Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/557

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 541

ner in Persia, in northern Asia Minor, in Greece, along the north- ern coast of the Mediterranean, in Italy, and in almost the whole of Europe. At the time when in the center and in the north of Europe they were still nomads, in India and especially in Persia they had founded great civilizations. For a while Persia domi- nated all of the old oriental states. It had successively swept away and passed beyond the frontiers of hordes, tribes, principalities, and particular kingdoms, and it formed a great empire, whose divisions, as in all other empires, no longer were based on geo- graphical or genetic conditions, and whose aim was to annihilate these old divisions within the unitary centralization of the " ring of kings." In the sixth century Persia was divided into satrapies, four of which comprised the Greek regions of Asia Minor. They were purely military and administrative divisions, having scarcely any reference to topography or original divisions. Furthermore, the military forces were placed chiefly in the most exposed zones, the frontier zones, the last acquired, and the least stable.

Never at any time in this development, which had ended in the formation of a more considerable empire than had before existed, were the very numerous physical frontiers, represented by moun- tains, rivers, and deserts, absolute obstacles to the development of the state. They were, at most, points of momentary arrest, or rather of relays, stations, or points of support for greater develop- ments. In the matter of expansion every empire obeys its mili- tary and conquering instincts, but these instincts are themselves derived from an economic necessity which obliges every people or every dominant class living upon the exploitation of other peoples or other classes always to extend its domains and its capital in order to maintain and, as much as possible, even to increase the relative importance of the always unstable superior class as over against the inferior. To stop the work of conquest or exploita- tion is to renounce domination and to tend toward democracy and equality. Such a conception, although foreseen by the Chinese philosophy, and later by Buddhism, never succeeded in evolving from the historic evolution of the Persian empire. At bottom, like every military and conquering empire, its policy never ceased to be that the limits of the empire should provide for, and extend