POLITICAL FORMS AND FORCES. 629 



of obscuring and even obliterating the traces of the original political 

 form. 



While, however, recognizing the fact that during political evolu- 

 tion these three primitive components alter their proportions in various 

 ways and degrees, to the extent that some of them become mere rudi- 

 ments or wholly disappear, it will greatly alter our conception of politi- 

 cal forms if we remember that they are all derived from this primitive 

 form that a despotism, an oligarchy, or a democracy, is to be re- 

 garded as a type of government in which one of the original compo- 

 nents has greatly developed at the expense of the other two, and that 

 the various mixed types are to be arranged according to the degrees 

 in which one or other of the original components has the greater influ- 

 ence. 



Is there any fundamental unity of political forces accompanying 

 this fundamental unity of political forms ? While losing sight of the 

 common origin of political structures, have we not also become inade- 

 quately conscious of the common source of their powers ? How prone 

 we are to forget the ultimate, while thinking of the proximate, it may 

 be worth while pausing a moment to observe. 



One, who in a storm watches the breaking-up of a wreck or the 

 tearing down of a sea-wall, is impressed by the immense energy of the 

 waves. Of course, when it is pointed out that in the absence of wind 

 no such results can be produced, he recognizes the truth that the sea 

 is in itself powerless, and that the power enabling it to destroy vessels 

 and piers is given by the currents of air which roughen its surface. If 

 he stops short here, however, he fails to identify the force which 

 works these striking changes. Intrinsically, the air is just as passive 

 as the water is. There would be no winds were it not for the varying 

 effects of the sun's heat on different parts of the earth's surface. 

 Even when he has traced back thus far the energy which undermines 

 cliffs and makes shingle, he has not reached its source ; for in the ab- 

 sence of that continuous concentration of the solar mass, caused by 

 the mutual gravitation of its parts, there would be no solar radiations. 



The tendency here illustrated, which all have in some degree and 

 most in a great degree, to associate power with the visible agency exer- 

 cising it, rather than with its inconspicuous source, has, as above im- 

 plied, a vitiating influence on conceptions at large, and among others 

 on political ones. Though the habit, general in past times, of regard- 

 ing the powers of governments as inherent, has been, by the growth of 

 popular institutions, a good deal qualified ; yet, even now, there is no 

 clear apprehension of the fact that governments are not themselves 

 powerful, but are the instrumentalities of a power. This power ex- 

 isted before governments arose ; governments were themselves pro- 

 duced by it ; and it ever continues to be that which, disguised more or 

 less completely, works through them. Let us go batk to the beginning. 



