requires a certain mental effort to transport
himself back to a time when even the smallest town clung so tenaciously
to its right of self-legislation. Nevertheless, such was the general
habit and feeling of the ancient world, throughout Italy, Sicily, Spain,
and Gaul. Among the Hellens it stands out more conspicuously, for
several reasons--first, because they seem to have pushed the
multiplication of autonomous units to an extreme point, seeing that even
islands not larger than Peparethos and Amorgos had two or three separate
city communities; secondly, because they produced, for the first time in
the history of mankind, acute systematic thinkers on matters of
government, amongst all of whom the idea of the autonomous city was
accepted as the indispensable basis of political speculation; thirdly,
because this incurable subdivision proved finally the cause of their
ruin, in spite of pronounced intellectual superiority over their
conquerors; and lastly, because incapacity of political coalescence did
not preclude a powerful and extensive sympathy between the inhabitants
of all the separate cities, with a constant tendency to fraternize for
numerous purposes, social, religious, recreative, intellectual, and
aesthetical. For these reasons, the indefinite multiplication of
self-governing towns, though in truth a phenomenon common to ancient
Europe as contrasted with the large monarchies of Asia, appears more
marked among the ancient Greeks than elsewhere; and there cannot be any
doubt that they owe it, in a considerable degree, to the multitude of
insulating boundaries which the configuration of their country
presented.

Nor is it rash to suppose that the same causes may have tended to
promote that unborrowed intellectual development for which they stand so
conspicuous. General propositions respecting the working of climate and
physical agencies upon character are indeed treacherous; for our
knowledge of the globe is now sufficient to teach us that heat and cold,
mountain and plain, sea and land, moist and dry atmosphere, are all
consistent with the greatest diversities of resident men: moreover, the
contrast between the population of Greece itself, for the seven
centuries preceding the Christian era, and the Greeks of more modern
times, is alone enough to inculcate reserve in such speculations.
Nevertheless we may venture to note certain improving influences,
connected with their geographical position, at a time when they