individual, fell back into the old mechanical and external view of the moral life, and sought the standard and measure of moral worth in external conformity to rule rather than in inward conformity of spirit, in conduct rather than in character, in specific acts rather than in the prevailing attitude of the will. The ecclesiastical organisation overshadowed the individual, of whose spiritual life it ought to have been simply the medium and expression; the rule supplanted the principle, the letter was substituted for the spirit, the means was mistaken for the end. The Reformation, being a reassertion of the Christian estimate of the supreme importance of the individual, was at the same time a return to the true inwardness of Christianity, a reassertion of the essentially spiritual character of its point of view. The Protestant doctrine of 'justification by faith alone' is a theological application of the ethical principle that the moral situation hinges not upon what a man does, but upon what he is,-upon the attitude of his will and the bent of his character. The Protestant churches themselves, however, soon became the victims of the external and the letter in a new form, substituting bibliolatry for ecclesiolatry, conformity to the letter of the creed for spiritual obedience, doctrine for life, theology for religion. In our own time we see many signs of a return to the moral simplicity of early Christianity. The modern industrial system shows the same tendency to relapse from an internal to an external, from a personal to an impersonal, view of human activity, the same tendency to lose sight of the moral individual, and the same necessity of the recovery of the individual in his true ethical importance. The development of commerce and the organisation of society upon an industrial basis have led to the economic estimate of human worth, according to the measure of the individual's efficiency as a part of the economic machine, whether he be producer, Econo distributor, or consumer, labourer or capitalist. mic value is so prominent and so important to modern society as well as to the individual, that it is apt to pass for the supreme or moral value; the 'economic' man is apt to be mistaken for the man himself. But we are coming to see that economic value is an 'abstract idea,' that in reality it is inseparable from moral value, and that though the former is not reducible to the latter, the one is dependent upon the other. The economic man' is an expression of the moral man, as truly as is the 'political man' or the citizen. The error of modern as of ancient and mediæval Socialism is that it regards the individual as a thing to be managed and controlled from without, rather than as a person, the springs of whose activity are within. It is forgotten that men cannot be made moral by Act of Parliament, that men cannot be made moral at all. Moral alternatives are resolved into alternatives of outward condition, of wealth or poverty, of comfort or discomfort. Environment is substituted for will, conditions for choice. We have to remind ourselves that "the only thing absolutely and altogether good is the good will," that not things but persons alone are good in themselves, and that the moral situation turns not upon external conditions but upon the use which the moral individual makes of these conditions. Social regeneration depends upon the regeneration of the individual, and the regeneration of the individual depends upon himself. 4. (b) Subordination of the sterner to the gentler virtues. A second manifestation of the law of moral progress is found in the gradual subordination of the sterner to the gentler virtues, of the virtues of being or security, to those of well-being or amenity. The discovery of the individual in his intrinsic moral worth brings with it a new sense of the individual's moral Y of its citizens, as the grand means of their intellectual and æsthetic culture. Moreover, the industrial basis of the State was recognised by the political status conceded to the industrial class, which was in Sparta excluded from citizenship. Yet the ancient type of virtue remained, even in Athens, hard and virile, as compared with the modern Christian type. The gentleness and grace of the highest forms of Greek life are rather the qualities demanded by the æsthetic sensitiveness and by the extreme intellectualism of the Athenians than the qualities which are reached by a renunciation of the sterner and rougher ideal of life. And when Athenian supremacy gave place to Spartan, and Spartan to Roman, the career of the gentler virtues might well have seemed to be finally closed. But Rome was destined to be overcome by a greater power than that of arms, the power of gentleness itself. Renouncing the old political and military ideal of life, and proclaiming itself from the first as the religion of love, as the gospel of forgiveness and nonresistance, Christianity breathed a new life into the body of human virtue. Perhaps the most comprehensive statement of the change of standpoint wrought by Christianity is, that it substituted for the narrowly and exclusively masculine ideal of the ancient world an ideal which not only included the feminine qualities, but made the specially feminine virtues typical and fundamental- the very essence and presupposition of virtue. While the classical moralists are obviously thinking of man rather than of woman, in their efforts to formulate the ideal life, and the classical State no less obviously exists for man and not for woman, Christianity taught a new reverence for woman, because it found a higher expression of certain essential aspects of its own ideal, especially a higher development of that sympathy which it regarded as the key to all the virtues, in womanly than in manly virtue. The Christian reverence for childhood is only another aspect of the same conception. The halo of a tender grace and gentle simplicity encircles childhood and womanhood, and consecrates them the eternal types of the highest human virtue. In the Master's character and life the Christians saw all the gentleness and sympathy of woman combined with, and subduing to its own beautiful rule, all the strength and wisdom of man. The special sphere of Christian virtue was not the battle-field or even the market-place, but the ministry of help to the poor and the sick, the forsaken and the oppressed. Christianity discovered to the Western mind "the sanctity of weakness and suffering, the supreme majesty of compassion and gentleness."1 All forms of cruelty and vain display of mere animal strength met the rebuke of the new spirit of reverence for weakness and scorn of unmitigated strength, which had been born into the world. "The high conception that has been formed of the sanctity of human life, the protection of infancy, the elevation and final emancipation of the slave classes, the suppression of barbarous games, the creation of a vast and multifarious organisation of charity, and the education of the imagination by the Christian type, constitute together a movement of philanthropy which has never been paralleled or approached in the Pagan world.” " 2 It is the effect of this change of standpoint in the estimation and determination of character that claims our attention—the new measure of virtue which it prescribes. "Christianity for the first time gave the servile virtues the foremost place in the moral type. Humility, obedience, gentleness, patience, resignation, are all cardinal or rudimentary virtues in the Christian character; they were all neglected or underrated by the Pagans.' The superiority of patient endurance to angry resentment, of forgiveness to revenge, of gentleness to force, was impressed 1 Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. ii. p. 100. ineffaceably upon the moral imagination of Christendom by the life of its meek and lowly' Founder. The hierarchy of the virtues was henceforth reversed: the first were made last, and the last first. "In that proportion or disposition of qualities which constitutes the ideal character, the gentler and more benevolent virtues have obtained, through Christianity, the foremost place," while the sterner and more virile have been compelled to accept a subordinate position. For in that true and complete manhood which is the final measure of human virtue, the gentler virtues are the essential complement of the sterner, and the sterner must be subdued to the rule of the gentler. If the sterner virtues are the hands and feet, sympathy or love is the eye of our moral nature, without which it had been blind to that common spiritual being which, uniting us in a common life with our fellows, and making the whole world kin, points out the path of all truly virtuous activity. 5. (c) Wider scope of virtue. We are thus led to notice a third phase of moral progress, its increasing scope, its growth from particularism to universalism, from patriotism or nationalism to humanism or cosmopolitanism. As the individual comes to self-discovery, he discovers his community of being and of life with his fellows, his citizenship in the city of humanity. With the discovery of the true and total self comes the discovery also of the true relation to all other selves: a true self-consciousness is at the same time a consciousness of others. With the recognition of moral personality in new and unsuspected places man learns the lesson of a larger sympathy and a wider considerateness in his relations towards others. In presence of this deep natural affinity, artificial and conventional barriers disappear. This phase also of the law of moral progress we find illustrated by the facts of moral history. 1 Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. ii. p. 101. |