ze it as [Greek: agape] or consider it a social
instinct as [Greek: philia], cannot be love at all unless it quickens
the intelligence as much as it animates the will. It cannot, except by
some confusion of thought, be held to justify the indulgence of emotion
irrespective of moral and social results. Yet, though this fatal error
may have dominated thought for a long time, it is hardly possible to
attribute it to St Paul's theory of charity when the very practical
nature of Judaism and early Christianity is considered. In his view the
misunderstanding could not arise. And to create a world or "body" of men
and women linked together by love, even though it be outside the normal
life of the community, was to create a new form of religious
organization, and to achieve for it (so far as it was achieved) what,
_mutatis mutandis_, Aristotle held to be the indispensable condition of
social life, friendship ([Greek: philia]), "the greatest good of
states," for "Socrates and all the world declare," he wrote, that "the
unity of the state" is "created by friendship" (Arist. _Pol._ ii. 1262
b).

It should, however, be considered to what extent charity in the
Christian church was devoid of social purpose, (1) The Jewish
conceptions of charity passed, one might almost say, in their
completeness into the Christian church. Prayer, the petition and the
purging of the mind, fasting, the humiliation of the body, and alms,
as part of the same discipline, the submissive renunciation of
possessions--all these formed part of the discipline that was to
create the religious mood. Alms henceforth become a definite part of
the religious discipline and service. Humility and poverty hereafter
appear as yoked virtues, and many problems of charity are raised in
regard to them. The non-Christian no less than the Christian world
appreciated more and more the need of self-discipline ([Greek:
askesis]); and it seems as though in the first two centuries A.D.
those who may have thought of reinvigorating society searched for the
remedy rather in the preaching and practice of temperance than in the
application of ideas that were the outcome of the observation of
social or economic conditions. Having no object of this kind as its
mark, almsgiving took the place of charity, and, as Christianity
triumphed, the family life, instead of reviving, continued to decay,
while the virtues of the discipline of the body, considered