The Evolution of States. J. M. Robertson

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СКАЧАТЬ beliefs of men have a much greater. Between two neighbouring cities there was something more impassable than a mountain—to wit, the series of sacred limits, the difference of cults, the barrier which each city set up between the stranger and its Gods."

      All this, so far as it goes, is substantially true, but it does not at all conflict with the principle as above set forth. Certainly all cities, like all tribes, were primarily separatist; though even in religious matters there was some measure of early peaceful inter-influence, and a certain tendency to syncresis as well as to separateness. (Cp. K.O. Müller, Dorians, Eng. tr. i, 228.) But the principle is not special to the cities of Greece. Cities and tribes were primarily separatist in Babylonia and in Egypt. How, then, were these regions nevertheless monarchised at an early period? Clearly by reason of the greater invitingness and feasibility of conquest in such territories—for their unification was forcible. The conditions had thus both an objective and a subjective, a suggestive and a permissive force, both lacking in Greece. Again, the twelve cities of Etruria formed a league. If they did so more readily and effectually than the Greeks, is not the level character of their territory, which made them collectively open to attack, and facilitated intercourse, one of the obviously probable causes? No doubt the close presence of hostile and alien races was a further unifying force which did not arise in Greece. Etruria, finally, like Latium, was unified by conquest; the question is, Why was not Greece? There is no answer save one—that in the pre-Alexandrian period no Greek State had acquired the military and administrative skill and resources needed to conquer and hold such a divided territory. Certainly the conditions conserved the ideal of separateness and non-aggression or non-assimilation, so that cities which had easy access to each other respected each other's ideal. But here again it was known that an attempt at conquest would probably lead to alliances between the attacked State and others; and the physical conditions prevented any State save Macedonia from becoming overwhelmingly strong. To these conditions, then, we always return, not as to sole causes, but as to determinants.

      (d) In Egypt, again, culture was never deeply disseminated, and before Alexander was hardly at all fecundated by outside contact. In Greece there was always the great uncultured slave substratum; and the arrest of freedom, to say nothing of social ignorance, female subjection, and sexual perversion, ultimately kept vital culture stationary. In Rome, militarism and the multiplication of the slave class, along with the deletion of the independent and industrious middle class, made progressive culture impossible, as surely as it broke down self-government. In all cases alike, over-population, not being met by science, either bred poverty or was obviated by crime and vice.

The so-called regeneration of Europe by the barbarian conquest, finally, was simply the beginning of a long period of corrupted and internecine barbarism, the old culture remaining latent; and not till after many centuries did the maturing barbaric civilisation in times of compulsory peace reach the capacity of being fecundated by the intelligent assimilation of the old. But after the Renaissance, as before, the diseases of militarism and class privilege and the political subjection caused a backthrow and intellectual stagnation, which was assisted by the commercial decline brought upon Italy; so that in the feudal period, in one State after another, we have the symptoms of, as it were, senile "decay" and retrogression.[153] In all cases this is to be set down proximately to the deficit of new ideas, and in some to excess of strife, which exhausted spare energy among the leisured class, deepened the misery of the toilers, and normally prevented the intelligent intercourse of peoples. It is become a commonplace of historical philosophy that the Crusades wrought for good inasmuch as they meant fresh communication between East and West. Yet it may be doubted whether much more was not done through the quiet contacts of peace between Saracen and Christian in Western Europe, and by the commerce with the East which preceded the Crusades,[154] than by the forced intercourse following on religious war. In any case, the transition from quasi-decay to progress in Christendom is clearly due to the entrance of new ideas of many species from many directions into the common stock; Greek letters, Saracen physics, and new geographical discovery all combining to generate thought.

      The case of Japan, again, compares with both that of ancient Greece and that of modern Europe. Its separate civilisation, advantageously placed in an archipelago, drew stimulus early in the historic period from that of China; and, while long showing the Chinese unprogressiveness in other respects, partly in virtue of the peculiar burdensomeness of the Chino-Japanese system of ideograms, it made remarkable progress on the side of art. The recent rapid industrial development (injurious to the artistic life) is plainly a result of the European and American contact; and if only the mechanism of reading and writing be made manageable on the European lines, and the snare of militarism be escaped, the Japanese civilisation may develop mentally as much as it is doing industrially and in military organisation.

      It suffices the practical political student, then, to note that progress is thus always a matter of intelligible causation; and, without concerning himself about predicting the future or estimating the sum of possibilities, to take up the tasks of contemporary politics as all other tasks are taken up by practical men, as a matter of adaptation of means to ends. The architect and engineer have nothing to do with calculating as to when the energy of the solar system will be wholly transmuted. As little has the politician to do with absolute estimates of the nature of progress. All alike have to do with the study of laws, forces, and economics.

      § 3

      We may now, then, set forth the all-pervading biological forces or tendencies of attraction and repulsion in human affairs as the main primary factors in politics or corporate life, which it is the problem of human science to control by counteracting or guiding; and we may without further illustration set down the principal modes in which these instincts appear. They are, broadly speaking:—

      (a) Animal pugnacities and antipathies of States or peoples, involving combinations, sanctified from the first by religion, and surviving as racial aspirations in subject peoples.

      (b) Class divisions, economically produced, resulting in class combinations and hostilities within a State, and, in particular, popular desire for betterment.

      (c) The tendency to despotism as a cure for class oppression or anarchy; and the spirit of conquest.

      (d) The beneficent lure of commerce, promoting intercourse, countered by the commercial jealousies of States.

      (e) Designs of rulers, giving rise to popular or aristocratic factions—complicated by questions of succession and loyalism.

      (f) Religious combinations, antipathies, and ambitions, international or sectarian. In more educated communities, ideals of government and conduct.

      

      In every one of these modes, be it observed, the instinct of repulsion correlates with the instinct of attraction. The strifes are the strifes of combinations, of groups or masses united in themselves by sympathy, in antipathy to other groups or masses. The esprit de corps arises alike in the species, the horde, the tribe, the community, the class, the faction, the nation, the trade or profession, the Church, the sect, the party. Always men unite to oppose; always they must love to hate, fraternise to struggle.

      The analogies in physics are obvious, but need not here be dwelt upon. There is a risk of losing concrete impressions, which are here in view, in a highly generalised statement of cosmic analogies. But it may be well to point out that a general view will perfectly reconcile the superficially conflicting doctrines of recent biologists, as to "progress by struggle" and "progress by co-operation." Both statements hold good, the two phases being correlatives.

I have said that it is extremely difficult to imagine a state of society in which there shall be no public operation of any one of these forces. I am disposed to say it is impossible, but СКАЧАТЬ