a religion. The tribes that united to form a city never failed to light a sacred fire, and to adopt a common religion.

Thus, in time of peace, as in war time, religion intervened in all acts. It was everywhere present, it enveloped man. The soul, the body, private life, public life, meals, festivals, assemblies, tribunals, battles, all were under the empire of this city religion. It regulated all the acts of man, disposed of every instant of his life, fixed all his habits. It governed a human being with an authority so absolute that there was nothing beyond its control.

These provisions of ancient law were perfectly logical. Law was not born of the idea of justice, but of religion, and was not conceived as going beyond it. In order that there should be a legal relation between two men, it was necessary that there should already exist a religious relation; that is to say, that they should worship at the same hearth and have the same sacrifices. When this religious community did not exist, it did not seem that there could be any legal relation. Now, neither the stranger nor the slave had any part in the religion of the city. A foreigner and a citizen might live side by side during long years, without one's thinking of the possibility of a legal relation being established between them. Law was nothing more than one phase of religion. Where there was no common religion, there was no common law. . .

It is a singular error, therefore, among all human errors, to believe that in the ancient cities men enjoyed liberty. They had not even the idea of it. They did not believe that there could exist any right as against the city and its gods. . . . The government was called by turns monarchy, aristocracy, democracy; but none of these revolutions gave man true liberty, individual liberty. To have political rights, to vote, to name magistrates, to have the privilege of being archon, this was called liberty; but man was not the less enslaved to the state. The ancients, especially the Greeks, always exaggerated the importance, and above all, the rights of society; this was largely due, doubtless, to the sacred and religious character with which society was clothed in the beginning.

We have sought to place in a clear light this social system of the ancients, where religion was absolute master, both in public and private life; where the state was a religious community, the king a pontiff, the magistrate a priest, and the law a sacred formula; where patriotism was piety, and exile excommunication; where individual liberty was unknown; where man was enslaved to the state through his soul, his body, and his property; where the notions of law and of duty, of justice and of affection, were bounded within the limits of the city; where human association was necessarily confined within a certain circumference around a prytaneum; and where men saw no possibility of founding larger societies.

48. The struggle of races. Following Gumplowicz and Ratzenhofer in tracing the evolution of organized society through the struggle of races, Ward discusses the origin of the state as follows: 1

The following are these steps arranged in their natural order: 1. Subjugation of one race by another. 2. Origin of caste. 3. Gradual mitigation of this condition, leaving a state of great individual, social, and political inequality. 4. Substitution for purely military subjection of a form of law, and origin of the idea of legal right. 5. Origin of the state, under which all classes have both rights and duties. 6. Cementing of the mass of heterogeneous elements into a more or less homogeneous people. 7. Rise and development of a sentiment of patriotism and formation of a nation.

There are always great natural differences in men. In civilized societies everybody knows how immensely individuals differ in ability and character. We naturally assume that with savages and low races this is not the case, but this is certainly a mistake. The natural inequalities of uncivilized races are probably fully as great as among civilized races, and they probably exert a still greater relative influence in all practical affairs. For the complicated machinery of a high civilization makes it possible to cover up mediocrity and to smother talent, so that the places that men hold are very rude indices indeed to their fitness or their true merits. In savage life.this is not the case, and a chief is almost certain to be a man of force and relative ability of the grade required at that stage of development.

In a conquered race such individual differences are likely to make themselves felt. The assumption all along is that the races considered are not primarily widely unlike. The issue of battle depends only to a small extent on real differences of mind or character. It may be merely accidental, or due to the neglect of the conquered race to cultivate the arts of war. In all other respects it may be even superior to the conquering race. The latter therefore often has to do with its social equals in everything pertaining to the life of either group. The difficulty of enforcing law in a community constituted as we have described must be apparent. With such an intense internal polarization of interests, the conquering race would find it difficult or impossible to frame laws to suit all cases. It could not understand the conquered race definitely enough to be successful even in securing its own interests. In a word, the conquering race needs the assistance of the conquered race in framing and carrying out measures of public policy. This it is never difficult to secure. A large number of the members of the subject race always sooner or later accept

1 Copyright, 1903, by The Macmillan Company.

the situation and are willing to help in establishing and maintaining order. The only basis of such order is the creation of correlative rights and duties under the law. This can only be secured through concessions on the part of the master race to the subject race and the enlistment of the best elements of the latter in the work of social reorganization. This, in fact, is what is sooner or later always done. The conquering race may hold out doggedly for a long time in a harsh military policy of repression and oppression, but it is only a question of time when experience alone will dictate a milder policy in its own interest, and the basis of compromise will at last be reached. The two principles involved are both egoistic, but equilibrate each other and contribute jointly to the result. These are economy on the part of the governing class and resignation on the part of the governed class. These produce concessions from the former and assistance from the latter. The result is that form of social organization known as the state.

49. War and state origin. The important parts played by war and property in the origin and development of the state are, perhaps too strongly, stated in the following: 1

The origin of the State, or Political Society, is to be found in the development of the art of warfare. . . . Historically speaking, there is not the slightest difficulty in proving that all political communities of the modern type owe their existence to successful warfare. As a natural consequence, they are forced to be organized on military principles, tempered, doubtless, by a survival of older (patriarchal) ideas.

Although we cannot speak with certainty as to the causes of this development, it is not difficult to suggest one or two facts which may have led to it. Foremost comes the increase of population, with its consequent pressure on the means of subsistence. This increase is always, under normal circumstances, steadily going on; and it is dealt with in various ways. Sometimes a pestilence breaks out; and the superabundant population, enfeebled by short allowance of food, is swept away by disease. Sometimes wholesale migrations take place to less thickly populated districts; this may be regarded as a real remedy, though perhaps only a temporary one, for the trouble. Sometimes, again, a great new invention enables a largely increased food supply to be produced; the changes from hunting life to pastoral life, and again from pastoral life to agriculture, are examples. Finally, war may break out on a large scale; and the weaker peoples may be either exterminated or reduced to subjection by the stronger.

1 Copyright, 1900, by The Macmillan Company.

Another cause may have been the great increase of realized wealth attendant upon successful agriculture, and, still more, industry. Pastoral wealth has this advantage, that it can be moved about with tolerable ease. A weak tribe can fold up its tents, and drive its cattle and sheep out of harm's way. But the wealth of the husbandman cannot be so disposed of. His wealth is in his fields, which he has patiently cultivated, and in his barns and presses which he has filled with corn and wine. He has built himself a permanent house, and he will not leave it while a chance of safety, or even of existence, remains. He is a very tempting bait to the military adventurer. Still more is the craftsman, with his rich store of wealth, a tempting object of plunder. The sack of an industrial town, with its shops and its stores of goods, is the dream of the freebooter.

Once more, it is natural to suppose that the improvement in the art of working in metals did much to stimulate the military spirit. The superiority of iron, still more of steel weapons and armor, over the old wooden bows and arrows and leather shield and corselet, would give a natural impetus to warfare. Above all, with the tendency towards specialization which, as we have seen, is one of the master principles of development, this improvement in the means of warfare would tend to produce a special military class, the professional warrior of the modern world. In primitive times every man was a soldier; as civilization progressed, the bulk of people became interested in other things, and fighting became the work of specialists. This fact is directly connected with the origin of the state. . .

A State is founded when one of these host leaders with his band of warriors gets permanent control of a definite territory of a considerable size: And, practically speaking, this always occurs in one of two ways. The host leader, after firmly establishing his position as ruler of his own tribe, extends his authority over neighboring tribes, until he becomes ruler of a large territory. . . . Or a State is founded by the successful migration and conquest by a band of warriors to and of a strange country.

III. STAGNATION AND PROGRESS

50. The beginnings of progress. The emergence of the state bound by rigid custom, and the beginnings of change and progress, are brilliantly worked out by Bagehot :

The progress of man requires the coöperation of men for its development. That which any one man or any one family could invent for themselves is obviously exceedingly limited. . . . The rudest sort of

coöperative society, the lowest tribe and the feeblest government, is so much stronger than isolated man, that isolated man (if he ever existed in any shape which could be called man) might very easily have ceased to exist. The first principle of the subject is that man can only make progress in "coöperative groups"; . . . and that it is their being so which makes their value; that unless you can make a strong coöperative bond, your society will be conquered and killed out by some other society which has such a bond; and the second principle is that the members of such a group should be similar enough to one another to coöperate easily and readily together. The cöoperation in all such cases depends on a felt union of heart and spirit; and this is only felt when there is a great degree of real likeness in mind and feeling, however that likeness may have been attained.

This needful coöperation and this requisite likeness I believe to have been produced by one of the strongest yokes and the most terrible tyrannies ever known among men the authority of "customary law."

. . . And the rule is often of most childish origin, beginning in a casual superstition or local accident. . . .

The necessity of thus forming coöperative groups by fixed customs explains the necessity of isolation in early society. As a matter of fact all great nations have been prepared in privacy and in secret. . . . And the instinct of early ages is a right guide for the needs of early ages. Intercourse with foreigners then broke down in states the fixed rules which were forming their characters, so as to be a cause of weak fiber of mind, of desultory and unsettled action; the living spectacle of an admitted unbelief destroys the binding authority of religious custom and snaps the social cord.

Thus we see the use of a sort of "preliminary" age in societies, when trade is bad because it prevents the separation of nations, because it infuses distracting ideas among occupied communities, because it "brings alien minds to alien shores." And as the trade which we now think of as an incalculable good, is in that age a formidable evil and destructive calamity; so war and conquest, which we commonly and justly see to be now evils, are in that age often singular benefits and great advantages. It is only by the competition of customs that bad customs can be eliminated and good customs multiplied. . . .

Similarly, the best institutions have a natural military advantage over bad institutions. The first great victory of civilization was the conquest of nations with ill-defined families having legal descent through the mother only, by nations of definite families tracing descent through the father as well as the mother, or through the father only. . . . The nations with a thoroughly compacted family system have "possessed the earth," that is,