Principles of western civilisation

170 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

hood and a common religious tradition, we may clearly distinguish how, not only the political institutions, the prevailing type of social organisation, and the existing standards of social morality, but the very life-principle of the State itself, are indissolubly associated with the same characteristic causes which gave to the original groups their peculiar strength and individuality.

There is in this respect no difference to be made in any fundamental governing principle, between the Greek States and Rome as we see them in history. In each we have developed, as Mr. Fowler expresses it,’ the same kind of polity, in which, although directed to different aims, the same governing principles carry the same form of political organisation through similar stages of growth. In each we have the same conception of exclusive citizenship; the same tradition of community of blood by descent, to which religious significance is attached; the same institution of common worship, associated now with the State and in the hands of a civil priesthood, but everywhere presenting, with its omens, auguries, and public rites, the original characteristics of that stage of religious development in which all the functions relate to material ends, and in which the centre of all consciousness is in the present time and in the existing political organisation.* In the later epoch of the State the greater gods of the tribes have developed into State deities whose rites and ceremonies are performed by a priesthood, always presenting to us the feature that its office and functions

1 The City-State of the Greeks and Romans, by W. W. Fowler, pp. 5, 6. 2 Cf. The Institutes of Justinian (Sandars), Intro.