History as past ethics; an introduction to the history of morals

by P. V. N. Myers

Never before in the history of the world down to our own day were there so many forces and circumstances making for cosmopolitanism in life and thought as in the age of the early Cæsars. The growth of the little city state of Rome into a world state had made all freemen actually or potentially citizens of the world. The political unity of the world had awakened the consciousness of a moral unity. In thought and feeling many select souls recognized themselves as brothers of all other men. It was not merely the world-wide reach of the Roman rule that promoted the growth of this cosmopolitanism, but contributing largely to it were the policies of the imperial government, many of whose agencies and institutions made directly and powerfully for the development of a sentiment of universal human kinship. The unification of the world on its physical side, by the creation of the splendid Roman roads and the facilities thus provided for world-wide trade and travel, had the same broadening effect upon the moral feelings that modern railways, steamboats, and telegraphs have upon the ethical sympathies of our own day. Furthermore, the practically autocratic authority of the Emperor tended to destroy class distinctions by reducing all to the same level of servitude, to obliterate national boundaries, and to weaken race prejudices. Then also, as the capital of the world, Rome had become, as a center and creator of cosmopolitan life, a second Alexandria. The character, too, of the slaves, drawn now largely from the East, and often superior in culture to their masters, tended to blur the distinctions between classes based on outer conditions, and to suggest the doctrine of equality in the sphere of the spirit. The army, also, recruited from every race and land in the Empire, and from the outside barbarian world as well, with the legions raised in one country serving in another, was a liberalizing agency, and a most effective one in breaking down race barriers and in widening the mental outlook and the moral sympathies of the traveled legionaries.

The second great cause of the enlarging of the moral feelings was the influence of the Greek spirit. Indeed, this broadening movement was in large measure the effect of the action of the cosmopolitan spirit of the Stoic philosophy upon the originally narrow spirit of Rome.[555] Evidences in literature of this widening of the moral horizon multiply from Terence in the second century B.C. to the age of the Antonines. The familiar sentiment of the poet, “I am a man and nothing human is alien to me,”[556] although we know nothing as to the response this evoked in the readers of Terence, may fairly be accepted as evidence that the new spirit of cosmopolitanism was already at work in Roman society. But the first clear sustained note of universalistic morality comes from Cicero in his treatise De Officiis,[557] to which we have already referred. The author says much about the Law of Nature and of the society and community of the human race. One should, in imitation of Hercules, even at the cost of great labor and pain, give succor and aid to every one, whoever he may be, for this is consonant with nature.[558] In destroying Corinth Rome was guilty of a great crime.[559] The human race forms a universal society, by virtue of the bond of reason and speech; therefore we are to do good to all men—but liberality should begin at home.[560] “The love of humanity,” he says, “which has its beginnings in the love of parents for their offspring, binds together first the members of the family; then, gradually reaching out beyond the domestic circle, embraces successively relatives, friends, neighbors, fellow citizens; next broadens to include allied nations; and finally comes to embrace the whole human race.”[561]

Two generations later, in the reign of Nero, Seneca enjoined the same cosmopolitan morality. He declared all men to be citizens of a universal commonwealth, and inculcated the lofty sentiment, “Man should be sacred to his fellow man.” Epictetus in the same age preached a like doctrine of human fraternity, and taught that a man should regard himself not as a citizen of this or of that city, but as a citizen of the world.

But it is in the Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius that we find the most emphatic declaration of this Stoic doctrine of the unity of mankind and the universal reach of the moral law. As envisioned by the emperor-philosopher the whole world is a single state and all men are fellow citizens. “My city and country,” he says, “so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome, but so far as I am a man, it is the world.”[562] Again he muses: “The poet says, Dear city of Cecrops; and wilt not thou say, Dear city of Zeus?”[563] Every man, he declares, should remember that every rational being is his kinsman, and that “to care for all men is according to man’s nature;”[564] for “men exist for the sake of one another.”[565]

In what measure these moralists and philosophers whom we have quoted really represented their times it is of course impossible to say; but probably we would not be wrong in assuming that they appealed to a certain public sentiment, and that the doctrines they taught evoked consenting response from the moral consciousness of more than a few in every rank of Roman society.

The Stoic doctrine of the Law of Nature and its ethical influence

The doctrine of the Law of Nature, upon which such emphasis was laid by the Stoic philosophers, had such consequences for the evolution of Roman morals and so great an influence upon the moral philosophers of later times, particularly upon the speculations of the philosophers of the eighteenth century, that we must in the present connection endeavor to gain some idea of what the Stoics meant by this phrase, and the ethical value of the conception.[566]

The Law of Nature is merely the Stoic designation of a law which, under other names, all the ages have revered as the supreme law of the universe. It is practically the law of conscience, the inner law written on the hearts of men.[567] It is that law which is in the background of our consciousness when we say, “We must obey God rather than man.” It is that holy law which came to Hebrew prophet as the word of Jehovah. It is that inviolable law which Antigone feared to break, “a law not proclaimed by men, and which lives not for to-day nor yesterday, but evermore.”[568] It is what the Supreme Court of the United States in a recent decision calls “the rule of reason,” that inborn sense of what is reasonable and just.

This Law of Nature being thus the expression of what is most constituent and essential in man as man, it necessarily results that there is a large common element in the customs and the rules of conduct of all peoples who are in the same or nearly the same stage of culture; hence the substantial conformity between the Law of Nature and the Laws of Nations. The conformity, however, is not perfect. The moral task of humanity is to make it perfect.

It is of course the ethical imperative of the Law of Nature which has rendered it such a revolutionary and reconstructive force in history. During the medieval period it was seldom invoked because the Church and not the normal human reason was regarded as the supreme authority in the domain of morals. But after the Renaissance and the Reformation had proclaimed the autonomy of the individual spirit and the ultimate authority of the individual conscience in the realm of moral right and wrong, then came naturally an appeal from the rules and conventions of society to the unwritten Law of Nature; hence the prominence it assumed in the writings of the philosophers of the eighteenth century, who prepared the way for the French Revolution.