tion which was their principal tool, no
impediment was so formidable as foreign intercourse. Men imitate what
is before their eyes, if it is before their eyes alone, but they do not
imitate it if it is only one among many present things--one competitor
among others, all of which are equal and some of which seem better.
'Whoever speaks two languages is a rascal,' says the saying, and it
rightly represents the feeling of primitive communities when the sudden
impact of new thoughts and new examples breaks down the compact
despotism of the single consecrated code, and leaves pliant and
impressible man--such as he then is--to follow his unpleasant will
without distinct guidance by hereditary morality and hereditary
religion. The old oligarchies wanted to keep their type perfect, and
for that end they were right not to allow foreigners to touch it.
'Distinctions of race,' says Arnold himself elsewhere in a remarkable
essay--for it was his last on Greek history, his farewell words on a
long favourite subject--'were not of that odious and fantastic
character which they have been in modern times; they implied real
differences of the most important kind, religious and moral.' And after
exemplifying this at length he goes on, 'It is not then to be wondered
at that Thucydides, when speaking of a city founded jointly by Ionians
and Dorians, should have thought it right to add "that the prevailing
institutions of the two were Ionian," for according as they were
derived from one or the other the prevailing type would be different.
And therefore the mixture of persons of different race in the same
commonwealth, unless one race had a complete ascendancy, tended to
confuse all the relations of human life, and all men's notions of right
and wrong; or by compelling men to tolerate in so near a relation as
that of fellow-citizens differences upon the main points of human life,
led to a general carelessness and scepticism, and encouraged the notion
that right and wrong had no real existence, but were mere creatures of
human opinion.' But if this be so, the oligarchies were right. Commerce
brings this mingling of ideas, this breaking down of old creeds, and
brings it inevitably. It is now-a-days its greatest good that it does
so; the change is what we call 'enlargement of mind'. But in early
times Providence 'set apart the nations;' and it is not till the frame
of their morals is set by long ages of transmitted discipline, that
such enlargemen