Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/34

10 of political history than the study of an organism which is highly complex. We need but call to mind the most striking institutions which the modern State has developed, such as Representative Government, Federation, or Local Self-government, to show how complicated a problem political science has become. Or if we look at the earlier history of the modern State, we again find its difficulties increased not only by the imperfect cohesion of the States themselves, but by the presence of two influences outside them which cannot be left out of account, viz. the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire. The life-history of any one Greek State, or of the Roman State in its earlier stages, would be, if we had it complete, a much more exact and instructive study.

Let us look into this a little more closely; for at a time when classical study is in some danger of losing its prestige and of being left stranded for the learned few to deal with as wreckage, it is as well to be sure of our ground in claiming an educational superiority for it, even on the historical side only. If it can be shown that the history of the most perfect State is the best history, and that the was a more perfect State than the modern one, something at least will have been done to prove the point in question.

What is a State, and what constitutes its excellence as such? A State is an aggregation of free human beings, bound together by common ties, some of which may be called natural ties, some artificial. The chief natural ties are community of race, of