and people is not so bitter to him as the thought that some mail-clad Achaian might lead Andromache a weeping captive, robbed of the light of freedom. "Me in death," exclaims the Trojan hero, "may the heaped-up earth be covering, ere I hear thy crying and thy carrying into captivity." "So spake glorious Hector, and took up his horse-hair crested helmet; and his dear wife departed to her home, oft looking back and letting fall big tears."

Through the family, the individual was linked with past and coming generations. The family is the expression of the will to live in organized social form. Through the family the race guarantees its will to live in coming generations. The mediæval ideal of virginity and chastity would have been regarded as sheer madness by classical antiquity. Pride in blood, love of family, self-perpetuation through posterity, were central and dynamic ideals in the Greek mind.

CHAPTER V

PROPERTY IN ANCIENT HEBREW AND GREEK LIFE

Our tradition which treats religion and morals as dealing with inner states of mind and which regards material, economic interests as external to the "inner" mind, would have been totally incomprehensible to the ancient Hebrews. Property was one of the central interests of the moral life. "O give thanks unto the Lord who giveth food to all flesh" (Psalms 136:1, 25). The moral consciousness of the ancient Hebrew was developed in vital touch with his instincts of workmanship and ownership. "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof" (Psalm 24:1).

The right of property came through one's kinship group. The idea of an independent, self-centered individual who must be as free as possible from all social restraint in his economic life would have meant nothing to a member of the early Hebrew community. It was the kinship group through the favor of Yahweh that owned property. Outside this kinship group there were no property rights. The instincts of hunger, of acquisition, of ownership, of workmanship, were organized by a powerful social tradition.

With the conquest of Canaan the Hebrews entered upon an agricultural stage of development. Property began to center in the land. "Wilt thou not

possess that which thy God giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever the Lord our God shall drive out from before us, them will we possess" (Judg. 11:24). “I will give unto thee . . . the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession" (Gen. 17:8). “The land shall not be sold forever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me" (Lev. 25:23). Religion and morality are inseparable from the land: "The land which ye shall inhabit, wherein I dwell" are the words of Yahweh (Numbers 35:34) "Praise ye the Lord who smote great nations and gave their land for a heritage unto Israel his people" (Psalms 135:1, 10,12; Jer. 12:14).

When we read the account of the murder of the male children by Pharaoh in order the better to hold the Hebrews as slaves (Exod. 1), we can appreciate such a pæan of rejoicing as the one hundred and fourteenth Psalm.

Morals and economics are inseparable in the Old Testament. "Thou visitest the earth and waterest it: thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God which is full of water: thou preparest them corn when thou hast so provided for it. Thy paths drop fatness. They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness: and the little hills rejoice on every side. The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered over with corn; they shout for joy, they also sing" (Psalm 65:9-13).

Psalm 104 mentions the "wine that maketh glad the heart of man and oil to make his face to shine and bread which strengtheneth man's heart. The trees of

the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon which he hath planted." "For thou shalt eat the labor of thy hands: happy shalt thou be" (Psalm 128:2).

The transition from the pastoral to the agricultural stage is accompanied by a profound moral strain. This conflict of ideals is crystallized in the story of Cain and Abel. Cain, the agriculturalist, brings to Yahweh the first fruits of the soil; Abel, the shepherd, brings the firstlings of the flock. It is Abel's offering which is pleasing to Yahweh; and it is this preference which occasions Cain's jealousy, a jealousy which prompts the murder of his brother.

In Jer. 35, there is mention of the Rechabites, who drink no wine, sow no seed, have no vineyards, and dwell in tents. Here is a group loyal to the old pastoral ideal. The character of Samson is a crystallization of this ideal. His mother ate nothing that came from the vine and no razor was to come on Samson's head (Judg. 13:5, 14). It was this old tradition wherein Samson's great strength lay (Judg. 16:5). And when Samson had told Delilah all his heart, that there had not come a razor on his head from his mother's womb, and that if he be shaven all his strength would go from him, "she made him sleep upon her knees; and she called for a man and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head . . . and his strength went from him . . . And he wist not that the Lord was departed from him" (Judg. 16: 17-20).

What a wonderful statement of the power of tradition as the necessary support of the human will!

What the agriculturalist produces is more saturated with a sense of his own will than what nature herself provides in the pastoral stage. A heifer that had not worked under the yoke, or soil that was virgin, was holier than a heifer or soil which had been associated with work. Hence the necessity of constant warning not to forget in Canaan that the land, the wealth, the crops, and life itself were gifts from Yahweh.

"The Lord thy God bringeth thee into . . . a land of wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates; a land of oil, olive and honey; a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. When thou hast eaten and art full and hast built goodly houses; and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied, beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents and scorpions and drought; who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not; and thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God; for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth" (Deut. 8).

The statement in First Kings that during the reign of Solomon "Judah and Israel dwelt safely every man under his vine and under his fig tree" (4:25) reflects the economic status after Israel had become an agricultural people. Every man had his inheritance (Prov. 27:8). The social unit of Israel during this agricultural stage was the clan family (Prov. 19: