Reich, Emil 1890. Graeco-Roman Institutions, From Anti-Evolutionist Points of View. Roman Law, Classical Slavery, Social Conditions: Four Lectures delivered before the University of Oxford. Oxford: Parker and Co.
The most superficial glance at the development of Western civilization cannot fail to notice that certain nations succeeded in maturing some branches of art to a degree of perfection unknown amongst other peoples. Thus sculpture was brought to its highest pitch of perfection by the Greeks; painting by the Italians and Spaniards; music by the Germans. Science, on the other hand, seems, to use the words of Goethe, to be a fugue, the successive parts of which are formed by the contributions of all nations, and while some nations may boast a greater number of meritorious scientists than others, no nation of Western civilization so completely excels its competitors in the domain of science, as do some in the realm of art. (Reich 1890: 3)
This has at no time been more true than now, and will hopefully continue to be even more true. I'm not sure if all nations have been brought into the fold, though. We can't say, for example, that all nations have a history of cinema, when Afghanistan started making movies this century.
This statement stands in need of no evidence; it is conceded on all hands. It stands, however, in need of an historical and technical explanation. (Reich 1890: 4)
Concessions.
In other words, the Greeks who were the teachers of the Romans in every branch of science and philosophy, were entirely unable to vie with their pupils as to legal science. Whence this remarkable and unexpected superiority of the Romans? How and why could they excel the most gifted nation of all ages in the cultivation of a science, the subject-matter of which was as familiar to the Greeks as to the Romans? For the Greeks were notorious pettifoggers, and there was scarcely a week but what a Greek took part in judicial proceedings, either as one of the numerous judges, or as a witness, or as one of the contending parties. (Reich 1890: 7)
Define:pettifogging - "placing undue emphasis on petty details; petty or trivial".
Are the Romans jurists so much more sagacious or shrewd than the jurists or other nations? Is their practical sense so much stronger, or do they combine theoretical comprehensiveness with practical adroitness in a superior way? (Reich 1890: 7)
Define:sagacious - "having or showing keen mental discernment and good judgement; wise or shrewd"; define:shrewd - "having or showing sharp powers of judgement; astute"; define:adroit - "clever or skilful".
The Romans never suffered their legal institutions to be interlarded with extraneous matter. From the earliest times down to the age of the Emperors, the Romans had a political institution that might have lent itself very easily to an undue interference with institutions of Private Law, after the manner of feudalism. I mean the Roman clientela. Roman client stood so their patroni in a relation not unlike that of a feudal tenant to his lord. They held estates from them, they were obliged to do homage and to discharge some of the duties implied in "feudal incidents." All this surely might have easily been used as a means to unduly influence the development of the Roman Law of real property. (Reich 1890: 9)
"The like holds good of countless idiosyncrasies, for example that tiresome I mean, or the happily nearly obsolete Don't yer know? with which shy and foppish youths are prone to interlard their conversation" (Gardiner 1932: 45-46).
Or take another great political institution of the Romans: I mean the two classes of patricians and plebeians. Nothing is more patent than the constant struggle of the plebeians with the patricians, and the marked difference in their political standing. Did this well-known difference exercise any influence on the private law of the Romans? Do we ever hear of an actio or private right being denied to a Roman because he is a plebeian? There is no trace either in the XII. Tables, or in any later legislation of any thoroughgoing or even important difference between the plebeians and patricians as to "civil" right (taking the word "civil" in its Roman sense) after the middle of the fifth century B.C. A plebeian could acquire real property, contract obligations, marry and will his property according to the same principles of Private Law as a patrician. (Reich 1890: 10)
Legal equality in the ancient world?
I have finally to say a few words about the relation of Roman Private Law to Ethics. Ethical and moral ideas have largely, and often unduly, influenced the unrestrained growth of Private Law. For although Private Law has close relations with Ethics, it contains and comprises leading ideas distinctly different from ethical ideas. Our obligations to a certain individual are quite different when arising from motives of friendship, and when caused by the duties of a legal contract. In fact the domain of Private Law is widely separated from the domain of Ethics. (Reich 1890: 12)
Sounds like Nicomachean Ethics, to be sure.
The principles laid down in this volume will afford ready help in almost every case of Private Law, because they emanate from Private Law alone, and have no tincture of non-legal elements. (Reich 1890: 13)
Define:tincture - "a slight trace of something".
It is the same case with the peculiarly Roman institution of "Patria potestas," which, although long obsolete as such, is still of practical value to all countries where Roman Law has been adopted, as we shall see in our next lecture. (Reich 1890: 14)
Latin: "power of a father". Patriarchy.
We have now to inquire what was the originating cause, [|] the vera causa of this marvellous Law? Why was it that the Romans alone were able to furnish their age and all subsequent ages with law-principles that were as completely divestede of non-legal elements as are the propositions in Euclid of non-mathematical? Before proceeding to a sketch of my view of the vera causa, it will be necessary to premise the views of others. (Reich 1890: 14-15)
Define:vera causa - "(in Newtonian philosophy) the true cause of a natural phenomenon, by an agency whose existence is independently evidenced."
Ihering proceeds to say that the Roman people had one pre-eminent trait of character, selfishness; and that their law is - the religion of selfishness. And this peculiar trait of character made them apt to carry out the promptings of their historical vocation. "The Roman world taken as a whole may be designated as the triumph of the idea of utilitarianism and practicability; [|] all her forces both of mind and character exist on behalf of utilitarian objects. Selfishness is the moving power of the whole; the whole of Roman virtues and institutions is the objectivation or the organism of national selfishness." (Reich 1890: 16-17)
Not in conflict with Nietzsche's "pathos of nobility and distance" and the ravings against altruism.
In the passage just quoted from Mommsen, he animadverts on the highly imperfect state of Roman [|] criminal law; how shall we now understand his "healthiness of the Romans?" (Reich 1890: 19-20)
Define:animadvert - "pass criticism or censure on; speak out against".
They will never come home to us; they will only be an undigested mass of learned texts, which we have to commit to memory through laborious study of the ancient and modern authorities. A clear understanding of the causes of Roman Law, on the other hand, facilitates our study of that Law most effectively. (Reich 1890: 21)
See an "indistinct mass" and "a vague uncharted nebula" (Nöth 1998: 337).
The main cause of the rise of Roman Private Law and its high perfection I take to be the Roman institution of Infamia. The Roman institution of Infamia was the fountain-head, or rather the chief motor and factor that brought about the majority of those legal institutions the sum total of which go to form the system of Roman Law. (Reich 1890: 21)
Oh snap.
Infamia in Latin means infamy, public disgrace. Savigny, whose chapter on Infamia is still considered the best extant treatise on this institution, says: "Infamia as the consequence of a criminal sentence became a general rule only by degrees." And this is the salient point of the world problem, the point to which I wish you to pay special attention. Certain trespasses entailed the punishment of public disgrace. The Romans, just as we, punished certain trespasses or offences with fines and loss of honour. A person convicted of theft is considered disgraced in our times. He is unable to hold a public office, and society will not receive him. That, therefore, the Romans were sensible of the disgrace inherent in certain offences appears very natural indeed. (Reich 1890: 22)
Thus, there is a legal history of for "renown". Note the easy parallel between "a person's security within the community's social net" (Senft 2009: 230), and being "received" by society.
This judgment put an indelible stain on the social life of the defendant; in fact, it made him a social outcast. And now compare the horrible consequence of this civil judgment with the indifferent consequence of the criminal conviction of an embezzler of public money! (Reich 1890: 23)
Looks like the tradition of punishing someone who stole $100 in quarters from a laundromat with a longer sentence than a a financier who stole millions is mighty fine.
Infamia was the loss of civil rights, of the jus honorum et suffragii. In other words: the person tainted with infamia was blotted out of the public and political life of Rome. He could stay in Rome; he could continue to ply his trade and sue his debtor in Rome; will his property, or marry a Roman woman. But in his public existence he was not only curtailed, but actually destroyed. He had no vote; he was not eligible to an office. (Reich 1890: 33)
Define:blot out - "to make obscure, insignificant, or inconsequential; wipe out, destroy". Is this not what's taking place today with deplatforming?
The free and independent Roman citizen enjoyed such immense privileges, his citizenhip possessed - as we shall see in a subsequent lecture - such an extraordinary value, that it was only both fair and natural that his personal conduct in private and public life should be subjected to a most rigorous superintendence. (Reich 1890: 35)
Is the Chinese citizen blessed with any additional value for having an automated superintendence?
A Roman house-son could not acquire only penny's worth of property for himself; every thing he acquired belonged to his father. In that startling dependence nothing was changed by his political position; he could be a consul, [|] a senator or praetor, yet unless his father had formally emancipated him he could not call one farthing his own. In other words: the Roman patria potestas, in its civil aspects, means a total disfranchisement of house-sons, who could nevertheless fill the highest posts of honour in the commonwealth. (Reich 1890: 36-37)
As feminists say, patriarchy hurts men, too. Click here to find out 6 Ways The Patriarchy Is Harmful To Men.
If, now, we discard all childish considerations, such as "patriarchal period," "race-character," or similar vagaries; and if we firmly hold to the self-evident belief in the substantial identity of human nature in all periods of history, we shall naturally ask: Why did Roman house-sons submit to a tyranny than which nothing seems more insupportable to our feelings? For, surely, the most pressing desire of every well-balanced young man of our time goes toward financial independence, and much as we all love our fathers, we crave for nothing more intensely than for earning our own living, and owning the proceeds of our industry and skill. (Reich 1890: 37)
The Roman commonwealth was a democracy, in which, as in all democracies, the fundamental principle of universal suffrage was eluded by a system of organized voting in classes. The voters of the first class recruited themselves from citizens possessing a certain wealth; the voters of the second class were citizens possessing a lesser wealth; and so forth. In addition to this class-arrangement, the first and second classes voted first, and since they had, as a rule, the majority of votes, - a vote being the collective result of the polling of a centuria, or subdivision of a class, - the lower or poorer classes seldom had a chance to cast a vote. In other words, Roman was a timocracy. Even after the class organization of the voters was somewhat changed through the combination of the comitia centuriata with the comitia tributa, the timocratic element of the Roman commonwealth continued to be predominant. Honour and power thus being dependent on the census, it was the ruling desire of every Roman to belong to the higher or wealthier "classes." To have a high census was equivalent to belonging to the really influential classes. (Reich 1890: 38)
Define:timocracy - "a form of government in which possession of property is required in order to hold office; a form of government in which rulers are motivated by ambition or love of honour". Modern U.S., with its voter restrictions, appears to be not that far off from a functional timocracy.
Thus the strong motive of economical independence was over powered by the still stronger motive of ambition. A Roman possessed only one kind of ambition: political. To be an influential member of the comitia, to fill one of the offices of the state, to be senator or general of the offices of the state, to be senator or general of the army were the chief objects of his ambition. To be baulked of the competition for these prizes was practically tantamount to being infamis, the very essence of infamia being the exclusion from the political arena. (Reich 1890: 39)
Something to keep in mind when looking at other notes on "ambition".
It would be uninteresting to rehearse the various opinions, which, as a rule, savor of the dust of learning rather than of the salt of common sense. (Reich 1890: 49)
Crispy.
A science is the result of a strong desire to systematize certain facts. Facts, as a rule, are extremely refractory and hate to be reduced to a systematic order under a few general "heads," and accordingly some of the simplest facts of the simplest of all sciences, mathematics, have successfully escaped the lasso of systematization or "scientification," so to speak; as, for instance, the prime-numbers, the law of their sequence being unknown. But if the desire of people to systematize a certain cluster of facts be very intense, they generally manage to so arrange or trim facts as a finally carry their point. (Reich 1890: 52)
Blunt and unobjectionable. Scientification sounds like my own clumsy "communicationalisation". Unwellformedness, eh.
So with the facts of Law. The facts of Law are, per se, no more willing to submit to the yoke of scientific generalizations, than the facts of fashion, or social conversation. (Reich 1890: 52)
Nooo!
These ancestors, however, if they could see how the law of Germany is completely taken out of the hands of the citizens, - with a slight exception in the administration of criminal law, - would scarcely retain their scornful laughter at a nation that was gullible enough to exchange the inestimable power of making its own law for the gewgaw of so called scientific systematization. (Reich 1890: 55)
Define:gewgaw - "a showy thing, especially one that is useless or worthless". For some reason these lectures are full of words that I'm apparently meeting for the first time.
But this very abundance of innumerable local and disparate polities; the very fact that the people of Germany were split into countless small "marks" and guilds, and still smaller political corporations, proved fatal to their liberty. Where people are immersed in atomic interests of petty corporations, public-spiritedness is on the wane. But since no country can dispense with the blessings of public-spiritedness, the burghers of Germany were not loth to welcome the constantly increasing meddlesomeness of their rulers. For, this meddlesomeness took the shape of broad public-spiritedness and paternal care for the general welfare. (Reich 1890: 57)
Am I ready for Jürgen Habermas's analysis of the public sphere? Probably not.
For reasons that cannot be discussed here, the whole intellect of Germany came to be concentrated in the German Universities. This in itself would not have been very harmful to the liberty of the people. Unfortunately, however, the Universities were solely founded by and dependent on the various rulers of Germany. With the unimportant exception of the University of Altorf, which was somewhat dependent on the free city of Nuremberg, not a single free city of Germany founded or endowed a University. This fact, - never noticed by German historians, although it had a vast influence on German civilization, - this fact brought the whole of German intellectual classes under the immediate sway of the princes. No man could fill the place of a teacher, clergyman, professor, lawyer or physician, without taking his degree at one of the Universities of the country. In other words: nobody could earn his living in one of the intellectual classes without obtaining leave and license from the ruler of the country. (Reich 1890: 58)
Something to keep in mind when reflecting upon the role of universities in our present day and foreseeable future (with its tendency towards privatisation).
The great and signal success of Darwinism in the domain of natural science has filled its adherents with just enthusiasm. The most radical opponent of the theories of Darwin, Haeckel, Huxley, Wallace and other eminent Darwinists cannot but acknowledge that many facts of morphology, botany, zoology and anthropology have been reduced to greater scientific order; and numerous facts hithero unknown have been discovered through the improved methods of Darwinism. To deny this would be to deny the most evident fact in modern science. Enthusiasm, however, is likely to carry away its devotees; and, accordingly, the fervent adherents of modern evolutionism were not satisfied with the laurels won in the sciences just named, but essayed to try their victorious concepts on problems that have previously been considered outside the pale of the naturalist. The puzzles of sociology, the enigmas of the rise and development of social institutions, they declared to be amenable to satisfactory solutions by means of ideas and concepts that proved so successful with regard to the physical frame of animals and plants. Religion, marriage-systems, kinship-systems, ceremonies, and laws were and are said to be problems that unbosom their mysteries to "natural selection," "survival of the fittest," "atavism," "theory of survivals," and the rest of Darwinian concepts with astounding willingness. We are taught, that in social institutions, as in animals and animal life, there is an uninterrupted process of evolution going on, one "stage" of civilization succeeding to another "stage," [|] the "higher" to the "lower," the "heterogeneous" to the "homogeneous;" that humanity was first what the savages of Africa and South America are at present; that by dint of more advanced ideas and greater "enlightenment" social institutions have been slowly improving; and that our present civilization, although containing many "survivals" of ruder and less "enlightened" times, is, by the very working of the principles of "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest," radically superior to the civilizations of either Greece and Rome or the Middle Ages. (Reich 1890: 65-66)
The puzzles of sociology find no explanation "in the vis inertiæ of habit, or in forgetfulness, or in a blind and fortuitous mechanism and association of ideas, or in some factor that is purely passive, reflex, molecular, or fundamentally stupid" (Nietzsche 1921: 1).
The evolutionist is in constant demand of enormous periods of time. He believes, that the small and incipient changes, that he is so sorely in need of, are sure to happen in one of the countless minutes of vast infinitudes of time. The incipient "variations" - this the killjoy of Darwinists - he cannot dispense with; at the same time, however, he [|] is unable to assign a definite time to their rise; and thus he drowns his doubts in the extremely plausible assumption, that the required incipient "variation" is more than likely to happen, provided we give it liberal chances of time. Now there is nothing cheaper than abstract time; and each of us is willing to grant any quantity of an object than which nothing is more inexhaustible. So it comes to pass that the vast periods of time demanded from the evolutionist have been willingly granted on all hands. (Reich 1890: 67-68)
Surely radiocarbon dating and other methods have made that abstract time a bit more concrete?
This may do, and no doubt does in natural science. But it will never do in the science of social institutions. The objects of the latter are distinctly and well-nigh essentially different from those of the former, in that they invariably refer to organized aggregates of individuals; whereas biology proper treats, as a rule, of individuals only. One fox does and acts exactly what a thousand foxes are doing and acting. The actions performed by one man, on the other hand, are totally different from the actions of organized aggregates of a thousand men. Sociology treats of aggregates of individuals, institutions being the outcome of the activity of aggregates. (Reich 1890: 68)
Another basic statement of the object of sociology. Reich's attitude towards animals, though, does not appear to go beyond those of his time and is very far from population ecology indeed.
Nations do not live in the jail of time; they live or try to live in the open grounds of eternity. Instead of wishing for the death of the unfit, they frequently so arrange matters as to care for nobody as lovingly as for the very people who are unfit for the struggle of life. And, vice versa; nations frequently pay the highest modes of worship to the very individuals that died an early death in the service of ideas maintaining the commonwealth of that nation. In what sense of the word can we say that Cæsar died? Was the effect of his actions, words, and writings lost like that of a dead fox? Could the bearing of every minute of his life on the Roman commonwealth be effaced by that accident on the Ides of March, 44 B.C., that mortals call the death of Cæsar? Nay, can the effects of the life of the least and most insignificant Roman be said to have vanished at all? Was not Rome the product of the Romans, and does not Rome still govern the world, or two thirds of it? (Reich 1890: 71)
Man, he really has it out for foxes, eh? Has no individual fox been recorded in history? Admittedly, popular culture is full of foxes, but finding actual individual foxes might take some time (I shall return to this).
By putting these questions, I mean to ask whether we possess a practical knowledge of the solution of these problems. And by practical knowledge I mean a knowledge that does not consist in learned quotations from authors only. (Reich 1890: 74)
This blog contains no practical knowledge.
In saying so you have said exactly and precisely what I hold to be the case, and accordingly I most heartily subscribe the opinion of the great scolder of mankind, of Schopenhauer, that he who has read Herodotus has read all history, the rest being variations on an old theme. (Reich 1890: 75)
Look at modern Europe and America. What we are pleased to call European civilization par excellence, or, in other words, Western civilization, is characterized mainly by the vast preponderance of urban over village life. In the East of Europe, in Russia, Roumania, Hungary, Servia, &c., village-life preponderates enormously. In America, on the other hand, where nothing will surprise the traveller more than the high average intelligence of every single American, every American speaking United States, as they call English, with remarkable purity and absence of provincialism or false suffixes or affixes, - in America there is practically speaking no village-life at all; all Americans live in cities, that is in places with urban customs and institutions. The intimate contact of city life brings about an infinitely increased intensity of mental and emotional actions and reactions, and thereby a more rapid growth oi thoughts and activities of all kind. If we now apply this to Greece and Rome, we shall easily comprehend, that the astounding intellectual power manifestated in those commonwealths was mainly due to the fact, that living as they did exclusively in cities, their intellect had to undergo more powerful incitements than the intellect of nations whose members live in loose contact with one another. The Samnites in Italy, the Acarnanians in Greece are examples of nations who did not live in cities exclusively, and we all know that they were renowned for military valor but insignificant as far as civilization is concerned. Greeks and Romans were, on the whole, exclusively city-nations; that [|] is, the whole of the population was concentrated, as it were, in one city. You cannot lay sufficient stress on this one fact; for this one fact together with very few other facts of equal generality goes to make the fundamental layer of the gigantic fabric of classical civilization. (Reich 1890: 76-77)
Speak American, not United Kingdomese! The idea itself is known well enough, e.g. the correlation between tradie and social and technological progress.
In the antique state to abolish slavery was tantamount to abolish the state itself, tantamount to complete annihilation of the then only possible manière de vivre. It is puerile to speak of Aristotle, the author of the profoundest ethical writings, as of a benighted heathen with regard to the question of slavery. He considers slavery, classical slavery, as a matter of course; and so did the Christian teachers of the first three centuries. (Reich 1890: 81)
So it is still in countries like Mauritania.
Women after all have only one main vocation - love; and this the Greek and Roman women faithfully fulfilled. In our own days, when the political and social grandeur and splendour of the male individual has been dwarfed into pigmy shape, displaying the sallow complexion of an impoverished organism, in our days the ladies rightly feel that a change ought to be brought about - and we all know they vigorously proceed in achieving it. (Reich 1890: 83)
Not that much of an advancement from Nietzsche (1921: 94).
This retiring position of women brought about a remarkable feature of classical civilization - the lack of private life. Private life proper did not exist in Graeco-Roman times previous to the rise of Christianity, and not to a great extent in the first three centuries of our era. For private life cannot develop without women occupying a prominent position in it. The charms of private life are mainly the charms of social contact with women. But where public life is so intensely developed as it was in Greece and Rome, there private life has few chances of existence. Public and private life are complementary; they supplement one another. Wherever the arts and amusements of private life are carried to a high degree of perfection there public life must needs be on the wane; and vice versa. At the times of absolutism in continental countries of Europe, that is, at the times when the people did practically never meddle with or take part in the transaction of political business, their private life was evolving charms and attractions of the most captivating kind. It is no exaggeration to say that the Vienna valse has proved one of the strongest pillars of the Austrian dynasty. People so passionately fond of dancing are naturally averse to the practice of dry and prosaic politics, and thus the reigning dynasty has free scope. The same remark applies to modern France, into which a vigorous spirit of self-relying popular politics will be breathed only when Frenchmen will cease to be so enamored of their marvellous theatres, concerts, salons, and other amusements generally. (Reich 1890: 84)
Complementary to what McDougall writes about the sex instinct (cf. 1916: 400-401).
Classical religion, classical public religion, was a religion of the beautiful, a divinification of beauty in all the manifold manifestations of that ideal power. Beauty commands admiration; beauty [|] has a direct, immediate and elementary power over the emotions of people, and it is easily turned to public purposes. The ancients lacking the depths of individual private life were deficient in sympathy with the inner life of religious edification. (Reich 1890: 86-87)
Something along the lines of Jakobson's (polish) admonition that a beautiful work of art "grabs" attention.
Nothing promoted the Byzantine Empire so efficaciously as the elaborate net of administrative offices which they cast over every single one of their provinces. These offices were filled with ambitious people from the provinces who thus felt attracted to the reigning dynasty with bonds of strong interest. (Reich 1890: 88)
Another variation on "bonds". Here, unlike the Romans, the Byzantines enabled the provinces to promote administrators from their midst.
Let me premise a general statement, in order to be on clear terms with every single lady and gentleman who honour me to-night with their presence: I do believe in a divine origin of Christianity; I add: I do believe in a divine origin of all institutions of mankind. Their roots extend into the realm of that power that all of us are agreed to call divine. (Reich 1890: 91)
Indeed the very opposite of Nietzsche.
We all know that in the first century of our era many a high-minded thinker and reformer tried to recast the frame of society and to turn the minds of people into new channels of thought. Such a mind, e.g., was Appolonius of Tyana. Why did none of them succeed? Why was it that of all these reformers, Christian teachers alone succeeded? (Reich 1890: 91)
A vivid metaphor: society as a high-rise building with a metal frame. It doesn't very well work with "channels", which evoke the waterways, but still, made me rethink the word "framework".
The Roman Empire sinned chiefly in that it did not employ women and the majority of men in pursuit of interests of a higher order. Men do crave for the ideal. In the long run people will not be satisfied with the machine-like routine of every-day life without satisfying their higher aspirations. But you will ask me, why was it thta women and the majority of men were so long content with living an insignificant life? Why was it that those women and men did not aspire to a higher position before the first century of our era? To this there is a very simple answer: By the first century of our era the legislation of Rome had loosened the fetters of women, and of men in bondage, to a very considerable extent. Women, housewives, were no longer kept in the strict seclusion of former centuries, and the absolute rights of ownership, the right of use and abuse in slave, was toned down to a human right. The next consquence of this was that women began to assert their rights as individuals. They desired to play some rôle in the actual world of Rome. But this world had no place for women. Antique civilization was not only a city-civilization, but an exclusive male civilization. (Reich 1890: 92)
Mechanization - making machine-like. Automatic ~ insignificant; defamiliarized ~ significant.
No sooner were laws issued that did away with the retired position of women, than the women, like all newly emancipated people, strove to be given a more prominent part in the commonwealth. This desire was more than amply satisfied by Christianity. In Christian communities women played a very important part; a Christian woman was essentially different from a heathen woman. She attended the frequent public church-meetings of men; she was expected to exhort, to teach her husband and her family. This increased importance of women was a great factor in the general development of Christianity. (Reich 1890: 92-93)
It feels like "communion" is implied in "public church-meetings".
This organization, however, the Christian teachers learned [|] from the system invented by the Romans. The Roman influence on Christianity is more strikingly illustrated by the very name of the adherents of the new creed. The Greek name of Christian is χριστιανός. Did it ever occur to you that this is no Greek form, or rather a late, and evidently Romanised form of a derivative? The New Testament was first written in Greek, and so were the Acts, where this word first occurs. But it was evidently framed after a Roman word, the ending ιανος being an un-Greek form. (Reich 1890: 93-94)
Yet another improvement over Nietzsche, who writes that "In the New [Testament], on the contrary, just a hostel of petty sects, pure rococo of the soul, twisting angles and fancy touches, nothing but conventicle air, not to forget an occasional whiff of bucolic sweetness which appertains to the epoch (and the Roman province) and is less Jewish than Hellenistic" (Nietzsche 1921: 156-157).
It is the distinctive sign and mark of classical antiquity that the pure emotional forces of men, - of a restricted number of men, it is true, were the ultimate safeguard and bulwark of the state. (Reich 1890: 95)
Profound but unsubstantiated.
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