Mediaeval Socialism | Page 4

come to justify by so different a method of argument. Thus, by the late Roman lawyers private property was upheld on the grounds that it had been found necessary by the human race in its advance along the road of life. To our modern ways of thinking it seems as though they had almost stumbled upon the theory of evolution, the gradual unfolding of social and moral perfection due to the constant pressure of circumstances, and the ultimate survival of what was most fit to survive. It was almost by a principle of natural selection that mankind was supposed to have determined the necessity of civil authority, slavery, private property, and the rest. The pragmatic test of life had been applied and had proved their need.
A third powerful influence in the development of Christian social teaching must be added to the others in order the better to grasp the mental attitude of the mediaeval thinkers. This was the rise and growth of monasticism. Its early history has been obscured by much legendary detail; but there is sufficient evidence to trace it back far into the beginnings of Christianity. Later there had come the stampede into the Thebaid, where both hermit life and the gathering together of many into a community seem to have been equally allowed as methods of asceticism. But by the fifth century, in the East and the West the movement had been effectively organised. First there was the canonical theory of life, introduced by St. Augustine. Then St. Basil and St. Benedict composed their Rules of Life, though St. Benedict disclaimed any idea of being original or of having begun something new. Yet, as a matter of fact, he, even more efficiently than St. Basil, had really introduced a new force into Christendom, and thereby became the undoubted father of Western monasticism.
Now this monasticism had for its primary intention the contemplation of God. In order to attain this object more perfectly, certain subsidiary observances were considered necessary. Their declared purpose was only to make contemplation easier; and they were never looked upon as essential to the monastic profession, but only as helps to its better working. Among these safeguards of monastic peace was included the removal of all anxieties concerning material well-being. Personal poverty--that is, the surrender of all personal claim to things the care of which might break in upon the fixed contemplation of God--was regarded as equally important for this purpose as obedience, chastity, and the continued residence in a certain spot. It had indeed been preached as a counsel of perfection by Christ Himself in His advice to the rich young man, and its significance was now very powerfully set forth by the Benedictine and other monastic establishments.
It is obvious that the existence of institutions of this kind was bound to exercise an influence upon Christian thought. It could not but be noticed that certain individual characters, many of whom claimed the respect of their generation, treated material possessions as hindrances to spiritual perfection. Through their example private property was forsworn, and community of possession became prominently put forward as being more in accordance with the spirit of Christ, who had lived with His Apostles, it was declared, out of the proceeds of a common purse. The result, from the point of view of the social theorists of the day, was to confirm the impression that private property was not a thing of much sanctity. Already, as we have seen, the Fathers had been brought to look at it as something sinful in its origin, in that the need of it was due entirely to the fall of our first parents. Then the legalists of Rome had brought to this the further consideration that mere expedience, universal indeed, but of no moral sanction, had dictated its institution as the only way to avoid continual strife among neighbours. And now the whole force of the religious ideals of the time was thrown in the same balance. Eastern and Western monasticism seemed to teach the same lesson, that private property was not in any sense a sacred thing. Rather it seemed to be an obstacle to the perfect devotion of man's being to God; and community of possession and life began to boast itself to be the more excellent following of Christ.
Finally it may be asserted that the social concept of feudalism lent itself to the teaching of the same lesson. For by it society was organised upon a system of land tenure whereby each held what was his of one higher than he, and was himself responsible for those beneath him in the social scale. Landowners, therefore, in the modern sense of the term, had no existence--there were only landholders. The idea of absolute dominion without condition and without definite duties could have occurred to