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. The elementary group is the
family, connected by common subjection to the highest male ascendant.
The aggregation of families forms the gens, or house. The aggregation
of houses makes the tribe. The aggregation of tribes constitutes the
commonwealth. Are we at liberty to follow these indications, and to lay
down that the commonwealth is a collection of persons united by common
descent from the progenitor of an original family? Of this we may at
least be certain, that all ancient societies regarded themselves as
having proceeded from one original stock, and even laboured under an
incapacity for comprehending any reason except this for their holding
together in political union. The history of political ideas begins, in
fact, with the assumption that kinship in blood is the sole possible
ground of community in political functions; nor is there any of those
subversions of feeling, which we term emphatically revolutions, so
startling and so complete as the change which is accomplished when some
other principle--such as that, for instance, of LOCAL
CONTIGUITY--establishes itself for the first time as the basis of
common political action.'
If this theory were true, the origin of politics would not seem a great
change, or, in early days, be really a great change. The primacy of the
elder brother, in tribes casually cohesive, would be slight; it would
be the beginning of much, but it would be nothing in itself; it would
be--to take an illustration from the opposite end of the political
series--it would be like the headship of a weak parliamentary leader
over adherents who may divide from him in a moment; it was the germ of
sovereignty,--it was hardly yet sovereignty itself.
I do not myself believe that the suggestion of Sir Henry Maine--for he
does not, it will be seen, offer it as a confident theory--is an
adequate account of the true origin of politics. I shall in a
subsequent essay show that there are, as it seems to me, abundant
evidences of a time still older than that which he speaks of. But the
theory of Sir Henry Maine serves my present purpose well. It describes,
and truly describes, a kind of life antecedent to our present politics,
and the conclusion I have drawn from it will be strengthened, not
weakened, when we come to examine and deal with an age yet older, and a
social bond far more rudimentary.
But when once polities were began, there is no difficulty in explaining
why they lasted. Whatever may be said against the principle of 'natural
selection' in other departments, there is no doubt of its predominance
in early human history. The strongest killed out the weakest, as they
could. And I need not pause to prove that any form of politics more
efficient than none; that an aggregate of families owning even a
slippery allegiance to a single head, would be sure to have the better
of a set of families acknowledging no obedience to anyone, but
scattering loose about the world and fighting where they stood. Homer's
Cyclops would be powerless against the feeblest band; so far from its
being singular that we find no other record of that state of man, so
unstable and sure to perish was it that we should rather wonder at even
a single vestige lasting down to the age when for picturesqueness it
became valuable in poetry.
But, though the origin of polity is dubious, we are upon the terra
firma of actual records when we speak of the preservation of polities.
Perhaps every young Englishman who comes now-a-days to Aristotle or
Plato is struck with their conservatism: fresh from the liberal
doctrines of the present age, he wonders at finding in those recognised
teachers so much contrary teaching. They both--unlike as they are--hold
with Xenophon--so unlike both--that man is the 'hardest of all animals
to govern.' Of Plato it might indeed be plausibly said that the
adherents of an intuitive philosophy, being 'the tories of
speculation,' have commonly been prone to conservatism in government;
but Aristotle, the founder of the experience philosophy, ought,
according to that doctrine, to have been a liberal, if anyone ever was
a liberal. In fact, both of these men lived when men had not 'had time
to forget' the difficulties of government. We have forgotten them
altogether. We reckon, as the basis of our culture, upon an amount of
order, of tacit obedience, of prescriptive governability, which these
philosophers hoped to get as a principal result of their culture. We
take without thought as a datum, what they hunted as a quaesilum.
In early times the quantity of government is much more important than
its quality. What you want is a comprehensive rule binding men
together, making them do much the same things, telling them what to
expect of each other--fashioning them alike, and keeping them so. What
this rule is does not matter so much. A good rule is better than a bad
one, but any rule is better than none; while, for reasons which a
jurist will appreciate, none can be very good. But to gain that rule,
what may be called the impressive elements of a polity are incomparably
more important than its useful elements. How to get the obedience of
men is the hard problem; what you do with that obedience is less
critical.
To gain that obedience, the primary condition is the identity--not the
union, but the sameness--of what we now call Church and State. Dr.
Arnold, fresh from the study of Greek thought and Roman history, used
to preach that this identity was the great cure for the misguided
modern world. But he spoke to ears filled with other sounds and minds
filled with other thoughts, and they hardly knew his meaning, much less
heeded it. But though the teaching was wrong for the modern age to
which it was applied, it was excellent for the old world from which it
was learnt. What is there requisite is a single government--call it
Church or State, as you like--regulating the whole of human life. No
division of power is then endurable without danger--probably without
destruction; the priest must not teach one thing and the king another;
king must be priest, and prophet king: the two must say the same,
because they are the same. The idea of difference between spiritual
penalties and legal penalties must never be awakened. Indeed, early
Greek thought or early Roman thought would never have comprehended it.
There was a kind of rough public opinion and there were rough, very
rough, hands which acted on it. We now talk of political penalties and
ecclesiastical prohibition, and the social censure, but they were all
one then. Nothing is very like those old communities now, but perhaps a
'trade's union' is as near as most things; to work cheap is thought to
be a 'wicked' thing, and so some Broadhead puts it down.
The object of such organisations is to create what may be called a cake
of custom. All the actions of life are to be submitted to a single rule
for a single object; that gradually created the 'hereditary drill'
which science teaches to be essential, and which the early instinct of
men saw to be essential too. That this regime forbids free thought is
not an evil; or rather, though an evil, it is the necessary basis for
the greatest good; it is necessary for making the mould of
civilisation, and hardening the soft fibre of early man.
The first recorded history of the Aryan race shows everywhere a king, a
council, and, as the necessity of early conflicts required, the king in
much prominence and with much power. That there could be in such ages
anything like an oriental despotism, or a Caesarean despotism, was
impossible; the outside extra-political army which maintains them could
not exist when the tribe was the nation, and when all the men in the
tribe were warriors. Hence, in the time of Homer, in the first times of
Rome, in the first times of ancient Germany, the king is the most
visible part of the polity, because for momentary welfare he is the
most useful. The close oligarchy, the patriciate, which alone could
know the fixed law, alone could apply the fixed law, which was
recognised as the authorised custodian of the fixed law, had then sole
command over the primary social want. It alone knew the code of drill;
it alone was obeyed; it alone could drill. Mr. Grote has admirably
described the rise of the primitive oligarchies upon the face of the
first monarchy, but perhaps because he so much loves historic Athens,
he has not sympathised with pre-historic Athens. He has not shown us
the need of a fixed life when all else was unfixed life.
It would be schoolboyish to explain at length how well the two great
republics, the two winning republics of the ancient world, embody these
conclusions. Rome and Sparta were drilling aristocracies, and succeeded
because they were such. Athens was indeed of another and higher order;
at least to us instructed moderns who know her and have been taught by
her. But to the 'Philistines' of those days Athens was of a lower
order. She was beaten; she lost the great visible game which is all
that short-sighted contemporaries know. She was the great 'free
failure' of the ancient world. She began, she announced, the good
things that were to come; but she was too weak to display and enjoy
them; she was trodden down by those of coarser make and better trained
frame.
How much these principles are confirmed by Jewish history is obvious.
There was doubtless much else in Jewish history--whole elements with
which I am not here concerned. But so much is plain. The Jews were in
the beginning the most unstable of nations; they were submitted to
their law, and they came out the most stable of nations. Their polity
was indeed defective in unity. After they asked for a king the
spiritual and the secular powers (as we should speak) were never at
peace, and never agreed. And the ten tribes who lapsed from their law,
melted away into the neighbouring nations. Jeroboam has been called the
'first Liberal;' and, religion apart, there is a meaning in the phrase.
He began to break up the binding polity which was what men wanted in
that age, though eager and inventive minds always dislike it. But the
Jews who adhered to their law became the Jews of the day, a nation of a
firm set if ever there was one.
It is connected with this fixity that jurists tell us that the title
'contract' is hardly to be discovered in the oldest law. In modern
days, in civilised days, men's choice determines nearly all they do.
But in early times that choice determined scarcely anything. The
guiding rule was the law of STATUS. Everybody was born to a place in
the community: in that place he had to stay: in that place he found
certain duties which he had to fulfil, and which were all he needed to
think of. The net of custom caught men in distinct spots, and kept each
where he stood.
What are called in European politics the principles of 1789, are
therefore inconsistent with the early world; they are fitted only to
the new world in which society has gone through its early task; when
the inherited organisation is already confirmed and fixed; when the
soft minds and strong passions of youthful nations are fixed and guided
by hard transmitted instincts. Till then not equality before the law is
necessary but inequality, for what is most wanted is an elevated elite
who know the law: not a good government seeking the happiness of its
subjects, but a dignified and overawing government getting its subjects
to obey: not a good law, but a comprehensive law binding all life to
one routine. Later are the ages of freedom; first are the ages of
servitude. In 1789, when the great men of the Constituent Assembly
looked on the long past, they hardly saw anything in it which could be
praised, or admired, or imitated: all seemed a blunder--a complex error
to be got rid of as soon as might be. But that error had made
themselves. On their very physical organisation the hereditary mark of
old times was fixed; their brains were hardened and their nerves were
steadied by the transmitted results of tedious usages. The ages of
monotony had their use, for they trained men for ages when they need
not be monotonous.