Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/243

 INTELLECTUAL EFFECTS OF LOCALITY. 227 government through the representative system, it requires a certain mental effort to transport himself back to a time when even the smallest town clung so tenaciously to its right of self- legislation. Nevertheless, such was the general habit and feel- ing of the ancient world, throughout Italy, Sicily, Spain, and Gaul. Among the Hellenes, it stands out more conspicuously, for several reasons, first, because they seem to have pushed the multiplication of autonomous units to an extreme point, seeing that even islands not larger than Peparethos and Amorgos had two or three separate city communities j 1 secondly, because they pro- duced, for the first time in the history of mankind, acute system- atic thinkers on matters of government, amongst all of whom the idea of the autonomous city was accepted as the indispensable basis of political speculation ; thirdly, because this incurable subdivision proved finally the cause of their ruin, in spite of pronounced intellectual superiority over their conquerors : and lastly, because incapacity of political coalescence did not preclude a powerful and extensive sympathy between the inhabitants of all the separate cities, with a constant tendency to fraternize for numerous pur- poses, social, religious, recreative, intellectual, and aesthetical. For these reasons, the indefinite multiplication of self-governing towns, though in truth a phenomenon common to ancient Europe, as contrasted with the large monarchies of Asia, appears more marked among the ancient Greek-, than elsewhere : and there cannot be any doubt that they owf it, in a considerable degree, to the multitude of insulating boundaries which the configuration of their country presented. Nor is it rash to suppose that t j same causes may have tended to promote that unborrowed intellectual development for which they stand so conspicuous. Gereral propositions respecting the working of climate and physral agencies upon character are, indeed, treacherous ; for our knowledge of the globe is now suffi- cient to teach us that heat an^l cold, mountain and plain, sea and land, moist and dry atmosphere, are all consistent with the greatest diversities of rodent men: moreover, the contrast between the population of Greece itself, for the seven centuries preceding the Christian era, and the Greeks of more modern Skylax, Teripl. 59.