A CRITICISM OF MORALITY. 



39 



ade, secret amour, &c. both of which forms of Chivalry and Minstrelsy 

 contain in themselves something new and not quite familiar to antiquity. 



Finally in modern times the monogamic union has risen to pre-emi- 

 nence the splendid ideal of an equal and life-long attachment between 

 man and wife, fruitful of children in this life, and hopeful of continuance 

 beyond and has become the great theme of romantic literature, and the 

 climax of a thousand novels and poems. Yet it is just here and to-day, 

 when this ideal after centuries of struggle has established itself, and 

 among the nations that are in the van of civilisation that we find the 

 doctrine of perfect liberty in the marriage relationship being most suc- 

 cessfully preached, and that the communalization of social life in the 

 future seems likely to weaken the family bond and to relax the obligation 

 of the marriage tie. 



If the Greek age, splendid as it was in itself and in its fruits to human 

 progress, did not hold marriage very high, it was partly because the ideal 

 passion of that period, and one which more than all else inspired it, was 

 that of comradeship, or male friendship carried over into the region of love. 

 The two figures of Harmodius and Aristogiton stand at the entrance of 

 Greek history as the type of this passion, bearing its fruit (as Plato through- 

 out maintains is its nature) in united self-devotion to the country's good. 

 The heroic Theban legion, the "sacred band," into which no man might 

 enter without his lover and which was said to have remained unvan- 

 quished till it was annihilated at the battle of Chaeronaea proves to us 

 how publicly this passion and its place in society were recognized ; while 

 its universality and the depth to which it had stirred the Greek mind are 

 indicated by the fact that whole treatises on love, in its spiritual aspect, 

 exist, in which no other form of the sentiment seems to be contemplated ; 

 and by the magnificent panorama of Greek statuary, which was obviously 

 to a large extent inspired by it. In fact the most remarkable Society 

 known to history, and its greatest men, can not be properly considered or 

 understood apart from this passion ; yet the modern world scarcely 

 recognises it, or if it recognises, does so chiefly to condemn it. l 



Other instances might be quoted* to show how differently moral ques- 

 tions are regarded in one age and another as in the case of Usury, Magic, 

 Suicide, Infanticide, &c. On the whole we pride ourselves (and justly I 

 believe) on the general advance in humanity ; yet we know that to-day 

 the merest savages can only shudder at a civilisation whose public opinion 

 allows as amongst us the rich to wallow in their wealth while the poor 

 are systematically starving ; and it is certain that the vivisection of ani- 



' Modern writers fixing their regard on the physical side of this love (necessary no 

 doubt here, as elsewhere, to define and corroborate the spiritual) have entered their pro- 

 test as against the mere obscenity into which the thing fell for instance in the days of 

 Martial but have missed the profound significance of the heroic attachment itself. It is, 

 however, with the ideals that we are just now concerned and not with their disintegra- 

 tion. 



