of property in his Politics, says that the acquisition of property is morally justifiable only as property is necessary material in household management.The acquisition of property through trade has no limits. Property in the household is organized with reference to the ideal of a good life. The state, according to Aristotle, should check those whose desire for property is not controlled by the ideal of a good life. There is no limit to the desire for wealth which arises from exchange. The good life is the ideal limit to the acquisition of property; in trade, as a distinct art, there is no limiting moral ideal. Therefore, the state should limit those individuals whose desire for dominates their entire life.

property

There is in Plato the same dualism between the will and material objects which we find in the New Testament. Plato's virtues of justice, wisdom, courage, and temperance are organized in a hierarchy in which the control of property tends to be subordinated to the "higher" virtues. But this Platonic dualism is not representative of the Greek morality of the golden fifth century. In the classical types of architecture there was no dualism of form and matter. The ideal forms were literally incarnated in actual marble. In the same way statuary incarnated the ideal human form freed from its imperfections in individual cases. Greek thought at its best was not an ascetic subordination of lower to higher. It aimed at seeing something of the whole of life in the functioning of each part. The moral thought of the age of Pericles looked ahead; it did not look away. The moral dualism between the will and things by making an inner will an

end in itself set the world of property free from an organizing moral tradition. Thus a theoretical moral formalism led to a practical moral materialism. But this was a post-Socratic development.

CHAPTER VI

THE EARLY HEBREW CONSCIOUSNESS OF SOLIDARITY

The earliest bond of solidarity was the tie of blood. The Israelites regarded themselves as descended from one ancestor, Abraham. The Old Testament refers to the Hebrews as a flock, a vine. This blood solidarity expressed itself in the idea that the Hebrews were a chosen people; and this particularism survived even the universalism of the later prophets. It made intermarriage during the exile a very serious problem. The Hebrew slave was on a different basis from the slave of foreign descent. The early Hebrew family was not a family in our modern sense; it was a clan family. This clan family and the tribe were the fundamental social units of Hebrew life. When, after the murder of Abel, Cain was driven out of his blood-group, he exclaimed: "every one that findeth me shall slay me."

The solidarity between the individual and his various social groups strikes our individualistic minds with amazement. "And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan, the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent and all that he had . . . and all Israel . . . burned them with fire" (Josh. 7). Not only Achan's family, but his inanimate possessions, were

infected with his guilt. The land where one lives shares the moral qualities of one's will: "Blood defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it" (Numbers 35:33). Even guilt which is undiscovered must be washed away from both people and land (Deut. 21:1-9).

Even Jehovah himself was mentally and morally attached to the land where his people dwelt. When David is driven by Saul from the sacred soil of Israel he is driven from "the inheritance of the Lord" where he must "serve other gods" (I Sam. 26:19).

The consciousness of solidarity which voices itself in the Song of Deborah moves the heart like the powerful harmony of a great orchestra (Judg. 5). One must read the whole song to feel its movement and its power. Jael is immortalized as a heroine because she enticed the Canaanite leader, Sisera, into her tent, and, when he fell asleep, took his life. Blessed-so runs the account-shall she be above women; when Sisera asked for water she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish. She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workman's hammer; with the hammer she smote off Sisera's head; at her feet he bowed, and where he bowed, he fell down dead.

The source of Samson's strength was in his unshaven locks because they were the symbol of an earlier nomadic clan-brotherhood (Judg. 16:5, 1620). The spirit of his will was broken when it was disassociated from the power of ancestral tradition. When he was in the grip of this ancestral tradi

tion, he could slay his thousands even with the jawbone of an ass. He died obedient to the voice of the clan; and "the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life" (Judg. 16:30). And the loyalty and solidarity of these tentdwellers who refused to plant fields and live in houses are held up by Jeremiah as an object lesson to his generation (Jer. 35).

The most powerful tabu the ancient Hebrew could utter was this: "No such thing ought to be done in Israel" (II Sam. 13:12). Solidarity was more real than individuality (Prov. 25:28).

As in China today, the ultimate source of authority in Israel was public opinion. In cases of dispute the individual went "up to the gate unto the elders" (Deut. 25:7-8). In the case of a rebellious son, "his father and his mother shall lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; and they shall say unto the elders of the city, 'This, our son, is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice' And all Israel shall hear and

fear" (Deut. 21:18-21).

The closing statement in Judges: "every man did that which was right in his own eyes," means that in the period of the Judges there was no central authority and that authority rested in the local kinship groups.

This consciousness of solidarity was greatly strengthened by the final conquest of Canaan and the centralization of the national life in the capital city of Zion, under the leadership of David. The Ark of Jehovah was taken by David to Jerusalem with dancing