On the same
principle, too, they had a public officer whose functions resembled those
of the Church courts in mediaeval Europe, a Censor Morum, an inquisitor
who might examine into the habits of private families, rebuke
extravagance, check luxury, punish vice and self-indulgence, nay, who
could remove from the Senate, the great council of elders, persons whose
moral conduct was a reproach to a body on whose reputation no shadow could
be allowed to rest.
Such the Romans were in the day when their dominion had not extended
beyond the limits of Italy; and because they were such they were able to
prosper under a constitution which to modern experience would promise only
the most hopeless confusion.
Morality thus engrained in the national character and grooved into habits
of action creates strength, as nothing else creates it. The difficulty of
conduct does not lie in knowing what it is right to do, but in doing it
when known. Intellectual culture does not touch the conscience. It
provides no motives to overcome the weakness of the will, and with wider
knowledge it brings also new temptations. The sense of duty is present in
each detail of life; the obligatory "must" which binds the will to the
course which right principle has marked out for it produces a fibre like
the fibre of the oak. The educated Greeks knew little of it.
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