t times, through the passions of men, non-Christian and pagan
ideas gain ground and for a time predominate. It is only by dealing
tactfully with human nature and by persistent efforts that the Church
has been enabled to make Christian ideals prevail.

At the dawn of Christianity, slavery was an established institution in
all countries.[478] Some pagan philosophers, like Seneca, maintained
that all men are by nature free and equal, still by the law of nations
slavery was upheld in all lands; and it was an axiom among the ruling
classes, that "the human race exists for the sake of the few."
Aristotle held that no perfect household could exist without slaves
and freemen and that the natural law, as well as the law of nations,
makes a distinction between bond and free.[479] Plato avowed that
every slave's soul was fundamentally corrupt and should not be
trusted.[480] The proportion of slaves to freemen varied in different
countries, though usually the former were largely in excess of the
free population. In Rome for a long time, according to the testimony
of Blair, the slaves were three to one. At one time they became so
formidable there that the Senate, fearing that if conscious of their
own numbers the public safety might be endangered, forbade them a
distinctive dress. Atrocious laws regulated the relations of master
and slaves. The head of the family was absolute master of his slaves,
having over them the power of life and death. Moral and social
degradation was the common lot of slaves. Their wretched condition in
pagan times was often rendered more intolerable by aggravating
circumstances. Many of them had once enjoyed the blessings of freedom,
but had been reduced to bondage by the calamities of war. Unlike the
Negro slaves of America, they were usually of the same color as their
masters; and in some instances, better educated, more refined, and of
more delicate frame, than those whom they served. Epictetus, one of
the ablest of the Stoic philosophers, was a slave. Horace and Juvenal
were the sons of freedmen.[481]

There is something of the ruthlessness of the ancient pagans in the
atrocities practiced in later times, and even in our day, by the
Mohammedans in Africa. Livingstone, Cameron, and still more recently
Cardinal Lavigerie, Archbishop of Carthage, who was furnished with
information by his missionaries, declare that at least 400,000 Negroes
are annually carried into bondage in Africa by Mussulman traders, a