ranger to the conception of long periods of time. He
imagines human society to have been interrupted by natural convulsions;
and beginning from the last of these, he traces the steps by which the
family has grown into the state, and the original scattered society,
becoming more and more civilised, has finally passed into military
organizations like those of Crete and Sparta. His conception of the
origin of states is far truer in the Laws than in the Republic; but it
must be remembered that here he is giving an historical, there an ideal
picture of the growth of society.

Modern enquirers, like Plato, have found in infinite ages the
explanation not only of states, but of languages, men, animals, the
world itself; like him, also, they have detected in later institutions
the vestiges of a patriarchal state still surviving. Thus far Plato
speaks as 'the spectator of all time and all existence,' who may be
thought by some divine instinct to have guessed at truths which were
hereafter to be revealed. He is far above the vulgar notion that Hellas
is the civilized world (Statesman), or that civilization only began when
the Hellenes appeared on the scene. But he has no special knowledge
of 'the days before the flood'; and when he approaches more historical
times, in preparing the way for his own theory of mixed government,
he argues partially and erroneously. He is desirous of showing that
unlimited power is ruinous to any state, and hence he is led to
attribute a tyrannical spirit to the first Dorian kings. The decay of
Argos and the destruction of Messene are adduced by him as a manifest
proof of their failure; and Sparta, he thinks, was only preserved by the
limitations which the wisdom of successive legislators introduced into
the government. But there is no more reason to suppose that the Dorian
rule of life which was followed at Sparta ever prevailed in Argos and
Messene, than to assume that Dorian institutions were framed to protect
the Greeks against the power of Assyria; or that the empire of Assyria
was in any way affected by the Trojan war; or that the return of the
Heraclidae was only the return of Achaean exiles, who received a new
name from their leader Dorieus. Such fancies were chiefly based, as far
as they had any foundation, on the use of analogy, which played a great
part in the dawn of historical and geographical research. Because there
was a Persian empire which was the natural enemy of the Greek, there
must