t; it became,
under Roman influence, more and more active, and of increasing political
importance. Such a state of things is in the highest degree conducive to
the propagation of thought, and, indeed, to its origination, through the
constant excitement it furnishes to intellectual activity. Commercial
communities, in this respect, present a striking contrast to
agricultural. By their aid speculative philosophy was rapidly
disseminated everywhere, as was subsequently Christianity. But the
agriculturists steadfastly adhered with marvellous stolidity to their
ancestral traditions and polytheistic absurdities, until the very
designation--paganism--under which their system passes was given as a
nickname derived from themselves.

[Sidenote: Philosophical influence of the Greek colonies.]

The intellectual condition of the Greek colonies of Italy and Sicily has
not attracted the attention of critics in the manner it deserves. For,
though its political result may appear to those whose attention is fixed
by mere material aggrandizement to have been totally eclipsed by the
subsequent power of the Roman republic, to one who looks at things in a
mere general way it may be a probable inquiry whether the philosophy
cultivated in those towns has not, in the course of ages, produced as
solid and lasting results as the military achievements of the Eternal
City. The relations of the Italian peninsula to the career of European
civilization are to be classified under three epochs, the first
corresponding to the philosophy generated in the southern Greek towns:
this would have attained the elevation long before reached in the
advanced systems of India had it not been prevented by the rapid
development of Roman power; the second presents the military influence
of republican and imperial Rome; to the third belongs the agency of
ecclesiastical Rome--for the production of the last we shall find
hereafter that the preceding two conspire. The Italian effect upon the
whole has therefore been philosophical, material, and mixed. We are
greatly in want of a history of the first, for which doubtless many
facts still remain to a painstaking and enlightened inquirer.

[Sidenote: Origin of the Greek colonial system.]

It was on account of her small territory and her numerous population
that Greece was obliged to colonize. To these motives must be added
internal dissensions, and particularly the consequences of unequal
marriages. So numerous did these