日本老熟肥女优_日本肥熟女优_日本胖熟女女优_日本超熟女三级视频在线观看

THREE:So far, virtue was with the Greeks what it must inevitably be with all men at first, chiefly self-regarding, a refined form of prudence. Moreover, other-regarding virtues gave less scope for reflection, being originally comprehended under obedience to the law. But there were two circumstances which could not long escape their notice; first, that fraud and violence are often, at least apparently, profitable to those who perpetrate them, a fact bitterly remarked by Hesiod;50 and secondly, that society cannot hold together without justice. It was long before Governments grew up willing and able to protect their subjects from mutual aggressions, nor does positive law create morality, but implies it, and could not be worked without it. Nor could international obligations be enforced by a superior tribunal; hence they have remained down to the present day a fertile theme for ethical discussion. It is at this point that morality forms a junction with religion, the history of which is highly interesting, but which can here be64 only briefly traced. The Olympian divinities, as placed before us by Homer, are anything but moral. Their conduct towards each other is that of a dissolute nobility; towards men it is that of unscrupulous partisans and patrons. A loyal adherence to friends and gratitude for sacrificial offerings are their most respectable characteristics, raising them already a little above the nature-powers whence they were derived. Now, mark how they first become moralised. It is by being made witnesses to an oath. Any one who is called in to testify to a promise feels aggrieved if it is broken, looking on the breach as an insult to his own dignity. As the Third Commandment well puts it, his name has been taken in vain. Thus it happened that the same gods who left every other crime unpunished, visited perjury with severe and speedy retribution, continued even after the offender��s death.51 Respect for a contract is the primary form of moral obligation, and still seems to possess a peculiar hold over uneducated minds. We see every day how many persons will abstain from actions which they know to be immoral because they have given their word to that effect, not because the actions themselves are wrong. And for that reason law courts would be more willing to enforce contracts than to redress injuries. If, then, one person inflicted damage on another, he might afterwards, in order to escape retaliation from the injured party, or from his family, engage to give satisfaction, and the court would compel him to redeem his promise.52 Thus contract, by procuring redress for every species of wrong, would gradually extend its own obligatory character to abstinence from injury in general, and the divine sanctions primarily invoked on behalf of oaths would be extended, with them, over the whole domain of moral conduct.It may be urged that beauty, however difficult of attainment or severe in form, is, after all, essentially superficial; and that a morality elaborated on the same principles will be equally superficial��will, in fact, be little more than the art of keeping up appearances, of displaying fine sentiments, of avoiding those actions the consequences of which are immediately felt to be disagreeable, and, above all, of not needlessly wounding anyone��s sensibilities. Such an imitation of morality��which it would be a mistake to call hypocrisy��has no doubt been common enough among all civilised nations; but there is no reason to believe that it was in any way favoured by the circumstances of Greek life. There is even evidence of a contrary tendency, as, indeed, might be expected among a people whose most important states were saved from the corrupt60ing influences of a court. Where the sympathetic admiration of shallow and excitable spectators is the effect chiefly sought after, the showy virtues will be preferred to the solid, and the appearance to the reality of all virtue; while brilliant and popular qualities will be allowed to atone for the most atrocious crimes. But, among the Greeks of the best period, courage and generosity rank distinctly lower than temperance and justice; their poets and moralists alike inculcate the preference of substance to show; and in no single instance, so far as we can judge, did they, as modern nations often do, for the sake of great achievements condone great wrongs. It was said of a Greek and by a Greek that he did not wish to seem but to be just.46 We follow the judgment of the Greeks themselves in preferring Leonidas to Pausanias, Aristeides to Themistocles, and Socrates to Alcibiades. And we need only compare Epameinondas with David or Pericles with Solomon as national heroes, to perceive at once how much nearer the two Greeks come to our own standard of perfection, and how futile are the charges sometimes brought against those from whose traditions we have inherited their august and stainless fame.