VUPS AND DOWNS
Weare always talking about progress. But does “progress” mean only the multiplication of wealth and of the power and speed of machines, in other words, of our mastery over nature? This would be a rash assertion. “Progress” implies further improvement of, and increase in, the virtues, and the diminution of the vices inherent in human nature. Now, can anyone who knows the history of ancient civilisation, the life, the customs, the ideas, and the moral outlook of the Greeks and Romans, say that we have become better than they? And if he can say so, how much better have we become? Have we become better in every department of life, or are there some things in which we show a falling-off?
There can be no doubt that we are braver than the ancients. Our control of fire has obliged us to be continually making calls upon our bravery. The formidable machines which we set in motion; the explosives which we use so largely; the murderous forces of nature, like electricity, which we have brought into subservience;the thousand dangerous exploits on the sea, in the bowels of the earth, and in the giddy heights of the air in which thousands, nay millions, of engineers and workmen daily risk their lives, have steeled our temperaments to quell that blind and instinctive fear which lies deep down in human nature.
War is the supreme test of this increased courage. War has become rarer, it is true, than it was in the ancient world; but how much more terrible and awe-inspiring has it become, both by land and by sea, since fire replaced steel as the principal weapon! The only forms of fire known to the ancients as useful in war were boiling oil, which was often used in sieges, and the so-called Greek fire, which was employed in naval battles—a mysterious compound, into which one suspects, petroleum entered, for it was much used by the nations and cities of the Black Sea. But both of these were but children’s toys compared with the guns, shrapnel, and torpedoes of modern warfare. We are justified, therefore, in asserting that the men who took part in the battles of Marathon, Cannæ, and Zama did not need to have hearts so stout or courage so intrepid as the men who faced each other in the great battles of the Napoleonic era, in the American Civil War, in the battles between the Russians and Japanese, or in the recent Balkan War.
But if we are more courageous, we are at the same time less cruel, a fact which throws our superior courage into greater relief. One of the characteristic differencesbetween contemporary civilisation and those which preceded it, up to the French Revolution, is the total suppression of the bloody spectacles which, under so many aspects and forms, were one of the most sinister delights of our ancestors. We find the greatest difficulty in understanding how so highly civilised a people as the Romans, with so many thoughts and feelings in common with ourselves, could have been roused to such a pitch of intoxication by the games of gladiators and the baiting of wild beasts. And yet the popular passion for these bloody games was such that even the emperors, in whom they inspired feelings of horror and repulsion, like Augustus, were compelled to attend the gory spectacles, so as not to appear, by their absence, to rebuke those who supported them and to run counter to the absorbing passion of the masses for them.
On the other hand, if an ancient Roman came back to the world, and saw an American stadium packed with people from top to bottom, he would be not a little puzzled to explain what could have induced so many thousands of persons to have flocked together from afar merely to watch a football match,—to collect in such crowds, endure such a long journey, and such discomfort, just to get a distant view of some youths kicking their legs in the air! It would seem to them a truly insipid and tiresome spectacle. Their tastes ran to a gory struggle, reminiscent of war, to fights between men and animals, blood in bucketfuls.
Christianity initiated that education of men’s feelingswhich has made us gradually turn away our eyes in horror from these atrocious diversions. But how slow and difficult this education has been! It can safely be said not to have reached its climax until after the Revolution. Only the nineteenth century, intent on mitigating and humanising the penal law in every direction, has finally succeeded in abolishing the last of these cruel spectacles, capital punishment. Right up to the end of the eighteenth century, condemned prisoners were executed throughout Europe with much pomp and in the full light of day, in the central squares of the cities, at times and places at which everybody could attend, as if at a public festival. Indeed, executions were invariably attended by an immense public, attracted by cruel curiosity to see a man going to his death. By diminishing the number of death sentences, and by executing culprits in prison yards in the presence of a handful of witnesses, or, as is still done in France, in public, but at dawn, with the public kept at as great a distance as possible, the nineteenth century has put the crown on one of the most far-reaching and wonderful moral transformations of the human mind, a transformation which owes its birth to the words of Christ uttered twenty centuries ago, and has given modern civilisation one notable reason for boasting itself superior to the ancient.
But if we are more courageous and more humane, we are, on the other hand, in no way more sober or more temperate. As far as these virtues are concerned, theancient world cuts a much better figure in history than does the modern. We have deteriorated. The modern world eats and drinks to excess. It indulges to excess in alcoholic drinks and stimulants. The only intoxicating drinks known to the ancients were wine and beer, and wine they always drank mixed with water. They did not know alcohol, nor consequently, liqueurs, now so numerous and so highly appreciated; they did not know tea, coffee, or tobacco. We can assert positively that drunkenness was the rarest of vices in the ancient world, while frugality was the commonest of virtues. We need not take too seriously those orgies of the wealthy to which ancient writers—especially Latin writers—so often allude, or the banquets at which dishes of parrots’ tongues were served, or pearls dissolved in vinegar were drunk. These stories bear a strong family likeness to the legends current in Europe about “the corrupt state of American society,” and are due to the same tendency. They are the exaggerated and violent reaction of an ancient puritanism against the natural advances of luxury and against that kind of moral slackening which always accompanies the increase of wealth. Just as the dispassionate and unprejudiced European, when he examines at close-quarters the so-called “corrupt state of American society,” readily recognises that the high-sounding expression only indicates certain defects and weaknesses which certainly are reprehensible, but which are common to the whole of modern civilisation and notpeculiar to America, so the famous Roman orgies and the banquets, which have made so much stir, would seem to us, if a miracle allowed us to attend them, very modest and unassuming affairs compared to our ostentatious displays.
As far, then, as sobriety and temperance are concerned, we cannot confront our ancestors with too haughty a mien. And what shall we say about the purity of our customs? That is a much more difficult problem, perhaps an absolutely insoluble one. At least I, for my part, do not feel myself competent to solve it. To judge from Greco-Latin literature and art, one would say that in the ancient world, with the exception of a few countries and certain epochs, such as the centuries during which Rome was controlled by a puritan aristocracy, the customs of both men and women were very free and easy. But literature and art often afford untrustworthy evidence on which to base a judgment as to the customs of an epoch. For vice, wrong, and crime, though they may shock the moral sense, are more interesting subjects for art than are virtue and honesty. In short, literature and art always seek to describe what is rare, exceptional, and dramatic. Therefore, if we wish to judge the moral state of an epoch from its literature and art, we must know how far and in what degree the faults and vices described or chosen for artistic representation are common, what is the rule, and how many are the exceptions. And how are we to find this out? We shall have toknow the moral state of the epoch, and literature will not help us to this knowledge.
Anybody who judged Paris from the novels or dramas which deal with Parisian life would be forced to conclude that the French metropolis spends the whole of its time in amorous adventures. But anyone whoknowsParis is aware, what is after all ana priorisupposition, that love occupies in its life a very much less prominent place than in its literature; and that the writers of dramas and novels go to love for their subject by preference, because love admits of more attractive treatment than do struggles for money or the rivalries of political ambitions and the crosses of the intellectual life. For the rest, when we wish to judge the customs of an epoch or of a people, we must not forget that it is not always the epochs or the nations which lament most loudly the depravity of customs that are the most corrupt. Far from it! Often the epochs which bewail their own vices most bitterly are those in which the moral conscience is still lively and robust and, therefore, protests against the evil. The epochs which are dumb, and seem most virtuous, have often reached such a pitch of depravity, that they have become indifferent to the evil.
A striking instance of this curious phenomenon is to be found in the history of Rome. Horrible stories are told of the first period of the Empire,—extending from Augustus to Nero,—during which the family of the Julio-Claudii were at the helm of the State. History andliterature are full of scandals, and of laments over the depravity of the times. In the second period, on the other hand,—that of the Flavii and Antonines,—the scandals and protests cease. The depravity of the preceding century seems suddenly to have mysteriously disappeared. The Roman world has, by a kind of miraculous conversion, in a few years turned virtuous. In fact, not a few historians have thought that this miracle did come about, and have credited it to the virtuous emperors of the second century. After so many bad emperors, Rome at last got some good ones; and the trick was done! But anybody who studies the facts with a little patience will have no hesitation in concluding that the times of the Antonines were at least as corrupt as those of the Julio-Claudii; but that, while in the first century of the Christian era the ancient Puritan spirit of Rome was still alive and vigorous, and therefore protested against the deterioration of customs with such energy that its protests have reached even to our ears, in the epoch of the Antonines, on the other hand, this spirit was spent. Consequently, everybody resigned himself to the evil, either despairing of being able to cure it, or not giving it a thought. And so, of the two epochs, that which was painted in the blacker colours was, perhaps, really the better.
It is impossible, then, to decide whether our customs are better or worse than those of the ancients. It is certain, on the other hand, that we are much more human than they. For with us, a sentiment, which withthe ancients was very weak, if not non-existent, is lively and profound, the sentiment of the moral equality of every individual. The ancients simply refused to recognise in the slave and in the free man, in the nobleman and in the plebeian, in the citizen and in the foreigner, human creatures made of the same clay and animated by the same spirit, whom the mysterious accidents of fortune had placed in different situations, and all of whom had certain sacred and inviolable rights in the supreme domain of justice. A few philosophers dared just to hint at such doctrines, but without laying too much stress upon them. And theirs were voices crying in the wilderness. The free man, the patrician, and the citizen felt themselves creatures of another species and of a higher nature than slaves, plebeians, and foreigners, towards whom the former group might have capricious bursts of benevolence, but to whom they never regarded themselves as bound by any obligation. Hence came that asperity which appears in all the social relations of ancient peoples,—in their laws, their customs, their wars, their political quarrels,—and which often seems to us in so striking a contrast with the lofty and noble culture which adorned the ancient states.
Augustus, for instance, was a grave, well-balanced, and prudent man, who avoided all extremes. Yet the ancient writers tell us to his credit that he had amongst his numerous freedmen several men of the loftiest intellect, of wide knowledge, and of transparent honesty, who had rendered him great services; but that, thoughhe held them in great honour, he never invited any of them to his table. Such an act of familiarity between freedmen and patricians would have seemed to the ancients derogatory, and so they praised Augustus for having avoided it. To us, on the other hand, this attitude of reserve on the part of the great Emperor seems strange and incomprehensible, as it would seem on the part of a great and wealthy manufacturer who was ashamed to dine with the heads of departments of his business.
On the other hand, the difference between rich and poor was much less marked in the ancient world than it is in the modern. This is, perhaps, the most striking and important of the lines of cleavage between the world of antiquity and that of to-day. The idea of the moral equality of men, who are all sons of God, which was disseminated by Christianity; the idea of political and social equality, which was promulgated by the French Revolution, have in modern civilisation cut at the roots of the ancient distinctions of class, of religion, and even to a certain extent of nationality. But modern society is organising itself, in compensation, into a hierarchy of wealth. Men may consider themselves in theory all equal to one another; but each tries to associate with those persons who have approximately the same means as he, because it is they who are able to have the same habits as he has. Precisely because the modern world is so rich and so luxurious, the modes of living among the richest, the rich, and the moderatelywell-to-do classes show striking differences. And what is true of the modes of living is also true of tastes and inclinations. Everybody realises nowadays that differences or resemblances in habits, tastes, and inclinations are what most attract and repel men and influence them in treating each other as equals or unequals, when custom and tradition have established no other moral difference between them. The motor-car is as powerful a barrier between the social classes of to-day as was aristocratic prejudice before the Revolution.
In ancient times, on the other hand, precisely because the world was then so much poorer and simpler, the difference in the mode of living between poor and rich was much smaller. Both lived in closer contact, treating each other really as equals, provided always that they were of the same rank socially and politically. Augustus, who could not have freedmen, however enlightened, to dinner, invited poor, but free-born, plebeians. A rich Roman would never have entertained a freedman in his house or at his table, or treated him as an equal, even if the latter had been as rich as, or richer than, himself. On the other hand, he welcomed and treated as an equal a citizen free-born like himself, however miserable and reduced to living on his bounty.
If, therefore, the ancient conception of the social relations was less humane and less generous than ours, it was not wanting in a certain moral grandeur that is wanting to ours, inasmuch as in estimating a man, it subordinated his wealth to ideal qualities, such as freebirth, or good birth, or citizenship. So it maintained in society certain moral values which were not to be bought with money. The poorest of Roman citizens was conscious and proud of possessing something of inestimable value, which the richest and most opulent of Roman freedmen could not acquire for all his wealth; and this sentiment was a very real alleviation of, and compensation for, his poverty. Dare we assert that in this respect our social system does not fall short of the ancient one? Such an assertion would be, in my opinion, a very bold one. The gravest weakness in modern society consists precisely in this continual increase of the power of money, as an all-regulating force and universal standard. If the social evolution which we are witnessing continues on the path on which it has started, in a short time there will be nothing in life worth having which is not purchasable for money; and then what means will there be left of bridling the greed and envy of the poor?
But this superiority of ancient society was in its turn the effect of a different conception of wealth, of its rights, its duties, and its objects. It is an exaggeration to credit the ancients with a simplicity and a contempt for riches, qualities which serve as a strange contrast with the greed and the insatiable thirst for gold which possess the moderns. In ancient times, it is true, men preached moderation in desires and taught the art of being contented with but little, with greater zeal and success than it is taught in modern times.Nevertheless, the men of those days, with but few exceptions, were not less greedy than we, and not less apt to consider wealth as the greatest of life’s blessings. Those who could, accumulated large private fortunes with the same frenzy and the same insatiate greed that inflame so many speculators and business men of the present day; and many of those who were content to live the simple life were converts to this noble and lofty philosophy from necessity rather than from conviction. The wealth of the ancient world was infinitely smaller than that of the modern world. Consequently a large number of persons had to be content to live the simple life. On this account the religions and the philosophers invented many theories and doctrines to prove that simplicity and parsimony were more desirable than opulence and luxury. That is the reason for the numberless theories regarding austerity that antiquity invented.
But though the ancients desired riches as much as we do, they were not infatuated by the desire to multiply them to the same extent as the moderns. In this respect, the ancients may truly be said to have been more austere and disinterested than we. And the difference between their thoughts and feelings on the subject and our own is seen most strikingly in one fundamental principle, which is, as it were, the keystone of the whole fabric of ideas and sentiments which concern riches; I mean, the question of putting money out at interest. To modern society it seems the mostnatural thing in the world that money should earn interest. Nowadays, the number of those who lend or invest capital in the countless ways offered by modern finance is infinite. Every one of these big and little capitalists, who possess State bonds, shares in railways or industrials, or bank or commercial securities, would be thunderstruck if anyone told him that he was behaving in an unseemly way. Matters have reached a point at which the distinction between investment and usury is fading from our minds. And yet numberless generations, and not a few of the most brilliant civilisations in history, professed the idea that any business of that sort was unbecoming. The ancients as a rule, with but few casual exceptions, judged it unfitting for a man of the respectable classes to earn money in any other way than either from land and houses—realty—or from direct participation in commerce and the arts; never from money lent at interest to others. That was usury; and was considered nearly always, with but few exceptions of time and place, as the exercise of a degrading profession. Wealthy men, with large sums of money at their disposal, were able, and were expected, to help those who needed money; but with gratuitous, not with interest-bearing loans. The letters of Cicero, for instance, are full of references to these gratuitous loans, for which the great orator, when short of money, often asked his friends. When he was in funds, he lent to those who were in need. In short, the lending of money without interest to upright and honourable personswas considered in those days a duty of the rich.
Of course, ideas like these about money and interest were bound to retard the development of the ancient world and the increase of wealth. But they were ideas which kept alive in men’s minds a certain noble disinterestedness of which it would be difficult to find traces to-day, and which makes amends for many of the asperities of ancient civilisation.
Considering, then, the separate virtues one by one, we find that in some we have progressed, in others we have not. Therefore, in certain respects we are better than the ancients, in others we are worse. Must we conclude that the good and the evil balance each other, and that, therefore, there has been no real moral progress from the ancient world to the modern? That would be, in my opinion, a very bold assertion. It is, in fact, undeniable that our moral life is richer in principles than that of the ancients, because we have retained many of the ancient principles, and have added to them the moral principles which were invented by the civilisations which flourished after the fall of the Roman Empire. We appreciate the virtues of patriotism, civic affection, and valour in war which were proper to the ancient cities. To them we add the sense of legality and right, the need for precise and prompt justice, which were invented by the ancient jurists and perfected by the moderns. We add charity, mercy, love of our neighbour, horror of cruel amusements, virtues which Christ taught us. We add the sentiment of thedignity and the rights of man, which was created by the philosophy of the eighteenth century and by the French Revolution. We add certain other brand-new sentiments, the creation of the civilisation of machinery, which are, therefore, stronger in America than in Europe: ardour for the new, enthusiasm for progress, confidence in our own strength. In war, we fight like the Romans, and in peace, we turn our eyes away from bloody spectacles. We should hold the gladiatorial games in no whit less horror than the most pious of Christian monks. We trade like the Phœnicians and we love knowledge like the Greeks. We appreciate liberty and we appreciate authority. Does not all this constitute real progress? And does it not suffice to counterbalance certain other defects of ours, such as intemperance and the immoderate desire for riches?
I think so. But that does not mean that we are at liberty to abandon ourselves freely to our vices and defects, under the pretext that they are compensated for by other virtues. It is the duty of every civilisation, as of every man, to make himself as perfect as possible. And this duty we must not forget, not even in the midst of the immeasurable triumphs of the richest, most powerful, and wisest civilisation that has ever yet seen the light of day.