THREE:Thus with Plutarch, as with his master Plato, a future world is the grand court of appeal from the anomalies and inequalities of this world; and, following the example of the Gorgias and the Republic, he reserves to the last a terrible picture of the torments held in store for those who have not expiated their transgressions on earth, describing them as they are supposed to have been witnessed by a human soul temporarily separated from the body for the purpose of viewing and reporting on this final manifestation of divine justice. It would appear, however, from the narrative in question that future punishments are not eternal. After a more or less protracted period of expiation, the immortal soul is restored to the upper world, under whatever embodiment seems most appropriate to its former career. Among those whose turn has arrived for entering on a new existence at the moment when Plutarchs visitor makes his descent to hell, is the soul of Nero. The wicked Emperor has just been condemned to assume the form of a viper, when a great light shines forth, and from the midst of the light a voice is heard crying:268 Let him reappear under the guise of a song-bird haunting the neighbourhood of marshes and meres; for he has already paid the penalty of his guilt, and the gods owe him some kindness for having liberated Greece, the best and most beloved by them of all the nations that he ruled.Still more important was the antithesis between Nature and convention, which, so far as we know, originated exclusively with Hippias. We have already observed that universality and necessity were, with the Greeks, standing marks of naturalness. The customs of different countries were, on the other hand, distinguished by extreme variety, amounting sometimes to diametrical opposition. Herodotus was fond of calling attention to such contrasts; only, he drew from them the conclusion that law, to be so arbitrary, must needs possess supreme and sacred authority. According to the more plausible interpretation of Hippias, the variety, and at least in Greek democracies, the changeability of law proved that it was neither sacred nor binding. He also looked on artificial social institutions as the sole cause of division and discord among mankind. Here we already see the dawn of a cosmopolitanism afterwards preached by Cynic and82 Stoic philosophers. Furthermore, to discover the natural rule of right, he compared the laws of different nations, and selected those which were held by all in common as the basis of an ethical system.63 Now, this is precisely what was done by the Roman jurists long afterwards under the inspiration of Stoical teaching. We have it on the high authority of Sir Henry Maine that they identified the Jus Gentium, that is, the laws supposed to be observed by all nations alike, with the Jus Naturale, that is, the code by which men were governed in their primitive condition of innocence. It was by a gradual application of this ideal standard that the numerous inequalities between different classes of persons, enforced by ancient Roman law, were removed, and that contract was substituted for status. Above all, the abolition of slavery was, if not directly caused, at any rate powerfully aided, by the belief that it was against Nature. At the beginning of the fourteenth century we find Louis Hutin, King of France, assigning as a reason for the enfranchisement of his serfs, that, according to natural law, everybody ought to be born free, and although Sir H. Maine holds this to have been a mistaken interpretation of the juridical axiom omnes homines natura aequales sunt, which means not an ideal to be attained, but a primitive condition from which we have departed: nevertheless it very faithfully reproduces the theory of those Greek philosophers from whom the idea of a natural law was derived. That, in Aristotles time at least, a party existed who were opposed to slavery on theoretical grounds of right is perfectly evident from the language of the Politics. Some persons, says Aristotle, think that slave-holding is against nature, for that one man is a slave and another free by law, while by nature there is no difference between them, for which reason it is unjust as being the result of force.64 And he proceeds to prove the contrary at length. The same doctrine of natural equality led to important political consequences, having, again according to Sir83 H. Maine, contributed both to the American Declaration of Independence and to the French Revolution.
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