CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION [1]
II. THE DAWN OF MORALITY: CONSCIENCE IN THE KINSHIP GROUP [12]
I. Institutions, Ideas, and Conditions of Life determining the Rules of Conduct [12]
II. Essential Facts of Kinship or Intratribal Morality [15]
III. The Beginnings of Intertribal Morality [22]
III. THE MORAL LIFE IN ANCIENT EGYPT: AN IDEAL OF SOCIAL JUSTICE [30]
I. Circumstances and Ideas which molded and motived Morality [30]
II. The Ideal [33]
IV. THE BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN CONSCIENCE [45]
V. CHINESE MORALS: AN IDEAL OF FILIAL PIETY [53]
I. Ideas, Institutions, and Historical Circumstances determining the Cast of the Moral Ideal [53]
II. The Ideal [60]
III. Effects of the Ideal upon Chinese Life and History [69]
VI. JAPANESE MORALS: AN IDEAL OF LOYALTY [77]
I. Formative and Modifying Influences [77]
II. The Ideal [80]
III. Some Significant Facts in the Moral History of Japan [87]
VII. THE ETHICAL IDEALS OF INDIA [95]
PART I. THE ETHICS OF BRAHMANISM—A CLASS MORALITY [95]
I. Historical and Speculative Basis of the System [95]
II. The Various Moral Standards [101]
PART II. THE ETHICS OF BUDDHISM: AN IDEAL OF SELF-CONQUEST AND UNIVERSAL BENEVOLENCE [106]
I. The Philosophical Basis of the System [106]
II. The Ideal [110]
III. Some Expressions of the Ethical Spirit of Buddhism [115]
VIII. THE ETHICS OF ZOROASTRIANISM: AN IDEAL OF COMBAT [123]
I. Philosophical and Religious Ideas which created the Ethical Type [123]
II. The Ideal [126]
III. The Practice [131]
IX. THE MORAL EVOLUTION IN ISRAEL: AN IDEAL OF OBEDIENCE TO A REVEALED LAW [135]
I. The Religious Basis of Hebrew Morality [135]
II. The Evolution of the Moral Ideal [140]
1. The Development up to the Exile [140]
2. The Morality of the Prophets of the Exile [157]
3. The Moral Life in the Postexilic Age [162]
X. THE MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF HELLAS: AN IDEAL OF SELF-REALIZATION [169]
I. Institutions and Ideas determining the Moral Type [169]
II. The Ideal [174]
III. Limitations and Defects of the Ideal [179]
IV. The Moral Evolution [185]
XI. ROMAN MORALS: AN IDEAL OF CIVIC DUTY [212]
I. Institutions and Conditions of Life determining the Early Moral Type [212]
II. The Primitive Moral Type [214]
III. The Moral Evolution under the Republic [218]
IV. The Moral Evolution under the Pagan Empire [231]
XII. THE ETHICS OF DOCTRINAL CHRISTIANITY: AN IDEAL OF RIGHT BELIEF [255]
I. Religious Ideas and Theological Dogmas molding the Ideal [256]
II. The Moral Ideal [261]
XIII. MORAL HISTORY OF THE AGE OF CHRISTIAN ASCETICISM [267]
I. Conceptions of Life and Historical Circumstances that produced the Ascetic Ideal [267]
II. The Ideal and its Chief Types [270]
III. The Chief Moral Facts of the Period [272]
XIV. THE ETHICS OF ISLAM: A MARTIAL IDEAL [288]
I. Religious Basis of the Moral System [288]
II. The Moral Code [289]
III. The Moral Life [293]
XV. THE MORAL LIFE OF EUROPE DURING THE AGE OF CHIVALRY [300]
I. The Church consecrates the Martial Ideal of Knighthood [300]
II. The Composite Ideal of Knighthood [306]
III. The Chief Moral Phenomena of the Period [309]
XVI. RENAISSANCE ETHICS: REVIVAL OF NATURALISM IN MORALS [320]
I. Determining Influences [320]
II. Some Essential Facts in the Moral History of the Age [322]
XVII. ETHICS OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION [333]
I. Principles of the Reformation of Ethical Import [333]
II. Some Important Moral Outcomes of the Sixteenth-Century Religious Reform [334]
XVIII. THE MORAL EVOLUTION SINCE THE INCOMING OF DEMOCRACY: THE NEW SOCIAL AND INTERNATIONAL CONSCIENCE [340]
I. Forces determining the Trend of the Ethical Movement [340]
II. Expressions of the New Moral Consciousness in Different Domains of Life and Thought [344]
1. The Ethics of Democracy [344]
2. The Ethics of Industrialism [347]
3. The Ethics of Modern Science [353]
4. The Ethics of Theology [360]
5. Social Ethics: the New Social Conscience [364]
6. International Ethics: the New International Conscience [371]
INDEX [383]

HISTORY AS PAST ETHICS

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

The ethical interpretation of history

Professor Freeman defined history as “past politics.” Mr. Buckle argued that the essence of the historical evolution consists in intellectual progress.[1] Many present-day economists hold that the dominant forces in the historical development are economic.[2] Churchmen consistently make the chief factor in history to be religion.

Whether the upholders of these several interpretations of history would have us understand them as speaking of the ultimate goal of the historic evolution, or merely of the dominant motive under which men and society act, none of these interpretations can be accepted by the student of the facts of the moral life of the race as a true reading of history. To him not only does moral progress constitute the very essence of the historic movement, but the ethical motive presents itself as the most constant and regulative force in the evolution of humanity. His chief interest in all the other factors of the historical evolution is in noting in what way and in what measure they have contributed to the growth and enrichment of the moral life of mankind.

Thus the historian of morals is deeply interested in the growth of political institutions among men, but chiefly in observing in what way these institutions have affected for good or for evil the moral life of the nation. Particularly is the progress of the world toward political unity a matter of profound concern to him, not because he regards the establishment of the world state as an end in itself, but because the universal state alone can furnish those conditions under which the moral life of humanity can most freely expatiate and find its noblest and truest expression.

It is the same with intellectual progress. The student of morals recognizes the fact that the progress of the race in morality is normally dependent upon its progress in knowledge—that conscience waits upon the intellect. But in opposition to Buckle and those of his school, he maintains that, so far from an advance in knowledge constituting the essence of a progressive civilization, this mental advance constitutes merely the condition precedent of real civilization, the distinctive characteristic of which must be a true morality. A civilization or culture which does not include this is doomed to quick retrogression and decay. As Benjamin Kidd truly observes, “When the intellectual development of any section of the race, for the time being, outruns the ethical development, natural selection has apparently weeded it out like any other unsuitable product.”[3]

As with the political and intellectual elements of civilization so is it with the economic. The outward forms of the moral life are, it is true, largely determined by the industry of a people; but the informing spirit of morality is the expression of an implanted faculty. It is elicited but not created by environment. No industrial order from which it is lacking can long endure. Natural selection condemns it as unfit. And this we are beginning to recognize—that economics and ethics cannot be divorced, that every great industrial problem is at bottom a moral problem. To the student of the ethical phase of history all social reformers from the old Hebrew prophets down to Karl Marx and Henry George are primarily moralists pleading for social justice, equity, and righteousness.

And preëminently the same is it with religion. Religion has been a great part of the life of man, and the historian of morals must be a diligent student of the religious systems of the world, but mainly because religion has been in general such a potent agency in the moral education of mankind. For it is the ethical factor in the great world religions which constitutes their universal and permanent element. “It is the function of religion to kindle moral enthusiasm in society at large.”[4] “Christianity has no other function or value than as an aid to morality.”[5] All the great religions of the world—Buddhism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism (reckoning historic Judaism as beginning with the great prophets of the ninth and eighth centuries B.C.), Christianity, and Islam—began as moral reforms.[6]