REV. W. R. INGE, D.D., ON FREEDOM AND DISCIPLINE. 247 



City States of ancient Greece and mediaeval Italy, have had a 

 short life and a merry one. A thoughtful writer, H. R. Marshall, 

 argues that Reason, the experimental, innovating spirit, is the 

 social form of the tendency to variation, instinct, the con- 

 servative, disciplined spirit, of the tendency to persistence. 

 Most variations fail to establish themselves, and therefore it is 

 safer to follow instinct. " Common practice and normal beliefs," 

 he says, " are closely related to instinctive capacities, and to 

 some extent represent the effective experience of the race. 

 If, then, we displace them, we should use the greatest care not 

 to displace their resultants in the life of action." History seems 

 to show — and this is to me a very interesting fact — that the 

 evil consequences of rash liberty are exhibited neither in the 

 routine of ordinary life, which has become so deeply rooted in 

 habit as to be almost a matter of instinct, and is therefore to 

 a large extent immune to the innovating temper, nor in the highest 

 spiritual life, which is so recent and insecure an acquisition that 

 its tender growth is stiiSed by repression and requires freedom 

 for its development, but in the intermediate field of morality, 

 where the protection of consecrated custom seems to be almost 

 necessary. The moral consciousness has not had a long enough 

 racial history to act automatically ; it has to struggle against 

 various impulses and instincts which are older than itself. It 

 is based largely on racial experience of comparatively recent date, 

 and the independent judgment of the individual can by no 

 means always be trusted to coincide with the stored experience 

 of society at large. Therefore adventurous, free-thinking 

 societies, which have rejected the trammels of authority, 

 generally come to grief because their intellectual development 

 far outstrips their moral practice. The Romans knew that 

 they were intellectually inferior to the Greeks ; but they also 

 perceived that the Greeks were " too clever by half " even for 

 their own interests, and they despised them for their untrust- 

 worthiness and moral levity. Quite rightly they recognized 

 the greater survival-value of their own reverence for custom : 

 Morihus antiquis stat res Romana virisque. 



Even more startling than the obliquities of Hellenic morality 

 are the viciousness and criminality of the Italian republics 

 of the Renaissance, during the period of their most brilliant 

 achievements in art and literature. The same tendency to 

 moral shipwreck is sometimes seen in the boldest and freest 

 individual characters ; though many courageous navigators 



