Principles of western civilisation

158 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

fact upon which they rested, and from which proceeded the governing spirit of the ancient State in all its phases. This is the institution of exclusive citizenship. The deeper we get in the history of the Greek and Roman peoples the more clearly do we see how the whole fabric of the ancient civilisations, military and civil, legal and religious, is ultimately related to this institution. The military ideals of the State; the conditions of land tenure; the relation of the units in a military organisation of society; the attitude of the Greek and Roman peoples throughout their history to slaves, to conquered races, and to all other nations ; the prevailing standards of conduct; the ideals in public and private life; the stand-point in that remarkable product of the ancient world, the Roman zzs czvzle, and last, but not least, the significance of that epoch in the history of the world in which we watch the Roman zus cwvile being slowly superseded by the zs gendzum, without any influx of new life to a type of social order which was organically united to the forms under which the spirit of the old zs czvile expressed itself;—can all be fully understood only when we have grasped the inner significance of the institution of citizenship in the ancient world.

Throughout the ancient civilisations from the earliest times the institution of citizenship was, to use words of Mommsen, ‘altogether of a moralreligious nature.” What, therefore, in the first place, was the origin and character of this moralreligious bond to which the entire constitution of the ancient State—moral, political, and militarywas in the last resort related ?

1 Mommsen’s History of Rome, translated by W. P. Dickson, vol. 1. p. 246.