In later ages many races have gained much of this
discipline quickly, though painfully; a loose set of scattered clans
has been often and often forced to substantial settlement by a rigid
conqueror; the Romans did half the work for above half Europe. But
where could the first ages find Romans or a conqueror? Men conquer
by the power of government, and it was exactly government which then
was not. The first ascent of civilisation was at a steep gradient,
though when now we look down upon it, it seems almost nothing.
III.
How the step from polity to no polity was made distinct, history
does not record,--on this point Sir Henry Maine has drawn a most
interesting conclusion from his peculiar studies:--
'It would be,' he tells us, 'a very simple explanation of the origin
of society if we could base a general conclusion on the hint
furnished us by the scriptural example already adverted to, and
could suppose that communities began to exist wherever a family held
together instead of separating at the death of its patriarchal
chieftain. In most of the Greek states and in Rome there long
remained the vestiges of an ascending series of groups out of which
the state was at first constituted. The family, house, and tribe of
the Romans may be taken as a type of them, and they are so described
to us that we can scarcely help conceiving them as a system of
concentric circles which have gradually expanded from the same
point.
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