and middle strata of the population alone is this mighty revolution to be explained. We have, unhappily, been accustomed to regard the socalled law which governs the development of philosophy as a peculiar mysteriously working force, which necessarily leads us from the sunlight of knowledge back into the night of superstition, only to begin its course again The corn-exporting provinces must have gradually become poor and depopulated, while around Rome, and likewise about the subordinate centres, wealth and population led to the most forced system of agriculture, in which heavily-manured and carefully cultivated little gardens produced richer results in fruit, flowers, &c., than extensive holdings in distant neighbourhoods. (Comp. Roscher, Nationalökon. des Ackerbaus, § 46, where it is said, inter alia, that single, fruit-trees in the vicinity of Rome produced as much as 15 yearly, while wheat in Italy for the most part produced only fourfold, because only inferior soils were devoted to the growing of wheat.) But the whole concentrated economy of the rich commercial centre is not only more sensitive to blows from without than the economy of a country in more moderate circumstances, but it is also dependent upon the productiveness of the circle which delivers to the centre the indispensable necessaries of life. The devastation of a fertile country by war, even though it is accompanied by a decimation of its inhabitants, is speedily compensated by the efforts of nature and of man; while a blow inflicted upon the capital, especially if the resources of the provinces are already diminishing, very easily produces complete ruin, because it hampers the entire system of commercial exchange at its centre, and so suddenly annihilates the exaggerated values enjoyed and created by luxury. But even without such blows from without, the fall must have come with increasing acceleration, as soon as the pauperisation and depopulation of the provinces was so far gone that, even by means of increased pressure, their contributions could no longer be kept up to their standard. The whole picture of this process would, so far as the Roman Empire is concerned, be much more clearly displayed to us, but that the advantages of a magnificent and powerfully maintained centralising process among the great emperors of the second century counterbalanced the evil, and, in fact, evoked a new period of material splendour at the very brink of the general downfall. It is upon this last brilliant display of the ancient civilisation, the benefits of which fell, of course, for the most part, to the towns and to certain favoured tracts of country, that the favourable picture chiefly rests which Gibbon draws of the condition of the Empire in the first chapter of the "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." It is evident, however, that the economic evil to which the Empire must ultimately succumb had already attained a seri-` ous development. A splendour which rests upon the accumulation and concentration of riches can very easily reach its climax if the means of accumulation are already beginning to disappear, just as the greatest heat of the day occurs when the sun is already setting. Much earlier must the moral ruin appear in this great process of centralisation, because the subjection and fusion of numerous and utterly dif from thence under newer and higher forms. It is with this impulse of national development as it is with the lifeforce of organisms. It is there-but there only as the resultant of all the natural forces. To assume it frequently helps our observations; but it veils their uncertainty, and leads to errors if we set it down as a complementary explanation ferent peoples and races brings confusion not only into the specific forms of morality, but also into its very principles. Lecky shows quite rightly (History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne, 1869, vol. i. p. 271 foll.) how the Roman virtue, so intimately fused with the local patriotism of the early Romans and the native religion, must inevitably perish through the destruction of the old political forms, and the rise of scepticism and introduction of foreign cults. That the progress of civilisation did not substitute new and superior virtues-"gentler manners and enlarged benevolence"-in place of the old ones, is attributed to three causes: the Empire, slavery, and the gladiatorial games. Does this not involve a confusion of cause and effect? Compare the admirable contrast just before drawn by Lecky himself between the noble sentiments of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and the character of the masses over whom he ruled. The individual can raise himself with the help of philosophy to ethical principles which are independent of religion and politics; the masses of the people found morality—and that still more in antiquity than in our own days-only in the connection, which had been taught in local traditions, and had become inseparable, of the general and the individual, of the permanently valid and the variable; and accordingly the great centralisation of the world-empire must in this sphere have exercised everywhere, alike amongst conquerors and conquered, a dissolving and disturbing influence. Where, however, is the "normal condition of society" (Lecky, loc. cit., p. 271) which could forthwith replace by new ones the virtues of the perishing social order? Time, above all things, and, as a rule, also the appearance of a new type of people, are needed for the fusion of moral principles with sensational elements and fanciful additions. And so the same process of accumulation and concentration which developed the ancient civilisation to its utmost point appears also as the cause of its fall. In fact, the peculiarly enthusiastic feature of the fermenting process from which medieval Christianity finally proceeded seems to find its explanation here; for it distinctly points to an overstraining of the nervous system by the extremes of luxury and abstinence, voluptuousness and suffering, extending through all classes of the population; and this condition, again, is merely a consequence of the accumulation of wealth, although, indeed, slavery lends to its consequences a specially disagreeable colouring. For the facts as to the accumulation in ancient Rome, see Roscher, Grundl. der Nationalökon. § 204, and especially Anm. 10; for the senseless luxury of decaying nations, ibid., § 233 ff., as well as the essay on luxury in Roscher's Ansichten der Volkswirthschaft aus geschichtl. Standpunkte.' The influence of slavery has been specially pointed out by Contzen, Die Sociale Frage, ihre Geschichte, Literatur u. Bedeut. in d. Gegenw., 2te Aufl., Leipzig, 1872. Compare also the following note. 6 by the side of those elements with the sum of which it is really identical. For our purpose it is well to keep in mind that ignorance cannot be the proper consequence of knowledge, or fantastic caprice the consequence of method; that rationalism does not, and never can of itself, lead us back to superstition. We have seen how in antiquity, amidst the progress of rationalism, of knowledge, of method, the intellectual aristocracy broke away from the masses. The lack of a thorough popular education must have hastened and intensified this separation. Slavery, which was in a sense the basis of the whole civilisation of antiquity, changed its character in imperial times, and became only the more untenable because of the efforts that were made to ameliorate this dangerous institution.2 The increasing intercourse of nations began to produce amongst the superstitious masses a confusion of religions. Oriental mysticism veiled itself in Hellenic forms. At 2 Gibbon, Hist. of the Decline, &c., chap. ii., describes how the slaves, who had become comparatively cheaper since the Roman conquests, rose in value, and were better treated in consequence, with the falling off in the importation of prisoners of war, who in the times of the wars of conquest had often been sold by thousands at a very cheap rate. It became more and more necessary to breed slaves at home, and to promote marriages amongst them. By this means the whole mass, which had previously on every estate, often with the most careful calculation (see the letters of Cato in Contzen, loc. cit., S. 174), been composed of as many different nationalities as possible, became more homogeneous. To this was added the enormous accumulation of slaves on the large estates and in the palaces of the rich; and again, too, the important part played by the freedmen in the social life of imperial times. Lecky, loc. cit., i. 318, rightly distinguishes three periods in the position of the slaves: the earliest, in which they were a part of the family, and were comparatively well treated; the second, in which their numbers were very largely increased, while their treatment grew worse; and finally, the third, which begins with the turning-points indicated by Gibbon. Lecky specially points out, too, the influence of the Stoic philosophy in the milder treatment of the slaves. Slavery no longer reacted in this third period upon the civilisation of the ancient world by means of the dread of great servile wars, but did so, of course, by the influence which the subject class more and more exercised on the whole modes of thought of the population. This influence, one diametrically opposed to the ancient ideals, became especially marked with the spread of Christianity. Comp. as to this Lecky, Hist. Eur. Morals, ii. 66 foll. Rome, whither the conquered nations flocked, there was soon no creed that did not find believers, while there was none that was not scoffed at by the majority. To the fanaticism of the deluded multitude was opposed either a lighthearted contempt or a blasé indifference: the formation of sharp, well-disciplined parties, amidst the universal division of interests among the higher classes, had become impossible. To such an extent there forced a way through the incredible growth of literature, through the desultory studies of officious spirits, through daily intercourse, disjected fragments of scientific discoveries, and produced that state of semi-culture which has been declared, perhaps with less reason, to characterise our own days. We must not, however, forget that this semi-culture was chiefly the condition of the rich and powerful, of the men of influence up to the imperial throne. The fullest social training, elegant social traits in wide command of affairs, are, in a philosophical sense, only too often united with the most pitiable deficiencies, and the dangers which are attributed to the doctrines of philosophers tend to become only too real in those circles where the flexible, unprincipled semi-culture is a slave of natural inclinations or disordered passions. When Epikuros, with a lofty enthusiasm, flung away the fetters of religion, that he might be righteous and noble, because it was a delight to be so, there came these profligate favourites of the moment, as they are pictured in rich variety by Horace and Juvenal and Petronius, who, with shameless front, rushed into the most unnatural forms of vice; and who was there to protect poor Philosophy when such reprobates claimed the name of Epikuros, if indeed they did not claim that of the Porch ? Contempt of the popular belief was here assumed as a mask for inner hollowness, utter absence of belief and true knowledge. To smile at the idea of immortality was a sign of vice; but the vice was due to the circumstances of the time, and had arisen not through, but in spite of philosophy. And in these very classes the priests of Isis, the thaumaturgists, and prophets, with their train of jugglery, found a rich harvest; nay, sometimes even the Jews found. a proselyte. The utterly uneducated mob shared in the towns the character of characterlessness with the great in their semi-culture. Thence ensued, then, in those times, in the fullest bloom, that practical Materialism, as it may be called-Materialism of life. On this point also the prevailing notions require an explanation. There is also a Materialism of life which, reviled by some, prized by others, may, by the side of any other practical tendency, still venture to show its face. 3 When effort is directed not to transitory enjoyment, but to a real perfecting of our condition; when the energy of material enterprise is guided by a clear calculation, which in all things has ultimate principles in view, and therefore reaches its aim; then there ensues that giant progress which in our own time has made England in two hundred years a mighty people, which in the Athens of Perikles went hand in hand with the highest blossom of intellectual life which any state has ever attained. But of quite another character was the Materialism of Imperial Rome, which repeated itself at Byzantium, Alexandria, and in all the capitals of the Empire. Here also the search for money dominated the distracted multitudes, as we see in the trenchant pictures of Juvenal and Horace; but there were lacking the great principles of the elevation 3 Mommsen, History of Rome, E. T., iv. 560 (chap. xii.), observes: "Unbelief and superstition, different hues of the same historical phenomenon, went in the Roman world of that day hand in hand, and there was no lack of individuals who themselves combined both-who denied the gods with Epikuros, and yet prayed and sacrificed before every shrine." In the same chapter are some details as to the introduction of Oriental reli gions into Rome. "When the Senate (in 50 B. C.) ordered the temples of Isis constructed within the ring-wall to be pulled down, no labourer ventured to lay the first hand on them, and the consul Lucius Paullus was himself obliged to apply the first stroke of the axe. A wager might be laid that the more lax any woman was, the more piously she worshipped Isis." Compare further Lecky, Hist. Eur. Morals, i. 338 foll. |