d protect. This was the grand defect of the ancient
Graeco-Roman civilization. The historian explores in vain the records
of the old Greek and Roman republics for any recognition of the rights
of individuals not held as privileges or concessions from the state.
Society recognized no limit to her authority, and the state claimed
over individuals all the authority of the patriarch over his household,
the chief over his tribe, or the absolute monarch over his subjects.
The direct and indirect influence of the body of freemen admitted to a
voice in public affairs, in determining the resolutions and action of
the state, no doubt tempered in practice to some extent the authority
of the state, and prevented acts of gross oppression; but in theory the
state was absolute, and the people individually were placed at the
mercy of the people collectively, or, rather, the majority of the
collective people.

Under ancient republicanism, there were rights of the state and rights
of the citizen, but no rights of man, held independently of society,
and not derived from God through the state. The recognition of these
rights by modern society is due to Christianity: some say to the
barbarians, who overthrew the Roman empire; but this last opinion is
not well founded. The barbarian chiefs and nobles had no doubt a
lively sense of personal freedom and independence, but for themselves
only. They had no conception of personal freedom as a general or
universal right, and men never obtain universal principles by
generalizing particulars. They may give a general truth a particular
application, but not a particular truth--understood to be a particular
truth--a general or universal application. They are too good logicians
for that. The barbarian individual freedom and personal independence
was never generalized into the doctrine of the rights of man, any more
than the freedom of the master has been generalized into the right of
his slaves to be free. The doctrine of individual freedom before the
state is due to the Christian religion, which asserts the dignity and
worth of every human soul, the accountability to God of each man for
himself, and lays it down as law for every one that God is to be obeyed
rather than men. The church practically denied the absolutism of the
state, and asserted for every man rights not held from the state, in
converting the empire to Christianity, in defiance of the state
authority, and the imperial edicts pun