Principles of western civilisation

166 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

outsiders which is almost beyond conception at the present day.*

As the deities worshipped are supposed to belong to the community alone, to be its protectors in peace, and its associates and leaders in war; there springs inevitably from the conception of common descent from deified ancestors a system of morality the exclusiveness of which it is almost impossible for us to fully realise; a system of morality in which there is to be distinguished a feeling of od/zgation to regard all outside the tie of the resulting moralreligious citizenship, as not only without the pale of all duty and obligation, and beyond the range of even those feelings which to us seem to be the outcome of a conception of a common humanity ; but as persons whom it would actually be a kind of sacrilege to admit under any circumstances as equals.

The enormous political significance of this conception will be immediately evident. During the whole period of the history of Greek and Roman peoples, it may be distinguished, accordingly, that there are always two fundamental ideas underlying the bond of citizenship. In the first place, it has a deep religious significance; in the second place, this significance is associated with the conception of exclusive blood-relationship in the State.” Down

1 The visible evidence of the possession of tribal blood, and at a later stage of citizenship in the Greek States, was, accordingly, to use the expressive words of Mr. Seebohm, ‘‘the undisputed participation, as one of kindred in the common religious ceremonies, from which the blood-polluted and the stranger-in-blood are strictly shut out” (Zhe Structure of Greek Tribal Society, by Hugh E. Seebohm, p. 4; see also Fowler’s City-State of the Greeks and Romans, pp. 28-33)-

2 The confidence in an ultimately divine origin was, to use the words of Professor Wheeler, ‘‘ an essential part of every family tree among the noble families. All the great heroes were sons of gods. If Minos was the son of Zeus,