History of European Morals From Augustus to Charlemagne Volume I Part 13

104 Lord Kames' _Essays on Morality_ (1st edition), pp. 55-56.

105 See Butler's _Three Sermons on Human Nature_, and the preface.

106 Speaking of the animated statue which he regarded as a representative of man, Condillac says, "Le gout peut ordinairement contribuer plus que l'odorat a son bonheur et a son malheur.... Il y contribue meme encore plus que les sons harmonieux, parce que le besoin de nourriture lui rend les saveurs plus necessaires, et par consequent les lui fait gouter avec plus de vivacite. La faim pourra la rendre malheureuse, mais des qu'elle aura remarque les sensations propres a l'apaiser, elle y determinera davantage son attention, les desirera avec plus de violence et en jouira avec plus de delire."-_Traite des Sensations_, 1re partie ch. x.

107 This is one of the favourite thoughts of Pascal, who, however, in his usual fashion dwells upon it in a somewhat morbid and exaggerated strain. "C'est une bien grande misere que de pouvoir prendre plaisir a des choses si ba.s.ses et si meprisables ... l'homme est encore plus a plaindre de ce qu'il peut se divertir a ces choses si frivoles et si ba.s.ses, que de ce qu'il s'afflige de ses miseres effectives.... D'ou vient que cet homme, qui a perdu depuis peu son fils unique, et qui, accable de proces et de querelles, etait ce matin si trouble, n'y pense plus maintenant? Ne vous en etonnez pas; il est tout occupe a voir par ou pa.s.sera un cerf que ses chiens poursuivent.... C'est une joie de malade et de frenetique."-_Pensees_ (Misere de l'homme).

108 "Quae singula improvidam mortalitatem involvunt, solum ut inter ista certum sit, nihil esse certi, nec miserius quidquam homine, aut superbius. Caeteris quippe animantium sola victus cura est, in quo sponte naturae benignitas sufficit: uno quidem vel praeferenda cunctis bonis, quod de gloria, de pecunia, ambitione, superque de morte, non cogitant."-Plin. _Hist. Nat._ ii. 5.

109 Paley, in his very ingenious, and in some respects admirable, chapter on happiness tries to prove the inferiority of animal pleasures, by showing the short time their enjoyment actually lasts, the extent to which they are dulled by repet.i.tion, and the cases in which they incapacitate men for other pleasures. But this calculation omits the influence of some animal enjoyments upon health and temperament. The fact, however, that health, which is a condition of body, is the chief source of happiness, Paley fully admits. "Health," he says, "is the one thing needful ... when we are in perfect health and spirits, we feel in ourselves a happiness independent of any particular outward gratification.... This is an enjoyment which the Deity has annexed to life, and probably const.i.tutes in a great measure the happiness of infants and brutes ... of oysters, periwinkles, and the like; for which I have sometimes been at a loss to find out amus.e.m.e.nt." On the test of happiness he very fairly says, "All that can be said is that there remains a presumption in favour of those conditions of life in which men generally appear most cheerful and contented; for though the apparent happiness of mankind be not always a true measure of their real happiness, it is the best measure we have."-_Moral Philosophy_, i. 6.

110 A writer who devoted a great part of his life to studying the deaths of men in different countries, cla.s.ses, and churches, and to collecting from other physicians information on the subject, says: "a mesure qu'on s'eloigne des grands foyers de civilisation, qu'on se rapproche des plaines et des montagnes, le caractere de la mort prend de plus en plus l'aspect calme du ciel par un beau crepuscule du soir.... En general la mort s'accomplit d'une maniere d'autant plus simple et naturelle qu'on est plus libre des innombrables liens de la civilisation."-Lauvergne, _De l'agonie de la Mort_, tome i.

pp. 131-132.

111 "I will omit much usual declamation upon the dignity and capacity of our nature, the superiority of the soul to the body, of the rational to the animal part of our const.i.tution, upon the worthiness, refinement, and delicacy of some satisfactions, or the meanness, grossness, and sensuality of others; because I hold that pleasures differ in nothing but in continuance and intensity."-Paley's _Moral Philosophy_, book i. ch. vi. Bentham in like manner said, "Quant.i.ty of pleasure being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry," and he maintained that the value of a pleasure depends on-its (1) intensity, (2) duration, (3) certainty, (4) propinquity, (5) purity, (6) fecundity, (7) extent (_Springs of Action_). The recognition of the "purity" of a pleasure might seem to imply the distinction for which I have contended in the text, but this is not so. The purity of a pleasure or pain, according to Bentham, is "the chance it has of not being followed by sensations of the opposite kind: that is pain if it be a pleasure, pleasure if it be a pain."-_Morals and Legislation_, i. -- 8. Mr. Buckle (_Hist. of Civilisation_, vol. ii.

pp. 399-400) writes in a somewhat similar strain, but less unequivocally, for he admits that mental pleasures are "more enn.o.bling" than physical ones. The older utilitarians, as far as I have observed, did not even advert to the question. This being the case, it must have been a matter of surprise as well as of gratification to most intuitive moralists to find Mr. Mill fully recognising the existence of different kinds of pleasure, and admitting that the superiority of the higher kinds does not spring from their being greater in amount.-_Utilitarianism_, pp. 11-12. If it be meant by this that we have the power of recognising some pleasures as superior to others in kind, irrespective of all consideration of their intensity, their cost, and their consequences, I submit that the admission is completely incompatible with the utilitarian theory, and that Mr. Mill has only succeeded in introducing Stoical elements into his system by loosening its very foundation. The impossibility of establishing an aristocracy of enjoyments in which, apart from all considerations of consequences, some which give less pleasure and are less widely diffused are regarded as intrinsically superior to others which give more pleasure and are more general, without admitting into our estimate a moral element, which on utilitarian principles is wholly illegitimate, has been powerfully shown since the first edition of this book by Professor Grote, in his _Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy_, chap. iii.

112 Buchner, _Force et Matiere_, pp. 163-164. There is a very curious collection of the speculations of the ancient philosophers on this subject in Plutarch's treatise, _De Placitis Philos._

113 Aulus Gellius, _Noctes_, x. 23. The law is given by Dion. Halicarn.

Valerius Maximus says, "Vini usus olim Romanis feminis ignotus fuit, ne scilicet in aliquod dedecus prolaberentur: quia proximus a Libero patre intemperantiae gradus ad inconcessam Venerem esse consuevit"

(Val. Max. ii. 1, -- 5). This is also noticed by Pliny (_Hist. Nat._ xiv. 14), who ascribes the law to Romulus, and who mentions two cases in which women were said to have been put to death for this offence, and a third in which the offender was deprived of her dowry. Cato said that the ancient Romans were accustomed to kiss their wives for the purpose of discovering whether they had been drinking wine. The Bona Dea, it is said, was originally a woman named Fatua, who was famous for her modesty and fidelity to her husband, but who, unfortunately, having once found a cask of wine in the house, got drunk, and was in consequence scourged to death by her husband. He afterwards repented of his act, and paid divine honours to her memory, and as a memorial of her death, a cask of wine was always placed upon the altar during the rites. (Lactantius, _Div. Inst._ i. 22.) The Milesians, also, and the inhabitants of Ma.r.s.eilles are said to have had laws forbidding women to drink wine (aelian, _Hist. Var._ ii. 38). Tertullian describes the prohibition of wine among the Roman women as in his time obsolete, and a taste for it was one of the great trials of St. Monica (_Aug. Conf._ x.

8).

114 "La loi fondamentale de la morale agit sur toutes les nations bien connues. Il y a mille differences dans les interpretations de cette loi en mille circonstances; mais le fond subsiste toujours le meme, et ce fond est l'idee du juste et de l'injuste."-Voltaire, _Le Philosophe ignorant_.

115 The feeling in its favour being often intensified by filial affection. "What is the most beautiful thing on the earth?" said Osiris to Horus. "To avenge a parent's wrongs," was the reply.-Plutarch _De Iside et Osiride_.

116 Hence the Justinian code and also St. Augustine (_De Civ. Dei_, xix.

15) derived servus from "servare," to preserve, because the victor preserved his prisoners alive.

117 "Les habitants du Congo tuent les malades qu'ils imaginent ne pouvoir en revenir; _c'est, disentils, pour leur epargner les douleurs de l'agonie_. Dans l'ile Formose, lorsqu'un homme est dangereus.e.m.e.nt malade, on lui pa.s.se un nud coulant au col et on l'etrangle, _pour l'arracher a la douleur_."-Helvetius, _De l'Esprit_, ii. 13. A similar explanation may be often found for customs which are quoted to prove that the nations where they existed had no sense of chast.i.ty. "C'est pareillement sous la sauvegarde des lois que les Siamoises, la gorge et les cuisses a moitie decouvertes, portees dans les rues sur les palanquins, s'y presentent dans des att.i.tudes tres-lascives. Cette loi fut etablie par une de leurs reines nommee Tirada, qui, _pour degouter les hommes d'un amour plus deshonnete_, crut devoir employer toute la puissance de la beaute."-_De l'Esprit_, ii. 14.

118 "The contest between the morality which appeals to an external standard, and that which grounds itself on internal conviction, is the contest of progressive morality against stationary, of reason and argument against the deification of mere opinion and habit."

(Mill's _Dissertations_, vol. ii. p. 472); a pa.s.sage with a true Bentham ring. See, too, vol. i. p. 158. There is, however, a schism on this point in the utilitarian camp. The views which Mr. Buckle has expressed in his most eloquent chapter on the comparative influence of intellectual and moral agencies in civilisation diverge widely from those of Mr. Mill.

119 "Est enim sensualitas quaedam vis animae inferior.... Ratio vero vis animae est superior."-Peter Lombard, _Sent._ ii. 24.

120 Helvetius, _De l'Esprit_, discours iv. See too, Dr. Draper's extremely remarkable _History of Intellectual Development in Europe_ (New York, 1864), pp. 48, 53.

121 Plutarch, _De Cohibenda Ira._

122 Lactantius, _Div. Inst._ i. 22. The mysteries of the Bona Dea became, however, after a time, the occasion of great disorders. See Juvenal, Sat. vi. M. Magnin has examined the nature of these rites (_Origines du Theatre_, pp. 257-259).

123 The history of the vestals, which forms one of the most curious pages in the moral history of Rome, has been fully treated by the Abbe Nadal, in an extremely interesting and well-written memoir, read before the Academie des Belles-lettres, and republished in 1725. It was believed that the prayer of a vestal could arrest a fugitive slave in his flight, provided he had not got past the city walls. Pliny mentions this belief as general in his time. The records of the order contained many miracles wrought at different times to save the vestals or to vindicate their questioned purity, and also one miracle which is very remarkable as furnishing a precise parallel to that of the Jew who was struck dead for touching the ark to prevent its falling.

124 As for example the Sibyls and Ca.s.sandra. The same prophetic power was attributed in India to virgins.-Clem. Alexandrin. _Strom._ iii.

7.

125 This custom continued to the worst period of the empire, though it was shamefully and characteristically evaded. After the fall of Seja.n.u.s the senate had no compunction in putting his innocent daughter to death, but their religious feelings were shocked at the idea of a virgin falling beneath the axe. So by way of improving matters "filia constuprata est prius a carnifice, quasi impium esset virginem in carcere perire."-Dion Ca.s.sius, lviii. 11. See too, Tacitus, _Annal._ v. 9. If a vestal met a prisoner going to execution the prisoner was spared, provided the vestal declared that the encounter was accidental. On the reverence the ancients paid to virgins, see Justus Lipsius, _De Vesta et Vestalibus_.

126 See his picture of the first night of marriage:-

"Tacite subit ille supremus Virginitatis amor, primaeque modestia culpae Confundit vultus. Tunc ora rigantur honestis Imbribus."

_Thebaidos_, lib. ii. 232-34.

127 Bees (which Virgil said had in them something of the divine nature) were supposed by the ancients to be the special emblems or models of chast.i.ty. It was a common belief that the bee mother begot her young without losing her virginity. Thus in a fragment ascribed to Petronius we read,

"Sic sine concubitu textis apis excita ceris Fervet, et audaci milite castra replet."

Petron. _De Varia Animalium Generatione._

So too Virgil:-

"Quod neque concubitu indulgent nec corpora segnes In Venerem solvunt aut ftus nixibus edunt."-_Georg._ iv. 198-99.

Plutarch says that an unchaste person cannot approach bees, for they immediately attack him and cover him with stings. Fire was also regarded as a type of virginity. Thus Ovid, speaking of the vestals, says:-

"Nataque de fiamma corpora nulla vides: Jure igitur virgo est, quae semina nulla remitt.i.t Nec capit, et comites virginitatis amat."

"The Egyptians believed that there are no males among vultures, and they accordingly made that bird an emblem of nature."-Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus, xvii. 4.

128 "La divinite etant consideree comme renfermant en elle toutes les qualites, toutes les forces intellectuelles et morales de l'homme, chacune de ces forces ou de ces qualites, concue separement, s'offrait comme un etre divin.... De-la aussi les contradictions les plus choquantes dans les notions que les anciens avaient des attributs divins."-Maury, _Hist. des Religions de la Grece antique_, tome i. pp. 578-579.

129 "The Church holds that it were better for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse."-Newman's _Anglican Difficulties_, p. 190.

130 There is a remarkable dissertation on this subject, called "The Limitations of Morality," in a very ingenious and suggestive little work of the Benthamite school, called _Essays by a Barrister_ (reprinted from the _Sat.u.r.day Review_).

131 The following pa.s.sage, though rather vague and rhetorical, is not unimpressive: "Oui, dit Jacobi, je mentirais comme Desdemona mourante, je tromperais comme Oreste quand il veut mourir a la place de Pylade, j'a.s.sa.s.sinerais comme Timoleon, je serais parjure comme epaminondas et Jean de Witt, je me determinerais au suicide comme Caton, je serais sacrilege comme David; car j'ai la cert.i.tude en moi-meme qu'en pardonnant a ces fautes suivant la lettre l'homme exerce le droit souverain que la majeste de son etre lui confere; il appose le sceau de sa divine nature sur la grace qu'il accorde."-Barchou de Penhoen, _Hist. de la Philos. allemande_, tome i. p. 295.

132 This equivocation seems to me to lie at the root of the famous dispute whether man is by nature a social being, or whether, as Hobbes averred, the state of nature is a state of war. Few persons who have observed the recent light thrown on the subject will question that the primitive condition of man was that of savage life, and fewer still will question that savage life is a state of war. On the other hand, it is, I think, equally certain that man necessarily becomes a social being in exact proportion to the development of the capacities of his nature.

133 One of the best living authorities on this question writes: "The a.s.serted existence of savages so low as to have no moral standard is too groundless to be discussed. Every human tribe has its general views as to what conduct is right and what wrong, and each generation hands the standard on to the next. Even in the details of their moral standards, wide as their differences are, there is yet wider agreement throughout the human race."-Tylor on Primitive Society, _Contemporary Review_, April 1873, p. 702.

134 The distinction between innate faculties evolved by experience and innate ideas independent of experience, and the a.n.a.logy between the expansion of the former and that of the bud into the flower has been very happily treated by Reid. (_On the Active Powers_, essay iii.

chap. viii. p. 4.) Professor Sedgwick, criticising Locke's notion of the soul being originally like a sheet of white paper, beautifully says: "Naked man comes from his mother's womb, endowed with limbs and senses indeed well fitted to the material world, yet powerless from want of use; and as for knowledge, his soul is one unvaried blank; yet has this blank been already touched by a celestial hand, and when plunged in the colours which surround it, it takes not its tinge from accident but design, and comes forth covered with a glorious pattern." (_On the Studies of the University_, p. 54.) Leibnitz says: "L'esprit n'est point une table rase. Il est tout plein de caracteres que la sensation ne peut que decouvrir et mettre en lumiere au lieu de les y imprimer. Je me suis servi de la comparaison d'une pierre de marbre qui a des veines plutot que d'une pierre de marbre tout unie.... S'il y avait dans la pierre des veines qui marqua.s.sent la figure d'Hercule preferablement a d'autres figures, ... Hercule y serait comme inne en quelque facon, quoiqu'il fallut du travail pour decouvrir ces veines."-_Critique de l'Essai sur l'Entendement._

135 The argument against the intuitive moralists derived from savage life was employed at some length by Locke. Paley then adopted it, taking a history of base ingrat.i.tude related by Valerius Maximus, and asking whether a savage would view it with disapprobation.

(_Moral Phil._ book i. ch. 5.) Dugald Stewart (_Active and Moral Powers_, vol. i. pp. 230-231) and other writers have very fully answered this, but the same objection has been revived in another form by Mr. Austin, who supposes (_Lectures on Jurisprudence_, vol.

i. pp. 82-83) a savage who first meets a hunter carrying a dead deer, kills the hunter and steals the deer, and is afterwards himself a.s.sailed by another hunter whom he kills. Mr. Austin asks whether the savage would perceive a moral difference between these two acts of homicide? Certainly not. In this early stage of development, the savage recognises a duty of justice and humanity to the members of his tribe, but to no one beyond this circle. He is in a "state of war" with the foreign hunter. He has a right to kill the hunter and the hunter an equal right to kill him.

136 Everyone who is acquainted with metaphysics knows that there has been an almost endless controversy about Locke's meaning on this point. The fact seems to be that Locke, like most great originators of thought, and indeed more than most, often failed to perceive the ultimate consequences of his principles, and partly through some confusion of thought, and partly through unhappiness of expression, has left pa.s.sages involving the conclusions of both schools. As a matter of history the sensual school of Condillac grew professedly out of his philosophy. In defence of the legitimacy of the process by which these writers evolved their conclusions from the premisses of Locke, the reader may consult the very able lectures of M. Cousin on Locke. The other side has been treated, among others, by Dugald Stewart in his _Dissertation_, by Professor Webb in his _Intellectualism of Locke_, and by Mr. Rogers in an essay reprinted from the _Edinburgh Review_.

137 I make this qualification, because I believe that the denial of a moral nature in man capable of perceiving the distinction between duty and interest and the rightful supremacy of the former, is both philosophically and actually subversive of natural theology.

138 See the forcible pa.s.sage in the life of Epicurus by Diogenes Laertius. So Mackintosh: "It is remarkable that, while, of the three professors who sat in the Porch from Zeno to Posidonius, every one either softened or exaggerated the doctrines of his predecessor, and while the beautiful and reverend philosophy of Plato had in his own Academy degenerated into a scepticism which did not spare morality itself, the system of Epicurus remained without change; his disciples continued for ages to show personal honour to his memory in a manner which may seem unaccountable among those who were taught to measure propriety by a calculation of palpable and outward usefulness."-_Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy_, p. 85, ed. 1836.

See, too, Tennemann (_Manuel de la Philosophie_, ed. Cousin, tome i.