Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/82

58 We can ourselves realise, without much effort, in the light of the highest ends of human life, how great is the difference between a highly organised State and all less perfect forms of association. We can compare the possibilities of progress in a well-knit State, and in an imperfectly civilised society, and see how art and literature, morality and material comfort, find a much more favourable soil in the one than in the other. We know, for example, how the conscience and the genius of Englishmen began at last to find utterance when the nation was strongly knit together under Henry VIII., and again under Elizabeth, after being choked by disunion for many generations. We can see how even the modern Socialist, who is apt to hanker after an economy like that of the Middle Ages, or even after the simplicity of savage life, is forced to assume an even more fully developed State-power than we have as yet attained to, for the realisation of the social perfection of his fancy. In spite of all its shortcomings, our modern State is all in all to us; it must seem capable of bringing about such human perfection as we can aspire to, for we can imagine nothing beyond it, except in the vaguest dreams of a far distant future.

Yet it may be doubted whether we can see into these things with a vision so clear and comprehensive as that of the Greek philosophers. Our State, as I said in the first chapter, is not so easily reasoned on; its life is not so visibly focussed for us as theirs. Plato and Aristotle, like Herodotus before them, seeing the peoples around them living in