Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/788

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the Apollo cult at Delphi, and to have been diffused by pious singers and by poets like Pindar. Says Pfleiderer : " The rules to be observed in conducting the purificatory rites were fixed by the priesthood of Delphi, and by tradition and public law received public sanction over the whole of Greece."'

A system of law that functions without the civil arm is an ethical element in a civilization. And such a system is always the creation of the intelligent few. The law of Manu was not a code actually administered, but a rhumd of what a small enlightened caste thought ought to be the law. The Law of Israel was worked out and interpreted by doctors and scribes who discussed its provisions freely among themselves, but pre- sented an unbroken front to the outside world. The long apprenticeship required for admission to the learned caste, and the contrast between the freedom of thought within the four walls of the school of the law and the reticence observed outside the school, show that the Thorah was the instrument of the Pharisees and not the custom of the people.,'

For more than four centuries one of the great possessions of the classic world was the ideal of a life lived by a plan, a life superior to the play of the emotions, framed in accordance with reason, and having the beauty of unity, simplicity, and symmetry. Such an ideal becomes the parent of the political and civic virtues as soon as human law and justice are regarded as the dictate in the field of social relations of that Reason which rules the universe and which it is man's duty to put himself in line with. Now, this ideal of life was created and perfected by a handful of men, the Stoic philosophers, who succeeded in combining the Hebrew earnestness about right and justice with the Hellenic ideals of beauty and wisdom.

The romantic ideal of love we owe to an artistic elite, the troubadours. Arising from the sentiments felt by wandering lyrists for great ladies far above them in social position this ideal was spread by their songs through the castles and courts of mediaeval Europe. There it blended with the ideals of

■ The Philosophy of Religion, Vol. IV, p. 243.

'Bragin, Die frei-retigiosen Strbmungen im alien Judenthum, pp. 78, 79.