CHAPTER VIII
THE MODERN PERIOD
The moral life of the modern western world differs from both Hebrew and Greek morality in one respect. The Hebrews and Greeks were pioneers. Their leaders had to meet new situations and shape new conceptions of righteousness and wisdom. Modern civilization and morality, on the other hand, received certain ideals and standards already worked out and established. These came to it partly through the literature of Hebrews, Greeks, and Latins, partly through Greek art and Roman civilization, but chiefly, perhaps, through two institutions: (1) Roman government and law embodied Stoic conceptions of a natural law of reason and of a world state, a universal rational society. This not only gave the groundwork of government and rights to the modern world; it was a constant influence for guiding and shaping ideas of authority and justice. (2) The Christian Church in its cathedrals, its cloisters, its ceremonials, its orders, and its doctrines had a most impressive system of standards, valuations, motives, sanctions, and prescriptions for action. These were not of Hebrew origin solely. Greek and Roman philosophy and political conceptions were fused with more primitive teaching and conduct. When the Germans conquered the Empire they accepted in large measure its institutions and its religion. Modern morality, like modern civilization, shows the mingled streams of Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and German or Celtic life. It contains also conceptions due to the peculiar industrial, scientific, and political development of modern times. Thus we have to-day such inherited standards as that of "the honor of a gentleman" side by side with the modern class standard of business honesty, and the labor union ideal of class solidarity. We have the aristocratic ideals of chivalry and charity side by side with more democratic standards of domestic and social justice. We find the Christian equal standard for the two sexes side by side with another which sets a high value on woman's chastity, but a trivial value on man's. We find a certain ideal of self-sacrifice side by side with an ideal of "success" as the only good. We cannot hope to disentangle all the threads that enter this variegated pattern, or rather collection of patterns, but we can point out certain features that at the same time illustrate certain general lines of development. We state first the general attitude and ideals of the Middle Ages, and then the three lines along which individualism has proceeded to the moral consciousness of to-day.
§ 1. THE MEDIÆVAL IDEALS
The mediæval attitude toward life was determined in part by the character of the Germanic tribes with their bold, barbaric strength and indomitable spirit, their clan and other group organizations, their customs or mores belonging to such a stock; and in part by the religious ideals presented in the church. The presence of these two factors was manifest in the strong contrasts everywhere present.
"Associated with mail-clad knights whose trade is war and whose delight is to combat are the men whose sacred vocation forbids the use of force altogether. Through lands overspread with deeds of violence, the lonely wayfarer with the staff and badge of a pilgrim passes unarmed and in safety. In sight of castles, about whose walls fierce battles rage, are the church and the monastery, within the precincts of which quiet reigns and all violence is branded as sacrilege."[84]
The harsh clashes of the Venus music over against the solemn strains from the Pilgrim's Chorus in Tannhäuser might well symbolize not only the specific collision of the opera but the broader range of passions opposed to the religious controls and values in this mediæval society.
The Group and Class Ideal.—The early Germans and Celts in general had the clan system, the group ideals, and group virtues which belonged to other Aryan peoples, but the very fact of the Germanic victories shows a military spirit which included both personal heroism and good capacity for organization. Group loyalty was strong, and the group valuation of strength and courage was unbounded. A high value was also set on woman's chastity. These qualities, particularly the loyalty to the clan and its head, survived longest in Celtic peoples like the Scots and Irish who were not subjected to the forces of political organization. Every reader of Scott is familiar with the values and defects of the type; and the problems which it causes in modern democracy have been acutely described by Jane Addams.[85] Among the Germanic peoples, when the clan and tribal systems were followed by the more thoroughgoing demarcation of classes, free and serfs, lords and villains, chevalier or knight, and churl, the old Latin terms "gentle" and "vulgar" found a fitting application. The term "gentle" was indeed given in one of its usages the force of the kindred term "kind" to characterize the conduct appropriate within the kin, but in the compound "gentleman" it formed one of the most interesting conceptions of class morality. The "honor" of a gentleman was determined by what the class demanded. Above all else the gentleman must not show fear. He must be ready to fight at any instant to prove his courage. His word must not be doubted. This seems to have been on the ground that such doubt would be a refusal to take the man at his own estimate, rather than because of any superlative love of truth, for the approved way to prove the point at issue was by fighting, not by any investigation. But the class character appears in the provision that no insult from one of a lower class need be noticed. Homicide was not contrary to the character and honor of a gentleman. Nor did this require any such standard in sex relations as a "woman's honor" requires of a woman. In conduct toward others, the "courtesy" which expresses in ceremony and manner respect for personal dignity was a fine trait. It did not always prevent insolence toward inferiors, although there was in many cases the feeling, noblesse oblige. What was needed to make this ideal of gentleman a moral and not merely a class ideal, was that it should base treatment of others on personal worth rather than on birth, or wealth, or race, and that it should not rate reputation for courage above the value of human life. This has been in part effected, but many traits of the old conception live on to-day.
The Ideal of the Church.—The ideal of life which the church presented contained two strongly contrasting elements, which have been frequently found in religion and are perhaps inevitably present. On the one hand, a spiritual religion implies that man in comparison with God is finite, weak, and sinful; he should therefore be of "a humble and contrite heart." On the other hand, as a child of God he partakes of the divine and is raised to infinite worth. On the one hand, the spiritual life is not of this world and must be sought in renouncing its pleasures and lusts; on the other hand, if God is really the supreme governor of the universe, then this world also ought to be subject to his rule. In the mediæval view of life, the humility and withdrawal from the world were assigned to the individual; the sublimity and the ruling authority to the church. Ethically this distribution had somewhat the effect of group morality in that it minimized the individual and magnified the corporate body of which he was a part. Asceticism and humility go hand in hand with the power of the hierarchy. Individual poverty—wealth of the church; individual meekness and submission—unlimited power and authority in the church; these antitheses reflect the fact that the church was the heir both of a kingdom of God and of a Roman Empire. The humility showed itself in extreme form in the ascetic type of monasticism with its vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. It was reflected in the art which took for its subjects the saints, conceived not individually, but typically and according to tradition and authority. Their thin attenuated figures showed the ideal prescribed. The same humility showed itself in the intellectual sphere in the preëminence given to faith as compared with reason, while the mystic losing himself in God showed yet another phase of individual renunciation. Even charity, with which the church sought to temper the hardship of the time, took a form which tended to maintain or even applaud the dependent attitude of the recipient. So far as life for the individual had a positive value, this lay not in living oneself out, but rather in the calm and the support afforded by the church:
"A life in the church, for the church, through the church; a life which she blessed in mass at morning and sent to peaceful rest by the vesper hymn; a life which she supported by the constantly recurring stimulus of the sacraments, relieving it by confession, purifying it by penance, admonishing it by the presentation of visible objects for contemplation and worship—this was the life which they of the Middle Ages conceived of as the rightful life of man; it was the actual life of many, the ideal of all."[86]