POLITICAL SOCIETY. 52 assume it as a primary fact, for the purpose of following out its subsequent changes. To conceive absolute beginning or origin (as Niebuhr has justly remarked) is beyond the reach of our faculties : we can neither apprehend nor verify anything beyond progress, or development, or decay, 1 change from one set of circumstances to another, operated by some definite combination of physical or moral laws. In the case of the Greeks, the legendary age, as the earliest in any way known to us, must be taken as the initial state from which this series of changes com- mences. "We must depict its prominent characteristics as well as we can, and show, partly how it serves to prepare, partly how it forms a contrast to set off, the subsequent ages of Solon, of Perikles, and of Demosthenes. 1. The political condition, which Grecian legend everywhere presents to us, is in its principal features strikingly different from that which had become universally prevalent among the Greeks in the time of the Peloponnesian war. Historical oligarchy, as well as democracy, agreed in requiring a certain established sys- tem of government, comprising the three elements of specialized functions, temporary functionaries, and ultimate responsibility 1 Niebuhr, Romische Gcschichte, vol. i. p. 55, 2d edit. "Erkennt man aber class allcr Ursprung jenseits unse.rer nur Entwickelung und Fortgang fassen- dcn Begriffe Hcgt ; und beschrankt sich von Stufe auf Stufe im Umfang der Gescbichte zuriickzugehen, so wird man Volker eines Stammes (das heisst, durch eigenthtlmliche Art und Sprache identisch) vielfach eben an sich cntgegenliegenden KUstenlandern antreffen ohne dass irgend etwas die Voraussetzung erheischte, eine von diesen getrcnnten Landschaften sei die urspriingliche Heimath gewesen von wo ein Theil nach der andcrn gewan- dert ware Dies ist der Geographic der Thiergeschlechtcr und der Vegetation analog : deren grosse Bezirke durch Gebiirge geschieden werden, and beschriinkte Mcere einschliessen." " When we once recognize, however, that all absolute beginning lies out of the reach of our mental conceptions, which comprehend nothing beyond development vnd progress, and when we attempt nothing more than to go back from the later to the earlier stages in the compass of history, we shall often find, on opposite coasts of the same sea, people of one stock (that is, of the sime peculiar customs and language,) without being warranted in supposing that either of these separate coasts was the primitive home from whence emigrants crossed over to the other. This is analogous to the geography of animal* and plants, whose wide districts are severed by mountains and inclose leus"
