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 40 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

of the law was the Pharisee. But a contemporary says : " Do ye not after their works : for they say and do not. For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders ; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers." 1 In China we have a learned official class upholding the ethics of Confucius, yet engaged in universal make-believe and "saving of face." So long as he propagated his native virtues of courage, temperance, and magnanimity, the Greek was fairly sincere ; but later in Byzantium the hierarchy that supported the more exacting Christian ideals became rotten with treachery and hypocrisy. The Barbarians, though brutal, had a bent toward honesty and truthfulness. Yet the priestly hierarchy that upheld the high southern ethics became honey- combed at last with corruption and falsehood ; while the nobles coupled sensuality and violence with outward conformity to the law of the church. Among the English clergy under the Com- monwealth the canker of hypocrisy ate deeper as Puritan strict- ness approached its triumph. In England of today the necessity that the members of the leisure class shall pose as models of the other classes has compelled each to cover himself with a garment of "respectability."

Hypocrisy is, in fact, the thing we must expect whenever men are ranked and organized for moral guidance and get honor or pay out of it. The only cure lies in what may be called "prophetism." The temptation to hypocrisy is least where there is perfect liberty of preaching or exhorting, where each utters whatever he feels "called" to utter, where there is little induce- ment to uphold what one does not believe in, where all opinions may be voiced, and where higher and lower ideals wrestle on equal terms. Something like this policy has prevailed in our American communities, and our reward for subjecting no deter- minate body of men to the strain of moral leadership is that we have no class deeply tainted with hypocrisy.

It might be supposed we should have to atone for this lack of close union in our guiding minority by a certain slowness of ethical advance, a certain persistency of vulgar and barbarous

1 Matthew 23 : 3, 4.