294 ^^^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tating their mytliical forefathers in the solemn celebration of this 

 mystic rite. 



It is interesting to note the rhetorical and metaphorical sur- 

 vivals of this once strong conviction. In referring to political 

 parties in France the Journal des D^bats recently remarked : " It 

 is not true that our nation consists of two nations the heirs of 

 the Emigration and those of the Revolution. This distinction no 

 longer exists. The last vestiges of it have been obliterated on 

 the battlefields, where all Frenchmen have mingled their blood. 

 France is henceforth one and indivisible." 



The noble sentiment expressed by the Greek comic poet Me- 

 nander and handed down to us in the language of Terence, his 

 Roman imitator, "I am a man, and regard nothing human as 

 alien to me," was doubtless shared by many individual thinkers 

 of antiquity, especially among the Greek Stoics and their Roman 

 disciples. Cicero, who may be taken as one of the most eminent 

 representatives of this ethical school, lays great stress upon " love 

 of mankind " {caritas generis humani), in distinction from the love 

 of kindred or countrymen. " A man," he says, " should seek to 

 promote the welfare of every other man, whoever he may be, for 

 the simple reason that he is a man " ; and declares that this prin- 

 ciple is the bond of universal society and the foundation of all 

 law. He returns to this topic again and again, and never tires of 

 enforcing this doctrine as fundamental in his treatises on duties 

 {De Officiis), on the highest good and evil {De Finibus Bonorum 

 et Malorum), and on laws {De Legibus). That he regarded this 

 broad, cosmopolitan view as a new departure in ethics is evident 

 from his remark that " he whom we now call a foreigner ( peregri- 

 num) was called an enemy (hostis) by our ancestors." 



The distinguished Christian apologist Lucius Lactantius bases 

 the duty of human kindness upon the hypothesis of human kin- 

 ship, thus reviving and amplifying the old tribal notion which 

 limits moral obligation to those who can claim a common pro- 

 genitor. " For, if we all derive our origin from one man, whom 

 God created, we are plainly of one blood ; and therefore it must 

 be deemed the greatest wickedness to hate a man, even though he 

 be guilty." He adds that " we are to put aside enmities and to 

 soothe and allay the anger of those who are inimical to us by re- 

 minding them of their relationship. . . . On account of this bond 

 of brotherhood God teaches us never to do evil, but always to do 

 good." He also quotes a passage from the Epicurean Lucretius 

 to the effect that " we are all sprung from a heavenly seed and 

 have all of us the same father " ; and draws from this statement 

 the conclusion that " they who injure men are to be accounted as 

 savage beasts." 



Lactantius has been surnamed the Christian Cicero, but the 



