The moral anomalies of such a state of society are not
justly to be charged upon any class of events immediately connected
with them, and those events are most entitled to our approbation which
could dissolve it most expeditiously. It is unfortunate for those who
cannot distinguish words from thoughts, that many of these anomalies
have been incorporated into our popular religion.
It was not until the eleventh century that the effects of the poetry
of the Christian and chivalric systems began to manifest themselves.
The principle of equality had been discovered and applied by Plato in
his Republic, as the theoretical rule of the mode in which the materials
of pleasure and of power produced by the common skill and labour of
human beings ought to be distributed among them. The limitations of
this rule were asserted by him to be determined only by the sensibility
of each, or the utility to result to all. Plato, following the doctrines
of Timaeus and Pythagoras, taught also a moral and intellectual system
of doctrine, comprehending at once the past, the present, and the
future condition of man.
Pages:
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433