Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/790

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Rome. In the classic world slavery had put a stigma on all manual labor. The great work-tradition of the Germanic race is traceable to the Benedictine monks, who in the Dark Ages taught from a thousand monasteries the lesson that labor is worthy and pious.' Again it was the Puritan minority that championed the quiet home pleasures and induced the English to give up the old orgiastic communal pleasures so prolific of harm. In India, the taste for learning and the contemplative pleasures has spread from one small section of the Brahman caste.

The spread of the superior ideal or valuation developed in the bosom of an elite is not wholly by the contagion of example. The van of the social procession urges and stimulates the rear to a double quick. The few press their desires, tastes, and opinions upon the many. This may be because it is to the interest of the few to get their ethical contribution generally accepted. Or the Hebrew or Puritan notion of joint national responsibility may spur the elite to an active campaign against ways of living or acting that might draw down on the nation the divine wrath. Again, when the general social consciousness is intense as compared with the class-, caste-, or sect-consciousness, we find in the posses- sors of the superior ethical view a disinterested eagerness to press it on the rest. The proselyting missionary spirit is awakened and inspires the minority to leaven the entire lump with their new ideal.

The ethical capital of a race is increased, not only by the contributions of minorities, but by those of individuals as well. The first elements of a social ethos may be spontaneously gen- erated within a body of associates. The development of an ethical content in old local cults may be due to the influence of a priesthood. New value-scales that favor social tranquillity may be worked out in a class of men with superior economic vision or in a better economic situation than the rest. But such sublime paradoxes as that enemies are to be forgiven, that it is more blessed to give than to receive, and that it is better to suffer than to do injustice, are the discoveries of genius. So at the

■ See MONTALEMBERT, The Monks of the West.