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man of the ancient world could hardly have grasped, for the reason that the political organization which we call the state had, in the ancient world, no existence. In order clearly to contrast the ancient conception of the state with that which exists in modern times, it will be necessary to utilize the results of recent research into the early history of political institutions. By the marvellous discoveries which have been made within the present century by the masters of the science of language, a great flood of light has been shed upon the earliest forms of social organization which existed in those nations with whose history we are at all concerned. Compara- Through the labors of the comparative philologists, not only tive philol has the original unity of the Aryan race been clearly established, but its prehistoric language has also been so far reconstructed as to distinctly indicate the stage of civilization attained by it before the departure from the common Aryan home. In the words of Peschel, "When the ancient vocabulary of the primordial Aryan age is restored by collecting the roots common to all the members, we at the same time obtain an outline of the social condition of these nations in the most ancient period." This great revelation, which in the history of the intellect has been called "the discovery of a new world," 2 has been brought about by the application of the comparative method to the study of language, whereby the roots common to a large group of kindred tongues have been traced back to a common source. But the comparative method has not been confined to the study of language only; it has found a new and a broad field for its operation in its application to the comparative study of political institutions, of forms of government. Alongside of the science of comparative philology a new science has lately Compara sprung into existence which has been styled comparative tive politics. politics. To the votary of this new science "a political constitution is a specimen to be studied, classified, and labelled, as a building or an animal is studied, classified, and labelled by those to whom buildings or animals are objects of study. We have to note the likenesses, striking and unexpected as those likenesses often are, between the political constitutions

1 Cf. Enc. Brit., 9th ed. vol. viii. p. 622.
2 See Max Müller's comments upon

the work of Fredrick Schlegel, in Science of Language, p. 165.

nity.

of remote times and places; and we have, as far as we can, to classify our specimens according to the probable causes of those likenesses."1 The most valuable single result so far attained by the application of the comparative method to the study of political institutions is embodied in the discovery that the unit of organization in all of the Aryan nations, Unit of or from Ireland to Hindoostan, was the naturally organized asso- the villageganization ciation of kindred — the family swelled into the clan - which commuin a settled state assumed the form of a village-community.2 "The two things, in short, the clan and the village-community, are the same thing, influenced only by those circumstances, geographical or otherwise, which allow one clan or company to adopt a more settled life, while another is driven to linger in, or even to fall back upon a ruder state of things. The yévos of Athens, the gens of Rome, the mark or gemeinde of the Teutonic nations, the village community of the East and, as I have said, the Irish clan, are all essentially the same thing."8 When we have firmly taken hold of this fact; when we clearly understand that the original unit of organization was the same in all the Aryan nations, whether situated on the shores of the Mediterranean or the Baltic, we have possessed ourselves of the atom or unit, which, in different forms and different combinations, everywhere enters into the structure of the state. Following the usual historical order, we naturally turn to The Greek the Hellenic world, in which the science of politics was born, monwealth. in order to ascertain the elements of political organization which there existed when authentic history begins. The dominant political idea which we there encounter is embodied in the independent city which stands towards all other cities as a sovereign commonwealth whose internal affairs are regulated by its own domestic constitution. When the internal organization of such a city is examined, the fact is revealed that the city-commonwealth is a composite whole, which has arisen out of the aggregation of village communities. The first stage in the aggregation is represented by the gathering of a group of village communities or clans (yévea) into a

1 Freeman, Comparative Politics, p. 23. In this brilliant work the name of the new science finds its origin.

2 Cf. Sir Henry Maine, Village-Communities in the East and West, passim.

The village - community is not, how-
ever, an exclusively Aryan possession.
Maine, Early Hist. of Inst., p. 77.
8 Comparative Politics, p. 102.

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ception of

the state

in the Hel

Aristotle, the founder of political

brotherhood (parpía); the second by the gathering of brother. hoods into a tribe; the last by the gathering of tribes into a city. "Several families formed the phratry, several phratries the tribe, several tribes the city. Family, phratry, tribe, city, were, moreover, societies exactly similar to each other, which were formed one after the other by a series of federaOnly con- tions." The aggregate thus made up, the independent city, embodied the only practical conception of the state which exthat existed isted in the Hellenic world.2 To the Greek mind the state, lenic world. the city-commonwealth, was an organized society of men dwelling in a walled city with a surrounding territory not too large to allow its free inhabitants to habitually assemble within its walls to discharge the duties of citizens. In this system of cities, internally organized after one general model, were contained the political conditions with which Aristotle, the acknowledged founder of political science, was brought into contact; and, in obedience to his practical temper, he begins his political speculations with a description of the forms of government actually existing around him. It is probable, that in order to collect sufficient data to support the statements and conclusions contained in his Politics, he made, as a preparatory study thereto, the collection called the Constitutions, which is said to have contained a description of the organization, manners, and customs of one hundred and fifty-eight states or cities. However that may have been, he informs us in the general introduction, which forms the first book of his Politics, that the state differs from the household only as to the number of its members, a fact which will appear from an examination of its elements. Out of the very necessities of social existence arise the relations of husband and wife, parent and child, master and servant, and thus the household is formed. Out of a union of households

science.

1 De Coulanges, The Ancient City (Small's trans.), p. 168. See, also, Comparative Politics, p. 104.

2" During the most brilliant times of the Greek Commonwealths, the City, and nothing higher or lower, was the one acknowledged political unit." Comparative Politics, p. 83.

8 Aristotle thought that a state should not be so large as to deny to its citizens the opportunity to become

familiar with each other. 'Avaykalov γνωρίζειν ἀλλήλους, ποιοί τινές εἰσι, τοὺς TOλiTas. Pol., bk. vii. ch. iv. 13.

4 See Pollock, Hist. Science of Politics, p. 1.

5 The main body of materials thus collected has been lost, but the fragments which remain have been collected and annotated by Neumann, and are contained in Bekker's Oxford edi. tion of Aristotle.

arises the village or tribe. Out of the union of villages or tribes arises a community of a higher order, the state, which is the natural and necessary completion of the process of aggregation in which the family is the unit or starting point. Neither the family nor the tribe is in itself sufficient for all the wants of social existence; it is only in a union of tribes the state that man finds the one form of life that

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will fully develop all of his capabilities. The conclusion thus attained is embodied in Aristotle's famous maxim that "man "Man is is born to be a citizen." The cityless1 man (anos) - the born to be a natural man of Hobbes and Rousseau must be more or less

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than man, either superhuman or a monster. Aristotle's political reflections were confined in the main to the constitutions of Greek states, and the typical Greek state was the independent city. It is true that sometimes a Greek city would be reduced to a relation of bondage to another city, and it would sometimes confederate upon equal or unequal terms with other cities; but there was never any such thing as admitting either subjects or allies to a common franchise, there was never anything like a merger of the independent city into a larger aggregation, which, in any proper political sense, could be called a nation.2

citizen."

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When we pass from the Greek to the Italian peninsula, The Italian we there find the idea of the independent city to be the lead- monwealth. ing political idea, and we also find the Italian city to be the resultant of the process of aggregation heretofore described in which the village community or clan is the unit or starting point. In Italy the village-community appears as the gens. Out of the union of gentes arose the tribe, out of the union of tribes arose the state or city-commonwealth. But the idea of the state as an independent city was never carried out with the same completeness in Italy as in Greece, for the reason that the Italian cities, which were generally smaller than those of Greece, manifested a greater willingness to join together in confederations. In this way the history of ancient Italy is far more a history of confederations than of

1 "He is the unit out of whom, if there be only enough of them, theorists of the Social Contract school undertake to build up the State. This is an enterprise at which Aristotle would

have stared and gasped." - Pollock,
Hist. Science of Politics, p. 9.

2 Comparative Politics, pp. 84, 91, 92.
8 See De Coulanges, The Ancient
City, pp. 131-146, 154-177.

of the Roman fran

chise.

single cities. And yet it was upon the soil of Italy that a group of village communities grew into a single independent city 2 that centralized within its walls the political power of Extension the world. The way in which Rome accomplished this marvellous result was by departing from the exclusive policy of the Greek cities, and by extending the right of Roman citizenship alike to her conquered enemies and to her faithful allies. The franchise of the Roman city was first extended to Italy, then to Gaul and Spain, and finally to the whole Roman world. In the end a right so widely bestowed became of course utterly worthless; but the theory upon which the right was conferred was never for a moment lost sight of. The freeman who received the franchise of the Roman city could only enjoy it within her own walls; it was only within the local limits of the ruling city that the supreme powers of the state could be exercised. And so whether we take for illustration the exclusive Greek city, or the great Latin city extending its franchise to all the world, the ancient conception of the state as the city - commonwealth stands forth clearly and distinctly defined.

The state as the na tion.

3. Out of the settlements made by the Teutonic nations upon the wreck of the Roman Empire has gradually arisen the modern conception of the state as a nation occupying a definite area of territory with fixed geographical boundaries, -the state as known to modern international law. In the Germania of Tacitus we have the contemporaneous observations of one of the greatest and most accurate of historians upon the social and political organization of the Teutonic race while yet in its childhood. By the aid of this invaluable sketch it is possible to establish by direct and positive evidence the existence of those primitive elements of organiza tion, common to the whole Aryan world, whose existence in the Greek and Italian peninsulas can only be inferred from

1 "The Italian confederations had
from the beginning a closer union and
a nearer approach to national unity
than the later and more brilliant con-

federations of Greece." Comparative
Politics, p. 96.

2 Maine, Early Hist. of Inst., p. 84.
8 Guizot, Hist. Rep. Govt., pp. 181,182.
As to the edict of Antoninus Caracalla,

extending the privilege of Roman citizenship to all the free inhabitants of the empire, see Maine, Ancient Law, p. 139; Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. i. pp. 185, 193, 194.

4" Within the walls of Rome alone could be consummated all the acts of a Roman citizen."- Guizot, Hist. Rep. Govt., p. 184.

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