Every town was full of resident aliens
and emancipated slaves, persons between whom and the citizens nature had
established no connection, and whose presence in the city had originally
been barely tolerated from motives of expediency. The selfishness of
modern times exists in defiance of morality, in ancient times it was
approved, sheltered, and even in part enjoined by morality. We are
therefore to consider the ancient world as a society of men in whom
natural humanity existed but had been, as it were, crusted or frosted
over. Inveterate feuds and narrow-minded local jealousies, arising out
of an isolated position or differences of language and institutions, had
created endless divisions between man and man. And as the special
virtues of antiquity, patriotism and all that it implies, had been in a
manner caused and fostered by these very divisions, they were not
regarded as evils but rather cherished as essential to morality.
Selfishness, therefore, was not a mere abuse or corruption arising out
of the infirmity of human nature, but a theory and almost a part of
moral philosophy.
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