unintelligible, to distrust those who live on the further side of a
river, to suppose that those whom we hear talking together in a foreign
tongue must be plotting some mischief against ourselves. The lapse of
time and the fusion of races doubtless diminished this antipathy
considerably, but at the utmost it could but be transformed into an icy
indifference, for no cause was in operation to convert it into kindness.
On the other hand, the closeness of the bond which united
fellow-citizens was considerably relaxed. Common interests and common
dangers had drawn it close; these in the wide security of the Roman
Empire had no longer a place. It had depended upon an imagined
blood-relationship; fellow-citizens could now no longer feel themselves
to be united by the tie of blood. Every town was full of resident aliens
and emancipated slaves, persons between whom and the citizens nature had
established no connection, and whose presence in the city had originally
been barely tolerated from motives of expediency. The selfishness of
modern times exists in defiance of morality, in ancient times it was
approved, sheltered, and even in part enjoined by morality. We are
therefore to consider the ancient world as a society of men in whom
natural humanity existed but had been, as it were, crusted or frosted
over. Inveterate feuds and narrow-minded local jealousies, arising out
of an isolated position or differences of language and institutions, had
created endless divisions between man and man. And as the special
virtues of antiquity, patriotism and all that it implies, had been in a
manner caused and fostered by these very divisions, they were not
regarded as evils but rather cherished as essential to morality.
Selfishness, therefore, was not a mere abuse or corruption arising out
of the infirmity of human nature, but a theory and almost a part of
moral philosophy. Humanity was cramped by a mistaken prejudice, by a
perverse presumption of the intellect. In a case like this it was
necessary and proper to prescribe humanity by direct authoritative
precept. Such a precept would have been powerless to create the feeling,
nor would it have done much to protect it from being overpowered by the
opposite passion, but the opposite passion of selfishness was at this
period justified by authority and claimed to be on the side of reason
and law. Precept is fairly matched against precept, and what the law of
love and the golden rule did for mankind