Chapter 9 COMPROMISE

ABRAHAM declared that every man is a free agent, responsible only to God. Moses reduced the teachings of Abraham to a written code of moral law, directed to the individual. Christ expanded on these teachings and added a new commandment emphasizing the principle of human brotherhood.

These events marked the turning point in a world which had long been dominated by the gods of superstition – the will-of-the-swarm and the living authorities.

In relation to recorded history, Abraham, Moses, and Christ lived in ancient times; but the pagan view to which they were opposed dates back to the beginning of primitive man, which has been estimated at 500,000 years ago. So, relatively speaking, the foundations of the Hebrew-Christian religion are of modern origin.

The new teachings were too revolutionary to be accepted all at once; even down to this day, they have never been given a thorough trial. But their impact on the deep-seated superstitions was terrific; and history since the time of Christ is largely a record of conflicts and compromises between paganism and freedom.

There had been glimmerings of freedom – perhaps independently of Abraham and the Hebrew prophets – but nowhere else do we find the principles so clearly stated and emphasized as the God-given rights of the individual person.

The Greeks

In ancient Greece, for example, there had been some degree of freedom, but it was on a class basis; and even in the days of their highest culture, the Greeks continued to cherish their pagan gods.

They believed, for example, that a man loved a woman because a god had shot an arrow into his heart. The chubby little figure on our valentines of today was as real to the Greeks as electricity is to present-day Americans.

The Greeks had implicit faith in the ability of the government to take care of their needs. It seems never to have occurred to them that the individual person is self-controlling and responsible for his own acts. They labored under the delusion that their democracy was a guarantee of peace and plenty, not realizing that unrestrained majority-rule always destroys freedom, puts the minority at the mercy of the mob, and works at cross-purposes to the effective use of human energy and individual initiative.^*

Paradoxically, when not kept within bounds, the democratic process has always led to the destruction of democratic ideals and has served as a springboard to dictatorship and war. The temptation to buy votes through governmental spending is too great. Prompted by political ambition or by a sincere desire to do good, and usually by both, a champion of the people emerges with the age-old and appealing promise of “something for nothing"--to be financed through ever-increasing taxes. (See pages 47, 65, 83, 146, 250. Supply and demand are thrown out of gear – the overhead goes up; the effective use of human energy goes down; the standard of living is lowered because money cannot buy wealth that is not produced. No government can support its people, for the simple reason that a government must derive its support from the people.

In Greece, it was the glittering Pericles who, in the role of benefactor, set up and maintained his dictatorship through increased government spending. Then, to divert attention from the impending disaster, he led his followers into the even greater disaster of war against Sparta.

It was the beginning of the end for Greece. But there had been some degree of freedom among the upper classes, and it reflected itself in their contributions to architecture, art, science, and philosophy.

The Romans

Taking advantage of what could be learned from the Greek philosophers, the methodical Romans built a political structure based on codified law. Written codes of law had been in existence prior to the Romans, and even before the time of Moses; but they were little more than expressions of savage superstition. Instead of being based on equity and justice, they were based on cruelty and revenge – “eye for eye, tooth for tooth.”

In ancient Babylon, for example, if a child were killed by a falling roof stone, the builder of the house suffered the penalty of having his own child killed in a similar manner.

But the Romans, in developing their laws, got away from tribal custom and substituted logic in the place of whim and fancy. This was an important contribution. Without written law, no one knows where he stands; but if the law is to be effective over wide areas, it must be based on something more substantial than local superstition.

The far-flung Roman Empire, which included people of vastly different customs and backgrounds, would have been impossible except for the clean-cut and reasonably just code of law under which everyone knew where he stood.

By way of illustration, imagine what would happen in the field of sports – baseball, football, hockey, etc.– if everything were left to the whim and fancy of each umpire and referee. Imagine the confusion that would result if there were no definite and logical rules laid down in advance, agreed to by both sides, and equitably enforced.

The Romans had their “rules of the game"; and generally speaking, these rules were enforced to the letter – impersonally and without prejudice. But there were different laws for different classes of people, so it could hardly be said that the rules were agreed to by both sides.

Each person in each class knew where he stood in relation to the law; and in theory, the privileged class had some say as to the fairness of the law. But dictatorships were frequent, and the interpretation of the law could be changed to meet the needs of the endless emergencies – both real and fancied.

Thus, the principles of freedom were compromised with the pagan idea of authoritarian control. The Romans were never able to solve the problem of true constitutional government. But their partial recognition of human rights under law brought the problem into the open and was not without value in leading to its solution some 1,400 years later. To say the least, the experiences of the Greeks and Romans showed how not to do it.

As will be seen later, the political structure of the United States is radically different from that of the Greeks or the Romans. It is based on the Ten Commandments and on the teachings of Christ. Try to rewrite the Declaration of Independence without reference to the Christian axioms. You’ll find it can’t be done!

The Manichaeans

While the Roman Empire was collapsing under its planned economy, the Christian Church emerged from the chaos as the only coherent group. Under its protection, individual freedom and initiative were encouraged within limits, especially in the noncontroversial areas of art and scientific abstraction.

But the viewpoint persisted that God’s kingdom should assume the form of an earthly monarchy, and there were various conflicts and compromises between the Church and the living authorities.

Persons act in accordance with their beliefs. So far as the laws of physics permit, they create a human world in the image of their God or gods. Medieval Europeans held the pagan belief that an authority controls all men in a static universe.

During the early Christian centuries, most Europeans were followers of Manes – a reformer of the ancient sun worship whose teachings had swept Europe in a wave of religious enthusiasm. They were known as Manichaeans, and they looked upon the universe, not as a unit, but as a vast battleground of conflicting forces. They saw everything in terms of opposites. There was war between light and dark, between good and evil, between soul and body, heat and cold, wet and dry, up and down. War was the natural order of things. It was everywhere and among all things, including men.

Although, as time went on, most of the Manichaeans turned to Christianity, they did not give up their pagan views. They continued to believe that an authority controlled them. They continued to think in terms of opposites. They had no difficulty in accepting the two conflicting views that man is free and that man is not free; that on the one hand, the individual person is self-controlling and on the other hand, he is controlled by great powers outside himself.

Thus, when the Manichaean became a Christian, he believed that his soul belonged to God – or, if he were not careful, to Satan – and that his body belonged to his master. Just where he himself came into the picture isn’t quite clear. But the fact remains that during ages of misery and human degradation, the Church kept alive the principles of common decency, morality, and humaneness – the recognition of human rights and the brotherhood of man.

The Feudal System

The advance of Christianity in Europe resulted in the rise of the feudal system. Under this system, people lived in an invisible world where space and time were not real but where all souls were equal.

Outside the Church, the system was one which men could not endure unless they wholly believed that the universe is static. They could never have borne its stagnating effects if they had ever imagined progress. But they truly thought of the material world as a temporary waiting room – which needn’t be comfortable because one passes through it only on a journey – and that any hardships or inequalities would bring future compensations.

In a sense, the feudal system resembled communism, except that it was set up on a stratified basis. In theory, each class contributed according to its abilities and received according to its needs, which were gauged by the social position of the particular group. Obviously, since the knight’s lady needed a horse to ride, it was only fair and proper that the serf should yoke his wife to the plow.

The absence of responsibility and the freedom from the urge of ambition were not without their compensations. Discontent was reduced, and each class had some degree of economic security. Fastened to the land, a serf could neither leave it nor lose it. He worked it as he was told. He had a fixed share of any crop God might will. He could not risk or lose or gain anything. If another baron seized the land, the serf, as a part of the booty, stayed right on.

Every man had a fixed place in the structure. As a part of his class, he owed a certain duty to each other class and received from each a certain return. Barons owed training and leadership to their knights. Knights owed military service to their barons. Serfs and peasants worked the land and produced all the necessities of life for the upper classes, from whom they, in turn, received protection and justice.

War was the rule rather than the exception, and it raged across the feudal countryside throughout the Dark Ages. But the fighting of wars was on a highly professional basis. It was the sole and exclusive business of knights and barons, and they attended strictly to it – taking only a little time out on Saturday afternoons for a few innocent rounds of highway robbery.

Hunger and famine were also normal. Frequently God’s wrath, they thought, descended in frightful epidemics of cholera, typhus, bubonic plague; and while lords and ladies fled to house parties on the beautiful countryside, the lower classes died so swiftly that the survivors couldn’t bury the corpses.

Progress

But the specialization of effort and the systematizing of war made it possible for human energy to work with some degree of effectiveness. Famines became less frequent. Some of the peasants grew so prosperous that they even wore shoes on holidays, when merry crowds thronged to watch men and women burned alive at the stake, broken on the wheel, or hanged, drawn, and quartered. Craftsmen and artists built beautiful Gothic cathedrals, and nobody minded living huddled around them with few comforts and less sanitation than cattle in pens.

But in spite of its drawbacks, the feudal system was one of the most highly perfected forms of social-economic organization in history. It even had a sort of safety valve to release any undue pressure of energy. A highly gifted boy, even of the lowest class, might, with his master’s permission, learn to read and write so that he could enter the Church. The discipline was strict in the Church, but all men were equal there. Any priest might become a pope; the son of a peasant actually did become a pope.

From the Dark Ages

It was under the feudal system that Europe emerged from the Dark Ages. It is held by some that the height of Old World civilization was reached under the feudal system. But in Continental Europe, only three or four short-lived generations enjoyed the benefits of this perfection. After that, there followed a period of confusion which the textbooks describe as the “rise of nationalism.”

Some of the barons managed to steal a march on other barons and to make themselves kings, and the other barons didn’t quite relish the idea of taking orders from a former fellow-baron. The skirmishes on the countryside were supplanted by major wars between ambitious nations, and the peasants were called from their plows to follow the banners of nationalism.

Even in Catholic countries, Europeans began to accept the theory that the king partakes of the divinity of God and that the child of a king is the natural heir to this divine endowment. This compromise was a backward step. In Europe, it wrecked the feudal system, the existence of which depended on maintaining a communal balance between classes. The reversion to pagan beliefs upset this balance and resulted in nationalism and war.

Magna Charta

Only in Britain was the feudal system kept intact – properly balanced and improved. On their sea-guarded island, the British barons successfully resisted their kings. At Runnymede in the year 1215, their armed forces so frightened King John that he signed an agreement to respect feudal customs.

The Magna Charta was an admission from the King that his power was not unlimited. As a written statement of British liberties, it has preserved the best values of the feudal system and has served as the foundation for building the British Empire.

But a grant of freedom is a denial of the fact that the individual is naturally free. A thing that can be given to one person by another person can also be taken away.^*

The point is that freedom exists in nature; it is the individual person’s inherent, inalienable self-control – a natural function of the human being. It is the same as life itself. Man is endowed with liberty by the Creator, just as he is endowed with life and with the power of reason.

To speak of liberty as a grant of permission – by one person to another person or by a so-called government to its so-called subjects – is within itself a denial of the principle of individual freedom. Such a denial is based on the assumption that human beings are incapable of taking care of themselves; that they must be held subservient to an authority which controls their actions and is responsible for their welfare.

Industry and Commerce

The English modified this pagan belief as far as it could be modified under the feudal system; and while other governments used military force to enlarge the area of their rule, the British merely permitted its traders to trade.

In a world of war-made empires, the British – with the exception of their few lapses into arbitrary planning and their stupid interference with the early American colonies – have used force primarily to protect the essential functions of industry and commerce.

Continental Europeans, whose ancestors abandoned the human values of feudalism, are inclined to sneer at the English as a nation of shopkeepers and hypocrites. But only the English – by granting to each individual the human rights within his class – have stood for the true values of feudalism.

British authority, in contrast to that of ancient Rome, is tempered with a quality of humaneness. British laws, based on the Ten Commandments, are designed to protect the individual and are administered with a fine sense of equity and with a consideration of human rights.

The solitary colonial administrator – full of fever and quinine, in topee and mosquito boots – doggedly does his duty, looking after the savages under his care. He claims no more for himself than his own human rights in his own class. He does not regard the savage as his social equal, any more than he considers himself to be the social equal of an earl. In the sight of God and British justice, all men are equal – and in this world, each man has his place.

Although founded on inconsistencies, British feudalism, tempered with the British sense of fair play, made a greater contribution to progress than can ever be expected from any trend toward Marxism.

But so much for the compromises which are presented as a background for the second and third attempts to establish individual freedom. While Europe was still stagnating in the Dark Ages – and several centuries before Britain had its Magna Charta – a dynamic but little-known civilization, based on a recognition of personal freedom, was blazing in the Near East and spreading along the shores of the Mediterranean.

^* It seems unfortunate that so many Americans have lost sight of the fact that our government was designed, not as a democracy, but as a republic. It is interesting to note that the word democracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence or in the Constitution or in the Bill of Rights; and I have been told that prior to 1913, it had never been used in any official presidential statement. Belief in the democratic process as a defense of liberty and freedom may be just as ineffective as was the faith of the French in their Maginot line. (See Chapter 15.)

^* In France, Hungary, and Spain, the kings also signed “Magna Chartas,” but these were repudiated by later kings.