Principles of western civilisation

168 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

with his blood responsibilities towards the community into which he was born, as towards a larger kindred.”*

The exclusive and absorbing demand of the claims of this larger kindred on the whole moral and religious nature of the individual altogether exceeded, in the ancient world, even the highest modern ideals of duty and obligation within the circle of family relationship. We may obtain some idea of the peculiar religious sanctity attached to the bond of citizenship, and of the spirit which pervaded the fabric of the ancient State, from Cicero's assertion that no man could lay claim to the title of good who would hesitate to die for his country; and that the love owed by the citizen towards this larger community of which he was a member was holier and more profound than that due from him to his nearest kinsman.

Whatever other characteristic may be expected to be associated with, or to proceed from, such a type of social organisation, the evolutionist at once distinguishes in it its significant feature. We have represented therein the most potent principle of military efficiency which it would be possible to conceive. Under no other type of social order could the principle of military ascendency so surely reach its culminating stage. Under no other theory of society could the ideal of conquest, by a people naturally fitted to conquer, lead so directly to conquest on a universal scale.

As, accordingly, we watch now the isolated groups of the original stock from which sprang the civilisations of Greece and Rome concentrating

1 Op. cit.