III. Limitations and Defects of the Ideal
Its aristocratic character
A chief defect of Greek ethics was its aristocratic spirit. So many were the classes excluded in whole or in part from the moral field that Greek morality was almost as much a class morality as that of Brahmanic India. Entire races and classes were as completely outside the moral pale as is the Indian pariah. It was only the higher cultured classes of citizens who, the moral philosophers taught, were capable of attaining the noblest virtues and living the truly moral life. All others were regarded as living on a semimoral or nonmoral animal plane of existence.
The exclusion of non-Greek races from the moral sphere
Thus throughout a great part of the historic period the Greeks virtually excluded all non-Greek peoples from the moral domain.[446] They regarded these non-Hellenic folk about as we regard animals, or as many a few generations ago looked upon the black race. They thought it right for them to make unprovoked war upon such people and to make slaves of those they might capture. Aristotle taught that to hunt barbarians for the purpose of getting slaves was just as right and proper as to hunt animals for food or sacrifice.[447] In a word, non-Greeks were regarded as being practically outside the pale of humanity.
The exclusion of slaves
The moral status of the slave in ancient Greece was determined by the fact that slaves were usually barbarians.[448] Since as non-Greeks they were already outside the moral pale, it followed naturally that as slaves they had no standing in the court of morals. Their status was almost the same as that of domestic animals. The Greek master never felt that he owed any moral duties to his slaves, though kind and merciful treatment of them was enjoined by the philosophers and moralists. According to Aristotle, the relation of slave and master is a purely natural one, like that of body and soul. He calls slaves “living instruments.”
The exclusion of the domestic sphere
Out of the family relationships arise a large part of the duties making up the moral code of the modern Western world, while in the atmosphere of the domestic circle are nourished many of what we regard as the most sacred and attractive of the virtues. Now these family virtues, which we esteem so highly, found only a very subordinate place in the Greek ideal of character, for the reason that the family, like the clan and the tribe, was almost absorbed by the city. In Sparta the family and family life practically disappeared. In Plato’s ideal republic the family is sacrificed to the state.
The status of the wife in most of the Greek cities was a low one. She was practically one of the slaves. Ethical sentiment, as was true of the sentiment of romantic love, seems to have been almost wholly lacking in the marriage relation.
Infancy, in its earliest stages, was in general never brought beneath the protecting ægis of the moral sentiment.[449] In the practice of the exposure of ill-formed, weak, defective, or unpromising newborn infants the Greeks, like the Romans, never advanced much beyond the standpoint of barbarians. This abandonment or destruction by parents of their offspring did not offend the common conscience. Even the philosophers and moralists saw nothing in the practice to censure. Evidence of how general the custom was, is afforded by various tales and dramas which turn on the rescue of the hero in his infancy after having been cast out to die.[450] The story of King Œdipus is typical.[451]
In this connection a word must be said regarding chastity. We find here one of the most serious defects of Greek morality. The virtue of chastity was given a very low place, hardly any place at all, in the Greek ideal of character. It was the undervaluing of this virtue that without doubt was one of the contributing causes of the decline and early decay of Greek civilization.
Another equally grave defect in the Greek moral character was lack of respect for the aged. Save at Sparta and Athens, age was not reverenced in ancient Greece.[452] In this respect the Greeks stood almost on a level with most primitive races.
The disesteem of industrial virtues
A marked characteristic of Greek ethical feeling was a deep prejudice against manual and commercial occupations as unworthy of freemen. Aristotle taught that there was “no room for moral excellence” in the trades and employments of artisans, traders, and laborers.[453] Even artists like Phidias and Polyclitus were looked upon as “miserable handicraftsmen.”[454] Plato in his Laws says: “He who in any way shares in the illiberality of retail trade may be indicted by any one who likes for dishonoring his race, before those who are judged to be first in virtue; and if he appear to throw dirt upon his father’s house,—by an unworthy occupation,—let him be imprisoned for a year and abstain from that sort of thing.”[455] In some cities the person who engaged in trade was disqualified for citizenship, and in others no mechanic or field laborer could enter the place where the freemen met.
This feeling that labor is degrading came in after the Homeric Age, with the rule of the oligarchs, and was the natural and inevitable outcome of slavery. The effect of slavery is to make work seem ignoble and servile, and to cause the industrial virtues to assume a low place in the moral ideal, or to drop out of it entirely. The high place assigned the industrial virtues in the moral ideals of ancient Persia and Israel was due probably as largely to the subordinate place which slavery held in those countries as to the influence of religious doctrines and physical environment.
Another ground for the feeling was that hard, coarse work destroys the suppleness and mars the beauty and symmetry of the body; and this to the Greek way of thinking was sufficient reason why the freeman—to use Plato’s phrase—“should abstain from that sort of thing.”
Still another reason for the feeling that the retail trades were unworthy of citizens was the conviction that this kind of business had “a strong tendency to make men bad.” The small merchants and traders in Greece certainly bore a very bad reputation,[456] and it is probable that the public disesteem of their occupation and the contempt in which they themselves were held had the same sinister influence upon them that the similar feeling in Old Japan had upon the petty trader there.[457]
Revenge reckoned as a virtue
In nothing did the ordinary Greek moral consciousness differ more widely from the Christian than in the matter of forgiving injuries. This was one of the virtues brought in by Christianity which to the Greek mind was foolishness. To the Greek the taking of revenge upon an enemy was a duty. A man should render himself useful to his friends and dangerous to his enemies. The Greek orator, in order to justify his resentment toward any one, always took pains to show that he had been injured in some way by the person, and hence had good ground for wishing to do him evil. Indeed, one who neglected to take revenge upon his personal enemy was looked upon as a weak, pusillanimous creature.[458]
But out of this virtue of revenge, paradoxically enough, arose the virtue of forgiveness; for revenge was limited by the requirements of the virtue of moderation or self-restraint. The person seeking revenge for an injury must set reasonable bounds to his thirst for vengeance. Hence when the age of reflection came there were teachers of spiritual insight who, regarding the matter from this point of view, saw forgiveness to be a virtue because it required in the one forgiving great self-conquest and self-control.[459]
Low estimation of truthfulness
Another serious defect in the ordinary Greek moral standard was the low place assigned to the virtue of veracity. The Greeks, in marked contrast to the ancient Persians, had only a very feeble sense of the sanctity of the plighted word. Untruthfulness was ingrained in the nation. The Homeric heroes were full of guile and deceit, and the historic Greeks were little better. They had throughout the ancient world a well-earned reputation for disregard of promises and oaths. When it seemed to them necessary to lie in order to gain a desired end, then lying appeared to them justifiable. Scythas, tyrant of Zancle, if we may judge from a story told by Herodotus, was the only Greek who kept his word to Darius. This man was in exile at Susa. He obtained from the king permission, presumably on parole, to visit Sicily, and honorably returned to Persia. The conduct of Scythas in this matter must have been exceptional, for, in the words of Herodotus, “him Darius regarded the most upright of all the Greeks to whom he afforded a refuge.”[460]
The great moral teachers of Greece recognized this defect in the moral character of their countrymen and sought to correct it by extolling the virtue of truthfulness. After the Persian war a class of men arose, historians and philosophers, whom Schmidt, because of their reverence for truth, calls the ancestors of the modern men of science.[461] Thucydides had the same sense of the sanctity of exactness in statement of fact as has the historian of to-day. Socrates died rather than cloak the truth before his judges. Aristotle said, “Friends and truth are both dear to us, but it is a sacred duty to prefer the truth.”[462]