by the mere ideals or appetites of rulers or leaders, or by more or less imaginary differences of interest, seen under the moral illusion of the most primitive of social instincts—the sensus gregis. As evolution proceeds, the blind form may be expected to disappear, and the more reasoned forms—that is, the inter-social and intellectual—to develop.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] It is one of the shortcomings of Buckle that, though he at least once (Introd. to Hist. of Civ. in Eng., Routledge's ed. p. 352) recognises the futility of explaining history in terms of national character, he repeatedly lapses to that method, and speaks of peoples as if they were of one will, bent, and mind. (Ed. cited, edit. notes pp. 354, 385, 540, 553, 558, 719, etc.). See below, pt. iii, ch. iii, second note, as to Eduard Meyer.
[2] Similarly De Tocqueville begins L'ancien régime et la révolution with "Les Français ont fait. …" (Avant-Propos, 2e éd. p. 5), and makes the successors of the Revolutionists "les mêmes Français" (p. 12). Soon he makes the Revolution an entity (p. 35). Compare with Taine's passage the programme of the first number of Le Play's La Réforme Sociale, 1881 (cited by H. Higgs, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Boston, July, 1890, p. 418), which might almost have been written by Taine. In the case of Le Play the ideal of a quasi-patriarchal order, very stable and very fixed, led to an attitude resembling at points that of Taine. It is easy to see how the natural recoil from political turmoil has, since the French Revolution, developed successive schools such as those of Saint Simon, Comte, and Le Play, all aiming at stability and order, all seeking to elbow out the cosmic force of Change. In Taine's case the result was an acceptance of Spencer's "administrative nihilism."
[3] Les philosophes classiques du XIXe siècle en France, 3ième éd. p. 37.
[4] Lettres de Prosper Mérimée à une Inconnue, préf. end. When, however, M. Taine wrote on Sainte-Beuve's death (1869), he laid down, as one of the necessities of the search for "the true truth," this very determination "to be the dupe of nothing and nobody, above all of oneself" (Derniers Essais, p. 52). Years before an acute critic had said of his literary criticism: "M. Taine, at bottom, let us say it with bated breath, is the dupe of himself when he supposes himself to have given a rigorous formula, an exact definition, a chemical analysis of his author" (Frédéric Morin, Les hommes et livres contemporains, 1862, p. 33). Compare the brochure of Professor Edouard Droz, La critique littéraire et la science, 1893, discussed in the present writer's New Essays towards a Critical Method, 1897, p. 13 sq.
[5] See Napoléon et ses détracteurs, par le Prince Napoléon, p. 13, and passim.
[6] Professor Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, 8th ed. p. 7.
[7] Gibbon, ch. vi (Bohn ed. i, pp. 201, 212–13). In the same way, Julius Cæsar, and the triumvirs after him, were in their day moved to extend citizenship in Italy because of the falling-off in the free Roman population. Widened citizenship meant a wider field for Italian recruiting. At that time the extension involved not taxation, but immunities; but, according to Cicero, Antony received great sums from the Sicilians in payment for the privilege he conferred upon them. Ad Atticum, xiv, 12; Philipp. ii, 36.
[8] Bryce, p. 9.
[9] A different explanation holds in the case of Hegel, who—after very pointedly affirming that "nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion" (Leidenschaft), in the sense of individual interest and self-seeking aim, and that "an individual is such and such a one, not a man in general, for that is not an existence, but one in particular" (Philos. der Geschichte, 2te Aufl. p. 30)—proceeds to express historical processes in terms of universal spirit, abstract universality, and so forth. Here the trouble is the cherished tendency to verbal abstraction.
[10] Cp. Professor H.A. Giles, The Civilisation of China, 1911, pp. 214–15. Smell appears to be an insuperable bar to any general association of "whites" with "blacks," and it probably enters into many racial repugnances. Compare the curious device of Lombard women to set up by an artificial bad smell a repugnance on the part of their alien suitors such as they themselves may have felt. Gummere, Germanic Origins, 1892, p. 138.
[11] Cited by Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You, ch. vi, end.
Chapter II
ROMAN POLITICAL EVOLUTION
§ 1
A survey of the ancient history best known to us may help to make clearer the fatality of strife and the impossibility of solving it save by transcending the physical plane. The habit of summing up all Roman history as so many planned actions of "the Romans," or of "Rome," is in singular contrast with the imbroglio of the records. In the social stage discovered to us by the analysis of the oldest known institutions, "early" Rome is already an artificial political organism, far removed from the simple life of tribal barbarism.[12] There are three tribes; the very name of tribe, it may be, comes from the number three[13] in the flection tribus; and the subdivisions are fixed by the numbers three and ten.[14] Behind the artificial "tribe" is a past in which, it may be, a group of villages forms the pagus or settlement.[15]
Already privilege and caste are fully established, even between classes of freemen; and only by inference can we reach the probable first bases of civic union among the ruling caste. They were clearly a caste of conquerors. Their curiæ, apparently the oldest form of group after the family or the clan,[16] are artificially arranged, numbering thirty, each curia containing nominally a hundred gentes, each gens nominally ten families.
Eduard Meyer (Geschichte des Alterthums, ii, 511) decides for the view of L. Lange, that the historic appellation of Roman citizens, Quirites, derives from curia. The ancients had several theories as to the name. One (Festus) was that the Sabine goddess Curis gave her name to the Sabine town Cures (cp. Athenê, Athenai), whence, according to the legend, had come a band under Titus Tatius, who conquered the Capitoline and Quirinal hills, and had for tribe-god Quirinus. Cp. Ihne, Early Rome, p. 82. Mommsen (Eng. tr. 1862, i, 57, 78, notes) has secured currency for the other tradition, argued for by F.W. Newman (Regal Rome, 1852, pp. 55–56), that the root is the Sabine word curis, quiris, a spear. For this somewhat unplausible theory there is support in the
