Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/672

 656 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Greece into Asia for example, was effected, thanks to the variety of Greek groups each one of which naturally spread where condi- tions were most similar ; adaptation was made by successive steps in the easiest and most advantageous direction. The coast of Asia Minor by its configuration, its character, its fauna and flora, strongly resembles Greece. Eolians, Dorians, lonians, colonized the coasts of Asia Minor, choosing for their respective destina- tions, those regions which were most like their own country.

The Greek world would have been able to develop through peaceful colonization, if it had been possible to avoid conflict with the great military power of the period, Persia; it was contact with the latter, not to mention other internal causes, which impressed upon the organization of Greece a military structure whose conflict with democratic tendencies constitutes the trend of her history.

In the conflict between Persia and the first European empire, the latter triumphed, and it was this which permitted the internal organization of Greece to develop with more freedom than had been possible in any earlier civilization. Sparta, Thebes, Mace- donia, continental powers, embodied especially the old military regime as opposed to the maritime, commercial, and even in part industrial states. The fact is that a civilization at first continental became not indeed exclusively maritime, but at once continental and maritime. So long as it had remained continental it had been able to spread only in the direction of latitude conformably to the orographic system which unites Asia and Europe. Now, having become also maritime, mistress of the interior seas, it could extend in the direction of longitude and at the same time multiply means of communication within the continental territory. It was, in short, once more a removal of frontiers which was realized. The moment of great oceanic civilizations had not yet come, but of a mixed regime. The conflict between Sparta and Athens, and especially Thebes and Macedonia, was the conflict of powers different in nature and composition. This conflict, developing in its continuation between Carthage and Rome, will arrive at a mixed solution, the creation of a great empire at once continental and maritime, but still above all continental, with this difference,