xvi SYSTEMATIC THOUGHT 385 



daries as well as race boundaries, and made quite clear for 

 the first time in Western Civilisation that a man is to be 

 judged, not by his birth or fortune, but by what he is worth 

 as a man. 1 The absorption of humanitarianism in super- 

 natural religion has at once popularised and corrupted it. 

 Between the great world-religions of Buddha, Christ, or 

 Mohammed, and the more ancient tribal or national religions, 

 there is a broad difference, roughly parallel to the difference 

 between humanitarian and nationalist ethics. The world- 

 religion at least seeks to include all men in fts scope. If 

 all men could be persuaded to believe the same tjiing, this 

 would be well enough, but as in matters of theology this 

 ideal is never realised, the effect of religious teaching 'is 

 ordinarily to draw a very vital distinction between those 

 who are of the household of faith and those who dwell 

 without. Hence the revived humanitarianism of modern 

 times has often had to protest against the ethics of religion, 

 and for a time found itself allied with science in combat- 

 ing the Church. There were however sufficiently strong 

 humanitarian elements in the Christian creed to assert 

 themselves against the degradation of religion, and the 

 modern humanitarian movement from the Evangelical 

 revival of the Eighteenth century down to the Christian 

 Socialism of our own day, has been as much furthered by 

 the established religion on certain sides as it has been 

 hampered and obstructed by it on others. It is but just to 

 add that in the modern world the humanitarian spirit has 

 also had to fight the crudities of an incomplete anct'over 

 confident science. The humanitarianism which, whether as 

 a force interpenetrating older creeds or as itself a religion, is 

 familiar to the modern world, is principally associated with 

 the series of political and social changes to which it gives 

 unity of meaning and purpose. ' Many of these changes 

 have a negative or destructive aspect. Such, fbr instance, are 

 the abolition of slavery, the destruction of class privilege, 

 the establishment of equality of opportunity. But the 

 humanitarian principle is not negative but inclusive, and 



1 A single passage in Aristotle (Eth. Nic. VIII. n, 7) may be said 

 to admit this truth by implication, but rather by way of exception to a 

 rule than as a fundamental axiom of life. 



