settled
by a usage which was social, political, and religious, as we should now
say, all in one--which those who obeyed it could not have been able to
analyse, for those distinctions had no place in their mind and
language, but which they felt to be a usage of imperishable import, and
above all things to be kept unchanged. In former papers I have shown,
or at least tried to show, why these customary civilisations were the
only ones which suited an early society; why, so to say, they alone
could have been first; in what manner they had in their very structure
a decisive advantage over all competitors. But now comes the farther
question: If fixity is an invariable ingredient in early civilisations,
how then did any civilisation become unfixed? No doubt most
civilisations stuck where they first were; no doubt we see now why
stagnation is the rule of the world, and why progress is the very rare
exception; but we do not learn what it is which has caused progress in
these few cases, or the absence of what it is which has denied it in
all others.

To this question history gives a very clear and very remarkable answer.
It is that the change from the age of status to the age of choice was
first made in states where the government was to a great and a growing
extent a government by discussion, and where the subjects of that
discussion were in some degree abstract, or, as we should say, matters
of principle. It was in the small republics of Greece and Italy that
the chain of custom was first broken. 'Liberty said, Let there be
light, and, like a sunrise on the sea, Athens arose,' says Shelley, and
his historical philosophy is in this case far more correct than is
usual with him. A free state--a state with liberty--means a state, call
it republic or call it monarchy, in which the sovereign power is
divided between many persons, and in which there is a discussion among
those persons. Of these the Greek republics were the first in history,
if not in time, and Athens was the greatest of those republics.

After the event it is easy to see why the teaching of history should be
this and nothing else. It is easy to see why the common discussion of
common actions or common interests should become the root of change and
progress. In early society, originality in life was forbidden and
repressed by the fixed rule of life. It may not have been quite so much
so in Ancient Greece as in some other parts of the world. But it was
very much so e