Part 6 (1/2)
We now realize more clearly than did Lecky that the Church was really a State in the Middle Ages, with its own laws and courts and prisons and regular taxation to which all were subject. It had all the interests and all the touchiness of a State, and more. The heretic was a traitor and a rebel. He thought that he could get along without the pope and bishops, and that he could well spare the ministrations of the orthodox priests and escape their exactions. He was the ”anarchist”, the ”Red” of his time, who was undermining established authority, and, with the approval of all right-minded citizens, he was treated accordingly. For the mediaeval citizen no more conceived of a State in which the Church was not the dominating authority than we can conceive of a society in which the present political State may have been superseded by some other form of organization.
Yet the inconceivable has come to pa.s.s. Secular authority has superseded in nearly all matters the old ecclesiastical regime. What was the supreme issue of the Middle Ages--the distinction between the religious heretic and the orthodox--is the least of public questions now.
What, then, we may ask, has been the outcome of the old religious persecutions, of the trials, tortures, imprisonings, burnings, and ma.s.sacres, culminating with the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes?
What did the Inquisition and the censors.h.i.+p, both so long unquestioned, accomplish? Did they succeed in defending the truth or ”safeguarding” society? At any rate, conformity was not established.
Nor did the Holy Roman Church maintain its monopoly, although it has survived, purified and freed from many an ancient abuse. In most countries of western Europe and in our own land one may now believe as he wishes, teach such religious views as appeal to him, and join with others who share his sympathies. ”Atheism” is still a shocking charge in many ears, but the atheist is no longer an outlaw. _It has been demonstrated, in short, that religious dogma can be neglected in matters of public concern and reduced to a question of private taste and preference_.
This is an incredible revolution. But we have many reasons for suspecting that in a much shorter time than that which has elapsed since the Inquisition was founded, the present attempt to eliminate by force those who contemplate a fundamental reordering of social and economic relations will seem quite as inexpedient and hopeless as the Inquisition's effort to defend the monopoly of the mediaeval Church.
We can learn much from the past in regard to wrong ways of dealing with new ideas. As yet we have only old-fas.h.i.+oned and highly expensive modes of meeting the inevitable changes which are bound to take place.
Repression has now and then enjoyed some temporary success, it is true, but in the main it has failed lamentably and produced only suffering and confusion. Much will depend on whether our purpose is to keep things as they are or to bring about readjustments designed to correct abuses and injustice in the present order. Do we believe, in other words, that truth is finally established and that we have only to defend it, or that it is still in the making? Do we believe in what is commonly called progress, or do we think of that as belonging only to the past? Have we, on the whole, arrived, or are we only on the way, or mayhap just starting?
In the Middle Ages, even in the times of the Greeks and Romans, there was little or no conception of progress as the word is now used. There could doubtless be improvement in detail. Men could be wiser and better or more ignorant and perverse. But the a.s.sumption was that in general the social, economic, and religious order was fairly standardized.
This was especially true in the Middle Ages. During these centuries men's single objective was the a.s.surance of heaven and escape from h.e.l.l. Life was an angry river into which men were cast. Demons were on every hand to drag them down. The only aim could be, with G.o.d's help, to reach the celestial sh.o.r.e. There was no time to consider whether the river might be made less dangerous by concerted effort, through the deflection of its torrents and the removal of its sharpest rocks.
No one thought that human efforts should be directed to making the lot of humanity progressively better by intelligent reforms in the light of advancing knowledge.
The world was a place to escape from on the best terms possible. In our own day this mediaeval idea of a static society yields only grudgingly, and the notion of inevitable vital change is as yet far from a.s.similated. We confess it with our lips, but resist it in our hearts. We have learned as yet to respect only one cla.s.s of fundamental innovators, those dedicated to natural science and its applications. The social innovator is still generally suspect.
To the mediaeval theologian, man was by nature vile. We have seen that, according to the Christian Epic, he was a.s.soiled from birth with the primeval sin of his first parents, and began to darken his score with fresh offenses of his own as soon as he became intelligent enough to do so. An elaborate mechanism was supplied by the Church for was.h.i.+ng away the original pollution and securing forgiveness for later sins.
Indeed, this was ostensibly its main business.
We may still well ask, Is man by nature bad? And accordingly as we answer the question we either frame appropriate means for frustrating his evil tendencies or, if we see some promise in him, work for his freedom and bid him take advantage of it to make himself and others happy. So far as I know, Charron, a friend of Montaigne, was one of the first to say a good word for man's animal nature, and a hundred years later the amiable Shaftesbury pointed out some honestly gentlemanly traits in the species. To the modern student of biology and anthropology man is neither good nor bad. There is no longer any ”mystery of evil”. But the mediaeval notion of _sin_--a term heavy with mysticism and deserving of careful scrutiny by every thoughtful person--still confuses us.
Of man's impulses, the one which played the greatest part in mediaeval thoughts of sin and in the monastic ordering of life was the s.e.xual.
The presuppositions of the Middle Ages in the matter of the relations of men and women have been carried over to our own day. As compared with many of the ideas which we have inherited from the past, they are of comparatively recent origin. The Greeks and Romans were, on the whole, primitive and uncritical in their view of s.e.x. The philosophers do not seem to have speculated on s.e.x, although there was evidently some talk in Athens of women's rights. The movement is satirized by Aristophanes, and later Plato showed a willingness in _The Republic_ to impeach the current notions of the family and women's position in general.
But there are few traces of our ideas of s.e.xual ”purity” in the cla.s.sical writers. To the Stoic philosopher, and to other thoughtful elderly people, s.e.xual indulgence was deemed a low order of pleasure and one best carefully controlled in the interests of peace of mind.
But with the incoming of Christianity an essentially new att.i.tude developed, which is still, consciously or unconsciously, that of most people to-day.
St. Augustine, who had led a free life as a teacher of rhetoric in Carthage and Rome, came in his later years to believe, as he struggled to overcome his youthful temptations, that s.e.xual desire was the most devilish of man's enemies and the chief sign of his degradation. He could imagine no such unruly urgence in man's perfect estate, when Adam and Eve still dwelt in Paradise. But with man's fall s.e.xual desire appeared as the sign and seal of human debas.e.m.e.nt. This theory is poignantly set forth in Augustine's _City of G.o.d_. He furnished therein a philosophy for the monks, and doubtless his fourteenth book was well thumbed by those who were wont to ponder somewhat wistfully on one of the sins they had fled the world to escape.
Christian monasticism was spreading in western Europe in Augustine's time, and the monkist vows included ”chast.i.ty”. There followed a long struggle to force the whole priesthood to adopt a celibate life, and this finally succeeded so far as repeated decrees of the Church could effect it. Marriage was proper for the laity, but both the monastic and secular clergy aspired to a superior holiness which should banish all thoughts of fervent earthly love. Thus a highly unnatural life was accepted by men and women of the most varied temperament and often with slight success.
The result of Augustine's theories and of the efforts to frustrate one of man's most vehement impulses was to give s.e.x a conscious importance it had never possessed before. The devil was thrust out of the door only to come in at all the windows. In due time the Protestant sects abolished monasteries, and the Catholic countries later followed their example. The Protestant clergy were permitted to marry, and the old asceticism has visibly declined. But it has done much to determine our whole att.i.tude toward s.e.x, and there is no cla.s.s of questions still so difficult to discuss with full honesty or to deal with critically and with an open mind as those relating to the intimate relations of men and women.
No one familiar with mediaeval literature will, however, be inclined to accuse its authors of prudishness. Nevertheless, modern prudishness, as it prevails especially in England and the United States--our squeamish and shamefaced reluctance to recognize and deal frankly with the facts and problems of s.e.x--is clearly an outgrowth of the mediaeval att.i.tude which looked on s.e.xual impulse as of evil origin and a sign of man's degradation. Modern psychologists have shown that prudishness is not always an indication of exceptional purity, but rather the reverse. It is often a disguise thrown over repressed s.e.xual interest and s.e.xual preoccupations. It appears to be decreasing among the better educated of the younger generation. The study of biology, and especially of embryology, is an easy and simple way of disintegrating the ”impurity complex”. ”Purity” in the sense of ignorance and suppressed curiosity is a highly dangerous state of mind. And such purity in alliance with prudery and defensive hypocrisy makes any honest discussion or essential readjustment of our inst.i.tutions and habits extremely difficult.
One of the greatest contrasts between mediaeval thinking and the more critical thought of to-day lies in the general conception of man's relation to the cosmos. To the medieval philosopher, as to the stupidest serf of the time, the world was made for man. All the heavenly bodies revolved about man's abode as their center. All creatures were made to a.s.sist or to try man. G.o.d and the devil were preoccupied with his fate, for had not G.o.d made him in his own image for his glory, and was not the devil intent on populating his own infernal kingdom? It was easy for those who had a poetic turn of mind to think of nature's workings as symbols for man's edification. The habits of the lion or the eagle yielded moral lessons or ill.u.s.trated the divine scheme of salvation. Even the written word was to be valued, not for what it seemed to say, but for hidden allegories depicting man's struggles against evil and cheering him on his way.
This is a perennially appealing conception of things. It corresponds to primitive and inveterate tendencies in humanity and gratifies, under the guise of humility, our hungering for self-importance. The mediaeval thinker, however freely he might exercise his powers of logical a.n.a.lysis in rationalizing the Christian Epic, never permitted himself to question its general anthropocentric and mystical view of the world. The philosophic mystic a.s.sumes the role of a docile child.
He feels that all vital truth transcends his powers of discovery. He looks to the Infinite and Eternal Mind to reveal it to him through the prophets of old, or in moments of ecstatic communion with the Divine Intelligence. To the mystic all that concerns our deeper needs transcends logic and defies a.n.a.lysis. In his estimate the human reason is a feeble rushlight which can at best cast a flickering and uncertain ray on the grosser concerns of life, but which only serves to intensify the darkness which surrounds the hidden truth of G.o.d.
In order that modern science might develop it is clear that a wholly new and opposed set of fundamental convictions had to be subst.i.tuted for those of the Middle Ages. Man had to cultivate another kind of self-importance and a new and more profound humility. He had come to believe in his capacity to discover important truth through thoughtful examination of things about him, and he had to recognize, on the other hand, that the world did not seem to be made for him, but that humanity was apparently a curious incident in the universe, and its career a recent episode in cosmic history. He had to acquire a taste for the simplest possible and most thoroughgoing explanation of things. His whole mood had to change and impel him to reduce everything so far as possible to the commonplace.