POLYTHEISTIC MORALITY. 193 slavery on the free,-on the masters,-whose proper development it is more necessary to follow, because it afterwards afforded the type of universal evolution. Under this aspect it is evident that this institution, however indispensable to human advancement in a political sense, must seriously impede moral progression. In personal morals, which the ancients knew most about, the effect of a power of absolute command over slaves who were bound to bear whatever caprice might inflict, was of course to impair that power of self-rule which is the first principle of moral development; -to say nothing of the dangers from flattery which beset every free man. As to domestic morals, De Maistre was no doubt right in the remark that slavery must have corrupted the primary family relations through the fatal facility it offered to licentiousness; so that even the establishment of monogamy was little more than a profession. As for social morality, which consists mainly in the love of mankind,-it is sufficiently evident that the universal habits of cruelty often gratuitous and arbitrary, exercised towards the unprotected slaves, must foster those propensities of hardness and even ferocity which were ordinary features of ancient manners, blighting even the best natures with moral injury. No less fatal were the consequences of the other political feature of the régime. It was through the confusion of the spiritual and temporal power that the morality of those times was subordinated Subordination to the polity; whereas, in modern days, and of morality especially under the reign of Catholicism, morality, to polity. in its independence of polity, has more and more assumed its direction, as I will presently explain. So vicious a subjection of the general and permanent in morality to the special and unstable in politics must impair the consistency of moral ordinances, and corrupt their purity by postponing the estimate of the means to that of the immediate personal end, and inducing a contempt of the fundamental attributes of humanity in comparison with those required by the existing needs of a variable policy. Inevitable as such an imperfection must be, it is not the less real, nor the less deplorable. The morality of the ancients was, in fact, like their polity, essentially military. When nations were adapted for a warlike destination, that aim became the supreme rule in the estimate of moral dispositions, which were esteemed in proportion to their aptitude to aid the great design, whether in the way of command or of obedience. Again, there was an absence of all moral education, which monotheism alone could institute. There was no compensation for this great elementary function in the arbitrary intervention of the Greek or Roman magistrate, when he imposed minute, capricious, and fallacious regulations upon private conduct. The only resource for supplying in any degree this enormous omission was to insinuate a kind of moral instruction into the popular mind by means of festivals and shows, such as VOL. II. N have lost their chief importance to society by having deputed their moral function to a better instrumentality. The social action of philosophers, among the Greeks first, and then the Romans, had no other destination; and this mode of abandoning such a function to private agency, without any legitimate organization, could only disclose the imperfection, in regard to morality, of the régime, without adequately repairing it; for influence of that nature could amount to little more than declamation, always impotent and often dangerous, whatever may have been its provisional utility in preparing a future regeneration. The causes of the moral inferiority of the polytheistic organism are now clear enough. If we take the point of view of the ancients. regarding their morality in its relation to their polity, we cannot but admire its aptitude as an aid to their military activity and in this direction, it has shared the general human progression, which could not have taken place in any other way. But it is no less strikingly imperfect, if regarded as a necessary phase of the moral education of mankind. It is not that the sanction of human passions was fatally authorized or facilitated by polytheism. Though there was something of this, the mischief is greatly overrated by Christian philosophers, who seem to think that no morality could resist such a solvent: yet polytheism destroyed neither the moral instinct of the race, nor the gradual influence of the spontaneous observations on the qualities of our nature and their consequences, which good sense presently amassed. On the other hand, monotheism, with all its superiority in this respect, has not realized its intrinsic morality any better in those exceptional cases in which it has coexisted with slavery and the confusion of the two social powers. It is observable, too, that this tendency, with which polytheism is so harshly reproached, and which was a necessary consequence of the extension of theological explanations to moral subjects, afforded a free and natural scope to various human feelings, which had been too much repressed before to have indicated in any other way how far they should be encouraged or neutralized, when morality had become possible. The eminent superiority of monotheism should not therefore induce us to disallow the participation of polytheism in the office of theological philosophy, whether as an organ of the advancing race in establishing certain moral opinions, which must be rendered almost irresistible by such universality; or by sanctioning those rules by the perspective of a future life, in which the theological, aided by the aesthetic spirit, set up its ideal type of justice and perfection, so as to convert into a powerful moral auxiliary a spontaneous infantile belief in the eternal prolongation of its favourite enjoyments. A rapid survey in truth convinces us that polytheism instigated the moral development of mankind in all important aspects, independently of its special encouragement of qualities most suitable to the purposes of the first age of society. DOMESTIC MORALITY. morality. Social morality. 195 Its efficacy is above all conspicuous in relation to the two extreme terms of morality, -the personal and the social. The Personal military application of the first was evident enough to secure especial attention to it; and the active and passive energy which is the prime virtue of savage life was carefully developed. Begun under fetichism, this development was carried forward to perfection under polytheism. The simplest precepts relating to this elementary class of virtues required the intervention of the religious spirit; and there is no doubt that its sanction was given to habits of physical purification, in which we find the first example of that superintendence of himself which Man must institute, for any purposes of action or resistance. As to social morality, it is clear that polytheism encouraged in the highest degree that love of country which took its rise under fetichism. Beginning in the fetich attachment to the native soil, it was stimulated by the national character of polytheism, till it attained the dignity of a rooted and invincible patriotism, often exalted into a conspicuous fanaticism, and constituting the great and almost the only aim of moral education. We see at once its bearing upon social progress, and how it must have been fostered by the small extent of nationality of that age, and also by the character of its wars, which rendered death or slavery always imminent, and devotion to country the only salvation. A certain degree of ferocity attended this virtue, as it bound up a hatred of foreigners with an attachment to a small number of compatriots; but it was a stage in the progress towards that love of the whole human race which was introduced by Christianity, and which would have been wholly incompatible with the military tendencies of antiquity. To polytheism we must also refer the first regular organization of morality in regard to old age and ancestry, a veneration for which was indispensable to that sense of social perpetuity which becomes more and more important as theological hopes of a future life lose their power, and till the positive philosophy establishes it for ever by exhibiting the connection of the individual with the whole human race, past, present, and future. Domestic morality. The most imperfect part of morality under polytheism was the domestic. It was, as it were, dropped between the personal and the social morality, at a time when they were too directly connected, in consequence of the supremacy of political considerations. We shall see presently how it is the immortal honour of Catholicism that it instituted a sound organization of morality by connecting it chiefly with the life of the Family, and making the social virtues depend on the domestic. Polytheism, however, effected a beginning of domestic morality; and it was under its reign that mankind rose to a settled monogamy. Though polygamy is still erroneously attributed to climate, any one may satisfy himself that it has been, in the North as much as the South, an attribute of the first age of human development, immediately following that in which the difficulty of subsistence controlled the reproductive instinct. Necessary as polygamy was in its own season, there is no doubt that the state of monogamy is the most favourable to the development of the best qualities of human nature, in both sexes; and the dawning conception of this social condition led, in the early days of polytheism, to the first establishment of monogamy, followed by necessary prohibitions of incest. Successive improvements of the conjugal relation accompanied the chief phases of the polytheistic régime; but the social character of Woman was far from being duly ascertained, while her unavoidable dependence on Man encouraged too much of his primitive rudeness. This first imperfect rise of the distinctive feminine character is exhibited in the constant though secondary participation of women in sacerdotal authority, which was expressly granted to them under polytheism, and taken from them by monotheism. As civilization develops all intellectual and moral differences, and therefore, among others, those of the sexes, we can no more derive a favourable presumption of the corresponding condition of women because they shared the priesthood, than because they shared war and the chase, which there is no reasonable doubt that they did. There is, in fact, abundant proof that the social state of Woman was radically inferior under the polytheistic régime to what it became in the reign of Christianity. In times when men were hunters and herdsmen, and then when they were warriors, the sexes were too much separated, and their affections were bestowed otherwise than on each other and then came the institution of slavery, which tended to impair the conjugal relation very seriously. But, in spite of these evils, polytheism certainly did imitate domestic morality, though less effectually than personal and social morals. Our examination of polytheism must, I think, convince us that Three phases notwithstanding vast deficiencies and imperfections, of Polytheism. this homogeneous and well-connected system could not but produce men of greater consistency and completeness than the world has since seen under a condition of humanity less purely theological, while not as yet fully positive. However this may be, one more task remains, to complete our estimate. We must review the different forms assumed by the system, according to the office it had to fulfil, in aiding human progress. We must distinguish between theocratic and military polytheism, according to the more spiritual or more temporal character assumed by the concentration of the two powers. Then again, in the military system, we must consider the rising stage of the spirit of conquest, and that of its completion and thus, the polytheistic régime will naturally divide itself into three parts, which we may call, in an historical way, the Egyptian method, the Greek, and the Roman. We will now consider the proper prerogative and invariable succession of the three. or theocratic. Caste. The intellectual and social elements of a primitive civilization can expand only under the almost absolute rule of a The Egyptian sacerdotal class. Prepared by fetichism in its advanced state of star-worship, and perhaps before the entire transition from the pastoral to the agricultural life, the system could be developed only under the ascendency of polytheism. Its general spirit consists in the hereditary transmission of functions or professions which is embodied in the institution of Caste, ruled by the supreme caste of the priesthood, which, being the depository of all knowledge, established a connection among all the heterogeneous corporations which took their rise from families. This ancient organization, not framed for purposes of war, though largely extended by it, did not assign the lowest and most numerous caste to a state of individual slavery, but to one of collective servitude, which is even more unfavourable than that of slavery to ultimate emancipation. The inevitable tendency of nascent civilization to such a system appears to me to be a law of social dynamics. We see it now in the Asiatic races so exemplified that we are apt to regard it as proper to the yellow races, though the white races were in their season equally subject to it, with the difference that, from their inherent superiority, or through the influence of more favourable circumstances, they disengaged themselves more rapidly from it. But the system could become thoroughly characteristic only under conditions which repressed warlike propensities, and favoured the sacerdotal spirit. The local causes were a combination of a fine climate with a fertile soil, favouring intellectual development by making subsistence easy; a territory admitting naturally of internal communication; and a country so isolated as to be secure from invasion, while offering no strong inducements to a life of war. These conditions are best found in the valley of a great river, separated from the rest of the world by the sea on the one hand, and inaccessible deserts or mountains on the other. Thus, the great system of castes flourished first in Egypt, Chaldæa, and Persia; and it abides in our day in those parts of the East which are least exposed to contact with the white nations, as in China, Japan, Tibet, Hindostan, etc.; and from analogous causes it was found in Mexico and Peru at the time of their conquest. Traces of these causes may be recognized in all instances of indigenous civilization, as in Western Europe, among the Gauls, the Etruscans, etc. The primitive influence may be perceived among nations whose progress has been accelerated by fortunate colonization. The general impress is recognized in their various ulterior institutions, and is not entirely effaced in the most advanced societies. In short, this system is the universal basis of ancient civilization. The universality and tenacity of the system of Caste are a sufficient proof of its suitability to human needs, in its season, notwith |