CH. xviii.] THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. 219 



primeval principle of community of race. From this happy 

 concurrence of circumstances there was formed, upon the 

 ruins of Paganism, that religious organization which alone, 

 of all churches that have existed, has earned the glorious 

 name of Catholic. Disgusted at some of her high-handed 

 proceedings in later times, Protestant historians hav a too 

 generally forgotten that the Roman Church, by co-ordinating 

 the most vigorous and progressive elements of ancient life, 

 prepared the way both for the ubiquity and for the per 

 manence of modern civilization. Had the ecclesiastical 

 system of the Empire perished, along with the breaking 

 up of its political system ; had there been really that wreck 

 of ancient institutions in the fifth century which was 

 formerly supposed to have occurred, until Mr. Bryce and 

 Mr. Freeman dispelled the gross error; it is difficult to see 

 how mediaeval European history could have been politically 

 anything more than a repetition of Grecian history, save 

 only in the extent of its geographical range. Whoever is 

 disposed to doubt so emphatic an assertion will do well 

 duly to ponder the fact that the newly-arriving Teutonic 

 subjects of the Empire (who would, in such case, have come 

 as foreign conquerors) had not advanced beyond the stage ol 

 tribal organization. On their further aggregation into rural 

 and civic bodies, the autonomous spirit would have acquired 

 an ascendency which it might well have taken another more 

 fortunate Athenian federation, or another all-absorbing 

 Roman domination, thoroughly to destroy. Even as it was, 

 it required all the immense power of the Church, unflinch 

 ingly exercised through many generations, to prevent Euro 

 pean society from disintegrating into a mere collection ol 

 mutually repelling tribal communities. But the Church 

 not only preserved the best social results of Roman dominion, 

 by hastening the consolidation of each embryonic nation 

 ality; it also, by its peculiar position as common arbiter 

 between the different states thus arising, assisted in the 



