maintains them could not exist when the tribe was the nation, and
when all the men in the tribe were warriors. Hence, in the time of
Homer, in the first times of Rome, in the first times of ancient
Germany, the king is the most visible part of the polity, because
for momentary welfare he is the most useful. The close oligarchy,
the patriciate, which alone could know the fixed law, alone could
apply the fixed law, which was recognised as the authorised
custodian of the fixed law, had then sole command over the primary
social want. It alone knew the code of drill; it alone was obeyed;
it alone could drill. Mr. Grote has admirably described the rise of
the primitive oligarchies upon the face of the first monarchy, but
perhaps because he so much loves historic Athens, he has not
sympathised with pre-historic Athens. He has not shown us the need
of a fixed life when all else was unfixed life.

It would be schoolboyish to explain at length how well the two great
republics, the two winning republics of the ancient world, embody
these conclusions. Rome and Sparta were drilling aristocracies, and
succeeded because they were such. Athens was indeed of another and
higher order; at least to us instructed moderns who know her and
have been taught by her. But to the 'Philistines' of those days
Athens was of a lower order. She was beaten; she lost the great
visible game which is all that short-sighted contemporaries know.
She was the great 'free failure' of the ancient world. She began,
she announced, the good things that were to come; but she was too
weak to display and enjoy them; she was trodden down by those of
coarser make and better trained frame.

How much these principles are confirmed by Jewish history is
obvious. There was doubtless much else in Jewish history--whole