Society keeps changing its sentiments with the centuries. Absolutely, we can never know when it is right or when it is wrong. The outlaw of one era is the idol of another. Servetus was immolated by the Calvinists, to-day he is a martyr to conscience. Bruno was burned as a heretic, now he is the hero of philosophy and science.
Galileo and Roger Bacon were once execrated by the church—their bones lie in unknown and unhonored graves. We regard them as brave pioneers of human thought. The formerly despised and hunted Christians are become the greatest power on earth. The Jew money-lender of the “dark ages” (whom such as Front-de-Bœuf once tortured with impunity) is the Rothschild of our century—“the guest of princes and the instigator of commercial wars.” Shylock is now an influential and courted capitalist. “All the glories of Alexander do not condone, in our eyes, for his cruelty in crucifying the brave defenders of Tyre, by thousands, along the sea-shore; and if Solomon, with his thousand wives and concubines, were to appear in London or New York to-morrow, even the most frivolous circles would be shocked, and Brigham Young, by contrast, seem a domestic model.”
From Cæsar we learn that the Suevi held their lands in common; that private property in the soil did not obtain with the Gauls and Germans. The same is true of the North American Indians and some of the Pacific Islanders. It is conceded, moreover, that communistic principles were generally prevalent in the earliest ages of the world. Then, any attempt at exclusive individual possession of land or chattel would have been deemed a theft.
The mediæval ideal was an ascetic and monastic life. To-day, millions regard such a course as unwise, if not wicked. Poverty, heretofore esteemed as the badge of honor and dignity, is by our era adjudged offensive. Nomadism prevailed in a former age. Now gypsies and tramps are the outcasts of society. Regarding marriage, public opinion has varied through all phases, without attaining finality. In earliest times how indiscriminate is the tie—the monstrous relation of brother and sister being the rule, rather than the exception. Polygamy prevails with one people and polyandry among another. In India and the Orient a wife is hidden from the dearest friend, while in Africa a chief will put his mate to bed with a guest. In Japan young women, even of good birth, “are free in their intercourse with men, till they are married; at Paris they are free after.”
In ancient Greece and Rome, again, marriage was not the highest conception, and largely “a matter of convenience and housekeeping.” Wives were little, if any better, than slaves. The class of women known as Hetairai (concubines and mistresses) were openly honored and trusted by both political and social leaders. The name of Aspasia is closely associated with that of Pericles. Theodota was the intimate of Socrates. Diotima has been immortalized in the “Symposium” of Plato.
The splendid ideal of our century is the monogamic state—“the great theme of romantic literature, and the climax of a myriad novels and poems.” In classic Greece the idealistic model was male friendship—comradeship. We have its type in the heroic figures of Harmodius and Aristogiton. The Theban Legion, or “Sacred Band,” exemplified the principle. No man might enter without his lover. Although annihilated at the battle of Chæronæa, it was never vanquished. The literature of Greece and Rome illuminate this exalted sentiment. The writings of Pliny the younger, Cicero and Lucian, are worthy of especial mention. Many sweet and noble friendships are embalmed in the poetry of Hellas and Latium; Demetrius and Antiphilus; Damon and Pythias; Phocion and Nicoles; Glaucus and Diomedes; Philades and Orestes; Cicero and Atticus; Socrates and Alcibiades; Lucilius and Brutus; Tiberius Gracchus and Blossius; Caius Gracchus and Licinus.
Suicide was not thought unworthy by the ancients. It was resorted to by Anthony, Brutus, Cassius, Cato, and Zeno. To-day, the attempt is a crime, and its consummation a disgrace. In Europe and America it is felo-de-se. Infanticide is common in many parts of Asia and Africa. To-day the feudal baron would be adjudged a freebooter; the knight-errant a brawling vagabond. A nineteenth century man may beat his wife within an inch of her life, and get but three months. For stealing a suit of clothes he would be “sent up” for years. So “gambling on ’change is now respectable enough, but pitch and toss for halfpence is low, and must be dealt with by the police. We know that when questions connected with life contingencies were first considered, it was regarded as most deliberate gambling to be in any way concerned in buying or selling such articles as annuities, or any interests depending upon them.” The age boasts of an advance in the humanities; and yet, public opinion permits extravagance and selfishness in the rich while the poor are starving. Our educated classes, generally, approve the vivisection of animals. In ancient Egypt it would have been stigmatized as the most abominable of crimes.
From age to age, likewise, law represents the code of the dominant or ruling class—at all times only valid because it is the code of those in power. How often used by “authority” for selfish purposes, may be read on every page of history. Monarchy, absolute or limited, is a synonym for injustice. Feudalism is another term for murder, rapine and extortion. In Spain, the lands of nobles were long exempted from direct taxation. For centuries the Hungarian turnpikes were free to the aristocracy. Prior to the revolution in France, all burdens of state devolved upon the lower classes. Less than two centuries ago Scotch lairds exported their peasantry into slavery. Students will recall the “Black Act” of George I., and the “Inclosure Laws” of England. Until quite recently, slavery existed in Europe and America; nor has the institution wholly disappeared from the earth. Legislation is mainly in the interest of the wealthy and powerful. Congress and legislatures are making the rich richer, and the poor poorer. Government is largely devoted to the creation and upholding of corporations, trusts, monopolies, subsidies and extortionate tariffs. What care the politicians for manhood? Wealth is their God.
“Let your rule be the greatest happiness to the greatest number,” interposes another authority. But are men agreed in their definition of “greatest happiness?” Different notions of it are entertained in all ages, amongst every people, by each class. “To the wandering gypsy a home is tiresome, whilst a Swiss is miserable without one. Progress is necessary to the Anglo-Saxons; on the other hand, the Esquimaux are content in their squalid poverty, have no latent wants, and are still what they were in the days of Tacitus. An Irishman delights in a row, a Chinaman in ceremonies and pageantry, and the usually apathetic Javanese gets vociferously enthusiastic over a cock-fight. The heaven of the Hebrew is a city of gold and precious stones, with an abundance of corn and wine; that of the Turk, a harem peopled by Houris; that of the American Indian, a happy hunting-ground; in the Norse paradise there were to be daily battles, with magical healing of wounds. It was, seemingly, the opinion of Lycurgus, that perfect physical development was the chief essential to human felicity; Plotinus, on the contrary, was so purely ideal in his aspirations as to be ashamed of his body. To a miserly Elwes, the hoarding of money was the only enjoyment of life; but the philanthropic Day could find no pleasurable employment, save in its distribution.”
Francis, Duke of La Rochefoucault, likened the soul of man unto a medal, so constructed that it may represent either a saint or a devil. Montaigne, also, said the soul of man was double-faced; the inner beamed upon self-love, while the outer wore a mask. Voltaire was a scoffer: a master of satire, who ridiculed without mercy every human weakness. In “Zadig” and “Micromegas” he mocked the ignorance and self-conceit of mankind. His “Memnon,” the “Wise Memnon,” who, in the morning, foreswore all women, made a vow of temperance, renounced gaming and quarreling, and determined never to be seen at court, was, before the night of the same day, cheated and robbed by a female, got drunk, gamed, quarreled with his most intimate friend, and made a visit to court, where everyone laughed at him. The moral of “Candide, or the Optimist,” is, as interpreted by Smollett, that nothing is more absurd than the exercise of human reason; that nothing is more futile and frivolous than the cultivation of philosophy; that mankind are savages, who devour one another. This is cynicism, pure and simple. I cannot endure a creed so ghastly: a philosophy that suspects Socrates of incontinence, charges Epicurus with prodigality, accuses Aristotle of covetousness, and can say of Seneca that “he had but the single virtue of concealing his vices.” Horace took a more charitable view of the moral philosophers, and ascribed their weakness to inability rather than hypocrisy. The poet says that men “upon the stage of this world are like a company of travelers whom night has surprised as they are passing through a forest; they walk on, relying upon the guide, who immediately misleads them through ignorance. All of them use what care they can to find the beaten path again; everyone takes a different path, and is in good hopes his is the best; the more they fill themselves with these vain imaginations the farther they wander; but though they wander a different way, yet it proceeds from one and the same cause; ’tis the guide that misled them, and the obscurity of the night hinders them from recovering the right road.”