304 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of stunted growth. These physical peculiarities are not mere 

 mythopoeic whimseys and creations of the fancy, but correspond 

 to real facts in the primitive history of the race, and point to the 

 class of persons who were the earliest promoters of the arts. 



The supersession of tribal by territorial sovereignty, although 

 radical and permanent, was gradual and scarcely perceptible in its 

 character, and did not begin to express itself in language till many 

 centuries after the change had been fully accomplished. Mediaeval 

 and modern history furnish numerous illustrations of this process 

 of social evolution and the manner of its operation. As Mr. Maine 

 has remarked, there had been kings of England and of France 

 long before John the Landless and Henry IV assumed respectively 

 these oiBcial titles ; although their predecessors had always been 

 styled kings of the English and of the French. The Czar, who, 

 while bearing sway as a territorial sovereign, preserves more than 

 any other European ruler the peculiarities of a tribal chieftain, 

 still calls himself Samod^rshez, or Autocrat of all the Russias, 

 and it was perfectly in keeping with the character and career of 

 Napoleon I, as a condottiere on a colossal scale, that he took the 

 title of " Emperor of the French." His interest was centered 

 wholly in the army, which he loved and fostered in the same 

 spirit that Tamerlane cherished his Mongolian hordes and Fra 

 Diavolo his band of brigands. The King of Prussia bears the title 

 of "German Emperor" {Deutsclier Kaiser), not Emperor of Ger- 

 many, since the latter would be inconsistent with the political ex- 

 istence and integrity of the other German states and a manifest 

 usurpation of the rights and prerogatives (HoTieitsreclite) of the 

 confederated princes and potentates. His imperial sovereignty is, 

 therefore, essentially tribal ; he is, so to speak, the chief of the 

 German confederated monarchs, and exercises territorial sover- 

 eignty only as King of Prussia. There has been a long succession 

 of Roman-German and German emperors, but never an Emperor 

 of Germany. 



A nomadic people, wandering from place to place, is not asso- 

 ciated in any sense with the soil ; the tribe remains the same, but 

 not the territory it occupies. With the beginning of agriculture 

 and sedentariness this relation is reversed. The conception of a 

 nation, nowadays, implies fixed or at least well-defined geograph- 

 ical boundaries. Changes may take place in the character of the 

 inhabitants and in the constitution of the government as the re- 

 sult of emigration and revolution ; individuals and families may 

 disappear and be superseded by others of a different stock, but the 

 nation remains, as it were, adscrijpta glebcB within certain terri- 

 torial limits and is not destroyed by any admixture of foreign 

 with native elements in the population. Mr. Maine states this 

 point very clearly and concisely when he says : " England was 



