" But for all that, when assured that nothing worse was to
happen to him than the loss of the son Bathsheba had borne him, David
comforted Bathsheba. He by no means gave her up. On the contrary, "he went
in unto her ... and she bare him a son, and he called his name Solomon:
and the Lord loved him."
Again the flesh had prevailed. And so it has always been with each new
movement which has been stimulated by an idealism inspired by a belief
that the spirit was capable of generating an impulse which would overcome
the flesh and which could cause men to move toward perfection along any
other path than the least resistant. And this because man is an automaton,
and can move no otherwise. In this point of view nothing can be more
instructive than to compare the Roman with the Mosaic civilization, for
the Romans were a sternly practical people and worshipped force as Moses
worshipped an ideal.
As Moses dreamed of realizing the divine consciousness on earth by
introspection and by prayer, so the Romans supposed that they could attain
to prosperity and happiness on earth by the development of superior
physical force and the destruction of all rivals. Cato the Censor was the
typical Roman landowner, the type of the class which built up the great
vested interest in land which always moved and dominated Rome. He
expressed the Roman ideal in his famous declaration in the Senate, when he
gave his vote for the Third Punic War; "_Delenda est Carthago_," Carthage
must be destroyed.
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