With infinite toil and trouble this point has been slowly
gained by mankind, through the circumstance that the very same political
aggregation of small primitive communities which makes them less
disposed to quarrel among themselves tends also to make them more than a
match for the less coherent groups of their more barbarous neighbours.
The same concert of action which tends towards internal harmony tends
also towards external victory, and both ends are promoted by the
co-operation of the same sets of causes. But for a long time all the
political problems of the civilized world were complicated by the fact
that the community had to fight for its life. We seldom stop to reflect
upon the imminent danger from outside attacks, whether from surrounding
barbarism or from neighbouring civilizations of lower type, amid which
the rich and high-toned civilizations of Greece and Rome were developed.
When the king of Persia undertook to reduce Greece to the condition of a
Persian satrapy, there was imminent danger that all the enormous
fruition of Greek thought in the intellectual life of the European world
might have been nipped in the bud. And who can tell how often, in
prehistoric times, some little gleam of civilization, less bright and
steady than this one had become, may have been quenched in slavery or
massacre? The greatest work which the Romans performed in the world was
to assume the aggressive against menacing barbarism, to subdue it, to
tame it, and to enlist its brute force on the side of law and order.
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