Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/130

 1 1 6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

same community, or set, or nation. It is to disregard all such artificial distinctions and to give him such help as he may need. 1 He who has such a spirit will ever be the Good Samaritan and to him every sufferer will be the man fallen among robbers.

3. Yet probably the strongest objection in the way of an actual recognition of this ideal of Jesus in actual life is the ineradicable conviction that social equality is impracticable. Men have dreamed of it and have died, leaving their dreams to the laughter of their times and the libraries of their descendants. These words of Jesus are beautiful but so are those of More and Rousseau and no less visionary. Men are not equal and fraternity is a word for oratory and French public buildings.

So men say, or think if they keep silent.

As to practicability of these and other teachings of Jesus there will be something to say in a later paper. The reply to this objection to be made here is this : Jesus does not claim that men in the world today are physiologically equal. There are the lame and halt. Nor are they mentally on an equality. There are men to whom one talent was given, and those to whom five and ten.' Nor does Jesus so far fall into the class of nature-philos- ophers as to teach that because men are to be brothers they are therefore to be twins. The equality of fraternity does not consist in duplication of powers, but in the enjoyment of love.

According to the new social standard of Jesus two men are equal not because they have equal claims upon each other but because they owe equal duties to each other. The gospel is not a new Declaration of Rights, but a Declaration of Duties. 3 As to what equality shall consist in when the perfect social order is attained Jesus gives us no clear teaching. But one can hardly doubt it would be little different. Men would then be brothers and society an all-embracing family, but individuality is not to be lost. And individuality is synonymous with personal inequalities.

x Luke 10.25-37. 2 Matt. 25:14-30; Luke 19:12-27.

3 The constitutional history of the French Revolution is a commentary upon this position of Jesus. It was a new age that replaced the Declaration des Droits de /'- Homme et du Citoyen of the constitution of 1791, with the Declaration des Droits et ees Devoirs de F Homme et du Citoyen of the constitution of Fructidor, 1795.