The debasing influence of the Greek philosophy, upon the Roman people, is shown by contrasting the characters of the distinguished men who were honored by the public at widely separated periods of time. Thus, during the period 400-350 B.C., Camillus, noted above all his contemporaries for the purity of his public life, was uninterruptedly honored with the highest offices in the State, and loved and respected by all classes of the community. But three hundred years later Cæsar, who involved the country in civil war to compass his ambition, and in which struggle liberty perished—he was preferred, in all the political struggles preliminary to his assumption of supreme power, to Cato, whose patriotism was unquestioned, and whose rigid virtue was proverbial throughout the Roman Empire. So also of a still later period, Agricola and Germanicus were renowned for the possession of the highest qualities of true manhood, joined to the practice in public life of the most austere and self-sacrificing virtue. Both served the State with courage, ability, and zeal; but the one, after a brilliant career in the West, was forced into retirement, and the other, after splendid services in the East, was exiled and poisoned.
Previous to the introduction of the Greek philosophy, and the Greek education and social habits, the Roman people were worthy of their noblest representative—Camillus. At that early period of their history they rewarded virtue and punished vice. But during the Empire, after the invasion of Greek manners, they were unworthy of their best representatives—Cato, Germanicus, and Agricola. To those great and good men they preferred Cæsar, Caligula, and Nero: they rewarded vice and punished virtue. There is in this circumstance unquestionable evidence of a great declension in character. But the remarkable fact in regard to this period of Roman history is that the declension in character was accompanied by a species of great mental growth or power.
During this period a literature was created which has ever since been famous, and which still exerts a considerable influence upon man. Cæsar’s Commentaries, the Orations of Cicero, the Annals of Tacitus, Livy’s History, the Odes and Satires of Horace, the Meditations of Aurelius, and the Morals of Seneca are in all the world’s libraries, and, in the universities, are placed in the hands of the most favored youth of all the civilized countries of the world, as models of style and exponents of a civilization whence all modern civilizations sprung. But this literature possessed no saving quality, because in so far as it was elevated in morals it did not represent the Roman people, not even the authors themselves generally, as has been shown. As a matter of fact, during the period of the creation of the great literature of Rome, Darwin’s law of “reversion” was in active operation. There was a “black sheep” in every noble Roman family. Bad men appeared, not now and then, at long intervals, as in all civilizations, but every day and everywhere; and these men were political and social leaders. They moulded the policy of the State and set the fashion in society. Under their direction the Roman people retrograded towards a state of savagery, and savagery is but another name for selfishness. Selfishness in its worst estate is the essence of human depravity, and to that condition the Roman people fell, at the time when their moralists were inditing those sublime sentiments which still challenge the admiration of all great and good men.
That the Roman people were as dead to the influence of high moral sentiments as the Britons were when first encountered by Cæsar, shows that they had degenerated to a similar condition of savagery, or to a condition of absolute selfishness, which is its moral equivalent. Given a savage state, two savages and one dinner; the savages will fight to the death for the dinner. Given a state of civilization absolutely selfish, two contestants and one prize; each contestant will exhaust all the resources of artifice, duplicity, and falsehood to secure the prize. To this deplorable condition the Roman people were reduced by subjective educational processes. Selfishness causes the individual to seek his own interest in total disregard of the interest of others. Hence it tends directly to the disintegration of society, since the essence of the civil compact is the pledge of each member of the community that he will do no injury to his fellows. Selfishness violates this pledge; for to gain its end it ruthlessly crushes whatever appears in its path.
In Rome selfishness did its complete work. It transformed the government from a pure democracy into an oligarchy composed of wealthy citizens, who called themselves nobles. By this class wealth was made the sole standard of social and political distinction, and in its presence, and through its influence, the old strife between the patricians and the plebeians gave way to a state of hostility between the rich and the poor—always the last analysis of social disorder. The contest was distinguished by assassinations, embezzlements of the public money, the quarrels of rival demagogues, and civil wars, and it culminated in Cæsar and the empire.
The nobles, or aristocrats, who wrought the work of transformation, were refined and elegant in their manners, and accomplished in the tricks of finance, the technicalities of the law, and the arts of oratory. They were the product of the Roman schools of rhetoric and logic, whose subjective methods obscured the truth, promoted vanity, and deified selfishness. All the guards of honor and rectitude having been swept away by Cæsar, a savage contest for supremacy ensued among the aristocrats. The prize for which they contended consisted of the spoil of the Roman legions and the product of the labor of the Roman slaves. This was the Roman patrimony—the price of blood and of the sweat of enforced toil. For this prize the Roman aristocrats struggled like savages fighting for the one dinner.
It is the old struggle, the struggle witnessed by each, in turn, of the nations of antiquity—the struggle in which selfishness vanquishes itself. But this is a struggle of giants, is on a grander scale, and is more conspicuous, for the historian, pen in hand, records its bloody scenes. It is the last act in a great drama, a drama that has lasted a thousand years. It is the conclusion of the long struggle of a few large-brained, unscrupulous individuals, to grasp the fruits of the toil of all men. The conspirators are about to fail, as such conspiracies have always failed and must always fail, and like Samson in his blind fury they will pull down upon their own devoted heads the pillars of the temple. The struggle culminates in a hand-to-hand conflict for the mastery between the baffled chiefs of the conspiracy to enslave mankind—the supreme effort of selfishness—and it involves the authors and their victims in one common disaster. Once more it is proved that a false system of education, a system which exalts abstract ideas and degrades things, promotes selfishness; that selfishness is the equivalent of savagery, and that savagery, however refined, wrecks society.
CHAPTER XXIII.
EDUCATION AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM—HISTORIC.
THE MIDDLE AGES.
The Trinity upon which Civilization Rests: Justice, the Arts, and Labor; and these Depend upon Scientific Education. — Reason of the Failure of Theodoric and Charlemagne to Reconstruct the Pagan Civilization. — Contempt of Man. — Serfdom. — The Vices of the Time: False Philosophy, an Odious Social Caste, and Ignorance. — The Splendid Career of the Moors in Spain, in Contrast. — Effect upon Spain of the Expulsion of the Moors. — The Repressive Force of Authority and the Atrocious Philosophy of Contempt of Man. — The Rule of Italy — a Menace and a Sneer. — The work of Regeneration. — The Crusades. — The Destruction of Feudalism. — The Invention of Printing. — The Discovery of America. — Investigation. — Discoveries in Science and Art.
Civilization languishes in an atmosphere of injustice, and if the injustice is gross, as slavery, for example, and long continued, the State perishes in the social convulsion which ensues. Thus perished the nations of antiquity. Civilization depends upon the useful arts; in them it had its origin, and with them it advances. The savage, in his most primitive state, is ignorant of all the arts; the most highly civilized man is familiar with, and under obligations to, all of them. The useful arts depend upon labor. If the laborer is degraded, the useful arts decline, as he sinks, in the social scale; if he is honored, they advance, as he rises. The trinity upon which civilization rests is, therefore, justice, the useful arts, and labor; and this trinity of saving forces depends in turn upon the scientific education of man. Rome held all these things in contempt, and Rome perished. Anarchy ensued, and, from a state of governmental chaos, the feudal system was evolved. A brief analysis of the history of the mediæval period will show that education was unscientific, and consequently that justice was scorned, the useful arts neglected, and labor despised.