Footnotes

[1.]Compassion ought from its derivation to have the same meaning with sympathy; but in common usage it is synonymous with pity.[2.]“Ignorantia legis neminem excusat.”[3.]The theory that Seneca was acquainted with St. Paul, or had any direct intercourse with Christians in Rome or elsewhere, has no historical evidence, and rests on assumptions that are contradicted by known facts.[4.]Virtutes leniores, as Cicero calls them.[5.]The duty of society to inflict capital punishment on the murderer has been maintained on the ground of the Divine command to that effect, said to have been given to Noah, and thus to be binding on all his posterity. (Genesis ix. 5.) My own belief—founded on a careful examination of the Hebrew text—is, that the human murderer is not referred to in this precept, but that it simply requires the slaying of the beast that should cause the death of a man,—a precaution which was liable to be neglected in a rude state of society, and was among the special enactments of the Mosaic law. (Exodus xxi. 38.) If, however, the common interpretation be retained, the precept requires the shedding of the murderer's blood by the brother or nearest kinsman of the murdered man, and is not obeyed by giving up the murderer to the gallows and the public executioner. Moreover, the same series of precepts prescribes an abstinence from the natural juices of animal food, which would require an entire revolution in our shambles, kitchens, and tables. If these precepts were Divine commandments for men of all times, they should be obeyed in full; but there is the grossest inconsistency and absurdity in holding only a portion of one of them sacred, and ignoring all the rest.[6.]Latin, virtus, from vir, which denotes not, like homo, simply a human being, but a man endowed with all appropriate manly attributes, and comes from the same root with vis, strength. The Greek synonyms of virtus, ἀρετή, is derived from Ἀρης, the god of war, who in the heroic days of Greece was the ideal man, the standard of human excellence, and whose name some lexicographers regard—as it seems to me, somewhat fancifully—as allied through its root to ἀνήρ, which bears about the same relation to ἄνθρωπος that vir bears to homo.[7.]In the languages which have inherited or adopted the Latin virtus, it retains its original signification, with one striking exception, which yet is perhaps an exception in appearance rather than in reality. In the Italian, virtu is employed to signify taste, and virtuoso, which may denote a virtuous man, oftener means a collector of objects of taste. We have here an historical landmark. There was a period when, under civil despotism, the old Roman manhood had entirely died out on its native soil, while ecclesiastical corruption rendered the nobler idea of Christian manhood effete; and then the highest type of manhood that remained was the culture of those refined sensibilities, those ornamental arts, and that keen sense of the beautiful, in which Italy as far surpassed other lands, as it was for centuries inferior to them in physical bravery and in moral rectitude.[8.]It is obviously on this ground alone that we can affirm moral attributes of the Supreme Being. When we say that he is perfectly just, pure, holy, beneficent, we recognize a standard of judgment logically independent of his nature. We mean that the fitness which the human conscience recognizes as its only standard of right, is the law which he has elected for his own administration of the universe. Could we conceive of omnipotence not recognizing this law, the decrees and acts of such a being would not be necessarily right. Omnipotence cannot make that which is fitting wrong, or that which is unfitting right. God's decrees and acts are not right because they are his, but his because they are right.[9.]From cardo, a hinge.[10.]It is virtually Cicero's division in the De Officiis.[11.]The points at issue with regard to sabbatical observance hardly belong to an elementary treatise on ethics. I ought not, however, to leave any doubt as to my own opinion. I believe, then, the rest of the Sabbath a necessity of man's constitution, physical and mental, of that of the beasts subservient to his use, and, in some measure, even of the inanimate agents under his control, while the sequestration of the day from the course of ordinary life is equally a moral and religious necessity. The weekly Sabbath I regard as a dictate of natural piety, and a primeval institution, re-enacted, not established, by Moses, and sanctioned by our Saviour when he refers to the Decalogue as a compend of moral duty, as also in various other forms and ways. As to modes of sabbatical observance, the rigid abstinences and austerities once common in New England were derived from the Mosaic ceremonial law, and have no sanction either in the New Testament or in the habits of the early Christians. I can conceive of no better rule for the Lord's day, than that each person so spend it as to interfere as little as possible with its fitting use by others, and to make it as availing as he can for his own relaxation from secular cares, and growth in wisdom and goodness.[12.]It was the malignity displayed toward the children of divorced wives by the women who succeeded them in the affections and homes of their husbands, that in Roman literature attached to the name of a stepmother (noverca) the most hateful associations, which certainly have no place in modern Christendom, where the stepmother oftener than not assumes the maternal cares of the deceased wife as if they were natively her own.[13.]

When Jesus forbids swearing by heaven, because “it is God's throne,” and by the earth, because “it is his footstool,” the inference is obvious that, for still stronger reasons, all direct swearing by God himself is prohibited. The word μήτε, which introduces the oaths by inferior objects specified in the text under discussion, not infrequently corresponds to our phrase not even. With this sense of μήτε, the passage would be rendered, “But I say unto you, Swear not at all, not even by heaven,” etc.

I find that some writers on this subject quote in vindication of oaths on solemn occasions the instances in the Scriptures in which God is said to have sworn by Himself. The reply is obvious, that no being can swear by himself, the essential significance of an oath being an appeal to some being or object other than one's self. Because God “can swear by no greater,” it is certain that when this phraseology is used concerning Him, it is employed figuratively, to aid the poverty of human conceptions, and to express the certainty of his promise by the strongest terms which human language affords. In like manner, God is said by the sacred writers to repent of intended retribution to evil-doers, not that infinite justice and love can change in thought, plan, or purpose, but because a change of disposition and feeling is wont to precede human clemency to evil-doers.