Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/67

II spell, as the places where they and their forefathers have lived and toiled.

But this influence of the land is never so powerful as that of kinship, and it acts in a different way. The tie of blood is strong in small groups, but it cannot create large ones or hold them together; the larger the group of kin becomes, the fainter and more fictitious will be the bond of relationship. But here comes in the influence of the land, and carries on the work which the other had begun. There are not likely to be natural geographical boundaries between the lands of adjacent villages, — no such stern natural limits as between the kin by blood of one set of villagers and another. When once the blood-tie has grown fainter, there is no serious obstacle to the union of villages and their lands in a larger whole, if there be obvious advantage to be gained by it, or if a strong hand urges or forces on the process. And this process may go on, gradually or by leaps, until some natural boundary is reached, such as the sea and the mountain barriers which enclose Attica or Latium, or the Rhine and the Alps, beyond which the Swiss have hardly, and at their peril, succeeded in extending their confederation. Then the land may eventually become a fatherland, and acquire a marvellous binding force over men's minds, as it has in Ireland and Switzerland, and more or less in all modern States.

If the union of villages was thus made more possible, as the idea of the land took the place of the idea of kinship, what may we suppose were the