A Materialism For The Masses PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892 edition. Excerpt: ... through the destruction of the old political forms, and the rise of scepticism and introduction of foreign cults. That the progress of civilisation did not substitute new and superior virtues--" gentler manners and enlarged benevolence"--in place of the old ones, is attributed to three causes: the Empire, slavery, and the gladiatorial games. Does this not involve a confusion of cause and effect? Compare the admirable contrast just before drawn by Lecky himself between the noble sentiments of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and the character of the masses over whom he ruled. The individual can raise himself with the help uf philosophy to ethical principles which are independent of religion and politics; the masses of the people found morality--and that still more in antiquity than in our own days--only in the connection, which had been taught in local traditions, and had become inseparable, of the general and the individual, of the permanently valid and the variable; and accordingly the great centralisation of the world-empire must in this sphere have exercised everywhere, alike amongst conquerors and conquered, a dissolving and disturbing influence. Where, howover, is the " normal condition of society " (Leeky, loc. cit., p. 271) which could forthwith replace by new ones the virtues of the perishing social order? Time, above all things, and, as a rule, also the appearance of a new type of people, are needed for the fusion of moral principles with sensational elements and fanciful additions. And so the same process of accumulation and concentration which developed the ancient civilisation to its utmost point appears also as the cause of its fall. In fjtct, the peculiarly enthusiastic feature of the fermenting process from which mediseval...