only because in point of political achievement Rome is by far the most
notable of the great States of the world, but because in the struggle
between aristocracy and democracy which was the salient feature of its
history from the expulsion of the kings to the battle of Actium, it
presents a very close and instructive parallel to what has been going on
amongst ourselves from the revolution settlement of 1688 to the present
hour. If for annual kings with large power we put hereditary kings with
small power, the parallel is complete.[12] Let us now cast a glance, for
time and space allow us no more, over some modern developments. The
modern States of Europe have good reason, upon the whole, to think
themselves fortunate in their having retained the kingship, which the
Greeks and Romans rejected, either as their original type, or elevated
and glorified from the dukedoms, margravates, and electorates with which
they started. There cannot be much doubt, I imagine, that, if the Romans
had retained their king in a hereditary or nearly hereditary form, he
might have exercised a mediatorial function between the contending
parties that would have prevented those bloody strifes and those ugly
civic wounds with which the record of their political career stands now
so sorrowfully defaced. In the experience of their own earliest story,
Servius Tullius had already shown them how a king in the strife of
classes might step in by a peaceful new model to open the ranks of a
close aristocracy with dignity and safety to a rising democracy; and in
modern times the case of Leopold II. of Tuscany does not stand alone as
an example of what good service a wise king may do in the adjustment of
contending claims and smoothing the march of necessary social
transitions. In fact, the most democratic people amongst the ancients,
in order to effect such an adjustment in a peaceful way, had been
obliged to make Solon a king for the nonce; and the Romans, urged by a
like social pressure, named their dictator, or re-elected their consuls
and their tribunes, in order to secure for the need of the moment that
unity of counsel, energy of conduct, and moral authority which is the
grand recommendation of the kingship. No doubt kings in modern as in
ancient times have erred; they have not been able always to keep
themselves sober under the intoxicating influence of absolute power, and
they have paid dearly for their errors; but we were wise in this
country, while beheading one despot and banishing another, to punish the
offender without abolishing the office. True, a thorough-going and
sternly-consistent republican may ask, with an indignant sneer, What is
the use of a king, when we have shorn him of all honours save the grace
of a crown and the bauble of a sceptre--reduced him, in fact, to a
mere machine to register the decrees of a democratic assembly? But such
persons require to be reminded that there is nothing more dangerous, not
only in political, but in all practical matters, than logical
consistency; that the most narrow-minded people are always the most
consistent, and this for the very obvious reason that they have only
room for one idea in their small brain chambers, whereas God's
world contains many ideas, stiff ideas too, and given to battle, which
must be brought into some friendly balance or compromise, or set about
throat-cutting on a large scale--a process to which consistent
republicans have never shown a less bloody inclination than consistent
monarchists. They must be reminded also that the person of the monarch
is an incarnated, visible, and tangible symbol of the unity of the
nation, of which parties and factions are so apt to be forgetful; and if
our logically-consistent republican may look on this as a matter of
association and sentiment which he will not acknowledge, he must simply
be told that the man who does not acknowledge the important place played
by associations and sentiments in all matters of Church and State knows
nothing of human nature, and is altogether unfit for meddling with the
difficult and dangerous art of politics. He may write books, and lecture
to coteries, and harangue electoral meetings, and delight himself
largely in the reverberation of his own wisdom, but by all means let him
not be a prime minister. To what ends logical consistency can lead a
politician in high places Charles I. and Archbishop Laud learned when it
was too late; and the fate of these two high-perched worthies stands as
a speaking lesson to all politicians, whether of the democratic or the
monarchical type, how easy a thing it is for a man to be a good
Christian and a consistent thinker, and yet on all political matters a
perfect fool.
Among the notable modern States three stand before us with
an exceptional preference for the democratic form of
government--Switzerland, France, and the great trans-Atlantic
Republic. These must be regarded with curious interest and kindly human
sympathy as great social experiments, by no means to be prejudged and
denounced by any sweeping conclusions made from the unfortunate
breakdown of the two celebrated ancient republics. The experiment in
these cases, as made in altogether different circumstances and under
different conditions, cannot warrant any such denunciations. The
representative system which now universally prevails, and which enables
a most widely-scattered and diverse-minded population to vote with a
coolness and a precision and a large survey of which the urban system of
Greece and Rome never dreamed; the general growth of intelligence among
all classes through the action of cheap education and the large
circulation of cheap books; the rapid and ever more rapid travelling of
contagious thought from the centre to the extreme limbs and flourishes
of social unities; and, above all, let us hope the improved tone of
social feeling in all the relations of man to man, which we owe to the
great Christian principle of living as brother with brother, and sister
with sister, under a common heavenly fatherhood,--these are all
forces largely operating in the present day which justify us in hoping
that many a social experiment which signally failed with the ancients
may be crowned in the centuries which are now being inaugurated with
encouraging success. Of the three which we have named, Switzerland is
the country in which, from topographical peculiarities, the interests of
jealous, neighbours, and the traditional habits of a peasant population
well trained to provincial self-government, the permanence of a
democratic federation may be prophesied with the greatest safety, but at
the same time with the least interest to the general march of humanity.
Ancient Rome, had it continued as compact and as little disturbed by
external forces and internal fermentations as modern Switzerland, might
have remained during the whole course of its career as sober-minded and
as stable as in the days of Cincinnatus, and the yeomanry which were
displaced by huge absentee landlords, and Syrian or Sicilian slaves. The
case of France is altogether different. A republic in an over-civilised,
highly-centralised, bureaucratically-governed country, with a
religiously hollow, hasty, violent, excitable, and explosive people,
seems of all social experiments the least hopeful: and that is all that
can wisely be said of it at present. But the social conditions in
America are altogether different; and the experiment of a great
democratic republic for the first time in the history of the
world--for Rome in its best times, as we have seen, was an
aristocracy--will be looked on by all lovers of their species with
the most kindly curiosity and the most hopeful sympathy. Here we have
the stout, self-reliant, sober-minded Anglo-Saxon stock, well trained in
the process of the ages to the difficult art of self-government; here we
have a constitution framed with the most cautious consideration, and
with the most effective checks against the dangers of an over-riding
democracy; here also a people as free from any imminent external danger
as they have unlimited scope for internal progress. Under no
circumstances could the experiment of self-government, on a great scale,
have been made with a more promising start. No doubt they have a
difficult and slippery problem to perform. The frequent recurrence of
elections to the supreme magistracy has always been, and ever must be,
the breeder of faction, the nurse of venality, and the spur of ambition.
Once already has this Titanic confederacy, though only a hundred years
old, by going through a process of a long, bitter, and bloody civil war,
shown that the unifying machinery so cunningly put together by the
conservative genius of a Washington, an Adams, and a Madison, was
insufficient to hold in check the rebellious forces at war within its
womb. No doubt also it were in vain to speak America free from those
acts of gigantic jobbing, blushless venality, and over-riding of the
masses in various ways, which were working the ruin of Rome in the days
of Jugurtha. The aristocracy of gold and the tyranny of capitalists in
Christian New York has shown itself no less able to usurp the public
land and defraud the people of their share in the soil than the lordly
aristocracy and the slave-dealing magnates of heathen Rome. Nevertheless
we need not despair. The sins of American democracy may serve as a
useful hint to us not rashly to tinker our own mixed constitution
without waiting for a verdict on issues, which, as Socrates wisely says,
lie with the gods; nor, on the other hand, is there any wisdom in
ascribing to the American form of government evils which, as belonging
to human nature, crop up with more or less abundance under all forms of
government, and which may be specially rife among ourselves. We also
have our Glasgow banks, our bubble companies of all kinds, our heady
speculations, our hot competitions, our over-productions, our haste to
be rich, our idol worship of mere material magnificence,--these are
evils, and the root of all evil, with the production of which no form of
government has anything to do, and against which every form of
government will be in vain invoked to contend.
In conclusion, we must bear in mind that democracy or social
self-government is the most difficult of all human problems, and must be
approached, not with inflated hopes and rosy imaginations, but with
sobriety and caution and a sound mind, and at critical moments not
without prayer and fasting. Before entering on any scheme for rebuilding
our social edifice on a democratic model, we should consider seriously
what a democracy really implies, and what we may reasonably promise
ourselves from its possible success. Of the two rallying cries which
have made it a favourite with persons given to change, equality and
liberty, the one is no more true than that all the mountains in the
Highlands are as high as Ben Nevis, and can only mean at the best that
all men have an equal right to be called men and to be treated as men,
while the other is only true so far as concerns the removal of all
artificial barriers to the free exercise of each man's function,
according to his capacity and opportunities. But this is a mere
starting-point in the social life of a great people. When the bird is
out of the cage, which it must be in order to be a perfect bird, the
more serious question emerges, what use it shall make of its
newly-acquired liberty. Here certainly to men, as to birds, there are
great dangers to be faced; and with nations the progress of society, as
already remarked, is measured to a much larger extent by the increase of
limitations than by the extension of liberties. Then, again, the
fundamental postulate of extreme democracy that the majority have
everywhere a right to govern is manifestly false. No man as a member of
society has a natural right to govern: he has a right to be governed,
and well governed; and that can only be when the government is conducted
by the wisest and best men who compose the society. If the numerical
majority is composed of sober-minded, sensible, and intelligent persons
who will either govern wisely themselves or choose persons who will do
so, then democracy is justified by its deeds; but if it is otherwise,
and if, when an appeal is made to the multitude, they will choose the
most daring, the most ambitious, and the most unscrupulous, rather than
the most sensible, the most moderate, and the most conscientious, then
democracy is a bad thing, at least nothing better than the other
_ocracies_ which it supplants. It is manifest, therefore, that of
all forms of government democracy is that which imperatively requires
the greatest amount of intelligence and moderation among the great mass
of the people, especially amongst the lower classes, who have always
been the most numerous; and, as history can point to no quarter of the
world where such a happy condition of the numerical intelligence has
been realised, it cannot look with any favour on schemes of universal
suffrage, even when qualified with a stout array of effective checks.
The system, indeed, of representing every man individually, and giving
every member of a society a capitation vote, as they have a capitation
tax in Turkey, however popular with the advocates of extreme democracy,
seems quite unreasonable. What requires to be represented in a
reasonable representative system is not so much individuals as
qualities, capacities, interests, and types. Every class should be
represented, rather than every man in a class. Besides, the equality of
votes which democracy demands, on the principle that I am as good as you
and perhaps a little better, is utterly false, and tends to nourish
conceit and impertinence, to banish all reverence, and to ignore all
distinctions in society. Anyhow, there can be no doubt that great masses
of men acting together on exciting occasions are peculiarly liable to
hasty resolutions and violent opinions; all democracies, therefore, are
unsafe which are unprovided with checks in the form of an upper chamber
composed of more cool materials, and planted firmly in a position that
makes them independent of the fever and faction of the hour. A strong
democracy stands as much in need of an aristocratic rein as a strong
aristocracy does of a democratic spur. And let it never be
forgotten--what democracies are far too apt to forget--that
minorities have rights as well as majorities; nay, that one of the great
ends to be achieved by a good government is to protect the few against
the natural insolence of a majority glorying in its numbers, and hurried
on by the spring-tide of a popular contagion. A state of society is not
at all inconceivable in which the many shall make all the laws and
monopolise all the offices of a fussy bureaucracy, while the few are
burdened with all the taxes. Never too frequently can we repeat, in
reference to all public acts, no less than to the conduct of individuals
in private life, the great Aristotelian maxim that ALL EXTREMES ARE
WRONG; that every force when in full action tends to an excess which
for its own salvation must be met by a counterpoising force; that all
good government, as all healthy existence, is the balance of opposites
and the marriage of contraries; and that the more mettlesome the charger
the more need of a firm rein and a cautious rider. He who overlooks this
prime postulate of all sane action in this complex world may pile his
democratic house tier above tier and enjoy his green conceit for a
season; but the day of sore trial and civic storm is not far, when the
rain shall descend, and the floods come, and the winds blow and beat
upon that house, and it will fall, because it was founded upon a dream.
II.
THE CHURCH.
Οὐ πᾶς ὁ λέγων μοι Κύριε, Κύριε, εἰσελεύσεται εἰς
τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν· ἀλλ᾽ ὁ ποιῶν τὸ θέλημα τοῦ
πατρός μου τοῦ ἐν τοῖς οῦρανοῖς.--Ὁ ΣΩΤΗΡ.
MAN is characteristically a religious animal; in fact, as Socrates
teaches, the only religious animal;[13] for, though a dog has no doubt
reverential emotions, it cannot be said with any propriety that he has
religious ideas or ecclesiastical institutions, for a very good reason,
because he has no ideas at all: observation he has very keen, and memory
also wonderfully retentive; instincts also, like all primal vital
forces, divine and miraculous; but ideas certainly none, for ideas mean
knowledge; and brutes that have no language properly so called that is a
system of significant vocal signs expressive of ideas, but only cries,
gesticulations, and visible or audible signs expressive of sensations
and feelings, can by no law of natural analogy be credited with the
possession of a faculty of which they give no manifestation. Language is
the outward body and form of which thought and reason and knowledge and
ideas are the inward soul and force; and hence the wise Greeks, unlike
our modern scientists, who delight in confounding man with the monkey,
expressed language and reason with one word λόγος, while what we
dignify with the name of language in birds and other animals was simply
φωνή, or significant voice. If, therefore, there is any thing most
human that history has to teach, it must be about religion. All the
great nations whose names mark the march of human fates have been
religious nations. A people without religion does not exist, or, if it
does exist, it exists only as an abnormal and deficient specimen of the
genus to which it belongs, which is of no more account in the just
estimate of the type than a fox without a tail, or a lawyer without a
tongue; and as for individual atheists, who have been talked about in
ancient times, and specially in these latter days, they are either
philosophers like Spinoza, the most pious of men, falsely baptized with
an odious title from the stupidity, prejudice, or malice of the
community, or, if they really are atheists, they are monsters which a
man may stare at as at an ass with three heads or with no head at all in
a show.
The form in which religion generally presents itself in early history is
what we commonly call Polytheism, though it is quite possible--a
matter about which I am not careful curiously to dogmatise--that
there may have been in some places an original Dualism, like the ancient
Persian, or even a Monotheism, out of which the Polytheism was
developed. For there cannot be the slightest doubt that, whatever may
have been the starting-point, there lay in the popular theology a
tendency to multiply and to reproduce itself in kindred but not always
easily recognisable forms, like the children of a family or the
cousinship of a clan. But, taking Polytheism as the type under which
history presents the objects of religious faith in the earliest times,
we have to remark that under this common name, as in the case of
Christianity, the greatest contrasts, both in speculative idea and in
social efficiency, stare us everywhere in the face. In the eye of the
Christian or the monotheistic devotee the worships of Aphrodite and of
Pallas Athene are equally idolatrous; but, allowing that these
anthropomorphic forms of divine forces and functions of the universe are
equally destitute of a foundation in fact or reason, the reverence paid
to them by a devout people might be as different as passion is from
thought, and sense from spirit. As the ideal of wisdom in counsel and in
action, the Athenian Pallas no doubt exercised as beneficent a sway over
her Hellenic worshippers as the ideal of Christian womanhood, in the
person of the Virgin Mary, does at the present day over millions of
Christian worshippers. It is only when the cosmic function impersonated
in the polytheistic god, being of an inferior order, leaps from its
proper position of subordination and usurps the controlling and
regulating action belonging to the superior function, that polytheistic
idolatry becomes immoral; though, of course, the very facility of this
usurpation, and the stamp of a pseudo divinity that may thereby be given
to beastly vice, is a sufficient reason for the denunciations of the
heathen idolatries so frequent in the Old Testament, which ultimately
ripened into the spiritual apostleship and monotheistic aggression of
St. Paul. One other striking feature of all polytheistic religions may
not be omitted. They are naturally complete--more catholic, more
sympathetic with universal nature and universal life than monotheistic
religions; if they make a philosophical mistake in worshipping many
gods, they do not make a moral mistake in excluding any of his
attributes. With the polytheistic worshipper everything is sacred: the
sun and the sea and the sky, dark earth and awful night, excite in him
an emotion of reverence. If the Greek polytheist was devout at all, he
was devout everywhere; whereas, under monotheistic influences, there is
a danger that devout feelings may respond exclusively to the stern
decrees of an absolute lawgiver and the awful threatenings of a violated
law. Polytheistic piety, whatever its defects, was always ready to add a
grace to every innocent enjoyment; monotheistic religiousness, as we see
its severe features in some modern churches, contents itself with adding
a solemn sanction to the moral law--a severity which here and there
has not been able to keep itself free from the unlovely phase of
regarding the innocent enjoyments and the graceful pleasantries of life
as a sin.