454 Slavery, its far-reaching effects 



of other men. Serfdom or slavery, it matters not. So far as human 

 experience has gone, it appears that all such conditions are eventually 

 ruinous 1 to the rulers. 



For it is not merely the degradation of manual labour that results 

 from slavery. The deadening of inventive genius and economic im- 

 provements is fatally promoted through the tendency to remedy all 

 shortcomings by simply using up more flesh and blood. Man abdicates 

 a most important function of his reason, and accepts a mere superiority 

 of animal over animal. This is surely not following the true law of his 

 development. It is from this point of view that the great scientific in- 

 ventions of modern times present an encouraging spectacle, as the 

 earlier abuses of their exploitation are gradually overcome, and the 

 operative citizen vindicates his claims as a human being. That ancient 

 slavery did in some ways act for good by guaranteeing leisure to classes 

 some of whom employed it well, may be freely admitted. But I do not 

 think we can sincerely extend the admission to include the case of 

 Politics, whatever Greek philosophers may have thought. Nor can we 

 without reservations apply it in the field of Art. On the other hand 

 Literature surely owed much to the artificial leisure created by slavery. 

 Even in its most natural utterances Greco- Roman literature is the voice 

 of classes privileged because free, not restrained by the cramping in- 

 fluences of workaday life and needs. Its partisan spirit is the spirit of 

 the upper strata of society, ignoring the feelings, and often the existence, 

 of the unfree toilers below. In the main aristocratic, it tells us next to 

 nothing of the real sentiments of even the free masses, particularly on 

 the labour-questions that have now for some time increasingly occu- 

 pied the public mind. That we are, for good or for evil, viewing all 

 matters of human interest on a different plane from that of the 'classic' 

 writers, is a consideration that students of the Past are in duty bound 

 never to forget. 



But, when we are told 2 that ancient civilization in its early stages 

 (as seen in the Homeric poems etc) may fairly be labelled as Medieval, 

 while it may be called Modern when in its full bloom, we shall do well 

 to pause before accepting a dogma that may imply more than we are 

 prepared to grant. That mankind had to make a fresh start in the 

 Middle Ages, ancient civilization having run its course and failed, is a 

 proposition dangerously true. If it implies that the 'free' labour of 

 modern times is not a direct development from ancient slavery, so- 

 far good. If we are to hold that ancient slave labour and modern free 

 labour, when and so far as each is a factor of economic importance, are 

 practically identical phenomena of capitalism eager to make a profit 



1 The Turk and his Rayahs furnishes a very striking illustration. 



2 E Meyer, KlSchr? 188. 



