Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/673

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 657

that, relying on more numerous seas, its force of penetration to the interior of continents will be greater in the direction of latitude.

At the same time that the limits of the Greek world were extended far beyond the rivers, the mountains, and the seas, its internal organization was complicated and perfected in the direc- tion of democracy, that is to say, by the gradual attenuation of its internal divisions. This evolution is especially remarkable in the Athenian state. The fact that Attica was inclosed on the north and the east by mountains, and elsewhere by the sea, had not pre- vented its colonization by diverse populations of the highest antiquity. Aristotle shows us clearly how it evolved from the tribe to the city, and how in the city the old divisions in connec- tion with the genetic structure and the physical differences exist- ing between the regions of the plains, the mountains, and the shores gave place to divisions more and more administrative; he also shows us that this internal fusion was accompanied by the leveling of political inequalities from Theseus down to his own time. In reality the modifications realized within were also con- nected with the expansion without, especially if one does not consider it solely from the point of view of political and military frontiers, but equally from that, more positive in its real com- pleteness, of social frontiers.

At the moment of its full expansion, Athens became the center of a world; its principal port, the Pireus, was the point of departure for the principal highways of Greek commerce and communication: the route to Pontus, the route to Chios and Lesbos, the route to Egypt and to Cyrenaica, the route to Sicily and to Italy, to Spain and to Gaul. Like the England of today it was no longer a state isolated and shut in ; it was the head of an essentially maritime confederation of colonies and allies. Unfor- tunately this confederation, at first leveling in its effect, was trans- formed more and more into a centralized, military empire, where the allies became subjects, victims of exploitation, and finally revolters, like all subjects and victims of exploitation. And such is still today in vaster form the problem which divides England between the democratic spirit and imperialism.