Ethics: Origin and Development

Owing to the intercourse with the East, and owing to the increasing commercial activity on sea and land, Europe gradually developed cities in which, side by side with the development of commerce, crafts, and arts, was developed also the spirit of freedom. Beginning with the tenth century these cities began to overthrow the power of their secular rulers and of the bishops. Such revolts spread rapidly. The citizens of the revolting cities drew up for themselves the "charters" or the "statutes" of their rights, and either forced the rulers to recognize and to sign these charters, or simply expelled their rulers and swore to observe among themselves these new statutes of freedom. The townsfolk first of all refused to recognize the courts of the bishops or of the princes, and elected their own judges; they created their own town militia for the defence of the city and appointed its commander, and finally, they entered into alliances and federations with other free cities. Many cities also liberated from the yoke of the secular and the ecclesiastical rulers the peasants of the neighbouring districts, by sending the town militia to the assistance of the villages. Genoa, for example, acted in this manner as early as the tenth century. And gradually the liberation of the cities and the formation of free communities spread throughout Europe: first in Italy and in Spain, then in the twelfth century in France, in the Netherlands, and in England, and finally throughout the whole of Central Europe, as far as Bohemia, Poland, and even Northwestern Russia, where Novgorod and Pskov, with their colonies in Viatka, Vologda, etc., existed as free democracies for a period of a few centuries. In this manner the free cities were reviving the free political system, due to which, fifteen hundred years earlier, enlightenment had blossomed forth so splendidly in Ancient Greece. The same situation now repeated itself in the free cities of Western and Central Europe. 17 And simultaneously with the birth of the new free life, there began also the revival of knowledge, art, and freedom of thought which has received in history the name of "The Renaissance."

I shall refrain here, however, from an analysis of the causes which brought Europe to "renascence and then to the so-called "Epoch of Enlightenment."

There are many splendid works about this reawakening of the human mind from a long sleep, and even a brief survey of them would lead us too far afield from our immediate purpose. Moreover, I should have to discuss much more fully than has hitherto been done, not only the influence exercised on the development of science and art by the discovery of the monuments of ancient Greek science, art, and philosophy, as well as the influence of the far voyages and travels undertaken in this period of trading with the East, the discovery of America, etc., but I should also have to consider the influence of the new forms