Caesar: A Sketch | Page 8

patterns of courage,
the Lucretias and Virginias of purity, the Decii and Curtii of patriotic
devotion, the Reguli and Fabricii of stainless truthfulness. On the same
principle, too, they had a public officer whose functions resembled

those of the Church courts in mediaeval Europe, a Censor Morum, an
inquisitor who might examine into the habits of private families, rebuke
extravagance, check luxury, punish vice and self-indulgence, nay, who
could remove from the Senate, the great council of elders, persons
whose moral conduct was a reproach to a body on whose reputation no
shadow could be allowed to rest.
Such the Romans were in the day when their dominion had not
extended beyond the limits of Italy; and because they were such they
were able to prosper under a constitution which to modern experience
would promise only the most hopeless confusion.
Morality thus engrained in the national character and grooved into
habits of action creates strength, as nothing else creates it. The
difficulty of conduct does not lie in knowing what it is right to do, but
in doing it when known. Intellectual culture does not touch the
conscience. It provides no motives to overcome the weakness of the
will, and with wider knowledge it brings also new temptations. The
sense of duty is present in each detail of life; the obligatory "must"
which binds the will to the course which right principle has marked out
for it produces a fibre like the fibre of the oak. The educated Greeks
knew little of it. They had courage and genius and enthusiasm, but they
had no horror of immorality as such. The Stoics saw what was wanting,
and tried to supply it; but though they could provide a theory of action,
they could not make the theory into a reality, and it is noticeable that
Stoicism as a rule of life became important only when adopted by the
Romans. The Catholic Church effected something in its better days
when it had its courts which treated sins as crimes. Calvinism, while it
was believed, produced characters nobler and grander than any which
Republican Rome produced. But the Catholic Church turned its
penances into money payments. Calvinism made demands on faith
beyond what truth would bear; and when doubt had once entered, the
spell of Calvinism was broken. The veracity of the Romans, and
perhaps the happy accident that they had no inherited religious
traditions, saved them for centuries from similar trials. They had hold
of real truth unalloyed with baser metal; and truth had made them free
and kept them so. When all else has passed away, when theologies have

yielded up their real meaning, and creeds and symbols have become
transparent, and man is again in contact with the hard facts of nature, it
will be found that the "Virtues" which the Romans made into gods
contain in them the essence of true religion, that in them lies the special
characteristic which distinguishes human beings from the rest of
animated things. Every other creature exists for itself, and cares for its
own preservation. Nothing larger or better is expected from it or
possible to it. To man it is said, you do not live for yourself. If you live
for yourself you shall come to nothing. Be brave, be just, be pure, be
true in word and deed; care not for your enjoyment, care not for your
life; care only for what is right. So, and not otherwise, it shall be well
with you. So the Maker of you has ordered, whom you will disobey at
your peril.
Thus and thus only are nations formed which are destined to endure;
and as habits based on such convictions are slow in growing, so when
grown to maturity they survive extraordinary trials. But nations are
made up of many persons in circumstances of endless variety. In
country districts, where the routine of life continues simple, the type of
character remains unaffected; generation follows on generation exposed
to the same influences and treading in the same steps. But the morality
of habit, though the most important element in human conduct, is still
but a part of it. Moral habits grow under given conditions. They
correspond to a given degree of temptation. When men are removed
into situations where the use and wont of their fathers no longer meets
their necessities; where new opportunities are offered to them; where
their opinions are broken in upon by new ideas; where pleasures tempt
them on every side, and they have but to stretch out their hand to take
them--moral habits yield under the strain, and they have no other
resource to fall back upon. Intellectual cultivation brings with it
rational interests. Knowledge, which looks before and after, acts as a
restraining power, to help conscience when it flags. The sober