as right is δίκη; justice as duty is δικαιοσύνη. Courage and justice are the two great social virtues; courage is the essence and the attribute of man, avopeía. Justice is the guarantee of right, and courage is its safeguard; therefore duty is the affirmation and revindication of right.

The principle of polytheism is the independence of forces; in the universe and in human societies, order results from the concert of free wills; social right is based on individual right; the authority of law reposes on the consent of all. The city, the republic, róλis, is a voluntary society which has for its normal conditions liberty and equality, the independence of each, but also the subordination of the individual to the whole. Law is not imposed by a will that is dominant and powerful upon feeble and yielding wills; not even by Divine power upon human weakness, but it is the free and spontaneous agreement among equals. In order that such co-ordination may be maintained, moderation, or consideration for others, becomes necessary. Do to others as ye would they should do to you is a maxim frequently insisted on.1 "Do no ill to any one," says Theognis: "consideration beseems the just." "Love those who love you," says Hesiod; "give to those who give to you."2 When your neighbour acknowledges his fault, restore to him your friendship." 3

In the early ages manual work was regarded as virtuous, because it conduced to the welfare of the state. According to Hesiod, it procures the favour of the Divinity on those who execute it with diligence; and this labour, which is the means of preserving life with honesty and modesty, he opposes with all his force to the criminal mode of gaining

1 Hesychius : Bouzyges. See Creuzer: Orat. de Civit. Athen. p. 11; Isocrates Orat. ad Nicocl. c. 61; c. 49.

2 Works and Days, i. v. 284.

3 Ib. 330.

4 Ib. 213.

wealth-theft and rapine. Theognis says: "Choose rather to live righteously with small means, than to be rich, having gotten riches unjustly. In justice is all virtue collectively, yea, and every man, if just, is good." 1

The sum of duties to a Greek was the merging of his personality in the state. The position he was to occupy in the community was not left to his arbitrary choice, but it was traced beforehand for him. Morality and virtue consisted in the conformity of the individual will to that of the body corporate; that was just which benefited the state, and that was heroic virtue, meriting canonization, which consisted in self-sacrifice for the good of others.

Beautiful and grand as is the ethical doctrine of Greek polytheism, as a system it is faulty. It viewed man only in the light of his relation to other men, and wholly omitted to see him in his relation to himself. Consequently there

was no cheek provided against that immorality which is not political. He was ruled in his dealings with the commonwealth; he was free to do what he liked as an individual. The education of children in the paths of virtue, which was strictly insisted on by many ancient religions, was left arbitrary to the Greeks; and Aristotle rebuked them for allowing their children to grow up as wild as the beasts.2 No incentive was held out to labour, and the maxims of Hesiod were forgotten. Herodotus wondered whence they had acquired their contempt for labour, whilst the barbarians actively encouraged the mechanical arts.3 Of twenty thousand Athenians, Demosthenes tells us, every one spent his time in the agora, for the first thoughts of the poorest Athenian citizen was to be idle, and trouble 1 Theog. ed. Gaisford, v. 143-50.

3 Herod. ii. 167.

2 Pol. viii. 4.

4 Demosth. Aristog. i. 51.

himself only with the business of state, and to be supported by the state.

Licentiousness knew no bounds, for religion had not attempted to check it. Few could be found who did not cheat the state as opportunities were afforded;1 no one could trust his neighbour; and Greek shamelessness, wanton debauchery, cupidity, and lying became proverbial.2

This demoralization, if not due to the religion of the state, was at least not hindered by it. The morals of London may be no better than those of Corinth, but Christian immorality contravenes the emphatic ethical teaching of Christian religion, whereas the polytheism of the Greek set before the imagination gods committing every impurity and treachery which degraded that highly gifted people.

If now we set ourselves to examine the ethics of the Scandinavian polytheist, we shall find evidence of similar moral workings; but in Norway the country passed through great political convulsions, disturbing the religion and the ethics of the people; and only in Iceland was the religion of the Esir permitted to develop a commonwealth, hanging together on principles very similar to those of Greece. To the Norseman, as to the Greek, the race of gods was a race mightier than men, living together in peace and friendship by preserving laws the disturbance of which would break up the constitution of Valhalla, and precipitate the universe into chaos. So on earth, to each individual man belonged freedom as an inalienable right, 1 Polyb. xviii. 17.

2 Plin. Hist. Nat. xv. 5.

Cf. Maury: Religions de la Grèce; Paris, 1859. Ménard: La Morale; Paris, 1860. Das Verhältniss der Moral d. Classichen Alterthums zur Christlichen, in Theologische Studien von Ullmann u. Umbreit; 24th year, 1851. Döllinger: Jew and Gentile; London, 1862.

and interference with the free action of another was morally wrong, because it disturbed the economy of the state. A man might kill another, but if he did so he must declare his name;1 then it ceased to be a sin, and was a social delinquency, and passed into the courts of justice. The execution of justice, according to the Norsemen, lay with the injured person. If he revenged his wrong in secret, it disturbed the public welfare, for it left an act, in which the public had an interest, unredressed. The most prominent virtue of the Norseman was courage. This was occasioned by the peculiarity of his situation; on a shore bare and poor, he was forced to battle with nature, and harry the coasts of more fortunate peoples, to pick up a precarious subsistence. Free as the winds, he yet, like the winds, obeyed law. He elected his lawgiver, and bowed to his decision, without attempting to controvert it. Probably he saw that the bond of law decided on by the community was the guarantee of his own freedom. Robbery and piracy were honoured and respected, especially if the sufferers were the dwellers in other lands; but to creep into a man's house at dead of night and to spoil his goods was regarded as infamy of the deepest dye. Honour, straightforwardness, and manliness were the virtues of the Norse religion. To hold his own, to fear no man, always to do that which he would not blush to do before friend or foe; to be no trucebreaker, no talebearer nor backbiter; to be generous and courteous, hospitable and kindly; such was the ambition of the hardy Norseman, for such a character would ensure fame undying, and admission to Valhalla.2

1 Gisla Saga Surssonnar, p. 22; Copenhagen, 1849. In the' Droplaugasonnar Saga, p. 11, it is said that the gods sent a storm to avenge a murder.

2 Maurer: Die Bekehrung d. Norwegischen Stammes, vol. ii. pp. 148188; München, 1856. Dasent: Burnt Njal, vol. i. pp. xxvii.-xxxv; Edinburgh, 1861.

Grand and noble was the scheme of Northern ethics, but it was deficient in the tender and holy virtues. It resembled the Greek scheme in its fundamental truths, the doctrine of individual independence, and of submission to the general welfare, but it broke down through an exaggeration of the virtue of courage. Courage was a necessity of existence with the Norseman when he lived on piracy, but when his energies turned to commerce it hindered the achievement of success; for, having no foreign foe to fight, and being bound to exhibit his courage, he resented the smallest injury done by a fellow-countryman with his sword, and his little republic of Iceland glared with burning homesteads, and smoked with blood.

The basis of monotheist ethics is altogether different. Submission is the key-note to all the moral harmonies of the monotheistic revelations of antiquity. It is taught that there is one God, independent, arbitrary, jealous of men, stern to avenge impiety. He reveals the truth that He is One to a peculiar people; and that people, fired with enthusiasm, zealous, and glowing with faith, affords the world an example of great virtue, and, at the same time, of great intolerance. Polytheism gives man no law within himself; this monotheism supplies. Polytheism unites man to man in a commonwealth, bound together by voluntary submission; monotheism grinds all men into one mass, and destroys independence of action.

We will take Mosaism and Islamism as examples.

According to the teaching of Moses, the groundwork of all good is not to be sought in man, as the Greek polytheist supposed, but in God: man does what is good, not because he is a member of society, but because it is God's will that be should do that which is right. Man is a member, not