political world into their own soul. The material world and external things, including wealth and power, were on principle indifferent to the Stoical wise man; and, like the Epicurean, he was rich because he had few wants. But it came to be recognised by the Stoics that their metaphysical principle of the reign of Reason or Nature was inconsistent with any mere hostility to the established institutions of Society. They accordingly recognised the naturalness or rationality of these institutions while holding paramount the laws of that larger society which is coextensive with humanity. That this recognition extended to the unconscious social growths as well as to the deliberately formed political organizations, appears from the fact that the Stoics instead of opposing the popular religion endeavoured to rationalize it. They recognised the truth that belief in cosmical and belief in social order are logically connected. At the same time they were perhaps the first to form a philosophical conception of individual personality. Subjectivity and personality had long been, de facto, recognised in the Roman as distinguished from the Greek conception of citizenship; and Stoicism in all probability owed no little of its popularity among educated Romans to this coincidence. But Stoic cosmopolitanism overtopped Roman citizenship as the Roman empire overtopped the old Latin and Italian State which was once identical with the Roman. Personality under Roman law and personality under the law of Nature or of the world were analogous but unlike conceptions. In fact Stoicism, like Christianity, was fatal to the old view of the supremacy of one particular earthly state. The rights of man were not the same as the rights of the Roman, still less of the Greek citizen. The eventual importance of these Stoical notions for economics will soon appear; but at present it must be said that in the hands of the Stoics they bore no fruits for economical theory. The Stoics did not even render the indirect service of clearing up the notion of civil society and the relation of its members to each other and to the State. In fact the distinction of civil Society and State was yet to be made; and the notion that the individual could be dependent on his fellow-citizens and on the State without losing his individuality was not yet understood.

CHAPTER IV.

CHRISTIANITY.

WHAT Stoicism began for the few, CHRISTIANITY accomplished for the many. It broke down the exclusive regard to State and citizenship. "We ought to obey God rather than man"; there is a higher law than that of the State and a higher order than that of politics or civil Society. As far as existing States were concerned, it was individualistic; but, like that of the Stoics, the individualism of Christianity was itself founded on the conception of a State,1-a State which was spiritual and owed nothing to the coercive force of armies and magistrates. The Church was a community which embraced men of all ranks and nationalities. It imposed on its members a law adopted by their own choice, and a law that was supposed to derive no support from the traditional morality or the old political institutions of Greece or Rome. It was first of all a mystical union in which the members were one in Christ Jesus, having their citizenship in the invisible world. It interfered with the earthly citizenship mainly by destroying its old identity with religion. Religion was no longer part and parcel of political citizenship.

But it was not long before the visible Church became a strongly organized body, claiming for itself all the claims of the invisible city. The treatise of Augustine De Civitate Dei was written2 to defend the Christian religion against the charge of bringing down a curse on the city of Rome; and his answer is that Rome is falling by its own sins, but the City of God is coming down from heaven to earth, prepared as a bride adorned for Christ

1 Cf. Plato, Republ., IX. 592, and Dante, Purgatorio, XIII. 94: " Ciascuna [anima] é cittadina D'una vera città."

2 413-426 A.D.

her husband, to take its place. This new organization was conceived by the theologians under the same figure as the Greek State was conceived by the Greek philosophers; it had, like the human body, one spirit and many members. The several Christians were the members, the Holy Ghost the one Spirit, or life in the whole.1 The Church soon took to itself the external forms of a government; and its officers were not unlike the Guardians of Plato's republic, being distinguished (like them) from those who were indeed citizens but were not devoted body and soul to the service of the commonwealth. The Society so ruled was not constituted by any community of blood, but by an ignoring of nationality, tradition and custom, and (in the case at least of the early converts) at the cost of a deliberate breach with the whole past and present of the Greek and Roman and Provincial world. The early success of this effort seems to show that a complete social and political revolution, as opposed to a gradual development, is not at all an impossibility;—but the later history of the Church brings out the irrepressibility of the ignored traditions and national differences, and shows that the theology of the Church, as it shaped itself in her councils, was affected by the philosophies which it professed to supersede. The old secular nature was not revolutionized, and the Canon (or Ecclesiastical) Law, which gives us amongst other things the authoritative view of the Church on the economical relations of men, has substantially the old social problems to handle, and finds Greek philosophy helpful in the task. We are told indeed (in the Corpus Juris Canonici) that "by the law of nature" all things are common, and no less so by Divine law, for "the earth is the Lord's," and therefore no man can truly say "this field is mine," or "this house is mine." It is the corruption of human nature, the Fall of Man, that has destroyed natural community of goods. But canon law does not insist on literal obedience to this natural and Divine law except in the case of those who are in a very special sense the Lord's people, namely the Clergy, who,

1 Corinth. xii. 4-28. Ephes. i. 22, 23. See Gierke, Staats- und Corporationslehre d. Alterthums (1881), p. 106 seq.

as individuals, forsake all for Him. The laity may have private property, though they should remember it is only the usufruct of the Lord's freehold, and the duties belonging to it outweigh the rights. There is a dignity in labour, and the clergy may work for a livelihood like the apostles; but neither they nor the laity must allow wealth. to become a main end of life. If possible, the slaves of the laity should be freed so soon as they (the slaves) become Christians. The slaves of the clergy are to remain slaves, for the clergy "having nothing of their own can give no liberty to another." Hard bargaining and monopolizing are wrong:-"turpe lucrum sequitur qui minus emit ut plus vendat." Still more wicked is usury, which is defined as "getting more than one has given qui plus quam dederit accipit, usuras expetit"; whether it be in money or in kind; and the usurer is simply a robber; "rapinam facit qui usuram accipit." It is lawful only between enemies; "ubi jus belli, ibi etiam jus

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usura. It is clear that the notion of wealth and even of the distribution of wealth remains substantially as it was to Plato and Aristotle. But there was a real progress, of importance both to economics and to politics, in the view of the relation of men to each other. There was recognised a spiritual bond that was not that of nationality or of the ancient Greek and Roman State, and yet was even more binding than these were. "The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one soul." The individuals are essential to the union, but the united body is something far greater than the component members. Cosmopolitanism is made a popular notion; the utmost extension of the Christian Society (it was conceived) can only strengthen and never endanger it; the interests of the individual members are represented as inseparably connected with the interest of the whole body; and the demand was made that the opportunity should be given to every human being to enter on the spiritual inheritance open to him with all his fellow-men. The features in this ideal which come near

1 Corpus Juris Canon., I. Distinctio, LIV. Palea, c. XXII. Cf. II. Causa, XII., Quæst., II. c. 39. The slaves might always become free by becoming priests.

est to the features of the Platonic and Stoic and Aristotelian are superior to their Greek counterparts, partly in the wideness of their application and partly in their warmth of feeling and fulness of detail.

The literal realization of the Christian Society seemed rather to be hindered than hastened when, by the conversion of Constantine, Christianity came out of prison to rule, and had to deal with a temporal power as wide as her own and professedly under her own banner. As a separation was made between clergy and laity, so the temporal power was separated from the spiritual;-Rome had two Suns,' the Pope and the Emperor. By the separation of clergy from laity, the democratic and communistic element in Christianity ceased to have a universal application; the ideal life was no longer for all men, but for the few. And in the separation of the temporal from the spiritual power there was practically a confession that Christianity could not create a new political and social order. It might only control and guide the existing order, as the clergy the laity. Still the idea of one universal Christian government was dear to the Church, as an approach to her ideal; and deep was the disappointment when the temporal power was divided between East and West, when Islam disputed the whole ground, and when later the Carlomanian empire broke up into several kingdoms. Dante (De Monarchia) gave, if not the last, the most perfect expression to the aspiration. By his time the process of decentralizing had been accomplished; and, under the feudal system, the people of his own and of the other countries of continental Europe were exposed to constant wars at the will of petty rulers. As feudalism gave way to strong monarchies under national rulers, the growth of cities and the extension of production for sale as opposed to production for use made the retention of the principles of the ancient political economy impossible. As late as 1311 the Council of Vienne threatened usurers with excommunication, and new arguments were invented to buttress up the old prejudices. But it was impossible for the Church to succeed in resisting the universal practice of men. With the new

1 Dante, Purgatorio, XVI. 106 seq.