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Bagehot, Walter, 1826-1877

"to political society"

The cause of types must
be something outside the tribe acting on something within--something
inherited by the tribe. But what that something is I do not know
that any one can in the least explain.
The following conditions may, I think, be historically traced to the
nation capable of a polity, which suggests principles for
discussion, and so leads to progress. First, the nation must possess
the PATRIA POTESTAS in some form so marked as to give family life
distinctness and precision, and to make a home education and a home
discipline probable and possible. While descent is traced only
through the mother, and while the family is therefore a vague
entity, no progress to a high polity is possible. Secondly, that
polity would seem to have been created very gradually; by the
aggregation of families into clans or GENTES, and of clans into
nations, and then again by the widening of nations, so as to include
circumjacent outsiders, as well as the first compact and sacred
group--the number of parties to a discussion was at first augmented
very slowly. Thirdly, the number of 'open' subjects--as we should
say nowadays--that is, of subjects on which public opinion was
optional, and on which discussion was admitted, was at first very
small.


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