Page:Karl Kautsky - Ethics and The Materialist Conception of History - tr. J. B. Askew (1906).pdf/27

 force of the German barbarians. And, moreover, this brute force springing out of the material world, appeared to the representatives of Christianity as the source of all evil, when it was not ruled by spirit and held in check by the spirit; while, on the other hand, they saw in the spirit the source of all good.

Thus the new social situation only contributed to strengthening the philosophic foundation of Christianity and its system of Ethics. But, on the other hand, there came through this new situation the joy in life and a feeling of self-confidence into society which had been lacking at the time of the rise of Christendom. Even to the Christian clergy, at least in the mass, the world no longer appeared as a vale of tears, and they acquired a capacity for enjoyment, a happy Epicureanism, though certainly a coarser form and one which had little in common with ancient philosophy. Nevertheless the Christian priesthood was obliged to maintain the Christian Ethic, no longer as the expression of their own moral feeling, but as a means of maintaining their rule over the people. And everything forced them to recognise more and more the philosophic foundation of this system of Ethics, namely, the mastery of the spirit over the real world. Thus the new social situation produced on the one hand a tendency to a Materialist system of Ethics; while, on the other, a series of reasons arose to strengthen the traditional Christian Ethic. Thus arose that dual morality which became a characteristic of Christianity, the formal recognition of a system of Ethics, which is only partially the expression of our moral feeling and will, and consequently of that which controls our action. In other words, moral hypocrisy became a standing social institution which was never so widely spread as under Christianity.

Ethics and religion appeared now as inseparably bound together. Certainly the moral law was the logical creator of the new god; but in Christianity the new god appeared as the creator of the moral law. Without belief in God, without religion, no morality. Every ethical question became a theological one, and as the