the present is mainly the result of the new pressure of industrial conditions.

On its secular side, mediæval life came more and more under the control of the feudal system, thus reverting, Christianity notwithstanding, to the ideal of the military State. Here again the individual was entirely subordinated to the larger whole of which he formed only an insignificant part. He was, more or less literally and absolutely, the servant of another, and could call nothing his own. The feudal society was a hierarchy, into whose complex system the life of the individual must be fitted, and as one of whose functions it must be regulated. The rise of industry gave the individual a new importance and new rights; independent competition superseded feudal subordination, and aristocracy was opposed, if not superseded, by democracy. The rise of Capitalism has again threatened, if it has not destroyed, the independence of the individual; the apparent failure of Individualism as an industrial principle has turned the world's attention. once more in the direction of Socialism; and it seems possible that the individual may again be absorbed in the State. Yet we can see in the entire movement a real progress; the shadow on the dial does not turn backward, history does not repeat itself. It is of the essence of progress that no solution of the problem of life is final, and that one extreme provokes a recoil to

its opposite. But it also belongs to the nature of progress that no solution will satisfy a later age which does not do fuller justice to, and rest upon a better understanding of, the individual than any previous solution; and that, as the individual advances in the understanding of his own nature and of his relations to the social whole, the problem of adequately interpreting that nature and those relations must become more complex.

The trend of moral progress has been in the direction of a true Individualism: it has meant the gradual discovery of the place of the individual in the body politic. The system of caste has gradually given place to the democratic system; the artisan and the slave have been admitted to the status of citizenship, and given a share in the government of the State. Yet while political disabilities have been removed, social disabilities have not always disappeared with them; political enfranchisement is not necessarily social enfranchisement.1 Classdistinctions are still apt to hide from us our essential identity as human beings, and the man behind the citizen is not yet clearly perceived. There are many signs that this veil also is yet to be drawn, that mutual recognition and respect will yet supersede mutual distrust and misunderstanding, and that behind the inevitable distinctions of avocation, of birth, of property, of capacity, each will yet see and acknowledge his fellow

man.

We have seen, moreover, that the medieval conception of Christianity as having to do only with the things of eternity and not with those of time, with the welfare of the spirit only and not with that of the body, is giving place to a larger conception of its meaning which includes temporal and material good. Science, too, has taught us to look for causes everywhere, and, even in the moral and religious life, to note the influence of environment. This

1 Cf. MacCunn, Ethics of Citizenship, ch. iv.; and Kidd, Social Evolution, pp. 227-229.

modern scientific view is obviously leading to a revision of our conception of charity,' and must result in new manifestations and applications of the Christian principle of love. The temporary relief of poverty, disease, and distress is seen to be inferior in ethical value to the radical cure of such evils by the removal of their causes. A new sympathy, more intelligent as well as more intimate, with the disfranchised masses of our vast city populations, whose citizenship is no more real than that of the Greek slave who was encouraged to lay no such flattering unction to his soul, is leading men everywhere to an anxious consideration of the ways and means by which these masses may be given the moral opportunity to which, as men of like passions with ourselves,' they are entitled no less than we. We are slowly coming to see that they do not exist for us any more than we exist for them; that they, no less than we, are ends-in-themselves and have a destiny of their own. Such a development and education of social sympathy is only a further step in the direction of the discovery-behind all varieties of class, of outward condition, and of special avocation —of a common moral personality.

3. Aspects of the law of moral progress: (a) Transition from an external to an internal view.— Of the general law of moral progress, already stated and illustrated in its general bearing, we find in the history of morality certain more specific illustrations, to the chief of which attention may now be called. The growing appreciation of the individual as moral person and ethical norm is manifested, first, in the increasing internality, spirituality, or depth of the moral consciousness as expressed in moral judgment; secondly, in the gradual subordination of the sterner to the gentler virtues; and thirdly, in the greater and greater scope attributed to morality, or the larger and larger number of persons to whom its application is extended.