258 Evolution and Social Reform: 



fictions in the main. The developed and expanded religion 

 of the hearth became the ancient city ; not urbs, but civitas, 

 the ancient civil order. Its rules, its usages, its magistra- 

 cies, were all religious. The priests adjudicated every 

 question; the pontiff was chief-justice. Law was but a 

 phase of religion. Justice, as we understand the term, was 

 unknown. *'Our country right or wrong" was a religious 

 doctrine then. In treaties, perfidy, in battle, massacre, 

 were corallaries of this expanded family religion. In 

 those good old times Socialism was the order of the day. 

 Liberty had no existence ; education was compulsory. No 

 man was permitted to live single or to rear a child that was 

 weak or deformed. Food and clothing were prescribed. 

 This " cake of custom," this family religion artificially ex- 

 tended to a religious city, a religious state, thickened and 

 hardened so that the wonder is that it was ever broken ; but 

 it was about 2500 years ago. The priests were obliged 

 to siirrender their absolute authority, and rule only in 

 worship, but the survivals of their original authority long 

 lingered here and there in civic law and use. Solon 

 "wrested the earth from religion and gave it to labor," in 

 Coulanges's happy phrase. Aristotle says he put an end to 

 the slavery of the people. As in mediaeval Europe a 

 baronial aristocracy succeeded the disintegration of the 

 Empire, so was it here ; and as there the people made a set 

 of royal tyrants the instruments of their battle with this 

 aristocracy, so also was it here. Meantime, the arts sprang 

 up; socialism retired; personal property was created; 

 money appeared. Over this, religion had no power. Now 

 plebeians could be rich, and, once rich, could be aristocrats, 

 and so the old lines of 'demarcation were more and more 

 effaced. They invaded politics. They invaded the sacra- 

 mental worship. They became consuls, priests. Rome, 

 become democratic, became first republican and then im- 

 perial. It was the people who made the new tyrant, as 

 they had made the old. The same tendency is observable 

 in our modern life. Only the new tyrant, hankered for, is 

 called Socialism. A Tyranny without a tyrant, shall we 

 say ? ]iut no less tyrannous on this account, and the per- 

 sonal tyrant would come very soon to tame the chaos that 

 would certainly ensue, as Napoleon came to tame the chaos 

 after the Avild and whirling aspirations of the French Rev- 

 olution. 



