TOPICS FOR CRITICAL STUDY

I. How does the Stoic theory of Causation differ from that of Polybius? How do both theories differ from the concepts of modern science? Cf. Karl Pearson, Grammar of Science, Introduction. 2. What were the historic and philosophic influences which account for the wide divergence of the contemporaneous views of Plato and Aristotle, of Stoics and Epicureans? Cf. previous chapters.

3. What are the similarities and contrasts in the Stoic and Epicurean doctrine of passive non-resistance? How do these correspond with modern theories?

4. Contrast Cicero's ideas of Justice with those of Plato. Cf. Ch. I. 5. What light is thrown upon Cicero's theory of the natural equality of races from modern anthropological research. Cf. Franz Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man.

6. What is the essential difference in the theoretical basis of brotherhood as set forth by the Stoics and by Cicero, and that presented in the Christian Scriptures?

7. Compare Seneca's doctrine of the Golden Age as the original state of nature, with that of Hobbes in the Leviathan and of Locke in the Civil Government.

8. How do you account for the fragmentary character of the social philosophy presented by the group of writers considered in this chapter as compared with the comprehensive scheme of Plato and Aristotle?

CHAPTER IV

CHRISTIANITY

HISTORIC BACKGROUND-ROME AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA

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HE purely political incidents of the transition from the Roman Republic to the Empire under Augustus and the immediate successors cannot here be recounted in detail. Description is confined to such facts as form a setting for the introduction of Christianity which from this time forward is fraught with the most profound significance in the history of social philosophy.

The century of strife which ended with the battle of Actium left the Republic in a condition of exhaustion and disintegration. Moral idealism, respect for law, traditions of citizenship, ideas of justice, were not lacking but there was no essential unity, no organizing principle. The opportunity of the strong man was at hand. Avoiding the title of king, a designation repugnant to surviving republican ideas, Octavius acquired the title of Princeps and Imperator. Invested with the powers of Consul, Tribune and Censor, he revised the personnel of the Senate and proposed nominations for elections and measures for action in the public assemblies. While thus preserving the form of the Republic the Monarchy abolished five centuries before was reëstablished.

Certain characteristics of the century following the ascendency of Augustus in 31 B.C. are significant.

It was a period of relative peace throughout the civilized world. No great conquests were undertaken. The political energies were spent in the main in Romanizing the provinces. The territory of the empire at the period of its greatest extension under Trajan, 98 to 117 A.D. embraced the entire area surrounding the Mediterranean including Britain and all Western Europe somewhat beyond the Rhine and Danube, all of Asia Minor, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Egypt and the entire African region north of the Sahara. It contained a population variously estimated at from one hundred to one hundred fifty millions.

In many respects it may be regarded as comparable to the age of Pericles in Greece. One of the public enterprises of great magnitude

consisted in the construction of military highways connecting many parts of the empire. During the recent World War, Italy, France and England (in Palestine) found road building greatly facilitated by the use of the old roadbeds constructed by the Romans of this period.

It was likewise the age of Roman Architecture. The city of Rome was transformed from a city of brick into a city of marble. Throughout the empire cities were resplendent with costly temples, theaters, amphitheaters, and markets, besides statues of Roman heroes. Augustus was a patron of literature as well as of art. The poets of this period, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, and the historian Livy, furnish the Latin student in our modern colleges and universities with his texts. Above all it was a time of wealth accumulation and concentration resulting in the production of a wealthy class whose ostentatious luxury in dress, table, houses and furnishings, rivaled that of the courts of earlier monarchs and served to increase the envy and unrest among the poor who constituted the great mass of the population.

A few deductions from the conditions of the time that bear upon the question of social philosophy may be made:

Never possessing any great genius for philosophy this period was particularly barren because political speculation was treason and economic and social discussion would have endangered the prerogatives of the rich and powerful. The absence of popular uprisings or revolts betokens an extreme apathy born of despair. The birth rate everywhere declined to an alarming degree, among the ruling classes from luxury and profligacy, among the poor because of oppression and uncertainty. The dejected state of mind is further evidenced by the rapid spread of a new religion entirely foreign to the Roman mind as such but congenial to a people who were ready to find comfort in a doctrine of passive resistance to present ills in the hope of future felicity.

It is interesting to note here that it was about the middle of the third decade of the reign of Augustus, in a remote province of the empire, that Jesus was born. At the moment no greater significance attached to his birth than to that of any other child but subsequent developments reveal it to have been one of the most momentous events in all history. We must therefore gather up a few historic facts that illumine these developments.

JUDAISM

A Semitic people known as the Hebrews emerge in history as a primitive people, tribally organized, struggling for possession of Canaan,

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sometime before the middle of the second millennium B.C. Passing through a long period of loose confederation under the Judges resembling in many particulars the feudal period in Egypt, Rome and Britain, they arrived at Monarchy about 1050 under Saul. The Kingdom reached its greatest political triumphs under David about 1025993. In 953 the Kingdom was divided by revolution into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Israel was overwhelmed by Assyria in 772 and most of the population transported. Judah maintained a precarious existence down to 586, when it was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar and its population suffered the fate of its northern rival, being carried into Babylonian captivity. Although the Jews after 70 years were permitted to return and to rebuild Jerusalem and to enjoy certain freedom in religion, the territory remained a province under the monarchies successively of Babylon, Persia, Macedonia and Rome.

The details of this interesting history are fully set forth in the Hebrew Bible, general familiarity with which renders any detail here unnecessary.

It is customary to characterize certain peoples by their dominant contributions to civilization.<In the same sense that Greece gave to the world philosophy, and Rome organization, the Hebrews contributed religion. At least we may say that their history and their philosophy is so interwoven with their religion and so much the outgrowth of it that it constitutes the chief element of interpretation. The Old and the New Testament together with the Apocrypha and the Talmud constitute the most extensive and complete religious history and literature created by any people.

At the outset the Jewish conception of Jehovah was that of a tribal God fighting for them and avenging their enemies. In all essential elements he differed in nothing from those of other primitive races. It was the genius of this people, however, during their long and eventful history to transform this original concept into the most exalted ethical monotheism which the world has yet produced.

Three ideas which gained ascendency and which are important in the development of social thinking prior to the advent of Christianity are the theocratic concept of God, the doctrine of the "Chosen People," and the Messianic Hope. >

The Semitic idea of God brought to its greatest perfection in Judaism was theocratic. It was naïve and practical. Throughout the entire process of elevating Jehovah from the position of the tribal God of the Hebrews to that of Supreme God of the universe, he retains his per

sonal character of creator and ruler. He exists somewhere outside the world but in absolute control of forces and events. History therefore is a narrative of God's dealings with men. Social institutions such as the family, the state, and even religion itself have their origin and form in the Divine Will. They are communicated to men through divine revelation. This concept formed the natural basis for the development of the doctrine of "the peculiar people."

The destruction of the Jewish Kingdom and the captivity in Babylon was a sad blow to political aspirations but it resulted in the creation of a national self-consciousness not hitherto achieved. Deprived of national independence, forcibly restrained from participation in political affairs, subject to an alien power, they not only wept when they remembered Zion 1 but they thought and wrote. They made diligent inquiry into their own origin and history and revived the theory of their peculiar mission. From oral tradition, fragments of written history and the use of Babylonian sources they constructed a unique narrative which portrayed their descent from Abraham and their selection as a chosen people, under the leadership of the One God of all the Earth. The Pentateuch supplemented by other writings soon took the form of a sacred book. Thus the feeling of group superiority, common to all peoples, a product of group survival, acquired peculiar strength and produced spiritual unity among the scattered elements of the race wherever the literature extended and preserved the character of nationalism without a nation.

Continued political subjection fostered a further state of mind. congenial to the hope of restoration of the former glory of Israel. The yearning for national deliverance, common to all conquered peoples, took particular hold of the Jewish mind because of the feeling of national separateness. Hebrew prophecy from the days of Ezekiel is filled with dreams of Utopia. Israel is one day to be redeemed. Jehovah will restore the throne of David and a new world empire with its Capital at Jerusalem will be established. Perhaps no point of time may be designated at which this hope took specific Messianic form, since it represents a movement rather than a discovery. It seems certain, however, that by the time of the conquest of Palestine by Pompey in 63 the concept was thoroughly established. Apocryphal writings from this time on are built largely on this assumption. Once formed it was easy to read back the idea into the Law and the Prophets. The Scriptures were reëxamined and were found to abound in confirmation. By the end of the century 1Psalm 137:1.