Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/613

Rh ETHICS 5U1 on the other hand, in his well-known paraphrase of a Stoic treatise on external duties (officia), ranks the renderin&quot; 1 of positive services to other men as a chief department of social duty; and the Stoics generally recognized the universal fellowship and natural mutual claims of human beings as such. Indeed, this recognition in later Stoicism is sometimes expresssd with so much warmth of feeling as to be hardly distinguishable from Christian philanthropy. Nor was this regard for- humanity merely a doctrine of the school. Partly through tho influence of Stoic and other Greek philosophy, partly from the natural expansion of human sympathies, the legislation of the empire, during the first three centuries, shows a steady development in the direction of natural justice and humanity ; and some similar progress may be traced in the general tone of moral opinion. Still the utmost point that this development reached fell considerably short of the standard of Christian charity. Without dwelling on the immense impetus given to the practice of social duty generally by the religion that made beneficence a form of divine service, and identified &quot; piety &quot; with &quot; pity,&quot; we have to put down as definite changes introduced by Christianity into the current moral view (1) the severe condemnation and final suppression of the practice of exposing infants ; (2) effective abhorrence of the barbarism of gladiatorial combats; (3) immediate moral mitigation of slavery, and a strong encouragement of emancipation; (4) great extension of the eleemosynary pro vision made for the sick and the poor. As regards alms giving, however the importance of which has caused it to usurp, in modern languages, the general name of &quot; charity&quot; it ought to be observed that Christianity merely univer salized a duty which has always been inculcated and main tained in conspicuous fulness by Judaism, within th;. , limits of the chosen people. The same may be said of the stricter regulation which Christianity enforced on the relations of the sexes ; except so far as the prohibition of divorce is concerned, and the stress laid on &quot;purity of heart &quot; as contrasted with merely outward chastity. Even the peculiarly Christian virtue of humility, which presents so striking a contrast to tho Greek &quot; highmindness,&quot; was to some extent anticipated in the Rabbinic teaching. Its far greater prominence under the new dispensation may be partly referred to the express teaching and example of Christ ; partly, in so far as the virtue is manifested in the renunciation of external rank and dignity, or the glory of merely secular gifts and acquirements, it is one aspect of the unworldliness which we have already noticed; while the deeper humility that represses the claim of personal merit even in the saint belongs to the strict self-examina tion, the continual sense of imperfection, the utter reli ance on strength not his own, which characterize the inner moral life of the Christian. Humility in this latter sense, &quot;before God,&quot; is an essential condition of all truly Christian goodness. Obedience, patience, benevolence, purity, humility, alienation from the &quot; world &quot; and the &quot; flesh, &quot;&quot;are the chief r, vel or striking features which the Christian ideal of prac tice suggests, so far as it cau be placed side by side with that commonly accepted in Graeco- Roman society. But we have yet to notice the enlargement of the sphere of ethics due to its close connexion with theology ; for while this added religious force and sanction to ordinary moral obligations, it equally tended to impart a moral aspect to religious belief and worship. &quot;Duty to God&quot; as distinct from duty to man had not been altogether unrecognized by pagan moralists, though the rather dubious relations of even the more orthodox philosophy to the established poly theism had generally prevented them from laying much stress upon it. But in the views of many Christians, religious worship and contemplation as far surpassed all other modes of human existence as pure philosophic speculation did in the view of Plato, Aristotle, and the Neo-pbtonists; indeed, the more learned of the eastern monks spoke of themselves as withdrawing from the world to the &quot; pui-suit of wisdom &quot; (&amp;lt;tAoa-o&amp;lt;/ua). Again, just as the Stoics held wisdom to be indispensable to real rectitude of conduct, while at the same time they included under the notion of wisdom a grasp of physical as well as ethical truth; so the similar emphasis laid on inwardness in Christian ethics caused orthodoxy or correctness of re ligious belief to be regarded as essential to goodness, and heresy as the most fatal of vices, corrupting as it did the very springs of Christian life. To the philosophers, how ever, convinced as they were that the multitude must neces sarily miss true wellbeing through their folly and ignorance, it could never occur to guard against these evils by any other method than that of providing philosophic instruction for the few; whereas the Christian clergy, whose function it was to offer truth and eternal life to all mankind, naturally regarded theological misbelief as insidious pre ventable contagion. Indeed, their sense of its deadliness was so keen that, when they were at length able to control the secular administration, they rapidly overcame their aversion to bloodshed, and initiated that long series of reli gious persecutions to which we find no parallel in the pre- Christian civilization of Europe. It was not that Christian writers did not feel the difficulty of attributing criminality to sincere ignorance or error. But the difficulty is not really peculiar to theology; and the theologians usually got over it (as some philosophers had surmounted a similar perplexity in the region of ethics proper) by supposing some latent or antecedent voluntary sin, of which the apparently involuntary heresy was the fearful fruit. Lastly, we must observe that in proportion as the legal conception of morality as a code of which the violation deserves supernatural punishment predominated over the philosophic view of ethics as the method for attaining natural felicity, the question of man s freedom of will to obey the law necessarily became prominent. At the same time it cannot be broadly said that Christianity took a de cisive side in the metaphysical controversy on free-will and necessity ; since, just as in Greek philosophy the need of maintaining freedom as the ground of responsibility clashes with the conviction that no one deliberately chooses his own harm, so in Christian ethics it clashes with tho attri bution of all true human virtue to supernatural grace, as well as with the belief in divine foreknowledge. All we can say is that in the development of Christian thought the conflict of conceptions was far more profoundly felt, and f.ir raore serious efforts were made to evade or transcend it. In the preceding account of Christian monlity, it has Deve .op- been already indicated that the characteristics delineated m*&quot;&amp;gt;t of did not all exhibit themselves simultaneously to the same r niion extent, or with perfect uniformity throughout the church. &quot; ],&quot;,!/ Partly the changes in the external condition of Christianity, tianity and the different degrees of civilization in the societies of which it was the dominant religion, partly the natural process of internal development, continually brought different features into prominence ; while again, the important antagonisms of opinion that from time to time expressed themselves in sharp controversies within Christen dom frequently involved ethical issues even in the Eastern church until the great labour of a dogmatic construction began in the 4th century, and in the Western church always. Thus, for example, the anti-secular tendencies of the new creed, to which Tertullian (160-220) gave violent and rigid expression, were exaggerated in the Montanist heresy which he ultimately joined ; on the other hand, Clemens of Alexandria, in opposition to the general tone of his age, maintained the value of pagan philosophy for