CHAPTER I.

THE ARYAN RACES.

It is proved by similarities in the languages of the European peoples and the Hindus and the Persians that they had in some sense a common origin. It is not indeed probable that they are sprung from the same parents: but their ancestors once formed a group of closely associated peoples who lived beside one another as neighbours and used either the same language or dialects of the same language. The peoples which had in this sense a common origin comprise all those that belong to the stocks of the Hindus, the Persians, the Celts, the Greeks, the Italians, the Teutons and the Slavs, and are known collectively as the Aryans or as the Indo-European peoples.

The evidence of language not only proves that the Aryans lived together as neighbours, but also tells us something about their pursuits and habits. From the languages of the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans and the ancient Hindus we learn that the forefathers of these peoples before they left their common dwelling-place were acquainted with the most important domestic animals and had a name for each of them: for the words cow, German Kuh, Sanskrit gâus, Greek βοῦς, Latin bos, are mere variations from an Aryan word whose meaning they retain unaltered: the same is true of the word ewe, Sanskrit avis, Greek ὄϊς, Latin ovis; of goose, German Gans, Sanskrit hansas, Greek χήν, Latin anser; of sow, German Sau, Sanskrit sû, Greek σύς or ὕς, Latin sus; of hound, German Hund, Sanskrit çvan, Greek κύων, Latin canis; and of Sanskrit açvas, Greek ἵππος, Latin equus, Saxon eoh or ehu.

In like manner the words door, German Thüre, Sanskrit dvaras, Greek θύρα, Latin fores, prove that the Aryans used a word bearing the same meaning and therefore their dwellings were something more than mere tents or moveable huts. Yoke, German Joch, Sanskrit jugam, Greek ξυγόν, Latin jugum, prove that they employed cattle for draught; ἄξων, Latin axis, Sanskrit akshas (axle and cart), Old High German ahsa (axle) indicate the use of carts; the Sanskrit nâus, Greek ναῦς, Latin navis, German Nachen, show that they could make boats: the Sanskrit aritram (an oar or paddle1), Greek ἐρετμός, Latin remus (resmus), prove that they propelled them by rowing or paddling. The absence however of common words for a mast, a sail, the sea, indicate that the waters that they knew were rivers or small lakes and that they did not possess the art of getting propulsion from the wind2.

The Aryans were not entirely ignorant of plants that produce corn: for there was an Aryan word from which are descended the Sanskrit yavas (barley), the Greek ζειά (spelt, a kind of grain) and jáva in Zend (or Old Persian), Slavic and Lithuanian. Mommsen, noticing only the Sanskrit and the Greek, and observing the difference of meaning, thinks that the Aryans while they were all together merely gathered and ate the grains of barley and spelt that grew wild. A recent English writer points out the wide diffusion of the words descended from the Aryan word, and thinks it could not have left traces of its existence in so many languages unless corn had been cultivated by the Aryans and had thus become well known to them3. This inference seems to be fair: but the absence of traces of other original Aryan words for agricultural products or instruments shows clearly that agriculture played only a subordinate part in their economy. It is probable that they sowed some kind of grain in little plots of ground that scarcely needed tillage.

The results of the evidence which has been adduced may be summed up by saying that the forefathers of the Greeks, Romans, Germans and Hindus, while they still occupied their common Aryan home, lived not in tents but in houses with doors, and were therefore not mere wanderers but had more or less permanent abodes: they were not savages dependent on wild animals and wild fruits for subsistence, but had sheep and cattle to supply them with flesh and milk: they had carts on wheels and knew how to yoke their oxen and horses: they made boats and propelled them on their rivers or lakes with oars or paddles: and they were acquainted with some kinds of grain, but were either ignorant of agriculture or cared little for it.

From the condition in which the Aryans lived we may safely infer that they were not totally devoid of political institutions. All men live under government except a few to whom government is either impossible or useless. The multitude of uncivilised races who inhabit or have inhabited the earth may be divided into two great classes; the first and lower class consisting of those who depend for subsistence solely on wild plants and wild animals, the second and upper class comprising all those who, in addition to the wild fruits that they may gather and the wild animals that they may kill, also have tame cattle to supply them with flesh and milk or cultivated plants that produce grain. The lower class are known either as savages or as hunting peoples: the upper, for want of a better name, may be designated as barbarians. In the lower class, the savages and hunting peoples, a very small number of peoples are found who have been prevented by specially adverse circumstances from having any governments: but in the rest of the lower class and in all the upper class of uncivilised peoples the existence of some kind of government is universal.

In illustration and proof of these statements some facts may be cited. The Bushmen of South Africa were at the beginning of the present century a race of savages who wandered over an arid sloping plain that lies to the South of the Orange River. They just contrived to maintain a miserable existence on the roots that they could grub up and on the flesh of animals that they shot with poisoned arrows or entrapped in pitfalls: but, as every family was compelled to keep itself isolated from all neighbours in order to have enough to eat, government was impossible. Other races resembling the Bushmen in the isolation of their families and in having no government are the Rock Veddahs in Ceylon and the Digger Indians in California. A slightly different case occurs in the regions near the North Pole. The Esquimaux, who live by catching seals and other marine animals, are not precluded from grouping their huts in small clusters: but nature offers so little reward to any combined effort of a large number of men that they have never cared to form political communities: and they afford perhaps the only example of human beings living as neighbours but without government. Leaving these very exceptional cases, we next observe a group of hunting peoples with whom nature dealt less unkindly. Some forty years ago, almost the only inhabitants of the western part of British North America, now known as Manitoba, were a number of Red Indian tribes who supported themselves entirely by the chase, killing buffalo for food and other animals for their furs, which they passed on to traders in return for such commodities as the traders brought them. During the greater part of the year each Red Indian family wandered almost as much apart from communication with mankind as did the Bushmen, for so the wild animals could most advantageously be pursued: and of course while they remained in dispersion had no government. But at certain seasons in every year a whole tribe came together for a great buffalo hunt: at other times they assembled to organize a war against some neighbouring tribe: and whenever they met for either purpose they subjected themselves to an efficient government, which included even a system of police. Apart from the groups of peoples whom I have mentioned, no great number of savage peoples seems to have been observed in recent times: the New Zealanders when first the Europeans went among them were savages and cannibals, and yet they lived under well established kingly governments.

With regard to the upper class of uncivilised peoples, the barbarians, who either keep cattle or grow corn or do both, it will suffice to say that observation of all of them (and they are extremely numerous) proves that all of them have governments. Nor is the fact hard to understand: for in their case it is never necessary for single families to live in isolation: they do as a matter of fact live collected together in groups of families, and each group gains numberless advantages by living together and acting together: and, where men live together and act together, government naturally comes into existence. Those of the barbarian peoples who, like the Aryans, have more or less fixed abodes, always group themselves in small independent tribes and adopt such simple forms of government as are suited to their circumstances. There are many different kinds of tribal governments. In nearly all of them a small number of men distinguished for prowess daring or intelligence have some authority over the rest: sometimes above these chiefs there is a higher chief or king: and sometimes the whole body of warriors may be called together to hear what the chiefs have to say to them. Among the ancient Aryans all the governments were no doubt tribal governments: but it is impossible to say that any one of the various kinds of tribal governments prevailed to the exclusion of the rest4.

When the Aryans had made such progress as I have described they divided into two groups: one group contained the forefathers of the Europeans, the other the forefathers of the Hindus and Persians. Whether the separation arose through a migration of only the Europeans or of only the Asiatics or from migrations of both Europeans and Asiatics cannot be determined. It is certain however that after the division of the stocks took place the Europeans still remained together long enough to acquire in common the art of ploughing. The English word to ear, Anglo-Saxon erian, Gothic erjan, Old High German eren, Latin arare, Greek ἀρόειν, Irish araim (I plough) are mere variations of a single word and show that when ploughing was introduced the European stocks were still in close neighbourhood with one another and all adopted dialectic varieties of the same sound to indicate the new method of breaking up the soil5.

The region in which the forefathers of the Europeans lived together cannot be precisely ascertained: the hypothesis that it was in central Europe seems to fit in best with the geographical distribution of their descendants and the relationships between their languages.

The invention of the art of ploughing opened new possibilities for the European peoples: for an agricultural people has far better chances than a people of herdsmen of accumulating wealth and making progress in the useful arts. But not all of them cared to make use of the new art and to become tillers of the soil. Those who took their homes amid the forests of central Europe still continued the life of hunters and herdsmen which had once been common to all the Aryans. Others devoted themselves to agricultural pursuits with delight and success: and among them were those who settled in the peninsulas of Greece and Italy, where, favoured by many circumstances, they made comparatively rapid progress in arts, knowledge and political development.

CHAPTER II.

A CLASSIFICATION OF EUROPEAN POLITICAL BODIES.

The subject matter of the study of politics consists firstly of the groups or collections of men who have lived under governments, and secondly of the governments under which they have lived. In the present chapter I wish to speak of the groups, to describe in outline the various forms which they have taken, and to define the names by which their forms are severally known. I must premise that I shall call some of the groups political communities, meaning by a political community a number of persons living under one government and also having much else in common besides government: the rest I shall call political aggregates, meaning by a political aggregate a number of persons or bodies of persons living under one government and having nothing else or very little else in common. Having said this, I can proceed to notice the forms of individual communities or aggregates, with a view to classifying them according to their forms. In my survey the earliest forms will be taken first, and the others afterwards, as far as possible in chronological order6.

The two European races into whose past we can grope our way farthest back are the Germans and the Greeks. Each of these races, when first we have any knowledge of them, had formed a large number of tribes or small primitive political communities. The German tribes in the times of Cæsar and of Tacitus and the Greek tribes in the time of Homer were alike in being of small size and in being primitive in their habits and government: but in a German tribe the whole population lived scattered over the open country and there was no walled city, while in a Greek tribe, though most of the people lived in the open country, there was a walled city as a centre for the community and a dwelling place for a few of the most important tribesmen. It is desirable to give the word tribe such a definition as will emphasize the distinction between a tribe and a city, and I shall therefore define it as meaning a small primitive political community, living in the open country without any walled city. From this definition it follows that I must regard the German tribes alone as being perfect specimens of the genus tribe or as being tribes pure and simple: the early Greek communities, though for brevity I shall speak of them as tribes, ought in strict accuracy to be regarded as tribes which were on the way to become cities and which had already acquired some small portion of the qualities by which cities are characterized.

In Greece tribes were succeeded by cities, that is to say small communities in which a walled city is everything, and the country districts are of little importance: and similar communities arose also in Italy. The cities of ancient Greece and Italy are often further designated as city-states, and the name is rightly applied to them: for they were not only cities in the sense which I have given to the word, but were also states because each of them was an independent community with a government of its own.

But the cities of ancient Greece and Italy were not all alike: the Greek cities were inexpansive: in Italy one city expanded itself by conquering a host of other cities and absorbing their populations into its own body politic. The contrast between the inexpansive cities of Greece and the expansive city of Rome is a matter of which I hope some time to speak at length: for the present it will suffice to notice that the Athenians, the largest political community known to Greek history in the age of the city states (that is to say before 338 B.C.), inhabited a territory of less area than an average English county: while in Italy before the beginning of the second Punic war (218 B.C.) towns or fortresses peopled by fully qualified citizens of the Roman Republic were to be found scattered over all the central region from Sena Gallica in Umbria to Sinuessa in Campania, and other towns or fortresses whose inhabitants possessed the private but not the public rights of Roman citizens existed in all parts of the peninsula7. It must however be observed that Rome did not by its expansion lose the distinguishing characteristics of a city state: it still continued after its expansion over all Italy to be a community in which a single city was of supreme importance and the population remote from the city was, politically at least, of little moment: but as it was incomparably larger than any ordinary city state, we must call it not simply a city state but an enlarged or expanded city state.

The small size of the Greek cities and their incapacity for acting in concert led to their subjugation by Macedonia in 338 B.C. About sixty or eighty years later many of them had recovered their independence, and some of them, in order to guard against a second conquest by Macedonia, joined together in a league or federation. The union of many communities in a federation was not a new thing in Greek history: during several centuries that preceded the year 338 B.C. some obscure tribes of mountaineers (the Achæans) had lived in such a union; their league had been broken up by the Macedonian conquerors, but they had been able, about 281 B.C., to reconstitute it: and the Greek cities, when they began, about 251 B.C., to see their need of mutual defence, had the Achæan League ready at hand, and were able to gain what they needed by enrolling themselves among its members. The Achæan League, enlarged by the admission of many important cities, was a federal state: that is to say, it was a community in which each city or canton had a government of its own for most purposes, but the federation or union of cities and cantons had also a common government for those matters which most nearly concerned the safety of them all. The League was perfectly successful till 221 B.C. in attaining the ends for which it had been established, and is remarkable as furnishing the first example in history of a well organized federal state8.

The Romans employed the strength, which they had acquired through their conquest of Italy and their success in the second Punic war, in getting possession of many distant territories inhabited by alien races. Before 146 B.C. they were masters of Macedonia, part of Asia Minor, Spain and northern Africa, and the Roman dominions presented an example of a mere political aggregate, or heterogeneous empire or number of peoples having no natural attraction for one another and held together only by force. For the rule of a heterogeneous empire the institutions of a city and even of an expanded city proved utterly unsuitable: and it was necessary that both the conquering city and the dominions which it had conquered should submit to be ruled under a centralised and despotic system of government adapted to the needs of a heterogeneous empire. The right system was only gradually made, but it had been completed by the death of the Emperor Constantine the Great in 337 A.D.

But it is time to return to the Germans: for the Germans were the successors of the Romans as masters of Western Europe. The Germans in their primitive tribal condition possessed a great aptitude for forming large political communities by the union of many small communities:—an aptitude which is probably common to all peoples in a tribal condition:—and they inhabited a flat country which put no obstacles in the way of the amalgamation of their tribes. At any rate the German tribes between 150 A.D. and 400 A.D. were engaged in a process of amalgamation. About 150 A.D. Ptolemy enumerated more than fifty of them9: by the year 400 all or nearly all of these had gathered themselves into a few great hordes or associations of tribes, (which may themselves be called overgrown tribes,) bearing severally the names of the Saxons, the Salian Franks, the Ripuarian Franks, the Angli, the Alamanni, the Burgundians, the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Lombards. After 400 A.D. came the great migrations of the German peoples: some of them invaded the provinces of the Western Roman Empire, still full of wealth and of such civilisation as the Romans had planted there: others, in the second half of the fifth century, betook themselves to Britain, from whence the Romans had departed in the year 407.

During the eleven centuries which intervened between the migrations of the Germans and the year 1500, the Germans who went to Britain, Spain and Gaul succeeded in forming certain large political communities which are usually known as the nations of medieval Europe. These political communities as they existed about the year 1480 or 1500 possessed three of the distinguishing features of nations: for each of them was of large size, lived under a single government, and was composed of men well suited for living together and under one government: but all of them lacked one quality which is essential for the making of a perfect nation: and that lacking quality was a strong cohesion between the inhabitants of the different parts of their territories. But it will be necessary to observe in detail the processes by which the large political communities were built up.

The Saxons, Angles, and Jutes who went to Britain established themselves at first in a number of small settlements on its southern and eastern coasts. From these settlements they gradually pushed their way inland, and by 577 A.D. they had conquered nearly all the richest and most fertile regions in Britain. The many political communities formed by settlement and conquest were soon afterwards engaged in strife with one another: in the beginning of the ninth century the West Saxons overpowered all their opponents and the West Saxon king received the submission of all the German settlers in the island. The conquering West Saxons and the conquered Angles and Jutes showed the same genius for amalgamation as had been shown by their forefathers in Germany long before: and by the middle of the ninth century all the Germans in Britain (we may now call them the English) had combined into a single large political community. Three times over, in 867-878, 988-1016, and 1066-1070, the English were disturbed by invasions of fresh immigrants from the continent of Europe: but on each occasion the new comers were successfully united in a single political community with the older settlers, and by the year 1174 or at any rate by 1215 the English people had been for the last time fashioned into one kindred under one government.

The German peoples who invaded Spain were the Vandals, the Alans, the Suevi and the Visigoths. The Visigoths proved to be the strongest of the four, and by the early years of the sixth century they had occupied nearly all the peninsula except the north east corner, which they left to the Suevi. In the enjoyment of the luxuries afforded by Roman civilisation, and in the fancied security of their position, they neglected the arts of war in which they had once so greatly excelled. In 710 A.D.10