The Project Gutenberg EBook of History of European Morals From Augustus to Charlemagne (Vol. 1 of 2) by William Edward Hartpole Lecky

The opinions of Hume on moral questions are grossly misrepresented by many writers, who persist in describing them as substantially identical with those of Bentham. How far Hume was from denying the existence of a moral sense, the following passages will show:—“The final sentence, it is probable, which pronounces characters and actions amiable or odious, praiseworthy or blameable ... depends on some internal sense or feeling which nature has made universal in the whole species.”—Enquiry Concerning Morals, § 1. “The hypothesis we embrace ... defines virtue to be whatever mental action or quality gives to the spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation.”—Ibid. Append. I. “The crime or immorality is no particular fact or relation which can be the object of the understanding, but arises entirely from the sentiment of disapprobation, which, by the structure of human nature, we unavoidably feel on the apprehension of barbarity or treachery.”—Ibid. “Reason instructs us in the several tendencies of actions, and humanity makes a distinction in favour of those which are useful and beneficial.”—Ibid. “As virtue is an end, and is desirable on its own account without fee or reward, merely for the immediate satisfaction it conveys, it is requisite that there should be some sentiment which it touches, some internal taste or feeling, or whatever you please to call it, which distinguishes moral good and evil, and which embraces the one and rejects the other.”—Ibid. The two writers to whom Hume was most indebted were Hutcheson and Butler. In some interesting letters to the former (Burton's Life of Hume, vol. i.), he discusses the points on which he differed from them.

“The chief thing therefore which lawgivers and other wise men that have laboured for the establishment of society have endeavoured, has been to make the people they were to govern believe that it was more beneficial for everybody to conquer than to indulge his appetites, and much better to mind the public than what seemed his private interest ... observing that none were either so savage as not to be charmed with praise, or so despicable as patiently to bear contempt, they justly concluded that flattery must be the most powerful argument that could be used to human creatures. Making use of this bewitching engine, they extolled the excellency of our nature above other animals ... by the help of which we were capable of performing the most noble achievements. Having, by this artful flattery, insinuated themselves into the hearts of men, they began to instruct them in the notions of honour and shame, &c.”—Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue.

“I conceive that when a man deliberates whether he shall do a thing or not do it, he does nothing else but consider whether it be better for himself to do it or not to do it.”—Hobbes On Liberty and Necessity. “Good and evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions.”—Ibid. Leviathan, part i. ch. xvi. “Obligation is the necessity of doing or omitting any action in order to be happy.”—Gay's dissertation prefixed to King's Origin of Evil, p. 36. “The only reason or motive by which individuals can possibly be induced to the practice of virtue, must be the feeling immediate or the prospect of future private happiness.”—Brown On the Characteristics, p. 159. “En tout temps, en tout lieu, tant en matière de morale qu'en matière d'esprit, c'est l'intérêt personnel qui dicte le jugement des particuliers, et l'intérêt général qui dicte celui des nations.... Tout homme ne prend dans ses jugements conseil que de son intérêt.”—Helvétius De l'Esprit, discours ii. “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.... The principle of utility recognises this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.”—Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. i. “By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question.”—Ibid. “Je regarde l'amour éclairé de nous-mêmes comme le principe de tout sacrifice moral.”—D'Alembert quoted by D. Stewart, Active and Moral Powers, vol. i. p. 220.

“Pleasure is in itself a good; nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good; pain is in itself an evil, and, indeed, without exception, the only evil, or else the words good and evil have no meaning.”—Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. x.

“Good and evil are nothing but pleasure and pain, or that which occasions or procures pleasure or pain to us. Moral good and evil then is only the conformity or disagreement of our voluntary actions to some law whereby good or evil is drawn on us by the will and power of the law maker, which good and evil, pleasure or pain, attending our observance or breach of the law by the decree of the law maker, is that we call reward or punishment.”—Locke's Essay, book ii. ch. xxviii. “Take away pleasures and pains, not only happiness, but justice, and duty, and obligation, and virtue, all of which have been so elaborately held up to view as independent of them, are so many empty sounds.”—Bentham's Springs of Action, ch. i. § 15.

“Il lui est aussi impossible d'aimer le bien pour le bien, que d'aimer le mal pour le mal.”—Helvétius De l'Esprit, disc. ii. ch. v.

“Even the goodness which we apprehend in God Almighty, is his goodness to us.”—Hobbes On Human Nature, ch. vii. § 3. So Waterland, “To love God is in effect the same thing as to love happiness, eternal happiness; and the love of happiness is still the love of ourselves.”—Third Sermon on Self-love.

“Reverence is the conception we have concerning another, that he hath the power to do unto us both good and hurt, but not the will to do us hurt.”—Hobbes On Human Nature, ch. viii. § 7.

“The pleasures of piety are the pleasures that accompany the belief of a man's being in the acquisition, or in possession of the goodwill or favour of the Supreme Being; and as a fruit of it, of his being in the way of enjoying pleasures to be received by God's special appointment either in this life or in a life to come.”—Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. v. “The pains of piety are the pains that accompany the belief of a man's being obnoxious to the displeasure of the Supreme Being, and in consequence to certain pains to be inflicted by His especial appointment, either in this life or in a life to come. These may be also called the pains of religion.”—Ibid.

“There can be no greater argument to a man of his own power, than to find himself able not only to accomplish his own desires, but also to assist other men in theirs; and this is that conception wherein consisteth charity.”—Hobbes On Hum. Nat. ch. ix. § 17. “No man giveth but with intention of good to himself, because gift is voluntary; and of all voluntary acts, the object to every man is his own good.”—Hobbes' Leviathan, part i. ch. xv. “Dream not that men will move their little finger to serve you, unless their advantage in so doing be obvious to them. Men never did so, and never will while human nature is made of its present materials.”—Bentham's Deontology, vol. ii. p. 133.

“Pity is imagination or fiction of future calamity to ourselves, proceeding from the sense of another man's calamity. But when it lighteth on such as we think have not deserved the same, the compassion is greater, because there then appeareth more probability that the same may happen to us; for the evil that happeneth to an innocent man may happen to every man.”—Hobbes On Hum. Nat. ch. ix. § 10. “La pitié est souvent un sentiment de nos propres maux dans les maux d'autrui. C'est une habile prévoyance des malheurs où nous pouvons tomber. Nous donnons des secours aux autres pour les engager à nous en donner en de semblables occasions, et ces services que nous leur rendons sont, à proprement parler, des biens que nous nous faisons à nous-mêmes par avance.”—La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, 264. Butler has remarked that if Hobbes' account were true, the most fearful would be the most compassionate nature; but this is perhaps not quite just, for Hobbes' notion of pity implies the union of two not absolutely identical, though nearly allied, influences, timidity and imagination. The theory of Adam Smith, though closely connected with, differs totally in consequences from that of Hobbes on this point. He says, “When I condole with you for the loss of your son, in order to enter into your grief, I do not consider what I, a person of such a character and profession, should suffer if I had a son, and if that son should die—I consider what I should suffer if I was really you. I not only change circumstances with you, but I change persons and characters. My grief, therefore, is entirely upon your account.... A man may sympathise with a woman in child-bed, though it is impossible he should conceive himself suffering her pains in his own proper person and character.”—Moral Sentiments, part vii. ch. i. §3.

“Ce que les hommes ont nommé amitié n'est qu'une société, qu'un ménagement réciproque d'intérêts et qu'un échange de bons offices. Ce n'est enfin qu'un commerce où l'amour-propre se propose toujours quelque chose à gagner.”—La Rochefoucauld, Max. 83. See this idea developed at large in Helvétius.

“La science de la morale n'est autre chose que la science même de la législation.”—Helvétius De l'Esprit, ii. 17.

This doctrine is expounded at length in all the moral works of Hobbes and his school. The following passage is a fair specimen of their meaning:—“Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good and evil in the conversation and society of mankind. Good and evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions, which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men are different ... from whence arise disputes, controversies, and at last war. And therefore, so long as man is in this condition of mere nature (which is a condition of war), his private appetite is the measure of good and evil. And consequently all men agree in this, that peace is good, and therefore also that the ways or means of peace, (which, as I have showed before) are justice, gratitude, modesty, equity, mercy, and the rest of the laws of nature are good ... and their contrary vices evil.”—Hobbes' Leviathan, part i. ch. xvi. See, too, a striking passage in Bentham's Deontology, vol. ii. p. 132.

As an ingenious writer in the Saturday Review (Aug. 10, 1867) expresses it: “Chastity is merely a social law created to encourage the alliances that most promote the permanent welfare of the race, and to maintain woman in a social position which it is thought advisable she should hold.” See, too, on this view, Hume's Inquiry concerning Morals, § 4, and also note x.: “To what other purpose do all the ideas of chastity and modesty serve? Nisi utile est quod facimus, frustra est gloria.”

“All pleasure is necessarily self-regarding, for it is impossible to have any feelings out of our own mind. But there are modes of delight that bring also satisfaction to others, from the round that they take in their course. Such are the pleasures of benevolence. Others imply no participation by any second party, as, for example, eating, drinking, bodily warmth, property, and power; while a third class are fed by the pains and privations of fellow-beings, as the delights of sport and tyranny. The condemnatory phrase, selfishness, applies with especial emphasis to the last-mentioned class, and, in a qualified degree, to the second group; while such terms as unselfishness, disinterestedness, self-devotion, are applied to the vicarious position wherein we seek our own satisfaction in that of others.”—Bain On the Emotions and Will, p. 113.

“Vice may be defined to be a miscalculation of chances, a mistake in estimating the value of pleasures and pains. It is false moral arithmetic.”—Bentham's Deontology, vol. i. p. 131.

“La récompense, la punition, la gloire et l'infamie soumises à ses volontés sont quatre espèces de divinités avec lesquelles le législateur peut toujours opérer le bien public et créer des hommes illustres en tous les genres. Toute l'étude des moralistes consiste à déterminer l'usage qu'on doit faire de ces récompenses et de ces punitions et les secours qu'on peut tirer pour lier l'intérêt personnel à l'intérêt général.”—Helvétius De l'Esprit, ii. 22. “La justice de nos jugements et de nos actions n'est jamais que la rencontre heureuse de notre intérêt avec l'intérêt public.”—Ibid. ii. 7. “To prove that the immoral action is a miscalculation of self-interest, to show how erroneous an estimate the vicious man makes of pains and pleasures, is the purpose of the intelligent moralist. Unless he can do this he does nothing; for, as has been stated above, for a man not to pursue what he deems likely to produce to him the greatest sum of enjoyment, is, in the very nature of things, impossible.”—Bentham's Deontology.

“If the effect of virtue were to prevent or destroy more pleasure than it produced, or to produce more pain than it prevented, its more appropriate name would be wickedness and folly; wickedness as it affected others, folly as respected him who practised it.”—Bentham's Deontology, vol. i. p. 142. “Weigh pains, weigh pleasures, and as the balance stands will stand the question of right and wrong.”—Ibid. vol. i. p. 137. “Moralis philosophiæ caput est, Faustine fili, ut scias quibus ad beatam vitam perveniri rationibus possit.”—Apuleius, Ad Doct. Platonis, ii. “Atque ipsa utilitas, justi prope mater et æqui.”—Horace, Sat. I. iii. 98.

“We can be obliged to nothing but what we ourselves are to gain or lose something by; for nothing else can be ‘violent motive’ to us. As we should not be obliged to obey the laws or the magistrate unless rewards or punishments, pleasure or pain, somehow or other, depended upon our obedience; so neither should we, without the same reason, be obliged to do what is right, to practise virtue, or to obey the commands of God.”—Paley's Moral Philosophy, book ii. ch. ii.

See Gassendi Philosophiæ Epicuri Syntagma. These four canons are a skilful condensation of the argument of Torquatus in Cicero, De Fin. i. 2. See, too, a very striking letter by Epicurus himself, given in his life by Diogenes Laërtius.

“Sanus igitur non est, qui nulla spe majore proposita, iis bonis quibus cæteri utuntur in vita, labores et cruciatus et miserias anteponat.... Non aliter his bonis præsentibus abstinendum est quam si sint aliqua majora, propter quæ tanti sit et voluptates omittere et mala omnia sustinere.”—Lactantius, Div. Inst. vi. 9. Macaulay, in some youthful essays against the Utilitarian theory (which he characteristically described as “Not much more laughable than phrenology, and immeasurably more humane than cock-fighting”), maintains the theological form of selfishness in very strong terms. “What proposition is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one, and that is not only true but identical, that men always act from self-interest.”—Review of Mill's Essay on Government. “Of this we may be sure, that the words ‘greatest happiness’ will never in any man's mouth mean more than the greatest happiness of others, which is consistent with what he thinks his own.... This direction (Do as you would be done by) would be utterly unmeaning, as it actually is in Mr. Bentham's philosophy, unless it were accompanied by a sanction. In the Christian scheme accordingly it is accompanied by a sanction of immense force. To a man whose greatest happiness in this world is inconsistent with the greatest happiness of the greatest number, is held out the prospect of an infinite happiness hereafter, from which he excludes himself by wronging his fellow-creatures here.”—Answer to the Westminster Review's Defence of Mill.

“All virtue and piety are thus resolvable into a principle of self-love. It is what Scripture itself resolves them into by founding them upon faith in God's promises, and hope in things unseen. In this way it may be rightly said that there is no such thing as disinterested virtue. It is with reference to ourselves and for our own sakes that we love even God Himself.”—Waterland, Third Sermon on Self-love. “To risk the happiness of the whole duration of our being in any case whatever, were it possible, would be foolish.”—Robert Hall's Sermon on Modern Infidelity. “In the moral system the means are virtuous practice; the end, happiness.”— Warburton's Divine Legation, book ii. Appendix.

“There is always understood to be a difference between an act of prudence and an act of duty. Thus, if I distrusted a man who owed me a sum of money, I should reckon it an act of prudence to get another person bound with him; but I should hardly call it an act of duty.... Now in what, you will ask, does the difference consist, inasmuch as, according to our account of the matter, both in the one case and the other, in acts of duty as well as acts of prudence, we consider solely what we ourselves shall gain or lose by the act? The difference, and the only difference, is this: that in the one case we consider what we shall gain or lose in the present world; in the other case, we consider also what we shall gain or lose in the world to come.”—Paley's Moral Philosophy, ii. 3.

“Hence we may see the weakness and mistake of those falsely religious ... who are scandalised at our being determined to the pursuit of virtue through any degree of regard to its happy consequences in this life.... For it is evident that the religious motive is precisely of the same kind, only stronger, as the happiness expected is greater and more lasting.”—Brown's Essays on the Characteristics, p. 220.

“If a Christian, who has the view of happiness and misery in another life, be asked why a man must keep his word, he will give this as a reason, because God, who has the power of eternal life and death, requires it of us. But if an Hobbist be asked why, he will answer, because the public requires it, and the Leviathan will punish you if you do not. And if one of the old heathen philosophers had been asked, he would have answered, because it was dishonest, below the dignity of man, and opposite to virtue, the highest perfection of human nature, to do otherwise.”—Locke's Essay, i. 3.

Thus Paley remarks that—“The Christian religion hath not ascertained the precise quantity of virtue necessary to salvation,” and he then proceeds to urge the probability of graduated scales of rewards and punishments. (Moral Philosophy, book i. ch. vii.)

This view was developed by Locke (Essay on the Human Understanding, book ii. ch. xxi.) Pascal, in a well-known passage, applied the same argument to Christianity, urging that the rewards and punishments it promises are so great, that it is the part of a wise man to embrace the creed, even though he believes it improbable, if there be but a possibility in its favour.

Cudworth, in his Immutable Morals, has collected the names of a number of the schoolmen who held this view. See, too, an interesting note in Miss Cobbe's very learned Essay on Intuitive Morals, pp. 18, 19.

E.g. Soame Jenyns, Dr. Johnson, Crusius, Pascal, Paley, and Austin. Warburton is generally quoted in the list, but not I think quite fairly. See his theory, which is rather complicated (Divine Legation, i. 4). Waterland appears to have held this view, and also Condillac. See a very remarkable chapter on morals, in his Traité des Animaux, part ii. ch. vii. Closely connected with this doctrine is the notion that the morality of God is generically different from the morality of men, which having been held with more or less distinctness by many theologians (Archbishop King being perhaps the most prominent), has found in our own day an able defender in Dr. Mansel. Much information on the history of this doctrine will be found in Dr. Mansel's Second Letter to Professor Goldwin Smith (Oxford, 1862).

Leibnitz noticed the frequency with which Supralapsarian Calvinists adopt this doctrine. (Théodicée, part ii. § 176.) Archbishop Whately, who from his connection with the Irish Clergy had admirable opportunities of studying the tendencies of Calvinism, makes a similar remark as the result of his own experience. (Whately's Life, vol. ii. p. 339.)

“God designs the happiness of all His sentient creatures.... Knowing the tendencies of our actions, and knowing His benevolent purpose, we know His tacit commands.”—Austin's Lectures on Jurisprudence, vol. i. p. 31. “The commands which He has revealed we must gather from the terms wherein they are promulgated. The commands which He has not revealed we must construe by the principle of utility.”—Ibid. p. 96. So Paley's Moral Philosophy, book ii. ch. iv. v.

Paley's Moral Philosophy, book i. ch. vii. The question of the disinterestedness of the love we should bear to God was agitated in the Catholic Church, Bossuet taking the selfish, and Fénelon the unselfish side. The opinions of Fénelon and Molinos on the subject were authoritatively condemned. In England, the less dogmatic character of the national faith, and also the fact that the great anti-Christian writer, Hobbes, was the advocate of extreme selfishness in morals, had, I think, a favourable influence upon the ethics of the church. Hobbes gave the first great impulse to moral philosophy in England, and his opponents were naturally impelled to an unselfish theory. Bishop Cumberland led the way, resolving virtue (like Hutcheson) into benevolence. The majority of divines, however, till the present century, have, I think, been on the selfish side.

Moral Philosophy, ii. 3.

Essay on the Human Understanding, ii. 28.

Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. iii. Mr. Mill observes that, “Bentham's idea of the world is that of a collection of persons pursuing each his separate interest or pleasure, and the prevention of whom from jostling one another more than is unavoidable, may be attempted by hopes and fears derived from three sources—the law, religion, and public opinion. To these three powers, considered as binding human conduct, he gave the name of sanctions; the political sanction operating by the rewards and penalties of the law; the religious sanction by those expected from the ruler of the universe; and the popular, which he characteristically calls also the moral sanction, operating through the pains and pleasures arising from the favour or disfavour of our fellow-creatures.”—Dissertations, vol. i. pp. 362-363.

Hume on this, as on most other points, was emphatically opposed to the school of Hobbes, and even declared that no one could honestly and in good faith deny the reality of an unselfish element in man. Following in the steps of Butler, he explained it in the following passage:—“Hunger and thirst have eating and drinking for their end, and from the gratification of these primary appetites arises a pleasure which may become the object of another species of desire or inclination that is secondary and interested. In the same manner there are mental passions by which we are impelled immediately to seek particular objects, such as fame or power or vengeance, without any regard to interest, and when these objects are attained a pleasing enjoyment ensues.... Now where is the difficulty of conceiving that this may likewise be the case with benevolence and friendship, and that from the original frame of our temper we may feel a desire of another's happiness or good, which by means of that affection becomes our own good, and is afterwards pursued, from the combined motives of benevolence and self-enjoyment?”—Hume's Enquiry concerning Morals, Appendix II. Compare Butler, “If there be any appetite or any inward principle besides self-love, why may there not be an affection towards the good of our fellow-creatures, and delight from that affection's being gratified and uneasiness from things going contrary to it?”—Sermon on Compassion.

“By sympathetic sensibility is to be understood the propensity that a man has to derive pleasure from the happiness, and pain from the unhappiness, of other sensitive beings.”—Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. vi. “The sense of sympathy is universal. Perhaps there never existed a human being who had reached full age without the experience of pleasure at another's pleasure, of uneasiness at another's pain.... Community of interests, similarity of opinion, are sources from whence it springs.”—Deontology, vol. i. pp. 169-170.

“The idea of the pain of another is naturally painful. The idea of the pleasure of another is naturally pleasurable.... In this, the unselfish part of our nature, lies a foundation, even independently of inculcation from without, for the generation of moral feelings”—Mill's Dissertations, vol. i. p. 137. See, too, Bain's Emotions and the Will, pp. 289, 313; and especially Austin's Lectures on Jurisprudence. The first volume of this brilliant work contains, I think without exception, the best modern statement of the utilitarian theory in its most plausible form—a statement equally remarkable for its ability, its candour, and its uniform courtesy to opponents.

See a collection of passages from Aristotle, bearing on the subject, in Mackintosh's Dissertation.

Cic. De Finibus, i. 5. This view is adopted in Tucker's Light of Nature (ed. 1842), vol. i. p. 167. See, too, Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind, vol. ii. p. 174.

Essay, book ii. ch. xxxiii.

Hutcheson On the Passions, § 1. The “secondary desires” of Hutcheson are closely related to the “reflex affections” of Shaftesbury. “Not only the outward beings which offer themselves to the sense are the objects of the affection; but the very actions themselves, and the affections of pity, kindness, gratitude, and their contraries, being brought into the mind by reflection, become objects. So that by means of this reflected sense, there arises another kind of affection towards those very affections themselves.”—Shaftesbury's Enquiry concerning Virtue, book i. part ii. § 3.

See the preface to Hartley On Man. Gay's essay is prefixed to Law's translation of Archbishop King On the Origin of Evil.

“The case is this. We first perceive or imagine some real good; i.e. fitness to promote our happiness in those things which we love or approve of.... Hence those things and pleasures are so tied together and associated in our minds, that one cannot present itself, but the other will also occur. And the association remains even after that which at first gave them the connection is quite forgotten, or perhaps does not exist, but the contrary.”—Gay's Essay, p. lii. “All affections whatsoever are finally resolvable into reason, pointing out private happiness, and are conversant only about things apprehended to be means tending to this end; and whenever this end is not perceived, they are to be accounted for from the association of ideas, and may properly enough be called habits.”—Ibid. p. xxxi.

Principally by Mr. James Mill, whose chapter on association, in his Analysis of the Human Mind, may probably rank with Paley's beautiful chapter on happiness, at the head of all modern writings on the utilitarian side,—either of them, I think, being far more valuable than anything Bentham ever wrote on morals. This last writer—whose contempt for his predecessors was only equalled by his ignorance of their works, and who has added surprisingly little to moral science (considering the reputation he attained), except a barbarous nomenclature and an interminable series of classifications evincing no real subtlety of thought—makes, as far as I am aware, no use of the doctrine of association. Paley states it with his usual admirable clearness. “Having experienced in some instances a particular conduct to be beneficial to ourselves, or observed that it would be so, a sentiment of approbation rises up in our minds, which sentiment afterwards accompanies the idea or mention of the same conduct, although the private advantage which first existed no longer exist.”—Paley, Moral Philos. i. 5. Paley, however, made less use of this doctrine than might have been expected from so enthusiastic an admirer of Tucker. In our own day it has been much used by Mr. J. S. Mill.

This illustration, which was first employed by Hutcheson, is very happily developed by Gay (p. lii.). It was then used by Hartley, and finally Tucker reproduced the whole theory with the usual illustration without any acknowledgment of the works of his predecessors, employing however, the term “translation” instead of “association” of ideas. See his curious chapter on the subject, Light of Nature, book i. ch. xviii.

“It is the nature of translation to throw desire from the end upon the means, which thenceforward become an end capable of exciting an appetite without prospect of the consequences whereto they lead. Our habits and most of the desires that occupy human life are of this translated kind.”—Tucker's Light of Nature, vol. ii. (ed. 1842), p. 281.

Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind. The desire for posthumous fame is usually cited by intuitive moralists as a proof of a naturally disinterested element in man.

Mill's Analysis.

Hartley On Man, vol. i. pp. 474-475.

“Benevolence ... has also a high degree of honour and esteem annexed to it, procures us many advantages and returns of kindness, both from the person obliged and others, and is most closely connected with the hopes of reward in a future state, and of self-approbation or the moral sense; and the same things hold with respect to generosity in a much higher degree. It is easy therefore to see how such associations may be formed as to engage us to forego great pleasure, or endure great pain for the sake of others, how these associations may be attended with so great a degree of pleasure as to overrule the positive pain endured or the negative one from the foregoing of a pleasure, and yet how there may be no direct explicit expectation of reward either from God or man, by natural consequence or express appointment, not even of the concomitant pleasure that engages the agent to undertake the benevolent and generous action; and this I take to be a proof from the doctrine of association that there is and must be such a thing as pure disinterested benevolence; also a just account of the origin and nature of it.”—Hartley On Man, vol. i. pp. 473-474. See too Mill's Analysis, vol. ii. p. 252.

Mill's Analysis, vol. ii. pp. 244-247.

“With self-interest,” said Hartley, “man must begin; he may end in self-annihilation;” or as Coleridge happily puts it, “Legality precedes morality in every individual, even as the Jewish dispensation preceded the Christian in the world at large.”—Notes Theological and Political, p. 340. It might be retorted with much truth, that we begin by practising morality as a duty—we end by practising it as a pleasure, without any reference to duty. Coleridge, who expressed for the Benthamite theories a very cordial detestation, sometimes glided into them himself. “The happiness of man,” he says, “is the end of virtue, and truth is the knowledge of the means.” (The Friend, ed. 1850, vol. ii. p. 192.) “What can be the object of human virtue but the happiness of sentient, still more of moral beings?” (Notes Theol. and Polit. p. 351.) Leibnitz says, “Quand on aura appris à faire des actions louables par ambition, on les fera après par inclination.” (Sur l' Art de connaître les Hommes.)

E.g. Mackintosh and James Mill. Coleridge in his younger days was an enthusiastic admirer of Hartley; but chiefly, I believe, on account of his theory of vibrations. He named his son after him, and described him in one of his poems as:—

“He of mortal kind
Wisest, the first who marked the ideal tribes
Up the fine fibres through the sentient brain.”

Religious Musings.

This position is elaborated in a passage too long for quotation by Mr. Austin. (Lectures on Jurisprudence, vol. i. p. 44.)

Hobbes defines conscience as “the opinion of evidence” (On Human Nature, ch. vi. §8). Locke as “our own opinion or judgment of the moral rectitude or pravity of our own actions” (Essay, book i. ch. iii. § 8). In Bentham there is very little on the subject; but in one place he informs us that “conscience is a thing of fictitious existence, supposed to occupy a seat in the mind” (Deontology, vol. i. p. 137); and in another he ranks “love of duty” (which he describes as an “impossible motive, in so far as duty is synonymous to obligation”) as a variety of the “love of power” (Springs of Action, ii.) Mr. Bain says, “conscience is an imitation within ourselves of the government without us.” (Emotions and Will, p. 313.)

“However much they [utilitarians] may believe (as they do) that actions and dispositions are only virtuous because they promote another end than virtue, yet this being granted ... they not only place virtue at the very head of the things which are good as means to the ultimate end, but they also recognise as a psychological fact the possibility of its being to the individual a good in itself.... Virtue, according to the utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and originally part of the end, but it is capable of becoming so.... What was once desired as an instrument for the attainment of happiness has come to be desired ... as part of happiness.... Human nature is so constituted as to desire nothing which is not either a part of happiness or a means of happiness.”—J. S. Mill's Utilitarianism, pp. 54, 55, 56, 58.

“A man is tempted to commit adultery with the wife of his friend. The composition of the motive is obvious. He does not obey the motive. Why? He obeys other motives which are stronger. Though pleasures are associated with the immoral act, pains are associated with it also—the pains of the injured husband, the pains of the wife, the moral indignation of mankind, the future reproaches of his own mind. Some men obey the first rather than the second motive. The reason is obvious. In these the association of the act with the pleasure is from habit unduly strong, the association of the act with pains is from want of habit unduly weak. This is the case of a bad education.... Among the different classes of motives, there are men who are more easily and strongly operated on by some, others by others. We have also seen that this is entirely owing to habits of association. This facility of being acted upon by motives of a particular description, is that which we call disposition.”—Mill's Analysis, vol. ii. pp. 212, 213, &c. Adam Smith says, I think with much wisdom, that “the great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects.”—Moral Sentiments, part vi. § 3.

“Goodness in ourselves is the prospect of satisfaction annexed to the welfare of others, so that we please them for the pleasure we receive ourselves in so doing, or to avoid the uneasiness we should feel in omitting it. But God is completely happy in Himself, nor can His happiness receive increase or diminution from anything befalling His creatures; wherefore His goodness is pure, disinterested bounty, without any return of joy or satisfaction to Himself. Therefore it is no wonder we have imperfect notions of a quality whereof we have no experience in our own nature.”—Tucker's Light of Nature, vol. i. p. 355. “It is the privilege of God alone to act upon pure, disinterested bounty, without the least addition thereby to His own enjoyment.”—Ibid. vol. ii. p. 279. On the other hand, Hutcheson asks, “If there be such disposition in the Deity, where is the impossibility of some small degree of this public love in His creatures, and why must they be supposed incapable of acting but from self-love?”—Enquiry concerning Moral Good, § 2.

“We gradually, through the influence of association, come to desire the means without thinking of the end; the action itself becomes an object of desire, and is performed without reference to any motive beyond itself. Thus far, it may still be objected that the action having, through association, become pleasurable, we are as much as before moved to act by the anticipation of pleasure, namely, the pleasure of the action itself. But granting this, the matter does not end here. As we proceed in the formation of habits, and become accustomed to will a particular act ... because it is pleasurable, we at last continue to will it without any reference to its being pleasurable.... In this manner it is that habits of hurtful excess continue to be practised, although they have ceased to be pleasurable, and in this manner also it is that the habit of willing to persevere in the course which he has chosen, does not desert the moral hero, even when the reward ... is anything but an equivalent for the suffering he undergoes, or the wishes he may have to renounce.”—Mill's Logic (4th edition), vol. ii. pp. 416, 417.

“In regard to interest in the most extended, which is the original and only strictly proper sense of the word disinterested, no human act has ever been or ever can be disinterested.... In the only sense in which disinterestedness can with truth be predicated of human actions, it is employed ... to denote, not the absence of all interest ... but only the absence of all interest of the self-regarding class. Not but that it is very frequently predicated of human action in cases in which divers interests, to no one of which the appellation of self-regarding can with propriety be denied, have been exercising their influence, and in particular fear of God, or hope from God, and fear of ill-repute, or hope of good repute. If what is above be correct, the most disinterested of men is not less under the dominion of interest than the most interested. The only cause of his being styled disinterested, is its not having been observed that the sort of motive (suppose it sympathy for an individual or class) has as truly a corresponding interest belonging to it as any other species of motive has. Of this contradiction between the truth of the case and the language employed in speaking of it, the cause is that in the one case men have not been in the habit of making—as in point of consistency they ought to have made—of the word interest that use which in the other case they have been in the habit of making of it.”—Bentham's Springs of Action, ii. § 2.

Among others Bishop Butler, who draws some very subtle distinctions on the subject in his first sermon “on the love of our neighbour.” Dugald Stewart remarks that “although we apply the epithet selfish to avarice and to low and private sensuality, we never apply it to the desire of knowledge or to the pursuits of virtue, which are certainly sources of more exquisite pleasure than riches or sensuality can bestow.”—Active and Moral Powers, vol. i. p. 19.

Sir W. Hamilton.

Cic. De Fin. lib. ii.

“As there is not any sort of pleasure that is not itself a good, nor any sort of pain the exemption from which is not a good, and as nothing but the expectation of the eventual enjoyment of pleasure in some shape, or of exemption from pain in some shape, can operate in the character of a motive, a necessary consequence is that if by motive be meant sort of motive, there is not any such thing as a bad motive.”—Bentham's Springs of Action, ii. § 4. The first clauses of the following passage I have already quoted: “Pleasure is itself a good, nay, setting aside immunity from pain, the only good. Pain is in itself an evil, and indeed, without exception, the only evil, or else the words good and evil have no meaning. And this is alike true of every sort of pain, and of every sort of pleasure. It follows therefore immediately and incontestably that there is no such thing as any sort of motive that is in itself a bad one.”—Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. ix. “The search after motive is one of the prominent causes of men's bewilderment in the investigation of questions of morals.... But this is a pursuit in which every moment employed is a moment wasted. All motives are abstractedly good. No man has ever had, can, or could have a motive different from the pursuit of pleasure or of shunning pain.”—Deontology, vol. i. p. 126. Mr. Mill's doctrine appears somewhat different from this, but the difference is I think only apparent. He says: “The motive has nothing to do with the morality of the action, though much with the worth of the agent,” and he afterwards explains this last statement by saying that the “motive makes a great difference in our moral estimation of the agent, especially if it indicates a good or a bad habitual disposition, a bent of character from which useful or from which hurtful actions are likely to arise.”—Utilitarianism, 2nd ed. pp. 26-27.

This truth has been admirably illustrated by Mr. Herbert Spencer (Social Statics, pp. 1-8).

“On évalue la grandeur de la vertu en comparant les biens obtenus aux maux au prix desquels on les achète: l'excédant en bien mesure la valeur de la vertu, comme l'excédant en mal mesure le degré de haine que doit inspirer le vice.”—Ch. Comte, Traité de Législation, liv. ii. ch. xii.

M. Dumont, the translator of Bentham, has elaborated in a rather famous passage the utilitarian notions about vengeance. “Toute espèce de satisfaction entraînant une peine pour le délinquant produit naturellement un plaisir de vengeance pour la partie lésée. Ce plaisir est un gain. Il rappelle la parabole de Samson. C'est le doux qui sort du terrible. C'est le miel recueilli dans la gueule du lion. Produit sans frais, résultat net d'une opération nécessaire à d'autres titres, c'est une jouissance à cultiver comme toute autre; car le plaisir de la vengeance considérée abstraitement n'est comme tout autre plaisir qu'un bien en lui-même.”—Principes du Code pénal, 2me partie, ch. xvi. According to a very acute living writer of this school, “The criminal law stands to the passion of revenge in much the same relation as marriage to the sexual appetite” (J. F. Stephen, On the Criminal Law of England, p. 99). Mr. Mill observes that, “In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility” (Utilitarianism, p. 24). It is but fair to give a specimen of the opposite order of extravagance. “So well convinced was Father Claver of the eternal happiness of almost all whom he assisted,” says this saintly missionary's biographer, “that speaking once of some persons who had delivered a criminal into the hands of justice, he said, God forgive them; but they have secured the salvation of this man at the probable risk of their own.”—Newman's Anglican Difficulties, p. 205.

De Ordine, ii. 4. The experiment has more than once been tried at Venice, Pisa, &c., and always with the results St. Augustine predicted.

The reader will here observe the very transparent sophistry of an assertion which is repeated ad nauseam by utilitarians. They tell us that a regard to the remote consequences of our actions would lead us to the conclusion that we should never perform an act which would not be conducive to human happiness if it were universally performed, or, as Mr. Austin expresses it, that “the question is if acts of this class were generally done or generally forborne or omitted, what would be the probable effect on the general happiness or good?” (Lectures on Jurisprudence, vol. i. p. 32.) The question is nothing of the kind. If I am convinced that utility alone constitutes virtue, and if I am meditating any particular act, the sole question of morality must be whether that act is on the whole useful, produces a net result of happiness. To determine this question I must consider both the immediate and the remote consequences of the act; but the latter are not ascertained by asking what would be the result if every one did as I do, but by asking how far, as a matter of fact, my act is likely to produce imitators, or affect the conduct and future acts of others. It may no doubt be convenient and useful to form classifications based on the general tendency of different courses to promote or diminish happiness, but such classifications cannot alter the morality of particular acts. It is quite clear that no act which produces on the whole more pleasure than pain can on utilitarian principles be vicious. It is, I think, equally clear that no one could act consistently on such a principle without being led to consequences which in the common judgment of mankind are grossly and scandalously immoral.

There are some very good remarks on the possibility of living a life of imagination wholly distinct from the life of action in Mr. Bain's Emotions and Will, p. 246.

Bentham especially recurs to this subject frequently. See Sir J. Bowring's edition of his works (Edinburgh, 1843), vol. i. pp. 142, 143, 562; vol. x. pp. 549-550.

“Granted that any practice causes more pain to animals than it gives pleasure to man; is that practice moral or immoral? And if exactly in proportion as human beings raise their heads out of the slough of selfishness they do not with one voice answer ‘immoral,’ let the morality of the principle of utility be for ever condemned.”—Mill's Dissert. vol. ii. p. 485. “We deprive them [animals] of life, and this is justifiable—their pains do not equal our enjoyments. There is a balance of good.”—Bentham's Deontology, vol. i. p. 14. Mr. Mill accordingly defines the principle of utility, without any special reference to man. “The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, utility or the great happiness principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.”—Utilitarianism, pp. 9-10.

The exception of course being domestic animals, which may be injured by ill treatment, but even this exception is a very partial one. No selfish reason could prevent any amount of cruelty to animals that were about to be killed, and even in the case of previous ill-usage the calculations of selfishness will depend greatly upon the price of the animal. I have been told that on some parts of the continent diligence horses are systematically under-fed, and worked to a speedy death, their cheapness rendering such a course the most economical.

Bentham, as we have seen, is of opinion that the gastronomic pleasure would produce the requisite excess of enjoyment. Hartley, who has some amiable and beautiful remarks on the duty of kindness to animals, without absolutely condemning, speaks with much aversion of the custom of eating “our brothers and sisters,” the animals. (On Man, vol. ii. pp. 222-223.) Paley, observing that it is quite possible for men to live without flesh-diet, concludes that the only sufficient justification for eating meat is an express divine revelation in the Book of Genesis. (Moral Philos. book ii. ch. 11.) Some reasoners evade the main issue by contending that they kill animals because they would otherwise overrun the earth; but this, as Windham said, “is an indifferent reason for killing fish.”

In commenting upon the French licentiousness of the eighteenth century, Hume says, in a passage which has excited a great deal of animadversion:—“Our neighbours, it seems, have resolved to sacrifice some of the domestic to the social pleasures; and to prefer ease, freedom, and an open commerce, to strict fidelity and constancy. These ends are both good, and are somewhat difficult to reconcile; nor must we be surprised if the customs of nations incline too much sometimes to the one side, and sometimes to the other.”—Dialogue.

There are few things more pitiable than the blunders into which writers have fallen when trying to base the plain virtue of chastity on utilitarian calculations. Thus since the writings of Malthus it has been generally recognised that one of the very first conditions of all material prosperity is to check early marriages, to restrain the tendency of population to multiply more rapidly than the means of subsistence. Knowing this, what can be more deplorable than to find moralists making such arguments as these the very foundation of morals?—“The first and great mischief, and by consequence the guilt, of promiscuous concubinage consists in its tendency to diminish marriages.” (Paley's Moral Philosophy, book iii. part iii. ch. ii.) “That is always the most happy condition of a nation, and that nation is most accurately obeying the laws of our constitution, in which the number of the human race is most rapidly increasing. Now it is certain that under the law of chastity, that is, when individuals are exclusively united to each other, the increase of population will be more rapid than under any other circumstances.” (Wayland's Elements of Moral Science, p. 298, 11th ed., Boston, 1839.) I am sorry to bring such subjects before the reader, but it is impossible to write a history of morals without doing so.

See Luther's Table Talk.

Tillemont, Mém. pour servir à l'Hist. ecclésiastique, tome x. p. 57.

Τό τε ἀληθεύειν καὶ τὸ εὐεργετεῖν. (Ælian, Var. Hist. xii. 59.) Longinus in like manner divides virtue into εὐεργεσία καὶ ἀλήθεια. (De Sublim. § 1.) The opposite view in England is continually expressed in the saying, “You should never pull down an opinion until you have something to put in its place,” which can only mean, if you are convinced that some religious or other hypothesis is false, you are morally bound to repress or conceal your conviction until you have discovered positive affirmations or explanations as unqualified and consolatory as those you have destroyed.

See this powerfully stated by Shaftesbury. (Inquiry concerning Virtue, book i. part iii.) The same objection applies to Dr. Mansel's modification of the theological doctrine—viz. that the origin of morals is not the will but the nature of God.

“The one great and binding ground of the belief of God and a hereafter is the law of conscience.”—Coleridge, Notes Theological and Political, p. 367. That our moral faculty is our one reason for maintaining the supreme benevolence of the Deity was a favourite position of Kant.

“Nescio quomodo inhæret in mentibus quasi sæculorum quoddam augurium futurorum; idque in maximis ingeniis altissimisque animis et exsistit maxime et apparet facillime.”—Cic. Tusc. Disp. i. 14.

“It is a calumny to say that men are roused to heroic actions by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense—sugar-plums of any kind in this world or the next. In the meanest mortal there lies something nobler. The poor swearing soldier hired to be shot has his ‘honour of a soldier,’ different from drill, regulations, and the shilling a day. It is not to taste sweet things, but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest day-drudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are the allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations.”—Carlyle's Hero-worship, p. 237 (ed. 1858).

“Clamat Epicurus, is quem vos nimis voluptatibus esse deditum dicitis, non posse jucunde vivi nisi sapienter, honeste, justeque vivatur, nec sapienter, honeste, juste nisi jucunde.”—Cicero, De Fin. i. 18.

“The virtues to be complete must have fixed their residence in the heart and become appetites impelling to actions without further thought than the gratification of them; so that after their expedience ceases they still continue to operate by the desire they raise.... I knew a mercer who having gotten a competency of fortune, thought to retire and enjoy himself in quiet; but finding he could not be easy without business was forced to return to the shop and assist his former partners gratis, in the nature of a journeyman. Why then should it be thought strange that a man long inured to the practice of moral duties should persevere in them out of liking, when they can yield him no further advantage?”—Tucker's Light of Nature, vol. i. p. 269. Mr. J. S. Mill in his Utilitarianism dwells much on the heroism which he thinks this view of morals may produce.

See Lactantius, Inst. Div. vi. 9. Montesquieu, in his Décadence de l'Empire romain, has shown in detail the manner in which the crimes of Roman politicians contributed to the greatness of their nation. Modern history furnishes only too many illustrations of the same truth.

“That quick sensibility which is the groundwork of all advances towards perfection increases the pungency of pains and vexations.”—Tucker's Light of Nature, ii. 16, § 4.

This position is forcibly illustrated by Mr. Maurice in his fourth lecture On Conscience (1868). It is manifest that a tradesman resisting a dishonest or illegal trade custom, an Irish peasant in a disturbed district revolting against the agrarian conspiracy of his class, or a soldier in many countries conscientiously refusing in obedience to the law to fight a duel, would incur the full force of social penalties, because he failed to do that which was illegal or criminal.

See Brown On the Characteristics, pp. 206-209.

“A toothache produces more violent convulsions of pain than a phthisis or a dropsy. A gloomy disposition ... may be found in very worthy characters, though it is sufficient alone to embitter life.... A selfish villain may possess a spring and alacrity of temper, which is indeed a good quality, but which is rewarded much beyond its merit, and when attended with good fortune will compensate for the uneasiness and remorse arising from all the other vices.”—Hume's Essays: The Sceptic.

At the same time, the following passage contains, I think, a great deal of wisdom and of a kind peculiarly needed in England at the present day:—“The nature of the subject furnishes the strongest presumption that no better system will ever, for the future, be invented, in order to account for the origin of the benevolent from the selfish affections, and reduce all the various emotions of the human mind to a perfect simplicity. The case is not the same in this species of philosophy as in physics. Many an hypothesis in nature, contrary to first appearances, has been found, on more accurate scrutiny, solid and satisfactory.... But the presumption always lies on the other side in all enquiries concerning the origin of our passions, and of the internal operations of the human mind. The simplest and most obvious cause which can there be assigned for any phenomenon, is probably the true one.... The affections are not susceptible of any impression from the refinements of reason or imagination; and it is always found that a vigorous exertion of the latter faculties, necessarily, from the narrow capacity of the human mind, destroys all activity in the former.”—Hume's Enquiry Concerning Morals, Append. II.

“The pleasing consciousness and self-approbation that rise up in the mind of a virtuous man, exclusively of any direct, explicit, consideration of advantage likely to accrue to himself from his possession of those good qualities” (Hartley On Man, vol. i. p. 493), form a theme upon which moralists of both schools are fond of dilating, in a strain that reminds one irresistibly of the self-complacency of a famous nursery hero, while reflecting upon his own merits over a Christmas-pie. Thus Adam Smith says, “The man who, not from frivolous fancy, but from proper motives, has performed a generous action, when he looks forward to those whom he has served, feels himself to be the natural object of their love and gratitude, and by sympathy with them, of the esteem and approbation of all mankind. And when he looks backward to the motive from which he acted, and surveys it in the light in which the indifferent spectator will survey it, he still continues to enter into it, and applauds himself by sympathy with the approbation of this supposed impartial judge. In both these points of view, his conduct appears to him every way agreeable.... Misery and wretchedness can never enter the breast in which dwells complete self-satisfaction.”—Theory of Moral Sentiments, part ii. ch. ii. § 2; part iii. ch. iii. I suspect that many moralists confuse the self-gratulation which they suppose a virtuous man to feel, with the delight a religious man experiences from the sense of the protection and favour of the Deity. But these two feelings are clearly distinct, and it will, I believe, be found that the latter is most strongly experienced by the very men who most sincerely disclaim all sense of merit. “Were the perfect man to exist,” said that good and great writer, Archer Butler, “he himself would be the last to know it; for the highest stage of advancement is the lowest descent in humility.” At all events, the reader will observe, that on utilitarian principles nothing could be more pernicious or criminal than that modest, humble, and diffident spirit, which diminishes the pleasure of self-gratulation, one of the highest utilitarian motives to virtue.

Hartley has tried in one place to evade this conclusion by an appeal to the doctrine of final causes. He says that the fact that conscience is not an original principle of our nature, but is formed mechanically in the manner I have described, does not invalidate the fact that it is intended for our guide, “for all the things which have evident final causes, are plainly brought about by mechanical means;” and he appeals to the milk in the breast, which is intended for the sustenance of the young, but which is nevertheless mechanically produced. (On Man, vol. ii. pp. 338-339.) But it is plain that this mode of reasoning would justify us in attributing an authoritative character to any habit—e.g. to that of avarice—which these writers assure us is in the manner of its formation an exact parallel to conscience. The later followers of Hartley certainly cannot be accused of any excessive predilection for the doctrine of final causes, yet we sometimes find them asking what great difference it can make whether (when conscience is admitted by both parties to be real) it is regarded as an original principle of our nature, or as a product of association? Simply this. If by the constitution of our nature we are subject to a law of duty which is different from and higher than our interest, a man who violates this law through interested motives, is deserving of reprobation. If on the other hand there is no natural law of duty, and if the pursuit of our interest is the one original principle of our being, no one can be censured who pursues it, and the first criterion of a wise man will be his determination to eradicate every habit (conscientious or otherwise) which impedes him in doing so.

On Human Nature, chap. ix. § 10.

Enquiry concerning Good and Evil.

This theory is noticed by Hutcheson, and a writer in the Spectator (No. 436) suggests that it may explain the attraction of prize-fights. The case of the pleasure derived from fictitious sorrow is a distinct question, and has been admirably treated in Lord Kames' Essays on Morality. Bishop Butler notices (Second Sermon on Compassion), that it is possible for the very intensity of a feeling of compassion to divert men from charity by making them “industriously turn away from the miserable;” and it is well known that Goethe, on account of this very susceptibility, made it one of the rules of his life to avoid everything that could suggest painful ideas. Hobbes makes the following very characteristic comments on some famous lines of Lucretius: “From what passion proceedeth it that men take pleasure to behold from the shore the danger of those that are at sea in a tempest or in fight, or from a safe castle to behold two armies charge one another in the field? It is certainly in the whole sum joy, else men would never flock to such a spectacle. Nevertheless, there is both joy and grief, for as there is novelty and remembrance of our own security present, which is delight, so there is also pity, which is grief. But the delight is so far predominant that men usually are content in such a case to be spectators of the misery of their friends.” (On Human Nature, ch. ix. § 19.) Good Christians, according to some theologians, are expected to enjoy this pleasure in great perfection in heaven. “We may believe in the next world also the goodness as well as the happiness of the blest will be confirmed and advanced by reflections naturally arising from the view of the misery which some shall undergo, which seems to be a good reason for the creation of those beings who shall be finally miserable, and for the continuation of them in their miserable existence ... though in one respect the view of the misery which the damned undergo might seem to detract from the happiness of the blessed through pity and commiseration, yet under another, a nearer and much more affecting consideration, viz. that all this is the misery they themselves were often exposed to and in danger of incurring, why may not the sense of their own escape so far overcome the sense of another's ruin as quite to extinguish the pain that usually attends the idea of it, and even render it productive of some real happiness? To this purpose, Lucretius' Suave mari,” etc. (Law's notes to his Translation of King's Origin of Evil, pp. 477, 479.)

See e.g. Reid's Essays on the Active Powers, essay iii. ch. v.

The error I have traced in this paragraph will be found running through a great part of what Mr. Buckle has written upon morals—I think the weakest portion of his great work. See, for example, an elaborate confusion on the subject, History of Civilisation, vol. ii. p. 429. Mr. Buckle maintains that all the philosophers of what is commonly called “the Scotch school” (a school founded by the Irishman Hutcheson, and to which Hume does not belong), were incapable of inductive reasoning, because they maintained the existence of a moral sense or faculty, or of first principles, incapable of resolution; and he enters into a learned enquiry into the causes which made it impossible for Scotch writers to pursue or appreciate the inductive method. It is curious to contrast this view with the language of one, who, whatever may be the value of his original speculations, is, I conceive, among the very ablest philosophical critics of the present century. “Les philosophes écossais adoptèrent les procédés que Bacon avait recommandé d'appliquer à l'étude du monde physique, et les transportèrent dans l'étude du monde moral. Ils firent voir que l'induction baconienne, c'est-à-dire, l'induction précédée d'une observation scrupuleuse des phénomènes, est en philosophie comme en physique la seule méthode légitime. C'est un de leurs titres les plus honorables d'avoir insisté sur cette démonstration, et d'avoir en même temps joint l'exemple au précepte.... Il est vrai que le zèle des philosophes écossais en faveur de la méthode d'observation leur a presque fait dépasser le but. Ils ont incliné à renfermer la psychologie dans la description minutieuse et continuelle de phénomènes de l'âme sans réfléchir assez que cette description doit faire place à l'induction et au raisonnement déductif, et qu'une philosophie qui se bornerait à l'observation serait aussi stérile que celle qui s'amuserait à construire des hypothèses sans avoir préalablement observé.”—Cousin, Hist. de la Philos. Morale au xviiime Siècle, Tome 4, p. 14-16. Dugald Stewart had said much the same thing, but he was a Scotchman, and therefore, according to Mr. Buckle (Hist. of Civ. ii. pp. 485-86), incapable of understanding what induction was. I may add that one of the principal objections M. Cousin makes against Locke is, that he investigated the origin of our ideas before analysing minutely their nature, and the propriety of this method is one of the points on which Mr. Mill (Examination of Sir W. Hamilton) is at issue with M. Cousin.

M. Ch. Comte, in his very learned Traité de Législation, liv. iii. ch. iv., has made an extremely curious collection of instances in which different nations have made their own distinctive peculiarities of colour and form the ideal of beauty.

“How particularly fine the hard theta is in our English terminations, as in that grand word death, for which the Germans gutturise a sound that puts you in mind of nothing but a loathsome toad.”—Coleridge's Table Talk, p. 181.

Mackintosh, Dissert. p. 238.

Lord Kames' Essays on Morality (1st edition), pp. 55-56.

See Butler's Three Sermons on Human Nature, and the preface.

Speaking of the animated statue which he regarded as a representative of man, Condillac says, “Le goût peut ordinairement contribuer plus que l'odorat à son bonheur et à son malheur.... Il y contribue même encore plus que les sons harmonieux, parce que le besoin de nourriture lui rend les saveurs plus nécessaires, et par conséquent les lui fait goûter avec plus de vivacité. La faim pourra la rendre malheureuse, mais dès qu'elle aura remarqué les sensations propres à l'apaiser, elle y déterminera davantage son attention, les désirera avec plus de violence et en jouira avec plus de délire.”—Traité des Sensations, 1re partie ch. x.

This is one of the favourite thoughts of Pascal, who, however, in his usual fashion dwells upon it in a somewhat morbid and exaggerated strain. “C'est une bien grande misère que de pouvoir prendre plaisir à des choses si basses et si méprisables ... l'homme est encore plus à plaindre de ce qu'il peut se divertir à ces choses si frivoles et si basses, que de ce qu'il s'afflige de ses misères effectives.... D'ou vient que cet homme, qui a perdu depuis peu son fils unique, et qui, accablé de procès et de querelles, était ce matin si troublé, n'y pense plus maintenant? Ne vous en étonnez pas; il est tout occupé à voir par où passera un cerf que ses chiens poursuivent.... C'est une joie de malade et de frénétique.”—Pensées (Misère de l'homme).

“Quæ singula improvidam mortalitatem involvunt, solum ut inter ista certum sit, nihil esse certi, nec miserius quidquam homine, aut superbius. Cæteris quippe animantium sola victus cura est, in quo sponte naturæ benignitas sufficit: uno quidem vel præferenda cunctis bonis, quod de gloria, de pecunia, ambitione, superque de morte, non cogitant.”—Plin. Hist. Nat. ii. 5.

Paley, in his very ingenious, and in some respects admirable, chapter on happiness tries to prove the inferiority of animal pleasures, by showing the short time their enjoyment actually lasts, the extent to which they are dulled by repetition, and the cases in which they incapacitate men for other pleasures. But this calculation omits the influence of some animal enjoyments upon health and temperament. The fact, however, that health, which is a condition of body, is the chief source of happiness, Paley fully admits. “Health,” he says, “is the one thing needful ... when we are in perfect health and spirits, we feel in ourselves a happiness independent of any particular outward gratification.... This is an enjoyment which the Deity has annexed to life, and probably constitutes in a great measure the happiness of infants and brutes ... of oysters, periwinkles, and the like; for which I have sometimes been at a loss to find out amusement.” On the test of happiness he very fairly says, “All that can be said is that there remains a presumption in favour of those conditions of life in which men generally appear most cheerful and contented; for though the apparent happiness of mankind be not always a true measure of their real happiness, it is the best measure we have.”—Moral Philosophy, i. 6.

A writer who devoted a great part of his life to studying the deaths of men in different countries, classes, and churches, and to collecting from other physicians information on the subject, says: “À mesure qu'on s'éloigne des grands foyers de civilisation, qu'on se rapproche des plaines et des montagnes, le caractère de la mort prend de plus en plus l'aspect calme du ciel par un beau crépuscule du soir.... En général la mort s'accomplit d'une manière d'autant plus simple et naturelle qu'on est plus libre des innombrables liens de la civilisation.”—Lauvergne, De l'agonie de la Mort, tome i. pp. 131-132.

“I will omit much usual declamation upon the dignity and capacity of our nature, the superiority of the soul to the body, of the rational to the animal part of our constitution, upon the worthiness, refinement, and delicacy of some satisfactions, or the meanness, grossness, and sensuality of others; because I hold that pleasures differ in nothing but in continuance and intensity.”—Paley's Moral Philosophy, book i. ch. vi. Bentham in like manner said, “Quantity of pleasure being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry,” and he maintained that the value of a pleasure depends on—its (1) intensity, (2) duration, (3) certainty, (4) propinquity, (5) purity, (6) fecundity, (7) extent (Springs of Action). The recognition of the “purity” of a pleasure might seem to imply the distinction for which I have contended in the text, but this is not so. The purity of a pleasure or pain, according to Bentham, is “the chance it has of not being followed by sensations of the opposite kind: that is pain if it be a pleasure, pleasure if it be a pain.”—Morals and Legislation, i. § 8. Mr. Buckle (Hist. of Civilisation, vol. ii. pp. 399-400) writes in a somewhat similar strain, but less unequivocally, for he admits that mental pleasures are “more ennobling” than physical ones. The older utilitarians, as far as I have observed, did not even advert to the question. This being the case, it must have been a matter of surprise as well as of gratification to most intuitive moralists to find Mr. Mill fully recognising the existence of different kinds of pleasure, and admitting that the superiority of the higher kinds does not spring from their being greater in amount.—Utilitarianism, pp. 11-12. If it be meant by this that we have the power of recognising some pleasures as superior to others in kind, irrespective of all consideration of their intensity, their cost, and their consequences, I submit that the admission is completely incompatible with the utilitarian theory, and that Mr. Mill has only succeeded in introducing Stoical elements into his system by loosening its very foundation. The impossibility of establishing an aristocracy of enjoyments in which, apart from all considerations of consequences, some which give less pleasure and are less widely diffused are regarded as intrinsically superior to others which give more pleasure and are more general, without admitting into our estimate a moral element, which on utilitarian principles is wholly illegitimate, has been powerfully shown since the first edition of this book by Professor Grote, in his Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy, chap. iii.

Büchner, Force et Matière, pp. 163-164. There is a very curious collection of the speculations of the ancient philosophers on this subject in Plutarch's treatise, De Placitis Philos.

Aulus Gellius, Noctes, x. 23. The law is given by Dion. Halicarn. Valerius Maximus says, “Vini usus olim Romanis feminis ignotus fuit, ne scilicet in aliquod dedecus prolaberentur: quia proximus a Libero patre intemperantiæ gradus ad inconcessam Venerem esse consuevit” (Val. Max. ii. 1, § 5). This is also noticed by Pliny (Hist. Nat. xiv. 14), who ascribes the law to Romulus, and who mentions two cases in which women were said to have been put to death for this offence, and a third in which the offender was deprived of her dowry. Cato said that the ancient Romans were accustomed to kiss their wives for the purpose of discovering whether they had been drinking wine. The Bona Dea, it is said, was originally a woman named Fatua, who was famous for her modesty and fidelity to her husband, but who, unfortunately, having once found a cask of wine in the house, got drunk, and was in consequence scourged to death by her husband. He afterwards repented of his act, and paid divine honours to her memory, and as a memorial of her death, a cask of wine was always placed upon the altar during the rites. (Lactantius, Div. Inst. i. 22.) The Milesians, also, and the inhabitants of Marseilles are said to have had laws forbidding women to drink wine (Ælian, Hist. Var. ii. 38). Tertullian describes the prohibition of wine among the Roman women as in his time obsolete, and a taste for it was one of the great trials of St. Monica (Aug. Conf. x. 8).

“La loi fondamentale de la morale agit sur toutes les nations bien connues. Il y a mille différences dans les interprétations de cette loi en mille circonstances; mais le fond subsiste toujours le même, et ce fond est l'idée du juste et de l'injuste.”—Voltaire, Le Philosophe ignorant.

The feeling in its favour being often intensified by filial affection. “What is the most beautiful thing on the earth?” said Osiris to Horus. “To avenge a parent's wrongs,” was the reply.—Plutarch De Iside et Osiride.

Hence the Justinian code and also St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xix. 15) derived servus from “servare,” to preserve, because the victor preserved his prisoners alive.

“Les habitants du Congo tuent les malades qu'ils imaginent ne pouvoir en revenir; c'est, disentils, pour leur épargner les douleurs de l'agonie. Dans l'île Formose, lorsqu'un homme est dangereusement malade, on lui passe un nœud coulant au col et on l'étrangle, pour l'arracher à la douleur.”—Helvétius, De l'Esprit, ii. 13. A similar explanation may be often found for customs which are quoted to prove that the nations where they existed had no sense of chastity. “C'est pareillement sous la sauvegarde des lois que les Siamoises, la gorge et les cuisses à moitié découvertes, portées dans les rues sur les palanquins, s'y présentent dans des attitudes très-lascives. Cette loi fut établie par une de leurs reines nommée Tirada, qui, pour dégoûter les hommes d'un amour plus déshonnête, crut devoir employer toute la puissance de la beauté.”—De l'Esprit, ii. 14.

“The contest between the morality which appeals to an external standard, and that which grounds itself on internal conviction, is the contest of progressive morality against stationary, of reason and argument against the deification of mere opinion and habit.” (Mill's Dissertations, vol. ii. p. 472); a passage with a true Bentham ring. See, too, vol. i. p. 158. There is, however, a schism on this point in the utilitarian camp. The views which Mr. Buckle has expressed in his most eloquent chapter on the comparative influence of intellectual and moral agencies in civilisation diverge widely from those of Mr. Mill.

“Est enim sensualitas quædam vis animæ inferior.... Ratio vero vis animæ est superior.”—Peter Lombard, Sent. ii. 24.

Helvétius, De l'Esprit, discours iv. See too, Dr. Draper's extremely remarkable History of Intellectual Development in Europe (New York, 1864), pp. 48, 53.

Plutarch, De Cohibenda Ira.

Lactantius, Div. Inst. i. 22. The mysteries of the Bona Dea became, however, after a time, the occasion of great disorders. See Juvenal, Sat. vi. M. Magnin has examined the nature of these rites (Origines du Théâtre, pp. 257-259).

The history of the vestals, which forms one of the most curious pages in the moral history of Rome, has been fully treated by the Abbé Nadal, in an extremely interesting and well-written memoir, read before the Académie des Belles-lettres, and republished in 1725. It was believed that the prayer of a vestal could arrest a fugitive slave in his flight, provided he had not got past the city walls. Pliny mentions this belief as general in his time. The records of the order contained many miracles wrought at different times to save the vestals or to vindicate their questioned purity, and also one miracle which is very remarkable as furnishing a precise parallel to that of the Jew who was struck dead for touching the ark to prevent its falling.

As for example the Sibyls and Cassandra. The same prophetic power was attributed in India to virgins.—Clem. Alexandrin. Strom. iii. 7.

This custom continued to the worst period of the empire, though it was shamefully and characteristically evaded. After the fall of Sejanus the senate had no compunction in putting his innocent daughter to death, but their religious feelings were shocked at the idea of a virgin falling beneath the axe. So by way of improving matters “filia constuprata est prius a carnifice, quasi impium esset virginem in carcere perire.”—Dion Cassius, lviii. 11. See too, Tacitus, Annal. v. 9. If a vestal met a prisoner going to execution the prisoner was spared, provided the vestal declared that the encounter was accidental. On the reverence the ancients paid to virgins, see Justus Lipsius, De Vesta et Vestalibus.

See his picture of the first night of marriage:—

“Tacitè subit ille supremus
Virginitatis amor, primæque modestia culpæ
Confundit vultus. Tunc ora rigantur honestis
Imbribus.”

Thebaidos, lib. ii. 232-34.

Bees (which Virgil said had in them something of the divine nature) were supposed by the ancients to be the special emblems or models of chastity. It was a common belief that the bee mother begot her young without losing her virginity. Thus in a fragment ascribed to Petronius we read,

“Sic sine concubitu textis apis excita ceris
Fervet, et audaci milite castra replet.”

Petron. De Varia Animalium Generatione.

So too Virgil:—

“Quod neque concubitu indulgent nec corpora segnes
In Venerem solvunt aut fœtus nixibus edunt.”—Georg. iv. 198-99.

Plutarch says that an unchaste person cannot approach bees, for they immediately attack him and cover him with stings. Fire was also regarded as a type of virginity. Thus Ovid, speaking of the vestals, says:—

“Nataque de fiamma corpora nulla vides:
Jure igitur virgo est, quæ semina nulla remittit
Nec capit, et comites virginitatis amat.”

“The Egyptians believed that there are no males among vultures, and they accordingly made that bird an emblem of nature.”—Ammianus Marcellinus, xvii. 4.

“La divinité étant considérée comme renfermant en elle toutes les qualités, toutes les forces intellectuelles et morales de l'homme, chacune de ces forces ou de ces qualités, conçue séparément, s'offrait comme un Être divin.... De-là aussi les contradictions les plus choquantes dans les notions que les anciens avaient des attributs divins.”—Maury, Hist. des Religions de la Grèce antique, tome i. pp. 578-579.

“The Church holds that it were better for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse.”—Newman's Anglican Difficulties, p. 190.

There is a remarkable dissertation on this subject, called “The Limitations of Morality,” in a very ingenious and suggestive little work of the Benthamite school, called Essays by a Barrister (reprinted from the Saturday Review).

The following passage, though rather vague and rhetorical, is not unimpressive: “Oui, dit Jacobi, je mentirais comme Desdemona mourante, je tromperais comme Oreste quand il veut mourir à la place de Pylade, j'assassinerais comme Timoléon, je serais parjure comme Épaminondas et Jean de Witt, je me déterminerais au suicide comme Caton, je serais sacrilége comme David; car j'ai la certitude en moi-même qu'en pardonnant à ces fautes suivant la lettre l'homme exerce le droit souverain que la majesté de son être lui confère; il appose le sceau de sa divine nature sur la grâce qu'il accorde.”—Barchou de Penhoen, Hist. de la Philos. allemande, tome i. p. 295.

This equivocation seems to me to lie at the root of the famous dispute whether man is by nature a social being, or whether, as Hobbes averred, the state of nature is a state of war. Few persons who have observed the recent light thrown on the subject will question that the primitive condition of man was that of savage life, and fewer still will question that savage life is a state of war. On the other hand, it is, I think, equally certain that man necessarily becomes a social being in exact proportion to the development of the capacities of his nature.

One of the best living authorities on this question writes: “The asserted existence of savages so low as to have no moral standard is too groundless to be discussed. Every human tribe has its general views as to what conduct is right and what wrong, and each generation hands the standard on to the next. Even in the details of their moral standards, wide as their differences are, there is yet wider agreement throughout the human race.”—Tylor on Primitive Society, Contemporary Review, April 1873, p. 702.

The distinction between innate faculties evolved by experience and innate ideas independent of experience, and the analogy between the expansion of the former and that of the bud into the flower has been very happily treated by Reid. (On the Active Powers, essay iii. chap. viii. p. 4.) Professor Sedgwick, criticising Locke's notion of the soul being originally like a sheet of white paper, beautifully says: “Naked man comes from his mother's womb, endowed with limbs and senses indeed well fitted to the material world, yet powerless from want of use; and as for knowledge, his soul is one unvaried blank; yet has this blank been already touched by a celestial hand, and when plunged in the colours which surround it, it takes not its tinge from accident but design, and comes forth covered with a glorious pattern.” (On the Studies of the University, p. 54.) Leibnitz says: “L'esprit n'est point une table rase. Il est tout plein de caractères que la sensation ne peut que découvrir et mettre en lumière au lieu de les y imprimer. Je me suis servi de la comparaison d'une pierre de marbre qui a des veines plutôt que d'une pierre de marbre tout unie.... S'il y avait dans la pierre des veines qui marquassent la figure d'Hercule préférablement à d'autres figures, ... Hercule y serait comme inné en quelque façon, quoiqu'il fallût du travail pour découvrir ces veines.”—Critique de l'Essai sur l'Entendement.

The argument against the intuitive moralists derived from savage life was employed at some length by Locke. Paley then adopted it, taking a history of base ingratitude related by Valerius Maximus, and asking whether a savage would view it with disapprobation. (Moral Phil. book i. ch. 5.) Dugald Stewart (Active and Moral Powers, vol. i. pp. 230-231) and other writers have very fully answered this, but the same objection has been revived in another form by Mr. Austin, who supposes (Lectures on Jurisprudence, vol. i. pp. 82-83) a savage who first meets a hunter carrying a dead deer, kills the hunter and steals the deer, and is afterwards himself assailed by another hunter whom he kills. Mr. Austin asks whether the savage would perceive a moral difference between these two acts of homicide? Certainly not. In this early stage of development, the savage recognises a duty of justice and humanity to the members of his tribe, but to no one beyond this circle. He is in a “state of war” with the foreign hunter. He has a right to kill the hunter and the hunter an equal right to kill him.

Everyone who is acquainted with metaphysics knows that there has been an almost endless controversy about Locke's meaning on this point. The fact seems to be that Locke, like most great originators of thought, and indeed more than most, often failed to perceive the ultimate consequences of his principles, and partly through some confusion of thought, and partly through unhappiness of expression, has left passages involving the conclusions of both schools. As a matter of history the sensual school of Condillac grew professedly out of his philosophy. In defence of the legitimacy of the process by which these writers evolved their conclusions from the premisses of Locke, the reader may consult the very able lectures of M. Cousin on Locke. The other side has been treated, among others, by Dugald Stewart in his Dissertation, by Professor Webb in his Intellectualism of Locke, and by Mr. Rogers in an essay reprinted from the Edinburgh Review.

I make this qualification, because I believe that the denial of a moral nature in man capable of perceiving the distinction between duty and interest and the rightful supremacy of the former, is both philosophically and actually subversive of natural theology.

See the forcible passage in the life of Epicurus by Diogenes Laërtius. So Mackintosh: “It is remarkable that, while, of the three professors who sat in the Porch from Zeno to Posidonius, every one either softened or exaggerated the doctrines of his predecessor, and while the beautiful and reverend philosophy of Plato had in his own Academy degenerated into a scepticism which did not spare morality itself, the system of Epicurus remained without change; his disciples continued for ages to show personal honour to his memory in a manner which may seem unaccountable among those who were taught to measure propriety by a calculation of palpable and outward usefulness.”—Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy, p. 85, ed. 1836. See, too, Tennemann (Manuel de la Philosophie, ed. Cousin, tome i. p. 211).

Thus e.g. the magnificent chapters of Helvétius on the moral effects of despotism, form one of the best modern contributions to political ethics. We have a curious illustration of the emphasis with which this school dwells on the moral importance of institutions in a memoir of M. De Tracy, On the best Plan of National Education, which appeared first towards the close of the French Revolution, and was reprinted during the Restoration. The author, who was one of the most distinguished of the disciples of Condillac, argued that the most efficient of all ways of educating a people is, the establishment of a good system of police, for the constant association of the ideas of crime and punishment in the minds of the masses is the one effectual method of creating moral habits, which will continue to act when the fear of punishment is removed.

An important intellectual revolution is at present taking place in England. The ascendency in literary and philosophical questions which belonged to the writers of books is manifestly passing in a very great degree to weekly and even daily papers, which have long been supreme in politics, and have begun within the last ten years systematically to treat ethical and philosophical questions. From their immense circulation, their incontestable ability and the power they possess of continually reiterating their distinctive doctrines, from the impatience, too, of long and elaborate writings, which newspapers generate in the public, it has come to pass that these periodicals exercise probably a greater influence than any other productions of the day, in forming the ways of thinking of ordinary educated Englishmen. The many consequences, good and evil, of this change it will be the duty of future literary historians to trace, but there is one which is, I think, much felt in the sphere of ethics. An important effect of these journals has been to evoke a large amount of literary talent in the lawyer class. Men whose professional duties would render it impossible for them to write long books, are quite capable of treating philosophical subjects in the form of short essays, and have in fact become conspicuous in these periodicals. There has seldom, I think, before, been a time when lawyers occupied such an important literary position as at present, or when legal ways of thinking had so great an influence over English philosophy; and this fact has been eminently favourable to the progress of utilitarianism.

There are some good remarks on this point in the very striking chapter on the present condition of Christianity in Wilberforce's Practical View.

See Reid's Essays on the Active Powers, iii. i.

I say usually proportioned, because it is, I believe, possible for men to realise intensely suffering, and to derive pleasure from that very fact. This is especially the case with vindictive cruelty, but it is not, I think, altogether confined to that sphere. This question we shall have occasion to examine when discussing the gladiatorial shows. Most cruelty, however, springs from callousness, which is simply dulness of imagination.

The principal exception being where slavery, coexisting with advanced civilisation, retards or prevents the growth of industrial habits.

See Mr. Laing's Travels in Sweden. A similar cause is said to have had a similar effect in Bavaria.

This has been, I think, especially the case with the Austrians.

See some remarkable instances of this in Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et du Moral de l'Homme.

Diog. Laërt. Pythag.

Plutarch, De Profectibus in Virt.

Diog. Laërt. Stilpo.

Clem. Alexand. Strom. vii.

Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, i. 1.

Lactant. Inst. Div. i. 5.

“Pythagoras ita definivit quid esset Deus: Animus qui per universas mundi partes, omnemque naturam commeans atque diffusus, ex quo omnia quæ nascuntur animalia vitam capiunt.”—Ibid. Lactantius in this chapter has collected several other philosophic definitions of the Divinity. See too Plutarch, De Placit. Philos. Tertullian explains the stoical theory by an ingenious illustration: “Stoici enim volunt Deum sic per materiem decucurrisse quomodo mel per favos.”—Tert. De Anima.

As Cicero says: “Epicurus re tollit, oratione relinquit, deos.”—De Nat. Deor. i. 44.

Sometimes, however, they restricted its operation to the great events of life. As an interlocutor in Cicero says: “Magna dii curant, parva negligunt.”—Cic. De Natur. Deor. ii. 66. Justin Martyr notices (Trypho, i.) that some philosophers maintained that God cared for the universal or species, but not for the individual. Seneca maintains that the Divinity has determined all things by an inexorable law of destiny, which He has decreed, but which He Himself obeys. (De Provident. v.)

See on this theory Cicero, De Natur. Deor. i. 42; Lactantius, Inst. Div. i. 11.

Diog. Laërt. Vit. Zeno. St. Aug. De Civ. Dei, iv. 11. Maximus of Tyre, Dissert. x. (in some editions xxix.) § 8. Seneca, De Beneficiis, iv. 7-8. Cic. De Natur. Deor. i. 15. Cicero has devoted the first two books of this work to the stoical theology. A full review of the allegorical and mythical interpretations of paganism is given by Eusebius, Evang. Præpar. lib. iii.

St. Aug. De Civ. vii. 5.

Plin. Hist. Nat. ii. 1.

“Nec vero Deus ipse qui intelligitur a nobis, alio modo intelligi potest nisi mens soluta quædam et libera, segregata ab omni concretione mortali, omnia sentiens et movens, ipsaque prædita motu sempiterno.”—Tusc. Quæst. i. 27.

Senec. Quæst. Nat. ii. 45.

“Estne Dei sedes, nisi terra et pontus et aër.
Et cœlum et virtus? Superos quid quærimus ultra?
Jupiter est quodcumque vides, quodcumque moveris.”

Pharsal. ix. 578-80.

“Quæve anus tam excors inveniri potest, quæ illa, quæ quondam credebantur apud inferos portenta, extimescat?”—Cic. De Nat. Deor. ii. 2.

“Esse aliques Manes et subterranea regna ...
Nec pueri credunt nisi qui nondum ære lavantur.”

Juv. Sat. ii. 149, 152.

See on this subject a good review by the Abbé Freppel, Les Pères Apostoliques, leçon viii.

Cicero, De Leg. i. 14; Macrobius, In. Som. Scip. i. 10.

See his works De Divinatione and De Nat. Deorum, which form a curious contrast to the religious conservatism of the De Legibus, which was written chiefly from a political point of view.

Eusebius, Præp. Evang. lib. iv.

The oracles first gave their answers in verse, but their bad poetry was ridiculed, and they gradually sank to prose, and at last ceased. Plutarch defended the inspiration of the bad poetry on the ground that the inspiring spirit availed itself of the natural faculties of the priestess for the expression of its infallible truths—a theory which is still much in vogue among Biblical critics, and is, I believe, called dynamical inspiration. See Fontenelle, Hist. des Oracles (1st ed.), pp. 292-293.

See the famous description of Cato refusing to consult the oracle of Jupiter Ammon in Lucan, Phars. ix.; and also Arrian, ii. 7. Seneca beautifully says, “Vis deos propitiare? bonus esto. Satis illos coluit quisquis imitatus est.”—Ep. xcv.

Cicero, De Divin. ii. 24.

Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att. xv. 22.

See a long string of witticisms collected by Legendre, Traité de l'Opinion, ou Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de l'Esprit humain (Venise, 1735), tome i. pp. 386-387.

See Cicero, De Natura Deorum; Seneca, De Brev. Vit. c. xvi.; Plin. Hist. Nat. ii. 5; Plutarch, De Superstitione.

“Olim truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum,
Cum faber, incertus scamnum faceretne Priapum,
Maluit esse Deum.”

Sat. I. viii. 1-3.

There is a very curious discussion on this subject, reported to have taken place between Apollonius of Tyana and an Egyptian priest. The former defended the Greek fashion of worshipping the Divinity under the form of the human image, sculptured by Phidias and Praxiteles, this being the noblest form we can conceive, and therefore the least inadequate to the Divine perfections. The latter defended the Egyptian custom of worshipping animals, because, as he said, it is blasphemous to attempt to conceive an image of the Deity, and the Egyptians therefore concentrate the imagination of the worshipper on objects that are plainly merely allegorical or symbolical, and do not pretend to offer any such image (Philos. Apoll. of Tyana, vi. 19). Pliny shortly says, “Effigiem Dei formamque quærere imbecillitatis humanæ reor” (Hist. Nat. ii. 5). See too Max. Tyrius, Diss. xxxviii. There was a legend that Numa forbade all idols, and that for 200 years they were unknown in Rome (Plutarch, Life of Numa). Dion Chrysostom said that the Gods need no statues or sacrifices, but that by these means we attest our devotion to them (Orat. xxxi.). On the vanity of rich idols, see Plutarch, De Superstitione; Seneca, Ep. xxxi.

1 Lact. Inst. Div. vi. 25.

Dion. Halic. ii.; Polyb. vi. 56.

St. Aug. De Civ. Dei, iv. 31.

Epictetus, Enchir. xxxix.

Cicero, speaking of the worship of deified men, says, “indicat omnium quidem animos immortales esse, sed fortium bonorumque divinos.”—De Leg. ii. 11. The Roman worship of the dead, which was the centre of the domestic religion, has been recently investigated with much ability by M. Coulanges (La Cité antique).

On the minute supervision exercised by the censors on all the details of domestic life, see Aul. Gell. Noct. ii. 24; iv. 12, 20.

Livy, xxxix. 6.

Vell. Paterculus, i. 11-13; Eutropius, iv. 6. Sallust ascribed the decadence of Rome to the destruction of its rival, Carthage.

Plutarch, De Adulatore et Amico.

There is much curious information about the growth of Roman luxury in Pliny (Hist. Nat. lib. xxxiv.). The movement of decomposition has been lately fully traced by Mommsen (Hist. of Rome); Döllinger (Jew and Gentile); Denis ( Hist. des Idées morales dans l'Antiquité); Pressensé (Hist. des trois premiers Siècles); in the histories of Champagny, and in the beautiful closing chapters of the Apôtres of Renan.

Sueton. Aug. xvi.

Ibid. Calig. v.

Persius, Sat. ii.; Horace, Ep. i. 16, vv. 57-60.

See, on the identification of the Greek and Egyptian myths, Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride. The Greek and Roman gods were habitually regarded as identical, and Cæsar and Tacitus, in like manner, identified the deities of Gaul and Germany with those of their own country. See Döllinger, Jew and Gentile, vol. ii. pp. 160-165.

“Ego deûm genus esse semper dixi et dicam cœlitum; Sed eos non curare opinor quid agat hominum genus.”

Cicero adds: “magno plausu loquitur assentiente populo.”—De Divin. ii. 50.

Plutarch, De Superstitione.

St. Aug. De Civ. Dei, vi. 6; Tertul. Apol. 15; Arnobius, Adv. Gentes, iv.

“Pars alia et hanc pellit, astroque suo eventus assignat, nascendi legibus; semelque in omnes futuros unquam Deo decretum; in reliquum vero otium datum. Sedere cœpit sententia hæc pariterque et eruditum vulgus et rude in eam cursu vadit. Ecce fulgurum monitus, oraculorum præscita, aruspicum prædicta, atque etiam parva dictu, in auguriis sternumenta et offensiones pedum.”—Hist. Nat. ii. 5. Pliny himself expresses great doubt about astrology giving many examples of men with different destinies, who had been born at the same time, and therefore under the same stars (vii. 50). Tacitus expresses complete doubt about the existence of Providence. (Ann. vi. 22.) Tiberius is said to have been very indifferent to the gods and to the worship of the temples, being wholly addicted to astrology and convinced that all things were pre-ordained. (Suet. Tib. lxix.)

Ammianus Marcellinus, xxviii.

De Profectibus in Virt. It was originally the custom at Roman feasts to sing to a pipe the actions and the virtues of the greatest men. (Cic. Tusc. Quæst. iv.)

E.g. Epictetus, Ench. lii. Seneca is full of similar exhortations.

According to Cicero, the first Latin work on philosophy was by the Epicurean Amafanius. (Tusc. Quæst. iv.)

See on the great perfection of the character of Epicurus his life by Diogenes Laërtius, and on the purity of the philosophy he taught and the degree in which it was distorted and misrepresented by his Roman followers. Seneca De Vita Beata, c. xii. xiii. and Ep. xxi. Gassendi, in a very interesting little work entitled Philosophiæ Epicuri Syntagma, has abundantly proved the possibility of uniting Epicurean principles with a high code of morals. But probably the most beautiful picture of the Epicurean system is the first book of the De Finibus, in which Cicero endeavours to paint it as it would have been painted by its adherents. When we remember that the writer of this book was one of the most formidable and unflinching opponents of Epicureanism in all the ancient world, it must be owned that it would be impossible to find a grander example of that noble love of truth, that sublime and scrupulous justice to opponents, which was the pre-eminent glory of ancient philosophers, and which, after the destruction of philosophy, was for many centuries almost unknown in the world. It is impossible to doubt that Epicureanism was logically compatible with a very high degree of virtue. It is, I think, equally impossible to doubt that its practical tendency was towards vice.

Mr. Grote gives the following very clear summary of Plato's ethical theory, which he believes to be original:—“Justice is in the mind a condition analogous to good health and strength in the body. Injustice is a condition analogous to sickness, corruption, impotence in the body.... To possess a healthy body is desirable for its consequences as a means towards other constituents of happiness, but it is still more desirable in itself as an essential element of happiness per se, i.e., the negation of sickness, which would of itself make us miserable.... In like manner, the just mind blesses the possessor twice: first and chiefly by bringing to him happiness in itself; next, also, as it leads to ulterior happy results. The unjust mind is a curse to its possessor in itself and apart from results, though it also leads to ulterior results which render it still more a curse to him.”—Grote's Plato, vol. iii. p. 131. According to Plutarch, Aristo of Chio defined virtue as “the health of the soul.” (De Virtute Morali.)

“Beata est ergo vita conveniens naturæ suæ; quæ non aliter contingere potest quam si primum sana mens est et in perpetuâ possessione sanitatis suæ.”—Seneca, De Vita Beata, c. iii.

The famous paradox that “the sage could be happy even in the bull of Phalaris,” comes from the writings not of Zeno but of Epicurus—though the Stoics adopted and greatly admired it. (Cic. Tusc. ii. See Gassendi, Philos. Epicuri Syntagma, pars iii. c. 1.)

“Sed nescio quomodo dum lego assentior; cum posui librum et mecum ipse de immortalitate animorum cœpi cogitare, assensio omnis illa elabitur.”—Cic. Tusc. i.

Sallust, Catilina, cap. li.

See that most impressive passage (Hist. Nat. vii. 56). That the sleep of annihilation is the happiest end of man is a favourite thought of Lucretius. Thus:

“Nil igitur mors est, ad nos neque pertinet hilum,
Quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur.”—iii. 842.

This mode of thought has been recently expressed in Mr. Swinburne's very beautiful poem on The Garden of Proserpine.

Diog. Laërtius. The opinion of Chrysippus seems to have prevailed, and Plutarch (De Placit. Philos.) speaks of it as that of the school. Cicero sarcastically says, “Stoici autem usuram nobis largiuntur, tanquam cornicibus: diu mansuros aiunt animos; semper, negant.”—Tusc. Disp. i. 31.

It has been very frequently asserted that Antigonus of Socho having taught that virtue should be practised for its own sake, his disciple, Zadok, the founder of the Sadducees, inferred the non-existence of a future world; but the evidence for this whole story is exceedingly unsatisfactory. The reader may find its history in a very remarkable article by Mr. Twisleton on Sadducees, in Smith's Biblical Dictionary.

On the Stoical opinions about a future life see Martin, La Vie future (Paris, 1858); Courdaveaux De l'immortalité de l'âme dans le Stoïcisme (Paris, 1857); and Alger's Critical Hist. of the Doctrine of a Future Life (New York, 1866).

His arguments are met by Cicero in the Tusculans.

See a collection of passages from his discourses collected by M. Courdaveaux, in the introduction to his French translation of that book.

Stobæus, Eclog. Physic. lib. i. cap. 52.

In his consolations to Marcia, he seems to incline to a belief in the immortality, or at least the future existence, of the soul. In many other passages, however, he speaks of it as annihilated at death.

“Les Stoïciens ne faisaient aucunement dépendre la morale de la perspective des peines ou de la rémunération dans une vie future.... La croyance à l'immortalité de l'âme n'appartenait donc, selon leur manière de voir, qu'à la physique, c'est-à-dire à la psychologie.”—Degerando, Hist. de la Philos. tome iii. p. 56.

“Panætius igitur, qui sine controversia de officiis accuratissime disputavit, quemque nos, correctione quadam adhibita, potissimum secuti sumus.”—De Offic. iii. 2.

Marcus Aurelius thanks Providence, as for one of the great blessings of his life, that he had been made acquainted with the writings of Epictetus. The story is well known how the old philosopher warned his master, who was beating him, that he would soon break his leg, and when the leg was broken, calmly remarked, “I told you you would do so.” Celsus quoted this in opposition to the Christians, asking, “Did your leader under suffering ever say anything so noble?” Origen finely replied, “He did what was still nobler—He kept silence.” A Christian anchorite (some say St. Nilus, who lived in the beginning of the fifth century) was so struck with the Enchiridion of Epictetus, that he adapted it to Christian use. The conversations of Epictetus, as reported by Arrian, are said to have been the favourite reading of Toussaint l'Ouverture.

Tacitus had used this expression before Milton: “Quando etiam sapientibus cupido gloriæ novissima exuitur.”—Hist. iv. 6.

Two remarkable instances have come down to us of eminent writers begging historians to adorn and even exaggerate their acts. See the very curious letters of Cicero to the historian Lucceius (Ep. ad Divers. v. 12); and of the younger Pliny to Tacitus (Ep. vii. 33). Cicero has himself confessed that he was too fond of glory.

“Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem;
Non ponebat enim rumores ante salutem.”—Ennius.

See the beautiful description of Cato's tranquillity under insults. Seneca, De Ira, ii. 33; De Const. Sap. 1, 2.

De Officiis, iii. 9.

Tusc. ii. 26.

Seneca, De Vit. Beat. c. xx.

Seneca, Ep. cxiii.

Seneca, Ep. lxxxi.

Persius, Sat. i. 45-47.

Epictetus, Ench. xxiii.

Seneca, De Ira, iii. 41.

Seneca, Cons. ad Helv. xiii.

Marc. Aur. vii. 67.

Marc. Aur. iv. 20.

Pliny, Ep. i. 22.

“Non dux, sed comes voluptas.”—De Vit. Beat. c. viii.

“Voluptas non est merces nec causa virtutis sed accessio; nec quia delectat placet sed quia placet delectat.”—Ibid., c. ix.

Peregrinus apud Aul. Gellius, xii. 11. Peregrinus was a Cynic, but his doctrine on this point was identical with that of the Stoics.

Marc. Aurel. ix. 42.

Marc. Aurel. v. 6.

Seneca, however, in one of his letters (Ep. lxxv.), subtilises a good deal on this point. He draws a distinction between affections and maladies. The first, he says, are irrational, and therefore reprehensible movements of the soul, which, if repeated and unrepressed, tend to form an irrational and evil habit, and to the last he in this letter restricts the term disease. He illustrates this distinction by observing that colds and any other slight ailments, if unchecked and neglected, may produce an organic disease. The wise man, he says, is wholly free from moral disease, but no man can completely emancipate himself from affections, though he should make this his constant object.

De Clem. ii. 6, 7.

“Peccantes vero quid habet cur oderit, cum error illos in hujusmodi delicta compellat?”—Sen. De Ira, i. 14. This is a favourite thought of Marcus Aurelius, to which he reverts again and again. See, too, Arrian, i. 18.

“Ergo ne homini quidem nocebimus quia peccavit sed ne peccet, nec unquam ad præteritum sed ad futurum pœna referetur.”—Ibid. ii. 31. In the philosophy of Plato, on the other hand, punishment was chiefly expiatory and purificatory. (Lerminier, Introd. à l'Histoire du Droit, p. 123.)

Seneca, De Constant. Sap. v. Compare and contrast this famous sentence of Anaxagoras with that of one of the early Christian hermits. Someone told the hermit that his father was dead. “Cease your blasphemy,” he answered, “my father is immortal.”—Socrates, Eccl. Hist. iv 23.

Epictetus, Ench. 16, 18.

The dispute about whether anything but virtue is a good, was, in reality, a somewhat childish quarrel about words; for the Stoics, who indignantly denounced the Peripatetics for maintaining the affirmative, admitted that health, friends, &c., should be sought not as “goods” but as “preferables.” See a long discussion on this matter in Cicero (De Finib. lib. iii. iv.). The Stoical doctrine of the equality of all vices was formally repudiated by Marcus Aurelius, who maintained (ii. 10), with Theophrastus, that faults of desire were worse than faults of anger. The other Stoics, while dogmatically asserting the equality of all virtues as well as the equality of all vices, in their particular judgments graduated their praise or blame much in the same way as the rest of the world.

See Seneca (Ep. lxxxix.). Seneca himself, however, has devoted a work to natural history, but the general tendency of the school was certainly to concentrate all attention upon morals, and all, or nearly all the great naturalists were Epicureans. Cicero puts into the mouth of the Epicurean the sentence, “Omnium autem rerum natura cognita levamur superstitione, liberamur mortis metu, non conturbamur ignoratione rerum” (De Fin. i.); and Virgil expressed an eminently Epicurean sentiment in his famous lines:—

“Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
Quique metus omnes et inexorabile fatum
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque
Acherontis avari.”

Georg. 490-492.

Plutarch, Cato Major.

Cicero, Ad Attic. vi. 2.

This contrast is noticed and largely illustrated by M. Montée in his interesting little work Le Stoïcisme à Rome, and also by Legendre in his Traité de l'Opinion, ou Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de l'esprit humain (Venise, 1735).

“Atque hoc quidem omnes mortales sic habent ... commoditatem prosperitatemque vitæ a diis se habere, virtutem autem nemo unquam acceptam deo retulit. Nimirum recte. Propter virtutem enim jure laudamur et in virtute recte gloriamur. Quod non contingeret si id donum a deo, non a nobis haberemus.”—Cicero, De Nat. Deor. iii. 36.

Ep. i. 18.

Seneca Ep. lxvi.

Lucretius, v. It was a Greek proverb, that Apollo begat Æsculapius to heal the body, and Plato to heal the soul. (Legendre, Traité de l'Opinion, tome i. p. 197.)

“Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano:
Fortem posce animum, mortis terrore carentem....
Monstro, quod ipse tibi possis dare.”

Juvenal, Sat. x. 356.

Marcus Aurelius recommends prayer, but only that we may be freed from evil desires. (ix. 11.)

Seneca, Ep. lxvi.

Ibid. Ep. liii.

De Const. Sap. viii.

Ench. xlviii.

Arrian, i. 12.

Arrian, ii. 8. The same doctrine is strongly stated in Seneca, Ep. xcii.

Cicero, De Nat. Deor. ii. 66.

Ep. lxxxiii. Somewhat similar sentiments are attributed to Thales and Bion (Diog. Laërt.).

Ep. xli. There are some beautiful sentiments of this kind in Plutarch's treatise, De Sera Numinis Vindicta. It was a saying of Pythagoras, that “we become better as we approach the gods.”

Marc. Aur. iii. 5.

Marcus Aurelius.

Seneca, Præf. Nat. Quæst. iii.

Marc. Aur. x. 25.

Epict. Ench. xvii.

Epict. Ench. xi.

Seneca, De Prov. i.

Ibid. iv.

Marc. Aurel. ii. 2, 3.

The language in which the Stoics sometimes spoke of the inexorable determination of all things by Providence would appear logically inconsistent with free will. In fact, however, the Stoics asserted the latter doctrine in unequivocal language, and in their practical ethics even exaggerated its power. Aulus Gellius (Noct. Att. vi. 2) has preserved a passage in which Chrysippus exerted his subtlety in reconciling the two things. See, too, Arrian, i. 17.

We have an extremely curious illustration of this mode of thought in a speech of Archytas of Tarentum on the evils of sensuality, which Cicero has preserved. He considers the greatest of these evils to be that the vice predisposes men to unpatriotic acts. “Nullam capitaliorem pestem quam corporis voluptatem, hominibus a natura datam.... Hinc patriæ proditiones, hinc rerumpublicarum eversiones, hinc cum hostibus clandestina colloquia nasci,” etc.—Cicero, De Senect. xii.

Diog. Laërt. Anax.

“Cari sunt parentes, cari liberi, propinqui, familiares; sed omnes omnium caritates patria una complexa est; pro qua quis bonus dubitet mortem oppetere si ei sit profuturus?”—De Offic. i. 17.

See Seneca, Consol. ad Helviam and De Otio Sapien.; and Plutarch, De Exilio. The first of these works is the basis of one of the most beautiful compositions in the English language, Bolingbroke's Reflections on Exile.

De Officiis.

Epist. i. 10.

“Tota enim philosophorum vita, ut ait idem, commentatio mortis est.”—Cicero, Tusc. i. 30, ad fin.

Essay on Death.

Spinoza, Ethics, iv. 67.

Camden. Montalembert notices a similar legend as existing in Brittany (Les Moines d'Occident, tome ii. p. 287). Procopius (De Bello Goth. iv. 20) says that it is impossible for men to live in the west of Britain, and that the district is believed to be inhabited by the souls of the dead.

In his De Sera Numinis Vindicta and his Consolatio ad Uxorem.

In the Phædo, passim. See, too, Marc. Aurelius, ii. 12.

See a very striking letter of Epicurus quoted by Diogenes Laërt. in his life of that philosopher. Except a few sentences, quoted by other writers, these letters were all that remained of the works of Epicurus, till the recent discovery of one of his treatises at Herculaneum.

Tusc. Quæst. i.

Consol. ad Polyb. xxvii.

Maury, Hist. des Religions de la Grèce antique, tom. i. pp. 582-588. M. Ravaisson, in his Memoir on Stoicism (Acad. des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, tom. xxi.) has enlarged on the terrorism of paganism, but has, I think, exaggerated it. Religions which selected games as the natural form of devotion can never have had any very alarming character.

Plutarch, Ad Apollonium.

Ibid.

Cic. Tusc. Quæst. i.

Philost. Apoll. of Tyan. v. 4. Hence their passion for suicide, which Silius Italicus commemorates in lines which I think very beautiful:—

“Prodiga gens animæ et properare facillima mortem;
Namque ubi transcendit florentes viribus annos
Impatiens ævi, spernit novisse senectam
Et fati modus in dextra est.”—i. 225-228.

Valerius Maximus (ii. vi. § 12) speaks of Celts who celebrated the birth of men with lamentation, and their deaths with joy.

Aulus Gellius, Noctes, i. 3.

Tacitus, Annales, xv. 62.

Sueton. Titus, 10.

Capitolinus, Antoninus.

See the beautiful account of his last hours given by Ammianus Marcellinus and reproduced by Gibbon. There are some remarks well worth reading about the death of Julian, and the state of thought that rendered such a death possible, in Dr. Newman's Discourses on University Education, lect. ix.

“Lex non pœna mors” was a favourite saying among the ancients. On the other hand, Tertullian very distinctly enunciated the patristic view, “Qui autem primordia hominis novimus, audenter determinamus mortem non ex natura secutam hominem sed ex culpa.”—De Anima, 52.

Plutarch, Ad Uxorem.

St. Augustine, Epist. 166.

“At hoc quidem commune est omnium philosophorum, non eorum modo qui deum nihil habere ipsum negotii dicunt, et nihil exhibere alteri; sed eorum etiam, qui deum semper agere aliquid et moliri volunt, numquam nec irasci deum nec nocere.”—Cic. De Offic. iii. 28.

See the refutation of the philosophic notion in Lactantius, De Ira Dei.

“Revelation,” as Lessing observes in his essay on this subject, “has made Death the ‘king of terrors,’ the awful offspring of sin and the dread way to its punishment; though to the imagination of the ancient heathen world, Greek or Etrurian, he was a youthful genius—the twin brother of Sleep, or a lusty boy with a torch held downwards.”—Coleridge's Biographia Litteraria, cap. xxii., note by Sara Coleridge.

“Vetat Pythagoras injussu imperatoris, id est Dei, de præsidio et statione vitæ decedere.”—Cic. De Senec. xx. If we believe the very untrustworthy evidence of Diog. Laërtius (Pythagoras) the philosopher himself committed suicide by starvation.

See his Laws, lib. ix. In his Phædon, however, Plato went further, and condemned all suicide. Libanius says (De Vita Sua) that the arguments of the Phædon prevented him from committing suicide after the death of Julian. On the other hand, Cicero mentions a certain Cleombrotus, who was so fascinated by the proof of the immortality of the soul in the Phædon that he forthwith cast himself into the sea. Cato, as is well known, chose this work to study, the night he committed suicide.

Arist. Ethic. v.

See a list of these in Lactantius' Inst. Div. iii. 18. Many of these instances rest on very doubtful evidence.

Adam Smith's Moral Sentiments, part vii. § 2.

“Proxima deinde tenent mœsti loca qui sibi lethum
Insontes peperere manu, lucemque perosi
Projecere animas. Quam vellent æthere in alto
Nunc et pauperiem et duros perferre labores.”
—Æneid, vi. 434-437.

Cicero has censured suicide in his De Senectute, in the Somn. Scipionis, and in the Tusculans. Concerning the death of Cato, he says, that the occasion was such as to constitute a divine call to leave life.—Tusc. i.

Apuleius, De Philos. Plat. lib. i.

Thus Ovid:—

“Rebus in adversis facile est contemnere vitam,
Fortiter ille facit qui miser esse potest.”

See, too, Martial, xi. 56.

Especially Ep. xxiv. Seneca desires that men should not commit suicide with panic or trepidation. He says that those condemned to death should await their execution, for “it is a folly to die through fear of death;” and he recommends men to support old age as long as their faculties remain unimpaired. On this last point, however, his language is somewhat contradictory. There is a good review of the opinions of the ancients in general, and of Seneca in particular, on this subject in Justus Lipsius' Manuductio ad Stoicam Philosophiam, lib. iii. dissert. 22, 23, from which I have borrowed much.

In his Meditations, ix. 3, he speaks of the duty of patiently awaiting death. But in iii. 1, x. 8, 22-32, he clearly recognises the right of suicide in some cases, especially to prevent moral degeneracy. It must be remembered that the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius were private notes for his personal guidance, that all the Stoics admitted it to be wrong to commit suicide in cases where the act would be an injury to society, and that this consideration in itself would be sufficient to divert an emperor from the deed. Antoninus, the uncle, predecessor, and model of M. Aurelius, had considered it his duty several times to prevent Hadrian from committing suicide (Spartianus, Hadrianus). According to Capitolinus, Marcus Aurelius in his last illness purposely accelerated his death by abstinence. The duty of not hastily, or through cowardice, abandoning a path of duty, and the right of man to quit life when it appears intolerable, are combined very clearly by Epictetus, Arrian, i. 9; and the latter is asserted in the strongest manner, i. 24-25.

Porphyry, De Abst. Carnis, ii. 47; Plotinus, 1st Enn. ix. Porphyry says (Life of Plotinus) that Plotinus dissuaded him from suicide. There is a good epitome of the arguments of this school against suicide in Macrobius, In Som. Scip. 1.

Quoted by Seneca, Ep. xxvi. Cicero states the Epicurean doctrine to be, “Ut si tolerabiles sint dolores, feramus, sin minus æquo animo e vita, cum ea non placet, tanquam e theatro, exeamus” (De Finib. i. 15); and again, “De Diis immortalibus sine ullo metu vera sentit. Non dubitat, si ita melius sit, de vita migrare.”—Id. i. 19.

This is noticed by St. Jerome.

Corn. Nepos, Atticus. He killed himself when an old man, to shorten a hopeless disease.

Petronius, who was called the arbitrator of tastes (“elegantiæ arbiter”), was one of the most famous voluptuaries of the reign of Nero. Unlike most of his contemporaries, however, he was endowed with the most exquisite and refined taste; his graceful manners fascinated all about him, and made him in matters of pleasure the ruler of the Court. Appointed Proconsul of Bithynia, and afterwards Consul, he displayed the energies and the abilities of a statesman. A Court intrigue threw him out of favour; and believing that his death was resolved on, he determined to anticipate it by suicide. Calling his friends about him, he opened his veins, shut them, and opened them again; prolonged his lingering death till he had arranged his affairs; discoursed in his last moments, not about the immortality of the soul or the dogmas of philosophers, but about the gay songs and epigrams of the hour; and partaking of a cheerful banquet, died as recklessly as he had lived. (Tacit. Annal. xvi. 18-19.) It has been a matter of much dispute whether or not this Petronius was the author of the Satyricon, one of the most licentious and repulsive works in Latin literature.

Seneca, De Vita Beata, xix.

“Imperfectæ vero in homine naturæ præcipua solatia, ne Deum quidem posse omnia; namque nec sibi potest mortem consciscere si velit, quod homini dedit optimum in tantis vitæ pœnis.”—Hist. Nat. ii. 5.

Hist. Nat. ii. 63. We need not be surprised at this writer thus speaking of sudden death, “Mortes repentinæ (hoc est summa vitæ felicitas),” vii. 54.

Tusc. Quæst. lib. 1. Another remarkable example of an epidemic of suicide occurred among the young girls of Miletus. (Aul. Gell. xv. 10.)

Sir Cornewall Lewis, On the Credibility of Early Roman History, vol. ii. p. 430. See, too, on this class of suicides, Cromaziano, Istorica Critica del Suicidio (Venezia, 1788), pp. 81-82. The real name of the author of this book (which is, I think, the best history of suicide) was Buonafede. He was a Celestine monk. The book was first published at Lucca in 1761. It was translated into French in 1841.

Senec. De Provid. ii.; Ep. xxiv.

See some examples of this in Seneca, Ep. lxx.

See a long catalogue of suicides arising from this cause, in Cromaziano, Ist. del Suicidio, pp. 112-114.

Consol. ad Marc. c. xx.

De Ira, iii. 15.

Ep. lxx.

See Donne's Biathanatos (London, 1700), pp. 56-57. Gibbon's Decline and Fall, ch. xliv. Blackstone, in his chapter on suicide, quotes the sentence of the Roman lawyers on the subject: “Si quis impatientia doloris aut tædio vitæ aut morbo aut furore aut pudore mori maluit non animadvertatur in eum.” Ulpian expressly asserts that the wills of suicides were recognised by law, and numerous examples of the act, notoriously prepared and publicly and gradually accomplished, prove its legality in Rome. Suetonius, it is true, speaks of Claudius accusing a man for having tried to kill himself (Claud, xvi.), and Xiphilin says (lxix. 8) that Hadrian gave special permission to the philosopher Euphrates to commit suicide, “on account of old age and disease;” but in the first case it appears from the context that a reproach and not a legal action was meant, while Euphrates, I suppose, asked permission to show his loyalty to the emperor, and not as a matter of strict necessity. There were, however, some Greek laws condemning suicide, probably on civic grounds. Josephus mentions (De Bell. Jud. iii. 8) that in some nations “the right hand of the suicide was amputated, and that in Judea the suicide was only buried after sunset.” A very strange law, said to have been derived from Greece, is reported to have existed at Marseilles. Poison was kept by the senate of the city, and given to those who could prove that they had sufficient reason to justify their desire for death, and all other suicide was forbidden. The law was intended, it was said, to prevent hasty suicide, and to make deliberate suicide as rapid and painless as possible. (Valer. Maximus, ii. 6, § 7.) In the Reign of Terror in France, a law was made similar to that of Domitian. (Carlyle's Hist. of the French Revolution, book v. c. ii.)

Compare with this a curious “order of the day,” issued by Napoleon in 1802, with the view of checking the prevalence of suicide among his soldiers. (Lisle, Du Suicide, pp. 462-463.)

See Suetonius, Otho. c. x.-xi., and the very fine description in Tacitus, Hist. lib. ii. c. 47-49. Martial compares the death of Otho to that of Cato:

“Sit Cato, dum vivit, sane vel Cæsare major;
Dum moritur, numquid major Othone fuit?”
—Ep. vi. 32.

Xiphilin, lxviii. 12.

Tacit. Hist. ii. 49. Suet. Otho, 12. Suetonius says that, in addition to these, many soldiers who were not present killed themselves on hearing the news.

Ibid. Annal. xiv. 9.

Plin. Hist. Nat. vii. 54. The opposite faction attributed this suicide to the maddening effects of the perfumes burnt on the pile.

Tacit. Annal. vi. 26.

Plin. Ep. i. 12.

This history is satirically and unfeelingly told by Lucian. See, too, Ammianus Marcellinus, xxix. 1.

Sophocles.

Arrian, i. 24.

Seneca, Ep. lviii.

Stobæus. One of the most deliberate suicides recorded was that of a Greek woman of ninety years old.—Val. Maxim. ii. 6, § 8.

Plin. Ep. iii. 7. He starved himself to death.

Ep. i. 22. Some of Pliny's expressions are remarkable:—“Id ego arduum in primis et præcipua laude dignum puto. Nam impetu quodam et instinctu procurrere ad mortem, commune cum multis: deliberare vero et causas ejus expendere, utque suaserit ratio, vitæ mortisque consilium suscipere vel ponere, ingentis est animi.” In this case the doctors pronounced that recovery was possible, and the suicide was in consequence averted.

Lib. vi. Ep. xxiv.

Ep. lxxvii. On the former career of Marcellinus, see Ep. xxix.

See the very beautiful lines of Statius:—

“Urbe fuit media nulli concessa potentum
Ara Deum, mitis posuit Clementia sedem:
Et miseri fecere sacram, sine supplice numquam
Illa novo; nulla damnavit vota repulsa.
Auditi quicunque rogant, noctesque diesque
Ire datum, et solis numen placare querelis.
Parca superstitio; non thurea flamma, nec altus
Accipitur sanguis, lachrymis altaria sudant ...
Nulla autem effigies, nulli commissa metallo
Forma Deæ, mentes habitare et pectora gaudet.
Semper habet trepidos, semper locus horret egenis
Cœtibus, ignotæ tantum felicibus aræ.”—Thebaid, xii. 481-496.

This altar was very old, and was said to have been founded by the descendants of Hercules. Diodorus of Sicily, however, makes a Syracusan say that it was brought from Syracuse (lib. xiii. 22). Marcus Aurelius erected a temple to “Beneficentia” on the Capitol. (Xiphilin, lib. lxxi. 34.)

Herodotus, vi. 21.

See Arrian's Epictetus, i. 9. The very existence of the word φιλανθρωπία shows that the idea was not altogether unknown.

Diog. Laërt. Pyrrho. There was a tradition that Pythagoras had himself penetrated to India, and learnt philosophy from the gymnosophists. (Apuleius, Florid. lib. ii. c. 15.)

This aspect of the career of Alexander was noticed in a remarkable passage of a treatise ascribed to Plutarch (De Fort. Alex.). “Conceiving he was sent by God to be an umpire between all, and to unite all together, he reduced by arms those whom he could not conquer by persuasion, and formed of a hundred diverse nations one single universal body, mingling, as it were, in one cup of friendship the customs, marriages, and laws of all. He desired that all should regard the whole world as their common country, ... that every good man should be esteemed a Hellene, every evil man a barbarian.” See on this subject the third lecture of Mr. Merivale (whose translation of Plutarch I have borrowed) On the Conversion of the Roman Empire.

They were both born about b.c. 250. See Sir C. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History, vol. i. p. 82.

Aulus Gellius mentions the indignation of Marcus Cato against a consul named Albinus, who had written in Greek a Roman history, and prefaced it by an apology for his faults of style, on the ground that he was writing in a foreign language. (Noct. Att. xi. 8.)

See a vivid picture of the Greek influence upon Rome, in Mommsen's Hist. of Rome (Eng. trans.), vol. iii. pp. 423-426.

Plin. Hist. Nat. vii. 31.

See Friedlænder, Mœurs romaines du règne d'Auguste à la fin des Antonins (French trans., 1865), tome i. pp. 6-7.

See the curious catalogue of Greek love terms in vogue (Lucretius, lib. iv. line 1160, &c.). Juvenal, more than a hundred years later, was extremely angry with the Roman ladies for making love in Greek (Sat. vi. lines 190-195). Friedlænder remarks that there is no special term in Latin for to ask in marriage (tome i. p. 354).

Aul. Gell. Noct. xv. 4; Vell. Paterculus, ii. 65. The people were much scandalised at this elevation, and made epigrams about it. There is a curious catalogue of men who at different times rose in Rome from low positions to power and dignity, in Legendre, Traité de l'Opinion, tome ii. pp. 254-255.

Dion Cassius, xlviii. 32. Plin. Hist. Nat. v. 5; vii. 44.

The history of the influence of freedmen is minutely traced by Friedlænder, Mœurs romaines du règne d'Auguste à la fin des Antonins, tome i. pp. 58-93. Statius and Martial sang their praises.

See Tacit. Ann. vi. 23-25.

On the Roman journeys, see the almost exhaustive dissertation of Friedlænder, tome ii.

Joseph. (Antiq. xvii. 11, § 1) says above 8,000 Jews resident in Rome took part in a petition to Cæsar. If these were all adult males, the total number of Jewish residents must have been extremely large.

See the famous fragment of Seneca cited by St. Augustin (De Civ. Dei, vi. 11): “Usque eo sceleratissimæ gentis consuetudo convaluit, ut per omnes jam terras recepta sit: victi victoribus leges dederunt.” There are numerous scattered allusions to the Jews in Horace, Juvenal, and Martial.

The Carthaginian influence was specially conspicuous in early Christian history. Tertullian and Cyprian (both Africans) are justly regarded as the founders of Latin theology. (See Milman's Latin Christianity (ed. 1867), vol. i. pp. 35-36.)

Milo had emancipated some slaves to prevent them from being tortured as witnesses. (Cic. Pro Milo.) This was made illegal. The other reasons for enfranchisement are given by Dion. Halicarn. Antiq. lib. iv.

This subject is fully treated by Wallon, Hist. de l'Esclavage dans l'Antiquité.

Senec. De Clemen. i. 24.

See, on the prominence and the insolence of the freedmen, Tacit. Annal. iii. 26-27.

Montesquieu, Décadence des Romains, ch. xiii.

See the very curious speech attributed to Camillus (Livy, v. 52).

“Caritas generis humani.”—De Finib. So, too, he speaks (De Leg. i. 23) of every good man as “civis totius mundi.”

He speaks of Rome as “civitas ex nationum conventu constituta.”

De Legib. i. 7.

De Offic.

Ibid. iii. 6.

De Offic. iii. 6.

De Legib. i. 15.

“Tunc genus humanum positis sibi consulat armis,
Inque vicem gens omnis amet.”
—Pharsalia, vi.

Ep. xcv.

Ep. xxxi.

De Vita Beata, xx.

Arrian, ii. 10.

vi. 44.

“Hæc duri immota Catonis
Secta fuit, servare modum, finemque tenere,
Naturamque sequi, patriæque impendere vitam,
Nec sibi sed toti genitum se credere mundo.”

Lucan, Phars. ii. 380-383.

There is a passage on this subject in one of the letters of Pliny, which I think extremely remarkable, and to which I can recall no pagan parallel:—“Nuper me cujusdam amici languor admonuit, optimos esse nos dum infirmi sumus. Quem enim infirmum aut avaritia aut libido solicitat? Non amoribus servit, non appetit honores ... tunc deos, tunc hominem esse se meminit.”—Plin. Ep. vii. 26.

Ep. viii. 16. He says: “Hominis est enim affici dolore, sentire, resistere tamen, et solatia admittere, non solatiis non egere.”

This characteristic of Stoicism is well noticed in Grant's Aristotle, vol. i. p. 254. The first volume of this work contains an extremely good review of the principles of the Stoics.

Cie. De Finib. lib. iv.

Arrian, Epict. ii. 14.

Ibid. i. 9.

Ibid. i. 14.

Ibid. i. 16.

Arrian, ii. 8.

Plutarch, De Profect. in Virt. This precept was enforced by Bishop Sanderson in one of his sermons. (Southey's Commonplace Book, vol. i. p. 92.)

Diog. Laërt. Pythagoras.

Thus Cicero makes Cato say: “Pythagoreorumque more, exercendæ memoriæ gratia, quid quoque die dixerim, audiverim, egerim, commemoro vesperi.”—De Senect. xi.

Ibid.

Sermon, i. 4.

He even gave up, for a time, eating meat, in obedience to the Pythagorean principles. (Ep. cviii.) Seneca had two masters of this school, Sextius and Sotion. He was at this time not more than seventeen years old. (See Aubertin, Étude critique sur les Rapports supposés entre Sénèque et St. Paul, p. 156.)

See his very beautiful description of the self-examination of Sextius and of himself. (De Ira, iii. 36.)

Arrian, ii. 18. Compare the Manual of Epictetus, xxxiv.

“Quod de Romulo ægre creditum est, omnes pari consensu præsumserunt, Marcum cœlo receptum esse.”—Aur. Vict. Epit. xvi. “Deusque etiam nunc habetur.”—Capitolinus.

The first book of his Meditations was written on the borders of the Granua, in Hungary.

i. 14.

See his touching letter to Fronto, who was about to engage in a debate with Herod Atticus.

i. 6-15. The eulogy he passed on his Stoic master Apollonius is worthy of notice. Apollonius furnished him with an example of the combination of extreme firmness and gentleness.

E.g. “Beware of Cæsarising.” (vi. 30.) “Be neither a tragedian nor a courtesan.” (v. 28.) “Be just and temperate and a follower of the gods; but be so with simplicity, for the pride of modesty is the worst of all.” (xii. 27.)

iii. 4.

i. 17.

v. 1.

ix. 29.

viii. 59.

xi. 18.

ix. 11.

viii. 15.

vii. 70.

vii. 63.

vii. 22.

Mr. Maurice, in this respect, compares and contrasts him very happily with Plutarch. “Like Plutarch, the Greek and Roman characters were in Marcus Aurelius remarkably blended; but, unlike Plutarch, the foundation of his mind was Roman. He was a student that he might more effectually carry on the business of an emperor.”—Philosophy of the First Six Centuries, p. 32.

vi. 47.

Capitolinus, Aurelius Victor.

M. Suckau, in his admirable Étude sur Marc-Aurèle, and M. Renan, in a very acute and learned Examen de quelques faits relatifs à l'impératrice Faustine (read before the Institut, August 14, 1867), have shown the extreme uncertainty of the stories about the debaucheries of Faustina, which the biographers of Marcus Aurelius have collected. It will be observed that the emperor himself has left an emphatic testimony to her virtue, and to the happiness he derived from her (i. 17); that the earliest extant biographer of Marcus Aurelius was a generation later; and that the infamous character of Commodus naturally predisposed men to imagine that he was not the son of so perfect an emperor.

“Quid me fletis, et non magis de pestilentia et communi morte cogitatis?” Capitolinus, M. Aurelius.

Ibid.

Many examples of this are given by Coulanges, La Cité antique, pp. 177-178.

All this is related by Suetonius, August.

Tacit. Annal. iv. 36.

See, e.g., the sentiments of the people about Julius Cæsar, Sueton. J. C. lxxxviii.

Sueton. Vesp. xxiii.

“Qualis artifex pereo” were his dying words.

See Sueton. Calig. 1.

Sueton. Calig. xxii. A statue of Jupiter is said to have burst out laughing just before the death of this emperor.

Seneca, De Ira, i. 46; Sueton. Calig. xxii.

Lampridius, Heliogab.

Senec. De Clemen. i. 18.

Tacit. Annal. iii. 36.

Senec. De Benefic. iii. 26.

Tacit. Annal. i. 73. Tiberius refused to allow this case to be proceeded with. See, too, Philost. Apollonius of Tyana, i. 15.

Suet. Tiber. lviii.

“Mulier quædam, quod semel exuerat ante statuam Domitiani, damnata et interfecta est.”—Xiphilin, lxvii. 12.

“Eos demum, qui nihil præterquam de libertate cogitent, dignos esse, qui Romani fiant.”—Livy, viii. 21.

Valerius Maximus, iv. 3, § 14.

See the picture of this scene in Tacitus, Hist. iii. 83.

Dion. Halicarnass.

“Divina Natura dedit agros; ars humana ædificavit urbes.”

See a collection of passages from these writers in Wallon, Hist. de l'Esclavage, tome ii. pp. 378-379. Pliny, in the first century, noticed (Hist. Nat. xviii. 7) that the latifundia, or system of large properties, was ruining both Italy and the provinces, and that six landlords whom Nero killed were the possessors of half Roman Africa.

Tacit. Annal. xii. 43. The same complaint had been made still earlier by Tiberius, in a letter to the Senate. (Annal. iii. 54.)

Augustus, for a time, contemplated abolishing the distributions, but soon gave up the idea. (Suet. Aug. xlii.) He noticed that it had the effect of causing the fields to be neglected.

M. Wallon has carefully traced this history. (Hist. de l'Esclav. tome iii. pp. 294-297.)

Livy, iv. 59-60. Florus, i. 12.

Livy, xxiv. 49.

Sallust, Bell. Jugurth. 84-86.

Livy, xxxix. 6.

“Primus Cæsarum fidem militis etiam præmio pigneratus.”—Suet. Claud. x.

See Tacitus, Annal. xiii. 35; Hist. ii. 69.

M. Sismondi thinks that the influence of Christianity in subduing the spirit of revolt, if not in the army, at least in the people, was very great. He says: “Il est remarquable qu'en cinq ans, sept prétendans au trône, tous bien supérieurs à Honorius en courage, en talens et en vertus, furent successivement envoyés captifs à Ravenne ou punis de mort, que le peuple applaudit toujours à ces jugemens et ne se sépara point de l'autorité légitime, tant la doctrine du droit divin des rois que les évêques avoient commencé à prêcher sous Théodose avoit fait de progrès, et tant le monde romain sembloit determiné à périr avec un monarque imbécile plutôt que tenté de se donner un sauveur.”—Hist. de la Chute de l'Empire romain, tome i. p. 221.

See Gibbon, ch. v.; Merivale's Hist. of Rome, ch. lxvii. It was thought that troops thus selected would be less likely to revolt. Constantine abolished the Prætorians.

The gladiatorial shows are treated incidentally by most Roman historians, but the three works from which I have derived most assistance in this part of my subject are the Saturnalia of Justus Lipsius, Magnin, Origines du Théâtre (an extremely learned and interesting book, which was unhappily never completed), and Friedlænder's Roman Manners from Augustus to the Antonines (the second volume of the French translation). M. Wallon has also compressed into a few pages (Hist. de l'Esclavage, tome ii. pp. 129-139) much information on the subject.

Hence the old name of bustuarii (from bustum, a funeral pile) given to gladiators (Nieupoort, De Ritibus Romanorum, p. 514). According to Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxx. 3), “regular human sacrifices were only abolished in Rome by a decree of the senate, b.c. 97,” and there are some instances of them at a still later period. Much information about them is collected by Sir C. Lewis, Credibility of Roman History, vol. ii. p. 430; Merivale, Conversion of the Roman Empire, pp. 230-233; Legendre, Traité de l'Opinion, vol. i. pp. 229-231. Porphyry, in his De Abstinentia Carnis, devoted considerable research to this matter. Games were habitually celebrated by wealthy private individuals, during the early part of the empire, at the funerals of their relatives, but their mortuary character gradually ceased, and after Marcus Aurelius they had become mere public spectacles, and were rarely celebrated at Rome by private men. (See Wallon, Hist. de l'Esclav. tome ii. pp. 135-136.) The games had then really passed into their purely secular stage, though they were still nominally dedicated to Mars and Diana, and though an altar of Jupiter Latiaris stood in the centre of the arena. (Nieupoort, p. 365.)

Cicero, Tusc. lib. ii.

Capitolinus, Maximus et Balbinus. Capitolinus says this is the most probable origin of the custom, though others regarded it as a sacrifice to appease Nemesis by an offering of blood.

Much curious information on this subject may be found in Friedlænder, Mœurs romaines, liv. vi. ch. i. Very few Roman emperors ventured to disregard or to repress these outcries, and they led to the fall of several of the most powerful ministers of the empire. On the whole these games represent the strangest and most ghastly form political liberty has ever assumed. On the other hand, the people readily bartered all genuine freedom for abundant games.

Valer. Maximus, ii. 4, § 7.

On the gladiators at banquets, see J. Lipsius, Saturnalia, lib. i. c. vi., Magnin; Origines du Théâtre, pp. 380-385. This was originally an Etruscan custom, and it was also very common at Capua. As Silius Italicus says:—

“Exhilarare viris convivia cæde Mos olim, et miscere epulis spectacula dira.”

Verus, the colleague of Marcus Aurelius, was especially addicted to this kind of entertainment. (Capitolinus, Verus.) See, too, Athenæus iv. 40, 41.

Senec. De Brevit. Vit. c. xiii.

Sueton. J. Cæsar, xxvi. Pliny (Ep. vi. 34) commends a friend for having given a show in memory of his departed wife.

Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxxiii. 16.

Sueton. Cæsar, x.; Dion Cassius, xliii. 24.

Sueton. Aug. xxix. The history of the amphitheatres is given very minutely by Friedlænder, who, like nearly all other antiquaries, believes this to have been the first of stone. Pliny mentions the existence, at an earlier period, of two connected wooden theatres, which swung round on hinges and formed an amphitheatre. (Hist. Nat. xxxvi. 24.)

Dion Cassius, liv. 2. It appears, however, from an inscription, that 10,000 gladiators fought in the reign and by the command of Augustus. Wallon, Hist. de l'Esclavage, tome ii. p. 133.

Sueton. Tiber. xxxiv. Nero made another slight restriction (Tacit. Annal. xiii. 31), which appears to have been little observed.

Martial notices (Ep. iii. 59) and ridicules a spectacle given by a shoemaker at Bologna, and by a fuller at Modena.

Epictetus, Enchir. xxxiii. § 2.

Arrian, iii. 15.

See these points minutely proved in Friedlænder.

Suet. Aug. xliv. This was noticed before by Cicero. The Christian poet Prudentius dwelt on this aspect of the games in some forcible lines:—

“Virgo modesta jubet converso pollice rumpi
Ne lateat pars ulla animæ vitalibus imis
Altius impresso dum palpitat ense secutor.”

Sueton. Tiberius, xl. Tacitus, who gives a graphic description of the disaster (Annal. iv. 62-63), says 50,000 persons were killed or wounded.

Tacit. Annal. xiii. 49.

Joseph. Bell. Jud. vi. 9.

See the very curious picture which Livy has given (xli. 20) of the growth of the fascination.

Joseph. Antiq. Jud. xix. 7.

Lucian, Demonax.

Philost. Apoll. iv. 22.

Friedlænder, tome ii. pp. 95-96. There are, however, several extant Greek inscriptions relating to gladiators, and proving the existence of the shows in Greece. Pompeii, which was a Greek colony, had a vast amphitheatre, which we may still admire; and, under Nero, games were prohibited at Pompeii for ten years, in consequence of a riot that broke out during a gladiatorial show. (Tacit. Annal. xiv. 17.) After the defeat of Perseus, Paulus Emilius celebrated a show in Macedonia. (Livy, xli. 20.)

These are fully discussed by Magnin and Friedlænder. There is a very beautiful description of a ballet, representing the “Judgment of Paris,” in Apuleius, Metamorph. x.

Pacuvius and Accius were the founders of Roman tragedy. The abridger, Velleius Paterculus, who is the only Roman historian who pays any attention to literary history, boasts that the latter might rank honourably with the best Greek tragedians. He adds, “ut in illis [the Greeks] limæ, in hoc pœne plus videatur fuisse sanguinis.”—Hist. Rom. ii. 9.

Thus, e.g., Hobbes: “Alienæ calamitatis contemptus nominatur crudelitas, proceditque a propriæ securitatis opinione. Nam ut aliquis sibi placeat in malis alienis sine alio fine, videtur mihi impossibile.”—Leviathan, pars i. c. vi.

Sueton. Claudius, xxxiv.

“Et verso pollice vulgi
Quemlibet occidunt populariter.”—Juvenal, Sat. iii. 36-37.

Besides the many incidental notices scattered through the Roman historians, and through the writings of Seneca, Plutarch, Juvenal, and Pliny, we have a curious little book, De Spectaculis, by Martial—a book which is not more horrible from the atrocities it recounts than from the perfect absence of all feeling of repulsion or compassion it everywhere displays.

These are but a few of the many examples given by Magnin, who has collected a vast array of authorities on the subject. (Origines du Théâtre, pp. 445-453.) M. Mongez has devoted an interesting memoir to “Les animaux promenés ou tués dans le cirque.” (Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscrip. et Belles-lettres, tome x.) See, too, Friedlænder. Pliny rarely gives an account of any wild animal without accompanying it by statistics about its appearances in the arena. The first instance of a wild beast hunt in the amphitheatre is said to be that recorded by Livy (xxxix. 22), which took place about 80 b.c.

Capitolinus, Gordiani.

Vopiscus, Aurelian.

Xiphilin, lxviii. 15.

Tacit. Annal. xv. 44.

Xiphilin, lxvii. 8; Statius, Sylv. i. 6.

During the Republic, a rich man ordered in his will that some women he had purchased for the purpose should fight in the funeral games to his memory, but the people annulled the clause. (Athenæeus, iv. 39.) Under Nero and Domitian, female gladiators seem to have been not uncommon. See Statius, Sylv. i. 6; Sueton. Domitian, iv.; Xiphilin, lxvii. 8. Juvenal describes the enthusiasm with which Roman ladies practised with the gladiatorial weapons (Sat. vi. 248, &c.), and Martial (De Spectac. vi.) mentions the combats of women with wild beasts. One, he says, killed a lion. A combat of female gladiators, under Severus, created some tumult, and it was decreed that they should no longer be permitted. (Xiphilin, lxxv. 16.) See Magnin, pp. 434-435.

Martial, De Spectac. vii.

Ibid. Ep. viii. 30.

Tertullian, Ad Nation. i. 10. One of the most ghastly features of the games was the comic aspect they sometimes assumed. This was the case in the combats of dwarfs. There were also combats by blind-folded men. Petronius (Satyricon, c. xlv.) has given us a horrible description of the maimed and feeble men who were sometimes compelled to fight. People afflicted with epilepsy were accustomed to drink the blood of the wounded gladiators, which they believed to be a sovereign remedy. (Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxviii. 2; Tertul. Apol. ix.)

“Nec unquam sine humano cruore cœnabat”—Lactan. De Mort. Persec. Much the same thing is told of the Christian emperor Justinian II., who lived at the end of the seventh century. (Sismondi, Hist. de la Chute de l'Empire Romain, tome ii. p. 85.)

Winckelmann says the statue called “The Dying Gladiator” does not represent a gladiator. At a later period, however, statues of gladiators were not uncommon, and Pliny notices (Hist. Nat. xxxv. 33) paintings of them. A fine specimen of mosaic portraits of gladiators is now in the Lateran Museum.

Plutarch's Life of Cæsar.

Dion Cassius, li. 7.

Faustina, the wife of Marcus Aurelius, was especially accused of this weakness. (Capitolinus, Marcus Aurelius.)

Seneca, De Provident. iv.

Arrian's Epictetus, i. 29.

Seneca, De Provident. iii.

Aulus Gellius, xii. 5.

Cicero, Tusc. lib. ii.

Some Equites fought under Julius Cæsar, and a senator named Fulvius Setinus wished to fight, but Cæsar prevented him. (Suet. Cæsar, xxxix.; Dion Cassius, xliii. 23.) Nero, according to Suetonius, compelled men of the highest rank to fight. Laws prohibiting patricians from fighting were several times made and violated. (Friedlænder, pp. 39-41.) Commodus is said to have been himself passionately fond of fighting as a gladiator. Much, however, of what Lampridius relates on this point is perfectly incredible. On the other hand, the profession of the gladiator was constantly spoken of as infamous; but this oscillation between extreme admiration and contempt will surprise no one who has noticed the tone continually adopted about prize-fighters in England, and about the members of some other professions on the Continent. Juvenal dwells (Sat. viii. 197-210) with great indignation on an instance of a patrician fighting.

“Quis mediocris gladiator ingemuit, quis vultum mutavit unquam?”—Cic. Tusc. Quæst. lib. ii.

E.g. Clem. Alex. Strom. iii. There is a well-known passage of this kind in Horace, Ars Poet. 412-415. The comparison of the good man to an athlete or gladiator, which St. Paul employed, occurs also in Seneca and Epictetus, from which some have inferred that they must have known the writings of the Apostle. M. Denis, however, has shown (Idées morales dans l'Antiquité, tome ii. p. 240) that the same comparison had been used, before the rise of Christianity, by Plato, Æschines, and Cicero.

Confess. vi. 8.

“[Servi] etsi per fortunam in omnia obnoxii, tamen quasi secundum hominum genus sunt.”—Florus, Hist. iii. 20.

Macrinus, however, punished fugitive slaves by compelling them to fight as gladiators. (Capitolinus, Macrinus.)

Tacit. Annal. xii. 56. According to Friedlænder, however, there were two classes of criminals. One class were condemned only to fight, and pardoned if they conquered; the others were condemned to fight till death, and this was considered an aggravation of capital punishment.

“Ad conciliandum plebis favorem effusa largitio, quum spectaculis indulget, supplicia quondam hostium artem facit.”—Florus, iii. 12.

Tusc. Quæst. ii. 17.

See his magnificent letter on the subject. (Ep. vii.)

In his two treatises De Esu Carnium.

Pliny. Ep. iv. 22.

Xiphilin, lxxi. 29. Capitolinus, M. Aurelius. The emperor also once carried off the gladiators to a war with his army, much to the indignation of the people. (Capit.) He has himself noticed the extreme weariness he felt at the public amusements he was obliged to attend. (vii. 3.)

Sueton. Titus, viii.

“Visum est spectaculum inde non enerve nec fluxum, nec quod animos virorum molliret et frangeret, sed quod ad pulchra vulnera contemptumque mortis accenderet.”—Pliny, Paneg. xxxiii.

“Præterea tanto consensu rogabaris, ut negare non constans sed durum videretur.”—Plin. Epist. vi. 34.

Symmach. Epist. ii. 46.

Sueton. Domitian, iii. It is very curious that the same emperor, about the same time (the beginning of his reign), had such a horror of bloodshed that he resolved to prohibit the sacrifice of oxen. (Suet. Dom. ix.)

“Pendant qu'il restait au logis, il n'était incommode à personne; il y passait la meilleure partie de son temps tranquillement dans sa chambre.... Il se divertissait aussi quelquefois à fumer une pipe de tabac; ou bien lorsqu'il voulait se relâcher l'esprit un peu plus longtemps, il cherchait des araignées qu'il faisait battre ensemble, ou des mouches qu'il jetait dans la toile d'araignée, et regardait ensuite cette bataille avec tant de plaisir qu'il éclatait quelquefois de rire.”—Colerus, Vie de Spinoza.

This is noticed by George Duval in a curious passage of his Souvenirs de la Terreur, quoted by Lord Lytton in a note to his Zanoni.

Essay on Goodness.

This contrast has been noticed by Archbishop Whately in a lecture on Egypt. See, too, Legendre, Traité de l'Opinion, tome ii. p. 374.

Tacit. Annal. xiv. 45.

Senec. De Clemen. i. 14.

Val. Max. ii. 9. This writer speaks of “the eyes of a mistress delighting in human blood” with as much horror as if the gladiatorial games were unknown. Livy gives a rather different version of this story.

Tacit. Annal. i. 76.

Sueton. Calig. xi.

Spartian. Caracalla. Tertullian mentions that his nurse was a Christian.

Capitolinus, Marcus Aurelius. Capitolinus, who wrote under Diocletian, says that in his time the custom of spreading a net under the rope-dancer still continued. I do not know when it ceased at Rome, but St. Chrysostom mentions that in his time it had been abolished in the East.—Jortin's Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, ii. 71 (ed. 1846).

Tacit. Ann. iii. 55.

Champagny, Les Antonins, tome ii. pp. 179-200.

πολιτεύεσθαι.—Diog. Laërt. Zeno.

Thus Tigellinus spoke of “Stoicorum arrogantia sectaque quæ turbidos et negotiorum appetentes faciat.”—Tacit. Ann. xiv. 57. The accusation does not appear to have been quite untrue, for Vespasian, who was a very moderate emperor, thought it necessary to banish nearly all the philosophers from Rome on account of their factiousness. Sometimes the Stoics showed their independence by a rather gratuitous insolence. Dion Cassius relates that, when Nero was thinking of writing a poem in 400 books, he asked the advice of the Stoic Cornutus, who said, that no one would read so long a work. “But,” answered Nero, “your favourite Chrysippus wrote still more numerous books.” “True,” rejoined Cornutus, “but then they were of use to humanity.” On the other hand, Seneca is justly accused of condescending too much to the vices of Nero in his efforts to mitigate their effects.

The influence of Stoicism on Roman law has been often examined. See, especially, Degerando, Hist. de la Philosophie (2nd ed.), tome iii. pp. 202-204; Laferrière, De l'Influence du Stoïcisme sur les Jurisconsultes romains; Denis, Théories et Idées morales dans l'Antiquité, tome ii. pp. 187-217; Troplong, Influence du Christianisme sur le Droit civil des Romains; Merivale, Conversion of the Roman Empire, lec. iv.; and the great work of Gravina, De Ortu et Progressu Juris civilis.

Cic. De Legib. ii. 4, 23.

There were two rival schools, that of Labeo and that of Capito. The first was remarkable for its strict adherence to the letter of the law—the second for the latitude of interpretation it admitted.

Dig. lib. i. tit. 17-32.

Ibid. i. tit. 1-3.

Ibid. i. tit. 1-4.

Dig. lib. i. tit. 4-5.

Laferrière, p. 32. Wallon, Hist. de l'Esclavage dans l'Antiquité, tome iii. pp. 71-80. M. Wallon gives many curious instances of legal decisions on this point.

To prove that this is the correct conception of law was the main object of Cicero's treatise De Legibus. Ulpian defined jurisprudence as “divinarum atque humanarum rerum notitia, justi atque injusti scientia.”—Dig. lib. i. tit. 1-10. So Paul “Id quod semper æquum ad bonum est jus dicitur ut est jus naturale.”—Dig. lib. i. tit. 1-11. And Gaius, “Quod vero naturalis ratio inter omnes homines constituit ... vocatur jus gentium.”—Dig. lib. i. tit. 1-9. The Stoics had defined true wisdom as “rerum divinarum atque humanarum scientia.”—Cic. De Offic. i. 43.

Cicero compares the phraseology of the Stoics with that of the Peripatetics, maintaining that the precision of the former is well adapted to legal discussions, and the redundancy of the latter to oratory. “Omnes fere Stoici prudentissimi in disserendo sint et id arte faciant, sintque architecti pene verborum; iidem traducti a disputando ad dicendum, inopes reperiantur: unum excipio Catonem.... Peripateticorum institutis commodius fingeretur oratio ... nam ut Stoicorum astrictior est oratio, aliquantoque contractior quam aures populi requirunt: sic illorum liberior et latior quam patitur consuetudo judiciorum et fori.”—De Claris Oratoribus. A very judicious historian of philosophy observes: “En général à Rome le petit nombre d'hommes livrés à la méditation et à l'enthousiasme préférèrent Pythagore et Platon; les hommes du monde et ceux qui cultivaient les sciences naturelles s'attachèrent à Épicure; les orateurs et les hommes d'État à la nouvelle Académie; les juris-consultes au Portique.”—Degerando, Hist. de la Philos. tome iii. p. 196.

See a very remarkable passage in Aulus Gellius, Noct. ii. 15.

“Fere enim nulli alii sunt homines qui talem in filios suos habeant potestatem qualem nos habemus.”—Gaius.

A full statement of these laws is given by Dion. Halicarn. ii. 4. It was provided that if a father sold his son and if the son was afterwards enfranchised by the purchaser, he became again the slave of his father, who might sell him a second, and, if manumission again ensued, a third time. It was only on the third sale that he passed for ever out of the parental control. A more merciful law, attributed to Numa, provided that when the son married (if that marriage was with the consent of the father), the father lost the power of selling him. In no other way, however, was his authority even then abridged.

Velleius Paterculus, ii. 67. A great increase of parricide was noticed during the Empire (Senec. De Clem. i. 23). At first, it is said, there was no law against parricide, for the crime was believed to be too atrocious to be possible.

Numerous instances of these executions are collected by Livy, Val. Maximus, &c.; their history is fully given by Cornelius van Bynkershoek, “De Jure occidendi, vendendi, et exponendi liberos apud veteres Romanos,” in his works (Cologne, 1761).

This proceeding of Hadrian, which is related by the lawyer Marcian, is doubly remarkable, because the father had surprised his son in adultery with his stepmother. Now a Roman had originally not only absolute authority over the life of his son, but also the right of killing any one whom he found committing adultery with his wife. Yet Marcian praises the severity of Hadrian, “Nam patria potestas in pietate debet, non atrocitate, consistere.”—Digest. lib. xlviii. tit. 9, § 5.

Valer. Max. vii. 7.

See, on all this subject, Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xliv.; Troplong, Influence du Christianisme sur le Droit, ch. ix.; Denis, Hist. des Idées morales, tome ii. pp. 107-120; Laferrière, Influence du Stoïcisme sur les Jurisconsultes, pp. 37-44.

Ælian, Hist. Var. vi. 7.

Livy, ii. 36; Cicero, De Divin. ii. 26.

Cicero, De Legibus, ii. 8-12. Cato, however, maintained that slaves might on those days be employed on work which did not require oxen.—Wallon, Hist. de l'Esclavage, tome ii. p. 215.

See the Saturnalia of Macrobius.

See his Life by Plutarch, and his book on agriculture.

The number of the Roman slaves has been a matter of much controversy. M. Dureau de la Malle (Econ. politique des Romains) has restricted it more than any other writer. Gibbon (Decline and Fall, chap. ii.) has collected many statistics on the subject, but the fullest examination is in M. Wallon's admirable Hist. de l'Esclavage. On the contrast between the character of the slaves of the Republic and those of the Empire, see Tac. Ann. xiv. 44.

Tacit. Annal. xiii. 32; xiv. 42-45. Wallon, Hist. de l'Esclav. ii. 293. I have already noticed the indignant rising of the people caused by the proposal to execute the 400 slaves of the murdered Pedanius. Their interposition was, however (as Tacitus informs us), unavailing, and the slaves, guarded against rescue by a strong band of soldiers, were executed. It was proposed to banish the freedmen who were in the house, but Nero interposed and prevented it. Pliny notices (Ep. viii. 14) the banishment of the freedmen of a murdered man.

See all this fully illustrated in Wallon. The plays of Plautus and the Roman writers on agriculture contain numerous allusions to the condition of slaves.

Wallon, tome ii. pp. 209-210, 357. There were no laws till the time of the Christian emperors against separating the families of slaves, but it was a maxim of the jurisconsults that in forced sales they should not be separated. (Wallon, tome iii. pp. 55-56.)

Ibid. tome ii. pp. 211-213.

Plin. Epist. viii. 16. It was customary to allow the public or State slaves to dispose of half their goods by will. (Wallon, tome iii. p. 59.)

Wallon, tome ii. p. 419. This appears from an allusion of Cicero, Philip. viii. 11.

Senec. De Clem. i. 18.

Ibid. Ep. xlvii.

Pliny, Ep. viii. 16.

Spartianus, Hadrianus.

Compare Wallon, tome ii. p. 186; tome iii. pp. 65-66. Slaves were only to be called as witnesses in cases of incest, adultery, murder, and high treason, and where it was impossible to establish the crime without their evidence. Hadrian considered that the reality of the crime must have already acquired a strong probability, and the jurisconsult Paul laid down that at least two free witnesses should be heard before slaves were submitted to torture, and that the offer of an accused person to have his slaves tortured that they might attest his innocence should not be accepted.

Numerous and very noble instances of slave fidelity are given by Seneca, De Benefic. iii. 19-27; Val. Max. vi. 8; and in Appian's History of the Civil Wars. See, too, Tacit. Hist. i. 3.

Aristotle had, it is true, declared slavery to be part of the law of nature—an opinion which, he said, was rejected by some of his contemporaries; but he advocated humanity to slaves quite as emphatically as the other philosophers (Economics, i. 5). Epicurus was conspicuous even among Greek philosophers for his kindness to slaves, and he associated some of his own with his philosophical labours. (Diog. Laërt. Epicurus.)

De Benef. iii. 18-28; De Vita Beata, xxiv.; De Clem. i. 18, and especially Ep. xlvii. Epictetus, as might be expected from his history, frequently recurs to the duty. Plutarch writes very beautifully upon it in his treatise De Cohibenda Ira.

Diog. Laërt. Zeno.

Bodin thinks it was promulgated by Nero, and he has been followed by Troplong and Mr. Merivale. Champagny (Les Antonins, tome ii. p. 115) thinks that no law after Tiberius was called lex.

Sueton. Claud. xxv.; Dion Cass. lx. 29.

See Dumas, Secours publics chez les Anciens (Paris, 1813), pp. 125-130.

Senec. De Clem. i. 18.

Senec. De Benef. iii. 22.

Spartian. Hadrianus. Hadrian exiled a Roman lady for five years for treating her slaves with atrocious cruelty. (Digest. lib. i. tit. 6, § 2.)

See these laws fully examined by Wallon, tome iii. pp. 51-92, and also Laferrière, Sur l'Influence du Stoïcisme sur le Droit. The jurisconsults gave a very wide scope to their definitions of cruelty. A master who degraded a literary slave, or a slave musician, to some coarse manual employment, such as a porter, was decided to have ill-treated him. (Wallon, tome iii. p. 62.)

Thus, e.g., Livia called in the Stoic Areus to console her after the death of Drusus (Senec. Ad Marc.). Many of the letters of Seneca and Plutarch are written to console the suffering. Cato, Thrasea, and many others appear to have fortified their last hours by conversation with philosophers. The whole of this aspect of Stoicism has been admirably treated by M. Martha (Les Moralistes de l'Empire Romain).

We have a pleasing picture of the affection philosophers and their disciples sometimes bore to one another in the lines of Persius (Sat. v.) to his master Cornutus.

Grant's Aristotle, vol. i. pp. 277-278.

Champagny, Les Antonins, tome i. p. 405.

Arrian, iii. 22. Julian has also painted the character of the true Cynic, and contrasted it with that of the impostors who assumed the garb. See Neander's Life of Julian (London, 1850), p. 94.

Seneca the rhetorician (father of the philosopher) collected many of the sayings of the rhetoricians of his time. At a later period, Philostratus wrote the lives of eminent rhetoricians, Quintilian discussed their rules of oratory, and Aulus Gellius painted the whole society in which they moved. On their injurious influence upon eloquence, see Petronius, Satyricon, i. 2. Much curious information about the rhetoricians is collected in Martha, Moralistes de l'Empire Romain, and in Nisard, Etudes sur les Poëtes Latins de la Dècadence, art. Juvenal.

“Cependant ces orateurs n'étaient jamais plus admirés que lorsqu'ils avaient le bonheur de trouver un sujet où la louange fut un tour de force.... Lucien a fait l'éloge de la mouche; Fronton de la poussière, de la fumée, de la négligence; Dion Chrysostome de la chevelure, du perroquet, etc. Au cinquième siècle, Synésius, qui fut un grand évêque, fera le panégyrique de la calvitie, long ouvrage où toutes les sciences sont mises à contribution pour apprendre aux hommes ce qu'il y a non-seulement de bonheur mais aussi de mérite à être chauve.”—Martha, Moralistes de l'Empire Romain (ed. 1865), p. 275.

There is a good review of the teaching of Maximus in Champagny, Les Antonins, tome ii. pp. 207-215.

Orat. xv.; De Servitute.

See the singularly charming essay on Dion Chrysostom, in M. Martha's book.

Mr. Buckle, in his admirable chapter on the “Proximate Causes of the French Revolution” (Hist. of Civilisation, vol. i.), has painted this fashionable enthusiasm for knowledge with great power, and illustrated it with ample learning.

The saying of Mme. Dudeffand about Helvétius is well known: “C'est un homme qui a dit le secret de tout le monde.” How truly Helvétius represented this fashionable society appears very plainly from the vivid portrait of it in the Nouvelle Hèloïse, part ii. letter xvii., a masterpiece of its kind.

Musonius tried to stop this custom of applauding the lecturer. (Aul. Gell. Noct. v. i.) The habits that were formed in the schools of the rhetoricians were sometimes carried into the churches, and we have notices of preachers (especially St. Chrysostom) being vociferously applauded.

Thus Gellius himself consulted Favorinus about a perplexing case which he had, in his capacity of magistrate, to determine, and received from his master a long dissertation on the duties of a judge (xiv. 2).

i. 10.

Noct. Att. vi. 13. They called these questions symposiacæ, as being well fitted to stimulate minds already mellowed by wine.

xviii. 2.

We have a curious example of this in a letter of Marcus Aurelius preserved by Gallicanus in his Life of Avidius Cassius.

“Senserunt hoc Stoici qui servis et mulieribus philosophandum esse dixerunt.”—Lact. Nat. Div. iii. 25. Zeno was often reproached for gathering the poorest and most sordid around him when he lectured. (Diog. Laërt. Zeno.)

This decadence was noticed and rebuked by some of the leading philosophers. See the language of Epictetus in Arrian, ii. 19, iv. 8, and of Herod Atticus in Aul. Gell. i. 2, ix. 2. St. Augustine speaks of the Cynics as having in his time sunk into universal contempt. See much evidence on this subject in Friedlænder, Hist. des Mœurs Romaines, tome iv. 378-385.

This movement is well treated by Vacherot, Hist. de l'École d'Alexandrie.

De Superstitione.

Dissertations, x. § 8 (ed. Davis, London, 1740). In some editions this is Diss. xxix.

Dissert. xxxviii.

De Dæmone Socratis.

De Dæmone Socratis. See, on the office of dæmons or genii, Arrian i. 14, and a curious chapter in Ammianus Marcell. xxi. 14. See, too, Plotinus, 3rd Enn. lib. iv.

De Dæmone Socratis.

I should except Plotinus, however, who was faithful in this point to Plato, and was in consequence much praised by the Christian Fathers.

“Omnium malorum maximum voluptas, qua tanquam clavo et fibula anima corpori nectitur; putatque vera quæ et corpus suadet, et ita spoliatur rerum divinarum aspectu.”—Iamblichus, De Secta Pythagor. (Romæ, 1556), p. 38. Plotinus, 1st Enn. vi. 6.

De Sect. Pyth. pp. 36, 37.

Porphyry, Life of Plotinus.

Iamblichus, De Mysteriis. 1.

See, on this doctrine of ecstasy, Vacherot, Hist. de l'École d'Alexandrie, tome i. p. 576, &c.

“Sic habeto, omnibus qui patriam conservaverint, adjuverint, auxerint, certum esse in cœlo ac definitum locum ubi beati ævo sempiterno fruantur.”—Cic. Somn. Scip.

Φῶς, which, according to Plutarch (who here confuses two distinct words), is poetically used for man (De Latenter Vivendo). A similar thought occurs in M. Aurelius, who speaks of the good man as light which only ceases to shine when it ceases to be.

Diss. xxi. § 6.

Iamblichus, De Sect. Pythagoræ, p. 35.

Porphyry, Life of Plotinus, cap. vii.; Plotinus, 1st Enn. iv. 7. See on this subject Degerando, Hist. de la Philos. iii. p. 383.

Thus it was said of Apollonius that in his teaching at Ephesus he did not speak after the manner of the followers of Socrates, but endeavoured to detach his disciples from all occupation other than philosophy.—Philostr. Apoll. of Tyana, iv. 2. Cicero notices the aversion the Pythagoreans of his time displayed to argument: “Quum ex iis quæreretur quare ita esset, respondere solitos, Ipse dixit; ipse autem erat Pythagoras.”—De Nat. Deor. i. 5.

See Vacherot, tome ii. p. 66.

See Degerando, Hist. de la Philosophie, tome iii. pp. 400, 401.

Plotinus, 1st Enn. ix.

See a strong passage, on the universality of this belief, in Plotinus, 1st Enn. i. 12, and Origen, Cont. Cels. vii. A very old tradition represented the Egyptians as the first people who held the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Cicero (Tusc. Quæst.) says that the Syrian Pherecydes, master of Pythagoras, first taught it. Maximus of Tyre attributes its origin to Pythagoras, and his slave Zamolxis was said to have introduced it into Greece. Others say that Thales first taught it. None of these assertions have any real historical value.

We have a remarkable instance of the clearness with which some even of the most insignificant historians recognised the folly of confining history to the biographies of the Emperors, in the opening chapter of Capitolinus, Life of Macrinus.—Tacitus is full of beautiful episodes, describing the manners and religion of the people.

The passages relating to the Jews in Roman literature are collected in Aubertin's Rapports supposés entre Sénèque et St. Paul. Champagny, Rome et Judée, tome i. pp. 134-137.

Cicero, pro Flacco, 28; Sueton. Claudius, 25.

Juvenal, Sat. xiv.

Hist. v.

Lact. Inst. Div. vii. 3.

See their history fully investigated in Aubertin. Augustine followed Jerome in mentioning the letters, but neither of these writers asserted their genuineness. Lactantius, nearly at the same time (Inst. Div. vi. 24), distinctly spoke of Seneca as a Pagan, as Tertullian (Apol. 50) had done before. The immense number of forged documents is one of the most disgraceful features of the Church history of the first few centuries.

Fleury has written an elaborate work maintaining the connection between the apostle and the philosopher. Troplong (Influence du Christianisme sur le Droit) has adopted the same view. Aubertin, in the work I have already cited, has maintained the opposite view (which is that of all or nearly all English critics) with masterly skill and learning. The Abbé Dourif (Rapports du Stoïcisme et du Christianisme) has placed side by side the passages from each writer which are most alike.

Quoted by St. Augustine.—De Civ. Dei, vi. 11.

xi. 3.

The history of the two schools has been elaborately traced by Ritter, Pressensé, and many other writers. I would especially refer to the fourth volume of Degerando's most fascinating Histoire de la Philosophie.

“Scurra Atticus,” Min. Felix, Octav. This term is said by Cicero to have been given to Socrates by Zeno. (Cic. De Nat. Deor. i. 34.)

Tertull. De Anima, 39.

See especially his Apol. ii. 8, 12, 13. He speaks of the σπερματικὸς λόγος.

See, on all this, Clem. Alex. Strom. v., and also i. 22.

St. Clement repeats this twice (Strom. i. 24, v. 14). The writings of this Father are full of curious, and sometimes ingenious, attempts to trace different phrases of the great philosophers, orators, and poets to Moses. A vast amount of learning and ingenuity has been expended in the same cause by Eusebius. (Præp. Evan. xii. xiii.) The tradition of the derivation of Pagan philosophy from the Old Testament found in general little favour among the Latin writers. There is some curious information on this subject in Waterland's “Charge to the Clergy of Middlesex, to prove that the wisdom of the ancients was borrowed from revelation; delivered in 1731.” It is in the 8th volume of Waterland's works (ed. 1731).

St. Clement (Strom. i.) mentions that some think him to have been Ezekiel, an opinion which St. Clement himself does not hold. See, on the patristic notions about Pythagoras, Legendre, Traité de l'Opinion, tome i. p. 164.

This was the opinion of Julius Firmicus Maternus, a Latin writer of the age of Constantine, “Nam quia Saræ pronepos fuerat ... Serapis dictus est Græco sermone, hoc est Σαρᾶς ἄπο.”—Julius Firmicus Maternus, De Errore Profanarum Religionum, cap. xiv.

Justin Martyr, Apol. i. 54; Trypho, 69-70. There is a very curious collection of Pagan legends that were parallel to Jewish incidents, in La Mothe le Vayer, let. xciii.

Suet. Vesp. 7; Tacit. Hist. iv. 81. There is a slight difference between the two historians about the second miracle. Suetonius says it was the leg, Tacitus that it was the hand, that was diseased. The god Serapis was said to have revealed to the patients that they would be cured by the emperor. Tacitus says that Vespasian did not believe in his own power; that it was only after much persuasion he was induced to try the experiment; that the blind man was well known in Alexandria, where the event occurred, and that eyewitnesses who had no motive to lie still attested the miracle.

The following is a good specimen of the language which may still be uttered, apparently without exciting any protest, from the pulpit in one of the great centres of English learning: “But we have prayed, and not been heard, at least in this present visitation. Have we deserved to be heard? In former visitations it was observed commonly how the cholera lessened from the day of the public humiliation. When we dreaded famine from long-continued drought, on the morning of our prayers the heaven over our head was of brass; the clear burning sky showed no token of change. Men looked with awe at its unmitigated clearness. In the evening was the cloud like a man's hand; the relief was come.” (And then the author adds, in a note): “This describes what I myself saw on the Sunday morning in Oxford, on returning from the early communion at St. Mary's at eight. There was no visible change till the evening.”—Pusey's Miracles of Prayer, preached at Oxford, 1866.

E.g.: “A master of philosophy, travelling with others on the way, when a fearful thunderstorm arose, checked the fear of his fellows, and discoursed to them of the natural reasons of that uproar in the clouds, and those sudden flashes wherewith they seemed (out of the ignorance of causes) to be too much affrighted: in the midst of his philosophical discourse he was struck dead with the dreadful eruption which he slighted. What could this be but the finger of that God who will have his works rather entertained with wonder and trembling than with curious scanning?”—Bishop Hall, The Invisible World, § vi.

Sir C. Lewis On the Credibility of Roman Hist. vol. i. p. 50.

Cic. De Divin. lib. i. c. 1.

“The days on which the miracle [of the king's touch] was to be wrought were fixed at sittings of the Privy Council, and were solemnly notified by the clergy to all the parish churches of the realm. When the appointed time came, several divines in full canonicals stood round the canopy of state. The surgeon of the royal household introduced the sick. A passage of Mark xvi. was read. When the words ‘They shall lay their hands on the sick and they shall recover,’ had been pronounced, there was a pause and one of the sick was brought to the king. His Majesty stroked the ulcers.... Then came the Epistle, &c. The Service may still be found in the Prayer Books of the reign of Anne. Indeed, it was not until some time after the accession of George I. that the University of Oxford ceased to reprint the office of healing, together with the Liturgy. Theologians of eminent learning, ability, and virtue gave the sanction of their authority to this mummery, and, what is stranger still, medical men of high note believed, or affected to believe, it.... Charles II., in the course of his reign, touched near 100,000 persons.... In 1682 he performed the rite 8,500 times. In 1684 the throng was such that six or seven of the sick were trampled to death. James, in one of his progresses, touched 800 persons in the choir of the cathedral of Chester.”—Macaulay's History of England, c. xiv.

One of the surgeons of Charles II. named John Brown, whose official duty it was to superintend the ceremony, and who assures us that he has witnessed many thousands touched, has written an extremely curious account of it, called Charisma Basilicon (London, 1684). This miraculous power existed exclusively in the English and French royal families, being derived, in the first, from Edward the Confessor, in the second, from St. Lewis. A surgeon attested the reality of the disease before the miracle was performed. The king hung a riband with a gold coin round the neck of the person touched; but Brown thinks the gold, though possessing great virtue, was not essential to the cure. He had known cases where the cured person had sold, or ceased to wear, the medal, and his disease returned. The gift was unimpaired by the Reformation, and an obdurate Catholic was converted on finding that Elizabeth, after the Pope's excommunication, could cure his scrofula. Francis I. cured many persons when prisoner in Spain. Charles I., when a prisoner, cured a man by his simple benediction, the Puritans not permitting him to touch him. His blood had the same efficacy; and Charles II., when an exile in the Netherlands, still retained it. There were, however, some “Atheists, Sadducees, and ill-conditioned Pharisees” who even then disbelieved it; and Brown gives the letter of one who went, a complete sceptic, to satisfy his friends, and came away cured and converted. It was popularly, but Brown says erroneously, believed that the touch was peculiarly efficacious on Good Friday. An official register was kept, for every month in the reign of Charles II., of the persons touched, but two years and a half appear to be wanting. The smallest number touched in one year was 2,983 (in 1669); the total, in the whole reign, 92,107. Brown gives numbers of specific cases with great detail. Shakspeare has noticed the power (Macbeth, Act iv. Scene 3). Dr. Johnson, when a boy, was touched by Queen Anne; but at that time few persons, except Jacobites, believed the miracle.

Lucretius, lib. vi. The poet says there are certain seeds of fire in the earth, around the water, which the sun attracts to itself, but which the cold of the night represses, and forces back upon the water.

The fountain of Jupiter Ammon, and many others that were deemed miraculous, are noticed by Pliny, Hist. Nat. ii. 106.

“Fly not yet; the fount that played
In times of old through Ammon's shade,
Though icy cold by day it ran,
Yet still, like souls of mirth, began
To burn when night was near.”—Moore's Melodies.

Tacit. Annal. i. 28. Long afterwards, the people of Turin were accustomed to greet every eclipse with loud cries, and St. Maximus of Turin energetically combated their superstition. (Ceillier, Hist. des Auteurs sacrés, tome xiv. p. 607.)

Suet. Aug. xci.

See the answer of the younger Pliny (Ep. i. 18), suggesting that dreams should often be interpreted by contraries. A great many instances of dreams that were believed to have been verified are given in Cic. (De Divinatione, lib. i.) and Valerius Maximus (lib. i. c. vii.). Marcus Aurelius (Capitolinus) was said to have appeared to many persons after his death in dreams, and predicted the future.

The augurs had noted eleven kinds of lightning with different significations. (Pliny, Hist. Nat. ii. 53.) Pliny says all nations agree in clapping their hands when it lightens (xxviii. 5). Cicero very shrewdly remarked that the Roman considered lightning a good omen when it shone upon his left, while the Greeks and barbarians believed it to be auspicious when it was upon the right. (Cic. De Divinat. ii. 39.) When Constantine prohibited all other forms of magic, he especially authorised that which was intended to avert hail and lightning. (Cod. Theod. lib. ix. tit. xvi. 1. 3.)

Suet. Aug. xc.

Ibid. Tiber. lxix. The virtue of laurel leaves, and of the skin of a sea-calf, as preservatives against lightning, are noticed by Pliny (Hist. Nat. ii. 56), who also says (xv. 40) that the laurel leaf is believed to have a natural antipathy to fire, which it shows by its angry crackling when in contact with that element.

Suet. Calig. ii.

Suet. Jul. Cæs. lxxxviii.

Plin. Hist. Nat. ii. 23.

“Prodigia eo anno multa nuntiata sunt, quæ quo magis credebant simplices ac religiosi homines eo plura nuntiabantur” (xxiv. 10). Compare with this the remark of Cicero on the oracles: “Quando autem illa vis evanuit? An postquam homines minus creduli esse cœperunt?” (De Div. ii. 57.)

This theory, which is developed at length by the Stoic, in the first book of the De Divinatione of Cicero, grew out of the pantheistic notion that the human soul is a part of the Deity, and therefore by nature a participator in the Divine attribute of prescience. The soul, however, was crushed by the weight of the body; and there were two ways of evoking its prescience—the ascetic way, which attenuates the body, and the magical way, which stimulates the soul. Apollonius declared that his power of prophecy was not due to magic, but solely to his abstinence from animal food. (Philost. Ap. of Tyana, viii. 5.) Among those who believed the oracles, there were two theories. The first was that they were inspired by dæmons or spirits of a degree lower than the gods. The second was, that they were due to the action of certain vapours which emanated from the caverns beneath the temples, and which, by throwing the priestess into a state of delirium, evoked her prophetic powers. The first theory was that of the Platonists, and it was adopted by the Christians, who, however, changed the signification of the word dæmon. The second theory, which appears to be due to Aristotle (Baltus, Réponse à l'Histoire des Oracles, p. 132), is noticed by Cic. De Div. i. 19; Plin. H. N. ii. 95; and others. It is closely allied to the modern belief in clairvoyance. Plutarch, in his treatise on the decline of the oracles, attributes that decline sometimes to the death of the dæmons (who were believed to be mortal), and sometimes to the exhaustion of the vapours. The oracles themselves, according to Porphyry (Fontenelle, Hist. des Oracles, pp. 220-222, first ed.), attributed it to the second cause. Iamblichus (De Myst. § iii. c. xi.) combines both theories, and both are very clearly stated in the following curious passage: “Quamquam Platoni credam inter deos atque homines, natura et loco medias quasdam divorum potestates intersitas, easque divinationes cunctas et magorum miracula gubernare. Quin et illud mecum reputo, posse animum humanum, præsertim, puerilem et simplicem, seu carminum avocamento, sive odorum delenimento, soporari, et ad oblivionem præsentium externari: et paulis per remota corporis memoria, redigi ac redire ad naturam suam, quæ est immortalis scilicet et divina; atque ita veluti quodam sopore, futura rerum præsagire.”—Apuleius, Apolog.

Aul. Gell. Noct. ii. 28. Florus, however (Hist. i. 19), mentions a Roman general appeasing the goddess Earth on the occasion of an earthquake that occurred during a battle.

Ælian, Hist. Var. iv. 17.

Hist. Nat. ii. 81-86.

Ibid. ii. 9.

Ibid. ii. 23.

I have referred in the last chapter to a striking passage of Am. Marcellinus on this combination. The reader may find some curious instances of the superstitions of Roman sceptics in Champagny, Les Antonins, tome iii. p. 46.

viii. 19. This is also mentioned by Lucretius.

viii. 1.

viii. 50. This was one of the reasons why the early Christians sometimes adopted the stag as a symbol of Christ.

xxix. 23.

xxxii. 1.

vii. 2.

xxviii. 7. The blind man restored to sight by Vespasian was cured by anointing his eyes with spittle. (Suet. Vesp. 7; Tacit. Hist. iv. 81.)

Ibid. The custom of spitting in the hand before striking still exists among pugilists.

ii. 101.

Legendre, Traité de l'Opinion, tome ii. p. 17. The superstition is, however, said still to linger in many sea-coast towns.

Lucian is believed to have died about two years before Marcus Aurelius.

See his very curious Life by Philostratus. This Life was written at the request of Julia Domna, the wife of Septimus Severus, whether or not with the intention of opposing the Gospel narrative is a question still fiercely discussed. Among the most recent Church historians, Pressensé maintains the affirmative, and Neander the negative. Apollonius was born at nearly the same time as Christ, but outlived Domitian. The traces of his influence are widely spread through the literature of the empire. Eunapius calls him “Ἀπολλώνιος ὁ ἐκ Τυάνων, οὐκέτι φιλόσοφος ἀλλ᾽ ἦν τι θεῶν τε καὶ ἀνθρώπου μέσον.”—Lives of the Sophists. Xiphilin relates (lxvii. 18) the story, told also by Philostratus, how Apollonius, being at Ephesus, saw the assassination of Domitian at Rome. Alexander Severus placed (Lampridius Severus) the statue of Apollonius with those of Orpheus, Abraham, and Christ, for worship in his oratory. Aurelian was reported to have been diverted from his intention of destroying Tyana by the ghost of the philosopher, who appeared in his tent, rebuked him, and saved the city (Vopiscus, Aurelian); and, lastly, the Pagan philosopher Hierocles wrote a book opposing Apollonius to Christ, which was answered by Eusebius. The Fathers of the fourth century always spoke of him as a great magician. Some curious passages on the subject are collected by M. Chassang, in the introduction to his French translation of the work of Philostratus.

See his defence against the charge of magic. Apuleius, who was at once a brilliant rhetorician, the writer of an extremely curious novel (The Metamorphoses, or Golden Ass), and of many other works, and an indefatigable student of the religious mysteries of his time, lived through the reigns of Hadrian and his two successors. After his death his fame was for about a century apparently eclipsed; and it has been noticed as very remarkable that Tertullian, who lived a generation after Apuleius, and who, like him, was a Carthaginian, has never even mentioned him. During the fourth century his reputation revived, and Lactantius, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine relate that many miracles were attributed to him, and that he was placed by the Pagans on a level with Christ, and regarded by some as even a greater magician. See the sketch of his life by M. Bétolaud prefixed to the Panckoucke edition of his works.

Life of Alexander. There is an extremely curious picture of the religious jugglers, who were wandering about the Empire, in the eighth and ninth books of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius. See, too, Juvenal, Sat. vi. 510-585.

Porphyry's Life of Plotinus.

Eunapius, Porph.

Ibid. Iamb. Iamblichus himself only laughed at the report.

Eunapius, Iamb.

See her life in Eunapius, Œdescus. Ælian and the rhetorician Aristides are also full of the wildest prodigies. There is an interesting dissertation on this subject in Friedlænder (Trad. Franc. tome iv. p. 177-186).

“Credat Judæus Apella.”—Hor. Sat. v. 100.

This appears from all the writings of the Fathers. There were, however, two forms of Pagan miracles about which there was some hesitation in the early Church—the beneficent miracle of healing and the miracle of prophecy. Concerning the first, the common opinion was that the dæmons only cured diseases they had themselves caused, or that, at least, if they ever (in order to enthral men more effectually) cured purely natural diseases, they did it by natural means, which their superior knowledge and power placed at their disposal. Concerning prophecy, it was the opinion of some of the Fathers that intuitive prescience was a Divine prerogative, and that the prescience of the dæmons was only acquired by observation. Their immense knowledge enabled them to forecast events to a degree far transcending human faculties, and they employed this power in the oracles.

De Origine ac Progressu Idolatriæ (Amsterdam).

This characteristic of early Christian apology is forcibly exhibited by Pressensé, Hist. des trois premiers Siècles, 2me série, tome ii.

The immense number of these forged writings is noticed by all candid historians, and there is, I believe, only one instance of any attempt being made to prevent this pious fraud. A priest was degraded for having forged some voyages of St. Paul and St. Thecla. (Tert. De Baptismo, 17.)

Apol. i.

Strom. vi. c. 5.

Origen, Cont. Cols. v.

Oratio (apud Euseb.) xviii.

De Civ. Dei, xviii. 23.

Constantine, Oratio xix. “His testimoniis quidam revicti solent eo confugere ut aiant non esse illa carmina Sibyllina, sed a nostris conficta atque composita.”—Lactant. Div. Inst. iv. 15.

Antonius Possevinus, Apparatus Sacer (1606), verb. “Sibylla.”

This subject is fully treated by Middleton in his Free Enquiry, whom I have closely followed.

Irenæus, Contr. Hæres. ii. 32.

Epiphan. Adv. Hæres. ii. 30.

St. Aug. De Civ. Dei, xxii. 8.

This history is related by St. Ambrose in a letter to his sister Marcellina; by St. Paulinus of Nola, in his Life of Ambrose; and by St. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, xxii. 8; Confess. ix. 7.

Plutarch thought they were known by Plato, but this opinion has been much questioned. See a very learned discussion on the subject in Farmer's Dissertation on Miracles, pp. 129-140; and Fontenelle, Hist. des Oracles, pp. 26, 27. Porphyry speaks much of evil dæmons.

Josephus, Antiq. viii. 2, § 5.

This very curious subject is fully treated by Baltus (Réponse à l'Histoire des Oracles, Strasburg, 1707, published anonymously in reply to Van Dale and Fontenelle), who believed in the reality of the Pagan as well as the patristic miracles; by Bingham (Antiquities of the Christian Church, vol. i. pp. 316-324), who thinks the Pagan and Jewish exorcists were impostors, but not the Christians; and by Middleton (Free Enquiry, pp. 80-93), who disbelieves in all the exorcists after the apostolic times. It has also been the subject of a special controversy in England, carried on by Dodwell, Church, Farmer, and others. Archdeacon Church says: “If we cannot vindicate them [the Fathers of the first three centuries] on this article, their credit must be lost for ever; and we must be obliged to decline all further defence of them. It is impossible for any words more strongly to express a claim to this miracle than those used by all the best writers of the second and third centuries.”—Vindication of the Miracles of the First Three Centuries, p. 199. So, also, Baltus: “De tous les anciens auteurs ecclésiastiques, n'y en ayant pas un qui n'ait parlé de ce pouvoir admirable que les Chrétiens avoient de chasser les démons” (p. 296). Gregory of Tours describes exorcism as sufficiently common in his time, and mentions having himself seen a monk named Julian cure by his words a possessed person. (Hist. iv. 32.)

Vit. Hilar. Origen notices that cattle were sometimes possessed by devils. See Middleton's Free Enquiry, pp. 88, 89.

The miracle of St. Babylas is the subject of a homily by St. Chrysostom, and is related at length by Theodoret, Sozomen, and Socrates. Libanius mentions that, by command of Julian, the bones of St. Babylas were removed from the temple. The Christians said the temple was destroyed by lightning; the Pagans declared it was burnt by the Christians, and Julian ordered measures of reprisal to be taken. Amm. Marcellinus, however, mentions a report that the fire was caused accidentally by one of the numerous candles employed in the ceremony. The people of Antioch defied the emperor by chanting, as they removed the relics, “Confounded be all they that trust in graven images.”

See the Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus, by Gregory of Nyssa. St. Gregory the Great assures us (Dial. iii. 10) that Sabinus, Bishop of Placentia, wrote a letter to the river Po, which had overflowed its banks and flooded some church lands. When the letter was thrown into the stream the waters at once subsided.

“Edatur hic aliquis sub tribunalibus vestris, quem dæmone agi constet. Jussus a quolibet Christiano loqui spiritus ille, tam se dæmonem confitebitur de vero, quam alibi deum de falso. Æque producatur aliquis ex iis qui de deo pati existimantur, qui aris inhalantes numen de nidore concipiunt ... nisi se dæmones confessi fuerint, Christiano mentiri non audentes, ibidem illius Christiani procacissimi sanguinem fundite. Quid isto opere manifestius? quid hæc probatione fidelius?”—Tert. Apol. xxiii.

Apol. i.; Trypho.

Cont. Cels. vii.

Inst. Div. iv. 27.

Life of Antony.

Octavius.

De Superstitione.

i. 6.

De Mort. Peregrin.

Origen, Adv. Cels. vi. Compare the curious letter which Vopiscus (Saturninus) attributes to Hadrian, “Nemo illic [i.e. in Egypt] archisynagogus Judæorum, nemo Samarites, nemo Christianorum presbyter, non mathematicus, non aruspex, non aliptes.”

“Si incantavit, si imprecatus est, si (ut vulgari verbo impostorum utor) exorcizavit.”—Bingham, Antiquities of the Christian Church (Oxf., 1855), vol. i. p. 318. This law is believed to have been directed specially against the Christians, because these were very prominent as exorcists, and because Lactantius (Inst. Div. v. 11) says that Ulpian had collected the laws against them.

Philostorgius, Hist. Eccl. viii. 10.

See Juvenal, Sat. vi. 314-335.

See Juvenal, Sat. vi. 520-530.

Metamorphoses, book x.

See their Lives, by Lampridius and Spartianus.

The conflict between St. Cyprian and the confessors, concerning the power of remitting penances claimed by the latter, though it ended in the defeat of the confessors, shows clearly the influence they had obtained.

“Thura plane non emimus; si Arabiæ queruntur scient Sabæi pluris et carioris suas merces Christianis sepeliendis profligari quam diis fumigandis.”—Apol. 42. Sometimes the Pagans burnt the bodies of the martyrs, in order to prevent the Christians venerating their relics.

Many interesting particulars about these commemrative festivals are collected in Cave's Primitive Christianity, part i. c. vii. The anniversaries were called “Natalia,” or birth-days.

See her acts in Ruinart.

St. Clem. Alex. Strom. iv. 10. There are other passages of the same kind in other Fathers.

Ad Scapul. v. Eusebius (Martyrs of Palestine, ch. iii.) has given a detailed account of six young men, who in the very height of the Galerian persecution, at a time when the most hideous tortures were applied to the Christians, voluntarily gave themselves up as believers. Sulp. Severus (Hist. ii. 32), speaking of the voluntary martyrs under Diocletian, says that Christians then “longed for death as they now long for bishoprics.” “Cogi qui potest, nescit mori,” was the noble maxim of the Christians.

Arrian, iv. 7. It is not certain, however, that this passage alludes to the Christians. The followers of Judas of Galilee were called Galilæans, and they were famous for their indifference to death. See Joseph. Antiq. xviii. 1.

xi. 3.

Peregrinus.

Zosimus.

“Do I not hate them, O Lord, that hate thee?—yea, I hate them with a perfect hatred.”

See Renan's Apôtres, p. 314.

M. Pressensé very truly says of the Romans, “Leur religion était essentiellement un art—l'art de découvrir les desseins des dieux et d'agir sur eux par des rites variés.”—Hist. des Trois premiers Siècles, tome i. p. 192. Montesquieu has written an interesting essay on the political nature of the Roman religion.

Sueton. Claud. xxv.

Plin. Hist. Nat. vii. 31.

Tacit. De Orat. xxxv.; Aul. Gell. Noct. xv. 11. It would appear, from this last authority, that the rhetoricians were twice expelled.

Dion Cassius, lii. 36. Most historians believe that this speech represents the opinions, not of the Augustan age, but of the age of the writer who relates it.

On the hostility of Vespasian to philosophers, see Xiphilin, lxvi. 13; on that of Domitian, the Letters of Pliny and the Agricola of Tacitus.

See a remarkable passage in Dion Chrysostom, Or. lxxx. De Libertate.

Cic. De Legib. ii. 11; Tertull. Apol. v.

Livy, iv. 30

Val. Maximus, i. 3, § 1.

Livy, xxv. 1.

Val. Max. i. 3, § 2.

See the account of these proceedings, and of the very remarkable speech of Postumius, in Livy, xxxix. 8-19. Postumius notices the old prohibition of foreign rites, and thus explains it:—“Judicabant enim prudentissimi viri omnis divini humanique juris, nihil æque dissolvendæ religionis esse, quam ubi non patrio sed externo ritu sacrificaretur.” The Senate, though suppressing these rites on account of the outrageous immoralities connected with them, decreed, that if any one thought it a matter of religious duty to perform religious ceremonies to Bacchus, he should be allowed to do so on applying for permission to the Senate, provided there were not more than five assistants, no common purse, and no presiding priest.

Val. Max. i. 3.

See Dion Cassius, xl. 47; xlii. 26; xlvii. 15; liv. 6.

Joseph. Antiq. xviii. 3.

Tacit. Annal. ii. 85.

Tacitus relates (Ann. xi. 15) that under Claudius a senatus consultus ordered the pontiffs to take care that the old Roman (or, more properly, Etruscan) system of divination was observed, since the influx of foreign superstitions had led to its disuse; but it does not appear that this measure was intended to interfere with any other form of worship.

“Sacrosanctam istam civitatem accedo.”—Apuleius, Metam. lib. x. It is said that there were at one time no less than 420 ædes sacræ in Rome. Nieupoort, De Ritibus Romanorum (1716), p. 276.

Euseb. Præp. Evang. iv. 1. Fontenelle says very truly, “Il y a lieu de croire que chez les payens la religion n'estoit qu'une pratique, dont la spéculation estoit indifférente. Faites comme les autres et croyez ce qu'il vous plaira.”—Hist. des Oracles, p. 95. It was a saying of Tiberius, that it is for the gods to care for the injuries done to them: “Deorum injurias diis curæ.”—Tacit. Annal. i. 73.

The most melancholy modern instance I remember is a letter of Hume to a young man who was thinking of taking orders, but who, in the course of his studies, became a complete sceptic. Hume strongly advised him not to allow this consideration to interfere with his career (Burton, Life of Hume, vol. ii. pp. 187, 188.) The utilitarian principles of the philosopher were doubtless at the root of his judgment.

De Divinat. ii. 33; De Nat. Deor. ii. 3.

“Quæ omnia sapiens servabit tanquam legibus jussa non tanquam diis grata.... Meminerimus cultum ejus magis ad morem quam ad rem pertinere.”—St. Aug. De Civ. Dei, vi. 10. St. Augustine denounces this view with great power. See, too, Lactantius. Inst. Div. ii. 3.

Enchirid. xxxi.

This is noticed by Philo.

The ship in which the atheist Diagoras sailed was once nearly wrecked by a tempest, and the sailors declared that it was a just retribution from the gods because they had received the philosopher into their vessel. Diagoras, pointing to the other ships that were tossed by the same storm, asked whether they imagined there was a Diagoras in each. (Cic. De Nat. Deor. iii. 37.)

The vestal Oppia was put to death because the diviners attributed to her unchastity certain “prodigies in the heavens,” that had alarmed the people at the beginning of the war with Veii. (Livy, ii. 42.) The vestal Urbinia was buried alive on account of a plague that had fallen upon the Roman women, which was attributed to her incontinence, and which is said to have ceased suddenly upon her execution. (Dion. Halicar. ix.)

Pliny, in his famous letter to Trajan about the Christians, notices that this had been the case in Bithynia.

Tert. Apol. xl. See, too, Cyprian, contra Demetrian., and Arnobius, Apol. lib. i.

St. Aug. De Civ. Dei, ii. 3.

Instances of this kind are given by Tertullian Ad Scapulam, and the whole treatise On the Deaths of the Persecutors, attributed to Lactantius, is a development of the same theory. St. Cyprian's treatise against Demetrianus throws much light on the mode of thought of the Christians of his time. In the later historians, anecdotes of adversaries of the Church dying horrible deaths became very numerous. They were said especially to have been eaten by worms. Many examples of this kind are collected by Jortin. (Remarks on Eccles. Hist. vol. i. p. 432.)

“It is remarkable, in all the proclamations and documents which Eusebius assigns to Constantine, some even written by his own hand, how, almost exclusively, he dwells on this worldly superiority of the God adored by the Christians over those of the heathens, and the visible temporal advantages which attend on the worship of Christianity. His own victory, and the disasters of his enemies, are his conclusive evidences of Christianity.”—Milman, Hist. of Early Christianity (ed. 1867), vol. ii. p. 327. “It was a standing argument of Athanasius, that the death of Arius was a sufficient refutation of his heresy.”—Ibid. p. 382.

Socrates, Eccl. Hist., vii. 30.

Greg. Tur. ii. 30, 31. Clovis wrote to St. Avitus, “Your faith is our victory.”

Milman's Latin Christianity (ed. 1867), vol. ii. pp. 236-245.

Ibid. vol. iii. p. 248.

Ep. xl.

“An diutius perferimus mutari temporum vices, irata cœli temperie? Quæ Paganorum exacerbata perfidia nescit naturæ libramenta servare. Unde enim ver solitam gratiam abjuravit? unde æstas, messe jejuna, laboriosum agricolam in spe destituit aristarum? unde hyemis intemperata ferocitas uberitatem terrarum penetrabili frigore sterilitatis læsione damnavit? nisi quod ad impietatis vindictam transit lege sua naturæ decretum.”—Novell. lii. Theodos. De Judæis, Samaritanis, et Hæreticis.

Milman's Latin Christianity vol. ii. p. 354.

Démonomanie des Sorciers, p. 152.

See a curious instance in Bayle's Dictionary, art. “Vergerius.”

Pliny, Ep. x. 43. Trajan noticed that Nicomedia was peculiarly turbulent. On the edict against the hetæriæ, or associations, see Ep. x. 97.

All the apologists are full of these charges. The chief passages have been collected in that very useful and learned work, Kortholt, De Calumniis contra Christianos. (Cologne, 1683.)

Justin Martyr tells us it was the brave deaths of the Christians that converted him. (Apol. ii. 12.)

Peregrinus.

Ep. x. 97.

Ep. ii.

Juvenal describes the popular estimate of the Jews:—

“Tradidit arcano quodcunque volumine Moses;
Non monstrare vias, eadem nisi sacra colenti,
Quæsitum ad fontem solos deducere verpos.”

Sat. xix. 102-105.

It is not true that the Mosaic law contains these precepts.

See Merivale's Hist. of Rome, vol. viii. p. 176.

See Justin Martyr, Trypho, xvii.

Justin Martyr, Apol. i. 26.

Eusebius expressly notices that the licentiousness of the sect of Carpocrates occasioned calumnies against the whole of the Christian body. (iv. 7.) A number of passages from the Fathers describing the immorality of these heretics are referred to by Cave, Primitive Christianity, part ii. ch. v.

Epiphanius, Adv. Hær. lib. i. Hær. 26. The charge of murdering children, and especially infants, occupies a very prominent place among the recriminations of religionists. The Pagans, as we have seen, brought it against the Christians, and the orthodox against some of the early heretics. The Christians accused Julian of murdering infants for magical purposes, and the bed of the Orontes was said to have been choked with their bodies. The accusation was then commonly directed against the Jews, against the witches, and against the mid-wives, who were supposed to be in confederation with the witches.

See an example in Eusebius, iii. 32. After the triumph of Christianity the Arian heretics appear to have been accustomed to bring accusations of immorality against the Catholics. They procured the deposition of St. Eustathius, Bishop of Antioch, by suborning a prostitute to accuse him of being the father of her child. The woman afterwards, on her death-bed, confessed the imposture. (Theodor. Hist. i. 21-22.) They also accused St. Athanasius of murder and unchastity, both of which charges he most triumphantly repelled. (Ibid. i. 30.)

The great exertions and success of the Christians in making female converts is indignantly noticed by Celsus (Origen) and by the Pagan interlocutor in Minucius Felix (Octavius), and a more minute examination of ecclesiastical history amply confirms their statements. I shall have in a future chapter to revert to this matter. Tertullian graphically describes the anger of a man he knew, at the conversion of his wife, and declares he would rather have had her “a prostitute than a Christian.” (Ad Nationes, i. 4.) He also mentions a governor of Cappadocia, named Herminianus, whose motive for persecuting the Christians was his anger at the conversion of his wife, and who, in consequence of his having persecuted, was devoured by worms. (Ad Scapul. 3.)

“Matronarum Auriscalpius.” The title was given to Pope St. Damasus. See Jortin's Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol. ii. p. 27. Ammianus Marcellinus notices (xxvii. 3) the great wealth the Roman bishops of his time had acquired through the gifts of women. Theodoret (Hist. Eccl. ii. 17) gives a curious account of the energetic proceedings of the Roman ladies upon the exile of Pope Liberius.

Conj. Præcept. This passage has been thought to refer to the Christians; if so, it is the single example of its kind in the writings of Plutarch.

Pliny, in his letter on the Christians, notices that their assemblies were before daybreak. Tertullian and Minucius Felix speak frequently of the “nocturnes convocationes,” or “nocturnes congregationes” of the Christians. The following passage, which the last of these writers puts into the mouth of a Pagan, describes forcibly the popular feeling about the Christians: “Qui de ultima fæce collectis imperitioribus et mulieribus credulis sexus sui facilitate labentibus, plebem profanæ conjurationis instituunt: quæ nocturnis congregationibus et jejuniis solennibus et inhumanis cibis non sacro quodam sed piaculo fœderantur, latebrosa et lucifugax natio, in publico muta, in angulis garrula; templa ut busta despiciunt, deos despuunt, rident sacra.”—Octavius. Tertullian, in exhorting the Christian women not to intermarry with Pagans, gives as one reason that they would not permit them to attend this “nightly convocation.” (Ad Uxorem, ii. 4.) This whole chapter is a graphic but deeply painful picture of the utter impossibility of a Christian woman having any real community of feeling with a “servant of the devil.”

De Civ. Dei, xix. 23.

The policy of the Romans with reference to magic has been minutely traced by Maury, Hist. de la Magie. Dr. Jeremie conjectures that the exorcisms of the Christians may have excited the antipathy of Marcus Aurelius, he, as I have already noticed, being a disbeliever on this subject. (Jeremie, Hist. of Church in the Second and Third Cent. p. 26.) But this is mere conjecture.

See the picture of the sentiments of the Pagans on this matter, in Plutarch's noble Treatise on Superstition.

Thus Justin Martyr: “Since sensation remains in all men who have been in existence, and everlasting punishment is in store, do not hesitate to believe, and be convinced that what I say is true.... This Gehenna is a place where all will be punished who live unrighteously, and who believe not that what God has taught through Christ will come to pass.”—Apol. 1. 18-19. Arnobius has stated very forcibly the favourite argument of many later theologians: “Cum ergo hæc sit conditio futurorum ut teneri et comprehendi nullius possint anticipationis attactu: nonne purior ratio est, ex duobus incertis et in ambigua expectatione pendentibus, id potius credere quod aliquas spes ferat, quam omnino quod nullas? In illo enim periculi nihil est, si quod dicitur imminere cassum fiat et vacuum. In hoc damnum est maximum.”—Adv. Gentes, lib. i

The continual enforcement of the duty of belief, and the credulity of the Christians, were perpetually dwelt on by Celsus and Julian. According to the first, it was usual for them to say, “Do not examine, but believe only.” According to the latter, “the sum of their wisdom was comprised in this single precept, believe.” The apologists frequently notice this charge of credulity as brought against the Christians, and some famous sentences of Tertullian go far to justify it. See Middleton's Free Enquiry, Introd. pp. xcii, xciii.

See the graphic picture of the agony of terror manifested by the apostates as they tottered to the altar at Alexandria, in the Decian persecution, in Dionysius apud Eusebius, vi. 41. Miraculous judgments (often, perhaps, the natural consequence of this extreme fear) were said to have frequently fallen upon the apostates. St. Cyprian has preserved a number of these in his treatise De Lapsis. Persons, when excommunicated, were also said to have been sometimes visibly possessed by devils. See Church, On Miraculous Powers in the First Three Centuries, pp. 52-54.

“Si quis aliquid fecerit, quo leves hominum animi superstitione numinis terrerentur, Divus Marcus hujusmodi homines in insulam relegari rescripsit,” Dig. xlviii. tit. 19, l. 30.

A number of instances have been recorded, in which the punishment of the Christians was due to their having broken idols, overturned altars, or in other ways insulted the Pagans at their worship. The reader may find many examples of this collected in Cave's Primitive Christianity, part i. c. v.; Kortholt, De Calumniis contra Christianos; Barbeyrac, Morale des Pères, c. xvii.; Tillemont, Mém. ecclésiast. tome vii. pp. 354-355; Ceillier, Hist. des Auteurs sacrés, tome iii. pp. 531-533. The Council of Illiberis found it necessary to make a canon refusing the title of “martyr” to those who were executed for these offences.

The first of these anecdotes is told by St. Jerome, the second by St. Clement of Alexandria, the third by St. Irenæus.

The severe discipline of the early Church on this point has been amply treated in Marshall's Penitential Discipline of the Primitive Church (first published in 1714, but reprinted in the library of Anglo-Catholic theology), and in Bingham's Antiquities of the Christian Church, vol. vi. (Oxford, 1855). The later saints continually dwelt upon this duty of separation. Thus, “St. Théodore de Phermé disoit, que quand une personne dont nous étions amis estoit tombée dans la fornication, nous devions luy donner la main et faire notre possible pour le relever; mais que s'il estoit tombé dans quelque erreur contre la foi, et qu'il ne voulust pas s'en corriger après les premières remonstrances, il falloit l'abandonner promptement et rompre toute amitié avec luy, de peur qu'en nous amusant à le vouloir retirer de ce gouffre, il ne nous y entraînast nous-mêmes.”—Tillemont, Mém. Ecclés. tome xii. p. 367.

“Habere jam non potest Deum patrem qui ecclesiam non habet matrem. Si potuit evadere quisquam qui extra arcam Noe fuit, et qui extra ecclesiam foris fuerit evadit ... hanc unitatem qui non tenet ... vitam non tenet et salutem ... esse martyr non potest qui in ecclesia non est.... Cum Deo manere non possunt qui esse in ecclesia Dei unanimes noluerunt. Ardeant licet flammis et ignibus traditi, vel objecti bestiis animas suas ponunt, non erit illa fidei corona, sed pœna perfidiæ, nec religiosæ virtutis exitus gloriosus sed desperationis interitus. Occidi talis potest, coronari non potest. Sic se Christianum esse profitetur quo modo et Christum diabolus sæpe mentitur.”—Cyprian, De Unit. Eccles.

Eusebius, v. 16.

Confess. iii. 11. She was afterwards permitted by a special revelation to sit at the same table with her son!

Ep. xl.

Ep. xviii.

Tertull. De Corona.

Milman's Hist. of Christianity, vol. ii. pp. 116-125. It is remarkable that the Serapeum of Alexandria was, in the Sibylline books, specially menaced with destruction.

Eunapius, Lives of the Sophists. Eunapius gives an extremely pathetic account of the downfall of this temple. There is a Christian account in Theodoret (v. 22). Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, was the leader of the monks. The Pagans, under the guidance of a philosopher named Olympus, made a desperate effort to defend their temple. The whole story is very finely told by Dean Milman. (Hist. of Christianity, vol. iii. pp. 68-72.)

Apology, v. The overwhelming difficulties attending this assertion are well stated by Gibbon, ch. xvi. Traces of this fable may be found in Justin Martyr. The freedom of the Christian worship at Rome appears not only from the unanimity with which Christian writers date their troubles from Nero, but also from the express statement in Acts xxviii. 31.

“Judæos, impulsore Chresto, assidue tumultuantes, Roma expulit.”—Sueton. Claud. xxv. This banishment of the Jews is mentioned in Acts xviii. 2, but is not there connected in any way with Christianity. A passage in Dion Cassius (lx. 6) is supposed to refer to the same transaction. Lactantius notices that the Pagans were accustomed to call Christus, Chrestus: “Eum immutata litera Chrestum solent dicere.”—Div. Inst. iv. 7.

This persecution is fully described by Tacitus (Annal. xv. 44), and briefly noticed by Suetonius (Nero, xvi.).

This has been a matter of very great controversy. Looking at the question apart from direct testimony, it appears improbable that a persecution directed against the Christians on the charge of having burnt Rome, should have extended to Christians who did not live near Rome. On the other hand, it has been argued that Tacitus speaks of them as “haud perinde in crimine incendii, quam odio humani generis convicti;” and it has been maintained that “hatred of the human race” was treated as a crime, and punished in the provinces. But this is, I think, extremely far-fetched; and it is evident from the sequel that the Christians at Rome were burnt as incendiaries, and that it was the conviction that they were not guilty of that crime that extorted the pity which Tacitus notices. There is also no reference in Tacitus to any persecution beyond the walls. If we pass to the Christian evidence, a Spanish inscription referring to the Neronian persecution, which was once appealed to as decisive, is now unanimously admitted to be a forgery. In the fourth century, however, Sulp. Severus (lib. ii.) and Orosius (Hist. vii. 7) declared that general laws condemnatory of Christianity were promulgated by Nero; but the testimony of credulous historians who wrote so long after the event is not of much value. Rossi, however, imagines that a fragment of an inscription found at Pompeii indicates a general law against Christians. See his Bulletino d'Archeologia Cristiana (Roma, Dec. 1865), which, however, should be compared with the very remarkable Compte rendu of M. Aubé, Acad. des Inscrip. et Belles-lettres, Juin 1866. These two papers contain an almost complete discussion of the persecutions of Nero and Domitian. Gibbon thinks it quite certain the persecution was confined to the city; Mosheim (Eccl. Hist. i. p. 71) adopts the opposite view, and appeals to the passage in Tertullian (Ap. v.), in which he speaks of “leges istæ ... quas Trajanus ex parte frustratus est, vitando inquiri Christianos,” as implying the existence of special laws against the Christians. This passage, however, may merely refer to the general law against unauthorised religions, which Tertullian notices in this very chapter; and Pliny, in his famous letter, does not show any knowledge of the existence of special legislation about the Christians.

Ecclesiastical historians maintain, but not on very strong evidence, that the Church of Rome was founded by St. Peter, a.d. 42 or 44. St. Paul came to Rome a.d. 61.

On this horrible punishment see Juvenal, Sat. i. 155-157.

Lactantius, in the fourth century, speaks of this opinion as still held by some “madmen” (De Mort. Persec. cap. ii.); but Sulp. Severus (Hist. lib. ii.) speaks of it as a common notion, and he says that St. Martin, when asked about the end of the world, answered, “Neronem et Antichristum prius esse venturos: Neronem in occidentali plaga regibus subactis decem, imperaturum, persecutionem autem ab eo hactenus exercendam ut idola gentium coli cogat.”—Dial. ii. Among the Pagans, the notion that Nero was yet alive lingered long, and twenty years after his death an adventurer pretending to be Nero was enthusiastically received by the Parthians (Sueton. Nero, lvii.).

See the full description of it in Rossi's Bulletino d'Archeol. Crist. Dec. 1865. Eusebius (iii. 17) and Tertullian (Apol. v.) have expressly noticed the very remarkable fact that Vespasian, who was a bitter enemy to the Jews, and who exiled all the leading Stoical philosophers except Musonius, never troubled the Christians.

See a pathetic letter of Pliny, lib. iii. Ep. xi. and also lib. i. Ep. v. and the Agricola of Tacitus.

Euseb. iii. 20.

“Præter cæteros Judaicus fiscus acerbissime actus est. Ad quem deferebantur, qui vel improfessi Judaicam intra urbem viverent vitam, vel dissimulata origine imposita genti tributa non pependissent.”—Sueton. Domit. xi. Suetonius adds that, when a young man, he saw an old man of ninety examined before a large assembly to ascertain whether he was circumcised.

Euseb. iii. 18.

See the accounts of these transactions in Xiphilin, the abbreviator of Dion Cassius (lxvii. 14); Euseb. iii. 17-18. Suetonius notices (Domit. xv.) that Flavius Clemens (whom he calls a man “contemptissimæ inertiæ”) was killed “ex tenuissima suspicione.” The language of Xiphilin, who says he was killed for “impiety and Jewish rites;” the express assertion of Eusebius, that it was for Christianity; and the declaration of Tertullian, that Christians were persecuted at the close of this reign, leave, I think, little doubt that this execution was connected with Christianity, though some writers have questioned it. At the same time, it is very probable, as Mr. Merivale thinks (Hist. of Rome, vol. vii. pp. 381-384), that though the pretext of the execution might have been religious, the real motive was political jealousy. Domitian had already put to death the brother of Flavius Clemens on the charge of treason. His sons had been recognised as successors to the throne, and at the time of his execution another leading noble named Glabrio was accused of having fought in the arena. Some ecclesiastical historians have imagined that there may have been two Domitillas—the wife and niece of Flavius Clemens. The islands of Pontia and Pandataria were close to one another.

“Tentaverat et Domitianus, portio Neronis de crudelitate; sed qua et homo facile cœptum repressit, restitutis etiam quos relegaverat.” (Apol. 5.) It will be observed that Tertullian makes no mention of any punishment more severe than exile.

Euseb. iii. 20.

De Mort. Persec. iii.

Xiphilin, lxviii. 1. An annotator to Mosheim conjectures that the edict may have been issued just before the death of the emperor, but not acted on till after it.

Euseb. iv. 26. The whole of this apology has been recently recovered, and translated into Latin by M. Renan in the Spicilegium Solesmense.

Apol. 5.

Lactant. De Mort. Persec. 3-4.

Pliny, Ep. x. 97-98.

Euseb. lib. iii.

There is a description of this earthquake in Merivale's Hist. of the Romans, vol. viii. pp. 155-156. Orosius (Hist. vii. 12) thought it was a judgment on account of the persecution of the Christians.

Eusebius, iv. 8-9. See, too, Justin Martyr, Apol. i. 68-69.

This is mentioned incidentally by Lampridius in his Life of A. Severus.

See this very curious letter in Vopiscus, Saturninus.

Justin Mart. Ap. i. 31. Eusebius quotes a passage from Hegesippus to the same effect. (iv. 8.)

“Præcepitque ne cui Judæo introeundi Hierosolymam esset licentia, Christianis tantum civitate permissa.”—Oros. vii. 13.

A letter which Eusebius gives at full (iv. 13), and ascribes to Antoninus Pius, has created a good deal of controversy. Justin Mart. (Apol. i. 71) and Tertullian (Apol. 5) ascribe it to Marcus Aurelius. It is now generally believed to be a forgery by a Christian hand, being more like a Christian apology than the letter of a Pagan emperor. St. Melito, however, writing to Marcus Aurelius, expressly states that Antoninus had written a letter forbidding the persecution of Christians. (Euseb. iv. 26.)

It is alluded to by Minucius Felix.

Eusebius, iv. 16.

St. Melito expressly states that the edicts of Marcus Aurelius produced the Asiatic persecution.

Eusebius, iv. 15.

See the most touching and horrible description of this persecution in a letter written by the Christians of Lyons, in Eusebius, v. 1.

Sulpicius Severus (who was himself a Gaul) says of their martyrdom (H. E., lib. ii.), “Tum primum intra Gallias Martyria visa, serius trans Alpes Dei religione suscepta.” Tradition ascribes Gallic Christianity to the apostles, but the evidence of inscriptions appears to confirm the account of Severus. It is at least certain that Christianity did not acquire a great extension till later. The earliest Christian inscriptions found are (one in each year) of a.d. 334, 347, 377, 405, and 409. They do not become common till the middle of the fifth century. See a full discussion of this in the preface of M. Le Blant's admirable and indeed exhaustive work, Inscriptions Chrétiennes de la Gaule.

It was alleged among the Christians, that towards the close of his reign Marcus Aurelius issued an edict protecting the Christians, on account of a Christian legion having, in Germany, in a moment of great distress, procured a shower of rain by their prayers. (Tert. Apol. 5.) The shower is mentioned by Pagan as well as Christian writers, and is portrayed on the column of Antoninus. It was “ascribed to the incantations of an Egyptian magician, to the prayers of a legion of Christians, or to the favour of Jove towards the best of mortals, according to the various prejudices of different observers.”—Merivale's Hist. of Rome, vol. viii. p. 338.

Xiphilin, lxxii. 4. The most atrocious of the Pagan persecutions was attributed, as we shall see, to the mother of Galerius, and in Christian times the Spanish Inquisition was founded by Isabella the Catholic; the massacre of St. Bartholomew was chiefly due to Catherine of Medicis, and the most horrible English persecution to Mary Tudor.

Euseb. v. 21. The accuser, we learn from St. Jerome, was a slave. On the law condemning slaves who accused their masters, compare Pressensé, Hist. des Trois premiers Siècles (2me série), tome i. pp. 182-183, and Jeremie's Church History of Second and Third Centuries, p. 29. Apollonius was of senatorial rank. It is said that some other martyrs died at the same time.

“Judæos fieri sub gravi pœna vetuit. Idem etiam de Christianis sanxit.”—Spartian. S. Severus. The persecution is described by Eusebius, lib. vi. Tertullian says Severus was favourable to the Christians, a Christian named Proculus (whom he, in consequence, retained in the palace till his death) having cured him of an illness by the application of oil. (Ad Scapul. 4.)

“Of the persecution under Severus there are few, if any, traces in the West. It is confined to Syria, perhaps to Cappadocia, to Egypt, and to Africa, and in the latter provinces appears as the act of hostile governors proceeding upon the existing laws, rather than the consequence of any recent edict of the emperor.”—Milman's Hist. of Christianity, vol. ii. pp. 156-157.

Adv. Cels. iii. See Gibbon, ch. xvi.

Eusebius, vi. 28.

Lampridius, A. Severus. The historian adds, “Judæis privilegia reservavit. Christianos esse passus est.”

Compare Milman's History of Early Christianity (1867), vol. ii. p. 188, and his History of Latin Christianity (1867), vol. i. pp. 26-59. There are only two cases of alleged martyrdom before this time that can excite any reasonable doubt. Irenæus distinctly asserts that Telesphorus was martyred; but his martyrdom is put in the beginning of the reign of Antoninus Pius (he had assumed the mitre near the end of the reign of Hadrian), and Antoninus is represented, by the general voice of the Church, as perfectly free from the stain of persecution. A tradition, which is in itself sufficiently probable, states that Pontianus, having been exiled by Maximinus, was killed in banishment.

Tacitus has a very ingenious remark on this subject, which illustrates happily the half-scepticism of the Empire. After recounting a number of prodigies that were said to have taken place in the reign of Otho, he remarks that these were things habitually noticed in the ages of ignorance, but now only noticed in periods of terror. “Rudibus sæculis etiam in pace observata, quæ nunc tantum in metu audiuntur.”—Hist. i. 86.

M. de Champagny has devoted an extremely beautiful chapter (Les Antonins, tome ii. pp. 179-200) to the liberty of the Roman Empire. See, too, the fifty-fourth chapter of Mr. Merivale's History. It is the custom of some of the apologists for modern Cæsarism to defend it by pointing to the Roman Empire as the happiest period in human history. No apology can be more unfortunate. The first task of a modern despot is to centralise to the highest point, to bring every department of thought and action under a system of police regulation, and, above all, to impose his shackling tyranny upon the human mind. The very perfection of the Roman Empire was, that the municipal and personal liberty it admitted had never been surpassed, and the intellectual liberty had never been equalled.

Sueton. Aug. xxxi. It appears from a passage in Livy (xxxix. 16) that books of oracles had been sometimes burnt in the Republic.

Tacitus has given us a very remarkable account of the trial of Cremutius Cordus, under Tiberius, for having published a history in which he had praised Brutus and called Cassius the last of Romans. (Annal. iv. 34-35.) He expressly terms this “novo ac tunc primum audito crimine,” and he puts a speech in the mouth of the accused, describing the liberty previously accorded to writers. Cordus avoided execution by suicide. His daughter, Marcia, preserved some copies of his work, and published it in the reign and with the approbation of Caligula. (Senec. Ad. Marc. 1; Suet. Calig. 16.) There are, however, some traces of an earlier persecution of letters. Under the sanction of a law of the decemvirs against libellers, Augustus exiled the satiric writer Cassius Severus, and he also destroyed the works of an historian named Labienus, on account of their seditious sentiments. These writings were re-published with those of Cordus. Generally, however, Augustus was very magnanimous in his dealings with his assailants. He refused the request of Tiberius to punish them (Suet. Aug. 51), and only excluded from his palace Timagenes, who bitterly satirised both him and the empress, and proclaimed himself everywhere the enemy of the emperor. (Senec. De Ira, iii. 23.) A similar magnanimity was shown by most of the other emperors; among others, by Nero. (Suet. Nero, 39.) Under Vespasian, however, a poet, named Maternus, was obliged to retouch a tragedy on Cato (Tacit. De Or. 2-3), and Domitian allowed no writings opposed to his policy. (Tacit. Agric.) But no attempt appears to have been made in the Empire to control religious writings till the persecution of Diocletian, who ordered the Scriptures to be burnt. The example was speedily followed by the Christian emperors. The writings of Arius were burnt in a.d. 321, those of Porphyry in a.d. 388. Pope Gelasius, in a.d. 496, drew up a list of books which should not be read, and all liberty of publication speedily became extinct. See on this subject Peignot, Essai historique sur la Liberté d'Écrire; Villemain, Études de Littèr. ancienne; Sir C. Lewis on the Credibility of Roman Hist. vol. i. p. 52; Nadal, Mémoire sur la liberté qu'avoient les soldats romains de dire des vers satyriques contre ceux qui triomphoient (Paris 1725).

See a collection of passages on this point in Pressensé, Hist. des Trois premiers Siècles (2me série), tome i. pp. 3-4.

Trypho.

Apol. xxxvii.

Euseb. vi. 43.

Eusebius, it is true, ascribes this persecution (vi. 39) to the hatred Decius bore to his predecessor Philip, who was very friendly to the Christians. But although such a motive might account for a persecution like that of Maximin, which was directed chiefly against the bishops who had been about the Court of Severus, it is insufficient to account for a persecution so general and so severe as that of Decius. It is remarkable that this emperor is uniformly represented by the Pagan historians as an eminently wise and humane sovereign. See Dodwell, De Paucitate Martyrum, lii.

St. Cyprian (Ep. vii.) and, at a later period, St. Jerome (Vit. Pauli), both notice that during this persecution the desire of the persecutors was to subdue the constancy of the Christians by torture, without gratifying their desire for martyrdom. The consignment of Christian virgins to houses of ill fame was one of the most common incidents in the later acts of martyrs which were invented in the middle ages. Unhappily, however, it must be acknowledged that there are some undoubted traces of it at an earlier date. Tertullian, in a famous passage, speaks of the cry “Ad Lenonem” as substituted for that of “Ad Leonem;” and St. Ambrose recounts some strange stories on this subject in his treatise De Virginibus.

St. Cyprian has drawn a very highly coloured picture of this general corruption, and of the apostasy it produced, in his treatise De Lapsis, a most interesting picture of the society of his time. See, too, the Life of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, by Greg. of Nyssa.

“La persécution de Dèce ne dura qu'environ un an dans sa grande violence. Car S. Cyprien, dans les lettres écrites en 251, dès devant Pasque, et mesme dans quelques-unes écrites apparemment dès la fin de 250, témoigne que son église jouissoit déjà de quelque paix, mais d'une paix encore peu affermie, en sorte que le moindre accident eust pu renouveler le trouble et la persécution. Il semble mesme que l'on n'eust pas encore la liberté d'y tenir les assemblées, et néanmoins il paroist que tous les confesseurs prisonniers à Carthage y avoient esté mis en liberté dès ce temps-là.”—Tillemont, Mém. d'Hist. ecclésiastique, tome iii. p. 324.

Dionysius the bishop wrote a full account of it, which Eusebius has preserved (vi. 41-42). In Alexandria, Dionysius says, the persecution produced by popular fanaticism preceded the edict of Decius by an entire year. He has preserved a particular catalogue of all who were put to death in Alexandria during the entire Decian persecution. They were seventeen persons. Several of these were killed by the mob, and their deaths were in nearly all cases accompanied by circumstances of extreme atrocity. Besides these, others (we know not how many) had been put to torture. Many, Dionysius says, perished in other cities or villages of Egypt.

See St. Cyprian, Ep. viii.

There was much controversy at this time as to the propriety of bishops evading persecution by flight. The Montanists maintained that such a conduct was equivalent to apostasy. Tertullian had written a book, De Fuga in Persecutione, maintaining this view; and among the orthodox the conduct of St. Cyprian (who afterwards nobly attested his courage by his death) did not escape animadversion. The more moderate opinion prevailed, but the leading bishops found it necessary to support their conduct by declaring that they had received special revelations exhorting them to fly. St. Cyprian, who constantly appealed to his dreams to justify him in his controversies (see some curious instances collected in Middleton's Free Enquiry, pp. 101-105), declared (Ep. ix.), and his biographer and friend Pontius re-asserted (Vit. Cyprianis), that his flight was “by the command of God.” Dionysius, the Bishop of Alexandria, asserts the same thing of his own flight, and attests it by an oath (see his own words in Euseb. vi. 40); and the same thing was afterwards related of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus. (See his Life by Gregory of Nyssa.)

“E veramente che almeno fino dal secolo terzo i fedeli abbiano posseduto cimiteri a nome commune, e che il loro possesso sia stato riconosciuto dagl' imperatori, è cosa impossibile a negare.”—Rossi, Roma Sotterranea, tomo i. p. 103.

This is all fully discussed by Rossi, Roma Sotterranea, tomo i. pp. 101-108. Rossi thinks the Church, in its capacity of burial society, was known by the name of “ecclesia fratrum.”

See, on the history of early Christian Churches, Cave's Primitive Christianity, part i. c. vi.

Dodwell (De Paucit. Martyr. lvii.) has collected evidence of the subsidence of the persecution in the last year of the reign of Decius.

This persecution is not noticed by St. Jerome, Orosius, Sulpicius Severus, or Lactantius. The very little we know about it is derived from the letters of St. Cyprian, and from a short notice by Dionysius of Alexandria, in Eusebius, vii. 1. Dionysius says, Gallus began the persecution when his reign was advancing prosperously, and his affairs succeeding, which probably means, after he had procured the departure of the Goths from the Illyrian province, early in a.d. 252 (see Gibbon, chap. x.). The disastrous position into which affairs had been thrown by the defeat of Decius appears, at first, to have engrossed his attention.

Lucius was at first exiled and then permitted to return, on which occasion St. Cyprian wrote him a letter of congratulation (Ep. lvii.). He was, however, afterwards re-arrested and slain, but it is not, I think, clear whether it was under Gallus or Valerian. St. Cyprian speaks (Ep. lxvi.) of both Cornelius and Lucius as martyred. The emperors were probably at this time beginning to realise the power the Bishops of Rome possessed. We know hardly anything of the Decian persecution at Rome except the execution of the bishop; and St. Cyprian says (Ep. li.) that Decius would have preferred a pretender to the throne to a Bishop of Rome.

Dionysius, Archbishop of Alexandria; see Euseb. vii. 10.

Eusebius, vii. 10-12; Cyprian, Ep. lxxxi. Lactantius says of Valerian, “Multum quamvis brevi tempore justi sanguinis fudit.”—De Mort. Persec. c. v.

Cyprian. Ep. lxxxi.

See his Life by the deacon Pontius, which is reproduced by Gibbon.

Eusebius, vii. 13.

Tertullian had before, in a curious passage, spoken of the impossibility of Christian Cæsars. “Sed et Cæsares credidissent super Christo si aut Cæsares non essent seculo necessarii, aut si et Christiani potuissent esse Cæsares.”—Apol. xxi.

Contra Demetrianum.

Eusebius, vii. 30. Aurelian decided that the cathedral at Antioch should be given up to whoever was appointed by the bishops of Italy.

Compare the accounts in Eusebius, vii. 30, and Lactantius, De Mort. c. vi.

See the forcible and very candid description of Eusebius, viii. 1.

This is noticed by Optatus.

See the vivid pictures in Lact. De Mort. Persec.

Lactant. De Mort. Persec. 15.

Eusebius, viii.

These incidents are noticed by Eusebius in his History, and in his Life of Constantine, and by Lactantius, De Mort. Persec.

“Italy, Sicily, Gaul, and whatever parts extend towards the West,—Spain, Mauritania, and Africa.”—Euseb. Mart. Palest. ch. xiii. But in Gaul, as I have said, the persecution had not extended beyond the destruction of churches; in these provinces the persecution, Eusebius says, lasted not quite two years.

The history of this persecution is given by Eusebius, Hist. lib. viii., in his work on the Martyrs of Palestine, and in Lactantius, De Mort. Persec. The persecution in Palestine was not quite continuous: in a.d. 308 it had almost ceased; it then revived fiercely, but at the close of a.d. 309, and in the beginning of a.d. 310, there was again a short lull, apparently due to political causes. See Mosheim, Eccles. Hist. (edited by Soames), vol. i. pp. 286-287.

Eusebius.

See two passages, which Gibbon justly calls remarkable. (H. E. viii. 2; Martyrs of Palest. ch. xii.)

There is one instance of a wholesale massacre which appears to rest on good authority. Eusebius asserts that, during the Diocletian persecution, a village in Phrygia, the name of which he does not mention, being inhabited entirely by Christians who refused to sacrifice, was attacked and burnt with all that were in it by the Pagan soldiery. Lactantius (Inst. Div. v. 11) confines the conflagration to a church in which the entire population was burnt; and an early Latin translation of Eusebius states that the people were first summoned to withdraw, but refused to do so. Gibbon (ch. xvi.) thinks that this tragedy took place when the decree of Diocletian ordered the destruction of the churches.

Mariana (De Rebus Hispaniæ, xxiv. 17). Llorente thought this number perished in the single year 1482; but the expressions of Mariana, though he speaks of “this beginning,” do not necessarily imply this restriction. Besides these martyrs, 17,000 persons in Spain recanted, and endured punishments less than death, while great numbers fled. There does not appear to have been, in this case, either the provocation or the political danger which stimulated the Diocletian persecution.

This is according to the calculation of Sarpi. Grotius estimates the victims at 100,000.—Gibbon, ch. xvi.

See some curious information on this in Ticknor's Hist. of Spanish Literature (3rd American edition), vol. iii. pp. 236-237.

This was the case in the persecutions at Lyons and Smyrna, under Marcus Aurelius. In the Diocletian persecution at Alexandria the populace were allowed to torture the Christians as they pleased. (Eusebius, viii. 10.)

Footnotes